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LIBRARY OF THE
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PRESENTED BY

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—THOUGHTS ON
UNION WITH CHRISTChoughts

Ciuton with Christ

4 a

7 BY

H. C. G. MOULE, M.A.
Principal of Riptry Hatt, and late Fellow of TRINITY
CoLttEGe, CamBRIDGE

Author of “ Tuoucurs on CHRISTIAN SANCTITY,” Ge,

pe

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‘““Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of Ged is m

ade unto us wisclom, and
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”— x COR. i, 30.

Cwelfth Thousand

NEW YORK
James Porr & Co., 14 & 16, Astor PLace
1836CON TEEN TS

I. PAGE |
In Curist 9 [|
IT.
Founp 1n Him 19 i}
4
Ii. WW
GrowTH Into Him 29
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UnszarcuaBLe Ricues , 40
Vv;
FRUITBEARING 54
Vi

ACCEPTED IN THE Betovep (i.)Contents.

 

 

 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
 

Hymns,

APPENDIX

WAT:

VAT.

IX.

A Mornine * Act or FaItTH’

AccEPTED IN THE BELovep (ii.)

ACCEPTED IN THE BELovED (iii. )

A PrRAcTICAL QUESTION ANSWERED

’

PAGE

76

go

I0§

E08

114PREFATORY NOTE

Tue subject of this little book is one of the trea-
sures of the inner Sanctuary of the Gospel, The
writer hardly needs to say that he has essayed to
touch it, on a few of its many sacred sides, with a
deep and ever deeper sense of the holiness of the
ground he has ventured to tread. What he has
written has been attempted only with a humble
and earnest hope that it may serve in some measure
to practical edification ; and every page is submitted
reverently and entirely to the authority of the
Holy Scriptures.

The book forms, in some sense, a companion to
the writer’s “Thoughts on Christian Sanctity.”?
In that little book the truth of the holy Union
was only passingly brought in, and reflection and
experience have led increasingly to the feeling that

it is a truth which must not only not be omittedViil Prefatory Note.

 

from the doctrine of Holiness, but be prominent
in it.

In the three chapters headed “Accepted in the
Beloved” the argument of a short treatise on
“Justifying Righteousness’” has been to some
extent reproduced, in a form less technical.

May the Heavenly Master use whatever is His
own in these pages, for His own holy purposes, and

forgive the rest.

Riptry Hatt,
CAMBRIDGE,

October 1885.Cinion with Christ
i
IN CHRIST.

In the Christian’s view and hold of the
Truth of Christ, it is his duty and his
strength to see and grasp central truths
as such. ‘There are suns, planets, and
satellites in the system of the blessed
Gospel. And as in the ancient astronomy
the great error about the sun’s relation to
our system occasioned manifold other
confusion, so 1t may be in the astronomy
of the upper skies. ‘To put a planetary
trath into a solar place must be a mistake
fruitful of mistakes. ‘To put a solar truth
in the centre, and its planetary truths
around it, and in connexion with it, will
surely be good both for mind and soul;
that is to say, if the adjustment is madeRom. xi.

IO In Christ.

 

“*in spirit and in truth,” not as a matter
of mere theory or discussion, but for
translation, by the grace of God, into the
life of faith.

Assuredly the planets will not lose in
lustre, nor their movements in majesty,
for such a recognition of the place and
function of their sun.

The supreme Sun of the spiritual uni-
verse, the ultimate Reason of everything
in the world and work of Grace, is the
Guiory or Gop. Whole systems of truth
move in subordinate relation to this; this
is subordinate to nothing. But we are
thinking now of one subordinate system,
and of its sun, supreme within that circle.
The system is the revealed way of fallen
Man’s salvation. ‘The solar truth of that
system, ruling and harmonizing the rest,
is the Unton of the Lord Christ and His
People. It is the truth conveyed in the
phrases. “‘in Christ,” “in Christ Jesus,”In Christ. II

 

, Christ in you,” ‘ joined unto the Lord.”
\ It is the truth of the Head and the Body,
\ the Limbs of the Body, the Branch and
the Root ; words which are but shadows of
/ the solid and eternal realities behind them.
~~ And thus all views of Gospel doctrines
which take no account of this are in-
adequate. ‘The views may be true in
themselves; they may avail to effect great
and gracious results; but they are inade-
quate, and the believer must lose more or
less by this inadequacy.
should say, or dream of saying, that the
truth of Vital and Covenant Union with
Christ is a truth whose definite mental
recognition is necessary to the soul’s sal-
vation. )But I do say, with the Holy
Scriptures open before me, that the neglect
of it, of avoidance of it, isa loss to the
soul, a loss of strength, of repose, of insight

into the reason of our hope, and into at Pet iii.
5-

great secret of growth in the divine life.

God forbid Ii? In Christ.

 

It is inadequate, and it is a spiritual
loss, to terminate our faith or teaching
within such phrases (true phrases and
holy, when truly used) as “The Lord
has loved me,” “ has sought me,” “ has
found me,” “has saved me,” “‘ has shed
His blood for me,”’ “ has given His grace
to me,’ “has changed me,”’ “leads and
guards me.” Happy the soul for which
such words are solid and well-grounded
certainties! But that soul still loses what it
might have, to its rich blessing, if it never
sees all these things to be linked to the
holy Unron as to their underlying secret
of peace and power.

Truly this truth is a thing which, if
revealed, must be worth the grasping. Is
it a divine certainty for every human
being who really accepts God’s witness
about His Son, yes, for every such being,
that he is not only very near Christ,Sbut
mv Christ, and Christ 1v him?? Is he notIn Christ. F3

 

only touched and held by the Lord, but

*¢ joined unto the Lord, one spirit ** «Es ce vi.
so, and so it is, here is no remote, super- *
fluous item in our secret of peace and life.
Here is the root, the centre, the repose.
Out of this sacred well flow the TIVES, «Con 7
clear as crystal, of righteousness, sanctifi- 3”
cation, and eternal redemption.

How full is the divine testimony
to the fact, to the blessings, of this
royal truth! How frequent is that phrase,
fullof eternal life, “um Crrisr’?! “Inaoy 2
Curist”’ the true Church was chosen, » *
and “ blessed with all spiritual blessing,”
before the Universe began. “In Curist,”’ Eph. i.6.
“the Beloved,”’ was given to it Accept-
ance before the Holy One. “In Curisr” Eph.i. 7,
‘we have redemption through His blood,
the forgiveness of sins.” “If any manz Cs v.
be in CurisT it is new creation.” “In Eph. -
Curist Jesus” the believer is “created 1.
unto good works,”

“In Curis Jesus ’’1Cor. i. 2.14 In Christ.

 

Eph. iii. he has been sanctified. ‘In Curistr”’ he
Gal. di. ‘has “access” unto the Father. “Iw
* Curist ” the whole company of such is
Phil.iv. one. “In Curist,’’? the Strengthener,
** each member of it “‘ can do all things.”
Rev.xiv.“ In THE Lorp” the saint dies, and 1s
Corxy, blessed. ‘In Curis’? shall all be made
= alive. And on the other side, “the hape
Col. i.27-0f glory ” is “ Christ In you”; “ Know
2Cor.xiii. ye not that Jesus Christ is 1v you, except
7 counterfeits?

99

ye be reprobates,
Here is indeed a truth full, in all its
Rom.viii. blessed aspects, of ‘life and peace.”
Whether it points us to union with the

Life of our Head, or interest in His
Covenant, it is a truth as rich and fruit-

ful for daily use as it is strong and solid

2 Thess. for “ everlasting comfort and good hope.”
ae My reader may possibly be one of
those sincere disciples who, having firmly
grasped some precious “truths of the
threshold,” yet shun to go forward deeperIn Christ. V5
ae ee eg
into the Sanctuary ; Sperhaps thinking
that this or that revealed truth is only for
the learned Christian, or for the aged, or
for those who can find time to theorize
and discuss.’ Whether there be any such
revealed truths or no, this great central
truth is not one of them. It is high and
deep as eternity, indeed, in its issues and
its foundations. But it is also fit to come
down, like the noonday sunshine, upon
the very stones and dust of the hourly
path. Nothing» ought to be more
Intensely and directly practical than a
clear apprehension and firm hold of my
one-ness with Jesus Christ, one-ness in
spiritual life, one-ness in Interest and
Standing. \It is a truth of heavenly gold,
but coined for daily traffic.e It is for the
young Christian, the unlearned Christian,
the Christian of narrowest sphere and
most earthly outward calling. To grasp
this deep yet simple racr is to pour intooes

    

16 In Christ.

i} aon

the heart, and through it into the life, in
all its parts, a new light, a new power.
“‘T am in Christ, and He in me; Iam
the branch, the limb, of my living Lord ;

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

 

He and I are, at this moment, one spirit ;

I belong to Him, not merely as my table

or chair belongs to me, but as my hand
does; am His bondservant, and I cannot

realize too deeply that He is my absolute

and despotic Master but it is after all not

merely as the chained African stands re-

Jated to his captor, or his buyer; it is rather

as my finger stands related to my head, a

thing useless and without a reason except

for the purposes of the head, and in rela-

tion to the head, but full of life and free.

dom within that relationship.” Truths like

these, and truths they are for every true
Christian, are not things for the study

only, and the lecture, and the arm-chair.
They are exactly fit to go ovt with us
into common life and to give a newIn Christ. 17

 

meaning and greatness to its little details,
\1n the interest of our Head. They are
the very things to fill with lasting and
glowing life every thought of gratitude
and love as we review our conversion, or

our revival, or our blessed hope. They?
are things which can equally uplift the/

believer’s soul in view of his heaviest trial
or most difficult duty, and bring his per-
ceptions of the will of God down into
the minutie of the ordinary day, yes,

into thought and care for punctuality in|

engagements, fidelity in little trusts, un-
selfish kindness in little needs, decorum in
the little things of the room, the person,
the manner. For the “ obligation of
nobility ”? extends over everything, when
that nobility is one-ness with Jesus Christ,
the being a limb to that sacred Head,
everywhere and always.

Let us try, in a few simple chapters,
by way of fragmentary meditation only,
Z

LLHtAEph. iil.
8.

18 In Christ.

 

to deal a little with this central truth of
grace. And let writer and reader do it
as those who are not talking over an
abstraction, but reckoning up as their
own some of the “ unsearchable riches ”
received in the act of entering “ into

Christ.”’IT,

FOUND IN HIM,

We have just reminded ourselves that the
truth of our union with our Lord is in-
deed a thing for “human nature’s,”’ re-
generate human natures’s, “ daily food.” ‘It
is something meant to bea secret of peace,
power, faithfulness, and love during the
hours and minutes of this present day—
be the day what it may for you and for
me.} It is then a truth which must be
ready in the soul, ready at hand for use,
For how much of the difficulty of common
life is made up of minute surprises, the
being taken unawares in little things !

With this thought I inscribe this chap-
ter with the title, rounp in Him.

ae

Phil iii,
Q-20 Found in Him.

 

The third chapter to the Philippians is
full of manifold instruction on the holy
subject of this little book. St Paul de-
scribes his conversion. He does so not
from the side of the external, the road to
Damascus, the supernatural glory, the arti-
culate Voice. He speaks of a transition,
a revolution, in the attitude of his convic-
tion and his will. He describes himself
as passing from a state of soul in which,
practically, his hope and strength was in
himself, in which he lived and moved on
the centre and in the atmosphere of self,
to a state in which he wasn Curist. And
in the ninth verse he looks forward to the
Great Day, and carries the thought of his
new and blessed position up toit. He
thinks what it will be to be ‘found in

oa Him ” at that great “ time of finding.”

