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Foreword

After faithfully serving the Lord in ministry for many decades, Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse was taken home by his Lord in 1960. His teaching ministry through the church in Philadelphia, as well as across this nation in both live events and radio broadcasts was a powerful work, used mightily by God. There remain tribal ornaments, Asian clothes and African artifacts at the Alliance to this day, given in appreciation for the faithful missionary teaching Dr. Barnhouse provided.

This is not made as a statement to build up the man, though his teaching was powerful. These things are evidence of what we can expect when God’s word is taught faithfully and plainly. Dr. Barnhouse’s teaching was drawn directly from God’s word, and as such remains as clear and as powerful today as the day it was first inspired. That God has preserved this teaching four decades after the man, gives testimony that God’s word preserves.

The volume you hold in your hand is a small collection of teaching from Eternity Magazine. These four chapters direct our attention to God’s methods for holy living. In a day and age when we are constantly taught to live our best life now, the timing is right for this work on God’s methods of living to be printed.

Dr. Barnhouse guides us through the Word, it’s gift of salvation, promise of assurance, call for prayer, and object of holiness. He reminds us of Christ’s love, who it falls upon, what it gives us, all the while reminding us that to grasp it would be akin to placing the oceans in a bottle! We are then directed to our Lord’s return. We are admonished to be like Him, allowing us to answer how we will appear on His return. And only then does our teacher speak of the glory that is only God’s, but that shines upon us. Glory that is not for the emotion of it all, but to transform us by Him and for Him!

My hope is that you are blessed by this teaching, that you will continue to turn to God’s Word for your methods, and that you might call upon the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals for sound biblical teaching, faithful doctrine, and practical resources.

Praise God for His Word!

Robert Brady
Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

The Power of Bible Study

“Sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy Word is truth “ (John 17. 17).

One of the great purposes of the redemption that Jesus Christ provided for us was that here and now on this earth we might have life. It was not merely that we might be saved for the future, and thus come some day to dwell in Heaven, but that we might know today what it is to live Christ. John brings his Gospel to a conclusion, saying: “These things have I written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. “He does not stop there, but completes the thought: “And that believing ye might have life through His Name.” So one of the principal purposes of faith is that we might know holiness in our lives today.

In thinking of some of the divine impulsions to holy living, we shall look outward to the Word of God; backward to the Cross; forward to the return of our Lord; and finally, within to the indwelling Spirit. In all of these we shall find that we are looking upward to our Lord Jesus Christ seated upon the throne making intercession for us. In the midst of the high priestly prayer of our Lord, we read: “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.”

Our English language is very rich in words, rich beyond other European languages, because of the Norman conquest. There came to this land conquerors who lived in the cities, while the Anglo-Saxons dominated the country. Each had their own language, and as the generations passed, they fused and gave us both tongues in our present speech. Sir Walter Scott, in the first pages of “Ivanhoe”, tells how “sheep” in the country became “mutton” in the town, and how “oxen” became “beef,” and how the “pigs” became “pork”, as they passed out of the hands of the Anglo–Saxon farmers and into the hands of the Normans in the towns. These double forms run all through our language. “Fraternal” and “brotherly” have really no difference of meaning, though they came from different points of the compass with different peoples who invaded this land. But this richness of speech is not without its confusion in spiritual terms. Take for example, the word “holy” and the word “saint.” There is no difference between them radically. “Holy" has come to us from the Germanic, and “saint” has come to us from the Latin, and has brought with it related forms, one of which is “sanctify.” This word sounds more sweetly in our ears than one like “holify,” so we have been spared that word. The meaning, however, becomes evident. We know that the suffix “ify” added to a word means “to make it that”, so, to sanctify means to make saintly, or to make holy.

With that in mind, we look at our text and find that we may translate it: “Make them holy through Thy Word: Thy Word is truth.” Every true child of God longs for the deepening of the Christian life. We have God–given desires for holiness. How important then that we should remember that the Lord Jesus, about to go to the Cross, looked to the Father and said: “Make them holy through Thy Word: Thy Word is truth.” It is an amazing thing, and we realise it more and more as we come to know the Word of God, that almost all that God does in this world today, He does by the Holy Spirit through the instrumentality of His Word. It follows that if we are to expect to secure blessings from God, we must receive them in the way that He has planned to give them to us. And though we may find holiness in many ways in the Bible, we shall not find it apart from the Bible.

