THE 
 
 GROWING 
 
 CHRrSTIAH 
 
 WILLIAM E. 
 BIEDERWOLF 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
5, ^^^3 
 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Presented by 
 
 c)We CXuVV\or, 
 
 ^ BV 4501 .B53 1903 
 BH Biederwolf, William E. 1867 
 1939. 
 The growing Christian 
 
THE GROWING CHEISTIAN 
 
WORKS BY 
 
 W. E. BIEDERWOLF 
 
 Evangelism 
 
 Its Justification, Its Operation, Its Value. 
 
 $1.75 
 Dr. Biederwolf's calm, measured presenta- 
 tion of the methods best calculated to 
 secure results — Among the phrases dis- 
 cussed are : The Philosophy of Revival; The 
 Preacher and His Message; Pastoral Evan- 
 gelism ; The Union Evangelistic Campaign ; 
 Individual Evangelism, etc., etc. 
 
 Hoiv Can God Answer Prayer? 
 
 $1.00 
 A devout and exceedingly helpful and 
 thorough discussion of a great theme. 
 
 The Growing Christian; 
 
 or, the Development of the Spiritual Life. 
 
 75 cents 
 Deals with the implanted life of God in the 
 soul, the conditions of growth and decay, 
 the signs of arrested development, and the 
 type of growth as presented by the Apostle 
 Paul in his instructions to the Ephesian 
 Church. 
 
 A Help to the Study of the Holy 
 Spirit, ^jQQ 
 
 A careful and diligent study of the Scripture 
 teaching as to the personality, deity, sealing, 
 anointing, communion, fruits, baptism, fill- 
 ing, emblems and resistance of the Spirit. 
 
THE 
 
 GROWII^G OHRISTIAE" 
 
 OR, 
 
 tETlje SDebelopment of t^ie Spiritual llife 
 
 REV. WILLIAM EDWARD BIEDERWOLF 
 
 AUTHOB OF "A HELP TO THE STUDY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT," 
 
 X 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1903 
 
 BY 
 
 THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
pntau 
 
 The following addresses were delivered at 
 the Winona Lake, Benton Harbor (Mich.), 
 Montreat (N. C), and other Bible Conferences 
 during the seasons of 1902 and 1903. They 
 are sent out at the request of many who 
 heard them and with the writer's prayer that 
 the Holy Spirit may use them to glorify Christ. 
 If you, my dear reader, only see Him more 
 clearly and love Him more dearly because you 
 have seen these pages it will have paid a thou- 
 sand fold for the labor of producing them. 
 
 W. E. B. 
 
 MONTICELLO, liTD. 
 
TO 
 
 WHOSE PKATERS GAVE HER BOY TO GOD 
 
 WHOSE LOSTG, UNTIRING DEVOTION 
 
 MADE POSSIBLE HIS PREPARATION FOR THE 
 
 GOSPEL MINISTRY, 
 
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 
 
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicode- 
 mus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Him by 
 night and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know that thou 
 art a teacher come from God : for no man can do 
 these miracles, except God be with him. Jesus 
 answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say 
 unto thee, Except a man be born from above he can- 
 not see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto 
 Him, How can a man be born when he is old? can 
 he enter the second time into his mother's womb 
 and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say 
 unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the 
 Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 
 That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that 
 which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that 
 I said unto thee, ye must be born from above.— 
 Saint John's Gospel, Chapter Three. 
 
Contents! 
 
 
 
 PAGK 
 
 The Life Implanted . 
 
 . 9 
 
 How TO Grow .... 
 
 29 
 
 How Not to Grow 
 
 . 49 
 
 Arrested Development . 
 
 67 
 
 The Signs of Growth 
 
 . 87 
 
 The Type of Growth 
 
 . 107 
 
^''Biit grow in grace and the knowledge of 
 our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.'''' 
 
 2 Peter 3: 18. 
 
Cl)e (l^rotptng CJjrtsttan 
 
 or. 
 
 t^t SDebelopmmt of tlie ^pititml tlife 
 
 THE LIFE IMPLANTED 
 *'Ye must be born from above." — John 3:7. 
 
 ICOUKT it the worthiest ambition of the 
 human soul — the desire to increase its 
 capacity for God; to grow, and in growing 
 to become more like God. 
 
 Paul in writing to the Thessalonians said, 
 "We beseech you, brethren, that ye increase 
 more and more." If you could translate that 
 utterance out of the sphere in which it has its 
 reference as uttered by Paul into any other 
 sphere of life, you would find it the very thing 
 that every man is trying to do. If a man has 
 riches he wPvUts more ; if he has knowledge the 
 very having it creates a thirst to have more ; if 
 he has skill he yearns to be still more accurate ; 
 if he is famous he would add another to his 
 list of triumphs. But I think the saddest 
 thing in the world is the nominal child of God 
 altogether anxious about such increase and 
 almost if not altogether indifferent about that 
 spiritual increase which constitutes the true 
 9 
 
Ube (Growing Cbttstian 
 
 wealth of this life and the sole wealth of the 
 life to come. 
 
 When a man dies it is usually asked, "How 
 much was he worth?" and the answer comes in 
 dollars. But that's a false estimate. Neither 
 in life nor in death will you or I be worth any 
 more than the measure of our growth in grace. 
 Dear child, you are looking for success; you 
 have a hunger for knowledge; possibly a long- 
 ing for wealth; bat when the ocean of eternity 
 shall break upon these sands of time, though 
 you have the laurel wreath upon your brow 
 and millions of sh_3ing gold at your feet, if 
 the path along which you have come is but the 
 long reminder of wasted hours for cultivating 
 the acquaintance of God, and through the 
 knowledge of Him to become like Him, you 
 will be a great deal poorer and more unsuc- 
 cessful than God ever intended you should be. 
 I would that God might create within us as we 
 go along a keen realization of the importance 
 of growing in grace and a deep hungering and 
 thirsting after righteousness, so that while we 
 are growing in stature and increasing in knowl- 
 edge we may become large in soul, having a 
 mind to appreciate and a heart to love and a 
 will to do the things of God. 
 10 
 
Ubc %itc IFmpIanteD 
 
 Peter tells us to "grow in grace," but there 
 must first be life before there can be growth. 
 This is as true in the spiritual world as it is in 
 the natural. Science with all its defining has 
 never been able to define life. Formerly there 
 were two great schools of science, one teaching 
 that "life can spring into being of itself," — a 
 theory known as Spontaneous Generation ; the 
 other holding that life can only come from pre- 
 existing life. You can hardly find a respecta- 
 ble scientist to-day who will lend his name to 
 the former view. Evolution is forced to befrin 
 with life. The evolutionist thinks he has found 
 his way back in material to the primordial 
 germ, but where life came from he confesses he 
 has never been able to find out. Here at least 
 the hand of God seems to have written, "Thus 
 far and no farther." How life originated, Mr. 
 Darwin designates "a hopeless inquiry." 
 
 Now an exact parallel to this is found in the 
 spiritual world. That a man must be born 
 again before he can enter the kingdom of God 
 is a scientific necessity. 
 
 Do you remember the story of the young 
 
 artist who had wrought so long upon an angel 
 
 statue and concealed himself to hear what the 
 
 master Angelo would say about it? — when he 
 
 11 
 
Uhc 6rowina Cbrtstian 
 
 heard the master say, "It only lacks one thing," 
 so near broken hearted did he become that he 
 could neither eat nor sleep, until one in deep 
 concern for him made his way to Angelo's 
 studio to inquire what it was the statue 
 lacked, and the great artist said, "Man, it 
 lacks only life ! If it had life it would be as 
 perfect as God Himself could make it." 
 
 Many people honestly fail to understand this. 
 They cannot see the difference between a man's 
 morality and a Christian's righteousness. "Why 
 a moral man should not simply grow better and 
 better until he is good enough to enter the 
 kingdom of God they honestly fail to see, but 
 it's the difference between a lifeless statue and 
 a living soul. The difference between a man's 
 morality and a Christian's goodness is not one 
 of quantity but of quality. To make this 
 plainer, let us enter into the sphere of natural 
 things. If I should ask you why a tree could 
 not keep on growing and growing until it 
 became an animal, you could see in an instant 
 why a merely moral man cannot grow into the 
 goodness that pleases God. To draw a closer 
 distinction : if one should ask why the sour crab 
 cannot keep on growing and developing until 
 its yield becomes the luscious golden fruit of 
 13 
 
trbe %\tc 'ffmplante^ 
 
 the russet, he would have a perfectly intelligent 
 answer to the question perplexing so many 
 people. It's a difference in generation and 
 therefore in the kind of life that grows, and 
 thus we see that the impassable gulf between 
 the different kinds of life in the natural world 
 has its exact parallel in the spiritual sphere in 
 the barrier between the natural and the super- 
 natural life as set forth by the Word of God. 
 In the natural world, that passage, if ever 
 effected, must be by the impartation of life 
 from the higher to the lower ; so in the spiritual 
 world in order to a spiritual development there 
 must first be the implanting of a spiritual life. 
 This is what Jesus calls being "born from 
 above," or as the authorized version has it, 
 "born again." And so before we speak about 
 growing we must be sure we are born. 
 
 And now I can almost hear some one saying 
 "What does it mean to be born again, and how 
 did I ever come to have this new life, and if I 
 have it not, how can I get it?" Well, the new 
 birth is a profound mystery — but not one whit 
 more mysterious to the theologian than the first 
 birth is to the physiologist, ^sop tells us of 
 a hen that laid golden eggs, but a reaUy wise 
 man would be no more surprised to see a hen 
 13 
 
Zhc 6ro\vtnG CbriBtian 
 
 lay a golden egg and that egg hatch into a 
 young alligator than he is to see a tiny acorn 
 produce a mighty acre-covering oak, so far as 
 his ability goes to explain either the one or the 
 other. There are some things that really smart 
 men do not know. "A religion without mys- 
 tery is an absurdity." 
 
 But let us look for a few moments at the 
 matter in question, the initial fact of divine 
 experience. The great difference between man 
 and animal is that to man was given the addi- 
 tional gift of a spirit that makes him a moral 
 being and endows him with immortality. Now 
 let us suppose a seed which we intend to plant. 
 "We are accustomed to say that within the seed 
 is the germ of life. We might call that germ, 
 whatever it is, the spirit of the seed, although 
 it is not immortal and if it is not cared for it 
 will perish forever. Only, however, when that 
 seed is planted and comes into correspondence 
 with certain environments does it really begin 
 to live, for in that correspondence the spirit of 
 nature knocks at the door of the seed and says, 
 **May I come in?" and entering in, somehow, 
 through some mysterious touch not given man 
 to understand, life is generated within the 
 waiting spirit of the seed. 
 14 
 
Ube %itc Umplante^ 
 
 Now I know that some astute theologian 
 might venture an objection here, because man 
 is said to be dead in trespasses and in sins. 
 But so is the seed dead. Man of himself can 
 do nothing ; what more can the seed do? What 
 more helpless and hopeless thing can you 
 imagine than a shrivelled seed lying on the 
 shelf? Apart from the spirit of nature, the 
 spirit within the seed, whatever it may be, 
 never will live, and apart from the Spirit of 
 God the spirit of man is doomed to an eternal 
 death because it cannot generate one spark of 
 life for itself. Analogy usually breaks down 
 somewhere, but the point of comparison here is 
 that the life-giving voiver, hoth in the seed and 
 in the man comes from ivithout. 
 
 But lest some one should protest that the 
 seed has within it the principle of life while 
 man has not, let us look beyond the point of 
 the analogy just mentioned. Where did the 
 seed get that germ or that principle of life? 
 We say that God put it there and the scientist 
 must admit as much or at least confess he 
 does not know. So too must the spiritual life 
 come from God if man is ever to possess it. 
 We will begin therefore as far back as possible. 
 We read that ''God created man in His own 
 15 
 
the (Srowtna Cbrt^tian 
 
 image, in His own image created He him." 
 What was this image? Not physical, for God 
 is not such. Not spiritual, for the Devil is a 
 spiritual being. Nor can we hardly say it is 
 psychical, — I mean giving him the power to 
 think, to will and to love, for I am not so sure, 
 indeed I think we must admit, that animals do 
 these things; at least the Devil does, possibly 
 with the exception of loving. But in His 
 moral image I think we must take it ; that is, 
 man became in the very beginning the temple 
 of the Spirit of God. God's Spirit entered into 
 him, whereby his understanding was enlight- 
 ened above all things else to know God, the 
 will inclined to do the will of God, and the 
 affections purified to love the things of God. 
 Then came the temptation and man fell, and 
 that which had been the temj)le of God went 
 to ruin because the Holy Spirit who dwelt in it 
 was under the painful necessity of leaving the 
 polluted spot. Then followed the descent of a 
 ruined race and every son of Adam has been 
 born in sin and shapen in iniquity, and until 
 man's nature is renewed by the restoration of 
 the Holy Spirit; not only is his mind, his will 
 and his affections alienated from God, but 
 Scripture is very express in stating his utter 
 16 
 
tlbe %iU 1Fmplante5 
 
 inability to do the things which are right. 
 *' Cannot" is the word used concerning him. 
 As to his understanding, he cannot know the 
 things of God (1 Cor. 2:14); as to his will, he 
 cannot be subject to the law of God (Rom. 
 8:7); as to his affection, he cannot love God 
 (same verse) , and as to his life, he cannot please 
 God (Rom. 8: 8). Upon his utter lack, there- 
 fore, of spiritual life and his utter inability to 
 do anything for himself is grounded the neces- 
 sity for the new birth, which means the res- 
 toration of the moral im-age of God by the 
 re-incoming of the Spirit of God. "Verily, I say 
 unto you, except a man be born again (except 
 he have the new life imparted to him from 
 above) he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
 He lacks the essential condition for seeing it. 
 As well try to think with his foot or to love 
 with his hand as to appreciate the things of 
 God so as to do them without being born from 
 above. The nature which a man gets at his 
 first birth is human; the nature which he gets 
 at his second birth is divine. The one is the 
 Adam nature, the other is the Christ nature, 
 and by no course of education, by no kind of 
 ethical culture, by no process of evolution, can 
 the natural man be made into the spiritual. It 
 17 
 
Ube 6rowlna Cbtistian 
 
 is scientifically impossible. Te must be born 
 again. The Spirit of God must come and bring 
 spiritual life with Him, and when He has come 
 in only then does a man become a spiritual 
 being in the highest sense of spirituality. 
 
 Dear friend, before we go on to speak of 
 growth would it not be well to pause long 
 enough to ask, *'Have I the life from which a 
 growth in grace can really spring, or have I 
 been finding satisfaction in a character wrought 
 by human workmanship rather than produced 
 by the Spirit of God?" Some one has said, 
 **One birth, two deaths; two births, one 
 death." Have you been born the second 
 time? Have you really and sincerely come to 
 God and told Him that He could have His 
 way with you? If you have, then you may 
 trust God for the regeneration and not worry 
 about it. 
 
 Then Paul tells us that "the Spirit beareth 
 witness with our spirit that we are the children 
 of God." Have you such a witness? Dear 
 friend, if you are walking in newness of life 
 and trying to keep yourself unspotted from the 
 world you will not be without the witness of 
 the Spirit. It He does nothing more, He will 
 say to you every moment you stop to listen, 
 18 
 
Ube %itc UmplanteD 
 
 **You have taken God at His word and God 
 will never fail you." 
 
 But some one wants to know if there are not 
 certain effects of the new birth which can help 
 us to an assurance such as we fain would have? 
 Yes, there are such effects, and while they 
 become more and more manifest as one grows 
 in grace they are in evidence from the very 
 hour of regeneration. These results come in 
 the most natural direction. If I should ask 
 you to mention for me the faculties of your 
 soul, you would say, *'I have a mind with 
 which to think; I have a will with which to 
 choose and I have a heart with which to love,'* 
 and further than this you would not be able to 
 go. Xow it is exactly upon these faculties the 
 Holy Spirit operates when He regenerates. He 
 illumines the understanding; He renews the 
 will; He purifies the affection. 
 
