Further: not only do all men feel this sense of wrong in themselves, but they expect wrong in others. Even parents anticipate and provide for it in their children. Every parent knows that there is a tendency in his children to go astray from the very first moment of accountability. He knows that there is in his child a tendency to speak lies as soon as it can speak at all, that there is a tendency to perverse tempers and wicked passions. Hence wise parents universally recognise, whether they make any pretensions to Christianity or not, the necessity of family government and careful training in order to check, counteract, or eradicate, as the case may be, these tendencies to evil; and thus they acknowledge the necessity for a certain kind of salvation in their children, and they recognise also this fact, that if they do not attempt to work out this salvation, the children will bring them to wreck and ruin. A child left to itself brings its mother to shame; we know that sadly too well.

There is the same recognition of the need of a salvation amongst men of the world. Every intelligent business man goes on the assumption that he has to encounter wrong in the hearts and conduct of his neighbours; in fact, the world takes it as a sign of intelligence that a business man goes on this assumption, and would call him a fool if he did not. He knows that he is beset on all hands by those who will over-reach, cheat, and ruin him for anything that they can, if they can promote their own interests by so doing. Hence the necessity for a kind of legal salvation, in the form of agreements and bonds, between man and man.

I hear a good deal about this in connection with our negotiations for buildings, which we are carrying on every day. When proprietors and agents have made certain offers or promises, the General says, “Have you got it in black and white?” and if the answer is “No,” then he says, “What is the use of it?” Alas! we know only too well that it is of no use; and I am sorry to say that this is as true of many professing Christians as of worldly men. Why is this? Because a man’s word is nothing in the great majority of instances. Hence the necessity for lawyers, magistrates, and judges; and even these have to be tied down by law, and watched and supervised, lest even the judges should turn traitors to justice, and, for the sake of bribes or party considerations, sell the interests of those whom they ought to protect. Here again is the recognition of the necessity for a salvation for these very people who are placed as guardians of public justice and the administrators of the law. This salvation many of them specially require when dealing with the poor Salvation Army. By the way, it is a curious fact that such is the impression produced by the Army, that again and again politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have laughingly represented various combinations of statesmen as “salvation armies.” How often do politicians in different lands represent their countries as being, in some particular verging on ruin, and needing a “salvation”? What is this but a great public confession, made by those best capable of judging, that whole nations are misled? for in these days of popular government most people have to be cajoled into voting, to their own injury. Moreover, we have it from the highest public authority that nation after nation goes astray on questions vitally affecting their highest good; and it is commonly asserted that they are deliberately led astray by men who care only for their own interests, and so contrive to delude their fellowmen wholesale.

It is evident that but for these temporal salvations to which I have alluded, the world would be unendurable for us to live in. You know this. You know that it is not safe for a man to trust his neighbour, nay, in many cases, even his brother; “for there is none upright among men, . . . they hunt every man his brother with a net.”

Here, then, is the patent, palpable necessity for a salvation. Now, the question is, What sort of salvation meets the necessities of the case? What kind of a salvation does God our Maker, who knows what He meant us to be at the first, and who knows perfectly what we have become through sin, what kind of a salvation does He propose for humanity!

I answer. He proposes a salvation that deals with and removes the cause of all this wrong and woe.

Our Saviour, in Matthew xv. 19, goes to the root of the evil when He says: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” And the apostle also, in Galatians v. 19 : “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Whether you believe in the revelation or not, you will agree with the fact that these are the works coming everywhere from the evil heart of man; there is no getting away from that. Then I say that God proposes to deal with and remove the cause–the wrong state of the heart. If all men’s hearts could be set right to-day, we should need no more temporal, legal, or political salvations; no more lawyers, police, magistrates, or judges; for a salvation that renews the heart would render all these unnecessary.

God’s plan of salvation in dealing with the internal malady embraces all its external consequences.

It is evident, then, that any salvation which does not deal with this leprosy of evil in the heart is a mockery.

As I showed last week that there are, alas, many false, delusive, disappointing christs; so I have to show this week that there are many make-believe, mock salvations, which only deceive, disappoint, and damn those who trust in them. As I walk about the world, and as I look at professing Christians, my soul cries: O God, make haste to help us to raise up a holy people, in order to show the world what salvation really means, for they do not know. They are utterly befogged and bewildered, and I do not wonder.

We will now look at a few of these mock salvations, for they are legion. First, I want to premise that anything no matter how valuable in itself, which is put in the place of something for which it is no substitute is a mockery. For instance, here is a stone, very valuable in its right place–especially if it be in one of the shops in Oxford Street; but offered to a starving man in a desert it is a mockery; because, valuable as it is, the man cannot eat it, and he will die notwithstanding that the stone, worth a thousand pounds, lies at his feet, because it is no substitute for bread.

Now, there are endless substitutions for salvation. It has been the devil’s plan from the beginning to make imitations of God’s best things. Perhaps it is a necessity that evil must try its power upon all God’s creatures as it did upon Adam; we do not know. Probably there was no other way of working out the transcendent value and beauty of goodness than by allowing it to come in contact with evil; if this be so, of course it applies to God’s remedies for sin; anyway, the devil has done his worst on these. God’s plan of salvation is at present in this crucible. The devil is trying to circumvent it, and his favourite plan for doing this is by forging plenty of mockeries.

We will look at these under four divisions, salvations of theory; salvations of ceremony; salvations of mere belief, and the salvation of unbelief.

First, let us look at salvations of theory. You see it matters very little what kind of a theory a man has; if it be substituted for salvation it becomes a mockery, a true theory no less than a false one.

The devil no doubt has a correct theory; I fancy that he is a much better theologian than many Christians, but he remains the old serpent still.

It is doubtless better to have right opinions than wrong ones, but the best opinions will not save a man. I am afraid there is a great deal of preaching that amounts to a mere putting of the different theories about salvation, instead of persuading men to come to Christ and be saved.

The main idea of much of the preaching of this day seems to be that of teaching people–instructing them, which too often results in hardening their hearts, and finding them an easier way down to perdition than they would have found without it. Unfortunately a man feels more comfortable when he has been to a place of worship and heard a fine theory about salvation, than he would if he had not been, although he may be no nearer being saved. All preaching, Sunday School teaching, tract writing and distribution, or any other instrumentality which has not for its end the immediate salvation of the people, only leads them to trust in mere teaching, which is a mockery. It is like giving a dissertation on the relative value of a vegetarian and an animal diet to a man dying of hunger. What good will your dissertation do unless you get the man to eat of the food about which you are descanting. And, unless your teaching induces men and women to eat of the Bread of Life for themselves, it is a mockery! And yet how few preachers or teachers, how few religious workers have this as their main idea–the end at which they aim. You can see the want of it in the way they fail to bring men to Christ there and then. How my heart has ached over this aimless, pointless preaching, I could not express. Perhaps, when I have had the rare opportunity of a Sunday’s rest, I have gone to some near place of worship, hoping to be refreshed or stimulated, and to see sinners saved, or at least convicted, but alas! I could only weep as I listened to dissertations on some creed or doctrine which had probably been believed and approved by everybody present since they were children, while the poor empty souls were left starving for want. I have felt like saying to the minister, “My brother, if you have nothing better than this to offer, let us have a prayer meeting and get something direct from the great Father himself, without your intervention.” Would to God there were more preachers in the fix of a Baptist minister in a town where we are just now having a glorious work, who has been so stirred up and awakened to his responsibilities, that, on a recent occasion when he had read his text, he broke down, weeping, which had more effect than all the sermons he had preached during the years he had been in that town. His people wept too, and many of them got converted over again. I wish that a few thousands of the ministers of this kingdom could be brought to a similar state of mind before next Sunday; what a commotion there would be in the land, and what a stir in hell, ah, and in heaven too!

