“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free Spirit.” Psalm 5: 10-12.

These words express the prayer of David at an important era in his life, and suggest to us his relation to the Holy Spirit in his deepest experience. Back of this picture there lies in dim outline another picture, that of a life that had also possessed the Holy Spirit but had lost His blessing; and it was, perhaps, in reference to this dark, sad background that David cried, “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” The other picture is that of Saul. These two lives stand side by side as companion pictures illustrating the dealings of the Holy Spirit with two opposite characters, and leading to entirely opposite results. It is a very solemn contrast and a very instructive lesson.

1. First, in the story of Saul we find that he, too, had the Holy Spirit. We have a very distinct account of his call and enduement by the Spirit. We find the story in the tenth chapter of First Samuel. Here we see the Spirit coming upon a man almost unsought, and apparently without any spiritual preparation. It was the Spirit of God coming for service, giving him power to prophesy, to conquer, to rule, the enduement for service rather than for personal experience.

There is always real danger just at this point. It is a very serious thing to want the Holy Ghost simply to give us power to work for God. It is much more important that we should receive the Holy Spirit for personal character and personal holiness. Perhaps the deep secret of Saul’s failure was that, like Balaam, he had power to witness and to work rather than to live and obey.

God’s graces are higher than God’s gifts, and one grain of love is worth a thousand lightning flashes of prophetic fire.

Again, we see, perhaps, another secret of Saul’s failure, in the fact that the power came upon him largely from others. It was when he was in company with the prophets that the spirit of prophecy came upon him.

There is always the danger of absorbing much from the atmosphere around us, and being too little self-contained and directly centered in God. “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart is departed from the Lord.” The difference between Saul and David was that David knew God for himself, and knew Him from a deep personal experience of the indwelling life of the Spirit, and the outflowing life of habitual obedience, while Saul knew Him only as a supernatural impulse for his public life.

But notwithstanding these drawbacks, the enduement of Saul with the Spirit of God was very deep and very important. It marked a complete crisis in his life, and his heart was changed into another heart, and he became another man.

It is very remarkable how fully God can possess a human soul. We read of demoniac possession through which the entire being of a man becomes so controlled by evil spirits that they are able to add tenfold intensity and force to his life. Why may not a man be just as much God-possessed as he can be Satan-possessed, so that every faculty and power of his being shall be filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, and his energy and capability shall be redoubled?

This was the case with Saul, and it may be true of us. Look again, how all-sufficient His divine presence was for every emergency. “When this is come upon thee,” Samuel said, “thou shalt do as occasion serve thee; for God is with thee.”

We do not need to have elaborate plans or depend upon our own wisdom; for we have a Guide and a Friend that will direct us as need shall require, and, if we will acknowledge Him in all our ways, He will direct our paths.

So Saul started in his career. No man ever had a more promising beginning, supported by splendid personnel, an enthusiastic people, a clear call of God and a manifestly divine enduement for his great work. Surely he had every opportunity to accomplish the grandest results for God and man.

But, alas! he ended in disappointment and failure. His kingdom ere long was rent from him by the hand of God, and his sun went down in darkness and blood. What were the causes of his failure, and what are the lessons of this strange career?

We find the test coming to him very soon. Samuel sent him on a high commission, and told him to wait a certain time until he should arrive. He bade him tarry seven days, promising him to come and offer sacrifices to God before marching against their enemies. Saul waited until the seven days had expired, and then, becoming impatient and anxious, he rashly offered the sacrifice himself. No sooner was the sacrifice accomplished than Samuel arrived and told him that, by his disobedience, he had forfeited the approval of God and the permanence of his kingdom.

It may seem a little thing, but little things are always deciding the issues of life because they are the best tests of real principle and character. It was but a little thing that wrecked the human race. One trifling act of disobedience, one minute detail of God’s commandments in which our first parents dared to take their own way and began the career of rebellion and independence which has brought upon the human race all their sorrow.

This act indicated the true spirit of Saul. One word expresses that better than any other, self-will.
Although God had appointed him to be His king, Saul insisted upon being his own master, thereby proving himself unfit for his trust.

It was not long before the second test came. God gave Saul another chance, He sent him on an expedition against the Amalekites, Israel’s ancient foes, types of the flesh and the world, and the enemies of the true life of God in the soul. His instructions were implicit and peremptory. He was to destroy Amalek utterly. Because God went with him in his expedition and crowned him with success, Saul returned victorious, having subdued Amalek and laid waste all their cities; but he brought back with him the best of the spoil and Agag, their king, to grace his triumph.

Samuel arrived just as he was congratulating himself on his splendid success, and his faithful fulfillment of his great commission. Saul met him with confidence, but Samuel responded with a stern rebuke. “I have obeyed the commandment of the Lord,”says the king. Then followed those terrible words of divine denunciation, which ended at last in the withdrawal of Samuel. As Saul clung to him in despair, the prophet’s garment parted in the hands of the king, and Samuel declared that it was the pledge of the broken covenant and the loss of his kingdom.

Saul betrayed the real earthliness of his heart by his last appeal. “Honor me,” he cried, “at least before the people,” and God granted him the little gratification which for the time satisfied his poor shallow heart. Out of this dark and dreadful scene there comes one sentence which is the keynote of true obedience and true success. “Obedience is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of the rams.” This was the secret of Saul’s failure; he lacked the true hearkening spirit and the obedient will.

He was quite willing to go half way with God as long as it did not cross his personal preferences; but when there came a test and a sacrifice, his obedience failed, and he pleased himself rather than God. This was the essential difference between Saul and David. It was this that made David a man after God’s heart. He wanted to obey God, and the real purpose of his heart was to please Jehovah.

Saul was a man after his own heart, and he wanted to please and glorify poor Saul. He was the type of a man that had power without grace, and gifts without holiness.

His desire to spare Agag was but a sample of his whole spirit. He wanted to spare himself. Agag is the type of the self-life and the whole story illustrates the great lesson of self-crucifixion, which lies at the threshold of all spiritual blessing. Amalek and the flesh must die. Saul was not willing that they should die, and, therefore, Saul had to die. He that would save his life must lose it, and he that is willing to lose his earth-life will keep it unto the life that is not of earth but eternal.

This was the turning point in Saul’s career. From this time the Spirit of God left him, and “an evil spirit from God” possessed him. It was the spirit of Satan, but it was by divine permission.

We touch a very awful theme here, but one that we dare not evade. We are taught in many places in the Holy Scripture that when men refuse the leading of the Holy Ghost, and choose their own way and the ways of Satan, the Lord lets them be filled with their own devices and gives them over to the power of evil.

Oh, let us not trifle with the sacred things of God! Let us not talk lightly of the perseverance of the saints when we are presumptuously disobeying God. Like the little child who keeps her hoop steady in its movement by touching it first on the one side then upon the other, so God speaks to us His promises and His threatenings as we are ready to receive them. To the disobedient and careless disciple He says with great solemnity, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” But to the poor trembling heart, sinking in its own discouragement, He cries, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee”; “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”

Like the pilgrim in Bunyan’s dream, let us both hope and fear. Let us guard against the first step backward. We never know where it is going to end. The apostle hints that it may be unto perdition, and he pleads with us, “Cast not, therefore, away your confidence.” “If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them who believe to the saving of the soul.”

2. David, likewise, has his experience of the Holy Ghost.

In the same paragraph that tells us of the Holy Spirit’s departing from Saul, we read these simple words, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.” (1 Samuel 16: 13).

The first effect of the Holy Spirit upon David is shown in the next reference, in the eighteenth chapter of first Samuel and the fifth verse, where we read that “David went out whithersoever Saul sent him, and he behaved himself wisely.”

This was not only an anointing with power, but an anointing also of wisdom and grace, enabling him to live a true life and to commend himself to this master and to all men.

The subsequent story of David’s life is but an unfolding of the power of the Holy Spirit. In the book of Psalms we have the inner life of David, and in the historical books we have the outer story that corresponded to this.

We find David himself attributing his military exploits and his physical power, as well as the success of His whole kingdom, to the power of the God upon whom he depended. There is no finer illustration of this than the eighteenth Psalm, in which he himself tells us the secret of his strength.

“He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms.”

“Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation: and thy right hand hath holden me up, and thy gentleness hath made me great.” Yet the warrior king recognized in his body the same power which gives us strength today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and attributed all his victories to the power of the Holy Ghost.

In the story of his campaigns we have some vivid illustrations of his constant dependence upon the presence of God and the leadership of His Spirit. Even when he wandered as a fugitive among his enemies, we find him constantly inquiring of the Lord about all his movements. When, as he ascended the throne, the Philistines came up against him, we see him at once appealing to Jehovah, and asking, “Shall I go up to the Philistines? Wilt thou deliver them into my hand? Not until the answer came and the order was given to move, did he presume to go forward.

It is needless to say that his movements were crowned with victory. A year later when the same enemy returned in force, David did not go against them as before. He again went to God for direct guidance, but he received an entirely different direction.

“Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees. And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.” Surely this was a divine plan of battle and a divine victory.

Thus he fought his battles, thus he won his crown; thus he ruled and organized his people; thus he planned the glorious temple; and thus he lived his wondrous life in the power of the same Holy Spirit which comes to us in the fuller light of the New Testament Dispensation.

We have in the Psalms some delightful revelations of the relation of the Holy Spirit to his inner life. We find in one of the most profoundly spiritual of them this prayer, “Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.” We see in some of them the unfoldings of a deeper life which makes them lighthouses for us upon the voyage of our higher Christian experience.

