QUIET TALKS ON POWER
 
 S. D. Gordon's "Quiet 
 Talks" on the Elements 
 of the Christian Life 
 
 Each 12mo, cloth, 75 cents net 
 Three vols. in a box, $2.25 net 
 
 QUIET TALKS ON POWER 
 QUIET TALKS ON PRAYER 
 QUIET TALKS ON SERVICE 
 
 gEGINNING with his remarkable 
 work on "Power" supplement- 
 ing it with one on " Prayer" and 
 later with a third on " Service," 
 Mr. Gordon has rounded out his 
 "Quiet Talks" on the Elements of 
 the Christian Life. Uniformly 
 bound, this set will be welcome to 
 the Christian's library whether as a 
 personal purchase or as a gift. 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 Publishers
 
 QUIET TALKS 
 ON P W ER 
 
 BY 
 
 S. D. GORDON 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION 
 
 CHICAGO NEW YORK TORONTO 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 Chicago: 63 Washington Street 
 New York: 158 Filth Avenue 
 Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHOKED CHANNELS ..... 9 
 
 THE OLIVET MESSAGE .... 33 
 
 THE CHANNEL OF POWER - 61 
 
 THE PRICE OF POWER .... 87 
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF POWER - - 117 
 
 MAKING AND BREAKING CONNECTIONS 147 
 
 THE FLOOD-TIDE OF POWER - - -173 
 
 FRESH SUPPLIES OF POWER ... 199 
 
 2073168
 
 CHOKED CHANNELS.
 
 CHOKED CHANNELS. 
 
 An Odd Distinction. 
 
 A few years ago I was making a brief tour among 
 the colleges of Missouri. I remember one morning 
 in a certain college village going over from the hotel 
 to take breakfast with some of the boys, and coming 
 back with one of the fellows whom I had just met. 
 As we walked along, chatting away, I asked him 
 quietly, "Are you a Christian, sir?" He turned 
 quickly and looked at me with an odd, surprised ex- 
 pression in his eye and then turning his face away 
 said: "Well, I'm a member of church, but I don't 
 believe I'm very much of a Christian." Then I 
 looked at him and he frankly volunteered a little 
 information. Not very much. He did not need to 
 say much. You can see a large field through a 
 chink in the fence. And I saw enough to let me 
 know that he was right in the criticism he had made 
 upon himself. We talked a bit and parted. But 
 his remark set me to thinking. 
 
 A week later, in another town, speaking one 
 morning to the students of a young ladies' seminary, 
 I said afterwards to one of the teachers as we were 
 talking: "I suppose your young women here are all 
 Christians." That same quizzical look came into 
 9
 
 io Choked Channels. 
 
 her eye as she said: "I think they are all members 
 of church, but I do not think they are all Christians 
 with real power in their lives." There was that 
 same odd distinction. 
 
 A few weeks later, in Kansas City visiting the 
 medical and dental schools, I recall distinctly stand- 
 ing one morning in a disordered room shavings on 
 the floor, desks disarranged the institution just 
 moving into new quarters, and not yet settled. I 
 was discussing with a member of the faculty, the 
 dean I think, about how many the room would hold, 
 how soon it would be ready, and so on just a busi- 
 ness talk, nothing more when he turned to me 
 rather abruptly, looking me full in the face, and 
 said with quiet deliberation: "I'm a member of 
 church; I think I am a deacon in our church" 
 running his hand through his hair meditatively, as 
 though to refresh his memory "but I am not very 
 much of a Christian, sir." The smile that started 
 to come to my face at the odd frankness of his 
 remark was completely chased away by the distinct 
 touch of pathos in both face and voice that seemed 
 to speak of a hungry, unsatisfied heart within. 
 
 Perhaps it was a month or so later, in one of the 
 mining towns down in the zinc belt of southwestern 
 Missouri, I was to speak to a meeting of men. 
 There were probably five or six hundred gathered in 
 a Methodist Church. They were strangers to me. 
 I was in doubt what best to say to them. One dis- 
 likes to fire ammunition at people that are absent.
 
 Choked Channels. n 
 
 So stepping down to a front pew where several 
 ministers were seated, I asked one of them to run 
 his eye over the house and tell me what sort of a 
 congregation it was, so far as he knew them. He 
 did so, and presently replied: "I think fully two- 
 thirds of these men are members of our churches" 
 and then, with that same quizzical, half-laughing 
 look, he added, "but you know, sir, as well as I do, 
 that not half of them are Christians worth counting." 
 "Well," I said to myself, astonished, "this is a 
 mining camp; this certainly is not anything like the 
 condition of affairs in the country generally." 
 
 But that series of incidents, coming one after the 
 other in such rapid succession, set me thinking in- 
 tently about that strange distinction between being 
 members of a church on the one hand, and on the 
 other, living lives that count and tell and weigh for 
 Jesus seven days in the week. I knew that minis- 
 ters had been recognizing such a distinction, but to 
 find it so freely acknowledged by folks in the pew 
 was new, and surely significant. 
 
 And so I thought I would just ask the friends 
 here to-day very frankly, "What kind of Christians 
 are you?" I do not say what kind you are, for I 
 am a stranger, and do not know, and would only 
 think the best things of you. But I ask you frankly, 
 honestly now, as I ask myself anew, what kind are 
 you? Do you know? Because it makes such a 
 difference. The Master's plan and what a genius 
 of a plan it is is this, that the world should be
 
 12 Choked Channels. 
 
 won, not by the preachers though we must have 
 these men of God for teaching and leadership but 
 by everyone who knows the story of Jesus telling 
 someone, and telling not only with his lips earnestly 
 and tactfully, but even more, telling with his life. 
 That is the Master's plan of campaign for this world. 
 And it makes a great difference to Him and to the 
 world outside whether you and I are living the story 
 of His love and power among men or not. 
 
 Do you know what kind of a Christian you are? 
 There are at least three others that do. First of all 
 there is Satan. He knows. Many of our church 
 officers are skilled in gathering and compiling statis- 
 tics, but they cannot hold a tallow-dip to Satan in 
 this matter of exact information. He is the ablest 
 of all statisticians, second only to one other. He 
 keeps careful record of every one of us, and knows 
 just how far we are interfering with his plans. He 
 knows that some of us good, respectable people, 
 as common reckoning goes neither help God nor 
 hinder Satan. Does that sound rather hard? But 
 is it not true? He has no objection to such people 
 being counted in as Christians. Indeed, he rather 
 prefers to have it so. Their presence inside the 
 church circle helps him mightily. He knows what 
 kind of a Christian you are. Do you know? 
 
 Then there is the great outer circle of non-chris- 
 tian people they know. Many of them are poorly 
 informed regarding the Christian life; hungry for 
 something they have not, and know not just what it
 
 Choked Channels. 13 
 
 is; with high ideals, though vague, of what a Chris- 
 tian life should be. And they look eagerly to us 
 for what they have thought we had, and are so often 
 keenly disappointed that our ideals, our life, is so 
 much like others who profess nothing. And when 
 here and there they meet one whose acts are domi- 
 nated by a pure, high spirit, whose faces reflect a 
 sweet radiance amid all circumstances, and whose 
 lives send out a rare fragrance of gladness and kind- 
 liness and controlling peace, they are quick to recog- 
 nize that, to them, intangible something that makes 
 such people different. The world tired, hungry, 
 keen and critical for mere sham, appreciative of the 
 real thing the world knows what kind of Christians 
 we are. Do we know? 
 
 There is a third one watching us to-day with in- 
 tense interest. The Lord Jesus! Sitting up yon- 
 der in glory, with the scar-marks of earth on face 
 and form, looking eagerly down upon us who stand 
 for Him in the world that crucified Him He knows. 
 I imagine Him saying, "There is that one down 
 there whom I died for, who bears my name ; if T 
 had the control of that life what power I would 
 gladly breathe in and out of it, but he is so absorbed 
 in other things." The Master is thinking about you, 
 studying your life, longing to carry out His plan if 
 He could only get permission, and sorely disap- 
 pointed in many of us. He knows. Do you know?
 
 14 Choked Channels. 
 
 The Night Visitor. 
 
 After that trip I became much interested in dis- 
 covering in John's Gospel some striking pictorial 
 illustrations of these two kinds of Christians, namely, 
 those who have power in their lives for Jesus Christ 
 and those who have not. Let me speak of only a 
 few of these. The first is sketched briefly in the 
 third" chapter, with added touches in the seventh and 
 nineteenth chapters. There is a little descriptive 
 phrase used each time "the man who came to 
 Jesus by night." That comes to be in John's mind 
 the most graphic and sure way of identifying this 
 man. A good deal of criticism, chiefly among the 
 upper classes, had already been aroused by Jesus' 
 acts and words. This man Nicodemus clearly was 
 deeply impressed by the young preacher from up in 
 Galilee. He wants to find out more of him. But 
 he shrank back from exposing himself to criticism 
 by these influential people for his possible friendship 
 with the young radical, as Jesus was regarded. So 
 one day he waits until the friendly shadows will con- 
 ceal his identity, and slipping quietly along the 
 streets, close up to the houses so as to insure his 
 purpose of not being recognized, he goes up yonder 
 side street where Jesus has lodgings. He knocks 
 timidly. "Does the preacher from up the north 
 way stop here?" "Yes." "Could I see him?" 
 He steps in and spends an evening in earnest conver- 
 sation. I think we will all readily agree that Nico-
 
 Choked Channel. 15 
 
 demus believed Jesus after that night's interview, 
 however he may have failed to understand all He 
 said. Yes, we can say much more he loved Him. 
 For after the cruel crucifixion it is this man that 
 brings a box of very precious spices, weighing as 
 much as a hundred pounds, worth, without question, 
 a large sum of money, with which to embalm the 
 dead body of his friend. Ah! he loved Him. No 
 one may question that. 
 
 But turn now to the seventh chapter of John. 
 There is being held a special session of the Jewish 
 Senate in Jerusalem for the express purpose of 
 determining how to silence Jesus to get rid of 
 Him. This man is a member of that body, and is 
 present. Yonder he sits with the others, listening 
 while his friend Jesus is being discussed and His 
 removal by force if need be is being plotted. 
 What does he do? What would you expect of a 
 friend of Jesus under such circumstances? I won- 
 der what you and I would have done? I wonder 
 what we do do? Does he say modestly, but plainly, 
 "I spent a whole evening with this man, questioning 
 Him, talking with Him, listening to Him. I feel 
 quite sure that He is our promised Messiah; and I 
 have decided to accept Him as such." Did he say 
 that? That would have been the simple truth. But 
 such a remark plainly would have aroused a storm 
 of criticism, and he dreaded that. Yet he felt that 
 something should be said. So, lawyer-like, he puts 
 the case abstractly. "Hmm does our law judge
 
 1 6 Choked Channels. 
 
 a man without giving him a fair hearing?" That 
 sounds fair, though it does seem rather feeble in 
 face of their determined opposition. But near by 
 sits a burly Pharisee, who turns sharply around and, 
 glaring savagely at Nicodemus, says sneeringly: 
 "Who are you? Do you come from Galilee, too? 
 Look and seel No prophet comes out of Galilee" 
 with intensest contempt in the tone with which he 
 pionounces the word Galilee. And poor Nicodemus 
 seems to shrink back into half his former size, and 
 has not another word to say, though all the facts, 
 easily ascertainable, were upon his side of the case. 
 He loved Jesus without doubt, but he had no power 
 for Him among men because of his timidity. Shall I 
 use a plainer, though uglier, word his cowardice? 
 That is not a pleasant word to apply to a man. But 
 is it not the true word here? He was so afraid of 
 what they would think and say! Is that the sort of 
 Christian you are? Believing Jesus, trusting Him, 
 saved by Him, loving Him, but shrinking back from 
 speaking out for Him, tactfully, plainly, when op- 
 portunity presents or can be made. A Christian, 
 but without positive power for Him among men 
 because of cowardice! 
 
 I can scarcely imagine Nicodemus walking down 
 the street in Jerusalem, arm in arm with another 
 Pharisee-member of the Sanhedrin and saying to 
 him quietly, but earnestly: "Have you had a talk 
 with this young man Jesus?" "No, indeed, I have 
 not!" "Well, do you know, I spent an evening
 
 Choked Channels. 17 
 
 with Him down at His stopping place, and had a 
 long, careful talk with Him. I am quite satisfied 
 that He is our long-looked-for leader; I have decided 
 to give Him my personal allegiance; won't you get 
 personally acquainted with Him? He is a wonder- 
 ful man." I say I have difficulty in thinking that 
 this man worked for Jesus like that. And yet what 
 more natural and proper, both for him and for us? 
 And what a difference it might have made in many 
 a man's life. Powerless for Jesus because of timid- 
 ity! Is that the kind you are? Possibly some one 
 thinks that rather hard on this man. Maybe you 
 are thinking of that other member of the Sanhedrin 
 Joseph of Arimathea who was also a follower of 
 Jesus, and that quite possibly he may have been 
 influenced by Nicodemus. Let us suppose, for 
 Nicodemus' sake, that this is so, and then mark 
 the brief record of this man Joseph in John's 
 account: "A disciple secretly for fear of the Jews." 
 If we may fairly presume that it was Nicodemus' 
 influence that led his friend Joseph to follow Jesus, 
 yet he had led him no nearer than he himself had 
 gone ! He could lead him no higher or nearer than that. 
 John in his gospel makes plain the fact that 
 Jesus suffered much from these secret, timid, cow- 
 ardly disciples whose fear of men gripped them as 
 in a vise. Five times he makes special mention of 
 these people who believed Jesus, but cravenly feared 
 to line up with Him. 1 He even says that many of 
 
 1 John 3:1. 7:$<x 1242 with 922. 19:38, 39.
 
 1 8 Choked Channels. 
 
 the rulers the very class that plotted and voted His 
 death believed Jesus, but that fear of the others 
 shut their lips and drove them into the shadow when 
 they could have helped Him most. These people 
 seem to have left numerous descendants, many of 
 whom continue with us unto this day. 
 
 Tightly Tied Up. 
 
 Turn now to the eleventh chapter and you win 
 find another pictorial suggestion of this same sort of 
 powerless Christian, though in this instance made so 
 by another reason. It is the Bethany Chapter, the 
 Lazarus Chapter. The scene is just out of Bethany 
 village. There is a man lying dead in the cave 
 yonder. Here stands Jesus. There are the dis- 
 ciples, and Martha, and Mary, and the villagers, and 
 a crowd from Jerusalem. The Master is speaking. 
 His voice rings out clear and commanding "Laza- 
 rus, come forth" speaking to a dead man. And 
 the simple record runs, "He that was dead" life 
 comes between those two lines of the record 
 "came forth, bound hand and foot with grave- 
 clothes, and his face was bound about with a nap- 
 kin." Will you please take a look at Lazarus as 
 he steps from the tomb? Do you think his eyes are 
 dull, or his cheeks hollow and pale? I think not! 
 When Jesus, the Lord of life, gives life, either 
 physical or spiritual, He gives abundant life. That 
 face may have been a bit spare. There had been no
 
 Choked Channels. 19 
 
 food for at least four days and likely longer. But 
 there is the flash of health in his eye and the ruddy 
 hue of good blood in his cheek. He has life. But 
 look closer. He is bound hand and foot and face. 
 He can neither walk nor work nor speak. 
 
 I have met some Christian people who reminded 
 me forcibly of that scene. They are Christians. 
 The Master has spoken life, and they have responded 
 to His word. But they are so tied up with the 
 grave-clothes of the old life that there can be none 
 of the power of free action in life or service. May 
 I ask you very kindly, but very plainly, are you like 
 that? Is that the reason you have so little power 
 with God, and for God? Perhaps some one would 
 say, "Just what do you mean?" I mean this: that 
 there may be some personal habit of yours, or per- 
 haps some society custom which you practice, or it 
 may be some business method, or possibly an old 
 friendship which you have carried over into the new 
 life from the old that is seriously hindering your 
 Christian life. It may be something that goes into 
 your mouth or comes out of it that prevents those 
 lips speaking for the Master. Perhaps it is some 
 organization you belong to. If there is lack of free- 
 dom and power for Christ you may be sure there is 
 something that is blighting your life and dwarfing 
 your usefulness. It may possibly be that practically 
 in your daily life you are exerting no more power 
 for God than a dead man! A Christian, indeed, 
 but willwul power because of compromise with some-
 
 20 Choked Channels. 
 
 thing questionable or outrightly wrong! Is that so 
 with you? I do not say it is, for I do not know. 
 But you know. The hungry, critical world knows. 
 Subtle, keen Satan knows. The Lord Jesus knows. 
 Do you know if that describes you? You may 
 know with certainty within twenty-four hours if 
 you wish to and will to. May we be willing to 
 have the Spirit's searchlight turned in upon us to- 
 night. 
 
 The Master's Ideal. 
 
 There is another kind of Christian, an utterly 
 different kind, spoken of and illustrated in this same 
 Gospel of John, and I doubt not many of them also 
 are here. It is Jesus' ideal of what a Christian 
 should be. Have you sometimes wished you could 
 have a few minutes of quiet talk with Jesus? I 
 mean face to face, as two of us might sit and talk 
 together. You have thought you would ask Him to 
 say very simply and plainly just what He expects of 
 you. Well, I believe He would answer in words 
 something like those of this seventh chapter of John. 
 It was at the time of Feast of Tabernacles. There 
 was a vast multitude of Jews there from all parts of 
 the world. It was like an immense convention, but 
 larger than any convention we know. The people 
 were not entertained in the homes, but lived for 
 seven days in leafy booths made of branches of trees. 
 It was the last day of the feast. There was a large
 
 Choked Channels. 21 
 
 concourse of people gathered in one of the temple 
 areas; not women, but men; not sitting, but stand- 
 ing. Up yonder stand the priests, pouring water 
 out of large jars, to symbolize the outpouring of the 
 Holy Spirit upon the nation of Israel. Just then 
 Jesus speaks, and amid the silence of the intently 
 watching throng His voice rings out: "If any man 
 thirst let him come unto Me and drink; he that 
 believeth on Me, as the Scripture saith, out of his 
 belly shall flow rivers of living water." Mark that 
 significant closing clause. That packs into a sen- 
 tence Jesus' ideal of what a true Christian down in 
 this world should be, and may be. Every word is 
 full of meaning. 
 
 The heart of the sentence is in the last word 
 "water." Water is an essential of life. Absence 
 of water means suffering and sickness, dearth and 
 death. Plenty of good water means life. All the 
 history of the world clusters about the water courses. 
 Study the history of the rivers, the seashores, and 
 lake edges, and you know the history of the earth. 
 Those men who heard Jesus speak would instinct- 
 ively think of the Jordan. It was their river. 
 Travelers say that no valley exceeded in beauty and 
 fruitfulness that valley of the Jordan, made so by 
 those swift waters. No hillside so fair in their 
 green beauty, nor so wealthy in heavy loads of fruit 
 as those sloping down to the edge of that stream. 
 Now plainly Jesus is talking of something that may, 
 through us, exert as decided an influence upon the
 
 22 Choked Channels. 
 
 lives of those we touch as water has exerted, and 
 still exerts, on the history of the earth, and as this 
 Jordan did in that wonderful, historic Palestine. 
 Mark the quantity of water "rivers." Not a 
 Jordan merely, that would be wonderful enough, 
 but Jordans a Jordan, and a Nile, and a Eu- 
 phrates, a Yang Tse Kiang, and an Olga and a 
 Rhine, a Seine and a Thames, and a Hudson and 
 an Ohio "rivers." Notice, too, the kind of water. 
 Like this racing, turbulent, muddy Jordan? No, 
 no! "rivers of living water," "water of life, clear 
 as crystal." You remember in Ezekiel's vision 
 which we read together that the waters constantly 
 increased in depth, and that everywhere they went 
 there was healing, and abundant life, and prosper- 
 ity, and beauty, and food, and a continual harvest 
 the year round, and all because of the waters of the 
 river. They were veritable waters of life. 
 
 Now mark that little, but very significant, phrase 
 "Outo}" not into, but "out of." All the differ- 
 ence in the lives of men lies in the difference between 
 these two expressions. "Into" is the world's prepo- 
 sition. Every stream turns in; and that means a 
 dead sea. Many a man's life is simply the coast 
 line of a dead sea. "Out of" is the Master's word. 
 His thought is of others. The stream must flow in, 
 and must flow through, if it is to flow out, but it is 
 judged by its direction, and Jesus would turn it out- 
 ward. There must be good connections upward, 
 and a clear channel inward, but the objective point
 
 Choked Channels. 23 
 
 is outward toward a parched earth. But before it 
 can flow out it must fill up. An onflow in this case 
 means an overflow. There must be a flooding inside 
 before there can be a flowing out. And let the fact 
 be carefully marked that it is only the overflow from 
 the fullness within our own lives that brings refresh- 
 ing to anyone else. A man praying at a conference 
 in England for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
 said: "O, Lord, we can't hold much, but we can 
 overflow lots." That is exactly the Master's 
 thought. "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of 
 living water." 
 
 Do you remember that phrase in the third chapter 
 of Joshua "For Jordan overfloweth all its banks 
 all the time of harvest." When there was a flood 
 in the river, there was a harvest in the land. Has 
 there been a harvest in your life? A harvest of the 
 fruit of the spirit love, joy, peace, long-suffering; 
 a harvest of souls? "No," do you say, "not much 
 of a harvest, I am afraid, " or it may be your heart 
 says "none at all." Is it hard to tell why? Has 
 there been a flood-tide in your heart, a filling up 
 from above until the blessed stream had to find an 
 outlet somewhere, and produce a harvest? A har- 
 vest outside means a rising of the tide inside. A 
 flooding of the heart always brings a haivest in the 
 life. A few years ago there were great floods in the 
 southern states, and the cotton and corn crops 
 following were unprecedented. Paul reminded 
 his Roman friends that when the Holy Spirit has
 
 24 Choked Channels. 
 
 free swing in the life "the love of God floods our 
 hearts." l 
 
 Please notice, too, the source of the stream "out 
 of his belly." Will you observe for a moment the 
 rhetorical figure here? I used to suppose it meant 
 "out of his heart." The ancients, you remember, 
 thought the heart lay down in the abdominal region. 
 But you will find that this book is very exact in its 
 use of words. The blood is the life. The heart 
 pumps the blood, but the stomach makes it. The 
 seat of life is not in the heart, but in the stomach. 
 If you will take down a book of physiology, and find 
 the chart showing the circulation of the blood, you 
 will see a wonderful network of lines spreading out 
 in every direction, but all running, through lighter 
 lines into heavier, and still blacker, until every line 
 converges in the great stomach artery. And every- 
 where the blood goes there is life. Now turn to a book 
 of physical geography and get a map showing the 
 water system of some great valley like the Missis- 
 sippi, and you will find a striking reproduction of 
 the other chart. And if you will shut your eyes 
 and imagine the reality back of that chart, you will 
 see hundreds of cool, clear springs flowing succes- 
 sively into runs, brooks, creeks, larger streams, 
 river branches, rivers, and finally into the great 
 river the reservoir of all. And everywhere the 
 waters go there is life. The only difference between 
 these two streams of life is in the direction. The 
 
 1 Rom. 5:5.
 
 Choked Channels. 25 
 
 blood flows from the largest toward the smallest; 
 the water flows from the smallest toward the largest. 
 Both bring life with its accompaniments of beauty 
 and vigor and fruitfulness. There is Jesus' picture 
 of the Christian down in the world. As the red 
 stream flows out from the stomach, and, propelled 
 by the force-pump of the heart, through a marvelous 
 network of minute rivers takes life to every part of 
 the body, so "he that believeth on Me" that is the 
 vital connecting link with the great origin of this 
 stream of life out of the very source of life within 
 him shall go a flood-tide of life, bringing refreshing, 
 and cleansing, and beauty, and vigor everywhere 
 within the circle of his life, even though, like the 
 red streams and the water streams, he be uncon- 
 scious of it. 
 
 An Unlikely Channel. 
 
 What a marvelous conception of the power 
 of life! How strikingly it describes Jesus' own 
 earthly life ! But there is something more marvelous 
 still He means that ideal to become real in you, my 
 friend, and in me. I doubt not there are some here 
 whose eager hearts are hungry for just such a life, 
 but who are tremblingly conscious of their own 
 weakness. Your thoughts are saying: "I wish I 
 could live such a life, but certainly this is not for me; 
 this man talking doesn't know me no special talent 
 or opportunity: such strong tides of temptation that
 
 a6 Choked Channels. 
 
 sweep me clean off my feet not for me." Ah, 
 my friend, I verily believe you are the very one the 
 Master had in mind, for He had John put into his 
 gospel a living illustration of this ideal of His that 
 goes down to the very edge of human unlikeliness 
 and inability. He goes down to the lowest so as to 
 include all. What proved true in this case may 
 prove true with you, and much more. The story is 
 in the fourth chapter. It is a sort of advance page 
 of the Book of Acts. A sample of the power of 
 Pentecost before the day of Pentecost. You and I 
 live on the flood-side of Pentecost. This illustration 
 belongs back where the streams had only just com- 
 menced trickling. It is a miniature. You and I 
 may furnish the life-size if we will. 
 
 It is the story of a woman; not a man, but a 
 woman. One of the weaker sex, so called. She 
 was ignorant, prejudiced, and without social stand- 
 ing. She was a woman of no reputation. Aye, 
 worse than that, of bad reputation. She probably 
 had less moral influence in her town than any one 
 here has in his circle. Could a more unlikely per- 
 son have been used? But she came in touch with 
 the Lord Jesus. She yielded herself to that touch. 
 There lies the secret of what follows. That contact 
 radically changed her. She went back to her village 
 and commenced speaking about Jesus to those she 
 knew. She could not preach; she simply told 
 plainly and earnestly what she knew and believed 
 about Him. And the result is startling. There are
 
 Choked Channels. 27 
 
 hundreds of ministers who are earnestly longing for 
 what came so easily to her. What modern people 
 call a revival began at once. We are told in the 
 simple language of the Gospel record that "many 
 believed on Him because of the word of the -woman." 
 They had not seen Jesus yet. He was up by the 
 well. They were down in the village. She was an 
 ignorant woman, of formerly sinful life. But there 
 is the record of the wonderful result of her simple 
 witnessing they believed on Jesus because of the 
 word of that woman. There is only one way to 
 account for such results. Only the Holy Spirit 
 speaking through her lips could have produced them. 
 She had commenced drinking of the living water of 
 which Jesus had been talking to her, and now already 
 the rivers were flowing out to others. 
 
 What Jesus did with her, He longs to do with 
 you, and jar more, if you will let Him ; though his 
 plan for using you may be utterly different from the 
 one He had for her, and so the particular results 
 different. Now let me ask very frankly why have 
 we not all such power for our Master as she? The 
 Master's plan is plain. He said "ye shall have 
 power." But so many of us do not have! Why 
 not? Well, possibly some of us are like Nicodemus 
 there is no power because of timidity, cowardice, 
 fear of what they will think, or say. Possibly some 
 of us are in the same condition spiritually that 
 Lazarus was in physically. We are tied up tight, 
 hands and feet and face. Some sin, some co-
 
 28 Choked Channels. 
 
 promise, some hushing of that inner voice, some- 
 thing wrong. Some little thing, you may say. 
 Humph! as though anything could be little that is 
 wrong! Sin is never little! 
 
 A Clogged Channel. 
 
 Out in Colorado they tell of a little town nestled 
 down at the foot of some hills a sleepy-hollow 
 village. You remember the rainfall is very slight 
 out there, and they depend much upon irrigation. 
 But some enterprising citizens ran a pipe up the hills 
 to a lake of clear, sweet water. As a result the 
 town enjoyed a bountiful supply of water the year 
 round without being dependent upon the doubtful 
 rainfall. And the population increased and the 
 place had quite a western boom. One morning the 
 housewives turned the water spigots, but no water 
 came. There was some sputtering. There is apt 
 to be noise when there is nothing else. The men 
 climbed the hill. There was the lake full as ever. 
 They examined around the pipes as well as possible, 
 but could find no break. Try as they might, they 
 could find no cause for the stoppage. And as days 
 grew into weeks, people commenced moving away 
 again, the grass grew in the streets, and the pros- 
 perous town was going back to its old sleepy condi- 
 tion when one day one of the town officials received 
 a note. It was poorly written, with bad spelling 
 and grammar, but he never cared less about writing
 
 Choked Channels. 29 
 
 or grammar than just then. It said in effect: "Ef 
 you'll jes pull the plug out of the pipe about eight 
 inches from the top you'll get all the water you 
 want." Up they started for the top of the hill, and 
 examining the pipe, found the plug which some 
 vicious tramp had inserted. Not a very big plug 
 just big enough to fill the pipe. It is surprising how 
 large a reservoir of water can be held back by how 
 small a plug. Out came the plug; down came the 
 water freely; by and by back came prosperity again. 
 
 Why is there such a lack of power in our lives? 
 The reservoir up yonder is full to overflowing, with 
 clear, sweet, life-giving water. And here all around 
 us the earth is so dry, so thirsty, cracked open 
 huge cracks like dumb mouths asking mutely for 
 what we should give. And the connecting pipes 
 between the reservoir above and the parched plain 
 below are there. Why then do not the refreshing 
 waters come rushing down? The answer is very 
 plain. You know why. There is a plug in the pipe. 
 Something in us clogging up the channel and nothing 
 can get through. How shall we have power, abun- 
 dant, life-giving, sweetening our own lives, and 
 changing those we touch? The answer is easy for 
 me to give it will be much harder for us all to do 
 pull out the plug. Get out the thing that you know 
 is hindering. 
 
 I am going to ask every one who will, to offer 
 this simple prayer and I am sure every thoughtful, 
 earnest man and woman here will. Just bow your
 
 30 Choked Channels. 
 
 head and quietly under your breath say to Him: 
 "Lord Jesus, show me what there is in my life that 
 is displeasing to Thee; what there is Thou wouldst 
 change." You may be sure He will. He is faith- 
 ful. He will put His finger on that tender spot very 
 surely. Then add a second clause to that prayer 
 "By Thy grace helping me, 7 will put it out what- 
 ever it may cost, or wherever it may cut." Shall 
 we bow our heads and offer that prayer, and hew 
 close to that line, steadily, faithfully? It will open 
 up a life of marvelous blessing undreamed of for 
 you and everyone you touch.
 
 THE OLIVET MESSAGE.
 
 THE OLIVET MESSAGE. 
 
 Searchlight Sights. 
 
 Coming into Cleveland harbor one evening, just 
 after nightfall, a number of passengers were gath- 
 ered on the upper deck eagerly watching the colored 
 breakwater lights and the city lights beyond. Sud- 
 denly a general curiosity was aroused by a small boat 
 of some sort, on the left, scudding swiftly along in 
 the darkness like a blacker streak on the black 
 waters. A few of us who chanced to be near the 
 captain on the smaller deck above, heard him quietly 
 say, "Turn on the searchlight." Almost instantly 
 an intense white light shone full on the stranger- 
 boat, bringing it to view so distinctly that we could 
 almost count the nail-heads, and the strands in her 
 cordage. 
 
 If some of us here to-night have made the prayer 
 suggested in our last talk together Lord Jesus, 
 show me what, there is in my life that is displeasing 
 to Thee, that Thou wouldst change we will appre- 
 ciate something of the power of that Lake Erie 
 searchlight. There is a searchlight whiter, intenser, 
 more keenly piercing than any other. Into every 
 heart that desires, and will hold steadily open to it, 
 the Lord Jesus will turn that searching light. Then 
 33
 
 34 The Olivet Message. 
 
 you will begin to see things as they actually are. 
 And that sight may well lead to discouragement. 
 Many a hidden thing, which you are glad enough to 
 have hidden, will be plainly seen. How is it pos- 
 sible, you will be ready to ask, for me to lead the 
 life the Master's ambition has planned for me, with 
 such mixed motives, selfish ambitions, sinfulness 
 and weakness as I am beginning to get a glimpse 
 of how is it possible? 
 
