A Review of Truth:
A message to the Quemerford meeting, 1896
and Holding the Head – 1873
– J. B. Stoney (1814-97)

'The Calling and Grace of the Remnant', 1894 'Ministry by J. B. Stoney', 2: 493 This was not "the last occasion on which he was there" but the previous to the last year. Two later addresses are dated 1895.

The 'List of Meetings – 1963' shows Quemerford as a subdivision of Chippenham. JT served there in 1926, the only occasion on record. 'Ministry by J. Taylor', 25: 370, 389. The following comments are interesting: J.W.D.  Historically the annual meetings at Quemerford ceased because the monthly features were not in evidence. J.T.  The princely element had gone. 'Ministry by J. Taylor', 92: 423, Hamilton, Ontario, 1938.

"Immediately upon the reading of Mr. Stoney's message, Mr. Raven rose and, with much feeling, delivered the … address 'Responsibility as to the Maintenance of the Truth' ".

G. W. W.

This 'Review' is now in Ministry by J. B. Stoney, 2: 527, which has all his ministry at Quemerford, 1873-95. FER's address is on the Ministry: F. E. Raven page, and is also now in Ministry by F. E. Raven, 2: 268. See Biography: J. B. Stoney and History: The Early Years: Remarks of J. B. Stoney.

Review of how the Truth, which the Lord Revived to the Church in this Century, has been Opposed and how Little Accepted

J.  N.  DARBY

The Lord was pleased to revive through dear Mr. Darby the truth that Christ is the Head of the Body, while he was still in the Church of England.

• Almost concurrent with this the opposition began. Dr. Pusey, who was of his own age, brought into force the great clerical opposition, called Ritualism.

• At that time some of the leading men at Oxford – Mr. [B. W.] Newton and Mr. [J. L.] Harris – left the Established Church, and consorted with Mr. Darby.

• He having also left the Established Church, now propounded the light which he had received, having first learnt the Gospel which enabled him to apprehend the truth himself.

I did not know Mr. Darby until after he was in Plymouth, in 1833.

• After leaving the University, I went to stay with him at a brother's house at Cork, where I was his constant companion;

• and just to give an idea of the truth that came out, I mention an attempt of mine to compose a hymn, entirely a new idea to me, as a divinity student, raw from the University, and before I was twenty.

[See No. 7 in 1973 Hymn Book]

You may see from this how very clearly was brought out the fact that our place is heaven, and that Christ is our Head there.

There is, thank God, a better and clearer idea now of what the new creation is than there was thirty years ago;

• but many of the evangelists do not really apprehend fully that the old man is removed from the eye of God in judgment.

• If this were truly apprehended they would not address the old man by seeking to work on his feelings.

• It is quite right to awaken souls to their lost condition, but the grace of God is that He has removed that man in judgment.

But I believe that what is not understood is the nature of the Man, the unique character of the One, who has superseded the first man before the eye of God,

• and until this is apprehended and that we derive from Christ, as members of His body, there can be no apprehension that He is our Head – the source of all life and power, or of what it is to be united to Him.

The Lord give grace to His saints to awaken them to their immense loss in not making more of the great truth which He has revived among us.

• I see everyone's power is in proportion as he approaches to it.

J. B. Stoney

Scarborough, May 26th, 1896.

The first error in Plymouth at the first division was the idea that the church was to go through the judgments;

• and the result of this was that Christ was said to go through all the experiences of the remnant in the Psalms, and this disclosed heresy as to Christ's nature.

• His body is identified with Him. When Christ moves His body moves; when He moves from the throne, the church moves; she is then removed from this scene.

• The moment He moves off the throne, Christian blessings will cease. I do not say there will be no more conversions,
  • but the church period as a parenthesis will end; church ministry ceases, and all not of Christ in Christendom is spued out of His mouth.

The next division was caused by the denial virtually that Christ bore the judgment of God.

• It was asserted that when He died He did not give up the life to which sin could be attached – i.e., as a sin-offering – and this was culpable ignorance of His nature.

• Years after, it was maintained that an offence done to the church was not an offence done to the Head.