Nowhere else can we find a profounder conception of faith than in some of these Psalms. The thirty-seventh Psalm is not unlike the beatitudes of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

There we see two pictures, one corresponding to the story of Saul and the other to the spirit of David. There we see a man who is plotting against God’s servant and seeking to slay him; and there we see the spirit of trust, fretting not because of evildoers, but trusting in the Lord with holy obedience, committing his way unto the Lord, and waiting patiently for Him, resting in the Lord and delighting himself in Him, and receiving from Him the desires of his heart.

Surely the man who could write this must have drunk deeply of the fountain of the Holy Spirit.

In the passage which we have quoted as our text we havea most definite unfolding of the Holy Spirit in David’s personal experience. He is represented here in a threefold aspect, and under three distinct names. First, as the right spirit, “Renew a right spirit within me”; second, as the Holy Spirit, “Take not thy holy Spirit from me”; third, as the free spirit, which literally means the princely spirit, the lofty, noble spirit,thespirit which communicates life and liberty. “Uphold
with thy free spirit.”

These are not repetitions. First, there is the right spirit. This is connected with the clean heart. It is it work of creation. It is the spirit of the newborn soul. It is the heart that has been purified. It is not so much the indwelling person of the Spirit as the effect of His work in producing rightness of heart toward God and toward man.

Secondly, we have the Holy Spirit. This is the person of the Holy Ghost Himself, which will come into the heart that has been made right, and dwell within us in His power and holiness.
It is the Holy Spirit, the spirit which brings holiness; and holiness just means wholeness, completeness, entireconformity to the will of God. David here intimates the possibility of losing this Holy Spirit, as Saul had done; but he cries, “take not thy holy Spirit from me.”

David’s trust is very beautiful. He had come to a great crisis. He had forfeited his kingdom and his place of deeper blessing. Had it not been for his confidence in God, he would have been driven to despair. He had fallen and fallen so far that his whole moral nature was stunned, and his spiritual sensibilities were so paralyzed that he was left for four long years without the consciousness of his very fall. When he awoke from his dream to the dreadful consciousness of his sin, the realization of his iniquity was fearful.

He beheld himself in the light of the Holy Ghost, and cried again, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” Yet, in the face of this dark and dreadful vision, he saw the grace of God as perhaps no one ever saw it before; and he was able to rise from the depths of sin to the heights of mercy, and cry, “I shall be whiter than snow.” Judas had a similar vision of his sin, but without the vision of mercy, and he sank to rise no more. But God in His infinite mercy gave David the faith to realize the divine love, so he rose from the abyss of sin to the heights of salvation. We have a similar incident in the story of the woman of Canaan, to whom Jesus gave the fearful words, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the dogs.” That expression, “dogs,” meant the very depths of sin and unnatural crime. She did not deny it; she accepted it with lowly heart. Then she leaped from the depths of her unworthiness and penitence to the highest place in His love, and claimed, even as a dog, a crumb of her Master’s bread. Jesus looked upon her with wonder, because she had been able to see her own unworthiness and yet to accept His mercy and grace.

This was the spirit that enabled David to trust God even in the darkest hour, and doubtless it brought David nearer to God than he had ever been before.

There is a third designation of the Holy Spirit here, “Uphold me with thy free spirit.” There was danger that, in coming back to God from such an awful state, he should come in the spirit of servile fear.

And so he asks that God would give him the spirit of love and holy liberty. David is the prodigal coming back to take the highest place, to wear the best robe, the royal ring, and to sit at the heavenly banquet. God wants us all to have this spirit. It is the spirit of sonship; it is the spirit of confidence; it is the new-born spirit; it is the princely spirit.

God takes us in Jesus Christ “even as He.” He has made us accepted in the Beloved, and we cannot honor Him so much in any other way as by accepting the place He gives us and counting ourselves the objects of His perfect complacency and infinite love through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the spirit of power, the spirit of love, the spirit that has spring in it and force in it, and leads us out to self-sacrifice and unselfish love. And so He adds, “Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee . . . and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.”

Was it with reference to this experience that he wrote the wondrous twenty-third Psalm? Surely we find here the same progression of thought and experience. First we see the restored sheep under the Shepherd’s care, rejoicing in the green pastures and lying down by the waters of rest. Next we see a different picture. It is t he wandering sheep, but the wandering sheep is not remembered except in the song of restoration. He restoreth my soul, He maketh me to walk in the right paths, for His name’s sake.

It is here that the crisis comes, “The valley of the shadow of death.” This is not literal death, but that deeper death to self and sin through which every true life must pass, and through which, perhaps, David passed after the tragedy of Uriah and Bathsheba.

Although it is a very dark valley, there is one bright thing through it all — the presence of the Lord. “Thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”; “Iwill fear no evil.”

You will notice that here He speaks of the second person. It is no longer He but Thou. God is now by his side and in his very heart. Now, how all has changed! Instead of the Shepherd, it is the Father; and instead of the fold, it is the banqueting house and the home circle. Instead of the painful returning of the prodigal, it is the table spread in the presence of his enemies, the head anointed with oil, and the overflowing cup. This is “THE FREE SPIRIT.” This is the blessing that there is not room enough to receive. Before him all is brighter still. As he looks out into the coming vista he cries, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Beloved, these are “the sure mercies of David.” The Lord is waiting to give the same right spirit, the same Holy Spirit, the same free spirit, the same fullness of blessing for spirit, soul, and body. Oh, it may be that some of us, like David, have sunk with him into sin and despair! Do not yield to discouragement, but recognize the hand of mercy in the fall. Perhaps it was divine love, showing you that you were not strong enough to stand alone, and bringing you back, not to the old place of blessing, but to a place where He is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.

That blessed Holy Spirit is ready to come to you and to “cause you to walk in his statutes, so that you shall keep his judgments and do them.” That “Free Spirit” is longing so to fill you that “the water that he shall give you shall be in you a well of water, springing up into everlasting life”; nay, more, that drinking of His fullness you shall not be able to hold the blessing, and out of your inmost being shall go forth to others rivers of living water; and your blessing shall reach its consummation in David’s closing song, “Then will I teach transgressors thy way; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.” “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.”

“Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets; “She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, “How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? “Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. ” Prov. 1: 20, 21, 22, 23.

There is a beautiful incident in the early history of Solomon which reveals the secret of his extraordinary life. Just after his accession to the throne of his father, David, the Lord appeared to him in Gibeon, and gave him the right to choose any blessing he desired. Instead of choosing wealth, power, long life, and the lives of his enemies, he simply asked for wisdom; and God was so pleased with him for his simple single choice that He gave him not only wisdom, but all these other blessings also. Solomon became renowned for superhuman wisdom, and, in this book of Proverbs, we have some of the utterances of that wisdom, crystalized in the form of these short,
sententious words, which have been well called “pearls at random strung.”

It, is said that the people of Scotland are accustomed to carry in their vest pockets a small copy of the book of Proverbs, as a sort of “vade mecum,” a kind of manual of practical wisdom, for the guidance of their everyday life.

This book reveals to us a phase of life that is extremely practical and important, and shows us the teachings and workings of the Holy Ghost as they affect our everyday life. The keyword to this whole book is the word Wisdom. It occurs scores of times.

It is a peculiar Hebrew word, and in these pages it becomes personified until it is really a proper name. It is very much like another term applied to our Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament; namely, the Word, or Logos, introduced to us in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. Indeed, the Word in John and Wisdom in Proverbs are really the same Person, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, revealed in these ancient pages in His primeval glory. But the Lord Jesus Christ always stands connected with the Holy Spirit, who reveals Him, and who filled Him, and spake and wrought through Him during His earthly ministry; so that Wisdom in the book of Proverbs is not only the personification of Jesus Christ but also of the blessed Holy Ghost.

Let us look at some of the pictures of this blessed Person in these ancient pages.

I. First, we see Him in His personal and primeval glory. This is unfolded in the sublime vision of the eighth chapter of Proverbs. “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.” This blessed Person is older than the creation. “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.”

Next, we see Him taking part in the work of creation. “When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth; when he established the clouds above; when he strengthened the fountains of the deep; when he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment; when he appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by him, as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.”

Oh, what depths of light these strange illuminated verses pour upon the fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the remote eternal ages! And, oh, what love to our poor human race these words reveal, “Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men”!

This blessed Christ, this blessed Comforter, who seeks your love, is no less than the second and third Persons of the Eternal Godhead. By them these heavens were made and this earth was formed. All the majesty of nature is their handiwork. All the wisdom of the ages has come from their eternal mind. Not only do they represent the wisdom and power of God, but they represent a love that has thought of us from the very beginning, and will love us to the end.

When this world was made, when the mountains were settled and the fountains and the rivers were opened, God was thinking of us, the Holy Ghost was planning for our happiness and welfare.

The whole material universe, the whole structure of nature, the whole economy of the ages was planned with a view to our creation, our redemption, our eternal glory. Redemption is no afterthought of God; but when He made this earth, and settled the stars in their orbits, He did it with a view to man’s creation and future destiny. Oh, surely we can trust Him with our future when we think of His eternal past ! Oh, surely we need not hesitate to commit our destiny to those Almighty hands, that have spanned these heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and to that heart of eternal love that loved us from the first of time, and loves us to the last!

But not only do we see His part in creation, but also in providence. “By me,” he says, “kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.” His is the wisdom that has inspired every high and mighty thought of man; His is the fire that has kindled every touch of human genius. He is the foundation of all life, and truth, and wisdom, and power; and He offers to be at once our wisdom, our guide, our power, and our all-sufficiency.

Surely we may well heed His gentle voice, as He calls to us in the light of all this record of glory: “Now, therefore, hearken unto me, ye children; for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not; for whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain the favor of the Lord, but he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate me love death.”

