That tabernacle was a material symbol of the great truth of the Incarnation.
THE WORD BECAME FLESH.—IMMANUEL.
THE WORD as a titular appellation of our Lord has already been elucidated. As the Word He has declared, and still declares, to all the universe, the boundless knowledge, wisdom, and love of the Eternal Father. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus alone is, and ever has been, the adequate mouthpiece of the only true and ever-living God.
“And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us.” John 1:14, R. V., margin. In these words the Holy Spirit enunciates the profoundest mystery and one of the most momentous facts of history. The Word, the embodiment of all the infinite attributes of the most high God; the Word, the Creator of all things in heaven and in earth; the Bright and Morning Star, the Sun of Righteousness in the firmament of eternity—this same Word condescended to become flesh, with its limitations, its frailties, and with all its implacable impulses to evil. That the Holy Spirit uses the term flesh is most significant. It carries with it the idea that the Word assumed universal human nature. Christ did not identify Himself with any one race or nation or tribe, but with humanity—humanity of all climes and ages. As the religion of Christ is universal in its range and adaptation, so Christ in becoming flesh gathered up in Himself all the traits, and predilections peculiar to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” Christ as the Son of Man touches every man at every point. There is not a key in the vast organ of humanity, which, when struck, does not awaken a sympathetic vibration throughout the mighty range and scope of the Christ-Man.
Our Sympathizer.
No sorrow, no pain, no temptation has ever pressed the heart of any man, woman, youth, or child, that Jesus did not feel. This sad but significant fact was foreseen by the prophet when he wrote, “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.” Isa. 53:4. Note the pronoun our. Jesus bore the griefs and sorrows of not any one man only, but of every member of the race. For “in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest. . . . For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.” Heb. 2:17, 18. Being made like unto the children of men, He experienced every suffering to which humanity is susceptible. Wherefore He is a faithful and merciful High Priest. He knows every one of us perfectly, because He is every one of us perfectly, sin excepted. Having Himself suffered being tempted, He knows how to deliver, how to succor, us when tempted. He knows my sorrows because He has felt them; He knows your anguish because that same anguish has wrung His great innocent heart.
Hence “we have not an High Priest which can not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Heb. 4:15. I may be subject to temptations that none of my brethren can ever know or feel, but no impulse to evil can ever surge through my nerves that Jesus did not feel and conquer. This great fact—the fact that He for whom are all things and by whom are all things, suffered everything that every member of human kind has suffered or can suffer constitutes Him a perfect Saviour. Thus it is that every soul finds in Christ the complement of his nature, the overflowing supply of his deficiencies. As the law could not work out righteousness in human flesh, God, moved with infinite pity and love, sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” that He might condemn “sin in the flesh.” Rom. 8:3. And as He assumed your flesh and my flesh, He most certainly condemned sin in your flesh and my flesh. Hence that condemnation avails for your sins and my sins now, providing we by faith suffer Jesus, by His Spirit, to dwell in our flesh. Day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, Christ condemns and subdues sin in our flesh, providing I suffer Him to dwell in me. We can now understand what Paul meant when he spoke of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Col. 1:27. For my entering into glory is conditioned upon my triumphing over sin; and Christ in me subdues my iniquities.
The Body of the Flesh.
It was when the Son of God condescended to become the Son of Man that He declared, “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me.” Heb. 10:5. And that body was the flesh of universal man. Yes; He took upon Him the “body of our humiliation,” and thus “tabernacled among us.” During the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness, God dwelt among them in the tabernacle He had commanded them to make for that purpose. See Ex. 25:8; 2 Sam. 7:6. That tabernacle was a material symbol of the great truth of the Incarnation. In the wilderness He veiled His intolerable glory from human sight with curtains of blue, and purple, and scarlet; when He came a Babe in Bethlehem, He veiled that glory with the curtains of human flesh. How fitting, then, that in the same breath He spoke of the temple and of His body. For that “body” which God had “prepared” Him was ever, in the most literal sense, the temple of the Most High. That God dwelt in the body of Jesus is the irrevocable pledge and surety that the same God, in His Son and by His Spirit, shall dwell in your body and in my body. And as He thus condemned sin in His body, even so shall He condemn sin in our bodies.