The immediate thing in question in the
passage is Acceptance, Justification. He
looks forward to be “found in Christ”Found in Him. 21

 

with a view to acquittal before the Judge,
as one clothed with, invested in, the
merits, the righteousness, of his glorious
Head. He anticipates the bliss of being
“ found ” then with his ground of accept-
ance READY, and his feet atREapy upon
its; not casting about bewildered for a

falling mountain to hide him from the Rev. vi.

Judge, but standing in meek fixity and
calmness, unsurprised, hidden in Christ, in

Jenovan TsipKenu, in the Lord our Jer. xaam

Righteousness.

I pause to observe in passing, that here is
an illustration of the true order of thought
in the matter of Justification. © St Paul
finds Justification in Christ, rather than
Christ in Justification. He simply and
heartily accepts, on the evidence of God,
His Son, for all in all. And in this his
divine possession he finds, on the same
evidence, one immense item of gain and
wealth; a perfect satisfactory righteous-22 Found in Him.

 

ness, wrought by the Head, reckoned to
the Limb as the Limb. > He takes the
Lord ; he is thereby incorporated into the
Lord. And the plan of God has provided,
in view of the primary need of the believ-
ing sinner, that this true incorporation
shall carry with it true justification, in
virtue of the atoning work, the sacrificial
work, done for the members by the Head.
Of this more in later chapters.*

But my present use of the words * found
in Him” looks in another direction than
that of covenant acceptance. ‘There
exists a profound connexion, under the
mam truth of “ m-wess” m Christ,
between the truths of acceptance and of
life-power ; not a confusion, for they are
perfectly distinct, but a connexion, for
they come from the same fountain, Christ,
on the same condition, incorporation. Of
this again we may think more in detail

* Chapters vi.—viil,Found in Him. 28

 

further on. But on this ground I venture
at once to take the holy words with a re-
ference to the life of grace, the life of

faith, the practical “ walk” of the believer

now, rather than to his “ standing in the Psa. i. s.

judgment” then. For the two things
have to do equally, though in different
ways, with our Union with the Lord.

<“ Founp in Him.” So must the soul
be, as to the Lord’s Righteousness, if it is
to meet in peace the sudden presence of
the Judge. But so too must the soul be,)

as to connexion with the Lord’s Life,(

through the Spirit, if it is to meet, for\
victory and peace, the perpetual sudden-|
ness, if | may speak so, of the presence of
the Tempter ard of the Traitor.

I speak here, it will be seen, of Union

with the Lord as it is realized, utilized,
applied ; Union turned into COMMUNION.
In itself the Union is permanent, per-

petual.

«He that is joined unto the1Cor.vi.

17:Matt. xxvi
ax.

 

 

24 Found in Him.

 

Lord” does not, from the point of view
of the covenant of God, move in and out,
out and in, moment by moment, day by
day. ‘The embraces of eternal love and
life are stronger and more persevering
than to suffer this. But from the side of
the believer’s experience, the believer’s
appropriation and enjoyment of the holy
privilege, there is indeed room for change
and alternation. ‘To “turn Union into
Communion,” I must, as an absolutely
necessary condition, watch and pray.
Watching and praying—over my posses-
sions in Christ—l may look to be “ found
in Him,” as to my experience, in the
moment of need. Unwatchful and neglect-
ing prayer, I must look to find myself, in
this sense, outside, exposed, and helpless.
Let us take an obvious case or two in
point. I am conscious of my liability to
impatience. The little things of the com-
mon day are only too apt to betray meFound in Him. 25

 

into haste of thought, perhaps of manner,
perhaps of action. [ am expected, by
those closest to me, to show quickly and
easily when my wish is crossed. Shall I
comfort myself with the excuse, so ready
and so unhappy, that my nerves are
highly strung, that I am over-worked,
that it is so common a weakness, that the
movement is so soon past? God forbid.
This thing can be dealt with, can be held
in effectual check, can be precluded, in
the soul which is in real union with the
eternal Source of love and peace. But in)
order to this, Union must be turned intot
Communion. {The soul must learn (and
It may learn) to maintain, by grace, an
attitude of conscious intimacy and inter-
course with its Lord and Head, And the
little, or great, surprise of trial that comes
upon it in such an attitude will ‘‘ find”
igi Flin ~ 5 in the place of peace, of
deliverance, of strength.¢ The trying2.6° Found in Him.

 

letter, the unwelcome interruption, the
disappointed plan, the mortifying word,
will not do their wonted work there. Not
only will there be outward calm; there
will be inward.

I am conscious of liability to defiling
imagination. Perhaps in this woful ten-

Job xiii. dency I “ possess the iniquities”” of past

years. Let the exciting cause, crude or

subtle, be what it may; let it “find”

me “in Him.” Out of communion with

my Head, I shall be as one who feels for

the ground, and treads upon the air.

Psa.xxvi. Abiding in Him I shall find “ my foot
‘2 stand,” and overcome.

I am conscious of weakness and un-
readiness in the exercise of influence for
my Lord. Opportunities come and are
lost. I am thrown with friends in un-
expected intercourse, and it closes without
a word spoken for Christ, perhaps with-

out an act of loving example done forFound in Him. 2.7

 

Him, just where I knew such things
were specially my work and call. Was
it not because the occasion did not “ find”

me “in Him”? Other interests were, for)
the time, in possession and supreme. And)

I found it very difficult indeed, by con-

fused and hurried acts of soul, to make

my way back, at the time, to an even
tolerable measure of ‘‘ abiding in Him,”

the secret of bearing fruit. Shall not the
mext occasion “find” me im the reht
place®-Then may I surely expec? that
my heavenly Master will use me, through
word, act, spirit, manner, for His work.
Let the believer make it a definite sub-
ject of prayer and holy watching to be
‘© found in Him,” in-this sense of the
habit of communion with his Head.

©The name of the Lord,” the revealed Prov.xviii.

}Self of the covenant Eternal, is the
““ strong tower” into which the righteous
\ runs, and is safe.” But surely this does28

Found in Him.

 

   
   
  
   
  
 
 
  
 
 

 

not mean that he is to dwell outside his
fortress, and to run into it only when the
terror comes. He is to hasten there, and

Gen. xix. make it his home. He is “not to stay
17,

Lord, work in me evermore, work in
me this hour, to will and to do for the
sake of this Thy good pleasure; to give
diligence, that I may be ever found in
peace, being found in Thee.—Amen.

in all the plain.” He is to be * found in)
Him,” alike by the crafty enemy now, |
and by the holy Judge hereafter. 4TET.

GROWTH INTO HIM.

TE Scriptural parable of the Head and
the Body is familiar to all Christians. Its
chief seat is the Epistles to Colosse and
Ephesus. It appears also in the Epistle Rom. xii.
to the Romans, and in the First to the1Cor.xii.
Corinthians, in a modified form ; modified,
by the absence of detailed mention of “ the
Heaa”; for the Apostle is there occu-
pied with the relation of the Limbs to one
another. But observe that the sacred Head,
Christ, is not really absent from the idea ;
far from it. He is so intensely pre-
sent with and in the Limbs that the
whole Organism, as one with Him, is
actually called, in the Corinthian passage,1 Cor. xii.
I2.

30 Growth into

 

“<Curist ”; a fact of the deepest signi-
ficance and power, viewed in regard both
of our Acceptance in the Lord and of
our Life in Him.

But the Ephesian and Colossian Epis-
tles are marked by this special mention
of theLord as Heap. And they thus sug-
gest, in a very special degree, two main
lines of truth about the “ mystical Body.”
They remind the Christian that he is an
implement, a vehicle, for the execution of
the exalted thoughts and purposes of the
Head; as a Limb, he exists to carry out,
in his daily path, not a. will of his own,
not a plan of his own, but the ideas of
Christ. And they remind him that the
whole secret of life and power for this
implement existence resides not in self but
in the Lord; the head, not the finger, is
the seat of the impulse that directs the
finger; the limb receives, transmits,
executes, but it is not asked to originate.Growth into Him. on

 

I am well aware that these truths must
be held, like most others, under check
and balance. The foot, the finger in
my body are not in any sense personal
beings. I, a living man, am a person,
To me the Creator has given that mys-
terious gift, personal consciousness and
will, profoundly real, however limited,
But then, bearing this in mind, as indeed
every hour forces me to do,I yet reap
from the divine imagery of Head and
Limb a wealth of opposite truth, very
much more likely toescape me. I win
the precious gain of realizing that I am

connected, personality and all, with Ong Phil. iii.

who is “able to subdue all things,” even
personality, to Himself; not by way of
destruction but of appropriation, adjust-
ment, transfiguration. Myself for ever, this
mysterious persistent Eco, I am yet inthe
power of, under the will of, the Supreme

Eco of my Lord and Head. For His

21,r5-

Gal. ii.

20.

Eph. iv.

   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
    
     
  
 
 

Growth into Hum.

 

purposes I exist; by His Life I spiritually
live. I think, I speak, I write, I visit, I do,
I bear, asa member of my Head; used
by the Head for His idea’s execution,
sustained by the Head with the silent in-
fusion and pervasion of His Life Eternal.
Across all the ineffaceable lines of my
personality He yet writes, by this parable
of His Word, the truth that I exist, what-
ever the depth and range of the existence,
for Him and by Him. Oh, mighty truth,)
full equally and always of self-abasement
and of holy rest, of holy impulse!

In Eph. iv. we find the phrase written
above this chapter. It stands there in
close connexion with the thought of
Head and Limb. dt bids the Limb
“grow up into,’ or more briefly and
better, “grow into,” the Head. Let us
take the phrase up, and study it a little
while; it is full of secrets of ** the life lived
in the flesh by faith in the Son of God.”Growth into Him.

Observe first, the “in-ness” of the iF
believer in his Head is taken for granted ; |
itis agiven Fact. The previous verses
make this plain, addressed as they are
by the Apostle to his fellow-saints as
such. Yes, the true Christian is always,
for St Paul, “in Christ.” Whether or
no he can give a full account of his posi-
tion, or state aright the holy theory of
his spiritual life and action, he is “in
the Lord” as regards source of life, and
as regards bond of covenant. Let it be q
clear then that we have here an exhorta- | i
tion not to be iz but to grow into Christ |
the Head. At the basis of the whole
matter lies that glorious fact, settled,
ordered, and sure; I am in Christ, Christ Bi
is in me. } And let me not waste life and i
strength in seeking to re-settle, to re-con- i
nect, what a Power not my own “ hath
joined together.”

But therefore, and all the more, I am

334 Growth into Him.

 

to “ grow into Him, which is the Head.”’
The words are remarkable as a case of

what is frequent in Scripture, a divine

truth overflowing a divine metaphor.

In the human body, how can a limb

grow into the head —a finger, for
example, separated from the head by so

much intervening structure? The notion
suggested might seem to be growth out-

ward rather than inward. But no, not

so in the divine reality figured by the in-
spired imagery. In the spiritual organism,

no “structure intervenes” between Head

Col, i and Limb. Each and all, feet, fingers, all, |
are things’ that “hold the Head.” The

3

Eph. iv. joint of supply ” means, for each limb,

ial its own point of direct contact with the
ally. Head. ‘The bodily imagery does its own
sacred work in making it clear and
vivid that I live by the Lord Christ, and

for Him, and in deep connexion with all
His people. But it leaves untouchedGrowth into Him. 25

re Cs ae ae
the fact that I live by Him not with a

derived life and remote and secondary
touch, but directly, spirit with spirit, by
the mutual contact of my faith and Him.