 What about your understanding? Does it 
 appreciate the things of God? *'I don't see 
 what you find in that picture to hold your 
 attention so long," said one friend to another. 
 *'Don't you wish you could?" replied the 
 other. The last man had within him the 
 spirit of an artist. There was an attractive- 
 ness in the picture appealing to something 
 19 
 
Zhc Growing Cbrtsttan 
 
 within his soul. Let us test ourselves by this 
 principle. 
 
 1. The Word of God. Does it mean any- 
 thing to you or is it a dull and uninteresting 
 book? We find it written within that a real 
 Christian will feed upon the Word and it will 
 be as manna to his soul, but when you per- 
 chance have tasted of it you have found your- 
 self altogether without an appetite for such 
 nourishment. It took such a hold upon one 
 person that he said he would meditate on it day 
 and night, but his eyes had been opened that 
 he might behold wonderful things as he read. 
 
 2. What about Prayer? Has it any meaning 
 for you? When you hear people singing about 
 the "Sweet hour of Prayer," do you find your- 
 self wondering what they mean? Possibly you 
 thought once you would pray, but you heard 
 no sweet whispering of the divine voice and the 
 God, in whom of course everyone believes, 
 seemed too far away to hear, or too uncon- 
 cerned, for ought you knew, to care if He had 
 heard. 
 
 3. What about the voice of nature? To the 
 regenerate person Paul says "all things have 
 become new." A man who had recently given 
 himself to Christ was walking through the 
 
 SO 
 
ZTbe Xtte 'ffmplante^ 
 
 garden with a friend and plucking a flower from 
 its stem said, "Isn't it beautiful; I never knew 
 how beautiful a flower was until I gave myself 
 to Christ." There's a volume of meaning in 
 that. Things do look and are more beautiful 
 to a Christian because he knows that although 
 the blessings of Providence are over the good 
 and bad alike, it is all for Christ's sake and in 
 everything round about him he has a continual 
 vision of his Lord. 
 
 I am not going to take upon myself the 
 responsibility of unchristianizing anybody; the 
 very appreciation, whose lack we have been 
 deploring, is itself a thing of growth. But if 
 you are an utter stranger to these things or the 
 appetite for them, I wonder if we must not 
 look for the reason in the words of Paul where 
 he says, "The natural man recoiveth not the 
 things of God, neither can he know them, for 
 they are spiritually discerned." 
 
 They have pictured to us a girl, blind and 
 deaf, placed upon a tower-top and touching 
 the world about her only through the soles of 
 her feet and the breezes that kissed her cheek; 
 and then from the throne of God came an 
 angel and touching those sightless eyes and 
 soundless ears cried, "Daughter, see ! Daughter, 
 21 
 
XTbe Growing Cbristian 
 
 hear!" and instantly there flowed into her soul 
 through the open eyes and ears the myriad 
 sights and sounds of a world all new. ''Old 
 things," says Paul, "have passed away; all 
 things have become new. Something like that 
 is the experience when by His Spirit is first 
 revealed the Son of God to man. Friend, you 
 need not be brilliant in mind to have the eyes 
 of your understanding opened, but if you are 
 willing that the Spirit of God shall have His 
 way with you, there will come to you such an 
 appreciation of Christ as shall seem like the 
 creation of a new faculty within your soul, 
 whereby you shall see and hear and understand 
 things which the eye and ear and heart of the 
 natural man hath never known. 
 
 And now a word about the other powers of 
 the soul. We spoke about the will; what 
 about yours? It gives you the power to 
 choose, but what about your choices? Whose 
 pleasure and whose glory do you consult in the 
 choices you make? Have you ever known what 
 it means to do a thing for Christ's sake, or are 
 you continually seeking to please yourself? 
 Have you a wrong passion which your will is 
 powerless to conquer? Are you weak in the 
 hour of temptation? 
 
 22 
 
Ubc %itc Umplante^ 
 
 Bishop Taylor told us of a black man, 
 recently converted, who was kneeling at the 
 altar for communion, and presently the Bishop 
 saw him looking intently and wildly at the man 
 by his side and then in great agitation he arose 
 and fled into the forest. Presently he came 
 back and quietly taking his place at the altar, 
 finished the communion, eating from the same 
 loaf and drinking from the same cup with the 
 man from whose presence he had just fled. 
 After the service Bishop Taylor inquired the 
 cause of his strange conduct, and the man told 
 him that in the one by his side he recognized the 
 one who had long ago slain his father and that 
 he had sworn a great oath of revenge. But in 
 the meantime he had been converted, yet when 
 he saw the man there he remembered the mur- 
 der and his oath and the old hatred awoke 
 within him, and so great was the temptation 
 that came upon him that it drove him out into 
 the wilderness where the Evil One assailed him, 
 but upon his knees he conquered through the 
 power of a will renewed by the Spirit of God. 
 Do you have victory or do you have continual 
 defeat? 
 
 And now briefly a question about your affec- 
 tions. *' Where your treasure is there will your 
 23 
 
Ube C^towtuG Cbrtsttan 
 
 heart be also." A wardrobe is a poor prison 
 for an immortal spirit. It could find nothing 
 to wear there if summoned suddenly into the 
 presence of God. It would be sad to lose your 
 heart and find it in the vault, hard and yellow 
 like the gold upon which it is set; to discover 
 it living, or rather dying, upon the vitiated 
 atmosphere of the dancing room, but in just 
 such places will it be if such are the things 
 that are dear to it. But not only does the one 
 who has passed from death unto life turn from 
 the sinful and the vile and become enamored of 
 that which is pure and holy, but he begins to 
 see things in their true relation and to seek 
 above all things else for the treasure that is 
 neither corrupted by moth nor stolen by 
 thieves. 
 
 And then you know that John says, "We 
 know we have passed from death unto life 
 because we love the brethren." The Christian 
 finds his heart going out to all his fellowmen, 
 but first, of course, and in a more intimate 
 sense, to the children of God. I know of no 
 surer sign of the unregenerate condition than 
 that one's heart should feel no stronger attrac- 
 tion for a Christian than for one who has not 
 crowned the Christian's Christ in his heart, 
 24 
 
XTbe %itc Umplante^ 
 
 This is doubtless the primary reference of the 
 word "brethren." But the Christian does not 
 stop with this. His sympathy has a wider 
 reach. He will have a concern for the unsaved. 
 Mr. Morgan tells of two men, nominal Chris- 
 tians, who worked side by side for five years 
 before finding out, either of them, that the 
 other had ever made a profession of religion. 
 One of them, in telling this to Mr. Morgan, 
 said, "Wasn't it funny?" "Funny!" said Mr. 
 Morgan, "why no; go find the man and let us 
 get down before God; you never have been 
 born again." I am judging no one, but surely 
 if one has the life of God within him it ought 
 not take the world five years to find it out. 
 
 I know these remarks are calculated to make 
 us feel uncomfortable, yet nothing that any 
 man might say could ever bring snch a feeling 
 to him who is trusting in Christ and has the 
 witness of the Spirit within himself. Nor 
 must we forget what was said a moment ago — 
 that these very graces are the things in which 
 we grow and may not in the first hours of 
 Christian experience be so much in evidence, 
 but if you are forced to feel as you read, that 
 your experience has been destitute of them all, 
 then I pray you to ask God for a vision of 
 25 
 
TLbc Growing Cbrietian 
 
 yourself; and then ask Him for a vision of 
 Himself and beseech Him to stamp His image 
 upon you. 
 
 When God was about to make man He called 
 to Him His three ministering angels and turn- 
 ing to the first said, "Justice, shall we make 
 man?" and Justice said, "Make him not, oh 
 God, for he will trample on Thy laws." Then 
 said God to the second, "Truth, shall we make 
 man?" and Truth said, "Oh, God, make him 
 not, for he will pollute Thy sanctuaries." 
 Then said God, turning to the third, "Mercy, 
 shall we make man?" and Mercy, dropping on 
 her knees and looking up through her tears, 
 said, "Oh, God, make him, and I will watch 
 over him with my care and follow him in all 
 the dark paths he will have to tread." Then 
 God made man in His own image and said, 
 "Oh, man, thou art the child of Mercy. Go." 
 Unbelieving one, thou art the child of mercy! 
 How good mercy has been to you ! — sending you 
 the only Son of God to atone for your sin, fol- 
 lowing you in your sin, whispering of forgive- 
 ness and wooing you, if possible, back to 
 heaven. Let us draw back the bolts of our 
 wills now and He who stands without with the 
 gift of life will open the door and enter in, and 
 
Ubc %itc UmplanteJ) 
 
 thus having life we will grow in His grace and 
 in the knowledge of Him, and thus growing 
 become like Him whom we shall some day see 
 face to face. God grant it ! 
 
 27 
 
^* Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for 
 your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; 
 nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not 
 the life more than meat and the body than raiment? 
 Behold the fowls of the air: they sow not neither do 
 they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly 
 Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than 
 they? Which of you by taking thought can add one 
 cubit to his stature? And why take ye thought for 
 raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how 
 THEY GROW ; they toil not neither do they spin. And 
 yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory 
 was not arrayed like one of these."" — St. Matthew'g 
 Gospel, Chapter 6. 
 
 28 
 
•fcow to (Btow 
 
 HOW TO GROW 
 
 " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.*' 
 —Matt. 6:28. 
 
 I BELIEVE with Browning that "Man was 
 made to grow, not stop." Greater men 
 than Browning evidently believed in this 
 too, for we hear Paul declaring that "Whom 
 He did foreknow. He also did predestinate to 
 be conformed to the image of His Son" — to 
 grow into His likeness. He tells the Colos- 
 sians that he only wished they might know 
 how he had prayed for them that they might 
 be well rooted and grounded, and to the Thes- 
 salonians he said, "Brethren, we beseech you 
 that you increase more and more." And 
 Peter, likewise, in more places than one, leaves 
 with the people the same injunction. We have 
 spent a little time in studying the life as im- 
 planted; let us now spend a little in seeing 
 how it grows. 
 
 If you are sighing to-day for the **joy which 
 once you knew when first you found the 
 Lord," it is because you have not been a grow- 
 ing Christian. Conversion is only the begin- 
 ning of what God can do for a human soul. 
 29 
 
Zbc (BrowtuG Cbrtsttan 
 
 "Have you on the Lord believed? 
 
 Still there's more to follow; 
 Of His grace have you received? 
 
 Still there's more to follow. 
 More and more, more and more, 
 
 Always more to follow ; 
 Oh, His matchless, boundless love ! — 
 
 Still there's more to follow." 
 
 *'For He is able to do for us exceedingly- 
 abundantly above all that we ask or think," 
 and we may "increase more and more" and 
 **grow in grace" until the measure of our 
 stature shall be something like the fullaess of 
 His own. 
 
 I want God to do for me all that He can do 
 for any man in this life. I know I shall be 
 satisfied when I awake in His likeness, hut I 
 do not want to be satisfied here with anything 
 less than the nearest likeness to Him that any 
 man can bear. If there are deep things of God 
 which can only be searched by His Spirit, then 
 I want His Spirit to lead me into the knowl- 
 edge of the deepest truth ; if there are moun- 
 tain top experiences from which I can come, 
 like His servant of old, with my face shining 
 with the presence of God, I want to go up into 
 the mountain ; if down in the valley there are 
 trials and afflictions from which I may come up 
 30 
 
Dow to (Brow 
 
 with my soul chastened, and be more meek and 
 lowly, more tender and sympathetic, and more 
 like the Man of Sorrows, I want to go down 
 into the valley ; if there are conditions which 
 if fulfilled will bring a power from God that can 
 give me victory over sin and can make and 
 keep my life pure and spotless and holy, I want 
 to fulfill the conditions and receive that 
 power. 
 
 "More like my Saviour would I grow, 
 More of His grace to others show; 
 More of His saving fullness see, 
 More of His love who died for me. " 
 
 Science recognizes what is known as a **bal- 
 ance of life, ' ' a condition of life where there is 
 neither growth nor retrogression; but such a 
 state of equilibrium is really foreign to organic 
 things save in theory, and what seems to be 
 such a balance is really a painfully slow pro- 
 gression, or what is more likely an equally slow 
 retrogression. Where there is life there must 
 be either growth or decay. Peter seems to 
 have had this in mind in his epistle. He had 
 been telling them of a day of testing which was 
 to come and then warned them lest they should 
 fall from their steadfastness, adding immedi- 
 ately thereunto, "But grow in grace." Por 
 31 
 
ttbe Growing CbriBtlan 
 
 them it was either to fall from their steadfast- 
 ness or to grow in grace. There is no stand- 
 ing still, and if the life of the soul is to be 
 what God would have it be it must be one of 
 continual progress in grace and in the knowl- 
 edge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Most people have recognized the infinite 
 desirability of being good. It was Huxley who 
 said that if some great power would agree to 
 make him always think what is good and do 
 what is right on condition of being turned into 
 a sort of a clock and wound up every morning 
 he would instantly close with the offer. Well, 
 there is a way, and that without being turned 
 into a sort of a clock or any other machine ; it 
 is to become good just as a lily becomes beau- 
 tiful. But alas! for the number who are 
 trying some other method, but you can always 
 hear the rattle of the wheels and the din of the 
 machinery. Suppose we mention a few of 
 these man-contrived methods. 
 
 1. One is Resolution. I will resolve and 
 therefore be good. But a man might as well 
 try to lift himself by pulling at his bootstraps. 
 A good resolution is nothing more than a fit of 
 sporadic earnestness, and while they are a good 
 kind of fits for every man to ha^ they can 
 83 
 
Ibow to (Brow 
 
 never make a man really good. Suppose the 
 little lad who always wants to be a man 
 resolves some day that he will get big, can he 
 by any thought whatever add one cubit to his 
 stature? The Master said, No. This is the 
 usual method of the unregenerate, but the 
 really sorrowful thing is that so many Chris- 
 tians are trusting in it too. I warrant that all 
 of us have over and over again resolved and 
 then failed at the very point of our resolution. 
 We forget that the very thing we resolve to 
 become would be the easy and natural outcome 
 if God's way had the supremacy instead of our 
 own. 
 
 2. Another method we might call Eradication, 
 Dealing with one sin at a time. If too diffi- 
 cult to wholly abandon at once, I will do so by 
 degrees and when this one has been eradicated 
 I will turn my attention to another. The 
 trouble with this theory is that most of us have 
 so many sins that we'd die before we got half 
 way through, and if we did get through we'd 
 be a dwarf anyhow, for we've added nothing 
 however much we 've taken away. But the 
 chief difficulty is this : we used the word eradi- 
 cation, but that is exactly what does not occur. 
 The root of the sin is still there and when we 
 83 
 
trbe Growing Cbristlan 
 
 think we have conquered one and turned our 
 attention to another, the first puts on new 
 strength and marks the point of another 
 defeat. 
 
 3. The third method is that of Imitation. I 
 will copy the virtues of the good and so become 
 like them. But most of us are very poor hands 
 at imitation, and at best such an art only yields 
 an artificial product and people can always tell 
 the difference. Titian was a good imitator but 
 he never became great till he left his master's 
 models and getting close up to nature's heart 
 allowed her to breathe her inspiration into his 
 soul. Mr. Meyer was one time traveling by 
 the side of a young man who was reading 
 Thomas A. Kempis' Imitation of Christy and 
 noticing the book said, "A grand book." 
 *'Yes," was the reply. *'I have found some- 
 thing better," said Mr. Meyer. *' Better?" 
 *'Yes, better for me," said Mr. Meyer. "I 
 was never a very good hand at imitating. " He 
 said when the master gave him a drawing to copy 
 at school his imitation needed always to have a 
 statement written beneath to let one know for 
 what it was intended. But said he: *'My 
 young friend, if my drawing master could have 
 infused the spirit of his skill into my brain and 
 84 
 
1bow to Grow 
 
 hand, he could have drawn through me as fair 
 a drawing as his own. And if instead of 
 imitating Christ far away in glory He will come 
 by the Holy Spirit and dwell in me, by His 
 grace He shall work through my poor-yielded 
 life a life something like His own fair life.'* 
 
 Ah J friends, now we are getting back to 
 where we started; there's a better way to be 
 good than these we've been considering — in 
 fact, the only way to be really good. If we can 
 say, like Paul, "Christ liveth in me," why not 
 let the Christ-life develop within ns? "He 
 that hath the Son hath life," and having 
 studied the life as implanted let us now "con- 
 sider the lilies, how they grow. ' ' For I am 
 sure if we can learn the lesson of the lily, our 
 life instead of being a series of dismal disap- 
 pointments and heart-rending failures, will rise 
 into the beauty of holiness even as the sweet 
 flower of which we speak rises from the garden 
 of its God into its more than Solomon-like 
 glory. 
 