 There is one answer to that intense heart-ques- 
 tion, and only one. We must have power, some 
 supernatural power, something outside of us, and 
 above us, and far greater than we, to come in and 
 win the victory within us and for us. 
 
 If that young man whose inner life is passion- 
 swept, one tidal wave of fierce temptation, hot on 
 the heels of the last, until all the moorings are 
 snapped, and he driven rudderless out to sea if he 
 is to ride masterfully upon that sea he must have 
 power. 
 
 If that young woman is to be as attractive, and 
 womanly winsome in the society circle where she 
 moves, as she is meant to be, and yet able to shape 
 her lips into a gently uttered, but rock-ribbed no 
 when certain well-understood questionable matters 
 come up, she must have power. If society young 
 people are to remain in the world, and yet not be 
 swayed by its spirit: on one side not prudish, nor 
 fanatical, nor extreme, but cheery, and radiant, and 
 full-lived, and yet free of those compromising en-
 
 The Olivet Message. 35 
 
 tanglements that are common to society everywhere, 
 they must have a rare pervasive power. 
 
 For that business man down in the sharp compe- 
 tition of the world where duty calls him, to resist 
 the sly temptations to overreach, to keep keenly 
 alert not to be overreached; and through all to pre- 
 serve an uncensorious spirit, unhurt by the selfish- 
 ness of the crowd tell me, some of you men will 
 that not take power? Aye, more power than some 
 of us know about, yet. 
 
 For that same man to go through his store and 
 remove from shelf or counter some article which 
 yields a good profit, but which he knows his Master 
 would not have there Ah! that'll take power. 
 
 It takes power to keep the body under control: 
 the mouth clean and sweet, both physically and 
 morally: the eye turned away from the thing that 
 should not be thought about : the ear closed to what 
 should not enter that in-gate of the heart: to allow 
 no picture to hang upon the walls of your imagina- 
 tion that may not hang upon the walls of your home : 
 to keep every organ of the body pure for nature's 
 holy function only that takes mighty power. 
 
 For that young man to be wide-awake, a pusher 
 in business, and yet steadily, determinedly to hold 
 back any crowding of the other side of his life: the 
 inner side, the outer-helpful side, the Bible-reading- 
 and secret-prayer- and quiet personal-work-side of 
 his life, that will take real power. 
 
 It will take a power that some of us have not
 
 36 The Olivet Message. 
 
 known to let that glass go untouched, and that 
 quieting drug untasted and unhandled. If the rear 
 end of some pharmacies could speak out, many a 
 story would startle our ears of struggles and defeats 
 that tell sadly of utter lack of power. 
 
 // takes power for the man of God in the pulpit 
 to speak plainly about particular sins before the 
 faces of those who are living in them ; and still more 
 power to do it with the rare tactfulness and tender- 
 ness of the Galilean preacher. // takes power to 
 stick to the Gospel story and the old book, when 
 literature and philosophy present such fine opportu- 
 nities for the essays that are so enjoyable and that 
 bring such flattering notice. // takes power to leave 
 out the finely woven rhetoric that you are disposed 
 to put in for the sake of the compliment it will bring 
 from that literary woman down yonder, or that 
 bright, brainy young lawyer in the fifth pew on the 
 left aisle. // takes power to see that the lips that 
 speak for God are thoroughly clean lips, and the life 
 that stands before that audience a pure life. 
 
 // takes power to keep sweet in the home, where, 
 if anywhere, the seamy side is apt to stick out. 
 How many wooden oaths could kicked chairs and 
 slammed doors tell of! After all the home-life 
 comes close to being the real test of power, does it 
 not? // takes power to be gracious and strong, and 
 patient and tender, and cheery, in *he commonplace 
 things, and the commonplace places, does it not? 
 
 Now, I have something to tell you to-night that to
 
 The Olivet Message. 37 
 
 me is very wonderful, and constantly growing in 
 wonder. It is this the Master has thought of all 
 that/ He has thought into your life. Yes, I mean 
 your particular life, and made an arrangement to 
 fully cover all your need of power. He stands anew 
 in our midst to-day, and putting His pierced hand 
 gently upon your arm, His low, loving, clear voice 
 says quietly, but very distinctly, "You you shall 
 have power." For every subtle, strong temptation, 
 for every cry of need, for every low moan of disap- 
 pointment, for every locking of the jaws in the reso- 
 lution of despair, for every disheartened look out 
 into the morrow, for every yearningly ambitious 
 heart there comes to-night that unmistakable ring- 
 ing promise of His ye shall have power. 
 
 The Olivet Message. 
 
 Our needs argue the necessity of power. And 
 the argument is strengthened by the peculiar em- 
 phasis of the Master's words. Do you remember 
 that wondrous Olivet scene? In the quiet twilight 
 of a Sabbath evening a group of twelve young men 
 stand yonder on the brow of Olives. The last glow- 
 ing gleams of the setting sun fill all the western sky, 
 and shed a halo of yellow glory-light over the hill- 
 top, through the trees, in upon that group. You 
 instantly pick out the leader. No mistaking Him. 
 And around Him group the eleven men who have 
 lived with Him these months past, now eagerly gaz-
 
 3 8 The Olivet Message. 
 
 ing into that marvelous face, listening for His words. 
 He is going away. They know that. Coming back 
 soon, they understand. But in His absence the 
 work He has begun is to be entrusted to their 
 hands. And so with ears and eyes they listen in- 
 tently for the good-bye word His last message. It 
 will mean so much in the coming days. 
 
 Two things the Master says. The first is that 
 ringing "go ye" so familiar to every true heart. 
 The second is a very decisive, distinct "but tarry ye." 
 What, wait still longer! Tarry, now, when your 
 great work is done! Listen again, while His part- 
 ing words cut the air with their startling distinctness 
 "but tarry ye until ye be endued with power." 
 
 I could readily imagine impulsive Peter quickly 
 saying, "What! shall we tarry when the whole 
 world is dying! Do we not know enough now?'* 
 And the Master's answer would come in that clear, 
 quiet voice of His, "yes, tarry: you have knowledge 
 enough, but knowledge is not enough, there must be 
 power." 
 
 There is knowledge enough within the Christian 
 church of every land aye, knowledge enough 
 within the walls of this building to-night to convert 
 the world, if knowledge would do it. Into many a 
 life, through home training, and school, and college, 
 has come knowledge, while power lingers without 
 a stranger. Knowledge the twin idol with gold to 
 American hearts is essential, but, let it be plainly 
 said, is not the essential. Knowledge is the fuel
 
 The Olivet Message. 39 
 
 p'led up in the fireplace. The mantel is of carved 
 oak, and the fenders so highly polished they seem 
 almtst to send out warmth, but the thermometer is 
 working down toward zero, and the people are shiv- 
 ering. The spark of living fire is essential. Then 
 how all changes! There must be fire from above to 
 kindle otr knowledge and ourselves before any of 
 the needed results will come. 
 
 There is no language strong enough to tell how 
 absolutely needful it is that every follower of Jesus 
 Christ from the one most prominent in leadership 
 down to the very humblest disciple, shall receive this 
 promised power. , 
 
 Look at these men Jesus is talking to. There is 
 Peter, the man of rock, and John and James, the 
 sons of thunder. They were with the Lord on the 
 Transfiguration Mount, and when He raised the 
 dead. They were near by during the awful agony 
 of Gethsemane. They were admitted nearer to the 
 Master's inner life than any others. There is quiet 
 matter-of-fact Andrew, who had a reputation for 
 bringing others to Jesus. There is Nathanael, in 
 whom is no guile. It is to these men that there 
 comes that positive command to tarry. If they 
 needed such a command, do not we? 
 
 "Yes," someone says, "I understand that this 
 power you speak of is something the leaders and 
 preachers must have, but you scarcely mean that 
 there is the same necessity for us people down in 
 the ranks, and that we are to expect the same power
 
 40 The Olivet Message. 
 
 as these others, do you?" Will you please call .'0 
 mind that original Pentecost company? There vere 
 one hundred and twenty of them. And while 'here 
 was a Peter being prepared to preach that tremen- 
 dous sermon, and a John to write five books of the 
 New Testament and probably a James to preside 
 over the affairs of the Jerusalem Church, and pos- 
 sibly a Stephen, and a Philip, yet these are only a 
 few. By far the greater number, both men and 
 women, are unnamed and unknown. Just the com- 
 mon, every-day folk, the filling-in of society; aye, 
 the very foundation of all society. They had no 
 prominent part to play. But they accepted the 
 Master's promise of power, and His command to 
 wait, as made to them. And as a result they, too, 
 were filled with the Holy Spirit, that wonderful 
 morning. I think, very likely, "the good man of the 
 house" whose guest Jesus was that last night was 
 there, and all the Marys, including the Bethany 
 Mary, who simply sat at His feet, and the Magda- 
 lene Mary, and housekeeper Martha, and maybe 
 that little lad whose loaves and fishes had been used 
 about a year before. That was the sort of com- 
 pany that prayerfully, with one accord, not only 
 waited but received that never-to-be-forgotten filling 
 of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Certainly, as some of you think, the preacher 
 must have this power peculiarly for his leadership. 
 But just as really he needs it because he is a man for 
 his living, to make him sweet and gentle and patient
 
 The Olivet Message. 41 
 
 down in his home: to make him sympathetic and 
 strong in his constant contact with the hungry hearts 
 he must meet. That young mechanic must have this 
 promised power if he is to live an earnest, manly life in 
 that shop. That school girl, whose home duties crowd 
 her time so; that keen-minded student working for 
 honors amid strong competition; these society young 
 people; these all need, above all else, this promised 
 power that in, and through, and around and above 
 all of their lives may be a wholesomely sweet, earn- 
 est Christlmess, pervading the life even as the odor 
 of flowers pervades a room. 
 
 Do you remember Paul's list of the traits of char- 
 acter that mark a Christian life love, joy, peace, 
 long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, 
 faithfulness, self-control? 1 Suppose for a moment 
 you think through a list of the opposites of those 
 nine characteristics bitterness, envy, hate, low- 
 spiritedness, sulkiness, chafing, fretting, worrying, 
 short-suffering, quick-temper, hot-temper, high- 
 spiritedness, unsteadiness, unreliability, lack of con- 
 trol of yourself. May I ask, have you any personal 
 acquaintance with some of these qualities? Is there 
 still some need in your life for the other desirable 
 traits? Well, remember that it is only as the Holy 
 Spirit has control that this fruit of His is found. 
 For notice that it is not we that bear this fruit, but 
 He in us. We furnish the soil. He must have free 
 swing in its cultivation if He is to get this harvest. 
 
 1 Gal., 5:22.
 
 42 The Olivet Message. 
 
 And notice, too, that it does not say "the fruits of 
 the Spirit, ' ' as though you might have one or more, 
 and / have some others. But it is "fruit" that 
 is, it is all one fruit and all of it is meant to be grow- 
 ing up in each one of us. And let the fact be put 
 down as settled once for all that only as we tarry 
 and receive the Master's promise of power can we 
 live the lives He longs to have us live down here 
 among men for Him. 
 
 If that father is so to live at home before those 
 wide-awake, growing boys that he can keep up the 
 family altar, and instead of letting it become a mere 
 irksome form, make it the green, fresh spot in the 
 home life, he must have this promised power, for he 
 cannot do it of himself. I presume some of you 
 fathers know that. 
 
 There is that mother, living in what would be reck- 
 oned a humble home, one of a thousand like it, but 
 charged with the most sacred trust ever committed 
 to human hands the molding 0} precious lives. If 
 there be hallowed ground anywhere surely it is there, 
 in the life of that home. What patience and tire- 
 lessness, and love and tact and wisdom and wealth 
 of resource does that woman not need! Ah, moth- 
 ers! if any one needs to tarry and receive the power 
 promised by the Son of that Mary, who was filled 
 with the Holy Spirit from before His birth for her 
 sacred trust, surely you do. 
 
 Here sits one whose life plans seem to have gone 
 all askew. The thing you love to do, and had
 
 The Olivet Message. 43 
 
 fondly planned over, removed utterly beyond your 
 reach, and you compelled to fit in to something for 
 which you have no taste. It will take nothing less 
 than the power the Master promised for you to go 
 on faithfully, cheerfully just where you have been 
 placed, no repining, no complaining, even in your 
 innermost soul, but, instead, a glad, joyous fitting 
 into the Father's plan with a radiant light in the 
 face. Only His power can accomplish that victory! 
 But His can. And His may be yours for the tarry- 
 ing and the taking. 
 
 Let me repeat then with all the emphasis pos- 
 sible that as certainly as you need to trust Jesus 
 Christ for your soul's salvation, you also need to 
 receive this power of the Holy Spirit to work that 
 salvation out in your present life. 
 
 A Double Center. 
 
 It has helped me greatly in understanding the 
 Master's insistent emphasis upon the promise of 
 power to keep clearly in mind that the Christian 
 system of truth revolves around a double center. 
 It is illustrated best not by a circle with its single 
 center, but by an ellipse with its twin centers. 
 There are two central truths not one, but two. 
 The first of the two is grained deep down in the 
 common Christian teaching and understanding. If 
 I should ask any group of Sabbath school children 
 in this town, next Sabbath morning, the question:
 
 44 The Olivet Message. 
 
 What is the most important thing we Christians 
 believe? Amid the great variety in the form of 
 answer would come, in substance, without doubt, 
 this reply: "The blood of Jesus Christ deanseth from 
 all sin." And they would be right. But there is a 
 second truth very reverently and thoughtfully let 
 me say of equal importance with that ; namely, this : 
 the Holy Spirit empowereth against all sin, and for 
 life and service. These two truths are co-ordinate. 
 They run in parallel lines. They belong together. 
 They are really two halves of the one great truth. 
 But this second half needs emphasis, because it has 
 not always been put into its proper place beside the 
 other. 
 
 Jesus died on the cross to make freedom from sin 
 possible. The Holy Spirit dwells within me to make 
 freedom from sin actual. The Holy Spirit does in 
 me what Jesus did for me. The Lord Jesus makes 
 a deposit in the bank on my account. The Spirit 
 checks the money out and puts it into my hands. 
 Jesus does in me now by His Spirit what He did for 
 me centuries ago on the cross, in His person. 
 
 Now these two truths, or two parts of the same 
 truth, go together in God's plan, but, with some 
 exceptions, have not gone together in men's experi- 
 ence. That explains why so many Christian lives 
 are a failure and a reproach. The Church of Christ 
 has been gazing so intently upon the hill of the cross 
 with its blood-red message of sin and love, that it 
 has largely lost sight of the Ascension Mount with
 
 The Olivet Message. 45 
 
 its legacy of power. We have been so enwrapt 
 with that marvelous scene on Calvary and what 
 wonder! that we have allowed ourselves to lose the 
 intense significance of Pentecost. That last vic- 
 torious shout "It is finished" has been crowd- 
 ing out in our ears its counterpart the equally 
 victorious cry of Olivet "All power hath been given 
 unto Me." 
 
 The Christian's range of vision must always take 
 in two hill-tops Calvary and Olivet. Calvary 
 sin conquered through the blood of Jesus, a matter 
 of history. Olivet sin conquered through the 
 power of Jesus, a matter of experience. When the 
 subject is spoken of, we are apt to say: "Yes, that 
 is correct. I understand that." But do we under- 
 stand it in our experience? So certainly as I must 
 trust Jesus as my Saviour so certainly must I con- 
 stantly yield my life to the control of the Spirit of 
 Jesus if I am to find real the practical power of His 
 salvation. 
 
 As surely as men are now urged to accept Jesus 
 as the great step in life, so surely should they be 
 instructed to yield themselves to the Holy Spirit's 
 control that Jesus' plan for their lives may be carried 
 through. 
 
 You remember in the olden time the Hebrew men 
 were required to appear before God in the appointed 
 place three times during the year. At the Pass- 
 over, and at Pentecost, and again at the harvest 
 home feast of Tabernacles. So it is required of
 
 46 The Olivet Message. 
 
 every man of us who would fit his life into God's 
 plan that he shall first of all come to the Passover 
 feast, where Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. 
 And then that he shall as certainly come to the great 
 Pentecost feast, or feast of first fruits where a glori- 
 fied Passover Lamb breathes down His Spirit of 
 power into the life. And then he is sure to have a 
 constant attendance at a first-fruits feast all his days, 
 with a great harvest home festival at the end. 
 
 I said there were two central truths. Will you 
 notice that the gospels put it also in this way, that 
 Jesus came to do two things not one thing, but two 
 things in working out our salvation. That the first 
 is dependent for its practical power upon the second, 
 and the second is the completing or carrying into 
 effect of the power of the first. That the first let 
 me say it with great reverence is valueless without 
 the second. 
 
 What was Jesus' mission? Would you not ex- 
 pect His forerunner to understand it? Listen, then, 
 to his words. When questioned specifically by the 
 official deputation sent from the national leaders at 
 Jerusalem, he pointed to Jesus, and declared that 
 He had come for a two-fold purpose. Listen: 
 "Behold the Lamb of God who beareth away the 
 sin of the world"; and then he added, and the word 
 comes to us with the peculiar emphasis of repetition 
 by each of the four gospel scribes "this is He 
 that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit." That was 
 spoken to them originally without doubt in a national
 
 The Olivet Message. 47 
 
 sense. It just as surely applies to every one of us 
 in a personal sense. 
 
 Mark also the emphasis of Jesus' own teachings 
 regarding this second part of His mission. At the 
 very beginning He spoke the decided words about 
 the necessity of being born of the Spirit. And we 
 are all impressed with that fact. But observe that 
 several times, in the brief gospel record, He refers 
 the disciples to the overshadowing importance of the 
 Spirit's control in the life. And that He devotes a 
 large part of that last long confidential talk which 
 John records, to this special subject, pointing out 
 the new experiences to come with the coming of the 
 Spirit, and holding out to them as the greatest evi- 
 dence of His own love the promise of power. 
 
 It adds intense emphasis to all this to note that 
 Jesus Himself, very Son of God, was in that won- 
 derful human life of His utterly dependent upon the 
 Holy Spirit. At the very outset, before venturing 
 upon a single act or word of His appointed ministry, 
 He waits at the Jordan waters, until the promised 
 anointing of power came. What a picture does that 
 prayerfully waiting Jesus present to powerless men 
 to-day! From that moment every bit and part of 
 His life was under the control of that Holy Spirit. 
 Impelled into the wilderness for that fierce set-to 
 with Satan, coming back to Galilee within the power 
 of the Spirit, He himself clearly stated more than 
 once, that it was through this anointing that He 
 preached, and taught, and healed, and cast out
 
 48 The Olivet Message. 
 
 demons. The writer to the Hebrews assures us 
 that it was through the power of the Eternal Spirit 
 that He was enabled to go through the awful experi- 
 ences of Gethsemane and Calvary. And Luke 
 adds that it was through the same empowering 
 Spirit that He gave commandment to the apostles 
 for the stupendous task of world- wide evangeliza- 
 tion. And then at the very last referring them to 
 that life of His, He said: "As ths father hath sent 
 Me even so send I you." Let me ask if He, ve 
 God of very God, yet in His earthly life intensely 
 human, needed that anointing, do not we? If He 
 waited for that experience before venturing upon 
 any service, shall not you and I? 
 
 But we must turn to the book of Acts to get fully 
 within the grip of this truth. For it, with the 
 epistles fitting into it, is peculiarly the Holy Spirit 
 book, even as the Old Testament is the Jehovah book 
 and the gospels with Revelation the Jesus book. 
 The climax of the gospels is in the Acts. What is 
 promised in the gospels is experienced in the Acts. 
 
 Jesus is dominant in the gospels; the Spirit of 
 Jesus in the Acts. He is the only continuous per- 
 sonality from first to last. He is the common de- 
 nominator of the book. The first twelve chapters 
 group about Peter, the remaining sixteen about 
 Paul, but distinctly above both they all group about 
 the Holy Spirit. He is the one dominant factor 
 throughout. The first fourth of the book is fairly 
 aflame with His presence at the center Jerusalem.
 
 The Olivet Message. 49 
 
 Thence out to Samaria, and through the Cornelius 
 door to the whole outer non-Jewish world; at Anti- 
 och the new center, and thence through the uttermost 
 parts of the Roman empire into its heart, His is the 
 presence recognized and obeyed. He is ceaselessly 
 guiding, empowering, inspiring, checking, controll- 
 ing clear to the abrupt end. His is the one master- 
 ing personality. And everywhere His presence is a 
 transforming presence. Nothing short of startling 
 is the change in Peter, in the attitude of the Jerusa- 
 lem thousands, in the persecutor Saul, in the spirit 
 of these disciples, in the unprecedented and unparal- 
 leled unselfishness shown. It is revolutionary. Ah ! 
 it was meant to be so. This book is the living illus- 
 tration of what Jesus meant by His teaching regard- 
 ing His successor. It becomes also an acted 
 illustration of what the personal Christian life is 
 meant to be. 
 
 The Spirit's presence and the necessity of His 
 control is deep-grained in the consciousness of the 
 leaders in this book. Leaving the stirring scenes at 
 the capital the eighth chapter takes us down to 
 Samaria. Multitudes have been led to believe 
 through the preaching of a man who has been 
 chosen to look after the business matters of the 
 church. Peter and John are sent down to aid the 
 new movement. Note that their very first concern 
 is to spend time in prayer that this great company 
 may receive the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The next chapter shifts the scene to Damascus.
 
 50 The Olivet Message. 
 
 A man unknown save for this incident is sent as 
 God's messenger to Saul. As he lays his hand upon 
 this chosen man and speaks the light-giving words 
 he instinctively adds, "and be filled with the Holy 
 Spirit." That is not recorded as a part of what he 
 had been told to do. But plainly this humble man 
 of God believes that that is the essential element in 
 Saul's preparation for his great work. 
 
 In the tenth chapter the Holy Spirit's action with 
 Cornelius completely upsets the life-long, rock- 
 rooted ideas of these intensely national, and intensely 
 exclusive Jews. Yet it is accepted as final. 
 
 With what quaint simplicity does the thirteenth 
 chapter tell of the Holy Spirit's initiation of those 
 great missionary journeys of Paul from the new 
 center of world evangelization? "the Holy Spirit 
 said, etc." And how like it is the language of 
 James in delivering the judgment of the first church 
 council: "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to 
 us." 
 
 Paul's conviction is very plain from numerous 
 references in those wonderful heart-searching and 
 heart-revealing letters of his. But one instance in 
 this Book of Acts will serve as a fair illustration of 
 his teaching and habit. It is in the nineteenth 
 chapter. In his travels he has come as far as to 
 Ephesus, and finds there a small company of earnest 
 disciples. They are strangers to him. He longs to 
 help them, but must first find their need. At once 
 he puts a question to them. A question may be a
 
 The Olivet Message. 51 
 
 great revealer. This one reveals his own concep- 
 tion of what must be the pivotal experience of every 
 true follower of Jesus. He asks: "Did ye receive 
 the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" 
 
 But they had been poorly instructed, like many 
 others since, and were not clear just what he meant. 
 They had received the baptism of John a baptism 
 of repentance; but not the baptism of Jesus a bap- 
 tism of power. And Paul at once gives himself up 
 to instructing and then praying with them until the 
 promised gift is graciously bestowed. That is the 
 last we hear of those twelve persons. Some of 
 them may have been women. Some may have come 
 to be leaders in that great Ephesian Church. But of 
 that nothing is said. The emphasis remains on the 
 fact that in Paul's mind because they were followers 
 of the Lord Jesus they must have this empowering 
 experience of the Holy Spirit's infilling. 
 
 Plainly in this Book of Acts the pivot on which all 
 else rests and turns is the unhindered presence of 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Five Essentials. 
 
 If you will stop a while to think into it you will 
 find that a rightly rounded Christian life has five 
 essential characteristics. I mean essential in the 
 same sense as that light is an essential to the eye. 
 The eye's seeing depends wholly on light. If it 
 does not see light, by and by, it cannot see light.
 
 52 The Olivet Message. 
 
 The ear that hears no sound loses the power to hear 
 sound. Light is essential to the healthful eye: 
 sound to the ear: air to the lungs: blood to the 
 heart. Just as really are these five things essential 
 to a strong healthful Christian life. 
 
 The second of these is a heart-love for the old Book 
 of God. Not reading it as a duty taking a chap- 
 ter at night because you feel you must. I do not 
 mean that just now. But reading it because you 
 love to; as you would a love letter or a letter from 
 home. Thinking about it as the writer of the one 
 hundred and nineteenth psalm did. Listen to him 
 for a moment in that one psalm, talking about this 
 book: "I delight," "I will delight," "My de- 
 light" in all nine times. "I love," "Oh! howl 
 love," "I do love," "Consider how I love," "I 
 love exceedingly," again nine times in all. "I have 
 longed," "My eyes fail," "My soul breaketh," 
 speaking of the intensity of his desire to get alone 
 with the book. "Sweeter than honey," "As great 
 spoil," "As much as all riches," "Better than thou- 
 sands of gold," "Above gold, yea, above fine gold." 
 And all that packed into less than two leaves. Do 
 you love this Book like that? Would you like to? 
 Wait a moment. 
 
 The third essential is right habits of prayer. 
 Living a veritable life of prayer. Making prayer 
 the chief part not alone of your life, but of your 
 service. Having answers to prayer as a constant ex- 
 perience. Being like the young man in a conference
 
 The Olivet Message. 53 
 
 in India, who said, "I used to pray three times a 
 day: Now I pray only once a day, and that is all 
 day." Feet busy all the day, hands ceaselessly 
 active, head full of matters of business, but the 
 heart never out of communication with Him. Has 
 prayer become to you like that? Would you have it 
 so? Wait a moment. 
 
 The fourth essential is a pure, earnest, unselfish 
 life. Our lives are the strongest part of us or else 
 the weakest. A man knows the least of the influ- 
 ence of his own life. Life is not mere length of 
 time but the daily web of character we uncon- 
 sciously weave. Our thoughts, imaginations, pur- 
 poses, motives, love, will, are the under threads: 
 our words, tone of voice, looks, acts, habits are 
 the upper threads : and the passing moment is the 
 shuttle swiftly, ceaselessly, relentlessly, weaving 
 those threads into a web, and that web is life. It 
 is woven, not by our wishing, or willing, but irresist- 
 ibly, unavoidably, woven by what we are, moment 
 by moment, hour after hour. What is your life 
 weaving out? Is it attractive because of the power 
 in it of His presence? Would you have it so? 
 Would you know the secret of a life marked by the 
 strange beauty of humility, and fragrant with the 
 odor of His presence? Wait just a moment. 
 
 The fifth essential is a passion for winning others 
 one by one to the Lord Jesus. A passion, I say. 
 I may use no weaker word than that. A passion 
 burning with the steady flame of anthracite. A
 
 54 The Olivet Message. 
 
 passion for -winning: not driving, nor dragging, but 
 drawing men. I am not talking about preachers 
 just now, as preachers, but about every one of us. 
 Do you know the peculiar delight there is in winning 
 the fellow by your side, the girl in your social circle, 
 to Jesus Christ? No? Ah. you have missed half 
 your life! Would you have such an intense passion 
 as that, thrilling your heart, and inspiring your life, 
 and know how to do it skillfully and tactfully? 
 
 Let me tell you with my heart that the secret not 
 only of this, but of all four of these essentials I have 
 named lies in the first one which I have not yet 
 named, and grows out of it. Given the first the 
 others will follow as day follows the rising sun. 
 
 What is the first great essential? It is this the 
 unrestrained, unhindered, controlling presence in the 
 heart of the Holy Spirit. It is allowing Jesus' other 
 Self, the Holy Spirit, to take full possession and 
 maintain a loving but absolute monopoly of all youi 
 powers. 
 
 Tarry. 
 
 My friend, have you received this promised power? 
 Is there a growing up of those four things within 
 you by His grace? Does the Holy Spirit have free- 
 ness of sway in you? Are you conscious of the full- 
 ness of His love and power conscious enough to 
 know how much there is beyond of which you are 
 not conscious? Does your heart say, "No." Well,
 
 The Olivet Message. 55 
 
 things may be moving smoothly in that church of 
 which you are pastor, and in that school over which 
 you preside. Business may be in a satisfactory 
 condition. Your standing in society may be quite 
 pleasing. Your plans working out well. The fam- 
 ily may be growing up around you as you had hoped. 
 But let me say to you very kindly but very plainly 
 your life thus jar is a failure. You have been suc- 
 ceeding splendidly it may be in a great many impor- 
 tant matters, but they are tte details and in the main 
 issue you have failed utterly. 
 
 And to you to-night I bring one message the 
 Master's Olivet message "tarry ye." No need of 
 tarrying, as with these disciples, for God to do some- 
 thing. His part has been done, and splendidly done. 
 And He waits now upon you. But tarry until you 
 are willing to put out of your life what displeases 
 Him, no matter what that may mean to you. Tarry 
 until your eyesight is corrected; until your will is 
 surrendered. Tarry that you may start the habit of 
 tarrying, for those two Olivet words, "Go" and 
 "tarry," will become the even-balancing law of your 
 new life. A constant going to do His will; a con- 
 tinual tarrying to find out His will. Tarry to get 
 your ears cleared and quieted so you can learn to 
 recognize that low voice of His. Tarry earnestly, 
 steadily until that touch of power comes to change, 
 and cleanse, and quiet, and to give you a totally new 
 conception of what power is. Then you can under- 
 stand the experience of the one who wrote:
 
 56 The Olivet Message. 
 
 "My hands were filled with many things 
 
 That I did precious hold, 
 As any treasure of a king's 
 
 Silver, or gems, or gold. 
 The Master came and touched my hands, 
 
 (The scars were in His own) 
 And at His feet my treasures sweet 
 
 Fell shattered, one by one. 
 'I must have empty hands,' said He, 
 'Wherewith to work My works through thee.' 
 
 "My hands were stained with marks of toil, 
 
 Defiled with dust of earth; 
 And I my work did ofttimes soil, 
 
 And render little worth. 
 The Master came and touched my hands, 
 
 (And crimson were His own) 
 But when, amazed, on mine I gazed, 
 
 Lo ! every stain was gone. 
 'I must have cleansed hands,' said He, 
 'Wherewith to work My works through thee.' 
 
 "My hands were growing feverish 
 
 And cumbered with much care I 
 Trembling with haste and eagerness, 
 
 Nor folded oft in prayer. 
 The Master came and toucJied my hands, 
 
 (With healing in His own) 
 And calm and still to do His will 
 
 They grew the fever gone. 
 'I must have quiet hands,' said He, 
 'Wherewith to work My works for Me.' 
 
 "My hands were strong in fancied strength, ' 
 
 But not in power divine, 
 And bold to take up tasks at length, 
 That were not His but mine.
 
 The Olivet Message. 57 
 
 The Master came and touched my hands, 
 
 (And might was in His own I) 
 But mine since then have powerless been, 
 
 Save His are laid thereon. 
 'And it is only thus,' said He, 
 'That I can work My works through thee.' "
 
 THE CHANNEL OF POWER.
 
 THE CHANNEL OF POWER. 
 
 A Word that Sticks and Stings. 
 
 I suppose everyone here can think of three or 
 four persons whom he loves or regards highly, who 
 are not Christians. Can you? Perhaps in your 
 own home circle, or in the circle of your close 
 friends. They may be nice people, cultured, lov- 
 able, delightful companions, fond of music and good 
 books, and all that; but this is true of them, that 
 they do not trust and confess Jesus as a personal 
 Savior. Can you think of such persons in your own 
 circle? I am going to wait a few moments in 
 silence while you recall them to mind, if you will 
 Can you see their faces? Are their names clear to 
 your minds? 
 
 Now I want to talk with you a little while to- 
 night, not about the whole world, but just about 
 these three or four dear friends of yours. I am 
 going to suppose them lovely people in personal 
 contact, cultured, and kindly, and intelligent, and of 
 good habits even though all that may not be true 
 of all of them. And, I want to ask you a question 
 God's question about them. You remember 
 God put His hand upon Cain's arm, and, looking 
 into his face, said: "Where is Abel, thy brother?" 
 61
 
 62 The Channel of Power. 
 
 I want to ask you that question. Where are these 
 four friends? Not where are they socially, nor 
 financially, nor educationally. These are important 
 questions. But they are less important than this 
 other question: Where are they as touching Him? 
 Where are they as regards the best life here, and 
 the longer life beyond this one? 
 
