SPEAK PLAINLY.

There will be a day when men will curse us because we have not
preached more plainly. You can call a spade "a spade" or you can
designate it as "an iron utensil employed for excavating
purposes," but if you want folks to understand what you are
driving at use the shorter term.

SHOOTING OVER MEN'S HEADS.

There is too little plain Anglo-Saxon preaching. We shoot far over
the heads of our congregations and do not even scar the varnish on
the gallery banister. We dwell on the points of distinction
between Calvinism and Arminianism when the greater part of our
people do not know the difference between an Arminian and an
Armenian, and some good old sister thinks we are preaching on the
cruelty of the Turks. Here I am discussing "The Dangers of
Imperialism" and "The Anglo-American Friendship," while men are
starving for the Bread of Life! Brethren in the ministry, let us
be less anxious about the syllogistic accuracy of our sermons and
be more eager to help men live right and quit sin and go to
heaven.

THE PULPIT CANNON.

There are many sins which few men have the courage to antagonize
in public. Theoretically the pulpit is supposed to cannonade all
sin of every variety and species, but, alas, it is usually too
cowardly. The Spirit-filled man fears no one from Sandow down to
Tom Thumb, from a plug-hat Bishop to a little pusilanimous dude
preacher.

GHASTLY CRIMES.

It is not that ministers are unawares of the prevalence of black
and ghastly crimes, but that they dare not speak openly against
them. Too many are contaminated with evil and involved in guilt
for the preacher to voice with impunity the truths which burn in
his soul. He knows only too well that if he dares assert his
manhood and exercises the prerogative of Christ's minister, the
retribution will be swift and terrible, viz: ejectment from his
pastorate!

MURDER

How ominous is the silence concerning murder. And yet the land is
swarming with crimson-handed murderers and murderesses. Many of
them are members of our "best churches" and move in the most
select society. Some of them read with animation the responses in
church service and repeat the Lord's Prayer with the greatest
gusto. A few--not many, we devoutly trust--talk about
"sanctification." Poor, deluded, hoodwinked souls! they are
blinded by Satan. Their hands are red with blood, and their hearts
are black as hell. Were they to ever approach the heaven of which
they sanctimoniously prate, they would be met at the gate with the
curse of murdered infants who never saw the light.

INFANTICIDE

If there is a pitiable sight in all God's great universe, if there
is a scene over which angels shed tears and demons shriek
laughter, it is an old cruel-eyed mother, who has seared her
conscience and sinned away all noble womanliness and blasted her
own soul, whispering into the unsoiled ears of her daughter the
way in which to murder her own offspring; and if there is a hot
hell, such a mother will make her bed in it.

POODLE-DOGS.

The duties and cares of maternity are too irksome, and so the
women who might be the mothers of John Wesleys and Fenelons and
Metchers and Inskips and Cookmans are petting poodle-dogs and rat-
terriers.

THE VITRIOL OF WRATH.

How many preachers dare speak in clarion tones what religion and
science concur in asserting concerning vice? But know ye by these
presents, all of Adam's race, that what depraved humanity
pronounces all right and harmless, the Almighty God who whirls the
worlds will corrode and scald with the burning vitriol of His
wrath, and woe! woe! woe! to the man or woman with whom is found
sin.

GILT-EDGED FRAUDS.

Any tyro knows who drowned Morgan, but the clergyman who "opens
up" on Masonry is a curiosity. Why, how can the ministers say
anything when they are the chaplains of these gilt-edged frauds
called "lodges"? It does not take much calculation to show that an
institution which spends three dollars in giving away one has no
right to exist. Some of the more weak-minded and puerile of the
clergy are doubtless in fear lest their "tongues should be torn
out by the roots and their hearts buried in the rough sands of the
seashore." Brave men are not so easily scared.

BOLOGNA SAUSAGE.

Secretism in itself is suspicious. Solon said that he wanted his
house so constructed that the people could see him at all hours
and thus know him to be a good man. A system which is so built
that the public is kept in the dark is entitled to the attention
of a Pinkerton. Bologna sausage made in a factory at the door of
which is a huge sign, "No Admittance," may be all right, but you
can not make people think so.

THE ENTERTAINMENT.

There are few preachers so foolish and illogical as to believe
that the entertainment plan is the best way to raise money for
church work, yet scarcely one of them declares his honest
straight-forward conviction about it. Now and then a Hale, more
daring than the rest, writes a remonstrative article for the
Forum, but the great mass keep quiet. A Pentecostal ministry will
wheel its guns into position and load and fire into the supper and
festival crowd notwithstanding the voices of objectors.

