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 The Life that Wins 
 
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An Address (Revised) by CHARLES 
 GALLAUDET TRUMBULL before the 
 National Convention of the Presby- 
 terian Brotherhood of America 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1911, 
 BY THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES Co, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES Co, 
 
 3 cents each; 30 cents a dozen. 
 
THE LIFE THAT WINS. 
 
 HERE is only one life that wins; 
 and that is the life of Jesus 
 
 Christ. Every man may have 
 
 that life; every man may live 
 that life. 
 
 I do not mean that every man may 
 be Christlike; I mean something very 
 much better than that. I do not mean 
 that a man may always have Christ’s 
 help; I mean something better than that. 
 I do not mean that a man may have 
 power from Christ; I mean something 
 very much better than power. And I 
 do not mean that a man shall be saved 
 from his sins and kept from sinning; I 
 mean something better than even that 
 victory. 
 
 To explain what I do mean, I must 
 simply tell you a very personal and 
 recent experience of my own. I think 
 I am correct when I say that I have 
 known more than most men know 
 about failure, about betrayals and dis- 
 honorings of Christ, about disobedience 
 to heavenly visions, about conscious 
 
 3 
 
fallings short of that which I saw other 
 men attaining, and which I knew Christ 
 was expecting of me. Not a great while 
 ago I should have had to stop just there, 
 and say simply I hoped that some day 
 I would be led out of all that into 
 something better. If you had asked me 
 how, I would have had to say I did not 
 know. But, thanks be to His long- 
 suffering patience and infinite love and 
 mercy, I do not have to stop there, but I 
 can go on to speak of something more 
 than a miserable story of personal failure 
 and disappointment. 
 
 The conscious needs of my life, before 
 there came the new experience of Christ, 
 of which I would tell you, were definite 
 enough. Three in particular stand out: 
 
 1. There were great fluctuations in my 
 spiritual life, in my conscious closeness 
 of fellowship with God. Sometimes I 
 would be on the heights spiritually; 
 sometimes I would be in the depths. 
 A strong, arousing convention; a stirring 
 address from some consecrated, victo- 
 rious Christian like Speer or Mott; a 
 searching, Spirit-filled book, or the ob- 
 ligation to do a difficult piece of Christian 
 service myself, with the preparation in 
 prayer that it involved, would lift me up; 
 and I would stay up—for a while—and 
 God would seem very close and my 
 
 4 
 
spiritual life deep. But it wouldn’t last. 
 Sometimes by some single failure before 
 temptation, sometimes by a_ gradual 
 down-hill process, my best experiences 
 would be lost, and I would find myself 
 back on the lower levels. And a lower 
 level is a perilous place for a man who 
 calls himself a Christian, as the Devil 
 showed me over and over again. 
 
 It seemed to me that it ought to be 
 possible for me to live habitually on a 
 high plane of close fellowship with God, 
 as I saw certain other men doing, and 
 as I was not doing. Those men were 
 exceptional, to be sure; they were in the 
 minority among the Christians whom I 
 knew. But I wanted to be in that 
 minority. Why shouldn’t we all be, and 
 turn it into a majority? 
 
 2. Another conscious lack of my life 
 was in the matter of failure before be- 
 setting sins. I was not fighting a win- 
 ning fight in certain lines. Yet if Christ 
 was not equal to a winning fight, what 
 were my Christian beliefs and profes- 
 sions good for? [I did not look for 
 sinlessness. But I did believe that I 
 could be enabled to win in certain 
 directions habitually, yes, always, instead 
 of uncertainly and interruptedly, the vic- 
 tories interspersed with crushing and hu- 
 miliating defeats. Yet I had prayed, oh, 
 
 5 
 
so earnestly, for deliverence; and the 
 habitual deliverance had not come. 
 
