What is the ‘Wilderness’ God brings His Elect into?

by J. C. Philpot 1850

 

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her”. [Hosea 2:14]

What are we to understand by “the WILDERNESS“? I think we may understand by it two things. First, the world; secondly, the human heart. For, we shall find, if the Lord enable, that to a child of God both the world, and the human heart as dissected and laid bare by the Spirit of God, bear marks and characters of “a wilderness.”

But what is “a wilderness?” We must comprehend the word literally, before we can understand it spiritually.

1. A “wilderness,” then, is, first, a place where no food grows. That is the very character of the Arabian desert. No grain grows there fit for man.

2. But secondly, it is a place where no food can be made to grow. Now, you know, in this country there are commons and heaths that do not bear grain in their present state; but they might be brought under cultivation and made to produce it. But there are wild, waste districts in the Scottish Highlands, which could not by any cultivation be made to grow grain. So with the “wilderness.” You might plough, sow, harrow, and roll it, but you would never have a crop. The sun would dry it up; there is no soil in which the plant could grow. It might spring up for a time; but with all our attempts, it would soon utterly wither away.

3. And the third idea to make up a desert, and flowing out of the two former features, is, that it is a place of which the inhabitants are always rovers, without a settled habitation. They have no home, house, nor building, but live in tents; and are continually shifting the spot on which for a time they dwell.

Do not these three ideas very much make up the figure of a “wilderness?” See whether they are not applicable to two things in the experience of a child of God—the world, and his own heart.

1. The WORLD is not “a wilderness” to a worldling. To him it is a beautiful estate, enclosed in a ring fence, with land easily cultivable and soil of the best quality, producing the richest crops, laden with golden harvests. But to a child of God, as I shall show you by and by, (if led into it,) the world is but a “wilderness;” from which no crop grows to feed his soul; from which by no exertions of his own can food be made to grow; and in which he is, and ever must be, a wanderer, not a settled inhabitant.

2. And this, too, with the HUMAN HEART. We shall find, I think, these three ideas of “a wilderness” meeting also in the human heart, as laid bare by the keen dissecting knife of the Spirit to the spiritual eye of a child of God. Out of his heart no food can come, for “in him, that is, in his flesh, dwells no good thing;” there is no food in it for his new nature; nothing of which he can say, ‘This is what my soul can feed upon.’ And though he may seek to cultivate it, and is bidden and admonished to do so; and though he has tried often to put in the plough, to clean it with the hoe, to rake it with the harrow, to sow good seed, and to water it perhaps with the waterpot, yet, after all his attempts, the harvest is only a heap of sand in the day of desperate sorrow, the soil being absolutely barren, totally uncultivable and unproductive, with all his fairest exertions. He is tossed up and down, in consequence, finding nothing in his heart on which he can set his foot, on which he can build for eternity, or in which he can safely and happily dwell, as a fixed resting-place.

Now, bear these things in mind, and when I come to the “wilderness,” as the Spirit of the Lord has promised to bring his people there, you will then see whether you have an experimental knowledge of these two things for yourselves.

B. The Lord says, “Behold, I will ALLURE her.” Does this mean the first work of the Spirit upon the soul? I believe not. The first work of the Spirit, we read in Scripture, and we find confirmed by experience, is, to convince of sin, to pierce to the heart, to wound, to make the soul sensible of its state before God, and its utter alienation from him. Therefore, the word “allure,” cannot apply to the first work of the Spirit upon the soul. Men may talk of being drawn by love; but what is the religion of those who are thus drawn by love? What depth, what reality, what power, what life, what godliness is there in it? The word “allure” is not applicable, then, to the first beginning of a work. That first work usually commences with conviction, a sight and sense of sin, a cry for mercy, a feeling of wretchedness and ruin, and a despair of salvation in self. [Amen!]

But after the Lord has been pleased thus to pierce, to wound, to convince, and bring down, he often, perhaps usually, drops down some sweetness, blessedness, and consolation into the soul. He gives it to taste a few ‘dewdrops of his love’, some ‘honey-drops from the Rock of Ages’. This I call the “Spring of the soul”. You know what a beautiful season spring is; when the leaves are clothing the trees, when the birds are singing upon the branches, when the flowers are springing out of the ground, when the chilly winds of winter are gone, when the balmy breezes blow from the south, when the sun rises high in the sky, and sheds gladness over the face of the renewed earth. Thus the soul has, generally speaking, a Spring; and, as there is but one spring in nature, so for the most part there is but one spring in grace. As regards our natural life, it is only once that we are young; and it is so spiritually; we only once enjoy that sweet season of which Job speaks, “As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle.” (Job 29:4.)

During, then, this youth of the soul, this Spring season, this “day of espousals,” there is an “alluring” of the heart unto God. Now this we need. And why? Perhaps we are bound up with carnal companions, or by snares we cannot break; hampered by worldly relations, and their persecutions we cannot face; tied down with lusts and sins, and the chain of these we cannot burst; in the world, and unable to come out of it. Notwithstanding all the frights, terrors, alarms, and convictions that the soul may experience, (though these for a time may operate, and that powerfully); yet when their effect has ceased, it slips back into the old spot; it is not fairly or fully brought out. We need something beyond law and terrors to do that; we need something besides thunder and lightning to bring the soul fully unto God. [Amen]

There is felt and seen, then, a beauty, a blessedness, a reality, a sweetness in the things of God, which the tongue cannot describe. By it the heart is drawn unto the Lord Jesus, to the truth as it is in Jesus, to the people of Jesus, and to the service of Jesus. The world, friends, foes, relations are all disregarded; neither frowns nor smiles have any effect. There is such a sweetness then felt in the things of God, such a blessedness and reality, that the soul is “allured” by them out of everything that before held it back from union with a living Head.

Under these blessed feelings, a soul will do anything for Christ; will make any sacrifice, give up anything, bear anything, endure anything for the Lord Jesus. The ‘Spring of nature’ is beautiful to see; but the ‘Spring of grace’ is more beautiful to feel. Early days, if not the most profitable, yet are often the best days in our feelings.

Now, by these “allurements,” sweetness, and blessedness, the Lord draws the soul into a profession of religion, into perhaps joining a church, taking up the cross, walking with the people of God, putting itself forward, and that in the utmost sincerity, to serve the Lord Jesus. And perhaps, we think, we shall enjoy this all our days. At this season, when we see old professors carnal and worldly-minded, and we feel full of life and zeal; some mourning and sighing, and we singing and dancing; others complaining of their bad hearts, when we scarcely know that we have a bad one; others cast down with temptations, and we not exposed to them; or groaning under trials, and we ignorant of them; we think that they must be deceived. We say, ‘That is not religion; the religion we have is a very different thing; there is a sweetness in ours; there is a comfort, a blessedness in it.’

Perhaps we write very hard things against these old professors; think they have been doing something very bad, and have sinned away their comforts; or that it is their own fault they are not so lively, so happy, and so comfortable as we. But we do not know what the Lord is doing by this “alluring,” nor what his purposes are; that all this is to bring us “into the wilderness.” And when he has got us there fairly and fully, then to show us what the “wilderness” really is.

C. But HOW does this take place? A “wilderness,” I endeavored to show represents generally two things—the world and the human heart.

Now, I dare say, when your soul was flourishing, the world in a measure flourished with you too. The Lord, generally speaking, calls his people young—being young, they have not many worldly trials—and therefore, very often natural youth and spiritual youth go hand in hand. There is a buoyancy, then, naturally, and spiritually, and the two are often closely united. But now comes the “wilderness.” Now comes the world, as opened up in its real character. Trial often begins with some heavy stroke of a worldly nature. This is sometimes the first stab that the soul gets when it comes into the “wilderness.” Perhaps some illness robs us of health for life; or some stroke in providence casts down all our airy Babels—or some disappointment, it may be of a very tender nature, lays all the youthful hopes of the heart prostrate in the dust.

1. Now, up to this time the world was not manifested as a “wilderness” world, nor was our heart altogether divorced from it. And though the Lord was sweet and precious, yet there were worldly things indulged in; worldly society perhaps not fully given up; worldly practices that the heart was not weaned from; worldly connections not fully broken through. John Newton speaks of his enjoying in early days the presence of the Lord sweetly in the woods, and yet spending the rest of the evening in carnal company. Now that seems very strange; yet perhaps you and I might have done something of the same kind. When I was a Fellow of my College at Oxford, soon after I felt the weight of eternal things, I have sat in the Common Room after dinner with the other Fellows, and amid all the drinking of wine, and the hum and buzz of conversation, in which I took no part, have been secretly lifting up my heart to the Lord. But I could not go among them after I got into the wilderness. The reason was, I was not fully brought out; though there was a blessedness felt in the things of God, yet the evils of the world were not clearly manifested; temptation was not powerfully presented; and therefore, the danger of it was not felt nor feared.

But now, the world begins to be opened up in its real character. Once it was your friend; now it has become your enemy—once it smiled upon you; now it frowns—once it did you good; now it slanders you, and does you all the evil it can—once you could enjoy it, but now it palls upon your appetite. Disappointment, vexation, and sorrow embitter all; and you find the world to be what God declares it, “a wilderness.” No food grows in it; nothing that your soul can really be satisfied with; “vanity and vexation of spirit,” are written upon all. Though you may try to get food out of it, all your attempts are blighted with disappointment; and you in consequence, finding no solid footing, become a wanderer, a pilgrim, and a stranger, tossed up and down in it, and having in it neither heart nor home.

2. But again. The human heart, as opened up to a child of God, is a “wilderness,” too. You did not know this formerly; you did not know you had so bad a heart. When the Lord was first “alluring” you into the “wilderness,” you could not see that you had no strength, no holiness, no wisdom in yourself; that your heart was a cage of unclean birds; that there was nothing spiritually good in it. In early days, we cannot discern between the Lord’s strength and our own; between natural and spiritual feelings; between the zeal of the flesh and the life of the Spirit. Nor do we understand these things until our senses are exercised to discern good and evil. A clear line is not drawn at first in our soul between nature and grace; and therefore, our hearts in early days are not to us a “wilderness.”

We think we can cultivate them; why could we not? Cannot we encourage a spirit of prayer? Cannot we read God’s word? Cannot we go to hear good men preach? Cannot we arrange certain seasons and hours in which to seek the Lord’s face? Cannot we watch against besetting sins? Cannot we keep the door of our lips? Cannot we keep our eyes and hearts fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ? We are told to do these things; to cultivate grace; and we make the attempt. Are we successful? If we are, it is our ignorance that makes us think so. [Amen] Let us have light to see, life to feel, and spiritual discernment to know what is of God, and what is of man; what grace is, and what the work of the Spirit is; what divine feelings are, and how distinct these are from the work of the flesh; then we shall find that our heart not only does not bear food that we can feed upon to our soul’s satisfaction; but cannot be made to bear it. It is a “wilderness,” a wide waste, a barren sand, a desert—fiercely blown by the dreadful Sirocco, parched by the sun, dried up and desolate, absolutely sterile and uncultivable.

Now, here in the “wilderness,” we get stripped to the very bone; here we lose all our goodness, all our wisdom, all our strength, all our creature holiness, all our rags of fleshly righteousness. It is in the “wilderness” we get stripped—and until we come there, we do not know what stripping is. Then we feel poor creatures, ruined wretches—desolate, forsaken, abandoned, almost without hope or help—in self lost and undone. We look upon the world—all is vanity, vexation, and sorrow. We look within—all is dark, wild, and desolate—nothing but sin, and that continually—unbelief, infidelity, obscenity, filth, and blasphemy—everything hideous, everything vile—nothing but evil without and within. This is stripping work—this is “the wilderness”—this is bringing a man to his senses; this is laying the creature low; this is making him know the depth of the fall; this is plucking up his fleshly religion, tearing out by the roots all his carnal hopes, leaving him naked, empty, and bare. All his creature holiness gone, all his creature zeal withered, all his creature strength turned into weakness, all his creature loveliness into corruption—and he standing before God utterly unable to work one spiritual feeling in his own heart. [Amen and Amen]

Are you here? Have you ever been here? Is God bringing you here? Here we must come to learn what true religion is; here must we come to see the end of all perfection, and to feel that “the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” But does the Lord leave his people here? No!
II. Which leads us to our second point. The Lord brings his people there to do them good—to give them blessings; to work grace in their hearts; and to extend to them favor and mercy in a measure and degree hitherto unfelt. But let us look at the catalogue of blessings provided for Israel when she comes into the “wilderness.”

A. “I will speak comfortably unto her.” It is in the margin, (and so it is in the Hebrew) “to her heart.” I shall take the two renderings—first, “to her heart;” secondly, “comfortably.”

1. “To her heart.” It is in the “wilderness,” then, that we learn “heart religion”. If you want God to speak to your heart, you must go into the “wilderness” for it. It is often only ‘headwork’ and ‘mere doctrines’ until we get there. Into the wilderness of human nature must we go, if God himself is to speak to our heart. And when you begin to feel what a heart you have, you will find the necessity of God speaking to it; for only so far as he speaks, have you any feeling, any life, any power in your religion. And O, when a man begins to find and feel what a “wilderness” heart he has—how anxious, how desirous he is that God would speak to his heart! How this shuts up his religion into a very narrow compass! How it cuts off the flesh of it, and brings him, and his religion too, into a nutshell! How it hacks to pieces all the ornaments that have been hung around it by self and the devil, and brings him to this point, (and a very trying point it is to be brought to)—”I have no religion of self; I cannot work a grain in mine own heart; I am dead, dark, stupid; God must speak to my soul—and if he does not speak, I am utterly destitute. I have no feeling, no life, no faith, no love, no strength, no holiness—I have nothing. I stand,” says the soul, “before God without a thread.”

“Lord,” (the poor man cries under these painful exercises, toiling and struggling in the wilderness), “speak to my soul; drop a word into my heart.” And how anxious he is for God to speak! But how many sleepless nights have you passed because God does not speak to your heart? How many times do you roll backwards and forwards upon your bed because you cannot get the Lord to speak a word into your soul? Do you ever go groaning and sighing along the street because the Lord does not speak to you? or, are you gazing with a fool’s eye into every picture-shop?

Now, if you are in the “wilderness,” you will want the Lord to speak to your soul; and you will feel all your religion to hang upon this—that you have no more true religion than springs out of God’s word and work in your heart. And here you will look and wait, long, beg, and pray, ‘Lord, in mercy speak to my poor soul.’ The Lord has promised to do this; but he will not speak until he brings you to the spot where he has promised to do so. When he has “allured” you along into the wilderness, and got you fastened there, he will now and then drop a word, give a promise, speak with soft melting whispers, make his word sweet and precious; and thus fulfill his promise, ‘I will speak to her heart.’

2. “Comfortably.” But the word also means “comfortably.” Now when the Lord was “alluring” your soul in the way I have described, you did not know much about comfort springing out of the Lord’s speaking to your soul. You could hardly tell whence your comfort came. It did not come direct from the mouth of God; the Lord did not mean it at that time to come so. Every sermon seemed at that time blessed; but now perhaps it is only one word out of it. At that time, when you went upon your knees, it seemed as though you had sweet access to the throne of grace; every hymn was full of beauty; and every child of God you could take in your arms, embrace, and feel sweet communion with. And yet, all the time, when you look back, you cannot say this sprung out of any special words or promises that God applied to your soul. There was a general sweetness, but not a particular one. It was more in the truth, in the people of God, in the blessedness of the things of God, in the doctrines of grace, than it was in special promises, or special applications of blood and love.

But when you get into the “wilderness,” you cannot do with what did very well in times of old. There are many children of God who love to hear a minister trace out evidences. ‘O,’ they say, ‘this just suits me; I love to hear evidences.’ But you get, after a time, beyond evidences. They will do for a babe; they will suit a child; but a man wants meat; a man can pick a bone. And so (I address myself now to those who know the “wilderness”) you want something stronger, more solid, more weighty, more real, more effectual; you want testimonies, words, manifestations, a sweet discovery of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is by being stripped in the “wilderness,” that we are brought to look and long for the Lord’s own special comfort; for we are brought to stand in need of it; and as we cannot get a drop of comfort by cultivating our own graces, we are obliged to beg for a few grains of comfort from the Lord himself.

And what a mercy it is, that he has promised to speak “comfortably;” that when nobody else can speak comfort, when we cannot speak it to our own souls, and cannot get consolation from anything, the Lord can and does, according to his promise, speak “comfortably.” He whispers peace, and blesses the soul with some testimony of its saving interest in the precious blood and love of his dear Son. That is the first thing the Lord has promised to do.

B. “I will give her her vineyards from thence.” A strange place! We would not go to Bagshot Heath or Woking Common to find “a vineyard;” and I am sure we should not go to the great Sahara desert, or the Arabian desert, to find grapes growing. But we might as well expect clusters of grapes upon Bagshot Heath, as spiritual fruitfulness in the human heart. Here, then, is the wonder. “I will give her her vineyards from thence.” What! in the wilderness! when she has been trying to bring something out of her heart to please God and self with, and all her efforts are baffled! What! to give her vineyards there! Why, that is the mystery; that is the beauty; that is the blessedness; that is the sweetness—that the Lord can and does make the barren heart fruitful in the “wilderness.”

Now, perhaps you have been toiling, tugging, working very hard to produce some fruit. ‘Come,’ say you, ‘it will not do to go on like this. I must do something; I must pray more, read the word of God more, watch over my heart more, and seek the Lord more. I will do it too; nobody shall hinder me.’ So some Monday morning, you begin and set to work, and take the Bible down. ‘Yes,’ say you, ‘I will read two or three chapters this morning; I will go to prayer, and I will try if I cannot do something to be a real Christian.’ All very good. But what do you get from it? What power, sweetness, or blessedness can you put into the word of God? What life and feeling can you put into your soul? Well, you have tried it again and again; and when you have cast up the account, it is nil—nothing, a cipher. Zero is the full amount! And you wonder where the fault is, until at last you begin to despair, and feel and say, ‘I am a wretch, and ever shall be. God be merciful to such a wretch! Lord, look in tender compassion on such a monster, such a filthy creature that has done nothing, and can do nothing but sin.’

