NO PROGRESS WITHOUT DISPLACEMENT

NO PROGRESS WITHOUT DISPLACEMENT

You write how the Lord cares for His people everywhere. I am filled with wonder and adoration, I might say, when I reflect on the minute way He watches over and cares for each of His own; and the effect when this love is apprehended is to divest us of something more of the old self, by substituting in its place something of Himself. I find a man might reprobate the ^[p. 382] old man to the utmost degree, and there would be no real progress; or even a man might dwell on the beauties of Christ, and there would be no real progress. But when I see Him and myself concurrently, there is progress; there is displacement; there is sanctification. The light that shows me the beauty of a room, also detects for me the dust in it that mars or disfigures the beauty. To sanctify us is now the deep interest and work of our Lord; and you will remark that, as He gets more place in our hearts, that in us which had barred Him is displaced. When this is not on the increase, there is the adoption of a religiousness which makes oneself the centre, as Jacob at Shalem; a falling back, like one afraid to advance, to safer ground where one had enjoyed less conflict and more opportunity for natural tastes. I find that among us there is great earnestness at first until peace is known. Then comes the critical moment; if they do not go on to the mystery, they sink to the mental, or sentimental, or both; the mind and the body kept in a round of some activity. What is to preserve the believer from the religiousness of the man but the knowledge of the mystery? and this is what the apostle sets forth in Colossians. If the mystery were known, Christ would be everything; my walk and service would be according to His pleasure. Under the plea of the gospel, many have practically excused themselves from learning the mystery. Surely the knowledge of it would make one more qualified for any service to which the Lord had called one.