3. 'Filled with joy and the Holy Ghost,' 'The Kingdom is joy in the Holy Ghost.' The Holy Spirit, the Blessed Spirit of Jesus is within thee, a very fountain of living water, of joy and gladness. Oh, seek to know Him, who dwells in thee, to work all that Jesus has for thee: He will be in thee the Spirit of faith and of joy.

4. Love and joy ever keep company. Love, denying and forgetting itself for the brethren and the lost, living in them, finds the joy of God. 'The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost.'



Twenty-second Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

In Christ our Sanctification.

'Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption; that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.'—1 Cor. i. 30, 31.

These words lead us on now to the very centre of God's revelation of the way of holiness. We know the steps of the road leading hither. He is holy, and holiness is His. He makes holy by coming near. His presence is holiness. In Christ's life, the holiness that had only been revealed in symbol, and as a promise of good things to come, had really taken possession of a human will, and been made one with true human nature. In His death every obstacle had been removed that could prevent the transmission of that holy nature to us: Christ had truly become our sanctification. In the Holy Spirit the actual communication of that holiness took place. And now we want to understand what the work is the Holy Spirit does, and how He communicates this holy nature to us: what our relation is to Christ as our sanctification, and what the position we have to take up toward Him, that in its fulness and its power it may do its work for us.

The Divine answer to this question is, 'Of God are ye in Christ.' The one thing we need to apprehend is, what this our position and life in Christ is, and how that position and life may on our part be accepted and maintained. Of this we may be sure, that it is not something that is high and beyond our reach. There need be no exhausting effort or hopeless sighing, 'Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above?' It is a life that is meant for the sinful and the weary, for the unworthy and the impotent. It is a life that is the gift of the Father's love, and that He Himself will reveal in each one who comes in childlike trust to Him. It is a life that is meant for our every-day life, that in every varying circumstance and situation will make and keep us holy.

'Of God are ye in Christ.' Ere our Blessed Lord left the world, He spake: Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. And it is written of Him: 'He that descended is the same that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.' 'The Church is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.' In the Holy Spirit the Lord Jesus is with His people here on earth. Though unseen, and not in the flesh, His Personal Presence is as real on earth as when He walked with His disciples. In regeneration the believer is taken out of his old place 'in the flesh;' he is no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit (Rom. viii. 9); he is really and actually in Christ. The living Christ is around him by His holy Presence. Wherever and whatever he be, however ignorant of his position or however unfaithful to it, there he is in Christ. By an act of Divine and omnipotent grace, he has been planted into Christ, encircled on every side by the Power and the Love of Him who filleth all things, whose fulness specially dwells in His body here below, the Church.

And how can one who is longing to know Christ fully as his sanctification, come to live out what God means and has provided in this—'in Christ'? The first thing that must be remembered is that it is a thing of faith and not of feeling. The promise of the indwelling and the quickening of the Holy One is to the humble and contrite. Just when I feel most deeply that I am not holy, and can do nothing to make myself holy, when I feel ashamed of myself, just then is the time to turn from self and very quietly to say: I am in Christ. Here He is all around me. Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father, of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ.

But because it is of faith, therefore it is of the Holy Spirit. Of God are ye in Christ. It is not as if God placed and planted us in Christ, and left it to us now to maintain the union. No, God is the Eternal One, the God of the everlasting life, who works every moment in a power that does not for one moment cease. What God gives, He continues with a never-ceasing giving. It is He who by the Holy Spirit makes this life in Christ a blessed reality in our consciousness. 'We have received the Spirit of God that we might know the things that are freely given us of God.' Faith is not only dependent on God for the gift it is to accept, but for the power to accept. Faith not only needs the Son as its filling and its food; it needs the Spirit as its power to receive and hold. And so the blessed possession of all that it means to be in Christ our sanctification comes as we learn to bow before God in believing prayer for the mighty workings of the Spirit, and in the deep childlike trust that He will reveal and glorify in us this Christ our sanctification in whom we are.

And how will the Spirit reveal this Christ in whom we are? It will specially be as the Living One, the Personal Friend and Master. Christ is not only our Example and our Ideal. His life is not only an atmosphere and an inspiration, as we speak of a man who mightily influences us by his writings. Christ is not only a treasury and a fulness of grace and power, into which the Spirit is to lead us. But Christ is the Living Saviour, with a heart that beats with a love that is most tenderly human, and yet Divine. It is in this love He comes near, and into this love He receives us, when the Father plants us into Him. In the power of a personal love He wishes to exercise influence, and to attach us to Himself. In that love of His we have the guarantee that His Holiness will enter us; in that love the great power by which it enters. As the Spirit reveals to us where we are dwelling, in Christ and His love, and that this Christ is a living Lord and Saviour, there wakens within us the enthusiasm of a personal attachment, and the devotion of a loving allegiance, that make us wholly His. And it becomes possible for us to believe that we can be holy: we feel sure that in the path of holiness we can go from strength to strength.

Such believing insight into our relation to Christ as being in Him, and such personal attachment to Him who has received us into His love and keeps us abiding there, becomes the spring of a new obedience. The will of God comes to us in the light of Christ's life and His love—each command first fulfilled by Him, and then passed on to us as the sure and most blessed help to more perfect fellowship with the Father and His Holiness. Christ becomes Lord and King in the soul, in the power of the Holy Spirit, guiding the will into all the perfect will of God, and proving Himself to be its sanctification, as He crowns its obedience with ever larger inflow of the Presence and the Holiness of God.

Is there any dear child of God at all disposed to lose heart as he thinks of what manner of man he ought to be in all holy living, let me call him to take courage. Could God have devised anything more wonderful or beautiful for such sinful, impotent creatures? Just think, Christ, God's own Son, made to be sanctification to you. The Mighty, Loving, Holy Christ, sanctified through suffering that He might have sympathy with you, given to make you holy. What more could you desire? Yes, there is more: 'Of God you are in Him.' Whether you understand it or not, however feebly you realize it, there it is, a thing most Divinely true and real. You are in Christ, by an act of God's own Mighty Power. And there, in Christ, God Himself longs to establish and confirm you to the end. And you have, greatest wonder of all, the Holy Spirit within you to teach you to know, and believe, and receive, all that there is in Christ for you. And if you will but confess that there is in you no wisdom or power for holiness, none at all, and allow Christ, 'the Wisdom of God and the Power of God,' by the Holy Spirit within you, to lead you on, and prove how completely, how faithfully, how mightily, He can be your sanctification, He will do it most gloriously.

O my brother! come and consent more fully to God's way of holiness. Let Christ be your sanctification. Not a distant Christ to whom you look, but a Christ very near, all around you, in whom you are. Not a Christ after the flesh, a Christ of the past, but a present Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost. Not a Christ whom you can know by your wisdom, but the Christ of God, who is a Spirit, and whom the Spirit within you, as you die to the flesh and self, will reveal in power. Not a Christ such as your little thoughts can frame a conception of, but a Christ according to the greatness of the heart and the love of God. Oh, come and accept this Christ, and rejoice in Him! Be content now to leave all your feebleness, and foolishness, and faithlessness to Him, in the quiet confidence that He will do for you more than you can think. And so let it henceforth be, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Most Blessed Father! I bow in speechless adoration before the holy mystery of Thy Divine Love....

Oh, forgive me, that I have known and believed it so little as it is worthy of being known and believed.

Accept my praise for what I have seen and tasted of its Divine blessedness. Accept, Lord God! of the praise of a glad and loving heart that only knows that it never can praise Thee aright.

And hear my prayer, O my Father! that in the power of Thy Holy Spirit, who dwells in me, I may each day accept and live out fully what Thou hast given me in Christ my sanctification. May the unsearchable riches there are in Him be the daily supply for my every need. May His Holiness, His delight in Thy will, indeed become mine. Teach me, above all, how this can most surely be, because I am, through the work of Thine Almighty Quickening Power, in Him, kept there by Thyself. My Father! my faith cries out: I can be holy, blessed be my Lord Jesus!

