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A >IPPLIED IIVMGE I, 1653 EosI Main Strwt ??5i'?"*''> '**'' '^"'^ Heog USA (716) ♦82 - 0300 - Phon« (716) 2M- 5989 -Fox nc --C—C-'^--^ . iiiMlS:^^ Vhe !Si umiTiff SSiisA, , » , ^ev. Waiter i^usseii, SS.j(., XuiAor of *'Vho Xif9 ofXov." Henderson & Company, 8-16 Lombard St., Toronto, Canada. 1902. Bntercd according to Act of Parliament of Canada by RKV. W. RuMiBLL, B.A., at the Department of Agri- culture. 880500 ( Debicateb ' Co my 5atl?er ant> IHotl^er. introduction. In an admirable discourse on " The Holy Spir- it, the late Dr. Dale has this sentence—" In every age men have been more deeply impressed by the great acts of God in former centuries than by His great acts in their own times." The truth of this statement is very evident if we consider how frequent are the references in ser- mons and addresses to the mighty works of God through the Holy Spirit in Bible times and in sub- apostohc and Reformation periods, by men who fail to recognize the same Spirit's presence and work m the Church to-day. Perhaps the Church's greatest need in this age IS a recognition of the Holy Spirit's presence and a belief m His readiness to work when permitted, as He alone can work for the overthrow of error, for the destruction of iniquity, for the establishing of the kmgdom of righteousness. More than scho arship, so necessary in every age, more than wealth apparently so indispensable, more than multiplied workers, though for laborers the Church must ever pray, more than all these is our need of a consciousness of the Holy Spirit's presence and power with us to-day. In such a consciousness Mr. Russell lives, and with the earnestness of one on whose heart a mes- sage is laid, he brings the sense of this conscious- ness to his readers and urges it upon the Church. He brings more, he brings the evidence of years of successful toil among all classes of men to attest the truth that in his belief he has followed no dream, but the will of the Master whom he serves. In memory of happy undergraduate days, now fast becoming distant but never to be forgotten, when our hearts drew close as we walked, studied and prayed together, I commend to the public this forcible and inspiring message of my friend. RoBEBT Johnston. St. Andrew's Manse, London, March, 1902. ^^reface. It is not the discussion but the concussion of high explosives that rouses the Titanic giant to hurl the Alpine barriers from the route of advanc- ing commerce and civilization. The chemical analysis of a coronation banquet would transform the most appetizing victuals into a repulsive and nauseating drug. The laboratory has its place, the exegetical chair will always be in demand. But in this blow- pipe age the Word of God may be theologically arranged, logically presented, and rabbinically dis- sected, till its vitality and virility are gone and its Christ rejected and dismissed as by the historic Pharisees. Men with minds like the cherubim and hearts like the seraphim have invaded all departments, and in exhaustive volumes given our privileged age the rich treasure stores of truth hidden in God for the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. The heart purpose of the author is to be a con- cussive hammer, to resurrect the potencies of the divine forces; to spread for a worid-wide constitu- ency a physiological and biological banquet of liv- ing and life-giving truth, that shall beget a con- suming passion lo be filled with all the fulness of God; to be a common shrub, translated and transfigured into a burning bush, ablaze with God, that may turn aside some colossal character, who, like Moses, may lead the multitudes of this Lao- dicean age out of bondage, and Joshua-like, lead them from the fruitless wanderings of the wilder- ness into the land of abundance and conquest. This message was written during hours snatched from an intensely busy life, and is offered to all who may open and read, with a hopeful confidence that he who writes and they who read may in the " ages to come " climb to the feet of Him who sent the Blessed Comforter, and pour our tribute of adoration in endless doxologies into the heart of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. V W. R. Contents* I.-BB PILX.BD WITH THB SPIRIT. II -THE ANNUNCIATION OF THB SPIRIT. III.-THB INCARNATION OP THB SPIRIT. IV.-THB MINISTRATION OP THE SPIRIT. V.-THE DETHRONINO AND DBSTROTINO MISSION OP THE SPIRIT. VI.-THE ENTHRONING AND ESTABLISHING MISSION OP THB SPIRIT. VII.-THE INDWELUNO AND INWORKINO MISSION OP THB SPIRIT. VIII.-THB EDUCATING AND ELUCIDATING MISSION OP THE SPIRIT. IX.-THB WITNESSING AND WAITING MISSION OP THE SPIRIT. X.-THE GUIDING AND GLORIPTING MISSION OP THE SPIRIT. XI.— THB MISSION OP MADNESS. "^ XII.— SEPARATION AND SERVICE. Xill.— WISDOM VERSUS WISDOM. XIV.— EMBLEMS OP THE SPIRIT. XV.— THE PRUIT OF THB SPIRIT. XVI.— THE ANOINTED MINISTER. XVII.-HOW TO RECEIVE THE SPIRIT. TJhe ^urnm^^ ^ush. ClIAPTEB I. Be Filled With the Spirit. '' Thtre arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neg- lected in the daily ministrations." Mo amount of opposition, though lashed by the > ^ wings of the black apostasy into malignant hate and bloody persecution, need ever make the heart of the Church palpitate with fear. But let her beware of the muttering, murmuring thunders of discontent. Behold the wisdom of the early Church! A meeting was called and the grievance was amicably adjusted. Two important questions were settled: First, that there is a class of officers in the Church that ought not to serve tables, but give themselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word." Second, that Church sup- pers are scriptural, but not for the poor Church for the Church is not poor, but for the poor of the Church. When God called Moses to the mount to give him the specifications for the building of the tabernacle, He told him to take Aaron, Nadab 14 THE BURNING BUSH. ^X and Abihu, and seventy of the elders, but to leave the multitude in the plains below. He did not " get up something," but he got up. He pushed his way up the hill with his " session " and " official board." It might be interesting to look at the picture. God, in the passion of His paternal heart, is longing to touch the heart of erring humanity. He decides to dwell in shekinal splendor amidst the children of men, and engages Moses to be the master-builder of His first dwelling-place on earth. Moses constituted the people into an assembly, and made ample provision for their physical and spiritual necessities, and with God-appointed dele- gates he departed for the uniquest council-chamber in history— the holy mount. When they had reached a somewhat elevated altitude, Moses once more made a selection; perhaps it was but one, Toshua. could still farther approach the blare and i)laze of the ineffable and insufferable Presence. He left the others with a regularly constituted judi- catory of appeal. The two went on and up into azure altitudes, climbing the majestic staircase of the mountains. Yet once more there is a selec- tion, and Moses alone pressed on and up, from step to step, from stage to stage, till the receding foot- hills rolled like billows below and the song of worship dissolved away and the master-builder, bathed in the cloud-crowned mountain-top, was ushered into the presence of God. " And the glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days; and the seventh day He called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord THE BURNING BUSH. »5 was like devouring fire in the top of the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel." Moses went up to sit in council with God on the sapphire stone. What a conference that must have been! Moses talking with God. God giving the minut- est details and the most elaborate directions of the specifications of the tabernacle. At the same time ;• beholding the glory of the Lord, he is changed mto the same image, from glory to glory." The skin of Moses' face began to glow with a luster and luminosity of prophetic transfiguration and after forty days he came down from the confer- ence like a transparency of the invisible face. The people saw the shining countenance and through it the heart and will of God, and when the appeal was made for the funds and supplies with which to materialize the divine pur .-, the willing hearts throbbed with a constrain ig re- sponse, and a multitude of generous givers flocked with prodigal providence, till " It is enough " re- echoed from the contracting builder. If God is just the same to-day, if the gold and the silver be His, if the cattle upon a thousand hills can be pressed into His currency, if the annual in- crease of the wealth of American Christendom is five hundred millions of dollars, why should we indignify the high and holy calling of the Bride of Chnst. by resorting to the bartering and bar- gaining attractions of the multiform messes of pot- tage? Why coerce the deaconate of the Church into the market to put a price upon the privilege of entering and enjoying access to that for which the Savior died? Why force collectors to revive p i6 THE BURNING BUSH. I \ cry? To the hills To the mount J T« *ik a i • altituflo* o* r^A% \ . mount I lo the Alpine out in the "Go!" of the GaHlin !,T^ "" '* P*^'* Church wherT thIun.oH? P'"^" °^. P^^^^^ '^^^ ^^e scornful itlttl^Xl' ^^'^^^^^^ ^^* Church. There was a t^^. K * God-mstituted bolted and ba^edhu«shmf.rT'" '^l '"''""^^"* of his store and ^uaTn I " "P°" ^^'« windows of steel but now^he nut .'TT'*^ ^^ '^'^ '"^^ht dow. and the cyclop^ wth hT« ilf T' '" '^" ^^"■ mightier sentinT^har'the oak'of 7h'' 'V f one century, or the forge-^vJouSt arm of ^l strongest iron. Our boaTted Lr r **** the arms and fire of on? ! • P°''". ^°''^«S' have done nob e service bTt^h'"^ T?"' the b'lerdin^rb^trp'ronh^'^ '""'"^ ^'^^-' an<.-nted pu%its 'intl^^t^^ OT^^^ THE BURNING BUSH. 17 born saints that have stvxxl upon victorious battle- rtlV,?' ^''^ thousand years. Give the world or rohgious carnality official capacity and we have received the entering wedge that ere long must receive a blow from the factional trip-hammer, and g'egation '""^"^ '"^ ""'^^ °^ '^' ^°"- nnH^**^♦*'"„^*^P*'''?^'''y "'°''<' continuously filled t^e mfu^u^ '^-^ ^P'"^ ^^^" anyone of his thTsni^t , ?^""' •'" ""^'^eathing the sword of relLw fu '""'"«^ '° ^^"^ h^^^rt '• the sapless rel^osity of his time, is indicative of his blood of TudTh'''''r"'^'P '° '^^ "L'°" °f '^^ tribe of Judah. J-s serene stedfastness; his sweet sublime trust ; lid the storm of stones from the demon-fanned thunder-doud of envious hat?- his forgiving diyinjty as the bulls of Bashan dyed their am' r«^r.- " ^''c ^r'"«^ '''°^' ^"^ the triumph- tvne of .i r " °u the proto-martyr. are a beatific s^h^ed''.JHH"'?v,°^?°^''.^'^°^"^^' "It is fin- ished and Father, forgive them, for they know TnH f "' u7 ^" ^^^P^^" -^« hut a deacoT and If such be the apostolic and God-prescribed qualification of what has been accepted as a sect^ ar office m the Church, what shall we sav about the altitudes of the eldership? And how shall we h^^^^rT '?" ?x7^*l' ""^ ''^P*h of the minister's high calling? We heard an African missionary TZr.u''J''-i^^''''';}^^^ •" ^'•^^^ that the pagan fed the h n ^J ?' °^ hyperborean heathenism"^ may mnl • ! ^^^' °l^^^ ^°'P^'' the missionary must maintain a condition of red heat, and that the missionary must sustain such a working tem- 11 l8 THE BURNING BUSH. perature, the Church in the homeland ought to be, and must be, at white heat. Let the deacons of our churches be so intensified in their fervor that the warmth may be felt. Let the elders be so ardent in the consuming passion of a living tlame that they may be seen in raised-letter fiery cap- itals And let us ministers be heated one seven times hotter, and like fire-eating monsters, potent as if incarnated with the "God of forces. Then mav we see the Church militant, marshalled by its Great Commander, who shall lead its heaven-pano- plied hosts forth "as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." To be honest and of good executive ability are good, but do not qualify a man for even the secular offices ot the Church. Stephen was a good man. Neither is goodness enough. He was full of faith. ilie most lightning-winged imagination can never exaggerate the possibilities of faith, but a man may give evidence of having great faith and not be full of the Holy Ghost. To trust God, as Abraham did, without works, without sight and without staggering, launch a nation upon the uncrossed seas of promise and land it in the new hemisphere of glorious destiny, is an enviable altitude of soul and a dignified serv- ice, but to have God, the triune God, in the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling the ransomed being, K infinitely better. indeeut man knew Him not. The whole philosophy of His life and the principles He enunciated were to them inex- plicable. The practical ethics He inculcated and urged upon the conduct of man, were. t«> the religionists of His time, the evident proof oi His madness. They continually misunderstood Him and misconstrued His simplest utterances. And amid the consistent inconsistency of self-centered, self-seeking humanity, He stood alone the phen- omenon of history. On that sad last night, when He was about to be betrayed, he said to His dis- ciples, " It is expedient for you that I go away; '" and after His resurrection and after the descent of the Holy Ghost, we find the disciples saying, " This is what He meant while He was yet with us." And now we have the thrice-blessed privilege of living in the third dispensation — the dispensa- tion of the Holy Ghost. But it is just possible to be living historically in the age of the Spirit and experimentally in the dispensation that was marked by pre-pentecostal weakness and unpardonable defeat. \\'hy was the promise of Acts i : 8 made to the disciples? It was spoken to those to whom the Lord had said: "Your names are written in hea- ven." and it is a noteworthy fact, the Word ex- plicitly states, that the mother of Jesus was in the upper room when the baptism of fire fell. Between the death of Julius Caesar and that of Suetonius, the historian, there lived a galaxy of luminaries, such as no other century in human his- tory has ever surpassed; a galaxy of historians. 24 THE BURNING BUSH. yi essayists, satirists, poets, and philosophers, in abundance. It was a period of great intelligence. But Jesus, with the anywhere and everywhere Spirit that sweeps at will from Paradise to Pat- mos, threw all the efforts and excellencies of four thousand years upon the scales, and they were found wanting. Demosthenes, the prince of orators, had lived; he had swayed the strong minds of his time like the angry winds move the trees of the forests. But he had vanished from the scene of action and left the world unredeemed. Plato, the prince of thinkers, had passed away, and an ideal republic was still a dream. Aristotle, the master of logi- cians, had failed to mix the healing cup. Homer, the king of poets, had swept the key-board of rythmic theorems, and still the world wailed out its woe. The theocracy had done divinely its God- appointed work, and as the Master looked down the centuries and viewed the stupendous work He was about to put into the hands of the infant Church, He saw Roman rage whetring its instru- ments of merciless persecution. He saw the blood- l^aptized Church. He saw the blood-stained hands sowing the martyred millions — the seed of the Church. He saw the setting sun curtained with damasks dyed in hell. He saw the all but starless night of the " dark ages." Amid the deepening, lilackening. devastating wrath of the death-dealing storm. He stood like the Rock of the Ages. He saw the apostasy developing and the infernal con- spiracy to commit regicide, deicide, and hurl the THE BURNING H L-S H. 25 redeemed universe into a cataclysm of chaotic cor- ruption, and weighing the contending forces and counting the cost, He gave the promise to the Church, His supernatural body, of supernatural power to do a supernatural work, to carry the " gospel of the kingdom " speedily to the utter- most parts of the earth. \Vhat is the cause of the soul-stirring absence of spiritual life and sin-convincing power in our day? Why do symposiums of divines bemoan the Laodiceanism of all the religious bodies after nine- teen centuries of Christian civilization? Let us suppose that all we know of the last two millen- niums of the history of the Church is obliterated from our memory. Let a white-winged messenger, whose advent and commission from the throne of God is beyond a question or suspicion, put into om hands a copy of the Acts of the Apostles, the key to the high explosives of God, the key to the power-house of the Church. Let the heavenly herald ask any logical mind the question: "With such pent-up potencies, with such pentecostal promises, with such an electrogenic endowment, obeying the ' Go.' of the Galilean, what would be the condition of aflfafrs at the close of two thou- sand years?" There is but one answer. Long before sixty generations would have dipped the honzon, all Jerusalem would be singing the sweet songs of Zion's enthroned and glorified king. The Judean hills would be skipping and gamboling like lambs in the perennial summer of the unset- ting Sun of Righteousness. Samaria's soil would be vibrant with the march of jubilant and triumph- r 26 THE BURNING BUSH. }k III ant hosts. Africa's down-trodden sons, with their faces of ebony, would be incandescent with a heavenly luster. India's superstitious and sin- crushed multitudes would be walking erect, with a diadem of glory on their brows. South Amer- ica's neglected tribes and nations would be trous- seaued, like her northern sister, in the bridal robes of a Christian civilization. China's millions would no longer be looking back into the immemorial and misty past, but the majesty of that hoary nation would have risen from the legendary quick- sands of a hopeless past, would have turned right- about-face, and have caught the inspiration of " He is risen. He is not here." With her marred visage transformed and beaming like the morning and her feet winged with the truth of the gospel, she would long ere this have taken her place in the vanguard of the redeemed. All the islands of the sea, like rubied stars in the dome of the deep, would be glowing with the resplendence of their Redeemer. The prophetic '' I will make the place of My feet glorious," would be a present reality. The earth would have passed through the parturi- ent pangs of the regeneration and the new heavens and the new earth have taken their places in the orchestra of a ransomed universe. But alas! There is no possibility of the real picture being mistaken for this description. " Call to your mind all the pictures of poverty and degra- dation that you have ever seen in the solitary places of extremest wretchedness, all those f^ases that have haunted yea with horror long aftei you had passed those dreary abodes of gaunt squalor. THE BURNING BUSH. 27 crowd them into one picture, unrelieved by a single ' ide of tempered darkness or colored light, and hang it over one half of the globe, it will still fail to equal the reality. Vou must put into it the prospect of hopeless continuance; you must take out of it all hope and aspiration, for the conspicu- ous feature of heathenism is poverty. You have never seen poverty. It has a world of meaning which you do not know. What you call poverty is wealth, luxury. Think of it as universal, con- tinent-wide. Put into it hunger, nakedness, bes- tiality. Fill Africa with it. Fill Asia with •>. Crowd the vision with men, women and children more than twenty times the population of all your great cities. Paint a starless sky. Hang your pic- ture with night. Drape the mountains with long. far-reaching vistas of darkness. Hang the curtains deep along every shore and landscape. Darken all the past. Let the future be draped in deeper ana still deeper night. Fill the awful gloom with hungry, sad-faced men and sorrow-shrouded women and hopeless, homeless children.'' It is the heathen world. A thousand millions in the region and shadow of death, sinking into the quag- mire of moral gangrene, and sending up to God and over the sea to the churches of Christendom their heart-rending, dying cr)-: " Come over into Macedonia and help us." The pessimist sees it — the optimist bewails it; and t. - conspicuous dif- ference between these two classes is as to the remedy. Is there power? What is it? Men are look- mg for power. Everywhere search is being made 28 THE BURNING BUSH. 1 - 'f Iff- for power. There is no commodity in greater demand. When it is found, possessed and proven, the world recognizes it and will pay fabulous prices for it. Unlike wisdom, the depths can say, " It is in me." You can get it for gold, and '* silver can be weighed for the price thereof." The world says to man with the microscope and telescope, and in all the realms between, " If you want power, ask, seek, knock." And yet, after all, we stand humbled by the absolute impotence of it all to turn the sinner from the error of his way and inspire the Church of God with a hunger for a holier life and an insati- able passion to obey and carry out the last com- mand of her Lord. Power there must be, and power we must have — power of a higher type. And blessed be God, power we may have. It is the power without which there would have been no cosmic systems and shining stars; no revolu- tionary or prophetic reformers; no incarnate God and no anointed Christ; no historic upper room; no fire-baptized apostles, and no power-endued Church, Years of experience, a wide field of ob- servation, a large correspondence, and intimate contact with tens of thousands of people, and the unpardonable weakness of the people of God, have accumulated a weight of conviction that has be- come inflamed by the Spirit, till an overwhelming passion has seized my soul, that a trumpet-blast ought to be given by all the pulpits of Christen- dom. The Church of Christ ought -to be called to the upper room to her knees, and upon her face I THE BURNING BUSH. 29 importune the throne, that the Holy Spirit may submerge her in the unfathomable depths of God, and once more, in a phenomenal manner, anoint her with power from on high. ' THli BVkNlNG BUSH. 3» cuapteb iii. Thb Inoabnation of the Spirit. " And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all of one accord in one place, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." IT takes but a casual glance at the Christian I Church to see that its membership is divided into three very significant groups. From the redemptive point of view, there are no upper lower and middle classes. There are but two classes— the rejecter of the atoning Christ, it mat- ters not how religious, how educated, or l:ow polished he may be, belongs to the earthlv. sensual, devihsh class, and in alliance with the arch enemy of the Christ, and as such, must sink forever from all that is heavenly and holy. The acceptor of Jesus belongs to the true Church, and has a divin- ity m his soul that forever widens the gulf between him and sin, and ultimately shall seat him with the Crown Pnnce of heaven, on the throne of uni- versal empire. In the worid, however, and in the Church, we have a sliding scale of classes, and classes within classes. In the Church militant we nave the three cardinal classes. The fir<;t an over- 32 THE BURNING BUSH. lif I whelming majority, is composed of the people who take no small part in all the pleasures and pur- suits of the world, sweeping the whole curriculum of the Christ-rejecting worid's amusements. And this multitude of religious worldlings la mtoxi- cated with the same Lethean draught with which the destroyer of souls is deceiving and destroying the non-Christian worid. This class hangs its destiny, without a palpitating fear, on the question: " How much of the worid can I have and yet get to heaven at last? Nothing but the microscope of infinite charity and the grace of an all-wise God can possibly detect any hope for this selfish host. if saved at all, and of this there are grave reasons for doubt, they shall be " saved as by fire." and shall go into the presence of the King without a star, and without a crown, and shall forever miss the blessed "Well done!" For the second class, every honest heart must have the deepest feelings of sympathy and respect. It is composed chiefly of devoted women, who are blood-relations of those women whose affectionate hearts and sorrow-stricken souls had forgotten the oft-repeated word of the Master, that He would be living and would rise on the third day, that *' red- letter day " of the Church, and were on their way to embalm the body of their Lord. You will find this class planning in committee-meetings, plod- ding wearilv along the streets pleading like mendi- cant monks from door to door for donations. You will find them perspiring in church-kitchens, cater- ing to the worid to secure a mere pittance to keep the Bride of Christ out of the charitable institu- THE BURNING BUSH. tions. The watchword of this class is " t o* %:' r-^;"'".^' ; "1 o- he-stave wi.h'U- .ngmg ., , broker, key, " Who sharro^l at"v the stone torn ,he door of the sepulchre" "Is not the greeting of the two men in shininTaDoarel rtre t 'a hW "rafs^nTi."' ""]■ " cenerated collection of men and women romX polyglot populations of all lands, and are indeed ant "'tT, """P :," '"r'^'y °^ '"e Church tri ™ph ^^ as but the opening of the flood-eates and th^ ^Z^L^ -^a-^e ~ £ mnienmums, the Christian Church ough° to te ■I ^ THE BURNING BUSH. sweeping along with the irresistible momentum of a mighty river, submerging earth's barren waste uith supernatural fertility, and clothmg the desert places with golden harvests and the prodijai abundance of tropical fruitage. , , ^ ^ The Jews had three great national feasts, l^ass- over was the first. It was held in commemoration of Israel's miraculous emancipation from bondage and escape from the tragedy in Egypt. It lasted about a week, and was held at the beginmng of the harvest. Two sheaves of golden grain were reabed and presented as an earnest of gratitude to the Lord of the harvest. And it is worthy ot note in this age when the masses of men are blighted with Americanitis-flurry, hurry, worry- that at the beginning of the busiest season, God s chosen people had time or took time to hold a religious feast which lasted seven days. It might solve the vexe' and vexing problems of our day, with its strikes and panics, and calm the rei son- dethroning pressure of our fevered and frenzied conditions if a Sabbatic year, if a Sabbatic week, or even a Sabbatic day could once more stand in fact as well as in figure upon our calendars, i^or to the soul for whom the blood has been shed, and to whom it has been applied, there is a pass- over occasion; and over that soul the black wing of the angel of death shall never stop to inflict its penalty of destruction and woe. With what freshness and inspinted hilarity the Israelites must have yoked up and rushed to the reaping of the whitening and whitened fields after a week of phvsical recreation and spiritual exhil- '■y*i THE BURNING BUSH. aration ! For forty and nine days the welkin rang uith the melody of the mower and the rythmic shouts of the reaper. What harmony mingkd with their toil! And then on the fiftieth day came the second great national feast, the feast of Fentecost when two loaves made of the finest ot the wheat were presented the Lord, the Pen- tecostal feast was celebrated. It was supposed to continue but a day, but continued for some days in". ?n7 :rl '^^''' '^'' ^^^°"^ '^-^'^^ oi feast: Jll thanksgiving, the people hastened to -he.^?tr t "'1°^ '^ ^'""' ^"d then with full of Tab:rn\'ele:'' ''''' '^"^^^ ^°"^^'' '^^ ^-^ fh. nu^!^^'^ ^^^'*' ^^^ ^^^'^ historical setting in the Old Testament economy, but were propheScal tT^VJ''" "^^-^^^""^"^ ^"^^^-^"t -d also t>pical of the experience in the progressive 'e- velopment of the Christian life. "^The Passover IndVlTV^^ '^"u^" '° '^^ ^^"^^y ^'^^'e oi God '-nrist. Ihe Pentecostal anointing quali^es and equips the child of God and comnfts him to the TfTrA w"^"' '^^' ^^^ ^^°"^ the commission of the Church to evangelize the world. And when the last npe cluster of fruitage will have been o\',n' "f ^T'^r'' ^^^"^ the autumna arbors latin^ Zt "^ ^^\'f "d« of the sea, the trans! ating messengers shall transmit a spotless Bride It the 2;^"'^^ ^'' ^^'^ ^° ^""^ the new wine 'MvT ^^^ ^"pper of the Lamb. fl,. o .^^ ^'■^ *h^ conditions of Pentecost?" is the question we hear on every hand. It is not so 36 THE BURNING BUS I i m !■ much getting into a condition as it is getting into an attitude. Man is the master of all the forces of God, in the proportion that he is the minister of the God of forces. He commands as much as he obeys. He who takes the lowliest attitude be- fore God, in spite of all the powers of an opposing universe, will ultimately rise to the loftiest altitude with God. When we put a vessel in the proper attitude to water, according to an unreversible law the liquid flows in. When a regenerate soul puts every particle of its body, every faculty of its mind and every power of its immortal spirit by an un- conditional surrender upon the altar of consecra- tion, the Holy Spirit— the Pentecostal Baptizer— does enter, it may be like the gentle, velvet-footed zephyr, it may be like the bracing breeze of a con- scious gale or it may be with the sovereign step- pings of the storm or the tumbling, tossing and terrifying sweep of a cyclone or tornado; but into the yielded spirit He will come as it pleases Him, and undertaking the administration of the life He will victoriously and triumphantly consummate His high and holy purpose. He wiJl come suddenly, although it may be silently, first filling the deep-sea depths of our sub- consciousness by the presence of a divine person- ality, who makes Jesus the most real, present and personal Lord; and as a logical and biological result the sensuous nature will perspire with an in- imitable sensation of beatific delight. As the attitude of the beatitude is a whole- hearted consecration to the will and work of God, to witness and wait for Christ, so the consequent THE BURNING BUSH. 37 condition into which the indwelling Spirit brings the believer, is cleansing " from all the filthiness fear of ^n^'^^^xf "'' perfecting holiness in the tear of Ood. There appeared tongues as of fire and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.'' )u^u^u^'''\ ""^y "^^^^ ""^^^ "s illustrious, Uit He will make us lustrous. He may never make us clever, but He will make us clean. He will make our conduct golden, because He makes he character glorious. The penetrating Spirit nnerTf^''''' '^' ^"'P ""^ '''''' places of the U ru ■ ^^^ P"'^^ '^^ ^°»1 f'-om sense and sin as Christ Himself is pure." rhr^^t"?!.*^^ practical outcome of it all will be i^hnst-like living and supernatural speech. " Thev began to speak with other tongues." th.t!!' *^^^'' 'u .^^^^'-ding to James, the use of the tongue is the index of the perfect man. It is said of Von Moltke, that deep humility was a pre! cour Hon ?