Micah 51:7-' Oh, thou that art named The house of Jacob, is the Spirit of the Lord straitened ? Are these His doings ? Do not My words do good to him that walketh uprightly ? "

The necessity of constant revival is a lesson that is forced upon us by the history of the Church from the beginning. As we know, in the apostle's days came the first sad declension, from which at large it has never recovered. God has come in, in His grace, and again and again raised up a testimony for Himself, and gathered a remnant as witnesses to it; but the Church as a whole has never been restored, and never will be until the Lord takes it to Himself forever. This is only the echo of all human history. We might have thought indeed that the Church would be an exception to the rest, but it has still been left to prove how "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man."

The need of revival is just the lesson of man's faithlessness in every trust committed to him, and the greater the trust the more, alas! is the failure evident and the more terrible it is. Babylon the Great is a mystery at which the apostle wonders with great wonder. It is now so familiar to us that we are hardly capable of realizing, perhaps, the solemnity of it; but we are not to speak of that just now. We want to look practically at things for ourselves and to inquire where we are, any of us, at the present moment. What our need of revival may be, every one, of course, has the responsibility of knowing for himself, but the need at large cannot be questioned, and the need of considering it can never fail. The Lord's words by the prophet here, although to His people Israel, and taking shape from this, yet have a voice to us, which is only more earnest and closer in application by the difference between Israel and ourselves now. The Lord appeals to them as the house of Jacob,-his house who in his name speaks of what man is in nature, of the characteristics that belongs to him, but whose relationship to God speaks of the grace which God is ever showing. The God of Jacob is just the God of grace, and it is in this character that now we know Him, as that old house of Jacob did not. He addresses them in the midst of terrible failure and He appeals to them with a question,-a question, alas, that the heart of His own is so capable of raising,-nay, in fact so often raises:"Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened ? "

It might seem so, if we look at things around,- there are so many things, in fact, to grieve and hinder the blessed Spirit of God, but that is not all in the question. There is, alas! a terrible tendency with us when we look at the failure, to impute it in some sense even to the God of ?.ll grace Himself, and to murmur as if we were delivered up to failure, as if He had appointed our portion in it, and therefore there was no hope of escape; but in this sense the Spirit of the Lord is never straitened.

Notice the expression, which is "the Spirit of Jehovah," the covenant God, the One who under that name of Jehovah took up Israel in Egypt to make the glory of that Name known, and who entered into covenant with them by that Name, which speaks of His abiding constancy and power to fulfil what He had undertaken. They could not indeed be straitened in Him. They must be straitened, as the apostle says, if such were the fact, in their own bowels. The Lord's people never fail from inefficiency on His part for them, but always by their own voluntary giving themselves up to failure, and this may be the result, even, of that unbelieving discouragement which is implied in the question here. As Joshua, when Israel had fled at Ai, fell on his face before God to say, "What wilt Thou do for Thy great Name ? " so with us, alas! we are apt to think that we are more jealous for the glory of God's Name than He is Himself; but the Lord replies to him:"Up, why liest thou on thy face ? Israel has sinned." That was the whole matter. It is still the whole matter, and it is never, even thus, a reason for discouragement. God will take care of the glory of His Name, and on the other hand He will never be lacking to the soul, which, in the fullest confession of failure, turns to Him.

Amid whatever circumstances of discouragement in the Church at large, we can always encourage ourselves, as David did, in the Lord our God, and the faith that trusts in Him shall not be ashamed in this respect any more than any other. How good it is to know that He will necessarily be more than sufficient for all we count upon Him for ! Do we believe this ? or are we putting the question still as to whether the Spirit of the Lord is straitened ?

Look at the Lord's own picture. The Spirit of God is in us now, a thing that no Israelite could speak of in his day, and the Lord's word as to it in that familiar speech of His to the woman of Samaria describes it as "living water," as "a spring of living water," not a well, as our translation puts it, but "a spring of water leaping up into everlasting life." Certainly we are intended there to realize the energy that there is in a spring like this. There are conditions, no doubt, as to our realization of it, but the ' failure to do so can only be with ourselves, and with ourselves as individuals, and never with the spring. The Spirit of God is in us now. Alas, how much do we realize of this marvelous truth ? God is in us. Our very bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, which we have of God. Can we be wrong in predicating the very largest results from such grace and power as are implied in this? How can the conduct of others affect this as regards ourselves? The unfaithfulness of the whole Church can never deprive the individual soul that turns to God of the display of power which God has for him, which may not indeed manifest itself outwardly in mighty works, but inwardly, assuredly, in the revelation of blessing and of power from One who is faithful to His gifts and never repents.

The Lord's words here reveal the secret of any failure. "Do not My words," He asks "do good to him that walketh uprightly?" That is the whole matter. Does God's word cease to be to us what it once was? Have we lost the blessed savor of it in any wise? Does it fail to yield to us for all our need, for more than all that faith can seek from it? Then there is but one reason for this failure. It is that we walk not uprightly.