Now when the Lord is pleased to speak a word to the heart, and bless your soul with real comfort, what is the effect? It makes you fruitful. Then you can read the word of God—aye, and with blessedness too; then you can pray, and with sweet satisfaction too; then you can look up, and with eyes of affection too; and then you can be holy, and that by the real sanctifying operations of the Spirit too. This is the way whereby all fruitfulness is produced—not by roller, plough, and harrow; seed basket and hoe; turning up the desert, and casting good grain there—to be like Pharaoh’s corn—only blasted by the East wind. But to be in the “wilderness”—to feel a needy, naked wretch, without hope or help in self, and to wait upon the Lord for him to speak a word to the soul, by his own blessed breath breathing into us a fruitfulness that our heart never could produce in itself. Here is genuine spirituality and true holiness—here is real fruitfulness. These are the graces of the Spirit—not the perishing works of the flesh.

What is thus wrought in the soul by the power of God is to the glory of God. “I will give her her vineyards from thence.” Now, if you had never known the “wilderness,” what a barren heart and desperately wicked nature you have, you would not have wanted fruitfulness to come from God’s own mouth into your soul. The starved, withered crop that ‘nature’ produces would have been reaped and gathered into your garner, and you would have been pleased with the sheaves, though they were but straw and chaff.

As time is running on, I must just hastily skim over the other blessings which God has promised in the “wilderness.”

C. “The valley of Achor for a door of hope.” Now the “valley of ACHOR” signifies the ‘valley of trouble.’ It was the valley in which Achan was stoned. And why stoned? Because he had taken the accursed thing—because his eye had been captivated by the Babylonish garment and golden wedge, and he had buried them in the tent. This may throw a light on what “the valley of Achor” is spiritually. Perhaps you have been guilty of Achan’s sin—you have been taking the accursed thing—you have been too deeply connected with the world—you have done things that God’s displeasure is against. Let conscience speak in your bosom. The consequence has been, that you have gotten into the “valley of Achor!” Trouble, sorrow, and confusion are your lot; and you do not know whether the lot of Achan may not await you there.

Now it is in this “valley of Achor,” or sorrow, confusion, and fear, that the “door of HOPE” is opened. And what is “a door of hope?” What is a ‘door’ literally? Is not “a door” a place of exit and a place for entrance? By “a door” we go out, and by “a door” we come in. So “a door of hope” admits the visits of the Lord to the soul; and “a door of hope” admits the going out of the soul’s breathings after God. Thus, every glimpse of mercy, every beam of love, and every ray of comfort; every sweet promise that drops into the soul, every intimation from God, every testimony of interest in Christ; every dewdrop, every honey-drop that falls into a parched wilderness heart—this is opening up “a door of hope.”

But why “in the valley of Achor?” That we may cease to hope in self—that a sound and true gospel hope may enter within the veil as an anchor sure and steadfast, and there be no hope but in the precious blood of the Lamb, and in a sweet manifestation of that blood to the conscience. This is “the door of hope” through which the soul looks into the very presence of God—sees Jesus on the throne of grace, the sprinkled mercy-seat, and the great High Priest “able and willing to save to the uttermost.”

Through this “door of hope,” by which Christ is seen, the soul goes forth in desires, breathings, hungerings, and thirstings after him. And through this “door of hope” descend visits, smiles, tokens, testimonies, mercies, and favors. And thus, there is a “door of hope;” no longer barred, closed, and shut back—but thrown wide open in the bleeding side of an incarnate God! And this is opened “in the valley of Achor,” where we deserve to be stoned to death because we have touched the accursed thing—where we deserve nothing but damnation, the eternal vengeance of God, and to be made as Achan a monument of eternal wrath. Yet, in this “valley of Achor,” is opened up a blessed “door of hope.”

D. “She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when the Lord brought her out of the land of Egypt.” Spring again! only a better spring. Youth again! “They shall renew their strength as the eagle.” Here is a renewing—of visits almost despaired of—of joys that seemed never to return—of hopes almost extinct—of consolations remembered, but remembered almost with fear, lest they should have been delusive. “She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came out of the land of Egypt.”

But what a place to go and get into, to learn religion. How much more pleasant it would be to the flesh to take our Bible down, get a notebook, have a new pen, put some fresh ink into the ink bottle, and then to draw out our religion from the Bible; to believe all we read, take down all we see, and transplant it into our heart. But that is not the way—that would only stand in the ‘letter’. It would not do for eternity, nor for a dying bed. It would exalt the creature, but would depress the Creator. It might do for an hour, but it would not do for the judgment-day. And therefore, we have to learn our religion, if we learn it at all, in a way totally opposite.

Have you learned your religion in the wilderness? If you have, it will stand. There is a reality in it—it bears marks of God’s grace and teaching. But if we have not learned it in this way—what reality, what power, what blessedness is there in it? None! We shall have to part with it when we need it most. When we lie upon a death-bed, all our false religion will make to itself wings, and fly away—and when we stretch forth our hands for a little true hope, it is all gone.

Thus, we want something solid, real, spiritual, abiding; something of God and godliness, divine, heavenly, and supernatural; wrought in the soul by the almighty power, and breathed into our heart by the very mouth of God himself. That will stand, and no other will.

If the Lord has led you in his path, you have an evidence in your soul that these things are so; and you will know that this is the way—not because I say, so, nor because the Bible always says it—but because you have felt, experienced, and known these things by divine teaching and by divine testimony!

[The above sermon by brother Philpot is a true saying and worthy of all acceptation. If I had read this sermon even ten years ago, I would not have understood it neither would it have meant anything to me. But now after twenty six years since I was saved, and having personally gone through this howling wilderness spoken of above, I know that these things are so; and that Brother Philpot has spoken the truth as it in Jesus!  - Mike Jeshurun]

J.C. Philpot’s Letter of Resignation from the ‘Church’ of England!

Philpot’s letter of resignation from the Church of England

March 28 –1835

Mr. Provost:
I beg leave to resign the Fellowship of Worcester College, to which I was elected in the year 1826. This step I am compelled to take because I can no longer with a good conscience continue a Minister or a Member of the Established Church.

After great and numerous trials of mind, I am, as I trust, led by the hand of God thus to separate myself from that corrupt and worldly system, called the Church of England. Her errors and corruptions, as well as her utter contrariety to a Gospel Church as revealed in the New Testament, have been for two or three years gradually opening upon my mind. But though I have thus slowly and by degrees obtained light from above to see the Established Church somewhat in her true colors, it is, I confess, only but very lately that the sin of remaining in her has been forcibly laid upon my conscience. I have felt of late that, by continuing one of her ministers, I was upholding what in the sight of the holy Jehovah is hateful and loathsome.

I have felt that, by standing up in her pulpit, I was sanctioning a system in principle and practice, in root and branches, corrupt before God. I have felt that I was keeping those children of God who sat under my ministry in total darkness as to the nature of a true Gospel Church. I have felt that both I myself, and the spiritual people that attended my ministry, were, in principle and system, mixed up with–the ungodly, the Pharisee, the formalist, the worldling, and the hypocrite. And thus, while I remained in the Church of England, my principles and my practice, my profession and my conduct, my preaching and my acting, were inconsistent with each other. I was building up with the right hand what I was pulling down with the left.

I was contending for the ‘power’–while the Church of England was maintaining the ‘form’. I was, by my preaching, separating the people of God from ‘the world lying in wickedness’–and the Church of England, in her Liturgy and Offices, was huddling together the spiritual and the carnal, the regenerate and the unregenerate, the sheep and the goats. I was contending for regeneration as a supernatural act wrought upon the souls of the elect alone by the Eternal Spirit–and the Church of England was thanking God for regenerating every child that was sprinkled with a little water. True prayer I was representing as the Spirit’s work upon the soul, as the groanings of a burdened heart, as the pouring out of a broken spirit, as the cry of a child to his heavenly Father, as the hungering and thirsting of a soul that panted after God. The Church of England tied me down to cold, hackneyed, wearisome forms, in which I prayed for the Royal Family, the Parliament, the Bishops, and all sorts and conditions of men, with scarcely one petition that the Spirit would rule in a regenerate heart.

My soul was pained and burdened within me at hearing the wicked and the careless take into their lips the sweet petitions of David in the Psalms. I heard around me those who I knew from their life and conversation had never for a moment spiritually felt the pangs of a wounded conscience, say, ‘I stick fast in the deep mire where no ground is; I am come into deep waters, so that the floods run over me’. I heard those who never desired or longed after anything but the gratification of their own lusts and covetousness, repeat aloud, ‘Like as the deer desires the water-brooks, so longs my soul after you, O God’. Those that were dressed up in all the colors of the rainbow, I heard saying, ‘As for me, I am poor and needy’. Graceless men who had never felt a drop of the Spirit’s teachings, and who outside of the Church swore, jeered, and scoffed, would cry in my hearing, ‘Take not your Holy Spirit from me’. Adulterers and adulteresses repeated aloud, ‘I will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I go to Your altar’. While the self-righteous Pharisee would sound in my ears, ‘I will go forth in the strength of the Lord God, and will make mention of Your righteousness only’.

Thus the gracious and blessed experience of God’s saints was mocked and trampled upon, and the fervent prayers and breathings of the Spirit in contrite souls were profaned by the ungodly taking them into their unhallowed lips. And all this I was conscious was not a casual occurrence, or such as arose from the unsuggested will of individuals, but was the deliberate principle and system of the Church of England. I saw it was so by her teaching every child to say he was made in his baptism ‘a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven’. I saw it was so by that system of responses which she enjoins upon all the congregation to make, and again and again has my soul been burdened at hearing the wicked little children around me mock God by shouting out the responses, as they had been systematically trained to do by ignorant ministers, parents, school-masters and school mistresses.

Being for the last three years a hearer and not a reader of the Liturgy, I have been compelled at times to close my ears with both my hands, that I might not hear the mechanical cries of the children, one of whose responses they always thus worded, ‘We have left undone those things which we ought not to have done’. I have groaned within me at hearing the ungodly around me thus mock God, and so far was I from joining in the dead and spiritless forms of the Prayer Book, that I could only secretly pray, ‘Lord, deliver me from this worldly and unholy system’.

Every dull and dry prayer seemed to lay a fresh lump of ice on my heart, and when I got into the pulpit, nothing but the hand of God, to whom I cried for help, could take off that deadness and barrenness which these wearisome forms had, in a great measure, laid upon me. At times, too, when I viewed the gettings up and sittings down, the bowings, the turnings to the East, the kneeling in this place and standing in that, and the whole routine of that ‘bodily service’ with which the blessed Jehovah was mocked, I could not but look on the whole as a few degrees only removed from the mummery of a Popish mass-house.

But though I felt, and at times could groan beneath the wretched formality of the Church of England, I was from two motives chiefly kept within her. One was, that I desired to be useful to the children of God in a dark neighborhood, with whom I had been connected for nearly seven years, and of whom some professed to derive profit from my ministry. The other was altogether carnal, and, though hiding itself in the secret recesses of my heart and therefore unperceived, was doubtless of much weight with me. This was the desire of retaining that comfortable competence which my Fellowship secured. My heart, I freely confess, has often sunk within me at the prospect of my already weak health terminating in confirmed illness, with poverty and need staring me in the face. I was also praying for an opening from the Lord to show me my path clearly, as, though I was determined neither to accept preferment, nor take another curacy, I was unwilling to throw up my ministry until the ‘death of the very aged incumbent.’ Lately, however, I have been brought to see ‘that I must not do evil that good may come’, and that if my conscience was fully convinced of the sin of remaining in the Church of England, no clearer or more direct intimation of the will of God was needed.

Thus have I laid open the inward workings of my heart, and the experience through which I have been led, in order to show that the resignation of my Fellowship and Curacy, and secession from the Church of England, is no sudden and hasty step, but the gradual and deliberate conviction of my soul.

But besides these particular evils under which I especially ‘groaned, being burdened’, as being brought into continual contact with them, I have felt that by continuing in the Establishment I sanction and uphold every other corruption that is mixed up with so worldly a system.

Thus I must sanction–the union of Church and State; the putting of the King in the place of Christ as Head of the Church; the luxury and pomp of the bishops; the giving away of livings for electioneering purposes; the heaping of office by ungodly parents on ungodly children; the system of tithes (I cannot but wonder how men who profess spiritual religion, and call themselves Evangelical ministers, can take tithes from carnal and ungodly farmers; no, as I have known some do, screw them up to the highest pitch, and even employ legal means to enforce their payment; while others of the same name and pretension exact tithes from gardens watered by the sweat of the laborer, and enforce burial and similar fees from the poor, when they themselves ride about in their carriages and phaetons. Of this I am confident, that they are not taught thus to act by the Blessed Spirit, who guides the regenerate into all truth, makes the conscience tender, and gives compassion towards the poor and needy. The New Testament authorizes no other payment to ministers but free and voluntary offerings; and thus all tithes, fees, and dues are part of that ‘mystery of iniquity’ of which Babylon, the mother of harlots, is the head); the principle and practice of Ecclesiastical Courts; the manufacturing of ministers by the gross at the Bishops’ ordinations, and all that mass of evil which has sprung out of a worldly and wealthy Establishment. When Christ has bidden me ‘call no man Father on earth’, and not to be called myself ‘Rabbi’, and ‘Master’, and consequently by no title distinctive of priesthood or ministerial office, I must sanction the decking out of His professed ministers with the trappings of Antichrist, such proud titles, I mean, as Reverend, Very Reverend, Right Reverend, Most Reverend, Father in God, My Lord, Your Grace, and the like.

As a minister of the Establishment I must also sanction that abominable traffic in livings whereby ‘the souls of men’ are bought and ‘sold’ (an especial mark of Babylon, Rev. 18:13), and knocked down to the highest bidder by the auctioneer’s hammer. Thus the whole system, in its root, stem, and branches, manifests itself to a renewed and spiritual mind as part and parcel of that Antichrist and Babylon which the Lord foreshowed His servants should arise, and from which He calls them to come out and be separate.

As a member, too, of the University, and Fellow of the College, I am unavoidably and necessarily mixed up with many evils, which I am convinced are equally hateful to God. Thus, in this capacity, I must sanction the whole principle of a University, as needful to qualify men to become ministers of Jesus Christ. But who that knows experimentally the sovereignty of Jehovah in choosing His ministers will not feel it to be dreadful presumption thus to train up unregenerate men to stand forth in His holy name?

The call to the ministry is as sovereign as the call by grace. And Jehovah will take the tinker from his barrow, and the cobbler from his stall, and send them to preach His Word, as he took Elisha from the plough, and Amos from ‘gathering sycamore fruit’. By continuing, therefore, a member of the University I tacitly set aside the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, which can alone qualify a man for the ministry, and substitute a knowledge of Latin and Greek, and such mere ‘letter-learning’ as is called Divinity. But by doing this I necessarily reject as ministers some of God’s most eminent and deeply-taught servants, as Bunyan, Deer, and Huntington; and exalt in their room unregenerate men, who were never taught a single truth by the Eternal Spirit.

And as, by continuing a member of the University, I sanction its principle, so in some measure do I sanction its practice. What that practice is, let those testify who have passed through the various stages of Undergraduate, Bachelor, and Master of Arts. But where in all that practice do I see the marks of Christ, or ‘the footsteps of His flock’? Can they be traced in the drawing rooms and dining rooms of the Heads of Houses? in the Common-rooms of the Fellows? in the breakfasts, wine-parties, and suppers of the Undergraduates? What, I would ask, is usually heard in the latter but shouting, and singing of unclean songs, or conversation on the boat-race, the steeple-chase, or the fox-hunt? And what is commonly heard in the former but the news and politics of the day, and all such trifling, and sometimes even unseemly conversation, as is the mark of the soul that is ‘dead in sins’? Where among all these, either professed ministers of Jesus Christ or such as are training to be so, is the name of the Savior, or the voice of prayer heard? If anywhere, it is among a few despised undergraduates, who have enough religion to see the open evils around them, but not enough grace or faith to separate from the system altogether.

And who that knows the University will not allow the following to be a faint sketch of the course run by most of her children? Initiated in boyhood in wickedness at one of the public schools, those dens of iniquity, or at a private school, in some cases but a shade better and in others worse, the youthful aspirant to the ministry removes to College, where, having run a career of vanity and sin for three years, he obtains his degree. Fortified with this, and his College testimonials, procured without difficulty except by the very notoriously immoral, and those who have shown some symptoms of spiritual religion, he presents himself to the Bishop for ordination. Examined by the Bishop’s Chaplain on a few commonplace topics of divinity, and approved, he is ordained amid a heap of other candidates, without one question of a spiritual nature, one inquiry as to his own conversion to God, or one serious admonition as to his motives and qualifications for so dreadful a work. The cold heartlessness and technical formality usually displayed by Bishop, Chaplain, Archdeacon, and Registrar, with the carelessness and levity of most of the candidates, can never be forgotten by one whose heart God has touched, and who has witnessed the solemn mockery of a semi-annual ordination.