 Three things present themselves at this point : 
 1. The mysteriousness of growth. It is not 
 the process the Master would have us contem- 
 plate, for this we never could understand, and 
 in order to grow it is not necessary to know 
 85 
 
Ube (3rovvlnG Cbristian 
 
 how to grow. No scientist understands Jioiu 
 the lily grows. It is so with, the growth of 
 character. If yours is a manufactured good- 
 ness, like other artificial things, it will not be 
 hard to explain; if it is the fruit of an inner 
 growing life, the child of God may appreciate 
 it, but God alone can understand it. 
 
 2. The lily does not try to grow. Of course 
 that were an impossibility for an unconscious 
 thing, but it's just as true of your life and 
 mine, both in the physical and the spiritual 
 sphere. This is the lesson Christ meant to 
 enforce. E"o amount of anxiety or worry or 
 thought will add one cubit to our stature or 
 perfect one grace within our soul. The Chris- 
 tian's life is to be a composed life. Growth 
 really takes place; if there is life and health in 
 the body growth is not only natural but inev- 
 itable; it is so with the soul, and where there 
 is health of the soul the life within the soul 
 will unfold itself as naturally as the lily from 
 its bud. 
 
 3. There is, however, a certain condition of 
 health and it is to this the Christian is to turn 
 his attention, and as he does so he will discover 
 that the growing will take care of itself or 
 rather God will take care of it, for He it is 
 
 30 
 
Dow to Grow 
 
 after all who does the growing. Certainly if we 
 are to be healthy we must have the proper diet. 
 The reason we have so many puny Christians is 
 the want of proper nourishment. 
 
 It has become the custom, and really a divine 
 one, to give the poor children of the city a few 
 weeks' outing in the country. A handful of 
 them were once taken to a farm house and a rare 
 treat for them it was indeed. The mother of 
 the home noticed that one little fellow did not 
 drink his milk, and she asked him why. And 
 he said, *'I ain't got no milk." ''Why, yes," 
 she said, "Johnny, that's your milk right by 
 your plate." And the little fellow said, "That 
 ain't milk; milk's blue." He had been living 
 on watered milk down in the city and almost 
 the hardest trial that ever came into his life 
 was when he had to leave the fresh, creamy 
 drink at the farm house and go back to the 
 doctored milk of the city. Too many Chris- 
 tians are living on blue milk, and is it any 
 wonder there is so much stunted growth among 
 us? There's rich food that God's prepared; it 
 brings health and a relish to those who try it. 
 
 The Christian's nourishment comes to him 
 through certain channels and to these now for 
 a brief time let us turn our attention. If we 
 37 
 
Ube Orowtng Cbristtan 
 
 were asked, What are these channels, — these 
 means of grace? we would almost recite them 
 in concert, so apparent are they as the chief 
 source of spiritual strength. To carry on the 
 analogy, we might liken these means of grace 
 to the lily's roots, each of which, as well as 
 every feeler, has its own little mouth through 
 which passes the heat and moisture of the soil 
 on their way to strengthen the growing plant 
 above. There are more of these roots than we 
 shall mention, but the ones you are expecting 
 to be mentioned are three: 
 
 1. The first is the Word of God. Peter says, 
 *'As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of 
 the Word that ye may grow thereby." What- 
 ever else that means, it means that the Word 
 of God is a good thing to feed on. It's too bad 
 that so many people seem to have misunder- 
 stood Peter. Milk, you know, is food which 
 has passed through the digestion of another, 
 and so there are some who think that about all 
 the feeding they need is what the minister 
 hands out to them on Sunday morning. I 
 refer to these bottle Christians who use their 
 pastor as a nurse. How strange that so many 
 Christians should be satisfied with a nourish- 
 ment like that ! Whatever else Peter meant he 
 38 
 
1bow to (3row 
 
 didn't mean that by the sincere milk of the 
 Word. How sad it is and yet how true that 
 the majority of Christians are not students of 
 the Bible. In some homes it is only an orna- 
 ment for the center table or a family record to 
 tell when the old folks were married and when 
 brother died and sister was born. There are 
 thousands of nominal Christians who can tell 
 you the number of cards in a eucher deck but 
 couldn't tell the number of books in the Bible 
 to save their lives. Not that there is any par- 
 ticular merit in this latter, but that it is sad 
 indeed that anyone called by the name of 
 Christ should know so much about the one and 
 so little about the other. What growth can 
 you expect in such a soul? They are indeed 
 like the rich farmer who had his barns stored 
 with corn and said to his soul, "Soul, thou 
 hast much goods, eat, drink and be merry." 
 Trying to feed his soul on corn. A neglected 
 Bible means a starved and puny spirit, a 
 dwarfed soul and a barren life. Jesus in His 
 priestly prayer for you and me said to the 
 Father, "Sanctify them by Thy truth; Thy 
 word is truth." What does this mean but 
 that the Word is the chief instrument in our 
 sanctification? It is from the Word that the 
 39 
 
(Tbe (3rowtna Cbrtsttan 
 
 Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows 
 them unto us and thus only can we come to 
 know the living Word through a thorough 
 acquaintance with the Word which is written, 
 and that is what sanctification means — to know 
 Christ. 
 
 And how shall I read the Word. 
 
 (1) First of all, Praijerfully. That the Holy 
 Spirit may be your interpreter and that you 
 may have that spirit which will cause you to 
 believe every word of it as God's message for 
 you. 
 
 (2) Frequently. More especially in stated 
 and uninterrupted seasons. To be healthy and 
 growing one must be regular in his diet. 
 
 (3) Carefully. Eeading the Bible every day 
 simply for the sake of regularity is of little 
 value; as if such a perfunctory performance 
 were to act as a charm about us during the 
 day! Such people might save even the little 
 time required by securing a minature Bible to 
 hang about their necks. One cold morning 
 as Miss Havergal was about her daily Bible 
 study, her sister besought her to read with her 
 feet more comfortably to the fire. *'But then, 
 Marie," said the saintly invalid, *'I can't rule 
 my lines so neatly; just see what a find I've 
 
 4Q 
 
Dow to Grow 
 
 got." She was in the habit of marking her 
 Bible, which is most excellent; but when one 
 studies it as she did there will be no need to 
 mark the place where you stop that you may 
 know where to begin next time. That's the 
 way Mr. Moody used to hoe potatoes when a 
 boy, so he said, and that's the way many people 
 read their Bibles. It seems as though God 
 has purposely hidden the treasures of His 
 Word, some of them deep, and others at least 
 a little underneath the surface, as if to test our 
 earnestness in searching for them and to insure 
 a keener appreciation and a profounder joy 
 when once we have brought them to light. 
 What a wonderful book it is! 
 
 *'Were all the seas one chrysolite, 
 The earth a golden ball, 
 And diamonds all the stars of night, 
 This book were worth them all!" 
 
 To studiously and carefully pore over its 
 pages is like eating meat at the King's table. 
 Dear child of God, are you neglecting this 
 Word or are you feeding upon it? I am sure if 
 you can say with the prophet, "Thy words 
 were found and I did eat them," that you can 
 also say with him, "And Thy Word was unto 
 me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." "I 
 41 
 
XTbe Growing Cbrlsttan 
 
 will answer for it," said Romaine, *'tlie longer 
 you read the Bible the more you will like it — it 
 will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more 
 you get into the spirit of it the more you will 
 get into the Spirit of Christ." 
 
 2. The second condition of growth, cr root 
 rather, through which the soul is to be fed is 
 Secret Prayer. And by secret prayer is meant 
 rather the occasion of deliberate approach, 
 when in our closet, as Andrew Murray says, 
 *'we are shut out from men and shut in with 
 God"; this rather than breathing the atmos- 
 phere of constant communion, this rather than 
 praying without ceasing, is what is meant by 
 secret prayer. The two are not, of course, to 
 be vitally severed. They really animate and 
 feed each other and are the complements in the 
 life of perfect fellowship. How blessed so to 
 breathe the atmosphere of prayer that anywhere 
 and everywhere the soul will cast quick glances 
 at its ever present Lord ; glances which speak 
 to Him in adoration, in love, in petition and 
 reliance; to have such constant fellowship that 
 even the smallest details of our lives will not 
 be too insignificant to mention to Him. But 
 I very much fear that one who thus expects to 
 commune without the more stated seasons of 
 
1bow to (Brow 
 
 private prayer will find himself forgetting his 
 privilege in the busy rush of life, and certainly 
 there could be no better preparation for such a 
 day's communion than to begin that day with 
 a season of quiet interview with Him whom we 
 desire to go with us to our daily duty. 
 
 In Hosea 14: 5 we hear the Lord saying, *'I 
 will be as the dew unto Israel and Israel shall 
 grow up as the lily." The dew, it is said, falls 
 or gathers only when the atmosphere is still, 
 and so the heavenly refreshing comes best in 
 the quiet of communion with our God. When 
 the Psalmist said, ''Evening, morning and 
 noon will I pray," he used a word that means 
 "to muse," "to meditate," and its Greek 
 equivalent carries with it the idea of "narrating 
 fully," and so when we have gotten alone with 
 God and told Him all about it we hear the 
 sweet whisper of His approval, or of His for- 
 giveness and receive His all-sufficient grace, 
 and no wonder we become strong. Tell Him 
 ail about it? All about what? All about 
 everything. All about your sin? Yes, He'll 
 forgive. All about your temptation? Yes, 
 He'll strengthen you to overcome. All about 
 your failure? Yes, He'll help you to succeed. 
 All about your sickness? Yes, He'll heal your 
 48 
 
Ube (Browing Cbtisttan 
 
 disease. All about your joys? Yes, He 
 wants to share your happiness. That's what 
 real fellowship means, a sharing with each 
 other of every concern. 
 
 "Oh, the pure delight of a single hour 
 That before Thy throne I spend ; 
 When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God, 
 I commune as friend with friend." 
 
 We don't need to dwell upon the fact that 
 such communion is conducive to growth in 
 grace. The delight of it seems to make us 
 forget all about the growing and it is good that 
 it should, for it is not by "taking thought" 
 that we grow. 
 
 3. And now just a word about the other root 
 or channel of grace. It is Exercise^ of course. 
 The idle arm grows weak ; the unused faculty 
 atrophies. Brother Lawrence, who taught us 
 so much about practicing the presence of God, 
 was a very good man, but he lost half of his 
 saintliness when he made up his mind to live 
 as if there were nobody else but God and Brother 
 Lawrence in the world. The monk in Long- 
 fellow's "Legend Beautiful" wanted to tarry 
 in his cell in communion with his Lord, 
 but God told him to go out and feed the beg- 
 gars. 
 
 44 
 
f}ow to (Brow 
 
 "Should he who, wrapped in silent ecstasy 
 Of divinest self -surrender, — 
 Should he slight his radiant guest, 
 Slight this vision celestial, for a crowd of ragged, 
 Bestial beggars at the convent gate?" 
 
 And God said: 
 
 "Do thy duty, that is best; 
 Leave unto the Lord the rest," 
 
 and when he came back the divine visitor said 
 he would not have stayed had the monk refused 
 to go. Here the thought comes out again, 
 If we will but obey His voice we can leave the 
 rest to Him. He will attend to the growth 
 and we would find ourselves growing more rap- 
 idly if we thought less about character and 
 more about duty. If we thought vless about 
 being somebody and more about doing some- 
 thing for somebody, we would come nearer 
 being the body the Lord wants us to be. 
 
 Dear child of God, are you growing? Have 
 you got a larger heart and a purer spirit than 
 you had last year? Are you living nearer the 
 Master now than then? Is your delight in the 
 law of the Lord and are you meditating therein 
 day and night? Are you taking time to be holy 
 while the world rushes on? Are you saying 
 each morning, *'What can I do to-day for 
 45 
 
Uhc Growing Cbristian 
 
 Christ?" We have been considering the lilies, 
 how they grow. Let us then say: "My life too 
 shall be one of growth, until like the lily's pure 
 and unstained calyx the beauty of holiness 
 shall crown it." And while the lily dies we 
 shall go on from beauty unto beauty and from 
 glory unto glory, for "it doth not yet appear 
 what we shall be." 
 
 46 
 
"77ie night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us 
 therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us 
 put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly as 
 in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in 
 impurity and wantonness, not in strife and envying. 
 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no 
 PROVISION FOR THE FLESH, to fulfil the lusts thereof.''^ 
 — St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 13. 
 
 48 
 
Dow IPlot to (Brow 
 
 HOW XOT TO GROW 
 "Make no provision for the flesh." — Rom. 15.14. 
 
 WE HAVE been considering the lilies o\ 
 the field, how they grow; we have 
 discovered that there is a law of 
 growth, and the same law — a continuity of the 
 law, the scientist would say — in both the 
 natural and spiritual world; we have dwelt 
 briefly upon some of the conditions of Christian 
 growth and I wonder if it wouldn't be well now 
 for a while to consider the Christian, how he 
 does not grotu. 
 
 When a plant is once supplied with the 
 proper means of nourishment the chief concern 
 of the horticulturist is not an endeavor to make 
 it grow — in fact, such is not his business at all 
 ■ — but it is to see that all obstacles to growth 
 are taken out of the way and everything eradi- 
 cated that would in any way hinder growth, 
 thus making it possible for the plant to come 
 to perfection in its own time and way. Every 
 living thing, in the natural world, to thrive 
 must be fed. This is true of plant life and it 
 is true of animal life. If it is not fed it will die. 
 49 
 
Zbc 6rowing Cbrtstiatt 
 
 In fact it will die anyhow. Plant and animal 
 life at the most is but ephemeral. The wiseacres 
 tell US they have all but discovered eternal life 
 such as may endure with us in the body. Yes, 
 *' all but," but who'd want such an eternal life if 
 they did find it? We are wont to say, in fact 
 we said it in the previous message, that if the 
 proper environment be furnished it is natural 
 for living organisms to live and grow ; without 
 controverting anything we there said, we now 
 intend to state what after all is really true, 
 that in spite of such nourishment it is natural 
 for such organism to deteriorate and die. As 
 another has said, '*We are wont to imagine 
 that nature is full of life ; in reality it is full of 
 death." Man with all his strength is but a 
 frail and daily dying creature. 
 
 But there is something else in man besides 
 the material. To him of all creatures was 
 given the privilege, yea, rather the necessity of 
 living forever, in the sense of existence. This 
 belongs to the spiritual nature of every man. 
 Because he is a spiritual being, he must go on, 
 either in heaven or in hell. This spiritual 
 nature is by generation sinful. "Man is born 
 in sin and shapen in iniquity. " He enters life 
 with the sinful principle as sole controller of his 
 50 
 
1bovv iRot to Grow 
 
 being. This nature we are accustomed to say- 
 has a deathward tendency. This is true, but 
 in a sense only, — unless regenerate, it involves 
 the soul in spiritual and eternal death, but 
 even in the lost world that nature itself is very 
 much alive indeed. We speak, as does the 
 Scriptures, of the unregenerate as being dead; 
 and tliey are dead — "She that liveth in pleasure 
 is dead while she liveth" — although it is im- 
 portant to notice that Scripture nowhere 
 teaches that the spiritual nature as just con- 
 ceived is ever dead in any man's life, save the 
 believer's in glory. You say, "How are you 
 using that word, spiritual?" In the sense now 
 that all people, even the devil, are spiritual 
 beings. In fact, the biggest evidence that an 
 unregenerate man is dead is the liveliness of 
 his wicked spiritual nature. 
 