^^'^''''^''^^ «f his spirit, and ti at he could hold his tongue in seven languages. The tongue IS a tool or a tyrant. When dipped in the U.ry hate of hell like a sulphurous maTch, it an kindle a destructive flame, surpassing in mali^. fuTA K u ^""'^''ation of Rome. But when tamed by the regenerating Spirit, when tempered tn the Pemecostal fire and clipped in the inkhorn ^houX'^'^r 'f T ^'"'^ "P^" the heart the thought of God. It can displace Pericles and Demosthenes from the supremacy of oratorv. It can make the most impassioned and impressive I ;S 38 THE BURNING BUSH. perorations in the literature of eloquence, and it can sing the symphonies of our Savior's redeeming love in loftier strains than the seraphim that bow and burn before the throne of God. THE BURNING BUSH. 39 Chaptee IV. The Ministration of the Spieit. " / indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, hut He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire." 7\ WONDERFUL age had just disappeared be- '» neath the horizon of the unretuming past. In it God had condescended to dwell with men, and a faithful few had shone with an aureole of glory as they stood in His presence; one had fore-dated the resurrection and " was not," for God had translated him. Another had sat in confer- ence with God on the sapphire stone and had tasted the sweet serenity of summitless sublimity, while a third had swept the invisible highway in the softest, springiest chcxriot of the heavenly liv- eries, drawn by fiery chargers. The theocracy was by no means a failure, for it accomplished its God-ordained purpose. But He who openeth and no man shutteth was about to throw open the door of a new and larger opportunity to the race of man. John, than whom no greater prophet had been born, had appeared, appointed and anointed by the pre-natal fulness of the Spirit's power. He ii s 40 THE BURNING BUSH. \ had come from the wilderness like a whirlwind of fire. He had swayed and subdued immense audi- ences by the Sinaitic thunderings and lurid ligl c- nings of the gospel of repentance. Yli was the morning star of the better day that was to usher in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, and the clairaudient ear can hear, already, the winds of prophetic Pentecost, blowing before them the withering leaves of the old dispensation. About a generation before, a babe had been born in the stable of an inn, in the Roman prov- ince of Judea. That child, that was called " Won- derful." was destined to make an unprecedented and unparalleled impress on the history of the world. Caesar Augustus, at the birth of Christ, could do what he pleased with the property and liberty of the three hundred millions of people comprising the Roman Empire, and could control the very heart-beat of those millions. But the Babe, whose infant cry blended with the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the kine. was to displace Rome. Juno, Venus, Bacchus and Diana have fled, as fabled specters vanish before the dawn. The colossal character has appeared and is announced by John as the One that shall hereafter baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire. God had baptized His people in the surging sea and in the cloud. John had baptized the repenting throng in the historic Jor- dan. But Jesus comes to baptize the believer into the personal Spirit, and yolk absolute impotence to absolute omnipotence. ! I THE BURNING BUSH. 41 According to the record, John was careful not to baptize all who came to him, irrespective of their spiritual condition. He drove the Pharisees and badducees away with the stinging lash, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" His baptism was given to repentant souls and was a public testi- mony that a gracious work had been done in their lieart. In the ordinance of baptism, all we have to do is to provide the scripturally qualified candi- date And so in the Lord's baptism— He is the liaptizer. He provides the oceanic font. He pro- IV.^A *K^ ^?^es;voven in the looms of heaven and fitted by the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual pre- paration of the candidate, by " the washing of re- generation and the renewing of the Holy Ghost " Ihis wonderful, wonder-working baptism is nowhere promised to, nor enjoined upon, impen- itent souls. Neither is it bestowed upon the people of God who. Lot-like, are living in Sodom ; nor is It possible to the Christians who refuse to obev God s command, " Escape to the mountains." and have settled down in Zoar— a little city. But it IS for those who are born of the Spirit and are walking m the light. It is not an uncommon thin? during a revival and by the unfolding of the truth in the power of the Spirit, to find many uncon- verted church members born of God. in their search for the baptismal anointing, and to see hosts of Christians restored from an inward if not an outward life of backsliding and carnal insecuritv. We are almost persuaded that the bapt'ism Jesus came to introduce and perpetuate till the 42 THE BURNING BUSH. .11 ' i::!' I ; I •;!• close of the Church age is a very rarely possessed gift. In the majority of instances, when we put the straight-edge of full-orbed Bible regeneration on the life and behavior of those who profess the Savior's baptism, the margin for the anointing of power is microscopi .. And when we behold the prevailing imbecility, even to arrest the attention and call the dov/n-rushing masses to a halt, our hearts burst forth with a cry for the fullest mani- festation of the high explosives from the king- dom of omnipotent power. The Holy Spirit gave us the incarnate Christ. He fashioned the body of Jesus and at the in- auguration of His public ministry came upon Him, raising the God-man officially to the highest rank of efficiency. He carried the Blessed One through testings, oppositions and conflicts that beggar i.'tiguage to describe, and after a victorious life, triumphant death, transcendent resurrection and ascension, elevated Him to His place beside the throne of God to become the Head of His Bride, the Church of Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit in this dispensation is to prepare a mystical body worthy of its glorious and glorified Head. The Head is a supernatural head, and so the body with all its members must be produced by the same supernatural process. Not by generation but by regeneration, and then baptized into the eternal Spirit, the body in all its parts must be carried by the Spirit through the same garden, via Dolorosa. Gabbatha, Golgotha, into the grave, " by baptism into His death." Now, by faith in the power of the resurrection, to a place in the heavenlies in THE BURNING BUSH ., Christ Jesus, and ultimately to share eternal wed- lock and a co-regnant throne with the Lord of the universe. Let us observe a few of the intensely practical and puhgent lessons that spring from the symbol used by John the Baptist and reiterated by the Master Himself— the symbol of fire. Fire penetrates. The strong masonry and superstructural steel fortifications of men are fairly successful in stemming the momentum of wind and water; but fire penetrates the strongest bul- warks, dissolves the forces of human genius and searches out every inflammable atom in the physical world. So the fiery-footed, electric-winged mes- sengers of the Spirit invade every region of the soul, melt down the strongholds of sin, and with a besom of fire sweep from the throne of the regen- erate life the usurping king of selfishness. Fire purifies. Sanitary massage treatment may have Its place, purification by water may be suf- ficient for earthen and wooden vessels, but the heroic treatment, I had almost said severe sub- mersion in a lavatory of fire, the fire-touched lips and the fire-purged soul are absolutely indispens- able to the purification of the messengers of Christ Ihis order must obtain in order to the highest efficiency m carrying the commission of our Lord to every people and kindred and tongue. And with fire-touched, fire-cleansing qualifications, it may be completed before the dews will have van- ished from the morning of the new centurv 44 THE BURNING BUSH. Fire propels. As we walk in the corridors in the musical conservatories of commerce and hear the runic rhyme of dazzling light, the flying shuttle, the invisible fly-wheel, the throbbing piston, and then in the awful stillness of a starry night catch the indescribable, dissolving symphonies of careering worlds and singing systems, we are ar- rested by the barbed interrogation: " What force propels this immense enginery?" The sibyl is solved by science. It is a triune giant. Solid fire pent up in the inexhaustible coal-beds of our earth; liquid fire in subterranean seas of petroleum; and gaseous fire, robed in the silken fabric of the nat- ural gases. All these, in Eozoic days, tumbled and tossed in tempest-tossed billows upon the ocean of fire that ♦hrobs like a great heart in the bosom of the sun. A short time ago we were overtaken in a blizzard, about one hundred miles from an American city. Three large engines were hitched to two coaches, and yet an accumulation of fleecy snowflakea arrested us and for a time successfully defeated the whole railway system. But the sinner that is l)orn of God, who is baptized by Christ into the eternal Spirit, the regenerate soul upon whose throne the Spirit has enthroned the ri.sen Christ, who has been into His death and knows the ex- perimental significance of the words " I have a baptism to be baptized with and am in pain till it be accomplished." the one to whom the Lord has revealed the Father, that one is yoked to, nay, verily, is indwelt by triune omnipotence. He may invade and inhabit the supernatural and de- monstrate to three worlds the paradoxes and r//': BCRXING HUSH. 45 hyperboles of the inspired Scriptures He may sit in a Cassiopean chair and with the great stellar Dipper drink nectareous inspiration from the heavenly helicons of eternal truth. He may feast on angelic ambrosia with the Prince of Peace and in the hyperborean heights above the crustal selfishness of this sensual and sensuous sphere, see the resurrection heralds coming with wings freightetl with the boundless wealth of the eternities. He is admitted to the department of the eruptive and explosive forces, and by a divine instinct learns the art of wielding the thousand-ton trip-hammer of truth and hurling projectiles of riKJiteousness against the citadels and strongholds of sin. Fire protects. " Let us suppose that the great Sire of the seasons should not arrest the descend- ing course of the sun at the winter solstice, and let the winter go on from Arctic cold to still colder Arctic. That flaming sentinel of terres- trial security should sink beneath the horizon for- ever. In three days." says Herschel, "there would not be a vestige of animal or vegetable life on the globe." Every atom of moisture would be precipitated in delug, s of rain and piles of snow, and from that time would set in a reign of uni- versal frost such as modern scienc-; is showing in the liquefaction of air. '"The \z\ earth would ?wmg blind and blackening in the' moonless air, a frozen hell, where cold performs the effect of fire." Our whole national securitv. from the simplest police force to the majestic tread of onr standing 46 THE BURNING BUSH. armies; our navies that plow the barbarous seas, and the torpedoes, that annihilate the opposing squadrons and sink the oppressors of civilization into the abyss of oblivion, is bound up in the fiat of that word fire. And when we have indulged in the wildest expressions of exaggerated imag- ination, we have but dimly defined the superlative symbolism. The story is told that once, during a threatened insurrection in India, the Queen invited the arch- leader to London. He was courteously shown the mighty navy of the mistress of the seas. Then his royal hostess showed him the magazines of power and all the infernal machinations for material de- struction; and the silent eloquence of imperial majesty hushed and conquered the rebel leader's heart. He went back to his own country a wiser and a loyal subject. And so the child of God need never fear. There is no reason why a ripple of unrest should ever invade his peace. There is not a shadow of a reason why a palpitating fear should flutter in his soul. The Captain of his salvation stands ready to marshal and mobilize the stars into battalions of light, to fight in their courses. Until no star shall twinkle, no milky way of blazing suns shall pave the way to the infinite beyond, and no Christ, the outshining of God, shall command the hosts of omnipotence, the humble saint may walk erect, dear as the apple of His eye and invul- nerable as the Spirit-anointed Christ. Fire proves. There was a time when men mechanically took off their hats, and uncovered THE BURNING BUSH. 47 their feet in blind devotion to the stars. Then the astrologers were demigods.. There was a time of denser darkness, if that were possible, when men bowed to the dust, and the alchemist held the thumb-screw of an embryonic priestcraft. Indeed, we are not far removed from the day when pos- sessions and position made men. But the curfew of that day has rung. We have heard the mid- night cry. The better day has dawned. The star- sown worlds have been subjected to fiery testings. Ihe atomic inhabitants have been weighed and measured in the laboratory, and in these days of record-breaking competition, all classes of men the classes and the masses, are being thrown into the crucible. And only the Christ-companioned are coming forth without the malodorous effect to shine with inextinguishable luster, for every m'an's work shall be tested with fire. In this Babel-building world, multitudes are rearing monumental mud mansions and furnishing them with highly polished bric-a-brac. They are adorning them with high-priced but perishable or- namentation. But if we would abide and would have our works stand the divine analysis, we must buikl with hvmg stone, taken from the quarries of bethsemane and the rock-cuts of Calvary We must carve upon the polished walls the glorious history of unimpeachable purity and self-sacrific- ing service. Then when things temporal shall dis- solve in the final fire, our works shall stand ap- proved and our crowns shall radiate the ravs of an unsetting sun. I 48 THE BURNING BUSH. Fire propagates. At the germination of the smallest seed, heat is necessary, though the heat supplied by one seed is so minute that it is not sensible to the touch. The source of heat is the combustion of the coaly matter of the seed, so that at the birth of every plant a pigmy bonfire is lit up. " He that hath ears to hear let him hear." O that we had ears of multiplied possibiHties! What a doxology would be heard at every spring- time season! From the lowest forms of vege- tation amid Arctic winters, to the highest forms that blaze and bloom in tropical gardens, what an infinite keyboard exists! As the master hand of Nature presses the numberless keys, " there come whisperings of melody, gushings of melody, or- chestral burstings of melody, diapason thunderings of melody," that roll through the arched magnifi- cence of our Father's house. When the heart, into which a faithful mother's hand and heart have sown the Word of God, and watered it with tear-stained prayers, is touched by the spring-time sun of the Holy Spirit, the wintry snows dissolve. The frost unfastens its death-like grip. Torrents rush and roar through the soul as the forerunners of summer and prophecy of the harvest. The rich, far-reaching foliage opens its millions of mouths and feeds upon the quadrillion- tonned granaries of the generous atmosphere. Floriage. like balsamic balm and floral fragrance, fills the whole range of its far-reaching influence with the sweet perfume of the Rose of Sharon, and the forming, developing, ripening, luscious fruitage pours forth a super-abundant supply, and THE BURKING BUSH. 4v leaves the ineradicable memory of such a man humanitT" °' ^ ^'"'^*''* ^""^ ^^''^^ It is not machinery but motion the Church needs It IS not more funds, but more fire we need. Where corn^oH ' '^t'"' '"'" ^" "^°*'°"' locomotion and commotion It ,s not the discussion of exposive cartridges but the concussion of them that insp res the monster to Hft the obstructing rocks upon his nat'lIwT '^' !,^°"^'''"^ ^"^ hurl them from the wl r.^ of advancing commerce and civilization. in th rf ^ ,'"'"^. ^""^""P^^ °f this consuming life Lul ^"^.'"'"'st'-y of the Apostle Paul. Be- hold him at Athens. " The splendor of Greece had waned and had passed undL Koman swa^J but what had survived the ravages of time and the conquerors of Rome attested its ancient grandeur Here genius had dwelt incarnate. It had built the loftiest epics, recited the happiest histories argued in the stateliest dialogues, wept in the sac ^ dest tragedies and laughed in the wittiest corn- edies. It had harangued in the mightiest orations. nohw'f'^ V^' 'f'^''' metaphysics, erected the noblest temples and carved the truest statues. It had painted the divinest pictures, wrestled in the greatest games, spoken the finest language, sun^ he gayest songs and fought the bravest battles he world ever witnessed. The study of the apostle in his native Tarsus, renowned for its cultivation of Grecian literature, must have made him ac- quainted with these glories of Athens. He had enjoyed the grace and euphony of Xenophon, and been charmed with the simple dignity of Hero- 50 THE BURMl NG JU S H. dotus. He had thrilled under Aeschylus and glowed with Demosthenes, whose intense logic and barbed interrogations he sometimes repro- duces. He could be no stranger to the image and music of Homer, the depths and beauty of Plato, the arms, oratory and magnilicence of Pericles." Lucian the poet, on visiting Athens, declared that he was filled with delight and wonder. But the spirit of Paul '* was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry." He went into paroxysms over the ungodliness of a colossal civ- ilization, the emptiness of a Christless culture. With his passionate perseverance, his sacred fury and his volcanic violence, possessed with a Scriptural sense of the minister's mission, Paul al- lows no doubt to lurk in the mind that the march- ing orders of the preacher is to preach, and that " He maketh His ministers flames of fire." " Wherever he went he preached. If he traveled he preached. When he rested he preached. When he came to an end he preached. No matter who composed his audience, he preached. To the Jew or to the Gentile, to the rustic or to the in- telligent, to the philosophical dweller of Athens, or to the debauched residents of Corinth, he preached. He never feared frown or scourge, the sneer of the sophist nor the senseless laugh of the profligate.'" Meet him where you will, he is preaching. He does not survey ruins. He is not enjoying the *' tale of Troy," " before which Achilles fought, Agamemnon ruled. Ulysses coun- selled and Ajax heaved his strength." He was looking for men and saw them not as Jews or THE BURNING BUSH. 51 Gentiles. He saw them as Jesus saw them, guihv and helpless, and he poured Sinaitic righteousness dissolved in the atoning passion of Calvary, anoint- ed by the power of the risen Christ, upon all ranks and condiiions of humanity. A short time ago a bench of bishops, constitut- ing the highest court of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, reviewing and pre- viewing the history of their Church and her spir- itual lukewarmness and the consequent dearth of conversions, seeing her lack of power to lead the believer into the deeper experiences of sanctifv- mg grace, which might be called the differentiut- wg feature of Methodism, issued a jeremiad, whose cry sweeps like a billow over our heart and stirs the deepest depths of our being, and long ere this time has broken over the heart of God the great I'ather, like the wail from the oppressed and crushed children of Israel in the brickvards of t-gypt. This cabinet of bishops proclaimed a fast and a week of importuning prayer, iml at this hour three millions of Methodists should have passed through the " upper room," worshippers, witness- es and workers, anointed with -^^wer from on high Fellow students and ministers Oi he Church, in the hne of apostolic success, commissioners from the court of high heaven, behind us towers the monu- mental pile of glorious historv. "In sixteen hundred and forty-three, the seed threshed out bv the Westminster divines, sown in this western con- tinent, IS responsible for the waving fields of Am- erican democracy." "And in Calvin's pulpit in Geneva was born the ancestor of the American 5* THE BURNING BUSH. eagle." The Church of our mothers has stood in the center of three epoch-making battles. ** The first, like a whirlwind, dashed to the earth and swept away the apostate and idolatrous Church of Rome from holding supremacy in the land of the heather. The second, after a long and painful struggle, overthrew and banished from the ecclesi- astical throne that blood-thirsty and perjured pre- latic usurpation, which the craft of one sovereign and the fierce despotism of his successors in vain attempted to erect upon the ruins of the perse- cuted Presbyterian Church. The third has been engaged in bursting asunder the fetters and cast- ing oflf the yoke of that cold, worldly, unspiritual, unchristian system, which has been well desig- nated " Moderatism." The Waterloo of this last long-protracted campaign awaits the Spirit-filled Church in Canada, to break down the strongholds of Laodiceanism. to invade and capture the un- counted wealth vaulted in the intrenched world- liness, and with flaming pulpits and blazing pews scale the heights of the largest liberty in the high- lands of the dispensation of the Spirit. With no disposition to belittle the past, with no temptation to bemoan the present, but with a burning passion that the Church of our mothers may adorn the highest niche in the temple ^f glory, we would importune her students and ministers to throw their unsurpassed deposits of learning into the baptismal font of fire and be moulded into projectiles of moral almightiness, with which the Master may break down the strongholds of sin: may belt the globe with the golden girdle of the ; r 1 1 THE BURXJWG BUSH. S3 gospel of the kingdom, and like ten thousand thunderstorms condensed into one sin-devastadng e?ern.1%n-. P'"°P"^l'^ '^ *^^ heart-throb of hf eternal Spirit, may break the monotony of a de- corous age and send her, with the solemn pomp and the irresistible momentum of a phalanx of fire to sit with her Lord on the co-regnant throne o the twentieth century. I hear -.he thunder rolling, The lurid lightning's pen Is tracing out the destiny. The doom of wicked men. I hear the mighty nations Now shake 'mid the martial storm- ine empire of another age Is rounding into form. I hear the tread of coming things, I see them from afar; Prophetic of some better days, I see the morning star. I hear the wail of dying souls. In Macedonian night, Church of Christ with lamps of life Ue pray you bring us lightl 1 hear the Church awaking. The Spirit leads the band: The Lord the Great Commander, To conquer ever> land. I hear the rushing, mighty wind Of Pentecostal fire. Go sweeping the Church of God, And all her ranks inspire. "!! & 54 run BURNING BUSH. I hear enlightened nations The Lord their Bridegroom praise; All robed in bridal splendor. Their songs of triumph raise, I hear the shout of ransomed hosts, I see the city fair. Where we shall with the Savior dwell And all His glory share. .-5^4 THE B( RSING BUSH. 55 Chaiteb v. TiiK Dkthuomxo axd Dkstbovixo Mission of the Spibit. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the ^"^ pint against the ftesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye pERHAPS the greatest question that engages the thought of all the schools and conventions that are springing up among all the denom- nations and m all lands for the " deepening of the spiritual life of the Church," is: What is The dis! position of the carnal nature or the self-life in the Christian? It is called self-denial. But there is a deeper experience than the most torturing self- denial. ,t is the denial of self. What is it? ^Vho ful lu i^f ^Tx"" '""""^ *^^ ^'^ys"ial depths of after Me e him deny himself, and take up his cross and ollow Me," to deny, to disown, to ab jure himself. We may reach' the idea in a con- cede form in the action of Peter in the denial of his Lord at the crucifixion. As Peter stood on the thT?!^?^ Z ^^""^' ^'^'■"'^"^ ^^'"^se'f among the rejectors and despisers of the Savior, one after S t'h.'p^^fr^'"' wih affinities and alliances uith the Royal Captive. He denied Him, he dis- 56 THL B U R N I S C U V S H. owned Him, he abjured Him, with the most super- lative language in the vocabulary of a fisherman, with oaths, he cursed tlie Christ beyond the cir- cumference of his ken. That is denial, and to deny self is not to deny something about self or by denial deprive self of some luxury or necessity. This may be but a motiem form of monastic sever- ity and all the while the self-indated self may be the hatcher>- of all the native brood enumerated by F\iiul in the Epistles to tiie Romans and the Galatians. To deny self is to use the strongest terminology within the range of revelation, that self is the accursed thing, unforgiven and beyond the reach of forgiving grace, and must be sent- enced and passeil over into the hands of the Holy Spirit for execution. It nuist go to the cross and be put to the death, and our testimony will ever be: "I have been cnicified with Christ; yet I live: and yet no longer I. but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh. I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God." A battle of stupendous moment has been waged for six thousand years against fallen humanity by a 'rinity of tormentors, "the world, the flesh and the devil." By not carefully distinguishing be- tween things that differ we are often thrown into difficulties from which few ever get thoroughly freed. The terms " the world " and " the earth " are frequently used interchangeably in the Scrip- tures; but in their cardinal and essential signifi- c.nnce they never mean the same thing. " The earth is the Lord's." The devil is the god of this world. rilE BIRSIXa UiSH. The earth is the creation of God. The world is the con.tr„ct.o„, or rather, destruction, ol t^e dev^' In the everyday expressions of the peoole we commonly hear people called • worldly ffiianr- iTewicKeuT^ ••"'"■. ' ^''* ""* ""rid'^^iethTn in the torw' "^"""'lU'mly the man that IS m the world, is m the embrace and kingdom anv ?„', "t°'' l"y """'' '' ^n.i-Christia^ "H no in him° Vorld,"''' "l' 'T "' "" ^^^er s .^•an:,%^rmisilri'^anTo';^;i'.''°o-t'c'k\?.t Christians, bit' ^mVh" ic lly1.Ss"'rhrmost »Tro1^«d;Vco?■•"^H^^^ he deep dark caverns of a coal mine. They a e I'oth m a very literal sense, in the earth bS th! one may be as far removed from the '^rld^ Z rer said, Ye are not of the world for I havP eL4„ sw= "^'"r"^ =■"" ^"'y '■•"■" holding sov! ereign sway m the heart of man. By not niakin? the d,st,nc.,on between the body and hrfl^h 58 THE BV RN I .V (/ BVSH. f li clearly ilefineil, we are thrust into another and possibly deeper dungeon, in which multitudes grope and groan for a deliverer. They look forward to death as the otdy cniancipattir. The hotly and the llesh are as i.lcarly distinguished from each other as the world and the earth. Many gotxl. intelligent Christian people labor through life under the erroneous impression and belief that sin is in the luxiy. Hence the prevalent impression which is deceiving hosts of youthful spirits, that the illegitimate habits and passions of the body will vanish as the boily grows older and feebler. The consequent conclusion is that at death or disembodiment the soul will burst into the ma- turity of holiness. There is no sin inherent in the body. Sin is in the camal nature that tlom- inates the body of the unregenerate and prosti- tutes the temple of the Holy Ghost, degrading it into avenues and marts in which to carry on the unhallowed connnerce. We who are saved to the uttermost are still in the body and will always be in the body, for it is not a vile body. The day shall come when He shall appear. " Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiHation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself." Among the *■ Moderates " of our boyhood, we very frequently heard, as an apology and Scriptural warrant for glaring inconsistencies on the part of those who professed to be the children of God. '* Oh. we are still in the flesh!*' It is a gross perversion of the whole trend of Scripture truth. The soul that is THE BV RS I X c V//. 59 IrSed' ^^'h the"s' '". *'^ ""^'^'- "^h- --" that are nm Jn K 5 ^'.'"^ '' "^^ '" ^^c flesh. - Yc are no n the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be thJ the Sp,nt of (i<,l chvelleth in vol, - ^^' ••conve?s1on°"T!r"f^V*'' ''''"' ^""^' ^^'^ ^^^ "^^ eralionV ! / ?• ^""*^'' '^"^«' ^^^ich is reijen- except when it is in trouble tuI ""• or wh. ',"'°''','' '""'" '" «» Pavilions of pleas™" or ,vho ,5 found conspicuous in its gala davs Th/r!: cTnvSn'ifT"^ Y, ^'""8 '- doZnJtj cup of consolation in Draver «i i i / '"""'the is anywhere in all the real'm " ^' '°""" " "« devU ,vin''h'' " fi""' " ™"5«'-3tion and the He V M L''!,,:!"''1 ='. '-''' -^""'"B of the I-ord ami ?h" ''"P"5^<' "• hnaliy in the lake of fire old "erpenTwhich i 'le";' T '\%-eo^- 'h" bound fim a Thousand vea'rs ' "' '"" ^''""' """ p..r?o",e ^:"chhtT 'n" ;'' '"''"'"■«' =" 'o His . e ...„^nMg ,1,^ |,^j„. Gi-jntic Bible stu- 6o THE BURNING BV ^H. dents have dealt crushing blows upon the hard head of this common foe, and yet there is ample room for another stroke at the vitals of the monster, who has destroyed, so many legions of precious lives. Those who have looked over the vast ex- tent of this field of Biblical study must have seen two great schools of eminent Bible students and Spirit-filled teachers. They represent the right and left wings of the question. What is the dis- position of the flesh in the heart and life of the Christian? The Calvinistic thinkers flock under the one wing and the Arminian thinkers under the other. In recent years, there has developed, to the extreme of the Arminian school, another wing that has withdrawn from the Methodist Church. ' It teaches the most literal, radical eradi- cation of the carnal nature from the soul of the believer. Then to the extreme of the Calvinistic school, there has sprung up a little wing, that makes very prominent the idea that the two na- tures struggle on, but that the saint is not re- sponsible for the inconsistencies that may be patent in his Ufe. The one develops a cold, nnspiritual formalism, the other provokes an unbridled fan- aticism. But there is another school of teachers to whom we find our heads and our hearts cling- ing closer and closer, with an affinity that is be- gotten of a kith-like kinship. It avoids the form- alism on the one hand, and the fanaticism on the other, and teaches the dethronement and displace- ment of the usurping self-life and the enthrone- ment and replacement of the risen Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to reign without a rival THE BURNING BUSH. 51 upon the throne and to wield His sovereign sceoter over every realm of the ransomed soul ^ Perhaps Amalek, in the Old Testament his- tory, might be taken as one of the mostTonsnir ! ous types of the flesh, or self-life Twe can 5„t" grasp and experience God's treatment of h?m we will have answered to our own hearts one S' the t ion. What IS he origin of Amelek? His ^ene- alop IS very significant. He was the grlnTon taee'' An"l "f'"'' '" '"^'^"^^^ '^' ^ mesf of pot- age. And if we trace his posterity for almost a thousand years, we find his course marked by un^ deviating laws of carnal consistency. We alwavs find h.i making irremedial disturbance and fn dealm^ .vith the diseased conditions the Apost^ Paul recognizes the malignant matemitv oreln we' ZIT " c\ f P'"^-^r '^^ ^"egory'fn th c sTn "The Fn? •''"' '^^ bond-woman and her son. ihe Ephesians are also oppressed bv th^ same discordant agent, and again the apos?le ^ri^'s the mandate of heaven. "Put off the old man '• And to the faithful at Colosse. the same fire-tTpned pen translated the thought of God for aU th?.e h.H 1, u-P"* ""^ *^^ ^^^ "^a"" His orien ts bad. his history is the blood-baptized record o? pStirence"/"' "t 5^^^^^ "'^^ tLdLh dealing ^h^f ?^ '^- ^^'^"^ «^ everlasting night. ^ lemmg warfare against Rome, a covenam rta" he" ■ 62 THE BURNING BUSH. religiously carried out till the clay of his death. Singularly we find, in the early part of the books of Moses, that God issued a decree, that the race of Amalek should be utterly destroyed. It is pain- fully clear to all who read, that the defeat and irrecoverable losses sustained by the chosen people for about a millennium were due to their diso- bedience in not carrying out to the letter the command of extermination. A sample page of the black record may be read in the fifteenth chap- ter of first Samuel. The command was, " Utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, and sheep, camel and ass." Short-sighted ox sentiment shrinks from the slaughter of the inno- cents; but the dimple-cheeked, prattling, baby- Amalekite will some day become a cruel, un- masked monster, that will stop at no act of Satanic treachery, as twenty continuous generations of his ancestors had proved. Rut Saul arranged a compromise. Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen, and of the fn I lings, and of the lambs and all that was good, were spared. In all time, the successful games that the arch-foe has played and won over the human race have been with the cards of compromise. At the (lawn of history, Satan made a 1 jld attempt to de.<;troy the holy line, by the dest action of Abel. But lie found that God could ' eate faster than he could kill. He changed his tactics and suc- cessfully intermixed the two lines, till a flood was necessary to purge the iniquitous offspring from the earth, .\gain, when the earlv Church came THE BURNING BUSH. 63 forth like a chaste virgin from the chamber of the ientecostal morning, the demon of hate let loose the arch-destroyer, and the early persecutions sent Th Tear? ofThro^ T'^ '"'° ''« ^^""^^C^ ;i.:nX^!h:^%^?en^^ .•Xes'r :eid «::'-":"'.- ^"^t::^ sfteep and the lowing kine crimson the royal face and amid the confusion thut f^n '"^ /"^f' «ce ti.e heels of disobed ^re he th mT '"■" V"" Vltrl '"' "f '' P"'-!^ cotrs en't^^h 'th^ Acbnnc line and rolls the responsibility up'^n Z and?ff;cT"^!'L'^r.r "r'^ ''^'he law of cause of the Lord He h. u 1 " '''"' ''"''«'<' 'he Word king-- C na"u :^ a h.^^X'"' ""' '™'" ''='"« ter how much it may cost' Thr"f ''"!' "" '™'- ^Vhat is the destiny of Annlpt ? t ^ <"-<. centuries bad rolleVt^f si„,?^:rrS- I :' THE BURNING BUSH. I' the declaration of exterminating warfare against Amalek, and we read : " So they hanged Hainan on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified." The Jews say Haman was a descendant of Agag and the last of the /..nalekites. It is very significant after so many centuries that this wicked scion should spring up and manifest the family fruitage. The king Ahasuerus had dismissed and despatched Vashti the queen and had replaced her with Esther the Jewess. Mordecai, who had adopted Esther watched over her with a paternal eye, and as he walked before tiie court, he discovered and dis- closeii i plot to kill the king. Haman, the enemy of the Jews, was raised to the vice-regal honors. All did him honor except Mordecai. This fanned the fury of an inborn hate against the Jews. Ha- man made a proposition to the king to utterly exterminate a certain people scattered abroad among the provinces of his mighty empire. It was sanctioned. The royal signet sealed the sent- ence of death, and wing-footed messengers has- tened witii the Draconian decree for the execution of "all Jews, both young and old. little children ?nd women." Not a child, be it never so innocent, in whose veins throbbed Jewish blood, was to be spared. Mordecai perceived the diabolical plot. He hastened to the place of prayer. He touched the heart of God, and through it found -an avenue to the heart of the king. After three days of fasting " Esther put on her royal apparel," and it may be with the shekinal splendor of divinity about her head, and stood in the inner court. " She stooped li > THE BURNING BUSH. 65 scepteT The ^'' T " '"? ^•"^' ^^^ ^-"-hed the scepter The greatness of gentleness, the maiestv of meekness and the strength of sweetneTs nn^ masked the Cerberus of hell. He hadTust "l^e'n ?he' contract to the lowest bidder, to bu W a Sows ^r the execution of Mordecai. Then 5od gave Ahasuerus an attack of insomnia. His servants could not fan him to sleep. Music fai ed to lure tt'TpoThecaV'' ^""^"^"^ ^^"^- The Lience ^f tne apothecary was impotent to dispense a soofh d"rL Ufe'nt"?^ '"^- ^^ the'Teli^rgt canffor^hf I'^^'^y "P t° the midnight hour, he ?r!^ ?K ^^ ch'-onicles, and the record of his escape from the dagger of the assassin, by the vigl ance and courage of Mordecai, was ;ead. TheTeep! aved'hir life S "*?t'^' ''''' ^^^ ^^ ^^^ "'d IS called and nr^ ' ^''" ^^^^^^Penrod. Haman o h. t 1? r ' "^""'^ ^'^'"" ^^'^ P""<^e>y honors lth.!jT u "^ "P°V^" "^^" ^^'h«'" the king de- Har^an n"^ T ^^' ^^'^-^^-t.cl selfishnefs of Haman never dreams that such laurels of sover- e gn favor could fit the .brow or harmoniously blend into any other character than that of his stupendous self. A program of regal pageantrv decrle'nf '/^u^.^^'' ^^"^ ^"^ ^^^" ^'^^<^"ted. The decree of death ,s cancelled. " Letters are senf by pc«t on horse-back, on mules, and'camels and 66 THE BURNING BUSH. young dromedaries; and instead of death, the Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor." It is said that at Lord Nelson's last battle, on two occasions, he had the " Redoutable," one of the enemy's ships, under his guns, and was impor- tuned to destroy it; but he refused, hoping to cap- ture it instead. From that ship came the bullet that took the life of the heroic commander. Be- loved, we may trifle with the flesh, but let us remember its history'. Review the battlefields which, with the cruelty of Tamerlane, it has heaped with the slain. Look at the seas it has made red with the blood of millions. If we do not mortify the flesh, it will mortify us. Let us throw compli- ments of floral sentiment and it will hurl thunder- bolts of destruction in return. " The carnal mind is enniitV' against God. and is not subject to the law of God. neither indeed can be."' Let us hand the flesh over to the Holy Si)irit for dethrone- ment and execution. Let us have the vile usurper substituted by the risen Christ, who shall set in operation archangel pt)wers and Titan forces, that shall make us overcomers and more than conquer- ors through Him " that hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." THE BURNING BUSH. 67 Chapter VI. The Entheonino and Estabushino Mission Spibit. John ^7.^7 ''"""'''^ ""'"'^ ^''^ """^ '^"^^ ^' OF THE in you, " To reveal Jlis Son in me," Gal 1 ; 16. U OW fitting the fact that when the Holy Spirit gave to us the Old Testament character and type of the self-centered life and its calam itous collapse, He drew our attention to Saul A^d the Christ-centered and selfless life. He gave us a fe-sue pu:ture of the New Testament Saul ho became the mspired madman, the Apostle Paul Snt' Tfl'T': '^T''''' ''''' ^^'^-l relations bewin th//"''' °^B^"i-"^'n- The contrasts oetween the two m the natural and the suoer- natural are strikingly antipodal. The first la^I ThebodHv^n 'P'T!" ^^ P^y^'^^' manhood, ilie bodily presence of the other was weak and his »t> of God. held the power to make peerless his- 68 THE BURNING BUSH. tory, the other was hounded continually by blood- thirsty persecutors. At the crisal moment, the king apparent was found buried beneath the stuff, a cowering coward, but the inspired apostle throws into a malodorous mass those things of which he might have boasted above all his fellows — '* cir- cumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteous- ness which is in the law, blameless." He calls them stuff, waste, and with the caloric of a Christ- consuming passion, burns his way through it all till the crown of righteousness adorns his worthy brow. God, in the progressive development of His revelation to man, held out to the Apostle Paul the honored service of announcing " the myster>- " to the saints of this dispensation. And in writing the Epistle to the Ephesians — the heav- enly Himalayas — the inspired author takes us into the depths and heights of this mystery. It is patent to the student of this epistle that the writer is illustrating the boundless- gospel vi the grace of God by the heathen mysteries, of which the Eleusinian were the most noted. Their celebration lasted for about nine days, with a Bacchic procession from Athens to Eleusis. With torches extinguished, the candidates for initiation waited outside ihe Telesterion or temple, in the silence of great darkness. Suddenly the doors of a gorgeous and brilliantly lighted temple were flung open, and amid the blaze of a dazzling light, the novitates were admitted, in the dead of night. THE BURNING BUSH. 69 There X ? ""P""*^^^'^* '^S^ts and ceremonies, the LT ^ ^^^'^^ °^ initiation. Those in he first stage were called Mystae. and those in the advanced staee EoootaP TuL^ 1 officer, called Hiero^p^^nra^n^Myltag^^^e"^* O^t e meS '"T°'."^^' ^^^^ '''' ^-'"'- «"-light- enment. We find sufficient evidence of the prev- alence of the mysteries in Athens, Corinth. PhiHppi 1 niiipp, ,s ,n the direct pathwav of the mvstic observances which are believed' to have Tme down mto Greece from Thrace. The shritie^! near Fhihpp,, while an elevation still nearer the city was known as the hill of Dionvsos. The dri out of whom the spirit of divination 'was cast was a Sionysos^ '"S't' 7 ''''''''''■ "^ ^^eTri^of yionysos. So Paul was initiated. He says " h^v^T'^'''^' '• "^ ^^^^ ^^^'•"^d the secret.'' ^^Z T '\™- ' ■ --5 ttTtheVaulinf the S^° .• P5'-^^^^'°" <^«"tains an allusion to t^ie perfection ntes of the mvsteries. Thus in ot the Mystae. but in 2 Peter i : 16 we 1 ave the Erota'e"""' ^"'r '"^^"'^^"^ experieLH; he SnLf ',°!; '"'■• ^' '' '^'^ ^^'"^^l translated eve- Mtness but more literally eve-witness by initia ion- ^^if}- '"^.r^ ^"">' ^-^'«P^^ in th7ex"pr :: sion. beholding "—the direct vision of Deitv rS ''T^' l'^ atmospheric "medium of holy hvmg. To make all men sec." or literally. TO THE BURNING BUSH. I ■ t t W!.at to enlighten them in the secrets of God. a stewardship! In Paul's illustrative method, he throws into juxtaposition the abyss of Satan and the abyss of God. At Athens and Ephesus were to be found the mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos, with the glorification of lust and drunkenness. Demeter's mystery was euphemised as a sacred marriage and that of Dionysos as divine enthusiasm. The state of the dead was to be a state of eternal inebria- tion. The now fragrant terms of enlightenment and perfection were used to dignify with religious association the vilest practices. Those initiated into the pagan mysteries were bound by a solemn oath not to disclose what they had seen or heard; but the life that has the secret of God, the life that is hid with Christ in God, cannot be hid in all the deep-sea depths of the Infinite. With what cloud- less clarity this illustration of the apostle's defines the two great cardinal experiences through which the soul passes in its transition from the bondage of sin into the rest of faith and the fulness of Jesus. The initiate stands in the deepest midnight darkness, shuddering, not in superstitious fear, but under the wrath of God. He feels the bending crust about to break beneath his feet and plunge him into starless doom. He utters a cry from a sin-burdened heart and as if by mag^c the massive doors swing open and he stands bathed in the " outshining " light of life that comes from the face of the Savior. The vision is mesmeric and for days the new-born soul, like Paul, is blinded by the ineffable glory. But alas! here the multitude THE B( RNJNG BUSH. 71 Stop. We are deluged with the testimonies of the defeated hosts in the ranks of all the Christian churches who have never had the divine Mysta- gogue lead them in and initiate them into the secrets. With this priceless boon to the Church of Jesus Christ, we ought to enter into our inherit- ance. Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, IS the gift of a merciful and gracious God to a rebel race. But the baptism with the Holy Ghost, the possession of the mystery, is the birthright of all believers, the children of God, for it is " the promise of the Father." To the great majority of minds, the word *' mystery " is associated with the worid of witchery and Scandinavian superstition and can only be invaded by those who are in alli- ance with evil spirits. But mystery is mystery only to those who have not been initiated, or who have not found the key to the mystery. You stand in a great bank and look at the' trusted clerk as he opens the safe that represents the security of millionaired wealth. Should he swing that iron door, and lock the combination, he might safely ofTer you all the wealth it holds, could you without violence open its door. It is a secret, which you have not one chance in millions of finding out. The bank official stoops, makes a few simple m< /e- ments of the hand. Thece is a willing response and he stands amid the vaulted riches. The laws that controlled the stellar spheres were a mystery for ages. For seventeen long years, Keplar, the toil-worn philosopher, forged keys, and in vain tried to fit them to the stubborn lock that had f 72 THE BURNING BUSH. %■ r ■ I I been hermetically sealed for millenniums, till fin- ally God rewarded his divine heroism by disclosing to him the long-lost secret. God was vindicated, and the enraptured philosopher, in the wild excite- ment of his glorious triumph, exclaimed: " Noth- ing holds me; I will indulge in my sacred fury! If you forgive me. I will rejoice; if you are angry, I can bear it. The die is cast. The book is writ- ten, to be read either now, or by posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, since God has waited six thousand for an ob- server!" All along the course of history, in all the de- partments of human economics, there have been mysteries. The physical world is still a huge sphinx-like riddle, the stony rind of which has never received a concussive blow, much less a frac- turing thud from the trip-hammer of the investi- gator. The psychical world has but recently been discovered, and invites the invading explorer and the inventive genius to conquer and capture its boundless wtc»lth. The Holy Spirit 'stands at the golden gates of uncrossed seas and volunteers to guide the adventurous spirit across the bound- less ocean of the supernatural, and unlock the treasures of " the exceeding great and precious promises." As in the purpose of God, in the humiliation of His Son, we have first the prophetic intelli- gence, after that the annunciation by the angel, then the miracle of the ages, the incarnation, with the consequent ministrations or mission of the God-man. So there is a striking similarity in the THE BURNING HUSH. 73 advent of the Holy Ghost, the personal agent in the mystery or indwelling of the risen Christ. In the first chapter of the Acts we get the an- nunciation of the Spirit, not by an angel, but by the Lord Himself— the Angel of Jehovah. Then in the second chapter we have the incarnation of the ^plnt in the r n-osite and continued body of Christ, the Chu.. a. .\nd p'l the subsequent chap- Tfu^^'c*?^^" 'P 't' "' -•• -rnatural workings of the Spirit h n-h thr Hi?), i. In the fi/ t . .1; ..tP! ri the \L .tie to the Ephes- uuis. P^ul v.. .1 e „- unciai.M of the mystery, and after ,, .-km-, W,, pp«,l,et.c commission into high pres^ r . lu ,V . upon l-is knees and with the passion ,. r. -...^..er .rniores God to touch their eyes that the;. -Wv/v, ,ee " what is the riches of the glory of I ,< ^ ritnr-: in the saints. And What IS the exceeding greatness of His power to US-ward who believe, according to the working of Mis mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Hi n at His own right hand in the heavenlies." W hat an apocalyptical vision of the omnipo- tence of the mysterj'! In the worid of human commerce we have in the diflFerent departments >s called the unit of measurement. In the |!ry-goods department it is the yard. Among the himhermen it is the foot. In the liquids we speak of the quart. The pharmacist uses tl grain The surveyor says, it is so many chains And when the bpirit of inspiration wished to convev a con- n'^/ ^o"^^Ption of the Infinite and Ete'rnal. He "?ed as His unit. ages. But the believer's unit 74 THE BURNING BUSH. ' H t • I: 1 1= % I h I i. of power, nay more, his minimum of power, is the power that defied the united forces of hell and the grave and raised Jesus from the dead. Yet more, it stepped upon the terrestrial forces and bore our ascending Lord up and on through stellar worlds and set Him at the right hand of God: " Far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." And until the Christ-filled life meets a difficulty that would be more insurmountable than the resurrection of the dead dry bones of Ezekiel's vision; until he finds a charnel house that some day will not respond to the vibrant voice that penetrated the sepulchre of Lazarus and brought forth the dead, dissolving brother, he need never fear. He may march forward in service and sacri- fice with the stately steppings of omnipotence. The great apostle does not leave us in ignor- ance as to how he came into possession of this sacred treasure that had been hid in God during the past ages. " How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote afore in a few words. Whereby when ye read ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ. Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. Unto me, who am least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearch- able riches of Christ. And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God. THE BURNING BUSH. 75 who created all things by Jesus Christ." And to the Colossians the same Spirit-filled pen defines the mystery to be "Christ in you the hope of glory. And in writing to the Galatians, he re- ports the time of this secret of secrets. After he had met in clash of arms the heavenly artillery outside of Damascus and had surrendered to the Conqueror after the humbling lesson when shut in by blindness to confer with God and his own soul, and when, through the ministry of Ananias, he got the larger vision, he was thnist into the so itude of Arabia and there received an apo- calypse about which his fire-tipped pen testified: out 1 certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews religion above many, my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased V-TOd, who separated me from my mother's very life and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me. . . " And after Paul's annunciation of the revelation of the mystery, once again he goes to his knees, and with a deeper cry. he prays that the iiphesian Christians may have an experimental ap- prehension of Christ indwelling, or more literally, se tlmg down in their hearts, by faith leading them into the abysses of the fulness of God I 76 THE BURNING BUSH. Then the divinely directed pen outlines the way and walk upon this " highway of holiness," and as with the brush of a master, draws the pic- ture of the Church in the fulness of the manifesta- tion of the mystery, when she shall walk with her Lord in the beatific bliss of the coming glory. " Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it : that He might sanctify and cleanse it with th*' washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy ard with- out blemish. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church." In the purification of our material garments It is possible to take all the soils or pollution out with a solution of hot water and soap, but no process of washing can take out the wrinkles; that is done by another treatment we call ironing. Water cleanses by displacement of the impurity and there its power reaches terminal limitations. If water had the power to abide after displacing the foreign matter and could we wear the garments without discomfort, then one washing would do each set of robes. But as tlie water cannot abide, there is a return of the unclean condition. The Holy Spirit cleanses by displacement and keeps clean by the replacement of the risen Christ, who becomes "that other Comforter." There should be but one great washing or rather bathing of regeneration, but the truth will ever remain : " He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet." How often we have watched our THE BURNING BUSH. 77 mother in the old-fashioned laundry, perhaps late on Saturday night, hurrying the beautiful linen, fragrant with the perfume of the garden grass, and puttmg the gloss and polish upon it for her boys for the following morning. She took the iron from the intensely hot old kitchen stove, turned It over and dropped a spittle upon its shining face. If It cleaved to the iron it was not fit for service, and must go back again to be qualiified by a still hotter fire. When the iron would not hold water but despatch it hissing into vapor, it was in a con- dition to smooth out all the wrinkles and put a luster upon the bosom that would satisfy the critic's eye and sustain a cleanly condition much longer than otherwise. Water with fire in it takes out the spots, and fire without water in it takes out the wrinkles. Are there not many of the people of God who are washed, but who have never been ironed and made to shine with the heavenly luster that reflects upon this dark world the light that breaks from the throne of God? We remember once visiting one of the largest print manufacturing establishments in this coun- try. The process was exceedingly interesting. Ihe molds of the high-priced and ingenious de- signers filled us with a curious wonder. The arrangement of the pigments that contributed to the commercial value seemed like magic. But the stage of captivating astonishment was not yet. After the material was ready for the artistic touch, but just before it reached the brush, those webs of material were run through a series of red-hot rollers, with a motion sufficiently accelerated to ^ THE BURNING BUSH. prevent injury, that the velvety nap might be burnt off and not resist the finish of the beautiful pat- tern. Ah! that's it! The soul whose warp and woof is sin, needs a new life. The workmanship of the regenerating Spirit, and the baptism with the Holy Ghost leaves the new man without spot or wrinkle, and lest there should be " any such thing " the fiery baptism will burn it off and leave a fit surface, upon which the Christ-life may be stamped, to fittingly robe the Bride for her Royal Bridegroom. Then Paul leads us up to the Ther- mopylae of the subject of the mystery, in the clos- ing chapter of this Alpine epistle. " Pray for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mys- tery of the gospel." There is nothing the people of a gossiping center like to hear better than a secret, a mysterious, malodorous missive about somel)ody; and at the same time there is nothing in the realm of human ken, from which the same class shri-ks and flees away with such superstitious dread as the suggestion of a secret or mystery. There are two Gods — the God of all gods, and "the irod of this world." There are two Christs — the " anointed One." nnd the .\ntichrist. There arc two Spirits — the Holy Spirit, and " the spirit of untruth in the children of disobedience." There are two abysses — the abyss of Satan, and the abyss of God. There are two great mysteries — the mys- tery of iniquity, and the mystery, Christ in you the hope of glory. Humanity is the contested battle-ground, for the throne of which these two great armies are in awfu' conflict. It looks as if THE BURNING BUSH. 70 Satan with all the myriad forces of fallen intel- ligences IS in malignant conspiracy to incarnate the arch-usurper in the human race and introduce a reign of chaos that an archangel's talent cannot describe. And the purpose of God, as illustrated m the incarnation and the advent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is to indwell and re-incarnate His Church and ultimately to put her with her glonous Lord upon the co-regnant throiie of a ransomed universe, a throne before which the myriad hosts of cherubim and seraphim shall bow and burn for ever and ever. It always has and will always require superhuman courage to proclaim the secrets of truth in all realms of secular or sacred verities. In the recent past, the geocentricitv of our sys em xyas the god before which the astronomers philosophers, .scientists and ecclesiastics bowed with reverential awe. Even the Church, leading ^ he hosts m prof(,und respect for ancient absurd- ities laononiK-e-i the doctrines of Ptolemy in ac- cordance with the revelations of Scripture, and walled them in with the tire of cruel persecution, through whKh alone their sacredness could be a tacked. But the unerring facts imperiously de- manded the abandonment of the earth as the great center of motion, and a multitude of circum- stances pointed to the sun. " It was the largest nnd most brilliant of all the heavenlv bodies It g-ave light to the moon and the planets. It gave "te to the earth and its inhabitants.- The nhil- ^|sopher waited. He stood amid a storm of perplex- tties. Prejudice guarded him like a Roman le'non Ill 80 THE BURNING BUSH. Difficulties towered above him with their pre- cipitous heights. Clothed in the impenetrable armor of truth, Copernicus finally rose superior to every consideration save the right. "He quitted the earth, swept boldly through space," and stood upon the sun, *' with an imagination endowed with the most extraordinary tenacity, he carried with him all the phenomena of the heav- ens." This is the courage that writes immortal history and builds imperishable monuments. And so the peerless apostle beholds the ** great mystery," the Christo-centric life — the Christ- centered system of truth — and then looks upon the armied hosts of Satan, sin and self, the principal- ities and powers and rulers and wicked spirits in the lieavcMilies. in battle array and with the author- ity of the throne, he urges the hero who would cleave a passage to the wells that spring from the still higher heavenlies — the miracle — the mystery of the risen Christ, to go into the armory of Je- hovah, to put on the whole armor and. thus pan- oplied in Gotl. he shall huri back the powers of hell and carry the banner of triumphant victory to the very citadel of the foe and win the imperish- able honors that wait to crown the true victor's brow. THE BURNING BUSH. 8l ClIAPTEE VII. The Indwelliwo akd Inworkiwo of the Spikit. " And I will pray the Father, and He shah givft you another Comforter that He may abide with you forever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you;' John I4 ■ 16 17 lESUS was just about to go away and His great ^ heart yearned as He looked upon the stupen- dous work that was pressing upon the horizon. He felt the utter mefficiency of the disciples to cope with the tremendous issues. They were in the stage of infantile vicissitudes. They were self- centered and consequently impotent to bear the tonnage of coming responsibility. How painfully patent their weakness was! During the earthly ministrations of the Lord, the imbecility of their true inwardness was stamped upon thei'r conduct at almost every appearance. As the Master, borne along by His impassioned soul, hurried through the land. He finds them disputing with each other by the way. What do you suppose was the griev- ance. Why. it was the one thin? that has been at the root of all trouble in Church nnd State since Te)^^^* the garden, " VA'ho shall he the great- 82 THE BURNING BUSH. est? " The disciples were possessed of the idea that the kingdom, in manifestation, instead of in mystery, was about to the introduced, and was to be a hunting ground for rapacious office-seekers, and as a consequence, were constantly jostling like selfish politicians for a place of emolument in the new administration. This has been the unexceptional trend of the human family, at its best and at its worst, for six millenniums. The Master, in a word, emphasized the fact, that the lowliest attitude before God is the loftiest altitude with God. In the fulness of His heart the f^reatest of all teachers gathered His disciples to Him, and began a course of teaching on the Holy Spirit, who should dwell in them and become the energizing force in all their future service. There should not be the shadow of a doubt in the breast of any Christian as to the conscious in- dwelling of the Holy Spirit. He always brings indisputable evidence with Himself that cannot be attributed to other than a supernatural power and person. There will be the inimitable presence of a perfume that cannot be dispensed by the local druggist. Let us suppose we have a true and trusted friend, who has sutained his reputation for veracity in the severest testings. He owns broad acres of tropical orchards, a very Elysian El Dorado. Our home is on the Ottawa, in the county upon which the flag-pole of the North stands amid dissolving cold. During one of our typical winters, this friend comes to visit us. Three times each day the choic- est things of our basket and board are heaped upon THE BURNING BUSH. §3 the groaning table. The f-t fiuit a northern cli- mate can produce and t' ,d-fashioned preserves, are prodigally provided. - stranger is exceed- ingly courteous, but during the last days of his visit, he sits with us beside the old-time hearth, and as the happy fire dances and ihe sparks dis- appear up the chimney like translated spirits, he talks of his orchards and vineyards, and in realistic fashion describes the numberless varieties of fruit, till we fancy we taste them and enjoy the dissolv- ing sweetness as we eat of their abundance. The time for farewells is at hand and our kinsman says. 1 am going away to-morrow, and when I arrive at home, I will send all at my own expense, sample cases of all the fruit that grows in my vast orchard " He bids us adieu. The lightning limited train vanishes in the distance. The children keep the spirit of expectation fresh; to them the days drag slowly by; but in due time the heavy truck of the express transfer comes thundering along and stops at our door. Are we surprised? Not at all, we have been expecting such a visitation. The fruit is unloaded and unpacked, and quicker than it takes to tell it, there is a carnival of fruit in our home ihe news reaches all the immediate friends and neighbors: indeed, they had been invited to share in this novel luxury before its arrival. How many critics from the desert of doubt, think you. would It take to invarle that jubilant crowd and convince It that the cherished friend had never gone to his truit-producing home, nor sent any fruit to us? i liey would be defeated and dismissed by a volley 84 THB BURNING BUSH. i of testimony and deafene*^ by incontrovertible shouts of derision and scorn. This is but a picture of what our Lord did in those closing epochal days. He sat in the midst and drew those fear-filled followers to Him, and carefully outlined the advent, office and operations of the other Comforter. "He shall be in you. He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever 1 have said unto you. He shall testify of Me. He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak. And He will show you things to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you." We may know, and blessed be God, we do know that our Lord is indeed risen and has ascended to the Father and that the Comforter has come, although we have had no tangible message, nor has an a«ge! brought the tidings of His return through the heavens to the right hand of God. But we have infallible evidence and are in possession of inerrant facts, by which we know that our glorious Lord is in the heavens, and the Spirit has come to this earth and is upon the executive throne. l>ecause since that annus mirabilis. that wonderful year, since that red-letter day, when we yielded our life as an instrument, with availability comparable with an archangel. He has done with mathematical accuracy, and demonstrated with divine dynamics in us, and for us, and through »«, exactly wha» Jesus said He would do. So with courtesy and dignity in keeping with the meek and lowly One THE BURNING BUSH. 8$ and with the majestic and heavenly Conqueror we dismiss from the empire of our ransomed beinff every emissary of the Evil One who would suggest *""?», * xJ?*^!'''