We are all familiar with the passages in the New Testament that record our Lord's remarkable statement in regard to the faith that moves mountains. When the disciples saw how soon the barren fig tree had withered away after it. was cursed, and expressed their astonishment in regard to this, we are told that

"Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto, you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."—Matthew 21:21-22.

Mark's account is a little fuller, and I would like you to have that before you also. There we read in chapter 11:22-26:

"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea ; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore 1 say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any : that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses."

I do not suppose that any of you for a moment would take our Lord's words literally; that is, you quite understand that He had no thought that any disciples of His would ever, at any time, undertake to level hills and mountains of earth and stone simply by prayer and faith. For these, undoubtedly,

A Steam Shovel

backed by prayer and faith, would be the proper method of procedure, according to a principle that runs throughout the word of God, whereby we learn that those who labour earnestly for the Lord can count on Him to give wisdom and strength for their service. If, therefore, it were necessary to level an actual bill in order, perhaps, to locate a meetinghouse, or a mission hall, in its place, we would not simply go down on our knees and ask God to clear the ground for us, but

Faith and Works

would go together.

Our Lord was accustomed to the use of figurative language. How rich and full are his discourses! And how wonderfully does He illustrate in this way! He is a vine, His disciples are branches. Yet no one supposes that He referred literally to a plant. Men were trees, and "every plant that My Heavenly Father hath not planted," He said, "shall be rooted up." Yet no one supposes that He was referring to unfruitful trees in orchards. He is the Bread of Life, He gives the Water of Life, He is the Light of the World, His Truth is a candle, not to be hidden under a bushel or a bed; that is, not to be obscured by either business or slothfulness. And so when He speaks of removing mountains, you may be sure He has in mind just such a mountain as is referred to in the book of the prophet Zechariah, chapter 4:7:

"Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shaft become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it."

The mountain was plainly a mount of difficulty and perplexity. God had brought back the remnant of His people from Babylon to Jerusalem. He had caused the Persian king to give them permission there to live and to rebuild the temple of the Lord. But hardly was the work begun before cruel and vindictive enemies commenced their opposition. They taunted them; they threatened them; they wrote lying letters concerning them to the king Himself, and in response to this there came a new commandment causing the work to cease. Yet God had declared it must go on. And, through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, he encourages the people to judge in themselves whatever is displeasing to His Holy Mind and contrary to His word, and then to go on with the work, taking no account whatever of the hindrances. It was simply theirs to labour on in faith. He, on His part, undertook to remove the mountain that seemed so high and so forbidding; it would be but as a plain before them as Zerubbabel and his helpers continued the work in dependence on the Lord. For, after all, they were not to labour in their own power. In the vision of

The Candlestick, with the Golden Bowl

upon the top of it, replenished with pure, fresh oil from the dripping olive trees that stood on either side of it, and whose branches were represented as bending over the golden receptacle, the oil, thus silently and unseen to the eye of men, passed through the center stem of the lamp-stand and out through its arms to the limbs, thus keeping the light burning. He was illustrating the great truth that all testimony for Him is "not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord."

Nevertheless, there were conditions that they must be careful to comply with, and not the least of these was their responsibility to act in grace toward one another, and to show to each other that same mercy and compassion which God had had upon them. See Chapter 7:8-10:

"And the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart."

Now in the account given in the Gospels, read in the light of this Old Testament passage, you will understand that the mountains to be removed by faith are mountains of difficulty, mountains of indifference, mountains of perplexity, such as we all have to face from time to time. Sometimes, indeed, the believer seems to be living in a narrow vale, surrounded on every hand by just such mountains, whose tops seem to reach up to heaven and almost exclude the very light of the sun—so high, so grim, so hard to overcome do they appear. Against mountains like these man's puny little spade, or shovel, would avail little indeed. All human effort at times becomes useless. The more one tries to remove the mountain, the higher it seems to rise, and the more discouraging do conditions become.

Yet here we have the plain word of the Lord,

"If ye had faith, ye should say to this mountain, Be thou removed and cast into the sea, and it should obey you."

There is no trial so great, no difficulty so hard, no perplexity so wearing, no trouble so overpowering but

FAITH can gain the victory

over it, and before believing prayer, the mountains become a plain. We are told in First John 5:4:

"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

But observe: There can be no such thing as the prayer of faith, if certain clearly-defined conditions laid down in the word of God are ignored. Only one of these conditions is particularly stressed in the Gospel account, but others are brought before us in various parts of the New Testament. In fact; there is one Old Testament verse that sums them all up:

"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

This verse expresses a great principle that runs throughout all dispensations. You cannot pray aright, if you do not live aright; you cannot pray in the spirit, if you do not act in the spirit; you cannot pray in faith, if you do not live by faith. It is utterly impossible to so pray as to be assured of an answer from God, unless the life be regulated by the Word of God. He who says, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me," has also said: "Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."

Among the various hindrances, mentioned in the New Testament are those of self-seeking, of disobedience, and of wavering.

"Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord."

But here, in Mark's gospel, our Lord particularly stresses the importance of maintaining an attitude of forgiving love toward all our brethren, if we would pray in such a way that mountains shall be removed. He says:

"When you stand praying forgive, for if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither shall your heavenly Father forgive you."

There are those, I know, who have stressed, and it seems to me, unduly, the difference between this command of the Lord and the words given by the Spirit to the Ephesians and Colossians. In Ephesians 4:32, we read:

"And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you."