 This nature Paul calls the "old man." This 
 suggests the question of the new man. The 
 new man is Christ, and when in regeneration 
 the new man enters. He brings His nature with 
 Him and of course another kind of life. "He 
 that hath the Son hath life." Every child of 
 God has therefore two natures, an old human 
 nature and a new divine nature. 
 
 Does regeneration mean a changed nature? 
 61 
 
Ube Growing Cbristian 
 
 Yes, if by nature is meant the individual, for 
 the Christian is most certainly a changed man ; 
 but the matter will appear much simpler if we 
 adhere to the Scriptural representation, which 
 seems to be, not that of a changed but of an 
 added nature. Peter tells us in his second 
 epistle, the first chapter and fourth verse, that 
 we have been *'made partakers of the divine 
 nature." 
 
 I have been pained to read in a religious 
 journal that reaches more young people than 
 any other in the world, words like these: 
 
 **What a glorious change from the old life 
 into the new! 'former things have passed 
 away' ; the old nature with its cravings and its 
 power is gone, for with the new birth comes a 
 new nature and he who has experienced the 
 regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is dead to 
 the old nature just as the butterfly is dead to 
 the grub nature that ruled it when a cata- 
 pillar." 
 
 That is not true, and many a child of God has 
 found himself many times in doubt and real 
 distress because he has failed to appreciate the 
 real truth of the matter. Thinking either that 
 regeneration meant instantaneous death to the 
 old nature, or that a change was then begun 
 52 
 
t)OW iRot to (3tow 
 
 that meant a speedy eradication of that nature, 
 he is surprised to find it manifesting itself with 
 its old lustings after evil when he thought it 
 dead and gone, and unsuspectingly he yields 
 himself to the subtle whispering of the evil one 
 that he never was born again, and discouraged 
 abandons himself to sin or seeks another regen- 
 eration, merely to go through the same experi- 
 ence, unhappy himself and a hindrance to 
 others by his weak and Christ-dishonoring life. 
 The truth is, the old man continues to breathe; 
 nor does he sign a quit claim to the soul when 
 the new man enters, but a lively spiritual con- 
 flict ensues which continues with some degree 
 of intensity, I am inclined to think — it does 
 with me — is the testimony of Scripture and 
 experience, until He shall come in glory to 
 **change our vile body that it may be fashioned 
 like unto his glorious body" (Phil. 3:21). 
 What we need is to put on the whole armor of 
 God and keep it on and keep the old man 
 under, as Paul did, through the all-conquer- 
 ing strength of the new man, and thank God 
 for a victory that's easy when we do. 
 
 You now see the difference between life in 
 the natural world and in the spiritual — the one 
 is bound to die ; the other is bound to live, and 
 53 
 
Uhc Growing Cbristian 
 
 yet in a sense the law of death is universal, for 
 even in the spiritual world the liveliness of the 
 old man is but the sign of a death more real 
 than any the natural world ever knew. 
 
 In order to become thoroughly acquainted 
 with the old nature, that we may recognize it 
 and be on our guard against it, it might be well 
 to see by what other names it is called. Paul, 
 we have seen, calls it the ''old man." We 
 also read of it as the "natural man," "the 
 flesh," and Paul identifies the flesh with him- 
 self. He says, "In me, that is in my flesh, 
 dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7:18). 
 *'Flesh," says Mr. Meyer, "is Me-ism." 
 Plesh, as used by Paul, is the element of self 
 in a man, the sinful human nature, and not 
 the material element of the human body. It is 
 the self-life, the carnal life. This, it has been 
 noted, inheres in the child of God as well as 
 in the unregenerate, and alas! in some of His 
 children it predominates over the Christ-life, 
 robs the soul of its beauty, and becomes to 
 them the cause of much sorrow and spiritual 
 darkness. 
 
 Now you will notice that while Paul calls 
 this element the "natural man," he speaks of 
 the new or divine nature as the spiritual, and 
 64 
 
Ibow IRot to Grow 
 
 while bearing in mind the previous discussion 
 and remembering that all men and demons 
 even are spiritual beings, it will be best here- 
 after to observe Paul's distinction, for in a very 
 distinct sense he only is spiritual who has the 
 Spirit of God indwelling and filling him. 
 
 Now we have already seen that life, in order 
 to growth, must be nourished. Each nature 
 craves its own peculiar diet. I stood in a dark 
 cellar the other day where some potatoes had 
 been poured upon the floor, and although old 
 and shriveled the life was still there and across 
 the floor during a portion of the day the sun 
 threw a heavy ray of its life-giving light and 
 every sprout was creeping in that direction to 
 bathe itself in its life-giving element. 
 
 A luxuriant growth or a healthy organ is 
 conditioned wholly by a correspondence with 
 proper environment. Do you want the Christ- 
 life, the new man, to flourish? We have seen 
 some of the conditions of such growth. Or do 
 you want the self -life, the old man, to thrive? 
 Then simply see that his appetites are satisfied. 
 But let us see what Paul says about it. In the 
 13th chapter of Romans and the 14th verse he 
 says, "But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
 make no provision for the fleshy to fulfill the lusts 
 55 
 
Ube GrowtnG Cbristlan 
 
 thereof." The old man is a determined char- 
 acter and purposes to control the reins of every 
 believer's being and Paul seems to be clearly 
 decided that there is but one avenue of escape, 
 one preventive against the successes of his 
 undertaking, and that is starvation. "Make 
 no provision for the flesh to gratify the appe- 
 tites thereof." In the original, that means, "If 
 you know what he likes, don't give him any of 
 it." Is it any wonder we have so many dwarfs 
 in the Christian life, people who have passed 
 from death unto life and then have left the 
 spiritual nature to starve, while the life that 
 ought to be devoted to its culture is consumed 
 in ministering to the flesh. 
 
 Some time ago a poor woman who lived in a 
 basement room in New York City was missed 
 for several days, and when her neighbors 
 knocked at her door they found it locked and 
 upon prying it open they saw the woman lying 
 on the floor with the life of her body slowly 
 ebbing away. There was neither fire, nor fuel, 
 nor furniture, nor food in the place, and there 
 in that great city of so much wealth she was 
 slowly starving to death. You say that was 
 very sad. Yes, but I can tell you something 
 sadder than that. It's sometimes pretty hard 
 56 
 
1bo\v mot to Grow 
 
 for a poor woman to get enough bread for the 
 body, but there are those in whose soul the life 
 of God exists and though surrounded with 
 every provision for its health they are making 
 provision for the flesh only, and if you could 
 pry open the door of that inner house where 
 the soul is and there see what God sees you 
 would find a heart without prayer or love, 
 vrith but little faith and flickering hope and 
 in it a soul that is starving for the bread of 
 life. Dear child, which nature are you nour- 
 ishing? What are the strongest things in your 
 life, the spiritual or the natural; Christ or the 
 world? • 
 
 Now I'm not going to enumerate for you 
 those things upon which the self-life thrives. 
 If I did, I'd never get through. Paul began it 
 once, and as if it were a hopeless task, he fin- 
 ished up with an "et cetera." After telling 
 the Galatian Christians how they might be kept 
 from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh he begins 
 to enumerate some of those things in which the 
 self-life delights. It's an awful list of ugly 
 sins, and if we were to fill out the "and such 
 like" with which he ends we would find it to 
 include a good many not so ugly and some in 
 fact, which many, at least nominal Christians, 
 57 
 
Ubc Growing Cbrtstian 
 
 have deemed altogether harmless. Eead the 
 list for yourself and then out of your own 
 experience see if you can in any wise fill up 
 the "and such like." Possibly some sorrow 
 has come into your life, and not able to under- 
 stand the ministry of affliction you've been 
 living with a bitter feeling ' toward God. The 
 evil one has whispered to you that God has been 
 unkind, and although you've read Eomans 
 8:28 you've preferred to listen to the subtle 
 whisperings of the enemy and you are 
 feeding the old man to-day because you are 
 failing to trust God who has been kind and 
 loving if you only understood. Possibly 
 it was the rising of an angry passion and you 
 let your temper slip, and you've known all 
 these days and weeks and months and years 
 that you ought to ask the other's pardon, but 
 your pride has been in the way and you haven't 
 done it and you've been feeding the self -life all 
 this while. There has come into your life a 
 question about the rightness or wrongness of 
 certain things and you have continued to do 
 them, though doubtful about their legitimacy 
 or propriety. But Paul says, "Whatsoever is 
 not of faith is sin." If there is any practice 
 in my life concerning which. I am in doubt, 
 68 
 
Ibow IRot to (Brow 
 
 until that doubt shall have disappeared, it is 
 mj solemn duty to put it away until God tells 
 me unmistakably that I may take it up again; 
 and if I am continuing in that which is not of 
 faith but of doubt, I am feeding the carnal 
 nature and not the divine. You were reading 
 a novel that the world had gone mad over, and 
 as you read there came stealing into your mind 
 unholy visions and something, or somebody 
 rather, for it was the Holy Spirit, told you to 
 lay it aside for it was not wholesome for a pure 
 hearted child, but it was fascinating and you 
 continued to the end. You were making pro- 
 vision for the flesh. I could tell you more 
 about a certain man, but this much by way of 
 illustration: He was purchasing a pair of 
 shoes. After one or two of plainer style the 
 dealer fitted a most handsome pair upon him. 
 They were comfortable and beautiful, but as 
 the man put his foot out with the shoe upon 
 it, he discovered something and he said, ''Harry 
 Field, you can't have that shoe." It was not 
 in the shoe, but in himself the something was 
 discovered. It would have been all right for you 
 possibly to wear that shoe, but it would have 
 been all wrong for him to wear it. It may 
 seem a little thing but it was infinitely better 
 59 
 
Zbc OvovoirxQ Cbristtan 
 
 for him to wear the plainer pair than to make 
 provision for the self -life every time he saw the 
 finer pair upon his feet. 
 
 Dear child of God, which nature are you 
 nourishing? What is it in your life that is 
 withering and blasting a character that other- 
 wise might be strong and beautiful and lovely? 
 I beg of you in God's name, Put it away! 
 For although it may seem a little thing it is 
 nourishing a carnal growth that will hinder 
 your spiritual development and make your life 
 but a poor excuse for what God would have you 
 be. Of one thing you may be sure. Every- 
 thing that ministers to the self -life is wrong for 
 the child of God, and upon all that carnality 
 mentioned by Paul, upon all that reviewed a 
 moment ago and upon many things else under 
 certain conditions you can write that one little 
 and woe-entailing word of three letters and 
 know that whatever is hindering the growth of 
 your soul into the fullness of the measure of 
 God's thought for you, it is si7i. Sin is the 
 worm in the heart of the tree — the sturdy oak 
 that defied the wind and the winter's blast, 
 but whose leaves withered and whose branches 
 dropped off and whose roots dried up when it 
 gave that little worm a place in its heart. Child, 
 60 
 
Ibow Boi to ©row 
 
 what is it that is spoiling your life? Put it away. 
 
 But now some one says: *'The old man is so 
 strong within me, how can I suhdue him? I've 
 nourished him so long that he has become my 
 master. His lustings are so strong and his 
 cravings so fierce it is so very hard to deny 
 them. x\nd then you spoke about starvation, 
 which seems to imply a gradual process. Can 
 I not have release at once, or must I wait the 
 long years through?" Yes, child, you must 
 wait the long years through. Do not misun- 
 derstand me; I am not speaking of what God 
 can or cannot do, but what the Word and 
 universal experience proves He does do. Sanc- 
 tification, whatever else it is not, is progressive. 
 It is possible to be kept, if you will, from 
 known sin, and yet sin is possibly more than 
 you have recognized, and if you could see with 
 the vision of God, in spite of all your sanctifi- 
 cation, you might abhor yourself in dust and 
 ashes; and it is yet possible that after your 
 attainment unto what you thought the highest 
 possible excellence, there will still await you in 
 years to come the vision of something wrong 
 which now you permit as right. 
 
 But let us see if we cannot learn something 
 more of what Paul means by "making no pro- 
 61 
 
Ube (Browing dbvistian 
 
 vision for the flesh." Four words will, I 
 think, help us in this matter. 
 
 1. Crucifixion. Gal. 5:24. *'They that are 
 Christ's have crucified the flesh with its pas- 
 sions and lusts." Notice, the verb is in the 
 aorist, the past tense, and it is spoken of them 
 that are Christ's. Now when did you crucify 
 your flesh? Why, evidently when the blessed 
 Christ Himself, in the likeness of sinful flesh, 
 was nailed to the cross ; and so throughout the 
 epistles the Christian is ideally considered as 
 one who is dead and he is told in Eom. 6 :11 to 
 **likewise" reckon himself dead indeed unto 
 sin. "Likewise." Like what? Why, just as 
 Christ in the likeness of sinful flesh was cruci- 
 fied, so I being in union with Him was nailed 
 there too and my self-life has been fixed to the 
 cross. In this sense the self -life is dead. I 
 dragged it there and drove the nail and said, 
 "Thou shalt forever die." Between me and 
 that old man with his lustings and his jeal- 
 ousies and all his carnal cravings now stands 
 the cross and I am henceforth to stand fast in 
 the liberty wherewith Christ hath made me 
 free. Oh, you who have crucified the flesh — 
 and you have if you are Christ's — think of it. 
 It will help you. Eeckon yourselves dead. 
 63 
 
1bow 1Flot to Grow 
 
 Look upon those precious wounds and then 
 into His dear face and say, "My Christ, when 
 you died, I died!" and, *'How shall I -that am 
 dead unto sin live any longer therein?" 
 
 But you say, "I must have something more." 
 Yes, indeed you must. For you say, "I find 
 the old man obtruding himself and the lustings 
 of his nature within me in spite of what I will 
 should be his utter destruction." This brings 
 us to the second word. 
 
 2. Mortification. Eom. 8:13. "If ye 
 through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the 
 body ye shall live." Here is the flesh in the 
 believer recognized as alive. To mortify, liter- 
 ally means "to cause to decay," and unlike 
 crucifixion, which is more of an act, this word 
 has in it the idea of process. It is certainly 
 true that we are to deal with our dispositions 
 summarily. "Let him that stole steal no 
 more." If the eye offends it is to be plucked 
 out ; if it is the hand, it is to be cut off. But 
 suppose one has a fever? The surgeon's knife is 
 useless here. We are now considering sin as a 
 vicious organism and are dealing with its appe- 
 tites, and there must be administered an inner 
 antiseptic. In other words, to become perfect 
 at once is a simple impossibility. And what is 
 63 
 
tTbe (Browtno Cbdstlan 
 
 that antiseptic? Eead the verse again. *'If ye 
 through the Spirit do mortify" — it is the 
 blessed Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit indwell- 
 ing and infilling, that lusteth against the flesh, 
 despoils the old man of his power and subdues 
 the self-life while the Christ-life goes on to yic- 
 tory and to beauty. But I know some of you 
 are asking: "Must I, in order to my spiritual 
 growth, always have my attention applied to 
 that which is diseased and repulsive? Does 
 making no provision for the flesh mean that I 
 must be forever dealing with the flesh?" Our 
 third word will help us here. 
 
 3. Transformation. 2 Cor. 3:18. "Behold- 
 ing as in a glass the glory of the Lord we are 
 changed (transformed) into the same image 
 from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the 
 Lord." How is growth into Christlikeness 
 produced? Not by morbid self-analysis and 
 perpetual anxiety about this inner devitiliza- 
 tion of the flesh that is going on. This would 
 be to rob one's experience of all its sweetness; 
 but by beholding the beauty of Him. We 
 must remember the lesson of the lily. And 
 will you notice that as the mortification was 
 through the Spirit so also is the transformation 
 "by the Spirit of the Lord." Speaking of the 
 64 
 
Ibow to Grow 
 
 Holy Spirit, Jesus said, "He shall glorify me," 
 and this process of the disintegration of the 
 flesh and transformation of the soul. He carries 
 on by revealing Jesiis unto us, and while you 
 are beholding Him and so knowing Him more 
 intimately and therefore loving Him more 
 dearly, self dies and Christ lives within. 
 