But further, I want you to note that any theory which teaches people to rest in a mere intellectual belief in the Scriptures, or any doctrines therein, while their souls are left in bondage to sin, is a mockery, and it is one of the most popular mockeries of this day.

Oh, Christians say, “Scatter the word,” and they have been scattering the word for generations, spending thousands of pounds over it, and I could enlighten them as to what becomes of the word in thousands of instances when it is scattered. We always get wrong when we depart from God’s way, and this is not His way. It is not written that “it pleased God to save by the distribution of Testaments, those who believe,” but it pleased God to save by the foolishness of preaching–by the living testimony of living men–by those who embody the word in their experience and lives, and then go and speak it in the power of the Spirit to others. This is the sort of preaching God has commanded. Study and love the written word as much as you like, but remember that the letter killeth, and that you will never save men by merely giving them the letter; and I point to the miserable results of this plan as proof of the truth of what I say.

I fear the giving away of texts and tracts has proved a most successful stratagem of Satan’s for enabling Christians to salve their consciences in resisting the Spirit’s urgings to a bold, straight-forward testimony for Christ. It is so much easier politely to hand one of these silent messengers, than to make a determined onslaught on the sinner’s conscience, and to try to persuade him there and then to flee from the wrath to come. Not only is it easier for the Christian, but it is also much more endurable for the unsaved; consequently he is willing to make a compromise, and in order to escape from straight, plain, personal dealing, he will pocket a tract, laughing in his sleeve at the cowardice of the giver; because he knows perfectly well that Christians, to be consistent with what they profess, ought to make a desperate effort for the immediate salvation of every unsaved man and woman with whom they come in contact. The world wants living epistles who will live, weep, act, suffer, and, if need be, die before the people. The testimony of such witnesses will prove a living word indeed, sharper than any two-edged sword.

I say that the knowledge of and belief in this whole Bible, from beginning to end, if substituted for actual, personal salvation, will prove as great a mockery as any other sentimental belief.

No mere intellectual beliefs can save men, because right opinions do not make right hearts. Alas, we all know the little practical effect opinions have on character. Look around you. Do you know any man who is not a thorough intellectual believer in chastity being better for a man, or a woman, in the end, than uncleanness? Is there any wicked, profligate young man, whom if you could take him aside and talk fairly to him, would not tell you that he believed that chastity was the best for a man, and yet you have only to look at him to see that he is a sepulchre of uncleanness and debauchery. What avails his intellectual belief in chastity while he is the slave of his lusts? What better is the man who believes in chastity and sins, than a man who does not believe in chastity and sins? As a French infidel, answering a caviller against holiness, said the other day, “You believe and sin, I do not believe and sin: where is the difference? It seems to me I am the better of the two.” Exactly, for however true or grand a man’s beliefs, of what use are they if he does not act them out? “Can faith save him?” Nay, verily, but such a faith can damn him. Further, any theory which leads men to suppose that they are safe without being actually saved is the most dreadful of all.

Such a theory adds an intellectual opiate to the deceit of the heart, and prevents the truth from troubling the conscience. Now, the only use of appealing to the understandings of the unregenerate, is, that through their understandings you may get at their hearts, but if Satan has “blinded their minds” by some intellectual opiate, there is no chance. The understanding is darkened, the conscience seared, and the soul paralysed. These are the worst people in the world to preach to; when I had to preach to them, how I groaned many a time for a congregation of heathen. I have found such now in the Salvation Army–I mean, a people whose understandings are not darkened by these false theories and intellectual conceits. One can get the light in through their heads into their hearts, and this is the reason of our success with them; and is not this the reason why the publicans and the harlots have always gone into the kingdom of God, while the natural children of the kingdom have been left out?

A man is either saved or not; the fact is independent of his theory, and it is of comparatively little consequence what his theory may be if he be saved. Hence many savages and Catholics have rejoiced in a consciousness of pardon, while many evangelicals have never known it. A man is either under the dominion of sin, or else he is delivered from it. If he is under the dominion of sin, what an awful theory is that which makes him believe he is saved. Could the devil have invented a more damning theory than that? And yet, alas! Alas! He allures millions to destruction through it, who otherwise would take alarm and begin to seek salvation. He says to all the qualms of conscience and the pangs of remorse, “You are all right, you believe this or the other, your faith is orthodox, you are safe,” frequently quoting separated or mutilated texts to back up his lying insinuations, such as “By faith ye are saved;” “he that believeth shall be saved,” “you are complete in Him,” etc. This latter phrase has come to express, in numbers of instances, the most utter ruin to which the human soul can be brought. “Complete in Christ”–complete without any true repentance, without any offering of the heart, without the slightest change inward or outward “complete in Him,” while living without Him, and having no conscious connection with Him whatever; complete without losing one evil feature of the godless life, without receiving one grace of any kind, without doing or suffering anything, except perhaps a whispered, “I believe;” complete all in a minute, since somebody pointed to a text with which perhaps the poor victim had been familiar all his life. Complete in Christ with a gnawing consciousness at the heart that it is as sinful, as empty, as powerless, and as joyless as ever; complete as a poor corpse would be complete, if painted and dressed in the clothes of a living man! May God save you from any such mock salvation as this.

Further, any theory that leads men to trust in general confessions and prayers for salvation, is a mockery.

How many thousands of people every Sunday confess to being “miserable sinners,” and cry to God to have mercy upon them, without the slightest appreciation of the meaning of the words they utter. They feel better and safer because of these confessions and prayers, whereas their prayers remove them further, rather than bring them nearer, to any real salvation. What is the use of prayer that produces no effect, that brings no answer? Here is a mother whose boy is condemned to die: the father goes to the Queen to beg for his life. When he returns, the mother says, “Well, have you succeeded?” He answers, “I have put up my petition before the Queen.” “Well, but what is the answer?” “Oh, you must not expect a direct answer: I have no answer, nor have I any reason to believe I shall get one, but I have put up my petition.” The mother would say, “That is a delusion; I want to know whether my boy is going to be released; I cannot sleep in my bed till I know what the answer is.” Now, I say, people who go on petitioning God for years together, never concerning themselves about the answer, or even expecting one, show that they are utterly insincere, and consequently obnoxious to God, and yet there are thousands of such people, who go to and fro to our churches and chapels every Sunday like a door on its hinges. They say, “O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners,” but they have no real desire for His mercy, no recognition even of the necessity for the forgiveness of sins, no concern about living to please Him, no idea of what repentance or salvation really means. Is it not manifest that such hypocritical confessions and prayers render those who engage in them more impervious to the truth, and more oblivious to any true idea of salvation, than they would be without them? God says such prayers are an abomination to Him. There is only one kind of prayer from an unconverted soul which is acceptable to God, and that is the prayer that is wrung out of the heart by anguish for sin.

