01.03. The Holy Spirit the Revealer of Christ (Bishop)
III. THE HOLY SPIRIT THE REVEALER OF CHRIST. BY GEORGE S. BISHOP, D.D.
WE are living in the Dispensation of the Spirit. What does that mean?
It means that we are living on a higher plane than ever has been occupied before. We gather this 1. From a comparison of this Dispensation with others that have preceded it.
True religion is more widely disseminated in this than it has been in any preceding Dispensation. Not only so, but more people, in proportion to the mass of professors of religion are truly spiritual, and spirituality in these has risen to a higher point than ever before that is, it has been more intelligent, consistent, ardent, aggressive and victorious. We know, for instance, that proportionally there are more Christians now in the world than there were in the time of the Judges that they will average better, and that they have a more forceful influence than had the early Hebrew tribes. We know, too, that the same fact bears out in a comparison of later results with those of our Saviour’s personal ministry. We know that he has more followers now than he had when he was on earth that intelligence has reached a higher point than it did, even under his teaching, and that Christian effort has been followed by more surprising and more permanent effects.
2. We know that this Dispensation is an advance, because God himself is advance progress. He never goes backward. God known as Diety, comes to be known as Deity in human flesh, and then this Deity, so brought near to us seen, touched and handled is known again, "not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
3. The same fact is clear from the structure of Scripture. The Old Testament is the Lock Christ is the Key to the lock then the Holy Ghost is the Hand on the key, without which the mystery of godliness had never been opened. Christ is the Revealer of God, and the Holy Ghost is the Revealer of Christ. "No man can say that Jesus is Jehovah, but by the Holy Ghost." These things go to make evident that we are living on a higher plane of light, responsibility, motive and action i.e., <k in a most signal sense," in the realm of the Spirit, and
4. The whole historic development of man looked at in the line of the plan of redemption is clearly enough in this upward direction. The work of God is from matter toward spirit. The child leaves his playthings behind, and comes to despise them. The college student turns his back on the pleasures and games of his boyhood. The professional man has forgotten the rivalries of college life as narrow as its walls; and the mellowed and matured philosopher "lives already amid the peace and the power of invisible scenes," and draws from above and beyond him the springs of incentive and action. The same principle holds throughout nature. Time and again our attention is drawn to the fact that there is an invisible world, and that that invisible world bears down upon and overpowers the visible. That Thought and Feeling and Volition are stronger than Substance and Quality and Force, and that from within what is unseen and supersensible and supernatural flow the "upper springs” of all inferior energy and action. That though principles, like Faith and Hope, and Love and Righteousness, like Mind and Heart and Will, are imperceptible, intangible and " hid within the Veil," yet not the smallest work of the obscurest worker nor the grandest enterprise of the most powerful syndicate or Caesar, but is the effect of their impetus. And so powerfully does this conviction rule mankind that not an individual but at times, and in moral crises, runs back of all second causes and stands subdued and solemnized before such facts as Conscience Force of Will an overruling Providence Remorse and the straight plummet-line that falls before the Unseen Holiest of all Eternal Righteousness. All which points upward to the Holy Ghost and emphasizes it that we are living in the Dispensation of the Spirit, and that we are moved, most of all, by powers above us, not only, but as never before, by the power of the Spirit, and that we must look to be led by the light, and vitalized for the great work of God by the GRACE of the Spirit that in fine " like holy John of Patmos, we are to BE " in this Day of the Lord in the Spirit.
5. But we are not left to gather up an inference from observation, nor speculation, nor from logic. “Our Saviour Himself now assures us, that if we believe in him we shall do greater works than even those which HE performed on earth, and that we shall do them precisely because he goes to the Father." This he explains by saying that it is expedient for us that he should go away, for unless he does go away the Comforter will not come; but if he shall go he will send him.
"And when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will convince the world of sin. He will guide you the Church into all truth. He shall glorify Me, i.e., make Me to you through you, Glorious. The Holy Ghost will fill the world through the Church with a revelation of God, in My Person, such as never has been seen nor known before." That focalizes our attention on three points.
I. The one essential to salvation is the Revelation of Christ. "He shall glorify ME!"
II. The Holy Ghost alone can reveal him. "HE shall glorify Me."
III. The ulterior and special Object of the Spirit’s revelation is God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. "He shall GLORIFY make Me glorious!"