 And now you say: *'This is glorious; such an 
 experience I covet. Will the Holy Spirit do 
 this for me?" This brings us to the last 
 word. 
 
 4. Dedication. While I believe growth is 
 gradual, there is a condition or position of the 
 soul conducive to its health and therefore to 
 its acceleration, and into this position I believe 
 we may and ought to come at once and in a 
 definite way. That is the position of the sur- 
 rendered life. Dedicating myself to God and 
 saying: "Blessed indwelling Spirit of Christ, 
 fill me and let the filling be deep : I want to 
 be just as much like Jesus as it is possible for 
 man to be. I do give myself to Thee — rule 
 my entire being, subdue and cast out and lead 
 me in the way of life and beauty and power." 
 
 65 
 
*'/ am the true vine, and my Father is the huaband- 
 man. Every branch in me that beareth not 
 FRUIT He taketh away : and every branch that 
 beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring 
 FORTH MORE FRUIT. Now ye are clean through the 
 word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, 
 and I in you. As the branch cannot hear fruit of 
 itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye ex- 
 cept ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the 
 branches*. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the 
 same bringcth forth much fruit: for without me ye 
 can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast 
 forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather 
 them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 
 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall 
 ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 
 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much 
 fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.'^ — St. John's Gos- 
 pel, Chapter 15. 
 
 66 
 
arrested H)evelopment 
 
 ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT AND 
 SPIRITUAL DWARF AGE 
 
 "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He 
 taketh away : and every branch that beareth fruit 
 He purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." 
 —John 15:2. 
 
 HOWEVER much the evolutionists have 
 disagreed with the more conservative 
 thinkers they have agreed among them- 
 selves that in the production of man a sentence 
 of suspension has been written upon the law of 
 development in the physical realm. Man as 
 an animal is God's noblest work in the phys- 
 ical universe. 
 
 But if what science tells us is true, it is to be 
 regretted that many of his powers have not 
 only been arrested in development but have 
 actually deteriorated from what they once 
 were. Yet how little is the sadness connected 
 with such a thought to be compared with that 
 sadness which comes from the thought of the 
 arrested development of a human soul. 
 
 In many respects other animals surpass man ; 
 the horse is stronger, the deer is fleeter, the 
 eagle can see farther, while man's sense of smell 
 67 
 
Z\^c Gxovoim Cf3ri5tian 
 
 and sound is almost as nothing in comparison 
 with many of the lower vertebrata. But though 
 all this IS true man is more than compensated 
 by additional and higher powers. Man is an 
 intelligence and if he cannot run with the deer 
 he can reach him with the bullet; if he cannot 
 see with the eagle he can surpass the eagle's 
 eye with the telescope or the microscope ; if he 
 is weaker than a horse he can control the beast 
 with a bit and bridle ; but what of all that ever 
 comes to man can be of any compensation or 
 comfort for a dwarfed and degenerated soul? 
 
 I have seen people whose ' bodies have had a 
 stunted growth and we call them dwarfs, and 
 I have thought that were not so hard to bear, 
 but oh, to have a dwarfed soul ! And there is 
 even something sadder than that — to watch 
 the waning of the faculties; to have the vision 
 grow dimmer, the sound grow fainter, nay, but 
 worse, even to have the mind grow weaker! 
 Yes, I could even think of my body shrinking 
 in stature from year to year, and terrible as 
 such a thing would be, I think I might even 
 bear that. But oh, to have a mind that is 
 slowly forgetting God, a character that is slowly 
 losing its beauty, a spirit that is losing its 
 glory, a heart that is losing its love, a soul that 
 68 
 
Hrre5te^ Development 
 
 is smaller now than it was a year ago, is a 
 thought that makes one shudder! 
 
 Look now at the text we have chosen. Two 
 things are written there : 
 
 (1) Every branch that heareth fruit the Father 
 purgeth that it may bear more fruit, and (2) 
 every branch that bearcth not fruit He taketh 
 away. Notice for a moment the fruit-bearing 
 branch. What a restful thought; no worrying 
 about the fruit; no responsibility, except just 
 to keep in close touch, to abide in the vine and 
 receive its life, which in the very nature of 
 things must bear fruit of itself. If we would 
 only appreciate this thought of our own noth- 
 ingness and our utter and necessary dependence 
 upon the vine, I am sure that everything would 
 come right in every moment of our life. 
 
 And now about the purging. It is the vine- 
 dresser's process of pruning his vines, with 
 which I presume all are familiar. There are 
 certain parts of the plant that must be cut 
 away in order to its best development from a 
 fruit-bearing standpoint. There is such a 
 thing as superfluous growth, because it is 
 growth in the wrong direction — the suckers 
 that grow on the farmer's corn, the water 
 sprouts that shoot out from the stem of a treo 
 
Zhc Grovvino Cbristtan 
 
 and consume the sap that ought to go on to 
 feed the ripening fruit. And so with the 
 vines, many of the branches, the same in 
 nature with the vine, run to wood and leaves 
 and are not only worthless in themselves but 
 hindrances to other branches that are growing 
 fruit. So far as leafage and appearances go 
 such branches may seem quite as promising as 
 any, but a little inspection will prove them to 
 be wasting the life of the vine in a mere 
 tendency to size, and often when they seem to 
 be doing grandly the vinedresser's knife is 
 ruthlessly applied and the fine appearance is 
 cut away just because it is a cumbrance to the 
 vine and cast aside to wither and be burned. 
 
 Just so it is in the spiritual world ; there can 
 be little fruitfulness without the use of the 
 sharp knife. You will notice that it is the 
 branch that is bearing a little fruit that is 
 purged of its worthless parts that it may bear 
 more fruit. In order to the richest growth in 
 grace and best results in Christian experience 
 there must be the cutting off of every encum- 
 bering growth and the purging away of all that 
 is unholy in the life. 
 
 But as the sprout cut away is only a hin- 
 drance and not essentially different from the 
 70 
 
arrested Development 
 
 branch it is forced to leave, how appropriate, in 
 closest keeping with the analogy, to use this 
 Scripture in the first place with a reference to 
 those things which might be deemed lawful 
 but by hosts of earnest Christians are consid- 
 ered questionable. Paul, speaking of such 
 things said, in 1 Cor. 6:12, **A11 things are 
 lawful unto me but all things are not expedi- 
 ent." And why not expedient? To this Paul 
 gives the most thorough answer, answering it 
 from the standpoint of a man's God, of his 
 neighbor and of himself. 
 
 1. As concerns God. 1 Cor. 10:31. Inex- 
 pedient because of the danger of misrepresent- 
 ing Him. By such indulgence we often sanc- 
 tion a tone of Christianity lower than His 
 approval warrants, and thus we are injuring 
 Him and the cause that is dear to Him. Con- 
 cerning the eating of questionable meats, a 
 subject of discussion in his day, Paul closed 
 his advice by saying, "Whether ye eat or drink 
 or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of 
 God." If you can conscientiously ask God*s 
 blessing on your undertaking and His presence 
 to attend you as you enter upon it, such a thing 
 may be deemed right for you to do, but unless 
 in that pleasure or that business the Holy 
 71 
 
XTbe GrowtnG CbrtBttan 
 
 Spirit can glorify Jesus it is wrong for you to 
 participate. Do you call that narrow? I call 
 it exceedingly broad. It is possible to become 
 an instrument of unrighteousness in any amuse- 
 ment, even though most innocent, but there is 
 a wide range of pleasure in which, when 
 entered upon in the Spirit of Christ, the very 
 beauty and glory of the Son of God will be 
 manifested to the world. In any undertaking 
 I should first want to know, "Will this please 
 God?" Calling upon one of his parishioners a 
 certain pastor inquired concerning the daughter 
 who was away at college, and the mother said, 
 *'I was just reading a letter from her as you 
 came in; part of it will interest you." And 
 she read a part of it where the daughter was 
 telling her mother of a dance that was to be 
 given by her class ; all her friends were going 
 and she wanted to go herself very much 
 indeed, but she knew her mother did not 
 approve of it and for her sake she was going to 
 stay away, "Well," remarked the pastor, 
 "that's very beautiful of her indeed; you must 
 love her very much." "Love her!" replied 
 the mother, as a tear came into her eye, "I 
 wish she was here now, that I might put my 
 arms around her and tell her how much I love 
 7^ 
 
Hrrestet) Development 
 
 her." In some such way as that I would like 
 God to feel toward me, and I am sure He will 
 if I am trying to walk "worthy of the Lord 
 unto all pleasing." 
 
 2. As concerns our neighbor. 1 Cor. 8:9. 
 Inexpedient says Paul, "lest by any means my 
 liberty becomes a stumbling block to them that 
 are weak." We all know what that means. 
 Although I might engage in this thing without 
 any harm to myself, I am making it possible 
 for others to do it who are not so discerning or 
 self-controlled as I. I will not do that which 
 may bring ruin to another. "Destroy not 
 with thy meat him for whom Christ died," says 
 Paul. Said a young man who had inherited a 
 passion for liquor: "I came near breaking my 
 pledge last night. The smell of wine was so 
 tempting that I could hardly resist it, but just 
 
 as I was about to yield I heard Miss 
 
 refuse. This gave me courage. I watched 
 her all evening and said to myself, 'If she 
 drinks, I will.' I was hoping and yet fearing 
 that she would, but as often as she was asked 
 she declined and so all unconscious to herself 
 she pulled me safely through." What a pity 
 had that young lady been without conviction 
 concerning the use of intoxicants in society. 
 
 7a 
 
Zbc Growing Cbrtsttan 
 
 If by any sacrifice that I can make I can save 
 my weaker brother, then I want to be big 
 enough, I want to be unselfish enough to save 
 him by my self-denial. Don't you? It's not 
 so much a question of inherent rightness or 
 wrongness as it is a question of how big or 
 how little you are going to be. 
 
 3. As concerns myself; and this is more 
 to the point in keeping with the analogy. 
 (a) 1 Cor. 6 :12. Inexpedient, says Paul, are some 
 things, *'lest I be brought under their power." 
 *'0h," said a man, when cautioned against the 
 use of morphine,^'! take but little at a time 
 and can stop when I choose." "Suppose you 
 try for six months," said his friend. At the 
 end of six months, after the fiercest struggle of 
 his life, he thanked his friend for his advice 
 and confessed that he did not realize how 
 greatly the habit held him under its control. 
 When once under the power of a thing, no 
 matter what it is, that thing for you is an evil 
 in your life. 
 
 (h) 1 Cor. 10:23. Inexpedient, says Paul, 
 **because they do not edify." While the pri- 
 mary reference is here doubtless to the edifica- 
 tion of others, it is equally and even more true 
 of the one who engages in them. And this is 
 74 
 
Hrreste^ Development 
 
 what we have had especially in mind from the 
 beginning — they hinder growth and fill the 
 church with barren, fruitless lives. 
 
 A prominent Christian worker once said, "I 
 never knew a Christian that began to dance 
 who was not soon missed from the prayer-meet- 
 ing." Having loved this present world, 
 Demas-like, they soon forsake the things of 
 God. It seems there is an incompatibility 
 between the two which experience seems to 
 prove will not abide each other. Such Chris- 
 tians have lost their flavor; their fruit has been 
 drying up , something has been stealing away 
 their strength and if the pruning process is 
 not soon begun something serious vfill occur. 
 And then say what we will, the lovely charac- 
 ters of this world, in whose lives the very 
 beauty and gentleness of Jesus have shone with 
 resplendent glory, have not been those whose 
 chief sources of amusement were found in the 
 giddy, venturesome circle of a Christ-ignoring 
 world. 
 
 Dr. Parkhurst's rule is a good one. Listen 
 to it: "The prime question in allowing myself 
 any indulgence is whether such indulgence in 
 any way unfits me to be a Christian in my 
 thoughts, deeds and devotions; whether I 
 
XTbe Growing Cbrtsttan 
 
 return with an eye just as quick to detect the 
 divine presence and a heart that just as 
 promptly and sensitively feels the helpful 
 strength issuing from the pages of God's 
 Word; whether the diversion helps to open or 
 tends to close the closet of prayer and whether 
 it tends to fill or clip the wings of my devo- 
 tion." 
 
 (c) Romans 14: 23. And then as if our duty 
 concerning such matters might not in some 
 particular instance be sufficiently plain, even 
 with such guiding principles before us, Paul 
 sets forth a simple direction that will always 
 point a man to the right side if he has the least 
 desire to do the will of God. He says, "If you 
 doubt, don't do it." "Whatever is not of faith 
 is sin." I had preached a sermon on consecra- 
 tion and had quoted those lines of Miss Haver- 
 gaPs, "Take my silver and my gold, not a mite 
 would I withhold," and the next day a letter 
 was received from a good and well-meaning 
 Christian woman telling of help received from 
 the sermon, but saying she hoped she would 
 next see me without the gold cuff -buttons I was 
 wearing. Well, the gold cuff-buttons did not 
 seem to be wrong for me, but I can conceive of a 
 condition of mind where they would be wrong. 
 76 
 
Brrestet) Development 
 
 A lady came to me really in great perplexity of 
 mind concerning her sealskin coat. "Is it wrong 
 for me to wear it?" she asked. "Yes," I said; 
 "wrong for you." "And why for me?" she 
 said. "Because," said I, "of the question in 
 your own mind." It is so with amusements; 
 the minute a doubt comes into your mind 
 about their inherent wrong or about their expe- 
 diency put them out of your life ; in time they 
 may become right again because the doubt has 
 disappeared, but "he that doubteth," says 
 Paul, speaking of questionable moats, "is con- 
 demned if he eat." 
 
 But the question with us thus far has not 
 been so much one of wrongness but of inexpe- 
 diency, not alone because such things are so 
 often the means of injury to others, but also 
 of keeping that which is higher and holier out 
 of our own lives. If such things stand between 
 you and your God, between you and the beauty 
 of holiness, then heaven itself can witness no 
 nobler sight than to see you resolutely and 
 calmly divest yourself of these lower things that 
 you may be clothed upon with the higher. 
 
 You tell me it is hard to part with so much 
 that has really become a part of your life. 
 Yes, but there is to be no loss except for gain. 
 77 
 
Ube Gvowino Cbtistian 
 
 What was it the poet told lis about reaching 
 higher things upon stepping stones manufac- 
 tured out of our own dead selves? 
 
 As the husbandman comes into the vineyard 
 with his keen sharp instrument the apparently 
 flourishing vine shrinks and says, "Why must 
 I give up this beautiful leafage, this luxuriant 
 growth in which I so much delight?" And 
 the vinedresser replies to the vine and says, 
 "This rank growth is not only superfluous but 
 it will hinder your fruitfulness, and unless you 
 allow it to be cut away you will be found in 
 tiino a barren and worthless vine fit only to be 
 cut down and consumed in the fire"; and then 
 the sharp knife begins its ratbless work and 
 though the vine bleeds for a while the vintage 
 always justifies the separation. 
 
 Let us not shrink from this cutting away. 
 Let us say; "Come, Thou Spirit of the 
 beautiful Christ, Thou knowest what is best ; 
 in Thy hands we place our lives; make them 
 beautiful in Thy sight, and as Thou hast made 
 us free to act, tell us what to do, which way 
 Thou wouldst have us go, what Thou would st 
 have us surrender and by Thy grace which 
 Thou dost freely give we will do it all"; and 
 that will be the hour. 
 
 78 
 
Brresteb Development 
 
 "When the tree of life will burst into flower, 
 And rain at our feet a glorious dower 
 Of something grander than ever we knew." 
 
