The subject I desire to bring before you tonight is - The effect that the knowledge of the Lord's presence in the assembly has upon us in private life; the outside, as the result of the wonderful place we have inside.
Inside we are priests of God, and thus are fit for the presence of the Lord in moral correspondence with Himself enjoying His presence. All are called to this, and all are provided with the priestly dress, though I do not know that everyone wears it; still, every one is provided by divine grace with a priestly dress as much as with his salvation. When we are soiled outside, in this world, He washes our feet that we may have part with Him where He is. If you see that all your intimacy with Christ depends on this, that there is no sense of soil upon you, then it necessarily will oblige you that you should not do anything in which you would contract a soil. And you will always find a person who is most sensible that he is free from soil is the one who is most watchful against it. The more one is sensible of the cloudless position in which his washed feet place him in company with the Lord, the more he shrinks from everything that would make him lose this great gain. It is not that one loses the sense of His love; you get that very well exemplified in Peter, in John 21. Peter had no fear of the Lord; when he heard it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat about him and cast himself into the sea to go to Him. I know Him, he says. Yes, Peter; but you are not in communion with Him. People often think, that because they have love for the Lord, they are all right; but love is not communion. Peter's feet were not washed until after they had dined; then he is restored to communion. In one sense we can never lose what the Lord is to us - that is beautiful in Peter - but we can lose communion. But I am not showing that now, I merely allude to the necessity of being free from every soil in order to enjoy the Lord's presence: and because you enjoy His presence, you are found separate from everything that would deprive you of the enjoyment of it; not only when you are gathered to His presence, but everywhere. In one sense, you are never out of His presence. In the Old Testament you get in type what we are; the priest inside, and the Levite outside. I want now to show the effect of being a priest in company with the Minister of the holy places.
The Lord does not give us so great a thing as His presence without giving marks of it - what I may call the guard. The Lord could not give us His presence without some distinct marks to confirm it. Now let us look at the effect of His presence. One might say, Will it have an effect on my private life? Assuredly it will. Mark this scripture, Luke 14: 33, "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple". It is not a question of salvation here. You cannot go farther than to hate your own life. It is a great point to know what to start with. I think it cannot but strike one in this passage how the Lord turns to the multitude, and how He sets forth all the difficulties in their way. He tells them the course they are to follow; and it is a very difficult course. He seems almost to check them; "There went great multitudes with him: and he turned and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. "And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple", verses 26-27.
As much as to say, Do you understand what you are to do? I ask the youngest in this room, What are you going to start with? Because it is a great thing to get a good start. What are you going to start with? With this: that you must forsake all that you have, or you cannot be His disciple. The point in this chapter is, that you are apart from everything but Christ. "Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple". You undertake everything on new ground. "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed". Transformed, not reformed. You are to fulfil the ordinances of God in which He has placed you, but you are to derive from Christ; you are to live Christ; you will fulfil all your relations in life far better; nothing on the old ground at all. "Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither good for the land, nor yet for the dunghill". Israel was the salt, but it had lost its savour. I want to lay upon your heart the entire newness of the life into which you are brought. You can neither be a tower nor an army, but as Christ is in you, for nothing else will stand.
I read this scripture because I want to lead your heart to understand - the Lord grant that each of us may understand it - as belonging to Christ, as those who know what it is to be gathered to His name - the wonderful sanctity of that position, what our individual course should be, that which is commonly called "private life". Here I get the great principle laid down, and it is absolute; but as the Lord said to Peter, there is no one who has given up these things for His sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time. Well, it is a great thing to begin with being a disciple of Christ. If I were dwelling on service, I might go a step farther and show you that you are Christ's slave and have no claim to anything whatever. A slave has no claim to anything, not to his family, property, his own life, or anything else; he belongs wholly to his master. Now I turn to the passage in Numbers 8.