 And I shall not ask you what you think about it. 
 For I am not concerned just now with what you 
 think. Nor shall I tell you what I think. For I am 
 not here to tell you what I think, but to bring a mes- 
 sage from the Master as plainly and kindly as I can. 
 So I shall ask you to notice what this old book 
 of God says about these friends of yours. It 
 is full of statements regarding them. I can take 
 time for only a few. 
 
 Turn, for instance, to the last chapter of Mark's 
 Gospel, and the sixteenth verse, and you will find 
 these words: "He that believeth and is baptized 
 shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be ." 
 You know the last word of that sentence. It is an 
 ugly word. I dislike intensely to think it, much 
 less repeat it. It is one of those blunt, sharp, 
 Anglo-Saxon words that stick and sting. I wish I 
 had a tenderer tone of voice, in which to repeat it, 
 and then only in a low whisper it is so awful 
 <l damned" 
 
 Let me ask you very gently: Does the first part 
 of that sentence "he that believeth trusteth 
 not," does that describe the four friends you are
 
 The Channel of Power. 63 
 
 thinking of now? And please remember that that 
 word "believeth" does not mean the assent of the 
 mind to a form of creed : never that : but the assent 
 of the heart to a person: always that. "Yes," you 
 say, "I'm afraid it does: that is just the one thing. 
 He is thoughtful and gentlemanly; she is kind and 
 good; but they do not trust Jesus Christ personally." 
 Then let me add, very kindly, but very plainly, if 
 the first part is an accurate description of your 
 friends, the second part is meant to apply to them, 
 too, would you not say? And that is an awful thing 
 to say. 
 
 What a strange book this Bible is! It makes 
 such radical statements, and uses such unpleasant 
 words that grate on the nerves, and startle the ear. 
 No man would have dared of himself to write such 
 statements. 
 
 I remember one time visiting a friend in Boston, 
 engaged in Christian work there; an earnest man. 
 We were talking one day about this very thing and 
 I recall saying: "Do you really believe that what 
 the Bible says about these people can be true? 
 Because if it is you and I should be tremendously 
 stirred up over it." And I recall distinctly his 
 reply, after a moment's pause, "Well, their condi- 
 tion certainly will be unfortunate." Unfortunate/ 
 That is the Bostonese of it. That is a much less 
 disagreeable word. It has a smoother finish a sort 
 of polish to it. It does not jar on your feelings 
 so. But this book uses a very different word from
 
 64 The Channel of Power. 
 
 that, a word that must grate harshly upon every ear 
 here. 
 
 I know very well that some persons have asso- 
 ciated that ugly word with a scene something like 
 this: They have imagined a man standing with fist 
 clenched, and eyes flashing fire, and the lines of his 
 face knotted up hard, as he says in a harsh voice, 
 "He that believeth not shall be damned," as though 
 he found pleasure in saying it. If there is one per- 
 son here to-night who ever had such a conception, 
 will you kindly cut it out of your imagination at 
 once? For it is untrue. And put in its place the true 
 setting of the word. 
 
 Have you ever noticed what a difference the man- 
 ner, and expression of face, and tone of voice, yes, 
 and the character of a person make in the impres- 
 sion his words leave upon your mind? Now mark: 
 It is Jesus talking here. Jesus the tenderest- 
 hearted, the most mother-hearted man this world 
 ever listened to. Look at Him, standing there on 
 that hilltop, looking out toward the great world He 
 has just died for, with the tears coming into His 
 eyes, and His lips quivering with the awfulness of 
 what He was saying "he that believeth not shall 
 be damned," as though it just broke his heart to say 
 it. And it did break His heart that it might not be 
 true of us. For He died literally of a broken heart, 
 the walls of that great, throbbing muscle burst 
 asunder by the strain of soul. That is the true set- 
 ting of that terrific statement.
 
 The Channel of Power. 65 
 
 Please notice it does not say that God damns 
 men. You will find that nowhere within the pages 
 of this book. But it is love talking; love that sees 
 the end of the road and speaks of it. And true love 
 tells the truth at all risks when it must be told. 
 And Jesus because of His dying and undying love 
 seeks to make men acquainted with the fact which 
 He sees so plainly, and they do not. 
 
 Now turn for a moment to a second statement. 
 You will find it in Galatians, third chapter, tenth 
 verse. Paul is quoting from the book of Deuter- 
 onomy these words: "Cursed" there is another 
 ugly word "cursed is everyone who continueth not 
 in all the words of the book of this law to do them." 
 Let me ask: Does that describe your friends? Well, 
 I guess it describes us all, does it not? Who is 
 there here that has continued in all the words of the 
 book of this law to do them? If there is some one 
 I think perhaps you would better withdraw, for I 
 have no message for you to-night. The sole differ- 
 ence between some of us, and these friends you have 
 in your mind is that we are depending upon Another 
 who bore the curse for us. But these friends de- 
 cline to come into personal touch with Him. Do 
 they not? And this honest spoken book of God 
 tells us plainly of that word "cursed" which has 
 been written, and remains written, over their faces 
 and lives. 
 
 The Bible is full of such statements. There is no 
 need of multiplying them. And I am sure I have
 
 66 The Channel of Power. 
 
 no heart in repeating any more of them. But I 
 bring you these two for a purpose. This purpose: 
 of asking you one question whose fault is it? Who 
 is to blame? Some one is at fault. There is blame 
 somewhere. This thing is all wrong. It is no part 
 of God's plan, and when things go wrong, some one 
 is to blame. Now I ask you: Who is to blame? 
 
 A Mot her- Heart. 
 
 Well, there are just four persons, or groups of 
 persons concerned. There is God; and Satan; and 
 these friends we are talking about; and, ourselves, 
 who are not a bit better in ourselves than they not 
 a bit but who are trusting some One else to see us 
 through. Somewhere within the lines of those four 
 we must find the blame of this awful state of affairs. 
 Well, we can say very promptly that Satan is to 
 blame. He is at the bottom of it all. And that 
 certainly is true, though it is not all of the truth. 
 Then it can be added, and added in a softer voice 
 because the thing is so serious, and these friends are 
 dear to us, that these people themselves are to 
 blame. And that is true, too. Because they choose 
 to remain out of touch with Him who died that it 
 might not be so. For there is no sin charged where 
 there is no choice made. Sin follows choice. Only 
 where one has known the wrong and has chosen it is 
 there sin charged. 
 
 But that this awful condition goes on unchanged,
 
 The Channel of Power. 67 
 
 that those two ugly words remain true of our dear 
 friends, day after day, while we meet them, and live 
 with them, is there still blame? There are just two 
 left out of the four: God, and ourselves who trust 
 Him. Let me ask very reverently, but very plainly: 
 Is it God's fault? You and I have both heard such 
 a thing hinted at, and sometimes openly said. I 
 believe it is a good thing with reverence to ask, and 
 attempt to find the answer, to such a question as 
 that. And for answer let me first bring to you a 
 picture of the God of the Old Testament whom 
 some people think of as being just, but severe and 
 stern. 
 
 Away back in the earliest time, in the first book, 
 Genesis, the sixth chapter, and down in verses five 
 and six are these words: "And the Lord saw that 
 the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and" 
 listen to these words "that every imagination of 
 the thoughts of his heau was only evil continually." 
 
 What an arraignment! "Every imagination," 
 *'evil," "only evil;" no mixture of good at all; 
 "only evil continually," no occasional spurts of good 
 even the whole fabric bad, and bad clear through, 
 and all the time. Is not that a terrific arraignment? 
 But listen further: "And it repented the Lord that 
 He had made man on the earth, and" listen to 
 these last pathetic words "it grieved Him at His 
 heart." 
 
 Will you please remember that "grieve" is always 
 a love word? There can be no grief except where
 
 68 The Channel of Power. 
 
 there is love. You may annoy a neighbor, or vex a 
 partner, or anger an acquaintance, but you cannot 
 grieve except where there is love, and you cannot be 
 grieved except wherein you love. 
 
 I have sometimes, more often than I could wish, 
 seen a case like this. A young man of good family 
 sent away to college. He gets in with the wrong 
 crowd, for they are not all angels in colleges yet, 
 quite. Gets to smoking and drinking and gambling, 
 improper hours, bad companions, and all that. His 
 real friends try to advise him, but without effect. 
 By and by the college authorities remonstrate with 
 him, and he tries to improve, but without much 
 success after the first pull. And after a while, very 
 reluctantly, he is suspended, and sent home in dis- 
 grace. He feels very bad, and makes good resolu- 
 tions and earnest promises, and when he returns he 
 does do much better for a tune. But it does not 
 last long. Soon he is in with the old crowd again, 
 the old round of habits and dissipations, only now it 
 gets worse than before; the pace is faster. And 
 the upshot of it all is that he is called up before the 
 authorities and expelled, sent home in utter disgrace, 
 not to return. 
 
 And here is his chum who roomed with him, ate 
 with him, lived with him. He says, "Well, I de- 
 clare, I am all broken up over Jim. It's too bad! 
 He was "hail-fellow, well met, " and now he has gone 
 like that. I'm awfully sorry. It's too bad! too 
 bad!!" And by and by he forgets about it except
 
 The Channel of Power. 69 
 
 as an unpleasant memory roused up now and then. 
 And here is one of his professors who knew him 
 best perhaps, and liked him. "Well," he says, "it 
 is too bad about young Collins. Strange, too, he 
 came of good family; good blood in his veins; and 
 yet he seems to have gone right down with the rag- 
 tag. It's too bad! too bad!! I am so sorry." And 
 the matter passes from his mind in the press of 
 duties and is remembered only occasionally as one 
 of the disagreeable things to be regretted, and per- 
 haps philosophized over. 
 
 And there is the boy's father's partner, down in 
 the home town. "Well," he soliloquizes, "it is too 
 bad about Collins' boy. He is all broken up over 
 it, and no wonder. Doesn't it seem queer? That 
 boy has as good blood as there is: good father, 
 lovely mother, and yet gone clean to the bad, and so 
 young. It is too bad! I am awfully sorry for 
 Collins." And in the busy round of life he forgets, 
 save as a bad dream which will come back now and 
 then. 
 
 But down in that boy's home there is a woman 
 a mother, heart-broken secretly bleeding her heart 
 out through her eyes. She goes quietly, faithfully 
 about her round of life, but her hair gets thinner, 
 and the gray streaks it plainer, her form bends over 
 more, and the lines become more deeply bitten in 
 her face, as the days come and go. And if you 
 talk with her, and she will talk with you, she will 
 say, "Oh, yes, I know other mothers' boys go
 
 7O The Channel of Power. 
 
 wrong; some of them going wrong all the time; but 
 to think of my Jim that I've nursed, and loved so, 
 and done everything for to think that my Jim " 
 and her voice chokes in her throat, and she refuses 
 to be comfortea. She grieves at her heart. Ah ! that 
 is the picture of God in that Genesis chapter. He 
 saw that the world He had made and lavished all the 
 wealth of His love upon had gone wrong, and it 
 grieved Him at His heart. 
 
 This world is God's prodigal son, and He is 
 heartbroken over it. And what has He done about 
 it. Ah! what has He done! Turn to Mark's 
 twelfth chapter, and see there Jesus' own picture of 
 His Father as He knew Him. In the form of a 
 parable He tells how His Father felt about things 
 here. He sent man after man to try and win us 
 back, but without effect, except that things got worse. 
 Then Jesus represents God talking with Himself. 
 "What shall I do next, to win them back? there is 
 My son My only boy Jesus I believe yes, I be- 
 lieve I'll send Him then they'll see how badly I feel, 
 and how much I love them; that'll touch them surely; 
 I'll do it." You remember just how that sixth verse 
 goes, "He had yet one, a beloved Son; He sent 
 Him last unto them, saying, they will reverence my 
 Son." And you know how they treated God's Son, 
 His love gift. And I want to remind you to-night 
 that, speaking in our human way the only way we 
 can speak God suffered more in seeing His Son 
 suffer than though He might have suffered Himself.
 
 The Channel of Power. 71 
 
 Ask any mother here: Would you not gladly suffer 
 pain in place of your child suffering if you could? 
 And every mother-heart answers quickly, "Aye, ten 
 times over, if the child could be spared pain." 
 Where did you get that marvelous mother-heart and 
 mother-love? Ah, that mother-heart is a bit of the 
 God-heart transferred. That is what God is like. 
 Let me repeat very reverently that God suffered 
 more in giving His Son to suffer than though He 
 had Himself suffered. And that is the God of the 
 Old Testament ! Let me ask: Is He to blame? Has 
 He not done His best? 
 
 Let it be said as softly as you will, and yet very 
 plainly, that those awful words, "damned" and 
 "cursed," whatever their meaning may be, are true 
 of your friends. Then add: It is not so because of 
 God's will in the matter, but in spite of His will. 
 Remember that God exhausted all the wealth of His 
 resource when He gave His Son. There can come 
 nothing more after that. 
 
 Your Personality Needed. 
 
 Then there is a second question from God's side 
 to ask about those ugly words: thoughtfully, and 
 yet plainly Is it the fault of Jesus, the Son of God? 
 And let anyone here listen to Him speaking in that 
 tenth chapter of John. "I lay down My life for the 
 sheep. No man taketh it from Me. I lay it down 
 of Myself. I have power to lay it down and power
 
 72 The Channel of Power. 
 
 to take it again." And then go out yonder to that 
 scene just outside the Jerusalem wall. There hangs 
 Jesus upon that cross, suspended by nails through 
 hands and feet. He is only thirty-three. He is 
 intensely human. Life was just as sweet to Him 
 that day as it is to you and me to-night. Aye, more 
 sweet: for sin had not taken the edge off his relish of 
 life. Plainly He could have prevented them. For 
 many a time had He held the murderous mob in 
 check by the sheer power of His presence alone. 
 Yet there He hangs from nine until noon and until 
 three six long hours. And He said He did it for 
 you, for me. Do not ask me to tell how His dying 
 for us saves. I do not know. No one statement 
 seems to tell all the truth. When I study into it I 
 always get clear beyond my depth. In a tremen- 
 dous way it tells a double story; of the damnable 
 blackness of sin; and of the intensity of love. I do 
 know that He said He did it for us, and for our 
 salvation, and that it had to be done. But as we 
 look to-day on that scene, again the question: does 
 any of the blame of the awful statements this book 
 makes regarding your friends belong to Him, do you 
 think? And I think I hear your hearts say "surely 
 not." 
 
 Well, the Father has done His best. No blame 
 surely attaches there. The Son has gone to the 
 utmost limit. No fault can be found there. There 
 is just one other left up yonder, of the divine part- 
 nershipthe Holy Spirit. What about Him.
 
 The Channel of Power. 73 
 
 Listen. Just as soon as the Son went back home 
 with face and form all scarred from His brief stay 
 upon the earth, He and the Father said, "now We 
 will send down the last one of Us, the Holy Spirit, 
 and He will do His best to woo men back, ' ' and so 
 it was done. The last supreme effort to win men 
 back was begun. The Holy Spirit came down for 
 the specific purpose of telling the world about Jesus. 
 His work down here is to convict men of their ter- 
 rible wrong in rejecting Jesus, and of His righteous- 
 ness, and of the judgment passed upon Satan. Only 
 He can convince men's minds and consciences. A 
 thousand preachers with the logic of a Paul and the 
 eloquence of an Isaiah could not convince one man 
 of sin. Only the Spirit can do that. But listen to 
 me as I say very thoughtfully and this is the one 
 truth I pray God to burn into our hearts to-night 
 that to do His work among men He needs to use men. 
 He needs you. "Oh!" you say, "it is hardly pos- 
 sible that you mean that: I am not a minister: I 
 have no special ability for Christian work: I am just 
 an obscure, humble Christian: I have no gift in that 
 direction." Listen with your heart while I remind 
 you that He needs not your special abilities or gifts, 
 though He will use all you have, and the more the 
 better, but He needs your personality as a human 
 channel through which to touch the men you touch. 
 And I want to say just as kindly and tenderly as I 
 can and yet with great plainness that if you are 
 refusing to let Him use you as He chooses shall I
 
 74 The Channel of Power. 
 
 say the unpleasant truth? the practical blame for 
 those ugly words, and the uglier truth back of them 
 come straight home to you. 
 
 That is a very serious thing to say, and so I must 
 add a few words to make it still more clear and 
 plain. The Spirit of God in working among men 
 seeks embodiment in men, through whom He acts. 
 The amazing truth is that not only is He willing to 
 enter into and fill you with His very presence, but 
 He seeks for, He wants, yes, He needs your person- 
 ality as a channel or medium, that living in you He 
 may be able to do His work among the men you 
 touch even though you may not be conscious of 
 much that He is doing through you. Is not that 
 startling? He wants to live in your body, and speak 
 through your lips, and look out of your eyes, and 
 use your hands, really, actually. Have you turned 
 your personality over to Him as completely as that? 
 
 Remember the law of God's communication with 
 men; namely, He speaks to men through men. Run 
 carefully through the Bible, and you will find that 
 since the Cain disaster, which divided all men into 
 two great groups, whenever God has a message 
 for a man or a nation out in the world He chooses 
 and uses a man in touch with Himself as His mes- 
 senger. 
 
 Listen to Jesus' own words in that last night's 
 long talk in John's Gospel, chapter fourteen, verse 
 seventeen. Speaking about the coming Spirit, He 
 says, "Whom the world cannot receive." That is
 
 The Channel of Power. 75 
 
 a strange statement. Though an important part of 
 the Spirit's great mission is to the world yet it can- 
 not receive Him. But chapter sixteen, verses seven 
 and eight gives the explanation: "I will send Him 
 unto you, and He when He is come (unto you) will 
 convince, ' ' and so on. That is to say, a message 
 from God to one who has come within the circle of 
 personal relation with Jesus that message comes 
 along a straight line without break or crook. But a 
 message to one who remains outside that circle 
 comes along an angled line two lines meeting at an 
 angle and the point of that angle is in some Chris- 
 tian heart. The message He sends out to the outer 
 circle passes through some one within the inner 
 circle. To make it direct and personal: He needs 
 to use you to touch those whom you touch. 
 
 God's Sub-Headquarters. 
 
 Let me bring you a few illustrations of how God 
 uses men, though the fact of His using them is on 
 almost every page of this Bible. Back in the old 
 book of Judges is a peculiar expression which is not 
 brought out as clearly as it might be in our English 
 Bibles. The sixth chapter and thirty- fourth verse 
 might properly read: "the Spirit of Jehovah clothed 
 Himself with Gideon." It was a time of desperate 
 crisis in the nation. God chose this man for leader- 
 ship among his fellows. If you take his life through- 
 out you will not think him an ideal character. But
 
 76 The Channel of Power. 
 
 he seems to be the best available stuff there was. 
 He became the general guiding an army in what, to 
 human eyes, was a perfectly hopeless struggle. Men 
 saw Gideon moving about giving orders. But this 
 strangely significant phrase lets us into the secret of 
 his wise strategy and splendid victory. "The Spirit 
 of Jehovah clothed Himself with Gideon. ' ' Gideon's 
 personality was merely a suit of clothes which God 
 wore that day in achieving that tremendous victory 
 for His people. The same expression is used of 
 Amasai, one of David's mighty chieftains, 1 and 
 of Zechariah, one of the priests during Joash's 
 reign. 2 
 
 A New Testament illustration is found in the book 
 of Acts in the account of Philip and the Ethiopian 
 stranger. This devout African official had a copy 
 of the old Hebrew Scriptures, but needed an inter- 
 preter to make plain their newly acquired signifi- 
 cance. The Holy Spirit, the interpreter of Scrip- 
 ture, longs to help him. For that purpose He seeks 
 out a man, of whom He has control, named Philip. 
 He is directed to go some distance over toward the 
 road where this man is journeying. We are told of 
 Philip that he was "full of the Spirit." And a 
 reading of that eighth chapter makes plain the con- 
 trolling presence of the Spirit in Philip's personality. 
 In the beginning He gives very explicit direction. 
 "The Spirit (within Philip) said, go near, join thy- 
 
 1 i Chron. xii: 18. 
 *2 Cbron. xxiv: 20.
 
 The Channel of Power. 77 
 
 self to this chariot." And at the close "the Spirit 
 of the Lord caught away Philip." 
 
 These are a few illustrations of what seems to be 
 a common law of God's intercourse with men. The 
 language of the Bible throughout fits in with this 
 same conception. Strikingly enough the same 
 seems to be true in the opposing camp, among the 
 forces of the Evil One. Repeatedly in the gospels 
 we come across the startling expressions "possessed 
 with demons," "possessed of demons," evidently 
 speaking of men whom demons had succeeded in 
 getting possession of, and clothing themselves with. 
 It seems to be a law of spirit life that a spirit needs 
 to be embodied in dealing with embodied beings. " 
 And God conforms to this law in His dealings with 
 men. 
 
 My friend, will you ask your heart, has the Holy 
 Spirit gotten possession of you like that? With 
 reverence I repeat that He is seeking for men in 
 whom He may set up a sort of sub-headquarters, 
 from which He may work out as He pleases. Has 
 He been able to do that with you? Or, have you 
 been holding back from Him, fearing He might 
 make some changes in you or your plans? If that 
 is so, may I say just as kindly as these lips can 
 speak it, but also as plainly, that then the practical 
 blame for those cutting words about your friends 
 comes straight back to you. 
 
 Hugh McAllister Beavsr, son of the former gov- 
 ernor of Pennsylvania, and one of the rarest chris-
 
 78 The Channel of Power. 
 
 tian young men that ever lived, felt impelled at a 
 conference of students at Northfield, in '97, to tell 
 this bit of his inner experience, though naturally 
 reluctant to do so. While at college, arrangements 
 were made for a series of meetings every night for a 
 week. "One day Agoing down the hallway of the 
 college building," he said, "I met a boy we all 
 called Dutchy, one of the toughest fellows in school. 
 I said to him, 'Dutch, come to the meeting to-night.'" 
 Instead of laughing or swearing, to Beaver's sur- 
 prise, he paused a moment as though such a thing 
 was possible, and Beaver said, "I prayed quietly to 
 myself, and urged him to come." And he said, 
 "Well, I guess I will." And that night to every 
 one's surprise Dutch came to the meeting. When 
 Beaver rose to speak, to his surprise this fellow was 
 not simply intensely interested but his eyes were full 
 of tears. And Beaver said ' 1 a voice as distinct as 
 an audible voice said to me, 'Speak to Dutchy!' 
 But I did not." Again the next night Dutchy 
 came of his own accord, and one of the boys put- 
 ting his arm on Beaver's shoulder said, "Speak to 
 Dutchy. We boys never saw him like this before." 
 And he said he would. But he did not. And some 
 time after he had a dream and thought he would 
 not walk this earth any more. It did not trouble 
 him except that his brother was crying. But he 
 thought he met the Master, who looked into his 
 face, and said, "Hugh, do you remember, I asked 
 you to speak to Dutchy?" "Yes." "And you
 
 The Channel of Power. 79 
 
 did not." "No." "Would you like to go back 
 to the earth and win him?" And he finished the 
 story by saying, "it's hard work, but he's coming 
 now. ' ' 
 
 I wonder if the Master has ever tried to use your 
 lips like that, and you have refused? 
 
 A prominent clergyman in New England tells this 
 experience of his. In the course of his pastoral 
 work he was called to conduct the funeral service of 
 a young woman who had died quite unexpectedly. 
 As he entered the house he met the minister in 
 charge of the mission church, where the family 
 attended, and asked him, "Was Mary a Christian?" 
 To his surprise a pained look came into the young 
 man's face as he replied, "Three weeks ago I had 
 a strong impulse to speak to her, but / did not; and 
 I do not know.'* A- moment later he met the girl's 
 Sunday school teacher and asked her the same 
 question. Quickly the tears came, as she said, 
 "Two weeks ago, Doctor, a voice seemed to say to 
 me, 'Speak to Mary,' and I knew what it meant, 
 and I intended to, but / did not, and I do not 
 know." Deeply moved by these unexpected an- 
 swers, a few minutes later he met the girl's mother, 
 and thinking doubtless to give her an opportunity to 
 speak a word that would bring comfort to her own 
 heart, he said quietly, "Mary was a Christian girl?" 
 The tears came quick and hot to the mother's eyes, 
 as she sobbed out, "One week ago a voice came to 
 me saying, 'Speak to Mary,' and I thought of it.
 
 8o The Channel of Power. 
 
 but I did not at the time, and you know how unex- 
 pectedly she went away and I do not know." 
 
 Well, please understand me, I am not saying a 
 word about that girl. I do not know anything to 
 say. I would hope much and can understand that 
 there is ground for hope. But this is what I say: 
 How pathetic, beyond expression, that the Spirit 
 tried to get the use of the lips of three persons, a 
 pastor, a teacher, aye, a mother! to speak the word 
 that evidently He longed to have spoken to her, and 
 He could not! 
 
 Has He tried to use you like that? 
 
 The Highest Law of Action. 
 
 But these two illustrations are narrower than the 
 truth. They speak of the lips. He wants to use 
 your lips; but, even more, He wants to use your 
 life. Much as He may use your lips, He will use 
 your personality, your presence, your life ten times 
 more, when you are wholly unconscious of it. He 
 loves men so much. He longs to save them. But 
 He needs us you and me as channels through 
 which His power shall flow to touch and mightily 
 influence those whom we touch. How often has 
 He turned away disappointed because the channel 
 had broken connections, or could not be used? 
 
 "He was not willing that any should perish; 
 
 Jesus, enthroned in the glory above, 
 Saw our poor fallen world, pitied our sorrows, 
 Poured out His life for us, wonderful love.
 
 The Channel of Power. 81 
 
 Perishing, perishing, thronging our pathway, 
 Hearts break with burdens too heavy to bear; 
 
 Jesus would save, but there's no one to tell them, 
 No one to save them from sin and despair." 
 
 Someone says: "You are putting an awful re- 
 sponsibility upon us. Would you have us go out 
 and begin speaking to everyone we meet?" No, 
 that is not what I am saying just now. Though 
 there is a truth there. But this: Surrender your- 
 self to Jesus as your Master, for Him to take pos- 
 session. Turn the channel over to Him, that He 
 may tighten the connections, upward and outward, 
 and clean it out, and then use as He may choose. 
 He has a passion for winning men, and He has mar- 
 velous tact in doing it. Let Him have His way in 
 you. Keep quiet and close to Him, and obey Him, 
 gladly, cheerily, constantly, and He will assume all 
 responsibility for the results. 
 
 There is a law of personal service. It is this: 
 Contact means opportunity; opportunity means 
 responsibility. To come into personal contact with 
 a man gives an opportunity of influencing him for 
 Christ, and with opportunity goes its twin partner 
 responsibility. 
 
 There is another law a higher law the highest 
 law of the Christian life. It is this: In everything 
 hold yourself subject to the Holy Spirit's leading. 
 Whenever these two laws come into conflict remem- 
 ber that the lower law always yields to the higher. 
 It is a law of life that where two laws come into
 
 82 The Channel of Power. 
 
 conflict the lower law always gives way to the higher. 
 That is a supreme law both of nature and in legis- 
 lation. Now, the highest law of the Christian life 
 is to yield constantly to the leading of our Compan- 
 ion the Holy Spirit. Then quiet time alone with 
 the Master daily over His word for the training of 
 the ear, and the training of the judgment, and the 
 training of the tongue becomes the great essential. 
 But to-night the great question is: Have you 
 turned the channel of power your personality 
 over to Him to be flushed and flooded with His 
 power? Will you? 
 
 "Only a smile, yes, only a smile, 
 
 That a woman o'erburdened with grief 
 Expected from you; 'twould have given relief, 
 
 For her heart ached sore the while. 
 
 But, weary and cheerless, she went away, 
 Because, as it happened that very day, 
 
 You were out of touch with your Lord. 
 
 "Only a word, yes, only a word, 
 
 That the Spirit's small voice whispered, 'Speak'; 
 
 But the worker passed onward, unblessed and weak, 
 Whom you were meant to have stirred 
 
 To courage, devotion and love anew, 
 
 Because, when the message came to you, 
 You were out of touch with your Lord. 
 
 "Only a note, yes, only a note, 
 
 To a friend in a distant land ; 
 
 The Spirit said, 'Write,' but then you had planned 
 Some different work, and you thought 
 
 It mattered little. You did not know 
 
 'Twould have saved a soul from sin and woe 
 You were out of touch with your Lord.
 
 The Channel of Power. 83 
 
 'Only a song, yes, only a song, 
 
 That the Spirit said, 'Sing to-night; 
 
 Thy voice is thy Master's by purchased right.' 
 But you thought, ' 'Mid this motley throng, 
 
 I care not to sing of the City of God' ; 
 
 And the heart that your words might have reached 
 
 grew cold 
 You were out of touch with your Lord. 
 
 'Only a day, yes, only a day, 
 
 But oh! can you guess, my friend, 
 
 Where the influence reaches and where it will end 
 Of the hours that you frittered away? 
 
 The Master's command is, 'Abide in Me'; 
 
 And fruitless and vain will your service b 
 If out of touch with your Lord."
 
 THE PRICE OF POWER.
 
 THE PRICE OF POWER. 
 
 The Law of Exchange. 
 
 Every man needs power. Every earnest man 
 covets power. Every willing man has the Master's 
 promise of power. But every man does not possess 
 the promised power. And many, it is to be feared, 
 never will. Many a man's life to-day is utterly 
 lacking in power. Some of us will look back at the 
 close of life with a sense of keen disappointment and 
 of bitter defeat. And the reason is not far to seek, 
 nor hard to see through. If we do not have power 
 it is because we are not willing to pay the price. 
 
 Everything costs. There is a law of exchange 
 that rules in every sphere of life. It is this, "to get, 
 you must give." It rules in the business world. If 
 I want a house or a hat I must give the sum agreed 
 upon. It rules in the intellectual world. If a young 
 man wants a disciplined mind he must give time, 
 and close application, and some real, hard work. It 
 holds true in the spirit realm. If you and I wish to 
 have business transactions in this upper world of 
 spirit-life we must be governed by this same law. 
 To have power in our lives over sin and selfishness, 
 and passion, and appetite ; over tongue, and temper, 
 and self-seeking ambition; to have power in prayer, 
 87
 
 88 The Price of Power. 
 
 and in winning others over from sin to Jesus Christ, 
 one must first lay down the required price. 
 
 What is the price of power? Turn to Jesus' talk 
 with Peter and the others in the latter part of the 
 sixteenth chapter of Matthew's gospel. Jesus has 
 been telling them of the awful cross-experiences 
 which He clearly saw ahead. Peter probably fear- 
 ful that whatever came to his Master might possibly 
 come to himself also, and shrinking back in horror 
 from that, has the hardihood to rebuke Jesus. The 
 Master, recognizing the suggestion as coming from a 
 far subtler individual than Peter, who is using igno- 
 rant Peter's selfishness to repeat the suggestion of the 
 wilderness, again bids him begone. Then in a few 
 simple words of far-reaching significance, He states 
 first the standard of power, and then the price to be 
 paid by one who would reach that standard. Listen 
 to Him: "If any man would come after Me, let him 
 deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." 
 
 In the Footprints of Jesus. 
 
 Let us look a little into these familiar words. "If 
 any man would, come after Me" that is the standard 
 set before us. Not to be regarded as a pillar in the 
 church, a leader in religious circles, a good Bible 
 student, a generous giver, an earnest speaker, an 
 energetic worker, a spiritually minded person, but, 
 what may not be coupled with any or all of these 
 admirable things, to tread in the footprints of Jesus.
 