I. The one essential to salvation is the revelation of Christ.
How essential this is may be gathered from Reason, from Conscience and from the light of the Scriptures. From Reason. Nowhere, outside the radius of Christianity, is there either- holiness or peace. Look at Africa. Look at China. Look at Hindostan. My dear friend, Bishop Fowler, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who has been traveling, as some of you know, of late in those countries, gave me a description impossible here to repeat, it was so terribly revolting. Even then, he said he had not touched the bottom facts.
He who knows anything of the history of moral light knows that it has followed, as its centre, the planting of the cross of Christ that just as races have receded from the light of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ, so they have sunken to a brutish level, and have died in the distractions of an utter unrest. But not only Reason, Conscience affirms the same truth. Conscience, in every man, says:" You are guilty! You are a sinner! You are condemned! God is holy. He cannot acquit. He must punish! "
Conscience, whatever modern thought may say however it may strive to cheat us cries, " Eternal Justice is Eternal Fact, and God is just; and How can justice clear the guilty? " and to this cry of conscience is no answer but in Christ and in the sacrifice of Christ. And these deductions of our reason and pure Conscience are confirmed by Scripture. The first thing that confronts us in the Bible, after the record of Creation, is a guilty man, and the whole Book goes on to deal with guilt, not as an accident, but as the one great fact on which are based all other facts of the remedial system.
If there is nothing to be saved from if there are no parties to be reconciled if, without reconciliation, there can be pardon, and peace, and comfort, and heaven, then what is our business as ambassadors for Christ and what is the Gospel? The Gospel is an overture to the LOST then men are lost. The Gospel is good tidings of SALVATION; then there is a way of Salvation. The Gospel is the presentation of a Saviour; then, without that Saviour, men no matter who they may be perish.
So, the Bible not only represents it, but it says so. [The first main characteristic of the Gospel is that it affirms.
Every thing else questions. Speculation questions. Superstition questions. Higher Criticism the men who write such books as "Whither" put them always in the form of a question. Infidelity is an interrogation point. The adversaries of the cross of Christ assert nothing, but they question everything. They will not lay down a proposition nor define their opinions. They dare not, for they know that the square, blunt blow of unsophisticated truth will at once demolish their light and fantastic fabrics of falsehood; therefore they skirmish, and cavil, and dodge, and suggest, and propose " certain questions." Now the Bible affirms. On this point does the Bible affirm? It does. It comes straight out and says: Apart from the knowledge of Christ there is no Salvation.
"We are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." "Without the shedding of Blood there is no remission!" "Neither is there Salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved." Thus is our first point established the one essential to Salvation is the revelation of Christ.
II. The Holy Ghost is the only revealer of Christ. He alone makes Christ glorious. The Holy Ghost has given us all the knowledge that we have of Jesus Christ. Where do we get that knowledge? How do we know that there is such a thing as a Saviour? From the Bible. Outside the covers of this book there is not a hint of a Christ. And whence came the Bible? It was inspired. Who inspired it? God, the Holy Ghost. Not only so but, with the Bible in our hands, how can we know anything of Christ, save as the Spirit reveals him?
"The letter killeth," says the Apostle. It is so. The letter killed in the Old Testament. Of what avail were miracles? Were all theophanies? Visions of angels? All shocks on the senses? Of none whatever. Miracle never changed any man. Appearances like that of the Angels to Abraham like that of the Burning Bush, or the wheels of Ezekiel, or the Fire that came down on Elijah’s altar at Carmel, never changed any man, except as with them, went a supernatural light and voice.
Abraham saw Christ’s day. How did he see it? By illumination by the Holy Ghost. Moses recognized God at Horeb. How? By the fire? No, but by God speaking out of the midst of the bush. Ezekiel was transformed at Chebar. How? By the wheels? No, but " the Spirit," he says, " entered in me." Israel was to be revived under Elijah. How? By the wind? By the earthquake? By the fire? By any sensible and ocular demonstration? No; but by the still small voice. That was the lesson taught to the prophet. The same fact comes out in the New Testament. How many saw Christ touched Christ said they believed on Christ in the flesh, who never went beyond impressions of their outward senses. We are often tempted to think that if we could have lived when Christ lived we should have found it easier to be Christians. It is a mistake. What makes a Christian is the Spiritual apprehension of Christ, and the Holy Ghost alone can reveal him.
He alone did it in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is full of Christ as full as the New is. See how, in preaching Christ the apostles quote the Old Testament.