"And I have taken the Levites for all the firstborn of the children of Israel. And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and to his sons from among the children of Israel, to do the service of the children of Israel in the tabernacle of the congregation, and to make an atonement for the children of Israel: that there be no plague among the children of Israel, when the children of Israel come nigh unto the sanctuary". I have read this to show that the Levites were given to the priests. I do not dwell upon it, but I desire to press that the priest's work was inside, while the Levite's work was outside - not a difficult thing to remember. The priests had to do with the inside, with God; the Levites with the outside, and they were given as a gift to Aaron and his sons. Keep this definitely before your minds. We are both priests and Levites. You see them distinct from each other in the type, but in the antitype they are united. The Levite had nothing to do but in connection with the priests. The Levites were given to the priests, and the Levites were taken instead of the firstborn who represent the assembly. This we cannot doubt. In Hebrews 12, we are called the assembly of the firstborn ones - as it should be read, it is plural - so that our proper aspect on the earth is as Levites; that is, we are Levites outside, answering to the priesthood inside, in the presence of God. That is our proper character here. I suppose all in this room will admit that we are priests, priests in the sanctuary; no one could escape seeing that we are the holy Priesthood, the consecrated company, the companions of our Lord Jesus Christ! Do you admit that this is your great dignity? You say, Yes. And do you enjoy it? Yes. Then what sort of a person are you outside? I am a Levite. Right, and what is the Levite?
The Levite is occupied with that which concerns God on earth, the heavenly kingdom. I hope you understand it, for it is a matter of great moment. Christendom has got out of the difficulty by making two classes, clergy and laity. There are things that a layman may do that a clergyman must not do, he must not soil his cloth, but where is the scripture for that? I say we are all priests, and we must not - any of us - soil our cloth. If you understand the dignity of your position in the sanctuary, how can you depart from the dignity outside? The atmosphere and circumstances are painfully different, but you are not to be different. What you are in the presence of God, you are to maintain here; in all the contrariety of this world, you are to be in correspondence to that. You are to manifest the same divine beauty in the antagonistic circumstances. One would suppose that a man could have two faces, one for Sunday and another for Monday; that at one time you could be ecclesiastical, and at another time secular. Perhaps you say, Oh well, I have my business to do. So our blessed Lord had, but He carried the heavenly grace into the workshop; He never left heaven. There is nothing more destructive than for a person to say, he can depart from his dignity when he comes outside, while he admits the greatness of his dignity inside.
But someone may say, I never enjoyed it. Perhaps not; but if you never enjoyed the dignity, how could you enjoy His presence? You could not enjoy it, nor He yours. "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me". I want to insist on this - and every upright person in this assembly or any other, will say, That must be true - that if we have the dignity inside with God, we could not forego nor compromise it, nor diverge from it in this world of contrariety. You are of the light, and you must be the light in the darkness as well as in the light; like a diver in a diving bell, he is in an element contrary to him. You may be hindered, baffled in a thousand ways, but you could not compromise what you are before God. That is the Levite. The Levites represent the service that is rendered by the priestly company. Ask a Levite, what is your business here? He would answer, The tabernacle. I think we must all see, that what concerns the heavenly service of our Lord Jesus Christ is our paramount interest upon this earth; we all should be occupied with it in some way. One may carry the boards and another the pins, and so on, but all was a representation of the heavenly order; and now we are to set forth the heavenly Man on earth. Your business, your paramount business is to set forth the beauty of the heavenly Christ on earth. That is the Levitical service, if you have not been inside you will not know how to do it. The priest is inside and the Levite outside to do a different work, but he is not to be a different person. The same divine beauty is to be manifested. See a fine horse drawing a royal carriage, well, put him to a cart, and you find he is the same horse still. Does he change? Is he a splendid horse drawing a carriage and a worthless one with a cart? Why, you know it would be unnatural - that it could not be. The very creation would put us to shame.
