The Lord for the Body

With Questions and Answers on Divine Healing

by A. B. Simpson

Foreword — By Walter M. Turnbull

Introduction — By Kenneth Mackenzie

Christian Alliance Publishing Co. 1925

Foreword

In publishing this Colportage Series, the one purpose is to disseminate widely the pure Gospel of Christ. America is being flooded with literature that is designed to turn hearts and minds from the faith of our fathers. Much of the popular reading of the day is either shallow and irreligious or erroneous and misleading.

The volumes in this series are selected because of their lucid presentation of Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour of mankind. In cheap but attractive form the cream of the writings of great preachers and teachers are offered to the public. No profits will accrue to any one through these books save the spiritual blessing that comes to the readers and the satisfaction that comes to the distributors who thus serve God and their fellowmen.

Evangelical Christians everywhere may assist in broadcasting these messages with the assurance that every word will ring true to the integrity of the Scriptures, the vicarious atonement of Christ, and the world's only hope in His coming again.

The Christian Alliance Publishing Company

Preface

IN 1903 Dr. Simpson first issued a little volume under the title of "The Discovery of Divine Healing" in which he set forth the teaching regarding healing as unfolded in different Books and in the experiences of various Biblical characters. This early volume was not intended to be an exhaustive treatise of this important theme, but was rather a presentation of helpful expositions that gathered around the lives of outstanding witnesses to the possibility of supernatural life for the body.

The present volume is an enlargement of the early edition. Important chapters upon "Paul and Divine Healing" and "Natural and Supernatural Healing" have been added; also one of Dr. Simpson's strongest pamphlets on "Inquiries and Answers Concerning Divine Healing" has been included.

This contains clear and logical replies to questions that usually arise in the minds of sincere inquirers after the truth. We are confident that this book will prove to be one of the most illuminating and widely appreciated works from the gifted pen of Dr. Simpson. The personal testimony of Dr. Henry Wilson, the associate and intimate friend of Dr. Simpson, has been added as an appendix. Dr. Wilson wrote this testimony when, as he states, he had come to his majority, having passed twenty-one years of glorious renewed life through the acceptance of God's provision.

Because the subject of the Lord's Healing is now so widely discussed in Christian circles, it is hard to realize that only a generation ago but few teachers ever touched upon this phase of Scriptural doctrine. Probably no one teacher of recent years has been so much used of God in this connection as Dr. Simpson. In the minds of multitudes his name is inseparably connected with teaching about Divine Healing. Yet it is well to remember that Dr. Simpson consistently maintained that he was not the founder of a healing cult, nor did he wish to place healing before spiritual blessing and the salvation of the lost.

He preached Christ, the living, all-sufficient Saviour. His dominant purpose was to make Him known in all the neglected lands of earth. His heart yearned over the lost and neglected at home and abroad. While faithful to the whole truth of God, he nevertheless placed soul-saving, the instruction of believers in deeper spiritual truths, and earnest missionary efforts before any ministry of healing. His teaching is best summed up in one of his own poems.

"Once it was the blessing,

Now it is the Lord;

Once it was the feeling,

Now it is His Word;

Once His gift I wanted,

Now the Giver own;

Once I sought for healing,

Now Himself alone.

All in all forever,

Jesus will I sing;

Everything in Jesus,

And Jesus everything."

Walter M. Turnbull

Introduction

These delightfully interesting studies come us as fresh and winsome as when they first fell from the lips of the honored servant of God, whom many of us held as the Moses who led us through the wilderness of perplexity, the Joshua who inspired us to cross the Jordan into the land of decision.

Some who stood loyally with him in the early years of his wonderful ministry, like the disciples of old, went away. A few to utter repudiation of the truth they had learned through him; others to hold it with cautious reservation. But he lived through all the heartaches which accompanied such departures, sweet and patient, trustful and loving, ever ready to receive them ; for he, himself, never varied in the conviction that healing as he was moved to present it could not be divorced from the message of salvation. If our blessed Lord is the very life of His own, that life must be related to every department of our being.

With him, the espousal of this much-disputed doctrine was not a matter of novelty that would in time wear away and be replaced by other novelties. It gripped his whole being; it compelled his entire devotion; it absorbed his heart and mind. And we who saw the workings of his methods and life could not other than confess that he was moved by a complete surrender to the Holy Spirit.

If only he could be found yielding to His behest in every turn he had to take, it was enough. The critics might pierce the atmosphere in which he lived with the arrows of poisoned unbelief; he was immune from infection. He literally was hid in God. It was this that made his messages so sacred to us.

The painful fact that teachers of Christian healing are subtly introducing psychology, that evident antagonist to the Holy Spirit, calls for the highest commendation of his manner. For he never permitted his teaching to be intinctured with any element of self-effort, selfintrospection, self-poise. To him, the truth of healing lay absolutely in the gift of God to His own, by simple acceptance and childlike following in the way of God. Faith, unalloyed was his foundation. And the death of self that Christ might live was the superstructure of his teaching and experience.

They who did not know him in the flesh, may well pursue these studies with deep appreciation. For thus they will learn to know the man as well as to accept the truth he held so precious.

Kenneth Mackenzie

CHAPTER I

THE DISCOVERY OF DIVINE HEALING

"And the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet; there he made for them a statute, and an ordinance, and there he proved them, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee" (Ex. 15:25, 26).

This was the discovery to Moses of Divine Healing. The branch that was cast into the bitter waters had been there before, but undiscovered, and now the Lord showed it to him and the waters were healed.

A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY

What a wonderful epoch it marks in our lives when we discover the hidden promises whose reality and power we had never dreamed of before! Henceforth life becomes all new. How wonderful to find that ever since the Saviour died our complete redemption has been purchased, and only waiting for our faith to claim it; and how we wish that all the world might know the treasure it is losing and the hidden resources of help and blessing which lie, like undiscovered wealth of some secret mine, beneath our thoughtless feet. The branch which Moses found simply represents the promise of God. Our Bible is full of such promises, and all we need is the divine illumination to show them to us and then the faith to claim them and apply them in the hour of need.

The sweetening of the bitter waters of Marah is closely connected in this passage with the ordinance of healing which God immediately proceeds to give to Israel. It is evident, therefore, that the healing of the waters was intended to suggest the other healing covered by the divine promise and what a promise it is! It lays the deep and solid foundation of the Lord's supernatural life for all our physical need. What a difference it makes in our lives when we truly find and fully understand this strong and sure foundation for faith to rest upon.

GOD'S PRIMARY SCHOOL

One should not fail to notice how early this experience came into the history of ancient Israel. Like a fond mother who first cares for her baby's body and afterwards attends to its education, so God first provides for Israel's physical needs, and a little later puts His infant people to school at Mount Sinai and through the deeper lessons of the wilderness.

The Lord Jesus began His ministry with physical healing, and so the youngest and humblest child of God ought to know the healing power of the Saviour. It is not surprising, therefore, that it comes natural to our simple-hearted converts in heathen lands, who know no better than to trust the Lord for both body and soul.

OLDER THAN THE LAW

It must also occur to the thoughtful reader that this ordinance of healing in the fifteenth chapter of Exodus is much older than the Law of Sinai, and, therefore, it has not been superseded even by the passing away of the Law. Just as Paul tells the Galatians that the covenant with Abraham could not be annulled by the later Law of Moses, so the ordinance of healing stands even after the passing away of the Mosaic institutions. The very terms "statute" and "ordinance" express permanency in this divine provision; and so it stands today, unless we can find in the New Testament some authoritative statement revoking it, which certainly we shall not find; for all the teachings of Christ and His apostles are but the echo and the fuller expression of the deep truths so well expressed in this ancient Law of Healing.

A TEST QUESTION

It is announced emphatically in the narrative that this was to be a test question with God's people. There "He proved them"; and what a test it is today of Christian life and Christian faith! How few there are that dare to stand it, and how it proves the people of God! How it brings us up to His heartsearching light and compels us to walk in holy fellowship and obedience if we would find the promises true in our bodies. How rigidly it demands an obedience as deep and spiritual as the profoundest teachings of the New Testament require.

It is not enough that we do our best and sincerely follow the light we have, but we must "diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord our God." We must take pains to understand His will. We must have a yielded, willing and responsive conscience that fears to offend and jealously feels its way into all His will. And so, while divine healing is the privilege of the youngest disciple, it will not suffer us to continue immature or careless, but will impel us to the deepest spirituality and the most earnest and diligent conformity to all the will of God. There is nothing that has so chastening, humbling, heartsearching and sanctifying an influence over our spiritual life as to live a life of dependence upon Christ for our bodily strength from day to day.

CONTINUOUS HEALING

There is another deeply spiritual truth connected with this discovery. Dr. Young translates the last clause of the passage in the continuous present tense: "I the Lord am healing thee." This is the aspect of divine healing which the Apostle Paul so frequently emphasizes. It is not a mere or incident occurring occasionally in life, but it is a life of constant, habitual dependence upon Christ for the body; moment by moment abiding in Him for our physical, as well as spiritual need, and taking His resurrection life and strength for every breath and every step.

ATTENDANT BLESSINGS

Once more, the blessing that follows divine healing is finely expressed in the sequel to this ancient incident. "They came to Elim where were twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees: and they encamped there by the waters." There is something exquisite about this sentence. It seems to be a sort of crystallized poem. The very tones fall upon the ear with strange sweetness. We can almost imagine that we feel the balm of the soft tropical air, hear the rustling of the palm trees, and see the sparkling waters from Elim's wells. How refreshing the shade; how exhilarating the fountains; how delightful the rest; how heavenly the overshadowing cloud! It is like a scene from the land of Beulah. It speaks to the deepest senses of the soul of the love-life of the Lord and the peace of God that passeth all understanding. And this is just the experience to which divine healing introduces the soul; the spiritual blessing is even richer than the physical.

How real Christ seems to us; how we come to know the Lord as never before, and how He rests us and sheds the fragrance of His love and joy through every sense of our spiritual and physical being until the heart finds utterance in the inspired song, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Reader, have you made this great discovery? It is hidden somewhere in your Bible. Perhaps the very trial that has crushed you is God's opportunity for revealing it to you. God grant that the old story may be reproduced in your life. "He cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the water, the waters were made sweet."

CHAPTER II

SUPERNATURAL LIFE

Genesis 20 17; Romans 4: 18-22; Hebrews 11: 11.

We have here, from the old story of Genesis, three cases of divine healing, Abimelech, Abraham and Sarah. Abraham in a fit of unbelief consented to tell a half lie. Sarah was his half-sister, and he introduced her to Abimelech as his sister and left the way clear for him to take her as one of his many wives. God arrested Abimelech before he had done wrong.

THE FIRST HEALING

God healed Abimelech through Abraham's prayer. No doubt they both made humble confession and together believed for God's deliverance, and God emphasized the answer by a distinct physical blessing. This is the earliest instance we have of faith and prayer for healing. It teaches us that sickness often comes as a divine chastening, and when the sin is laid aside, God takes away the chastening rod and heals the disease.

ABRAHAM'S EXPERIENCES

Alongside of this it is very natural for us to associate Abraham's and Sarah's faith for their physical quickening and the renewing of their youth and strength. It would seem as though Abraham's lesson with Abimelech strengthened his faith and threw him more directly upon God, for his own personal need and blessing. We find in this transaction that both of them believed, and Sarah's faith is more emphatic even that Abraham's.

EVEN SARAH

The construction of the eleventh of Hebrews is very strong, and suggests that Sarah had made a bad failure at first and met the promise that she should be a mother with keen scorn and laughter at the very idea of such a thing; so it added that Sarah, "even Sarah," as it is in the original, poor Sarah, who had so failed, received supernatural strength to become the mother of Isaac. It shows that even if you did break down the first time you may still pick yourself up and overcome even if you have doubted, and surely there are none of us who have not had our doubts and fears and we know how patient and faithful God has been in restoring us and then teaching us through suffering the better way. If you have been among the doubting ones, listen to God and let Him teach you. You may yet be among the princes of faith as Abraham and Sarah were.

A HIGHER KIND OF STRENGTH

Divine healing is getting a new kind of life, and God values it more than He does natural strength. He did not want Isaac born through natural, but supernatural strength. He gave divine strength to Abraham and Sarah, something that was a part of God Himself, because He wanted it to be of a higher order. Divine health is a better kind of health than the natural and it will accomplish a better kind of service for Christ. It is not the health that takes us to the ball game, the dance and theater, but the health that takes us to the slums, the alleys, and garret; the message not only divine, but the messenger endued with divine strength and power.

So we have here the rudimentary principle, the very elementary and essential nature of divine healing. It is a higher sort of life. We believe for it, then we get it and it leads to results more lasting and fruitful than the strength that we get from natural sources.

ABRAHAM'S FAITH

In the fourth chapter of Romans, this very emphatic chapter on faith, Abraham alone is mentioned. In the first place he believed against hope. It was something that was not easy, not possible. Now this is essentially miraculous, and there is no doubt that God does sometimes override natural law in healing. I see no place in the Bible where we are taught that the miraculous is to cease with the ascension of the Lord, but we are told that the resurrection and ascension of Christ was the pattern according to which God was going to continue to work. We may know the "exceeding greatness of His power" today. Do not be discouraged if God tells you to trust if everything is against it, even natural possibilities.

Again, we are told, and I like to read it both ways, each version gives a fine sense, that when he believed for this impossible thing "he considered not his own body"; he took his eyes and his attention off himself. If he had looked at it perhaps it would have destroyed faith. There are times when we must take our eyes off ourselves. We cannot stand while looking on the dark side. It is the devil that always says, "Pity thyself." He said it to Jesus Christ through Peter, and Jesus said to him, "Get thee behind Me, Satan."

AS GOOD AS DEAD

The Revised Version is still better and it gives a distinct thought: "Without being discouraged he considered his own body as good as dead." That is, he put an estimate on it at the lowest value and then over against it he put the almightiness of God and said, "But God," doubting nothing. When God created the world He started with nothing, and there are times when He must smash us to pieces, for as long as there is the slightest ray of human hope we cling to it, and do not get hold of God.

I have been very much afraid since my healing to count upon my strength. I do not consider myself strong-I do not care whether I am or not, but I found after the Lord had given me supernatural strength the enemy was getting me to trust in it, and then it left me and I had to very quickly get the old-fashioned way of depending upon Christ for my physical life and strength. It is counting yourself as good as dead, living each day as though it were a supernatural gift, by the moment taking His life. Do not be afraid to find yourself out in midair with nothing under you but the everlasting arms. Just look at the darkest and worst side of it and then look at God and say, "does it matter?" It is just as easy or even a little easier for God to do a big thing as a little thing. He has His almightiness at His disposal and it is not for Him to use it, and indeed He wants to do so.

DO NOT STAGGER

Again, he "wavered not," "staggered not." Do not have a "perhaps," an "if," or a "but," about it. Do not allow anyone to sympathize with you. Many go through life wavering and staggering all the time. Abraham did not flinch, stagger or waver, but was "fully persuaded" that He that had promised was not only able, but, in the Greek, "abundantly able to perform," more than able, superfluously able to perform. His conception of God made it seem just like child's play for Him to do a great thing. Again, there is fine expression here-he not only did not stagger, but he "waxed strong in faith." The more he looked at the difficulties, and the more he looked at God, the stronger his faith waxedgrowing all the time. The more he felt himself cut off from everything else the more he felt that God must help him. Are you waxing strong in faith?

Faith does not show what a man you are, but it shows what a God you have. The more we get from God the bigger beggars we are and the grander Father is He. That is, He puts us in a position where we must take a great deal, and He is diappointed when we fail to do so.

FAITH GLORIFIES GOD

I have read somewhere of a little street boy who was taken up out of a cellar by the Fresh Air Fund sent to a farmer's house in Westchester. He had a great big room all to himself, and when he was shown into it at night and a little candle placed on the table, it was a perfect world of bewilderment to him and he thought he was in heaven. Finally he got tired and sleepy and looked at the snowy-white bed. Why, he had never been in a bed in his life! So he slowly crept up to it, and after a while he just laid his little cheek against the soft pillow. He could not believe it was for him, there was some mistake. He began to feel so guilty after a while.

The idea that he should lie down on a white, snowy bed like that-it was presumption or intrusion. But he just went far enough to let his head poke into heaven for a moment, and then he got down on the floor under the bed and said: 'This is the place for me," and curled himself up and was soon fast asleep. Early in the morning the landlady came in and saw him, and she cried, "Oh, dear me, what does the boy mean!" And she picked him up and put him in the bed and tried to explain that the bed was for him, but she had the hardest time to make him understand and to induce him to get under the nice clean sheets.

How many of God's dear children there are who are sleeping under the bed instead of resting in the bosom of His love. We are so slow to believe all that He has for us and to take what we are entitled to. Oh, some day when whiter than the snow and higher than the angels, and when all the magnificence of the ages is at our feet, how ashamed we will be to think how hard it was for us to take a little crumb from our Father's table. God is looking for princely hearts, who, like Abraham, are willing to believe that He is the God that He says He is.

We cannot quite understand it, but it is so. Get it into your heart if you do not quite get it into your intellect and be strong in faith, giving glory to God. He has let that trouble come to you, beloved, just for an opportunity to get you out of it, that it may be a stepping-stone to Himself.