 The Price of Power. 89 
 
 Think back into that marvelous life. A human 
 life, remember. For though He was Son of God 
 He lived His life down here as a son of man. 
 Think of His power over temptation, not alone at 
 the outset in the fierce wilderness struggle, but 
 through those succeeding years of intense conflict; 
 His power over Satan, over man-possessing demons, 
 over disease; His power in dealing with the subtle 
 schoolmen trying their best to trip Him up, as well 
 as over His more violent enemies who would have 
 dashed Him over yon Nazareth precipice, or later 
 stoned the life out of His body in Jerusalem. Recall 
 the power of His rare unselfishness; His combined 
 plainness and tenderness of speech in dealing with 
 men; His unfailing love to all classes; His power 
 as a soul winner, as a man of prayer, as a popular 
 preacher, lovingly wooing men while unsparingly 
 rebuking their sins. There is the suggestion of Jesus' 
 standard of power. Would you go after Him? 
 You may. For as the Father sent Him even so 
 sends He us, to do the same work and live the same 
 life. 
 
 But wait a moment before answering that ques- 
 tion. There is another side in His life to that 
 "come-after-me." Opposites brought into contact 
 produce a violent disturbance. Such a life as that 
 of Jesus, down in the atmosphere of this world will 
 of necessity provoke bitter enmities, both then and 
 now. Listen. He was criticized and slandered. 
 They said He was peculiar and fanatical. His
 
 90 The Price of Power. 
 
 friends thougnt Him "beside Himself," swept off 
 His feet by excessive, hot-headed enthusiasm. 
 They "laughed Him to scorn," and reviled Him. 
 They picked His words, and nagged His kindliest 
 acts, and dogged His steps. Repeated attempts 
 were made upon His life, both at Nazareth and by 
 stoning at Jerusalem. A determined conspiracy 
 against His life was planned by the Jerusalem offi- 
 cials six months before the end actually came. He 
 was practically a fugitive for those months. At 
 the last He was arrested and mocked and spit upon, 
 struck with open hand and clenched fist, derisively 
 crowned with thorns, and finally killed a cruel, 
 lingering, tortured death. 
 
 "If any man would come after Me." Plainly this 
 language of Jesus put back into its original setting 
 begins to assume a new significance. 
 
 A Fixed Purpose. 
 
 But look at these words a little more closely. 
 "//" it is an open question, this matter of follow- 
 ing Jesus. It is kept open by many people who 
 want to be known as Christian, but who hesitate 
 over what a plain understanding of Jesus' words 
 may involve. Some of us may be disposed to shrink 
 back from the simple meaning these words will yet 
 disclose. 
 
 "If any man would" would is the past tense of 
 will. The word will is one of the strongest in our
 
 The Price of Power. 91 
 
 language. A man's will is the imperial part of him. 
 It is the autocrat upon the throne; the judge upon 
 the bench of final appeal. Jesus is getting down to 
 the root of matters here. He is appealing to the 
 highest authority. No mere passing sentiment is 
 this. Not attending a meeting and being swept 
 along with the crowd by the hour's influence. But 
 a fixed purpose^ calmly, resolutely settled upon, 
 rooted away down deep in the very vitals of the will 
 to follow Jesus absolutely, no matter what it may 
 cost or where it may cut. 
 
 I wonder how many of us would form such a pur- 
 pose, to follow Jesus blindly, utterly regardless of 
 what it might be found to mean as the days come 
 and go? "Oh, well," I hear some one say, "why 
 talk like that. Nobody is required to suffer to-day 
 as He did." Do you think not? I am not so sure 
 about that. There is a young man in Southern 
 India, bright fellow, full of power, of high class 
 family, who heard of Jesus, and felt the personal 
 appeal to himself of that marvelous story. He 
 thought a good while of what it meant, and what it 
 might involve, and at length resolutely formed his 
 decision to accept and follow Jesus. As he had 
 anticipated, his dear ones remonstrated with him, 
 coaxed, pleaded, threatened, and finally, his own 
 father violently put him out of his life-long home, 
 and he has remained since an outcast from home and 
 loved ones. These words of Jesus surely are full of 
 significance to him.
 
 92 The Price of Power. 
 
 "But that was in India, far off, heathen India," 
 you say. Well, here is something of a similar sort 
 at home. I knew a young woman in a certain New 
 England town visiting away from home. She 
 attended some meetings where she was visiting, and 
 decided to be a Christian. She was betrothed to a 
 young man, not a Christian, in her home town. At 
 once she wrote him explaining her new step think- 
 ing, doubtless how glad he would be. For most men 
 seem very willing to have their wives Christian. 
 But he wrote back that if she were determined to be 
 a Christian that must put an end to their engage- 
 ment. He was not a Christian and did not want 
 his wife to be one. Every one here must know how 
 serious a question that brought up for decision. 
 For she was a true woman, and love's tendrils twine 
 with wondrous tenacity about a woman's heart. 
 And I presume, too, that everyone of you has 
 already thought while I am speaking, of the tempta- 
 tion that, quick as a flash, went through her mind. 
 "You need not make a public matter of this. Just 
 be a true Christian in heart and life, and in that way 
 you'll win him over afterwards." I imagine some of 
 you have heard something like that before. But she 
 remembered that her new Master said "Confess" as 
 well as "believe." It was a crisis; a severe strug- 
 gle of soul. But she felt she must follow her Mas- 
 ter's leading regardless of what it involved. And so 
 she decided. You are not surprised to know that 
 she was ill for a time. The intense strain of spirit
 
 The Price of Power. 93 
 
 affected her body. "If any man would come 
 after Me" meant much to her. Did it not? 
 
 Without doubt if some of us listening to-day were 
 to follow Jesus quietly, but absolutely, in all things 
 as His own Spirit plainly led, we would find as sharp 
 a line of separation drawn against us, as did He in 
 Palestine, and these young people in India and 
 America. 
 
 Many a social door would be shut in our faces. 
 O, shut politely of course ! Society thinks it ii^Very 
 bad form to get unduly excited about mere matters 
 of religious opinion. But the door is shut, and 
 barred, too. Some of us would possibly be search- 
 ing for other business positions before to-morrow's 
 light faded away if we were determined to go only 
 where He clearly pointed the way. 
 
 But we have only begun to get at the meaning of 
 Jesus' words. Is there still a fixed purpose to follow 
 regardless of what meaning these words may yet 
 disclose? Not impossibly the company of those 
 willing to go straight through this verse with a calm, 
 determined "yes" to every word of Jesus, will grow 
 smaller as we go on. 
 
 A Character Sketch. 
 
 Let us go a little farther. "If any man would 
 come after Me let him deny himself." "Deny him- 
 self" what does that mean? Well, deny means to 
 say "no," plainly and positively. Himself is the
 
 94 The Price of Power. 
 
 smoother English word for his self. Let him say 
 "no" to his self. Please notice that Jesus is not 
 speaking of what is commonly called self-denial. 
 That is, repressing some desire for a time, sacrificing 
 something temporarily in order to gain an advantage 
 later. That sort of thing is not peculiar to the 
 Christian life, but is practiced by all classes, even 
 among the lowest. He is not speaking of that, but 
 of something far more radical. Reading the verse 
 through again, it will be seen that there are three 
 distinct persons referred to by Jesus. First, the 
 "any man" He speaks of, and then the two others 
 represented by these words "himself" and "Me, " 
 either one or the other of whom is influencing this 
 "any man's" life. "Say no to his self" is coupled 
 with "follow Me." And the opposite is implied 
 if any man will not do as I desire, he will continue 
 to do as he is now doing, namely, deny Me and fol- 
 low his self. 
 
 These two persons self and Jesus are placed 
 here in sharpest contrast. An uncompromising 
 antagonism exists between them. They are sworn 
 foes, and every man must decide to which he will 
 yield his allegiance. To agree with either one is to 
 oppose the other one. For a man to settle some 
 matter that comes up for decision by saying "yes" to 
 the desires or demands of his self involves his saying 
 "no" to Jesus. And on the other hand his yielding 
 assent to the plans and wishes of this "me," namely 
 Jesus, is plainly equivalent to saying "no" to his self.
 
 The Price of Power. 95 
 
 What is this self in each of us that Jesus sets in 
 such antagonism to Himself, and instructs us to say 
 a hard, uncompromising, unceasing "no" to? There 
 are a few words in common use that give some sug- 
 gestion of its character. There is the word selfish, 
 that is, being absorbed in one's own self; in getting 
 every stream to flow by his own door. That is 
 commonly regarded, even in absolutely worldly 
 circles, as a detestable trait. Its opposite, self-for- 
 getful, being full of forgetting one's self in thinking 
 of others, is as commonly regarded in all circles as a 
 charming, winsome trait of character. The words 
 self-centered, and self-willed, are as familiar and sug- 
 gestive. 
 
 The fact is, there is an individual living inside 
 each one of us whom Jesus refers to, by this word 
 ' ' his self. ' ' This individual takes on the degree of in- 
 tensity and other local coloring of the person it in- 
 habits. It may be polished, scholarly, cultured; or, 
 coarse, ignorant and ill-mannered. But "scratch 
 a Russian and you find a Tartar. ' ' Scratch through 
 the veneering here and, whether coarse or highly 
 polished, you will find the same individual self. 
 
 There are some quite marked characteristics by 
 which its presence may be recognized. They may 
 not all be noticeable together in any one person. 
 But one or more will be found in every person whom 
 it succeeds in influencing and dominating. One 
 characteristic is this: it covets praise. It feeds and 
 fattens on commendation. It constantly seeks to be
 
 96 The Price of Power. 
 
 highly esteemed, to have its worth properly ap- 
 praised. It is immensely impressed with its own 
 importance, its value to society, its keenness, wis- 
 dom or aptness, and wishes others to be so im- 
 pressed also. It is fond of a mirror, especially one 
 : made to magnify. It seeks recognition. It presses 
 forward, rudely or politely, according as its habitat 
 has been trained in rude or polite circles. It may 
 put on the garb of humility, and use the language of 
 depreciation. But its ear is none the less keenly 
 alert to hear the agreeable things and to cherish 
 them. 
 
 Another characteristic, which really is simply the 
 other side of this first named one, is this: it shrinks 
 from criticism. How it writhes and twists at the 
 least touch of unfavorable criticism! It is always 
 on the defensive. The cheek colors at the sugges- 
 tion of its being wrong, or having blundered, or of 
 being peculiar. 
 
 How quickly it explains and defends and brings 
 evidence of its being in the right. It is extremely 
 sensitive. "It is that touchy thing in you." It is 
 chronically troubled with "the disease of touchiness." 
 Its feelings are readily hurt. It is easily slighted. 
 It remembers grievances. It has an interrogation 
 point constantly on sentinel duty, namely, What will 
 they think? What will they say? It lives in con- 
 stant fear, under the lash of that huge, vague, awful 
 they. 
 
 I remember knowing a Sunday school teacher who
 
 The Price of Power. 97 
 
 had a mission class of rather rough boys from non- 
 christian homes. I asked one day how she was 
 getting along with them. "Going to give them 
 up," she replied. "Is that so? They have all 
 become Christians?" No, none of them were Chris- 
 tians, and they liked her, and said they would not 
 come if she gave them up, but she felt discouraged, 
 and anyway she had decided to give them up. Law- 
 yers and women do not always give their reasons, 
 very wisely. I ventured to suggest that before giv- 
 ing them up, she have the boys come up to her 
 home, one at a time, perhaps for tea; have a pleas- 
 ant chatty time at tea and afterwards, and then 
 before the boy left have a quiet friendly talk with 
 him by himself about being a Christian, and, a few 
 words of prayer with him. Wouldn't she try that 
 before giving them up? And I remember distinctly 
 that her face blushed as red as a bright red rose, as 
 she replied, "Why, Mr. Gordon, he'd laugh at me!" 
 And she could not bear the possible chance of being 
 laughed at for the other more likely possibility of 
 winning a soul a man a life. That was "self" 
 in her, shrinking back from a laugh; dreading that 
 look of possibly contemptuous surprise that might 
 come. 
 
 Another person, speaking about certain recrea- 
 tions very common in society, and which he was in 
 the habit of joining, though freely questioning the 
 propriety of so doing, said, "O, I don't care much 
 for those things. I could easily give them up, but
 
 98 The Price of Power. 
 
 people think you are so queer if you decline, and 
 you feel as if you were a back number." Ah! 
 there was the rub. The desire to be thought well 
 of; the dislike of being considered peculiar; the fear 
 of that thinly veiled sneering curl on the lip that 
 was self in him asserting its presence, and even 
 more, ruling his action. Do you recognize the in- 
 dividual inside of you that Jesus is speaking of? 
 
 There is a third tell-tale ear-mark of self that is 
 difficult to conceal it is assertive. It dearly loves to 
 have its own way. It has plans and ambitions, and 
 proposes to carry them through regardless of man, 
 or let the plain truth be spoken softly of God. 
 Its opinions are held tenaciously. Its favorite pro- 
 noun is I, capitalized, with variations of my and me. 
 The personal equation is extremely powerful and 
 persuasive. 
 
 The true follower of Jesus holds every plan sub- 
 ject to change from above. But this self, if allowed 
 to rule, takes the bit in its tightly-shut teeth, and 
 drives determinedly ahead, reckless of either man's 
 or God's preferences, even though religious phra- 
 seology may be upon its tongue. 
 
 Still another trait of character of this self whose 
 closer acquaintance we are making is this : // has an 
 insatiable appetite. It grows hungrier by that on 
 which it feeds. Its capacity is beyond the measur- 
 ing line. If given free rein it will debase the holiest 
 functions of the body, and degrade the highest pow- 
 ers of the mind to appease its gnawing, passion-
 
 The Price of Power. 99 
 
 bitten hunger. The noblest gifts, the purest emo- 
 tions, the most sacred relationships, are dragged 
 down to the slimy gutter to tempt and temporarily 
 stay its jaded palate. 
 
 Unmasked. 
 
 Thai is something of a suggestion of the character 
 of this other master than Jesus, who seeks to get 
 control of us, and from whose relentless, vise-like 
 grip Jesus would fain free us. He says there is 
 only one thing to do with it. No half-way com- 
 promise the great American expedient will do 
 here. The Master says plainly it is to be denied, 
 repressed, put determinedly down, starved, stran- 
 gled. To every suggestion or demand there is to be 
 a prompt, positive, jaw-locked no. 
 
 There is war to the knife, and the knife clear up 
 to the hilt, between these two claimants for the con- 
 trol of our powers self and Jesus. Paul understood 
 this antagonism thoroughly. It comes out repeat- 
 edly in his writings. His name for this inner enemy, 
 by an accidental turn in English, is Jesus' word 
 "self" spelled backwards with the letter "h" added 
 f-1-e-s-h. His remarks in Romans, eighth chap- 
 ter, verses four to eight, and twelve to thirteen, are 
 simply an enlargement of these words in the six- 
 teenth of Matthew's gospel. If one will read these 
 verses, substituting Jesus' word "self" for Paul's 
 word he will be surprised to find how strikingly Paul is
 
 ioo The Price of Power. 
 
 expressing this very thought of Jesus. A free trans- 
 lation of part of these verses would read like this: 
 Verse five "They that choose to walk after self (as 
 a slave walked after, or behind, his master) will 
 show their choice by obeying the desires of self, and 
 they that choose to walk after the Spirit will obey 
 the desires of the Spirit." Verse seven "For the 
 purposes of self are opposed to God's purposes; for 
 it does not hold itself subject to God's wishes; in- 
 deed, in its very nature it cannot; and they that 
 choose to obey self cannot please God." Verse 
 thirteen "If by the Holy Spirit's aid ye kill off the 
 plans and doings of self, ye shall therein find real 
 true life, and only so." 
 
 Plainly, the deep searching experiences of Paul's 
 great soul, and his wide observation of others, in 
 his ceaseless travels, confirm the statements already 
 made, that there is the intensest hatred, the bitter- 
 est antagonism, between these two personalities 
 represented by Jesus' words, "himself" and "me." 
 There can be no patched-up truce here. The only 
 way the lion and the lamb can lie down together in 
 this case is for the one to lie down underneath the 
 other conquered; or inside the other devoured. 
 
 In his other letters Paul sometimes uses still 
 another name, "the old man," and names the char- 
 acteristics of this omnipresent self, which crop out 
 with varying degrees of prominence, in different 
 persons, and under different circumstances. Notice 
 only a few of these: In Galatians, fifth chapter,
 
 The Price of Power. 101 
 
 nineteenth verse: "The deeds of self are .... 
 improper sexual intercourse, impurity, shameless 
 looseness . . . . ' It will, wherever possible, 
 debase the holiest functions of the body. In Colos- 
 sians, third chapter, fifth verse, speaking of the 
 "old man" : "And covetousness, which is reckoning 
 of highest worth that which is less worthy than 
 God." That is to say, the ambitious longings of 
 self, will if unchecked become the ruling passion, 
 thrusting all else ruthlessly aside and degrading the 
 highest powers of the mind to satisfying its feverish 
 desire. In Ephesians, fourth chapter, thirty-first 
 verse: "Bitterness, passion, anger, loud disputing, 
 evil-speaking .... malice." Its assertiveness, 
 and demand for a due recognition of its worth, its 
 rights, its opinions, its proper place, bring bitterest 
 burnings, and worse. It will not be needful to re- 
 view congressional, and political, and society life for 
 illustrations. They may be found much nearer 
 one's own door. 
 
 Was there ever such a list? Such a being whose 
 heart begets and nurses such progeny! This being 
 has the smell of hell, and of the evil one himself. 
 Ah! now we are getting at the straight truth. Self 
 is Satan's personal representative in every human 
 heart. Its door of entrance is the door of disobedi- 
 ence. It can have control only where one allows 
 himself to get out of intelligent sympathy with God. 
 The self in Peter was recoiling from that cross of 
 which Jesus spoke. How keen Jesus was in recog-
 
 IO2 The Price of Power. 
 
 nizing the suggestor of the thought that found 
 expression through Peter's lips "Get thee behind 
 me, Satan" Self is Satan, condensed into each 
 man's life, though in some he dare not exhibit his 
 coarser traits; and in others he is being constantly 
 conquered by that power of the Spirit of Jesus which 
 comes through absolute, glad surrender to Him. 
 
 This sly Satan-self may often be recognized by a 
 favorite question it asks among Christian people 
 about a great many so-called unimportant matters: 
 What's the harm? But a true follower of Jesus 
 never lives down upon the plane of "what's-the- 
 harm?" He lives up in a higher sphere with his 
 Master, who "pleased not Himself," but made it 
 the steady, unfaltering aim of His life to do always 
 those things that were pleasing to His Father. Men 
 thought Him narrow and fanatical, but He cared 
 not so long as He could daily hear that clear, sweet 
 voice saying "This is My beloved Son, in whom I 
 am well pleased." The final touchstone which the 
 follower of Jesus applies to every matter is this: 
 Would it please Him? 
 
 Let everyone here who earnestly desires to fit 
 into, and to fill out, Jesus' plan for his life, take 
 paper and pencil and make a list of his personal 
 habits; such as his eating, what he eats and how; 
 his drinking, other things he puts into his mouth, 
 his dress, the use and care of his body, his recrea- 
 tions, his reading, his conversation, his use of 
 money, his use of time, his life plans and his daily
 
 The Price of Power. 103 
 
 J*ans, his social engagements; and regarding each 
 ask plainly the question what is the motive that 
 conhols me in this? Is it my own preference or en- 
 joymmt? Or, is it to please and honor Jesus? Let 
 him further go through the list of his business 
 methods, his friendships, the various organizations 
 he belongs to, with the same question. If he will 
 do thorough work he will probably have some stiff 
 fighting on hand both at the start and afterwards. 
 Many a life would thereby be radically changed. 
 For example, I know a Christian storekeeper who 
 has on his shehes a certain article bearing the label 
 of a tonic medicine, but he knows perfectly well, 
 as does anyone who stops to think about it, that the 
 stuff back of the label is one form of an intoxicant. 
 There can be no question of what the Master would 
 say about it. But it brings a good profit. And his 
 money-fevered self asserts its mastery and carries 
 the day. And the man tightly grips the profits, 
 while Satan chuckles with unholy glee, and souls are 
 being damned by this Christian man's aid. Cer- 
 tainly there can be none of the power of God in 
 such a life. Let us rather speak the truth and say 
 that this man is exerting a positive power for Satan 
 and for hell. 
 
 All this is included in these few simple words, 
 "let him deny himself." Is there still a fixed pur- 
 pose to follow Jesus without regard to what it may 
 cost us, or where the keen edge of separation may 
 cut in?
 
 IO4 The Price of Power. 
 
 The Battle of the Forks. 
 
 Here is a forking of the road. I bring this vhole 
 company up to this dividing, and therefore deeding, 
 point. Let each choose his own road deliberately, 
 prayerfully, with open eyes. This road to the left 
 has as its law, yielding to self; saying "yes" to the 
 desires and demands of self; with some modifica- 
 tions possibly, here and there, for I arc talking to 
 professing Christian people. Yes to Jesus some- 
 times, but at other times, when it suit? circumstances 
 and inclinations better to do otherwise well, a 
 pushing of the troublesome question aside. And 
 that means a decided yes to self, with as positive a 
 negative to Jesus' desires implied thereby. That is 
 the left-hand fork. 
 
 This right-hand road knows only one law to which 
 exception is never made, namely: Yes to Jesus, 
 everywhere, always, regardless of consequences, 
 though it may entail loss of friendships, or money, 
 or position, or social standing, or personal prefer- 
 ence, or radical change of plans, or, what not. 
 
 Judas assented to the cravings of his ambitious 
 self and said "no" to his Master, thinking possibly, 
 with his worldly shrewdness, thereby to force Jesus 
 to assert His power. He little knew what a time of 
 crisis it was, and what terrific results would follow. 
 
 Peter stood on the side of his cowardly, shrinking 
 self in the court-yard that dark night, and against 
 his Master. And though with matchless love he
 
 The Price of Power. 105 
 
 was forgiven, he never forgave himself, nor was able 
 to get that night's doings out of his memory. Judas 
 and Peter were brothers in action that night, and 
 there are evidences that many other disciples are 
 standing over in the same group. Are you? 
 Which road do you choose to-night: this to the 
 left? Or, this to the right? 
 
 I knew a young man who was deeply attached to 
 an admirable young woman, both refined Christian 
 persons, much above the average in native ability, 
 and in culture. He made known to her his feelings. 
 But as many a woman who does not trust her best 
 Friend in such matters is apt to do she held him off, 
 testing him repeatedly, to find out just how real his 
 attachment was. Finally revealing indirectly her 
 own feeling she still withheld the consent he pleaded 
 for, until he would yield acquiescence in a certain 
 plan of hers for him. The plan, proper enough in 
 itself, was an ambitious one, and tended decidedly 
 toward swinging him away from the high, tenderly 
 spiritual ideals that had swayed his life in college 
 and afterwards, though he probably was not clearly 
 conscious of this tendency. The only safe thing to 
 do under such strong circumstances was to take 
 time, aside, alone, for calm, poised, thought and 
 prayer, to learn if her plan was also the Master's 
 plan for him. But the personal element proved too 
 strong for such deliberation. The possibility of 
 losing her swung him off of his feet. It was no 
 longer a question between her plan and the Master's
 
 io6 The Price of Power. 
 
 plan. The latter dropped out of view, probably 
 half-unconsciously because hurriedly. He must 
 have her, he thought. That rose before his eyes 
 above all else. And so the decision was made. 
 With what result? He is to-day prominent in 
 Christian service, an earnest speaker, a tireless 
 worker, with a most winsome personality. But his 
 inner spiritual life has perceptibly dwarfed. His 
 ideals, still high and noble, are distinctly lower than 
 in his earlier life. Intellectual ideals, admirable in 
 themselves, but belonging in second place in a 
 Christian life, now command the field. His con- 
 ceptions and understanding of spiritual truth have 
 undergone a decided change. 
 
 The proposal of the self -life came in very fasci- 
 nating guise to him. He hastily said "yes" to 
 it: that meant as decided a refusal of Another's 
 plan for him, which had once been clearly recog- 
 nized, and accepted, but was now set aside, be it 
 sadly said, as he swung quickly off to the left fork 
 of the road. 
 
 There is an incident told of a European pastor, 
 an earnest, eloquent man. The realization came in 
 upon him that he had not been fully following the 
 Master. In much of his life self was still ruling. 
 He came to this forking of the road, and the battle 
 was a fierce one, for self dies hard. But finally "by 
 the Spirit," he got the victory, as~ every one may, 
 and calmly stepped off to the right. He has vividly 
 described that battle of the forks in language, the
 
 The Price of Power. 107 
 
 accuracy of which will be recognized by others who 
 have been in action on that field. 
 
 "Oh, the bitter shame and sorrow, 
 
 That a time could ever be 
 When I let the Saviour's pity 
 Plead in vain, and proudly answered : 
 
 'All of self, and none of Thee.' 
 
 "Yet He found me: I beheld him 
 Bleeding on the accursed tree; 
 Heard Him pray, 'forgive them, Father,' 
 And my wistful heart said faintly : 
 'Some of self and some of Thee.' 
 
 "Day by day, His tender mercy, 
 
 Healing, helping, full and free, 
 Sweet and strong, and oh, so patient, 
 Brought me lower, while I whispered: 
 
 'Less of self and more of Thee. 1 
 
 "Higher than the highest heaven, 
 
 Deeper than the deepest sea, 
 Lord, thy love at last has conquered; 
 Grant me now my soul's desire, 
 
 'None of self and all of Thee.' " 
 
 Is there still a fixed purpose? Will you take this 
 right fork? Let those who will, and those who 
 linger reluctantly listen to the further word that 
 Jesus adds: "Let him deny himself and take up his 
 cross." "Take up his cross" what does that 
 mean? The cross has come to be regarded in these 
 days as a fine ornament. It looks beautiful bejew- 
 eled; on the end of a sword; or worked into regalia.
 
 io8 The Price of Power. 
 
 It makes such an artistic finish to a church building, 
 finely chiseled in stone, or enwreathed with ivy. It 
 looks pretty in jewelry and flowers. But to Jesus 
 and the men of His time it had a grim, hard, painful 
 significance. In Roman usage a man condemned to 
 this death was required to take up the crude wooden 
 cross provided, carry it out to the place of execu- 
 tion, and there be transfixed upon it. Plainly to 
 these men listening, Jesus' words meant: Let him 
 say "no" to his self, and then nail it up on the cross 
 and leave it there to die. 
 
 Paul understood this thoroughly. To help the 
 young Christians in Galatia he explains his own ex- 
 perience by saying: "I have been crucified with 
 Christ;" and to the unknown friends in Rome he 
 writes: "if ye by the Spirit put to death the doings 
 of the self life ye shall live." The only thing to do 
 with this self is to kill it. 
 
 In Luke's account an intensely practical word is 
 added to Jesus' remark: "Let him take up his 
 cross daily." A cat is said to have nine lives, 
 because it is so hard to kill. I do not know what 
 your experience may have been, but, judged by this 
 rule, the self in me is tougher-lived than that. It 
 has about ninety-nine, or nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine lives. I put it on the cross to-day in the pur- 
 pose of my will by the power of the Spirit, and I 
 find it trying to sneak down and step into active 
 control again to-morrow through some sly, subtle 
 suggestion which it hopes may get past the vigilance
 
 The Price of Power. 109 
 
 of my sentinel. That word daily becomes, of 
 necessity, my constant keynote a daily conflict, 
 a daily sleepless vigilance, and, thank God, a daily 
 victory. 
 
 Every man's heart is a battlefield. If self has 
 possession, Jesus is lovingly striving to get posses- 
 sion. If possession has been yielded to Jesus, there 
 is a constant besieging by the forces of self. And 
 self is a skilled strategist. In every heart there is a 
 cross, and a throne, and each is occupied. If Jesus 
 is on the throne, ruling, self is on the cross, dying. 
 But if self is being obeyed, and so is ruling, then it 
 is on the throne. And self on the throne means 
 that Jesus has been put on the cross. And it seems 
 to be only too pathetically true that not only in New 
 Testament times, but in these times, there are num- 
 bers of professing Christians, who, in the practice 
 of daily life, are crucifying the Son of God afresh, 
 and openly exposing Him to shame before the eyes 
 of the crowd. 
 
 Suppose that to-night I determine to make this 
 absolute surrender to Jesus as my Master. To-mor- 
 row in some matter, possibly a small matter speak- 
 ing a word to some one asking a silent blessing at 
 the meal making a change in some personal habit 
 or some other apparently trivial matter the Spirit 
 quietly makes clear His wish as to what I should 
 do. But I hesitate: it seems hard. I do not say 
 that I will not obey, but actually I do not. Let me 
 plainly understand that in such a single failure to
 
 no The Price of Power. 
 
 obey, self is again mounting the throne, and Jesus 
 is being dethroned and put over yonder on the 
 cross. 
 
 Do some of us still hesitate at this forking of the 
 roads, irresolute? A crowned Christ is attractive. 
 But self's tendrils, though small, are tenaciously 
 tough, and twine into so many corners and around 
 some hidden things. And the uprooting and out- 
 cutting mean sharp pain. Is that so? And you 
 hesitate? Please take another frank look. 
 
 Lock- Step. 
 
 These two forks differ radically. They differ in 
 direction. One is to the left; the other to the right. 
 And these two words are significant of more than 
 direction. They differ in grade. This left-hand 
 road does not seem to have any grade. It is 
 smooth and level, and straightaway, apparently. 
 But a keener look reveals a slant down, very slight 
 at first, but steadily increasing, not only in its down- 
 ward grade, but in the proportionate grade down. 
 
 This right-hand road has a decided grade up from 
 the beginning, a steep slant, that causes many to 
 avoid it, though they feel impelled to take it. 
 Those who take it say that after the first decided 
 step into it the slant does not seem nearly so hard 
 as before starting, and that climbing it makes splen- 
 did muscle and gives an inspiring sense of exhilara- 
 tion from the very start. The atmosphere is rare
 
 The Price of Power. 1 1 1 
 
 and purifying and invigorating. It is not traveled 
 by so many, though the number keeps increasing. 
 But such rare companionship, hitherto unknown, 
 they afford! 
 
 The striking peculiarity of this road, however, is 
 his, that each one keeps lock-step with a certain 
 One who leads the way. This One is remarkable in 
 appearance. His lace combines all the strength and 
 resolution of the strongest man's with all the fine- 
 ness and gentleness of the finest woman's. But He 
 bears peculiar marks as though He had been through 
 some terrible experience. His face has a number of 
 small scars as though it had been torn by thorns and 
 cut by thongs. His hands and feet look as though 
 huge spikes had been forced through them. But 
 the glory-light of another world is in His eyes, and 
 illumines His face radiantly, and a glad ring is in 
 His low, musical, singularly clear voice. 
 
 The walking in step with Him is so close that one 
 can feel the tender throbbing of His heart, and can 
 talk confidentially with Him in low, quiet tones, 
 and can hear distinctly His gentle still-like voice in 
 reply. 
 
 As one steps off quietly, determinedly to the right 
 from the battle of the forks he hears the closing 
 words of Jesus' remarks to Peter "and follow Me." 
 Jesus sends no one ahead alone. He blazes out 
 every path through the unknown, unbroken forest, 
 and asks us simply to come along after Him. He 
 did what He asks us to do. The self-life was
 
 1 1 2 The Price of Power. 
 
 alluringly and repeatedly presented to Him by 
 Satan, in the wilderness, in the remark of Peter, by 
 the visit of the Greeks, in Gethsemane where the 
 struggle of soul almost broke the tie that held body 
 and spirit together, and many other times. In 
 many a hard battle for the divine Jesus was in- 
 tensely human in His earthly life He repeatedly 
 said a never-varying "no" to the self-life, and lived a 
 constant victory until the very last triumphant shout 
 of victory on Calvary. It was a life of constant 
 conflict, but of splendid, calming, scarce-broken 
 peace within, and of marvelous power without 
 
 Earnestly, lovingly, gently, yet passionately, He 
 stands just ahead in that path now, with pierced 
 hands outstretched in open invitation, with a heart- 
 yearning in the depths of His great eyes, wooing us 
 on to follow where He goes on before. 
 
