EXTRACTS OF LETTERS, &c.
EXTRACTS OF LETTERS, &c.
From October 1895 to May 1897
October 1895 In the lonely hours of the night I get a sense of what Jordan is. In complete helplessness as to myself, and apart from everybody, there is wonderful solace and satisfaction in being so drawn to the Lord that one’s heart is absorbed with Himself. The great loss to souls is their not being absorbed with Him. They will gladly speak, read, hear of Christ, but are not absorbed with Him. No one understands Him but as they are in company with Him.
I had a nice word with ———— as to the difference between acceptance and deliverance. It is impossible for any one not knowing deliverance, and what coming to the living Stone is, to have any idea of God manifest in the flesh beyond human speculation.
November I have been meditating much on faith and the Spirit, and have been thinking of the way in which Christians put faith in the place of grace and of the Spirit. Faith apprehends God’s grace in giving, but grace is the power of God. By the grace of God I am what I am. I see how souls are deceived by putting faith in the place of the Spirit, who is the power.... Faith is the gift of God. Faith sees God, and counts on God, and there is the work of faith with power; but it is the Spirit who leads me into God’s counsel for me.
[p. 120] I feel my weakness more as my energy increases. It is a great lesson to learn that you have no one to turn to but the Lord Himself, and that He is sufficient for you. Death must be learned. How much I require my own teaching now! People think they can enjoy Christ’s life without learning death on themselves, but they cannot.
I have to learn in this protracted helplessness that there is no resource but in the Lord; no friends nor letters nor anything but Him. It is a happy lesson to learn in any degree.
I wish I could convey to you the way the Lord’s supper opened out to me last night in connection with John 6. You appropriate His death which you remember, and you enter into His life. In a sense you cross the Jordan. I am learning that with even one step in Jordan, things here assume their true colour — a dry and barren land where no water is, but the sphere of His life gleams before me on the other side, where His presence is perennial joy.
I feel the body is the Lord’s. I look to Him to keep me from being occupied in bodily weakness with myself, and that I may be free from myself to think of Him.
I have been meditating on the dispensations. This is the Spirit’s day on the earth. Anything that is not of the Spirit is not acceptable to God.
I believe there is the greatest gain from being in the Lord’s company — it is the “manifold more”. I have been meditating on “I ... will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3: 20). In the one, He is my guest, He comes to me. In the other I am His guest, I go to His place. You prepare yourself to receive a great guest, and you prepare in another way to be His guest — to be with Him in His own home or place.
[p. 121] As far as I see Laodicea boasts of all that grace confers, without any of the grace, or “little power”, that marks Philadelphia. It is very interesting to see that it is closest association with Christ that corrects that state. “I ... will sup with him, and he with me”. I do not think gold is the righteousness conferred but practical.
... Many suppose that they know union with Christ, because in God’s grace they are united to Him.
... Nothing understands divine love, but the love that is of God.
The history of a soul taught of God is very interesting; there is a divine order of teaching which the Spirit of God does not depart from.
First, we learn acceptance with God, everything of the old man removed from the eye of God in the cross, so that you are in Christ before Him.
Secondly, you are delivered from the body of this death through the death of Christ, and you by the Spirit are in Christ free from the law of sin and death.
Thirdly, the more you enjoy your deliverance in the life of Christ, the more you realise that He is not here; and that to reach Him here (in the assembly) you have to cross the water (see Matthew 14), to the other side of death, and come to Him, the living Stone, and thus you are built up a spiritual house.
Fourthly, in your infirmities down here you find that He is touched with feeling for you, and as a Great Priest He draws you to His own side, not only to relieve you, but to conduct you into the circle of the consecrated company, associated with Himself in the holiest of all.
Fifthly, the more you are with Him in the Holiest, the more you are in the race, drawn away from the world to where He is, and eventually you find that Jordan is privilege — that in His death you have died, and are clear of everything in this scene, to enter upon the sphere of His life where you know Him as Head.
Sixthly, when you know Him as Head you soon realise that you are united to Him.
Seventhly, united to Him you are not only in His [p. 122] heavenly power but His interests absorb your heart, and you are able to stand for Him here, against all the power of the enemy. See Ephesians 6.
December I was very glad to hear from you and of your exercise about faith and the work of the Spirit.
To begin simply at the beginning; the first thing for the soul is faith in God; that is, what God in His grace has wrought for you. Of course, faith is the gift of God, seeing what He has done. In Hebrews 11 they died without having received the promise, but we have received it, and now we come to the Spirit’s work — a work in us. Not I, but Christ liveth in me. So that faith is seeing how God sees me. The Spirit of God enables me to be what God sees me to be — not in Adam but in Christ. The Spirit of God sets me in Christ according to Romans. God sees me in Christ and not in Adam, because of the work of Christ. The old man is crucified, and by the Spirit I am delivered from the body of this death through the death of Christ; in Christ old things are passed away, all things are become new. By faith I see how God sees me in Christ, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, and by the Spirit I am in Christ.
I have been thinking that I have known Christ’s sympathy as to circumstances, and in bereavement, but very little until now as to illness.
I have been dwelling on the greatness of His love, that He would like to have us with Himself, and then I turned to the greatness of His grace in allowing us to be here for Him.
†My world is now very circumscribed. It circles round Himself.
†[p. 123] I paid a visit to the heavenly regions. To see what I have seen is quite enough to keep one from sleeping. Corruption shall put on incorruption; but I got such a view of it — of His own glorious body!
†Oh, if every one could see the world as I have seen it these last few weeks they would be afraid to touch it in any shape or form. If we had each accepted the cross all through our lives, how different our lives would be!
January 1896 †You will find the Lord’s sympathy better than any human support. Do you know what it is in weakness to find support outside this world? Remember the new ground you are on.
†I am learning a new road in dependence upon Christ all along the road. He has fought the battle, and we get the good of it. Thank Thee, glorious Lord!
†The more you follow one Person alone the more simple your path will be. The reason people find their path so difficult is that they have not a single eye for a single Person.
†I have learned to do without any thing or any one but the Lord. He is enough without letters or friends or anything else.
†[p. 124] The hindrance in every soul, from the eldest to the youngest, is not being set for the glory. You cannot reach the purpose of God any other way.
Does your heart rejoice in the love that would draw you away from your own darkness into its own light?
†Reading 2 Corinthians 4. Do we belong to the scene where the brightness is, or to the scene where the blindness is? It is not only that the scene is bright, but the Person in it. He belongs to it. It is a great thing for us to belong to it. Wonderful way to open heaven ... by a Person!
†If man would only dwell on the divine reality of God’s world, he would see that this is only man’s world. In God’s world all is divinely beautiful. This is a beautiful world, but it is only like a flower. In God’s world all is according to God. I am roaming in beautiful worlds, and I rouse up and find myself in this world.
†Everything is getting so small in contrast to eternal things. I always begin with God; the difficulty is to go on, and not let other things come in.
†There is a great gap between God’s things and man’s things.... I began with, “I will delight in the Lord”, and it brought me to the end of all things here.
A man may get a place in the church, but unless he walks in the Spirit he is not thoroughly for God. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord” (Zechariah 4: 6). That is my text.
It is hard to explain my present experience. The great thing before me is that all things are of God. The great text before me is, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit saith the Lord”. I feel I am only at the infancy of Christianity. How small everything is in contrast to eternal things!
†I see an open door — fulness of blessing, and power to carry one through this world in devotedness to the Lord, but when I look at anything of man it is all confusion and failure. But all is bright up there!
†There is a great contrast between things outside this scene and the things here; but no matter what they are, you must look up to the Lord for small matters as well as for great. My rest is, that I am not conscious of anything here until I open my eyes; I am above the things here in the sense of His power; that is rest even in the night. Outside of everything with the Lord, that is communion; that is what I call rest — the great thing is to stay in it. Make the Lord your delight and not any circumstance; when lost in Him, that is rest.
†The first thing that made me love the Lord was finding that He loved me. I found that the Lord loved me, and that I could go to Him; I think that is what Peter felt; it was not Peter’s love that made him go to the Lord so much as finding that the Lord loved him.
A day’s experience in bed. I began with grace and I came to praise. Then I came to see what service is. I see that the great lack in the servant is that it is not the purpose of God that is his ideal. If it is not, if he does not know the purpose of God, he cannot lead souls to glory. You must begin with grace in order to end with [p. 126] glory. Your knowledge of the glory is according to the measure of your knowledge of the grace.
I had a thought in the night. Glory is the goal and climax of everything — the glory righteously displaying itself. We see good and evil together; good overcame the evil in such a way that the glory is displayed righteously and the glory is the climax. God’s purpose in the saints necessarily runs along that line, and if they are set for the glory they must be in the purpose, and if they are set for the purpose they are sure to be in the glory, which is the righteous display, or the display righteously of all God’s attributes, so that the good has obtained the victory. If this were truly known it would work wonderful advancement in souls, and in the testimony down here.
I have been thinking much of the early chapters of Revelation. Christ among the candlesticks. He has an establishment on earth, and now He is in heaven ready to come for us. Then in chapter 4 He is acknowledged in heaven.
How beautifully John’s gospel opens up the new man, new order, new line of things, and starting us with new power.
It is a great favour to be allowed to keep up our acquaintance with one another about heavenly things.
†I should like to make a sketch of the history of the first man and the second. The first man who brought in all the ruin coming to an end in the cross; and the Second Man starting, not from the cross, but from the glory, bringing in everything according to God. Think of a Man in glory! That is a Man according to all God’s attributes. Think of knowing Him there! And He is your Saviour, and you are united to Him. What a wonderful picture [p. 127] it would be if I could portray it as I see it. It is constantly before me as I lie here musing, so that I am never lonely.
February †I had a wonderful night. The whole sky seemed lighted up, the light circling round, and the Lord in the midst, immensely great, surveying the earth. I was there too. It seemed as if He were shewing it to me, or at least there it was for me to see at a distance, and I was but a speck looking at it.
I wish I could convey to you the whole scheme as I have seen it from the first man to the reign of Christ — the whole sky seemed to be lighted up, and the Lord filling the whole space.
In connection with Antichrist the Latin kingdom is transformed into Babylon — man’s greatness. To make Antichrist a magnificent man is the aim; everything on earth used for this purpose.
Next, Babylon is destroyed, and then the power all comes from heaven. The king comes from heaven. The Lord of glory comes. Then you have the New Jerusalem down here. It comes with the glory of God.
†What a difference it makes in any one to be set for the glorified Man! If you give up for the Lord you get on. If the glorified Man is your object you cannot make anything of yourself. It is such a great thing to colour your whole life, to know that you belong to a Man in glory. Seeing Christ in glory takes you out of everything here.
If you know that you are accepted you want deliverance to enjoy it. Then you find that Christ, who is your life,
[p. 128] is not here. He is rejected from and by everything in this world. You look about to find Him, and you discover that He has a company — an assembly, to whom He comes, and where you can meet Him. This separates the heart to Him, not only from system, but from everything here. You find that He is the living Stone, and that you are of Him, as the stone in the quarry was a part of Solomon’s temple.
†I have been in the courts of glory. What do you think is the first thing you learn when you get there? You find that glory is your destination.
Read Colossians 3: 1 - 4. Wonderful! but if you understand the glorified Man you know how He brings it all in. He has overcome in righteousness. He is glorified in the setting aside of every man.
There is a voice from heaven — one man is cleared away in judgment, another Man has been introduced, something perfectly new; that is salvation, you cannot make it too simple.
†If you lost a person who was dear to you in one place and found him in another place, it would alter the place to you. You could not be with a person without being in a place. If you leave the place, you lose the power.... It is a great thing to be travelling to the spot where your affections are.
Is it the work of the Lord you are set on, or your own gratification?
The subject before me is the impossibility of diverting a soul from the smallest touch of divine grace. If a soul is saved it cannot be lost. How much time is lost in seeking to establish the fact of election instead of enjoying [p. 129] the bloom and freshness of it, seeking excuses for unbelief instead of walking in the power of our calling. If ye do these things ye shall never fall.... If the same time and anxiety wasted in seeking corroboration of salvation had been spent in seeking instead that there should be no soil or shade upon it, how different the walk would have been. When we walk worthy of the calling we have the corroboration of it.
†If you have failed and are looking for restoration where would you begin?
Answer. — The Nazarite began over again.
That will not do; it is improving the old thing. You must begin at the other side of the failure; you must get on another line — the line of the glorified Man. When Peter was fully restored he had got hold of the Man in glory, and was occupied with Him; and he could say, “Ye denied the Holy One and the Just”. See Acts 3: 14. Just what he had done himself. You begin with the good, and go on with the good. That is where I am now. It is a different thing to see a thing and to go the road. You begin on the new line, and the new line leads you to Christ where Christ is. Then you have two things — power and place. The power of the glorified Man takes you to the place of the glorified Man.
It is a good thing to be in that solitude where nothing can be any light to you but the word of God; you see everything and every one there.
I had a very helpful meditation upon the resource the Lord is when all around is darkness and weariness.
†(Question asked — ‘Why are you not sleeping?’) I was thinking of the church, and what the effect would be of a true servant; how it would tell on the saints.
[p. 130] How many make everything of preaching, instead of seeking to be a pattern man, one standing here for God.
I am trying to study what the course of a servant, a witness, in the true sense, would be — one really coming from God. I was reading John 17. If a servant came that way into the midst of His people here, altogether from God, what an effect it would have on the saints. I was tracing it through Ephesians. What a blessed thing to come out here as a heavenly man expressive of Him, apart from all connection with the old man!
I am glad that my little meditation on Revelation is put in the Voice as a whole. It is a great thing to present things as a whole. I never remember getting such a sense of God’s ways as when I saw it portrayed before me in that book in the dead of night.
... I am trying to write on the true servant. There is nothing very new in it, except one thought which has cheered me greatly, that it is as Christ is endeared to us, and as we really know Him, that we value union with Him, and this is the servant’s great business, to make Him attractive to souls.
March I had a wonderful night, contesting in my sleep with a man on spiritual subjects. I hope I have got good by it in seeing more clearly that the side I was contending for was Christ only. I had great joy in seeing that Christ alone fills the whole scene.
... I am very much interested in the subject of communion. When do you know communion first?
... I am writing on Laodicea. It is difficult to believe how any can assume to be the church who do not know [p. 131] the gospel. The deficiency is really in gospel truth; without that church truth cannot be known. I reproach myself constantly as to how very little I have helped the church when I see what darkness there is on what is really the gospel.
I was thinking this morning that there are two great processes always going on in a Christian, the object being to get morally clear of the old man and to bring in the new man, Christ Jesus. One process is “Beholding the glory of the Lord”, bringing you into moral correspondence with Him. The second is a very different action — “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”, the life of Jesus manifest in our mortal body. You might have the first in private contemplation, but the second — the bearing about the dying of Jesus — would transpire in every movement of your life; on the one hand you receive of Christ, and on the other you part with what is not of Him.
I think you and ———— would like to hear of my experience last night. I awoke in the night with great fervour, occupied with a verse, saved by the mighty power of God. I had been contending for it in my sleep, but the people were making such a rant of it, and I was panting like a hunted hare. I tried to explain to them that salvation was effected on the cross, and that the believer is given the power of God to enjoy it. My great text for myself was, I sat under his shadow with great delight; but that only in the Spirit of God I could enjoy it. The moment I went to sleep the rant began again, and I awoke in excitement. I looked to the Lord to establish the fact to myself, that it is only in the Spirit of God that we can get clear of excitement in the flesh, and the Lord in a marked way made me know that I was free from the flesh, and could enjoy it all in the Spirit.
When I awoke this morning I felt like a man after a race; and in reviewing it, my meditation was, that the first great thing is to overcome the man that was removed in [p. 132] the cross, and the next great thing is to walk in the power of God — to walk in the Spirit.
Those I was contending with were all imaginary people whom I did not know, but you can imagine the sort of night I had.
The Holy Ghost demonstrates to us the character of the world — no righteousness here, all power broken; this world is an awful place, a great desert without any power for the heavenly man; he can take no position here if he takes the ground of the Holy Ghost; with Christ rejected here he cannot take a place of rule. A man with earthly position might be in John 14: 26, but he could not be in John 15: 26.
I do not think you understand what I mean by three orders of communion. I mean by individual, having Christ the centre of everything; His own individual connection with us gives this. When I say personal, I mean it is all about Himself — John 13: 14, and general. Any one who is in communion with Him, has the two former. The Son is always in communion with the Father, but as we get into communion with Christ we then share in the communion with the Father. You make communion too much a work instead of the happy outflow of nearness, and this is the beginning of the mistakes about communion so often made.
If I were near you and we had a subject of common interest, I should soon know if we had communion one with another; but in divine communion Christ is the centre. Christ is already in communion with the Father, and as we get into communion with Him we advance into communion with the Father. It is not so much the greatness of the things we know in communion, as the fact that we are in concert with Him. It is the concert with Him and not the knowledge that is prominent with us.
[p. 133] We do not begin with communion on the same line. I begin from Him down, and I think you are occupied with us. You must find His side. If you had the individual it would not be where we are, but where He is. You would see what it was to Him to place a man in Eden, and so as to all His works. Next will grow what I call personal, how He is displayed in it. Communion is different to every other blessing. We are entirely outside of it; we never are the objects of it, though we are the subjects of it. When before the Lord we are allowed to see what He sees in order to give us an idea of the magnitude of what He is connected with, and as we are near Him we grow connected with it.
Moses had a very different idea of communion to what Paul had. Moses was seeing a new order of things in order to alter the existing ones. Paul was caught up in order more thoroughly to establish him in what he had received. Communion really culminates in eternal life....
The Lord blesses me in order that I should be blessed, and I know that the blessing is from Him. “The blessing of the Lord maketh rich”; but in communion it is more to bring me on familiar level with Himself.
It is a comfort to me that you begin to apprehend the great subject of communion. I am sending a paper on the necessary place feet-washing holds for fellowship with the Lord. I hope you and ———— will read it carefully and understand it. I cannot tell you how it weighs on me that there is an attempt to be in communion with the Lord without being clear of that which caused the distance and judgment. If one truly realises what it is to be cleared, what a joy to Him and what unspeakable gain to us! In society people prepare themselves before they come into company, and this is really what is required to enjoy the Lord’s company. The feet must be washed. We must be clear of the flesh, and in the Spirit.
[p. 134] I have been very much helped lately, though through much conflict, in judging myself as to whether it was that I had faith in the Lord’s love for me, or faith in His power (Philippians 4: 13 — “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me”). Naturally speaking, you could have more reliance on a friend that has means than on the friend that has no means; but the friend that has no means, if he has love, is a better friend. Therefore if I know that the Lord loves me personally, the more I study that love the more I see, not what He could give, but what He could be to me; and when His love to you begins to be attractive, you are surprised to find where it will lead you, and what it will open out to you.
Every Christian has learned Him as a Saviour, but the first real beginning in the soul of this attachment is your discovery that He loves you. As He said to Peter (Luke 5: 10), “Fear not”, I will advance you from a mere fisherman to be a fisher of men; for Peter had said, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. It is not only that He is the object of my heart, but I find that the One I love has made me an object to His heart! A great day for the soul! People are ready to say how they love Him, but how far can they say that they are conscious of His love to them? that they so prize it, that it is the greatest secret of their heart? When the Lord’s love is before you, you find this love is drawing you from darkness to light. He begins by shewing His desire for your spiritual advancement, and not by advancing you in earthly position. It is beautiful to see that the work of true love is to set aside darkness, or whatever would interfere with association; and therefore it is not esteemed as it ought to be, because we are looking for something on the earth, and the tendency is to judge of His love by earthly gifts or favours down here.
The bride in the Song of Songs 1: 4 began rightly when she said, “Draw me, and we will run after thee”. The unfailing mark of true affection, if I know He loves me, is that I seek His company, and therefore plainly, if you keep your first love, you will seek to have company with Him. The Ephesians had given up their heavenly position when they lost their first love. If you are thus [p. 135] true in heart to Him, you can follow out what you get in Song of Songs 2:3 “I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste”. It is very plain that company is dearer to the heart than any gift, and in the end you find — “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love” (verse 4).
But alas! like the bride, though one knows the peculiar sweetness of sitting under His shadow with great delight, yet the tendency is to think of oneself and one’s own interests here, to drop down into selfish engrossment, and sleep like the bride in Song of Songs 5. Sleeping is not doing anything actually wrong, but it is making oneself happy without the Lord, and a state of inactivity with regard to Him. It often follows a very happy time; but then you feel you have had an irreparable loss, and you want to return to your first love. This we see in chapter 5 brings out great exercise, and the peculiar exercise connected with it, is that which is always fruitful in occupying you with Himself personally, so that when you reach Him again you are nearer to Him: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine”. I would not dwell so long on this point, only that I see it is where the weakness of Christians lies: they do not expect the Lord to draw them out of this place, to make it an unrestful place; on the contrary, they are looking to find rest here.
Surely Mary Magdalene, when in the agony of her heart she could not find the Lord, was indifferent about everything here; but He, true to His love for her, and not merely seeking to relieve her present distress, tells her not to touch Him, but to tell His disciples that He is going away — a great practical lesson, a deep dark disappointment it must have been to her, but it was the Lord’s love which would not conceal from her that the only way henceforth of reaching Him was outside of everything here, which, in the long run, the true heart gladly accepts — that we can be where He is fully accepted, and be clear of the place where He is refused: as she found before the close of that day, when she met Him again on resurrection ground — an unequalled moment to her soul! This prepared her for the great history of those who belong to the rejected Christ, set free from everything [p. 136] in the purity and perfection of His work, so that she could say: “As he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4: 17), and that, consequently, she is part of the consecrated company; and relieved of every human pressure she can enter the holiest to share before God in all the fragrance and acceptance of Christ, of which we have no type; the fulness and magnitude of it are only made known by the Spirit of God; it is not detailed in scripture. She is united to Him, made a member of His body, and therefore shares in all His interests and all His power, and can come forth to act here unhinderedly according to His own pleasure; and it is then only that the greatness of worship on God’s side is fully known.
Now we see how the love of Christ conducts one all along to His own company to be in unclouded communion with the Father and with Himself. “Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1: 3): we cannot get any higher than that — a most amazing height; and yet it is from that height, where all things are of God, that we must look down if anything tries us here, instead of trying to scramble out of the trouble by one palliation or another.
I trust you will see very fully, how blessedly one is conducted by His love to a scene where everything is solved, and where your heart is assured that the love that has brought you to the top will order for you all along the road below. But, if you understand it, you look at it, not as being in the trouble, but as living with Him out of it, while marking His gracious way of freeing you from it.
April I have had happy times turning to my great resort — the shadow of His wing, where His fruit is sweet to my taste.
I am writing a paper on the walk and service of the saints. I am especially pleased with two thoughts: 1.— There is nothing for God here but the Man who came out of heaven, and the more our hearts are drawn to that [p. 137] Man the more we part with everything that is not of Him; and 2.— When we are severed from everything not of Christ, then we are ready for union with Him.
†I have been so happy sitting under His shadow with great delight; so cheered to know that I have a right to be there; and that I may stay there. But I have been learning also the practical side of it — that the way to keep there is “I am crucified with Christ” — and therefore no consideration for myself has any place. If I allow any consideration for myself, I am not saying, “Not I, but Christ liveth in me”.
Every one has to learn the relief by going through the circumcision. Do not forget that! I say to myself when the panting comes on — “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”! — or else some senseless consideration of myself comes in my way.