We must recognise, therefore, that there are some ways in which holiness cannot come to us. We must not expect to find holiness merely through preaching, or listening to preaching. We have, all of us, met people who have been to so many Bible conferences and conventions that they can readily foretell a speaker’s third point while he is still in the midst of the second! Yet such people frequently confess that they do not possess blessing in their own lives. They have listened without hearing. “Faith cometh by hearing; and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10.17). Hearing is, of course, a Biblical term for obedience, that takes truth to the heart and submits self to its rule. A carnal Christian may listen to all the preaching available, but if there is no yielding to it, there will be no blessing.

Another truth we must realise is that God may use any part of His Word to bring the force of holiness into our lives. I have found in my own experience that God has used strange passages of Scripture to bring great blessings. There are some truths that are not included in what has come to be called Keswick truth, yet these may be used by the Holy Spirit to bring the experience of the domination of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I remember, for example, a study which I once made of the doctrine of Satan. As I found in the Word, God’s revelation of what the devil was, what he had been doing, what he wanted to do, and what he was never going to be able to do, the Lord used this knowledge to bring me one of the richest experiences of my Christian life.

Further, we must not expect to find holiness merely through prayer meetings. Prayer is vital, and the true Christian will find that the indwelling Holy Spirit draws the heart to God in prayer. Early in the morning, especially, we should find ourselves alone with God. Do not think, however, that by multiplying prayer meetings you are going to find the sanctifying power of God in your own life. I have found that prayer with the open Bible is the most effective. When you get down upon your knees and expect God to speak to you through that particular passage upon which you are meditating, you will find that He does speak. Many people make of prayer something that God never intended it to be. Prayer to them is a monologue instead of a dialogue. George Muller said that the most important part of prayer was the fifteen minutes after he had said “Amen”. People do not realise how they rush into the presence of God and how they rush out again. They treat God in a way they would never treat anyone of human renown. If by some chance you should be taken for an interview with the King of England, what would you do? Would you walk in, and as you entered begin talking? “Oh, I am most delighted to be here, it is indeed a great honour. I have followed your career through all the years of your youth, and also followed you with my prayers. I have been greatly interested in all that you have done.” Would you go on talking thus, telling him all about his kindness in receiving you, and then thank him for the honour without giving him the opportunity of opening his mouth? You smile, yet is it not true that many people pray just like that? They come in at close of day, and say: “Now, let me see, I have been taught before going to bed at night to say my prayers.” So they say: “Bless me and mine; give me this and give me that. Amen”; and then they go right back to what they were thinking about before they started the prayer. People may seek guidance in some such fashion, but there is a danger in guidance apart from the Word of God. There is a type of guidance current that is a sort of fashion with some people. From some of the experiences that they have desired to share with everybody, it would seem that their guidance has frequently been auto-suggestion instead of the direction of the Holy Spirit. If one seeks to have the mind brought to a state of blank quietness, there is danger that enemy voices shall speak counterfeits to the mind. Meditation with the Word is the safeguard that God has given us.

Then again, we must not expect to find that the life of holiness can be attained by any type of self–preparation. It is not by what some people have called “Tarrying Meetings,” that the Holy Spirit is going to come upon us in power. Whenever you find anyone looking for an “it,” there is always spiritual danger. It is to Him we must look. We must not be seeking an experience, we must be desiring Christ exalted in our lives. Out in Los Angeles a man became associated with a little cult in which all the devotees were looking for an experience which they called “the witness of the Spirit.” This man went to a Christian who was deeply taught in the Word, and said: “Do you have the witness of the Spirit?” The Christian replied: “I have what the Word of God calls the witness of the Spirit.” “Oh, but you don’t understand,” replied the man. “I went to Tarrying Meetings; night after night I waited and tarried, and I did not get ‘it.’ I went home and tarried further, and towards morning it was just as though a ball of fire came through the ceiling into my bosom, and burned and burned all the sin out of me. Did you ever have an experience like that?” The Christian who was taught in the Word, replied, “No, thank God, I never did. I would not know whether it came from God or the Devil.” When a Christian begins to look for emotional experiences instead of looking for the quiet application of the Word to the heart by the Holy Spirit, he is on a wrong track, that can lead to nothing but deception, and can only delay the reality of blessing.

