w 
 
 $ 
 
 ^LIFE 
 RIST-LIFE 
 
 
 3TROM.,, 
 
 II 
 
 1 
 
£ibrar;p of Che t:heolo0ical ^tmxnary 
 
 PRINXETON . NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED B'' 
 
 Robert P. Brodsky 
 
 BV 3797 .08 1896 
 Ostrom, Henry, 1862-1941. 
 Out of the Cain-life into 
 the Christ-life 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 INTO THE CHRIST-LIFE 
 
Works by 
 
 Rev. Henry Ostrom: 
 
 ^Out of the Cain-Life.-' 
 
 Bound in cloth, 342 pages. Price ;^i.oo. 
 
 **These are exceedingly simple winning and absorbing 
 discourses. T-he author sticks to his business as a winner 
 of souls and does not assume to teach the church its doc- 
 trine. He takes the gospel as it stands and as he has re- 
 ceived it, and applies to it a method of cumulative or 
 progressive illustration which strikes us as something fresh, 
 if not v/holly new, in pulpit methods. It is, at all events, 
 effective." — The Independent^ Nj T. 
 
 "Avoiding, technical terms and commonplace expres- 
 sions, the author makes important the substance of the 
 matter. The style is fascinating,, transparent and marked 
 by literary finish. The matter is evangelistic and in- 
 structive." — T^e Michigan Christian Ad'vocate^ Detroit, 
 
 **These fervent evangelistic utterances are just what the 
 church of God needs to-day. The author dwells very 
 much on the Holy Spirit's work in the individual. No 
 one has ever given us a more forcible presentation of this 
 great doctrine than Mr. Ostronx, in his book."— J^f 
 Baltimore Methodist. 
 
 Selections from the "Tongue of Fire.". 
 
 32 pages, 5c. each, 35c. per dozen, $2.50 
 per hundred. 
 
 These selections are taken from the Rev. William 
 Arthur's great book, **The Tongue of Fire." They 
 Are arranged specially to accommodate young and extra 
 busy people. 
 
 **Soul, Cease Thine Ease." 
 
 16 pages and cover, 3 c. each; 30c. per 
 dozen, $2.00 per hundred. 
 The Dearest Psalm and the Model Praya 
 
 i8mo decorated cloth, 25 cents. 
 
Out of The Cain-life 
 Into The Christ-life. 
 
 BY 
 
 OF pmce^^ 
 
 DEC 18 1963 
 
 REV* Henry Ostrom, 
 
 EVANGELIST. 
 
 Not as Cain. — I John, iii : J 2, 
 Christ liveth in me. — Galatians, ii : 20. 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 Chicago New York Toronto 
 
COPYEIGHTED 
 
 1896 
 FLEMING H. EEVELL COMPANY 
 
TO MY DEVOTED WIFE, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 An apology for the appearance of this little 
 book would be superfluous. An all but limitless 
 subject calls for a plentitude of expressions. 
 More hewers will yet be needed before a clear 
 path through the forest of self has been hewn out. 
 
 These chapters have grown forth during my 
 three years labors as an Evangelist. During 
 these years the conviction has thrilled my very 
 soul that Mercy, Kindness and Love must be set 
 forth unbeclouded before the people of this age. 
 Our diminutive life will never sweep out into its 
 intended vastness until the gentler graces flow 
 into the most delicate and extreme channels of 
 the being. 
 
 The coming victory of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 waits only upon true unity of spirit among the 
 people called Christians. Let the Christ-spirit 
 supplant the Cain-spirit and we shall not so 
 readily wonder what Jesus meant when yet stand- 
 ing upon this earth he said to Nicodemus, ' 'Even 
 the Son of Man which is in heaven," for in that 
 spirit heaven meets earth and laps over it. 
 
 Should these pages prove to be the Holy Spirit's 
 
4 PREFACE 
 
 messengers of help to any, then those aged and 
 younger people who have requested their publi- 
 cation and assisted in their production will find 
 eternal fruitage from their words. 
 
 They have been written in the midst of active 
 undertakings in my evangelistic work, and if it 
 should appear in any instance that the lines of 
 thought show a very light touch of the pen, the 
 reader can always find the key to the meaning of 
 my message in the words of a Christian Philan- 
 throphist, "People seem to forget that it is 
 manly to be godly." Henry Ostrom. 
 
 ' Note.— Most of the Scripture quotations used in this book are 
 taken from the Revised Version. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 Preface 3 
 
 Chapter 1. 
 
 The Cain-Life 9 
 
 Chaptee 2. 
 
 The Common Lot 37 
 
 Chapter 3. 
 
 The Christ Miracle 47 
 
 Chapter 4. 
 
 The Mastery of Christ 65 
 
 Chapter 5. 
 
 Etchings of the Redemptive Idea 93 
 
 Chapter 6. 
 
 Christian Redemption 107 
 
 Chapter 7. 
 
 The Redemption of Sorrow 189 
 
 Chapter 8. 
 
 The Divine Unfolding 143 
 
 Chapter 9. 
 
 The Needed Gift 161 
 
 Chapter 10. 
 
 The Seven-Fold Revealing 189 
 
 (1.) The Universal Revelation. 
 (2.) The Scripture Revelation. 
 (3.) The Revelation of Self and Sin. 
 (4.) The Revelation of Salvation. 
 
6 CONTENTS 
 
 (5.) The Revealing of the Direct Witness. 
 (6.) The Revelation in the Godly Life. 
 (7.) Special Revelations to Faith. 
 
 Chapter 11. 
 The Holy Spirit Asserting Jesus 215 
 
 Chapter 12. 
 Strengthened with Power 237 
 
 Chapter 13. 
 The Unfailing Grace 259 
 
 Chapter 14. 
 Some Christian Symbols o the Holy Spirit 279 
 
 Chapter 15. 
 Not Your Own 311 
 
 Chapter 16. 
 Receiving the Holy Spirit 327 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE. 
 
" The Bible will be honest with you, and while it makes 
 all admissions, on certain grounds, as to what differenti- 
 ates you f rom other people who are dishonorable and dis- 
 honest and have broken vows outwardly it goes straight 
 into the conscience and says, ' After all you are a sin- 
 ner, you are smitten with an incurable disease which 
 knows no remedy save the knowledge and experience of 
 which come not from earth but straight and miracu- 
 lously from heaven.'" Rev. John MacNeil. 
 
 And the Lord said unto Cain, where is Abel thy 
 brother ? And he said I Imow not: Am I my brother's 
 keeper f And he said what hast thou done f— Genesis, 
 IV: 9, 10. 
 
 " And apart from races we deem barbarous, is not the 
 passion for dominion and wealth and power accountable 
 for the worst chapters of cruelty and oppression written 
 in the world's history ? Few people — perhaps none — are 
 free from this reproach. What indeed is true civilization? 
 By its fruit you shall know it. It is not dominion, 
 wealth, material luxury, nay, not even a great literature 
 and education,widespread— good though these be. Civili- 
 zation is not a veneer; it must penetrate to the very heart 
 and core of societies of men. Its true signs are thought 
 for the poor and suffering, chivalrous regard and respect 
 for woman, the frank recognition of human brother- 
 hood, irrespective of race or color or nation or religion, 
 the love of ordered freedom, abhorrence of what is mean 
 and cruel and vile; ceaseless devotion to the claims of 
 justice. Civilization in that, its true, its highest sense, 
 must make for peace." Sir Charles Russell, 
 
 Lord Chief Justkie of England. 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE. 
 
 T 17" HERE the fields of art bear their newest 
 ' " growths, the head of Cain, the first-born of 
 Adam and Eve, is rising into prominence. In 
 the art galleries of Europe and America the 
 traveler is surprised to find this man pictured 
 and sculptured so often. That it would be an 
 unspeakably blessed circimistance if the spirit of 
 this first son of humanity could be entirely ban- 
 ished from our race, so that it finds expression 
 nowhere upon earth, saving in stone or on can- 
 vas, there to remind all men of their deliverance 
 from the Cain-life until they rejoice and serve in 
 the very spirit of Jesus the Christ, shall be 
 the burden of the message here set forth. 
 
 ''Not as Cain," says the aged apostle John 
 when he would plainly present to the people 
 ''a model to avoid," for Cain "was of that 
 wicked one, and slew his brother," when jealousy 
 had grasped him as if soul and body had been 
 grasped and thrown down against the righteous 
 conduct of Abel. If, as so many think. Eve 
 really believed that her first-born was the Messiah, 
 how sadly disappointed she must have felt when 
 
10 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 her bruised hopes lay at the feet of this cringing, 
 self-excusing murderer. But whatever she may- 
 have thought, either then or previously about 
 the mission of her boy, she knew that she was his 
 own mother and you and I know that Cain is our 
 own brother ! 
 
 Yes. Cain, too, is our brother. He might 
 all but disown that dear bond with Abel, but 
 we can not disown Cain. The poor murderer. 
 Opportunity has been piled up into heights since 
 he thrust his brother down, and the word 
 "brother" has always been kept higher than 
 opportunity, for that word does not abide in 
 the mere letter of the law. It breathes the 
 spirit of the deathless law of love. So, we can 
 not disown Cain. The pity is that we have been 
 like smaller or younger brothers copying his 
 ways and drinking of his spirit instead of nobly 
 setting up the standard of love to attract our 
 fellow men from the Cain-spirit. For this sad 
 reason our kinship is to be deplored. That 
 we can not disown it may appear more real to 
 us as we consider how our hands have been 
 lifted in the very same positions as Cain's and 
 our hearts too have burned with the same slaying 
 heat, while God said to us " Where is thy 
 brother ? " 
 
 But there has appeared amid the centuries 
 another brother, even Jesus the Christ. We may 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE H 
 
 well wish to wash our lips as we apply such a title 
 as " Brother " to him whose every act and word 
 stand forth in history as the light and life of men. 
 But let us by faith claim the kinship with him 
 and seek to find all our fellow men in this family, 
 in the kinship of which life is given rather than 
 taken, and salvation rather than murder is 
 written over the door of the heart. 
 
 The elevator of human history fell with a crash 
 when man became a sinner. Adam was in that 
 falling elevator. And the splinters flew every- 
 whither. They wounded Cain. They have since 
 been festering the race. Adam sinned directly 
 against God, Cain sinned directly against man. 
 Adam excused himself by casting the blame upon 
 the woman, Cain excused himself by pleading 
 ignorance. Adam was a rebel, Cain was a mur- 
 derer. 
 
 What heart can conceive the awful change 
 which must have come into the nature of Adam 
 when he undertook to hide away from God. But 
 would not the change in the relation between 
 man and man be equally marked and awful, how 
 awful did not really appear until Cain had caused 
 the blood of his brother to flow out upon the unfor- 
 giving earth. 
 
 I desire you to study with me not so much the 
 act of Cain as the spirit of the man. The Cain- 
 spirit, the Cain-life is a murderous life. We 
 
12 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 must not over-estimate the extent to which 
 this spirit has affected us, for this would be to 
 slander humanity, but on the other hand we may 
 well pray to be kept from condoning or overlook- 
 ing it, lest, deceiving ourselves, we lower the 
 standard of character, and when you lower that 
 you can heighten nothing. 
 
 That murderous spirit has scattered its conta- 
 gion among humanity until there is a little mur- 
 der in us all. Anger, strife, scorn, heartless 
 competition, malice, wrath, the look of reproach, 
 the unforgiving spirit, these would never have 
 been known to exist between man and man had 
 not the Cain-spirit crimsoned the race. The 
 drooping arms of Cain form on either side the 
 water-shed of the human race. See how instead 
 of the tropical gulfs of peace and good will 
 among men, receiving ever fresh and full supply, 
 this murderous spirit has sent forth the chilly 
 waves of rebellion and anger until they have be- 
 come frozen into treacherous heights against 
 which the millions have dashed into shipwreck. 
 Had Cain raised his right hand unto his God and 
 lowered his left hand helpfully to his brother, 
 peace on earth, good will among men might this 
 very moment have charmed the whole race into 
 the REST of its God. 
 
 Then man would have lived for his fellows, each 
 man would have been a benediction to all other men 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 13 
 
 — no conflict, no discord, but sweetest accord and 
 harmony would have prevailed. The united 
 whole family would have abode in peace, and 
 each man's character would have been a pure 
 fountain out of which his fellows would have 
 drunken, each in turn, producing an increase of 
 benedictions for the other so naturally that even 
 angels would have had a joy in it, all free from 
 astonishment as they would have said, "Behold 
 how these children love each other." 
 
 But how wide the contagion has spread, how 
 plentiful the poisonous crop which has grown 
 from the Cain-spirit. At its root it may appear 
 to be little more than self-assertion, or self-inde- 
 pendence. Now any man can assert his own 
 independence, yes, any devil can do that much, 
 but it took the Son of G-od to be great enough to 
 make himself of no reputation, taking upon him 
 the form of a servant, to lay down his life for the 
 world. Self-assertion! Yes, indeed, little chil- 
 dren have had their happy hours blighted and 
 blasted with its murderous sweep. Oh, the pity 
 of it! Two little children could not play together 
 without the quarrel. A sweet little girl of four 
 years was talking very rapidly and eagerly to 
 her father, who had returned home after a pro- 
 longed absence. Her little brother, who was two 
 years her senior, whispered humorously to the 
 father, "She thinks she is mistress here, don't 
 
14 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 she ?" The little girl immediately requested of 
 the father to tell her what her brother had said, 
 when the following episode occurred: 
 
 Father: ''Oh, it's a secret between him and 
 me, you never mind." 
 
 Little daughter cries piteously. 
 
 Father: "My darling, you must not cry so. 
 Why I thought you were having such a nice time ; 
 now let us go right on with our visit." 
 
 Little daughter : "I want to know what he 
 said when he whispered to you." 
 
 Father: "My son, tell her what you said to 
 me." 
 
 The little boy : ' 'No, papa, she does not need 
 to know what I said. " 
 
 Father: "Yes, my son, you tell her." 
 
 The little boy: "No, papa, I don't want to." 
 
 Father: "My son, you must tell your sister 
 what you said." 
 
 Little boy : ' 'I said that you thought that you 
 were mistress around here." 
 
 Little daughter greatly increases her crying. 
 
 Father : ' ' My son, throw you arms about your 
 little sister's neck and tell her you are sorry to 
 have grieved her." 
 
 Little boy: " I don't want to. " 
 
 Father: "Yes, my dear, you must tell her you 
 are sorry. Throw your arms about her neck and 
 kiss her, right away." 
 
THE CAIN-LIFB 15 
 
 The act is done. 
 
 Little daughter : ' ' Papa, he did not kiss me 
 at all, he just put his lips up against my face." 
 
 The father: "My son, I can not tell you again 
 — throw your arms about your sister's neck, kiss 
 her and tell her you are sorry." 
 
 The hearty spirit of forgiveness was evident, 
 the crying had ceased, the visit was resumed, and 
 the children were once more under the dominion 
 of love ; but through all the preceding stages of 
 this episode there was evident the Cain-spirit. 
 The little children who belong to Jesus, and who 
 are the heirs of his kingdom, find the same 
 tempter who induced Cain to slay his brother 
 blighting their play hours with a deadly spirit of 
 strife. 
 
 They grow up, until a dozen summers have 
 passed and the little school quarrels come; less 
 than a dozen more years have passed, and the un- 
 willingness to speak with each other or the oppo- 
 sition in conversation against each other comes 
 into the field. At mid-age and in old age the 
 strife becomes hot, intense, and spiteful. Plots 
 and murders are but the outbreakings of the 
 same, one, common spirit; it gets into the na- 
 tions, it gets into the churches, it gets into the 
 families. Andrew Murray has said, "In these 
 later times, even the baptism of the Holy Spirit 
 is a cause of separation. Let us learn not to ex- 
 
16 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 pect that all should think the same or express 
 themselves in the same way; let our first care be 
 to exercise love, gentleness, kindness. We often 
 think we are valiant for the truth, and we forget 
 that God's word commands us to speak the truth 
 in love.''' 
 
 Men are known to live within a hundred yards 
 of their fellow men for twenty years without 
 speaking to them. Members of the same family 
 will live in the same city for years without greet- 
 ing each other; and if they resolve that they will 
 come out of this awful thraldom of the Cain-life 
 they find it next to impossible to do it. A woman 
 who was a member of the Christian church arose 
 in a prayer meeting one morning and said, "I 
 would like to be excused from this meeting. I 
 want to go and see a friend of mine to whom I 
 have not spoken for three years. She lives in 
 this city and I must see her." That woman re- 
 tired from the meeting and appeared again at the 
 afternoon service. When asked if she had suc- 
 ceeded in meeting that neighbor, with whom she 
 had not spoken for so'long, she answered, ' 'No, I 
 went to her home three times but failed to gain 
 admission." "Could not we help you find her? 
 How far away does she live?" "Oh," said the 
 woman, "she lives less than three blocks from 
 my home. She is my sister." Here were two 
 people born of the same mother, nursed at the 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 17 
 
 same bosom, rocked in the same cradle and called 
 by the same surname, living in the same city, so 
 thoroughly enslaved by the Cain-spirit that they 
 had not spoken to each other for three years. 
 
 In one of my meetings there sat a man whose 
 face wore the expression of intelligence but who 
 appeared very much dejected. At the close of 
 the meeting I said to him, ' ' My friend, are you 
 in trouble?" "Well," said he, "I am a church 
 member and I do not think I am living right. " 
 "Then," said I, "do you know what the difficulty 
 is ? " After deep sighing with many nervous 
 gestures, he replied, "Yes, I have an uncle living 
 in this city, and between him and me there arose 
 a difference some years ago, and we have not 
 spoken to each other during all these years. I 
 feel that I ought to go and see him, but he does 
 not profess to be a Christian and I do not know 
 how he will receive me." He promised to see 
 his uncle about the matter that night. He con- 
 sented that I should accompany him until we 
 came to the corner of the street which led up to 
 the home of his uncle, then he told me that he 
 would go alone and that all would be well. I 
 wished him the abundant blessing of God upon 
 his splendid decision and bade him good-night. 
 Next day he sat in the meeting the picture of 
 dejection still. After we had concluded the pub- 
 lic service I approached him and asked him how 
 
18 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 he succeeded with his uncle. "O, " said he, ''I 
 went right up to the door of his house, but I 
 could not go in." Then he promised me that he 
 would go and see his uncle immediately. That 
 night he returned, O, so dejected. I approached 
 him again and said, ' ' You have not seen your 
 uncle." "No, sir," said he. Then we prayed 
 together. He wept and pleaded with God to 
 grant him grace sufficient to make him strong 
 enough to speak to that uncle. Ah! the struggle. 
 The next time I saw this man he was approach- 
 ing me on the street, his head was erect, his step 
 was elastic and his face was beaming. Before he 
 had gotten near enough to me for us to shake 
 hands, he said, "I saw my uncle. It is all 
 right now." "Well," said this conqueror, fresh 
 out of the Cain-life, ' ' I went into the house and 
 told my uncle about the difference. I said that I 
 had always thought he was in the fault in the 
 matter, but I could plainly see now that I had 
 not shown him the spirit of Christ, and I had 
 made up my mind to live a Christly life hence- 
 forth and I wished him to forgive me for not 
 having done so before. O, you should have seen 
 him ; he threw his hands down on the arms of the 
 chair and said, ' I could not have done it, I could 
 not have done it.' " No, the natural man can not 
 from the heart perform such a great act, neither 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 19 
 
 can he account for it, but when he sees it an im- 
 pression of the divine presence affects his soul. 
 
 A vast revival undertaking was practically- 
 snow-bound with a yard of carpet about which 
 two prominent church members had quarreled, 
 and we did not know that the quarrel existed un- 
 til they confessed it and forgave each other; then 
 the revival proceeded. Another revival was 
 full-fledged in a day, by a Sunday-School superin- 
 tendent and a leading church worker giving up 
 disagreement and each requesting the other's 
 prayers. Over and over and over again this 
 truth is verified beyond the shadow of a question, 
 " By this shall all men know that ye are my dis- 
 ciples when ye have love one to another." When 
 sermons and songs and arguments, when plead- 
 ings and strugglings have failed, the spirit of 
 Christian love will make a channel through which 
 the Holy Ghost will reach the hardest infidel in 
 the community. These cases are rather typical 
 than extreme. The Cain-spirit is not incidental, 
 it is in the flavor of the natural character, and 
 when analyzed Paul calls it " bitterness." 
 
 1. The New Testament description of the nat- 
 ural man is very explicit. When I say the nat- 
 ural man I use the word "natural" in its com- 
 monly accepted meaning. Really to become a 
 Christian is in the highest sense to become natu- 
 
so OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ral, for as William Arthur has said, ' < As sinners 
 our nature is unnatural." 
 
 Let us look at some of these descriptions of the 
 natural man as given in the New Testament. 
 ' ' From that time forth began Jesus to show unto 
 his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, 
 and suffer many things of the elders and chief 
 priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised 
 again the third day. Then Peter took him and 
 began to rebuke him, saying, be it far from thee, 
 Lord : this shall not be unto thee. But he turned 
 and said unto Peter, G-et thee behind me Satan; 
 thou art an offense unto me ; for thou savourest 
 not the things that be of God, but those that be 
 of men. Then Jesus said unto his disciples, if 
 any man will come after me, let him deny him- 
 self, and take up his cross and follow me. For 
 whosoever shall save his life shall lose it; and 
 whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find 
 it." Matt, xvi: 21-25. 
 
 See how clearly Jesus teaches here that the 
 natural man is an unsacrificial being ; he does not 
 believe in going to his Calvary but rather the op- 
 posite. That very spirit which made the Caesars 
 build their thrones upon the sufferings of their 
 fellow men is the spirit of the natural man. That 
 very spirit of the Pueblo Indian which made him 
 scalp a white man that he might himself inherit 
 some ability which the white man had, so that 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 31 
 
 the more scalps he could fasten to his girdle the 
 more of other men's abilities he thought he had 
 captured — that is the spirit of the natural man 
 and is it not the Cain-spirit? Christ came into 
 the world, teaching us greatness in sacrifice, 
 ''Take up your cross and follow me." I think if 
 he were saying it to-day he would use some such 
 expression as, ' 'Follow me to the very gallows or 
 to the electrocutioner's chair." "Lose your life," 
 saith he. The natural man does not believe in it, 
 and were it not for those mild etchings repre- 
 sented by such types of character as that of the 
 mother, we would hardly find a vestige of a hint 
 of the sacrificial left in the race. It was no mere 
 touch of insight into human character which 
 caused Isaiah to say: "Cease from man whose 
 breath is in his nostrils. " I do not mean now to say 
 simply that man is a sinner and unreliable by na- 
 ture, but I mean that my reader and I shall so 
 see m^an that we shall know that the sacrificial 
 life is not naturally welcome to him. Man has 
 not only lost his loyalty to G-od, but he has lost 
 that holy charm of the divine nature which has 
 been the secret of all mercy ever shown to needy 
 rebels. Poor selfish soul, afraid of circumstances 
 and afraid of death, bethink thee God made thee 
 to have dominion and to rule, but never canst 
 thou take thy victorious position until thou hast 
 the sacrificial spirit. 
 
22 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 2. The natural man is given to mingle re- 
 ligion and worldliness. When Jesus said to the 
 people, "Ye can not serve God and mammon," 
 and "No man can serve two masters," he had 
 just drawn a remarkable picture of business 
 shrewdness, closing it up with the expression of 
 the sacrificial spirit in business, and Luke says, 
 "Immediately the Pharisees who were lovers of 
 money heard all these things and they scoffed at 
 him." Jesus replied, "That which is exalted 
 among men is abomination in the sight of God." 
 (See Luke, ch. 16.) Here Jesus used the word 
 "men" as he did in the previous case when 
 speaking to Peter. Why did he not say that 
 which is exalted of the devil? Or, when speak- 
 ing to Peter, why did he not say thou mindest 
 not the things of God but the things of the devil. 
 No, in each case he uses the word "men." 
 
 The natural man has the Cain-spirit, and he 
 wants to mingle religion and worldliness. Christ 
 came proclaiming God as the manager of business, 
 saying in his message, ' ' Seek first the kingdom of 
 God, " promising clothing and food to be added. He 
 would have nothing secular; he would lift every 
 necessary toil and business transaction up into the 
 sacred realm, and make life, all life, religious. But 
 the natural man has shut this out from his view; 
 he sees what he calls prosperity; he does not see 
 God. He talks about making a living, forgetting 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 23 
 
 that making a living is surely the least duty in this 
 life. He proposes to exhale righteousness before 
 he has inhaled it. He would shut the whole uni- 
 verse out from his vision by holding a penny 
 before each eye. Worldliness is blind. It is 
 money-blind. 
 
 3. The natural man is a vain- glorious being. 
 *<How can ye believe," says Christ, "which 
 receive glory one of another, and the glory that 
 cometh from the only G-od ye seek not." — 
 John v: 44. Just ten verses preceding this Jesus 
 said, ''The witness I receive is not from man." 
 Now, Christ loves the witness of the regenerated 
 man, but man as he is, the natural man can not 
 bring acceptable witness to the Christ. Jesus 
 could not exalt and commend Herod, but he could 
 exalt and commend Mary Magdalen after she was 
 saved, for she had lost the Cain-spirit and found 
 true character. The natural man does not reckon 
 values properly; he does not see the worth of 
 Jesus. Jesus came, completely changing the idea 
 of greatness. The natural man believes that it 
 is great to be exalted. Jesus teaches that it is 
 great to serve. The Cain-spirit kills the brother, 
 the Jesus-spirit prays for its murderers. Oh, let 
 us lose our vain-glory, and find to-day that 
 humility which comes from the very life of the 
 Spirit of Grod. Your lamp turned up too high 
 will smoke and sputter; turn it down and it will 
 
24 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 give light to all the family. The light of the soul 
 appears when burnished with service. 
 
 4. The natural man is spiteful. Said Jesus to 
 his disciples, ' ' Ye shall be hated of all men for 
 my name's sake." Matt. x:22. He had told 
 the disciples that men would deliver them up. 
 He warned them to beware of men. He did not 
 here say beware of Satan, but of men. The nat- 
 ural man is spiteful. In the 18th chapter of 
 Matthew's Gospel a record is made of Jesus' 
 touching parable of the king who forgave his serv- 
 ant, being moved with compassion ; and the serv- 
 ant in turn taking his fellow servant who owed 
 him, by the throat says, "Pay what thou owest." 
 He refused all pleas and cast his fellow-servant 
 into prison. Then the king said, ' ' Thou wicked 
 servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou 
 besoughtest me; shouldst not thou also have had 
 mercy on thy fellow-servant, even as I had mercy 
 on thee?" The servant is delivered to the tor- 
 mentors and Jesus adds, ' ' So shall my Heavenly 
 Father do unto you if ye forgive not every one 
 his brother from your hearts. This spiteful 
 spirit may not come out in words or deeds, but it 
 is in the man, and to be a Christian implies its 
 banishment. 
 
 A young man who was near death professed to 
 give himself to Christ. He had been an avowed 
 infidel. One morning he said, " O, I trust I am 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 saved, but the slightest mistake my wife makes 
 in arranging my pillows or anything else about 
 my room makes me so angry. " When told that he 
 must not speak hastily to his young wife, for it 
 might grieve her sadly in after years, he said ' ' I 
 do not say anything, but I feel it, I feel it. " What is 
 an expression of heated anger but the emphasis of 
 this vicious spirit, made noticeable by some spec- 
 ial strategy of the enemy. 
 
 5. The natural man is jealous. How the fol- 
 lowing words burn into our feelings as we write 
 them, < 'Pilate knew that for envy the chief 
 priests had delivered Christ up." Matt, xxvii: 
 18. Paul says, "Whereas there is among you 
 jealousy and strife; are ye not carnal and walk af- 
 ter the manner of men." Now, mark you, he does 
 not say after the manner of Satan, but men, nat- 
 ural men. Jealousy and strife are almost living 
 forms. You can almost photograph them. When 
 two people are under the influence of either the 
 one or the other of these vices, it is as if a third 
 person of hideous appearance and hellish char- 
 acter sat in the same room with them. You can 
 almost see the finger in the mouth, and hear the 
 defiant clap of the foot upon the floor, and this 
 awful power so common to the natural man is all 
 but a visible spirit, is the Cain-spirit. On its 
 account Christ was delivered up. Is there no 
 sacred place on earth, no lovely order, no prec- 
 
26 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ious aim, no holy shrine on earth, where Satan 
 will not dare intrude with this awful spirit? 
 
 In great church assemblies, amid the city mis- 
 sionaries and even the foreign missionaries, by the 
 coffins of the dead, and close to the cross of the 
 Son of Grod, men will debate who shall be greatest. 
 And if these things do occur in places of such 
 sacred vows and noble ambitions, who but the 
 Son of God would be strong enough to endure for 
 one moment the awful disharmony of the multi- 
 tudes who willfully reject the way of love and life. 
 The natural man is anti-Christian. " If I were 
 still pleasing men, I would not be the servant of 
 Christ." 
 
 We may well tremble with eagerness to have 
 introduced to the soul's vision Christ's estimate 
 of man's relation to his fellows, bearing in mind 
 meanwhile that the measure of the stature of 
 Christ is perfect manhood. And if man may 
 readily learn truth by contrast, then surely 
 Jesus presents an overwhelming claim for his 
 study. We seem to forget what a revelation in 
 thinking and in estimating character Jesus 
 wrought during his brief ministry on this earth 
 in the flesh. He is the Man from above; the 
 second Adam, the Life, the Way. Men did not 
 rush to him in allegiance. They questioned, they 
 argued, they started and withdrew again j they 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 27 
 
 prayed and despised again ; but the contrast made 
 evident the Christ as the ideal man. 
 
 If a considerate father could find a perfect man 
 who was willing to live with his boy, to instruct 
 him and to inspire him, and to call his son up in 
 fellowship with himself, think you that he would 
 not be willing to undergo any kind or degree of 
 hardship or sacrifice to have that son under the 
 influence of such a man. But the perfect man 
 has appeared, and we are welcome not only to 
 his influence but to his life, his thrill, himself. 
 
 To be Christly is to be a man. Only in so far 
 as we fill out this ideal in our characters have we 
 regained true manhood. 
 
 Trace along those drooping arms of Cain, the 
 warping of human influence, radically in contrast 
 with the Christian ideal for "the Lord taketh 
 pleasure in his people:" and the only way by 
 which you or I can serve the Lord is by using the 
 life he imparts to us, in the service of humanity. 
 
 My praises will never glorify God except they 
 come from a heart eager also to glorify humanity. 
 My prayers can not ascend acceptably to the 
 Father in Heaven unless they carry in their em- 
 brace my brother upon earth. There is not an 
 *'I" or a "me" or a "my" in all the Lord's 
 Prayer — it is all "our" and "us" and "they." 
 In the condemnation pronounced against the rich 
 man there is no declaration of any other wrong in 
 
28 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 his life excepting that he did not provide for Laz- 
 arus, his poor brother. He fared sumptuously 
 every day, he was clothed in rich apparel, and he 
 withheld help from the poor man laid at his gate. 
 That rich man could not possibly find any other 
 way to serve Grod but by serving Lazarus. Laz- 
 arus had been laid at his gate; he was the very 
 embodiment of need. G-od could have fed him as 
 in the case of Elijah by employing ravens, but 
 the rich man was the proper instrument for God's 
 use in this event, just as Philip the Evangelist 
 was the proper instrument for G-od's use when 
 the Ethiopian eunuch needed very plain instruc- 
 tion concerning the way of Life. Jesus was ever 
 emphasizing this upon the attention of the people 
 in his words and in his practices. Take those re- 
 markable sayings of his uttered on the mountain- 
 side. I am glad we do not have to call them ser- 
 mons, because we are so apt to fill in the thought 
 with certain peculiar interpretations of the occa- 
 sion when we think of sermons. They must be 
 about so long and so deep, and so thin and so 
 thick. The method of preparation, method or 
 quality of reception must all be reckoned into the 
 estimate, before we can tell whether they are 
 good sermons or not. But Jesus did not call this 
 wonderful mountain-side deliverence a sermon, 
 <' These sayings of mine" — just a saying, you 
 know, some truth told so that you are captured 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 by the truth rather than the telling. The jewel 
 appears more prominent than the setting. 
 
 In these wonderful sayings Jesus teaches ten 
 specific duties toward man, every one of which 
 implies great gentleness, and tenderness, and 
 love. Only once in all these sayings does he warn 
 us against humanity. Here it is, ' ' Beware of 
 false prophets." As if to say, keep in touch 
 with God, do not let man side-track you, serve 
 man but do not follow man, follow God. Do not 
 demand of him, make no claims against him, 
 but help him. How prominently this is seen in 
 the wording of the Golden Rule, "All 
 things whatsoever ye would that men should do 
 to you, do ye even so to them;" not demand of 
 them, but do to them. Ah, yes, surely this is the 
 way of life, that we should ' ' by love serve one 
 another. " Again in that wonderful summing up of 
 affairs in the 25th Chapter of the Gospel of Mat- 
 thew the justification of those on the right hand 
 is based upon what they did for their fellows, and 
 the condemnation of those on the left hand is 
 based upon what they did not do when their fel- 
 lows were in need of help. Here were the 
 hungry, the sick, the prisoners, the : strangers ; 
 the one " fed" and "visited" and "gone unto" 
 and "taken in;" the other class, "fed not" "gone 
 not unto," "visited not" and " taken not in.' 
 Now right here Jesus gives the great reason 
 
30 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 which lies deep under all this interpretation of 
 Christianity, when he says, •< Inasmuch as ye did 
 it unto one of the least of these ye did it unto 
 me," or again, "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto 
 one of the least of these ye did it not unto 
 me." Christ has identified himself with hu- 
 manity, born in human flesh, associated with hu- 
 man company, going over the human path of 
 death, calling himself the Son of Man and saying 
 that his children are to be in him as he is in the 
 Father. Hence when I come to serve Christ I 
 must look about me to find him. Then he says to 
 me, ''Here I am, and here, and here also." This 
 man is sick, this man wayward, this poor, here is 
 another child of want, here is your enemy, 
 yonder is the wild-hearted woman, here is the 
 vicious criminal, again there is the degraded na- 
 ture where scarcely an expression of the divine 
 remains to identify it with the Christ, here the 
 poor, drivelling fetish- worshipper. ' ' Would you 
 serve me" Jesus says, ' 'then find me among these. " 
 Thus Mrs. J. Fowler Willing, speaking of poor 
 girls and boys who are employed in the cigarette 
 factories of New York, says, '<The really pathetic 
 part of the case is the fact that Christ wanders 
 alone and uncared for through the streets." 
 
 There is that wonderful expression of godliness 
 written in the 13th Chapter of 1st Corinthians, 
 liook at how Paul undertakes to analyze the un- 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 31 
 
 failing grace of love. By far the greater frac- 
 tion of the analysis is given in expressions which 
 refer to duty to man. And no wonder, when we 
 recall the basis upon which this man's Chris tly- 
 life was built. He never used the large word 
 himianitarianism, but he was a conscious phon- 
 ograph uttering the short word Christ. The word 
 altruism did not find a place in his writings, but 
 the words sacrifice, debtor, bond-servant and 
 brother, did. Harken, ' ' I am debtor both to 
 Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and 
 to the foolish." And when Paul spoke of debts, it 
 was with no dishonorable apathy. He meant to 
 undertake to pay. And our debts are no less than 
 his. 
 
 The Epistle of James talks in the plainest terms 
 of rebuke against the rich who despise the poor. 
 
 Peter, in his Epistle, bids us rejoice, "inas- 
 much as we are partakers of Christ's sufferings," 
 and adds his teachings concerning the duties of 
 individuals to each other in the home. The Epis- 
 tle of Jude tells us to " save men with fear, pull- 
 ing them out of the fire." 
 
 And John in the great Revelation seems to be 
 shouting down the centuries the very essential of 
 the Gospel, when he says, ' ' Let him that heareth 
 say come;" while his Epistles with strongest terms 
 of expression teach that no man can love God 
 unless he love his brother also. Here, then, is 
 
32 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 the field of Christian service, wide as the human 
 race. Yes, wide as the human race. There is 
 no color line, no sex line, no caste, no grade here; 
 neither Jew nor Glreek, neither male nor female, 
 neither bond nor free. With this interpretation 
 of humanity, the most elite person can recognize 
 without a shudder of recoiling how perfectly ap- 
 propriate it was for Delia, called "the Blue Bird " 
 of that wretched ante-room of hell in her day, 
 Mulberry Bend, to subscribe herself, when writ- 
 ing to Mrs. Whittemore, who was God's angel of 
 deliverance to her, ' ' your own daughter in 
 Christ," or for Ananias to address Saul of Tarsus 
 in holy gentlemanliness, "Brother Saul." 
 
 A little while ago I said that Jesus had 
 identified himself with humanity and that when 
 we wish to serve man he would point to human 
 needs and say, "Here I am." But how? If 
 I should undertake to serve humanity, as a 
 natural man it would be impossible. I have 
 not the purchase power. We have seen that the 
 natural man is positively opposed to the spirit of 
 service, but in Jesus the spirit of service becomes 
 my very life, then seeing humanity in Jesus, 
 service of the lowest or the meanest becomes a 
 privilege of rarest worth. Now mark that fact, 
 we can not naturally serve humanity. We can 
 not begin to pay the indebtedness. True benefi- 
 cence would never begin until our debt is paid, 
 
THE CAIN-LIFE 33 
 
 and more, we have not the moral grip to be 
 true servants of humanity, we have not the 
 moral life, we have not the moral caste or tone 
 or flavor. It is not in us. Much that is com- 
 mendable has been given to us, perhaps through 
 Christian parentage or excellent influence in our 
 childhood days. But you might as well under- 
 take to lift yourself up by the laces of your shoes 
 as to undertake to serve humanity without 
 a Christly enthusiasm. O, identify yourself with 
 Christ and get the purchase power which shall 
 lift you, and through you a multitude of others 
 to the very heart of eternal goodness. There 
 are not wanting approaches to this kind of char- 
 acter in men who make no profession as followers 
 of Christ. Recently there has died a Jew whose 
 gifts of large sums of money drawn from abnor 
 mally large sums in his possession have caused his 
 name to be upon many lips and printed with 
 many types. And we do well to recognize that 
 which might be substituted by something worse 
 in any man, but here is the very difficulty; right 
 here you may, if you will hear the bells of warn- 
 ing ringing all up and down our days and nights, 
 humanity does not want the gold of other men, 
 it wants humanity. Not it, but them. Rusted 
 steel looks like gold when lying in the sun at 
 a distance, so do the gifts of men look like 
 charity. Of course there are not wanting 
 
34 OTJT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 those who will take the gold, and even those 
 who would demand it by force, but this is rather 
 the expression of a diseased appetite. We know 
 that an indulgence of this will never save human- 
 ity. Man must give himself to his fellows. 
 *< Brethren, if Christ laid down his life for us, 
 we ought to lay down our lives for one another," 
 and let us not be content to endorse the general 
 programme which implies that we are to give 
 ourselves to humanity in Christ, but let us 
 be willing to put brain into the problems and 
 sweat into the toils, let us gladly contribute 
 all our nerves to be burnt out in toil, that hearts 
 may be warmed at their very fires as they burn. 
 Let us undertake a life-long effort, having the 
 yoke of Christ upon us as if we were oxen and 
 would plow from East to West and from West to 
 East furrow after furrow until every thistle 
 and briar in all the fallow field of human discord 
 has been buried deep in death. 
 
THE COMMON LOT. 
 
*' The Bible is reunion perfected, illustrated in the 
 God-man walking- the earth, showing- the etiquette of 
 heaven and the possibilities of man reunited to God." 
 —H, W, Warren, S. T. D. 
 
 We are memhers one of another. 
 Ephesians iv: 25. 
 
 *' Obviously in Christ's conception, to serve men is to 
 serve Him. But this is not the common conception; we 
 talk of ' divine service ' as if it meant only prayer and 
 praise am 1 ne h Baring" of sermons. Visiting' the father- 
 less and widows in their affliction we call philanthropy, 
 and keeping one's self unspotted from the world we 
 would probably call morality; but St. James says that 
 these things are religion, 'pure and undefiled before 
 God.' Pure religion is philanthropic and true philan- 
 thropy is religious, and to divorce the one from the 
 other is to libel and cripple both." Josiah Steong. 
 
 " This learned I from the shadow of a tree 
 That to and fro did sway upon the wall; 
 
 Our shadow selves — our influence — may fall 
 Where we can never be." 
 
THE COMMON LOT. 
 
 r^ IVEN the Christly spirit of service and we are 
 ^-*^ not without equipment as real helpers of our 
 fellows. God has given to us that great power of 
 influence always at hand, more subtle than 
 electricity, more searching than the X-rays, and 
 giving color to other people's characters like the 
 morning sun to the clouds which skirt the dawn. 
 The fool has influence, and the wise man can not 
 live without shaping other men's characters. 
 Silence will influence, so will words. What the 
 flavor is to the orange, what the color is to the 
 milk, what the tone is to the bell, that in char- 
 acter is an awful might for good or bad. It is 
 not so much what we say as how we say it; it is 
 not so much what we do as how we do it. 
 
 A friend of mine who is to-day a preacher of 
 the Gospel sat in a pew during a religious service 
 when he was a boy, and when the preacher had 
 given an invitation for all those who desired to 
 become Christians to draw near to the pulpit, 
 my friend resisted, stoutly clinging to his Cain- 
 life, until a little cripple, using a crutch under 
 each arm, made his way to the aisle and toil- 
 
38 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 somely to the altar railing. This broke the Cain- 
 spirit in my friend. He said: "I could not 
 stand it to see that cripple hobble up the aisle, I 
 had to go. I gave myself to Christ that night, 
 and the influence of the cripple saved me. " Christ 
 said that virtue had gone out of him when the 
 afflicted woman was healed, and Benjamin Wilson 
 in his translation renders it ' ' He perceived that a 
 power had gone out of him " If that power but 
 reaches into the sphere of influence which you 
 and I continuously carry with us, then it will in- 
 deed be honest for us to say with Paul, ' ' For me 
 to live is Christ." Our Christ does not discount 
 the marvelous sweep of influence in little chil- 
 dren. The quality of the child-life is so reliant 
 and at its best so guileless! We all know how 
 often it is said the little babe rules the house- 
 hold. What multitudes of adults have entered 
 the kingdom of heaven through some sweet re- 
 quests or touching utterances of children. 
 
 " How often as we crowd along- in life's on-rushing mart, 
 A little seed from childish lips finds lodgement in the 
 
 heart, 
 And there takes root and flourishes in memory's living 
 
 bower, 
 Until it seems a sermon of the most convincing power. 
 
 But yesterday while grumbling at the slow descending 
 
 rain. 
 And inwardly condemning it, again and yet again. 
 A baby sitting by my side remarked in accents low, 
 " You shouldn't scold it that way, for rain makes 
 
 flowers grow." 
 
THE COMMON LOT 39 
 
 And when God proposed to upset the throne 
 of the Caesars and bring in a victory to humanity, 
 no more perfect conception of how to accomplish 
 it could be suggested than there should be a babe 
 born in a manger. 
 
 Ah, it is not a question of age or of social 
 standing or even of experience: let us stand 
 aghast in the presence of the truth, our common 
 influence over each other is like the ceaseless 
 reigning of a miracle. Benjamin West drew the 
 picture of the baby in the cradle, on the clean 
 floor of his mother's kitchen. His mother, 
 coming in, saw the picture and the coal dust on 
 the floor, which had been very recently scrubbed. 
 Taking little Benjamin up in her arms, she 
 kissed him affectionately. In after years 
 Benjamin "West said, "My mother's kiss 
 made me an artist." In one of our Western 
 cities fire broke out in a large school building. 
 One of the boys who had been accustomed to beat 
 the drum while the children marched for exer- 
 cises, with presence of mind which would have 
 been quite wonderful for a man of years, ran for 
 his drum, took his stand in the hall-room and be- 
 gan beating it, that the children might march 
 down and out of the building in order, averting 
 a stampede. What that boy's drum was to the 
 needs of those schoolmates of his, our very ap- 
 pearance may be in its influence upon those who 
 
40 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 meet us ; orderly marches or stampedes are neither 
 of them so much produced by great speeches as 
 by silent influences. No amount of arrangement 
 will righten up difficulties when the tone of affairs 
 is wrong. The Christ-spirit, the Christ-savor, 
 must supplant the Cain-spirit. 
 
 One might have thought that our common in- 
 heritance to trouble would have made us, long 
 ago, more cautious about our treatment of each 
 other, for trouble is such a mighty leveler. Men 
 who have been the most distant toward each 
 other, and the most individual in their conceptions 
 of life have had the diffidence of their souls broken 
 up in less than an hour by a shipwreck or a fire. 
 
 Some years ago while journeying up one of the 
 great canyons of Colorado a passenger train was 
 wrecked. The tender was detached from the en- 
 gine and run into the gulch, the baggage car was 
 turned on its roof over the precipice, the track 
 was torn up, the ends of the coaches broken in, 
 the water tanks bursted, and the lamps thrown 
 here and there. Two men were in the baggage 
 car, many passengers were in the coaches. In- 
 stantly all was confusion and haste. After the 
 two men had been taken from the baggage car 
 alive, and the passengers were given positions of 
 as great comfort as could be provided in that 
 place, they waited in great eagerness for help. 
 The engine without the tender had been run up 
 
THE COMMON LOT 41 
 
 the canyon a few miles, carrying some men to 
 telegraph from the lonely little mountain -canyon 
 depot, to the city in the distance for help. But 
 it was eight long hours before they could move 
 away from that desolate stopping-place. The 
 wreck had occurred shortly before noon and all 
 were hungry. That morning one of the tourists 
 had taken the precaution to provide a small 
 luncheon in a paper sack, thinking perhaps that 
 thus equipped he might be able to climb higher 
 up the mountain-sides and take in vaster sweeps 
 of the scenery during the day. Well, the wreck 
 had occurred and here were the passengers sitting 
 in little groups, or walking up and down. Soon 
 the storm swept down the canyon; it rained, it 
 snowed, it blew, it thundered and lightened, but 
 the travelers were all friends. It seemed as if 
 they had all gone to school together, each was 
 ready to converse with the other, and during this 
 sweet sway of social courtesy this one man with 
 the little paper sack of luncheon was distributing 
 the food among more than a dozen people. The 
 first to receive a part of the luncheon was a poor 
 Swedish woman whose two children were crying 
 with hunger, next were two women wearing costly 
 garments and jewels and next were their hus- 
 bands. So one after the other received a little 
 portion, sharing in homeliest style the luncheon. 
 Trouble did it. I do not say that they should 
 
42 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 have been so free in conversation before the wreck 
 occurred or that it would have been necessary for 
 them to have taken their dinner from the hands 
 of one man, a stranger, but I do say that there 
 should have been nothing in their spirits opposed 
 to all this, without the train-wreck. 
 
 Again, our common inheritance to need ought 
 to have taught us to fondle dearly every moment 
 of influence for the good of our fellow men. 
 
 "Who that has read James Russell Lowell's won- 
 derful interpretation of the power of need over 
 the heart in "The Vision of SirLaunfal" can fail 
 to appreciate more than ever the deep lesson 
 upon the power of common need in Jesus' parable 
 of the Good Samaritan. How single and alone, 
 how rich and independent, how haughty and 
 heartless, how priest-like and Levite-like is Sir 
 Launf ul that morning as the leper by the gate re- 
 quests an alms. 
 
 "This man, so foul and bent of stature, 
 
 Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
 And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
 So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 
 
 The leper raised not the gold from the dust: 
 
 Better to me the poor man's crust, 
 Better the blessing of the poor, 
 
 Though I turn me empty from his door; 
 That is no true alms which the hand can hold: 
 
 He gives only the worthless gold 
 
THE COMMON LOT 43 
 
 Who gives from a sense of duty; 
 
 But he who gives but a slender might, 
 And gives to that which is out of sight 
 
 That thread of the all-sustaining beauty 
 Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
 
 The hand can not clasp the whole of his alms, 
 The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
 
 For a god goes with it and makes it store 
 To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 
 
 Time and circumstance have held their sway, 
 and now Sir Launf al is aged and poor. His search 
 for the Holy Grail was a failure, but he has found 
 a heart of sympathy. His castle, another has 
 taken it, but his soul — 
 
 "Deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
 
 The badge of the suffering and the poor." 
 
 The leper is found near the laughing spring 
 and again requests an alms. Now Sir Launf al 
 says, 
 *'l behold in thee an image of him who died on the tree." 
 
 * * * * •55- * * 
 
 "He parted in twain his single crust, 
 
 TIg broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
 And gave the leper to eat and drink. " 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 *'The voice that was softer than silence said, 
 
 Lo it is I, be not afraid! 
 In many climes, without avail, 
 
 Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 
 Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
 
 Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 
 
44 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 This crust is my body broken for thee, 
 
 This water bis blood that died on the tree; 
 The Holy Supper is kept indeed, 
 
 In wbatso we share with another's need; 
 Not what we give, but what we share, 
 
 For the gift without the giver is bare; 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three. 
 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 
 
 Common need did it. 
 
