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THE LIFE-GIVING LOOK.

THE LIFE-GIVING LOOK.

A WORD FOR THE NEW YEAR.

BY THE EDITOR.

E cannot do better than start our New Year with the beautiful words of our blessed Lord, which are illustrated by our first picture.

They tell us very plainly that the life secret of the saved

is a simple believing look to the Lord Jesus Christ. This brings, under the Holy Spirit's teaching, life from that death "in trespasses and sins," in which all " by nature" are involved (Ephes. ii. 1-3). This brings peace from the heavy condemnation on account of sin to the deepest of earth's sinners who believes that God made Christ "to be sin" for him, that he "might be made the righteousness of God" in Christ (2 Cor. v. 21). Then follows the consciousness of acceptance and salvation, which is the happy privilege of every true believer.

After this comes the life of devotion to God, as His reconciled child in Christ Jesus, which it is also the happy privilege of the believer daily to live. Life has its sorrows, conflicts, trials, difficulties, for the child of God; but the secret of finding life at the first is also the secret of maintaining it and living it out. There must be the same believing look to Christ each moment, for comfort, grace, and strength, as well as for a constant example, in whose most blessed steps to walk.

Will our readers see that they start the New Year in this spirit? It is a solemn time, and seems especially a season for seeing that our hearts are right. Will any who are still living for this world alone, its follies and its sins, look unto Him for that pardon and reconciliation with God, which alone can enable them to commence a really Christian life? And, if they have got as far as this, will they remember to renew and keep up that believing look, as the constant power for daily life, all through this coming year ?

SAVING, BECAUSE SAVED.

SAVING, BECAUSE SAVED.

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BY C. N.

E are all thinking of New Year's Gifts, and we should all like to begin the year with some fresh gift from the Lord. It is deeply on my heart that there is one gift we sorely need, and one which I earnestly beseech our readers to claim,

"God gave Solomon largeness of heart."

This is what we need. Largeness of heart to grasp the terrible sin around; largeness of heart to have room for a burning, overpowering love for those under its awful dominion; largeness of heart which shall compel us to stretch out hands and feet before Him, and say, "Lord, take them and use them to rescue Thy perishing ones."

But perhaps some are afraid to claim this gift, because they fear what it will involve. You are so comfortable in your own safety, you draw the curtain and shut out the cry of the outcasts. Oh, redeemed ones, where should we be to-day if our Lord Jesus had done so? By His boundless love for you, that patient, unwearying "love which pursued you for years"-that tender, teaching love which clings about you, I plead-have you any idea how you are wounding and wearying His heart of love by being so slow to learn what is His own deepest desire? He died to save and to rescue, and as each newly saved one looks up to Him with grateful love,. He whispers, "I saved you that I might make My mighty power to be known. Ye shall be My witness." But you have been of little use to Him, though He pleads, "that as I have loved you ye should also love one another."

You say you cannot do much. But it is not power we want; it is largeness of heart. Then that will speed the feet, and nerve the hands, and quicken the mind. Love is very ingenious, and a heart filled with "love which is shed abroad in it by the Holy Ghost" will soon find ways of rescue. If you live with Him you must love souls. Read of Heaven; how gloriously full it will be! "Ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands!" Have you ever thought how it comes to be so full? Just by one

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SAVING, BECAUSE SAVED.

telling another; just by one rescued one stretching out the hand to another. Have you got the heart to do that?

There are two prints widely known. One represents a surging sea, a stormy sky, and waves dashing against a rock. On the rock is fixed a mighty cross, and to the cross there is clinging one who has been rescued from a wreck. There she lies spent, exhausted-but safe. The cross is her salvation. Dying hands appear in the awful waters below, but she cannot heed them, and only clings for herself. Is that like you-saved, but unsaving?

Now see the other picture. The same wild sea, the same immovable rock, the same mighty cross, the same clinging figure. But it is not only a clinging one now. One arm is clasping the cross, but the other is stretched out to the dying hands which had vainly pleaded before, and another is being lifted out of the surging waves and placed on the rock. Is that like you-saving because saved?

"He hath brought me out of a horrible pit, and hath set my feet on a rock" (Psa. xl. 2). Is that as far as you can read, or can you finish the next verse, too?

"So stir my heart, O Christ! Bid Faith arise
At once.
At once faith onward dares or dies!
'Well able?' Yes, Lord, Thou and Thy right hand
Have conquered hell; can aught before Thee stand?
Conquer and claim my heart's last strip of land.

Thus conquered by Thee, henceforth, love enslaved,
To conquer for Thee-saving, because saved!"