• The plea for this perversion was that if you say so you make the church equal to Christ.

• The truth is that you must not separate them; we have no idea of the evil working of this leaven.

The last division was caused by those who insisted that eternal life was given to the man here on believing, which is really on the same principle as under the law:

• "This do and thou shalt live".

• They did not see that, as the man under judgment has gone in judgment, you must be severed from the man under death by Christ's death, in order to be brought into life in Him.

• In a word that the life did not come to the man under judgment, but that the man who was under judgment being delivered from it in Christ's death, has life, not in himself but in Christ; Christ is his life.

In Romans you are dead to sin, and to the old man; you touch life for your own relief.

• But in Colossians you have died with Christ to the world, you are outside of everything here, outside of the place where the man is, and you come to where there is nothing but Christ:
  • "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all" – Christ only.

• Then you know the Head; there is no human voice. What a moment for the soul!

There are two truths that, I might say, mark christianity: one is, I have to break with the man here, and with the place where that man is. Man is here on the earth, and I have to refuse man where man is;

• but I have a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, and we are united to Him in the place where He is, in heaven.

• It is true we are still in the flesh and still on the earth, but while so, we are to walk as He walked who is in heaven. We are to work it out here on earth.

• It is with that intention that I hope to be able to bring before you what are the practical results of the truth in this passage.

• Our Lord Jesus Christ is now seated at the right hand of God. I need hardly say to any of you that there could be no union with Him as here on earth.

• In John 20 we have a new thing introduced, and it is marked by the first day of the week. To any heart at all drawn to the Lord this is a most wonderful scene; the beginning of the new creation.

• It is the first day of the week, the Lord is risen from the dead, and He is now introducing us to what He is to us on earth and what He is to us in heaven.

• The first thing for the heart practically to learn is, that there is no connection at all with Christ but by the Holy Spirit.

• Where God's grace is manifested to my heart is in the death of Christ. He was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.

• If I set aside the man here in Christ's death, then I have to do with Christ in quite a new order.

• It is not that souls do not know it, but it is a new thing which, in all its newness, ought practically to characterise us entirely.

• I do not speak of it as a thing we can take in in a moment. Sorrowful though it is, we must own it, that we have to be broken down in one thing after another;
  • but it is a great thing to be assured of the fact that that is our true place,

  • that we are united to Him who is risen from the dead, and who is set down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens.

• The Colossians did not deny union, but the danger with them was, and with us too is, whether we are realising the benefits that flow to us from it.

• I often say and wonder to myself, 'Am I really united to that blessed One, the Son of the Father, and can I be moved by this poor world and the things of it?'

• Unless the Holy Spirit holds your heart, you are a poor trifling thing, moved about like a child by one thing and another,
  • I do want your hearts to be moved by the fact itself of what a wonderful thing it is "holding the Head".

• God in His mercy has been pleased to recover this truth for us.

• I believe that many a conscientious person has the sense that things are not all right, yet does not know the remedy of "holding the Head". It would correct a great deal of the disorder and confusion.

The first thing is the Holy Spirit, and mark how it comes out in the gospel of John.

• When John the baptist sees our Lord, he says,
  • "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world".

• There is evil in the world, and One has come in who will eventually take it all away. But that is not all; he goes on.
  • "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him … the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Spirit".

• There is one mind. God sent His Son to take away the sin of the world. We were powerless to meet the ruin, and God sent His Son to bear the judgment upon us.
  • "He it is who baptises with the Holy Spirit".

• That is what comes out; and as I am on that, I may mention another thing that brings in the second point.

• The disciples follow Him – and very interesting as showing how the divine mind leads to the highest point – they ask Him,
  • "Where dwellest thou?"

• Has your heart ever gone out to the Lord in that way? For that brings out the second point.

• If I have gone out to Him, the Man that is away, I must refuse the man that is here, and the place where that man is;
  • but I must walk in this place according to the principles of that Man who is away – like Jesus who is not here but in heaven.

• That is the great problem to work out, and it is what we are set for, but it is only by the Holy Spirit that we can act like Him.

First, then, I go to the contrasts. I have the Lord Jesus Christ, the Man now, and in heaven.