Luther used to say he could tell whether the Church was gaining or losing life-power by the study or neglect of the Hebrew. Why did he say it? Because the study of Hebrew means the Old Testament, and because the Old Testament is the casket which contains Christ. The New Testament is the key to the Old, but when we have a key, we do not turn our backs upon the lock, and laugh away the lock we open it. The Old Testament is full of Christ. Take Psalms 22:1-31, where he cries, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? " Take Isaiah 53:1-12 :" He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." Take the Levitical Sacrifices -’How without these could we explain the Atonement?
Yet only a few who read them under the Old Dispensation, saw Christ in these Scriptures and why? Because they needed more than the most perfect description. They needed light on the light. They needed, like David, to have their eyes opened to see wondrous things out of God’s law.
They needed, like Simeon and Anna, in the temple, to have something more than had other spectators. Something more than the mere presentation of Christ. Something which should make them take him in their arms and exclaim, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation!" The same thing is true of the New Testament. It is, of course, full of Christ and nothing but Christ and yet, in the gospels, when Christ himself was living and walking among them, we may say of most, as it Is said of the disciples, who were journeying to Emmaus "Their eyes were holden that they should not know him."
St. Peter in Matthew 16:23 responds in answer to the question of Jesus, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." But how does he say it? He says it, not in his senses, but like a man transfigured, by a fire that burns in him and out of him in a new flash of fact as well as expression " Blessed art thou, Simon BarJona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee; but my Father which is in heaven."
Thomas, in John 20:28, cries out in a rapture, “My Lord and my God! " He sees and he adores the Deity of Christ. From the most incredulous of the eleven he comes to be their leader, and by appropriating faith to confess and to claim the Lord Jesus as God.
He does this without ever putting Christ to the test that he had laid down for himself. He does it unexpectedly, suddenly.
How often do we lay down tests anticipating how the Lord shall come to us. He must come this way or that way, by a convulsion, by a vision, by some recognized demonstration or else we must refuse credence. “Except I shall put my finger into the print of the nails and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe."
If you will look back at the chapter, you will find it a blank as to any handling of Jesus, such as Thomas proposed. Instead of this, is a silence a check. The GODHEAD COMES IN a more than human majesty clothed a more than human glory enhaloed the mysterious Person who thus unexpectedly revealed himself to Thomas and repeated, as out of eternity to him, the very thoughts of his heart.
Thomas saw a man before him with a great wound gaping in his side, more than enough to have caused any death. He saw that wound bleeding, yet the man living and speaking speaking his own words which none could have known beside an omnipresent, invisible Listener, and Thomas cried instinctively, " My Lord and my God! " How did he do it? By illumination. Because the Spirit taught him to cry. Because, all at once, in Christ’s light, he saw light. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ. He glorifies Christ. Notice. He does not create Christ; he shows him.
Christ is all the while there. A person is in a dark room. You cannot see the person; you do not know he is there. Then some one brings in a candle and you see the person revealed touched with all the radiance of the candle, brighter in outline, more distinct and glorious in feature for the very darkness against which he stands. When we were sailing in the Grecian Archipelago we came, at dawn of day, to the Island of Rhodes. At first we saw only a grey indistinctness the shapeless outline of vast rocks rising out of the water. Then as the sun came up, how glorious! There lay the harbor once bestridden by the famous Colossus, the sapphire ripplings of the water touched with rose and gold the ships, the flappings of their sails stirred lightly by the morning breeze. There stretched away the green fields and the mountains round which poetry had thrown her charm; midway in the perspective rose the ancient castellated ramparts of the fortress of the Knights of St. John, all flashing, glowing, burning, touched and " transfigured by the ministry of light." “That which doth make manifest is light." The Holy Ghost is the only revealer of Jesus. And the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ or reveals him in his true glory now, as he could not possibly do were Christ present.
One thing: it was necessary that Christ should go away in order that the power of a natural, carnal, earthly influence might be broken. The apostles loved Christ too much, as the carnal loves the carnal. They limited his power as Martha did when she’said: "If Thou meaning his bodily presence hadst been here, my brother had not died." That is the error of Rome with her crucifixes, her Mass and her sensuous ecstacies. Read the memoirs of Santa Teresa and of St. John of the Cross, and you will find the love they express for the Saviour is sensuous carnal. There is something lurid about it. You are afraid of it.
It was necessary that that sort of thing should be broken that there should come an experience, which, permit me to say it, should emancipate Christ should burst the tomb and the grave-clothes, and set him Infinite, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Heavenly working above, as ever in, and through his church an experience like that of St. Paul when he says:" Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." We only know him as the Spirit reveals him.
