The War Cry, No. 104.-DEC. 15, 1881.

SUGGESTIONS TO OPPOSERS.

By W. BRAMWELL BOOTH.

II.

LAST week, I remarked that there are some things specially worth remembering by those who oppose faithful and definite teaching, and testimony on Holiness, and I add to what I then wrote the following simple suggestions as worthy of some thought, with the assurance of my love in the Lord, and my earnest desire that God, the Holy Ghost, may lead every reader of these words into "the fulness of the blessings of the Gospel.'

5.—We are not unfrequently charged with failing to give due reverence to the Bible as the Word of God. If it is meant that we attach more importance to the Spirit than to the letter, that we have discovered after a practical experimental fashion, that the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life-we admit that to be so-but the holy soul can admit no more; to him, the Word of Truth is the meat and drink through which he receives the sustenance of his very life. He eats it. It is the chart by which the

Captain of our Salvation directs his every movement. It is the weapon with which, by the indwelling power of the Holy One, he is able to smite his foes, and overcome the King's enemies. He loves it. Illuminated by the Holy Ghost, he finds it yields him a new revelation of the Divine Will every time he looks into its pages. By it he tries the spirits around him. By it he tries himself.

Beloved, you who walk in the Light, remember that the Light cannot be darkness. He cannot contradict Himself. His Spirit in you will be in harmony with His Word, even when He speaks to your inward consciousness apart from the direct words of the Bible, which, if you know anything of communion with Him, He will.

To extol the PROMISER, surely cannot be said to take honour from His promise. To wait on the Lord for continual guidance, to trust in Him for continual cleansing, to rely wholly upon Him for continual keeping. To do this, puts upon His Holy law and precious promises the highest honour He has asked for them. This we will do. This we do. In return, He doth write His words upon our hearts, and engraves upon them "His new, best name of love." The LIVING WORD is with us.

6.—" Know ye not that your bodies are the Temples of the Holy Ghost." It is required that the body be the willing and obedient servant of a sanctified will and a holy heart. In itself the instrument either of sin or righteousness, it is to be yielded freely to obedient service, kept under, governed, by the power of a Divine indwelling,

fulfilling in peace all the holy will of God, towards Him, and towards its neighbour. A means of glorifying God. A weapon of war to resist the Devil. A dwelling-place for the Most High. A workshop filled with powers, He himself created, and then redeemed, and now will sanctify, for God to work in for His own glory.

7. It is a serious mistake, a mistake which may have eternally serious consequences, to measure one's own responsibility by another's, or to reckon another's attainments by one's own. Equally is it a terrible error to regard the standard of one's present experience as the ultimate end of God's will concerning us. If you are a doubting Christian, your own consciousness bears you witness that you are; but do not look upon that witness as evidence that there is nothing better than doubting for you, or for your brother. God's Spirit will testify to what you are, not to what you are not: to what you are, not to what you ought to be. Some people seem to rest because they are condemned, because they are cold, because they are unbelieving, because their hearts do deceive them, and accept that evidence as a token of peace instead of a sounding alarm of danger, and urgent entreaty to go on and know something better of the Divine will. To many it is a glorious fact, indisputable, ungainsayable by Satan himself, that God the Holy Ghost will as surely bear witness that we love Him wholly, with all our heart, as that we love Him much, but not Him alone. If you, a justified soul, know you are pardoned, you have living evidence that God can reveal His mind, and have the strongest cause

to believe that your brother who declares the fact, knows he is sanctified wholly and saved from sin.

8.-That we do not rejoice in the resurrection, power, and glory of a risen Jesus, is a singularly strange mistake. To us He is risen, indeed. Captivity is led captive. We have good reason, some of us, to remember the days we spent at Calvary. The pardon by a dying Saviour, the cleansing which came by an open fountain of water and blood, the reconciliation of the Cross, these we well remember. Days of joy and peace they brought, but not days of complete liberty. We found not always power to rejoice, power to believe, power to obey, power to die. We needed a Jesus in resurrection power, and we know, who have a clean heart, when He came, how He came. We know He raised us to sit with Him in heavenly places, to have conversation above with Him, riches above in Him, glory above by Him, and, from that hour, His presence in us, and His. pleading presence at the Father's right hand have secured us all our strength, and supplied us all our need. We loved Him on the Cross, and embraced Him in the tomb; but, risen, He is with us, "the living," risen to rule and reign over us who are risen with Him, never to die any more. Blessed be this first-born of many brethren, the First-Born FROM THE DEAD.

The War Cry, No. 13.-MARCH 20, 1880.

REV. W. FLETCHER'S TESTIMONY.

"My dear brethren and sisters, God is here! I feel Him in this place. But I am ashamed; I would hide my face in the dust. I have dishonoured my God and denied my Saviour, by not confessing Him. I have grieved His Spirit, I have been ashamed and afraid to declare what He hath done for my soul; but I am sensible of my folly, and deeply humbled on account thereof, and He has restored my soul.

"Last Wednesday evening, He instructed and commanded me by His word, 'Reckon yourself, therefore, to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ.' I obeyed the voice of God, and now obey it, by declaring to the praise of His love, I am freed from sin; yea, I now bear witness to the glory of His grace; ‘I am dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ,' who is my Lord, and reigns over every motion of my soul.

"I have received this blessing four or five times before; but I grieved the Spirit of God by not making confession, and as often I let it go. I