Take a canary singing up there in the wide expanse of the firmament, put it in a cottage, would it not sing the same note? Would it have the song of a canary one day and the chirp of a sparrow the next? That would be unnatural, and so is the other. Christendom has got out of the difficulty by dividing the Christians into two classes, but this helps my argument. If you insist that a clergyman in private life should be there in the dignity of his position before God, you have supplied me with a true argument. Do you say, Must we have no secular business at all? My answer is, The Lord had one and so had Paul. "These hands", said he, "have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have showed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak". He had a very good business at Ephesus; at Thessalonica business was very bad; but business was not the thing that was prominent with him. He was here for the Lord; and I put it to every one of you, if the Lord were to ask you, What would you like best down here? Would the response of every heart be, that I might be here for you: not what you might do, but that you might be for Him. It is sentimental that a man cannot go on with divine things, because he has a secular employment, and contrary to all Scripture. What a sight for the angels - Jesus, a carpenter! And I am quite prepared to say that the apostle Paul went about the making of tents cheerfully; and without a soil on his conscience went from making the tents into the sanctuary, and that he did not lose the sense of his priesthood because of his making tents. Do you say that you cannot have a secular calling because you are called into the very highest dignity of association with the Lord?
You may have to shorten sail, and to lose a great deal that you might have; that is all right. Toil never does anybody harm, it is care that does the mischief. The raven is one of the busiest of birds, he toils all the day and sleeps all night; and the Lord says, "Consider the ravens". Take no thought. "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things". There is no use in taking thought, you cannot alter things, and what do you want with more than you can use? "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth". What then constitutes happiness? Joy in the Lord. Our hearts are brought down by labour. I do not object to a servant giving up secular work to devote all his time to the Lord's service, but I know that if he gives up his secular work and does not work as hard in the Lord's service as he did in his secular business, he is sure to come to grief. What I am insisting on must be plain to every one who thinks for a moment. If you say, I am in the highest dignity in the presence of God, you cannot come out and compromise that dignity among men. A truthful person cannot do it. A person may be grieved and worried like a man in a diving bell. He goes down, however, to do his master's work, though he does not like the element in which he works, for he lives from above, and when wearied and fatigued he rings the bell and comes up again. The characteristic of common nobility is that it is great in unsuited circumstances, displays itself in overcoming the difficulties.
I work down here in an element that does not suit me, but I belong to an element that does suit me. I dwell much on this because it is lost sight of. A person speaks of enjoying a meeting, but I say, Did you enjoy the presence of the Lord? It is the greatest dignity a man could enjoy. A great many are fed, and it is a marvellous provision, who are not really enjoying the presence of the Lord. Their feet are unwashed, therefore they cannot enjoy the Lord in His heavenly order. In the presence of the Lord you are morally in heaven, there is not a shade upon the conscience - "washed with pure water". The washing of the feet is to bring me into the sense of perfect fitness for Himself, so that I can be there without a single shade of reserve between Him and me. You say, It is too great. It is not too great for His heart, nor for any person who has ever tasted it; and if I have enjoyed that, the question is, How shall I act in private life? Why, I must correspond to my high dignity, I must not compromise it. Thus, there is a testimony to His name. I could point out to you some men called clergymen, who when they found out they were priests of God, gave up the surplice. They found out they were priests in common with all Christians. Again another, an officer in the army has discovered, not merely that he had salvation, but that he was one of the "holy priesthood" in the sphere of divine blessedness and peace, and he can be a soldier no longer. It is learning our dignity inside with God which has produced devotedness to Him outside; but I have no doubt that nothing has a greater effect upon other Christians than separation. I do not believe, beloved friends, that our exposition of truth has at all the effect upon people that separation has. Separation is what they cannot resist; that is what they see, it affects them.
Like Isaac in Gerar, he had to leave the place, the Philistines so annoyed him, and the very night he left, the Lord appeared to him! And what happened the next day? Abimelech came to him with his servants, and said, "We saw that God was with you". But when did they come to see that? When he was gone; when he had separated from them. As long as you stay in any doubtful circle, you may say what you like about it, but as soon as you leave it you condemn it. I ask you to judge everything you are engaged in by what your place is in relation to Christ in the holiest of all; judge everything by that. I will bring you Scripture to prove how you are affected. I turn first to Genesis 33, Jacob had come to Shechem and bought a bit of land there and settled down. He had an altar El-elohe Israel, but he was out of the course. As a gardener judges of the root of a tree by the leaf, so you can judge of the interior by the exterior; the defective external shows you are weak in your apprehension of your true place with God. You must start from your true place - a priest in company with the Lord. And if you carry that out, you cannot go and do this thing and the other thing. The fact is some sacrifice their place of dignity in order to carry on the lower sphere of natural interest here. Now look at Jacob; he is in the land, a religious man, he has his altar; he is connected with what people call the restoration of the truth. He says, I am on the ground, and I keep to the truth El-elohe Israel.
