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                        HOLY IN CHRIST:

           Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children
                   to be Holy as He is Holy.

                               BY
                      REV. ANDREW MURRAY,

        AUTHOR OF 'ABIDE IN CHRIST,' 'LIKE CHRIST,' ETC.



                          _'I am holy:
                       ye shall be holy.'_



                   FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY,
                  CHICAGO, NEW YORK, TORONTO,
             Publishers of Evangelical Literature.




PREFACE.


There is not in Scripture a word more distinctly Divine in its origin
and meaning than the word holy. There is not a word that leads us higher
into the mystery of Deity, nor deeper into the privilege and the
blessedness of God's children. And yet it is a word that many a
Christian has never studied or understood.

There are not a few who can praise God that during the past twenty years
the watchword BE HOLY has been taken up in many a church and Christian
circle with greater earnestness than before. In books and magazines, in
conventions and conferences, in the testimonies and the lives of
believers, we have abundant tokens that what is called the
Holiness-movement is a reality.

And yet how much is still wanting! What multitudes of believing
Christians there are who have none but the very vaguest thoughts of what
holiness is! And of those who are seeking after it how many who have
hardly learnt what it is to come to God's Word and to God Himself for
the teaching that can alone reveal this part of the mystery of Christ
and of God! To many, holiness has simply been a general expression for
the Christian life in its more earnest form, without much thought of
what the term really means.

In writing this little book, my object has been to discover in what
sense God uses the word, that so it may mean to us what it means to Him.
I have sought to trace the word through some of the most important
passages of Holy Scripture where it occurs, there to learn what God's
holiness is, what ours is to be, and what the way by which we attain it.
I have been specially anxious to point out how many and various the
elements are that go to make up true holiness as the Divine expression
of the Christian life in all its fulness and perfection. I have at the
same time striven continually to keep in mind the wonderful unity and
simplicity there is in it, as centred in the person of Jesus. As I
proceeded in my work, I felt ever more deeply how high the task was I
had undertaken in offering to guide others even into the outer courts of
the Holy Place of the Most High. And yet the very difficulty of the task
convinced me of how needful it was.

I fear there are some to whom the book may be a disappointment. They
have heard that the entrance to the life of holiness is often but a
step. They have heard of or seen believers who could tell of the blessed
change that has come over their lives since they found the wonderful
secret of holiness by faith. And now they are seeking for this secret.
They cannot understand that the secret comes to those who seek it not,
but only seek Jesus. They might fain have a book in which all they need
to know of Holiness and the way to it is gathered into a few simple
lessons, easy to learn, to remember, and to practise. This they will not
find. There is such a thing as a Pentecost still to the disciples of
Jesus; but it comes to him who has forsaken all to follow Jesus only,
and in following fully has allowed the Master to reprove and instruct
him. There are often very blessed revelations of Christ, as a Saviour
from sin, both in the secret chamber and in the meetings of the saints;
but these are given to those for whom they have been prepared, and who
have been prepared to receive. Let all learn to trust in Jesus, and
rejoice in Him, even though their experience be not what they would
wish. He will make us holy. But whether we have entered the blessed life
of faith in Jesus as our sanctification, or are still longing for it
from afar, we all need one thing, the simple, believing, and obedient
acceptance of each word that our God has spoken. It has been my earnest
desire that I might be a helper of the faith of my brethren in seeking
to trace with them the wondrous revelation of God's Holiness through the
ages as recorded in His blessed Word. It has been my continual prayer
that God might use what is written to increase in His children the
conviction that we must be holy, the knowledge of how we are to be holy,
the joy that we may be holy, the faith that we can be holy. And may He
stir us all to cry day and night to Him for a visitation of the Spirit
and the Power of Holiness upon all His people, that the name of
Christian and of saint may be synonymous, and every believer be a vessel
made holy and meet for the Master's use.

  A. M.

  Wellington, _16th November 1887_.




CONTENTS.


  DAY                                                         PAGE
   1. God's Call to Holiness--1 Pet. i. 15, 16,                 11

   2. God's Provision for Holiness--1 Cor. i. 2,                19

   3. Holiness and Creation--Gen. ii. 3,                        28

   4. Holiness and Revelation--Ex. iii. 4-6,                    36

   5. Holiness and Redemption--Ex. xiii. 2,                     46

   6. Holiness and Glory--Ex. xv. 11-17,                        55

   7. Holiness and Obedience--Ex. xix. 5, 6,                    64

   8. Holiness and Indwelling--Ex. xxv. 8,                      73

   9. Holiness and Meditation--Ex. xxviii. 36-38,               81

  10. Holiness and Separation--Lev. xx. 24, 26,                 89

  11. The Holy One of Israel--Lev. xi. 45,                      98

  12. The Thrice Holy One--Isa. vi. 1-3,                       107

  13. Holiness and Humility--Isa. lvii. 15,                    117

  14. The Holy One of God--John vi. 69,                        125

  15. The Holy Spirit--John vii. 39,                           133

  16. Holiness and Truth--John xvii. 17,                       142

  17. Holiness and Crucifixion--John xvii. 19,                 150

  18. Holiness and Faith--Acts xxvi. 18,                       158

  19. Holiness and Resurrection--Rom. i. 4,                    167

  20. Holiness and Liberty--Rom. vi. 18-22,                    175

  21. Holiness and Happiness--Rom. xiv. 17,                    184

  22. In Christ our Sanctification--1 Cor. i. 30, 31,          192

  23. Holiness and the Body--1 Cor. iii. 16,                   201

  24. Holiness and Cleansing--2 Cor. vii. 1,                   210

  25. Holiness and Blamelessness--1 Thess. iii. 12, 13,        219

  26. Holiness and the Will of God--1 Thess. iv. 3,            227

  27. Holiness and Service--2 Tim. ii. 21,                     235

  28. The Way into the Holiest--Heb. x. 19,                    243

  29. Holiness and Chastisement--Heb. xii. 10, 14,             253

  30. The Unction from the Holy One--1 John ii. 20, 27,        262

  31. Holiness and Heaven--2 Pet. iii. 11,                     271

      Notes,                                                   281




First Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

God's Call to Holiness.

  'Like as He which called you is _holy_, be ye yourselves also _holy_
  in all manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall be _holy_,
  for I am _holy_.'--1 Pet. i. 15, 16.


The call of God is the manifestation in time of the purpose of eternity:
'Whom He predestinated, them He also _called_.' Believers are 'the
_called_ according to His purpose.' In His call He reveals to us what
His thoughts and His will concerning us are, and what the life to which
He invites us. In His call He makes clear to us what the hope of our
calling is; as we spiritually apprehend and enter into this, our life on
earth will be the reflection of His purpose in eternity.

Holy Scripture uses more than one word to indicate the object or aim of
our calling, but none more frequently than what Peter speaks of
here--God has called us _to be holy_ as He is holy. Paul addresses
believers twice as 'called to be _holy_' (Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. i. 2). 'God
called us', he says, 'not for uncleanness, but _in sanctification_'
(1 Thess. iv. 7). When he writes, 'The God of peace _sanctify_ you
wholly,' he adds, 'Faithful is He which _calleth_ you, who also will do
it' (1 Thess. v. 24). The calling itself is spoken of as 'a _holy_
calling.' The eternal purpose of which the calling is the outcome, is
continually also connected with holiness as its aim. 'He hath _chosen_
us in Him, that we should be _holy_ and without blame' (Eph. i. 4).
'Whom God _chose_ from the beginning unto _salvation in sanctification_'
(2 Thess. ii. 12). '_Elect_ according to the foreknowledge of the
Father, through _sanctification_ of the Spirit' (1 Pet. i. 2). The call
is the unveiling of the purpose that the Father from eternity had set
His heart upon: that we should be holy.

It needs no proof that it is of infinite importance to know aright what
God has called us to. A misunderstanding here may have fatal results.
You may have heard that God calls you to salvation or to happiness, to
receive pardon or to obtain heaven, and never noticed that all these
were subordinate. It was to 'salvation _in sanctification_,' it was to
Holiness in the first place, as the element in which salvation and
heaven are to be found. The complaints of many Christians as to lack of
joy and strength, as to failure and want of growth, are simply owing to
this--the place God gave Holiness in His call they have not given it in
their response. God and they have never yet come to an agreement on
this.

No wonder that Paul, in the chapter in which he had spoken to the
Ephesians of their being 'chosen to be holy' prays for the spirit of
wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God to be given to believers,
that they might know 'the hope of their _calling_' (i. 17, 18). Let all
of us, who feel that we have too little realized that we are called to
Holiness, pray this prayer. It is just what we need. Let us ask God to
show us how, as He who hath called us is Himself holy, so we are to be
holy too; our calling is a holy calling, a calling before and above
everything, to Holiness. Let us ask Him to show us what Holiness is, His
Holiness first, and then our Holiness; to show us how He has set His
heart upon it as the one thing He wants to see in us, as being His own
image and likeness; to show us too the unutterable blessedness and glory
of sharing with Christ in His Holiness. Oh! that God by His Spirit would
teach us what it means that we are called to be holy as He is holy. We
can easily conceive what a mighty influence it would exert.

'Like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy'. How
this call of God shows us the true _motive_ to Holiness. 'Be ye holy,
for I am holy.' It is as if God said, Holiness is my blessedness and my
glory: without this you cannot, in the very nature of things, see me or
enjoy me. Holiness is my blessedness and my glory: there is nothing
higher to be conceived; I invite you to share with me in it, I invite
you to likeness to myself: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy.' Is it not
enough, has it no attraction, does it not move and draw you mightily,
the hope of being with me, partakers of my Holiness? I have nothing
better to offer--I offer you myself: 'Be holy, for I am holy.' Shall we
not cry earnestly to God to show us the glory of His Holiness, that our
souls may be made willing to give everything in response to this
wondrous call?

As we listen to the call, it shows also the _nature_ of true Holiness.
'_Like as_ He is holy, so be ye also holy.' To be holy is to be Godlike,
to have a disposition, a will, a character like God. The thought almost
looks like blasphemy, until we listen again, 'He hath chosen us _in
Christ_ to be holy.' In Christ the Holiness of God appeared in a human
life: in Christ's example, in His mind and Spirit, we have the Holiness
of the Invisible One translated into the forms of human life and
conduct. To be Christlike is to be Godlike; to be Christlike is to be
holy as God is holy.

The call equally reveals the _power_ of Holiness. 'There is none holy
but the Lord;' there is no Holiness but what He has, or rather what He
is, and gives. Holiness is not something we do or attain: it is the
communication of the Divine life, the inbreathing of the Divine nature,
the power of the Divine Presence resting on us. And our power to become
holy is to be found in the call of God: the Holy One calls us to
Himself, that He may make us holy in possessing Himself. He not only
says 'I am holy,' but 'I am the Lord, who make holy.' It is because the
call to Holiness comes from the God of infinite Power and Love that we
may have the confidence: we can be holy.

The call no less reveals the _standard_ of Holiness. '_Like as He_ is
holy, _so ye also_ yourselves,' or (as in margin, R.V.), 'Like the Holy
One, which calleth you, be ye yourselves also holy.' There is not one
standard of Holiness for God and another for man. The nature of light is
the same, whether we see it in the sun or in a candle: the nature of
Holiness remains unchanged, whether it be God or man in whom it dwells.
The Lord Jesus could say nothing less than, 'Be perfect, even as your
Father in heaven is perfect.' When God calls us to Holiness, He calls us
to Himself and His own life: the more carefully we listen to the voice,
and let it sink into our hearts, the more will all human standards fall
away, and only the words be heard, Holy, as I am holy.

And the call shows us the _path_ to Holiness. The calling of God is one
of mighty efficacy, an effectual calling. Oh! let us but listen to it,
let us but listen to Him, and the call will with Divine power work what
it offers. He calleth the things that are not as though they were: His
call gives life to the dead, and holiness to those whom He has made
alive. He calls us to listen as He speaks of His Holiness, and of our
holiness like His. He calls us to Himself, to study, to fear, to love,
to claim His Holiness. He calls us to Christ, in whom Divine Holiness
became human Holiness, to see and admire, to desire and accept what is
all for us. He calls us to the indwelling and the teaching of the
Spirit of Holiness, to yield ourselves that He may bring home to us and
breathe within us what is ours in Christ. Christian! listen to God
calling thee to Holiness. Come and learn what His Holiness is, and what
thine is and must be.

Yes, be very silent and listen. When God called Abraham, he answered,
Here am I. When God called Moses from the bush, he answered, Here am I,
and he hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. God is calling
thee to Holiness, to Himself the Holy One, that He may make thee holy.
Let thy whole soul answer, Here am I, Lord! Speak, Lord! Show Thyself,
Lord! Here am I. As you listen, the voice will sound ever deeper and
ever stiller: Be holy, _as_ I am holy. Be holy, _for_ I am holy. You
will hear a voice coming out of the great eternity, from the
council-chamber of redemption, and as you catch its distant whisper, it
will be, Be holy, I am holy. You will hear a voice from Paradise, the
Creator making the seventh day holy for man whom He had created, and
saying, Be holy. You will hear the voice from Sinai, amid thunderings
and lightnings, and still it is, Be holy, as I am holy. You will hear a
voice from Calvary, and there above all it is, Be holy, for I am holy.

Child of God, have you ever realized it, our Father is calling us to
Himself, to be holy as He is holy? Must we not confess that happiness
has been to us more than holiness, salvation than sanctification? Oh! it
is not too late to redeem the error. Let us now band ourselves together
to listen to the voice that calls, to draw nigh, and find out and know
what Holiness is, or rather, find out and know Himself the Holy One. And
if the first approach to Him fill us with shame and confusion, make us
fear and shrink back, let us still listen to the Voice and the Call, 'Be
holy, as I am holy.' 'Faithful is He which _calleth_, who also _will do
it_.' All our fears and questions will be met by the Holy One who has
revealed His Holiness, with this one purpose in view, that we might
share it with Him. As we yield ourselves in deep stillness of soul to
listen to the Holy Voice that calls us, it will waken within us new
desire and strong faith, and the most precious of all promises will be
to us this word of Divine command:

  BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


O Lord! the alone Holy One, Thou hast called us to be holy, even as Thou
art holy. Lord! how can we, unless Thou reveal to us Thy Holiness. Show
us, we pray Thee, how Thou art holy, how holy Thou art, what Thy
holiness is, that we may know how we are to be holy, how holy we are to
be. And when the sight of Thy Holiness only shows us the more how unholy
we are, teach us that Thou makest partakers of Thy own Holiness those
who come to Thee for it.

O God! we come to Thee, the Holy One. It is in knowing and finding and
having Thyself, that the soul finds Holiness. We do beseech Thee, as we
now come to Thee, establish it in the thoughts of our heart, that the
one object of Thy calling us, and of our coming to Thee, is Holiness.
Thou wouldst have us like Thyself, partakers of Thy Holiness. If ever
our heart becomes afraid, as if it were too high, or rests content with
a salvation less than Holiness, Blessed God! let us hear Thy voice
calling again, Be holy, I am holy. Let that call be our motive and our
strength, because faithful is He that calleth, who also will do it. Let
that call mark our standard and our path; oh! let our life be such as
Thou art able to make it.

Holy Father! I bow in lowly worship and silence before Thee. Let now
Thine own voice sound in the depths of my heart calling me, Be holy, as
I am holy. Amen.


  1. Let me press it upon every reader of this little book, that if
     it is to help him in the pursuit of Holiness, he must begin _with
     God Himself_. You must go _to Him who calls you_. It is only in the
     personal revelation of God to you, as He speaks, I am holy, that
     the command, Be ye holy, can have life or power.

  2. Remember, as a believer, you have already accepted God's call,
     even though you did not fully understand it. Let it be a settled
     matter, that whatever you see to be the meaning of the call, you
     will at once accept and carry out. If God calls me to be holy, holy
     I will be.

  3. Take fast hold of the word: 'The God of peace sanctify you wholly:
     faithful is He which _calleth_ you, _who also will do it_.' In that
     faith listen to God calling you.

  4. Do be still now, and listen to your Father calling you. Ask for
     and count upon the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to open
     your heart to understand this holy calling. And then speak out the
     answer you have to give to this call.




Second Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

God's Provision for Holiness.

  'To those that are _made holy_ in Christ Jesus, called to be
  _holy_.'--1 Cor. i. 2.

  'To all the _holy ones_ in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi. Salute
  every _holy one_ in Christ Jesus.'[1]--Phil. i. 1, iv. 21.


HOLY! IN CHRIST! In these two expressions we have perhaps the most
wonderful words of all the Bible.

HOLY! the word of unfathomable meaning, which the Seraphs utter with
veiled faces. HOLY! the word in which all God's perfections centre, and
of which His glory is but the streaming forth. HOLY! the word which
reveals the purpose with which God from eternity thought of man, and
tells what man's highest glory in the coming eternity is to be; to be
partaker of His Holiness!

IN CHRIST! the word in which all the wisdom and love of God are
unveiled! The Father giving His Son to be one with us! the Son dying on
the cross to make us one with Himself! the Holy Spirit of the Father
dwelling in us to establish and maintain that union! IN CHRIST! what a
summary of what redemption has done, and of the inconceivably blessed
life in which the child of God is permitted to dwell. IN CHRIST! the one
lesson we have to study on earth. God's one answer to all our needs and
prayers. IN CHRIST! the guarantee and the foretaste of eternal glory.

What wealth of meaning and blessing in the two words combined: HOLY IN
CHRIST! Here is God's provision for our holiness, God's response to our
question, How to be holy? Often and often as we hear the call, Be _ye_
holy, _even as I_ am holy, it is as if there is and ever must be a great
gulf between the holiness of God and man. IN CHRIST! is the bridge that
crosses the gulf; nay rather, His fulness has filled it up. IN CHRIST!
God and man meet; IN CHRIST! the Holiness of God has found us, and made
us its own; has become human, and can indeed become our very own. To the
anxious cries and the heart-yearnings of thousands of thirsty souls who
have believed in Jesus and yet know not how to be holy, here is God's
answer: YE ARE HOLY IN CHRIST JESUS. Would they but hearken, and
believe; would they but take these Divine words, and say them over, if
need be, a thousand times, how God's light would shine, and fill their
hearts with joy and love as they echo them back: Yes, now I see it. Holy
in Christ! Made holy in Christ Jesus!

As we set ourselves to study these wondrous words, let us remember that
it is only God Himself who can reveal to us what Holiness truly is. Let
us fear our own thoughts, and crucify our own wisdom. Let us give up
ourselves to receive, in the power of the life of God Himself, working
in us by the Holy Spirit, that which is deeper and truer than human
thought, Christ Himself as our Holiness. In this dependence upon the
teaching of the Spirit of Holiness, let us seek simply to accept what
Holy Scripture sets before us; as the revelation of the Holy One of old
was a very slow and gradual one, so let us be content patiently to
follow step by step the path of the shining light through the Word; it
will shine more and more unto the perfect day.

We shall first have to study the word Holy in the Old Testament. In
Israel as the holy people, the type of us who now are holy in Christ, we
shall see with what fulness of symbol God sought to work into the very
constitution of the people some apprehension of what He would have them
be. In the law we shall see how HOLY is the great keyword of the
redemption which it was meant to serve and prepare for. In the prophets
we shall hear how the Holiness of God is revealed as the source whence
the coming redemption should spring: it is not so much Holiness as the
Holy One they speak of, who would, in redeeming love and saving
righteousness, make Himself known as the God of His people.

And when the meaning of the word has been somewhat opened up, and the
deep need of the blessing made manifest in the Old Testament, we shall
come to the New to find how that need was fulfilled. In Christ, the Holy
One of God, Divine Holiness will be found in human life and human
nature; a truly human will being made perfect and growing up through
obedience into complete union with all the Holy Will of God. In the
sacrifice of Himself on the cross, that holy nature gave itself up to
the death, that, like the seed-corn, it might through death live again
and reproduce itself in us. In the gift from the throne of the Spirit of
God's Holiness, representing and revealing and communicating the unseen
Christ, the holy life of Christ descends and takes possession of His
people, and they become one with Him. As the Old Testament had no higher
word than that HOLY, the New has none deeper than this, IN CHRIST. The
being in Him, the abiding in Him, the being rooted in Him, the growing
up in Him and into Him in all things, are the Divine expressions in
which the wonderful and complete oneness between us and our Saviour are
brought as near us as human language can do.

And when Old and New Testament have each given their message, the one in
teaching us what _Holy_, the other what _in Christ_ means, we have in
the word of God, that unites the two, the most complete summary of the
Great Redemption that God's love has provided. The everlasting
certainty, the wonderful sufficiency, the infinite efficacy of the
Holiness that God has prepared for us in His Son, are all revealed in
this blessed, HOLY IN CHRIST.

'The Holy Ones in Christ Jesus!' Such is the name, beloved
fellow-believers, which we bear in Holy Scripture, in the language of
the Holy Spirit. It is no mere statement of doctrine, that we are holy
in Christ: it is no deep theological discussion to which we are invited;
but out of the depths of God's loving heart, there comes a voice thus
addressing His beloved children. It is the name by which the Father
calls His children. That name tells us of God's provision for our being
holy. It is the revelation of what God has given us, and what we already
are; of what God waits to work in us, and what can be ours in personal
practical possession. That name, gratefully accepted, joyfully
confessed, trustfully pleaded, will be the pledge and the power of our
attainment of the Holiness to which we have been called.

And so we shall find that as we go along, all our study and all God's
teaching will be comprised in three great lessons. The first a
revelation, '_I am holy_;' the second a command, '_Be ye holy_;' the
third a gift, the link between the two, '_Ye are holy in Christ_.'

First comes the revelation, 'I am holy.' Our study must be on bended
knee, in the spirit of worship and deep humility. God must reveal
Himself to us, if we are to know what Holy is. The deep unholiness of
our nature and all that is of nature must be shown us; with Moses and
Isaiah, when the Holy One revealed Himself to them, we must fear and
tremble, and confess how utterly unfit we are for the revelation or the
fellowship, without the cleansing of fire. In the consciousness of the
utter impotence of our own wisdom or understanding to know God, our
souls must in contrition, brokenness from ourselves and our power or
efforts, yield to God's Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to reveal God as
the Holy One. And as we begin to know Him in His infinite righteousness,
in His fiery burning zeal against all that is sin, and His infinite
self-sacrificing love to free the sinner from his sin, and to bring him
to His own perfection, we shall learn to wonder at and worship this
glorious God, to feel and deplore our terrible unlikeness to Him, to
long and cry for some share in the Divine beauty and blessedness of this
Holiness.

And then will come with new meaning the command, 'Be holy, as I am
holy.' Oh, my brethren! ye who profess to obey the commands of your God,
do give this all-surpassing and all-including command that first place
in your heart and life which it claims. Do be holy with the likeness of
God's Holiness. Do be holy as He is holy. And if you find that the more
you meditate and study, the less you can grasp this infinite holiness;
that the more you at moments grasp of it, the more you despair of a
holiness so Divine; remember that such breaking down and such despair is
just what the command was meant to work. Learn to cease from your own
wisdom as well as your own goodness; draw near in poverty of spirit to
let the Holy One show you how utterly above human knowledge or human
power is the holiness He demands; to the soul that ceases from self, and
has no confidence in the flesh, He will show and give the holiness He
calls us to.

It is to such that the great gift of Holiness in Christ becomes
intelligible and acceptable. Christ brings the Holiness of God nigh by
showing it in human conduct and intercourse. He brings it nigh by
removing the barrier between it and us, between God and us. He brings it
nigh, because He makes us one with Himself. 'Holy in Christ:' our
holiness is a Divine bestowment, held for us, communicated to us,
working mightily in us because we are _in Him_. 'In Christ!' oh, that
wonderful _in_! our very life rooted in the life of Christ. That holy
Son and Servant of the Father, beautiful in His life of love and
obedience on earth, sanctifying Himself for us--that life of Christ, the
ground in which I am planted and rooted, the soil from which I draw as
my nourishment its every quality and its very nature. How that word
sheds its light both on the revelation, 'I am holy,' and on the command,
'Be ye holy, as I am,' and binds them in one! In Christ I see what God's
Holiness is, and what my holiness is. In Him both are one, and both are
mine. In Him I am holy; abiding and growing up in Him, I can be holy in
all manner of living, as God is holy.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


O Most Holy God! we do beseech Thee, reveal Thou to Thy children what it
meaneth that Thou hast not only called them to holiness, but even called
them by this name, 'the holy ones in Christ Jesus.' Oh that every child
of Thine might know that He bears this name, might know what it means,
and what power there is in it to make Him what it calls him. Holy Lord
God! oh that the time of Thy visitation might speedily come, and each
child of Thine on earth be known as a holy one!

To this end we pray Thee to reveal to Thy saints what Thy Holiness is.
Teach us to worship and to wait until Thou hast spoken unto our souls
with Divine Power Thy word, 'I am holy.' Oh that it may search out and
convict us of our unholiness!

And reveal to us, we pray Thee, that as holy as Thou art, even a
consuming fire, so holy is Thy command in its determined and
uncompromising purpose to have us holy. O God! let Thy voice sound
through the depth of our being, with a power from which there is no
escape: Be holy, be holy.

And let us thus, between Thine infinite Holiness on the one hand and our
unholiness on the other, be driven and be drawn to accept of Christ as
our sanctification, to abide in Him as our life and our power to be what
Thou wouldst have us--'Holy in Christ Jesus.'

O Father! let Thy Spirit make this precious word life and truth within
us. Amen.


  1. You are entering anew on the study of a Divine mystery. 'Trust
     not to your own understanding;' wait for the teaching of the Spirit
     of truth.

  2. _In Christ._ A commentator says, 'The phrase denotes two moral
     facts--first, the act of faith whereby a man lays hold of Christ;
     second, the community of life with Him contracted by means of this
     faith.' There is still another fact, the greatest of all: that it
     is by an act of Divine power that I am in Christ and am kept in
     Him. It is this I want to realize: the Divineness of my position in
     Jesus.
  3. Grasp the two sides of the truth. _You are_ holy in Christ with
     a Divine holiness. In the faith of that, you are to _be holy_, to
     _become holy_ with a human holiness, the Divine Holiness manifest
     in all the conduct of a human life.
  4. This Christ is a Living Person, a Loving Saviour: how He will
     delight to get complete possession, and do all the work in you!
     Keep hold of this all along as we go on: you have a claim on
     Christ, on His Love and Power, to make you holy. As His redeemed
     one, you are at this moment, whatever and wherever you be, _in
     Him_. His Holy Presence and Love are around you. You are _in Him_,
     in the enclosure of that tender love, which ever encircles you with
     His Holy Presence. _In that Presence, accepted and realized, is
     your holiness._


    [1] There is one disadvantage in English in our having synonyms of
        which some are derived from Saxon and others from Latin.
        Ordinary readers are apt to forget that in our translation of
        the Bible we may use two different words for what in the
        original is expressed by one term. This is the case with the
        words _holy_, _holiness_, _keep holy_, _hallow_, _saint_,
        _sanctify_, and _sanctification_. When God or Christ is called
        the Holy One, the word in Hebrew and Greek is exactly the same
        that is used when the believer is called a saint: he too is a
        holy one. So the three words _hallow_, _keep holy_, _sanctify_,
        all represent but one term in the original, of which the real
        meaning is to make holy, as it is in Dutch, _heiliging_
        (holying), and _heiligmaking_ (holy-making).




Third Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Creation.

  'And God blessed the Sabbath day, and _sanctified_ it, because
  that in it He had rested from all the work which God created and
  made.'--Gen. ii. 3.


In Genesis we have the Book of Beginnings. To its first three chapters
we are specially indebted for a Divine light shining on the many
questions to which human wisdom never could find an answer. In our
search after Holiness, we are led thither too. In the whole book of
Genesis the word Holy occurs but once. But that once in such a
connection as to open to us the secret spring whence flows all that the
Bible has to teach or to give us of this heavenly blessing. The full
meaning of the precious word we want to master, of the priceless
blessing we want to get possession of, '_Sanctified in Christ_,' takes
its rise in what is here written of that wondrous act of God, by which
He closed His creation work, and revealed how wonderfully it would be
continued and perfected. When God blessed the seventh day, and
_sanctified_ it, He lifted it above the other days, and set it apart to
a work and a revelation of Himself, excelling in glory all that had
preceded. In this simple expression, Scripture reveals to us the
character of God as the Holy One, who _makes holy_; the way in which He
makes holy, by entering in and _resting_; and the power of _blessing_
with which God's making holy is ever accompanied. These three lessons we
shall find it of the deepest importance to study well, as containing the
root-principles of all the Scripture will have to teach us in our
pursuit of Holiness.

1. God _sanctified_ the Sabbath day. Of the previous six days the
keyword was, from the first calling into existence of the heaven and the
earth, down to the making of man: _God created_. All at once a new word
and a new work of God, is introduced: _God sanctified_. Something higher
than creation, that for which creation is to exist, is now to be
revealed; God Almighty is now to be known as God Most Holy. And just as
the work of creation shows His Power, without that Power being
mentioned, so His making holy the seventh day reveals His character as
the Holy One. As Omnipotence is the chief of His natural, so Holiness is
the first of His moral attributes. And just as He alone is Creator, so
He alone is Sanctifier; to make holy is His work as truly and
exclusively as to create. Blessed is the child of God who truly and
fully believes this!

God sanctified the Sabbath day. The word can teach us what the nature
is of the work God does when He makes holy. Sanctification in Paradise
cannot be essentially different from Sanctification in Redemption. God
had pronounced all His works, and man the chief of them, very good. And
yet they were not holy. The six days' work had nought of defilement or
sin, and yet it was not holy. The seventh day needed to be specially
made holy, for the great work of making holy man, who was already very
good. In Exodus, God says distinctly that He sanctified the Sabbath day,
with a view to man's sanctification. 'That ye may know that I am the
Lord that doth _sanctify you_.' Goodness, innocence, purity, freedom
from sin, is not Holiness. Goodness is the work of omnipotence, an
attribute of nature, as God creates it: holiness is something infinitely
higher. We speak of the holiness of God as His infinite moral
perfection; man's moral perfection could only come in the use of his
will, consenting freely to and abiding in the will of God. Thus alone
could he become holy. The seventh day was made holy by God as a pledge
that He would make man holy. In the ages that preceded the seventh day,
the Creation period, God's Power, Wisdom, and Goodness had been
displayed. The age to come, in the seventh day period, is to be the
dispensation of holiness: God made holy the seventh day.

2. God sanctified the Sabbath day, _because in it He rested_ from all
His work. This rest was something real. In Creation, God had, as it
were, gone out of Himself to bring forth something new: in resting He
now returns from His creating work into Himself, to rejoice in His love
over the man He has created, and communicate Himself to him. This opens
up to us the way in which God makes holy. The connection between the
resting and making holy was no arbitrary one; the making holy was no
after-thought; in the very nature of things it could not be otherwise:
He sanctified _because_ He rested in it; He sanctified by resting. As He
regards His finished work, more especially man, rejoices in it, and, as
we have it in Exodus, 'is refreshed,' this time of His Divine rest is
the time in which He will carry on unto perfection what He has begun,
and make man, created in His image, in very deed partaker of His highest
glory, His Holiness.

_Where God rests in complacency and love, He makes holy._ The Presence
of God revealing itself, entering in, and taking possession, is what
constitutes true Holiness. As we go down the ages, studying the
progressive unfolding of what Holiness is, this truth will continually
meet us. In God's indwelling in heaven, in His temple on earth, in His
beloved Son, in the person of the believer through the Holy Spirit, we
shall everywhere find that Holiness is not something that man is or
does, but that it always comes where God comes. In the deepest meaning
of the words: where God enters to rest, there He sanctifies. And when we
come to study the New Testament revelation of the way in which we are
to be holy, we shall find in this one of our earliest and deepest
lessons. It is as we enter into the rest of God that we become partakers
of His Holiness. 'We which have believed do enter into that rest;' 'He
that hath entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works,
as God did from His.' It is as the soul ceases from its own efforts, and
rests in Him who has finished all for us, and will finish all in us, as
the soul yields itself in the quiet confidence of true faith to rest in
God, that it will know what true Holiness is. Where the soul enters into
the Sabbath stillness of perfect trust, God comes to keep His Sabbath
holy; and the soul where He rests He sanctifies. Whether we speak of His
own day, 'He sanctified it,' or His own people 'sanctified in Christ,'
the secret of Holiness is ever the same: 'He sanctified because he
rested.'

3. And then we read, '_He blessed_ and sanctified it.' As used in the
first chapter and throughout the book of Genesis, the word 'God blessed'
is one of great significance. 'Be fruitful and multiply' was, as to
Adam, so later to Noah and Abraham, the Divine exposition of its
meaning. The blessing with which God blessed Adam and Noah and Abraham
was that of fruitfulness and increase, the power to reproduce and
multiply. When God blessed the seventh day, He filled it so with the
living power of His Holiness, that in it that Holiness might increase
and reproduce itself in those who, like Him, seek to enter into its rest
and sanctify it. The seventh day is that in which we are still living.
Of each of the creation days it is written, up to the last, 'There was
evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.' Of the seventh the
record has not yet been made; we are living in it now, God's own day of
rest and holiness and blessing. Entering into it in a very special
manner, and taking possession of it, as the time for His rejoicing in
His creature, and manifesting the fulness of His love in sanctifying
him, He has made the dispensation we now live in one of Divine and
mighty blessing. And He has at the same time taught us what the blessing
is. Holiness is blessedness. Fellowship with God in His holy rest is
blessedness. And as all God's blessings in Christ have but one fountain,
God's Holiness, so they all have but one aim, making us partakers of
that Holiness. God created, _and blessed_; with the creation blessing.
God sanctified, _and blessed_; with the Sabbath blessing of His rest.
The Creation blessing, of goodness and fruitfulness and dominion, is to
be crowned by the Sabbath blessing of rest in God and holiness in
fellowship with Him.

God's finished work of Creation was marred by sin, and our fellowship
with Him in the blessing of His holy rest cut off. The finished work of
redemption opened for us a truer rest and a surer entrance into the
Holiness of God. As He rested in His holy day, so He now rests in His
Holy Son. In Him we now can enter fully into the rest of God. 'Made holy
in Christ,' let us rest in Him. Let us rest, because we see that as
wonderfully as God by His mighty power finished His work of Creation,
will He complete and perfect His work of sanctification. Let us yield
ourselves to God in Christ, to rest where He rested, to be made holy
with His own holiness, and to be blessed with God's own blessing. God
the Sanctifier is the name now inscribed upon the throne of God the
Creator. At the threshold of the history of the human race there shines
this word of infinite promise and hope: 'God blessed and sanctified the
seventh day because in it He rested.'

  BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


Blessed Lord God! I bow before Thee in lowly worship. I adore Thee as
God the Creator, and God the Sanctifier. Thou hast revealed Thyself as
God Almighty and God Most Holy. I beseech Thee, teach me to know and to
trust Thee as such.

I humbly ask Thee for grace to learn and hold fast the deep spiritual
truths Thou hast revealed in making holy the Sabbath day. Thy purpose in
man's creation is to show forth Thy Holiness, and make him partaker of
it. Oh, teach me to believe in Thee as God my Creator and Sanctifier, to
believe with my whole heart that the same Almighty power which gave the
sixth-day blessing of creation, secures to us the seventh-day blessing
of sanctification. Thy will is our sanctification.

And teach me, Lord, to understand better how this blessing comes. It is
where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou
makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in
the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing
that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love,
and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness. I ask it in the
name of our Lord Jesus, in whom Thou hast sanctified us. Amen.


  1. God the Creator is God the Sanctifier. The Omnipotence that did
     the first work does the second too. I can trust God Almighty to
     make me holy. God is holy: if God is everything to me, His presence
     will be my holiness.

  2. Rest is ceasing from work, not to work no more, but to begin a
     new work. God rests and begins at once to make holy that in which
     He rests. He created by the word of His power; He rests in His
     love. Creation was the building of the temple; sanctification is
     the entering in and taking possession. Oh, that wonderful entering
     into human nature!

  3. God rests only in what is restful, wholly at His disposal. It is
     in the restfulness of faith that we must look to God the
     Sanctifier; He will come in and keep His holy Sabbath in the
     restful soul. We rest in God's rest; God rests in our rest.

  4. The God that rests in man whom He made, and in resting sanctifies,
     and in sanctifying blesses: this is our God; praise and worship
     Him. _And trust Him to do His work._

  5. Rest! what a simple word. The Rest of God! what an inconceivable
     fulness of Life and Love in that word. Let us meditate on it and
     worship before Him, until it overshadow us and we enter into
     it--the Rest of God. _Rest_ belongeth unto God: He alone can give
     it, by making us share His own.




Fourth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Revelation.

  'And when the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to see, He called
  unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And
  he said, Here am I. And He said, Draw not nigh hither; put off thy
  shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou standest is _holy_
  ground. And Moses hid his face, for He was afraid to look upon
  God.'--Ex. iii. 4-6.


And why was it holy ground? Because God had come there and occupied it.
Where God is, there is holiness; it is the presence of God makes holy.
This is the truth we met with in Paradise when man was just created;
here, where Scripture uses the word _Holy_ for the second time, it is
repeated and enforced. A careful study of the word in the light of the
burning bush will further open its deep significance. Let us see what
the sacred history, what the revelation of God, and what Moses teaches
us of this holy ground.

1. Note the place this first direct revelation of God to man as the Holy
One takes in sacred history. In Paradise we found the word _Holy_ used
of the seventh day. Since that time twenty-five centuries have elapsed.
We found in God's sanctifying the day of rest a promise of a new
dispensation--the revelation of the Almighty Creator to be followed by
that of the Holy One making holy. And yet throughout the book of Genesis
the word never occurs again; it is as if God's Holiness is in abeyance;
only in Exodus, with the calling of Moses, does it make its appearance
again. This is a fact of deep import. Just as a parent or teacher seeks,
in early childhood, to impress one lesson at a time, so God deals in the
education of the human race. After having in the flood exhibited His
righteous judgment against sin, He calls Abraham to be the father of a
chosen people. And as the foundation of all His dealings with that
people, He teaches him and his seed first of all the lesson of
_childlike trust_--trust in Him as the Almighty, with whom nothing is
too wonderful, and trust in Him as the Faithful One, whose oath could
not be broken. With the growth of Israel to a people we see the
revelation advancing to a new stage. The simplicity of childhood gives
way to the waywardness of youth, and God must now interfere with the
discipline and restriction of law. Having gained a right to a place in
their confidence as the God of their fathers, He prepares them for a
further revelation. Of the God of Abraham the chief attribute was that
He was the Almighty One; of the God of Israel, Jehovah, that He is the
Holy One.

And what is to be the special mark of the new period that is now about
to be inaugurated, and which is introduced by the word holy? God tells
Moses that He is now about to reveal Himself in a new character. He had
been known to Abraham as God Almighty, the God of Promise (Ex. vi. 3).
He would now manifest Himself as Jehovah, the God of Fulfilment,
especially in the redemption and deliverance of His people from the
oppression He had foretold to Abraham. God Almighty is the God of
Creation: Abraham believed in God, 'who quickeneth the dead, and calleth
the things that are not as though they were.' Jehovah is the God of
Redemption and of Holiness. With Abraham there was not a word of sin or
guilt, and therefore not of redemption or holiness. To Israel the law is
to be given, to convince of sin and prepare the way for holiness; it is
Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, the Redeemer, who now appears. And it
is the presence of this Holy One that makes the holy ground.

2. And how does this Presence reveal itself? In the burning bush God
makes Himself known as dwelling in the midst of the fire. Elsewhere in
Holy Scripture the connection between fire and the Holiness of God is
clearly expressed: 'The light of Israel shall be for a fire, and the
Holy One for a flame.' The nature of fire may be either beneficent or
destructive. The sun, the great central fire, may give life and
fruitfulness, or may scorch to death. All depends upon occupying the
right position, upon the relation in which we stand to it. And so
wherever God the Holy One reveals Himself, we shall find the two sides
together: God's Holiness as judgment against sin, destroying the sinner
who remains in it, and as Mercy freeing His people from it. Judgment and
Mercy ever go together. Of the elements of nature there is none of such
spiritual and mighty energy as Fire: what it consumes it takes and
changes into its own spiritual nature, rejecting as smoke and ashes what
cannot be assimilated. And so the Holiness of God is that infinite
Perfection by which He keeps Himself free from all that is not Divine,
and yet has fellowship with the creature, and takes it up into union
with Himself, destroying and casting out all that will not yield itself
to Him.

It is thus as One who dwells in the fire, who is a fire, that God
reveals Himself at the opening of this new redemption period. With
Abraham and the patriarchs, as we have said, there had been little
teaching about sin or redemption; the nearness and friendship of God had
been revealed. Now the law will be given, sin will be made manifest, the
distance from God will be felt, that man, in learning to know himself
and his sinfulness, may learn to know and long for God to make him holy.
In all God's revelation of Himself we shall find the combination of the
two elements, the one repelling, the other attracting. In His house He
will dwell in the midst of Israel, and yet it will be in the awful
unapproachable solitude and darkness of the holiest of all within the
veil. He will come near to them, and yet keep them at a distance. As we
study the Holiness of God, we shall see in increasing clearness how,
like fire, it repels and attracts, how it combines into one His infinite
distance and His infinite nearness.

3. But the distance will be that which comes out first and most
strongly. This we see in Moses: he hid his face, for He feared to look
upon God. The first impression which God's Holiness produces is that of
fear and awe. Until man, both as a creature and a sinner, learns how
high God is above him, how different and distant he is from God, the
Holiness of God will have little real value or attraction. Moses hiding
his face shows us the effect of the drawing nigh of the Holy One, and
the path to His further revelation.

How distinctly this comes out in God's own words: 'Draw not nigh hither;
put off thy shoes from off thy feet.' Yes, God had drawn nigh, but Moses
may not. God comes near: man must stand back. In the same breath God
says, Draw nigh, and, Draw not nigh. There can be no knowledge of God or
nearness to Him, where we have not first heard His, Draw not nigh. The
sense of sin, of unfitness for God's presence, is the groundwork of true
knowledge or worship of Him as the Holy One. 'Put off thy shoes from off
thy feet.' The shoes are the means of intercourse with the world, the
aids through which the flesh or nature does its will, moves about and
does its work. In standing upon holy ground, all this must be put away.
It is with naked feet, naked and stript of every covering, that man must
bow before a holy God. Our utter unfitness to draw nigh or have any
dealings with the Holy One, is the very first lesson we have to learn,
if ever we are to participate in His Holiness. That _Put off!_ must
exercise its condemning power through our whole being, until we come to
realize the full extent of its meaning in the great, '_Put off_ the old
man; put on the Lord Jesus,' and what 'the _putting off_ of the body of
the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ,' is. Yes, all that is of
nature and the flesh, all that is of our own doing or willing or
working--our very life, must be put off and given unto the death, if
God, as the Holy One, is to make Himself known to us.

We have seen before that Holiness is more than goodness or freedom from
sin: even unfallen nature is not holy. Holiness is that awful glory by
which Divinity is separated from all that is created. Therefore even the
seraphs veil their faces with their wings when they sing the Thrice
Holy. But oh! when the distance and the difference is not that of the
creature only, but of the sinner, who can express, who can realize, the
humiliation, the fear, the shame with which we ought to bow before the
voice of the Holy One? Alas! this is one of the most terrible effects of
sin, that it blinds us. We know not how unholy, how abominable, sin and
the sinful nature are in God's sight. We have lost the power of
recognising the Holiness of God: heathen philosophy had not even the
idea of using the word as expressive of the moral character of its gods.
In losing the light of the glory of God, we have lost the power of
knowing what sin is. And now God's first work in drawing nigh to us is
to make us feel that we may not draw nigh as we are; that there will
have to be a very real and a very solemn putting off, and even giving up
to the death, of all that appears most lawful and most needful. Not only
our shoes are soiled with contact with this unholy earth; even our face
must be covered and our eyes closed, in token that the eyes of our
heart, all our human wisdom and understanding, are incapable of
beholding the Holy One. The first lesson in the school of personal
holiness is, to fear and hide our face before the Holiness of God. 'Thus
saith the High and Lofty One, whose name is holy, I dwell in the High
and Holy Place, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit.'
Contrition, brokenness of spirit, fear and trembling are God's first
demand of those who would see His Holiness.

Moses was to be the first preacher of the Holiness of God. Of the full
communication of God's Holiness to us in Christ, His first revelation to
Moses was the type and the pledge. From Moses' lips the people of
Israel, from his pen the Church of Christ, was to receive the message,
'Be holy: I am holy: I make holy.' His preparation for being the
messenger of the Holy One was here, where he hid his face, because he
was afraid to look upon God. It is with the face in the dust, it is in
the putting off not only of the shoes, but of all that has been in
contact with the world and self and sin, that the soul draws nigh to the
fire, in which God dwells, and which burns, but does not consume. Oh
that every believer, who seeks to witness for God as the Holy One, might
thus learn how the fulfilment of the type of the Burning Bush is the
Crucified Christ, and how, as we die with Him, we receive that Baptism
of Fire, which reveals in each of us what it means: the Holy One
dwelling in a Burning Bush. Only so can we learn what it is to be holy,
as He is holy.

  BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


Most Holy God! I have seen Thee, who dwellest in the fire. I have heard
Thy voice, Draw not nigh hither; put thy shoes off from thy feet. And my
soul has feared to look upon God, the Holy One.

And yet, O my God! I must see Thee. Thou didst create me for Thy
likeness. Thou hast taught that this likeness is Thy Holiness: 'Be holy,
as I am holy.' O my God! how shall I know to be holy, unless I may see
Thee, the Holy One? To be holy, I must look upon God.

I bless Thee for the revelation of Thyself in the flames of the
thorn-bush, in the fire of the accursed tree. I bow in amazement and
deep abasement at the great sight: Thy Son in the weakness of His human
nature, in the fire, burning but not consumed. O my God! in fear and
trembling I have yielded myself as a sinner to die like Him. Oh, let the
fire consume all that is unholy in me! Let me too know Thee as the God
that dwelleth in the fire, to melt down and purge out and destroy what
is not of Thee, to save and take up into Thine own Holiness what is
Thine own.

O Holy Lord God! I bow in the dust before this great mystery. Reveal to
me Thy Holiness, that I too may be its witness and its messenger on
earth. Amen.


  1. _Holiness as the fire of God._ Praise God that there is a
     Power that can consume the vile and the dross, a Power that
     will not leave it undisturbed. 'The bush burning but not
     consumed' is not only the motto of the Church in time of
     persecution; it is the watchword of every soul in God's
     sanctifying work.