CHAPTER III

THE LOOK THAT BRINGS LIFE

Numbers 21:4.

"And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way." We so easily get discouraged and it is a most dangerous state to get in. It is the very place where the devil strikes us. Do not ever get discouraged.

THE WRONG WAY

The children of Israel had chosen their own way, and God had told them it was a bad way before they had chosen it, but still they chose it; and, therefore, they should not have gotten discouraged, because it was the way they wanted to go. Perhaps we are suffering from the results of disobedience, for having taken some way which God would not have chosen for us; but do not get discouraged, even if it be so, for God follows us and is there when we have brought our troubles upon ourselves. He will never leave us nor forsake us. Do not be discouraged by your trying situations. Do not look at these things; if you look at them they will mesmerize you.

DO NOT GET DISCOURAGED

They began to feel blue and to think things that were very bad. Do not ever let the devil know that he has hurt you. Do not ever let him hear you say, "It is hard." If he feels that he does hurt you he will stay and try harder, but if he thinks he does not hurt you he will not waste his time on you. Do not for the world let people tell you about your troubles; do not let them sympathize with you. Always rejoice, always be cheerful. Under no circumstances get discouraged or be depressed.

UNBELIEF

Well, the next thing after they got discouraged, we read, "And the people spake against God and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread." Discouragement leads to discontent, discontent leads to doubt, suspicion, unbelief. They did it under the disguise of giving Moses a good talking to, but it was God they meant. The devil is trying today to get you to find fault with God. Don't hastily find fault with circumstances or with people, lest you should be found "even to fight against God."

JUDGMENT

Next comes the stage of judgment. "The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people." When we are looking for trouble we get trouble. When we are in the complaining mood we shall get something to complain about. Oh, as we talk about our little troubles if we could only see what real trouble is, and God often gives us a pinch of it just to make us ashamed of our petty complaining and murmuring. And so God sent judgment. God was very much displeased with the spirit of murmuring, with the spirit of discouragement, with the spirit of unbelief, and sent fiery serpents. They were serpents, but God sent them. They were physical ailments, they were demon powers, but God was above, God was behind.

Oh, how absurd and extreme are the teachings of the wildfire, self-appointed prophets of our age. God lets the devil be an instrument of judgment. It is God's strange way, but when people get on the devil's ground, God lets the devil take them prisoners and shut them up in the Castle of Giant Despair and makes it very hard for them. And so God is in these troubles. Disease may come from Satan or from natural causes. It comes by divine permission. When you find anybody talking lightly or recklessly about it, just stick to your Bible. If God is in the chastening, God alone can command its removal.

REPENTANCE

Next we find repentance. Judgment brings conviction, sorrow, shame, repentance. And so they came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that He take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people." There must be frank acknowledgment of sin. Prayer must come after penitence-that is the place for Moses' prayer. And so we must pray, and God hears the prayers of His united people and those whom He has placed in the ministry of a peculiar priesthood. The prayer does not dissipate the serpents. The prayer only sets in operation the process by which everything moves. God heard Moses' prayer, and He set in operation His plan of healing.

God's one object was to bring Jesus into prominence, to make Him known, to show Him in some new light and some new way, and for this reason He let all this come to pass because He was going to give them a new emblem of His Son. So, dear friend, when sickness comes to you, when any trial enters into your life, even if it be through your unbelief and sin, even if you have been to blame for it all, behind it all is the divine love that allows it to come into your life.

REVELATION OF JESUS

God lifts up His own Son in the midst of disease and death and bids them look to Him and live. And so if there has come to you a trial, and even through a sin, lift up your eyes and you will behold, not God's judgment, not a revelation of wrath, but a blessed manifestation of Jesus Christ, and He will come into your life in some new way which you have never known before, and you will thank the devil and be glad of your trial for having brought you nearer to your Lord. Moses was commanded to make a serpent of brass and set it upon a pole. And it came to pass that anyone who had been bitten could live by looking. God has told us that, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up." This is God's remedy for disease as well as sin.

THE LOOK OF FAITH

The prayer of Moses was not enough. The prayer of Moses brought the revelation of Jesus, but that was not enough unless they took the healing, looked at the figure and drew life from it by the contact of faith through the power of a look. And it is just the same today. The prayers of God's people bring Christ to you, but you must take the life by the same look that they did. You must somehow get into contact with Him. The senses of your soul and the very functions of your body must somehow come into touch with Him, must become responsive to Him, must draw from Him and drink from Him, just as the plant draws the nourishment from the air and the soil and lives. It is a living touch and a living look.

Now this figure of looking is the most scientifically correct one that could be used. It is true that the eye has a strange power to bring into connection the outer with the inner world. If I look at an object of terror, it is infused into my mind; and sometimes they say the murdered man, long after death, has the picture of his murderer in his very eye. He took him in that dreadful hour of agony and fear, and there he is impressed as by a touch of fire. If that camera looks into your face, it takes your face right in. It just looks at you and it takes in all there is of you. And so it is true, it is one of the strangest truths, that as we look at the evil the evil hypnotizes us, the evil imparts itself to us.

Just the same is it when you turn heavenward. You reflect the brightness; you take in the joy and love and strength, and you grow like it and its nature passes into you. So the wounded Hebrew looked at that bright image of brass, and began to be conscious that a strange peace and sweetness was passing through his being, filling him with vital pulses from heart to limb, thrilling all his being, and after a while the stupor and the horror of death passes away and he throws the serpent's poison off. But if he just curled himself up in his wretchedness and refused to look, all the pleadings of Moses were in vain.

That is just the way the woman got healed. She pressed forward and drew from the Lord the life that was in Him for anybody to take, but which the others did not know how to take. And so the same Christ is still lifted up, and the Holy Spirit loves to present Him in the hour of pain and sickness. If you turn to Him and fix your eye upon Him, then into the aching body will come peace and rest; you will find your lungs expanding, your frame exhilarated, and your lips will begin to say, "0 Christ, Thy flesh is meat indeed, and Thy blood is drink indeed." For it is not a glance, but it is a fixed and settled look. It is an abiding look.

Now, this is where we come short, this is where we fail, this is the place to which nearly every case of disappointment can be traced. Perhaps you have confessed your wrong, perhaps you have believed in the divine remedy, perhaps you have done it intelligently and believingly, but you did not keep Him in view, you did not begin to look and keep looking, you did not learn that inner touch, that blessed consciousness of the breath and the touch of Jesus Christ, that spiritual sense of God which He will give to the finest instincts of the trusting soul.

There is a strange disinclination to wait upon God. Men would rather go to a priest and give him money to do their waiting upon God for them instead of going to God themselves.

CHRIST'S ATONEMENT

Again, we are here taught the great atoning work of Jesus Christ for the body and for the soul. Why was it that this symbol of healing was made in the form of a serpent? Why was not some other symbol used? Why was the serpent chosen? It looks a little strange. There must have been some deep meaning in it. Was it not because our Saviour was made in the likeness of sinful men? But the one point in which they differed was that the serpent of brass had no poison in it. He was made sin for us, but He was not sinful. He was made like the disease of the fallen race; there is something in Him that reminds us of our scourge and curse. But it did not really defile Him.

That serpent seems to point to the lifting up of the Son of. Man on the cross; and it seems almost as if Jesus took the serpent right into His arms and received his poison and his sting that we might escape. Jesus took the serpent's sting and the serpent's poison into His own heart and into His own life, and, therefore, we may be free. Having borne in His body what our body deserves to bear, why should we bear it, too? Why should you be stung by the devil's fangs when He was stung to death for you? And so our Lord is revealed to us as the atonement for sickness, as the One "who bore our infirmities, and carried our pains" and "by His stripes we are healed"; and the Holy Spirit is trying to present Him to you so that you cannot help seeing. Oh, for this revelation of Jesus! Oh, that He might come to you in the dark place, and the sad place, in the sick room, and say, "I have brought you here just so that your eyes might be turned to the cross."

If you just receive it, it will fill your being. But if you turn away it is gone. It is only while you look that you live. It is the abiding that keeps me in contact with the Living One. It will bind you up to Christ, and you will never be able to get along without Him. And it will be true every moment, "Without Me ye can do nothing." And your life will be one long "looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith."

CHAPTER IV

AN OLD MAN MADE YOUNG

"And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.

Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said" (Josh. 14: 10-12). We are to turn our attention first, to the testimony of strength and health given by this venerable old servant of the Lord; and this is that he is as strong at eighty-five years as he was when he was only forty years old, both to go out and to come in, both to put on his armor or to take it off, and his Lord has kept him alive all these years.

STRENGTH FOR LIFE

First, it is strength for a lifetime that he tells us about-forty-five years of strength. It is a life sustained by the strength of God. That is so much better than a case of healing or some single deliverance from a hard trial. He wants to give us His very life, His health. Take Him for the habit of your life; learn to live upon Him and have Him live in you, and then should emergencies come you will be able to get right up close to Him and be ready for any emergency. You will seldom have a hard trial, if you take Him before the trial comes.

PRIVATIONS

But again, we see here a life preserved in the midst of the greatest privations, the most inhospitable clime, the most depressing circumstances, burning sands, poisonous reptiles, inclement weather, the heat by day and the cold by night-monotonous diet and the lack of water, the tremendous care and the special burden that rested on him-all this Caleb lived through. All the congregation but Joshua and he passed away, but they lived throughout. That was a splendid testimony of divine strength and life under the most unfavorable circumstances.

Again, it is the testimony of an old man made young; and of an old man who is as young as a boy, of strength that is unimpaired by years. Think of it, here was a man eighty-five years old and just asking for a commission, and starting on the greatest campaign of his life. God says He will renew our strength like the eagle's, and He is wonderfully fulfilling this to some.

Again, we find here that it is not only spasmodic fits of strength, but the endurance of strength, that can stand a long pull and feel as fresh at the end as at the beginning. There are so many people who begin to step out, and soon begin to feel the shortness of breath and the painful reaction. But Caleb could stand it all day, and God wants to give us that strength that can hold out all day, and still be good for many a day and year. God will give you the strength that will stand, and be as fresh tomorrow as it was today.

But once again, look at his courage. Sometimes when strength does not fail the spirit fails, and we lie off and do not venture as much as in other days. You know the picture in Ecclesiastes of the old man who is "afraid of that which is high." He does not like to go upstairs, he does not like to work too much, he is afraid of hurting himself. Things look bigger than they are and he makes up his mind that he is weak. Do not lose courage; do not be laid aside, God will keep you sweetly working for Him until your life work is done. I think it is beautiful to look at this venerable old man, as fresh as a boy, brave and full of holy confidence and just asking the hardest job, that He could prove how much God could do.

THE SECRET

Let us look in the next place and see whence it came, the secret of it. He tells us that it was not his constitution or the care he took of himself, but he says, "The Lord, my God, hath kept me alive." It all came direct from a divine source. He had learned the meaning of that old covenant, "I am Jehovah Rophi, I will be your continuous support and the source of your life moment by moment," and so he had gone to Him and He had not failed. Even when God does heal us there is so much danger of our getting to depend on the feeling of strength and the health we have, instead of constantly taking it freshly from the same source in God. We have so often seen people when they are raised up from sickness, detach their faith from God to themselves, and because they feel so well, they conclude they are well. You have been looking at the pitcher rather than the spring. Get right the spring and stay there.

FOLLOWED FULLY

Once again, we have here the conditions as well as the source of Caleb's wonderful strength and heath. "Because I wholly followed the Lord, my God." It came from God, but it came from God for a reason. He met the conditions and God fully met him. Not because he had followed, but because he had "wholly followed." The difference between the genius and man of commonplace ability lies in things that are not at first perceived. The value of that painting just lies in the little art touches. So the power of the Holy Ghost in your life and mine, and the measure of our obedience and intimacy with God must come up to following God wholly, or we shall miss much. A single splash of ink on that fine dress, and the dress is destroyed, one little link broken in the chain, and the chain is no good. So a seeming trifle may spoil all your blessing.

You remember in speaking about our faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is not faith that the apostle requires, it is a particular kind of faith. He says, "Cast not away therefore your confidence," that is, the faith of boldness, of audacity. You remember the faith of Abraham that Paul speaks about. It was a kind of faith that had no "staggering" in it. "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief." You remember the faith that was spoken of in the Gospel of Matthew.

Jesus said, "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, and doubt not." It is just like the high degree that makes steam, and the one degree that makes liquid air. You must reach a certain point before the power comes. Now there are lots of people that have faith, but they just hold back a little. They believe up to a certain point, but there is a "but" and an "if" and a "perhaps" and a reserve. So their surrender reaches a certain point and stops there, and their joy and their peace depend to a certain extent upon circumstances. Not so with Caleb, "I wholly followed the Lord my God." Therefore, the Lord was "wholly" with him.

FULLY BELIEVED

How did he wholly follow the Lord? First, he wholly believed God. He believed God without any kind of reservation. God told him to go and spy out the land, and he came back and told them just what the Lord had told him. It is a beautiful land; God is with us; "Let us go up at once, and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it." Does God require us to have that kind of faith? Yes, beloved, He does. He requires that when you pray you shall believe you have the thing you ask for. How in the world shall we ever do it? Why, we never could do it, but Jesus does it for us. He teaches us to throw away the faith we have and take His instead. If He gives it, it will be as perfect as His own.

I am so glad that I am not bringing to you an impossible task. Oh, let us find out what the crucified life means. It is the life that comes to the conclusion forevermore that you are no good, and never will be. "The life that I now live I live by the faith of the Son of God." Just find it out, beloved, and it will be unspeakably delightful to know that Jesus is your all and in all, the "Author and Finisher of your faith," and, therefore, He does require of you that your faith shall have no "ifs" nor "buts" about it. Will you have it?

And so again, Caleb not only believed fully, but he followed the Lord wholly in witnessing for Him. He not only believed, but he said he believed, and he stood up in the camp alone and still said it, and when the camp turned upon him in an angry crowd and said they would stone him he still said it, and God blessed him for it.

WAITED

But not only did he witness, but he waited, for faith must learn to wait. Forty-five years was a long time, but his faith did not fail to wait. It stood the long pull as well as the strong pull. God said, "I will give you that place that you set your foot on"; you shall have it, Caleb; and for forty-five years he kept his eye on Hebron, and said, "I cannot afford to die, for I have got something to live for; I have got a promise, and that is something to live for. It is a great thing to have a goal before you. Caleb had one, and he waited and waited, and finally won it.

Not only did he follow God but he put himself in a place where he must have special strength from God. He put himself in a place where God must carry him through, or bring dishonor upon Himself. Do not venture unless you have the faith, but if you have you will do something; you will go out to meet the mighty Lord and He will meet you. I am sure God is searching our hearts today, and putting us upon our faces, and making us glad we have Jesus Christ to be our all and in all.

Do not merely talk about it; get somewhere, do something for God, make your healing a blessing and a power in the world, and make it worth God's while to bless you.

CHAPTER V

THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER

Leviticus 14

The leper was God's object lesson of the effect of sin upon the body; it was the picture of evil within stamping its likeness upon the whole frame, And so in the healing of this leper we have the very principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it deals with the double question of sin and sickness. You must always associate the two together. The leper stood before the priest crying: "Unclean, unclean," and the poor fellow bore the stamp of his uncleanness. It is all presented in great fullness in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus.

CHRIST COMES TO US

First, the priest goes to him outside the camp. Here we find Jesus Christ, of whom this priest was the type, not waiting for us to get fixed up and come up to the level where He can heal us, but coming down to the level where we are and lifting us up to Him.

Yes, He will come to you, He will be your righteousness and lead you every step of the way, and although you may be a sinful, paralyzed, unclean leper, He is your High Priest, and will come to you just where you are and help and heal you.

The first step always is Jesus. "I am the Way." "Tell me the way to Jesus," somebody said, and there never was a better answer, "There is no way to Jesus, for Jesus is the Way. There is not even a step; there is nothing for you to do before you get to Jesus. Jesus is the first thing, Jesus the next thing."

THE CROSS

Then the next thing we see in the story of this leper brings us up to the cross and the Crucified One. It is the sweet picture of the death and resurrection of Christ presented by two little birds that were to be brought, the one sacrificed and the other set at liberty. The first little bird was to be killed, and we know what that means, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it is through that that our cleansing and our healing come.

The cleansing of the leper was through the blood of the little bird; your cleansing and healing are through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ-the death of Christ. It is the greatest fact in the history of the world, and it is fitting that we should take it fully in. You can cry over the passion of Christ. That will not make you a better man or a better woman. It is faith that must enter in and take the real meaning. It means, my dear friend, when He died that afternoon you died and I died. That was the end of the old I, the sinful, guilty self.

God does not take the old man and fix him and cleanse him; the old man is put away.

And that is the meaning of resurrection life. It does not mean that our natural strength is improved a little, but our natural strength is as good as dead. It is crucified with Christ. It means that we have taken another kind of life-the life of the risen Son of God. It is not our strength increased, but it is our strength displaced and God's strength given instead.

THE RESURRECTION

Not only is it the death of the little bird; do not dwell too long on that, for quickly you are carried right along in the double action of the figure to the other little bird that was held beneath the dripping blood of the dead bird, was sprinkled with its blood, and covered with the drops of its life, and then all crimson and stained and baptized into the death of the dead one, it was set free in the open field and went singing away in its glad liberty, a picture of the resurrection.

