God's children, who are recognising these great any cost were invited to confess that desire by facts of revelation, is rapidly increasing. standing up, whilst others remained in prayer. Deeply solemn were these moments of silent confession, as scores stood up in that tent filled with praying souls. So again, after an interval, those who had received definite blessing were invited publicly to acknowledge it by standing. One who received a very remarkable blessing at this Convention thus writes:-"I was obliged to stand. . . . There I stood-a silence pervaded the whole assembly for a brief moment. It was broken by the leader simply, slowly, and Then as to the other question-the methods best calculated to bring distressed and longing believers into a definite experience of Christ's all-sufficiency, to fill to the full their every need. We believe the Church has much to learn on this point. But we would acknowledge with gratitude what our Heavenly Father has already taught many of His children. The truth is, souls longing for a life of liberty and triumph need as patient and tender dealing as sinners seeking salvation. They must have their "after-pointedly, repeating these words 'HE saith— meetings" as well as anxious inquirers after pardon and peace. A decided step in this direction was made at the last Keswick Convention. Very solemnising was it to see so many, with intensely earnest faces, waiting upon God at these "after-meetings." It may be well to indicate briefly the nature and purpose of these meetings. They were seasons of solemn heart-searching. Yet they were times of calm restfulness before God. Time was given in silence, for everyone to know and see his true condition, for a deliberate casting of one's all upon the altar, for a believing grasp of some one or more of the facts the Scripture reveals, for a letting down of one's soul with all its need, cares, and weakness, into Christ for His keeping. The soul thus seeking a truer life was led out to express its desire, audibly in some verse of a hymn, in the attitude of prayer, and then being brought face to face, so to speak, with some portion of God's Word, was led to confess its confidence in the language of faith, in some appropriate refrain. As it was said, those thus waiting were invited to spend a "believing time" upon some given declaration of Scripture. There was an entire absence of all mere fleshly excitement, and yet to many these quiet seasons were moments of the intensest joy. But there was another feature in these aftermeetings. They afforded an opportunity for personal confession either of need felt or of blessing received. Those who were really earnestly desiring to receive "the blessing" at He saith. He hath said, I will never—never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' 'Think of that!' The power of this word fell full upon me. I was completely overcome, incapable of stirring, or of utterance. All I knew was I believed every word of it, and the light and joy of Christ abiding-of my abiding Saviour-I never remember to have realised. . . I cannot speak of rapture, I cannot say I have exuberant spirits, but I joyfully realise I am now in Christ and Christ in me the Hope of Glory'. . . and that He will keep what I have committed unto Him.” In most, if not in all, cases of definite blessing, it is instructive to note that that which gave relief was not so much what man had said, as some statement of God's word--the Scripture. In no other way, as it seems to us, can we hope for blessings to be really permanent. Let the soul be brought to rest on some Divine declaration, on some statement of fact, or some unfailing promise, and at once it has a solid basis to stand on. This is true of all classes of anxious souls-sinners seeking salvation, or saints seeking the fulness of blessing. We thank God for the progress thus made; for God's gracious leading during these days and years of His reviving grace. May we be kept in humble dependence upon Him-in a willing, obedient attitude towards Him, to follow as He leads, and to obey as He commands. Keswick Convention. JULY 24TH TO 29TH. "PRAISE the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever!" It is impossible to begin even a small outline of the Keswick Convention in any other way than by praise; praise to the Lord for what He showed Himself to be. This has marked our week here with an indelible seal. "It was Jesus Himself" is the voice in which by one consent the praise was given, whether in the open testimonies, or in the individual face-to-face thanksgivings. It is not so much thanks for "the blessing" as a “clearer view of Christ" that makes the joyful looks and "the Cleanser," rather than the "cleansing;" the "Holy One," and not only "holiness; "-in short, "Jesus Himself," personal, living, present Saviour, has been the whole summary of all the teaching this week: and we see that wherever we go we have the blessing in a very por table form, for two little words hold all we have seen, and all we shall ever see now and for ever"IN HIM;" and we have Him. spread wish for cleansing each temple were a sign of the Master's return. There were more teachers this year than last. We greatly missed the voice and look of Pasteur Stockmayer, whose far in-reaching and penetrating revealings of God's truth are rarely equalled. Instead of him, we had the joy of welcoming Pasteur Theodore Monod, whose simplicity is the simplicity of depth, and his power of making things so obvious was a great help to many, and cleared many puzzles. In the preliminary meeting