  2. There is a new Theology, which only speaks of the love of
     God as seen in the cross. It sees not the glory of His
     Righteousness, and His righteous judgment. This is not the God
     of Scripture. 'Our God is a consuming fire,' is New Testament
     Theology. To 'offer service with reverence and awe,' is New
     Testament religion. In Holiness, Judgment and Mercy meet.

  3. _Holiness as the fear of God._ Hiding the face before God
     for fear, not daring to look or speak,--this is the beginning
     of rest in God. It is not yet the true rest, but on the way to
     it. May God give us a deep fear of whatever could grieve or
     anger Him. May we have a deep fear of ourselves, and all that
     is of the old, the condemned nature, lest it rise again. 'The
     spirit of the fear of the Lord' is the first manifestation of
     the spirit of holiness, and prepares the way for the joy of
     holiness. 'Walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort
     of the Holy Ghost;' these are the two sides of the Christian
     life.

  4. The Holiness of God was revealed to Moses that he might be
     its messenger. The Church needs nothing so much to-day as men
     and women who can testify for the Holiness of God. Will you be
     one?


NOTE.

The connection between the fear of God and holiness is most intimate.
There are some who seek most earnestly for holiness, and yet never
exhibit it in a light that will attract the world or even believers,
because this element is wanting. It is the fear of the Lord that works
that meekness and gentleness, that deliverance from self-confidence and
self-consciousness, which form the true groundwork of a saintly
character. The passages of God's Word in which the two words are linked
together are well worthy of a careful study. 'Who is like unto Thee,
glorious in _holiness_, _fearful_ in praises?' 'In Thy _fear_ will I
worship towards Thy _holy_ temple.' 'O _fear_ the Lord, ye His _holy
ones_.' 'O worship the Lord, in the beauty of _holiness_; _fear_ before
Him, all the earth.' 'Let them praise Thy great and _terrible_ name;
_holy_ is He.' 'The _fear_ of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and
the knowledge of the _Holy One_ is understanding.' 'The Lord of hosts,
Him shall ye _sanctify_; let Him be your _fear_, and let Him be your
dread.' 'Perfecting _holiness_ in the _fear_ of the Lord.' 'Like as He
which _called you_ is holy, be ye yourselves also _holy_; and if ye
_call on Him_ as father, pass the time of your sojourning in _fear_.'
And so on through the whole of Scripture, from the Song of Moses on to
the Song of the Lamb: 'Who shall not _fear_ Thee, O Lord! and glorify
Thy name, for Thou only art _holy_.' If we yield ourselves to the
impression of such passages, we shall feel more deeply that the fear of
God, the tender fear of in any way offending Him, the fear especially of
entering into His holy presence with what is human and carnal, with
aught of our own wisdom and effort, is of the very essence of the
holiness we are to follow after. It is this fear of God will make us,
like Moses, fall down and hide our face in God's presence, and wait for
His own Holy Spirit to open in us the eyes, and breathe in us the
thoughts and the worship, with which we draw nigh to Him, the Holy One.
It is in this holy fear that that stillness of soul is wrought which
leads it to rest in God, and opens the way for what we saw in Paradise
to be the secret of holiness: God keeping His Sabbath, and sanctifying
the soul in which He rests.




Fifth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Redemption.

  '_Sanctify_ unto _me_ all the first-born.'--Ex. xiii. 2.

  'All the first-born _are mine_; for on the day I smote all the
  first-born in the land of Egypt _I sanctified_ unto _me_ all the
  first-born in Israel: _mine_ they shall be: I am the Lord.'--Num.
  iii. 13, viii. 17.

  'For I am the Lord your God that bringeth you up out of the land
  of Egypt to be your God: ye shall therefore _be holy_, for I am
  _holy_.'--Lev. xi. 45.

  'I have redeemed thee; thou art mine.'--Isa. xliii. 1.


At Horeb we saw how the first mention of the word holy in the history of
fallen man was connected with the inauguration of a new period in the
revelation of God, that of Redemption. In the passover we have the first
manifestation of what Redemption is; and here the more frequent use of
the word holy begins. In the feast of unleavened bread we have the
symbol of the putting off of the old and the putting on of the new, to
which redemption through blood is to lead. Of the seven days we read:
'In the first day there shall be an _holy_ convocation, and in the
seventh day there shall be an _holy_ convocation;' the meeting of the
redeemed people to commemorate its deliverance is a holy gathering; they
meet under the covering of their Redeemer, the Holy One. As soon as the
people had been redeemed from Egypt, God's very first word to them was,
'Sanctify--make holy unto me all the first-born: it is mine.' (See Ex.
xiii. 2.) The word reveals how proprietorship is one of the central
thoughts both in redemption and in sanctification, the link that binds
them together. And though the word is here only used of the first-born,
they are regarded as the type of the whole people. We know how all
growth and organization commence from a centre, around which in
ever-widening circles the life of the organism spreads. If holiness in
the human race is to be true and real, free as that of God, it must be
the result of a self-appropriating development. And so the first-born
are sanctified, and afterwards the priests in their place, as the type
of what the whole people is to be as God's first-born among the nations,
His peculiar treasure, 'an holy nation.' This idea of proprietorship as
related to redemption and sanctification comes out with especial
clearness when God speaks of the exchange of the priests for the
first-born (Num. iii. 12, 13, viii. 16, 17): 'The Levites are _wholly
given unto me_; instead of the first-born have I _taken them unto me_;
for all the first-born _are mine_; in the day that I smote every
first-born in the land of Egypt _I sanctified them for myself_.'

Let us try and realize the relation existing between redemption and
holiness. In Paradise we saw what God's sanctifying the seventh day was:
He took possession of it, He blessed it, He rested in it and refreshed
Himself. Where God enters and rests, there is holiness: the more
perfectly the object is fitted for Him to enter and dwell, the more
perfect the holiness. The seventh day was sanctified as the period for
man's sanctification. At the very first step God took to lead him to His
Holiness--the command not to eat of the tree--man fell. God did not give
up His plan, but had now to pursue a different and slower path. After
twenty-five centuries' slow but needful preparation, He now reveals
Himself as the Redeemer. A people whom He had chosen and formed for
Himself He gives up to oppression and slavery, that their hearts may be
prepared to long for and welcome a Deliverer. In a series of mighty
wonders He proves Himself the Conqueror of their enemies, and then, in
the blood of the Paschal Lamb on their doors, teaches them what
redemption is, not only from an unjust oppressor here on earth, but from
the righteous judgment their sins had deserved. The Passover is to be to
them the transition from the seen and temporal to the unseen and
spiritual, revealing God not only as the Mighty but as the Holy One,
freeing them not only from the house of bondage but the Destroying
Angel.

And having thus redeemed them, He tells them that they are now His own.
During their stay at Sinai and in the wilderness, the thought is
continually pressed upon them that they are now the Lord's people, whom
He has made His own by the strength of His arm, that He may make them
holy for Himself, even as He is holy. The purpose of redemption is
Possession, and the purpose of Possession is likeness to Him who is
Redeemer and Owner, is Holiness.

In regard to this Holiness, and the way it is to be attained as the
result of redemption, there is more than one lesson the sanctifying of
the first-born will teach us.

First of all, we want to realize how inseparable redemption and holiness
are. Neither can exist without the other. _Only redemption leads to
holiness._ If I am seeking holiness, I must abide in the clear and full
experience of being a redeemed one, and as such of being owned and
possessed by God. Redemption is too often looked at from its negative
side as deliverance from: its real glory is the positive element of
being redeemed unto Himself. Full possession of a house means
occupation: if I own a house without occupying it, it may be the home of
all that is foul and evil. God has redeemed me and made me His own with
the view of getting complete possession of me. He says of my soul, 'It
is mine,' and seeks to have His right of ownership acknowledged and made
fully manifest. That will be perfect holiness, where God has entered in
and taken complete and entire possession.[2] It is redemption gives God
His right and power over me; it is redemption sets me free for God now
to possess and bless: it is redemption realized and filling my soul,
that will bring me the assurance and experience of all His power will
work in me. In God, redemption and sanctification are one: the more
redemption as a Divine reality possesses me, the closer am I linked to
the Redeemer-God, the Holy One.

And just so, _only holiness brings the assurance and enjoyment of
redemption_. If I am seeking to hold fast redemption on lower ground, I
may be deceived. If I have become unwatchful or careless, I should
tremble at the very idea of trusting in redemption apart from holiness
as its object. To Israel God spake, 'I brought you up out of the land of
Egypt: _therefore_ ye shall be holy, for I am holy.' It is God the
Redeemer who made us His own, who calls us too to be holy: let Holiness
be to us the most essential, the most precious part of redemption: the
yielding of ourselves to Him who has _taken_ us as His own, and has
undertaken to _make_ us His own entirely.

A second lesson suggested is the connection between God's and man's
working in sanctification. To Moses the Lord speaks, '_Sanctify_ unto me
all the first-born.' He afterwards says, '_I sanctified_ all the
first-born for myself.' What God does He does to be carried out and
appropriated through us. When He tells us that we are made holy in
Christ Jesus, that we are His holy ones, He speaks not only of His
purpose, but of what He has really done; we have been sanctified in the
one offering of Christ, and in our being created anew in Him. But this
work has a human side. To us comes the call to be holy, to follow after
holiness, to perfect holiness. God has made us His own, and allows us to
say that we are His: but He waits for us now to yield Him an enlarged
entrance into the secret places of our inner being, for Him to fill it
all with His fulness. Holiness is not something we bring to God or do
for Him. Holiness is what there is of God in us. God has made us His own
in redemption, that He might make Himself our own in sanctification. And
our work in becoming holy is the bringing our whole life, and every part
of it, into subjection to the rule of this holy God, putting every
member and every power upon His altar.

And this teaches us the answer to the question as to the connection
between the sudden and the gradual in sanctification: between its being
a thing once for all complete, and yet imperfect and needing to be
perfected. What God sanctifies is holy with a Divine and perfect
holiness as His gift: man has to sanctify by acknowledging and
maintaining and carrying out that holiness in relation to what God has
made holy. God sanctified the Sabbath day: man has to sanctify it, that
is, to keep it holy. God sanctified the first-born as His own: Israel
had to sanctify them, to treat them and give them up to God as holy. God
is holy: we are to sanctify Him in acknowledging and adoring and
honouring that holiness. God has sanctified His great name, His name is
Holy: we sanctify or hallow that name as we fear and trust and use it
as the revelation of His Holiness. God sanctified Christ: Christ
sanctified Himself, manifesting in His personal will and action perfect
conformity to the Holiness with which God had made Him holy. God has
sanctified us in Christ Jesus: we are to be holy by yielding ourselves
to the power of that holiness, by acting it out, and manifesting it in
all our life and walk. The objective Divine gift, bestowed once for all
and completely, must be appropriated as a subjective personal
possession; we must cleanse ourselves, perfecting holiness. Redeemed
unto holiness: as the two thoughts are linked in the mind and work of
God, they must be linked in our heart and life.

When Isaiah announced the second, the true redemption, it was given to
him, even more clearly and fully than to Moses, to reveal the name of
God as 'The Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.' The more we study this
name, and hallow it, and worship God by it, the more inseparably will
the words become connected, and we shall see how, as the Redeemer is the
Holy One, the redeemed are holy ones too. Isaiah says of 'the way of
holiness,' the 'redeemed shall walk therein.' The redemption that comes
out from the Holiness of God must lead up into it too. We shall
understand that to be redeemed in Christ is to be holy in Christ, and
the call of our redeeming God will acquire new meaning: 'I am _holy_:
_be ye holy_.'

  BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


O Lord God! the Holy One of Israel and his Redeemer! I worship before
Thee in deep humility. I confess with shame that I so long sought Thee
more as the Redeemer than as the Holy One. I knew not that it was as the
Holy One Thou hadst redeemed, that redemption was the outcome and the
fruit of Thy Holiness; that a participation in Thy Holiness was its one
purpose and its highest beauty. I only thought of being redeemed from
bondage and death: like Israel, I understood not that without fellowship
and conformity to Thyself redemption would lose its value.

Most holy God! I praise Thee for the patience with which Thou bearest
with the selfishness and the slowness of Thy redeemed ones. I praise
Thee for the teaching of the Spirit of Thy Holiness, leading Thy saints,
and me too, to see how it is Thy Holiness, and the call to become
partaker of it, that gives redemption its value; how it is for Thyself
as the Holy One, to be Thine own, possessed and sanctified of Thee, that
we are redeemed.

O my God! with a love and a joy and a thanksgiving that cannot be
uttered, I praise Thee for Christ, who has been made unto us of Thee
sanctification and redemption. In Him Thou art my Redeemer, my Holy One.
In Him I am Thy redeemed, Thy holy one. O God! in speechless adoration I
fall down to worship the love that passeth knowledge, that hath done
this for us, and to believe that in one who is now before Thee, holy in
Christ, Thou wilt fulfil all Thy glorious purposes according to the
greatness of Thy power. Amen.


  1. 'Redemption through His blood.' The blood we meet at the
     threshold of the pathway of Holiness. For it is the blood of
     the sacrifice which the fire of God consumed, and yet could not
     consume. That blood has such power of holiness in it, that we
     read, 'Sanctified by His own blood.' Always think of holiness,
     or pray for it, as one redeemed by blood. Live under the
     covering of the blood in its daily cleansing power.

  2. It is only as we know the Holiness of God as Fire, and bow
     before His righteous judgment, that we can appreciate the
     preciousness of the blood or the reality of the redemption. As
     long as we only think of the love of God as goodness, we may
     aim at being good; faith in God who redeems will waken in us
     the need and the joy of being _holy in Christ_.

  3. Have you understood the right of property God has in what He
     has redeemed? Have you heard a voice say, _Mine. Thou art
     Mine._ Ask God very humbly to speak it to you. Listen very
     gently for it.

  4. The holiness of the creature has its origin in the Divine
     will, in the Divine election, redemption, and possession. Give
     yourself up to this will of God and rejoice in it.

  5. As God created, so He redeemed, to sanctify. Have great
     faith in Him for this.

  6. Let God have the entire possession and disposal of you.
     Holiness is His; our holiness is to let Him, the Holy One, be
     all.


    [2] See Note A on Holiness as Proprietorship.




Sixth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Glory.

  'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! among the gods?
  Who is like unto Thee, _glorious in holiness_,
  Fearful in praises, doing wonders?
  Thou in Thy mercy hast led Thy people which Thou hast redeemed:
  Thou hast guided them in Thy strength to the habitation of
      _Thy holiness_ ...
  _The holy place_, O Lord, which Thy hands have established.'

        --Ex. xv. 11-17.


In these words we have another step in advance in the revelation of
Holiness. We have here for the first time Holiness predicated of God
Himself. _He is_ glorious in holiness: and it is to the dwelling-place
of _His Holiness_ that He is guiding His people.

Let us first note the expression used here: glorious in holiness.
Throughout Scripture we find the glory and the holiness of God mentioned
together. In Ex. xxix. 43 we read, 'And the tent shall be _made holy_ by
my _glory_,' that glory of the Lord of which we afterwards read that it
filled the house. The glory of an object, of a thing or person, is its
intrinsic worth or excellence: to glorify is to remove everything that
could hinder the full revelation of that excellence. In the Holiness of
God His glory is hidden; in the glory of God His Holiness is manifested:
His glory, the revelation of Himself as the Holy One, would make the
house holy. In the same way the two are connected in Lev. x. 3, 'I will
be _sanctified_ in them that come nigh unto me, and before all the
people I will be _glorified_.' The acknowledgment of His Holiness in the
priests would be the manifestation of His glory to the people. So, too,
in the song of the Seraphim (Isa. vi. 3), '_Holy, holy, holy_, Lord God
of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His _glory_.' God is He who
dwelleth in a light that is unapproachable, whom no man hath seen or can
see: it is the _light_ of the knowledge of the _glory_ of God that He
gives into our hearts. The glory is that which can be seen and known of
the invisible and unapproachable light: that light itself, and the
glorious fire of which that light is the shining out, that light is the
Holiness of God. Holiness is not so much an attribute of God, as the
comprehensive summary of all His perfections.

It is on the shore of the Red Sea that Israel thus praises God: 'Who is
like unto Thee, O Lord! Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness?' He
is the Incomparable One, there is none like Him. And wherein has He
proved this, and revealed the glory of His Holiness? With Moses in
Horeb we saw God's glory in the fire, in its double aspect of salvation
and destruction: consuming what could not be purified, purifying what
was not consumed. We see it here too in the song of Moses: Israel sings
of judgment and of mercy. The pillar of fire and of the cloud came
between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel: it was a cloud
and darkness to those, but it gave light by night to these. The two
thoughts run through the whole song. But in the two verses that follow
the ascription of holiness, we find the sum of the whole. 'Thou
stretchedst out Thy right hand: the earth swallowed them.' 'The Lord
looked forth upon the host of the Egyptians from the pillar of fire and
discomfited them.' This is the glory of Holiness as judgment and
destruction of the enemy. 'Thou in Thy mercy hast led _Thy people_ which
thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided _them_ in Thy strength to the
habitation of Thy Holiness.' This is the glory of Holiness in mercy and
redemption--a Holiness that not only delivers but guides to the
habitation of holiness, where the Holy One is to dwell with and in His
people. In the inspiration of the hour of triumph it is thus early
revealed that the great object and fruit of redemption, as wrought out
by the Holy One, is to be His indwelling: with nothing short of this can
the Holy One rest content, or the full glory of His Holiness be made
manifest.

And now, observe further, how, as it is in the redemption of His people
that God's Holiness is revealed, so it is in the song of redemption that
the personal ascription of Holiness to God is found. We know how in
Scripture, after some striking special interposition of God as Redeemer,
the special influence of the Spirit is manifested in some song of
praise. It is remarkable how it is in these outbursts of holy
enthusiasm, God is praised as the Holy One. See it in the song of Hannah
(1 Sam. ii. 2), 'There is none holy as the Lord.' The language of the
Seraphim (Isa. vi.) is that of a song of adoration. In the great day of
Israel's deliverance the song will be, 'The Lord Jehovah is become my
strength and song. Sing unto the Lord, for He hath done excellent
things. Cry aloud and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is _the
Holy One_ of Israel in the midst of thee.' Mary sings, 'For He that is
mighty hath done great things to me: and _holy_ is His name.' The book
of Revelation reveals the living creatures giving glory and honour and
thanks to Him that sitteth on the throne; 'and they have no rest day and
night, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, which
was, and which is, and which is to come.' And when the song of Moses and
of the Lamb is sung by the sea of glass, it will still be, 'Who shall
not fear, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy.' It is
in the moments of highest inspiration, under the fullest manifestation
of God's redeeming power, that His servants speak of His Holiness. In
Ps. xcvii. we read, 'Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous, and give thanks
at the remembrance of His Holiness.' And in Ps. xcix., which has, with
its thrice repeated holy, been called the echo on earth of the Thrice
Holy of heaven, we sing--

  Let them praise Thy great and terrible name.
  HOLY IS HE.

  Exalt ye the Lord our God,
  and worship at His footstool:
  HOLY IS HE.

  Exalt ye the Lord our God,
  and worship at His holy hill:
  For the Lord our God is HOLY.

It is only under the influence of high spiritual elevation and joy that
God's holiness can be fully apprehended or rightly worshipped. The
sentiment that becomes us as we worship the Holy One, that fits us for
knowing and worshipping Him aright, is the spirit of praise that sings
and shouts for joy in the experience of His full salvation.

But is not this at variance with the lesson we learnt at Horeb, when God
spake, 'Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes,' and where Moses feared
and hid his face? And is not this in very deed the posture that becomes
us as creatures and sinners? It is indeed: and yet the two sentiments
are not at variance: rather they are indispensable to each other; the
fear is the preparation for the praise and the glory. Or is it not that
same Moses who hid his face and feared to look upon God, who afterwards
beheld His glory until his own face shone with a brightness that men
could not bear to look upon? And is not the song that sings here of God
as glorious in holiness, also the song of Moses who feared and hid his
face? Have we not seen in the fire, and in God, and specially in His
Holiness, the twofold aspect; consuming and purifying, repelling and
attracting, judging and saving, with the latter in each case not only
the accompaniment but the result of the former? And so we shall find
that the deeper the humbling and the fear in God's Holy Presence, and
the more real and complete the putting off of all that is of self and of
nature, even to the putting off, the complete death of the old man and
his will, the more hearty the giving up to be consumed of what is
sinful, the deeper and fuller will be the praise and joy with which we
daily sing our song of redemption: 'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord,
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?'

'_Glorious_ in holiness; _fearful_ in praises:' the song itself
harmonizes the apparently conflicting elements. Yes, I will sing of
judgment and of mercy. I will rejoice with trembling as I praise the
Holy One. As I look upon the two sides of His Holiness, as revealed to
the Egyptians and the Israelites, I remember that what was there
separated is in me united. By nature I am the Egyptian, an enemy doomed
to destruction; by grace, an Israelite chosen for redemption. In me the
fire must consume and destroy; only as judgment does its work, can mercy
fully save. It is only as I tremble before the Searching Light and the
Burning Fire and the Consuming Heat of the Holy One, as I yield the
Egyptian nature to be judged and condemned and slain, that the Israelite
will be redeemed to know aright his God as the God of salvation, and to
rejoice in Him.

Blessed be God! the judgment is past. In Christ, the burning bush, the
fire of the Divine Holiness did its double work: in Him sin was
condemned in the flesh; in Him we are free. In giving up His will to the
death, and doing God's will, Christ sanctified Himself; and in that will
we are sanctified too. His crucifixion, with its judgment of the flesh,
His death, with its entire putting off of what is of nature, is not only
for us, but is really ours; a life and a power working within us by His
Spirit. Day by day we abide in Him. Tremblingly but rejoicingly we take
our stand in Him, for the Power of Holiness as Judgment to vindicate
within us its fierce vengeance against what is sin and flesh, and so to
let the Power of Holiness as Redemption accomplish that glorious work
that makes us give thanks at the remembrance of His Holiness. And so the
shout of Salvation rings ever deeper and truer and louder through our
life, 'Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like unto
Thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?'

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


'_Who_ is like unto Thee, O Lord! glorious in holiness, fearful in
praises, doing wonders?' With my whole heart would I join in this song
of redemption, and rejoice in Thee as the God of my salvation.

O my God! let Thy Spirit, from whom these words of holy joy and triumph
came, so reveal within me the great redemption as a personal experience,
that my whole life may be one song of trembling and adoring wonder.

I beseech Thee especially, let my whole heart be filled with Thyself,
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, who alone doest wonders. Let
the fear of Thy Holiness make me tremble at all there is in me of self
and flesh, and lead me in my worship to deny and crucify my own wisdom,
that the Spirit of Thy Holiness may breathe in me. Let the fear of the
Lord give its deep undertone to all my coming in and going out in Thy
Holy Presence. Prepare me thus for giving praise without ceasing at the
remembrance of Thy holiness. O my God! I would rejoice in Thee as my
Redeemer, MY HOLY ONE, with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. As my
Redeemer, Thou makest me holy. With my whole heart do I trust Thee to do
it, to sanctify me wholly. I do believe in Thy promise. I do believe in
Thyself, and believing I receive Thee, the Holy One, my Redeemer.

Who is like unto Thee, O Lord! glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,
doing wonders?


  1. _God's Holiness as Glory._ God is glorified in the holiness
     of His people. True holiness always gives glory to God alone.
     Live to the glory of God: that is holiness. Live holily: that
     will glorify God. To lose sight of self, and seek only God's
     glory, is holiness.

  2. _Our Holiness as Praise._ Praise gives glory to God, and is
     thus an element of holiness. 'Thou art holy, Thou that
     inhabitest the praises of Israel.'

  3. God's Holiness, His holy redeeming love, is cause of unceasing
     joy and praise. Praise God every day for it. But you cannot do
     this unless you live in it. May God's holiness become so
     glorious to us, as we understand that whatever we see of His
     glory is just the outshining of His holiness, that we cannot
     help rejoicing in it, and in Him the Holy One.

  4. The spirit of the fear of the Lord and the spirit of praise
     may, at first sight, appear to be at variance. But it is not
     so. The humility that fears the Holy One will also praise Him:
     'Ye that fear the Lord: praise the Lord.' The lower we lie in
     the fear of God, and the fear of self, the more surely will He
     lift us up in due time to praise Him.




Seventh Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Obedience.

  'Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bare you on
  eagles' wings, and brought you _unto myself_. Now therefore, if ye
  will _obey my voice indeed_, and keep my covenant, ye shall be a
  peculiar treasure unto me above all people: ye shall be unto me an
  _holy_ nation.'--Ex. xix. 4-6.


Israel has reached Horeb. The law is to be given and the covenant made.
Here are God's first words to the people; He speaks of redemption and
its blessing, fellowship with Himself: 'Ye have seen how I brought you
_unto myself_.' He speaks of holiness as His purpose in redemption: 'Ye
shall be unto me an _holy_ nation.' And as the link between the two He
places obedience: 'If ye will indeed _obey_ my voice, ye shall be unto
me an _holy_ nation.' God's will is the expression of His holiness; as
we do His will, we come into contact with His holiness. The link between
Redemption and Holiness is Obedience.

This takes us back to what we saw in Paradise. God sanctified the
seventh day as the time for sanctifying man. And what was the first
thing He did with this purpose? He gave him a commandment. Obedience to
that commandment would have opened the door, would have been the
entrance, into the Holiness of God. Holiness is a moral attribute; and
moral is that which a free will chooses and determines for itself. What
God creates and gives is only naturally good; what man wills to have of
God and His will, and really appropriates, has moral worth, and leads to
holiness. In creation God manifested His wise and good will. His holy
will He speaks in His commands. As that holy will enters man's will, as
man's will accepts and unites itself with God's will, he becomes holy.
After creation, in the seventh day, God took man up into His work of
sanctification to make him holy. Obedience is the path to holiness,
because it is the path to union with God's holy will; with man unfallen,
as with fallen man, in redemption here and in glory above, in all the
holy angels, in Christ the Holy One of God Himself, obedience is the
path of holiness. It is not itself holiness: but as the will opens
itself to accept and to do the will of God, God communicates Himself and
His Holiness. To obey His voice is to follow Him as He leads in the way
to the full revelation and communication of Himself and His blessed
nature as the Holy One.

Obedience. Not knowledge of the will of God, not even approval, not even
the will to do it, but the doing of it. Knowledge, and approval, and
will must lead to action; the will of God must be _done_. 'If ye indeed
obey my voice, ye shall be unto me an holy nation.' It is not faith, and
not worship, and not profession, that God here asks in the first place
from His people when He speaks of holiness; it is obedience. God's will
must be _done_ on earth, as in heaven. 'Remember _and do_ all my
commandments, that ye may be holy to your God' (Num. xv. 40). 'Sanctify
yourselves therefore, and be ye holy; and ye shall keep my statutes _and
do_ them. I am the Lord which sanctify you' (Lev. xx. 7, 8). 'Therefore
shall ye keep my commandments _and do_ them: I am the Lord: I will be
hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the Lord which hallow you,
that brought you up out of the land of Egypt' (xxii 21, 33).

A moment's reflection will make the reason of this clear to us. It is in
a man's work that he manifests what he is. I may know what is good, and
yet not approve it. I may approve, and yet not will it. I may in a
certain sense will it, and yet be wanting in the energy, or the
self-sacrifice, or the power that will rouse and do the thing. Thinking
is easier than willing, and willing is easier than doing. Action alone
proves whether the object of my interest has complete mastery over me.
God wants His will _done_. This alone is obedience. In this alone it is
seen whether the whole heart, with all its strength and will, has given
itself over to the will of God; whether we live it, and are ready at any
sacrifice to make it our own by doing it. God has no other way for
making us holy. 'Ye shall keep my statutes _and do_ them: I am the Lord
which make you holy.'

To all seekers after holiness this is a lesson of deep importance.
Obedience is not holiness; holiness is something far higher, something
that comes from God to us, or rather, something of God coming into us.
But obedience is _indispensable_ to holiness: it cannot exist without
it. While, therefore, your heart seeks to follow the teaching of God's
word, and looks in faith to what God has done, as He has made you _holy
in Christ_, and to what God is still to do through the Spirit of
Holiness as He fulfils the promise, 'The very God of peace sanctify you
wholly,' never for one moment forget to be obedient. 'If ye shall indeed
obey my voice, ye shall be an holy nation to me.' Begin by doing at once
whatever appears right to do. Give up at once whatever conscience tells
that you dare not say is according to the will of God. Not only pray for
light and strength, but _act_; do what God says. 'He that _doeth_ the
will of God is my brother,' Jesus says. Every son of God has been
begotten of the will of God: in it he has his life. To do the Father's
will is the meat, the strength, the mark, of every son of God.

It is nothing less than the surrender to such a life of simple and
entire obedience that is implied in becoming a Christian. There are,
alas! too many Christians who, from the want either of proper
instruction, or of proper attention to the teaching of God's word, have
never realized the place of supreme importance that obedience takes in
the Christian life. They know not that Christ, and redemption, and faith
all lead to it, because through it alone is the way to the fellowship of
the Love, and the Likeness, and the Glory of God. We have all, possibly,
suffered from it ourselves: in our prayers and efforts after the perfect
peace and the rest of faith, after the abiding joy and the increasing
power of the Christian life, there has been a secret something hindering
the blessing, or causing the speedy loss of what had been apprehended. A
wrong impression as to the absolute necessity of obedience was probably
the cause. It cannot too earnestly be insisted on that the freeness and
mighty power of grace has this for its object from our conversion
onwards, the restoring us to the active obedience and harmony with God's
will from which we had fallen through the first sin in Paradise.
Obedience leads to God and His Holiness. It is in obedience that the
will is moulded, and the character fashioned, and an inner man built up
which God can clothe and adorn with the beauty of holiness.

When a Christian discovers that this has been the missing link, the
cause of failure and darkness, there is nothing for it but, in a grand
act of surrender, deliberately to choose obedience, universal,
whole-hearted obedience, as the law of his life in the power of the Holy
Spirit. Let him not fear to make his own the words of Israel at Sinai,
in answer to the message of God we are considering: 'All that the Lord
hath spoken, _we will do_;' 'All that the Lord hath said _will we do_,
and be obedient.' What the law could not do, in that it was weak through
the flesh, God hath done by the gift of His Son and Spirit. The
law-giving of Sinai on tables of stone has been succeeded by the
law-giving of the Spirit on the table of the heart: the Holy Spirit is
the power of obedience, and is so the Spirit of Holiness, who, in
obedience, prepares our hearts for being the dwelling of the Holy One.
Let us in this faith yield ourselves to a life of obedience: it is the
New Testament path to the realization of the promise: 'If ye will _obey_
my voice indeed, ye shall be unto me an _holy_ nation.'

We have already seen how holiness in its very nature supposes the
personal relation to God, His personal presence. 'I have brought you
_unto myself_; if ye obey, ye shall be _unto me_ an holy nation.' It is
as we understand and hold fast this personal element that obedience will
become possible, and will lead to holiness. Mark well God's words: 'If
ye will obey my _voice_, and keep my covenant.' The voice is more than a
law or a book; it always implies a living person and intercourse with
him. It is this that is the secret of gospel obedience: hearing the
voice and following the lead of Jesus as a personal friend, a living
Saviour. It is being led by the Spirit of God, having Him to reveal the
Presence, and the Will, and the Love of the Father, that will work in us
that personal relation which the New Testament means when it speaks of
doing everything unto the Lord, as pleasing God.

Such obedience is the pathway of holiness. Its every act is a link to
the living God, a surrender of the being for God's will, for God Himself
to take possession. In the process of assimilation, slow but sure, by
which the will of God, as the meat of our souls, is taken up into our
inmost being, our spiritual nature is strengthened, is spiritualized,
growing up into an holy temple in which God can reveal Himself and take
up His abode.

Let every believer study to realize this. When God sanctified the
seventh day as His period of making holy, He taught us that He could not
do it at once. The revelation and communication of holiness must be
gradual, as man is prepared to receive it. God's sanctifying work with
each of us, as with the race, needs time. The time it needs and seeks is
the life of daily, hourly obedience. All that is spent in self-will, and
not in the living relation to the Lord, is lost. But when the heart
seeks day by day to hearken to the voice and to obey it, the Holy One
Himself watches over His words to fulfil them: 'Ye shall be unto me an
holy nation.' In a way of which the soul beforehand can have but little
conception, God will overshadow and make His abode in the obedient
heart. The habit of always listening for the voice and obeying it will
only be the building of the temple: the Living God Himself, the Holy
One, will come to take up His abode. The glory of the Lord will fill
the house, and the promise be made true, 'I will sanctify it by my
glory.'

'I brought you _unto myself_; if ye will obey _my voice_ in deed, ye
shall be _unto me_ an holy nation.' Seekers after holiness! God has
brought you to Himself. And now His voice speaks to you all the thoughts
of His heart, that as you take them in, and make them your own, and make
His will your own by living and doing it, you may enter into the most
complete union with Himself, the union of will as well as of life, and
so become a holy people unto Him. Let obedience, the listening to and
the doing the will of God, be the joy and the glory of your life; it
will give you access unto the Holiness of God.

  BE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


O my God! Thou hast redeemed me for Thyself, that Thou mightest have me
wholly as Thine own, possessing, filling my inmost being with Thy own
likeness, Thy perfect will, and the glory of Thy Holiness. And Thou
seekest to train me, in the power of a free and loving will, to take Thy
will and make it my own, that in the very centre of my being I may have
Thine own perfection dwelling in me. And in Thy words Thou revealest Thy
will, that as I accept and keep them I may master their Divine contents,
and will all that Thou willest.

O my God! let me live day by day in such fellowship with Thee, that I
may indeed in everything hear Thy voice, the living voice of the living
God speaking to me. Let the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Thy Holiness, be
to me Thy voice guiding me in the path of simple, childlike obedience. I
do bless Thee that I have seen that Christ, in whom I am holy, was the
obedient one, that in obedience He sanctified Himself to become my
sanctification, and that abiding in Him, Thy obedient, holy Child, is
abiding in Thy will as once done by Him, and now to be done by me. O my
God! I will indeed obey Thy will: make Thou me one of Thy holy nation, a
peculiar treasure above all people. Amen.


  1. 'He became obedient unto death.' 'Though He was a Son, yet He
     learned obedience by the things which He suffered.' 'I come to
     do Thy will.' 'In which will we are sanctified.' Christ's
     example teaches us that obedience is the only path to the
     Holiness or the glory of God. Be this your consecration: a
     surrender in everything to seek and do the will of God.

  2. We are 'holy in Christ'--in this Christ who did the will of
     God and was obedient to the death. In Him it is we are; in Him
     we are holy. His obedience is the soil in which we are planted,
     and must be rooted. 'It is my meat to do His will;' obedience
     was the sustenance of His life; in doing God's will He drew
     down Divine nourishment; it must be so with us too.

  3. As you study what it is to be and abide in Christ, as you
     rejoice you are in Him, always remember it is Christ who obeyed
     in whom God has planted you.

  4. If ever you feel perplexed about holiness, just yield yourself
     again to do God's will, and go and do it. It is ours to obey,
     it is God's to sanctify.

  5. _Holy in Christ._ Christ sanctified Himself by obedience, by
     doing the will of God, and in that will, as done by Him, we
     have been sanctified. In accepting that will as done by Him, in
     accepting Him, _I am holy_. In accepting that will of God, as
     to be done by me, _I become holy_. I am in Him; in every act of
     living obedience, I enter into living fellowship with Him, and
     draw the power of His life into mine.

  6. Obedience depends upon hearing the voice. Do not imagine you
     know the will of God. Pray and wait for the inward teaching of
     the Spirit.




Eighth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Indwelling.

  'And let them make me _a holy place_, that I may _dwell_ among
  them.'--Ex. xxv. 8.

  'And the tent shall be _sanctified_ by my glory, and I will
  _dwell_ among the children of Israel, and will be their God.'--Ex.
  xxix. 43, 45.


The Presence of God makes holy, even when it descends but for a little
while, as at Horeb, in the burning bush. How much more must that
Presence make holy the place where it dwells, where it fixes its
permanent abode! So much is this the case, that the place where God
dwells came to be called _the_ holy place, 'the holy place of the
habitation of the Most High.' All around where God dwelt was holy: the
holy city, the mountain of God's Holiness, His holy house, till we come
within the veil, to the most holy place, the holy of holies. It is as
_the indwelling God_ that He sanctifies His house, that He reveals
Himself as the Holy One in Israel, that He makes us holy too.

Because God is holy, _the house_ in which He dwells is holy too. This
is the only attribute of God which He can communicate to His house; but
this one He can and does communicate. Among men there is a very close
link between the character of a house and its occupants. When there is
no obstacle to prevent it, the house unintentionally reflects the
master's likeness. Holiness expresses not so much an attribute as the
very being of God in His infinite perfection, and His house testifies to
this one truth, that He is holy, that where He dwells He must have
holiness, that His indwelling makes holy. In His first command to His
people to build Him a holy place, God distinctly said that it was that
He might dwell among them: the dwelling in the house was to be the
shadowing forth of His dwelling in the midst of His people. The house
with its holiness thus leads us on to the holiness of His dwelling among
His redeemed ones.

The holy place, the habitation of God's Holiness, was the centre of all
God's work in making _Israel_ holy. Everything connected with it was
holy. The altar, the priests, the sacrifices, the oil, the bread, the
vessels, all were holy, because they belonged to God. From the house
there issued the twofold voice--God's call to be holy, God's promise to
make holy. God's claim was manifested in the demand for cleansing, for
atonement, for holiness, in all who were to draw near, whether as
priests or worshippers. And God's promise shone forth from His house in
the provision for making holy, in the sanctifying power of the altar, of
the blood and the oil. The house embodied the two sides that are united
in holiness, the repelling and the attracting, the condemning and the
saving. Now by keeping the people at a distance, then by inviting and
bringing them nigh, God's house was the great symbol of His own
Holiness. He had come nigh even to dwell among them; and yet they might
not come nigh, they might never enter the secret place of His presence.

All these things are written on our behalf. It is as the Indwelling One
that God is the sanctifier of _His people_ still: the Indwelling
Presence alone makes us holy. This comes out with special clearness if
we note how, the nearer the Presence was, the greater the degree of
holiness. Because God dwelt among them, the camp was holy: all
uncleanness was to be removed from it. But the holiness of the court of
the tabernacle was greater: uncleanness which did not exclude from the
camp would not be tolerated there. Then the holy place was still holier,
because still nearer God. And the inner sanctuary, where the Presence
dwelt on the mercy-seat, was the Holiest of All, was most holy. The
principle still holds good: holiness is measured by nearness to God; the
more of His Presence, the more of true holiness; perfect indwelling will
be perfect holiness. There is none holy but the Lord; there is no
holiness but in Him. He cannot part with somewhat of His holiness, and
give it to us apart from Himself; we have only so much of holiness as we
have of God Himself. And to have Himself truly and fully, we must have
Him as the Indwelling One. And His indwelling in a house or locality,
without life or spirit, is only a faint shadow of the true indwelling as
the Living One, when He enters into and penetrates our very being, and
fills us, our very selves, with His own life.

There is no union so intimate, so real, so perfect, as that of an
indwelling life. Think of the life that circulates through a large and
fruitful tree. How it penetrates and fills every portion; how
inseparably it unites the whole as long as it really is to exist!--in
wood and leaf, in flower and fruit, everywhere the indwelling life flows
and fills. This life is the life of nature, the life of the Spirit of
God which dwells in nature. It is the same life that animates our
bodies, the spirit of nature pervading every portion of them with the
power of sensibility and action.

Not less intimate, yea rather, far more wonderful and real, is the
indwelling of the Spirit of the New Life, through whom God dwells in the
heart of the believer. And it is as this indwelling becomes a matter of
conscious longing and faith, that the soul obeys the command, 'Let them
make me a holy place, that I may dwell among them,' and experiences the
truth of the promise, 'The tent shall be sanctified by my glory, and I
will dwell among the children of Israel.'

It was as the Indwelling One that God revealed Himself in the Son, whom
He sanctified and sent into the world. More than once our Lord insisted
upon it, 'Believe me, that I am in the Father and _the Father in me_;
the Father _abiding in me_ doeth the works.' It is specially as the
temple of God that believers are more than once called holy in the New
Testament: 'The temple of God is _holy_, which temple ye are.' 'Your
body is a temple of the _Holy_ Spirit.' 'All the building groweth unto
an holy temple in the Lord.' It is--we shall later on learn to
understand this better--just because it is through the Spirit that the
heart is prepared for the indwelling, and the indwelling effected and
maintained, that the Spirit so peculiarly takes the attribute of Holy.
The Indwelling Spirit is the Holy Spirit. The measure of His indwelling,
or rather of His revealing the Indwelling Christ, is the measure of
holiness.

We have seen what the various degrees of nearness to God's Presence in
Israel were. They are still to be found. You have Christians who dwell
in the camp, but know little of drawing nigh to the Holy One. Then you
have outer court Christians: they long for pardon and peace, they come
ever again to the altar of atonement; but they know little of true
nearness or holiness; of their privilege as priests to enter the holy
place. Others there are who have learnt that this is their calling, and
long to draw near, and yet hardly understand the boldness they have to
enter into the Holiest of all, and to dwell there. Blessed they to whom
this, the secret of the Lord, has been revealed. _They know_ what the
rent veil means, and the access into the immediate Presence. The veil
hath been taken away from their hearts: they have found the secret of
true holiness in the Indwelling of the Holy One, the God who is holy and
makes holy.

Believer! the God who calls you to holiness is the God of the Indwelling
Life. The tabernacle typifies it, the Son reveals it, the Spirit
communicates it, the eternal glory will fully manifest it. And you may
experience it. It is your calling as a believer to be God's Holy Temple.
Oh, do but yield yourself to His full indwelling! seek not holiness in
the first place in what you are or do; seek it in God. Seek it not even
as a gift from God, seek it in God Himself, in His indwelling Presence.
Worship Him in the beauty of holiness, as He dwells in the high and holy
place. And as you worship, listen to His voice: 'Thus saith the high and
lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the
high and holy place, _with him also_ that is of a contrite and humble
spirit.' It is as the Spirit strengthens us mightily in the inward man,
so that Christ dwells in our heart by faith, and the Father comes and
makes with Him His abode in us, that we are truly holy. Oh, let us but,
in true, true-hearted consecration, yield ourselves to be, as distinctly
as was the tabernacle or the temple, given up entirely to be the
dwelling of the Most High, the habitation of His Holiness. A house
filled with the glory of God, a heart filled with all the fulness of
God, is God's promise, is our portion. Let us in faith claim and accept
and hold fast the blessing: Christ, the Holy One of God, will in His
Father's Name, enter and take possession. Then faith will bring the
solution of all our difficulties, the victory over all our failures, the
fulfilment of all our desires: 'The tent, the heart, shall be sanctified
by my glory; and I will dwell among them.' The open secret of true
holiness, the secret of the joy unspeakable, is Christ dwelling in the
heart by faith.

  BE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


We bow our knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus, that He would grant
unto us, according to the riches of His glory, what He Himself has
taught us to ask for. We ask nothing less than this, that Christ may
dwell in our hearts by faith. We long for that most blessed, permanent,
conscious indwelling of the Lord Jesus in the heart, which He so
distinctly promised as the fruit of the Holy Spirit's coming. Father! we
ask for what He meant when He spake of the loving, obedient disciple: 'I
will come and manifest myself to him. We will come and take up our abode
with him.' Oh, grant unto us this indwelling of Christ in the heart by
faith!

And for this, we beseech Thee, grant us to be strengthened with might by
Thy Spirit in the inner man. O Most Mighty God! let the spirit of Thy
Divine Power work mightily within us, renewing our mind, and will, and
affections, so that the heart be all prepared and furnished as a
temple, as a home, for Jesus. Let that Blessed Spirit strengthen us to
the faith that receives the Blessed Saviour and His indwelling Presence.

O Most Gracious Father! hear our cry. We do bow our knee to Thee. We
plead the riches of Thy glory. We praise Thee who art mighty to do above
what we can ask or think. We wait on Thee, O our Father: oh, grant us a
mighty strengthening by the Spirit in the inner man, that this bliss may
be ours in its full blessedness, our Lord Jesus dwelling in the heart.

We ask it in His Name. Amen.


  1. God's dwelling in the midst of Israel was the great central
     fact to which all the commands concerning holiness were but
     preparatory and subordinate. So the work of the Holy Spirit
     also culminates in the personal indwelling of Christ. (John
     xiv. 21, 23. Eph. iii. 16, 17.) Aim at this and expect it.

  2. The tabernacle with its three divisions was, as of other
     spiritual truths, so the image of man's threefold nature. Our
     spirit is the Holiest of all, where God is meant to dwell,
     where the Holy Spirit is given. The life of the soul, with its
     powers of feeling, knowing, and willing, is the holy place. And
     the outer life of the body, of conduct and action, is the outer
     court. Begin by believing that the Spirit dwells in the inmost
     sanctuary, where His workings are secret and hidden. Honour Him
     by trusting Him to work, by yielding to Him in silent worship
     before God. From within He will take possession of thought and
     will; He will even fill the outer court, the body, with the
     Holiness of God. 'The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly;
     and may your spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved entire,
     without blame. Faithful is He which calleth you, who will also
     do it.'

  3. God's indwelling was within the veil, in the unseen, the
     secret place. Faith knew it, and served Him with holy fear. Our
     faith knows that God the Holy Spirit has His abode in the
     hidden place of our inner life. Set open your inmost being to
     Him; bow in lowly reverence before the Holy One as you yield
     yourself to His working. Holiness is the presence of the
     Indwelling One.




Ninth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Mediation.

  'And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it,
  HOLINESS TO THE LORD. And it shall be upon Aaron's forehead, that
  Aaron may bear the iniquity of the _holy_ things, which the
  children of Israel shall _hallow_ in all their _holy_ gifts; and
  it shall always be upon his forehead, that they may be accepted
  before the Lord.'--Ex. xxviii. 36, 38.


God's house was to be the dwelling-place of His Holiness, the place
where He was to reveal Himself; as the Holy One, not to be approached
but with fear and trembling; as the Holy-making One, drawing to Himself
all who would be made partakers of His Holiness. Of the revelation of
His Holy and His Holy-making Presence, the centre is found in the person
of the high priest, in his double capacity of representing God with man,
and man with God. He is the embodiment of the Divine Holiness in human
form, and of human holiness as a Divine gift, as far as the dispensation
of symbol and shadow could offer and express it. In him God came near to
sanctify and bless the people. In him the people came their very
nearest to God. And yet the very Day of Atonement, in which he might
enter into the Most Holy, was but the proof of how unholy man was, and
how unfit to abide in God's Presence. In himself a proof of Israel's
unholiness, he yet was a type and picture of the coming Saviour, our
blessed Lord Jesus, a wondrous exhibition of the way in which hereafter
the holiness of God should become the portion of His people.