One bird could show the dead Christ, but it took the other bird to show the living Christ. So this other little bird tells us that we are cleansed and healed by the resurrection of our Lord. It tells us that we may enter into the partnership of His death just as the living bird did. It was just baptized into the death of the other, and so we are to be baptized into the death of Jesus Christ, buried with Him in baptism and then we are to go free, just as if we were another being born out of Him, and alive forevermore.

For a moment you see the flowing blood and the gasping bird, but in another moment you hear the glad cry of the living bird and the triumphant song of freedom and life.

It is a cross where He hangs no more; it is a grave where He lies no more, it is a vacant cross, it is an empty tomb, it is a living Christ.

I do not know of any finer picture of the true meaning of the cross and resurrection than that of the sculptor who cut in marble a cross, but immediately covered it up by twisting around it a beautiful vine, and he hung the leaves and the clusters so thick upon it that you could scarcely tell the cross was there. There had been a cross, but over it hung the thick, rich clusters of leaves and fruit of the vine. And so the death of Christ is now covered over with the fruit of His risen life, and Easter ought to be to us a glad, bright, glorious new year of the heart and of the life; the resurrection rather than the death, the death only as a pathway to the resurrection. It is the life of Christ that makes us pure, happy and well.

Listen to Him as He cries: "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have. Handle Me and see." Bones, flesh, a man, human every whit! And "we are members of His body, and His flesh and His bones." It is the risen Christ. He is your head, He is your very heart, He is your true life, He shares with you His life. And so right here in the cleansing of the leper we have this other picture, the death and resurrection of the Lord as the secret of our life both for soul and body.

The story of this leper is carried on through a series of deeper processes which we can only touch upon.

DEEPER LIFE

First, we have the washing of his clothes; that means the habits of our lives. Then there is the washing of himself; that is not only the outward but the inward life. And then there is another process, the shaving of his hair; not only the hair on his head, but even his beard and his eyebrows. It was a very keen and a very heart-searching process. You know the hair means our own strength, it is the type of human strength, and here we are taught what it really means to die with Christ.

It is not to die to your evil habits only and your evil nature, but it is to die especially to your strength, to your confidence, to your selfsufficiency, and especially to your own opinions and ideas. The hair of your head, your intellectual mind, your eyebrows, the way you look at things. Oh, how we have to die to all this before Christ can heal us! What a revolution we have to pass through, until we see as He sees and lose confidence in our views and judgments.

CONSECRATION

And then comes a little later that other beautiful rite-the dipping of the finger of the priest in the blood of the sacrifice and applying it three times to the leper; first, to the right ear, next to his thumb, and then to his foot. It is just a touch of the blood to the ear, the organ of hearing; the hand, the organ of activity and action; the feet, the members with which we walk.

The blood always means the life; the life is in the blood, and it means the life of Jesusdivine life, the personal life of the Son of God, has come to our brains, our minds, our hands, our activities, our feet, our walk, our life.

THE ANOINTING

And then after the blood had come, the oil followed. This meant something more than the life, for the oil represents the Holy Ghost. You need the Holy Ghost to possess you, to give you power. It is possible to have the life without the power. The oil means power. "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you," effectual life, life with power behind it.

THE FILLING

And then there is just one more type. He uses the remnant of the oil-all that is left is to be poured upon the head of him that is to be cleansed. That is the filling with the Holy Ghost, coming into every part of your being, getting in the utmost possible measure God's highest thought and will.

Well, here we have in this little picture, it seems to me, the whole story of redemption for the soul, spirit and body. Could there be anything harder than the case of that leper? Your case is not worse. But could there be anything higher than the height to which he is raised, for this beautiful picture carries him on and up until he is filled with all the fullness of the Holy Ghost. And all this is brought right down to our level! All this is waiting for us through our Great High Priest, who is coming forth to us without the camp, and is now waiting to bless us!

CHAPTER VI

THE MESSAGE OF ELIHU

Job 33

The story of Job belongs to the Patriarchal age. It is an object lesson of the great principles of God's government. Job stands before us as an example of a good man, a man who has reached the highest ideals of his own time, a godly man, but a man who has not yet been thoroughly crucified to his own strength and goodness, and has not entered into that deeper experience which we know is the resurrection life.

We find Abraham passing through it in his sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah; we find Joseph passing through it in his years of anguish; we find Moses and David passing through it, and here we have the story of Job. This sudden trial comes to him, for which there seems to be no explanation, and while it lasts and before he comes out in his marvelous victory, God lets it come before us in a drama in which all the light and help that man can give to his fellow man passes away in

FAILURE

First, we have Job's own wife who fails, utterly fails, and at last in despair bids him give the whole thing up.

Then we see the three worldly friends pass by one after the other, each representing some phase of human wisdom. One represents the wealth of the world, another represents the wisdom of the world, and the other represents the goodness of the world, and each one thinks he knows all about it. Before they got through they had to come and ask God's forgiveness, and then Job's, for their rashness, their blindness, their stupidity.

But they have to appear and then fail. And finally Job has to fail. He thought he was all right, maintained his integrity and stuck to it that he was not to blame; but even Job had to break down at last, his righteousness had to fail, God had to lay him in the dust until he abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes. Then God Himself appeared as the explanation and the remedy for all, and Job was lifted up and restored to all that he had before, and the whole drama was made plain that what God wanted was to show the vanity of all human helpers and even Job's goodness, and then give him something better- His own righteousness.

THE VOICE OF GOD

But now right here before the close of the drama, before the climax, this man Elihu appears upon the scene. After all others have talked themselves empty and Job has answered them, Elihu, a young man, steps forward and claims to be the voice and inspiration of the Almighty, and his wise and wonderful message seems to bear it all out. While the whole book is inspired in a sense, yet all the speakers previously have just talked vanity and wind, and Elihu is the first that speaks the thought of the deep spiritual teachings of the New Testament.

It is very much like the twelfth chapter of Hebrews. It unfolds the highest and holiest principles of God's government in dealing with His children, and is far in advance of anything we find even in the Mosaic teachings. First he tells us that God is always trying to talk to men. His object is to reach their consciences and their hearts. "God speaketh once-yea, twice, yet man perceiveth it not."

He does everything that He can to make men understand, and through the Holy Ghost He tries to bring to them conviction and to hold them hack from his purpose, and "hide pride from man." That is, that He may arrest you in some wrong attitude or action and humble in you some form of pride which is to bring you to ruin.

God is trying to make us understand, and He is taking the gentler methods first. He does not want to resort to severity, but to guide us with His eye; so He puts thoughts into our minds, He puts fears upon our hearts and brings various influences to bear. He is the God of Providence and interposes in all the events of life. He speaks to us by His gracious deliverances and He tries to have us escape some severer lesson. We read in the eighteenth verse, "He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword." He kindly delivers us from the danger and lets us see His providential working. Oh, many times God has interposed just that we might understand that He loves us.

GOD'S SECOND VOICE

Still man does not learn, still God's love and kindness seems to be wasted, and now the severe testings have to come. "He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitudes of his bones with strong pain." Sickness comes, terrible sickness, sickness that seems to make every bone ache with keen pain, so that his appetite fails, his flesh is consumed and his bones all seem to stick out; and they say he must die, there is no hope for him; his friends give him up; the physicians give him up; there is nothing seemingly but the grave.

This is the hardest sort of a case. And yet he tells us that God's hand has been in all this. No talk of the devil here at all; the hand of providence is in it all, God's hand. Do not run into wild fire; stick to your Bible. God uses sickness. God uses trial, He lets the devil have a part in it, but it is by God's permission that all this has come. Perhaps it is a long story; perhaps it has taken months, perhaps years, to bring him to this condition.

THE MESSENGER

Well now, what next? Ah, here is the halting place where God brings His next agency. Providence stops for a moment, and now grace comes in. "If there be a messenger with him"....... if there be somebody who understands God's way, that his end is always mercy and His purpose always blessing, "to show unto man His uprightness," God's uprightness, to show him what God's purpose is, to help him to understand God, to submit to God, to listen to God, to put himself in God's hands; if there is only somebody there with a gentle, loving hand, and a faithful touch to press through all the films and help him to get to the heart of God, then, oh, what a change!

THE ATONEMENT

"Then He is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom." So here in the very heart of the patriarchal age we have this word. He has been all wrong, but God has a way of making it right, through the very blood of Christ's redemption. Jesus has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. We see this all through the Mosaic teaching. We saw it on a previous page when we were talking about the leper and the two little birds that were used for his cleansing.

We saw it in the brazen serpent that was raised on the pole. We have it in the censer of Aaron swinging between the living and the dead. So here we have it, right in the beginning of the Old Testament, the Ransom, Jesus Christ, making settlement on account of our body, substituting His stripes for our sickness and healing us by them.

THE HEALING

So this intercessor sits down by Job and tells him about God and then comes the healing. There is no waste of words, but just one sentence: "His flesh shall be fresher than a child's-He shall return to the days of his youth." It is not merely healing; it is regeneration, it is "a converted body," it is life given back in all its freshness. It is not an old man made well, but it is a new heart put into his being and new blood into his veins.

It is a renewing of life; it is the deeper teaching of the resurrection life, not the repair shop tinkering you up and letting you go on a little longer in the old break-down way, but it is that something which He is bringing to us in these days, the childhood of nature, it is that deep, sweet love-life of the Lord which He wants to pour into all our being and make us young again.

There is something about this picture of healing that is delightful-"fresher than a child," a buoyant freshness that makes you return to the days of your youth. God wants to make you like a happy, trusting child, and make it so delightful both to Him and you that you will feel it is joy to have Him heal you. He now brings you to a place of closer communion: "He shall pray unto God, and He will be favorable unto him; and he shall see His face with you." You will be brought into a new, sweet place. "He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light."

And he tells us that God often deals thus with men. His real purpose is to make them understand Him, to get them right with Him, and then bless them outwardly as well as inwardly. It is the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, the third epistle of John. It is the soul and body prospering and being in health conjointly. And so shall we not look into our own lives, our own needs, and understand our Father's love? How stupid we have been, how slow and how often we have tried to run from Him!

GOD ALWAYS TEACHING

And then when God is dealing with His children He usually has some deeper lesson for each time. Perhaps you have learned the former lesson and He is now teaching you something more, and the process may be a little slow and a little long. God has something to say that you have not yet heard.

The whole key to this passage seems to be, God speaking and man not understanding. "Man perceiveth not." Perhaps you have learned the lesson of your first and second healing, and now He has something else to teach you. There is a strange, sweet reluctance upon His part here. He speaks once, or even twice, before He brings sickness, and then He is so quick to remove it if we will open our ears and turn our hearts to Him. Never let us lose confidence in His perfect love. He does not want to break our spirit, or let it get hard, resentful or discouraged. He loves us, forevermore, and He wants us to trust His love and through His love to get hold of His life.

CHAPTER VII

SAMSON, AN OBJECT LESSON IN DIVINE HEALING

Judges 13: 7, 24, 25

"Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death."

"And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol."

And then again in the next chapter and the sixth verse, "The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand."

And yet again in the nineteenth verse, "And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil."

SEPARATION

In the dark days of the Judges, God brings out this striking object lesson of divine life for the body. Just as He had linked the principle of sickness with sin in the case of the leper, so here he links purity and strength, physical power with right living and separation to God. The first principle brought out here is that the foundation of strength is separation unto God.

He was a Nazarite from his mother's womb. And so, in order to be separated from every unclean thing, his mother must not even eat anything unclean. Then she must, and he must also, abstain from wine and strong drink. This seems to have special reference to earthly passion and desire. The spirit of true restraint and moderation is closely connected with a sound and healthy condition.

Therefore, it was not only a life of purity, but a life of true victory over self-the crucified life, the life that died to earthly things. God wants you to be pure, and God wants you to be subdued, to be self-restrained, not that there is any gospel of asceticism, but the true principle of life is, "All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any." I will not allow myself unduly to care for any thing, for as soon as it gets the mastery over me then it becomes wrong. The thing that might be right for you at one time is not best at another time. And so before the strong physical life of Samson could be developed he had to be a Nazarite in the true sense of the word. Then the simplicity of his life appears in the fact that no razor was to touch him; he was not to think of personal adornment.

STRENGTH

Next we find in Samson, not only the principle of purity, but the principle of supernatural strength, the physical life that simply comes from a source outside of his physical organism. Men look for evolution by natural laws; they do not expect any more to come out of a thing than they see go in. Here is a kind of strength that is unaccountable, that has no philosophy back of it; there is no reason why it should exist. Whence does it come? We are told again and again in these Old Testament records, that there may be no mistake, "the Spirit of the Lord," the breath of God, came upon this man. This ought not to be entirely new, for that was the way it was in the beginning:

"God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life."

The Spirit of God began to move him. There came manifestations, paroxysms of supernatural energy, and he would do things that were even a wonder to himself, and after a while the consciousness settled down upon him, and he knew that he had in him a strange secret of physical energy that others did not possess, and when the lion came upon him, he just rent him asunder as if he were a kid; he took the gates of Gaza and bore them off on his shoulders; and before his life was over, he tore down the colossal temple of the Philistines upon the heads of his enemies. There was nothing in bone or muscle that could explain it, it was just a paroxysm of force that swept into him from a divine source.

SPIRITUAL FORCE

What God once did He can do again. He does not do these things for play. He does not bring out a character like Samson so that we may gaze at him like a star. God's highest method of working still is to put into human bodies a kind of physical energy for which there is no way of accounting apart from the Holy Ghost. It is God's normal idea for us that the Spirit of God should move upon us and stir us with physical forces that take away the disease and give us powers of endurance that even we cannot understand. This is why Samson lived this strange supernatural life. God raised him up to show you that if a man will clear the way for God by keeping out of unwholesome influences, by getting on the ground of purity, God will just pour through him celestial dynamite. It is not so much better machinery that you want as more power to run it.

The other day we found our office in a state of collapse, and everything suspended because downstairs in a dark cellar an engine had gone to pieces and the power that turned the printing presses was all still; the machinery would not go, the engine had refused to work. Power, power, power was all we wanted. Then everything went all right. And so in your life and mine.

Do not try to fix up your heart and your joints, and your indigestion, but get power, get the engine going. Let the heavenly current charge you and everything will go; you want a supernatural addition to the force you have. You have natural power when things are all regular, but when they begin to get irregular you must have twice as much power. Get God into the machinery, and even if it is a little rusty and a little stiff, it will become sufficient if the power is there.

That is the idea of Samson. I do not want to exaggerate the picture, but there it looms, a great gigantic figure in the darkest ages of history, God's example of a body charged with the life of the Holy Ghost by a divine battery.

Beloved, have you received a physical baptism of the Holy Ghost? Your mind has been baptized with the Spirit; your affections have been baptized with the Spirit. Do you know what it is for your physical consciousness just to breathe in the rest and quietness of this divine inspiration? Have you received the Holy Ghost into your body? You have been in the third chapter of I Corinthians; have you ever definitely entered into the sixth chapter of I Corinthians?

Take it to your hearts; ask God to make it real to you, and, oh, when it comes to pass, you can understand the mystery of Samson's life; it will not be a mystery any more. You will say a hundred times a day, is it not wonderful, is it not blessed to have something inside of you that you cannot explain; but it moves you, it makes you run for God and almost fly for God.

That is the second principle then in the history of Samson. First, it means a separated life from every evil thing that could hurt you, and then it means a strong life deriving energy from a source outside and above.

UNSEEN FORCES

We might show this through the natural world; that force and power, even in the universe, is not in matter, but it is in a principle behind matter. You cannot see it; you cannot feel it. Take the subject of gravitation. I need not tell you that the law of gravitation is the greatest force we know; but you cannot see it, you cannot take it in your hand. You can take electricity and bottle it up; you cannot do this with gravitation, but it is the greatest force there is. Those particles of granite cling together by an unseen force, a kind of spiritual or ethereal force.

Well, the most advanced science is unable to tell anything about it; nobody knows what gravitation is. It is a power you cannot see, but it is the greatest power of nature. And so we might follow all through the natural world, and find it is not the visible things, but the invisible things that are strong. God has just given us parables all through nature to show us that He wants to raise us above the material, He wants us to see the thing behind the thing we see; He wants us to get to God Himself.

Perhaps when they find out the secret of nature, they will find that it is the living God, "for by Him all things consist," or, as it is better translated, all things "hang together." He is wanting us to learn that in our bodies, He wants us to glorify these earthly temples by filling them with something grander and better.

NOT IT, BUT HIM

So many people are wanting the "thing" to go; wanting "it," whatever that "it" is, inside or outside. There are all sorts of "its." You want something that will make you feel better. I do not believe that is what God wants. God wants you to get your eye off of these things and place it on Him; and soon you will have so much of Him you will not have time to watch "it." And if God wants you to live a year with something hurting you, and all that time be so strong that nobody will understand it, all right, let it stay. Just get your thoughts centered on the Holy Ghost, on God Himself, and let things go, let the devil fight, let all be upside down; never mind, if you and God are right.

What does this lesson mean? It means, first, clear the way for God. If you had a wire overhead that was partly wire and partly hemp, you would not get any electricity; it must be all wire. So if you let your body be partly God's and partly the flesh's, partly the world's, why, it will hinder. The first thing is right of way for God.