More than seven hundred years in advance it had been prophesied: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14), a name signifying “God with us.” And “God with us” means righteousness, holiness, deliverance, eternal triumph, and endless life. In the happy phrase of a well-known writer, “Christ set up His tabernacle in the midst of our human encampment. He pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us, and make us familiar with His divine character and life.” This is the boon and glory par excellence of man, that God is with him and in him; that the Son of God is likewise the Son of Man. With what honor this great truth invests every human body. For it, too, may be and ought to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. As “God was in Christ”—in the body prepared for Him,—so with regard to His redeemed children He says, “I will dwell in them and walk in them.” He is to us Immanuel; and hence can never leave nor forsake us. That He is to me Immanuel is the pledge that He is to me Jesus; for He must be with me in order to save me from my sins.
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”
[The next article is “The Life of Christ—Revelation and Exemplification of the Divine Law.”]
“And the Word became flesh.”
OF OURSELVES.
By George Adam Smith
We talk of breaking law; we can only break ourselves against it. But if we sin against Love we do destroy her; we take from her the power to redeem and sanctify us. Believe, then, in hell, because you believe in the Love of God—not in a hell to which God condemns men of His will and pleasure, but in a hell into which men cast themselves from the very face of His Love in Jesus Christ. The place has been painted as a place of fires. But when we contemplate that men come to it with the holiest fires in their natures quenched, we shall justly feel that it is rather a dreary waste of ash and cinder, strewn with snow—some ribbed and frosted Arctic Zone, silent in death, for there is no life there, and there is no life there because there is no Love, and no Love because men in rejecting or abusing her have slain their own power ever again to feel her presence.—George Adam Smith.
“WHO TOUCHED ME?”
By H. A. St. John
JESUS stopped a multitude of people who were thronging His steps and pressing Him on every side, in the city of Capernaum, as He was on His way to the home of the ruler of the synagog in obedience to a pressing call to heal a dying son. Jesus not only stopped, but turned about, and with a clear voice propounded this question, “Who touched Me?” His disciples marveled that He should propound such a question with such emphasis and interest. Said Jesus, “I perceive that virtue has gone out of Me.” So we learn that virtue is not simple inherent purity, but is a power to do good that is constantly going out, as the opportunity offers, for the good of others. So when the Word enjoins that Christians add to their faith virtue, it means to add the power to go about doing good as did Jesus. Reader, does virtue go out of you toward the needy?
It was a poor, afflicted woman, who for twelve long years had spent all her means on the best doctors, but was nothing bettered, that had by the touch of faith brought complete healing to her sorely-afflicted body. She was feeble in body—timid and shrinking, and could not have pressed her way through that mass of people to Jesus, but He knew of her presence and pressed His way near to her. Jesus, with all power in heaven and earth, always makes Himself accessible to all that yearn for His presence and help. The woman prayed and watched for the opportune moment. And such an attitude of soul thirst, prayer, and watchfulness, will always find the mighty, yea the almighty Helper and Healer near at hand, with an abounding, interfusing virtue, which only needs the contact of a finger-tip of faith that it may leap like the electric current, to thrill and vitalize the sickly soul or sickly body. It was not the touch but the faith; for Jesus said to the woman, “Thy faith [not thy touch] hath made thee whole.” Some kind of action upon the part of the one seeking the virtue of Christ may be and is natural, but not necessary. All such actions are but the natural gestures of faith.
Jesus did not propound this question on that day that He might be informed, for He well knew who touched Him. But He wanted the answer right then and there for the good of the healed one, the good of the people, and the glory of God. So that happy, healed woman proclaimed to the multitude her great affliction, her great recovery, and her great Physician. Yet in the face of this beautiful testimony, some tell us that women should not speak in meeting; but the Lord Jesus, the Master of assemblies, called upon a woman to testify, and she did so, to the praise of God, and the good of her own soul.
So let every trusting, timid sister take heart, for if virtue has gone out of Jesus to your healing, either in soul or body, the great Physician calls on you to tell it out with gladness. By so doing you will glorify the Lord, and other poor, afflicted, or heavily-laden souls may be induced to seek the same healing Fountain, so accessible, and full, and free, everywhere.
Jesus stopped, startled, and stirred the multitude by the question, “Who touched Me?” and the same multitude were instructed, interested, and impressed by the answer. Only one humble woman could answer the question. She alone of all that multitude had touched the Lifegiver in a way to bring more life to herself and more glory to God. But a day is hastening on apace, when before an assembled universe, and in the presence of the same Jesus, glorified, a multitude, as numberless as the sands of the seashore, will exclaim with a voice like the sound of many waters, all in perfect harmony. We were once sickly and sinful, but this same lovely Jesus touched us all, and virtue went out of Him, and now we are justified, sanctified, and glorified, and henceforth forever we will shout His praises with songs of everlasting joy.