Here comes in the thought before us,
“Grow into Him.” I am in contact with
Him ; Iam tosee that that contact is, not
more immediate, for that cannot be, but
more deep, more large, more full. As if
a material limb could involve its cells
and tissues in the life-organs of the head,
and this in growing depth and Extent 5 as
if a material branch could bury its sap-
vessels ever deeper in the fountains of
the root.

The thought is one presentable under
many comparisons. But they all fall
under the one idea, the turning evermore
of our union with the Head into con-
scious and life-developing communion.
The believer is to open to Christ his
Head, in spiritual receptivity, more and

3a36 Growth into Him.

yet more of his spirit, his will, his affec-
tions, Sas growing self-knowledge gives
him occasion to do so.¢ He is to see to it
that this widening surface, so to speak, is
all applied to the life-source of his Head.
He is to bring into conscious contact
with Him, as insight grows, those ‘ little
things,” for instance, which are the
oftenest occasion of spiritual defeat, ‘be-
cause oftenest met on the resources of self,
while all the time they are the oftenest
opportunities of glorifying God, when

met on the resources of the Head.
One all-important aspect, then, of

Christian growth is growth inward;

not (God forbid) in the sense of self-
concentration, but in a sense the very
opposite; growth out of self into the
Lord, as the ever more deeply, vividly,
and continuously realized Centre of the

2Cor.ix/plan of life and Source of its ** all-suf-
8.

ficiency in ali things.” We may beGrowth into Him. 37

 

permitted to grow outward, more or
less; we may be called to extensions of
activity, of influence, of acceptance and
success in the work of the Lord. But
whether we are led to this, or to circum-
stances and work quite stationary to all
appearance, or to be laid aside, narrowed
and shrivelled into what seems nothing,
as tO position, or strength, or success,
let us to see to it that we are “ growing
into Him.” . Whatever His limb is to
be, to do, to bear, it will do it health-
fully and aright only thus. ‘The contact
with nothing less than Him must be not
maintained only, but developed, deepened,
as assuredly, in one way or another, the
need for it will be, while our “life in
the flesh” works out its mysterious com-
plications. It will be a matter of effort,
most real efrort, but effort directed full
upon the right point, not wasted in mis-
direction. By repeated exercises of self-38 Growth into Him.

 

surrender and Of faith, in the light “of
the holy written Word, let our growth be
into Him; and then there will be the less
fear of the limb’s growing for itself. We
shall find, in the labyrinth which once so
completely bewildered us, that in Christ
we Stand, as it were, at its centre. We
shall grow in the power to assimilate
circumstances, instead of being their
victims, as we evermore use Him whom
we possess, and grow into Him in Whom
we are. |ly.

UNSEARCHABLE RICHES.

We have just considered the invitation to
the believer to “grow into” his Lord
and Head. He who is “in Christ,” he
who would be “ found in Christ,” must
not be content without “ growing into
Christ,” his source and secret of life and
holiness. In ever deepening contact with
Him, the contact of a deliberate and
conscious application to Him as the
fountain of divine fulness, he must find
and use that which alone will feed and
develop the soul’s growth and power.

Let us take another Pauline phrase to
follow out the thought ; a phrase, that is,
of the Holy Spirit speaking through theActs ix
7h

Eph. iii.
8.

AO Unsearchable Riches.

““Chosen Vessel,’ chosen to ‘f bear” the
Lord’s “‘ Name,” to dispense His revealed
aren.

‘“"THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF
Carist.” “Ihe words, by the way, have
at least one remarkable personal history
connected with them. ‘They were the
means of the spiritual enlightenment, a
century ago, of Dr William Conyers,
vicar of Helmsley, whose story is told in
a funeral sermon by his friend John
Newton. Conyers had long toiled with
immense earnestness as pastor of his great
Yorkshire parish; so earnestly as to win
public praise in the Church of England.
But his soul was iil at ease. He neither
saw results in his flock nor felt them in
himself, correspondent to his longings ;
and the most indefatigable inculcation of
the doing of duty with the hope that
Christ would make up deficiencies, brought

Reading

him no nearer to the pure ideal,Unsearchable Riches. Al

his Bible one day he read, as if never read
before, this one phrase, ‘the unsearch-
able tiches of Christ.” It struck him~as
completcly and magnificently different
from the idea of Christ hitherto present
in his soul and in his teaching; an idea
clear and definite enough, but cold and
limited. The words first perplexed the
pastor, and then set himon a new search,
which ended in a discovery of Christ’s
all-sufficiency, meeting his own discovered
impotence and total poverty. And this
transfigured his inner life, and made his
ministry—not less diligent, or methodical,
or faithful to the Church of his ordina-
tion—but fruitful to an extraordinary
degree in rich and solid results of con-

 

version and new life.

It may be that che words which were
God’s voice to Conyers have to deliver a
special message to us to-day; to the
reader and to the writer.Job xi
7.

17.

Ps; XC.

42 Unsearchable Riches.

 

In the view of the Apostle, then, Christ
contains, embodies, is, ‘* UNSEARCHABLE
riches”; wealth, property, possession,
altogether “ untrackable,” for such is the
precise meaning of the epithet.* He is a
holy Labyrinth which no clue can “ find
out unto perfection.’ “ Christ is Paradise
to me,”’ says aGerman hymn. Yes, the
Rock of refuge, sought, perhaps, just as
such with terrified energy. by the soul
awakened to the terrors of God, trans-
figures itself into Paradise when touched.
Its divine strength includes within it the
infinite “ beauty ”’ also “of the Lord our
God.” And this Paradise is one whose
mounts and bowers and paths are things
interminable, inexhaustible; opening up
for ever to the believer’s search,

““Unsearchable ricHes’’; that favourite

thought in the pages of St Paul, “‘ riches.”

His language is full of spiritual silver and

* aveEtyviaoros.(a
Unsearchable Riches, 43 | |
|

 

gold; the treasures accumulated by and \
in Christ for the saints.2 ‘In everything? a i P|
ye are enriched in Him ’’; “ He became Cor.viii. I}
poor, that ye through His poverty might ” ii
be nich,” “according to”* nothing less li
than the Father’s “riches in glory ine 1
Christ Jesus.” This whole range of lan- 1
guage is good to trace out, and think out.
A believing meditation upon it may well
bring to the discouraged Christian at least | q
the conviction that he is meant to live, |
in some most real and practical respects, i
not as an indigent toiler, but as a million- . J
dite, ih the matter of divine peace }
and power. He is indeed to own his
native poverty, or rather beggary, more
humbly and absolutely always. And he
is indeed to toil in the use of his spiritual
possessions in his Lord’s cause, within
him and around him. But he ts not to
toil toearn them. He is to accept them,
and having accepted them to know thatJoh. i.x6.

Eph. i. 7.

1 Cor. vi.
17.

A4 Unsearchable Riches.

 

he possesses them. Yes, in the possession
of Christ he is to know that he is actually
possessor, 1n the same sense, of “ His ful-
ness.”” Joined to Christ in spiritual union
he is joined to * the riches of His grace.”
The channel of reception is there, estab-
lished and prepared for use. It has but
to be dilated, not new made, and there
shall flow through it not a niggardly
supply that will just, as it were, pay for
the avoidance of starvation, but the large
and generous income given by the King
to His loved and trusted child, the child
who is a child because the living member
of His blessed Son; because ** one spirit ”
in bridal union with His blessed Son
Two apparently contradictory ideas
stand side by side in this matter, in true
inner harmony. They are, the believer’s
ceaseless and unaltered poverty in _him-
self, and his immediate, assured, con-
tinual riches in Christ. He is to live asOnsearchable Riches.

 

possessed of spiritual Welle on on con-
dition of drawing for it always, un- |
changeably, on no internal resource what- ye
ever, but on his glorious Head. His |
life, his peace, his power, is not deposited
by Christ in him, and left there, as it were
a standing pool. It isa ceaseless circu-

lation, the very life-pulse of the exalted) cS |
Lord Himself, to be received and used a |
in continual successions. ‘The receptacle) |
never creates, never originates, and is kept ¢
healthy only by perpetual exercise of its
fue function, reception. Is not thisthey= — =
pee of the phrase of St John, “ Of Job.i.rs.
His fulness all we received, and grace for

Stace, -““prace,’ literally, “instead -of
plies © As If to say, We Came. Wwe
touched, and were joined to, the Life-(
Fountain; and then began, as the result

of that reception, a perpetual successive

flow ; always there, yet always in succes-/

sion; the water that filled the pool just:46 Unsearchable Riches.
| | a

now followed and displaced by that (
which this moment fills it, and is “ in-
stead of” what was there to meet the
need now past. Yes, the more continual

 

the sense of the poverty and drought of

self the better, because then the more
continual will be the drawing of the soul

upon the Head with. whom it is one.

And then, on the other hand, what it is

tO expect, to reckon on, to act: on: in

such drawing, is a supply divinely sufli-
Eph.i.7;clent, divinely full; ‘‘ the riches of His
“T grace” and not its poverty ; life-wealth
from a store which in itself is infinite,

and whose only limit, therefore, lies in

the receptivity of the vessel, of the limb,

It is for us so to act upon our blessed

union as to find those words true for us,

2Cor. vi. “‘ having nothing, and yet possessing all
things.” _Ido not make the vain attempt
to suggest a routine, a fixed model, of
spiritual experience. The soul of manUnsearchable Riches, 47

 

and the action of God in grace, are both
things whose complex mystery forbids
such a thought.» No thoughtful Christian)

will lightly and crudely criticize or re.
buke the spiritual sadnesses and per
plexities of another. But Jet me express

a humble, earnest conviction nevertheless,
that many an hour of sadness and per-
plexity is an hour which need never have
been such; an hour which was what it
was mainly because the soul had never
realized, or had forgotten, that while its
own absolute poverty and impotence
was, of course, a fact, the present and
immediate “ riches,’ not poverty, of
Christ the Head, precisely as needed for
the whole demand of that moment, were
a fact too—a solid fact—meant for that
moment’s use.

Christian, we all remember, lay long
in Doubting Castle. He was wrong in
getting within its precincts at first. But2 Cor. xii.
9.

48 Unsearchable Riches.

 

he was wrong, too, in remaining half-an-
hour within the prison-doors, once there.
Por the, key was in his pocket. “Ihe
divine promise was his own possession 3
that is to say, the divine fact of his life,
peace, and power in’Christ, wholly and
always in Christ, was a fact for him, for
him then.\ Christian, in the immortal
Dream, no sooner remembered this than
me acted Wpon. it; opened the door:
and walked out at liberty. Will not
you, this hour? Will you not definitely
remember for this hour that there is
absolutely no defect in your possessions
in your Head, and that your receptivity?
is the only limit, therefore, to your fruis
tion? ‘That truth may not meet every
problem. No one truth can do that.
But will it not meet some probiems
that lie deep at the root of very many
more? ‘* My graces sufficient for thee” ;
take every word of that divine AnswerCoe Ce AQ

 

 

 

given to a aa In great straits, and study
it in the light of your vital Union with
the divine Speaker; a Union as direct and
feal_ as St -Paul’s. So, and not om the
resources of any experience of yours, no,
(but on the resources of the written Word
‘and the Living Word, you and I will
really learn to make St Paul’s testimony
in that passage ours,

I have touched very little in detail on
the word <5 unsearchable,” “ untrackable.”
And it may be best to leave it to the
reader, that he may make for himself
delightful proof of its truth, We must
work upon it, or rather upon Him, to
make that proof; for no one finds a
Ibpyrinth. inexhaustible. who dees noi
actually tread its paths.