 But the purging process does not end with 
 merel}^ questionable things. As the vine must 
 be cleansed of all plant-devouring insects, and 
 all parasitical growths that twine themselves 
 about the vine and suck its very life away, and 
 of the little worm that bores its way into the 
 very heart, so also is it true of the Christian. 
 Alas ! that so many harbor some secret sin in 
 their heart — it may be only a little one as they 
 think, but it is eating out their very life and 
 making it barren of all that is pleasing to God. 
 Have you such a sin? Put it away, and see 
 what God will do for you. You have doubt- 
 less read of Mammoud who destroyed a costly 
 idol he was tempted to spare, and how when 
 he struck it, it was hollow and bursting rained 
 at his feet a whole shower of diamonds and 
 precious stones. It will be so with you. 
 Trench has written about it in his poetry: 
 
 "Thou, too. heaven's commissioned warrior to cast 
 
 down each idol throne 
 In thy heart's profaned temple, make this faithful 
 deed thine own. 
 Let descend the faithful blow ; 
 79 
 
XTbe GtowtnG Cbrtsttan 
 
 From their wreck and from their ruin first will thy 
 true riches flow. 
 
 Thou shalt lose thy life and find it, thou shalt boldly 
 cast it forth, 
 
 And then, back again receiving, know it in its end- 
 less worth." 
 
 But suppose the vine should dictate to its 
 dresser and having the power should say, "No, 
 I cannot, I will not part with these things." 
 You know what that would mean — Barrenness. 
 In Brazil there is a plant called the' 'Matador'* 
 or *' Murderer." It is a poisonous parasite that 
 fixes itself upon the most vigorous trees of the 
 forest and creeping upward winds its arm-like 
 tendrils in close embrace about the tree until 
 at last it shoots its beautiful and poisonous 
 flowery head above the strangled summit as if 
 in triumph, for it has killed the tree. Can 
 this be true of a Christian? What was the 
 second thing written in the text? "Every 
 branch in me that beareth not fruit. He taketh 
 away," and in the sixth verse it is said they are 
 "cast into the fire and burned." It seems to 
 read, either fruit bearing or burning. What 
 does that mean? I do not know. I know 
 what I think it means. I know what the great 
 schools of theology have thought it means. I 
 80 
 
HtuesteD development 
 
 know they differ altogether in their opinions, 
 and I know that the really wise man is the man 
 who knows that he does not know it all, and I 
 know that in the light of these words I would 
 not dare to willfully persist in known sin. 
 There have been men, and some of them for 
 whom my heart has bled, who have done such 
 a thing and God only knows the result. There 
 is in my mind an instance of this, of which for 
 reasons I must speak reverently and with care 
 — a man who for almost a score of years occu- 
 pied a place of responsibility and usefulness in 
 the Master's vineyard as superintendent of a 
 flourishing Sabbath School. He was apparently 
 an earnest Christian and much devoted to the 
 work. In connection with his business there 
 came to him an opportunity for making consid- 
 erable money which, however, incurred an 
 evident violation of the Sabbath day. He felt 
 the thing to be wrong, and yet he yielded not 
 only the first Sunday, but the next, and then 
 the next, and so on. Naturally he began to 
 lose interest in his Christian work. It no 
 longer yielded him the same joy, nor was he 
 unconscious of the lack of something that 
 formerly had helped him and made his influ- 
 ence strong. By and by he resigned as super- 
 81 
 
Zbc Gtoxoim CbtiBtian 
 
 intendent; then his church attendance grew 
 irregular and after a while it ceased altogether. 
 He gave himself up to making money, appar- 
 ently lost all interest in the things of God, and 
 a few years ago passed away seemingly uncon- 
 cerned about his own future. 
 
 I am not even going to suggest the possibility 
 of a regenerate man being lost ; it may be that 
 such branches were never really in the Vine, or 
 it may be that the burning is but the drapery 
 in the analogy and used to complete the 
 imagery in keeping with what really transpires 
 in a vineyard, and such branches because of 
 their unfruitf alness have been laid aside in the 
 sense in which some have interpreted Paul's 
 words in 1 Cor. 9 : 27, where he says he endeav- 
 ors to keep the self -life crucified, "lest that by 
 any means when I have preached to others I 
 myself should be a castaway." Not that Paul 
 was in any danger of being eventually cast away 
 into that pit of burning where there shall be 
 weeping and gnashing of teeth ; not that any 
 niche in God's gallery can be empty of its 
 intended statue; not that any power on earth, 
 above it or beneath it can tear one lamb from 
 the Shepherd's bosom, but that the possibility 
 was ever present with him of his heart being 
 82 
 
HrresteC) Bevelopment 
 
 set upon something displeasing to God, of his 
 becoming ambitious for himself rather than 
 for Christ, of the loss of influence through 
 doubtful indulgence by reason of which his life 
 would become barren and unfruitful and God 
 would strip him of his 2^oiue7\ and casting him 
 aside ivould give to another his place of service 
 and his crown of rejoicing. 
 ' It is this thought that has been before me 
 throughout all I have said. Is yours an 
 arrested development? Can you recall a time 
 of deeper interest in the Master's work ; a time 
 of greater pleasure in his service ; a time when 
 you could rest your head at night with the 
 sweet consciousness that that day had counted 
 something for Jesus — possibly more than a 
 week or month or year counts now? Was there 
 a time when you felt the avenues of your soul 
 coursing with the rich peace and satisfaction of 
 Christ? And are all these things of the past? 
 Something is wrong somewhere, and if you will 
 but cast yourself down before Him He will put 
 His finger on the spot and show you where 
 it is. 
 
 I want to be very tender just at this point. 
 This is not to denounce your sin as manifested 
 in any particular form, but my God in heaven, 
 83 
 
XTbe Growing Cbristian 
 
 what an awful thing it would be to be forced to 
 feel that Christ has no further use for me 
 because I have thwarted Him and withstood 
 Him and pulled away from Him and have been 
 now so long a proud and self -concerned pro- 
 fessed child of His, that I am left to drag these 
 weary years through and go up at last into His 
 presence a dwarfed and stunted weakling! 
 May heaven save us all from a thing like that ! 
 Not very long ago we were preaching in a 
 tent during a time of fierce and frequent 
 storms. Several times the tent, a massive one 
 with heavy center poles well stayed, blew down. 
 One day driving into the country we saw a 
 mighty monarch of the forest lying prostrate 
 on the ground. It had gone down during the 
 night. "Well," said Mr. Weeden, my associ- 
 ate, "no wonder the old tent went down when 
 a tree like that had to give up." But our 
 surprise vanished when we came up and read 
 the story of its downfall. It had been a mag- 
 nificent tree, once tall and beautiful and 
 strong, bearing its fruit in its season. The 
 winds tried "to blow it down, but it struck its 
 roots deeper in the soil and laughed at the 
 puny efforts of the storm. The sun tried to 
 burn its foliage; it dried up the soil and tried 
 84 
 
Brre6teD Development 
 
 to starve its roots; the rains poured down as if 
 they would drown it; the snows piled up 
 around it as if they would freeze it or bury it, 
 but the old tree grew on and prospered. But 
 by and by the tree seemed to lose its spirit. 
 Its leaves were not so fresh and green; they 
 withered early and came in fewer numbers each 
 recurring year; its fruit grew small and shriv- 
 elled; its branches dropped off, many of them, 
 and by and by another storm came, not so fierce 
 as many it had met before, but the fibers had 
 lost their strength and the once proud and 
 defiant tree fell with a mighty crash. And 
 when we came up to it we discovered that its 
 huge trunk was all hollow and that for probably 
 many years it had been scarcely more than the 
 rim of a tree. The rest of the story is very 
 brief. One unfortunate day a little worm ate 
 its way into the heart of the tree, laid its eggs 
 there and died. Soon there were a dozen 
 worms, and from these came many more. Soon 
 there were hundreds feeding upon the heart of 
 the tree until they had eaten away nearly all its 
 life and left it an easy prey to the storms that 
 blew about it. 
 
 Dear friend, the application is easy. God 
 help us to make it each one for himself. Have 
 85 
 
Ube Growing Cbrtsttan 
 
 you been falling in the hour of temptation? 
 Has your life been dry of late? No buoyancy 
 of spirit, no intimate fellowship with Jesus, no 
 tear and no prayer. Ah, child, there was no 
 salvation for the tree ; there is for you. The 
 blessed Spirit of Christ, pure, strong and true 
 is waiting to come in and He will bring His 
 own health with Him and you shall no longer 
 be the "servant of sin" of any kind, but 
 "yielding your members unto righteousness you 
 shall have your fruit unto holiness." 
 
 May God help us to put away that which is 
 injurious and to put it away now ; and for every 
 wrong thing and for every inexpedient thing, 
 which by His grace we lay down, we shall be 
 made rich in Him for He will give us Himself 
 in ever increasing measure until the very full- 
 ness of God shall be ours and Christ shall be 
 all in all, God grant it. 
 
Zbc ^iQn5 ot Gtowtb 
 
 THE SIG^NTS OF GEOWTH 
 
 SOMEWHERE I have read a beautiful little 
 story which I can but imperfectly recall. 
 It was entitled "The Measuring Rod," 
 and it was, in short, the account of a time at 
 certain intervals when an angel of God came 
 down to measure the spiritual growth of His 
 people. He had a mysterious and beautiful 
 rod against which the people were asked to 
 come and stand, and when they took their 
 place, the one after the otjier, a strange thing 
 occurred. The stature of the measured one 
 would either increase or decrease according to 
 their spiritual condition as compared with the 
 same at the angel's last visit. There were a 
 great many surprises. Mrs. A., who was pres- 
 ident of the Ladies' Aid and superintendent of 
 the Infant Department and the leader in sev- 
 eral of the other church undertakings and 
 whom everybody thought would look exceed- 
 ingly well under the rod, shrank away almost 
 to nothing. But old Jerry, the cobbler, always 
 stooping below his height, whom no one 
 thought of save as they had some mending to 
 be done, fairly blazed with a glow of glory 
 87 
 
Cbe Otowing (Xbriatiau 
 
 which the mysterious rod shed about him, as 
 his deformity seemed to leave him while his 
 stature increased above that of anybody in the 
 village. There was one young lady there who 
 knew she loved her Christ, but she was pain- 
 fully conscious at that time of having been so 
 often envious of another young lady's hand- 
 somer garments than she herself could afford ; 
 and of other things which at the time she had 
 argued herself into conceding as nothing 
 wrong, but which now in the presence of that 
 heavenly rod smote her with a deep sense of 
 guilt. She tried to hide herself among the 
 crowd, thinking the angel might overlook her, 
 but he seemed to know everyone by name and 
 presently hers was called, and as she took her 
 place it was just as she dreaded it would be, for 
 though she stood on the tip of her toes trying 
 to raise herself, she knew she was shrinking 
 down. With tears in her eyes she besought 
 the angel not to put the record down, but he 
 said to her, with a kind and pitying smile, 
 ''Daughter, the record must go down, for I 
 must show it to the Master, but when I come 
 again I'm sure it will be otherwise.*' She 
 promised him it would and went back to live 
 anew for Christ. I wonder how we of this 
 88 
 
ZTbe Signs ot Growtb 
 
 audience would fare if that angel with his rod 
 were here to-day? 
 
 There is something very impressive to me in 
 that story as I recall it, for although it is but 
 an innocent fiction, it is based on a tremendous 
 truth, and always arouses the question within 
 me, "Am I or am I not growing in grace?" 
 "Am I or am I not increasing in spiritual 
 stature?" and then the query comes, *'Is there 
 a way that I can arrive at any certain knowl- 
 edge of my spiritual development, if such there 
 be?" I cannot hear myself grow, for there is 
 no whirr of machinery ; I cannot see myself 
 grow, for that which grows is invisible, and if 
 it were not, all thorough growth is too slow to 
 be watched. But there must be some mark, 
 some outward manifestation to the world or 
 inward evidence to myself that the life of Christ 
 is prospering within my soul. It is to this we 
 wish to refer for a brief while at this place. If 
 the Christian grows in grace as Peter would 
 have him do, it ought to be that any of the 
 graces in which he is supposed to grow, could 
 be taken as the rod with which to measure his 
 development ; for ideal growth above all things 
 else is symmetrical. God would have us be a 
 complete all-round Christian with every grace 
 89 
 
Zhc Growing Cbrtettan 
 
 of the new life developed so that from whatever 
 side approached, the world will see something 
 of the Christ-life within ns. 
 
 We might take any of the fruits of the Spirit 
 mentioned by Paul in Galatians, or by Peter 
 in his epistle. We might take Faith and 
 measure ourselves by that, for what stronger 
 virtue than to cease from doubt and Job-like 
 to believe in God even though He seem to slay 
 you. We might take Submission, that heroic 
 virtue that chooses just what God has chosen 
 for you though it be the stony path and the 
 bleeding heart. We might take Love, that 
 divinest of graces, that always finds us helping 
 somebody. We might take Humility; the full 
 corn in the ear always bends down. We might 
 take these or any one of many others, but being 
 confined of course by the very breadth of Chris- 
 tian character to a somewhat limited test, I 
 have selected four things, measuring rods so to 
 speak, by which you may judge how much, if 
 at all, you have been growing in grace. And I 
 have been careful to sslecb those things about 
 which there can be no mistaken judgment. 
 Oftentimes we think we are humbler and more 
 loving and better than we really are ; but here 
 are some things that will lead us to a pretty 
 90 
 
Ube St^ns ot Ctovvtb 
 
 safe conclusion concerning the height of our 
 spiritual man. May God help us as we go 
 along, in case we see we are lacking (and this 
 doubtless will be true in some degree of us all), 
 to earnestly covet, as the apostle prayed, to 
 increase more and more as we go on from degree 
 to degree toward the stature of the perfect 
 man. 
 
 1. In the first place, we shall mention a 
 spiritual appetite; and we mean by that of 
 course an appetite for spiritual things. A 
 healthy man always has a good appetite, and 
 health after all is the prime essential of growth ; 
 but since the things of God are and always will 
 be distasteful to the natural man, the very fact 
 of your appetite for them is evidence of the 
 health and growth of your spiritual man ; and 
 since the appetites of these two natures are 
 wholly antagonistic, their relative strength 
 within you will quite readily determine your 
 standing in the eyes of God and of the world as 
 well. 
 
 Let us be honest now. You tell me the- 
 things that are strongest in your life and I can 
 give you a fair estimate of the stature of your 
 spiritual man. Are you in the house of God on 
 Sunday more for the sake of your profession 
 91 
 
XTbe Growing Cbrtstian 
 
 than for feasting your soul in the worship of 
 God? The occasional, and very occasional, 
 visit to the prayer-meeting, — is it for the sake 
 of appearance, or if that sounds too harsh, let us 
 say for duty's sake, and when sitting in these 
 places does the mind play truant to the occa- 
 sion and indulge itself in frequent excursions 
 and excitements wherein you know from expe- 
 rience an indulgence brings gratification 
 stronger than you have ever experienced in 
 waiting upon God? It was Hannah Whitehall 
 Smith, I think, who wrote, 
 
 "I love to steal awhile away 
 From every cumbering care. 
 And spend the hours of setting day 
 In humble, grateful prayer." 
 
 Do you really delight to do that, or do you 
 prefer to steal away somewhere else and spend 
 your evenings where God is all forgotten? The 
 Psalmist said the man who had forsaken the 
 wickedness of this world was a blessed man. 
 He said, however, that his delight was in the 
 law of the Lord and that in that law he was to 
 be found meditating day and night; that he 
 was like a tree planted by the rivers of water 
 that bringet'i? forth his fruit in his season. 
 
Xlbe SlGHS of Gvowtb 
 
 What about your delight? How much real 
 satisfaction and deep gratifying pleasure do you 
 get from meditating in this Word? — or when 
 you read it, providing you do, is it a perfunc- 
 tory service, is it from the constraint of duty, a 
 thing that you feel you ought to do rather than 
 a thing you love to do? 
 