Among the many points in which the high priest typified Christ as our
sanctification, there is, perhaps, none more suggestive or beautiful
than _the holy crown_ he wore on his forehead. Everything about him was
to be holy. His garments were holy garments. But there was to be one
thing in which this holiness reached its fullest manifestation. On his
forehead he was always to wear a plate of gold, with the words engraved
on it, HOLINESS TO THE LORD. Every one was to read there that the whole
object of his existence, the one thing he lived for, was, to be the
embodiment and the bearer of the Divine holiness, the chosen one through
whom God's holiness might flow out in blessing upon the people.

The way in which the blessing of the holy crown was to act was a most
remarkable one. In bearing HOLINESS TO THE LORD on his forehead, he is,
we read, 'to bear the iniquity of the holy things which the children of
Israel hallow; that they may be accepted before the Lord.' For every sin
some sacrifice or way of atonement had been devised. But how about the
sin that cleaves to the very sacrifice and religious service itself?
'Thou desirest truth in the inward parts.' How painfully the worshipper
might be oppressed by the consciousness that his penitence, his faith,
his love, his obedience, his consecration, were all imperfect and
defiled! For this need, too, of the worshipper, God had provided. The
holiness of the high priest covered the sin and the unholiness of his
holy things. The holy crown was God's pledge that the holiness of the
high priest rendered the worshipper acceptable. If he was unholy, there
was one among his brethren who was holy, who had a holiness that could
avail for him too, a holiness he could trust in. He could look to the
high priest not only to effect atonement by his blood-sprinkling, but in
his person to secure a holiness too that made him and his gifts most
acceptable. In the consciousness of personal unholiness he might rejoice
in a mediator, in the holiness of Another than himself, the priest whom
God had provided.

Have we not here a most precious lesson, leading us a step farther on in
the way of holiness? To our question, How God makes holy, we have the
Divine answer: Through a man whom the Divine Holiness has chosen to rest
upon, and whose holiness belongs to us, as His brethren, the very
members of His own body. Through a holiness which is of such efficacy,
that the very sins of our holy things disappear, and we can enter the
Holy Presence with the assurance of being altogether well-pleasing.

And is not just this the lesson that many earnest seekers after holiness
need? They know all that the Word teaches of the blessed Atonement, and
the full pardon it has brought. They believe in the Father's wonderful
love, and what He is ready to do for them. And yet, when they hear of
the childlike simplicity, the assurance of faith, the loving obedience,
and the blessed surrender with which the Father expects them to come and
receive the blessing, their heart fails for fear. It is as if the
blessing were all beyond their reach. What avails that the Holy One is
said to come so nigh? their unholiness renders them incapable of
claiming or grasping the Presence that offers itself to them. Just see
how the Holy One here reveals His way of making holy, and preparing for
the fellowship of His Holiness. In His Elect One as Mediator, holiness
is prepared and treasured up enough for all who come through Him. As I
bow to pray or worship, and feel how much there is still wanting of that
humility, and fervency, and faith, that God has a right to demand, I may
look up to the High Priest in His Holiness, to the holy crown upon His
forehead, and believe that the iniquity of my holy things is borne and
taken away. I may, with all my deficiency and unworthiness, know most
assuredly that my prayer is acceptable, a sweet-smelling savour. I may
look up to the Holy One to see Him smiling on me, for the sake of His
Anointed One. 'The holy crown shall always be on His forehead, that they
may be accepted before the Lord.' It is the blessed truth of
Substitution--One for all--of Mediatorship; God's way of making us holy.
The sacrifice of the worshipping Israelite is holy and acceptable in
virtue of the holiness of Another.

The Old Testament shadow can never adequately set forth the New
Testament reality with its fulness of grace and truth. As we proceed in
our study, we shall find that the holiness of Jesus our sanctification
is not only imputed but imparted, because we are _in Him_; the new man
we have put on is created in true holiness. We are not only counted
holy; we are holy, we have received a new holy nature in Christ Jesus.
'He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all _of One_;
therefore He is not ashamed to call them brethren.' It is our living
union with Jesus, God's Holy One, that has given us the new and holy
nature, and with that a claim and a share in all the holiness there is
in Jesus. And so, as often as we are conscious of how unholy we are, we
have only to come under the covering of the Holiness of Jesus, to enjoy
the full assurance that we and our gifts are most acceptable. However
great be the weakness of our faith, the shortcoming in our desire for
God's glory, the lack in our love or zeal, as we see Jesus, with
Holiness to the Lord on His forehead, we lift up our faces to receive
the Divine smile of full approval and perfect acceptance.

This is God's way of making holy. Not only with the holy place, as we
have seen, but with the holy persons too, He begins with a centre, and
from that in ever-widening circle makes holy. And that this Divine
method will be crowned with success we may be sure. In the Word we find
a most remarkable illustration of the extent to which it will be
realized. We find the words on the holy crown once again in the Old
Testament at its close. In the day of the Lord, 'there shall be upon the
bells of the horses, HOLINESS TO THE LORD.' The high priest's motto
shall then have become the watchword of daily life; every article of
beauty or of service shall be holy too; from the head it shall have
extended to the skirts of the garments. Let us begin with realizing the
Holiness of Jesus in its power to cover the iniquity of our holy things;
let us make proof of it, and no longer suffer our unworthiness to keep
us back or make us doubt; let us believe that we and our holy things are
acceptable, because in Christ holy to the Lord; let us live in this
consciousness of acceptance, and enter into fellowship with the Holy
One. As we enter in and abide in the holiness of Jesus, it will enter in
and abide in us. It will take possession and spread its conquering power
through our whole life, until with us too upon everything that belongs
to us the word shall shine, HOLINESS TO THE LORD. And we shall again
find how God's way of holiness is ever from a centre, here the centre of
our renewed nature, throughout the whole circumference of our being, to
make His Holiness prove its power. Let us but dwell under the covering
of the Holiness of Jesus, as He takes away the iniquity of our holy
things, He will make us and our life holy to the Lord.

  BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


O my God and Father! my soul doth bless Thee for this wondrous
revelation of what Thy way and Thy grace is with those whom Thou hast
called 'Holy in Christ.' Thou knowest, O Lord, how continually our
hearts have limited our acceptance with Thee by our attainments, and
conscious shortcoming has wrought condemnation. We knew too little how,
in the Holiness of Him who makes us holy, there is a Divinely infinite
efficacy to cover our iniquities, and give us the assurance of perfect
acceptance. Blessed Father! open our eyes to see, and our hearts to
understand this holy crown of our blessed Jesus, with its wondrous and
most blessed, HOLINESS TO THE LORD.

And when our hearts condemn us, because our prayers are so little
consciously according to the will or to the glory of God, or truly in
the name of Jesus, O most Holy Father, be pleased by Thy Spirit to show
us how bright the smile and how hearty the welcome is we still have with
Thee. Teach us to come in the Holiness of our High Priest, and enter
into Thine, until it take possession of us, and permeate our whole
being, and all that is in us be holy to the Lord. Amen.


  1. Holiness is not something I can see or admire in myself: it
     is covering myself, losing myself, in the Holiness of Jesus.
     How wonderfully this is typified in Aaron and the holy crown.
     And the more I see and have apprehended of the Holiness of
     Jesus, the less shall I see or seek of holiness in myself.

  2. He will make me holy: my tempers and dispositions will be
     renewed; my heart and mind cleansed and sanctified; holiness
     will be a new nature; and yet there will be all along the
     consciousness, humbling and yet full of joy: it is not I;
     Christ liveth in me.

  3. Let us lie very low and tender before God, that the Holy
     Spirit may reveal to us what it is to be holy in the Holiness
     of Another, in the Holiness of Jesus, that is, in the Holiness
     of God.

  4. Do not trouble or weary too much to grasp this with the
     intellect. Just believe it, and look in simplicity and trust to
     Jesus to make it all right for you.

  5. _Holy in Christ._ In childlike faith I take Christ's holiness
     afresh as my covering before God. In loving obedience I take it
     into my will and life. I trust and I follow Jesus: this is the
     path of holiness.

  6. If we gather up the lessons we have found in the Word from
     Paradise downward, we see that the elements of holiness in us
     are these, each corresponding to some special aspect of God's
     holiness: deep Restfulness (ch. 3), humble Reverence (ch. 4),
     entire Surrender (ch. 5), joyful Adoration (ch. 6), simple
     Obedience (ch. 7). These all prepare for the Divine Indwelling
     (ch. 8), and this again we have through the Abiding in Jesus
     with the Crown of Holiness on His head.




Tenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Separation.

  'I am the Lord your God, which have _separated_ you from other
  people. And ye shall be _holy_ unto me, for I the Lord am _holy_,
  and have _separated_ you from other people that ye should be
  _Mine_.'--Lev. xx. 24, 26.

  'Until the days be fulfilled, in the which he _separateth_ himself
  unto the Lord, he shall be _holy_.... All the days of his
  _separation_ he is _holy_ unto the Lord.'--Num. vi. 5, 8.

  'Wherefore Jesus also, that He might _sanctify_ the people through
  His own blood, suffered _without the gate_. Let us therefore go
  forth unto Him _without the camp_, bearing His reproach.'--Heb.
  xiii. 12, 13.


Separation is not holiness, but is the way to it. Though there can be no
holiness without separation, there can be separation that does not lead
to holiness. It is of deep importance to understand both the difference
and the connection, that we may be kept from the right-hand error of
counting separation alone as holiness, as well as the left-hand error of
seeking holiness without separation.

The Hebrew word for holiness possibly comes from a root that means to
separate. But where we have in our translation 'separate' or 'sever' or
'set apart,' we have quite different words.[3] The word for holy is used
exclusively to express that special idea. And though the idea of holy
always includes that of separation, it is itself something infinitely
higher. It is of great importance to understand this well, because the
being set apart to God, the surrender to His claim, the devotion or
consecration to His service, is often spoken of as if this constituted
holiness. We cannot too earnestly press the thought that this is only
the beginning, the presupposition: holiness itself is infinitely more;
not what I am, or do, or give, is holiness, but what God is, and gives,
and does to me. It is God's taking possession of me that makes me holy;
it is the Presence and the glory of God that really makes holy. A
careful study of God's words to Israel will make this clear to us. Eight
times we find the expression in Leviticus, 'Ye shall be holy, for I am
holy.' Holiness is the highest attribute of God, expressive not only of
His relation to Israel, but of His very being and nature, His infinite
moral perfection. And though it is by very slow and gradual steps that
He can teach the carnal darkened mind of man what this means, yet from
the very commencement He tells His people that His purpose is that they
should be like Himself--holy because and as He is holy. To tell me that
God separates men for Himself to be His, even as He gives Himself to be
theirs, tells me of a relation that exists, but tells me nothing of the
real nature of this Holy Being, or of the essential worth of the
holiness He will communicate to me. Separation is only the setting apart
and taking possession of the vessel to be cleansed and used; it is the
filling of it with the precious contents we entrust to it that gives it
its real value. Holiness is the Divine filling without which the
separation leaves us empty. Separation is not holiness.

But separation is essential to holiness. 'I have separated you from
other people, and ye shall be holy.' Until I have chosen out and
separated a vessel from those around it, and, if need be, cleansed it, I
cannot fill or use it. I must have it in my hand, full and exclusive
command of it for the time being, or I will not pour into it the
precious milk or wine. And just so God separated His people when He
brought them up out of Egypt, separated them _unto Himself_ when He gave
them His covenant and His law, that He might have them under His control
and power, to work out His purpose of making them holy. This He could
not do until He had them apart, and had wakened in them the
consciousness that they were His peculiar people, wholly and only His,
until He had so taught them also to separate themselves to Him.
Separation is essential to holiness.

The institution of the Nazarite will confirm this, and will also bring
out very clearly what separation means. Israel was meant to be a holy
nation. Its holiness was specially typified in its priests. With regard
to the individual Israelite, we nowhere read in the books of Moses of
his being holy. But there were ordinances through which the Israelite,
who would fain prove his desire to be entirely holy, could do so. He
might separate himself from the ordinary life of the nation around him,
and live the life of a Nazarite, a separated one. This separation was
accepted, in those days of shadow and type, as holiness. 'All the days
of his separation he is holy unto the Lord.'

The separation consisted specially in three things--temperance, in
abstinence from the fruit of the vine; humiliation, in not cutting or
shaving his hair ('it is a shame for a man if he have long hair');
self-sacrifice, in not defiling himself for even father or mother, on
their death. What we must specially note is that the separation was not
from things unlawful, but things lawful. There was nothing sinful in
itself in Abraham living in his father's house, or in Israel dwelling in
Egypt. It is in giving up, not only what can be proved to be sin, but
all that may hinder the full intensity of our surrender into God's hands
to make us holy, that the spirit of separation is manifested.

Let us learn the lessons this truth suggests. We must know _the need_
for separation. It is no arbitrary demand of God, but has its ground in
the very nature of things. To separate a thing is to set it free for one
special use or purpose, that it may with undivided power fulfil the will
of him who chose it, and so realize its destiny. It is the principle
that lies at the root of all division of labour; complete separation to
one branch of study or labour is the way to success and perfection. I
have before me an oak forest with the trees all shooting up straight and
close to each other. On the outskirts there is one tree separated from
his fellows; its heavy trunk and wide-spreading branches prove how its
being separated, and having a large piece of ground separated to its own
use, over which roots and branches can spread, is the secret of growth
and greatness. Our human powers are limited; if God is to take full
possession, if we are fully to enjoy Him, separation to Him is nothing
but the simple, natural, indispensable requisite. God wants us all to
Himself, that He may give Himself all to us.

We must know the _purpose_ of separation. It is to be found in what God
has said, 'Ye shall be holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy, and have
separated you from the people, that ye should be MINE.' God has
separated us _for Himself_ in the deepest sense of the word; that He
might enter into us, and show forth Himself in us. His holiness is the
sum and the centre of all His perfections; it is that He may make us
holy like Himself that He has separated us. Separation never has any
value in itself; it may become most wrong or hurtful; everything depends
upon the object proposed. It is as God gets and takes full possession of
us, as the eternal life in Christ has the mastery of our whole being, as
the Holy Spirit flows fully and freely through us, so that we dwell in
God, and God in us, that separation will be, not a thing of ordinances
and observances, but a spiritual reality. And it is as this purpose of
God is seen and accepted and followed after, that difficult questions as
to what we must be separated from, and how much sacrifice separation
demands, will find an easy answer. God separates from all that does not
lead us into His holiness and fellowship.

We need, above all, to know _the power_ of separation, the power that
leads us into it in the spirit of desire and of joy, of liberty and of
love. The great separating word in human language is the word _Mine_. In
this we have the great spring of effort and of happiness: in the child
with its toys, in labour with its gains and rewards, in the patriot who
dies for his country, it is this _Mine_ that lays its hand on what it
sets apart from all else. It is the great word that love uses. Be it the
child that says to its mother, My own mamma, and calls forth the
response, My own child; the bridegroom who draws the daughter from her
beloved home and parents to become his; or the Holy God who speaks: 'I
have separated you from the people, that ye should be _Mine_;' it is
always with that _Mine_ that love exerts its mighty power, and draws
from all else to itself. God Himself knows no mightier argument, can put
forth no more powerful attraction than this, 'that ye should be _Mine_.'
And the power of separation will come to us, and work in us, just as we
yield ourselves to study and realize that holy purpose, to listen to and
appropriate that wondrous _Mine_, to be apprehended and possessed of
that Almighty Love.

Let us study step by step the wondrous path in which Divine Love does it
separating work. In redemption it prepares the way. Israel is separated
from Egypt by the blood of the Lamb and the guiding pillar of fire. In
its command, 'Come out and be separate,' it wakens man to action; in its
promises, 'I will be your God,' it stirs desire and strengthens faith.
In all the holy saints and servants of God, and at last in Him who was
holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, it points the way. In
the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, it seals the
separation by the Presence of the Indwelling God. This is indeed the
power of separation. _The separating power of the Presence of God_; this
it is we need to know. 'Wherein now shall it be known that I have found
grace in Thy sight, I and Thy people?' said Moses: 'is it not in _that
Thou goest with us_? _so_ shall we be _separated_, I and Thy people,
from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.' It is the
consciousness of God's Indwelling Presence, making and keeping us His
very own, that works the true separateness from the world and its
spirit, from ourselves and our own will. And it is as this separation is
accepted and prized and persevered in by us, that the holiness of God
will enter in and take possession. And we shall realize that to be the
Lord's property, a people of His own, is infinitely more than merely to
be accounted or acknowledged as His, that it means nothing less than
that God, in the power and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, fills our
being, our affections, and our will with His own life and holiness. He
separates us for Himself, and sanctifies us to be His dwelling. He comes
Himself to take personal possession by the indwelling of Christ in the
heart. And we are then truly separate, and kept separate, by the
presence of God within us.

  BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


O my God! who hast separated me for Thyself, I beseech Thee, by Thy
mighty power, to make this Divine separation deed and truth to me. May
within, in the depths of my own spirit, and without, in all my
intercourse, the crown of separation of my God be upon me.

I pray Thee especially, O my God, to perfect in power the separation
from self! Let Thy Presence in the indwelling of my Lord Jesus be the
power that banishes self from the throne. I have turned from it with
abhorrence; oh, my Father, reveal Thy Son fully in me! it is His
enthronement in my heart can keep me as Thy own, as Himself takes the
place of myself.

And give me grace, Lord, in my outward life to wait for a Divine wisdom,
that I may know to witness, for Thy glory and for what Thy people need,
to the blessedness of an entire giving up of everything for God, a
separation that holds back nothing, to be His and His alone.

Holy Lord God! visit Thy people. Oh, withdraw Thou them from the world
and conformity to it. Separate, Lord, separate Thine own for Thyself.
Separate, Lord, the wheat from the chaff; separate, as by fire, the gold
from the dross; that it may be seen who are the Lord's, even His holy
ones. Amen.


  1. Love separates effectually. With what jealousy a husband claims
     his wife, a mother her children, a miser his possessions! Pray that
     the Holy Spirit may show how God brought you to Himself, that you
     should be His. 'He is a holy God; He is a Jealous God.' God's love
     shed abroad in the heart makes separation easy.

  2. Death separates effectually. If I reckon myself to be indeed
     dead in Christ, I am separated from self by the power of Christ's
     death. Life separates still more mightily. As I say, 'Not I, but
     Christ liveth in me,' I am lifted up out of the life of self.

  3. Separation must be manifest; it is meant as a witness to others
     and ourselves; it must find expression in the external, if
     internally it is to be real and strong. It is the characteristic of
     a symbolic action that it not merely expresses a feeling, but
     nourishes and strengthens the feeling to which it corresponds. When
     the soul enters the fellowship of God, it feels the need of
     external separation, sometimes even from what appears to others
     harmless. If animated by the spirit of lowly consecration to God,
     the external may be a great strengthening of the true separateness.

  4. Separation to God and appropriation by Him go together. This has
     been the blessing that has come to martyrs, confessors,
     missionaries,--all who have given distinct expression to the
     forsaking all.

  5. Separation begins in love, and ends in love. The spirit of
     separation is the spirit of self-sacrifice, of surrender to the
     love of God; the truly separate one will be the most loving and
     love-winning, given up to serve God and man. Is not what separates,
     what distinguishes Jesus from all others, His self-sacrificing
     love? This is His separateness, in which we are to be made like
     Him.

  6. God's holiness is His separateness; let us enter into _His_
     separateness from the world; that will be our holiness. Unite
     thyself to God. Then art thou separate and holy. God separates for
     Himself, not by an act from without, but as His Will and Presence
     take possession of us.


    [3] See Note B.




Eleventh Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Holy One of Israel.

  'I am the Lord that brought you up out of the land of Egypt, to be
  _your God_; ye shall therefore _be holy_, for _I am holy_. I the
  Lord which _make you holy, am holy_.'--Lev. xi. 45, xxi. 8.

  'I am the Lord Thy God, _the Holy One of Israel_, Thy Saviour.
  Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer, _the Holy One of Israel_: I am
  the Lord, _your Holy One_, the Creator of Israel, your
  King.'--Isa. xliii. 3, 14, 15.


In the book of Exodus we found God making provision for the Holiness of
His people. In the holy times and holy places, holy persons, holy
things, and holy services, He had taught His people that everything
around Him, that all that would come near Him, must be holy. He would
only dwell in the midst of holiness; His people must be a holy people.
But there is no direct mention of God Himself as holy. In the book of
Leviticus we are led on a step further. Here first we have God speaking
of His own holiness, and making it the plea for the holiness of His
people, as well as its pledge and power. Without this the revelation of
holiness were incomplete, and the call to holiness powerless. True
holiness will come to us as we learn that God Himself alone is holy. It
is He alone makes holy; it is as we come to Himself, and in obedience
and love are linked to Himself, that His Holiness can rest on us.[4]

From the books of Moses onwards we shall find that the name of God as
holy is found but seldom in the inspired writings, until we come to
Isaiah, the evangelist prophet. There it occurs twenty-six times, and
has its true meaning opened up in the way in which it is linked with the
name of Saviour and Redeemer. The sentiments of joy and trust and
praise, with which a redeemed people would look upon their Deliverer,
are all mentioned in connection with the name of the Holy One. 'Cry
aloud and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is _the Holy One of
Israel_ in the midst of thee.' 'The poor among men shall rejoice in _the
Holy One of Israel_.' 'Thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory
in _the Holy One of Israel_.' In Paradise we saw that God the Creator
was God the Sanctifier, perfecting the work of His hands. In Israel we
saw that God the Redeemer was ever God the Sanctifier, making holy the
people He had chosen for Himself. Here in Isaiah we see how it is God
the Sanctifier, the Holy One, who is to bring about the great redemption
of the New Testament: as the Holy One, He is the Redeemer. God redeems
because He is holy, and loves to make holy: Holiness will be Redemption
perfected. Redemption and Holiness together are to be found in the
personal relation to God. The key to the secret of holiness is offered
to each believer in that word: 'Thus saith the Lord, your Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord, your Holy One.' To come near, to
know, to possess the Holy One, and be possessed of Him, is Holiness.

If God's Holiness is thus the only hope for ours, it is right that we
seek to know what that Holiness is. And though we may find it indeed to
be something that passeth knowledge, it will not be in vain to gather up
what has been revealed in the Word concerning it. Let us do so in the
spirit of holy fear and worship, trusting to the Holy Spirit to be our
teacher.

And let us first notice how this Holiness of God, though it is often
mentioned as one of the Divine attributes, can hardly be counted such,
on a level with the others. The other attributes all refer to some
special aspect or characteristic of the Divine Nature; Holiness appears
to express what is the very essence or perfection of the Divine Being
Himself. None of the attributes can be predicated of all that belongs to
God; but Scripture speaks of His Holy Name, His Holy Day, His Holy
Habitation, His Holy Word. In the word Holy we have the nearest possible
approach to a summary of all the Divine perfections, the description of
what Divinity is. We speak of the other attributes as Divine
perfections, but in this we have the only human expression for the
Divine Perfection itself. It is for this reason that theologians have
found such difficulty in framing a definition that can express all the
word means.[5]

The original Hebrew word, whether derived from a root signifying to
separate, or another with the idea of shining, expressed the idea of
something distinguished from others, separate from them by superior
excellence. God is Separate and different from all that is created,
keeps Himself separate from all that is not God; as the Holy One He
maintains His Divine glory and perfection against whatever might
interfere with it: 'There is none holy, but the Lord;' 'To whom will you
liken me? or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.' As Holy, God is
indeed the Incomparable One; Holiness is His alone; there is nothing
like it in heaven or earth, except when He gives it. And so our holiness
will consist, not in a human separation in which we attempt to imitate
God's,--no, but in entering into His separateness; belonging entirely to
Him; set apart by Him and for Himself.

Closely connected with this is the idea of Exaltation: 'Thus saith the
High and Holy One, whose name is Holy.' It was the Holy One who was seen
sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, the object of the worship of
the seraphim. In Psalm xcix. God's Holiness is specially spoken of in
connection with His exaltation. For this reason, too, His Holiness is so
often connected with His Glory and Majesty (see 'Sixth Day'). And here
our holiness will be seen to be nothing but the poverty and humility
which comes when 'the loftiness of man is brought low, and the Lord
alone is exalted.'

If we inquire more closely wherein the infinite excellence of this
Separateness and Exaltation consists, we are led to think of the Divine
Purity, and that not only in its negative aspect--as hatred of sin--but
with the more positive element of perfect beauty. Because we are
sinners, and the revelation of God's Holiness is in a world of sin, it
is natural, it is right and meet, that the first, that the abiding
impression of God's Holiness should be that of an Infinite Purity that
cannot look upon sin, in whose Presence it becomes the sinner to hide
his face and tremble. The Righteousness of God, forbidding and
condemning and punishing sin, has its root in His Holiness, is one of
its two elements--the devouring and destroying power of the consuming
fire. 'God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness' (Isa. v. 16); in
righteousness the Holiness of the Holy One is maintained and revealed.
But Light not only discovers what is impure, that it may be purified,
but is in itself a thing of infinite beauty. And so some of our holiest
men have not hesitated to speak of God's Holiness as the infinite
Pulchritude or Beauty of the Divine Being, the Perfect Purity and Beauty
of that Light in which God dwelleth. And if the Holiness of God is to
become ours, to rest upon us, and enter into us, there must be, without
ceasing, the holy fear that trembles at the thought of grieving the
infinite sensitiveness of this Holy One by our sins, and yet side by
side, and in perfect harmony with it, the deep longing to behold the
Beauty of the Lord, an admiration of its Divine glory, and a joyful
surrender to be His alone.

We must go one step further. When God says, 'I am holy: _I make holy_,'
we see that one of the chief elements of His Holiness is this, that it
seeks to communicate itself, to make partaker of its own perfection and
blessedness. This is nought but Love. In the wonderful revelation in
Isaiah of what the Holy One is to His people, we must beware of
misreading God's precious Word. It is not said, that _though_ God is the
Holy One, and hates sin, and ought to punish and destroy, that
notwithstanding this He will save. By no means. But we are taught that
_as_ the Holy One, _just because_ He is the Holy One, who delights to
make holy, He will be the Deliverer of His people. (See Hos. xi. 9.) It
is Holiness above everything else that we are invited to look to, to
trust in, to rejoice in. The Holy One is the Holy-making One: He redeems
and saves that He may win our confidence for Himself, that He may draw
us to Himself as the Holy One, that in the personal attachment to
Himself we may learn to obey, to become of one mind with Him, to be holy
as He is holy.

The Divine Holiness is thus that infinite Perfection of Divinity in
which Righteousness and Love are in perfect harmony, out of which they
proceed, and which together they reveal. It is that Energy of the Divine
life in the power of which God not only keeps Himself free from all
creature weakness or sin, but unceasingly seeks to lift the creature
into union with Himself and the full participation of His own purity and
perfection. The glory of God as God, as the God of Creation and
Redemption, is His Holiness. It is in this that the Separateness and
Exaltation of God, even above all thought of man, really consists. 'God
is Light;' in His infinite Purity He reveals all darkness, and yet has
no fellowship with it. He judges and condemns it; He saves out of it,
and lifts up into the fellowship of His own purity and blessedness. This
is the Holy One of Israel.

It is this God who speaks to us, 'I am the Lord your God: I am holy: I
make holy.' It is in the adoring contemplation of His Holiness, in the
trustful surrender to it, in the loving fellowship with Himself, the
Holy One, that we can be made holy. My brother! would you be holy?
listen again, and let, in the deep silence of trust, God's words sink
into your heart--'Your Holy One.' Come to Himself and claim Him as your
God, and claim all that He, as the Holy One who makes holy, can do for
you. Just remember that Holiness is Himself. Come to _Him_; worship
_Him_; give _Him_ the glory. Seek not, even from Him, holiness in
yourself; let self be abased, and be content that the Holiness is His.
As _His_ presence fills your heart, as _His_ Holiness and Glory are your
one desire, as _His_ holy Will and Love are your delight,--as the Holy
One becomes all in all to you,--you will be holy with the holiness He
loves to see. And as, to the end, you see nothing to admire in self, and
only Beauty in Him, you will know that He has laid of His glory on you;
and your holiness will be found in the song, There is none holy, but the
Lord.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


O God! we have again heard the wonderful revelation of Thyself, 'I am
holy.' And as we felt how infinitely exalted above all our conceptions
Thy Holiness is, we heard Thy call, almost still more wonderful, 'Be ye
holy, as I am holy.' And as every thought of how we were to be holy, as
Thou art holy, failed us, we heard Thy voice once again, in this most
wonderful word of all, 'I make you holy.' I am 'your Holy One.'

Most Holy God! we do beseech Thee, give us in some due measure to
realize how unholy we are, and so to take the place that becomes us in
Thy presence. Oh that the sinfulness of our nature, and all that is of
self, may be so discovered to us, that it may be no longer possible to
live in it! May the Light that reveals this, reveal too, how Thy
Holiness is our only hope, our sure refuge, our complete deliverance.
O Lord! speak into our souls the word, 'The Holy One, your Redeemer,'
'Your Holy One,' with such power by Thy Spirit, that our faith may grow
into the assured confidence that we can be holy as Thou art holy.

Holy Lord God! we wait for Thee. Reveal Thyself in power within us, and
fit us to be the messengers of Thy Holiness, to tell Thy people how holy
Thou art, and how holy we must be, and how holy Thou dost make us. Amen.


  1. This Holy One is God Almighty. Before He revealed Himself to
     Israel as the Holy One, He made Himself known to Abraham as the
     Almighty, 'who quickeneth the dead.' In all your dealings with
     God for holiness, remember He is the Almighty One, who can do
     wonders in you. Say often, 'Glory to Him who is mighty to do
     exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think.'

  2. This Holy One is the Righteous God, a consuming fire. Cast
     yourself into it, that all that is sinful may be destroyed. As
     you lay yourself upon the altar, expect the fire. 'And yield
     your members unto God as instruments of Righteousness.'

  3. This Holy One is the God of Love. He is your Father; yield
     yourself to let the Holy Spirit cry in you, Abba Father! that
     is, to let Him shed abroad and fill your heart with God's
     father-love. God's Holiness is His fatherliness; our holiness
     is childlikeness. Be simple, loving, trustful.

  4. This Holy One is God. Let Him be God to you; ruling all,
     filling all, working all. Worship Him, come near to Him, live
     with and in and for Him: He will be your holiness.


    [4] 'I am the Lord your God; ye shall therefore _make holy_
        yourselves, and _be holy, for I am holy_' (Lev. xi. 44).

        'I am the Lord that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt to
        be your God: ye shall therefore _be holy, for I am holy_'
        (Lev. xi. 45).

        'Ye shall _be holy_, for _I the Lord your God am holy_'
        (Lev. xix. 2).

        '_Make holy_ yourselves therefore, and _be ye holy_, for I am
        the Lord your God; ye shall keep my statutes and do them: I am
        the Lord which _make you holy_' (Lev. xx. 7, 8).

        'Ye shall _be holy_ unto me, for _I the Lord am holy_, and have
        separated you from other people, that ye should be mine'
        (Lev. xx. 26).

        'The priest shall be _holy_ unto thee, for _I the Lord which
        make you holy, am holy_' (Lev. xxi. 8).

        'I will be _hallowed_ among the children of Israel; I am the
        Lord _which make you holy_' (Lev. xxii. 32).

        'I am the Lord _which make them holy_' (Lev. xxi. 15, 23;
        xxii. 9, 16).

    [5] See Note C for some account of the different definitions that
        have been given.




Twelfth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Thrice Holy One.

  'I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. Above Him
  stood the seraphim. And one cried to another, and said, _Holy,
  holy, holy_ is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His
  glory.'--Isa. vi. 1-3.

  'And the four living creatures, they have no rest day and night,
  saying, _Holy, holy, holy_ is the Lord God, the Almighty, which
  was, and which is, and which is to come.'--Rev. iv. 8.


It is not only on earth, but in heaven too, that the Holiness of God is
His chief and most glorious attribute. It is not only on earth, but in
heaven too, that the highest inspiration of adoration and praise makes
mention of His Holiness. The brightest of living beings, they who are
ever before and around and above the throne, find their glory in adoring
and proclaiming the Holiness of God: surely there can be for us no
higher honour than to study and to know, to worship and adore, to
proclaim and show forth the glory of the Thrice Holy One.

After Moses, as we know, Isaiah was the chief messenger of the Holiness
of God. Each had a special preparation for his commission to make known
the Holy One. Moses saw the Holy One in the fire, and hid his face and
feared to look upon God, and so was prepared for being His messenger,
and for praising Him as 'glorious in holiness.' Isaiah, as he heard the
song of the seraphim, and saw the fire on the altar, and the house
filled with the smoke, cried out, 'Woe is me.' It was not till, in the
deep sense of the need of cleansing, he had received the touch of the
fire and the purging of his sin, that he might bear to Israel the Gospel
of the Holy One as its Redeemer. May it be in the spirit of fear and
lowly worship that we listen to the song of the seraphim, and seek to
know and worship the Thrice Holy One. And may ours too be the cleansing
with the fire, that we may be found fit to tell God's people that He is
the Holy One of Israel, their Redeemer.

The threefold repetition of the HOLY has at all times by the Church of
Christ been connected with the Holy Trinity. The song of the living
creatures around the throne (Rev. iv.) is evidence of the truth of this
thought. We there find it followed by the adoration of Him who was, and
is, and is to come, the Almighty: the Eternal Source, the present
manifestation in the Son, the future perfecting of the revelation of God
in the Spirit's work in His Church. The truth of the Holy Trinity is
often regarded as an abstract doctrine, with little direct bearing on
practical life. So far is this from being the case, that a living faith
must root in it: some spiritual insight into the relation and the
operation of each of the Three, and the reality of their living Oneness,
is an essential element of true growth in knowledge and spiritual
understanding.[6] Let us here regard the Trinity specially in its
relation to God's Holiness and as the source of ours. What does it mean
that we adore the Thrice Holy One? God is not only holy, but makes holy:
in the revelation of the Three Persons we have the revelation of the way
in which God makes holy.

The Trinity teaches us that God has revealed Himself in two ways. The
Son is _the Form of God_, His manifestation as He shows Himself to man,
the Image in which His unseen glory is embodied, and to which man is to
be conformed. The Spirit is _the Power of God_, working in man, and
leading him up to that Image. In Jesus, He who had been in the form of
God took the form of man; and the Divine Holiness was literally
manifested in the form of a human life and the members of a human body.
A new holy human nature was formed in Christ, to be communicated to us.
In His death His own personal holiness was perfected as human obedience,
and so the power of sin conquered and broken. Therefore in the
resurrection, through the Spirit of Holiness, He was declared to be the
Son of God with power to impart His life to us. There the Spirit of
Holiness was set free from the veil of the flesh, the trammels that
hindered it, and obtained power to enter and dwell in man. The Holy
Spirit was poured out as the fruit of Resurrection and Ascension. And
the Spirit is now the Power of God in us, working upwards towards
Christ, to reproduce His life and Holiness in us, to fit us for fully
receiving and showing forth Him in our lives. Christ from above comes to
us as the embodiment of the Unseen Holiness of God: the Spirit from
within lifts us up to meet Him, and fits us to receive and make our own
all that is in Him.

The Triune God whom we adore is the Thrice Holy One: the mystery of the
Trinity is the mystery of Holiness: the Glory and the Power of the
Trinity is the Glory and Power of God who makes us holy. There is God
dwelling in light inaccessible, a consuming fire of Holy Love,
destroying all that resists, glorifying into its own purity all that
yields. There is the Son, casting Himself into that consuming fire,
whether in its eternal blessedness in heaven, or its angry wrath on
earth, a willing sacrifice, to be its food and its satisfaction, as
well as the revelation of its power to destroy and to save. And there is
the Spirit of Holiness, the flames of that mighty fire spreading on
every side, convicting and judging as the Spirit of Burning, and then
transforming into its own brightness and holiness all that it can reach.
All the relations of the Three Persons to each other and to us have
their root and their meaning in the revelation of God as the Holy One.
As we know and partake of Him, we shall know and partake of Holiness.

And how shall we know Him? Let us learn to know the Holiness of God as
the seraphs do: in the worship of the Thrice Holy One. Let us with
veiled faces join in the ceaseless song of adoration: 'Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord of hosts.' Each time we meditate on the Word, each prayer to
the Holy God, each act of faith in Christ the Holy One, each exercise of
waiting dependence on the Holy Spirit, let it be in the spirit of
worship: Holy, holy, holy. Let us learn to know the Holiness of God as
Isaiah did. He was to be the chosen messenger to reveal and interpret to
the people the name, the Holy One of Israel. His preparation was the
vision that made him cry out, 'Woe is me! for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of hosts.' Let us bow in silence before the Holy One,
until our comeliness too be turned into corruption. And then let us
believe in the cleansing fire from the altar, the touch of the live
coals of the burning holiness, which not only consumes, but purges lips
and heart to say, 'Here am I, send me.' Yes, let us worship, whether
like the adoring seraphim, or like the trembling prophet, until we know
that our service too is accepted, to tell forth the praise of the Thrice
Holy One.

Holy, holy, holy: if we are indeed to be the messengers of the Holy One,
let us seek to enter fully into what this Thrice Holy means. HOLY, the
Father, _God above us_, High and Lifted up, whom no man hath seen or can
see, whose Holiness none dare approach, but who doth Himself in His
Holiness draw nigh to make holy. HOLY, the Son, _God with us_, revealing
Divine Holiness in human life, maintaining it amid the suffering of
death for us, and preparing a holy life and nature for His people. HOLY,
the Spirit, _God in us_, the Power of Holiness within us, reaching out
to and embracing Christ, and transforming our inner life into the union
and communion of Him in whom we are holy. Holy, holy, holy! it is all
holiness. It is only holiness--perfect holiness. This is Divine
holiness: holiness hidden and unapproachable; holiness manifested and
maintained in human nature; holiness communicated and made our very own.

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the mystery of the Christian life,
the mystery of Holiness. The Three are One, and we need to enter ever
more deeply into the truth that neither of the Three ever works separate
or independent of the other. The Son reveals the Father, and the Father
reveals the Son. The Father gives not Himself, but the Spirit: the
Spirit speaks not of Himself, but cries Abba Father! The Son is our
Sanctification, our Life, our All: the fulness is in Him. And yet we
have ever to bow our knees to the Father for Him to reveal Christ in us,
for Him to establish us in Christ. And the Father does not this without
the Spirit: so that we have to ask to be strengthened mightily by the
Spirit, that Christ may dwell in us. Christ gives the Spirit to them
that believe and love and obey; the Spirit again gives Christ, formed
within and dwelling in the heart. And so in each act of worship, and
each step of growth, and each blessed experience of grace, all the Three
Persons are actively engaged: the One is ever Three, the Three are ever
One.

Would you apply this in the life of holiness, let faith in the Holy
Trinity be a living practical reality. In every prayer to _the Father_
to sanctify you, take up your position _in Christ_, and do it in the
power of _the Spirit within you_. In every exercise of faith _in Christ_
as your Sanctification, let your posture be that of prayer to _the
Father_ and trust in Him as He delights to honour the Son, and of quiet
expectancy of _the Spirit's_ working, through whom the Father glorifies
the Son. In every surrender of the soul to the sanctification of _the
Spirit_, to His leading as the Spirit of Holiness, look to _the Father_
who grants His mighty working, and who sanctifies through faith in _the
Son_, and expect the Spirit's power to manifest itself in showing the
will of God, and Jesus as your Sanctification. If for a time this
appears at variance with the simplicity of childlike faith and prayer,
be assured that as God has thus revealed Himself, He will teach you so
to worship and believe. And so the Holy, holy, holy will become the deep
undertone of all our worship and all our life.

Children of God! called to be holy as He is holy, oh, come let us bow
down and worship in His holy presence! Come and veil the face: withdraw
eye and mind from gazing on what passes knowledge, and let the soul be
gathered into that inner stillness, in which the worship of the heavenly
Sanctuary alone can be heard. Come and cover the feet: withdraw from the
rush of work and haste, be it worldly or religious, and learn to
worship. Come, and as you fall down in self-abasement, the glory of the
Holy One will shine upon you. And as you hear and take up and sing the
song, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, you will find how in such knowledge and worship
of the Thrice Holy One is the power that makes you holy.

  BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty! which wast, and art, and art to
come! I worship Thee as the Triune God. With face veiled and feet
covered, I would bow in deep humility and silence, till Thy mercy lift
me as on eagles' wings to behold Thy glory.

Most merciful God! who hast called me to be holy as Thou art holy, oh,
reveal to me somewhat of Thy Holiness! As it shines upon me and strikes
death into the creature and the flesh, may even the most involuntary
taint of sin, and its slightest movement, become unbearable. As it
shines and revives the hope of being partaker of Thy Holiness, may the
confidence grow strong that Thou Thyself art making me holy, wilt even
make me a messenger of Thy Holiness.

Thrice Holy God! I worship Thee as my God. HOLY! THE FATHER; holy and
making holy; making holy His own Son and sending Him into the world,
that we might behold the very glory of God in a human face, the face of
Jesus Christ. HOLY! THE SON; the Holy One of God, fulfilling the will of
the Father, and so making holy Himself that He might be our holiness.
HOLY! THE SPIRIT; the Spirit of Holiness, dwelling within us, making the
Son and His Holiness our own, and so making us partakers of the Holiness
of God. O my God! I bow down, and worship, and adore.

May even now the worship of heaven that rests not day or night be the
worship my soul renders Thee without ceasing. May its song be, down in
the depths of the heart, the keynote of my life: HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, Lord
God Almighty! which wast, and art, and art to come. Amen.


  1. Thought always needs to distinguish and separate: in life
     alone there is perfect unity. The more we know the living God,
     the more we shall realize how truly the Three are One. In each
     act of One Person the other Two are present. There is not a
     prayer rises but the Presence of the Holy Three is needed
     through Christ, in the Spirit, we speak to the Father.

  2. In faith to apprehend this is to have the secret of holiness.
     The Holy God above us, ever giving and working; the Holy One of
     God, the living gift, who has possession of us, in whom we are;
     the Holy Spirit, God within us, through whom the Father works,
     and the Son is revealed: this is the God who says, I am holy, I
     make holy. In the perfect unity of the work of the Three,
     holiness is found.

  3. No wonder that the love of the Father and the grace of the
     Son do not accomplish more, when the fellowship of the Holy
     Spirit is little understood or sought or accepted. The Holy
     Spirit is the fruit and crown of the Divine Revelation, through
     whom the Son and the Father come to us. If you would know God,
     if you would be holy, you must be taught and led of the Spirit.

  4. As often as you worship the Thrice Holy One, hearken if no
     voice be heard: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Let
     the answer rise, Here am I, send me, and offer yourself to be
     _a messenger of the holiness of God_ to those around you.

  5. When in meditation and worship you have sought to take in and
     express what God's word has taught, then comes the time for
     confessing how you know nothing, and for waiting on God _to
     reveal Himself_.


    [6] The Divine necessity and meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity
        is seen from the counterpart we have of it in nature. In every
        living object that exists we distinguish first _the life_, then
        _the form_ or _shape_ in which that life manifests itself, then
        _the power_ or _effect_ as seen in the result which the life
        acting in its form or manifestation produces. And so we have God
        as the Unseen One, the Fountain of life; the Son as the Form or
        Image of God, the manifestation of the Unseen Life; and the Holy
        Spirit as the Power of that life proceeding from the Father and
        the Son, and working out the purpose of God's will in the
        Church. Applying this thought to God as the Holy One, we shall
        understand better the place of the Son and the Spirit as they
        bring to us the Holiness of God.




Thirteenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Humility.

  'Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose
  name is _Holy_: I dwell in the High and _Holy_ place, with him
  that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of
  the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.'--Isa.
  lvii. 15.


Very wonderful is the revelation we have in Isaiah of God, the Holy One,
as the Redeemer and the Saviour of His people. In the midst of the
people whom He created and formed for Himself, He will as the Holy One
dwell, showing forth His power and His glory, filling them with joy and
gladness. All these promises have, however, reference to the people as a
whole. Our text to-day reveals a new and specially beautiful feature of
the Divine Holiness in its relation to the individual. The High and
Lofty One, whose name is Holy, and whose only fit dwelling-place is
eternity, He looks to the man who is of a humble and contrite heart;
with him will He dwell. God's Holiness is His condescending Love. As it
is a consuming fire against all who exalt themselves before Him, it is
to the spirit of the humble like the shining of the sun, heart-reviving
and life-giving.

The deep significance of this promise comes out clearly when we connect
it with the other promises of New Testament times. The great feature of
the New Covenant, in its superiority to the old, is this, that whereas
in the law and its institution all was external, in the New the kingdom
of God would be within. God's laws given and written into the heart, a
new spirit put within us, God's own Spirit given to dwell within our
spirit, and so the heart and the inner life fitted to be the temple and
home of God; it is this constitutes the peculiar privilege of the
ministration of the Spirit. Our text is perhaps the only one in the Old
Testament in which this indwelling of the Holy One, not among the people
only, but in the heart of the individual believer, is clearly brought
out. In this the two aspects of the Divine Holiness would reach their
full manifestation: I dwell in the High and Holy place, and with him
also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. In His heaven above, the
high and lofty place, and in our heart, contrite and humble, God has His
home. God's Holiness is His glory that separates Him by an infinite
distance, not only from sin, but even from the creature, lifting Him
high above it. God's Holiness is His Love, drawing Him down to the
sinner, that He may lift him into His fellowship and likeness, and make
him holy as He is holy. The Holy One seeks the humble; the humble find
the Holy One: such are the two lessons we have to learn to-day.