 Let us follow. It may be, it will be, in some 
 measure, through the experiences of the wilderness 
 temptation, and of Gethsemane, and of Calvary, but 
 it will also be to share the victory which was always 
 coupled with every testing He met. It will as cer- 
 tainly be following Him in power, and victory, on 
 past Calvary to the new life of the resurrection 
 morning, that saw the greatest display of power. 
 And even past that, to the upper chamber where 
 His words burn their way into our hearts "as the 
 Father sent Me (clothed with power unconquerable) 
 even so send I you." And then to Olivet where 
 the victorious words ring out, "All power hath been
 
 The Price of Power. 113 
 
 given unto me in heaven and on earth, therefore go 
 ye and make disciples." 
 
 "// any man 
 
 wottld come after me, 
 
 let him say "no" to his self, 
 
 and nail it to the cross daily, 
 
 and I allow me." 
 
 Jsus, Master, by the Holy Spirit's help, I will.
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF POWER.
 
 THE PERSONALITY OF POWER. 
 
 A Personally Conducted Journey. 
 
 Everyone enjoys the pleasure of travel; but nearly 
 all shrink back from its tiresomeness and drudgery. 
 The transportation companies are constantly schem- 
 ing to overcome this disagreeable side for both 
 pleasure and business travel. One of the popular 
 ways of pleasure travel of late is by means of per- 
 sonally conducted tours. A party is formed, often 
 by the railroad company, and is accompanied by a 
 special agent to attend to all the business matters of 
 the trip. A variation of this is to arrange for a 
 group of congenial people to accompany some well- 
 known accomplished gentleman. This gives the 
 trip, not alone the convenience of having all busi- 
 ness matters cared for, but also the decided enjoy- 
 ment which this gentleman's wide knowledge and 
 experience, and personal contact incidentally give. 
 There are some criticisms however of such parties, 
 from the standpoint of greatest comfort and of free- 
 dom in moving about. 
 
 Probably the very pleasantest way the ideal way, 
 to travel anywhere, either in our own home land, or 
 abroad is to form a party of only a very few per- 
 sons, mutually congenial, and personally agreeable, 
 117
 
 1 1 8 The Personality of Power. 
 
 one of whom is an experienced traveler, to whom 
 checking baggage, buying tickets, studying time- 
 tables, planning connections and all the rest of that 
 sort of thing which, to most, is disagreeable drudg- 
 ery, to whom all that is mere pleasant detail; and 
 who in addition knows all the ground you will cover, 
 the best hotels, the inconveniences to avoid, the 
 desirable places and things, and who finds rare en- 
 joyment in making the trip delightful and inspiring, 
 and restful too, to these dear friends of his. 
 
 For instance if the trip is a foreign one begin- 
 ning with a run through Great Britain it would add 
 immensely to have such a friend in London who 
 knew that great whirling world-metropolis, as you 
 know your own home. After a bit you may slip 
 over the Channel to Holland. It is only a few 
 hours away, but the strange language, new custom- 
 house rules, new usages, new sights, different sort 
 of people, all make it a totally different world. A 
 few hours will bring you into Sweden, or west from 
 the hollow-landed Dutch to the higher-landed Ger- 
 mans, or south through Belgium into sunny France, 
 and so on. And in each place the customs, and 
 language, and sights, and people, the food, the 
 sleeping arrangements, and apparently everything, 
 especially to a stranger, are totally different. It is 
 this very variety the constant change of surround- 
 ings that constitutes much of the charm of it all. 
 There is nothing so refreshing and invigorating as
 
 The Personality of Power. 119 
 
 that. But on the other hand to an entire stranger 
 who has no guide, it is apt to be confusing and 
 wearisome. And the tiresome side often overcomes 
 the pleasant side. Now this is what I am saying, 
 that, if there are just a few together, and this ex- 
 perienced traveler, who is also a dear friend, is one 
 of them, the trip is radically changed. You move 
 in a new world. He can talk Dutch in Holland, 
 and German in Germany, Swedish in Scandinavia, 
 and French in Switzerland. He sees the baggage 
 past the customs officials, and provides restful stop- 
 ping places, and keeps the disagreeables away from 
 you. He knows the places to visit, and is familiar 
 with the historic occurrences, and is a quiet, cheery 
 companion, and if with it all he has an unlimited 
 letter-of-credit, and makes you feel that somehow 
 you are favoring him by letting him help you out 
 when you run short that, I say, would be the ideal 
 way of traveling. 
 
 Now why take so much time speaking about all 
 that? Listen! I will tell you why. Living is like 
 traveling. Life is a journey. It is a trip through 
 a strange land where you have never been before, 
 and you never know a moment ahead where you are 
 going next. Strange languages, strange scenes, 
 strange dilemmas; new tangles, new experiences, 
 and some old ones with new faces so you do not 
 know them. It is just as chock-full of pleasure and 
 enjoyment as it can be, if you could only make some
 
 1 20 The Personality of Power. 
 
 provision for the drudgery and hard things that seem 
 to crowd in so thick and fast sometimes, as to make 
 people forget the gladness of it. 
 
 Now I have something to tell you that seems too 
 utterly good to be believed, and yet keeps getting 
 better all the way along. It is this: the Master has 
 planned that your life journey shall be a personally 
 conducted one on this ideal plan. It was said a 
 night or two ago that the Master has thought into 
 your life and made arrangement for all its needs. 
 Let me add to-night this further fact: He has 
 arranged with His best friend, who is an experienced 
 traveler, to go with you and devote Himself wholly to 
 your interests. 
 
 Some of you, I am afraid, will smile, and think 
 that I am just indulging in a fancy sketch drawing 
 on my imagination. And so I pray our Master to 
 burn into our hearts that it is plain, matter-of-fact 
 truth, for every day life. I would say that it is cold 
 fact were it not that such a fact can never be cold. 
 
 Power is a Person. 
 
 Each of these talks, you have noticed, has led up 
 to the one idea of surrender. That word surrender 
 stands for one side only of a transaction our side. 
 As in all transactions, there is another side His 
 side to whom the surrender is made. To-night we 
 want to take a step in advance and talk about the 
 part which Jesus has in this surrender-transaction.
 
 The Personality of Power. 121 
 
 All truth goes in pairs. The partnership word with 
 surrender is mastery. Surrender on my part is fol- 
 lowed by mastery on His part. There are two per- 
 sonalities in this transaction. You are one: an 
 important one, but only one. To-night we shall try 
 to get a better acquaintance with the other One. 
 The One who assumes control of the surrendered 
 life, who is to be our personal guide and friend. 
 
 Will you recall again the Master's good-bye Olivet 
 message, and notice just what it means? Listen to 
 the very words: "Ye shall receive power." Let 
 me ask you what is power? Will some one give a 
 simple definition of that word? There are four 
 words, four of the commonest, most familiar in our 
 language, for which I have not been able to find a 
 definition. If some one here can help me I will be 
 grateful. They are the words life, light, love, and 
 power. What do they mean? I can find plenty of 
 statements about them, descriptions of what each of 
 these is like, but no definitions. 
 
 What is life? Recently I looked into the state- 
 ment regarding life made by three of the most 
 famous English scientists of the nineteenth century, 
 whose names are household words. I read them 
 carefully. The wisdom and keenness of observation 
 they show are amazing. But when I had studied 
 and read them repeatedly I found myself asking 
 what is life? They have described rarely the func- 
 tions and characteristics of life, but have not told 
 what it is. They do not seem to know. Do you?
 
 122 The Personality of Power. 
 
 What is light? Will some one tell me? The 
 corpuscular theory, which the famous Newton advo- 
 cated, is long since abandoned. The later wave 
 theory is pretty generally accepted, and yet they can 
 not all agree upon that. These people say that 
 light is a part of the kind of energy called radiant 
 energy. Now, we all know what light is! The 
 sun of course is not light, only a light-holder and 
 distributer. According to the oldest record we have 
 of the creation, light existed before these light-hold- 
 ers, the sun and moon and stars. 
 
 What is love? Well, you all know, I hope. Pity 
 the poor man who does not know by experience 
 what love is. But you cannot tell what it is. "Oh ! ' ' 
 you say, "it is emotion." Yes, so is hate, its very 
 opposite. "Well, love is affection." Yes. What 
 is affection? "Well, it is a pleasurable feeling, or 
 regard, which may be very intense, and which leads 
 us to unlimited sacrifice if need be. It is a devotion 
 that grips the soul tremendously." That is true; 
 yet that is only telling what love is like. No simple, 
 plain definition of love, or light or life has ever been 
 formed yet by man so far as I can learn. 
 
 What is power? You may say it is force. And 
 what is force? "Well, force is a form of energy." 
 What is energy? "Well," you reply, "it is a strong 
 inward movement whose strength is very impres- 
 sive." Some one says "power is ability." And 
 ability? "Well, that is the innate power to do 
 something." And so we get to use our word in the
 
 The Personality of Power. 123 
 
 attempted definition itself, which is simply talking 
 in a circle. We can find good descriptive words, 
 but no defining words. 
 
 Now mark a singular fact. In the writings of 
 John, in this old book I have here, you will find a 
 few statements regarding these things which com- 
 bine wondrous simplicity of language with marvel- 
 ous, yes, unfathomable, depth of meaning. First, 
 about life : in chapter one, verse four, of the gospel : 
 "in Him was life," being an evident allusion to 
 the remarkable Genesis statement: "the Lord B God 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
 became a living soul." Then, about love: in chap- 
 ter four, verse seven, of his first epistle: "love is 
 of God"; coupled with the twice spoken words 
 "God is love" in the same chapter. About light: 
 in chapter one, verse five, of the same epistle, "God 
 is light." 
 
 I know some of you, perhaps some skilled theo- 
 logian here, is saying to himself, "Those are state- 
 ments of moral truths." And I understand that 
 that is the common conception. But I want to state 
 here my own profound conviction, based on the 
 Spirit-breathed words of John, that some day, when 
 we shall know about all these deep things, we shall 
 be finding that there is a basis not only of moral 
 truth, but of far more than moral truth underlying 
 those profoundly simple statements. 
 
 And I believe in that day we shall find that life 
 all life is, in some actual, marvelous way, the out-
 
 124 The Personality- of Power. 
 
 breathing of God's own being. And that light is 
 the inherent radiance of His person and face, and 
 that the universal passion of love is the throbbing 
 pulse-beat of His own great heart. 
 
 Now why take time to speak about these things 
 to-night when we are talking about power? I will 
 tell you why. Because they give the intensest prac- 
 tical significance to a similar statement about that 
 word power with which we are greatly concerned 
 just now. 
 
 Mark the language Luke uses in describing that 
 memorable Olivet scene in which we are so deeply 
 interested in these talks together. The old King 
 James version reads: "ye shall receive power after 
 that the Holy Spirit is come upon you." The 
 revised version puts it in this way, "ye shall receive 
 power -when the Holy Spirit is come upon you." 
 Some of you have probably noticed that some edi- 
 tions give a marginal note, which, in this case, 
 proves to be the literal reading namely: ye shall 
 receive power the Holy Spirit coming upon you. Not 
 "after," nor "when," but simply "the Holy Spirit 
 coming," etc. That is to say, the Holy Spirit is 
 power. That you will observe fits in with the form 
 of statement John uses. The Holy Spirit in con- 
 trol, unhindered, unhampered, means power mani- 
 fest in the life. That is the profound truth of God's 
 book. And as a bit of side evidence it is striking 
 to observe that all Scripture statements throughout 
 fit in with that conception. Power is a person. Not
 
 The Personality of Power. 125 
 
 some thing, nor influence, nor sentiment, nor some 
 working upon our hearts at a distance by God seated 
 up yonder on the throne. That were wonderful 
 indeed. But a person, called the Holy Spirit, living 
 in me shall I make it very definite by saying, living 
 in my body? that is power. If restrained by sin, or 
 disobedience, or ignorance, or wilfulness of any 
 sort, then power restrained, held in check, not evi- 
 dent. If utterly unrestrained, given free sway and 
 control ah ! then power manifest, limitless, wonder- 
 ful, all exercised in carrying out God's will in, and 
 with, and through me. 
 
 And the marvelous message I bring you from the 
 old book of God is this: The Master has sent a dear 
 friend of His, and of yours, who is experienced, and 
 strong, and loving, personally to conduct you through 
 your daily life, and His presence unrestrained, means 
 power unlimited. 
 
 A Significant Name. 
 
 Do you remember that heart-to-heart talk that 
 Jesus had with the eleven disciples that last night 
 they spent together in the upper room? John tells 
 us about it in chapters thirteen to sixteen. The 
 Master talks a great deal that night, about some One 
 else, who was coming to take His place with them. 
 They did not understand what He meant till after- 
 wards. He packs more into that one evening's talk 
 about this coming One than all He had said before
 
 126 The Personality of Power. 
 
 put together. Notice that now He gives a name, a 
 new name, to this person, repeated four times that 
 night. It is an intensely significant name the 
 Comforter. Will you remember, and keep constant- 
 ly in mind, the actual meaning of that new name? 
 it is simply this: one called alongside to help. 
 
 Let me attempt to suggest a little of its practical 
 meaning. 
 
 Here is a little girl standing on the curbstone 
 down town on Broadway in New York, with a 
 bundle in her arms. She has been sent on an 
 errand, and wants to get across the street. But the 
 electric cars are whizzing past in both directions, 
 and wagons, and carriages, and omnibuses, and 
 horses jam the street from curb to curb, and she 
 cannot get across. She stands there gripping her 
 bundle, watching eagerly for a chance, and yet afraid 
 to venture. But the jam seems endless, and she 
 grows very tired, and by and by the corners of her 
 mouth begin to twitch down suspiciously, and a big 
 tear is just starting in each eye. Just then a big 
 policeman steps up, one of the finest, six feet tall, 
 and heavy and broad. He seems like a giant to her. 
 He stoops down. Would you imagine he had such 
 a gentle voice? "What's the matter?" "Can't 
 get 'cross." Oh! is that all; he'll fix that. And 
 he takes her little hand in his with a reassuring 
 "come along." And along she goes, past cars, 
 under horses' heads, close up to big wheels. She 
 is just as small as before, and just as weak. But
 
 The Personality of Power. 127 
 
 though her eyes stay pretty big, the tears are gone, 
 and there is an air of confidence, because this big, 
 kind-hearted giant by her side is walking across the 
 street as though he owned the whole place, and he is 
 devoting his entire attention to her. That policeman 
 is a comforter in the strict meaning of the word. 
 
 Here is a boy in school, head down close to the 
 desk, puzzling over a "sum." It won't "come 
 out." He figures away, and his brow is all knitted 
 up, and a worried look is coming into his face for he 
 is a conscientious little fellow. But he cannot seem 
 to get it right and the clouds gather thicker. By 
 and by the teacher comes up and sits down by his 
 side. It awes him a little to have her quite so close. 
 But her kindliness of manner mellows the awe. 
 "How are you getting along?" "Won't come out 
 right" in a very despondent tone. "Let me see, 
 did you subtract that ....?" "Oh-h-h! I for- 
 got that," and a little light seems to break, as he 
 scratches away for a few moments; then pauses. 
 "And this figure here, should it be . . . . " 
 "Oh-h-h, I see." More scratching, and a soft sigh 
 of relief, and the knitting brows unravel, and the face 
 brightens. The teacher did not do the problem for 
 him. She did better. She let him feel her kindly 
 interest first of all, and gave just the light, experi- 
 enced touch that showed him the way out, and yet 
 allowed him the peculiar pleasure of getting through 
 himself. That is wJiat "Comforter" means. 
 
 One summer a friend suggested to me spending a
 
 128 The Personality of Power. 
 
 week on Lake Chautauqua. I did not have the 
 money to spare, and so told him I was not sure I 
 could arrange to get away. But he seemed to 
 divine the basis of my objection, and insisted on my 
 going along. We went. I had very little money 
 with me. I got on the train without a ticket, took 
 a seat in the parlor car, stopped at the best hotel, 
 had a choice room on the ground floor, patronized 
 the well-ordered dining-room regularly, and made 
 free use of the place. And all the time I had prac- 
 tically no money with me. But would you believe 
 me I was not a particle concerned about paying for 
 those privileges. Never felt less concern about any- 
 thing in my life. You know why. I had a trust- 
 worthy friend with me who was concerned for me. 
 
 Now these are simple suggestions, illustrating 
 partly the meaning of that marvelous name Jesus 
 gave to the Holy Spirit. I will send another Com- 
 forter, one who will be right by your side to help, 
 sympathetic, experienced, strong; and He will stay 
 with you all the time. In the kitchen, in the sitting- 
 room, the sick-room, with the children, when work 
 piles up, when things jangle or threaten to, when 
 the baby's cross, and the patching and sweeping and 
 baking, and all the rest of it seem endless, on the 
 street, in the office, on the campus, in the store, 
 when tempted almost slipped, when opportunity 
 opens for a quiet personal word, everywhere, every 
 time, in every circumstance, one alongside to help. 
 Is not that wonderful?
 
 The Personality of Power. 129 
 
 A Pictorial Illustration. 
 
 There is one bother about illustrations: they never 
 do tell all the truth. They never are as vivid, nor 
 as good as the truth, that is when you are talking 
 about our Master, or His arrangements. The very 
 best illustrations of Bible truth are Bible illustra- 
 tions. Now there is a striking pictorial illustration 
 back in the Old Testament of the meaning of this 
 name of the Holy Spirit. It is in the story of a 
 most remarkable journey from Egypt to the border 
 line of Palestine. The journey was remarkable for 
 two things. First, for the sort of country it was 
 through. It is a trackless waste of sand, that 
 spreads over thousands of square miles. It was 
 infested with venomous serpents and scorpions, and 
 is described as "all that great and terrible wilder- 
 ness," "a waste howling wilderness," and "a land 
 of deserts and pits, of drought and of the shadow of 
 death, that none passed through, and where no man 
 dwelt." Think of taking a trip through a country 
 like that ! But it was even more remarkable because 
 of the transformation that took place in the travel- 
 ers. For a mob of four millions of people was 
 changed into a well-organized nation. The explana- 
 tion given is fully as remarkable as the trip, and the 
 transformation. It must strike very strangely on 
 the cold, matter-of-fact ears of this materialistic 
 world we dwell in. It is this: that the Lord God 
 Himself actually went with them in person, and
 
 130 The Personality of Power. 
 
 \\ved with them, and took immediate charge of 
 everything. He had promised Moses, their leader, 
 that He would do this. Just how definite or indefi- 
 nite a thing that meant to Moses' mind we cannot 
 know. But it became very definite and tangible 
 that memorable night of departure from the iron 
 furnace of Egypt. For there was a real physical 
 evidence of His presence. There appeared a 
 column or pillar of fleecy-like cloud which came 
 down close to the ground, and which every one 
 could plainly see. At night time it shone and 
 flamed as a pillar full of partly concealed fire. 
 God's voice spake out of it in their hearing. And 
 that presence-cloud never left them. In spite of 
 complaints, and criticisms, and rebellions of the 
 most mean and exasperating kind, it never left them 
 until they had safely arrived at the border line of the 
 promised Palestine. 
 
 Now it is extremely fascinating in tracing that 
 journey to notice just what that cloud came to mean 
 to them. If you will run rapidly through the three 
 wilderness books, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, 
 you will find there twenty distinct incidents l which 
 illustrate how God's actual presence in that cloud 
 was made very real to them in practical affairs. In 
 those incidents there are ten different ways in which 
 they were made to feel that powerful Presence. 
 
 At the outset it is mentioned that the chief pur- 
 pose was "to lead them the way," and, by night 
 
 1 See note at the end.
 
 The Personality of Power. 131 
 
 "to give them light." Five incidents speak of 
 bodily nourishment, including fresh food daily, with 
 occasional extras, and a full supply of pure living 
 water. Five speak of protection from bodily harm. 
 Two tell of the defeat of an enemy. Once there is 
 chiding for ingratitude. Six times rebuke or punish- 
 ment for sin. In four they are held back when dead- 
 set on a very wrong course. Twice there is instruc- 
 tion in their leader's plan for them. Three times a 
 fuller manifestation of Himself, and each time this is 
 preceded by obedience on their part in some partic- 
 ular matter. Once there is a special plan suggested 
 for relief in managing the nation's affairs. And 
 then the fact is stated that whenever Moses went 
 apart to talk with God the cloud descended lower, 
 that is, God came nearer when Moses desired to talk 
 with Him. So you see, the cloud meant guidance 
 through that trackless desert, food supplies, protec- 
 tion, defeat for the enemy, chiding, restraint, pun- 
 ishment, instruction, help in business matters, a 
 more intimate manifestation of the glorious person- 
 ality of their Guide, and a gracious coming nearer 
 whenever desired. Was not that a real practical 
 presence of the great God with them all those days? 
 Now that is the Bible's own graphic illustration 
 of the meaning of that new name given to the Holy 
 Spirit, by Him who knew Him best, Comforter one 
 alongside to help.
 
 132 The Personality of Power. 
 
 On a Higher Level. 
 
 Before we leave that illustration we must notice 
 a very significant thing which is no small part of the 
 truth illustrated. Though the cloud appeared the 
 very night of that sudden going out of Egypt, and 
 was never absent from them, by day or by night, 
 yet a full year afterwards there was a new experi- 
 ence. By God's direction a special tent was made 
 and set up in which He said He would dwell. It 
 was known as God's dwelling place, the tent of 
 meeting, the tabernacle, the tent of testimony. 
 When everything concerning its setting up had been 
 fully done as specified then there was an experience 
 the most remarkable they had yet had with God. 
 It was a new manifestation of the glorious presence 
 of their unseen Friend-Guide. It is twice said that 
 the tent was "filled" with His glory. And this 
 nearer disclosure, which God gave of Himself, was 
 so marvelously glorious and overpowering that even 
 Moses, who had spent almost twelve weeks in that 
 mount with God, in closer intimacy than any one 
 else even Moses was not able to enter into the tent, 
 so over-awing was that Presence. 
 
 Now it is of intensest interest to mark four things 
 about that experience. First of all, before it came, 
 there was obedience to God's instructions. Eighteen 
 times within the narrow limits of the last two pages 
 of the Exodus record, it is said that Moses and the 
 people did everything, in every particular, just
 
 The Personality of Power. 133 
 
 exactly as "the Lord commanded Moses." There 
 was explicit obedience before anything else. Then 
 followed the wondrous infilling of the tent with 
 God's presence. The third thing is particularized 
 very carefully: all their movements were directed 
 and controlled by that Presence. Clearly the only 
 safe rule for living in that terrible desert, was to 
 plan to live a planless life so far as their own plan- 
 ning was concerned. Besides the last two verses of 
 Exodus which emphasize this, I find that in my 
 revised Oxford edition forty-five lines in the ninth 
 chapter of Numbers are given to telling how exactly 
 they were guided, and how explicitly they followed 
 their Guide. It seems almost at first reading as 
 though there was a decidedly needless repetition. 
 You seem to understand the thing easily enough 
 without that. But as one reads it again, and yet 
 again, slowly, it begins to dawn upon the mind that 
 the purpose is to put marked emphasis on this fea- 
 ture of their new life in the wilderness. The people 
 would rise in the morning, and probably the first 
 thing done was to look out toward the cloud to learn 
 if there was to be any change that day. And so 
 during the day there would come to be an instinctive 
 habit of watching that cloud. They might remain 
 in a new camping place for months, or only for a 
 few weeks, or, possibly only for a few days. They 
 never knew a day ahead. They lived literally a day 
 at a time. It was certainly a hand-to-mouth exist- 
 ence so far as the daily manna was concerned. But
 
 ij4 The Personality of Power. 
 
 then it was from His hand to their mouths and that 
 made a great difference. It was equally so in their 
 movements and in all of their new life. When, one 
 morning as thousands of heads peep out, the cloud 
 is seen to have lifted up from over the tent, the next 
 question was which direction? It might be toward 
 the west, or it might be just the opposite, toward the 
 east. Both the time of going, and the direction, and 
 the pace were regulated by the presence of their 
 Friend in that cloud. Their life was a life of obedi- 
 ence to the will of their wise, loving Companion. 
 
 The fourth thing was intimacy of intercourse. It 
 is a little unfortunate that in reading our Bibles we 
 sometimes allow the gaps that come in the printing 
 to break the continuity of thought. There is a 
 break for instance between the last verse of Exodus 
 and the first verse of Leviticus. The reading is 
 meant to be continuous, and shows that after the 
 infilling, and the explanation about guidance, that 
 God "called" Moses to Him and commenced talking 
 about their new life. Now in connection with that 
 call, and all their after talks, notice a remarkable 
 statement in the last verse of that long seventh chap- 
 ter of Numbers. It explains just how God talked 
 with Moses. Listen: "Whenever Moses went into 
 the tent of meeting to speak with Him, then he heard 
 the voice speaking unto him from above the mercy- 
 seat that was upon the ark of the testimony, from 
 between the two cherubim; and He speaketh unto 
 him. ' ' There was the living, loving voice of their
 
 The Personality of Power. 135 
 
 Companion-God, which Moses could plainly hear, 
 and which others heard, talking familiarly and inti- 
 mately about all their affairs. Several times when 
 in doubt what to do Moses promptly went off into 
 the tent, then the cloud would come down nearer, 
 and Moses would state his difficulty, and back would 
 come that clear distinct voice with an answer. 
 Group up those four things obedience; the never- 
 to-be-forgotten infilling; the controlling guidance; 
 and intimate companionship. 
 
 That is the very best illustration I can find of the 
 meaning of that word which Jesus now chooses out 
 and uses as the new name which would most vividly 
 tell what the Holy Spirit was to be to all believers after 
 His own departure. All that the presence of God in 
 that pillar was to those people, and to Moses per- 
 sonally, all that the Holy Spirit will be to you. 
 And my own conviction is that Jesus had that Old 
 Testament scene in His mind. For if you will turn 
 again to that last night's talk you will find a striking 
 repetition of the steps or peculiarities of that wilder- 
 ness experience. Though here the whole experience 
 is on a much higher, finer plane. There is a close- 
 ness of personal regard, a depth of that deepest of 
 all loves, friendship love, that is not found in the 
 Old Testament story, except perhaps between Moses 
 himself and God. 
 
 But now read the twenty-first verse of the four- 
 teenth chapter of John: "He that hath My command- 
 ments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me;
 
 136 The Personality of Power. 
 
 and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, 
 and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto 
 him." And the twenty-third verse adds to it: "If 
 a man love Me, he will keep My word: and My 
 Father will love him, and We will come unto him 
 and make Our abiding place with him." Notice: 
 there is obedience; it is accepted as an evidence of 
 love: there is a return love a new, higher, recipro- 
 cal love: then there is a revealing of Himself; and, 
 constant abiding. Now run your eye through the 
 remaining part of that evening's conversation and 
 you can quickly pick out these words: "teach," 
 "bring to your remembrance," "guide," "bear 
 witness of me," "tell you coming things," "tell 
 you about me." 
 
 Does that not parallel remarkably the wilderness 
 experience? Only it is all put on such a higher 
 plane. There is a fullness, and richness, and tender- 
 ness, of personal intimacy here. The Presence in 
 the wilderness was for the national life: here it is 
 peculiarly for the personal life. There He dwelt 
 actually in the heart of the nation. Here He dwells 
 actually in one's own very person. And then, too, 
 now He can do so much more in us because so 
 much more has been done for us through the person 
 of Jesus.
 
 The Personality of Power. 137 
 
 How to Find the Meaning. 
 
 May I say right here plainly: there seems to be 
 even yet in some quarters a hazy idea about the Holy 
 Spirit being a person. It is extremely common, 
 even among people of excellent Christian training, 
 to find Him referred to, both in prayer and speech 
 as it. Could anything be more disrespectful or in- 
 sulting, if it were intentional instead of being 
 thoughtless or, in ignorance, as I am sure it really 
 is. Imagine my speaking of the pastor of this 
 church in that way. "// is a good preacher. // is 
 a helpful pastor." You smile, and he smiles. But 
 if I said it repeatedly, and in sober earnest, you 
 know how insulted he would be. I suppose that the 
 use of the word "itself" for the Holy Spirit in the 
 eighth chapter of Romans is largely responsible for 
 this. The revisers have properly substituted the 
 word "himself." That very usage so common has 
 doubtless accustomed many persons to a vague idea 
 of the personality of the Spirit. And yet apart 
 from that, there is without doubt much mistiness, 
 and uncertainty, in some minds, because of the diffi- 
 culty of thinking of a person without a form. It 
 seems impossible for our minds to grasp the idea of 
 existence without bodily shape, yet of course we 
 believe in a personal God. Probably another reason 
 is that the Holy Spirit's work is not to speak of 
 Himself but of Another of Jesus. He is Jesus' 
 representative, and is constantly absorbed in filling
 
 138 The Personality of Power. 
 
 us with thoughts of His Chief. And when our 
 minds are most deeply stirred with thoughts of 
 Jesus then it is that in that very fact of being so 
 stirred we have clearest evidence of the Holy Spirit's 
 presence within us. His very faithfulness to His 
 mission has led to Himself suffering depreciation at 
 our hands, through our ignorance. 
 
 I am sure it must help us all decidedly in getting 
 a clear-cut, sharply defined idea of His personality 
 to notice the language Jesus uses in speaking of Him 
 that night. For instance, notice that in our English 
 version the personal pronouns "he," "whom," 
 "him," "which" (used in the sense of who as is 
 common with the British translators), occur twenty- 
 four times. A study of the actual words used would 
 prove helpful and interesting. One of them, used 
 several times, is peculiarly emphatic, its meaning 
 being equivalent to the expression "that person 
 there." 
 
 And then notice the words used to describe what 
 this person will do: "He shall teach," "bring to 
 your remembrance," "bear witness of Me," "con- 
 vict the world of" three distinct things, "shall 
 guide," "shall hear," "shall speak," "shall de-' 
 clare," "shall glorify Me," "shall take of Mine and 
 declare it unto you." Everyone of these ten differ- 
 ent expressions imply intelligence and discrimina- 
 tion, and therefore of course personality. And 
 then added to this is the name given to Him here 
 of which so much has been said.
 
 The Personality of Power. 139 
 
 May we take just another look at that name The 
 Comforter as we close our talk together? I wish 
 with my whole heart, and I pray, that a vivid sense 
 of the meaning of that name may be one result of 
 this evening's meeting. I was traveling alone in 
 Germany one hot July day on a train going down to 
 the city of Worms. It was quite hot and I was 
 very tired, and my head aching, I distinctly remem- 
 ber. The conductor came along and objected to 
 my ticket. Before leaving this country, I thought 
 I knew a little of German, enough to worry through 
 on. My ideas on that subject changed a trifle over 
 there, however. That day my tired ears refused to 
 recognize any familiar sounds on the conductor's 
 lips, and my tired tongue refused to utter anything 
 satisfactory to him. And there I was, a complete 
 stranger in a strange land too tired to think or have 
 any mental resources, not knowing but I might be 
 put off at the next station. In fact just tired 
 enough for fine worrying. It looked blue for a few 
 moments. But not for long. A young man by my 
 side, a Jew, spoke to me in excellent English. Was 
 any sound ever so welcome! He straightened the 
 conductor out, and then we fell to talking together. 
 He proved to be a very intelligent, agreeable com- 
 panion. I found his home was in the city where I 
 was going. So we got off there together, and he 
 simply devoted himself to me for the day. He took 
 me up to a good hotel, and while I was eating din- 
 ner, went and got his brother who had been in
 
 140 The Personality of Power. 
 
 America, and who entertained me while I ate. 
 Then he took me to his father's home, a large old 
 mansion, overlooking the famous Luther monument, 
 where I rested a while. And then a' quick run to a 
 few interesting points, and finally when leaving time 
 came, he insisted on accompanying me to the station, 
 and making sure I had a good seat, and then bade 
 me a gracious good-bye. 
 