on Saturday evening (22nd), Canon Battersby laid very great stress on this promise, "I will guide thee with Mine eye,” asking for much prayer that every speaker might be near enough to catch the hint from the Lord as to what he should say, and what line should be taken. It was most markedly answered, and from the opening meeting on Monday evening one thought prevailed, and Jesus Himself was presented. At this meeting it was very striking how at once we were, so to speak plunged into the very deep of truth; no shallow waters to wade through first; but we began where so many Conventions often end-on the death-side of Christian life-and His death was showed forth not only as our atonement, once for all, but also pressed as a continuous fact in our lives by our "daily dying." MONDAY EVENING. It was the eighth year of the Convention, and M. Monod happily remarked that, as the eighth day of every feast which God ordained in Israel was the crowning day, so we might expect this our eighth year to be a grand time of blessing. And indeed it Our first meeting opened with prayer by Canon proved so, just because the Lord Jesus was so mani- BATTERSBY, and then he read Psalm xlvi., with its festly exalted, and held in His only proper place-triumph-cry of "The Lord of Hosts is with us!" "in the midst; " the centre round which our lives-grand ground to start upon. should revolve. Did not this prove that the Holy Spirit was very fully present? And therefore, on this eighth day, as of old, there could be offered the special burnt-offering of joyful se f-consecration, to which all the seven days previous had led up. Our first hymn was No. 340. And then Canon BATTERSBY repeated again Psalm xlvi. 7, 11, and said: First I would say to you all, Welcome, in the name of the Lord. Well-come in its old meaning, and I trust we shall all know it in The eighth year suggests another thought. The that sense. Why is it that we have come here? seventh year was the Sabbath year for the land the To be blessed, and to be a blessing. We have Lord cared for, when there was nothing to be sown come for new, fresh blessing from the hand of God. or reaped (was our last year's gathering something And I do desire that to be a blessing may be a like that to any), and the eighth year they might more prominent thought than ever before. How sow again, and "eat yet of old fruit." It was "old often we have failed here. How often we have fruit" we enjoyed, the Bread of God come down been shut up when we ought to have been open from heaven, unexhausted yet in His "The Lord of hosts is with us." to sus- fountains. power tain and satisfy. Then the ninth year; that was to Fox has often told us who God's hosts are. (1 Cor. be the year of the new fruit. Shall it be so with us? i. 27, 28.) These are, in the truest sense, the Sal-that He shall have come before another year, and vation Army of our God. We don't need a badge give us to drink with Him the "new" wine of the to show we belong to this army, let us prove it by kingdom. It does seem as if the longing, wide- our lives. Are we going to be the Salvation Army? Mr. We have been fond of sermons and conventions. this your meaning? Die, then! and then as you I fear we have not been like God's hosts, content look up the Holy Ghost descends; then you hear to be "weak." We have been too strong for Him the voice you look for, "This is my beloved son, in to use, and we need to get down from our pedestals; whom I am well pleased." But as you long for this, then the Lord will use us. We read in this Psalm I beseech you in God's name, my brother, take God's of the heathen. They are all around us, and we way, and be willing to go through the baptism of are here to carry on the Lord's fight, that all may death. Then shall result this, as with Jesus—“ He be brought under His sceptre. "The kingdoms began to be about thirty years of age; " that was the were moved," but His voice did the work. I pray age when a man could perform the full Priest's work. that the result of this Convention may be to turn Let us be willing to die with Him, that He may out a fresh army of faithful soldiers and servants to consecrate us for full priestly work and close comfight the Lord's battles. munion with Him. Rev. W. HASLAM and Rev. E. H. HOPKINS both followed in prayer, asking Him that He would bring us to the point of breaking down, that He might alone be exalted. Canon BATTERSBY then asked whether those who had been travelling to-day had any message to give, received on their journey. Then came what follows, words which proved the very key-note of the whole week, whose vibration ran through every gathering. Rev. H. WEBB-PEPLOE opened with powerful words, of which the following is but an outline: I would ask you to turn to Luke iii. 21-23. "Jesus also being baptised, and praying, the Heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon Him; and a voice came from Heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased. And Jesus Himself began to be about thirty years of age." The baptism which Jesus went through was not only outward, but contained a deep spiritual reality of death. "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." It was death in advance, so to speak: and until each one of us who are gathered here in earnest desire for the power of the Holy Ghost have been through the same baptism of death with Him, there is no possibility of Heaven being open to us, or the Spirit anointing us. Death in sin is the condition of each unregenerate man since the fall, death for sin is the Divine requirement, fulfilled