elieve, for my part, that one great cause of
the worldliness and the sinfulness and mechanical formalities that are
eating the life out of the Christianity of this generation is the fact
of the Church having largely lost any real belief in the possibility
that Christian men may possess the fulness of God as their present
experience. And so, when they do not find it in themselves they say:
'Oh! it is all right; it is the necessary result of our imperfect
fleshly condition.' No! It is all wrong; and His purpose is that we
should possess Him in the fulness of His gladdening and hallowing power,
at every moment in our happy lives.

III. One word to close with, as to the means by which this prayer may be
fulfilled.

Remember, it comes as the last link in a chain. I shall have wasted my
breath for a month, as far as you are concerned, if you do not feel that
the preceding links are needful before this can be attained.

But I only touch upon the nearest of them and remind you that it must be
Christ dwelling in our hearts, that fills them with the fulness of God.
Where He comes God comes. And where does He come? He comes where faith
opens the door for Him. If you will trust Jesus Christ, if you will
distrust yourselves, if you will turn your thoughts and your hearts to
Him, if you will let Him come into your souls, and not shut Him out
because your souls are so full that there is no room for Him there, then
when He comes He will not come empty-handed, but will bring the full
Godhead with Him.

There must be the emptying of self, if there is to be the filling with
God. And the emptying of self is realised in that faith which forsakes
self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-dependence, self-control,
self-pleasing, and yields itself wholly to the dear Lord.

There is another condition that is required, and that is the previous
link in this braided chain. The conscious experience of the love which
is in Christ will bring to us 'the fulness of God.' Love is power; love
is God; and when we live in the sense and experience of God's love to us
then we have the power and we have the God. It is as in some of these
petrifying streams, the water is charged with particles which it
deposits upon everything that is laid in its course. So, if we plunge
our hearts into that fountain of the love of Christ, as it flows it will
clothe us with all the divine energies which are held in solution in the
divinest thing in God--His own love. Plun