THE EFFECT OF THE PRACTICAL DENIAL OF THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

^[p. 264] THE EFFECT OF THE PRACTICAL DENIAL OF THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

I am glad you are so well, and working on so courageously. The Lord is as good as ever; no one is discouraged but the sluggard. If I move, I know I can move. The very exercise of my strength makes me conscious that I have strength. “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh” (Ecclesiastes 4: 5); you must exercise a life in order to find out the good of it. It would be legal to try and get it, but it is only healthy to use and exercise what is mine. Effort ended with John the baptist. It is all gift now, but I must use the gift. I find out the value of the gift as I turn it to good account. I do not make a fortune, but I spend the fortune that I have been given wisely and well.

You would like to hear of things here. I trust there is steady progress, though the sifting, no doubt, has reduced us in numbers. I believe there is an awakening to the great truths which have been taught too superficially. I feel the real break-down with brethren has been in avowing the truth of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and at the same time using any and every means that any man would use in the work of the Lord. No one can read the Acts of the Apostles without observing that from Ananias and Sapphira (chapter 5) to the end, the one thing which declared failure was a denial of the presence of the Holy Spirit; and when, with this dishonour to the Spirit, there was preached a gospel that the believer was accepted in the Beloved, you can well see that this truth could not be maintained in power in the soul, without the Spirit; and the holders or accepters of this great truth, while grieving or quenching the Spirit, must reduce it to a mere human dogma, which leaves them as much in the old man, or as worldly as ever they were; for if I am cleared of the old man by Christ’s work, I must have the Spirit to keep me clear. If the old man be crucified, what power have I but the Spirit of God?

^[p. 265] Now, if the Spirit be hindered, I must continue in the old man practically; and if I hold the truth that it has been set aside in the cross, I must deceive myself, and thus allow myself to walk in it, and minister to it, as far as a mere legal conscience will allow me. There is really no true sense of the termination of the old man in the cross of Christ, if there be no Spirit to support my new nature against the flesh. I hope I make it plain to you. The Spirit being slighted, the highest truths must necessarily be reduced to human dogmas, placing the soul avowedly in an eminence, which it has really no power to retain. It is simply a grand title, without capacity or means to support it; and the consequence has been, that the holders of the grandest truth are found in the deepest mud of the world. There was, of course, no idea of crossing Jordan, or of doing battle for Christ in Canaan. They could assert that they were freed from the old man, and all judgment connected with him in the cross; but they never really entered by the Spirit into this liberation, which is not known in fulness, until by a spiritual death-bed, one has, as risen with Christ, been led by the Spirit to enjoy Him where He is; and then to become qualified and fitted for standing for Him here; and to this Gilgal introduces us, as in Colossians 3 and Philippians 3.

I believe the Lord is awakening many to their own failure in not honouring the presence of the Spirit more.