And that is a terrible thing to say of any child of God, for it does not mean simply what we call failure. It is failure, but failure of that purpose of heart which God claims and looks for as the very condition of His manifesting Himself with us. The unleavened bread with which we are to keep the
feast is the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. We can keep God's feast in no other fashion. Everything else is leaven; that is, it is not mere lapse from weakness or incapacity, but it is ferment, it is the spirit of rebellion, in fact, against God Himself. Let us remember that uprightness has to be measured according to the place that God has given us, according to the power of the revelation He has made to us.

What is the place that He has given us? A place in Christ, as Christ. We have Him before God, who has gone up to God charged with all our interests, to maintain us according to the value of His blessed work for us; so that now it is only unbelief if we ever think we have to serve ourselves, to look after our own concerns, as it were, as if He were in some way at least insufficient for us.
We have things, surely, to do down here. We have a life to live, we have duties to perform; but that is a very different thing from that seeking of our own which is never a duty, but a departure from Him. We are here in the world for Him. If He is before God for us, on the one hand, we are as truly for Him upon the other. If we are in Him, He, as the result, is in us, and thus is all fruit found. If now, as the seal upon it all, the Spirit of God has come to take possession of us, this is the plain mark, as the apostle says, that we are not our own, we are bought with a price. He is with us, in us, to secure Christ's interests, to work for His glory.

All that implies, most surely, our highest interests also. We cannot lose our lives for Him without gaining them over and over again, as we may say. We cannot live to Him without finding the wondrous power of such a life, the blessing and enjoyment of it. We cannot seek His things without finding that, in the truest sense, and as far as lies in us, we have secured our own, but the seeking His things must be what is in our hearts. Let the care of all else be upon Him. He is competent for it, and our first duty is to trust Him unfeignedly with it all. Thus we may go unburdened. Thus alone are we witnesses for Him and not witnesses against Him. It is when men can see in us that Christ has possession of us and that our lives are, in the purpose of our hearts, devoted to Him,-it is thus He is commended. The doctrine of Christ makes way for itself in the power of a living witness.

This, then, is what is uprightness. We are to answer to the place that God has put us in. As we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, we are to walk in Him; if we are risen with Christ, we are to have our mind upon things above, where Christ sitteth, at the right hand of God. All that is short of this is not mere failure in reaching what we aim at, it is failure in the aim itself; and there can be nothing but straitness for us if that be our condition. It is vain to think of anything like revival until we are ourselves revived out of a fallen condition.

We need, therefore, to begin with ourselves individually. We are not to end there. If once our hearts are really in the power of that which God has -made our own, the state of His people will press itself upon us in exact proportion, but we shall find that now the Lord can use us in ministry to those He loves, and from whom His love never departs, however much they may have departed from Him. It is indeed a terrible thing for those who are truly His to be encompassed with a multitude of those who if they are indeed believers, "are not, for all that in the energy of faith, in the power of the truth which they acknowledge as such. One can understand that in such a condition one might feel that he could go more easily alone than with those who are out of sympathy with, and irresponsive to, the claims of Christ upon them, but here also we might find that it was our own that we were seeking in another way. God never leaves His people, and we are to be the witnesses of that love of His which never leaves them.

We are to refuse indeed all that would make us responsible in any wise for the evil of others, all that would be complicity on our part, conformity to that which springs out of an unjudged condition; but apart from this, it is ours to be with the people of God, seeking their blessing, as our own blessing, which it truly is. The body of Christ needs all its members. " If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it," and, alas, how crippled is the Church to-day by the mixture of clean and unclean which everywhere prevails. There must be in all that involves one's duty to Him, no compromise; but there must be, on the other hand, the love which has its central characteristic in not seeking its own, therefore in true and unselfish ministry to all the need there is around.
Discouragement is here apt to be our sorest hindrance. Whatever love might desire, if once we get the thought that it is impossible to realize it, all efforts are chilled, all work for that which is hopeless drops of necessity. We still have need to urge upon ourselves the question:"Is the Spirit of the Lord
straitened?"If we plead it with Him in faith, we shall surely find what is His answer to it. The consequences of our own past failure may in measure follow us, and the general condition of things we can never hope to alter; but those who are with God will still find that His word appeals to the hearts of His own, and that there is a power for revival out of whatever ruin may have been wrought. There still remain for us Christ and the Spirit and the precious word of God ready to reveal more and more of that which is in it for the enrichment of us all, the riches which Christ's poverty has secured for us and which still appeal to the hearts of His people. How blessed to know that in every one of these there still abides that Spirit who is the seal in us of the perfection of Christ, and who never, therefore, can give up His care of those who thus stand identified with that perfection! Of revival, every one of us will still find his constant need, and the path itself which God puts before us is never spoken of as an easy one. If we think of it we can never say that we have strength sufficient for it. It is out of weakness still, and ever, that strength is found, and grace alone is all our sufficiency. The more deeply for ourselves we realize this, the more we shall count upon that grace for others and expect to see the fruit of the Spirit in those in whom the Spirit still abides, and who will never give them up. F. W. G.