 Chapter 11 of Our Master—Thoughts for Salvationist about their Lord. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lauren Randall. Our Master—Thoughts for Salvationists about their Lord by Bramwell Booth. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord, Jonah chapter 2 verse 9. Work out your own salvation, Philippians chapter 2 verse 12. Salvation is of the Lord or not at all. It is a touch, a revelation, an inspiration, the life of God in the soul. It is not of man only, nor of that greatest of human forces, the will of man. But of God, and the will of God. It is not mere will, work, a sort of self-raising power. It is a redemption brought home by a personal redeemer, made visible, tangible, knowable to the soul redeemed in a definite transaction with the Lord. It brings forth its own fruits, carries with it the assurance of its own accomplishment. And is its own reward, it is impossible to declare too often or too plainly that salvation is of the Lord. And yet around us on every side are those who are relying upon something short of this new life. They have set up a sort of human virtue in the place of the God-life. They are slowly mastering their disordered passions. The base instigations of their lower nature are being thwarted. Greedy appetites which reign in others are in them compelled to serve. Animosities to cunning and falsehood, the fruits of which are only too apparent in the world at large. They watch and harass and pinch. Animosities and jealousies and envies. Those enemies of all kinds of peace are repressed if not controlled. And these followers of virtue go further than this. They aim at building up a character which can be called noble, or at least virtuous. When some succeed or appear to themselves to do so, they cultivate truth. Honesty is with them, whether as to their business or their social life, the best policy. They are just. They are temperate. By nature and by training they are kind and generous. So much so that it is as difficult to convict them of an unkindly act as it is easy to prove them more generous and liberal than many of the professed followers of Jesus. Often they are charitable, giving of their substance to the poor, not hard to please, considerate of their inferiors, patient with one another, in a very high sense they have true charity. And after long periods of struggle and lofty and faithful effort, they may be able to claim that they have developed a fine character. That by self-cultivation, and perhaps by a kind of self-redemption, they have produced a very beautiful and desirable being. I will not stay to inquire how far heart conceit and heart deceit may account for much of this, or to suggest that a great contrast may exist between the outer life and the unseen deeps within. I will admit for the moment that all is as stated and even more. But then, with much of grace and beauty, it may be trained and tutored in the ways of humility and virtue, able to live in the constant and kindly service of others, and devoted to truth and duty. With all these excellencies they may yet be dead while they live. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Generous, lovable, dutiful, honorable flesh, but only flesh. A chaste, and if you like to have it so, a useful life, but lifeless. A fine product of a lifetime of labor in the culture of the physical, intellectual, and moral powers. But after all, dead. For he that believeth not on the Son of God hath not life. In this view, the body, and in a larger degree the mind, becomes a sepulcher for the soul. All the attention given to education, to refinement, and culture, to the development of gifts, for instance, such as music, or inventive science, to the practice of self-restraint and the pursuit of morality, is so much attention to the casket that will perish, to the neglect of the eternal jewel that is enclosed. It may be possible to present a kindly, honest, law-abiding, agreeable life to our neighbors, to go through business and family life without rinding anything of great moment with which to condemn ourselves, to be thought even by those nearest to us, to be living up to a high standard of morality, and yet, for all this has to do with the casket only, to be dead all the while in trespasses and sins. The young man who should spend his fortune upon his tomb would be scarcely so great a fool as he who spends his life on those things in himself which are temporal, to the neglect of those which are eternal. Only think of the absurdity of devoting the splendid energy of youth and manhood, the grand force of will, the skill of genius, and the other gifts which commonly meant applied to their own advancement and success, to the adornment enriching an extension of one's grave. And yet this is very much the case of those of whom I am thinking. All their advances, whether in moral attainment, in personal achievement, or in worldly advantage, are at the best but enlargements and adornments of a tomb, and of a tomb destined itself to perish. Do I then discourage good works? Has man no part to play in his own deliverance? Is he after all only an animal, the mere creature of circumstance and natural law? Have I forgotten that faith without works is dead? No, I think not. I have but remembered that works without faith are dead also. The one extreme is as dangerous as the