HEROISM.

Whatever may be the matter under consideration the sanctified man
dares anything right. God is with him, and he feels His presence.
Right is right, and by the grace of God he will stand by it though
all the world howl and roar.





CHAPTER VII.

RESPONSIVENESS TO CHRIST.


A COAL AND A FLAME.

Among the results of the coming of the Comforter is an increase in
warm personal love for Jesus. Conversion plants divine love
(agape) in the heart, but sanctification quickens and intensifies
it. Conversion drops a coal into the breast; the fuller grace fans
it into a flame.

SOUNDING STRINGS.

There is a place in experience where Christ's voice sets the whole
being vibrating. The soul is so in tune with Him that the cadences
of His tones fill the soul with a tremor of glee and gladness. If
you sing the scale in a room where there is a piano the
corresponding strings of the instrument will sound. Thus it is
with Jesus and the sanctified soul. When Christ speaks the heart
answers spontaneously.

REGENERATION

Regeneration does much for us. But there is that even in the heart
of the regenerate which is antagonistic to Christ. The whole man
does not say instinctively, "Thy will be done"; yet there is
something within to which the Lord can appeal. Consult Peter. He
tells us of "exceeding great and precious promises by which we
become partakers of the Divine nature." We "take a part"
(partakers) of the divine Shekinah into our hearts. We are not
only "adopted" but born of God, and by a divine heredity we
possess His character.

SAMUEL.

We see this beautifully illustrated in the case of Samuel. Given
in covenant to God from his birth, and early taught the word of
the Lord, he possessed the changed heart and the attuned ear. When
God's voice fell out of the skies that night something in Samuel
heard what aged and mitred Eli could not hear. Eli had the theory
and reasoned out who the speaker must be, but the heart of Samuel
awoke intuitively at the sound of that voice.

THE VOICE FROM THE SKY.

As Jesus taught in the temple God spoke, and many whose ears were
dull because their hearts were hard and unchanged said, "It
thundered." Others saw that something extraordinary had occurred
and admitted that "an angel spoke to Him." But the disciples whose
"names were written in heaven," and who had regenerated hearts,
knew it was the voice of God.

THE FLINTY WORLD.

But while the child of God is in sympathy with God he must be
sanctified wholly to be fully, constantly and completely
responsive to Christ. Jesus wants a bride who will live His life
with Him and enter into all His plans and sorrows, ambitions and
trials, aims and purposes. There are many people who are glad
Jesus died for them who know nothing about "suffering with
Christ." Yet the Bible is filled with allusions to it. The
Heavenly Bridegroom wants a companion who will understand Him.
This cold, hard, flinty, wicked world does not. "He came unto His
own and His own received Him not." He knocked at the door of His
own vineyard and the husband-men said, "Come, let us kill the
Son." The divine Lord hungers for some one who will not misjudge
His purposes nor impute to Him base motives.

THE UNAPPRECIATED.

We have all seen people who were never appreciated. Those who were
near to them by blood and kindred always thought them strange and
visionary. What a sad thing if Christ's bride does not appreciate
His aims for the world, His sorrow over perishing souls, His
heart-ache over dying men! "The fellowship of His sufferings"--
what can it mean? It means that we mourn over the sin in the world
which makes Christ weep; sob over the evil that makes Him hang His
fair head and groan. It means that ever and always we shall look
at things from the Christ standpoint.

THE SHEEP AND THE SHEPHERD.

"My sheep know [recognize] my voice," says the Shepherd. He states
the principle that "sheep" always hear when He speaks. "Lambs" may
be at times mistaken as to the voices that cry in the soul, but
Christians whose experience entitles them to the designation,
"sheep," do not err as to the speaker. Watch a good shepherd
collect his flock at evening. Every sheep knows him. It is getting
dark, and the quiet animals are busily feeding in the fragrant
clover, but the tender cadences of the voice of their guide and
protector pierce their delicate ears and enter their gentle
hearts, and the white flock comes bounding toward the shepherd. A
sportsman in golf suit and plaid cap and with a fine baritone
voice may call earnestly, but "a stranger will they not follow."
The shepherd holds the key to their confidence, and no one else
can unlock the door to their love.

CHRIST HAS THE KEY.

Christ has the key to our hearts. He stands in the dusk of evening
in the falling dew and sends His sweet voice out across the
billowing fields of clover, and all His sheep leap toward "the
Good Shepherd."

THE COW AND THE SUNSET.

