(Continued from page 52.)

On page 43 of "The Three-fold Secret of the Spirit," Mr. McC. says :

"What then is the secret of Hi? fulness, of His abundant life of Peace, Power, and Love? We answer:THE ABSOLUTE UNQUALIFIED SURRENDER OF OUR LIFE TO GOD TO DO HIS WILL INSTEAD OF OUR OWN . . . when we surrender our lives and believe, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, . . . THE FULNESS of the Spirit is God's answer to SURRENDER and faith, . . . at SURRENDER the Spirit, already entered, fakes full possession. The supreme, human condition of the fulness of the Spirit is a life WHOLLY SURRENDERED to god to do His will.''

Also on page 15 of " The Surrendered Life:"

"What is the Surrendered Life? Or, rather, what is the act of surrender which opens the portals of the life of surrender, of consecration to God ? "

Then on page 16 :

"The word consecrate means 'to fill the hand.' Just as the Jewish worshiper tilled his hand with the best, richest, and choicest of his own, and brought it as an offering to the Lord, so is the redeemed child of God to offer himself to God as the highest expression of grateful worship he can possibly make to the Lord who has redeemed him."

There is much more of like import. But it is not necessary to quote more. In what we have extracted Mr. McC.'s ideas are sufficiently clearly expressed. It devolves on us now to examine them in the light of Scripture. We shall consider, first, the statement that "at surrender, the Spirit, already entered, takes full possession." Mr. McC. insists that the Spirit comes to indwell at conversion, but that He does not take full possession then ; that depends on our surrender. Now i Cor. 6:19 reads, "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ?" He is in the body, then. If He
has not taken "full possession," what part of the body is it He has not taken possession of? Is it the eyes, the ears, the feet, the heart? Surely, in entering the body to dwell there, He claims the whole body. The whole body belongs to God; and when God gives His Spirit to dwell in the body, by that very fact He claims the whole body. The Spirit's coming to indwell the body is then His taking possession-full possession of the body. If it be asked, Can it be possible that the Spirit is in full possession when there is so much, as is often the case, in the practical life that is inconsistent with His presence and even antagonistic to Him? Is He there in the fulness of His powers? I answer, Yes, certainly. The inconsistencies of our lives, our lack of surrender, our insubjection to His control, is no more a denial of His being in us in the fulness of His energies than it is a denial of His presence. If He is in us, indwells our bodies, as the scripture we have quoted affirms, He is in us as possessing infinite wisdom, power and love. He is in us in the fulness of the divine resources that are in His hands.

But it will be said, He is not filling many. True. A family living in a house in which there is city water complains of not having good water. They are drawing the water they use from a well nearby with very inferior water, and yet good city water is in their house, in ample abundance, in the power of the reservoir from whence it comes. Too true a picture this of too many Christians. Nevertheless the Spirit is in them as " able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think:" I am not denying the need of surrender. I am not saying that any who have not surrendered are "filled with the Spirit," but I do urge that the lack of being " filled with the Spirit" is not evidence that the Spirit is not there with His fulness. He is there to fill. He is there Himself with all fulness, with divine knowledge of the word of God, with absolutely perfect divine competency therefore to unfold it and build up in the knowledge of it, and in all fruitfulness.

On the other hand, however truly "filled with the Spirit" one may be, he cannot truthfully say he knows or enjoys all the "fulness of the Spirit." The Spirit's measure of the knowledge of God is immeasurably beyond ours. And this is true even in those in whom surrender has the fullest expression. The most devoted saint, the one most fully consecrated, even in Mr. McC.'s sense of the term, does not "ask or think" the exceeding abundant fulness of the Spirit.

It is not the truth, then, to say that " at surrender the Spirit, already entered, takes full possession," or that "the fulness of the Spirit is God's answer to surrender and faith." While it is indeed a "supreme" condition of much blessing-of the enjoyment of blessing, it is not the secret of the Spirit's being in us in the fulness of His resources and powers for us.

In answer to the question, "What is the act of surrender which opens the portals of the life of surrender?" Mr. McC. says on page 15 :

"Surrender, or consecration, is the voluntary offering of ourselves unto God to do His will instead of our own.''

It is clear that in his mind "surrender" and "consecration " are identical. Does the word of God teach that surrender and consecration are one and the same thing ? If it does it should be shown, not assumed. Since Mr. McC. assumes it-does not refer to any scripture- it becomes necessary for us to inquire whether there is ground in Scripture for what he assumes. Let it be distinctly understood that I am not denying that surrender is taught. It is insisted on, not only in the passages Mr. McC. quotes, but many more. The question is, Is our surrender, or our devoting ourselves to God, the same thing as consecration ?