In this faith I yield myself to Thee, Lord Jesus, my King and Master, to do Thy will alone. In everything I do, great or small, I would act as one sanctified in Jesus, united to God's will in Him. It is Thou alone canst teach me to do this, canst give me strength to perform it. But I trust in Thee—art Thou not Christ my sanctification? Blessed Lord! I do trust Thee. Amen.

1. Christ, as He lived and died on earth, is our sanctification. His life, the Spirit of His life, is what constitutes our holiness. To be in perfect harmony with Christ, to have His mind, is to be holy.

2. Christ's Holiness had two sides. God sanctified Him by His Spirit: Christ sanctified Himself by following the leading of the Spirit, by giving up His will to God in everything. So God has made us holy in Christ; and so we follow after and perfect holiness by yielding ourselves to God's Spirit, by giving up our will and living in the will of God.

3. It is well that we take in every aspect of what God has revealed of holiness in His word. But let us never weary ourselves by seeking to grasp all completely. Let us even return to the simplicity that is in Jesus. To bow at His feet, to believe that He knows all we need, and has it all, and loves to give it all, is rest. And holiness is resting in Jesus the rest of God. Let all our thoughts be gathered up into this one: Jesus, Blessed Jesus.

4. This holy life in Christ is for to-day, when you read this. For to-day He is made of God unto you sanctification: to-day He will indeed be your holiness. Believe in Him for it; trust Him, praise Him. And remember: you are in Him.



Twenty-third Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and the Body.

'The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you; therefore glorify God in your body.'—1 Cor. iii. 16, vi. 13, 19.

'She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit.'—1 Cor. vii. 34.

'Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.'—Rom. xii. 1.

Coming into the world, our Blessed Lord spake: 'A body didst Thou prepare for me; lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.' Leaving this world again, it was in His own body that He bore our sins upon the tree. So it was in the body, no less than in soul and spirit, that He did the will of God. And therefore it is said, 'By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.'

When praying for the Thessalonians and their sanctification, Paul says, 'And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Of himself he had spoken as 'always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.' His earnest expectation and hope was, 'that Christ be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.' The relation between body and spirit is so intimate, the power of sin in the spirit comes so much through the body, the body is so distinctly the object both of Christ's redemption and the Holy Spirit's renewal, that our study of holiness will be seriously defective if we do not take in the teaching of Scripture on holiness in the body.

It has been well said that the body is, to the soul and spirit dwelling and acting within it, like the walls of the city. Through them the enemy enters in. In time of war, everything yields to the defence of the walls. It is often because the believer does not know the importance of keeping the walls defended, keeping the body sanctified, that he fails in having the soul and spirit preserved blameless. Or it is because he does not understand that the guarding and sanctifying of the body in all its parts must be as distinctly a work of faith, and as directly through the mighty power of Jesus and the indwelling of the Spirit, as the renewing of the inner life, that progress in holiness is so feeble. The rule of the city we entrust to Jesus: but the defence of the walls we keep in our own hands; the King does not keep us as we expected, and we cannot discover the secret of failure. It is the God of peace Himself, who sanctifies wholly, who must preserve spirit and soul and body entire and without blame. The tabernacle with its wood, the temple with its stone, were as holy as all included within their walls: God's holy ones need the body to be holy.

To realize the full meaning of this, let us remember how it was through the body sin entered. 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food,' this was the temptation in the flesh; through this the soul was reached, 'it was a delight to the eyes;' through the soul it then passed into the spirit, 'and to be desired to make one wise.' In John's description of what is in the world (1 John ii. 15), we find the same threefold division, 'the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.' And the three temptations of Jesus by Satan correspond exactly: he first sought to reach Him through the body, in the suggestion to satisfy His hunger by making bread; the second (see Luke iv.) appealed to the soul, in the vision of the kingdoms of this world and their glory; the third to the spirit, in the call to assert and prove His Divine Sonship by casting Himself down. Even to the Son of God the first temptation came, as to Adam and all in the world, as lust of the flesh, the desire to gratify the natural and lawful appetite of hunger. We cannot note too carefully that it was on a question of eating what appeared good for food that man's first sin was committed, and that that same question of eating to satisfy hunger was the battleground on which the Redeemer's first encounter with Satan took place. It is on the question of eating and drinking what is good and lawful that more Christians than are aware of it are foiled by Satan. To have every appetite of the body under the rule and regulation of the Holy Spirit appears to some needless, to others too difficult. And yet it must be, if the body is to be holy, as God's temple, and we are to glorify Him in our body and our spirit. The first approaches of sin are made through the body: in the body the complete victory will be gained.

What Scripture teaches as to the intimacy of the connection between the body and spirit, physiology confirms. What appear at first merely physical transgressions leave a stain and have a degrading influence on the soul, and through it drag down the spirit. And on the other side, spiritual sins, sins of thought and imagination and disposition, pass through the soul into the body, fix themselves in the nervous constitution, and express themselves even in the countenance and the habits or tendencies of the body. Sin must be combated not only in the region of the spirit: if we are to perfect holiness, we must cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. 'If through the Spirit ye do make dead the deeds of the body, ye shall live.' If we are indeed to be cleansed from sin and made holy unto God, the body, as the outworks, must very specially be secured from the power of Satan and of sin.

And how is this to be done? God has made very special provision for this. Holy Scripture speaks so explicitly of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that communicates holiness, in connection with the body. At first sight it looks as if the word, your bodies, were simply used as equivalent to, your persons, yourselves. But as the deeper insight into the power of sin in the body, and the need of a deliverance specially there, quickens our perception, we see what is meant by the body being the temple of the Holy Spirit. We notice how very specially it is of sins in the body that Paul speaks as defiling God's holy temple; and how it is through the power of the Holy Ghost in the body that he would have us glorify God. 'Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost: glorify God therefore, in the power of the Holy Spirit, in your body.' The Holy Spirit must not only exercise a restraining and regulating influence on the appetites of the body and their gratification, so that they be in moderation and temperance,—this is only the negative side,—but there must be a positively spiritual element, making the exercise of natural functions a service of holy joy and liberty to the glory of God; no longer a threatened hindrance to the life of obedience and fellowship, but a means of grace, a real help to the spiritual life. It is only in a body that is full of the holy life, very entirely possessed of God's Spirit, that this will be the case.

And how can this be obtained? In the true Christian life, self-denial is the path to enjoyment, renunciation to possession, death to life. As long as there is ought that we think we have liberty and power to use or enjoy aright, if we but do so in moderation, we have not yet seen or confessed our own unholiness, or the need of the entire renewing of the Holy Spirit. It is not enough to say, 'Every creature of God is good, if it be received with thanksgiving;' we must remember the addition, 'for it is sanctified by the word and by prayer.' This sanctifying of every creature and its use is a thing as real and solemn as the sanctifying of ourselves. And this will only be where, if need be, we sacrifice the gift and the liberty to use it, until God gives us the power truly to use it to His glory alone. Of one of the most sacred of Divine institutions, marriage, Paul, who so denounces those who would forbid to marry, says distinctly that there may be cases in which a voluntary celibacy may be the surest and acceptable way of being 'holy both in body and spirit.' When to be holy as God is holy indeed becomes the great desire and aim of life, everything will be cherished or given up as it promotes the chief end. The actual and active presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the body will be the fire that is kept burning continually on the altar.

And how is this to be attained? Of the body as of the spirit it is God, God in Christ, who is our Keeper and our Sanctifier. The guarding of the walls of the city must be entrusted to Him who rules within. 'I am persuaded that He is able to guard my deposit,' to keep that which I have committed to Him, must become as definitely true of the body, and of each of its functions of which we are conscious that it is the occasion of doubt or of stumbling, as it has been of the soul we entrusted to Him for salvation. A fixed deposit in a bank is money given away out of my hands to be kept there: the body or any part of it that needs to be made holy must be a deposit with Jesus. Faith must trust His acceptance and guarding of it; prayer and praise must daily afresh renew the assurance, must confirm the committal of the deposit, and maintain the fellowship with Jesus. Abiding thus in Him and His Holiness, we shall receive, in a life of trust and joy, the power to prove, even in the body, how fully and wholly we are in Him who is made unto us sanctification, how real and true the Holiness of God is in His people.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Blessed Lord! who art my sanctification, I come to Thee now with a very special request. O Thou who didst in Thine own body bear our sins on the tree, and of whom it is written, 'We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,' be pleased to reveal to me how my body may to the full experience the power of Thy wonderful redemption. I do desire in soul and body to be holy to the Lord.

