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The Eight Points of the Oxford Group

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The Eight Points of the Oxford Group 127007 269 B47 (2) Keep Your Card in This Pocket Books will be Issued only on presentation of proper library cards. Unless labeled otherwise, books may be retained for two weeks. Borrowers finding books marked, de- faced or mutilated are expected to report same at library desk; otherwise the last borrower will be held responsible for all imperfections discovered, The card holder is responsible for all books drawn on this card. Penalty for over-due books 2c a day plus cost of notices. Lost cards and change of residence must be re- ported promptly. Public Library Kansas City, Mo. POINTS " THE EIGHT 9 { OXFORD GROUTP : "' FIRST EDITION ... 1996 REPRINTED . - - - 1936 '&EPRINTBD . - - 1986 REPRINTED .... 1936 REPRINTED .... 1937 REPRINTED .... 1937 REPRINTED .... 1938 THE THE AN EXPOSITION FOR CHRISTIANS AND PAGANS Bj C. IRVING BENSON HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS CATHEDRAL BUILDINGS, MELBOURNE LONDON, EDINBURGH, TORONTO BOMBAY AND MADRAS 1938 transmission the p$ner(il Pf*t Qffice, Melbourne, for m 4hr9ulfftij&& fast us** book Wholly set up and printed in Australia by Brown, Prior, Anderson Pty. Ltd., Printcraft House, 490 Little Bourke St., Melbourne, C.I, 2948. PAGE FOREWORD .... vii CHAPTER I GOD HAS A PLAN FOR EVERY LIFE 1 II CONFESSION is GOOD FOR THE SOUL 18 III IF THY BROTHER HATH AUGHT AGAINST THEE . 30 IV THE FOUR ABSOLUTES . 44 V BE STILL AND KNOW . 58 VI DON'T BE AN Ass! 74 VII 'LIFE CHANGERS ALL . 89 VIII Lo, HERE is FELLOWSHIP! . 102 APPENDIX A THE SECRET OF VICTORIOUS VITALITY . - 115 B MY TEXT 129 C MY WITNESS 143 D QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS . 151 IF THIS COUNSEL OR THIS WORK BE OF MEN, IT WILL BE OVERTHROWN: BUT IF IT BE OF GOD, YE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO OVERTHROW THEMj LEST HAPLY YE BE FOUND EVEN TO BE FIGHTING AGAINST GOD. GAMALIEL. FOREWORD THE CROSS IN LAKELAND all the glory that is England no place has INbeen so chanted by poets and nature lovers as the Lake country in Cumberland and West- morland that district which Lowell aptly called c Wordsworthshire.' Where else in the world is beauty more thickly sown where is there such unity in variety as in the sweep of landscape which greets the eye from the shores of Coniston or from Kirkstone Pass? Wordsworth, the laureate of Lakeland loveliness, has described the eight val- leys seen from the top of Scawfell, diverging like spokes from the nave of a wheel. The scenery of Lakeland is a succession of delightful surprises and of ever changing forms and colours. Rugged mountains rise amid velvety valleys; there is the sparkle of myriad waterfalls and the shimmer of wild ruffled lakes 5 glowing foxgloves and other flowers in rich profusion bedeck verdant carpets of ferns and lichen-covered rocks are adorned with colours of vivid beauty. Little wonder that such seers as Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, De Quincey, Arnold and Ruskin fed their souls in this earthly paradise and littered its winding ways and woodland paths with memories of their presence and poetic thought. vii viii THE CROSS IN LAKELAND Wordsworth was born in Lakeland, It gave him his cradle, his home and his grave. He loved it with a deep, penetrating, interpreting love. Every tiniest flower was full of deepest suggestion to him. He listened to the music of its running streams, to the song of the skylark and the cuckoo's call, to the whispering leaves and the wind in the trees and caught the deeper accents of a voice divine and saw the Unseen in the seen. A SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE On a summer day in the year 1908 there came to this haven of quietness and tranquil beauty a clergyman from Philadelphia, smitten with a sense of failure and futility. He was a Lutheran minis- ter, sick at heart because of the felt lack of the power of God in his life and ministry. A man cannot give what he does not possess and the high calling of the ministry is to give men God. Religion must be infectious it $ is, as Dean Inge insists, caught rather than taught. Of all the wretched men in this world, the most to be pitied is a minis- ter spiritually uncontagious. He may be an elo- quent preacher, an efficient organizer, a social success, but if he is a failure in the main issue of his life, he is of all men the most miserable. This pilgrim, Dr. Frank Buchman, went to