 That day lingers in my memory as one of the 
 green spots of that trip. It touched me to think 
 that my Master graciously sent one of His own 
 despised race to be my friend. Do you not think 
 that that man, experienced where I was ignorant, 
 and so sympathetic, was a living illustration to me 
 of Jesus' name for the Holy Spirit one called along- 
 side to help? 
 
 One day recently, riding on a Lake Shore train in 
 Ohio, I chanced to notice the conductor stopping to 
 speak to a little girl sitting behind me. Then I 
 noticed that she was alone and crying a little, 
 quietly. She did not answer his questions, but he 
 must have been a father, I thought, because he 
 seemed to understand so well. Speaking to a kind- 
 faced motherly looking woman in the next seat he 
 had the little girl go back and sit beside her, next 
 the window. They did not talk much, if any, I 
 noticed. But the girl was snuggled up close, and 
 I knew from her face that she felt the warm sym- 
 pathy of that friendly presence, and that the terrible 
 feeling of loneliness had gone. Is not that woman,
 
 The Personality of Power. 141 
 
 another illustration of that name Comforter? Her 
 mere presence was all that was needed to clear the 
 skies and change the atmosphere for the little lone 
 and lonely traveler. 
 
 But Jesus Himself has a very striking way of 
 making clear just what He meant, by coupling 
 another word with that new name the first time He 
 used it. He says, "I will send another Comforter." 
 The comparison is with Himself. He is one com- 
 forter. The Holy Spirit another one. The only 
 other time this word is used is by John in his first 
 epistle, and is translated by our word advocate, and 
 refers to Jesus. Jesus practically says: "You know 
 what I have been to you these months past." And 
 they would think through the close intimacy ofj 
 nearly two years. How He had spoken with unmis-j 
 takable plainness when they were in the wrong, but] 
 also how loving with a strong love He had been, howj 
 patient, and gentle, and resourceful, and how He 
 seemed to yearn over them that they might grow 
 into His ideal for them. "Now," He says, "I am 
 going away, but I will send you another one who; 
 will be to you all that I have been and more." " [ - 
 And more! That comparative more, either spoken 
 or implied, runs all through this last long confiden- 
 tial talk. "More, much more, because I go unto the 
 Father." Jesus crucified, risen, glorified can do 
 much more by far in us by His other self, the Holy 
 Spirit, than He could in person on the earth those 
 years. And the wondrous meaning of that "another
 
 142 The Personality of Power. 
 
 comforter" to you and me, my friends, to-night is 
 simply this: it is the same as though the Lord Jesus 
 had actually come back again and you had Him all 
 to yourself and more. 
 
 But I cannot tell you the meaning of that wonder- 
 ful name. Nor yet the wondrous charm of Him, 
 who, for our sakes, embodies it. You may put 
 together all these illustrations in the attempt to get 
 a real, close-up, idea of what Jesus meant in that 
 love-gift of His to you. And then you will not 
 know. There is really only one way to gain that 
 knowledge. It is this: take the step which belongs 
 to your side of the transaction between you and the 
 Master. Surrender yourself to Him to be changed 
 and cleansed and used as He may choose. Then 
 He will begin at once working out the side that 
 belongs to Him. You shall be filled with His pres- 
 ence. Then you will begin to know. Then you can 
 sing 
 
 "I have a wonderful guest, 
 
 Who speeds my feet, who moves my hands, 
 Who strengthens, comforts, guides, commands. 
 Whose presence gives me rest. 
 
 "He dwells within my soul, 
 
 He swept away the filth and gloom; 
 He garnished fair the empty room, 
 And now pervades the whole." 
 
 And you shall go on knowing more and better 
 until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.
 
 The Personality of Power. 143 
 
 Of the twenty incidents referred to three do not directly mention 
 the cloud, and in two others it is over the mount, with its character- 
 istics much intensified. The references are given for those who will 
 want to get closer up to this famous illustration. 
 
 Guidance: Ex. xiii. 21-22, with Numbers xiv: 14. 
 
 Bodily nourishment: Ex. xv:25; xvi: 13-14,45; xvii:6. Numbers 
 xi: 31-32. xx: 1-12. 
 
 Protection from bodily harm: The nation Ex. xiv: 19-20. The 
 leaders Num. xiv: 10 and on. xvi: 19 and on. xvi: 42 and on. xx: 1-12. 
 
 Defeat of an enemy: Ex. xiv: 24-31; xvii: 8-16. 
 
 Chiding: Ex. xvi: 4-7, 10-12. 
 
 Rebuke or punishment for sin: Numbers xi: 33; xii: i-io; xiv: 
 10 and on; xvi: 19 and on; 42 and on; xx: 1-12. 
 
 Held back from wrong: Numbers xiv: 10 and on; xvi: iq and on; 
 42 and on; xx: 1-12. 
 
 Instruction and training: Ex. xix: g, 16 and on; xxiv: 15-18. 
 
 Fuller manifestation: Ex. xxxiv. 5 and on; xl: 34-38. Lev. ix:6, 23. 
 
 Special plan of relief in managment: Numbers xi: 16, 17, 25. 
 
 Coming nearer: Ex. xxxiii: 7-11, revised version.
 
 MAKING AND BREAKING 
 CONNECTIONS.
 
 MAKING AND BREAKING 
 CONNECTIONS. 
 
 Many Experiences, but One Law. 
 
 In mechanics power depends on good connections. 
 A visit to any great machine shop makes that clear. 
 There must be good connections in two directions 
 inward toward the source of power, and outward for 
 use. The same law holds true in spiritual power as 
 in mechanical. There must be good connections. 
 
 These nights we have been together a few things 
 have seemed clear. We have seen that from the 
 standpoint of our lives there is need of power, as 
 well as from the standpoint of the Master's use of 
 us among others. Jesus' promise and insistent 
 words make plain the necessity of our having power 
 if His plan for us is not to fail. His words about 
 the price of power have set many of us to doing 
 some honest thinking and heart-searching. And we 
 have gotten some suggestion, too, of the meaning 
 of that word power, and of the personality back of 
 the word. 
 
 To-night I want to talk with you a little about 
 how to secure good connections between the source 
 of power and the channel through which it is to flow
 
 148 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 out to others; and, once secured, how to preserve 
 the connections unbroken. 
 
 It has been one of the peculiar characteristics of 
 recent years in religious circles that much has been 
 spoken and written about the Holy Spirit. Thou- 
 sands of persons have been led into a clearer under- 
 standing of His personality and mission, and into 
 intimate relationship with Himself. And yet, may 
 I say frankly, that I read much and listened to much 
 without being able to get a simple workable under- 
 standing of how I was to receive the much-talked-of 
 baptism of power. That may quite likely have been 
 due to my own dullness of comprehension. But 
 whatever the cause, my failing to understand led to 
 a rather careful study of the old Book itself until 
 somewhat clearer light has come. And now in this 
 convention I am anxious to put the truth as simply 
 as I may that others may not blunder and bungle 
 along and lose precious time as I have done. 
 
 Many an earnest- heart, conscious of weakness and 
 failure, is asking, how may I have power to resist 
 temptation, and live a strong, useful, Christian life? 
 In the search for an answer some of us have run 
 across two difficulties. One of these is in other 
 people's experiences. It is very natural to try to find 
 out how someone else has succeeded in getting what 
 we are after. Many a godly man has told of his 
 experience of waiting and pleading with God before 
 the thing he sought came. Personal experiences are 
 intensely interesting, and often helpful. But there
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 149 
 
 are apt to be as many different sorts of experiences 
 as there are persons. Yet there is one unchanging 
 law of God's dealing with men underlying them all. 
 But unless one is more skilled than many of us are 
 in analyzing experiences and discovering the under- 
 lying law, these experiences of others are often mis- 
 leading. We are so likely to think at once of the 
 desirability of having the same experience as some- 
 one else, rather than trying to find God's law of 
 spirit life in them all. And so, some of the written 
 experiences have clouded rather than cleared the 
 sky. We should rather try first to get something of 
 a clear understanding of God's law of dealing with 
 men as a sort of basis to build upon. And then fit 
 into that, even though it may develop differently in 
 our circumstances. We may then get much help 
 from others' experiences. If possible, we want to- 
 night to get something of an inkling of that law. 
 
 Another difficulty that has bothered some of us is 
 in the great variety of language used in speaking of 
 this life of power; a variety that seems confusing to 
 some of us. "The baptism of the Holy Spirit," 
 "the induement," "the filling," "refilling," "many 
 fillings," "special anointings" these terms are 
 familiar, though just the distinctive meaning of each 
 is not always clear. Let us look a little at the lan- 
 guage of the Book at this point. A run through the 
 New Testament brings out five leading word sused 
 in speaking of the Holy Spirit's relation to us. 
 These words are "baptized," "filled," "anointed,"
 
 150 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 "sealed," and "earnest." It seems to take all five 
 words to tell all of the truth. Each gives a different side. 
 
 The word baptized is the distinctive word always 
 used before the day of Pentecost, in speaking of 
 what was to occur then. It is not used afterward 
 except in referring back to that day. It belongs 
 peculiarly to the day of Pentecost. Each of the 
 gospels tells that John the Baptist said that Jesus 
 was to baptize with the Holy Spirit. Jesus Him- 
 self uses the word, during the forty days, in Acts, 
 first chapter. Peter, in Acts, eleventh chapter, 
 recalls this remark. Paul uses it once in referring 
 back to Pentecost. 1 These seem to be the only 
 instances where the word is used in speaking of the 
 Holy Spirit. One other word is used once in ad- 
 vance of Pentecost. "Tarry until ye be endued or 
 clothed upon." 2 We shall see in a few moments 
 that the meaning of this fits in with the meaning of 
 baptized, emphasizing one part of its meaning. 
 
 "Baptized" may be called the historical word. 
 It describes an act done once for all on that great 
 day of Pentecost, with possibly four accessory repe- 
 titions to make clear that additional classes and 
 groups were included. 3 It tells God's side. 
 
 1 T Cor. xii. 13. 
 a Luke xxiv. 49. 
 
 3 That is to make perfectly plain that this experience was for all: 
 a very difficult fact for these intensely Jewish disciples to grasp. 
 
 (1) Not limited to the original one hundred and twenty, but for the 
 whole body ol Jewish disciples Acts iy. 
 
 (2) For the hated half-breed Samaritans Acts viii. 
 
 (3) For the "dogs" of Gentiles Acts x. 
 
 (4JFor individual disciples anywhere, and at any distance in time 
 from Pentecost Acts xix.
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 151 
 
 In this connection it will be helpful to note the 
 significance of the word baptize. Of course you 
 will understand that I am not speaking now of the 
 matter or mode of water baptism. But I am sup- 
 posing that originally or historically the word means 
 a plunging or dipping into. We commonly think of 
 the act of immersion-baptism from the side of the 
 object immersed because the action is on the side 
 of the thing or person which is plunged down into 
 the immersing flood. But in the historical baptism 
 of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost the standpoint is 
 reversed. Instead of a plunging down into there is 
 a coming down upon, exactly reversing the order 
 with which we are familiar, but with the same result 
 submersion. Notice the phrases in Acts used in 
 describing the baptism of the Holy Spirit on that 
 historical Pentecost: "Coming upon you," "pour 
 out," "poured forth," "fallen upon," "fell upon," 
 "poured out," "fell on them," "came upon," 1 all 
 suggesting an act from above. 
 
 A Four-Sided Truth. 
 
 Now notice that the word used at the time of the 
 actual occurrence and afterwards is another word 
 "filled" and "full," which occurs eleven times in the 
 first nine chapters of Acts. It tells what was ex- 
 perienced by those persons at Pentecost and after- 
 wards. It describes their side. Baptism was the 
 
 1 Acts i: 8; ii: 17, 33; viii: 15; x: 45; xix: 6.
 
 152 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 act; filling was the result. If you plunge a book 
 into water you are submerging the book: that is 
 your side. The leaves of the book quickly become 
 soaked, filled with the water: that is the other side. 
 When a baby is born it is plunged out into the 
 atmosphere. That is an immersion into air. It 
 begins at once to cry and its lungs become filled 
 with the air into which it has been plunged. So 
 here "filled" is the experience word; it tells our 
 side. 
 
 The third word, "anointed" indicates the purpose 
 of this filling; it is to qualify for living and for ser- 
 vice. It is the word commonly used in the Old 
 Testament for the setting apart of the tabernacle to 
 its holy use; and of priests and kings, and some- 
 times prophets for service and leadership. In the 
 New Testament it is four times used of Jesus, each 
 time in connection with His public ministry. 1 Paul 
 uses it of himself in answering those who had criti- 
 cised his work and leadership at Corinth. 2 And 
 John uses it twice in speaking of ability to discern 
 and teach the truth. 3 It is the power word, indicat- 
 ing that the Holy Spirit's coming is for the specific 
 purpose of setting us apart, and to qualify us for 
 right living, and for acceptable and helpful service. 
 
 The fourth word, "sealed," explains our personal 
 connection with the Lord Jesus. It is used once by 
 
 1 (i)Luke iv. 18, quo. from Isa. Ixi: i. (2) Acts iv: 27. (3) Acts x: 38. 
 (4)Heb. i: 9, quotation from Ps. xiv:7. 
 1 2 Cor. i:2i. 
 * i John i: 20, 27.
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 153 
 
 Paul in writing to his friends at Corinth, and twice 
 in the Ephesian epistle. 1 The seal was used, and 
 still is to mark ownership. In our lumber regions 
 up in the Northwest it is customary to clear a small 
 spot on a log and strike it with the blunt end of a 
 hatchet containing the initials of the owner, and 
 then send it adrift down the stream with hundreds 
 of others, and though it may float miles unguarded, 
 that mark of ownership is respected. On the West- 
 ern plains it is common to see mules with an initial 
 branded on the flank. In both cases the initial is 
 the owner's seal, recognized by law as sufficient evi- 
 dence of ownership. So the Holy Spirit is Jesus' 
 ownership mark stamped upon us to indicate that 
 we belong to Him. He is our sole Owner. And 
 if any of us are not allowing Him to have full con- 
 trol of His property, we are dealing dishonestly. 
 Sealed is the property or ownership word. 
 
 The last one of these words, ''earnest," is a pecu- 
 liarly interesting one. It is found three times in 
 Paul's epistles. 2 An earnest is a pledge given in 
 advance as an evidence of good faith. We are 
 familiar with the usage of paying down a small part 
 of the price agreed upon to make a business tran- 
 saction binding. In old English it is called caution 
 money. My mother has told me of seeing her 
 mother many a time pay a shilling in the Belfast 
 market-house to insure the delivery of a bag of 
 potatoes, paying the remainder on its delivery. 
 
 1 a Cor. i: 22. Eph. i: 13; iv: 30. * 2 Cor. i: 22-, v: 5. Eph. i: 14.
 
 1 54 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 Now here the Holy Spirit is called "the earnest 
 of our inheritance unto the redemption of the pur- 
 chased possession." That means two things to us: 
 First that the Holy Spirit now filling us is Jesus' 
 pledge that He has purchased us, and that some day 
 He is coming back to claim His possessions; and 
 then that the measure of the Spirit's presence and 
 power now is only a foretaste of a greater fullness 
 at the time of coming back; a sort of partial advance 
 payment which insures a payment in full when the 
 transaction is completed. Paul speaks of this to 
 the Romans as the first fruits of the Spirit. 1 
 
 So, if you will take all five words you will get all 
 of the truth about our friend the Holy Spirit, and 
 just what His coming into one's life means. The 
 first word, "baptism," is the historical word, point- 
 ing us back to the day of Pentecost. The other four 
 words, taken together, tell us the four sides of the 
 Holy Spirit's relation to us now. "Filled" is the 
 experience word, pointing us inward to what actually 
 takes place there. "Anointed" is the power word, 
 pointing us outward to the life and service among 
 men to which we are set apart. "Sealed" is the 
 personal-relation word, pointing us upward to our 
 Owner and Master. "Earnest" is the prophetic 
 word, pointing us forward to the Master's coming 
 back to claim His own, and to bestow the full meas- 
 ure of the Spirit's presence. 
 
 And to-night we want to get some hint of how to 
 
 1 Romans viii: 23.
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 155 
 
 have this infilling, which shall also be an anointing 
 of power and a seal of ownership and an earnest of 
 greater things at Jesus' return. 
 
 Broken Couplings. 
 
 But perhaps some one is saying, "Have not we all 
 received the Holy Spirit if we are Christians?" 
 Yes, that is quite true. It is the Holy Spirit's 
 presence in us that makes us Christians. His work 
 begins at conversion. Conversion and regeneration 
 are the two sides of the same transaction. Con- 
 version, the human side: regeneration, the divine 
 side. My turning clear around to God is my side, 
 and instantly His Spirit enters and begins His work. 
 But here is a distinction to be made: the Holy Spirit 
 is in every Christian, but in many He is not allowed 
 free and full control, and so there is little or none 
 of His power felt or seen. Only as He has full sway 
 is His power manifest. If at the time of conversion 
 or decision there is clear instruction and a whole- 
 hearted surrender, there will be evidence of the 
 Spirit's presence at once. And if the new life goes 
 on without break there will be a continuance of that 
 power in ever-increasing measure. But many a 
 time, through ignorance, or through some disobedi- 
 ence or failure to obey, there has come a break, a 
 slipping of a cog somewhere, and so an interruption 
 of the flow of power. Many a time lack of instruc- 
 tion regarding the cultivation of the Spirit's friend-
 
 156 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 ship has resulted in just such a break. And so a 
 new start is necessary. Then a full surrender is 
 followed by a new experience or, shall I better say, 
 a re-experience of the Spirit's presence. And this 
 new experience sometimes is so sharply marked as 
 to begin a new epoch in the life. Some of the no- 
 table leaders of the Church have gone through just 
 such an experience. 
 
 Yet, I know a man have known him somewhat 
 intimately for years one of the most saintly men it 
 has been my privilege to know. For some years he 
 was a missionary abroad, but now is preaching in 
 this country. His private personal life is fragrant, 
 and his public speech is always accompanied with 
 rare power. In conversation with a young minister 
 at a summer conference, he said he had never 
 known this second blessing or experience on which 
 such stress was being laid there. And I think I can 
 readily understand that he had not. For, appar- 
 ently, so far as one can see, his first surrender or 
 decision had been a whole-hearted one. He had 
 followed simply, fully, as he saw the way. There 
 had been no break, but a steady going on and up, 
 and an ever-increasing manifestation of the Spirit's 
 presence from the time of that first decision. So 
 that it may be said, quite accurately, I think, that 
 in God's plan there is no need of any second stage, 
 but in our actual experience there has been a second 
 stage, and sometimes more than a second, too,
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 157 
 
 because with so many of us the connections have 
 been broken, making a fresh act on our part a 
 necessity. 
 
 The Real Battlefield. 
 
 But now the main topic we are to talk about is 
 making and breaking connections. First, making 
 connections with the source of power. How may 
 one who has been willing to go thus far in these 
 talks go a step further and have power in actual 
 conscious possession? 
 
 There are many passages in this old Book that 
 answer that question. But let me turn you to one 
 which puts the answer in very simple shape. John's 
 gospel, seventh chapter, verses thirty-seven to thirty- 
 nine. Listen: "Now, on the last day, the great 
 day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if 
 any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. 
 He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, 
 out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." 
 Then John, writing some fifty years or so after- 
 wards, adds what he himself did not understand at 
 the time: "But this spake He of the Spirit who 
 Jiey that believed on Him were to receive; for not 
 yet was the Spirit given, because not yet was Jesus 
 glorified." 
 
 There are four words here which tell the four 
 steps into a new life of power. Sometimes these
 
 158 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 steps are taken so quickly that they seem in actual 
 experience like only one. But that does not matter 
 to us just now, for we are after the practical result. 
 Four words thirst, glorified, drink, believe tell 
 the whole story. Thirst means desire, intense de- 
 sire. There is no word in our language so strong 
 to express desire as the word thirst. Physical thirst 
 will completely control your actions. If you are 
 very thirsty, you can do nothing till that gnawing 
 desire is satisfied. You cannot read, nor study, nor 
 talk, nor transact business. You are in agony when 
 intensely thirsty. To die of thirst is extremely pain- 
 ful. Jesus uses that word thirst to express intensest 
 desire. Let me ask you Are you thirsty for 
 power? Is there a yearning down in your heart for 
 something you have not? That is the first step. 
 No good to offer food to a man without appetite. 
 "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst." Pitiable 
 are they that need and do not know their need. 
 Physicians find their most difficult work in dealing 
 with the man who has no desire to live. He is at 
 the lowest ebb. Are you thirsty? There is a special 
 promise for thirsty ones. "I will pour water on him 
 that is thirsty." If you are not thirsty for the 
 Master's power, are you thirsty to be made thirsty? 
 If you are not really thirsty in your heart for this 
 new life of power, you might ask the Master to put 
 that thirst in you. For there can be nothing before 
 that. 
 
 The second word is the one added long afterwards
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 159 
 
 by John, when the Spirit had enlightened his under- 
 standing "glorified." "For not yet was the Spirit 
 given, because not yet was Jesus glorified." That 
 word has two meanings here: the first meaning a 
 historical one, the second a personal or experimental 
 one. The historical meaning is this: when Jesus 
 returned home all scarred in face and form from His 
 trip to the earth, He was received back with great 
 enthusiasm, and was glorified in the presence of 
 myriads of angel beings by being enthroned at the 
 Father's right hand. Then the glorified Jesus sent 
 the Holy Spirit down to the earth as His own per- 
 sonal representative for His new peculiar mission. 
 The presence of the Spirit in our hearts is evidence 
 that the Jesus whom earth despised and crucified is 
 now held in highest honor and glory in that upper 
 world. The Spirit is the gift of a glorified Jesus. 
 Peter lays particular stress upon this in his Pente- 
 cost sermon, telling to those who had so spitefully 
 murdered Jesus that He "being at the right hand 
 of God exalted .... hath poured forth this." 
 That is the historical meaning the first meaning 
 of that word "glorified." It refers to an event in 
 the highest heaven after Jesus' ascension. The 
 personal meaning is this: when Jesus is enthroned 
 in my life the Holy Spirit shall fill me. The Father 
 glorified Jesus by enthroning Him. I must glorify 
 Him by enthroning Him. But the throne of my 
 heart was occupied by another who did not propose 
 to resign, nor to be deposed without resistance. So
 
 160 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 there had to be a dethronement as well as an en- 
 thronement. I must quietly but resolutely place the 
 crown of my life, my love, my will upon Jesus' 
 brow for Him henceforth to control me as He will. 
 That act of enthroning Him carries with it the de- 
 thronement of self. 
 
 Let me say plainly that here is the searching test 
 of the whole matter. Why do you want power? 
 For the rare enjoyment of ecstatic moods? For 
 some hidden selfish purpose, like Simon of Samaria, 
 of which you are perhaps only half conscious, so 
 subtly does it lurk underneath? That you may be 
 able to move men? These motives are all selfish. 
 The streams turn in, and that means a dead sea. 
 Better stop before you begin. For thy heart is not 
 right before God. But if the uppermost and under- 
 most desire be to glorify Jesus and let Him do in 
 you, and with you what He chooses, then you shall 
 know the flooding of the channel-ways of your life 
 with a new stream of power. 
 
 Jesus Himself, when down here as Son of Man, 
 met this test. With reverence be it said that His 
 highest purpose in coming to earth was not to die 
 upon the cross, but to glorify His Father. That 
 memorable passage opening the sixty-first chapter 
 of Isaiah, which Jesus applied to Himself in the 
 Nazareth synagogue, contains eight or nine state- 
 ments of what He was to do, but closes with a com- 
 prehensive statement of the underlying purpose 
 "that He might be glorified." As it turned out, that
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 161 
 
 could best be done by yielding to the awful experi- 
 ences through which He passed. But the supreme 
 thought of pleasing His Father was never absent 
 from His thought. It drove Him to the wildernesa, 
 and to Gethsemane, and to Calvary. 
 
 Is that the one purpose in your heart in desiring 
 power? He might send some of us out to the far- 
 off foreign mission field. He might send some down 
 to the less enchanted field of the city slums to do 
 salvage service night after night among the awful 
 social weckage thrown upon the strand there; or 
 possibly it would mean an isolated post out on the 
 frontier, or down in the equally heroic field of the 
 mountains of the South. He might leave some of 
 you just where you are, in a commonplace, hum- 
 drum spot, as you think, when your visions had been 
 in other fields. He might make you a seed-sower, 
 like lonely Morrison in China, when you wanted to 
 be a harvester like Moody. Here is the real battle- 
 field. The fighting and agonizing are here. Not with 
 God but with yourself, that the old self in you may 
 be crucified and Jesus crowned in its place. 
 
 Will you in the purpose of your heart make Jesus 
 absolute monarch whatever that may prove to 
 mean? It may mean great sacrifice; it -will mean 
 greater joy and power at once. May we have the 
 simple courage to do it. Master, help us! Thou 
 wilt help us. Thou art helping some of us now as 
 we talk and listen and think.
 
 1 62 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 Power Manifest in Action. 
 
 Well, then, if you have won on that field of 
 action, the rest is very simple. Indeed, after a 
 victory there, your whole life moves up to a new 
 level. The third word is drink. "Let him come 
 unto Me and, drink" Drinking is one of the easiest 
 acts imaginable. I wish I had a glass of water here 
 just to let you see how easy a thing it is. Tip up 
 the glass and let the water run in and down. Drink 
 simply means take. It is saying, "Lord Jesus, I 
 
 take from Thee the promised power I thank 
 
 Thee that the Spirit has taken full control." But 
 you say, "Is that all?" Yes. "Why, I do not 
 feel anything." Do you remember saying some- 
 thing like that when you were urged to take Jesus 
 as your Savior? And some kind friend told you not 
 to wait for feeling, but to trust, and that when you 
 did that, the light came? Now, the fourth word is 
 'believe. The law of God's dealing with you has not 
 changed. Jesus says, "Out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water." You are to believe His 
 word. "But," you say, "how shall I know I have 
 this power?" Well, first, by believing that Jesus 
 has done what He agreed. He promised the Spirit 
 to them that obey Him. The Holy Spirit fills every 
 surrendered heart. Then there is a second way 
 you will experience the power as need arises. How 
 do you know anything? Here is this chair. Sup- 
 pose I tell you I have power to pick it up and hold
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 163 
 
 it out at arm's length. Well, you think, I look as 
 though I might have that much power in my arm. 
 But you do not know. Perhaps my arm is weak 
 and does not show it. But now I pick it up and hold 
 it out (holding chair out at arm's length) now 
 you know I have at least that much power in my 
 arm. Power is always manifest in action. That is a 
 law of power. How did that man by the pool of 
 Bethesda in Jerusalem, who had not walked for 
 thirty-eight years how did he know that he had 
 received power to walk? He got up and walked! 
 He did not know he had received the power till he 
 got up. Power is shown in action always. Faith 
 acts. It pushes out, in obedience to command. 
 And when you go out of here to-day, as the need 
 arises you will find the power rising within you to 
 meet it. When the hasty word conies hot to your 
 lips, when that old habit asserts itself, when the 
 actual test of sacrifice comes, when the opportunity 
 for service comes, as surely as the need comes, will 
 come the sense of His power in control. Believe 
 means expect. 
 
 "Thirst," "glorify," "drink," "believe" desire, 
 enthrone, accept, expect that is the simple story. 
 Are you thirsty? Will you put Jesus on the throne? 
 Then accept, and go out with your eyes open, ex- 
 pecting, expecting, expecting, and He will never fail 
 to reveal His power. Shall we bow in silence a few 
 moments and settle the matter, each of us, with the 
 Master direct?
 
 164 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 Three Laws of Continuous Power. 
 
 Power depends on good connections. In mechan- 
 ics: the train with the locomotive; the machinery 
 with the engine; the electrical mechanism with the 
 power house. In the body : the arm with the socket ; 
 the brain with the heart. In the Christian life the 
 follower of Jesus with the Spirit of Jesus. We 
 have been talking together about making connec- 
 tions, and I believe some of us have made the vital 
 connection this hour, which means new inflow and 
 outflow of power. 
 
 Now there will be time for only a brief word 
 about breaking connections. "But," you say, "we 
 do not want to break connections." No, you do 
 not. But there is someone else who does. Since 
 you have put yourself into intimate contact with 
 Jesus this someone else has become intensely inter- 
 ested in breaking that contact. And this enemy 
 of ours, this Satan, the hater, is subtle and deep 
 and experienced and more than a match for any 
 of us. But greater is He that is now in you than 
 he that is in the world. Satan will do his best by 
 bold attack and cunning deceit to tamper with your 
 couplings. 
 
 One of the saddest sights, and yet a not uncom- 
 mon one, is to see a man who has been mightily 
 used of God, but whose usefulness is now wholly 
 gone. One can run back through only recent years 
 and recall, one after another, those through whom
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 165 
 
 multitudes were blessed, but who, yielding to some 
 subtle temptation, have utterly and forever lost their 
 opportunity of service. The same is true of scores 
 in more secluded circles whose lives, spiritually 
 blighted and dwarfed, tell the same sad story. 
 
 These recent instances are but repetitions of older 
 ones. Three times the writer of Judges tells of 
 Samson that "the spirit of the Lord came mightily 
 upon him," and then is added the pathetic sentence 
 "but he wist not that the Lord was departed from 
 him." And between the two occurs the story of an 
 act of disobedience. Twice the same thing is re- 
 corded of King Saul, "the spirit of God came 
 mightily upon him," and the same sequel follows, 
 "the spirit of the Lord had departed." And be- 
 tween the two is found an act of disobedience to 
 God's command. The ninth of Luke tells a similar 
 story. The disciples had been given power; had 
 used the power for others; were requested to relieve 
 a demonized boy; had tried to; had expected to; 
 but utterly failed, to their own chagrin, and the 
 father's disappointment, amid the surprise and criti- 
 cism of the crowd. The Master explains that a 
 slipshod connection with God was at the bottom of 
 their failure. Power is not stored in us apart from 
 God's presence. It merely passes through as He 
 has sway. Once the connection between Him and 
 you is disturbed, the flow of power is interrupted. 
 We do not run on the storage battery plan, but on 
 the trolley plan. Constant communication with the
 
 1 66 Maki-ng and Breaking Connections. 
 
 source of power is absolutely essential. The spirit 
 of God never leaves us. We do not lose His presence. 
 But whatever grieves Him prevents His presence 
 being manifest. The evidence of His presence may 
 be lost through wrongdoing. So I want to give you 
 in very brief compass the three laws of the life of 
 power continued and increasing power. I wish 
 some one had given them to me long ago. It might 
 have saved me many a bad break. 
 
 The first law can be put in a single word obey. 
 Obedience is the great foundation law of the Chris- 
 tian life. Indeed it is the common fundamental law 
 of all organization, in nature, in military, naval, 
 commercial, political and domestic circles. Obedi- 
 ence is the great essential to securing the purpose of 
 life. Disobedience means disaster. If you turn to 
 scripture you must read almost every page if you 
 would get all the statements and illustrations of 
 obedience and its opposite. Begin with the third of 
 Genesis, where the first disastrous act of disobedi- 
 ence brought a ruin still going on. Run through 
 the three wilderness books, where the new nation is 
 grouped about the smoking mountain. Listen in 
 Deuteronomy to the old man Moses talking during 
 the thirty days' conference they had in Moab's 
 plains before he was taken away. Then into 
 Joshua's book of victory and the Judges' dark story 
 of defeats, through the kingdom books, and the 
 prophecies, and you will find the changes rung more 
 frequently upon obedience than anything else. The
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 167 
 
 is true of the New Testament clear to the last 
 cohmn of the last page. 
 
