“First and foremost, I thank God for a true conversion.  When I got religion, I got it good and thorough.  Christ became everything to me.  The law of sin, or temptation to worldly conformity of any kind, was completely eradicated from my heart; and from that hour to this the law of Christ has fully satisfied my soul, and made me gloriously free and independent of the world and its maxims and pleasures.  And now, after fifty-five years’ enjoyment of peace with God and humble devotion to his service, I bless him that I ever gave him my heart and devoted myself to his work.  I am happy.  The consoling comforts of the grace of God are with me by day and by night, and the blessed future is radiant with the hope of being ‘numbered with the saints in glory everlasting.’”

In these days of compromise and doubt we need to have as definite an experience of salvation as had William Butler.  He who would win others to a new life must himself possess that life, and know it, being able to say with Paul, “I know whom I have believed.”

STUDY IX.

A complete surrender.

Memory Verse:  “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
    that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable
    unto God, which is your reasonable service.”—­(Rom. xii, 1.)

Scripture for Meditation:  Rom. vi, 1-13.

John Wesley said, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven upon the earth.”

A life surrendered to God will be an invincible life, while the life only partly surrendered will know nothing but defeat.  Someone says that, in the transfer of property, any reservation implies, also, reserved rights.  If a man sells a ten-acre lot, and keeps a yard square in the center for himself, he has a right of way across what he has sold to get to his reservation.  And if, in our surrender, we keep back anything, “that constitutes the devil’s territory, and he will trample over all we call consecrated to get to his own.”  Therefore a complete surrender of the life to God is absolutely necessary.

To the rich young man who came to him, Jesus said, “One thing thou lackest.”  He demanded an unconditional surrender of every interest of his life.  But the young man was not willing to make the surrender, and went away sorrowful.  Of every man and woman Jesus asks the same surrender.  But many now wander off in the darkness of formality and doubt because they are not willing.  Three things are implied in such a surrender:  (1) An acknowledgment of the Divine ownership and human stewardship in all temporal affairs; (2) A complete submission of the will to God; (3) The supremacy of Jesus Christ in the heart and life, so that the interests of his kingdom are first, always, and everywhere.