 3. A third conscious lack was in the 
 matter of dynamic, convincing spiritual 
 power that would work miracle-changes 
 in other men’s lives. I was doing a lot 
 of Christian work—had been at it ever 
 since I was a boy of fifteen. I was going 
 through the motions—oh, yes. So can 
 anybody. I was even doing personal 
 work—the hardest kind of all; talking 
 with people, one by one, about giving 
 themselves to my Saviour. But I wasn’t 
 seeing results. Once in a great while 
 I would see a little in the way of result, 
 of course; but not much. I didn’t see 
 lives made over by Christ, revolutionized, 
 turned into firebrands for Christ them- 
 selves, because of my work; and it 
 seemed to me I ought to. Other men 
 did, why not I? I comforted myself 
 with the old assurance (so much used by 
 the Devil) that it wasn’t for me to see 
 results; that I could safely leave that to 
 the Lord if I did my part. But that 
 didn’t satisfy me; and I was sometimes 
 heart-sick over the spiritual barrenness 
 of my Christian service. 
 
 About a year before I had begun, in 
 various ways, to get intimations that 
 certain men to whom I looked up as 
 conspicuously blessed in their Christian 
 
 6 
 
service seemed to have a conception 
 or consciousness of Christ that I 
 did not have—that was beyond, bigger, 
 deeper, than any thought of Christ 
 I had ever had. I rebelled at the 
 suggestion when it first came to me. 
 How could any one have a better idea of 
 Christ than 1? (I am just laying bare to 
 you the blind, self-satisfied workings of 
 my sin-stunted mind and heart.) Did 
 I not believe in Christ and worship Him 
 as the Son of God and one with God? 
 Had I not accepted Him as my personal 
 Saviour more than twenty years before? 
 Did I not believe that in Him alone was 
 eternal life, and was I not trying to live 
 in His service, giving my whole life to 
 Him? Did I not ask His help and guid- 
 ance constantly, and believe that in Him 
 was my only hope? Was I not cham- 
 pioning the very cause of the highest 
 possible conception of Christ, by con- 
 ducting in the columns of The Sunday 
 School Times a symposium on the Deity 
 of Christ, in which the leading Bible 
 scholars of the world were testifying to 
 their personal belief in Christ as God? 
 All this I was doing: how could a higher 
 or better conception of Christ than mine 
 be possible? I knew that I needed to 
 serve Him far better than I had ever 
 
 7 
 
done; but that I needed a new conception 
 of Him I would not admit. 
 
 And yet it kept coming at me, from 
 directions that I could not ignore. I 
 heard Jowett of England preach a ser- 
 mon on Ephesians 4:12, 13: “Unto the 
 building up of the body of Christ: till 
 we all attain unto the unity of the faith, 
 and of the knowledge of the Son of God, 
 unto a fullgrown man, unto the measure 
 of the stature of the fulness of Christ’; 
 and as I followed it I was amazed, be- 
 wildered. I couldn’t follow him. He 
 was beyond my depth. He was talking 
 about Christ, unfolding Christ, in a way 
 that I admitted was utterly unknown to 
 me. Whether Jowett was right or wrong 
 I wasn’t quite ready to say that night; 
 but if he was right, then I was wrong. 
 And I came away realizing that I had 
 heard what was to me the most wonder- 
 ful sermon I had ever listened to. 
 
 A little later I read another sermon 
 of Jowett’s, in the Record of Christian 
 Work, on “Paul’s Conception of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ.” As I read it, I was con- 
 scious of the same uneasy realization 
 that he and Paul were talking about a 
 Christ whom I simply did not know. 
 Could they be right? If they were right, 
 how could I get their knowledge? 
 
 One day I came to know Dr. John 
 
 Q 
 
Douglas Adam, who speaks the closing 
 message of the convention to you to- 
 night. I learned from him that what he 
 counted his greatest spiritual asset was 
 his unvarying consciousness of the actual 
 presence of Jesus. Nothing bore him 
 up so, he said, as the realization that 
 Jesus was always with him in actual 
 presence; and that this was so, indepen- 
 dent of his own feelings, independent of 
 his deserts, and independent of his own 
 notions as to how Jesus would manifest 
 His presence. Moreover, he said that 
 Christ was the home of his thoughts. 
 Whenever his mind was free from other 
 matters, it would turn to Christ; and he 
 would talk aloud to Christ when he was 
 alone—on the street, anywhere—as 
 easily and naturally as to a human friend. 
 So real to him was Jesus’ actual presence. 
 