Sanctification brings out the power of appreciation in the soul.
What God does for you fills your soul with gratitude, and you can
get blessed any time of day or night by simply reflecting on the
mercies and lovingkindnesses of the Lord. The natural human heart
does not appreciate God, and sees nothing especially lovely in
Him. A cow and the man who owns the cow may stand side by side and
look at the same sunset. The cow sees a big splotch of crimson and
gold; the other sees one of God's sky-paintings, and is inspired
to holy living and self-denial and fidelity to the Master. You
must have a "sunset nature" to appreciate a sunset, and you must
be sanctified wholly to see in Christ a beauty and loveliness
which no Murillo and no Raphael and no Del Sarto have yet put on
canvas.

THE LOVELY CHRIST.

O the lovely Christ! How the heart aches to go to Him! We get so
homesick for Jesus. People are so dull and uninteresting and vapid
and stupid--so precisely like ourselves--we get weary of the world
and its emptiness, and yearn to fly away to be with the spotless
Christ and live in that

    "Undiscovered country, from whose bourne
     No traveller returns"

Some day, thank God! the Bridegroom will step out upon the balcony
of heaven and look at us and speak to us in a tone inaudible to
all but ourselves, and our souls will bound with rapture and the
earthen vessel will crumble and we will spread snowy pinions and
wing our flight up to the presence of our soul's King!





CHAPTER VIII.

SOUL-REST.


AN EFFECT.

One of the beatific effects of the cleansing of the heart from all
sin is soul-rest. It always accompanies the glorious experience of
entire purity.

FACIAL INSCRIPTIONS.

This poor tired world of ours needs rest. Study the faces of the
people you meet in the streets, in the markets, in the cars, in
the churches, and there is one word NOT written on them, and that
word is "Rest." You will find many other words written on them. On
some faces you see "Selfishness" in crabbed, crooked letters; on
others "Lust" in bold-faced type; on others "Gluttony"; on others,
"Self-Conceit"; on others, "Craftiness"; and on through a thousand
unworthy legends; but the one thing which makes life worth living
is not found except among the sanctified.

VAMPIRES AND BATS.

It is wonderful how elusive rest is. You may search for it all
your days and grow gray and haggard, and sit down in the evening
of life with the vampires circling about you and be forced to
confess, "I have not found rest!" You may retire from business and
say, "I will spend my declining years in peace," but as the sun
goes down the bats come out and flap the black skinny wings of the
sins of other days in your affrighted face. If you are a student
you may drop your books like Dr. Faust and hurry to the country,
but the imp of restlessness will dog your steps and snare your
pathway and you will carry home with you a Mephisto who will never
leave you.

THE SEEDS OF ANARCHY.

Some Christian people seek rest in changing preachers, but there
is nothing in that to bring it. You may leave the minister who
thumps the desk and listen to a man with a nasal twang, but you
are still restive and unsatisfied. You think the reason your peace
of soul is disturbed is that Mrs. Garrulous talked about you, or
that the weather is rainy and disagreeable, or that the meetings
are dull, or that people are selfish. The real reason is that you
have a restlessness in your heart characteristic of inbred sin.
You possess the seeds of dissatisfaction, and lawlessness, and
anarchy, and nothing but holiness of heart will expel them.

THE OCEAN DEPTHS.

Down in the unfathomed depths of old Ocean there is no movement,
no disturbance. Gigantic "Majesties" and "Kaiser Wilhelms" and
"Oregons" and "Vizcayas" plow and whiten the surface; tempests
rage and Euroclydons roar and currents change and tides ebb and
flow, but the great depth knows no ripple. It is said that down
there the most fragile of frail and delicate organisms grow in
safety. In the depths of the sanctified heart there is no storm
and no breaker. Trials may come and leave white scars; billows may
beat and surges may roll, and water-spouts and tornadoes may make
the upper sea boil with anguish and sorrow and grief, but deep in
the heart there is calm. There the delicate graces of the Spirit
thrive and luxuriate. Great, soulless, iron-keeled, worldly
institutions and sharp-prowed cutters may ride over your
sensibilities, but the inner placidity is unbroken.

THE ETERNAL SABBATH.

God's plan is to rest us so we can work for Him with ease and
success. He institutes an everlasting Sabbath in the spirit that
we may be ceaseless in sanctified activities. If a man is always
jaded and tired he can not take hold of his work with much
enthusiasm.

SPIRITUAL POISE.

There is no mistaking the man or woman who has found the second
rest. There is a poise of spirit and a sweet serious balance of

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