^ interrogation. The prepositions • "rlr" A^^ ''^i^^'i ^'^ P^*^^"* ^»*h meaning. For and "with" and "in" are the keys to the three great dispensations. The three persons of the J rinity have never been on the earth officially at he same time. In the Old Testament dispensa- tion the Father was the Chief Executive and the others co-operated with Him. In the second we have the Son the conspicuous agent, while in this Iiiffhly-favored age. the Spirit is magnified and the truest honor is bestowed upon the adorable Trinity l)y this method of operation. God was for His people in the time of the theocracy. He was with them when Jesus was upon the earth. "His Name shall be called h-mmanuel, which is. God with us." But we live m the age of the highest privilege and possibil- ities— God in us. The Old Testament record is full of painful pictures of the Father. God, taxing every energy of a paternal passion to reveal Him- self to His people and lead them to a theocentric national life. But they would be like the surround- ing nations. He did not. nor will He, cast oflF His people forever; but He gave them their hearts' [lesire, and with it the inevitable consequences- leanness of soul and the indignity of giving to posterity some of the most unenviable chapters in human history. He ransacked four millenniums to find a man who would let Him pour into his lite the omnific forces, and He found none. Then MICROCOPY RtSOUITION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) IS ■ M iii Hi 13. IK u Mmm 12.2 2.0 1.8 ^ /1PPLIED IM/^GE ^^ 16S3 East Moin StrnI S^S Rochester. New York 1*609 USA ^S (716) ♦82 -0300 -Phone ^S (7<6) 2SS - S989 - Fax 86 7" // £ BURNING BV SH. \\ i He made a " Man, made of a woman, made under the law," and that Man became an omnipotent channel through which cyclones of infinite power could sweep and shake into the dust of the sum- mer threshing-floor the rock-ribbed strongholds of Satan. Christ entered upon the official work at the banks of the Jordan and began, or rather, con- tinued the divine effort of making the purpose and plan of His Father known. He touched human need at all points and yet, consistently inconsistent, those who knew Him best understood Him but partially. He was a riddle to them all. They looked at Him with fault- finding pity and put up with Him. With a blis- tering salinity they importuned others never to mind Him. And at last they become intolerant, laying violent hands upon Him, saying, " He is beside Himself." Awful if it is true, and still more cruelly awful when uttered in the home circle, by those who ought to conceal it most. He said: " I must needs go away. It is expedient for you that I go away." We live in the post-Pentecostal days, at least historically. In the intellectual world we speak of men living ahead of their time. The Chinese nation is living four thousand years behind a pos- sible Christian civiHzation. Doubtless tbere were men in the Old Testament times who lived experi- mentally in the post-Pentecostal experience — such as Gideon. The Holy Spirit clothed Himself with Gideon. What is that but the indwelling Spirit? But the great mass of the historic people lived in, or rather, behind their time. It is not less true THE BURNING BUSH. 87 now. Multitudes of the professed people of God to-day live historically in the third period, the dis- pensation of the Spirit, through no merit or choice of their own; but experimentally they live in the severest forms of Old Testament legalism. The minority only is living in this age of privilege. And the minority of the minority is even now living in the times that are prophetic. They sit in the heavenlies. They sit in Cassiopea's chair, reach forth, lay hold of the great Dipper, and drink angehc nectarine from the heavenly Helicon, and feast on the viands of the age to come. p for some modern Moses to marshal the Christian Church and give to history another exodus and emancipation that will land the hosts of God upon the victorious vantage-ground of the heavenlies in Christ Jesus! The hush of heaven settles down upon the heart as we enter the outer court of this sublime truth, " in Christ, and Christ m us," leading the believer into the sphere of life in which he can pray " in His name." Truth has been given to us in terraced treasures. The unre- generate never does and never can ask for any- thing in Christ's name. It is an impossil-ilityfor him to voice a cry other than for Christ's sake. Indeed, it is practically true of the saint who is living the carnal Christian life so that it is clear to all who have made the observation, that the great burden of prayers by the children of God is "for Jesus' sake." To ask "in His name" is the ele- vated tableland of those who abide in Him. They do not come as suppliants or mendicants, impor- tuning a plutocrat to relieve a difficulty or rescue If If 88 THE BURNING BUSH. from a circumstance of danger. It is the appre- hension, and conscious yea, " the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledging of the mystery of God and of the Father, and of Christ; " and the spiritual consciousness that one has been raised not only from poverty and sin, but has also passed through the years of his minority and has been made a partner in the joint stock company of which his Father is the chiefest of the firm. " If children, then heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesi.: Christ," so that as a member of the great combine, he can make demands and command the wealth of all the unsur- veyed fields and immeasurable mines in the uni- verse of truth. Little wonder, as the Master looked into the unlimited treasures " hid in God," and then at the paltry asking of His disciples, that He should exclaim: " Hitherto ye have asked nothing. Ask, that ye may receive." The deep-dyed intensity of this tremendous truth supplied the indestructably divine dynamics that sustained the martyrs who died for Christ, and the martyrs who have lived like Christ through all time. The fact and fiction of this world stand side by side in trumpet-toned attestation of the fact, as instanced in the story of the trial of Ignatius by Trajan: "Who art thou, poor devil?" asked Trajan. " No one," answered Ignatius, " calls a God-bearer a kakodaemon, unless you mean thereby that having Christ, a heavenly king, I confound the devils of the demons." " And who," asked Trajan, " is a God-bearer? " " He," answered Ignatius, " that has Christ in his breast." " Dost THE BURNING BUSH. 89 hearts?''' '" 'fh '^^' ^'J '°°' ^""^ &°^« '" o"^ hearts? Thou art deceived," said lenatius when thou callest the devils of the nation^s goS s There ,s one God. and Christ Jesus His Son." Uost thou mean Him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate? " asked the emperor. " I speak '' he answered. " of Him that nailed on the cross sin and Its author and sentenced every malice of the devil to be trodden down of them who carry Him irj.i";J''"ut' ; "P""'' ^^°"' '^^^' carry^Christ w thin thyself? " asked the emperor. " Yes " re- plied the martyr, " for it is written, ' I will dwell in them and walk in them.' " " Let Ignatius, who says he carries the Crucified in himself, be fettered taken to Rome and thrown to the wild beasts to amuse the people," was the sentence of Trajan, and Ignatius heartily thanked God. Thus this early tatlier vyhose name means Theophoros, or " the in- flamed, ' was thrown to the lions, as wheat to the merciless mill-stones, ground into the finest of the flour, baked in the oven of nameless cruelty, giv- mg germinal ground-work for the tradition that when his heart was cut in pieces, the name of Jesus was found written in golden letters on everv fragment. ^ ^^ru^^f indwelling Christ is the other Comforter. V\ hy do we call a cravat for the neck a comforter? An extra garment for the body, a heavier lot o'f coverings tor our bed-chamber, or robes for our carriages in winter are commonly called comfort- ers. What IS a comforter? A comforter is that \\hich gets between us and those things which cause and intensify discomfort. A sufferer tosses a- 90 THE BURNING BUSH. in paroxysms of pain upon a sick bed. He is in torturing agony. The physician is called at the darkest moment. He gives an effective remedy and retires. At daybreak he calls, and finds the patient asleep, with pacific restfulness on his face. The sufferer of the past night smilingly responds to the professional question: " O doctor, I am so comfortable this morning." What has happened? The medicine — the spirit of the medical science — has stepped between the sufferer and the torturing disease. The word comforter conveys the idea of one called to our side, to render assistance or comfort, and in the case of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter is within to undertake and successfully consum- mate God's purpose in each life. In the busy whirl of her morning duties the mother often plays the part of a comforter. She hears a shriek from the playground, and rushes out to find her babe in trouble, both hurt and affrighted. The sole aim of the maternal heart is to displace all the trouble real or imagined, and, as far as she can, replace it with herself. The Holy Spirit, who makes con- spicuous the mother-heart of the God-head, is able and willing to do for the child of God what the natural mother exhausts every effort to accom- plish in the suffering body of her babe. The work of the Holy Spirit reads like a tragedy, throbs with comedy, and displays to the world a divine drama in the history of the soul. To comfort the Christian the Holy Spirit must get between him and all that disturbs the soul and the Christian life. He must first get between THE BVRNINIJ BUSH. „, him and his sins. There can be no peace, to sav the^f/ " Th'""""^' "'''" ''"' ">^ and trouble the w^ked."™T"e"Ho.y''1oSit'"'\rJ^°<'- '° sword "tl,» \^T^^ c% 7^*"^' ^'**^ H»s own fhl h; • r M .^"'"^ °^ ^°^' pierces through to psychofe '''""" '^°^* ^^^"^^ ^^^^ to «ome soWt th^ A, ^'l synonymous-" the soul and Wh",; It: *^°"^^? ^"^ '"tents of the heart." S it if^tr^r- ^^' "" unutterable com- S ".f ? ^^""^ ^^^ unshakable assurance tnat our transgressions are as far removed as the East s from the West," and hurled TnToIhe ^byss of obhvion beyond the memory of a g^Jlciou^ member Jo' "1;"" '"' ^^"^ """^^ ^'^ ' - ance^anrffl^i'/."""? '^"°"' '^^^^^ ^^ disturb- o«r «fn ^^^^^tatmg forces than our sins. It is IS nof; 1 '""' '' ^ ^^'^^' ^o^d than sm, but InH tl ^^'' E°'^"'y- Law deals with our sins and they may be pardoned; but the sin may re Sent brnod ''''/7 "-^ ^^"' P^^-petuating^ the at ir. b^oo^.and keepmg the Christian's life in GoJ nn/'T"^^- i"'""'^''- ^^"^t, the Lamb of cirm;x of t^rLn'^ °? '^' '?'' ^"^ ^"dured that sinTbut H?^.l '''' '^ ''"'^'^" P^"^^ty «f our s ns, but He also made provision for the disoo- sition of our sin. "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." And the Sae or'no ''' '°"^' '" '^^'^""^ ^he sin from the ^en?r5 ^ T' ^"^ supremacy in the soul. R^. re^nL ^ '^r"*"^ ^P'"t keeps sin from reigning in us. What an indescribable comfort to 92 THE BURNING BUSH. . K know that the Eternal Spirit stands " the stronger than he," and separates between us and our sin. But deeper down, and if possible still more vile, one with my very heart's blood and life, is still another and a deadlier foe. It is the self-life. " There is a foe within the heart, The Christian well may fear; More subtle far than inbred sin, And to the heart more dear. " It is the power of selffulness, That proud and wilful I; And ere my Lord can dwell in me, My very self must die." " Beside myself " — what does it mean? It must mean outside of myself. How much more truth- fully the world speaks and better than it means, when it critically and cruelly says of a Spirit-filled and Spirit-impassioned life, " He is beside himself. He is mad." Christ at the center, nearer to us than our foes, nearer to us than our friends, and nearer to us than we are to ourselves. The Cre- ator in the creature. The Redeemer in the re- deemed. The Comforter between us and our sinful, self-full and tainted selves. How much of our current parlance is selfish, — watch yourself, help yourself, satisfy yourself, suit yourself and enjoy yourself. When the poetry and heavenly harmony of the beautiful hymn, '* Not my Own," is translated into the majestic prose of every-day life, from what an Atlantean burden of unenviable responsibility the weary soul is relieved. And yet once more the Spirit makes Jesus more real and near to us thz n our salvation. THE BURNING BUSH. 93 Instead of looking upon righteousness, sanctifica- tion and redemption with all the age-long unfold- mgs of mysteries yet hid in God, as experiences to be obtained ana cherished and as causes to be guarded with a legal tenacity, He, the Comforter, beconies the great God-commissioned and be- stowed creative cause, and our salvation from its alpha and omega is the indispensable consequence. Indeed, the whole Christian life is the logical and biological consequence of the Christ. "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them." And thus the hfe, impelled and propelled by the dynanio-genic forces of the indwelling fulness of the whole God-head bodily, shall go forth like its Master, to the divine service and sacrifice for which It lives and moves and has its being; and the whole moral and spiritual universe shall feel the throb of its heart-beat. And Satan shall be hor- nhed; sinners shall be vivified; angels shall be happified; saints shall be magnified; Christ shall be satisfied, and God shall be glorified. if Si i^ THE BURNING BVSH. 95 Chaptbb VIII. Th. Educating ai.i> Ei,rciDAiiNa Missioi. of thk Spibit. ears of the most intimate companionship with II I02 THE BURNING BUSH. Jesus. In quoting texts of Scripture in her pres- ence, should we drop a word, or quote from the Revised Version, with its frequent variations, she would give a kind, but at the same time a negative shake of her head. 3iie told us that she had lead the Bible through once every year for thirty years. It would have been a comparatively easy task for her to have reproduced the Bible should some infernal incendiary burn and banish the Book of books from human ken. The Spirit filled that saintly life, till perspiring perfume flowed like sweet incense from the Rose of Sharon, as He grew and flourished in perennial freshness in the rich and fertile soil of her transplanted and trans- formed heart. The next stage of progress in the acquisition of truth is through information. Let us revert for a moment to our illustration of sugar. The mas- ter of all the sciences may dazzle the world with learned discussions on the chemical constituents of sugar, that sweet adjunct of the larder. He may be the successful competitor, and distance all others for the chair in a cosmopolitan university. He may discourse wisely upon carbon and cor- rectly estimate all the forces in its giant arm to run the multiform enginery of the mechanical world. He may launch out like a modern Colum- *^us and push his way over the trackless waters contained in the numberless brooks and rivers and lakes and seas and oceans, and come back to deliver m.esmeric messages, before which vast con- courses of aspiring students are swayed as by a mighty wind. He may daguerrotype his mind for THE BURNING BUSH. 103 m vo?,rh? ^^ '^^ '°""^" ^^"^' ^"^ generations blessed. He may know all about that sweet and useful commodity. No secret of its composition may escape the keenness of his lynx eye. And at the same time he may be so disabled by disease or incapacitated by habits not uncommon amone Uie great, so that so far as the experimental esti- ^l y?!, '"?f/ ^""f"^^^^ sweetness is concerned. the little child with access to an old-fashioned sugar-bowl is an infinitely better judge than the man who is freighted down with all the well-earned honors and qualifications of the schools, but whose sense of taste has been disquaHfied as a critic by the vitiating habits of stimulants and irritants. If there is any danger above another into which we who preach the -ospel of the grace of Ood are likely to fall, it is this cunningly-set trap of intellectualism. We often hear the unrighteous criticism that the ministers are not preaching the gospel. May we not t.njtlifully assert that there is not a conspicuously large number who are guiltv of perjuring the pulpit, but that possibly there IS at least a large minority of men who have never nsen to the conviction of their supernatural com- mission and who stand upon the second tableland, giving exhaustive expositions of the psychical truth? We reach the highest cardinal level and thrc with the fullest manifestation of God when \ apprehend the third great step in the progressive revelation of the truth as embodied in the generic term, incarnation. I04 THE BURNING BUSH. pi'' 'I IS. if it. The merchant may make and mass his millions with mammoth warehouses of sugar; the cars of commerce may groan under the growing imports and exports, and yet those who handle the freightage of sweetness itself may ferment with the rebellious spirit of the capital-hating laborer. The analyst may measure and weigh and estimate its value; but none of these can test its intrinsic sweetness. There is only one way to know it is sweet, and that is by experience, or in other words, by tasting. And the human heart breaks into ecstatic rap- ture as it contemplates the thought that God, the everlasting God, has put the basis of knowing Him on a level easily accessible to the lowest order of human intelligence. Not a few times have we heard as a proof text that we cannot know God, the interrogative declaration: " Canst thou by searching find- out God?" And with an inflated air of victory the agnostic shades into an expres- sion of astonishment because his dogma does not crush out all hope of knowing the Unknown. He quotes a truth from the infallible and in- errant Word. It does not prove that we cannot know God, but that we cannot know Him by re- search. For the Blessed Book oflfers another and a simpler way by which we may know God. If it were necessary for a man to know the alphabet of any language to know God, multitudes must go down to hopeless despair. And one man, with whom the writer is intimately acquainted, who once said in a testimony meeting : " I cannot spell the word let, but I can let God;" and no saint THE BURNING BUSH. loS t^armus hi ^'" '^"i '"^^^^"'^ ^"t ^"«t^°"« Chris- of on^nf th ^°"^ ''^^^ *° *^^ S^^^e ^d doom of one or the most corrupt men in his community. hTorrl^rT °J ^"'''•^? '"^"' ^^° <=^"«°t read, and sticks a pm m the figures on the face of the cal- endar and yet with mathematical accuracy he can guide his ocean greyhound as he reads The vaulted rTa" Z' o/'f 'r^ "' "^^u^^- ^^-^ - -deed t^^ 'n!^h? Lnnn ""^'"r'^" ^P*"^ °^ understand- ing that enables us to live anywhere and anywhen. We stand on the threshold of the beginnhigless beginning and watch the Creator rolling sysfems on systems out by Almighty fiat, and know by unernng faith that " the worlds were made bj the \V ord of God." The humbling honor of knowing the s tiblimest truths-truths for which the angels "light gladly leave their thrones of Hght-is often given to one who cannot spell a word of two sylla- bles or analyze a simple sentence in grammar Une of the most interesting book writers comes ice at this point; " I know some- thincr "^/fu ^^?-f '^^ r "'" F"""-, 1 Know Some- thing of the life o a man who is often named as he most distinguished philosopher of the nine- eenth century He slept but four hours out of the nSr' '"' '^ ""^' r^'y y^^'^' Never sick wrnf A f ^?",^eary, he travelled and read and wrote and studied enough to wear out half a dozen ordinary men. He learned many languages. He was familiar with every department of science. He explored vast libraries. He knew the scientific men ?L "^iJ-°"'- ^e received a hundred thousand letters. Kings and princes delighted to do him io6 THE BURNING BUSH. honor. Titles and diplomas of distinction were scattered like rubbish about his room. Ministers of state, generals in the army, officers of kingly courts, professors of colleges, travellers, academ- icians and students, all counted it an honor to have known him. That man ranged through all the departments of nature, science, literature and philosophy, and fbund no God, no Savior, no heav- en, no promise or prospect of everlasting life. With all his disccveries he never found the river of God's pleasure. I knew something of the life of another man, who was not permitted even to own himself, and yet that poor man had such pleasures as belong to the infinite God. He had expectations that over-passed the boundaries of earth and time. He could read his " title clear to mansions in the sky." All the books on the imitation of Christ might have been written and their precepts obeyed with legal accuracy in the Old Testament dispensation. And even in our highly privileged age, but few have found the secret that we are not called upon to imitate Him, but to receive Him — the risen Christ — in the power of the Holy Ghost and have the Christ-life reproduced, re-incarnated in, and lived through us. Should a fevered ambition seize us to reproduce the classics of Greece and repeat the history of those giant minds, what folly it would be to strain after their immortal fame without their spirit. But could some good spirit from the para- dise of the poets take us by the hand, nay, more, enter into and possess us and press us up the slopes of " Parnassus, on whose highest peak sparkles the THE BURNING BUSH. 107 Pienan fountain, whose waters impart the true genius of poetry, oratory and the fine arts, where Homer Hesiod, Pindar, Sapho and many others scaled the heights, drank from those Pierian foun- tains and electrified the world with the brilliancy of their genius," then could we resurrect and bring from the future a grander and a diviner Greece. 1 his IS the secret, in the fulness of the Spirit, to climb the Alpine peaks and, drinking from the heavenly fountains, make the worid feel that the Master still writes poetry in stanzas more sublime than the literature of the classic hills. Michael Angelo is called the inimitable artist. 1 hat one would be a monster of cruelty who ought to be dethroned, who would condition the acces- sion to a father's throne, much less the life of his child, upon the reproduction of the inimitable. And Christ is infinitely beyond the power of men or angels to imitate; and the utter hopelessness of the task is its most hopeful feature. It is not the unbending severity of a tyrant or task-master, but the wisdom of a father, who wants to drive us from the method of failure and draw us to look for the better way— the enthronement of the ascended and glonfied Lord, through the Pentecostal power of the Holy Spirit, to have manifested through the Church, His body, the inimitable life— " even as Pie. Christ's words, " And bring all things to your remembrance," is a strong admonitory rebuke to those who ignore the letter of the Word especially and all literature in general. To bring to remem- brance implies the presence of the facti in the » i 108 THE BURNING BUSH. mind. There go into one of the largest American post offices daily three hundred tons of mail matter. The distributing department can only dis- tribute to the millions the amount that has been cwitnbuted by the incoming mail. And so the official mission of the Spirit is not to give informa- tion, but to illuminate the information and to guide m the dispensation of previously acquired stores of truth. If we were not afraid of Pharisaic presump- tion, we would advise all young men to empty their pockets into their heads, to buy books; to empty their heads into their hearts, those furnaces of fiery enthusiasm, to be dissolved into material for truly revolutionary lives, and empty their lives into the stupendous issues of their own generation, in sacrifice and service for a suffering humanity. The ambassador of Jesus Christ should prepare to preach as if there were no God, and forge pro- jectiles of prophetic momentum that would be best calculated to do deadly execution to the black fleets of a Satanic foe, in a world from which God has been banished, and then stand in the 'impot- ence of incarnate weakness and let Him speak as if there were none but He " who spake and it was done, who commanded and it stood fast." We would be the recipients of great benefits were we to stand with the Master Builder in the work-shop of the carboniferous age. " The highest type of animal had been reached. There was a pause and a preparation by purification had to be made for the advent of another class." There was a superabundance of carbonic acid, which must be removed. The divine Chemist could have com- :- m THE BURNING BUSH. 109 bined It wiih hme and imprisoned it in limestone. It could have been detailed to do valuable service in other kmgdoms of this vast universe. But car- bon IS very precious. It is the basis of all our com- bustion It blazes and warms in gas, petroleum and coal, and upon it we depend for light and heat and motion. The carbon must be preserved for future use. Man would discover its utilities. Man was yet prophetic. Man was involved in the pur- pose of God. God toiled unceasingly through all the creative week to prepare a habitation for man. He would need the forces to be developed from carbon. And the willing virgin, Vegetation, was chosen to accomplish the dignified service. "God made the mighty forests grow. He poured the sunshine upon the green leaves that every branch might treasure up a - tion of em- bodied light. He sent forth great .er-floods to sweep the fallen trunks of millions of trees into ravines and valleys between the hills. He covered them over and pressed them down with masses of sand and earth. He hardened the covering into stone, that the storehouse might not be opened till the time of need." He pressed the solar forces into vegetation and compressed them in geological Gethsemanes. and then with His strong hand and mighty arm He lifted up the massive doors and man resurrects the long-buried sunlight and trans- forms it into force, and light, and heat, and sends them forth in throbbing steam and electric mes- sengers, annihilating time and space and hasten- ing the prophetic picture, when ''there shall be no more sea." , * ■ 1 10 THE BURNING BUSH. M-'y wc not say it reverently that the blessed Book is the pent-up forces of God, provided through sixteen stormy centuries? All the poten- cies of the. inspired Word, in every tendril of the tree of life, in every leaf and every cell of the oak- tissued trunk that stood for ages the Satan-tossed tempest, once throbbed in the great heart of God. Revelation is the program of God's purpose and plan for ruined and redeemed humanity. Reve- lation was given to this world under the tonnage of awful pressure, and in the oil-press of Getli- semane the power of God was prepared from the True Olive and stored in the risen Christ for the Church of all time. When the Holy Spirit possesses the surrendered body, soul and spirit of the child of God, the life that has become a rich repository of the written Word is kindled into a living flame. All the awakened forces and powers of the soul, clothed with the authority of the risen Christ, stand like a Promethean monster, who forges the pan- oply of God for the consecrated life and multiplies it into invincible armies, leading them on to con- quest as if swept by a hurricane of the infinite God. THE BURNING BUSH. Ill cuaptea ix. Thjc VVitnessino and Waitixo Mission of tue Spirit. " But when the Comforter is come, whom I wilt send you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning." HTix- »vord translated ''witness" in the text is ■ u^ed as a synonym for "martyr," although martyr' means infinitely more than "wit- ness. When a man is called to witness before the common court of the judicial world as he stands to dispense the truth that may determine the life or death of a fellow mortal or decide the destmy of momentous issues, for his protection and safety he has at his command all the poHce force of the city, and still more he may demand safe-keepmg from all the military might of the em- pire while he gives his testimony. But a martyr is not only one who has truth, but a spirit upon whom the truth has fastened a fever-like grip and sways him with the consciousness of the Absolute of heaven and hell. To give his evidence may hurl from the throne the very powers that frame the timbers and build the pantheons of corrupt papal 11 112 THE BURNING BUSH. powers, and thwart the purpose of unrighteous pohtical policies. His story may prove an irritant, like the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem. It may start all the thrones of the Caesars rocking. It may send with the thud of omnipotence all the anti-Christian systems smashing, crashing into the God-determined depths of destruction. It may rouse the ire of infernal hosts and disgorge the wrath of Satanic revenge upon the head of the martyr. But though the heavens bend and break over his head in tempests of torment, though the conspiring world of demon-peopled night form an alliance of death with the Christ-rejecting rage of pagan Rome, the Pauline martyr will tell his flaming story, though his head be severed from his body. Being strong in faith, staggering not, stimulated and strengthened by the " blessed hope " that at the resurrection of the just he shall be re- headed, glorified and glorious with a tiara of tri- umph and a diadem like the dome of star-decked night dazzling upon his brow. In the annunciation of the Holy Spirit, the Lord said: "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me." What a weight of responsibility rests upon the soul of a witness! One is awed as he enters those palaces of justice and beholds the judges ermined and em- powered with the disposition of bodies and souls for time and eternity. He holds the keys of life and death. He is the minister and the master of law. He proclaims pardon, the dark cell is for- saken, and it may be. the darker doom of the black-robed executioner vanishes before the morn- ing star of liberty's dawn, and there are ecstatic THE BURNING BUSH. n^ hearts and rapt -ou. rejoicings of mother, father, Trh th '^'■'" f f *P^"^^' ^^ '^ °"e had come ou from the sepulchred dead. The same judge pro- nounces a penalty, and the same throng of true and tender hearts, that for weary months had hoped against hope, collapse under the cruel blow. \^''l^'''S,gnei-hroken hearts look for the last time at the object of doom. He passes into the dark dungeon, disgraced himself and disgracing the mnocents, and is huiled into a black eternity Does not the summons to be a witness impress us with the awfulness and awe-fulness of our responsibility? For It IS not the judicial wisdom of the judge, it is not the forensic bnlliance and legal keenness of the advocate but the unbiassed, unadulterated testi- mony of responsible witnesses, who may not be able to spell a word of two syllables, nor parse a simple English word, to say nothing about thread- ing their way through the subtleties of law that controls the balances of equity before the minds of an intelhgent jury. The trial of the Christ is still going on It IS Bar^bbas or Christ now, just as it was two millenniums ago. It is said that Barabbas' name was " Jesus." too, it being a common name in the East, and this may be the partial explanation of the expression used in Scripture, Jesus, which is called the Christ," to distinguish rtim from the impostor and murderer. The two Jesus Barabbas. and Jesus the Christ, still stand at the bar of the human heart. As in our Lord's time, so now. there is a time- servin^^, man-fearing judge on the bench, an un- \iH 114 THE BURNING BVSH. '*->!'; lawful, cruel mob, a sin-constituted jury clamoring for an opportunity to commit over again the crime of ages, to crucify afresh the Lord of glory. The carnal mind and the world-corrupted heart are pressmg v.ith a diabolical consistency for the liberation and coronation of Barabbas. A witness must have a personal knowledge of the facts m the case. There is no pronoun he must use wth such egotistical frequency as the pronoun I. He cannot give scholarly dissertations on what he thinks. He cannot lend wings to his imagination and display his hopes. There is no rooi 1 for speculative flights. When he has ex- hausted his store of personal knowledge, he has fulfilled the only purpose for which the court has summoned him. And only those who know their Savior by an experimental acquaintance are truly witnesses unto Him. And we may have indestruct- ible evidence that He lives in us. "settles down m our hearts by faith," and that we live, and move, and have our being in Him. It is of the most vital importance that we know that "we have passed out of death into life." not only for our own sakes, but also for the sake of Him who is our Lord and Savior, who is still on a long-drawn-out trial. Up- on the value or worthlessness of our evidence may be heaped unutterable indignities, or honors befit- ting His royal character. The witness must tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He must give his tes- timony personally. He must speak out boldly be- fore both parties — friends and foes — and must not mince matf's. He must testify courageously. THE BURNING BUSH. 115 