But further, as a Fellow of a College, I am connected with a body of men, who, however amiable and learned they may be (and if I forget the kindness of some of them I would be ungrateful indeed), are yet ignorant of Jesus Christ. Their acts as a body I am a party to, and indirectly, if not directly, sanction. Thus I help to give away college livings to unregenerate men, though I may know in my own conscience that they are not even called by grace, much less to the work of the ministry. I am a party also to giving testimonials indiscriminately of good life and conduct to be presented to the Bishop by the candidates for ordination (the document requiring the college seal), as well as to the electing of Fellows and Scholars for their classical attainments, and thus thrusting them into the ministry, and, in a word, to the whole system of education pursued, which, as a means of qualifying men to be ministers, I believe to be hateful to God.

In short, I am mixed up with a society of men whose life and conduct, however amiable, moral, and honorable, are not those of ‘the poor and afflicted’ family of God. No other way, then, have I to escape these evils, to ‘keep myself pure, and not to be partaker of other men’s sins,’ than by fleeing out of Babylon.

Lastly, I secede from the Church of England because I can find in her scarcely one mark of a true church. She tramples upon one ordinance of Christ by sprinkling infants, and calling it regeneration (the Word of God allowing no other than the baptism of believers, and that by immersion); and profanes the Lord’s Table by permitting the ungodly to participate. The true Church is despised; but she is honored. The true Church is persecuted; but she is a persecutor. The true Church is chosen out of the world; but she is part and parcel of it. The true Church consists only of the regenerate; but she embraces in her universal arms all the drunkards, liars, thieves, and immoral characters of the land. She christens them, she confirms them, she marries them, she buries them. And she pronounces of all for whom she executes these offices, that they are regenerate, that ‘all their sins are forgiven them’, that they are ‘the servants of God’.

If perhaps on a dying bed any doubts and convictions should arise that all is not right for eternity, she sends her minister to visit them, and ‘to absolve them from all their sins’. And having thus lulled their fears, and deluded them to die in peace, she quiets the rising doubts of their friends at the mouth of the grave, by assuring those who ‘this our brother is delivered out of the miseries of this sinful world’, and is ‘committed to the dust in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life’

Oh! could the dreadful veil that hides eternity be for a moment lifted up, we would see that thousands, whom the Church of England is blessing, God is cursing; and that tens of thousands whom she is asserting to be ‘in joy and felicity’, are at that moment ‘lifting up their eyes in hell, being in torment’. And while she thus speaks peace and comfort to all that will call her ‘Mother’, although unregenerate and dead in sins, she in her canons excommunicates and pronounces ‘guilty of wicked error’ all that are enlightened of the Spirit to declare she is not a true church, and separate from her communion. What is this but to remove the ancient landmarks of truth and error; ‘to call evil good, and good evil; to put darkness for light, and light for darkness, bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter’?

At the same time, she shuts up and seals the mouth of all her ministers, and ties them down to say what she says, and to deny what she denies, by compelling them to ‘give their sincere assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the Common Prayer Book, and to promise that they will ‘conform to the Liturgy as by law established’. And if any of them are haply taught of God the things of Christ in their own souls, and having grace and faithfulness to preach what they have tasted, felt, and handled; contradict in the pulpit what they assert in the desk, they are frowned on by Bishops, despised by the clergy around them, and hated by all the worldly part of their parish, until at length the powerful convictions of an enlightened conscience force them to deliver their souls by fleeing out of Babylon.

But I am told that the Church of England is the only true church; that she derives her sacraments and ministers in a direct, uninterrupted line from the apostles, and that to secede from her is to be guilty of schism. But where are the outward marks of this only true church? Where are the ‘signs’ of these successors of the apostles, as ‘wrought among us in all patience, in signs and wonders, and mighty deeds’? (2 Cor. 12:12). Are they to be found in lordly Bishops, proud and pampered dignitaries, fox-hunting, shooting, dancing, and card-playing clergy? Or are they to be discovered in those mere moral and outwardly decent ministers, who, after their solemn vow ‘to lay aside the study of the world and the flesh’, busy themselves in classics, mathematics, history, modern languages, natural philosophy, divinity, and everything and anything but to know Christ in their own souls?

Where are the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit visible in men, who, not being able to utter a word but what is written down, either copy their sermons from books, or forge out of their own heads a weekly lecture on stale morality? Where are the seals of their commission, whereby they ‘approve themselves as ministers of God, by pureness, by knowledge, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left’? (2 Cor. 6 : 6, 7).

But, perhaps, these outward marks of the successors of the apostles may be discovered in the Evangelical clergy, by some esteemed so highly. What are these, however, as a body, now generally doing but making common cause with the worldly clergy, whom in their hearts they consider to be neither Christians nor ministers, to uphold an unholy system? They are for the most part compounding their sermons out of Simeon’s dry and marrowless ‘Outlines’, looking out for preferment, buying and selling livings, training up their unregenerate sons for the ministry, and ‘putting them into the priest’s office that they may eat a piece of bread’.

Who among them can give a clear and decisive account of his call by grace, or of his call to the ministry? What description can they give of the entrance of the law into their conscience, bringing with it guilt, condemnation, and death, and of a deliverance by the inward revelation of Christ and the application of the ‘blood of sprinkling’? The greater part are violently opposed to the fundamental doctrines of unconditional election, particular redemption, imputed righteousness, and man’s helplessness. And those who do set forth the doctrines of free and sovereign grace preach them with such dryness and deadness as clearly show that they were never wrought into their experience by the blessed Spirit. Under their ministry the ‘spiritual children’ of God will not sit; for knowing little or nothing of the work of regeneration, and the trials, temptations, or consolations of the people of Christ, they cannot approve themselves to the consciences of the spiritual, either as called by grace or as sent to preach the gospel.

Thus, with perhaps a few and rare exceptions, the Clergy of the Church of England, whether Orthodox or Evangelical, correspond to that description given by the Holy Spirit, Micah 3: 11: “Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the Lord and say–Is not the Lord among us? No disaster will come upon us.”

And need we wonder if, as is the priest, so is the people? The congregation of the High church, or Orthodox clergy, as they proudly call themselves, consists, with possibly a few exceptions, of none but open sinners, self-righteous pharisees, and dead formalists. In this ‘congregation of the dead’ the blind lead the blind, and all their weekly confessions, absolutions, prayers, praises, services, and sacraments are, as they will one day find, but one continual mockery of the blessed God, who requires of His worshipers that they ‘should worship Him in spirit and in truth’.

Of those who sit under the ministry of the Evangelical clergy, the greater part in no wise differ from ‘the congregation of the dead’ described above, being attracted there by the superstitious charm of the Parish Church. Of the remaining part, there may be a few seeking souls who range over these barren heaths, until fairly driven from them by starvation, or brought off by tasting the green pastures and still waters of gospel grace under an experimental minister. The rest are mere formalists, with an evangelical creed in their heads, but without any grace in their hearts; or, if the minister be a high Calvinist, such ‘twice dead’ doctrinal professors as never felt the plague of their own hearts, never had their consciences ploughed up by the law, never loathed themselves in their own sight, and were never ‘plunged in the ditch until their own clothes abhorred them’.

Humble, lowly, contrite souls, who are deeply acquainted with the workings of grace and of corruption, whose consciences have been made tender, and who have landmarks of the dealings of God with them, cannot long continue where they have fellowship with neither minister nor people. And, indeed, so opposed is the whole principle and practice of the Church of England to the work of grace upon the souls of the elect, and ‘to simplicity and godly sincerity’, that a minister, who is not a hypocrite or a formalist, must, when he has reached a certain point in Christian experience, either flee out of her or awfully sin against the convictions of his own conscience. He may remain in her as a presumptuous dead Calvinist; he may take the highest tone of doctrine, and preach Sunday after Sunday about assurance of personal salvation; but if once he describes the work of the Spirit on the soul he must, at a certain point, either come out of her or, by remaining contentedly within her pale, manifest himself a hypocrite in experience, of all hypocrites and of all hypocrisies the most deceiving and the most dreadful.

Can a man, for instance, who has known the work of regeneration in his own soul, and whose conscience is made tender by the blessed Spirit, go on long to lie unto God by thanking Him for regenerating infants? Can he who has been sprinkled with the blood of Christ, and been fed with His flesh, continue long to give the elements of His body and blood to the unbeliever, the self righteous, and the ungodly? Can he who has tasted the covenant of grace, and experimentally entered into the everlasting distinction between the sheep and the goats, go on long to mock God by declaring at the grave’s mouth of every departed unbeliever, swearer, and drunkard, that he is a ‘brother’, and is ‘taken to be with God’?

Notions in the head, however correct, doctrines, however high, a presumptuous confidence of salvation, however loud and lofty, may allow a man thus to trifle with the living JEHOVAH. But a tender conscience, a godly fear, and a trembling sense of God’s holiness and majesty, such as the blessed Spirit works in the soul, must sooner or later bring a man out of this dreadful mockery.

From this worldly and unholy system I now SECEDE; and blessed be the name of God Most High, who has poured light on my eyes to see these abominations, and given me, I trust, a small portion of that faith of Moses whereby ‘he was willing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season’. For sooner far would I die in a workhouse, under the sweet shinings-in of the eternal Comforter, and His testimony to my conscience that I am born of God, than live and die in ease and independence, without following Jesus in that path of trial and suffering which alone leads to eternal life.

But my long relationship with yourself, as Head of Worcester College, and with my brother Fellows, will not allow me thus to dissolve my connection with you without faithfully WARNING both you and them of your present state before God. What marks, then, are there in you, or them, of that new birth, without which none can enter the kingdom of heaven? What signs have you, or they, of a broken and contrite spirit? What marks of ‘the faith of God’s elect’? What inward discoveries have you, or they, had of the blood and righteousness of Christ? What testimony of the blessed Spirit to the pardon of your sins, and to your adoption into the family of God? ‘If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His’, though a sound classic, an acute mathematician, or a learned divine. And to have been professed ministers of Jesus Christ will only add to your condemnation, if you and they live and die in your present state of unbelief and unregeneracy.

I am weak and ignorant, full of sin and compassed with infirmity, but I bless God that He has in some measure shown me the power of eternal things, and by free and sovereign grace stopped me in that career of vanity and sin in which, to all outward appearance, I was fast hurrying down to the chambers of death.

With all due respect to you as Provost of Worcester College,
Yours faithfully,
J. C. Philpot

Was J.C. Philpot a Mystic who taught Pietism?!

Mike Jeshurun

It has ever been the tactic and practice of the haters of Truth to malign God’s servants by falsely affiliating them with those who teach error. This is what is sometimes known as ‘guilt by association’.

A classic example of this is the labeling of Herman Hoeksema and the Protestant Reformed Churches as ‘Hyper-Calvinists’ by Hypo-Calvinists such as Ian Murray and the Banner of Truth! These Hypo-Calvinists hated the truth that the Gospel is not an ‘offer’ and that God in the preaching of it is not sincerely trying to save the reprobate whom He hath afore ordained to destruction, that they conveniently maligned those who reject this ‘Well-meant offer’ as Hyper-Calvinists! In fact The Banner of Truth is so set against the denial of the ‘well-meant offer’ that they would dare to rewrite history to make one of the best Calvinist’s book on God’s sovereignty by A.W. Pink look as if it accommodated the Hypo-Calvinist heresy!

Who is Joseph Charles (J C ) Philpot?

Joseph Charles Philpot (1802 – 1869) was known as “The Seceder”. He resigned from the Church of England in 1835 and became a Strict & Particular Baptist. While with the Church of England he was a Fellow of Worchester College, Oxford. After becoming a Strict and Particular Baptist he became the Editor of the Gospel Standard magazine and served in that capacity for twenty years.

His preaching was marked by clear views of gospel truth; an ability to set forth the deepest truths in a simple manner; a wealth of similies from nature to open up and explain the things of God; and a clear discernment of the vital distinctions between a mere profession of Christ and a true saving knowledge of Him.

Having seceded from the Apostate ‘Church of England’ [Babylon as he called it], Mr. Philpot knew first hand what nominal Christianity was all about. Neither did he mince words in his preaching against a dead profession as opposed to vital godliness and true religion! Of these dead religionists he said- “‘If your religion is only in the Bible, and has no existence out of the Bible in your own soul, which is the case with thousands who are considered great Christians, the same fire that will at the last day burn up the Bible will burn up your religion with it”!

Such a man must necessarily have enemies! And history proves that when haters of the truth cannot find anything with which to accuse the true servants of God, they conveniently malign them by false charges. Our own Lord and Saviour was accused of being a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. [Mat 11:19]

There has been a charge that J.C. Philpot was a Mystic who taught Pietism. This brief article is to counter that charge and set forth the truth of Brother Philpot’s preaching. If there ever was a preacher who had a clear discernment of the vital distinctions between a mere profession of Christ and a true saving knowledge of Him, it was J.C. Philpot!

He confessed: “My desire is to exalt the grace of God; to proclaim salvation alone through Jesus Christ; to declare the sinfulness, helplessness and hopelessness of man in a state of nature; to describe the living experience of the children of God in their trials, temptations, sorrows, consolations and blessings.” Of this ‘living experience’ which he speaks of, his writings abound and have been a confirmation of the operations of the Divine hand in the lives of many saints since.

But was he a Mystic who taught a form of Reformed Pietism? To answer this question one must first understand what the term Pietism actually means.

Question: “What is Pietism?”

Here is one definition – “Pietism is a movement within Christianity that attempts to focus on individual holiness and a consistent Christian life. It is typically led by laymen or local pastors who are frustrated with the perceived hypocrisy or inconsistency within the larger church”. [S. Michael Houdmann]

Here is another – “Any teaching that promises something extra to make someone an “elite” Christian is rightly called “pietism”.  The essence of pietism is this: It is a practice designed to lead to an experience that purports to give one an elite or special status compared to ordinary Christians. [Bob Dewaay]

Lastly – “Pietism (from the word piety) was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement. The Pietist movement combined the Lutheranism of the time with the Reformed, and especially Puritan, emphasis on individual piety, and a vigorous Christian life”. [Wikipedia].

Some famous Christian Pietists are Madame Guyon, Thomas A. Kempis, John Wesley and even the popular Watchman Nee.

Did J.C. Philpot teach Pietism?

To be sure Brother Philpot spoke of ‘Dry Doctrinal Calvinists’, dead Calvinists, heady notional Calvinists and ‘Graceless Calvinist’s! These were not set in contrast to some elite Calvinists who possessed a deeper experience and understood some deeper ‘mystery’, but just plain regenerated Christians with vital godliness. In other words, according to Philpot you were either a Christian or you were not!

He did not categorize Christians into two groups of those with the ‘second-blessing’ or ‘higher-life’ and those who were just Carnal Christians like the Pietists do. Unlike Pietists such as John Wesley, Finney and the holiness people who taught that ‘the higher life’ could be attained through sincere desire, prolonged prayer and patient waiting, Philpot blasted all forms of human ability and put man in the dust where he belongs! Philpot’s God was obligated to no man, not even the regenerated Calvinist!

Philpot had seen the fruits of dry notional Calvinism first hand, for he was once a part of the ‘Church of England’ from which he resigned! He wrote in his letter of Resignation to Mr. Provost concerning the dead religionists of that Church –

“Who among them can give a clear and decisive account of his call by grace, or of his call to the ministry? What description can they give of the entrance of the law into their conscience, bringing with it guilt, condemnation, and death, and of a deliverance by the inward revelation of Christ and the application of the ‘blood of sprinkling’? The greater part are violently opposed to the fundamental doctrines of unconditional election, particular redemption, imputed righteousness, and man’s helplessness. And those who do set forth the doctrines of free and sovereign grace preach them with such dryness and deadness as clearly show that they were never wrought into their experience by the blessed Spirit. Under their ministry the ‘spiritual children’ of God will not sit; for knowing little or nothing of the work of regeneration, and the trials, temptations, or consolations of the people of Christ, they cannot approve themselves to the consciences of the spiritual, either as called by grace or as sent to preach the gospel”.

Like many who come out of the established Church (Babylon) Mr. Philpot found to his grief that these dry, notional Calvinists were present wherever there was a Church of considerable membership. This burdened him much to preach and constantly set forth the difference between true and false religion in the majority of his sermons.

He even discovered the cause for the existence of such dry and dead Church membership, i.e. a dry doctrinal preaching with the exclusion of the precepts!

He wrote –

“Consider this point, ye ministers, who Lord’s day after Lord’s day preach nothing but doctrine, doctrine, doctrine; and ask yourselves whether the same Holy Spirit who revealed the first three chapters of the epistle to the Ephesians did not also reveal the last three? Is not the whole epistle equally inspired, a part of that Scripture of which we read, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17)?

“To despise, then, the precept, to call it legal and burdensome, is to despise not man, but God, who hath given unto us His Holy Spirit in the inspired Scriptures for our faith and obedience…. Nothing more detects hypocrites, purges out loose professors, and fans away that chaff and dust which now so thickly covers our barn floors than an experimental handling of the precept. A dry doctrinal ministry disturbs no consciences. The loosest professors may sit under it, nay, be highly delighted with it, for it gives them a hope, if not a dead confidence, that salvation being wholly of grace they shall be saved whatever be their walk of life. But the experimental handling of the precept cuts down all this and exposes their hypocrisy and deception”

To summarize: Brother Philpot’s burden in his method of preaching was to detect hypocrites and purge out loose professors from the assembly. He knew full well the vanity and utter uselessness of a dry doctrinal ministry to save anyone and thus laid emphasis on doctrinally sound experimental/experiential preaching. As one old, well-tried Christian exclaimed of this kind of preaching, “It is not a new doctrine – but the old, preached with life and power.”

Mr. Philpot said, “Many ministers preach gospel truths, but are not blessed. Why not? Because, they have not preached them under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit! Their thunders are mimic thunders—their preaching is rather ‘acting’ than preaching. The secret of all preaching is the power and influence of the Holy Spirit. If that is denied, the tongue is merely that of the actor on the stage”!