... As I ponder here it seems to me that if we had faith all would be simple and grand to us. The Man who died for us to clear us in the sight of God from the offender — now raised to glory, living in us by the power of His Spirit. If we were clear about the first, we should soon be in the full joy of the second.
†I have had great experience of everything being gone, not by myself but by Another — that I am set free from everything. I have had such a sense of being carried above everything by the Spirit of God. It is a great thing to go back to your beginning with the Lord — to find that as He is the only One before God, so He is your only One.
It is very cheering to me to see that the more we realise the true character of the wilderness, the more we feel it a [p. 138] privilege to be over Jordan, and dead with Christ, so that we can enjoy Him in His own sphere of life. May this be abundantly enjoyed by you....
I see that the great hindrance in every one is not having accepted the crucifixion of the old man!
... You will find that there is no real attachment to the Lord until His company is valued; friends or business or anything must be secondary to Him. It is not now and then to have His company, but that, that is where you come from, — from Him. “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee” (Ruth 1: 16). I have written a paper on the effect of His love. You will see it in the Voice.
The greatest proof of love is to seek the company of the one you love. I had great joy in the night in finding myself alone with the Lord. The sense of companionship with the Lord is a great delight to me.
Very glad to hear you are leading souls to the knowledge of deliverance. Many believe in it, have faith in the doctrine of it, who have not yet been able to say by the power of the Spirit dwelling in them, “I thank God” as in Romans 7. Adam has been superseded by Christ. I am not in Adam but in Christ.
I believe the great weakness in the collective company is from not apprehending the meaning of the communion of His blood and His body.
If you minister from the study of the Word, you will be interesting and attractive to your audience, but if you come from Christ with a word you will speak in the demonstration of the Spirit.
[p. 139] Holding the Head is knowing Him as the source of everything.
I have been thinking how little we know of what “eye hath not seen nor ear heard”, ... and yet it is revealed to us by His Spirit. I have been longing to get a glimpse of it. I think we can form some idea of it if we enjoy the Lord outside of everything.
If I trace the history of a man of God on earth I see that there is nothing of God for him here; he sees nothing on earth that he wants as a man of God. Nothing can be more enjoyable than absolute devotedness to One whose goodness, love, and worth command your whole heart.
Very few cultivate the Lord’s presence as a place to retire to or make it a retreat. Meetings and friends often divert us from His company. No meeting or teaching can make up for His company to the true heart.
I have an interesting subject before me — that of prayer. Your comfort in prayer depends so much upon being near the Lord. “If we know that he hears us”; we must be near Him to know that. How would you know His mind in prayer — His pleasure? We do not bear in mind sufficiently that no prayer but by the Spirit can go to Christ. People often think that a well-expressed word is prayer. Sometimes we are sure of reaching the Lord, and sometimes not.
I am weak as to doing anything, but comforted with the assurance that I am under the protection of His wing. I so enjoy the feeling that it is my place to sit under His shadow. It is so secure, so true, so abiding.
[p. 140] I was glad to hear from you, and have been very thankful to get tidings of you and P———— Street from time to time. I continue much the same as to health — very thankful for the Lord’s ministry to me. Everything here seems to take a smaller place and everything with Him a greater place. I think if the first great step in the Christian course were divinely understood the saints would have a happier time. If they saw that the old man is removed in the cross and that they are before God in Christ, by the Spirit, in their own eye as in God’s eye, they would walk here in deliverance.
I have just been reading part of Matthew 14 and John 17. I have much before me the entrance into the church — the assembly.
In prayer I have got used lately to take a survey of the places where the Lord’s name is named, and I have those who are set for His service especially before me. But when I think of His grace I think what a poor affair our service is. I begin at Dublin and travel on to Edinburgh. I like to have all the chief labourers before me, and also the women who laboured with me in the gospel.
I have been thinking of the dispensations. 1. From the flood to the call of Abraham. 2. Promises to faith. 3. Kingdom in man’s hand. 4. Christ here. 5. The Spirit. I am wishing to write on them in order to bring out No. 5 - The Spirit’s dispensation.
Many thanks for your letter on man’s assumption of Christ’s rights in the church. It is a terrible delusion. The Roman power conceded it to the church as if they could restore to Christ His rights, but the clergy were glad to snap at it in order to have power here, and the end will be that Antichrist will assume it as his right. No man walking in the life of Christ will be drawn into the delusion.
As to your question about stones and living stones, every one is a stone who has received the Holy Ghost — [p. 141] he belongs to the building, but the question really is — Is he in his place? Has he answered to his responsibility as to that?
Knowing that you belong to Christ is not the same as being conducted to where He is, outside the scene of His rejection.
Do you understand that there is no man before God here? The Man before God is in glory, and every one believing in Him is before God in Him. The Spirit of that Man — the Holy Ghost is here. I wish I could convey to you how it came before me in the night and hindered my sleep — the wondrous fact that there is no man on the earth before God; the responsible man removed in judgment. It is the day of grace and not of responsibility. If you adhere to responsibility you refuse the grace. I could not convey to you what a scene it appeared to me last night — no man before God here, and the only Man before Him the Man in heavenly glory, but the Spirit of that Man with His own here.
Glad to get your letter. The saints at ———— have been much on my heart. I enjoyed the many times I was with them. Many thanks for all your kindness and love. I would only say one word — It is a great thing for a servant here to have before him the purpose of God, which is that each member should know that he is united to Christ. Then he works here for Him and from Him.
Message If you felt that the death of Christ had blighted this world for you as you say that of ———— did, you would be a happy man, because your heart would have found an object outside this world who is able to satisfy you completely, not only now but for all eternity. If you look [p. 142] for happiness in things here instead of in a Person who is not here you will never find it.
About the bride in Song of Songs 5. First, there was indolence of heart as one who is away from the Lord. She had not His company. Next, He desires to resume company. He knocks; that is circumstance, not love exactly; a knock is not a voice, it is a circumstance. He knocks, but she is reluctant to join Him. I am more and more convinced that as love increases the desire for His company increases. The company of friends diverts from it; when the heart is true to Him it is not satisfied without being in His company. Preaching or going to meetings cannot satisfy it. There is no real attachment but as His company is valued. Do you ever go to the Lord without wanting anything from Him, but just wishing to be in His company? You cannot be in the Lord’s company without being transformed into His image.
It is very evident that if the truth does not produce an effect upon a man himself he cannot be the instrument to produce an effect by the truth upon others. Nothing more palpable as to the servant of God than that it is not what he knows that affects others, but what he is. If you do not know what God’s purpose is you do not know what you are working for. A builder would not work without a plan. A great deficiency in saints is that they have no clear idea of God’s purpose. Some would say it is the salvation of souls; the fact is, it is to prepare a bride for His Son in glory; this is the mystery kept secret from the foundation of the world, so that even an evangelist, if he comes from Christ, ought to know what his finish is, what he is set for, though he has only to do with the beginning.
It is wonderful to me to see that nothing here helps you in the Lord’s service. It is not only that we have to [p. 143] travel through the wilderness, but one day we have to cross the Jordan and to realise that we are severed from everything here to enjoy the sphere where He is, even though we have to resume links here. It is a wonderful day to the soul when we can realise the perfection of being in His things, severed from everything here and thus really capacitated for His interests by being so identified with Him.
It has pressed on me how little labouring brethren know and prize the gifts they have received from the Lord for His service. The gift is as definite as your salvation, but if you know the gift, you know how He has empowered you to act. If I were to remain with my brethren, what I trust I should press on them would be that each should know the gift which he had received of the Lord. Praying and ministry of the word are put together in scripture; therefore if I know what He has called me to, I pray for those whom I seek to serve; I learn what they require. Every fresh bit you get for yourself it is not merely to strengthen yourself, but to enable you to meet their need. This would make a very peculiar servant, but a very useful one. For instance, if I look abroad among the mass of your hearers, I rejoice that they have found peace with God, and are assured of the eternity of it on His side; but I believe that neither you nor I have an idea how little deliverance is known in the full sense of the word according to scripture. I think many are quite sure that they stand accepted, clear in the sight of God for ever, and they find rest of heart in the sense that God sees them without a cloud; but they cannot look up to God and say, that they are without a cloud; they are not yet delivered from the old man, no longer in Adam but in Christ. You see yourself clear because in the Spirit of Christ. People try to get deliverance because of the fulness of their acceptance, but it is only as they are in the Spirit of Christ that they have deliverance.
The work of the Cross for acceptance, the work of the Spirit for deliverance; once this is known it imparts great power to the servant, because then he sees not only the [p. 144] negative, but the positive. A man who believes in the grace of God is very strong on the negative, he sees that everything must be removed, but the man of real vigour, the man in divine power, is the man who has himself touched the positive; and therefore he is a good guide to conduct you to it. He knows that it is God’s grace to all, but he has tasted of it himself. I know men amongst us who can denounce the old man in a very strong way, who can tell you nothing about the new man.
One word more; a question that has very much interested me, is whether the workman is set for the purpose of God, to lead the saints into the present enjoyment of union with Christ?
How few labourers have it prominently before them!
Two duties are plain — one that you are to use the gift that the Lord has given you for His service, the other — that “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3: 19). Now, if you cannot carry out the second, while fulfilling the first, it is clear that the first must get the preference; then you are cast on His love through the saints for maintenance.
I am sure that while a man can carry on the Lord’s work, and work for his own maintenance at the same time, it is the most blessed path. I have not found that men of private means, as a rule, are the best servants. On the other hand when the labourer begins to look for his reward for his work, he is more occupied with his faith for himself, than with his work.
I feel a servant of the Lord ought to do his work leaving results to the Lord, and not depending on any one. The one who has helped him this time might not do so next time, and where there is least apparent means there is often a greater tribute because of love. I stuck to secular employment myself until I was advanced in years, and since then I never wanted anything; in fact I found saints more ready to give in every way than I required to receive.
The secret is to keep your service before you, and if you are not recompensed at the moment, you will be recompensed in time. I do not think any one is truly in the Lord’s service, if he does not work as hard in it as he would in his secular employment.
The Lord direct you to Himself, because if you keep Himself before you, all the rest will come right.
May Your fragrant gift has come. Your love for me has been fragrant for many years. We may receive gifts from any one, but we can only know love from nearness of association. Many judge of God’s favour or love by His gifts. Mary, who sat at His feet, knew more about Him than that. His love is greater than His gifts. May you be kept so near Him, in company with Himself, not only to get from Him, but so to know Him that you know you have parted from the resource of your heart when you have parted from Him. Love delights in being rather than in doing. May you increase in the knowledge of His company.
†What joy to find that the old man is crucified with Christ. To one like myself practically apart from this scene, it is a source of unspeakable joy and comfort.
Very glad to get your letter, and that you see the importance of combining the objective and subjective. If any one cannot rejoice in God’s grace he is not in conformity to it. My meditation today has been that very few know how the old man is disposed of.
I can quite understand your feeling about Quemerford, but if my absence is a loss, every one interested in the Lord’s work ought to try and make up for it. If you go there to the Lord you are sure to be supported. I am better today; tried to finish my paper on the objective and subjective.
[p. 146] I have been greatly interested, and I hope helped, by seeing the imperfect way we learn truth; not that the truth is imperfect, but we have learned it imperfectly. Some of us have been more occupied with seeing that we get the truth accurately, as revealed in the word of God, than we have been with understanding the state that is necessary in ourselves to our apprehension of what is revealed. Many have been satisfied with seeing the purpose of God’s grace, but I find that there is a great deal more said about the state that is to enable us to receive it. For instance, in Ephesians 1 the prayer that you may be given the Spirit of wisdom and revelation is before you have received the truth; that is, that you must have got the mind of God in its breadth, before you can understand the mind of God. We have been too much satisfied with clear exposition of truth, and have contented ourselves with thinking that we had the truth because we had the exposition of it, instead of seeing that we require a divine state to enable us to apprehend the truth. This is most important as shewing how necessary the subjective is for the apprehension of the objective. Generally the former has been put after the latter, but if we study the ways of God, we shall find that He prepares us for the truth by giving us a state which can appreciate the truth before He enunciates the truth to us. We have thought everything of getting a clear idea of truth, whereas getting a state that can appreciate the truth is the great grace of God.
We get a striking example of this in the parable of the sower. The same seed had a very different effect on each heart. The state of the heart gave effect to the seed. It enhances God’s grace to us very much when we see that when He makes known His grace He gives a state that can appreciate His grace. I am sure I have sought to bring heaven before souls, but I find that I have too much overlooked the journey to heaven. Though Christ is the great object there, we must remember that there is no way to heaven but through the wilderness and over Jordan. We have thought that we had got there because our faith was in Christ who is there, but the real proof that we have reached any truth is that we have the state that fits us [p. 147] for it. The state of one risen with Christ is having put on the new man. No one knows what it is to be in heaven with Christ until he knows what it is to be severed from every link here, with Christ to walk through Jordan. He may resume links here, but he can never lose the state which fitted him for being in heaven. And there it is not what we have lost that occupies us, but the immensity of the gain where we have been entranced. I think a great defect in souls, is that they have not crossed Jordan — have not realised what it is to have died with Christ, and to be thereby severed from everything in this world. And if you are not in heart and experience over Jordan, you do not know the Lord as Head.
Glad to get your letter. How beautiful the experience is that it is the Lord’s work. How different to an account of one’s own feelings and desires. If we understood better the gracious way He leads us on, and had more experience of it, we should be greatly delighted.
At present I am trying to understand the experience of being over Jordan. I see what it is to be severed from everything here, and to find absolute satisfaction in Him — a very interesting knowledge; but for those who have to resume their links here it must be very different from those who need never resume them; so that over Jordan is a deeply interesting study with me. I cannot but think that those who look only at the objective truth lose the sense of the Lord’s interest in leading them little by little into the taste and ability to enjoy His things. It seems even common sense to know that when a thing is immensely beyond you, you could not appreciate it if you had not the nature and ability for it. If you have not it is like the hen that found the diamond which was of no value to her.
I was much pleased with each of your letters telling me of the grace of God to each of you in a different aspect. Wonderful the grace of our God!
[p. 148] I have been very much interested in seeing that you must have the state to enjoy God’s grace. It is a divine state; you must get the best robe to enjoy the great supper (Luke 14), and you never lose the state. The state is yours, though you are not always enjoying the supper. I think this is of great importance. You must have the state to enjoy the grace. The state you are given to cross the Jordan remains yours though you may have to resume things here. The state that is given to you is not so much the enjoyment as your being able to appropriate the grace. It is on the subjective side you have the joy. Faith is subjective and it is when you enter upon the subjective that you enjoy the grace and have the best robe to enjoy the supper; and when we receive ability from God — the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him to understand the mystery, it is that we may enjoy the mystery. It is when we are in the subjective that we enjoy it.
... The state for risen with Christ is having put on the new man.
I have had a lovely meditation on John 17 and a splendid view of the gospel — man put away and another Man before God.... I have new light on the objective and subjective; I have been thinking of it for two days. How long one takes to learn truth! I feel like a dog at a marrow bone, only reaching now what I have been at for years.
It is a great thing when the Lord continues His own here for His own pleasure. When I think that He knows so well the difference between this place and His place I am sure He would not continue any one here who wished to go to Him but for His own pleasure and their benefit.
Of course I am thinking a good deal of Quemerford, and have expressed my desire that they will insist upon the truth that the Lord revived to Mr. Darby, that Christ is the Head of the body. I find as I look around that what is so little known is new creation; so many are not clear [p. 149] of the old, and do not see any divine way of getting clear. Many an honest man has not got on because he is not clear of the old man; he may be clear as to salvation, and yet not be clear that old things are passed away and all become new. Until this is known the new man is never heartily embraced.
My nights are good, but my strength does not increase and I am often very weary in the day time.
I want to send a message to each of you four, though I cannot apply the truth to each as it suits each, yet I hope each one will be able to apply it to herself.
In our journey to the Lord, one day or other, sooner or later, we must cross the Jordan. Every one now that is spiritual when he gets near the Lord is over Jordan in spirit, but it is not every one who is over in spirit who has really walked it over and knows what it is consciously to be over. So many are leavened by the tendency to confine ourselves to the objective truth, that all is ours and that we have it. But God is very gracious; He not only gives us everything, but He gives us the nature and ability in order to enjoy His gifts. I desire for each of you that you may understand the grace of being really over. When you are, you have the sense of being severed from every link here, but you have no loss because you are enjoying the Lord and His line of things. No one can really minister Him in power until he is brought into this experience. Every one must in spirit be over Jordan to be with Him for the enjoyment of his own soul. Do not content yourselves with knowing that it is all yours, though it is all yours through divine grace; but see that His grace has fitted you for the practical enjoyment of it; and then if you resume links here you do so with the consciousness that you belong to a place that is radiant with all His interests, and that your severance from things here is no loss to you. Let this be the study for each of you in the secret of your souls and you will be greatly blessed.
... [p. 150] I am glad to think of you as the Lord’s servant....
The more you are the Lord’s servant, the better you will fulfil every other relation of His appointment. The greatest devotedness in a servant of the Lord is to follow Him. “If any man serve me, let him follow me” (John 12: 26). It is a path the vulture’s eye hath not seen, and if you follow the Lord you not only know Him for yourself increasingly, but you are better able to tell of Him to others.
It is quite possible for the servant to be truly receptive, and to be able, as he is spiritual, to judge all things; but the great aim of the servant should be to make His Lord known. You may be sharp in seeing distinctions between the expositions of truths, but what really gives power is being able to state what is of Christ. Locke says, that a man of judgment nicely distinguishes between two points in which there is the least difference. Human cleverness likes to dwell upon the distinction, but the great thought of the servant of the Lord is to connect the soul with that which is of God. If this be your aim you will be a useful servant, but you must be much with Him or you will not be up to it.
The Lord bless you much.
... It is very cheering to me to hear that they were contending for the truth about the living Stone, because I see from Scripture that the Man who glorified God where we dishonoured Him is in glory, and therefore on earth there is no man. There is another Man accepted before God, but the Holy Ghost is here, and if we are of Christ we must be led by the Spirit of God; and we could not find Him here risen and in glory but as outside everything of man. Thus we know Him in the assembly as the living Stone at the other side of death. I have often remarked that John 6 and Matthew 15 occurred together. You could not be in Christ’s company but in Christ’s life, therefore He breathed on them in John 20. — His first interview with them as risen.
([p. 151] Reading Numbers.) The part that cheered me most was seeing that truly accepting the way to Canaan (heaven) is through the wilderness, leaving everything behind because of what was before them until they finally crossed the Jordan, and were in the sphere of His life. I think I see it in my own history. When I was living with Mr. D. in 1835 I tried to write a hymn, one verse was:
‘To us the world is vile and dross,
Whate’er was gain we count but loss,
Yon heaven is our home!’
My comment on it now is, It is a great thing to get hold of the place definitely, but as I consider it now, I had then very little idea of the way to it; and now that I have in some measure learned the way to His place I can truly say,
‘The world is a wilderness wide,
I have nothing to seek nor to choose.’ (139:1)
... It is a great hindrance to souls to begin exclusively with the gospel; that is, occupied only with the great benefits of grace; they thus confine Christ to meeting their own need, and do not see that it is the purpose of God to unite them to Christ in heaven; just as one might dilate very largely on Christ in the ship as in Matthew 8 and not venture to say a word about Christ walking on the water as in Matthew 14. In Paul’s gospel he brings you to glory — he begins with Christ in glory. If souls understood this better they would understand from their start that this world is a wilderness, and would learn more and more every day that there is nothing for Christ here, and that the heart that seeks Christ must seek Him where He is. This is the great teaching of the book of Hebrews; you are drawn away, first through your infirmities, by Christ who is not here to find yourself with Him in the cloudless light of God. In the book of Hebrews nothing is conferred on you here; everything is conferred with Christ outside of the world, so the great result is that we [p. 152] are inside the veil and outside the camp. There is no other road to heaven now but through the wilderness and over Jordan. You get no taste of what Christ is to you but as you are really in heart over Jordan with Him. For any special light or power, such as knowing Him as Head, you must be over Jordan if it be only for a moment, and I believe, besides this, there is an actual sense that you have crossed the Jordan with Him, so that you are severed from every link here, and find unspeakable happiness in being with Him. A great day for the heart, and a journey you must take one day, for there is only one way to heaven. I hope you will not find this very difficult to understand. Study it until you do understand it. Give yourself to it before the Lord until you do.
I must tell you that I have begun a paper on Jordan. I dare say some would be surprised when I say that I see the measure of every Christian’s power here is the measure in which he knows death with Christ. There is no judgment in Jordan. It is really liberation from everything here connected with the first man. According as you are with Him — the second Man, who is out of death, you are in power.
I have not studied ————’s questions yet, they are not easy to answer. As to No. 1, What are the snares of a servant? One man’s snare is not another’s. The greatest snare is the thing you like best naturally. Advance is always in proportion to surrender. When we do surrender we have manifold more.
We can see very plainly that where gospel work carries the day there is no thought of Christ beyond what He would be in His grace to us here. I have often described the work current as good gospel, good conduct, good works. The gospel of the glory takes a new line.
It is a great thing that God is not demanding anything now. Before it was, Do this and live. Now it is,
“[p. 153] Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45: 22). How very little one walks under the control of the Spirit of God! If people really felt that the first man is gone in judgment they would feel there is no use in trying to improve him. If I walk in the Spirit I am directed about everything by the Spirit, and the first man is gone from me as he is gone from God. I notice how quickly one is betrayed into the natural will, but we are Christ’s slaves, under His direction. We have no right to anything of our own will or inclination. It is all at His pleasure. Ours is a wonderful history.
No one is really proof against the world who does not know the love of the Father, and no one is proof against the flesh unless he is in Christ. One going on in devotedness to the Lord is like a spring in the desert. I am learning more every day that the more absolutely I am freed from the old man, the more I rejoice in my freedom, and also the more I find that Christ can be more to me than all. It is not only relief, but “my cup runneth over”. How much is lost by occupation with oneself and present things! How much I now enjoy having only to do with what is unseen and eternal.
I rejoice in your decision for the Lord. It is plain that if a man work not neither shall he eat; but when the Lord calls, His service must be preferred to one’s natural duty, and if you are really in His service you will have to work as continuously as if you were in secular employment. The Lord keep you in the freshness of faith in Himself, going forth in His work, not undertaking more than He gives you grace for. I have pressed upon my brethren not to give up their secular employment until the work of the Lord so increased upon them that they must give up one or the other. The Lord bless you much.
[p. 154] I was very glad to get your letter, it cheered me much. In early days you were always ready for fresh light; it is a great thing to see it, and greater still when you follow it. I am thankful I have you in remembrance before the Lord I might say almost daily. The more I look back and judge myself, the more I see that it is some small thing that diverts one from following the Lord wholly. It is wonderful to me to see that nothing here helps you in His service. It is not only that we have to travel through the wilderness, but one day we have to cross the Jordan, and to realise that we are severed from everything here to enjoy the sphere where He is, even though we have to resume links here. It is a wonderful day to the soul when you can realise the perfection of being in His things severed from everything of man, and thus really capacitated for His interests here by being so identified with Him.
The Lord bless you much and increase you in your service to Him.
... My word to you is, “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them” (2 Timothy 3: 14). I think that in a day like this we have to cling to our beginning with the Lord, and as we cling, we are led into fuller light. It is a great thing to be sure as far as you go on.