_The Holy One seeks the humble._ There is nothing that has such an
attraction for God, that has such affinity with holiness, as a contrite
and humble spirit. The reason is evident. There is no law in the natural
and the spiritual world more simple, than that two bodies cannot at the
same moment occupy the same space. Only so much as the new occupant can
expel of what the space was filled with can it really possess. In man,
self has possession, and self-will the mastery, and there is no room for
God. It is simply impossible for God to dwell or rule when self is on
the throne. As long as, through the blinding influence of sin and
self-love, even the believer is not truly conscious of the extent to
which this self-will reigns, there can be no true contrition or
humility. But as it is discovered by God's Spirit, and the soul sees how
it has just been self that has been secretly keeping out God, with what
shame it is broken down, and how it longs to break utterly away from
self, that God may have His place! It is this brokenness, and continued
breaking down, that is expressed by the word contrition. And as the soul
sees what folly and guilt it has been, by its secret honouring of self,
to keep the Holy One from the place which He alone has a right to, and
which He would so blessedly have filled, it casts itself down in utter
self-abasement, with the one desire to be nothing, and to give God the
place and the praise that is His due.

Such breaking down and humiliation is painful. Its intense reality
consists in this, that the soul can see nothing in itself to trust or
hope in. And least of all can it imagine that it should be an object of
Divine complacency, or a fit vessel for the Divine blessing. And yet
just this is the message which the Word of the Lord brings to our faith.
It tells us that the Holy One, who dwells in the High and Lofty place,
is seeking and preparing for Himself a dwelling here on this earth. It
tells us, just what the truly contrite and humble never could imagine,
and even now can hardly believe, that it is even, that it is only, with
such that He will dwell. These are they in whom God can be glorified, in
whom there is room for Him to take the place of self and to fill the
emptied place with Himself. The Holy One seeks the humble. Just when we
see that there is nothing in us to admire or rest in, God sees in us
everything to admire and to rest in, because there is room for Himself.
The lowly one is the home of the Holy One.

_The humble find the Holy One._ Just when the consciousness of sin and
weakness, and the discovery of how much of self there is, makes you fear
that you can never be holy, the Holy One gives Himself. Not as you look
at self, and seek to know whether now you are contrite and humble
enough--no, but when no longer looking at self, because you have given
up all hope of seeing anything in it but sin, you look up to the Holy
One, you will see how His promise is your only hope. It is in faith
that the Holy One is revealed to the contrite soul. Faith is ever the
opposite of what we see and feel; it looks to God alone. And it believes
that in its deepest consciousness of unholiness, and its fear that it
never can be holy, God, the Holy One, who makes holy, is near as
Redeemer and Saviour. And it is content to be low, in the consciousness
of unworthiness and emptiness, and yet to rejoice in the assurance that
God Himself does take possession and revive the heart of the contrite
one. Happy the soul who is willing at once to learn the lesson that, all
along, it is going to be the simultaneous experience of weakness and
power, of emptiness and filling, of deep, real humiliation, and the as
real and most wonderful indwelling of the Holy One.

This is indeed the deep mystery of the Divine life. To human reason it
is a paradox. When Paul says of himself, 'as dying, and behold we live;
as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as having nothing, yet possessing
all things,' he only gives expression to the law of the kingdom, that as
self is displaced and man becomes nothing, God will become all. Side by
side with deepest sense of nothingness and weakness, the sense of
infinite riches and the joy unspeakable can fill the heart. However deep
and blessed the experience becomes of the nearness, the blessing, the
love, the actual indwelling of the Holy One, it is never an indwelling
in the old self; it is ever a Divine Presence humbling self to make
place for God alone to be exalted. The power of Christ's death, the
fellowship of His cross, works each moment side by side with the power
and the joy of His resurrection. 'He that humbleth himself shall be
exalted;' in the blessed life of faith the humiliation and the
exaltation are simultaneous, each dependent on the other.

The humble find the Holy One; and when they have found, the possession
only humbles all the more. Not that there is no danger or temptation of
the flesh exalting itself in the possession, but, once knowing the
danger, the humble soul seeks for grace to fear continually, with a fear
that only clings more firmly to God alone. Never for a moment imagine
that you attain a state in which self or the flesh are absolutely dead.
No; by faith you enter into and abide in a fellowship with Jesus, in
whom they are crucified; abiding in Him, you are free from their power,
but only as you believe, and, in believing, have gone out of self and
dwell in Jesus. Therefore, the more abundant God's grace becomes, and
the more blessed the indwelling of the Holy One, keep so much the lower.
Your danger is greater, but your Help is now nearer: be content in
trembling to confess the danger, it will make you bold in faith to claim
the victory.

Believers, who profess to be nothing, and to trust in grace alone, I
pray you, do listen to the wondrous message. The High and Lofty One,
whose name is Holy, and who dwells in the Holy Place, and who can dwell
nowhere but in a Holy Place, seeks a dwelling here on earth. Will you
give it Him? Will you not fall down in the dust, that He may find in
you the humble heart He loves to dwell in? Will you not now believe that
even in you, however low and broken you feel, He doth delight to make
His dwelling? 'Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the
Kingdom;' with them the King dwells. Oh, this is the path to holiness!
be humble, and the holy nearness and presence of God in you will be your
holiness. As you hear the command, Be holy, as I am holy, let faith
claim the promise, and answer, I will be holy, O Most Holy God! if Thou,
the Holy One, wilt dwell with me.

  BE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


O Lord! Thou art the High and Lofty One, whose Name is Holy. And yet
Thou speakest, 'I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him that is
of a contrite and humble spirit.' Yes, Lord! when the soul takes the low
place, and has low thoughts of itself, that it feels it is nothing, Thou
dost love to come and comfort, to dwell with it and revive it.

O my God! my creature nothingness humbles me; my many transgressions
humble me; my innate sinfulness humbles me; but this humbles me most of
all, Thine infinite condescension, and the ineffable indwelling Thou
dost vouchsafe. It is Thy Holiness, in Christ bearing our sin, Thy Holy
Love bearing with our sin, and consenting to dwell in us; O God! it is
this love that passeth knowledge that humbles me. I do beseech Thee, let
it do its work, until self hides its head and flees away at the presence
of Thy glory, and Thou alone art all.

Holy Lord God! I pray Thee to humble me. Didst Thou not of old meet Thy
servants, and show Thyself unto them until they fell upon their faces
and feared? Thou knowest, my God! I have no humility which I can bring
Thee. In my blessed Saviour, who humbled Himself in the form of a
servant, and unto the death of the cross, I hide myself. In Him, in His
spirit and likeness, I would live before Thee. Work Thou it in me, by
the Holy Spirit dwelling in me, and as I am dead to self in Him, and His
cross makes me nothing, let Thy holy indwelling revive and quicken me.
Amen.


  1. Lowliness and holiness. Keep fast hold of the intimate
     connection. Lowliness is taking the place that becomes me;
     holiness, giving God the place that becomes Him. If I be
     nothing before Him, and God be all to me, I am in the sure path
     of holiness. Lowliness is holiness, because it gives all the
     glory to God.

  2. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
     heaven.' These first words of the Master when He opened His
     lips to proclaim the Kingdom, are often the last in the hearts
     of His disciples. 'The Kingdom is in the Holy Ghost:' to the
     poor in spirit, those who know they have nothing that is really
     spiritual, the Holy Spirit comes to be their life. The poor in
     spirit are the Kingdom of the Saints: in them the Holy Spirit
     reveals the King.

  3. Many strive hard to be humble with God, but with men they
     maintain their rights, and nourish self. Remember that the
     great school of humility before God, is to accept the humbling
     of man. Christ sanctified Himself in accepting the humiliation
     and injustice which evil men laid upon Him.

  4. Humility never sees its own beauty, because it refuses to look
     to itself: It only wonders at the condescension of the Holy
     God, and rejoices in the humility of Jesus, God's Holy One, our
     Holy One.

  5. The link between holiness and humility is indwelling. The
     Lofty One, whose name is Holy, _dwells_ with the contrite one.
     And where He dwells is _the Holy Place_.




Fourteenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Holy One of God.

  'Therefore also that _holy_ thing which shall be born of thee
  shall be called the Son of God.'--Luke i. 35.

  'We have believed and know that Thou art _the Holy One of
  God_.'--John vi. 69.


'The holy one of the Lord'--only once (Ps. cvi. 16) the expression is
found in the Old Testament. It is spoken of Aaron, in whom holiness, as
far as it could then be revealed, had found its most complete
embodiment. The title waited for its fulfilment in Him who alone, in His
own person, could perfectly show forth the holiness of God on
earth--Jesus the Son of the Father. In Him we see holiness, as Divine,
as human, as our very own.

1. In Him we see wherein that Incomparable Excellence of the Divine
Nature consists. 'Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest iniquity,
therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness
above Thy fellows.' God's infinite hatred of sin, and His maintenance of
the Right, might appear to have little moral worth, as being a
necessity of His nature. In the Son we see Divine Holiness tested. He is
tried and tempted. He suffers, being tempted. He proves that Holiness
has indeed a moral worth: it is ready to make any sacrifice, yea to give
up life and cease to be, rather than consent to sin. In giving Himself
to die, rather than yield to the temptation of sin; in giving Himself to
die, that the Father's righteous judgment may be honoured; Jesus proved
how Righteousness is an element of the Divine Holiness, and how the Holy
One is sanctified in Righteousness.

But this is only one side of Holiness. The fire that consumes also
purifies: it makes partakers of its own beautiful Light-nature all that
is capable of assimilation. So Divine Holiness not only maintains its
own purity; it communicates it too. Herein was Jesus indeed seen to be
the Holy One of God, that He never said, 'Stand by, for I am holier than
thou.' His holiness proved itself to be the very incarnation of Him who
had spoken, 'Thus saith the High and Lofty One, whose Name is Holy: I
dwell in the High and Holy place, and with him who is of a contrite
spirit.' In Him was seen the affinity holiness has for all that is lost
and helpless and sinful. He proved that holiness is not only the energy
which in holy anger separates itself from all that is impure, but which
in holy love separates to itself even what is most sinful, to save and
to bless. In Him we see how the Divine Holiness is the harmony of
Infinite Righteousness with Infinite Love.

2. Such is the Divine aspect of the character of Christ, as He shows in
human form what God's Holiness is. But there is another aspect, to us no
less interesting and important. We not only want to know how God is
holy, but how man must act to be holy as God is holy. Jesus came to
teach us that it is possible to be men, and yet to have the life of God
dwelling in us. We ordinarily think that the glory and the infinite
Perfection of Deity are the proper setting in which the beauty of
holiness is to be seen: Jesus proved the perfect adaptation and
suitability of human nature for showing forth that which is the
essential glory of Deity. He showed us how, in choosing and doing the
will of God, and making it his own will, man may truly be holy as God is
holy.

The value of this aspect of the Incarnation depends upon our realizing
intensely the true humanity of our Lord. The awful separating and
purifying process that is ever being carried on in the fiery furnace of
the Divine Holiness, ever consuming and ever assimilating, we expect to
see in Him in the struggles of a truly human will. Holiness, to be truly
human, must not only be a gift, but an acquirement. Coming from God, it
must be accepted and personally appropriated, in the voluntary surrender
of all that is not in accordance with it. In Jesus, as He distinctly
gave up His own will, and did and suffered the Father's will, we have
the revelation of what human holiness is, and how truly man, through
the unity of will, can be holy as God is holy.

3. But what avails that we have seen in Jesus that a man can be holy?
His example were indeed a mockery if He show us not the way, and give us
not the power, to become like Himself. To bring us this, was indeed the
supreme object of the Incarnation. The Divine nature of Christ did not
simply make _His_ humanity partaker of its holiness, leaving Him still
nothing more than an individual man. His Divinity gave the human
holiness He wrought out, the holy human nature which He perfected, an
infinite value and power of communication. With Him a new life, the
Eternal Life, was grafted into the stem of humanity. For all who believe
in Him, He sanctified Himself, that they themselves might also be
sanctified in truth. Because His death was the great triumph of His
obedience to the will of the Father, it broke for ever the dominion of
sin, it atoned for our guilt, and won for Him from the Father the power
to make His people partakers of His own life and holiness. In His
Resurrection and Ascension the power of the New Life, and its right to
universal dominion, were made manifest, and He is now in full truth the
Holy One of God, holding in Himself as Head the power of a Holiness, at
once Divine and human, to communicate to every member of His body.

THE HOLY ONE OF GOD! in a fulness of meaning that passeth knowledge, in
spirit and in truth, Jesus now bears this title. He is now the One Holy
One whom God sees, of such an infinite compass and power of holiness,
that He can be holiness to each of His brethren. And even as He is to
God the Holy One, in whom He delights, and for whose sake He delights in
all who are in Him, so Christ may now be to us too the One Holy One in
whom we delight, in whom the Holiness of God is become ours. 'We have
believed and know that Thou art _the Holy One of God_,'--blessed they
who can say this, and know themselves to be holy in Christ.

In speaking of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, we saw how Christ stands
midway between the Father and the Spirit, as the point of union in which
they meet. In the Son, 'the very image of His substance' (Heb. i. 3), we
have the objective revelation of Deity, the Divine Holiness embodied and
brought nigh. In the Holy Spirit we have the same revelation
subjectively, _the Divine Holiness entering our inmost being and
revealing itself there_. The work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal and
glorify Christ as the Holy One of God, as He takes of His Holiness and
makes it ours. He shows us how all is in Christ; how Christ is all for
us; how we are in Christ; and how, as a living Saviour, Christ through
His Spirit takes and keeps charge of us and our life of holiness. He
makes Christ indeed to be to us _the Holy One of God_.

My Brother! wouldst thou be holy, wouldst thou know God's way of
holiness--learn to know Christ as the Holy One of God. Thou art _in
Him_, 'holy in Christ.' Thou hast been placed, by an act of Divine
Power, in Christ, and that same Power keeps thee there, planted and
rooted in that Divine fulness of life and holiness which there is in
Him. His Holy Presence, and the power of His eternal life, surround
thee: let the Holy Spirit reveal this to thee. The Holy Spirit is within
thee as the power of Christ and His life. Secretly, silently, but
mightily, if thou wilt look to the Father for His working, will He
strengthen the faith that thou art in Christ, and that the Divine life,
which thus encircles thee on every side, will enter in and take
possession of thee. Study and pray to believe and realize that it is in
Christ as the Holy One of God, in Christ in whom the Holiness of God is
prepared for thee as a holy nature and holy living, that thou art, and
that thou mayest abide.

And then remember, also, that this Christ is thy Saviour, the most
patient and compassionate of teachers. Study holiness in the light of
His countenance, looking up into His face. _He came from heaven for the
very purpose of making thee holy._ His love and power are more than thy
slowness and sinfulness. Do learn to think of holiness as the
inheritance prepared for thee, as the power of a new life which Jesus
waits and lives to dispense. Just think of it as all in Him, and of its
possession as being dependent upon the possession of Himself. And as the
disciples, though they scarce understood what they confessed, or knew
whither the Lord was leading them, became His saints, His holy ones, in
virtue of their intense attachment to Him, so wilt thou find that to
love Jesus fervently, and obey Him simply, is the sure path to holiness
and the fulness of the Holy Spirit.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most Holy Lord God! I do bless Thee that Thy beloved Son, whom Thou
didst sanctify and send into the world, is now to us _the Holy One of
God_. I beseech Thee that my inner life may so be enlightened by the
Spirit that I may in faith fully know what this means.

May I know Him as the revelation of Thy Holiness, the incarnation in
human nature, even unto the death, of Thine infinite and unconquerable
hatred of sin, as of Thy amazing love to the sinner. May my soul be
filled with great fear and trust of Thee.

May I know Him as the exhibition of the Holiness in which we are now to
walk before Thee. He lived in Thy holy will. May I know Him as He
wrought out that holiness, to be communicated to us in a new human
nature, making it possible for us to live a holy life.

May I know Him as Thou hast placed me in Him in heaven, holy in Christ,
and as I may abide in Him by faith.

May I know Him, as He dwells in me, the Holy One of God on the throne of
my heart, breathing His Holy Spirit and maintaining His holy rule. So
shall I live holy in Christ.

O my Father! it pleased Thee that in Thy Son should all the fulness
dwell. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; in Him
dwell the unsearchable riches of grace and holiness. I beseech Thee,
reveal Him to me, reveal Him in me, that I may not have to satisfy
myself with thoughts and desires, without the reality, but that in the
power of an endless life I may know Him, and be known of Him, the Holy
One of God. Amen.


  1. In the holiness of Jesus we see what ours must be:
     righteousness, that hates sin and gives everything to have it
     destroyed; love, that seeks the sinner and gives everything to
     have him saved. 'Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of
     God, neither he that loveth not his brother.'

  2. It is a solemn thought that we may be studying earnestly to
     know what holiness is, and yet have little of it, because we
     have little of Jesus. It is a blessed thought that a man may
     directly be little occupied with the thought of holiness, and
     yet have much of it, because he is full of Jesus.

  3. We need the whole of what God teaches in His Word in regard
     to holiness in all its different aspects. We need still more to
     be ever returning to the living centre where God imparts
     holiness. Jesus is _the Holy One of God_: to have _Him_ truly,
     to love _Him_ fervently, to trust and obey _Him_, to be _in
     Him_--this makes us holy.

  4. Your holiness is thus treasured up in this Divine, Almighty,
     and most gentle Saviour--surely there need to be no fear that
     He will not be ready or able to make you holy.

  5. With such a Sanctifier, how comes it that so many seekers
     after holiness fail so sadly, and know so little of the joy of
     a holy life?

     I am sure it is with very many this one thing: they seek to
     grasp and hold this Christ in their own strength, and know not
     how it is the Holy Spirit within them who must be waited for to
     reveal this Divine Being, the Holy One of God, in their hearts.




Fifteenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Holy Spirit.

  'But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him
  were to receive: for _the Holy Spirit_ was not yet: because Jesus
  was not yet glorified.'--John vii. 39.

  'The Comforter, even _the Holy Spirit_, whom the Father will send
  in my name, He shall teach you all things.'--John xiv. 26.

  'God chose you to salvation _in sanctification of the Spirit_, and
  belief of the truth.'--2 Thess. ii. 13. (See 1 Pet. i. 2.)


It has sometimes been said, that while the Holiness of God stands out
more prominently in the Old Testament, in the New it has to give way to
the revelation of His love. The remark could hardly be made if it were
fully realized that the Spirit is God, and that when He takes up the
epithet Holy as His own proper name, it is to teach us that now the
Holiness of God is to come nearer than ever, and to be specially
revealed as the power that makes us holy. In the Holy Spirit, God the
Holy One of Israel, and He who was the Holy One of God, come nigh for
the fulfilment of the promise, 'I am the Lord that make you holy.' The
unseen and unapproachable holiness of God had been revealed and brought
near in the life of Christ Jesus; all that hindered our participation in
it had been removed by His death. The name of Holy Spirit teaches us
that it is specially the Spirit's work to impart it to us and make it
our own.

Try and realize the meaning of this; the epithet that through the whole
Old Testament has belonged to the Holy God, is now appropriated to that
Spirit which is within you. The Holiness of God in Christ becomes
holiness _in you_, because this Spirit is in you. The words, and the
Divine realities the words express, _Holy_ and _Spirit_, are now
inseparably and eternally united. You can only have as much of the
Spirit as you are willing to have of holiness. You can only have as much
holiness as you have of the indwelling Spirit.

There are some who pray for the Spirit because they long to have His
light and joy and strength. And yet their prayers bring little increase
of blessing or power. It is because they do not rightly know or desire
Him as the _Holy_ Spirit. His burning purity, His searching and
convicting light, His making dead of the deeds of the body, of self with
its will and its power, His leading into the fellowship of Jesus as He
gave up His will and His life to the Father,--of all this they have not
thought. The Spirit cannot work in power in them because they receive
Him not as the _Holy_ Spirit, in _sanctification_ of the Spirit. At
times, in seasons of revival, as among the Corinthians and Galatians, He
may indeed come with His gifts and mighty workings, while His
sanctifying power is but little manifest. (1 Cor. xiv. 4, xiii. 8, iii.
1-3; Gal. iii. 3, v. 15-26.) But unless that sanctifying power be
acknowledged and accepted, His gifts will be lost. His gifts coming on
us are but meant to prepare the way for the sanctifying power within us.
We must take the lesson to heart; we can have as much of the Spirit as
we are willing to have of His Holiness. Be full of the Spirit, must mean
to us, Be fully holy.

The converse is equally true. We can only have so much holiness as we
have of the Spirit. Some souls do very earnestly seek to be holy, but it
is very much in their own strength. They will read books and listen to
addresses most earnestly; they will use every effort to lay hold of
every thought, and act out every advice. And yet they must confess that
they are still very much strangers to the true, deep rest and joy and
power of abiding in Christ, and being holy in Him. They sought for
holiness more than for the Spirit. They must learn how even all the
holiness which is so near and clear in Christ, is beyond our reach,
except as the Holy Spirit dwells within and imparts it. They must learn
to pray for Him and His mighty strengthening (Eph. iii. 16), to believe
for Him (John iv. 14, vii. 37), in faith to yield to Him as indwelling
(1 Cor. iii. 14, vi. 19). They must learn to cease from self-effort in
thinking and believing, in willing and in running; to hope in God, and
wait patiently for Him. He will by His Holy Spirit make us holy. Be holy
means, Be filled with the Spirit.

If we inquire more closely how it is that this Holy Spirit makes holy,
the answer is,--He reveals and imparts the Holiness of Christ. Scripture
tells us: Christ is made unto us sanctification. He sanctified Himself
for us, that we ourselves might also be sanctified in truth. We have
been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all. We are sanctified in Christ Jesus. The whole living Christ is
just a treasury of holiness for man. In His life on earth He exchanged
the Divine Holiness He possessed into the current coin needed for this
human earthly life, obedience to the Father, and humility, and love, and
zeal. As God, He has a sufficiency of it for every moment of the life of
every believer.

And yet, it is all beyond our reach, except as the Holy Spirit brings it
to us and inwardly communicates it. But this is the very work for which
He bears the Divine Name, the _Holy_ Spirit, to glorify Jesus, the Holy
One of God, within us, and so make us partakers of His Holiness. He does
it by revealing Christ, so that we begin to see what is in Him. He does
it by discovering the deep unholiness of our nature (Rom. vii. 14-23).
He does it by mightily strengthening us to believe, to receive Jesus
Himself as our life. He does it by leading us to utter despair of self,
to absolute surrender of obedience to Jesus as Lord, to the assured
confidence of faith in the power of an indwelling Christ. He does it by,
in the secret silent depths of the heart and life, imparting the
dispositions and graces of Christ, so that from the inner centre of our
life, which has been renewed and sanctified in Christ, holiness should
flow out and pervade all to the utmost circumference. Where the desire
has once been awakened, and the delight in the law of God after the
inward man been created, there, as the Spirit of this life in Christ
Jesus, He makes free from the law of sin and death in the members, he
leads into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. As God within us, He
communicates what God in Christ has prepared.

And if we ask once more how the working of this Holy Spirit, who thus
makes holy, is to be secured, the answer is very simple and clear. He is
the Spirit of the Holy Father, and of Christ, the Holy One of God: from
them He must be received. 'He showed me a river of water of life
proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb.' Jesus speaks of 'the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my Name.' He taught us to ask
the Father. Paul prays for the Ephesians: 'I bow my knees to the Father,
that He may grant unto you, according to the riches of His glory, that
ye may be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.' It is
as we look to God in His Holiness, and all its revelation from Creation
downward, and see how the Spirit now flows out from the throne of His
Holiness as the water of life, that our hope will be awakened that God
will give Him to work mightily in us. And as we then see Jesus revealing
that holiness in human nature, rending the veil in His atoning death,
that the Spirit from the Holiest of all may come forth and, as the Holy
Spirit, be His representative, making Him present within us, we shall
become confident that faith in Jesus will bring the fulness of the
Spirit. As He told us to ask the Father, He told us to believe in
Himself. 'He that believeth in me, rivers of living water shall flow out
of him.' Let us bow to the Father in the name of Christ, His Son; let us
believe very simply in the Son as Him in whom we are well-pleasing to
the Father, and through whom the Father's love and blessing reach us,
and we may be sure the Spirit, who is already within us, will, as the
Holy Spirit, do His work in ever-increasing power. The mystery of
holiness is the mystery of the Trinity: as we bow to the Father,
believing in the Son, the Holy Spirit will work. And we shall see the
true meaning of what God spake in Israel: '_I am holy_,' thus speaks the
Father; '_Be holy_,' as my Son and in my Son; '_I make holy_,' through
the Spirit of my Son dwelling in you. Let our souls worship and cry out,
'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts.'

The Holy Spirit. All true knowledge of the Father in His adorable
Holiness, and of the Son in His, which is meant to be ours, and all
participation of it, depend upon our life in the Spirit, upon our
knowing and owning Him as abiding in us as our Life. Oh, what can it be
that, with such a Thrice Holy God, His Holiness does not more cover His
Church and children? The Holy Spirit is among us, is in us: it must be
we grieve and resist Him. If _you_ would not do so, at once bow the knee
to the Father, that He may grant you the Spirit's mighty workings in
the inner man. Believe that the Holy Spirit, bearer to you of all the
Holiness of God and of Jesus, is indeed in you. Let Him take the place
of self, with its thoughts and efforts. Set your soul still before God
in holy silence, for Him to give you wisdom; rest, in emptiness and
poverty of spirit, in the faith that He will work in His own way. As
Divine as is the holiness that Jesus brings, so Divine is the power in
which the Holy Spirit communicates it. Yield yourself day by day in
growing dependence and obedience, to wait on and be led of Him. Let the
fear of the Holy One be on you: sanctify the Lord God in your heart: let
Him be your fear and dread. Fear not only sin: fear above all self, as
it thrusts itself in before God with its service. Let self die, in
refusing and denying its work: let the Holy Spirit, in quietness, and
dependence, in the surrender of obedience and trust, have the rule, the
free disposal of every faculty. Wait for Him--He can, He will in power
reveal and impart the Holiness of the Father and the Son.[7]

  BE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts! the whole earth is full of Thy
glory! Let that glory fill the heart of Thy child, as he bows before
Thee. I come now to drink of the river of the water of life that flows
from under the throne of God and of the Lamb. Glory be to God and to the
Lamb for the gift that hath not entered into the heart of man to
conceive--the gift of the Holy indwelling Spirit.

O my Father! in the name of Jesus I ask Thee that I may be strengthened
with might by Thy Spirit in the inner man. Teach me, I pray Thee, to
believe that Thou hast given Him, to accept and expect Him to fill and
rule my whole inner being. Teach me to give up to Him; not to will or to
run, not to think or to work in my strength, but in quiet confidence to
wait and to know that He works in me. Teach me what it is to have no
confidence in the flesh, and to serve Thee in the Spirit. Teach me what
it is in all things to be led by Thy Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Thy
Holiness.

And grant, gracious Father, that through Him I may hear Thee speak and
reveal Thyself to me in power: I AM HOLY. May He glorify to me and in
me, Jesus, in whom Thy command 'BE HOLY' hath been so blessedly
fulfilled on my behalf. And let the Holy Spirit give me the anointing
and the sealing which bring the perfect assurance that in Him Thy
promise is being gloriously fulfilled, 'I MAKE YOU HOLY.' Amen.


  1. It it universally admitted that the Holy Spirit has not, in
     the teaching of the Church or the faith of believers, that
     place of honour and power, which becomes Him as the Revealer of
     the Father and the Son. Seek a deep conviction that without the
     Holy Spirit the clearest teaching on holiness, the most fervent
     desires, the most blessed experiences even, will only be
     temporary, will produce no permanent result, will bring no
     abiding rest.

  2. The Holy Spirit dwells within, and works within, in the hidden
     deep of your nature. Seek above everything the clear and
     habitual assurance that He is within you, doing His work.

  3. To this end, deny self and its work in serving God. Your own
     power to think and pray and believe and strive--lay it all down
     expressly and distinctly in God's presence; claim, accept, and
     believe in the hidden workings of the indwelling Spirit.

  4. As the Son ever spake of the Father, so the Spirit ever points
     to Christ. The soul that yields itself to the Spirit will of
     Him learn to know how Christ is our holiness, how we can always
     abide in Christ our Sanctification. What a vain effort it has
     often been without the Spirit! '_As the anointing taught you_,
     ye abide in Him.'

  5. In the temple of thine heart, beloved believer, there is a
     secret place, within the veil, where dwells, often all unknown,
     the Spirit of God. Do bow in deep reverence before the Father,
     and ask that He may work mightily. Expect the Spirit to do His
     work: He will make Thy inner man a fit home, Thy heart a
     throne, for Jesus, and reveal Him there.


    [7] I cannot say how deeply I feel that one of the great wants of
        believers is that they do not _know_ the Holy Spirit, who is
        within them, and thereby lose the blessed life He would work in
        them. If it please God, I hope that the next volume of this
        series may be on _The Spirit of Christ_. May the Father give me
        a message that shall help His children to know what the Holy
        Spirit can be to them.




Sixteenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Truth.

  '_Make them holy_ in _the Truth_: Thy word is _Truth_.'--John
  xvii. 17.

  'God chose you unto salvation in _sanctification_ and belief of
  _the Truth_.'--2 Thess. ii. 12.


The chief means of sanctification that God uses is His word. And yet how
much there is of reading and studying, of teaching and preaching the
word, that has almost no effect in making men holy. It is not the word
that sanctifies; it is God Himself who alone can sanctify. Nor is it
simply through the word that God does it, but through the Truth which is
in the word. As a means the word is of unspeakable value, as the vessel
which contains the truth, if God use it; as a means it is of no value,
if God does not use it. Let us strive to connect God's Holy Word with
the Holy God Himself. God sanctifies in the Truth through His word.

Jesus had just said, 'The words which Thou gavest me, I have given
them.' Let us try and realize what that means. Think of that great
transaction in eternity: the Infinite Being, whom we call God, _giving
His words_ to His Son; in His words opening up His heart, communicating
His mind and will, revealing Himself and all His purpose and love. In a
Divine power and reality passing all conception, God gave Christ His
words. In the same living power Christ gave them to His disciples, all
full of a Divine life and energy to work in their hearts, as they were
able to receive them. And just as in the words of a man on earth we
expect to find all the wisdom or all the goodness there is in him, so
the word of the Thrice Holy One is all alive with the Holiness of God.
All the holy fire, alike of His burning zeal and His burning love,
dwells in His words.

And yet men can handle these words, and study them, and speak them, and
be entire strangers to their holiness, or their power to make holy. It
is God Himself, the Holy One, who must make holy through the word. Every
seed, in which the life of a tree is contained, has around it a husk or
shell, which protects and hides the inner life. Only where the seed
finds a place in congenial soil, and the husk is burst and removed, can
the seed germinate and grow up. And it is only where there is a heart in
harmony with God's Holiness, longing for it, yielding itself to it, that
the word will really make holy. It is the heart that is not content with
the word, but seeks the Living, Holy One in the word, to which He will
reveal the truth, and in it Himself. It is the word given to us by
Christ as God gave it Him, and received by us as it was by Him, to rule
and fill our life, which has power to make holy.

But we must notice very specially how our Saviour says, Sanctify them,
not in the word, but in the truth. Just as in man there is body, soul,
and spirit, so in truth too. There is first _word-truth_; a man may have
the correct form of words while he does not really apprehend the truth
they contain. Then there is _thought-truth_; there may be a clear
intellectual apprehension of truth without the experience of its power.
The Bible speaks of truth as a living reality: this is the _life-truth_,
in which the very Spirit of the truth we profess has entered and
possessed our inner being. Christ calls Himself _the Truth_: He is said
to be full of grace and truth. The Divine life and grace are in Him as
an actually substantial existence and reality. He not only acts upon us
by thoughts and motives, but communicates, as a _reality_, the eternal
life He brought for us from the Father. The Holy Spirit is called the
Spirit of Truth; what He imparts is all real and actual, the very
substance of unseen things; He guides into the Truth, not thought-truth
or doctrine only, but life-truth, the personal possession of the Truth
as it is in Jesus. As the Spirit of Truth He is the Spirit of Holiness;
the life of God, which is His Holiness, He brings to us as an actual
possession.

It is now of this living Truth, which dwells in the word, as the
seed-life dwells in the husk, that Jesus says, 'Make them holy in the
Truth: Thy word is Truth.' He would have us mark the intimate
connection, as well as the wide difference, between the word and the
truth. The connection is one willed by God and meant to be inseparable.
'Thy word is truth;' with God they are one. But not with man. Just as
there were men in close contact and continual intercourse with Jesus, to
whom He was only a man, and nothing more, so there are Christians who
know and understand the word, and yet are strangers to its true
spiritual power. They have the letter but not the spirit; the Truth
comes to them in word but not in power. The word does not make them
holy, because they hold it not in Spirit and in Truth. To others, on the
contrary, who know what it is to receive the truth in the love of it,
who yield themselves, in all their dealings with the word, to the Spirit
of Truth who dwells in it and in them too, the word comes indeed as
Truth, as a Divine reality, communicating and working what it speaks of.
And it is of such a use of the word that the Saviour says, 'Make them
holy in the truth: Thy word is truth.' As the words, which God gave Him,
were all in the power of the eternal Life and Love and Will of God, the
revelation and communication of the Father's purpose, as God's word was
Truth to Him and in Him, so it can be in us. And as we thus receive it,
we are made holy in the Truth.

And what now are the lessons we have to learn here for the path of
Holiness? The first is: Let us see to it that in all our intercourse
with God's Blessed Word we rest content with nothing short of the
experience of it, as truth of God, as spirit and as power. Jesus said,
'If ye abide in my word, ye shall know the truth.' No analysis can ever
find or prove the life of a seed: plant it in its proper soil, and the
growth will testify to the life. It is only as the word of God is
received in the love of it, as it grows and works in us, that we can
know its truth, can know that it is the Truth of God. It is as we live
in the words of Jesus, in love and obedience, keeping and doing them,
that the Truth from heaven, the Power of the Divine Life which there is
in them, will unfold itself to us. Christ is the Truth; in Him the love
and grace, the very life of God, has come to earth as a substantial
existence, a Living, Mighty Power, something new that was never on earth
before (John i. 17); let us yield ourselves to the Living Christ to
possess us and to rule us as the Living Truth, then will God's word be
Truth to us and in us.

The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of Truth; that actual heavenly
reality of Divine life and love in Christ, the Truth, has a Spirit, who
comes to communicate and impart it. Let us beware of trying to study or
understand or take possession of God's word without that Spirit through
whom the word was spoken of old; we shall find only the husk, the truth
or thought and sentiment, very beautiful perhaps, but with no power to
make us holy. We must have _the Spirit_ of the Truth within us. He will
lead us _into_ the Truth; when we are in the Truth, God makes us holy in
it and by it. The Truth must be in us, and we in it. God desires truth
in the inward parts: we must be of the people of whom Christ says, 'If
ye were of the truth,' 'he that is of the truth knoweth me.' In the
lower sphere of daily life and conduct, of thought and action, there
must be an intense love of truth, and a willingness to sacrifice
everything for it; in the spiritual life, a deep hungering to have all
our religion every day, every moment, stand fully in the truth of God.
It is to the simple, humble, childlike spirit that the truth of the word
will be unsealed and revealed. In such the Spirit of truth comes to
dwell. In such, as they daily wait before the Holy One in silence and
emptiness, in reverence and holy fear, His Holy Spirit works and gives
the truth within. In thus imparting Christ as revealed in the word, in
His Divine life and love, as their own life, He makes them holy with the
holiness of Christ.

There is another lesson. Listen to that prayer, the earthly echo of the
prayer which He ever liveth to pray, 'Holy Father! make them holy in the
truth.' Would you be holy, child of God? cast yourself into that mighty
current of intercession ever flowing into, ever reaching, the Father's
bosom. Let yourself be borne upon it until your whole soul cries, with
the unutterable groanings, too deep and too intense for human speech,
'Holy Father! make me holy in the truth.' As you trust in Christ as the
truth, the reality of what you long for, and in His all-prevailing
intercession; as you wait for the Spirit within as the Spirit of truth;
look up to the Father, and expect His own direct and almighty working to
make you holy. The mystery of holiness is the mystery of the Triune
One. The deeper entrance into the holy life rests in the fellowship of
the Three in One. It is the Father who establishes us in Christ, who
gives, in a daily fresh giving, the Holy Spirit; it is to the Father,
the Holy Father, the soul must look up continually in the prayer, 'Make
me holy in the truth.'

It has been well said that in the word Holy we have the central thought
of the high-priestly prayer. As the Father's attribute (John xvii. 11),
as the Son's work for Himself and us (ver. 19), as the direct work of
the Father through the Spirit (vers. 17, 20), it is the revelation of
the glory of God in Himself and in us. Let us enter into the Holiest of
all, and as we bow with our Great High Priest, let the deep, unceasing
cry go up for all the Church of God, 'Holy Father! make them holy in the
truth: Thy word is truth.' The word in which God makes holy is summed up
in this, HOLY IN CHRIST. May God make it truth in us!

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Blessed Father! to Israel Thou didst say, I the Lord am holy and make
holy. But it is only in Thy beloved Son that the full glory of Thy
Holiness, as making us holy, has been revealed. Thou art our Holy
Father, who makest us holy in Thy truth.

We thank Thee that Thy Son hath given us the words Thou gavest Him, and
that as He received them from Thee in life and power, we may receive
them too. O Father! with our whole heart we do receive them; let the
Spirit make them truth and life within us. So shall we know Thee as the
Holy One, consuming the sin, renewing the sinner.

We bless Thee most for Thy Blessed Son, the Holy One of God, the Living
Word in whom the Truth dwelleth. We thank Thee that in His never-ceasing
intercession, this cry ever reacheth Thee, 'Father, sanctify them in Thy
truth,' and that the answer is ever streaming forth from Thy glory. Holy
Father! make us holy in Thy truth, in Thy wonderful revelation of
Thyself in Him who is the truth. Let Thy Holy Spirit so have dominion in
our hearts that Thy Holy Child Jesus, sanctifying Himself for us that we
may be sanctified in the truth, may be to us the Way, the Truth, and the
Life. May we know that we are in Him in Thy presence, and that Thy one
word in answer to our prayer to make us holy is--Holy in Christ. Amen.


  1. God is the God of truth--not truth in speaking only, or truth of
     doctrine--but truth of existence, or life in its Divine reality.
     And Christ is _the truth_; the actual embodiment of this Divine
     life. And there is a kingdom of truth, of Divine Spiritual
     realities, of which Christ is King. And of all this truth of God in
     Christ, the very essence is, the Spirit. He is the Spirit of truth:
     He leads us into it, so that we are of the truth and walk in it. Of
     the truth, the reality there is in God, Holiness, is the deepest
     root; the Spirit of _truth_ is the _Holy_ Spirit.

  2. It is the work of _the Father_ to make us holy in the truth: let
     us bow very low in childlike trust as we breathe the prayer: 'Holy
     Father! make us holy in the truth.' _He will do it._

  3. It is the intercession of _the Son_ that asks and obtains this
     blessing: let us take our place _in Him_, and rejoice in the
     assurance of an answer.

  4. It is _the Spirit of truth_ through whom the Father does this
     work, so that we dwell in the truth, and the truth in us. Let us
     yield very freely and very fully to the leading of the Spirit, in
     our intercourse with God's Word, that, as the Son prays, the Father
     may make us holy in the truth.

  5. Let us, in the light of this work of the Three-One, never read
     the Word but with this aim: to be made holy in the truth by God.




Seventeenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Crucifixion.

  'For their sakes I _sanctify_ myself, that they themselves also
  may be _sanctified_ in truth.'--John xvii. 19.

  'He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will. In which will we have been
  _sanctified_ through the offering of the body of Jesus once for
  all. For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
  _sanctified_.'--Heb. x. 9, 10, 14.


It was in His High-priestly prayer, on His way to Gethsemane and
Calvary, that Jesus thus spake to the Father: 'I sanctify myself.' He
had not long before spoken of Himself as 'the Son whom the Father hath
sanctified and sent into the world.' From the language of Holy Scripture
we are familiar with the thought that, what God has sanctified, man has
to sanctify too. The work of the Father, in sanctifying the Son, is the
basis and groundwork of the work of the Son in sanctifying Himself. If
His Holiness as man was to be a free and personal possession, accepted
and assimilated in voluntary and conscious self-determination, it was
not enough that the Father sanctify Him: He must sanctify Himself too.

This self-sanctifying of our Lord found place through His whole life,
but culminates and comes out in special distinctness in His crucifixion.
Wherein it consists is made clear by the words from the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The Messiah spake: 'Lo, I come to do Thy will.' And then it is
added, 'In the which will we have been sanctified through the offering
of the body of Christ.' It was the offering of the body of Christ that
was the will of God: in doing that will He sanctified us. It was of the
doing that will in the offering His body that He spake, 'I sanctify
myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.' The
giving up of His will to God's will in the agony of Gethsemane, and then
the doing of that will in the obedience unto death, this was Christ's
sanctifying Himself and us too. Let us try and understand this.

The Holiness of God is revealed in His will. Holiness even in the Divine
Being has no moral value except as it is freely willed. In speaking of
the Trinity, theologians have pointed out how, as the Father represents
the absolute necessity of Everlasting Goodness, the Son proves its
liberty: within the Divine Being it is willed in love. And this now was
the work of the Son on earth, amid the trials and temptations of a human
life, to accept and hold fast at any sacrifice, with His whole heart to
will, the will of the Father. 'Though He was a Son, yet He learned
obedience in that He suffered.' In Gethsemane the conflict between the
will of human nature and the Divine will reached its height: it
manifests itself in language which almost makes us tremble for His
sinlessness, as He speaks of His will in antithesis to God's will. But
the struggle is a victory, because in presence of the clearest
consciousness of what it means to have His own will, He gives it up, and
says, 'Thy will be done.' To enter into the will of God He gives up His
very life. In His crucifixion He thus reveals the law of sanctification.
Holiness is the full entrance of our will into God's will. Or rather,
Holiness is the entrance of God's will to be the death of our will. The
only end of our will and deliverance from it, is death to it under the
righteous judgment of God. It was in the surrender to the death of the
cross that Christ sanctified Himself, and sanctified us, that we also
might be sanctified in truth.

And now, just as the Father sanctified Him, and He in virtue thereof
appropriated it and sanctified Himself, so we, whom He has sanctified,
have to appropriate it to ourselves. In no other way than crucifixion,
the giving up of Himself to the death, could Christ realize the
sanctification He had from the Father. And in no other way can we
realize the sanctification we have in Him. His own and our
sanctification bears the common stamp of the cross. We have seen before
that obedience is the path to holiness. In Christ we see that the path
to perfect holiness is perfect obedience. And that is obedience unto
death, even to the giving up of life, even the death of the cross. As
the sanctification which Christ wrought out for us, even unto the
offering of His body, bears the death mark, we cannot partake of it, we
cannot enter it, except as we die to self and its will. Crucifixion is
the path to sanctification.

This lesson is in harmony with all we have seen. The first revelation of
God's Holiness to Moses was accompanied with the command, Put off. God's
praise, as Glorious in Holiness, Fearful in Praises, was sounded over
the dead bodies of the Egyptians. When Moses on Sinai was commanded to
sanctify the Mount, it was said, 'If any touch it, man or beast, it
shall not live.' The Holiness of God is death to all that is in contact
with sin. Only through death, through blood-shedding, was there access
to the Holiest of all. Christ chose death, even death as a curse, that
He might sanctify Himself for us, and open to us the path to Holiness,
to the Holiest of all, to the Holy One. And so it is still. No man can
see God and live. It is only in death, the death of self and of nature,
that we can draw near and behold God. Christ led the way. No man can see
God and live. 'Then let me die, Lord,' one has cried, 'but see Thee I
must.' Yes, blessed be God, so real is our interest in Christ and our
union to Him, that we may live in His death; as day by day self is kept
in the place of death, the life and the holiness of Christ can be
ours.[8]

And where is the place of death? And how can the crucifixion which leads
to Holiness and to God be accomplished in us? Thank God! it is no work
of our own, no weary process of self-crucifixion. The crucifixion that
is to sanctify us is an accomplished fact. The cross bears the banner,
'It is finished.' On it Christ sanctified Himself for us, that we might
be sanctified in truth. Our crucifixion, as our sanctification, is
something that in Christ has been completely and perfectly finished. 'We
have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
once for all.' 'By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified.' In that fulness, which it is the Father's good pleasure
should dwell in Christ, the crucifixion of our old man, of the flesh, of
the world, of ourselves, is all a spiritual reality; he that desires and
knows and accepts Christ, fully receives all this in Him. And as the
Christ, who had previously been known more in His pardoning, quickening,
and saving grace, is again sought after as a real deliverer from the
power of sin, as a sanctifier, He comes and takes up the soul into the
fellowship of the sacrifice of His will. 'He put away sin _by the
sacrifice of Himself_,' must become true of us as it is of Him. He
reveals how it is a part of His salvation to make us partakers of a will
entirely given up to the will of God, of a life that had yielded itself
to the death, and had then been given back from the dead by the power of
God, a life of which the crucifixion of self-will was the spirit and the
power. He reveals this, and the soul that sees it, and consents to it,
and yields its will and its life, and believes in Jesus as its death and
its life, and in His crucifixion as its possession and its inheritance,
enters into the enjoyment and experience of it. The language is now, 'I
died that I might live: I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no
longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.' And the life it now
lives is by the faith on the Son of God, the daily acceptance in faith
of Him who lives within us in the power of a death that has been passed
through and for ever finished.

'I sanctify myself for them, that they themselves also may be sanctified
in truth.' 'I come to do Thy will, O God. In the which will,' the will
of God accomplished by Christ, 'we have been sanctified through the one
offering of the body of Christ.' Let us understand and hold it fast:
Christ's giving up His will in Gethsemane and accepting God's will in
dying; Christ's doing that will in the obedience to the death of the
cross, this is His sanctifying Himself, and this is our being sanctified
in truth. 'In the which will we have been sanctified.' The death to
self, the utter and most absolute giving up of our own life, with its
will and its power and its aims, to the cross, and into the crucifixion
of Christ, the daily bearing the cross--not a cross on which we are yet
to be crucified, but the cross of the crucified Christ in its power to
kill and make dead--this is the secret of the life of holiness--this is
true sanctification.

Believer! is this the holiness which you are seeking? Have you seen and
consented that God alone is holy, that self is all unholy, and that
there is no way to be made holy but for the fire of the Divine Holiness
to come in and be the death of self? 'Always bearing about in the body
the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in
our mortal body'--is the pathway for each one who seeks to be sanctified
in truth, even as He sanctified Himself; sanctified just like Jesus.

