ATTAINMENT AND GIFT

ATTAINMENT AND GIFT

I have for some time been thinking of writing to you. I believe, if I may be candid with you, that the defect in your teaching has been ‘the attaining process’. There are two ways ordinarily of advancing. One by assiduous pursuit, and thereby acquiring the thing desired; the other, by gift - endowment. The first may be illustrated by a man who makes his fortune, and rises to eminence; the other, by one who has received riches and honours by inheritance or gift. Now the latter is the way we receive everything divine, because everything is the gift of grace.

Let us examine the conditions or state produced in a saint by each of those two modes in which progress is sought. The one who tries to progress by assiduous pursuit is eager, earnest, full of aspiration, not satisfied with seeing. “Give, give”, is the unceasing desire. Very attractive such a one would be as a listener, very interesting as a narrator of discovered truth, and of heavenly scenery. In manner there is a pleasing drapery of devoteeism, a captivation with Solomon’s things, but with no knowledge of being united to Him, and therefore with no sense of possession. Hence there is no power to rend one’s own clothes, and be superior to feelings or tempers in anything. Like a miser the joy is in acquiring, and recounting their gains, that is, their progress. They condemn every one not in accordance with themselves. They are always individual; they never have the sense that their acquisitions are in common with the body of Christ, or that all the saints are in conjunction with them.

Now on the other hand, those who are advanced by gift first learn that what they are offered is common property for the whole church. “To each the manifestation of the Spirit is given for profit” (1 Corinthians 12: 7). Anything conferred on one is really belonging to all; nothing is individual or personal endowment; and hence it is not as I discover truth that I progress, but as I comprehend Christ, and that I am united to Him. The more I see of Christ, the more I see what belongs to the church, and to me a member of the body of Christ. It is not the height that I have ascended that occupies me but His height; though His height indicates my height as in Him; I derive from Him. It is Christ who is exalted before me, and if I see like the queen of Sheba, I am not a mere spectator. The church is united to our Solomon, and all things through Him are ours; not ours because we had come to Jerusalem and had seen them; hence the effect is quite different. The more I see that I belong to Christ, and that I am united to Him, the more I use His power to free me from habits, manners, tempers, which hinder the exhibition of His life in me. I am assured of being one with Him, and of having all things in Him; and as this deepens, my manifest progress is in self-judgment, and in abrogation of the old man, which, even in that which was gain to me, shuts Him out. This gives subduedness of manner, and makes one sensible how little one is in keeping with the eminence to which we are raised; and while seeking to walk worthy of the vocation, one is ever more sensible of grace and worth in others than in oneself.