• It was a place not known before. I hope I shall not surprise any one when I say that Moses could not 'hold the Head'.

• I take that as an example, I do not say that God did not hold Moses, but I want you to understand it practically.

• Abel was an accepted man, but is that the way I know acceptance who am "accepted in the beloved?"

• I remember well when acceptance was a new word to me. I had never heard it before, and it astonished and arrested me, that it was acceptance in the Beloved.

• That was perfectly new to me, but it is also a long time before the truth works into the soul, producing the due effect.

Enoch had this testimony that he pleased God, but had he the power of eternal life? Had Abraham? Was it in character the same as

• "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son"?

• "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life".

But I come to a closer contrast, and I think it is here that souls are puzzled.

• They have not the sense of having derived power from Christ.

• It is a different thing, and would have an immense practical effect upon you.

• There were those who had not the Head, and there were those, as the Colossians, "not holding the Head".

• There could not be union with Christ in humiliation, because, first, everything must be removed out of the way that would bar the union. So the Lord says,
  • "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone".

• Some lose the force of that scripture,
  • "If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"

• – they say that merely means He saves many, but it is more than saving many. It is what is said in another place,
  • "Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one".

• We do not get communion with the body of Christ until after His death. We are brought into another order of things in resurrection and I am learning the goodness of it.

• It is not only that He has done great things for us – He has, but we belong now to that blessed One who is at the right hand of God. We are united to Him; He is the Head.

Now I will take the disciples in three different aspects or places in which they were with the Lord, and it was a wonderful thing to be with Him, and a blessed thing to have Him as a shelter.

• They were under His shadow; but at that time He was only a wing to them, and not the Head.
  • "I sat down under his shadow with great delight".

• Under the shelter of that wonderful Person they sat, and lacked nothing.
  • "When I sent you … lacked ye anything?" They answered, "Nothing".

• I can understand what it was, but they were not united to Him, they could not hold the Head.

• Tell me, have you, practically, that wonderful fact in your soul? Do you understand that you are nearer than they were?

• They knew what it was to be under His wing, and I contemplate them there as under the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, and the wonderful charm of His own presence such, that
  • however trying the circumstances around, they could distinctly say in words used in the brightest days of Solomon, that they lacked nothing. – Compare 1 Kings 4: 27 with Luke 22: 35.

• But what is all that now to you? You are higher still, and your place is to hold the Head.

• I say it and I know it. There is nothing has so shaken the foundations of my heart as that. I still say to myself,
  • 'What am I? Where am I? Is it the place here that is to occupy you? You are united to another Man in another scene. That is to occupy you. A higher place altogether, with another Person, and in heaven'.

The disciples on the mount of transfiguration "were eyewitnesses of his majesty". "Eyewitnesses", and not a bit at home.

• But what can you say? There is no place where I am so at home as in the glory, because my Saviour is there, in answer to the love of God to me.

• There it is that the chief of sinners sees his Saviour, and what is the effect? He was three days blind, and neither did eat nor drink.

• His soul had to go through what it was to be brought up from the depth that was his as a man, to the height of the glory of God, where Jesus is.

Again, John 20 is a most wonderful chapter, for there I see a Man risen from the dead,

• and not only that, but death broken, and a new Man too, the beginning of the creation of God.

• The first creation began with the heavens and the earth, and finished up with a man.

• The new creation begins with the new Man.

• It is the power of the Christ, the One who glorified God in everything, so perfect, so answering to the mind of God, that He is saluted,
  • "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased".

• God sent forth His Son born of a woman, and He so maintained what was due to God under the weight of our guilt, that He is now raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father.

• Now in this chapter He appears to Mary Magdalene, and says to her, 'I will tell you where I will be'.
  • "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God".

• That is His place. Then He comes into the midst of His disciples, and imparts to them what our condition requires because of the nature of His own condition.

• They were not one of them united to Him, He introduces it all, and He winds it up by breathing on them,
  • "Receive the Holy Spirit".

• As the flesh is the link with the first man, so the Holy Spirit is the link with the new, the Man in glory.