other. The legal mechanical observance of the rules of a right life, apart from a living faith in Christ, can no more renew the heart in holiness and righteousness than can a mere intellectual belief of certain facts about Christ, apart from working out his will, save the soul, or make it meet for the inheritance of the saints. In both cases, the verdict will be the same. The faith in the one is dead. The works in the other are also dead. The fact is, salvation is a two-fold work. It is of God. It is of man. Did God not will man salvation? He could not be saved. Thus man will his own salvation. He cannot be saved. God is free. Man also is free. He may set up a plan for saving himself, but no matter how perfect it will fail unless it have God for its center, and God, though he has devised the most infinitely complete and beautiful and costly scheme of redemption for man, will nonetheless fail unless the individual man wills to cooperate with him. Man is not a piece of clay which God can fashion as he likes. He is not even a harp out of which he can get what strains he will without regard to its strings. There is in man something, a force, an energy, which must act in union with God, and with which God must act in wonderful partnership if his will is to be accomplished. It is true, of course, that God does much for a man without his aid. I do not now refer to material blessings. He it is who gives us life and breath and all things, and gives them largely without our effort. But even in man God does much without his help. He calls. He stirs up conscience. He gives flashes of light to the most darkened heart. He softens by the hand of sorrow, and rebukes with the stripes of affliction. Memory, human affection, hope, ambition are all made means by the Holy Ghost to urge men to holiness. The ministry of goodness in others is so directed as to point multitudes to the way of the cross. But this will not provide the one thing needful. Instruction, clear views of the truth, belief in the facts of God's love and grace, admiration of salvation in other lives, even the desire to declare the gospel may all be present and yet the soul be dead. Dead in trespasses and sins, cursed, bound and corrupted by dead works. Just as the noblest and highest efforts of man towards his own salvation without the cooperating, life-giving work of God can result only in confusion and death. So the most powerful, gracious, long-suffering and tender yearnings in work of God for man's salvation without the cooperating will of man can result only in distress, disappointment, and death. Are you dead? Are you in either of these classes? Are you relying on God's mercy, waiting for some strange visitation from on high, depending with a faith which is merely of the mind upon some past work of Christ, but without the vital power of his mighty life in you? Filled with desires that are not realized, offering prayers that are not answered, striving at times to work out a law of goodness which you feel all the time is an impossibility for you? Living, so to speak, out of your element, like a fish out of water, that is death. Or are you, on the other hand, depending for salvation on your own labor to build up a good character and to live a decent, honorable, and honest life? Conscious of advance, but not of victory. The servant of a high ideal, but without liberty? The devotee of your own self? All the powers and qualities of your nature growing towards maturity except the powers of your soul. The casket, as life goes on, growing more and more adorned while the eternal spirit, the priceless jewel made to receive the likeness of God and enjoy him for ever, seems ever of less and less worth to you? That also is death. The man who is in either class is dead while he lives. He is a walking mortuary. CHAPTER XII OF OUR MASTER THOUGHTS FOR SALVATIONIST ABOUT THEIR LORD. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Hirsch. OUR MASTER THOUGHTS FOR SALVATIONIST ABOUT THEIR LORD BY BRAHMWELL BOOTH. CHAPTER XII. SELF-DENIAL. IF ANY MAN WILL COME AFTER ME, LET HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS AND FOLLOW ME. MATHEW 1624. It is a striking thought that self-denial is, perhaps, the only service that a man can render to God without the aid or cooperation of something or someone outside himself. No matter what he does, unless it be to pray, which would hardly be included in the idea of service, he is more or less dependent upon either the assistance or presence of others. If, for example, he speaks or sings for God, whether in public or in private, he must have hearers. If he writes, it is that he may have readers. If he teaches, he needs scholars. If he distributes gifts, there must be receivers of his charity. If he leads souls to Christ, these souls must be willing to come. If he suffers persecution, there must be persecutors. Or if, like Stephen, he is called to die for his Lord, there must be those who stone him and others who stand by consenting to his death. A few moments' consideration will, I think, also show that even in the sphere of our personal spiritual experience it is very much the same. We can, after all, do but little for ourselves. Salvation comes to men through human instrumentality and seldom apart from it. We are, I know, saved by faith. But how shall we believe unless we hear? And how