USE HIS POWER

The second thing is, perhaps, to be fully persuaded, intelligently persuaded of the glorious ministry of the Holy Ghost for the body as well as the soul. And then the next thing is to do as the scientist does, as the intelligence of our modern age does with the hidden forces of nature. They used to let the lightning kill men, but now they take it and harness it and use it. Today men have found out that lightning is the most beneficent power of the universe and they use it.

Now, get to work and study the laws of the Holy Ghost; find out all the modes of His operation, the things that help to bring Him, and then adjust yourself to Him, and you will find out that the Spirit of God will fit into your life as perfectly as the power fits into our machinery. Finally, do not get it all in theory, but go ahead and practice it, and the Holy Ghost will teach you how to use it, and after a while you will have it all in experience, and you will find what an all-round Friend He is.

There is not a thing in your life-work to which He cannot adjust Himself--social life, brain work, everything; He will just be the God of your life. Study Him, find out the laws of His working, adjust yourself to Him, and then use His glorious resources.

CHAPTER VIII

DIVINE HEALING IN THE PSALMS

The Hebrew Psalter is the manual of religious experience for the children of God in every age. We may therefore expect that its rich devotional pages will express the physical conflicts and blessings of the trusting heart as well as the deeper and more spiritual states. We are not disappointed.

A SEDATIVE

What is more necessary to physical health and comfort than sleep? And so we find the Psalmist like a tired and trusting child leaning upon his Father's bosom and often echoing the sentiment of Psalm 127:2, "So He giveth His beloved sleep." This is better than all the sedatives and narcotics of medical science and we have not learned far in the blessed Gospel of healing if we have not yet learned the secret of going to sleep in the arms of our Lord. How finely this is expressed in these two passages in the early Psalms of David, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, only maketh me dwell in safety" (Ps. 4:8). And the other is but the echo of it, "I laid me down and slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me" (Ps. 3:5).

A PRAYER FOR HEALING, PSALM SIX

Our next reference is a prayer for healing, "Have mercy upon me, 0 Lord, for I am weak. 0 Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed. I am weary with my groanings. Every night I make my bed to swim. I water my couch with tears." This is indeed a bitter cry, but it is soon changed into a joyful song of praise, "Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping, the Lord hath heard my supplication. The Lord will receive my prayer" (Ps. 6:2, 3, 8, 9).

PSALM EIGHTEEN

We turn over a few pages and we come to the eighteenth Psalm, which is a sublime record of answered prayer. "It is God," he cries, "that girdeth me with strength and maketh my way perfect. He teacheth my hands to war so that a bow of steel is broken in mine arms" (vs. 32, 34). David's physical prowess and victorious strength in battle were not due to the practiced muscles of the athlete, but to the supernatural power that fired his veins with divine strength and made his battles the battles of the Lord. The same strength is still available for those who trust in Him, and in the consciousness of His power our lives may be multiplied tenfold.

PSALM TWENTY-SEVEN

Here is a fine burst of praise for physical life and deliverance from danger and from death, "I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" (Ps. 27: 13). It was not in the land of the hereafter but in the land of the living that he believed to see the goodness of the Lord, and he saw it.

PSALM THIRTY

In the thirtieth Psalm we have again the double side of prayer and praise, "0 Lord, my God, I cried unto Thee and Thou hast healed me. Thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the grave. Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing. Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness" (vs. 2, 3, 5, II).

PSALM THIRTY-TWO

The thirty-second Psalm is also a testimony of pardon and healing. "When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me. My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto Thee and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Thou art my hiding place. Thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou shalt encompass me about with songs of deliverance" (vs. 4, 5, 7).

PSALM THIRTY-FOUR

The thirty-fourth Psalm, it is needless to say, is one of the favorite Ebenezers of every victorious life. It tells of deliverance both from troubles and from fears, there is one precious promise in it that some of us have literally proved in hours of peril, "He keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken. The Lord redeemeth the life of His servants and none of them that trust in Him shall be desolate" (vs. 20, 22).

PSALM THIRTY-NINE

Here is a humbler and more sorrowful prayer that sometimes fits into the hour of deep depression (Ps. 39: 10-13). "Remove Thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand. When Thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity. Oh, spare me that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more." But the next Psalm very soon turns the prayer into praise. "I waited patiently for the Lord and He inclined unto me and heard my cry. He bath put a new song in my mouth even praise unto our God."

PSALM FORTY-ONE

We have come to one of the sweetest of the Psalms, and one that ought to be hung up in every chamber of sickness and pain. "The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing. Thou wilt turn all his bed in his sickness" (Ps. 41 : 3). How gentle His care! How paternal His nursing! How thoughtful His provision for the turning of our very couch, when, as sometimes happens, the trial lingers.

PSALM FORTY-TWO

The forty-second Psalm has a fine expression in the eleventh verse, "Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God." It is repeated in the following Psalm and it may well suggest the bright and shining face which God's health gives to the countenance, and which we should ever wear as our testimony to Him.

PSALM FIFTY

"Call unto Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me" (Ps. 50: 15). This is a promise which may well cover every day of trouble and every case of sickness, need and pain.

PSALM FIFTY-ONE

"Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice" (Ps. 51:8). Here we see that spiritual trouble brings on us physical prostration and distress and that forgiveness and blessing bring healing and comfort to the mortal frame.

PSALM FIFTY-FIVE

Where shall we find a darker picture of the sinking life than in the fifty-fifth Psalm, verses 4-6? "My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me and horror hath overwhelmed me. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at rest." But soon we hear once more the sweeter notes of praise, "As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me. He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me. Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved" (vs. 16, 18, 22).

PSALM FIFTY-SIX

Again in the fifty-sixth Psalm, verse thirteen, we have another testimony of God's deliverance from death. "I will render praises unto Thee, for Thou hast delivered my life from death." "Wilt Thou not deliver my feet from falling that I may walk before God in the light of the living?"

PSALM SIXTY-THREE

There is a fine expression in the sixty-third Psalm, first verse, "My flesh longeth for Thee." There is such a thing as the crying out of our physical being to God for quickening and strength. Just as the babe lives on the life of its mother, so God is the supply of all our life and "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." David had learned this deep secret of the divine life, and it is because of this that Christ has become for us the Living Bread, that he that eateth Him shall live by Him.

PSALMS SIXTY-EIGHT, SEVENTY-ONE AND SEVENTY-THREE

"Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with His benefits, even the God of our salvation. He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto God the Lord belong the issues from death" (Ps. 68: 19, 20). "I will go in the strength of the Lord God. I will make mention of thy righteousness and of Thine only. Thou which hast shown me great and sore troubles shall quicken me again and shall bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness and comfort me on every side" (Ps. 71: 16, 20, 21). "My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. I am continually with Thee. Thou hast holden me by the right hand" (Ps. 73: 26, 23). All these are testimonies of the healing and strengthening touch of God.

GENERAL PROMISES

There are general promises in the Scriptures and in the Psalms which cover all our needs, including the healing of our bodies. Such a promise is Psalm 84:II, "For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly."

PSALM NINETY-ONE

But it is needless to say the richest and fullest of the Psalms of help and healing is the ninety-first, and with this we may well pause for the present in our series of Psalm studies. It almost reads like a Psalm of Moses; the drapery of it reminds one of the tabernacle and the Holy of Holies, the secret place of the Almighty. Our space will only permit us to call attention to three things in this beautiful Psalm.

I. What God Himself is.

1. He is the Most High, above all other power and therefore above all adversaries and evils,

2. He is the Almighty. This is the mighty Shaddai, the God who is sufficient.

3. He is a refuge, and fortress, that is, the One to whom we fly in times of danger, either for offensive or defensive warfare.

4. He is our habitation, for having found Him a shelter in danger we learn to dwell there as our abiding home when the danger is past.

II. What God will be to us and do for us.

1. He will deliver us from Satan and from sickness.

2. He will deliver us from fear as well as harm and keep our hearts in perfect rest.

3. He will guard us from all evil by angelic protection and ceaseless providence.

4. He will answer our prayers and honor and bless us.

5. With long life will He satisfy us and show us His salvation.

These are some of the precious promises of this blessed Psalm.

III. What He expects of us in order that we may claim His blessing and His healing.

1. That we should abide in Him, dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, and abiding under the shadow of the Almighty. This is the secret of every blessing, fellowship with Christ, intimate union and abiding communion with our Lord.

2. We must confess Him as our Guardian and Deliverer. "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress." We must say it as well as feel it. We must commit ourselves openly and unreservedly to His care and as we do so He will honor our faith and be to us all we take Him for.

3. We must trust Him. We must say, "In Him will I trust," "Under His wings shalt thou trust." "His truth shall be thy shield and buckler." The shield is the figure of faith. The buckler represents the sort of faith that is so fastened to us that we cannot lose it, and like the ancient buckler it is part of our very dress and inseparable from us. This is the faith that God gives and that overcomes all things and makes all things possible.

4. We must give up our doubts and fears. This is not only a promise, but a command. "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."

5. We must tread upon the lion and adder. We must take the place of victory. We must put our feet upon the necks of our adversaries. We must treat our spiritual enemies as conquered foes and we must do it in the very beginning, while they are young, before they get the mastery.

6. We must set our love upon Him, choose Him as our supreme object and desire and be wholly consecrated to His will and glory. It is of these He says, "Therefore will I deliver them." He is proud of our consecration and there is nothing He will not do for the heart that wholly belongs to Him.

CHAPTER IX

DIVINE HEALING IN THE PSALMS CONTINUED

These old Psalms are just waymarks for the pilgrims who have passed on before and left for us these staves that supported them in hard places. And it will help you to take a Psalm that God has inspired, and turn it God and say, "This is Thy Word, Lord, and Thou wilt surely answer Thine own prayer."

PSALM NINETY-TWO

Let us look at some of these precious promises of healing. In the ninety-second Psalm we read, "The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." Here we have both loftiness and strength; we have height and depth; the stature of the palm and the roots of the cedar. You may go through the woods during the spring days and you will see a little vine, the creeper, without any strength in itself, hanging to a great oak, and that little creeper is just as strong as the oak. It has not any strength of itself, but has all the strength of the great tree. It is the picture of a weak, helpless disciple leaning on the great, strong Lord. You do not need to be strong, but God is strong, and He gives you His strength.

It goes on to say, "Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing." Surely, that is a blessed kind of healing, for old age is usually barren, old age ceases to bear fruit. After a certain period almost all sorts of vegetable and animal life cease to produce and bring forth fruit. But like the ivy you can lean upon the giant tree, taking the strength of God.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE

Passing over for a moment one or two Psalms we come to the one hundred and fifth Psalm, and we find here some references to the children of Israel, and God's dealings with them. "He brought them forth also with silver and gold, and there was not one feeble person among their tribes." He brought them forth out of Egypt. He has just been telling us of the death of the firstborn and the leading of the Lord, and this is the way He brought them. He supplied their money, and He supplied their strength, because He had promised that He would do it. He had made a covenant at Marah: "If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee."

God kept them strong. Caleb tells that he was as fresh at eighty-five as a man at twentyfive.

And they would all have been kept if they had not disobeyed God. But God works both ways-the covenant of death and the covenant of life, and so they perished for their disobedience and unbelief.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND SEVEN

And so again in the one hundred and seventh Psalm we have a series of pictures of God's dealings with man. In the seventeenth verse, "Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted." They have done wrong, and God has no other way to wake them up. "Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saveth them out of their distresses."

He is a gracious Lord; He hears their cry. "He sent His Word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions." He did not send a drug or a doctor or a prescription; He sent His Word. "Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men! And let them sacrifice the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and declare His works with rejoicing." This is a beautiful picture of God's tender mercy to the poor, troubled sinner.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND TEN

In Psalm one hundred and ten, we have a Psalm for the young as well as the old. "Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning; thou hast the dew of thy youth." It is a picture of Jesus Christ, and the one that is addressed here is Christ, the Son of man, and the dew of youth means that it is His youth, and He just bedews us with His youth. That is divine healing. It is a little of the life of the Son of God, the freshness that bedews us with His Holy Spirit. "Thy people shall be willing [or shall be a free-will offering] in the day of Thy power," and then this shall be the result: they will be clothed with the beauty of holiness, they will be fresh from the womb of the morning and sparkling with the dew of Christ's youth.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN

Psalm one hundred and sixteen, the first nine verses, is a peculiarly beautiful note of praise.

"I love the Lord because He hath heard my voice and my supplications." It is not merely "I thank the Lord," but "I love Him because He is so good." Have you ever awakened refreshed and rested after weariness and suffering and said, "I love the Lord because He is so good?" Tell Him you love Him, do not wait until you get to heaven.

Well, what was it; what was the matter? "Because He has inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me; I found trouble and sorrow." You see this is meant for hard cases; it is just framed for people who are in a desperate physical condition. It is the testimony of people who have been dreadfully sick and got well. I have been thinking since I read this over what a beautiful prayer book for the sick these Psalms of David would make!

Next he tells us what he did. "Then called I upon the name of the Lord; 0 Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul." He did not lose heart, he did not say what is the use, he just called. He put his whole strength in it and was determined that God should hear him. He called. He put his whole strength in it and called on the name of the Lord. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do." Do not say, 0 Lord, Lord, Lord, why don't You help me. But say, 0 loving Father, 0 dear Lord, You are so good. 0 Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my life." His life was in danger. He did not have to cry long. He only puts half a verse in his prayer, and all the rest is praise. He says, "Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful. The Lord preserveth the simple; I was brought low and He helped me." He just knew little enough to expect the Lord to help him.

"Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For Thou hast delivered my life from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living." He is going to live now wholly for God, for He has been so good to him.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE

Is there anything better for the home, the business, or the journey than the one hundred and twenty-first Psalm, especially the last verses? "Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy Keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil; He shall preserve thy life. [For it means life.] The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore." He is our Preserver, our Keeper; keeping our bodies, keeping our spirits, keeping all our life.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN

Is there a sweeter sedative than the one hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm and the second verse? "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so He giveth His beloved sleep." What is more necessary for health than sleep, what is harder than to force it, and what is more needful than rest? What a beautiful verse! "So He giveth His beloved sleep." He puts you in the place of His beloved before He gives you sleep. You have to be His beloved first. I dare say that many times when you have been nervous or weary or worn you have felt you must just get the love of God before you could sleep. And He wants to keep you that way. To His beloved He giveth sleep. Take the place of love and you will find rest and strength.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE

We have here some precious promises for the time of physical need. We read in the 19th verse: "He will fulfil the desire of them that fear Him: He also will hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserveth all them that love Him; but all the wicked will He destroy."

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND TWO

And now we go the two Psalms that we have passed over, because they are like the ninety-first, the mountain tops of healing. There are two linked together, the one hundred and second and the one hundred and third, for these Psalms often go in pairs.

In the twenty-third verse of the one hundred and second Psalm we read, "He weakened my strength in the way; He shortened my days"--sickness, decay, prostration, paralysis, helplessness, complete collapse, inevitable death. Everybody says so, strength gone, constitution exhausted, "My strength is weakened and my days shortened." It was evident that his days were numbered. There was no hope; he might as well give up and die. That is the situation. He had quite made up his mind for a while that it was death. Then came the reaction; the breath of hope and prayer, the pitiful plea of helplessness and the prayer for help, and is there anything more pathetic than the prayer of helplessness?

Oh, it has often cheered our heart. "I said, 0 my God, take me not away in the midst of my days; Thy years are throughout all generations." You cannot fail to see the point. Man's are days, God's are years. With Thee, he says, a year is as much as a day with me. I have just a little bit of life, Lord; Thou hast all the ages. You have the ages of eternity, Lord. You that are so rich in time, rich in life, let me have my little store. Is it not pathetic, is it not beautiful, is it not enough to touch the heart of God Himself? It is like the child that cried, "Save me because I am so little." Get little and then the Lord will save you. Don't try to be big, don't try to be eloquent. It makes one tired when people say, "I cannot pray well." People that pray well are bores.

Then he says, "Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end." 0 mighty God, 0 Father of eternity, 0 rich Source and Resource of life, pity Thy little child whose life is like a span, and give me just a little more. And God hears the prayer, and the very next word is a burst of praise.

PSALM ONE HUNDRED AND THREE

"Bless the Lord, 0 my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and forget not all His benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's." This will not mean much to you, if you have not actually lived it. Some of you know what it is; the health that is out of weakness made strong, and that lives on the bosom of God.

One is impressed by the completeness of this doxology. It covers everything, all kinds of healing and health. It is the life of God, it is the mercy and salvation of God. "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities." He starts at the right place. There is always need for a fresh touch of grace. Do not try to walk on a plane of independence, but get right down at the foot of the cross. There may be things in your heart that you did not know were there.

There may be little films from the very atmosphere of the world, but, oh, it is exquisite to get right down at the feet of Christ and say, "He forgiveth all." He is so holy that the heavens are unclean before Him. And so, come, sufferer, come to the blood every time and take a fresh cleansing even for what you do not know, and just live under the blood. And then the healing is complete: "He healeth all thy diseases."

But that is not half of the blessing. When all your diseases are healed you are not half healed. He "redeemeth thy life from destruction." You are well today, but tomorrow you would break all your bones if the Lord did not hold you up. You are walking through death all the time and the elements of poison and disease. Why don't you die? Why, the Lord "redeemeth thy life from destruction."

