THE KING’S BUSINESS
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get out at this gate? The world here. At that gate? The flesh there. Besieged and surrounded by the devil, standing stuck in dismay you are. Ah! let me get hold of you. Oh, come to Calvary. Come to the Cross. Come to Jesus. Get your soul in flated by divine faith. Here and now get Jesus to breathe on you as on the disciples of old, and to say to the very center of your being, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” ^nd in this Holy Ghost power you will ascend above them all to the “heavenly places” of the “seated together with Christ,” to the safe glory-communion of a God-near and God-filled consecration. If you can’t get. on, get up. If you can't get out, get up. Up, up ! “Ex celsior !” “And when on joyful wing, Cleaving the sky, Sun, moon and stars forgot, Upward I fly, Still all my song shall be— Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to Thee!” And now just one closing word to the two groups in the congregation, the saved and the unsaved, the Chris tian and the Christies?. Unsaved, unconverted soul, I had better shake hands with you and bid" you farewell! You are not pn the foundation of God, and I can hear the hollow murmur of that coming “blizzard” of holy wrath that will sweep you away to a lost for-ever- and-ever. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, even Jesus Christ.” So farewell, a long, a last farewell. You have now to hear that Thunder-Voice say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” Goodbye, hell- bound hearer of this sermon! Ah! my brother, as I take your hand, I cling to it, and I plead with all the earnestness possible, Oh, come vou to Tesus now. Come build foT eter-
joyful power of the Holy Ghost. “De- part froth all iniquity.” You can, you can. Enough, enough is this, “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” Ah! but my circumstances,” you say, “are so peculiar. I am entangled by my sur roundings. I can’t get a start. I am like one caught in a thicket with the thorns by the thousand pinioning me to, the place. I can’t get out. Fam ily, business, world, liking, love and fate—hedged in, hedged round, a stick-in-the-mud !”■ Ah! dear friend, so said the despairing French that day in Paris, you remember. The city is at its last gasp, besieged and beleaguered by the victorious Ger mans. The national army is far away and it is of pressing, vital importance this morning to communicate with it. Hemmed in on every side, how to get out is the problem. Try at this gate? Here the hoof-patters of the charging cavalry! Back. Try at that other gate? There the boom of the awak ened big guns! Back. Try here? The air-cleaving “hoch! hoch!” of the victorious Fatherland! Back, back from the awful environment of blood and iron, back, beaten! What’s to be done ? How to get out with the momentous message? See! on one of the broad squares of the citv a gently swaying, swelling mass. What’s that? It’s a balloon. The light hy drogen gas is rapidly inflating it. Bigger and bigger and bigger. The monster, as if it knew the destiny of the Empire depended on its flight, pulls and pulls to be off. Ready! Into the car the messengers leap. Ropes let go. Up with a breathless bound to the sky! Up and up and up till, beyond the reach of the thou sand whistling bullets from yon Ger man rifles, it calmly, defiantly sails over their heads away to the frontier post. It is done. Just so, namer of the name of Christ, are you to depart from-all iniquity. You have tried to
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