Further, another mock salvation is presented in the shape of ceremonies and sacraments. These were only intended as outward signs of an inward spiritual reality, whereas men are taught that by going through them or partaking of them, they are to be saved. Amongst these may be classed Baptism, the last Supper, and the ceremonials of ancient or modern Churches.

Oh, the thousands of souls who are resting their hopes of salvation on the fact that they have been baptized, not only such as believe in the palpable delusion of baptismal regeneration, but amongst ordinary church and chapel going people. As I look at our Army congregations in Rinks, Theatres, and other similar places, and note, the signs of sin, debauchery, and crime on many of their faces, I say to myself, I suppose all these people have been baptized; but I do not think there are many thieves, or harlots, or drunkards, or openly immoral people who claim baptismal regeneration. Thank God! It is only genteel sinners who can bring themselves to believe in such a palpable sham, and yet, if baptism possesses any efficacy, it should be as effective in the one class of sinners as in the other.

What an inveterate tendency there is in the human heart to trust in outward forms, instead of seeking the inward grace! And where this is the case, what a hindrance, rather than help, have these forms proved to the growth, nay, to the very existence, of that spiritual life which constitutes the real and only force of Christian experience!

It is a calamity deeply to be deplored that men should thus put the form in the place of the power, but they have always been doing so. It is only another species of that idolatry which has prevailed from the foundation of the world. Take, for instance, the brazen serpent. All are familiar with the story of that miraculous intervention of Jehovah on behalf of the Israelites dying from the poisonous bites of the fiery flying serpents, sent as a punishment for their rebellious murmuring. God directed Moses to exhibit a brazen serpent on a pole, and to proclaim to the bitten multitudes that all who would look to it should be healed. Thousands looked, and as they looked were cured. In memory of that wonderful deliverance, and doubtless also as an emblem of the coming Saviour, that serpent was preserved; but when, in the years that followed, the people came to attach undue value to the ceremony of viewing it, burning incense before it, with idolatrous worship, Hezekiah, jealous for the honour of Him whom this form was only intended to shadow forth, called it “Nehushtan,” i.e., a piece of brass, which it really was, breaking it in pieces and casting it away with the trees of the groves and the altars of the high places which the people had desecrated by idolatry, Now, we have nothing to say against forms; but they are only, as it were, the bodies in which spiritual ideas and purposes are manifested, and without LIFE they are useless, and worse than useless.

When forms are exalted, and idolized, and trusted in, no matter how beautiful in themselves, or how Divine in their origin, they become “Nehushtan,” as a piece of brass, or a piece of bread or a bowl of water. As the apostle said of circumcision, when the Jews had put it in the place of righteousness, “Neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” And although originally ordained by God, he says again: “Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God.” We feel persuaded that if Paul were here now, and could see the deadly consequences which have arisen from the idolatrous regard given to what are called the Sacraments of the Supper and of Baptism, he would say precisely the same with respect to them; for even if Jesus Christ intended them to be permanent institutions (against which there are very strong arguments, as put forth by many most devoted and intelligent Christians ever since the days of the apostles, amongst whom are the “Friends” of our own time), such is the awful abuse to which these ceremonies have been subjected, that we feel sure Paul would say Baptism is nothing, and the ceremony of the Lord’s Supper is nothing, apart from keeping the commandments of God, especially that great and all-comprehensive commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.”

Christians often say to me, when I put this view before them, “Ah, but you have no authority to remit the Supper, because the Lord said we were to take it in remembrance of Him till He come!” I answer that He left the taking of it at all perfectly discretional; and as to its continuance, that entirely depends on which coming He alluded to. “Friends,” and many others of the most spiritual and deeply taught Christians of all times, have believed that He then referred, as in so many other places which are generally misunderstood, to His coming at the end of the Jewish dispensation. Any way, our Lord, who had long before said to the woman of Samaria, “The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem (in any special sense) worship the Father . . . But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth,” anywhere and everywhere, could not have intended to teach that God could be more acceptably or profitably worshipped through any particular form or ceremony than without such form or ceremony, and especially if there were weighty reasons on the other side for rejecting it!! Neither is it credible to a spiritually enlightened mind that He who said, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and we (I and My Father) will come unto him, and make our abode with him,” could have intended to teach that through the earthly medium of bread and wine His people were to remember Him on whom their thoughts were to be constantly concentrated, or to commune with Him in any special sense above that in which they were to commune with Him always and everywhere. The water which Jesus gives, and to which alone He attaches any importance, is that which is “in us a well of water springing up into everlasting life”; and the wine which He values and promises to drink with us in His Father’s kingdom, is that wine of the kingdom which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Friends, do you partake of these sacraments? If not, rivers of earthly water, vineyards of wine, will avail you nothing; they will be as “Nehushtan.”

If we were to have any binding forms in the new and spiritual kingdom in which all forms were to find fulfilment, it seems to me that there is a great deal more ground for insisting on washing of one another’s feet than for either of those already referred to; and in this we can see a great practical lesson on the human side which our Lord actually laid down. How comes it, I wonder, that many of those who regard the former with such sanctimonious reverence, can utterly and without scruple, set aside the latter? I fear that human pride and priestly assumption must be held largely responsible.

Farther, nothing is more evident to all who have any acquaintance with the history of Christianity, than that the undue value set upon these ceremonies has been one of the greatest hindrances to the extension of Christianity. Again and again have its valiant warriors paused in their triumphal progress, and turned aside from the battle with the great forces of evil, to quarrel amongst themselves concerning these mere externals.

When I was in Ireland, some of the oldest and most experienced Christians who took part in that great revival some twenty-five years ago told me that a great proportion of the results of that wonderful work of God were lost, in consequence of a controversy about water baptism. Do you wonder that we of the Salvation Army shrink from the possibility of such a sacrifice of the greater to the less–especially when we are backed up by the great apostle of us Gentiles thanking God that he baptized none of his early converts, and for the very same reason, namely, because they were making the ceremony a cause of controversy!

Further, what can be the value of imitating the marchings and vestments and songs of the ancient Jewish Church? We are not accepted in the beloved Jews, and if these ceremonies had become, as God said they were, a stink in His nostrils because of the backsliding unbelief and hardness of heart of His ancient people, how much greater must the offence of them be when adopted by impenitent, infidel, and rebellious Gentiles. Neither can it be any less repugnant to the mind of God, that spiritually uncircumcised Philistines should dare to put their hands to His ark, by anticipating the signs, ordinances, and alleluias of the Church triumphant. What have such people to do with the songs of martyrs and confessors, or with the alleluias of the angel bands who stand before the Lord in His temple? “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.” And yet what multitudes who are hardening their hearts and stiffening their necks every day against the claims of God and of His truth, dare to bow down to what they call the table of the Lord and unite in what they believe to be the songs of saints and angels. The first qualification for participating in any spiritual exercises or ceremonies, is the renewal of the heart by the Holy Ghost. If you could have the very same ceremonial which they have in heaven, with angels as your ministers, unless you had the spirit of it within, it would profit you nothing. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not the love of God, I am nothing.” And our Lord said, with respect to some of His hearers, “Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in our streets. But He shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity;” showing that even where Christ Himself was the preacher, if the heart remained under the bondage of sin and in the gall of bitterness, the hearers would only inherit greater condemnation, and sink into a deeper hell.

