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TA Higher Up
Religion - part 3
by
General William Booth
First published
in The War Cry, No. 12. -
March 13, 1880
Republished in ‘Holiness
Readings’,
1883.
How
Far Can I Be Saved?
This
is a question, as we have already intimated, of thrilling
interest to every really converted soul.
Hunger and thirst after all inward and outward
rightness with God and before Him is
natural to the spiritual man.
And the possibility of complete deliverance must,
whatever be his opinion, interest him, and deserve his most
careful attention.
Can I be saved
from sinning and from sin
here?
I know, you know,
we all know, that we shall have deliverance there, in the new
heavens and the new earth, but what about this very earth in
which we are compelled to live for the present, can I love God
with all my heart here in this town, in this house?
Aye, in this poor body, with all its aches, and pains,
and infirmities, with devils tempting me and men opposing me,
and the mighty work of winning souls to Jesus on my hands, is
it my Father’s good pleasure to give me NOW that inner hidden
kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost?
That is the question; and that is a question of
surpassing importance to every redeemed soul whose eyes shall
rest on this paper.
IT MEANS
HAPPINESS! Sin is
the great evil of your existence.
Perhaps you have thought other-wise.
The Devil’s great interest is to delude you by making
you feel that your happiness is dependent on your
circumstances. You
used to think so in an unsaved state.
You said then, if you could only secure some for or
other of earthly treasure you should be blessed.
And now, you say, with Christ
and something else
you will be happy.
Give me this or that and Jesus,
and it will be all right.
But it was not so then, and it is not so now.
God is your great good.
You were made to enjoy Him.
He, and He only, can fill and satisfy your soul.
Sin separated you from God before conversion, and now
sin dulls your senses and clouds your vision, and prevents God
manifesting Himself in all His glorious power within you.
Peter told the
Jews that God, having raised up His Son Jesus, had sent Him to
bless them. But
how? By destroying
the Roman yoke, and making them again a great, free, powerful
nation? No!
By the completion of their beautiful temple, and the
revival, in all its pomp and magnificence, of that temple’s
ritual and service?
No! By
sending them trade, and commerce, and plenty, and health, and
friendships, and all the desired relationships of family life?
No? How
then? Oh,
Hallelujah! By
turning every one of them away from his iniquities.
That was the Lord’s plan for making the Jews blessed;
but they would not have it, and rejected it and Him who
brought it, and the great bulk of them clung to their
iniquity, although it was the deadly poison which drank up
their life’s joy, and shut out from them the great Healer, and
Saviour, and Joy Giver, and died and were damned in it.
And so with you, dear reader.
God has sent Jesus to you on the same heavenly,
benevolent errand.
He comes to your heart to bless, and gladden, and satisfy; but
he comes to do it in this very way.
He cannot do it
in any other, and that is by turning you away from your
iniquities. They
are the asps whose venom poisons the springs of gladness in
your soul. He has
come to destroy them, the works of the devil,-all of them, big
and little; and the little-if any of them can with propriety
be so called-no less than the big; to destroy them root and
branch, fruit and flower, and leaves and branches, and stem
and root,-the whole Upas tree must go!
His mission to you,-His mission of mercy, and blood,
and sacrifice,-is to make and end-a complete end-of sin in
your soul. So
shall ye have a peace and abiding joy, and in no other way.
IT MEANS
USEFULNESS. You
want to be of some service to the Master, and to your
brethren, and to poor perishing sinners.
Very good.
This, too, is a never absent instinct of a divine nature.
To win souls to Christ, and to nurse and strengthen
them when they are won.
To be a saviour of men.
Hallelujah.
You are such in some measure already.
You have His Spirit, and are ever and anon about His
business. But you
are feeble and inconstant.
The fire burns low, and often seems ready to expire.
It take you almost all your time to keep yourself
saved. Well, you
want a higher up religion.
You need to be holy, because holiness means strength,
and faithfulness, and power.
It removes doubts by bringing in assurance of personal
salvation, and doubts, you know, mean always weakness; and it
also removes all the hindrances to perpetual indwelling of
Jehovah. As sin
goes out, God comes in; and with Christ fully dwelling in the
vessel, in the temple, in the body, you will be fully equipped
and qualifies for every good work.
Holiness means usefulness.
Come, then, let us pursue this interesting and
importance inquiry.
How far can God save from sin here?
And we are sure our readers will agree with us-at
least, we can only be satisfactorily answered by hearing what
the Lord says on the subject; and, having listened to the
Scriptures, you may then with propriety and advantage listen
to the testimony of those who boldly profess to have an
experience on the subject.
What says the
Word of the Lord?
What people say-whether they be learned or unlearned, official
or unofficial, or anything else-if they speak no in harmony
with the direct and plain teaching of the Word of God, they
speak not the truth on this subject, whatever they may do on
any other. And as
the opinions of other men are not our standard, neither are
their lives. If A
and B say I cannot be saved from sinning,-if they say I must
go on in unbelief, and unfaithfulness, and evil tempers, unto
the end of my earthly days; if they say I cannot love God with
all my heart, and be loyal with simple obedience to my
heavenly King,-I ask A and B for their authority; and if they
confess that, after some two or three disjointed,
misapprehended texts of Scripture, they rely upon the fact
that this unholy, inconsistent, spirit-grieving life is the
common confessed experience of the bulk of Christians, and
therefore nothing better is possible to me,
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I
reject their authority.
I won’t accept the backsliding experience of any number
of people as the standard of religious attainment for me.
It is not what men are, but what God wants them to be;
not what they actually possess and enjoy of purity, and peace,
and power, but what Christ, the blessed Christ, with his agony
and blood bought for them; what the Father freely offers, and
what the pleading, long-suffering Holy Spirit waits to bestow.
If I live at
Ephesus,
am I to conclude that it is impossible for me to keep my first
love with its self-consuming, soul-saving power?
or if my lot is cast in Laodicea, am I to teach that it
is the right and acceptable thing before God and men not to be
enthusiastic, not to be eaten up with the zeal of God’s house,
not to be burning hot; but to be miserable, contemptibly
lukewarm in His service?
Oh, my brethren,
my comrades in The Salvation Army, to you I write, Beware of
measuring yourselves with yourselves.
It is not wise.
Endless loss, and sorrow, and backsliding have been
caused by it,
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contenting ourselves with being as good as other people.
And yet many will do it, no matter how warned or
cautioned they may be; and therefore let us burry up to the
high levels of attainment, so that instead of dragging men
down to Ephesus and Laodicea we may life them up to Mount
Beulah, and draw them on to that blessed highway, the highway
of holiness.
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