shall we hear without a preacher? That instruction on the things of God, which is a necessity for every true child of God, comes almost invariably by the agency or through the experiences of others. The joy and consolation of fellowship can only be the result of communion with the saints. In spiritual things, as in ordinary affairs, it is the countenance of his friend which quickens and brightens the tired toiler as iron-sharpeneth iron. And though it is true that God can and often does wonderfully teach and inspire his people without the direct aid of any human agent, it is equally true that he generally does so by the employment of his word which he has revealed to men or by the recalling of some message which has already been received into the mind and heart. Where does this in the least detract from our absolute dependence upon him? The man who crosses the Atlantic in a steamship is no less dependent on the sea because he employs the vessel for his journey. We are no less dependent upon the earth for our sustenance because we only partake of the wheat after it has been ground into flour and made into bread. And so we are no less dependent upon God because he has been pleased to employ various humble and simple instruments to save and teach and guide us. After full allowance has been made for the power and influence of intervening agencies, it is in him we really live and move and have our being. But I return to my first word. There is one kind of service open to all, irrespective of circumstances and gifts, which can be rendered to God without the intervention of anyone. In this we may truly call self-denial. Much that quite properly comes under that description need never, probably will never, be known to anyone but God. It may be a holy sacrament indeed, kept between the soul and its Lord alone. 1. There is the denial of all that remains of evil in us. How many sincere souls, when they look into their own hearts, find to their horror evil in them where they least expected it? Find them part stone, when they should be all flesh. Find them bound to earth and the love of earthly things, when they should be free from the world and the love of the world. Find them occupied, alas, so often with idols and heartlusts, when God alone ought to rule and reign. Here is a sphere for self-denial. Here is a service to be rendered to God, which will be very acceptable to him, in which you alone can perform. And if you with thus deny yourself, then examine yourself. Study the evils of your own nature. Recognize sin. Call it by its right name when you speak of it in the solitude of your own heart. If there are the remains of the deadly poison in you, say so to God, and keep on saying so with holy importunity. Pass your sins, attack them as the farmer attacks the poison plant among his crops, or the worms and flies which will blight his harvest, in which, unless he can ruin them, he knows full well will ruin him. That is the perfect self-denial. To cut off the right hand, and to pluck out and cast away what is dear as the right eye, if it offend against the law of purity and truth and love. But you yourself are to do it. Do not say you cannot, for you alone can. If you would be his disciple, his holy, loving, pure, worthy disciple, you must deny yourself. Cry to him for help as much as you will. You cannot cry too often or too long. But you must do more than that. You must arise and deny your own selfish nature. Pinch and harass and refuse your own inward sins, and expose them to the light of God. Confess them without ceasing, mortify them without mercy, and slay them and give no quarter. Say and say in earnest, O how I hate these lusts of mine that crucified my God. These sins that pierced and nailed his flesh fast to the fatal wood. Yes, my redeemer, they shall die. My soul has so decreed, I will not longer spare the things that made my Savior bleed. Whilst with a melting broken heart my murdered Lord I view, I'll raise revenge against my sins and slay the murderers too. Too! There are denials of the will. Human nature is a collection of likes and dislikes. The great mass of men are governed by their preferences. What they like, they strive after. What they do not like, they neglect, or refuse, or resist. Many of these preferences, though not harmful in themselves, lead continually to that subjection of the will to self-interest, and help that self-satisfaction and self-love, which are the deadly enemies of the soul. Now true self-denial is the denial for Christ's sake and the sake of souls of these preferences. To say to God, I sacrifice my way for thy way, my wish for thy wish, my will for thy will, my plan for thy plan, my life for thy life. This is self-denial. Nothing can be more acceptable to a good father's heart than the knowledge that his son, living and laboring far away from him amid difficulties and opposition, is courageously sacrificing his own preferences, and faithfully seeking to carry out his, the father's, will. In such a son, that father sees a reproduction of all that is strongest and best in his own nature. And so it is with the heavenly father. No greater joy can be his than to see the resolute surrender of his children's own will to his, and the daily denial of their hopes and plans for themselves and theirs in favor of his plans. 