PREPARED FOR ALTERNATIONS

PREPARED FOR ALTERNATIONS

I must give myself the pleasure of writing a greeting to you on you coming to ————. To my mind, as I think of it, it will be the seventh month to you. The first month is the Passover, and with it the feast of unleavened bread, that is, how I am set free before God, and what characterises me in consequence. This is the only true start; but when you come to the seventh month, you have great heights and great depths. You have the day of atonement,

^[p. 38] when if a man afflict not his soul, that soul shall be cut off; and then the jubilee commenced, and during it was the feast of the ingathering — great contrasts in that month, and thus I think it will be with you; the day of prosperity is set against the day of adversity that man may find nothing after him, and the contrasts test one more than sameness. To rise suddenly into prosperity from adversity has overpowered many a mind. To fall from prosperity to adversity has embittered many a lifetime. To be ready for either — for the seventh month — is the great problem of grace. The greatest feast on this earth now, the real feast of ingathering, is the society of hearts devoted to Christ — virgins going forth to the meeting of the Bridegroom. This feast you will have. But if you enjoy this feast really and divinely, you will be ready, like our blessed Lord, to encounter the very next hour the most painful exhibition of what Satan makes of man. When He came down from the mount of transfiguration where God was glorifying Him as a Man on earth, the first thing He meets is one from a child sorely vexed of the devil, distorted and disorganised. Will you be as ready for the one as for the other? If it be by grace that you enjoy the good, so by grace will you resist and rebuke evil; or will you be elated unduly by the one, and be peevish and irritable with the other? The loss of grace may not appear so much at the feast as in the day of atonement. There is no judgment if you do not enjoy yourself fully, but there is judgment if you do not afflict your soul; that is, your grace will be tested and disclosed more in the way that you deal with the evil which tries you greatly than with the good which delights you. There is more enjoyment in the latter case, but there is not more grace. I believe the real measure of grace comes out in the time of trying more than in the feast. In the good time you acquire, but in the evil time you prove how much you have acquired. The length and the severity of the winter tests the measure and the extent of the ant’s store. It was acquired in summer, but drawn upon in winter; hence the latter tells the amount of gain you have acquired from the former; and if you have long and fine summers, you must expect long and severe winters. Come to ———— then, not only expecting ^[p. 39] the finest summers, but with purpose of heart to use them in providing for the dreariest winters. The brighter I am with the Lord, the more dreary is everything with man, but I have gained nothing from being with Him if I am not better fitted for being His messenger and witness in the midst of all that is contrary to Him. The gain of happy hours with Him is to be spent and seen in sad hours of contention with evil here. The one who is in most repose in the glory is the most ready and skilful antagonist of Satan here, and is in his own person fasting and praying, and thus cutting off standing ground from the adversary. If a gun be charged it is that it may be fired off, but it is in the firing that its mettle is tested.