II. The next chapter reveals to us this divine Wisdom building her house, hewing out her seven pillars, killing her sacrifices, spreading her table, inviting her guests, and calling her friends to the banquet of her bounty and grace. This, also, is a picture of the Holy Ghost. The house that she is building is the Church of Christ. The seven pillars that stand in the front are truth, righteousness, life, faith, love, power, and hope. The sacrifice is that of Christ, our great atonement; and the banquet prepared is the feast of His love, the Living Bread which He Himself provides, and the wine of joy and blessing that comes from the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. Into this blessed house of mercy and unto this table of every heavenly blessing, the Holy Spirit is inviting a starving world.

In contrast with this blessed woman, who stands in the front of the picture, there is another woman revealed in the closing verses. It is the woman that so often appears in the pictures of Proverbs, that evil woman who sits in the highway of life calling to the passers-by to
partake of her unhallowed joy, inviting the foolish and the simple to partake of her forbidden pleasures, saying to them, “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But, alas! there is an awful skeleton behind that door, and a fearful cry that comes from that house of folly and sin, for the prophet tells us “that the dead are there; and her guests are in the depths of hell.”

So the two houses stand face to face on the highway of life; the heavenly house, with the Holy Ghost standing at its door and inviting in the children of sin and sorrow, and saying, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, .. . come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money, and without price. Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?” And right across the way, with the multitude surging by and pressing in the house of pleasure, the house of shame, the house of sin, whose steps are hard by the gates of hell.

III. We turn back to the first chapter of Proverbs, and we have another picture of Wisdom as an impersonation of the Holy Ghost. She is standing now in the streets of the great city, in the entering in of the gates, in the places of public concourse, and calling to the passing crowd as they go heedlessly by, “How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge. Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. “This is the Holy Ghost pleading with a lost, perishing world. This is the Spirit of God, in the messengers of the Gospel, inviting men to turn to God. This is the vision of divine mercy trying to save men through the message of the Gospel.

Notice that she does not stand behind a pulpit railing and inside upon the marble steps of a splendid cathedral. This was the way that Isaiah prophesied, that Jonah preached, that Jesus preached, and that Paul often proclaimed the Gospel.

We cannot wait for a sinful world to come to our doors. We must go out quickly, and constrain them to come in; and if we are filled with the Holy Ghost, our cry, like Wisdom’s, will still be heard in the streets, and amid the concourse of crowds, and at the entering in of the gates. It is the same old cry, “Repent”; “Turn you at my reproof.” It is the call to men to turn from sin and turn to God; and the promise comes with it that God will give His Spirit to the returning sinner, and enable him to repent, believe, and obey.

Oh, is there any sinful soul listening to this message or reading these lines? He calls to thee, “Turn you at my reproof,” and He will pour out His Spirit upon you as you put yourself in the place of blessing, and He will make known His words unto you, and lead you into all truth as you follow on and obey the light that He has already given you. But there is the same solemn warning to those that refuse to repent and believe. Oh, how sad and solemn is this warning cry, “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would have none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.” Oh, how dark the angry cloud!

And then there comes a strange and awful change in the structure of the sentence; from the second person it changes to the third person. It is no longer you, but they; for God has now gotten so far away that He is speaking to the poor lost soul no more, but only speaking about it. “Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they would none of my counsel; they despised all my reproof: therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.” This is still the Holy Spirit’s solemn voice to all who reject His message and refuse the Gospel of His grace.

But as the storm cloud sweeps away, the rainbow rises upon its last dark shadow, a rainbow of promise to those who have heeded His warning and have hearkened to His voice. God grant, brother, that it may be His word to you, and thou even yet shall turn at His reproof. “Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from the fear of evil.” Blessed promise; saved from all evil, saved even from its shadow and from its touch.

IV. How shall we find the truth? How shall we receive this heavenly wisdom? The answer is given in the second chapter of Proverbs and the first nine verses. “If thou will receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.” Here is the secret of divine teaching, deep earnestness and singleness of purpose, and perseverance of pursuit; the ears, the heart, the whole being must be yielded up. We must desire God above everything, and seek Him as men search for treasures and mines, for silver and for gold.

God has hidden every precious thing in such a way that it is a reward to the diligent, a prize to the earnest, and a disappointment to the slothful soul. All nature is arrayed against the lounger and the idler. The nut is hidden in its thorny case; the pearl is buried beneath the ocean wave; the gold is imprisoned in the rocky bosom of the mountain; the gem is found only after you crush the rock that encloses it; the very soil gives its harvests as the reward of industry to the laboring husbandman. So truth and God must be earnestly sought. “They that seek shall find; to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

The Holy Ghost is given in His fullest measure to deep earnestness and singleness of purpose and desire. You cannot have the higher things of God without the sacrifice of everything else. “I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung,” “for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” This is the true Spirit of divine attainment. The prize is not for all. All run, but one receiveth the prize. God give us the diligence, the singleness, the self-sacrifice, the concentration of desire, purpose, and every power upon the one thing which really means all things, and we, too, shall find that God is waiting to reward the true heart with Himself. It is as true as ever, “ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”

V. The message of wisdom to the seeker and searcher after treasure is found in Proverb 3: 13-18, “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding: for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her; and happy is every one that retaineth her.”

Then again, in chapter 8: 10, 11 we find: “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.”

And in verses 18-21 we read: “Riches and honor are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, . . . and my revenue than choice silver. I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment; that I may cause them that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.”

These are some of the treasures which this heavenly wisdom has to bestow upon those who truly seek her.

The keynote of the whole lesson was given in Solomon’s own life. He had the wisdom to choose wisdom and wisdom only, and God added to him all the things he did not choose. It is still true for us that, if we will choose the Holy Ghost, He will become to us the sum and substance of all good things.

He will be to us peace and happiness, joy and rest, health and strength, providence and protection, guidanceand provision, freedom from fear and care, and all the gifts and blessings which God can bestow upon a trusting heart.

Like the widow’s pot of oil, the Holy Spirit in us will be the equivalent of everything that heart can desire or life can need. God help us to make the wise and happy choice, and have all in Him and Him in all; and, as we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all things shall be added unto us.

This was where Solomon began his illustrious career. Happy would it have been for him if he had ended where he began. Alas! God’s very blessing became a snare. His heart turned away from the source of all his blessings to the blessing themselves. His affections were set on the things that surrounded him, his wives, his friends, his treasures, perhaps his own wisdom; and he sank from the Creator to the creature, from the height of wisdom to the depths of folly, shame, and sorrow.

Alas! Moses had to fail to show that the law made nothing perfect, and Solomon had to fail to show that the highest wisdom of man is insufficient for the child of God. Thank God, “a greater than Solomon is here,” the Lord Jesus Christ; not wisdom but Himself, the wise One; not holiness but Himself the Holy One, not our best but Himself within us to be His best.

Let us receive Christ, the wisdom of God, and let it be true of us, that “of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”

The blessed Holy Ghost is waiting to bring Him into our hearts, and to reveal Him and unfold Him in our life, the Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the Light of the World; and “He that followeth him shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

“And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still, small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19: 11-13.

This beautiful expression, “A still, small voice,” has almost come to be recognized as one of the names of the Holy Spirit. The whole scene is a fine illustration of the Spirit’s working not only in the ages and dispensations, but in the experience of every individual heart.

The scene is a most dramatic one. Elijah had just reached the climax of his marvelous ministry. In that magnificent scene on Carmel we behold him in the very zenith of his career. God has answered his faith and prayer by the descending fire. The whole nation has been swayed at his will, and the very king is helpless as a child at his bidding; while the prophets of Baal, unable to resist the storm of popular enthusiasm, have been swept away by a stroke of judgment. Even the very heavens that have been closed for years have opened the floodgates at the prophet’s command, and, like a commander-in-chief of the armies of earth and heaven, Elijah has led the victorious procession to the very gates of the capital. But now another scene occurs as dramatic as the first.

There is one other heart in Israel as thoroughly possessed of the devil as Elijah was possessed of the Holy Ghost. She hears the startling tidings without the quiver of a muscle or a nerve, and with a face of flint and a heart of steel, she speaks but one sentence, of fierce, defiant threatening, “So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.” It was a well directed shot from the batteries of the pit. In a moment it had done its fearful work, and the prophet of fire was broken like a child. There is something almost ludicrous in the graphic description of his flight, “Elijah arose and went for his life”; nor did he stop till he had reached the utmost confines of the land, away down at Beersheba. Nor even there did he linger, but, leaving his servant, he hastened on across the desert, until, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, he sank on the sand, and lay down beneath a juniper tree with one gasp of hopeless despair, “Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers.”

God tenderly nursed and cherished His weary child, put him to sleep, then awoke him and fed him by angel hands, until he was strong enough for his farther journey. Then He sent him on to Horeb, the Mount of God.

There, on some mountain crag and at the entrance of a cave, he waited for the message of his Lord. His spirit was all agitated and chafed. He felt his life was a failure, and he longed for power to accomplish the things for which he felt unable. Perhaps he even thought that if he could rule the world for a little how different things would be. He was just in that mood where he wanted something to happen. Anything was better than this silence, and the very war of the elements would seem to such a spirit a luxury of rest.

It was not long before his thought was fulfilled, and God began to speak to him through the voice of nature. First came the mighty earthquake, heaving the solid ground, tearing the rocks asunder and making the desert’s bosom heave like the billows of the ocean, till it seemed that he himself must be torn from his resting place, or engulfed in the awful chasms that were opening round him on every side. But he looked upon the whole scene unmoved. There was nothing in it to touch his spirit; the earthquake came and went, and he felt hat “the Lord was not in the earthquake.”