3. There are denials of the affections. The precious things of earth, the mother's tender care, the father's faith and prayer, from thee have birth. And just because love is of such high origin and is the greatest power in human life, it is often captured and held by the devil as his last stronghold against God. The heart is at once the strongest and the most sensitive part of our nature, and it is here, therefore, that we often find the most blessed and profitable opportunities for self-denial. That pleasant companionship, so grateful, so fruitful of joy, and yet so likely to tempt me from the path of faithful service, Lord, I deny myself of it. That mastering affection for wife, or husband, or children, so beautiful in its strength and simplicity, and yet so exacting in its claims, Lord, I deny myself of the abandonment to which it invites me. I put it in its proper place, second to thee, and to the work thou hast given me to do. That love of home and friends and circle, which is so powerful a factor in life, and enters so constantly into all the arrangements and details of our conduct, influencing so largely all real plans for doing God's work. Lord, I will deny it when it is in danger of lessening my labours for thee and thy kingdom. The pleasant hour, the quiet evening, the restful book. I will lay them at thy feet for thy sake when they hinder me doing thy will. It is between me and thee alone. It is the sacrifice of love. How precious it must be to God to see such self-denial. When the true lover sees the woman he has chosen, leaving all for his sake, calmly laying down the love of father and family, and even braving the rebuffs and unkindnesses of those from whom before she has known nothing but affection, in order that she may give him her whole heart and life, how strong become the cords which bind him to her. Every sacrifice she makes for his sake forges another bond which will not easily be broken. Then is the Lord a man that he should be behind us in loving, within everlasting love, those who thus give up and deny their own loves for him? No, a thousand times no. He will repay. Every self-denial is a seedling rich with future joys, for it is indeed true that he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will give him the morning star. For there are denials with reference to our gifts. Look not, says the apostle, every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. That is, even in the exercise of his choicest gifts and graces, let a man forget his own in his desire to employ and bring forward the gifts of others. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in the lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. That is, in your own mind take a humble view of yourself, your own powers and your own worthiness, and hold your comrades in higher esteem than you hold yourself, in honor preferring one another to yourself. That would be a very real self-denial to some people. Recompense to no man evil for evil, though you know he well deserves it. Avenge not yourselves. If thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. That is, deny yourself of your own joys, that you may enter into the sorrow of others, and lay aside your own sorrows and tears, and silence your own breaking heart, when you can help others by entering with joy into their joys. You will see, beloved, that all this is work which no one can do for you, and that it is in a very true sense high service to God as well as to man. How then is it with you? Are you a self-denying disciple? If not, beware, lest it should shortly appear that you are not a disciple at all. CHAPTER XIII. And while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were holding that they should not know him. Luke chapter 24 verses 15 and 16. 1. The Knifegrinder. The only person in the house except for the man and his wife was a young domestic servant, a soldier of the Salvation Army. Her employers were generally drinking, when they were not asleep. And the drinking led to the most dreadful quarreling. Disgusting orgies of one kind or another were of almost daily occurrence and such. Visitors as came to the house only added fuel to the fiery furnace of passion and frenzy through which the girl was called to walk. Since that happy Sunday afternoon, two years ago, when she gave herself to God in the wholesome village from which she came, the meetings and the opportunity given her by the army, of doing some work for other souls had been a bright light in her life. Little by little religion had come to have for her something of the same meaning it had for St. Paul. Though I fear she knew very little of St. Paul, or of the great and wise things he wrote, domestic service has seldom favourable to the study of the scriptures. But the same spirit which led the great apostle to confer not with flesh and blood, and which took him into Arabia before he went to Jerusalem, was leading this quiet country maiden to see that to be a follower of Christ means something more than to win a fleeting happiness in this life and a kind of pension in the next. She was beginning to understand that to be really Christ's means also to be a Christ, that to be his one must seek for the lost sheep for whom he died. And so Rhoda, I call her Rhoda, though that was not her name, when she found to what sort of people she had in her ignorance