072. PHYSICAL IMAGES OF HIS WORKING

PHYSICAL IMAGES OF HIS WORKING

So, while Christ is the life, the Holy Spirit is the life-giver. The Holy Spirit presents Christ to the soul, or, if you prefer the phrase, in and through the Holy Spirit, Christ comes to the soul and takes up his abode in it, makes it holy, gives it new views of truth and new power of will. Before the Holy Spirit began his work Christ was outside, and we looked upon him as a foreign, perhaps even as a distant, Redeemer. After the Holy Spirit has done his work, we have Christ within, the soul of our soul and the life of our life. A union is established between Christ and us, so that none can separate us from him or from his love. In fact, there is nothing more marked in the New Testament than the way in which Christ is identified with his body, the church, unless it is the way in which the Holy Spirit is identified with our spirits. The Holy Spirit so passes into our spirits that we are said to have the spirit of Christ, and it is sometimes difficult to tell whether our spirit or the divine Spirit is meant, the two are so merged the one in the other. All this renewing and transforming shows what power the Holy Spirit exercises. It is power compared with which the mightiest physical changes sink into insignificance. You can more easily create a world than recreate a soul. Only God can regenerate. It is only God, who caused the light to shine out of darkness at the beginning, who can shed abroad in a sinful soul the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And yet physical images are employed to illustrate the Holy Spirit’s power. His agency is compared to that of air, of water, and of fire, at their highest pitch of efficiency. Take the air, that is often so still and apparently impotent about us that we absolutely forget its existence. Would you believe that this air, when stirred, is capable of taking up cattle and carrying them half a mile over fences and trees? Would you believe that this air could absolutely prostrate the strongest houses, and even lay low the largest trees, cutting a clear swath for miles and miles through the forest? Yet the eastern tornado or the western cyclone is nothing but "wild air," as Helen Kellar beautifully said. So, in the ordinary quiet workings of the Holy Spirit, we get no idea of the mighty effects he is able to produce. The same divine Agent who comforts the sorrowing and speaks in whispers of peace to the heart of a child is able to come like a mighty rushing wind at Pentecost and in a single day convert three thousand unto God. The agency of the Holy Spirit is compared to that of water. The rain is a symbol of his influence. Sometimes it is the gentle showers that water the mown grass and cause the thirsty field to revive. So the Holy Spirit encourages the believer whose earthly hopes have been cut down. But there are larger manifestations of his power. In this country and latitude we know little of what rain can accomplish. Years ago I was traveling in Palestine and happened to be caught in the last rain of the springtime, just before the long dry season from April to November set in. I had heard of rain coming down in the tropics in sheets and bucketsful, but I had never expected to see anything like it. But there, on the way from Carmel to Caesarea, I had the experience. The water seemed to descend in masses. Those exposed to it were drenched as if they had been plunged into the sea. Then I understood what the psalmist meant by "the river of God which is full of water ": he meant the rain, that came down like floods from heaven. And then I understood the promise of Malachi: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord, if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, so that there shall not be room to receive it." The opening of the windows of heaven is an allusion to the Deluge of old; and the prophet assures us that, when God’s people are faithful and put his promise to the test, the Holy Spirit, whose ordinary influences are so gentle, will descend like the floods of Noah, so that the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and rivers of blessing flow forth from God’s sanctuary, to water the earth. The agency of the Holy Spirit is compared to fire. The flame kindled in the heart by the blessed Spirit may be so slight and low that a single breath of coldness and opposition may suffice to quench it. But it may also become a consuming blaze that carries everything before it. It is only a match that sets the dry wood burning in the hunter’s camp-fire, but that fire may spread till the whole forest for miles and miles is swept by the roaring flames. A kerosene lamp overturned is a little thing, but Chicago devoured by conflagration is the result,—the greatest structures of wood and iron melt and crumble in that heat. So in the common operations of the Holy Spirit we get no conception of what the Spirit can do in melting hard hearts and in bringing to nothing the pride and opposition of men. How often has he swept whole communities with religious anxiety and zeal that could only be compared with fire from heaven! The college revivals, and the great awakenings on a larger scale which this country has witnessed in days gone by, are evidence that the Holy Spirit has a power beyond all our ordinary estimates. Why should we be so slow to believe in his power? Was Pentecost the limit of his working? What was Pentecost but the feast of first-fruits, the bringing in of the first few ripened ears of the mighty harvest? Shall we limit the harvest by the first-fruits, or think that the first ingathering is the greatest possible? Ah, no! Pentecost was but the beginning, and the power of the Spirit of God will be fully seen, only when a nation is born in a day.