 Come, friends, have you really learned to love 
 Jesus? If you have, could you ever enter into 
 any indulgence that could drive Him out of 
 your thoughts? We are told to "remember 
 Him," and if we loved Him would this not be 
 the natural thing to do? These are the words 
 of a noble character whom I delight to think 
 of as a friend. Said he: *'I think very many 
 times of the one I love best. When in the 
 night I awake my first thought is of her ; and 
 when early in the morning the sunrise comes 
 stealing into my room, my first thought is of 
 her, and constantly throughout the day my 
 mind goes out to her. I think of all the sweet 
 things she has said, of all the sweet and loving 
 things she has done, and / do remember her." 
 Do you think he would enjoy a separation from 
 her? And if we really love Jesus, do you not 
 think that before we went any place or gave 
 ourselves to any indulgence we would first ask, 
 93 
 
Zhc Growing Cbristtan 
 
 "Can I have Jesus with me in these things?" 
 I recall the story of the young lady who wore 
 a locket about her neck into which no one was 
 permitted to look. But one day in an hour of 
 serious sickness one of her most intimate 
 friends was allowed to open the sacred orna- 
 ment, and there she saw the words, "Whom 
 not having seen I love." All her life she had 
 been remembering Him, thinking over sweet 
 thoughts about Him, and need I tell you how 
 marvelously like Him she had grown as her 
 character ripened in its rare loveliness, while 
 her friends wondered at it until they knew the 
 secret? 
 
 In my work as an evangelist I find scores of 
 converts, especially among the young, who are 
 perplexed about worldly amusements, and they 
 come asking me if it is wrong to dance or to do 
 so and so. I do not wonder at this, for as yet 
 they are like those Christians to whom Paul 
 speaks in the third chapter of First Corinthians, 
 saying, "Brethren, I could not speak unto you 
 as unto spiritual but as unto carnal, even as 
 unto babes in Christ." In them the carnal 
 nature was still predominate, and such things 
 as were troubling the consciences of these 
 young converts were the very things they cared 
 94 
 
Zbc SiQns ot Growtb 
 
 most to do; but that you who have been for 
 years in the Christian life should be concerned 
 about those things is very sad indeed, for you 
 have had time to develop a taste for better 
 things, and if you have been a growing Chris- 
 tian and have not been living all the while in 
 the elementary stage of experience and are not 
 babes in Christ, and therefore carnal, which is 
 only another expression for the self-life, there 
 will have been developed within you an appetite 
 which will prove to be what Dr. Chalmers has 
 called the "expulsive power of a new affection." 
 Poor Ilenry Heine — we say poor because he 
 was so very poor indeed — he worshiped what 
 he thought was the beautiful, and the Venus 
 de Milo, an armle.ss, half-clad statue in the 
 Louvre at Paris, he called his goddess and said 
 it made him better to sit and gaze upon her; 
 but he had never seen Him who is the Eose of 
 Sharon for beauty and the Lily of the Valley 
 for loveliness. But it is said of Dannecker, a 
 gi'eat sculptor of Germany, that he was one 
 time asked to use his wonderful skill in carving 
 a statue of Venus, and he made a strange 
 reply. He had been for years working over a 
 face of the Christ and at last produced a face 
 of such marvelous beauty and tenderness that 
 95 
 
Zbc (Browing Cbrtsttatt 
 
 people would weep as they looked upon it. 
 And when asked to carve a Venus, he replied, 
 *'I can never make a Venus after I have looked 
 upon the face of Christ." What a secret is 
 here ! And what but may be true of us all ! To 
 have an appetite which only the things of 
 Christ can satisfy speaks already of a soul that 
 is growing largo, and to nourish it through the 
 appointed means of grace, brings such a satis- 
 faction to the soul that every sinful attraction 
 will lose its power; and such a vision of His 
 beauty that the fairest things of this world will 
 lose their splendor. 
 
 2. A second evidence of growth in grace is 
 a keener appreciation of lioiu exceedingly sinful 
 all sin is, and a correspondingly deeper loathing 
 for it. As we grow in grace the more hideous 
 and repulsive does sin, of whatever kind, 
 become. Dear child, have you really learned 
 to hate sin so that you shrink from the least 
 touch of it, and when you know it has touched 
 you, is your heart wrung with an unspeakable 
 agony because your sin has pierced the heart of 
 God? I think Paul had come to a place like 
 that. Just before he died he called himself the 
 chief of sinners. What did he mean? Not 
 that he was a greater sinner than when he was 
 96 
 
Zbc SiQHS of Growtb 
 
 yet a babe in Christ or when he blasphemed 
 God and waded in the blood of His slaughtered 
 saints. Xo, not that, but that now when he 
 knew so much about God, one little sin, how- 
 ever small, caused him infinitely more pain 
 than all the grosser sins of his former life. 
 Child of God, if you have been growing in 
 grace, something like that will be true of you. 
 
 3. The third evidence of growth in grace is 
 a clearer discernment of right and wrong. I 
 will let Paul explain what I mean. In 1 Cor. 
 2:15 it is written, "He that is spiritual judgeth 
 all things," and if you will look in the Eevised 
 Version you will find the word "judgeth" 
 changed to "discerneth," "the spiritual man 
 discerneth all things" , and if you will turn to 
 Hebrews 5:14 you will read, "Strong meat 
 belongeth to them that are of full age, even to 
 those who by reason of use have their senses 
 exercised to discern both good and evil." 
 
 A little child through ignorance of what is 
 harmful would be in constant peril of serious 
 hurt were it not for the care given it by some 
 grown person who has learned by the discrimi- 
 nation which comes from long exercise of the 
 senses to make proper distinction between 
 things which are hurtful and things which are 
 97 
 
Ubc GrowiuG Cbrtstian 
 
 useful. Imagine, if possible, a world in which 
 danger always came with noiseless tread and 
 invisible form, in which decay was not malo- 
 dorous, in which mutilation was painless and 
 disease carried on its dread work with no 
 warning to its victim; imagine such a world 
 and the work of preservation for which the 
 senses are responsible is at once apparent. 
 What wonderful and indispensable things the 
 senses are and to what a degree of accuracy 
 they may be trained. But there are spiritual 
 senses as well as natural. There is a spiritual 
 eye and a spiritual taste and other senses of the 
 spiritual man corresponding to those of the 
 natural man. But alas, for those who have 
 eyes and see not, cars and hear not, and who 
 because of their undisciplined senses, senses 
 that are not exercised to discern good and evil, 
 are in the babe condition, needing a guardian 
 to tell them which way to go and what to eat 
 lest they be continually indulging that which 
 is displeasing to God and hurtful to their own 
 souls. 
 
 A soldier was on duty as sentinel in a savage 
 country. He had been for many years a 
 hunter among the forests. As the night deep- 
 ened he heard the cracking of the forest twigs, 
 98 
 
Ube Signs of Orowtb 
 
 and looking out he saw what appeared to be a 
 wild hog slowly approaching and apparently 
 searching among the leaves for the nuts that had 
 fallen from the tre-^G. But the hunter's keen 
 eye detected a certain avrkwardness about the 
 movements and suspicion was aroused. To 
 fire and shoot a wild hog would be to make 
 himself the butt of ridicule among his compan- 
 ions, but feeling that his sense of sight so 
 trained by use could be depended upon he 
 raised his rifle and fired, and with a bound and 
 a yell an Indian leaped to his feet and fell back 
 dead. 
 
 How often Satan comes in disguise. How 
 often evil presents itself with seeming plausi- 
 bility, but the Word of God is that in just the 
 degree in which we have arrived to maturity, 
 that is according to our growth in grace, will 
 be our ability to more readily detect that which 
 is inconsistent with the true worship of our 
 God. We will se3 evil where years before we 
 would never have thought of even looking for 
 it. Things which formerly we would not allow 
 ourselves to think of as questionable we will 
 now have grace to put away. The word '* un- 
 derstanding," used in Isaiah 11: 3 to describe 
 this faculty of soul, in the original means 
 99 
 
Z\)c Growing dbtisttan 
 
 "scent" or "smell," and what is promised 
 there, is a keenness of scent in the fear of the 
 Lord; the ability to detect the obnoxious in 
 what others indulge without suspicion of its 
 harm ; a sensitiveness as it were to danger yet 
 a great way off that will drive us to Jesus for 
 shelter. Something like this Paul must have 
 meant when speaking of spiritually matured 
 people as those "who by reason of use have 
 their senses exercised to discern both good and 
 evil." 
 
 Sometimes Mrs. B. comes into my study and 
 she will say, "Why, dear, it is very close in 
 here," and I reply, "Well, I hadn't noticed 
 it." The reason is plain. I had been sitting 
 in that atmosphere for hours, had come some- 
 what into harmony with it and was not aware 
 of how really unwholesome it was, but she who 
 had been downstairs and out-of-doors enjoying 
 God's own pure air came into my room with 
 her senses sharpened to discern what I could 
 not detect, because mine had become dull 
 through living in touch with that which was 
 foul and unhealthy. Just so there are some 
 Christians who are living in the midst of moral 
 malaria and do not seem to know it. And 
 when they hear some pure-hearted man speak 
 100 
 
Ube ^iQns of Growtb 
 
 a word of caution against some pet indulgence 
 they think him too radical for sensible people 
 to listen to. There are Christians who will 
 hang unholy pictures on the walls of their 
 imagination, who will take up some of the 
 impure fiction over which the world is going 
 wild and read it with relish through to the end, 
 who will indulge in a laagh at remarks which 
 could not well be made in mixed society and 
 feel no pain though the hurt has been just as 
 surely received. People who call themselves 
 Christians, and I would not by any language I 
 might use mean to unchristianize anybody, 
 living in an atmosphere of pleasure and sin 
 which would be positively intolerable if they 
 only knew the fragrance and the exhilaration 
 of the atmosphere that comes from constant 
 communion with the living Christ, the vital 
 breath of prayer, the uplift from the blessed 
 Word, the inspiration found in doing His will. 
 Are your spiritual 'senses being exercised by 
 reason of use to discern both good and evil? 
 
 4. And now a word about the other evidence 
 of such growth. It is victory over si7i. We 
 certainly must admit that according to the 
 measure of one's light it is possible to be kept 
 from all known sin — not from falling into 
 
Ube Growing Cbrtsttan 
 
 temptation but from falling in temptation. 
 Whether any allow themselves to be so con- 
 stantly and continually kept is not for us to 
 say, but to claim this for oneself is far from 
 asserting one's perfection. For anyone to talk 
 about being perfectly sanctified sounds per- 
 fectly absurd. Such an one has failed to 
 appreciate what holiness really is. Certainly 
 we are to be holy; and we are to be still holier. 
 Mr. Meyer says that he was one time paying 
 a pastoral visit to a poor washerwoman who 
 had just gotten out a line of clothes. He con- 
 gratulated her because they looked so white. 
 Pleased with her pastor's kind words she invited 
 him to have a cup of tea. While they were 
 sitting at tea the sky clouded and there was a 
 snow storm, and as he came out the white 
 snow lay everywhere about, and he said to her, 
 "Your washing does not look quite so clean as 
 it did." "Ah," she said, "the washing is 
 right enough, but what can stand against God 
 Almighty's white?" And so, my friend, you 
 may think yourself clean, but if you could only 
 see God, if you are a man of true heart, you 
 would cry, "Woe is me, for I am undone!" and 
 repenting in dust and ashes you would cry, 
 "Lord, forgive me!" 
 
 102 
 
Zbc Slans ot 6rowtb 
 
 But while all this is true, still if I did not 
 find in my own experience that I am having 
 easier victory over wsin to-day than I had ten 
 years ago, how disappointing to me would be 
 the power which the Word teaches comes from 
 union with Christ, from the indwelling and 
 infilling of His own omnipotent Spirit. Peter 
 talks about being "kept by the power of God" 
 (1 Peter 1 : 5). Banish forever the thought that 
 it is necessary for the Christian to sin. Tempted 
 you may be. Jesus was. "The life of holi- 
 ness," says Macgregor, "is not a life of passive 
 rest; it is a conflict. It is a fight; but it is a 
 fight of faith (i Tim. 6:12), and it is a suc- 
 cessful fight." Xot freedom from temptation, 
 but victory over it. The law of sin is still with 
 us. It was with Paul. He had to "keep his 
 body under" (1 Car. [): 27); when he would Uo 
 good "evil was ever present with him" (Rom. 
 7; 21), but he knew the secret of victory and 
 applied it in his life. He tells about it in 
 Rom. 8 : 2. That verse suggests the fight just 
 mentioned. How apparent it is that if pro- 
 vision is made for the fli'sh the "law of sin" 
 will become strong and the old man's victory 
 easy; but if we follow Paul's advice and "make 
 no provision for the flesh," but the rather for 
 303 
 
Cbe Growing CfDViBttan 
 
 the "things of the Spirit," the "law of the 
 Spirit of His life" within us becomes strong 
 and the new man's victory assured. And as 
 we go on growing thus from day to day the 
 victory becomes easier as we go. It is but 
 natural that it should. Victory we may have 
 all along the way, but temptation itself loses 
 its power for the man of holiness who is "grow- 
 ing up in all things in Him." Are you grow- 
 ing? 
 
 J04 
 
"And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; 
 and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teach- 
 ers; for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of 
 the ministry, unto the building up of the body of 
 Christ; till we all come unto the unity of the 
 
 FAITH AND OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD, 
 UNTO A FULL GROWN MAN, UNTO THE MEASURE OF THE 
 STATURE OF THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST; that ive be nO 
 
 more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about 
 with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men in 
 craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but 
 dealing truly in love, may groiv up into Him in all 
 things, which is the head, even Christ." — Saint Paul's 
 Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 4. 
 
 106 
 
Ubc U\?pe ot (3rowtb 
 
 THE TYPE OF GROWTH 
 
 "Till we all come unto the unity of the faith and 
 of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full- 
 grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
 fuUness of Christ. "—Eph. 4:13. 
 
 HAVING spoken at some length of the 
 Christian's growth and development, I 
 wonder if the thought has not already- 
 been present with many of you concerning the 
 type or goal of this development. It is the 
 purpose of these closing words to set it before 
 you, for I am sure, 
 
 "If thou couldst in vision see 
 Thyself, the man God meant, 
 Thou never more couldst be 
 The man thou art, content." 
 
 In this marvelous passage of PauPs, taken 
 from his Ephesian letter, there is doubtless an 
 immediate reference to the perfection in Jesus 
 Christ of the church as a whole, yet the church 
 can only come to the stature of a fuUgrown 
 man, as the individuals who compose it are 
 likewise perfected in the graces that belong to 
 Christian character. And so we have here set 
 before us the type of character, the whereunto 
 107 
 
Zbc Growing Cbvistian 
 
 the Christian is to grow. He is to develop into 
 the likeness of Christ. Christ is the type of 
 growth. 
 
 You have all read Hawthorne's "Legend of 
 the Stony Face,'* how the Great Spirit left his 
 image upon a rock and went away promising 
 to return at a future time, and how one Indian 
 gazed upon that face by day and dreamed 
 about it by night until his own face began to 
 bear its likeness ; and one day when the tribe 
 had ceased from war and its spiritual vision 
 had become clear, they recognized in him the 
 Great Spirit who had come back to earth in 
 this waiting prophet's soul. 
 
 Something like that Paul says is to be true 
 of the real child of God. This is what he says : 
 **We all with unveiled face beholding as in a 
 mirror (and this certainly is the original) the 
 glory of the Lord (and by glory is meant char- 
 acter), are changed into the same image from 
 character to character" (2 Cor. 3:18). Does 
 this mean that we are eventually to become, 
 each one, another Christ? No, and yes. An 
 image is a likeness. There is nothing here of 
 Hindoo absorption; nothing of identification 
 or of equality; nothing of this modern deifica- 
 tion of man that would make him, in a meas- 
 108 
 
Ube tl^pe ot Growtb 
 
 ure, through sacrificial toil, a savior of the 
 world in the same sense with the atoning 
 Christ; but an expression of the transforming 
 influence of the devout contemplation of the 
 moral beauty and glorious goodness of the Son 
 of God. We are to be like Christ; we are so 
 to partake of His character that when the 
 world sees us, though it be at the trivial round 
 and common task, it will say, "Tell us of the 
 Christ whose glory you so reflect." 
 
 And still in a very proper sense we are to be 
 ourselves Christs; and here, after all, we are 
 going to discover the real secret of our likeness 
 to Him. Christ, as it were, has been reincar- 
 nated in every Christian, however poorly some 
 of us represent Him. At the moment of the 
 new birth, Christ takes up His abode in the 
 believer's soul and the individual is no more 
 himself but Jesus Christ ; all the rest of life is 
 a continual denial of himself and an assertion 
 of the Christ within, and all the supreme love- 
 liness of character is but the expression of the 
 perfect man within. When Augustin, who had 
 lived in profligacy, gave himself to Christ, he 
 renounced his former evil associations. One 
 day, when going down the streets of Carthage, 
 he met the woman who had been his fascina- 
 109 
 
tTbe (Browing Cbristlan 
 
 tion in the sinful life and ran from her. She 
 cried and said, "Why do you run, Augustin? It 
 is I." And Augustin shouted back, ''I run 
 because I am not I." "Martin Luther," said 
 the great reformer, "does not live here; Jesus 
 Christ lives here," and a greater one than 
 Luther long ago said, "I live, yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me." Blessed be God such a 
 transformation is possible. And the assertion 
 of Christ in a believer's being involves the 
 reproduction of Christ in a believer's life; hav- 
 ing the same mind and disposition with Christ 
 in all things, that this world, in taking note 
 of the Christian's daily walk and conversation, 
 will recognize that Christ has come back to 
 eartli in another Christian soul. 
 
 Of course it is very important to have a 
 noble ideal and an ambition to attain it. "We 
 have not meant to ignore this truth, although 
 we have been studying the attainment of char- 
 acter from another viewpoint, and there is no 
 ideal so completely worthy to be set before the 
 human soul as that presented in the character 
 of Jesus Christ; neither can there be any 
 nobler aspiration than the ambition to be so 
 Christ-like in the deportment of one's life, 
 that as you go through the world, the sad and 
 110 
 
Zhc U^pe of Growtb 
 
 weary souls of earth will see Christ in yon and 
 bless God for sending you into their midst. 
 But when once the character of Jesus is set 
 before us in all its unblemished loveliness, is it 
 any wonder we despair of ever attaining an 
 ideal like unto that? But who has been em- 
 phasizing ideals? We've been talking about a 
 type, and there's all the difference in the world 
 between an ideal and a type. We spoke about 
 the reproduction of Christ in life, but not as 
 anything a poor, weak, human soul might do. 
 We'll have to consider the lilies again, how 
 they grow. How do they grow? How does an 
 acorn become an oak? Not by trying, but by 
 allowing the oak-life within it its own natural 
 development, and so the Christian's Christ- 
 likeness does not result from an effort of the 
 human soul to reproduce the character of 
 Christ by imitating an ideal (though we do not 
 disparage imitation), but by allowing the 
 Christ-life within him to reproduce itself. 
 This is what is meant in the scientific world 
 by "Conformity to Type." 
 
 You know what protoplasm is: it's the basis 
 
 of all life; it's the clay from which the potter 
 
 moulds his vessels; but did you know that all 
 
 protoplasm is at least seemingly alike and that 
 
 111 
 
Ube (Btowtng Cbristtan 
 
 if you took the first little speck of it and 
 examined it under the highest powers of the 
 microscope, you could not tell, though you 
 were the most skilled scientist of earth, whether 
 that little speck of structureless albuminous- 
 like substance would develop into a man or an 
 animal or a tree? In the embryo, as it first 
 meets the eye, it is impossible to tell whether 
 that into which it is to develop will fly in the 
 air, or swim in the sea, or walk on the earth, 
 or be fixed immovable in it. What then is it 
 that makes the difference in the outgrowth of 
 that protoplasmic germ? It is a strange some- 
 thing that has entered into it, and which is dis- 
 tinct from it, and which seizes upon it and 
 moulds it into an image of itself; a different 
 something for the plant, a different something 
 for the animal, a different something for man 
 and a different something for every different 
 type belonging to them. What is this mys- 
 terious something? It is the ty2)G determining 
 life^ the potter who moulds the clay into an 
 image of himself. *'A11 life," says Paul, "is 
 not the same life; there is one kind of life of 
 men, another life of beasts, another of fishes and 
 another of birds." This mysterious some- 
 thing, which no eye can see and no science 
 112 
 
XTbe XTotc of (Browtb 
 
 define, which enters the protoplasm of a tree is 
 the tree-life ; that which enters the protoplasm 
 of a fish, the fish-life, and that which enters 
 the protoplasm of a man, the man-life, and so 
 on, and each of these protoplasmic germs must 
 now, according to its nature, develop into an 
 image of the particular life within it, the visi- 
 ble vegetable or animal being, as it were, but 
 the incarnation of the invisible image stamped 
 upon them in their germinal state and which 
 by the very nature of things they cannot help 
 but reproduce. 
 
 Is there now an analogy to this in the spirit- 
 ual world? Is there another kind of life which, 
 entering into the spiritual nature of man, 
 begins to work itself out as a process of natural 
 development? Yes, there is, and what that 
 life is we have already seen. It is the Christ- 
 life, and just as the man-life develops into the 
 image of a man, so the Christ-life develops into 
 the image of the Christ, making the man in 
 his spiritual nature an exact reproduction of 
 the Christ within him. Blessed be God, the 
 Christian's Christ-likeness does not result from 
 a series of feeble efforts to imitate an extrane- 
 ous ideal, but comes from the spontaneous, 
 automatic reproduction of an inner life which 
 113 
 
Zbc (Btowino Cbristtan 
 
 is as natural as the quiet persistent growth of 
 the enameled calyx from the lily bulb. If only 
 the conditions of health are maintained there 
 need be no anxiety about the imago. 
 
 And what does it mean to be like Christ? 
 Well, in plain terms, it means we'll be a good 
 deal easier to get along with than some of us 
 are now. In the home you'll be easier to live 
 with ; no longer be so awfully nice away from 
 home and cross as a bear in your own house. 
 That unruly temper that goes off with a hair- 
 trigger will come under control and disappear. 
 That thin-skinned sensitiveness, that is always 
 getting its feelings hurt, will disappear, because 
 the self -life will be crucified and a dead man 
 isn't supposed to have any feelings. All that 
 bitterness of heart and unforgiving spirit will 
 take wings, and when you've buried your ani- 
 mosity you'll not spend any time putting 
 flowers on its grave. That "good as anybody 
 else, and a little better" feeling will give place 
 to a becoming humility and you won't pride 
 yourself on it when you get it either. There'll 
 be a change in that life of worldliness that has 
 caused people to wonder what the difference 
 was any way between you and some others who 
 never professed to be Christians. 
 114 
 
XTbe Xl^pe ot (Btowtb 
 
 But why particularize? Look at His tran- 
 scendent character, the dazzling glory of His 
 moral beauty, and think of growing up, as Paul 
 says, in all things into Him ! Think of being 
 like Him — like Him in His sublime and unfal- 
 tering faith in tlie righteous purpose and power 
 of the God of heaven to redeem the world 
 though all the powers of hell be set against it; 
 like Him in His cheerful obedience to His 
 Father's will, though it wrung His soul with 
 unspeakable agony to perform it; like Him in 
 His self -forgetful earnestness that made His 
 whole existence a continuous Calvary passion 
 for His fellowmen; like Him in His infinite 
 forgiveness that came from a heart without a 
 grain of personal animosity even though His 
 persecutors nailed Him, in their wrath, to the 
 cross of His crucifixion; like Him in His 
 tender compassion that sent His heart out with 
 an infinite yearning to the poor and distressed 
 and made His life a mission of mercy to the 
 heirs of misfortune; like Him in His calm and 
 gentle self-control, answering nothing though 
 reviled and insulted by the brutal mob; like 
 Him in His sweot humility that made the con- 
 scious Sovereisfu of the Universe, with all His 
 supreme dignity, a little child among the men 
 115 
 
Ubc Growing Cbristtan 
 
 of earth; and above all, like Him in the 
 pure whiteness of His soul, which, though it 
 came in contact with defilement, like the 
 enameled lily, was never sullied by its touch. 
 Like Him in all these and in all the other 
 traits of His lovely character. 
 
 Well might one despair of ever attaining any- 
 thing like such perfection of moral beauty if he 
 were left to his own feeble effort after right- 
 eousness. To imitate such an ideal, how were 
 it in any appreciable degree possible? But it's 
 not imitation we're dwelling upon. It's some- 
 thing better than that. It's conformity to type. 
 It is the Christ-life, the new man reproducing 
 His image in the human soul. We are not to 
 conform ourselves but we are to be conformed. 
 The verbs in such passages are all in the passive 
 voice. **Whom He did foreknow, He also did 
 predestinate to be conformed to the image of 
 His Son." *' Beholding as in a glass the glory 
 of the Lord we are transformed into the same 
 image from glory to glory." "Put on the new 
 man which is renewed in knowledge after the 
 image of Him that created him, ' ' And once 
 more the same apostle, for it is Paul who is 
 saying all this, says, "My little children, of 
 whom I travail in birth again until Christ he 
 116 
 
TLbc U'QVC ot Growtb 
 
 formed in you." And what is all this but 
 what we liaTe been saying? that of ourselves 
 we are insufficient to accomplish anything, but 
 that it is the living Christ within whose work- 
 manship we are and the beauty of whose holi- 
 ness is upou us as He works within us to will 
 and to do of His good pleasure. 
 
 Somewhere I have read of an artist falsely 
 accused and thrown into prison. His brushes 
 and paint were allowed him, but he had no 
 canvas. One day he asked a man in the corri- 
 dor for something upon which he might paint, 
 ap.d the man indifferently picked up an old 
 soiled handkerchief and tossing it to him said, 
 *'There, see what j^ou can do v.ith that," and 
 the artl-t began to paint upon it the face of 
 Jesus. The picture that he painted afterward 
 became one of the famous paintings of the 
 IMaster's face. He labored on it faithfully and 
 when it was finished he shoAved it to the man 
 and when ho looked upon its marvelous sweet- 
 ness it touched his heart and the tears flowed 
 unbidden down. And as I recall the story the 
 thought comes to me, if a poor artist could 
 take an old soiled rag and so make it glow with 
 the loveliness of Jesus that a careless, indiffer- 
 ent man could be touched into tears as he 
 117 
 
Ube C^rowina (Tbrtstian 
 
 looked upon it, wliat might not tlie glorious 
 Christ do with my life if I would but allow 
 Him to have His way with me to reproduce 
 His likeness through me. 
 
 The best developments are always slow. 
 Oaks do not grow up like mushrooms in a 
 single night, and solid godly characters are not 
 the products of a few months. It is a law in 
 the natural world that the highest type of life 
 develops most slowly, and as the spiritual is so 
 much higher than the natural in man, why 
 should we feel discouraged if the perfect char- 
 acter is not produced like the growth of an as- 
 paragus plant or like the maturity of a monad 
 in the lower world. We must not forget that 
 law of universal application, *' First the blade, 
 then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
 So let us live on, growing day by day "in grace 
 and in the knowledge of Christ," remembering 
 that when we have attained unto the best pos- 
 sible in this life, "it doth not yet appear what 
 we shall be," but ever rejoicing in that when 
 He shall appear the likeness shall be complete. 
 Oh, sweet, transporting thought ! 
 
 *'I shall be like Him, wondrously like Him, 
 And in His beauty shall share." 
 
 Heaven after all is God's sample room of His 
 118 
 
Zbc U^pe ot Gtowtb 
 
 finished work. Suppose we arc yisiting a pot- 
 tery, desirous of seeing the product of the 
 establishment; we might be shown to the 
 mixing-room where the chiys are stirred 
 together and on up to the molding-room where 
 the vases and the various vessels take their 
 shape in obedience to the will of the skillful 
 artisan, but we would not have seen what the 
 factory could really do until we had followed 
 its varied processes clear up to the sample 
 room, where the finished work stands in all its 
 beauty and perfection. It is so with our 
 growth in grace, with our conformity to the 
 image of His Son, and though "it doth not 
 yet appear what we shall be, we know that 
 when He shall appear we shall be lilce Him, for 
 we shall see Him as He is." 
 
 Not long ago in England a young man, 
 blinded in early youth by an accident, was 
 married to a beautiful young lady. He was of 
 high social position and in spite of his blind- 
 ness had won honors at the university. He 
 had courted and won his bride although he 
 had never looked upon her face. He had 
 undergone a course of treatment that gave the 
 surgeon such encouragement as to make him 
 confident of a favorable outcome, and they had 
 119 
 
XTbe (Btowtna Cbristian 
 
 arranged the final test for the hour of the cere- 
 mony. The young man, his eyes still shrouded 
 in linen, drove with his father, Sir William 
 Hart Dyke, to the church. Miss Cave, the 
 bride, came, leaning on her father's arm. So 
 moved was she, she could not speak. Was her 
 lover at last to see her face, the beautiful face 
 that others admired but which he had known 
 only through the delicate touch of his finger 
 tips? She neared the altar as the soft strains 
 of Lohengrin's wedding march floated through 
 the building, and there beheld a strange scene. 
 Sir William Hart Dyke stood there with his 
 son and before them the great occulist Just in 
 the act of cutting away the bandage. The 
 bandage fell. The young lover stood just a 
 moment as if in the uncertainty of a dream. 
 One step forward — a beam of rose-colored light 
 fell into his face as it came shooting through 
 the stained window of the cathedral, but he 
 did not seem to see it. Did he see anything? 
 Yes, before him was a face from which he could 
 not tear his gaze, and as if just coming into 
 consciousness of where he was, with a look of 
 joy such as mortals scarcely ever know, he 
 stepped forward to meet his bride. They 
 looked into each other's eyes, and one would 
 120 
 
^bc XIvpc of Ovowtb 
 
 have thought his own would never have wan- 
 dered from her face. "At last?" she said, still 
 in uncertainty. "At last, at last," he echoed, 
 solemnly. "No longer through a glass darkly," 
 says Paul, "hut face to face," for I shall see 
 Ilim as He is, and when I see Him as He is I 
 shall be like Him. After all that I have been 
 able to become here, and my life has not been 
 altogether without victory, I have beheld, as in 
 a mirror, the spotless beauty of my Christ, I 
 have felt like crying, "Depart from me, O 
 Lord, for I am a sinful man," but oh, what a 
 promise is this — "Changed into His own image 
 from glory unto glory," and when at last I 
 stand in His presence, fuU-statured and clear- 
 eyed, that transformation will be complete — a 
 heart like His and a face like His — and as I 
 look with untrammeled vision into His eyes I 
 shall see reflected back no longer my own 
 deformity and imperfection, but I shall see an 
 image like Him — for when I see Him as He is I 
 shall be like Him, 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 121 
 
STUDIES AND ADDRESSES 
 
 miLIAM P. MERRILL, P.P. 
 
 Pastor of Brick Presbyterian Church, Nev York 
 
 The Common Creed of Christians 
 
 Studies of the Apostles' Creed. i2mo. 
 
 The studies take th» Creed as a recognized part of the 
 ■worship and belief of the Christian Church and set forth 
 some of its practical implications, and make clear what 
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 EPmN LINCOLN HOUSE, P.P. 
 
 The Glory of Going On 
 
 and Other Life Studies. i2mo. 
 
 These addresses have even a hisrher value than their 
 literary quality. They voice genuine counsel and en- 
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 JOHN EDJVARP BUSHNELL, P.P. 
 
 Summit Views and Other Sermons 
 
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 HERBERT BOOTH SMITH, P.P. 
 
 Pastor Jmmanuel Presbyterian Church. Los Angelas, Cat, 
 
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 Thoroughly devout, believing fervently in the ultimate 
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PRAYER AND EVANGELISM 
 
 JOHN HENRY JOWETT, P.P. 
 
 "Come Ye Apart" 
 
 Daily Exercises in Prayer 
 and Devotion. i2mo. 
 
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 Lectures Delivered at Princeton Tkeological Seminary 
 
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CHRIST'S LIFE AND INFLUENCE 
 
 J. PEOPLE'S 
 LIFE OF 
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 /. PATERSON-SMITH 
 
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LIFE AFTER DEATH 
 
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 Can the Dead Communicate with 
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 Quiet TaJks About 
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