in Christ, and then the death to sin, the death of self, is the position of each believer. To be blessed here there must not only be the thought of Heaven opened, but a deliberate yielding of self unto death, fulfilling all righteousness by entering into the death of Christ, and realising that the old life is done away. This must be done voluntarily on our part, as well as judicially on His. So to-night, being baptised into His death, we may see Heaven opened. Come and see God. Is Then prayer followed, asking that He would show us where we had been living the self-life, that we might be willing that it should end. We sang Hymn 110, and then Mr. Fox followed in exactly the same line, pressing deeper the same thought-death with Christ for life; death in Him for fruitfulness. "I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!" and one of the clearest reasons why we were straitened was because we refused to accept the baptism of death, and to reckon ourselves dead. And our first gathering ended with the prayer, "Oh let the awe of Thy holy presence subdue us, and humble us to the dust. Then shall we no longer live but die, because we have seen God. No man shall see My face and live.' Nay, Lord, but see Thee we must, and therefore die we will!" The solemn words found many an echo, and these two addresses gave the tone to all, and the subject was followed out by all who spoke, with one voice, so clearly and definitely, doctrinally clear and pointed, as well as pressed as an experience, that we could go on to resurrection before we ended, and to the joyous Ascension thought of His realised perpetual presence in its unbroken joy. TUESDAY. Monod, on the defeat of Ai, brought many low before Him, and unveiled before Him. "What gold, what garment, hinders my victory, Lord?" was the cry after it. At a later meeting, one of Mr. Peploe's vast but definite addresses impressed deeper all we had heard. He brought it close to us that consecration was not one act merely, but should be carried on moment by moment, and was only an act as you would call breathing an act. It was the activity of faith. The basis on which consecration was demanded was that He says: "All things are yours." The same Epistle says: "Ye are not your own;" marvellous paradox, only to be explained as it is accepted. All His unsearchable riches mine, and yet nothing is mine, not even myself, not one faculty is mine to use. Much prayer followed, that the paradox might be fully learned; and an address by Rev. E. W. Moore which immediately followed, on "God is faithful, by whom ye are called into the fellowship of His Son," reminded us of one part of it-fellowship in His death; and it is because we are so slow to die that we enter so little into the glory of fellowship with His risen Presence. Everything is included in the Cross. When we look at it, we see a Dying Man; look again, and see a Present God; again, and see the sin of the world; further look, and lo, you see yourself there with Him, crucified, and your own life ended; and pardon, peace, purity, and power are included there. The evening meeting was a memorable one. Rev. Hubert Brooke began by God's use of a thorn-bush such as we, and how He makes it a place for His fire to dwell in. Mr. Fox then followed, from Hosea v. 13, showing the estimate God has of His own presence, in that He says, "I will return to My · place." The chief point which the Lord the Spirit pressed home through the next words, "until they acknowledge their offence," was the power of the great remedial force of confession; the breaking open the shell of self and laying the soul bare before Him, exposed without protection to His searching gaze, entirely at the disposal of His mercy. The conclusion was irresistible-will you yield to Him now? Do you want the power of His presence to be restored or quickened? Yield, then, now, and confess; come now to the Cross, the place of death, and you will find Him. He says, "I will return to My place," and His place is Jesus. God is always at home in Jesus; go there and find Him. The after-meeting was very solemnising. Through the words of His servant, Rev. E. H. Hopkins, the Lord broke down the last resistance of many Christian rebels! Oh, that there should be such a thing possible! Thank God, His word proclaims gifts, even for the rebellious." WEDNESDAY. This day the power and presence of the living Lord was even more felt. The early meeting could begin with a praise hymn already, for the Lord could heal "immediately," since His people were ready and empty. Then followed a word from Mr. Bowker, which we would like to give in its entirety, so forcible, clear, and pointed, on the same subject along which all the speakers were so distinctly led, on 2 Cor. iv. 10, 11; how the bearing about the dying preceded the manifested life, and reminding us that it was the submission of the will—the centre of the being-which was the "dying daily." The Bible Reading at 9.45 was in Mr. Peploe's hands, taking in a grand view of God's meaning of death, from the word "crucified" in Galatians. "I have been crucified" (ii. 20); "Ye have crucified the flesh" (v. 24); "the world is crucified unto me" (vi. 14). Will you any longer try to escape God's intention for you? The prayer which fol lowed gave us as the sacrifice He asked for, accepting the nails of painful circumstances, the piercings of daily providences, as all part of God's way of working out His will of death for us, without which He cannot manifest the life of Jesus in our body. If you evade the death, you escape the