But I ask, what is your manner of life? Mixed up with the Shechemites. Ah! I see now where you are. Your external indicates your moral power. Do you think, that if a person is living in the enjoyment of association with Christ, that person could find himself at home with company morally lower than himself? Never. You never saw a person descend to lower company morally, that he was not declining. There is nothing which affects us more than having to do with one who is superior to ourselves, because it is association that forms our character. Now turn to Genesis 35: 1: "And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother". He must raise his standard; he is going now to different ground than El-elohe Israel. And what does he say to his household? "Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears: and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem", verses 2-4 On the low ground at Shechem he could tolerate a great many things, but now that he takes true ground for the Lord, he must be quite different in private life. It is a good criterion; the defect in private life has originated from a lack before God. Turn now to 1 Corinthians 6 to see what the loss is when a Christian does not maintain his true dignity.
I think many have a wrong conception altogether about our position on the earth. They are looking to get comfortable easy times here. I say, that is not what you are called to. No doubt you will be taken care of in "the inn", but it is in the inn the man was taken care of, not in the world. The Lord does not say his expenses were paid outside the inn. There is no question that you will be taken care of, but I ask you to consider the elevated position that you occupy on this earth, as priests of the Lord, ministers before God; and going through this world with the joys of heaven, an everlasting portion, the countenance and favour of your Lord, are you willing to put up with very small commons here? If you are not, you lose the greater for the lesser. Now let us look at 1 Corinthians 6. It is very evident that the Corinthians had declined from their true dignity; they had lost the sense of being suitable for the Lord's presence.
Nothing can be plainer than that if we are to come into the presence of the Holy One, we must be holy; and the consecrated priest is the only one who is in the holy places; we must be in moral correspondence with Him in order to be in His company. You must be in priestly trim to know the Lord in the midst of His own. But if you are not so while you assume to be, then you will be sure to betray yourself in private life; there you are found out. You fail in private life because you are not morally in your true dignity before God. Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good. It is a great principle that you are externally the reflection of what you are morally, as in Luke 11: 36. There the Lord says, "If the whole body therefore be light, having no part dark, the whole shall be light". What stops the light from coming out? Something inside. If there were no part dark, the whole should be light, as when the bright shining of a candle gives its glare. The failure is outside, and the outside betrays the inside. You find the same principle in the Old Testament, "He setteth himself in a way that is not good", that is, the outside manner; "he abhorreth not evil", that is inside. Of course, there may be the putting on of a false appearance; that is, only spiritual affectation; and the one who attempts it is exposed when he least expects it, like a bird with borrowed feathers. In 1 Corinthians 5 we find the saints very low in the house of God, they were indifferent to what was suitable to the Lord; but what are they outside? What are they in public, in the face of the world? They are revealed; they sought to enforce their rights against their own brother, even before an ungodly court. That is what the Corinthians were. Most highly gifted, most highly favoured; but there was not a circle in society in which they were not a scandal. Why? Because they were a scandal in the highest, and if you are a scandal in the first, be sure you are a scandal in every one. The apostle says, "Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust?"