Let me only eueee st two aspects of
“ the unsearchable ” in this sacred matter,
by way of help to meditation and prac-
tice,

450 Unsearchable Riches.

 

1. “The wealth of Christ,” that is
to say, Christ as the possession of His
people, is “untrackable” then, first in
Hisexr. Jesus Christ is strictly and per-
fectly an inexhaustible wealth, in Himself,
of glory, spiritual glory. Deep among the
indirect indications of His eternal God-
head lies a word like this; for it suggests
that He is One who cannot ** be found out
unto perfection.” In His Person, perfect
God and perfect Man, One Christ; in His
Work, as the Creating Word, the Aton-
ing Lamb, the absolute Exemplar, the
Risen One, Prince and Head of Life, the
enthroned mediating Priest, the coming
One, Judge and King; in His relations
to the Church, and to the Soul, and to
the World (and how many more aspects
of His “wealth” might I name in this
brief summary!) Christ is ‘¢ untrackable.”
And this Christ is mine; I am in Him,
joined to this Lord, in Life, in Covenant.Unsearchable Riches. 51

2. “The wealth of Christ,” Christ
as the possession of His people, is * un-
trackable,” next, in respect of appLica-
fe Oo THEIR Nezp. That need 4
Bomerctable,” ina sense most prac.
tical and importants for it is the whole
need involved in the conditions of the
human spirit here and for ever. =Bur
indeed, practically and to me, the needs
of any given day and hour are “un-
trackable,” if that day and hour is to
be lived to God, $Can I “track out”
the deceitfulness of my own heart? the
maze of circumstances? the plots and
efforts of those unseen but perfectly real
enemies, the personal spirits of evil, that
Watch against the soul > No smallest
event of the day but contains at least
possible occasion for victory or failure,
for the Master’s use of me, or His finding
me useless. Can I * track out”? al] this?

No; the labyrinth defies my weary
Avaq 52 Unsearchable Riches.

 

 

thought. But however manifold its
windings, there is something which can
ft into them all, as the wards of the key
me thease of the locks it is the > um
Peechable gickes of Chiist.” "1am
personally assured by His Word that I,
His member, one with Him, have but
to use Him to find a wonderful develop-
ment of His power ; to find it, in its divine
force and delicacy at once, able so to deal
with everything as to turn it into peace
and blessing, into occasion of rest in Him
and fruit-bearing for Him. For to His
Cor. ix. members “ God is able to make all grace
e abound, that they, always having all
sufficiency in all things, may abound unto
every good work.’
¢ Israel entering Canaan offers a parable,
\in this matter among others, of the soul
\entering into Union with Christ. Re-
deemed from Egypt, they were brought
‘nto a land full of wealth ready for theUnsearchable Riches. 53

 

using. Modern colonists have often to
begin with long and laborious clearing
and breaking up of the wild new land
they have won. $'The ‘Tribes of the
Covenant found houses builded, wells
digged, and vineyards of old renown for Deut. vi.

I; see

imuit. “heir task was to inhabit, todraw, ices
to tend and use and enjoy, while living in ° 4
obedience to their King. <

All things are stored up for us in Him
) of Whom “ old Canaan” was a faint and
Marrow type. Entering Him, we pass
at once into immense possessions, “ which xz Cor. ii.
God hath prepared for them that love
Him.” We are richly endowed in Him,
and have no need to collect an income.
It is ours, in the life of “ faith and Heb. vi.
patience,’ humbly to claim, and diligently
to employ, the “unsearchable riches of
Christ,”V.

FRUIT-BEARING.,

THe thought of fruit-bearing in and fo!
Christ was suggested towards the close of
the last chapter.$This is one of the greatest
of all subjects under the supreme subject
of Union with Christ. In His last words
to His own, our dear Lord solemnly
laid- it down that Union is absolutely

a xv. necessary to fruit-bearing ; ‘‘separated from

9

not a little, only a little,
And the whole massa

Me ye can do’
but “ nothing.’
implies, obviously, that fruit-bearing in
His eyes is the very raison détre, in a
deep sense, of His people, of His true
Church. Each of them is ‘joined. to”

2Fruit-Bearing. BG

 

Him with a view to bearing fruit. It is |
indeed with a view, thank God, to their q
personal blessedness, their supreme and
eternal enjoyment of Him and His Father.

But this, in the deep heart of spiritual |
things, is linked eternally to ‘glorifying ” |
Him and His Father; to ‘ shewing forth 1Pet. ii. |
Their praises.” And this is butone mode ~ |
of expressing the “ bearing of fruit” for
God; the doing, enduring, being, that
which shall bring Him glory.’

Union with Christ, then, profound
connexion with Him as Life, and as
Covenant-Head (we shall see in some
after chapters how deeply these two
thoughts are inwoven with each other),
is absolutely indispensable to fruit-bear-
ing. ) And fruit-bearing is the essential
purpose of the Christian’s life. He exists
fon tis. No: part of his life cam be
taken out of the reach of this. He is on
wrong ground altogether if he claims to56 Fruit-Bearing.

 

live an hour, a quarter of an hour, really
to self. Not for a mcment is he other
than a limb of Christ, an implement, a
bond-servant of Christ. True, he must, in
our mortal path, be very often doing and
being things which have no ostensible
connexion with his Head and Lord.
But not for one hour ought he to do and
to be these things irrespective, really, of
Him. Itis not right with him if he 1s
not honestly, in the purpose of his soul,
living as in Christ and for Christ under
whatever variations of condition. In
work and in rest, in sacred things and
secular, alone and in intercourse, he still
BELONGS. Let him cherish that word
and wear it in his heart, “I BELonG.”
The realization of it, through grace,
which is one form of ‘turning union
into communion,” will be sure to result
in fruit-bearing. It will not dislocate
life; it will harmonize it, It will notFruit-Bearing.

 

make it artificial; it will pour into it
the noble naturalness of a will at once
active and at rest, And; because it is
one mode of abiding in Christ, it will
assuredly bring about fruit-bearing in that
life. Christ will shine out there in holy
reality and practicality ; and this will be
to bear fruit.

A few detached thoughts on the subject of
spiritual fruitfulness are all that shall be
attempted here. One or two leading pas-
sages of Scripture present themselves in
the connexion, and we will just indicate
some of their divine lessons. _Let it only
be remembered that they are lessons not
for spiritual curiosity, but for the strong
realities of to-day.

1. “That we should BRING FORTH Rom.vii.

FRUIT unto God.” In this sentence the
imagery is of marriage. The redeemed
Church, ard the redeemed soul, are
‘© married to Him that was raised from58 Fruit-Bearing.

 

the dead.”’ Joined to the Second Man,
the last Adam of Resurrection, the
people of God, by a blessed natural-
ness of result, are to be productive of
thought, word, and act in His interest,
for His praise, and because of their union
with His life. By a sequence as natural
(in a true sense) as that by which sinning
resulted from their inheritance of the life
of self, well-doing unto the Lord is to re-
sult from their union to the life of their Re-
deemer. There is that in their holy Union
with Him which is divinely calculated thus
to come out in a life of true holiness ; and
they are to act upon that fact, in the
restful strength of those who know that
they do possess a wholly supernatural en-
dowment for these new results. They pos-
sess it, as they possessed the sad capacity
for rebellion and self-pleasing, by union
with Another, with a Head, {The dfer-
ence doubtless is that the old life, for itsFruit-Bearing.

 

results, needs no patient watching, no
conscious drawing on its Head; the new
life does.? But this leaves untouched the
all-important /ikeness of the two lives
and their results, that neither originates in
efforts of ours. Once there, it is there as
our gift from Another, from a Head; that

is, in the case of the new life, from the

Risen Lord Himself, ‘* from Whom is our Hos. xiv.
8.

fruit found.”

2. * [he rrurr OF THE SPiriz. Hlere@y

observe first, in passing, the singular
monmoer >.“ fruits? not “driits Asal
to suggest that the graces named are not
isolated things, of which you may choose
to appropriate one, and [ another; but
one sweet unity and harmony, intended
to be the issue of the Spirit’s presence in
every true believer, every branch of the
sacred Root. Not love and: joy here,
faithfulness there, meekness there, tem-
perance (that is to say, self-control)Matt. v.

di toh. Xv.

| 5:

Rom. viii.
Q-11.

  

60 Fruit- Bearing.

 

elsewhere; but all ineach. The Beati-
tudes, surely, describe one character of,
many sides. So does the Fruit of the‘
Spirit. :

Observe again, it is the fruit of THE
Spirit. ‘Che Third Person of the Trinity,
the eternal Sanctifier of the chosen people,
is the secret of the out-coming of this
fruit. Is this a thought discordant with the
Saviour’s word, ‘‘ He that abideth in mg,
and Jin him, the same bringeth forth much
fruit”? Surely not, when we remember
the indissoluble connexion, in the life of
grace, between the presence of the Spirit
and the presence of Christ ; between being
in Christ and being in the Spirit. See,
for illustration, the great passage in the
Mommaus, “‘ Ye are in the Sprrit, if the
Bout of God dwell in you, ... . df
Christ be in you, the body is dead, be-
cause of sin, but the spirit is life, because
of righteousness,” &c.Fruit-Bearing. 61
It is the Holy Ghost who mediates,

who makes, the presence of the Lord |

Christ to me and in me. Not by way lj

of local infusion, but by way of spiritual |

union, He bound me to Christ and Christ

to me, with a bond whose tying, on my

side, was that faith which He, ‘‘ the2Cor. iv.

Spirit of faith,” gave me toexercise. And **

He, as immediate Agent, maintains that

union, working in me. In the realities of

spiritual life, I cannot for a moment dis-

sociate the two presences, the two aspects

oe uniom,”. As little ean: 1 in practice

dissociate the vital power of the summer

sun in its warmth and glory from the

translucent air without which its bene-

ficence could not reach me, could not per-

vade me. Christ is my vital Sun, the

Holy Spirit is my vital Air.< To change

the imagery, and to use language which

aims only to convey one side of most

sacred truth, the Lord my Head is thePhil. i.

If.

Isa. xi.

  

62 Fruit- Bearing.

 

divine Fountain for me of all spiritual ful-
ness ; the Lord the Spirit is the divine
Channel between that Fountain and the
vessel of my soul.§ The results, the fruits,
of contact are thus Christ’s work, and the
Spirit’s work, at the same moment and
in equal truth.

3. “ Being FILLED wiru the fruit* of

« righteousness, which is by Jesus Christ,

Oo

unto the glory and praise of God.” Here
is, indeed, a pregnant verse, giving at once
the measure of the quantity of spiritual
fruit, its secret of production, and its end,
I remark now only on the word “ fi//ed,”
The Apostle thinks of the great “ day of
Christ,” and of the Philippian believers
there. And his prayer is that they may

. be found then to be “ trees of righteous-

ness,” whose fruit shall not be a scattered
thing here and there in a mass of leaves,

“ The true reading gives the singular, ¢ fruit,”
here also.Fruit-Bearing. 63

 

 

but a harvest that shall have loaded every
bough.

A few years ago, sojourning by the
beautiful shores of the Lake of Thun,
during a genial September, I walked day
by day in sight of the orchards which
cover those green fields and hills, and saw
their manner of fruit-bearing. It was as
if the root and branches, in their perfect
rapport, conspired to push out the golden
apples wherever there was wood to carry
them. ‘The trees were not fruit-bearing
only, they were “ filled with fruit,” to the
praise of that sun and soil.

Would we be “trees of the Lord, full Ps. civ.r6.

of sap,” and “ filled with the fruits of
righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ”?
Let us seek the sacred gift, then, of the
“fulness of the Spirit,” among the trea.
sures of our Union with Christ. And
what does that mean? Not, necessarily,.
any vehement revolution of the inner man,
nor necessarily any ecstasies of emotion,64 Fruit- Bearing.