life! The power of the Spirit made many see what it meant : and, oh, may He keep us always accepting the small things in life which bring about the experimental and continuous fulfilment of what He has done as an accomplished fact once for all in every believer, in crucifying Him with Christ. At the 11.30 meeting Canon Battersby read portions of a letter from one whose voice has long been familiar to many, Mr. T. Croome. It was written under very solemn circumstances, the writer not knowing how soon it might please his Lord to end his long trying illness by calling him to Himself. Thus penned, under the possible shadow of death, the words of long and tested experience came with the greater weight, as he thus writes :—“ The experience of death, 'crucifixion with Christ,' is as real as it is rare with Christians. It is the great want of the Church, and a felt want, as witness the seeking after it at your last Convention, when it formed such a topic of address. But the experience of the 'place of death' comes not as an attainment, nor in consequence of any new dealing between my soul and God; it comes, and is maintained, simply and solely by taking by faith the place of crucifixion, in which the death of Christ has already placed me, believing the fact of my already being, by virtue of identification with Christ on the Cross, DEAD, and accepting the fact and its consequences for me. "The experience of the 'place of death' arises from accepting the fact, not from any experimental attainment of mine making the fact, and He who deals with the place of death' as an attainment of mine, or teaches that I have to die twice, only with unhallowed hands seeks to add to the finished work of Calvary. An exceedingly searching address from Rev. E. W. Moore, on Heb. ix. 13, followed as a very candle of the Lord to many; as he brought forward the "terrible possibility of living ones bringing forth dead works." The remedy was then shown from Num. xix., and that it was ready prepared beforehand for instant application, that no defilement might last. This awoke a great longing. "Oh, make me sensitive enough to recognise any defiling touch at once!" because it not only hurts the one who touches, but taints all who come near. In the evening, the two addresses made the aftermeeting a very fruitful and deciding time. M. Monod's simple and yet deep way of putting the claim of the Lord Jesus was made the means of many owning that claim then and there, and one little word in its very simplicity, pierced between many joints. "Take Christ. What is taking? Taking is using: Taking is using! and you cannot 'Why, then, if so simple, do so few believers take until you use." Then on Rev. iii. 20, he said, know the place of death '? "1. As with a first salvation from guilt, they stumble over its exceeding simplicity. I am crucified,' and want the feeling before accepting the fact. "2. They do not want the consequences of knowing the 'place of death.' Here thousands will stop short. With a first salvation many a man sees the way of salvation, and desires to be saved from wrath, but he does not want the result of conversion on his present life, and so delays, neglects, refuses. And so with the 'place of death.' I know but few believers who would care to know it really, and with all its consequences. Of all I talk to most stop as soon as the results are shown, and 'cannot quite agree;' but I am satisfied the want grows in the Church, and will probably be more and more evident at this Convention." May the Lord answer the prayer of His dear servant, and enable us to take the fact as a fact, prepared to accept all the issues of so accepting. Rev. W. Haslam then spoke on Rom. vi. 23, and showed how in this and the previous chapters sin was dealt with as a transgression, a disease, and a master, and how in each case, by the work of Christ for us, we were made free from sin, not in the sense of eradication, but in that of full and complete mastery over it. This was the point so clearly urged by Canon Battersby on the previous Sunday morn ing. But, Mr. Haslam added, we must not forget that freedom from sin meant bondage to God. that to learn that we were wretched, miserable, and poor, was a long lesson, but it was not the last. After it comes, "Buy of Me that thou mayest be rich." Buy? What with? With thyself. Will you not give yourself, the self you are always complaining of? Ah, but so often, when it comes to the point, you find that the self is a very old friend, and you do not like to trust yourself wholly into His hands; and you look at His wares, and examine, and praise, and wish they were yours, and then you will not pay down the price, and so you go away poor and sad still. Rev. C. A. Fox's words still further clenched in this thought. "The Lord is indeed among us as a Divine Pilgrim to-night, showing us His wares, and and whispering, Buy of Me!'" Will you? He says, "all things are yours." Then on what principle may we prove them to be ours, and enjoy them, so that His words may be true: "Thou mayest be rich"? There are four principles on which we may make them ours. (1) Faith and the Word. They must go together, and the only reason why we are not rich is because we will not fasten on the Word with our whole affection. Tarry by any promise He has given, and hold on to it until He meets you there. He is sure to come, He will not tarry, for He always travels by the promises. (2) Death and the will. This is very important. Amid confusion of terms I can only say what I have learned by deep experience of years, that there |