 Some months later I was in Edinburgh, 
 attending the World Missionary Con- 
 ference, and I saw that Dr. Robert F. 
 Horton was to speak to men Sunday 
 afternoon on “The Resources of the 
 Christian Life.’ His book on “The 
 Triumphant Life” had helped me greatly, 
 and I went eagerly to hear him. I ex- 
 pected him to give us a series of definite 
 things that we could do to strengthen our 
 Christian life ; and I knew I needed them. 
 
 9 
 
But his opening sentence showed me 
 my mistake, while it made my heart 
 leap with a new joy. What he said was 
 something like this: 
 
 “The resources of the Christian life, 
 my dear friends, are just Jesus Christ.” 
 
 That was all. But that was enough. 
 I hadn’t grasped it yet; but it was what 
 Paul, and Dr. Jowett, and Dr. Adam, 
 were trying to tell me about. Later, 
 as I talked with Dr. Horton about my 
 personal needs and difficulties, he said, 
 earnestly and simply, “Oh, Mr. Trum- 
 bull, if we would only step out upon 
 Christ in a more daring faith, He could 
 do so much more for us.” 
 
 Before leaving Great Britain I was 
 confronted once more with the thought 
 that was beyond me, a Christ whom I did 
 not yet know, in a sermon that a friend 
 of mine preached in his London church 
 on a Sunday evening, a young Welsh 
 minister, the Rev. Richard Roberts. His 
 text was Philippians 1:21, “To me to 
 live is Christ.” It was the same theme— 
 the unfolding of the life that is Christ, 
 Christ as the whole life and the only life. 
 I did not understand all that he said, and 
 I knew vaguely that I did not have as my 
 own what he was telling us about. But I 
 wanted to read the sermon again, and I 
 
 Io 
 
brought the manuscript away with me 
 when I left him. 
 
 It was about the middle of August 
 that a crisis came with me. I was at- 
 tending a young people’s missionary con- 
 ference, and was faced by a week of 
 daily work there for which I knew I was 
 miserably, hopelessly unfit and incompe- 
 tent. For the few weeks previous had 
 been one of my periods of spiritual let- 
 down, not uplift, with all the loss and 
 failure and defeat that such a time is 
 sure to record. The first evening that I 
 was there Bishop Oldham, of India, 
 spoke on the Water of Life. He told us 
 that it was Christ’s wish and purpose 
 that every follower of His should be a 
 wellspring of living, gushing water of 
 life all the time to others, not intermit- 
 tently, not interruptedly, but with con- 
 tinuous and irresistible flow. We have 
 Christ’s own word for it, he said, as he 
 quoted, “He that believeth on me, from 
 within him shall flow rivers of living 
 water.” He told how some have a little 
 of the water of life, bringing it up in 
 small bucketfuls and at intervals, like the 
 irrigating water-wheel of India, with a 
 good deal of creaking and grinding, while 
 from the lives of others it flows all the 
 time in a life-bringing, abundant stream 
 that nothing can stop. And he de- 
 
 II 
 
scribed a little old native woman in the 
 East whose marvelous ministry in wit- 
 nessing for Christ put to shame those of 
 us who listened. Yet she had known 
 Christ for only a year. 
 
 The next morning, Sunday, alone in 
 my room, I prayed it out with God, as 
 I asked Him to show me the way out. 
 If there was a conception of Christ that 
 I did not have, and that I needed be- 
 cause it was the secret of some of these 
 other lives I had seen and heard of, 
 a conception better than any I had yet 
 had, and beyond me, I asked God to 
 give it to me. I had Richard Roberts’ 
 sermon with me, “To me to live is 
 Christ,” and I rose from my knees and 
 studied it. Then I prayed again. And 
 God, in His long-suffering patience, for- 
 giveness, and love, gave me what I asked 
 for. He gave me a new Christ—wholly 
 new in the conception and consciousness 
 of Christ that now became mine. 
 