And then in Colossians 3:12-13:

"Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."

It has been pointed out that in Mark the word is,

"Forgive that you may be forgiven."

whereas, in the full blaze of the Christian dispensation the word is, "Forgive because you have been forgiven."

And yet I do not think the two lines of teaching are in any way opposed, the one to the other. The forgiveness of which our Lord was speaking to His disciples was not the forgiveness of a sinner, but the forgiveness of a failing saint, whereas the forgiveness spoken of by the Apostle Paul was that of the sinner. Addressing His disciples, our Lord says, as it were, "You are failing from day to day; you constantly need your Father's restorative and governmental forgiveness; yet you, at times, cherish feelings of malice and enmity and an unforgiving spirit toward your brethren who offend you. If you do not forgive them, you cannot count on your Father's forgiveness when you come to Him confessing your failures, and as long as this spirit of malice is cherished by you, you cannot really pray in faith. Paul takes up the other thought. He says, as it were, "you have been forgiven; how can you hold hard feelings against those who have offended you? If God had dealt with you according to your sins, how fearful would your judgment be! Yet he in Christ has graciously forgiven all; he has put away every sin, thus making you fit for His Holy Presence. Your responsibility now is to forgive as you have been forgiven."

I wonder if we do not have right here the secret of so many of our unanswered prayers? May we not learn from these passages just why so many mountains still rise up between our souls and God which might all be levelled to the plain, if we were only exercised about these things in His Holy Presence?

Some of you will remember the striking incident of

The conversation of Macdonald Dubh,

as narrated by Ralph Conner in "The Man from Glengarry." I understand the incident is not merely fiction, but is founded upon actual fact. The black Macdonald, a powerful, burly Highlander, living in Glengarry county, Ontario, had suffered fearful anguish for years because of an injury inflicted upon him by a French Canadian some years before. He had nursed the desire to take a fearful vengeance upon his foe until it became a perfect obsession him. Neither God nor eternity had any place in his life. It was in vain that the minister's wife tried to get him to forgive his enemy. She sought to have him repeat the Lord's Prayer, but he always balked at the words, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." But God wrought in power in the Glengarry country, and there was a great revival, in which real Christians were aroused, and Christless men and women reached and saved. The black Macdonald heard the story of the Cross, portrayed in living power in the Gaelic tongue, from the lips of the venerable Highland minister. It broke his heart and bowed him in penitence at the Saviour's feet. When next the minister's wife went to visit him and tried to stress the necessity of forgiveness, he sobbed out as he joined with her in what is generally called the Lord's Prayer, "Oh, it's a little thing, it's a little thing, for I have been forgiven so much."

It is this that grips the heart and enables one to bear in patience the ill-doing and evil-speaking of others and preserves from bitterness of spirit or any desire for vengeance. How can one, forgiven so much, ever hold an unforgiving spirit against any?

And yet, even as I ask the question, you know, and I know, how many of us have been hindered in our Christian life and experience by this very thing. We know, too, how it has kept us from the place of prayer, or if we prayed with our lips, how it has hindered the heart going out to God in faith. It is, indeed, the secret of many of our unanswered petitions. May God enable us to ever manifest the spirit of His own beloved Son, who died praying for his murderers, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The same spirit that was manifested in the martyr Stephen, who cried "Lord lay not this sin to their charge." The spirit that the martyrs manifested; the same gracious disposition that caused the beloved J. N. Darby, whose name means so much to many who have learned to value the truth for which he stood, in his dying hours, he was heard to say,

"I die in charity toward all."

So God would have us ever live. And as we thus live, we shall find a confidence filling our hearts when we come to God in prayer and we may know that we shall receive the things that we ask of Him because we do His commandments and love those things that are pleasing in His sight.

"Oh that when Christians meet and part,
These words were graved on every heart—
They're dear to God!

However willful and unwise,
We'll look on them with loving eyes—
They're dear to God!

Oh, wonder!—to the Eternal One,
Dear as His own beloved Son;
Dearer to Jesus than His blood,
Dear as the Spirit's fixed abode—
They're dear to God!

When tempted to give pain for pain,
How would this thought our words restrain,
They're dear to God!

When truth compels us to contend,
What love with all our strife should blend!
They're dear to God!

When they would shun the pilgrim's lot
For this vain world, forget them not;
But win them back with love and prayer,
They never can be happy there,
If dear to God.

Shall we be there so near, so dear,
And be estranged and cold whilst here—
All dear to God?

By the same cares and toils opprest,
We lean upon one faithful Breast,
We hasten to the same repose;
How bear or do enough for those
So dear to God."

The words of this little poem may well speak to the heart of every one of us. We enter so little into the tender, compassionate love of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ for all His own, and perhaps some of us have never noticed that the Apostle speaks of the love of the Spirit. The Eternal Trinity, is deeply interested in every one for whom Christ died. Surely, we who are indwelt by the blessed Holy Spirit cannot but love those whom God so loved. And love drives out all malice, all unkindness, and brings every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

We shall not complain that God turns a deaf ear to our cry and doesn't answer prayer when we plead with Him to level the mountains that have caused us so much distress, if we are careful to so act and live in His Presence that we can, indeed, ask in faith, nothing wavering, believing that we receive those things for which we make request. Thus shall we have the faith that removes mountains.
—H. A. IRONSIDE.

From Removing Mountains by H. A. Ironside. (Helps for Young Christians, no. 27). Goodmayes, Essex, [England]: G. F. Vallance, [194-?].

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