The first thing for a man of God in this day to be assured of is, that there is now no recognition of the old man with God. The Son of God became a Man that He might set aside that man in judgment. Now, if you have got this first step — to know as a fact that the Man who glorified God in all His attributes is the only One with God, and that He is your only One, because we are born of God, it is an immense start for the servant of Christ; he starts from one Person who is God, and who has glorified God as a Man. When we receive the Holy Ghost we know our relation to God on His side, and on our own. On His side it is God’s love perfected with us, 1 John 4; and on our side we know that we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit; we are in Him, in the Man who glorified God. This is deliverance, “As he is, so are we in this world”. Many a one tastes of God’s love who does not know in himself by the Spirit, that he is not in Adam but in Christ, that he starts from Christ.
I think that the next step, as to gathering souls together, is quite secondary to the first, and you have always to refer to the first as a pivot, and the source of everything. If you are really set in heart for this, those you draw to Him will be of Him, and as they behold Him, they will be transformed into the same image. I think any faithful man having these two points can effect great blessing in this day, and if you were faithful in these two points you would have the brightest company.
Everything is in ruins; the church about to be spued out of His mouth. Three things characterise those who are faithful to the Lord. “Thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name” (Revelation 3: 8).
I think it is fearful to anticipate the scattering and darkness consequent on the church being spued out of His mouth, and it is a great thing to fall back upon what cannot be shaken. Two things I commend to your heart, your place with Christ, and the saints’ place with Christ, only known as His heart is known; so the servant has a wide field outside of all the labyrinth of questions around, through which he can only find his way as he clings fully to the Lord.
June I want to interest you in what is much before me, to bring before the brethren how little the truth made known to Mr. Darby has been maintained and pressed by us. I am trying to write a review of the way it has been opposed and refused, and I want it to be made a prominent subject at Quemerford, in order to lead the saints to give more thought to what was given by the Lord in this century. Each one is responsible for its maintenance. This is my message to them with my best love.
[p. 156] I feel it is a very important time. I hope the Lord will lead out His servants fully for Himself at this time. I have written a short review of the way the truth which was given to Mr. Darby in the beginning of the century has been opposed, and how little accepted. My desire is that the saints should be exhorted, that if we do not value what the Lord has been pleased to restore, we cannot expect more. How few really do know anything of new creation! How slowly we accept that the old must go! And there are very few who are occupied with the new. They look upon it more as a future thing than as a present portion. The idea that all is mine through His grace, and that is enough, has worked much harm in souls, because they were satisfied with the belief that all was theirs, though they were not enjoying it. Even in our own day I can see that when there was less light there was more piety. Now with greater light there is less piety. As if God could separate His gifts from the enjoyment of them. But, of course, if we only want the gift and do not want Himself, He does not give the grace to enjoy it. When near Him you learn what His grace is; and the nearer you are to Him the more true piety you have, and the more you learn of His grace. I see very often that a saint with much piety learns more quickly than the one with much truth. Mary Magdalene was very ignorant, but she was very devoted to the Lord.
I quite agree with R. that the corn of the land is collective and the manna individual. Manna applies to all the variations of the individual path down here, whereas the corn is Christ in heaven glorified. Mr. D. used to say that we do not find the corn in John 6, and that the corn of the land is where it grew, therefore we get the first taste of it in the assembly.
The doctor reports that I am going on satisfactorily, and wants me to get out the first fine day; but I cannot see this for myself. My one desire is to know the Lord’s [p. 157] mind. I am afraid to express any wish as to it, fearing that it might not be in consonance with His.
I have been greatly interested in dwelling on one simple fact, that while we all admit in one shape or other that the old man must be removed, hardly any one is occupied with the new man or new creation. I cannot tell you what an interest it is to me now to turn from all and to ponder what the new man is. Many look upon it as future, and many a one has been turned back, because he was not ready for the new. It has been a great help to me lately seeing more clearly how completely the old has passed away, and that the new is dawning on us. May we really apprehend what it is to put on the new man.
As to the question about John 6 — John 6 is the way into life. It is neither the manna, which is the grace of Christ’s life in the wilderness, nor is it the corn; but He is our life, and therefore we have His life whatever place He is in.
Of course ———— is right in saying that every Christian who is going on is not advancing in this world. He is so attracted by better things that he becomes indifferent to things here.... I have finished my paper on atonement, and am pondering one now on the purpose of God. We see all through scripture the way the enemy diverts from the purpose of God.
I have been writing to ———— and ————, that I look to God to lead them each to have an understanding with Him in private, that He may be their object; with the text, “My soul followeth hard after thee”.
I enjoyed F.E.R.’s paper in the Voice† very much. ‘God in Christ — Father and Son.’ I think we very slowly get into the latter. It is entirely outside us, as John 17 shews us. Sonship is greater than membership of His body. The great defect is, that while we see clearly
†Volume 30, 1896.
[p. 158] acceptance with God, we do not enjoy in ourselves the fact that the old man is gone in judgment. I knew it for myself for years after beginning with dear Mr. D., but I had no idea of getting rid of the flesh except by coercion. I was happy while looking up to God, but miserable when looking at myself — mourning over the terribleness of the flesh; I had no idea that it was gone. I was always pressing death, I meant my own death, because Christ had died; but I had not yet seen that, if walking in the Spirit, the old man was gone for me, and it was useless to be occupied with him. The discovery of this is a wonderful deliverance, and you make no progress in Christ till this is known.
I quite agree with you as to deliverance. People have a very feeble idea of what deliverance is. Some think it is deliverance from judgment — the Red Sea. I see that God sees me apart from the old man in the cross, and in Christ before Him, and that the Spirit of God can supersede the old man in me and make me know that I am in Christ, so that I am a new “I”, and the life that I now live in flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved and gave Himself for me.
I have been much interested in seeing the beauty and importance of breaking bread. It gives the heart such a sense of the love of Christ to us; and on the other hand all man’s hopes and honours are gone. Nothing can save him but the death of the Lord. Christendom loses the power in saying, ‘Remember that Christ died for thee.’ Of course you could not exclude that, but the paramount thought is to remember Himself in His death.
... I see very plainly where all our difficulty lies. First we have not seen and enjoyed the entire removal of the old man according to the greatness and extent of God’s mind; hence we are not prepared to enter upon the new. It is wonderfully beautiful when fully accepted that the One who died to clear me from the old man now lives in me [p. 159] to the delight of God. I cannot know Him but by association with Him. The objective school have done irreparable mischief — it is like having light without an eye. You and I can remember how much more piety there was as to practical life, houses, etc., when there was less light.
Beloved Brethren, — It is not the Lord’s will that I should be with you at this time, but I rejoice in His constant special care of you, in sending His dear servants to help you on in His mind.
I have only one suggestion to make to you, and that is, that you not only follow Him in heart adoringly for His wonderful service and interest in you down here, but that each of you study to know something of “beholding His glory” — not so much what you say to Him as what He is to you; not so much your prayers as the sense of being lost in the blessedness of being near Him, outside this world; and this you will find will have a greater effect on you than even His hearing your prayers.
For the Newport Brethren on July 1st and 2nd.
Somebody said of ————— that he dearly loved the Lord, and that he is now with the One who loved him. He now knows Love, where it is satisfied, I will rest in my love. I think the practical difficulty with souls is to realise the fact that this world is a wilderness because Christ has been rejected and put to death here, and if we are true to the profession of the communion of his blood, the reality of His death — not alone the benefit of it — would be more touchingly prominent to our hearts, and like Mary Magdalene we should learn to find Him where He is, and in learning Him thus risen out of death, we should be not only richly blessed ourselves, but able to help others, able in truth to say —
‘’Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love,
That has made me a pilgrim below.’ (139:5)
[p. 160] I look upon the twelve stones in Jordan as figuratively Christ for Israel in Jordan, and the twelve stones on the bank, Christ in resurrection. The great thing for us to learn is the three waters: first, the Red Sea, which is the judgment of death, a way opened through the death and resurrection of Christ. Next, Marah; in the wilderness we have nothing but Marah; death is our portion here; Christ, having passed through it, sweetens it for us. Then Jordan, which is our death with Him, and the moment we touch it we find that all judgment is passed. He is gone to the other side of death, and we have to do with Him on the other side of death; we are in His life — He is our life.
I think if ———— studies the end of Luke 10 he will see that grace came in when law was not able to meet the need of man. The man who went from Jerusalem to Jericho was going downward, and was left half dead. Neither priest nor Levites could do him any service, because he could do nothing. A stranger — Christ — came and poured in oil and wine and relieved him, first of the death wounds, and then set him on his own beast. The power which brought Christ into our circumstances, brought us out of them. An “inn” is not the same word as an hotel, it is more a courtyard or a caravansary, and there He took care of him, bearing all his expenses, while he is a stranger and a pilgrim here. This is the earthly side of the gospel, how a man is set up here — cured, carried, and cared for. The prodigal is the heavenly side.
As to the mixed condition, the body is the Lord’s, as we learn from Romans 12, and it belongs to the Lord just as much as a horse belongs to its owner. You have to do the Lord’s pleasure in your body whatever you have to do, whether to buy or to sell. The body is not yet redeemed, but you are born of the Spirit, and you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.
Your friend is in the future, but not in the present. We see in meetings how much this is the case with souls. How often when there is a stir for Christ in the meeting some one gives out a hymn about the Lord’s coming, to shew [p. 161] that by-and-by they will be for Him; but the thing is to be for Him now; that is the present.
We have been reading John 17. Everything in it is outside man. It is very interesting to see how it unfolds to us the way we learn the Father. The first verse and the last shew what the character of it is. I say to myself how much better I know the love of God than I know the love of the Father. I see the great point in the admonition to young men (1 John 2) is, that if they love the world, the love of the Father is not in them; it is so unique, and outside the comprehension of man. We begin (John 17) with eternal life — knowing Him, and then we come from Him, by whom we are sanctified. Though in the world, we are preserved from the evil in it; our hearts are drawn away to Christ who is entirely separated from it. This is all apostolic; where we come in is verse 23. I believe the new Jerusalem will be the great expression of this. The world that will be then, will believe that the Father sent the Son, and I believe if we were more in keeping now with what we are called to — supposing all the saints were united, all going on together in one spirit and one mind — it would have a wonderful effect upon the world! It is only the world in us that can cause a difference of opinion between us, and those who get nearer to the Lord are really nearer to one another in mind and thought. I cannot understand being estranged from a saint who is as near to the Lord as myself.
I quite agree with you as to ‘effort’. I have found nothing so difficult to myself, and I perceive it in others, as to realise practically as an absolute fact that the old man is gone in judgment from the eye of God in the cross. If we accepted this simply we should neither look for good or bad from that which is judicially terminated; and then, as this is realised, Christ would be our entire occupation; the Spirit would lead to nothing else.
The Lord comfort you much.
[p. 162] If I look at myself and others I see how slowly one has really accepted the fact that the old man has been removed in judgment from the eye of God. I believe if we kept this distinctly as an absolute truth before our hearts, we should look at everything in a different light. It is a beginning that has a great fruition. I rejoice to think that you know what it is to reach the Lord at the other side of Jordan. May He increase this more and more to you.
These months have been a profitable time to me; I have been able to trace all the Lord’s grace to me in spite of all my failure, so that now to pass away to be with Him is better than the brightest circle of things that could be offered to me here.
I find some who have known what the Red Sea is, and have travelled through Christ’s death to Him risen, and are thus at full peace with God, yet do not heartily accept that this world is a wilderness where Christ is rejected, and therefore are not set for Jordan — to be dead with Him from everything here — to taste of the unclouded joy that is in His presence in glory.
July I am greatly interested in Psalm 73. When the presence of the Lord is before the soul how differently everything comes out! Though then His presence was only known in a cloud; how much more now in a living Person.
I was writing this morning that we must not think more of God’s gifts than of Himself. Love gives most to those to whom it has given most. If you value His gifts more than Himself your heart has declined. I have been pondering on the love of the Father. It is remarkable that ————would not accept that we are loved as Christ is loved — so dark as to the new order.
... Fancy its being said that ‘Dead with Christ’ [p. 163] is only standing! The great joy to the heart is that man is not only gone to God, but in the Spirit he is gone to us. We are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, a wondrous joy. May we keep more in the joy of it.
It is remarkable that as we advance we like best those who are advancing. Those who never gave up the world honestly are sure to go back to it. If we receive light and do not walk in it we are sure to be ensnared. It is a sad thing to have a head full of knowledge and a heart following its own will.
Putting on Christ is profession, as I have contended before now. Paul says, I stand in doubt of you. “In Christ” is the state you begin with, as transferred from Adam to Christ, but you have not put on the new man — Christ, fully until you have morally parted from the old man, and that is not until you are in spirit at the other side of death.
I feel more and more every day that the objective school leads to Laodicea. Poor ———— in trying to establish the subjective turned to Laodicea instead of clinging to Philadelphia. I can see in so many the mischief of being solely subjective; it is the opposite snare of being solely objective.
I have begun a paper on the love of the Father. It is opening more to me as I go on. With the Lord’s help I hope it may be useful. I hope that you will both study it carefully. I will give you one idea. There is a great difference between descending love and ascending love. The love of the daughter to the mother is ascending love.
I was awake a little while last night and greatly interested in seeing the difference between manna and eternal life; manna is the grace of Christ’s life in the most incongruous circumstances in the form of a servant, while [p. 164] eternal life in its own sphere is according to its own order. Do you see the difference?
I enclose a paper, ‘The Love of God and the love of the Father.’ I am not up to much today. You cannot confound the words of Christ and the words of the Father. Christ’s word is to the man down here; the word of the Father is from the Father to His own. Christ walked down here in the love of the Father.
“Without me ye can do nothing” is a very sweeping statement, but very encouraging.
I was glad that you had such a profitable reading at ————. I think if you read carefully my paper on the new man you will see that I not only agree with ———— but I give reasons why it must be so. I say in Ephesians those to whom this is addressed come from being seated in heaven, or they could not come out in the new way. In Colossians I shew that holding the Head you have put off the old man, and your knowledge is increased, but you do not come out in the full way that you do in Ephesians.
Putting on Christ as in Galatians I connect more with profession.
When you come from heaven you come out on the earth as a new man, not only in your own private circle, but as in Ephesians 6, you come out here superior to all the power of the enemy. You will find it interesting to trace the progress from Ephesians 4 to end of Ephesians 6.
I think there is great blessing from meditation. Truth gets fitted in, in all its parts, and greatly enlarged to your view as you ponder on it. It is important that we meditate on what is present. Every Christian refers to the past or the future; very few to the present. You get an example [p. 165] of what I mean in Psalm 73. The individual gets his answer from the Lord, when there is only a cloud of glory, a most blessed answer, shewing the effect of being in God’s presence. But we get the Lord’s present mind by beholding His glory (2 Corinthians 3). You are transformed into His mind, like the two disciples going to Emmaus, not from reading scripture but from being in His presence. You might give chapter and verse and not be in His presence. But if you come from His presence you would be sure to light upon the right chapter and verse, and to take the right path.
The Lord bless you in this meditation more and more.
August I am thankful I can greet you entering on another year. The Lord grant that you may be so with Him, gathering the manna before the sun is up, that you can be assured of His support all the way in the circumstances here. I give you a text, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8: 35). We first love Him for what He has done for us, which is shewn in our readiness to surrender for Him, like Jonathan to David, or like the woman in the Pharisees house (Luke 7); but when we love Him for what He is to us, we are in Him. He is our life. Then it is not surrender for Him, but we suffer with Him. It is not merely His work now, but His love. Every Christian knows something of His work, but many lack in not knowing His love. It is in Him who is our life that we learn His love; we do not lose sight of the blessedness of His work for us, but the heart delights in His love. Therefore we read, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” I need not add more. The Lord bless you much in every way.
To Brethren in America and Australia.
Dear Brethren in the Lord — I have been asked by our dear brother J. R., who is going to you on the Lord’s [p. 166] service, if I had any message to send to you; so I send a few words, which I trust may prove a help and encouragement to you.
I wish to direct your attention to the beginning of God’s grace, and to the finish. It is clear if we do not know the beginning, we can never arrive at the finish. It is in the beginning that most Christians are defective. It is an old saying, ‘The beginning is half the battle.’ The Galatians did begin well, but they were hindered, and they had to begin in a deeper and fuller way. The beginning of God’s grace is that He has laid help upon One that is mighty — His own arm has brought salvation. Now while every Christian will accept this in words, not many enter into how it was effectuated. God’s Son became a Man, that He might bear the judgment that rested on Adam and his race, and remove that man in judgment from the eye of God; and He so glorified God in this, that He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and in Him the believer is accepted by God, so that the first man might be altogether removed from His eye for the believer, and he is in Christ; no longer in Adam, but in Christ: the believer can say “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8: 2). Now this is the beginning; hence when Christ is formed in you, you know that your old man is crucified, and you can say “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2: 20). It is not merely that the man who offended is gone from the eye of God, but experimentally he is gone from you because you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.
Now the finish is, that while in the counsel of God every believer is united to Christ, the Spirit’s present work in him is to conduct him in spirit now to where Christ is, as Rebekah was conducted to Isaac, in order that he may realise union with Christ in heaven; and from thence he comes forth with heavenly power as a new man on the earth, in the church, and in the natural relations in which God has placed him, so that he is able to stand for Christ here against all the power of the enemy.
I need not add more, dear brethren. The Lord bless you much in understanding the scope of His grace. I can [p. 167] understand how you are specially hindered in a country of human progress like yours, where the first man is made the most of; you will be greatly hindered, unless you fixedly go against the tide; the living fish always swim against the tide, the dead ones go with it.
Ever affectionately yours in the Lord.
J.B.S.
I send you my little word to the American brethren. I hope you will approve of it. The Lord bless you much in your mission. Seek direction from the Lord as to the subjects you bring before them, and be not satisfied with knowing the subject, but seek to be in the power of it yourself. As some one has said, ‘If you speak from the conscience, you speak to the conscience.’ You may know a thing from the Bible, but you must be in the Spirit to be in the power of it.
Your letter was a great cheer to me ... I rejoice especially at the profitable time you have had during your severe attack. I think there can be no greater evidence of the Lord’s interest in us than that He should enlighten us as to His own mind in the hours of our weakness. It shews that He judges that we would like to know more about Him, so that though “our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4: 16). One thing that I have learned during my long confinement is that many things I have had but a glimmer of before, I now see more in their divine accuracy.
I am thankful that I have you all in daily remembrance before the Lord, and every brother whom I can remember at O————.
I have never noticed what ———— refers to in the gospels, nor have I found it safe to be diverted from the object of each gospel. The object of John’s gospel is plainly the work that is done in you. It begins with the brazen serpent. Matthew’s gospel is chiefly to the Jew. Mark is the servant. Luke is the man in general.
In reading scripture if you keep the object of the book before you, you have power, like a retriever keeping to his game. The great intent of the word of God is to shew how man has been removed from the eye of God, and how the Man of His pleasure has been brought in, and the more you ponder the scriptures, seeing this intention, the more power and efficacy you will have with souls. Some have been unable to grasp the gospel of John because so wedded to the objective they would not see the work in you.
The Lord bless you much in entering on another year. “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is towards me”. It is not only that you belong to Him, but the sense He gives that He takes an interest in you will have a wonderful effect on you. Love alone understands love. Nothing would preserve you all the day long like the sense that you are an object of interest to the Lord. The company and circumstances which your conscience would see no objection to, would bear another character. As He was your object, you would judge what would suit Him, and not merely what would meet the requirements of your conscience. Conscience does not go beyond your moral sense, or your knowledge of God. Peter could meet the Lord with a restored conscience (John 20), but his heart was not restored until chapter 21. If you once have the sense of what it is to be His object you can judge everything that would cause the slightest estrangement between you and Him. Many walk with a good conscience who are not answering to the love of His heart, because they do not know it themselves. The bride in Canticles could not reproach herself for doing anything not according to her conscience, but ‘sleeping’ she was not responsive to, nor in accord with His heart towards her. Hence when she recovered, it was Himself personally who came before her in all His divine beauty.
The Lord grant that you may know daily the blessed consolation of being an object to Him, so that you may [p. 169] judge of everything, not by whether it suits you, but whether it suits Him.
... I hear that they had a nice time this morning. ———— spoke on three chapters in John. I had been saying this morning that chapter 14 is inside, intended for those who go outside, not for those who are at once going to heaven. The assembly is for the earth....
I am full of my new subject — the effect of company, and I am surprised how it opens out in scripture. I was reading Numbers 6. Mr. D. says it is a perilous thing to undertake service without a pure conscience. If one is really devoted how much one shrinks from what interferes with the Object of one’s devotedness; thus we appreciate the better the Lord’s service now in washing our feet. The Nazarite lost his vow by the touch of a dead bone.
†You ought to go to the meeting. The assembly is for those who are staying in this world, to learn the mind of the Lord, not for those who, like me, are going out of the world — going to Him.
... We have all been more occupied with the past than with the present. Surely as we see in Psalm 63 and 73, which are past, how the psalmist remembers in the wilderness what it is to be in the sanctuary, which was only a cloud of glory, how much more should we get from the presence of the Lord in the assembly. The remembrance of it is blessed in my (as I might say) weary hours here. “My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me” (Psalm 63: 8).
Again, amid incongruities here, as in Psalm 73, how cheering to turn to Him in glory and learn more than the psalmist learned. So we do not lose the past, but the present — the sanctuary, is more to us. In John 14, we have to learn what He was on the earth before we can come out, as in chapter 15 for Him. We can never lose the past,
[p. 170] but the great point is to live in the present; and thus the past is fulfilled to us, and we are prepared for the future. The darkest night will end in the brightest day.
I quite understand your difficulty about the past, but if David could have been comforted in his remembrance of the glory of God in the sanctuary when he was in the wilderness far away from the tabernacle, and be able to say, “My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me” (Psalm 63: 8), how much more should I be able to say it in remembrance of the Lord in the midst of His own; so that I do not lose the past, but I get more than the past in the present. We get the same in Psalm 73. There it is your individual difficulties you get solution of in the sanctuary. How much more now in the presence of the Lord Himself. The past teaches us what wonders we may expect in the present.
My thanks for your letter. I find it is not at all easy to lead brethren to see the difference between the past and the present. There are many who can talk nicely on Psalm 53 instead of dwelling on the Lord in the assembly. I said to a brother who wrote nicely on Matthew 8 some time ago, ‘Now let us have a paper on chapter 14.’ Almost every speaker speaks upon what has been done, not what Christ is doing — what Christ’s present interests are; the present transforming power of the glory is almost overlooked. I see all the grace that came out from Abel down to Christ were only types, figures of what is to come, but any grace which any one has now is grace that has come, the grace of Christ.
I had not looked at the words you quote in the light that you do. But I can quite see that they may convey your interpretation. Surely everything here to the Lord was most desolate. Our enjoyment is never complete until we can pass out of it all with Him, even for present service in it.
[p. 171] I quite understand the alternations which you pass through. I feel assured the more you are with the Lord, the more He will console you in company with Himself for your loss. The first great service we know of Him is as High Priest. When Peter was sinking (Matthew 14) the Lord stretched out His hand and drew him to Himself. This sets forth His sympathy, His priestly service to us in trouble and difficulty.
I trust you are so drawn to the Lord in your deep sorrow that His sympathy consoles you for the loss of your beloved sister; she has gone to Him, so that in His company you do not feel your loss. Remember we are appointed unto Marah, the water of death; we are cleared of the judgment of death, but of the fact of death we are not cleared, and it is only as we are in communion with the Lord that we cross over Jordan, and are in the sphere of life with Him. It is there I like to think of you. It is a blank to lose one much beloved in this world, though we know all love is in the Lord Himself. The Lord grant that each of us may know what it is to be outside of everything with Himself, enjoying His company.