For answer to this question we have but to turn to Lev. 8:The consecration of the priests is the great subject of this chapter. Let every one as he reads this important passage ask, Who consecrated the priests ? and, What was done to consecrate them? One reading the chapter, even in a cursory way, can not fail to see that it is Moses who acts all through. Moses consecrated the priests. It was Moses who took "Aaron and his sons," "the garments," the "oil," the "bullock." the "rams "and the "basket of unleavened bread" (vers. 2-4). It was Moses who "brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water" (ver. 6). This washing with water is a type of "our bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10:22). But whose work is this? Our own, or God's? It is certainly God's, because Peter tells us, i Pet. 1:2, it is "through sanctification of the Spirit," that is, through the Spirit working in us with the word of God, giving the word effect in us, that we are brought into the path of the obedience of Jesus Christ and under the shelter of His blood. It is not, then, our washing ourselves. It is the "washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). Further, it was Moses who put the garments upon the priests (vers. 7, 13). These garments speak of the ways of Christ in obedience, the outward effect of the Spirit's work within us. It was Moses who "brought the bullock for the sin-offering and slew it," and with the blood " purified the altar." True, the priests "laid their hands upon the head of the bullock " in token of, and as confessing, the need of an "offering for sin," but it was Moses who "brought," "slew," and "burned" the offering (vers. 14-17). How precious a type of our standing before God, cleared from the full due of our sins and accepted on the ground of a sacrifice He Himself has provided, and which His own Son has made in offering Himself! The full measure of our acceptance is witnessed to in the "ram for the burnt-offering" which follows, and which is also "brought" and "killed" and "burnt"by Moses (vers. 18-21). No works of righteousness of ours, no obedience of ours could possibly be the measure of our acceptance if it be, as it must be, that we are accepted in the Beloved. How plainly all question of anything that we do, however right, however much it is enjoined on us, disappears here!

Again:Moses "brought the other ram, the ram of consecration," "slew it," and applied the blood to the "ear," the "thumb" and the "toe" of the priests (vers. 22-24). How this tells us that it is the knowledge of God given to us in the atoning work of the cross of Christ that commands our ears, our hands, our feet! It is not in surrender, right as surrender is, that we find our power to live for and serve God. It is by revealing Himself to us as a Saviour-God that He has laid hold of our members to control and use them. Reconciled to God by the blood of Christ, it becomes our joy to be His; and joying in Him we find sufficient motive to do His will.

Now Moses takes certain parts of the ram, an "unleavened cake," a "cake of oiled bread" and a "wafer" and "puts "it all upon the "hands" of the priests and " waved them " before the Lord and then " burnt them " on the altar upon the burnt-offering (vers. 25-28). What a delightful type this of our communion with God! He puts Christ into our hands, gives us His own thoughts about Him-His joys and delights in Him. How perfectly He knows Him! How fully He enjoys Him! True, our hands are too small to measure Him, but it is God's thoughts we have, however short of His measure ours is. It is not our thoughts of Christ that He uses our hands to wave before Him, but His own which He graciously gives to us. Then, too, how He delights in these thoughts of His concerning Christ as they come back to Him from our hands! How He links all the value of the absolutely perfect devotedness of Christ with them! What absolutely perfect satisfaction He has in the One we wave before Him, a satisfaction that is measured by His own estimate of the perfections of His person and work-not our measure, so immeasurably inside of His !

We read yet again that Moses took "the breast" of the "ram of consecration" and"waved it before the Lord," and then took both"oil" and"blood"-"the blood which was upon the altar," and " sprinkled " the priests and their garments (vers. 29, 30).Aaron had already been anointed with oil without blood (ver. 12)-a type of Christ as not needing to make a sacrifice for Himself (Heb. 7:27). Now, both Aaron and his sons are anointed together and in connection with blood. In this is shown that Christ's sacrifice is the ground of our being linked with Him in the possession of all that is founded on that sacrifice.

Finally, we have Moses directing Aaron and his sons to "boil the flesh" and "eat it" with the "bread" of the "basket of consecrations" (ver. 31). This speaks of our satisfaction in the obedience of Christ-that obedience so precious to God; satisfaction realized now in our souls as in the presence of God we feed on Him who in perfect devotedness to God did His holy will, laying down His life.
We have seen that it was Moses who consecrated the priests, and also what he did to consecrate them. We have seen also what the interpretation of it all is. The conclusion is plain. We do not consecrate ourselves by " surrender," by " yielding," by giving up our wills. It is God Himself who consecrates us. God by His Spirit working in us with the word of God, separating us thus from the mass of men and to Himself on the ground of the sacrifice of Christ, linking us with Christ in the place where He is appearing for us, and with Himself in the satisfaction He has found in the Christ who is ever before Him. But this satisfaction which we are given thus to participate in is satisfaction in Christ- in what He is and has done-not in our own lives-not in our surrender, nor in what we feel to be a higher plane of life reached by surrender.

( To be continued.)