Lord Jesus, give me this New Year's gift of largeness of heart, to feel for the perishing, to love the sinning ones with the love wherewith Thou hast loved me, that I may seek to save by all means, by prayer, by every effort, by stirring the interests of others, if I cannot go forth myself. Inspire me with Thy own self-sacrificing love, for Thy glory. Amen.

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN.-We are glad to be able to tell our readers that the friend they know so well by her writings, Eva Evered Poole, has published a series of small books of stories for children and young people. They are very attractive within and without. They are published by Nisbet and Co., 21, Berners-street, London, W., and are 1s. the packet.

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GREAT secret in Christian life is to cultivate reality. We all know the difference between mere knowledge and realised experience; between truth merely known and that which has real power in the heart. It is a common expression that the head gets in advance of the heart-in other words, that there is more merely mental knowledge than heartfelt experience of truth.

There is great danger in mental knowledge when it goes no further. It accustoms the heart to the form and sound of truth, which it does not follow. This accounts for the low spiritual attainments of many Christians. They are often painfully conscious of knowing much blessed truth, which has little power in their lives. This discourages them. They feel the difficulty of bringing their experience and life up to the level of their knowledge.

But it surely is not the will of our Father that this great distance should exist between our knowledge and our experience. There must be some fault when it is so; and it is most important to search out the remedy. This will not be found in seeking new views of truth. These may, for a time, occupy our minds, and an inward revival may seem to result; but, too often the effect is more on the mind than the heart. It is emotional more than solid and real; and, for this reason, it is not lasting.

If we are conscious of unreality, and our experience does not answer to our knowledge, the remedy lies in seeking real views of the old truths, rather than in searching hither and thither for something new.

But let us guard against a mistake. The Holy Spirit of God alone can give us real views of truth. But many wait drearily on, hoping that some day He will grant a revival. This is the mistake. The Holy Spirit imparts power to believe, but He does not believe instead He enables us to believe aright by acting in and through the faculties which God has given us, and we must recognise the responsibility of giving up ourselves, in child-like confidence, to His gracious

of us.

*This Paper is reprinted from "The Sure Foundation, or Thoughts on the Believer's Safety," a little volume by the Editor, which is intended for the help and encouragement of the Anxious and Doubting, and for the establishment of the Believer in simple Gospel Truth. There are thousands amongst our readers to whom such a book would be helpful. It forms a very suitable present. It is published (price 1s.) by Nisbet and Co., 21, Berners-street, London, W., who will send it to any address for 12 stamps; or it can be obtained of any bookseller.

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leadings. The Divine rule is that "he that seeketh findeth." Merely to feel our need and to confess it, has no promise of blessing. We too often forget the seeking to which the Spirit is constantly leading us.

If we want to experience the reality of what we know, we must definitely seek to do so. But how it may be asked. First of all, of course, in simple believing prayer. All our efforts without this will avail us nothing. But are we, beyond this, to be merely passive-to do nothing? Surely not. We must cultivate reality; we must earnestly avoid unreality.

With regard to revealed truth, which does not seem real to us, it will help us, if we remark that, whatever we feel, it is real. But if we want to realise it more, we must learn the secret of just living as if it were true.

Dear Truth seems unreal because we The slightest thing knowingly

But some will say, "This is what we want to arrive at." reader, it is what you must begin at. get into such habits of unreality. allowed in our life, inconsistent with what we believe, has a terrible result. The mind cannot forget the truth; but we act in spite of it, and hardening of heart follows. It may be in very little matters, but the effect is the same. The truths which ought to have an increasing power over us gradually cease to be real.

To realise truth we must give up expecting, even in answer to prayer, certain emotions which we call realisation, until we have learned over again the lesson of simple faith. It is, after all not what we feel, but what God says, that constitutes truth. And, starting from this, we must diligently put aside everything which we suspect is grieving the Spirit, whose office it is to make truth real to our hearts.

Many very earnest souls are often kept long in darkness while seeking a deeper realisation of truth. They pray for and expect some feelings about it, which will make them happy and inspire them, as they think, with some new power. In this they err. The secret of deeper reality is in some simple faith exercised upon the truth itself, and in simple obedience in the least detail, to the line of conduct which it suggests. Faith, and not feeling must be the motive to obedience; and obedience is the condition in which "joy and peace in believing" will result.

It is true that it is God's part to "fill us with all joy and peace in believing " (Rom. xv. 13). It is ours to trust Him for it, and to expect it from Him. But while there is any permitted disobedience, the slightest thought or habit knowingly indulged, which His truth would condemn, tempers manifested inconsistent with our belief, we cannot

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