 Tae fact is, every heart is a battlefield whose pos- 
 session is being hotly contested. If Jesus is in 
 possess^n Satan is trying his best by storm or strat- 
 e gy to ** in. If Satan be in possession whether as 
 a coarse or a cultured Satan, then Jesus is lovingly 
 storming the door. Satan can not get in without 
 your consent, and Jesus -will not. An act of obedi- 
 ence to God is slamming the door in Satan's face, 
 and opening it wider for Jesus' control. Listen 
 with your heart ! An act of disobedience, however 
 slight, as you think, is slamming the door of your 
 heart in Jesus' face and flinging it open to Satan's 
 entrance. Is that mere rhetoric? It is cold fact. 
 No, it is hot fact. The first great simple law is 
 obedience. 
 
 But someone asks, "How shall I know what 
 whom, to obey? Sometimes the voices coming to 
 my ear seem to be jarring voices; they do not agree. 
 Pastors do not all agree: churches are not quite 
 agreed on some matters: my best friends think dif- 
 ferently: how shall I know?" Here comes in the 
 second law, Obey the book of God as interpreted by the 
 Spirit of God. Not the book alone. That will lead 
 into superstition. Not to say the Spirit without the 
 book He has indited. That will lead to fanaticism. 
 But the book as interpreted by the Spirit, and the 
 Spirit as He speaks through His book. There is a 
 voice of God, and a Spirit of God and a book of
 
 1 68 Making and Breaking Connections. 
 
 God. God speaks by His Spirit through His wore. 
 Sometimes He speaks directly without the written 
 word. But very, very rarely. The mental impressions 
 by which the Spirit guides are frequent. But I am 
 speaking now, not of that but of His audibte inner 
 voice. He is chary in the use of that. And when he 
 so speaks the test is that, of necessity, the voice of 
 God always agrees with itself. The spoken word is 
 never out of harmony with the written word. And 
 as He has given us the written word, it becomes our 
 standard of His will. This book of God was in- 
 spired. It is inspired. God spoke in it. He speaks 
 in it to-day. You will be surprised to find how light 
 on every sort of question will come through this 
 in-Spirited book. 
 
 But someone with a practical turn of mind is 
 thinking: "but it is such a big book. I do not know 
 much about it. I read the psalms some, and some 
 chapters in Isaiah, and the gospels and some in the 
 epistles, but I have no grasp of the whole book; 
 and your second law seems a little beyond me." 
 Then you listen to the third law, namely: time alone 
 with the book daily. It should be unhurried time. 
 Time enough not to think about time. At least a 
 half hour every day, I would suggest, and prefer- 
 ably the first half hour of the morning, rising at 
 least early enough to get this bit of time before any 
 duty can claim you. It may seem very difficult for 
 some. But it is an absolute essential, for the first 
 two laws depend on this one for their practical force.
 
 Making and Breaking Connections. 169 
 
 When Joshua, trembling, was called upon to 
 assume the stupendous task of being Moses' succes- 
 sor, God came and had a quiet talk with him. In 
 that talk He emphasized just one thing as the secret 
 of his new leadership. Listen: "This book of the 
 law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt 
 meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest 
 observe to do according to all that is written therein. ' ' 
 There are the three laws straight from the lips of 
 God, packed into a single sentence. 
 
 Let us plan to get alone with the Master daily 
 over His word, with the door shut, other things 
 shut out, and ourselves shut in, that we may learn 
 His will, and get strength to do it. And when in 
 doubt wait.
 
 THE FLOOD-TIDE OF POWER.
 
 THE FLOOD-TIDE OF POWER. 
 
 God 's Highest Ideal. 
 
 A flood-tide is a rising tide. It flows in and fills 
 up and spreads out. Wherever it goes it cleanses 
 and fertilizes and beautifies. For untold centuries 
 Egypt has depended for its very life upon the yearly 
 flood-tide of the Nile. The rich bottom lands of the 
 Connecticut Valley are refertilized every spring by 
 that river's flood-tide. The green beauty and rich 
 fruitage of some parts of the Sacramento Valley, 
 whose soil is flooded by the artificial irrigation-rivers, 
 are in sharp contrast with adjoining un watered 
 portions. 
 
 The flood- tide is caused by influences from above. 
 In the ocean and the portions of rivers under its in- 
 fluence by the heavenly bodies. In the rivers by the 
 fall of rain and snow swelling successively the upper 
 streams and lakes. 
 
 God's highest ideal for men is frequently ex- 
 pressed under the figure of a river running at flood- 
 tide. Ezekiel's vision of the future capital of Israel 
 gives prominence to a wonderful river gradually 
 reaching flood-tide and exerting untold influence. 
 
 John's companion vision of the future church in 
 the closing chapters of Revelation finds its radiating
 
 174 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 center in an equally wonderful river of water of life. 
 When Jesus would give a picture of a Christian man 
 up to His ideal He exclaims, "Out of his belly shall 
 flow rivers of living water." John's explanation 
 years after was that He was speaking of the Holy 
 Spirit's presence in the human life. Jesus' ideal 
 would put our lives at the flood-tide. No ebb-tide 
 there. No rise and fall. But a constant flowing in 
 and filling up and flooding out. 
 
 Love is ambitious. God is love. And therefore 
 God is ambitious for us. In the best sense of the 
 word He is ambitious for our lives. The old im- 
 pression has been that salvation is for the soul, and 
 for heaven. Well, it is for the soul, and it is for 
 heaven, but it is for the present life and for this 
 earth. Some of God's most far-reaching plans 
 have to do with this earth. To-night we want to 
 get a glimpse of God's ambitious ideal for our lives 
 down here; something of an understanding of the 
 results of the unrestrained presence within us of 
 His Holy Spirit. 
 
 It is not surprising that there have been some 
 mistaken ideas about the results. It has been a 
 common supposition that somehow the baptism of 
 the Holy Spirit is always connected with an evan- 
 gelistic gift and, further, connected with marked 
 success in soul-winning. Men have thought of Mr. 
 Moody facing great crowds, who were swayed and 
 melted at his words, and of people in great multi- 
 tudes accepting Christ. Probably the world has
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 175 
 
 never had a finer illustration of a Spirit-filled man 
 than in dear old Moody. And it is not to be won- 
 dered at that the rare evangelistic gift of service 
 with which he was endowed and the great results 
 attending it should be so closely allied in our minds 
 with the Spirit-filled life which he exemplified so 
 unusually. In sharp contrast however with that 
 conception will you note that we are told over here 
 in Exodus of a man named Bezalel l who was filled 
 with the Spirit of God that he might have skill in 
 carpentry, in metal working, and weaving of fine 
 fabrics, for the construction of the old tent of God. 
 Will you note further that a company of seventy 
 men 2 were filled in a like manner that they might be 
 skilled in conducting the business affairs of the 
 nation; and that Luke tells of Elizabeth 3 being filled 
 that she might become a true mother for John. 
 
 A second misconception has been that marked 
 success always accompanies the Spirit's control. 
 In contrast with that will you please note the results 
 in some of the Spirit-swayed men whom God used 
 in Bible times. Isaiah was called to a service that 
 was to be barren of results, though long continued; 
 and Jeremiah's was not only fruitless but with great 
 personal peril. Jesus' public work led through a 
 rough path to a crown of thorns and a cross. 
 Stephen's testimony brought him a storm of stones. 
 And Paul passed through great danger and distress 
 
 1 Exodus xxxi: 1-5. 
 * Numbers xi: 16, 17. 
 Luke i: 13-17. 4^
 
 176 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 to a cell, and beyond, a keen-edged ax. These are 
 leaders among Spirit-filled men. 
 
 Paul's teaching in the Corinthian epistle helps one 
 to a clear understanding about results. He explains 
 that while it is one Spirit dwelling in all who 
 acknowledge Jesus as Lord, yet the evidence of His 
 presence differs widely in different persons. It is 
 one God working all things in all persons, but with 
 great variety in the gifts bestowed, in the service 
 with which they are intrusted, and in the inner ex- 
 periences they are conscious of. 1 
 
 What results then may be expected to follow the 
 filling of the Holy Spirit? It may be said in a sen- 
 tence that Jesus fills us with the same Spirit that 
 filled Himself that He may work out in us His own 
 image and ideal, and make use of us in His passion- 
 ate reaching out after others. If we attempt to 
 analyze these results we shall find them falling into 
 three groups. First results in the life, that is in 
 the inner experiences, and the habits. Second 
 results in the personality, that is in the appearance, 
 and the mental faculties. Third results in service. 
 Let us look a little at each of these. 
 
 A Transfigured Life. 
 
 First regarding the inner experiences. Without 
 doubt the first result experienced will be a new sense 
 of peace: a glad, quiet stillness of spirit which noth- 
 
 1 1 Cor. xii: 4-6,11.
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 177 
 
 ing seems able to disturb. The heart will be filled 
 with a peace still as the stars, calm as the night, 
 deep as the sea, fragrant as the flowers. 
 
 How many thousands of lips have lovingly lingered 
 over those sweet strong words: "The peace of God, 
 which passeth all understanding, shall guard your 
 heart and thought in Christ Jesus." It is God's 
 peace. It acts as an armed guard drawn up around 
 heart and thoughts to keep unrest out. It is too 
 subtle for intellectual analysis, but it steals into and 
 steadies the heart. You cannot understand it but 
 you can feel it. You cannot get hold of it with 
 your head, but you can with your heart. You 
 do not get it. It gets you. You need not under- 
 stand in order to experience. Blessed are they that 
 have not understood and yet have yielded and 
 experienced. 
 
 "Peace beginning to be 
 
 Deep as the sleep of the sea 
 When the stars their faces glass 
 
 In its blue tranquillity: 
 Hearts of men upon earth 
 That rested not from their birth 
 To rest, as the wild waters rest, 
 With the colors of heaven on their breast." 
 
 With that will come a new intense longing to do 
 the Master's will; to please Him. As the days 
 come and go this will come to be the master-passion 
 of this new life. It will drive one with a new pur- 
 pose and zest to studying the one book which tells
 
 178 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 His will. That book becomes literally the book of 
 books to the Spirit-dominated man. 
 
 With that will come a new desire to talk with this 
 new Master, who talks to you in His word, and is 
 ever at your side sympathetically listening. His 
 book reveals Himself. And better acquaintance 
 with Him will draw you oftener aside for a quiet 
 talk. The pleasure of praying will grow by leaps 
 and bounds. Nothing so inspires to prayer as 
 reverent listening to His voice. Frequent use of 
 the ears will result in more frequent use of the 
 voice in prayer and praise. And more: Prayer will 
 come to be a part of service. Intercession will 
 become the life mission. 
 
 But I must be frank enough to tell you of another 
 result, which is as sure to come as these there will 
 be conflict. You will be tempted more than ever. 
 Temptations will come with the subtlety of a snake ; 
 with the rush of a storm; with the unexpected swift- 
 ness of a lightning flash. You see the act of sur- 
 render to Jesus is a notice of fight to another. You 
 have changed masters, and the discarded master 
 does not let go easily. He is a trained, toughened 
 fighter. You will think that you never had so many 
 temptations, so strong, so subtle, so trying, so unex- 
 pected. But listen there will be victory! Truth 
 goes in pairs. You will be tempted. The devil will 
 attend to that. That is one truth. Its companion 
 truth is this : you will be victorious over temptation 
 as the new Master has sway. Your new Master
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 179 
 
 will attend to that. Great and cunning and strong 
 is the tempter. Do not underrate him. But greater 
 is He that is in you. You cannot overrate Him. 
 He got the victory at every turn during those thirty- 
 three years, and will get it for you as many years 
 and turns as shall make out the span of your life. 
 Your one business will be to let Him have full 
 control. 
 
 Still another result, of the surprising sort, will be 
 a new feeling about sin. There will be an increased 
 and increasing sensitiveness to sin. It will seem so 
 hateful whether coarse or cultured. You will shrink 
 from contact with it. There will also be a growing 
 sense of the sinjulness of that old heart of yours, 
 even while you may be having constant victory over 
 temptation. Then, too, there will grow up a yearn- 
 ing, oh! such a heart-yearning as cannot be told in 
 words, to be pure, really pure in heart. 
 
 A seventh result will be an intense desire to get 
 others to know your wonderful Master. A desire 
 so strong, gripping you so tremendously, that all 
 thought of sacrifice will sink out of sight in its 
 achievement. He is such a Master! so loving, so 
 kind, so wondrous! And so many do not know 
 Him: have wrong ideas about Him. If they only 
 knew Him that surely would settle it. And prob- 
 ably these two the desire to please Him, and the 
 desire to get others to know Him will take the 
 mastery of your ambition and life.
 
 180 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 The All- Inclusive Passion. 
 
 But all of these and much more is included in one 
 of Paul's packed phrases which may be read, "the 
 love of God hath flooded our hearts through the Holy 
 Spirit given unto us." 1 The all-inclusive result is 
 love. That marvelous tender passion the love of 
 God heightless, depthless, shoreless, shall flood 
 our hearts, making us as gentle and tender-hearted 
 and self-sacrificing and gracious as He. Every 
 phase of life will become a phase of love. Peace is 
 love resting. Bible study is love reading its lover's 
 letters. Prayer is love keeping tryst. Conflict 
 with sin is love jealously fighting for its Lover. 
 Hatred of sin is love shrinking from that which 
 separates from its lover. Sympathy is love tenderly 
 feeling. Enthusiasm is love burning. Hope is love 
 expecting. Patience is love waiting. Faithfulness is 
 love sticking fast. Humility is love taking its true 
 place. Modesty is love keeping out of sight. Soul- 
 winning is love pleading. 
 
 Love is revolutionary. It radically changes us, 
 and revolutionizes our spirit toward all others. 
 Love is democratic. It ruthlessly levels all class dis- 
 tinctions. Love is intensely practical. It is always 
 hunting something to do. Paul lays great stress on 
 this outer practical side. Do you remember his 
 "fruit of the Spirit"? 2 It is an analysis of love. 
 
 1 Rom. v: 5. 
 Gal. 7:22-23.
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 1 8 1 
 
 While the first three "love, joy, peace" are emo- 
 tions within, the remaining six are outward toward 
 others. Notice, "long-suffering, gentleness, good- 
 ness, faithfulness, meekness," and then the climax is 
 reached in the last ' ' self-control. ' ' And in his great 
 love passage in the first Corinthian epistle, 1 he picks 
 out four of these last six, and shows further just 
 what he means by love in its practical working in 
 the life. "Long-suffering" is repeated, and so is 
 "kindness" or "goodness." "Faithfulness" is re- 
 produced in "never faileth." Then "self-control" 
 receives the emphasis of an eight-fold repetition of 
 "nots." Listen: "Envieth not," "boast eth not," 
 "not puffed up," "not unseemly," "seeketh not 
 (even) her own, " "is not provoked," "taketh not 
 account of evil" (in trying to help others, like Jesus' 
 word "despairing of no man" *), "rejoiceth not in un- 
 righteousness" (that is when the unrighteous is pun- 
 ished, but instead feels sorry for him). What 
 tremendous power of self-mastery in those "nots"! 
 Then the positive side is brought out in four "alls"; 
 two of them the first and last passive qualities, 
 "beareth all things," "endureth all things." And 
 in between, two active "hopeth all things," " be- 
 lie veth all things." The passive qualities doing 
 sentinel duty on both sides of the active. These 
 passive traits are inteasely active in their passivity. 
 There is a busy time under the surface of those 
 
 1 i Cor. xiii. 
 
 * Luke vi: 35. R. V., margin.
 
 1 82 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 "nots" and "alls." What a wealth of underlying 
 power they reveal! Sometimes folks think it senti- 
 mental to talk of love. Probably it is of some stuff 
 that shuffles along under that name. But when the 
 Holy Spirit talks about it, and fills our hearts with 
 it there is seen to be an intensely practical passion 
 at work. 
 
 Love is not only the finest fruit, but it is the final 
 test of a Christian life. How many splendid men 
 of God have seemed to lack here. What a giant of 
 faith and strength Elijah was. Such intense indig- 
 nation over sin! Such fearless denunciation! What 
 tremendous faith gripping the very heavens! What 
 marvelous power in prayer. Yet listen to him criti- 
 cising the faithful remnant whom God lovingly 
 defends against his aspersions. There seems a seri- 
 ous lack there. God seems to understand his need. 
 He asks him to slip down to Horeb for a new vision 
 of his Master. And then He revealed Himself not 
 in whirlwind nor earthquake nor lightning. He 
 doubtless felt at home among these tempestuous 
 outbreaks. They suit his temper. But something 
 startlingly new came to him in that exquisite "sound 
 of gentle stillness," hushing, awing, mellowing, 
 giving a new conception of the dominant heart of 
 his God. Some of us might well drop things, and 
 take a run down to Horeb. 
 
 I know an earnest scholarly minister with strong 
 personality, and fearless in his preaching against sin, 
 but who seems to lack this spirit of love. He is so
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 1 83 
 
 cuttingly critical at times. The other ministers of 
 his town whom he might easily lead, shy off from 
 him. There is no magnetism in the edge of a razor. 
 His critical spirit can be felt when his lips are shut. 
 I recall a woman, earnest, winsome when she 
 chooses to be, an intelligent Bible student, keen- 
 scented for error, a generous giver, but what a 
 sharp edge her tongue has. One is afraid to get 
 close lest it may cut. 
 
 When the Holy Spirit takes possession there is 
 love, aye, more, a flood of love. Have you ever 
 seen a flood? I remember one in the Schuylkill 
 during my boyhood days and how it impressed me. 
 Those who live along the valley of that treacherous 
 mountain stream, the Ohio, know something of the 
 power of a flood. How the waters come rushing 
 down, cutting out new channels, washing down rub- 
 bish, tearing valuable property from its moorings, 
 ruling the vaJley autocratically while men stand back 
 entirely helpless. 
 
 Would you care to have a ilood-tide of love flush 
 the channelways of your life like that? It would 
 clean out something you have preferred keeping. It 
 would with quiet, ruthless strength, tear some prized 
 possessions from their moorings and send them adrift 
 down stream and out. Its high waters would put 
 out some of the fires on the lower levels. Better 
 think a bit before opening the sluice-ways for that 
 flood. But ah! it will sweeten and make fragrant. 
 It will cut new channels, and broaden and deepen
 
 1 84 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 old ones. And what a harvest will follow in its 
 wake. Floods are apt to do peculiar things. So does 
 this one. It washes out the friction-grit from be- 
 tween the wheels. It does not dull the edge of the 
 tongue, but washes the bitter out of the mouth, and 
 the green out of the eye. It leaves one deaf and blind 
 in some matters, but much keener-sighted and 
 quicker-eared in others. Strange flood that! 
 Would that we all knew more of it. 
 
 The Fullness of the Stature of a Man. 
 
 Now note some of the changes in the personality 
 which attend the Spirit's unrestrained presence. 
 Without doubt the face will change, though it might 
 be difficult to describe the change. That Spirit 
 within changes the look of the eye. His peace 
 within the heart will affect the flow of blood in the 
 physical heart, and so in turn the clearness of the 
 complexion. The real secret of winsome beauty is 
 here. That new dominant purpose will modulate the 
 voice, and the whole expression of the face, and the 
 touch of the hand, and the carriage of the body. And 
 yet the one changed will be least conscious of it, if 
 conscious at all. Neither Moses nor Stephen knew 
 of their transfigured faces. 
 
 It is of peculiar interest to note the changes in 
 the mental make-up. It may be said positively that 
 the original group of mental faculties remain the same. 
 There seems to be nothing to indicate that any
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. .185 
 
 change takes place in one's natural endowment. 
 No faculty is added that nature had not put there, 
 and certainly none removed. 
 
 But it is very clear that there is a marked develop- 
 ment of these natural gifts, and that this change is 
 brought about by the putting in of a new and tremen- 
 dous motive power, which radically affects everything 
 it touches. 
 
 Regarding this development four facts may be 
 noted. 
 
 First fact: Those faculties or talents which may 
 hitherto have lain latent, unmatured, are aroused into 
 use. Most men have large undeveloped resources, 
 and endowments. Many of us are one-sided in our 
 development. We are strangers to the real possible 
 self within, unconscious of some of the powers with 
 which we are endowed and intrusted. The Holy 
 Spirit, when given a free hand, works out the 
 fullness of the life that has been put in. The 
 change will not be in the sort but in the size, and 
 that not by an addition but by a growth of what is 
 there. 
 
 Moses complains that he is slow of speech and of 
 a slow tongue. God does not promise a new tongue 
 but that he will be with him and train his tongue. 
 Listen to him forty years after in the Moab Plains, 
 as with brain fired, and tongue loosened and trained 
 he gives that series of farewell talks fairly burning 
 with eloquence. Students of oratory can find no 
 nobler specimens than Deuteronomy furnishes. The
 
 1 86 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 unmatured powers lying dormant had been aroused 
 to full growth by the indwelling Spirit of God. 
 
 Saintly Dr. A. J. Gordon, whose face was as 
 surely transfigured as was Moses' or Stephen's, 
 used to say that in his earlier years he had no execu- 
 tive ability. Men would say of him, "Well, Gordon 
 can preach but " intimating that he could not do 
 much else; not much of the practical getting of 
 things done in his makeup. When he was offered 
 the chairmanship of the missionary committee of the 
 Baptist Church, he promptly declined as being 
 utterly unfit for such a task. Finally with reluc- 
 tance he accepted, and for years he guided and 
 molded with rare sagacity the entire scheme of mis- 
 sionary operation of the great Baptist Church of the 
 North. He was accustomed with rare frankness 
 and modesty to speak of the change in himself as an 
 illustration of how the Spirit develops talents which 
 otherwise had lain unsuspected and unused. 
 
 The second fact: ALL of one's faculties will be 
 developed to the highest normal pitch. Not only the 
 undeveloped faculties, but those already developed 
 will know a new life. That new presence within 
 will sharpen the brain, and fire the imagination. It 
 will make the logic keener, the will steadier, the 
 executive faculty more alert. 
 
 The civil engineer will be more accurate in his 
 measurements and calculations. The scientific man 
 more keenly observant of facts, better poised in his 
 generalization upon them, and more convincing in
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 1 87 
 
 his demonstrations. The locomotive engineer will 
 handle his huge machine more skillfully. The road 
 saves money in having a Christian hand on the 
 throttle. The lawyer will be more thorough in his 
 sifting of evidence, and more convincing in the 
 planning of his cases. The business man will be even 
 more sharply alive to business. The college student 
 can better grasp his studies, and write with stronger 
 thought and clearer diction. The cook will get a 
 finer flavor into the food. And so on to the end of 
 the list. Why? Not by any magic, but simply and 
 only because man was created to be animated and 
 dominated by the Spirit of God. That is his nor- 
 mal condition. The Spirit of God is his natural 
 atmosphere. The machine works best when run 
 under the inventor's immediate direction. Only as 
 a man any man is swayed by the Holy Spirit, 
 will his powers rise to their best. And a man is not 
 doing his best, however hardworking and conscien- 
 tious, and therefore not fair to his own powers, who 
 lives otherwise. 
 
 Some one may enter the objection, that many of 
 the keenest men with finely disciplined powers may 
 be found among non-christian men. But he should 
 remember two facts, first, that a like truth holds 
 good in the opposite camp. There are undoubtedly 
 men whose genius is brilliant because inspired by an 
 evil spirit. There are cultured scholarly men, and 
 keen shrewd business men who have yielded their 
 powers to another than God and are greatly assisted
 
 1 8 8 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 by evil spirits, though it is quite likely that they are 
 not conscious that this is the true analysis of their 
 success. 
 
 The second fact to note is that no matter how keen 
 or developed a man's powers may be either as just 
 suggested, or, by dint of native strength and of his 
 own effort they are still of necessity less than they 
 would be if swayed by the Spirit of God. For man 
 is created to be indwelt and inspired by God's Spirit, 
 and his powers can not be at their best pitch save as 
 the conditions of their creation are met. 
 
 The third fact : There will be a gradual bringing 
 back to their normal condition 0} those faculties which 
 have been dwarfed, or warped, or abnormally devel- 
 oped through sin and selfishness. Sometimes these 
 moral twists and quirks in our mental faculties are 
 an inheritance through one or more generations. 
 The man with excessive egotism often carries the 
 evidence of it in the very shape of his head. But 
 as he yields to the new Spirit dominant within, a 
 spirit of humility, of modesty will gradually displace 
 so much of the other as is abnormal. The man of 
 superficial mind will be deepened in his mental pro- 
 cesses. The man of hasty judgment or poor judg- 
 ment will grow careful in his conclusions. The lazy 
 man will get a new lease of ambition and energy. 
 
 These results will be gradual, as all of God's pro- 
 cesses are. Sometimes painfully gradual, and will 
 be strictly in proportion as the man yields himself 
 unreservedly to the control of the indwelling Spirit.
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 189 
 
 And the process will be by the injection of a new 
 and mighty motive power. The shallow-minded 
 man will have an intense desire to study God's won- 
 drous classic so as to learn His will. And though 
 his studies may not get much farther, yet no one 
 book so disciplines and deepens the mind as that. 
 The lazy man will find a fire kindling in his bones 
 to please his Master and do something for Him, 
 that will burn through and burn up his indolence. 
 The man of hasty judgment will find himself stop- 
 ping to consider what his Master would desire. 
 And the mere pause to think is a long step toward 
 more accurate jwdgment. He will become a rever- 
 ent student of the word of God, and nothing corrects 
 the judgment like that. 
 
 The self-willed, headstrong man will likely have 
 the toughest time of any. To let his own plan 
 utterly go, and instead fit into a radically different 
 one will shake him up terrifically. But that mighty 
 One within will lovingly woo and move him. And 
 as he yields, and victory comes, he will be delighted 
 to find that the highest act of the strongest will is in 
 yielding to a higher will when found. He will be 
 charmed to discover that the rarest liberty comes 
 only in perfect obedience to perfect law. 
 
 And so every sort of man who has gotten some 
 moral twist or obliquity in his mental make-up will 
 be straightened out to the normal standard of his 
 Maker, as he allows Him to lake full control. 
 
 The fourth fact : All this growth and development
 
 190 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 will be strictly along the groove of the man's natural 
 endowment. The natural mental bent will not be 
 changed though the moral crooks will be straight- 
 ened out. Peter's rash, self-assertive twists are 
 corrected, but he remains the same Peter mentally. 
 He does not possess the rare logical powers of Paul, 
 nor the judicial administrative temper of James, 
 before the infilling, and is not endowed with either 
 after that experience. John's intensity which 
 would call down fire to burn up supposed foes is 
 not removed but turned into another channel, and 
 burns itself out in love. Jonathan Edwards retains 
 and develops his marvelous faculty of metaphysical 
 reasoning and uses it to influence men for God. 
 Finney's intensely logical mind is not changed but 
 fired and used in the same direction. 
 
 Moody has neither of these gifts, but has an un- 
 usually magnetic presence, and a great executive 
 faculty which leaves its impress on his blunt direct 
 speech. His faculties are not changed, nor added to, 
 but developed wonderfully and used. Geo. Mueller 
 never becomes a great preacher like these three; 
 nor an expositor, but finds his rare development 
 in his marked administrative skill. Charles Studd 
 remains a poor speaker with jagged rhetoric and 
 with no organizing knack, though the fire of God 
 in his presence kindles the flames of mission zeal 
 in the British universities, and melts your heart 
 as you listen. Shaftsbury's mental processes show 
 the generations of aristocratic breeding even in his
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 191 
 
 costermonger's cart lovingly winning these men, or 
 after midnight searching out the waifs of London's 
 nooks and docks. Clough is refused by the mis- 
 sionary board because of his lack of certain required 
 qualifications, and when finally he reaches the field 
 none of these qualities appears, but his skill as an 
 engineer gives him a hold upon thousands whom his 
 presence and God-breathed passion for souls win to 
 Jesus Christ. Carey's unusual linguistic talent, 
 Mary Lyon's teaching gift are not changed but 
 developed and used. The growth produced by the 
 Spirit's presence is strictly along the groove of the 
 natural gift. But note that in this great variety of 
 natural endowment there is one trait a moral trait, 
 not a mental that marks all alike, namely a per- 
 vading purpose, that comes to be a passion, to do 
 God's will, and get men to know Him, and that 
 everything is forced to bend to this dominant pur- 
 pose. Is not this glorious unity in diversity? 
 
 Saved and Sent to Serve. 
 
 The third group of results affects our service. 
 We will want to serve. Love must act. We must do 
 something for our Master. We must do something 
 for those around us. There will be a new spirit of 
 service. Its peculiar characteristic and charm will be 
 the heart o] love in it. Love will envelop and under- 
 gird and pervade and exude from all service. There 
 will be a fine graciousness, a patience, a strong
 
 192 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 tenderness, an earnest faithfulness, a hopeful tire- 
 lessness which will despair of no man, and of no 
 situation. 
 
 The sort of service and the sphere of service will 
 be left entirely to the direction of the indwelling 
 Holy Spirit, "dividing to every man as He will." 
 There will be no choosing of a life work but a 
 prayerful waiting till His choice is clear, and then a 
 joyous acceptance of that. There will be no attempt 
 to open doors, not even with a single touch or twist 
 of the knob, but only an entering of opened doors. 
 
 If the work be humble, or the place lowly, or 
 both, there will be a cheery eager using of the 
 highest powers keyed to their best pitch. If higher 
 up, a steady remembering that there can be no 
 power save as the Spirit controls, and a praying to 
 be kept from the dizziness which unaccustomed 
 height is apt to produce. Large quantities of paper 
 and ink will be saved. For many letters of applica- 
 tion and indorsement will remain unwritten. 
 
 The Master's say-so is accepted by Spirit-led men 
 as final. He chooses Peter to open the door to the 
 outer nations, and Paul to enter the opened door. 
 He chooses not an apostle but Philip to open up 
 Samaria, and Titus to guide church matters in 
 Crete. A miner's son is chosen to shake Europe, 
 and a cobbler to kindle anew the missionary fires of 
 Christendom. Livingston is sent to open up the 
 heart of Africa for a fresh infusion of the blood of 
 the Son of God. A nurse-maid, whose name re-
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 193 
 
 mains unknown, is used to mold for God the child 
 who became the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, one of 
 the most truly Spirit-filled men of the world. 
 Geo. Mueller is chosen for the signal service of 
 re-teaching men that God still lives and actually 
 answers prayer. Speer is used to breathe a new 
 spirit of devotion among college students, and Mott 
 to arouse and organize their service around the 
 world. Geo. Williams and Robert McBurney 
 become the leaders, British and American, in an 
 in-Spirited movement to win young men by thou- 
 sands. An earnest woman is chosen to mother and 
 to shape for God the tender years of earth's greatest 
 queen, who through character and position exerted 
 a greater influence for righteousness than any other 
 woman. The common factor in all is the Chooser. 
 Jesus is the Chief Executive of the campaign through 
 His Spirit. The direction of it belongs to Him. He 
 knows best what each one can do. He knows best 
 what needs to be done. He is ambitious that each of 
 us shall be the best, and have the best. He has a 
 plan thought out for each life, and for the whole 
 campaign. His Spirit is in us to administer His 
 plan. He never sleeps. He divideth to every man 
 severally as He will. And His is a loving, wise will. 
 It can be trusted. 
 
 A Spirit-mastered man slowly comes to under- 
 stand that service now is apprenticeship-service. 
 He is in training for the time when a King shall 
 reign, and will need tested and trusted and trained
 
 194 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 servants. He is in college getting ready for com- 
 mencement day. That may explain in part why 
 some of the workers whom we think can be least 
 spared, are called away in their prime. Their ap- 
 prentice term is served. School's out. They are 
 moved up. 
 
 The Music of the Wind Harp. 
 
 Please remember that these are flood-tide results. 
 Some good people will never know them except in 
 a very limited way. For they do not open the sluice- 
 gates wide enough to let the waters reach flood-tide 
 These results "will vary in degree with the degree and 
 constancy of the yielding to the Spirit 1 s control. A 
 full yielding at the start, and constantly continued 
 will bring these results in full measure and without 
 break, though the growth will be gradual. For it is 
 a rising flood, ever increasing in height and depth 
 and sweep and power. Partial surrender will mean 
 only partial results; the largest and finest results 
 come only as the spirit has full control, for the work 
 is all His, by and with our consent. 
 