You have known a man by his clothes by his face now you come to know him by his CHARACTER. Something reveals him in his abilities, in his integrity, in his truth, as your friend. Then, whether he be present or absent, you can say, " I know him. I can count on him now as never before." The Holy Ghost reveals Christ. But let us come closer; the ulterior and special object of the Spirit’s revelation is God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. That is our III. Point. “He shall glorify " " Make me GLORIOUS."
St. Paul expands our Saviour’s statement in these words:" For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The Apostle institutes a wondrous parallel with the original creation. Indulge me while I press that parallel in its out-starting facts.
"And God said, ’Let there be light/ and there was light" a luminous but undefined Aurora like that of Northern climes in winter, when objects are apparent, indeed, but not glorified. Then, on the fourth day the Sun rose oil this Earth. What a change! What a glorious transfiguration of the material Earth, when the Sun rose upon it in splendor! On the fourth day the Sun rose. What a fact! How everything on earth was touched and changed by this! Let us try to conceive the difference between the first three days and the fourth, when the Sun rose in his splendor; and then let us try to take in the stupendousness of the parallel made by St. Paul. The world without Christ, or Christ in twilight beneath the dawn-line of the Old Testament beneath the histories, and types, and prophecies beneath the horizon of an Arctic winter, and then, and all at once, and forever, the Sun of Righteousness in visible perfection of his glory the Mystery of Godliness the Dayspring from on high!
“God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts" creation is the prelude and the prophecy of a yet higher and more sublime irradiation " to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ." The statement of this point, involves, of course, three. That there is such a thing as the knowledge of the glory of God that this knowledge is unfolded in the face of Jesus Christ, and that it comes by a Divine in-shining.
1. The knowledge of the glory of God. If God be God, he is glorious, for glory is manifested excellence, and God is most excellent, and cannot be hid. The glory of God is not only his greatness, but the equipoise of his character. Satan is great, i. e., in faculties, but he is in no wise glorious, but infamous because of the defect of his character. Michael, the arch-angel, originally no greater than Satan, and perhaps not so great, is more glorious because of the perfection the balance of his character.
God’s glory is the equipoise of his attributes. With him no where is there too much no where a deficit.
"A God o’er all consummate, absolute, Full-orbed, in his whole world of rays complete."
All heresy starts from the centre, i. e., by unpivotting God, by disturbing the balance of the Divine attributes, by making God lop-sided, by contending for power to the exclusion of rectitude, or for sovereignty, to the exclusion of self-consistency; or for justice, to the exclusion of mercy, or for mercy to the prejudice of justice.
God unsupported, unsuspended, self-sufficient is an Orb at rest ponderibus Libratus Suis, equally balanced every way by his own weight. There is no more power in God than there is righteousness, and no more sovereignty than self-restraint.
It is because God is balanced and must balance that he is what he is, and no conscience, however clouded say or think whatsoever it please can ever be at peace until it sees Eternal God himself at peace. A God onesided, careened and tilted by the overponderance of any attribute a God at war with himself, like a sun on fire devoured by mutually contending flames, were an object of horror fitted only to drive to distraction. Such a God were it not a mental contradiction to try to conceive him could never give peace.
It is important to put emphasis upon the fact before us, because the effort of to-day is to destroy the balance of the attributes of God to posit it that justice, for example and in measurement, and in adjustment everything comes back to the straight line that justice in God is a merely optional attribute.
"How can God," says one of our modern Theologians,* "How can God be free if he be the slave of his own justice? "
* Author of "Whither." As well ask, "How can I be free if I cannot rid myself of my back-bone? I am the slave, then, of my back-bone. But how can I be a man and have no back-bone? " For God to be free from his justice would be for him to be free from himself as moral, " and therefore immoral for justice is simply looking on things as they are, and treating them accordingly, and to deny this is to deny rectitude, and to deny rectitude is to deny God and make him immoral.
"God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, Wisdom, Power, Holiness." Holiness consisting, and in that order of "justice, goodness and truth." Not goodness first, as if God were mere lawless, reckless good-nature, but justice first and yet, not justice only, but equally goodness, because he trues i.e., is truth.
Ho wean you improve on the told definition? It came to Sir Harry Vane on his knees, while praying for light. Did he not get the light? Outside of the Scripture, what ever has come so near to direct inspiration?
