The Surrendered Life

At no period in the last century of the history of God's people has there been more emphasis placed upon the Christian life and walk than at the present. For long years the hearts of God's true children have longed for the fullest, richest, closest spiritual life attainable in Christ Jesus. That there was such a deeper, higher, broader life in Christ than the lives of many of His children were exemplifying, was admitted by all. The Word of God promised it; the lives of the early disciples were resplendent with its glory; the hearts of God's devout children clung to it with pathetic persistence. That self-same tenaciousness of faith in the possibility of such a fullness of Christian experience was the Spirit-born and Spirit-fed proof of its existence. Men's hearts would not yield their faith in its existence because the Spirit who dwelt within them would not suffer such faith to perish. Seeing then that he could not banish the vision of the glory-crowned peak, the arch-adversary sought to becloud the pathway to it. Knowing that they would not surrender their faith in the distant haven he essayed to confuse, by a maze of misleading lines, the chart that guided weary seekers to it. As for a thousand years he had blinded the way to the heart-resting peace with God, so now he diligently set himself to darken the path to the heart-keeping peace of God. Error and false teaching of divers and manifold forms swarmed to the becloudment. Perfectionism; sanctification of the flesh; eradication of inbred sin from that in which a holy God declares there "dwelleth no good thing"; holiness teaching with much of truth, yet such serious error in the ignoring and wresting of God's word as has led to pitiable disappointment, and spiritual disaster;--all these have hung about the true pathway to fullness of life in Christ, as the mist and mirage beset the toiling traveler eager to reach his journey's end.