H. A. ST. JOHN.
How They Became Convinced
[Believing it would be of interest to our readers, the editor of the Signs of the Times has asked Sabbath-keeping ministers and evangelical workers to tell in a few words the scripture or scriptures, the truths and principles, which constrained them to accept the unpopular truth of the seventh-day Sabbath. These testimonies must not exceed 500 words. Let us hear from all.]
XXV.
The leading text which decided this question of Sabbath-keeping with me was, and is, Ex. 20:8, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” This is a plain injunction laid upon all men; for it comes from the Creator of all men. Every intelligent moral being comes within the purview of that commandment. It emanates from the highest authority known to man; and the wisest man thus wrote of it: “Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” Eccl. 12:13. And this duty is enforced in view of the final judgment: “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Eccl. 12:14. The motive which should prompt to this obedience is love. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matt. 22:37-40. David says, “O how love I Thy law! it is my meditation all the day.” Ps. 119:97. And James thus exhorts us: “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.” James 2:12.
But how do we know that it is the seventh day of the week that is to be thus observed?—Answer: The fourth commandment is based upon the great facts of creation week, and thus defines its own duties, and limits its own time: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:11. This record does not pertain to that definite and specific seventh day which was then passed, the day which He had spent in rest, but the seventh day in a general and concrete sense, which was thus set apart in numerical order, for the use of man for all time to come. Thus the particular cycle of time called “the week” came into being. No other origin can be assigned for it. This cycle rests thus securely upon the fiat of the great Creator. And so long as the world continues by common consent to recognize the week, so long will the Sabbath stand as the memorial and monument of God’s creative work in the beginning. And when this baleful period of man’s sinful probation is closed, the Sabbath, which has served such a noble purpose in time, will be perpetuated in the new creation. “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord.” Isa. 66:22, 23.
U. SMITH.
XXVI.
I did not need to become exercised very long over the Sabbath question to be convinced that the first day of the week was none other than an ordinary work-day, with no Bible sacredness attached to it whatever; whereas the day preceding, Inspiration had always marked as a day of rest and worship.
For some time I indulged myself in thinking that the seventh-day Sabbath was only for the Jew, and settled down in my convictions to try to find it so in the commandment. After candid consideration I found that the commandment (Ex. 20:8–11) pointed to the fact of the Lord’s rest at creation, and hence it must have been for all His creatures, and not such a small part as the Jews, who did not exist till two millenniums later.
The commandment further stated “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” “Is He the God of the Jews only? is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.” Rom. 3:29. “Yes,” I said, “if the Lord is my God, why should not the seventh day be my Sabbath?” Christ said, “The Sabbath was made for man.” Mark 2:27.
Seeing the Scriptures would not bear me out in calling the Sabbath “Jewish,” I even resorted to the dangerous position that Christ destroyed the law of morality, the Ten Commandments, in order to do away with the seventh-day Sabbath, the latter being in the very heart of that law written on stone by the finger of God. In my desperation I dared to say it, nevertheless my better convictions often severely rebuked me, especially in reading such plain statements as those found in Matt. 5:17, 18; Luke 16:17; Rom. 3:31.
The arrow of God’s conviction had entered my heart, and to be honest with myself and God, this matter had to be settled.
In my search for truth I read Isa. 66:22, 23, that the people of God would assemble to worship Him “from one Sabbath to another” in their redeemed state. I said why not begin to “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” now? For if I ever get a place in that paradise, I will have to become a willing worshiper “from one Sabbath to another.” I said, “Lord, make me willing now.” With this a joy and peace entered my soul that eclipsed the vanity of anything earthly. “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” Rom. 15:13.
C. J. COLE.
St. Johns, Oregon.
SORROW’S USE.
By Alexander Maclaren
THE sorrow that is meant to bring us nearer to God may be in vain. The same circumstances may produce opposite effects. I dare say there are people who will read these words who have been made hard and sullen and bitter and paralyzed for good work because they have some heavy burden to carry, or some wound or ache that life can never heal.
Ah, brother, we are often like shipwrecked crews, of whom some are driven by the danger to their knees, and some are driven to the spirit casks. Take care that you do not waste your sorrows; that you do not let the precious gifts of disappointment, pain, loss, loneliness, ill health, or similar afflictions that come in your daily life mar you instead of mending you. See that they send you nearer to God, and not that they drive you further from Him. See that they make you more anxious to have the durable riches and righteousness which no man can take from you, than to grasp at what may yet remain of fleeting earthly joys.
So let us try to school ourselves into the habitual and operative conviction that life is a discipline. Let us beware of getting no good from what is charged to the brim with good. May it never have to be said of any of us that we wasted the mercies which were judgments, too, and found no good in the things that our tortured hearts felt to be also evils, lest God should have to wail over any of us: “In vain have I smitten your children; for they have received no correction.”—Alexander Maclaren.