Next came the wild tornado, filling the air with clouds of sand, sweeping through the mountains, and tearing the solid rocks from their base and hurling the forests into Hie abysses below, while the air reverberated with the crashing thunder, and quivered with the awful lightning. His ears were stunned with the tempest’s awful roar; but through all the wild confusion the prophet stood unmoved . Perhaps his fiery spirit was even rested by the elemental war. There was nothing in it that spoke to his deeper heart. The whirlwind passed; but “the Lord was not in the whirlwind.”

Then came the fire. Perhaps it was the thunderbolt of the sky; perhaps it was some flame caused by the lightning stroke, kindling the forests and sweeping over the mountains, with fiery blaze; or, perhaps, it was some supernatural and awful flame, falling from the skies, quivering before his gaze like the fire that came dawn on Sinai ages before, when Moses received the law. But even this did not blanch his cheek nor move his heart; he gazed upon it with his spirit still unbroken, and his heart chafing as before. And then, like the hush that comes before the storm, or like the emphatic pause in some musical strain, there came an awful stillness, and there fell upon his ear a strange and “still, small voice,” or as the New Version expresses it, “A sound of gentle stillness,”softer than evening bells, sweeter than a mother’s tones, gentler than music’s tenderest notes. Perhaps it spoke as much to the senses of his soul as to his outward ear; but there was something in it so deep, so tender, so penetrating that it thrilled his inmost being. It broke his whole spirit into tenderness and awe, and, gathering his mantle about him, he crept into the cave, and fell upon his face at the feet of God to listen to His message. The fiery heart at length is subdued, the mighty will is broken, the stern prophet is like a little child.

What is the meaning of all this wondrous drama?

I. ELIJAH’S LESSON.

In the first place, it has a meaning for Elijah himself. He needed to be quiet, he needed to find that the forces that he was longing for were not the highest forces at God’s command, and that even his own stern, strong nature needed to be subdued and taught the deepest power of gentleness and love.

II. ELIJAH AND ELISHA.

Secondly, it had a yet higher meaning: it was a sort of picture of the two ministries of Elijah and Elisha. His was but a temporary dispensation; he came as the winter before the spring, as the plow before the sower, as the storm before the shower. His was the ministry of judgment and destruction. But the sunshine of spring is stronger than the storms of winter, and the little seed that drops into the soil is mightier than the plowshare that digs the furrow or the dynamite that blasts the rocks. So the gentle ministry of Elisha which was to follow was more mighty and more fruitful than all the destructive miracles of the great Elijah. He had his place; but the earthquake, the whirlwind and the fire of his awful judgments had to pass away, and “the still, small voice” of Elisha’s gentler teachings and miracles of grace had to come instead.

III. THE NEW DISPENSATION.

All this was prophetic of a yet higher era and a grander transaction. For Elijah and his ministry were typical of the law and the dispensation of Moses, while Elisha, was the type of the Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel of His grace. And so the scene on Horeb is a representation of the difference between Law and Grace, Judgment and Mercy, the Old Dispensation and the new.

God had already proved how much, or rather how little discipline can do to perfect human character and lead to lasting righteousness.

All that suffering and chastening can accomplish to purify a people was done for ancient Israel. What can ever surpass the pathetic story of Israel’s fall, Judah’s captivity, and Jerusalem’s doom? But alas! how transitory the effect upon the character of the nation! They wept, they suffered, they died, they left the awful record burned into the very heart of the nation; but the next generation went on repeating the sins and follies of their fathers, and God could only cry, “Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.”

Thank God, there is a better way. The Gospel of His grace, the gentleness of His love, and the power of His Holy Spirit, have accomplished what law and terror never could while they wrought alone. “The still, small voice”of Jesus’ love is mightier than all the thunder of Mount Sinai’s law, or Assyrian or Chaldean armies. The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did. “The earthquake, the whirlwind, and the fire” have gone, but “the still, small voice”of Calvary and Pentecost is speaking to the hearts of millions, and speaking them back to God and righteousness and heaven.

IV. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL.

The scene at Horeb is often repeated in our individual life. We, too, have to pass through the earthquake, the whirlwind, and the fire in our vain search for God; and, at last, we find Him as the still, small voice in the depths of our soul. Perhaps the experience comes through great trial, outward or inward sufferings, tests that rend our very heart and crush our spirit. But the suffering has no saving power. The human heart can be torn to pieces, and yet every single piece be as full of pride and rebellion as the whole.

It needs the quiet divine influence of the Holy Spirit to change the heart and sanctify the soul. Suffering without the Holy Ghost is the saddest thing on earth. Trials unsanctified are like the lightning strokes that blight but cannot bless.

Sometimes it is not so much external suffering as a struggle within the secret soul itself to find God and peace. Oh, how we labor and long and try! But the best result of all our struggles is to show their own fruitlessness and to lay us helpless and silent before the feet of Christ; and then we awake in the arms of His love and power. And as we awake, we find that there is so little in the new experience that is tangible or strongly marked. In fact, the most frequent experience is to find that we really have come into nothingness. The stillness is so quiet that there is often the absence of all self-consciousness and feeling, and even the presence of God is “a still, small voice” so quiet that we have to hush every other sound before we can hear it.

Indeed, the first experience is often one of great emptiness, bareness, and nothingness, and one is apt to be disappointed, and to say, “Is this all that is meant by the rest of faith?” But we soon find that the nothingness of self is but the beginning of God’s all-sufficiency, and as we are willing to rest in our nothingness and the all-sufficiency, we soon begin to know the sweetness and the power of that voice.

V. THE HOLY SPIRIT AS THE VOICE OF GOD.

The keynote of all this wondrous story is THE VOICE. The earthquake had a sound, but it had no voice. The tempest and whirlwind could make a mighty noise, but there was no voice. The fire could speak through the sense of vision, and fill the soul with awe, but it had no voice to speak to the heart. But “the still, small voice” had behind it an intelligent mind, a living personality, a loving heart, and it was mightier than all the lifeless forces which had gone before.

Oh, the power of a voice! How it lingers in our memory! How certain tones arrest our attention and wake up all the old chords of the past! How that voice speaks to us of the difference between nature and revelation, between the language of the earth and sky, and the language of God’s precious Word! God hath spoken once in the voice of creation, but it is only like the inarticulate language of the earthquake, the whirlwind, and the fire. God hath spoken a second time, in the voice of His Holy Word and His blessed Son, and this is the message that brings light and life and salvation to man.

A voice is more than a message, more than a printed page, more than even an inspired book. A voice means the presence of the person who speaks, and his personal and living words to us. And so God speaks to us, not only in the Bible, but by His own personal voice. His sheep know His voice, and “a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.”

There is more in the Bible and in the revelation of Christ than merely a message of truth. It is also a personal message of love. He has a special voice for every one of His children, and it is our privilege to know His voice.

Oh, how that voice can speak to us! It is not an audible voice; it does not reach our outward senses; it would not be possible to explain to a stranger how it makes itself understood in the heart; but, as we kneel in prayer and ask His counsel, as we come with our heavy-laden hearts and throw ourselves upon His bosom for comfort; as we bring our petitions and wait for the whispered answer, how it speaks to us, how it satisfies us, how it identifies itself to us, and makes us know “it is the Lord!” How it gives its approval to the plans that He commends! How it seals the promise that is suggested to the mind, and lets it fall upon the heart like balm upon the bleeding wound! How it brings home the words that fall from the speaker’s lips, and makes them God’s living messages to our hearts! How it emphasizes every word we read, and how its sweet and heavenly whisper fills all our inmost being with peace and joy and life, until our glad and grateful heart can only say, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak; for he will speak peace to his people and to his saints”!

VI. THE POWER OF GENTLENESS.

The New Version translates this phrase, “The sound of a gentle stillness.” It speaks of God’s gentleness. Gentleness is always an attribute of the highest natures. The bravest soldier, the loftiest character, is always the most child-like, simple and tender. Jesus Christ was the incarnation of meekness, lowliness, and gentleness.

The apostle used this as his strongest plea when he besought His disciples “by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.” “I am meek and lowly in heart” was the Master’s own highest claim. And this was but the ancient prophetic picture. “He shall not strive nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets; a bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.”

Is there a more sublime spectacle, is there a more heart-moving sight in all history, than that patient Sufferer standing in the judgment hall or hanging upon the Cross and allowing His murderers to do their worst, answering not a word, “led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth”? The Holy Ghost, the Representative of Christ, also is gentleness itself. He came upon Jesus as the Dove, and He dwells in us as a Monitor so kind, a Comforter so tender, that we can only “grieve” and “vex” Him, but we cannot make Him angry. He appeals to our obedience by His sensitiveness to the hurt that we can give Him. Oh, let us be gentle as He; let us treat Him with the consideration that His sensitiveness should claim!

He will not force an entrance to our heart. He will not do violence to the freedom of our will. He will not compel us to do what we do not choose, nor to surrender what we want to keep. He appeals to the finest motives of our being, to the will that springs from our deepest heart, and to the obedience which we are only too glad to give.

Let us imitate His gentleness; let us ask Him to translate it into all our beings until we shall be simple, sensitive, considerate, yielded, lowly, meek and childlike, “even as He.” Our faces, our manners, our tones, and the whole complexion of our life shall be the blending of the spirit of the Lamb and the Dove.