This occurs unblushingly every day of the week now, amongst those who call themselves Christians. I judge from their low state that they do not enjoy the Lord's presence. I dare say some would not think it a nice thing for a clergyman to do, but for an ordinary Christian nothing amiss. I am only showing what are the consequences of assuming to be in the Lord's presence, without the power of it. If you are not truly there you will betray yourself. You cannot make a pony into a horse; but I insist on this, that the horse under a carriage is the same horse when under a cart. If he is a fine, well-stepped, good-tempered horse under a carriage, he will be exactly the same under a cart. Are you to change because you are in adverse circumstances? A great man ennobles the lowest circumstances. In the common details of daily life, I am to manifest the power and beauty of the heavenly Man. "I can do all things through him who gives me power". I derive entirely from Him. "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me". Trying circumstances are the very opportunity for you to display the greatness of His grace. When Abraham had been met by Melchisedec, he did not fall back to Abraham a stranger in the land. No; he had been blessed in the name of the Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth, and he said, I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet. Oh! I say, How soon you carry out your new dignity. Beloved friends, if you enjoy your dignity, it is impossible not to carry it out; you would be inconsistent with yourself. No one who enjoyed his great dignity in the presence of the Lord could come out into the world and compromise that dignity - become another person here, without deep shame and remorse. If it were otherwise, it would be a proof that the dignity had never been apprehended. Well, here then, in chapter 6 there is no testimony. Next, look at them in chapter 8: 11. Here we have another thing:
"And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died?" Now they are a hindrance to others; not only there is no testimony. You do not answer to your dignity, but also you damage others: you do not appear in your true character, and this is the deficiency of all Christians still in the world. They are not attired in the priestly garments. Perhaps you say, I never knew that I was a priest. This accounts for your morally undignified course. Like the Corinthians, you are not only no testimony, but actually a hindrance to your fellow-Christians. And that is not all, beloved friends, though bad enough. What about themselves? Turn now to 2 Corinthians 6: 17-18. Here we see that they were losers themselves because they did not live up to their dignity. When you are true to your priestly position, and touch not the unclean thing, the Lord abundantly, in a very marked way, shows His care for you. I could give you examples of this: for instance, a clergyman, having discovered his great dignity in the presence of the Lord, refuses man's ordination, and apparently loses all his means: God provides for him in a very remarkable way, and he proves the truth of these words: "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty". These Corinthians had lost what many a one in the world in trying circumstances has lost, the manifested care of Almighty God in his circumstances here on earth. Why? Because of their evil associations. And from what do I trace your evil associations? From this, that you do not understand the greatness of the sanctity that belongs to you as one of an assembly gathered to the Lord's name and His presence known to you. Many a man is like Samson grinding in the Philistine prison, because of his associations. Let us now look at the way every advance in light is proved in detail. You get the principle in Joshua 3.
The power that carries me over is the power that will enable me to overcome every power on earth. I can predicate that the power that carries me so high will necessarily carry me in complete superiority to all below it. The greater the light, the more it dispels the darkness; the greater it is, the more noticeable it is; therefore the more you are in the divine light, the farther and the wider you will shine down here in this world. We see it in our blessed Lord: knowing He had come from God and went to God, He could descend to wash the disciples' feet. He could touch everything and gild everything with the greatness of the light. If I dwell in the region of light, the power that carried me there, will also carry me into the region of darkness to shed forth the divine beauty of the light in all the details of daily life. If I have but little light, I shall manifest but little light. I will illustrate it for you in this way: bring a small candle into a dark room, and you find that it lights up a certain space; bring a larger one, and it lights a larger space; bring the greatest, and it clears away all the darkness. I will give three examples from Scripture; because, as I have said before, the principle I am dwelling on, and I trust you all receive it from the word, is that whatever you are in the presence of God is your true dignity, and that you cannot forego or lose sight of it anywhere, without grieving the Spirit. I do not like to bring it down to things of this world, but if a man has a certain elevation he would not give it up, if an honourable man, nor act inconsistently with it, wherever he might be. The first scripture I turn to is Romans 12: 1.