Throw away your Theology nay, throw away your Bible, and, in the light of common sense alone, how can you make " love " and by love, of course, is meant love to lost sinners how can you make that any more than the old definition has made it without making it unholy, bad and wicked love? ^What sort of a love is that which has been severed from holiness, justice and goodness?
Justice optional! What should we think of a man to whom it were optional to be just, or to be unjust?
What should we think of our courts if it were conceded that judges might rule as they pleased no matter what the evidence no matter how glaring the facts? The moral grandeur of God is his balance, his poise, that he rights himself. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"
2. The glory of God then, as it stands revealed in vast concentric haloes, circles upon circles of immeasurable excellence is at its brightest spot its centre and when focalized and gathered to one burning point, nothing more, nothing less than CONCILIATION OF JUSTICE AND GRACE. "How can God be just and justify the guilty? " lies at the root of the Gospel. The answer to that question is the Gospel, and Christ on the cross is its sum.
Christ on the cross, not Christ in pre-existence, transcending thought as is the mystery of everlasting generation.
Christ on the cross, not Christ incarnate, in the wondrous constitution of his Person web- work as it is, and master-piece of all the attributes of God combined as if the sun should come down out of heaven and shine in, and through some creature making it forever a sun-creature. Not Christ, a babe, in glory streaming from the manger. Not Christ when twelve years old, the fair Divinity but softly breaking through his youthful form and gesture as he stands questioning the doctors and unveiling the Messiah of the Scriptures in such wise as to anticipate his whole commission and to make rejection of him from that moment, the unpardonable sin. Not Christ again in all the grand kaleidoscopic aspects of his ministry, as miracles spring up beneath his footsteps like fresh flowers. Not Christ in any, nor in all, these revelations, glorious as they are, but still subordinate, but Christ upon the tree.
Christ on the cross, his visage marred more than any man’s, bore witness to God’s truth. It was there the vision of God’s glory shone the brightest "in the face of Jesus," stamped with Divinity and stained with blood.
It was there seen that God would not swerve that sin must be punished. It was also seen that God would punish sin by punishing himself that the whole united Godhead would suffer the Father in giving his Son from his bosom the Son in agonies of blood and death the Holy Ghost in joint participation of co-equal sufferings, and in the grieving to which he submits before God would, in any wise, clear the guilty.
Christ on the cross bore our guilt. As a race we lay crushed beneath it. Imagine a weight like that lifted and borne by one helpless Man a weight that all the Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim and Powers could not have raised by one united and stupendous straining! Yet he raised it, and not only so, he, the mighty ScapeGoat of iniquities, bore it away to a land uninhabited sought for, it cannot be found.
What is the upshot of this? The upshot is that from the instant you and I look away to Christ as our Substitute; we are eternally saved.
"The guilt of twice ten thousand sins one offering takes away."
"If Christ has my discharge procured And freely in my place endured, The whole of wrath Divine, Payment God cannot twice demand, First, at my bleeding Surety’s hand And then again at mine."
"Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," not through our moralities, nor feelings, nor ceremonies, but alone and solely through him. Is not that glorious f Bursts there not a glory from that torn flesh which hangs and writhes upon those ragged nails, which challenges all suns to rival it in splendor? Is not here God’s glory focalized, as it swings low and kisses even your and my horizon? When we were at the North Cape, at midnight, a French gentleman took out a sun-glass and burned a hole in his hat with it. Low as the sun was, he was still clothed with all his burning power. So is it with our Saviour on the cross. "For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth " there, yes there, he liveth and for you and me he liveth " liveth by the power of God."
“For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."
3d. This glory hath inshined that is the third point. It hath shined not historically not in the face of a physical Christ, although these, of course, are included; but through the veil on the heart. Christ’s glory to mere worldly men is a veiled glory; " the veil says the apostle, “is upon their heart." That veil has been rent not from our side from God’s side. Not from the bottom where we could take hold you and I could not rend any Veil; but from the top where God can take hold to the bottom. Christ, full length, appears; let down as a Saviour for sinners let down where we are, at our last and our lowest let down where we can take hold; and God says, "Take hold! I have rent I have split down the Veil."
God hath "shined in" not into the world only, that is not enough could not be, for " the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
Into believing hearts God hath shined. It is not simply knowledge, but it is the light of the knowledge. It is not Church instruction, but heart-work interior regeneration. "When it pleased God," says Paul, " to reveal His Son within me, immediately I took no conference with flesh and blood."