of the great city engaged herself, had set to work to seek their salvation. Many very good people would probably think that she would have been a wiser girl to have gone elsewhere, that the risks of such a position were very great and so on. No doubt. But the light of a great truth was rising in Rhoda's heart in mind. She perceived in her very danger an opportunity to prove her love for her Savior by risking something for the souls of those two besotted creatures for whom she dared to think he really died. And so day after day she toiled for them. Night after night she prayed for them. And in her sober moments the wreck of a woman hermistress wept loud in her slobbering way and talked to the days long, long ago, when she, too, believed in the things that are good. The first flush of novelty in the sense of doing an unselfish thing for God wore away, and presently Rhoda's real trial began. The drinking and fighting grew worse, and the difficulty of getting out to a meeting grew greater. Gradually the weary body robbed the struggling soul of its time to pray, and worst of all by slow degrees Rhoda's faith was shaken, for her prayers, her agonizing prayers, on behalf of those dark souls were only too manifestly not answered. Was it worth while after all troubling about sinners? Was it her affair? Why should she care? What use could it be to become an officer in order to seek the many if God did not hearken to her cry for the few? One day the captain of the court, which Rhoda Balon called, and seemed greed with her for neglecting the meetings. This was a heavy blow. She could not or would not explain, and when that night, in the midst of a drunken brawl her master struck her in the face, hard and flesh both failed, and she determined to say no more about salvation and to abandon all profession of religion. That night seemed long and dark, and when at last sleep came, the pillow was wet with tears of anguish, of anger and of pride. Scissors to mend, to mend, to mend, the monotonous calls of London hawkers for a strange mixture of sounds, at one moment attractive, at another repelling, they are perhaps more like the cry of a bird in distress than anything else. Rhoda looked at her woodchopper as the knife grinder came nearer to the house, and as he passed, beckoned him and gave it to him. She made no remark. He was rough and grimy, and his torn coat gave him an appearance of misery, which his face rather belied. She was miserable enough, and made no reply to his cheery good morning. Presently the axe was sharpened, and the man brought it to the door. She paid him. Thank you, he said, and then, with kindly abruptness, excuse me, but I see you have been crying. Do you ever pray? And after a silence, God answers prayer, though he may not do it our way. He did it for me. I was a drunkard, but my mother's prayers are answered now, and I belong to the Salvation Army. Do you know any of them? Oh, they just live by prayer. Rhoda stood in silence, listening to the strange man, till she ceased to hear him, and looking at him till she ceased to see him. Another presence and another voice was there. It was the Christ. Rhoda was delivered. She is still fighting for souls, and loves most to do it, where Satan's seed is. But the knife grinder never knew. Two. A kiss. The heat and smell in the narrow slum were worse than usual. A hot Saturday night in midsummer is a bad time in the slums, and worse in the slum public houses. It was so on the night I speak of, in and out of the suffocating bar the dirty stream of humanity came and went. Men who had ceased long ago to be anything but beasts, women with tiny white children in their bony arms, boys and girls sipping the nafta of perdition, and talking the talk of fools, lewd and foul-mouthed women of the streets all hustled and jostled one another, and sang and swore and bandied horrid words with the bar men. And all the while they drank and drank and drank. The atmosphere grew thicker and thicker with the dust and tobacco smoke, and little by little the flaming gas jets burned up the oxygen till my midnight the place was all but unendurable. Among the last to go was a woman of the town, who betook herself with a bottle of whiskey to a low lodging-house hard by. There she drank and quartile with such vehemence that in the early hours of the morning the deputy, as the guardian of order is called in these houses, picked her up and threw her into the gutter outside. There amid the garbage from the costar monger's barrows, and the refuse of the town, this remnant of a ruined woman lay and a half drunk in doze, until the golden sunlight mounted over the city-houses and pierced the sultry gloom on the sabbath morning. Another woman chanced that way, young, beautiful, like-in-form in spirit, and touched with the far-offness of many who walk with Christ. She hastened to the early Sunday morning service there to join her prayers with others, seeking strength to win the souls of men. What is that? She asked her friend as they passed. That replied the other as a drunken woman, unclean and outcast. In a moment the salvationist knelt upon the stones and kissed the battered face of the poor wanderer. Who is that? What did you do? said the Magdalene. Why did you kiss me? Nobody ever kissed me since my mother died. It was the Christ. That kiss won a heart to