 We may not slight the sick to-day, our need 
 may be as his to-morrow. The poor, we may not 
 turn them empty away to-day, our own need may 
 beseech for a true friend to-morrow. Yea, and 
 in the presence of all the contrast between the 
 blessed ideal and our poor present experience 
 may we not well say, My needs to-day bring 
 into full life a kindred feeling with all the needy 
 race. 
 
 So now here is the question. Will you step 
 out of the Cain-life into the Christ-life? Will 
 you out of the love of God serve his creatures 
 and your brethren? Thus be the channel through 
 which the Lord of Life and Love may make his 
 bounties the common lot of the multitude. 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE. 
 
What Think Ye of Christ ? 
 
 Pharisees! with what have you to reproach Jesus? 
 
 "He eateth with publicans and sinners." 
 
 "Is this all?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Pilate, what is your opinion? 
 
 "I find no fault in this man." 
 
 And you, Judas, who have sold your Master for silver; 
 have you some fearful charge to hurl against him? 
 
 " I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent 
 blood." 
 
 And you, centurion and soldiers who led him to the 
 cross, what have you to say against him? 
 
 " Truly this was the Son of God." Matt, xxvii: 54. 
 
 And you, demons? 
 
 "He is the Son of God." 
 
 John Baptist, what think you of Christ? 
 
 "Behold the Lamb of God." 
 
 And you, John? 
 
 " He is the bright and morning star." 
 
 Peter, what say you of your Master? 
 
 " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
 
 Paul, you have persecuted him; what testify you of 
 him? 
 
 " I count all things but loss for the excellency of the 
 knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord." 
 
 Angels of heaven, what think ye of Jesus? 
 
 "Unto you is born a Saviour, which is Christ the 
 Lord." 
 
 And thou. Father in heaven, who knowest all things? 
 
 " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 
 Beloved reader, what think you of Christ? 
 
 — La Luz (Madrid), quoted in El Abogado Christiano 
 lllustrado (Mexico) and Missionary Review of the World 
 (New York). 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE. 
 
 HThe greatest miracle of all the ages is Jesus 
 ■^ Christ himself. Every miracle which Jesus 
 performed gives evidence of being intended as a 
 means of opening up the soul-vision of humanity 
 that we might recognize him as the Son of God 
 and the Saviour of the world. Not the turning 
 of the water into wine, not the casting out of 
 devils, and not the raising of the dead, but Jesus 
 Christ himself is the miracle of miracles. All 
 other marvels at best are incidental to this, and 
 I question if any man can calmly, quietly and 
 without bias sit down and consider Jesus Christ 
 in his relation to history and to humanity, and to 
 his own claims, without being convinced of the 
 miracle of the very existence of one born among 
 humanity such as Jesus the Man of Galilee. 
 
 In a recent article in the Nineteenth Century, 
 Mr. Gladstone says: 
 
 " I do not know on earth a more blessed sub- 
 ject for contemplation than that which I should 
 describe as follows: There are, it may be, upon 
 earth four hundred and fifty million professing 
 Christians. There is no longer one fold under 
 one visible Shepherd, and the majority of Christ- 
 
48 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ians (such as I take it now to be, though the 
 minority is a large one) is content with its one 
 Shepherd in heaven and with the other provisions 
 he has made on earth. His flock is broken up 
 into scores — it may be hundreds — of sections. 
 These sections are not at peace but at war. But 
 with all this segregation, and not only division 
 but conflict, of minds and interests, the answer 
 given by the four hundred and fifty millions, or 
 by those who are best entitled to speak for 
 them, to the question, 'What is the G-ospel?' is 
 still the same. With conceptions so slight that 
 we may justly set them out of the reckoning, the 
 reply is still the same as it was in the apostolic 
 age — the central truth of the Gospel lies in the 
 trinity and tLe incarnation, in the God that 
 made us and the Saviour that redeemed us. 
 When I consider what human nature and human 
 history have been, and how feeble is the spirit in 
 its warfare with the flesh, I bow my head in 
 amazement before this mighty moral miracle, 
 this marvelous occurrence evolved from the very 
 heart of discord." 
 
 Napoleon, astounded at the prevailing interest 
 of humanity in Jesus, exclaims, ' ' Caesar is dead 
 and forgotten, Romulus is dead and forgotten, 
 Alexander is dead and forgotten, I shall soon 
 be dead and forgotten, but this man Jesus 
 the longer he is dead the more the people will 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 49 
 
 run after him. I tell you I know man. I have mar- 
 shalled man on many a battlefield, but Jesus Christ 
 is more than man." Why, here is an unanswer- 
 able miracle. Jesus Christ born amid most humble 
 surroundings, the poor man of Nazareth, his 
 poverty can not well be doubted. He said, " The 
 foxes have holes and the birds of the air have 
 nests but the Son of Man hath not where to lay 
 his head." He sent his disciples to procure the 
 money for tribute from the mouth of a fish. He 
 commended Mary his mother to John in the death 
 hour, Joseph of Arimath^a characterized as a rich 
 man provided the tomb for his body, and he con- 
 demned all selfish hoarding of goods. Four thous- 
 and men besides women and children remain with 
 him in the solitude for three days hungry, then 
 he calls his disciples unto him saying, ' ' I have 
 compassion on the multitude because they con- 
 tinue with me now three days and have nothing 
 to eat and I would not send them away fasting 
 lest haply they faint in the way." It is true he 
 wore a seamless robe, probably a present from 
 some interested follower. It is true there was a 
 purse held in the apostolic company, but there 
 was never sufficient money in it to make it a 
 matter worth the record that any was left over 
 on any occasion, including the occasion of the 
 betrayal of Jesus by Judas. Jesus Christ stood 
 in a wheat field and shelled his dinner, probably 
 
50 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 because no one had invited him out. It is a phe- 
 nomenon to read of him riding even when he had 
 the use of a borrowed boat or a borrowed beast of 
 burden, and promptly after his resurrection finding 
 some of his disciples fishing with sad hearts, 
 he says, "Children, have you any meat? " and 
 after directing them to the source of supplies 
 says to them, "Come and break your fast." 
 Evidently Jesus Christ was a poor man. He who 
 said, " Gro tell John that the poor have the gos- 
 pel preached unto them," "Blessed are ye poor, 
 for yours is the kingdom of heaven," knew what 
 it was to experience what the poor man does, 
 which must have appeared quite a new and as- 
 tonishing fact to the formal Jews of that day. 
 His hands were empty that he might fill them with 
 gifts of grace for you and me, his hands were 
 bare that he might share the feeling of the blasts 
 with you and me. 
 
 " Nay, and he ate our meats, 
 And drank our drinks, and wore tlie dress we wore; 
 And his hair fluttered in the breeze which stirred 
 Peter's and John's and mine." 
 
 Yet this poor man has out-lived all millionaires 
 and all castled lords unto this present day. 
 Croesus. Who knows about Croesus? And how 
 much is known? What children mention his 
 name? What public addresses or lectures are 
 delivered about him? Who seeks him or venerates 
 
 V 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 51 
 
 him? Where is he? The castles have been and 
 are gone and their rich inheritances are forgotten. 
 But Jesus Christ, the homeless teacher of men, 
 lives on during the centuries and bids fair right 
 speedily to outlive all the wealth and possessions 
 of the day in which we live. 
 
 Look at the miracle. Jesus Christ was never 
 known to marshal an army. There is not a 
 military incident in his programme during his 
 stay upon earth. He did not, even like Chinese 
 Gordon, carry a cane, as he led forth his followers 
 into battle. Bare-handed he gathered the com- 
 panies together with the charm of his teaching 
 and of his love, and when Peter drew forth a 
 sharp instrument of some kind to cut off the ear 
 of Malchus, he quickly healed the ear and said, 
 < ' They that take the sword shall perish with the 
 sword, and if my kingdom were of this world 
 then would my followers fight, but now is my 
 kingdom not from hence." When men smote 
 him he rebuked them not; when men derided and 
 spat upon him he antagonized them not. There he 
 stood the Prince of Peace, without a sword, with- 
 out an arrow, without an army, without what na- 
 tions would call a battle; yet he has outlived all 
 the generals and captains of ancient Greece and 
 Rome and Phenicia and Assyria and of all na- 
 tions until the present day, and continues to out- 
 live them as the days come and go. Stand there 
 
53 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago and tell 
 me that Jesus Christ will outlive Herod. How I 
 might laugh you to scorn. But who knows 
 Herod to-day? And who does not know Jesus 
 Christ as a marvelous character in history at 
 least. 
 
 Jesus Christ was never known to write a single 
 book. We have been told in later years that he 
 may have at least dictated one, but we have no 
 sujfficient proof that he ever did. He does not 
 represent himself as a writer. The four Gospels 
 seem to be studied epitomes of inspired simplicity 
 about him. Yet he has outlived all authors, prose 
 and poetic, during his days and all preceding days, 
 and continues to outlive all authors between his 
 day and the present. Very ancient books there 
 are, revered by benighted peoples, but Jesus right 
 surely wins his way among these, he will not let 
 them alone, they can not let him alone ; and in so- 
 called civilized countries you will find ten thou- 
 sand little boys who can stand up upon the spur 
 of the moment and tell you something Jesus said, 
 while perhaps you could not average five people 
 in a company of ten thousand who could arise 
 upon the spur of the moment and quote from 
 Thales or Socrates or Plato or Aristotle or 
 Zenophon or Buddha or Pericles. Much has 
 been said about the twenty-nine autographs of 
 Christopher Columbus, not including some mar- 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 53 
 
 ginal notes upon the pages of books. We display- 
 no samples of the handwriting of Jesus. He out- 
 lives Columbus without that. As he was sword- 
 less so he is penless, and he outlives the author as 
 he does the soldier. 
 
 Jesus Christ was never known to see a steam 
 engine or a railway train or electric appliances 
 for the transit of messages or of people or for 
 lighting up the cities, yet he has outlived the 
 discoveries and explorations of all the so-called 
 new countries from that day to this; the steam- 
 ships and railway, telephone, the telautograph, 
 the lineotype, all these and many more modern 
 wonders. Indeed, these very inventions are brought 
 into requisition to carry forth his plain teachings, 
 and to emphasize his deathless character upon 
 the attention of the peoples. Into each opening 
 continent and island of the sea; he presses his 
 way while the waiting people trust him and are 
 glad. 
 
 Jesus Christ has a grip upon the heart of uni- 
 versal mankind and it will not let go. The great, 
 tender and consciously mighty interest which he 
 showed (and is still showing) has captured the 
 race. How rich he might have become had he 
 charged but a penny apiece of the people who 
 flocked to hear him or came for his help. He 
 charged nothing, he kept giving. He is the hope 
 of the peoples. The discontented mob of laborers 
 
54 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 in Trafalgar Square in London, while being dis- 
 persed by the police, called out with enthusiasm, 
 "Three cheers for Jesus Christ." Contend and 
 oppose as you may, buried deep in the hearts of 
 the children of men is the conviction that Jesus 
 is the long-sought hope. And when once men 
 yield their wills to this ray of Christ's own light 
 shining within them, they will plight their alle- 
 giance to him, fearless of life or death. 
 
 Jesus Christ could not have been an impostor. 
 Had he been an impostor, how quickly he would 
 have sought either the favor of the Roman Gov- 
 ernment or of the Jewish church. He sought 
 neither. As to the government he said, <■ ' The 
 kings of this world exercise lordship over you, 
 and you count them benefactors who exercise lord- 
 ship over you; but it shall not be so among you, 
 but he that would be great among you shall be 
 your servant." Did they not accuse him of being 
 an antagonist to Caesar? As for the pharisaical 
 church people of his day, he said of them: For 
 a pretense you make long prayers, you tithe mint 
 and anise and cummin, but you forget to practice 
 mercy and truth. He conflicted with their ideas 
 of the Sabbath, he conflicted with their ideas of 
 the Old Testament prophecies, and for envy the 
 chief priests delivered him up. There he stood, 
 no government, no church, no home, no following, 
 no wealth, no fame, doubted and feared, scorned 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 55 
 
 and despised, yet he has revolutionized the con- 
 victions of governments and the convictions of 
 churches until they tremble with fear for the 
 future of either as they mark the contrast be- 
 tween the teachings he gave and their conditions. 
 Whose favor did he seek? You can not imagine 
 from any authentic record of Jesus that he cajoled 
 with anybody. He came to save and he kept at 
 that business. No sign of a plot, no hint at 
 scheming, openly, out and out, yet mercifully he 
 did the deeds, he said the sayings. No impostor! 
 Again, Jesus Christ could not have been self- 
 deceived. How conscious of his position he ap- 
 peared, how authoritative and calm, how he fits 
 exactly into prophecy at least 2,000 years old, 
 how at shorter range by some 1,400 years Isaiah 
 has told about the very garments he would wear 
 and the sepulcher into which his body should be 
 laid. So commonly do the occurrences of his life 
 fit into prophecy that Matthew in writing the rec- 
 ord refers twenty-six times at least to prophetic 
 utterances. John says, after quoting from 
 Isaiah, "These things said Isaiah because he saw 
 his glory and he spoke of him." How exactly he 
 fitted into his own statements concerning his 
 death and his resurrection and concerning the 
 abiding security of the truths he taught and upon 
 which we now feed. Look these all over, elabor- 
 ate the line of suggestions for yourselves, and 
 
56 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 tell me was there ever recorded any such miracle 
 as this. Hear him, "I came from above." His 
 name is called Immanuel. God with us. He 
 says, "He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father." In turn the chief priests scorned and 
 then feared him, saying, ' ' The people are gone 
 after hirti." 
 
 Pliny, the younger, when he finds that the 
 magistrates are bringing Christians to trial for 
 their religion, writes to the Emperor for advice. 
 He knows not their crimes nor the punishment 
 due them. He has not attended any of the trials. 
 Shall he make any distinction between the young 
 and the old, the tender and the robust? Shall he 
 release any that repent or recant ? Here is his 
 letter, written probably in the year 112. 
 
 *'My method has been this: I asked those 
 brought before me whether they were Christians. 
 If they confessed, I asked them twice afresh, with 
 a threat of capital punishment. If they persisted 
 obstinately, I ordered them to be executed, for I 
 had no doubt that whatever the nature of their 
 religion, a loillful and sullen inflexibility deserved 
 punishment. Some that were infected with the 
 madness, being entitled to the privileges of Eo- 
 man citizens, I reserved to be sent to Eome to be 
 referred to your tribunal. As information poured 
 in that they were encouraged, more cases oc- 
 curred. A list of names was sent by an imJc7iovm 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 57 
 
 accuser, but some of the accused denied that they 
 were or ever had been Christians. They repeated 
 after me an invocation of the gods and of your 
 image. They performed sacred rites with wine 
 and frankincense, and reviled Christ, none of 
 which things, I am told, a real Christian would 
 ever be compelled to do. Therefore, I dismissed 
 them. Others, named by an informer, first con- 
 fessed and then denied it, and declared that they 
 had forsaken that error three or four years, some 
 even twenty years ago. * * * And this was 
 the account which they gave of the nature of the 
 religion they once professed, whether it deserves 
 the name of crime or error: That they were ac- 
 customed to meet on a stated day, before sunrise, 
 and to repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ 
 as to a god, and to bind themselves as with an 
 oath not to commit any wickedness, not to be 
 guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery, never to 
 break a promise or withhold a pledge ; after which 
 it was their custom to separate, and meet again 
 at a promiscuous meal (doubtless the love-feast 
 connected with the Lord's Supper). From this 
 last they desisted after I published my edict ac- 
 cording to your orders and forbade any secret 
 societies of that sort. To come at the truth, I 
 thought it necessary to put to the torture two 
 women said to be deaconesses. But I could gather 
 nothing except a depraved and excessive super- 
 
58 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 stition. Deferring further investigation, I re- 
 solved to consult you, for the number of culprits 
 is so great as to demand serious consideration. 
 Informers lodge complaints against a multitude of 
 every age and of both sexes. More still may be 
 impeached. The contagion of this superstition 
 has spread through cities and milages^ and even 
 reached farm-houses. Yet I think it may be 
 checked. " 
 
 Even these very words of Pliny sound like a 
 partial report of which Jesus' own words were a 
 prophecy as he referred to coming trials of his 
 people, including the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 saying, " Then shall they deliver you up to be 
 afflicted and shall kill you and ye shall be hated 
 of all nations for my name's sake, and then shall 
 many be offended and shall betray one another." 
 Surely he who could say, ' ' before Abraham was I 
 am," is also saying "when Nero is I am." Do 
 you notice that phrase in Pliny's letter, "yet I 
 think it may be checked." Why, here is the tes- 
 timony of a heathen writing to a heathen, a 
 Roman writing to a Roman, a government official 
 writing to an Emperor. Jesus Christ has been 
 crucified; he thinks the plan may be checked. 
 We know it can not be checked. The heathen 
 coloring of the letter is apparent. A few sen- 
 tences in his letter reveal something wonderfully 
 suggestive about the spirit or the timber of the 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 59 
 
 early followers of Christ. And his reference to 
 those who withdrew their allegiance to Jesus is no 
 more striking than the reference to such occur- 
 rences in the Gospel of John and the Epistles of 
 Paul, or the records of the fallen as the result of 
 selfishness in the day in which we live. 
 Evidently they did not all recant, and evidently 
 recanting was becoming uncommon. Jesus Christ 
 was not self-deceived. 
 
 We need not consider it so bewildering that 
 Jesus Christ should have been born of a woman 
 who was espoused, not married, to Joseph, a plain 
 carpenter. Without doubt this fact suggests a 
 great mystery, yet all life is a mystery. Strange, 
 keen, coy life; who can tell what it is ? But 
 there is a sweetness to the mystery like the 
 sweetness in the mystery of music or of affection ; 
 we love their very mysteries. They charm us. 
 So to say the least of it the mystery here is win- 
 some. Look back to that mother who bore you, 
 and as you think it over you say, ' ' Born of her, yet 
 an individual." We are ourselves. We are not 
 her. And since the great Creator has made the 
 law by which the generations of man are born and 
 succeed each other — a law so mysterious, is it to 
 be doubted that by that same law he should come 
 among us living as a man? You will find be- 
 wildering and tormenting mysteries if you try to 
 
60 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 follow out the line of accounting for Jesus Christ 
 by any other method. 
 
 Behold him stand the Son of man, the Son of 
 God ! He came to show us what it is to be a man, 
 and he came to teach us what it is to be God. He 
 is in our way before us as the very path to vic- 
 tory ; we can not get around him, we can not get 
 over him, we can not get under him, he is risen 
 from the dead, he will not die. Behold he is alive 
 forevermore. No stain has been upon his lips. 
 No lust was seen in his eye. No double-dealing 
 in his conduct. He came from above. He is 
 above all. God so loved the world that he gave 
 him. The Germans have their Von Moltke and 
 their Bismarck, the Hungarians have their Come- 
 nius, the Italians Garibaldi, the English their 
 Wellington, and the Americans their Washington 
 and their Grant; but the Germans, the Hungar- 
 ians, the Italians, the English, the Americans 
 and the nations of civilization hold to this one Je- 
 sus Christ. And how quickly the heathen rushes 
 to pay his homage to him. If the Jew had been 
 as prompt as the heathen, the nations of the world 
 might have been in the full glory of the era of 
 his peace to-day. Does he not charm your soul ? 
 And it is not only what we can say of Christ as a 
 person or as a character ranging among characters, 
 but O, what language of peace is heard upon the 
 lips of those who are acquainted with him. They 
 
THE CHRIST MIRACLE 61 
 
 call him Saviour. They call him Friend, Blessed 
 Redeemer, the Best Friend, Our Lord and All in 
 All. Nor is it so much a question of whether we 
 shall know the actual things he said, though this 
 is valuable, but it is that we shall know him, that 
 we shall get into the sweep of his character and 
 be like him. Like some little child in a boat 
 caught in the current of a deep, swift, flowing 
 river, borne on with the Christ-spirit. 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST. 
 
" Can Satan cause the truth of God to fail, or his prom- 
 ises to be of none effect ? If not, the time will come 
 when Christianity will prevail over all, and cover the 
 earth. Let us stand a little, and survey this strange 
 sight, a Christian World. Where, I pray, do the Christ- 
 ians live ? Which is the country, the inhabitants 
 whereof are all thus filled with the Holy Ghost ? Are 
 all of one heart and of one soul ? Can not suffer one 
 among them to lack anything, but continually give to 
 every man as he hath need ? Who, one and all, have 
 the love of God filling their hearts, and constraining 
 them to love their neighbors as themselves ? Who have 
 all "put on bowels of mercy, humbleness of mind, gen- 
 tleness, long suffering?" Who offend not in any kind, 
 either by word or deed, against justice, mercy or truth; 
 but in every point do unto all men as they would these 
 should do unto them? With what propriety can we 
 term any a Christian country which does not answer 
 this description ? Why, then, let us confess we have 
 never yet seen a Christian country upon earth." 
 
 John Wesley. 
 
 The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Rom- 
 ans xvi:20. 
 
 "A sort of affectation prevents some Christians from 
 treating religion as if its sphere lay among the common 
 places of daily life. It is to them transcendental and 
 dreamy; rather a creation of pious fiction than a matter 
 of fact. They believe in God, after a fashion, for things 
 spiritual, and for the life which is to be; but they totally 
 forget that true godliness hath the promise of the life 
 which now is, as well as of that which is to come. To 
 them it would seem almost a profanation to pray about 
 the small matters of which daily life is made up. Per- 
 haps they will be startled if I venture to suggest that 
 this should make them question the reality of their 
 faith. C. H. Spurgeon. 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST. 
 
 ly'iNG, Prince, Master, Lord — what authority 
 ^^ dwells in these titles. The real meaning of 
 that word ' 'Lord " if transferred to an ocean steam- 
 ship would render it Master, or if transferred to 
 a large business block iinder construction would 
 render it Foreman, or if to a railroad. Superin- 
 tendent. Our Lord Jesus Christ then is our 
 Lord. He came asking for no pitying regard, he 
 came to manage. 
 
 Eight here lurks the infidelity which has slyly 
 gained a place in the very temple of the King. 
 It says Christ is the great Friend, the wonderful 
 Saviour, but it refuses to say with Paul, "He is 
 the wisdom of God." It will welcome the Christ- 
 ian religion as a comfortable conveyance to a 
 heaven of rest, but it objects to the Christian re- 
 ligion as the regulating authority of God for this 
 earth. 
 
 It is willing to help brace up the church, but it 
 refuses to usher in the Kingdom which Christ so 
 emphatically said was at hand, not finding in the 
 church Christ's bride who shall be the mother of 
 the adopted family gathered from the wayward 
 everywhere. 
 
66 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 A modern Matthew might well be welcomed 
 into the field who would express anew for us the 
 thought of the Old Testament country Evange- 
 list, Micah, "Out of thee (Bethlehem) shall come 
 a Governor which shall be Shepherd of my people 
 Israel." Matt. ii:6, E. V. When we are willing 
 to apply the principles of Jesus to political affairs 
 we will be ready for the new title Shepherd- 
 Governor. Then shall we close up the chasm 
 between the secular and the sacred; and the 
 Protestant Eef ormation shall find its fuller reform. 
 Christ did not come to be the spectacle of the 
 world. He came to be its Saviour. Christ is an 
 infinite expression of holy help. He is not a 
 Shepherd and a Governor, he is the Shepherd- 
 Governor. He is not only a King and a Saviour, 
 he is the Saving King and the Kingly Saviour. 
 He is one present, pure, saving Lord. 
 
 1. He is the Lord of business affairs. We 
 say this part of life is business and that part of 
 life is religion ; business is business and religion is 
 religion, and you can not mix business and relig- 
 ion. To be sure you can not mix business and 
 religion unless you have the religion to mix. But 
 business is Christianity and Christianity is busi- 
 ness. Christ came to regulate the transactions 
 in our business affairs so that a man can drop 
 dead in any office where legitimate business is 
 employing his time, saying, I do this in the name 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 67 
 
 of the Lord Jesus. What is a man's business but 
 the method by which he finds holy employment 
 and holy defense against the suffering and the 
 needs of those intrusted to him? Shall a man be 
 an appendix to a plow, or a yard-stick, or a rail- 
 road, or an ore-crusher ? God made him to be a 
 king, and gave him his commission to subdue the 
 earth and have dominion. And one of the sad- 
 dest exhibitions of the weakness introduced into 
 his life by sin is that this king will run from a 
 hornet. The crowding of Jesus out of business, 
 where man gets his hardest knocks, and either 
 loses or finds his manhood, has brought us a ter- 
 rible greed for gold and a kind of hardness and 
 obtuseness, which has made the business life of 
 many a sullen treadmill of remorse. Our fathers 
 and mothers used to sing, 
 
 '* When I can read my title clear to mansions in the 
 
 skies, 
 I'll bid farewell to every fear, and wipe my weeping 
 
 eyes." 
 But the worldly business men of to-day would 
 seem to sing: 
 " When I can sing my title clear to mansions on the 
 
 avenue, 
 I'll bid farewell to every fear, and the devil take you." 
 
 We can hardly endure calla lilies; we want 
 celery so we can eat it. Lambs skipping on the 
 hillside lose their poetic significance; we want 
 
68 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 mutton. We are like the old man whose wife 
 came home from church, and when he asked her 
 what the preaching was about, she said : ' ' He 
 preached about Joseph going down into Egypt 
 to buy corn," whereupon the old man questioned, 
 ' ' Did he say what corn is worth down there now?" 
 We are like the woman who rushed out of a mil- 
 liner's store to conduct a missionary meeting, and 
 upon reaching the platform said, ' ' Let us rise and 
 sing hymn two dollars and a half." Oh, brothers. 
 let Christ into your business. And let him not 
 only be a comforter; let the spirit of Christ reg- 
 ulate the daily struggle and put it into harmony. 
 Be like the London tinker who said he served 
 God for a business and mended pans for expenses. 
 If your business is not right, righten it or leave it. 
 
 If your business is a righteous business, make 
 it your throne, where Christ places you. 
 
 Let me commend to you the following words of 
 Mary A. Lathbury: 
 
 " Children of yesterday, heirs of to-morrow, 
 What are you weaving, labor and sorrow ? 
 
 Look at your looms again; faster and faster 
 Fly the great shuttles prepared by the Master; 
 
 Life's in the loom, room'for it — room! 
 
 Children of yesterday, heirs of to-morrow, 
 Lighten the labor and sweeten the sorrow; 
 
 Now, while the shuttles fly faster and faster. 
 Up and be at it — at work with the Master. 
 
 He stands at your loom, room for him — room! 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 
 
 Children of yesterday, heirs of to-morrow, 
 Look at your fabric of labor and sorrow. 
 
 Seamy and dark with despair and disaster. 
 Turn it, and lo! The design of the Master! 
 
 The Lord's at the'^loom, room for him — room! " 
 
 A poor seamstress, who had several children to 
 support, was asked by a Christian woman how she 
 prospered. The seamstress replied, "O, thank 
 you; I am rich in work." When work becomes 
 worship, it will be considered riches indeed. 
 What a covetable opportunity the business man 
 has to-day of proving to the world that mastery 
 of Christ without which industrial harmony never 
 can be realized. 
 
 When the blacksmith was cautioned by the 
 minister to remember as he shod the horse that 
 the Lord made the animal, he replied, ' ' I will do 
 better than that, I will remember that the Lord 
 is making this nail." 
 
 A middle-aged gentleman who carried a sunny 
 face arose recently in a camp meeting and said, 
 * ' I am sometimes taken for a minister and the 
 brethren want to know where my ' charge ' is ; I 
 tell them down on the corner of Grand avenue 
 and Water street in my home city. I operate a 
 lumber yard for the Lord there." 
 
 Just notice how in those sayings on the moun- 
 tain-side Christ strikes a comparison between man 
 and the animals. On other occasions he answers 
 
70 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 the Jews by expressing the very same idea when he 
 says, for instance, ' ' How much better is a man than 
 a sheep ? " Here in these sayings on the mountain- 
 side he makes the comparison very definite and 
 then clearly draws the lesson. Harken. ' ' Be- 
 hold the birds of the heaven that they sow not, 
 neither do they reap nor gather into barns, and 
 your heavenly Father feedeth them, are not ye 
 of much more value than they." The question 
 resolves itself into this, if God provides grass for 
 the sheep's food, water for its drink and wool for 
 its back, seeds and worms and insects for the 
 birds and feathers for their covering, nothing 
 can prevent him from providing all we need for 
 our food and clothing but our disloyalty, and it 
 will all work out as orderly as does the provision 
 for the sheep and for the bird. People who are 
 disloyal have much of these things, wretched 
 blasphemers fare sumptuously every day. Shall 
 not you and I have the necessities ? O, worry- 
 ing soul, seek first the Kingdom. There are 
 multitudes of people who believe in God for al- 
 most everything else but for these common every- 
 day provisions. No wonder Jesus said right 
 here, " O, ye of little faith! " We are not suffer- 
 ing so much from infidelity about ' ' the THiiitij " as 
 infidelity about bread and butter. 
 
 We divide between what we call the sacred and 
 the secular, but with God all is sacred. This 
 
 s 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 71 
 
 practice of laying one set of actions upon one side 
 of a line and another set of actions upon the 
 other side of the line and calling those on the one 
 side sacred, and those on the other side secular 
 is a mistake of the dark ages. The monastic idea 
 is not actually dead yet. I had a friend who 
 talked about dim, 7'eligious light. What a use of 
 the word "religious." That very class of con- 
 ceptions has given us this thing sacred and that 
 thing secular. Not that one thing or one day 
 may not be considered more vastly sacred than 
 another, but we are living in that order of gov- 
 ernment which calls upon us to eat or drink or 
 do whatsoever we do in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus, to live a life rather than allot sections of a 
 life, and in all things by prayer and supplication 
 with thanksgiving to let our requests be made 
 known unto God. Let us again call to mind 
 that when Jesus so often and so sweetly called 
 attention to the care of our "Father" for us in 
 those sayings on the mountain plateau he spoke 
 particularly of food and clothing. And of these 
 things, food, drink and clothing, mark you, he 
 said, "Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye 
 have need of all these things;" and it was of 
 these provisions, things we handle, taste and 
 wear, things we soil and wear out, it was of the 
 supply of these things he spoke, when he said. 
 Consider the lilies how they grow." Right 
 
72 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 here the awful breech is caused in the Christian 
 church of our day by the infidelity within it 
 with which men are bound as if with a fetter. 
 Perhaps the most noticeable need of our day is a 
 spirit of holiness among men of business. The 
 business men by the- hundred show their wrong 
 bent in life not so much by violent wickedness as 
 by cowardly infidelity. And when I say infidel- 
 ity I do not mean that which refuses to believe 
 in the revelation of God, or allies itself to atheism. 
 I mean that infidelity which does not reckon God 
 in the richness of his promises into account. 
 Thank God for blessed exceptions to the startling 
 general order of business affairs the country over. 
 That general order will never cease until men 
 cease to believe that going to church is sacred 
 and selling cloth secular. In its proper time 
 and proper place selling cloth is as sacred as sing- 
 ing psalms, or ploughing fields as sacred as pray- 
 ing. Do I hear some business man say there is 
 the point exactly, if we could plough the fields it 
 would be another question. Our fathers ploughed 
 fields and they lived righteously, but it is a decid- 
 edly different thing to transact business upon the 
 vast basis of affairs where we operate with our 
 new inventions and enterprises to-day. Well 
 then, there is land enough, let us move out on to 
 the farm. We may better live there than wreck 
 our destiny by denying Christ or selling him for 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 73 
 
 gold. Let us make the farm our ark and rush 
 into it, taking with us a multitude. Ah, no, we 
 need not run to the farm. Stupid infidelity ! As 
 if Christ had lost the kingdom or divided it with 
 the enemy. We know that those plain short 
 statements of his will revolutionize us — and busi- 
 ness customs as well. "We will seek first his 
 kingdom (w^orld-wide, present, coming, unfail- 
 ing) and his righteousness; food and clothing are 
 added like the decoration to the lily. Let us be 
 poor. He was. Let us lose. He did. Let us 
 die. We are still with him. Let us not be 
 anxious. He careth for us. 
 
 2. Christ is Lord of literature. They tell us 
 in certain quarters that they don't want a geog- 
 raphy in the public schools which teaches that 
 God made the heavens and the earth. I wonder 
 that they do not take the bouquets out, for fear 
 the children might think that the Lord made the 
 flowers. I wonder that they do not put board 
 shutters over the windows, for fear the children 
 might get the conviction that God made the sun- 
 light. I am glad there are a few prominent news- 
 papers in this country which hold some things of 
 moral significance in regard. But do you not 
 know of the low penny-catching tendency to crowd 
 Christ out of literature which will yet reach 
 the unborn millions of girls and boys in 
 America unless the conditions are changed ? 
 
74 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 A lot of publications which lay before the 
 gaze of young men craven pictures of 
 nudity and vileness in barber-shops and 
 other places, are but instances of another vio- 
 lent attempt to crowd Christ out. There is no 
 great tone of sentiment in prose and poetry in all 
 Christendom to-day which is not traceable to 
 something Jesus said. I heard Dr. John P. New- 
 man say that when he was a pastor in Washing- 
 ton he was surprised to find, when called to 
 visit sick Congressmen, that so many of them 
 would ask for the New Testament to be gotten 
 from their pockets that he might read to them 
 from it during his visits. Statesmen, not to say 
 orators and politicians, reckon the standards of 
 their public addresses largely by the Scripture 
 quotations which break out upon them like fruit 
 upon a tree. Our dearest American poets have 
 been Christly singers. When Christ shall be truly 
 recognized as master of the thoughts of the peo- 
 ple we will not be surprised to hear men and 
 women say that they have been called of Grod to 
 be editors. 
 
 3. There have been indications, too, of an at- 
 tempt to crowd Christ out of his own Church. I 
 would not speak carelessly or thanklessly of that 
 best institution of earth to-day, the Christian 
 Church. The Church was God's highway, at the 
 entrance of which I found Christ, and I love her 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 75 
 
 virtues very dearly. The Church is not made yet. 
 It is being made. And I love her so dearly that 
 when I see an indication of a defect I must gent- 
 ly point it out just as I would seek to remedy 
 some defect in my mother's health. The Church 
 has strongly verged again upon the brink of sell- 
 ing out to all kinds of formularies and customs 
 and trifling entertainments, in the place of truly 
 enthroning Christ. They tell us that all subjects 
 of general interest lead up to Christ. I do not 
 deny that there is a connection between all sub- 
 jects of true interest and Jesus Christ. But the 
 world is hungering for Christ himself. You 
 might take me to the Atlantic cable and tell me 
 that this leads up to Cyrus W. Field, but if I had 
 known nothing about Cyrus W. Field's inventing 
 the cable, could I possibly find out about Mr. 
 Field from looking at that guttapercha and wire? 
 It would indeed lead up to Mr. Field, but the 
 elevator is invisible. This world wants Christ; 
 the personal Christ, the living Christ; the real 
 saving, abiding, undying, pulsing Christ. They 
 tell us now that we shall presently have a unity 
 of religions ; that we shall be called upon to min- 
 gle a little Mohammedanism and Buddhism and 
 Brahmanism and Shintuism, with a little Christi- 
 anity, and that in the coming days we shall have 
 a broad, great religion. 
 
 When I was a boy, an old minister presented 
 
76 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 me with Caird's " Oriental Religions, " and ever 
 since I read it, I have understood that there were 
 certain virtues in heathen religions, accompanied 
 by a great many vices, and that these virtues are 
 a result of Christ, the true light, shedding some 
 light into the heart of every man that cometh 
 into the world. But there is one Christianity; 
 only one Christ, and Christ is the Christian. 
 The true Christian is the Christ-man — Christ, 
 Christ, Christ-i-anity. 
 
 I had a day dream. Men gathered together to 
 create a unity of lights. The first man had a taper 
 from a child's Christmas tree, the second man 
 had a tallow candle and the third a kerosene 
 lamp. It was a very hot day in August. The 
 first man, lighting the taper, stood out in a high 
 place and accosted the sun: "O, sun in the 
 heavens, I will assist you. Let the world look on 
 while we create unity of lights." The old sun 
 smiled and then laughed, and then with a ha ha, 
 ha ha, of heat, caused the melted taper to fall 
 upon the man's hand and he dropped it in a trice 
 and began to blow the burn, muttering between 
 times, ' 'There is but one sun ; there is but one 
 sun." 
 
 The second man with his lighted tallow candle 
 greeted the sun, saying: "G-reat sun in the 
 heavens, let there now be unity of lights. " The 
 hot tallow fell upon his hand. He dropped his 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 77 
 
 candle and turned to record in his note-book, 
 "There is but one sun; there is but one sun." 
 
 The third man said: "Gentlemen, I will show 
 you unity of lights." Bringing his kerosene oil 
 lamp lighted, he stood out on the high place and 
 called to the sun, saying: "O sun in the heavens, 
 I am here to assist you. Let us produce unity of 
 lights." The old sun sent down its armies of 
 light ninety-odd millions of miles and threw them 
 against the man's lamp until it exploded, and he 
 fell to the earth, blistered and groaning, where- 
 upon his comrades picked him up, wrapped him 
 in batting and vaseline, placed him on his back 
 in the long grass, and I heard him now and again 
 groaning out the words, "There is but one sun; 
 there is but one sun." 
 
 I recognize the virtues amid the vices of 
 heathen religions, but there is but one Christ; 
 there is but one Christ. O, Church of Christ, 
 he is your hope, and you are the instrument of 
 his kingdom. 
 
 4. Christ is the rightful Lord of the State. 
 Margaret Bottome has recently given to the 
 public a splendid incident illustrating this field of 
 expression in the Christ-life. She says: I shall 
 never forget an experience told me by a deeply 
 devoted woman, who found herself at one time 
 living in a state where the women were citizens. 
 She was called upon to act as a juror upon a 
 
78 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 murder trial. She was greatly shocked and asked 
 to be excused. She said she had little children 
 and wanted to know if she could not be released. 
 She was asked if she had servants, and answered 
 that she had. Had she a nurse for her children ? 
 and she replied that she had. "You can not 
 then be excused," was the answer She told me 
 she went to her room and prayed as she never 
 had prayed in her life for the presence of the 
 Holy Ghost, a spirit of wisdom and power from 
 on high to rest upon her, and her prayer was 
 answered, and she said that never in her life 
 was she so conscious of the presence of God 
 as when she sat on that jury in that murder 
 trial. 
 
 Truth is truth, whether it lives in a legislative 
 hall or a Quaker meeting-house. And it is not 
 necessary for the state to say that certain things 
 are not correct simply because the church said 
 they were correct. I do not believe in the present 
 union of church and state, if for no other reason be- 
 cause both are imperfect. But the state need 
 not say that nine and nine are twenty simply 
 because the church says nine and nine are eigh- 
 teen. The state need not adopt the reading 
 of Thomas Carlyle for the opening of the pub- 
 lic schools in the morning simply because there 
 is only a percentage of the Scriptures upon which 
 differing factions will agree as most suitable for 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 79 
 
 the teachers to read to the pupils or the pupils to 
 say in concert. Do not think of Christianity- 
 being narrower than nationalism. Christianity 
 is world-wide, and Christ is king; his kingdom is 
 come, his kingdom is here, his kingdom is com- 
 ing, his kingdom is yet to come. 
 
 Over one hundred times in the four Gospels 
 there is mentioned this kingdom of Christ, or the 
 kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. God's 
 original plan was to govern men through the har- 
 mony of love as his own immediate subjects; and 
 the race has not outgrown him. ' ' If thou release 
 this man, ' ' said the angry Jews, ' ' thou art not 
 Caesar's friend; everyone that maketh himself a 
 king speaketh against Csesar." The chief priests 
 cried out "We have no king but Cgesar." How far 
 they had wandered away from even the ideas which 
 prevailed in David's time. ' ' But we must be toler- 
 ant." Yes, indeed, we must if we are to follow 
 Jesus Christ, but do you know, that a vote ap- 
 pears almost, if not quite, as sacred as a baptism ; 
 and that, wherever and however, there is the 
 buying and selling of public offices, of the running 
 of political hobbies for the sake of the exaltation 
 of men to positions where their income will more 
 completely equal their extreme expenditures for 
 self indulgences and vice, and in so far as we give 
 ourselves to endorse it and by our neglect permit 
 it, to that extent we would if the issue were on 
 
80 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 with Christ in the flesh standing near us choose 
 our part with the Roman and with the Pharisee 
 rather than with the Christ. Do not let us fear 
 to say it, the kingdoms of this world shall become 
 the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 
 Truth will defeat falsehood, love will defeat hate, 
 joy will defeat gloom, and life will defeat death. 
 And what being can tell what the great God of 
 the nations would do to-day for that nation 
 and through that nation which would pro- 
 claim that it is right to stand with the 
 Christ — a nation which instead of continuing to 
 expend its resources in coast defenses and arms 
 for its soldiers, saying meanwhile that the way to 
 stop war is to get ready to fight; what if such a 
 nation should proclaim to the world "We are 
 Christ's people; we will lay down our lives for 
 other nations. The bravery of the Son of God 
 hath entered into us. We will not increase our 
 territory upon the basis of fear of consequences 
 from other nations. In Christ we live and our's 
 is the victory of the Son of God." Does not the 
 very statement concerning God's providence in 
 the Old and New Testament give encouragement 
 to the belief that such a nation would shine as the 
 stars in the firmament and live guarded as one 
 guards the apple of his own eye? But suppose 
 such a nation perish from the face of the earth. 
 The life of a nation is the life of a multitude of 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 81 
 
 individuals and it would live on in eternal worlds, 
 just as the true-hearted individual does; there- 
 fore, it might better thus perish. Note 
 these words so recently uttered by the Lord 
 Chief Justice of England, in connection with his 
 remarks on International Arbitration, before the 
 American Bar Association. ' ' Who can say that 
 these times breathe the spirit of peace ? Na- 
 tions armed to the teeth prate of peace, but there 
 is no sense of peace. One sovereign burthens 
 the industry of his people to maintain military 
 and naval armament at war strength, and his 
 neighbor does the like and justifies it by the ex- 
 ample of the other; and England, insular though 
 she be, with her imperial interests scattered the 
 world over, follows, or is forced to follow, in the 
 wake. If there be no war, there is at least an 
 armed peace. 
 
 << Figures are appalling. I take those for 1895. 
 In Austria the annual cost of army and navy 
 was, in round figures, £18,000,000; in France, 
 £37,000,000; in Germany, £27,000,000; in Great 
 Britain, £36,000,000; in Italy, £13,000,000; and 
 in Eussia, £52, 000, 000. The significance of these 
 figures is increased if we compare them with 
 those of former times. The normal cost of the 
 armaments of war has of late years enormously in- 
 creased. The annual interest on the public debt 
 of the great powers is a war tax. Behind this 
 
82 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 array of facts stands a tragic figure. It tells a 
 dismal tale. It speaks of overburthened indus- 
 tries, of a waste of human energy unprofitably 
 engaged, of the squandering of treasure which 
 might have let light into many lives, of homes 
 made desolate, and all this, too often, without 
 recompense in the thought that these sacrifices 
 have been made for the love of country or to 
 preserve national honor or for national safety. 
 When will governments learn the lesson that 
 wisdom and justice in policy are a stronger se- 
 curity than weight of armament ? " 
 
 "Ah! when shall all men's good, 
 
 Be each man's rule, and universal peace, 
 
 Lie, like a shaft of light, across the land." 
 
 I am not forgetting our boast of bravery and 
 our huzzahs, many of them prompted by evident 
 spite and hate. I am not forgetting the proud 
 boasts of national honor, but neither am I for- 
 getting the prayers that have passed from the 
 trembling lips of the sufferers or the great hearts 
 that have broken that the love of G-od might have 
 sway, and the women of peace who have wept in 
 the night hours for the population which has 
 been consigned to eternity by the sword. And 
 moreover, Assyria was great, and Rome was great, 
 and G-reece was great, where are they to-day ? 
 Every nation under G-od's skies shall thus dimin- 
 ish and fade away unless it recognizes this 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 83 
 
 Jesus Christ our King. He micst reign until he 
 hath put all enemies under his feet. Christ 
 our Redeemer, " Thy kingdom come." The tribe 
 has given way to the nation and the nation must 
 recognize the world-bond. We travel around the 
 world in less than sixty days and talk around it 
 in a few minutes. The world is rapidly becom- 
 ing a neighborhood and we must live as neigh- 
 bors. That man who sees no farther than his 
 own country hath not had his own vision touched 
 by the Son of God. 
 
 There are not wanting men who sternly oppose 
 international arbitration right at this time when 
 the greatest undertaking in behalf of interna- 
 tional arbitration is being carried forward with 
 no little prospect of victory. But says someone, 
 there are reasons for opposing arbitration. Yes 
 indeed, and there are reasons for betraying Christ. 
 A few pieces of silver suggest a great many rea- 
 sons, but let us truly believe that no true inspir- 
 ation of our motives can exist but that inspira- 
 tion which comes out of the heart of Christ. And 
 the spirit of war is not the spirit of Christ. 
 
 Just at this time, too, there comes pressing at 
 the doors of our national government a solicita- 
 tion for the adoption of military drill in the pub- 
 lic schools. As if the boys of America must 
 recognize soldiery as a part of their education. 
 Whatever may have been the necessities of the 
 
84 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 past and however well it may be to honor the 
 memory of those who have laid down their lives in 
 the defense of some great principle, or are to- 
 day suffering afflictions as a result of battles in 
 the defense of some great principle, surely we arc 
 too near the noontide of Christian civilization to 
 undertake more at most than the rudiments of 
 military drill in the public schools. It is to be 
 feared that those who in the advocacy of this 
 plan plead that the war-spirit is not associated 
 with it in the estimation of the young boy have not 
 quite sufficiently recognized the subtle thrift of 
 the Cain-life. 
 
 Humanity's greatest astonishment and acclaim 
 awaits the exhibition of a great national or inter- 
 national CONSCIENCE. See how the people of 
 America respect the Society of Friends. "Who 
 jeers at the Quaker for affirming rather than 
 swearing in court? What a gentle respect is 
 offered to fhe plain garb of this man who believes 
 in saying ''thee" and "thou." Those who be- 
 lieve in voting as a religious duty would not, and 
 those who believe in it as an election dodge dare 
 not "egg" the Quaker if he refuse to vote. 
 Why this respect equivalent to deference? Ah! 
 there is a great expression of a great conscience 
 in the Quaker's customs. Get that into the na- 
 tion. Let there be brought on a Revival which 
 shall truly make the conscience Christly and 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 85 
 
 America's very character would be worth more 
 m a minute than her cannon would be worth in a 
 millenium for the saving of the poor Armenians 
 from the terror of the unspeakable Turk. 
 
 In the heights of our national ideals let the 
 glow of Peace stream through a cleansed con- 
 science and war shall forever cease. 
 
 5. Jesus is Lord of the Home. The family which 
 is really at the base of all social conditions is 
 being assaulted in our day by the most dangerous 
 enemies both to it and to Christ. This magnet 
 which attracts men and women over land and 
 over sea, this secret place where of all others men 
 would chose to lay down their heads in death ; 
 this tree of life ' 'whose protecting boughs touch 
 the morning on one side and the evening on the 
 other," "home, home, sweet home." My brother, 
 let Christ into your home. He had no home- 
 stead upon earth, bid him welcome to yours. 
 Practices of divorce have become so common that 
 the superintendent of the National Bureau of 
 Reforms in Washington recently said, "Between 
 the contemporaneous polygamy of the Turkish 
 harem and the consecutive polygamy of American 
 'divorce colony' there is only the difference 
 between the span and the tandem." In this same 
 record Mr. Crafts says a man recently secured a 
 divorce in a city of the west after three months' 
 residence, and on the same day married a woman 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 whom he had brought with him from abroad for 
 tliat purpose, who had been his companion during 
 his three months' waiting. And some of the records 
 of the statements of even legislators concerning 
 this question would startle the nation terribly 
 were we not so afflicted with the mercantile spirit. 
 The missionaries who return to this country- 
 are calling our attention to the fact that family 
 prayers are falling into disuse in American 
 homes. The plea is sometimes made that modern 
 conditions of business and city life render this 
 custom impracticable. And it is therefore hoped 
 that its disuse does not imply any particular 
 relapse in morals. But modern methods of busi- 
 ness and of travel permit wonderful activities in 
 games of cards, in theater-going, in dancing and 
 such like. Modern methods of business and 
 travel do not prevent attending to the holidays, 
 to the sick and to funerals. It is true that the 
 hospital, a direct product of Christianity, is 
 assisting wonderfully in the care of the sick, but 
 not generally to the exclusion of a studied home 
 interest in the afflicted loved ones. And, more- 
 over, men of vast business pursuits are conduct- 
 ing family prayers twice a day in their homes. I 
 fear that the cause of this neglect is not in meth- 
 ods of business or travel, but in fevered mer- 
 cantile spirit, which will not give time to the 
 blessedness or which fears the searching of family 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 87 
 
 prayers. Let us change the custom. Let Christ 
 into the home; have a brief season of steady wor- 
 ship. Let him be at our dinner tables, let him 
 take our little ones up in his arms, let him com- 
 fort our troubled ones and stand by the coffins of 
 our dead. Our dedicated homes shall be the 
 dwelling places of our Christ — his Bethanies. 
 