 

speech, or act. ‘here have been, and
there may be, times for such things. But
they are anyhow the accidents, not the
essence. ‘The essence, the true secret of
the matter, is our calm, deliberate, sub-
missive welcome of the Holy One in, to
do His whole sanctifying will in every
part of our being, of our circumstances, of
our time. It is the will to be every hour
and every moment. a// that He is able to
make us; to be filled, all over and all
through the life, with all the fulness He
is willing to put into it. It is the un-
reserved Veni, Creator Spiritus, of a soul
that He has taught wholly to desire and
wholly to trust all His will and work for
its whole condition now.
<©’Tis Thine to cleanse the heart,
To sanctify the soul,
To pour fresh life on every part,
And new create the whole.”’

Come, Holy Spirit, thus. And thus

come, Lord Jesus.VI.

I.—ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED.

Tue subject of Acceptance may seem to
some of my readers out of place in these
pages. We have been touching some of
the truths of the Sanctuary; is not this a
truth of the Threshold? I would reply
that it is, and it is not. It is indeed one
of the first anxious enquiries of the
awakened, “Can I be accepted???” But
the Acceptance given is a permanent
thing, not a point but a line: a thing
always needed, to the last hour of the
believer's life. And the longer it is
needed, and possessed, the greater will be
the interest of the study of our possession;

J2 Cor.iv.1z.

Eph. 1.6.

66 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

our care to know all that it is, all that
enters into it and issues from it; to feel
more and yet more what a rock it 1s
that is touched by the now resting feet.
In this light it appears as a truth not
of the ‘Threshold only but of the Sanc-
tuary. »Nor can I forget that those “ in
whose mortal flesh the life of Jesus is
manifested” are pretty sure to be called
upon to help and guide other souls, in one
way or another, in the first steps of
the life of grace.¢ And thus even the
“threshold” aspect of divine Acceptance
may be a study very much to the present
point.

Let us come then to this great theme,
as those who truly having this precious
gift take it reverently up to weigh it and
examine it anew.

“He hath made us accepted in the Be-
loved.” ‘The Revised Version reads this
verse somewhat differently from the Autho-Accepted in the Beloved. 67

 

rized: ‘To the praise of the glory of His
grace, which He freely bestowed on us in
the Beloved.” But the two renderings agree
in substance. For the context 1s occupied
with such truths as the choice of God’s
people in His dear Son, their adoption,
their redemption in the blood of Christ.
Thus it appears that the “ grace” here in
view is eminently the grace of Accept-
ance. It is Acceptance which is “ freely
bestowed on them in the Beloved.”

So I take the familiar words without
misgiving, and place them before this
chapter, to introduce a few thoughts on
the deep and blessed connexion between
two great truths; our Acceptance, or
Justification, and our Union with Christ
our Head. ‘This was touched upon ina
line or two in the previous chapters; but
it calls for fuller notice. May the Lord
Himself bless writer and reader in the
meditation, so as just to quicken their sense

5 aDeut. xxxili.

2.

Jas li. 20.

68 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

of the strength and depth of the reason of
their peace with God in Christ !

What a question for the awakened con-
science is the question of Acceptance! I
have seen, in the light of God’s holy, per-
fect, awful Law, that sin, my sin, is
GUILT, that is, just liability to legal penalty.
It is a great deal besides. It is mistake,
pollution, pestilence, misery. But the con-
vincing Spirit shows it me just now as
held up against the light of the “ fiery
Law ’’; and it is GuILT; it is my terrible
title to the condemnation of the Judge.
The Law writes me down “ guilty of all.”
And if there is no way of righteous deal-
ing with that fact, in my favour, it is
hopeless work to try to deal with other
aspects of sin. For this one aspect bars
me out from God as my Guide, Healer,
Friend, and Joy.

The writer puts no imaginary case. It
is his own. § And surely the reader bearsAccepted in the Beloved. 69

 

him out with 47s own, in proportion to
his sight of the demand of God’s perfect
Law. ? It is no thing of the past, no obso-
lete phase of religious life, for a man’s
whole being to cry out, under that view,
for some way of Acceptance, in which the
Jupce’s voice may say, “I acquit thee wee
for a covering robe, a propitiatory sacri-
fice.

Yes, and when that cry has been de-
cisively answered, in some great spiritual
crisis of conversion, the echoes of it, so to
speak, last on. That view of sin as guilt,
that view burnt into the soul, abides
there, and reasserts itself.) Each conscious-
ness of sinning in the after-life of the
believer has something of that sight in it.
Amid all his other thoughts about his sin
the man still realizes, perhaps more in-
tensely and sensitively as time goes on,
that it is always, in itself, GUILT.
The slightest violation of the blessed70 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

law *%is, in’ itself, loaded with
condemnation. The little things, the
mis-called peccadillos of word, and act, and
thought, the things which so obviously
need not have been, but /ave been, as
truly as the more startling sins (which also
need not have been, if the Lord’s secret
had been used), are all displeasing to the
Law. All, always, are under the Law’s
frown. All, always, need a reason why for
my Acceptance, if I am not to hear the
Law’s sentence—death.

The Law demands of man, always,
eternally, one of two things; complete
and life-long holiness, or complete satisfac-
tion for sinning on the part of the guilty.
And not one second of my life into which
sin, of commission or defect, has entered,
can face that pure, immovable Law,
now or for ever, on any footing of my
own.

So Acceptance is indeed a pressing needAccepted in the Beloved. 71

 

 

with me. $ And I know, if I know the
Gospel, that the Gospel never, never for
one moment, dishonours the Law, or

modifies it, or plays fast and loose with it.s
Nay, it “establisheth the Law.” - And Rom ii

thus my being a believer, a true believer in
the Gospel, ought only to deepen my view
of the abiding need of a sure Acceptance,
such as will satisfy the Law ; something
which will meet sin as cuit. I need,
indeed, all along my road, something that
shall be my victory over sin, my medicine
against its poison, my security against the
Tempter’s cruel wiles. But I need also, all
along, a something that shall permanently,
presently, profoundly, deal with my view
of sin as to GUILT, as to the claim of God’s
Law. I need this quite as much after as
before conversion. For, as I have seen,
wherever and whenever sin is, there and
then is guilt. And my sin after I have

“seen Him and known Him ”—is it not r Joh. iii.eee ITNT SEE a
——— *

72 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

yet guiltier, if possible, is it not more con-
trary to His Law, than before?

I have dwelt on this great elementary
truth at some length. There is, I believe,
a cause for doing so. Lax, easy views of
Law and Guilt, and the way to deal with
them, are not uncommon things, even
within living circles of the Christian
Church. This is so, sometimes, under
the delusion, a woful delusion, that sin in
believers loses at least some of its true
character; sometimes under the equal
delusion that its guilt can be met, in_be-
lievers, by something outside the sphere of
Law; for example, by developments of
the work of grace within them. Ah no,
It is not so. 2’The “ fiery Law ”’ is the same
thing to the end, the same eternally. And
so too, so therefore, is the nature of sing
And therefore an Acceptance for the sin-
ning soul, good in Law, good in view of

this pure and dreadful Law of God, isAccepted in the Beloved. 73

 

urgently needful always, needful now. It
must be a Legal Acceptance; not a legal
fiction indeed, but a fact essentially
legal.

Such an Acceptance, blessed be our
God and Father, is revealed in the

     
    
 
  

divine Book. God, I read there, “ justi- Rom. iv.

fieth the ungodly.” He “ imputeth
righteousness without works.’’ And the
resource for this great Act of grace lies in
“* the Satisfaction of His Son our Lord.”
He, perfect Man, fulfilled the whole pre-
cept of the Law with overflowing fulness,
And He also, wonderful fact, yielded
Himself to be treated as its Violator, and
was so treated. He suffered for our sins.

  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

Fie bore our sins; and the phrase **toje;am
: s - = 8 ;

bear sins ” habitually means, in Scripture, peek xviii.

to endure the retribution due to them, gf°’...

to be punished as the doer of them.
Yes, the Son suffered, and (mysterious

 
  
  

counterpart) the Father struck. The Zecneie74 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

death which was from one side a murder,

from another side a self-immolation, was

from yet another, from the Lawegiver’s

_ side, a solemn execution. “It pleased

i Isa. lil: the Lord to bruise Him.” “He made
iT | 7 itm to be sin.” ‘The Cross was’ 10
awd accident in the Blessed One’s task and
undertaking; no mere last step in a
course of transcendent virtue, no mere
supreme groan, as it were, over the fact
of sin, no mere final example of self-
| devotion, greater, indeed, than that of
| a pastor, for instance, dying for his
converts’ sake, but of the same kind. It
was the Satisfaction of the broken Law.
It was borne because, under the Law,

| Heb. ix.** without shedding of blood there is no

22.

remission.”

And now this Obedience and this Satis-
faction of the Lord Jesus Christ is, thanks
be to God, the secret, the resource, for
the Acceptance of guilty man. SomehowAccepted in the Beloved. 75

 

or other, under some conditions or other,

because He obeyed, because He died,
sthe holy Law lays no bar at all to the
?pEace of guilty man with God.VIL.
II.—ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED.

«* SoMEHOW or other; under some cons
ditions or other.” So the last chapter
closed. I ask now to say a little im
detail about the “ somehow”; very
simply, and more by way of suggestion
for Scriptural research and humble,
prayerful thought, than by way of elabo-
rate proofs.

First then, and most clearly, the Word
of God instructs me that I, the sinner
needing Acceptance, or needing a new
sense and grasp of Acceptance at what-
ever time, under sense of guilt, may
have it, in virtue of the Lord’s work,Accepted in the Beloved. 77

 

Weel a Wan, 4, siner, accept as -Imy
Saviour, on His own terms, Jesus Christ
the Son of God. Am I a sinful man,
who believes in, who casts himself upon,

the Lord Christ? ‘Then, I am accepted.

«‘T have peace with God, being justified Rom. v.

by faith.”

Am I not stating all the Scriptural
necessaries of the case? As I understand
the Word of God, it nowhere demands
as a necessary that the believing suppliant
must see and confess, before acceptance,
the true theory of the Atonement. Holy,
precious, reverend, divine, is that theory,
as stated and illustrated in the Word.
God forbid that I, or my reader, should
think it a thing indifferent. But it is
not, surely, a thing precisely on the
threshold of entrance into peace and life;
not a thing necessarily there. ‘The

threshold-word is ‘‘ Believe on the Lord Acts xvi.

Jesus Christ”; accept Him ; take Him onJoh. vi.
40.

    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    
 
   

78 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

His own terms, whatever they are, to
meet thy need and be thy all. Never
shall I forget the joyful sight of this by
a gifted young friend of my own, long
“‘ srieved and wearied ” with a profound
sense of the need of Acceptance and of
Life; ‘I see it now, Isee it. He waits
only till I give myself over to Him, to
be saved in His own way.” Yes, “ he
that seeth,” beholdeth, contemplateth,*
“the Son, and believeth on Him, hath
everlasting life”; hath all that is meant
by everlasting life. And that includes
indeed within it the reversal of the death-
sentence, the gift of righteousness in law,
Acceptance before God.

Let the humble suppliant then, ‘(and
Scripture has no message of peace for
the un-humble,)< be assured without
delay that self-renouncing trust in our

Lord Jesus Christ, as the All-Suffcient,

* mas 6 Oewpav.Accepted in the Beloved. 79

 

does carry with it, now and here, par-
don and peace before the holy Law
of God. Let the blessed reasons why
be given also, just as promptly and freely
as the case may need. But do not
let the discussion of them cloud for one
hour the fact that “he that believeth on
the Son hath everlasting life.” We can-
not do wrong to lay confident and loving

stress on the divine Facts: “ He spared Romwiii.
A », é a2

mot His Son”; ““He made Him to be, é, »

sin for us”; “we were reeonciled top

God by the peatu of His Son”; “ He is
the Propitiation.” His Death 1s the
procuring cause of our, of my, of your,
acceptance; of the acceptance of the
man who accepts the Son, $But let not
the new believer, or the old believer with
a new disquiet, a new insight into his
need before the Law, be hindered in the
first and decisive step into life, or into
new realization of life, by any thought

y80 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

that a complete view of the divine Theory
Is a sine quad non to possession of the
divine Thing.

