some dizzy height to attain it; it is such a lowly thing. We will not humble ourselves to find it. We refuse to believe that it can be as simple as that. I have heard of a farmer who read Billy Sunday’s sermons years ago when the evangelist was preaching in Pittsburgh. The farmer wanted to become a Christian. He packed a week’s rations, missed the train, finally walked to Pitts burgh, and missed the meeting. He found a preacher who led him to the Lord and when he learned how plain the way of salvation is, he said, “If I had known it was that simple, I wouldn’t have brought all these rations along.” Some of us pack up for an ordeal of praying and waiting and agonizing and abstruse study just to learn that we have only to come to Jesus as we are, without one plea on the ground of His blood and His bidding. “Thy blood was shed for me, and thou biddst me come to Thee.” Not only concerning salvation, but also for everything else we may need, He has told us, “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” ^Jpmeone may say, “But Jesus is not here now. He has gone back to the Father and this is the age of the Holy Spirit.” There is misunderstanding here. The Holy Spirit did not come merely to fill the gap left by the departure of our Saviour. Jesus is still with us all the days, even unto the end of the age. The Holy Spirit is here to take the things of Christ and reveal them to us. He makes Jesus real. He does not speak of Himself but glorifies Christ (John 16:13, 14). Our Lord is still among us and invites us as of old to come to Him for rest. One gets a taste of the freshness of this first-hand experience of Christ when he meets a new Christian here or on a mission field. This one is all aglow with a new-found peace and joy before he had heard too many differing Bible scholars and has seen too many church members disgracing the cause of the Lord by their low living. One could almost wish that such a brand-new Christian might not have to run afoul of either so that he might maintain his first-hand, first-century sweet heart love for Christ. But that is impossible. Besides, it is possible not only to maintain but also to increase and improve that early devotion amidst all the complexi ties of modem living. It is possible but it is all too rare and the age takes its toll. The average Christian today needs, above all else, to learn how to maintain or recover the lost radiance of the young Christian and the early faith. Call it revival, or the Spirit-filled life, or recon secration, or the victorious life, or what you will: this is the major issue before us today. We must make sure first that we have such an expe rience to begin with. Some are trying to maintain or recover what they never had, to revive a fire that never burned. We cannot live the Christian life until we have a Christian life to live. “Come unto me . . . and I will give you rest” : there is the original obtainment to be followed by the daily attainment, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me . . . and ye shall find rest.” I am convinced that we are trying to bring to dedication many church members who need to be brought to sal vation. Others may be saved but lack assurance. It was said of Thomas Chalmers that he had “an original experience of Jesus Christ.” A man must be sure of that first of all. Have I come to Jesus in simple faith, receiv ing Him as my Saviour and confessing Him as my Lord?
Lord in his heart. Gibbon says of the Greek scholars of the Tenth Century: “They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony. They read; they praised; they compiled; but their lan guid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and ac tion.” Such trafficking in unfelt truth is not limited to the Tenth Century. I have read that Gertrude Stein studied medicine in her earlier years. While she was adept at dissecting corpses, she had no interest in working with live human bodies. One can be just like that with regard to Divine truth, analyzing and studying it, but never knowing it alive. The Pharisees were that kind. They never knew the Lord of life while the commonest of people touched Him and began a new life. I am fearful that a great deal of evangelical Christianity and much of what we call fundamental and orthodox Christianity may be in this sad plight. Our mass of second-hand knowledge, valu able as it is, may hinder the very thing it ought to nourish, our own first-hand, warm, personal experience of Jesus Christ. It may improve that experience, but it can never be a substitute for it. The man who wished he could read the Gospel of John for the first time was striking at something very vital. Who has not had a spell of longing, particularly if he had spent hours listening to conflicting radio preachers, that he might go back to Galilee and start out like those who heard our Lord in the days of His flesh; or be a member of the First Church when the faith was young? Now, of course, we cannot do that and we would lose a lot if we could. “Blessed are those (ourselves) who have not seen and yet have believed.” But how to enter into, maintain, or recover the simple faith which goes directly to Jesus and touches Him while, as of old, the multitude only throngs Him: that is a major issue in this atomic, push-button, jet-pro pelled age. Some dear souls never get through to Jesus for all they learn about Him. Others know Him but leave their first love. Others lose the joy of salvation. I used to think that only advanced backsliders who never read the Bible and never went to church were of that category. Are there not thousands of hard-working church members, even ministers, who go through all the motions but have long since lost thé joy of it? Theirs is the work without the wonder, the words without the music, the statutes without the songs, to use the phrase of he Psalmist. Some are afraid to admit it and work fever ishly keeping up a front, a facade, a show of godliness without the power thereof. M rs. Kenneth Strachan told how greatly she was helped by what Dr. McQuilkin called “a magic formula . . . GO TO JESUS.” He said, “If you will just remem ber in every difficulty, need or trial, to go to Jesus, you will find a sure source of help. It is a formula that will never fail you.” That is indeed a blessed formula, and nowadays when religion is putting out some very dubi ous wonder drugs of its own, we would do well to go directly to the Great Physician. We sometimes think that one has to work up to an unusual and vary rare degree of faith to know the secret of the Lord. The very opposite is true. There is not so much to learn as there is to unlearn! We do not scale
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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