 6. But now let me ask you to consider the 
 vital question which has resulted from all the 
 other questions connected with this opposition to 
 Christ. It is this: "We have crowded him out of 
 the heart. Get Christ truly enthroned in your 
 heart and you will find his claim as constant as 
 the passing moments of your life. You will sleep 
 in him by night, and awaken to serve him by day. 
 Your business affairs and your social relations will 
 know the very moulding of his own hands. We 
 can not have Christian nations unless we have 
 Christian individuals. We can not have Christian 
 cities unless we have Christian citizens. 
 
 And no amount of legislation about the home or 
 the church or the nation can find its way in to 
 victory when Christ is crowded out of the heart. 
 Divorces may decrease but adultery will increase 
 unless the heart has turned from "self " to Christ. 
 This awful night-covered, sly. Scripture-con- 
 demned sin of our day, leaving limp and crushed 
 lives all along the path of its indulgence and lock- 
 ing up the doors of hope in the very faces of 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ostracized maidens while the very movement of 
 the same lock swings full wide-open the doors of 
 liberty to passion-heated men right beside them, 
 can never be mastered and cast out saving by Him 
 who casts out devils living in the heart. My 
 brother, give Christ your heart. Sound the 
 depths of your being with his help, find there the 
 power to love or hate, to be true or untrue, and 
 loyally surrender yourself. Hear Him saying 
 unto you, "My son, give me thy heart." What 
 the rainbow is to the storm, what the parlor is to 
 the house, what the mother is to the family, that 
 the heart is to the man. I beseech of you think 
 the best thoughts you can gather, cherish the 
 best feelings of which you are capable, raise your 
 ambitions to the highest altitude possible, but 
 remember Christ alone can be the inspiration of 
 that which is good. Start here. Do not try so 
 much to be good as to be loyal to Christ. 
 
 When I was a boy I heard a story of a young 
 woman who engaged to marry a rich young man. 
 As the time appointed for the wedding drew near 
 the young man's business affairs were ruined. 
 Soon as the bankruptcy came he wrote the young 
 woman telling her that he would release her hon- 
 orably from her engagement to marry him, and 
 assuring her that it was only because he had lost 
 his property. She replied to his letter, saying 
 that she did not engage to marry him because of 
 
THE MASTERY OF CHRIST 89 
 
 his property, but because she loved him, and in 
 the days of his greater prosperity he had given 
 her a nugget of gold which was rich enough to 
 provide necessities for the wedding and some con- 
 veniences for the home, that she was willing to 
 abide by the engagement and assist him in the 
 struggle out of his debts. The engagement was 
 continued and the marriage occurred. That 
 young woman had given that young man her 
 heart. And I would have you to-day give your- 
 self to Christ poorer or richer, more or less com- 
 fortable, honored or dishonored. See, see his 
 beauty! Hearken, it is he that speaks so tenderly 
 to your soul to-day, "Give me thy heart." 
 
 "'Pears to me," said the old colored woman 
 who was being taught by the missionary to read, 
 and who found herself Yevj slow at learning, 
 " 'pears to me I could get along better if you jes* 
 learn me the word ' Jesus ' first. ' Pears to me 
 everything would come in sort o' natural after- 
 ward." Her philosophy was right, whether its 
 application could be realized or not. Jesus 
 first, and everything will find its place in due or- 
 der. Give him your heart. O, that the crude 
 statement of the Scotch miner might be the very 
 soul expression of all who read this. The man 
 had never been out of the mining regions before. 
 He came to the great city and in the first meet- 
 ing undertook (what I wish you would all do) to 
 
90 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 testify. After apologizing for his rough appear- 
 ance and imperfect language, he paused a mo^ 
 ment, then, with tears in his eyes cried out: 
 *' But my Jesus, he's a beauty." 
 
 Now calmly tell me, dear reader, have you ever 
 been mastered ? And who is your master ? Deep 
 as the depths of your soul, may you find the 
 answer coming to your lips to-day, I have one 
 Master even Jesus Christ. 
 
ETCHINGS OF THE RE 
 DEMPTIVE IDEA. 
 
" The people's heart is like a harp for years 
 Hung where some petrifying torrent rains 
 Its slow-encrusting spray; the stiffened chords 
 
 Faint and more faint make answer to the tears 
 That drip upon them; idle are all words; 
 Only a golden plectrum wakes the tone 
 Deep buried 'neath that ever- thickening stone." 
 — James Russell Lowell. 
 
 " The Son of God who loved me and gave Himself 
 UP FOR ME." — Oalatians ii: 20. 
 
 " Say to men, Come, suffer; you will hunger and 
 thirst; you will, perhaps, be deceived, be betrayed, 
 cursed; but you have a great duty to accomplish; they 
 will be deaf, perhaps, for a long time to the severe voice 
 of virtue; but on the day that they do come to you, they 
 will come as heroes, and will be invincible." 
 
 — Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 " How unspeakably precious Jesus has been." 
 
 — Last words of Rev. S. A. Keen, D.D. 
 
 " You sinned!" I cried in righteous scorn, 
 " None will forget the stain;" 
 I turned aside, he crept away 
 And went to sin again. 
 
 " You sinned!" I said in pitying tones, 
 
 As love my wrath o'erbore, 
 " But God and I forgive;" he rose 
 
 And went to sin no more. 
 
ETCHINGS OF THE REDEMPTIVE 
 IDEA. 
 
 T SAW the lowest rung on the ladder of redemp- 
 * tion in the window of a pawn-broker's shop 
 one day. There were scores of tickets hung up 
 there, upon which was printed "unredeemed 
 watches for sale." And I thought, to be sure, 
 there is the redemption of a watch. Some man 
 either out of necessity or perhaps for vice has 
 come to this place to pawn his watch and he has 
 never come back again to pay the money with 
 interest as the redemption price of the article. 
 So they called the watch unredeemed. But sup- 
 posing it were redeemed, even then, it would 
 represent a very, very low grade of redemption. 
 Perhaps five dollars would be the price. Then 
 when you have redeemed it, if it goes too slow, 
 you may miss a train on account of it and thus 
 miss the receiving of much more money than its 
 redemption price. Or supposing it goes too fast, 
 you may administer drops of medicine too quickly 
 to your sick friend and cause his death; and at 
 best it is only a watch. And I fear that even so 
 small a thing as a watch has declined many a 
 soul from a singleness of purpose to glorify God. 
 
94 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Yet if I were to pay the redemption price and 
 hand you your watch to-day, had you been com- 
 pelled to pawn it, how you would thank me and 
 tell your friends, too, of what you would call a 
 great act of kindness. Can it be possible that 
 you have never really looked up to the Christ that 
 has redeemed us, and said "thank you ? " 
 
 Let us now step upon a higher rung of the ladder 
 of redemption, for you know, every subject requires 
 to be looked at from the proper standpoint, and 
 step by step we may come into the richer treas- 
 ures of this subject, just as the person who be- 
 gins to play the piano plays first with one finger, 
 then with one hand, then with both hands and 
 so on until she becomes a successful musician, 
 charming the very harmony out of the instru- 
 ment. 
 
 Here then is the second rung of the ladder of 
 redemption. A poor widow lives in a cottage set- 
 tled on a narrow strip of land at the edge of the 
 city. Both the land and the cottage are encum- 
 bered with a heavy mortgage. The little daugh- 
 ter, borrowing her mother's features and growing 
 into young womanhood, has resolved to redeem 
 the property from the mortgage. She studies 
 diligently until she becomes a wage-earner and 
 with great economy and willingness she finds her- 
 self able to pay one hundred dollars on the mort- 
 gage at the end of the first year. At the end of 
 
ETCHINGS OF THE REDEMPTIVE IDEA 95 
 
 the second year her fidelity is rewarded with the 
 ability to pay twice as much. Her sick mother 
 does not know that the daughter is receiving 
 more than barely enough to pay for the fuel and 
 groceries and clothing which they need, but now 
 a few years have sped away and the daughter en- 
 tering the door of the modest little home in the 
 evening twilight carries the folded paper which 
 has been against the property all these years and 
 places it in the hands of her feeble mother With 
 great surprise the mother inquires, ' 'What is this, 
 my daughter ? " Quick as thought the daughter 
 turns to get her mother's spectacles and bids her 
 read it; but the mother can not read the writing 
 easily and in her eagerness cries out, ' ' Tell me, 
 daughter, what it is. " Then comes the surprising 
 answer, "Mother, this is the mortgage. The 
 property is redeemed. Our house and lot are 
 free." What mother would not press the cheeks 
 of her daughter between her soft hands and kiss 
 her lips again and again, at the thought of such 
 kindness and fidelity as this daughter showed. 
 My friend, if one were thus to redeem your prop- 
 erty for you, would you not thank him, would you 
 not talk of him to your friends, and for days to- 
 gether, and on special days for years would it not 
 be the burden of your conversation, he redeemed 
 the property for me, he surprised me with his 
 kindness, now hard he toiled, how willing he was, 
 
96 OUT OF THE CAIN LIFE 
 
 how lovingly he did it. Yet the price of the re- 
 demption, though very much greater than that of 
 the watch at the pawnbroker's shop, is by far less 
 than the greatest conceivable price to be paid, 
 while that daughter has learned many lessons of 
 economy and of diligence which will be worth 
 more than gold or silver to her character. Every 
 hour of that toiling was a contribution to her 
 soul if performed in the true spirit. Then, too, the 
 house may be burned to ashes to-night, or the 
 tornado may sweep it away, or an earthquake 
 may swallow it up, or the poor widow may be- 
 come so delighted with the home on earth free 
 from encumbrances as to cause her to neglect the 
 title to a home off one of the golden streets of the 
 New Jerusalem. Yes, indeed, a beautiful act of 
 redemption has been performed, but there is a 
 higher. 
 
 Now let us step up another rung of this ladder 
 and look upon redemption as the Jews viewed it. 
 Peter evidently refers to their custom of redemp- 
 tion, when he says, ' ' Ye are not redeemed with 
 corruptible things such as silver and gold;" when 
 the Jewish child was thirty days of age, the 
 father would carry it to the priest and present 
 with it thirty pieces of silver as a redemptive of- 
 fering. Then the priest would swing the thirty 
 pieces of silver about the head of the child and 
 ask the father whether he would have the child or 
 
ETCHINOS OF THE REDEMPTIVE IDEA 97 
 
 the money. The father answered, a small meal 
 was partaken of, the money was placed in the 
 treasury of the temple and the child was said to 
 be redeemed. Then followed certain rites of sac- 
 rifice of animals in due time. Here the redemp- 
 tion does not concern a watch or house and lot, 
 but a little innocent child. The child is dedicated 
 with fatherly regard in the interest of the relig- 
 ion of Jehovah, and out of respect to his cove- 
 nant, it is therefore called a redeemed child. But 
 how many redeemed Jewish children told false- 
 hoods and turned traitors against their parents; 
 and the price, thirty pieces of silver, lovingly de- 
 posited is at best only a little money. I think 
 it is not a hard task for that father to leave the 
 herding of his sheep or his plowing in the hot 
 sun, to don clean garments and make his way to 
 the priest, carrying with him the sweet babe he 
 loves, yet, what call for gratitude is involved in 
 this act. Here is a man with heathen nations all 
 about him, pleading the interests of his own little 
 child, when the child is too young to plead for it- 
 self; recognizing for the child the true God, when 
 the child is so young that it can not express any 
 personal recognition and paying with joy the 
 price of toil, the redemption of the little one. 
 
 One act of my mother's before I was twelve 
 years of age has stirred my soul hundreds of times, 
 until I have fairly wept with gratitude at the 
 
98 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 thought of her deed. And shall I not say ' ' thank 
 you " to Christ, who redeemed me before I had yet 
 had my first struggle with sin, that I might be 
 counted among the victors of his blood? O, soul 
 of mine, thou must appreciate redemption. Chris- 
 tian Redemption. Come, study it, let it breathe 
 its meaning into thy life. Redeemed, redeemed, 
 redeemed! 
 
 Still higher. Let us look upon redemption as 
 it was illustrated when nearly four millions of 
 slaves were set free in the United States. Many 
 of these men had been accustomed to being shipped 
 to and fro in dry-goods boxes as chattels or things, 
 they had been sold at public auction, they had 
 been goaded to their tasks and belittled by their 
 enslavement. The question of their redemption 
 began to flood the mind and soul of such men as 
 G-arrison and Phillips and Beecher and Lincoln 
 until it burst forth like a healing fountain. It 
 was a question as to whether men should be 
 chained to heavy balls or allowed to be at liberty, 
 whether they should be lashed over the back in 
 the hot sun or find the quiet retreat of a shade 
 tree for rest — slavery or freedom. And the 
 price of their redemption ? Who can tell it ? 
 What mother's tears fall silently in the 
 evening twilight from her uplifted eyes? What 
 father's heart-beats may be heard above the mild 
 breezes of the summer morning hours as he 
 
ETCHINGS OF THE REDEMPTIVE IDEA 99 
 
 stands lost in the imagination that he hears the 
 footsteps of his returning soldier boy? What lover 
 loses heart and sickens, or with broken heart 
 dies? What gaps in family circles? What noises 
 of distress mingle with the gloom of dark days of 
 home-sickness among sick and wounded soldiers? 
 What mornings are refused the glory of sunrise 
 because the smoke of battle fights back the light 
 of God? What blood stains the torn earth? 
 What graves are these over which the flowers are 
 strewn in springtime? What flags and emblems 
 are torn and trampled under the feet of frenzied 
 war-horses? What old hymn-books sent by 
 Christian people to the battle front are nowadays 
 taken down by the newly converted old soldier 
 that he may sing this time from the heart, 
 < 'Sweet hour of prayer," or "There is a happy 
 land ? " 
 
 Louis Beaudry said that he learned to sing 
 "There is a happy land" another way after 
 being in Libby prison and hearing Sunday-school 
 children through the window sing it together one 
 morning. They sang, "There is a happy land, 
 far, far away," but now, said he, since I have 
 learned a deeper love of God I sing it, there 
 is a happy land 7iot far away, and I do not weep 
 singing it now as I did that morning. What 
 angels are these who watch the homes of 
 patient widows and bereaved children whose 
 
100 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 husbands and fathers knew no better way of 
 deliverance than war? 
 
 But the emancipation of the slave has never 
 yet proven a success in the widest sense, and in- 
 deed we can not point to a great emancipation in 
 history which has proven a thorough success. 
 The greatest undertaking of the kind perhaps 
 ever reported was that of leading the Jews out of 
 the bondage of Egypt, but the Jew to this day has 
 never been a national success. He wanders about 
 in ten thousand cities, yet he does not gather with 
 his own fellows to settle as a people in one nation. 
 He substitutes a sort of moral rectitude for 
 the teachings of Abraham or Moses as well 
 as those of Jesus. Sadly down the path 
 of history has the Jew been walking, more than a 
 mere pantomime of prophecy. He has been a 
 fulfillment of it. So here the colored man is out 
 of the dry goods box, he is unchained from the 
 ball, the lashes do not smart his weary shoulders, 
 and with the exception of some very sad cases of 
 abuse yet existing^ he does not suffer the sting 
 of opposition and degradation he once did, but he 
 is shrouded in darkness, he is the subject of the 
 proclamation of emancipation, but the best repre- 
 sentatives of his own race proclaim with eloquence 
 and tears that he needs the proclamation of 
 divine redemption. He is free at certain points, 
 but his mind is captivated with centuries o/ 
 
ETCHINGS OF THE REDEMPTIVE IDEA 101 
 
 ignorance, his body is captivated with centuries 
 of indulgence, and his soul with centuries of 
 sin. The war produced a great emancipation 
 but it did not produce the emancipation of 
 the colored man from selfishness. And many a 
 man who went forth in that war went not forth 
 with the conception of liberating the slave, 
 many a soldier doubtless knew no great tide of 
 philanthropy filling his soul as he enlisted. Yet 
 had you or I been one of those colored slaves, how 
 we would bless the memory of the man who came 
 to set us free, how we would talk of it in our 
 households, how we would vie with each other to 
 show the deepest gratitude. 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison tells the following in- 
 cident concerning these people: Toward evening he 
 went out to the adjacent camp of the Fifty-fifth 
 Massachusetts (colored) regiment. Crowded 
 around were the plantation "hands," clothed in 
 the rags and ignorance inherited from the dead in- 
 iquity. < ' Well, " cried Mr. Garrison, ' ' you are free 
 at last. Let us give three cheers." He led off. 
 To his utter amazement there was no response. 
 The poor creatures looked at him with a surprise 
 equal to his own. He had to give the second and 
 third cheers also without^ them. They did not 
 know how to cheer. But they have learned 
 how. How they do talk about father Abraham. 
 Come soul of mine, talk about Jesus. Rouse thee, 
 
103 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 rouse thee, if thou hast any sense of gratitude 
 left or to be attained, express it here. Christ 
 hath redeemed thee. Eedeemed, redeemed ! 
 
 I am going to ask you shortly to step up another 
 rung of this great ladder of redemption, and we 
 can only step there because Christ has come and 
 the Scriptures have been given. I am going to 
 ask you to view Christian Redemption. We could 
 not think of stepping up there without the Christ 
 and the revelation, for we know of nothing human 
 which corresponds with the redemptive thought 
 announced and lived out by Jesus Christ. Csesar 
 wanted his throne with . ten thousand soldiers 
 to give it to him. Romulus slew thousands of 
 people that he might be exalted as a great man 
 among men. Alexander wept because he could lay 
 no more people tribute to his vain-glory. This is 
 true of the ambitions of the natural man. Pro- 
 fessor Huxley said in one of his late utterances, 
 * ' The survival of the fittest by no means implies 
 the survival of the best." Indeed it does not. 
 Humanity's survivals have been survivals of ma- 
 lice and hatred and brute force, with occasional 
 splendid exceptions which show us gleamings of 
 that light which lighteth every man coming into 
 the world. Humanity's survivals among the 
 Chinese will slay the female child, and among the 
 Hindoo will insist upon child-widowhood, and 
 among the North American Indians will leave the 
 
ETCHINGS OF THE REDEMPTIVE IDEA 103 
 
 (5ld man to die by the trail becauseihe can not keep 
 jip in the hunting race. Humanity's best general 
 production of a redemptive mark has never 
 reached the mark of unselfishness. O, I wish we 
 might conceive how Christ transformed the idea 
 of what it is to be great. Do you not see how He 
 substituted the life of service for the life of domi- 
 neering. What bravery of faith, what gentleness 
 df love are seen plain as the light of day in his 
 doing what we would call the greatest of daring 
 as he takes the lowliest place and performs the 
 completest of service, even going so far as to take 
 the position of a slave and washing the disciples' 
 feet. And let us never forget — will not the 
 reader pause to consider, what Jesus says about 
 this event of the feet-washing, ' • Jesus knowing 
 that the Father had given all things into his 
 hands, and that he came forth from God and 
 goeth unto God, riseth from supper," then he 
 proceeds to wash their feet. When his perfect 
 consciousness of his divinity is at full height, when 
 he is truest in his representation of God himself, 
 knowing that he came forth and knowing that he 
 is to return unto the Father, he proceeds to the 
 service of a slave. He not only came as a man. 
 He came as our man. He touches us and com- 
 pletely reverses the idea of what it is to be man- 
 ly, and it is said the Father gave Him authority 
 to execute judgment because He is the Son of 
 
104 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 man. It is plain that there is no contradiction 
 but rather the completest agreement in the di- 
 vine nature and the spirit of readiest service which 
 can find way into our hearts. God has always 
 been sacrificial and Christ was the expression of 
 that, and when we become godly we shall be sac- 
 rificial. Now bear in mind this bent of character 
 is not yet common to humanity. Bring the best 
 apparent constructions of the redemptive act and 
 lift the hatchways and look well down into your 
 construction and you will find stored away some- 
 where in the hold of the vessel that sly tramp 
 called self. It is not so wonderful that Jesus 
 should come to die for sinners when viewed from 
 the standpoint of his own teaching ; it would have 
 been wonderful had he not come. But from my 
 standpoint, with the strong disposition of the self- 
 life, it is the marvel of marvels. 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION, 
 
"In taking our nature into union with his own, God 
 conferred the rarest and highest honor on humanity; so^, 
 since he redeemed men with the blood of his Son, th« 
 highest angels do not wear crowns so bright as the thief 
 on the cross and the woman that was a sinner. As in 
 the families of men the youngest child is seated by day 
 next to its father, and lies closest by night to its 
 mother's breast; as in the material heaven it is not the 
 largest but the smallest planets that revolve in orbits 
 nearest to the sun; so, in consequence of redeeming 
 love, though in his original position inferior to the 
 angels, man occupies in the family of God, and in those 
 heavens of which the visible are but ,]the starry pave- 
 ment, a place nearest to the throne. And by the law 
 that to whom much is given of them shall much ba 
 required, those whom God has most loved are most 
 bound to love; those whom he has most glorified are 
 most bound to glorify him." — Thomas Outhrie. 
 
 ' * Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible 
 things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of lif6 
 handed down from your fathers, hiit with precious blood, 
 as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even tM 
 blood of Christ; who was foreknown indeed before the 
 foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end o) 
 the times for your sake.— 1. Peter i: 18, 19, 20. (R. V.) 
 
 " Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown 
 When thou camest to earth for me; 
 But in Bethlehem's home there was found no room 
 For thy holy nativity. 
 
 Foxes found their rest, and the birds had their nests 
 
 In the shade of the cedar tree; 
 But thy couch was the sod, Oh. thou Son of God, 
 
 In the deserts of Galilee. 
 
 —Emily S. Elliott, 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION. 
 
 'T^His is a theme in which the angels are inter- 
 ■■• ested. How broad is Christian redemption in 
 its sweep of meaning. Through this great fact a 
 better body is in store for humanity, even a spir- 
 itual body ready in the coming days and like that 
 of the Master himself. A better condition of 
 thinking is involved in this redemption, for we 
 are bidden to bring every thought into subjec- 
 tion to the obedience of Christ. A better social 
 condition is involved for we are by love to serve 
 one another, and in the cleansing bf the heart 
 from all sin, the raising of the whole being to a 
 new life as well as a new ideal are included in this 
 great redemption. Man was to be lifted out of 
 the circle where self is center into the circle 
 where Christ is all, the very springs of action 
 and the very motives of living^made God-like, 
 with the record of the past freely forgiven, and 
 the life made already fresh and new with the fore- 
 taste of the resurrection glory. 
 
 Let us climb to the rung of the ladder where 
 the angels stand, and look off upon the scene. As 
 lower than man in the scale of creation is the ani- 
 
108 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 mal, so just over on the other side is the angel.* 
 This high intelligence reckons among its glories 
 a race of beings which never tasted sin. These 
 unfallen ones are frequently represented in the 
 Scriptures as sweetly in communion with God and 
 as manifesting a helpful interest in humanity. 
 
 What range of intelligence and of moral nature 
 they possess is not definitely known but it is 
 thought to be very vast on account of some sug- 
 gestive things said about them. Great missions 
 have been denied them. They were permitted to 
 minister to Jesus after the temptation, they were 
 not permitted to come into the final struggle con- 
 nected with his arrest and crucifixion. We need 
 not hesitate to draw near and look upon their in- 
 teresting but inadequate view of redemption. 
 Peter speaking expressly of redemption by the 
 precious blood of Christ says, "Which things the 
 angels desire to look into." 
 
 What strange communications must have 
 been exchanged between those sons of light 
 as through many years they heard the 
 story of the coming incarnation of the Son 
 of God. How their pure natures must have 
 throbbed to some sweeter melody as they dreamed 
 redemption's dream, and when that morning 
 
 *Mark says that during Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, " He 
 was with the WILD BEASTS and ANGELS ministered unto him." 
 (Mark i : 13.) Thus behold the representative of true manhood 
 standing with the beasts on one side and the angels on the other. 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 109 
 
 came for the cloud-height melody and a holy band 
 was commissioned to sing, "Glory to G-od in the 
 highest, on earth good-will among men;" also 
 when after noting the awful conflict with the evil 
 one in the wilderness where the Son of man was 
 maintained sinless, they drew near that some new 
 draft of heavenliness might quench the thirst of 
 the weary and victorious Immanuel; how they 
 must have ushered back again glad with a de- 
 lightsome awe, and when they saw the great 
 sweat drop as blood to the ground in Gethsemane 
 they hastened willing and expectant ministers to 
 the agonizing life of the Son of God, to note that 
 their immediate help was of no such quality as to 
 be needed in such a battle; how their awe must 
 have deepened in intensity until there were great 
 punctuations in the ascriptions and melodies of 
 the heavenly world. And when that rude frame 
 of wood bore the form of him who planted the 
 germ of every aspen, and his cry was heard far 
 over the hill, the echo of which has gone around 
 and around the earth and far into the heavens, 
 until angels knew it was the cry of one tasting 
 death for every man, how they must have looked 
 upon this earth, on the one hand to raise unpre- 
 cedented acclaims, and on the other hand with 
 trembling reverence. How over that cross and 
 around that sepulchre their thoughts must have 
 hovered, as if they were looking out upon some 
 
no OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 great aurora of providence, or how like the na- 
 tives of Africa whom Livingston describes, they 
 dared not approach the great Victoria Falls be- 
 cause they supposed them to represent the edge of 
 the world; these holy ones looked off upon the 
 scene. 
 
 But they have never turned from the atmos- 
 phere of sinfulness to the life-giving breezes of for- 
 giveness and eternal health. They had never 
 known the dashing waves yield their prey to the 
 land of deliverance, nor had they ever passed 
 through furnaces heated seven times hot by pas- 
 sions, whose fires they themselves had fanned; 
 being delivered without the smell of fire upon 
 them. 
 
 Deliverance from the miry pit makes the rock 
 feel solid. Since sin is in the world it is idle to 
 argue about the details of how it came here. I 
 am not so much concerned about its pedigree as 
 about its power. I am not so much concerned 
 about the fruit Adam ate as about the poison 
 discovered in my nature. It does not so much 
 concern a man when he discovers a thief in his 
 house whether he came in through the door or the 
 window as it does to get him out of the house 
 before some terrible act of violence has been com- 
 mitted. So it does not so much concern me 
 about the details of the way I came to be a sinner 
 as about the awful fact that I am a sinner. The 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 111 
 
 disease has struck me. But since sin is in the 
 world, and we are here, we may well delight to 
 remember that deliverance from the bitterness of 
 the Cain-life gives unspeakable relish to the 
 obtaining of peace through redemption. Who 
 knows what deliverance means like the delivered? 
 
 " Earth has a joy unknown to heaven — 
 The new-born peace of sins forgiven; 
 Tears of such pure and deep delight, 
 Ye angels, never dimmed your sight. 
 
 But I amid your choirs shall shine, 
 And all your knowledge shall be mine; 
 
 Ye on your harps must learn to hear 
 A sacred chord that mine shall bear." 
 
 Now, let us stand upon another rung of this 
 ladder, and look upon redemption from the stand- 
 point of that man whose heart yearns with the 
 blessed impulses of that first effort of self-sur- 
 render called penitence. Have you ever been 
 there ? There would be so many more strong 
 triumphant Christians in the world to-day had 
 they started out in the way by radically repenting 
 of their sins. It takes the dark background of 
 the storm to bring out the rainbow in its beauty, 
 and it takes the full recognition of the self -life to 
 bring out redemption in its beauty. Have you 
 ever been awakened to the conception of wrong 
 in your soul ? Have you ever really felt how 
 many things there are surely characteristic of 
 
112 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Christ which you would feel humiliated to have as 
 characteristic of you ? Has the vastness of the 
 soul been opened to your view until it seems full 
 of great mountain peaks and chasms and storms 
 and quiet nooks and corners where lesser passions 
 lurk, and whole prairies of thorns and briers and 
 poisonous weeds, and great centers of selfish fire 
 which upon occasion belch out as if fighting every 
 approacher ? Have you ever come to say, ' 'I do 
 not know myself, search me, O God ? " Have 
 you ever noticed how at one moment your heart 
 is as tender as that of an infant cooing upon the 
 bosom of its mother and the next so obdurate 
 that it reminds you of a vicious devil, and have 
 you said, the record of my past keeps living on 
 and I am here a sinner, to go back I can not? 
 Within me is condemnation and guilt. To go 
 forward longer as I am, how dare I, but my feet 
 are slipping, slipping, as if time had been frozen 
 smoothe, and my heart is cold and hard. Then 
 and there, O, bless the day, then and there broke 
 upon your vision the memory of the cross and 
 you said, Jesus will save me. 
 
 A lost soul hovering between two worlds ; ever 
 since your babyhood you had proclaimed by every 
 action that you were a lost being. In those earlier 
 days you knew not whether to feel the kitten's 
 back or the fire, to drink poison or water, to creep 
 on the rug or out in the snow, to smile or cry. You 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 113 
 
 sought to walk and fell. As the years went on every- 
 day upset a score or more of conclusions formerly 
 made. As a young man you stood at the forks of 
 the road and sighed again and again to know 
 whether to be a mechanic or a farmer or to en- 
 gage in some profession. Perhaps you have been 
 at mid-age sitting with your cheerful family about 
 the Thanksgiving table and before one little year 
 has gone round you sit weeping in deepest sor- 
 row because she is lost to your home, the great 
 loving heart of the family called by the most 
 blessed name of 'all earthly names, "mother." 
 Will you invest in this line of business or in that, 
 will you cherish this trend of thought even about 
 religion, or will you cherish 'that, or perhaps you 
 have come to old age and your sight has failed 
 you, you can not see the path, you carry a stick 
 in your hand to help you feel the way, your dull 
 hearing will not warn you of approaching danger, 
 and if you sit in the door of your home the very 
 cricket on the curb may become a burden to your 
 soul, the white locks fall over your wrinkled fore- 
 head, you are a pilgrim journeying somewhere, 
 the breath of eternity is upon your brow, and you 
 know not the way. Lost, lost, lost! But hearken, 
 Jesus hath spoken, "I am the way." 
 
 O, the consciousness of a condemned soul. He 
 has squandered ability, he has depreciated the 
 Gospel, he has shut out the light, and what 
 
114 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 does he know of surrender; his heart has 
 rushed to the opposite side from that of the 
 angel-life. He fears eternity, would that he 
 feared himself. Have you been there, and 
 have you out of this condemnation looked 
 unto the merciful Redeemer until deeper 
 and still deeper were the feelings of grief at the 
 thought of having caused him so terrible a sor- 
 row, only to be rewarded with the sweet assur- 
 ance of forgiveness — a great, free, plentiful, holy 
 forgiveness ? Pardon will often cause the culprit 
 who receives it to faint in his cell. This pardon 
 which Jesus gives causes the culprit to sing as he 
 goes at large. When a person is pardoned he is 
 left to prove himself and is very cautiously taken 
 back into the trust of those who know him, but 
 when Jesus pardons a sinner he is taken immedi- 
 ately into the family and given the confidence of 
 the household, adopted as the child of God and 
 promised an inheritance of infinite love; the lost 
 is found, the dead is alive. 
 
 Have you seen redemption from the standpoint 
 of a penitent ? Have you looked at Calvary 
 through such doors as these? The angels may 
 well rush in now and express their joy in the pres- 
 ence of God over one sinner that repenteth, for 
 they never saw redemption from beneath. The 
 angels said he went forth to save them, but I have 
 said he came to save me. They said he is theirs, 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 115 
 
 but I have said he is mine. They say < ' unto you 
 is born a Saviour," but the poor human leper 
 cries, "if thou wilt thou can'st make me 
 clean." They say behold him go, but we can 
 say behold him come. They look off upon the 
 scene with holy enthusiasm, but the scene is 
 within me, and the enthusiasm, too, for I needed 
 redemption and I got it. To be a man born in 
 sin and redeemed is to know and experience of the 
 love of the Infinite, high above that which even 
 angels know from actual experience. And here 
 we not only see redemption, but we feel it. The 
 first dawnings of benevolence have come into our 
 souls as we repented and the new life is already 
 blessedly begun. 
 
 " Oh glory to His name and His wondrous love proclaim, 
 
 I'll shout His praise on high; 
 I'll sing redeeming love to the shining hosts above, 
 
 And behold His face in glory by and by." 
 
 Still another rung of the ladder invites us. 
 Let us step higher and view redemption from the 
 standpoint of a new man in Christ. May we have 
 the thoroughly surrendered will and the clear 
 heart-vision as we look upon this wonderful 
 theme from this wonderful standpoint. Lie down 
 in your hammock at night when the summer sky 
 is clear and you would think that if you were high 
 up in the air you could walk from star to star 
 and from planet to planet and that the distance 
 
116 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 from one star to another would be all too short 
 for your steps. But rise and go aloft in the 
 region of planets and stars, or else with a tele- 
 scope bring the planets and stars within clearer 
 view, and you will see that what appeared to you 
 as a short step is like the distance across a con- 
 tinent. So when Christ has come into our lives 
 and we have turned away from the old self-life to 
 God it all appears different to us. We enter into 
 fellowship with Jesus Christ. Mark that word 
 fellowship. The very same spirit which is in 
 Jesus becomes the spirit which moves us to our 
 activities, we live the redemptive life. A young 
 man got his hand hurt in a corn shelling machine, 
 and the physician informed the friends after am- 
 putating the hand that it would be necessary to 
 graft the wound. So the pastor of the church 
 where he attended and the teacher of the village 
 school and others contributed from their arms 
 four hundred grafts of living flesh. The grafts 
 were applied and the young man recovered. 
 These friends had fellowship with his sufferings. 
 And we are to enter into the fellowship with the 
 sufferings of Christ just as these friends did with 
 the sufferings of this young man. Christ suffered 
 because of his great love. They sympathized 
 with the young man's pain, we are rather to sym- 
 pathize with Christ's great principles. And this 
 is what it means to be a Christian. We are to go 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 117 
 
 out with Christ borne on by his great love to 
 seek and to save the lost. This task of recon- 
 structing the race by defeating the self-life and 
 bringing in the Christ-life will never cease until 
 the complete victory arrives, and every Christian 
 man enlists as a Christian, receiving this great 
 commission in his soul; and just as Christ 
 presents himself to Calvary we are to pre- 
 sent ourselves living sacrifices unto God. 
 The Jewish idea was to kill the sacrifice, 
 but the Christian idea since Christ has died and 
 risen from the dead is to have the sacrifice alive. 
 We are supposed to be enlisted in the very front 
 of a battle, to be one with Jesus Christ. ' 'Unto 
 you it is given not only to believe on him, 
 but also to suffer." The same work is on 
 his heart to-day as that which was on his 
 heart when he announced the finished atone- 
 ment. It must be applied, and by the Holy 
 Spirit's help we are to apply it. When I prayed 
 as a penitent I said, God be merciful to me, but 
 when I pray to-day I enter into his fellowship 
 which adds, God be merciful to them. How 
 quickly that prayer finds a place upon the lips of 
 the new-born soul. How little we knew when we 
 first prayed that prayer for personal deliverance 
 that we should take in every Hindoo and every 
 Japanese and every Chinaman and every inhabit- 
 ant of every island and on every sea into our 
 
118 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 cry, since Christ is taking us all into his great 
 redemption, and how few of the greater weak- 
 nesses of our character were definitely understood 
 in that first hour. Some of these have since been 
 recognized and cured until we find ourselves say- 
 ing. Lord thou didst forgive me fully and 
 freelv at that time, but now I find it means a 
 million-fold more than I thought it did; while 
 thy forgiveness has never been cancelled, I 
 would fain have it reasserted that thou mightest 
 see in the very motions of my soul how much 
 better I appreciate what it means to have sin for- 
 given than I did at that time. We see sin more 
 as Christ saw it now. O, could I but pick up 
 somewhere one nail which I certainly knew had 
 pierced the palm of my blessed Redeemer on the 
 cross, how I would kiss it and weep over it and 
 fold it close within my palms and say, ' 'Let me 
 wound myself with this, if perhaps some scratch 
 of the nail over a vein might cause me to bleed 
 against that same thing against which his blood 
 rushed for me." Does some one say I fear that 
 the human heart could not bear the intense fel- 
 lowship with Christ of which we are speaking, it 
 would seem to be suicidal. How mistaken, my 
 friend; it is not suicidal, it is resurrection. Just 
 as the self-life dies the Christ-life comes in. We 
 are debtors everywhere to humanity with Christ, 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 119 
 
 and we are invited into the struggle, and the honor 
 involved in it no tongue can tell. 
 
 When God created these worlds it was an easy- 
 act of his power. 
 
 <'He spake and it was done," "The earth 
 showeth his handiwork^'' says the Psalmist, 
 as if it were a task of knitting or some 
 delicate work; but when he came to re- 
 deem humanity, or better when he came 
 to re-create humanity, he is represented as 
 poor, and sighing, and groaning, and weep- 
 ing, and weary, and dying — and behold he 
 lives again. The prophet had cried out, "Make 
 bare thine arm, Oh, Lord," and it was no longer 
 handiwork. 
 
 Into that first act of creation we were 
 not invited. God formed the lilies and God 
 made the waters and all the forms of beauty and 
 the whirling maze of worlds without any sugges- 
 tion of our helping, but when the greater act 
 occurred, when the appeal could be made to the 
 highest motives that could inspire a human act or 
 glorify a human destiny, then he said, come in 
 and share it. Be redeemers with me, take up 
 your cross and follow. When shall we once learn 
 the lesson of holy greatness and of deathless 
 worth ? Painters have caused people to sit 
 wrapt by the hour in the presence of their pro- 
 ductions and in some cases to weep and resolve 
 
120 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 for better living then and there. Michael 
 DeMunkacsy's great picture, "Christ before 
 Pilate " is said to have broken the heart of a 
 sailor. He resolved to give up drink and sin no 
 more. I had a friend wh© stood amid the throng 
 of people looking off upon that picture. He is a 
 well balanced man, but his attention became so 
 riveted upon the incident it represented that as 
 he fixed his eyes upon the mob calling for the 
 crucifixion of Christ he called out, ' ' Here stop 
 that." Oh, if we could but have the spirit of 
 Jesus in the heart of the church to-day men and 
 women would feel the power of his presence and 
 really see it as they see the artist's dream in the 
 pictures. What a mighty revival of Christliness 
 would come down upon the peoples and what a 
 spirit of great tenderness and benevolence would 
 be awakened everywhere, until the feelings of 
 Paul would find response in millions of hearts in 
 our day and our lives would be in accord with 
 those great full words, ' ' For me to live is Christ. " 
 Verily the Christian is a Christ-i-an. We are 
 the continuation of the Christ plan and of the 
 Christ-life. We have the very same thing to do 
 and we are to do it according to the same outline 
 of action and inspired by the same great motive. 
 A little boy lifted his shining face at the break- 
 fast table one morning and said to his father, who 
 was a very thorough Christian minister, "Well, 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 121 
 
 papa, if they were to write a new Bible now they 
 would put mamma's name, and your name, and 
 sister's name and our preacher's name and my 
 name in it, wouldn't they ?" The father inquired 
 to find out exactly what the little child meant, 
 when he explained that the names of the people 
 to-day would be in the book instead of such 
 names as Peter, John and Paul and Dorcas. See 
 how that child detected the meaning of the 
 Christian religion. We ought to be the Bible of 
 to-day, so that if the record of to-day were written 
 down it should as truly be the divine record as 
 that contained in the Acts of the Apostles. Let 
 us keep to our programme. Here it is, ^ ' The 
 spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath 
 anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, 
 he hath sent me to proclaim release to the cap- 
 tives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set 
 at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the 
 acceptable year of the Lord. " 
 
 I will, I must if possible enter into fellowship 
 with this redemptive plan. 
 
 Why, the African village at the World's Fair in 
 Chicago was peopled by some genuine Africans 
 whose tribe has the following very interesting 
 custom. The boys of the surrounding community 
 join the tribe upon their own choice and take rank 
 in the tribe according to merit as racers or hunt- 
 ers, etc. At a convenient season of the year the 
 
132 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 boys are sent out into the hills to compete in 
 races, marksmanship and other athletic deeds. 
 While there they are addressed by some of the 
 most supple of the older men of the tribe on how 
 to shoot and run and dodge, and similar pursuits ; 
 then, when the day comes for tribe- joining, all 
 who desire to join are placed in a company to- 
 gether and they are bidden to take their rank ac- 
 cording to their standing in the games. The best 
 athlete is first, the second best, second, and so on 
 down the line. Now, they are to bear the mark 
 or scar of their rank, and this is produced by a 
 deep gash made in the back of the boy. The 
 boy at the foot of the line receives the gash low 
 down on the back, but the boy at the head of the 
 line is gashed up near the head. An African who 
 in his boyhood had joined the tribe, entered the 
 African village at the World's Fair. He had 
 been educated in America and was dressed in 
 American style, but he had not forgotten the dia- 
 lect of his own tribe. Entering the village he 
 began to converse with the natives. They en- 
 quired about his birthplace and tribe until he 
 told them that he was a Prince of the tribe. They 
 immediately asked if he wore the scars, and when 
 he said he did, two or three of those Africans 
 rushed forward and thrust their hands down un- 
 der his collar, then quickly fell down before him 
 to do him homage. They had felt the scar and 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 123 
 
 they knew his rank. The lesson is evident. 
 High rank meant high scars, but any kind of 
 rank meant scars of some kind. So here Christ 
 would have followers who are enlisted with the 
 idea of suffering with him and of bearing the 
 marks of the King. 
 
 Heaven will not be a nursery for the feeble. 
 When God marshalls his great hosts for review 
 you may hear it said, '• These are they who came 
 up out of great tribulation." What if Jesus should 
 stand yonder in visible form and say to us, 
 <'Come children, draw near and converse with 
 me." We draw near and he tells us that he would 
 have us talk over redemption with him. Could 
 we take part in the conversation? Could 
 we reach a single strain of the theme? Would 
 there be any real interest in it from your stand- 
 point and mine? If not, then I fear that the cen- 
 tral and all-embracing theme of the Christian re- 
 ligion has never sufficiently interested us to charm 
 away our mean self-life, nor have we realized suf- 
 ficiently our high calling to see that we are to 
 have fellowship with the Son of God. 
 
 We c£.n not be possessed of that refining sensi- 
 tiveness to the needs of humanity which is so ab- 
 solutely necessary to humanity and true success 
 in every undertaking, unless we are in actual fel- 
 lowship with Jesus himself. We must see Jesus 
 in the poorest and worst. Not that the worst 
 
124 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 love him and please him, but that help to them is 
 help to him. "Ye did it mi to me." 
 
 And now let us take our position looking off 
 upon the view of redemption which must have 
 been in the mind of the Redeemer himself. ' 'We 
 reckon," said one of the fathers of the seventeenth 
 century, "that a man must be exceedingly benev- 
 olent when he sits down to devise how he can best 
 distribute his goods among others." Jesus comes, 
 saying, all this is voluntary, I come to do the 
 Father's will and to lay down my life. 
 
 "Jesus my Saviour to Bethlehem came, 
 Born in a manger to sorrow and shame, 
 Oh, it was wonderful, blest be his name, 
 Seeking for me, for me. 
 
 Jesus my Saviour on Calvary's tree 
 Paid the great price and my soul is set free, 
 
 Oh, it was wonderful, how could it be. 
 Dying for me, for me." 
 
 It is a chosen plan, a favored lot. What benev- 
 olence there must be in the heart of one who de- 
 vises how, when and where to lay down his life 
 for sinners and give them an inheritance of 
 boundless wealth. He gave his best to bring us 
 to our best. It is his very life. What valor is 
 to the brave man, what muscle is to the sailor, 
 what the father-feeling is to the father, these 
 faintly picture what redemption is to Christ. We 
 could not know him any other way and we are to 
 
CHRISTIAN REDEMPTION 125 
 
 have this life in us. Eedeemed, redeemed! We 
 were reared by the ministry of those who loved 
 us. Let us live to serve. Let us suffer to cure 
 others. Let us die that we may live. The atone- 
 ment of Christ is a perfect atonement, but it 
 needs a manward application and we are invited, 
 what honor is in it, to fill up the sufferings of 
 Christ which are behind which are ready to fol- 
 low. Oh, my soul, this is life; all else is death. 
 Saviour divine, be thou revealed in me. Re- 
 deemed ! Redeemed 1 1 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF 
 SORROW. 
 
** But the most kingly act is not to dominate, but to 
 yield. It is there that authority and dominion ex- 
 tend not to empire but to self,'''' — H, W, Warren, 
 S. T. D, 
 
 •' The capacity of sorrow belongs to our grandeur, and 
 the loftiest of our race are those who have had the pro- 
 foundest sympathies, because they have had the pro- 
 f oundest sorrow. " — Henry Giles. 
 
 " For godly sorrow worketTi repentance unto salvation, a 
 repentance which hringeth no regret; hut the sorrow of the 
 world worheth death.''^ — II. Corinthians vii: 10. (R. V.) 
 
 "Sadness serves but one end, being useful only in 
 repentance, and hath done its greatest work, not when 
 it sighs and weeps, but when it hates and grows careful 
 against sin; but cheerfulness serves charity, fills the 
 soul with harmony, and makes and publishes glorifica- 
 tions of GodL.'"— Jeremy Taylor, 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SORROW. 
 
 TTow broad and comprehensive, and if under- 
 ■'■ ■'■ taken by any other than a divine hand, how 
 daring would be this Christian plan of dealing with 
 humanity. Stoics taught some of the external 
 virtues such as fidelity and heroism, but Jesus 
 teaches us not only to be faithful but to be for- 
 giving ; not only to be heroic but to be gentle and 
 loving and merciful. The religion of Jesus un- 
 dertakes to play all the keys of the whole instru- 
 ment. It will bring out the music of the whole 
 orchestra, hence it includes sorrow among the 
 subjects of its blessed ministry. What a bene- 
 diction it is that we can feel sorrow. If man 
 were capable only of joy he would be like a violin 
 with one string; what a wearisome exhibition of 
 monotony would such a person be. In certain 
 cases of insanity, weeping is the sign of ap- 
 proaching recovery, and the word will be whis- 
 pered among the nurses and attendants concern- 
 ing the patient, ''We saw a tear in his eye; that 
 man will yet recover." What perfect delight 
 thrills the hearts of the relatives as they read the 
 new letter from the hospital saying, ' ' Your friend 
 has been seen to weep a little ; recovery is more 
 than probable." 
 
130 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Joy soars high and bathes its wings in the light 
 and sings its songs ; but sorrow meanwhile fol- 
 lows the long shaft and digs out the rich nuggets 
 of ore. How could we enter into deepest fellow- 
 ship with Jesus were we not capable of ' ' weeping 
 with those that weep." There is a heroism in 
 sorrow; when sorrow is of the right quality it 
 dares to go with God in the struggle. Even the 
 Jewish Psalmist seems to have believed this when 
 he said ''My tears, are they not in thy bottle." 
 Dear soul, you wept so bitterly ; you went alone and 
 hid yourself away, as if, since there was but one 
 God there was but one wounded mortal too, and 
 there you wept and sighed and prayed while your 
 whole being was heaving like a ship in the storm 
 until he said, "Peace be still," and there was a 
 great calm. May be there was great courage in 
 that hour. 
 
 Mothers weep when their boys leave home. 
 They have the courage to weep; they know that 
 if the boys will be true in the midst of their 
 enemies they can succeed, and they emphasize 
 the knowledge upon the boy's soul with weeping. 
 ''Blessed are they that mourn." As long as hu- 
 manity can rejoice in this world it may well sor- 
 row. There is no general conflict between laugh- 
 ter and tears, between joy and sorrow. <' Sor- 
 rowful yet always rejoicing," says Paul. 
 
 But what disgraceful sorrow we have suffered. 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SORROW 131 
 
 How surely there seems to be no territory of the 
 being where evil has not caused these poisonous 
 growths to come up; even sorrow has become de- 
 generated sin. There is a sorrow of the world — 
 first sorrow, then death; a blighting, withering, 
 slaying sorrow. 
 
 What is this sorrow of the world? The world 
 in the days when Paul wrote would naturally be 
 represented by Rome or Greece. This vast un- 
 christian community based its life upon the asser- 
 tion of the individual. The modern phrase, 
 ''Look out for number one." would have exactly 
 fitted that class of humanity. Their thought was 
 upon themselves, and their great study was to 
 defend themselves and exalt themselves, and 
 hence their sorrow was a selfish sorrow. 
 