Was J.C. Philpot a Mystic?

Now what or who is a ‘Mystic’? “A Mystic is a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy”.

Mr. Philpot never claimed to have any direct communication with God and thereby have an insight into any ‘divine mysteries’. He ever maintained that the only mode of our communing with God was through prayer and the only way God spoke to us was through His Word the Bible!

Notwithstanding, he maintained that, “Christ in the mere letter of the word cannot satisfy their keen appetite. They must feed upon him internally, or their famine still continues. To these hungry, famishing souls, to have Christ in the letter is like a starving beggar standing outside a shop where there are plenty of provisions, and not having a farthing to buy them with”.

“There are many times and seasons when the word of God is to us a dead letter; we see and feel no sweetness in it. But there are other times, through mercy, when the word of God is made sweet and precious to us; when we can say, with the prophet of old, “Your words were found, and I did eat them; and your word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart” (Jer. 15:16).

Now dear reader, is this not the experience of even true Christians? Unless the Word is quickened by the Holy Spirit, it is just a dead letter! If just reading the Bible alone could ‘save’ then many Roman Catholic’s and other cultists who use the Bible as their spiritual guide would be saved. It was not until the Spirit sovereignly opened Romans 1:17 to Luther that he saw the truth!

The Psalmist was not physically blind! Yet he prays – “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous thins out of Thy law”! [Psa 119:18] The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew the Old Testament well. But it was not until the Master opened their understanding that they understood it. [see Luk 24:45]. The Apostle wrote to the Thessalonians- “For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance”! [1Thes 1:5] To the majority the Word of God preached is ‘word only’, without any power, assurance or operation of the Holy Spirit!

Philpot’s description of the true Christian and his experience will very quickly expose those who have a dead religion! And this one of the main reasons why he is hated so much.

Here is an excerpt from him on the experience of a truly regenerated soul –

The Christian thus learns that if he stands, God must hold him up; if he knows anything aright, God must teach him; if he walks in the way to heaven, God must first put, and afterwards keep him in it; if he has anything, God must give it to him; and that if he does anything, God must work it in him. He now “through the law”-that is, through his experience of its killing sentence-”is become dead to the law, that he may live unto God”. He can no longer take a killing letter for a living rule, but is deeply conscious that it is only by being “married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that he can bring forth fruit unto God” Ro 7:4. Thus by the presence of God going with him, he becomes separated “from all the people that are upon the face of the earth” Ex 33:16.

Whilst others boast of what they have done for God, he is glad to feel that God has done something for him; whilst others are handling the shell, he is eating the kernel; whilst others are talking of Christ, he is talking with Him; whilst others are looking through the park palings, he is enjoying the estate; and whilst others are haranguing about the treasure in the Bank of England, he is pleased to find a few coins in his own pocket, stamped with the king’s image and superscription. But he finds the truth of that text, “In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increases sorrow” Ec 1:18. As his inward religion separates him from those who have only an outward one, he becomes a butt for empty professors to shoot at. Those whom he once would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock, now spare not to spit in his face Job 30:1 Job 30:10.

A constant acquaintance with his own vileness preserves him from a self-righteous holiness in the flesh; a daily cross and a rankling thorn keep him from careless presumption. His path is indeed a mysterious one, full of harmonious contradictions and heavenly paradoxes. He is never easy when at ease, nor without a burden when he has none. He is never satisfied without doing something, and yet is never satisfied with anything that he does. He is never so strong as when he sits still Isa 30:7, never so fruitful as when he does nothing, and never so active as when he makes the least haste Isa 28:16. All outstrip him in the race, yet he alone gains the goal, and wins the prize. All are sure of heaven but himself, yet he enters into the kingdom, whilst they are thrust out. He wins pardon through guilt, hope through despair, deliverance through temptation, comfort through affliction, and a robe of righteousness through filthy rags. Though a worm and no man, he overcomes Omnipotence itself through violence; and though less than vanity and nothing Isa 40:17 2Co 12:11, he takes heaven itself by force Mt 11:12.

Thus amidst the strange contradictions which meet in a believing heart, he is never so prayerful as when he says nothing; never so wise as when he is the greatest fool; never so much alone as when most in company; and never so much under the power of an inward religion as when most separated from an outward one. Strange mysterious creature! He cannot live without sinning, yet cannot live in sin; cannot live without prayer, and yet for days together cannot pray; continually finds religion a burden, yet would not part with it for the world; lusts after sin as a delicious morsel, yet hates it with a perfect hatred; esteems Christ the Chiefest among ten thousand, and yet is at times tried with doubts whether He is a Saviour at all.

Such, then, is the path, however feebly or imperfectly described, in which the redeemed walk Isa 35:9, a path trodden by them alone, and that too, often sorely contrary to their own inclinations. To walk in this path is not the product of wisdom Dan 2:30, the effect of talent 1Co 2:6, nor the fruit of study. We neither placed ourselves in it at first, nor have kept ourselves in it afterwards. If we have done either, we are not in the way at all, but are walking in a side path, and shall end at that door which Bunyan saw to open into hell from the very gates of heaven.

Who are these who charge Mr, Phipot of being a Pietist Mystic?

Why they are the same ones whom Mr. Philpot exposes as being dead Calvinists, heady notional Calvinists and ‘Graceless Calvinist’s! Oh they are Reformed ‘theologians’ all right! But it is all in their head, and has not reached their heart!

They can debate on all the five points of Calvinism and tell you the difference between Infra and Supra-lapsarianism and everything in between! They have hosted large websites with ‘Reformed’ writings that would keep you occupied for a lifetime! But try telling them to come out of Apostate Babylon, the denominational ‘Church’ that they are a part of and they will show their true colours! Tell them that Christmas is Roman Catholic and Pagan and should be shunned by Christians and they will manifest the character of goats by justifying it!

Let me say this in closing: that the preaching of Brother Philpot stands out against the moderate and general Calvinism which, along with the infusion of a dry and legal spirit, is prevalent in most Baptist, Presbyterian and ‘Reformed’ Churches of our day! None can cherish and appreciate his preaching except those who have a valid experimental religion in their hearts and are willing and daring enough to bare their bosom to every arrow that flies from the pulpit!

These and these alone will cherish and praise God for a ministry such as Brother Philpot’s! The rest will trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you!

Mr. Philpot in his own words as to why men hate his preaching –

From J. C. Philpot’s Daily Portions April 29

“Why should any living man complain when punished for his sins? Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.” –Lamentations 3:39, 40

I believe in my conscience there are thousands of professors who have never known in the whole course of their religious profession what it is to have “examined and tested their ways;” to have been put into the balances and weighed in the scales of divine justice; or to have stood cast down and condemned in their own feelings before God as the heart-searching Jehovah. From such a trying test, from such an unerring touchstone they have ever shrunk. And why? Because they have an inward consciousness that their religion will not bear a strict and scrutinizing examination.

Like the deceitful tradesman, who allures his customers into a dark corner of his shop, in order to elude detection when he spreads his flimsy, made-up goods before them, so those who have an inward consciousness that their religion is not of heavenly origin, shun the light. As the Lord says, “Every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved; but he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.”

Now if you know nothing of having from time to time your ways searched and tested by God’s word, or if you rise up with bitterness against an experimental, heart-searching ministry that would test them for you, it shows that there is some rotten spot in you–something that you dare not bring to the light. The candle of the Lord has not searched the hidden secrets of your heart; nor have you cried with David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

* * * * * * * * *

Afflictions of God’s people compared to Iron and the Power of God likened to the Northern Iron and Steel.

Afflictions of God’s people compared to Iron.

J.C. Philpot

“Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?” [Jer 15. 12]

When the Lord would select a figure aptly to describe the afflictions of His people, He fixes on the metal iron; and thus compares them with the hardest, the strongest, the firmest, the most unyielding and the most tenacious of all metals.

1. Some of the Lord’s people have to pass through deep and severe trials in providence; and these to them are often of an “iron” nature. Those trials in providence which do not weigh heavily, which do not press deeply, which are not felt to be of a nature that we cannot of ourselves overcome, are not iron trials. But those afflictions that the Lord brings upon His people, against which they find their own exertions cannot prevail, which baffle all human wisdom, laugh at creature strength, and defeat every power in man to remove or overcome, may well be compared to that hard, unbending, unyielding, tenacious metal–”iron.”

2. Others of the Lord’s people have deep and severe trials in grace. All the chosen family do not pass through the same degree of cutting afflictions in providence; but in grace none of them are exempt from trials. Are we not to suffer with Christ that we may reign with Him? to die with Him that we may live with Him? Are we not predestinated to be conformed to His likeness? And is not that likeness a suffering likeness? Are we not to be crucified with Christ here, that we may see Him as He is hereafter? Who, then, is to escape the cross? Who is to pass through life without heavy spiritual trials? Bastards–not sons.

“Bastards may escape the rod,
Sunk in earthly vain delight;
But the true-born child of God
Cannot, would not, if he might.”

Thus the Lord’s people (though there are degrees, doubtless, of spiritual as there are gradations of temporal suffering) have to pass through an appointed measure of spiritual griefs, exercises and sorrows. And these to them are to be as “iron.” If they are but wood, which I can snap asunder with my hands, they are not such trials as the Lord Himself sends. If I have burdens, which I can myself remove; if I have trials, from which I can deliver myself; if I have temptations, out of which I can rescue my own soul, I have clear evidence that I am not walking in that path of tribulation in which the Lord’s people walk. If I can exercise faith upon Christ; if I can take God at His word; if I can believe every promise; and thus shift every burden when I please and how I please, I may be sure of this, that God has never tied that burden round my shoulders–has never laid that affliction upon my heart–and that His hand is not in that trouble. But when our trials are of such a nature that to us they are as “iron;” as unable for us to bend or break as the iron pillar that supports that gallery– then we have some evidence that these trials are of the Lord’s appointment, and that the blessed Spirit has traced out our case here when He compares the trials we have to pass through to this firm, yielding, and unbending metal.

Child of God, has not this been the heaviest part of your trial, the keenest edge of the cutting affliction, that you could not, by any creature exertions, remove it from you? But this very thing that so often tries your mind is the very proof that it comes from God: for when the Lord binds, none can loose; when the Lord shuts, none can open. When the Lord puts a man into a trial, none but the Lord’s hand can deliver. So that the keen edge of the trial that has so often pierced your heart; the heavy burden that has so often weighed down your shoulders–that you could not deliver yourself–this very circumstance that has caused so many sighs and cries to go up out of your heart, and filled you at times with sorrow, is a proof that the affliction is from God.

3. Some of the Lord’s people have to suffer under great burdens of guilt. The law is applied to their conscience in its spirituality, breadth, condemnation, and curse; and this is to them indeed an “iron” yoke, which they cannot bend or break. Convictions that we can remove, and burdens of guilt that we can throw aside as a porter deposits his load upon a bulk– that is not the application of God’s law to the conscience, that is not the opening up of the spirituality of the commandment to the soul. It is not of God if we can remove it, or any man remove it for us. But is not this one of the most keen and cutting things in the spirituality of God’s law applied to the conscience, that we cannot remove the guilt, cannot take away the curse, cannot ease ourselves of the burden, though it sinks into the heart and presses the soul down? Yet this very mark proves that it is of God, because it is of the nature of “iron.”

4. Some of the Lord’s people have to pass through keen and cutting temptations. Satan is allowed to harass them from time to time with his fiery darts; he is permitted to work upon the evils of their fallen nature, and suffered to stir up the corruption of that depraved heart which they carry in their bosom. And these temptations they feel utterly unable to remove. When fiery darts are shot into your mind, can you remove them? When blasphemous imaginations are stirred up in your carnal heart, can you get away from them? When Satan presents to your mind everything hateful and everything horrible, can you bid him depart, or drive these thoughts away? If we could, how happy should we be. But we cannot break or bend these temptations; they are to us as “iron.”

5. Again. How many of the Lord’s family are entangled in secret snares known only to themselves! And how they cry, sigh and groan under these snares that Satan is laying perpetually for their feet! How often they are entangled with besetting lusts! How often cast down by the pride of their hearts! How often overcome by the covetousness of their depraved nature! How continually entangled in one snare or another that they meet with in their path! But can they deliver themselves? It would not be an “iron” snare if they could break it. It would be such green withs as Samson told Delilah would bind him fast–mere tow, that bursts asunder when it sees the flame. If you and I are entangled in any snare, and we can break it, and escape out of it, would that be a snare to us? No: the very nature of a snare is to have a firm hold round the neck of the unhappy animal that is caught in it. It is the “iron” of the snare, the wire, that destroys the hapless animal that runs into it. And have not you and I found sometimes our snares to be as inextricable by creature power as the poor hare that is caught in the wire of the poacher? Yes, as unable to deliver ourselves, and requiring the hands of another to loose that snare from our necks.

6. Others of the Lord’s people are held in bondage because they have not clear manifestations of the Lord’s love to them. They are not able to cry, “Abba Father:” they cannot see their names in the book of life; they have not felt the testimony of the Spirit of God; they have not received the sweet sheddings abroad of dying love; they have not had the pardon of their sins clearly made manifest to their conscience. And they have a feeling sense in their own consciences that these things are indispensable to salvation; that they must have them brought into their hearts by the power of God, or die in their sins. Are not these “iron” trials to some of the Lord’s living family? Do not these things often bow their minds, burden their hearts, and distress their conscience, because they cannot come out into the liberty of the gospel, because they cannot rejoice in the Lord as their salvation, because they cannot call God with an unwavering confidence, “Father.” But if they had no trials in this matter; if there were no sharp and keen exercises connected with these feelings in their heart; if they caused no burden, brought no distress, were not some* times round their necks like a yoke, it would be no trial to them at all. But it is because these convictions of their short-comings, of their unbelief and helplessness are so keen, and so weighty, that they have in them the nature of the rigid, unyielding, unbending metal–”iron.”

7. Others of the Lord’s family have to endure sharp persecutions; the enmity of relations, the scorn of professors, the hatred of the world lying in the Wicked One. Was not this Jeremiah’s portion? Did he not say, that “every one hated” him? And every one will hate you and me, if we are as faithful as Jeremiah. A minister to escape enmity, scorn and slander! Show me the man that does; and I will show you an unfaithful man, a coward in Christ’s camp, and one who dares not open his mouth boldly in the Redeemer’s name. But show me a faithful man, one who preaches the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven–-one who fears no man’s frown and courts no man’s smile–who seeks only the approbation of the blessed Spirit in his own conscience–and I will show you a man hated, despised, persecuted, opposed and slandered; a man who, in proportion to his faithfulness, knows something of Jeremiah’s outward path, and something also of his inward suffering.

We have a large assembly here this evening; and many professors of truth beneath this roof. How have you found religion? Some of you have professed it many years. What has your path been? You have come here from various parts of the town?’ you can tell the streets through which you came, whether clean or dirty, whether wide or narrow, whether thronged with people or comparatively free. You can describe exactly the road you have come. Well; you have traveled so many years in the path of religion, and how have you found that? Has it been a very rough path? a very rugged way? an up and down road? many trials and persecutions, many temptations, many sorrows, many afflictions, and many keen and cutting convictions, that have been to you as unbending and unyielding as the metal “iron?” If so, you have some evidence that the Lord has been leading you; that you are amongst His afflicted and poor people; that you have been in the furnace, where the Lord chooses His Zion. Thus you have some testimony that the Lord is leading you by a right way, though it be a rough and rugged way, to bring you to a city of habitation. And never expect any other path but an iron one; never anticipate any trials but iron trials; never look for any temptations but iron temptations; any snares but iron snares, any foes but iron foes, nor any sorrows but iron sorrows.

Well; and how are we to break them? As well might the condemned criminal in Newgate’s cell break through those walls of stone, and gates of iron, as one of the Lord’s tempted and tried people himself break to pieces the sorrows and trials that the Lord brings upon him. No: they would not be of the Lord’s appointment, of His own bringing, if he could get himself free, if he could snap them asunder like a rotten stick; if he could by his own unassisted strength break through all, and proclaim light, life and liberty to his own soul.

The Power of God likened to the Northern Iron and Steel.

But did the Lord leave Jeremiah here? What are the words of the text? Oh how suitable and expressive to his fainting spirit! “Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?”

It would appear, that the Jews made use of “northern iron” to form their cutting instruments from; and it is a singular coincidence, that this country in which we live is supplied with Swedish or “northern iron” to make all her cutting instruments from. The knives you have in your pockets, the scissors you have been using this day, are of “northern iron.” The iron, which comes from Sweden is of such a pure, strong and tenacious nature, that it is selected for the purpose of making cutting instruments. You see that the Lord, when He is pointing out the trials His people are passing through, compares them to “iron.” He does not diminish their weight; He does not at all lower their oppressive tendency. But then, in order to administer a suitable remedy to Jeremiah’s soul, He brings forward something much stronger. “Shall iron,” He says, “break the northern iron and the steel?” No, surely; the “northern iron and the steel” shall break through that. The common iron never can break through the northern iron, which is a metal of such a far superior nature; still less prevail against that keen well-tempered steel which can cut through everything it touches.

But how is this to be explained spiritually? In the same way as we have seen that the trials, sorrows, exercises and temptations of the Lord’s people are compared to “iron;” so we must look out for something that is more than a match for these trials, temptations, exercises and sorrows, if we would spiritually open up and interpret the figure.