He sanctified Himself for us, that we ourselves also might be sanctified
in truth. Yes, our sanctification rests and roots in His, in Himself.
And we are in Him. The secret roots of our being are planted into Jesus:
deeper down than we can see or feel, there is He our Vine, bearing and
quickening us. Let us by faith understand that, in a manner and a
measure which are far beyond our comprehension, intensely Divine and
real, we are in Him who sanctified Himself for us. Let us dwell there,
where we have been placed of God. And let us bow our knees to the
Father, that He would grant us to be mightily strengthened by His
Spirit, that Christ as our Sanctification may dwell in our hearts, that
the power of His death and His life may be revealed in us, and God's
will be done in us as it was in Him.

  BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


Holy Father! I do bless Thee for this precious blessed word, for this
precious blessed work of Thy beloved Son. In His never-ceasing
intercession Thou ever hearest the wonderful prayer, 'I sanctify myself
for them, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.'

Blessed Father! I beseech Thee to strengthen me mightily by Thy Spirit,
that in living faith I may be able to accept and live the holiness
prepared for me in my Lord Jesus. Give me spiritual understanding to
know what it means that He sanctified Himself, that my sanctification is
secured in His, that as by faith I abide in Him, its power will cover my
whole life. Let His sanctification indeed be the law as it is the life
of mine. Let His surrender to Thy fatherly will, His continual
dependence and obedience, be its root and its strength. Let His death to
the world and to sin be its daily rule. Above all, _let Himself_, O my
Father! _let Himself_, as sanctified for me, the living Jesus, be my
only trust and stay. He sanctified Himself for me, that I myself also
may be sanctified in truth.

Beloved Saviour! how shall I rightly bless and love and glorify Thee for
this wondrous grace! Thou didst give Thyself, so that now I am holy in
Thee. I give myself, that in Thee I myself may be made holy in truth.
Amen. Lord Jesus! Amen.


  1. 'If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take
     up his cross, and follow me.' Jesus means that our life shall be
     the exact counterpart of His, including even the crucifixion. The
     beginning of such a life is the denial of self, to give Christ its
     place. The Jews would not deny self, but '_denied_ the Holy One,
     and killed the Prince of Life.' The choice is still between Christ
     and self. Let us deny the unholy one, and give him to the death.

  2. The steps in this path are these: First, the deliberate decision
     that self shall be given up to the death; then, the surrender to
     Christ crucified to make us partakers of His crucifixion; then,
     'knowing that our old man is crucified,' the faith that says, 'I am
     crucified with Christ;' and then, the power to live as a crucified
     one, to glory in the cross of Christ.

  3. This is God's way of holiness, a Divine mystery, which the Holy
     Spirit alone can daily maintain in us. Blessed be God, it is the
     life which a Christian can live, because Christ lives in us.

  4. The central thought is: We are in Christ, who gave up His will
     and did the will of God. By the Holy Spirit the mind that was in
     Him is in us, the will of self is crucified, and we live in the
     will of God.


    [8] See Note D.




Eighteenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Faith.

  'That they may receive remission of sins, and an inheritance among
  them that are _sanctified by faith in me_.'--Acts xxvi. 18.


The more we study Scripture in the light of the Holy Spirit, or practise
the Christian life in His power, the deeper becomes our conviction of
the unique and central place faith has in God's plan of salvation. And
we learn, too, to see that it is meet and right that it should be so:
the very nature of things demands it. Because God is a Spiritual and
Invisible Being, every revelation of Himself, whether in His works, His
word, or His Son, calls for faith. Faith is the spiritual sense of the
soul, being to it what the senses are to the body; by it alone we enter
into communication and contact with God.

Faith is that meekness of soul which waits in stillness to hear, to
understand, to accept what God says; to receive, to retain, to possess
what God gives or works. By faith we allow, we welcome God Himself, the
Living Person, to enter in to make His abode with us, to become our
very life. However well we think we know it, we always have to learn the
truth afresh, for a deeper and fuller application of it, that in the
Christian life faith is the first thing, the one thing that pleases God,
and brings blessing to us. And because Holiness is God's highest glory,
and the highest blessing He has for us, it is especially in the life of
holiness that we need to live by faith alone.

Our Lord speaks here of 'them that are sanctified by faith in me.'[9] He
Himself is our Sanctification as He is our Justification: for the one as
for the other it is faith that God asks, and both are equally given at
once. The participle used here is not the present, denoting a process or
work that is being carried on, but the aorist, indicating an act done
once for all. When we believe in Christ, we receive the whole Christ,
our justification and our sanctification: we are at once accepted by God
as righteous in Him, and as holy in Him. God counts and calls us, what
we really are, sanctified ones in Christ. It is as we are led to see
what God sees, as our faith grasps that the holy life of Christ is ours
in actual possession, to be accepted and appropriated for daily use,
that we shall really be able to live the life God calls us to, the life
of holy ones in Christ Jesus. We shall then be in the right position in
which what is called our progressive sanctification can be worked out.
It will be, the acceptance and application in daily life of the power of
a holy life which has been prepared in Jesus, which has in the union
with Him become our present and permanent possession, and which works in
us according to the measure of our faith.[10]

From this point of view it is evident that faith has a twofold
operation. Faith is the evidence of things not seen, though _now
actually existing_, the substance of things hoped for, but _not yet
present_. It deals with the unseen present, as well as with the unseen
future. As the evidence of things not seen, it rejoices in Christ our
complete sanctification, as a present possession. Through faith I simply
look to what Christ is, as revealed in the Word by the Holy Spirit.
Claiming all He is as my own, I know that His Holiness, His holy nature
and life, are mine; I am a holy one: by faith in Him I have been
sanctified. This is the first aspect of sanctification: it looks to what
is a complete and finished thing, an absolute reality. As the substance
of things hoped for, this faith reaches out in the assurance of hope to
the future, to things I do not yet see or experience, and claims, day by
day, out of Christ our sanctification, what it needs for practical
holiness, 'to be holy in all manner of living.' This is the second
aspect of sanctification: I depend upon Jesus to supply, in personal
experience, gradually and unceasingly, for the need of each moment,
what has been treasured up in His fulness. 'Of God are ye in Christ
Jesus, who of God is made unto us sanctification.' Under its first
aspect faith says, I know I am in Him, and all His Holiness is mine; in
its second aspect it speaks, I trust in Him for the grace and the
strength I need each moment to live a holy life.

And yet, it need hardly be said, these two are one. It is one Jesus who
is our sanctification, whether we look at it in the light of what He is
made for us once for all, or what, as the fruit of that, He becomes to
our experience day by day. And so it is one faith which, the more it
studies and adores and rejoices in Jesus as made of God unto us
sanctification, as Him in whom we have been sanctified, becomes the
bolder to expect the fulfilment of every promise for daily life, and the
stronger to claim the victory over every sin. Faith in Jesus is the
secret of a holy life: all holy conduct, all really holy deeds, are the
fruit of faith in Jesus as our holiness.

We know how faith acts, and what its great hindrances are, in the matter
of justification. It is well that we remind ourselves that there are the
same dangers in the exercise of sanctifying as of justifying faith.
Faith _in God_ stands opposed to trust _in self_: specially to its
willing and working. Faith is hindered by every effort to do something
ourselves. Faith looks to God working, and yields itself to His
strength, as revealed in Christ through the Spirit; it allows God to
work both to will and to do. Faith must work; without works it is dead,
by works alone can it be perfected; in Jesus Christ, as Paul says,
nothing avails but 'faith _working_ by love.' But these works, which
faith in God's working inspires and performs, are very different from
the works in which a believer often puts forth his best efforts, only to
find that he fails. The true life of holiness, the life of them who are
sanctified in Christ, has its root and its strength in an abiding sense
of utter impotence, in the deep restfulness which trusts to the working
of a Divine power and life, in the entire personal surrender to the
loving Saviour, in that faith which consents to be nothing, that He may
be all. It may appear impossible to discern or describe the difference
between the working that is of self and the working that is of Christ
through faith: if we but know that there is such a difference, if we
learn to distrust ourselves, and to count on Christ working, the Holy
Spirit will lead us into this secret of the Lord too. Faith's works are
Christ's works.

And as by effort, so faith is also hindered by the desire to see and
feel. 'If thou believest, thou shalt see;' the Holy Spirit will seal our
faith with a Divine experience; we shall see the glory of God. But this
is His work: ours is, when all appears dark and cold, in the face of all
that nature or experience testifies, still each moment to believe in
Jesus as our all-sufficient sanctification, in whom we are perfected
before God. Complaints as to want of feeling, as to weakness or
deadness, seldom profit: it is the soul that refuses to occupy itself
with itself, either with its own weakness or the strength of the enemy,
but only looks to what Jesus is, and has promised to do, to whom
progress in holiness will be a joyful march from victory to victory.
'The Lord Himself doth fight for you;' this thought, so often repeated
in connection with Israel's possession of the promised land, is the food
of faith: in conscious weakness, in presence of mighty enemies, it sings
the conqueror's song. When God appears to be _not doing_ what we trusted
Him for, then is just the time for faith to glory in Him.

There is perhaps nothing that more reveals the true character of faith
than joy and praise. You give a child the promise of a present
to-morrow: at once it says, Thank you, and is glad. The joyful thanks
are the proof of how really your promise has entered the heart. You are
told by a friend of a rich legacy he has left you in his will: it may
not come true for years, but even now it makes you glad. We have already
seen what an element of holiness joy is: it is especially an element of
holiness by faith. Each time I really see how beautiful and how perfect
God's provision is, by which my holiness is in Jesus, and by which I am
to allow Him to work in me, my heart ought to rise up in praise and
thanks. Instead of allowing the thought that it is, after all, a life of
such difficult attainment and such continual self-denial, this life of
holiness through faith, we ought to praise Him exceedingly that He has
made it possible and sure for us: we can be holy, because Jesus the
Mighty and the Loving One is our holiness. Praise will express our
faith; praise will prove it; praise will strengthen it. 'Then believed
they His words; they sang His praise.' Praise will commit us to faith:
we shall see that we have but one thing to do, to go on in a faith that
ever trusts and ever praises. It is in a living, loving attachment to
Jesus, that rejoices in Him, and praises Him continually for what He is
to us, that faith proves itself, and receives the power of holiness.

'Sanctified by faith in me.' Yes, 'by faith _in Me_:' it is the personal
living Jesus who offers Himself, Himself in all the riches of His Power
and Love, as the object, the strength, the life of our faith. He tells
us that if we would be holy, always and in everything holy, we must just
see to one thing: to be always and altogether full of faith in Him.
Faith is the eye of the soul: the power by which we discern the presence
of the Unseen One, as He comes to give Himself to us. Faith not only
sees, but appropriates and assimilates: let us set our souls very still
for the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, to quicken and strengthen that
faith, for which He has been given us. Faith is surrender: yielding
ourselves to Jesus to allow Him to do His work in us, giving up
ourselves to Him to live out His life and work out His will in us, we
shall find Him giving Himself entirely _to us_, and taking complete
possession. So faith will be power: the power of obedience to do God's
will: 'our most holy faith,' 'the faith delivered to the holy ones.'
And we shall understand how simple, to the single-hearted, is the secret
of holiness: just Jesus. We are in Him, our Sanctification: He
personally is our Holiness; and the life of faith in Him, that receives
and possesses Him, must necessarily be a life of holiness. Jesus says,
'Sanctified by faith in me.'

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Beloved Lord! again have I seen, with adoring wonder, what Thou art
willing to be to me. It is in Thyself, and a life of living fellowship
with Thyself, that I am to become holy. It is in the simple life of
personal attachment, of trust and love, of surrender and consecration,
that Thou dost become my all, and make me partaker of Thyself and Thy
Holiness.

Blessed Lord Jesus! I do believe in Thee, help Thou mine unbelief. I
confess what still remains of unbelief, and count on Thy presence to
conquer and cast it out. My soul is opening up continually to see more
how Thou Thyself art my Life and my Holiness. Thou art enlarging my
heart to rejoice in Thyself as my all, and to be assured that Thou dost
Thyself take possession and fill the temple of my being with Thy glory.
Thou art teaching me to understand that, however feeble and human and
disappointing experiences may be, Thy Holy Spirit is the strength of my
faith, leading me on to grow up into a stronger and a larger confidence
in Thee in whom I am holy. O my Saviour! I take Thy word this day,
'Sanctified by faith in me,' as a new revelation of Thy love and its
purpose with me. In Thee Thyself is the Power of my holiness; in Thee is
the Power of my faith. Blessed be Thy name that Thou hast given me too a
place among them of whom Thou speakest: 'Sanctified by faith in me.'
Amen.


  1. Let us remember that it is not only the faith that is dealing
     specially with Christ for sanctification, but all living faith,
     that has the power to sanctify. Anything that casts the soul wholly
     on Jesus, that calls forth intense and simple trust, be it the
     trial of faith, or the prayer of faith, or the work of faith, helps
     to make us holy, because it brings us into living contact with the
     Holy One.

  2. It is only through the Holy Spirit that Christ and His Holiness
     are day by day revealed and made ours in actual possession. And so
     the faith which receives Him is of the Spirit too. Yield yourself
     in simplicity and trust to His working. Do not be afraid, as if you
     cannot believe: you have 'the Spirit of faith' within you: you have
     the power to believe. And you may ask God to strengthen you
     mightily by His Spirit in the inner man, for the faith that
     receives Christ in the indwelling that knows no break.

  3. I have only so much of faith as I have of the Spirit. Is not
     this then what I most need--to live entirely under the influence of
     the Spirit?

  4. Just as the eye in seeing is receptive, and yields to let the
     object placed before it make its impression, so faith is the
     impression God makes on the soul when He draws nigh. Was not the
     faith of Abraham the fruit of God's drawing near and speaking to
     him, the impression God made on him? Let us be still to gaze on the
     Divine mystery of Christ our holiness: His Presence, waited for and
     worshipped, will work the faith. That is, the Spirit that proceeds
     from Him into those who cling to Him, will be faith.

  5. _Holiness by faith in Jesus_, not by effort of thine own,
      Sin's dominion crushed and broken _by the power of grace alone_,--
     _God's own holiness_ within thee, His own beauty on thy brow,--
      This shall be thy pilgrim brightness, this _thy blessed portion now_.

        F. R. H.


    [9] The best commentators connect the expression, 'by faith in me,'
        not with the word 'sanctified,' but with the whole clause, 'that
        by faith in me they may receive.' This will, however, in no way
        affect the application to the word sanctified. Thus read, the
        text tells us that the remission of sin, and the inheritance,
        and the sanctification which qualifies for the inheritance, are
        all received by faith.

   [10] See Note E.




Nineteenth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Resurrection.

  'The Son of God, who was born of the seed of David _according to
  the flesh_, who was declared to be the Son of God with power,
  _according to the Spirit_ of holiness, by the resurrection of the
  dead.'--Rom. i. 4.


These words speak of a twofold birth of Christ. According to the flesh,
He was born of the seed of David. According to the Spirit, He was the
first begotten from the dead. As He was a Son of David in virtue of His
birth through the flesh, so He was declared to be the Son of God with
power, in virtue of His resurrection-birth through the Spirit of
holiness. As the life He received through His first birth was a life in
and after the flesh with its weakness, so the new life He received in
the resurrection was a life in the power of the Spirit of holiness.

The expression, the Spirit of holiness, is a peculiar one. It is not the
ordinary word for God's Holiness that is here used as in Heb. xii. 10,
describing holiness in the abstract as the attribute of an object, but
another word (also used in 2 Cor. vii. 1 and 1 Thess. iii. 13)
expressing the habit of holiness in its action--practical holiness or
sanctity.[11] Paul used this word, because He wished to emphasize the
thought, that Christ's resurrection was distinctly the result of that
life of holiness and self-sanctifying which had culminated in His death.
It was the spirit of the life of holiness which he had lived, in the
power of which He was raised again. He teaches us that that life and
death of self-sanctification, in which alone our sanctification stands,
was the root and ground of His resurrection, and of its declaration that
He was the Son of God with power, the first begotten from the dead. The
resurrection was the fruit which that Life of Holiness bore.

And so the Life of Holiness becomes the property of all who are
partakers of the resurrection. The Resurrection Life and the Spirit of
Holiness are inseparable. Christ sanctified Himself in death, that we
ourselves might be sanctified in truth: when in virtue of the Spirit of
sanctity He was raised from the dead, that Spirit of holiness was proved
to be the power of Resurrection Life, and the Resurrection Life to be a
Life of Holiness.

As a believer you have part in this Resurrection Life. You have been
'begotten again by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' You
are 'risen with Christ.' You are commanded 'to reckon yourself to be
alive unto God in Christ Jesus.' But the life can work in power only as
you seek to know it, to yield to it, to let it have full possession and
mastery. And if it is to do this, one of the most important things for
you to realize is, that as it was in virtue of the Spirit of holiness
that Christ was raised, so the Spirit of that same holiness must be in
you the mark and the power of your life. Study to know and possess the
Spirit of holiness as it was seen in the life of your Lord.

And wherein did it consist? Its secret was, we are told: 'Lo, I am come
to do Thy will, O God.' 'In the which will,' as done by Christ, 'we have
been sanctified by the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ.' This
was Christ's sanctifying Himself, in life and in death; this was what
the Spirit of holiness wrought in Him; this is what the same Spirit, the
Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus, will work in us: a life in the will
of God is a life of holiness. Seek earnestly to grasp this clearly.
Christ came to reveal what true holiness would be in the conditions of
human life and weakness. He came to work it out for you, that He might
communicate it to you by His Spirit. Except you intelligently apprehend
and heartily accept it, the Spirit cannot work it in you. Do seek with
your whole heart to take hold of it: the will of God unhesitatingly
accepted, is the power of holiness.

It is in this that any attempt to be holy as Christ is holy, with and in
His Holiness, must have its starting-point. Many seek to take single
portions of the life or image of Christ for imitation, and yet fail
greatly in others. They have not seen that the self-denial, to which
Jesus calls, really means the denial of self, in the full meaning of
that word. In not one single thing is the will of self to be done:
Jesus, as He did the will of the Father only, must rule, and not self.
To 'stand perfect and complete in all the will of God' must be the
purpose, the prayer, the expectation of the disciple. There need be no
fear that it is not possible to know the will of the Father in
everything. 'If any man will do, he shall know.' The Father will not
keep the willing child in ignorance of His will. As the surrender to the
Spirit of holiness, to Jesus and the dominion of His holy life, becomes
more simple, sin and self-will will be discovered, the spiritual
understanding will be opened up, and the law written in the inward parts
become legible and intelligible. There need be no fear that it is not
possible to do the will of the Father when it is known. When once the
grief of failure and sin has driven the believer into the experience of
Rom. vii., and the 'delight in the law of God after the inward man' has
proved its earnestness in the cry, 'O wretched man that I am,'
deliverance will come through Jesus Christ. The Spirit works not only to
will but to do; where the believer could only complain, 'To perform that
which is good, I find not,' He gives the strength and song, 'The law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin
and death.'

In this faith, that it is possible to know and do the will of God in all
things, take over from Him, in whom alone you are holy, as your
life-principle; 'I come to do Thy will, O God.' It is the principle of
the resurrection life: without it Jesus had never been raised again. It
is the principle of the new life in you. Accept it; study it; realize
it; act it out. Many a believer has found that some simple words of
dedication, expressive of the purpose in everything to do God's will,
have been an entrance into the joy and power of the resurrection life
previously unknown. The will of God is the complete expression of His
moral perfection, His Divine Holiness. To take one's place in the centre
of that will, to live it out, to be borne and sustained by it, was the
power of that life of Jesus that could not be held of death, that could
not but burst out in resurrection glory. What it was to Jesus it will be
to us.

Holiness is Life: this is the simplest expression of the truth our text
teaches. There can be no holiness until there be a new life implanted.
The new life cannot grow and break forth in resurrection power, cannot
bring forth fruit, but as it grows in holiness. As long as the believer
is living the mixed life, part in the flesh and part in the spirit, with
some of self and some of Christ, he seeks in vain for holiness. It is
the New Life that is the holy life: the full apprehension of it in
faith, the full surrender to it in conduct, will be the highway of
holiness. Jesus lived and died and rose again to prepare for us a new
nature, to be received day by day in the obedience of faith: we 'have
put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness.' Let the inner life, hid with Christ in God, hid also
deep in the recesses of our inmost being, be acknowledged, be waited on,
be yielded to, it will work itself out in all the beauties of holiness.

There is more. This life is not like the life of nature, a blind,
non-conscious principle, involuntarily working out its ideal in
unresisting obedience to the law of its being. There is the Spirit of
the life in Christ Jesus--the Spirit of holiness--the Holy Spirit
dwelling in us as a Divine Person, entering into fellowship with us, and
leading us into the fellowship of the Living Christ. It is this fills
our life with hope and joy. The Risen Saviour breathed the Holy Spirit
on His disciples: the Spirit brings the Risen One into the field, into
our hearts, as a personal friend, as a Living Guide and Strengthener.
The Spirit of holiness is the Spirit, the Presence, and the Power of the
Living Christ. Jesus said of the Spirit, 'Ye know Him.' Is not our great
need to know this Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, of His Holiness and
of ours? How can we 'walk after the Spirit' and follow His leading, if
we know not Him and His voice and His way?

Let us learn one more lesson from our text. _It is out of the grave of
the flesh and the will of self that the Spirit of holiness breaks out in
resurrection power._ We must accept death to the flesh, death to self
with its willing and working, as the birthplace of our experience of the
power of the Spirit of holiness. In view of each struggle with sin, in
each exercise of faith or prayer, we must enter into the death of Jesus,
the death to self, and as those who say, 'we are not sufficient to think
anything as of ourselves,' in quiet faith expect the Spirit of Christ to
do His work. The Spirit will work, strengthening you mightily in the
inner man, and building up within you an holy temple for the Lord. And
the time will come, if it has not come to you yet, and it may be nearer
than you dare hope, when the conscious indwelling of Christ in your
heart by faith, the full revelation and enthronement of Him as ruler and
keeper of heart and life, shall have become a personal experience.
According to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead,
will the Son of God be declared with power in the kingdom that is within
you.

  BE YE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


Most Holy Lord God! we do bless Thee that Thou didst raise Thy Son from
the dead and give Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in Thee.
Thou didst make His resurrection the power of eternal life in us, and
now, even as He was raised, so we may walk in newness of life. As the
Spirit of holiness dwelt and wrought in Him, it dwells and works in us,
and becomes in us the Spirit of life.

O God! we beseech Thee to perfect Thy work in Thy saints. Give them a
deeper sense of the holy calling with which Thou hast called them in
Christ, the Risen One. Give all to accept the Spirit of His life on
earth, delight in the will of God, as the spirit of their life. May
those who have never yet fully accepted this be brought to do it, and in
faith of the power of the new life to say, I accept the will of God as
my only law. May the Spirit of holiness be the spirit of their lives!

Father! we beseech Thee, let Christ thus, in ever increasing experience
of His resurrection power, be revealed in our hearts as the Son of God,
Lord and Ruler within us. Let His life within inspire all the outer
life, so that in the home and society, in thought and speech and action,
in religion and in business, His life may shine out from us in the
beauty of holiness. Amen.


  1. Scripture regards the resurrection in two different aspects.
     In one view, it is the title to the new life, the source of our
     justification. (Rom. iv. 25, 1 Cor. xv. 17.) In another it is
     our regeneration, the power of the new life working in us, the
     source of our sanctification. (Rom. vi. 4; 1 Pet. i. 3.) Pardon
     and holiness are inseparable; they have the same source, union
     with the Risen Living Christ.

  2. The blessedness to the disciples of having a Risen Christ
     was this: He, whom they thought dead, came and _revealed
     Himself_ to them. Christ lives to reveal Himself to thee and to
     me; wait on Him, trust Him for this. He will reveal Himself to
     thee as thy sanctification. See to it that thou hast Him in
     living possession, and thou hast His Holiness.

  3. The life of Christ is the holiness of Christ. The reason we
     so often fail in the pursuit of holiness is that the old life,
     the flesh, in its own strength seeks for holiness as a
     beautiful garment to wear and enter heaven with. It is the
     daily death to self out of which the life of Christ rises up.

  4. To die thus, to live thus in Christ, to be holy--how can we
     attain it? It all comes '_according to the Spirit of
     holiness_.' Have the Holy Spirit within thee. Say daily, 'I
     believe in the Holy Ghost.'

  5. _Holy in Christ._ When Christ lives in us, and His mind, as
     it found expression in His words and work on earth, enters and
     fills our will and personal consciousness, then our union with
     Him becomes what He meant it to be. It is the Spirit of His
     holy conduct, the Spirit of His sanctity, must be in us.


   [11] See Note F.




Twentieth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Liberty.

  'Being made _free from sin_, ye became servants of righteousness:
  now present your members as servants of righteousness _unto
  sanctification_. Now being made _free from sin_, and become
  servants unto God, ye have your fruit _unto sanctification_, and
  the end eternal life.'--Rom. vi. 18, 19, 22.

  'Our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus.'--Gal. ii. 4.

  'With freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be
  not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.'--Gal. v. 1.


There is no possession more precious or priceless than liberty. There is
nothing more inspiring and elevating; nothing, on the other hand, more
depressing and degrading than slavery. It robs a man of what constitutes
his manhood, the power of self-decision, self-action, of being and doing
what he would.

Sin is slavery; the bondage to a foreign power that has obtained the
mastery over us, and compels often a most reluctant service. The
redemption of Christ restores our liberty and sets us free from the
power of sin. If we are truly to live as redeemed ones, we need not only
to look at the work Christ did to accomplish our redemption, but to
accept and realize fully how complete, how sure, how absolute the
liberty is wherewith He hath made us free. It is only as we '_stand
fast_ in our liberty in Christ Jesus,' that we can have our fruit unto
sanctification.

It is remarkable how seldom the word _holy_ occurs in the great argument
of the Epistle to the Romans, and how, where twice used in chap. vi. in
the expression 'unto sanctification,' it is distinctly set forth as the
aim and fruit to be reached through a life of righteousness. The twice
repeated 'unto sanctification,' pointing to a result to be obtained, is
preceded by a twice repeated 'being made free from sin and become
servants of righteousness.' It teaches us how the liberty from the power
of sin and the surrender to the service of righteousness are not yet of
themselves holiness, but the sure and only path by which it can be
reached. A true insight and a full entering into our freedom from sin in
Christ are indispensable to a life of holiness. It was when Israel was
freed from Pharaoh that God began to reveal Himself as the Holy One: it
is as we know ourselves 'freed from sin,' delivered from the hand of all
our enemies, that we shall serve God in righteousness and holiness all
the days of our life.

'_Being made free from sin_:' to understand this word aright, we must
beware of a twofold error. We must neither narrow it down to less, nor
import into it more, than the Holy Spirit means by it here. Paul is
speaking neither of an imputation nor an experience. We must not limit
it to being made free from the curse or punishment of sin. The context
shows that he is speaking, not of our judicial standing, but of a
spiritual reality, our being in living union with Christ in His death
and resurrection, and so being entirely taken out from under the
dominion or power of sin. 'Sin shall not have dominion over you.' Nor is
he as yet speaking of an experience, that we feel that we are free from
all sin. He speaks of the great objective fact, Christ's having finally
delivered us from the power which sin had to compel us to do its will
and its works, and urges us, in the faith of this glorious fact, boldly
to refuse to listen to the bidding or temptation of sin. To know our
liberty which we have in Christ, our freedom from sin's mastery and
power, is the way to realize it as an experience.

In olden times, when Turks or Moors often made slaves of Christians,
large sums were frequently paid for the ransom of those who were in
bondage. But it happened more than once, away in the interior of the
slave country, that the ransomed ones never got the tidings; the masters
were only too glad to keep it from them. Others, again, got the tidings,
but had grown too accustomed to their bondage to rouse themselves for
the effort of reaching the coast. Slothfulness or hopelessness kept them
in slavery; they could not believe that they would be able ever in
safety to reach the land of liberty. The ransom had been paid; in truth
they were free; and yet in their experience, by reason of ignorance or
want of courage, they were still in bondage. Christ's redemption has so
completely made an end of sin and the legal power it had over us,--for
'the strength of sin is the law,'--that in very deed, in the deepest
reality, sin has no power to compel our obedience. It is only as we
allow it again to reign, as we yield ourselves again as its servants,
that it can exercise the mastery. Satan does his utmost to keep
believers in ignorance of the completeness of this their freedom from
his slavery. And because believers are so content with their own
thoughts of what redemption means, and so little long and plead to see
it and possess it in its fulness of deliverance and blessing, the
experience of the extent to which the freedom from sin can be realized
is so feeble. 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' It is
by the Holy Spirit, His light and leading within, humbly watched for and
yielded to, that this liberty becomes our possession.

In the sixth chapter Paul speaks of freedom from sin, in chap. vii.
(vers. 3, 4, 6) of freedom from the law, as both being ours in Christ
and union with Him. In chap. viii. (ver. 2) he speaks of this freedom as
become ours in experience. He says, 'The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.' The
freedom which is ours in Christ, must become ours in personal
appropriation and enjoyment through the Holy Spirit. The latter depends
on the former: the fuller the faith, the clearer the insight, the more
triumphant the glorying in Christ Jesus and the liberty with which He
has made us free, the speedier and the fuller the entrance into the
glorious liberty of the children of God. As the liberty is in Christ
alone, so it is the Spirit of Christ alone that makes it ours in
practical possession, and keeps us dwelling in it: 'the spirit of the
life in Christ Jesus _hath made me free_ from the law of sin and death.'
'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' As the Spirit
reveals Jesus to us as Lord and Master, the new Master, who alone has
ought to say over us, and leads us to yield ourselves, to present our
members, to surrender our whole life to the service of God in Christ,
our faith in the freedom from sin becomes a consciousness and a
realization. Believing in the completeness of the redemption, the
captive goes forth as 'the Lord's freedman.' He knows now that sin has
no longer power for one moment to command obedience. It may seek to
assert its old right; it may speak in the tone of authority; it may
frighten us into fear and submission; power it has none over us, except
as we, forgetting our freedom, yield to its temptation, and ourselves
give it power.

We are the Lord's freedmen. 'We have our liberty in Christ Jesus.' In
Rom. vii. Paul describes the terrible struggles of the soul who still
seeks to fulfil the law, but finds itself utterly helpless; sold under
sin, a captive and a slave, without the liberty to do what the whole
heart desires. But when the Spirit takes the place of the law, the
complaint, 'O wretched man that I am,' is changed into the song of
victory: 'I thank God, through Jesus Christ, the law of the Spirit of
life hath made me free.'

What numberless complaints of insufficient strength to do God's will, of
unsuccessful effort and disappointed hopes, of continual failure,
re-echo in a thousand different forms the complaint of the captive, 'O
wretched man that I am!' Thank God! there is deliverance. 'With freedom
did Christ set us free! Stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again
in a yoke of bondage.' Satan is ever seeking to lay on us again the yoke
either of sin or the law, to beget again the spirit of bondage, as if
sin or the law with their demands somehow had power over us. It is not
so: be not entangled; stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has
made you free. Let us listen to the message: 'Being made free from sin,
ye became servants unto righteousness; now yield your members servants
to righteousness _unto sanctification_.' 'Having been made free from
sin, and having been enslaved unto God, ye have your fruit _unto
sanctification_.' To be holy, you must be free, perfectly free; free for
Jesus to rule you, to lead you; free for the Holy Spirit to dispose of
you, to breathe in you, to work His secret, gentle, but mighty work, so
that you may grow up unto all the liberty Jesus has won for you. The
temple could not be sanctified by the indwelling of God, except as it
was free from every other master and every other use, to be for Him and
His service alone. The inner temple of our heart cannot be truly and
fully sanctified, except as we are free from every other master and
power, from every yoke of bondage, or fear, or doubt, to let His Spirit
lead us into the perfect liberty which has its fruit in true holiness.

Being made free from sin, having become servants unto righteousness, ye
have your fruit unto holiness, and the end life everlasting. Freedom,
Righteousness, Holiness--these are the steps on the way to the coming
glory. The more deeply we enter by faith into our liberty, which we have
in Christ, the more joyfully and confidently we present our members to
God as instruments of righteousness. The God is the Father whose will we
delight to do, whose service is perfect liberty. The Redeemer is the
Master, to whom love binds us in willing obedience. The liberty is not
lawlessness: 'we are delivered from our enemies, that we may serve Him
in righteousness and holiness all the days of our life.'[12]

The liberty is the condition of the righteousness; and this again of the
holiness. The doing of God's will leads up into that fellowship, that
heart sympathy with God Himself, out of which comes that reflection of
the Divine Presence, which is Holiness. Being made free from sin, being
made the slaves of righteousness and of God, we have our fruit unto
holiness, and the end--the fruit of holiness becomes, when ripe, the
seed of--everlasting life.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most glorious God! I pray Thee to open my eyes to this wonderful liberty
with which Christ has made me free. May I enter fully into Thy word,
that sin shall have no dominion over me because I am not under the law
but under grace. May I know my liberty which I have in Christ Jesus, and
stand fast in it.

Father! Thy service is perfect liberty: reveal this too to me. Thou art
the infinitely Free, and Thy will knows no limits but what its own
perfection has placed. And Thou invitest us into Thy will, that we may
be free as Thou art. O my God! show me the beauty of Thy will, as it
frees me from self and from sin, and let it be my only blessedness. Let
the service of righteousness so be a joy and a strength to me, having
its fruit unto sanctification, leading me into Thy Holiness.

Blessed Lord Jesus! my Deliverer and my Liberty, I belong to Thee. I
give myself to Thy will, to know no will but Thine. Master! Thee and
Thee alone would I serve. I have my liberty in Thee! be Thou my Keeper.
I cannot stand for one moment out of Thee. In Thee I can stand fast: in
Thee I put my trust.

Most Holy God! as Thy free, obedient, loving child, Thou wilt make me
holy. Amen.


  1. Liberty is the power to carry out unhindered the impulse of our
     nature. In Christ the child of God is free from every power
     that could hinder his acting out the law of his new nature.

  2. This liberty is of faith (Gal. v. 5, 6). By faith in Christ I
     enter into it, and stand in it.

  3. This liberty is of the Holy Spirit. 'Where the Spirit of the
     Lord is, there is liberty.' 'If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are
     not under the law.' A heart filled with the Spirit is made free
     indeed. But we are not made free that we may do our own will.
     No, made _free to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit_.
     'Where the Spirit is, there is liberty.'

  4. This liberty is in love. 'Ye were called for freedom; only use
     not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love
     be servants, one to another.' The freedom with which the Son
     makes free is a freedom to become like Himself, to love and to
     serve. 'Though I was free from all men, I brought myself under
     bondage to all, that I might gain the more.' This is the
     liberty of love.

  5. 'Being made free from sin, ye became _servants of
     righteousness_ unto sanctification.' 'Let my people go, that
     they may serve me.' It is only the man that doeth righteousness
     that can become holy.

  6. This liberty is a thing of joy and singing.

  7. This liberty is the groundwork of holiness. The Redeemer who
     makes free is God the Holy One. As the Holy Spirit He leads
     into the full possession of it. To be so free from everything
     that God can take complete possession, is to be holy.


   [12] See Note G.




Twenty-first Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Happiness.

  'The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost.'--Rom. xiv. 17.

  'The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Ghost.'--Acts
  xiii. 52.

  'Then Nehemiah said, This day is _holy_ unto the Lord: neither be
  ye sorry, for the _joy_ of the Lord is your strength. So the
  Levites stilled the people, saying, Hold your peace; for the day
  is _holy_; neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their
  way to make great _mirth_, because they had understood the
  words.'--Neh. viii. 10-12.


The deep significance of joy in the Christian life is hardly understood.
It is too often regarded as something secondary; whereas its presence is
essential as the proof that God does indeed satisfy us, and that His
service is our delight. In our domestic life we do not feel satisfied if
all the proprieties of deportment are observed, and each does his duty
to the other; true love makes us happy in each other; as love gives out
its warmth of affection, gladness is the sunshine that fills the home
with its brightness. Even in suffering or poverty, the members of a
loving family are a joy to each other. Without this gladness,
especially, there is no true obedience on the part of the children. It
is not the mere fulfilment of a command, or performance of a service,
that a parent looks to; it is the willing, joyful alacrity with which it
is done that makes it pleasing.

It is just so in the intercourse of God's children with their Father.
Even in the effort after a life of consecration and gospel obedience, we
are continually in danger of coming under the law again, with its, Thou
shalt. The consequence always is failure. The law only worketh wrath; it
gives neither life nor strength. It is only as long as we are standing
in the joy of our Lord, in the joy of our deliverance from sin, in the
joy of His love, and what He is for us, in the joy of His presence, that
we have the power to serve and obey. It is only when made free from
every master, from sin and self and the law, and only when rejoicing in
this liberty, that we have the power to render service that is
satisfying either to God or to ourselves. 'I will see you again,' Jesus
said, 'and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from
you.' Joy is the evidence and the condition of the abiding personal
presence of Jesus.

If holiness be the beauty and the glory of the life of faith, it is
manifest that here especially the element of joy may not be wanting. We
have already seen how the first mention of God as the Holy One was in
the song of praise on the shore of the Red Sea; how Hannah and Mary in
their moments of inspiration praised God as the Holy One; how the name
of the Thrice Holy in heaven comes to us in the song of the seraphs; and
how before the throne both the living creatures and the conquering
multitude who sing the song of the Lamb, adore God as the Holy One. We
are to 'worship Him in the beauty of holiness,' 'to sing praise at the
remembrance of His Holiness;' it is only in the spirit of worship and
praise and joy that we fully can know God as holy. Much more, it is only
under the inspiration of adoring love and joy that we can ourselves be
made holy. It is as we cease from all fear and anxiety, from all strain
and effort, and rest with singing in what Jesus is in His finished work
as our sanctification, as we rest and rejoice in Him, that we shall be
made partakers of His Holiness. It is the day of rest, is the day that
God has blessed, the day of blessing and gladness; and it is the day He
blessed that is His holy day. Holiness and blessedness are inseparable.

But is not this at variance with the teaching of Scripture and the
experience of the saints? Are not suffering and sorrow among God's
chosen means of sanctification? Are not the promises to the broken in
heart, the poor in spirit, and the mourner? Are not self-denial and the
forsaking of all we have, the crucifixion with Christ and the dying
daily, the path to holiness? and is not all this more matter of sorrow
and pain than of joy and gladness?

The answer will be found in the right apprehension of the life of
faith. Faith lifts above, and gives possession of, what is the very
opposite of what we feel or experience. In the Christian life there is
always a paradox: what appear irreconcilable opposites are found side by
side at the same moment. Paul expresses it in the words, 'As dying, and,
behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making
many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.' And elsewhere
thus, '_When_ I am weak, _then_ am I strong.' The apparent contradiction
has its reconciliation, not only in the union of the two lives, the
human and the Divine, in the person of each believer, but specially in
our being, at one and the same moment, partakers of the death and the
resurrection of Christ. Christ's death was one of pain and suffering, a
real and terrible death, a rending asunder of the bonds that united soul
and body, spirit and flesh. The power of that death works in us: we must
let it work mightily if we are to live holy; for in that death He
sanctified Himself, that we ourselves might be sanctified in truth. Our
holiness is, like His, in the death to our own will, and to all our own
life. But--this we must seek to grasp--we do not approach death from the
side from which Christ met it, as an enemy to be conquered, as a
suffering to be borne, before the new life can be entered on. No, the
believer who knows what Christ is as the Risen One, approaches death,
the crucifixion of self and the flesh and the world, from the
resurrection side, the place of victory, in the power of the Living
Christ. When we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into His
death and resurrection as ours; and Christ Himself, the Risen Living
Lord, leads us triumphantly into the experience of the power of His
death. And so, to the believer who truly lives by faith, and seeks not
in his own strugglings to crucify and mortify the flesh, but knows the
living Lord, the deep resurrection joy never for a moment forsakes Him,
but is his strength for what may appear to others to be only painful
sacrifice and cross-bearing. He says with Paul, 'I glory in the cross
through which I have been crucified.' He never, as so many do, asks
Paul's question, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'
without sounding the joyful and triumphant answer as a present
experience, 'I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 'Thanks be to
God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ.' It is the joy of a
Present Saviour, of the experience of a perfect salvation, the joy of a
resurrection life, which alone gives the power to enter deeply and fully
into the death that Christ died, and yield our will and our life to be
wholly sanctified to God. In the joy of that life, from which the power
of the death is never absent, it is possible to say with the Apostle
each moment, 'As dying, and, behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing.'

Let us seek to learn the two lessons: Holiness is essential to true
happiness; happiness essential to true holiness. _Holiness is essential
to true happiness._ If you would have joy, the fulness of joy, an
abiding joy which nothing can take away, be holy as God is holy.
Holiness is blessedness. Nothing can darken or interrupt our joy but
sin. Whatever be our trial or temptation, the joy of Jesus of which
Peter says, 'in whom ye now rejoice with joy unspeakable,' can more than
compensate and outweigh. If we lose our joy, it must be sin. It may be
an actual transgression, or an unconscious following of self or the
world; it may be the stain on conscience of something doubtful, or it
may be unbelief that would live by sight, and thinks more of itself and
its joy than of the Lord alone: whatever it be, nothing can take away
our joy but sin. If we would live lives of joy, assuring God and man and
ourselves that our Lord is everything, is more than all to us, oh, let
us be holy! Let us glory in Him who is our holiness: in His presence is
fulness of joy. Let us live in the Kingdom which is joy in the Holy
Ghost; the Spirit of holiness is the Spirit of joy, because He is the
Spirit of God. It is the saints, God's holy ones, who will shout for
joy.

And _happiness is essential to true holiness_. If you would be a holy
Christian, you must be a happy Christian. Jesus was anointed by God with
'the oil of gladness,' that He might give us 'the oil of joy.' In all
our efforts after holiness, the wheels will move heavily if there be not
the oil of joy; this alone removes all strain and friction, and makes
the onward progress easy and delightful. Study to understand the Divine
worth of joy. It is the evidence of your being in the Father's
presence, and dwelling in His love. It is the proof of your being
consciously free from the law and the strain of the spirit of bondage.
It is the token of your freedom from care and responsibility, because
you are rejoicing in Christ Jesus as your Sanctification, your Keeper,
and your Strength. It is the secret of spiritual health and strength,
filling all your service with the childlike happy assurance that the
Father asks nothing that He does not give strength for, and that He
accepts all that is done, however feebly, in this spirit. True happiness
is always self-forgetful: it loses itself in the object of its joy. As
the joy of the Holy Ghost fills us, and we rejoice in God the Holy One,
through our Lord Jesus Christ, as we lose ourselves in the adoration and
worship of the Thrice Holy, we become holy. This is, even here in the
wilderness, 'the Highway of Holiness: the ransomed of the Lord shall
come with singing; the redeemed shall walk there; everlasting joy shall
be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness.'

Do all God's children understand this? that holiness is just another
name, the true name, that God gives for happiness; that it is indeed
unutterable blessedness to know that God does make us holy, that our
holiness is in Christ, that Christ's Holy Spirit is within us. There is
nothing so attractive as joy: have believers understood it that this is
the joy of the Lord--to be holy? Or is not the idea of strain, and
sacrifice, and sighing, of difficulty and distance so prominent, that
the thought of being holy has hardly ever made the heart glad? If it has
been so, let it be so no longer. 'Thou shalt glory in the Holy One of
Israel:' let us claim this promise. Let the believing assurance that our
Loving Father, and our Beloved Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who in
dove-like gentleness rests within us, have engaged to do the work, and
are doing it, fill us with gladness. Let us not seek our joy in what we
see in ourselves of holiness: let us rejoice in the Holiness of God in
Christ as ours; let us rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. So shall our
joy be unspeakable and unceasing; so shall we give Him the glory.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most Blessed God! I beseech Thee to reveal to me and to all Thy children
the secret of rejoicing in Thee, the Holy One of Israel.

Thou seest how much of the service of Thine own dear children is still
in the spirit of bondage, and how many have never yet believed that the
Highway of Holiness is one on which they may walk with singing, and
shall obtain joy and gladness. O Father! teach Thy children to rejoice
in Thee.

I ask Thee especially to teach us that, in deep poverty of spirit, in
humility and contrition and utter emptiness, in the consciousness that
there is no holiness in us, we can sing all the day of Thy Holiness as
ours, of Thy glory which Thou layest upon us, and which yet all the time
is Thine alone. O Father! open wide to Thy children the blessed mystery
of the Kingdom, even the faith which sees all in Christ and nothing in
itself; which indeed has and rejoices in all in Him; which never has or
rejoices in ought in itself.

Blessed God, in Thy Word Thou hast said, 'The meek shall increase their
joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of
Israel.' Oh, give us, by Thy Holy Spirit, in meekness and poverty of
spirit, to live so in Christ, that His Holiness may be our
ever-increasing joy, and that in Thyself, the Holy One of Israel, we may
rejoice all the day. And may all see in us what blessedness it is to
live as God's holy ones. Amen.


  1. The great hindrance to joy in God is expecting to find
     something in ourselves to rejoice over. At the commencement of
     this pursuit of holiness we always expect to see a great change
     wrought in ourselves. As we are led deeper into what faith, and
     the faith-life is, we understand how, though we do not see the
     change as we expected, we may yet rejoice with joy unspeakable
     in what Jesus is. This is the secret of holiness.

  2. Joy must be cultivated. To rejoice is a command more frequently
     given than we know. It is part of the obedience of faith, to
     rejoice when we do not feel like doing so. Faith rejoices and
     sings, because God is holy.

  3. 'Filled with joy and the Holy Ghost,' 'The Kingdom is joy in
     the Holy Ghost.' The Holy Spirit, the Blessed Spirit of Jesus
     is within thee, a very fountain of living water, of joy and
     gladness. Oh, seek to know Him, who dwells in thee, to work all
     that Jesus has for thee: He will be in thee the Spirit of faith
     and of joy.

  4. Love and joy ever keep company. Love, denying and forgetting
     itself for the brethren and the lost, living in them, finds the
     joy of God. 'The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost.'




Twenty-second Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

In Christ our Sanctification.

  'Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from
  God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption; that,
  according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the
  Lord.'--1 Cor. i. 30, 31.


These words lead us on now to the very centre of God's revelation of the
way of holiness. We know the steps of the road leading hither. He is
holy, and holiness is His. He makes holy by coming near. His presence is
holiness. In Christ's life, the holiness that had only been revealed in
symbol, and as a promise of good things to come, had really taken
possession of a human will, and been made one with true human nature. In
His death every obstacle had been removed that could prevent the
transmission of that holy nature to us: Christ had truly become our
sanctification. In the Holy Spirit the actual communication of that
holiness took place. And now we want to understand what the work is the
Holy Spirit does, and how He communicates this holy nature to us: what
our relation is to Christ as our sanctification, and what the position
we have to take up toward Him, that in its fulness and its power it may
do its work for us.

