IGNORANCE INDEED
‘And they said unto him, We Have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.’
Such is the condition of many at the present day in Christian England, and that not by reason of the practical heathenism in which too many of our children grow up in our large cities, but because, sweep as she may, search as she will, the Church is unable to find all those lost coins which belong to the King, which lie hidden beneath the dust and rubbish of a material age. This is sad enough. But there is a sadder fact even than this. Many of our children are being deliberately brought up in ignorance of the Holy Spirit, of His grace and work, because some are pleased to call this great doctrine which God Himself has revealed ‘denominational.’
I. Modern panaceas of regeneration are more extravagant than the Divine remedies of heavenly medicine.—It is power that we want, and in the spiritual world knowledge is not necessarily power. We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: our sufficiency is of God. What we need for our advance, what England needs in her system of education, is place for God, place for that power from on high, which God is willing to bestow on a nature which, left to itself, is very much as if we surrounded our fires with muslin, or deposited gunpowder on our hearths. This world makes short work of the unprotected, unassisted nature. If we are sinking back, baffled and disheartened, because our hereditary taint is too much for us, listen to the advice which the Apostle gives you: ‘Stir up the gift of God that is in thee.’
II. Temples of the Holy Ghost.—That is what God designed us to be, temples in which the presence of God should drive away what was bad, and attract what was good.
III. All life is one.—We cannot divide up our lives into sacred and secular. What God desired was that religion should be supreme. We need to exhibit the sacredness of secular knowledge, not to secularise religion. Religion is what we want; progress, development, science—all part of the one life of man as God designed it to be. That is what makes the Bible such a wonderful book. The Bible displays to us all life viewed on the side of God—national life, family life, intellectual life, viewed on the side of God in its oneness and in its fullness. That is one meaning, surely, of that wonderful saying, ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ Without the Spirit of the Lord it is impossible to live in an environment like this. Unify your lives, brethren, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Seek to know the religion of common life and the fullness, and not the deadliness, of an advancing civilisation. Union with Christ, high effort, noble desires. Sacramental indwelling—these are the necessities, not the luxuries, of life.
IV. Let us rouse ourselves to the realisation of the purpose for which we were created.—‘I believe in God the Father Almighty’ means a great deal in the purpose of a life. ‘I believe in Jesus Christ’ means an acceptance both of His salvation wrought for us and of His sanctification offered to us. ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost’ means a living co-operation with that saving influence which alone can keep us safe in view of our heredity and environment. So full of peril is our life, and it is this that the Church has in view when she so mercifully warns us. Without God you cannot be the man you might be here. It is to fail of our great end to be left without God, hereafter to be left to ourselves, to be left to our own choice. What does that mean? Will any expurgation of creeds, will any closing of the Bible, alter the result? To be without God is that eternal loss which is hell. To be with God is that eternal gain which is heaven.
—Rev. Canon Newbolt.
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‘What, as a Christian, has the Holy Ghost been to me? What do I owe to that pledge so manfully made, to that vow so courageously renewed: “Dost thou believe in God the Father, Who made thee and all the world? Dost thou believe in Jesus Christ, Who redeemed thee and all mankind? Dost thou believe in God the Holy Ghost, Who sanctifieth thee and all the elect people of God?” Yes, all this I steadfastly believe. It is true of each one of us that, if we wish to be saved, if we wish that body of our humiliation to be preserved blameless and entire unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, if we wish to keep that mind with all its powers unspotted and clear, if we wish to guard the spirit as the unsullied mirror of God’s holiness, the unstained dwelling of His majesty, we must believe in the Holy Ghost.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE
No wonder that they had no firm hold on spiritual realities; no wonder that duty was little better than drudgery, that faith was torpid, that endeavour was but half-hearted! No wonder that it is so with us! What did Paul do for them when he brought them the knowledge of the Holy Spirit? Just what the same knowledge shall do for us. ‘He shall take of Mine and shall show it unto you,’ Jesus had said. Yes, the work of the Spirit is to make Jesus vividly real to men.
I. He makes our beliefs real and vital.—We realise what Christ was and is, and as we realise power is added to us, the truth of the message of Jesus, ‘Ye are the sons of God.’
II. He makes our duties no longer the drudgery of compulsion, but glad service done as unto the Friend and Saviour Himself. Behind duty he sets the Christ, so that every labourer has the strength, the courage, the incitement to fidelity, which comes from working for One Whom the worker knows and loves.
III. It is for this knowledge that we pray, for this power of enthusiasm, this power without and above, that comes to reinforce the capacities that are within, ensuring their effectiveness, guaranteeing their permanence. For this—that we may know God, not only as our Creator and Preserver, as our Saviour and Redeemer, but as the inspirer and sanctifier of our souls.
—Rev. F. Ealand.
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‘Perhaps the most helpful interpretation of the working of the Holy Spirit is that given in Ecce Homo. It is the enthusiasm of humanity. “A single conception enthusiastically grasped is found powerful enough to destroy the very root of all immorality within the heart. As every enthusiasm that a man can conceive makes a certain class of sin impossible to him and raises him not only above the commission of them, but beyond the very temptation to commit them, so there exists an enthusiasm which makes all sin whatever impossible” (and all goodness possible). “This enthusiasm is emphatically the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is called here the enthusiasm of humanity, because it is that respect for human beings which no one altogether lacks, raised to the point of enthusiasm. Being a reverence for human beings as such, and not for the good qualities they may exhibit, it embraces the bad as well as the good, and as it contemplates human beings in their ideal—that is, in what they might be—it desires not the apparent but the real and highest welfare of each; lastly, it includes the person himself who feels it, and loving self only in the ideal, he differs as much as possible from the selfish man, for it produces self-respect, humility, independence, while selfishness is allied with self-contempt, with arrogance, and with vanity.”