Rich will be his gain with each new,
true insight into the blessed ‘Theory.

) But he will stand in al] the better position

for the insight when he stands, on the
very simplest grounds, in assured possession
of the Thing.

So much I venture to say on the side
of evangelical stmpuiciry. But now, all
the more confidently, all the more
earnestly, let me come to the main point
we have in hand, and speak on the side
of evangelical FULNEss and DEPTH; asking
still the mercy and guidance of our living
Master.

This simplicity of the Gospel has deep
foundations and far-reaching ramparts.
Below and around this blessed fact of
welcome to Christ, and peace with God
because of the death of Christ, there lieAccepted in the Beloved. 81

 

 

divine reasons, holy preparations and
provisions, why it should be so, and
how it should be. > They all “go off

into mystery,” I know; there are points

after which we lose them in “ His Ps.xxxvi.

judgments, which are a great deep.” ?
But we can trace them some way, and
It is a great strength to the believing spirit
to do so.

This underlying region of truth may
be all summed up in the words, the Union
of Christ and His believing People. It
is the truth we are concerned with all
through this little book; the truth of Head
and Limbs, Root and Branches, Bride-
groom and Bride. It is tiie doctrine of
our. “in-ness’’ in the Lord, im all qs
crystal depth; the doctrine of our incor-
poration into His Life, and, along with
that, inseparable from that, our entrance
into His Covenant, and its interests, and
privileges, and possessions.

6aa STE SBE PELE 7
\

1 Cor.xv.
22.

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  

82 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

“In Curist”! Think again, and yet
again, over the familiar phrase. It is a
blessed ground for thought and prayer to
tread, and to dig; for all that happens to
us in the way of spiritual benediction
happens to us “in Christ.” ‘There is no
other region for the gift and the develop-
ment of eternal life for man.

zr. Think first of it as 1 denote
wirat. union, To be “im Chiast?
balanced, in Scripture, with to be ‘in
Adam.’’ And our whole connexion with
Adam assumes first our connexion with
him in the bond of natural human life.
Beings devoid of this have nothing to do
with him in other respects; nothing to
do with Adam’s sin, as affecting their
moral state and their judicial standing.

Even so the Scripture teaches, or
indicates, that all saying connexion with
Christ, the Last Adam, assumes connexion
with His exalted Life. Human beingsAccepted in the Beloved. 83

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

have, indeed, all of them, a physical
connexion with Him; for He was the
Son of a Woman; and is not every
mother’s son, ultimately, akin to every
other? But this is but the porch of the
sanctuary of vital union with the Lord.
(‘The sanctuary itself is not the connexion
lof Christ with man, but the connexion of
Christ with believing man; a bond not
of physical life, but of spiritual; not of
nature, but of new nature; not of genera-
tion, but of regeneration. Doubtless the
Outer truth is necessary to the inner. To
be a believer, I must be a man; to be
born again I must have been born. But
the inner truth is the decisive one.
Connexion with the Last Adam is, after
all, but a thing of the clouds, as regards
eternal life for me, so long as it is only
the connexion of humanity. To be

“‘joined unto the Lord” in the strong 1 Cor. vi.

solidity of availing fact, I must “ believe
6a84 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

Joh.i.rz.0n His name.”? J must touch him with
Joh.iii.7. spiritual contact; I ‘‘must be born

again.” But then, this spiritual contact,
let me remember, is no mere shadow,
parable, or metaphor. (It is a profound
and positive reality.) Have I, through
grace, believed? Then my life in Christ
means vastly more than the remission of
my doom of death. It means that I live,
in the pulse and action of the very
strongest mode of life, life spiritual, life
eternal, by the Life-power of the Lord
my Head, ministered to me by the Holy
Spirit. Christ the Head and I the limb,
Christ the Root and I the branch, are so
joined in vital spiritual contact by the
action of the Spirit of God that we are
“one spirit.” Such is our union that
it is illustrated in Scripture by nothing
less than the marriage-tie itself.

2. Think next of our “in-ness” in
Christ .as it denotes covenant interest.Accepted in the Beloved. 85

 

Here again Scripture balances with it
our interest in Adam. ‘The great doc-
trine of Original Sin I do not try here
to discuss and analyse. But it is after all
only one mode of expressing and connect-
ing dark but solid facts, plainly to be seen
in, Seripture and. in experience alike:
; Adam lost the life of God as a gift of
creation ; therefore I am born needing to
be born again. Adam fell; therefore my
actual and individual existence Jdegins
fallen. Adam was guilty; therefore [am
born needing a Mediator and I[ntercessor,
needing a Propitiation; that is to say, I
am born, however inscrutable the reason,
in the place of guilt. But the reason,
however inscrutable, has this in it as an
element, that I am one with Adam in
the bonds of race, So far I can see that
it is not an arbitrary thing; it is based,
somewhere and in some measure, upon
this; that he, as regards race and blood,Heb. xiii.
20.

  

86 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

is Head and I am member; he, in the
sphere of natural human life, is Root and
I am branch. My covenant interest in
Adam’s fall has to do with the previous
truth, my union with his nature and his
life. It may well demand other condi-
tions; but it certainly demands this.
Even so is Christ, and my interest in
Him, only with the blessed over-balance
of grace over sin, of righteousness over
guilt. I, a believer,am “in Christ” in
covenant union. Between me and Him,
my blessed “ Head once wounded,” there
passes a real interchange of interests, and
liabilities, and possessions, under an Eternal
Covenant. Heris liable for my debts; *]
am inducted into His possessions. On
this side and on that is “ imputation,”
reckoning, placing to an account. To
His account is placed my fall, my trans-
gression, my guilt; to my account is

placed His standing, His obedience, HisAccepted in the Beloved. 87

 

 

merit, His righteousness, His large and
glorious satisfactoriness to His own and
His Father’s Law.

But why? Is all this a cold “legal
fiction”? Is it the arbitrary treatment
of any guilty person as innocent because
any other person being innocent was
treated as guilty? No. It is indeed a
thing profoundly legal; but it is a thing
in which holy Law moves within lines
and orbits of real and eternal Life. ‘The
Sufferer is the Heap; the Justified are the
MemBeERS. And those words, so great, so
sacred, so divine, are but the faint surface
indication (for words can be no more) of
a union of life and nature so positive, so
intense, that we can almost sce passing
along its channel the current of mutuality
of interest, as one precious part of the
blessings and treasures it conveys.

So let the Gospel we clasp and teach be
simple. ‘Tell the anxious enquirer, tell88 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

your own anxious heart, over the open
Bible, that simple faith in the Son of God
carries’ with it, ipso facto, life eternal.
Tell the guilt-burthened conscience, tell
your own under this moment’s need, with
unhesitating simplicity, that because Jesus
died the poor penitent, believing, is ac-
cepted, is accepted now. But oh, let us
often dive also beneath the great deep of
the ways of grace, to trace, so far as we
can trace them, “the bottoms of the
mountains.” Or to change the metaphor,
let us not only pluck the fruits and flowers
of the Lord’s garden, made our own for
His sake, but pierce the soil of His holy
field, and dig its gold, which also, for
His sake, is ours. Let us make it as plain
as Scripture lets us do, plain to others
who need it, plain to our own souls, that
the simplicity and freedom of the Gospel
offer of life and peace rests direct upon
the depths of the central mystery of theAccepted in the Beloved. 89

 

Gospel; Union with Christ by faith,
union of life, union in covenant.

It is peace with God THROUGH our Rom. v.
Lord Jesus Christ; peace for His Son’s *
sake, guaranteed by Him, the Father, to
be good as before His Law. It is accept-

ance with God in the Beloved; a thing Eph. i. 6.

lodged deep in Christ, to be touched only
in Christ, to be possessed only in Union
with Christ. And it is “in the BELoveD”;
yes, do not forget that word in this con-
nexion. It irradiates the whole mystery,
the whole blessed mass of saving facts,
with glory shed from the central light of
the Divine Nature, from Love, the infi-
nite Love of the Father for the Son.
The “ many brethren ”
for they are in the Beloved “ FrrstsBorn.”
Law, Life, Love, a threefold cord of

eternal texture, holds the believing sinner’s

29.

anchor, as it lies ‘© within the veil.” Heb. vi.
19.

are dear indeed, Rom.viii.Jude 20.

Gal. i.
20.

 

   
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

Vile.

III.k—ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED.

Have we been theologizing too long, too
elaborately? Itrust not. It is no pur-
pose of these humble pages to discuss for
discussion’s sake. They aim, with the
Lord’s mercy, solely and sincerely, at the
building up of the writer’s fellow believer
on “our most holy faith.” And all is
with a view to the real demands of the
common days, the common things, that
make up “ the life we live in the flesh.”’
Sure I am that all theologizing which
really ignores this aim is little to the pur-
pose of the soul. But then, I am equally
sure that the Christian is never less strong
and less spiritual for being more thought-Accepted in the Beloved. gl

 

ful. He is never less rich in the sense of
peace for a firmer grasp on its revealed
reasons. And so a few brief pages spent
on the holy Doctrine of Acceptance need
not hinder the believing reader. They
may directly help him in his personal enjoy-
ment of covenant peace, and his personal
exercise of lifeand powerasoneof the Lord’s
limbs and branches, ‘¢ growing into Him.”

But now a few more words under the
same heading, to deal rather with the
use than with the theory.

Be Aud first, a word of gentle .bue
earnest warning. I entreat my fellow-
member of our Lord and Head to watch
against a lax hold on that great branch of
thetruth of ““ in-ness’” “in Christ, “ Chrict
FOR me.” Precious, incalculably precious,
is the word, “Christ rv me.”’ Let us wel-
come in upon the soul att that is meant by
that word, It expresses a divine fact for
the Christian. He is “mv Curisr’”; yes92 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

decd, as we have seen. But alse,
Christ 1s “1n HIM.” The Head is not
only dear, not only near, to the Limb.
The very Life of the Head suffuses and
yenetrates the Limb. ‘The contact is so
deep, so real, that it is only inadequately
figured and shadowed by the action
through man’s body of the forces whose
material source is in his brain. Yes,
and this fact abides, not only in times of
spiritual joy, but even when temptation
Is strongest, nay, even when actual faith
Is faintest. The realization may be
weak, the sense and exercise of power
may be low. eBut let the Christian find
his secret of renewal, prompt and strong,
in a steadfast assurance that Christ 1s
nevertheless in him.§ There is the fact;
Ge not toake it;. only use. jt. - See
how the Apostle. uses it, 1 Cor, vii 37,
He speaks to a Christian tempted to
grossest sin, to fornication itself. AndAccepted in the Beloved. 93

 

 

 

 

he bids him find his perfect victory in
this immediate certainty. -‘ You are
joined unto the Lord,” “You are one
spirit with the Lord.” *

Yes, “Christ m me”s hold it fase,
drink it into the depth of your spirit.
But do the same with ‘‘ Christ ror me.”
‘The two truths are not identical. One
is not the equivalent or substitute for the
ouier, “Christ In me” is not the
watchword with which to meet the
Law. It is indeed the secret of victory
over the tempter, over the world, over
self. But it does not meet the Law.
And we need always something that will
meet the Law. For the Law’s demand,
as I have said, is continual, is eternal;

* In this one passage, by the way, the holy
Marriage-metaphor is distinctly used of the relation
between the individual Christian and Christ, not
only (as usually) of that between the Church and
Christ. He is ** my Shepherd, Husband, Friend.”94 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

 

fixed as the throne of God. It asks of
you and me, at every moment, perfect
Holiness or perfect Satisfaction. Now
the Righteous Christ, the Atoning Christ,
is the one possibility of meeting that
demand, in my case, and in youfs,
We can meet it only on His resources.
Those resources become ours, in genuine
right and fact, when we enter into Him;
when we become one with Him. One-
ness with Him is the central thought
and truth. But this does not alter what
we need to find there, in order to make
our answer to the Law. We need not
some vague and general result of our
Union. We need the “ For-ness”’ of
our Head ; His Righteousness, His Merit,
His Satisfactoriness to the Law of God.
Blessed is the experience, offered to
every believer, of “ Christ in me.” Whole-
hearted surrender and whole-hearted ador-
ing trust, these are the conditions, andAccepted in the Beloved. 95

 

 

 

the blessing then is sure. But ah, let
that experience, which will lead you ever
deeper into the searching as well as glad-
dening “light of the Lord,” be always
ramparted and sustained with that one
solitary secret of judicial peace with God,
“‘Christ ror me’’; the stricken Head ror
me His living Limb.