I will now show the benefits that flow out of union with Christ. In turning to Romans 8 I shall be told that union is not taught in that epistle. But I get

• "no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus".

• Man is set aside as a sinner, and then the apostle says,
  • "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness;" and more,

  • "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his".

• I have to do with Him in all the perfectness of Himself in the glory of God.

• Romans gives you the justified man, and Ephesians the heavenly man. The only two perfect codes of practice summed up, some one has said, in Philippians.

• Now Luther never went beyond a justified person, he never got on heavenly ground, or to holding the head. It was all our side.

• I ask you, you may say that all understand it, but I ask you what is it to be a christian? I don't understand it all. I want to.

• The proportion, the magnitude of what becomes one is beyond conception. See what a new place you are in, another creation altogether. The practical effect comes out in Romans 12
  • "Be not conformed to this world"; but "present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service".

• I am delivered from the body of this death by this blessed Person, in whom I am. What a restful place to be in!

• Where are you? Have you this happy sense that you are in Christ? What is your reasonable service?

• If I belong to this blessed One, I am here upon the earth where He suffered for me. He wins my heart in humiliation, He satisfies it in glory.

• He made Himself familiar with every character of suffering in passing through this scene that He might be able to guide us all the way along. We are not only succoured by that blessed One,
  • but we are united to the One who won our hearts in the place where that One is, and it is His own associations that we have now to do with, so that the truth is of practical power here on the earth.

• It is old associations that ruin us. You see I am the same person that I ever was; a tree, if you please; then God will deal with the branches. The same man with the same duties.

• But suppose I am a member of a political club, He does not support me in that.

• He will support every branch of the tree that is for God. He will support it in more vigour and more order than ever naturally I had maintained it. My proper relationships I fulfil better than ever.

The way to keep out the bad is by bringing in the good. Take a banker as an illustration.

• He is sent into a room till he gets so conversant with the good notes that the bad are detected at once. He has learned what a good bank note is, by handling and observing them.

• When he sees a forgery he can't tell you how the bad note was produced, but he knows that it is bad, and that is enough for him. He says, 'That is not a good note'.

• Anything that is not good is bad, and that is the great thing now.

The action is beautiful in Romans and Ephesians, making a perfect code.

• You will find the epistles of Paul for the most part correct the intrusion of what is bad by insisting on what is good. He says in 1 Corinthians 6: 15,
  • "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?" and in the same chapter, "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit".

• Now, with the Corinthians the flesh was unrebuked; there was no check upon it. And in chapter 10 he turns round to them as wise men to show how foolish they were in what they were connected with practically.

"Your bodies are the members of Christ". What a practical word it is! I am sure it will reach us all in that way. "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit".

• If you want to improve the world, you are not holding the Head. It affects the smallest detail.

• For instance, if a person says there is no harm in going to a flower show, I say you are not holding the Head. Is that the place for a member of Christ?

• You are not mindful of the gravity of your position. You do not deny the benefits of grace perhaps, but you reduce yourself to a lower level.

• All the great truths lie on one flat – one level. You might have forgiveness, good conduct, faith, with earthly mercies, and I will call that downstairs;
  • but now upstairs we are united to Christ; we have to do with Himself and with His own interests and a heavenly scene.

• Upstairs must have downstairs, and includes all the benefits of downstairs; but downstairs has not upstairs.

• The great difficulty is, meeting souls practically where they are. You say perhaps, 'I never feel up to it'. There ought to be in the heart earnestness in consequence.

• Do you ever agonise about yourself? The Spirit of God interceding in you with groans that cannot be uttered! Do you ever hear these groans?

• What tries me is the fact that one feels one is sharing in the very thing one would like to correct. I think of some whom I would like to see getting on,
  • and instantly it raises the question, 'Are you getting on yourself?'

2 Corinthians shows the contrast. To me it is an immense thing that the heresy that underlay all at Corinth was that there was no resurrection of the body,

• and yet the body here is to be light, in the way the moon derives light from the absent sun.

• You are to be here the light of the world when the One who was the light of it is not here. It is the most cheering thing.

• I am to be like the One that is not here and unlike the world – the people that are here that cast Him out.