“The northern iron and the steel” signify the power of God–the power of God put forth in the weakness of the creature. And, in several instances, we may compare what God is and does for His people’s help to this “northern iron and the steel.” For instance,

1. There is the eternal covenant, “ordered in all things and sure.” Can this eternal covenant be broken? Can this eternal covenant pass away, and become a thing of nought? Say that you are interested in this covenant, can your trials, your temptations, your sorrows–I will add another word, your sins–break to pieces this eternal covenant which was entered into with the Three Persons of the glorious Godhead on your behalf? As well might the common iron break the “northern iron and the steel,” as your trials, sorrows, griefs, exercises and temptations, break to pieces that eternal covenant which God the Father has made on your behalf with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

2. God’s decrees, absolute purposes and eternal appointments, that flow out of His eternal covenant, are another branch of this “northern iron and the steel,” that breaks to pieces everything before it, but which these cannot touch. I remember to have read that in our large manufactories, huge steel shears are made use of to cut to pieces plates of iron, as easily as you who have this day been employed at your needle have cut through a piece of linen, and much more easily than a child cuts through a common card. Thus, God’s purposes and eternal appointments, which are here compared to steel made from “northern iron,” can cut to pieces all your afflictions, trials and exercises, with the same facility as the steel shear, moved by steam, can cut through iron plates. But what else can touch them? Nothing but steel can cut through iron plates; and so nothing but the mighty power of God can cut through the trials, temptations, afflictions and sorrows that you are from time to time exercised with.

3. God’s promises recorded by the blessed Spirit in the unerring word of truth–are not these also part of “the northern iron and the steel?’ What so firm as they? Are not these the words of Jesus Himself? “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” (Matt. xxiv. 35.) Will not God’s promises stand forever and ever? Are they not all “yea and amen unto the glory of God by us?’ (2 Cor. i. 20.) Now the Lord has promised to bring the righteous out of trouble. He has promised to hear the sigh and cry of the mourners; to put their tears into His bottle; to remember them for good; to bow down His ear, and hear them when they call upon Him. He says, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” (Ps. 1. 15.) Is not this “the northern iron?” How strong! how firm! how unable to break! how impossible to bend! How it will cut through afflictions, and rend them asunder, as the steel shears cut asunder plates of iron!

4. The blood shed for a chosen people–the propitiation and sacrifice that the Son of God once offered for sin upon Calvary’s tree–is not this, too, a part of that power of God which He here compares to “the northern iron and the steel?” Say your conscience is bowed down with guilt; your sins rise up like mountains before your view; you are distressed at the evils, which are manifested to your sight. But shall these sink you to hell? Shall these iron sins and iron guilt be left round your neck to drown you in eternal perdition? Not if you are one of the chosen seed; not if the blood of Jesus was shed for you upon the cross. That is able, when applied, to remove the strongest chains that may surround you– that is able, when made known to the conscience, to purge it, however guilty you feel, or however defiled by sin and filth.

5. The glorious righteousness of the God-Man; His spotless obedience to God’s holy law; His perfect fulfillment of it by doing and suffering, which He wrought out and brought in, in the days of His flesh–is not this also a part of God’s power, and what God manifests in the hearts of His people as a justifying robe, shielding them from deserved wrath?

6. The love of Jesus, “which passeth knowledge,” which is “strong as death,” and can never fail–is not this a part too of the “northern iron and the steel?” And if you are interested personally in the blood and love of Jesus; though you may have from time to time iron sorrows, iron sins, iron temptations; yet, if you are personally interested in the glorious work of the God-Man, it shall cut them all to pieces; it shall break to shivers “the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder;” and bring your soul out of every trouble, every temptation and every sorrow.

But is it sufficient that the “iron and the steel” should be side by side? Must there not be some application of the steel to the iron before it can cut it in pieces, before it can rend it asunder? Say that you have many trials, many temptations, many sorrows, and that there is the love of God on your behalf–the eternal covenant–Christ’s atoning blood, justifying righteousness and dying love–the God-Man Mediator between inflexible justice and your soul. But are you still at a distance? Have you not yet been brought near to God, and has He not been brought near to you? What can the steel shears do unless there be an application of them to the iron? Is it not so spiritually and experimentally in a sinner’s conscience? Will the doctrine be sufficient? It would not do in a manufactory. The doctrine of steel shears cutting through iron plates would not do the work. When the master looked to see what work had been done, the workman might discuss very clearly and very learnedly what wonderful shears there were in the factory; but the employer would want to know how many iron plates they had cut asunder through the day. He would not be satisfied with the doctrine; he would want to know what had been the experience of the effect of the steel shears. Is it not so spiritually? Will doctrines do us any good unless there be an application of those doctrines with power to our soul? I know they cannot. They can do us no more good than speculating upon the nature of steel compared with iron, without bringing the theory into experience and practice. And here the Lord’s people are distinguished from those dead in profanity, and those dead in profession, with clear heads and unhumbled hearts. These can sit by their firesides, or sometimes over the tea table, and discourse very fluently and eloquently what virtue there is in “steel;” can enter into all the branches of it, and describe most admirably what the eternal covenant is, what the decrees of God are, what the blood of Jesus is, what His glorious righteousness. But has there ever been an application to their conscience of these doctrines that they can discourse so fluently and talk so scripturally about? It will do them no good to talk about them, unless there be some application of them to their heart and conscience. This is what the Lord’s people want; and this is what He gives them all.

This, then, is one of the chief reasons why the Lord brings His people into such “iron” difficulties–that He may have the glorious privilege of cutting them asunder. If you have no iron trials, no iron temptations, no iron griefs, no iron sorrows, what do you want the “northern iron and the steel” for? To look at, to play with, and to admire? as you may pass by a cutler’s shop window, and admire the rows of knives and scissors you see hanging therefrom? No: if your hearts are exercised with iron sorrows, temptations, trials and perplexities, I am sure you will want the almighty power of God in your souls to cut them asunder. And God can do it. Are you a poor persecuted believer? God can cut down in a moment that enemy who is persecuting you. Are you tempted of Satan? He in a moment can cut his fiery darts asunder. Are you passing through a severe trial? By the application of some precious promise the Lord can in a moment cut the trial asunder. Are you entangled in some grievous snare that you feel and cry out under night and day, and yet are unable to extricate yourself? The Lord can in a moment, by the application of His precious word to your soul, cut that snare asunder. He has but to bring against it “the northern iron and the steel,” and it is done in a moment. And how we see here the glory of God! How the Lord brings His people into those states and cases in which He will be glorified! If I feel no sin, I want no pardon. If I have no guilt, I want no application of atoning blood. If I have no burdens, I want no sweet relief. If I have no temptations, I want no precious deliverances. If I have no trials, I want no powerful application of God’s word to my soul. How was it with Jeremiah? Did not he say, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart?” Why? Because keen persecutions, sharp trials, severe temptations, had given him an appetite–that was the reason why the “word was found.” He fell upon it as a hungry man upon a crust. It was sweet to his soul, because it brought with it a precious deliverance from the temptations and the sorrows his soul was groaning under.

Is there not then a needs be for your being tried, tempted and distressed? Does not the apostle say “Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations?” (l Pet. i. 6.) Was not that Christ’s way? And of the early Christians too? They followed Him in this path. And does not the Lord bid the Laodicean church buy of Him “gold tried in the fire?” (Rev. iii. 18.) Does not James say, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation?” ii. 12.) And again; “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations?” (ver. 2.) Why? Any joy in trials? any pleasure in sorrow? No, none. But in the deliverances from the Lord; in the power of God put forth to bring the soul out; there is joy there. And therefore, we have to walk in a dark path to make the light dear to our eyes; we have to pass through trials, to taste the sweetness of the promises when applied with power; we have to endure temptations, that we may enjoy the sweetness of deliverance. And this is the way, be sure of it, that God deals with His people. Is your conscience made honest? Does that monitor in your bosom speak the truth? Tell me what it says? Does it not say, ‘Few trials, few consolations; few sorrows, few joys; few difficulties, few testimonies from God; few sufferings, few discoveries of love and blood? Does not the Apostle say, “As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ?” (2 Cor. i. 5.) And does he not say, “Our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation?” (ver. 7.) And does not the Apostle Paul tell us to be mindful not to forget what the Lord says, when He speaks to his people that the lot of a child is to endure chastisement? He says, “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him; for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement,” (O solemn word! O how applicable to thousands!) “whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” (Heb. xii. 5-8.)

The Lord leads us, by His own blessed Spirit, into right paths! They may be, they must be, paths of trial. We must be baptized into His sufferings and death, if we are to be partakers of His glorious resurrection. We must take up the cross, and deny ourselves, and follow Him in the regeneration, if we are to see Him in glory. “Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me; that ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” (Luke xxii. 28-30.)

Thus, we see, that in proportion as we feel the iron nature of trials and sorrows, shall we experience “the northern iron and the steel” of God’s almighty power and grace to deliver. Happy are the people that are in such a case! Happy the people that have this Lord for their manifested God!

J.C. Philpot on “How Humility, Helplessness and Self-loathing are learned”!

1. Humility. Humility is not obtained by reading texts, and turning over parallel passages which speak of it, but by having something in ourselves, discovered to us in a spiritual way, to be humble for. Thus a man who stands as a forsaken stump of what he was, and has the devil to harass him all the summer, and his own vile heart to plague him all the winter, has something in himself to make him humble. Humility is forced, beaten, driven into him; he is made humble, whether he will or not, and is compelled by sheer necessity to take the lowest room.

These cutting dispensations teach him:

2. His helplessness. A man does not learn that he is a helpless creature by reading Ro 5:6, as he does not learn that his heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked by reading Jer 17:9. A Chelsea pensioner, with both his arms shot off, or a man bed-ridden with the palsy, wants nobody to tell him how helpless he is. It is his daily, hourly, momently experience. Every time he wishes to eat, drink or stir, his helplessness is forced upon him by bitter experience. He cannot deny it, evade it, or escape from it. Thus a man who has had all his natural religion cut down to the ground, and the branches thereof taken away, and burnt before his eyes, needs no one to preach to him “the duty of helplessness”. The fowls of the mountains come flocking down; he has no arms to drive them away. The beasts of the earth gather around him; he is palsied, and is forced to lay his body as the street for them to pass over.

From these mysterious dealings he learns:

3. Self-loathing. He cannot be a peacock Pharisee, spreading out in the sun the feathers of good works. He has something to loathe himself for. We cannot hate others without a cause of hatred. Nor can we feel hatred of ourselves, unless there is something in self to hate. A man who falls into a stinking puddle hates his clothes because he loves cleanliness. Thus he who has a holy principle in his heart must needs hate sin. Our modern professors hate other people’s sins, but love their own. But a child of God hates himself as being so filthy and polluted before Him whom he loves. He hates the fowls that brood over him with their obscene wings and dismal croakings. He hates the beasts that roar about him for food, and grudge if they be not satisfied. And above all he hates himself, as the wretched stump to which these unclean animals resort.

It would not be difficult to show how patience, meekness, contrition of spirit, tenderness of conscience, and other similar graces are produced in the soul by this dark experience, which every prating fool whom presumption has stuck up in a pulpit has a bolt to shoot at.

But I hasten to an effect that I cannot pass over, and that is, that it produces a case for the Divine Redeemer in which to manifest His power, glory and salvation. With all the great swelling words about religion that are trumpeted through the land, and amongst the troops of professors that everywhere abound, there is scarcely one of a thousand who has a case that needs Christ’s heavenly manifestations. They can all see, all hear, all believe, all rejoice, and I am sure they can all talk. They never had their natural religion stripped from them; never had clay smeared over their eyes Joh 9:6, nor the divine fingers put into their ears Mr 7:33, nor their wisdom turned into foolishness, nor their comeliness into corruption. But they say, We see, and therefore their sin remaineth. The light which is in them is darkness, and thus how great is that darkness!

A physician is useless without a case, and the deeper the case, the wiser and better physician we need. Thus a guilty conscience is a case for atoning blood, a wounded spirit for healing balm, a filthy garment for a justifying robe, a drowning wretch for an Almighty hand, a criminal on the gallows for a full pardon, an incurable disease for a heavenly Physician, and a sinner sinking into hell for a Saviour stooping down from heaven. A man with a real case must have a real salvation. He is no longer to be cheated, fobbed off, deluded and tricked with pretences, as a nervous patient is sometimes cured with bread pills; but he must have a real remedy as having a real disease. Christ in the Bible, Christ sitting as an unknown Saviour in the heavens, Christ afar off, unmanifested and unrevealed, is no Christ to him. “Near, near; let Him come near-in my heart, in my soul, revealed in me, manifested unto me, formed within me-this, this is the Christ I want. O for one drop of His atoning blood, one smile of His blessed countenance, one testimony of His love, one gleam of His justifying righteousness!”

And thus when this divine Redeemer appears in His garments stained with blood, the sinking soul hails His approach, the fowls of the mountains take flight, the beasts of the earth slink off to their dens, the dreary stump pushes forth its shoots, and the voice sounds forth from the inmost depths of the soul, “This is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord, we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation”.

And now comes that season to which all the preceding have been but preparatory and introductory-the Harvest of the soul. I do not understand by “the harvest” spoken of in the text the harvest at the end of the world Mt 13:39, the general ingathering of the elect from the four winds, from one end of the heaven to the other. But I understand by it a particular harvest; a harvest in the soul in time; not a harvest of both soul and body at the end of time. As there is a spring, a summer and a winter in experience, so is there a harvest in experience; and as one part of the text is experimental, so the other part is experimental also.

The peculiar mark of harvest is, that it is the season of fruit. And thus I consider the harvest of grace to consist in the production of fruit in the soul. The only fruit which God will ever acknowledge as such, is that which He Himself produces by His Spirit in the heart. “From Me is thy fruit found” Ho 14:8. “Working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight” Heb 13:21. “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained prepared, marg. that we should walk in them” Eph 2:10. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” Php 2:13. The market indeed is glutted with sloes and crabs. These are heaped up on every stall, and hawked about from door to door. But it is the fruit of the graft, not the fruit of the stock, that is worthy of the name, and none other will be put upon the heavenly table. The graft, however, would not bear till it was cut in. “Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it”-that is, dresses and prunes it-”that it may bring forth more fruit” Joh 15:2.

The great secret of vital godliness is to be nothing, that Christ may be all in all. Every stripping, sifting, and emptying; every trial, exercise and temptation that the soul passes through, has but one object-to beat out of man’s heart that cursed spirit of independence which the devil breathed into him when he said, “Ye shall be as gods”. A man must well nigh be bled to death before this venom can be drained out of his veins. To cut down a giant into a babe a span long; to put a hunch-backed camel into a hydraulic press, and squeeze it into sufficient dimensions to pass through a needle’s eye-this is the process needful to be undergone before a man can bring forth fruit unto God. Well might Nicodemus marvel how a man could enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born; and the wonder how a grown-up man becomes a helpless babe is as great a mystery to most now.

The fatal mistake of thousands is to offer unto God the fruits of the flesh instead of the fruits of the Spirit. Fleshly holiness, fleshly exertions, fleshly prayers, fleshly duties, fleshly forms, fleshly zeal-these are what men consider good works, and present them as such to God. But well may He “who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity”, say to all such fleshly workers, “If ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil?” Mal 1:8. All that the flesh can do is evil, for “every imagination of man’s heart is only evil continually”; and to present the fruits of this filthy heart to the Lord of hosts is “to offer polluted bread upon His altar” Mal 1:7. Thus the “pleasant fruits, new and old” So 7:13, of which all manner are laid up at the gates of the righteous for the Beloved, are such only as the Spirit of God produces in the soul. And as He looketh not “on the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart” 1Sa 16:7, so these fruits are not so much outward as inward fruits.

It is within, in the secret depths of the soul, that the eternal Spirit works; and the outward actions are but visible signs and manifestations of His inward operations. A broken heart, a contrite spirit, a tender conscience, a filial fear, a desire to please, a dread to offend the great God of heaven, a sense of the evil of sin, and a desire to be delivered from its dominion, a mourning over our repeated backslidings, grief at being so often entangled in our lusts and passions, an acquaintance with our helplessness and weakness, a little simplicity and godly sincerity, a hanging upon grace for daily supplies, watching the hand of Providence, a singleness of eye to the glory of God-these are a few of the fruits that constitute the harvest of the soul. But why was it necessary that winter should precede? Why does the farmer break up the green sward with his plough, and turn in all the pretty daisies and cowslips, and lay bare the black soil, with all the hidden worms and maggots that lie concealed beneath the turf? Why does he drag his harrows over the fallows, and tear up the couchgrass, and gather it into heaps, and burn it to ashes? Because he wants a crop of corn to spring from seed which he himself sows, and because the natural produce of the land will not give him wheat and barley. Thus the violets and primroses of nature-the virtues of the natural heart, and all the flower of fleshly religion-must have the share of the winter plough pass beneath their roots, and be buried in mingled confusion beneath the black clods of inward corruption, that grace may spring up as an implanted crop.

By the wintry dealings I have before attempted to describe, independence has been broken to pieces, and the soul brought to hang upon Christ for everything; pride has been cut down, and humility produced; a deceitful heart has been laid bare, and spiritual integrity created; hypocrisy has been detected and sincerity implanted; a form of religion has been crushed, and power set up in its stead; an empty profession of dry doctrine has been rooted up, and a realisation of eternal things been substituted; the reprobate silver has been burnt in the furnace, and the pure gold has come out uninjured. A burnt child dreads the fire, and a broken-down soul dreads an empty profession. A tender wound cannot bear pressure, and a conscience made tender by terrible things in righteousness cannot bear the burden of guilt. “By the reason of God’s highness, it cannot endure” Job 31:23.