But that is not half yet. "He crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies." That is the sweet nearness that it gives you, the fondness and the oneness of the Father's heart, for when He comes into your body He gets a closer hold of you. I do not know how we would know the love of God if we did not have Him in our very bones. When He is in every throb of the heart, in every bone of the body, He seems nearer to the soul. Do not try to be too stiff and cold, too regular and proper; there is a place for love and emotion, and the happy child and the overflowing hallelujah, and they know it best who are conscious that the Lord is for the body and the body is for the Lord.

But that is not all; the very best is still to come. He "satisfieth thy mouth with good, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's." That is divine life that comes after divine healing. That is being lifted to a higher plane and kept there all the time. That is being healed when you are well, as well as when you are sick. It is the overflowing life of God in the human frame and in the human heart. That is the ideal life of this beautiful Psalm. These Psalms are far beyond the experience of most lives. May God help us to live up to them and then help others to enter in!

CHAPTER X

THE GREAT ATONEMENT

Isaiah 53: 4.

Let us consider some reasons for applying this standard and cardinal passage, in this greatest chapter of the greatest of the prophets, to the subject of divine healing.

SICKNESS

The first reason here that we may apply this without any doubt as a ground for the Lord's healing, is the use of the word "griefs" in this text, "He hath borne our griefs." The original word is found about one hundred times in the Old Testament, and every time but this it is translated "sickness." This is the only instance where it is translated "griefs," and this must be because the translator could not quite understand the sense of using "sickness" here. It might have been on the principle of trying to make the Bible sound more rational that this word was inserted. "Griefs" is not altogether a mistranslation, but the word really means "disease." This verse covers the atonement of Christ for our bodies, the provision of His redemption for these mortal attacks.

BORNE

2. The next reason for applying this verse in the Bible is the word "borne." "He hath borne our sicknesses." This word is also a kind of technical term. It has a theological meaning which is most clearly defined in many of the passages in which we find it. It is applied to the scapegoat that bore away the sins of the people. It is used in this chapter where we are told that He bore the sins of many. It is found in John where we are told that the Lamb of God "beareth away the sins of the world." So it means not mere sympathy or mere relief, but it means substitution, one bearing another's death. Christ literally substituted His body for our body. That is the meaning of the words, "Surely He hath borne our sicknesses." He took them upon Himself and relieved us of the load by His atonement.

CHRIST'S DEATH

3. The third reason why we apply this passage to divine healing is the use of the word for sickness later in the chapter, in the tenth verse, where we are told that it pleased the Lord to make Him sick. "He hath put Him to grief," or literally, as Dr. Young has translated it, "He hath made Him sick in smiting Him."

We are told by physicians who have explained the causes of the death of Christ, that He died from rupture of the heart. He did not die from the ordinary causes incident to crucifixion, but He died from a spasm that caused His heart to burst, and when they came to Him He was dead, while the others who were crucified with Him were still alive. He died from the disease which He bore for us. So there is a sense in which Christ was really sick, but it was in our place, for it is added in the next verse, "And with His stripes we are healed."

MATTHEW'S TRANSLATION

4. Here is the fourth one. Matthew 8: 16, 17 confirms its application to physical healing. "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." There you have the literal translation of the word "sickness," and there you have the double use of the verb. Matthew's translation bears out in every part the application of this verse to the healing of the body. Both words, "infirmity" and "sickness," denote physical difficulty and disability.

The one may be a lack of strength, the other may be a condition of physical disease. Still further, the use that Matthew makes of the verse makes it quite positive that he was referring to the body alone, for he quotes the passage in direct connection with Christ's miracles of healing. "When evening was come He healed all that were sick." The reason that He healed the people was because Isaiah said He would. Now, if Isaiah did not mean healing, this verse would be irrelevant. Isaiah must have meant healing, or Matthew would not have quoted it.

HEALED BY HIS STRIPES

5. Once again, to strengthen the argument, we have the closing clause of this great verse, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." Here we have all the different phases of Christ's death. "Wounded for our transgressions," or actual sins.

"Bruised for our iniquities." Iniquities are different from transgressions, they are something in us. It has reference to the state of our heart, to our moral and spiritual condition. What a man is, is much worse than what a man does, so Christ died for what you are as well as what you have done.

"The chastisement of our peace was upon Him." That means our spiritual blessing, our new life, our happiness, our peace and rest, our deliverance from the curse of sin and consciousness of it, our union with God in the Holy Ghost. All this was bought for us by His chastisement.

So we have three things in this Gospel: transgressions atoned for, our sinful nature laid on Him, our new life bought by Him.

"With His stripes we are healed." That makes the inventory complete. Without that it is only a partial list; with that it is fourfold and entire. But to say, "By His stripes we are healed" just means spiritual healing is a tautology. He has said that in the previous clause, "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him." It must mean something else-physical redemption through His agony as our substitute.

Now, if you will put those four points together, I do not see how any unprejudiced mind can doubt for a moment that this passage covers the healing of our bodies through the atonement of Christ.

6. But, again, we want to notice the force of the word "surely," in this passage. "Surely, He hath borne our sicknesses and carried our pains." Why did He say "surely"? Why did He say it here? Well, to say the least, it is an underlining of the passage intended to mark it as very important. It makes it not only important, but absolutely true. It is because in the beginning of the chapter he stepped out with diffidence and hesitation, and said, "Lord, who hath believed our report?

Lord, they will not believe what I am going to say, and especially when I say anything about the power of the Lord, they will be sure to doubt it. If I talk about historical facts they may believe it, but if I go and tell them about a divine arm that can take hold of man's weaknesses, if I reveal a power that can do great things, they will doubt my testimony." "Lord who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" Therefore, the Lord just says, "Isaiah, tell them it is true, and put My oath behind it, and say, 'Surely, this particular part of the Gospel is true, because it does reveal the arm of the Lord, it does show the power of the Lord.'"

OUR SORROWS

7. But we want to call your attention still further to the other word in this text, "sorrows." "Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." We have told you that the word "griefs" means physical disease, sickness of the body. That is the ordinary meaning of the word ninety-nine times out of one hundred. Here is added another word, "sorrows." I have no doubt that it is a true translation. The only variation that I have seen suggested is the word "pains." It might mean "pains," but I think I like "sorrows" best. It may mean a good many things.

It may mean the sensitive, suffering part of sickness. It may mean that which accompanies disease. The worst diseases are often painless, and sometimes the severest pains are connected with the least important diseases, so you can see at once the difference between disease and pain. But, blessed be His name, He covers both. He will not only take away disease, but He will take away the symptoms which accompany it, too. You can bring Him your racking headache just as well as the consumption or the heart disease that is eating away your life.

Again, it may mean mental disease-the ills of the mind, and you know what a large catalogue they are, insanity in all its forms. Doubtless it can be healed, and God does give many instances of the healing of mental diseases through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you know of any dear friend, suffering from this most fearful of all ills, do not hesitate to ask and expect God to help and heal.

But this word "sorrows" has another meaning. Doubtless it means the heart break, and the inward griefs that affect our feelings and affections, and bring an anguish worse than sickness-the burdens of Gethsemane. The more of joy you know, the more of sorrow you will always have, the nearer you get to Him, the oftener will you walk through the gardens of Olivet. But, thank God, He hath redeemed you from sorrow, and while pains will hurt, there will come a joy a little sweeter for their hurt; there will come deliverance from their bondage.

It is one thing to weep, it is another thing to triumph through your tears and have your sorrow turn to joy. There are people that are crushed with sorrow, and there are people that rise through their trials and their cares, and you may rise and triumph through Him. You may go through life with a chastened joy, with a gladness that has in it a touch of gravity, but without a bit of the graveyard. It is yours by the redemption of Jesus Christ.

CARRIED

8. Our text is growing bigger and bigger. Why are the two verbs in it? "Surely, He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." Ah, that is the best of all. It means that He did not only take them when on the cross, and assume them as our Substitute, but it means that He keeps taking them still, and that evermore His hands are reaching out, one by one, to take them from you and carry them for you in the priesthood of His ascension. "Borne" means on the cross, but He carries them every moment on the throne.

So there are two things. First, you are to believe that He took them once for all, and then there is the putting them over, the laying them on Him, the transferring of every burden as it comes to you, and living out that beautiful verse, "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Now you cannot stop being careful for everything just by mere negation, as the folly of Christian Science teaches. That will not do. I cannot say there is nothing the matter with me when there is. I may say there is no trouble. But there is trouble. I cannot cancel my debts by saying there are no debts. But I can hand them over to another.

Here is a letter from a friend: "Send your creditors to me. Send your bills to me, call upon me." And you just go to his office, and hand them over, and your friend takes them, and you can say there is nothing the matter; everything is all right." "You can be careful for nothing," but not like a blind Buddhist, or a silly ostrich, who hides his head behind a leaf and thinks there is no hunter because he cannot see him. "Be careful for nothing" is only half the remedy-listen: "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." That is the way to hand them over. Give them to Him; tell Him about them, and He that bore them on the cross will carry them day by day, and then the care will disappear because the load is gone.

CHAPTER XI

DIVINE HEALING IN ISAIAH

We have already referred to that great chapter which is the cornerstone of the Gospel, the fifty-third of Isaiah. And we have seen in it what abundant reason there is to appropriate and apply the great atonement therein set forth to our physical needs. But there are many other passages in this great evangelical prophecy that may be equally applied to the needs of our body and the quickening life of God in our mortal flesh.

THE PROMISE OF STRENGTH

"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Isa. 40:31).

In the previous verses we are reminded of the fallibility of human strength and the divine sufficiency for them that have no might. Here we learn that they may exchange their weakness for the strength of God by waiting on the Lord. This brings us at once to the heart of the subject. The very essence of the Lord's healing is the imparting of the life of Christ to the human frame by the Holy Spirit. This is obtained by waiting on the Lord, not the habit of passively waiting until our prayers are answered, but the attitude of receiving from Him in living communion the imparted strength of His own life.

Just as the branch draws its life from the vine, just as the graft attached to the trunk of the tree becomes adjusted to its new sources of supply and draws from the sap its nutriment and life; just as the dew gathers round the plant and fills the flower cup and refreshes the whole vegetable creation, so the heart can learn to receive from Him who is the Fountain of life, breath by breath, vital energy and physical renewing. This is an exchange of strength. We lay down our strength and receive His instead.

The effect is a great uplift. "They shall mount up with wings as eagles." This is the first effect of a great blessing. We need not these hours of elevation and even if the high altitude is not always maintained, yet it prepares us for the reactions that follow and the quieter plane of daily life. For next we are brought the earth again and called to run the race of some supreme exertion, some difficult undertaking, something that requires the putting forth of our utmost energy. And God does give strength for these emergencies, the nights of watching, the days of unremitting toil, the pressure of extreme labor or suffering.

But this is not the normal attitude of life. And so we come to the next stage, "They shall walk and not faint." This is the plod of life. This is the plane of the commonplace. This is where the hardest strain really comes and where the grace and strength of God are most manifest. But it is the long pull that tells and wears. And for this the strength of God is adequate. "They that wait upon the Lord shall walk and not faint." Yes, there is in Christ physical help for the daily, hourly steppings of duty and toil, that will put zest into our labor, spring into our steps and freshness into our spirit. Happy they who have learned the secret of waiting on the Lord.

RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HEALING

"I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will restore comforts unto him and to his mourners."

"I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord; and I will heal him" (Isaiah 57: 18, 19).

Here we have the picture of a soul that has gone astray and been suffering under the chastening of the Lord. "For the iniquity of his covetousness I was wroth and smote him." And the chastening for a time seemed to be in vain. "I hid me and was wroth. And he went on frowardly in the way of his heart." But at last the stubborn will broke and instantly the heart of God flew to meet His returning child. "I have seen his ways and will heal him." Here we have healing as the result of repentance and returning to God. But this is not all. "I will lead him also and will restore comforts unto him and to his mourners."

But there is another healing a little farther on. After the soul has been led into the fulness of Christ and the "peace, peace," of the Spirit's inbreathing, then, for the second time the Lord says, "I will heal him." This is different from the first healing. When first we come to God for physical help He meets us on the ground of faith and promise, not waiting for a deep spiritual experience, but blessing us immediately.

Our first experience of healing is usually easy and free from the tests and conflicts of our maturer life. But later, after we have entered into all the experiences of these verses, we reach a deeper physical life, one that draws its strength from Christ by the Holy Spirit and finds in Him a new source of health and life. This becomes the habit of faith. It is not mere deliverance from some sudden and special attack of disease, but a normal strength that draws its support continually from Jesus as the Head of our body and the life of all our being.

THE LIFE OF LOVE AND THE EXPERIENCE OF HEALING

"Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward."

"And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Isaiah 58:8-11).

Here we have a still deeper experience of life and healing. It is not mere righteousness now, but love. The soul has been taught the true fast which the Lord loves, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, to deal out bread to the hungry, clothe the naked and bring the poor and outcast home. Then shall our light break forth as the morning and our health shall spring forth speedily. Then shall the Lord satisfy our soul in drought and make fat our bones, and we shall be like a watered garden and a spring of waters whose waters fail not. Here is the rich and overflowing life of God springing from a heart full of love and benevolence.

Watering others we become watered ourselves. Our health springs. It is not pumped up from a dry well, but the overflow of a great artesian fountain. Our very bones are made fat. There is something fine in this figure. It reaches to the marrow. This is not necessarily the fat that is on our bones, but in our bones. Some people are made of dry bones. They are parched and pinched and always seem to be at starvation point. There is no unction, freshness or heartiness about them. Their lives are hard and hidebound, like Baizac's dreadful hero whose skin was too tight for him and at last squeezed him to death. Others seem to be always mellow, whole hearted, fresh and overflowing with sympathy, cheer and help for others. Their bones have been made fat. They have got some marrow in them. This is the life that God gives.

It is a higher kind of health and imparts exhilaration and spring to every movement and impulse.

So we have found in the book of Isaiah three kinds of health. There is that which comes from waiting on the Lord (Isaiah 40: 31). There is that which comes from getting right with God (Isaiah 57: 18). And there is that which springs from the overflow of the life of love. How very significant it is that all these physical blessings spring from spiritual conditions and seem to belong to the very nature of things.

A man's health, therefore, is largely a matter of higher conditions. The more we ascend in the spiritual plane the more directly are we in touch with all the sources of divine and supernatural life which center in Christ the Living One and the Fountain of Life to all who abide in Him.

CHAPTER XII

NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL HEALING

Until after the time of Solomon there seems to have been no departure from the simplicity of the ancient faith with respect to the body. But he laid the foundation for that departure from God by an alliance with the world which led to all the disasters of his people in the succeeding generations.

Allying himself with Egypt, and introducing its luxuries, refinements and intermarriages, there soon followed, no doubt, its physicians too, and the grandson of Solomon, king Asa, is the first example of their treatment in the entire Bible. His act is mentioned with manifest disapproval, as indicating distrust in God, and is marked by God's displeasure in its fatal termination. It is marked by a whole series of gradual departures from God through seeking human alliances in his exigencies. "Because thou hast relied upon the king of Syria, and relied not on the Lord," was the same principle which a little later caused his death. "In his sickness Asa sought not unto the Lord, but unto the physicians."

In a recently published address one speaks of those "who have not sufficient faith in God to see Him in and through the use of means," and adds, "The use of means ought not to lessen our faith in God, and our faith in God ought not to hinder our using those means which He has given us for the carrying out of His own purposes." It is strange that this distinction is not brought out by the Holy Spirit in this, the first reference to the subject in the Scriptures.

Why does the Lord not blame him for not asking a blessing on the physicians? How is it that the forbidden act was not the neglect of this, but the seeking unto the physicians instead of the Lord? His going to them is not regarded as an evidence or an opportunity for faith in God, but the reverse. And is it not the usual rule of human nature to lean harder on the smallest twig of the visible and the human than upon the whole Omnipotence of an unseen God? And the real test of faith is to be willing to step out on "the seeming void," and expect to find "the Rock beneath."

The case of Naaman, a little later, is a pleasing contrast. His disease was incurable, and especially suggestive of the connection between sickness and sin. His first application was about as far back as the most ignorant and blundering soul could wish for its encouragement. Overflowing with pride and self-consciousness, he came to the prophet's door, and expected attention and consideration, but received the deathblow, first to his self-will and then to his sickness. How wisely and bravely the old prophet left him with God, and let him down into the death of self!

So it must ever he. Naaman must die ere the leper can be cleansed and the healing come. And he dies, as every other must, by an act of faith; and how simple an act! Only implicit obedience to the Divine Word. He does just what the prophet tells him, and he does it through to the end. That is faith.

For salvation, for healing, for everything, faith is to do just what God tells us, and then leave the result with Him. Are you sick? There is a command in James as explicit as Elisha's orders. Simply, promptly, fully obey it, and God will hold Himself as much bound to honor His own word as He does you to obey it.

Naaman's faith had to be continuous, abiding and persistent. Seven times had he been commanded to wash in Jordan. This involved the very essence of faith; viz., an act which at first perceives no sign of the answer claimed. Once, twice, thrice he entered the sacred river and returned. Once, twice, thrice again he repeated it. But there was yet no sign of healing. So must we believe and act and expose ourselves to the humiliation of apparent failure.