• Like a true wife, she is to remain in the premises, but to be there looking out for Him, contributing His light to the ruthless world which has driven Him away.

• I am to answer to His tastes, and I have nothing to do with the enemies that refused Him.

• You are to have the same moral expression as the moon has, sailing through the sky on a dark night, towards the world. I contribute light to this scene from the absent sun.

• I am not looking for any thing in it or from it. Those who had a title to possession on earth were to waive it. What of those who had no title?

2 Corinthians 3: 18: "We all, with open face …" We see the glory, and the glory claims us as its own.

• The apostles had seen the glory on the mount of transfiguration and were afraid, but now the glory says 'you must take the same image'. It claims us as belonging to it.

• I believe you will never get deliverance from this present world until your heart gets the impress of what the glory of Christ is.

• You must get a new taste and be brought into circumstances to form the taste, and once formed, you are at home in that which is above the brightness of the sun. The effect on Paul was that he lost his eyesight.

• I must not omit speaking of the effect, that while your associations are with Christ in heaven, you walk as He walked on earth. The difficulty is to maintain what you have learnt.

• The practical action in 2 Corinthians is
  • "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus".

• I want you to understand the actual magnitude of the position. We are united to this blessed One, our hearts know that He loves us.

• I am to live here in a life of another order, but to do this I must set aside that in myself that would hinder it.

• Those who are most living to the Lord find out practically that there is nothing to promote it in the other.

Galatians gives you a legal man. Ephesians is an advance on Romans, it is in heavenly places.

• I come out, properly speaking, a heavenly person on the level to which God has called us. The Man now at God's right hand walks into the scene and says
  • "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest".

  • 'I ignore the existence of everything of the first man, I set aside everything but Myself, the saints are Myself'.

  • Here Paul says: "It pleased God … to reveal his Son in me".

• Now, in Colossians it is the religious man that has to be set aside. In Hebrews it is heaven instead of earth. Philippians is where they combine.

• I find Christ – chapter 3 – is the simple object. Christ set aside everything, and
  • "we are the circumcision …"

• and He is not only the object but the mark for which I leave all things behind that were gain to me.

• It is not intended only to set forth beautiful theories in Scripture, but you find out their magnificence just as you get into the practice of them.

• You might talk to a child for ever about walking, and what is the good? But as soon as he puts his foot to the ground he knows what it is.

What I dread is an aptitude for hearing truth, and no sense of the responsibility which I incur because I have heard it.

• In a certain sense Israel was worse off in Canaan than in Egypt when there was no rain, for in Egypt the river came up and watered the land,

• but in Canaan the rain was stopped and they had no river, when they grew indifferent.

There are many persons with great and high truth who are worse off than when they had very little, because they have not gone on with what they had, and are not walking in practical diligence.

• Then God says, 'I will not give you the rain'.

Now 2 Timothy is to the servant what Philippians is to the congregation.

• It is the last words of the apostle Paul to the servant. He says
  • "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord".

• Why is this? Why does he not speak of the power of the enemy outside? All they in Asia had turned away from him; Asia, where his chief work was done – Philippi, I need hardly say, was in Europe.

• Those in Asia had not turned away from 'downstairs' from the forgiveness of sins, from expecting the favour of God, or from good and upright conduct on earth.

• Probably they became very scrupulous and made more parade about that, mere Pharisaism; for there is not most depth where there is most parade. But they had turned away from 'upstairs'.

• I thank God for the wonderful ways of His mercy, that it is not lost to us long ago, that this wonderful truth has been preserved – that we are united to Christ at His right hand.

• Paul could only light upon one man – Onesiphorus – who had not turned aside.

• No one could understand this testimony but by the Holy Spirit; namely,
  • I must set aside the man that is here, in all his development and talent, and the place too … the earth, where all these wonderful things are;

  • I must refuse both the man and the place, and introduce here the manners and ways of that Man in heaven whom I know not only as my Saviour and Lord, but to whom we are united as our Head. That is the truth.

• "Be not … ashamed of the testimony of our Lord". What is it? Are you ashamed of it?

