For it is not ye that speak.
The Christian ministry a ministry of the Spirit
The text applied-
I. To the apostles.
1. The primary reference is to the apostles.
2. The fact of the Spirit of the Father speaking in the apostles is evident from the effects produced by their word.
II. To ourselves.
1. This is the dispensation of the Spirit.
2. The minister of the Spirit prepares diligently for his pulpit ministrations. (C. Clayton, M. A.)
The intuitional element in lift,
The disciples were a helpless body of men for thinking purposes, and could not imagine beforehand, in their simplicity and rudeness and ignorance, what would be best for them; but if they gave themselves wholly to the ministry of Christ, and then were called before magistrates, it would be given them in that hour what they should say. The range of saying was very limited. It was not that they should understand all theology, providence, learning; but the power of self-defence against magistrates. They were to maintain innocency and simplicity; not to be tricked into casuistry.
1. The nation and times from which the sacred Scriptures came were anterior to the philosophizing period which was ushered in later. Facts, events, things, emotions, belong to the periods which generated the Scriptures.
2. Every man recognizes the fact that the mind acts with different degrees of clearness and certainty under different conditions. The range of the eye is limited, but in perfect health you can see more clearly than when health is impaired; also when atmospheric conditions are favourable. So it is with faculty. The faculties of the mind have a wonderful power of development. The limit to which you can draw out the mind-for that is the meaning of education-is immense. But that is not the only limit of the expansible faculties of the mind. They are subject to instantaneous development. As a grain of powder, which is small, but which, when touched by fire, expands instantly into a thousand times its bulk and diameter, and generates a power that was unsuspected before, so the mental faculties can be touched with a fire that shall give them an immense flash and scope and penetration utterly unlike the ordinary experience of men in life. (Beecher.)
A latent prophetic gift in man
There is a latent spirit of prophecy in everybody who is highly organized. This action of the mind is seen in lower forms. Take, for example, the inspiration which fear breeds. If a man’s leading idea is gold, he has an instinct by which he avoids things unfavourable. Others work on the plane of philosophical power. Scholars have the “critical judgment.” These flashings of inspiration are of the highest value; in business, art. There may be error in these intuitions; so there is in ordinary experience. These flashes of prophecy should be corrected.
1. The primary benefit that comes from these moral intuitions is comfort and direction of the individual. They clear his reason, they furnish an ideal; they redeem him from bondage.
2. These inspirations work mostly beyond the senses, in the invisible. Is it unreasonable to expect a certain degree of excitability of mind in the Divine realm? (Beecher.)
Intuition begotten of fear
A man is walking sluggishly home, and thinking of the drudgery of the day, and he hears the fire-bell, and instantly he says, “Why, that is my district; how did I leave things?” Instantly he thinks of the way in which he left his shop and the tire; and then he says to himself, “If it is there, what treasure I have in that shop, open and exposed! Why, there is powder there!” In an instant that man, not by any slow process of analyzing, but with a flash, thinks of a thousand things; and they are all material things; they are not higher thoughts and realities at all. (Beecher.)
Intuition illuminates, but does not create, facts
Of course, when the flash of inspiration comes to a man in practical matters, there must be material for it to illuminate or act upon. If in a gallery of pictures there is a central electric fire, and the light flashes into the room, a spectator who has a liking for pictures, standing there, feels the inspiration in a minute; and if the light instantly goes out, he exclaims, “I have seen them: I know them; let the light go out;” but if a man is in an empty room, where there is nothing on the walls, if the light were to flash, he might look around and not know anything more than he did before. Let a man store his mind with knowledge, with facts, with realities, with materials of various kinds, and then, when swelling, flashing revelations come, he has something for them to inspire; but they never inspire emptiness or ignorance; they merely give to what a man does know, facts, principles, materials, spiritual or ethical forms and proportions and revelatory power for the future. (Beecher.)
Intuition needs correction
We know, too, that these intuitions, these flashes of prophecy should be corrected. We dig gold out of a vein, and we know that there is dross in it. Gold absolutely pure is seldom found anywhere; but we do not reject the ore if there is only ninety per cent of gold in it. I think that men who buy dry mines, and spend good money on nothing at all, ought to be willing to take a mine that has ninety per cent of pure metal in it. If it has fifty per cent or forty per cent., or even twenty per cent., it is worth working: it more than pays expenses. (Beecher.)
Luther before the Diet of Worms
Never perhaps has this promise been more clearly fulfilled than in the case of Luther before the Diet of Worms. The intrepid monk, who had hitherto boldly braved all his enemies, spoke on this occasion, when he found himself in the presence of those who thirsted for his blood, with calmness, dignity, and humility. There was no exaggeration, no mere human enthusiasm, no anger; overflowing with the liveliest emotion, he was still at peace; modest, though withstanding the powers of the earth; great in presence of all the grandeur of the world. This is an indisputable mark that Luther obeyed God, and not the suggestions of his own pride. In the hall of the Diet there was One greater than Charles and than Luther.