 Wherein was the change? It is hard 
 to put it into words, and yet it is, oh, 
 so new, and real, and wonderful, and 
 miracle-working in both my own life 
 and the lives of others. 
 
 To begin with, I realize for the first 
 time that the many references through- 
 out the New Testament to Christ in 
 you, and you in Christ, Christ our life, 
 
 I2 
 
and abiding in Christ, are literal, actual, 
 blessed fact, and not figures of speech. 
 How the 15th chapter of John thrilled 
 with new life as I read it now! And 
 the 3rd of Ephesians, 14 to 21. And 
 Galatians 2:20. And Philippians 1: 21. 
 
 What I mean is this: I had always 
 known that Christ was my Saviour; but 
 I had looked upon Him as an external 
 Saviour, one who did a saving work for 
 me from the outside, as it were; one who 
 was ready to come close alongside and 
 stay by me, helping me in all that I 
 needed, giving me power and strength 
 and salvation. But now I knew some- 
 thing better than that. At last I realized 
 that Jesus Christ was actually and 
 literally within me; and even more than 
 that: that He had constituted Himself 
 my whole life (save only my resistance 
 to him), my body, mind, soul, and spirit; 
 my very self. Was not this better than 
 having Him as a helper, or even than 
 having Him as an external Saviour: to 
 have Him, Jesus Christ, God the Son, as 
 my own very life? It meant that I need 
 never ask Him to help me again, as 
 though He were one and I another; but 
 rather simply to do His work, His will, 
 in me and with me and through me. 
 My body was His, my mind His, my will 
 His, my spirit His; and not merely His, 
 
 13 
 
but literally a part of Him; all he asked 
 me to say was, “I have been crucified 
 with Christ, and it is no longer I that 
 live, but Christ liveth in me.” Jesus 
 Christ had constituted Himself my life— 
 not as a figure of speech, remember, but 
 as a literal actual fact, just as literal, just 
 as actual, as the fact that a certain tree 
 had constituted itself this desk on which 
 my hand rests. For “In Him were all 
 things created, . . . and in Him all 
 things consist”; and we are a part of 
 the body of Christ. 
 
 Do you wonder that Paul could say 
 with tingling joy and exultation, “To 
 me to live is Christ’? He did not say, as 
 I had mistakenly been supposing I must 
 say, “To me to live is to be Christlike,” 
 nor, “To me to live is to have Christ’s 
 help,’ nor, “To me to live is to serve 
 Christ.” No; he plunged through and 
 beyond all that in the bold, glorious, 
 mysterious claim, “To me to live ts 
 Christ.” I had never understood that 
 verse before. Now, thanks to His gift 
 of Himself, I am beginning to enter into 
 a glimpse of its wonderful meaning. 
 
 And that is how I know for myself 
 that there is a life that wins: that it 
 is the life of Jesus Christ; and that it 
 may be our life for the asking, if we 
 
 14 
 
let Him—in absolute, unconditional sur- 
 render of ourselves to Him, our wills to 
 His will, making Him the Master of our 
 lives as well as our Saviour—enter in, 
 occupy us, overwhelm us with Himself, 
 yea, fill us with Himself “unto all the 
 fulness of God.” 
 
 What has the result been? Did this 
 experience give me only a new _ intel- 
 lectual conception of Christ, more inter- 
 esting and satisfying than before? If it 
 were only that, I should have little to tell 
 you to-day. No; from that hour to 
 this it has meant a revolutionized, funda- 
 mentally changed life, within and with- 
 out. If any man be in Christ, you know, 
 there is a new creation. 
 
 Do not think that I am suggesting any 
 mistaken, unbalanced theory of perfec- 
 tion or sinlessness in what I have been 
 saying. The life that is Christ reveals 
 to a man a score of sins and failures in 
 himself where he only saw one before. 
 He is still left the free will to resist 
 Christ; and my life, since the new ex- 
 perience of which I speak, has recorded 
 shamefully many failures and sins of such 
 resistance. But, men, the fighting has 
 been on higher levels than it ever used to 
 be; and the restorations after failure are 
 wonderfully blessed and complete— 
 
 15 
 
made so, I think, by “keeping short 
 accounts with God.” , 
 
 The three great lacks or needs of 
 which I spoke at the opening have been 
 miraculously met. 
 