September †Divine love makes you its object yet never makes you self-centred as natural love does. In divine sympathy you are drawn away from your weakness or sorrow to a scene of imperishable bliss to where He is Himself.
What souls want to know is the Lord in glory. It is not only attraction to Him, but it separates from earth. Seeing Christ in glory takes you out of everything here. Keep Christ in glory before you as your polar star and you will be kept right.
[p. 172] I have had a beautiful meditation. I saw the old man completely set aside by God in judgment, and the Holy Ghost setting up Christ here on earth. I got such a view of it — that God should have totally disposed of the man under judgment and brought in a Man after His own pleasure — the totality — the completeness of it! Not an atom of the old man left before Him. You must ponder it to see its immensity.
... Though there is break up in the church there is no break up in the Head of the church. The gifts today are as true as ever they were.
As to service, the Spirit of God does not occupy the servant with the exercise of his gift until he has done with himself. Paul himself did not go into service until he had spent three days where he did neither eat nor drink; and afterwards he spent two whole years in Arabia. The difficulty in all the confusion now is to get hold of what was right at the beginning. On the Lord’s side all remains the same.
We have been reading John 14, John 15 and part of John 16. You could not be in chapter 15 until you are in chapter 14.
... I hope you may have a season of enjoyment of the Lord in your new quarters. What I look for for you both is that you may know what it is to enjoy the Lord outside of everything. I see some studying the word and hearing with avidity everything about the Lord who do not seem to know what it is to enjoy being with Him without their own mind being brought in. I like Mary’s sitting at His feet. I do not think that means humility, but she was in a humble place near Him. I see those who learn the Lord only from the word are like those who know a relation through a biography. How differently would the biography be read if they knew the relation himself. So as to Him; when we know Him how differently we read His word.
[p. 173] In Ephesians we have the calling. Unless you are in it practically you cannot experience it. You are not in the possession of it properly, although you may know it. There are eight points in it: new creation; new man; quickened; one body; access; one Spirit; holy temple; assembly on earth.
The favour that brings you nigh gives you a sense of the love. Where the greatest grace is, there you have the greatest exercise. There is a wonderful difference between opening out the word of God and knowing the mind of God. The unique thing to know is what things are to Him, not what they are to us.
†When did you taste of the feast in the Father’s house? What is the difference to the prodigal when he was kissed and when he was feasted? In the latter he got company. The prodigal kissed got his own measure full, but the prodigal feasted gets God’s full measure, which is infinite. It is God who makes merry. Who lives in the joy of that?
I am enjoying the sense of being at the great supper, feasting on the fatted calf. If the prodigal is kissed all judgment is gone, but when he is at the feast he knows God’s present feelings about him. Many get the kiss and rejoice in it who never go on to making merry with God.
... I want to interest you in a few Psalms (Psalm 120 - Psalm 134), songs of degrees, which describe Israel from the captivity, seeking the house of the Lord, and at length reaching it. In Israel’s time there was something ostensibly for God on the earth. There is nothing ostensibly for Christ now. The grievous deception into which Christendom has unwittingly been led is beyond any deception known in the world; it is that Christ has now a place on the earth. So churches and chapels are built as if He had a place here. This deception of the enemy is all to cover His rejection by man. He has no place on earth; the only place in which He can be found here is in the assembly,
[p. 174] and that is in divine seclusion with His own, as we see in John 14; even there He is only seen by those who, with feet washed, are able to be in that divine seclusion with Him — now the Holiest of all. I say all this to interest you in the assembly. You must first see what a great attempt there is to conceal the grievous fact that He has been refused in this world; and when you are enlightened by the Spirit you see then that His place is outside of everything here, one to which He draws you, as He drew Peter from the waves here to His own side, so that you must turn from this place in order to find Him in His own place....
May the Lord increase your interest in everything belonging to Himself.
... The Lord in divine sympathy understands the weakness I am in, and He conducts me from it to the scene of imperishable bliss in which He is Himself. I am greatly struck with the way our blessings are connected with heaven. If it is the gospel, we are not to be moved from the hope of the gospel, which for us is heaven; for the earthly family salvation was for the earth. If you want comfort, you are drawn to heaven — the Holiest of all, to the scene of imperishable bliss.
I have nearly finished my paper on the gospel and the church†. I have been greatly struck with the fact that if you have not God’s gospel, you never get to God’s purpose. It has put the gospel in a more important light to me than ever. The Reformation began with the gospel....
PS. — Tell Mrs. ————, with my love, to look at Luke 18: 30, it is “this present time” — “manifold more in this present time”, and it is the same word as is used for the “good part” in chapter 10.
What I feel is that so many seem to take up preaching without waiting in the assembly to get sure of their gift, and whatever they know, they never will preach beyond
†Voice to the Faithful, Volume 30.
forgiveness. I said to ———— ‘You will fill the room if you preach forgiveness, but if you preach the end of man you will empty it’. He said I was quite right. It is not seen that it is God who works first, and evangelists have to deliver the message. Shew me one convert who goes beyond the man who was blessed to him. A man cannot deliver a message unless he knows it. It is unworthy of a servant to deliver a message that he is imperfectly informed of. Inside with the Lord every one is taught of Him to be for Him here. Apollos was blessed, but he did not know his gift at first, for he is not afterwards spoken of as an evangelist. I think it a great loss in many young brethren that they do not stay long enough learning of the Lord in private before they take public service. ———— said to me, ‘A great many at ———— are ready to preach.’ I said ‘Do they ever pray in the assembly?’ ‘No,’ he said. That was enough for me.
I think many of the evangelists of the present day are so little alive to the seriousness of their calling. I am struck as I study the subject with the gravity of the mission. See 1 Thessalonians 1: 2. Great results to those who come from God. The great thing is to begin with God. Evangelists usually begin with the sinner. I was only nine years old when I heard ———— preach in the drawing-room at ———— on Acts 9, and what arrested me was the fact that the Lord would do such a thing as send a light out of heaven! After I was converted and had given up going to the Bar (which I thought a great sacrifice) to serve the Lord, I heard Mr. D. preach on acceptance. That was quite a new word to me.
The brightest work of the gospel will decline if it is limited to the benefit of the convert.... It is remarkable that often where the brightest work of the gospel is, there is the greatest decline, and no divine progress in souls. Now divine progress is moral correspondence to Christ in glory, and this latter is only produced by proximate association with Christ Himself. In the work of the gospel, grace comes to the sinner, and the first divine [p. 176] sense he gets is, as we see in the prodigal, that the father is on good terms with him, he fell on his neck and kissed him. Grace has come to the prodigal to relieve him of the distress under which he lay. If he gets no more than this — a sense of safety, it is constantly repeated, but he does not advance. But when he is drawn to God — to the source of grace, he finds that it is not merely his own relief that is met, but he touches all that is in the heart of God, to fulfil His pleasure; and while the first is a limited acquisition, the second is unlimited, and with this unspeakable satisfaction — the opening out to him of the heart of God, who once was at a distance. Then, not only is his relief complete, but his new relation to God is unrivalled, daily increasing, and daily more opening out the treasures of His grace; enabling him so to apprehend God’s purpose, that he is able to stand for God in this world — to have the eyes of his heart enlightened, that he may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.
If the sun or great source of natural light comes to me, it does not enlighten me beyond its power, or the occasion of it, but if I am drawn to God, the source of all light, I am necessarily affected by getting into the power of it, and if I get near it I must be in the power of it. Beholding the Lord’s glory with unveiled face we are changed into the same image from glory to glory. This is not the light coming to me, but I am brought to it; and it is always as you are brought into the atmosphere of Christ’s glory that He attracts your heart. You are then always advancing; you do not know what is so interesting and blessed there until you get there. Gospel work may not be in the same vigour as it once was, but if you are going on with Him, He has power to maintain you according to the range of His present interests, and you are always advancing in the knowledge of the Lord, and are daily more engrossed with His interests. It is when one tries to confine oneself to one line of His interests, that one begins to lose power. It is the bride who is near Him,
[p. 177] who knows Him as the Morning Star, and who says to Him “Come”.
I like your thought about the church. I have often used the word reproducing Christ, John 15, which connects it with growth, makes it plainer. The more we think of the church the more wonderful it is. The world could not contain the books written, and yet the church is to be an expression of it all.
I have been reading Psalm 18, John 14, John 20 — the freshness of the resurrection morning. The new day has begun for us to find Him risen in the assembly.
I had a nice visit from ———— yesterday; he quite enters into the importance of deliverance, and has been pressing it. He asked me for another word for himself. I said, ‘What is your aim? Is it union with Christ in heaven?’
... I have spent my morning writing my new paper on the Spirit of God. The first point is the difference between and in, the Spirit on you and in you. In you is the promise of the Father in answer to Christ’s request. I think I have made an interesting discovery in seeing that it is when you accept that you are in Christ (Romans 8), and have changed your ground from Adam to Christ, you first know that you are in the power of the Spirit. I am greatly struck with the force of “in Christ” — a new personal identity; Isaac is in his right place; you have not a good conscience if you cease to acknowledge Him there, and you never would err if you did acknowledge Him.
Any spiritual person must see that the Lord was the holy thing born of God and could have no human taint. He began from the lowest point to encounter everything for man here — a Man for God; and He unswervingly maintained it, so that a voice came from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3: 17). He was [p. 178] truly Man, but all His springs were in God, therefore He was an exceptional Man; but He maintained man in all that was due to God in the smallest details from babyhood to manhood. His life was like His garment, without seam, woven from the top throughout.
... I think God often enlightens a man without any human ministry; for example — the thief on the cross. I should think that Mr. Darby never heard the gospel that he preached. The light shines upon the silver piece. It is light that brings in God. Men love darkness rather than light. I think ———— gets too much exclusively from the reading of the word. I see some who love to hear and read and think and speak of the Lord, who still want one great thing, that is, to be alone with Him. It is the most unspeakable blessing that God has given us a Person to be the comfort and solace of our hearts, so that at times one can truly say, ‘Never less alone, than when alone’.
I asked ———— what the saints want most, and he said, Deliverance which I believe is true.
I should be distressed for your present time of trial only that I know that “All things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8: 28), — and further, we who live are always delivered unto death. We are appointed to Marah here. We are clear of the judgment of the Red Sea, but in our journey through this wilderness it is Marah, and it is only as Christ is our life that we can bear up in the wilderness. This should comfort you much.
Very glad to get your letter and to find that you are exercised upon such an important point as justification. The words justification and reconciliation do not occur in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. There could be no [p. 179] justification until the resurrection. See Romans 4: 25. In 1 Corinthians 15: 17 we read, “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins”. There could be no reconciliation until the man under the judgment of God (in Adam all die) was removed in judgment from the eye of God in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now He has been raised by the glory of the Father, so the believer is accepted in Christ, the Man of God’s pleasure. Like the thief on the cross, a new thing goes into paradise, and the old remains here. You will never understand the grace of God until you see that there are two men. In Adam all die — in Christ all shall be made alive. No one in Adam is justified before God. In the offerings you allude to in the Old Testament, faith in the blood shelters from judgment, as with Israel in Exodus 12. They were sheltered, but not clear of Egypt, nor of Pharaoh, nor of the Egyptian. This is the state of many true believers, safe but distressed. A soul has not reached the resurrection until he travels through the Red Sea — figurative of the death of Christ. The great practical difficulty with every one is to understand what has been effected in the cross, not only sins forgiven but sin made an end of. He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. I need not add more — but till you see one man set aside and the Man of God’s pleasure raised and glorified at His right hand, in whom we are accepted, you will never grasp the full grace of God, nor be in the enjoyment of His favour on the earth, for reconciliation is the removing of that which caused the distance. It is not only sheltering you by the blood, but removing the distance and that which caused it. The Lord bless you much.
... I had no letter today but yours. I think those who only know that their sins are forgiven, when troubled, only seek to get back the sense that their sins are forgiven; they have no idea of the Spirit as their bond with the Lord.
What produces a “brother” is often merely that he believes on Christ risen, and has received the Holy Ghost, and will not listen to ordained ministry; but it is one [p. 180] thing to have received the Spirit, and another thing to walk in the Spirit. How rare the latter is! I should like to write on the Spirit, but it is such a large subject I feel hardly up to it.
The great thing that souls have to learn is Christ in glory. When you reach Him there you are not only attracted to Him but you are separated from this place. Your heart is so drawn to the Lord in glory that you are apart from all here.
... I had a nice visit from ————, he thinks the truth is growing. I was saying to him that the saints who know that in the counsel of God they are united to Christ, and who yet never go beyond the gospel, are as if Rebecca after her marriage was only occupied with her birth and rearing, and not with the high position of nearness to which she was brought.
———— agrees with me that it is the gospel which people want; the word gospel occurs more than sixty times from Romans to Philippians. You could not understand being united to Christ until you are, like the prodigal, making merry with the Father.
... There is no type of the gospel in Rebecca; she is chosen because she is of the stock and lineage of Isaac. It is properly what we get in Hebrews, “all of one”; but the way I used it was as if that after she was brought to Isaac she was dwelling on the days of her youth and her bringing up, etc., before she was found in grace by Eliezer, rather than with all the great favour she received afterwards.
I think what ———— wants is deliverance, it is there the mass of Christians are: they have not got real deliverance. I was thinking this morning that if you learn God’s mind from the word only you are in the past, but if you learn the word from your nearness and knowledge of the Lord you are necessarily in the present. I hope you will have a happy day. We have been reading Psalm 68, in connection with David bringing up the ark; also Exodus 28,
[p. 181] John 14 and 1 Chronicles 16. The tent was nothing until the ark was brought in; then the Lord was supreme. Thus we may know Him now — supreme above every shade of evil.
PS. — Did I tell you that “the gospel” occurs more than sixty times in the epistles?
... Marah is the water of the Red Sea; we are free of the judgment of death, but there is nothing here for us but death. Christ having passed through, sweetens it for us. The great thing to learn in the wilderness is yourself. In Egypt it is the enemy.. It is inveterate how much we are occupied with ourselves instead of with Christ, how little we practically carry out not in Adam but in Christ, how little we say, as to things when they arise — that is of Adam, not of Christ....
... Many a one has been turned back because he was not cleared of the old creation, and was not ready for the new. It has been a great help lately getting hold more clearly and fully of how the old thing has passed away, and the new is dawning on us. May we really apprehend what it is to have put on the new man.... I have been thinking much of the difference between reading the word and holding the Head.
... As to ————’s question. I think we get in John 14 what the Lord is inside with His own, in the Holiest. The great idea in 1 Corinthians 14 is edification; so that the more we are. with the Lord in the assembly, the more we are edified, and the more fitted we are to shew forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light. While at the same time every individual servant received instruction from Him, as the Head, with regard to His interests here, so that he knows what his [p. 182] Lord would have him do, even though he be debarred from being with those who are assembled. For my part I read as a rule John 14 every Lord’s day. I get a deeper acquaintance with what He is to His own inside, though I am not permitted to be at the meeting.
I think the individual can worship. The blind man (John 9: 35) worshipped Him when he got into His presence, but you cannot worship unless you are near Him, and He is especially to be found in the assembly. He is there for all, though all do not worship Him, all are not near enough. Once in the assembly you are always in the assembly; wherever you are you belong to the assembly; though you may not always come together, you share in whatever good comes from it. Those who are near the Lord and learn of Him manifest the good outside the assembly. Whether you are there or not it is always a matter of deep interest to you what transpires there. I have been reading 1 Kings 8. I commend it to you with John 14 and 1 Corinthians 14. The great point in the assembly is edification; you are built in first, and then you are built up....
I rejoice that you enjoy the solitude you refer to; I trust that you are enriched by it. It is a great thing to know that the Lord is an object to you, and that you can realise the feelings of Ruth, Entreat me not to leave thee.
I had a nice visit from ————. I asked him why do people talk of what the Lord was, and so little of what He is. Men do not talk of those they love in that way. He replied, ‘I am learning a little of that myself.’ I have had a happy meditation on the difference between the comfort you get in the Psalms here in this world, and the priesthood of Christ which carries you outside this world and above the sense of your trouble to the One who is out of the trouble.
[p. 183] October I wrote a few lines to ————, and finished up by saying — If Christ in glory be your polar star you are sure to be kept right.
I find that the Galatians were defective in deliverance. When Christ has His true place there is no thirsting. John 4: 14 is then known. This the Corinthians did not know, nor their full acceptance in glory. If they had, they would not have been led away by their own wisdom.
It is interesting to see how people can take true church position, and yet not be in a state competent to be occupied with Christ’s interests in His own. This to my mind accounts for the great hindrances which occur in ministry in the assembly. Until saints are really settled as to their own state they are not competent to enter on the circle of His interests.
I had a nice visit from ————. Telling her of what I pray for her, I said, ‘I pray for every one differently.’ I meant, for every one with whom I was intimate.
†When I last saw you I was sitting under His shadow with great delight. Now I am with Him in heaven. I could not express what He brings before me — the sense of His love and favour....
Keep yourself in the love of God — in the love of God. I delight in the love of God.
In the beginning of my illness I used to say that my body is the Lord’s. Now I say that I am a member of Christ (1 Corinthians 6: 15).
I intended to answer your question yesterday. I do not think as a rule that the Lord alters our circumstances. My impression is that He uses them, not merely to detach us from present things, but as an occasion of making Himself more necessary to us, in drawing us away from them to Himself. If you remark, the first thing you know of the Lord is that He is a solace to you in your infirmities;
[p. 184] for instance, in sickness, or in bereavement. Alleviation of your trials and sorrows here only makes you more wedded to the place, but He weans you from the place by drawing you into company with Himself. You get this in the case of Peter in Matthew 14: when sinking, he cried out, Lord, save me, I perish, and the Lord drew him to Himself.
I said to ———— when taking leave of her, ‘Christ is not here; a heart that cares for Him would like to know Him where He is.’ Though He comes down to us, He does not connect Himself with anything down here.
... As to your letter. The Spirit has come down to the church, not to the world; He has no link with the world. The world seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. The great work of the Spirit in each of us is to carry us up to the sphere of Christ’s life — to where He is in His own sphere; and where the things above are. We should all know much more, and have a higher range of heavenly things, if we more truly answered to the leading of the Spirit. There we could drink of the fountain which never fails. The tendency in us is to decline.
You see every meeting is characteristic of the leaders there. You may notice where places are dead and cold, you find no one leading in power there. Even a woman who is walking with the Lord may have a great effect upon the company.
We had John 14 this morning and went over my new paper on the Spirit, which is nearly finished. I think many get a taste of being across the water with the Lord in the assembly who are not over Jordan. This taste increases, for the more we know it the more we like to renew it — and it increases. There are many devoted who are not over Jordan. The Spirit is not free to conduct us to the things of God until we are clear of the world.
Very glad to get your letter. I rejoice greatly that you find resource in the Lord in your loneliness. It is the one [p. 185] thing I daily desire for you. I see that one can read, and pray, and hear, and serve, and meditate on the word, and praise, and yet be very deficient in sitting alone with the Lord. As I said to someone: ‘Do you go to Him when you do not want anything?’ I like the idea of C.H.M.’s little child knocking at his father’s door, who, asked him what he wanted; his answer was, ‘I want to be with you.’ If that is applied to the Lord in glory, where only He is to be found now, it is just what I mean. I am very thankful that dear ———— is going to you. I believe he is calculated to be of great use. His answer to me to one little question elicited a great deal. I asked him, why do people dwell more on the past than on the present. He said, ‘I am learning a little of that myself.’ I am glad to hear of dear ————, I pray for her daily, that she may get the “manifold more”....
The Lord bless you much.
Thank you for your letter and for your account of the lecture on Matthew 15. I have read that chapter in connection with chapter 14. He is preparing the disciples for the new structure in chapter 16. Chapter 14 is Christ supreme above all the evil here, drawing us to Himself. Chapter 15 is our worthlessness, and so great is His grace that He gives to those who have no claim. Many are not like Job, who, while admitting his own worthlessness, turns in prayer to God. Many admit that they are very bad, but they do not count fully on grace.
I often think of you in your solitude and am glad to think that you have so much. Nothing really tests so much our resource in the Lord as how we get on when we are alone. I hope you will be preserved from all the leaven of relations, etc. The more your heart enjoys Christ in glory, the more you feel that you are in a place where Christ is not; the very fact of the dearth here makes you enjoy more the brightness and favour of His presence.
The Lord bless you much.
[p. 186] Glad to get your kind letter. I often remember you in your sphere of work. I am more and more convinced every day that souls do not practically know deliverance. They do not know what it is for Adam to be superseded by Christ. They know the doctrine of it; and many would say that deliverance is not by the reckoning of faith but by the Spirit of God; but I think it is a wonderful thing when one can truly say — I thank God that Adam is superseded by Christ; so that Christ becomes the new “I” instead of the flesh. I feel it is deepening in me more and more what it is to be in Christ.
The Lord give you grace to help His people in this dark day, and bless you much in the circle of your own family. Kindest love to each and to all the saints.
... As to your question about being in Christ. When you look to the future of the church we are all of Christ; in one sense our individuality is lost. Now that we are in the mixed condition we are in Christ; and besides that, as to the life which I now live in the flesh, the body is the Lord’s; He had bought it, and has the right over it, as an owner has a right to his horse. I have no right to choose anything for myself. This does not clash with my new position. “I am crucified with Christ”. There used to be a discussion as to whether we keep the responsible “I”, but we have changed the “I” altogether. My conscience is not happy if I am not walking in the Spirit. As to my body I have to do many things, such as business, etc., which properly do not belong to the new “I”. We can do the things which are incumbent on us, as in the body, in the grace of Christ, which is the manna.
I am dwelling much on what a guide should be.
I thank you much for your very interesting letter. Will you kindly convey to dear ———— my heartfelt thanks for her gift — an odour of sweet savour acceptable to the Lord, and assure her that I have every comfort that I [p. 187] could require, but I prize her gift greatly, as David did the water from the well of Bethlehem. The Lord give her greatly to enjoy His love. It cheered me much to hear of you all; and I am thankful to be able to remember the few I knew at W———— .... I heard of you through dear ————. I wish he would dwell more on what Christ is than on what He did.
I have intended for some time to write to you to send you the enclosed. This morning we heard that you have been very ill. Thank God you are better.... Referring to your last letter I did not in the least censure you for your deep sorrow, but I wanted to point out how the Lord uses these great trials in order to draw us away from the place where the trial is, to Himself, where there is no trial, to find solace in His own company, and this solace I pray for daily that it may be your portion....
... As to your question about “holy and without blame before him in love”, it is spoken of as what God has called us to in Ephesians 1: 4; and in chapter 5, where it ought to be translated as the same words, “holy and blameless”, it is what is effectuated in us.
What is the most absorbing state known to any one? To have an object, whose goodness, love, and worth command your whole heart, so that you enjoy being absolutely devoted to Him. Do you know much of this incomparable enjoyment? It is very blessed to feel that the Lord is more to one than ten thousands of gold and silver. I do not mean what He does, but what He is.
Thank you for your letter. It was a cheer to me to find that you had resumed your oar in the church-boat, and were working in company with your brethren. I am meditating on the calling of a guide. I should like to send it to you when printed, as it embodies all that I [p. 188] can gather from scripture on the subject. As far as I know, the great lack with servants is not having taken a sufficiently separate place, because you cannot lead any one beyond where you have been led yourself. I see Moses was himself many years in the wilderness before he leads the people. I cannot ask any one to leave anything that I have not left myself. Elijah and Elisha were altogether cast on God, before they could be a help to the people of God. It is not the man who sees defects, but the man who removes them who is doing the Lord’s work, like Nehemiah....
