07 - Chapter 07
CHAPTER VII.
How this great blessing adds to our ability to do good to others. The personal blessings we have been considering imparted in the holy baptism, cannot be confined to ourselves. The candle lighted from heaven refuses to be hid under a bushel. It shines on ail around. Each of the personal gifts enumerated in the foregoing chapter has its outgoing influence adopted to bless as many as it shall reach. But there are certain other advantages it gives to Christians and ministers of the Gospel, to which we desire to call special attention.
1st. The recipient of this blessing will know how to lead others up into it. In all our churches there are men and women hungry for this higher blessing. Their pastor should be to them a Joshua or a Caleb, who has been over into the promised land and therefore knows the way and can lead them there. And sadly lacking is the preacher who has no experience in this line, having only received the first installment of spiritual power that which accompanies the ordinary conversion. In this matter he is a blind guide. And when his people come to him and ask him about the higher heights of Christian experience, he is obliged to say, " I know nothing of them, I have not been there. " I a in reminded of a. clergyman who under great distress of mind, because of his spiritual weakness and carnality, his leanness within and barrenness without, went to the President of a noted Theological Seminary for counsel. He opened his heart to the President, who asked him, after all, if he regarded himself as a Christian? And when our friend replied in the affirmative, he closed the interview by saying, " We here have come to regard the ordinary Christian as a pretty good thing. " As the inquiring minister left the President’s study, he asked himself, " Is this poor pittance which I enjoy, all the rich Gospel was designed to give? " and he came back and told me the story, a discouraged and almost broken hearted man. Brother preacher, when your hungry flock come to you with like questions, must you for want of experience answer them in like manner? And “when they ask for bread, give them a stone. "
2d. As a rule also it will give him a fertility of speech, an aptness of illustration, and a power in appeal, which he will feel is imparted by the Spirit. Others, too, will be in like manner impressed. Paul recognizes this and its great importance, when he asks the Ephesian Church to pray for him, "that utterance might be given him, that he might open his mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the Gospel." The Pentecostal baptism gave to Peter and all his brethren a power of utterance to which they had been strangers heretofore. And the tongue of fire that sat upon each, was a type of the new power of speech the Spirit imparted. Jesus promised this help of the Spirit in speech when he said, "It shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak! For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in yon" Matthew 10:1-42: Spurgeon and Moody and Finney, and all successful evangelists and many others, recognize this great help of the Spirit in their work. Spurgeon used often to pause in mid-discourse, and placing his hand on his brow, would say " Brethren, pray for me, I must have more of the power of the Holy Ghost." Finney did the same. We do not claim that those who have received this baptism at all times are conscious of this help, this unction from the Holy Spirit in speech. I judge Paul did not at times, for he tells the Corinthians, how he "was with them in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." He confesses that in speech he was rude, (2 Corinthians 11:6) and that his alienated brethren said "his speech was contemptible." I judge he was not always remarkable for eloquence. But Paul tells us that however weak he might appear in speech, the Holy Ghost so much the more gave power to his words, and made them successful, and God was the more glorified thereby. Not infrequently the Holy Spirit is doing his mightiest work in the congregation when the preacher is imagining his address a failure. Why this occasional absence of unction, we may not fully know, but that it answers important purposes we can plainly see. We will mention some which occur to us. 1. It deepens the sense of gratitude for the gift when it is enjoyed. The State of Grace is contrasted so vividly in our experience with that of Nature. 2. It serves as a reminder of our personal weakness. It bids us cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils and depend wholly on God. 3. It serves the great purpose of maintaining the Spirit of prayer in a Church for its pastor, while he dispenses the Word. Thus when the Spirit of prayer began to flag in Spurgeon’s congregation, and when he put his hand upon his brow and said, "Brethren, pray for me, I need more help from above," then a thousand heads were bowed, the help came; the preachers strength was renewed and God was glorified. This was a very common occurrence in Mr. Finney’s labors. Away back in Moses’ time, we find the same feature of Divine working forcibly presented. It is recorded in Exodus 17:11-12, "And it came to pass when Moses held up his hands Israel prevailed, and when he let down his hands Amalek prevailed. But Moses hands were heavy, and Aaron and HUT stayed up his hands, the one on the one side and the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun, and Joshua discomfited Amalek." So ever since, the Heralds of Divine truth, although the} T had been anointed and Baptised by the Holy Ghost, have been greatly dependent for sustained unction on the prayers of the brethren. The Holy Spirit thus by the occasional weakening of the preacher’s hands, teaching the brethren to be constant in prayer. Of this I feel certain, that this occasional absence of conscious help from the Spirit, cannot in all cases be charged to some overt act of Sin.