Lord! I have too little understood that my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, that there is nothing in it that can be matter of indifference, that its every state and function is to be holiness to the Lord. And where I saw that this should be so, I have still sought myself to guard from the enemy's approaches these the walls of the city. I forgot how this part of my being too could alone be kept and sanctified by faith, by Thy taking and keeping charge of what faith entrusted to Thee.

Lord Jesus! I come now to surrender this body with all its needs into Thy hands. In weariness and nervousness, in excitement and enjoyment, in hunger and want, in health and plenty, O my holy Saviour, let my body be in Thy keeping every moment. Thou callest us, 'being made free from sin, to present our members as servants of righteousness unto sanctification.' Saviour! in the faith of the freedom from sin which I have in Thee, I present every member of my body to Thee: I believe the Spirit of life in Thee makes me free from the law of sin in my members. Whether living or dying, be Thou magnified in my body. Amen.

1. In the tabernacle and temple, the material part was to be in harmony with, and the embodiment of, the holiness that dwelt within. It was therefore all made according to the pattern shown in the mount. In the two last chapters of Exodus, we have eighteen times 'as the Lord commanded.' Everything, even in the exterior, was the embodiment of the will of God. Even so our body, as God's temple, must in everything be regulated by God's word, quickened and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

2. As part of this holiness in the body, Scripture mentions dress. Speaking of the 'outward adorning of plaiting the hair, of wearing jewels, or the putting on of apparel,' as inconsistent with 'the apparel of a meek and quiet spirit,' Peter says, 'After this manner aforetime the holy women, who hoped in God, adorned themselves.' Holiness was seen in their dressing; their body was the temple of the Holy Spirit.

3. 'If ye through the Spirit do make dead the deeds of the body, ye shall live.' His quickening energy must reign through the whole. We are so accustomed to connect the spiritual with the ideal and invisible, that it will need time and thought and faith to realize how the physical and the sensible influence our spiritual life, and must be under the mastery and inspiration of God's Spirit. Even Paul says, 'I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage, lest I myself should be rejected.'

4. If God actually breathed His Spirit into the body of Adam formed out of the ground, let it not be thought strange that the Holy Spirit should now animate our bodies too with His sanctifying energy.

5. 'Corporeality is the end of the ways of God.' This deep saying of an old divine reminds us of a much neglected truth. The great work of God's Spirit is to ally Himself with matter, and form it into a spiritual body for a dwelling for God. In our body the Holy Spirit will do it, if He gets complete possession.

6. It is on this truth of the Holy Spirit's power in the body that what is called Faith-healing rests. Through all ages, in times of special spiritual quickening, God has given it to some to see how Christ would make, even here, the body partaker of the life and power of the Spirit. To those who do see it, the link between Holiness and Healing is a very close and blessed one, as the Lord Jesus takes possession of the body for Himself.



Twenty-fourth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Cleansing.

'Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.'—2 Cor. vii. 1.

That holiness is more than cleansing, and must be preceded by it, is taught us in more than one passage of the New Testament. 'Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word.' 'If a man cleanse himself from these, he shall be a vessel sanctified.' The cleansing is the negative side, the being separate and not touching the unclean thing, the removal of impurity; the sanctifying is the positive union and fellowship with God, and the participation of the graces of the Divine life and holiness (2 Cor. vi. 17, 18). So we read too of the altar, that God spake to Moses: 'Thou shalt cleanse the altar, when thou makest atonement for it, and thou shalt anoint it, to sanctify it' (Ex. xxix. 36). Cleansing must ever prepare the way, and ought always to lead on to holiness.

Paul speaks of a twofold defilement, of flesh and spirit, from which we must cleanse ourselves. The connection between the two is so close, that in every sin both are partakers. The lowest and most carnal form of sin will enter the spirit, and, dragging it down into partnership in crime, will defile and degrade it. And so will all defilement of spirit in course of time show its power in the flesh. Still we may speak of the two classes of sins as they owe their origin more directly to the flesh or the spirit.

'Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh.' The functions of our body may be classed under the three heads of the nourishment, the propagation, and the protection of our life. Through the first the world daily solicits our appetite with its food and drink. As the fruit good for food was the temptation that overcame Eve, so the pleasures of eating and drinking are among the earliest forms of defilement of the flesh. Closely connected with this is what we named second, and which is in Scripture specially connected with the word flesh. We know how in Paradise the sinful eating was at once followed by the awakening of sinful lust and of shame. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul closely connects the two (1 Cor. vi. 13, 15), as he also links drunkenness and impurity (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10). Then comes the third form in which the vitality of the body displays itself: the instinct of self-preservation, setting itself against everything that interferes with our pleasures and comfort. What is called temper, with its fruits of anger and strife, has its roots in the physical constitution, and is one among the sins of the flesh. From all this, the Christian, who would be holy, must most determinedly cleanse himself. He must yield himself to the searching of God's Spirit, to be taught what there is in the flesh that is not in harmony with the temperance and self-control demanded both by the law of nature and the law of the Spirit. He must believe, what Paul felt that the Corinthians so emphatically needed to be taught, that the Holy Spirit dwells in the body, making its members the members of Christ, and in this faith put off the works of the flesh; he must cleanse himself from all defilement of flesh.

'And of spirit.' As the source of all defilement of the flesh is self-gratification, so self-seeking is at the root of all defilement of the spirit. In relation to God, it manifests itself in idolatry, be it in the worship of other gods after our own heart, the love of the world more than God, or the doing our will rather than His. In relation to our fellow-men it shows itself in envy, hatred, and want of love, cold neglect or harsh judging of others. In relation to ourselves it is seen as pride, ambition, or envy, the disposition that makes self the centre round which all must move, and by which all must be judged.

For the discovery of such defilement of spirit, no less than of the sins of the flesh, the believer needs the light of the Holy Spirit; that the uncleanness may indeed be cleansed out and cast away for ever. Even unconscious sin, if we are not earnestly willing to have it shown to us, will most effectually prevent our progress in the path of holiness.

'Beloved! let us cleanse ourselves.' The cleansing is sometimes spoken of as the work of God (Acts xv. 9; 1 John i. 9); sometimes as that of Christ (John xv. 3; Eph. v. 26; Tit. ii. 14). Here we are commanded to cleanse ourselves. God does His work in us by the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit does His work by stirring us up and enabling us to do. The Spirit is the strength of the new life; in that strength we must set ourselves determinedly to cast out whatever is unclean. 'Come out, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.' It is not only the doing what is sinful, it is not only the willing of it, that the Christian must avoid, but even the touching it: the involuntary contact with it must be so unbearable as to force the cry, O wretched man that I am! and to lead on to the deliverance which the Spirit of the life of Christ does bring.

And how is this cleansing to be done? When Hezekiah called the priests to sanctify the temple that had been defiled, we read (2 Chron. xxix.), 'The priests went in unto the inner part of the house of the Lord to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found.' Only then could the sin-offering of atonement and the burnt-offering of consecration, with the thankofferings, be brought, and God's service be restored. Even thus must all that is unclean be looked out, and brought out, and utterly cast out. However deeply rooted the sin may appear, rooted in constitution and habit, we must cleanse ourselves of it if we would be holy. 'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' As we bring out every sin from the inner part of the house into the light of God and walk in the light, the precious blood that justifies will work mightily to cleanse too: the blood brings into living contact with the life and the love of God. Let us come into the light with the sin: the blood will prove its mighty power. Let us cleanse ourselves in yielding ourselves to the light to reveal and condemn, to the blood to cleanse and sanctify.