VII. THE POWER OF STILLNESS.

It was “a still, small voice,” or “the sound of a gentle stillness.” Is there any note of music in all the chorus as mighty as the emphatic pause? Is there any word in all the Psalter more eloquent than that one word, “Selah, (Pause) “? Is there anything more thrilling and awful than the hush that comes before the bursting of the tempest or the strange quiet that seems to fall upon all nature before some preternatural phenomenon or convulsion? Is there anything that can so touch our hearts as the power of stillness?

The sweetest blessing that Christ brings us is the Sabbath rest of the soul, of which the Sabbath of creation was the type; the Land of Promise, God’s great object lesson. There is for the heart that will cease from itself “the peace of God that passeth all understanding”; “a quietness and confidence” which is the source of all strength; a sweet peace which “nothing can offend”; a deep rest which “the world can neither give nor take away.” There is, in the deepest center of the soul, a chamber of peace where God dwells, and where, if we will only enter in and hush every other sound, we can hear His still, small voice.

There is, in the swiftest wheel that revolves upon its axis, a place in the very center where there is no movement at all; and so in the busiest life there may be a place where we dwell alone with God in eternal stillness.

This is the only way to know God. “Be still, and know that I am God.” “God is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.”

A score of years ago a friend placed in my hand a little book which became one of the turning points of my life. It was called “True Peace.” It was an old mediaeval message with but one thought, which was this, that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would only get still enough to hear His voice.

I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so I began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamoring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din. Some of them were my own voice, some of them were my own questions, some of them were my own cares, and some of them were my very prayers. Others were suggestions of the tempter and voices from the world’s turmoil. Never before did there seem so many things to be done, to be said, to be thought; and in every direction I was pushed, and pulled, and greeted with noisy acclamations and unspeakable unrest. It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them, and to answer some of them, but God said, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Then came the conflict of thoughts for the morrow, and its duties and cares, but God said, “Be still.” And then there came the very prayers which my restless heart wanted to press upon Him, but God said, “Be still.” And as I listened and slowly learned to obey and shut my ears to every sound, I found after awhile that when the other voices ceased, or I ceased to hear them, there was a still, small voice in the depths of my being that began to speak with an inexpressible tenderness, power and comfort. As I listened it became to me the voice of prayer, and the voice of wisdom, and the voice of duty. I did not need to think so hard, or pray so hard, or trust so hard, but that “still, small voice” of the Holy Spirit in my heart was God’s prayer in my secret soul, was God’s answer to all my questions, was God’s life and strength for soul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer, and all blessing; for it was the living God Himself as my Life and my All.

Beloved, this is our spirit’s deepest need. It is thus that we learn to know God; it is thus that we receive spiritual refreshing and nutriment; it is thus that our heart is nourished and fed; it is thus that we receive the Living Bread; it is thus that our very bodies are healed, and our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord, and we go forth to life’s conflicts and duties like the flower that has drunk in, through the shades of night, the cool and crystal drops of dew. But as the dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews of His grace never come to the restless soul.

We cannot go through life strong and fresh on express trains, with ten minutes for lunch. We must have quiet hours, secret places of the Most High, times of waiting upon the Lord, when we renew our strength and learn to mount up on wings as eagles, and then come back, to run and not be weary, and to walk and not faint.

The best thing about this stillness is that it gives God a chance to work. “He that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his”; and when we cease from our works, God works in us; and when we cease from our thoughts, God’s thoughts come into us; when we get still from our restless activity, God worketh in us both to will and do of His good pleasure, and we have but to work it out.

Beloved, let us take His stillness, let us dwell in “the secret place of the Most High,” let us enter into God and His eternal rest, let us silence the other sounds,and then we can hear “the still, small voice.”

There is another kind of stillness, the stillness that lets God work for us, and hold our peace; the stillness that ceases from its contriving, and its self-vindication, and its expedients of wisdom and forethought, and lets God provide, and answer the unkind word and the cruel blow in His own unfailing, faithful love. How often we lose God’s interposition by taking up our own cause and striking for our own defense.

Never shall I forget a little scene which happened not long ago. A quiet Christian girl was sitting at table among a party of friends, who were discussing a Christian work in which she was deeply interested. Someof the criticisms were very severe, and, as she thought, unjust and unfair. She said a few simple words to correct the statements; but then, as the criticism, more and more severe, went on, she simply held her peace. I saw the mantling brow and the tear just springing to her eyes, and I thought how easy it would have been for her to give the quick reply, and answer just as sharply as she might have done. But the grace of God had become ascendant in that young heart; the Holy Ghost was on the Throne. She sat in silence, and simply suffered and waited. After a few moments I saw she could stand the struggle no longer, and she gently and lovingly rose and left the table and went to her room to lay her burden upon the bosom for her Savior.

In a moment it all flashed upon the other person, who loved her very tenderly. He saw how he had wounded her; he knew how she would have answered months before. The sweetness and gentleness of her spirit cut him to the very heart, and taught him a lesson that he was manly and noble enough fully to acknowledge. Never again will his lips utter those hasty words, and never will he forget that spectacle of gentleness and silence.

It was her best vindication, and it made up for her, besides, a jewel of unfading lustre in the crown above.

There is no spectacle in all the Bible so sublime as the silent Savior answering not a word to the men that were maligning Him, and whom He could have laid prostrate at His feet by one look of divine power or one word of fiery rebuke. But He let them say and do their worst, and He stood in the power of stillness — God’s holy, silent Lamb.

God give to us this silent power, this mighty self-surrender, this conquered spirit which will make us “more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Let our voice and our life speak like “the still, small voice”of Horeb and as “the sound of a gentle stillness.” And after the heat and strife of earth are over, men will remember us as we remember the morning dew, the gentle light and sunshine, the evening breeze, the Lamb of Calvary, and the gentle, Holy, Heavenly Dove.

“Tell me: what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil. Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside all that which is full. So she went from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured out. And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said into her son, Bring me yet a vessel: and he said unto her, there is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God: and he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children upon the rest.” 2Kings 4: 2-7.

The events of Elisha’s life are more like those of the life of Christ than are any others in the Old Testament. Just as Elijah represented the Spirit of the Lord and the ministry of John the Baptist, a ministry of judgment and fire, so Elisha represented the ministry of Jesus Christ in its gentleness, benignity and grace; and very many of his beautiful miracles are distinctly parallel to the miracles of our Lord, while they preach the same lesson and breathe the same spirit of love and graciousness.

The passage before us is a striking object lesson of the Holy Ghost in His all-sufficiency for the supplying it every source of need.

1. HER NEED. First, we have, in the case of this poor widow, an example of great need. Her situation was one of debt, danger, distress, and of complete helplessness. She had no one to go to but God, and, unless delivered by Him, her situation must have become one of the greatest extremity. It represents the very worst and most helpless state in which a child of God can be found. But such a situation is often the greatest blessing that can come to us, because it throws us upon God, and compels us to trust in the all-sufficiency of His grace.

Nearly all the great examples of faith and victorious grace which we find in the Scriptures came out of situations of extremity and distress. God loves hard places, and faith is usually born of danger and extremity.

It was thus that Jacob was transformed from Jacob to Israel in the conflict at Peniel. It was thus that Israel was awakened to claim the great redemption from the bondage of Egypt, by the doubling of the tale of brick and by the heated furnace of iron. It was thus that David learned to know his God, and was able to testify, “Thou hast known my soul in adversity.” Let us not be discouraged by difficulties, nor regard them as always misfortunes; but rather let us receive them as challenges to our faith and opportunities given to us by our God to show that there is nothing too hard for Him.

2. HER RESOURCES. Was there, then, nothing left for her? Was she entirely without resources? “Tell me, what hast thou in the house?” And she answered, “Thy servant hath nothing, save a pot of oil.” To her that seemed nothing, and yet it contained the supply of all her need. God loves to utilize and economize all the resources which He has already given to us. Just as a master workman can do a great deal of excellent work with very common tools, so God can work with very simple instruments; but He wants us to utilize what He has already given. It was very little that Moses had, but that little rod was sufficient to divide the Red Sea and to break the power of Pharaoh. It was very little that the lad on the Galilean shore had that day; but his five loaves and two small fish were sufficient to feed the five thousand, when they were given to Jesus and placed at His service. Our least is enough for God, if we allow Him complete control.

But that little pot of oil was not a little thing. It represented the power of the Holy Ghost, the infinite attribute of God Himself.

We need not stop to prove that oil is the Scriptural symbol of the Holy Spirit. This little vessel of oil represented the presence and the power of the Spirit, which every believer may have, and in some measure does have, and which, if we only know how to use Him, is equal to every possible situation and need of our Christian life. But in how many cases is this an unrealized power and an unemployed force?

There is a grim story told of a poor Scotchwoman who went to her pastor in her extremity, and told him of her poverty. He kindly asked her if she had no friend nor member of her family who could support or help her. She said she had a son, a bonny lad, but he was in India, in the service of the government. “But does he not write to you?” “Oh, yes; he often writes me, and sends the kindest letters, and such pretty pictures in them. But I am too proud to tell him how poor I am, and, of course, I have not expected him to send me money.” “Would you mind showing me some of the pictures?” said the minister. And so Janet went to her Bible, and brought out from between the leaves a great number of Bank of England notes, laid away with the greatest care. “These,” she said, “are the pictures.” The minister smiled, and said, “Janet, you are richer than I am. These are bank notes; and every one of them might have been turned into money, and you might have had all your needs supplied. You have had a fortune in your Bible without knowing it.”