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service". Here is a man freed from the old taskmaster, the flesh, as we see in chapter 6, and the Lord is now his Master; one thing characterises him - his body is the Lord's. Then in verse 2, he is transformed, comes out in an entirely new fashion. "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God". In verse 4, the practice begins, and where it begins is important, it begins at what is nearest to the heart of Christ, the body. "As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then, gifts ...". The body is my first responsibility; necessarily it is. how can I be near the Lord, and the chief interest in His heart not be my first interest? As the Levite's business was the tabernacle, so here, you begin with what is nearest to Christ. This is the first light; it culminates in the last verse: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good". You do not assert your rights, you do not avenge yourself; but you overcome evil with good. That is a beautiful light. In the next chapter, such an one is subject to the powers that be, and owes no man anything but love. I am not a citizen, but I am a subject, and I do what I am ordered, and I "give honour to whom honour is due": I see a distinguished person, and I bow; I render to all their dues. That is a lovely character upon earth: set in righteousness here on the earth, your testimony before the world is that you overcome evil with good, you do not stand up for your rights, you obey the powers that be, and you owe no man anything but love. Finally, you cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light. That is as far as the first light goes. Thus you are a very estimable, peculiar, godly man upon this earth. That is Romans; but there is nothing as to details in the assembly, and in your own family: the light here does not reach them. Now turn to Colossians 3: 18-23.
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey your masters in all things according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men". See where you are. We have a much larger light here, and, consequently, we get details both as to the assembly and in the family. In Romans we do not get beyond the individual responsibility; there you come forth as one who knows what his place in Christ is, and you start with that which is nearest to Christ - his body. In Colossians we are across the Jordan, dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world; we are on for heaven now. Hence in chapter 3 we are told to "seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God". There is first the rolling away of the will and the habits of the old man, in order to put on the new, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him; while both among the saints, or in the assembly, and your own house, the effects of the increased light are very manifest. There is light enough to touch them all. The light is greater, and its influence consequently is greater. Turn now to the greatest things: Ephesians 4: 6-10. Anyone can see the advance in practice from the greatly increased light.
You are seated in the heavenlies, in confirmed association with Christ, and necessarily this affects us in every circle, from the assembly down to the slave in the household. The lowest link in this world knows the benefit of the wonderful moral height from which he comes. Not only is the highest service in the church enjoined, but a man is to love his wife, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. There is now the greatest light - the light from heaven. Hence, fathers are not to provoke their children to wrath; but to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The greater the moral height from which you come, the more the light, and it must come out in every detail down here. The canary sings its sweetest note in the expanse of the firmament, but it sings the very same note in the corner of the humblest cottage. In chapter 4 righteousness and holiness of truth characterise you, for you have put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
In chapter 5 you are the children of light; and as the children of light, your business is to love. You are lights in the world, and this fulfils what I have already said, your body is light. What is the meaning of the peculiar dress that some religious people adopt? It is to give an impression to those around them of the sanctity of their calling. That is Pharisaism. The way to have a body of light - moral weight, is to be so with the Lord - the Lord is the light, and the eye takes in the light - so to feed upon Him who is more than Jonah and more than Solomon, that you are controlled by the light, and you set forth in every detail here the beauty and the greatness of the light, in which, by divine grace, you are placed. The sum of all I have been saying is this, the more you know your dignity in the presence of God, the more it will come out in private life; it will produce separation and devotedness. What are the great characteristics of this period? Dependence upon God, and surrender. This is what you get in Luke 18. The more you ponder the subject, the more you will see the inconsistency of permitting that a saint may be one thing with God, and a different one with man. One may know little of it, but I cannot accept anything less.
If I go into the holiest, I know I am there without a spot; but when I come out into this world, I meet with an intense contrariety. As I am walking in the Spirit, I like to resist the contrariety; in divine sensibility, shrinking from this and that; it is all contrary to me. As I thus walk, I am in Christ's pathway here; He was always apart from the evil, while doing the good and seeking the blessing of all He met with. A person who comes from "a believers' meeting" merely, can go into worldly associations that he would shrink from, did he know what it is to be in the holiest, in company with the Lord Jesus Christ - the supreme blessedness of that holy association. The Lord grant that each of our hearts may be in such undisturbed enjoyment of our place with Him, so knowing His presence that we shrink from everything that would deprive us of the enjoyment of it, for His name's sake.