'Let us cleanse ourselves, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.' We read in Hebrews (x. 14), 'Christ hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.' As we have so often seen that what God has made holy man must make holy too, as he accepts and appropriates the holiness God has bestowed, so here with the perfection which the saints have in Christ. We must perfect holiness: holiness must be carried out into the whole of life, and carried on even to its end. As God's holy ones, we must go on to perfection, perfecting holiness. Do not let us be afraid of the word. Our Blessed Lord used it when He gave us the command, 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' A child striving after the perfection in knowledge of his profession, which he hopes to attain when he has finished school, is told by his teacher that the way to the perfection he hopes for at the end of his course is to seek to be perfect in the lessons of each day. To be perfect in the small portion of the work that each hour brings, is the path to the perfection that will crown the whole. The Master calls us to a perfection like that of the Father: He hath already perfected us in Himself: He holds out the prospect of perfection ever growing. His word calls us here day by day to be perfecting holiness. Let us seek in each duty to be whole-hearted and entire. Let us, as teachable scholars, in every act of worship or obedience, in every temptation and trial, do the very best which God's Spirit can enable us to do. 'Let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.' 'The God of peace make you perfect in every good work to do His will.'

'Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.' It is faith that gives the courage and the power to cleanse from all defilement, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. It is as the promises of the Divine love and indwelling (2 Cor. vi 16-18) are made ours by the Holy spirit, that we shall share the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. In the path along which we have already come, from the rest in Paradise down through Holy Scripture, we have seen the wondrous revelation of these promises in ever-growing splendour. That God the Holy One will make us holy; that God the Holy One will dwell with the lowly; that God in His Holy One has come to be our holiness; that God has planted us in Christ that He may be our sanctification; that God, who chose us in sanctification of the Spirit, has given us the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and now watches over us in His love to work out through Him His purposes and to perfect our holiness: such are the promises that have been set before us. 'Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.'

Beloved brother! see here again God's way of holiness. Arise and step on to it in the faith of the promise, fully persuaded that what He hath promised He is mighty to perform. Bring out of the inner part of the house all uncleanness; bring it into the light of God; confess it and cast it at His feet, who takes it away, and cleanses you in His blood. Yield yourself in faith to perfect, in Christ your Strength, the Holiness to which you are called. As your Father in heaven is perfect, give yourself to Him as a little child to be perfect too in your daily lessons and your daily walk. Believe that your surrender is accepted: that the charge committed to Him is undertaken. And give glory to Him who is able to do above what you can ask or think.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Holy Lord Jesus! Thou didst give Thyself for us, that, having cleansed us for Thyself as Thine own, Thou mightest sanctify us and present us to Thyself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Blessed be Thy Name for the wonderful love. Blessed be Thy Name for the wonderful cleansing. Through the washing by the word and the washing in the blood, Thou hast made us clean every whit. And as we walk in the light, Thou cleansest every moment.

With these promises, in the power of Thy word and blood, Thou callest us to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Blessed Lord! graciously reveal in Thy Holy Light all that is defilement, even its most secret working. Let me live as one who is to be presented to Thee without spot or wrinkle or any such thing—cleansed with a Divine cleansing, because Thou gavest Thyself to do it. Under the living power of Thy word and blood, applied by the Holy Spirit, let my way be clean, and my hands clean, my lips clean, and my heart clean. Cleanse me thoroughly, that I may walk with Thee in white here on earth, keeping my garments unspotted and undefiled. For Thy great love's sake, my Blessed Lord. Amen.

1. Cleansing has almost always one aim: a cleansed vessel is fit for use. Spiritual work done for God, with the honest desire that He may through His Spirit use us, will give urgency to our desire for cleansing. A vessel not cleansed cannot be used: is not this the reason that there are some workers God cannot bless?

2. All defilement: one stain defiles. 'Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement.'

3. No cleansing without Light. Open the heart for the Light to shine in.

4. No cleansing like fire. Give the defilement over to the fire of His Holiness, the fire that consumes and purifies. Give it into the death of Jesus, to Jesus Himself.

5. 'Perfecting holiness in the fear of God:' it is a solemn work. Rejoice with trembling—work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

6. 'Having these promises,' it is a blessed work to cleanse ourselves—entering into the promises, the purity, the love of our Lord. The fear of God need never hinder the faith in Him. And true faith will never hinder the practical work of cleansing.

7. If we walk in the light, the blood cleanseth. The light reveals; we confess and forsake, and accept the blood; so we cleanse ourselves. Let there be a very determined purpose to be clean from all defilement, everything that our Father considers a stain.



Twenty-fifth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holy and Blameless.

'Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe.—The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, to the end He may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His holy ones.'—1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 12, 13.

'He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love.'—Eph. i. 4.

There are two Greek words, signifying nearly the same, used frequently along with the word holy, and following it, to express what the result and effect of holiness will be as manifested in the visible life. The one is translated without blemish, spotless, and is that also used of our Lord and His sacrifice, the Lamb without blemish (Heb. ix. 14; 1 Pet. i. 19). It is then used of God's children with holy—holy and without blemish (Eph. i. 4, 5, 27; Col. i. 22; Phil. ii. 15; Jude 24; 2 Pet. iii. 14). The other is without blame, faultless (as in Luke i. 6; Phil ii. 15, iii. 6), and is also found in conjunction with holy (1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 13, v. 23). In answer to the question as to whether this blamelessness has reference to God's estimate of the saints or men's, Scripture clearly connects it with both. In some passages (Eph. i. 4, v. 27; Col. i. 22; 1 Thess. iii. 15; 2 Pet. iii. 14) the words 'before Him,' 'to Himself,' 'before our God and Father,' indicate that the first thought is of the spotlessness and faultlessness in the presence of a Holy God, which is held out to us as His purpose and our privilege. In others (such as Phil. ii. 15; 1 Thess. ii. 10), the blamelessness in the sight of men stands in the foreground. In each case the word may be considered to include both aspects: without blemish and without blame must stand the double test of the judgment of God and man too.

And what is now the special lesson which this linking together of these two words in Scripture, and the exposition of holy by the addition of blameless, is meant to teach us? A lesson of deep importance. In the pursuit of holiness, the believer, the more clearly he realizes what a deep spiritual blessing it is, to be found only in separation from the world, and direct fellowship with God, to be possessed fully only through a real Divine indwelling, may be in danger of looking too exclusively to the Divine side of the blessing, in its heavenly and supernatural aspect. He may forget how repentance and obedience, as the path leading up to holiness, must cover every, even the minutest detail of daily life. He may not understand how faithfulness to the leadings of the Spirit, in such measure as we have Him already, faithfulness to His faintest whisper in reference to ordinary conduct, is essential to all fuller experience of His power and work as the Spirit of holiness. He may, above all, not have learnt how, not only obedience to what he knows to be God's will, but a very tender and willing teachableness to receive all that the Spirit has to show him of his imperfections and the Father's perfect will concerning him, is the only condition on which the Holiness of God can be more fully revealed to us and in us. And so, while most intent on trying to discover the secret of true and full holiness from the Divine side, he may be tolerating faults which all around him can notice, or remaining,—and that not without sin, because it comes from the want of perfect teachableness,—ignorant of graces and beauties of holiness with which the Father would have had him adorn the doctrine of holiness before men. He may seek to live a very holy, and yet think little of a perfectly blameless life.

There have been such saints, holy but hard, holy but distant, holy but sharp in their judgments of others; holy, but men around said, unloving and selfish; the half-heathen Samaritan more kind and self-sacrificing than the holy Levite and priest. If this be true, it is not the teaching of Holy Scripture that is to blame. In linking holy and without blemish (or without blame) so closely, the Holy Spirit would have led us to seek for the embodiment of holiness as a spiritual power in the blamelessness of practice and of daily life. Let every believer who rejoices in God's declaration that he is holy in Christ seek also to perfect holiness, reach out after nothing less than to be 'unblameable in holiness.'

That this blamelessness has very special reference to our intercourse with our fellow-men we see from the way in which it is linked with love. So in Eph. i. 4, 'That we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love.' But specially in that remarkable passage: 'The Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another, and toward all men, to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness.' The holiness and the blamelessness, the positive hidden Divine life-principle, and the external and human life-practice—both are to find their strength, by which we are to be established in them, in our abounding and ever-flowing love.

Holiness and lovingness—it is of deep importance that these words should be inseparably linked in our minds, as their reality in our lives. We have seen, in the study of the holiness of God, how love is the element in which it dwells and works, drawing to itself and making like itself all that it can get possession of. Of the fire of Divine holiness love is the beautiful flame, reaching out to communicate itself and assimilate to itself all it can lay hold of. In God's children true holiness is the same; the Divine fire burns to bring into its own blessedness all that comes within its reach. When Jesus sanctified Himself that we might be sanctified in truth, that was nothing but love giving itself to the death that the sinful might share His holiness. Selfishness and holiness are irreconcilable. Ignorance may think of sanctity as a beautiful garment with which to adorn itself before God, while underneath there is a selfish pride saying, 'I am holier than thou,' and quite content that the other should want what it boasts of. True holiness, on the contrary, is the expulsion and the death of selfishness, taking possession of heart and life to be the ministers of that fire of love that consumes itself, to reach and purify and save others. Holiness is love. Abounding love is what Paul prays for as the condition of unblameable holiness. It is as the Lord makes us to increase and abound in love, that He can establish our hearts unblameable in holiness.

The Apostle speaks of a twofold love, 'love toward each other, and toward all men.' Love to the brethren was what our Lord Himself enjoined as the chief mark of discipleship. And He prayed the Father for it as the chief proof to the world of the truth of His Divine mission. It is in the holiness of love, in a loving holiness, that the unity of the body will be proved and promoted, and prepared for the fuller workings of the Holy Spirit. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians, division and distance among believers are named as the sure proof of the life of self and the flesh. Oh, let us, if we would be holy, begin by being very gentle, and patient, and forgiving, and kind, and generous in our intercourse with all the Father's children. Let us study the Divine image of the love that seeketh not its own, and pray unceasingly that the Lord may make us to abound in love to each other. The holiest will be the humblest and most self-forgetting, the gentlest and most self-denying, the kindest and most thoughtful of others for Jesus' sake. 'Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering' (Col. iii. 12, 13).

And then the love toward all men. A love proved in the conduct and intercourse of daily life. A love that not only avoids anger and evil temper and harsh judgments, but exhibits the more positive virtue of active devotion to the welfare and interests of all. A charitable love that cares for the bodies as well as the souls. A love that not only is ready to help when it is called, but that really gives itself up to self-denial and self-sacrifice to seek out and relieve the needs of the most wretched and unworthy. A love that does indeed take Christ's love, that brought Him from heaven and led Him to choose the cross, as the only law and measure for its conduct, and makes everything subordinate to the Godlike blessedness of giving, of doing good, of embracing and saving the needy and lost. Thus abounding in love, we shall be unblameable in holiness.

It is in Christ we are holy; of God we are in Christ, who is made of God unto us sanctification: it is in this faith that Paul prays that the Lord, our Lord Jesus, may make us increase and abound in love. The Father is the fountain, He is the channel; the Holy Spirit is the living stream. And He is our Life, through the Spirit. It is by faith in Him, by abiding in Him and in His love, by allowing, in close union with Him, the Spirit to shed abroad the love of God, that we shall receive the answer to our prayer, and shall by Himself be established unblameable in holiness. Let it be with us a prayer of faith that changes into praise: Blessed be the Lord, who will make us increase and abound in love, and will establish us unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with His holy ones.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Most Gracious God and Father! again do I thank Thee for that wondrous salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, which has made us holy in Christ. And I thank Thee that the Spirit can so make us partakers of the life of Christ, that we too may be unblameable in holiness. And that it is the Lord Himself who makes us to increase and abound in love, to the end our hearts may be so established; that the abounding love and the unblameable holiness are both from Him.

Blessed Lord and Saviour! I come now to claim and take as my own, what Thou art able to do for me. I am holy only in Thee; in Thee I am holy. In Thee there is for me the power to abound in love. O Thou, in whom the fulness of God's love abides, and in whom I abide, the Lord, my Lord, make me to abound in love. In union with Thee, in the life of faith in which Thou livest in me, it can be and it shall be. By the teaching of Thy Holy Spirit lead me in all the footsteps of Thy self-denying love, that I too may be consumed in blessing others.

And thus, Lord! mightily establish my heart to be unblameable in holiness. Let self perish at Thy presence. Let Thy Holiness, giving itself to make the sinner holy, take entire possession, until my heart and life are sanctified wholly, and my whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto Thy coming. Amen.

1. Let us pray very earnestly that our interest in the study of holiness may not be a thing of the intellect or the emotions, but of the will and the life, seen of all men in the daily walk and conversation. 'Abounding in love,' 'unblameable in holiness,' will give favour with God and man.

2. 'God is Love;' Creation is the outflow of love. Redemption is the sacrifice and the triumph of love. Holiness is the fire of love. The beauty of the life of Jesus is love. All we enjoy of the Divine we owe to love. Our holiness is not God's, is not Christ's, if we do not love.

3. 'Love seeketh not its own.' 'Love never faileth.' 'Love is the fulfilling of the law.' 'The greatest of these is love.' 'The end of the commandment is love.' To love God and man is to be holy. In the intercourse of daily life, holiness can have its simple and sweet beginnings and its exercise; so, in its highest attainment, holiness is love made perfect.

4. Faith has all its worth from love, from the love of God, whence it draws and drinks, and the love to God and man which streams out of it. Let us be strong in faith, then shall we abound in love.

5. 'The love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which was given unto us.' Let this be our confidence.



Twenty-sixth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and the Will of God.

'This is the will of God, even your sanctification.'—1 Thess. iv. 3.

'Lo, I am come to do Thy will. By which will we have been sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.'—Heb. x. 9, 10.

In the will of God we have the union of His Wisdom and Power. The Wisdom decides and declares what is to be: the Power secures the performance. The declarative will is only one side; its complement, the executive will, is the living energy in which everything good has its origin and existence. So long as we only look at the will of God in the former light, as law, we feel it a burden, because we have not the power to perform—it is too high for us. When faith looks to the Power that works in God's will, and carries it out, it has the courage to accept it and fulfil it, because it knows God Himself is working it out. The surrender in faith to the Divine will as Wisdom thus becomes the pathway to the experience of it as a Power. 'He doeth according to His will,' is then the language not only of forced submission, but of joyful expectation.

'This is the will of God, your sanctification.' In the ordinary acceptation of these words, they simply mean that among many other things that God has willed, sanctification is one; it is something in accordance with His will. This thought contains teaching of great value. God very distinctly and definitely has willed your sanctification: your sanctification has its source and certainty in its being God's will. We are 'elect in sanctification of the Spirit,' 'chosen to be holy;' the purpose of God's will from eternity, and His will now, is our sanctification. We have only to think of what we said of God's will being a Divine power that works out what His wisdom has chosen, to see what strength this truth will give to our faith that we shall be holy: God wills it, and will work it out for all and in all who do not resist it, but yield themselves to its power. Seek your sanctification, not only in the will of God, as a declaration of what He wants you to be, but as a revelation of what He Himself will work out in you.

There is, however, another most precious thought suggested. If our sanctification be God's will, its central thought and its contents, every part of that will must bear upon it, and the sure entrance to sanctification will be the hearty acceptance of the will of God in all things. To be one with God's will is to be holy. Let him who would be holy take his place here and 'stand in all the will of God.' He will there meet God Himself, and be made partaker of His Holiness, because His will works out its purpose in power to each one who yields himself to it. Everything in a life of holiness depends upon our being in the right relation to the will of God.

There are many Christians to whom it appears impossible to think of their accepting all the will of God, or of their being one with it. They look upon the will of God in its thousand commands, and its numberless providential orderings. They have sometimes found it so hard to obey one single command, or to give up willingly to some light disappointment. They imagine that they would need to be a thousandfold holier and stronger in grace, before venturing to say that they do accept all God's will, whether to do or to bear. They cannot understand that all the difficulty comes from their not occupying the right standpoint. They are looking at God's will as at variance with their natural will, and they feel that that natural will will never delight in all God's will. They forget that the new man has a renewed will. This new will delights in the will of God, because it is born of it. This new will sees the beauty and the glory of God's will, and is in harmony with it. If they are indeed God's children, the very first impulse of the spirit of a child is surely to do the will of the Father in heaven. And they have but to yield themselves heartily and wholly to this spirit of sonship, and they need not fear to accept God's will as theirs.

The mistake they make is a very serious one. Instead of living by faith they judge by feeling, in which the old nature speaks and rules. It tells them that God's will is often a burden too hard to be borne, and that they never can have the strength to do it. Faith speaks differently. It reminds us that God is Love, and that His will is nothing but Love revealed. It asks if we do not know that there is nothing more perfect or beautiful in heaven or earth than the will of God. It shows us how in our conversion we have already professed to accept God as Father and Lord. It assures us, above all, that if we will but definitely and trustingly give ourselves to that will which is Love, it will as Love fill our hearts and make us delight in it, and so become the power that enables us joyfully to do and to bear. Faith reveals to us that the will of God is the power of His love, working out its plan in Divine beauty in each one who wholly yields to it.

And which shall we now choose? And where shall we take our place? Shall we attempt to accept Christ as a Saviour without accepting His will? Shall we profess to be the Father's children, and yet spend our life in debating how much of His will we shall perform? Shall we be content to go on from day to day with the painful consciousness that our will is not in harmony with God's will? Or shall we not at once and for ever give up our will as sinful to His,—to that Will which He has already written on our heart? This is a thing that is possible. It can be done. In a simple, definite transaction with God, we can say that we do accept His holy will to be ours. Faith knows that God will not pass such a surrender unnoticed, but accept it. In the trust that He now takes us up into His will, and undertakes to breathe it into us, with the love and the power to perform it—in this faith let us enter into God's will, and begin a new life; standing in, abiding in the very centre of this most holy will.

Such an acceptance of God's will prepares the believer, through the Holy Spirit, to recognise and know that will in whatever form it comes. The great difference between the carnal and the spiritual Christian is that the latter acknowledges God, under whatever low and poor and human appearances He manifests Himself. When God comes in trials which can be traced to no hand but His, he says, 'Thy will be done.' When trials come through the weakness of men or his own folly, when circumstances appear unfavourable to his religious progress, and temptations threaten to be too much for him and to overcome him, he learns first of all to see God in everything, and still to say, 'Thy will be done.' He knows that a child of God cannot possibly be in any situation without the will of His Heavenly Father, even when that will has been to leave him to his own wilfulness for a time, or to suffer the consequences of his own or others' sin. He sees this, and in accepting his circumstances as the will of God to try and prove him, he is in the right position for now knowing and doing what is right. Seeing and honouring God's will thus in everything, he learns always to abide in that will.

He does so also by doing that will. As his spiritual discernment grows to say of whatever happens, 'All things are of God,' so he grows too in wisdom and spiritual understanding to know the will of God as it is to be done. In the indications of conscience and of Providence, in the teaching of the word and the Spirit, he learns to see how God's will has reference to every part and duty of life, and it becomes his joy, in all things, to live, 'doing the will of God from the heart, as unto the Lord and not unto men.' 'Labouring fervently in prayer to stand complete and fully assured in all the will of God,' he finds how blessedly the Father has accepted his surrender, and supplies all the light and strength that is needed that His will may be done by him on earth as it is in heaven.

Let me ask every reader to say to a Holy God, whether he has indeed given himself to Him to be made holy? Whether he has accepted, and entered into, and is living in, the good and perfect will of God? The question is not, whether, when affliction comes, he accepts the inevitable and submits to a will he cannot resist. But whether he has chosen the will of God as his chief good, and has taken the life-principle of Christ to be his: 'I delight to do Thy will, O God.' This was the holiness of Christ, in which He sanctified Himself and us, the doing God's will. 'In which will we have been sanctified.' It is this will of God which is our sanctification.

Brother! are you in earnest to be holy? wholly possessed of God? Here is the path. I plead with you not to be afraid or to hold back. You have taken God to be your God; have you really taken His will to be your will? Oh, think of the privilege, the blessedness, of having one will with God! and fear not to surrender yourself to it most unreservedly. The will of God is, in every part of it, and in all its Divine power, your sanctification.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Blessed Father! I come to say that I see that Thy will is my sanctification, and there alone I would seek it. Graciously grant that, by Thy Holy Spirit which dwelleth in me, the glory of that will, and the blessedness of abiding in it, may be fully revealed to me.

Teach me to know it as the Will of Love, purposing always what is the very best and most blest for Thy child. Teach me to know it as the Will of Omnipotence, able to work out its every counsel in me. Teach me to know it in Christ, fulfilled perfectly on my behalf. Teach me to know it as what the Spirit wills and works in each one who yields to Him.

O my Father! I acknowledge Thy claim to have Thy will alone done, and am here for it to do with me as Thou pleasest. With my whole heart I enter into it, to be one with it for ever. Thy Holy Spirit can maintain this oneness without interruption. I trust Thee, my Father, step by step, to let the light of Thy will shine in my heart and on my path, through that Spirit.

May this be the holiness in which I live, that I forget and lose self in pleasing and honouring Thee. Amen.

1. Make it a study, in meditation and prayer and worship, to get a full impression of the Majesty, the Perfection, the Glory of the Will of God, with the privilege and possibility of living in it.

2. Study it, too, as the expression of an infinite Love and Fatherliness; its every manifestation full of loving-kindness. Every providence is God's will; whatever happens, meet God in it in humble worship. Every precept is God's will; meet God in it with loving obedience. Every promise is God's will; meet God in it with full trust. A life in the will of God is rest and strength and blessing.

3. And forget not, above all, to believe in its Omnipotent Power. He worketh all things after the counsel of His will. In nature and those who resist Him, without their consent. In His children, according to their faith, and as far as they will it. Do believe that the will of God will work out its counsel in you, as you trust it to do so.

4. This will is Infinite Benevolence and Beneficence revealed in the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Live for others: so can you become an instrument for the Divine will to use (Matt. xviii. 14; John vi. 39, 40). Yield yourselves to this redeeming will of God, that it may get full possession, and work out through you too its saving purpose.

5. Christ is just the embodiment of God's will: He is, God's will done. Abide in Him, by abiding in, by doing heartily and always, the will of God. A Christian is, like Christ, a man given up to the Will of God.



Twenty-seventh Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Service.

'If a man therefore cleanse himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work.'—2 Tim. ii. 21.

'A holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices. A holy nation, that ye may show forth the excellences of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.'—1 Pet. ii. 5, 9.

Through the whole of Scripture we have seen that whatever God sanctifies is to be used in the service of His Holiness. His Holiness is an infinite energy that only finds its rest in making holy: to the revelation of what He is in Himself, 'I the Lord am holy,' God continually adds the declaration of what He does, 'I am the Lord that make holy.' Holiness is a burning fire that extends itself, that seeks to consume what is unholy, and to communicate its own blessedness to all that will receive it. Holiness and selfishness, holiness and inactivity, holiness and sloth, holiness and helplessness, are utterly irreconcilable. Whatever we read of as holy, was taken into the service of the Holiness of God.

Let us just look back on the revelation of what is holy in Scripture. The seventh day was made holy, that in it God might make His people holy. The tabernacle was holy, to serve as a dwelling for the Holy One, as the centre whence His Holiness might manifest itself to the people. The altar was most holy, that it might sanctify the gifts laid on it. The priests with their garments, the house with its furniture and vessels, the sacrifices and the blood,—whatever bore the name of holy had a use and a purpose. Of Israel, whom God redeemed from Egypt that they might be a holy nation, God said, 'Let my people go, that they may serve me.' The holy angels, the holy prophets and apostles, the holy Scriptures,—all bore the title as having been sanctified for the service of God. Our Lord speaks of Himself 'as the Son, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.' And when He says, 'I sanctify myself,' He adds at once the purpose: it is in the service of the Father and His redeemed ones,—'that they themselves may be sanctified in truth.' And can it be thought possible, now that God, in Christ the Holy One, and in the Holy Spirit, is accomplishing His purpose, and gathering a people of saints, 'holy ones,' 'made holy in Christ,' that now holiness and service would be put asunder? Impossible! Here first we shall fully realize how essential they are to each other. Let us try and grasp their mutual relation. We are only made holy that we may serve. We can only serve as we are holy.

Holiness is essential to effectual service. In the Old Testament we see degrees of holiness, not only in the holy places, but as much in the holy persons. In the nation, the Levites, the priests, and then the High Priest, there is an advance from step to step: as in each succeeding stage the circle narrows, and the service is more direct and entire, so the holiness required is higher and more distinct. It is even so in this more spiritual dispensation: the more of holiness, the greater the fitness for service; the more there is of true holiness, the more there is of God, and the more true and deep is the entrance He has had into the soul. The hold He has on the soul to use it in His service is more complete.

In the Church of Christ there is a vast amount of work done which yields very little fruit. Many throw themselves into work in whom there is but little true holiness, little of the Holy Spirit. They often work most diligently, and, as far as human influence is concerned, most successfully. And yet true spiritual results in the building up of a holy temple in the Lord are but few. The Lord cannot work in them, because He has not the mastery of their inner life. His personal indwelling and fellowship, the rest of His Holy Presence, His Holiness reigning and ruling in the heart and life,—to all these they are comparative strangers. It has been rightly said that work is the cure for spiritual poverty and disease; to some believers who had been seeking holiness apart from service, the call to work has been an unspeakable blessing. But to many it has only been an additional blind to cover up the terrible want of heart-holiness and heart-fellowship with the living God. They have thrown themselves into work more earnestly than ever, and yet have not in their heart the rest-giving and refreshing witness that their work is acceptable and accepted.

My brother! listen to the message. 'If a man cleanse himself, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work.' You cannot have the law of service more clearly or beautifully laid down. A vessel of honour, one whom the King will delight to honour, must be a vessel cleansed from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Then only can it be a sanctified vessel, possessed and indwelt by God's Holy Spirit. So it becomes meet for the Master's use. He can use it, and work in it, and wield it. And so, clean and holy, and yielded into the Master's hands, we are Divinely prepared for every good work. Holiness is essential to service. If service is to be acceptable to God, and effectual for its work on souls, and to be a joy and a strength to ourselves, we must be holy. The will of God must first live in us, if it is to be done by us.

How many faithful workers there are, mourning the want of power; longing and praying for it, and yet not obtaining it! They have spent their strength more in the outer court of work and service, than in the inner life of fellowship and faith. They truly have never understood that only as the Master gets possession of them, as the Holy Spirit has them at His disposal, can He use them, can they have true power. They often long and cry for what they call a baptism of power. They forget that the way to have God's power in us is for ourselves to be in His power. Put yourself into the power of God; let His holy will live in you; live in it and in obedience to it, as one who has no power to dispose of himself; let the Holy Spirit dwell within, as in His Holy Temple, revealing the Holy One on the throne, ruling all; He will without fail use you as a vessel of honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use. Holiness is essential to effectual service.

And service is no less essential to true holiness. We have repeated it so often: Holiness is an energy, an intense energy of desire and self-sacrifice, to make others partakers of its own purity and perfection. Christ sacrificed Himself—wherein did that sacrifice consist, and what was its aim? He sanctified Himself that we might be sanctified too. A holiness that is selfish is a delusion. True holiness, God's holiness in us, works itself out in love, in seeking and loving the unholy, that they may become holy too. Self-sacrificing love is of the very essence of holiness. The Holy One of Israel is its Redeemer. The Holy One of God is the dying Saviour. The Holy Spirit of God makes holy. There is no holiness in God but what is most actively engaged in loving and saving and blessing. It must be so in us too. Let every thought of holiness, every act of faith or prayer, every effort in pursuit of it, be animated by the desire and the surrender to the Holiness of God for use in the attaining of its object. Let your whole life be one distinctly and definitely given up to God for His use and service. Your circumstances may appear to be unfavourable. God may appear to keep the door closed against your working for Him in the way you would wish; your sense of unfitness may be painful. Still, let it be a matter settled between God and the soul, that your longing for holiness is that you may be fitter for Him to use, and that what He has given you of His Holiness in Christ and the Spirit is all at His disposal, waiting to be used. Be ready for Him to use; live out, in a daily life of humble, self-denying, loving service of others, what grace you have received. You will find that in the union and interchange of worship and work, God's Holiness will rest upon you.

'The Father sanctified the Son, and sent Him into the world.' The world is the place for the sanctified one, to be its light, its salt, its life. We are 'sanctified in Christ Jesus,' and sent into the world too. Oh, let us not fear to accept our position—our double position; in the world, and in Christ! In the world, with its sin and sorrow, with its thousands of needs touching us at every point, and its millions of souls all waiting for us. And in Christ too. For the sake of that world we 'have been sanctified in Christ,' we are 'holy in Christ,' we have 'the spirit of sanctification' dwelling in us. As a holy salt in a sinful world, let us give ourselves to our holy calling. Let us come nearer and nearer to God who has called us. Let us root deeper and deeper in Christ our sanctification, in whom we are of God. Let us enter more firmly and more fully into that faith in Him in whom we are, by which our whole life will be covered and taken up in His. Let us beseech the Father to teach us that His Holy Spirit does dwell in us every moment, making, if we live by faith, Christ with His Holiness, our home, our abode, our sure defence, and our infinite supply. As He which hath called us is holy, let us be holy in His own Son, through His own Spirit, and the fire of His Holy Love will work through us its work of judging and condemning, of saving and sanctifying. A sanctified soul God will use to save.

BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.

Blessed Master! I thank Thee for being anew reminded of the purpose of Thy Redeeming Love. Thou gavest Thyself that Thou mightest cleanse for Thyself a people of Thine own, zealous in good works. Thou wouldest make of each of us a vessel of honour, cleansed and sanctified, meet for Thy use, and prepared for every good work.

Blessed Lord! write the lessons of Thy word deep in my heart. Teach me and all Thy people that if we would work for Thee, if we would have Thee work in us, and use us, we must be very holy, holy as God is holy. And that if we would be holy, we must be serving Thee. It is Thy own Spirit, by which Thou dost sanctify us to use us, and dost sanctify in using. To be entirely possessed of Thee is the path to sanctity and service both.

Most Holy Saviour! we are in Thee as our sanctification: in Thee we would abide. In the rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all, in the power of a surrender that would have no will but Thine, in a love that would lose itself to be wholly Thine, Blessed Jesus, we do abide in Thee. In Thee we are holy: in Thee we shall bear much fruit.

Oh, be pleased to perfect Thine own work in us! Amen.

1. It is difficult to make it clear in words how growth in holiness will simply reveal itself as an increasing simplicity and self-forgetfulness, accompanied by the restful and most blessed assurance that God has complete possession of us and will use us. We pass from the stage in which work presses as an obligation; it becomes the joy of fruit-bearing; faith's assurance that He is working out His will through us.

2. It has sometimes been said that people might be better employed in working for God than attending Holiness Conventions. This is surely a misunderstanding. It was before the throne of the Thrice Holy One, and as he heard the Seraphim sing of God's Holiness, that the prophet said, 'Here am I, send me.' As the mission of Moses, and Isaiah, and the Son, whom the Father sanctified and sent, each had its origin in the revelation of God's Holiness, our missions will receive new power as they are more directly born out of the worship of God as the Holy One, and baptized into the Spirit of Holiness.

3. Let every worker take time to hear God's double call. If you would work, be very holy. If you would be holy, give yourself to God to use in His work.

4. Note the connection between 'sanctified' and 'meet for the Master's use.' True holiness is being possessed of God; true service being used of God. How much service there is in which we are the chief agents, and ask God to help and to bless us. True service is being yielded up to the Master for Him to use. Then the Holy Ghost is the Agent, and we are the Instruments of His will. Such service is Holiness.

5. 'I sanctify Myself, that they also:' a reference to others is the root principle of all true holiness.



Twenty-eighth Day.

HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Way into the Holiest.

'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh: and having a great Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart, in fulness of faith.'—Heb. x. 19-22.

When the High Priest once a year entered into the second tabernacle within the veil, it was, we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'the Holy Ghost signifying that the way into the Holiest of all was not yet made manifest.' When Christ died, the veil was rent; all who were serving in the holy place had free access at once into the Most Holy; the way into the Holiest of all was opened up. When the Epistle passes over to its practical application (x. 19), all its teaching is summed up in the words: 'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest, let us draw near.' Christ's redemption has opened the way to the Holiest of all: our acceptance of it must lead to nothing less than our drawing near and entering in. The words of our text suggest to us four very precious thoughts in regard to the place of access, the right of access, the way of access, the power of access.

The place of access. Whither are we invited to draw nigh? 'Having boldness to enter into the Holiest.' The priests in Israel might enter the holy place, but were always kept excluded from the Holiest, God's immediate presence. The rent veil proclaimed liberty of access into that Presence. It is there that believers as a royal priesthood are now to live and walk. Within the veil, in the very Holiest of all, in the same place, the heavenlies, in which God dwells, in God's very Presence, is to be our abode—our home. Some speak as if the, 'Let us draw near,' meant prayer, and that in our special approach to God in acts of worship we enter the Holiest. No; great as this privilege is, God has meant something for us infinitely greater. We are to draw near, and dwell always, to live our life and do our work within the sphere, the atmosphere, of the inner sanctuary. It is God's Presence makes holy ground; God's immediate Presence in Christ makes any place the Holiest of all: and this is it into which we are to draw nigh, and in which we are to abide. There is not a single moment of the day, there is not a circumstance or surrounding, in which the believer may not be kept dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. As by faith he enters into the completeness of his reconciliation with God, and the reality of his oneness with Christ, as he thus, abiding in Christ, yields to the Holy Spirit to reveal within the Presence of the Holy One, the Holiest of all is around him, he is indeed in it. With an uninterrupted access he draws near.[13]

The right of access. The thought comes up, and the question is asked: Is this not simply an ideal? can it be a reality, an experience in daily life to those who know how sinful their nature is? Blessed be God! it is meant to be. It is possible, because our right of access rests not in what we are, but in the blood of Jesus. 'Having boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near.' In the Passover we saw how redemption, and the holiness it aimed at, were dependent on the blood. In the sanctuary, God's dwelling, we know how in each part, the court, the holy place, the Most Holy, the sprinkling of blood was what alone secured access to God. And now that the blood of Jesus has been shed—oh! in what Divine power, what intense reality, what everlasting efficacy, we now have access into the Holiest of all, the Most Holy of God's heart and His love! We are indeed brought nigh by the blood. We have boldness to enter by the blood. 'The worshippers, being once cleansed, have no more conscience of sins.' Walking in the light, the blood of Jesus cleanses in the power of an endless life, with a cleansing that never ceases. No consciousness of unworthiness or remaining sinfulness need hinder the boldness of access: the liberty to draw near rests in the never-failing, ever-acting, ever-living efficacy of the Precious Blood. It is possible for a believer to dwell in the Holiest of all.

The way of access. It is often thought that what is said of the new and living way, dedicated for us by Jesus, means nothing different from the boldness through His blood. This is not the case. The words mean a great deal more. 'Having boldness by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near by the way which He dedicated for us.' That is, He opened for us a way to walk in, as He walked in it, 'a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.' The way in which Christ walked when He gave His blood, is the very same in which we must walk too. That way is the way of the Cross. There must not only be faith in Christ's sacrifice, but fellowship with Him in it. That way led to the rending of the veil of the flesh, and so through the rent veil of the flesh, in to God. And was the veil of Christ's holy flesh rent that the veil of our sinful flesh might be spared? Verily, no. He meant us to walk in the very same way in which He did, following closely after Himself. He dedicated for us a new and living way through the veil, that is, His flesh. As we go in through the rent veil of His flesh, we find in it at once the need and the power for our flesh being rent too: following Jesus ever means conformity to Jesus. It is Jesus with the rent flesh, in whom we are, in whom we walk.[14] There is no way to God but through the rending of the flesh. In acceptance of Christ's life and death by faith as the power that works in us, in the power of the Spirit which makes us truly one with Christ, we all follow Christ as He passes on through the rent veil, that is, His flesh, and become partakers with Him of His crucifixion and death. The way of the cross, 'by which I have been crucified,' is the way through the rent veil. Man's destiny, fellowship with God in the power of the Holy Spirit, is only reached through the sacrifice of the flesh.

And here we find now the solution of a great mystery—why so many Christians remain standing afar off, and never enter this Holiest of all; why the holiness of God's Presence is so little seen on them. They thought that it was only in Christ that the flesh needed to be rent, not in themselves. They thought that the liberty they had in the blood was the new and living way. They knew not that the way into true and full holiness, into the Holiest of all, that the full entrance into the fellowship of the holiness of the Great High Priest, was only to be reached through the rent veil of the flesh, through conformity to the death of Jesus. This is in very deed the way He dedicated for us. He is Himself the way; into His self-denial, His self-sacrifice, His crucifixion, He takes up all who long to be holy with His Holiness, holy as He is holy.

The power of access. Does any one shrink back from entering the very Holiest for fear of this rending of the flesh, because he doubts whether he could bear it, whether he could indeed walk in such a path? Let him listen once more. Hear what follows: 'And having a Great Priest over the House of God, let us draw near.' We have not only the Holiest of all inviting us, and the blood giving us boldness, and the way through the rent veil consecrated for us, but the Great Priest over the House of God, the Blessed Living Saviour, to draw, to help, and to welcome us. He is our Aaron. On His heart we see our name, because He only lives to think of us, and pray for us. On His forehead we see God's name, 'Holy to the Lord,' because in His Holiness the sins of our holy things are covered. In Him we are accepted and sanctified; God receives us as holy ones. In the power of His love and His Spirit, in the power of Him the Holy One, in the joy of drawing nearer to Him and being drawn by Him, we gladly accept the way He has dedicated, and walk in His holy footsteps of self-denial and self-sacrifice. We see how the flesh is the thick veil that separates from the Holy One who is a Spirit, and it becomes an unceasing and most fervent prayer, that the crucifixion of the flesh may, in the power of the Holy Spirit, be in us a blessed reality. With the glory of the Holiest of all shining out on us through the opened veil, and the Precious Blood speaking so loudly of boldness of access, and the Great Priest beckoning us with His loving Presence to draw near and be blessed,—with all this, we dare no longer fear, but choose the way of the rent veil as the path we love to tread, and give ourselves to enter in and dwell within the veil, in the very Holiest of all.

And so our life here will be the earnest of the glory that is to come, as it is written—note how we have the four great thoughts of our text over again—'These are they which came out of great tribulation,' that is, by the way of the rent flesh; 'and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,' their boldness through the blood; 'therefore are they before the throne of God,' their dwelling in the Holiest of all; 'the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall be their Shepherd,' the Great Priest still the Shepherd, Jesus Himself their all in all.

Brother! do you see what holiness is, and how it is to be found? It is not something wrought in yourself. It is not something put on you from without. Holiness is the Presence of God resting on you. Holiness comes as you consciously abide in that Presence, doing all your work, and living all your life as a sacrifice to Him, acceptable through Jesus Christ, sanctified by the Holy Ghost. Oh, be no longer fearful, as if this life were not for you! Look to Jesus; having a Great Priest over the House of God, let us draw near. Be occupied with Jesus. Our Brother has charge of the Temple; He has liberty to show us all, to lead us into the secret of the Father's presence. The entire management of the Temple has been given into His hands with this very purpose, that all the feeble and doubting ones might come with confidence. Only trust yourself to Jesus, to His leading and keeping. Only trust Jesus, God's Holy One, your Holy One; it is His delight to reveal to you what He has purchased with His blood. Trust Him to teach you the ordinances of the sanctuary. 'That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God,' He has been given. Having a Great Priest, let us enter in, let us dwell in the Holiest of all. In the power of the blood, in the power of the new and living way, in the power of the Living Jesus, let the Holiest of all, the Presence of God, be the home of our soul. You are 'Holy in Christ;' in Christ you are in God's Holy Presence and Love; just stay there.