Alas, beloved, many of us have fortunes in our Bibles without knowing it, or without using our infinite resources. The Holy Spirit is given to us to be used for every sort of need; and yet, with all the power of heaven at our call, many of us are going about in starvation, simply because we do not know our treasure, and do not use our redemption rights. “Know ye not,” the apostle asks us, “that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?” If we but use the power that is given within our breast, behind the name of Jesus and the promises of God, we would fail no more, we would fear no more, we would no more be a reflection upon our Savior and a dishonor to His name, as well as a discouragement to the world, but we would rise up into victory, and cry, “Thanks be to God, who always causeth us to triumph, in Christ.”

What is the difference between Japan and China today? It is this: while Japan has learned the secrets of modern progress, and is using them in still victorious warfare, China does not know what other races have learned. What is the difference between our age and the age of our grandfather? It is simply that we have learned from nature. We are using the great secrets of steam, electricity, and the various appliances of practical science in all our industrial life, so that one man can do today what it took twenty to do in the days of our fathers. The business man can sit in his office and annihilate both space and time as he talks through his telephone to the most distant parts of the land, and through his phonograph into the ears of the coming generation.

What was the matter with Hagar in her bitter sorrow? Nothing but this; she could not see the fountain that lay so near, she and her child were perishing with thirst. There was no need that the angel should create a fountain; he needed only to open Hagar’s eyes and let her see it and drink of it.

There was no need that God should make a spring of sweetness at Marah’s waters; all that was needed was to show to Moses the branch of healing that was already there. As he plunged it into the waters the people were healed.

There was no need that an army of angels should come to the help of Elisha on the mountainside. The angels were already there; all that was needed was that the eyes of Elisha’s servant might be opened to the heavenly army that surrounded and defended them. In like manner the fountain of life is waiting for us to drink; the waters and the branch of healing are at hand, the angelic army are all around us. All we need is to see them, to know that they are there, to realize our redemption rights, and then to claim them and triumph in His name. God is saying to us, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” Christ has appeared, the Holy Ghost has come, and all that we need to do is to know and receive and use the great divine commission.

3. THE CONDITIONS OF RECEIVING AND REALIZING DIVINE HELP. First, she, the woman, was directed to make room. She must get vessels, empty vessels, to hold the supply which was about to be revealed. Our greatest need is to make room for God. Indeed, God has to make room for Himself by creating new vessels of need. Every trial that comes to us is but a need for Him to fill and an opportunity for Him to show what He can be to us and do for us. But it is not enough to have need; we must also have empties. We must realize our needs, and we must realize that He alone can supply them. We must be emptied of self-consciousness and dependence upon man; and as we lie fully at His feet, He will prove

“How wise, how strong His hand.”

Again, there must be faith to count upon God and go forward expecting Him to meet our needs. This woman did not wait till the oil was running over from her little pot; but providing the vessels in advance, she acted as though she had an unbounded supply. So it was that the disciples had to go forward to feed the multitude with their five loaves and two fish, and had to count upon the supply which had not yet appeared. We must anticipate God’s fulfillment and trust Him sufficiently to pay in advance; then He will make good our expectations in His glorious and ever-flowing grace.

Again, we must have not only faith, but unselfish love. These were borrowed vessels. The needs were not all her own; and, no doubt, as the vessels went home they did not go home empty. God loves to give to us when we are, like God, receiving that we may give to others.

The most blessed thing about the blessed God must be this, that He has no needs of His own; but that He is always giving, always blessing, and always seeking some new channel through which to bless and to pour out the fullness of His life. If we would receive that fullness, we, God-like, must be great givers. The secret of joy is to want nothing for ourselves, to be rich in dispensing His grace and blessing, to live for others, and to be ever filling the vessels of need from the world around us with the overflowing of His heart and of ours. The beauty of the parable of the friend at midnight lies chiefly in this, that he wanted the loaves from his friend that he might give them to another that was in need. Likewise, when we come for grace and help to the helpless, we shall find that God will open the windows of heaven and pour us out a blessing until there shall not be room to receive it.

Again, the woman’s faith was necessary. She must show it by beginning to pour out the contents of the little pot into the larger vessel. As she poured, the oil continued to flow and overflow until every vessel was filled, and it might have been flowing still if there had been room enough to hold its multiplying stream.

So faith must go forward and act out its confidence and risk itself by doing something and putting itself into the place where God must meet it with actual help. It was when the water at Cana was poured out that it became wine. It was when the man stretched out his hand that it was healed. It was as the lepers went on their way that they were made whole. It was as the father went back to his home that the messenger was sent to tell him that his son was alive.

There is a beautiful expression in Hebrews, to the effect that the ancient fathers were persuaded of the promises and “embraced them,” or rather as the new version translates it “ran to meet them.” Let us run to meet the promises of God. Let us measure up to them. Let us act our confidence, and God will meet us more than halfway with His faithfulness and grace.

There is yet another lesson, the most important of all: “Go, sell the oil, . . . and live thou and thy children of the rest.” The oil was but the representative value, and was convertible into everything that she could need. It, was equivalent to currency, food, houses, clothes, lands, anything and everything that possessed value and could meet her need. Thus is the Holy Ghost convertible into everything that we can require.

There are parallel passages in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke which teach a great lesson. In the one passage it reads, “if ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” In the parallel passage in the other Gospel, instead of the Holy Spirit, it reads, “Give good things to them that ask him.” That is to say, the Holy Ghost gives all good things, and He is equivalent to anything and everything that we need. Do we need salvation? He will lead us to Christ, and bring us to witness of our acceptance. Do we need peace? He will bring into our hearts the peace of God. Do we need purity? He will sanctify us and “cause us to walk in His statutes, and keep His judgments to do them.” Do we need strength? He is the Spirit of power. Do we need light? He is the Teacher and Counselor and Guide. Do we need faith? He is the Spirit of faith. Or love? By Him “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.” Would we pray and have our prayer answered? “The Spirit itself maketh intercession within us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Do we need health? He will quicken our mortal bodies by the Spirit that dwelleth in us. Do we need courage? He will give us faith, faith that shall claim the supply of all our needs by believing prayer. Do we need circumstances changed by the mighty workings of God’s providence? He is the Spirit of power. The hearts of men are in His hands and He can turn them as the rivers of water, and make all things work together for good to them that love God.

He is the Almighty Spirit, the Great Executive of the Godhead, and with Him in our hearts, God can do exceeding abundantly for us “according to the power that worketh in us.”

Oh, let us use the Holy Ghost, not merely for spells of emotional feeling or what we call spiritual experience, but in the whole circle of our life as the Executor of God, the all-sufficient Leader of our victorious faith!

There is yet another lesson taught us here; namely, that we may increase and multiply the effectiveness of the Spirit of God in our lives, by wisely using the power and grace He gives us.

The idea of trading with our spiritual gifts is brought out more fully in the New Testament in the great parable of the pounds, where the one pound that represented, no doubt, the gift of the Holy Ghost, is increased to ten by wise and profitable use. So we can take the Holy Ghost, and as we obey Him and learn to use Him, and become subject to the great laws which regulate His operations, we shall find that there is scarcely a limit to the extent of His working and the sufficiency of His power. All that is needed is room, opportunity, vessels of need, and faith to go forward in dependence upon Him.

The oil did not stop until the woman stopped; God was still working when her faith reached its limit. The same God is working still, and our faith will stop long before His willingness and His resources are exhausted. Shall we trust more boldly? Shall we recognize every difficulty, every situation which conveys an opportunity of proving Him yet more gloriously; and shall we go on from strength to strength until every adversary has been subjected and compelled to help us, till every mountain of difficulty has become a mountain of praise, and every hard place in life a vessel into which God may pour the overflowing fullness of His all-sufficiency?

Beloved, as we step out into the future, shall we forget the experiences we have had and press on to higher and greater? Shall we leave the vessels that have been satisfied, and bring new vessels for him to fill? Shall we forget the blessings we have had from the Holy Ghost, and think rather of those we have not yet had? And shall we go on to prove His mighty promise, “I will open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing until there shall not be room enough to receive it”?

“Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord, Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye, and your cattle, and your beasts. And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord: He will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.” 2 Kings 3: 16-18.

This is another of Elisha’s parabolic miracles; for it was both a parable of divine teaching and a miracle of divine working. It is full of practical lessons about the Holy Spirit in our lives.

1. A GREAT EMERGENCY. First, we see a great emergency. The king of Israel and the king of Judah had united in a campaign against the Moabites, and in marching through the wilderness they had come into great straits. Their water supply was cut off, and they were in danger of perishing of thirst. This may represent any hard places in our lives. Such an emergency is God’s opportunity of blessing, and is the only way by which many of us can ever be brought to realize the fullness of divine grace.

There was a peculiarity, however, in this trying situation to one of the party at least. To Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, it was a trouble that he had brought upon himself, and he had no one else to blame for his ill fortune. Because he had hastily and generously formed an unholy alliance with a wicked king, he was suffering on account of his forbidden act. As God has warned us to have no fellowship with wicked men, we never can disobey this commandment, either by mixed marriages or by business partnerships, without suffering in consequence.

We see at once the difference between a wicked man and a child of God. In his extremity the wicked king of Israel gave up in despair, and never once thought of turning to God for help. He uttered a hopeless cry, and said practically, “God has brought us here to destroy us.” That is the way ungodly men look at their troubles.

In contrast with him, Jehoshaphat at once thought of God and called for His servant and His message. No matter how trying our situation, no matter how much to blame we ourselves are for it, let us always go at once with it to God, and seek his direction and deliverance ; and we shall never seek in vain.