fully, constantly. He must speak. It is not optional. It is obligatory. He who refuses to give the facts in his possession is not only guilty of contempt of court, but is guilty of any injustice that may be inflicted upon an innocent party, by the withholding of the evidence that is in his power to communicate. The two conspicuous needs of the Church to-day are the flaming prophets, who shall stand as seers upon the watch-towers of our time and give God's message to our generation like a trumpet-blast from an archangel's volcanic voice, and the fearless, faithful witnesses to the full- orbed, supernatural, present-day truth. We would not for an instant underrate nor de- preciate the importance of holy and consistent living, but at the same time "■ must not under- estimate the value, and must • -ve to conversation and testimony the highest niche that the Scripture warrants. When Bunyan's famed Christian was on his way to the City of Life, he frequently overtook and was overtaken by other pilgrims. As they journeyed along, we find the faithful one at once provoking celestial conversation. But such Christ- like conduct was uniformly rejected like a distaste- ful drug by Formality, Pliable, Worldly-wise-man and Legality. Even Talkative, who could easily lead the conversation on all other subjects, was stricken with a strange dumbness; and soon they all "turned every one to his own way" and the blood-washed pilgrim was once more alone pressing on and up "singing and making melody in his heart unto the Lord." m Ii6 THE BURNING BUSH. If our commonwealth is in heaven, if our com- panions are there, if our costume is woven in the looms of heaven, if our common Lord is there, our daily conversation, with the gravitating spontan- eity of love, ought to center there. The writer knows a Christian gentleman who once walked the streets of one of the largest cities m Amenca for sixty hours, at intervals, for the purpose of detecting the common and current topics of street conversation. He reported that dunng that week he had heard all subjects within the poles and the circumferences of human com- merce, pleasure and sin. but never once heard the name of God. Jesus or heaven, except n the dese- crating breath and tongue of the blaspnemer. During the last great Pan-American Exposi- tion, it IS doubtful if there were more than an in- significant minority of adults and vouthful spirits on this North American continent' who were not asked by some individual, and who did not ask the question: "Are you going to the Pan-Amer- ican. Why? Because it was the occasion of a Iife-time. The sight of that tower of light was like the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven Buffalo was in the affections of the people If the matter is upon the heart, it does not take any more gitt to ask a man if he has a ticket on the Li-htnin-^ Limited Liie-Line Railroad for the Celestial Citv the home of the soul, than it takes to ask a neigh^ bor ^ he IS going by the Continental Special ^o iJo hSo^^. '''''' ''^' ^- -^ ^^- ^-e passed i J THE BURNING BUSH. "7 If we walk for sixty hours through the clois- tered corridors of Davidic psalmody, our hearts will be thrilled with the stories and songs and shouts of overflowing testimony; *' I will speak," '• I will tell," " I will sing," " I will cry aloud,'" " Come all ye that fear God and I will declare what He hath done for my soul." When the shepherd kmg was but a lad, he was sent by his father to brmg tidings of the welfare of his military brethren and to carry some delicious luxuries from the hearts and home of their parents. As the unarmed strip- ling was visiting with his soldier-brothers on the field of battle, the God-defying, blaspheming giant came out to challenge and insult the army of the Lord. The future hero began to rise in the breast of the youthful David. He volunteered to humble and destroy the Goliath. He refused the cumbrous armor of the king, and when asked from what source was his hope kindled, that he could conquer the opposing and oppressing mon- ster, he responded by giving a startling testimony. David said unto Saul, "Thy servant kept h'is father's sheep, and there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock; and I went out after him and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth. The Lord that delivered me out of the mouth of the lion and the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." And put- ting a smooth stone into his sling he smote the giant, and with the giant's own strong sword cut ofif Goliath's head. With one stroke of God- inspired courage he turned the tide of battle on Israel's side. I ■ ii8 THE BURNING BUSH. Pifl When Paul, for preaching the gospel of the boundless grace of God, and especially emphasiz- ing the power of the resurrection, was hunted by the sleuth-hounds of persecution, when he was sur- rounded by malignant ecclesiastics; when the in- flamed multitude panted for his life's blood, crying '•away with him!" he came upon the stairs, as he was borne by the soldiers, for the violence of the people. He beckoned with the hand unto the people, and when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue saying: " Men, brethren and fathers, hear ye my (letence which I make now unto you." And after a stirring introductory charge, he dethroned all the power of the opposition with the testimony of his own supernatural conversion: *' And it came to pass, that as I made my joumev unto Damascus, about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me, and I fell unto the ground and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul. Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Constrained through life by the consuming reality of this heav- enly vision, the peerless apostle lived and suffered and after givin.cr an inventorv of all the forces of the arch-fiend, he could pen the deathless sentence for all time: " Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors." " He shall testify of Me," was the God-given assurance. Christ came to reveal the Father, and the Spirit has come to make manifest and reveal the Son. The Holy Spirit is to the Sun of Right- eousness what the terrestrial atmosphere is to the sun of our solar system. The light and heat of THE BURNING BUSH. 119 the sun conies across abysses of space with a tem- perature two hundred degrees below zero, over a region as void of light as incarnate darkness itself. So marvelously is it constituted by an all- wise Creator and the foreseeing providence of a Paternal heart, when it reaches our air or sur- rounding atmosphere, it bursts into light, to illumine and brighten the face of His footstool, to warm and melt and dispel the snows of eternal winter, to quicken and resurrect the dead from the sepulchre of nature, and robe the whole surface of the globe with countless forms of life and beauty. So the Spirit has come from the Father and the Son, He throws around the Spirit-regenerated life an atmosphere, a personal, spiritual, supernatural atmosphere, which becomes a perfect transmitter, through which the risen Sun of Righteousness, although high up in the heaven of heavens, may transform the whole environment of the soul into a conservatory of heaven let down to earth. The climate is that of the world beyond the change of f.easons. The growth is as prodigal as the tropics. And as the solar center fills and suffuses all things, and is in all life, although millions of miles away, so the unsetting, unfading Sun and Center of all the star and sun-sown systems of immensity, fills all the realms of our being and becomes the center of our ransomed natures. The Spirit becomes the heat-generating radiator, and the true Christian life becomes a divine radiation, like an alabastron box, warming and lighting and making fragrant all the spheres through which we -,veep, singing I20 THE BURNING BVSH. and shining around the immeasurable orbit of the r-temal Center. The clearer and purer the atmosphere the less conscious and sensible we are of it, but as it dissolves and disappears into the transparency of an etherea temple and the sun, like a great sov- ereign of light, fills it with His glory. Thus it is also with the Spirit. The mofe Scriptural our tZ'T'^'i '"^ the more spiritual our apprehen- sion, the less conspicuous the Spirit becomes and the more personally real and vitally near Jesus is to us as our Savior and Lord. Perhaps one ^nint^fT'^M?"c^"' P*"^"''^^ ^f this selfless spirit of the Holy Spirit is found in the Gospel of Genesis- rom the master-brush of Moses. It s the story of Abraham's servant, probably Eliezer no! me:f"'%^'^ l^'^-^'^^"^ ^P-^' hrname i^ not mentioned in the record to which we refer. The mission of Eliezer in the historical, and ye thrsoinTin' V '?^"' "^^ '""^ ^^-^ ^" -t': the Spmt in this Christian age. His was to find a bride for Isaac the child of promise, the only son and heir of Abraham. The mission of the Holy Spirit IS to gather out a Bride for Jesus, the cWld of prophecy and of promise, the only begotten Son of God, the Heir of all things. Eliezer takes the oath that he shall go to Abra- ham s kinsfolk for the chosen virgin, and then sets no LI?>'°" w""""^*? *^' commission of destiny for postenty. He took with him ten camels, ladened uith an earnest of Abraham's wealth, Isaac's future inheritance As he journeys along, he prays and counsels with God. In due time, he arriUs at the THE BURNING BUSH. 131 trysting place, at the Mesopotamian well. They unload and pitch their tents^ and the messenger of the patriarch continued to confer with God — " And it came to pass, before he had done speak- ing, that behold, Rebekah came out, and the dam- sel was very fair." She gladly gave him drink, and with the bounding hilarity of a girl, filled up the troughs for the camels. He rewarded her kind- ness with " a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands, of ten shekels weight of gold. And the damsel ran and told these things to them of her mother's house. And Laban ran out unto the man and he said. Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, wherefore standest thou with- out? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels." The camels were speedily stabled and stalled, and supplied with provender. And Eliezer is ushered into the heartsome home and urged to immediately partake of a bountiful sup- per. But he declined till he had told his story and had unbosomed his great trust. After giving his testimony, " I am Abraham's servant," he begins to magnify his lord — " The Lord hath blessed my master greatly, and He hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and menservants, and maidservants, and camels and asses." Then, after giving an exhaustive inventory of Abraham's wealth, he added, " He has an only son — he is the heir of the boundless estate ; and I am sent to woo and win a bride, to hare with Isaac the posses- sions of his father." Rebekah's heart was won, through the mediating ministry of the faithful am- bassador of Abraham, and her hand was offered 122 THE BURNING BUSH. wjTioZrn^ '^"^ ^^^ "^* y^' "'»• The home- ward journey was soon accomplished. She met hte shared with him the fulness of the possessions and the still greater honor of continuing ^e chosen hne that was to be crowned by the^ coming of Him who was called " Wonderful ' " ^ ot the bpint in this Church dispensation. He is here dunng: the elective, selective age to chooi a wrin! u- '^^^"" °^ ^°^- «^ ^ransfor^nTThe Airmen Word into an inventory of the unsurveved and bo,„,, inheritance and in^measurable weYl h and faithf,' "''-"^ ^"'^'^ ^^' ^P'"^' '^' ""tiring and aithful minister of the God of Abraham dis- tributes Himself through all the God-appointTi ami God-anomted agencies of evangelization to gather the chaste and blood-washed vfrgin. " the Church TeaT '""T "' """^'^'" ^^°"^ -» kindreds anJ peoples and tongues, to stand with her Lord at the marnage altar, to join Him in the bonds o eternal wedlock, to walk with Him in\vhite for-' ever to be elev;ated to her place of regal splendor and to share with Him the glory of the God " U-ho gives its lustre to the insect's wing And «i,eels His throne on the rolling' worlds." I THE BU RNINO BUSH. "3 CUAPTEB X. The GriDiNo and Globifyiko Mission of the Sl'IBIT. " And when He is come. He ivill reprove the tvorld of sin and of righteousness and of judgment: of sin because they believe not in Me; of righteousness be- cause I go unto My Father, and ye see Me no more; of judgment because the prince of this world is judged. I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now; Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth, is come. He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will show you things to come." T^HE Holy Spirit is in the world to do a double I work. His heavenly commission is to effect the convction and conversion of the sinner and minister to the comfort and confirmation of the saint. The word translated " reprove " has no exact synonym in our language, but means to prove upon, or against, to convict by proof, to i>resent such evidence as will be suflficient to con- demn if it fail to convince. The Spirit will con- vince, convict, convert or condemn the sinner; but His special ministrations in the Church are to guide the saint and glorify the Savior. 124 THE BURNING BVSH ■ i the revelation. Gewratfon n*"'™'™ ""l «hen alpha to its ome^=L f!i? ■?'u°'' """o". from its .u-enti; :: °1T {.aie'l ,e'°C^;.t:„^ ^^h" insurmountable difficulty that ft^ , ?' ^J' m.nd of Nicodemus was 1 ow he ^uld* ?:', '"* ■ ^o^rl^e'-drrne-'d^ '^e ^t^^^fatiol-faif ^ ^re' tTelch ,h' ""7 ^X'^^' '^'^ ^^'^'^'' God. began h:^fS%ea.^vrid"-/:rtH:!::Titt Svt^L'enSut l^t^n-^ri £S^ ;ux^dt,^:s.''t"Rl''-'';'T-!°^ Infhel'tr'^'r.H^!:'^"-™"';^^'^^ m tnem, for God hath shown it unto them For fhl Zm'J^T f "™ '™"' 'hrcreaUon of he tZl. ,h?, '"'^ f'"' ''"'"e "nderstood by the Godf J^ ^'l ""'t'' "'" «« "="ial power and Wnr^ t r J ''T '■«•" °' Natu.e." But the ens i f^t cor''."' "'^ '''"^'«= <" 'h' h=^- ens as if it contained encyclopaedic volumes of flaming sentences and illustmed paragt^phTthat THE BURNING BUSH. las the blind may fed, the child may comprehend and mto whuse unfathomed deep the telescopic eye of the philosopher and scientist may pore and prove the plans, the purposes and the counsels of the Creator, " even His eternal power and Godhead." The combmed purpose of the numberless lumin- aries that march with solemn pomp and exquisite harmony on the plains of limitless space, singing the song of the morning, was to announce the coming of a fuller and completer revelation, which bnngs us to the Scriptures or written Word. " God has made three revelations of Himself— His works. His words, and His Son. They are each and all progressive. Nature, the law and the gospel, a silent, material universe, an inspired Book, a living God-man. A fourth, a fuller reve- lation of God is yet to come. Then each of the revelations is in itself progressive. The earth attained perfection in a series of successive stages. The Word also was given during sixteen stormy centunes, closing with the life of Jesus Christ, which was and is slill a revelation of timeless pro- gression. But we need a guide to teach the alpha- bet and spell out the monosyllables, to say noth- ing about untwisting the stupendous sentences of the stars. God has given us the guide through Copernicus, Keplar. Herschel, as well as the mod- ern masters of nature's book. We also need a guide to the written Word. Put an unlettered son of toil into a blooming meadow in summer time. The earth groans with countless forms of vegeta- tion, from the lowest and most worthless to the highest forms of floral beauty, and the fragrant .1*1 'i: 126 THE BURNING BUSH. svveetness of the clover, the broad, waving acres of the nchest pnced grasses. To the fanner, unin- mated in the natural sciences, the whole scene presents but a mixed, disorderly mass of obnoxious weeds, scattered in purposeless confusion among the useful and profitable products of the farm. But give the same view-point to the master professor of the botanical sciences, and he will take the teach- able pupil by the hand and lead him up by a fauh- less spiral staircase of unerring systems, up and up to the private chambers of creative omnipotence, who spake and it was done, who commanded and It stood fast." The Word of God is not a mechan- ism, else it could be understood and explained by logical processes. It is an organism, and must be studied and experienced according to biological Without the supernatural Guide whom Jesus proniised to send, to the most scholarly mind, with all the present-day intellectual acumen, the Book will appear to be a heterogeneous mass, just as the meadow appears to the illiterate rustic. 1 hrough dmt of hard toil and perspiring energy he receives a living the one physicr.1 and the other spiritual. But the Spirit transforms the whole book into a cofnplete organic system, de- veloping through the centuries into the infalHble revelation of the will of God to man. His will and purpose may have come down from the stars, through the Scriptures, by the Spirit, who becomes the personal, indwelling Guide, and who leads the surrendered life through the Scrip- tures, and will ultimately bear such a life up THE BURNING BUSH. 127 through and beyond the stars to his place with Chnst upon His Father's throne. A guide is not some helper we take with us. but an e.Tcient, well-qualified intelligence, who t:iKes us .vith him. Let a sight-seeing traveler vistt the i aid of the Alps. He pays his guide and starts o-^i to lead, but the guide refuses to follow Loss and m all likelihood death to all the party would mevitably follow such a course. But the Alpme guide, who is as much at home among those majestic peaks and gorges and hair-breadth nar- rows as a bird in its native air, leads the way, and after the trip of wonder and adventure, the preci- pitous and perilous passes, the satisfied traveler understands the wisdom of absolute surrender to uidf"^ ^"''^' and the safety of following the Nearly two thousand years ago the Holy Spirit brought the Son of God from the topless peaks of the purpose of God, and humanized Him in the mystery of the incarnation. He guarded Him from the inflamed jealousy and hate of a usurping kine He guided the infant Savior to a hiding-place in historic Egypt. He led Him. unarmed and un- harmed through the inimitable life, and bore Him from the tomb "far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that IS named, not only in this world, but also in that which IS to come." And now the ascended jurist has sent and commissioned the same Spirit to undertake each Christian life, to lead every sur- rendered child of God victoriously through the same Satan-contested battlefields and to triumph- ■'■ caM. 128 THE BURNING BUSH. antly carry the conqueror to the coronation day and give him his place aniong the heroes of heaven. It would seem to the student :f history that the apostolic and immediate post-apostolic Church lost the fulness of the truth by a progression of relapses. The Ephesian Church of revelation, the first in the timeless mirror of the churches, was commended and eulogized for a seven-fold quali- fication, which would pass in our critical times as an equipment of the highest efficiency for the high- est offices at the disposition of the Church. But this same church is strongly admonished, and in- deed blamed, for having relaxed her first love. Waves of worldliness in rapid succession dashed over the church, crystallizing its secretions and en- casing the church in its vicious grip. About the time of Constantine, the Vesuvian volcano of pre- latic and papal powers broke like a decumen deluge over the celestial craft di ring the " dark ages." Putrefaction petrified, and all but starless night held sway, until the Word of God lay buried beneath strata of death, as impenetrable as the rocky quarries of earth's coal and mineral deposits, when barbarians peopled our forests. But the dark night has passed away, the " morn- ing star of the Reformation," Wyclifte, digs up the Word from the rubbish in the gray dawn of the morning and in the dim Ught of the coming day, he beholds, in flaming golden capitals, the Holy Bible, the " Memoirs of God," His message of life and light and love to man. Immediately another rugged miner, Luther, the miner's son. THE BURNING BUSH. 129 appears, with pickaxe and hammer. With giant- like strokes he breaks the crust of papal corrup- tion and he picks tHte magic key to the kingdom of God, and from its hiding-place for ten tempest- uous and blood-guttered centuries, he unlocked "the just shall Hve by faith." He knocked the key- stone from the papal arch, and the whole system is crumbling and falling, and will ultimately go down with a crash before the flaming vengeance of the coming Christ. Then, another colossal spirit comes above the horizon of history, in the person of John Wesley, who, with his co-laborer, Whitfield, went deeper and found the forces by which the truth hitherto known was put into solution, to impart tl:e right- eousness of Christ and put truth into the life-blood, giving the resultant consequences of a pure heart and a holy life and the anointing with which those violent evangels of the e\ lasting gospel moved the multitudes and led tei . of thousands to the cleansing fountain and shook two contin- ents by the " foolishness of preaching." And now, in these latter epoch-making da> 3, many men and women from all denominations Lnd sections of the Christian Church are digging deep and finding access to the deep-sea depths of God, and are bring- ing to view the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit as promised by our Lord in those closing days of His ministry, as He outUned the mission of the Comforter, Teacher, Testifier and Guide of the Church till the close of the age. It seems patent to the unveiled heart, and th'- Spirit-clarified eye, that the time of the fulfilment (0) \l A i'fii] m I30 THE BURNING BUSH. ''ll I of Joel s prophecy is just fining over the horizon. Ihe civihzed nations of continental Europe and America have had the eariy kin, in the great re- vivals that have at intervals. swept like tidal waves over all peoples since the dawn of the Reformation. Ihe hermetically sealed doors, the rocky strong- holds of superstition, and the steel-panoplied anti- Christian armies of heathenism, have long stood in defiance and resisted the onward march of Chris- tian civilization. For a generation there has been a forced international courtesy that admits with marked intoleration the white-winged messengers of the cross. But God is now hastening to girdle the globe with the gospel of the kingdom. He is letting loose the Spirit like the wind, and even now we hear the crashing and down-falling forests of paganism, in which every form of iniquity has been hatched with tropical abundance for ages Following in its train, we hear the crackling, con- suming fire of prophetic Pentecost, licking up the dead and dying waste. The whole vvorid vibrates with the thunderings of the rugged plowshares of divine providence, as they go breaking up the fal- low ground of rank, rooted heathenism; and it would seem clear to the watchman who has taken the dispensational point of view in the plan of God that in the immediate future, as loudly intimated by recent reports from Japan, there may be con- tinued with superiative, supernatural swiftness, a worid-wide evangelization. And it might not be impertinent for some stalwart saint, who walks with his head and heart in the heavens, to prophesy, that the only general revival to be looked for in THE BURNING BUSH. 131 these lands upon which the early rains have fallen, will be conspicuous^ manifested in the churches of America and European countries. The great Master of the harvest is thrusting upon the fields the strongest, the most scholarly and the holiest of men, who, with prophetic vision and Pentecostal voices, are calling the Church to the hidden life, to the experimental knowledge of the " mystery that was hidden for ages and from generations, which is Christ in you the hope of glory." " He shall show you things to come." As in the natural heavens there are terraces of heavens, in the spiritual life there are heavens and heavens, and heavens of heavens. The vision of the truth is so unutterably glorious that even Paul, though he had outlooked the blaze of the Syrian sun, could not and dared not do more, after over fourteen years, than say it would be unlawful to speak of them. And yet modem astronomy has climbed the starry staircase of a hundred and twenty-five millions of such heavens as the great apostle saw. There are depths to be reached by the yielded life to which the line and plummet of all past experience has never reached; there are continents of undiscovered truth beyond the seas and we would brand with the superstitions of mediaeval ignorance any effort to carve upon the pillars of Hercules, " Ne plus ultra "—there's noth- ing beyond. An interesting fact was brought to our notice a few days ago. An astronomer, in making experi- ments in astral photography, exposed his instru- ment upon a section of the heavens for a given 133 THE BURNING BUSH. M time, and found that he had captured twenty-five thousand stars. Then he fix^d his instrument in the same section for double the time of the prev- ious test, and he had haltered fifty thousand. Once again he threw open the luring, sensitive plate and waited twice the length of the last experiment, and he had harnessed one hundred thousand of those fiery chargers that run the courses of the plains of night. To the student of the higher heavens, the Word of God— Moses and the prophets and the psalms, the gospels and the epistles and the apocalypse- become like systems of milky ways of blazing suns constellations of stars and clustered groups of satellites. The Spirit leads the surrendered life away from the congested conditions at the surface, up from the atmosphere that is densified and darkened by accumulations of paralyzing miasma; away from the confusions and distractions of the multitude; up the mountain-side to the observatory of separation, and as he takes the lowly attitude upon the hilltop with God, he gets the vision glor- ious through the sky-piercing, far-seeing instru- ment of faith s mighty telescope, and comes back to the time-serving throng with a prophetic mes- f^^^P^^^^t "lakes "both the ears of them that hear A few years ago there came to our attention an instance that beautifully illustrates the utter inabil- ?'• -.T" ^ unfettered imagination to describe the Spint-illummed wonders of the inspired Word of God There lived in the backwoods of Canada, a family ,n which was a daughter who had suffered THE BURNING BUSH. 133 from her childhood a peculiar affection of her eyes, and as a consequence lived in partial blindness for some years — she had never seen the beauty of a cloudless starry night, except as through a glass darkly, by the generosity of the moon, and by child- like faith in song and story. The family knew nothing about the modern methods of alleviating such painful limitations by scientific operations and optical appliances. But the parents were re- commended by a sympathizer to seek the ministry of a successful specialist. He prepared the neces- sary glasses, and the desired effects were a glad reality. During the early part of the night the grateful girl would go out and assume the at- titude of a devout and reverent worshipper, and as she fixed her enraptured gaze upon the star- decked crown upon the brow of night, ecstatic ejaculations would burst from her glad heart: "Oh! has it been like this all these years? " So to the eye of the unregenerate heart, the sea of uncreated light that bursts from the Word like blazing sys- tems is but a dome of inky and impenetrable night, and upon the lifeless, sightless eye-ball of the soul that is dead in sin, the ineffable and insuf- ferable light of God seeks in vain to rouse a responding glance of gladness or of gratitude. And even to the great multitude of Christian people, the Word is but a nebulous mass of gray- ish, gloomy dawn, through which they grope their way to the City of Light. But to the heart that has received the risen Christ, in the power of the Holy Ghost, the whole orb of truth grows into a temple of transparency, and as he stands in the trans- !1 :.iti .'I :l! »34 THE BURNING BUSH. Wk'tr ht"^' °^i^^ ^^'^''' P^^^^"« he bends thought of God and exclaims: " O he d-oths of ^he nches, both of the wisdom and knowfe'dg o Hk L "^ unsearchable are His judgments,^and His ways past finding out! " :# THE BURNING BUSH. I3S Chapteb XI. The Missioir of Madness. " The prophet is a fool, the man of the Spirit ia mad," Rosea 9 : 7. " And he not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit," Eph. 5 : 18. 'T'HE pure heart and fine-tissued spirit recoils at ■ the first sight of the above picture. It offends the finest feelings to see, side by side, in the same text, that which is the source of more crime, more physical wrecks and spiritual ruin for time and eternity, than all other Satanic agencies put together, with the statement of the sublimest truth ever announced by the Great Teacher sent from God. But the nauseating and revolting sensations disappear when we understand the method by which the Master, as well as the apostles and all success- ful teachers, have communicated their prophetic messages — by striking contrasts, bold figures, vivid pictures, pregnant parables and apocalyptical rhap- sodies. When Jesus wanted to beget in His disciples an enthusiasm and virility in laying hold of a gold- en opportunity, He told them the story of the unjust steward, who, when he was about to be 136 THE BURNING BUSH. I ■ 'i deprived Of his office and livelihood, resorted to an ingenious device in order to escape the indig- nity of begging and the infamy of digginjr for which hKS lord commended him/ And if ouf'texJ Fnh *^^°'''f ^^f •" ^"^'"^ '<> ^he saints a Ephesus, adopted the same method. There was a pLTedl'd T''/" ^^^^E^^-™ emporium so dbsi! pated and destroyed by sensual" indulgence that their .deal conception of heaven and conditions of Paul s'efzed't?' '" "" ^^^^"^' ''''' ^^ intoxication oiC^f^u °PP°^;""»ty to inspire the people aban^ni? ?^ f.' ^^'^^}'''^y Possessed and utteriy abandoned to the spiritual exhilaration produced as"^ their ,H^^HP•f• '" '^' ^^°"y ^'^^'^'^^ «S as their self-indulging and sin-indulging fellow In othL^'^'^H^ 'I! ''r ^'^^ ""^°'y and in%u1ouI ILTa.