How many people have failed to understand the meaning of that word in the Acts, where the Lord told His disciples that they were to wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father. They were not to tarry in Jerusalem in order to become fit for the Holy Spirit, they were to wait for the calendar and nothing more, for the prophesied day had been clearly announced, and it was to be a day of God’s grace, dependent upon nothing but His sovereign desire. If a man received an announcement that upon the King’s birthday he was to be made a peer of the realm, would he rush to London and say: “I must go and begin to feel like a peer; what can I do to make myself worthy to be a peer?” All he could do would be to reveal his ignorance. Rather would he wait quietly until the calendar brought the King’s birthday. Then his name would be published in the Honours List, and he would enter into his new position by the grace of the King. So it is with Pentecost. “When the Day of Pentecost was fully come” the gift was given. It was not the day before nor the day after. It was fixed in God’s calendar. It was announced as the Feast of Weeks in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus. Seven Sabbaths were to be counted; that is forty–nine days, and the morrow after the seventh Sabbath was the fiftieth day -- Pentecost, which means literally the fiftieth day. It was on this fiftieth day the Spirit came, right on schedule, not because of any merit that was in those people, but because it was God’s arrangement thus to work out His eternal plan in grace.

In addition to those negatives there are certain positive truths which are far more important. If we are to be made holy by the Word, it will be by appropriation of certain truths that are in the Word of God, and obedience to them.

First of all, I do not think that there is any possibility of real sanctification in any life until we possess the knowledge of what happened when we were saved. I am not saying it is necessary for you to know when you were saved. One day I had a telephone call asking if I would call on an old gentleman who was nearing the end of his life. I went. It was in a simple home, and the wife said to me: “He has been listening to you on the radio, and he wanted very much that you should come and talk to him.” He was an elderly Irishman, who had come over to America from Ulster, and, in the course of our conversation, I found he was trusting the Lord. After reading the Word and praying, we talked of other things. “How old are you, sir?” I asked. “I do not exactly know,” he replied. “There were lots of children in our family, twelve or fourteen, I do not know how many, and an uncle brought me over to the States when I was seven or eight or ten, either in 1863 or 1864.” I said: “Well, you may not know when your birthday is or how old you are, but you know you are alive, don’t you?” “Oh, yes, I know I am alive !” So I say to Christians, “Do not get worried if you cannot say, ‘I was born again on the 26th of July, or the 13th of February.’ Do you know you are alive in Christ?” That is the first step, the foundation step for holiness, and no one can ever know it in the Christian life until he has entered into the knowledge of what happened when he was saved.

We were many years old physically before we knew we were alive. Certainly none of us at the age of one or thereabouts started to philosophise, and say: “I am a human being, I have life.” We grow into such knowledge. One of the marks of the passing from childhood into manhood is the growth in the knowledge of all that occurred when we were born, and the knowledge of those processes by which we were brought into this world. In the matter of the new birth God lets us have this knowledge as early as we are willing to take it. It is thus that the Gospel is preached to the unsaved, but explained to the believer.

What happened when we were born again? We read in James: “Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth.” Here we find the Word is the means of the communication of divine life to us. Peter tells us we are born again, “not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God that liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Peter 1.23). What is the Spirit telling us here? That our birth in Christ was the work of the Holy Spirit, Who took the Word of God into the womb of the heart; there faith laid hold upon it, and from the contact of the incorruptible seed of the Word with our faith, there was created within us an absolutely new life. God did not take Jacob and begin to work on him to cut off one tendency and reform him in something else. God condemned Jacob and planted Israel within him. God did not take Simon and say: “We will have to polish him to make something of him.” God said “There is no good in Simon,” and planted Peter right alongside the old nature. God did not take Saul of Tarsus and say: “There is a good bit there I could use.” He said: “In the flesh there dwells no good thing,” and put Paul within. Later Paul knew what had happened, admitted there was no good in himself, and said: “It is not I, but Christ that liveth in me” (Gal. 2.20). So the first stage in holiness is the knowledge that when we were saved, God the Holy Spirit came permanently to dwell within in an absolutely new creation.

That leads on to the second step, the assurance that we are saved. We should never say: “I hope to be, I am trying to be.” Once in a while I ask some soul who is not quite clear about his spiritual state: “Have you been born again? Have you received Christ? Are you trusting the Lord?” And I get the answer: “Well, I hope I am saved. I am doing the best I can. I hope if I walk in the straight and narrow path for twenty years, I might be—possibly— perhaps.” That is not the language of the New Testament, and there cannot be any true progress in the Christian life, any advancement in holiness until we have the absolute assurance that when God gave us life, He gave us eternal life, and that it is our present possession.