him. Three. A promotion. Henry James was coming rapidly in his employer's favour. Thoughtful, obliging, attentive to details, anxious to please, and above all, thoroughly reliable in word indeed he was a first-class servant, an exemplary salvationist. In the court at which he belonged he stood high in the esteem both of the local officers and the soldiers. And there was no more welcome speaker in the open air or more successful fisher in the centre's meetings than young James. The question of his future was beginning to occupy a good deal of attention. Aught he to offer himself for officership in the army? He was very far from decided either one way or the other, when one evening at the close of business his master sent for him. He expressed his pleasure at the progress James was making and offered him a greatly improved position. The mangership of a branch establishment was certain privileges as to ours, an immediate and considerable advance in salary and the prospect of a still more profitable position in the future. There was really only one condition required of him. He must live in premises adjoining the new venture and he must not come to and fro in the uniform of the army. His employers had a high esteem for the salvation army. It was a noble work and their opinion of it had risen since they had employed one or two of its soldiers. But business was business and the uniform going in and out would not help business and so forth. The young man hesitated and to the senior partner's surprise asked for a week to consider. During the week there were consultations with almost everyone he knew. The majority of his own friends had decidedly accept. A few salvationists of the weaker sort said yes take it you will in the end be able to do more for God and give the army more time, more money, more influence. On the other hand the captain and the older local officers answered no. It is a compromise of principle. The uniform is only the symbol of out and out testimony for Christ. You put it on in a holy covenant with him. You cannot take it off especially for your own advantage without breaking that covenant, don't. James promised himself quite sincerely no doubt that it should not be so with him and on the appointed day informed the firm that he accepted their proposal. The new enterprise was a success. Everything turned out better than was expected. At the end of six months the new manager received a cordial letter of thanks from the firm and a hint to further developments. But Henry James was an unhappy man. He had gained so much that he was always asking himself how it came about, that he seemed to have lost so much more, position, prospects, opportunity, money. These were all enhanced, and yet he went everywhere with a sense of loss, burdened with the consciousness of having parted with more than he had received in return. As a man of business, the impression at first took the form of a business estimate in his mind. Yes, that was it. He had secured a high, a very high price, that evening in the counting-house when the partners waited for his answer. He had parted with something he had, in fact sold something. It was the Christ. It proved a ruinous transaction. End of CHAPTER XIII our master thoughts for salvationists about their Lord. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Hirsch. Our Master Thoughts for Salvationists About Their Lord by Bremwell Booth CHAPTER XIV Ever the Same A New Year's greeting. Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever, for wisdom and might are his. And he changes the times and the seasons. CHAPTER II VS. 20 & 21 I am the Lord. I change not. Malachi III V6 He changes the time and the seasons. What a beautiful thought it is. Instead of the hard compulsion of some inexorable and unchanging law, fixing summer where it must, and planting winter in our midst whether it be well or ill. Here is the sweet assurance that the seasons change at his command, and that the winds and the waves obey him. It is not some abstract and unknowable force taking no account of us and ours, with whom we have to do, but a living and ruling father. He who maketh small the drops of water that pour down rain. He who shuts up the sea with doors, and says, Here shall thy proud waves be stayed. He who maketh the south winds to blow, and by whose breath the frost is given. He who teaches the swallow to know the time of her coming, and has made both summer and winter, and the day and the night his servants. He is our Father. How precious it is to feel that our times are in his hands, and to know that whether the year be young or old, he will fill it with mercy and crown it with loving kindness. Do not be deceived by the modern talk about the laws of nature, into forgetting that they are the laws ordained by your Father for the fulfillment of his will. Every day that dawns is as truly God's day as was the first one. Every night that draws its sable mantle over a silent world sets a seal to the knowledge of God whom maketh the darkness. Behind the mighty forces and the ceaseless activities around us stands the sovereign of them all, the hand of him who never slumbers is on the levers. The earth is the Lord's, and his chosen portion is his people. And when he changes the times and the seasons, he fits the one to the other. It is with some such thoughts as