I must not omit to say a word here on the salvation of unbelief, notwithstanding that I purpose to enlarge on it at a future time. The most astounding theory of all the false theories about salvation, and also the latest novelty propagated, alas, from Christian pulpits and through the Christian press, as well as from avowedly infidel platforms, is that man is to be ultimately saved from his errors and iniquities, and especially from all trouble concerning them, by a simple negation. He is to dismiss from his mind all the creeds, all idea of any precise revelation, and to get light from any natural earthly source he can, especially from the modern lights, who are responsible for this new theory. He is to throw his mind back as far as is possible towards heathenism, nay, further back than those enlightened heathen philosophers to whom I referred in my first lecture, for he must on no account even sigh after anything supernatural or Divine. He is to believe in himself and in humanity; especially the future of humanity–seeing that there are so many ugly facts about its present. Thus he will have no more difficulties, sighings, or cryings!

He is to put away everything unpleasant and unsightly as far as he can, even if it professes to be the word of God, and possessing his soul (no, I beg pardon, his mind) in patience, to wait and hope till the law of evolution has transformed our poor sin-stricken and groaning earth into a heathen paradise.

What a striking reproduction is this modern revelation, only in a new fashion, of the words of fools thousands of years ago, who used to say, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?” and who “consider not that they do evil.”

Truly we may say of all these theories, ceremonies, prayers, faiths, and unbeliefs, which are palmed on man as substitutes for salvation from sin, vanity of vanities, cruel mockeries, making destruction doubly sure. Poor humanity still cries out, “Who will show us any good?” Miserable comforters are ye all, leaving us still on the dunghill, covered with wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores. WHAT SHALL WE DO TO BE SAVED?

Of course the mere idea of salvation supposes some enemy, bondage, disease, or danger; there can be no salvation where there is nothing to be saved from. All the saviours raised by God for Israel during their national existence were actual deliverers of their people from their enemies, otherwise they could not have been saviours. Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Nehemiah, and many others, were real deliverers of their people; they delivered from the outward consequences of sin; but the great distinguishing feature of our Joshua is that He delivers His people from their spiritual enemies, and from the power of sin itself. Where there is no deliverance there can be no salvation. What a mockery and a delusion it is for a man to profess to be saved, while he is groaning under the power of his spiritual enemies. If you are under the dominion of sin, you are yet an utter stranger to the salvation of God.

The common sense of mankind has prevented any theoretical deliverances or mock salvations for these temporal maladies and destructions, but our great adversary, who lieth in wait to deceive, has succeeded, as we have already seen, in deluding men and women, as to the reality of Salvation when applied to the soul. But the salvation of God is no less real and practical for the soul than any of these temporal salvations are for the body or the circumstances.

What is man’s disease? Sin, badness, falseness, spiritual death. Salvation means restoration to goodness, to truth, to spiritual life, and to God. It means deliverance from inward evil, and renewal of the heart in righteousness and true holiness. It means the right adjustment of the faculties of the soul, bringing it into harmony with the laws of its own being, with the law of God, and with the rightful claims of its fellow beings. In short, it means being PUT RIGHT in all its relations for time and for eternity.

Do you ask for living witnesses of such a salvation? Thank God, there are thousands who can testify that they have passed from darkness to light, that they have been delivered out of the hands of all their enemies, and are now enabled to serve God, walking before Him in righteousness and holiness day by day–thousands, not of genteel, refined, religiously trained people, such as most of you here to-day, but from amongst the most ignorant, neglected, besotted, and openly wicked of earth’s populations. They stand forward, an exceeding great army of witnesses to the reality of the salvation of God, and to the power of His Christ to deliver, to restore, to purify, and to keep all those who really receive and obey Him.

Secondly, we have the most satisfactory evidence which mortals can give, of future glorification in the fact that many are glorified before our eyes in death. Amidst the humiliation, pains, and agonies of physical dissolution, we see the soul emerging from the wreck of its physical environment, triumphing over him who hath the power of death, and in regal majesty pluming its wings for its final flight, and in view of such a victory, human reason, no less than Divine revelation, declares: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Are there any here who want salvation? Come and try our Saviour Lord. He can cure your disease, extract the poison out of your heart, and make you new creatures! We testify that He has done this for some of us on this platform; whereas we once were the children of wrath, because the children of sin, even as others, now He has made us the children of God and of light, enabling as to seek those things that are above.

Consistently with our profession, we consecrate ourselves, our whole being, our children, influence, time, life, and, if need be, death, to the pressing of this salvation on the attention and acceptance of our fellowmen. We make all things bow down before this unbending resolution, to seek and to save the lost.

This sense of need has been forced upon men, first, by the failure of their own repeated efforts to help and save themselves.

Secondly, by their observation of such fruitless efforts in others.

What man or woman who has thought at all, who has not stood on the edge of this human whirlpool, and watched the struggling multitudes as they have risen and sunk, striving and struggling by resolutions, by the embracing of new theories, by taking of pledges, and making new departures, to escape from the evil of their own natures and to save themselves? Who has watched the struggle without realizing the need that some Almighty independent arm should be stretched out to deliver and to save? Who can read history or contemplate the experience of humanity at the present time, without realizing that it needs a Saviour, whatever idea may be entertained as to the kind of Saviour required?

Farther, this sense of need is the outcome of the filial instinct born in every human soul, which cries out in the hour of distress or danger to an Almighty Father, a God, a friend somewhere in the universe, able to help and to deliver. This instinct is at the bottom of all religious, and more or less embodied in all their formulas, from that of the untutored savage up to the profoundest philosopher the world has ever produced. Perhaps the cry of humanity, destitute of a Divine revelation, could not be better summed up than in the following words of Plato, who, speaking of the soul and its destiny, says: “It appears to me that to know them clearly in the present life is either impossible or very difficult; on the other hand, not to test what has been said of them in every possible way, not to investigate the whole matter and exhaust upon it every effort, is the part of a very weak man. For we ought in respect to these things, either to learn from others how they stand, or to discover them for ourselves, or, if both these are impossible, then taking the best of human reasonings, that which appears the best supported, and embarking on that, as one who risks himself on a raft–so to sail through life–unless one could be carried more safely, or with less risk, on a secret conveyance, or some Divine Logos.”

In this confession, and in that of many others similar, we see, as it were, a mighty soul prying through the gates of life, striving to fathom the mysteries of being and to unlock the unknown future, in fact, crying out for a Christ, a Divine Word, or Logos, a something or somebody who should guide him, taking him up where human reason and philosophy failed him. It is also worthy of note that it has always been the highest type of man in all ages who has cried out most persistently for an extraneous deliverer. The more conscious of his own powers and the higher in his aspirations man has become, the more vehemently has he sought, outside of himself, for light and deliverance. Surely this universal cry of humanity, in all its phases and throughout all acres, betrays a great want, casting its shadows before the cry of the creature responding to the purpose of the Creator to send a SAVIOUR able to save to the uttermost of man’s necessity. The great realized want of humanity was a deliverer who could take away its sense of guilt, enlighten its ignorance, and energise it for the practice of all goodness and truth, a being who could not only stand without and legislate as to what men were to do, but who could come within and empower them to do it. Heathen philosophies and ancient religions could say, “Love thy neighbour,” but they could none of them inspire the man to do it, much less enable him to love his enemy–none of them even aspired to command that. Man was beyond humanity. Here, then, was the great need of a power to come inside and rectify the wrong, making the spring right, so that its outcome might be right.