2. In appropriating and realizing our
Justification in Christ, our Acceptance in
the Beloved, let us seek, as ever, the two
diverse but harmonious things—depth of
view, simplicity of action. The fuller our
study of Scripture on the matter, the better,
if it results in convictions clear as well as
fulland connected. The humblerand more
submissive our thoughts of the sovereignty
of God’s grace in the matter, the better, if
they are guarded and balanced with other
truths, the truths of divine pity, and divine
sincerity of invitation. The stronger our
realization of eternal faithfulness in the96 = Accepted in the Beloved.

 

matter, the better ; our realization cf the
holy personal action of the Lord, who
indeed is ‘‘ not ourselves,” in bringing us
into His Christ and sustaining and main-
taining usin Him. On the other hand,
let the most advanced Christian nevel
fail to take, from his own point of view,
the very simplest action in assuring and
reassuring his soul in the matter of accept-
ance. Do I,a man, a sinner, now, this
hour, not- yesterday, but now, believe on
the name of the Son of God? Personal
triumphs aside, personal failures aside, all
the past and all the future aside, do I at
this present point stand before God a
believing man? ‘Then I stand in Christ.
And in Christ is the whole divine provi-
sion and apparatus of justifying righteous-
ness for the man who is in Him. At
this moment J need it all. At this mo-
ment I, a believer, possess it all.

Such thoughts are often specially timelyee in the Beloved. 97

 

 

for the soul long acquainted with God in
Christ, but now overtaken in a fault.
Its very experience may bewilder it.
Must I not, to possess peace now, recur
first to my happy experiences of old?
No. I must be content, from my owny Joh. ii.
point of view, to take exactly. the fet 3
step over again, to believe on the name
of the Son of God. For the moment, I
will not ask if I was in Christ yesterday ;
I will stand in Him to-day. And I do
(this on the ground not of what I have
\been, but of what He is.

Great Christians, old in faith and
holiness, have been known in dying hours
to fall back, with all the soul’s weight,
upon that one word, that threshold-word,
that invitation to the poor penitent in
live fest vdistress> **. Elina that comely on
unto mel will in no. wise cast.out; 77
‘Their gain from the past was that they
knew already what treasures were open

7‘view of acceptance altogether? Js not hon-

 
  
 
 
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

98 Accepted in the Beloved.

   

 

to their reviving faith. $But their faith
was the simplest, the most elementary, in
itself. § Let it be ever so with us.

3. I hardly need say a word, to any one
likely to read this little book, on the con-
nexion between assured Acceptance in
Christ, and Holiness. Let me only ap-
peal to you, is not that connexion deep,
direct, and strong? Do you not know
that your assurance of “in-ness” in
Christ, and of Christ’s *‘‘ for-ness” for
you His member, is at once fulcrum and
lever to spiritual life and work? Is it
not your quiet strength against the Enemy,
whose object it is, accordingly, by every
art to disturb it? Is it not your animation
to love the brethren, to love all men as
possible brethren in Him, to toil and ven-
ture for them that they too may be His?
Js not conscious allowed inconsistency just
that which beclouds and bewilders yourAccepted in the Beloved. g9

 

est love of the Lord’s will just that which
clears the air around every blessed reason
of your peace, your peace not in obedient

   
 

self, but in “ the Obedience of the One ” ? Rom. v.

4. A very few words shall follow on
the great subject, so present to many
minds, of the holy Sacraments of the
Gospel, and their connexion with our
Union and Acceptance.

How am I incorporated into Christ,
and maintained in incorporation? In the
spiritual essence of the matter, and from
my side, by Fairy, simple, direct, imme-
diate. I accept Him and His Name for

19.

my hope and life; and this is the revealed Joh. i. 12.

way to becomea child of God. The man
who to-day, say in some Indian mission
station, say in some English parish, sees
and accepts Christ as his peace, life, and
Lord, is beyond all doubt, then and there,
baptized or not, a cuixtp in the Father’s
sight. And the man who to-day is acting

ers TE100 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

 

living faith in Christ as his peace, life, and
Lord, his Head, his power and hope, is
receiving by the chain and channel of that
faith, as truly in his chamber, his shop, his
field, as at the holy Table itself, all the
“riches of grace” which this moment
needs. The Lord is in that man, and he
in the Lord. The convert waits not for
Baptism, the believer waits not for the
Communion, to possess that divine reality
before God.

But then, God evermore appends to His
divine Covenants divine Seals; yes, divine
Seals, His own making, and perfectly
effectual for their divine purposes. He
gives to man visible and outward things,
under every covenant, to attest its cer-
tainty to man’s senses and mind; to be
legal tokens of “ conveyance.”* Such is

* It is interesting to find St Bernard, the great

theologian of the twelfth century, explaining the
Holy Communion precisely thus, and speaking ofAccepted in the Beloved. 101

 

the Rainbow. Such was circumcision,
God’s seal to His covenant of grace
(grace, not works,) with Abraham.
Such are the Sacraments of the Gospel.
In principle and purpose they are just of
a piece with Noah’s sacrament, and
Abraham’s.

They “confer ” and “ convey ” as the
documentary Seals of God. I kneel at the
Communion Table. I am a believer in
the Son of God, and in the promise of
Life in Him. My gracious God, con-
descending to my human heart, as He did
to Abraham’s, presses then and there for
me His seal upon His covenant. 2The
blessed elements are to me as it were His
outstretched hands, doing the deed in my
sight, to my very touch; re-sealing all the
benefits of Calvary to me, to me, with a
Circumcision and Baptism as the successive sa-

craments of the same grace. Sermo in Coena

Domini, c. 2.102 Accepted in the Beloved.

 

certainty of their own.? This is in truth,
to be means of grace; means of grace
because seals of Covenant.

But the Covenant is mine antecedent to
the Seals. It is mine for continuous pos-
session, for continuous use. Every
moment I need, every moment I may
have, the fulness of its covenanted grace,
through faith which is in Christ. I love,
I venerate, I seek, the Sacrament. But [
live upon the reality it seals. And I pos-
sess that reality, direct, by faith.

5. So this chapter must close. Let
me close by coming back to the glorious
truth of Acceptance in the Beloved, viewed
simply in itself. And let me ask some
voices of the Blessed gone before to bear
their witness to it. Thank God, it is
no novelty in Christian faith and teach-
ing. From the Apostles’ time, age after
age, through the succession of the ancient
“Fathers,” and then again in the days ofAccepted in the Beloved. 103

 

 

 

 

 

the Reformation and the following days,
we trace, like a line of light through many
a shadow, the truth, ‘“‘ ACCEPTED IN THE
BeLovep.” Listen to a few of the great
cloud of witnesses, as they tell us the reason
of their hope.

St ArTHanasius writes (century iv.):
“It behoves us to reckon to the whole
Lump that fulfilment of the Law which
was wrought by the Firstfruits.’* St
AvucusTINE writes, a little later: ‘‘’The
transgressions belong to us; the suffering
for us belongs to the Head. Because
of His suffering for us, all that belongs
to us of transgressions is discharged.”
St Bernard writes (century xil.):
‘©The Head and the Body is one Christ.
The Head satisfied for the members ;
Christ for His own vitals.” And when
we come to the age of the Reformation,
and its next successors, itis the same. Let

* For references, see Appendix.F ff 7 ; ;
ma H ae: en : 5 a “
SS M *: r S

 

  
 
 
 
  
 
   
    
    
  
  
    

 

104, Accepted in the Beloved.

me close with one specimen* of this whole
type of teaching, in the sweet, deep words
of our English saint, George Hereert, in
the seventeenth century :

JUDGEMENT.

Almightie Judge, how shall poore wretches brook
Thy dreadfull look,

Able an heart of iron to appall,
When Thou shalt call

For ev’ry man’s peculiar book ?

What others mean to do I know not well
Yet I heare tell

That some will turn Thee to some leaves therein
So void of sinne

That they in merit shall excell.

}

But I resolve, when Thou shalt call for mine,
That to decline,

And thrust a Testament into Thy hand:
Let that be scann’d.

There Thou shalt find My FAULTs ARE THINE.

* See further in the Appendix.IX.

A PRACTICAL QUESTION ANSWERED.

<¢ What shall I, a member of Christ, do with my
sin, detected and undetected ?”’*

Tuis is a question often present to hearts
which have accepted and realized, in a
special way, the truth of our sanctification
by the power and life of our living Lord,
through the Holy Spirit. They find
themselves met by a twofold practical
problem. There is the problem of deal-
ing with any given instance of conscious
sinning, inward or outward, and there is

* The following remarks were written in reply
to some personal enquiries. They cover, in an-
other form, some of the ground of the previous
three chapters. But they are designedly left as
written.106 A Practical

 

why rJoh.i.the problem of ‘unconscious sin,” the
a ae certainty, by the Word of God, that there
is within me, underlying any moment’s
personal analysis, an “ unknown quantity ”
| of very real sinfulness; if I think only of
iW sinfulness of defect. What shall I do with
ey these things ?

 

 

 

wl With regard to the least conscious act
| or process of sinning, one thing is clear—
| | It must be stopped, decisively stopped.
hi Let nothing divert me from that convic-

tion andaim. And to effect this, I must

above all things renew that true conscious
t Joh. iii.contact with the Son of God, which is
the divine secret of not sinning. Humbly
re-affirming, in His presence, what I am
and what I have in Him, on the warrant
of His Word, I must bring down upon
that evil thing the foot of the blessed Con-
queror of myself and of my sins. “ Unpsr
His Freer” must be one watchword in
this need.Question Answered. 107

 

But then, this is not all. I am again,
by His grace and mercy, in willing and
conscious contact with my Life. His
heart-cleansing Virtue flows again full
upon the needing spot. But what about
the moment when | was sinning that now
arrested sin? It was a very guilty mo-
ment ; what shall I do with it? Shall I
dream that it is atoned for by this mo-
ment’s holiness and communion, or by
some future development of holiness, as it
will be, say, in the state of glory? No,
surely: _ For at each moment, equally,
true holiness is simplest duty and strictest
debt. SI must, then, get that moment’s
guilt, so dark and real, accounted for by
that divine resource, “the blood and right-
eousness ” of the Son of God, my covenant
and vital ‘Head once wounded.”$ On
Him it was laid, in eternal plan, before
the world was. On Him it was laid, his-
torically, at Calvary. }On Him I must108 A Practical

—

 

eT Jay it, in the way of simplest trust and
| | confession, now and here, without hesita-
tion or reserve.’ “On His weap” must

| be my other watchword in this need,
| As a believer, through grace, I am in
| union with my Lord and Head. From
that union, there flow down to each
member two sacred confluent streams,
the Life and the Merit of the Head. I
get them both by faith; I get them both
from Him, to Whom I am joined by

| 2 Cor. iv, faith, by the “ Spirit of faith.”