 In one of her exquisite poems Frances Ridley 
 Havergal tells of a friend who was given an seolian 
 harp which, she was told, sent out unutterably sweet 
 melodies. She tried to bring the music by playing 
 upon it with her hand, but found the seven strings 
 would yield but one tone. Keenly disappointed 
 she turned to the letter sent before the gift and
 
 The Flood-Tide of Power. 195 
 
 found she had not noticed the directions given. 
 Following them carefully she placed the harp in the 
 opened window-way where the wind could blow 
 upon it. Quite a while she waited but at last in 
 the twilight the music came: 
 
 "Like stars that tremble into light 
 
 Out of the purple dark, a low, sweet note 
 Just trembled out of silence, antidote 
 To any doubt ; for never finger might 
 Produce that note, so different, so new: 
 Melodious pledge that all He promised should come 
 true. 
 
 "Anon a thrill of all the strings; 
 
 And then a flash of music, swift and bright, 
 Like a first throb of weird Auroral light, 
 Then crimson coruscations from the wings 
 Of the Pole-spirit ; then ecstatic beat, 
 As if an angel-host went forth on shining feet. 
 
 "Soon passed the sounding starlit march, 
 
 And then one swelling note grew full and long, 
 While, like a far-off cathedral song, 
 Through dreamy length of echoing aisle and arch 
 Float softest harmonies around, above, 
 Like flowing chordal robes of blessing and of love. 
 
 "Thus, while the holy stars did shine 
 
 And listen, the aeolian marvels breathed ; 
 While love and peace and gratitude enwreathed 
 With rich dlight in one fair crown were mine. 
 The wind that bloweth where it listeth brought 
 This glory of harp-musicnot my skill or thought."
 
 196 The Flood-Tide of Power. 
 
 And the listening friend to whom this wondrous 
 experience is told, who has had a great sorrow in 
 her life, and been much troubled in her thoughts and 
 plans replies: 
 
 " .... I too have tried 
 My finger skill in vain. But opening now 
 My window, like wise Daniel, I will set 
 My little harp therein, and listening wait 
 The breath of heaven, the Spirit of our God." 
 
 May we too learn the lesson of the wind-harp. 
 For man is God's aeolian harp. The human-taught 
 finger skill can bring some rare music, yet by com- 
 parison it is at best but a monotone. When the 
 instrument is set to catch the full breathing of the 
 breath of God, then shall it sound out the rarest 
 wealth of music's melodies. As the life is yielded 
 fully to the breathing of the Spirit we shall find the 
 peace of God which passeth all understanding filling 
 the heart; and the power of God that passeth all 
 resisting flooding the life; and others shall find the 
 beauty of God, that passeth all describing, trans- 
 figuring the face; and the dewy fragrance of God, 
 that passeth all comparing, pervading the personal- 
 ity, though most likely we shall not know it.
 
 FRESH SUPPLIES OF POWER.
 
 FRESH SUPPLIES OF POWER. 
 
 'As the Dew " 
 
 There is another very important bit needed to 
 complete the circle of truth we are going over 
 together in these quiet talks. Namely, the daily life 
 after the act of surrender and all that comes with 
 that act. The steady pull day by day. After the 
 eagle-flight up into highest air, and the hundred 
 yards dash, or even the mile run, comes the steady, 
 steady walking mile after mile. The real test of life 
 is here. And the highest victories are here, too. 
 
 I recall the remark made by a friend when this 
 sort of thing was being discussed: "I would make 
 the surrender gladly but as I think of my home 
 life I know I cannot keep it." There was the rub. 
 The day-by-day life afterwards. The habitual steady- 
 going when temptations come in, and when many 
 special aids, and stimulating surroundings are with- 
 drawn. This last talk together is about this after- 
 life. What is the plan for that? Well, let us talk 
 it over a bit. 
 
 Have you noticed that the old earth receives a 
 fresh baptism of life daily? Every night the life- 
 giving dew is distilled. The moisture rises during 
 the day from ocean, and lake, and river, undergoes a 
 199
 
 2oo Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 chemical change in God's laboratory and returns 
 nightly in dew to refresh the earth. It brings to all 
 nature new life, with rare beauty, and fills the air 
 with the exquisite fragrance drawn from flowers and 
 plants. Its power to purify .and revitalize is pecu- 
 liar and remarkable. It distils only in the night 
 when the world is at rest. It can come only on 
 clear calm nights. Both cloud and wind disturb and 
 prevent its working. It comes quietly and works 
 noiselessly. But the changes effected are radical and 
 immeasurable. Literally it gives to the earth a 
 nightly baptism of new life. That is God's plan for 
 the earth. Anc" that, too, let me say to you, is His 
 plan for our day-by-day life. 
 
 It hushes one's heart with a gentle awe to go out 
 early in the morning after a clear night when air 
 and flower and leaf are fragrant with an indescribable 
 freshness, and listen to God's voice saying, "7 will 
 be as the dew unto Israel." That sentence is the 
 climax of the book where it occurs. 1 God is trying 
 through Hosea to woo His people away from their 
 evil leaders up to Himself again. To a people who 
 knew well the vitalizing power of the deep dews of 
 an Oriental night, and their own dependence upon 
 them, He says with pleading voice, "I will be to 
 you as the dew." 
 
 The setting of that sentence is made very win- 
 some. The beauty of the lily, and of the olive-tree; 
 the strength of the roots of Lebanon's giant cedars, 
 
 1 Hosea xiv : 5.
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 201 
 
 and the fragrance of their boughs; the fruitfulness 
 of the vine, and the richness of the grain harvest are 
 used to bring graphically to their minds the meaning 
 of His words: "as the dew." 
 
 Tenderly as He speaks to that nation in which 
 His love-plan for a world centered, more tenderly 
 yet does He ever speak to the individual heart. 
 That wondrous One who is "alongside to help" 
 will be by the atmosphere of His presence to you 
 and to me as the dew is to the earth a daily re- 
 freshing of new life, with its new strength, and rare 
 beauty and fine fragrance. 
 
 Have you noticed how Jesus Himself puts His 
 ideal for the day-by-day life? At that last Feast of 
 Tabernacles He said, "He that believeth on me out 
 of his inner being shall flow rivers of water of life." * 
 Jesus was fairly saturated with the Old Testament 
 figures and language. Here He seems to be think- 
 ing, of that remarkable river-vision of Ezekiel's. 2 
 You remember how much space is given there to 
 describing a wonderful river running through a place 
 where living waters had never flowed. The stream 
 begins with a few strings of water trickling out from 
 under the door-step of the temple, and rises gradu- 
 ally but steadily ankle-deep, knee-deep, loin-deep, 
 over-head, until flood-tide is reached, and an ever 
 rising and deepening flood-tide. And everywhere 
 the waters go is life with beauty, and fruitfulness. 
 
 1 John vii: 37-39. 
 * Ezekiel xlvii: i-ia.
 
 2O2 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 There is no drought, no ebbing, but a continual 
 flowing in, and filling up, and flooding out. In 
 these two intensely vivid figures is given our Mas- 
 ter's carefully, lovingly thought out plan for the 
 day-by-day life. 
 
 In actual experience the reverse of this is, shall I 
 say too much if I say, most commonly the case? It 
 seems to be so. Who of us has not at times been 
 conscious of some failure that cut keenly into the 
 very tissue of the heart! And even when no such 
 break may have come there is ever a heart-yearning 
 for more than has yet been experienced. The men 
 who seem to know most of God's power have had 
 great, unspeakable longings at times for a fresh 
 consciousness of that power. 
 
 There is a simple but striking incident told of one 
 of Mr. Moody's British campaigns. He was resting 
 a few days after a tour in which God's power was 
 plainly felt and seen. He was soon to be out at 
 work again. Talking out of his inner heart to a few 
 sympathetic friends, he earnestly asked them to join 
 in prayer that he might receive "a fresh baptism of 
 power." Without doubt that very consciousness of 
 failure, and this longing for more is evidence of the 
 Spirit's presence within wooing us up the heights. 
 
 The language that springs so readily to one's lips 
 at such times is just such as Mr. Moody used, a 
 fresh baptism, a fresh filling, a fresh anointing. 
 And the fresh consciousness of God's presence and 
 power is to one as a fresh act of anointing on His
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 203 
 
 part. Practically it does not matter whether there 
 is actually a fresh act upon the Spirit's part, or a 
 renewed consciousness upon our part of His pres- 
 ence, and a renewed humble depending wholly 
 upon Him. Yet to learn the real truth puts one's 
 relationship to God in the clearer light that prevents 
 periods of doubt and darkness. Does it not too 
 bring one yet nearer to Him? In this case it cer- 
 tainly suggests a depth and a tenderness of His 
 unparalleled love of which some of us have not even 
 dreamed. So far as the Scriptures seem to suggest 
 there is not a fresh act upon God's part at certain 
 times in one's experience, but His wondrous love is 
 such that there is a continuous act a continuous 
 flooding in of all the gracious power of His Spirit 
 that the human conditions will admit of. The flood- 
 tide is ever being poured out from above, but, as a 
 rule, our gates are not open full width. And so only 
 part can get in, and part wliich He is giving is 
 restrained by us. 
 
 Without doubt, too, the incoming flood expands 
 that into which it comes. And so the capacity in- 
 creases ever more, and yet more. And, too, we 
 may become much more sensitive to the Spirit's 
 presence. We may grow into better mediums for 
 the transmission of His power. As the hindrances 
 and limitations of centuries of sin's warping and 
 stupefying are gradually lessened there is a freer 
 better channel for the through-flowing of His power.
 
 2O4 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 A Transition Stage. 
 
 Such seems to be the teaching of the old Book. 
 Let us look into it a little more particularly. One 
 needs to be discriminating in quoting the Book of 
 Acts on this subject. That book marks a transition 
 stage historically in the experience possible to men. 
 Some of the older persons in the Acts lived in three 
 distinct periods. There was the Old Testament 
 period when a salvation was foretold and promised. 
 Then came the period when Jesus was on the earth 
 and did a wholly new thing in the world's history in 
 actually working out a salvation. And then fol- 
 lowed the period of the Holy Spirit applying to 
 men the salvation worked out by Jesus. All these 
 persons named in the Book of Acts lived both before 
 and after the day of Pentecost, which marked the 
 descent of the Holy Spirit. The Book of Acts 
 marks the clear establishing of the transition from 
 the second to the third of these three periods. Ever 
 since then men have lived after Pentecost. The 
 transitional period of the Book of Acts is behind us. 
 
 Men in Old Testament times both in the Hebrew 
 nation and outside of it were born of the Spirit, 
 and under His sway. But there was a limit to what 
 He could do, because there was a limit to what had 
 been done. The Holy Spirit is the executive mem- 
 ber of the Godhead. He applies to men what has 
 been worked out, or achieved for them, and only 
 that. Jesus came and did a new thing which stands
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 205 
 
 wholly alone in history. He lived a sinless life, and 
 then He died sacrificially for men, and then further, 
 arose up to a new life after death. The next step 
 necessary was the sending down of the divine ex- 
 ecutive to work out in men this new achievement. 
 He does in men what Jesus did for them. He can 
 do much more for us than for the Old Testament 
 people because much more has been done for us by 
 God through Jesus. The standing of a saved man 
 before Pentecost was like that of a young child in a 
 rich family who cannot under the provisions of the 
 family will come into his inheritance until the 
 majority age is reached. After the Son of God 
 came, men are through Him reckoned as being as 
 He is, namely in full possession of all rights con- 
 ferred by being a born son of full age. Now note 
 carefully that this Book of Acts marks the transition 
 from the one period to the other. And so one needs 
 to be discriminating in applying the experiences of 
 men passing through a transition period to those 
 who live wholly afterwards. 
 
 The After- Teaching. 
 
 The after-Pentecost teaching, that is the personal 
 relation to the Spirit by one who has received Him 
 to-day, may best be learned from the epistles. 
 Paul's letters form the bulk of the New Testament 
 after the Book of Acts is passed. They contain the 
 Spirit's after-teaching regarding much which the
 
 206 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 disciples were not yet able to receive from Jesus' 
 own lips. They were written to churches that were 
 far from ideal. They were composed largely of peo- 
 ple dug out of the darkest heathenism. And with the 
 infinite patience and tact of the Spirit Paul writes 
 to them with a pen dipped in his own heart. 
 
 A rather careful run through these thirteen letters 
 brings to view two things about the relation of these 
 people to the Holy Spirit. First there are certain 
 allusions or references to the Spirit, and then certain 
 exhortations. Note first these allusions. 1 They are 
 numerous. In them it is constantly assumed that 
 these people have received the Holy Spirit. Paul's 
 dealing with the twelve disciples whom he found at 
 Ephesus 2 suggests his habit in dealing with all whom 
 he taught. Reading that incident in connection 
 with these letters seems to suggest that in every 
 place he laid great stress upon the necessity of the 
 Spirit's control in every life. And now in writing 
 back to these friends nearly all the allusions to the 
 Spirit are in language that assumes that they have 
 surrendered fully and been filled with His presence. 
 
 There are just four exhortations about the Holy 
 Spirit. It is significant to notice what these are not. 
 They are not exhorted to seek the baptism of the 
 
 1 i Thessalpnians iv: 8. 
 
 1 Corinthians xii: I-H. 
 
 2 Corinthians xn 4. 
 
 Galatians iii: 2-5; iv: 6; v: 5, 18, 18, 22-25. 
 Romans viii: 1-27; xv: 13. 
 Colossians i: 8. 
 Philippians iii: 3. 
 Titus iii: 5-6. 
 Acts xix: 1-7.
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 207 
 
 Holy Spirit nor to wait for the filling. There is no 
 word about refillings, fresh baptisms or anointings. 
 For these people, unlike most of us to-day, have been 
 thoroughly instructed regarding the Spirit and pre- 
 sumably have had the great radical experience of 
 His full incoming. On the other hand notice what 
 these exhortations are. To the Thessalonians in his 
 first letter he says, "Quench not the Spirit." 1 To 
 the disciples scattered throughout the province of 
 Galatia who had been much disturbed by false 
 leaders he gives a rule to be followed, "Walk by the 
 Spirit." 2 The other two of these incisive words of 
 advice are found in the Ephesian letter "Grieve not 
 the Spirit of God," 3 and "be ye filled with the 
 Spirit." 4 
 
 These exhortations like the allusions assume that 
 they have received the Spirit, and know that they 
 have. The last quoted, "be ye filled," may seem at 
 first flush to be an exception to this, but I think we 
 shall see in a moment that a clearer rendering takes 
 away this seeming, and shows it as agreeing with the 
 others in the general teaching. 
 
 This letter to the Ephesians may perhaps be taken 
 as a fair index of the New Testament teaching on 
 this matter after the descent of the Spirit; the after- 
 teaching promised by Jesus. It bears evidence of 
 being a sort of circular letter intended to be sent in 
 
 1 i Thessalonians v: 19. 
 
 * Galatians v: 16. 
 
 Ephesians iv: 30. 
 *Eph. v:i8.
 
 208 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 turn to a number of the churches, and is therefore 
 a still better illustration of the after-teaching. The 
 latter half of the letter is dealing wholly with this 
 question of the day-by-day life after the distinct act 
 of surrender and infilling. Here are found two 
 companion exhortations. One is negative : the other 
 positive. The two together suggest the rounded 
 truth which we are now seeking. On one side is 
 this: "Grieve not the Spirit of God," and on the 
 other side is this: "be ye filled with the Spirit." 
 Bishop H. C. G. Moule calls attention to the more 
 nearly accurate reading of this last, "be ye filling 
 with the Spirit." That suggests two things, a 
 habitual inflow, and, that it depends on us to keep the 
 inlets ever open. Now around about these two 
 companion exhortations are gathered two groups of 
 friendly counsels. One group is about the grieving 
 things which must be avoided. The other group is 
 about the positive things to be cultivated. And the 
 inference of the whole passage is that this avoiding 
 and this cultivating result in the habitual filling of 
 the Spirit's presence. 
 
 Cross- Currents. 
 
 Fresh supplies of power then seem to be depend- 
 ent upon two things. The first is this : Keeping the 
 life clear of hindrances. This is the negative side, 
 though it takes very positive work. It is really the 
 abnormal side of the true life. Sin is abnormal,
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 209 
 
 unnatural. It is a foreign element that has come 
 into the world and into life disturbing the natural 
 order. It must be kept out. The whole concern 
 here is keeping certain things out of the life. The 
 task is that of staying in the world but keeping the 
 world-spirit out of us. We are to remain in the 
 world for its sake, but to allow nothing in it to dis- 
 turb our full touch with the other world where our 
 citizenship is. The Christian's position in this world 
 is strikingly like that of a nation's ambassador at a 
 foreign court. Joseph H. Choate mingles freely 
 with the subjects of King Kdward, attends many 
 functions, makes speeches, grants occasional inter- 
 views, but he is ever on the alert with his rarely 
 keen mind, and long years of legal training not to 
 utter a syllable which might not properly come from 
 the head of his home government. Never for one 
 moment is he off his guard. His whole aim is to keep 
 in perfect sympathy with his home country as repre- 
 sented by its head. He never forgets that he is there 
 as a stranger, sojourning for a while, belonging to 
 and representing a foreign country. So, and only 
 so, all the authority and power of his own govern- 
 ment flows through his person and is in every word 
 and act. Such a man invariably provides himself 
 with a home in which is breathed the atmosphere of 
 his far away homeland. Now we are strangers, 
 sojourners, indeed more, ambassadors, representa- 
 tives of a government foreign to the present prince 
 of this world. It is only as we keep in perfect sym-
 
 2io Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 pathy with the homeland and its Head that there 
 can flow into and through us all the immeasurable 
 power of our King. Whatever interrupts that inter- 
 course with headquarters interrupts the flow of 
 power in our lives and service. We must guard most 
 jealously against such things. 
 
 Electricity helps a man here, in the similes it sug- 
 gests. For instance the electric current passing 
 into a building is sometimes mysteriously turned 
 aside and work seriously interrupted. A cross-wire 
 dropping down out of place, and leaning upon the 
 feed-wire has drawn the power into itself and off 
 somewhere else. The cross is apt to be in some 
 unknown place, and much searching is frequently 
 necessary before it can be found and fixed. And all 
 the work affected by that feed- wire waits till the fix- 
 ing is done. 
 
 The spirit atmosphere in which we live is full, 
 chock-full, of cross-currents. And a man has to be 
 keenly alert to keep his feed-wire clear. If it be 
 crossed, or grounded, away goes the power, while 
 he may be wondering why. 
 
 What are some of the cross-currents that threaten 
 to draw the power of the feed- wire? Well, just like 
 the electric currents some of them seem very trivial. 
 Here are a few of the commoner ones: 
 
 Failure to keep bodily appetites under control. 
 Intimate fellowship with those who are enemies of 
 our Lord, it may be in some organization, or other- 
 wise. The absence of a spirit of loving sympathy.
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 211 
 
 The dominance in one's life of a critical spirit which 
 saps the warmth out of everything it touches. Jeal- 
 ousy, and the whole brood which that single word 
 suggests. Keeping money which God would have 
 out in service for himself. Self-seeking. Self-as- 
 sertion. A frivolous spirit, instead of a joyous win- 
 someness, or a sweet seriousness. Overworking 
 one's bodily strength, which grows out of a wrong 
 ambition, and is trusting one's own efforts more 
 than God's power, and which always involves dis- 
 obedience of His law for the body. Over-anxiety 
 which robs the mind of its freshness, and the spirit 
 of its sweetness, and whose roots are the same as 
 overwork. 
 
 The hot hasty word. The uncontrolled temper. 
 The pride that will not confess to having been in the 
 wrong. Lack of rugged honesty in speech. Careless- 
 ness in money matters. Lack of reverence for the 
 body. The unholy use between two, whose relation 
 is the most sacred of earth, of that hallowed func- 
 tion of nature which has rigidly but one normal use. 
 
 Some personal habit which may be common 
 enough, and for which plausible arguments can be 
 made, but which does take the fine edge off of the 
 inner consciousness of the Master's approval. Keen 
 shrewd scheming for position by those in holy 
 service. 
 
 Paul's Galatian letter supplies these items: 
 wrangling; wordy disputes; passionate outbursts of 
 anger; wire-pulling or electioneering, that is, using
 
 212 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 the world's methods to attain one's ends by those in 
 God's service. 
 
 These are some of the cross-currents that are 
 surely drawing the power out of many a life to-day. 
 But how may one know surely about the wrong 
 thing? Well, that One who resides within the 
 heart is very sensitive and is very faithful. If I 
 will jealously keep on good terms, aye on the best 
 terms, with Him, ever listening, ever obeying, I will 
 come to know at first touch the thing that disturbs 
 His sensitive spirit. And to keep that thing out, 
 uncompromisingly, unflinchingly out, is the only 
 safeguard here. 
 
 But there will be continual testings and tempt- 
 ings. Testings by God. Temptings by Satan. 
 There will be testings by God that the realness of 
 the surrender may be made clear, and, too, that in 
 these repeated siftings the dross may all go, and only 
 the pure gold remain. The will must be exercised in 
 rejecting and accepting that its fiber may be tough- 
 ened. No man knows how deep is his conviction 
 until the test comes. God will test for love's sake 
 to strengthen. Satan will tempt for hate's sake to 
 trip up and weaken. God's testings will give 
 strength for Satan's temptings. And out of this 
 double furnace the gold comes doubly purified. 
 
 Some circumstance arises involving a decision. 
 There is a clear conviction of what the inner One 
 prefers but it runs against our plans in which 
 friends or loved ones are concerned who may not
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 213 
 
 see eye-to-eye with us. To follow the conviction 
 means misunderstanding and some sacrifice. And so 
 the test is on. To be tactful, and gentle in follow- 
 ing rigidly the clear conviction will take grace, and, 
 will bring a refining of life's strength and fabric. 
 
 To run through this old Book and call the names 
 is to bring to mind the men who have gone through 
 just such testings and temptings; some with splen- 
 did victory, and some with shameful defeat. 
 
 So it comes to pass that surrender is not simply 
 the initial act into this life of power. It must be- 
 come the continuous habit. There must be a habitual 
 living up to the act. Surrender comes to be an atti- 
 tude of the will affecting every act and event of life. 
 And by and by the instinctive measuring of every- 
 thing by its relation to Jesus comes to be the in- 
 voluntary habit of the life. 
 
 Friends with God. 
 
 The second thing upon which fresh supplies of 
 power hinge is the cultivation of personal friendship 
 with God. This is the positive side of the new life. 
 This is the true natural life. It is the living con- 
 stantly in the atmosphere of the Spirit's presence. 
 
 The highest and closest relation possible between 
 any two is friendship. The basis of friendship is 
 sympathy, that is, fellow-feeling. The atmosphere 
 of friendship is mutual unquestioning trust. In the 
 original meaning of the word, a friend is a lover.
 
 214 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 A friend is one who loves you for your sake alone, 
 and steadfastly loves, regardless of any return, even 
 return-love. Friendship hungers for a closer knowl- 
 edge, and for a deeper intimacy. Friendship grows 
 with exchange of confidences. Friends are confi- 
 dants. 
 
 "As in a double solitude, ye think in each other's hearing." 
 
 A man's friendships shape his life more than aught 
 else, or all else. 
 
 Now this is the tender relation which God Him- 
 self desires with each of us. Did Jesus ever speak 
 more tenderly than on that last Thursday night 
 when He said to those constant companions of two 
 years, "I have called you friends, for all things that 
 I heard from My Father I have made known unto 
 you"? Out of his own experience David writes, 
 "The friendship of the Lord is with those that rever- 
 ently love Him, and He will give evidence of His 
 friendship by showing to them His covenant, His 
 plans, and His power." And David knew. Abra- 
 ham had the reputation of being a friend of God. 
 He even trusted his darling boy's life to God when he 
 could not understand what God was doing. And he 
 found God worthy of his friendship. He spared that 
 darling boy even though later He spared not His 
 own darling boy. It thrills one's heart to hear God 
 saying, "Abraham my friend." Friendship with 
 God means such oneness of spirit with Him that 
 He may do with us and through us what He wills.
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 215 
 
 This and this alone is the true power God in us, 
 and God with us free to do as He wills. 
 
 Now trust is the native air of friendship. A 
 breath of doubt chills and chokes. If one is filled 
 and surrounded by trust in God as the atmosphere 
 of his life his touch with God then becomes most 
 intimate. Satan cannot breathe in that atmosphere. 
 It chokes him. Air is the native element of the bird. 
 Away from air it gasps and dies. Water is the 
 native element of the fish. Out of water it chokes 
 and gasps and dies. Trust is the native element of 
 friendship friendship with God. A constant feel- 
 ing of confidence in GOD that believes in His over- 
 ruling power, and in His unfailing love, and rests in 
 Him in the darkness when the thing you prize most 
 is lying bound on the stony altar. 
 
 The Spirit of God is a friend, a lover. He is ever 
 wooing us up the heights. Let us climb up. He is 
 every wooing us into the inner recesses of friendship 
 with Himself. Shall we not go along with Him? 
 This is the secret of a life ever fresh with the pres- 
 ence of God. It is the only pathway of increasing 
 youthfulness in the power of God. 
 
 "And in old age, when others fade, 
 They fruit still forth shall bring; 
 They shall be fat, and full of sap, 
 And aye be flourishing."
 
 2 1 6 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 A Bunch of Keys. 
 
 To those who would enter these inner sacred 
 recesses here is a small bunch of keys which will 
 unlock the doors. Three keys in this bunch; a 
 key-time, a key-book, and a key- word. The key- 
 time is time alone with God daily. With the door 
 shut. Outside things shut outside, and one's self 
 shut in alone with God. This is the try sting-hour 
 with our Friend. Here He will reveal Himself to us, 
 and reveal our real selves to ourselves. This is 
 going to school to God. It is giving Him a chance 
 to instruct and correct, to strengthen and mellow 
 and sweeten us. One must get alone to find out that 
 he never is alone. The more alone we are so far as 
 men are concerned the least alone we are so far as 
 God is concerned. It must be unhurried time. Time 
 enough to forget about time. When the mind is fresh 
 and open. One must use this key if he is to know 
 the sweets of friendship with God. 
 
 The key-book is this marvelous old classic of God's 
 Word. Take this book with you when you go to 
 keep tryst with your Friend. God speaks in His 
 Word. He will take these words and speak them 
 with His own voice into the ear of your heart. You 
 will be surprised to find how light on every sort of 
 question will come. It is remarkable what a faithful 
 half-hour daily with a good paragraph 1 Bible in 
 wide, swift, continuous reading will do in giving one 
 
 1 One beauty of the revised version is its paragraphing.
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 217 
 
 a swing and a grasp of this old Book. In time, and 
 not long time either, one will come to be saturated 
 with its thought and spirit. Reading the Bible is 
 listening to God. It is fairly pathetic what a hard 
 time God has to get men's ears. He is ever speak- 
 ing but we will not be quiet enough to hear. One 
 always enjoys listening to his friend. What this 
 Friend says to us will change radically our concep- 
 tions of Himself, and of life. It will clear the vision, 
 and discipline the judgment, and stiffen the will. 
 
 The key-word is obedience: a glad prompt doing 
 of what our Friend desires because He desires it. 
 Obedience is saying "yes" to God. It is the harmony 
 of the life with the will of God. With some it 
 seems to mean a servile bondage to details. It 
 should rather mean a spirit of intelligent loyalty to 
 God. It aims to learn His will, and then to do it. 
 God's will is revealed in His word. His particular 
 will for my life He will reveal to me if I will listen, 
 and, if I will obey, so far as I know to obey. If I 
 obey what I know, I will know more. Obedience is 
 the organ of knowledge in the soul. "He that will- 
 eth to do His will shall know." 
 
 God's will includes His plan for a world, and for 
 each life in the world. Both concern us. He would 
 first work in us, that He may work through us in 
 His passionate outreach for a world. His will in- 
 cludes every bit of one's life; and therefore obedience 
 must also include every bit. A run out in a single 
 direction may serve as a suggestion of many others.
 
 2 1 8 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 The law of my body, which obeyed brings or con- 
 tinues health is God's will, as much as that which 
 concerns moral action. Our bodies are holy because 
 God lives in them. Overwork, insufficient sleep, 
 that imprudent diet and eating which seems the rule 
 rather than the exception, carelessness of bodily 
 protection in rain or storm or drafts or otherwise : 
 these are sins against God's will for the body, and 
 no one who is disobedient here can ever be a chan- 
 nel of power up to the measure of God's longing 
 for us. 
 
 And so regarding all of one's life, one must ever 
 keep an open mind Godward so as to get a well 
 balanced sense of what His will is. Practice is the 
 great thing here. This is school work. By per- 
 sistent listening and practising there comes a mature 
 judgment which avoids extremes in both directions. 
 But the rule is this: cheery prompt obeying regard- 
 less of consequences. Disobedience, failure to obey, 
 is breaking with our Friend. 
 
 These are the three keys which will let us into the 
 innermost chambers of friendship with God. And 
 with them goes a key-ring on which these keys must 
 be strung. It is this: implicit trust in God. Trust 
 is the native air of friendship. In its native air it 
 grows strong and beautiful. Whatever disturbs an 
 active abiding trust in God must be driven out of 
 doors, and kept out. Doubt chills the air below 
 normal. Anxiety overheats the air. A calm looking 
 up into God's face with an unquestioning faith in
 
 Fresh Supplies of Power. 219 
 
 Him under every sort of circumstance this is trust. 
 Faith has three elements: knowledge, belief and 
 trust. Knowledge is acquaintance with certain facts. 
 Belief is accepting these facts as true. Trust is 
 risking something that is very precious. Trust is the 
 life-blood of faith. This is the atmosphere of the 
 true natural life as planned by God. 
 
 "If a wren can cling 
 To a spray a-swing 
 
 In a mad May wind, and sing, and sing, 
 As if she'd burst for joy; 
 Why cannot I, 
 Contented lie, 
 
 In His quiet arms, beneath His sky, 
 Unmoved by earth's annoy?" 
 
 Shall we take these keys, and this key-ring and 
 use them faithfully? It will mean intimate friend- 
 ship with God. And that is the one secret of power, 
 fresh, and ever freshening. 
 
 There is a simple story told of an old German 
 friend of God, which illustrates all of this with a 
 charmi ng picturesqueness . Professor Johan Albrecht 
 Bengal was a teacher in the seminary in Denkendorf, 
 Germany, in the eighteenth century. "He united 
 profound reverence for the Bible with an acuteness 
 which let nothing escape him." The seminary 
 students used to wonder at the great intellectuality, 
 and great humility and Christliness which blended 
 their beauty in him. One night, one of them, eager 
 to learn the secret of his holy life, slipped up into
 
 220 Fresh Supplies of Power. 
 
 his apartments while the professor was out lecturing 
 in the city, and hid himself behind the heavy cur- 
 tains in the deep recess of the old-fashioned window. 
 Quite a while he waited until he grew weary and 
 thought of how weary his teacher must be with his 
 long day's work in the class-room and the city. At 
 length he heard the step in the hall, and waited 
 breathlessly to learn the coveted secret. The man 
 came in, changed his shoes for slippers, and sitting 
 down at the study table, opened the old well-thumbed 
 German Bible and began reading leisurely page by 
 page. A half-hour he read, three-quarters of an 
 hour, an hour, and more yet. Then leaning his 
 head down on his hands for a few minutes in silence 
 he said in the simplest most familiar way, "Well, 
 Lord Jesus, we're on the same old terms. Good- 
 night." 
 
 If we might live like that. Begin the day with a 
 bit of time alone, a good-morning talk with Him. 
 And as the day goes on in its busy round sometimes 
 to put out your hand to Him, and under your breath 
 say, "let's keep on good terms, Lord Jesus." And 
 then when eventide comes in to go off alone with 
 Him for a quiet look into His face, and a good-night 
 talk, and to be able to say, with reverent familiarity : 
 "Good-night, Lord Jesus, we are on the same old 
 terms, you and I, good-night." Ah! such a life 
 will be fairly fragrant with the very presence of God.
 
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