 This same spirit is common to humanity since 
 the assertion of the self -life is the secret of hu- 
 man trouble and human failure, hence the sorrow 
 of the world is a self-sorrow. The sorrow of the 
 world says, I am injured, poor me, how I strug- 
 gle, how I suffer ! This was the difficulty with 
 Cain. Instead of immediately repenting of his 
 sin, "My punishment is greater than I can bear." 
 This was the difficulty with the rich young man 
 who came to Jesus and went away sorrowful. I 
 think I hear him say, he has told me to sell all 
 my goods and give to the poor, my lands, my 
 
132 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 flocks, my houses, my vineyards. Ah, it was a 
 sorrow of the world. 
 
 Now, whenever there comes a question between 
 a thing and a character, God always takes the 
 part with the character. Here, in the case of 
 the rich young man, the conflict was between 
 gold and the man. Immediately the Lord said, 
 <'man up, gold down." The same is true in the 
 case of the Gadarene demoniac. The conflict 
 there is between the pigs and the man. The 
 Lord immediately says, "man up, pigs down." 
 And then, when man is permanently established 
 in victory, gold is represented as the pavement 
 of his feet in heaven. This rule always abides ; 
 character up, things down. But the rich young 
 man did not perceive this. His sorrow was a 
 self-sorrow. "He went away sorrowful, for he 
 had great possessions." No man ever was pinned 
 under a railroad wreck more truly than was 
 that young man pinned under his possessions. 
 He had his heart where his feet ought to be, upon 
 the earth. John Ruskin says that the charac- 
 teristic of the mean man is in the way he pro- 
 nounces the word "I," and the characteristic of 
 the great man is in the way he pronounces the 
 word "it." The sorrow of the world always 
 speaks of self. It has not great philanthropy, it 
 h as no great fund of helpfulness to feed upon ; it 
 works death ; it is separate, single, exclusive, kill- 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SORROW 133 
 
 ing. There are people from all about us who 
 have gone to premature graves through this aw- 
 ful blast, and who can tell the great number of 
 deadly vices it breeds in its own walled up nest? 
 
 But now let us turn our attention to godly sor- 
 row, which is said to work repentance — a repent- 
 ance that needeth not to be repented of. The 
 sorrow of the world savors of the world; godly 
 sorrow savors of God. The sorrow of the world 
 says, " I am wronged " ; godly sorrow says, ''He 
 is wronged." The sorrow of the world says, "I 
 suffer"; godly sorrow, " He hath suffered." The 
 one, "I am abused"; the other, "He is mal- 
 treated." The one, ' ' My poor heart " ; the other, 
 <'His broken heart." These waters of Marah 
 flow very close to the mercy seat, and soon the 
 soul mellowed by this kind of sorrow will be heard 
 saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner," laying 
 the emphasis upon the word "sinner " very much 
 more than upon the word "me," for godlj sorrow 
 worketh repentance. 
 
 My brother, have you ever felt this kind of sor- 
 row? Has your soul ever awakened sufficiently to 
 sa y, " God has been wronged, Christ has been slain 
 and humanity has been injured through my willful- 
 ness and sin?" Have you ever had moral ambition 
 enough to explore the Infinite nature far enough to 
 find how many scars you have made in his affection 
 through the outgoings of his mercy for you? 
 
134 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Look, look upon him. See him weep. Hear him 
 plead. Note the steady greatness in the strain 
 of his teaching. Hear his warning; feel his 
 heart-throbs. Behold, this is your Creator! This 
 is your Saviour! This is your King, and of this 
 one you are an offspring. Oh, soul, did you ever 
 with godly sorrow beg the divine pardon ? It is 
 a great thing to repent of sin. 
 
 Sometime ago in one of my meetings I ap- 
 proached a man from Chicago and said to him, 
 <* My brother, have you given your life to Jesus ?" 
 He replied, 'No. sir, I have not, and what is 
 more I do not mean to; I tell you I do not be- 
 lieve what you preached to-night. You taught 
 that a man must get down in the dust before G-od 
 in order to be saved, and I tell you I will not do 
 it. I think too much of myself for any such 
 humiliation, and I do not believe in it." "Beg 
 your pardon, my friend, ' ' said I, ' ' you misunder- 
 stood my teaching. I do not say that a man 
 would be required to get down in the dust in 
 order to be a Christian, but I mean to say that 
 you are now down in the dust, and one of the 
 first steps toward becoming a Christian is to 
 rise high enough to let the light shine on you 
 so that you shall see the dust which soils you. " 
 
 Eepentance is not going down into the valley, 
 repentance is not going down at all, repent- 
 ance is rising up. When one is ascended high 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SORROW 135 
 
 enough to see how God has been wronged by him, 
 until he desires and determines to ask forgive- 
 ness for his fruitless and injurious life, then he 
 becomes a true penitent. Repentance is really 
 the first dawning s of benevolence. The very first 
 step in the Christian life is a step into greatness. 
 O, for the. blessing of godly sorrow. Fellow sin- 
 ner, may it come into your soul to-day. I do not 
 ask you to weep; that would only be incidental, 
 but may heaven give to the very deeps of your 
 being a mighty appreciation of the goodness of 
 God and your mfluence upon your fellows until 
 you shall be sorry that they have been wronged. 
 When Col. H. H. Hadley knelt in the Water 
 Street Mission and prayed for forgiveness he was 
 a drunken newspaper man. He says, ' ' That 
 night I was two hundred-odd pounds of sin and 
 beer." But when he began to pray he found him- 
 self saying, "dear Jesus." He says, "This was 
 altogether new to me, to call my Saviour dear 
 Jesus. Then I said, O dear Jesus let me bear 
 this terrible appetite for strong drink for thee 
 who hast borne my sins forme." Col. Hadley did 
 not think to ask that the appetite might be taken 
 away, this he might well have done. But when 
 there came genuine repentance he would fain en- 
 dure the awful trial for such a Saviour as this. 
 Start here my brother, right in the day-dawn of 
 benevolence. Sound the depths of your being 
 
136 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 and see if you can not find it within you to say, 
 ''Father I have sinned, forgive me." 
 
 Glorious John Hunt says that the Fiji Islanders 
 would faint under the awful load of their own 
 guilt when they saw it. When John Hunt went 
 among these poor cannibals in 1838, girls were 
 sold for seven dollars each that they might be 
 eaten. John Hunt preached Christ to them until 
 they saw the awfulness of their practices. Under 
 his messages they would faint and revive, and faint 
 and revive and bewail their awful unrighteousness. 
 You could not buy a human being to-day, in the 
 Fiji Islands, for seven millions of dollars. But 
 these poor tribes had no Bible. You and I have 
 been surrounded with the richest and the great- 
 est teachings that have ever fallen upon human 
 ears. They have been stated, they have been 
 sung, and with the very pleadings of sacrifice 
 they have been pressed upon our attention. 
 Shall we not drop a tear or two of genuine re- 
 pentance and hate the old self-life. 
 
 "Who sent this quilt here," said a dying soldier 
 boy to the nurse. " I do not know," replied the 
 nurse, "but there was a note with it and I can 
 find out who sent it." "I wish you might," said 
 the young man. The nurse retired from the room 
 and upon returning found him intently gazing at 
 one patch in the quilt. ' ' Did you find out who 
 sent the quilt ? " said he. Then the nurse read 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SORROW 137 
 
 the name at the bottom of the note. The young 
 man burst into weeping and said, "I thought so, 
 I thought so; I knew it was her. I knew that 
 that patch was a piece of my mother's dress." 
 Then drawing it close to his lips he kissed the 
 patch once and again, saying, ' ' G-od forgive me 
 for the way I treated my mother. Nurse, you 
 will tell mother, won't you, that I asked God to 
 forgive me before I died, and T want her to for- 
 give me." I think that soldier boy was 
 greater ten-million-fold that minute than he ever 
 could have been spurring himself on in some bat- 
 tle. We never can be genuine Christians unless 
 we have been genuine penitents. The joy of 
 the Lord can not be our strength unless godly 
 sorrow has been our tonic. There are men every- 
 where who have never begun to find the present 
 possibilities of their character because they have 
 never known a great sorrow. The smelting has 
 not been perfect enough to bring out the gold. 
 
 A father brought his daughter to a musical in- 
 structor for voice culture. The daughter was 
 asked to stand upon the stage in a large hall and 
 sing. The father and instructor stood in the dis- 
 tance to estimate her effort. "Well," said the 
 father, "what do you think she will make ?" "I 
 can not tell you," answered the instructor, "her 
 voice has a vast compass and is of pure tone. I 
 
138 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 could tell you better what she would make if I 
 could break her heart." 
 
 Forgiveness is none the less precious because it 
 is so readily offered. How boldly we come and 
 say, "Father forgive me." Do we consider what 
 it costs him to forgive us? We speak of our 
 sensitive natures and say that the errors of our 
 fellow men rasp against our souls so that we can 
 hardly endure their coarseness. We say they are 
 not kindred spirits with us. But what of the 
 holy sensitiveness of him whose perfect character 
 was never stained by a tinge of wrong purpose or 
 of wrong doing. Do not I know that my dullness 
 and daring sinfulness must rasp as if into the 
 very quick against the sensitive nature of my 
 Christ? Out of that nature, while amid the 
 lowest surroundings, came forth such saying as 
 these, " Blessed are the pure in heart." "Who- 
 soever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath 
 committed adultery with her already in his 
 heart," and "I am the truth." When Christ 
 comes to save your soul it is like an angel reach- 
 ing deep into the mire for a pearl. And I do not 
 mean here the soul of a man whose habits are vile 
 beyond other peoples, I mean the most respect- 
 able kind of a sinner who slights the mercy of 
 heaven. We do not consider it so very wonderful 
 that the man who was lost deep in drunkenness 
 or criminality should rejoice with exceeding joy 
 
THE REDEMPTION OF SORROW 139 
 
 because his sins are forgiven, but is it not true 
 that the man who has been saved from these 
 things ought to be as thankful as the man who 
 has been saved out of them ? 
 
 Does some one say, O the love of God makes it 
 easy for him to forgive. I reply, yes, but love is 
 not insensible, love is not stupid, love is not un- 
 true. But with full recognition of the sin, with 
 exact estimate of its vileness and in perfect con- 
 sciousness of all that it has cost to save the sin- 
 ner, love eagerly, abundantly pardons. God's 
 attitude is rather the attitude of truth than of 
 resentment, and truth is not thrust down when 
 a sinner is forgiven, it is asserted, upheld, hon- 
 ored, glorified. That struggle of the truth in the 
 face of our moral falsehood broke the heart of 
 Jesus Christ. Brother, it was for thee and for me. 
 
 Why wait for fires or floods or sickness or per- 
 secution to break your heart; is there not appeal 
 enough in the goodness of God? Does not the 
 tenderness of his voice within your soul make you 
 tremble with sorrow that you have so long re- 
 jected it? If I must be constrained by any influ- 
 ence, let it be such an influence as God's good- 
 ness, or God's love. Now, even now, may the 
 icy heart of your winter melt away and the new 
 world spring into existence, even a world where 
 sorrow is unselfish. 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING. 
 
•' We deceive ourselves, doubtless, in this way, im- 
 agining that because we have the whole Scriptures, and 
 are conversant with all their great truths, the Spirit of 
 God is necessarily working in us. We need a baptism 
 of the spirit as much as the apostles did at the time of 
 Christ's resurrection. " — Bowen. 
 
 ••It would be a blessed day which should witness the 
 descent of the Holy Ghost anew upon the whole Christ- 
 ian church. But to ask for this would be to ask for 
 uncovenanted grace. For the majority of Christians are 
 not in a receptive condition. Vessels must be emptied 
 of earth before they can be filled with gold. There 
 must be an intense thirst before Jesus will give these 
 living waters." — Rev. Daniel Steele, S. T. D. 
 
 " When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto 
 you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which pro- 
 ceedeth from the Father, he shall hear witness of me; and 
 ye also shall hear ivitness, hecause ye have been with me 
 from the heginning. These things have I spoken unto you, 
 that ye should not he made to stumble. They shall put you 
 out of the synagogues, yea, the hour cometh thatwhosoever 
 Uilleth you shall think that he offereth service unto Ood. 
 And these things will they do hecause they have not knoivn 
 the Father nor me. But these things have I spoken unto 
 you, that when their hour is come ye may remember them, 
 how that I told, you. And these things I said not unto you 
 from the hcginniiig hecause I was with you. But now 1 
 go imto him that seiit me; and none of you asketh me. 
 Whither goest thouf But hecause I have spoken these 
 things unto you, sorroiv hath filled your heart. Nevertheless 
 I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away, 
 for if 1 go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; 
 but if I go I will send him unto you. " 
 
 —John xv: 26, 27; xvi: 4-7. (R. V.) 
 
THE DIVINE. UNFOLDING. 
 
 "\ 1 7ho can imagine the difficulties to be encoun- 
 tered when God proceeded to unfold the 
 secrets of His pure nature and the privileges which 
 he would grant to men, of high and rich commun- 
 ion with himself in such days as those of Abel and 
 Enoch and Abraham. For we must not forget 
 that the influences of more perfectly stated truths 
 concerning God and ourselves have affected our 
 parents, and, indeed, all civilization to such a vast 
 extent that to have been born as we, in these 
 civilized countries of the world and in this age, 
 was to be started out in life with an almost infi- 
 nite profusion of opportunity and advantage. 
 
 It was not always so. See behind those hills 
 of time, yonder in the distance, those darker days. 
 The pillar of fire has not yet appeared. The 
 prophets' souls have not yet borne their great, 
 strong, healthful messages, nor has a live coal off 
 the altar touched their lips. The psalmists have 
 not yet sung of Jehovah, the Shepherd, Leader, 
 King; and the sweet, holy ministry of the Son of 
 God has not yet broken like fragrant incense 
 upon the darkened minds and sinful hearts of the 
 people. It were difficult, indeed, to estimate 
 
144 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 what it meant to unfold the things of God out 
 on the edges of those centuries. It is always 
 difficult to put great truth in language; it must 
 have been especially difficult to put the things of 
 God's glory into the language of the earlier peo- 
 ple, so deeply fallen into rebellion against Him. 
 How beautiful the unfolding. 
 
 The voice of God is heard calling for his lost 
 child, "Adam, where art thou." This is the 
 great starting point of that which culminates 
 later on this earth, in the expression of the Holy 
 Spirit, dwelling amid eager welcomes right within 
 the soul of the redeemed creature — this the morn- 
 ing star, that the noon-day. Let us trace these 
 unf oldings that we may the better see how impor- 
 tant it is for us to believe with deepest purpose 
 in the largest, completest unfolding of the God- 
 nature to man — the Holy Spirit. 
 
 God has called to his lost child. That voice 
 alone, its tones ; how they must have stirred the 
 heart of Adam. I think he is saying, ' ' Will he 
 speak to me, will he yet speak tome." For you 
 know these early people (and the race is not rid 
 of the same moral defect even to-day) feared the 
 voice of God, and when he spake to them from 
 Sinai they said, ' ' Let not God speak with us lest 
 we die." 
 
 Again, he appeals to the patriarchs and calls 
 every man to be a priest in his own household; the 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING 145 
 
 individual and the family are brought into possi- 
 ble communion with himself. What a revelation 
 this must have been to these early people. 
 
 Again, the law is given amid the fears of the 
 people; the words are uttered, "Thoushalt" and 
 <'thou shalt not." ''Now," I think men say to 
 each other after their fear has subsided, ' ' This is 
 very plain; we understand; we must not kill; we 
 must not steal, and we must love him." What 
 penitent anxious for communion with his God and 
 willing to make his life righteous before him 
 would not have been willing to say, " It is enough 
 we will seek to obey ; yea, we will suffer in obedi- 
 ence if we may but gain the favor of the great 
 Eternal, " but already they had had more than this. 
 The sacrifices were being offered ; great, strong an- 
 nouncements of godly faith were being made, nor 
 shall they cease, for the Lord continues to unfold 
 his nature to man, expressing himself in symbols 
 and tokens and certain forms of worship and 
 service, especially in better places, and the tab- 
 ernacle is made after his own designing. Not one 
 family, but many are called together to commune 
 with him, and in the forms of worship the unfold- 
 ing of his own thought and heart become more 
 and more apparent to the people, while from the 
 mercy-seat in the holy of holies beams the 
 Shekinah. This was a mysterious, abiding light, 
 perhaps not unlike the sun-dog in the sky, still 
 
146 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 and quiet, but radiant — beautiful symbol of the 
 presence of Him of whom John later said, ' ' God 
 is light." 
 
 And now as the unfolding of his nature contin- 
 ues, the prophets bear witness, the kings live and 
 die, the nations grow and wane, the Psalmists 
 sing, the priests pray, scenes of great deliverance 
 appear as pledges of covenants made, strong 
 warnings are uttered against the sins of the na- 
 tion, God's people are taught to separate them- 
 selves from the idolaters round about them, while 
 now and again a man rises baptized with great 
 assurance, saying, ^^Thus saith the Lord." As 
 if to say he who called for his lost Adam is still 
 calling. 
 
 Then the light broke like the dawn of the 
 morning from the hills and the brief but plain 
 prophecy of Moses began to come into its fuller 
 expression of meaning upon the lips of Isaiah and 
 of the minor prophets concerning the com- 
 ing deliverer. It must have been like a feast to 
 the soul for these men to have felt impelled to 
 have uttered their messages. Take the youthful 
 Isaiah, scarcely, if quite, out of his teens, utter- 
 ing such words as these, "Unto us a child is born; 
 unto us a son is given, and the government shall 
 be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be 
 called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, 
 the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING 147 
 
 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem 
 of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots ; 
 and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, 
 the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit 
 of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and 
 of the fear of the Lord ; and shall make him of 
 quick understanding in the fear of the Lord, and 
 he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, 
 neither reprove after the hearing of his ears. But 
 with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and 
 reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; 
 and he shall smite the earth with the rod of 
 his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall 
 he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be 
 the girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle 
 of his reins." 
 
 What joy, what unspeakable rapture must have 
 ravished the hearts of these men amid their ordi- 
 nary sorrows when they uttered such words as 
 those. But behold, O, holy wonder, there ap- 
 pears that one from above born of Mary in Beth- 
 lehem of Judea. The people call him Prophet, 
 King, Rabbi. The sin-stricken woman at the 
 well of Sychar as she speaks, keeps expressing his 
 name in better titles ; first she calls him "sir," 
 later "prophet," then telling of her belief in the 
 coming Messiah she dares to say, ' ' Can this be 
 the Christ? " 
 
 He appears among the people, poor with 
 
148 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 the poorest, weary with the weariest, slandered 
 and opposed with the most persecuted, teach- 
 ing as no man ever taught, fulfilling the law, 
 living a divine life and surely though slowly be- 
 coming the evident deliverer of the people. Now, 
 G-od has unfolded himself as so intensely sympa- 
 thetic that he is beside us in our babyhood, him- 
 self incarnate as a little child, he reclines at our 
 dinner tables, he takes the little children up in his 
 arms and blesses them, he heals our sicknesses, 
 he forgives our sins, he feeds our hungry, he 
 touches our dead and they live. Could Abel or 
 Enoch or Abraham have seen this so fully ex- 
 pressed as the people of the day of his appearing 
 saw it, how they would have exulted. 
 
 Immanuel, Immanuel, God with us. And sin- 
 ners touch him. 
 
 But this is not enough ; humanity is a redeemed 
 humanity and we are called to fellows/iip with the 
 infinite God, in eternal years destined to be like him 
 and to glory in him, yes, and to express through 
 ceaseless days of eternity the wealth of the heart 
 of God. Hence Jesus stands forth in the presence 
 of the people while they celebrate Feast of 
 Tabernacles at Jerusalem, the very city where 
 (3-od had unfolded much of the wealth of himself, 
 in the design of the great temple and its worship ; 
 to tell the people of the coming, greater glory yet 
 to break upon their vision and enrich their 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING 149 
 
 souls. It was the last day of the feast. Offer- 
 ings of water were being brought from Siloam 
 and presented before the Lord. Skins and jars 
 well filled with the pure liquid were handed forth, 
 and appropriate offerings were being celebrated. 
 He looked upon it, and then this great effort of 
 God to unfold himself to humanity brought out 
 the larger lesson which the water symbolized, in 
 these words, "If any man thirst let him come 
 unto me and drink, he that believeth on me as the 
 Scripture hath said out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water. " 
 
 Anon he continues this strain of announcement, 
 telling of greater things to come. He says, ' ' I 
 go unto my Father but I will send the Comforter 
 (the Paraclete); you would rejoice if you love me 
 because I said I go unto the Father, for if I go 
 not unto the Father the Comforter will not come 
 unto you, even the spirit of truth whom I will 
 send unto you from the Father." Now observe, 
 it is said that that utterance of his about the 
 water at the feast was spoken concerning the 
 Holy Spirit. These are the words which follow 
 it, ' ' This spake he of the Spirit which they that 
 believed on him were to receive for the Spirit 
 was not yet given because Jesus was not yet 
 glorified." 
 
 Jesus bids his people tarry for the coming of 
 the Spirit. God had things to tell to men which 
 
150 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 they could not bear as yet and God had things 
 to show to men which they could not yet endure. 
 Jesus is "the effulgence of G-od's glory and the 
 very image of his substance," but the unfolding 
 can be made more expressive and can enter more 
 deeply into the heart-realization of humanity, 
 hence they were bidden to look for the coming of 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 And now the day has broken over the eastern 
 city, and with it there breaks over the hearts of the 
 male and female followers of Jesus assembled in 
 the upper room at Jerusalem, the light of the 
 hitherto, fullest, brightest expression of God to 
 humanity ever yet witnessed. 
 
 The local representation of God in Jesus as a 
 man among us has been withdrawn, the invisible 
 expression of God in the very spirit of Jesus him- 
 self has been ushered in. It is a new day, the 
 Christian idea has become full-orbed and the high 
 noon of fellowship with the great Father rests 
 steadily over the faithful people, with the prom- 
 ise that it shall rest over succeeding centuries, 
 until the Kingdoms of this world have become 
 the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and 
 he shall reign for ever and ever. Had God re- 
 mained manifested in the local, visible Christ, in 
 the man Jesus how different all would be. What 
 pilgrimages bound for Palestine would be organ- 
 ized by the thousand, in succession, all over the 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING 151 
 
 earth. What weariness and sickness and death 
 would follow in the wake of the great assemblies, 
 what poor people would be unable to provide for 
 the trip. What strange declining of the great 
 plan would appear as we 'would tend to ap- 
 proach Palestine as a single country, rather 
 than looking out as we now do, upon the whole 
 world as belonging to our Christ. He is no less 
 present, unseen than seen. As he said, he is 
 with us alway. His incarnation was rather a 
 hiding of the vaster wealth of his nature behind 
 a veil of flesh. 
 
 But we see him now in this larger, fuller, com- 
 pleter expression of the hidden wealth and glory 
 of his nature. O, blessed day ! The Pentecost ! 
 The unceasing Pentecost, the unwithdrawn pres- 
 ence is yours and mine, he shall abide with you 
 forever. 
 
 Before Jesus had yet ascended He breathed 
 upon His followers saying, ' ' Receive ye the Holy 
 Spirit ? " Perhaps they were incompetent to re- 
 ceive Him fully, for this would not be the first 
 time He had corrected their slowness. But now on 
 this Pentecost day his breath is increased, until 
 there is the sound as of a rushing, mighty wind, 
 and it fills all the place where they are as- 
 sembled. There is life in that wind, and God is 
 in the wind. And the unfolding of His nature is 
 so correctly perceived by the people that they 
 
152 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 immediately partake of the sacrificial spirit, their 
 sympathies are awakened and their love abomids. 
 They present their goods and divide them, prob- 
 ably among those who had come a long distance 
 and had run short of means. Peter explains the 
 incident, assuring them that this accords with the 
 promise of God concerning the Holy Spirit, 
 and they begin to proclaim a thorough recovery 
 from iniquity for Jew and Gentile alike, the 
 young communion takes on holy life and new 
 membership, the Lord adding daily such as are 
 being saved. Now, lions, nor fires, nor stocks, 
 nor scourge, nor deep dungeon avail to affect 
 their ardor, but right on toward death they 
 move counting it all joy that they are reckoned 
 worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus. 
 
 And this unfolding of the divine nature contin- 
 ues in our day. It is God's tender purpose to un- 
 cover, in so far as we can stand the gaze, the secret 
 brilliancy of His nature, and to bring us as 
 a redeemed people to that condition where we can 
 truly realize the fulness of the Holy Spirit. 
 And the highest, purest, grandest expression of 
 God's nature to man is in the Holy Spirit. No 
 wonder Peter designated the day in which he 
 lived <* the end of the times." (See 1 Peter i:20 
 R. V.) 
 
 This blessed unfolding or evolving of the 
 Divine is such a distinct characteristic of his 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDINO 153 
 
 providence that we may well study it a little 
 more closely. Take the Jewish people, they 
 were called to be God's peculiar people for they 
 were made the guardians of His revelation 
 and the leaders in the faith, until Christ's 
 teachings took root and then the plan manifests 
 itself as including the whole human race in its 
 scope. Then Peter interprets the words of Joel's 
 prophecy, ' ' Thus saith the Lord, I will pour forth 
 of my spirit upon all flesh," and shows 
 us that this prophecy was finding its 
 expression in Pentecost. Those words, ''all 
 flesh " point to the wide sweep of meaning 
 in Christ's great commission before his ascen- 
 sion, "Go ye forth and make disciples of all the 
 nations." Simeon under the power of the Holy 
 Spirit spake this same great truth, saying that 
 Jesus was ' ' a light for the unveiling of the Gen- 
 tiles and the glory of Israel. " (R.V.) Very close 
 to this teaching is that of Paul's, concerning the 
 relation of the law to the Gospel, in which he 
 shows that the whole plan of the centuries comes 
 to its fulness in the teaching that a7iy man can be 
 saved by faith in Jesus Christ through the power 
 of the Holy Spirit. Jesus placed great emphasis 
 upon this line of thought when he said, ' ' Many 
 prophets and kings have desired to see the things 
 that ye have seen and have not seen them, and to 
 hear the things which ye have heard and 
 
154 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 have not heard them," and he did not 
 hesitate to tell the people of Chorazin 
 and Bethsaida that if the mighty works which 
 had been done in them had been done in Sodom, 
 the people of Sodom would have repented, but he 
 adds, speaking to his own followers, "Greater 
 things than these shall ye do. " Elijah's method 
 of calling for fire from heaven could no longer be 
 entertained. The march of great events moves 
 on up the steeps of time. God hath more to say. 
 Look at that word "Father" as applied to our 
 God. Earely was such a thing thought of in the 
 Old Testament, but Jesus freely teaches us to use 
 it. "The Hebrews," says Dr. Camden M. Co- 
 bern, ' ' would not speak the word which we ren- 
 der Jehovah, even in the synagogue readings, 
 substituting for it Adonai (Lord.") But we are 
 bidden to call God "Our Father," quickly girding 
 our reverence with the phrase, "hallowed be thy 
 name." Jesus explains why we should use such 
 a title, and before his crucifixion repeatedly illus- 
 trates its beauty, while after he is risen from 
 the dead he uncovers the strong, golden bond 
 which unites us to himself with wonderful plain- 
 ness and equal condescension by saying, "I as- 
 cend unto my Father and unto your Father." 
 Later, Paul takes up the very same thought and 
 gives it the Pentecostal emphasis by saying, 
 <* The Holy Spirit is sent forth into our hearts 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING 155 
 
 crying 'Abba Father.' " Now, Jeremiah's dream 
 is coming to pass for the neio covenant is being 
 established. 
 
 Beautiful beyond description is the opening out 
 of this Scripture plan, into this Pentecostal noon- 
 day, so truly the highest, fullest, grandest ex- 
 pression of the divine thought that ever shone 
 upon the pathway of redeemed pilgrims. 
 
 There is great beauty, too, evident in the ex- 
 pression of G-od to us, in the different titles which 
 apply to himself. In those earlier days he was 
 manifested to the people in such titles as Jehovah, 
 the Lord God Almighty, or I Am that I Am. No- 
 tice how this unfolding of titles expressing greater 
 nearness, and rich with more winsome invita- 
 tions, continues to increase as the days come and 
 go. We have noticed that rarely in the Old Tes- 
 tament do we get the title Father, but anon there 
 are applied to him such titles as Father, Shep- 
 herd, Counsellor, Prince of Peace. Then we have, 
 Jesus, Saviour, Lord, Christ, Immanuel, and later 
 Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, Spirit of Truth and 
 Spirit of the Highest. These titles applied to God 
 have produced for us an almost limitless wealth 
 of expression, especially in hymns. They have 
 served to give us words of few syllables and words 
 of many syllables, and words, too, that would 
 rhymn with other words until the singing of 
 Christian hymns has been found possible as a 
 
156 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 means of most direct communion with the per- 
 sonal God. Let us note just a few of these by 
 way of illustration, bearing in mind that we are 
 not taking time to give a complete list of the 
 titles which apply to God. 
 
 "Jesus, lover of my soul." 
 
 Here we require a word of two syllables with 
 which to express our Saviour, and the word 
 " Je-sus " beautifully fills the place. 
 "Rock of Ages, cleft for me." 
 
 Here the poet has called in the title which re- 
 quires four syllables in all, " Rock-of-Ag-es." 
 
 "I come, thou wounded Lamb of God, 
 To wash me in thy cleansing blood." 
 
 Here <'Lamb of God " requires three words of 
 one syllable each, making the title beautifully 
 harmonious. It is interesting to observe how 
 this same wealth of titles finds its expression in 
 such lines as the following: 
 
 "What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus — my Jesus." 
 
 "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove, 
 With all thy quickening powers." 
 
 " Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire." 
 
 "Come, Holy Spirit, come, 
 Send forth from heaven, thy home, 
 Thy cheering ray." 
 
 It is customary for us to expect that every 
 great Christian revival shall be attended with a 
 
THE DIVINE UNFOLDING 157 
 
 revival in singing, and God has made ample pro- 
 vision for the most devout expressions in song 
 through the unfolding of himself in this perfect 
 wealth of titles. 
 
 The title Holy Ghost is used itself over forty 
 times in the Authorized Version of the New 
 Testament. This does not include such titles as 
 "The Spirit of Truth," or "The Spirit of the 
 Highest," which are used quite frequently, especi- 
 ally the former; and this very fact alone should 
 invite Christian people everywhere to study eager- 
 ly what this expression of God's nature means. 
 There was a time in my own life when I fain 
 would have changed his titles and cast out alto- 
 gether the words Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. As 
 discouraged Thomas proposed to place his fin- 
 gers in the very wounds of Christ, so gross was I 
 that the title Spirit or Ghost suggested at once 
 the baser uses rather than the better. But when 
 I so surrendered my all that I might acquaint 
 myself with His gentleness and loveliness, this 
 act became like a microscope over a flower and I 
 saw much wealth of beauty in the title. I no long- 
 er wonder that it abounds in the Scriptures. It 
 shall also be heard on my lips. 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT. 
 
"God does not waste power, nor use the supernatural 
 where the natural suffices. When human hands may as 
 well take away the stone, he does not bid it move with- 
 out hands, or send angels to roll it away. The great 
 Economist of the universe works no needless miracles. 
 He may choose not to bestow the gift of tongues, while 
 he so stimulates philological research as that a hundred 
 languages hitherto without written form have their 
 alphabet and grammar, lexicon and literature, and the 
 word of God is without a miracle both preached and 
 translated in over three hundred vernaculars. In 
 our day, within a space of time in which Paul could 
 scarcely have found his way to strange peoples, our 
 missionaries learn to preach in their tongues, and then 
 teach them to read and write their own language, and 
 present them with the word of God as the first printed 
 book in their own speech." 
 
 Rev. a. T, Pieeson, D.D. 
 
 Ye shall recel/oe the gifts of tlieHoly Ghost. — A cts ii: 38 
 
 "If we did not 'receive the Holy Ghost ' when we 
 believed, and if we have not ' received ' Him since we 
 believed, and are not living now the Spirit-filled life, 
 at whose door, then, does the blame lie?" 
 
 Rev. John MacNeil, B.A. 
 
 " He who wants ore must mine beneath the surface. 
 Life has little purpose and little meaning till the scales 
 have fallen from our eyes. We lead little lives. We 
 are swayed by petty motives. We are controlled by 
 trifling considerations when the infinite and eternal 
 crowd closely upon us. It is all because our eyes are 
 holden that we can not see. Even the Saviour himself 
 walks with us and is unrecognized. Vision is what we 
 need." Rev. Joseph F. Berry, D.D. 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT. 
 
 W/^ are now upon the heights of the super-rea- 
 sonable — the super-reasonable rather than 
 the un-reasonable. Like life itself, we can not ana- 
 lyze it and allot its parts and tabulate its ele- 
 ments. It is super-reasonable. The cold, literal 
 critic may say it is unreasonable, yet he lives. 
 So here the same critic may say that the Holy 
 Spirit dwelling with men is unreasonable. We 
 answer, yes, from your standpoint, unreasonable, 
 but from ours not unrealizeahle. The miraculous 
 help of G-od, a victorious power from without us, is 
 imperatively needed and it is realized, ' ' Eye hath 
 not seen, nor ear heard, but unto us God re- 
 vealed it through the Spirit." 
 
 The Apostle John says that "The Holy Spirit 
 was not yet given for that Christ was not yet 
 glorified." Is not the Holy Spirit God, and has 
 not God always been here? Why divide the sub- 
 ject, f then? Here a great many people appear to 
 have been confused and others discouraged. Fruit- 
 less discussions about the Trinity and about de- 
 grees of grace have discouraged and slain a mul- 
 titude here. 
 
163 OUT OF THE CAIX-LIFE 
 
 May that blessed Spirit now give us the 
 patience and the willingness to learn the teach- 
 ing that we may better understand what is meant 
 by this expression, "He was not yet given," or 
 "He was not yet." Was not the Holy Spirit 
 always in the world? Yes, indeed; in the account 
 of the Creation at the close of the second verse of 
 the first book of the Bible, it is said, " The Spirit 
 of God moved upon the face of the waters." It 
 appears also that a close translation of this 
 second verse in the book of Genesis would read, 
 * ' The Spirit of the Lord brooded tenderly over 
 the face of the waters." (Well may we remember 
 that when the Lord made these oceans and these 
 continents, he did it with a tender touch, and the 
 lilies and the roses bear the marks of the delicacy 
 of a divine movement.) Holy men of old, too, 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 
 The Spirit of the Lord is said to have come upon 
 Sampson, he is said to have come upon Bazaleel 
 and Aholiab. Jesus was conceived of the Holy 
 Spirit. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy 
 Spirit. Of Simeon itis said, the Holy Spirit was 
 upon him and it was revealed unto him by the 
 Holy Spirit that he should not see death until he 
 had seen the Lord's Anointed, and he was led of 
 the Spirit into the temple. Jesus was led of the 
 Spirit into the wilderness, the Holy Spirit de- 
 scended upon him at the baptism. 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 163 
 
 Yes, surely he has always been, as the Father 
 and the Son have always been, but he was not yet 
 given because the time was not yet fulfilled. Let 
 us illustrate. A mother bought a pretty piece of 
 goods and made from it a dress for her daughter, 
 little Mary. She was a girl of seven years. Now, 
 the dress was all finished and placed away in some 
 drawer or closet, where little Mary might not see 
 it. One day her aunt comes to her mother's home 
 for a visit. The mother and the aunty slip quietly 
 away so that Mary does not see them, and 
 there the dress is taken out and shown to the 
 aunty who admires it and delights in the joyful 
 prospect of Mary getting her beautiful Christmas 
 present, the new dress. After a few days have 
 gone by, grandma comes to visit. The little 
 dress is taken out and shown grandma. She 
 admires it and speaks of the pleasure it will give 
 the child when Christmas comes; and later still, 
 little Mary's father, whose occupation compels 
 him to be much from' home, returns for a brief 
 stay with the family. The little dress Is taken 
 out, the father examines it and pronounces it 
 very, very nice. By and by the much-expected 
 Christmas morning has surely at last come to the 
 city. Father and mother are both awakened 
 early, while little Mary comes hurrying over the 
 threshold into their room to find out what her 
 Christmas present shall be. Christmas greetings 
 
164 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 are presented with the morning kisses and all is 
 ready. The mother, taking the little dress in her 
 hands, clothes her little child in it and stands back 
 a piece to see how it looks, while the little girl 
 walks about the room mingling her delight with 
 that of her parents. Christmas morning has come 
 and the present is given, but it was not yet given 
 when the aunty came visiting or when grandma 
 came or even when father came, for Christmas 
 was not yet come. But when the fullness of time 
 had brought around the anniversary of the dear 
 old day, when the child would appreciate the 
 present most and when it was most appropriate 
 that it should be given, then she received it and 
 wore it as her very own. Even little Mary may 
 have seen that piece of cloth when it arrived, but 
 all the answers received to her questions about it 
 were so indefinite that she was but little the wiser 
 concerning it. Now, however, it is hers. 
 
 So the Holy Spirit came out of the bosom of the 
 Godhead in creation but he was not yet given be- 
 cause the time was not yet fulfilled ; he came repeat- 
 edly and was manifest as we have seen, but the 
 time must have its preparations like the bread in 
 its rising. By and by when the stars had given all 
 the light they could, when the moon had shone 
 its fullest, when the sun had risen and had sent 
 its first rays of morning and the high noon of 
 gospel privilege came on, the clock of God's prov- 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 165 
 
 idence struck twelve, the wind blew and the 
 cloven tongues like as of fire sat upon the people 
 and it was day, gospel day, Pentecost Day ; and 
 the night has never followed it. 
 
 Now let us insist upon this. The Holy Spirit is 
 the expression of God especially made for the day 
 in which we are living. Peter does not say that 
 the Pentecost scene is the fulfilling of Joel's proph- 
 ecy. He simply says, ' ' this is that which hath 
 been spoken by the prophet Joel." If you will 
 compare the second chapter of Acts with the 
 second chapter of Joel's prophecy you will 
 see that there remains a wider significance 
 yet to be realized by the children of men in the 
 dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Social irregu- 
 larities are to be brought into order, and the con- 
 dition of the vast multitudes of people is to be 
 marked by a reconstruction rich with greatest 
 grace. The positive need of our receiving him as 
 a gift, so that we shall realize the possibilities of 
 the day of grace in which we live, is so great that 
 we may well tremble with the thought of our 
 daring on the one hand and of our neglect on the 
 other. We need a very pentecost of faith to-day. 
 
 Think of the teaching which Paul gave to new 
 converts from heathenism. And what messages 
 Jesus gave to the multitudes of people who did 
 not seem to possess spiritual insight enough to 
 catch but the slightest influence of his great, di- 
 
166 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 vine meaning. When we think that we are liv- 
 ing in the greatest day of opportunity that the 
 world has ever seen, how it should stir our very 
 souls to a faith which will bring us such a victory 
 as men hitherto have never proven or even imag- 
 ined. No people from the days of Abraham to 
 the days of Simon Peter, or from the days of 
 Simon Peter to the days of the generation just 
 preceding us, has had such an opportunity to know 
 and prove G-od as we have to-day, through this 
 gift, the abiding gift. Jesus said of him, ' ' He shall 
 abide with you forever." The Lord send into the 
 hearts of his people everywhere the prayer of 
 George Whitefield, "Oh, Lord, make me an ex- 
 traordinary Christian." 
 
 God's orders are always specific orders. It 
 will not do for us to simply generalize the teach- 
 ing and say that we have the substance anyway, 
 what more do we need ; for since he has out of his 
 love revealed the particulars to us we are called 
 upon to receive the truth in his own way. A 
 man who has never learned music may sit before 
 a piano and say: The music is in this instru- 
 ment, all you have to do is to touch the keys and 
 bring it out. There are only so many keys any- 
 way and consequently you can only get so much 
 music out of the instrument; so he begins to 
 touch the keys with his untrained fingers, but no 
 music results. He must particularize, learning 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 167 
 
 little by little if he would be a musician, and we 
 must particularize if we would receive this revela- 
 tion of our G-od. There are few errors more fatal 
 than that of religious indolence which refuses to 
 think God's thoughts after him when he tells us 
 to receive the promise of the Father by faith, or 
 when he says ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. It is idle for us to generalize and say, I 
 have given myself to Christ; what more can I do? 
 You can do just as much more as the Lord calls 
 upon you to do; you can do the most rational pos- 
 sible thing, when the gift is offered to you. You 
 can take the gift. There was no generalizing 
 when Ananias said to Saul, ' ' Be filled with the 
 Holy Ghost," or when Paul said to the Ephesians, 
 ''Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye be- 
 lieved." You know that it is not enough for one 
 who would follow Christ to say that he believes in 
 God. He must believe in God as revealed in 
 Jesus, and it is not enough for one who seeks to 
 live a godly life to say that his sins are pardoned 
 through Jesus, for the great gift is his for the ask- 
 ing, even the Holy Spirit. As to the symbol of 
 the Tongue of Fire on the Day of Pentecost, the 
 speaking with tongues and the sound as of the 
 rushing of a mighty wind, we can not add greater 
 light than by quoting from William Arthur's 
 classic book, " The Tongue of Fire." 
 
 * 'Among the permanent benefits resulting from 
 
168 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Pentecost we can not include the visible flame. 
 Of it we never again find any mention in the 
 course of the apostolical history; it appears to 
 stand related to the Christian dispensation as the 
 fires of Sinai did to the Mosaic — the solemn token 
 of supernatural power upon its inaugural day. 
 
 "Neither are we warranted in looking upon 
 the 'gift of tongues' as one of the permanent 
 privileges of the Church. Only thrice, throughout 
 the Acts of the Apostles, do we find any record 
 that it accompanied the first introduction of 
 Christianity to a place; and both these instances 
 are very peculiar. The first was in the house of 
 Cornelius, when Peter, preaching to his Italian 
 auditory, felt some misgiving whether he might 
 not by possibility be doing wrong should he in- 
 clude them within the fold of the Church; but he 
 saw a great change pass upon the men before 
 him, and heard them begin to speak with other 
 tongues, and thus saw that, as to themselves at 
 the first, so to the G-entiles the Lord had now 
 given a Pentecost. The other case is that 
 wherein the disciples at Ephesus, who had been 
 instructed in the baptism of John, but had not so 
 much as 'heard whether there was any Holy 
 Ghost,' received the word at the hands of Paul, 
 and began to speak with other tongues. Paul 
 shows the gift of tongues to be destitute of any 
 power of edification for the Church, and therefore 
 
THE NEEDED OTFT 169 
 
 not to be a gift likely to continue where all were 
 convinced of the truth of Christianity. ' Tongues 
 are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to 
 them that believe not.' The only specific use 
 assigned to the miracle is that it is a sign to them 
 who believe not. In any community, then, in 
 which the whole population had become believers, 
 this sign ceased to be called for. "We are not 
 called upon to say that it will never be restored 
 to the Church, for that is never said in the Word 
 of Grod ; nor should we ridicule or talk disrespect- 
 fully of the faith of any Christian who devoutly 
 expects its restoration. All we say is that we 
 have not Scriptural ground to claim it as one of 
 the permanent gifts of the Spirit; and we may 
 add that if it ever returns to the Church it will 
 be, not a mystification, but a miracle, a real 
 speaking with ' other tongues, ' not a speaking in 
 some unheard-of, unknown tongue." 
 
 No emphasis is placed upon the sound as of the 
 rushing of the wind in the permanent dispensa- 
 tion of the Spirit. But the gift is ours, and his 
 presence is as evident as the expression ' ' receive 
 ye the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Nothing is more apparent to-day among believ- 
 ers than that we are in great need of some kind 
 of a power to pump up the energies of the peo- 
 ple and give us enough real, constant flood of ac- 
 tivity to keep us moving. Formality, coldness 
 
170 OUT OF THE CAIN- LIFE 
 
 and a strange incapacity for gripping spiritual 
 forces, the lack of power to impress humanity 
 with the living truth, of courage to overcome the 
 barriers which stand constructed in the path of 
 the child of the kingdom, these all give evidence 
 of a great need of a divine anointing. We catch 
 hold of truth, we need to have the truth take hold 
 of us. We express ourselves as clinging to Jesus, 
 we need to have the Holy Spirit impart Jesus 
 himself within us. We need life. We know that 
 life as a condition is very hard to describe, but 
 O, how it moves things when we get it. 
 
 Take these words of Christ to which we re- 
 ferred previously, when he said that the man who 
 received the Holy Ghost should have rivers of 
 living water flow out of him There is not a par- 
 ticle of our pump-system in that statement of 
 his. How wearily we make our way in the 
 struggle against sin, lifting a little here and there 
 and then lacking the very ambition to do more, 
 though it lay right at our hand to do it. 
 
 Take our assemblies for Christian testimony. 
 How often a strange slowness seems to call, as if in 
 agony for some kind of an impetus to set things 
 going. The fountains are frozen and the wings 
 are tied. Look at the leader. How he works! 
 It is pump, pump, pump. Here him say, "Now 
 is there not one more who would speak a 
 word for Jesus." Then failing to get a 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 171 
 
 response, "Let us sing again." He calls 
 for a testimony, to be answered perhaps with a 
 very brief expression, uttered in such low tones 
 that only a few can hear it. Yet this is not the 
 core of the difficulty. The meeting, sung to a 
 conclusion rather than admit a failure, is closed, 
 and the tone of the spirit of the affair is expressed 
 in the same wearisome word, pump, pump, pump. 
 The same is often true in church financing. Re- 
 cently I heard'of a pastor whose congregation was 
 much addicted to social amusements and tobacco 
 using, asking for a contribution of two hundred 
 dollars for foreign missions and receiving forty 
 dollars. The Sunday school was appealed to to 
 help in the matter and a competition was inaug- 
 urated. The officers of the Sunday school, other 
 than the teachers, together with each class, en- 
 tered into the competition, and when it had end- 
 ed the officers had succeeded in getting together 
 the most money, hence they were entitled to the 
 prize, and by the time the pastor had gotten a 
 prize such as was at all appropriate for grown 
 people like the officers, almost the total amount 
 of their contribution was exhausted. 
 
 Christian America! According to the Internal 
 Revenue statistics and other reliable sources of 
 information, during the last year spent five hun- 
 dred and fifteen millions of dollars for tobacco and 
 five millions for sending the gospel to the heathen. 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Characterize it by the same word, piunp, pump, 
 pump. 
 
 We cry *' hard times" with the world. Great 
 expenditures for fireworks and gala days go right 
 on — the coronation ot the Russian Czar, Nicholas 
 II., costs a million pounds sterling (not including 
 human lives) on the one hand, and a company of 
 people in one assembly on the American shore of 
 the Atlantic contribute one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars for missions on the other hand, in one day. 
 Then a gentle apology must be made for such 
 open-heartedness and the people must be warned 
 against spasmodic devotion. But to go into the 
 subject of church financing would require a book 
 of itself. Just to touch it can scarcely fail to re- 
 mind the Christian of the all but caustic words 
 of Jesus, "Where is your faith?" 
 
 Our organization is wonderfully complete, our 
 churches are comfortable, our methods of travel are 
 convenient, our homes are beautiful, musical in- 
 struments are plentiful, good books and magazines 
 and papers abound; and the day of greatest oppor- 
 tunity which ever dawned upon mortals is here, yet 
 we lack, sadly lack, that which makes the life an 
 overflow of benevolence, and I fear that we are 
 given to spend much of our time trying to prime 
 the pump. In some parts of this country they 
 very easily do away with that necessity by 
 striking an artesian vein, then the water pumps 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 173 
 
 itself. Let us not do anything else but that 
 one thing which will bring the supply to our 
 needs, let us believe in the Holy Spirit and 
 receive him by faith. Dear Christian, thyself 
 take the gift. 
 
 In the home, in the realm of social customs, in 
 the pulpit and in fact everywhere to-day we are 
 losing power from want of emphasizing that 
 which is of first importance. Doing is not neces- 
 sarily succeeding. Success is not fidelity. On 
 the farm the thing to emphasize during the cloud- 
 burst is not corn planting, and the thing to em- 
 phasize in the autumn is rather the gathering of 
 the fruit than training the vines. G-ymnastics 
 are valuable, but who would think of emphasizing 
 the practice of gymnastics while in the chair of 
 a barber shop? 
 
