And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee
The higher spiritual life
Jesus returns to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.
This is full of interest in every way.
1. As bringing up the question of Christ’s Divinity. Can One who is Divine receive augmented powers? Especially can He from another co-equal Spirit? To this inquiry it may be replied that Christ’s life on earth was the Divine circumscribed. The power of the Spirit that rested upon Christ brought forth no new elements, but it brought out the Divine element previously existing.
2. Interesting as a study of the life of Christ, it becomes even more so in its connection with ourselves--with the whole sphere and operation and possibilities of the human mind. A like experience will be traced in the apostles’ lives. At the time of His death they were very little advanced, except in personal affection for Him, beyond Nicodemus, or other devout and spiritually-minded Jews. He had told them to stay in Jerusalem until some great change should come upon them. And He declared what that change should be--power from on high; the power of the Holy Ghost. And then came the Pentecostal experience.
3. We find traces in the early Church to show that there were those who received this special power over and above mere ordinary endowments.
4. In every age there have been those to whom these disclosures have been made, pre-eminently the case with John Wesley, who laboured years, as he regarded it, in bondage, and at last came out in the power of the Spirit.
5. Lastly, many now living are distinctly conscious that this same impulse, this same clothing of extraordinary power remains on earth. Men’s faculties are telescopic. Used in their lower state they are, as it were, undrawn cut. They are capable of being brought to a condition in which they will be a hundred times more than in their ordinary condition. The consciousness of this transcends all other evidences of the Divine life. APPLICATION: Many of you are longing for the renewal of life. Here is the instrument of your power. This is what you need; this is what we all need--that higher life which comes by the Spirit of God. (H. W. Beecher.)
The power of the Holy Ghost
There was no great natural capacity in Harlan Page; and yet he was an apostle; and his life has quickened the lives of tens of thousands since he has been gone. Being dead, he yet speaks. But he had the Holy Ghost rising upon him. There are men who say but little; and yet they give you anew ideal. They shine as stars in the heavens. And there can be no accounting for it, except on the ground of the dynamic influence of spiritual life and spiritual power in this world. There are men who stand in the centre of circles, and all rise up and call them blessed; and nobody can tell why, except that they bring heaven near, and bring invisible things near, and gain faith, and strengthen their moral tendencies, and see God, and have the power to reflect what they see upon other persons. It is these men who have the higher region of their soul enlightened by the Spirit of God, that do the most for other men; that set aside scepticism, that convince the unconvinced, that penetrate the unconverted through with a new and eternal sense, both of their lacks and of their possibilities and hopes. It is these men who are joined together, and who receive their power of life and of working from God, that, after all, are the lights of the world. (H. W. Beecher.)
Effects of the indwelling of the Spirit
Dr. Daniel Steele says, “ Soon after Dr. Finney’s conversion he received a wonderful baptism of the Spirit which was followed by marvellous effects. His words uttered in private conversation, and forgotten by himself, fell like live coals on the hearts of men, and awakened a sense of guilt which would not let them rest till the blood of sprinkling was applied. At his presence, before he opened his lips, the operatives in a mill began to fall on their knees and cry for mercy, smitten by the invisible currents of Divine power which went forth from him. When, like a flame of fire, he was traversing western and central New York, he came to the village of Rome in a time of spiritual slumber. He had not been in the house of the pastor an hour before he had conversed with all the family, the pastor, children, boarders, and servants, and brought them all to their knees seeking pardon, or the fulness of the Spirit. In a few days almost every man and woman in the village and vicinity was converted, and the work ceased from lack of material to transform, and the evangelist passed on to other fields, to behold new triumphs of the gospel through his instrumentality.” (Lightning Flashes.)
Spiritual power
Dr. Steele mentions another case, not, however, so well known in this country as that of Professor Finney. He says, “Another rare instance of extraordinary spiritual power is that of Father Carpenter, of New Jersey, a Presbyterian layman of a past generation. A cipher in the Church, till anointed of the Holy Ghost, he immediately became a man of wonderful spiritual power, though of ordinary intellect, and very limited education. In personal effort, hardened sinners melted under his appeals and yielded to Christ. Once in a stage-coach going from Newark to New York, he found six unconverted men and one believer his fellow-passengers. He began to present the claims of Jesus, and so powerfully did the Spirit attend the truth, that four were converted in the coach, and the other two after reaching New York. At his death it was stated that by a very careful inquiry it had been ascertained that more than ten thousand souls had been converted through his direct instrumentality. (Lightning Flashes.)