Further, I want to remark that in the Bible a Christ is offered that meets this need. This is the great distinguishing boast of our faith–the only religion on the face of the earth in which the idea of a Christ has ever been conceived. The Bible offers this Christ. The golden chimes of great joy that rang out on the day when He was heralded by the angels, were to be glad tidings to all people of a Saviour which was Christ the Lord, a mighty deliverer, able to cope with man’s inability, with the disadvantages of his circumstances, and the consequences of his fall. Now we contend that this Christ of the Bible, the Christ who appeared in Judea 1800 years ago, is now abroad in the earth just as much as He was then, and that He presents to humanity all that it needs; that He is indeed, as He represented Himself to be, the Bread of Life come down from heaven, the Light, and the Life, and the Strength of man, meeting this cry of his soul which has been going up to God for generations. Here I stand and make my boast, that the Christ of God, my Christ, the Christ of the Salvation Army, does meet this crying need of the soul, does fill this aching void, and does become to man that which God sets Him forth as being in this book. Guilty humanity He promises to pardon, and He does pardon. Ignorant humanity (with respect to God and the things of God) He promises to enlighten, and He does enlighten it. Degraded, sunken, impure humanity (in the very essence of its being) He promises to purify, and He does purify it. We make our boast of this Christ, and we say He is able to save to the uttermost, and that He does this now as much as ever He has done in the 1800 years that are past, that He is a real, living, present Saviour to those who really receive and put their trust in Him.

I know that many may answer, “This is not the Christ that is generally presented in the preaching and teaching of this age, or that is generally professed and believed in by the Christians of this age; neither do we see such results as you depict in their characters or lives.” Granted. The sceptics and the infidels say: “We do not see these results, and therefore we do not believe in your Christ.” And I say, looking at the question from their standpoint, I should feel just as they do, because they have a right to have these results proved to them. It is useless telling of wonderful things having transpired a long time ago and a long distance away. They say, Show them now; show us the men in whom this change is wrought, and then we will believe that this Christ always does these things. I say Amen, and that because they do not see these signs in the popular Christianity of this day, therefore they reject its Christ, and there is great excuse for them, not such excuse as will justify them at the bar of God, because they ought to have found out Christ for themselves, nevertheless, an excuse to themselves and to their fellow-men.

I say, I grant that this is not the Christ exhibited in these days.

I will now try to give to you, as I perceive them, those modern representations of Christ which, instead of drawing all men unto Him, have driven the great mass away from Him, and disgusted many of the ablest minds with the whole system of existing Christianity.

Now this is not the Christ represented in the New Testament. The Christ of God was a real veritable person, who walked about, and taught, and communicated with men; who helped and saved them from their evil appetites and passions, and who promised to keep on doing so to the end of the world; who called His followers to come out from the evil and sin of the world to follow Him, carrying His cross, obeying His words, and consecrating themselves to the same purposes for which He lived and died; seeking always to overcome evil with good, and to breast the swelling tide of human passion and opposition with meekness, patience, and love; promising to be in them an Almighty Divine presence, renovating and renewing the whole man, and empowering them to walk in His footsteps.

I am afraid there are thousands who sit in our churches and chapels and hear the modern Christ descanted on, who, if asked their idea of Christ, would be utterly at a loss to give it. They have no definite conception of what His name or being means. They would not like to say whether He is in heaven or on earth. If asked whether He had done anything for them personally, they cannot tell; the most they say is that they hope so, or that they hope He will do something some day. He is to them a mere idea.

Another false but very common view of Christ in these days is that He is a sort of Divine make-weight. You will hear people say, when spoken to about their souls, “Yes, I know I am very weak and sinful, but I am doing the best I can, and Jesus is my Saviour; He will make up what I lack.” In these instances there is not even the recognition of the necessity of pardon, much less of the power of Christ to renew the soul in righteousness, and to fit it for the holy employments and companionships of heaven. This Christ is simply dragged at the tail, not only of human effort but of human failure, and offered, as it were, in the arms of an impudent presumption, as a make up in the scale of human deserts. And yet how many thousands of church and chapel going people, it is to be feared, are deluded by supposing that this imaginary Christ will meet the needs of their souls before the judgment bar of God.

To others this imaginary Christ is only a superior human being, a beautiful example–the most beautiful the world has ever seen; not Divine, yet the nearest to our conception of the Divine which even they think possible, but only human still. This Christ is held up as the embodiment of all that is noble, true, self-sacrificing and holy–an example of what we are to be, but supplying no power by which to conform ourselves to the model.

I frequently find that the people who make so much ado about the example of Christ are the furthest from following it. They say it is not intended to be followed literally. But how else can you imitate any one? How can an example be followed figuratively? Alas! The admirers of this human Christ make it sadly manifest in their lives and experience that humanity needs not only a model, but an inspiring presence to restore its lost balance, energise its feeble faculties, and rekindle its spiritual aspirations. Conceiving only of a human model, the paralysed soul finds no higher source of strength than its own desires and resolutions, and after the oft-repeated experiment at self-deliverance, sinks at length overwhelmed with a sense of failure and despair. It is not in man or angel, however sublime, to free the human soul from its fetters of realized guilt, or to empower it for the reconquest of that Eden of righteousness and peace from which the avenging angel of justice once expelled it. A human Christ is only a phantom of the imagination, an ignis fatuus.

Another modern representation of the Christ is that of a substitutionary Saviour, not in the sense of atonement merely, but in the way of obedience. This Christ is held up as embodying in Himself the sum and substance of the sinner’s salvation, needing only to be believed in, that is, accepted by the mind as the atoning Sacrifice, and trusted in as securing for the sinner all the benefits involved in His death, without respect to any inwrought chancre in the sinner himself.

This Christ is held up as a justification and protection in sin, not as a deliverer from sin. Men and women are assured that no harm can overtake them if they believe in this Christ, whatever may be the state of their hearts, or however they may, in their actions, outrage the laws of righteousness and truth.

In other words, men are taught that Christ obeyed the law for them, not only as necessary to the efficacy of His atonement for their justification, but that He has placed His obedience in the stead of, or as a substitution for, the sinner’s own obedience or sanctification, which in effect is like saying, Though you may be untrue Christ is your truth; though you may be unclean, Christ is your chastity; though you may be dishonest, Christ is your honesty; though you may be insincere, Christ is your sincerity.

The outcome of such a faith only produces outwardly the whited sepulchres of profession, while within are rottenness and dead men’s bones. The Christ of God never undertook to perform any such offices for His people, but He did undertake to make them “new creatures,” and thus to enable them to perform them for themselves. He never undertook to be true instead of me, but to make me true to the very core of my soul. He never undertook to make me pass for pure, either to God or man, but to enable me to be pure. He never undertook to make me pass for honest or sincere, but to renew me in the spirit of my mind so that I could not help but be both, as the result of the operation of His Spirit within me. He never undertook to love God instead of my doing so with “all my heart and mind and soul and strength,” but He came on purpose to empower and inspire me to do this. The idea of a substitutionary Christ accepted as an outward covering or refuge, instead of the power of “an endless life,” is a cheat of the devil, and has been the rain of thousands of souls. I fear this view of Christ, so persistently preached in the present day, encourages thousands in a false hope while they are living in sin, and consequently under the curse not only of a broken law, but of a Saviour denied and abjured. Let me ask you, my hearers, what sort of a Christ is yours? have you a Christ who saves you, who renews your heart, who enables you to live in obedience to God, or are you looking to this outside and imaginary Christ to do your obeying for you?