The things he has passed through have brought him into an acquaintance with God. He now knows the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent; and he has felt that God is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. He can no longer endure the vain inventions of men, the formalities of a carnal Establishment, the mummeries of priestcraft, the canting whine of hypocrites, the empty babble of chattering professors, the mock holiness of Arminian perfectionists, and the cloak of religion which masks thousands of rotten hearts. He becomes a solitary character. He sets little store by loud prayers or long prayers, whether they come from the blind mill-horse in the pulpit, or his humble imitator in the pew. He finds that a secret groan is better than a long prayer, a tear of contrition sweeter than an extempore form, and a few words with God in his closet more precious than many words at a prayer-meeting, even though deacons pray.

A line of Hart’s hymns relieves his soul, when a noisy choir chanting Dr. Watts loads it with a burden; and half a verse of Scripture melts his heart, when a letter preacher with a long sermon hardens it into ice. He never leaves the company of empty professors without a load, or the sweet company of God without a blessing. He feels Christ to be his best Counsellor. His love most worth seeking, His friendship most enduring, His presence most cheering, and His smiles most to be desired. Men, even the very best of them, often only wound him; the company of God’s children is often burdensome; and their advice usually an ineffectual help. His heavenly Friend never deceived him, never violated his confidence, disclosed his secrets, wounded his feelings, carnalised his mind, saddened his spirit, led him into error, or treated him with neglect. But on the contrary, ‘pardons his sins, forgives his ingratitude, pities his infirmities, heals his backslidings, and loves him freely.

The Christian thus learns that if he stands, God must hold him up; if he knows anything aright, God must teach him; if he walks in the way to heaven, God must first put, and afterwards keep him in it; if he has anything, God must give it to him; and that if he does anything, God must work it in him. He now “through the law”-that is, through his experience of its killing sentence-”is become dead to the law, that he may live unto God”. He can no longer take a killing letter for a living rule, but is deeply conscious that it is only by being “married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that he can bring forth fruit unto God” Ro 7:4. Thus by the presence of God going with him, he becomes separated “from all the people that are upon the face of the earth” Ex 33:16.

Whilst others boast of what they have done for God, he is glad to feel that God has done something for him; whilst others are handling the shell, he is eating the kernel; whilst others are talking of Christ, he is talking with Him; whilst others are looking through the park palings, he is enjoying the estate; and whilst others are haranguing about the treasure in the Bank of England, he is pleased to find a few coins in his own pocket, stamped with the king’s image and superscription. But he finds the truth of that text, “In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increases sorrow” Ec 1:18. As his inward religion separates him from those who have only an outward one, he becomes a butt for empty professors to shoot at. Those whom he once would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock, now spare not to spit in his face Job 30:1 Job 30:10. Every consequential Evangelical, who has not an idea about religion but what he has gleaned from Scott or Simeon, condemns him as “a rank Antinomian”. Every spruce Academic, hot from Hackney or Cheshunt, who knows no more about the operations of a living faith than of the Chinese language, has an arrow stored in his quiver, feathered with a text to strike him through the heart as “an awful character”. Every high-faith professor rides over his head; every dry Calvinist outruns him in the race; every Pharisee outstrips him in zeal; every ranting Methodist thunders at him for sloth; and every doer of duty avoids him as a pestilence.

However various sects differ among themselves, they all unite in condemning him. All other religion is right, and his alone wrong; everyone else’s faith is genuine, and his only is spurious. Of him alone the charitable augur uncharitably; universal salvationists cut off him alone from salvation; those that pity the heathen have no pity for him; and those who compass sea and land to make one proselyte, pronounce his case alone as past recovery. And what is his trespass and what is his sin, that they so hotly pursue after him? Ge 31:36. Does he live in sin? No. Is he buried in the world, head over ears in politics, heaping together dishonest gains, or eaten up with covetousness? None dare say so. Does he neglect prayer, reading the Word, hearing the truth, contributing to the necessities of saints, and living peaceably with all men? No. Why then this universal baying at him from every dog of the pack? For the same reason that Joseph’s brethren hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him-the Father loves him, and has clothed him in a garment of many colours, and given him revelations which He has denied to them.

But he has sorrow, too, and opposition within, far more trying to his spirit than the evil names which malicious ignorance heaps upon him, or the unjust suspicions which Pharisaic pride harbours against him. Paul, after being caught up into the third heaven, had given to him a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above measure 2Co 12:7. Go where he would, this thorn still accompanied him, rankling continually in his flesh, hampering every movement, inflicting unceasing pain, and piercing him deeper and deeper the more that he struggled against it. Ten thousand thorns in the hedge do not pain like one in the flesh. And thus ten thousand unjust suspicions of the sons of Belial, though they be “all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands; but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron and the staff of a spear” 2Sa 23:6,7 -ten thousand suspicions, I say, from vulture-eyed professors are but as thorns in the hedge, which only wound us when we go near them, and which a wise man will keep a due distance from. But a thorn in the flesh, driven and fastened in by the hand of God, we can neither ease nor extract.

And thus any one constant harassing temptation, which strikes into the soul of a child of God, will grieve and wound him a thousand times more deeply than a thick hedge of furze-bush professors standing by the roadside. But by these painful exercises he is kept from settling down on the lees of a dead assurance, or resting at his ease on the ground of a past experience. This rankling thorn preserves him from that vain, wretched, delusive establishment, falsely so-called, which, as a spreading gangrene, has infected well nigh whole churches with the dry rot-an establishment built upon length of profession, upon belief of the doctrines of grace, upon membership in a Particular Baptist Church, upon consistency of conduct, upon a general currency as a believer, upon freedom from doubts and fears, and upon an experience twenty years ago. His thorn in the flesh will not let him stand at ease, or ground his arms, as though the battle were won, the enemy vanquished, and the articles of peace signed. He cannot rest on doctrines, of which the power is not now felt; nor in a past experience, which is not continually renewed; nor in a Saviour in the Bible whose presence is not from time to time manifested; nor in promises, of which the sweetness is not occasionally enjoyed. He cannot thus cast anchor in the Dead Sea. He cannot lie stretched at his ease on this downy bed, for his thorn will not let him rest, but makes him “full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day” Job 7:4.

Thus his establishment consists not in a head furnished with notions, but in a heart established with grace; not in an outward union with a church, but in an inward union with Christ; not in sitting down once a month to the ordinance, but in eating the bread which came down from heaven; not in having repented twenty years ago, but in being often melted by a sense of God’s goodness and mercy; not in occupying a corner in an experimental chapel, but in having a place and a name in the church of the Firstborn. He will not indeed despise nor neglect any one of Christ’s ordinances, but will look to the power more than to the form; and will think it sweeter to walk into the inner chambers of Zion’s palace, and behold the King’s face, than to go round about her, to tell her towers, and mark well her bulwarks.

Through the inward conflicts, secret workings, mysterious changes, and ever-varying exercises of his soul, he becomes established in a deep feeling of his own folly and God’s wisdom, of his own weakness and Christ’s strength, of his own sinfullness and the Lord’s goodness, of his own backslidings and the Spirit’s recoveries, of his own base ingratitude and Jehovah’s longsuffering, of the aboundings of sin and the super-aboundings of grace. He thus becomes daily more and more confirmed in the vanity of the creature, the utter helplessness of man, the deceitfullness and hypocrisy of the human heart, the sovereignty of distinguishing grace, the fewness of heaven-taught ministers, the scanty number of living souls, and the great rareness of true religion. Nor are these convictions borrowed ideas, floating opinions, crude, half-digested sentiments or articles of a creed, which may be right or may be wrong; but they are things known by him as certainly, and felt as evidently as any material object that his eye sees, or his hand touches.

He has a divine standard set up in his soul by which he measures others as well as himself, for “he that is spiritual judgeth all things” 1Co 2:15; and as he measures them with one hand, he is forced to stamp “Tekel” with the other. He looks into the granaries, and finds chaff stored instead of wheat; he holds up the notes to the light, and cannot discover the water-mark; he walks up to the fold, and sees goats penned instead of sheep; and visits the household to search for the family likeness, but finds it filled with the “sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore” Isa 57:3. All he wants is reality. All that he is in search of is something which bears the divine impress, and carries with it a heavenly and supernatural character. But instead of finding widows “indeed and desolate” 1Ti 5:5, he is pestered with widows of Tekoa 2Sa 14:2; and instead of bankrupt debtors and insolvent prisoners, he encounters scarce any but wealthy merchants, with a flourishing trade and a stock in hand. His soul can, however, only unite with the poor and needy, the stripped and the emptied, the shipwrecked sailor and the shelterless wayfarer, who, from sheer necessity, from being driven out of house and home, have fled for refuge to the hope set before them in a salvation without money and without price.

And thus a little godly fear, a little living faith, a little groaning prayer, a little genuine repentance-in a word, a little heavenly reality, will kindle a union, when towering pretensions, unshaken confidence, ready utterance, a sanctified countenance, a whining cant, a gifted head, and a tongue that walketh through the earth, will freeze up every avenue of his heart. He has a needle in his soul which has been touched with a heavenly magnet; and the pole that a broken heart attracts, a brazen forehead repels.

Thus growth in grace is not progressive sanctification and fleshly holiness on the one hand, nor a false and delusive establishment on the other. The narrow path lies between these two extremes. On the one side is Seneh, and on the other side is Bozez 1Sa 14:4, Pharisaic holiness and Antinomian security, and between these two sharp rocks lies the path “which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen” Job 28:7. From dashing on either of these rocks, a living man is kept only by the mysterious dealings of God with his spirit, and the internal exercises through which he continually passes. A constant acquaintance with his own vileness preserves him from a self-righteous holiness in the flesh; a daily cross and a rankling thorn keep him from careless presumption. His path is indeed a mysterious one, full of harmonious contradictions and heavenly paradoxes. He is never easy when at ease, nor without a burden when he has none. He is never satisfied without doing something, and yet is never satisfied with anything that he does. He is never so strong as when he sits still Isa 30:7, never so fruitful as when he does nothing, and never so active as when he makes the least haste Isa 28:16. All outstrip him in the race, yet he alone gains the goal, and wins the prize. All are sure of heaven but himself, yet he enters into the kingdom, whilst they are thrust out. He wins pardon through guilt, hope through despair, deliverance through temptation, comfort through affliction, and a robe of righteousness through filthy rags. Though a worm and no man, he overcomes Omnipotence itself through violence; and though less than vanity and nothing Isa 40:17 2Co 12:11, he takes heaven itself by force Mt 11:12.

Thus amidst the strange contradictions which meet in a believing heart, he is never so prayerful as when he says nothing; never so wise as when he is the greatest fool; never so much alone as when most in company; and never so much under the power of an inward religion as when most separated from an outward one. Strange mysterious creature! He cannot live without sinning, yet cannot live in sin; cannot live without prayer, and yet for days together cannot pray; continually finds religion a burden, yet would not part with it for the world; lusts after sin as a delicious morsel, yet hates it with a perfect hatred; esteems Christ the Chiefest among ten thousand, and yet is at times tried with doubts whether He is a Saviour at all.

Such, then, is the path, however feebly or imperfectly described, in which the redeemed walk Isa 35:9, a path trodden by them alone, and that too, often sorely contrary to their own inclinations. To walk in this path is not the product of wisdom Da 2:30, the effect of talent 1Co 2:6, nor the fruit of study. On the contrary, all that nature can do is to fight against it. Reason calls it folly, wisdom terms it madness, prudence considers it delusion, learning deems it enthusiasm, free-will counts it presumption, and self-righteousness thinks it licentiousness. Bishops and Archbishops despise it, Deans and Archdeacons abhor it, High Church clergy revile it, Low Church clergy preach against it, Bible and Missionary Societies cashier anyone the least tainted with it, and the devout and honourable expel it out of their coasts Ac 13:50. Graceless Calvinists abhor the sword whose keen edge gives them no quarter; Wesleyans revile the weapon that lays their proud fabric in the dust; worldly Dissenters hate the light that makes manifest their rotten foundation; preachers made at colleges and academies detest the voice which demands their divine commission; and formalists of all grades, sects, names and denominations loathe a religion which cuts them off from eternal life, and leaves them without the shadow of a hope. One thing is to them sufficiently clear: if this be the only way to heaven, they are not walking in it. This, at any rate, they have discernment enough to see; and thus, if they would justify themselves, they must necessarily condemn the way itself, the people who are walking in it, and the ministers who preach it.

But happy are those of us who, by an Almighty hand and a supernatural power, have been put into this blessed path! We neither placed ourselves in it at first, nor have kept ourselves in it afterwards. If we have done either, we are not in the way at all, but are walking in a side path, and shall end at that door which Bunyan saw to open into hell from the very gates of heaven.

J.C. Philpot on “The Believer’s Need for Spiritual Discipline”!

There are lessons to be learnt, of which the soul at present knows little or nothing. There is an experience to be passed through, little, little dreamt of; a road to be travelled, as yet but little, little known. Harvest does not succeed summer in the kingdom of grace, as in the kingdom of nature. “Afore the harvest” another season comes. A long and dreary winter intervenes, and with winter comes the pruning knife of the heavenly Husbandman, who purgeth the vine, “that it may bring forth more fruit” Joh 15:2. “For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, He shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.”

But why should this wintry season be necessary? What need of this sharp and severe discipline? Why should not the soul go on as it has begun? Why should it not proceed from strength to strength, and increase in faith, hope, and love, until its peace should be as a river, and its righteousness as the waves of the sea? Isa 48:18, We have indeed an abundance of preachers who tell us not only that it ought to be so, but that is actually is so. We have no lack of railway projectors, who will draw us out a line to heaven with neither hill nor dale, and scarcely an inclined place. Nor have we any want of fancy drawing masters, who will sketch us out a beautiful landscape, with heaven itself at the end, as easily as Martin paints his Egyptian colonnades and oriental palaces. But there are such persons as fire-side travellers and chimney-corner voyagers, and such architects as builders of castles in the air. Now, however pretty may be the descriptions of the one, or however beautiful the palaces of the other, the true pilgrim needs a guide who has traveled the road himself, and he that builds for eternity wants an architect who can lay a solid foundation at the first, and afterwards put every stone in its right place. We will leave, then, these speculators to their theories, and instead of speaking of things as they think the ought to be, [To be always telling us what we ought to do, is to bid us draw water with a bucket which has a hole at the bottom; and I am sure free-will never yet mended this hole.] will endeavour to describe things as they are. A little spiritual insight, then, into the human heart may explain the reason why this severe discipline is needful, and unravel this mystery. Together with the spiritual graces that had first budded, and afterwards, under the warm beams of the sun, burst forth into flower, there had shot unperceived an undergrowth of self-righteousness and spiritual pride.

Counterfeits, too, and imitations of divine operations had sprung up, as the offspring of a deceitful heart, or as delusions of Satan transformed into an angel of light. Side by side with spiritual trust, fleshly presumption had imperceptibly crept up. Under the shadow of divine hope, vain confidence had put forth its rank shoots. Natural belief had grown rapidly up with spiritual faith, fleshly ardour with heavenly zeal, universal charity with divine love, and the knowledge that puffeth up the head with the grace that humbleth the heart. Above all things, pride, “accursed pride, that spirit by God abhorred”, was taking occasion by the very grace of God to feed itself to the full. It was sitting on Christ’s throne, exalting itself and despising others, measuring every one by its own standard, and will nigh trampling under its feet every one of David’s soldiers that was in distress, in debt, or discontented 1Sa 22:2. Forgetting its base original, when it was a beggar on the dunghill, and that a man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven, the soul was in great hazard of sacrificing to its own net, and burning incense to its own drag Hab 1:16. Thus pride was doing that secret work which Hart so well describes;

The heart uplifts with God’s own gifts,

And makes even grace a snare. Gadsby’s 287

But beside these more obvious and glaring evils, we may remark that self was as yet little known, the deep recesses of a desperately wicked heart little fathomed, the helplessness, beggary and bankruptcy of the creature little felt. The unspeakable value, therefore, of Christ’s blood, the breadths, lengths, depths and heights of distinguishing love, the riches of the goodness, forbearance and longsuffering of God, the depths of misery and degradation to which the Redeemer stooped to pluck His chosen from death and hell-all these divine mysteries, in the experience of which the very marrow of vital godliness consists, were little known and less prized.

Judging from my own experience, I believe there is at this time an indistinctness, a dimness, a haziness in the views we have of Christ. Though the soul loves and cleaves to Him with purpose of heart, yet it does not see nor feel the depth of the malady, and therefore not the height of the remedy. It has not yet been plunged into the ditch, till its own clothes abhor it Job 9:31, nor cast into “deep mire where there is no standing” Ps 69:2. The fountains of the great deep of the human heart have not yet been broken up; the exceeding sinfullness of sin has not yet been fully manifested; the desperate enmity and rebellion of a fallen nature have not yet been thoroughly discovered; nor the wounds, bruises and putrefying sores of inward corruption been experimentally laid bare. And thus, as the knowledge of salvation can only keep pace with the knowledge of sin, Christ is as yet but half a Saviour.

A lesson, therefore, is to be taught which the soul can learn in no other way. Books here are useless, Christian friends of little value, ministers ineffectual, and the letter of the Word insufficient. A certain experience must be wrought in the soul, a peculiar knowledge be communicated, a particular secret be revealed, and all this must be done in a way for which no other can be substituted. This, then, is the reason why winter comes afore harvest, and why “the sprigs are cut off with pruning hooks, and the branches taken and cut down.”

J.C. Philpot on “A Christian without doubts is no Christian”!

He that has no searchings of soul whether he is in the way, no chilling doubts nor sinking fears ever saddening his spirit, no secret groan nor sigh to have his heart right before God, no solemn midnight cries, no anxious prospects nor gloomy retrospects, no trembling apprehensions how it will be with him at the last, no dread of self-deceit, nor suspicions of Satan’s delusions-he, I say, who glides securely on without these deep exercises, manifests by his very ease that he is not in the narrow path that leads to eternal life.

