Sanctified success.

No wonder success comes to the sanctified man.  Indwelt by the Shekinah, filled witll the Holy Ghost, his whole being energized with power and force, “whatsoever he doeth prospers.”

CHAPTER XI.

Visits of angels.

DESCRIPTIVE PSALM.

The ninety-first Psalm is a painstaking description of the blessings and benefits bestowed upon the man that “dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High.”  Without doubt the entire chapter should be taken as a photograph of the sanctified man.  Among other things, this fortunate and favored person is told that he is to have angelic guards and ministers who will protect him and keep him “in all his ways.”

God’s own.

The sanctified are in a peculiar sense God’s own, and all the resources of heaven are pledged to their protection.  All the fire companies of the firmament will turn out to extinguish a fire if it kindle on God’s saints.  If need be, Jehovah will empty His balm jars but the wounds of warriors shall be healed.  Angels are detailed for our protection:  heavenly visitants hover near us lest the fires of affliction destroy us.

Understanding Christ.

The moment the soul is sanctified, it begins to understand Christ in a new and delightful sense.  It is given unto it to not only sit at His feet in the temple, but to groan with Him in Grethsemane.  It understands Him, and, in suffering, is “as He is in this world.”

A dark hour.

It was a dark, dark hour for the Master.  He had been praying a long while, perhaps for several hours.  The place was one familiar to Him.  Many a night after a long, wearisome day of teaching in the temple, He had labored painfully up the slope of the Mount of Olives in search of the quiet of “the Garden.”  Here the Savior had His oratory.  Sometimes the disciples were with Him; at other times He was alone.

A night of crisis.

But this night was a night of crisis.  The old olive trees, in all their centuries of life, had never witnessed so intense a struggle as that which took place on the night of His passion.  Alive to all the pathos of the hour, awake to all the gravity of the situation, sensitive to the slightest breath, He prays to “the Father” with that desperation in which the flight of time and the doings of the world are all forgotten.

Uncertainty.

There was much about the hour which made it a painful one.  There was, first of all, an uncertainty concerning the will of “the Father.”  With a great cry the lonely Christ fell to the ground:  “If it be thy will let this cup pass, nevertheless” let thy will, whatsoever it is, “be done.”  Evidently He was not at that time really sure what the plan of “the Father” was in regard to Him.