Another false idea of Christ, entertained, I fear, by multitudes of sincere souls, is that of a Divine condemnation.

This class of people seem to think that they ought to spend all their lives bewailing and bemoaning their sins, and are for ever crying out, “Oh, wretched man that I am,” “Christ have mercy on us, miserable sinners;” and they go on crying this every day of their lives. They forget that He of whom Moses and the prophets did write, is come. They forget that the deliverer is here–that pardon is offered, and that He is ready to witness it and fill their souls with peace and joy. If Christ be only for condemnation, what are these poor souls advantaged by His coming? What has He done more than the law did for them? The law made them realize their bondage, writhe under a sense of their sins, and set them longing after freedom and deliverance. It was their schoolmaster (or should have been) to bring them to Christ–Christ, the Son, who was to make them free; but alas! In this case, He is made a much harder schoolmaster than the law itself, for these poor souls get no deliverance, no peace, no joy, or power. They are always piping Paul’s bewailing notes, in which he personified a convicted sinner, struggling under the fetters of condemnation. But they never get into his triumphant notes, where he declares, “there is now no condemnation.”

This false view of Christ has led to most of the idolatries, penances, and lacerations of Catholicism.

The exhibition of a Christ too unsympathetic and implacable to be approached without a second intercessor a far-off, austere judge, rather than a pitying, pardoning Saviour–has kept millions of poor souls in bondage all their lives. I must say, however, that I have more sympathy with such souls, because they are sincere, and earnest, and willing to deny themselves, in order to find the right way, than with those who thoughtlessly take refuge under any of the false representations of Christ to which we have referred. It is to be feared, however, that the same spirit of worldliness which has so largely destroyed the power of Protestantism, has, to a great extent, extinguished this groping after Christ in the Catholic Church. I confess that I cannot see sufficient cause for congratulations such as are common in Protestant circles over the decadence of Popery, seeing that everybody knows that it is not in consequence of a growth of real heavenly light, but only the further spread of a careless, godless, take-it-easy spirit, putting out the earnest desire for purification which formerly led to so much self-sacrifice in the Church of Rome. There can be no doubt that it is through the loss of this true spirit of devotion that the evils which have crept into that Church have so completely over-shadowed the good, and prevented the multiplication of St. Bernards and others who got through the self-despair into the purest light and joy. Still, there are many earnest souls left, who continue to cry over their sins as though no deliverer had come. The Christ of God came not to bring condemnation but pardon, peace, and gladness to every penitent sinner on the face of the earth. I heard, the other day, a story which beautifully illustrates this: A poor Catholic woman, who had been in bondage all her life to a sense of guilt, and had earnestly sought by all the methods prescribed by her Church, especially by devotion to the Virgin Mary, to find peace and deliverance, when on her death-bed was brought into contact with one who had in reality found the Christ of God, and who was enabled to show to this poor trembling soul the sufficiency of His sacrifice, and His willingness to pardon and to purify. Through the influence of the Spirit of God which accompanied this exhibition of the true Christ, she was enabled to rest her soul on Him, and immediately entered into rest. Shortly afterwards her priest presented himself at her bedside, when she accosted him with the words, “Oh, you are too late, too late, I have found a better Priest than you, and He has absolved me. I am happy, happy, happy!”

The Christ of God is not a condemnatory Christ, but a pitying, pardoning Saviour, calling to His bosom the weary and heavy laden in all ages.

Another of these false views of Christ is that which presents Him as a future deliverer, without being a present Saviour.

It is to be feared that thousands are looking to Him to save them from the consequences of sin–that is, hell, who continue to commit sins; they utterly misunderstand the aim and work of the Christ of God. They do not see that He came not merely to bring men to heaven, but to bring them back into harmony with His Father; they look upon the atonement as a sort of make-shift plan by which they are to enter heaven, leaving their characters unchanged on earth. They forget that sin is a far greater evil in the Divine estimation than hell; they do not see that sin is the primal evil. If there were no sin there need be no hell. God only proposes to save people from the consequences of sin by saving them from the sin itself; and this is the great distinguishing work of Christ–to save His people from their sins!

Men have made up their minds that they can possess and enjoy all they can get of this world in common with their fellow-men, and yet get to heaven at last. They have made up their minds that it is all nonsense about following the Christ, becoming a laughing stock to the world, which He made Himself every day He lived, and setting themselves to live a holy life, which He said if they did not they were none of His; all this they have abandoned as an impossibility, and yet, not content without a religion, and finding it impossible to look into the future without a hope of some sort, they have manufactured a Christ to meet their views, and spun endless theories to match the state of their hearts. The worst of all, however, is that a great many of the teachers of Christianity have adopted these theories, and spend their whole lives in misrepresenting the Christ of the gospel.

Now let me try to put before you what I conceive to be the true representation of the Christ of God. We say that He meets the whole world’s need–that He comes to it walking on the waves of its difficulties, sins, and sorrows, and says, “I am the Bread of Life; take Me, appropriate Me, live by Me, and you will live for ever, I will resuscitate and pardon, cleanse and energise you; I am the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” This is the Divine “Word,” or deliverer, which philosophers have longed for, and stretched out their dying hands to embrace–which all the heathen world have, more or less, groped after in some dim figure.

We saw at the outset that man needed some being outside of himself, above him, and yet able to understand and pity him in his utmost guilt, misery, and helplessness–able to inspire him with a new life, to impart light, love, strength, and endurance, and to do this always and everywhere, in every hour of darkness, temptation, and danger. Humanity needed an exhibition of God, not merely to be told about Him, but to see Him; not merely to know that He was an Almighty Creator, able to crash him, but that He is a pitiful Father, yearning and waiting to save him. God’s expedient for showing this to man was to come in the flesh. Can the wisest modern philosopher or the most benevolent philanthropist conceive a better? How otherwise could God have revealed Himself to fallen man? Since the fall man has proved himself incapable of seeing or knowing God; he has ever been afraid of the heavenly, running away even from an angel; and when only hearing a voice and seeing the smoke which hid the divinity, he exceedingly feared and quaked, and begged not to hear that voice again. Truly, no man as he is by nature can see God and live. Seeing then, that God desired that man should see Him–that is, know Him–and live, notwithstanding his fall, He promised a Saviour, who should reveal Him in all the holiness and benevolence of His character, and in His plenitude of power to save!

Here the Christ of God presents Himself, claiming to be this Divine Saviour. An objector may ask for proof of His Divinity. This would be far too great subject to go into now, but we may glance at two or three considerations, which are quite sufficient, unless, indeed, Christ were an impostor.