But the thing that ought to come home to every heart here is this, Do you hold the Head? Are you ashamed of the testimony of the Lord?

• Christ was not only refused life upon the earth, but they rejected the Holy Spirit in Acts 7, and God has turned it round to my gain.
  • He gave Jesus a place in heaven, and the very place He has given Him He gives us.

• And what consummates the joy of my heart? I am in company with Him where He is.

• The wonderful thing in the mind of God is that saints are united to Christ.

• I look back and see for 1800 years great men, devout men; but Satan closed the eyes of the most devoted, so that they never saw this truth as we see it now.

• It may be that all do not see it now, and, though I could not refuse any such, offering to come among us, yet I never would encourage them.

• I never discourage, but I try to press on them the gravity of the position, because I think it is too easily adopted.

• The word said to myself, when I was coming out. I feel to be momentous, 'Have you faith for it?'

• There is not sufficient sense in the heart of what the position is.

• Are you conscious of this, that the more you have of a divine truth, the more immense it becomes, and
  • the deeper is your desire to know more about it, for you know its value; your capacities increase as they are ministered to.

"Be not … ashamed of the testimony of our Lord". Chapter 4. "Do the work of an evangelist".

• The apostle puts maintaining the testimony on higher ground even than his work in the gospel. This is precious to me, and I should not easily give it up.

• I see it is an immense thing to maintain what is due to Christ, and I would rather be known as a man standing here for the Lord Jesus Christ, that He knew it, than be the performer of the best works that could possibly be done.

• Was the gift the first thing? The first thing was maintaining the testimony. Timothy must wear the uniform of a soldier.

• The first thing to do is, whether officer or anything else, to put on your uniform.

• If the army be demoralised, so to speak, you must first, when you return to allegiance, put on your uniform and then do your work.
  • You must put maintaining the testimony higher than any gift.

One point more, though I am hardly adequate to it, and that is, the different oppositions which the truth has encountered within my own memory. When the cry was made,

• "Behold, the bridegroom; go forth to meet him",

• there came in a very dreadful error, only checked by the maintenance of the truth, and that was, that the Holy Spirit was not here. We were to fall down and pray for the Holy Spirit.

• Look at all the various ways Satan has attempted to draw away the saints, just as you might look down a river and see all the colourings in the clear stream.

In a certain sense, I don't believe that we ever lose the consequences of declension.

• A deserter may return and be a good soldier, but there is the mark ' D ' on him, for he has deserted.

• Like a horse that has been down, I do not believe we ever recover entirely from the effect of a fall.

• I am higher morally, because I have the divine power that has put me higher than my failure, and with the Lord I go on more thoroughly.

• I have no one but the Lord now; I had brought myself into ruin, but there is nothing for me but the Lord. So that a fall often produces real devotedness.

I think there is a danger of losing sight of the fact that the only power we have, is the power of the Holy Spirit.

• Then as to the coming of the Lord, I suppose no one in this room denies it; but I ask the question,

• Are you really going out to meet Him? Are you waiting for Him? Do you think you can wait for Him in the flesh? Never!
  • "The Spirit and the bride say, Come",

• and what does that lead to? In the same verse it leads the servant to that which meets the deepest need of man, but it begins with the highest. From the highest occupation down to the lowest.

• You say, 'Oh, I believe in the coming of the Lord'.

• I admit it, but is that the testimony you bear in Manchester? 'That is a man we can't understand. He has gone out to meet the Lord'.

• They were leaving the things around and pressing on to meet the Bridegroom. I say that cannot be without the Holy Spirit. I speak of that now as the power, and I think we suffer from losing sight of this.

Satan's way of acting and hindering truth is varied.

• There is no evil or error going on around without our being influenced by it. There is no activity outside of us that is not in the air, so to speak.

• When a malady is prevalent around, it attacks whoever is predisposed to take it.

• How will you be free? By holding the Head. He is gone into heaven, having condemned all of man; and the rudiments of the world, the A B C, the elements therefore, whatever is going on, affect us.

• For instance, ritualism. 'Oh, that never touches us', you say. Does it not?

• There are some among us who never come out to any meeting at all, but the breaking of bread. What is that but a little bit of ordinances, and baptism may become so too.