Jehoshaphat called at once for the prophet of the Lord. It was a prophet he wanted. He was willing to hear God’s message and to take God’s way of deliverance. It is so beautiful to find that the prophet was there. Elisha was the beautiful type of the Holy Ghost and the ever present Christ. Unlike Elijah, who was the prophet of judgment and represented the law, Elisha was always among the people, helping the poor widow in her poverty, the students on the banks of the Jordan when the axe went off the handle, and even the army of his country when on this laborious and dangerous expedition. He represented that God who is always within our call and a God at hand. The very meaning of the word Paraclete or Advocate is, One near by, One we can call to our side and call upon in every time of need. Let us bring Him all our burdens; let us cast upon Him all our care; let us use Him for every emergency, and prove His all-sufficiency in every time of need.

2. PREPARATION. We next see the preparation for God’s deliverance. First, Elisha called for a minstrel. You know that this minstrel represented the spirit of praise. Our prayers, too, should always begin with praise. If our difficulty and dangers be met with a song of believing triumph, we shall find God ready to echo it back with the song of deliverance. When we cannot pray, it is a good time to praise.

Next came the divine message, “Thus saith the Lord.” God must be heard in this matter, His voice must be listened to, His message received, and His way adopted. When trouble comes we usually run in every other direction first, get everybody else’s advice and help, and then at last think of appealing to heaven.

The first thing in trouble is to hearken and ask, “What saith the Lord?” What lesson is He teaching? What rebuke is He sending? What direction is He giving? What way of escape would He have us take? God has always one way out of every difficulty, and only one.

Next, they must make room for the coming blessing. “Make this valley full of ditches.” One would have supposed that the valley was deep enough without the ditches. But the valley was there anyhow; the ditches must be made on purpose. It is possible to have need of God and not have room for God. These ditches represent special preparation and the opening of the channels of faith to receive the blessing.

What is a ditch? It is a great, ugly opening in the ground. There is nothing ornamental nor beautiful about it; it is just a void and empty space, a place to hold water. How shall we open the ditches for God to fill? By bringing to Him our needs, our failures, the great rents and voids and broken up places in our lives. It is a good time at the commencement of another year to think of the places where we have come short, and the needs in our hearts that have not yet been supplied. Let us bring them to Him, and like the widow’s vessels, He is able to fill them all.

The answer must be claimed by simple faith. “Ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain,” said the prophet, “yet that valley shall be filled with water.” There was to be no outward demonstration, but it was to come quietly and without observation. This is the way God loves to bless us, and this is the way that faith must always receive the blessing. This is not, however, the way that unbelieving man likes to have it come. He would like to see wind and rain, and have
great display of outward circumstances; then he would be able to believe in the coming of the water. “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,” was the Master’s reproof in His own day; and it is as pertinent today as ever.

Faith, however, is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” and it loves to claim the promise and rest in the Promiser, allowing Him to bring the answer in His own way and time, and counting upon it as though it were already a present fact. Shall we thus trust our God and learn to walk by faith and not by sight?

3. THE DIVINE ANSWER. The divine answer was not long in coming. With the morning light, lo! the ditches had disappeared and the valley was filled with water, reflecting the crimson hills of Edom from its glassy bosom, and looking to the Moabites as pools of blood.

It was water that came, and only water. That was all they wanted. Water was the symbol of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is all we want in our extremity and need. He will be to us answered prayer, temporal provision, spiritual supply, and all things pertaining to life and godliness.

Notice again that when the water came, the ditches disappeared from view. Likewise, when the Holy Ghost comes, our needs will be supplied, and the very remembrance of our sorrow and distress will leave us. So long as you are looking at the ditches and thinking of your desperate need, you are not filled with water. God wants so to fill you that He will even obliterate the remembrance of your sin and sorrow, and, as Job beautifully expressed it, you will remember your misery as waters that pass away.

Again, when the water came there was enough, not only for them to drink but also for their cattle and their beasts; so when God fills your life with the Holy Spirit, the blessing overflows not only to every person around you, but the very beasts that serve you will be the better for your blessing. That truck-man was not far astray when he said that his horse and his dog knew that he had been converted. Oh, the groans of the irrational creation around us that are ever going up to God, because of man’s sin. Oh, the blessing that will come to the whole universe when man receives his Savior and becomes prepared to be the lord of this lower creation!

There is a very remarkable expression used respecting this glorious miracle of divine grace and bounty. “This is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord.” This wonderful blessing was not, in God’s estimation, anything extraordinary nor at all hard for him to do. Nor is it a great or difficult thing for Him to baptize you and me with the Holy Ghost till all our wants are supplied and all our being is filled with His blessing. We are constantly thinking of it as though it cost Him some great effort. Thousands of Christians are looking forward to it at a great distance as the culminating point of life. On the contrary, it is but a light thing for God to do, and is intended to mark rather the beginning than the close of a career of usefulness.

The great purpose of Christ’s coming was “that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, in righteousness and holiness before him,” — not the last days, but “all the days of our life.” It is not our preparation for heaven but our preparation for life.

4. THE GREATER BLESSING. Next comes God’s deliverance and the greater blessing which He has for them. “This is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.” This was the great purpose of their campaign and the design of God in delivering them in their peril, that they might go forward and conquer their enemy and His. This also is God’s purpose in our sanctification.

He does not give us the Holy Ghost that we should receive a clean heart merely, and then spend our lives complacently looking at it and telling people about it, but that we should go forth in the power of His Spirit and His indwelling life, to conquer this world for Him. We, too, have a great foe to face and a great trust to fulfill. We are sent to conquer the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to give the Gospel to the whole inhabited earth. It is a shame that thousands of Christians should spend their lives without even claiming this baptism; and it is a far greater shame that thousands more should be occupied all their days in getting a satisfactory interest in Christ and an experience of sanctification.

What would you think of the gardener who, after spending five years in planting an orange grove in Florida, in watering, pruning, and cultivating it, should then find that he has to spend a quarter of a century more keeping the plants in a healthy condition, without any return of fruit? You would certainly think it a poor investment. It is all right to spend a while in getting your orchard ready; but you expect this to end some day, and the trees will begin to do something better than grow, even to reward your labors with the abundant harvest.

What would you think of the manufacturer who took all the trouble to set up a water wheel, and a lot of machinery, and then simply amused himself with having the wheel turn round, without driving any machinery, or doing any practical work? God must get very tired of everlastingly keeping us in repair. Surely he has a right to expect that the time of fruit will come. God help us, beloved, to get at things and to stay at them. Keep your engine out of the repair shop. Get it in working order as quickly as you can, and then ask God to put an express train behind it, and let it run and carry its precious freight on the great highway of His holy will.

It is very miserable work to be always getting sanctified, and it is very unworthy of God’s infinite grace and power. Let us get into conflict and victory and aggressive work for God and this lost world, and He will surely deliver our enemies into our hand, and make us more than conquerors through Him that loved us. And then we shall find that the using of our blessing is the best way to keep it, and the running of the wheel is the surest means of keeping it from falling.

5. THOROUGH AND FINISHED WORK. They were commanded, as soon as they had conquered the Moabites, to do thorough work, to smite every fenced city, to spread stones upon every fertile piece of land, and to fill up every well of water, leaving the land desolate and worthless. It was simply an illustration of thorough and completed work.

When God begins to work for us, it is time for us to work for Him, and our work should be as thorough as His. It is all folly for us to sit down and fold our arms, and say, “God will do it.” We must work out our own salvation, all the more because it is God that worketh in us.

When David heard “a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees,” it was the very time for him to bestir himself and do His best, for God had gone out before him to deliver his enemies into his hand. When we see the almighty working of our God, it is the very time for us to stir ourselves up to faithful cooperation and thorough work.

It was the failure of Israel to do thorough work that lost them the blessing which Joshua’s conquest secured. They left some of their enemies in the land, and in due time this remnant became their masters. It is very foolish for us to leave a vestige or a trace of evil behind us. Let us do thorough work in our repentance, in our obedience, in our sanctification, in our divine healing, in our service for God.

How foolish it is for the builder to rear the costly walls and leave them unroofed; the elements will soon crumble the unprotected masonry to a heap of worthless ruins. Let us finish our work day by day. Let everything we say and do be as thorough and complete as the finished measure of the musical melody and harmony, without which the rest of the note would be thrown away. So let us live from day to day, that, when the close shall come, we shall have nothing to do but to go to our reward and say with our departing Master, “Father, I have glorified thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which thou gayest me to do.”

Beloved, it is a time of God’s mighty working in the world and among the nations. Let it stimulate us to arouse ourselves to holy action, and to cooperate with Him in His mighty purpose of preparing the world for the speedy return of His dear Son, our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

There is “a sound of going in the mulberry trees,” and the Lord has gone up before us. Let us bestir ourselves, and haste the day of our Master’s coming and the cry of victory around the world and from the ranks above, “Alleluia; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”

As Dr. Chalmers has so wisely said, “Let us trust as if all depended upon God, but let us work as if all depended upon ourselves.”

“No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 2 Peter 1: 20, 21.

This passage directs our attention to the inspiration of the ancient prophets, and to the work of the Holy Ghost as revealing the will of God to His chosen messengers. God at sundry times and divers manners spake to our fathers by the prophets.

Divine revelation began in Eden, and God has never ceased to maintain communication with His devoted subjects. In the antediluvian and patriarchal dispensations He spake at intervals to particular men, revealing His will to them; but from the time that He called Moses to lead the chosen people out of Egypt, He has had a special class of messengers through whom He has revealed His will to His people. These have been called the prophets of the Lord. Moses was, perhaps, the first of them.

In the fourth chapter of Exodus, God distinctly calls him to this special ministry. “Now, therefore, go,” He says, “and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.” When afterwards He appointed Aaron to be His spokesman, He added, “Thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God.”

Moses recognized himself as a prophet, and said of his Antitype, “A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear.”