How often must it have seemed to him like a vain repetition or foolish play! But he continued until every word had been fulfilled and the order of faith and obedience explicitly, completely carried through. And then the answer came-his flesh "as the flesh of a little child," his leprosy all gone, and his soul exulting in the consciousness of new, and pure, and perfect health. So let us believe and wait and finish the steps of faith.

His subsequent history is full of instruction. First, his gratitude prompts him to make a generous return as a thank-offering, and the prophet, with a wise avoidance of even the appearance of mercenary considerations, declines at the time to receive his gift. Next, with a prompt and wholehearted consecration, he declares his steadfast dedication henceforth to the true God. And then, with a jealous perplexity about his precise duty while attending his royal master in the temples of idolatry, he asks the prophet's counsel.

The prophet throws him back on God, and he goes forth to be a witness for God throughout the whole of Syria.

There is one other instance of healing in the later years of the kingdom of Judah. It is the story of Hezekiah. That it was a supernatural and, indeed, a miraculous healing, and not the result of remedies, is evident from the fact that he had been declared by God to be in a dying condition, and the distinct statement in Chronicles that God "wrought a miracle for him" (margin) and healed him. If it were miraculous, this disposes at once of the whole question of the means used; they must have been symbolical and not remedial.

His prayer is given with considerable fullness by Isaiah. It began, like many of our prayers, with a wail of unbelief. "Like a crane or a swallow he chattered," and many a modern prayer is no better. But at length he reached the point of self-despair, and with the cry, "Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me, the deliverance came. What shall I say? He hath both spoken to me and Himself hath done it."

The faith of Hezekiah in asking a sign was very great. He asked something harder even than his healing. God has given us a still greater sign-the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. After this, nothing is too hard for us to ask or Him to do.

Hezekiah did not make the most of his new life. He allowed his blessing to lift up his heart in foolish pride, and a greater blow had to come, which left his kingdom and household a heritage of sorrow.

The attempt of some to make the healing of Hezekiah a warrant for the use of medical remedies in our sickness is fatally weak in these respects:

I. He was incurably sick, and no remedy could be a means.

2. His healing was called "a miracle," and if so, could not in any sense be natural.

3. The application used is called a sign. At least this seems to be implied in the last two verses of Isaiah.

4. It was administered by Isaiah through a special Divine revelation, and not through medical science.

5. There was no resort to physicians whatever, but from the first a simple waiting upon God.

6. The plaster of figs may have been no more than the anointing with oil in James; viz., a sign that the case had been committed to and undertaken by the Lord.

7. Hezekiah did what he was told by the Lord exactly, and faith should do just what God's Word still teaches us in sickness.

CHAPTER XIII

HEALING IN HIS WINGS

"But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of righteousness arise, with healing in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall" (Mal. 4:2).

This is a vision of the Springtime of the ages, with its glorious sunshine and its overflowing life. The vision came to the last of the Old Testament prophets as he looked out from the sere and cheerless winter of Israel's trials to the brighter future their Messiah was to bring.

I. The first picture is the Sunrise and the Light.

Another prophet had caught the same vision and had written, three centuries before, "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up."

Looking across the gulf of four centuries, Malachi saw the rising dawn of the Christian age and the light which was to shine from the face of Jesus Christ on a lost and benighted world. It was the vision of a glorious sunrise. How literally our Lord fulfilled the prophecy and claimed the promise as He stood amid the false teachings and perverted light of His age and cried aloud, "I am the Light of the world, he that followeth Me shall not abide in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

Christ is the Sun of righteousness. All other teachers were but light bearers. They shone only with reflected light, but He came as a Divine luminary, bearing the direct light of God Himself into the world's darkness. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." The teachings and the example of Jesus Christ bring to us the revelation of God's will and His purposes of love and mercy toward our fallen race.

But Christ did not leave us merely with the light of His Word, and His pattern of grace, but has also left us His Holy Spirit as the personal Agent through whom the light is brought down to our very hearts and made plain to our blindness and ignorance. Not only does He give us light, but also sight. Just as the solar light would be useless to the physical universe were it not for the atmosphere which diffuses it and communicates to our sensitive organs of vision, so the Holy Spirit has been given to take of the things that are Christ's and reveal them unto us, and make God's light personal and sufficient for every quickened soul.

The sunrise that Malachi saw was not merely the dawn of the Christian era, and the rising of the Sun of righteousness in the personal ministry of Jesus Christ, but there is a sunrise just as real and glorious that comes to every soul which opens its vision to the light of God. The words become true to the individual heart that has long been sitting in darkness:

"Sometimes a light surprises

The Christian while he sings;

It is the Lord who rises

With healing in His wings."

This is especially true in connection with the ministry and experience of Divine healing to which this promise particularly refers. How difficult it is for the natural mind and heart to grasp this blessed truth and take the Lord for the body as freely as for spiritual need. Mere teaching cannot bring us to this. There must be a revelation of Christ by the Spirit, as our Almighty Healer.

We may read the most logical arguments, we may be familiar with all the literature on the subject, but it will all seem dim and distant until "the Sun of righteousness Himself arises with healing in His wings." Then it is all so plain that we wonder why we ever doubted, and it seems to us that all the world must fly to His arms if it only knew what we have come to know of His healing love and power. Then the Christ of Galilee becomes the Christ of today, "a living, bright reality," and the light that reveals Him to our trusting heart brings also the faith that receives Him and turns our pain into praise and our night into day.

Dear suffering one, perhaps you have had light enough from books and teachers; turn to Him and awake to His power, and it will be true of you, "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning and thine health shall spring forth speedily."

II. The Sun of Righteousness.

The light brings also with it the righteousness. We need not only light, but spiritual life and power. We need to be made right with a Divine righteousness. Our spiritual condition is intimately connected with our physical blessing.

It was God's ancient covenant with Israel, "If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee." Again, in Ezekiel, the covenant was renewed in this gracious promise, "In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will cause you to dwell in your cities," and they shall say this land which was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The moral and spiritual transformation brings a new world of material blessings.

Faith must begin with conscience void of offense, and this is something that all our struggles and efforts can never bring. This is the gift of Jesus Christ, this is that righteousness that looks down from heaven and afterwards springs up from the earth. It is a Divine righteousness that comes from the revelation of Jesus Christ and is as natural and spontaneous as the buds and blossoms that come from the kiss of the sunbeams that look down into their lifeless breasts.

Oh, ye that are struggling to be good and holy, when will you learn that man did not make himself at the first and cannot make himself over again, and that when you cease your struggling and in self-surrender and true helplessness accept "the gift of righteousness" you shall "reign in life by One, Jesus Christ."

III. His Healing Wings.

"The Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings."

Doubtless this includes all the ills of humanity and covers Christ's complete redemption work. But why should we exclude the literal healing which formed so large a part of the Master's earthly ministry? Had we lived in the days of the Messiah, we should have known Him chiefly as a healer and a wonder working Rabbi, who touched the brow of pain and made it whole, and whose presence and command drove away spirits of evil from the human breast and brought the demon-possessed victims of insanity to sit at his feet clothed and in their right minds.

The healing of the body through Jesus Christ was no new thought to the ancient prophets.

It had been included in the covenant of Moses. It had been the theme of David's songs and Solomon's proverbs. It had been part of the simple practical faith that took God as their Theocratic King for all the life of the nation. It had been a prime feature in the glorious picture which Isaiah gave of the Man of Sorrows. And, as we have already shown, it formed a leading part in the actual ministry of the Saviour. He passed it on to His disciples when He went away, and they in turn bequeathed it to the Christian Church down to the latest generations.

God always meant the faith of His people to take real things from Him and make external blessings stepping stones to the higher experiences of the unseen. For if God has not become real to us in the things that are patent to our senses and the observation of all men, how can we be assured that the remoter blessings we are claiming for the future have any solid foundation. But when we see God come into our present life, and become as real as our misery and sin and as the pains and sicknesses He heals, then we know that our faith for the future is not a dream, but that these things are but the first fruits of the greater blessings of the ages to come.

The Lord is a God of infinite benevolence and goodness and "in Him is no darkness at all." Sickness and pain are as foreign to His nature and beneficent will as sin and death.

The original creation He made "very good," and the ravages of disease are wholly due to the presence and power of Satan. Christ has come to destroy the works of the devil, and His blessed Gospel includes the healing of our diseases as truly as the forgiveness of our sins. Only a prejudiced and faithless theology could restrict the blessings of His great salvation to mere spiritual blessings and rob a suffering world of the touch of His healing wings.

But there are two conditions stated by the language of this beautiful text that are very closely connected with the blessing of healing.

The first is a due sense of God's claims upon our obedience and a spirit of reverence and a humble, holy regard to His authority and will. It is expressed by the phrase, "You that fear My name." This text gives no encouragement to a profane and fanatical confidence that would dictate to God and claim any temporal blessing regardless of His will. We must first be yielded to that will in complete submission, and then only are we able to stand on the ground of faith and claim our blessing, not merely because we want it, but because He wills it.

Another condition is also expressed by the beautiful phrase, "in His wings." It is from close and trustful confidence alone that we can claim His healing. We must get under His very wings and in the bosom of His love before faith can claim its highest victories in our inmost being. This is the secret of many a failure. We are not close enough to His heart. We are not simple and childlike enough in our trust. We have not yet come like little birdlings to nestle under the mother wings of God.

It is to those that fear His name

His healing pow'r the Saviour brings;

Oh, let us hide with contrite hearts

Beneath His healing wings.

It is His wings that heal our pains,

And soothe the serpent's poisoned stings;

Close to His bosom we must press

To feel His healing wings.

IV. Spring Time.

The sunrise brings the spring-time. "Ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall." This is a beautiful picture of the liberty of the animal world. As the young creatures go forth from the confinement of the winter and leap for joy in the freedom of the fields and the gladness of the spring, the life of Christ in a human body and spirit makes all things new, and even age grows young again in the buoyancy of pulses that beat with the energy of Divine life and health.

The ancient picture of it is strikingly beautiful, "His flesh shall be fresher than a child's; He shall return to the days of His youth." "Who satisfieth thy mouth with good, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's." "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."

Such a life is really the beginning of immortality and resurrection life. It is "the earnest" of the age to come. And it is the privilege of all who will recognize and receive God's blessed gift to lost humanity, the Prince of life, the Lord Jesus, our Living Head and Living Bread. This is the great secret that science has not found, that mythology and poetry have dreamed about and reached after, but that the Bible alone has revealed. It was the secret of the Master's life, and it should be ours. "As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, even so He that eateth Me shall live by Me."

What a wonder of life and grace is here revealed, a Life sent down from heaven to be the life of the world. No wonder that as Malachi looked down the ages, the shadows seemed to flee away, the night departed, and the sunrise of an everlasting day burst upon his vision.

Oh, ye who dwell in darkness and misery, "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you." "The night has gone, the day has come, let us cast off the work of darkness, let us put on an armor of light." And then let us go forth in the beauty and brightness of the Bride while the watchers say, "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners."

CHAPTER XIV

PAUL AND DIVINE HEALING

"I am in a strait between two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you; and having this confidence I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith." (Phil. 1: 23-25).

The Apostle Paul was not only a pattern of our spiritual life in Christ, but a striking example of right and privilege to receive the life of our Lord Jesus Christ into our mortal frame and to take Him for our physical strength as truly as for our spiritual need.

His life was a marvelous spiritual triumph in the face of unparalleled difficulties, pressures, sufferings, and mutilations. He seemed to carry a charmed life, and neither Roman rods nor Roman dungeons, malarial dungeons nor hardships of every kind, could hinder him from a single service for his Master, nor shorten his glorious life until all his work was accomplished, and he could say, "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

What was the secret of that marvelous physical life? The answer involves the whole doctrine of Divine healing, and reveals to us its deepest and highest principles.

I. THE STANDPOINT OF DIVINE HEALING

It is good for us to approach every Divine truth from the right standpoint. Promises unreservedly true and meant for our enjoyment may be beyond our reach because we are not approaching them from the right direction, and because we are not standing on the true ground of faith. In the verse already quoted, the apostle discloses the standpoint from which he was able to trust God for his body. It was because his life was not his own, but so dedicated to Jesus that he could truly, say, "For me to live is Christ."

It was because he had been delivered from the fear of death so fully that he could honestly say, "For me to die is gain." It was because he did not want to live for his own sake, but only for the sake of his Master, and for the sake of others, and that he could say in triumph and confidence, "I know that I shall abide and continue with you all."

Paul had so completely renounced his own will in the matter of life or death that he claimed Divine health not because it was his will, but because it was his Master's will and for his Master's glory. This is sublimely expressed in his noble words to the elders of Ephesus, "I count not my life dear unto myself, but that I may finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify of the gospel of the grace of God." He counted his life dear, but not for himself.

It would have been dearer for him to go and be with his blessed Master, but he counted it dear because the Lord needed him, and the Lord's people needed him. It was a sacred trust, therefore he could take it from his Master without a doubt or fear, and go forward into the perils and privations that he knew it involved.

This, beloved, is the standpoint of Divine healing. This is the ground of faith. This is the only place where we have a right to claim any of God's promises. So long as we want blessings for ourselves they are selfish blessings, but so soon as we relinquish our rights and claims and take everything only for Christ, then we can take anything from God because it is for God we are taking it, and it is God's interest more than ours to bless us. This is aptly expressed by a dear old colored saint, who used to say when he got into any trouble, "Oh, Lord! your property is in danger; oh, Lord, take care of your property."

He was so wholly the Lord's that he could honestly feel in looking after himself he was looking after the Lord's property. All things are ours when we are Christ's. So God help us and bring us to the point where we let go even life itself, as a personal desire, and then take it back as God's will and God's choice, and for God's service and glory. It is the old story of Moriah. It is Isaac laid down and then given back as God's Isaac and no longer as ours. We gain by losing, we lose by holding. The surrendered life is the only safe life. Letting go is twice possessing.

II. THE SECRET OF DIVINE HEALING

He had a secret. It was a very definite one. It expressed the philosophy of his experience. It was exactly the same secret that he had for his spiritual life. "Not I but Christ liveth in me."

Paul had no sanctification of his own, but it was all summed up in the indwelling life of Christ. And so Paul claimed no physical strength of his own, but he had learned the secret of resting in the physical life of his Master, and living upon the supernatural vitality he received from Christ, and "renewed day by day."

Listen to him as he says in 2 Cor. 4: 10, 11: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our bodies. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

We find a little expression repeated twice here, "THE LIFE ALSO OF JESUS." Paul had two lives. He had his own life which was mortal and frail and which was always ready to die. But he had another life, "the life also of Jesus," and when his own physical strength gave way, then the life of Jesus came to his aid and carried him through. In other words, he had, residing in him, the very Person of his blessed Master, and His supernatural life sustained the vital energy of the apostle, so that when ready to sink, exhausted, and all his powers had failed, there came to him directly from Christ, through the Holy Ghost, a quickening influence reviving and restoring him and sufficient for all his needs.

Now, we may not understand this. We cannot understand it unless we know the secret too. It is like a telegraphic message in cipher. We must have the key to the cipher to make any meaning out of it. And the key to this experience is the personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ in your own being. Let us, at least, believe it.

We shall find it confirmed by the whole story of his life. Let us recall an incident. We find it recorded in the fourteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. After Paul had preached the gospel at Lystra to a heathen audience with wonderful power, the jealous Jews from Iconium and Antioch came and set the people against him, inciting a cruel riot and persuading the mob to attack Paul and drag him through the streets of the city and stone him until they left him for dead. We may be quite sure that when Paul's Jewish enemies got a chance to kill him, they did not stop half way.

So far as they could see, Paul was killed. Dragged along the hard pavement and left buried amid a heap of stones, to all intents and purposes the life of Paul must have been ready to go out. But it was just then that "the life of Jesus" asserted itself. And so we read, with great simplicity but with sublime eloquence, "Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up and came into the city, and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe. And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch."

Here we see the power of Christ revealed in the hour of utter despair. As his brethren stand around him in loving prayer the Holy Spirit arouses his sinking life, and Jesus touches him with His own physical and endless life; and, lo! the life of Christ quickens his mortal flesh, he springs to his feet and goes on to his work. And the next day we find him, not in a hospital, nor on a long vacation, but preaching the gospel and coming the very place where he had been maltreated and almost killed, and going on quietly, triumphantly with his work, taking his healing for granted as though it were just the thing to be expected.

So again, we find him at another point in his history, recorded in 2 Cor. 1: 8, telling them of the trouble that came to us in Asia, that "we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life; but we had the answer of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead; who did deliver us from so great a death, who doth deliver, and in whom we trust He will yet deliver us."

Here is a very clear case of experience. In the first place the apostle was sick unto death and despaired even of life, when he looked at himself, and it would seem that when he looked at God, the answer was death. Paul's life was not equal to it. He was pressed above measure, and above strength. Yet there was another life, the life of his risen Lord, the strength of "God which raiseth the dead," on which he depended. And from the sinking life of Paul he looked up to the endless life of Jesus and claimed it in all its resurrection power till he could send back the triumphant shout, "He did deliver, He doth deliver, He will yet deliver."