• What is ritualism? It is that you get Christ through ordinances. It sprang up with the revival of truth, and no doubt carried off many a true heart from the river of blessing.

• I am not preserved at all but by holding the Head.

Another error is, that Christ came among men merely to restore man, to add His divine virtues to a human stock.

• It is trying to get Christ to mend up the old thing, and there is no such thing. Instead of that, you get the old thing superseded.

• You must be good, most people say, but that is not enough, there must not be a leaf of the crab tree at all. The true gardener will not allow one bud.

• As to what sprang up among ourselves, it began with saying that the church would be in the judgment, and what eventually came out was that we had no Head in heaven at all.

• There was neither knowledge of the Church, nor the truth of holding the Head. You never get the right sense of how the saints are in the care of Christ, unless you begin with Him as Head.

• I remember a subscription being made for a poor widow, to get a sum invested that she might have a yearly income, and I said to myself, Surely, they might trust the Lord's care for her next year as well as for this.

All these things are landmarks, but what I seek is that all should go home saying 'Well, I will seek to cleave closer to the Lord than ever', owning that there shall be "one Lord, and his name one".

Ecclesiastical laxity came out next, called Bethesda.

• They did not understand what the unity of the body was. They did not hold the Head.

• You will never understand this phase unless you know it is not the evil you sow that defines the character of the evil you will reap.
  • You may say 'That is not what I sowed', but you are not prepared for the various things that will grow out of it.

• In Corinth they had no respect for the holiness of God's house, and so they went to law with one another before the ungodly.

• There was no respect for God's judgment in His own house, and they went to the world for its judgment.

• The leaf – the outward thing – will tell you where there is church laxity. They do not understand the body at all. They do not hold the Head.

The refusal of the third class of sufferings turned out to be a denial of the end of the first man.

• I think that many lately who have got hold of the unity of the body have got it without power, because they have got hold of it merely as a doctrine.

• In all cases where it has not power they have not begun by holding the Head.
  • "From which all the body by joints and bands …"

• What is the use of the most beautiful network of gas-pipes in this city if they are not connected with the gas-works?

One thing more – what I believe has done more detriment to the truth than any one thing yet is the gospel without the church.

• I am bold to say it, and I say it anxiously, I have lost friends by it, because I have tried to maintain what is the truth.

• Nothing has come in and given a character of laxity and indifference as to vital truth so much as this.

• They are content with the gospel, and say the church is secondary.

• There are those who have no church, while they have derived their gospel from us. We have heard of the gathering the good into vessels. They have no vessels at all!

Do you think we are safe from it? That is why I touched on that point in Timothy.

• In a moment I am assailed, 'Oh, you don't care for the gospel'.

• I do; but I have a deeper thing before my mind. What one desires is that souls should be converted to find their true place in the body of Christ.

In Ephesians he gives "evangelists" for the body.

• Therefore I spoke of 2 Timothy. Timothy was to maintain the testimony of the Lord prior to all: he was to do the work of an evangelist.

• I may call it 'a forlorn hope', but it is not forlorn. It does not mean a hopeless thing. It means a company of volunteers who will die or succeed.

My heart knows many who really do hold nothing so dear to them as to maintain what is due to Christ upon this earth.

• Do you think this will produce a lower character of work?

• I say all this because I do not want that we should be carried away by what is outside.

• I do not want to judge my brethren with regard to their work; I have nothing to do with that.

• It is not that I regret the work of those to whom I have alluded, but I would not co-operate with them. I would not touch the net while they were touching it.

• I have a different business. I am in a different position. I feel I must be for the Lord, and I can turn to Him as the one simple thing to guide me upon the earth.

I believe the more one knows of the Lord the more one values His own.

• You cannot be united to the Head in heaven but by the Holy Spirit, by whom you are baptised into one body.

• If I had not any interest in the things of the Lord Jesus Christ on this earth, what a nonentity I should be!

• The Lord lead our hearts more into association with Himself in heaven, and there you will find, a great deal better than I can tell you,
  • what a source of unspeakable light, and power, and guidance in everything He will be to your heart.