By one who is spiritually sincere every step will be more or less weighed, every experience sooner or later brought to the touchstone, and every part of the road anxiously tried. He will love to be searched through and through. He will uncover his bosom to every arrow that flies from the pulpit, to see if it be aimed at him. He will love a searching ministry, and in his right mind cannot be probed too deeply. He will hate the daubers with untempered mortar, and those who sew pillows to all armholes. He will love heart and conscience work, and cleave most to him who most “commends himself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God”. He desires to have his path traced out, his stumbling-blocks removed, his temptations entered into, and the dealings of God with his spirit described.

It is through these very doubts that the evidence is obtained. Doubts lead to cries and groans after a divine testimony; and in answer to these cries the heavenly witness is given. A man without, doubts is without testimonies. Doubts are to testimonies what the mortise is to the tenon, the lock to the key, the enigma to the solution. Testimonies are Ebenezers, “stones of help” 1Sa 7:12, marg.; but the stone must have a hole dug for it to stand in, and that hole is doubt. Doubts of salvation are to manifestations of salvation what hunger is to food, nakedness to clothing, a thunderstorm to a shelter, a gallows to a reprieve, and death to a resurrection. The one of these things precedes, prepares and opens a way for the other. The first is nothing without the last, nor the last without the first.

Thus, next to testimonies, the best thing is spiritual doubts. To know we are right is the best thing; to fear we are wrong is the second best. To enjoy the witness of the Spirit is the most blessed thing this side of the grave; to pant after that enjoyment is the next greatest blessing. I am speaking, mind, only of spiritual doubts; that is, doubts in a spiritual man, for natural doubts are as far from salvation as natural hopes. The path through the valley of Baca is “from strength to strength”; that is, according to the eastern mode of travelling, from one halting place to another, where wells are dug, and “the rain also filleth the pools” Ps 84:6,7. We do not learn God or ourselves, sin or salvation, in a day.

The question is, Have we set one step in the way? “Watchman, what of the night?” Is it even, midnight, cock-crowing or morning? Mr 13:35. Is it spring, summer, winter or harvest? The question is not so much whether you have much faith, but whether you have any. It is not quantity, but quality; not whether you have a very great religion, but whether you have any at all. A grain of true faith will save the soul; and I have known many, many seasons when I should be glad to feel certain that I had the thousandth part of a grain.

J.C. Philpot on “The Believer’s Struggle with Hope”!

But an elect vessel of mercy can never be wrecked on such shoals as these. To his own apprehensions, his hope may perish from the Lord [La 3:18], and “be removed like a tree” [Job 19:10]. But it is not really lost out of his heart. He still holds faith, and has not put away a good conscience. There is a “Who can tell?” struggling for life. As Jacob said of Esau, “Peradventure he will accept me”; and as the servants of Benhadad reasoned with their master, “We have heard that the kings of Israel are merciful kings; peradventure he will save thy life”, so the new-born soul under spiritual convictions hopes against hope. This anchor holds him firm. And though he often fears his cable will snap, yet the anchor, being within the veil, linked on to the throne of God by the golden chain of eternal love, can neither break nor drive.

But hope in a storm and hope in a calm, hope in the bud and hope in the flower, though they differ not in nature, differ greatly in degree. Night and day do not alter the reality of things, but they widely alter their appearance. Hope shut up in a dungeon and looking through the prison bars, and hope walking abroad in the sunshine differ much in feeling, though they do not differ in kind. But we must not cut off hope’s head, nor bury him alive in his cell, because he is shut up, and cannot come forth. Neither must we say that hope is only born on the same day that he comes out in his holiday attire.

But some would treat hope as badly as they treat faith, and allow him neither place nor name, birthright nor inheritance in the regenerated soul until deliverance comes, though it belongs especially to the poor [Job 5:16], dwelleth in the heart that is sick [Pr 13:12], and is the portion of those whose mouth is in the dust [La 3:29]. Such wise master-builders would allow the soldier no helmet [1Th 5:8], the sailor no anchor [Heb 6:19], and the prisoner no stronghold [Zec 9:12]. But if he is joined to the living he has hope; and the hope of a living dog is better any day than the vain confidence of a dead lion [Ecc 9:4].

But under the genial ray of God’s smiling countenance the bud opens, and hope bursts forth. And as it expands it looks upward to heaven, and rises towards its Author and Finisher, its Source and its End. All true grace looks upward, whilst counterfeits look downward. Thus true hope centres in God; false hope centres in self. “Hope thou in God”, said David to his soul Ps 42:11. “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee” Ps 39:7. “That they might set their hope in God, and not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation” Ps 78:7-8. But false hope is a hope in self, that is to say, natural self. It is therefore compared to a rush, which grows out of the mire, and withereth before any other herb; and to the web which the spider spins out of its own bowels Job 8:11-14. I never yet found anything in self-I mean natural self-which raised up a living hope. I have known plenty of things to cause despair, such as pride, lust, covetousness, unbelief, infidelity, enmity, rebellion, hardness and carelessness. I have found in self mountains of sin to press out the life of hope, torrents of evil to sweep away the foundations of hope, and clouds of darkness to hide the very existence of hope. But I have never yet found in vile self, deceitful self, filthy self, black self, and hateful self, any one thing to beget or keep alive a spiritual hope. If I could, I should fall under that terrible sentence, whose sweeping edge cuts off thousands: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord” Jer 17:5.

But what a mighty revolution takes place in the soul when the bud of hope bursts forth into flower! It was well nigh covered up with despair, as the bud is hidden by the green leaves that close around it; but it springs up out of despair, and the green leaves part asunder. Darkness, guilt, terror, heaviness, gloom, melancholy, forebodings of death and judgment brooded over the soul, like the unclean birds over Abraham’s sacrifice. But hope, as Abraham of old, has driven them away. And now hope mounts upward to God. Hope has nothing to do with earth, but leaves flesh and self and the world, the servants and the asses, at the foot of the mount Ge 22:5, that it may have communion with Jehovah Jireh. Thus hope feeds upon the unseen things which faith realises.

Both faith and hope are engaged on the same things, but not in the same way. Faith credits, hope anticipates; faith realises, hope enjoys; faith is the hand which takes the fruit, hope is the mouth which feeds upon it. Thus a certain promise is made to Abraham that he shall have a son by Sarah. This was a revelation of divine possibility in human impossibility Mr 10:27, of supernatural power in creature helplessness Ro 4:19-22, to credit which revelation is the essence of spiritual faith. By faith Abraham realised this promise; by hope he enjoyed it. It was an unseen thing, an event to come to pass at twenty-five years distance, but faith made it present, and as such hope fed upon it. When Abraham held in his arms the newborn Isaac, the pleasure was only a fuller enjoyment of what he had before tasted. He now enjoyed in reality, in possession, what he had previously tasted in prospect, in anticipation.

Thus true hope feeds upon present things, but upon present things only as pledges and foretastes of things future. It feeds upon Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, and looks forward to no other salvation than that of which it now enjoys the foretaste. All other hope than this is a lie. To hope in the forgiveness of sin-of which there is no foretaste; in God-of whom there has been no manifestation; in salvation-of which there has been no pledge; in mercy-of which there has been no token; in everlasting happiness-of which there has been no inward enjoyment; is delusion and presumption. Of this building, ignorance digs the foundation, self-deceit rears the wall, and hypocrisy plasters on the untempered mortar. It is a refuge of lies, which the hail shall sweep away and the waters overflow.

J.C. Philpot on “God and Satan as Agents exercising the Believer’s Discipline’!

J.C. Philpot on “God and Satan as Agents exercising the Believer’s Discipline’!

The Believer’s discipline thus exercised by the heavenly Husbandman consists of two distinct parts;

1. The first is that which is immediately and peculiarly exercised by Himself: “He will cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.”

2. The second is that which He leaves to be accomplished by other agents. “They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth; and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.”

I remarked that there had shot up a secret undergrowth of natural religion, as well as a plentiful crop of pride, during the spring and summer of the soul. These are the sprigs that had grown up side by side with the bud. Now if these were suffered to continue, they would starve the bud, or overshadow it. A shoot from the old stock, if permitted to remain, will always starve the graft. It is a sucker, so called because it sucks the sap and nourishment from it, and lives and thrives at its expense. A good gardener, therefore, never hesitates for a moment, but takes out his pruning knife and cut it off close to the stem.

But it may be said, “How will this comparison hold good in the kingdom of grace? The old man and the new are not maintained and nourished by the same sap.” It is true that originally they are not, but when grace visits the heart, nature will often adopt new food and take grace’s provision. Old nature is not very delicate nor dainty, but will feed on anything that suits her palate or satisfies her ravenous appetite. Sin or self-righteousness, indulgences or austerity, feasting or fasting, truth or error, religion or profaneness, superstition or infidelity, a convent or a brothel, all are alike to nature. She has the appetite of a vulture, and the digestion of an ostrich. She has as many colours as a chameleon, and as “changeable suits of apparel” as an actor’s wardrobe. She can play all parts, speak all languages, and assume all shapes. But all her crafts and wiles she employs for one single end -to feed and exalt herself. This is the utmost stretch of her grovelling ambition, and to effect the will compass sea and land, heaven and hell.

Thus when grace comes into the heart, nature first resists and quarrels with the newcomer, who is destined to rise upon her ruins, and set up his throne on her prostrate body. But as opposition only makes grace wax stronger and stronger, nature soon changes her tone, and seeks to ruin him by her friendship, whom she cannot conquer by her enmity. She becomes religious, and puts in her claim for some of grace’s food. If grace prays, she can pray also; if grace reads, she too can turn over the Bible; and if grace hears, she can sit under a gospel minister. Nay, she can go far beyond grace, for she has no conscience and he has, and can talk when grace is forced to hold his tongue, and get into a pulpit when can hardly sit in the pew. So the six hundred thousand who fell in the wilderness ate angels’ food to the full. Ps 78:25 So Saul was feasted on the shoulder, the choice piece that was reserved especially for the priest 1Sa 9:24 Le 8:32 . Thus nature, become religious, feeds on the provision bestowed upon grace. And this she does so slyly and secretly, that unsuspecting, guileless grace never discover the robbery. Here, then steps in the heavenly Husbandman, and begins to cut off with His pruning hook the sprigs that are pushing forth so luxuriantly at grace’s expense.

In using His pruning hook, the divine Husbandman has two objects in view;

1. To cut off close to the stem the rank shoots of nature.

2. To cut down to their due proportion-their bearing length, the scions of grace. Now natural faith, false hope, and counterfeit love are utterly unable to stand against heavy trials when they are sent for the express purpose of putting us into the balance. They give way and fall to pieces. They vanish away like the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney. It is as Bildad speaks of a hypocrite’s hope; “He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure” Job 8:15. And as this sharp pruning hook lops off false religion close to the stem, so it cuts down a good part of that which is true.

It is true that real grace can suffer neither loss nor diminution, but its manifestations and its actings may. Who that possesses faith is not conscious that it ebbs and flows, rises and sinks, is strong and weak, and varies from day to day and from hour to hour? Thus when a sharp trial comes, its immediate effect is to depress faith. It falls upon it like a weight, and bends it down to the ground. Faith may be compared to the quicksilver in a weather-glass or in a thermometer. The quantity of mercury in the bulb never varies, but it rises or falls in the tube according to the weight of the air, or the heat of the day. Thus faith, though it abides in the heart without loss or diminution, yet rises or sinks in the feelings, as the weather is fair or foul, or as the sun shows or hides itself.

Did Job’s faith, for instance, mount equally high when “in the days of his youth” -the spring of his soul-”the secret of God was upon his tabernacle,” and when “he cursed his day,” and cried, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him?” Was Peter’s faith as strong when he quailed before a servant girl as when he was ready to go to prison and death? Or Abraham’s when he denied Sarah to be his wife Ge 20:2, and when with but 318 he pursued and smote the army of four mighty kings? Ge 14. If faith never fluctuated, never sinks and never rises, then we have at once the dead assurance of a professor; the faith is in our own keeping; then it does not hang on the smile or frown of God; then we are no more beggars and bankrupts, living on supplies given or withholden, but independent and self-sufficient; then we “have no changes, and so fear not God.” But if faith ebb and flow, what is the cause? Is it in self? Can we add to its stature one cubit, or make one hair of it black or white? If not, then must its ebbings and flowings come from God.

But temporal afflictions do not cut down faith, hope and love, nor cut off their counterfeits so severely and closely as spiritual trials. We read of “pruning hooks,” which expression denotes more than one. Thus any discovery of the holiness and justice of God, of His terrible wrath against sin and eternal hatred of all iniquity, any piercing conviction of His heart-searching eye flashing into the conscience, any setting our secret sins in the light of His countenance, any spiritual sight of self in appalling contrast with His purity and perfection-any manifestations of this nature will most assuredly cut down to the stump the sprigs of natural religion.

Fallen nature could never yet endure the sight of God. It perishes at the rebuke of His countenance. It goes into the holes of the rocks and the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty. Natural faith never yet bore the touch of God’s hand, but crumbled to pieces under it. Thus the first effect of these spiritual discoveries of God is to mow to the ground the thick under-growth of nature. And as the same stroke sweeps away all the consolation which the soul enjoyed, the feeling is as if it had lost all its religion. Like a person going out of the sun into a dark room, to whom the darkness seem greater than it really is; or like a person to whom a bad piece of news is told, who is so stunned by it that he can think of no one alleviating circumstance; so when darkness suddenly falls upon the soul, and evil tidings from heaven seem communicated to the heart, not only nature totally, but grace, too, partially sinks under the stroke. As a person who swoons away retains life in reality, though it is lost in appearance, so grace faints away under trials, and often recovers but slowly her former strength.

Such is the usual effect of sudden and severe trials. But there is another mode of using the pruning hook employed by the divine Husbandman. And that is, if I may use the figure, to cut half through the branch, and so stop the supply of sap. Many who have enjoyed the spring and summer of the soul, have felt their comfort and peace decline gradually, they could scarce tell how. It was no sudden stroke that befell them, but a gradual withdrawing of light and life, and a gradual discovery of the character of God and of their own vileness. Thus the pruning hook was so slowly and insensibly put under the lower side of the branch to cut it half-way through, that it was not seen.

But its effects were soon felt. Natural religion began to wither. A secret dissatisfaction with self began to creep over the soul. Zeal did not shoot so strong, and faith seemed to hang its head, and hope appeared to droop. Gloom and despondency began to gather over the mind. The feeling grew stronger and stronger that there was something wrong somewhere. Suspicions as to the reality of its religion, and whether there was not something rotten at the very core, now begin to haunt the soul. Under these doubtings it goes to God to seek deliverance from Him. But all is dark there, and the heavens gather blackness. The pruning knife has cut off the supply of sap. The branches of nature wither away, and drop off from the stem; and the shoots of grace look sickly and drooping.

But there is another branch of this sentence which God does not Himself execute, but leaves to the agency of others. All things that happen flow from the divine decrees. There is no chance work or contingency in the government of God; but “He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth”. Nevertheless He is not the author of sin; for He “cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man” Jas 1:13. Thus we must divide the decrees of God into His executive decree, and His permissive decree. All that is good He executes with His own hand. All that is evil happens according to His decree, and cannot but come to pass as necessarily as all that is good, but He leaves the execution of it to an evil heart, or to an evil devil. These act unconscious of the divine decree, and think only to fulfil their own evil purposes. Thus to them belongs the wickedness, and to God the glory. Satan when he tempted Judas, and the Jews when they crucified Christ, both fulfilled the divine decree, and formed connecting links of the great chain of redemption; but God did not by any secret impulse instigate them to act wickedly.

Thus in the execution of the second part of the sentence passed upon the tree in the text, God, who cannot be the author of sin, leaves it to be performed by other agents. “They”, that is the branches pruned off and cut down, “they shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth, and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.”

The portion of the sentence which God leaves to be performed by other agents is as important, I may say as indispensable, as the portion which He executes Himself. These agents are two-fold:

1. The fowls of the mountains.

2. The beasts of the earth.

We may perhaps discover who are intended by “the fowls of the mountains” by referring to the Lord’s own explanation of the parable of the sower. We read in that parable Mr 4:4 of “the fowls of the air”, which came and “devoured the seed that was sown by the wayside”, which the Lord thus explains: “When they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts”. But there is something we must not pass over unnoticed in the word “left”: “They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains”, etc. How much is contained in the expression “left”! It is as though the soul were given up, abandoned, forsaken, not indeed fully nor finally, but cast off as it were for a time, and delivered, like Samson, to make sport for its enemies. The tree with its sprigs cut off close to the stem, with the branches that shot up from its roots cut down and taken away, and the graft itself pruned down to a remnant of what it was, stands a melancholy stump. Winter has come; the sun no longer shines. The sap has sunk down into the root; life seems pretty well extinct, and the axe appears ready to finish what the pruning hook has left undone. And now what does it seem fit for? To become a roosting place for every unclean bird. “There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, everyone with her mate” Isa 34:15. These keen-eyed fowls of the mountains are always watching their opportunity to alight upon a soul forsaken of God. The eagle “dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she” Job 39:28-30. And as the “fowls of the mountains” seem to signify the fallen angels, those accursed spirits, whose delight is to destroy all whom they can, and to harass all whom they cannot destroy; so by “the beasts of the earth” we may understand those earthly lusts, carnal desires, and base workings of a fallen nature which war against the soul.