these that I send out a brief New Year's greeting to my friends. I wish them a Happy New Year, because I feel that God has sent it, that he wills it to be a Happy New Year, a Good Year, that in all the changes it may bring, he will be planning with highest benevolence for their truest welfare. Whether therefore it holds for them sorrow or joy, it will be a year of mercy, a year of grace, a year of love. Blessed be God for ever and ever, for wisdom and might are his. He revealeth the deep and secret things. He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him. Let us then go forward in fear not. Man material changes. All things that touch the life of man are marked for change. As knowledge advances and men come nearer to the secrets of the world in which they live, they find how true indeed it is that man is but a shadow dwelling in a world of shadows. Everything is changing. Everything but God. The sun, the astronomers tell us, is burning itself away. The mountains, say the geologists, are not so high as they once were. Their lofty summits are sliding down their sides year by year. The everlasting hills are only everlasting in a figure, for they too are crumbling day by day. The hardest rocks are softening into soil every season, and we are actually eating them up in our daily bread. The hills are shadows, and they flow from form to form, and nothing stands. They melt like mists, the solid lands. Like clouds they shape themselves and go. The great ocean currents are changing. Most regions of the earth's surface are being changed with them, and time is writing wrinkles on the whole world and all that is therein. But above it all I see one standing, my unchanging God. Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest, and they shall all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vestured shall thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. What a contrast there is between the worker and his work, between the creator and the creature. We see it in a thousand things, but in none is it so manifest for the wafering man or written so large upon the fading draperies of time as in this. They shall perish, but thou remainest. And greater changes yet seem to lie ahead. A universal instinct points to the time of the restitution of all things. The whole creation growneth and travaileth in pain together waiting, and it has been a long weary waiting for deliverance. But the day of the Lord will come, as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. And his vision John saw, as it were, a picture of that final change. Lo, he says, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair. It looks as though the wise men who say it will burn itself out are right. And the moon became as blood, and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind, and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. What a combination of astounding catastrophes is here. Earth and stars are to meet in awful shock, sun and moon to fail, cloud and sky to disappear. The elements to melt with fervent heat, a world on fire. But above it all, the lamb that was slain will take his place upon the throne, unmoved, unchanged, amidst the tumult of dissolving worlds. My God, my Savior, in thine unchanging love I put my trust. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are my glorious dress. Its flaming worlds in these arrayed with joy shall I lift up my head. Two, changes of association. But far reaching, as are the changes in our material surroundings, those with which we have to battle in our personal associations, are often as great, and are often much more painful. Indeed, man himself is the most changeable thing in all man's world. It is not merely that our companions and friends and loved ones die, the wind passeth over them and they are gone, and the dear places that knew them know them no more. It is not merely this, nor is it that their circumstances change, that wealth becomes penury, that health is changed to weakness and suffering, and youth to age and decay. It is not merely this, but it is that they change. The ardour of near friendship grows cold and fades away, the trust which once knew no limitations is narrowed down, and, by and by, walled in with doubts and fears. The comrade ship, which was so sweet and strong and quickened us to great deeds as iron sharpeneth iron, is changed for other companionships. The love, which seems so deep and true and was ready to look on tempests for us, becomes but a name and a memory, even if it does not change into a well of bitter waters in our lives. This fact of human mutability, this inherent changeableness in man, is the key to many of the darkest chapters of the world's history. The prodigal, the traitor, the vowbreaker, these have ever been far more fruitful sources of anguish and misery than the lifelong rebel and lawbreaker. The psalmist touches the inner springs of sorrow when he says, all that hate me whisper together against me, yea, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. No one who has once read it can forget that revelation of the pent-up shame and agony in David's heart, which was voiced in his cry, O my son Absalom, my son my son Absalom, and God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son my son. The human heart probably fell to its lowest depth of ingratitude and