^ '''^'' '^^ fire-tipped, Spirit-inspi?ed pen urged he saints at Ephesus to manifest the sar^e impassioned enthusiasm for God that the inflamed sensualists and profligates did for their father^e l.n ciy^' '' '* ^^^} *"e ""^'^ '"tense and superlative «fT^ u "'^^ '° '•^P°^t the conduct and por! tray the character of the ungodly? Is it not bl <^use they live out ^vith a moreNmense purpose" their constraining impulses than the people of (Ld> -wnnging from the heart of a New York d«-" ica reformer the cry: "O that the perseveran« Je^elTT 711 "^'^ °^ '""^ same'stuffT?he perseverance of the sinners! " Take for in<5tannL the expression, "abandoned." What is an aban doned character? Is it not one who has aban' doned, forsaken and deserted all that is v rtuou"' THE BURNING BUSH. 137 pure and womanly, all that is high, holy and heav- enly? And so far as companionship and fellow- ship are concerned, one frc m whom all that is God- like and divine has been compelled to withdraw, with the crushing, heart-breaking sorrow of the Savior? When we were a student, we were furn- ished with one of the most striking incidents illustrative of the extent to which a life may be abandoned to the powers of darkness, a condition that cannot be exaggerated, and that, too, amid the noon-day blaze of Christian civilization, in the heart of a city of colleges and churches. An unfortunate man was tried for complicity in a case of murder, and in the process of the trial, he gave essentially the following testimony: " I never did a conscious good act in my life, and no ray of spiritual light ever crossed my soul." He had been " shapen in iniquity." He had drawn the sustenance of his infant days from the secre- tions of a breast that surged with nameless pas- sion. His nursery tales had been the relation of soul-soilmg stories. His lullaby had been pesti- lence-bearing tones, and he had grown up, lived and moved and had his being in the atmosphere of the infernal world. The Christian life may be abandoned to the service of God with the same undivided purpose, and unfettered intensity, so that it can humblv and yet boldly give a testimony as far removed from the above as the poles of light are from darkness, and heaven from hell. " I never did a conscious wrong act, and between my soul and the Sun of 138 THE BURNING BVSH. P Righteousness there never intervenes an interruot- ing cloud." * Again, the Great Artist gives us a still more vivid picture of how a life may be yielded to, and possessed by, powers and personalities outside of Itself, and put itself beyond its own control. It is the case of the man possessed of demons, literally demonized. He was so empowered and driven by the indwelling multitude of wicked spirits, that he could not be tamed nor bound, no, not with chains. When the Lord asked him his name, the demons wou d not permit him to make reply, but their chief answered: "My name is Legion, because we are many. Probably there were six thousand foul spirits crowded into the soul of that unfortun- ate man What a storage battery of diabolical to.ce! There was enough Satanic power to drive a whole herd of two thousand swine dashing into a sea of destruction. ^ Surely the Christ was not indulging in poetic imagery? Nay; but He was wrestling with an awful monster. He was in the throes of a fearful conflict with malignant authority in demon-pos- sessed humanity. The man of Gadara did not possess those fiendish forces, but they possessed him. Our hearts pant and our spirits crv out for the vision glonous of men in the Church' of Christ who are thus violently yielded to the unlimited ?r.T K 'w ;"^^'^"'"g^ Trinity, and whose lives are as absolutely controlled as the one thrown upon the canvas by the master-hand of our Lord. Then ChlrT ^ u °u-^"* ^^^'''^' ^'" ^^^ God-instituted Church make history worthy of the highest place f'l , THE BURNING U S H. 139 in the chronicles of eternity and climax her glori- ous commission in this sin-stained and sin-crushed world. Nothing short of abandonment will do. If we had more abandoned saints we would have fewer abandoned sinners. The farther we go from sin. the faster we go for sinners. We cannot touch the smner savmgly from his side of the circle, we must, as to spiritual condition, be as far removed from him as the Christ, that "even as He" we may take the attitude beside and even below the lost soul, and then as the lever in the hands of the •Almighty, upon the fulcrum of Spirit-vivified truth we may be instrumental in lifting the sin-burdened soul from the lowest depths to the securities of the highest heaven. Aristotle said: "No great genius was ever without some mixture of madness, nor can any- thing grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken, except by the agitated soul." Ihere is scarcely a poet, artist, philosopher or man of science mentioned in the history of the human intellect, whose genius was not opposed by parents, guardians, and even teachers. In these cases Nature see 1 ed to have triumphed by direct interposition; to have insisted on her dariings hav- mg their rights, and encoi-aged disobedience, secrecy, falsehood, even f?ig! t from home and occasional vagabondism, rathe- than that the worid should lose what it cost her so much pain to pro- .r.Z^'^!' consistency a great man has simply nothing to do. A foolish consistency is the hob- fiiii I ?i 1 140 THE BURNING BUSH. goblin of small minds, poets, philosophers and divines." A red light of danger signal may be opportune in some of the secular departments, but not in the present-day, Laodicean conditions of half-hearted service in the Church of Christ. The pressing need is for an army of revolutionary spir- its, to " do something strange and extravagant and break the monotony of a decorous age." Of course such irritants and agitators will be mis- understood, but Copernicus, Galileo, Socrates, the explorers, the inventors, the prophets, all men who have launched advanced truth upon their lagging generation, have been violently misunderstood. The very Christ was most misunderstood of all. *■ To be great is to misunderstood." In the life of Dante, we get one of the most superlative illustrations of the torrid temperature for which our temperate age is suflFering. He had power to describe the infernal regions because his spirit had descended into the realm of darkness and torment. He had gazed on the awful vision, till, gaunt and emaciated, with eyes as if set in sockets of sorrow, and with heart throbbing with sympa- thetic suflFering, he became the very incarnation of the lost. From time to time, as he passed along his native streets, the very children would point him out to each other and exclaim: " There goes a man who has been in hell." Give us irritation, sensation if you will, rather than stagnation. Stagnation is the next stage to death and decomposition. It is not the faultily faultless and the icily clean that make history, but the man who is inwardly intoxicated with a con- I'i THE BURNING BUSH. 141 suming conviction. For the great explosions and the volcanic eruptions there must be accumulations of heat somewhere; there must be deep deposits of ignited coal at the center. It tosses and torments him like a fiery-hearted monster, then it rushes and pours from him in torrents of truth, and like Row- land Hill, his words come hissing-hot from his soul. And this unfettered earnestness makes plain the ancient superstition of the hunter, that the jjuUet will surely hit the mark, which is first dipped in the marksman's blood. If our Christianity is not doing with the truth what the great Head of the Church promised in His farewell addresses, it is not the genuine article. Its creeds are but the husks of a devitalized re- ligiosity. Its gorgeous temples are but the mod- em catacombs in which lie the cold corpses of ecclesiasticism. Its sermons are but the feeble funeral incantations of the Savior who still lies in Joseph's tomb. Our critical, classical, Christless choirs, with the deceptive cosmetics of culture, are only the perfumed decorations that fail to hide death's monstrous presence. And the heart of the Father cries over the performances and oflferings of a mutilated, enervated and emasculated evan- gelism. It might be profitable to look at one of the conspicuous evidences of our Lord's unpardonable madness. Surely His conduct was the index of an irresponsible mind. It is found in His behavior towards the leper. The leper is shunned. He is given over to death. He is an outcast. Wherever he goes, he heralds his loathsome presence by the J 42 THE BURNING BUSH. cry, "Unclean, unclean!" No hand ever bathed his burning brow or gave a cooling cup to his parched lips. He lurked in the dismantled dwell- ings or hid in the caves or clefts of the rocks. He heard of Jesus. He believed with a hope born of desperation in the divine power of the new Pro- phet. He trampled the law under his feet and rushes recklessly into the town. The crowd heard his cr>', *• Unclean, unclean! " Thev see him come. They flee as if from the breath of a destroying pest- ilence. He falls at the feet of Jesus, who puts forth His healing, helping hand, saying, " I will; be thou dean. At once the fever falls, and the blood flows. For conduct like this, for offences no greater than wiping away tears of sorro\v, or healing the sick, or raising the dead, or forgiving sin, or going about doing good, the bloodhounds from ever>' kennel of hate were put upon His tracks, hunted the Lamb of God and never abated their Satanic rage till they drank the innocent blood. Those who knew Him best and should have shielded Him with maternal sympathy, at first put up with Him, and then with a chilling severitv, insinuated that he was irresponsible. Then with wounded priJe they went out and laid hold of Him, saying " He is beside Himself. He is mad." It is strenuous men, violent men, men who thrust that tell. It is hlood earnestness for the salvation of souls that prevails with God and man. It is the constraining consciousness that we are all about to hear the crash of worlds and the crack of doom that hurls the truth with such tremendous thud, and makes demons fear and sinners fall before THE BURNING BUSH. 143 the mercy of God. It is not polished paragraphs, nor astral apostrophes, but incandescent fire con- suming us to ashes, and the phoenix spirit coming up clothed m omnipotence and rejuvenescent with archangel power and Titan forces, to huri thunder- bolts after the cleavage of the irresistible light- o' When Quebec was to be taken the War Office hrlhr^'i^/ ^?! °^^^^t general and asked him what he thought of the pro ect. His reply was that it was impossible. As they went down the s id ing scale of army leaders they received "he unva y- mg answer: "difficult," or " impossible "But of a"wct?r "'l''1,'T"^?^' '^^^^^ -^h *he flas"h H. c.If u '• '" "^^ '^ ^'^ ^^^•" He did both. r?.l f-^P^,^^"''^'"- He scaled the heights He chd the difficult He made possible the " impossible » destiny of this land, and won the worthy monu mental pUe of imperial honor and the en^ab^ vCh"'""' T'^^ ^^^^ ^°'f^ vLorious." \\ hat they wanted was a mad man, and he was found in the youngest general. ^ ""^ Mediocrity in the ministry is the curse of our a^H nil ^"^ '' "'^'^ despicable in the prophet cautio^r rf T' '"<^°"«'^tent. than cool-head madmen " Jh.. ^'"^ ""'^^^ ^"^ ^^^ ^^ i^^Pired martvrs the ""'T '"f^^'""^^'-^' heroes, saints, empires, and hasten the dav when the internal 144 THE BURNING BUSH. n It is one of the clear and cogent commands of our Lord that we should be filled with the Spirit. It is not an optional matter, but one of the binding obligations and divinely appointed qualifications, without which no child of God is equipped for life and service for the Master. The Christian who lives a single day without this supernatural pos- session assumes the unenviable responsibility of meeting at the judgment of Christ a wide field of unfinished work, and sustaining the irrecoverable loss of forfeiting the crown, of forever missing the ecstatic rapture of the " well done." On the other hand the messenger who fulfils the conditions and receives the triune involution of the Christ-investfc»i authority, shall reap a rich harvest of results, and shall go up to the coronation amid the plaudits of the redeemed, to receive a diadem of glory that shall out-dazzle and utterly eclipse the star-decked crown on the brow of night. Then there flow from the obedient and anointed life, rivers of practical, productive consequences, that bear prodigal freightage of blessing to all the barren wastes and wildernesses through which they flow Under these conditions the heart is made glad. They are like unto the " oil of joy and gladness " to the soul, displacing all the burden and every for- eign element that generates discomfort and unrest and transforming the soul into a doxology of praises like the twenty-four hallelujahs of the psalmist. It was our privilege and pleasure to be enter- tained during a revival campaign in an American THE BURNING BUSH. 145 town, m a large sanatorium. The patients who were there for treatment were bound by the strict- est curriculum of Medo-Persian rules. It occurred to us that two of those rules ought to be duplicated, enlarged, illumined and placed in conspicuous places all along the corridors of the churches. The suffenng patients were strictly prohibited from talkmg to each other about their diseases and dis- orders. What Socratic wisdom on the part of the proprietor and superintending medical philosopher! Then, grumblers were not allowed on the grounds at all. What a panacea there is in a life at leisure from Itself! What an elixir in the oil of joy and gladness! What an impenetrable coat of mail is found in the joy of the Lord! There is no dark- ness It cannot dissipate. There is no circumstance It cannot control. There is no sop that it cannot sweeten. There is no hovel of which it cannot make a heaven. And there is no stronghold of Satan's power that the harmony of glad song can- not crush and cause to crumble as if it had received a destructive blow from the oflfensive projectiles of heaven's artillery. In such a life the hand is made strong. With all our boasted nationa. id material prestige, with all our colossal civilization, with all our peerless power of intellectual, giant-producing institutions, ^[f ^^ w"°* forced to the confession that the pro- phetic "iron and clay" characteristics obtain in alarmingly large proportions? In the nerve- destroying rapidity with which all departments of the economic machine is hurrying to annihilate time multitudes of oppressed and depressed hu- 146 THE BURNING BUSH. manity are living on artificial stimulants. A col- lapse and crash may be delayed, but it will inevit- ably come, and disaster will heap its prey along every iron highway and the coast-line of every sea. But the far-seeing, provident love of our Father provided a divine stimulant, the blessed Holy Ghost. The afterwards of all other legitimate as well as illegitimate specifics, is discouraging and disappointing reaction. But the resulting conse- quences of the supernatural are increasing, reju- venating, redoubled action. The mind can suc- cessfully grapple with the weighty questions of eternal truth with the ease and pleasure with which the philosopher toys with the elements of thought. And the Spirit can unravel the mystery, apprehend absolute truth, walk in companionship with God, and drink at the secret springs of infinite love. In such a life the evangel is invested with Christ-like courage. Before the Pentecostal bap- tism, Peter went down in inglorious defeat before the damsel's charge that he had been identified vyith the captive King. He withered and wiUed like Jonah's gourd before the little maid. In the third accusation, that his speech betrayed him into undeniable alliance with the despised Savior, he doffed his uniform and deserted the; royal ranks, uttering maledictions of blasphemy against Him whom he had but recently assured that though all men should forsake, he would stand by Him, even to the death. But. after the advent of the Spirit, and the marvelous manifestations in the upper room. Peter, panoplied in the arms of God. stood like the impregnable fortress, and defied all THE BURNING BUSH. 147 the hosts of hell to shake his citadel of security. He unsheathed the sword of the Spirit upon the armied opposition till thousands fell in saving sur- render to the sovereign sway of Him whom they had crucified, but who was now risen, ascended and seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Agam, when Peter and John had been used to ter- mmate the begging career of the cripple at the Beautiful Gate, and had presented him as an ocular demonstration of the power cf Jesus to heal and to forgive sins, they were thrown into prison by the hate-blinded ecclesiastics, who were " grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." At the trial before those who held the lives of the faithful apostles in their 'lands, the same Peter, who had failed ignominio-- at the last trial, stood forth with the majesty o' on, and, " filled with the Holy Ghost," testi :hout ambiguity of utterance, that "by th. Nazareth, whom ye ci tme of Jesus Christ of ied, whom God raised from the dead, even by tiim doth this man stand before you whole." And when thev saw the bold- ness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlettered and idiotic men, they marveled. They were imprisoned, they were scourged, they were tried they were threatened, and they were com- manded not to speak any more in His name, but they had been transformed from weakness into the spirit of moral almightiness, not by a process ot development or spiritual athletics, but by the supernatural indwelling of the Holy Ghost. They had been translated from the impotence of coward- 148 THE BURNING BUSH. ice into the omnipotence of Christlike courage, so that before ecclesiastical or imperial authorities that might have inflicted immediate execution, they unitedly gave utterance to the immortal sentence: " For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." ii-- m THE BURNING BUSH. 149 Chapter XII. Sepakation and Service. "Now there were in the Church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas and Simeon, that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and SauV T^ HE outpouring of the Spirit of which we have * the record in the second chapter of the Acts, was especially the Jewish Pentecost, and Jerusalem was the center from which radiated the supernatural presence. But the ecstasy that fell upon Peter, and the heavenly vision upon the house-top, were the key that opened the flood- gates and turned the mighty currents of the Father's gift upon the Gentile worid in the house of Cornelius, through the preaching of Peter. Antioch became the second great center, Gentile Jerusalem, a storage battery of divine power, by which the heart of the Church was moved to give the gospel to the whole worid. Whkt is the Church? What is the business ot the Church? The etymology of the word, the Ht- eral anatomy of the word " church " is pregnant with^ the greatest significance. It means " called out. The language becomes meaningless verbi- ■rll hm ■ I 150 THE BURNING BUSH. age, unless it implies called out from another spiritual company. The Jewish congregation was a select Jewish or judaized company; but the Church of Gentile constituents is a cosmopolitan polygot, a polychromatic collection of consecrated, concentrated Christians. Modem church phraseol- ogy is sometimes unfortunate and misleading. We speak of "joining the church," and it is often as pur- poseless and impotent to stimulate a life of god- liness as joining one of the secular societies for mutual benefit among men. In the morning fresh- ness and fervor of the apostolic days, they never "joined the church," and it would be a priceless boon to that sacred institution if candidates for mitiation could be dissuaded from such superficial alliances now. They were joined to the Lord and added to the Church. " But he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit "—literally glued to the Lord. Chemists can make a cement that is as strong and secure as the granite of the native rock; but the component parts of the divine glue are made by the supernatural sciences, and it perfects a reunion with the Christ that cannot be dissolved by atmos- pheric nor diabolical circumstances. The arch fiend never wielded a hammer with sufficient power to dissever a life that is thus joined in one spirit with the " Rock of Ages." The man who is not jomed to the Church but to the Lord, and added to the Church, will attend church with religious regularity, worship and work in her ranks, even thouorh the officiary be offensive to him. He will not teach and practise monastic separation, but will live the separated life of a sunbeam, amid THE BURNING BUSH. 151 malarial surroundings, untarnished by its environ- ments, distilling and disseminating the fragrance of an holy life in all directions. We know no more dangerous place between the gates of death and the portals of heaven for an unregenerate soul, than to have taken the sleep- producing sop of church membership without the transformation of the new birth. The probabilities are that he will never be wakened from his decep- tion and insecurity till he is roused by the blast of the last trumpet, and called to meet his doom at the " great white throne." Let us picture a case m which a Spirit-filled, prophetic preacher has such a class of influential moralists upon his church roll and pharisaically devoted to all the services and the sacraments of the sanctuary. The faithful mmister becomes stirred by the utter godlessness of the multitudes all about him, rushing down the dark, dishonorable road to death. He prepares a burning message on sin and its penalty, and on provisions of pardon. He lies on his study floor all night in Pauline soul-travail, and goes before his congregation as if he had come from the eternal world with the Sinaitic thunderings and cloud- cleaving lightnings of the wrath of God, dissolved in the passion of the dying God-man in Calvary's awful tragedy. The non-professing, ungodly hosts tremble and cry out: "Men and brethren, what shall we do? " The modern Pharisee listens with a degree of discomfort but supercilious satisfaction that " the sinners " are receiving the coj^ent. or- thodox treatment they so richly deserve. ' During the subsequent week, the same anointed pastor m »Sa THE BURNING BUSH. becomes more intensely stirred, as he witnesses the prevaihng carnality and flagrant inconsistencies Of those whose names indignify, dishonor and dis- grace the uniform of the Church militant. He spends a night, like his Lord, on the mount with Ood, and on the succeeding Lord's Day, robed as Moses was with the radiance of that shekinal glory, proclaims the power of the Holy Ghost to separate, to sanctify, to purify, and qualify the people of God, to reproduce the life of Christ among men. And again the unregenerate formal- ist assumes an attitude as void of responsive expres- sion as a marble statue. He is as unmoved by the searching, stimulating truth as if the impas- sioned prophet were speaking in a foreign tongue. Ihe profound though rustic philosophy of the farmer sounds the dizzy depths of this important truth. He does not put the grain into the bam to save It, but to preserve it. He is taught by some expensive experiences that to put a load oi unthreshed grain into the barn before it is prop- erly saved, especially if it is to take a place in the bottom of the mow, to be under the pressure of great tonnage, will cause it to heat and ferment, and not only waste itself, but may produce dis- turbing elements that will render the whole mass unht for food. But when it is properly saved by the harvest sun, it may be put into the hidden and hard place. It will cause no trouble and sus- tain no harm. When the threshing-time arrives it will turn out into the rich golden grain, to be separated and stored in the granary, or placed in the elevator to await the cars of commerce, to THE BURNING BUSH. 153 ets and satisfy the transfer it to supply the demands of natural life. It is a momentous fact, from which the Church has learned many painful and profitable lessons, that troublous times are unavoidably in store for the congregation into whose midst is thrust a man who has not been thoroughly saved by the Sun of Righteousness. Put him into a place of author- ity and especially at the bottom, out of sight, under pressure, and to his selfish, ambitious heart the inconspicuous position will become provoca- tion. Fermentation will ultimately manifest itself and a condition of endless disturbance will obtain. But if, like the ripening grain, we let him be cut by the Spirit-wielded sickle of sin-exposing con- viction, if we let the faithful witness lay bare the secrets of the heart and let the Sun of Righteous- ness complete the work, we may let him be pre- served in the Church, separated from the straw and the chaflF of sin and self, and the life blessed, broken and multiplied by Christ, may be elevated for trans- shipment, to be reproduced in broad fields of heav- enly influences, to satisfy the dying cry of the world's need. The business of the Church is identical with that of her Lord. Early in life He gave the proclama- tion to all time: " Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business? " After the United States had declared war against Spanish oppression and cruelty, the government sent a message to the hero of Manilla—" Find and destroy the Spanish fleet of the Pacific." To say nothing about the folly and national inconsistency of forming alliances for ^^^v 1 ^^K 1 Pi 1 '!ii IV ^^^^Bl 'I'f ^H ■ ill ;' ; '-■ I '■' ,i. ;■ ' 1 i IS4 THE BURNING BUSH. pleasure and amusement, for which the whole squadron would have been recalled, stripped of their uniform, dismissed from the ranks and ban- ished into despicable oblivion, had Admiral Dewey overpowered and brought to penal captivity in the nation's harbor a whole Spanish armada, he would have as unpardonably disobeyed his high orders as if he had played into the enemy's hands, and surrendered the American fleet without a dissent- ing voice or resisting blow from the eagle's wing. Had he behaved thus, there would have been no triumphal pageantry, no Dewey's Memorial Arch, and one less American hero in the niches of fame! In like manner the righteous government of a holy Ood has proclaimed war against Satan and all his unholy and infernal alliances; and as SchaflF the historian says, " the Church militant must from its very nature be at perpetual war with the world, the flesh and the devil, both within and without." But in many parts of the battlefield the Church IS wooing the world and the worid is weakening the Church. Many of the ambassadors are catering to the enemy instead of courageously command- mg the army to conflict and conquest. The true, the separated Church, will spontan- eously produce the separated and spirit-equipped commissioners. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, "Separate Me ^^J*"f bas and Saul for the word whereunto I have called them." It is exceedingly interesting to fol- low the prepositional progress in the three-phased separation in the life of the great apostle. The word translated separated, means, " from the hori- MJ THE BURNING BUSH. 155 »> zon. " The higher we rise from a given point on the horizon, the wider our outlook and range of vision becomes. We saw the sun setting three times during one night. We had gone out from the town one evening and were sitting on the slope of a mountain when the sun disappeared behind its summit. Running up several rods, we again saw the king of day curtained in the robes of night. Once more we ran faster and farther up towards the towering top, and for a third time beheld the vesture of the forest-clothed mountain folding the evening vail about the face of the retiring sun. If we had been provided with altitude enough and had been energized with sufficient strength and speed, the sun would never have gone down. Paul was separated from his Jewish maternity that God might reveal His Son in him, which was " the mys- tery that was hidden from ages and from genera- tions." Coming up out of the traditional darkness and superstitious religiosity, he must have had a new and a larger horizon, that might be a fitting synonym of the first heaven. Then he was separ- ated to the apostolate and so raised to the highest dignity bestowed upon the eye-witnesses of our Lord's resurrection. Then his horizon was larger. His altitude greater and his position nearer the heart-center of all spiritual systems. Is not this the second heaven? Separation from the worid and separation to a life of service for God, imply can- didature for the divine involution of the Trinity. It IS the God-prescribed qualification for the recep- tion of the commission implied in separation for the work the risen Christ commands. This must have Ik ii 156 THE BURNING BUSH. been the vantage ground of the third heaven. It is very significant that about the time the translated apostle was having the unutterable and indescrib- able " visions and revelations of the Lord " in paradise, the Holy Spirit was enlarging the heart and pressing the Antiochan church to separate and set apart Paul and Barnabas for the greatest and noblest contract of the ages — the evangelization of the heathen world. Paul saw the world from the heart of the risen Christ. He saw the mighty forces behind the throne; and he went forth to do, and dare, and die, like his Lord. They were Spirit-sent, and departed unto Seleu- cia ; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus. The Spirit-sent messenger cannot be defeated. He goes with a fiery-hearted, wing-footed, thunder- toned thud. Through those two anointed evan- gels the two great cities of Cyprus are shaken. Then they speed across to the mainland, pressing their way to Antioch in Pisidia. They find them- selves in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and " after the reading of the law " an opportunity is afforded the strangers which Paul immediately embraces. There are three great sermons reported in the Acts of the Apostles. Peter's famous sermon is found in the second chap er. It swept the oak- tissued, iron-sinewed Jew before the gospel of the resurrection. Stephen' sermon, found in the seventh chapter, cut his audience to the heart. It exposed the hypocrisies of the hearers and gave the Church her first martyr. Then Paul's sermon is recorded, in this the thirteenth chapter. All THE BURNING BUSH. 157 three of them notoriously violate the laws of homi- letics and scientific sermonizing; but all three were empowered, endynamited, by the Holy Spirit, and, as a logical consequence, resulted in revolutionary and transformatory convulsions. For the next Sabbath day almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God. The Spirit stirred the whole city and multitudes of the Gentile citizens believed on the Lord Jesus. Then Satan stirred and incited the devout Jews and the honorable women to deeds of inhuman violence; but the Holy Spirit supported and stimulated Paul and Barnabas as with a draught from the fountains of eternal truth, " and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost." After the first Church council had settled the heresies of the circumcising teachers, and Paul and his companion had presented their cheering report of glorious victories among the heathen in their first missionary tour, the heart of the pioneer explorer burned to visit once more those scenes of spiritual transformation. But the plan of the Great Mis- sionary Founder is that nobody should have a second opportunity to hear the gospel till every creature has had one. This gracious purpose is clearly evidenced by His treatment of Paul and His divine direction during the second journey. He permitted the apostle with his party to con- tinue the former route till a continuance therein would be divergence from His program for the world. One after another the superintending Spirit closed the doors and constrained the quartette of missionaries into the historic Troy. ■ >58 THE BURNING BUSH. As Paul Stood in the night, probably looking out over the moonlit waves above the sobbing of the sea, louder than the wail of the homeless wind, he saw the Macedonian and heard the cry: " Come over into Macedonia and help us." It was the cry of Europe. It was the cry of Africa. It was the cry of the Americas. It was the heart cry from the coming multitudes of the two millenniums — " Help! help! " And after he had seen the vision immediately they endeavored to go. How literally and sublimely beautiful! " Sought to go." It was not an effort. The constraining passion of the great heart to preach the gospel in the regions beyond swept the first missionary to Europe with the consuming enthusiasm that always character- ized his ministry. One is prone to soliloquize concerning the con- ditions that would have resulted had Paul not im- plicitly obeyed the vision and entered that door of dignity. The Columbian Exposition might have immortalized the mechanical, moral and spiritual progress of India and the East, and been he'd in Calcutta. The Pan-American might have adorned an electrical metropolis in the African Soudan. The Glasgow Exhibition might have graced Pekin. and our boasted Christian civilization might have robed lands now pagan and heathen. The writer, as well as his readers, might be dressed in the un- tanned coverings of wild animals, and might have been sitting in the shadow of death, in this the morning of this our crisal century, waiting with an ineradicable longing for some light-winged messenger of life and love. THE BURNING BUSH. 159 Like the healthy action of the heart in the hu- man body, the first propulsive throb of the Anti- ochan church sent Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Asia. After these had exhausted their mental and spintual force, ;hev returned to recount and relate their wonderful storj-. Then the heart of the home church grew, and with impassioned, divine impulse, sent Paul and Silas to Troas and then to Europe. A mightier m nifesiation of supernatural power rooted the new