Why do you go down to the station for the ten o’clock train at ten instead of eleven? Because you believe the time–table of the railway company, that the train is to start at the hour announced. John, in the 5th chapter of his first epistle, says: “If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.” Why would you believe the witness of man as to engagements and train schedules, and not believe God’s Word that He has given you eternal life, and that that life is in His Son? So many people are timid about believing God, but He says we make Him a liar if we do not believe His record of life given in Christ.

There can never be any holiness in the Christian life, any reality that is firm and unshakable, if we doubt God. We must stand upon the Rock, knowing that what God has done He has well done and has done for ever. Oh, that we might have in our testimony the language of the New Testament! Imagine Paul saying: “I hope I am saved; I am doing the best I can.” He said: “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day” (2 Tim. 1.12). “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8.38, 39).

What about John? John says: “These things have I written to you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5.13). He knew he had it. He was not going around saying: “I trust, if I do not fall away, that finally I shall be saved.” He knew that God had given him His Son, and that in the Son he had eternal life. Peter says: “We are redeemed, not with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1.18, 19). You may say: “That is all right for Peter and John and Paul, those giants in the faith, but what about some of the little ones?” Well, let us refer to Jude. He only wrote twenty–five verses, but this is one of them: “Now unto Him Who is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (v. 24).

These two truths, a knowledge of what happened when we were saved, and an assurance that it has happened in our own lives, are pre-requisites to any further growth in the Word of God, and in holiness. When I use the word “pre-requisite”, I do so that we should understand it. You could not study astronomy if you had not completed certain preliminary studies. Arithmetic is a pre–requisite to algebra; algebra is a pre–requisite to geometry; and geometry is a pre–requisite to astronomy. You take these things in order, and no one will be able to study the parabolic curves, and the movements of the stars through space, who does not know the multiplication table. You need not expect in your Christian life to have the joyous overflow that some people know, unless you have passed through the rudimentary course of pre–requisites in the Word of God. There must be the knowledge of what happened when you were saved, and the assurance that it has happened to you. Then you can move on to higher things.

A third step towards holiness is the Bible revelation of the will of God. As we study the Word we find out some of the things that reveal His will, and we learn then to do them. Some people think they have done quite enough for the Lord if they keep a nodding acquaintance with the ten commandments. So far as doing anything for the Lord from pure love, they know nothing about it at all. But when we read carefully the Word of God we find certain revelations of His desires, and learn how we may be well–pleasing in His sight.

There was a simple man in the western part of the United States who was saved, and they asked him what difference it had made in his life. He said: “I am a butcher, and since I have been saved I have stopped weighing my thumb. I sold that thumb for the price of beef hundreds of times. Then I found in the Word of God that ‘a false balance is an abomination to the Lord.’” In reading the Word that man had discovered a practical point about the will of the Father, and he was growing in the Spirit by applying that Word to his scales. Thus he was beginning to know a little more of sanctification. People say: “How am I to know the will of God?” I can tell you from my own personal experience that ninety percent of knowing the will of God consists in being willing to do it even before you know it. We must realise that in our Christian life God is desiring to be loved by us, wanting us to seek out His will, to know it and do it. If there is not real love, there cannot be any desire to do His will.

At the Keswick Convention a gentleman came to me on the street, pulled out a photograph, and said: “Do you know these two young people?” I had received a photograph of the same people a few days before. A young woman who found Christ in my church in Philadelphia went out to China as a nurse under the China Inland Mission. A young man saved in England went out to the same Mission in China and met the young lady. She wrote me a letter, three pages of it, telling me about Henry, but forgot to mention his last name. She said his pastor would be at Keswick, and he would come and see me. So his pastor came to me and said: “My Henry wrote me three pages about Helen, but forgot to tell me her last name.” Now you know how it is when young people are that way, they like to do things that are well pleasing to the other.