 Look again at the thirteenth chapter of 
 Corinthians. Over and over and over again, 
 Paul lays emphasis upon the grace of Love. 
 He describes it, he classifies it, he analyzes it, he 
 illustrates it, he commends it, until when you 
 have read the chapter through you say there is 
 one thing to do, "I must receive the grace of 
 love or 'I am nothing.'" John's Gospel repre- 
 sents Jesus as emphasizing Light and Life. Again 
 and again he uses those two vital words. Life, 
 Light; Light, Life. Jesus says that he performed 
 many of his miracles and uttered many of his say- 
 
174 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ings to supply the people's special needs. He did 
 not do or say just because the actions or the 
 words were in truth, but because they were in 
 the truth which needed emphasis. Take the 
 single illustration of Jesus' words just before bid- 
 ding Lazarus come forth into life again. He said: 
 "Father, I thank thee that thou hearest me, 
 * * * but because of the multitude which 
 standeth around I said it that they may believe 
 that thou didst send me." Jesus did not deal 
 with questions of botany or astronomy or geology 
 in his teachings. He emphasized the needed 
 truth. General truths about nature and about 
 man or about God, no matter how often or how 
 well stated, will not bring in the reign of love and 
 the victory over self. The gospel is nut a gospel 
 only. The thrill of joy and faith and hope and 
 love which springs through the very soul of that 
 gospel comes from the heart of the living Jesus. 
 And the people need him, and each other. We 
 do not so need to get a blessing, much less to 
 *'get religion," but we need to get the Holy 
 Spirit, and this will make us serve our fellows. 
 If the pulpit everywhere would truly preach Jesus 
 to the people — not about him, but HIM, the Lord 
 would energize our thoughts and open to us the 
 gospel, until we would be astonished at the possi- 
 bilities of our mission ; and the perplexing ques- 
 tions of science and of society and the language 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 175 
 
 of nature would be caught into the train of this 
 message, as the autumn leaves are behind a swift 
 train of cars. Then, the pirate spirit would be 
 supplanted by the rescue spirit. Why must we 
 have and do, whether righteously or questionably? 
 Why do we establish a lot of other little govern- 
 ments with which to help the Lord maintain his 
 authority and often with the vain plea of helping 
 him support his church ? As the Russians say, 
 *'The better is the worst enemy of the best.'' 
 Ah, God has called us to superiority and we must 
 receive and know him in the most superior ex- 
 pression of himself before we will feel shame at 
 the thought of amusing ourselves to feed the 
 poor, or of our penurious methods of giving and 
 working for the kingdom of heaven. In the mat- 
 ter of offerings the old Jewish law called for the 
 first and the unblemished. Later the standard 
 has been elevated rather than lowered, but we 
 can not reach it unless our souls thrill with the 
 divine presence, which emphasizes the all impor- 
 tant, and generally refines the conduct. 
 
 Yet after all it is not so much the matter of 
 what is done or given as it is that the quality of 
 our choices and the emphasis which bears our 
 faith are inferior or misplaced. No amount of 
 cultivating and planning will give the refined 
 power to our undertakings, but the Holy Spirit 
 will. And it seems to be one of the chosen de- 
 
176 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 vices of the enemy to busy us with a thousand 
 regulations rather than consent that our atten- 
 tion should be given to the one thing needful — 
 the gift of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 You know that the so-called society life is at 
 the opposite pole from the missionary life. Now, 
 the thing to be emphasized in this day of com- 
 forts and opportunities — in this day of Christ, is 
 surely the salvation of the world, and either the 
 missionary is a religious fanatic, or else the so- 
 ciety church member is coldly selfish. The con- 
 trast is too [great. Look at these two classes of 
 people without any prejudice. What would you 
 say of the first class — the missionary. Why, she 
 acts as if some great sacrifice had become the 
 very passion of her life. Now, what would you 
 say of the second class — the society woman ? 
 Why, she acts as if she meant herself to be some- 
 body and have a good time. That kind of lan- 
 guage does not represent Christ. O, let us 
 change the emphasis. Let us either restrict the 
 zeal of the missionary or pray for the baptism of 
 the Holy Spirit upon the home-stayer. 
 
 What would Jesus do ? Children of God, there is 
 a great inheritance in store for us upon this earth. 
 We may not have the strength of body, mind or 
 soul that Paul and other missionaries have had, 
 but there never was a great motive in any of 
 their souls and there never was a grace in any of 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 177 
 
 their characters which you and I may not share 
 through the anointing of the Holy Spirit of the 
 Lord. 
 
 " The Master hath need of the reapers, 
 
 And, idler, he calleth to thee; 
 Come out of the mansion of pleasure, 
 
 Prom the halls where the careless may be. 
 Soon the shadows of eve may be falling 
 
 With the mists, and the dew and rain; 
 O, what are thy joys and thy follies 
 
 To the blight andthe waste of the grain? 
 
 0,|what are thy wants to the summons, 
 And what are thy griefs and thy pain ? 
 
 Here, too, is the very secret of the Christian Re- 
 vival. It is not for us to get up an expression of 
 enthusiasm, or for thaimatter to get up anything 
 else, excepting humanity. It is for us to get 
 down from on high that power of God which will 
 cause us sweetly to keep tally with his wooing 
 grace. Do you not see that no true revival can 
 be realized without the most implicit reliance 
 without the Holy Spirit, for you can not put 
 truth into a man's heart as you would empty a 
 basketful of apples into a barrel. It must rather 
 get there as music does into the heart of one who 
 gives himself to it, awakened to the desire, per- 
 haps, by hearing some great musician. When we 
 truly honor the Holy Spirit, without a shade of 
 clinging to our reputation or comfort or under- 
 standing, even; then he has found the channel 
 
178 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 through which he can work, and just as the water 
 will flow copiously out into the open channel be- 
 fore it, so the blessed Spirit will pour his convict- 
 ing and saving grace through our work, until 
 there shall be great rivers laden with heavenly- 
 provision carried forth to supply the needs of hun- 
 gry humanity. What a holy commerce ! 
 
 Let us hear again those words of Jesus at the 
 last day of the great feast, telling us that the 
 work of the Holy Spirit should make a man like 
 a fountain, out of which flow rivers of living 
 water. It would have been a great saying had he 
 said that the flow should be as the meadow brook. 
 But no, it is rivers; Mississippis, Amazons, 
 Thameses, Niles and Danubes. A man, one man, 
 shall thus be like a vast supply station, shipping 
 the supplies to the ends of the earth. There ap- 
 pears a ship freighted with prayer and money 
 for the heathen in Asia. There appears another 
 freighted with food and clothing for the famine- 
 stricken people of some other country. Here go 
 cargoes of toil and constant fidelity with gifts to 
 schools and orphanages in another region, and 
 here again are gifts to hospitals, and great 
 freights of praise mingling as precious spices 
 with the cargoes going to many ports, and all 
 sailing under the colors of Calvary. Hallellujah! 
 How things will move when the Holy Spirit is 
 truly honored. Then shall we not see the figures 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 179 
 
 for tobacco bury almost too deep for a resurrec- 
 tion the figures for Missions. Then shall the vast, 
 world-wide revival appear, and we shall be one 
 in victory as we are one in the Holy Spirit. That 
 revival will not only be "a wave," it will be a 
 tide. It will not only be individual, it will be 
 mutual. It will not only quicken the intellect, it 
 will work the intellect. It will not only make the 
 soul happy, it will make it sacrificial. It will not 
 only sti?' the feelings, it will churn them. And 
 to that revival the word ^' after'' can never be 
 company. 
 
 Where is the spirit of prophecy ? Not that we 
 require anything approaching the egotism which 
 would cause us to seek to excel our fellows in a sort 
 of religious fortune telling. Prophecy primarily 
 has not so much to do with the future as it has to do 
 with the present. When men required to learn 
 at God's hands the lesson concerning divine wis- 
 dom over-reaching all time, then prophecy espec- 
 ially required the vision of the future, and that 
 very teaching becomes a mighty inspiration to 
 our hopes and beliefs to-day. But the spirit of 
 prophecy will give us insight as well as foresight; 
 by it we shall see the movement of G-od and take 
 hold of the victory brought to view by faith. 
 When Joel said, < ' Your sons and your daughters 
 shall prophesy and your young men shall see 
 visions and your old men shall dream dreams," 
 
180 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 he means that the saying should have a blessed 
 fulfillment. 
 
 Let a man receive the Holy Spirit and he 
 has the insight into G-od's movement; he has 
 the conception of God's care and of God's heart- 
 breakings, and he has the conception of the 
 victory of love over hate, and of good over evil, 
 and he knows it; and seeing how the fingers of 
 God's providence are pointing to duty, he gets his 
 own individual commission and proceeds to fulfill 
 it, conscious that the work is God's own. We 
 need to keep tally with God. We need that com- 
 munion in service which makes the service divine. 
 The prophetic insight is evidently one of the 
 greatest and at the same time one of the most 
 common results of the Holy Spirit's in-dwelling. 
 
 At the salutation of Mary, Elizabeth is filled with 
 the Holy Ghost, and then right promptly she calls 
 Mary "the mother of my Lord." Mary herself 
 has been the recipient of the same blessed spirit 
 and proceeds to answer her in that prophetic 
 poem beginning, "My soul doth magnify the 
 Lord," her insight reaching forth until she dares 
 to announce, ' ' henceforth all generations shall 
 call me blessed," and "he hath put down 
 princes from their thrones." Zacharias, the 
 priest, Elizabeth's husband, being filled with the 
 Holy Spirit, sees in John the prepared way 
 ' * whereby the day-spring from on high hath 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 181 
 
 visited us and men shall serve God without fear. " 
 Simeon coming in the Spirit in the temple, having 
 the Holy Spirit upon him, and it being revealed 
 (mark you) unto him by the Holy Spirit that he 
 should not see death until he had seen the Lord's 
 anointed, sees in Jesus ''a light for the un- 
 veiling of the nations and the glory, ay, 
 the glory of Israel." John filled with the 
 Holy Spirit sees well through Jewish legal- 
 ism and Roman selfism regarding man's 
 relation to man, and recognizing that larger 
 brotherhood of which the angels had sung over 
 Bethlehem, he says, ' ' He that hath two coats let 
 him impart to him that hath none, and he that 
 hath food let him do likewise. Then cometh He 
 mightier than I, He shall baptize you with the 
 Holy Ghost." John saw it. Jesus bade his apos- 
 tles not to be anxious when they were delivered 
 up before governors and kings, for it would be 
 the "Spirit of their Father" who would speak in 
 them. Now note the words of Joel. Peter quotes 
 without any reduction of meaning or cautious 
 comment as if to pare them down, "Your sons 
 and your daughters shall prophesy and your 
 young men shall see visions and your old men 
 shall dream dreams." Paul catches up the same 
 thread again and says, "We know not what to 
 pray for as we ought, but the spirit helpeth our 
 infirmities." Join this to the words of Je^us, 
 
183 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 "Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father, believe 
 that you have received it, and ye shall have it," 
 and behold the prophetic insight or rather that 
 insight which is the very tide in the waters of 
 prophecy is the essence of true prayer. By this 
 very prophetic anointing our experiences are 
 linked, too, with that of Daniel when he said 
 he knew both the dream and the interpreta- 
 tion which the king asked for, and with Paul when 
 he said on the corn-boat in the storm that the 
 passengers were safe. 
 
 Knowing human weaknesses, those of others 
 and our own, we may not be too hasty about de- 
 claring a given conviction or fact, but the very 
 consciousness of it will tone and shape our efforts 
 as the Holy Spirit, its author, quickens our faith : 
 and indirectly, at least, the act will represent the 
 fact or the conviction. "I know" and "lam 
 persuaded" will then be phrases which, like electric 
 wires, convey the light from the dynamo to the 
 lamp, 
 
 I do not think that Joel meant that the young 
 men would lie down to sleep and have brought 
 before their minds pictures of horses and 
 chariots and divided hosts of the enemy; 
 this would have been very instructive -rae 
 day. This kind of vision had proven so. 
 But I think he meant that young men would get 
 the spiritual eye opened until they would sit dowD 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 183 
 
 in their offices or toil on their farms or labor in 
 their shops or ride their bicycles over the streets 
 or preach the gospel, while there should be flood- 
 ing their souls and minds holy conceptions of 
 what men would be like when they became truly 
 Christly men, holy conceptions of the refining and 
 sanctifying of mercantile practices, of chastity 
 and virtue, and of home ; the vision of the doubt- 
 laden man being transformed by the power of 
 God and becoming an example of godliness. Such 
 a vision would come into their minds. They shall 
 look upon strange confusions created by dishon- 
 esty in trade and in courts and pharisaism in 
 churches, and knowing G-od there shall appear 
 before them the coming victory of the kingdom. 
 And when Joel said, "Your old men 
 shall dream dreams," I do not think 
 that he meant that they should go to 
 sleep at night and be disturbed by some dream 
 which in the morning they would try to interpret 
 by some strange rules which nobody knows the 
 reason for accepting, but I think he meant, they 
 shall sit with their thin, cool hands upon the arms 
 of their chairs or walk the streets aided by their 
 canes, or ride in the trains or carriages, while 
 dreams like that of Simeon when he said that 
 <' Christ was for the unveiling of the Gentiles," 
 shall come into their minds. They shall look 
 upon intemperance and say, "Christ shall root 
 
184 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 it out." They shall look upon every false ambi- 
 tion which artful men try to plant in the bosoms 
 of the people of the nations and they shall say, 
 "It shall be rooted out and destroyed." And in 
 their dreams gentleness shall be mightier than 
 the storm, love shall out-do all contention, peace 
 shall prevail over disturbance and death shall be 
 the passage-way to immortal service, in the spirit 
 of Christ. And these old men and those young 
 men shall see light where others shall see dark- 
 ness, and the reign of goodness where others see 
 only the prevalence of the wrong ; they shall see 
 victory where others see defeat, and where others 
 look upon the surface and are frightened with a 
 secret terror, they shall employ those strong rays 
 of holy shining and look through the problem, as 
 very prophets of God. 
 
 Would that all God's people were prophets, 
 keeping tally with the divine movement 
 and sharing in the divine triumph. We are 
 also called to be priests, and if we could 
 be priests, true priests to God as a peo- 
 ple, without the prophetic power, the world 
 would fawn to us everywhere, but when we are 
 prophetic priests bad men will hate our efforts. 
 They know that their badness is doomed, and like 
 the steady aggression of the tides of the sea mak- 
 ing their way to the beach, so must the Chris- 
 tian movement make its way until world-wide 
 
THE NEEDED GIFT 185 
 
 it washes away the woes of the pleading peo- 
 ple greeting it on the shores of time. <«Ye 
 shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD RE' 
 VEALING. 
 
"JWe must forget ourselves and all self-interest, and 
 listen and be attentive to God." Madame Guyon. 
 
 The spirit semrcheth all things, yea the deep things of 
 Ood. — 1 Corinthians, ii: 10. 
 
 " There is one thing that people say very carelessly 
 that always seems to me to be a dreadful thing for a 
 man to say. They say it when they talk about their 
 lives to one another, and think about their lives to 
 themselves, and by and by very often say it upon their 
 death-bed with the last gasp, as though their entrance 
 into the eternal world had brought them no deeper 
 enlightenment. One wonders what is the revelation 
 that comes to them when they stand upon the borders 
 of the other side and are in the full life and eternity of 
 God. The thing men say is, ' I have done the best I 
 can.' It is an awful thing for a man to say. The man 
 never lived, save he who perfected our humanity, who 
 ever did the very best he could. You dishonor your 
 life, you not simply shut your eyes to certain facts, you 
 not simply say an infinitely absurd and foolish thing, 
 but you dishonor your [human life if you say that you 
 have done in any day of your life or in all the days of 
 your life put together the very best that you could, or 
 been the very best man that you could be." 
 
 Phillips Brooks. 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING. 
 
 TIT" HAT the telescope is to the stars, or what the 
 sunlight is to the morning, the Holy Spirit is 
 to man and salvation. Christianity is superior wis- 
 dom. Strange searchings and practices of men 
 and women in the realms of the occult, both 
 prove our thirst for knowledge in such realms 
 and convince the truth-seeker of the importance 
 where we hear so much of mind-reading and hyp- 
 notism and spiritism of learning directly of the 
 Holy Spirit. That we may better learn the way 
 of the Holy Spirit we have classified in this chap- 
 ter some activities relating to his office under 
 the title of the seven-fold revealing, as follows: 
 
 1. The Universal Revelation. 
 
 2. The Scripture Revelation. 
 
 3. The Revelation of self and sin. 
 
 4. The Revelation of salvation. 
 
 5. The Revealing of the direct witness. 
 
 6. The Revelation in the godly life. 
 
 7. Special Revelations to faith. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Universal Revelation. 
 "We should not forget that Christ has been as- 
 serted somewhat to every heart. The Holy Spirit 
 
190 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 has been the silent, universal preacher, while 
 thankless men have been too faithless to rear a 
 Phillip for his messenger, or too slow to send 
 the Phillip who waited for means with which to 
 go. Yet he has kept on convincing. To me this 
 is one of the most restful thoughts which a soul- 
 winner can cherish. Just to think, the Holy 
 Spirit hath spoken to this soul before me. He 
 knows, or may know the truth of what I say, 
 and if I can so impress him (not with my skill 
 or my presence), as that he shall feel the cor- 
 respondence between this impression and that 
 which he has known before, then verily faith may 
 be expected, and the soul shall find the peace of 
 God. And how restful, though by no means 
 slothful we must be, when we just seek to keep 
 tally with God's own work. For he is working 
 wonderfully, even while we sleep. 
 
 John says of Jesus, ' ' There was the true light, 
 even the light which lighteth every man coming 
 into the world." (John i: 9.) Jesus gave the 
 Jews to understand that they could recognize his 
 divinity, but they "had not his word abiding 
 in them." (John v: 38.) So there is a word of 
 God in us as well as in the Book. ' ' It is writ- 
 ten," said he again, <'they shall all be taught of 
 God, every one that heard from the Father and 
 hath learned cometh unto me." (John vi: 45.) 
 Then all are taught, but some do not learn. 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALINO 191 
 
 Again said Jesus : * ' If any man willeth to do his 
 will he shall know of the teaching whether it be 
 of God or whether I speak from myself." (John 
 vii: 17.) Here is the condition of character 
 which learns. Paul, following the very same 
 line of teaching, says that men hold down the 
 truth in unrighteousness, and knowing God they 
 glorify him not as God, and that they even refuse 
 to have God in their knowledge. (Rom. i: 18, 
 21, 28.)* Here we discover the gospel beneath all 
 gospels preached to that silent listener, the 
 human heart. That God who out of his great 
 heart-interest for humanity has been represented 
 in atonement by his Son, we see here represented, 
 revealing needs and revealing the worth of 
 humanity through the Holy Spirit. 
 
 It is his blessed office, also, to give us con- 
 ceptions which are good and great and strong — 
 conceptions of truth which could not otherwise 
 be obtained. In our day we speak of natural 
 religions. Natural religions are not godless 
 religions. All that is good in what may be 
 termed natural religions is the work, and always 
 has been the work, of the Holy Spirit in the heart 
 of universal humanity. The great objection to 
 the natural religions is not on account of what is 
 good in them, but on account of what is bad, or 
 
 ♦Revised version. 
 
192 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 what is left out or wanting. A glass of cold 
 water is good, but a glass of spring water con- 
 taining a dose of arsenic is ruinous. A steam 
 engine may be of great service, but the steam 
 engine without steam is a burden. If men would 
 obey this law within their hearts, how speedily 
 the higher revelation of the Word would be given 
 to them. Natural religion is a spark j revealed 
 religion is a fire. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Scripture Revelation. 
 
 *' As it is written, things which eye saw not 
 and ear heard not, and which entered not into 
 the heart of man, whatsoever things God pre- 
 pared for them that love him. But unto us God 
 revealed them through the Spirit." (R. V.) 
 
 I never could have looked out of the natural 
 eye and found such beauty, the natural ear never 
 could have captured such sweet melodies, the 
 natural heart never could have conceived of any- 
 thing so gracious, so forgiving, so gentle, so 
 blessed. But God hath revealed that to us by his 
 Spirit. 
 
 The chief place of this revelation is in His 
 "Word. It has been the work of the Holy Spirit 
 here to open up the secrets of the divine nature too. 
 One of the sweetest records concerning revival 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 193 
 
 meetings I have heardjin a long time was received 
 a little while ago when a minister wrote me after 
 the meetings in his city, and said, *'I^met an 
 infidel book-seller in our city, and he told me 
 to-day that there had been a marvellous increase 
 in the sale of Bibles since the revival. " Young 
 people may well ponder the words of John Rus- 
 kin, ' ' My mother forced me by steady, daily toil 
 to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart, as 
 well as to read every syllable through, aloud, 
 hard names and all, from G-enesis to Apocalypse, 
 about once a year, and to that discipline — patient, 
 accurate and resolute — I owe, not only a knowl- 
 edge of the book, which I find occasionally ser- 
 viceable, but much of my general power of taking 
 pains, and the best part of my taste in litera- 
 ture." 
 
 This of itself would be much, but it is our 
 privilege to trace the very thoughts of God in 
 this Book, as if we could hear Him speak. And 
 that blessed spirit who so thoroughly searches 
 us has here given us a description of his own 
 gentle character. Studying the Bible is not like 
 reading or studying a text book. When we 
 study it with true spiritual insight we get into 
 the stream of the divine method and are carried 
 by its current in his own direction. Our course 
 is like that of the swimmer rather than that 
 of the diver. 
 
194 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 My friend, let me ask you some very close 
 questions about this matter. Are you a 
 student of the Bible ? Do you give the Bible 
 genuine heart study ? Do you find your- 
 self saying as you read it, this Book knows me ? 
 Do you seek to follow the stream of teaching, 
 placing your soul into its current ? Do you com- 
 mit Scripture to memory ? Have you the habit 
 of remembering promises in times of trial ? Are 
 the promises of God yea and amen to you ? It is 
 perfectly surprising how vast the need of a revival 
 in the study of God's Word has become in these 
 days of printing presses when cheap, durable, 
 beautiful Bibles are so easily procured. It is not 
 a most extraordinary thing to hear men in 
 intelligent communities arising in testimony 
 meetings and quoting from the hymn book, when 
 Scripture promises are asked for; and as far as I 
 can observe the younger people do not appear to 
 excel those of more advanced years in this re- 
 spect. We may not expect that our feet will 
 more accurately find the path of life unless we 
 look truly to the way marked out for us. 
 
 It is rather startling to hear from a manager of 
 a large cathedral window manufacturer in the 
 United States that Bible scenes are not being 
 called for as they once were in cathedral windows, 
 because the windows require a knowledge of the 
 design in order to appreciation, and exact Bible 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 193 
 
 « 
 
 knowledge has so fallen off that Bible scenes are 
 not called for. It would be more startling were 
 the evangelical churches using great quantities 
 of such windows. It is suggestive enough any-^ 
 way. My friend, let us go through the mere 
 wording of the Book, beyond the mere accurate 
 knowledge of what the Book says, and breathe the 
 very life of God into our souls as we feed upon 
 His Word. 
 
 Andrew Murray lays great and effective stress 
 upon Jesus' words, "Have faith in God." He 
 says, "Every special exhibition of the power of 
 faith to the saints of old was the fruit of a special 
 revelation of God." My mother's word is very 
 dear to me but my mother herself is dearer to me 
 than anything she ever said. The Holy Spirit 
 brings to our spiritual sensibilities the Divine 
 Person so that we may see God and live, hear God 
 and obey, feel God and conquer. The Book is his 
 and he asserts the Book, but O, how much more 
 is he than the Book. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Revealing of Self and Sin. 
 
 We can not too positively emphasize the reveal- 
 ing of our own natures to us by the Holy Spirit. 
 Lightly answering questions of deep moment ta 
 
196 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 the soul betrays an absence of knowledge con- 
 cerning one's self, as well as concerning G-od. We 
 need a revealing of ourselves to ourselves. We 
 become affected with a moral listlessness, hence 
 Jesus calls upon us with such words as these, 
 ' 'He that hath ears to hear let him hear, " ' < Let 
 these things sink down into your ears." The 
 Holy Spirit may be considered as unceasingly ac- 
 tive in executing the great plan of salvation 
 among men, speaking through the ministries of 
 nature, of his Word, and of the great variety of 
 providences both trying and encouraging. 
 
 Strides of invention can but faintly represent 
 the rapid uncovering of one' s own nature to the 
 willing soul by the Spirit. Depths of feeling and 
 of motive which have never before been dreamed 
 of come to light when his light searches us. We 
 would be confused and startled until all trust 
 would be banished, and fear would hold the citadel 
 of the being did he not himself hold us while 
 searching us. Under this condition it is blessed 
 to have the consciousness that the Holy One is 
 searching us, for we know that if anything were 
 found commendable he would give it fullest credit 
 and whatever appears condemnable, his mercy 
 is sufficient and free to provide deliverance from 
 it. So through our tears mercy's light is stream- 
 ing. 
 
 Jesus, referring to this phase of his work. 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 197 
 
 said, "When he the Spirit of Truth is come he 
 shall convince the world of sin because they be- 
 lieve not on me." A supreme willingness to 
 know the truth will speedily bring this convic- 
 tion, but the truth itself can not produce it. It 
 would appear that truth enough has been told 
 and heard to save ten thousand worlds like this, 
 but truth of itself has no guarantee of reception 
 by a race of beings who are rebellious in heart. 
 It is altogether probable that the devil knows 
 more truth than any of us. And this very fact con- 
 cerning the impotency of truth alone may ex- 
 plain why so much good, wholesome truth is told 
 from the pulpit and in Sunday schools and prayer 
 meetings, the home, etc., with so little positive 
 good effect following it. How many Christian 
 workers make it their very hobby, as they say, 
 to tell the truth and leave the consequences with 
 God, forgetting that they are to be representa- 
 tives of living power in the truth rising above the 
 letter, into -the spirit which giveth life. And 
 the temptation here is very evident to produce 
 steady and well finished arguments and hurl them 
 against the enemy during the day's battle, to re- 
 turn to the broken rest of the night disappointed 
 and discouraged that such an effort did not give 
 evidence of rich returns, forgetting that God is 
 not seeking so much the golden vessel or the 
 scholarly truth as the truth which he can wield 
 
198 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 for immediate purposes of mercy. How often 
 the consecrated toiler will find the Lord using 
 that upon which he reckoned nothing, while that 
 which he thought his choicest effort seems to 
 have fallen into disuse. God chooses the weak 
 things. 
 
 This lack of honoring the Holy Spirit in teach- 
 ing is without doubt the greatest cause of the 
 absence of deep and positive conviction of sin 
 and a very thorough turning from it to righteous- 
 ness in so many quarters to-day We may have 
 accomplished much more in producing intellect 
 than our fathers and mothers did, but no amount 
 of intellect producing will make a proper substi- 
 tute for a broken heart. The soul can not find 
 room for great and deep gratitude or for that 
 mellowness of love which is like a superior tone 
 to a singer, without having the deeps of the 
 nature broken up under the conviction of sin. 
 
 We may conclude pretty readily what the Holy 
 Spirit's conviction would be like. If the Holy 
 Spirit wrought the penitence recorded in the 
 51st Psalm, away back in the Jewish dispensa- 
 tion, then the conviction of sin as expressed in 
 that Psalm ought at least to be matched by the 
 convictions in this Gospel day. If the Psalmist 
 cries, '' Have mercy upon me, O God," then noth- 
 ing less should be the penitent's cry to-day. If 
 he says, < ' Hide thy face from my sins and blot 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 199 
 
 out all mine iniquities," surely the conviction 
 should not be less deep to-day. If he says, 
 *' Cast me not away from thy presence, " surely 
 the cry should be no less intense to-day. But one 
 must calmly read the whole Psalm to get into its 
 sweep. 
 
 The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and 
 when he begins to assert what it is to be 
 righteous, until the conscience realizes it, the 
 awful contrast between the soul and righteous- 
 ness must appear, the wrong done against our 
 God and the wrong done against our fellows be- 
 comes evident and under this conviction the heart 
 breaks. Then like the broken and harvestless 
 soil it receives the seed of truth deep into itself. 
 
 Do not allow yourself to fall into the conviction 
 that your great need is to join the church or to 
 leave off bad habits. You may well need the fel- 
 lowship of God's people and you may well leave 
 off all evil practices, but the great need is to have 
 your needs revealed by the Hoiy Spirit and come 
 right out to meet your God, whom you must meet 
 some day and who would meet you in boundless 
 mercy now. Our religious dangers are too im- 
 minent to permit of any "septic" treatment. 
 Hearken! God will speak to you if you will. 
 
200 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Revelation of Salvation. 
 
 Having thus come to deal not primarily with 
 the church, not with the sacraments, not 
 with opinions, but directly and definitely 
 with our God, shall not our cry be heard 
 and answered, shall not the great Physician 
 pronounce a cure, shall not the great Lib- 
 erator open the prison doors and the great 
 Regenerator give us a new heart? Yes, truly. 
 Miracles there have been in all climates and all 
 lands, but this miracle of grace will be in your 
 heart And God who created you shall create 
 you anew, the motive shall be fixed upon him. 
 You shall have already had a knowledge of him 
 present where you are, but that knowledge made 
 you sad, for you were condemned. Now he has 
 taken away your condemnation, he has done it ; it 
 is not merely that your resolutions are stronger 
 and your purposes higher, it is that God himself 
 by the Holy Spirit hath done this work for you 
 and in you. A voice from without us comes to 
 whisper our need and a power from without us 
 comes to deliver us from the guilt of sin and im- 
 part to us a new bent, a new heart, a new life, 
 whether its coming be with calm and quiet step 
 or amid crying and anguish, it comes to make us 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 201 
 
 new. In the courtroom of the divine we are 
 pronounced pardoned, and more than this the 
 self-life has been subdued to the life which Christ 
 has brought us. 
 
 A young man who was very happy after his 
 conversion was telling me of his rapture one day. 
 He had told me when a penitent that he had been 
 addicted to some base secret sins and, being con- 
 cerned that he might be sure of his deliverance, I 
 said to him, ' ' Well, I am so glad to hear what 
 the Lord has done for you. Now I hope you have 
 conquered those secret habits you told me about." 
 *'Yes, indeed," said he, "I am saved above 
 those.'' Gradual or instantaneous, it is divine. In 
 the heart of the refined or of the brutal it is 
 divine, in childhood or old age, in the dying or 
 the healthful, it is the work of the Holy Spirit. 
 And it is not only an exalted work he does. It 
 is an exalting work — <' saved above that." 
 
 V. 
 
 The Revealing of the Direct Witness. 
 
 He will tell you that he hath pardoned you and 
 received you into his own family. Not only must 
 a power from without us enter in to save us but 
 a voice from without must tell us that we are 
 adopted into the family of God, having been freely 
 forgiven. The same voice which tells me I am a 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN- LIFE 
 
 sinner must tell me I am forgiven. The witness 
 of the Holy Spirit to our salvation should surely 
 be as distinct as his conviction of our guilt. 
 
 1. He can tell us. He has made man capable 
 of telling truth to his fellows, of relying so far 
 upon what he tells that millions of dollars are in- 
 volved in business transactions, and the life is 
 jeopardized in surgical operations, and all upon the 
 basis that the main statements concerning either 
 the one or the other were understood. If God 
 has so given us the power to communicate with 
 each other, can he himself not whisper his wit- 
 ness in our souls ? 
 
 2. We have the evidence of His Word. He says 
 that if I forsake sin and return unto him he will 
 abundantly pardon. Humbly asking him to 
 search me and show me that I do forsake sin and 
 come unto him, it is my privilege to claim that 
 promise and reckon him as good as his word; an- 
 swering every suggestion of the enemy with, 
 "He said it." 
 
 3. We have the evidence of the new life. 
 That new life is within us and we know. We 
 are often even sweetly surprised to notice its as- 
 sertion when we were not at the time distinctly 
 conscious of it. There it was like a magnet holding 
 us to the right. The swearer says, ''Why, I do 
 not swear any more ; I do not want to swear." 
 The thief toils gladly to pay back what he stole, 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 203 
 
 adding a bonus to it, so convinced is he of the 
 worth of this new treasure. 
 
 4. We have the distinct witness of the Holy 
 Spirit with our spirits that we are the children of 
 God. Of course we do not mean by this that a 
 voice is heard through the outward ear proclaim- 
 ing the great fact, but a sure sweet witnessing 
 — ''softer than silence," is heard in the soul and 
 we know it to be the divine voice. The natural 
 man will not understand this. But he may if he 
 will give himself to it for ' ' The Spirit himself 
 beareth witness with our spirits." Dear reader, 
 have you long sought this in the belief that some 
 distinct experience should be yours, yet you had 
 never gained it ? Let me urge you to remember 
 that you are to hearken unto God. Hearken, 
 hearken. Let your soul hearken. Be not impa- 
 tient, you shall know his voice. The fault can not 
 be in his voice, it is in your hearing. But be 
 sure that you believe on Jesus with all your 
 heart, wanting to be his own child more than you 
 want anything or all things else. Be as deeply 
 eager for this as for food when hungry or drink 
 when thirsty, then quietly cease trying and be- 
 lieve in his goodness, great enough to pronounce 
 you his. Your listening soul shall say, God hath 
 spoken. It is done. Israel begged at the foot of 
 Sinai not to hear his voice, but you having for- 
 
204 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 saken all sin, may well say with the rapture of 
 faith, ' ' Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Revelation in the G-odly Life. 
 
 Adopted child of G-od, the treasures of all wealth 
 for two worlds have been opened unto you; be- 
 gin to take inventories quickly, and begin to lay 
 claim to your vast possessions, for in your fa- 
 ther's household all this which hath been opened 
 for you, and in you, and by you, is but the initial 
 work of the Holy One. That which has been 
 done by you, did I say ? Yes, for even your re- 
 pentence as we have before seen may have saved 
 another. 
 
 Now what claims of faith are not only freely 
 granted, but urged by the same blessed Spirit 
 upon your heart's reception. You are to expect 
 eternal glory. A million years to come you are 
 to be a pure, well-informed, exultant minister of 
 the King of Kings, sharing the meaning of Cal- 
 vary with the Son of G-od, free from sin and 
 death, forever to associate with holy and glori- 
 fied beings. But this is not all, I had almost said 
 this were little. It is true that this could not be 
 if it were sought for merely as a possession or an 
 attainment. You are called to holiness. The 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 205 
 
 subdued self-life is to be rooted out and abandoned 
 and your soul is to be the channel through which 
 the very Spirit of Christ the Saviour is to be 
 poured for the cleansing and refreshing of your 
 fellow men. Did you receive the Holy Ghost 
 when you believed? Did you receive this gift 
 by faith? Now, I dare not forbear to ask you 
 this question. You may make the mistake which 
 I made for years, and answer with some general 
 assertions about being saved. May the gentle- 
 ness of our God lead you in a better way. Do 
 not bother about opinions and discussions until 
 you are confused. Let God himself anoint you. 
 His deeper revealing is followed with his mightier 
 power. His Calvary is succeeded by his Pente* 
 cost. 
 
 There is a further revealing of the results of 
 his great work within us. It is effected upon our 
 characters, and will be more apparent to others 
 than to ourselves; these results are called his 
 fruits. When Christ is the vine and we are the 
 branches, what beauty must adorn the life. 
 Behold the luscious fruit which garnishes this 
 kind of life. Now, the fruit of the Spirit is love, 
 joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 fidelity, meekness, self-control. And this fruit 
 grows upon this kind of a tree. These graces 
 work out of this kind of a life as naturally as apples 
 
206 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 grow on an apple tree, while the blessed Spirit 
 changes the arctic into the tropic life. 
 
 Years ago, as a young preacher in a country- 
 village, I used to receive many gentle courtesies 
 in the homes of godly people. As I count them 
 over in memory I think that no man in the world 
 owes so much to the kind and forbearing people 
 of God as the young minister. As with many of 
 my brethren, a few of these homes used to be 
 called "my home." One of these was with Mr. 
 and Mrs. B. This couple had a reputation for 
 unusual cheerfulness and general kindness. One 
 day I drove down the street, passing the front 
 window of their home to the gate leading up to 
 the drive-house. As I passed the home I saw in 
 the window a large oleander, literally loaded with 
 blossoms. Hurrying from my buggy and rap- 
 ping at the door, I was soon greeted by Mrs. B. 
 When I said, " Where did you get that oleander?" 
 she laughed, and interjected many questions 
 about my health, and the meetings, and the work 
 in general, and laughed again. Then she invited 
 me into the parlor where the oleander was, to 
 take a good look at it, and, as she naively said, 
 to smell of the blossoms. Crossing the threshold, 
 I began to express my delight, when Mrs. B. 
 said, "Smell it, smell it." Drawing near to the 
 plant, I took one of the blossoms by the stem 
 between my fingers, to draw it up to my face so 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 207 
 
 that I might catch a little of its sweetness, when 
 behold you, I found that it was made of tissue 
 paper! Imagine my surprise. The plot had suc- 
 ceeded. Mr. and Mrs. B. enjoyed "the sell," 
 rather than < ' the smell, ' ' and referred to it with 
 great cheer for many days. 
 
 Now, I fear this is what a great many Christian 
 people are doing; they are trying to tie on graces. 
 Here is a quick-tempered person who says, ' ' Now, 
 I will be kind after this." Here is a cheerless 
 nature and he says, ' ' Henceforth I am going to 
 be cheerful; " here is a hopeless soul and he says, 
 "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and 
 it is always darkest before dawn, so I will cheer 
 myself up and be hopeful." Now, my friends, 
 you can not do it. And for two reasons. First, 
 this being kinder, is not Christian love, this be- 
 ing more cheerful is not Christian joy, and this 
 quoting of proverbs which any heathen could 
 quote is not Christian hope. And in the second 
 place we can not do these very things we have re- 
 solved. We can not 
 
 " Fold away our fears, 
 
 And put by our foolish tears, 
 And through all the coming years 
 Just be glad." 
 
 But get God's life within you, be separate unto 
 God, planted in the new soil, step over into the 
 
208 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 summer life, live on the south side of opportunity 
 where the warm showers fall and the fruit of the 
 spirit will appear in your lives as naturally as the 
 fruit on the trees. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Special Revelations to Faith. 
 Conversion is the June-day of character. The 
 wheat is in "the milk." Now, it should con- 
 stantly grow and mature until hard and golden. 
 But there should be special days when the heavy 
 wheat heads bend lowly under the warm and 
 copious shower, days also when they lift their 
 foody weight jeweled with dew-drops straight up 
 to the beaming sun, like victorious rescuers sight- 
 ing their home city. And there should come, 
 too, days of speedy ripening when the children 
 note the changes on their way home from the 
 country school and call out to their father that the 
 field over the hill is almost ripe — so changed in a 
 day. Such noted changes in character should 
 mark the time between the transforming June 
 day, when straw is no longer only straw, but 
 wheat has appeared, though in embryo; and those 
 harvest days when the sheaves lean into each 
 other's arms as the husbandman approaches with 
 his wagon. O, blessed life I 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 209 
 
 And now what riches are ours in the treasury 
 of prayer. Why the Lord should have called us 
 into this privilege of holy consultation with him- 
 self we can not tell, excepting that he loves us so. 
 You ask for pardon and get it, you ask for a new 
 heart and a place in the Father's family and get 
 it, you have taken many promises from his Word 
 and cashed them at the wicket of prayer. Now, 
 the Holy Spirit is both the writer of the check 
 and cashier in God's great treasury. He will tell 
 you the amount to write on the different checks. 
 He will tell you whether Jesus' name can go on a 
 check of such and such an amount for you or not, 
 and having given you the check written out and 
 the endorsement of Jesus, nothing in earth or 
 hell can defeat your petition. 
 
 '< Whatsoever ye shall ask in my 7iame, that 
 will I do. If ye shall ask me anything in my 
 name, that will I do. That whatsoever ye shall 
 ask the Father in my name, He may give it you. 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you if ye shall ask any- 
 thing of the Father, He will give it you in my 
 name. Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my 
 name; ask and ye shall receive. In that day ye 
 shall ask in my name."" John xiv: 13, 14, xv: 
 16, xvi: 23, 24, 26. To ask in the name of Jesus 
 is to truly represent Jesus. If an attorney does 
 anything in the name of a business firm he must 
 represent the thought and the business plan of 
 
210 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 the firm he represents. He must be as nearly as 
 possible an endorsement of all the principles of 
 the firm which relate to the undertaking com- 
 mitted to him. Upon the guarantee of good faith 
 he is trusted with his commission. So when the 
 Holy Spirit has slain our self -life until it is all 
 our passion to carry out the programme of Jesus 
 and represent his principles at any cost, he will 
 surprise us with new checks, which he will write for 
 us day by day, and we shall return after the day 
 is spent, filled with holy joy as we recount how he 
 has led us to ask and receive his special gifts, 
 thus declaring that our fellowship with him is 
 truly established. 
 
 Evidently this is the place where William Tay- 
 lor stood when they asked him to pray for rain, 
 and he replied that ''He would suggest it to the 
 Father," and where George Miiller stood when 
 he said, "To-day I have had it very much laid on 
 my heart, no longer merely to thi9ik about the 
 establishment of an Orphan Home, but actually 
 to set about it, and I have been very much in 
 prayer respecting it, in order to ascertain the 
 Lord's mind. May God make it plain." God did 
 make it plain, and the Bristol Home costing 
 seventy-five thousand dollars and accommodating 
 three hundred children was opened nearly forty 
 years ago. This, too, was the place where he 
 stood when he wrote in his diary December 26, 
 
THE SEVEN-FOLD REVEALING 211 
 
 1850: *' I desire to be allowed to provide scrip- 
 tural instruction for a thousand orphans instead 
 of doing so for three hundred. I desire that it 
 may be yet more abundantly manifest that God 
 is still the Hearer and Answerer of prayer, and 
 that he is the living God now as he ever was and 
 ever will be, when he shall simply, in answer to 
 prayer, have condescended to provide me with a 
 house for seven hundred orphans and with means 
 to support them. This last consideration is the 
 most important point in my mind. The Lord's 
 honor is the principal point with me in this whole 
 matter; and just because this is the case, if He 
 would be more glorified by my not going forward 
 in this business, I should by His grace be perfectly 
 content to give up all thoughts about another 
 Orphanage House. Surely, in such a state of 
 mind, obtained by the Holy Spirit, thou, O my 
 Heavenly Father, loilt not suffer thy child to be 
 mistaken, much less deluded. By the help of God 
 I shall continue further, day by day, to wait upon 
 Him in prayer, concerning this thing, till He shall 
 bid me act." To-day George Miiller, the aged, 
 tells to the glory of the Father how upwards of 
 three millions of dollars have been passed through 
 his hands in answer to prayer, and without solic- 
 iting from man for the support of orphans ; and 
 about two millions more for charities and missions 
 and other means of help to humanity. 
 
213 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Dear child of Glod, the Holy Spirit invites us to 
 prove what great things He will do for us and 
 through us for others. Do not try to be a wonder- 
 worker and thus give the self -life advantage, but 
 just seek His will and you shall prove the wealth of 
 the prayer-privilege. Study how Jesus went 
 alone to pray before and after some special event. 
 Note how obedient He is to the Father's will and 
 come boldly unto the throne in His name. 
 
 2. He will lead us. ' ' As many as are led by 
 the Spirit of G-od they are the Sons of God." If 
 you or I ought to be in China then there is 
 a vacant place in China which no one else can fill. 
 If you or I ought to be hidden away like the tim- 
 bers under the floor, then there is a weakness in 
 the floor which no one else can strengthen but you 
 or me. Rush not hastily to human advisers. 
 Hearken, the Holy Spirit will whisper to you and 
 his whispering in your heart will accord with his 
 whispering in his own Word. 
 
 Let us, as Jeremy Taylor says, ' ' Practice the 
 presence of God truly." 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERT- 
 ING JESUS. 
 
"Love is the only remedy. Trustfulness and good 
 will are the only irresistible weapons. God himself 
 tames and saves us by making his sun to shine upon the 
 evil and upon the good, and by sending the rain upon 
 the just and the unjust. Let us place ourselves at the 
 divine standpoint. Let us also be ' well pleased ' with 
 all men, as capable of redemption and salvation and 
 Christlikeness. Let us approach them hopefully, trust- 
 fully, tenderly. Let the carol of the Nativity echo in 
 our souls, in our words, and in our deeds." 
 
 Hugh Peice Hughes. 
 
 "Bui when the comforter is come whom, 1 will send 
 imto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth which 
 proceedeth from the Father, he shall hear witness of me. 
 
 He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall 
 declare it unto you.'' — John xv:26; xvi:14. (R.V.) 
 
 "We speak about social righteousness, but for each 
 person a beginning is found in personal salvation. It is 
 safe to give this advice: Bring yourself into right rela- 
 tions with God; that is the beginning of all things. 
 Through this right relationship with God seek to enter 
 into right relations with your fellows. Humanitarian- 
 ism by itself — that is to say, humanitarianism which 
 does not rest back upon God — is as unstable as the 
 sands.' Peof. Richaed T. Ely 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS. 
 
 \ IT" HEN the disciples were journeying toward 
 ^ ^ Emmaus and Christ met them as a stranger, 
 it was not because his own essential presence was 
 not there that he appeared as a stranger, but it 
 was because their eyes were not opened. So it is 
 said, ' ' Their eyes were holden that they should 
 not know him." Later it is said, "Their eyes 
 were opened and they knew him." That 
 same Spirit will open our eyes to-day to know 
 Jesus! Many of us covet an hour when we 
 might look upon him in some physical form, 
 and we think that that would be one of the 
 chiefest, richest hours we could know, at least 
 this side of death. Just to look upon him for an 
 hour, or to touch a physical hand moved by his 
 own spirit, dwelling in the body which wielded 
 the hand. But to you and me is positively grant- 
 ed a privilege of realization and understanding of 
 Jesus, exceedingly superior to anything like that. 
 Christ has never been so gloriously asserted as he 
 has been since his ascension, by the Holy Spirit to 
 the souls of men and women, brought home by the 
 Divine Illuminator and Teacher. No wonder that 
 
216 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Luke calls the Holy Ghost "The Spirit of Jesus." 
 Acts xvi: 7, etc. 
 
 If you were to talk to me about the habits of 
 the birds of paradise, I could not converse intelli- 
 gently with you. I do not know much about 
 them, do not know what kind of food they 
 prefer or the kind of nests they build. I have 
 only seen some of them. You might pro- 
 ceed with your descriptions and I should sit still 
 and receive the instruction, but I could not intel- 
 ligently answer you in return. There would be 
 no reciprocity in the conversation; you would be 
 the teacher and I would be the pupil — well enough 
 for a beginning only. 
 
 And is not this often just the way it is with 
 our relation to Christ ? We hear of his wonder- 
 ful mission and we are greatly interested in his 
 wonderful sayings and in his death and resurrec- 
 tion; but we are called to have fellowship with 
 him, we are called to have Christly motives mov- 
 ing our motives, so that instead of his atonement 
 being a distant event, our hearts have the aton- 
 ing love in them, and instead of our hearing 
 about it with a distant kind of admiration, Christ 
 liveth in us. Let me again impress upon your 
 attention the value of Christ not remaining lo- 
 cally in the flesh in this world, having one place 
 to stay, one country to dwell in, but that, having 
 gotten through with the local expression by 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 217 
 
 which the dullness of human vision was cleared, 
 he has gone into the invisible expression of him- 
 self, that he may be revealed to every heart and 
 incarnated in every life. Christ in you, the mys- 
 tery hid from the ages ; ^ ' Christ in you, the hope 
 of glory." 
 
 How rapidly we may learn if the teacher dwells 
 with us day and night and is an infallible teacher. 
 If the Holy Ghost is to manifest the Christ unto 
 our souls' vision, the manifestation must be very 
 distinct and unmistakable. O, to look upon him 
 with the eyes of the soul! O, to see him and 
 know he is here ! O, to realize his heart throb 
 against our hearts, and to truly say, ' ' This is 
 Jesus." It is the Holy Spirit's office thus to re- 
 veal him to us. Did I say to us ? This is not 
 enough. It is the Holy Spirit's office to reveal 
 Jesus in us. Paul says it pleased G-od to reveal 
 his son in him, and he goes on to tell how, though 
 he was as one born out of due time, yet he had 
 seen Christ, he had him revealed in him. That 
 heart of Paul which had been so murderous, self- 
 ish and Cain-like, Christ was verily revealed 
 within it. Hence his missionary zeal. And yet 
 that word " zeal " is a very limp word when ap- 
 plied to Paul. It was a missionary Christ-i-za- 
 tion. He simply got the world on his soul, be- 
 cause the Christ, the world's Redeemer, was re- 
 vealed in his soul. He did not look off upon the 
 
218 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 distant Christ, but to the Christ within him. 
 Such a realization of Jesus was well illustrated by 
 a young man in the South whose former life had 
 been wayward. Some time after his conversion 
 he came to a trying hour of darkness, and upon 
 telling of the trial he said, ' ' I looked deep into 
 my consciousness and I found the same Jesus still 
 there, so I took heart again." This young man's 
 faith had evidently been based upon the true teach- 
 ing that Christ comes into the life. The Holy 
 Spirit of Pentecost had made the realization act- 
 ual, definite and powerful. 
 