I rejoice that you say the Lord Himself and the prosperity of His people are the one thought before you. The Lord increase this more and more to you, and my whole heart will go out for your blessing.
The great thing in ministry is to get directly from the Lord. A man who gets from the Lord is acceptable to those who are near the Lord. A human opinion claiming to be derived from scripture, backed up by sayings of pious men, is what is more generally acceptable. This often has more acceptance than what is spiritual. There are students of the Bible who dwell on the past and the future, who are not in the present. I see more and more every day that every one must learn for himself before he can reach anybody truly.
We were reading John 14 and Revelation 3. How the true company are marked by being very weak but very faithful — faint yet pursuing. What is the difference between a Philadelphian now and the bride of Revelation 21? One is faithful to Christ in His rejection; the other is expressive of His glory.
I have been a long time in acknowledging your letter. It is a great thing to be in the spot that the Lord would have one to be in. I feel the servant has just to learn that he must get his help exclusively from the One who is not
[p. 189] here to serve those who are here. I see so few understand what a solemn thing it is to be a servant of the Lord. If really led by the Lord you are sure to be in company with those led by the Lord.
It is a great mistake not to see that sin is completely put away by the sacrifice of Himself. Of course, the sin is here still, but if I look at Christ, sin is gone before God in the cross. It is not gone anywhere else.
I meant, as to not being occupied with the ‘rags’, that people are too much taken up with denouncing the bad, instead of bringing in the good. Nothing but good can really supersede evil. You can denounce badness, pointing out defects; but you do no good until you bring in the good. Then you supersede the bad. I am writing upon the guide, and am greatly struck with the unique place he must hold here on the earth, where the most pious man in Christendom is a slave to Satan’s greatest deception — that Christ is not rejected here.
... I send an answer to your friend in Scotland about atonement and reconciliation. If there is no atonement there is no forgiveness. Romans 3: 25 sets forth that without shedding of blood there is no remission, but reconciliation is the removing of that which caused the distance — removing sin.
May you know practically what it is to gather the manna before the sun is up — apart from all influence of the world.
Tell ———— that many a man can preach the gospel who is not called to be an evangelist. After the scattering from Jerusalem they went everywhere preaching the word.
†What a shake I got as to everything here when I first saw that the Lord has bought the world for the sake of His treasure in it. He has nothing else in it now. How [p. 190] can I receive position or status from it? Nothing would so affect us as the Lord’s rejection, if we entered into it deeply.
It is a great thing to learn death in three aspects. First as typified in the waters of the Red Sea — the judgment of death — a way opened through the death and resurrection of Christ. Next, in the wilderness — there is nothing but Marah. Death is our portion here, but Christ having passed through it, sweetens it for us. Then Jordan — our death with Him, and the moment we touch it, we find that all judgment has passed. Sorrow is gone, and we have to do with Him on the other side of death; but we are in the life of Christ, He is our life.
November I was glad to get your letter which is a great cheer to me.
Dear C. H. M. is now in the sunshine of eternal love. It is cheering to me to hear your account of the assembly at ————. I was delighted to hear of your speaking in the assembly. I may venture to tell you that it is my daily prayer for you that utterance may be given you that you may open your mouth boldly. No light or truth is given to you but is given for the benefit of others (1 Corinthians 12: 7). We cannot be too much interested in the assembly, which is all that is of Christ on earth. I feel that many true-hearted ones take assembly ground, and I would not discourage them, but they have little apprehension of the deeply solemn moment of fellowship with Christ’s death, not only His death for you, but that He died here. You rise up with a sense of the desolation of the earth because of Christ’s death. Israel were idolaters because they did not feel the absence of Moses. They sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. We can see how this leads to [p. 191] our seeking Him in glory. The Lord bless you much. I cherish the remembrance of your visit.
Very glad to get your cheering letter. I am meditating on what I may call a spiritual vein or mind which is quite distinct from a natural mind. We may be very happy in spiritual things while occupied with them, and yet we may easily turn to natural things and be engrossed with them, as in Romans 7: 22 - 24, “I delight in the law of God” — that is the spiritual mind; but with the natural mind I am a “wretched man”. In Romans 7 the contrast of the two is felt, and deliverance is sought for and found. But one who has not deliverance alternates from one to the other, and the loss is in that which he delights in — the spiritual things. If he is not clear of the old things, he is no expression of the new.
How true ————’s remarks about the funeral! How often we disclose our weakness when we attempt to do anything! I have thought that the intention in speaking at a funeral is to encourage the hearers in a heavenly course.
My idea of the burial of a saint is to set forth the transcendent blessedness of being with the Lord. Every one knows something of the blessedness of His being with us; but no one tastes now of the fulness of His love unless he is with Him outside of everything, and there it is I like to think of you. Human feeling is right in connection with human affection, but divine love seeks nothing but company and concert. I hope you are like the bride.
... I often thought of writing to you but could not.
I am sure you feel the blank of dear C.H.M.’s absence. I am sure he had great joy in all the Lord did for him and was doing; his heart was charmed with His grace down here. Now he knows fully what it is to be with Him up [p. 192] there. Though the first is so delightful, the second is more; it is in figure what Solomon was to the queen of Sheba; no spirit in herself, but her heart absorbed with him. And even now, wonderful to say, according to 2 Corinthians 3: 18 — we beholding His glory (not there yet), are transformed into the same image from glory to glory. He is not only thinking of and caring for you in every little detail according to the love of His heart, but it is as consummation to your happiness that you are made like Him, and in concert with His own mind, whether in your individual path, as Psalm 73 explains, or in the assembly. We get a good illustration of this in the two disciples going to Emmaus (Luke 24). The effect of being in His presence is that they lose sight of their own interests, their hearts are so taken up with His; and without any verbal direction from Him, but from the mere effect of seeing Him, they go to the circle of His interest.
I think we may speak of the human element in connection with ourselves. Paul said of Timothy, “Being mindful of thy tears”; but it is a great thing to be able to distinguish between real divine affection and natural affection. When I think of the Lord, the second Man out of heaven — though we have known him after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more — I feel how little the new order is apprehended, and how taking the human element is with Christians, even in preaching.
I know quite well the love you bear me, and that you remember me before the Lord. I have nothing to seek nor to choose, nothing to regret nor to lose.
It is many years since we met on the way to glory. No doubt the Lord uses the occasion of bodily suffering as an opportunity of making Himself more indispensable to us, so that we return to our natural circle with a deeper sense [p. 193] of being with the Lord, like the holy anointing oil which could not be imitated. The Lord bless you much.
†Faith has to do directly with God. Providence or human wisdom will only divert you from faith. See Abraham setting out for the place appointed him of God (Genesis 22). It took me a long time to get to the top of mount Moriah. When there you find that it is all darkness on your side, but you have the light of God in the resurrection of Christ. Wonderful history!
Glad to get yours this morning. I had a visit from ———— here yesterday. I wanted him to hold meetings at ————, to teach them the assembly. I am writing on the subject, deeply interested in seeing how thoroughly it would alter everything here if we truly remembered the death of Christ; man’s day would be over for us; every touch of honour or distinction would be avoided. While death on the one hand clears us of all that is of man, we have to think of Him in glory with amazing satisfaction.... What is the difference between joining the Lord in the Holiest and John 14? ...
I commend to you both Psalm 63. In verse 2 change the word sanctuary to Holiest, and let your daily life be in moral correspondence to it.
I see the remarkable character of the closing hour. The faithful have but one object, and that is, Christ Himself. To me it resembles the disciples at first, not thinking of anything to do but of getting to Himself, and I think the end will be just like that. The close of the church will be like the beginning of it. The saints make the Lord their one absorbing object, not the church nor anything else. So in Philadelphia; it is all subjective — little power, but keeping His word and not denying His name. The candlestick [p. 194] and everything is gone, but the faithful one clings to Himself.
I am getting on with my new paper. I intend to call it ‘The Grace and Blessing vouchsafed in the Assembly’. I feel it humbling to write on the assembly; how little is known of it! If the Lord were more known as a resource, outside and apart from everything here, the good of the assembly would be better known.
Glad to get your account of the reading. You will see from my letter to ————, which I enclose, where I think the hitch is. Many do not see the gospel as God’s work, and look upon Christ as greater than the Passover; but they think that they have to offer Him instead of seeing that they are powerless to do anything.
I think it is very interesting to see that Philadelphia is all subjective, and the heart of the faithful is so set on the Lord that the desire of their heart is satisfied, and thus they are the bride. I think the crown in Philadelphia is the Lord Himself.
I was glad to get your letter with its tidings of London. I rejoice that the brethren are learning more of Romans, and entering into the divine meaning of deliverance. God has got rid of the man from His own eye in the cross, and there is no answer to this in me, unless the Spirit supersedes Adam in me by Christ; so that I have changed my “I”. I have not to ask, Is there any harm in this or that? but is this Christ, or is it the flesh? — the old “I” or the new “I”? I have the new “I” by the Spirit; I have the old “I” by the flesh. In one way there never has been a greater delusion than holiness by faith.
As to your question about company with the Lord and union, you may enjoy company as the consecrated company in the assembly. That is not union. People write and speak of the sense of union. I do not understand it. In union I am led by the Spirit to Christ, as Rebekah was led to Isaac — never can be separated from Him. You [p. 195] may enjoy His company as one of the consecrated ones, but that is not union. The Lord bless you much.
I was glad to get your letter and to know that my little paper gets an echo in your heart. I quite feel with you as to the close; that the one absorbing thought is following Himself. In that sense the church ends as it began, so that it comes forth as the bride, and in Philadelphia it is not the objective that is presented but the subjective — little power — hast kept My word — hast not denied My name.
I hear you had an interesting reading on Tuesday. I have for a long time been trying to present the gospel from God’s side. Those who are so imbued with the offerings under the law cannot see that God has done the work from Himself, that the ministration of righteousness is from the glory, not merely clearance of guilt. It is put very strongly by Paul in Philippians 3. He uses quite a new word, “which is of God”, (verse 9) to express how entirely it is of God. May you be greatly blessed in a faithful presentation of the truth....
I thank you much for your kindness in telling me of your work in New York. It is cheering to hear of the advance in truth, but I find many will accept an advance who have not as yet begun in divine power in their own souls. I think many have rest as to the forgiveness of their sins through God’s grace, who have not learned that by the Spirit of God they are freed of the old man, and that they are in Christ. In the flesh they are in Adam; in the Spirit they are in Christ. They content themselves with the fact that God has removed the old man in the cross, and has accepted them in Christ, and they believe that they are delivered. This is simply objective, and has done incalculable mischief to souls. God makes me to correspond with Himself by the Spirit, so that I can say, I thank God Adam is superseded. Christ is in His place in me.
[p. 196] I am glad you had a prosperous time in the gospel. If you take notice very few preachers present the gospel from God’s side.
There is a great stir as to the righteousness of God. J.N.D. used to say that the righteousness of God is that which suits God. Many are so brought up under the law that they think they have to bring the offering, and that Christ is a better offering than the paschal lamb. They have no idea of the ministration of righteousness from the glory of God. They can understand a landlord forgiving his tenants, but they cannot understand that He in His grace changes the tenants, head and ears in debt, into sons to dwell in His house for ever....
I was looking for a subject to write on, and as I did not get any, I got a very cheering thought — that a member does not suggest, he only acts from a suggestion. It gives great restfulness, because if you belong to Him, He can suggest to you as He likes. I am thinking that every truth, when known in power, imparts a character of its own. The subject of my new paper brings you into the Holiest, into the presence of the Father. Glad to hear that ———— is on the worshipping theme....
I thank you much for your care of me and for the very gracious way you write.... I do not get more physical strength, but I thank God I can think and listen without any trouble, and through His tender care I have very little suffering except from weariness. I am very thankful that you like the papers, they interest me much thinking them out. I have great interest in going over and praying for the places and persons I know who are in any wise set for the Lord. [p. 228] I am glad to hear of the places you name.... The more I ponder, the more I feel how little one has entered upon the Christian history in divine power — how little we get to Christ as He is, though we [p. 197] delight in hearing of Him as He was here. Nothing can satisfy true love but company.
... It is a cheer to me that you like my paper on the gospel. I fear that many have not reached deliverance. I think it is a wonderful experience to know by the Spirit of God dwelling in you that you are delivered from Adam and are in Christ, so that it is not whether I may do this or that, but would Christ do it? Not I, but Christ liveth in me. Through His goodness I have happy seasons. It is no trouble to me to think or to listen, though I cannot use my hands or my feet. I am sorry to hear you complain of increased feebleness though your letter does not indicate it. I often think of my happy times with you. I rejoice in your prosperity in the assembly. It ought to interest us more as Christ’s only interest on earth....
... I hope you had a good journey to ————. My love to ———— I was thinking this morning as I was praying, how little we know of the Lord or value Him outside of everything. I was thinking if she were to awake in the morning and find herself in a ship with plenty of food and clothing, and light, and no one there but the Lord Himself — no friends — no letters, nothing but the Lord, I want to know would she be satisfied? I have been thinking how little we know of what eye hath not seen or ear heard, and yet it is revealed unto us by His Spirit; I have been longing to get a glimpse of it. I think we can form some idea of it if we enjoy being with the Lord outside everything....
... I have begun my new paper — the effect of truth in power, or the journey of faith in Hebrews 11. I find it very interesting, but difficult to explain. Can you say where you are? My point is that your character and appearance indicate where you are. Do you see the [p. 198] difference between the faith of Abraham and that of Moses. What is the climax of Abraham’s faith? What the climax of the walk of faith impersonated by Abraham? I think the mass of Christians are only as far as Noah — saved from judgment. Though they do not combine with the world they like independence. The mark of a person who is really delivered is “The life which I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Galatians 2: 20). This in principle is the life of faith as depicted in Abraham.
... Tell ———— with my love that the Lord will never ask her to be satisfied with Himself until she is ready for it, or wishing for it.
I am thinking of writing a few lines to all Christians — simply ‘In Adam or in Christ’. I think great darkness exists as to this. When it is known it is beautifully simple. God in the cross removes from His eye in judgment the first man who offended Him, and every one believing in Christ is no longer in Adam before Him, but in Christ, to the everlasting joy of his heart, while the Holy Ghost dwelling in the believer necessarily supersedes Adam, and maintains him in Christ to his inexpressible delight; so that he walks about the world quite in a new way — in all the moral efficacy of what baptism is the form of, but his joy is in the Lord.
We were reading this morning Psalm 84 and John 17. How few enter into the great longing of Psalm 84!
It is plain there is a difference between the way “Head” is used. I heard J.N.D. say that you might ask a man in the street, Was he answering to his Head? “Head over all things to the church” (Ephesians 1: 22) is quite another idea. The main point for us is the Head in Colossians 2. No one really holds the Head until he has died with Christ. Much of the teaching going is simply derived from the study of scripture. The great importance of holding the Head is that you get right direction; this you can never get from [p. 199] the study of scripture alone; you may present a great many interesting things from scripture, but they do not edify. Edifying is adding a piece where the piece is wanted, so that you cannot know what really suits souls unless you come from Christ in the sphere of life the other side of Jordan. This is knowing Him as Head; it is then you put on bowels of mercies, you are suited for His own circle. You may retort that there is very little ministry of this kind, but I believe ministry would be more effective if it were more to the needed point.
A brother writes to me that we ought to look for results; I quite agree; but there is no result beyond the truth that produces the result. Many amongst us have no deliverance beyond the reckoning of faith, and this is evidently from imperfect teaching; and many again do not know what it is to come to the Living Stone, because they think every believer is there; this again is from imperfect teaching.
December Your welcome letter was a joy to my heart. I am through the Lord’s goodness wonderfully well, though I feel the cold much; it keeps me from sleeping sometimes.... but I have interesting times, thinking of all the places and saints that I know. I generally have some subject of interest before me. I am studying at present the effect of truth received in power, or the journey of faith, as you see in Hebrews 11. I think many are as far as Noah, safe from the judgment of God, in the sense of His favour here, enjoying earthly things, and seeking independence, though they do not join the combination of the world to build Babel. I have not got on much in the path of faith yet, but I see it is looking for nothing but God — seeking His place. Writing to a brother, I asked him how he would like to be in a ship with every bodily comfort, and no one in it but the Lord Himself. Could you fall down and say, ‘Oh, Lord, thou art enough for me?’ [p. 200] I am very thankful that you have been led in such a simple, clear way to see the difference between being in Adam and in Christ. It is a great cheer to my heart. I have written a short letter to all Christians, bringing before them the simple truth, that there must be a change of man before God, not a change of character; even that is not enough.
Glad to get your letter this morning.... You must keep acceptance and deliverance quite distinct. Acceptance is because of what God has wrought in the cross — the work of Christ. The prodigal knew it in his father’s loving feelings towards him; but the more he did, the more he felt how unfit he was for him. This shews he had not deliverance. I used to say everything was bright above, but what troubled me was myself. I had not deliverance. Deliverance is that you are by the power of the Spirit as free of the old man as God is, that is to say, it is as much gone from your eye as it is from God’s eye for you in the cross.
As to the past, present, and future, I do not think any one in the present could forget the past; when the past is in power, the present is known; but unless the present is in power the future is not known....
Many thanks for your letter. It is cheering to hear that my little meditations are a comfort to you. I see that so many have dwelt upon the blessedness and perfection of Christ’s work for us, and on His services to us here, and it is a great comfort to the heart that He has been in our circumstances, but I find that nothing gives real solid satisfaction of heart like knowing Him in His own circumstances and beholding the Lord’s glory. I have said to some, do you dwell on the past or on the present? We can learn something of the past by reading the gospels. Beautiful reading it is, you get there the manner of His grace in exquisite touches; but we can only have the, knowledge of the present by being with Himself,
[p. 201] and His directing us to some passage of scripture which is a real ministry of the Spirit. I have said — Do you get your subject from the word or from the Lord Himself? ... People can gather from the past a great deal to say, but you cannot get the present mind of the Lord except from Himself.
A devoted man is like a spruce fir-tree; one shoot striking upwards, not detracting from, but encouraging all the other branches to follow.
I was glad of your letter and to get some tidings of ————. I quite agree with you that we ought to look for results, but bear in mind that results will never be beyond the producing power; that is, the truth that produces them. For instance, many are clear about acceptance who are not clear about deliverance. The fault is in the way the latter has been presented. Many have thought, and do still, that because they are clear in the sight of God, that by faith they are clear in themselves, which is a delusion. A person cannot be too strong on the fact that he is clear in the sight of God, but you are never clear of self until you can say, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7: 25). Then you have changed your “I”, you are not in Adam but in Christ; and the Spirit assures you that you are free from the law of sin and death. I only give this as an example. I see so many nice people, and even preachers, who do not really know what deliverance is. Acceptance is God’s side. You might be in acceptance but not in deliverance. I was myself for years. I used to say it was unspeakably happy to look up, but in myself I was not free of the old man. You cannot be free but by the Spirit of God who dwells in you.
I have been writing to ———— that you cannot have results beyond the truth that produces them. The two disciples going to Emmaus had an exposition of scripture that made their hearts burn, but it was the sight of Himself [p. 202] that really diverted them from their own business to His, so that late at night they take a long walk to Jerusalem. I only give this as an example to shew that you cannot have results beyond the truth that produces them.
As to depression, there are two kinds: one is when you are not sure of God’s acceptance — do not see the work perfectly accomplished in the cross; the other, when you have not deliverance. The great difference is that it is all darkness in the one case, while in the other, you have, though depressed, a bright spot, for you can look up....
We had a variety of reading this morning — Isaiah 53; Psalm 135, Psalm 136 — after you reach the house. Then John 14 and John 17.
... I had a good night — going on with my paper on the journey of faith. It is intensely interesting. I think it is so striking that we do not hear of Moses in Hebrews 11 after the Red Sea. His faith has reached its climax. Then comes the disclosure of the rebellion of the heart, and God’s desire that we should approach Him. I look upon Moses as one personation for faith and Abraham as another.
All the faithful are called children of Abraham in Galatians 3. His faith ends with seeking a bride for his son. Moses’s surmounting all the power of the enemy, and ending with the song; and the history of ourselves in the wilderness is made known. Over Jordan we enjoy new relationship with the Lord of Sabaoth. In Abraham you have the faith that reaches up to God. In Moses the faith that surmounts all on our side, so they coalesce in Canaan, or in heaven. The bride reaches Him there, and there the heavenly power is made known, so they come out in a new way on the earth.... Are you of the four little things upon earth that are exceeding wise? See Proverbs 30: 24 - 28.
I have been very much interested and occupied with the subject now under consideration at your readings.
[p. 203] I think I may venture to send you my meditations. It is plain that Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world (and there shall be new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness). It is in that character He does it, and this is the name He bears almost all through the Revelation referring to His work on earth. But while we see that in death all the power of evil was broken, and all that was contrary to God was removed, the man who was under judgment removed in judgment, He was here the impersonation of everything that was according to God even to death. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness; as J.N.D. has said — righteousness is that which suits God. In His death He was the burnt offering gone up to God in all the perfection and sweetness of Himself, and this before the burning without the camp took place. He was everything to the eye of God, so that all righteousness was fulfilled; He not only removed the evil, but He established the will of God on earth as it is in heaven. He could say at the close as a Man “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17: 4,5). That was before resurrection. Resurrection is the proof that at the very moment in which He was bearing the judgment on man who had dishonoured God, He was glorifying God so fully that the glory claimed Him. Resurrection is the proof that all has been accomplished according to the will of God. If there was no resurrection, death which is the judgment is not overcome, and it was predicted as well as His death. “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10: 18). We, believing that God has raised Him from the dead, are justified. He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4: 25). This is clearance. We come to another thing in the justification of life. Christ is there our righteousness, which is ministered from the glory. The prodigal son could know that he was reconciled, but he was not in a condition to enjoy it until he had the best robe on.
I need not add more. The great point is not to confine [p. 204] yourself too exclusively to the removal of evil, bruising the serpent’s head and the like (He was made sin for us, who knew no sin), but that the Person who did so, fulfilled all righteousness beforehand; He was set upon maintaining everything due to God in the darkest moment when bearing judgment. I once said to dear J.N.D. ‘How much the Lord was thinking of us in those three hours of darkness’. He retorted — He was not thinking of us; He was thinking of glorifying God.
... I think it is a great point His doing everything as the Lamb of God, that is the sacrifice, and surely if He glorified God and finished the work here, the resurrection did not add to it. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work ...” (John 17: 4) is before the resurrection. Look at 1 Corinthians 15, and see that our resurrection depends on His. There could be no righteousness to us if there were no resurrection. It entitled us to it....
Glad to hear of your intended readings.... There are two subjects which I believe are much wanted. 1. The scriptural meaning of deliverance. 2. What is the simple meaning of “This do in remembrance of me”. I believe that if anything of the gravity and the blessing of the latter were known, it would affect those who come to the breaking of bread; and certainly it would characterise in a marked way those who had broken bread, to remember the Lord in the perfectness of His love, and at the same time the end of all the hopes of man as to honour and distinction of any kind, or as to any hopes of saving himself. Man a complete ruin, without hope and without God in the world....