Lakeland seeking if haply he might find the secret of the missing power. Not in the many meetings of the Keswick Convention, instinct with spiritual- ity though they were, did he gain that for which he was hungering. Not yet was his heart open THE CROSS IN LAKELAND ix and receptive. Then one afternoon he attended a service in a little chapel outside Keswick town and there to a congregation numbering less than twenty an unknown woman, a modern Dinah Morris, told, in simple, artless words, the story of 'Jesus Christ the Crucified.' As she spoke the pilgrim saw the Cross as he had never seen it before and through the Cross he saw himself. That is what the Cross does for us. It throws the searching light of God into the dark places of our hearts and lays bare the things we try to hide even from ourselves. It strips us of the silken robes of self-excusing and tears off the masks wherewith we disguise our condition. THE LIGHT THAT HURTS This is the light that hurts and heals. If a man seeks to go on sinning in smug complacency he must contrive to keep out of sight of the Cross if he can. Frank Buchman remembers little that the nameless preacher said; it was the Word of the Cross he heard. Could there be nobler testi- mony to a sermon than that? It calls to mind an experience which deeply moved John Henry Jowett. Early one morning he went out from Northfield to conduct in the woods a camp meeting for men drawn from the Jerry McAuley mission for 'down and outers' in New York. Before c Jowett spoke one of the men prayed for him: Oh, Lord we pray for our brother. Now blot him out! Reveal Thy glory to us in such blazing splendour that he shall be forgotten.' They c 5 desired to see no man save Jesus only. x THE CROSS IN LAKELAND There in the little Cumberland chapel Frank Buchman had a sight of the Cross. Truly, a man may look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times and not see it once, and then look for the thousandth time and see it for the first time. He had resigned his charge after a brush with the trustees. Grudges against these men rankled in his mind. He thought they had been high-handed and hard-hearted in their opposition to him. Resentment was choking his soul, and love, peace and joy cannot abide in a mind rankling with bitter- ness. With the Cross before his eyes he saw it all. Whatever wrong he had suffered at the hands of others he was not right in himself. There is light in the Cross and there is love the love that burns to bless. And in the fire of the love of God the 7 sin of pride in this man s heart was burned away. Thus dawned the creative day in his life. Indeed, life really began for him that day. Thor- valsden, the sculptor, who was born at sea between Iceland and Copenhagen, when questioned as to C his birthplace, replied: I do not know but I arrived in Rome on March 8, 1797,' dating his real birth from the commencement of his artistic career. Frank Buchman was born in . I need not cross the room to make sure. He saw the Cross in 1908. He walked back exultingly to the house where he was a guest. He had made a great discovery the greatest discovery that a man ever makes and he could not keep it to himself. At the tea table he related his experience, simply and quietly THE CROSS IN LAKELAND xi but with the contagious gaiety of one who has found what he has long been seeking. Among those who listened to his story was a son of the house, a Cambridge fresher, who suggested a walk after the meal. For hours they walked by Der- wentwater, and as they walked, Dr. Buchman told what had happened how he had seen that to retain his consciousness of God his heart must be empty of all sin and free from the angry past. There by the lake-side that shining youth with a legal mind surrendered his life to Christ. Dr. Buchman was now a happy man but a self- contained happiness soon evaporates. Next day he sat down and wrote six letters of honest apology to the trustees with whom he had quarrelled, and at the top of each he wrote a verse of the hymn which that lover of Lakeland, Matthew Arnold, regarded as the finest in the English language: When I survey the wondrous Cross On which the Prince of Glory died) My richest gain I count but loss, And four contempt on all my pride. The relief which came to him with this action had a determining effect on his life, for he had learnt that there can be no living and transforming sense of unity with the divine Will, no 'God Consciousness,' so long as the heart nurses bitter- ness.
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