How then, do we see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
One way, by Faith. Faith is the great opened eye of the soul. We believe God speaking in His Word. We believe that Jesus is God. We believe, and see it in new light, that in extremis, in salvation, highest angel equally with highest man avails not. Only God upon the tree can answer God upon the throne.
Another way --the light shines in is by the Witness of the Spirit. What is that witness if not a supernatural spiritual emphasis put on the assurances and promises of God, which makes them true to us without a question?
"The Holy Spirit also testifies unto us," says St. Paul, in Hebrews 10:15, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." The Spirit bears with the Word, his assurance, IN on the soul. I have not only heard Christ’s doctrine, but I have his voice speaking within me.
"The Spirit answers to the Blood, And tells me I am born of God."
Nothing like this to give peace! It comforts now, amid all sins, all tumults, all perplexities, and it will comfort when the head lies on its last pillow, and can turn and look no where else. A third way Light shines in is by Consciousness. Consciousness of breathing goes with breathing. Consciousness of walking goes with walking. Consciousness of life and vigor goes with power. A man full of the Holy Ghost knows what he is full of, and that he is not empty. He knows that his light is not darkness that his joy is not despair, and that his power is something other and more than physical elation or physical energy.
"Can he not, through some interior eye which we know not, and for which we have no name, pour into us the radiance of his own infinite glory, though he be the king invisible, whom no man hath seen, nor can see?" Can he not manifest himself to the eye of interior consciousness with a distinctness of spiritual presence as satisfying as that which his bodily form gave to the external vision of his disciples? Can he not pour floods on floods of inundating life upon us until lifted, floated we shall move like the resistless waves in might of spiritual power?
He can! he can! We know it. We have felt it, and the voice of yearning irrepressible, has turned it into prayer.
"Refining Fire! go through my heart, Illuminate my soul, Scatter thy life in every part, And sanctify the whole." This Revelation of Christ by the Spirit is what the WORLD needs is dying for " When he shall come to you he shall convince the world of sin." This Revelation of Christ -fresh revelation I mean, satisfying our souls, filling, flooding enlarging us with the light, and the love, and the joy, and the strength of the Lord is what we need, my Brethren. What you and I need if we would save a dying world. In other words, we need the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, that we may see Christ and preach Christ. The reason why we do not get on have little enlargement is the lack of this Baptism. And the reason why we lack this Baptism is, that we do not, as we ought, believe in it. We look on Pentecost as a stereotype. It stands for us the monument of what was once a living benediction, but is dead. The Holy Ghost is as it were, mummified in the Church. He is mechanical, in our conception, latent. He is being carried under our decent ceremonials as the dead emperor Numidian was carried, in his closed litter, into the battle.
Few of us, I fear, are praying as our fathers prayed. " Breathe from the four winds, O BREATH! " in the conviction that the Church’s power is the direct impingement of the supernatural that it is afflatus from on high or else our gilded congregations are but bleaching bones. And because we do not believe in the Baptism of the Holy Ghost we do not ask for it. We look on men like Whitefield and Carvosso, Brainerd and Edwards, Bramwell and Spurgeon, Cecil and McCheyne as unapproachable examples, and so our sermons drag, and Sunday-school instructions drag, and evangelism drags and life drags.
What we want is A FRESH REVELATION OF CHRIST. As dear McCheyne says, " Christ for me! that’s ever new, that’s ever glorious." Revivals of religion will begin again, my Brethren, when ministers go back to the A. B. C. of the Gospel when they consent to crucify their brains and preach upon the simplest texts. "It is a faithful saying." "God so loved the world." The Spirit owns a very simple Christ.
What we want is a FRESH REVELATION OF CHRIST. Not to see him physically, with Huxley, nor intellectually, with the "Higher Criticism" men, but with Bunyan and with Christmas Evans, by the Holy Ghost "To view the Lamb in his own light, Whom angels dimly see, And gaze transported at that sight Through all eternity."
"We, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed BY THE SPIRIT from glory to glory." Let us believe this. Let us, too, gaze until WE are changed our ministry transfigured. Until from glory unto glory we anticipate the beatific vision. Then, on our death-beds, if the Lord should tarry, we may say as did the dying John Owen, when there were brought to him the last wet proof-sheets of his immortal Book " the Glory of Christ " " some glimpses of it I have had already, but now I am going where I shall see it as I have never seen it in this world." I God grant the Revelation now, as flesh and blood can bear, and afterward the far exceeding and eternal weight of glory for his dear Son’s sake.