Many thanks for your letter. It interested me much. I had been intending to write to you in, I hope, true guardian care for you, that you might be preserved from soil in your visit to ————. There is danger in even what [p. 205] is right in itself of drawing the heart away from the Lord. I like to think of you in your solitude where you can get such a sense of what Christ is, that you can be prepared for the attractions and difficulties of this present time. One little word. Do not depend on going to the Lord, but depend on coming from Him. I was very much pleased that when I said to ————, ‘If you come from your own room happy with the Lord to the best ordered family circle, you would find a great difference between the two’; he quite agreed with me. Careless nurses take their children out cold and bring them to the fire to get warm, but careful ones take them out warm. This is what I want you to be, as the little hymn says,
‘And with adoring fervour,
In this Thy nature grow,’ (51:5)
because the light is the only power to resist darkness.
I am glad the truth is coming out so distinctly. I believe it is an immense thing to see that not only is sin removed, but that all that is pleasing to God is brought in by the Lord Jesus Christ here. It was here He glorified God. Though He was the Rose, He was not manifested. The church which is His complement, is the Rose in full bloom, to perpetuate all the blessedness of Himself here on earth....
... I have been thinking over a subject to write on. I think a paper on putting away of sin would be helpful. Many understand forgiveness of sins by the blood who cannot see that sin in itself is not forgiven. It is condemned, as we see, in Romans 8: 2. The more I think of it the more I see how it runs through scripture that the man must be removed in order to put away sin. He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, is a very strong passage.
———— will find an answer to his question on Romans 1: 17 in J.N.D.’s note on it....
No one can know love except near the Person who loves.
... [p. 206] I had when awake last night half an hour’s very happy meditation on the removal of sin. I see great significance in the washing of water, which culminates in the three witnesses (1 John 5). There must be entire separation from the taint of sin for the enjoyment of eternal life. The offerings for acceptance include the death of the sacrifice. But in the case of the sin offering, the sacrifice was burned without the camp. I have written this in my paper on the removal of sin. How important it is to connect the death of man with the work of the atonement! I have been deeply interested in going through scripture on the subject. I am impressed with the sense in my own soul that sin is not forgiven but removed. This affects your sense of acceptance in every stage of your journey....
... I thank you much for ————’s letter. It is encouraging to me, for it is only lately that I have begun to pray for the few I know at ————.
I was going to send you a little parable that I had sketched out for you. If you awoke one morning to find yourself all alone, as if at sea in a boat, with every comfort, but no one else in the boat, no helmsman, no crew, etc., none but the Lord Himself, would you be able to say, He is enough for me?
It is important for our present blessing whether we are occupied with the present, and with the Lord where He is. We cannot forget the past; this is true even in natural things; but to know the object of your heart in the present moment is the greatest satisfaction. Every one can dilate upon the past, but you must come fresh from Himself to speak of the present.
... As to my message to the dear sorrowing ————s. While Peter was set upon the best thing — joining the Lord, he learned his own weakness; he began to sink; but the Lord relieved him by drawing him to Himself. I think it is often so now, if we truly seek Him. The Lord is [p. 207] endeared the more to us in our infirmity, and we join Him in His new place above all the power of evil here. It is thence He comforts us.
I have been greatly interested in studying Hebrews 11. Many are as far in the walk of faith as Noah, but do not follow up the faith of Abraham which rises to the highest point with God, and that of Moses, which is to surmount all the difficulties on our side. It is very beautiful and instructive, but I hope you will see my meditation on it in print....
I was glad to get your letter.... There is great comfort in the word: “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart” (Psalm 37: 4). The second will follow the first. He gives us our desire if we delight in Him, and the desire of our heart is Himself. Every one is characterised by the object which controls him. Thank God, Christ claims our hearts, and we could have no greater object before us. But the more devoted we are to Him, the more we like to be devoted to Him. Nothing satisfies love but love. “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned” (Song of Songs 8: 7), and as you remark, to know His love is the chief thing; but remember, it is only near Him that you can know His love, and the better we know His love the more we are drawn to Him. You must be near Him for His love to be known. Many look for the love of God in the mercies of the day, and no doubt it descends to the smallest things — the hairs of your head. But it is only as we are near Him that we can rest in His love; as we read of Himself, when everything is done, He rests in His love. Acts never exhaust love. The assurance of love satisfies the heart. Like a fir-tree, the top shoot taking the lead, and then every branch will follow the leader.
Glad to hear of your children and your dear son. I hope he will not be contaminated with the world in his new circumstances. There is great comfort in the fact that God never forgets our brightest day, and you must return to it. See Jeremiah 2. I long that dear ———— may find such a retreat in the presence of Christ in glory, that [p. 208] she may be able to face the difficulties here in all the freshness and vigour which His presence affords....
... In thinking over the history of souls I feel how slowly any one gets on, and how far one must go before one understands the greatness of His grace. I am much interested in that passage, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5: 12). Few have really got as far as that. It is there that all the manifold blessing begins....
... We had in our reading today, the account of the crucifixion in all four gospels. How very affecting it is to remember that scene! I do not believe any one will be much affected with Christ’s death unless they know Him in glory and see the contrast, and how much better it is to be with Him in the place where He is, than in the place where He is rejected.... I hope you have got out this morning (Lord’s Day morning), and that in remembering Him you have seen something greater than what David saw. We see in Psalm 73 what a little sight of Him gives blessing! It is not a cloud of glory now, but a Person. I often think what mercy it was that I was never debarred by illness from going to the assembly.
Through mercy I get on wonderfully well from day to day, and sleep better I think than I used. I have plenty of time for meditation, and I enjoy calling to remembrance before the Lord those whom I knew in different places. I have been greatly struck with seeing how little souls have got beyond acceptance; rejoicing in their salvation seems to be the acme! As far as I see few have entered into the greatness of deliverance. I do not think you enjoy life in Christ until you are consciously in Christ. I think that sometimes souls get it morally, though they have not [p. 209] got it doctrinally. If one were like Mary Magdalene, feeling this place intolerable without Him, what would it be to find Him where He is, outside of everything! There we must be in liberty, and we could not be there but in His life. It is remarkable how many like hearing of Him, and reading of Him, who know very little of His company.... I hope you have happy times with Him, more than consoled for every loss. The Lord bless you much....
I was glad to get your letter as to my paper on the relation of the gospel to the church, and to find that you in the main agreed with it. As to the two objections you make, I do not object to earnest appeals, far from it; but you, yourself, disavow human wisdom, and if you do, I think you must not approve of human eloquence. I think a man must feel a thing deeply himself, or he cannot make others feel it; but if you address the human mind you interest it, and many are impressed just because the human mind is acted on; and it is like the seed upon the rock. The evangelist’s business is to bring the light of God into the conscience, and there is seldom much depth of feeling where there is much impassioned expression.
I think the work of the gospel is too solemn to be treated in the levity of eloquence. Every one knows that human eloquence can work a man up to a desired conclusion. It has often been practised; even Christians are greatly moved by an eloquent discourse; they are excited and pleased; whereas when it is purely spiritual, when heart and conscience are touched, they are subdued and solemnised; they have to do with God. The human mind cannot go beyond the human mind; you may get an assent from many without any real work of God. When you address the mind you get a mental assent to the truth, but when you have touched the conscience you have brought God in. When a servant is in the power of the truth he does not address the old man, for he knows that the old man can have nothing to do with the grace of God. As a simple man once said to an eloquent preacher, ‘You began by telling us that the old man must have no [p. 210] place, and now, sir, you are using your old man to awaken poor sinners.’ Next as to Apollos, I did not mean to convey that he was more fully in heart for the Lord when he was refreshing the saints than when he preached the baptism by John, but that though with little light he was blessed to souls. We find eventually that he was not really an evangelist, but his service was to the saints. I believe the gift of an evangelist is a great gift. I do not say that he may not get another gift, as Paul had, but as a rule, as far as I know, I have not seen an evangelist give up his proper calling, and settle down to teach, who has not lost his power. I look upon a gift as some special presentation of Christ to the soul, and as has been truly said, when an evangelist stands up to teach, he is sure before long to preach; on the other hand if a teacher stands up to preach he is soon drawn into teaching. The Lord bless you much. Come from the Lord, and come for the Lord, and you are sure to be blessed....
... I am getting on slowly with my paper. When do you know eternal life? I do not believe you know it till you are in deliverance. You are always entitled to it, but you do not know it. He that hath the Son hath life.
It has been thought that beholding the Lord’s glory is reading the Bible; I do not think so. It is contemplating Christ, on whom rests all the glory of God — His satisfaction according to all His attributes. The difference between reading of Him and being in His presence is illustrated in the two disciples going to Emmaus. They had an exposition of scripture which made their hearts burn, but it was seeing Himself that sent them to the circle of His interests.
Very glad of your letter.... I like the subject of your lecture in America very much. I do not think any one ever knows Christ personally who has not gone through the experience of John 9. As I understand, the question of sin is treated of in chapter 8, and in chapter 9 we have [p. 211] the religious man, the best side of man. The blind man, though very faithful, and suffering for the Lord, did not know Him personally until he was in the solitude of light. Then it is not only that you know that He is the Son of God, but you know Him as the Son of God — a wonderful moment to the soul. When you know Christ in glory you must necessarily accept the grievous fact that He is not here, but rejected; therefore the first coming together of His own is to remember Him in death. Christendom has added — ‘Remember that He died for thee’, which is not the prominent idea, and diverts from it. No one with a particle of real love to Him could come in the glitter of the world to remember Him, much less continue in it. It is very plain to me that if you have not passed through chapter 9 experimentally, you will not understand the cross. I rejoice to find you on this great subject....
... I am interested in seeing how many devoted people enjoy beyond their knowledge. The woman in Luke 7 did the act of a forgiven person before she knew that her sins were forgiven. I have often said many have a glimpse of being over Jordan who never took the step; and many are glad of the grapes of Eshcol who do not go to the place where they grow.
Rebekah coming from Syria to Canaan is only a wheel within a wheel. We have to come from Syria to Canaan in a great many things in order to acquire maturity.
January, 1897 Had yours this morning. I hope you may enter on this year in simple confidence in the Lord. I give you John 14: 23, and F———— chapter 15: 13.
I have finished my paper, but not to my satisfaction. I cannot convey the sense I have of knowing the Lord as Head, and being united to Him. In knowing Him as Head [p. 212] you have reached Him in the heavenly country, and there you get instruction from Him touching His interests in the old country. But when you know the exceeding greatness of His mighty power, you have a home in heaven, and you come out characteristic of your home....
I have received ————’s interesting letter. Thank her much for the texts. May I be true to them....
I send you ————’s. It is dangerous to touch the Old Testament unless you know the grace of God.
As to the remark that the shadow of the cross makes the world a wilderness, that is not true. It is the death of Christ that makes it a wilderness, therefore we have to drink the water of the Red Sea — Marah. Peter says “Arm yourselves ... with the same mind” ...
I feel for you much in your deep sorrow. If I can feel your loss, how much more must you feel it. Be assured the Lord is able to fill the blank and draw your heart to Himself, as He did Peter when he was sinking in the water. Peter was taking the step that love led him to take to join the Lord, but in doing so he was made conscious of his own weakness, and he cried out to the Lord on his own account. But his desire to reach the Lord was greater than ever, and the Lord drew him to Himself, and thus He would now sympathise with you, He, the glorified One, drawing you to His side above all the sorrow and desolation here, where your heart will be abundantly satisfied. May this be fully known to you....
Your letter cheered me very much.... I am not surprised that you have conflict, no one progresses without conflict. I have found great interest in Galatians 5: 17 (New Translation). There is conflict, but immense comfort. The Spirit always gains the day. Many are exclusively occupied with the joy of salvation, but it is when [p. 213] you seek real deliverance that the conflict begins, and Christ is not formed in your heart until the Holy Ghost is in you as a well of water springing up. Then Christ lives in you.
... My comfort is that I can commit you to One who knows all your circumstances and who cares for you infinitely more than I do. I think your beloved husband is right in wishing for the prayers of the brothers who really take an interest in him. I have joined in such prayer meetings before now with decided blessing from them.
When I think of you and your large family, I compare you to a boat at sea surrounded with every comfort; but if you were bereaved of the helmsman what would you do? My answer is that if your heart is fully set on the Lord you will find that the Lord Himself is at the helm, and you will be surprised and affected by His tender solicitude for you and all yours. It is an immense comfort to realise in any degree what it is to have lost everything but Himself, and to be able to realise in any measure the last verse of John 17. I cannot think of anything more touching than the Father’s love — the love wherewith He loves Christ....
It was good of you to send me such a nice shawl. I was sure of your loving interest without any gift.... I am glad to be able to remember you before the Lord. May you be able to realise that the Lord is a Friend who sticketh closer than a brother. Many are satisfied with their acceptance, and the joy of being saved, who have never yet learned what it is to live in the life of Christ, which is deliverance — the law of the Spirit of life setting them free from the law of sin and death. It is here that the first conflict begins, but as you know it, you not only love Christ for His work, but you love Him because you know Him, so that you can say, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8: 35). I give you this as text for the new year. The Lord bless you much....
[p. 214] I have good accounts from Weston. It is very encouraging to find so much amity among the brethren. I hope there is a corresponding work in their souls....
What will you say when I tell you that I have begun another paper, entitled Devotedness. It is very interesting. I trust I may be helped to bring it out. What causes the first great exercise to a devoted heart? It is wonderful to see that the devoted heart’s great aim is to reach that which was lost when ruin began. I see how much depends on a man being thoroughly devoted, and what a peculiar course he must take if he is to be devoted. I think Mr. Wigram was devoted, but I see very little of that kind of devotedness now-a-days; but there is no reason why there should not be. The Lord is as good now as He was then. If we were more devoted, we should find a way of escape better from the various things that tempt us....
I thank you much for being the willing medium of conveying to me the loving message from the much-loved brethren. Thank the Lord, I can truly say that the progress and advancement of each of them is unfeigned pleasure to me. May they more and more stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. I rejoice to hear of your profitable meetings, and that unity and cordiality seemed so much restored.
... I do not think there is restoration without repentance, and the measure of the restoration is according to the measure of repentance.
... It is painful to find how easily we have passed on to advanced truth without being established in the foundation. I am trying to write on “Take heed how ye hear”. I think it very sad to see how people take up truth so lightly....
... I do not see how any one can get on here who does not come from the Lord outside and apart from everything.
[p. 215] What I pray for ———— I pray for you both, that you may enjoy the Lord so in seclusion with Himself that you may come forth prepared for everything here, but not looking for anything here except to do His pleasure....
... I like your reference to being alone with the Lord. How much I require it myself, though I am in such happy seclusion here. I am getting on slowly with my paper. I have been very much interested in seeing that those who received a full gospel — the gift of God’s sovereign grace, if they do not know deliverance as the work of the Spirit, however well they may have learned the purpose of God in all His grace for His own, and be able to speak of it freely as the work of His grace, yet they never seem to have any enjoyment beyond the gospel. This is consistent; for if they refuse the first work of the Spirit as dwelling in them, it could not be possible to get any further....
I had an interesting time with ————;he quite entered into the point you refer to, and was especially pleased with the thought of making the Lord prominent. I think, when apprehended, it lets in great light on you.
I find the great secret is to come from the Lord. Every one is ready to go to Him. If you come from Him who is outside everything, you are coloured by a scene that is entirely holy and of God; and be it individually, or collectively, you know you are under His influence. It is not anything here that influences you, but Himself who is not here. I find nothing more difficult than to get people to cultivate seclusion with the Lord. They will read, pray, visit, but to be alone with the Lord they are slow to seek. If quite alone with Him it is Himself who fashions you, not anything here. The Lord bless you much.... I send you 2 Corinthians 3: 18.
Glad to get ————’s letter, and to find she can write of seclusion with the Lord as she does.... We have been reading Psalm 63 and 84, and John 20 and 14....
I have been writing to ———— that I see the great defect in preachers is that they make the text the prominent thing and not the Lord. I think ———— makes the Lord prominent.
I like all I have heard of the reading on Romans 6. What ———— calls formative, I call the man changed from Adam to Christ; that is the first step, and it is effected by faith and appropriated by faith....
... It is clear that 1 Corinthians 15 refers to the first resurrection. I looked at the Synopsis and I see J.N.D. connects the second resurrection with the destruction of death in His kingdom when He reigns. This I think makes it all plain. Surely no unconverted person could in any way be in Christ.
The whole range of God’s purpose for us from salvation to union with Christ is simply His grace to us, but though all is apprehended by faith, the first step alone is appropriated by faith. The first step for the believer is that he is transferred from Adam to Christ. He is accepted in the Beloved; he is then on new ground, and every additional step is by the work of the Spirit of God in him. Now the great loss is that because the first is appropriated by faith, it is thought that all the rest are appropriated by faith. For example, deliverance has been said to be by the reckoning of faith. This is a great delusion and has damaged many. Here was the root of the last division. They held that all the grace of God was apprehended by faith, which is quite true, but many can speak of truth from salvation to union, who know nothing of the great grace which they acquire by being practically in the blessings of this new position. You cannot be in deliverance but by the life of Christ, and so on up to union. Nothing is more damaging than that a person should be able to speak of the greatness of God’s grace in giving so great a position, and yet to have acquired nothing of the blessing or greatness of it. I hope you will understand [p. 217] this for it is of all importance. I was glad to hear from you and that you had such a happy time at Weston.
I am much pleased that you so fully understand my letter. The subject of it has been a great help and light to me. My great question is how to convince souls who are not delivered. Many accept the truth of it in terms who have not the reality.
As to the remark about being over Jordan if one has to return to things here, I think no one who has really been over Jordan ever loses the sense that it is a fact. Many have an imagination, or even a glimpse of it, but that is not the reality....
I think a person once over, in the Spirit, has accepted death, and he knows what it is, though he does come back here. It is quite possible to contemplate being over without being really over. I think at times of great spiritual enjoyment you may get a real glimpse of being over.
You get a correct account of my health every day. It is the Lord’s pleasure to keep me here still, but I often contemplate my departure.
I have been dwelling much upon the marks of a man who has learned that he is in Christ, and not in Adam. This has led me, with deep interest, to the subject of God’s purpose for the church, suggested to me by the words — “Take heed how ye hear”.
I see that there are seven steps or stages in the range of God’s purpose for us, beginning with salvation and ending with union. They are all to be apprehended by faith, but the first only is appropriated by faith, and therefore one can speak of them, and have beautiful imaginations about them, without being in the experience of them. The first — salvation, is appropriated as well as apprehended by faith, because it is God’s grace transferring you from Adam to Christ. In Christ you are on new ground. If you do not accept this, you make no [p. 218] advance, because it is only in the life of Christ you have deliverance. But the other steps though apprehended by faith are only appropriated as you are in the Spirit. There are many who hold that these other steps are appropriated by faith, but they are greatly deceived. They can learn them clearly from scripture, and speak of them accurately and interestingly, as one would write poetry, which is really carrying you in imagination beyond your experience; but they have not appropriated them, and consequently do not enjoy them.
If you have learnt that you are in Christ, in His life, you know His love; you know something in addition to salvation. Next — When you reach the Living Stone in the assembly, your heart will rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. You gain immensely because you are led into the blessedness of His acceptance before God in the holiest of all. Then, according as you are led, you can serve Him here, you are occupied with His interests here, which is quite a new day to you. Next, when you enter into the great fact that you are dead with Him from the rudiments of the world, you have reached Him in His own sphere; and you are serving Him according to His direction. Now is made known to you that you are united to Him in heaven; you enjoy the wonderful blessedness of being so near Him, knowing His love, and being in His perfect confidence. And finally, you come out as a new man in heavenly power, to maintain for Him, in the face of all the opposition of the present scene, waiting for His appearing.
How many know only the first — salvation, and have no joy beyond the joy of salvation! They may be able to speak correctly of all the other stages, but they are not in the enjoyment of them. It is mental acquisition instead of experimental. I think this accounts for the fact that many, though happy in their salvation, do not seem to have acquired anything beyond their salvation, and all the immense blessings which follow are unknown to them.
[p. 219] I was so glad to get your letter. It is a great comfort thinking of you and your beloved husband, as knowing the Lord outside of everything here. I do not think anything fits us for the contrariety of things here except absolute seclusion with the Lord. I see many who like to read, pray, serve, who do not know what it is to be alone with the Lord. I hope you are not troubled about the commotion at ————. I think ignorance of the assembly is the defect there, and they must begin afresh. I have all along felt that there could be no healing until they understood the assembly. This applies more or less to all of them.
I see a great difference in the preachers who preach only the work, and those who present Himself. Many speak of a text, but the Person is the great object for the soul, and this you can never get to the end of, for you can never get to the end of Him. I have enjoyed very much Hebrews 11.
It is good for you to be exercised about deliverance. God’s purpose for the church from salvation to union is all grace, but there are several steps from salvation to union.
The first step is that He has terminated judicially in the cross the man under judgment, and has accepted the believer in Christ risen from the dead. This you not only apprehend by faith, but you also appropriate it by faith. You apprehend all the steps by faith, but you can only appropriate the first by faith. It has been a great damage to souls to say that because you apprehend all by faith you also appropriate all by faith.
Now in deliverance you are on new ground, you are in Christ, and that is the work of the Spirit in you. It is in His life you have deliverance. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8: 2). If you are not truly established in this step, you never enjoy the other steps, though you may believe they are all yours. Hence many can speak of the beauty and greatness of the calling of God who are not [p. 220] enjoying more than their own salvation, whereas every step in the calling is a new day and a new joy to your heart.
First, you are free from the law of sin and death. Christ lives in you. Second, you reach Him in the assembly, and your joy is full. Third, by His grace you serve Him here. Next, you know that you are dead with Him from the rudiments of the world, and you have, in the Spirit, reached Him in His own life, on the other side of death — a moment of unspeakable bliss. People can write poetry about it, but few have been there experimentally.
Finally, you know you are united to Him in heaven, and have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
In union with Christ heavenly things are made known to you, and your position is inconceivably blessed.
It was with sorrow of heart I heard of your great bereavement last week, but I delayed writing until you had entered on the new and untried path to which the Lord has appointed you.
There are many passages in scripture shewing how God cares for the widow and the fatherless; but I do not turn you to them; I turn you to Christ Himself simply, and desire that you should find the consolation in Him that Mary of Bethany found (John 11). We see in Hebrews 4 that He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and the heart that is really seeking Him, finds Him as Peter did, who when he left the boat to reach Him (Matthew 14), found his own infirmity required the Lord’s help, for he was sinking; so the more you are set upon being with the Lord, the more you find that you need Him for your own infirmities; and it is not only that the attractiveness of His love is drawing your heart to Himself, but also you want Him for your own need, and near Himself you will be not only perfectly happy, but you will be consoled for your irreparable loss.
To me, you are like a ship at sea, surrounded with your family, and every comfort, but without any human support, for the one in whom your heart rested is gone to [p. 221] your future home, and Christ, if you really confide in Him, is now your helmsman.
There is nothing around you to trust in, but the more you trust in Him the more He will assure you day by day of His faithful support.
May you and yours be thus abundantly blessed is my true desire.
... It is inconceivably blessed to me to know that God has a love in His own heart for each of His own. Sometimes when I pray for the weak and insignificant, it is an immense encouragement to appeal to His own heart, however little they may know of it — the same love that He has for Christ — I think it is a theme of great refreshment to oneself.
We had John 6 today, as well as chapters 14 and 17....
I am getting on slowly with my paper — ‘Transformed.’ I find it interesting but very searching. How partially any one is transformed! There are some who admire truth greatly who are not transformed. They are too satisfied with admiration, and know too little of the Lord personally.
(Question asked as to what he thought about breaking bread with an invalid in his own room.)
