CHAPTER VIII.

CLOSING COUNSELS AND PARTING WORDS.

THE WAY OF PROGRESS.

DANGERS AND DIFFICULTIES.

A FOURTH PART should, of right, be added, if our limits were not already reached. Many practical questions of deep and general interest, such as growth in grace, discipline, temptations, self-examination, watching and prayer, reading, study of the Scriptures, methods of doing good, and the like, might well form the conclusion of a work upon experimental religion.

However, if we must leave these topics untouched, it is a consolation to know, that whoso shall find Christ in His fulness, and dwell in Him, will have in Him, and in His Word, and His Spirit, counsel and strength which no work of man no human

hand or human heart could give.

At best, authors or ministers, are but like the finger and the tongue of John the Baptist pointing to Jesus always present-as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

We must get beyond the minister, however wise and good he may be; and beyond the book, howev er full and clear its teachings, to find Jesus. The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, gives the truth in words of honied sweetness, when the bride is made to say,

"I sought him but I found him not:

“I will arise now and go about the city in the streets, "And in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth:

"I sought him but I found him not.

"The watchmen that go about the city found me:

"To whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth ?

"It was but a little that I passed from them;

"But I found him whom my soul loveth.

I held him and would not let him go."

Ah! when we find him, and while we will not let him go there is safety, progress, happiness, usefulness, for us. Satan cannot lay hold on us.

A little child, who was told by her mother that the tempter could not get her, because Jesus would be with her, answered, "Why, mother, I am in Jesus!"

We are in Jesus, if we abide in him.

Therefore it is that exhortations may be dispensed with, because abiding in Jesus we shall be watchful and prayerful, diligent and faithful, secure from the adversary and cheerful as the lark.

Like jets and chandeliers connected by hidden

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pipes with the great meter at the works, our light will burn on, and shine evermore, because Christ is our unfailing fountain head.

He in whom Christ dwells by faith will pray with all prayer and without ceasing, because prayer has become his vital breath; and like the beating of his heart and the heaving of his lungs, his soul will go out in prayer and praise, spontaneously without the lashings of conscience and the urgencies of duty. Songs in the night will come welling up from the overflowing joys of his heart; and his very dreams will take on heavenly hues and shapes.

He will be active. The spirit in him will be love ; a constraining fire in his bones; he cannot but be active. He will be generous. If he abide in Christ, who, though rich, for our sakes became poor, himself the free gift of God to us - he cannot but give freely for his Master and his Master's cause.

He will grow in grace; for he has a living union with Him who is full of grace and truth; and from Him he will receive grace for grace.

He will have no longer occasion to examine himself to see whether he is a Christian at all or not saying and singing the mournful strain,

"Oft it causes anxious thought;

Am I his or am I not?"

For he will have left the dim line of uncertainty so far behind in his race, that his days of groping

will be ended forever. His examinations will be to see whether he is "in the faith:" abiding in Jesus: not lifted up, not turned aside, but in the fulness of the faith.

He will press for the mark; for every day the mark of the prize will brighten and swell out toward the proportions of an actual presence, a substantial verity; and every day his urgency will accelerate, as on eagle wing he mounts up toward the goal of hope.

But what is it to abide in Jesus?

To abide in Jesus, is just to keep always the very attitude taken when Jesus was accepted.

As ye have received the Lord Jesus Christ, so walk ye in him-rooted and grounded in him, saith the apostle.

We received him very humbly. We felt our place to be the dust. Our righteousness to be rags. Our power to be weakness. And looked to Christ for all things.

Even so abide. So walk ye in him.

He who is lifted up with the idea of some exalted state of purity, or power, or safety gained, has in so far forgotten the apostolic injunction and is not in the lowly way where Christ was received by him. His joy is in his state, not in Christ. His trust is in his own attainments, not in Christ.

The command is not-Now you have got into a high and holy state, so walk in that; But even as ye received CHRIST JESUS, So walk in Hıм.

HIDDEN PIPES AND CRYSTAL STREAMS.

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One who had found the blessed Saviour by faith, and had his eyes opened to see the folly of his blind struggles to gain the goal by works: became so enamored of faith, as to think of that night and day, and extol it to all listeners. But his comforts began to fail, and his light grew dim. His soul pined away into leanness again, and grew hungry, he could not tell why. By-and-by, however, a beam from the Sun of Righteousness dispelled his darkHe saw that he had magnified faith instead

ness.

of Christ.

Just as if one should look at the system of iron pipes underlaying the city streets, and conducting the waters into every house, and forgetting the fountain which supplies them, should say,

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Ah, it is these pipes which bring their crystal streams to all! We owe all to these pipes."

Satan even tempted him to question whether, the power was not in the faith itself independent of Jesus. So that if there were no Saviour, yet if faith could be the same, whether the salvation would not be received. But even while he questioned thus, the power began to wane, as the supply of water in our houses would begin to fail, the instant the fountain head was shut off from the conducting pipes. And it was only when he returned again to Jesus as the fountain which supplies the Waters of the River of Life, that the streams began to flow again in full current into his heart.

We received CHRIST AS ALL-SUFFICIENT, even so let us abide in Him.