A young man learns just by chance that his Helen likes violets better than roses, so he goes to a florist and says: “I want some violets.” The shop assistant says: “I am very sorry, sir, we do not have any violets; won’t you take some of these roses?” The young man says: “No, thank you,” and walks twelve blocks to another shop, and he considers his twelve blocks well walked if he can find some violets. Why? Just so that when he gives his Helen the violets, she will say: “Oh, Henry, you knew I liked violets better than roses!”

There is a spiritual lesson in that. Have you ever really tried to find out what God wants? Tried to “surprise” His will? To say: “Lord, I have sought diligently to know what pleased Thee best, and in my life I have sought to bring forth just this fruit because Thy Word reveals principles which show that that is well pleasing unto Thee?” Thus we apprehend our Lord’s will in matters which are not specifically mentioned in the Word. The Bible is not a set of rules, but a book of divine principles. As we yield to those we have learned, He reveals His will still further.

It is most important, however, that we be willing to do His will as soon as we know it; even before we know it. We learn a great deal from our children. A few months ago I walked out of our dining room with Miss Twelve–year–old beside me, and went to my study. A certain matter was being discussed. “Daddy, what do you want me to do?” I gave her a definite answer. She began to argue, and went on at a great rate. I sat writing as though I had not heard her. She was silent for a moment, and then began all over again, telling me why that which I had expressed as my will was wrong, and why it should be something else. After the child had said this about three times, her mother came into the room, and asked: “Why don’t you come?” and the child said: “I am waiting to find out what daddy wants me to do.” I said to her: “Wait a minute, my dear, whatever else you may be doing, you are not waiting to find out what I want you to do. I told you what I wanted you to do the moment I came into the room. What you are waiting for is to see if you cannot get me to change my mind, and you cannot!”

Frequently you find someone who says: “I am earnestly seeking the will of God,” when in reality they are seeking to justify their failure to do what they know God wants them to do. A young student in a theological seminary said that he was earnestly seeking the will of God as to whether or not he should marry a young lady who was not saved. Now the Word of God says: “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?” (2 Cor. 6.14). Like the little girl, he continued quibbling with God to find out His will, when that will was revealed definitely and unchangeably in His Word.

If we are going to grow in holiness, we are going to come with a willingness to do His will and a diligence to study to find out what that will is. Not only does the Word of God give us this knowledge of what happens when we are saved, the assurance that we are saved, and the revelation of God’s will in every phase of life, but it gives us something far more, it gives us a knowledge of His whole plan. We learn the line of His march in history, we learn enough of His present and future plans to set our minds at rest. We are satisfied when we know the Word of God. We are not troubled by the rumours of rearmament conferences, and not troubled by the disquieting news that fills the press from day to day, because we have been to the Word of God. We know His plan. We are not worried about the latest theories of the intellectuals who attack the Bible. Young people who are concerned because of some of the things that are being taught in our schools will find all the difficulties disappear when they come to the Word of God and learn His plan.

Suppose I go out one evening and see a group of men standing upon a mound under a summer sky, looking up to the stars, and I say: “What are you doing?” They say: “We are astronomers, we are studying the stars.” “What, out here on a mound?” “Yes, here we have a broad sweep, we can see the whole horizon.” I say, “Come with me into this little house and apply your eyes to this little one-inch eye–piece.” They say: “Oh, no; we could not have the narrow restrictions that you would impose upon us. Give us this broad, fine mountain top.” Yet we know they could learn more in one moment by taking the restrictive eye–piece of a telescope than they could learn in a hundred years out on their broad mountain top.

So it is with the Word of God. Men stand today and say: “Look at the eminence to which we have raised ourselves. We look backwards into history and can see as far as the protoplasm in the primordial ooze.” We bring them to God’s Word and show them even further: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1.1).

We as believers come to a group of men who look forward into the future. H. G. Wells writes of things to come, and how fearfully and wonderfully they are made. The best of the world’s thinkers see chaos ahead; war and the passing of civilisation. We say: “We will not have the narrowing restrictions.” We ask, “What do you see in the future?” “We see confusion, we see the end of an era.” Well, we see the Lord Jesus Christ through our telescope, and we see the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and righteousness covering the earth as the waters cover the sea, at the return of our Lord.

Then we go to the scientists and philosophers and say, “What do you see from your little mountain top?” Sir James Jeans says: “We see that behind the universe there is something.” And Mr. Eddington ponders and says: “Yes, definitely, and it is a mathematical something.” How wonderful! But looking through the Word of God we find a Father pitying His children, sending His Son Christ to redeem and save the world from sin.