 Speaking of the day when those men took their 
 journey to Emmaus, and said, "Did not our hearts 
 burn within us, while he talked with us by the 
 way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures." 
 
 A little boy committing that verse to memory 
 one day recited it this way : ' ' Did not our hearts 
 burn within us, while he talked with us by the 
 way, and while he opened us to the Scriptures," 
 instead of ' ' While he opened to us the Scriptures. " 
 His father said, " No, my boy, that is not right," 
 and he tried it again, stumbling into it the same 
 way. Next evening the father was reading his 
 Bible at this very place and as he read on he 
 noticed the forty-fifth verse of that last chapter of 
 Luke, " Then opened he their understandings that 
 they might understand the Scriptures," and he 
 said, "It is right; he opens the Scriptures unto 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 219 
 
 US, and he opens us unto the Scriptures." A 
 great many people have the former who have not 
 received the emphasis of the latter. Bengel's 
 motto was, "Apply thyself wholly to the Scrip- 
 tures and apply the Scriptures wholly to thyself " 
 — true reciprocity. 
 
 But how often the character of Jesus is a 
 great historical character looked upon with admi- 
 ration. We love to hear him sung about, we love 
 to hear his name taken reverently upon human 
 lips, and we say 
 
 "Sweetest note in seraph song, 
 Sweetest name on mortal tongue." 
 
 But it is another thing to have the soul get the 
 life of the atonement right into it, until we are 
 the very lungs and Christ, the very breath, 
 until we are the very veins and Christ the very 
 blood, the life, the tone of our beings. May the 
 Holy Grhost bring Jesus near. May he 
 bring Jesus in us. May he reveal him soon in 
 us. 
 
 The old self-life is so alive, so quick, so vigor- 
 ous, and by common standards would be called so 
 healthy, so robust, so sturdy! May the Holy 
 Spirit impart the receiving faith to us this hour. 
 
 Dear re ader, the Christian life is not the apply- 
 ing of the teachings of Christ or even the applying 
 of the principles of Christ to our lives. It is not an 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 application ; it is a realization. ' ' He that hath the 
 Son hath Life." The word here translated life is 
 "^0€," meaning the life which is peculiar to God, 
 or God-life.* The Christian life then is a new life. 
 Instead of the applying of the principles of Christ, 
 it is through them, the "Christ in you." For 
 this direct realization of himself, he has provided 
 abundantly in the work of the Holy Spirit. Hear 
 him say, ' ' But when the Comforter is come, whom 
 I will send unto you from the Father, even the 
 spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, 
 he shall testify of me." John xv: 26. 
 
 He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of 
 mine, and shall show it unto you. John xvi: 14. 
 
 Select from those verses these words, Jesus' 
 own words: "He shall testify of me, he shall 
 glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall 
 show it unto you." What great words; SHOW, 
 TESTIFY, GLORIFY. 
 
 We can imagine him saying, twenty centuries 
 hence there will be companies of people gathered 
 together, and they will be looking back over the 
 years to Palestine, counting my footsteps, as I 
 trod up and down through the cities and villages 
 and across the valleys. They will read my words, 
 and delight to know how I came forth from the 
 Father to save the world ; but they will rather be 
 looking back over the centuries and they will have 
 a dim realization of my presence, my life, my 
 
 *So used throughout the New Testament, 175 times at least. 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 221 
 
 vigor among them ; they will be talking very much 
 of the cross, but they will be prone to forget that 
 I am alive forever more. I will not belittle the 
 cross or the atoning work I am to do, but the Holy 
 Spirit will come and assert me, show me, declare 
 me, glorify me. Men shall know me without the 
 fleshly outfit, which I now carry as my body. 
 They shall see me and hear me and they shall 
 live, yet not they, I shall live in them. 
 
 Is it because we fear we may belittle the cross 
 of Christ that men so often refer to the days when 
 He was here? As if He had come and gone. 
 Now it was necessary for Him to emphasize what 
 should occur, after His physical form would dis- 
 appear, hence He told the disciples that He would 
 return unto the Father and repeated the same 
 truth again and again. It was equally necessary 
 that the office of the intercessor should be clearly 
 assumed by Him, for especially the Jewish mind 
 demanded it after fifteen centuries of training 
 under that system of religion. But He just as 
 plainly teaches His living, abiding presence with 
 us, as he does His going unto the Father and His 
 intercession. Because I live ye shall live also. 
 John xiv:19. If a man love me we will come 
 unto Him and make our abode with Him. John 
 xiv:23. 
 
 That the love wherewith thou hast loved me 
 may be in them and I in them. John xvii: 26. 
 
S22 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
 the world. Matt, xxviii: 20. 
 
 Where two or three are gathered together in 
 my name, there am I in the midst of them. Matt, 
 xviii: 20. 
 
 If any man hear my voice and open the door I 
 will come in to him and will sup with him. Rev. 
 iii: 20. 
 
 Our fellowship is with the Father and with his 
 son Jesus Christ. 1 John i: 3. 
 
 Christ liveth in me. Gal. ii : 20. 
 
 Christ is infinite and everywhere. Christ is as 
 truly in this room as he is in heaven. We have 
 made him the dead Christ. We have made crosses 
 out of wood and of metal and we have made pictures 
 representing him dead and we have been < 'cling- 
 ing to the cross," to it instead of him. Dear 
 cross. Precious cross. Yea, rather, dear Jesus. 
 Precious Jesus. In the infinite plan thou wast 
 as truly the slain one before the foundation of the 
 world as when on Calvary. The cross did not 
 make thee great. Thou hast made the cross. 
 The weak wood thou didst exalt, as thou 
 dost the weak human soul. Christ of Beth- 
 lehem, Christ of Calvary, Christ of America, 
 Christ of the world. Thou walkest in our streets, 
 thou sittest in our chairs, thou speakest to our 
 storms. The centuries have not out- run thee. 
 The newest thoughts and the freshest tides of 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 223 
 
 life, that flow out over our activities to-day, are 
 thine own. Thou modern Christ. Thou eternal 
 Christ. Here. * ' But a day old. " 
 
 Are we yet living only in the first throes of 
 the Protestant reformation; still Roman; still 
 holding to the dead Saviour, with a great strug- 
 gle for regenerating grace ? How sadly we need 
 to-day to show humanity about us that our Christ 
 lives, that he lives in us and that he lives through 
 us, that men may very well see that we let our 
 light so shine, that we glorify our Father in 
 Heaven. We will never get a very definite asser- 
 tion of Christ before the world in any age, unless 
 we honor the Holy Spirit. Truth is, these eyes 
 of ours will open to no other touch but the touch 
 of the Holy Spirit to look upon the vision of 
 Jesus; and these hearts of ours will open to no 
 other key but that of the Holy Spirit, to let the 
 Christ dwell in us richly. The apostle said, '' He 
 that descended is the same that ascended, that he 
 might fill all things." This earth is within the 
 sweep of that sentence. He shall testify of him, 
 he shall declare him, he shall make him known. 
 This strange cry of the heart after the divine as 
 it is represented in Jesus, Immanuel, the Man of 
 Galilee — this strange cry of the heart shall be 
 hushed into a calm realization, which says, '<I 
 know him, Jesus is mine and I am his." 
 
 You see very readily what an effect this will 
 
224 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 have upon the statement sometimes made, that if 
 you emphasize the teaching concerning the Holy 
 Spirit you overlook Jesus. Nay, rather, if you 
 emphasize the teaching concerning the Holy 
 Spirit you reveal Jesus. Let us receive the gift 
 and get the assertion of Christ in our souls 
 clearly. 
 
 The idea of receiving a blessing from God is 
 used very much more in the Old Testament than 
 in the New. Not that it is entirely left out of the 
 New Testament, for here the word is used, but 
 more especially in speaking of the help man is to 
 give to man, rather than the life man is to re- 
 ceive from Grod. The word " blessed, " meaning 
 little more than happy, is used in a more general 
 way in the New Testament than either the word 
 " bless " or ''blessing." The reasons seem quite 
 evident. 
 
 First, the word *' bless" is too distant in its 
 meaning and too weak. Literally it means ' * to 
 speak well of." Use has given the word a deeper 
 meaning, but this latest, largest, fullest ex- 
 pression of Grod, the Holy Spirit, has outgrown 
 the word in its best accepted meaning. 
 
 And, again, the full-orbed Christian experience 
 as expressed in the New Testament is rather an 
 experience of right relations than of compli- 
 mentary announcements. God has come to us 
 and drawn us to himself, and we are not so called 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 225 
 
 to receive what he will do as through what he 
 will do and has done to receive himself, even the 
 Holy Spirit. Hence, Jesus said, ' ' Come after 
 me. " ' ' We will make our abode with him. " < ' I 
 in them and thou in me," and '' I will send the 
 Comforter that He may abide with you." This is 
 more than the blessing, it is life and life from 
 person to person. Notwithstanding this it is 
 easy enough for any one to take that point of 
 view of the subject which would cause the num- 
 bering of blessings, "the first blessing" and 
 <'the second blessing," as Luther called it " a 
 second conversion," or as Charles Wesley, "a 
 second rest," or as John Wesley, "the second 
 blessing," or as Andrew Murray, "the second 
 crisis," the "second conviction " and " the second 
 blessing." It is this, but it is more. 
 
 But the direct act of numbering does not ap- 
 pear in the New Testament and we do well to 
 avoid as far as possible the controversy which it 
 calls forth in our day. The New Testament por- 
 trayal of the self -life will be found strong enough 
 to produce the conviction, if the soul is willing to 
 be filled with the fulness of God. Let those who 
 prefer the more ancient method of expressing use 
 it, but personally I have found the blessed 
 Spirit's indwelling transform my life as a Chris- 
 tian, from the grasping to the being grasped, and 
 from the fitful to the steady, without emphasis 
 
226 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 being laid upon the number of the blessing. 
 When I said, 
 
 " Give me thyself from every boast — 
 From every wish set free; 
 Let all I am in thee be lost, 
 But give thyself to me," 
 
 then how plainly I saw the struggle with the old 
 self-life against which in my regeneration God 
 had given the better life — saw it until I loathed 
 it; saw it until I believed the Holy Spirit would 
 slay it, and in that belief I found him fill my 
 soul with himself, causing Jesus to be the beaute- 
 ous one to me the first and the last, the all in all. 
 Indeed, as far as I am personally concerned, the 
 numbering of God's operations in the soul ceased to 
 teaze me from that day. 
 
 "He shall glorify me." These strange words 
 ' ' glory " or " glorify " or " glorious, " how diffi- 
 cult it is for us to define their meaning. Glory, 
 glory — a word so eagerly used, yet so mysteriously 
 sacred. We talk of glorifying the graves of the 
 dead when we cover them over with blooming 
 flowers, we talk of glorifying a painting when we 
 set the light to shine so as to bring out its best 
 expression. When men and women can find no 
 other word with which to express themselves they 
 say «« glory." When assembled people with shin- 
 ing faces are knitted into oneness of spirit and the 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 227 
 
 songs of the hymn book seem lame, they raise 
 their voices and say ''glory." "When in the 
 death hour no other word seems exactly to fit the 
 ecstatic expression of the victor, he will whisper 
 GLORY. Paul says that there is one glory 
 of the sun and another glory of the moon 
 and another glory of the stars; for one 
 star differeth from another in glory. As if to 
 say, there is a kind of shine on the sun we call 
 glory, and another kind of shine on the moon we 
 call glory, and another on the stars we desig- 
 nate glory. He also says that we shall be 
 changed from glory unto glory even as by the 
 spirit of the Lord. Jesus using the same word 
 says that the glory which he had with the Father 
 he gave unto his children, just after he had said 
 ' ' Father glorify thou me with the glory which I 
 had with thee before the world was." And here 
 he uses it again when he says, ''The Holy Spirit, 
 when he comes, shall glorify me. " Did I say too 
 intense a thing when I said we could know Christ 
 better than they did when he was here in the 
 flesh? Hearken: "show," "testify," "glorify." 
 " He shall glorify me," he shall turn the light 
 on the picture. O, Jesus, my Jesus, how beau- 
 teous thou art! The fairest among ten thousand 
 times ten thousand, my Jesus, my Jesus! How 
 resplendent thou art, glorified to even my soul by 
 the Holy Spirit; loveliest of the loveliest, divinest 
 
228 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 of the divinest, there is none like thee, beauteous 
 Son of God. 
 
 « ' But if the ministration of death, written and 
 engraven on stone, came with the glory, so that 
 the children of Israel could not look steadily 
 upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face ; 
 which glory was passing away; how shall not 
 rather the ministration of the spirit be with 
 glory ? For if the ministration of condemnation 
 is glory, much rather doth the ministration of 
 righteousness exceed in glory. For verily that 
 which hath been made glorious hath not been 
 made glorious in this respect, by reason of the 
 glory that surpasseth. For if that which passeth 
 away was with glory, much more that which re- 
 maineth is in glory. But we all, with unveiled 
 face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, 
 are transformed into the same image from glory 
 to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. 2 
 Corinthians 3:7-11, 18 (E. V). 
 
 Let me recall for you as nearly as I can an inci- 
 dent told by an American preacher. In one of 
 the families of his parish was a little girl, who 
 had been blind from her infancy. Surgeons were 
 called in to operate, but their operation proved 
 imsuccessful. A second operation was performed 
 with the same sad result. The hearts of the par- 
 ents were sore; they had spent much money, 
 willingly and freely; and the child had endured 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 229 
 
 much pain, but she could not see. Never 
 since her recollection could she look upon 
 her mother or her father. One day the 
 surgeons met the father and said to him, 
 "We think another operation would cure 
 the child." The father said, ''I feel there is no 
 possible cure and the pain she suffers nearly kills 
 me." They persuaded him that they had good 
 reason to think some benefit might follow another 
 operation, and urged the undertaking of it. The 
 parents agreed to permit another trial, and the 
 surgeons were told that they could operate on the 
 child's eyes again. After the operation they 
 again covered the little eyes to await results. 
 During the interval the father met the pastor and 
 said, ' 'Pastor, will you come over to our house to- 
 morrow morning? " The pastor in telling about 
 it said, I had been very busy that day and before 
 I recalled to mind sufficiently to understand what 
 his request meant, I had spoken. Then I recol- 
 lected that the time was about due to have the 
 bandages removed from the child's eyes, and I 
 asked him when I should come. He gave me the 
 hour. I went a few minutes early, and when I 
 entered the home I was fairly overcome with the 
 suspense, which was evident on the faces of the 
 parents. By and by the surgeons appeared, the 
 nervous father paced up and down the floor, talk- 
 ing excitedly. The mother sat holding the little 
 
330 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 child's hands in her hands, the tears streaming 
 down her cheeks. It was a terrible moment, while 
 we waited tremulously, intent. The physician 
 pulled out the pin from the bandage to unwind it 
 slowly, slowly. Will she see? What slight cov- 
 erings remainlbetween the questions, will she see 
 or wi^l she not. Pleading looks were very com- 
 mon in that home that morning. This was indeed 
 hoping against hope. The bandages are removed, 
 and instantly, the little child, with voice of per- 
 fect rapture, calls out, ''O, mamma, mamma, 
 mamma, I never thought you looked like that. 
 O, mamma, mamma." Then turning to her papa, 
 <'My papa, my papa, is that my papa?" And, 
 again exultant with rapture she exclaims, ' ' O, 
 the light, the light!" Many tears and kisses min- 
 gled upon the face of the darling child. Her eyes 
 had been opened while the glory of the light had 
 lit up the surroundings. How like this is that 
 opening of the vision of the soul upon the Son of 
 God when the Holy Spirit comes into the life, 
 and when he is thus set forth in his resplendent 
 beauty. 
 
 Who of us who know him under the revealing 
 of the Holy Spirit has not said, ' ' Oh, the light, 
 the light! " I know a man who had been born 
 and reared a Boman Catholic. That man came 
 into a meeting one evening as a seeker after 
 Christ, He was a florist, and had refined tastes, 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 231 
 
 and when I came near him I said, "Brother, how 
 much light have you got on the subject?" He 
 turned his face up to me and said, ' 'Electric, elec- 
 tric." And we may say, "Jesus, I never thought 
 you were like that! I never thought you would 
 be so real, I never thought you would be so near, 
 I never thought you could be so dear to my heart. " 
 Mary and Martha and Lazarus were in the twi- 
 light of knowledge compared with this which my 
 soul has while the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ 
 to it. 
 
 A gentleman visiting one of the art galleries of 
 Europe became so greatly interested in a picture 
 that he studied it for hours. His traveling com- 
 panion left him to look at other pictures, and re- 
 turned several times to see if he was not ready to 
 proceed. Each time he asked for a little longer 
 opportunity to study this one great production. 
 By and by, his companion, weary with waiting 
 for him, said : ' ' What can you see in that old 
 picture to keep you so long?" The gentleman 
 tried to explain its merits and impress them upon 
 his friend's attention, but without avail. He an- 
 swered, ' ' I can not see anything so extraordinary 
 about that picture." Then the gentleman replied, 
 "Don't you wish you could?" It takes the inspired 
 soul to see the inspiring beauty, and it takes the 
 inspired readei" to get at the real wealth in the 
 scriptures and of the Christ they present. 
 
332 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Now we need to estimate life and its trials as 
 Christ does. We need to feel about sin as Christ 
 does. Then every form of its expression becomes 
 to us deadly and we are glad to devote ourselves 
 at any cost to its destruction. The Calvary- 
 spirit does not take much time asking, ^^W/iat 
 harm is there in itV It not only undertakes not 
 to do wrong but the burden of its fleeting mo- 
 ments is, ' ' Save the wrong-doers through the 
 right." We need to feel about suffering and hard 
 knocks of persecution just as Christ does. Com- 
 fort-loving and ease never entered into the pro- 
 gramme of this ' ' servant of all. " Every act of his 
 represents a holy purpose which we mortals 
 would call bravery of the first quality. 
 
 Christ is our life, and we are to live him out. 
 Let us look up calmly and say, ' 'This is my Jesus, 
 come let us go out with him." As one can best 
 describe what frost is who has lived in it and felt 
 its tingle, or as one can best prize music who has 
 given himself to it, so we who give ourselves over 
 unto Christ shall know him, witnessed to and 
 glorified by that Spirit of truth who searcheth all 
 things, yea the deep things of God. The redemp- 
 tive life is his own life No distant admiring 
 look can produce it No formal partaking of 
 emblems can create it. No inflicted or voluntary 
 suffering can woo it to us. The Holy Spirit has 
 this work to do and he wills to do it for and in 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT ASSERTING JESUS 233 
 
 those who receive him by faith. Truly see Jesus 
 and greed will be changed to generosity, ambition 
 to philanthropy and fear to faith. Rise to his plane 
 of unstinted sacrifice and no service can be so great 
 but that its winning beauty shall appear in the 
 midst of toil and suffering, tears and blood, to 
 which its execution honors us with a call. We 
 may outgrow our theories. We can not outgrow 
 Christ. 
 
 Gentle Holy Spirit, our souls would now receive 
 the witness, the declaring and the glorifying of 
 Jesus within them. This we are sure will be 
 more than our general conception of a blessing. 
 We would reverently pray with the new convert 
 from heathenism, ' ' O, Lord, make us to sparkle 
 all over with Jesus." 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH 
 POWER. 
 
" Did you ever notice that all but the heart of man 
 obeys God? If you look right through history you will 
 find that this is true. In the beginning God said, ' Let 
 there be light,' and there was light. ' Let the waters 
 bring forth,' and the water brought forth abundantly. 
 And one of the proofs that Jesus Christ is God is that 
 he spoke to nature, and nature obeyed him. At one 
 time he spoke to the sea, and the sea recognized and 
 obeyed him. He spoke to the fig tree, and instantly it 
 withered and died. It obeyed literally and at once. He 
 spoke to devils, and the devils fled. He spoke to the 
 grave, and the grave obeyed him and gave back its 
 dead. But when he speaks to man, man will not obey 
 him; that is why man is out of harmony with God, and 
 it will never be different until men learn to obey God.' 
 
 D. L. Moody. 
 
 " Strengthened with power through his spirit in the in- 
 ward man that Christ may dwell in your hearts through 
 faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in 
 love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what 
 is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to 
 know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye 
 may be filled uinto all the fullness of Ood.''^ — Ephesians 
 iii:16-19. (R.V.) 
 
 *'I will call over each member of my orphanage in 
 my mind with solemn prayer, and search out every per- 
 fection of every kind; any trace of the image of God 
 which I can discern in each, and enter them on paper, 
 adding thereto every fresh discovery, and then to each 
 name affix a plan, denoting what is the best method of 
 helping that person's infirmities and strengthening his 
 virtues. If I do not thus study the tempers and dispo- 
 sitions of my family, how unlike will my carriage be to 
 that of my heavenly Father towards me." 
 
 Mrs. Mary Fletcher. 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER. 
 
 Tn his address on "The Beauty of a Life of 
 "*• Service " Phillips Brooks says, "Christianity 
 has not been tried. My friends, no man dares to 
 condemn the Christian faith to-day because it has 
 not been tried." 
 
 God is surely calling to-day for a race of men 
 and women who will put that unique form of re- 
 ligion called Christianity to the test, or rather to 
 the proof. He is calling for a race of people who 
 will demonstrate not only that Christianity is 
 capable of cultivating our religious powers, set- 
 ting the heart at ease from itself and giving lib- 
 erty of soul, but that it is capable of producing 
 serene lives filled with unrepaid service for 
 humanity and kept in the great fellowship of God 
 night and day, moment by moment. We need to 
 get a stirring conviction of the strength and 
 wealth of Christianity, unreduced, full strength. 
 
 Look at those words of Paul In Ephesians, 
 third chapter, verses 16, 17, 18 and 19. Look at 
 the great striking words which stand out in that 
 passage of Scripture like great mountain-peaks. 
 Strengthened, Power, Spirit, Inward man, Christ, 
 Dwell, Hearts, Faith, Eooted, Grounded, Love, 
 
238 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Apprehend, Saints, Know, Filled, God. Some 
 portions of Scripture run up to a climax very per- 
 ceptibly, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; but this one ap- 
 pears like a great perfection, every part of which 
 if separated from the rest would fill a world all its 
 own. Cut each phrase up like a potato and each 
 part will have an eye in it that will sprout and 
 bear fruit. It is refreshing to apjjfoach such 
 words as these, for if we are hungry we can sure- 
 ly feed here. And here is the wonder. All that 
 is told of the possibilities of grace in this text 
 hinges upon the power of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Let us read it over slowly and weigh every word. 
 "That he would grant you according to the 
 riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened 
 with POWER through his spirit in the inward man ; 
 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through 
 faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and 
 grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend 
 with all the saints what is the breadth and length 
 and height and depth, and to know the love of 
 Christ which passeth knowledge that ye may be 
 filled unto all the fulness of God." (R. V.) 
 
 What about this great inner man? Elsewhere 
 Paul calls attention to the outward man perish- 
 ing, but says that the inner man is renewed day 
 by day. There is an outward and an inner man, the 
 husk and the corn. There is a terrible insult to 
 this word in use, when men are said to supply the 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 239 
 
 inner man by taking dinner, as if a man's stomach 
 were the inner man. Coy as life itself is this great 
 region. Few people appear to have allowed them- 
 selves to look into it. It would seem like looking 
 down a dizzy height or off upon a terrific storm. 
 It jars the feelings. Men will speak with con- 
 tempt about distinct teaching concerning the 
 Holy Spirit. I do not wonder that people do not 
 realize the presence and personality of the Holy 
 Spirit. Do we begin to realize our own person- 
 ality? O, the sweep of being, O, the depths and 
 heights of the soul, even of a little child. 
 
 To look through one's own being is like going 
 off the hurricane-deck of a steamer on to the 
 passenger-deck. (Many people appear to go no 
 further than this. What do they know about the 
 vessel?) To look through one's own being is to 
 go down stairs into the saloon, then go down 
 another stairway to the hold, and go on down 
 until you come to the keelson. Then traverse 
 the vessel from stem to stern, and when you have 
 completed your examination looking over the 
 many appliances and the general outfit of it, with 
 surprise you will say, ' 'Why, this is a floating city. " 
 Little wonder that Paul, speaking of the love of 
 God, is made by both the authorized and the re- 
 vised versions to say, " It is shed abroad in our 
 hearts." We are not conscious of a fraction of 
 the meaning of our own existence as spiritual 
 
240 OUT OF THE CAIN- LIFE 
 
 beings. We hold that we are spirits in our com- 
 monest methods of expression, calling hands and 
 feet and mind and feelings ours, not us, but that 
 mighty personality which should alarm us when 
 separate from God becomes to us but the merest 
 generality. The great concern of God for human- 
 ity is no exaggeration. It is the concern of 
 purest love, but it is all lavished upon beings 
 made originally a little lower than God and 
 stricken with disloyalty, to recover us from which 
 all heaven is concerned. The great inner man is 
 the center of righteous or unrighteous ambitions, 
 the great region where love has her nest and 
 from which she flies out in the mid-heavens of 
 Providence. The great inner man is the region 
 where all the graces may live and grow, and it is a 
 territory vast, so vast that God alone can over- 
 take it. And that man who is not a Christian 
 is not only rebellious but he is utterly foolish to 
 undertake to manage himself. He is too vast. 
 There are so many highways leading into the 
 secrets of his character, there are so many gate- 
 less highways about unregenerate man, that he 
 is perfectly foolish when he undertakes to say, I 
 will do the best I can with myself, so incompetent 
 is he to watch all these highways. 
 
 This I think is what Paul had in mind when he 
 said, < ' And the peace of God which passeth all 
 understanding shall guard your hearts and minds 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 341 
 
 through Christ Jesus." The word here ren- 
 dered "guard," is the very same word which is 
 used for a Roman sentry, and hence he would 
 seem to say, these highways into your being are 
 very long and wide and many, and over there by 
 that gateway shall stand Peace, and when Lust 
 shall come running in from the devil's army to 
 get at you. Peace shall say, "Stay, I am here ;" 
 and when Envy shall come running in from the 
 devil's army to the secret of your being, then up- 
 on his reaching the gateway. Peace shall say, 
 "Stay, lam here," and when Doubt and Fear 
 come running toward us to capture us. Peace 
 shall stand with her serene face and say " Stay, 
 lam here," until the whole being is kept by the 
 power of God through faith unto a salvation ready 
 to be revealed. For Peace is majestic and keen- 
 eyed. 
 
 This great inner man then is to be guarded by 
 Peace, the surroundings are to be fortifications 
 that are quiet and lovely, the guarded soul is 
 consequently kept under the secure keeping of an 
 infinite God, and no other power can keep it. 
 
 The inner man ! Do you not know how this 
 moment you think you have the inner man mas- 
 tered and you say, " I will always be kind," and 
 in less than thirty minutes some person has said 
 something to you which has caused to spring up 
 within you the very venomous disposition of per- 
 
343 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 dition. Man might just as well undertake to feed 
 himself by grasping in the air as to undertake to 
 guard the inner man himself. He can not do it. 
 None but the Infinite One can supply our all but 
 infinite wants. 
 
 Now this inner man is Christ's great craft. 
 He hath come to captain it. He will stay with 
 the ship day and night. He will strengthen it 
 against the beating waves and he will with equal 
 ease hush the waves to rest. Will he stay? 
 Will he surely dwell in our hearts ? Ah, tell us 
 this until we believe it if you can. Most of us 
 know something of what it means to have high 
 moments of ecstasy and victory. So true is this 
 that in certain regions of the church's thought 
 to-day there is an idea that really the Christian 
 life implies a peripatetic kind of allegiance. We 
 talk about a mountain-top experience and a 
 valley experience, and a bright day and a dark 
 day. Very often I fear the real significance of 
 it is a loyal condition and a disloyal condition, 
 a true condition and an untrue condition, tor un- 
 less you are talking merely about the region of 
 your feelings, which is not the essential region of 
 Christianity, then certainly there must be an ini- 
 quitous departure from God's love when you get 
 into the valley. Do you mean that your charac- 
 ter goes mountain and then valley, light place 
 and then dark place? 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 243 
 
 This is not a question of weeping or laughing. 
 Tears can be produced with horseradish and laugh- 
 ter with a feather. Nothing is superficial here. 
 We are dealing with the inner man. The inner 
 man may know both the joy and the sorrow 
 of the Lord just as the dew-drop reflects the 
 light as surely as the ocean. And the joy is in 
 the sorrow and the sorrow is in the joy, as 
 the light is in the flower and the flower is in 
 the light. God has no contradictions in his 
 nature. Slay the self-life and God brings the 
 Christ-life and he brings it to abide. 
 
 How he punctuated every great lesson of the 
 fifteenth of John with that word "abide." He 
 gathered together illustration and explanation 
 and exhortation and piled the one upon the other 
 and then set upon the pyramid that word 
 ' ' abide. " He conditioned great results in prayer 
 upon it, so great that they astound the unregen- 
 erate man. Christian joy. Christian love and 
 fruit-bearing follow in the train of his thought 
 until as a climax he promises the Holy Spirit, the 
 Comforter. But who of us has not had that cher- 
 ished moment of high resolution? I used to 
 board with a lady who was the mother of five 
 children — and when I speak of her I speak with 
 bated breath, for her failures seem only to 
 emphasize my own. She used to be very jubi- 
 lant on Sunday, she would shout hallelujah 
 
244 0C7T OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 and she was a great church attender, but before 
 Monday noon, through the partition between the 
 place where she and the family dwelt and my 
 room, I would fairly seem to hear her slippers 
 scold the floor. She appeared to have lost all her 
 great grace. She had religion enough for a pew, 
 but she had not enough for a wash-tub. She had 
 great enthusiasm in testimony-meeting, but it was 
 another thing to have five of God's lambs to 
 be fed. Surely this is not all ' <■ the Christian 
 life " means. Abide, abide. The world to-day is 
 hunting and God is pleading for a company of 
 Christian people who can shine, every day lumin- 
 ous. Said Paul, ' ' Among whom we shine as lu- 
 minaries in the world," and he had just said pre- 
 viously that it was to be done in the midst of a 
 crooked and perverse generation, too. O, to get 
 over this peripatetic kind of loyalty followed by 
 disloyalty, this building up a splendid structure, 
 and then standing back and seeing it tumble, and 
 then letting our tears fall over the broken tim- 
 bers, and building up again, until we get tired, and 
 standing back and seeing it fall and weeping 
 over the splintered timbers again. Surely such 
 experience can not be ' ' grounded, " like a building, 
 on a deep foundation, or '« rooted, "like a tree, in 
 love. 
 
 Time is as nothing with our Keeper. ' ' O, but 
 the circumstances." Never forget that circum- 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 245 
 
 stances are our opportunities. A great deal is 
 said to-day about environment. There is no 
 doubt about the value of a proper environment if 
 properly used — it is better to live on the south 
 side of life than on the north, but if you keep im- 
 proving the environment and do not keep improv- 
 ing the soul, soon all advantage becomes common 
 and the individual becomes thankless and 
 dwarfed. Place a selfish, jealous person into a 
 mansion, provide servants and elegance and pay 
 all the bills for him, and unless he loses that sel- 
 fishness he will soon become accustomed to the 
 comforts and blister your very feelings with in- 
 gratitude. A violin which will not sound well in 
 a log cabin will not sound well in a mansion. 
 Plant a thorn tree in a valley and it is a thorn. 
 Plant it on the hillside and it is still a thorn. In 
 sandy soil, thorn; in clay soil, thorn; in winter, 
 thorn; in summer, thorn. The environment will 
 not change it. All over this world you may find 
 people quarreling with their occupations. The 
 hatter, the barber, the dentist, the tailor, the 
 shoemaker; all occupations illustrating this old 
 quarrel. It is an old device of the enemy to get 
 us to quarrel with circumstances rather than 
 resolutely set our wills by faith in Christ to have 
 the self-life slain and the Christ-life imparted. 
 Are you poor ? You can have Christ abide in 
 you. Others have, and the promise is yours. 
 
246 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Are you frail and do you live in a defective body? 
 You may have Christ abiding; others have, and 
 the promise is to you. Are you strong and fore- 
 handed with circumstances? You may prove 
 how you do in the secret of his searching draw all 
 your good and all your triumph not from self but 
 from Christ. He would abide. Does some one 
 say, ' ' I have tried this often. Vows have been 
 made in tears and my deepest motives appear to 
 have favored this very life of the abiding pres- 
 ence of Christ, but I have not succeeded. Such 
 a life appears beyond my reach and rather for 
 angels than for men." 
 
 A lady whose life had been very ordinary in- 
 deed, when compared with the richer privileges 
 in Christ, received through the Holy Spirit's light- 
 ing up the things of Grod to her, such a realiza- 
 tion of Christ that her face was beautifully lit up, 
 her voice was soft and her very attitude superior. 
 She began at once to say, ' ' I must go right home 
 and tell my children of the beauty of Jesus. The 
 beauty of Jesus. I never saw Jesus like this be- 
 fore." Then quick as a flash she began to utter 
 these words half sorrowfully, "Can I keep it; can 
 Ilkeep it." 
 
 Now, here the gift of power finds its place. "We 
 are to be strengthened with power that Christ 
 may dwell. That life, that Christ-life, forgiving 
 enemies, delighting to serve; sacrificial and free 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 247 
 
 from pride, jealousy, lust, malice and anger is 
 itself charged with too much force for us to main- 
 tain it in constancy. Conscious of this, and 
 either forgetting or not having known about the 
 power of the Holy Spirit, multitudes have be- 
 come discouraged and have sought to content 
 themselves with what they call the spirit of mod- 
 eration and balance. 
 
 It will do us good to look squarely at the 
 weakness of our nature, since sin has so af- 
 fected us. In the Old Testament we repeatedly 
 hear about God being our strength, but in 
 the New Testament, where the fuller unfolding 
 of God's nature appears in the Holy Spirit, this 
 strength or power is brought out into prominence 
 and we are bidden to receive it. We are like 
 clay pails taken fresh from the potter's wheel. 
 It is frail, moist clay, scarcely capable of holding 
 its own weight up into the form which the potter 
 has wrought. Now let us try to fill it with wa- 
 ter. But a few spoonfuls have been poured into 
 it until the pail begins to run over the floor in 
 a muddy stream. Let us take another and see if 
 we may fill it with money. We have not 
 placed more than a handful into it until it is 
 breaking down and the money is falling out. It 
 can not hold the contents. Its fibre is not strong 
 enough. Now let us take still another clay pail 
 fresh from the potter's wheel and place it in a 
 
248 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 furnace and turn on the hot fire until it becomes 
 hard. It is ready. Take it and set it on the table 
 and fill it now to the brim with pieces of money ; it 
 will hold every one of them. Fill it with diamonds, 
 it will hold every one of them. Fill it with water, 
 it will hold all the water we can put into it. So with 
 the inner man. If the walls of the inner man are 
 not strong enough they will not hold the Christ- 
 life. There is a little of the old man, a little of 
 the malign, a little of the jealous, of the vain, of 
 the self -life, and the walls break down. But let 
 Grod's Holy Spirit of power come and enter into 
 the fibre of the inner man, let the walls be 
 strengthened with the silent strength of God's 
 love until we are toned up with divine vigor — 
 then let the Christ-life come in and we can hold 
 it. The love of God shall abide in our hearts, the 
 peace of God shall abide within us, the joy of the 
 Lord shall be our strength, and the hope of God 
 shall be our badge of honor and triumph, and 
 God in all things shall be glorified ; we shall be in 
 deed and in truth partakers of the divine nature, 
 strengthened with might, strengthened with his 
 spirit in the inner man. 
 
 A very expressive phrase has become quite com- 
 mon, especially at camp meetings and holiness 
 meetings. It is indeed a great phrase. Men have 
 contended sharply about it, and thirsty souls have 
 trembled when it has been uttered. This is it, 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 249 
 
 " Receiving the power." What I have just illus- 
 trated by the clay pail being empowered to hold 
 its contents, I believe to be the true meaning of 
 this great phrase, " Receiving the power." 
 
 I would not feel called upon to utter criticisms 
 against displays of religious influence in people's 
 bodies, when men have been known to swoon, 
 when others have leaped to their feet with shouts 
 of great joy, and others with shining faces have 
 just leaned back and whispered their praise to the 
 bounteous giver. Some of these scenes have been 
 beautiful beyond description, and their holy influ- 
 ence has lingered tenaciously for many days, espe- 
 cially perhaps such of them as have marked the 
 death-hour of some of the most triumphant. We 
 would not, we dare not, criticise or speak care- 
 lessly in the presence of such scenes. 
 
 But the power of the Holy Spirit seems rather 
 a girding than a collapse. What immediate re- 
 sults to the physical frame may follow this largest, 
 fullest, richest, manifestation of God's self to 
 man we can not assert. A man whose eye has 
 been fixed upon self, if not lustfully yet longingly 
 for twenty years and who now, suddenly gets 
 that eye Jilled with the vision of the pure, gentle, 
 benevolent Spirit may easily find himself incapa- 
 ble of longer sitting erect. His body prone on 
 the earth may declare how the gaze dazzled and 
 overpowered him for the time being. Or one 
 
250 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 whose voice has been mute for a score of years, 
 when the goodness of God appeals to his sense of 
 gratitude, being suddenly ravished with the vast- 
 ness of that goodness to him and others by the 
 Holy Spirit lighting up the display — surely we 
 can conceive how such a one might be heard to 
 shout aloud his hallelujahs. And we can more 
 than conceive how these things might occur, for 
 some of my readers bear in their memories the 
 very sweets accompanying such experiences. But 
 notwithstanding this, that phase of physical in- 
 fluence upon some temperaments or during some 
 occasions is not what is meant essentially by re- 
 ceiving the power of the Holy Spirit. Its essen- 
 tial, distinctive meaning is rather in contrast 
 with these things. 
 
 1. Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit 
 into G-alilee and thence to Nazareth, where he 
 clearly announces his programme. ' ' The Spirit 
 of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed 
 me to preach the gospel to the poor ; he hath sent 
 me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
 ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to 
 the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised ; 
 to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 (Luke iv: 18, 19 ) 
 
 The power of the Spirit appears to have speed- 
 ily brought forth a calm, vast, thoughtful an- 
 nouncement from prophecy. 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 251 
 
 2. "Ye shall receive power after that the 
 Holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be wit- 
 nesses unto me." That power would then gird a 
 man to be a clear, distinct, truthful witness. 
 
 3. Jesus surely taught this truth when he told 
 his people not to be anxious when arrested and 
 on trial what they should answer, nor to try to 
 plan it, for the Holy Spirit would teach them. 
 
 4. And in the day of Pentecost, the Holy 
 Spirit's coming seems to have opened as a special 
 sign the intelligence of the receivers of the power, 
 so that they understood foreign languages, thus 
 in a trice accomplishing what would otherwise 
 require long seasons of study. 
 
 The power is not of the thunder-bolt class. 
 That would destroy rather than gird us. It is 
 his light we need. Let us have the light whether 
 the match cracks and snaps or is more quiet. 
 Let us not forget that to turn our attention upon 
 our own rapture may be but to tempt th^ return- 
 ing of the old enemy, the self -life. Christ is 
 more to us than our rapture, and the strength, 
 the power, is more than our ecstasy. And let us 
 remember that as the fire silently found its 
 way into the clay pail, the fire of God might 
 silently find its way into the __walls of our inner 
 beings while Christ was preparing the furniture, 
 in order that he might dwell there forever and 
 forever. It might come like the frost stealing 
 
352 OUT, OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 into the stones, unheard and with noiseless foot- 
 steps, while the soul is sweetly, silently con- 
 scious, ' ' God is strengthening me, I shall over- 
 come now; I feel within me the power of victory; 
 the Holy Spirit is making the walls of my inner 
 man capable of resisting the attacks of the ene- 
 my." Many people would feel like hastening 
 away to some silent room all alone to talk it 
 over with the Father, saying calmly, ' ' Oh, the 
 strength of G-od! The might of God!" coming out 
 again to witness by word and life to the precious 
 work of the Holy Spirit in the inner man — the 
 power of God. 
 
 Have you received the power of the Holy Spirit? 
 Can you go out of the most enthusiastic meeting 
 without shuddering to think, ' 'when I get home 
 it will be so still, and that same spirit that har- 
 monizes with me will tantalize me? " Can you 
 go home and say, ' ' He is here, that Divine Person 
 with whom I harmonize is here ?" Full as- 
 surance of faith, full assurance of hope, full 
 assurance of understanding — three terms which 
 belong to the Epistles of the New Testa- 
 ment, are they your very own ? Oh, that he 
 might so come and strengthen us anew in the 
 inner man, that constant as our breathing when 
 we are awake and in toil, or when we are asleep 
 and unconscious, Christ may dwell in us. And 
 when we get out with the problems that are com- 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 253 
 
 ing upon us in the kingdom of Heaven we shall 
 not say, ' ' I was so happy in that meeting, but I 
 am afraid if they come down with a cold problem 
 and ask me to grapple with it I will get tired and 
 discouraged, but I will go to meeting and get 
 happy again. " You can not live this way. You take 
 the level of the sea from the level, not from the 
 crest of the wave. Now, if the power of God is 
 in the inner man, you will say, ' ' Let that problem 
 come. Christ ^s here and he knows how to grapple 
 with it, and he icill grapple with it, and his 
 strength in the Holy Spirit is enough to keep 
 me. If my strength fails, if the body die, then I 
 will only have my headquarters of operation 
 higher up ; and if he wants my body to stand the 
 strain of the problem for fifty or sixty years with 
 sweat and toil and patient sacrifice, then he will 
 stay right here and see me through, touching me 
 now and again with the blessed inspiration of the 
 vigor that is out of his great fund of strength." 
 What have I to fear or choose since Christ is all 
 the world to me, and all my heart is love ? Oh, 
 for the power, the strong, steady, divine 
 might. Oh, for merchants to stand behind their 
 counters conscious of the indwelling Jesus, and 
 not afraid of the customer who may come and 
 try to induce them to deceive. Oh, for people 
 who have no disposition to tempt the devil, but 
 let him come every step before they hear him, 
 
254 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 conscious that Christ will master him. Oh, for 
 those who sit beside the couches of the sick, with 
 little provision of victuals in the pantry and with 
 little money in the bank, and with children who 
 need protection and care and blessing, quietly 
 conscious that the inner man is fortified by the 
 Holy Spirit, and of Christ dwelling within, while 
 they say, ' ' The hours are not too long ; Jesus is 
 here." 
 
 I have heard congregations sing, ' ' Thou my ever- 
 lasting portion, more than life or friends to me," 
 almost daily for three years, but my soul ''has 
 been seeking to prove the language mine and I 
 have proven it. O, for such a stability that a 
 man might be all alone in Africa, beyond the 
 reach of any familiar voice or hand, while within 
 a rod of where he stands a savage might appear 
 with a spear poised directly at his heart and a 
 serpent be within a foot of his heel, yet should he 
 consciously say in the might of God, ' ' I believe 
 that Jesus is with me all the time and I am more 
 than conquerer." Such an one, I think, would 
 only represent what it is to be "strengthened 
 with power." 
 
 Another beautiful and very expressive phrase 
 has become current in our day. It is the 
 "power for service." Many very rich things 
 are being said about the need of the anoint- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit for new undertakings, 
 
STRENGTHENED WITH POWER 255 
 
 bringing out very clearly the much-needed 
 truth that the power in all victory is of God and 
 not of us. And how very blessedly this power 
 for service finds its natural place in the great 
 plan as we remember that Christ is the indweller 
 when the Holy Spirit strengthens with power the 
 inner man. Now, Christ and service are two 
 words which always love each other's company. 
 He gives himself to us. He is servant of all. He 
 washes the feet and seeks the lost sheep. ' ' I am 
 among you as one that serveth." The problem 
 of the salvation of man came upon his heart until 
 it broke it. Let this Christ dwell in a man and 
 how he will serve! "Ye have the mind of 
 Christ," has been translated, "Ye have the dis- 
 position of Christ." "The imitation of Christ" 
 is not quite correct as an expression. We must 
 have the Christ-life. Then we will serve. The 
 idea of being good and superior by excluding 
 the great needy multitudes about us is not the 
 Christian idea. Holiness is sacrifice; and sacri- 
 fice since Christ came has but one altar, and that 
 altar is human tieed. The power of the Holy 
 Spirit is given to render it possible for us to 
 show forth kindness and gentleness and endur- 
 ance when all others fail; to study, to toil, to 
 give, to die, that the world may have its sin loved 
 out of it. Thank God, faith brings the Holy 
 Spirit and he becomes the "we can " of the sacri- 
 
^56 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ficial life. How evident this is if Christ dwells 
 in the heart by faith and the walls of the inner 
 man are strong enough to hold him! Won't we 
 serve ? 
 
 Servant of all, come and serve through us. 
 Our hands for thee to use to dispense to those 
 who need. Our feet for thee to use to send us 
 on errands of mercy. Our lips for thee to use to 
 speak messages for thee. Our all for thee to use 
 in a service Calvary-like and victorious. 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE, 
 
'•All the other matchless attributes of Jehovah are 
 shadowed by the beauty of his holiness and love." 
 
 Rev. C. M. Cobekn, D.D. 
 
 " The love of Ood Jiath been shed abroad in our hearts 
 through the Holy Ohost which was given unto us.'' — 
 Eomans v:5. (R. V.) 
 
 "My honored friend and brother: For once hearken 
 to a child who is willing to wash your feet. I beseech 
 you, by the mercies of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, if 
 you would have my love confirmed toward you, write no 
 more to me about the misrepresentations wherein we 
 differ. Why should we dispute when there is no possi- 
 bility of convincing? Will it not in the end destroy 
 brotherly love, and insensibly take from us that union 
 and sweetness of soul which I pray God may always 
 subsist between us? How glad would the enemies of 
 the Lord be to see us divided. How would the cause of 
 the common Master every way suffer by raising disputes 
 about particular points of doctrine. Honored sir, let us 
 offer salvation freely to all by the blood of Jesus, and 
 whatever light God has given us let us freely communi- 
 cate to others." Whitefield to Wesley. 
 
 "God's love is put within us as an object of our 
 thought, and as a power moulding our emotions, pur- 
 poses, actions." Joseph Agak Beet. 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE. 
 
 \1 /hat is that power which never disappoints 
 ^ the most radiant hope of the sanctified — that 
 power which God wields in his prolonged Calvary- 
 effort, and which sent forth the only begotten Son, 
 the power of powers ? It is Love. And you and 
 I are living in the day when, by the Holy Spirit, 
 the love of God (not less than this) is shed 
 abroad in our hearts, and it is the availing 
 motive-power of the victorious life to which we 
 are all invited. 
 
 There is a region of experience where the com- 
 mon difficulties of life which tempt and dis- 
 courage people do become the very instruments 
 which exalt life into richer conditions. Here in 
 this region difficulties which otherwise appear 
 like mountains are now feeble little mole hills, 
 and the ambitions and competitions that are so 
 common to human life appear bald and worthless. 
 When pride has lost its grip upon the being, and 
 love, pure love sways the ransomed soul, the child- 
 like spirit sweetens all the atmosphere of the life, 
 and God's care for us is seen to be just what His 
 Word calls it, " the riches of grace." 
 
260 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Soul, do you know this region of experience ? 
 Is the love ^of God glorifying your life ? Have 
 you got it ? Better be a hissing and a by- word 
 in the world, better have your provision of 
 potatoes and salt, better have your sleeves out at 
 the elbows, but get it, get it. 
 
 If we were surrounded to-day by pyramids of 
 precious stones — diamonds, emeralds and sap- 
 phires, we might say to them, "Precious stones, 
 there is a region where things as beautiful as you 
 are grow quickly in the sunlight and send forth 
 abundance of sweet perfume, and they are placed 
 upon marriage altars, and upon the coffins of the 
 dead." Then the precious stones might say to 
 us, " How can these things be ?" And we might 
 answer them, < ' Well, precious stones, you nestle 
 yourselves down by the root of some orange tree 
 or magnolia or rose-bush and allow yourselves to 
 be taken up by the growth of these trees or 
 bushes, then some bright summer day you will 
 live in the region of rapid growth and sweet per- 
 fume and flowerj but precious stones you must 
 die to stone-hood before you can live in flower, 
 hood. So I say to you to-day, there is a region 
 where God and the soul are in sweetest fellow- 
 ship, an uncomplaining, congenial, blessed re- 
 gion of life free from vexatious care, from hate, 
 from anger and from slavish fear; that region is 
 the love of God, but you must die to self -hood be- 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 261 
 
 before you can know this conquering grace or live 
 this blessed life. 
 
 Upon love to God and man hang all the law and 
 the prophets. ' ' Love is the fulfilling of the law. " 
 <'He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law;" 
 and "God is love." Ceaseless, deathless, holy- 
 grace come into our hearts to-day. Holy Spirit, 
 shining amid our tribulations and our shame, shed 
 it abroad, shed it abroad to-day. 
 
 It will make no little difference in our under- 
 standing of this subject, as well as in the wealth 
 or poverty of our characters, that we have a cor- 
 rect knowledge of what this love really is. 
 