sin, when poor Judas chained sides and sold his lord. What a change it was, alas, alas, what a quagmire of uncertainties and shifting sand unsanctified human nature must be, nay, is. I suppose that few of us have escaped some sorrowful experiences of this kind, even to those who have not tasted the fruits of human fickleness in the great affairs of Christ's kingdom. There has generally come some share of it into the more private relationships of life, in the home, in the family, or in the circle of friendship or comradeship, we have had to lament the failure of many tender hopes. But blessed be the name of our God, who knoweth what is in the darkness, amidst the changing scenes we have found one comfort, above the strife of tongues, and over the stormy seas of sorrow when, as Job said, even our kinsfolk have failed, and our familiar friends have forgotten this. There is born to us the voice of one who sticketh closer than a brother, saying, I am the Lord. I change not. With me there is no variableness, neither the shadow of turning. I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. The more men change, the sureer God will be. The more they forget, the more he will remember. The further they withdraw, the nearer he will come. Three personal changes. And we ourselves change also. As the years fly past, the most notable fact about us, perhaps, is the changes that are going on in our own experiences. Our habits, our thoughts, our hopes, our conduct, our character. How much there was about us only a few years ago, which has changed in the interval, nay, how much has grown different even since last New Year's Day. Indeed, might we not say of a great deal in us, which today is, that tomorrow it will be cast away forever. Have you, my friend, not had to mourn over some strange changes? Has not your joy been often so quickly turned to sorrow, that you have wondered how you yourself could be the same person? Has not some trifling circumstance often seemed to cloud your sky for days, darkening all the great lights in your heaven, so that your whole past and present and future have seemed different to you, and you stood in the stupor of astonishment at the gloomy change? Has not your zeal for souls been subject to like-strange and unaccountable changes, so that the work you once thought impossible you have found easy, or the work you once delighted in you now find hard, difficult, and barren? Has not your freedom in prayer and your desire for it wavered between this and that until you have not known what to think of yourself? Has not your perception of duty and your devotion to it at one time clear and strong become at another so dim and feeble, that you have been utterly ashamed of your wobbling and cowardice, and amazed at your failure? And most sorrowful of all, has not your love for your God and Savior been up and down, shamefully down, so that when you have afterwards reflected on your coldness towards Him and His cause, you have been covered with confusion and astonishment at the fickleness of your own heart? And more than this, how great are the changes wrought in us by the curbing influence of time, how much that in youth and early manhood we meant to do, and could do, and did do, us to be laid down or left to others as our years approached the limits of their pilgrimage? I have known some men who, for this reason alone, did not desire to live beyond the years of strength and vigor, they preferred to cease at once to work and live. The loss by death or disappointments worse than death of our friends and dear ones, but changes this also works. Unconsciously, men narrowed the sphere of their sympathies. The mainspring of life, love, grows slowly rusty for want of use, and from some hearts that were once true fountains of joy to those around them, the living water almost ceases to flow. Some in fault-finding and censoriousness too often take the place of generous labor for the welfare of the world. This may, no doubt, arise in part from the natural desires that others should profit by our past experiences, which renders us the more observant of their conduct the more we love. But no matter what the cause, certainly it is that within and without all seems to change. Is it not, then, a joy unspeakable that, amidst all this, whether we are or are not fully alive to the weakness and variableness and deceitfulness of our own hearts, we can look up to the rock that changes not? In the darkest hour of disappointment with ourselves, in the depths of that miserable aftermath of sorrow and failure which follows all pride and foolish self-assertion, in the mirey pit of condemnation and guilt in which sin always leaves the sinner, we can look up to him whose power, whose grace, whose love is ever the same. Do you really believe it? There is a great hope in it for you, if you do, high above all your changes, high above all the storms and disappointments that belong to them, high above all the wretched failure and doubting of the do the best I can life you are living. He lives to bless, to save, to uplift, to keep. Unnumbered multitudes fighting the way to him in spite of the timidities and wobblings, the could'ns and would'ns of their own nature have proved him the faithful and unchanging God. Will not you? End of Our Master Thoughts for Salvationists About Their Lord by Bramwell Booth