AHH | _ And then, with regard to the dark
“unknown quantity” of undetected sin
. and sinning, the same sacred truth must
| be my peace, not my opiate but my sanc-
a tifying peace. I must recur to, I must
| dwell on, this truth of Curist FOR ME
WHO AM IN Curist. My deep word of
Jer.xxiii. answer must be JEHovaH Tsrpkenu. And
well for me if my view of the Eternal
Holiness is such that I realize that I needQuestion Answered. 109

 

that answer every hour.

My ‘sins of Lev.v.rs.

ignorance,” if only they, call me to live
with my hands continually upon the holy
head of the Lord my Righteousness.

«© And these things are written”

surely they are written, in effect, in the
blessed Book), “ that we sin not, ine

way of propitiation transfigures itself ever
more into the way of unsinning experi-
ence, as the believer draws evermore from
the same source and by the same hand
remission and purification, acceptance and
cleansing power. ‘The twofold action on
each moment of self-discovery, the action
which lays the sin upon the Lord’s head
and beneath the Lord’s feet, will issue in
a divine singleness of result, the result
that, next time, “‘ we sin not.” And, as
this whole process deepens our conscious
contact with Him, makes us to “ grow eo iv.
into Him,” we shall find a blessed assist-
ance in dealing also with ‘“ unconscious

(as 1 Joh.

ll. I.. “If we walk in the light,”

Ilo A Practical

sin;” we shall get a truer and more sensi -
tive insight into what in us is sin, and we
shall do this in a way which will lead us
Not to an enfeebling wretchedness and
(perplexity, but to a thankful strength
which knows at once what to do, and
does it, by the grace of God.

Once more with devout thanksgiving
let us ponder our position and our
Possession in Jesus Christ, the Life and
the Righteousness of His people, their
All for the wHote need of every moment.
And if we would enjoy our wealth, and
use it for the Giver, let us remember,
with His endowment, His conditions,
if we are
Whole-hearted with the Holy One,
willing to see all things as He sees
them, who “is in the light,” then
“we have fellowship ” with Him, and

He with us; we are friends, personal

friends, participators of each other,Question Answered. Il!

 

wonderful thought. And meanwhile,
to supply a range of abiding need which
even this Friendship cannot cancel here
on earth, to supply the need of the
remission of sin, sin unknown as well
as known, sin which baffles articulate
and explicit confession, and yet is there,
we possess the eternal efhicacy of the Lord’s
Blood and Righteousness ; we possess it,
not for fictitious or fanciful reasons, but
because we are His, one with Him.
The whole of this need we may not,
we do not, ever know. But if in holy
sincerity we are implicitly ‘‘ laying on the;
altar’? all that may be within, ready,
through grace, for instant confession and\
renunciation on discovery, we are dealt’
with—for that Righteousness’ sake—(
graciously, generously, holily, as if each
detail were seen by us, and known, and|
articulately confessed over the Sin-Bearer.)
Is there not provision here for a112) A Question Answered.

“cloudless air?’ between the Redeemer
and the soul—the continuous and vivify-
ing peace of one who has laid all the
demerit upon His head and all the will
beneath His feet ?

Reader, it may be thus this hour for
you and for me, through Him who loved
us; blessed be His name. Amen.A Morning “Act of Faith?? 113

 

A MORNING “ACT OF FAITH.”

I peLtieve on the Name of the Son or
Gop.

Therefore I am 1n Him, having Redemp-
tion through His Blood, and Life by
His Spirit.

And He is 1n mg, and all fulness is in
Him.

To Him I belong, by purchase, conquest,
and self-surrender.

To me He belongs, for all my hourly
need.

There is no cloud between my Lord and
me.

There is no difficulty, inward or outward,
which He is not ready to meet in
me to-day.

The Lord is my Keeper. Amen.HYMNS.

“On Him: From Him: By Hm.”

Hat, glorious Head of all Thine own,
Our equal cause of peace and power!

Thou for our sins didst once atone,
Thou art our life of life this hour.

On Thee were our transgressions laid,
On Thee the Law’s pure lightnings shed;

The members’ debt of doom was paid
By unknown sufferings of the Head.

And now in toil, temptation, strife,

Still from their Head’s exhaustless well
The members draw new streams of life,
The world, the flesh, the fiend to quell,Elymus, 115

 

Deep through the springs of mind and soul
Thee the great Comforter inspires ;
Thy sovereign thoughts our thought con-

trol,
Thy love our love divinely fires,

To know, to do the Head’s commands—
For this the Body lives and grows;
All speed of feet and skill of hands

For Thee is spent, and from Thee flows,

Then, Lord, in strong communion still
Oh, faster bind us to be free;
Thou working out by us Thy will,
We working out Thy will by Thee!
H. €. Gi Mi;
Oct., 1885.

Lorp Jesus, are we one with thee?
O height, O depth of love!
Thou one with us on Calvary,
We one with Thee above.

8a116 Hymns.

 

Such was Thy love, that for our sake
Thou didst from heaven come down;
Our mortal flesh and blood partake,
In all our misery one.

Our sins, our guilt, in love divine,
Confess'd and borne by Thee:
The sting, the curse, the wrath were
thine
To set Thy members free.

Ascended now, in glory bright,
Still one with us Thou art:

Nor life, nor death, nor depth, nor height
Thy saints and Thee can part.

Ere long shall come that glorious day,
When, seated on Thy Throne,
Thou shalt to wondering worlds dis-
play
That we in Thee are one.

DEck.Jesus, I sing Thy matchless grace

That calls a worm Thy own;
Gives me among Thy saints a place,
‘To make Thy glories known.

Allied to Thee our vital Head

We act, and grow, and thrive;

From Thee divided each is dead

When most he seems alive.

Thy saints on earth, and those above,

Here join in sweet accord;

One body all in mutual love
And Thou our common Lord.

Oh may my faith each hour derive

Thy Spirit with delight,

While death and hell in vain shall strive

This bond to disunite.

Thou the whole Body wilt present
Before Thy Father’s face ;

Nor shall a wrinkle or a spot

Its beauteous form disgrace.

DopDpDRIDGE.Wt Dear is Thy Presence with Thy friends,
aT To faith’s glad eyes reveal’d,
| Their Sun when sorrow’s night descends,
In battle’s hour their shield.

 

"Tis life to clasp the word
Which tells of Thee with every saint
For ever ong, dear Lord.

k

: } But, ah! when heart and spirit faint,
|
f

Companions may converse and go;
! But what shall now divide

| Members and Head, above, below,
| The Bridegroom and the Bride?

H, C..&, M.Hymns.

 

Jesus, Thy life is mine !
Dwell evermore in me,
And let me see

That nothing can untwine

Thy life from mine.

Thy life in me be shown!
Lord, I would henceforth seek
To think and speak
Thy thoughts, Thy words alone,
No more my own!

Thy love, Thy joy, Thy peace,
Continuously impart
Unto my heart,
Fresh springs that never cease,
But still increase,

The blest reality
Of resurrection power,
Thy Church’s dower,

Life more abundantly,

Lord, give to me!Hymns.

 

 

Thy fullest gift, O Lord,

Now at Thy word I claim,
Through Thy dear Name,
And touch the rapturous chord

Of praise forth-pour’d.

Jesus, my life is Thine,
And evermore shall be
Hidden in Thee!

For nothing can untwine

Thy life from mine,
F, R. Havercat,

From Hymns of Consecration and Faith, by
permission of the Publishers, MEssrs,
MarsHact, Broruers,APPENDIX.
A

(See page 103).

“Man it was who owed, Man it is
who hath paid; ¢ For,’ saith he, «if One
died for all, then all died’; forsooth, so
that the satisfaction of the One should be
reckoned (‘mputetur) to all, even as He,
the One, carried the transgressions of all ;
and so that it should not prove to be one
party who forfeited and another party
who satisfied. For the Head and the
Body is one Christ. The Head satisfied
for the members; Christ for His own
vitals (wisceribus). For, according to the
Gospel of Paul . . . . ‘ He, dying for us,

made us alive together with Himself, for-122 Appendix.

 

giving us all our trespasses, blotting out
the handwriting of the decree that was
against us, and took it out of the way,
fastening it to the Cross; despoiling
principalities and powers.’ Oh, may I
be found among those spoils, of which
the adverse powers have been despoiled,
myself transferred to the dominion of the
Lord! ”’—-St Bernarp, Epistle cxe.

This passage, it will be seen, includes
the short quotation made p. 103.

A long and noble passage follows,
pressing from every side the thought that
as the mysterious gui/t flows to me from
Adam, so the mysterious merit from
Christ. ‘‘ He was made for us, by God
the Father, righteousness,’ saith the
Apostle. The righteousness which was
made for me, is it not mine? If mine is
the inherited guilt, is not mine the granted
righteousness ?”—c. 6.

The words quoted from St Athanas-Appendix, 123

 

ius are found in a Treatise in his Works,
Wol. ti:, py 270, ed. 1601.

Those quoted from St Augustine oc-
cur in a sermon on Psalm xc., §z. The
theme is a favourite one with St Augus-

tine.B.
(See page 104.)

“‘FairH makes the righteousness of
Christ’s satisfaction and obedience to be
ours, as it is the bond of that Mysricar
Union which there is between Christ
and the believing soul. If Christ and
the believer be one, the righteousness of
Christ may well be reckoned as the
righteousness of the believer, Nay,
mutual imputation flows from mystical
union: the sins of believers are imputed
to Christ, and the righteousness of Christ
to them; and both justly, because being
united each to other by mutual consent
(which consent on our part is faith,) God
considers them but as one person. As it
is in marriage—the husband stands liableAppendix. 125

 

to the wife’s debts, and the wife stands
interested in the husband’s possessions ; so
it is here. Faith is the marriage-bond
and tie between Christ and a believer;
and, therefore, all the debts of a believer
are chargeable upon Christ, and the
righteousness of Christ is instated upon
the believer: so that, upon the account
of this marriage-union, he hath a legal
right and title to the purchase made by
it. Indeed, this union is a high and in-
scrutable mystery; yet plain it is that
there is such close, spiritual,and real union
between Christ and a believer: the Scrip-
ture both often expressly affirms it—‘ He
that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit,”’
1 Cor. vi. 17—and also lively illustrates
it by sevetal; resemblances. <.».. 4 Tt is
still upon the account of this union that
Christ was reckoned a sinner, and we are
reckoned as righteous. And therefore,
as faith is the bond and tie of this union,126 Appendix.

 

 

so it (faith) is, without more difficulty,
the way and means of our justification.
By faith, we are united to Christ ; by
that union, we truly havea righteousness ;
and upon that righteousness, the justice of
God as well as His mercy, is engaged to
justify and acquit us.”’"—From The Doctrine
of the Two Covenants, by E. Hopkins,

D.D., Bishop of Londonderry ;_ died
16go.

 

“ Mine is the guilt, but Thine the Right-

eousness ;

Mine is the sin, but Thine the cleansing
Blood ;
Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace,
Thy Blood, Thy Righteousness, O
Lord my God.”
H. Bonar.By THE SAME AUTHOR.

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