 1. It is not a kindlier way. No mere adding on 
 of acts more gentle or more genial can represent 
 this wonderful grace, nor if the best of them could 
 be grounded in a habit would they truly represent 
 what is here meant, nor is the significance like 
 that of a person dwelling in a house, himself sep- 
 arate from the place where he lives. But it is like 
 the sap in the tree or the tides in the ocean or the 
 light breathing out its purity in the opening and 
 fragrant flower. Love, love! Have you got it? 
 Have you got it? 
 
 2. It is not what we commonly understand by 
 natural love, such as exists between husband and 
 wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters. 
 Surely if it were the purest type of this kind of 
 love it would be well worth its cost to have it 
 
262 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 constantly abiding within us» Who dare but 
 commend pure, natural love ? It has kept bonds 
 of kindly interest unbroken for scores of years in 
 the hearts of those who have neither seen nor 
 heard from each other. It has kept the heart of 
 the mother quiet and patient and cheerful during 
 the long hours of night watching while all about 
 her, except the sick child, were quiet in sleep. It 
 has bridged the ocean for lovers, it has made dis- 
 tance appear as nothing, it has made toil and 
 endurance as light as air, it has caused the very 
 fountain of the deeps of the being to break forth 
 with the enthusiasm of regard upon the death of 
 some darling of the household. Sweet human 
 love, thou hast stitched the family life together 
 and knitted the household into oneness ! 
 
 Portions of this love are manifest in the heart 
 of the heathen and the heart of the Christian 
 alike. It burns high on the altars of child- 
 hood devotion, its fires will live when old age 
 has brought the pilgrim to second childhood, 
 and like the fires upon the altar in the ancient 
 temple, it never goes out during the days that 
 intervene. Yet this kind of love, though so 
 great, is evidently not the love which now 
 concerns us. There is a higher love and there 
 is a higher life. As the life of the lily is higher 
 than that of the stone, the life of the kitten 
 is higher than that of the lily, the life of the 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 263 
 
 child is higher than that of the kitten, and the 
 life of God, the life he imparts to the waiting 
 soul, the ' ' Zoe " in the New Testament, is 
 higher than the human life in sin, so the love 
 of God is higher than human love. 
 
 3. It is the love of God. Jesus said to the 
 Jews, "Ye have not the love of God abiding 
 in you." Without doubt these very men loved 
 their wives, and these very women loved their 
 children and these sons and daughters loved 
 each other; but not with this higher love which 
 Christ came to give us. Again he said, "If any 
 man love the world the love of the Father is not 
 in him," it is very evident that he meant to show 
 that there is a love which is not.like this other love 
 — the love of the Father. The love of the world is 
 born of a natural life, the love of the Father is born 
 of the Holy Spirit, a new life. It is of God's own 
 life. It is the very same love that first con- 
 ceived the creation of the power of human love. 
 It is the very same love that originated Calvary, 
 not like it, not explaining it, but the very 
 same love. It is the taking of somewhat of 
 the dynamo of God's perfect being, and the 
 imparting of this electric blessedness to our im- 
 perfect beings until we are made ' ' partakers of 
 the divine nature." He infinite, we finite. 
 The very same light which fills this room is 
 the light which fills the air about us, and the 
 
264 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 little leaf dropping from the tree obeys the very- 
 same law as the earth in its motion, and the 
 worlds in theirs. So the very same love which 
 is in Grod's heart is shed abroad in our hearts by 
 the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. God's 
 love. 
 
 Have' you got it? Have you got it ? If not, 
 be a hissing and a by- word in the world, eat po- 
 tatoes and salt, let your sleeves be out at the 
 elbows, but get it, get it. 
 
 Did you ever receive a welcome surprise, so 
 great and so welcome that you sat down and 
 thought it over ? What joy dwelt within you as 
 you went about your toils to find it flowing in 
 perfect floods over the mind and over the feelings 
 until this one surprise was under and over and 
 through and through everything you did that day. 
 This is the way the love of G-od finds its welcome 
 to the thoroughly surrendered heart. The 
 stranger becomes a friend, the far-off grace be- 
 comes the very thrill of our lives, under, above 
 and through all we do or say or think. Yet we 
 are so insensible to it. Holy Spirit, breathe upon 
 us until we awaken and welcome thy dawn of 
 blessedness this hour. 
 
 We seem so often to be like one who might 
 stand upon the ridge of the roof of a building 
 and look it over; he would say to himself, this 
 building is so long and so wide and so high. This 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 265 
 
 roof is made of such and such material and is 
 about so old. But let the man come down from 
 the ridge of the roof and enter into the building, 
 let him sit amid the multitude where the worship 
 is all heart-worship, let him hear the organ and 
 the singers and the speakers, and let the great 
 power of salvation enter into the assembly until 
 men are born again then and there. Now the 
 building is a new building, he is within it, he 
 looks high to the ceiling, he looks out through 
 the windows to the light, he has fellowship with 
 the worshipers, his soul has proven that Christ 
 was there, and to him the building is another 
 place, he is within it and the inspiration of the 
 occasion is within him. Thus we look upon God's 
 love. We are on the outside of it where there 
 are no doors to enter, exalted in the thought of 
 our own purpose or of our own love, but let us 
 come to the open doors and enter in to gather the 
 inspiration that there awaits us until we do know 
 the love of God. Behold these windows, how they 
 look far out to the last struggling sinner who 
 piteously lifts a hand for help. See the height of 
 these ceilings, high as the throne of God. Yon- 
 der they glitter in the wealth through the haze 
 of our finite perceptions. But O, feel the fellow- 
 ship, the breath, the life. It sweetens our prefer- 
 ences, it tones our convictions, it hallows every- 
 thing but sin. 
 
266 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 " For the love of God is broader than the measure of 
 man's mind, 
 
 And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully- 
 kind." 
 
 In the presence of this grace, ambitions which 
 otherwise seem so necessary lose their signifi- 
 cance and are replaced by one ambition, that is, 
 through love to serve. No man can know this 
 blessed sway who is not willing to be poor. Just 
 as long as you can not say that you would rather 
 be poor and hungry with this grace, than be rich 
 and well fed without it, just so long it can not be 
 yours. Neither can any man prove this grace 
 who is not willing to be despised, for it was this 
 very grace which caused God to give his ' ' only 
 begotten Son " to shame and slander and death. 
 Neither can any man have this grace who is not 
 willing to suffer pain. We can not say, ' ' I am 
 strong and have a healthy body, therefore I can 
 undertake great deeds and God would be glad to 
 use me, or I have money and am forehanded and 
 am acknowledged as great because of this, or I 
 have winsome ways and a well developed social 
 nature and I can win friends and make the cause 
 succeed." Wait a moment. Is love greater 
 than wealth? Is love greater than physical 
 strength? Is love greater than social power? 
 There are thousands of forgotten heathens of an- 
 cient civilization which had all of these as an in- 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 267 
 
 spiration, but the Christian religion brings us 
 Christ, and the love he brings is first and last the 
 very atmosphere of a holy life. Depend upon your 
 money and you may lose it. Depend upon your 
 physical strength, and when it is gone where are 
 you? Depend upon your friendships and they 
 will betray you, but be filled with the love of 
 Grod, then his wealth is yours, and he who uses 
 the weak things will cause you even to bless 
 your enemies. 
 
 G-et the idea that this is God's love. How it 
 gets into your natures I can not tell, nor can we 
 tell how life gets into the tree, or how the light 
 gets into the fiower, or how the fire gets into the 
 iron, or how the frost gets into the stone, or the 
 attraction into the magnet. But G-od will im- 
 part himself to the soul which will give itself up 
 exclusively to him. 
 
 This is not only apparent concerning God's 
 love; the peace the Christian receives is the peace 
 of God, the joy he receives is the joy of the Lord, 
 and where Jesus said "Have faith in God" it 
 may well be translated " Have you faith of God." 
 (Mark xi:22.) Of course they all become ours 
 when we receive them and use them. But the 
 Father and the child are to share the same nature ; 
 born from above, we get the nature which is from 
 above. " Our citizenship is in heaven" has been 
 translated by some scholars, ' ' Our polity begins 
 
SC8 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 in the heavens. " Paul says Christ is the head 
 and we are the body, and Jesus himself said that he 
 would be in us and we would be in him as he is in 
 the Father and the Father in him, while here 
 again in the Epistle to the Romans, Paul says, 
 < ' The love of G-od is shed abroad in our hearts by 
 the Holy Ghost which is given unto us " — this 
 treasure is in earthen vessels. 
 
 4. And while this love is God's love imparted 
 to our finite natures its true expression is evi- 
 dent in the service to our fellow-man. ' ' Let 
 him that saith he loveth God love his brother 
 also; love worketh no ill to a neighbor." The 
 word which is rendered "love" in this connec- 
 tion is the word Agape, and it is the very same 
 word which is rendered love in John iii:16. It 
 means the love of intense good will. On the 
 other hand, when God speaks of his love to his 
 children the word used is Phileo, and it means 
 the love of positive delight. The love here re- 
 ferred to then having filled our hearts gives us to 
 have the spirit of intense good-will towards 
 humanity. It will be so in harmony with the 
 song of the angels and the advent of Jesus that it 
 will produce the very opposite of strife and envy 
 and jealousy and malice and revenge, all 
 of which characterize the Cain-life. Said a 
 little girl down in Illinois last Christmas morning, 
 whose mother had corrected her in a firm tone of 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 269 
 
 voice, ' ' Mamma, we must not scold to-day, you 
 know, for this is Jesus' birthday." The little child 
 recognized that a right estimate of celebrating 
 Christ's advent would produce a loving harmony 
 in the family, and she was right. The love of God 
 shed abroad in our hearts will change the very 
 aspect of humanity to us. When Jesus came near 
 to his crucifixion hour he said to his disciples, ' 'A 
 new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
 one another as I have loved you." And when we 
 remember that on three different occasions these 
 men had disputed with each other who of them 
 should be greatest, we can plainly see that the 
 love which Jesus had for them is altogether su- 
 perior in type to that love which they had yet 
 known. His love made him lay down his life in 
 sacrifice for them, but they never understood the 
 deeper meaning of sacrifice until they received 
 the later anointing of the Holy Spirit at Pente- 
 cost; then, they began their work of distributing 
 goods among those who had need so that every 
 man was supplied, then they returned counting it 
 all joy that they were reckoned worthy to suffer 
 for Christ's sake. It is the Christly love we 
 need. The Calvary-love will not count the cost ; it 
 has its eye on the needy one rather than upon it- 
 self or upon visible results. 
 
 Now what about that enemy of yours? What 
 are you to do with him? Does some one say ''Am 
 
270 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 I to call wrong right, and just let every thing pass 
 on as if all things were common?" No, my friend, 
 you are not to call wrong right, but you are to seek 
 to get the wrong out of every single life you can in- 
 fluence in this wide world, and you are to seek 
 to get the right into every individual's life you 
 can affect. That enemy ! His awful thraldom 
 must arouse your pity if you love him. If you 
 love him you will pray for him, you will study to 
 help him, you will lay down your life for him. 
 You have no right to imprison him excepting for 
 the sake of protecting the lives of others and re- 
 forming his own nature. He is ungrateful. 
 But you are not serving him, you are serving 
 the Lord. Christ died for a race of ingrates. 
 "If he lay down his life for us we ought to 
 lay down our lives for the brethren." 
 
 Recently a church member called upon one of the 
 leading pastors of this country. He came to con- 
 sult him about the advisability of securing a di- 
 vorce from his wife. He began to tell about the 
 sad story of her faults, until the pastor checked 
 his conversation by saying, ' ' Brother, can 
 you tell me one good thing about your wife ? " 
 The man replied, "Well, she is a very good 
 cook." "Now," said the pastor, "can you tell 
 me another good thing ? Does she stay at 
 home?" "Yes, she has always been ^ very 
 good to stay at home." "Can you tell me 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 271 
 
 anything else good about your wife ? " said the 
 pastor. '<Is she kind to her children?" 
 "Yes, generally," said the man. "Well," said 
 the pastor, "I think she has a good many re- 
 deeming qualities. Let us pray together that 
 the Lord may help you to be patient." After 
 prayer they separated. My friend, the 
 pastor, sent for the wife to come and 
 see him. He told her he had heard 
 about the difficulty and he wished to 
 help her. The woman began immediately 
 to disclose the faults of her husband, when 
 the pastor pursued the same plan with her which 
 he had followed in conversation with her husband, 
 and the first question was, ' ' Can you tell me any- 
 thing good about your husband? " She replied: 
 "Well, he is a good provider." The second and 
 third questions were asked and answered favor- 
 ably, and the wife was advised to go home and 
 study patience, after the pastor had prayed with 
 her. Then the pastor called at the home when 
 the husband and wife were both in and the chil- 
 dren were absent. He paved the way by telling 
 the unhappy couple that he had heard of their 
 trouble, and that he had come as a Christian to 
 help them settle it. "Now," said he to tjie hus- 
 band, ' ' I want you here, in the presence of your 
 wife, to tell all the good things about her you can 
 think of. " He began to tell, and with the pastor's 
 
373 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 assistance, through little interjections of ques- 
 tions, he told a long story. "Then," said the pas- 
 tor to the wife, ' ' I want you to tell all the good 
 things you can about your husband," and the wife 
 told an interesting and long story. The pastor, 
 gifted with no little grace and wisdom, said: 
 ' ' Now, it appears to me that there are many peo- 
 ple in this world who live together in compara- 
 tive peace, who can not say so many good things 
 about each other as you can, and I want you to 
 promise me that for at least one year, no matter 
 what circumstances occur in your home, you will 
 not speak of any of the bad things in each other's 
 characters, and you will try not to think of them. " 
 The pastor told me that some months had elapsed 
 and that he had asked the couple for positive 
 reports, to find that they were living very agree- 
 ably, and he said their faces showed that it was 
 so. But we saw that very woman convicted of 
 the need of divine love in her heart. We saw 
 her weep and pray and plead, and we saw her 
 profess to receive it. Who of us does not know 
 that if that woman had the love of Christ in her 
 heart, and that man had the love of Christ in his 
 heart, they would live in harmony and blessed- 
 ness, and if either of them only had the love of 
 Christ in the heart, that one would be gentle 
 and forgiving with the other, and quite probably, 
 too, win the other from self unto Christ, through 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 273 
 
 the shining of that same love. Paul says, in his 
 great chapter to the Corinthians, that this love 
 never faileth. 
 
 This love is heroic. Perhaps we may as 
 well admit that as a distinct characteristic 
 the spirit of valor does not exist in our day. 
 Burke's lamentation, ' ' The day of chivalry has 
 gone," would fit us to-day. We are a race of 
 cowards. We are asking ' ' Will it pay, and 
 is it an easy way? " And we always will be a 
 race of cowards until we receive a fullness of God's 
 love. Likely one reason for this condition of 
 affairs is in the fact that man has invented so many 
 machines for defense and they are so well adapted 
 to their intended work that we have come to hide 
 behind the machine instead of trusting in God. 
 Idolatry does not really need an idol made into 
 peculiar figures. But we are told the fathers 
 were stronger physically than we are, and we 
 have not the power of endurance to venture 
 far in the conflict. There we are again call- 
 ing in our defense a human body. Scores of 
 suffering bed-ridden invalids, who have not 
 walked a yard for twenty years and who suf- 
 fer indescribable pain, shame any such suggestion 
 away from us. No, we need the love of God in 
 our hearts. We must have a baptism of divine 
 love. Not a thing, not a single thing, must inter- 
 vene between us and the Holy One, not a mo- 
 
274 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 merit's nursing must be given to our cowardice 
 and idolatry. Love is the very opposite of idol- 
 atry, for God is love. Men can be loved into hero- 
 ism. The principle is strong enough and the sup- 
 ply is large enough. Prices must not be reckoned 
 here. Let us have it, let us have it. Fresh from 
 his own heart! Then men's hearts shall be girded 
 in the storm, and the witness, the very miracle 
 of the Divine, shall appear to infidel and heathen 
 alike, for be sure that by this shall all men know 
 that we are Christ's disciples when we have love 
 one to another. 
 
 Infidels who can endure eloquence and organi- 
 zation, singing and praying, philosophy and zeal, 
 exhortation, argument and tears will be won by 
 this power of powers, the love of God. 
 
 Indians in their sun dances will lacerate their 
 bodies until pools of their blood soak iato the 
 earth around them. They will dance almost in- 
 cessantly from four o'clock in the morning to ten 
 at night for four days or more in some of their 
 religious observances, like the medicine dance. 
 
 Look at the Mahometan pilgrimages. What 
 weariness, filth and death mark their journey. 
 
 See the people of Siam. They in former days 
 burned the bodies of their dead and mixing them 
 with lime used them as plaster for their temples. 
 
 The maidens of Carthage gave their hair that 
 it might be braided into bow-strings for Hannibals 
 
THE UNFAILING GRACE 275 
 
 archers, and the maidens of Tyre gave theirs for 
 cordage in the navy of Tyre. 
 
 Now, get that faculty thoroughly imbued with 
 love, let the divine nature fill the soul with the 
 greatest motive power known in the universe , and 
 who can dream what buoyancy shall appear in the 
 life consigned to service as a fish is to the water 
 in which it lives. Then nothing will be so de- 
 licious to the soul as the privilege of service. 
 You might as well think of the sun running a 
 million miles out of its sphere to gather up light 
 enough with which to shine as to think of such a 
 life separated from a conscious delight in blessing 
 all other lives about it. Do you realize that it has 
 never changed through all the centuries ? It is 
 the same love and just as great as in the hour when 
 Christ was slain. Like the little wheat seed which 
 thousands of years ago received its treasure into 
 itself at the hands of God. That seed has folded 
 that treasure close in its embrace all down the 
 years, in heat or cold, in storm or calm, by day 
 or by night; it is to-day after successive har- 
 vests, not barley or oats, but wheat. With like 
 fidelity through all the ages has been, and will 
 be, this love of God always the same, but repro- 
 ducing itself in successive harvests where human 
 hearts receive it. Love never faileth. When 
 malice and jealousy, pride and lust have burnt 
 out their rapidly wasting stock of fuel, then love, 
 
276 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 fair as a morning without clouds and strong as the 
 heart of the Lord, our G-od, shall stand forth 
 chanting triumphantly the victory of the saved; 
 never to weary or want or die, for God is love. 
 And that this grace should be given to flood your 
 nature and mine! Dear reader, tell me, is not 
 this life? And is not all the other common strug- 
 gle death? 
 
 The trees of life grow in that thirteenth chap- 
 ter of First Corinthians. Let us move into that 
 orchard to-day. A perfect abundance of ripe fruit 
 hangs invitingly from the low-bending branches 
 here. 
 
 Like the fish to the ocean, like the lamb to the 
 meadow, or like the babe to its mother's arms, 
 let us give ourselves to His love, who first loved 
 us. 
 
SOME SCRIPTURE SYM- 
 BOLS OF THE HOLY 
 SPIRIT. 
 
"The eye is quicker than the ear. And there is 
 therefore a language of symbols. The multitude will 
 better catch your meaning by one apt symbol than by a 
 thousand words. The mind shrinks from the intellect- 
 ual effort of grappling with the subtle essence of things, 
 and loves to have truth wrapped up in a form which can 
 easily be taken in by the eye, the ear, the sense of 
 touch." F. B. Meyer. 
 
 " And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, parting 
 asunder like as of fire."" — Acts ii:3. 
 
 *' The church of God is to-day courting the world. Its 
 members are bringing it down to the level of the un- 
 godly. The ball, the theater, nude and lewd arts, social 
 luxuries, with all their loose moralities, are making 
 inroads into the sacred enclosure of the church. As a 
 satisfaction for all this worldliness, Christians are mak- 
 ing a great deal of Lent and Easter and Good Friday 
 and church ornamentations. It is the old trick of Satan. 
 The Jewish church struck on that rock, the Roman 
 church was wrecked on it, and the Protestant church is 
 fast reaching the same doom. Our great dangers, as 
 we see them, are assimilation to the world, neglect to 
 the poor, substitution of the form for the fact of godli- 
 ness, abandonment of discipline, a hireling ministry, an 
 impure Gospel, which, summed up, is a fashionable 
 church." Bishop R. S. Foster. 
 
 '* There are orders that go straight to the hearts of 
 men unheard by mortal ears. Some day, under divine 
 orders, the church of Jesus Christ will move out to take 
 the world. Get ready for it." Bishop C. C. McCabe. 
 
SOME SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS OF THE 
 HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 PiTHER because our moral needs are so great 
 ■■— ' or because language is so incompetent, or 
 perhaps on account of both of these, God has 
 chosen to use many symbols with which to illus- 
 trate and send home the truths we need to know 
 and cherish. A large share of the differences 
 which exist between people in their beliefs is due 
 to the narrowness of language. The truth may 
 be in your mind and in your heart, but when you 
 come to tell the hidden worth which is in it, what 
 a poor, lame instrument is language. If we would 
 consider this duly, it would help save such a 
 tremendous amount of religious discussion, and it 
 would help produce such a great aggregation of 
 true harmony among Christian people, that the 
 world would much sooner get a deep conviction 
 of a divinity of the Christian religion. Little 
 differences of doctrinal expression, which have no 
 particular significance as to our life and as to our 
 estimate of Jesus, ought at least to be placed in 
 abeyance, in the presence of the awful needs of 
 humanity about us and the eagerness of God's 
 heart to reach a lost world. 
 
280 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 In recent years the public schools have been 
 adopting what is called teaching by objects. 
 Children are taught to count with the use of balls 
 and sticks and apples; or the picture of a horse 
 is drawn and the word horse written under it; 
 then the child's attention is called to the picture 
 and to the word, so as to associate the word with 
 the object in his mind. But this has long been 
 heaven's method of teaching us, another proof of 
 the modernness of Biblical methods, for the first 
 Great Teacher has always led the way. The gen- 
 erations are in the distance behind him. Let us 
 hasten into his school. 
 
 A symbol is to a truth what the wings are to 
 the bird. Under proper conditions it carries the 
 truth right forth on its journey to the soul. May 
 we see more than we put into words as we study 
 a few of these symbols of the Divine Spirit. 
 
 1. Se is revealed in the symbol of fire. This 
 strange, weird element, so dangerous as an 
 enemy and so necessary as a friend, has been very 
 widely employed by the Lord as a method of 
 getting the truth through our dullness into our 
 souls. He fixed it in flaming words at the gate 
 of Eden, he kindled it in the temple, he caused it 
 to glow on Sinai, he raised it aloft as heaven's 
 finger-board for Israel, and he made it the symbol 
 of the baptism of a Christian. Fire. Fire. 
 
 What a separator ! The iron and the silver 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 281 
 
 and the gold are liberated from the dross when 
 the flames of fire come to emancipate. With a 
 blast of fire, five times as forceful as the most 
 violent of hurricanes, the pig-iron is liberated 
 from the ore; and the silver is poured out and 
 the gold refined by the same mighty agent. So 
 here the agent employed for the separating of the 
 soul from sin is the Holy Spirit, the fire of God. The 
 deep disease of iniquity is so fastened into our 
 beings that it will not be taken out except it be 
 burnt out. The great problem of our lives is in- 
 volved in our willingness or unwillingness to 
 part with our sins without any compromise; to 
 pass over into the life hidden with Christ in God 
 and let his fire burn the bridges, so that retreat 
 will find no place in all the programme. We are 
 bidden to leave the whole old life behind us and 
 to take the whole new life for our own. Forsake 
 sin. As William Gurnall said when the gloom of 
 the seventeenth century yet hung over the peo- 
 ple, ' ' To forsake sin is to leave it without any 
 thought reserved of returning to it again. Every 
 time a man takes a journey from home about 
 business we do not say he hath forsaken his 
 house, because he meant when he went out to 
 come to it again. No, but when we see a man 
 leave his house, carry all his stuff away with him, 
 lock up his doors and take up his abode in an- 
 other, never to dwell there more, here is a man 
 
282 OUT OF THE CAIN- LIFE 
 
 who hath indeed forsaken his house." It ''were 
 strange to find a drunkard so constant in the ex- 
 ercise of that sin, but sometime you may find him 
 sober, and yet a drunkard he is, as well as if he 
 was then drunk. Every one hath not forsaken 
 his trade that we see now and then in his holiday 
 suits. Then the man forsakes his sin when he 
 throws it from him, and bolts the door upon it 
 with a purpose never to open more to it." 
 
 " Out of the world," said Jesus. Those words 
 of his seem to be charged with electric force, 
 when you sever them from all others. What a 
 title for a book they make. How they catch the 
 attention, "Out of the world." Those whom 
 thou hast given me ^^out of the world,'' ''I have 
 chosen them out of the world." The drift of 
 affairs in the world of that day was all wrong, 
 because, as we have seen, it was of the self-idea, 
 and how sadly, how hellishly, this same drift moves 
 on to-day. That it moves on is not so deplorable 
 as that it is believed by so many to be the only pos- 
 sible way of living. That belief is so deep in the 
 convictions of the people that the practice of it 
 is a natural result, and the little children are 
 taught it in the schools, in the homes, and, too, 
 betimes at least, in some of the churches. Now 
 we know that the Christian life is another kind 
 of programme, operating under another kind of 
 rules, seeking another class of results, and inspired 
 
SCRIPTZTRE SYMBOLS 283 
 
 by another Spirit. We are sent into the world 
 even as Christ was. When Darius fled before 
 Alexander, he threw his massive crown from his 
 head that he might run the faster, and in this 
 conflict of light with darkness, we, who do believe 
 in Grod, must throw aside all our own ambitions 
 and plans ; for it will take an untrammeled soul 
 for this task. 
 
 We have seen attempts to enforce this idea of 
 separation from the world by the use of peculiar 
 forms of dress. It may be better to give us this 
 plan than none, but we must know that there 
 ought to be something in the Christian heart, 
 something in the life, which will appear as a con- 
 trast, that sinners may see the difference between 
 the clay in the pit and the rock where the deliv- 
 ered one stands. Let not the fear of man ensnare 
 you. The stamp of genuineness is involved here. 
 If shams are to be plentiful as weeds, let us give 
 this Christian religion the stamp of genuineness, 
 in the presence of the perverse. Separate. 
 Separated by fire, So often we speak of young 
 Isaiah having his lips touched with a live coal 
 from off the altar. Do you not suppose those lips 
 of his were blistered after the live coal touched 
 them? Yes, this fire burns. It will blister, but 
 heaven's blisters are preferable to the world's 
 freezing. The church must be separate from the 
 
284 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 world. And it will be so when the Holy Spirit is 
 duly honored. 
 
 She can not lay her great undertakings tribute 
 to all kinds of questionable methods of financing, 
 and to the business shrewdness of sinful men who 
 possess gold, without violating her virtue and 
 wrecking her prospects. 
 
 She can not undertake to indorse the amuse- 
 ment-loving self-life of the people about her, 
 going into the same methods of killing time and 
 currying self-conceit which the world loves, with- 
 out grieving the Holy Spirit. 
 
 She can not choose the glitter and lose the 
 worth, she can not, either for money with which 
 to perpetuate her great undertakings, or with 
 friendships with which to console her vanity, plead 
 that society demands her compromise, without 
 losing her power and grieving her God. 
 
 She can not, through her amusements, fund the 
 treasury for God's poor and attempt through her 
 pleasures to provide the social stimulus which 
 the sinner, amid ten thousand temptations, needs, 
 without betraying the wisdom of her Leader and 
 slandering the Calvary of her Redeemer. Whose 
 heart has not been made sick in these latter days 
 with the terrible travesty of a mixed intoxication 
 of amusement and so-called charity and of a 
 promiscuous jumble of worldliness and religion? 
 I saw not long ago a church arranged for a church- 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 285 
 
 supper with a fee, where the words of the wicked 
 rich maji were framed and hung up near one of 
 the tables, " Eat, drink and be merry." And this 
 in Christ's church ! 
 
 Nor may she withdraw from the world. The 
 iron worker will thrust his hand into the water 
 and then into the molten iron for an instant, 
 without receiving injury. The water has made a 
 case of vapor about the hand for its protection, 
 and the Lord makes a wall of fire about his people 
 for protection. We may not withdraw, saving 
 for that secret communion which girds us. Out, 
 right out into the world's needs will we go, too 
 intent for its salvation to dare adopt any second- 
 rate measures or methods, and too sure of the 
 wealth of the things of grace to dare barter with 
 a bankrupt world. The fresh fish lives in the 
 salt water. ''Our polity begins in the heavens." 
 We must be cut loose from this world-spirit. 
 The world which knew not Christ when he came 
 among us in the flesh does not know him yet, and 
 John says that this is the very reason it does not 
 know us because it knew not him. And it never 
 will know Christ until it has lost the goaded, 
 competitive, vain, self-assertive spirit. O for a 
 baptism of Christian faith. 
 
 Fire has a very penetrating quality. Hide it 
 away as deeply as you may, and if it has fuel 
 enough and draft enough it will burn to the sur- 
 
286 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 face. See it belching out of the crater of the vol- 
 cano and darting through the tops of the flues of 
 the great factories. Put it under six inches of 
 iron, and the iron will become hot on the surface ; 
 put it over on one side of the room, and it will 
 gradually make its way out, until, if you open 
 the door on the other side to enter the building, 
 the waves of heat will meet you there. And I am 
 glad that the fire of the Divine Spirit is ever pen- 
 etrating and will find its way to the surface. 
 Christianity is not shame-faced. She has com- 
 mitted no crimes, she is guilty of no selfishness. 
 Her record is above all compare, and she does not 
 require to hide away in shame. On the other 
 hand, her characteristic is to do, to give, to dare, 
 to turn the world upside down. No such revolu- 
 tionary thought was ever cherished in the mind 
 of man as that thought which is the prime factor 
 in the Christian religion — love to Cod and love to 
 man. This Holy Spirit fire will burn out to the 
 surface. 
 
 It will take the cloud off the face. You 
 may not know that your face shines; Moses 
 did not know that his shone. Had he known 
 it, vanity might have stepped in and beclouded 
 it again. Disease, too, may have rendered 
 the skin of your face far otherwise than ruddy, 
 but the Divine kindling will be yours. This fire 
 burns out, too, into the conduct, into the very 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 287 
 
 movement of life. I have actually seen people 
 move their hands with beautiful grace when a 
 fresh anointing had come upon their hearts. But 
 this effect is far more expressive than in physical 
 expression or physical movement. With this fire 
 burning within us, we shall let people know 
 whether we are servants of G-od or not. At the 
 close of a meeting some time ago a gentleman 
 came up to me and said, ' ' I can not tell you how 
 interested I was in those few words spoken by my 
 partner. I was delighted. It completely sur- 
 prised me. "We have been partners for twelve 
 years, and this is the first time I ever knew he 
 professed to be a Christian." Now, the man in 
 his testimony had said that he had been some 
 twenty years in the service of the Lord. God 
 forgive. A man who is a Christian should assert 
 it. I hear people say that they are going to live 
 it, but they are not going to tell it. One might 
 as well say that he is going to be dead-alive. You 
 can not be a Christian without telling it. It is a 
 part of the programme to tell it. In this con- 
 nection the Scriptures mention the organ with 
 which we express it. The mouth, the lips, the 
 tongue; ''With the mouth confession is made 
 unto salvation." '' My lips shall show forth thy 
 praise;" and when Pentecost came, the symbol 
 was the tongue of fire. But people say it is better 
 to live it and not profess it than to profess it and 
 
288 OXJT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 not live it. But this boat has two oars, the one 
 is ''to live it," the other is " to profess it;" if 
 you throw away either oar you row in a circle; 
 with the use of both oars you make your way 
 heavenward. It is painful to find a large com- 
 pany of people gathered together in what is called 
 a Christian testimony meeting when only the 
 smallest percentage appears to have anything to 
 testify. As if there were nothing to say, as if 
 Christ were not on trial, or as if no struggle were 
 pending and no great victory was to be won. I 
 tell you, if the fire of the Divine Spirit gets into 
 the people's hearts it will revolutionize the testi- 
 mony meetings and we shall not only be ready to 
 speak, but, what is of evidently more import, we 
 shall be faithful witnesses to the Christ, and men 
 shall feel the conviction of our witness 
 
 And this fire of the Divine Spirit will revolu- 
 tionize our social customs. I think I see the day 
 coming when an afternoon call will no longer 
 mean a few casual remarks about the weather and 
 ordinary things, with a visitor's card added, but 
 when if no other method will successfully lift us 
 out of this insipid, uninviting custom, we shall 
 have Caller's Societies or Leagues or Unions to 
 provide a programme, so that for one month all 
 the callers may converse mainly about the work 
 of the Gospel in Africa, and another month the 
 work of the Gospel in India, and another the in- 
 
SCRIPTURE SVMBOLS 
 
 fluence of good reading upon the children, etc. 
 Must we hear the plea that the people would not 
 be sufficiently informed to converse intelligently 
 upon the subject of missions? Then they may be 
 informed. The people who are accustomed to 
 pay social calls ought to be informed. Let the 
 fire burn brightly enough in every church serv- 
 ice, in the missionary meetings and in the won- 
 derful missionary papers and magazines, and they 
 will be ashamed in this day of privilege and need 
 to ever suggest for one moment a paltry excuse 
 for wasting time by merely "passing the time " 
 This awful lethargy, whether it exhibits itself in 
 the cold testimony meeting or in the system of 
 polite calls, must be substituted with a mighty 
 quickening. Our Christian expressions are too 
 much like the names on the handkerchiefs when 
 they used to print them with old-fashioned indel- 
 ible ink. They had to pass a hot iron^over the 
 printing, so as to bring it out clearly and make 
 it legible. The deep things of the Divine Spirit 
 need to be brought out to-day. The cold refresh- 
 ing water is at the bottom of the well One of the 
 richest compliments I have yet heard paid to any 
 man was paid to a minister of Christ who has 
 recently spoken in most of the cities of the cen- 
 tral and eastern States. We were seated at the 
 supper table when his work became a subject of 
 comment. One of the company said, ' ' That man 
 
290 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 made me think of Jesus every minute," and her 
 comment was promptly followed by two or three 
 others, who said that they felt the very same 
 while listening to him. That man so specializes 
 the work of the Holy Spirit that he says, ' ' The 
 Holy Spirit's fruit and chisf work is to get Christ 
 and the love of God in us for our every-day life." 
 Love burns. 
 
 Fire is a unifier. Need, awful need, stalks 
 everywhere about us while perhaps plenty of our 
 strength is expended and certainly enough time 
 occupied, somehow, and too often, I fear, anyhow. 
 But the claim of a divine harmony is wanting. 
 We can not steadily execute because we do not 
 steadily keep step; mob-like rather than army- 
 like. It is as useless as it is faithless for us to 
 say that the harmony can not exist and especially 
 that it can not be perpetuated long, where the 
 peculiarities of many people are to be taken into 
 account. It will cost our great Savior no more 
 taxing of strength to keep a soul true for a 
 minute than for a second, or for a day than for a 
 minute. Do not think of any strain being placed 
 upon the strength of the Lord in keeping us. 
 
 <'Tell me," said a trembling soul, "how the 
 Lord can keep one spotless every day." The 
 teacher answered, ' ' I carried a vessel full of oil 
 all the way around the city without spilling a 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 291 
 
 drop of it. How did I do it ? I kept my eye on 
 it all the time." 
 
 The Almighty God, the everlasting Father, 
 fainteth not, neither is weary. Then he can just 
 as easily keep us for a year, or a century, or a 
 million centuries, as for a second. Indeed, we 
 mortals are not acquainted with time, anyway. 
 When I was a boy the length of time from Christ- 
 mas to Christmas seemed like a century, now it 
 seems rather like a day. When we awaken in 
 the morning,, the night's sleep appears to have 
 been but an instant. Wrapped in conversation, 
 time passes unnoticed. So we do not know time. 
 I can not tell whether the battle is long or short. 
 With the Lord a thousand years are as one day. 
 And it is equally true that God can as easily keep 
 a million'souls as one, in perfect accord. George 
 Miiller uttered a great philosophy when he was 
 first called of God to build his large orphanage. 
 Said he, "I knew that the Lord could as easily 
 support a thousand orphans through me as three 
 hundred." Yes. He can do it. 
 
 Then, too, we show a want of faith in both God 
 and man by our chronic emphasis upon reporting 
 things. This religious denomination is of such a 
 size, and it collected so much money. The property 
 of that religious denomination is valued at so such. 
 The converts for the year aggregated so many. 
 The effect of all this would not be so serious were it 
 
OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 not a fact that the habit colors our estimates and 
 casts a sort of hard, mathematical influence about 
 the work until one is led to wonder whether the 
 Lord will not repeat the history of Gideon's 
 army and deplete the numbers. It is nothing 
 new to hear men say to-day that the greatest 
 danger of a religious organization is its vastness. 
 Why ? This is not necessarily so. Our Lord is 
 the God of the millions and his resources are in- 
 finite. But remember the real work of the Spirit 
 of God can not be read from an annual report. 
 You may report calls, so many, and the distance 
 between them, so many rods, and the length of 
 each call, so many minutes, but you can not 
 report so many yards high, and so many yards 
 wide, and so many yards deep, of fidelity. The 
 thing is unreportable. God weighs where man 
 measures. Man runs into mathematics, God 
 holds to dynamics. Let the report be the var- 
 nish if you will but let the great, holy, divine 
 principle be the structure. 
 
 And that shrewd eye which prides itself in 
 keenly estimating grades of redeemed men, so 
 that it promptly distinguishes between what it 
 pronounces <'the upper and the lower classes," is 
 not a safe discerner of the movements of the Holy 
 Spirit in the Kingdom of Heaven. Strife in the 
 church is the same evil monster that it is in the 
 bar-room, only the garb is different. Ten fingers 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 293 
 
 on two hands obey the will of one person, and a 
 truly surrendered people, even the body of Christ, 
 shall harmonize with the One Divine Will. 
 
 At a great camp meeting scores of tents were 
 pitched in the grove just out of the city. These 
 and the board cottages accommodated hundreds 
 of people. Many of them cooked their own food 
 during the sacred outing. Meetings were held 
 almost hourly and continued late at night. A 
 heavy rain fell and the bedding had to be carried 
 out of the tents into the sunlight which followed. 
 Many of the people carried fruits and other pro- 
 visions from the city, necessitating a long walk 
 each trip. Thus the people were kept unusually 
 busy. Their tents were close together and many 
 conveniences were wanting. Yet they lived for 
 a week without a known disagreement. No need 
 of police interference — no violence, no harsh 
 words ; but singing, praying, weeping, and buoy- 
 ant victoriousness prevailed there. Stand off and 
 look upon the scene, and let us consider: 
 If Grod would give those hundreds and thousands 
 to live so harmoniously for a week why may we 
 not claim the same victory for the multitudes, 
 and years of it, too. Or surely we may claim it 
 in Missionary Societies, in Young Peoples' Socie- 
 ties, in Sunday Schools, in assemblies of preachers 
 and of Christian workers, yea in the church of 
 Christ. Do you say how shall we secure this 
 
894 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 blessed unity ? G-ive us the rules. Ah, there is 
 the trouble. We would adopt the rules, we 
 would pay the money, we would fast and read 
 and plan and toil,iibut we would not meet that 
 crisis which we fear. We dread to open wide 
 the hearing of the soul and let those words 
 search us, ' ' You must either deny self or Christ " 
 That awful crisis moment reveals our cowardice. 
 Faith is heroism. Let us dare to die. Let us be 
 brave enough to give up the ambition to live 
 here a long time, goaded on by a kind of relig- 
 ious hypochondria. Let us count God in, and 
 say, ' ' Thy sweet will is enough ' Let us meet 
 the crisis. Satan will say you will die physi- 
 cally, you will be poor, you will defeat all the 
 better possibilities of your character, you will be 
 hidden away, no one will know you, you will be a 
 fool Let us say, ' ' Granted. I must choose : I 
 will choose the will of God; I die that I may live. 
 Holy Spirit, it is enough." 
 
 Come gently, moments of mine. Gladly I greet 
 you, fresh from my Father's hands. My future is 
 not a speculative future. It is all good in the 
 pledge of my Redeemer. Come, then, moments 
 of mine; ye bring me naught but good. 
 
 The whole difficulty is the want of that faith 
 which receives the Holy Spirit. This neglect 
 may be largely cultivated through fear of fanat- 
 icism or a delicate fondness for moderation, rather 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 295 
 
 than a violent prejudice Anything will do, the 
 one object of the enemy being to keep us from 
 the victory. No two people will probably think 
 exactly the same in detail, but we can fall prone 
 into the hands of Him who breathes the breath 
 of holy life within us. We can give up to God, 
 throwing away the millionaire spirit and assert- 
 ing the spirit of deepest want. 
 
 There, at the very opposite of this spirit of 
 harmony, lies our competition and strife which has 
 given rise to that sort of religious mathematics, 
 which, like the frost with the feeble meadow 
 brook, threatens to freeze solidly the genuinely 
 spiritual activities of the organizations it afflicts. 
 A living child two feet in height is unspeakably 
 preferable to a dead doll — a thing — six feet in 
 height. The Lord send us living unity. 
 
 2. He is revealed to us in the symbol of water. 
 I have before called your attention to Jesus' words 
 in the seventh chapter of John, where He em- 
 ployed this symbol during the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles. 
 
 What a beautiful and expressive symbol ! See 
 it in the iris bend as a wreath about the brow of 
 the storm, see it in the soft-tinted veil over the 
 rising sun, or the white, fluffy frill about the 
 evening star; beautiful in the brook, beautiful in 
 the river, beautiful in the sea, the fountain, the 
 ice-cake, or the dew-drop. 
 
296 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 The Psalmist speaks about the beauty of holi- 
 ness. If we should undertake to represent the 
 graces of the Spirit with the use of human char- 
 acters, how beautiful we would require to make 
 the faces! 
 
 What is more refreshing than the water to the 
 thirsty pilgrim, as he drinks it, or to the dusty- 
 traveler, as he bathes in it. The grass, the 
 flowers and the trees wear new forms of beauty 
 and share a new life, after the warm showers 
 have fallen. The dry, adobe plains of the West 
 are turned into splendid gardens, luxuriant with 
 harvest. What did it? Water. Why that 
 stretch of country yonder, bearing now and then 
 a bunch of grease weed, while here, within a few 
 rods of it, fruits and flowers abound ? Water. 
 Water has been brought from yonder mountain 
 lake or stream in the canon, and the refreshing 
 is like the roses on the cheek of health. And 
 when the Divine Spirit is fully entertained in our 
 souls, how refreshing ! Human cares lose their 
 drudgery, common duties cease to be irksome, 
 the feverish thirst for something exciting is 
 gone, and the soul loves the philosophy of Jesus' 
 words, <' He that is faithful in that which is 
 least is faithful also in much." We do not 
 require the overdrawn plot of the exciting story 
 to rouse up our spirits to the point of endurance. 
 We drink of the water from the hidden rock and 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 297 
 
 bathe in the fountain of perpetual strength until 
 «'the inward man is renewed day by day." 
 Does the reader know the secret of this precious 
 refreshing ? Have you gone alone and found 
 a really new revelation of faith or hope or love to 
 your soul ? Have you seen that these things 
 which are prime truths to God, devoid of all 
 speculation and dreaminess, were becoming very 
 real to you ? You have proven his refreshing in 
 the communion of Christian people and in seeking 
 to help the most helpless. You have proven 
 what the world wonderingly, or may be helplessly, 
 hears, that "It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive." Now, for you, tnrough all nature, reve- 
 lation and providence, the Holy Spirit offers an 
 infinite refreshing An apple now and then ? 
 Yours is the liberty of the whole orchard. 
 
 But the water is more than refreshing and beau- 
 tiful. What a carrier is water. What floating 
 cities find their way from continent to continent, 
 while the old ocean bears their burdens, and it 
 seems as, easy for the ocean to carry a steel-clad 
 as to carry a feather. The Divine Spirit within 
 us shall render us burden-bearers. There is 
 plenty to do. The calls are loud enough, the want 
 is vast enough, but the heart to do it, and do it 
 steadily, day in and day out, without wearing- 
 down into harshness and complaining, we never 
 
298 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 can find, unless the Holy Spirit comes as the 
 water to bear us and our burdens along. 
 
 3. He is revealed to us in the symbol of a dove^ 
 specially used at the time of the baptism of Jesus. 
 The dove has long been held to be the symbol of 
 modesty, gentleness and peace. She will not 
 nestle among the briars or rude surroundings. 
 Her nest is downy and soft. And it is one of the 
 sweet characteristics of the Holy Spirit that he 
 prepares -the nest for himself in our souls, with 
 mildness and gentleness for its lining. That 
 sweet subduing is often manifested in tears of 
 tenderness, like the thawing out of winter, pre- 
 paring for the spring showers to come. Unkind 
 words and unkind looks do not belong to that 
 soul which is the nesting place of the heavenly 
 dove. His gentleness doth make us great. What 
 could be more appropriate than this symbol at 
 the baptism of him ' ' who is meek and lowly in 
 heart." Why, it seems almost superfluous to 
 speak of Jesus as sweet-tempered and gentle! 
 The Holy Spirit will make us like himself. The 
 ruffled soul can not speak even the truth well, 
 because it is to be " spoken in love." 
 
 4. Then there is the symbol of the wind. This 
 is another of those strange, swift forces so com- 
 mon to this world. Jesus told Nicodemus that 
 we could not tell whence it came or where it went. 
 The little breath of morning air, called the rustle 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 299 
 
 of the dawn, gathers little breaths to itself, until 
 volume after volume has become harmonized, and 
 then sweeping over the hill tops, it plays with the 
 fields of grain and the tall trees, and the sailing 
 clouds, the wind-mills and the seas, as if it had a 
 limitless sweep and cared not how great the de- 
 mand. It gets into the sails of the ships and pro- 
 pels them on their course, it gets into the wind- 
 mills and pumps the water for the farm. 
 
 This great motive power of the Holy Spirit, 
 wherever cherished, has been signalized as the 
 mighty motive power of God. The heavenly 
 motive power! This power got into the heart 
 of Paul, until day and night he sought a lost 
 world, like a mother seeking a lost child. He 
 preached, he toiled with his own hands, he 
 pleaded, he prayed, he wept; imprisoned, he wit- 
 nessed for Christ; set free, he journeyed on foot 
 from country to country; caught in a storm at 
 sea, he communed with God and taught the peo- 
 ple; cast upon a desert island, he so displayed the 
 presence of God with him, that the natives gathered 
 together provisions and put them on ship-board 
 with him, and when he resumed his journey he 
 feared neither Rome, nor the Romans, nor death. 
 In the mighty sway of the Divine Spirit, he 
 moved through this thankless world to represent 
 the Christ. And he still keeps moving. This 
 mighty force has moved men and women, until 
 
300 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 they could not remain surrounded by their com- 
 forts and apparent advantages. David Living- 
 stone was entreated not to be so foolish as to bury 
 his great intellect in Africa. William Carey, after 
 drawing rude maps on old pieces of paper and sole 
 leather in his shoe shop, determined to go to India. 
 Count Zinzendorf, the father of Moravian mis- 
 sions, stirred to the depths while looking upon 
 Stenburg's altar piece picture of the crucifixion, 
 under which was written, 
 
 " All this I did for thee; 
 What hast thou done for me ? " 
 
 threw his fortune out to humanity as an offering 
 of holy love. How this mighty force moved upon 
 the soul of the sainted Frances Ridley Havergal. 
 "Perhaps," she says, "you will be interested to 
 know the origin of the consecration hymn, ' Take 
 my life.' I went for a little visit of five days. 
 There were ten persons in the house, some un- 
 converted and long prayed for, some converted 
 but not all rejoicing Christians. He gave me the 
 prayer, <Lord give me all in this house! ' And 
 he just did. Before I left the house every one 
 had got a blessing. The last night of my visit I 
 was too happy to sleep, and passed most of the 
 night in praise and renewal of my own consecra- 
 tion, and these little couplets formed themselves 
 and chimed in my heart, one after another, till 
 they finished with, 'Ever, only, all for thee!'" 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 301 
 
 We may not belittle the great undertakings of 
 Christian people during the past centuries. We 
 may not forget the toil and endurance of our 
 fathers who opened out these new countries for 
 habitation, but O, no being can tell the need of a 
 mighty motive power in the activities to-day. 
 
 Under this mighty inspiration the power of 
 endurance would be ours. We hear very much 
 to-day about the swift activities of the day in 
 which we live, but I question if we have begun 
 to realize the extent of our powers of endurance, 
 when we are harmoniously committed to the 
 Lord's will. We do not wear out with the work 
 as we do with the worry. This constant effort 
 to pump up energy enough to keep us faithful is 
 enough to slay us, but when the Holy Spirit 
 comes, as a mighty motive power, to live within 
 us, then our activities are his activities, and the 
 sweet rest of the busy undertakings increases 
 our capacity as it does our delight. 
 