The psychologists take us to their little summit and bid us look within our own being. We say: “What have you found?” A psychologist in one of our universities wrote a book called “The Beast Within”, and he tells young people that they have atavisms from their ancestors, who went in the forests on all fours, and that if they do not want to have too many difficulties, they must not inhibit those ancestral strains, that when the beast rages in his cage, it is best to take him out for a walk, but discreetly. Thus our young people are taught to go the way of the godless.

But we go to the Word of God and we find all our comeliness in the dust before Him. We see, not a beast from the forest, but rebellious creatures who have disobeyed God, and who are not willing to accept that which He offers in Christ, and we learn to see that in man, that is, in the flesh, dwelleth no good thing. Thus we are prepared to take the righteousness that is offered to us in Christ. The Scriptures reveal to us the past and the future in a clarity that is divine. They show us God, they show us ourselves. All this gives great stability to the Christian life. This makes it possible for us to walk uprightly, standing in Jesus Christ in absolute certainty, with our minds at peace in Him in the midst of life.

There is a fifth point which we can mention only in passing. A knowledge of the Scriptures keeps us from the counterfeits that are so prevalent in our day. I am reminded of a story that appeared recently in one of our weeklies. A young man took a young lady to the theatre, and afterwards they went to a night club. They danced for hours in that atmosphere of smoke and stale beer, and it was in the freshness of the dawn that they left the place. “What is that smell?” asked the young lady, as they came out. “That’s not a smell,” replied the young man. “That is fresh air!” There are some people today who have spent so much time in the musty atmosphere of form, ceremony, ritual, and religion, that when the Gospel is preached, they say “What new thing is that?” It is not new, it is simply Christianity. The man who has lived his life in the country knows fresh air, and the man who is really taught in the Word of God will easily detect any counterfeit. It is a great thing to have the stability of the Word of God.

These words are for the young Christians who are just beginning the Christian life, and are the prospectus of an elementary course in sanctification which will lead on to the deeper truths that we must learn when we go in for our master’s degree in sanctification. But though we have not touched upon these deeper truths, they do exist.

God tells us in Hebrews 5 why some people find it rather difficult to take in the deeper truths of sanctification. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews wanted to tell them about Melchizedek. He seems to approach that truth, and then turn away from it, and then go toward it again, as much as to say: “I have something to tell you that I find most difficult.” He talks about Melchizedek in verse 6, again in verse 10. It seems, then, as though the teaching problem were too great for him. He says: “Of him we have many things to say and hard to be uttered” because the audience is stupid -- (that is my own translation -- “and hard to be uttered, seeing that ye are dull of hearing.”

We are all in that audience. These truths of the eternal High Priesthood of Christ are most important, but God the Holy Spirit says His ministers have difficulty in preaching them. Why? Because we are so dull of hearing, and fail, therefore, in receiving them.

If we wish the deeper truths, learn from the last verse in this chapter: “But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Heb. 5.14). It is by living in the Word of God, by studying from day to day, by learning, as David teaches us in the first Psalm, to delight ourselves the Word of God, and in His law to meditate day and night, that we shall have our senses exercised to discernment. The phrase “to meditate day and night,” is a Hebraism. It does not mean you are to be in cloistered seclusion reading morning, noon, and night, and never going out into the world. It means that in the midst of the most ceaseless activity in university, in home, in business, wherever we may be in the plan of God, that we are to live our lives within the sphere and boundaries of this Book. That gives us all the space we need to move around comfortably, for it takes us from eternity to eternity, and from the depths of our sin to the heights of God. He says: “Live there in the bounds of the Book and you shall grow in Christ.”

May we not join Christ in His High Priestly prayer: “Make them holy through Thy truth. Thy Word is truth.” And then we shall exclaim, “Make me thus holy, O Lord!”

“Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace
Our path when wont to stray;
Stream from the fount of Heavenly grace,
Brook by the traveller’s way.

“Bread of our soul, whereon we feed,
True manna from on high;
Our guide and chart, wherein we read
Of realms beyond the sky.

“Word of the ever-living God,
Will of His glorious Son,
Without Thee how could earth be trod,
Or Heaven itself be won?

“Lord, grant that we aright may learn
The wisdom it imparts
And to its Heavenly teaching turn
With simple, childlike hearts.”

BERNARD BARTON