doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is to
imitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen.

Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. The
cross is rough, and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep
its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is
finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory
and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away
and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the Presence of the
living God.

_Lord, how excellent are Thy ways, and how devious and dark are the ways
of man. Show us how to die, that we may rise again to newness of life.
Rend the veil of our self-life from the top down as Thou didst rend the
veil of the Temple. We would draw near in full assurance of faith. We
would dwell with Thee in daily experience here on this earth so that we
may be accustomed to the glory when we enter Thy heaven to dwell with
Thee there. In Jesus' name, Amen._

IV

_Apprehending God_

O taste and see.--Psa. 34:8

It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years ago
called attention to the inferential character of the average man's faith
in God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a
deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remains
personally unknown to the individual. "He _must_ be," they say,
"therefore we believe He is." Others do not go even so far as this; they
know of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think the
matter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and
have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the
various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God
is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He
is law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena of
existence.

These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them have
one thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. The
possibility of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered their
minds. While admitting His existence they do not think of Him as
knowable in the sense that we know things or people.

Christians, to be sure, go further than this, at least in theory. Their
creed requires them to believe in the personality of God, and they have
been taught to pray, "Our Father, which art in heaven." Now personal