First, those who reject His Divinity say He is the nearest to the Divine of anything we can conceive. They say He is the best of the good of our race–even infidels cannot find fault with His character; they bow down before the spotless purity, the beneficence and moral beauty of Jesus Christ. All schools grant this. Then, taking my stand here I say that this perfect being claimed to be Divine, and He claimed it so unmistakably and persistently, that if you take it out of His teachings, you reduce them to a jumble of inconsistencies. His Divinity is the central fact around which all His doctrines and teachings revolve, so that if this be extinguished, they become like a system of astronomy without the sun, dark, conflicting, and inconsistent. Read the Gospels and eliminate for yourselves all His assumptions of Divinity, and then see what you can make of His teaching.

Secondly, these assumptions were understood and resented by the people to whom He spoke, and they surely were the best judges as to what He meant. If they had mistaken His meaning, He was bound, merely as a man of honour, to explain Himself, but He never did; so when the Jews said, “Whom makest Thou Thyself,” or, “This man maketh himself equal with God,” He did not demur nor retract, but repeated, “Yet I came forth from the Father, and I go to the Father.” This was the one intolerable point in His teaching, which the Jews, who owned no plurality in gods, could not endure; that any other being should be one with their Jehovah was to them insufferable, and for this they ultimately crucified Him. “What further need,” have said the high priest, “of witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard His blasphemy.”

Then, if He were so near an approach to perfection as even infidels admit, how was it that He allowed such an impression of His teachings to go abroad, if He were not Divine? How could He say, “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins,” if He had not known Himself to be the Christ of God?

Thirdly, His character supported His assumptions. For 1800 years millions of the best of the human race have accepted these assumptions without being shocked by them. If He be not Divine, how comes it to be that, the greatest of human intellects, the sincerest of human souls, and the most aroused and anxious of human consciences, have ventured their all upon this Divine word, and have seen nothing contradictory between His claims and the actual character which He sustained in the world; whereas, imagine the very holiest and best who ever trod our earth putting forth such assumptions, and how would they sound? Suppose Moses, who had talked with God in the burning bush, or Isaiah, whose tongue was touched with the live coal from off the altar, or Daniel, the man greatly beloved, to whom the angel Gabriel was sent again and again, or the apostle of the Gentiles, who was admitted into the third heaven, or the beloved apostle John, suppose any of these men saying, “I am from above, ye are from beneath,” “I am not of this world,” “If ye believe not I am He, ye shall die in your sins,” “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.” Again, “I leave the world and go to the Father;” and in His prayer on the eve of His agony, “The glory which I had with the Father before the world was,” and again, in answer to Philip’s request, “Show us the Father,” “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;” “believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?”

And not only does He claim this oneness of essence with the Father, but also that omniscience which enables Him not only to be with His people but to dwell in them, as shown in His answer to the question of Judas, when he asked how it was that He would manifest Himself to His own people and not to the world. Jesus answered, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Think of any creatures–David, a Paul, a John, daring to claim for himself this omniscience. If this Christ were not Divine, then there is no alternative; he was altogether an impostor and a deceiver.

From such a conclusion, however, even infidels and blasphemers shrink, and therefore we must be allowed to hold to our faith in our Divine Redeemer–our Immanuel, “God with us.” I may ask here, if there is one of my hearers whose consciousness does not tell him that he needs a Divine Saviour? Would any less than an Almighty, omniscient, infinite deliverer meet the needs of your souls? If so, you must feel much better and stronger, and more able to help yourselves than I do. “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”

But take this mystery out of Christianity, and the whole system utterly collapses. Without a Divine Christ Christianity sinks into a mere system of philosophy, and becomes as powerless for the renovation and salvation of mankind as any of the philosophies which have preceded it. But no, our Joshua has come, our Deliverer is here; He is come, and is now literally fulfilling His promise to abide, “I and my Father will come unto you, and make our abode with you.” He comes now in the flesh of His true saints, just as really as He came first in the body prepared for Him, and He comes for the same purpose, to renew and to save; He is knocking at the doors of your hearts even now, through my feeble words, and will come into your hearts if you will let Him. As He came walking over the sea of Galilee to the men and women of His own day, He comes now to you, walking over the storm raised by your appetites, your inordinate desires, passions, and sins–a storm only just gathering, waxing worse and worse, and which, unless allayed, will grow to eternal thunderings, lightnings, and billows; but He is able to allay it, He offers to pronounce “Peace, be still,” and end this tempest of your soul for ever. Will you let Him?

As Christ represented His union with the Father as perfect and entire on every point and in every particular of His humiliation, so He represents it as equally complete with respect to the sufficiency and vicarious character of His death. “THEREFORE doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”

He so shows that in baring His own heart to the sword of justice, He was equally with the Father interested in the maintenance of the dignity of the law, and equally inspired with boundless and quenchless love for its transgressors.

There has been a great deal of empty talk as to the needlessness of a vicarious sacrifice, and many contend that the Father’s love flows out to all His creatures independently of any such intervention; but, setting aside the requirements of the Divine law altogether, I venture to assert that there has never been a human conscience awakened in any measure to the deserts of sin, which has not instinctively felt the need of such a sacrifice. In thousands of instances, even with the strongest representations of the infinity, value, and efficacy of the atonement, it requires the utmost effort to get the trembling soul to rest its hopes on the merit of even this Divine sacrifice, and all history proves that in no other way have sinful consciences ever been able to find rest.

In view of this sacrifice God waits to pardon your guilt, cleanse your pollution, transform your character, and hallow, and beautify, and utilize your life. You have no longer an excuse for groaning under the dominion of sin. He calls you forth from the tomb of your depravity; He calls you out of the dungeon of your guilt, and offers you a full and free acquittal, with all the resources necessary for a new life of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

My friends, have you accepted this Christ? Do you know Him as your Divine Almighty Deliverer from the strength and power of sin? Have you cast your weary soul on Him as your sacrifice, claiming freedom from the condemnation of the past? Have you the witness of His Spirit that this sacrifice has been accepted by God on your behalf, and does the answering cry, “Abba, Father,” go up from your soul? Are you living in the regeneration of His Spirit, carefully seeking to fulfil all righteousness, commending your every act to Him in faithful obedience? Does He reign over you as the sovereign of your heart and life, and do you hold everything you possess–yourself, your children, your property, your time, your influence, your reputation, your life, your death–subservient to His will and interests? If so, happy are you, and your example before men and your influence in the world will be worthy of the professed followers of the “Christ of God.”

TDE emphasises our work over the work of the cross.

I have seen too many people do lots of works with very little fruit. They my spend years working with people helping them understand how to live a christian lifestyle, but forgetting how to have a relationship with Jesus. Salvation is not our work. Our work is to tell others what Jesus has done, to tell them how they can meet Him, and then God does the rest! God will save them, He will heal them, He will set them free! We are the messengers, He is God!

It is the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus which is actually what will save our friends, our good works wont save them even if they do point to something better. We need to keep the cross in the centre of our evangelism so that people do not convert for the wrong reasons. Keep doing good works, but for goodness sake, it is JESUS who SAVES! Let’s make room for God to do His thing!

A BURNING, ZEALOUS PASSION 

FOR THE LOST

Apathy and Evangelism

I was recently at leadership training course for planting reproducing churches and we were lead by a leader in the Chinese house church movement. He was asked, “Do you think that the church in the West has lost its passion for souls?” He replied, “How many people have you lead to Christ recently?” Statistics suggest that only 5% of Christians are actively involved in evangelism

and this means that people are not hearing the gospel. We have lost our burning, zealous passion for the lost.