This is the secret of Divine healing. It is union with One who is our physical Head as well as the source ot our spiritual life. It is to be in touch with the Son of man who is risen from the dead, in the power of an endless life, and who is the Head of our body and has taught us to understand that "we are members of His body, His flesh, and His bones." Yea, the apostle tells us in another place that "our bodies are the members of Christ." "The Lord is for the body, and the body for the Lord." Why should not we understand and claim the secret too?

It does not mean immortality, or life that never can die; but it does mean participation in the life of our risen Lord in such a measure as will make us equal to every duty, every labor, and every pressure, until our life-work shall be done, and the Master shall either call us to Himself or come to meet us. Beloved, have you learned the secret--"THE LIFE ALSO OF JESUS?"

III. THE PRINCIPLES OF PAUL'S SECRET AND ITS PRACTICAL WORKING

1. In the first place it did not presuppose that Paul should be strong in his own constitutional strength. On the contrary it was based upon Paul's weakness and quite consistent with a condition on his part of personal insufficiency. There is every reason to believe that Paul was naturally feeble rather than robust, and that his constant exposures, hardships, and sufferings, had had their natural effect in reducing him many times to the very verge of prostration, and even death. And so we find him speaking of "the infirmity of his flesh."

We find him saying, "We which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake. Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." But this did not hinder his taking the strength of the Lord Jesus and being enabled thereby for all that the Master required of him. His health and strength were a Divine paradox. "When I am weak, then am I strong," he could most truly say. In himself he was physically weak but in reliance upon the physical strength of an indwelling Lord, he was stronger than himself, and better equipped for his work than even perfect health could have made him.

Here lies the deep secret of Divine healing and the explanation of Paul's singular experience recorded in the twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians. "The thorn in the flesh" was not removed, whatever that thorn was, but more strength was given than if it had been removed. Therefore, if it was a spiritual trial it was not taken away but double grace was added. And if it was a physical weakness it was not withdrawn but double physical strength was supplied, so that Paul was even stronger than if he had been delivered from this particular trouble.

He could say, "I take pleasure in infirmities for Christ's sake, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." Paul's health was Divine strength given in human weakness so he could say, Though the outward man perish, the natural and physical constitution may seem to decay, yet the inward man, the Divine life, by Christ's strength is renewed day by day.

2. In the second place Paul's experience of Divine health was not incompatible with the greatest pressures, the severest hardships, the most perilous exposures, and the most uncongenial and unfavorable surroundings. Much of his life was spent in damp, unhealthy dungeons. He was often exposed to cold, inclemency, fasting, sleeplessness, a night and a day was he drowned in the deep. Oft was he shipwrecked, again and again he was stoned, beaten with the Roman rods that bruised and lacerated both flesh and bone almost to mutilation.

Never did human frame sustain such unspeakable pressures. And yet through them all he went triumphant and always ready for whatever service the Master had for him. "We are troubled on every side," he could say, "yet not distressed; we are perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken: cast down but not destroyed." The severest pressures only served to render the more marked the glory and strength of his Lord. He could say, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us."

3. In the third place Paul's physical strength was sustained by continual dependence on the Lord Jesus and a life of abiding in Him for physical as well as spiritual life. He gives us the secret in 2 Cor. 4: 16: "For which cause we faint not: though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen."

The renewing was "day by day" and only "while he looked" to the unseen sources of his strength. He did not receive one tremendous miracle which carried him through life. He had learned what Jesus had so fully unfolded in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John in regard to his own life, "As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me." Feeding upon Christ he lived by Him, and he could truly say in the language which he employed elsewhere and in another connection, "In Him we live, and move, and have our being."

Beloved, have we learned thus moment by moment to live upon His life, and, while outward pressure increases, and personal strength diminishes, to take a stronger hold upon His everlasting strength, and, as we wait upon the Lord, "renew our strength" until we shall "mount up with wings as eagles, run and not be weary, walk and not faint." This was the physical life of Paul. This is the privilege of every believing and obedient child of God.

CHAPTER XV

INQUIRIES AND ANSWERS

Many practical questions arise in the minds of inquirers respecting Divine Healing, both as respects the doctrine and the personal appropriation. Some of these we shall endeavor to answer.

1. In what sense can Christ be said to atone for sickness, when disease involves no such moral element as sin does?

If I owe a debt to a man, not only am I liable, my house is liable too, and it may be held until my debt is paid. So my body is my house, and it is liable for the debt of my soul to God, even if it had not sinned, as it has, alas! Disease is sin's mortgage against my house. But, if the debt is paid, the mortgage is discharged, and my house is free. So Christ has paid my debt of sin and released my body. Judgment has no claims upon it. On the Cross of Calvary He bore in His body all my physical liabilities for sin, and therefore He is said to have borne our sicknesses and carried our pains, and by His stripes we are healed.

2. If Christ has provided for the complete removal of our diseases, why should we ever die?

He has not provided that there shall be no disease, but that disease if it come shall be overcome. Nor has He provided that there shall be no death, but that should death come it shall be overcome by the glorious resurrection. But if there were no death there could be no resurrection, and physical immortality in our human and earthly state would be far less than the glorious and immortal life we shall have through our Second Adam, in our resurrection life.

3. Why then cannot the dead be raised now as in the days of Christ and His apostles?

There is nothing to render such an occurrence impossible, but there is at the same time no Scriptural authority to justify our claiming it. The command to exercise this ministry was given to the twelve apostles, not to the seventy. And the time for the resurrection of Christ's people is distinctly stated thus: "Afterwards, they that are Christ's at His Coming."

4. If we should always claim healing, however, would it not follow that we should never die?

Not necessarily. There is no need that we should die of disease. The system might just wear out and pass away as naturally as the apple ripens and falls in Autumn, or the wheat matures and dies in June. It has simply fulfilled its natural period.

"Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age like as a shock of corn cometh in his season." This is very different from the apple falling in June, with a worm in it. This is disease. The promise of healing is not physical immortality, but health until our life-work is done. "With long life will I satisfy him." We may not all live to fourscore, but we may all be "satisfied." And if we knew that our life would close tomorrow, we should claim strength and sufficiency today.

5. Are we not taught in the Scriptures that submission to God's will is the highest act of faith and obedience?

Yes, and before claiming anything of God we must be in the attitude of profound submission and prostration; but, being in this attitude, we will be led to make very sure that what we submit to is indeed God's will, and we shall find that that will does not lay upon an obedient and surrendered child a needless burden of sickness and pain; but desires and demands for us, even more than we can desire it, the help and deliverance Christ has purchased by His blood for our bodies as well as our souls.

6. How may I know His will in any particular case?

We can only know His will from His Word and Spirit. And we must not expect a special revelation from His Spirit where His Word has clearly spoken. He has told us clearly in His Word that Jesus has purchased for us redemption for body as well as soul. He has said of one sufferer who represented many more, "Ought not this woman to be loosed from her bond?" He has shown us His Father's will by His whole earthly example and acts as well as words, and never in a single case did He decline to help those who trusted Him; and unless He has shown us something different for us so clearly that we cannot question it, we should not question it, but should go forward on these clear encouragements of His Word and take Him at that Word for all.

7. Is not sickness a Divine chastening, and really designed for our good, and ought it not so to be received by us?

If we honestly so regard it, why, of course, we should bow under it at the Father's feet, and leave ourselves wholly in His hands. But it is a little inconsistent to say this and then run for the nearest doctor and use every expedient and resource of human skill to get rid of this gracious chastening, and get out of the Divine hands. Persons, who act so, really believe in their heart that sickness is an evil, and that they are perfectly justified in using every legitimate means to remove it. Even if it is a Divine chastening, surely prayer is a much more reverent and childlike remedy than physic.

But, seriously, the whole subject of Divine chastening is greatly mystified by those who reason in this way.

God has told us that His chastenings are not random or capricious blows, struck without reference to any principle or moral government, and leaving us wholly in the dark as to their purpose and remedy. God chastens like a father, intelligently and tenderly, and He is willing to make us know His meaning, and how we may escape His rod. He has told us distinctly that sickness and suffering are sent when we will not heed His gentle voice, and that, even then, if we will listen, repent, acknowledge our error, learn our lesson and obey His will, the trial will be arrested or removed, and we restored to His love and favor.

The thirty-third chapter of Job gives a picture of His dealings with His children through trial; and there is no dark, terrific mystery, but the simple, righteous principle, so clearly laid down in the New Testament, "If we would judge ourselves we should not be judged, but when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world." Even if sickness be a Divine chastening its remedy is to have recourse to God, and, putting ourselves right with Him, claim His gracious deliverance.

8. How can I be sure that it is not best for me to be sick to keep me humble and near to God?

"Well, brother, if the blood of Jesus and the grace of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit are not sufficient to keep you humble and holy, I do not see how sickness is going to, unless it be a greater Saviour than Christ, and I do not see how God is going to keep the saints and angels pure in a world where there shall be no pain forever."

9. But do not a great many people greatly glorify God in their sicknesses and trials, and is it not a great opportunity for service and testimony?

A true disciple will glorify God anywhere, but how do you know how much more these persons would glorify God, after having shown the spirit of patience and meekness in trial, by rising up in His strength and showing His power to heal, and then going out to witness and work for Him?

How many there are on the contrary, who wither and fail under the long and crushing weight of years of pain, and become depressed, morbid, and blighted by the furnace. If God wants us well He will not perfectly bless us in sickness. He will sustain us, but He will also prompt us to claim something higher and better.

10. But how do I know that if I were healed I would really use my strength for the glory of God, and not perhaps, like Hezekiah, fail to render according to the benefit received? The same grace and power that heal the body are also promised to sanctify and keep the soul and may be claimed by the same faith. The first promise is Jehovah Tsidkenu, the second, Jehovah Rophi, but both are equally free, and both must be taken together if our blessing is to be complete.

11. Was not the answer of God to Paul, when he prayed for the removal of his thorn, a lesson to us to accept our trials and sicknesses as God's will and receive more grace to bear them?

Well, in the first place, Paul certainly prayed until he got an answer from heaven, and so we should claim deliverance at the very least until we get a refusal as clear and divine as he did. In the next place Paul's revelations required a special discipline to counteract the effect of his stupendous revelations, and when we get where he had been we may claim some right to his thorn.

In the third place, if the ordinary doctrine of our opponents be true, that sickness is not from Satan but from God, this could not have been disease, for it was a messenger of Satan.

In the fourth place, there is every reason to believe that it was not sickness, but some humiliating and annoying trial, something that buffeted him rather than incapacitated him for work, for all through it the power of Christ rested upon him. He does not seem to have been hindered a single day from his ministry, and adds that "all the signs of an apostle were wrought in him, in signs, and wonders and mighty deeds."

And, finally, we have elsewhere several distinct accounts of his healing from disease, showing that he had anything but a doubtful experience of the efficacy of prayer for his bodily need. In Acts 14: 20, we see him by faith rising up from a state of apparent death after having been stoned and dragged through the streets as dead, and immediately going forth to preach the gospel. In 2 Cor. 1: 8-11, we see him give up, humanly speaking, to die, through the pressure of a trouble under which he "despaired even of life," and yet delivered through faith in God who raiseth the dead.

And in 2 Cor. 4: 10, 11, we see him often exposed to death, and ready to sink, naturally, but finding his weakness a greater occasion for the life of Christ to be manifested in his mortal flesh. Such a man is rather an unfortunate argument to use against Divine Healing. 12. Why have not the great and good men of the past and present accepted this doctrine, if it is in the Word of God?

Well, why have they not accepted the doctrine of the Lord's personal coming, the doctrine of baptism, the doctrine of holiness in this life?

Simply because the faith once delivered to the saints was lost during the Middle Ages and partly recovered by Luther, and since then is slowly being restored to the Church of God. We shall never have much hold upon Divine truth until we take it at God's word, without waiting for the endorsement of human names. But it would not be hard to show a long array of noble names, including Ireneus, Tertullian, Origen and Justinian among the fathers, the Waldenses and Covenanters in later times, and even Luther, Peden, Cameron, Wesley and Whitfield since the Reformation, who bear witness to the marvelous healing power of God in this way.

13. Why was Epaphroditus "sick nigh unto death"?

I suppose as Paul states because of his extreme self-sacrificing efforts for him. And, perhaps, we might add, to give an opportunity and show the power and grace of God in His healing, for "God had mercy on him," and healed him; and I cannot see how his case is ought but an example of God's love and power in healing.

14. Why did Paul leave Trophimus at Miletum sick?

Well, we do not claim that Paul had any power to heal Trophimus, or that anybody has such power now. It was a matter between Trophimus and his God. Perhaps God had some lesson for him that he had not learned, and, therefore, could not at once be healed. Are there not such cases today, by hundreds? Had not God to leave Job on his back until he learned his heart-searching lesson? And then He healed him immediately.

Divine healing fully recognizes the sovereignty of God, and the state and spiritual attitude of the individual. The case of Trophimus, therefore, is fully in harmony with all its principles.

15. Why is it that many persons who were anointed for healing have not been healed; and some who seemed to have real faith have died?

We never can read the heart. God only knows if there was a real faith. Many excellent and eminent Christians are found without such a faith. Many, who once claimed healing with a victorious faith, at a later period are found to be without it and acknowledge it themselves.

There may be various causes for it. Sometimes it is a subtle, spiritual decline in vigorous, energetic fellowship with God. The soul reposing on its pillow of privileges has got at ease in Zion, and lost the edge of its first love. Sometimes a marvelous healing has led it so to rest in what God has done as to let go abiding communion for continued life and power.

Sometimes a subtle pride, or lack of love crept in and weakened the spiritual vigor. Sometimes in those that are not healed there is an expectation and hope rather than an immediate and present tense faith. Real faith takes and acts now. Many drift slowly over, expecting to be some day healed, expecting rather than accepting. In many such cases it has afterwards been made very plain that there was no real taking of Christ for strength and healing.

Sometimes the Master is taking home His child and will He not, in such cases, lift the veil and show the trusting heart that its service is done? How often He does! Dorothea Trudel could not, would not, ask for life. She was going home. A dear young girl in Michigan who for some time claimed healing, awoke one day from sleep, her face covered with the reflection of heaven, and told her loved ones that the Master had led her to trust for life thus far, but now was taking her to Himself. It is well, and let no one dare to reproach such a heart with unfaithfulness.

16. Why did President Garfield die, in spite of the prayers of the whole nation, including many godly and believing persons?

There was no sort of compliance in this case with the Scriptural conditions of answered prayer. He was under the care of a number of earthly physicians, there was no submission of the case directly to God in the ordinance of anointing, and the prayer of faith, and, indeed, such a suggestion was, we believe, refused, and would be probably in any similar case.

Nor was there any evidence of personal faith in God, on his own part, for healing. In no sense did it come under the Scriptural requirements for Divine Healing, and, besides, it is very probable that God was dealing with this whole nation in a public manner through its head, and calling it to repentance without which, not even Noah, Daniel and Job could together have obtained deliverance.

17. Does not James say, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him?"

Yes, all true, and they are forgiven, but it is not a question of forgiveness merely, but of discipline, and James also says, in the same passage: "Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it. Be ye also patient, stablish your heart for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Ye have heard of the patience of Job and have seen the end of the Lord that He is very pitiful and of tender mercy." This is the spirit of the faith that claims and receives Divine Healing.

18. But does not James speak of the prayer of faith as if it was the faith of the elders that brought the healing?

Happily, the Holy Ghost has anticipated this objection by the first verses in this Epistle of James, where he says about this very question of prayer, "Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord." God is not going to make one man's faith a shelter for another's unbelief. He is not going to let us keep our doubts and get our healing. He cares for us too well to let us remain on any lower plane than that of implicit confidence in Him.

True, He does give and bless the ministry of prayer for others, and enables us to believe for their help, but it is only when they also are right with God, and exercising faith for themselves. Then their faith and ours are in one accord and it is really a united prayer. But when we are leaning on another's faith and not looking directly to God ourselves, there is no unity and there can be no power.

19. Are there not, in the New Testament, distinct promises of special gifts, power of healing and miracles spoken of in connection with the enduement of the Spirit, and may we not expect these to be exercised by special individuals?

Yes, there are spiritual gifts, but they are never apart from the Giver. They are not powers possessed by the individual, but the power of the Holy Ghost personally, working through Him. "All these worketh that one and the self same Spirit, dividing to every one severally as He will."

So that no man can claim that he is a healer or a power, or anything but a helpless instrument whom God may be pleased to use in a given case, and will use in so far as the conditions are in accordance with His will. But God will not allow him to do anything differently from what God Himself would do, if you came to Him directly. Now, if you come to God with a heart of unbelief and dependence upon man, you will get nothing. Nor will you if you thus come to His most chosen instruments.

Take, for example, the gift of power for winning souls. This is a real ministry and power. But it gives no power to us to save the sinner apart from his own direct repentance and faith. It is simply the power to lead him to God, and when he comes with a true heart, to claim for him acceptance and salvation, and really receive with and for him the blessing and seal of Heaven.

So, precisely, in the ministry of healing, the part of the instrument is to lead the sufferer to know the will and word of God, to trust Him for himself, and then when he truly and trustingly comes, to claim with and for him the blessing promised, and the seal and earnest of the Holy Spirit.