†We remember the Lord’s death because we are living in the place where He died. It is our proper start. Instead of seeking something for ourselves, we begin our week by the remembrance of His death, and if we know Him in glory, it only draws our hearts more to Him and severs us from all human expectation here. I think it is quite different with an invalid — one who is about to pass out of this world. I am afraid it is often done as a sort of consolation; and in Christendom as a means of grace.
[p. 222] February It was very kind of you to write of dear Mr. ————’s funeral. The better I knew him the more I was drawn to him.
I was very glad to get tidings of you all at M————. I am glad to hear of the additions, but the great secret is, not the shoots, but the roots. As in a tree, there is no shoot without the root first. So you must begin with the Lord in secret. It is true in everything that He that seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Many are looking for bloom and fruit, and are disappointed when they do not find it; but the defect is, that they have not been deeply and constantly with the Lord. It is a great point to lay hold of, that the Lord is in glory, and outside of everything here, and we can bring nothing of Him into this scene, but as we have been with Him there. See 2 Corinthians 3: 18. The Lord bless this truth deeply to you, and the dear brethren at M————. Give my true love to the dear brethren.
Very glad to hear of the reading at ———— on Ephesians 6. I connect it with John 16. The prince of this world is judged for the man in the power of the testimony of Christ. No Christian in John 16 could be conformed to the world. It is there heavenly power for the earth.
I hope you had a happy morning at P———— Street. I generally confine myself to prayer for the labourers on the Lord’s day. My great desire for them today has been that they might seek His presence. I think many in seeking the Lord have got enriched with the virtue of the truth without knowing the doctrine of it. Dear Mr. Wigram knew a great deal more of the good of the truth than he knew of doctrine. No one would be spiritually near the Lord without knowing that he was apart from the flesh, not in the flesh but in the Spirit. The greatest light I think that has come in of late is the knowledge of deliverance. I used to press being heavenly, but the first thing is deliverance from the flesh.
I have been reading part of Canticles and David’s [p. 223] song in 1 Chronicles 16. Marvellous instance of the magnanimity of grace, that though like the bride you may sleep and seek your own ease — in a way forget the Lord — yet you never lose what the Spirit has given you of Him. The “father” if he sleeps does not awake a “babe” he awakes a father, and in the greatness of the grace, where there is true awakening — restoration — he is nearer to Him than before he went to sleep....
†May we know the Lord in His place of greatness and splendour, and remember Him here in His death — His presence our one desire. Not looking for anything here, but for His presence, which is fulness of joy. May we be drawn to Him in glory, not only as a future hope but for present joy and blessing.
... I have been interested in seeing the difference between the experience of the Christian as to Egypt, the wilderness, and Canaan. First, the enemy; secondly, yourself; thirdly, how you behave as a heavenly man. Marah is the water of the Red Sea. We are free of the judgment of death: but there is nothing here for us but death. Christ having passed through, sweetens it for us. The chief lesson of the wilderness is yourself. In Egypt it is the enemy.
It is lamentable how much we are occupied with ourselves instead of with Christ; how little we practically carry out — not in Adam but in Christ, how little we say as to things as they arise. That is of Adam, not of Christ. I was glad to hear of the good prayer-meeting at P———— Street....
... Glad to get your account of P———— Street. The great thing in the assembly is to be with Him risen, to remember His death where He died, so that you are in heart dissociated from the place where He died, and [p. 224] attached to the place where He is. Then you come forth to express Him in the place where He is not. Mr. ———— asked me what I thought about breaking bread with invalids; I said, if they were recovering, and likely to resume their place here, it is very nice, because it keeps fresh in your heart what this place has been to Him; but if you are going out of it to Him, the real meaning of it is lost. In Christendom they take the sacrament as a means of grace for those departing.
That is a nice intelligent letter from ————, but she could not mortify the deeds of the body unless she was in experimental deliverance. Every one must learn what it is to appropriate Christ’s death for himself. Christ is not formed in you until you are crucified with Him....
The great thing I see every one wants more or less is deliverance. I used to say that saints do not realise union, which is true; but now I begin at the beginning, and say what they want first is deliverance.
I had yours this morning. I am glad dear ———— is coming to you. I hope she is above her sorrow. Job was relieved all round, but he had no sympathy. I do not desire that she should be relieved only, but that she should know the sympathy of Christ outside everything — happier outside everything with Himself, than here with everything one would like, under the care of God. I know no one who loves hearing and reading of the Lord or serving Him more than she does, but there is no resource for the heart until you know Him outside everything here.
As to my paper on self-improvement, my intention is to shew not only that there is no improvement, but what living Christ is. We are all more or less ensnared by self-improvement, which is unintentionally denying the grace of God....
†Always have a definite aim before you in the Lord’s work. Perhaps a tower has to be battered down — an obstacle removed; keep at it until it is done. Thus you [p. 225] will be useful and effective, and your hearers will be thankful.
†At the end of Acts 7 first I see Him in glory; secondly, I am with Him in glory; thirdly, I can speak to Him in glory — not merely about things as I see them, but as He sees them. What hinders us is looking at things as we see them. I must get into the glory to see things as He sees them. That was my education when awake last night.
†I have been pondering for many hours yesterday and again today. My great subject is, that you are not only cleared from the old; that you see in Romans; but that you are in the new, as in Colossians 1; and in Colossians 3 you use it. You are not conscious that you have it until you use it. I reproach myself much that I have not led others into it more.
I thank you for your letter. It is a cheer to me to hear that there is an exercise in ———— as to the holiness which becometh the house of God. I think in general many are ready to hear and to accept truth without being near enough to the Lord to know the responsibility as to their course which the truth involves. A remark was made to me lately about a district, that while they appreciate God’s grace in transferring them from Adam to Christ risen from the dead, yet as a rule, they do not apprehend the great moral effect of this truth. They are ready and diligent to reform their habits and tempers, but never seem to grasp the idea of being transformed. According to Romans 12, in the sight of men we are not to be conformed to anything in this world, and according to 2 Corinthians 3: 18, we are brought into moral correspondence to Christ in glory. The work of the Spirit in the believer is not reformation but transformation.
[p. 226] I rejoice in your faithfulness for the Lord....
It is quite true that many Christians after being freed from the judgment of Egypt by the death of Christ — the Red Sea — go back in taste to Egypt, and attempt to use in the Lord’s service the old man, from which they are delivered through the death of Christ, not seeing that they are acting in open defiance of the greatness of His grace, because they are seeking to use in His service the man whom He has terminated for them in the cross — removed for ever from God’s holy eye. Our true place is the wilderness where there is nothing but Marah, death on every side, on the human side; “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass” (1 Peter 1: 24), but we have the manna from heaven, and the smitten rock for our joy and strength.
The Lord bless you much, and strengthen you for His service.
I had ————’s letter this morning. It must be an interesting subject. I had been wishing that ———— would give a course of lectures from Egypt to Canaan. The eye is to be on the cloud of glory. Wherever the cloud was the manna was. Another thing, I find you do not take your proper place in the wilderness until you are set for Canaan. In Numbers 21 the full enmity of the heart against God is disclosed, the unmendability of the natural man. I find that no one discovers really the enmity of his heart against God until he has accepted the wilderness in its true character.
I have been thinking there is no idea of the church in professing Christendom. The idea of the gospel came with Luther. I should like to see a good paper on it, but I do not know that I am up to it. I should like to write a paper on the gospel partially accepted, while the church is completely unknown. It is a deplorable fact that except a few among us, no one seems to take any interest in what the church is in God’s mind.
[p. 227] Your letter interested me. I am truly thankful for the way the Lord has led you. I think we are not sufficiently awake to the solemn fact that while the gospel is partially accepted since the Reformation, the Church, as it is in the mind of God, is so very little known. To begin at the very beginning — to join the Lord in His own place, outside everything of man, as you truly say, I think many among us, though true and earnest in the gospel, have never really learned. Peter in Matthew 14 sets forth in figure what it is to leave all human support, and seek Christ Himself in the supremacy of His power, at the other side of death, which is really coming to the Living Stone. If you have not taken that step you are not set for what is God’s great and wondrous destination for us, not only as His own sons in glory, but as members of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, to share and take part in all His counsels and interests. The Lord keep you fervently answering to the desires of the heart of God for you.
As to your exercise about preaching — If you are not hampered by any sectarian rules, you might, I think, tell out the gospel, as the Lord has taught you. If you are faithful in that which is least, you will be faithful also in much. The Lord bless you much.
I was glad to get your account of the reading. I quite like what was said of Marah. Many pious people accept baptism, thinking they are really dead and risen with Christ, and without knowing that it is in the power of the Spirit.
I have begun my new paper on the gospel and the church, attempting to shew how unknown the mystery of the gospel was until it was revived to Mr. Darby. I remark that every one who has departed from the acceptance of that truth is sure to lose power, and to decline; while any one who adheres to it, however feebly, is marked by support from the Spirit of God. Like Israel going through the wilderness, those who stood up for the land were those who succeeded....
... I am glad to hear of the lecture on Numbers 15. I had been reading that chapter and was thinking what was the character of the offerings after the failure. It is wonderful how prominent Numbers is becoming. I remember Mr. Darby agreeing with me that Romans 3 answers to Exodus 12 and that Exodus 14 answers to Romans 5 and how plain it is that Romans 7 answers to the brazen serpent.
We were reading today Psalm 24 and Psalm 115 and Revelation 21 and John 15. How wonderful to think what the church will be on earth for Christ’s service, and would be now assuredly if it had the characteristics of the new Jerusalem, though in a minor way....
†I think all are more or less defective in two things. (1) in not being delivered, (2) in not having come to the Living Stone. All God’s purposes are to be enjoyed by-and-by, but it is only as we experience them step by step in divine order that we have part in His purpose now.... I feel it is such a favour to be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, I am only just beginning to realise it myself.
... As to a servant of Christ advertising or using the world in any form, it is plainly not according to the word of God. We read in John 14: 26 that the Holy Ghost would be sent in Christ’s name to bring the disciples into the knowledge of all that He had said, which is detailed for us in the gospels; but we read in chapter 15: 26 that the Holy Ghost would be sent from Himself in heaven to testify of Himself, and we see how this is carried out in John 16. So that no one having received the Holy Ghost from Christ in heaven could use the world in any form to help on the testimony. The Spirit would first demonstrate that the world is sin. Who could use it then to help on the testimony? Secondly, there is no righteousness here, so that righteously you could not use it; and thirdly, the prince of this world is judged, so that in the [p. 229] power of the heavenly Christ, in accordance with Ephesians 6 you can withstand the wiles of the devil; and having done all to stand, glorifying Christ in this world, learning from Him of the Father’s things, which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.
Paul when he first came into Europe, and the woman with the spirit of divination proclaimed him (where he was entirely unknown) as the servant of the Most High God, refused her support, feeling that the devil wanted to have a finger in the work; and the result was, that the whole community from the magistrates down to the mob, the whole power of evil, was arrayed against him; so that he was beaten and cast into prison.
Everything seemed as if the enemy had succeeded, until the quiet hour of midnight, when God interposed, and not only set Paul and Silas free, but the man of Macedonia was so wrought upon by the power of God, that he called for a light, and sprang in, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? It is a simple question now whether it is better to use worldly power, or to be content to go on in a way unnoticed by man, but eventually, through God’s grace, with the greatest effect.
I thank you much for your hearty response as to my little paper — ‘In Adam or in Christ.’ I was especially cheered by the exercise of the brethren as to whether they understood the meaning of the word themselves. I often ponder with myself as I lie here, how little we really apprehend the magnificence of God’s grace in transferring us from the man who dishonoured Him to the Man of His pleasure. What rays of divine light shine in upon the soul as one in any measure believes it? One feels daily how little one answers practically in our ways and words, to being in Christ and not in Adam.
I think in general many are ready to hear and accept truth without being near enough to the Lord to know the responsibility, or the course which the truth involves.
I have been dwelling on what a true servant would be like in this day of Christ’s rejection. It is not so much [p. 230] what he does as what he is. A man here for God is like a star in the sky; he may have a peculiar mission besides, and may help others. Nothing but what is of the Spirit of God will abide. As to man all his thoughts perish, but every thought and desire he ever had by the Spirit of God will remain. My whole contention is, how much remains? What is mere human cleverness, and what is the power of the Holy Ghost, and the Lord’s own work? I know that I am of the glorified Man, and that whatever belongs to Him remains.
... I am glad to hear you had such a good meeting on the Lord’s day. I think it is quite possible for true, earnest souls to be happy together remembering the Lord’s death, who have not yet known what it is to come to Himself as the Living Stone.
I think very few in the meetings know what it is to be built up a spiritual house. I do not mean the whole company; but if there are even two or three who do know it there is a good beginning in the company — a beginning which must help others. I think it is a wonderful moment when you are conscious that you have come to Him — the Living Stone, God’s foundation, and that you now form a part of the spiritual house. Your blessing and power in the assembly is your enjoyment of the Lord in His own place, and not merely your enjoyment of the ministry, however beautiful. A brother, I suppose twenty years in the Lord, said to me lately that what he is looking for is the consciousness of having come to the Living Stone. I was cheered to see this exercise in him. Some of the evangelists hold that every believer is on the Living Stone. The truth is that every believer is a stone, but he is not built up until he comes to the Living Stone, the foundation chosen of God and precious.
I find that the two things the saints are most ignorant about are — deliverance, and coming to the Living Stone. The happiest among them seldom get beyond joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom they have received the reconciliation. This is the joy of [p. 231] salvation. Deliverance is the next step. When in deliverance you know that you are set free from the body of this death, that you are in Christ, that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made you free from the law of sin and death. No one really advances in his soul until he knows this, though he may know the scriptures well, and be able to explain every passage in Ephesians, but he is not in it on God’s side. You must come to the Living Stone first; otherwise you cannot know Christ in the Holiest, or know Him as Head. You must know these two before you can know what union with Christ in heaven is.
I hope you will be able to see that you must begin in divine order. All God’s purpose will be enjoyed by-and-by, but it is only as we are led in these successive steps that we can have part in it now.
My conviction is, that if even two or three in the meeting at ———— had found the Lord as the Living Stone on the other side of death, as Peter had to learn in Matthew 14, when he left the boat to meet the Lord on the water, they would have held on in dependence on Him, and thus have been able to help any earnest soul to find what through grace they had found. I have had to learn this practically for myself where there was no adverse party. The Lord give you grace to make Him your one object.
... It is a true remark of ————’s about the objective. I see so many who think they have everything — that because they have faith everything is theirs. Men of the world do not care for title if they do not get anything with it.
I thought it so nice of ———— to tell me that he desired to know that he had come to the Living Stone. It is the first journey out of the world to Christ. Vain to talk of being in the Holiest and knowing Him as Head if you have not left this place.
We have had Exodus 15, Numbers 18, with John 14.
[p. 232] I am sorry to hear of poor ————. The only remedy for depression of the kind is reading the gospels, and keeping the eye on the Lord Himself, thinking of Him and not of your own state, and by-and-by you find that the depression is gone.
What I desire for ———— and ————is deliverance. I think they know a great deal but they are not able to appropriate it until they are in deliverance. It is for that I pray for them.
I hope my new paper is getting on.
I think so few understand the links in the great chain of His purpose.... It is interesting to see the great position to which God has called us; but how few under-stand or enjoy it! If one were really in the enjoyment of it there could not be enjoyment in anything connected with the earth.
I had your long interesting letter this morning.... I pray for ———— that she may have the joy of knowing the Lord outside of everything. I am beginning to really taste for myself what a favour it is to be dead with Him from the rudiments of the world.
As to my paper, my great point is that while saints were allowed to believe that all is theirs, which is true, they were prevented by the device of the enemy from having present enjoyment of it. I want to make this emphatic, that though all is mine by the gift of God when I believe it, yet it is only by the Spirit that I can enjoy any of it, except the first step, which is salvation, and which is known by faith....
I rejoice to hear that your beloved husband is so much better, and that you are also. I feel the Lord is taking great pains with you in all this trial. I hope now that He is about to restore to you your natural helmsman, that your heart will rejoice in finding how He could supply his place if [p. 233] you had lost him. Mary of Bethany could never forget what she discovered of the Lord in His walk with her to the grave (John 11). She learned His heart in such a way that she really felt His death more (chapter 12) than she had felt the death of Lazarus. I hope you may have a deeper sense of the blank here in Christ having died, but that your heart will rejoice to find Him where He is, and to know what a resource He is to you. True love to you both.
I thank the Lord that you are still continued amongst us, for you are very dear to us, and I trust that this little retirement with Himself has been greatly blessed to you. I find it a great thing for myself to know the Lord outside everything — supreme in His own glory, so that if everything here in this land of Marah were to fade away, we have unbounded joy and light for evermore with Him; and having a taste of it now, fits us for this death scene in a wonderful way. The Lord bless you much.
I have been wishing to write to you.... I think it is a great thing if you do not know where to go, to feed the kids beside the shepherds’ tents (Song of Songs 1: 8) — to be within reach of helpful ministry. It is a great cheer that wherever the cloud was there the manna was, it is not that the cloud was where the manna was. If your heart is set on the Lord He is sure to lead you to the spot where He will feed you with Himself. I feel how much happier you would be if you were in a bright circle of His interests as you were at ————. The Lord bless you much and direct you as to His own will.
I have heard of the deep sorrow the Lord has caused you and Mrs. ———— to pass through. I should like to say one word in sympathy for you — how the Lord uses our infirmities as we see in the end of Hebrews 4 to attach us to Himself. There are three great classes of infirmities — [p. 234] pressure of circumstances, bad health, and bereavement. Job was called to pass through all three; and though he was relieved eventually, he had no sympathy. In the affliction the Lord puts us through now, if the heart is following Him, He only uses the affliction to increase our desire to be with Him, as Peter going to Him on the water; when he began to sink, his own infirmity occupied him with the Lord, and then the Lord stretched forth His hand and caught him, so that his infirmity only increased and promoted his desire to get to the Lord. Thus Mary of Bethany was comforted by His walk with her (John 11). He had given no promise of relief, but His company was so affecting to her, He so endeared Himself to her, that we find in the next chapter that she felt the prospect of His death more than the death of Lazarus.
The Lord grant to each of you that He may be more endeared to you by the way He has drawn you each to Himself in this sorrow.
... I rejoice that your beloved husband is better. I remember him daily as the Lord’s servant. The Lord bless you both much. Only one thing is needful — “Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10: 42). The “good part” is the “manifold more” at the close of chapter 18.
March I hope ———— now understands what I mean about the device of Satan into which some have fallen. The whole range of God’s purpose in grace is their main point, and they are right so far. We have only to believe it; but there is no appropriation by faith except for the first step, which is God’s work for us. It is only in Christ that we can enjoy the other steps, though they are ours. It is true that many among ourselves can speak clearly on these points, though not in the practical power of them, but [p. 235] then they do not make it all faith as the others do. They would agree that it must be the work of the Spirit. To any simple soul it must be plain that the first step — salvation, must be by faith only. The next step is deliverance — “in Christ”; and then a new day begins; you begin to enjoy your possessions. We all agree that we have the possessions; the right is ours by faith; they are God’s gift; but if we were enjoying each link in the great chain it would make a wonderful difference with us.
Excuse this long explanation which I have given because I do not think ———— quite catches my meaning....
I am meditating a new paper, ‘As is the heavenly, so are they that are heavenly.’
I am, thank the Lord, very happy, though sometimes parts of the nights are somewhat disturbed. I have plenty to interest me in praying for those in different places which I have visited. I find it cheering to see what the Lord does; His way is perfect, yet nothing so comforts me as to be occupied with what He is. You see the difference in John 14: 26, where what He has been to us is brought out, and in John 15: 26, which is what He is at this present moment. This explains what you get in 2 Corinthians 3: 18. One gets a sense of being satisfied with Him outside and apart from everything.
I am glad that the meeting is prospering. I feel the great lack in many is not having a clear idea of how we are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. People come together as true believers, but they do not know what it is to come individually to the Living Stone. They have not taken the step that Peter took in Matthew 14. This is too much looked at as leaving system to go to the Lord. It really means leaving everything, to go to Him at the other side of death, and no one has really come to the Living Stone till he has taken this step. We should have brighter meetings if even a few in the assembly knew what it is to have taken this great step; but though many are quite happy in their salvation, they are not in true deliverance, which simply means that you are in the [p. 236] life of Christ; not occupied with refusing Ishmael, but rejoicing that Isaac has his place, and that what belongs to Christ comes easy to you. The Lord bless you much. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free.
I send this message to ———— with much love. Divine food prepares for the path of understanding (Proverbs 9). Wisdom’s feast — “Eat of my bread, and drink of the wine”.
I have begun my new paper. The great point is that there is no other road to heaven but through the wilderness, and Numbers shews you the divine path, God in His goodness meeting you, and your own evil exposed, as I have said. We see from Colossians that heaven is the hope of the gospel. I do not believe any one reaches Romans 8 until he is set for heaven. Numbers is a wonderful book; I think it describes the experience of every one truly going to Canaan. If you are not set for heaven you try to make the wilderness a resting place. We leave the path to heaven if we seek anything to enjoy here. We are idolaters if we seek to enjoy ourselves where Christ died.
... I am sending you my paper, ‘As is the heavenly.’ It is very difficult to convey the effect of beholding the Lord. I fear it will not be interesting to any one who does not answer to it experimentally.... I do not believe any one has deliverance until he is first disgusted with himself. No one discloses the real enmity of his heart until he is set for heaven. Therefore the wiles of the enemy are to occupy him with himself in some form.... What I pray for Mrs. ————, is that she may now realise the comfort of drawing near to the Lord and finding His sympathy.
[p. 237] It has been such a comfort to me to see the great grace in connecting the Lord’s death with Marah. Fellowship with His death sweetens death to us. I had long seen our side of it. The sense of Marah here is relieved by fellowship with His death. If our hearts are set on the place where Christ is we have our anchorage there within the veil.
There is a difference between knowing the Lord’s love and knowing Him as the wisdom of God. In the first you have confidence in Him, in the second you have confidingness. You know Him as the One who can solve everything for you, so that your self is lost, like the queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon — there was no more spirit in her.
I am truly thankful that the Lord Himself has been your solace in the hour of your sorrow and great bereavement. It is very blessed to taste in any degree how He as Priest bears us above the infirmities of humanity, be it pressure of circumstances, bad health, or bereavement. He draws us to Himself as He drew Peter when sinking. Some know that He has freed us from the claim of the law through His death, and that we are delivered from the old man — “the body of this death”, through His death, who do not know Him as Priest, bearing us above the weakness of humanity. It is a blessed moment when one weighed down by bereavement is by His own hand drawn so near to Himself that in His company the bereaved one is consoled.
[p. 253] The Lord bless you much.
I am disappointed to hear of ————. The very fact of her sense of loss of enjoyment is a proof that she had it. The man that has lost his eyesight feels that he has lost it; one who never had it does not know of his loss. Her only way of relief is keeping more before her what Christ is, and not thinking of herself.
[p. 238] Do you see the difference between Romans 7 and Hebrews 4? In the first you are dead to the law by the body of Christ, and in the second you are delivered from all the weakness of humanity. The first step in the heavenly path after your salvation is Marah, death on the human side. If you have little or much, death is on all, and as you have fellowship with His death, death is made sweet to you.
I need not tell you more of my paper, but the subject is very interesting to me. I only ask that I may do the subject some justice. I am much interested in the end of Hebrews 6, the anchor of the soul. Have you a good anchorage? If not, you will drift on the shore of the world....
I had through mercy a lovely night. Your letter came early. I like much what you relate was said in the lecture about Light and Life. The gospel begins with light and goes on to life....