 1. There has been a sustained fellow- 
 ship with God utterly different from 
 and infinitely better than anything I 
 had ever known in all my life before. 
 Christ has permitted no extended, dreary 
 fluctuations or barren intervals in my 
 spiritual life. 
 
 2. There has been habitual victory over 
 certain besetting sins—the old ones that 
 used to throttle and wreck me. There is 
 yet infinitely much ground to be occupied 
 by Christ; of that I am more painfully 
 aware than I ever used to be; and I 
 know, also, that there is in my life, as 
 Bishop Oldham said, “a vast area of un- 
 discovered sin” that I have not let Him, 
 as I must by ever completer surrender 
 and obedience, even open my eyes to. 
 But many of the old constant and sicken- 
 ing, soul-destroying failures are done 
 away with by Him, and, as I have faith 
 to believe, forever. 
 
 3. And, lastly, the spiritual results in 
 service have given me such a sharing of 
 the joy of Heaven as I never knew was 
 possible on earth. Six of my most in- 
 timate friends, most of them mature 
 
 16 
 
Christians, have had their lives com- 
 pletely revolutionized by Christ, laying 
 hold on Him in this new way and receiv- 
 ing Him unto all the fulness of God. 
 Two of these are a mother and a son, 
 the son a young business man twenty-five 
 years old. Another is the general man- 
 ager of one of the large business houses 
 in Philadelphia. Though consecrated and 
 active as a Christian for years, he is now 
 letting Christ work out through him in a 
 new way into the lives of his many as- 
 sociates, and of his salesmen all over the 
 country. A white-haired man of over 
 seventy has found a peace in life and a 
 joy in prayer that he had long ago given 
 up as impossible for him. Life fairly 
 teems with the miracle-evidences of what 
 Christ is willing and able to do for other 
 lives through any one who just turns 
 over the keys to His complete indwelling. 
 
 Jesus Christ does not want to be our 
 helper; He wants to be our life. He 
 does not want us to work for Him; He 
 wants us to let Him do His work through 
 us, using us as we use a pencil to write 
 with. 
 
 When our life is not only Christ’s, 
 but Christ, our life will be a winning 
 life: for He cannot fail. But, remember, 
 a life cannot win unless it serves. A 
 prize-fighter may win, but he does not 
 
 17 
 
serve. It is only a small part of life, and 
 a wholly negative part, to overcome: we 
 must bear fruit in service if we would 
 really enter into life and the joy of the 
 life that is Christ. If we are not bearing 
 fruit, constantly and habitually, as a life- 
 habit, we cannot ever do the lesser thing 
 of habitual winning. 
 
 The conditions of thus receiving Christ 
 as the fulness of the life seem to be 
 three—after, of course, complete confes- 
 sion of sin and our personal acceptance 
 of Christ as our Saviour from the guilt, 
 power, and consequences of our sin. 
 1. Absolute and unconditional surrender 
 to Christ as Master of all that we are 
 and all that we have. 2. Asking God for 
 this gift of the fulness of Christ as our 
 life. 3. Believing, then, that God has 
 done what we have asked—not will do, 
 but has done it. Upon this third step, 
 the quiet act of faith, all may depend. 
 Faith must be willing to believe God in 
 entire absence of any feeling or evidence. 
 For God’s word is safer, better, and 
 surer than any evidence of His word. 
 
 And remember that Christ Himself is 
 better than any of His blessings; better 
 than the power, or the victory, or the 
 service, that He grants. God creates the 
 electricity that drives cars, and carries 
 messages, and lights our houses; but God 
 
 1& 
 
is better than electricity. Christ creates 
 spiritual power; but Christ is better than 
 that power. He is God’s best; He is 
 God; and we may have this best: we may 
 have Christ, yielding to Him in such com- 
 pleteness and abandonment of self that 
 it is no longer we that live, but Christ 
 liveth in us. Will you thus take Him?