faith of Christianity in the virgin soil of another continent; and then once more they return 10 in?j,;re the Church with the stor}- 01 the progress of the everla'^ting gospel. Then, the hean of the Church giew and expanded ^^ith passion, till it took in the whole world; and through the heart of Paul h vearned to reach Rome anu txie cold, deac' extremities of the then-known world—thus there was another great Christ-like hean-beat: and Paul is thrust upon the streets of the imperial city, the capital of a world-wide empire An additional impassioned throb carried him to Spam, and probably to England: and as the bDint-filleci Presbyterian nnnister said while ^v- mg a soul-stimng missionan^ address: "If Paul could have evaded the manx-r's fate a litfle longer, m another missionarv tour he would h£ve crossed the Atlantic, as he did the \eueun Sea. and discovering America, he would have p.anted the glonous Gospel of the grace of Oud amiG the wilds of the new world and thus have ••uG the CA-angeiized earth as a tribute at rh- ieet o; hi. Master before the dose of hi. ^eerles^ rms- >i'»nan- career." Hi 1 ■ ill' i' 1 THE BURNING BUSH. x6i Chapteb XIII. Wisdom vebsus Wisdom. T^HE section of truth contained in the closing I verses of the first chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians and the whole of the second chapter, project the profoundest proposition, and the most mtncate and conclusive arguments in all the wntmgs of the peerless apostle. It must be transparent to the student of this sublime scripture that Paul had Plato and Platonic philosophy in his mmd. Farrar says there is an infinite gulf between the teacher of Athens, the philosophers of Oreece, and the Son of God, between that divme Plato of Arnobius, the Plato of whom Clement said that he touched the very gates of truth, and the Plato whom Jerome carried under his hermit mantle and Augustine under his bishop s robes. Coleridge said that Plato was a plank from the wreck of Paradise cast upon the shores of idolatrous Greece. When we contrast the bnlhants of the ancients or moderns with Lhnst, "over the graves of all the philosophers," and around the monuments of all their glory the unstopped ear can hear the sigh of the sobbing winds, voicing with thundering tones the veracity l62 THE BURNING BUSH. t-'- ] of the inspired Word: " The world by wisdom knew not God." " The Buddha was a prince, wealthy, beautiful and strong; Confucius was a descendant of nobles and a counsellor of kings; and Plato so towered above them both that from their loftiest pedestal they could only reach to lay their garlands of admir- ation at his feet;" but Paul so transcended the giant Greek, that he would have required a step-ladder to tie the apostle's sandals. Wisdom was the key that unlocked the Parthenons of Plato's philoso- phy. It was the plasm from which evolved the Colossus of classic civilization, and out of its magic stones the philosopher built the tripod upon which Grecian glory thought to defy the disintegrating agencies of chemical change, and to resist the death-dealing virus of the tooth of time. Plato's wisdom was impersonal. It could do good, but was absolutely impotent to make society essen- tially good. It mistook superstructural architec- ture and gorgeous ornamentation for the solid sub- stnictural, lapidary foundations, which alone can bear the tonnage of immortal destiny. The true, the beautiful and the good, index the sublimest constituents in the character-building of individuals and nations. But as a basis of security against the descending rain and merciless storm, they are as helpless and as hopeless as the foolish foundation portrayed by the Master Himself. Cain's offering of Edenic fruit was just as true, it was incomparably more beautiful, and intrinsic- ally just as good, as was the bleeding lamb of Abel's sacrifice. But Cain ignored and despised THE BURNING BUSH. 163 the God-appointed basis of the blood, which means the recognition of death and the reception of life through the substitution of another. In writing to the Greek mind, Paul drew a pic- ture of bold and striking contrast with the master- piece of Plato's genius. He indulges in a dialogue with the Corinthians. You have a wisdom. It may have come down from Jupiter. It raised a race of untamed barbarians to a colony of philosophers, painters, poets, orators, soldiers and statesmen, that have given to the world monumental history. But Greece, with Rome and Babylon and Egypt, has gone down under the accumulating weight of her own Christless civilization. We have a wisdom ours is a person. Your wisdom is historic; ours is immemorial. ' When there was no depth, I was brought forth.' Before creation's morning, 'Then 1 was with Him. as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him. \our wisdom is a cult; ours is the Christ, \vho came from the heart of Jehovah and sprang from Him like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. Yours is true; ours is the Truth. You have a tnpod; so have we. It is not the true, the beautiful and the good, but Christ Jesus, who is made unto us the wisdom from God, indexed by righteous- ness, sanctification and redemption. These are the toundations upon which the Church is being built. It may be deluged again and again by the demon- lashed decumen billow. The forces of Satanic seas may exhaust their hellish hate against her eternal walls, but like the rock-formed coast, she shall iitirl them back into the impotence of sWvexy spray. ¥^ I M I h 1 THE BURNING BVSH. the gates of hell shall not prevail against 164 for ' her/ Christ is made unto us righteousness. Right- eousness is a divine benefit that must be accepted by the sinner and appropriated by an act of faith. No man will be able to stand approved for a mo- ment before God the righteous Judge, who is not as righteous as He. Christ became the righteous- ness of God to us that He might become our right- eousness to God. There was a point of time in the atoning sacrifice of our Savior, when our sin was not only imputed and imparted to Him, but when — awful mystery — He became sin, He took the sinner's sin and uttered the condemned sinner's cry: *' My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me? '" And so His righteousness may be imputed and im- parted to us. Infinitely more, His righteousness may be aft to us that our sin was to Him, and thus by His grace we may stand justified before God at that great day, as righteous as He. There are some respects in which we shall never, in all the ages, attain unto the likeness of the God- head. We shall ever be approaching the appall- ingly far and the appealing possible altitudes of the Deity. Yet, with divine and stimulating provoca- tion, He shall ever recede from our attainment of the absolute. But there is at least one attribute of the Godhead in which the humblest believer in Jesus Christ is absolutely perfected. He may be as righteous as He. There can be no progressive sliding scale in our relations to the righteousness of God. Our standing before God must, once for all, be irreversibly fixed, consequently our security THE BURNING BUSH. 16S in Christ is as impregnable and invulnerable as the triple-walled citadel of the Deity. The new birth and all the purifying and ennobling graces of a holy life do not give us a right to the heavenly inherit- ance of eternal life; they fit us for the holy and sin- less environments, without which it would be a con- stitutional impossibility for us to remain in that supernatural worid. But the basis, the alpha and omega of our right to eternal life, is the imputed and imparted righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, ac- cepted and appropriated by faith in the atoning I ^\■lOT, which for all time, and through all eternity, settles the penalty of sin. The same Jesus is made unto us sanctification. which secures for us a healthy and a holy state in Christ, not an attainment but the obtainment of the risen Christ, breaking the power of sin in the life, qualifying and empower- ing the Chri.Ntian for service and sacrifice like Christ. And Jesus is made unto us redemption. These three great foundation facts, these essential prin- ciples of the Christian life, coexist and co-operate. They are vitally and mutually dependent upon each other. Sanctification and redemption are cut flowers that wi.her in the scorching testings apart from nghteousness; but organically inter-penetrat- mg the rocky foundations of righteousness, they spring up and bear imperishable fruitage. Subtract sanctification from righteousness and it oecomes mere vigor, " conduct too inflexible to be living, justice too severe to be just." Subtract righteous- ness from sanctification and it withf -s and'fades in the bhstering temperatures ( f triui. It becomes mere sentimentalism and pitiable weakness. Sane- 1 Pi iff i i, ' ;■ ' '^w i ■■ ■ i66 r//£ BURNING BUSH. tification makes righteousness active and helpful. Righteousness makes sanctification beneficent while it is also benevolent. Redemption will culminate the completed salvation in the resurrection and transformation of our bodies of humiliation " Hke unto His glorious body," and translate the Church to her purchased possessions as a co-reigning sov- ereign with the crowned Prince of Peace. To attempt to comprehend the truth contained in the second chapter without a clear grasp of the Platonic and Pauline wisdoms, is to wander help- lessly through inextricable mazes and tortuous laby- rinths; but with the two wisdoms running side by side, like rails on a railway, the Spirit will lead us through the deepest truths ever given to the in- spired pen by the divine Spirit, '* And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." As we leap Hke a deep-sea diver into the abyss of tntth from the sixth verse, we need to keep our two great antecedent wisdoms distinctly separ- ate and follow closely our unerring and untiring Guide. As the controversy intensifies, we are suddenly precipitated upon a bloody battlefield. The wis- dom from below and the wisdom from above, as mighty commanders, followed by battalions of spirits, advance upon each other, like the panoplied forces of two great armies, until the interested observer fancies he hears the clash of arms, the execution of cannonry and the crash of war. The THE BURNING BUSH. 167 wisdom of this world can be fathomed and under- stood by the man of scholastic skill, but the heav- enly or hidden wisdom can only be understood and apprehended by a holy life and a pure heart. " Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect. But this word " perfect " is like a blood- tingling provocaMve signal of war to many of the professional r" »! ic of God. When we read its definition ir ii -brews- "Strong meat belongeth to them th.. mv ,| lu' ci ,- '—literally perfect — it iu']ic.a;\c of an enviable and llii ife. " Which none wot; : knew, for had they .1 h'lve crucified the Lord s t i^ written, eye hath not seen, 'lUier hrvfc entered into the heart .c 1 I.! tlif } V OL-'d u- w'.ali God hath prepared for becomes attainabit of the known ' of glory, nor ear hccr :. of man the Mil them that love No text in the sacred Scriptures has suffered more from its friends, by false interpretation and application, than the above. It is not infrequently taken as a germinal text from which to « volv'e funeral sermons, and not uncommonly transformed into the brush and pigments with which the cler- ical artist throws upon the black cloud the rain- bow of promise and with which he paints the New Jerusalem and home of the soul in all its enrap- turing splendor. The authoress of " Eve hath not seen it, my gentle boy," falling into the error of which our peerless homiletical ^ofessor so em- phatically guarded us, that of dii .ciating the text from its context, translated the present and pos- sible wealth of this voluminous text into the i68 THE BURNING BUSH. i'fiill glories of the Spirit world. The boy stormed his mother with questions: " Is it far away in some region old, where rivers flow over sands of gold? " '• Not there, not there, my child," was her unsat- isfactory, because unscriptural, reply. " Is it where the feathery palm trees rise and the dates grow ripe under sunny skies? " was the importunate cry of the hungry heart of the youth, whom all the con- fectioners, upholsterers and finance ministers can never satisfy. " Shall we not seek it and weep no more?" came like the heartache of a homesick soul, and " It is beyond the grave aad beyond the tomb, It is there, it is there, my child," is offered as a cordial to soothe the spirit in its deepest cravings for that which the father-heart of God has made abundant provision in our earth- bound conditions. If the devoted and sincere mother-heart had but caught a glimpse of the following verse, she would have understood that the " eye " that hath not seen, is the eye of the princes, the philoso- phers of the earthly wisdom, the unregenerate, the cruel religionists, who perpetrated the most dia- bolical tragedy of all time, the cnicifixion of " the Lord of glory." " But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." It is not beyond the power of imagination to conceive that the most microscopic forms of animal life may have some method of communicating their very limited intelligence to each other. All the way up the age-long course of development and ever- wideninjj diflferences, the capacities increase and :*' • ._ THE BURNING BUSH. 169 means of interchanging feelings multiply till we reach the highest orders of the lower animals, that in many respects surpass even man. But we might as consistently expect a bat to understand optics, an owl to teach botany, and an ancestral tadpole to grapple with the truths of theology, as to ex- press a hope that they should sit in counsel with man and comprehend the problems that are but toys to the human spirit. " For what man know- eth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God." " But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spirit- ually discerned. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. He that is spiritual discerneth all things, yet he himself is discerned of no man." The " natural man " is literally the psychical man. We are all ready to admit that the man who lives exclusively in the physical, the sensuous, that the sensual man cannot respond to and enjoy the edifying and transforming beauties and luxuries of spiritual truth. But Paul, by the authority and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, emphatically ex- cludes the brilliantly educated and highly polished psychologist, or philosopher, because of a consti- tutional impossibility, from access to the temple of supernatural truth. We stand with breathless wonder in these days of mechanical and material progress, at the superiative degrees of perfec- 170 THE BURNING BUSH. m I ve\ tion to which the purely materialistic mechanics have attained. But to them there is an unknown and unknowable sea. "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther. Here shall thy proud waves be stayed," presents an insurmountable barrier. Then the adventurous explorer, launched upon the forces of God, piloted with microscopic and telescopic genius, discovers new hemispheres of psychical phenomena. When his vision falls upon the hor- izon and is arrested by limitations of the most myriad-minded giant of the philosophers, the proud human heart and carnal mi d carve "Ne plus ultra " — there is nothing beyond — upon the pillars of Hercules. But beyond the limits of human wisdom, be- yond the sweep of human vision, beyond the grasp of human reason, there lies a realm awaiting the Spirit-filled life, and wooing with passionate ardor the supernatural adventurer. After six millen- niums we have little more than skirted its shores and a few daring spirits, with mystic imaginings, have ventured a little inland. It is the new world, only bounded by the exceeding great and precious promises of God and the boundless seas of the infinite, of which Canaan was but a feeble type. The expression of Joshua, that " there is yet much land to be possessed," is but a prophetic picture of spiritual conditions. There are rivers to be explored and mountains to be scaled. There are forests to be transformed into fruitful plains and mineral wealth to be moulded into the glittering currency of golden commerce. There are peoples to be conquered, and vast empires to be born. 1^ i.i THE BURNING BUSH. 171 There are civilizations to be developed, and monu- ments to be built that shall radiate the rays of an unsetting sun. And there arc volumes of flaming history to be written with fire-tipped pens that we shall read with apocalyptical rapture in the chron- icles of eternity. Could some archangel divinity transform and translate us into a master of the ancient classics, how we would revel in the productions of those men of creative genius, and seizing the brush of the inimitable artists, we would mesmerize the world with paintings of incarnate spirits. But the ordinary multitudes are dependent upon imperfect translations and chromatic reproductions. The Word of God has never been translated. The letter of the Word submits to the law of literary translation. The psychical elements of the Word dissolve in the same agencies as those of secular literature, but the best scholarships our age has produced have but succeeded in transliterr.ting the hidden language of the Book. The method adopted by its divine Author is to translate the reader, that he may peruse the sacred volume in the mother tongue of the Spirit. The reverent heart must always be arrested with the hush of heaven as it ventures to voice the last sentence of this pregnant chapter. " But we have the mind of Christ." We may not be great preachers, but we may be the voice of the Great Preacher, who moved the multitudes and "spake as never man spake." Ours may be very ordinary minds. The avenues of outlet may be so con- tracted that the stupendous issues of eternal truth V :l 172 THE BURNING BUSH. tumble and toss like volcanic fire, vainly attempting to utter the unutterable. But we may have the mind that first broke the silence of the eternal past, and voiced the plans and purposes of God in crea- tion and redemption. We may receive the mind that gave the archi- tectural plan of the material universe. We may become the temple and habitation of Him who conferred with God in the beginning and conceived the atonement. We may experience the paradox of Him who bled upon the sacrificial altar, before the foundations of creation were laid, without which sweeping systems could not consist. We may have the mind of Him who climaxed the sal- \ation of the race amid the awful convulsions of Calvary. Thrice blessed be God! we may have as the alpha and omega of our being, Him whose nature and name shall be the science and the song of the eternities. ■ i :,i H vt-. THE BURNING BUSH. 173 Chaptee XIV. Emblems of th£ Spibit. " / indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but He that covieth after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire." SPEAKING after the manner of men. all through the Old Testament dispensation we find the father-heart of God longing with a paternal cr\- to reveal Himself to the minds and hearts of His people. The streams of flowing blood from numberless birds and beasts in endless sacri- fices, ministering priests and mediating prophets, but feebly expressed the purpose of His heart. But in the fulness of time. He sent forth His Son, the express ima^e of His person, and the outshin- ing of His face, to tabernacle with men and touch heans with their deepest needs. And yet God manifest in the flesh found even His disciples prac- tically impervious to the purposes, and conceptions He W'ished to communicate They were self- centered and consistently human. The God-man sought, with sublime simplicity, to manifest Him- self to them, but when He spoke of " leaven." they thought He was reproving them for not having brought a bread supply. When He spoke of the U 'A 174 THE BURNING BUSH. Im !l =' temple, they interpreted Him as intimating the destruction of the historic building. His life to them was an indefinable riddle, until after the Spirit came; and then we find the transparent ex- pression, "This is what He meant while He was yet with us," It is impossible to understand Jesus from the physical touch, or through the psychical faculties; He must be apprehended through the supernatural senses, imparted by the personal Holy Ghost in the human mind. Christ is the revelation of God to man, and the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of the revelation in man. And in order that the n. THE BURNING BUSH. 175 The true scriptural thought of the Spirit is the very opposite. There are mysteries and unmas- tered secrets in the modes of atmospheric opera- tion, but the sovereign exhibitions of the wind are as plain and sensible as any fact in human ken. Ask the school-boy to explain the wind and he will look at you with the expression of astonished interrogation; but dare to hint that he never ex- perienced its freaks and knows nothing about its forces, and an expression of ridicule if not of pity will strongly indicate the youth's suspicion of his questioner's sanity. We all bow reverently before the fact that there are unfathomed mysteries in generation. In col- lege clays, the first dogma in the natural sciences jvas: " Protoplasm is the physical basis of natural life. ' The definition must necessarily be less than the thing defined. " In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." And He was from the beginning. He alone stood in the laboratory of the beginning and saw life springing from the fiat of the Eternal. But the fact of life is no mystery. It is intellectual dishonesty to deny it, and it is philosophical treason to ignore it. At this spring- time season, the silent eloquence of nature's annual resurrection, bursting the tomb of winter and load- ing the fields and forests with prodigal vegetation forbids the possibility of a doubt. The endless stream of boys and giris gambolling like lambs upon the green, and the throbbing multitudes l^ressmg time itself in the fevered rush, proclaim that life is an intense and superlative reality. e. .1 176 THE BURNING BUSH. Regeneration is a mystery into which the un- fullen intelligences may search with unutterable wonder, but the fact need not be in the slightest degfree clothed even in the most vapory texture of insecurity. The regeneration of the human soul is an event of such tremendous moment, that three worlds take cognizance and become participants in the deepest interest. The arch-destroyer has lost a soul and all the hadean realms of fallen spirits are draped in gloom and malignant mourn- ing. Angelic chorisiers, robed in garments of praise, *' rejoice over one sinner that repenteth." And should not the heart in which the *' new crea- tion " has sprung into being, be conscious and sensible that an epoch-making occasion has ob- tained, translating the soul from death to life, from darkness to light and from the power of sin and Satan unto God? The Spirit may enter the soul upon the velvet footfall of the noiseless air; He may come like the soft wing of the gentlest zephyr; He may conic like the buoyant step of youth in the hurrying gale; He may herald His arrival in the princely pageantry of the storm, displaying His sovereign sway in the heart, or He may burst upon the scene like the angry tornado, sweeping the whole face of creation with the blast of divine dignity. Rut fulfil the conditions and come He assuredly will; and He will manifest His saving grace and sanctifying power. The fire is another of the emblems he employs. " He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire." Fire has a cleansing, illuminating and THE BURNING BUSH. m energizing ministry. A little reHection upon one of the Creator's maprrines of fire and force in the center of our solar em fills us with indescribable awe. Ihere are eruptions in the sun that A "? e^ysers ot glowing flame two hundred and eighty thousand miles, forty times the diameter of our earth. There are cyclonic storms in the sun that travel one hundred miles a second. Such storms of fire coming down upon our world from the north, would, in thirty seconds after thev had crossed the St. Lawrence, be in the Gulf of Mexico, carrying with them the whole surface of the con- tment m a mass of scorching vapor. The sun could melt two hundred and eighty-seven millions of cubic miles of ice in a second without diminishinfr Its heat. *» What magazines of power sweep in stars and suns and systems in the planispheres of the infinite deep! And yet they but emblematize and feebly express the infinitude of power with which the soul may be invested when indwelt bv the Holv Ghost. Fire dissolves the difTicultie.s and offers a solu- tion to all the intricate issues with which the (^hurch has had to do in her eventful historv This thought is vividly illustrated by a picture from the ■irt gallerj' of Reformation historv. The reformers srave an entertainment demonstrating the foUv of all measures to settle the stupendous differences between the papal and Protestant parties, except those of consuming separation. A masked char- acter came in with two buiulles of kindling wood •ind laid them upon the hearth. One bundle was \ I 1' 3 tt! ! *1 ii 1 tfi THE BURNING BUSH. of straight sticks, and the others were most crooked and gnarly. As he retired, they saw "John Reuchlin," wa«» placarded upon his back. Tnen came a second person, who unsuccessfully toiled and labored to produce a harmony of position between the two bundles. He retired in defeat, and they saw the name " Erasmus " on his back. Next, an energetic enthusiast came rushinj; in. carrying a brazier of living coals, which he poured upon the sticks, transforming them into a mass of living flame. He represented " Luther." It was the fire. Then came a grand personage, who endeavored to put out the fire with a sword; but inglorious defeat attended his efTorts. Lastly, one robed in all the royal prestige of Roman authority came in. and all the wrath of the papal .see tried in vain to blow the fire oui Seeing a couple of vessels near by, and supposing them to l.r filled with water, the Pope seized one in his frenzy. It proved to be full of oil. He dashed it upon the Hame to extiufjuish it. but he merely added fuel to the fury of his own impassioned foe. So there is no pt)wer diabolical, human or angelic, that can possibly extinguish the fiery baptism that lays hold of the soul that has been baptized by the Lord ksus into the power of the Holy Ghost. The water is a third emblem which Jesus employs to illustrate the influence of the Spirit. Jesus had been in Jerusalem at the feast. The throng had j^^rown day by day, till the company had assumed gigantic prop>e successful, hut we are admonished and commanded TO be faithful. \\"e may never make iiistorv like Paul. \\ e may never achieve the successes that make him easily the winner in the race for cro\MS!- But when we meet him in the ineffable glorv we may be able to say to the flaming apostle to the Gentile?: -'Yqi: never did anythmg I was not vvillmg to midertake " We may be as faithfu' as Pau', anr' indeed a« faithfu] as the unfalJer intelligences that bow and bum Ijefore the throne Meek^^^ !!^ the seventh ingredient o' the irtiit of the Snrrit. It is harr! to define our conception O! -meekness It may be the aroma of rii>ening and ripened fruit It mav L»e that silker tfr^'^r^ i'i aoo THE BURNING BUSH. i woven by the creative hand and so delicate that the touch of the gentlest finger rends and destroys It. It IS the soft, resistless something that yields to the slightest pressure. It Ts something we get when the flower is bruised or broken; it is the in- imitable perfume. A friend once gave my wife a bottle of beauti- ful perfume. It was exquisitely delicate. It was put up in an elegant bottle, sealed, artistically labelled and the whole setting was sweet and frag- rant. W e only Knew its delicateness and worth by the name and market value. It was kept for some time. It was packed and repacked in the routine of our rambling lives. But one day the railroad men gave our trunk a special toss and when we Tr"t iV ^^^ves of sweet perfume filled the room, ine bottle was broken. K • ^^^2,'l^" experience for the Christian beyond being filled, sealed, labelled and ticketed for heaven; it is to be broken in the jostle of life and to perfume the whole community in which he lives If you put pressure upon a lemon it will yield Its sourness with undeviating consistency. If you squeeze a thorn bush it will always tear and lacer- ate. If you crush a rose it will cover you with Its own fragrance and sweetness. Although we may not, like Moses, in the majesty ?L^V'''^ ' ??^^^'J "''"^^'^ ^^^^^'•' ^^"te laws. lead armies and found an empire, at the same time we may )e meek as the founder of the United States of Israel. Like Him who founded the universe mv.TZl '^i, 'i""'^. '* '" "^y^*^^- ^'•^hed it in mystery, pillared it in mystery, frescoed It in mys- THE BURNING BUSH. ^fl tery and paved it in mosaics of mystery we mav d,st.l and perspire from every pore of^ourbeTn^ the oil of the Rose of Sharon and the swS essences of the Lily of the Valley. . hor^iv^"fu' '' J^^t indefinable something about a holy hfe that shrinks from being handled There as ever J?^^. h ^^^^ T" ""^ ^°"^^" i" ^he world ^Ll -^ ^^^' ^"* t^^y ^'^ays shrink from hL? ^'' H*°" ^ ^"^ ^°^y-" There is a super- XT. ^""^ "nscnptural idea abroad that heavenly eartraT 'th^ F^" <=onduct may have touched this earth at the Enochic and apostolic and papal honzons of the past and may touch it again in prophetic horizons that lie hiSden in the Sysses hU n„H '■ ^"'"'■f' ^"' '^^' '^^ "'Pridian is so DrfLTi'° '"f "'^^'^ "^"^^^"^ ^'•^"^ ^^^ reach of present-day unfortunates, that the sublimest hope holv ir '^tk"°^ '\ tantalizing treasure of a tht^i!?H ^^' u^'^P^"' " ^^° ^hile He walked this earth was in heaven, and who, though now in heaven ,s still in earth with the tonnage of atoning love has made the highest heaven touch this earth at Its lowest and deepest extremities, so that robed n«5T^^"-' '''''''^" ^" *^^ ''^^"' the pardoned and anointed sinner may walk with God as Enoch did in the intimacy of bosom friends. Temperance, ob self-control, is the last ele- ^ure*"'" ^^^ ^™'^ ""^ *^^ ^P^"*- " ^^P thyse" \ut ^'P'*y abides with him alone Who ,n the silent hour of inward thoug!.t Can sill suspect and still revere himself in lowlmess of heart." I \i ! ffi ?t'i •if THE BURNING BUSH. "The bravest trophy ever man obuined 1» that which o'er himself, himself hath gained." And as Solomon expresses it: " He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a city." Think of the battles that devastated and de- stroyed Babylon and sank the Persian Empire; that brought to Greece her national distinction and glory; that blighted Greece and gave to Rome her armies of iron. Alexander conquered the world's empires, but went down under the thrust from the scimeter of sensual appetite. Napoleon can give recipes for victory by which others win. but his selfish ambition crushes and sends him as a captive to the penal island. ** Hercules laughs at the world's impossibilities, but yields to the seductions of impurity and of forbidden pleasures." Daniel, in the self-conquest of immaculate purity, transformed a mighty empire with its throne of gold and silver and ivory, into a theocracy, and left a sextette of obelisks with sky-piercing peaks that transcend the twelve exploits of Hercules as the sun-kissed peaks of the Alps tower above the ant-hills of the malarial plain. Samson smites the proverbial Philistines and bears away triumph- antly the gates of Gaza on his Atlantean shoulders but falls in ignominous surrender before the siren smile of Delilah. But Joseph, the soul of unim- peachable purity, went through the pit at Dothan. endured the indignities of the captive journey to Egypt, stood in the unbending divinity of chastitv before the enticing queen, suffered patientlv the unrighteous bondage and shame in an Egyptian THE BURNING BUSH. «3 dungeon, and with the bound of a god sprang to vLr^T^^-^^ "^'Smity beside the thfone of Pharaoh. The great abbey and cathedral in Lon- don gives a resting-place to the mortality, and cornmemorates the immortality of historic heroes; but the sacred Scnptures put a brighter aureola of fame upon the brow of the moral victor. fipM /k ^'1"'^'^'* captured cannons from many a flnf??,, k'^'^'' "l?"y inscriptions to his honor, lift HnlV''^ n'"°"'u ^^"'^ °^ Napoleon in Place Ven- dome But thousands of Christians, living stones from the quames of Gethsemane and the rock-cut of Calvary built in the monumental pile of the Church s history form one grand, sky-piercing pedestal upon which stands the Horified apostle m the memory of an enlighten ind benefited ill If f ; -l THE BUINING BUSH. ao5 Chapteb XVI. If. THE AKOINTBD 1UHI8TEB. yV/HEN our Lord undertook to teach the truth W and the necessity of the new birth, He did not draw His picture from the incarnation of wrecked virtue to be found in the abandoned woman He interviewed at Jacob's well. He threw upon the canvas the highest type of the natural ma*., the person of Nicodemus. If He thus con- clusiv_iy demonstrated the impossibility of admit- ting man at his best to the kingdom of God, with- out the birth from above. He must of necessity exclude, by the same inflexible law, the whole scale of unregenerate humanity. And so when the Spirit undertakes to teach the criminal helplessness of the Christian ambassa- dor, without the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He takes a character from among men. who. were it within the reach of human attainment, might have been a successful minister without the divine and Pentecostal enduement. If it were an indis- pensable equipment in order to the scriptural suc- cess and eflRciency of the golden-mouthed orator of the early Church, how dare we who are mediocre men indignify the pulpit and desecrate the sacred commission without the promised anointing of holy oil? In the world of patent medicines there n 3 H. ' 1} 306 THE BURNING BUSH. s a familiar picture, blown about the streets like the withenng leaves of the autumn woods, that stnkmgly Illustrates the truth we wish to impress upon the hearts of all who may read these pages On the face of the advertising dodger there are two pictures representing two strongly contrasted conditions of one man. The one is a revolttg picture of a suflFerer, who has become so reduced iLtrT ?f ^" '^" ^'""*y °' "^^oo^ h^s dis- appeared. Life IS at a minimum and the sufferer is but a spint inhabiting a body of bones. The other IS a picture of full-orbed health, a battery of electric vigor, the incarnation of beauty and un- a lar^^ hTl °°'^' ^'I^f " '^^ ^^° '« ^he cut of ?he for^ If ' "^u" "^^ u'^ 'f ^istically decorated the form of a key— the key to health. One hundred doses for one dollar. It professes to be the magic panacea for the ills of suffering human- rL-. y "^.