 The money is about us, we have the co-opera- 
 tive congeniality of an open field, the world has 
 become a neighborhood, and no small percentage 
 of the intelligent people of the heathen nations 
 are fond of our civilization. Organizations are 
 wonderfully perfected, and the needs of humanity 
 are recognized as never before in the history of 
 Christendom. Yes, indeed, the ships are good 
 ships, the waters are good waters and the course 
 
303 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 is a good course J may the Lord send us the pro- 
 pelling power. 
 
 The wind is a very cleansing element. It 
 searches the garments hung out in the open air, 
 cleansing away their impurities with its sweet- 
 ness. Indeed, the wind and the fire and the 
 water are all cleansers, and when God mani- 
 fested himself to humanity in this latest, suprem- 
 est way, it was in his plan, and it is still there, 
 to make us a people with clean hearts and clean 
 minds. No stains go so deeply as stains in the 
 character, no washing needs to be so well done as 
 the washing of the soul. The prayer of David 
 was based upon soundest philosophy, ''Wash me 
 throughly from mine iniquity. ' ' 
 
 5. The last symbol to which I will call your 
 attention is that of the seal. You know how 
 the seal is used in city and government 
 offices, in court rooms and business houses. 
 The die bears some picture upon it, chosen 
 by those who own it, and when some docu- 
 ment is to be sealed, melted wax is poured 
 over the place and the seal is firmly set down 
 upon the melted wax. The picture on the die is 
 left in the wax, and the property is said to be 
 sealed. The use of the wax was quite common in 
 ancient days. Great writings were inscribed 
 with the use of a stilus in wax, covering the tops 
 of the tables. Here the sealing of the document 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 
 
 is used as a symbol. Now, the Holy Spirit rep- 
 resents the seal, and we represent the wax. You 
 know in the use of wax for sealing purposes it is 
 necessary to have it thoroughly heated, until it 
 is quite soft and yielding, otherwise the wax 
 would break into pieces and no impression would 
 be left. The seal must also be held firmly, so that 
 the impression becomes accurate. Now, here is 
 the illustration; the Holy Spirit is the seal and 
 we are the wax. The government of heaven 
 would claim us, and the order is given for the seal- 
 ing. Our heavenly Father is more willing to give 
 the Holy Spirit to them that ask him, than a 
 father is to give bread unto his children. Dr. A. 
 J. Gordon says that when we come to Christ for 
 pardon we set to our seal that God is true, but 
 when He seals us with the Holy Spirit he asserts 
 that we are true. Have you, dear reader, this 
 double sealing? 
 
 As for the firmness of the seal, God will care for 
 that; but as for the plastic condition of the wax, 
 we must see to that. Our wills fully yielding, 
 our affections cheerfully assenting, our whole 
 beings prone in his presence, the Holy 
 Spirit shall produce the impression. And 
 what do you think the picture on the 
 seal is ? I think it is the image of Jesus. For 
 "He that saith he loveth Him ought himself also 
 to walk even as He walked," and "This was the 
 
304 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 mystery which was hidden from the ages, Christ 
 in you the hope of glory." Again, "If we have 
 borne the image of the earthly we shall also bear 
 the image of the heavenly." 
 
 And Paul continues, ''We are sealed with 
 the Holy Spirit of adoption," and this is the 
 earnest of our inheritance; that is, if we are 
 sealed by the Holy Spirit of adoption we have 
 the first portions of the coming possessions, the 
 heavenly wealth. A little piece of heaven, a slice 
 from the big loaf, has been given us here ; we have 
 the foretaste. Bear in mind that this foretaste 
 becomes ours through the sealing of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 In those days, when a man bought a flock of 
 sheep, the bargain was made and the man who 
 sold them took a piece of wool from a sheep and 
 gave it to the other, just as a man to-day might 
 pay five dollars down to bind the bargain. If a 
 man sold a field in those days, the man who 
 bought it was to get a bag of earth from the field 
 as a token of the bargain. Mr. Haslam gives a 
 very interesting illustration of this in our day. 
 He sold a large elm tree to a deaf man, in Eng- 
 land, who promptly paid him a shilling. Placing 
 the amount in Mr. Haslam's hand he shouted, 
 "That is earnest." When he had nodded his as- 
 sent the deaf man repeated again, "Mind, that is 
 earnest." The price of the tree was ten pounds. 
 
SCRIPTURE SY3IB0LS 305 
 
 The shilling was not to be returned, but it was 
 part payment. Now, the apostle says the Holy 
 Spirit seals us, and that this is the earnest of our 
 inheritance until the reward of our purchased 
 possession. Everything we ever get in heaven 
 we are going to get here. Love, the love of God, 
 is in heaven, the love of God is in our hearts. 
 Peace, the peace of God, is in heaven, the peace 
 of God is in our hearts. The joy of God is in 
 heaven, the joy of the Lord is our strength. The 
 life of God is in heaven, the life of God is here. 
 Christ is as able to save me before I die as he ever 
 is, and the Holy Spirit is as truly here as he is 
 in heaven. What is this that burns in my heart 
 and comes out in expressions of praise ? Why, 
 it is a little piece of heaven. What is this that 
 makes me want to see every one else turn from 
 sin? Why, it is a little piece of heaven. What is 
 this which makes my soul rest calmly in trial? 
 Why, it is a little piece of heaven. "Well," said 
 the visitor to a sick Scotchman, ' ' you have one 
 great comfort, you will soon be in heaven and get 
 out of this poor, afflicted body." The old man 
 looked up and smiled and said, " Heaven! I have 
 been there ten years already." This is paradise 
 regained. The following taken from Eev. Asa 
 Mahan's book, "Out of Darkness Into Light," sug- 
 gests very happily this kind of a heaven life. He 
 says, "A sister in Christ, whom I knew very 
 
306 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 intimately for upwards of fifteen years prior to 
 her death, was when I first saw her so far from 
 Christ that she had merely, as she herself often 
 said, ' a name to live. ' She immediately sought 
 and obtained 'the sealing and earnest of 
 the Spirit.' From that time until she was 
 called home, ' her sun did not go down, 
 neither did the moon withdraw itself. ' Her own 
 family and all who knew her most intimately tes- 
 tified that they never witnessed in her an un- 
 Christ-like act or utterance. In every circle in 
 which she appeared her single aim was to lead 
 sinners to Christ, or believers ' out of darkness 
 into the marvelous light of God,' and she had 
 ' power with God and man.' At home she was as 
 a farmer's wife, a model housekeeper, and at home 
 and in the community her influence was ' as 
 ointment poured forth.' All who knew her will 
 testify to the strictest accuracy of the above 
 statements. At one time her husband employed 
 as a help in his labors a very bigoted but pro- 
 fane Irish Catholic, who had been taught from 
 infancy that out of the Catholic Church salvation 
 is impossible. His attention was soon arrested, 
 however, by the wondrous serenity and sweetness 
 of that woman's spirit and conversation. At the 
 table he would listen with the intensest interest 
 to her conversation upon the love of Christ and 
 
SCRIPTURE SYMBOLS 307 
 
 the beauty of holiness. He would frequently- 
 tarry after meals to speak to the woman on the 
 subject. As he had been listening for some time 
 to her conversation one day, he exclaimed with 
 deep earnestness, ' Madame, you will get to 
 heaven before you die. ' That is it. A little cor- 
 ner of heaven in your kitchen, another little corner 
 in your workshop, another little corner of heaven 
 in your store, and another little corner in your 
 school room." 
 
 Then will not heaven be wonderfully more ? 
 Yes, yes. We have the little handful of wool, 
 but there is the whole flock of sheep ; we have the 
 little bagful of earth, but there are the great big 
 fields which we could not carry away in five cen- 
 turies. O, yes, I get as if the little edge of the 
 thumb-nail here, I get the whole Infinite nature 
 forever there. ' ' Now we see as in a glass darkly, 
 then face to face. Now I know in part, then shall I 
 know even as also I am known." Nor is it a rash 
 thing to say that if I am ever going to call Christ 
 all in all in heaven, if I am ever going to be 
 awakened in his likeness to be all in all and 
 always his, I ought to begin to get his very own 
 life within me at once by the power of the Holy 
 Spirit. May he find our hearts so passive that he 
 can stamp the Christ image upon our characters 
 and we shall be sealed. Then by and by the fig- 
 
308 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ure, the symbol, shall not be needed, for we shall 
 be no longer little children in the first grades of 
 the school, but we shall graduate into the holy 
 business of eternity. 
 
NOT YOUR OWN. 
 
" Every sin suffered to remain in the heai*t raises ^ 
 family." Elijah P. Beown. 
 
 " It is a great mistake to ask God to help us to work; 
 we should rather give up ourselves to him that he may 
 use us. Therefore, instead of our asking him to help 
 us, we should understand that he is asking us to help 
 him. The work is not ours, but his; and he is the worker 
 or doer of it. It matters little how unworthy the instru- 
 ment, the great Lord can accomplish his purpose with 
 it. The weaker the tool, the greater is the glory of him 
 who can produce successful results." 
 
 Rev. Wm Haslam. 
 
 Ve are not your own. 1 Corinthians vi:19. 
 
 " Be sure that at the root of all real experience of 
 more grace, of all true advance in consecration, of all 
 actually increasing conformity to the likeness of Jesus, 
 there must be a deadness to self that proves itself to God 
 and men in our dispositions and habits. It is sadly pos- 
 sible to speak of the death-life and the Spirit-walk, 
 while even the tenderest love can not but see how much 
 there is of self. The death to self has no surer death- 
 mark than a humility which makes itself of no reputa- 
 tion, which empties out itself, and takes the form of a 
 servant. It is possible to speak much and honestly of 
 fellowship with a despised and rejected Jesus, and of 
 bearing his cross, while the meek and lowly, the kind 
 and gentle humility of the Lamb of God is not seen, is 
 scarcely sought. The Lamb of God means two things — 
 meekness and death. Let us seek to receive him in 
 both forms. In him they are inseparable; they must 
 be in us, too." Andrew Murray. 
 
NOT YOUR OWN. 
 
 "\1 Ze can scarcely be too often reminded of the 
 preciousness of the thought that our Father 
 in Heaven knows all about us. For, if any de- 
 fects are apparent, he is so able and willing to 
 remedy them. He upbraideth not. And if any 
 commendable conditions exist he will reward and 
 glorify them. We need not fear his searching. 
 It is the searching of love. Only let us be in his 
 hands perfectly passive, that he may search us 
 and try us. What better time than now? 
 
 I sometimes say that we need barber-shop con- 
 secration. If men would commit themselves to 
 Christ as they do to a barber who shaves them, 
 what marvelous results would follow. See this 
 man in the barber's chair. He dare not talk or 
 laugh or gesture. There he reclines. The bar- 
 ber, perhaps a total stranger to him, proceeds to 
 lather his face, and then with a keen-edged knife 
 drawn near the eyes or over jugular vein, he 
 shaves the man, turning his head as he wishes, 
 catching him by the nose or ears, pinching the 
 skin between his fingers and thumb, until finally 
 he gives him notice to arise and go a clean-faced 
 
312 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 pilgrim. And if you would resign yourself so 
 exactly to Christ, how he would clean you up, 
 until the pure soul would shed its light all over 
 the face. This and nothing less than this is our 
 proper position before G-od. The claim is as gen- 
 tle as it is righteous, "Ye are not your own." 
 
 We are not self -producers of good. These con- 
 stant supplies of provision and clothing are the 
 outflowings of an infinite heart. It is one of the 
 most rational acts conceivable to ' ' ask the bless- 
 ing" at the table. In many homes they say 
 " make a beginning " instead of "ask the bless- 
 ing" or "return thanks." There is really no 
 other rational way to make a beginning at meals 
 than that of acknowledging the G-iver and seek- 
 ing direction concerning that which exerts an in- 
 fluence so wide-reaching and so acute. I asked 
 the bread where it came from, and it said from the 
 flour-bin. I went to the flour-bin and asked it 
 where bread came from. It answered from the 
 mill. I asked the mill. It said from the mow 
 Then I questioned the mow, and it told me from 
 the field. Then in the cold of winter, when the 
 winds blew and the ice sheeted the earth like 
 armor, I asked of the field where the bread came 
 from, when it replied, God sends the sunshine and 
 the showers, God made the wheat-germ, and in due 
 time you will find the wheat product here waving, 
 golden in the summer sun. God gives the bread. 
 
NOT YOUR OWN 313 
 
 Go thy way, pray it again: '< Give us this day 
 our daily bread. " But man toiled for it. Yes, 
 but where did he get the strength and ingenuity 
 for toil? Man does not produce; he gathers, he 
 receives. And as for the clothing, the sheep 
 wear the woolens first, the wild animals the 
 furs, the domesticated animals the shoes, and 
 the fields the cottons, then, by the blessed provi- 
 dential law of need and supply they are raised to 
 the higher uses of man: for ''Your heavenly 
 Father knoweth that ye have need of all these 
 things." 
 
 How prepared they were when we came. What 
 hands received us, what soft garments clothed 
 us, what provision sustained us. We were 
 received as kings' sons into palaces. Born re- 
 ceivers ! Why should we contest the original 
 and uninterrupted claim of God our Father. 
 There is a phrase quite commonly used which 
 might be substituted with a much safer one. 
 It is this, ' ' Take God into partnership with you. " 
 I have two objections to this expression, either 
 one of which seems to be sufficient reason why a 
 better phrase should be substituted for it. The 
 first objection is this: I never produced anything 
 to deposit upon which I could have a claim as 
 a partner. And the second is this: Since the 
 self-life is so truly a life, and as such, so surely 
 assertive; if the Lord and I were really part- 
 
314 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 ners, it would not be long before, instead of it be- 
 ing the Lord and I, it would be I and the Lord. 
 No, no, the Lord is proprietor. Let us walk 
 right up by faith to the first commandment and 
 plight our loyalty to our God as King and Master. 
 We are very costly kind of property. Who of us 
 can tell what expenditures are represented in a 
 single soul, centuries before it appears on this 
 earth. Although we might not be able to 
 reckon any of these things as directly involved 
 in our being created, yet their influence 
 can be directly traced in the soul quality 
 or tone of character. Those ancient heroes and 
 heroines who followed G-od by faith until He spoke 
 in plain terms of peace and assurance to them, 
 they lived for me. Those faithful ones who 
 veered not from the holy way when lions, and 
 fires and dungeons were called into requisition to 
 slay their faith, those teachable sacrificers, who 
 felt the winds of earth blow about their cheeks as 
 they do about mine, and knew in them the sym- 
 bol of a life of triumph. These all lived for me. 
 No patriarch who went out to sacrifice to God 
 but he did it for me. No prophet told the mes- 
 sage of God but he told it for m& No Psalmist 
 sang the praise of God but the melody was for 
 me. And the dear Christ poured out his life a 
 holy, perfect sacrifice for me. Verily, it is as if 
 all the goodness of the past, like millions of con- 
 
NOT YOUR OWN 315 
 
 verging lines, came to an electric focus at the 
 very center of my vast heart-needs. As to the 
 sin and misery, God has pressed upon us the 
 privilege of the loss of all that any day, and as 
 for the inheritance of grace, it is our wealth now 
 for the asking. Vast vaults filled with loving 
 providence, why should I be born in these days of 
 their outpoured wealth ? 
 
 Then there is, in our immediate history, that 
 expenditure of care and prayer, of patience and 
 toil, of forgiveness and fidelity, of which father 
 and mother seem inexhaustibly possessed. To 
 come to the plainest terms, how often we 
 wounded their righteous sensibilities, how often 
 she especially went alone and wept over 
 our ingratitude. They reproved us, they apolo- 
 gized for us. they practiced the very insistence 
 of mercy, and out of the fullness of their sweet af- 
 fection complemented that which needed some 
 kind of a spiritual microscope to detect any merit 
 in it. And those school teachers and tutors ! 
 How the heat of their toil dried up the very life- 
 springs as they taught us the very same thing 
 over and over again. They fought ignorance on 
 its own field, while no brass band roused their 
 chivalry with music. They said that our voices 
 were musical. And even this frail compliment 
 roused our conceit until we were again worse in- 
 grates than before. Then some new hardship 
 
316 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 again taxed the patient teacher's assistance, and 
 we galloped away like unbroken colts until some- 
 thing broke, perhaps our temper, and we ran 
 away in a fury. So costly! They say to the mis- 
 sionary, ' ' How can you endure those coarse and 
 ignorant peoples and tribes ? " The missionary 
 looks at Jesus and says, ' ' How can they endure 
 me ? " And so it is. What words of mine yet 
 stay festering, like poisoned daggers, in the hearts 
 of those whom I have wounded. What frowns, 
 what tones of voice, what evident ingratitude, 
 what bitter criticism, have called out the tolerance 
 of a multitude for me alone. So costly! 
 
 Nor dare we fail to mention again, though so 
 briefly, the redemption which Jesus provides: 
 Do not imagine that he shrank back from the 
 effort. Do not slander Christ as reluctant. 
 People say that it was wonderful for him to come 
 and suffer and die. Not from his stand- 
 point. Jesus could not be Jesus did he 
 not delight in the sacrificial. When he seemed to 
 hold his life as if some parcel in his hands he 
 said, " I lay down my life of myself; I have power 
 to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. " 
 Again he said, ' ' The Son of man came not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister and to give his 
 life a ransom for many." There were incidents 
 connected with this which he would have pass 
 from him, but never the sacrifice, so long as he 
 
NOT YOUR OWN 317 
 
 bears the title ''The Lamb of God." But the 
 cost of our redemption — who can tell it? As the 
 Rev. F. B. Meyer has said, "Every disc of the 
 Saviour's blood was so much coin in the price 
 paid." Earth never can reckon, and heaven's 
 programme contemplates an eternal reckoning 
 upon this theme of themes. 
 
 But more. We are very destructive beings. We 
 have battered down walls of defense and dug out 
 channels of destruction. Hopes and joys, faiths and 
 charities, have fallen before us. A man might 
 well turn to Christ and fight against sin during 
 the centuries to come if he might only lessen the 
 total amount of human wrong. Perhaps you re- 
 pented at the age of thirty and have for some 
 years been in the way of life ; but, my friend, there 
 are those who took their first glass of intoxicants 
 or trampled upon virtue first through your influ- 
 ence, yonder in asylums or penitentiaries. There 
 then the seed you sowed is bearing its fruit. 
 They are in death. The pity of it! Christian, 
 what price would you not willingly pay if you 
 could dry up the poisoned stream of events. But 
 there it keeps flowing on a constant testimony to 
 your destructiveness. Ah, if the accounts were 
 balanced so that all that appears of a redeeming 
 nature were placed to our credit, and all that 
 which has been destructive placed upon the debit 
 side of the account, then we are bankrupts. 
 
318 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 For see, the self-life, the spirit, the tone of 
 our actions, is as apparent before God as the 
 rumbling of musketry or the sweep of a tor- 
 nado. In the stillness of the why and the 
 how of life our God is looking. And motives 
 are very heavy commodities in the moral realm. 
 The man who meant to break your flowers down is 
 guilty, but the man who came as a friend to visit 
 you and stumbled over them in the dark, he is not 
 guilty. It is the motive that made it. One bad 
 motive outweighs a hundred apparently good 
 outward acts. "It is the bein' of it," said Uncle 
 Tom to Cassey when she would discourage him as 
 he suffered from the severe whipping ordered by 
 Clarence, because he (the hero) refused to whip 
 the other slaves. 
 
 Now, what a wonder of grace, when the holy God 
 takes us, the non-producing, costly, destructive 
 beings, to be all his own, saying : "Ye are not 
 your own." 
 
 Neither our things nor ourselves are ours. One 
 has come with the hand of mastery to gather up 
 the destructive and put it to divinest uses. Try- 
 ing to manage ourselves we are like fire let loose. 
 God managing us, we are "cities set on hills 
 whose lights can not be hid." Come, now, let us 
 present ourselves without a question or perad- 
 venture to our God. 
 
 It is idle to say, I did so years ago. Bo so now. 
 
NOT YOUR OWN 319 
 
 There is more of you to-day than ever before. 
 Make the dedication without wavering and 
 take your hands off of the offering. Let it go to 
 whom it belongs. Be the property of God with 
 the utmost of your will and the completest agree- 
 ment of your affections. Give up +o God. Ah, 
 yes, there is the phrase we hear so often and find 
 so unwelcome: "Give up, give up.'' Must I 
 give up this habit and that enjoyment, this fond- 
 ness and that amusement, must I give up? Hear 
 me patiently. I know something of the meaning 
 of that sad cry of the soul, as if every new demand 
 of the Gospel of Christ were a bereavement. I have 
 felt that that pitiable loss was just a step before me. 
 I looked through the windows from the distance 
 and from the outside of the building, and I saw no 
 light, no beauty, within the temple. Yes, I have 
 felt this. They asked me to give up, but could I 
 not be saved without this extreme rule. There 
 was the difficulty, I did not see what it meant to 
 be saved. To be saved. Does that mean to gain 
 heaven and escape ruin? Never. Heaven and 
 hell are involved in the question, but to be saved 
 is to get the Life, the Christ-life, to know. Christ, 
 to love Christ, to live Christ. And to be lost is 
 to live for self. Heaven is thrown in with the 
 life, just as the color comes with the oranges when 
 you buy them. You do not go to the store to 
 buy the beautiful color; you buy the fruit, 
 
320 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 the color is thrown in. So here you do not 
 become a Christian to go to heaven. You be- 
 come a Christian, a Christ-i-an, because 
 Christ charms your soul, then incidentally 
 he says, "Great is your reward in heaven." 
 Heaven is thrown in with the salvation. 
 
 They tell us that we do not preach hell-fire as 
 they used to preach it. I reckon that the state- 
 ment is very pertinent. We are not so much 
 concerned to keep the people out of perdition as 
 we are to get perdition out of the people, and We 
 are not so much concerned to get people into 
 heaven as we are to get heaven into 'the people. 
 This change of expression in the pulpits is but a 
 placing of the emphasis where it belongs, that is, 
 upon Christ rather than upon destiny. Given a 
 Christly soul, and destiny is demonstrated. 
 Given a man who prays and sings and gives and 
 vows and preaches, but is not Christly — is not 
 Christized, and no conceivable destiny could 
 make a heaven for him. One may be con- 
 ceived to seek heaven as a miser would seek 
 gold, employing the same avarice and the same 
 eagerness, but we know full well that no streets 
 of gold and no gates of pearl and no songs 
 of praise, literal or figurative, would make a 
 heaven to a soul, without the eternal wealth 
 of the Christ-life pouring into the being. There- 
 fore, beloved, I would not have you give up with 
 
NOT YOUR OWN 321 
 
 your thought mainly upon saving your soul. 
 But forfeit self, forfeit all, for Christ , just for 
 Christ himself. Jesus will charm your soul. In- 
 quire for his beauty, look upon him with the 
 spirit's eyes, study him, yield to him- he will 
 charm you. 
 
 When will we learn that to deny self is to in- 
 dulge ourselves? To be poor in spirit is to 
 inherit the earth. Give up? Yes, give up. The 
 old tree stood straight and high in the forest, 
 the lumberman came along and made it give 
 up the great chips or the sawdust at the 
 trunk, until it fell down with a crash. 
 Then it must give up its limbs to be sawed into 
 logs. Next they passed it through the saw-mill, 
 until it gave up a slab on this side and another on 
 that, and still another and another. Poor 
 thing, it is not half as large as it was when it 
 went into the mill, but it is straighter and 
 smoother and more useful. And now they make 
 it give up more saw-dust until it is of the right 
 size, a timber to be planed. They take it to the 
 planing mill. Here it gives up more shavings 
 than a child can carry away in a basket. And 
 now the carver has it. Chip after chip, coarser 
 and finer, are given up, curves and circles and 
 right lines have been cut, until at last the sand 
 paper is applied and the stick gives up the small 
 dust as a last demand of the skill and art and wis- 
 
322 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 dom which fitted it for a pillar in the great tem- 
 ple. By giving up it gained its rank and worth. 
 God wants to beautify us, and he will fulfill it if 
 we will but ' ' give up. " He knows what we should 
 do and where we should be, make up your mind 
 to this. The Lord knows how to make the best 
 possible out of you, and the plan is revealed in 
 the Christ-life. Hester Ann Rogers was so in- 
 tense in her determination to perfectly admit the 
 claim of the Lord upon her life that she retired to 
 her room and cut her hair short and ripped up 
 some of her choice dresses, for she had 
 been so vain about her hair and her dresses. And 
 when she came to that place where she could say 
 Christ is all, go dearest things, great or little, 
 go , give me the Holy Spirit, then the blessed 
 life began to pour into her soul from the highest, 
 and she knew a heavenly charm. She meant it 
 and she received it. Not your own. Not your 
 own. 
 
 There may be no such question involved in 
 your giving up to Christ, but it may be something 
 more simple than this, rather than something 
 more abstruse. Satan is an economist. He will 
 not use a rod when a green blade of grass or a 
 feather will answer his purpose. 
 
 Blessed condition, not my own, not my own 
 The claim is made, the control is granted. 
 
NOT YOUR OWN 
 
 " All, yes all, I give to Jesus. 
 It belongs to him." 
 
 He hath taken me (not merely my things), he 
 hath taken me, yea he hath hidden me in God, for 
 does he not say, ' ' Your lives are hid with Christ 
 in God." A friend of mine illustrates those 
 words by placing a little text-ticket between the 
 leaves of a small thin Testament and then placing 
 the Testament between the leaves of a great 
 Bible. Then it is hidden away in holy truth. 
 
 Are you ready ? Soul of uncounted worth, are 
 you ready? Then do not simply say "yes," as 
 Peter said, ' ' Though all men forsake thee yet will 
 not I," but pause and say, Thou Holy Spirit of 
 God, who dost know how much there is to me as 
 a redeemed soul, take an account of all that there 
 is invoWed in my life, and now, even now, give me 
 grace to bring the last little thing to thee. This 
 I do in Jesus' name. Amen. 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY 
 SPIRIT. 
 
*' I knew Jesus, and he was very precious to my soul; 
 but I found something- in me that would not keep 
 patient and kind. I did what I could to keep it down, 
 but it was there. I besought Jesus to do something for 
 me, and when I gave him my will he came into my 
 heart and cast out all that would not be sweet, all that 
 would not be kind, all that would not be patient, and 
 then he shut the door." George Fox. 
 
 " Be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but he filled 
 with the Spirit."" — Ephesians, v: 18. 
 
 "The real battle in the Christian life is with self, 
 and there is no place in it in which what Rutherford 
 calls that ' house-devil of self ' is more apt to hide away 
 than in the pocket-book." Dr. T. L. Cuyler. 
 
 "Now, I think in regard to our being filled with the 
 Spirit, of course it is a gift. The command, ' Be filled,' 
 implies the willingness of God to give the Spirit, so we 
 must begin to anticipate. Why, the hope of it will lift 
 you up. So Charles Wesley wrote: 
 
 ' It lifts me up to things above, 
 It bears on eagle's wings.' " 
 
 Margaret Bottome. 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 T\o I HEAR some one say, ''Ah! this is what I 
 •*-^ want to hear. Tell us how to receive him. 
 The need, I admit it, and ' ' I would rather be full 
 of distress than thus empty." Explain it as 
 thoroughly as you can, giving the ins and outs 
 of this and that truth until I see it clear as the 
 noon-day sun. Then immediately I will act, and 
 I shall be filled with the Holy Spirit." 
 
 But there is the difficulty. We want some one to 
 describe the way. Dear soul, he will describe the 
 way for you. Ask him. The details of expression, 
 very dear to one soul, may become the most danger- 
 ous snares to another soul. Go to his own word. 
 Do not allow yourself to even hint at such a thing 
 as that you, or any other human being, can be 
 more concerned about finding the fullness of the 
 Holy Spirit than he is about our finding it. Every- 
 where the admission of the great need is readily 
 expressed, but so often the eager determination 
 of faith to receive is totally wanting. 
 
 A very evident reason for this is in the fact 
 that away down in the depths of our beings there 
 
328 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 lives a falsehood. We may be slow to admit it, 
 and if we were going to write out a general state- 
 ment of our convictions and characteristics we 
 would not place the record concerning this -false- 
 hood in the list, but under the searching of the 
 Holy Spirit it becomes very evident. Indeed, a 
 little deep, quiet thinking will manifest it to most 
 souls. Even those common, every-day undertak- 
 ings which belong to our lives reveal that we do 
 not deeply believe in God as the present, perfect 
 God. We do not believe in his love, we do not 
 believe that he cares for us, we do not believe 
 that he is really with us. We can argue with 
 ourselves and say it is so, and his own witness will 
 give force to the argument, but the falsehood as- 
 serts itself again. It will not down ! Do we not fear 
 to trust him, and do we not actually believe, for in- 
 stance, that toil is a disaster ? O, sad infidelity. 
 Is this the reason why the Holy Spirit is called 
 "the Spirit of Truth," the opposite to the false- 
 hood? When he is cherished in all the deeps of the 
 being the falsehood dies out. Fear and doubt and 
 complaining take their flight , and the new truth 
 is cherished in their stead. 
 
 Now, the conflict is with that old falsehood. In 
 so far as we cherish the spirit of complete sub- 
 mission to the Holy Ghost we gain victory over 
 the falsehood, but we are to come to that condi- 
 tion where we so abandon ourselves to him that 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 329 
 
 the falsehood is turned out of the being, and the 
 very truth of God is firmly settled in the cleansed 
 heart. It is astonishing what new light this will 
 throw upon life's trials. The idea of a man say- 
 ing that he glories in tribulation! How could it 
 be? Ah, that can never be seen until the false- 
 hood of fear is gone out and in its place lives the 
 Spirit of Truth, working Patience and Experience 
 and Hope through the tribulation. 
 
 Resolution will not do this. Many people ad- 
 mire a holy life, but never will admiration bring 
 it. Admiration is not resolution. Resolution is 
 not faith, and faith is not the Holy Spirit. Ad- 
 miration may lead to resolution, resolution to 
 faith, and faith in turn lay claim to Him But 
 right there lays the stepping stone to our victory. 
 We are to receive Him. 
 
 An easy way of consecration is a false way. 
 If it be simple to-day it will be more abstruse to- 
 morrow. Some, who find the more difficult ele- 
 ments of consecration when they for the first 
 time seek Jesus, seem to enter into the blessed 
 and full reception of the Holy Spirit then and 
 there. But no responsible man or woman can re- 
 alize that deep and thorough dedication who has 
 not been willing to let the divine One search the 
 soul to its depths. Do not say " I am consecrated 
 fully to God. Such moments of ecstacy as I have 
 could not come to me otherwise. ' ' Let the Holy 
 
330 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 Spirit search you. Die, die to self. Count no 
 costs. Seek no personal advantages Let the 
 Cain-life die. The quest for the riches of God 
 monopolizes all other quests. Rich or poor, 
 young or old, loved or hated, let us die. 
 
 Is your temper the stumbling-block ? Murder, 
 we seek to put away from us as far as possible. 
 If any one should say that a murder had been 
 committed in the next street from our home, and 
 we should learn in an hour that it was done in 
 the avenue by the same name twenty blocks away, 
 we should say, ' ' I am glad it was not right in our 
 neighborhood." This viciousness of temper be- 
 longs to the murder-spirit; it is a remainder of 
 the Cain-life. The Holy Spirit will give us not 
 only to have it subdued, but to have it rooted out 
 and cast far, far away from us, the farther the 
 better. Not the temper, but the viciousness. 
 For the temper is to the life what the tension is 
 to the bow or what the tone is to the harp. When 
 the tension is correct the bend of the bow is 
 pleasing, and when the tone is correct the harp 
 will respond to its master, but let the bow be so 
 limp that it will not spring, or so stiff that it 
 will break, and it is a failure; likewise a harp 
 without tone would respond melodiously to the 
 touch of no master. Do not pray to have the 
 temper broken. Give it over to the unfailing 
 Temper-Keeper, whose name is Love. 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 331 
 
 Beware that your heart is not set upon circum- 
 stances instead of Christ. One given to com- 
 plaining may become cheerful and affable and re- 
 main so for months because some one has prom- 
 ised him a trip over the mountains. This prom- 
 ise throws music into that life in less than an 
 hour. But has his motive necessarily been 
 changed? And will this kind of cheer and affa- 
 bility abide the stress of the years? Is it not the 
 joy of self -delight instead of the joy of the Lord? 
 
 Thank God, His joy is very apparent in the many 
 young and old people who have left the outing 
 and the comfortable home for sacrificial service 
 in mission fields of the great cities near and 
 distant, and whose pure, rich joy delights 
 in weariness and in enduring the cross for 
 others. 
 
 What does it matter to one entirely given over 
 to Christ and living in true fellowship with him, 
 ready to perfect obedience, whether he appears 
 to be in prosperity or not? Suppose he to-day 
 should receive ten thousand dollars as a gift. He 
 knows that he is no richer than before. He 
 knows that in less than an hour he may be re- 
 quired to give it all over for the building of an 
 orphanage or for the carrying of the Gospel to 
 the neediest or for some similar service. Money 
 or lands could not make him richer. There is one 
 kind of riches to him, that which endures and 
 
332 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 glorilBes, even "the riches of grace in Jesus 
 Christ." The possessions are only the peelings 
 around the new opportunity, and it may be neces- 
 sary for the Lord to strip off the wrappings so 
 as to get at the opportunity for us, or it may be 
 that we can use it like apples, peelings and all. 
 It matters not which way to such a one, for 
 he knows that neither his joy nor his sorrow 
 comes from these things. He worships the dear 
 will of his G-od. "I get what I want," said a 
 Christian lady, "because I want my Master's 
 will." 
 
 Can you this day step out beyond the last old 
 entanglement and say: "Lord, give me thy will." 
 Can you? Then, hear him say to you, " Be filled 
 with the Spirit." Are you sometimes compli- 
 menting yourself upon your respectability or 
 achievements or possessions or health? Abandon 
 them all to the blessed Lord and do not wait to 
 cast a lingering look upon your idols. Said Miss 
 Havergal : "I think this very sense of not 
 having gifts is the best and most useful gift 
 of them all." And Paul: "As having nothing 
 and yet possessing all things." Our very out- 
 fit gets into our way. ' ' Let us lay aside every 
 weight." 
 
 Pleasing our Father becomes the rapture of the 
 fully consecrated soul. Having the disapproval of 
 others when he knows he pleases God is no more 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 333 
 
 to him than if a man seeking for ivory in Africa 
 should bring home a ship-load of the treasures 
 and lose a coat-button in the attempt. Come, 
 then, to the great moment which eternity will 
 celebrate, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit 
 in his fullness 
 
 Come as Abraham did. He had become the 
 man of faith. He had believed God when all na- 
 ture seemed opposed to it. The great promise 
 had been given, but a new test must be applied. 
 He must take his only son Isaac and go at the 
 Lord's command up into the mountain and obey 
 the orders given. See him! O, the struggle. 
 His son follows hesitatingly with him, saying: 
 "Where is the lamb?" He answers: "My son, 
 God will provide himself a lamb for the offering." 
 Go on, Abraham, go to the end of self. How his 
 hand must have trembled as he built that altar, 
 but how much more as he binds his son and places 
 him on it. Will he kill him, will he kill his own 
 boy? And will the Lord allow him to do it? In 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews we read : ' ' He ac- 
 counted that God was able to raise him from the 
 dead, which also he did, in a figure." The knife 
 is raised above the child. Poor child. Poor 
 father. Nay, they are both receiving new riches. 
 Abraham has gone to the end of self. He has 
 thrust the knife, not into Isaac, but into his own 
 
334 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 father-heart. It is enough. God provides the 
 lamb and Abraham goes away glorified. 
 
 Have you gone to the end of natural affection ? 
 Have you given over your fondnesses and 
 your affinities to Christ ? Your filial heart, your 
 mother heart, your father heart and your lover's 
 heart, have you given this over to the King ? 
 Jesus meant just what he uttered when he said, 
 ' ' If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his 
 father and mother and wife and children and 
 brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, 
 he can not be my disciple." Notice that he says 
 that we are to hate our own lives. We are not to 
 hate them more than we hate others or others 
 more than them. It is the self -life wherever we 
 find it. Deadly opposition to this everywhere 
 will prepare us for the immediate receiving of the 
 Christ-life with which we are called to lovingly 
 drive the self-life out of our fellows. We see now 
 the possible righteousness in that strange saying 
 reported of Mrs. Spurgeon, the mother of the 
 great Charles, ' ' I seek to bring you up to live a 
 life all for the glory of God. If you grow up and 
 dare to run into sin and die unsaved I will go to 
 the judgment and witness against you." 
 
 Then we may lose the power of appreciation of 
 our friends ? Never. We shall love them as we 
 never did before. We shall sacrifice our own 
 tastes and comforts for them with a delightful 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 335 
 
 eagerness, and we shall cherish them with that re- 
 gard which shall live right on in heaven, sweetly 
 in harmony with the love of our King. Let such 
 love as this rule in our souls, and how obediently 
 the appetites and passions will own its sway. Oh, 
 the Christ-love! How it sweetens and elevates 
 and glorifies the family life. The higher life is 
 one of higher affection. The Calvary spirit at the 
 dinner table will make the children extra well be- 
 haved, 
 
 A young lady asked me one day why she could 
 not enjoy a victorious life in Christ. She gave 
 evidence of many good qualities of character but 
 of one great defect. I noticed it, and said, ' ' Sister, 
 were you ever conquered?" ' ' What do you mean?" 
 said she. ' ' I mean did your mother or father or 
 anyone else ever conquer you, until you gave up 
 to be ruled?" Then she replied, " I think such a 
 thing never really occurred in my life," There 
 was her difficulty. She had never positively hated 
 rebellion. The soul is deep ; great soundings must 
 be taken and great depths broken up. Do you 
 fear it? Fear what? The truth ? 
 
 Love it if hell seems to skirt it, love it, love 
 it. The gentle God help you. Beware of plan- 
 ishing. In straightening out plates of iron which 
 have become bent at the corners, the workmen 
 do this. They begin to pound the iron at a dis- 
 
336 OUT OF THE CATN-LIFE 
 
 tance from the edges and then gradually come 
 out to the edges, thus effecting a smooth surface. 
 But there is no room for planishing here. This 
 is breaking off, this is giving up. Drop the self- 
 life like a hot iron. It burns with awful fires. 
 Full-shining of the love of God, smite our self-life 
 dead! 
 
 Look at Elisha. Word is come that his master 
 Elijah is to be taken away from him. He and Eli- 
 jah are on their way to the other side of Jordan, 
 where the great scene of Elijah's translation is to 
 occur. The young men from the school of the 
 prophets wait yonder on the hillside, jeering at 
 Elisha. "Knowest thou not that thy master will 
 be taken away from thee to-day?" He answers, 
 ♦'Yes, I know it, hold your peace." The journey 
 is completed and Elisha makes his request that a 
 double portion of Elijah's spirit may rest upon 
 him. The assurance that his request will be 
 answered, if the condition is fulfilled, is given to Eli- 
 sha. The condition is fulfilled. Elisha has watched 
 him ascending, the mantel has fallen, and Elisha 
 has made his way back to Jordan. Elijah with 
 that mantel divided the waters of the Jordan when 
 they passed over together. Can Elisha divide 
 them now? The test is ready. The boys 
 from the school of the prophet watch to see 
 what he will do. I think I see him step forth 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 337 
 
 until his feet are close to the waters of the 
 flowing river. I think I hear him say to him- 
 self, ' ' These waters will not divide ; it is 
 against nature to try to make them divide; 
 see how sullen they look, and what is this mantel, 
 and if I should try to divide them and fail, all 
 the days of my life I shall be taunted by those 
 boys yonder or those whom they tell of my 
 failure. I will have an undying reputation as a 
 fool. No, I can not do it." He waits and won- 
 ders, half believing. Behold the soul's battle- 
 field. Who will win? God or the enemy? 
 Eflisha waits. And now I hear him say to him- 
 self. ' ' Then let me fail, let me be a fool, let those 
 students laugh at me as long as I live, or let me 
 die and let my body fall into this muddy stream." 
 But his vision is rising. The river is almost for- 
 gotten, so is the mantel, so are the boys, they are 
 all hidden in the great consecration. He has 
 lifted his eyes unto Grod, unto God alone. He 
 cries, "Where is the God of Elijah?" and throws 
 the mantel down upon the waters, dividing them 
 right and left, while the boys from the school of 
 the prophets shout down through the valley, "The 
 spirit of Elijah doth rest upon Elisha." See, 
 when Elisha got to the end of the students and 
 the mantel and the water and Elisha, and saw 
 God only, his victory came. Oh, soul, make way, 
 make way for the divine, let it rush in. It alone 
 
338 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 shall endure throughout all generations. Death 
 of the self -life. This be thy watchword. * 
 
 Let us go to that memorable night when there 
 wrestled with Jacob an angel until the break of 
 day. Jacob was a follower of God, he was not a 
 heathen, but he was contentious and sly, he was 
 strife-ridden and given to supplant other people. 
 The angel wrestles with him. The angel here men- 
 tioned has by many been thought to be Jesus 
 before his incarnation. Jacob wrestled too. 
 Jacob believes in Jacob. He would indorse the 
 theory we so often hear, ' ' Do the best I can and 
 let the Lord do the rest." Anon the angel touches 
 Jacob on the thigh and puts it out of joint. Jacob's 
 power to brace himself and strive in the struggle is 
 gone. What can he do but hold on to the angel. 
 Then the angel cries, '<Let me go, for the day 
 breaketh;'andJacob,no longer capable of wrestling, 
 
 *Note the steps up which the Lord led Moses. 
 
 Ex. 3:4. (The Lord) " Moses, Moses." 
 
 Ex. 3:4. (Moses) ''Here am 1." 
 
 Ex. 3 : 10. (The Lord) '• I will send thee." 
 
 Ex. 3:11. (Moses) "Who am I?" 
 
 Ex. 3 : 14. (The Lord) "Thus shall ye say, I am hath sent me." 
 
 Ex. 4:1. (Moses) "They will not believe me." 
 
 Ex. 4:8. (The Lord) "They will believe." 
 
 Ex. 4 : 10. (Moses) " O Lord, I am not eloquent." 
 
 Ex. 4:12. fThe Lord) "I will be with thy mouth." 
 
 Ex. 4:13. (Moses) "Send, I pray thee, by the hand of whom 
 
 thou wilt." 
 Ex. 4:14. (The Lord) "Is there not Aaron ? " 
 Ex. 4:30. (Moses) "And Aaron spake the words." 
 Ex. 6:29. (The Lord] "Speak thou unto Pharaoh." 
 Ex. 6:30. (Moses) "Behold I am of uncircumcised lips." 
 Ex. 7 : I. (The Lord) " See I have made thee a god unto Phaiaoh." 
 
 (Moses) "Works miracles." 
 Ex. 13 : 21. " And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of 
 cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give 
 them light; that they might go by day and by night." 
 
RECEIVING THE BOLT SPIRIT 339 
 
 holds with his plea for a blessing until it is said, 
 *' Thou shalt no more be called Jacob (meaning a 
 supplanter), but thou shalt be called Israel, for as a 
 prince hast thou had power with God and pre- 
 vailed." His victory came when incapable of 
 wrestling, he could only hold on and act. 
 
 Come, let us be princes. Not doing the best 
 we can and then asking God to supplement it, 
 but let us die unto all effort, and then the strength 
 of God shall work through us, our own victories, 
 and the victories of the kingdom. 
 
 When Paul had received those great revelations 
 in the upper heavens it was necessary for him to 
 be preserved from any assertion of self. He says, 
 ' ' Lest I should be exalted above measure there 
 was given to me a thorn in the flesh," and after 
 beseeching the Lord three times for its removal, 
 you remember the answer, ' ' My grace is suffic- 
 ient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in 
 weakness." Testifying to our own leanness does 
 not imply humility. It may rather imply sloth 
 and the taking of the name of the Lord in vain. 
 We may confess our sinfulness and honor our 
 Saviour best by witnessing to the victory we act- 
 ually prove hour by hour. Personal pessimism 
 is wicked doubt. Yet we are weakness. Let us 
 admit it, let us believe it, and, in fullest conscious- 
 ness of whatever it may imply, let us receive God 
 and his strength. Paul did not hesitate to admit 
 
340 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 that he was nothing. Men will tell you that you 
 will become limp and aimless and ambitionless if 
 you undertake so to abandon yourself to God ; but 
 is Divine love limp, is Calvary aimless, is the 
 Christ-life without energy, is God dead? 
 
 The legend says that when Mahmud captured the 
 Hindu temple of Somnath he found there a great 
 idol. Approaching it he smote the hollow thing 
 with his battle axe, when, forthwith it split and 
 showered forth a profusion of costly jewels and 
 gold. By destroying the idol, Mahmud secured 
 the treasure^ And by abandoning our wishes and 
 preferences, yea, ourselves, unto God, we find the 
 wealth of the energy of the life of the Holy One. 
 Smite the idol, the dearest idol, and be filled with 
 the Spirit to-day. 
 
 To the Ephesians Paul says, ' < Be not drunk 
 with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the 
 Spirit" (Eph. v: 18), and on the very same page 
 of his Epistle he tells husbands to love their 
 wives, and wives to be true to their husbands, and 
 children to obey their parents; hence it is just as 
 important and just as binding upon us to be filled 
 with the Holy Spirit as it is for us to be tri^e in 
 our family relationships. The figure Paul uses 
 here is a very expressive one. We will not get 
 the best results by having in our minds the 
 picture of a receptacle being filled with some kind 
 of commodity, as for instance, a pail being filled 
 
hecetvinq the holy spirit 34^ 
 
 with water or a basket with fruit. We must go 
 beyond this. Luke says, "All in the synagogue 
 werejilled with wrath." (Luke iv: 28.) Also, 
 "Behold a man full of leprosy." (Luke v: 12.) 
 Now, a man full of wrath has every secret spring 
 of his soul's action touched and moved by wrath, 
 and a man full of leprosy is permeated with the 
 disease. So here, a man full of the Spirit has every 
 secret spring of his soul's action touched and moved 
 by the Spirit and he is permeated with the Spirit. 
 It is life to life and Spirit to spirit. 
 
 While the tense of the verb used in this text 
 would make the verb read "Be ye filling with 
 the Spirit," tnat in Acts ii:4 literally reads 
 "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost," and 
 that in Acts xi: 24 literally reads "He jwas 
 * * * full of the Holy Ghost." So we have 
 three tenses of the verb, giving us a fullness, 
 realized definitely as an incident in the past, a 
 present fullness, and a continuous filling — filled, 
 full, and filling. A moment's reflection will sug- 
 gest space for growth and for the impartation of 
 help for others through us, for which the Holy 
 One provides, through this three-fold expression 
 of the word "fill." Start anywhere on this 
 thought and run out upon any one of its direct 
 lines and you find it literally paved with oppor- 
 tunity. Again, being filled with the Spirit is ex- 
 pressively placed over against being drunk with 
 
342 OUT OF THE CAIN-LIFE 
 
 wine. A man who is drunk does not live his own 
 life; his thoughts are wine thoughts, his gait is a 
 wine gait, his words are wine words, so the man 
 who is filled with the Spirit does not live his own 
 life, his thoughts are to be brought into captivity 
 to the obedience of Christ, his words are pure 
 words, he lives in the Spirit, and he walks in 
 the Spirit. This is the way out of the Cain-life; 
 we die with Christ that we may live with him. 
 What a beautiful life must follow 
 
 Limitless territory awaits us. The Infinite One 
 hath placed himself at our disposal, he hath filled 
 us with himself, we have received the promise of 
 the Father, by faith the gift is ours. 
 
 Now is the work done, is this all ? No, we are 
 to share the glory of the King in his beauty and 
 our bodies are to be made like unto his own, we 
 are to come where we have perfect liberty. Cit- 
 izens of heaven! Tearless, stainless, sinless 
 heaven! There no tempter could ever suggest 
 the wish for sinning. And here and now, while 
 we breathe through this weak clay in which 
 we live, all the universe is filled with oppor- 
 tunity and advantage for us in Christ. The 
 full heart should become larger and the large 
 heart should grow during the centuries to receive 
 more and more of the teaching, the leading and 
 the power, to the glory of the Father and of the 
 Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
 
RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 343 
 
 And thus finding Christ we shall find human- 
 ity — and ourselves. The life that saves shall 
 usurp the life that slays, and we shall be 
 /'All like-minded, compassionate, loving as 
 brethren, tender-hearted, humble-minded; not 
 rendering evil for evil, or reviling for revil- 
 ing; but contrariwise, blessing." (I Peter iii: 
 8, 9.) ''I venerate Christ in the slave who 
 cleans my sandals," said the benevolent Paulinus. 
 
 We have left Cain in the distance. Look not 
 back upon him. Manhood is to be found in the 
 very opposite direction, where stands the Christ, 
 ''the Way, the Truth and THE LIFE."