January 1929
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action that brings experience. God proposes a definite thing when He offers pardon. He gives a definite thing when He makes the soul to live. He cannot go all the way. He waits our acceptance of salvation. Procrastination is the thief o f souls. Another year opens before us. We all hope to be saved, but we put it off. This is how the devil gets us. He does not deny that salvation is a fine thing, but he proposes delay in order that the impression of truth may melt into inactivity. On sinking ships, in sweeping floods, in burning homes, those who delay are lost. In the great exigency that our sins have made, there is need of haste. God will respect the feeblest faith. He will hear the humblest cry. He will take the outstretched hand of the weakest endeavor. He will pardon the neediest sinner. But there must be a motion towards Him. We must ask. We must seek. We must knock. We must accept the divine and definite terms of the divine arrangement that God has made through Christ, the Saviour of the world. Watch God a t Work Ponder these words of William Arnot. “On a still, sultry autumn day, as you walk through the fields, your attention is arrested by a tiny sound at intervals, like an explosion in miniature, and a few seconds after, a shower of tiny balls fall upon the ground. It is the bursting of seed-pods in the sun. The casket that contains the seed of some plants is composed of four or five long, narrow staves joined together like copper work, but without the hoops. The staves are glued together at the edges, and the vessel so constructed is strong enough to contain the seed till it is ripe. But if the seeds were retained beyond > that, the purpose of nature would be thwarted. Accord ingly, at this stage, there is a turning-point, and the action of the machinery is reversed. The same qualities in the vessel that hold fast the seed while it is green, jerk it to a distance after it is ripe. The staves of the little barrel are bent, the bursting force overcomes the adhesion and opens them with a spring that flings the seed as if from a sower’s hand. By this contrivance, though no human hand were near, a whole field would soon be sown by seed from a single plant.” Stand Unafraid Dr. H. C. Morrison well says: “There is no state of purity or life of righteousness possible in this world that will save one from false accusation and sometimes persecution. John the Baptist' was beheaded, Jesus was crucified, Stephen was stoned to death, Paul was behead ed, and thousands of saints have been hunted and butchered. Do not suppose you can be wholly sanctified, live a holy life in this world, and not meet with strong opposition! But you can love your enemies. You can be a faithful and glad witness for the Lord Jesus in his regenerating, sanctifying and keeping power. You can have a great patience, and an undaunted courage. You can stand unafraid among men and devils, and contend for the faith that saves, and in the midst of it all you can be kept from any sort of unholy anger, courteous and obliging to those who are opposing and using you wickedly.”
:: H e a r t t o H e a r t ::
Will You Start 1929 With God? C hester G. H azard “M l j B AHY people form indefinite plans for carrying out excellent purposes but fail to make the J? necessary arrangements for executing them. They will go to Europe: some day. They will a j ] ^ ^ d o a great deal of good somehow.. They will jwffljs give attention to religion by and by. They forget that nothing worthy and beautiful is done in history without definite plan and specification. They miss and lose the best of life and are wrecked at last in life’s sea because they have no chart and do not steer. This trusting to luck rather than to gumption is especially common in religious matters. Probably every one hopes that religion will happen to him sooner or later. Now and then a man is struck by lightning, therefore a man may “meet with a change” any day. A spiritual experience like that of the apostle Paul has been known in the past, it may be repeated. Such a reliance upon divine grace can hardly be called trusting to luck. But is it not presuming upon divine grace? Are we directed by the Word of God to wait for an experience before submitting to His rightful authority? I f I am wrong, the first thing for me to do is to quit it. I need, in such a case, to make confession and set the matter straight. Thus, drawing near to God in truth, I may hope for that mercy and help which He loves to show. But how can God show such things to disobedient persistence and lazy indifference? When Paul had that tremendous experience he was doing the thing that he believed to be right with all his might. That was the reason why mercy was shown to him. That God is waiting to deal with us in mercy, but with definiteness, is shown by His Word as it has come to us through His prophet Isaiah. In the fifty-fifth chap ter of that prophet’s book it is written, “Seek ye the Lord while He may he found; call ye upon Him while He is near : let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Incline your ear and come unto Me; hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” Jesus is crucified for us in the fifty-third chapter of that prophet’s book and freely offered to us in the fifty-fifth chapter. How greatly good and beautiful those chapters a re ! But God is waiting for us to act upon them. Not merely to admire them, but to act upon them. To act definitely and at once upon them. They fade away like a glorious sunset if we do not act upon them. They pass from memory like a beautiful song if we do not do any thing about them. How often we have been appealed to and almost persuaded, but what was left of it all ? It is
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