3d. The baptism of the Spirit will give the preacher great confidence in the Gospel and the remedies it offers. All about in his field he will find men groaning under the power of sin. Men who have striven often and long to break its dominion over them, but have failed. And now courage and confidence almost gone, they are inclined to give up the struggle and float downward with the stream. But if the preacher evinces in his confident words and in his holy life, his faith in One Mighty to Save such men will come to him, as once Nicodemus came to Jesus, by night,’ to ask him how deliverance can be obtained. Blessed my brother will you be, if with a strong voice, you can tell them the story of your own deliverance and give them the assurance that he who saved you, can save them also. So too it will be when you stand before the people declaring all the words of this Divine life if you can add, " / speak what I know and testify to what I have seen. " The experience of a baptism of the Holy Ghost forms a background of confidence in preaching, nothing else can supply.
4th. We do not see how a preacher can select wisely his field of labor unless he lives on most intimate terms of communion with God. We believe the Holy Spirit will indicate to the preacher who walks close with him, where his proper field is, and where it is not, as He did to Paul and Phillip. And that it is these spiritual indications which should determine this matter and not the wedge of gold or the Babylonian garment. So too his messages will be suggested and opened to him by that Spirit, which all abroad in his congregation knows the message needed. oth. This baptism will impart force to the preacher’s words and carry conviction of their truth to the hearer’s heart. After Jesus had been inducted into the preacher’s office by the baptism of water at Jordan and by the Holy Ghost, we are told that his hearers were astonished at His teaching, for His word was with power. The Apostles before they received the baptism at Pentecost, spoke only as men endowed with the ordinary and natural unction. After it with an effect astonishing and a force well nigh irresistible! They were endowed with power from on high. This new and enlarged power of the Spirit attending their labors was their great dependence, as from Jerusalem they went forth to preach repentance to a sin-loving world. Paul says, “My speech and my preaching was not with persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” 1 Corinthians 2:4. To the Thessalonians he writes, “Our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost," 1 Thessalonians 1:5. Moody says after seeking this baptism and receiving it, “I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different. I did not present new truths. And yet hundreds were converted! I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if ’you would give me all Glasgow." Rev. B. Fay Mills gives similar testimony and ascribes the marvelous success attending his evangelistic labors to a baptism of the Holy Ghost, received some years after his conversion. Brethren in the ministry, have you received this power Christ promised the disciples? Can you obtain it? Have you sought it as for hidden treasure? Can you do ^our work without it? Let me suggest that you not only set your heart on gaming it, but ask some of your devout brothers and sisters to help you in prayer to God that you may receive the anointing and that they pray for you while you preach. Let me add that almost without exception, the men of power in all our denominations laboring now or in the past, have confessed their indebtedness to a special baptism received in answer to fervent prayer, for their great success and the power which attended their speech.
6th. This alliance of the Holy Spirit with the soul of man, was designed to afford important aid in ones calling, whatever it may be. The man who works in the coal mine and the woman at the washtub, can each expect the Holy Spirit’s aid as truly as the minister in the cathedral or the monarch on his throne. So that he may do his work the better and with richer enjoyment, because of the great gift. O! for the time when the farmer, the tradesman, the blacksmith, the doctor, the lawyer and the politician shall each consecrate his business to God and cry mightily to Him, to set apart by a special baptism, himself and his business to His glory! No doubt the average Christian prays for and expects a measure of Divine aid in his work. A small measure at least. What we plead for is the larger measure, the cup full and overflowing, made possible, where our Redeemer ascended on high, leading captivity captive and giving gifts to men. Few there are who do not feel at times that they are living far below their privilege. The writer once said to a member of his Church, "Dr. S., what a mighty man you would be if baptised with the Holy Spirit and your powers were fully awakened, sanctified and brought into action! " He made no reply, and as he walked away I fancied I had offended him. Some days after, meeting me, he said, " No, I am not half the man I ought to be. And as the spirit of the Lord often stirred up Sampson between Dan and Bethel before his great power was developed, so it is with me. The Holy Ghost often reproves me for my imbecility and barrenness, and tells me what I might be and ought to be. But alas! The vision passes and I subside back within the old lines of spiritual weakness and inefficiency. The full grown man in Christ, endowed with His strength and power, I am not and fear I never shall be." Alas! Who can measure this vast reservoir of latent power in our Churches? How shall it be developed, brought forth and applied to the world’s conversion? Our answer is, The baptism of the Holy Ghost alone will do it. That which made the early Churches so mighty in doing the work of God the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that and that alone will develop this power with God and men. But that day will never come, till the Churches of God come to believe that such a blessing is in store for them and seek after it in faith and an importunity like that evinced in the great ten-days prayer meeting which preceded its first bestowal.