The Divine answer to this question is, 'Of God are ye _in Christ_.' The
one thing we need to apprehend is, what this our position and life in
Christ is, and how that position and life may on our part be accepted
and maintained. Of this we may be sure, that it is not something that is
high and beyond our reach. There need be no exhausting effort or
hopeless sighing, 'Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring
Christ down from above?' It is a life that is meant for the sinful and
the weary, for the unworthy and the impotent. It is a life that is the
gift of the Father's love, and that He Himself will reveal in each one
who comes in childlike trust to Him. It is a life that is meant for our
every-day life, that in every varying circumstance and situation will
make and keep us holy.

'Of God are ye _in Christ_.' Ere our Blessed Lord left the world, He
spake: Lo! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. And it is
written of Him: 'He that descended is the same that ascended far above
all the heavens, that He might fill all things.' 'The Church is His
body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.' In the Holy Spirit
the Lord Jesus is with His people here on earth. Though unseen, and not
in the flesh, His Personal Presence is as real on earth as when He
walked with His disciples. In regeneration the believer is taken out of
his old place 'in the flesh;' he is no longer in the flesh, but in the
spirit (Rom. viii. 9); he is really and actually in Christ. The living
Christ is around him by His holy Presence. Wherever and whatever he be,
however ignorant of his position or however unfaithful to it, there he
is in Christ. By an act of Divine and omnipotent grace, he has been
planted into Christ, encircled on every side by the Power and the Love
of Him who filleth all things, whose fulness specially dwells in His
body here below, the Church.

And how can one who is longing to know Christ fully as his
sanctification, come to live out what God means and has provided in
this--'in Christ'? The first thing that must be remembered is that it is
a thing of faith and not of feeling. The promise of the indwelling and
the quickening of the Holy One is to the humble and contrite. Just when
I feel most deeply that I am not holy, and can do nothing to make myself
holy, when I feel ashamed of myself, just then is the time to turn from
self and very quietly to say: I am in Christ. Here He is all around me.
Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here
is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real
presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father,
of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to
me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and
in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the
sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust
and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ.

But because it is of faith, therefore it is of the Holy Spirit. _Of God_
are ye _in Christ_. It is not as if God placed and planted us in Christ,
and left it to us now to maintain the union. No, God is the Eternal One,
the God of the everlasting life, who works every moment in a power that
does not for one moment cease. What God gives, He continues with a
never-ceasing giving. It is He who by the Holy Spirit makes this life in
Christ a blessed reality in our consciousness. 'We have received the
Spirit of God that we might _know_ the things that are freely given us
of God.' Faith is not only dependent on God for the gift it is to
accept, but for the power to accept. Faith not only needs the Son as its
filling and its food; it needs the Spirit as its power to receive and
hold. And so the blessed possession of all that it means to be in Christ
our sanctification comes as we learn to bow before God in believing
prayer for the mighty workings of the Spirit, and in the deep childlike
trust that He will reveal and glorify in us this Christ our
sanctification in whom we are.

And how will the Spirit reveal this Christ in whom we are? It will
specially be as the Living One, the Personal Friend and Master. Christ
is not only our Example and our Ideal. His life is not only an
atmosphere and an inspiration, as we speak of a man who mightily
influences us by his writings. Christ is not only a treasury and a
fulness of grace and power, into which the Spirit is to lead us. But
Christ is the Living Saviour, with a heart that beats with a love that
is most tenderly human, and yet Divine. It is in this love He comes
near, and into this love He receives us, when the Father plants us into
Him. In the power of a personal love He wishes to exercise influence,
and to attach us to Himself. In that love of His we have the guarantee
that His Holiness will enter us; in that love the great power by which
it enters. As the Spirit reveals to us where we are dwelling, in Christ
and His love, and that this Christ is a living Lord and Saviour, there
wakens within us the enthusiasm of a personal attachment, and the
devotion of a loving allegiance, that make us wholly His. And it becomes
possible for us to believe that we can be holy: we feel sure that in the
path of holiness we can go from strength to strength.

Such believing insight into our relation to Christ as being in Him, and
such personal attachment to Him who has received us into His love and
keeps us abiding there, becomes the spring of a new obedience. The will
of God comes to us in the light of Christ's life and His love--each
command first fulfilled by Him, and then passed on to us as the sure and
most blessed help to more perfect fellowship with the Father and His
Holiness. Christ becomes Lord and King in the soul, in the power of the
Holy Spirit, guiding the will into all the perfect will of God, and
proving Himself to be its sanctification, as He crowns its obedience
with ever larger inflow of the Presence and the Holiness of God.

Is there any dear child of God at all disposed to lose heart as he
thinks of what manner of man he ought to be in all holy living, let me
call him to take courage. Could God have devised anything more wonderful
or beautiful for such sinful, impotent creatures? Just think, Christ,
God's own Son, made to be sanctification to you. The Mighty, Loving,
Holy Christ, sanctified through suffering that He might have sympathy
with you, given to make you holy. What more could you desire? Yes, there
is more: '_Of God you are in Him._' Whether you understand it or not,
however feebly you realize it, there it is, a thing most Divinely true
and real. You are in Christ, by an act of God's own Mighty Power. And
there, in Christ, God Himself longs to establish and confirm you to the
end. And you have, greatest wonder of all, the Holy Spirit within you to
teach you to know, and believe, and receive, all that there is in Christ
for you. And if you will but confess that there is in you no wisdom or
power for holiness, none at all, and allow Christ, 'the Wisdom of God
and the Power of God,' by the Holy Spirit within you, to lead you on,
and prove how completely, how faithfully, how mightily, He can be your
sanctification, He will do it most gloriously.

O my brother! come and consent more fully to God's way of holiness. Let
Christ be your sanctification. Not a distant Christ to whom you look,
but a Christ very near, all around you, in whom you are. Not a Christ
after the flesh, a Christ of the past, but a present Christ in the power
of the Holy Ghost. Not a Christ whom you can know by your wisdom, but
the Christ of God, who is a Spirit, and whom the Spirit within you, as
you die to the flesh and self, will reveal in power. Not a Christ such
as your little thoughts can frame a conception of, but a Christ
according to the greatness of the heart and the love of God. Oh, come
and accept this Christ, and rejoice in Him! Be content now to leave all
your feebleness, and foolishness, and faithlessness to Him, in the quiet
confidence that He will do for you more than you can think. And so let
it henceforth be, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in
the Lord.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most Blessed Father! I bow in speechless adoration before the holy
mystery of Thy Divine Love....

Oh, forgive me, that I have known and believed it so little as it is
worthy of being known and believed.

Accept my praise for what I have seen and tasted of its Divine
blessedness. Accept, Lord God! of the praise of a glad and loving heart
that only knows that it never can praise Thee aright.

And hear my prayer, O my Father! that in the power of Thy Holy Spirit,
who dwells in me, I may each day accept and live out fully what Thou
hast given me in Christ my sanctification. May the unsearchable riches
there are in Him be the daily supply for my every need. May His
Holiness, His delight in Thy will, indeed become mine. Teach me, above
all, how this can most surely be, because I am, through the work of
Thine Almighty Quickening Power, in Him, kept there by Thyself. My
Father! my faith cries out: I can be holy, blessed be my Lord Jesus!

In this faith I yield myself to Thee, Lord Jesus, my King and Master, to
do Thy will alone. In everything I do, great or small, I would act as
one sanctified in Jesus, united to God's will in Him. It is Thou alone
canst teach me to do this, canst give me strength to perform it. But I
trust in Thee--art Thou not Christ my sanctification? Blessed Lord! I do
trust Thee. Amen.


  1. Christ, as He lived and died on earth, is our sanctification.
     His life, the Spirit of His life, is what constitutes our
     holiness. To be in perfect harmony with Christ, to have His
     mind, is to be holy.

  2. Christ's Holiness had two sides. God sanctified Him by His
     Spirit: Christ sanctified Himself by following the leading of
     the Spirit, by giving up His will to God in everything. So God
     has made us holy in Christ; and so we follow after and perfect
     holiness by yielding ourselves to God's Spirit, by giving up
     our will and living in the will of God.

  3. It is well that we take in every aspect of what God has
     revealed of holiness in His word. But let us never weary
     ourselves by seeking to grasp all completely. Let us even
     return to the simplicity that is in Jesus. To bow at His feet,
     to believe that He knows all we need, and has it all, and loves
     to give it all, is rest. And holiness is resting in Jesus the
     rest of God. Let all our thoughts be gathered up into this one:
     Jesus, Blessed Jesus.

  4. This holy life in Christ is for to-day, when you read this. For
     to-day He is made of God unto you sanctification: to-day He
     will indeed be your holiness. Believe in Him for it; trust Him,
     praise Him. And remember: _you are in Him_.




Twenty-third Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and the Body.

  'The temple of God is _holy_, which temple ye are. _The body_ is
  for the Lord, and the Lord for _the body_. Know ye not that your
  _body_ is the temple of _the Holy Ghost_ which is in you;
  therefore glorify God in your _body_.'--1 Cor. iii. 16, vi. 13,
  19.

  'She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that
  she may be _holy_ both _in body_ and spirit.'--1 Cor. vii. 34.

  'Present your _bodies_ a living sacrifice, _holy_, acceptable to
  God.'--Rom. xii. 1.


Coming into the world, our Blessed Lord spake: '_A body_ didst Thou
prepare for me; lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.' Leaving this world
again, it was in His own _body_ that He bore our sins upon the tree. So
it was in the body, no less than in soul and spirit, that He did the
will of God. And therefore it is said, 'By which will we have been
sanctified through the offering _of the body_ of Jesus Christ once for
all.'

When praying for the Thessalonians and their sanctification, Paul says,
'And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit
and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame, at the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ.' Of himself he had spoken as 'always bearing
about _in the body_ the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may
be manifested _in our body_. For we which live are always delivered unto
death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested _in
our mortal flesh_.' His earnest expectation and hope was, 'that Christ
be magnified _in my body_, whether by life or by death.' The relation
between body and spirit is so intimate, the power of sin in the spirit
comes so much through the body, the body is so distinctly the object
both of Christ's redemption and the Holy Spirit's renewal, that our
study of holiness will be seriously defective if we do not take in the
teaching of Scripture on holiness in the body.

It has been well said that the body is, to the soul and spirit dwelling
and acting within it, like the walls of the city. Through them the enemy
enters in. In time of war, everything yields to the defence of the
walls. It is often because the believer does not know the importance of
keeping the walls defended, keeping the body sanctified, that he fails
in having the soul and spirit preserved blameless. Or it is because he
does not understand that the guarding and sanctifying of the body in all
its parts must be as distinctly a work of faith, and as directly through
the mighty power of Jesus and the indwelling of the Spirit, as the
renewing of the inner life, that progress in holiness is so feeble. The
rule of the city we entrust to Jesus: but the defence of the walls we
keep in our own hands; the King does not keep us as we expected, and we
cannot discover the secret of failure. It is the God of peace _Himself_,
who sanctifies wholly, who must preserve spirit and soul _and body_
entire and without blame. The tabernacle with its wood, the temple with
its stone, were as holy as all included within their walls: God's holy
ones need the body to be holy.

To realize the full meaning of this, let us remember how it was through
the body sin entered. 'The woman saw that the tree was good for food,'
this was the temptation in the flesh; through this the soul was reached,
'it was a delight to the eyes;' through the soul it then passed into the
spirit, 'and to be desired to make one wise.' In John's description of
what is in the world (1 John ii. 15), we find the same threefold
division, 'the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life.' And the three temptations of Jesus by Satan correspond exactly:
he first sought to reach Him through the body, in the suggestion to
satisfy His hunger by making bread; the second (see Luke iv.) appealed
to the soul, in the vision of the kingdoms of this world and their
glory; the third to the spirit, in the call to assert and prove His
Divine Sonship by casting Himself down. Even to the Son of God the first
temptation came, as to Adam and all in the world, as lust of the flesh,
the desire to gratify the natural and lawful appetite of hunger. We
cannot note too carefully that it was on a question of eating what
appeared good for food that man's first sin was committed, and that that
same question of eating to satisfy hunger was the battleground on which
the Redeemer's first encounter with Satan took place. It is on the
question of eating and drinking what is good and lawful that more
Christians than are aware of it are foiled by Satan. To have every
appetite of the body under the rule and regulation of the Holy Spirit
appears to some needless, to others too difficult. And yet it must be,
if the body is to be holy, as God's temple, and we are to glorify Him in
our body and our spirit. The first approaches of sin are made through
the body: in the body the complete victory will be gained.

What Scripture teaches as to the intimacy of the connection between the
body and spirit, physiology confirms. What appear at first merely
physical transgressions leave a stain and have a degrading influence on
the soul, and through it drag down the spirit. And on the other side,
spiritual sins, sins of thought and imagination and disposition, pass
through the soul into the body, fix themselves in the nervous
constitution, and express themselves even in the countenance and the
habits or tendencies of the body. Sin must be combated not only in the
region of the spirit: if we are to perfect holiness, we must cleanse
ourselves from all defilement of flesh _and_ spirit. 'If through the
Spirit ye do make dead the deeds of _the body_, ye shall live.' If we
are indeed to be cleansed from sin and made holy unto God, the body, as
the outworks, must very specially be secured from the power of Satan
and of sin.

And how is this to be done? God has made very special provision for
this. Holy Scripture speaks so explicitly of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit
that communicates holiness, in connection with the body. At first sight
it looks as if the word, your bodies, were simply used as equivalent to,
your persons, yourselves. But as the deeper insight into the power of
sin in the body, and the need of a deliverance specially there, quickens
our perception, we see what is meant by the body being the temple of the
Holy Spirit. We notice how very specially it is of sins in the body that
Paul speaks as defiling God's holy temple; and how it is through the
power of the Holy Ghost in the body that he would have us glorify God.
'Know ye not that _your body_ is the temple of the Holy Ghost: glorify
God therefore, in the power of the Holy Spirit, in _your body_.' The
Holy Spirit must not only exercise a restraining and regulating
influence on the appetites of the body and their gratification, so that
they be in moderation and temperance,--this is only the negative
side,--but there must be a positively spiritual element, making the
exercise of natural functions a service of holy joy and liberty to the
glory of God; no longer a threatened hindrance to the life of obedience
and fellowship, but a means of grace, a real help to the spiritual life.
It is only in a body that is full of the holy life, very entirely
possessed of God's Spirit, that this will be the case.

And how can this be obtained? In the true Christian life, self-denial is
the path to enjoyment, renunciation to possession, death to life. As
long as there is ought that we think we have liberty and power to use or
enjoy aright, if we but do so in moderation, we have not yet seen or
confessed our own unholiness, or the need of the entire renewing of the
Holy Spirit. It is not enough to say, 'Every creature of God is good, if
it be received with thanksgiving;' we must remember the addition, 'for
it is sanctified by the word and by prayer.' This sanctifying of every
creature and its use is a thing as real and solemn as the sanctifying of
ourselves. And this will only be where, if need be, we sacrifice the
gift and the liberty to use it, until God gives us the power truly to
use it to His glory alone. Of one of the most sacred of Divine
institutions, marriage, Paul, who so denounces those who would forbid to
marry, says distinctly that there may be cases in which a voluntary
celibacy may be the surest and acceptable way of being 'holy both in
body and spirit.' When to be holy as God is holy indeed becomes the
great desire and aim of life, everything will be cherished or given up
as it promotes the chief end. The actual and active presence of the Holy
Spirit in the life of the body will be the fire that is kept burning
continually on the altar.

And how is this to be attained? Of the body as of the spirit it is God,
God in Christ, who is our Keeper and our Sanctifier. The guarding of
the walls of the city must be entrusted to Him who rules within. 'I am
persuaded that He is able to guard my deposit,' to keep that which I
have committed to Him, must become as definitely true of the body, and
of each of its functions of which we are conscious that it is the
occasion of doubt or of stumbling, as it has been of the soul we
entrusted to Him for salvation. A fixed deposit in a bank is money given
away out of my hands to be kept there: the body or any part of it that
needs to be made holy must be a deposit with Jesus. Faith must trust His
acceptance and guarding of it; prayer and praise must daily afresh renew
the assurance, must confirm the committal of the deposit, and maintain
the fellowship with Jesus. Abiding thus in Him and His Holiness, we
shall receive, in a life of trust and joy, the power to prove, even in
the body, how fully and wholly we are in Him who is made unto us
sanctification, how real and true the Holiness of God is in His people.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Blessed Lord! who art my sanctification, I come to Thee now with a very
special request. O Thou who didst in Thine own body bear our sins on the
tree, and of whom it is written, 'We have been sanctified through the
offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,' be pleased to reveal
to me how my body may to the full experience the power of Thy wonderful
redemption. I do desire in soul and body to be holy to the Lord.

Lord! I have too little understood that my body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost, that there is nothing in it that can be matter of
indifference, that its every state and function is to be holiness to the
Lord. And where I saw that this should be so, I have still sought myself
to guard from the enemy's approaches these the walls of the city. I
forgot how this part of my being too could alone be kept and sanctified
by faith, by Thy taking and keeping charge of what faith entrusted to
Thee.

Lord Jesus! I come now to surrender this body with all its needs into
Thy hands. In weariness and nervousness, in excitement and enjoyment, in
hunger and want, in health and plenty, O my holy Saviour, let my body be
in Thy keeping every moment. Thou callest us, 'being made free from sin,
to present our members as servants of righteousness unto
sanctification.' Saviour! in the faith of the freedom from sin which I
have in Thee, I present every member of my body to Thee: I believe the
Spirit of life in Thee makes me free from the law of sin in my members.
Whether living or dying, be Thou magnified in my body. Amen.


  1. In the tabernacle and temple, the material part was to be in
     harmony with, and the embodiment of, the holiness that dwelt
     within. It was therefore all made according to the pattern
     shown in the mount. In the two last chapters of Exodus, we have
     eighteen times 'as the Lord commanded.' Everything, even in the
     exterior, was the embodiment of the will of God. Even so our
     body, as God's temple, must in everything be regulated by God's
     word, quickened and sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

  2. As part of this holiness in the body, Scripture mentions dress.
     Speaking of the 'outward adorning of plaiting the hair, of
     wearing jewels, or the putting on of apparel,' as inconsistent
     with 'the apparel of a meek and quiet spirit,' Peter says,
     'After this manner aforetime _the holy women_, who hoped in
     God, adorned themselves.' Holiness was seen in their dressing;
     their body was the temple of the Holy Spirit.

  3. 'If ye through the Spirit do make dead the deeds of _the body_,
     ye shall live.' His quickening energy must reign through the
     whole. We are so accustomed to connect the spiritual with the
     ideal and invisible, that it will need time and thought and
     faith to realize how the physical and the sensible influence
     our spiritual life, and must be under the mastery and
     inspiration of God's Spirit. Even Paul says, 'I buffet _my
     body_, and bring it into bondage, lest I myself should be
     rejected.'

  4. If God actually breathed His Spirit into the body of Adam
     formed out of the ground, let it not be thought strange that
     the Holy Spirit should now animate our bodies too with His
     sanctifying energy.

  5. 'Corporeality is the end of the ways of God.' This deep saying
     of an old divine reminds us of a much neglected truth. The
     great work of God's Spirit is to ally Himself with matter, and
     form it into a spiritual body for a dwelling for God. In our
     body the Holy Spirit will do it, if He gets complete
     possession.

  6. It is on this truth of the Holy Spirit's power in the body that
     what is called Faith-healing rests. Through all ages, in times
     of special spiritual quickening, God has given it to some to
     see how Christ would make, even here, the body partaker of the
     life and power of the Spirit. To those who do see it, the link
     between Holiness and Healing is a very close and blessed one,
     as the Lord Jesus takes possession of the body for Himself.




Twenty-fourth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Cleansing.

  'Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us _cleanse_
  ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting
  _holiness_ in the fear of God.'--2 Cor. vii. 1.


That holiness is more than cleansing, and must be preceded by it, is
taught us in more than one passage of the New Testament. 'Christ loved
the Church, and gave Himself up for it, that He might _sanctify_ it,
having _cleansed_ it by the washing of water with the word.' 'If a man
_cleanse_ himself from these, he shall be a vessel _sanctified_.' The
cleansing is the negative side, the being separate and not touching the
unclean thing, the removal of impurity; the sanctifying is the positive
union and fellowship with God, and the participation of the graces of
the Divine life and holiness (2 Cor. vi. 17, 18). So we read too of the
altar, that God spake to Moses: 'Thou shalt _cleanse_ the altar, when
thou makest atonement for it, and thou shalt anoint it, to _sanctify_
it' (Ex. xxix. 36). Cleansing must ever prepare the way, and ought
always to lead on to holiness.

Paul speaks of a twofold defilement, of flesh and spirit, from which we
must cleanse ourselves. The connection between the two is so close, that
in every sin both are partakers. The lowest and most carnal form of sin
will enter the spirit, and, dragging it down into partnership in crime,
will defile and degrade it. And so will all defilement of spirit in
course of time show its power in the flesh. Still we may speak of the
two classes of sins as they owe their origin more directly to the flesh
or the spirit.

'_Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh._' The functions
of our body may be classed under the three heads of the nourishment, the
propagation, and the protection of our life. Through the first the world
daily solicits our appetite with its food and drink. As the fruit good
for food was the temptation that overcame Eve, so the pleasures of
eating and drinking are among the earliest forms of defilement of the
flesh. Closely connected with this is what we named second, and which is
in Scripture specially connected with the word flesh. We know how in
Paradise the sinful eating was at once followed by the awakening of
sinful lust and of shame. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul
closely connects the two (1 Cor. vi. 13, 15), as he also links
drunkenness and impurity (1 Cor. vi. 9, 10). Then comes the third form
in which the vitality of the body displays itself: the instinct of
self-preservation, setting itself against everything that interferes
with our pleasures and comfort. What is called temper, with its fruits
of anger and strife, has its roots in the physical constitution, and is
one among the sins of the flesh. From all this, the Christian, who would
be holy, must most determinedly cleanse himself. He must yield himself
to the searching of God's Spirit, to be taught what there is in the
flesh that is not in harmony with the temperance and self-control
demanded both by the law of nature and the law of the Spirit. He must
believe, what Paul felt that the Corinthians so emphatically needed to
be taught, that the Holy Spirit dwells in the body, making its members
the members of Christ, and in this faith put off the works of the flesh;
he must cleanse himself from all defilement of flesh.

'_And of spirit._' As the source of all defilement of the flesh is
self-gratification, so self-seeking is at the root of all defilement of
the spirit. In relation to God, it manifests itself in idolatry, be it
in the worship of other gods after our own heart, the love of the world
more than God, or the doing our will rather than His. In relation to our
fellow-men it shows itself in envy, hatred, and want of love, cold
neglect or harsh judging of others. In relation to ourselves it is seen
as pride, ambition, or envy, the disposition that makes self the centre
round which all must move, and by which all must be judged.

For the discovery of such defilement of spirit, no less than of the sins
of the flesh, the believer needs the light of the Holy Spirit; that the
uncleanness may indeed be cleansed out and cast away for ever. Even
unconscious sin, if we are not earnestly willing to have it shown to us,
will most effectually prevent our progress in the path of holiness.

'_Beloved! let us cleanse ourselves._' The cleansing is sometimes spoken
of as the work of God (Acts xv. 9; 1 John i. 9); sometimes as that of
Christ (John xv. 3; Eph. v. 26; Tit. ii. 14). Here we are commanded to
cleanse ourselves. God does His work in us by the Holy Spirit; the Holy
Spirit does His work by stirring us up and enabling us to do. The Spirit
is the strength of the new life; in that strength we must set ourselves
determinedly to cast out whatever is unclean. 'Come out, and be ye
separate, and touch not the unclean thing.' It is not only the doing
what is sinful, it is not only the willing of it, that the Christian
must avoid, but even the touching it: the involuntary contact with it
must be so unbearable as to force the cry, O wretched man that I am! and
to lead on to the deliverance which the Spirit of the life of Christ
does bring.

And how is this cleansing to be done? When Hezekiah called the priests
to sanctify the temple that had been defiled, we read (2 Chron. xxix.),
'The priests went in unto the inner part of the house of the Lord to
cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found.' Only
then could the sin-offering of atonement and the burnt-offering of
consecration, with the thankofferings, be brought, and God's service be
restored. Even thus must all that is unclean be looked out, and brought
out, and utterly cast out. However deeply rooted the sin may appear,
rooted in constitution and habit, we must cleanse ourselves of it if we
would be holy. 'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, the
blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' As we bring out every sin
from the inner part of the house into the light of God and walk in the
light, the precious blood that justifies will work mightily to cleanse
too: the blood brings into living contact with the life and the love of
God. Let us come into the light with the sin: the blood will prove its
mighty power. Let us cleanse ourselves in yielding ourselves to the
light to reveal and condemn, to the blood to cleanse and sanctify.

'Let us cleanse ourselves, _perfecting holiness in the fear of the
Lord_.' We read in Hebrews (x. 14), 'Christ hath perfected forever them
that are sanctified.' As we have so often seen that what God has made
holy man must make holy too, as he accepts and appropriates the holiness
God has bestowed, so here with the perfection which the saints have in
Christ. We must perfect holiness: holiness must be carried out into the
whole of life, and carried on even to its end. As God's holy ones, we
must go on to perfection, perfecting holiness. Do not let us be afraid
of the word. Our Blessed Lord used it when He gave us the command, 'Be
ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' A child striving
after the perfection in knowledge of his profession, which he hopes to
attain when he has finished school, is told by his teacher that the way
to the perfection he hopes for at the end of his course is to seek to be
perfect in the lessons of each day. To be perfect in the small portion
of the work that each hour brings, is the path to the perfection that
will crown the whole. The Master calls us to a perfection like that of
the Father: He hath already perfected us in Himself: He holds out the
prospect of perfection ever growing. His word calls us here day by day
to be perfecting holiness. Let us seek in each duty to be whole-hearted
and entire. Let us, as teachable scholars, in every act of worship or
obedience, in every temptation and trial, do the very best which God's
Spirit can enable us to do. 'Let patience have its perfect work, that ye
may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.' 'The God of peace make
you perfect in every good work to do His will.'

'_Having therefore these promises_, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves
from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear
of God.' It is faith that gives the courage and the power to cleanse
from all defilement, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. It is as
the promises of the Divine love and indwelling (2 Cor. vi 16-18) are
made ours by the Holy spirit, that we shall share the victory which
overcometh the world, even our faith. In the path along which we have
already come, from the rest in Paradise down through Holy Scripture, we
have seen the wondrous revelation of these promises in ever-growing
splendour. That God the Holy One will make us holy; that God the Holy
One will dwell with the lowly; that God in His Holy One has come to be
our holiness; that God has planted us in Christ that He may be our
sanctification; that God, who chose us in sanctification of the Spirit,
has given us the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and now watches over us in
His love to work out through Him His purposes and to perfect our
holiness: such are the promises that have been set before us. 'Having
therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all
filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.'

Beloved brother! see here again God's way of holiness. Arise and step on
to it in the faith of the promise, fully persuaded that what He hath
promised He is mighty to perform. Bring out of the inner part of the
house all uncleanness; bring it into the light of God; confess it and
cast it at His feet, who takes it away, and cleanses you in His blood.
Yield yourself in faith to perfect, in Christ your Strength, the
Holiness to which you are called. As your Father in heaven is perfect,
give yourself to Him as a little child to be perfect too in your daily
lessons and your daily walk. Believe that your surrender is accepted:
that the charge committed to Him is undertaken. And give glory to Him
who is able to do above what you can ask or think.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Holy Lord Jesus! Thou didst give Thyself for us, that, having cleansed
us for Thyself as Thine own, Thou mightest sanctify us and present us to
Thyself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
Blessed be Thy Name for the wonderful love. Blessed be Thy Name for the
wonderful cleansing. Through the washing by the word and the washing in
the blood, Thou hast made us clean every whit. And as we walk in the
light, Thou cleansest every moment.

With these promises, in the power of Thy word and blood, Thou callest us
to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Blessed
Lord! graciously reveal in Thy Holy Light all that is defilement, even
its most secret working. Let me live as one who is to be presented to
Thee without spot or wrinkle or any such thing--cleansed with a Divine
cleansing, because Thou gavest Thyself to do it. Under the living power
of Thy word and blood, applied by the Holy Spirit, let my way be clean,
and my hands clean, my lips clean, and my heart clean. Cleanse me
thoroughly, that I may walk with Thee in white here on earth, keeping my
garments unspotted and undefiled. For Thy great love's sake, my Blessed
Lord. Amen.


  1. Cleansing has almost always one aim: a cleansed vessel is fit
     for use. Spiritual work done for God, with the honest desire
     that He may through His Spirit use us, will give urgency to our
     desire for cleansing. A vessel not cleansed cannot be used: is
     not this the reason that there are some workers God cannot
     bless?

  2. _All_ defilement: one stain defiles. 'Let us cleanse ourselves
     from _all_ defilement.'

  3. No cleansing without Light. Open the heart for the Light to
     shine in.

  4. No cleansing like fire. Give the defilement over to the fire of
     His Holiness, the fire that consumes and purifies. Give it into
     the death of Jesus, to Jesus Himself.

  5. 'Perfecting holiness in _the fear of God_:' it is a solemn
     work. Rejoice with trembling--work out your salvation with fear
     and trembling.

  6. 'Having these promises,' it is a blessed work to cleanse
     ourselves--entering into the promises, the purity, the love of
     our Lord. The fear of God need never hinder the faith in Him.
     And true faith will never hinder the practical work of
     cleansing.

  7. _If we walk in the light, the blood cleanseth._ The light
     reveals; we confess and forsake, and accept the blood; so we
     cleanse ourselves. Let there be a very determined purpose to be
     clean from all defilement, everything that our Father considers
     a stain.




Twenty-fifth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holy and Blameless.

  'Ye are witnesses, and God also, how _holily_ and justly and
  _unblameably_ we behaved ourselves among you that believe.--The
  Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another,
  and toward all men, to the end He may stablish your hearts
  _unblameable in holiness_ before our God and Father at the coming
  of our Lord Jesus with all His _holy ones_.'--1 Thess. ii. 10,
  iii. 12, 13.

  'He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we
  should be _holy and without blemish_ before Him _in love_.'--Eph.
  i. 4.


There are two Greek words, signifying nearly the same, used frequently
along with the word holy, and following it, to express what the result and
effect of holiness will be as manifested in the visible life. The one is
translated without blemish, spotless, and is that also used of our Lord
and His sacrifice, the Lamb without blemish (Heb. ix. 14; 1 Pet. i. 19).
It is then used of God's children with holy--holy and without blemish
(Eph. i. 4, 5, 27; Col. i. 22; Phil. ii. 15; Jude 24; 2 Pet. iii. 14). The
other is without blame, faultless (as in Luke i. 6; Phil ii. 15, iii. 6),
and is also found in conjunction with holy (1 Thess. ii. 10, iii. 13, v.
23). In answer to the question as to whether this blamelessness has
reference to God's estimate of the saints or men's, Scripture clearly
connects it with both. In some passages (Eph. i. 4, v. 27; Col. i. 22;
1 Thess. iii. 15; 2 Pet. iii. 14) the words 'before Him,' 'to Himself,'
'before our God and Father,' indicate that the first thought is of the
spotlessness and faultlessness in the presence of a Holy God, which is
held out to us as His purpose and our privilege. In others (such as Phil.
ii. 15; 1 Thess. ii. 10), the blamelessness in the sight of men stands in
the foreground. In each case the word may be considered to include both
aspects: without blemish and without blame must stand the double test of
the judgment of God and man too.

And what is now the special lesson which this linking together of these
two words in Scripture, and the exposition of holy by the addition of
blameless, is meant to teach us? A lesson of deep importance. In the
pursuit of holiness, the believer, the more clearly he realizes what a
deep spiritual blessing it is, to be found only in separation from the
world, and direct fellowship with God, to be possessed fully only
through a real Divine indwelling, may be in danger of looking too
exclusively to the Divine side of the blessing, in its heavenly and
supernatural aspect. He may forget how repentance and obedience, as the
path leading up to holiness, must cover every, even the minutest detail
of daily life. He may not understand how faithfulness to the leadings
of the Spirit, in such measure as we have Him already, faithfulness to
His faintest whisper in reference to ordinary conduct, is essential to
all fuller experience of His power and work as the Spirit of holiness.
He may, above all, not have learnt how, not only obedience to what he
knows to be God's will, but a very tender and willing teachableness to
receive all that the Spirit has to show him of his imperfections and the
Father's perfect will concerning him, is the only condition on which the
Holiness of God can be more fully revealed to us and in us. And so,
while most intent on trying to discover the secret of true and full
holiness from the Divine side, he may be tolerating faults which all
around him can notice, or remaining,--and that not without sin, because
it comes from the want of perfect teachableness,--ignorant of graces and
beauties of holiness with which the Father would have had him adorn the
doctrine of holiness before men. He may seek to live a very holy, and
yet think little of a perfectly blameless life.

There have been such saints, holy but hard, holy but distant, holy but
sharp in their judgments of others; holy, but men around said, unloving
and selfish; the half-heathen Samaritan more kind and self-sacrificing
than the holy Levite and priest. If this be true, it is not the teaching
of Holy Scripture that is to blame. In linking holy and without blemish
(or without blame) so closely, the Holy Spirit would have led us to
seek for the embodiment of holiness as a spiritual power in the
blamelessness of practice and of daily life. Let every believer who
rejoices in God's declaration that he is holy in Christ seek also to
perfect holiness, reach out after nothing less than to be 'unblameable
in holiness.'

That this blamelessness has very special reference to our intercourse
with our fellow-men we see from the way in which it is linked with love.
So in Eph. i. 4, 'That we should be holy and without blemish before Him
_in love_.' But specially in that remarkable passage: 'The Lord make you
to _increase and abound in love_ toward one another, and toward all men,
_to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness_.' The
holiness and the blamelessness, the positive hidden Divine
life-principle, and the external and human life-practice--both are to
find their strength, by which we are to be established in them, in our
abounding and ever-flowing love.

Holiness and lovingness--it is of deep importance that these words
should be inseparably linked in our minds, as their reality in our
lives. We have seen, in the study of the holiness of God, how love is
the element in which it dwells and works, drawing to itself and making
like itself all that it can get possession of. Of the fire of Divine
holiness love is the beautiful flame, reaching out to communicate itself
and assimilate to itself all it can lay hold of. In God's children true
holiness is the same; the Divine fire burns to bring into its own
blessedness all that comes within its reach. When Jesus sanctified
Himself that we might be sanctified in truth, that was nothing but love
giving itself to the death that the sinful might share His holiness.
Selfishness and holiness are irreconcilable. Ignorance may think of
sanctity as a beautiful garment with which to adorn itself before God,
while underneath there is a selfish pride saying, 'I am holier than
thou,' and quite content that the other should want what it boasts of.
True holiness, on the contrary, is the expulsion and the death of
selfishness, taking possession of heart and life to be the ministers of
that fire of love that consumes itself, to reach and purify and save
others. Holiness is love. Abounding love is what Paul prays for as the
condition of unblameable holiness. It is as _the Lord makes_ us to
increase and abound in love, that _He can establish_ our hearts
unblameable in holiness.

The Apostle speaks of a twofold love, 'love toward each other, and
toward all men.' Love to the brethren was what our Lord Himself enjoined
as the chief mark of discipleship. And He prayed the Father for it as
the chief proof to the world of the truth of His Divine mission. It is
in the holiness of love, in a loving holiness, that the unity of the
body will be proved and promoted, and prepared for the fuller workings
of the Holy Spirit. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians,
division and distance among believers are named as the sure proof of the
life of self and the flesh. Oh, let us, if we would be holy, begin by
being very gentle, and patient, and forgiving, and kind, and generous in
our intercourse with all the Father's children. Let us study the Divine
image of the love that seeketh not its own, and pray unceasingly that
the Lord may make us to abound in love to each other. The holiest will
be the humblest and most self-forgetting, the gentlest and most
self-denying, the kindest and most thoughtful of others for Jesus' sake.
'Put on therefore, as God's elect, _holy and beloved_, a heart of
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering' (Col. iii. 12,
13).

And then the love toward all men. A love proved in the conduct and
intercourse of daily life. A love that not only avoids anger and evil
temper and harsh judgments, but exhibits the more positive virtue of
active devotion to the welfare and interests of all. A charitable love
that cares for the bodies as well as the souls. A love that not only is
ready to help when it is called, but that really gives itself up to
self-denial and self-sacrifice to seek out and relieve the needs of the
most wretched and unworthy. A love that does indeed take Christ's love,
that brought Him from heaven and led Him to choose the cross, as the
only law and measure for its conduct, and makes everything subordinate
to the Godlike blessedness of giving, of doing good, of embracing and
saving the needy and lost. Thus abounding in love, we shall be
unblameable in holiness.

It is in Christ we are holy; of God we are in Christ, who is made of
God unto us sanctification: it is in this faith that Paul prays that the
Lord, our Lord Jesus, may make us increase and abound in love. The
Father is the fountain, He is the channel; the Holy Spirit is the living
stream. And He is our Life, through the Spirit. It is by faith in Him,
by abiding in Him and in His love, by allowing, in close union with Him,
the Spirit to shed abroad the love of God, that we shall receive the
answer to our prayer, and shall by Himself be established unblameable in
holiness. Let it be with us a prayer of faith that changes into praise:
Blessed be the Lord, who will make us increase and abound in love, and
will establish us unblameable in holiness before our God and Father, at
the coming of our Lord Jesus with His holy ones.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most Gracious God and Father! again do I thank Thee for that wondrous
salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, which has made us holy
in Christ. And I thank Thee that the Spirit can so make us partakers of
the life of Christ, that we too may be unblameable in holiness. And that
it is the Lord Himself who makes us to increase and abound in love, to
the end our hearts may be so established; that the abounding love and
the unblameable holiness are both from Him.

Blessed Lord and Saviour! I come now to claim and take as my own, what
Thou art able to do for me. I am holy only in Thee; in Thee I am holy.
In Thee there is for me the power to abound in love. O Thou, in whom the
fulness of God's love abides, and in whom I abide, the Lord, my Lord,
make me to abound in love. In union with Thee, in the life of faith in
which Thou livest in me, it can be and it shall be. By the teaching of
Thy Holy Spirit lead me in all the footsteps of Thy self-denying love,
that I too may be consumed in blessing others.

And thus, Lord! mightily establish my heart to be unblameable in
holiness. Let self perish at Thy presence. Let Thy Holiness, giving
itself to make the sinner holy, take entire possession, until my heart
and life are sanctified wholly, and my whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto Thy coming. Amen.


  1. Let us pray very earnestly that our interest in the study of
     holiness may not be a thing of the intellect or the emotions,
     but of the will and the life, seen of all men in the daily walk
     and conversation. 'Abounding in love,' 'unblameable in
     holiness,' will give favour with God and man.

  2. 'God is Love;' Creation is the outflow of love. Redemption is
     the sacrifice and the triumph of love. Holiness is the fire of
     love. The beauty of the life of Jesus is love. All we enjoy of
     the Divine we owe to love. Our holiness is not God's, is not
     Christ's, if we do not love.

  3. 'Love seeketh not its own.' 'Love never faileth.' 'Love is the
     fulfilling of the law.' 'The greatest of these is love.' 'The
     end of the commandment is love.' To love God and man is to be
     holy. In the intercourse of daily life, holiness can have its
     simple and sweet beginnings and its exercise; so, in its
     highest attainment, holiness is love made perfect.

  4. Faith has all its worth from love, from the love of God, whence
     it draws and drinks, and the love to God and man which streams
     out of it. Let us be strong in faith, then shall we abound in
     love.

  5. 'The love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts by the
     Holy Ghost which was given unto us.' Let this be our
     confidence.




Twenty-sixth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and the Will of God.

  'This is _the will of God_, even your _sanctification_.'--1 Thess.
  iv. 3.

  'Lo, I am come to do _Thy will_. By _which will_ we have been
  _sanctified_, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ
  once for all.'--Heb. x. 9, 10.


In the will of God we have the union of His Wisdom and Power. The Wisdom
decides and declares what is to be: the Power secures the performance.
The declarative will is only one side; its complement, the executive
will, is the living energy in which everything good has its origin and
existence. So long as we only look at the will of God in the former
light, as law, we feel it a burden, because we have not the power to
perform--it is too high for us. When faith looks to the Power that works
in God's will, and carries it out, it has the courage to accept it and
fulfil it, because it knows God Himself is working it out. The surrender
in faith to the Divine will as Wisdom thus becomes the pathway to the
experience of it as a Power. 'He doeth according to His will,' is then
the language not only of forced submission, but of joyful expectation.

'This is the will of God, your sanctification.' In the ordinary
acceptation of these words, they simply mean that among many other
things that God has willed, sanctification is one; it is something in
accordance with His will. This thought contains teaching of great value.
God very distinctly and definitely has willed your sanctification: your
sanctification has its source and certainty in its being God's will. We
are 'elect in sanctification of the Spirit,' 'chosen to be holy;' the
purpose of God's will from eternity, and His will now, is our
sanctification. We have only to think of what we said of God's will
being a Divine power that works out what His wisdom has chosen, to see
what strength this truth will give to our faith that we shall be holy:
God wills it, and will work it out for all and in all who do not resist
it, but yield themselves to its power. Seek your sanctification, not
only in the will of God, as a declaration of what He wants you to be,
but as a revelation of what He Himself will work out in you.

There is, however, another most precious thought suggested. If our
sanctification be God's will, its central thought and its contents,
_every part of that will_ must bear upon it, and the sure entrance to
sanctification will be the hearty acceptance of the will of God in all
things. To be one with God's will is to be holy. Let him who would be
holy take his place here and 'stand in all the will of God.' He will
there meet God Himself, and be made partaker of His Holiness, because
His will works out its purpose in power to each one who yields himself
to it. Everything in a life of holiness depends upon our being in the
right relation to the will of God.

There are many Christians to whom it appears impossible to think of
their accepting all the will of God, or of their being one with it. They
look upon the will of God in its thousand commands, and its numberless
providential orderings. They have sometimes found it so hard to obey one
single command, or to give up willingly to some light disappointment.
They imagine that they would need to be a thousandfold holier and
stronger in grace, before venturing to say that they do accept all God's
will, whether to do or to bear. They cannot understand that all the
difficulty comes from their not occupying the right standpoint. They are
looking at God's will as at variance with their natural will, and they
feel that that natural will will never delight in all God's will. They
forget that the new man has a renewed will. This new will delights in
the will of God, because it is born of it. This new will sees the beauty
and the glory of God's will, and is in harmony with it. If they are
indeed God's children, the very first impulse of the spirit of a child
is surely to do the will of the Father in heaven. And they have but to
yield themselves heartily and wholly to this spirit of sonship, and they
need not fear to accept God's will as theirs.

The mistake they make is a very serious one. Instead of living by faith
they judge by feeling, in which the old nature speaks and rules. It
tells them that God's will is often a burden too hard to be borne, and
that they never can have the strength to do it. Faith speaks
differently. It reminds us that God is Love, and that His will is
nothing but Love revealed. It asks if we do not know that there is
nothing more perfect or beautiful in heaven or earth than the will of
God. It shows us how in our conversion we have already professed to
accept God as Father and Lord. It assures us, above all, that if we will
but definitely and trustingly give ourselves to that will which is Love,
it will as Love fill our hearts and make us delight in it, and so become
the power that enables us joyfully to do and to bear. Faith reveals to
us that the will of God is the power of His love, working out its plan
in Divine beauty in each one who wholly yields to it.

And which shall we now choose? And where shall we take our place? Shall
we attempt to accept Christ as a Saviour without accepting His will?
Shall we profess to be the Father's children, and yet spend our life in
debating how much of His will we shall perform? Shall we be content to
go on from day to day with the painful consciousness that our will is
not in harmony with God's will? Or shall we not at once and for ever
give up our will as sinful to His,--to that Will which He has already
written on our heart? This is a thing that is possible. It can be done.
In a simple, definite transaction with God, we can say that we do accept
His holy will to be ours. Faith knows that God will not pass such a
surrender unnoticed, but accept it. In the trust that He now takes us up
into His will, and undertakes to breathe it into us, with the love and
the power to perform it--in this faith let us enter into God's will, and
begin a new life; standing in, abiding in the very centre of this most
holy will.

Such an acceptance of God's will prepares the believer, through the Holy
Spirit, to recognise and know that will in whatever form it comes. The
great difference between the carnal and the spiritual Christian is that
the latter acknowledges God, under whatever low and poor and human
appearances He manifests Himself. When God comes in trials which can be
traced to no hand but His, he says, 'Thy will be done.' When trials come
through the weakness of men or his own folly, when circumstances appear
unfavourable to his religious progress, and temptations threaten to be
too much for him and to overcome him, he learns first of all to see God
in everything, and still to say, 'Thy will be done.' He knows that a
child of God cannot possibly be in any situation without the will of His
Heavenly Father, even when that will has been to leave him to his own
wilfulness for a time, or to suffer the consequences of his own or
others' sin. He sees this, and in accepting his circumstances as the
will of God to try and prove him, he is in the right position for now
knowing and doing what is right. Seeing and honouring God's will thus in
everything, he learns always to abide in that will.

He does so also by doing that will. As his spiritual discernment grows
to say of whatever happens, 'All things are of God,' so he grows too in
wisdom and spiritual understanding to know the will of God as it is to
be done. In the indications of conscience and of Providence, in the
teaching of the word and the Spirit, he learns to see how God's will has
reference to every part and duty of life, and it becomes his joy, in all
things, to live, 'doing the will of God from the heart, as unto the Lord
and not unto men.' 'Labouring fervently in prayer to stand complete and
fully assured in all the will of God,' he finds how blessedly the Father
has accepted his surrender, and supplies all the light and strength that
is needed that His will may be done by him on earth as it is in heaven.

Let me ask every reader to say to a Holy God, whether he has indeed
given himself to Him to be made holy? Whether he has accepted, and
entered into, and is living in, the good and perfect will of God? The
question is not, whether, when affliction comes, he accepts the
inevitable and submits to a will he cannot resist. But whether he has
chosen the will of God as his chief good, and has taken the
life-principle of Christ to be his: 'I delight to do Thy will, O God.'
This was the holiness of Christ, in which He sanctified Himself and us,
the doing God's will. 'In which will we have been sanctified.' It is
this will of God which is our sanctification.