^^ *.^^ ?^ P'^*"'^ ^^ '•^ad in emphatic captals Before he took it^ and under the other. After he took it. In the art gallery of divine revelation there are many such productions of the inspiring Artist. And we might spend a very profitable hour in studying the brief but pregnant biography of one ot them that we f^nd in the closing verses of the Acts of the Apostles. In the spiritual man the contrast is just as great as in the physical world, and our Father in heaven has provided an Elixir as omnipotent as Himself. It is able to translate the soul from death to life, from sickness to health, from poverty to wealth. THE BURNING BUSH. 207 and from burdcL^ome weakness to the fabulous strength of the giants. Apollos was an educated man. He was born at Alexandria. To say this is synonymous with saymg he was a man of great erudition. With the name of this historic center we associate the source of the recondite knowledge of Egyptian philosophy, of physics and the mysteries of nature. Illumined by the wit of the Greek. The theocratic Jew was there; the disciples of Zoroaster, the wor- shippers of Buddha and Brama were there also. Here the schools of Greek philosophy, especially the Platonists, flourished. Jerome says that Apollos afterwards became Bishop of Corinth t^oned^ ^^^ ^^' *^''^^°''^' "^^y "ot.be ques- But the most microscopic intellectual acumen Word T''"'" ^'^ 'T' "^^^"'"^ °f the LivTng c2fnL! ^I'^^^'u ''T^'^'- ^' '"^y discover thi catacombs decipher their mysterious hieroglyphics aiid illumme that charnel-house of heart^stSg me ory with electric jets. It may build fortresses ZtrrTf '"' f 'h"'^ °" ^^^ ^'^'^ seas oTLtrai pamspheres, and bnng captive armadas of con- Sn a"n;u"^-'^'T "'"^^' ^^ ^P°^^' '^ ^he sub- jtcion and service of man. But it stand, boneless sli?fn'\T u'r *'^ ^°°^ °^ ^-'- The Holy nlone ? tV t'^'^-'u'''''} ^"d ^P^"t Of the believer alone ,s the key that fits every ward of the mvs- banou'etinT'"''""' I"' ^'"^^^ ^^^ seeker to t'he banqueting rooms the guest chambers of the King, and makes him stand with breathless won- m ii ■ '•I. fir ! I 208 THE BURNING BUSH. 1 der, like the Queen of Sheba, amid the indescrib- able splendor of the temple of truth. He gives the Kossian eye that can scan the infinite heights of Jesus living and reigning in glory, and foresees seasons of refreshing coming from the presence of the Lord. "He was an eloquent man." In our day he would be a great "draw-card." We are living in a time of show cases, buttons, bouquets, badges bunting, pyrotechnic displays and stereop^i?on views. All sorts of methods are adopted and en- isted to draw and entertain the people. It is not ^ess irue in the sacred courts of the Church o; yod. In one of our great cities where the masses do not go to church, a city of colleges, a center of mechanical, mental and moral power, at the close of the summer season, an anonymous bene- factor suggested a novel method by which he con- fidently assured the pulpits that multitudes would be attracted to the deserted sanctuary. The reme- dial and revolutionary step was to abolish the pres- ent system of having young gentlemen as ushers, and substituting young ladies of beauty and aesthetic culture, and with a salinity worthy of Juvenal, he added. " You will have to change them every two we^ks." We protest with all the vehem- ence of our hearts against all methods " to draw " trom the cook stove apostasy." to the smile of a siren. God has provided the Church with a Draw Card, with which her ministers can get fh. c!f* T fl,^"ti^^ audience of every ear within ^1 ."^ ?[ K' ^f'^- ^' '' *h^ Spirit-anointed pulpit and the fire-kindled pew. THE BURNING BUSH. 2og There is an eloquence that is selWnflated and tn^ «1 *"?''"«: cymbal. And there is the tr^th wX"'" '^"' l^P'^^^^^ *^<^ conviction o1 truth with a passion that makes the auditors for get the speaker, and which, like that of St Bernard sways them as by the fury of a fiery tempesf^^ th^falT^'n "\^''^ <=onspicuouTillustmtions of ^:m:l" o^'ent.^"^^ ^' ^'^^ ^' '^^ *- -^ in the life of P°l''"/ S^ -^ ,°' eloquence is found in the life of Richard Bnnsley Sheridan. In his hrvarSuTi'^"^' ?"^^"^^' '' '^ -^^ **^"t ail tne various species of oratory, everv kind of eloquence, ancient and' modem. co,ildb^ found hi his impassioned effort. The brimance of the bar the sublimity of the senate and .e passion of the delSn.^.'.? superlatively represented^n Ws dlalh e^ir^ p l^ "P°" '^^ mal-administrating gov- eZt of r^' '^'^ '' ^^ '^' "^^^^ astonishing effort of eloquence, wit and argument he had ever 5w ;, 7^"" '^^ ^" ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ heard or read dwindled into nothing before it. as vapor vanishes ckntorLT ?"""''= " It surpassed all an- cient or modem times, and possessed everything hat genius or art could furnish to agitate and con trol the human mind." Sir Wm. Dolben moved an adjournment of the House, as it would ^ an absohjte impossibility for any intelligence to gi'e an unbiased judpnent under the spell of Sheridfn^s mesmenc speech. But Sheridan went down to poverty, to shameful and criminal banklptcy and .^i 'I \f ■\ ; ' 1 2IO THE BURNING BUSH. ty I L terminated his career in a forgotten grave, " un- wept, unhonored and unsung." An instance of another kind of eloquence is to filhnn^M .!^ '^c.'^^' *^^ '*"^P^»^' the glorified Bishop Matthew Simpson. On one occasion he preached m Memorial Hall, in London. He was speakmg on the theme of all time—the tragedy of all histoiy— the atoning death of the Savior of the worid. For about thirty minutes he spoke without a gesture, without apparent emotion, with- out raising his voice. Then, with his vast audi- ence, he seemed to be translated to the time and locality of the crucifixion. He pictured the Re- deemer bearing our sins in His bo<: on the tree. He stooped as if sin had become a positive, con- Crete quantity, and was crushing him with an immeasurable tonnage. Then, as if stimulated and s rengthened by the eternal Spirit, he arose and chnibed the precipitous heights, and threw oflF the burden, crying out, " How far? " " As far as the Hast IS distant from the West, so far hath He re- moved our transgressions from us." The whole assembly, as if moved by an irresist- ible impulse, and drawn by the golden cables of inspired eloquence, rose to their feet, remained standing for a few moments, as if held by a mes- meric spell, then sank back with intense emotion into their seats. A professor of rhetoric was in the audience. A personal friend of his who saw him there, and who knew he had gone to criticise asked him: "Well, what do you think of the Bishop's elocution? " " Elocution! " ejaculated he |i! t THE BURNING BUSH. ail "that man doesn't need elocution, he has got the Holy Ghost! ' Apollos was exceedingly mighty in the Scrip- tures; but It IS quite possible to be an exegete of no mean rank and at the same time be but a biblical anatomist or botanist. There are in our college halls master minds who can gather their classes under the shadow of the Tree of Life there are minds like the peripatetic philosophers, who can lead their wondering pupils along endless cor- ridors and through the labyrinths of learning, and with the scholarship of our modern masters, analyze the groves from fruit to root; but at the close of the curriculum course, the class may have only a valuable store of information, while all around may be heaps of lifeless and unsavory waste We cannot have too much of such exhaust- ive and minutely accurate investigation. But the physiological study of the Living Word is possible only to the man indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who, like the spnng-time sun, penetrates the fibre of an apparently dead root, fills it with the streaming, throbbing sap, carries the commerce of chemistry from the inexhaustible laboratory and resources of earth and sea and atmosphere, untwists the sun- beani, refines the sugar, extracts the color, mixes the flavor, weaves with more than Tyrian beauty the silken-tissued leaves, hangs upon the branches millions of feathery fans and ladens every twig and stem with large, luscious, mellow, mature fruit, to feed and refresh the famishing souls that throng the highway of life. •'1 i J I 'I % 11 Aia THE BURNING BUSH. .ill i: There spnngs up in our hearts a prophetic ionging and pardonable jealousy for the army of t^'^taS. Tr ' • r", ^^'^^[^^ ^S^' ^^° ^'^ failing il ,, *?u "^^^^Jo*- which the Great Sculpto? designed them. Our college chairs are crushing under the tonnage of scholarships that the Church !!t^^^^ T? "P"'? ^^^ y°""8^ candidates for the min- istry. The substructural timbers of our pulpits ti;'.?n7' '^^ exceeding weight of endowment, InniJ^ u ' T°" ^i^ intelligent audiences of ou^ modern churches. Could these encyclopaedic em- ponums of universal learning, could these pulpits of profound research, be endued with holy oil and baptized with sacred fire, what volcanic outbursts of living and impassioned truth, through tongues of fervent flame and lives of moral mightiness would disturb the lethargy of the Laodicean mul S tudes would rouse the sleeping hosts, would resur- rec the milhons who are "dead in trespasses and sin and hft the Church from the indignity of a catering social institution. With the authority of m. ^1- ^ ? ^'"^' *^^y ^^"^^ ^^ad and execute o"! VetThTstro^^eV'^ '"^^''"^' "^"^^^"^ ^-^^ h. w/J^'," ^T^""^ '" 'P'"^-" He was in earnest; rL7 A f^ad earnest; he was enthusiastic. The S Ir^V'^rt'"^ "^^^""*" ^^^' "s «"ch terms of th?,-nl '/'ii:°'' %"^ ^°'""& °^e^' all terms tinld ''?T^^'^- ^^^* ^" inconsistency in lamest " ''Inn 1 ^T 5 ^^"^*^""' ^"* ^ ^"^ "^^ '" earnest. Apollos had not yet received the ban t,™ with ,he Holy Ghost. hTwH fe^'^, ".Lug'h he knew only John's baptism, which was a tesi 'i THE BURNING BUSH. 313 mony that he had repented and had received the remission of sins. Surely regeneration makes the soul boil. Surely anointing with the Spirit makes the life boil over, and translates it into the divine energy that energizes in it mightily. It invests the whole being with the panoply of the super- natural. ** It is as easy to twist iron anchors and to braid cannons as it is to braid straw; it is as easy to boil granite as to boil water, if you take all the steps in order "—if you get a sufficiently intense temperature. We are willing to admit that the physical conditions, the mental peculiarities, and spiritual characteristics are as varied as the human, as the multiplied millions of the race diflfer in features and eccentricities. But the incoming of the Holy Spirit will introduce revolutionary agencies that will transform and conspicuously impassion the life. It is indeed true that our temperaments differ in kind and capacity for heat, or in other words we boil at different degrees of heat. Let us stroll together along one of the busiest streets of a great city. There on the street corner is a man at the boiling point, in the excite- ment of a conversation over the real or apparent superority of his pet pug or pointer. Just a block away a group of beautiful girls are bubbling over with glee — a patty-pan ebullition over the arti- ficialities of fading fashions. Across the square is the Union Depot, where throngs are pressing, carriages congest the avenue, bands supply jubil - ating music. The Transcontinental Limited is due from the capital of the Prairie Pr /ince. Hark! i* 1 Ml i I ai4 THE BURNING BUSH. 1 1 Cheers, greetings! Is it a vicc-regaJ party? Is it to he metropolis of the successful hockey 7eam Just hard by, political opponents under the cSc of competitive platforms, boil over in debates con <^rnmg the nation's destinies. The Board of Trade IS like a seething caldron, where the st?niulants of business are distilled. Another class neTdsthl temperature of a revolution to brTngTts flintW^^^^^^ ings to a fervent condition. While the hUpi" j;^^"f ,^--ture of men are moved by notw'„l' short of the grandeur of the absolute tr^th Thf umtf r'7?.^ inconceivably awful fir^f a con! suming God throws them into the irresistX intensity produced by the " splendors and shades eaVnesTn«s'"'D'"'\:''^." '^^ - majttylt earnestness. Demosthenes' orations were said to Brou/ha'i^T" "^'^' '^'^^^ ^'^'^ P^^^^on Lo S ?:°';§^^^^/" !/Peeches were called law papers on fire. Sheridan said: " I like to hear Rowland H^ Srhtrt.'''"" ''^ "°^'^ ^°-^ hissingTot'fr™ ness^Tee P^Z ^iT^ °^ unquenchable earnest- ness see Paul at Athens. The markets are sur felted with gods. He is bedazzled bythescintir hfSrrldors"? /"'*""• ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ r^L.u I °^ /"^ ^^'- Fountains of poetry wrestle V^^ ''''• P^^^'^^ophers of giant s^atu^ thene Het ^''*"^P"\"^?de ''""^^rtal by Demos- thenes. He sees numberless nich .s honoring the THE BURNING BUSH. aiS Statues of deified heroes. He visits the Parthenon and the monument of Minerva, and amid the god- less civilization and Christless religiosity his spirit was stirred in him. He went into a paroxysm. That stupendous spirit, that majestic mind and colossal character that embodied the sevenfold aspirations of the ambitious Jew, that pioneer of world-wide missions, was thrown into the Spirit- kindled furnace and raised to the temperature of an impassioned, unquenchable zeal, to carry the gospel of a purer heaven, a holier life and brighter immortality than had ever dawned upon the vision of classic Greece. Let us modernize the occasion. Ephesus was the Chicago, the great emporium of the East. Apollos, Moody-like, was drawing great multi- tudes, and vast audiences hung upon his words as if their destiny hinged upon his flaming setences. The pauper in his vermin, the prince in his ermine, and all the intermediate stages of society, were represented in the congesting gatherings. There was in the city a remarkable couple, con- spicuous for their spiritual power and quick-scented insight and yet scripturally unpretentious in their Christian service. In all probability they had received the anointing of the Spirit, and been initiated into the mystery of Christ through the instrumentality of Paul, with whom they had been co-laborers at Corinth, On this historic, this crisal. this momentous occasion, they found themselves auditors of the Alexandrian orator. He stands upon the platform as a master of the profoundest issues. He carries the intelligent thinkers cap- 1; t ■S ■■;■ «6 THE BURNING BVSH bts'on'^thT"!^^^^^^^^^ ration. He enrapturing ecSesl/*'*'^°""^ rhapsodies and less ks he disDlav. hi« ^. «"»<> 'on^l and emotion- VVh^n^u ^ , telescopic eloquence great preacher the huX'= '^,,P^"«"« °' the The raised-letter ttoe th», '''*'""'>' "^o^Ple- tween the lineTX'Ly p'^es«dTe*'rr ^'^ ^- heart, that thev did LvJu- ■ ''" "P°" o" patronize ^ '^^ birth- right to all fW^^ 7^^. "^^''^ ^as an inherent si?n^"sfeakfnV^Z':h " L'^ ^^^^^^'^ P^-" view, the u'Sati souTha t rfcl" r^t^ °^ ciai right to live" r "'r' '^^^^^ ^^^ - i"^^- whole fabric of Iw i?''"" '^ ""J"«* ^"^ the weight ofT. n """T^^^^ ^"*° ^"'n "nder the weignt ot Its own unrighteousness; A«x n • the unpardoned soul has no r^X . ^^^''^ first operation of the g^ace of CnH . T'^' '^' worid. But the sinn^ i r "^ *°'^^*"^ ^ '•ebel eminently h?^ls a r.nH^?''"^ P^'^'^ises." Pre- through^he'pleVof^'lhf hJ '^rl ^"°^"^'"^' Pentecostal aLntbring3 to ^h."^ ""f' ^^'^^^^ the apprehension and experimen't^'"'''"'' '""' of the " Promise of the Path™ ^PP^-^ciation THE BURNING BUSH. 221 There must be an intense desire, a deep longing, a soul-hunger for Himself in the inner being, and a I: '.y passion for a divine equipment that cannot be secured ;nder the stars, for the Christ-life and sacrilicing iervice. Do i ( esire that He shall come into my life and hold undivided sway over all my being ? Am I willing that it shall be no longer I and Christ, nor even Christ and I upon the throne? Am I willing to say, " Not I, but Christ " shall be the Sovereign Lord and King to command and control my every action ? What Jesus said to His immediate disciples, He says to His followers of all time: " Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." When those humble fishermen forsook their fishing pursuits, they distinctly understood that, in obeying the Master, they would be instrumental in doing for men what they had hitherto been doing with the finny tribe of Galilee. In other words, with the fishing-tackle of truth they would be able to land alive multitudes of perishing souls. With the generous consent of the patient reader, the writer will revert to his own experience, seldom detailed to the public gaze because of its sacredness. During the summer months of his freshman year in the university, he was appointed by the College Missionary Society to work in Manitoba. He began with the buoyancy of a schoolboy. The hope and vigor of budding man- hood beat high in his heart. His charge was a bishopric of no mean proportions. Tireless energy characterized his efforts to do and dare for the 222 THE BURNING BUSH. If ■ I... i m good of men, for the honor of the Church and the glory of God. But the cry of the penitent was never heard. The conversion of sinners was conspicuously wanting, and the ret vn to the col- lege halls and university classes was not marked by the testimony that everywhere obtained as apostolic preachers and Pauline missionaries returned from their epoch-making journeys — the conversion of souls and successful invas- ions upon the territory and strongholds of Satan. A cry — an undefined, unquenchable cry — was bom in his soul, for a divine equip- ment, about which he had never known and never heard. But a second summer was spent in the mission-field, with the same fruitless results. The third summer brought a new era. The same college society sent him to a mission-field on the Ottawa. The Presbyterians in hi? native town were holding some special meetings during the T lonth of June. Two gospel lingers of con- tinental fame were singing and the preaching was being done by the resident pastor and some local helpers. It was the first revival meeting the em- bryonic preacher had ever seen in the church of his mother. Great grace was upon the church. The atmosphere was impregnated with a divine visitation and the Spirit was doing His office-work in convincing and converting the unsaved, and re- ceiving His place as the other Comforter in the hearts of believers. A superhuman constraint was laid upon the subject of this testimony to avail himself of the novel and unusual sight. The ser- mon was vigorous and strong; the singing was Wk THE BURNING BUSH. 223 seraphic. But these did not stir his soul. God used the testimony of a Stephen-hke face. A Christian lady, whom the Master has signally used for a quarter of a century, was invited to speak for a few minutes. Her testimony told the hungry young heart the cause of its secret, wail-hke cry, and the corresponding supply. At the same trnie it became the barbed arrow of Spint-pomted con- viction, which the Divine Archer shot into the soul, generating pain and a tempest of unrest, that for three stormy months swep^ the lone craft upon an unfriendly sea. Christian work was drudgery of the most unprofitable type. The whole summer season was like an age-long, dreary desert, with bHstering sands, fiery and barren heavens. We would not go over those weary months again for all the positions and possersions of the world. To secure the Spirit-filled life there must be an unconditional surrender. There 1. st be an undi- vided, whole-hearted consecration of body, soul and spirit. Shall I yield? Shall I join the standing army of the King of kings? Shall I say, "Wherever He says I will go, and whenevei He says I shall spring promptly to obey; whatever He details me to do, that is the ser\'ice or sacrifice I shall gladly, joyously hasten to perform, whether it be to preach on a cart or on a capitol, to wield a scepter and rule an empire, or minister in the unknown and forgotten stations of life. However He says, it shall be done in His way, all for His glory "? In the privileged company of truth-seeking readers, we shall return to our historic year. The e was but one month, and the college halls would 224 THE BURN'^t; BUSH. ! 1 again echo and re-echc with the whirlwind of returning students. A Spirit-filled elder of the church suggested that a special effort be made to rouse the Laodicean carnality of the mission station and arrest the corruption that was stalking through the community with the boldness of the roaring lion. A union meeting was arranged between the Methodists and the Presbyterians. A forty-days' campaign was begun, whose battles and conquests will be read in the chronicles of the coming ages. * The Waterloo was fought on the first Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the heart of the student missionary, while a Spirit-endued lawyer poured forth the truth from the fountain of the eternal Spirit, using the golden chalice to be found in Rom. 15 : 29. It was like the ultimatum from the capital of the sovereign Godhead. The prophetic minister sat beside the law on fire, settling the question of whole-hearted sur- render and facing the problem of who should be Sovereign and Lord in all his future life and ministry. It was a war of giants. It was Calvary repeated. It was the demon- thronged desert. It was death and dissolution from the past alliances with the old self-life. It was resurrection to live in the power of the risen Christ. It was ascension to share by faith a place and serv- ice in " the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." The fire-clothed, faithful, truth-honoring mes- senger sat down, little dreaming of what had transpired at his side. The Spirit constrained the recipient of the " Father's Gift," to rise and give his first public testimony. There was a supernat- THH BURNING BUSH. 225 ural involution of the Godhead. The evokition ts but the inevitable result and will be an eternal consequence. There was the instantaneous in- working and energizing of the Triune Personality, and the outworking just as instantaneously began to manifest itself in word and deed. Then the Spirit began to call for a council and intelligent dedication of the life. Night came; the retiring hour arrived. Hour after hour passed over that Mosaic mountain-scene in a human soul, it was God conferring with a yielding life. That un- pretentious room was like the palatial chambers of the holy habitations of Mount Zion. Any attempt to describe it seems like desecration. Upon his face the candidate for holy orders, the vestments of the Spirit, lay prostrated in comnuinion with God. It seemed as though the combined forces of the apostate worid were gathering and rolling up insurmountable barriers, till the soul seemed to be in a veritable gorge, around which impen- etrable and impassable barriers, guarded by all the hosts of darkness, defied the egrt s of the im- prisoned immortal. But to be in the black hole ot Calcutta, to be in a dark and dismal dungeon, alone with God, makes the most extravagant apocalyp- tical visions an experimental reality. The child-like confidence and venture of the soul on such occasions startle us. We remember how the confiding heart looked up into the Father's face and with a holy audacity saul: " Unless Thou wilt show me from the Word that Thou wilt be with me and in me to undertake my life, till ' that day,' I will surrender all, withdraw (IS) 226 THE BURNING BUSH. , from the ministry, live the natural, self-centered lite and await the issues of a half-hearted service." And as if the great Father-heart had drawn aside the curtains of invisibility and dropped a newly-niade promise from the throne, Isa. 45 : 2 came like a swift-winged angelic messenger to the panting heart--" I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron. Ever since that day, it has been an ever- lasting No, to the old life, and an everlasting Yes to the enthroned Christ. "I will say Yes to Jesus, Oft it was No, before, '^An^S''""''''^,'' I' ™y ''""'^ P^'o^d entrance. And I proudly barred the door. ^"t I made complete surrender, And given Him right of way And henceforth it i? always Yes; lo whatever He may say." The Holy Spirit is a gift. A gift is something or somebody that comes to the recipient. Other^ wise It would be wages, that is something you earn, something for which you give or do some- thing in return. It is nothing inherent in the gift, any gift that makes it ours. It is the fact that a giver brings or sends it with word communicated m some way, authorizing us to call it ours. The word of the giver makes a gift potentially ours, and our believing that word and saying it is our prop- erty makes the gift practically ours. Yet here the teacher as well as preacher finds himself in a THE BURNING BUSH. 237 region of difficulty, because of the very simplicity of the first principles of reception. When the truth like a fire burns in the evan- gel's bones and rolls like the thunder, when it flashes like the Sinaitic lightning and the convicted and repentant sinners cry out: " What must we do to be saved? " it is at this point of awful issues we have often found ourselves kneeling with open Bible at John 6 : 37, beside a trembling soul with a single heartbeat between him and eternal life or everlasting death, and been hushed by the utter helplessness of human logic and the finite arm to bring the seeking one over the gulf between guilt and glory. We may teach and lead him logically, and he may just as logically learn and follow and yet fail. Life-giving power is not logical, it is biological. We can and ought to teach the seeker that if he fulfil conditions according to the Scrip- tures, he has a right to claim all the causative forces of that same Word of God. Indeed, He will wreck worlds and annihilate the created universe before He will break or fail to honor His Word, which He has exalted above all His name. Faith is saying " Amen " to God. Receiving the Comforter is fi^lfilling the prescribed conditions, the consecration of body, soul and spirit, and then believing and boldly attesting the reception of Him who is promised. Receiving, pure and simple, is endorsing the promise of God. Let us illustrate. Perhaps the majority of my readers have had the sensible pleasure of receiving a bank- cheque or postal money-order, bearing the author- ity of a much-needed supply. The face reads some- C28 fHE BURNING BUSH. ; t thmg like the following: " Pay to the Bearer, the sum of $ioo." If it be a Post Office Order, in the lower left-hand corner there is tl -. word ** Re- ceived " Before the payee can possibly handle the money he must, speaking with mathematical accuracy, tell or write an untruth— he must sub- scribe his name. He must receipt the hundred dollars before he gets it. and pass it over to an unknown person, and trust without a shred of vis- ible security that the tangible coin will be forth- comuig. Whether it be a postal note or bank cheque, it is the receipting of it or endorsation. winch is the same thing, that makes the paper or money a current reality. When Jesus says: " Receive ye the Holy (■host." and the honest heart endorses it with all the sincerity of the soul, all the resources of the mfinite treasury promised in the Word of God become the current coinage with which the Spirit- I)ossesse(l life may do efficient work and carry on a successful business for the King. We must then reckon the work as done. Reckon is a mathematical and nautical term, and IS frequently translated "count." One would naturally think that after Paul had sounded those deepest abysses of truth in the sixth chapter of Romans, that teaches the believer's privilege to be '■ dead indee' ^^•^''^ ^-' companionsh^ of the antediluvian patriarch, who. amkl circum tellowsh.p of God. and ultimate translation to the habitations of the redeemed pate^andl''^^'' '^' °^ '"'^''^'"^ "''"' «« ^ntici- pated and to some degree shared in the most ele- Ihll t ^L ^- " ^^^"'•^"ce of understanding to you '' Tot'fr^ "' ^'1 "'-^^^^^y'' " Chris! in you. 1 o the human mmd. living as we do in the ton/f; '".1, 'f "''""^^ ^° '^' -"'titude! living ii' a'eVbv t£: Tr-^- ^"'"^^^^^ and'contK avoid 1 7 n ^h.ch ,s sensible, it is difficult to avoid literally reversing the order expressed in ^i^E and KEALiZK. Chaos will always reign in fhe ' THE BURNING BUSH. 331 mind and insecurity in the heart, shoulu the scrip- tural order of the Spirit's operation be rejected or ignored. The author has a friend who stands near the center of the inner circle of his Galatian 4 : 15 friends. He thinks like Plato and pours his thought through a logical mould worthy of Aris- totle. He was brought to Christ in the afternoon of life and led to see and accept the anointing even later in the day. The truth came to him on this wise. " The altar sanctifies the gift." 1 lay myself entirely, intelligently upon the altvir, which is my " reasonable service," and logically concluded, " Am I not sanctified, set apart for a holy pur- pose? " And the irreversible law of logic drew from him the aftirmative exclamation: '* It looks like it! " He testified to it. He claimed the birth- right, and for weeks walked by faith, as an acrobat does the cable that spans Niagara gorge. The realization came. For he had learned the priceless lesson to walk by faith. One day, as he was busily hurrying about the secular service in his life-work, the flood-gates opened, the freshet came and submerged that man of iron and granite, and transformed him into the paradox of the "Lion Lamb." Beloved, receive, reckon and recognize Him, and realize you must. It may be sooner; it may be later. It may be in service, or in unselfish sacri- fice; but hold fast to your confession of the faith, and in His way, at His time, He will manifest in person His supernatural presence. >