The Great Work of Christian Religion
By J. J. Cornell
THE great work of the Christian religion is to save men from the commission of sin—save us now, because God loves us. If He finds us in a sinful state, He comes not to judge, but to point a better way. This is the leading motive in all reform movements.—J. J. Cornell.
DO YOU KNOW HIM?
By G.
“Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of His understanding.” Isa. 40:28. If you have not known this, it is very important that you learn it. It is a source of great comfort to know that He who controls the universe, who supplies all our wants, who watches over us by day and by night, whose ear is open to the cry of the needy, never gets weary. His strength never gives way. And nothing ever can occur that will be beyond His understanding. It is worth while to know such a God as this; there is reason, there is wisdom, in worshiping such a God.
“Hast thou not known” Him? Then hasten to make His acquaintance; for no one can afford to remain in ignorance of Him and of His truth. All men get faint in this world, faint in body and in spirit; so they need to know “the everlasting God,” for “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.” Verse 29. Amongst the inhabitants of earth there is none that can stand in his own strength; for “even the youths [with all their buoyancy and self-confidence] shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.” Verse 30.
“Hast thou not known” this great “Creator of the ends of the earth”? Hast thou not known Him “by whom all things consist”? Then seek to know Him at once; and delay not to enter His service. For “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Verse 31.
“Hast thou not known” the Lifegiver, the Author of salvation? Now is the time to learn of Him, yea, the time to find Him. It is life eternal to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent to give life to all who will accept it of Him. Not to know Him is death. To be a stranger to the covenant of promise is to be without hope, without God (Eph. 2:11, 12); and that means “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess. 1:7-9). “He that hath the Son [or is fully acquainted with Him] hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” 1 John 5:12. In Him you may have peace; for He is our peace. Eph. 2:14. He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” John 14:6. Seek Him now, while He may be found. His promise is, “I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find Me.” Prov. 8:17. G.
THE GREAT EXAMPLE.
By S.
God does not ask of us unreasonable things. He sets the example for what He requires of us, and opens for us a way to perform the requirement. His promise to us, no matter what the obstacle to be overcome, is, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness.” Isa. 41:10.
So no matter what the trial, or the obstacle, or how dark the way may appear, there is the promise of the mighty Friend, the pleading, compassionate Father, to give every help and comfort we can need. God knew, before ever He set His ways before man, that His ways were not the ways of the world, not the ways of the natural human heart. He knew that He was requiring of man a course diametrically opposed to the sweep of the unregenerate multitude, a course that would require a man to stand and fortify himself in God, and resist strenuously, the ways of the natural, carnal heart on pleasure and ambition bent. He tells us this in the following words: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Nevertheless, God calls upon man to forsake the ways of man, and to adopt the ways of God. In the same declaration He says: “Seek ye Jehovah while He may be found; call ye upon Him while He is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto Jehovah.” And then comes the promise, “He will have mercy upon him, and . . . He will abundantly pardon.” Isa. 55:6-9.
Tho it may seem to man an impossible thing to forsake his line of thought which centers in self and unrighteousness, and think along lines that are as much higher as the heavens are higher than the earth, yet if the conditions are met, it is neither impossible nor unreasonable. It can never be justly charged against God that He has required of man a thing that He has made it impossible for him to perform.
What provision has God made to enable man to perform the divine will? Let us see. We have seen that man’s nature, his spirit, was opposed to God’s will and way. Here is the way God has opened for bringing the creature into harmony with the Creator: “I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh.” Eze. 11:19. We can not serve God while still our heart is unregenerate, carnal. God Himself declares it. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Rom. 8:7. But Christ came doing the Father’s will. The record of Him is this: “Lo, I come; in the roll of the book it is written of Me: I delight to do Thy will, O My God; yea Thy law is within My heart.” Ps. 40:7, 8. That is shown also in His prayer, “Not My will, but Thine be done.” Christ’s mind and will were in perfect harmony with the mind and will of the Father.
Now the key to man’s performance of the divine will is found in this admonition: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 2:5.
That mind was in harmony with the mind of God the Father. That led Christ to be submissive to the divine will. That made it possible for Christ to will to do God’s will; yea, to delight in doing it. That is why He did not count it a thing to be grasped to be equal with God; that is how He found it possible to empty Himself of all His glory, take upon Himself the form of a servant, and humble Himself even to the death upon the cross; that is how He could bless them that cursed Him, love them that hated Him, pray for them that despitefully used Him, turn the unsmitten cheek to the hand that had already smitten Him, and do unto others in all things as He would that they should do to Him.