We read in Romans 10, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

If we are really interested in “Winning the world for Jesus” then we must evangelise! The Booth family understood this; both Florence and Catherine wrote about Aggressive Christianity

, this meant establishing Christianity where it was not before. Sadly our Christianity often seems more like the opposite and is apologetic for what we believe to be the truth. We have become apathetic in soul saving endeavours and we need to rekindle this burning, zealous passion to see the lost saved!

The apostle Paul

When I think of a burning, zealous passion to see the lost saved I immediately think of the Apostle Paul. This Paul who was once passionate for preventing the gospel from being spread met Jesus and His life was transformed. As Paul gave his life to Christ he quickly became zealous for the gospel. In fact he would call himself a fool for the gospel! He said he would become all things to all people to save some!

“Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel,”

and “For Christ’s love compels us!

” As we survey the life of Paul we see that he was tortured and abused, despised and rejected, and still he kept preaching the gospel. His cry of “Woe to me!” shows us that his heart was bursting with Gods love; he wanted everyone to know that they could be reconciled to God and so his actions matched this. He never gave up preaching even when in jail, he was motivated by the love of God.

The Father’s heart

We can see this love in God the Father. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life!”

Could you imagine a person giving up their only son? Sometimes it is easy for us to gloss over this important fact that shows us the burning, zealous passion to see people saved.

This passion is so intense that God does not want any to perish but all to come to repentance, He wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, He is the good Shepherd who counts His sheep and notices when just one is missing! God wants all to be saved and He sacrificed His son to show it! This is the heart of God: Love for all!

We see in these examples how love compels people to go above and beyond what we would normally see as normal. We see that this heart for the lost compels us to preach, to do and become anything to see people saved! There is a burning, zealous passion to see every single person saved!

How to cultivate a burden for the lost

So how do we get this heart for the lost? How do we too have this burning, zealous heart for the lost, this passion to see the whole entire world saved?

Holiness of Heart

Brengle teaches us, “Holiness increases this desire, and makes it burn with a quenchless flame. The zeal of other people blazes up, burns low, and often dies out, but the zeal of a man with a clean heart, full of the Holy Ghost, increases year by year. Others run away from the prayer-meeting, but he holds on. Others do not grieve if souls are not saved, but he feels that he must see souls saved, or die.”

The Salvation Army was such an aggressive soul saving movement because we were compelled by the love of God. Stories abound of Salvationists like Railton, Cadman, Booth-Tucker, Joe the Turk and many others who worked hard, preached often and creatively engaged thousands of people that they might save some. It is not by chance that many revivals around the world, and especially The Salvation Army, have had a holiness doctrine, because holiness compels people to evangelise!

They had a burning, zealous passion to preach the gospel because they wanted everyone to be saved! They genuinely loved people and wanted them to know God. This love comes from God, and when we allow God to take away all our sin, and then fill us with His love we too can have this burning, zealous passion to see other saved!

Heed the call to evangelise

Another way we can cultivate our passion for the lost is to start with obedience. If we search the Scriptures we will see that God has called us to, commanded us to, and compelled us to preach the gospel. At the beginning of Jesus ministry He called the fishermen to come fishing for people with Him, then just before Jesus ascended into Heaven He commanded us all to preach the gospel to all the world! Jesus commands us to evangelise, and we must obey!

William Booth said, “We are a salvation people – this is our speciality – getting saved and keeping saved, and then getting somebody else saved, and then getting saved ourselves more and more until full salvation on earth makes the heaven within.” If we embrace our calling to be a holiness – evangelism movement then we will see revival! We need to embrace our calling and the commands that God has given us to preach the gospel to every nation!

Hate Hell

Another interesting defining aspect of a burning, zealous passion for souls comes from our hate of hell. Many evangelists will talk about how hell frightens them and motivates them to preach the gospel! Florence Booth speaks of this, “When Officers show a lack of power for aggressive work, I am convinced that their hearts are not deeply moved over the condition of sinners.”

Booth continues to teach that we must not only believe in our heads our doctrine of hell we must believe it in our heart. She says that conviction is when a truth is firmly planted in our heart, and if the doctrine of hell is planted in our heart we will be much more aggressive in our evangelism, and not only that but our evangelism will be more compelling to the sinner to be saved!

Conclusion

God loves every person in the world and wants them to be saved! Imagine if every Salvationist had this burning, zealous passion for the lost! Imagine if our hearts were moved by the plight of the unsaved drifting off into hell. Imagine the passion which we would preach with, imagine the love we would care with, imagine the zeal we would pray with, imagine the methods we would use, imagine how powerful our message would be!

Do you have a burning, zealous passion for the lost?

QUESTIONS FOR SOLDIERS
BASED ON THE ARTICLES OF WAR

Have you been responsive to the Holy Spirit’s work and obedient to His leading in your life, growing in grace through worship, prayer, service and the reading of the Bible? Have you made the values of the Kingdom of God and not the values of the world the standard for your life?

Have you upheld Christian integrity in every area of your life, allowing nothing in thought, word or deed that is unworthy, unclean, untrue, profane, dishonest or immoral?

Have you maintained Christian ideals in all your relationships with others; your family and neighbours, colleagues and fellow Salvationists, those to whom and for whom you are responsible, and the wider community?

Have you upheld the sanctity of marriage and of family life? Have you been a faithful steward of your time and gifts, money and possessions, body, mind and spirit, knowing that you are accountable to God?

Have you abstained from alcoholic drink, tobacco, the non-medical use of addictive drugs, gambling, pornography, the occult and all else that could enslave the body or spirit?

Have you been faithful to the purposes for which God raised up The Salvation Army, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, endeavouring to win others to Him, and in His name caring for the needy and the disadvantaged?

Have you been actively involved, as able, in the life, work, worship and witness of the corps, giving as large a proportion of your income as possible to support its ministries and the worldwide work of the Army?

Have you been true to the principles and practices of The Salvation Army, loyal to its leaders, and shown the spirit of Salvationism whether in times of popularity or persecution?

TDE breeds bad behaviour.

This turns Jesus into a genie in a bottle. It’s like we can rub the bottle anytime we like and get whatever we want. You know, I want this job, this car, this sort of life I want, I want, I want. Now, this is fine when it lines up with God’s word, for example, I want to experience Gods love more, to love others more, to be wholly sanctified, etc… But if coming to God is based only on my own selfish desires then when I don’t get what I wan’t I’ll give up on God as this Christian thing isn’t working anymore…

To rectify this we need to highlight that we all need God in all times, we need to move away from a God we come to just so He can ‘bless’ us, but come to God so He can save us from our sin. Jesus undoubtedly wants to bless our socks off, but it’s not in the worldly way, it’s in a deeper and more holy way. Jesus wants to bless us by dealing with sin, by taking us from the kingdom of darkness and transferring us int the Kingdom of Light!

Sadly many people have these long lasting relationships with their friends and the only time sin is mentioned is when we pray a prayer to ask Jesus for forgiveness! (The person praying doesn’t even know what they’re saying.) We need to remember that sin is the problem, and this means that people need God right now. Jesus life, death and resurrection needs to make sense. This understanding of Salvation will help us as we disciple people through good and bad times. Jesus isn’t just here to grant us wishes, He’s here to destroy the works of the devil, and sometimes that hurts.