Now it is most difficult, if not altogether impossible, for a tempted soul to distinguish clearly and accurately between the temptations which spring from Satan and those which arise from the carnal mind. And for this reason, that Satan can only work on our fallen nature, and thus we are unable to distinguish between the voluntary lusts of our carnal heart, and those which arise from the suggestion of Satan. He tempts most when least seen. But though when under the temptation, we cannot often, nor indeed usually, distinguish between the suggestions of Satan and the spontaneous lustings of our own hearts, yet, looking at each at a distance, we may draw this distinction between them, that spiritual wickedness, what Paul calls “filthiness of the spirit” 2Co 7:1, may be ascribed to “the fowls of the mountains”; and carnal wickedness, the “filthiness of the flesh”, to the beasts of the earth. Thus all those peculiar temptations respecting the being and character of God, which are usually unknown, or at least unfelt by us in our days of unregeneracy, but afterwards often sadly haunt the soul, we may ascribe to the suggestions of Satan.

A temptation, for instance, comes into the soul like a flash of lightning. It may perhaps be an infidel doubt that starts up suddenly in the mind. This hidden poison at first perhaps has little apparent effect, as we at once reject the thought with horror. But as soon as the Word of God is opened, or the throne of grace approached, the black thoughts, the powerful questionings, the harassing suspicions which fill the mind, show us in a moment how the subtle poison is coursing through every vein. The Word of God has lost all its sweetness and power, and the voice of prayer is dumb. Darkness and disquietude fill the soul. The heavens are clothed with blackness, and sackcloth is made their covering. Well do the words of Jeremiah describe this state of soul: “I beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains”-the stable foundations of truth-”and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled” Jer 4:23-25.

I never found anything to sweep away all my religion in any way to be compared with such thoughts as these. Unbelief has often shaken it to the very centre, guilt has covered it with midnight darkness, and fears of death in sickness have cut it down to the root. But infidel doubts sweep away the foundation itself, and “if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Or, perhaps, some dreadful imagination rushes into the mind, such as Hart justly calls “masterpieces of hell”. These rush in in a moment, when perhaps we are on our knees, or reading the Scripture, or hearing the word. There is something so horrible in them that a man dares not for a moment think of them, even to himself, but strives to the uttermost of his power to banish them from his mind. He will start up from his knees, throw aside the Bible, plunge his thoughts into the world, yea, even into the lusts of the flesh, rather than not drive away such fearful imaginations. It seems as if we were committing the unpardonable sin, as if God would be provoked to cut us off in a moment, and send us to hell; as if the earth itself would open its mouth and swallow up such monsters of iniquity. I will allude no farther to these thoughts than to express my belief that many of God’s children are sadly pestered by them.

The great change which has befallen the soul, the mighty contrast between its present state and what it was “in months past as in the days when God preserved it, when His candle shined upon its head, and the rock poured it out rivers of oil”-this great and unlooked for revolution is of itself sufficient to kindle all the rebellion and enmity of the carnal mind. Upon these, therefore, Satan works. He and his tribe of evil spirits, these “fowls of the mountains”, come flocking down with their flapping wings, and brood over the stump which God has for a time abandoned to them. They are said “to summer upon it”, which expression may signify that they spend a certain season upon the tree cut down; that their visits are not for a day or a week, but for a whole season, a definite and prolonged time. But I think the expression points also to the delight, the infernal glee with which these foul birds come trooping down to their prey. It is their summer when it is the soul’s winter.

If the devil ever feels joy, it is in making souls miserable. The cries of the damned are his music, their curses and blasphemies his songs of triumph, and their anguish and despair his wretched feast. Thus when these fowls of the mountains darken the wretched stump, and spread over it their black and baleful wings, it is their summer. And as they brood over it, they breathe into it their own wretched enmity against all that is holy and blessed. Hard thoughts of God, heavings up of enmity against His sovereignty, boilings up of inward blasphemy, and of such feelings as I dare not express, are either infused or stirred up by them. It is the soul’s mercy that “the holy seed, the substance thereof, is in it, though it has east its leaves”; and that “there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again” and “through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant” Job 14:7-9. Nothing but divine life in the soul could withstand such assaults as these. And thus there is in the midst of, and in spite of, all the heavings and bubblings of inward rebellion, a striving against them, a groaning under them, an abhorrence of them, a self-loathing on account of them, and at times an earnest cry to be delivered from them.

But there are “the beasts of the earth” as well as “the fowls of the mountains”, who sit on this forsaken stump. These are said “to winter upon them”; that is, on the remnants of the broken branches. This expression “winter” points apparently to the season of the year during which the beasts of the earth take up their abode upon it. And it seems to intimate that they and the fowls of the mountains divide the year between them. The one take the summer, and the other the winter. Thus there is change of visitants, but no respite for the tree; a diversity of temptation, but no relief for the soul.

These beasts of the earth, I observed, seemed to signify the lusts of our fallen nature, the wretched inheritance which we derive from our first parent. “The first man is of the earth, earthy.” And, “as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy” 1Co 15:47,48. The sin of our fallen nature is a very mysterious thing. We read of the mystery of iniquity as well as of the mystery of godliness; and the former has lengths, depths, and breadths as well as the latter; depths which no human plumbline ever fathomed, and lengths which no mortal measuring line ever yet meted out.

Thus the way in which sin sometimes seems to sleep, and at other times to awake up with renewed strength; its active, irritable, impatient, restless nature, the many shapes and colours it wears, the filthy holes and puddles in which it grovels, the corners into which it creeps, its deceitfullness, hypocrisy, craft, plausibility, intense selfishness, utter recklessness, desperate madness, and insatiable greediness, are secrets, painful secrets, only learnt by bitter experience. In the spiritual knowledge of these two mysteries-the mystery of sin and the mystery of salvation-all true religion consists. In the school of experience we are kept day after day, learning and forgetting these two lessons, being never able to understand them, and yet not satisfied unless we know them, pursuing after an acquaintance with them, and finding that they still, like a rainbow, recede from us as fast as we pursue. Thus we find realised in our own souls those heavenly contradictions, those divine paradoxes, that the wiser we get, the greater fools we become 1Co 3:18; the stronger we grow, the weaker we are 2Co 12:9,10; the more we possess, the less we have 2Co 6:10; the more completely bankrupt, the more frankly forgiven Lu 7:42; the more utterly lost, the most perfectly saved; and when most like a child, the greatest in the kingdom of heaven Mt 18:4.

Now, as the nature of the fowls of the mountains cannot be known by merely gazing at them as they hover in the air, so the disposition of the beasts of the earth cannot be learned by seeing them in a travelling show, locked up in the dens of a menagerie. We know them best by feeling their talons. These wild beasts during the summer, when the sun was up, and the day hot, lay crouching in their holes and caverns. “The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens” Ps 104:22. The lewd monkey, the snarling dog, the greedy wolf, the untameable hyena, the filthy jackal, the cunning ape, the prowling fox, the ranging bear, the relentless tiger, and every beast of the forest that roars after its prey-all lay in the depths of the wood, unnoticed and unknown, while the sun was high in the heavens. But winter has come, and the beasts of the earth gather round the hewn-down stump.

In the first awakenings of the soul we do not usually know nor feel much of our fallen nature. We look too much to the branches, and not enough to the root; taste the bitterness of the stream more than that of the fountain, and are more engaged with the statue than the hole of the pit whence it was digged. We feel more the guilt of sin committed than of sin indwelling, and think more of the daily coin that passes through our hands than of the mint-the evil treasure of our evil heart-which stamps it with its image and superscription. Caesar’s penny denoted Caesar’s power, though those who boasted they never were in bondage to any man, saw not that the money which circulated among them carried with it a proof of his dominion over them. Nor do we see at first very clearly that the sin which stamps every action has the image of Adam engraved upon it. Still less do we know much about sin in the days of spiritual prosperity.

The good treasure of the good heart is then circulating its gold, stamped with Christ’s image. But when the day of adversity comes, and beggary and bankruptcy ensue, and the evil treasure again issues forth, we begin to look at the die, and feel-bitterly and painfully feel-that every word, look, thought, desire and imagination, as they pass through the heart, are immediately seized, cast under the press, and come forth bearing sin’s coinage upon them. This bank never breaks, this die never wears out, but fresh coin is issued as fast as the old disappears. Guilt, indeed, and a tender conscience would fain stop this circulation, but they can do little else than stand by and count, with sighs and groans and bitter lamentations, the incomings and outgoings of sin’s exchequer.

But what are the effects of these trying dispensations? Such as could be produced in no other way. Whatever wonderful effects are ascribed to the letter of the Word, in this Bible-spreading and Bible-reading day, one thing is certain, that it is utterly inadequate to produce in the soul the fruits and graces of the Spirit. Humility, repentance, filial fear, self-loathing, simplicity and godly sincerity, brokenness of heart, contrition of spirit, meekness, patience, deadness to the world, spiritual discernment, boldness and faithfulness in the cause of truth, an open heart and an open hand-such and similar Divine fruits cannot be gathered out of the Bible as a man picks hips and haws off a hedge. The notions of them may; and in this day, notions and opinions, doctrines and sentiments, creeds and articles, ceremonies and ordinances, cant and whine, superstition and self-righteousness, formality and tradition, have usurped the place of vital godliness. But the reality, the power, the life, the inbeing, the feeling, the experience, in a word, the spiritual possession of these gracious fruits must be wrought into the soul; made, as it were, part and parcel of it, be the blood that circulates through its veins, the meat it eats, the water it drinks, and the clothing it wears.

Now this the letter of the word never has done, and never can do. A peculiar experience must be passed through; and by means of this spiritual experience alone are these divine effects wrought. Thus the fair tree that shot up its boughs to heaven being pruned down to a stump, and the abandoning of it to the fowls of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth, teaches the soul: Humility, Helplessness and Self-loathing!

J.C. Philpot on How can I know that I am ‘Born Again’?

All true religion has a beginning, and a beginning, too, marked, clear and distinct. That the entrance of divine light into the soul, the first communications of supernatural life, the first manifestations of an unknown God, the first buddings forth of a new nature, the first intercourse of man with his Maker; that all these hitherto unfelt, unthought of, uncared for, undesired transactions should take place in the soul, and the soul be ignorant of them, should know neither their time nor their place, is a contradiction. The evidence of feeling is as strong, as distinct, as perceptible as the evidence of sight. I know by sight that this object is black and that white. I know as certainly by feeling that this substance is cold and that hot. I may not be able to tell why the one is hot and the other cold, but I know the fact that they are so.

Thus a new-born soul may not be able to tell why it feels, nor whence those feelings arise; but it is as conscious that it does feel as that it exists. It suits well the empty profession of the day to talk about early piety, and convictions from childhood, and Sunday school religion, and baptismal regeneration, and infant lispings, and the dawnings of the youthful mind. “The privilege of pious parents, of family religion, of the domestic altar, of a gospel ministry, of obedience to ordinances, of a father’s prayers, of a mother’s instruction”-who has not heard these things brought forward again and again as the beginning of what is called Christian conversion and decided piety? Many of these things are well in their place, and not to be despised or neglected; but when they are held up as the almost necessary beginning of a work altogether heavenly and supernatural, they must be set aside. Thousands have had these things who have perished in their sins; and thousands have not had them who have been saved with an everlasting salvation.

A true beginning is a beginning felt. I will not say that we must be able to point out the moment, the hour, the day or the week, though the nearer we approach the precision of time, the nearer we approach to a satisfactory evidence. But the season, the time within certain limits, when new feelings, new emotions, new wants, new desires arose in the heart, can never be forgotten by one who has really experienced them. To smother over, to mystify, to smuggle up the beginning is to throw discredit on the whole. If the beginning be wrong, all is wrong. If there be no divine beginning, there can be no divine middle, and no divine end; and if the first step be false, every successive step will partake of the original error. If a man, therefore, who professes to be walking in the way never knew the door, and never found it a strait and narrow one, he has clambered over the wall, and is a thief and a robber. His sentence is already recorded. “Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness” Mt 22:13.

True religion then begins with an entrance into the soul of supernatural light and supernatural life. How or why it comes the soul knows not; for “the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit” Joh 3:8. The wind itself is not seen, but its effects are felt. The sound of a going is heard “in the tops of the mulberry trees” 1Ch 14:15 , where God Himself is not seen. The voice of the Lord powerful and full of majesty was heard by those who saw no similitude De 4:12. Thus effects are felt, though muses are unknown. Streams flow into the heart from a hidden source; rays of light beam into the soul from an unrisen sun; and kindlings of life awaken in us a new existence out of an unseen fountain. The new-born babe feels life in all its limbs, though it knows not yet the earthly father from whence that natural life sprung. And thus new-born souls are conscious of feelings hitherto unpossessed, and are sensible of a tide of life, mysterious and incomprehensible, ebbing and flowing in their heart, though “Abba Father” has not yet burst from their lips.

A man’s body is alive to every feeling, from a pin scratch to a mortal wound, from a passing ache to an incurable disease. The heart cannot flutter or intermit for a single second its wonted stroke without a peculiar sensation that accompanies it, notices it and registers it. Shall feelings, then, be the mark and evidence of natural life, and not of spiritual? Shall our ignoble part, the creature of a day, our perishing body, our dust of dust, have sensations to register every pain and every pleasure, and be tremblingly alive to every change without and every change within; and shall not our immortal soul be equally endowed with a similar barometer to fluctuate up and down the scale of spiritual life? We must lay it down then at the very threshold of vital godliness, that if a man has not been conscious of new feelings, and cannot point out, with more or less precision, some particular period, some never-to-be-forgotten season, when these feelings came unbidden into his heart, he has not yet passed from death into life. He is not in Christ, if he is not a new creature 2Co 5:17.

But the question is arising to your lips, “What are these new feelings? Describe them, if you will or can, that we may compare our heart with them, for as in water face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man”. I believe, then, that the first sensation of a new-born soul is that of light. “The entrance of Thy words giveth light” Ps 119:130. “The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up” Mt 4:16. This was the light from heaven above the brightness of the sun, which struck persecuting Saul to the earth, and of which he afterwards said, “God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts” 2Co 4:6.

But, together with this ray of supernatural light, and blended with it in mysterious union, supernatural life flows into the soul. “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth” Jas 1:18. “You hath He quickened”-that is, made alive-”who were dead in trespasses and sins” Eph 2:1. Every ray of natural light is not single, but sevenfold, as may be seen in the rainbow, where every distinct ray of the sun is broken into seven different colours. And thus the first ray of supernatural light which shines into the soul out of the Sun of righteousness is really not single, but manifold. Mingled with heavenly light, and inseparable from it, life, feeling and power, faith and prayer, godly fear and holy reverence, conviction of guilt and hungerings and thirstings after righteousness, flow into the heart. And it is this blended union of feelings which distinguishes the warm sunlight which melts the heart from the cold moonlight that enlightens the head. The latter begins and ends in hard, dry, barren knowledge, like the Aurora Borealis playing over the frozen snows of the north; whilst the former penetrates into and softens the secret depths of the soul, and carries with it a train of sensations altogether new, heavenly and divine.

Thus feeling is the first evidence of supernatural life-a feeling compounded of two distinct sensations, one referring to God, and the other referring to self. The same ray of light has manifested two opposite things, “for that which maketh manifest is light”; and the sinner sees at one and the same moment God and self, justice and guilt, power and helplessness, a holy law and a broken commandment, eternity and time, the purity of the Creator and the filthiness of the creature. And these things he sees, not merely as declared in the Bible, but as revealed in himself as personal realities, involving all his happiness or all his misery in time and in eternity. Thus it is with him as though a new existence had been communicated, and as if for the first time he had found there was a God.

It is as though all his days he had been asleep, and were now awakened-asleep upon the top of a mast, with the raging waves beneath; as if all his past life were a dream, and the dream were now at an end. He has been hunting butterflies, blowing soap bubbles, angling for minnows, picking daisies, building card-houses, and idling life away like an idiot or a madman. He had been perhaps wrapped up in a profession, smuggled into a church, daubed over with untempered mortar, advanced even to the office of a deacon, or mounted in a pulpit. He had learned to talk about Christ, and election, and grace, and fill his mouth with the language of Zion. And what did he know of these things? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Ignorant of his own ignorance of all kinds of ignorance the worst, he thought himself rich, and increased with goods, and to have need of nothing, and knew not he was wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked Re 3:17.

But one ray of supernatural light, penetrating through the vail spread over the heart, has revealed that terrible secret-a just God, who will by no means clear the guilty. This piercing ray has torn away the bed too short, and stripped off the covering too narrow. It has rent asunder “the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils, and it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty” Isa 3:22-24.

A sudden, peculiar conviction has rushed into the soul. One absorbing feeling has seized fast hold of it, and well nigh banished every other. “There is a God, and I am a sinner before Him”, is written upon the heart by the same divine finger that traced those fatal letters on the palace wall of the king of Babylon, which made the joints of his loins to be loosed, and his knees to smite one against another Da 5:5,6. “What shall I do? Where shall I go? What will become of me? Mercy, O God! Mercy, mercy! I am lost, ruined, undone! Fool, madman, wretch, monster that I have been! I have ruined my soul. O my sins, my sins! O eternity, eternity!”

Such and similar cries and groans, though differing in depth and intensity, go up out of the new-born soul well nigh day and night at the first discovery of God and of itself. These feelings have taken such complete possession of the heart that it can find no rest except in calling upon God. This is the first pushing of the young bud through the bark, the first formation of the green shoot, wrapped up as yet in its leaves, and not opened to view. These are the first pangs and throes of the new birth before the tidings are brought, “A man-child is born”. “What shall I do to be saved?” cried the jailer. “God be merciful to me a sinner!” exclaimed the publican. “Woe is me, for I am undone!” burst forth from the lips of Isaiah.