All this is not in harmony with human nature, but it is in harmony with the will of Him who made us; and He has made it possible for the human to do it. He has set the example by doing it Himself in human flesh. We can not do it in any other way than that which He has outlined—“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” That will enable you to do that which is otherwise impossible; viz., to live the Christ life. Then study to know the mind of Christ; pray for its possession in place of the carnal mind; and let it lead you, as it led Christ, to do the will of Him who has sent you, as He sent Him, into the world to do His will. S.
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCIENCE.
It seems strange to us that scientists can be infidels when the results of science-work furnish so many illustrations of the wisdom, power, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God.
For instance, many can not conceive of a personal God, as truly personal as man; if He is, they think He must be of matter like ourselves; and therefore limited in power and finite in knowledge. If it is said that He is everywhere present by His Spirit, they reply that as Spirit and matter are opposites, “this would make God a dual being.”
But who knows whether all substance is identical with that analyzed by earthly chemists, and that it has no property they have not discovered? Again and again it has been thought that the final resolution of atmospheric air had been reached, but in later times new gases are continually being discovered. Just recently a new substance—radium—has been revealed, which pours forth a ceaseless stream of intensely radiant particles, which in no perceptible sense diminishes the mass. How little at the most man knows of corporeal, material, or substantial things!
How does man know that matter and spirit are opposites? Powers, energies, that man can not weigh, measure, handle with his crude ideas and still cruder apparatus at its finest, he is wont to call spirit. How does he know? Sunlight and electricity have been called forces, but they have lately been weighed and analyzed. The apostle declares that “if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” 1 Cor. 15:44. Let us not endeavor to limit God by our limited knowledge.
The sun is a body nearly 100,000,000 miles away; but its presence is felt everywhere upon this earth, sometimes intolerably. Is God less than a comparatively small creature of His power?
Each man—a personality—has a certain degree of influence surrounding him in which his personality is dominant. This is sometimes called his aura. This personality is recognized many times when the man can neither be seen, nor heard, nor felt, nor smelled physically. We feel it after all, tho not by touch. We know there is a presence, a personality, in the room in the profoundest darkness and stillness. If this is possible to finite man in a limited degree how much more so of the infinite God to an unlimited extent?
Man now by instruments of his own devising can so use electricity as to speak hundreds of miles away in the ears of a friend, and his voice can be distinguished clearly. Can not God do this at infinite distance with all the forces of the universe under His control?
By means of the Roentgen rays and Becquerel rays man can pierce with the light opaque bodies thought once to be impenetrable to light rays. Can not He that formed the eye see everywhere?
Now without wires man sends messages many hundreds of miles and receives them; can not the infinite and eternal God do infinitely more?
Now men can send the image of a man any distance that he can his message over the electric wire,—telephotography, they call the process. Can not He who is above all else make His personal presence manifest in all parts of His universe?
“With Him is the Fountain of life.” That life is not thrown off or thrown out. It is never separate and existent in its onward course, any more than the ray of sunlight can exist independent of the sun. Everywhere in all parts of the great universe of God flow His currents of life. Everywhere in all parts of His universe those in harmony with God have living connection with Him. His power sent through His own instruments, His own channels knows no loss through gravitation, friction, or resistance7to air or ether. All help it on. God is infinite in power everywhere. And yet He is somewhere, and sometime His children shall see His face, and then all will be one.
“RECEIVE YE THE HOLY SPIRIT.”
God grants forgiveness that He may cleanse us from our sins and bestow upon us His righteousness. That cleanses from all the black past, and places us in the living present clean before Him. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death.” Rom. 8:1, 2. The slave of sin is a free man. The child of disobedience is a child of God. The blind sees. The deaf ears are unstopped. The tongue of the dumb sings.
But God gives His Spirit for service; and it will never be received—it can never be received—in its fulness till the whole man is given to the service of God. God will not serve with your sins. Jesus Christ is not a minister of sin. Gal. 2:17. His glory He will not give to another.
The church of Christ can have God's power for service when she will in her members yield herself to serve God,—to do as He wills, as He chooses, as He directs. This does not mean following one's own way and calling it God's way; it means giving up one's own way absolutely, and choosing God's way at the cost of all things worldly, earthly, carnal, selfish.
His Spirit waits to enter, waits to clothe with power; waits to fertilize and fructify and bring forth Pentecostal fruit. O church of Christ, give up all else and “receive ye the Holy Spirit.”