Brother! are you in earnest to be holy? wholly possessed of God? Here is
the path. I plead with you not to be afraid or to hold back. You have
taken God to be your God; have you really taken His will to be your
will? Oh, think of the privilege, the blessedness, of having one will
with God! and fear not to surrender yourself to it most unreservedly.
The will of God is, in every part of it, and in all its Divine power,
your sanctification.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Blessed Father! I come to say that I see that Thy will is my
sanctification, and there alone I would seek it. Graciously grant that,
by Thy Holy Spirit which dwelleth in me, the glory of that will, and the
blessedness of abiding in it, may be fully revealed to me.

Teach me to know it as the Will of Love, purposing always what is the
very best and most blest for Thy child. Teach me to know it as the Will
of Omnipotence, able to work out its every counsel in me. Teach me to
know it in Christ, fulfilled perfectly on my behalf. Teach me to know it
as what the Spirit wills and works in each one who yields to Him.

O my Father! I acknowledge Thy claim to have Thy will alone done, and am
here for it to do with me as Thou pleasest. With my whole heart I enter
into it, to be one with it for ever. Thy Holy Spirit can maintain this
oneness without interruption. I trust Thee, my Father, step by step, to
let the light of Thy will shine in my heart and on my path, through that
Spirit.

May this be the holiness in which I live, that I forget and lose self in
pleasing and honouring Thee. Amen.


  1. Make it a study, in meditation and prayer and worship, to get a
     full impression of the Majesty, the Perfection, the Glory of
     the Will of God, with the privilege and possibility of living
     in it.

  2. Study it, too, as the expression of an infinite Love and
     Fatherliness; its every manifestation full of loving-kindness.
     Every providence is _God's will_; whatever happens, meet God in
     it in humble worship. Every precept is _God's will_; meet God
     in it with loving obedience. Every promise is _God's will_;
     meet God in it with full trust. A life in the will of God is
     rest and strength and blessing.

  3. And forget not, above all, to believe in its Omnipotent Power.
     _He worketh all things after the counsel of His will._ In
     nature and those who resist Him, without their consent. In His
     children, according to their faith, and as far as they will it.
     Do believe that the will of God will work out its counsel in
     you, as you trust it to do so.

  4. This will is Infinite Benevolence and Beneficence revealed in
     the self-sacrifice of Jesus. Live for others: so can you become
     an instrument for the Divine will to use (Matt. xviii. 14; John
     vi. 39, 40). Yield yourselves to this redeeming will of God,
     that it may get full possession, and work out through you too
     its saving purpose.

  5. Christ is just the embodiment of God's will: He is, God's will
     done. Abide in Him, by abiding in, by doing heartily and
     always, the will of God. A Christian is, like Christ, a man
     given up to the Will of God.




Twenty-seventh Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Service.

  'If a man therefore cleanse himself from these, he shall be a
  vessel unto honour, _sanctified_, meet _for the Master's use_,
  prepared _unto every good work_.'--2 Tim. ii. 21.

  'A _holy_ priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices. A _holy_
  nation, that ye may _show forth the excellences of Him_ who called
  you out of darkness into His marvellous light.'--1 Pet. ii. 5, 9.


Through the whole of Scripture we have seen that whatever God sanctifies
is to be used in the service of His Holiness. His Holiness is an
infinite energy that only finds its rest in making holy: to the
revelation of what He is in Himself, 'I the Lord _am holy_,' God
continually adds the declaration of what He does, 'I am the Lord that
_make holy_.' Holiness is a burning fire that extends itself, that seeks
to consume what is unholy, and to communicate its own blessedness to all
that will receive it. Holiness and selfishness, holiness and inactivity,
holiness and sloth, holiness and helplessness, are utterly
irreconcilable. Whatever we read of as holy, was taken into the service
of the Holiness of God.

Let us just look back on the revelation of what is holy in Scripture.
The seventh day was made holy, that in it God might make His people
holy. The tabernacle was holy, to serve as a dwelling for the Holy One,
as the centre whence His Holiness might manifest itself to the people.
The altar was most holy, that it might sanctify the gifts laid on it.
The priests with their garments, the house with its furniture and
vessels, the sacrifices and the blood,--whatever bore the name of holy
had a use and a purpose. Of Israel, whom God redeemed from Egypt that
they might be a _holy_ nation, God said, 'Let my people go, that they
may _serve_ me.' The holy angels, the holy prophets and apostles, the
holy Scriptures,--all bore the title as having been sanctified for the
service of God. Our Lord speaks of Himself 'as the Son, whom the Father
_sanctified and sent_ into the world.' And when He says, 'I sanctify
myself,' He adds at once the purpose: it is in the service of the Father
and His redeemed ones,--'that they themselves may be sanctified in
truth.' And can it be thought possible, now that God, in Christ the Holy
One, and in the Holy Spirit, is accomplishing His purpose, and gathering
a people of saints, 'holy ones,' 'made holy in Christ,' that now
holiness and service would be put asunder? Impossible! Here first we
shall fully realize how essential they are to each other. Let us try and
grasp their mutual relation. We are only made holy that we may serve.
We can only serve as we are holy.

_Holiness is essential to effectual service._ In the Old Testament we
see degrees of holiness, not only in the holy places, but as much in the
holy persons. In the nation, the Levites, the priests, and then the High
Priest, there is an advance from step to step: as in each succeeding
stage the circle narrows, and the service is more direct and entire, so
the holiness required is higher and more distinct. It is even so in this
more spiritual dispensation: the more of holiness, the greater the
fitness for service; the more there is of true holiness, the more there
is of God, and the more true and deep is the entrance He has had into
the soul. The hold He has on the soul to use it in His service is more
complete.

In the Church of Christ there is a vast amount of work done which yields
very little fruit. Many throw themselves into work in whom there is but
little true holiness, little of the Holy Spirit. They often work most
diligently, and, as far as human influence is concerned, most
successfully. And yet true spiritual results in the building up of a
holy temple in the Lord are but few. The Lord cannot work in them,
because He has not the mastery of their inner life. His personal
indwelling and fellowship, the rest of His Holy Presence, His Holiness
reigning and ruling in the heart and life,--to all these they are
comparative strangers. It has been rightly said that work is the cure
for spiritual poverty and disease; to some believers who had been
seeking holiness apart from service, the call to work has been an
unspeakable blessing. But to many it has only been an additional blind
to cover up the terrible want of heart-holiness and heart-fellowship
with the living God. They have thrown themselves into work more
earnestly than ever, and yet have not in their heart the rest-giving and
refreshing witness that their work is acceptable and accepted.

My brother! listen to the message. 'If a man _cleanse_ himself, he shall
be a vessel unto honour, _sanctified_, _meet_ for the Master's use,
_prepared_ unto every good work.' You cannot have the law of service
more clearly or beautifully laid down. A vessel of honour, one whom the
King will delight to honour, must be a vessel _cleansed_ from all
defilement of flesh and spirit. Then only can it be a _sanctified_
vessel, possessed and indwelt by God's Holy Spirit. So it becomes _meet
for the Master's use_. He can use it, and work in it, and wield it. And
so, clean and holy, and yielded into the Master's hands, we are Divinely
prepared for every good work. Holiness is essential to service. If
service is to be acceptable to God, and effectual for its work on souls,
and to be a joy and a strength to ourselves, we must be holy. The will
of God must first live in us, if it is to be done by us.

How many faithful workers there are, mourning the want of power; longing
and praying for it, and yet not obtaining it! They have spent their
strength more in the outer court of work and service, than in the inner
life of fellowship and faith. They truly have never understood that
only as the Master gets possession of them, as the Holy Spirit has them
at His disposal, can He use them, can they have true power. They often
long and cry for what they call a baptism of power. They forget that the
way to have God's power in us is for ourselves to be in His power. Put
yourself into the power of God; let His holy will live in you; live in
it and in obedience to it, as one who has no power to dispose of
himself; let the Holy Spirit dwell within, as in His Holy Temple,
revealing the Holy One on the throne, ruling all; He will without fail
use you as a vessel of honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use.
Holiness is essential to effectual service.

_And service is no less essential to true holiness._ We have repeated it
so often: Holiness is an energy, an intense energy of desire and
self-sacrifice, to make others partakers of its own purity and
perfection. Christ sacrificed Himself--wherein did that sacrifice
consist, and what was its aim? He sanctified Himself that we might be
sanctified too. A holiness that is selfish is a delusion. True holiness,
God's holiness in us, works itself out in love, in seeking and loving
the unholy, that they may become holy too. Self-sacrificing love is of
the very essence of holiness. The Holy One of Israel is its Redeemer.
The Holy One of God is the dying Saviour. The Holy Spirit of God makes
holy. There is no holiness in God but what is most actively engaged in
loving and saving and blessing. It must be so in us too. Let every
thought of holiness, every act of faith or prayer, every effort in
pursuit of it, be animated by the desire and the surrender to the
Holiness of God for use in the attaining of its object. Let your whole
life be one distinctly and definitely given up to God for His use and
service. Your circumstances may appear to be unfavourable. God may
appear to keep the door closed against your working for Him in the way
you would wish; your sense of unfitness may be painful. Still, let it be
a matter settled between God and the soul, that your longing for
holiness is that you may be fitter for Him to use, and that what He has
given you of His Holiness in Christ and the Spirit is all at His
disposal, waiting to be used. Be ready for Him to use; live out, in a
daily life of humble, self-denying, loving service of others, what grace
you have received. You will find that in the union and interchange of
worship and work, God's Holiness will rest upon you.

'The Father _sanctified_ the Son, _and sent_ Him into the world.' The
world is the place for the sanctified one, to be its light, its salt,
its life. We are 'sanctified in Christ Jesus,' and sent into the world
too. Oh, let us not fear to accept our position--our double position; in
the world, and in Christ! In the world, with its sin and sorrow, with
its thousands of needs touching us at every point, and its millions of
souls all waiting for us. And in Christ too. For the sake of that world
we 'have been sanctified in Christ,' we are 'holy in Christ,' we have
'the spirit of sanctification' dwelling in us. As a holy salt in a
sinful world, let us give ourselves to our holy calling. Let us come
nearer and nearer to God who has called us. Let us root deeper and
deeper in Christ our sanctification, in whom we are of God. Let us enter
more firmly and more fully into that faith in Him in whom we are, by
which our whole life will be covered and taken up in His. Let us beseech
the Father to teach us that His Holy Spirit does dwell in us every
moment, making, if we live by faith, Christ with His Holiness, our home,
our abode, our sure defence, and our infinite supply. As He which hath
called us is holy, let us be holy in His own Son, through His own
Spirit, and the fire of His Holy Love will work through us its work of
judging and condemning, of saving and sanctifying. A sanctified soul God
will use to save.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Blessed Master! I thank Thee for being anew reminded of the purpose of
Thy Redeeming Love. Thou gavest Thyself that Thou mightest cleanse for
Thyself a people of Thine own, zealous in good works. Thou wouldest make
of each of us a vessel of honour, cleansed and sanctified, meet for Thy
use, and prepared for every good work.

Blessed Lord! write the lessons of Thy word deep in my heart. Teach me
and all Thy people that if we would work for Thee, if we would have
Thee work in us, and use us, we must be very holy, holy as God is holy.
And that if we would be holy, we must be serving Thee. It is Thy own
Spirit, by which Thou dost sanctify us to use us, and dost sanctify in
using. To be entirely possessed of Thee is the path to sanctity and
service both.

Most Holy Saviour! we are in Thee as our sanctification: in Thee we
would abide. In the rest of a faith that trusts Thee for all, in the
power of a surrender that would have no will but Thine, in a love that
would lose itself to be wholly Thine, Blessed Jesus, we do abide in
Thee. In Thee we are holy: in Thee we shall bear much fruit.

Oh, be pleased to perfect Thine own work in us! Amen.


  1. It is difficult to make it clear in words how growth in
     holiness will simply reveal itself as an increasing simplicity
     and self-forgetfulness, accompanied by the restful and most
     blessed assurance that God has complete possession of us and
     will use us. We pass from the stage in which work presses as an
     obligation; it becomes the joy of fruit-bearing; faith's
     assurance that He is working out His will through us.

  2. It has sometimes been said that people might be better employed
     in working for God than attending Holiness Conventions. This is
     surely a misunderstanding. It was before the throne of the
     Thrice Holy One, and as he heard the Seraphim sing of God's
     Holiness, that the prophet said, 'Here am I, send me.' As the
     mission of Moses, and Isaiah, and the Son, whom the Father
     _sanctified and sent_, each had its origin in the revelation of
     God's Holiness, our missions will receive new power as they are
     more directly born out of the worship of God as the Holy One,
     and baptized into the Spirit of Holiness.

  3. Let every worker take time to hear God's double call. If you
     would work, be very holy. If you would be holy, give yourself
     to God to use in His work.

  4. Note the connection between 'sanctified' and 'meet for _the
     Master's use_.' True holiness is being possessed of God; true
     service being used of God. How much service there is in which
     we are the chief agents, and ask God to help and to bless us.
     True service is being yielded up to the Master _for Him to
     use_. Then the Holy Ghost is the Agent, and we are the
     Instruments of His will. Such service is Holiness.

  5. 'I sanctify _Myself_, that _they also_:' a reference to others
     is the root principle of all true holiness.




Twenty-eighth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Way into the Holiest.

  'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into _the Holiest_
  by _the blood_ of Jesus, by _the way_ which He dedicated, a new
  and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh: and
  having a _great Priest_ over the house of God; let us draw near
  with a true heart, in fulness of faith.'--Heb. x. 19-22.


When the High Priest once a year entered into the second tabernacle
within the veil, it was, we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'the
Holy Ghost signifying that the way into _the Holiest of all_ was not yet
made manifest.' When Christ died, the veil was rent; all who were
serving in the holy place had free access at once into the Most Holy;
the way into the Holiest of all was opened up. When the Epistle passes
over to its practical application (x. 19), all its teaching is summed up
in the words: 'Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into _the
Holiest_, let us draw near.' Christ's redemption has opened the way to
the Holiest of all: our acceptance of it must lead to nothing less than
our drawing near and entering in. The words of our text suggest to us
four very precious thoughts in regard to the place of access, the right
of access, the way of access, the power of access.

_The place of access._ Whither are we invited to draw nigh? 'Having
boldness to enter into _the Holiest_.' The priests in Israel might enter
the holy place, but were always kept excluded from the Holiest, God's
immediate presence. The rent veil proclaimed liberty of access into that
Presence. It is there that believers as a royal priesthood are now to
live and walk. Within the veil, in the very Holiest of all, in the same
place, the heavenlies, in which God dwells, in God's very Presence, is
to be our abode--our home. Some speak as if the, 'Let us draw near,'
meant prayer, and that in our special approach to God in acts of worship
we enter the Holiest. No; great as this privilege is, God has meant
something for us infinitely greater. We are to draw near, and dwell
always, to live our life and do our work within the sphere, the
atmosphere, of the inner sanctuary. It is God's Presence makes holy
ground; God's immediate Presence in Christ makes any place the Holiest
of all: and this is it into which we are to draw nigh, and in which we
are to abide. There is not a single moment of the day, there is not a
circumstance or surrounding, in which the believer may not be kept
dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. As by faith he enters
into the completeness of his reconciliation with God, and the reality
of his oneness with Christ, as he thus, abiding in Christ, yields to the
Holy Spirit to reveal within the Presence of the Holy One, the Holiest
of all is around him, he is indeed in it. With an uninterrupted access
he draws near.[13]

_The right of access._ The thought comes up, and the question is asked:
Is this not simply an ideal? can it be a reality, an experience in daily
life to those who know how sinful their nature is? Blessed be God! it is
meant to be. It is possible, because our right of access rests not in
what we are, but in the blood of Jesus. 'Having _boldness_ to enter into
the Holiest _by the blood_ of Jesus, let us draw near.' In the Passover
we saw how redemption, and the holiness it aimed at, were dependent on
the blood. In the sanctuary, God's dwelling, we know how in each part,
the court, the holy place, the Most Holy, the sprinkling of blood was
what alone secured access to God. And now that the blood of Jesus has
been shed--oh! in what Divine power, what intense reality, what
everlasting efficacy, we now have access into the Holiest of all, the
Most Holy of God's heart and His love! We are indeed brought nigh by the
blood. We have boldness to enter by the blood. 'The worshippers, being
once cleansed, have no more conscience of sins.' Walking in the light,
the blood of Jesus cleanses in the power of an endless life, with a
cleansing that never ceases. No consciousness of unworthiness or
remaining sinfulness need hinder the boldness of access: the liberty to
draw near rests in the never-failing, ever-acting, ever-living efficacy
of the Precious Blood. It is possible for a believer to dwell in the
Holiest of all.

_The way of access._ It is often thought that what is said of _the new
and living way_, dedicated for us by Jesus, means nothing different from
the boldness through His blood. This is not the case. The words mean a
great deal more. 'Having boldness _by the blood_ of Jesus, let us draw
near _by the way_ which He dedicated for us.' That is, He opened for us
a way to walk in, as He walked in it, 'a new and living way, through the
veil, that is to say, His flesh.' The way in which Christ walked when He
gave His blood, is the very same in which we must walk too. That way is
the way of the Cross. There must not only be faith in Christ's
sacrifice, but fellowship with Him in it. That way led to the rending of
the veil of the flesh, and so through the rent veil of the flesh, in to
God. And was the veil of Christ's holy flesh rent that the veil of our
sinful flesh might be spared? Verily, no. He meant us to walk in the
very same way in which He did, following closely after Himself. He
dedicated for us a new and living way through the veil, that is, His
flesh. As we go in through the rent veil of _His flesh_, we find in it
at once the need and the power for our flesh being rent too: following
Jesus ever means conformity to Jesus. It is Jesus with the rent flesh,
in whom we are, in whom we walk.[14] There is no way to God but through
the rending of the flesh. In acceptance of Christ's life and death by
faith as the power that works in us, in the power of the Spirit which
makes us truly one with Christ, we all follow Christ as He passes on
through the rent veil, that is, His flesh, and become partakers with Him
of His crucifixion and death. The way of the cross, 'by which I have
been crucified,' is the way through the rent veil. Man's destiny,
fellowship with God in the power of the Holy Spirit, is only reached
through the sacrifice of the flesh.

And here we find now the solution of a great mystery--why so many
Christians remain standing afar off, and never enter this Holiest of
all; why the holiness of God's Presence is so little seen on them. They
thought that it was only in Christ that the flesh needed to be rent, not
in themselves. They thought that the liberty they had in the blood was
the new and living way. They knew not that the way into true and full
holiness, into the Holiest of all, that the full entrance into the
fellowship of the holiness of the Great High Priest, was only to be
reached through the rent veil of the flesh, through conformity to the
death of Jesus. This is in very deed the way He dedicated for us. He is
Himself the way; into His self-denial, His self-sacrifice, His
crucifixion, He takes up all who long to be holy with His Holiness, holy
as He is holy.

_The power of access._ Does any one shrink back from entering the very
Holiest for fear of this rending of the flesh, because he doubts whether
he could bear it, whether he could indeed walk in such a path? Let him
listen once more. Hear what follows: 'And _having a Great Priest_ over
the House of God, let us draw near.' We have not only the Holiest of all
inviting us, and the blood giving us boldness, and the way through the
rent veil consecrated for us, but the Great Priest over the House of
God, the Blessed Living Saviour, to draw, to help, and to welcome us. He
is our Aaron. On His heart we see our name, because He only lives to
think of us, and pray for us. On His forehead we see God's name, 'Holy
to the Lord,' because in His Holiness the sins of our holy things are
covered. _In Him_ we are accepted and sanctified; God receives us as
holy ones. In the power of His love and His Spirit, in the power of Him
the Holy One, in the joy of drawing nearer to Him and being drawn by
Him, we gladly accept the way He has dedicated, and walk in His holy
footsteps of self-denial and self-sacrifice. We see how the flesh is the
thick veil that separates from the Holy One who is a Spirit, and it
becomes an unceasing and most fervent prayer, that the crucifixion of
the flesh may, in the power of the Holy Spirit, be in us a blessed
reality. With the glory of the Holiest of all shining out on us through
the opened veil, and the Precious Blood speaking so loudly of boldness
of access, and the Great Priest beckoning us with His loving Presence to
draw near and be blessed,--with all this, we dare no longer fear, but
choose the way of the rent veil as the path we love to tread, and give
ourselves to enter in and dwell within the veil, in the very Holiest of
all.

And so our life here will be the earnest of the glory that is to come,
as it is written--note how we have the four great thoughts of our text
over again--'These are they which came out of great tribulation,' that
is, by the way of the rent flesh; 'and they washed their robes, and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb,' their boldness through the blood;
'therefore are they before the throne of God,' their dwelling in the
Holiest of all; 'the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall be
their Shepherd,' the Great Priest still the Shepherd, Jesus Himself
their all in all.

Brother! do you see what holiness is, and how it is to be found? It is
not something wrought in yourself. It is not something put on you from
without. Holiness is the Presence of God resting on you. Holiness comes
as you consciously abide in that Presence, doing all your work, and
living all your life as a sacrifice to Him, acceptable through Jesus
Christ, sanctified by the Holy Ghost. Oh, be no longer fearful, as if
this life were not for you! Look to Jesus; having a Great Priest over
the House of God, let us draw near. Be occupied with Jesus. Our Brother
has charge of the Temple; He has liberty to show us all, to lead us into
the secret of the Father's presence. The entire management of the Temple
has been given into His hands with this very purpose, that all the
feeble and doubting ones might come with confidence. Only trust yourself
to Jesus, to His leading and keeping. Only trust Jesus, God's Holy One,
your Holy One; it is His delight to reveal to you what He has purchased
with His blood. Trust Him to teach you the ordinances of the sanctuary.
'That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House
of God,' He has been given. _Having a Great Priest_, let us enter in,
let us dwell in the Holiest of all. In the power of the blood, in the
power of the new and living way, in the power of the Living Jesus, let
the Holiest of all, the Presence of God, be the home of our soul. You
are 'Holy in Christ;' in Christ you are in God's Holy Presence and Love;
just stay there.

  BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


Most Holy God! how shall I praise Thee for the liberty to enter into the
Holiest of all, and dwell there? And for the precious Blood, that brings
us nigh? And for the new and living way, through the rent veil of that
flesh which had separated us from Thee, in which my flesh now too has
been crucified? And for the Great Priest over the House of God, our
Living Lord Jesus, with Whom and in Whom we appear before Thee? Glory be
to Thy Holy Name for this wonderful and most complete redemption.

I beseech Thee, O my God! give me, and all Thy children, some right
sense of how really and surely we may live each day, may spend our whole
life, within the veil, in Thine own Immediate Presence. Give us the
spirit of revelation, I pray Thee, that we may see how, through the rent
veil, the glory of Thy Presence streameth forth from the Most Holy into
the holy place; how, in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the kingdom
of heaven came to earth, and all who yield themselves to that Spirit may
know that in Christ they are indeed so near, so very near to Thee.
O Blessed Father! let Thy Spirit teach us that this indeed is the holy
life: a life in Christ the Holy One, always in the Light and the
Presence of Thy Holy Majesty.

Most Holy God! I draw nigh. In the power of the Holy Spirit I enter in.
I am now in the Holiest of all. And here I would abide in Jesus, my
Great Priest--here, in the Holiest of all. Amen.


  1. To abide in Christ is to dwell in the Holiest of all. Christ is
     not only the Sacrifice, and the Way, and the Great Priest, but
     also Himself the Temple. 'The Lamb is the Temple.' As the Holy
     Spirit reveals my union to Christ more clearly, and heart and
     will lose themselves in Him, I dwell in the Holy Presence,
     which is the Holiest of all. You are 'holy in Christ'--draw
     near, enter in with boldness, and take possession--have no home
     but in the Holiest of all.

  2. 'Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He
     might sanctify it.' _He gave Himself!_ Have you caught the
     force of that word? Because He would have no one else do it,
     because none could do it; to sanctify His Church, _He gave
     Himself_ to do it. And so it is His own special beloved work to
     sanctify the Church He loved. Just accept Himself to do it. He
     can and will make you holy, that He may present you to
     _Himself_ glorious, without spot or wrinkle. Let that word
     _Himself_ live in you. The whole life and walk in the House of
     God is in His charge. _Having_ a Great Priest, let us draw
     near.

  3. This entrance into the Holiest of all--an ever fresh and ever
     deeper entrance--is, at the same time, an ever blessed resting
     in the Father's Presence. Faith in the blood, following in the
     way of the rent flesh, and fellowship with the Living Jesus,
     are the three chief steps.

  4. Enter into the Holiest of all, and dwell there. It will enter
     into thee, and transform thee, and dwell in thee. And thy heart
     will be the Holiest of all, in which He dwells.

  5. Have we not at times been lifted, by an effort of thought and
     will, or in the fellowship of the saints, into what seemed the
     Holiest of all, and speedily felt that the flesh had entered
     there too? It was because we entered not by the new way of
     life--the way through death to life--the way of the rent veil
     of the flesh. O our crucified Lord! teach us what this means;
     give it us; be it Thyself to us.

  6. Let me remember that my access into the Holiest is as a Priest.
     Let me dwell before the Lord all the day as an Intercessor,
     offering, unceasingly, pleadings which are acceptable in
     Christ. May God's Church be like her of whom it is written,
     'She departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings
     and prayers night and day.' It is for this we have access to
     the Holiest of all.


   [13] So near, so very near to God,
          I cannot nearer be;
        For in the person of His Son,
          I am as near as He.

   [14] 'Christ suffered, that He might bring us to God, being put to
        death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit.' 'Forasmuch
        then as Christ suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also
        with the same mind.' The flesh and the Spirit are antagonistic:
        as the flesh dies, the Spirit lives.




Twenty-ninth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Chastisement.

  'He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of _His
  holiness_. Follow after _sanctification_, without which no man
  shall see the Lord.'--Heb. xii. 10, 14.


There is perhaps no part of God's word which sheds such Divine light
upon suffering as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It does this because it
teaches us what suffering was to the Son of God. It perfected His
humanity. It so fitted Him for His work as the Compassionate High
Priest. It proved that He, who had fulfilled God's will in suffering
obedience, was indeed worthy to be its executor in glory, and to sit
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. 'It became God, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation
_perfect_ through _sufferings_.' 'Though He was a Son, yet _learned_ He
_obedience_ by the things which He _suffered_, and having been made
_perfect_, became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey
Him.' As He said Himself of His suffering, 'I sanctify myself,' so we
see here that His sufferings were indeed to Him the pathway to
perfection and holiness.

What Christ was and won was all for us. The power which suffering was
proved to have in Him to work out perfection, the power which He
imparted to it in sanctifying Himself through suffering, is the power of
the new life that comes from Him to us. In the light of His example we
can see, in the faith of His power we too can prove, that suffering is
to God's child the token of the Father's love, and the channel of His
richest blessing. To such faith the apparent mystery of suffering is
seen to be nothing but a Divine need--the light affliction that works
out--yea, _works out_ and actually effects the exceeding weight of
glory. We agree not only to what is written, 'It _became_ Him to make
the Author of salvation perfect through suffering,' but understand
somewhat how Divinely becoming and meet it is that we too should be
sanctified by suffering.

'He chasteneth us for our profit, that we should be made partakers of
His holiness.' Of all the precious words Holy Scripture has for the
sorrowful, there is hardly one that leads us more directly and more
deeply into the fulness of blessing that suffering is meant to bring. It
is _His Holiness_, God's own Holiness, we are to be made partakers of.
The Epistle had spoken very clearly of our sanctification from its
Divine side, as wrought out for us, and to be wrought in us, by Jesus
Himself. 'He which sanctifieth and they which are sanctified are all of
one.' 'We have been sanctified by the one offering of Christ.' In our
text we have the other side, the progressive work by which we are
personally to accept and voluntarily to appropriate this Divine
Holiness. In view of all there is in us that is at variance with God's
will, and that must be discovered and broken down, before we understand
what it is to give up our will and delight in God's; in view of the
personal fellowship of suffering which alone can lead to the full
appreciation of what Jesus bore and did for us; in view, too, of the
full personal entrance into and satisfaction with the love of God as our
sufficient portion; chastisement and suffering are indispensable
elements in God's work of making holy. In these three aspects we shall
see how what the Son needed is what we need, how what was of such
unspeakable value to the Son will to us be no less rich in blessing.

_Chastisement leads to the acceptance of God's will._ We have seen how
God's will is our sanctification; how it is in the will of God Christ
has sanctified us; yea more, how He found the power to sanctify us in
sanctifying Himself by the entire surrender of His will to God. His 'I
delight to do Thy will' derived its worth from His continual 'Not my
will.' And wherever God comes with chastisement or suffering, the very
first object He has in view is, to ask and to work in us union with His
own blessed will, that through it we may have union with Himself and
His love. He comes in some one single point in which His will crosses
our most cherished affection or desire, and asks the surrender of what
we will to what He wills. When this is done willingly and lovingly, He
leads the soul on to see how the claim for the sacrifice in the
individual matter is the assertion of a principle--that in everything
His will is to be our one desire. Happy the soul to whom affliction is
not a series of single acts of conflict and submission to single acts of
His will, but an entrance into the school where we prove and approve all
the good and perfect and acceptable will of God.

It has sometimes appeared, even to God's children, as if affliction were
not a blessing: it so rouses the evil nature, and calls forth all the
opposition of the heart against God's will, that it has brought the loss
of the peace and the piety that once appeared to reign. Even in such
cases it is working out God's purpose. 'That He might humble thee, to
prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,' is still His object in
leading into the wilderness. To an extent we are not aware of, our
religion is often selfish and superficial: when we accept the teaching
of chastisement in discovering the self-will and love of the world which
still prevails, we have learnt one of its first and most needful
lessons.

This lesson has special difficulty when the trial does not come direct
from God, but through men or circumstances. In looking at second
causes, and in seeking for their removal, in the feeling of indignation
or of grief, we often entirely forget to see God's will in everything
His Providence allows. As long as we do so, the chastisement is
fruitless; and perhaps only hardens the more. If, in our study of the
pathway of Holiness, there has been awakened in us the desire to accept
and adore, and stand complete in, _all the will_ of God, let us in the
very first place seek to recognise that will in everything that comes on
us. The sin of him who vexes us is not God's will. But it is God's will
that we should be in that position of difficulty to be tried and tested.
Let our first thought be: this position of difficulty is my Father's
will for me: I accept that will as my place now where He sees it fit to
try me. Such acceptance of the trial is the way to turn it into
blessing. It will lead on to an ever clearer abiding in all the will of
God all the day.

_Chastisement leads to the fellowship of God's Son._ The will of God out
of Christ is a law we cannot fulfil. The will of God in Christ is a life
that fills us. He came in the name of our fallen humanity, and accepted
all God's will as it rested on us, both in the demands of the law, and
in the consequences which sin had brought upon man. He gave Himself
entirely to God's will, whatever it cost Him. And so He paved for us a
way through suffering, not only through it in the sense of past it and
out of it, but by means and in virtue of it, into the love and glory of
the Father. And it is in the power which Christ gives in fellowship
with Himself that we too can love the way of the Cross, as the best and
most blessed way to the Crown. Scripture says that the will of God is
our sanctification, and also that Christ is our Sanctification. It is
only in Christ that we have the power to love and rejoice in the will of
God. In Him we have the power. He became our Sanctification once for all
by delighting to do that will; He becomes our Sanctification in personal
experience, by teaching us to delight to do it. He learned to do it; He
could not become perfect in doing it otherwise than by suffering. In
suffering He draws nigh; He makes our suffering the fellowship of His
suffering; and in it makes Himself, who was perfected through suffering,
our Sanctification.

O ye suffering ones! all ye whom the Father is chastening! come and see
Jesus suffering, giving up His will, being made perfect, sanctifying
Himself. _His suffering is the secret of His Holiness, of His Glory, of
His Life._ Will you not thank God for anything that can admit you into
the nearer fellowship of your blessed Lord? Shall we not accept every
trial, great or small, as the call of His love to be one with Himself in
living only for God's will. This is Holiness, to be one with Jesus as He
does the will of God, to abide in Jesus who was made perfect through
suffering.

_Chastisement leads to the enjoyment of God's love._ Many a father has
been surprised as he made his first experience of how a child, after
being punished in love, began to cling to him more tenderly than
before. Even so, while to those who live at a distance from their
Father, the misery in this world appears to be the one thing that shakes
their faith in God's Love, it is just through suffering that His
children learn to know the Reality of that Love. The chastening is so
distinctly a father's prerogative; it leads so directly to the
confession of its needfulness and its lovingness; it wakens so
powerfully the longing for pardon and comfort and deliverance, that it
does indeed become, strange though this may seem, one of the surest
guides into the deeper experience of the Divine Love. Chastening is the
school in which the blessed lesson is learnt that the will of God is all
Love, and that Holiness is the fire of Love, consuming that it may
purify, destroying the dross only that it may assimilate into its own
perfect purity all that yields itself to the wondrous change.

'We know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love:
and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in Him.' Man's
destiny is fellowship with God, the fellowship, the mutual indwelling of
love. It is only by faith that this Love of God can be known. And faith
can only grow by exercise, can only thrive in trial: when visible things
fail, its energy is roused to yield itself to be possessed by the
Invisible, by the Divine. Chastisement is the nurse of faith; one of its
chosen attendants, to lead deeper into the Love of God. This is the new
and living way, the way of the rent flesh in fellowship with Jesus
leading up into the Holiest of all. There it is seen how the Justice
that will not spare the child, and the Love that sustains and sanctifies
it, are both one in the Holiness of God.

0 ye chastened saints! who are so specially being led in the way that
goes through the rent veil of the flesh, you have boldness to enter in.
Draw near; come and dwell in the Holiest of all. Make your abode in the
Holiest of all: there you are made partakers of _His_ Holiness.
Chastisement is bringing your heart into unity with God's Will, God's
Son, God's Love. Abide in God's Will. Abide in God's Son. Abide in God's
Love. Dwell, within the veil, in the Holiest of all.

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most Holy God! once again I bless Thee for the wondrous revelation of
Thy Holiness. Not only have I heard Thee speak, 'I am holy,' but Thou
hast invited me to fellowship with Thyself: 'Be holy, as I am holy.'
Blessed be Thy name! I have heard more even: 'I make holy,' is Thy word
of promise, pledging Thine own Power to work out the purpose of Thy
Love. I do thank Thee for what Thou hast revealed in Thy Son, in Thy
Spirit, in Thy Word, of the path of Holiness. But how shall I bless Thee
for the lesson of this day, that there is not a loss or sorrow, not a
pain or care, not a temptation or trial, but Thy love also means it, and
makes it, to be a help in working out the holiness of Thy people.
Through each Thou drawest to Thyself, that they may taste how, in
accepting Thy Will of Love, there is blessing and deliverance.

Blessed Father! Thou knowest how often I have looked upon the
circumstances and the difficulties of this life as hindrances. Oh, let
them all, in the light of Thy holy purpose to make us partakers of Thy
Holiness, in the light of Thy Will and Thy Love, from this hour be
helps. Let, above all, the path of Thy Blessed Son, proving how
suffering is the discipline of a Father's love, and surrender the secret
of holiness, and sacrifice the entrance to the Holiest of all, be so
revealed that in the power of His Spirit and His grace that path may
become mine. Let even chastening, even the least, be from Thine own
hand, making me partaker of Thy Holiness. Amen.


  1. How wonderful the revelation in the Epistle to the Hebrews of
     the holiness and the holy making power of suffering, as seen in
     the Son of God! 'He _learned obedience_ by the things which He
     suffered.' 'It became God to make the Author of our salvation
     _perfect_ through suffering, for both He that sanctifieth and
     they who are sanctified are all of one.' 'In that He Himself
     hath suffered, He is _able to succour_.' 'We behold Jesus,
     because of the suffering of death, _crowned with glory_ and
     honour.' Suffering is the way of the rent veil, the new and
     living way Jesus walked in and opened for us. Let all sufferers
     study this. Let all who are 'holy in Christ' here learn to know
     the Christ _in whom_ they are holy, and the way in which He
     sanctified Himself and sanctifies us.

  2. If we begin by realizing the sympathy of Jesus with us in our
     suffering, it will lead us on to what is more: sympathy with
     Jesus in His suffering, fellowship with Him to suffer even as
     He did.

  3. Let suffering and holiness be inseparably linked, as in God's
     mind and in Christ's person, so in your life through the
     Spirit. 'It became God to make Him perfect through suffering;
     for both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are
     all of one.' Let _every trial_, small or great, be the touch of
     God's hand, laying hold on you, to lead you to holiness. Give
     yourself into that hand.

  4. 'Insomuch as ye are partakers of _Christ's sufferings_,
     rejoice; for _the Spirit of glory_ and of God resteth on you.'




Thirtieth Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

The Unction from the Holy One.

  'And ye have _an anointing from the Holy One_, and ye know all
  things. And as for you, the anointing which ye received of Him
  abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you; but as His
  anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is
  no lie, and even as it taught you, ye abide in Him.'--1 John ii.
  20, 27.


In the revelation by Moses of God's Holiness and His way of making holy,
the priests, and specially the high priests, were the chief expression
of God's Holiness in man. In the priests themselves, the holy anointing
oil was the one great symbol of the grace that made holy. Moses was to
make an holy anointing oil: 'And thou shalt take of the anointing oil,
and sprinkle it upon Aaron and upon his sons, and he shall be hallowed,
and his sons with him.' 'This shall be an holy anointing oil unto me.
Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured; neither shall ye make any other
like it; it is holy, it shall be holy unto you' (Exod. xxix. 21, xxx.
25-32). With this the priests, and specially the high priests, were to
be anointed and consecrated: 'He that is the high priest among you, upon
whose head the anointing oil was poured, shall not go out of the holy
place, nor profane the holy place of his God; for _the crown of the
anointing oil of his God_ is upon him' (Lev. xxi. 10, 12). And even so
it is said of David, as type of the Messiah, 'Our king is _of the Holy
One of Israel_. I have found David, my servant; with my _holy oil_ have
I anointed him.'

We know how the Hebrew name _Messiah_, and the Greek _Christ_, has
reference to this. So, in the passage just quoted, the Hebrew is, 'with
my holy oil I have _messiahed_ him.' And so in a passage like Acts x.
38: 'Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, whom God _christed_ with the Holy
Ghost and with power.' Or Ps. xlv.: 'God hath _messiahed_ thee with the
oil of gladness above thy fellows;' in Heb. i. 9, 'Thy God hath
_christed_ thee with the oil of gladness.' And so (as one of our
Reformed Catechisms, the Heidelberg, has it, in answer to the question,
Why art thou called a Christian?) we are called Christians, because we
are fellow-partakers with Him of His christing, His anointing. This is
the anointing of which John speaks, the chrisma or christing of the Holy
One. The Holy Spirit is the holy anointing which every believer
receives: what God did to His Son to make Him the Christ, He does to me
to make me a Christian. 'Ye have the anointing of the Holy One.'

1. _Ye have an anointing from the Holy One._ It is as the Holy One that
the Father gives the anointing: that wherewith He anoints is called the
oil of holiness, the Holy Spirit. Holiness is indeed a Divine ointment.
Just as there is nothing so subtle and penetrating as the odour with
which the ointment fills a house, so holiness is an indescribable,
all-pervading breath of heavenliness which pervades the man on whom the
anointing rests. Holiness does not consist in certain actions: this is
righteousness. Holiness is the unseen and yet manifest presence of the
Holy One resting on His anointed. Direct from the Holy One, the
anointing is alone received, or rather, only in the abiding fellowship
with Him in Christ, who is the Holy One of God.

And who receives it? Only he who has given himself entirely to be holy
as God is holy. It was the priest, who was separated to be holy to the
Lord, who received the anointing: upon other men's flesh it was not to
be poured. How many would fain have the precious ointment for the sake
of its perfume to themselves! No, only he who is wholly consecrated to
the service of the Holy One, to the work of the sanctuary, may receive
it. If any one had said: I would fain have the anointing, but not be
made a priest; I am not ready to go and always be at the call of sinners
seeking their God, he could have no share in it. Holiness is the energy
that only lives to make holy, and to bless in so doing: the anointing of
the Holy One is for the priest, the servant of God Most High. It is only
in the intensity of a soul truly roused and given up to God's glory,
God's kingdom, God's work, that holiness becomes a reality. The holy
garments were only prepared for priests and their service. In all our
seekings after holiness, let us remember this. As we beware of the error
of thinking that work for Christ will make holy, let us also watch
against the other, the straining after holiness without work. It is the
priest who is set apart for the service of the holy place and the Holy
One, it is the believer who is ready to live and die that the Holiness
of God may triumph among men around him, who will receive the anointing.

2. '_The anointing teacheth you._' The new man is created in
_knowledge_, as well as in righteousness and holiness. Christ is made to
us _wisdom_, as well as righteousness and sanctification. God's service
and our holiness are above all to be a free and full, an intelligent and
most willing, approval of His blessed will. And so the anointing, to fit
us for the service of the sanctuary, teaches us to know all things. Just
as the perfume of the ointment is the most subtle essence, something
that has never yet been found or felt, except as it is smelt, so the
spiritual faculty which the anointing gives is the most subtle there can
be. It makes 'quick of scent in the fear of the Lord:' it teaches us by
a Divine instinct, by which the anointed one recognises what has the
heavenly fragrance in it, and what is of earth. It is the anointing that
makes the Word and the name of Jesus in the Word to be indeed as
ointment poured forth.

The great mark of the anointing is thus, teachableness. It is the great
mark of Christ, the Holy One of God, the Anointed One, that He listens:
'I speak not of myself; as I hear, so I speak.' And so it is of the Holy
Spirit too: 'He shall not speak out of Himself: whatsoever He shall
hear, that shall He speak.' It cannot be otherwise: one anointed with
the anointing of this Christ, with this Holy Spirit, will be teachable,
will listen to be taught. 'The anointing teacheth.' 'And ye need not
that any one teach you: but the anointing teacheth you concerning all
things.' 'They shall be all taught of God,' includes every believer. The
secret of true holiness is a very direct and personal relation to the
Holy One: all the teaching through the word or men made entirely
dependent on and subordinate to the personal teaching of the Holy Ghost.
The teaching comes through the anointing. Not, in the first place, in
the thoughts or feelings, but in that all-pervading fragrance which
comes from the fresh oil having penetrated the whole inner man.

3. '_And the anointing abideth in you._' '_In you._' In the spiritual
life it is of deep importance ever to maintain the harmony between the
objective and the subjective: God in Christ above me, God in the Spirit
within me. In us, not as in a locality, but _in us_, as one with us,
entering into the most secret part of our being, and pervading all,
dwelling in our very body, the anointing abideth _in us_, forming part
of our very selves. And this just in proportion as we know it and yield
ourselves to it, as we wait and are still to let the secret fragrance
permeate our whole being. And this, again, not interruptedly, but as a
continuous and unvarying experience. Above circumstances and feelings,
'the anointing abideth.' Not, indeed, as a fixed state or as something
in our own possession; but, according to the law of the new life, in the
dependence of faith on the Holy One, and in the fellowship of Jesus. 'I
am anointed with fresh oil,'--this is the objective side; every new
morning the believer waits for the renewal of the Divine gift from the
Father. 'The anointing abideth in you,'--this is the subjective side;
the holy life, the life of faith and fellowship, the anointing, is
always, from moment to moment, a spiritual reality. The holy anointing
oil, always fresh, the anointing abiding always, is the secret of
holiness.

4. '_And even as it taught you, ye abide in Him._' Here we have again
the Holy Trinity: the Holy One, from whom the holy anointing comes; the
Holy Spirit, who is Himself the anointing; and Christ, the Holy One of
God, in whom the anointing teaches us to abide. In Christ the unseen
holiness of God was set before us, and brought nigh: it became human,
vested in a human nature, that it might be communicated to us. Within us
dwells and works the Holy Spirit, drawing us out to the Christ of God,
uniting us in heart and will to Him, revealing Him, forming Him within
us, so that His likeness and mind are embodied in us. It is thus we
abide in Christ: the holy anointing of the Holy One teacheth it to us.
It is this that is the test of the true anointing: abiding in Christ, as
He meant it, becomes truth in us. Here is the life of holiness as the
Thrice Holy gives it: the Father, the first, the Holy One, making holy;
the Son, the second, His Holy One, in whom we are; the Spirit, the
third, who dwells in us, and through whom we abide in Christ, and Christ
in us. Thus it is that the Thrice Holy makes us holy.

Let us study the Divine anointing. It comes from the Holy One. There is
no other like it. It is God's way of making us holy--His holy priests.
It is God's way of making us partakers of holiness in Christ. The
anointing, received of Him day by day, abiding in us, teaching us all
things, especially teaching us to abide in Christ, must be on us every
day. Its subtle, all-pervading power must go through our whole life: the
odour of the ointment must fill the house. Blessed be God, it can do so!
The anointing that abideth makes the abiding in Christ a reality and a
certainty; and God Himself, the Holy One, makes the abiding anointing a
reality and a certainty too. To His Holy Name be the praise!

  BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.


O Thou, who art the Holy One, I come to Thee now for the renewed
anointing. O Father! this is the one gift Thy child may most surely
count on--the gift of Thy Holy Spirit. Grant me now to sing, 'Thou
anointest my head;' 'I am anointed with fresh oil.'

I desire to confess with deep shame that Thy Spirit has been sorely
grieved and dishonoured. How often the fleshly mind has usurped His
place in Thy worship! How much the fleshly will has sought to do His
work! O my Father! let Thy light shine through me to convince me very
deeply of this. Let Thy judgment come on all that there is of human
willing and running.

Blessed Father! grant me, according to the riches of Thy glory, even now
to be strengthened with might by Thy Spirit in the inner man. Strengthen
my faith to believe in Christ for a full share in His anointing. Oh,
teach me day by day to wait for and receive the anointing with fresh
oil!

O my Father! draw me and all Thy children to see that for the abiding in
Christ we need the abiding anointing. Father! we would walk humbly, in
the dependence of faith, counting upon the inner and ever-abiding
anointing. May we so be a sweet savour of Christ to all. Amen.


  1. I think I know now the reason why at times we fail in the
     abiding. We think and read, we listen and pray, we try to
     believe and strive to look to Jesus only, and yet we fail. What
     was wanting was this: 'His anointing teacheth you; _even as_ it
     taught you, ye abide in him;' so far, and no farther.

  2. The washing always precedes the anointing: we cannot have the
     anointing if we fail in the cleansing. When cleansed and
     anointed we are fit for use.