There is no measure of the Holy Spirit’s power except the greatness of the Holy Spirit himself. The Holy Spirit is as great as Christ,—in fact, he is Christ, not now absent but present, with us and with his church alway even unto the end of the world, and all things in heaven and earth are given into his hand. And since Christ is God revealed, Deity manifested, Divinity brought down to our comprehension and engaged in the work of our salvation, the Holy Spirit is this same God in the hearts of believers and pushing the conquests of Christ’s kingdom in the world. Wherever God is by his omnipresence, there the Holy Spirit is, to make men will and do according to his will. And whatever God can do by his omnipotence in the spirits of men, that the Holy Spirit can do, to convert the world to Christ. Is the Holy Spirit equal to the work of missions? Ah, the Holy Spirit is God himself, engaged in this very work. More pervasive than electricity or magnetism, his power encircles the globe, and hence the touch of prayer in America can produce results in Africa or in Japan.

He is one, and he is almighty. He can weave together all the prayers and all the labors of the Christian church into the complex structure of his kingdom, and he can make the least breath of desire, and the widow’s mite of contribution, most potent agencies for the salvation of the world. All the wealth of Christendom is his, and he can prompt his people to use it. The storms of war and the oppositions of the nations are only surface movements of the great sea of humanity, beneath which the vast ocean of God’s Spirit is ever resting and waiting, with power to bring the waves to calm or to drive them with one consent to engulf and overwhelm the shore. And the day shall come when, in answer to his people’s prayers and through their very efforts, this ocean-like Spirit shall show his power, and the work of a thousand years shall be done in one day. Men may fail and be discouraged, but the mighty Spirit of God shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he has set judgment in the earth, and the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.

"It is the mistake and disaster of the Christian world that effects are sought instead of causes." These weighty words of a recent writer have deeply impressed me. I wish to apply them to the subject of missions. The Holy Spirit is the one and only power in missions, and to expect success in missions while we ignore the Holy Spirit, is to look for an effect without a cause. How evident it is that this great agent, this renewer of hearts, this regenerator of the world, has been largely neglected and ignored! We have been trying to carry on missions without the Spirit of missions. We have trusted our own wisdom, instead of trusting him. We have invoked earthly helps, instead of invoking the Helper, the Advocate, who has been called to this work by God. And so our zeal has slackened, and our faith has grown weak, and our love has become cold. Neither faith nor love will survive, if hope does not go with them. We cannot do this work ourselves, and when we lose sight of the Holy Spirit, Christian activity dwindles and dies. The success of missions is dependent upon our recognition of the Spirit of missions. The conversion of the world must be preceded by new faith in him who effects conversion. The Holy Spirit will show his greatest power only when the church seeks his power. The Spirit of missions is also the Spirit of prayer. How may we secure the power of the Holy Spirit in missions and in prayer? Ah, we cannot pray that he will take to himself his great power and reign supreme in the world, until we ourselves admit him to complete dominion in our hearts and lives. So long as we are full of other things that he abhors—our own selfish plans, our impure desires, our worldly ambitions—he will not work in us that mighty praying, that mighty effort, that mighty sacrifice, that alone will save the world. You might put a corked bottle under Niagara, but you could never fill it. The flood of spiritual influence may be descending like Niagara, but the love of sin may completely prevent it from entering our souls. Let us open our hearts then that we may receive. Let us put away the evil that offends God and prevents him from doing his work in us. Let us ask for his coming and indwelling. Let us take him, by the act of our wills, once more to be our Lord. On his last birthday but one, Livingstone wrote : "My Jesus, my King, my Life, my All, I again dedicate my whole self to thee!" No wonder that he died on his knees, with his face buried in his hands, praying for the regeneration of Africa. The Spirit of missions is also the Spirit of consecration. He prompts to various kinds of service. He puts it into the heart of one to say: "Here am I, send me!" He moves another to say: "The half of my goods I give, to send the gospel across the sea!" He impels still another to spend days and nights in prayer for the conversion of Madras, or for the spiritual revolutionizing of New York.

Brethren, we are responsible for the bringing of the world to God, because we have this connection and partnership with the Spirit of God. It is not so much a question of giving, as it is a question of receiving. The Saviour even now utters his command as he did in the company of those disciples on the evening of his resurrection. "Receive ye—take ye—the Holy Ghost!" he says to each one of us. But we make two mistakes with regard to his words. First, they are a command, and not a mere permission; and secondly, it is not a passive receiving, but an active taking that is required of us. Shall we thus take the Holy Spirit to-day,—the Spirit of missions, the Spirit of power? May God the Father grant it! May Christ the Son bestow it! May the Holy Spirit himself vouchsafe it! Then from us who are gathered here, though of ourselves we are hard and dry as rocks in the desert, shall flow rivers of living water like that which sprang forth at the touch of Moses’ rod! Then shall be set in motion divine influences which shall flow like ocean tides around the world, until every land shall be bathed in their flood and the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea!