The Heart-Cry of Jesus Part 3

The garden prospers, the vegetables are most encouraging, and the produce is abundant. But one morning the farmer notices that smoke is issuing from the crater at the summit of the mountain. The sky blackens and red flames flash amid the clouds of smoke. The land is shaken with earthquakes. Suddenly, right in the middle of his verdant field, a great red-lipped chasm opens and blue flames leap upwards and surge toward the sky. His crops are blasted with the "fierce heat of the flame," and the work of years is wrecked in a moment.

BLUE FLAMES OF GEHENNA

No permanent Christian life can be built upon the foundation of an unsanctified heart. For a time the graces of the Spirit may seem to grow, but in some sad hour the surface will split open and the man will leap back aghast at the blue flames of Gehenna, which singe his brows and blacken his cheeks.

THE PROPHET AND PRINCE.

An old white-haired prophet and a gay young prince are in conversation.

The aged man bows his head upon his staff and weeps.

"For what are you weeping, old man?"

"Ah, I am thinking of the black and dastardly crimes you will commit when you have once become king."

"Is thy servant a dog, a ruthless town whelp, that he should do such things?"

PROPHECY FULFILLED

But years roll on and the young man is king, and his hands are stained with crime, and the old man's predictions come true. G.o.d had given the aged saint a view of the boy's breast, and he saw the embryonic seeds of sin which, if allowed to remain, would sprout and produce a fruitage of evil deeds.

THE BROKEN FLOWER

The secret of the downfall of many a brilliant character is a bosom sinfulness little expected to be in existence. No man saw the black and ugly thing but it was there. A lady had a tall and graceful plant. The flowers were white and beautiful and all the town said, "What a fine flower!" One day a storm swept across the garden. One plant was injured; it was the one which people had admired and praised. Filled with grief, the lady stooped to examine the stem, and found that it had been pierced by a worm-hole. The insect had worked silently and secretly. No one saw him cutting into the heart of the tall and magnificent flower, but in a storm, under a test severe and protracted, the stem snapped and the choice beauty of the garden was a thing of the past.

THE WORM IN THE HEART.

It is the worm in the heart with his relentless and resistless tooth, which weakens the character. Under severe and protracted temptation the will snaps and yields, and the beautiful life is a wreck and fit only for the dump of the Universe.

STUMPS AND ROOTS.

There are many roots, hidden roots, which bury themselves deep in the soil of the heart. They extend far below clear cerebration, twisting and twining themselves in "the fringe of consciousness." It takes the fire of the Holy Ghost to follow them deep into the ground and destroy them. It used to be a pastime of the boys in eastern Ohio to pile great heaps of brush upon huge stumps in newly-cleared land. All the long October day they would toil, raising a stack of dry limbs upon the stump which needed to be removed. In the evening when twilight came and the stars shone out, they would light the brush and watch the flames greedily devour the pile. In the morning when the lads returned to the scene of the fire, no sign of the stump was to be seen. Looking closely they saw great holes as large at the top of the ground as a man's body, and tapering to a small point as they went deep into the earth. The fire had found the huge roots, and had tracked them into their retreats and consumed them.

FIRE OF PENTECOST.

We pile the brush of time and talents and money and name and self upon the altar, and the fire of Pentecost, which G.o.d sends as He sent to Mount Carmel of old, will destroy not only the brush, but the roots of sin, one and all.

CHAPTER V.

CHRISTIAN UNITY.

A COMMON PLATFORM.

One of the results spoken of by Christ in His prayer, and brought about by sanctification, is Christian unity--"that they all may be one."

There is but one remedy for sectism and bigotry, and it is found in the answer to Christ's pet.i.tion. When Pentecost comes to us we are all lifted upon one grand common platform and shake hands and shout and weep and laugh and get so mixed up that a Presbyterian can not be distinguished from a Methodist, nor a Friend from an Episcopalian vestryman.

FALSE UNITY.

We have heard much about the organic union of churches. Many great and good men have looked forward with sanguine hopes to the day when we should do away with denominations. In a few cases two churches of different sects have united and worshipped in one congregation. But the causes of such unity are frequently far from gratifying. In D----the Methodists and Primitive Methodists clasp hands and join forces because they can thus make one preacher do the work which two formerly performed. In K----the Baptists and Presbyterians unite because the thirteen members of one church and the seven of the other feel lonely in their great refrigerators and are inclined to make friends and preserve life. The cold is most intense. In the far North the weather is sometimes so severe that wild beasts, ordinarily hostile both toward each other and man, crowd close together near the campfire of the explorer.

With many churches it is "unite or die!" The mallet of the auctioneer threatens the steeple-house, the young folks are off "golfing" or "hiking," and the gray-beards, lonely and terror-stricken as they see church extinction approaching, favor "a union of forces with some other church." In the church magazines of the next month appear sundry articles on "the broad and liberal spirit of the nineteenth century church." "A large catholicity is taking the place of the old fogyism of former days," scribbles the hack-writer.

THE "MILKSOP'S" THEORY.

In a few cases large congregations have united. When we behold it our hopes rise, but they are doomed to early blight by a careful study of the situation. The cause of denominationalism is the tenacious clinging to faith and doctrines. Whether or no we ought to all believe precisely alike about non-essentials, one thing is sure, the man who does not cleave to some faith, heart and head and brain and blood, is worthless in Christ's army. Milksops may be ornamental, they are certainly not militant, and G.o.d wants soldiers. The man who does not know what he believes, and the man who says "it does not matter what one believes if one is only sincere," are more despicable than the Yankees who burned witches in Salem. Better that a man be "narrow" than that he be so "broad" as to take in "the devil and all his angels." Out upon our folly when we barter away the truth of G.o.d for a flimsy, tissue-paper bond of so-called "fellowship"!

CHRISTIAN ONENESS.

There is a unity, however, and to it Christ referred, which does not consist in uniformity of creed but in oneness of heart. When we are truly sanctified the non-baptizing Quaker, and the trine immersionist, and the High Church Episcopalian, and the foot-washing Tunker, and the Methodist, and the Baptist, and the Congregationalist all unite in one far-reaching melodious chorus,

"HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD!"

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED.

Sanctification destroys sticklerism for non-essentials and the l.u.s.t for fine distinctions in dogmatics. It slays the doctrinaire and makes a red-hot revivalist out of him. The purified soul takes the Bible for his "credo" and loves G.o.d's children of whatever name with a generosity that overtops every inadequate consideration. The sanctified are united by a common cause and a common experience. Opinions may differ as to ecclesiastical polity or the mode of baptism, but the white cord of sanctification is "the bond of perfectness" which makes them one bundle. Yale and Cornell are rivals with their "eights" and "sh.e.l.ls" on American Hudson, but men from both colleges join forces to beat the Britishers at Henley. Holiness people of every church unite to "push holiness."

THE SPOKES AND THE HUB.

When the glorious grace of full salvation is experienced, love for Christ is increased and intensified. Everyone wants to magnify Him and live close to Him: and as we get close to Him, the Hub, the distance between us, the spokes, is lessened.

THE D.D. AND THE NEGRO.

A D.D. and a negro meet on a Mississippi River boat. They fall into conversation. The doctor speaks of the Lord. The negro's eyes fill and he says, "You know my Savior?" and they shake hands and weep and shout.

Why this community of feeling between men of such diverse stations in life? Both possess the blessing of entire sanctification.

VARIOUS SECTS

The writer has had the privilege of preaching in churches of different denominations in the work of special evangelism, but never has he known the falling of Pentecostal fire to fail to burn up sectarianism. It is no easy matter to find out from the preaching of our holiness preachers under what denominational flag they sail. Full salvation obliterates the fences which separate the people of G.o.d and makes them really "one in Christ Jesus."

CHAPTER VI.

FEARLESSNESS.

PETER THE FEARLESS.

There was a man among the one hundred and twenty "upper room believers"

in whom Pentecost effected a most apparent and almost spectacular change. It was Peter. We remember him as the man at whom the young girl pointed her finger and laughed. We recall that he was so cowardly that he denied his Lord on the spot, swearing that he did not know Him.

Behold this same Peter on the day of Pentecost. He is charging home the murder of Christ. Fear is gone, and gone forever. He faces men and does not flinch an iota. Carnality, the source of cowardice, has been removed, and the weakling is turned into a Lord Nelson for bravery, and a Savonarola for faithfulness to men's souls.

SHALL WE TREMBLE?

Fear of man is one of the most illogical things in the world. Men sell the blood of Jesus and hope of heaven and eternal happiness because of "what people say." Think of it, afraid of a man who will die and be hurried under ground before he rots! Frightened at a thing dressed in a long black coat and a white cravat with a golden-headed cane and a tall hat and a frown; a thing which will stop breathing some fine day and the worms will eat! Shall I tremble when an ecclesiastical Leo utters a roar? Shall I halt and stammer because a top-heavy lad from a theological seminary, hopelessly in love with himself, scowls at the word "sanctification"?