I have learned three things especially from the study of “the heavenly”. First, the scene of Marah is relieved by fellowship with Christ’s death, as we realise His death; secondly, our hearts are not set on this place, but on the place where He is gone; otherwise we have no direction, and may drift into the world; thirdly, the great service of His priesthood to us is to bear us above the weakness of humanity.
In the history of the soul light comes before life, but in the gospel of John, life is treated of before light.
As to your question, do you not understand that if the anchor of your soul is not in heaven, you will be stranded on the earthly side? I have begun a new paper and am trying to get a good title for it. I am trying to set forth the distinct power belonging to and given for every fresh step, every definite advance in grace, so that one might be assured of what step one had really entered on. People know them all so well mentally, and they think they have them all without the special grace needed for taking each step....
[p. 239] I think if a person knew the Lord outside everything it would be very easy to see that he does; though he would not feel things here less, he would know where the relief is. It is sad to me to see some who love the Lord, and faithfully serve Him, and still so little cultivate acquaintance with Him outside everything here.
I am glad to hear of the additions, and that brothers have come into fellowship. I hope the part they take in the meetings will be from their own experience, and not merely what they have read. I do not mean by experience their own feelings, but their knowledge of Christ. I see some who pray, and read, and serve, and delight to hear, who I am sure lose a great deal, because they do not, like the queen of Sheba, enjoy the One greater than Solomon. In beholding His glory you get impressions of what you had no presentiment; the word seems newly opened to you; but I have written on this in a paper called ‘Transformed’, which you will see. I feel that the objective school has leavened many. Mr. Darby was used by God to correct Wesleyanism, and to bring out in the fullest way the perfection of God’s grace, yet his teaching was deeply subjective.
There are seven links in the great chain of His purpose. They are all to be apprehended by faith. The first is salvation, where God’s heart has expressed itself fully. The man under judgment has been terminated in judgment on the cross. Every believer in Christ risen is accepted in Him; he has peace with God, and the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost. This is immense grace; and few souls, however devoted, get beyond it. You are no longer in Adam, but in Christ before God, to His entire satisfaction. As far as I see, the greatest evangelists of our day do not get beyond this. You may say it is a great theme, and so it is. But the leaven that has hindered many, is the thought that because the first link of grace is appropriated by faith, that all the others are appropriated by faith. This led to the recent division. The truth is that the first alone is appropriated [p. 240] by faith, because it is God transferring us from one man to another. The second is deliverance, which is only known when we are in Christ, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death. You do not enter on this but as you are in the Spirit of Christ, though all the links of His purpose, from salvation to union with Christ, are all yours, and to be enjoyed hereafter; but you only enjoy them now as you are in the Spirit of Christ.
I want to call attention to the fact that the weakness of our meetings arises from not knowing what it is to come to the Living Stone, chosen of God and precious. Every believer is a stone, but he is not in his true place in the spiritual house, until he comes to the Living Stone. Now if he had not deliverance he never could get to Christ on the other side of death, and I do not believe that any one does know it, until he has gone through experimentally Matthew 14 and John 6. Though the two chapters are so apparently diverse, if you study them carefully, you will see that they happened at the same time. One is the way we have to go, the other — the power by which we can go — the life of Christ.
†People think that sleep is better than the Lord’s ministry to one. It is not. The Lord’s ministry is a wonderful thing, and it is the greatest rest.
I had a long visit from ———— yesterday. They had good readings at ————, but I do not see any prospect yet of their having light or grace to come together to break bread. The more I dwell on the fellowship of Christ’s death the more I feel how solemn it is, and how little understood. If we truly had fellowship with His death how little we should expect from this place, and how our hearts would cling to Him where He is....
[p. 241] I had your letter. When I say that you cannot properly say “heavenly” until Ephesians 4, I mean till you come from heaven. I quite agree with R———— that the new company start from Numbers 21; they have been learning themselves in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8).
I think Matthew 14 is connected with deliverance. What is the third step in the chain of grace in the purpose of God? The first is salvation; the second deliverance. What is the third? I make the third “part” with Christ. It is there the assembly comes in....
†The bride in Canticles made herself comfortable and went to sleep. We would naturally like the Lord to shew His love to us by giving us rest here, but He shews His love in doing just the reverse — in making no rest for us here, that He may draw us into company with Himself.
†Does your heart rejoice in the love that would draw you away from your own darkness into its own light? It is a joy to my heart to know that is where my portion is.
I had your interesting letter this morning early. I like greatly the distinction between Joshua and Moses. The great defect is not following the Forerunner. If you are not set for heaven you are trying to make the wilderness a resting place. If you are not anchored in heaven, you are sure to drift into the world.
We had our little reading, Luke 22, John 20 and 14. I have been trying to realise what being over Jordan is. It is a grand day when you are free from the influence of everything here, of every visible thing. The new man has touched his own sphere, and is not trying to refuse things here, but is in the sense that he virtually belongs to another place. But still there is a greater day, when you know that you are part of Himself in heaven, and are walking about here in the power of His Spirit to be His witness.
[p. 242] I am writing to ———— that I feel daily more and more that the path of the Christian is unique. If your heart is not set on the place where Christ is, you are diverted by any advancement here, and you are sure to give up Paul’s line....
... I am getting on but slowly with my new paper, trying to trace the believer’s moral journey from the far country until he can say
’... The Spirit’s power
Has ope’d the heavenly door’. (74:5)
Then I hope to set forth the characteristic of a heavenly man on earth....
JND used to say he was not a man for detail, but that others made beautiful things out of his gold....
What gives power to a speaker is his having the Lord before him in the passage that he speaks on. Many speakers have only man and the good of man before them....
Where does ministry culminate? In love! The prodigal gets kissed; he begins with love. The saint is united; that is the finish of love.
Every convert gets the kiss, but the one who gets to the Father’s joy and the Father’s interests is always advancing, no matter what the circumstances, or what the trouble here. It is only three years ago that I saw that, though the truth set forth in the parable of the prodigal son was the first I ever knew. How wonderfully rich that scripture is!
It is delightful to contemplate that when we realise union with Christ we know His love which passes knowledge; and if we can at all anticipate the bliss of being around Him, it adds greatly to it that we should love one another with His love. The satisfaction of love is when [p. 243] its object wants nothing. As we read of the Lord, “He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zephaniah 3: 17).
April Your letter was very welcome, and though I hear of you constantly I was glad of a line. I fully agree with you about deliverance. It is only in the life of Christ that we can have any real deliverance from the law of sin and death. I see that we are not only freed from the claim of the law by the body of Christ, so that we can say our old man is crucified with Him, but as we seek Him we find the greatness of His priestly service in drawing us above all the weakness of humanity to Himself; so that any one who knows Him where He is, supreme above all the power of evil here, would never seek for any help from the world around him. I do not believe there is any communion with Him or enjoyment of Him in the assembly without knowing deliverance, nor do I believe that saints ever know the wretchedness there is in themselves until they are set for heaven where He is, as Israel in Numbers 21, which you rightly call the new company, were set for Canaan. The Lord bless you and yours.
I had ————’s by night mail. Much pleased with her account of the last lecture. I like what was said about the two and a half tribes.
I had been meditating in the night a message to Rotherham, and I see very plainly that if heaven as a hope wanes, you have lost the present anchor of your soul within the veil. I believe nothing will keep us in this like having fellowship with His death. I think fellowship with Christ’s death gives us a real idea of the place we are in, and sets our hearts on His place; but if our hearts are really set on where He is, we do pass over Jordan while still here, and we learn Colossians. But how few have truly learned [p. 244] Colossians If you are really enjoying Christ as Head in the sphere of His own life, though still on the earth, surrounded by all the things that used to please you naturally, you are seeking the things above, and receiving from Him power to do according to His pleasure here. I think it is a great favour to know that we have a Head in heaven, and that we belong to that sphere before we are taken out of this sphere. I see that even in the type we are to be brought to the place — to God’s habitation (Exodus 15).
... I often think before the Lord of some who love Him and who would do anything to serve Him, and yet who do not know what it is to be alone with Him, outside everything here. If I were to say, ‘I love Mr. Darby and Mr. Darby loves me, but I never spent half an hour with him’, what would that prove? Being with the Lord is so peculiar. How different the Old Testament times to ours! They could delight in Jehovah, but they could not understand what we may know — delight in One who has been and is a Man, and who is acquainted with all about us. Such intimacy! ...
Glad to hear such a cheerful report of your little circle. I have been greatly interested lately in seeing that we are saved for heaven, not merely as a future home, but for the rest of our hearts even now. I think it is a wonderful thing to know that I am given to be over Jordan with Christ through grace, as much as my salvation. Therefore the two great things that mark a Christian in this world are fellowship with Christ in His death here where He died, and association with Him where He now is. If any one is truly in the first, his only rest is in the second, and therefore it is the anchor of the soul. If you are diverted from it by anything here you lose your anchor, and drift into the world. I think we have been too much satisfied to be saved for heaven by-and-by, instead of seeing that it is the actual hope belonging to salvation (Colossians 1: 5, 23).
If you have Christ before you it is fellowship with His [p. 245] death here and His glory where He is. Between those two — death and glory — you have to walk daily. On the one side, as you look at Him as He was here, it is His death; on the other side — you behold His glory.
You would never have a cloud if you were beholding His glory, and if you keep up your intimacy with Him your feet will be washed. The Lord does it.
Matthew 14 is not coming to the Living Stone, but it is the preparation for it. You must get clear of your own infirmity, His priestly hand bearing you to His side, before you can seek Him. It is when you are free of yourself that you become occupied with Him. If you look into the history of your soul, you will see that you cannot come any other way. You must have deliverance first before you can have part with Him....
It is a wonderful thing that each one can be a living stone contributing to God’s assembly.
... It came very freshly before me this morning, that as Christ is rejected from this world, nothing that is not of Christ could be owned of Him, and any spiritual help must come direct from Him, and not from anything in this world. I awoke so cheered with what also came so freshly before me — that it is as much part of the grace of God that we should be over Jordan as our salvation is of His grace. By grace I am saved by the work of Christ, and so am I over Jordan by His death. If we valued the latter as we do the former, we should have a wonderful time. But the Spirit does not lead us into it until we seek it, and are ready for it. I see more and more every day that Christianity is the path the vulture’s eye hath not seen.
I am glad you had such a happy meeting on Thursday. J.N.D. used to say that Paul had reached nothing fully in Philippians 3. I think this helps us to see that though [p. 246] Paul knew what it was to be over Jordan, and knew union, that he was not yet in the fulness of either.
Some fail to see how unique the Lord’s nature was, so that instead of His being one with us, we are one with Him.
How very easy the path would be if the heart were kept true to Christ in fellowship with His death here, where it occurred, and associated with Him in glory where He is....
Did you notice my remark about the evangelist — that he comes from Christ to seek and enlighten the members of Christ? ...
... I have been thinking very much how one begins to be turned aside, and how to treat it. What is the first indication that you are off the line? Your first decided move after a new occurrence? This is especially true after having received light from God. Your next move indicates the ruling purpose of your heart. Ponder this well....
I like the letter from ————, but it is not merely Christ risen, but Christ in glory; so that in beholding Him you are like the queen of Sheba, lost, no more spirit left; you gain instead of lose; and what an immense gain it is to get the sense of being with Him! ...
I thank you much for your comprehensive letter. I have been for some time wishing to write to you. I was pleased to hear a few days ago of your intention to write to me. First let me say I rejoice much at the prospect of your being free to give your time more exclusively to the Lord’s service. May the Lord fit you for it fully....
There are many who have not seen clearly how the first man is removed from the eye of God, and that the Man of His pleasure is exclusively before Him. How many receive it as a doctrine who have no idea of the reality of it, and so they cannot heartily take in that Christ is entirely de novo, as J.N.D. used to say, ‘sui generis’. I remember saying years ago to dear Mr. Wigram, that [p. 247] the Lord was perfect china and we broken china. He corrected me by saying, ‘He was not china at all.’ Now I see how wondrously unique He was in the eye of God.
There are many who have not really reached deliverance in their own souls; and some, I think, who look for good conduct, and to keep a good conscience, who have never known what it is to be delivered from the “wretched man” (Romans 7). If you are really delivered you are in the life of Christ, and a new scene altogether opens out to you....
I hope the Lord will strengthen you both for the meetings on Friday if it be His will, and that he will send a plentiful rain on His inheritance. I am sending you my little message to the brethren to be read to them. I have been very much struck lately, pondering over my life, how much happier a time I should have had, and how many sorrows I should have been spared, if heaven had been more definitely the anchor of my soul. One is so apt to look for something in this place while passing through it. I feel now that it is marvellous grace that I am as much entitled to be over Jordan with Christ, as I am to be saved by His work on the cross.
May you know the unmeasured love of His heart.
To the brethren gathered at Rotherham, April 16th, 1897
Dear Brethren, — Though I am not able to be among you, my heart is fully with you, and I have you in remembrance before the Lord, I am thankful to say, daily. I may just briefly express great desire for you. We are delivered out of Egypt — the world — what man has made of the earth, to be in God’s habitation. “Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation” (Exodus 15: 13). Now if this is definitely before you, even that you have been delivered out of the present evil age for heaven, you must take the only true road to reach it. The divine path to heaven is through the wilderness. This world is a wilderness, and there is nothing for you here [p. 248] but Marah, that is, death on man’s side; and the more you have fellowship with Christ in His death, the easier the path becomes to you, because you see the true character of this world; and the more truly you do, the more you seek Him where He is. “That ... we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil” (Hebrews 6: 18, 19).
Now, if you are diverted from His place — where Jesus is entered as Forerunner, by anything here, even the mercies of God, you have lost the anchor of your soul, and you drop into the world; but if you cleave to Him, and to His place, you learn, as in Colossians, that heaven is the hope of the gospel (Colossians 1: 5 - 23). You will find that it is God’s grace to you that you should be morally dead to everything here, though fulfilling all the ordinances of God, and you are in living enjoyment of the things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. No one can conceive a more wonderful position as set here on the earth for Christ. The Lord incline each of our hearts more and more to follow Him there for present enjoyment.
The Lord bless you much in your meeting. My love to each.
Yours very affectionately in Christ.
... I rejoice in the tidings from you this morning of the meetings....
I have been wishing for myself to know more of what the queen of Sheba is the type of when she came to king Solomon. Surely it is our privilege to come to Him who is greater than Solomon, and to be so absorbed with Him as to have no more spirit in us — so entirely under His influence. I remark that many dwell on the love of Christ who do not dwell much on the wisdom of Christ. As I see His love I have confidence in Him, but as I know Him as the wisdom of God I have confidingness. He can solve everything for me. The Lord bless you abundantly.
... [p. 249] I had, thank God, a good night — plenty of time to meditate, but have not found a title for my subject. I feel that such a line of things is much wanted.... I see that so few have had a good start. The prodigal’s start was making merry with his father.
Do you remark that when ———— speaks of Christ risen as an important truth it is only seeing that He is on new ground. It is when you behold Him in glory that you are absorbed with Him.
I had a visit from dear ————. He seems to think that my happiness in my illness has made things real to people....
I have had good tidings of the Rotherham meetings; I like the line of things taken up very much. The reading on Saturday was on Romans 10....
Though I was pretty comfortable last night I could not go to sleep, and I was pleased at getting a title for my paper, namely, there must be heresies among you. I think the force of that is that something hinders them from adopting the truth in its fulness, and they set up an opinion of their own. In the case of Christendom it is one huge system of heresies; for example, they have no idea of the removal of the first man and they limit the Lord’s supper to the remembrance of your own benefit. When a man qualifies the truth it is because it is too much for him, not because he intends to be wrong. Lot looking for a place for himself instead of following Abraham is an example of it....
... I began my new paper today. I feel I have much material but I do not know if I am able to put it in order. It is only a divine eye that can take in divine light. If there is human admixture with the word it is leavened. I think it is very important to see, as the similitude of Matthew 13 shews, that it is not that the meal is refused, but there is an addition to it. The man with most power is the man who quotes scripture most accurately. J.N.D. used to say that if you were lecturing in the Spirit you would [p. 250] remember a text correctly. I have often said that Satan quoted scripture to the Lord incorrectly....
What is it that turns people aside? Bring them to the water is one thing.
It was very cheering to me to get your letter after your long silence. I felt that you were exposed to the north wind as well as the south winds. I hope the spices did really flow out.
I have often tried of late to press the distinction between the coming of the Holy Ghost to shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, and His work in us, which is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which has made me free from the law of sin and death. I think that many are happy in their salvation, as the prodigal knew he was in favour when he was kissed, who are not in deliverance from the “wretched” self, with the best robe on, enjoying the great supper in the presence of God. I think the evangelists would take a very different course if they had more before them the simple fact that they were sent to find the members of Christ’s body — that they come from Christ, and have to answer to Him for the work. They see it too much as the benefit of man, which is only philanthropy.
The Lord bless you both much. My daily prayer for you is that you may know the Lord on the other side of Jordan. It is a wonderful truth that by the same grace by which you are saved you can say you are over Jordan with Christ in the sphere of His own life while you are still on the earth.
Thank you much for your kindness in writing to me about the meeting in ———— and for your desire to gratify me by sending me tidings. I am greatly interested in your account of the gospel address, and also in the difference between deliverance in Romans 6 and in Colossians 2. I see one is from the man, the other from the place where man has all his interests. Romans is known a long time before Colossians.
[p. 251] I hope the Lord will lead you to Himself daily outside everything. That is my great desire for you, that you may come from Him to the things of this poor world.
I am sending you ————’s letter. I am greatly pleased with ————’s gospel sermon. How fully he has got hold of the gospel of the glory! It is remarkable to me that those who do not see the gospel of the glory, however devoted they are, and however vigorously they dwell on Christ on our side, yet they never seem to have a thought about Him on His own side.
I see how much depends on knowing deliverance according to God’s word. Many a devoted one has lost it because he made deliverance the reckoning of faith — the human interpretation of it. No one who has not divine deliverance can enjoy Christ in His own place.
(Message to one who wrote of the low state of a meeting)
Tell ———— with my love, the low state of others is his opportunity to shew the right way; he can be a leader in lowliness and devotedness.
I thank you for your interesting letter.... I hope dear ———— will enjoy much being apart with the Lord. It is quite possible to know Christ risen, entirely on new ground, as Mary Magdalene did; but there is a great difference between that and knowing Him in glory. In the one case it is all new ground to you, but in the other, you are so absorbed with Him, that it is not the newness of your position that occupies you, but the greatness of your acquisition. I think it is a great moment when you are led by the Spirit to know that you are over Jordan with Him, and this by the same grace as that by which you are saved. It is a wonderful thing to know that you belong to another scene, and not only to know that you [p. 252] belong to it, but to have been there, and like Caleb to come from it to the wilderness. This ought to be our true path every day.
I am very glad that you are enjoying the priesthood of Christ. Every Christian looks for relief from his trials, like Job; but Job had no sympathy. To us the trials are often not removed, but we have the Lord Himself personally as the compensation.
It has been much before me of late, that heaven is where the heart ought to be, not the earth.
... Some speak of company with the Lord when they mean His coming to them — to their side of things. Every earnest soul when praying thinks he is in company with the Lord. But it is quite another thing to be apart from everything to enjoy Himself, absorbed with Him, like the queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon. It is really to be over Jordan in spirit; over Jordan is the perpetuity of it. It is surprising to me how few really expect Jordan as a present thing. They expect it when they die. To me it is almost inconceivably blessed to be morally dead to everything here; not turning away from it like a monk or a nun, but because of brighter things above, which are entirely new to you.
———— has read my new paper doctrinally; I hope you will read it experimentally.
I ask for you to get blessing in this time of separation from everything here. I think souls are often led over Jordan by the Spirit and get a sense of the blessedness of being there who have not yet entered practically into the reality of being dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world. I cannot conceive greater joy, not only to be consciously in His sphere of life, but that you are exempted from all the contrariety and confusion here, so that you come back, not seeking anything from this place, but deriving all your joy and comfort completely outside it.
The Lord bless you much. I am thankful I have such an interest in your blessing.
I was glad to get your note. I delight to think of you daily as loving the Lord so much, diligently serving Him, rejoicing in everything which brings you nearer to Him. It is easy to commend you to Him in any circumstance. One thing more I desire for you, and that is, not only that you may have His company in your own circumstances; many limit His company to this; but what I ask for you is — that you may know Him as outside everything here, so that yourself may be in abeyance, and that He may entirely satisfy your heart. This is really to be in spirit over Jordan. This experience is continuous. I thank the Lord that I can bear you in fervent remembrance before Him.
I am truly rejoiced to hear that your beloved husband is so well as to be able to undertake a voyage. I hope it will be a distinct benefit to his health, and you may both, while going to the Cape of Good Hope enjoy more and more the hope which you have in heaven, which we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil. I have been greatly struck lately with how little we look upon heaven as our actual home. You will find that if our anchor is not there we are sure to drift into the world.
... I often find it trying to reconcile sleeplessness and weariness with God’s tender love and Christ’s personal interest, and yet I am quite assured always that all is ordered in perfect love.
Dear Mr. Wigram used to say that we were always passed through some trying circumstance before we were given some fresh sight of His grace. The Lord bless each of you more and more.
... [p. 254] When I think of God, I am sure that everything is ordered in the wisest way, and the body is the Lord’s, but I sometimes feel as if I expected Him to give me more sleep.
I think that is an interesting remark that God never gives us faith about ourselves but about Himself.
I am interested in the two deliverances in Romans and Colossians; both were effected at the same time, and in the same way, and both described by one baptism; yet there is often a vast interval between knowing No. 1 and No. 2....
I always think Mr. Wigram had many things spiritually which he had not doctrinally, as J.N.D. had. He had the spiritual experience of eternal life, but he was only acceptable to those who also had spiritual experiences. I think I learn truth experimentally before I get it doctrinally.... I see now what is really denied in the objective school is new creation. No one could se new creation who did not see the old creation removed....
I feel that so few servants get the knocking about for fifty-six years that I did. They enter on service too hastily....
I long to say a word to you, and yet I hardly feel equal to it. It is a solace to my heart to think of him in fulness of delight with his Saviour. I cannot speak of my loss when I think of yours. He loved you I may say both naturally and spiritually. I have been comforted in thinking that I have been asking for you of late that you might know the Lord outside of everything, and surely you can have no solace now but so knowing Him. He can prepare you for all the contrariety and difficulty here.
With deepest love and sympathy.
Your letter was very welcome. It was most kind of you to write. I am thankful that I have an interest in the Lord’s things at ————. I heard from ———— also, and I rejoice that there is a bond of fellowship between you and him.
[p. 255] I think the subjects of deliverance and priesthood are of deep importance. One is what we are clear from; the other, what we are brought to. I am much interested in seeing that the deliverance in Romans and the deliverance in Colossians were effected at the same time, and by the self-same work, and baptism describes both, but practically there is a long interval between our knowing the deliverance in Romans, and the deliverance in Colossians. The first deliverance is from the old man; the second is from the place and things that suit the old man. I believe many think they have deliverance when they have not. I do not think any one has deliverance who is trying to do right; when I have deliverance I am occupied with what Christ would like.... Much love and constant remembrance of you all.
April 30th.
†How little we realise what the Lord actually went through here! May we know how God has made us to share with His own Son, not only in glory by-and-by, but in the path down here. May we understand that our little sufferings here are for discipline, and as necessary, in the place where Christ died, and where He is rejected.
J B. Stoney entered into rest at 4 a.m., May 1st, 1897.
“Absent from the body, ... present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5: 8).