A young lad fell overboard from a ship's deck, and one of the sailors stood quietly looking at his struggles, while the mother cried frantically, "Why don't you save my boy?" Still he stood until he sank and rose the second time. Then he sprang in and rescued him. "Why did you wait so long?" asked the anxious mother. "I waited till he was too weak to clutch me. Had he done so, we would both have sunk together." Keep your hands off all men if you would really trust God, and then even men can doubly help you.

20. Is there any need for the ministry of others at all?

Yes, God has appointed the ministry of prayer and given a special promise where two of us are agreed as touching anything we shall ask. He has also appointed the ordinance of anointing as the special seal and acknowledgment of His covenant of healing, and our claim; and these are divine means, and channels of blessing when received in the spirit of faith in Himself, and their willful neglect would show a spirit of disobedience and selfwill, unbecoming the humble disciple.

21. What is the special significance of anointing, and how often should it be administered?

It is the Old Testament symbol of the Holy Ghost. It signifies His personal coming into the body of the person anointed to communicate the healing life and power of Jesus Christ. It sustains to the matter of healing a similar relation to that held by baptism and the Lord's Supper in connection with our professions of Christ as a Saviour, and our deeper communion with Him spiritually.

It should not be repeated needlessly or with an idea of any potency in itself. If there be any new physical need, or even a new spiritual state enabling us to take hold of Christ for healing in a more effectual manner than before, it may be repeated, but it ought not to be lightly done, or done in any way which could discount or reckon as null and void our former anointing.

22. Why has God made all the remedies we find in nature if He does not intend us to use them?

Perhaps He did not make them any more than He made beer or whiskey. God made the barley and man made the alcohol.

And yet there is in the human body and the natural world a certain vis medicatrix natura, as the doctors call it, that is a certain restorative power, which is part of His divine beneficence for a world which He foresaw would be cursed with sin and sorrow. And we do not deny that natural remedies may go a certain length and possess a limited value in relieving and healing the body. But-

1. They are limited and extremely uncertain.

2. They are not His way for His children.

3. They are not to be combined in the Scriptures with Divine Healing.

a. They work through natural, this through supernatural channels.

b. They do not act on the same principles. The one is local and specific treatment, the other is a direct vital touch upon the springs of life.

c. All Christ's redemption purchases must be free gifts, by grace without works, and so if Divine Healing be through Christ's blood, it must be a gift of grace alone. We cannot mix our works with it any more than our justification.

d. He must have all the glory, and if man touch it he will be sure to claim it.

e. Faith, by its very nature, is always weakened by a mixture of man's works. If it has a human twig to lean on, it will lean harder on it than on God's mightiest words. It must, therefore, have God only.

To combine the omnipotence of Jesus with a dose of mercury, is like trying to go upstairs by the elevator and the stairs at the same moment, or harnessing an ox with a locomotive.

23. But cannot we ask God to bless the means?

Yes; but that is not Divine Healing through the name of Jesus alone, as He has prescribed. That is Esau's blessing. There is a blessing even for Esau; but give me Jacob's.

24. But did not God prescribe figs for Hezekiah?

Yes, and if He had prescribed figs for us, we should use them. Hezekiah did just what he was told, and God healed him. We are told to pray, "Anointing with oil in the name of the Lord," and if we really believe God, we will exactly obey.

The figs did not and could not heal Hezekiah. His case was wholly incurable. They were simply a token that God had the case in hand, and were given at the command of the prophet, and not the physician, who seems to have had nothing whatever to do with this case.

25. Why did Christ use clay?

No doubt, for a similar reason, as a token that He was touching this man's disease. But the clay did not heal him. It was the water of Siloam, the type of the Sent One, which washed away both the clay and the blindness, too.

26. Was not Luke called the Beloved Physician?

Yes. He had been a physician, but be became an evangelist. Even if he practiced after his conversion, it was no reproach, nor sin; but if God had wanted to guard us against the fanaticism of Divine Healing, how easy it would have been for Him to record a single instance in which the early believers sent for Luke. He could not have much medical practice in such a wandering life as he led with Paul, and the only time we read of the two meeting at the side of a patient, was when Eutychus was killed, and then it is Paul, and not Luke, who seems to have been sent for, and who certainly was used of God to raise him from the dead. Luke himself, who writes the narrative, does not even use a medical term in describing it.

27. But did not Paul himself prescribe medicine to Timothy in telling him to take wine for weak digestion?

Well, if this was fermented wine, we must abandon the argument for temperance. If, then, it was unfermented wine, it was simply a diet, and not a drug, and used just as we would suggest tea or rare beef to a friend. God's Word does prescribe to us all varieties of simple, wholesome food, but not medicine. From Genesis to Revelation you will find no single explicit direction to use human remedies. But you will find numerous directions to bring your sickness to God.

28. How should I act if I should break my arm?

Ask the Lord to keep it from breaking. Then do not calculate on breaking it, or you may according to your faith. If you should meet someone who has a broken arm, tell him not to try any experiments on God. If they can trust Him, without doubt He will heal anything. But if they cannot surely do so or have any question about it, let them go to the nearest and best surgeon.

For yourself, trust God in the present moment, and do not have any supposes, else you may have Job's experience, "I feared a fear and it came upon me."

29. How should we act in reference to the sickness of others?

First lead them to get right spiritually, and learn the lesson God may have. Then tell them of the great Physician, and pray for right conviction and appropriating faith, but do not commit your faith further than they are ready to go of themselves, unless you are specially led of God to do so. Above all, do not allow them to lean upon your faith for their healing. If they can really believe and act faith, then take hold for and with them with all your heart, and when two of you are really agreed in spirit and faith, it shall be done.

30. What should we do in the case of children?

We may act for them if our own, or if they are substantially laid upon us by the Lord, so that we are responsible for them. But we cannot believe for the children of others where God is looking to someone else to assume this responsibility, as, for example, an unbelieving parent. In the case of the children of others we should be most careful in assuming responsibility. In the case of the children of our Orphanage, we would not feel justified in taking this responsibility, in view of the law of the state requiring the care of an attendant physician.

In the case of our own children we may and should teach them to unite with us themselves in faith, and we will find it very easy to get their simple hearts to trust Jesus fully.

In all cases of sickness in others where there is danger involved and you have the responsibility, to meet the obligations of the law, it is a great matter, if possible, to have some regular physician who believes in Divine Healing within call, so as to be responsible if necessary.

31. If we are not immediately conscious of actual healing, after anointing, how should we act?

Keep your eyes off your symptoms and on Christ. He is your life. Your body must be reckoned as good as dead, and He depended upon for strength, moment by moment. Therefore look to Him, draw your strength from Him, and be not discouraged at any testing or seeming delay. In nature the root may be cut, and yet the tree only wither after many weeks; the serpent may be killed, and yet his tail will move till the sun goes down; the seed may be planted in September, and the winter snows and storms pass over it before the spring and summer bloom and harvest-"Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it till he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient, stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh."

32. How can I consider and call myself healed when there is no sign of it in my body?

How can I go away from the telegraph office and be at rest about the telegram I have just sent, when I see no trace of it as it goes flashing along the wires.

If I can trust a telegraph operator, can I not trust my God? Faith must always first "call the things that are not as though they were," and "against hope believe in hope," and "consider now its own body now dead," or more literally, "without being weakened in faith, he considered his own body now as good as dead, yet looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured He was able to perform."

The healing is not in our own body at first-we consider it as good as dead, but in Christ's body, and as we look to it, its strength keeps coming into ours, and we "wax strong through faith."

33. But have we a right to call that real which is not real?

If God calls it so, we can echo His declaration. And faith always must first reckon and then receive. And when we go to the post office to collect our orders, we must send in our signed receipt before we get any money, so faith must ever send its receipt to heaven before it grasps its answer. And if we have not the faith to do this for Divine Healing, perhaps we have not the faith for anything.

34. How can I obtain and exercise true and effectual faith for Divine Healing?

Only by having Divine faith as well as Divine Healing. Only by counting your faith and yourself dead and insufficient, and receiving Christ for this wholly, throwing yourself upon Him for it absolutely, and claiming a faith as perfect as that which God requires and gives, faith that doubts not, that believes it has the thing which it has asked, and so has whatsoever it saith.

35. Is all sickness from the devil?

Sickness may arise from several causes. First, it is sometimes God's chastening, and while the devil is the instrument used, God is speaking and we must hear and repent, and learn His lesson. Secondly, it is sometimes Satan's tormenting attack when we are walking in obedience and service. He has power even to simulate all symptoms. He often attacks us after we have given a testimony against him, especially respecting healing, at other times when in God's special service. At such times we must resist him, and he will flee from us. We must not fear him. Especially we must lay him over on Christ, and He will conquer. But to know it is Satan is half the battle.

APPENDIX

DIVINE HEALING AFTER TWENTY-ONE YEARS' EXPERIENCE A CONTRAST

Testimony Of Henry Wilson

Out of weakness into strength, out of pain and weariness of mind and body into power and gladness in both, out of the fear of disease into the joy of the Lord and the love that kills fear and casts it out. For seventeen and a half years of toilsome, painful effort to keep on one's feet, and do a little, the blessed exchange of twenty-one years of service without toil. Doing three times as much without one-third of the effort, and without the need or desire to touch a drop of medicine or stimulant. In the sad past, old beyond my years; now younger than at twenty-five, if vigor of body and clearness of mind are any test of youth; not to speak of the "joy unspeakable and full of glory" that illumines the soul.

If attaining one's majority gives a right to speak and act as not before, then this privilege is mine today; to say a few plain words as to what divine healing is after twenty-one years of unbroken peace and joy in believing in and living out the life also of Jesus in this mortal body.

DIVINE TRUTH A DIAMOND

Like all God's truth this of "the Lord for the body" is a diamond with many facets or faces, and as we hold it up in the white light of the Holy Spirit it shines and sheds forth like a prism the very life and sweetness of the incarnate but glorified body of the Lord Jesus.

I. First, then, after twenty-one years divine healing is to me:

NEW PERSONALITY

The Incoming and Indwelling of a New Personality. It is a new man inside of the old, making the old new by this simple fact. It is texts of Scripture turned into fact. It is the words, "Christ in you" (Col. I:27) made flesh and blood and bone and tissue. "Christ dwelling in your heart by faith" (Eph.3:17), passes from the page of the book into the heart and nerve centers of the man. All that Jesus said about the Bread of Life and the Water of Life have become what they say in a physical as well as a spiritual sense. In a word we have a new translation and a revised version of the Word of God not into English, French or German, but into spiritual meat, into mental brain food and cells of healthy and health-giving blood.

II. Second, and as a direct consequence of the first, divine healing is

THE CONTINUOUS INFLOW OF A RIVER OF LIFE

into our whole being from the indwelling body of Jesus Christ. The whole man partakes of the whole being of the whole Christ. Again words pass into realities, thoughts become things, ideas become vitalities. "There is a fountain filled with blood," becomes a present tense in a new and living way. "There is a river," greater than that of Buddha, really flowing into and through our being and like that in Ezekiel's vision making things live and move and have being where there was either death or at best only half life before.

SPIRITUAL GULF STREAM

This continuous inflow of life from the body of the Lord Jesus becomes to us a veritable "Gulf Stream" in the ocean of our daily life. It permeates, penetrates silently and below the surface, the very texture and hidden parts of the human organism. It creates a new atmosphere in our whole consciousness.

Just as England is green and moist by the encircling influence of the Gulf Stream, while other places in the same latitude without it are cold and chilly, so is the soul and body which is bathed in this spiritual river green and fresh and vigorous, while others who know it not are cold, barren and aged. The words of Isaiah 58:II pass into fact. "He shall make fat thy bones. Thy soul shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail not." Then from this flows the wonderful secret of SPIRITUAL RESPONSIVENESS

III. Spiritual Responsiveness.

Medical men tell us of the patient "responding to treatment." The powerful drug or the inpoured oxygen seems to call forth the decaying organs into renewed energy. Alas, it is often only temporary, and the syncope that follows shows how unreal the vitality developed has been.

But in this higher therapeutic the inpoured oxygen of the life of Jesus does more than galvanize, it vitalizes and keeps alive the energies of the whole system. It pours in not oxygen, but something so deep and real that the Bible calls it not only life, but "the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus"-setting the whole being "free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).

ASSIMILATION

IV. Next comes the wonderful process of Assimilation.

Just as natural food and medicine must not only be received into, but digested and assimilated by the body before it can be effective, so once more in this spiritual materia medica every organ of soul and body becomes open and alert to meet the incoming current of the water of life. A simple illustration may help here. An iron pipe is placed in the current of a river. The water passes into and out of the pipe, but the pipe knows it not, and in no way partakes of the nature of the water it conveys. Not so here. Our bodies are the pipes, not iron or even golden, in the River of the Water of Life (Rev. 22: I), but of flesh and blood, capable of and actually absorbing the life-giving stream as it passes into us, until our whole being has not only absorbed, but consciously, willingly absorbed every particle of the vitalizing current.

The old illustration of "the pitcher in the river and the river in the pitcher," is more than fulfilled here. In divine healing, both the river and the pitcher are silent beings. One is the living body of the Lord Jesus; the other is the body of the believer, both in touch and harmony, each open to the other, each desirous of receiving and being filled with the other. "The Lord for the body and the body for the Lord, the river saying to the vessel, "Receive me," the vessel saying gladly, "Lord, I believe, Lord, I receive Thee, the Living and Life-Giving One, to fill me with nothing less than 'all the fulness of God'" (Eph. 3:19).

MYSTICAL BODY A REALITY

V. Fifthly, "The Mystical Body of Christ" becomes something more than a theological or ecclesiastical idea to be more or less realized in a spiritual way by a few holy souls with special grace to attain unto it. "Christ the Head," "We the body and members in particular,"- "Members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones," and a dozen similar texts, pass once more from the realm of theory into the world of fact. They are what they say.

They say what they mean, and their deepest meaning becomes mine in a way too strong for words, and yet as simple as the holding up of my little finger, proves its connection with, and its continuous life from the heart within my body. In fact text after text like John 6:54-57, which we once thought merely beautiful parables of purely spiritual things pass down from heaven into the earth of our common life, and turn the earth of our physical being into a paradise of God and a very heaven of glory. At last we begin to see the profound truth that while every physical fact has a spiritual basis or background the converse is no less true. Every spiritual fact has its physical expression, and the expression in this case is as real as the fact behind it.

So "we are the body of Christ and members in particular." "As He is (in heaven), so are we in the world" (I John 4: 7). He is in the glory at the right hand of God, as far above us as heaven is above the earth and yet in our bodies of flesh and bone and tissue and nerves as near as the sunlight is to the flower it kisses and bathes with its enfolding life and power.

REVELATION 3:20

VI. Sixth. Texts which have been used to preach salvation and sanctification only become vivid pictures of divine healing. For instance, Revelation 3:20, the beautiful A, B, C text for the two first, is now one of the best in the Bible to show us how easily we may be healed if we will. "Behold I stand at the door and knock," etc. The door is now the thin veil or partition between us and the living Christ standing just outside. He knocks at

(1) The eye door, and says, Lift the latch, and in a moment, "in the twinkling of an eye" (I Cor. 15:52) you will see Me waiting to give you health and victory over disease and all weakness of body.

(2) The ear door is closed. He knocks again. We open and hear Him say as He passes in, "I am Jehovah that healeth thee" (Ex. 15:26).

PORES OF BODY BECOME GATES OF LIFE

He knocks again at the door of the mouth. We open and begin to say, "Lord, I believe, Lord, I receive," and instantly He passes in, bringing all He is and all He has with Him. And so of every human sense, which until now has been a "gate of death" (Psa. 9:13), of fear and forecasting of evil. Each changes its name because its nature is changed; sight, hearing, speech, yes, even the very pores of our body's so long channels of germ-bearing air, are transformed into little gates of life through which the sweet, wholesome tides of vitality flow in a steady stream, feeding and fructifying every spring of our natural life.

OVERFLOW OF SPIRITUAL LIFE

VII. Divine healing is to me after twenty-one years of experience, the continuous overflow into the body of the life of Jesus already in the soul and spirit.

It is the very same life, only now filling and vitalizing the earthen vessel of this mortal frame.

It is "God manifested in the flesh" in a real and living way. It is human flesh made holy, healthy, happy, strong and effective for all its needs and service by the incorporation of the flesh of Christ.

It is the answer to all our questionings and criticisms about God dwelling with and within men.

MATTER, (I) REAL, (2) DIVINE, (3) GLORIFIED

The human part of our being becomes as glorious as the divine. Matter becomes real because a real God has taken up His abode in it.

Matter becomes divine because "we," that is the whole, not half of us, "are partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).

Matter becomes eternal because we have in it now eternal life. "He that hath the Son hath life."

Matter becomes glorious for He who is the Lord of Glory dwells in it, giving us a foretaste of the coming day when He shall transfigure the body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned after the body of His glory according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself (Phil. 3:21).

CONTINUAL VICTORY

Hence divine healing when thus understood is a victorious life for the body. Not exemption from pain and sickness at all times, any more than the soul and spirit are at all times free from temptation, but victory over pain and sickness, by the continuous and overmastering inflow of the life of the Lord.

This is the philosophy and this is the Christianity of divine healing. A bright, cheerful, wholesome atmosphere breathing all around us, because a Living One has breathed into the heart and every organ of the body His own vitality and made each of them a living channel of healthfulness and blessing to others.

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