  3. Would you have the abiding anointing? Yield yourself wholly
     to be sanctified and made meet for the Master's use: dwell in
     the Holiest of all, in God's presence: accept every
     chastisement as a fellowship in the way of the rent flesh: be
     sure the anointing will flow in union with Jesus. 'It is like
     the precious ointment upon the head of Aaron, that went down to
     the skirts of his garments.'

  4. The anointing is the Divine eye-salve, opening the eyes of the
     heart to know Jesus. So it teaches to abide in Him. I am sure
     most Christians have no conception of the danger and
     deceitfulness of a thought religion, with sweet and precious
     thoughts coming to us in books and preaching, and little power.
     The teaching of the Holy Spirit is in the heart first; man's
     teaching in the mind. Let all our thinking ever lead us to
     cease from thought, and to open the heart and will to the
     Spirit to teach there in His own Divine way, deeper than
     thought and feeling. Unseen, within the veil, the Holy Spirit
     abideth. Be silent and still, believe and expect, and cling to
     Jesus.

  5. Oh that God would visit His Church, and teach His children what
     it is to wait for, and receive, and walk in the full anointing,
     the anointing that abideth and teacheth to abide! Oh that the
     truth of the personal leading of the Holy Spirit in every
     believer were restored in the Church! He is doing it; He will
     do it.




Thirty-first Day.


HOLY IN CHRIST.

Holiness and Heaven.

  'Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of
  men ought ye to be in all _holy_ living and godliness?'--2 Pet.
  iii. 11.

  'Follow after _the sanctification_ without which no man shall see
  the Lord.'--Heb. xii. 14.

  'He that is _holy_, let him be made _holy_ still.... The grace of
  the Lord Jesus be with the _holy ones_. Amen.'--Rev. xxii. 11, 21.


O my brother, we are on our way to see God. We have been invited to meet
the Holy One face to face. The infinite mystery of holiness, the glory
of the Invisible God, before which the seraphim veil their faces, is to
be unveiled, to be revealed to us. And that not as a thing we are to
look upon and to study. But we are to see the Thrice Holy One, the
Living God Himself. God, the Holy One, will show Himself to us: we are
to see God. Oh, the infinite grace, the inconceivable blessedness! we
are to see God.

We are to see God, the Holy One. And all our schooling here in the life
of holiness is simply the preparation for that meeting and that vision.
'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' 'Follow after
the sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord.' Since the
time when God said to Israel, 'Be ye holy, as I am holy,' Holiness was
revealed as the only meeting-place between God and His people. To be
holy was to be the common ground on which they were to stand with Him;
the one attribute in which they were to be like God; the one thing that
was to prepare them for the glorious time when He would no longer need
to keep them away, but would admit them to the full fellowship of His
glory, to have the word fulfilled in them: 'He that is holy, let him be
made yet more holy.'

In his second epistle, Peter reminds believers that the coming of the
day of the Lord is to be preceded and accompanied by the most tremendous
catastrophe--the dissolution of the heavens and the earth. He makes it a
plea with them to give diligence that they may be found without spot and
blameless in His sight. And he asks them to think and say, under the
deep sense of what the coming of the day of God would be and would
bring, what the life of those ought to be who look for such things:
'What manner of person ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness?'
Holiness must be its one, its universal characteristic. At the close of
our meditations on God's call to Holiness, we may take Peter's question,
and in the light of all that God has revealed of His Holiness, and all
that waits still to be revealed, ask ourselves, 'What manner of men
ought we to be in all holy living and godliness?'

Note first the meaning of the question. In the original Greek, the words
living and godliness are plural. Alford says, '_In holy behaviours and
pieties_; the plurals mark the holy behaviour and piety _in all its
forms and examples_.' Peter would plead for a life of holiness pervading
the whole man: our behaviours towards men, and our pieties towards God.
True holiness cannot be found in anything less. Holiness must be the
one, the universal characteristic of our Christian life. In God we have
seen that holiness is the central attribute, the comprehensive
expression for Divine perfection, the attribute of all the attributes,
the all-including epithet by which He Himself, as Redeemer and Father,
His Son and His Spirit, His Day, His House, His Law, His Servants, His
People, His Name, are marked and known. Always and in everything, in
Judgment as in Mercy, in His Exaltation and His Condescension, in His
Hiddenness and His Revelation, always and in everything, God is the Holy
One. And the Word would teach us that the reign of Holiness, to be true
and pleasing to God, must be supreme, must be in all holy living and
godliness. There must not be a moment of the day, nor a relation in
life; there must be nothing in the outer conduct, nor in the inmost
recesses of the heart; there must be nothing belonging to us, whether
in worship or in business, that is not holy. The Holiness of Jesus, the
Holiness which comes of the Spirit's anointing, must cover and pervade
all. Nothing, nothing may be excluded, if we are to be holy; it must be
as Peter said when he spoke of God's call--holy in all manner of living;
it must be as he says here--'in all holy living and godliness.' To use
the significant language of the Holy Spirit: Everything must be done,
'worthily of the holy ones,' 'as becometh holy ones' (Rom. xvi. 3; Eph.
v. 3).

Note, too, the force of the question. Peter says, 'Wherefore, beloved,
seeing that ye look for these things.' Yes, let us think what that
means. We have been studying, down through the course of Revelation,
the wondrous grace and patience with which God has made known and made
partaker of His holiness, all in preparation for what is to come. We
have heard God, the Holy One, calling us, pleading with us, commanding
us to be holy, as He is holy. And we expect to meet Him, and to dwell
through eternity in His Light, holy as He is holy. It is not a dream; it
is a living reality; we are looking forward to it, as the only one thing
that makes life worth living. We are looking forward to Love to welcome
us, as with the confidence of childlike love we come as His holy ones to
cry, Holy Father!

We have learnt to know Jesus, the Holy One of God, our Sanctification.
We are living in Him, day by day, as those who are holy in Christ Jesus.
We are drawing on His Holiness without ceasing. We are walking in that
will of God which He did, and which He enables us to do. And we are
looking forward to meet Him with great joy, 'when He shall come to be
glorified in the holy ones, and to be admired in all them that believe.'
We have within us the Holy Spirit, the Holiness of God in Christ come
down to be at home within us, as the earnest of our inheritance. He, the
Spirit of Holiness, is secretly transforming us within, sanctifying our
spirit, soul, and body, to be blameless at His coming, and making us
meet for the inheritance of the holy ones in light. We are looking
forward to the time when He shall have completed His work, when the body
of Christ shall be perfected, and the bride, all filled and streaming
with the life and glory of the Spirit within her, shall be set with Him
on His throne, even as He sat with the Father on His throne. We hope
through eternity to worship and adore the mystery of the Thrice Holy
One. Even here it fills our souls with trembling joy and wonder: when
God's work of making holy is complete, how we shall join in the song,
'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which wast, and art, and art to
come!'

In preparation for all this the most wonderful events are to take place.
The Lord Jesus Himself is to appear, the power of sin and the world is
to be destroyed; this visible system of things is to be broken up; the
power of the Spirit is to triumph through all creation; there is to be a
new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. And holiness
is then to be unfolded in ever-growing blessedness and glory in the
fellowship of the Thrice Holy: 'He that is holy, let him be holy yet
more.' Surely it but needs the question to be put for each believer to
feel and acknowledge its force: 'Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look
for these things, what manner of men ought ye to be in all holy living
and godliness?'

And note now the need and the point of the question. 'What manner of
persons ought ye to be?' But is such a question needed? Can it be that
God's holy ones, made holy in Christ Jesus, with the very spirit of
holiness dwelling with them, on the way to meet the Holy One in His
Glory and Love, can it be that they need the question? Alas! alas! it
was so in the time of Peter; it is but too much so in our days too.
Alas! how many Christians there are to whom the very word Holy, though
it be the name by which the Father, in His New Testament, loves to call
His children more than any other, is strange and unintelligible. And
again, alas! for how many Christians there are for whom, when the word
is heard, it has but little attraction, because it has never yet been
shown to them as a life that is indeed possible, and unutterably
blessed. And yet again, alas! for how many are there not, even workers
in the Master's service, to whom the 'all holy living and godliness' is
yet a secret and a burden, because they have not yet consented to give
up all, both their will and their work, for the Holy One to take and
fill with His Holy Spirit. And yet once more, alas! as the cry comes,
even from those who do know the power of a holy life, lamenting their
unfaithfulness and unbelief, as they see how much richer their entrance
into the Holy Life might have been, and how much fuller the blessing
they still feel so feeble to communicate to others. Oh, the question is
needed! Shall not each of us take it, and keep it, and answer it by the
Holy Spirit through whom it came, and then pass it on to our brethren,
that we and they may help each other in faith, and live in joy and hope
to give the answer our God would have?

'Seeing that these things are, then, all to be dissolved, what manner of
persons ought we to be in all holy living and godliness?' Brethren! the
time is short. The world is passing away. The heathen are perishing.
Christians are sleeping. Satan is active and mighty. God's holy ones are
the hope of the Church and the world. It is they their Lord can use.
'What manner of persons shall we be in all holy living and godliness!'
Shall we not seek to be such as the Father commands, 'Holy, as He is
holy'? Shall we not yield ourselves afresh and undividedly to Him who is
our Sanctification, and to His Blessed Spirit, to make us holy in all
behaviours and pieties? Oh! shall we not, in thought of the love of our
Lord Jesus, in thought of the coming glory, in view of the coming end,
of the need of the Church and the world, give ourselves to be holy as He
is holy, that we may have power to bless each believer we meet with the
message of what God will do, and that in concert with them we may be a
light and a blessing to this perishing world?

I close with the closing words of God's Blessed Book, 'He which
testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly. Amen: Come, Lord
Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the holy ones. Amen.'

  BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.


Most Holy God! who hast called us to be holy, we have heard Thy voice
asking, What manner of persons we ought to be in all holy living and
godliness? With our whole soul we answer in deep contrition and
humility: Holy Father! we ought to be so different from what we have
been. In faith and love, in zeal and devotion, in Christlike humility
and holiness, O Father! we have not been, before Thee and the world,
what we ought to be, what we could be. Holy Father! we now pray for all
who unite with us in this prayer, and implore of Thee to grant a great
revival of True Holiness in us and in all Thy Church. Visit, we beseech
Thee, visit all ministers of Thy word, that in view of Thy coming they
may take up and sound abroad the question, What manner of persons ought
ye to be? Lay upon them, and all Thy people, such a burden under
surrounding unholiness and worldliness, that they may not cease to cry
to Thee. Grant them such a vision of the highway of holiness, the new
and living way in Christ, that they may preach Christ our Sanctification
in the power and the joy of the Holy Ghost, with the confident and
triumphant voice of witnesses who rejoice in what Thou dost for them.
O God! roll away the reproach of Thy people, that their profession does
not make them humbler or holier, more loving, and more heavenly than
others.

O Holy God! give Thou Thyself the answer to Thy question, and teach us
and the world what manner of persons Thy people can be, in the day of
Thy power, in the beauty of holiness. We bow our knee to Thee, O Father,
that Thou wouldst grant us, according to the riches of Thy glory, to be
mightily strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of Holiness. Amen.


  1. What manner of men ought ye to be in all the holy living? This
     is a question God has written down for us. Might it not help us
     if we were to write down the answer, and say how holy we think
     we ought to be? The clearer and more distinct our views are of
     what God wishes, of what He has made possible, of what in
     reality _ought_ to be, the more definite our acts of
     confession, of surrender, and of faith can become.

  2. Let every believer, who longs to be holy, join in the daily
     prayer that God would visit His people with a great outpouring
     of the Spirit of Holiness. Pray without ceasing that every
     believer may live as a holy one.

  3. 'Seeing that _ye look for_ these things.' Our life depends, in
     more than one sense, upon what we look at. 'We look not at the
     things which are seen.' It is only as we look at the Invisible
     and Spiritual, and come under its power, that we shall be what
     we ought to be in all holy living and godliness.

  4. _Holy in Christ._ Let this be our parting word. However
     strong the branch becomes, however far away it reaches round
     the home, out of sight of the vine, all its beauty and all its
     fruitfulness ever depend upon that one point of contact where
     it grows out of the vine. So be it with us too. All the outer
     circumference of my life has its centre in the ego--the living,
     conscious I myself, in which my being roots. And this I is
     rooted in Christ. Down in the depths of my inner life, there is
     Christ holding, bearing, guiding, quickening me into holiness
     and fruitfulness. In Him I am, In Him I will abide. His will
     and commands will I keep; His Love and Power will I trust. And
     I will daily seek to praise God that I am Holy in Christ.




NOTES.


NOTE A.

Holiness as Proprietorship.


In a little book--_Holiness, as understood by the Writers of the Bible;
A Bible Study by Joseph Agar Beet_--the thought that by Holiness is
meant our relation to God, and the claim He has upon us, has been very
carefully worked out. Holy ground was such because 'it stood in _special
relation_ to Himself.' The first-born 'were to stand _in a special
relation to God as His property_.' So with the entire nation; when God
declares that they shall be holy, He means 'that they shall render to
Him the devotion He requires.' 'All holy objects stand in a special
relation to God as His property.' The priests are said to sanctify
themselves; they did this 'by formally placing themselves at God's
disposal, or by separating themselves from whatever was inconsistent
with the service of God.' 'When God declares He is holy, the word must
represent the same idea in the hundreds of passages in which it is
predicated of men and things.' 'Holiness is _God's claim to the
ownership_ of men and things; and the objects claimed were called holy.
Now, _God's claim_ was a new and wondrous revelation of His nature. To
Aaron God was now the Great Being who had claimed from him a lifelong
and exclusive service. _This claim_ was a new era, not only in his
everyday life, but in his conception of God. Consequently the word
_holy_, which expressed _Aaron's relation to God_, was suitably used to
express _God's relation to Aaron_. In other words, to Aaron and Israel
God was holy in the sense that He claimed the exclusive ownership of the
entire nation. When men yielded to God the devotion He claimed, they
were said to sanctify God.' 'Jehovah and Israel stood in special
relation to each other; therefore Jehovah was _the Holy One of Israel_,
and Israel was _Holy to Jehovah_. This mutual relation rested upon God's
claim that Israel should specially be His; and this claim implied that
in a special manner He would belong to Israel. This claim was a
manifestation of the nature of God.' 'The peculiar relation arises from
God's own claim, in consequence of which they stand in a new and solemn
relation to Him. This may be called objective holiness. This is the most
common sense of the word. In this sense God sanctified these objects for
Himself. But since some of these objects were intelligent beings, and
the others were in control of such, the word sanctify denotes these
ones' formal surrender of themselves and their possessions to God. This
may be called subjective holiness. From the word holy predicated of God,
we learn that God's claim was not merely occasional, but an outflow of
His Essence. As the one Being who claims unlimited and absolute
ownership and supreme devotion, God is the Holy One.'

In the New Testament the Spirit of God claims the epithet holy 'as being
in a very special manner the source and influence of which God is the
one and only aim.' Here 'our conception of the holiness of God increases
with our increasing perception of the greatness of His claim upon us,
and that this claim springs from the very essence of God. In the
incarnate Son of God we see the full development and realization of the
Biblical idea of holiness. We find Him standing in a special relation to
God, and living a life of which the one and only aim is to advance the
purposes of God.' We see in Him 'holiness in its highest degree, _i.e._
the highest conceivable devotion to God and to the advancement of His
kingdom.' 'In virtue of His intelligent, hearty, continued
appropriation of the Father's purpose, and in virtue of its realization
in all the details of the Saviour's life, He was called _the Holy One of
God_.'

'The word _saint_ is very appropriate as a designation of the followers
of Christ; for it declares what God requires them to be. By calling His
people _saints_, God declares His will that we live a life of which He
is the one and only aim. This is the objective holiness of the Church of
Christ. In some passages holiness is set before the people of God as a
standard for their attainment. In these passages _holy_ denotes a
realization in man of God's purpose that he live a life of which God is
the one and only aim. This is the subjective holiness of God's people.

'Holiness is God's claim that His creatures use all their powers and
opportunities to work out His purposes. Holiness, thus understood, is an
attribute of God. For His claim springs from His nature, even from that
love which is the very essence of God. His love to us moves Him to claim
our devotion; for only by absolute devotion to Him can we attain our
highest happiness.'

'Though without purity we cannot be subjectively holy, yet holiness is
much more than purity. Purity is a mere negative excellence; holiness
implies the most intense mental and bodily activity of which we are
capable. For it is the employment of all our powers and opportunities to
advance God's purposes.'

The question 'How we become holy,' is answered thus: 'Our devotion to
God is a result of inward spiritual contact with Him who once lived a
human life on earth, and now lives a glorified human life on the throne,
simply and only to work out the Father's purposes. We live for God
because Christ does so, and because Christ lives in us, and we in Him:
the Spirit of Christ is the Agent of the spiritual contact with Christ
which imparts to us His life, and reproduces in us His life. He is the
bearer of the power as well as of the holiness of Christ.'

'That God claims from His people unreserved devotion to Himself, and
that what He claims He works in all who believe it, by His own power
operating through the inward presence of the Holy Spirit, placing us in
spiritual contact with Christ, is the great doctrine of sanctification
by faith.'

The same view, that holiness is a relation, had previously been worked
out very elaborately by Diestel. In what has been said on redemption and
proprietorship as related to holiness (see 'Sixth Day'), we have seen
what truth there is in the thought. But holiness is something more. What
is holy is not only God-devoted, but God-accepted, God-appropriated,
God-possessed. God not only possesses the heart, but absolutely occupies
and fills it with His life. It is this makes it holy.

However much truth there be in the above exposition, it hardly meets our
desire for an insight into what is one of the highest attributes of the
very Being of God. When the seraphs worship Him as the Holy One, and in
their Thrice Holy reflect something of the deepest mystery of Godhead,
it surely means more than merely the expression of God's claim as
Sovereign Proprietor of all.

The mistake appears to originate in taking first the meaning of the word
_holy_ from earthly objects, and then from that deducing that holiness
in God cannot mean more than it does when applied to men. The Scriptures
point to the opposite way. When Old and New Testaments say, 'Be ye holy,
for I am holy, I make holy,' they point to God's Holiness as the first,
both the reason and the source of ours. We ought first to discover what
holiness in God is. When we read at creation of God's _sanctifying_ the
Sabbath day, we have to do, not with a thought or word of Moses as to
what God had done, but with a Divine revelation of a Power in God
greater and more wonderful than creation, the Power which is later on
revealed as the deepest mystery of the Divine Being.

This Holiness in God, as it appears to me, cannot be a mere relation.
To indicate a relation, tells me nothing positively about the personal
character or worth of the related parties. To say that when God
sanctifies men He claims them as His own, does not say what the nature
is of the work He does for them and in them, or what the Power by which
He does it. And yet that word ought to reveal to me what it is that God
bestows. To say that that claim has its root in His very nature, and in
His love, and that holiness is therefore an attribute, makes it an
attribute, not like love or wisdom, immanent in the Divine Being, ere
creatures were, but simply an effect of Love, moving God to claim His
creatures as His special possession. We should then have no attribute
expressive of God's moral perfection. Nor would the word holy of the Son
and the Spirit any longer indicate that deep and mysterious
communication of the very nature and life of God in which sanctification
has its glory. In the Divine holiness we have the highest and
inconceivably glorious revelation of the very essence of the Divine
Being; in the holiness of the saints the deepest revelation of the
change by which their inmost nature is renewed into the likeness of God.




NOTE B.

On the Word for Holiness.


The proper meaning of the Hebrew word for holy, _kadosh_, is matter of
uncertainty. It may come from a root signifying to shine. (So Gesenius,
Oehler, Fuerst, and formerly Delitzsch, on Heb. ii. 11.) Or from another
denoting new and bright (Diestel), or an Arabic form meaning to cut, to
separate. (So Delitzsch now, on Ps. xxii. 4.) Whatever the root be, the
chief idea appears to be not only separate or set apart, for which the
Hebrew has entirely different words, but that by which a thing that is
separated from others for its worth is distinguished above them. It
indicates not only separation as an act or fact, but the superiority or
excellence in virtue of which, either as already possessed or sought
after, the separation takes place.

In his _Lexicon of New Testament Greek_, Cremer has an exhaustive
article on the Greek _hagios_, pointing out how holiness is an entirely
Biblical idea, and 'how the scriptural conceptions of God's Holiness,
notwithstanding the original affinity, is diametrically opposite to all
the Greek notions; and how, whereas these very views of holiness exclude
from the gods all possibility of love, the scriptural conception of
holiness unfolds itself only when in closest connection with Divine
love.' It is a most suggestive thought that we owe both the word and the
thought distinctly to revelation. Every other attribute of God has some
notion to correspond with it in the human mind: the thought of holiness
is distinctly Divine. Is not this the reason that, though God has so
distinctly in the New Testament called His people holy ones, the word
_holy_ has so little entered into the daily language and life of the
Christian Church?




NOTE C.

The Holiness of God.


There is not a word so exclusively scriptural, so distinctly Divine, as
the word holy in its revelation and its meaning. As a consequence of
this its Divine origin, it is a word of inexhaustible significance.
There is not one of the attributes of God which theologians have found
it so difficult to define, or concerning which they differ so much. A
short survey of the various views that have been taken may teach us how
little the idea of the Divine Holiness can be comprehended or exhausted
by human definition, and how it is only in the life of fellowship and
adoration that the holiness which passes all understanding can, as a
truth and a reality, be apprehended.

1. The most external view, in which the ethical was very much lost sight
of, is that in which holiness is identified with God's Separateness from
the creation, and elevation above it. Holiness was defined as the
incomparable Glory of God, His exclusive adorableness, His infinite
Majesty. Sufficient attention was not paid to the fact that though all
these thoughts are closely connected with God's Holiness, they are but a
formal definition of the results and surroundings of the Holiness, but
do not lead us to the apprehension of that wherein its real essence
consists.

2. Another view, which also commences from the external, and makes that
the basis of its interpretation, regards holiness simply as the
expression of a relation. Because what was set apart for God's service
was called holy, the idea of separation, of consecration, of ownership,
is taken as the starting-point. And so, because we are said to be holy,
as belonging to God, God is holy as claiming us and belonging to us too.
Instead of regarding holiness as a positive reality in the Divine
nature, from which our holiness is to be derived, our holiness is made
the starting-point for expounding the Holiness of God. 'God is holy as
being, within the covenant, not only the Proprietor, but the Property of
His people, their highest good and their only rule' (Diestel). Of this
view mention has already been made in the note to 'Sixth Day,' on
Holiness as Proprietorship.

3. Passing over to the views of those who regard holiness as being a
moral attribute, the most common one is that of purity, freedom from
sin. 'Holiness is a general term for the moral excellence of God. There
is none holy as the Lord: no other being absolutely pure and free from
all limitations in His moral perfection. Holiness, on the one hand,
implies entire freedom from moral evil; and, upon the other, absolute
moral perfection.' (Hodge, _Syst. Theol._) The idea of holiness as the
infinite Purity which is free from all sin, which hates and punishes
it, is what in the popular conception is the most prominent idea. The
negative stands more in the foreground than the positive. The view has
its truth and its value from the fact that in our sinful state the first
impression the Holiness of God must make is that of fear and dread in
the consciousness of our sinfulness and unholiness. But it does not tell
us wherein this moral excellence or perfection of God really consists.

4. It is an advance on this view when the attempt is made to define what
this perfection of God is. A thing is perfect when it is in everything
as it ought to be. It is easy thus to define perfection, but not so easy
to define what the perfection of any special object is: this needs the
knowledge of what its nature is. And we have to rest content with very
general terms defining God's Holiness as the essential and absolute
good. 'Holiness is the free, deliberate, calm, and immutable affirmation
of Himself, who is goodness, or of goodness, which is Himself' (Godet
_on John_ xvii. 11). 'Holiness is that attribute in virtue of which
Jehovah makes Himself the absolute standard of Himself, of His being and
revelation.' (Kubel.)

5. Closely allied to this is the view that holiness is not so much an
attribute, but the 'whole complex of that which we are wont to look at
and represent singly in the individual attributes of God.' So Bengel
looked upon holiness as the Divine nature, in which all the attributes
are contained. In the same spirit what Howe says of holiness as the
Divine beauty, the result of the perfect harmony of all the attributes,
'Holiness is intellectual beauty. Divine holiness is the most perfect
beauty, and the measure of all other. The Divine Holiness is the most
perfect pulchritude, the ineffable and immortal pulchritude, that cannot
be declared by words, or seen by eyes. This may therefore be called a
transcendental attribute that, as it were, runs through the rest, and
casts a glory upon every one. It is an attribute of attributes. These
are fit predications, _holy_ power, _holy_ love. And so it is the very
lustre and glory of His other perfections. He is glorious in holiness.'
(Howe in _Whyte's Shorter Catechism_.) This was the aspect of the Divine
Holiness on which Jonathan Edwards delighted to dwell. 'The mutual love
of the Father and the Son makes the third, the personal Holy Spirit, or
the Holiness of God, which is His infinite beauty.' 'By the
communication of God's Holiness the creature partakes of God's moral
excellence, which is perfection, the beauty of the Divine nature.'
'Holiness comprehends all the true moral excellence of intelligent
beings. So the Holiness of God is the same with the moral excellency of
the Divine nature, comprehending all His perfections, His righteousness,
faithfulness, and goodness. There are two kinds of attributes in God,
according to our way of conceiving Him: His _moral_ attributes, which
are summed up in His Holiness, and His _natural_, as strength,
knowledge, etc., which constitute His greatness. Holy persons, in the
exercise of holy affection, love God in the first place for the beauty
of His Holiness.' 'The holiness of an intelligent creature is that which
gives beauty to all his natural perfections. And so it is in God:
holiness is in a peculiar manner the beauty of the Divine being. Hence
we often read of the beauty of holiness (Ps. xxix. 2, xcvi. 9, cx. 3).
This renders all the other attributes glorious and lovely.' 'Therefore,
if the true loveliness of God's perfections arise from the loveliness of
His Holiness, the true love of all His perfections will arise from the
love of His Holiness. And as the beauty of the Divine nature primarily
consists in God's Holiness, so does the beauty of all Divine things.'

6. In speaking of God's Holiness as denoting the essential good, the
absolute excellence of His nature, some press very strongly the
_ethical_ aspect. The good in God must not be from mere natural impulse
only, flowing from the necessity of His nature, without being freely
willed by Himself. 'What is naturally good is not the true realization
of the good. The actual and living will to be the good He is, must also
have its place in God, otherwise God would only be naturally ethical.
Only in the will which consciously determines itself, is there the
possibility given of the ethical. The ethical has such a power in God
that He is the holy Power, who cannot and will not renounce Himself, who
must be, and would be thought to be, the holy necessity of the goodness
which is Himself,--to be the Holy. The love of God is essentially holy;
it desires and preserves the ethically necessary or holy, which God is.'
(Dorner, _System_, vol. i.)

7. It was felt in such views that there was not a sufficient
acknowledgment of the truth that it is especially as the Holy One that
God is called the Redeemer, and that He does the work of love to make
holy. This led to the view that holiness and love are, if not identical,
at least correlated expressions. 'God is holy, exalted above all the
praise of the creature in His incomparable praise-worthiness, on account
of His free and loving condescension to the creature, to manifest in it
the glory of His love.' 'God is holy, inasmuch as love in Him has
restrained and conquered the righteous wrath (as Hosea says, xi. 9), and
judgment is exercised only after every way of mercy has been tried. This
holiness is disclosed in the New Testament name, as exalted as it is
condescending, of Father.' (Stier _on John_ xvii.)

8. The large measure of truth in this view is met by an expression in
which the true aspects of the Holiness of God are combined. It is
defined as being the harmony of self-preservation and
self-communication. As the Holy One, God hates sin, and seeks to destroy
it. As the Holy One, He makes the sinner holy, and then takes him up
into His love. In maintaining His love, He never for a moment loses His
Divine purity and perfection; in maintaining His righteousness, He still
communicates Himself to the fallen creature. Holiness is the Divine
glory, of which love and righteousness are the two sides, and which in
their work on earth they reveal.

'Holiness is the self-preservation of God, whereby He keeps Himself
free from the world without Him, and remains consistent with Himself and
faithful to His Being, and whereby He, with this view, creates a Divine
world that lives for Himself alone in the organization of His Church.'
(Lange.)

'The Holiness of God is God's self-preservation, or keeping to Himself,
in virtue of which He remains the same in all relationships which exist
within His Deity, or into which He enters, never sacrifices what is
Divine, or admits what is not Divine. But this is only one aspect. God's
Holiness would not be holiness, but exclusiveness, if it did not provide
for God's entering into manifold relations, and so revealing and
communicating Himself. Holiness is therefore the union and
interpretation of God's keeping to Himself and communicating Himself; of
His nearness and His distance; of His exclusiveness and His
self-revelation; of separateness and fellowship.' (Schmieder.)

'The Divine Holiness is mainly seclusion from the impurity and
sinfulness of the creature, or, expressed positively, the cleanness and
purity of the Divine nature, which excludes all connection with the
wicked. In harmony with this, the Divine Holiness, as an attribute of
revelation, is not merely an abstract power, but is the Divine
self-representation and self-testimony for the purpose of giving to the
world the participation in the Divine life.' (Oehler, _Theol. of O. T._
i. 160.)

'Opposition to sin is the first impression which man receives of God's
Holiness. Exclusion, election, cleansing, redemption--these are the four
forms in which God's Holiness appears in the sphere of humanity; and we
may say that God's Holiness signifies _His opposition to sin manifesting
itself in atonement and redemption, or in judgment_. Or as holiness, so
far as it is embodied in law, must be the highest moral perfection, we
may say, "_holiness is the purity of God manifesting itself in atonement
and redemption, and correspondingly in judgment_." By this view all the
above elements are done justice to; holiness asserts itself in judging
righteousness, and in electing, purifying, and redeeming love, and thus
it appears as the impelling and formative principle of the revelation of
redemption, without a knowledge of which an understanding of the
revelation is impossible, and by the perception of which it is seen in
its full, clear light. God is light: this is a full and exhaustive New
Testament phrase for God's Holiness' (1 John i. 5). (Cremer.)

This view is brought out with special distinctness in the writings of J.
T. Beck. 'It is God's Holiness which, taking the good which was given in
creation in strict faithfulness to that good and perfect will of God, as
the eternal life-purpose of love, in righteousness and mercy carried out
to its completion in God Himself to a life of perfection. God does this
as the Alone Holy. In the world of sin Divine _love_ can only bring
deliverance by a mediation in which it is reconciled to the Divine
_wrath_ within _their common centre, the Holiness of God_, in such a way
that while wrath manifests its destroying reality, love shall prove its
restoring power in the life it gives.' (Beck, _Lehrwissenschaft_, 168,
547.)

'Holiness is the sum and substance of the Divine life, as, in comparison
with all that is created, it exists as a perfect life, but as it, at the
same time, opens itself to the creature to take it up into a Godlike
perfection--that is, to be holy as God is holy. Holiness is thus so far
from being in opposition to the Divine love that it is its essential
feature or norm, and the actual contents of love. In holiness there is
combined the Divine self-existence as a perfection of life, and the
Divine self-exertion in the realizing a Godlike perfection of life in
the world. Holiness as an attribute of the Divine Being is His pure and
inviolably self-contained personality in its absolute perfection. Hence
it is that in holiness, as the absolute unity and purity of the Divine
Being and working, all the attributes of Divine revelation centre. And
so holiness, as expressive of the Being of God, qualifies the love as
essentially Divine.

'Love is the groundform of the Divine will, but as such it receives its
Divine filling and character from the Divine Holiness, as the Divine
self-existence and self-exertion. As such the Divine will manifests
itself in two modes--in its pure love as _Goodness_, in its holy harmony
as _Righteousness_. These two do not exist separately, but permeate each
other in reciprocal immanence, just as God in His Holiness is love, and
in His love is holiness. In goodness the Divine love shows itself as the
pleasure in well-being. But in this goodness the righteousness of God,
to secure the well-doing, also acts.' (J. T. Beck, _Glaubenslehre_.)

'God is holy, separate from all darkness and sin, but not in isolated
majesty banishing the imperfect and the sinful from His presence: for
God is light, God is love. It is the nature of light to communicate
itself. Remaining pure and bright, undiminished and unsullied, it
overcomes darkness and kindles light. The Holiness of God is likewise
mentioned in Scripture, mostly in connection with love, communicating
itself and drawing into itself. "I am holy"--but God does not remain
alone, separate--"be ye also holy."' (Saphir _on Hebrews_ xii.)

'When we think of God as light and love, we realize most fully the idea
of holiness, combining _separateness_ and _purity_ with _communion_.'
(Saphir, _The Lord's Prayer_, p. 128.)

'It is especially as the spirit of His Church, and as dwelling in the
human heart, that God is the Holy One.' (Nitsch.)

That in the Holiness of God we have the union of love and righteousness,
has been perhaps put by no one more clearly than Godet. In his
_Commentary on Romans_ iii. 25, 26, he writes:--

'The necessity of the expiatory sacrifice arises from His whole Divine
character; in other words, from His Holiness, the principle at once of
His love and righteousness, and not of His righteousness exclusively.'

'In this question we have to do not with God in His essence, but with
God in His relation to free man. Now the latter is not holy to begin
with; the use which he makes of his liberty is not yet regulated by
love. The attribute of righteousness, and the firm resolution to
maintain the Divine _holiness_, must therefore appear as a necessary
safeguard as soon as liberty comes on the stage, and with it the
possibility of disorder; and this attribute must remain in exercise as
long as the educational period of the creature lasts--that is to say,
until he has reached perfection in love. Then all these factors--right,
law, justice--will return to their latent state....

'It is common to regard _love_ as the fundamental feature of the Divine
character; in this way it is very difficult to reach the attribute of
righteousness. Most thinkers, indeed, do not reach it at all. This one
fact should show the error in which they are entangled. _Holy, holy,
holy_, say the creatures nearest to God, and not _Good, good, good_.
Holiness, such is the essence of God; and holiness is the absolute love
of the good, the absolute horror of the evil. From this it is not
difficult to deduce both love and righteousness. Love is the goodwill of
God toward all free beings who are destined to realize the good. Love
goes out to the individuals, as holiness itself to the good which they
ought to produce. Righteousness, on the other hand, is the firm purpose
of God to maintain the normal relations between all these creatures by
His blessings and punishments. It is obvious that righteousness is
included, no less than love itself, in the fundamental feature of the
Divine character, holiness. It is no offence, therefore, by God to speak
of His justice and His rights. It is, on the contrary, a glory to God,
who knows that in preserving His place He is securing the good of
others. For God, in maintaining His supreme dignity, preserves to His
creatures _their most precious treasure_, a God worthy of their respect
and love.'

And in his _Defence of the Christian Faith_ Godet writes, on 'The
Perfect Holiness of Jesus Christ,' as follows:--

'The supernatural in its highest form is not the miraculous, it is
holiness. In the miraculous we see Omnipotence breaking forth to act
upon the material world in the interests of the moral order. But
holiness is morality itself in its sublimest manifestation. What is
goodness? It has recently been said, with a precision which leaves
nothing to be desired, Goodness is not an entity--a thing. It is a law
determining the relations between things, relations which have to be
realized by free wills. Perfect good is therefore the realization, at
once normal and free, of the right relations to one another of all
beings; each being occupying, by virtue of this relation, that place in
the great whole, and playing that part in it, which befits it.

'Now, just as in a human family there is one central relation on which
all the rest depend,--that of the father to all the members of this
little whole,--so is there in the universe one supreme position, which
is the support of all the rest, and which, in the interest of all
beings, must be above all others preserved intact--that of God. And just
here, in the general sphere of good, is the special domain of holiness.
Holiness in God Himself is His fixed determination to maintain intact
the order which ought to reign among all beings that exist, and to bring
them to realize that relation to each other which ought to bind them
together in a great unity, and consequently to preserve, above all,
intact and in its proper dignity, His own position relatively to free
beings. The Holiness of God thus understood comprehends two things--the
importation of all the wealth of His own Divine life to each free being
who is willing to acknowledge His sovereignty, and who sincerely
acquiesces in it; and the withholding or the withdrawal of that perfect
life from every being who either attacks or denies that sovereignty, and
who seeks to shake off that bond of dependence by which he ought to be
bound to God. Holiness in the creature is its own voluntary acquiescence
in the supremacy of God. The man who, with all the powers of his nature,
does homage to God as the Supreme, the absolute Being, the only One who
veritably is; the man who, in His presence, voluntarily prostrates
himself in the sense of his own nothingness, and seeks to draw all his
fellow-creatures into the same voluntary self-annihilation, in so doing
puts on the character of holiness. This holiness comprehends in him, as
it does in God, love and righteousness; love by which he rejoices in
recognising God, and all beings who surround God, as placed where they
are by Him. He loves them and wills their existence, because he loves
and wills the existence of God, and at the same time of all that God
wills and loves; and righteousness, by which he respects and, as much as
in him lies, causes others to respect God, and the sphere assigned by
God to each being. Such is holiness as it exists in God and in man: in
God it is His own inflexible self-assertion; in man it is his inflexible
assertion of God.

'It is in Jesus that human nature sees how man can assert God and all
that God asserts, not only humbly, but joyously and filially, with all
the powers of his being, and even to the complete sacrifice of
_himself_.'

Careful reflection will show us that in each of the above views there is
a measure of truth. It will convince us how the very difficulty of
formulating to human thought the conception of the Divine Holiness
proves that it is the highest expression for that ineffable and
inconceivable glory of the Divine Being which constitutes Him the
Infinite and Glorious God. Every attribute of God--wisdom and power,
righteousness and love--has its image in human nature, and was in the
religion or the philosophy of the heathen connected with the idea of
God. From ourselves, when we take away the idea of imperfection, we can
form some conception of what God is. But holiness is that which is
characteristically Divine, the special contents of a Divine revelation.
Let us learn to confess that however much we may seek, now from one,
then from another side, to grasp the thought, the holiness of God is
something that transcends all thought, a glory not so much to be
thought, as to be known, in adoration and fellowship. Scripture speaks
not so much of holiness, as the Holy One. It is as we worship and fear,
obey and love; it is in a life with God, that something of the mystery
of His glory will be unfolded. As the Divine light shines in us and
through us, will the Holy One be revealed.




NOTE D.

'Our holiness does not consist in our changing and becoming better
ourselves: it is rather _He_, He Himself, born and growing in us, in
such a way as to fill our hearts, and to drive out our natural self,
"our old man," which cannot itself improve, and whose destiny is only to
perish.

'And how is this kind of incarnation effected, by which Christ Himself
becomes our new self? By a process of a free and moral nature, described
by Jesus in words which surprise, because they place His sanctification
upon nearly the same footing as our own: "As the living Father hath sent
me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me shall live by me."

'Jesus derived the nourishment of His life from the Father who had sent
Him: He lived by the Father. The meaning of that, doubtless, is, that
every time He had to act or speak, He first effaced Himself; then left
it to the Father to think, to will, to act, to be everything in Him.
Similarly, when we are called upon to do any act, or speak any word, we
must first efface ourselves in presence of Jesus; and after having
suppressed in ourselves, by an act of the will, every wish, every
thought, every act of our own self, we are to leave it to Jesus to
manifest in us His will, His wisdom, His power. Then it is that we live
by Him, as He lives by the Father. The process is identical in Jesus and
in us. Only in Jesus it was carried on with God directly, because He was
in immediate communion with Him; whilst in our case the transaction is
with Jesus, because it is with Him that the believer holds direct
communication, and through Him that we can find and possess the living
Father. In that lies _the secret_, generally so little understood, _of
Christian sanctification_.' (Godet, _Biblical Studies, N. T._, p. 190.)




NOTE E.

Let me once more refer all students of holiness to Marshall on
Sanctification, and specially his third and fourth chapters. If they
will compare him with our modern works--say, for instance, _God's Way of
Holiness_, by so eminent an author as Dr. H. Bonar--they cannot but be
struck by the prominence which Marshall gives to the one thought, that
our holiness, a holy nature, is provided in Jesus, and that as faith
accepts and maintains our union with Jesus in personal intercourse,
sanctification is by faith. While, in other works, the union to Jesus,
and faith in Him, are but incidentally mentioned, and the chief stress
is laid upon duties and the motives which urge to their performance,
Marshall points out how motives never can supply the strength we need:
it is the power of Christ's life in us, it is Christ Himself, as we by
faith are rooted in Him, who works all our works in us.

An abridgment of the work, for popular use, is published by Nisbet & Co.




NOTE F.

Note from Bengel on Rom. i. 4.


'_According to the Spirit of Holiness._ The word _hagios_, holy, when
God is spoken of, not only denotes the blameless rectitude in action,
but the very Godhead, or to speak more properly, the _divinity_, or
excellence of the Divine nature. Hence _hagiosune_ (the word here used)
has a kind of middle sense between _hagiotes_, holiness, and
_hagiasmos_, sanctification. Comp. Heb. xii. 10 (_hagiotes_ or
holiness), v. 14 (_hagiasmos_ or sanctification). So that there are, as
it were, three degrees: _sanctification_, _sanctity of life_,
_holiness_. Holiness is ascribed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. And since here the Holy Spirit is not mentioned, but the spirit
of holiness (prop. sanctity, _hagiosune_), we must further inquire what
this remarkable expression denotes. The name spirit is expressly and
very frequently given to the Holy Spirit; but God is also called a
spirit; and the Lord Jesus Christ is called a spirit, but in contrast to
the latter. (2 Cor. iii. 17.) With this we must compare the fact that,
as in this passage, so often the antithesis of flesh and spirit is found
where Christ is spoken of. (1 Tim. iii. 16; 1 Pet. iii. 18.) In these
passages the Spirit is applied to whatever belongs to Christ (apart from
the flesh, although this was pure and holy, and above the flesh),
through His generation of the Father, who sanctified Him: in short, His
Godhead itself. For here, _flesh_ and _spirit_, and chap. ix. 5, _flesh_
and _Godhead_, stand in mutual contrast. This spirit is here called not
the spirit of holiness, the usual title of the Holy Spirit; but it is
called in this passage _the spirit of sanctity_, to suggest at once the
efficacy of that holiness or divinity, which led of necessity to the
Saviour's resurrection, and by which it was most forcibly illustrated,
and also that spiritual and holy, or Divine power of Jesus who has been
glorified and yet retained a spiritual body. Before the resurrection the
spirit was concealed under the flesh; after the resurrection the spirit
of sanctity concealed the flesh. In reference to the former, He was wont
to call Himself the Son of man; in reference to the latter, He is known
as the Son of God.'

Beck, in his _Lehrwissenschaft_, p. 604, puts it very clearly, thus--

'Inasmuch as the innocence and purity of Christ were not present in His
sufferings and death as a quiescent attribute, but were in full action
in the indestructible life-power of the Spirit, as He sanctified His own
self to God for us ("through the eternal spirit," Heb. ix.
14--therefore, in Rom. i. 4, _hagiosune_, the habit of holiness in its
action or sanctity, not _hagiotes_, only an inner attribute, or
_hagiasmos_, holiness in its formation)--His suffering effected an
everlasting redemption.'




NOTE G.

'Freed' and 'Possessed'--The Twofold Result of
Redemption.

(_From an address by Pastor Stockmaiev._)


'Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and
purify unto Himself _a people for His own possession_, zealous of good
works.'

'In the redemption work of our Saviour Jesus Christ, there are two
definite parts. You will never find the secret of abiding in Christ, so
long as you cannot see these two definite distinct parts. The first is
"Jesus for me," the other "I for Jesus." Blessed be our Saviour that He
came for sinners. _He for us._ Blessed be the Lord that there is
redemption from penalty; but that is not yet all that redemption means.
You must have a clear apprehension of the second part of redemption, by
that same Holy Ghost who is the guide to introduce us into the full
possession of all that Christ, living and dying, has wrought out for us.
He gave Himself that He might redeem us from all iniquity--not that we
might have the pleasure of being pleased with our own purity or
holiness, or such things; but that He might have us altogether for
Himself, to purify _unto Himself_, for Himself, not for Himself and
themselves, but _unto Himself_, a people of His own possession.

'What is now redemption?--freedom from self, even spiritual self. We are
not to be our own centre, the centre of our joy, our progress, having in
our poor weak hands the threads of our spiritual life. There is no real
spiritual life but Christ's life, and He must have the care of it
altogether from the beginning to the end. Lift up your eyes, dear
brethren, you who were creeping on the ground. We are made for the glory
of God, to be possessed by Jesus. The Lord God found a way, in giving
His Son, the Lamb of God, His Lamb, to get such selfish people, who even
in the line of the Christian life found means to seek and to nourish
self, to get such people into His own real practical possession, to be
possessed by Jesus. That is redemption, and that only; that is liberty,
and that is reality; that is what satisfies, not to be satisfied with
any experiences of your own, but to let go your experiences, and to say,
I am free, so free as the people of Israel were coming out of Egypt,
free to serve God. "Let my people go, that they may serve me." You are
free, free through the blood of Christ, free through the power of the
Holy Ghost--no flesh, no hand, no self being able to keep you back. The
Lord has stretched out His arms upon all the powers who had kept us in
the bondage of Egypt, and He triumphed over them. You are free as the
bird of the air to live in Jesus--that is freedom; you are free in your
daily life, free in the deepest, inmost depths of your being, free for
Jesus, possessed by Him, a people of His own possession. Let my people
go, said God. So, I have given my blood, said Jesus; and no flesh, no
sin, no self can claim against the blood of Jesus. He has redeemed unto
Himself, not for us, a people of His own possession....

'You are inquiring about the secret of abiding in Jesus. Have you not
seen this in the 15th of John, that abiding and bearing fruit are
inseparable? You cannot abide in Jesus for His joy, _and your inward
satisfaction_. The secret of abiding is to stand as a redeemed one, as
firmly in the second part of redemption as the first. I am now living
for Jesus, and I have only to ask, Lord, what wilt Thou have done now? I
am for Thee. I am for Jesus. I have only to follow, to follow as a
sanctified one, as a possessed one, as one who is no more living for
himself, who has given his life up into the hands of Jesus. Oh, how
these questions of abiding become simple! It is not mysticism; it is not
some special experience. It is simply a fact. I need Jesus for every
moment, and my temptations as well as my duties become opportunities of
realizing this life of fellowship with Christ. Oh, yes, this is
redemption! Oh, mighty power of God the Father, God the Son, God the
Holy Ghost, engaged to keep such a weak, helpless, unfaithful thing as
you and myself in the centre of life! Sealed by the Holy Ghost, and God
will never break His own seal.'




THE END.




MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Holy in Christ, by Andrew Murray

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