The next great prophet was Samuel. Like Moses he also appeared at a special crisis in the history of his people. They had been for centuries in the deepest declension and distress. Like Luther, God’s instrument in the Reformation of our own time, God sent him to call Israel back to Himself. The call of Samuel was most marked and his ministry most important. In 1 Samuel 3: 19-21, we read concerning him, “The Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel . . . knew that Samuel was established to a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again in Shiloh: for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.”

Indeed, Samuel was really the founder of the prophetic institutions and the schools of the prophets which from his time we find in Israel. No nobler race of men ever lived than the prophets of Israel. They were the only class that was true to God. The kings, with a few exceptions, were disastrous failures; and even the priesthood became subservient to a corrupt throne and a godless populace. But the prophets were God’s true representatives and witnesses, and stood for righteousness and godliness in the darkest ages of God’s ancient people.

When Saul failed to meet the purpose of his high calling, Samuel was still true to Jehovah. When David sank in his double crime, Nathan was there to reprove him and to bring him the message of Jehovah. When Solomon allowed his heart to be turned away from God, the prophet Abijah was there to bear God’s message of warning, and to tell Jeroboam what God was about to do in rending the kingdom asunder. When Rehoboam succeeded his father and was about to ruin his kingdom in presumptuous recklessness, the prophet Shemaiah was ready to carry God’s message to him and arrest him in his reckless purpose. When Jeroboam had ascended the throne of Israel and reared his idolatrous altars at Dan, there was a prophet of the Lord ready to stand before him and to warn him of God’s judgment because of his idolatry. When the wicked Baasha, king of Israel, had filled his cup of sin, God had His servant, Jehu the prophet, ready to utter His message of warning and judgment against the wicked king. When Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Rehoboam, then Shemaiah the prophet was there to call the nation to repentance, and to promise them deliverance from the hand of the enemy.

W hen King Asa summoned his people to meet the common enemy, and to trust in the arm of Jehovah, then God sent Azariah the prophet to bear to him the message of encouragement and covenant promise; and when, later in his reign, Asa became willful and self-reliant, and turned from God to the arm of flesh, God sent Hanani the prophet to tell him of the divine displeasure and of the judgment which he was about to bring upon himself. When Jehoshaphat stood face to face, with the Ammonites and Moabites in the valley of Berachah in great peril and humiliation, then God sent the prophet Jeheziel to announce the victory of faith that was to come with the morrow.

When Joash, king of Judah, turned away from God, then Zechariah, the prophet of the Lord, stood up to reprove him for his sin, and suffered martyrdom at the hands of the king and people, the first of that band of witnesses who sealed their testimony with their blood. W hen Ahab and Jezebel reigned in Samaria, and all Israel was given up to the worship of Baal, then Elijah appeared as God’s messenger of fire to warn the people and to lead them back to their allegiance to heaven. When Elijah’s ministry was completed, Elisha, coming as the messenger of peace, for half a century guided and counseled the king and the people in the name of Jehovah, the glorious type of the coming Christ.

The brightest light of the good Hezekiah’s reign was Isaiah, the prophet of the Lord. Even when Jerusalem fell, and Judah passed into captivity, Jeremiah, like a guardian angel, hovered over its dark midnight, and sought by his warning and pleading to avert its cruel fate; and then, when he could do no more, like the Master Himself, he wept over the city that he had loved. The last days of Israel were linked with the prophetic ministry of Hosea, the prophet of love. The exile of Judah was lighted up by the prophetic ministry of Ezekiel by the river Chebar, and of Daniel in far off Babylon. The days of Restoration were less dependent upon the leadership of Zerubabel than upon the prophetic ministrations of Haggai and Zechariah; and, finally, the Old Testament Dispensation was closed by Malachi, the messenger of Jehovah and the prophet of the coming age.

The very names of these prophetic messengers are beautifully significant. “Isaiah” and “Hosea” mean that God is the Savior; “Jeremiah,”God is high; “Ezekiel,” God is strong; “Daniel,” God is judge; “Joel,” Jehovah is God; “Elijah,” God is Jehovah; “Elisha,”God is our Savior. “Jonah,” who stands first among the prophets whose writings are recorded, means “the Dove,” and suggests the Holy Ghost in His gentle grace. “Nahum,” who wrote amid the sorrows of Israel’s ruin, signifies “the Comforter,” and “Malachi,” who was the messenger of the new dispensation, means “My messenger.” Thus were their very names and lives consistent with their high character and their divine commission.

The prophets of Israel may be divided into two classes; first, those whose lives alone are recorded; and, secondly, those whose writings have come down to us. The latter company may again be divided into six classes.

First, we have Jonah, standing alone as the pioneer and the earliest of the prophets whose writings are recorded. Next, we have the prophets who were connected with Israel’s last days; namely, Hosea, Amos, and Nahum. Thirdly, we have the prophets connected with Judah from the reign of Hezekiah for about two generations and about a century before the fall of Judah. These were Joel, Micah, and Isaiah. They lived in the palmy days of Judah’s kingdom, and were sent to hold the nation back from the captivity to which they were hastening. Through their ministry the catastrophe that came to Israel was averted from Judah for more than a century. It came at last, however, and we have a fourth group of prophets, who cluster around the sinking fortunes of the kingdom of Judah and fall of Jerusalem. They are Jeremiah, Obadiah, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk.

We have a fifth class a little later, who may be called the prophets of the exile. They prophesied in captivity. They are Ezekiel and Daniel, the one in the country, the other in the capital of Babylon.

Finally, we have the prophets of the Restoration, the men who counseled and comforted the returning bands who went back to rebuild the temple and city of Jerusalem. They were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. These sixteen names constitute the glorious company of the prophets whose writings have come to us. They are commonly divided into the major and minor prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel belonging to the former, and all the others to the latter class. They all claimed to be the special messengers of Jehovah, and they were all accredited by His signal presence and power. They belong to that class of whom our text says they “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” The same language might yet more emphatically be applied to the prophets and writers of the New Testament.

And so we come to the great subject of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures and the messengers of God’s will in the various dispensations. Let us briefly consider; first, the nature of inspiration; secondly, its evidences; and, thirdly, the responsibility that it lays upon us.

1. As to the nature of inspiration what do we mean by the inspired prophets and the inspired Scriptures?

The Scripture writers themselves settle this question. There is no doubt that they claim for themselves, and the Lord Jesus Himself recognizes the claim, that they are the special messengers of God and bring to man the expression of His will. It may not be easy for us to explain the precise nature of their inspiration. All we need to know is its practical extent and value, and that it was a divine influence which so possessed them that it preserved them from all error and enabled them to give to men a correct and infallible record of the facts they intended to represent, and the message which God intended they should bear. It was such a superintendence by the Holy Ghost as made their message absolutely inerrant and infallible. It was not always necessary that they should receive a revelation of all the facts in the case, because they may already have been familiar with many of them or even all of them. What they needed was such a divine guidance and control as would enable them to state these facts accurately and as fully as God required.

This divine control did not make them necessarily passive and mechanical. They were not writing as a phonograph would speak, or as a typewriter would obey the touch of the performer. While in many instances they may have been unconscious, in others they undoubtedly wrote and spoke in the free possession of all their faculties and in the exercise of their own intelligence. We know that they acted with perfect individuality, and that each man’s message was colored by the complexion of his own mind, so that we know the writings of Isaiah from those of Jeremiah; we know the voice of Elijah from that of Elisha; we know the style of John from that of Paul. The Book of God is like a beautiful garden, where all the flowers grow upon the same soil and are watered from the same heaven, but each has its own unique colors, forms, fragrance and individuality. This is a harp of nearly a hundred strings; but all are in perfect harmony, and every measure is resolved into one glorious refrain, JESUS, REDEMPTION, “Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, goodwill to men.” It is not necessary for us to believe that the Holy Ghost inspired the wicked words which the Bible records, the ungodly speeches and the foolish utterances contained in the Book of Job, and many such things. All that was necessary was that it should give a correct record of what Job’s wife and Job’s friends really said, and even of the devil’s wicked speeches. The speeches were inspired by the devil, but the record of them was inspired by the Holy Ghost.

The Apostle Paul records the nature and fullness of inspiration very explicitly when he says, in 1 Cor. 2: 12, 13, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. “We, therefore, know that these records are divine, that these messages are from the throne, and that this blessed book is the very Word of the living and everlasting God.

2. The Lord Jesus Christ bears witness to the inspiration of the Scriptures. Again and again He quotes from the Old Testament books, and He tells us that it was the Word of the Lord and the Word of the Spirit through the prophet.

The New Testament bears witness to the Old, and the Holy Spirit, through His later messengers, confirms His messages through former oracles.

The message brings its own evidence, and bears to every true heart the conviction of its divinity and its truth.

The best evidence of the Holy Scriptures is the response which they find in the consciences of men. Listening to the great Teacher, we are compelled to say, “He told me all that ever I did.” “Is not this the Christ?”

To the child of God the divinest testimony to the Holy Scriptures is the blessing which they have brought to his own soul, the witness of the Holy Ghost within him, and the effect that this book has produced upon his heart and life.

Its miracles of grace are its divinest credentials. It has changed the sin-possessed soul into a saint of God, and has made the wilderness of evil and misery to blossom as the rose.

But it has also divine and supernatural credentials. Side by side with God’s inspired Word have always marched the twin witnesses of miracles and prophecy. These mighty words have moved the heavens and shaken the earth. In response to their command the dead have been raised, the living have been transformed, and all the powers of nature have witnessed to the supreme authority of God’s inspired commands.

This book is the panorama of the ages, and history has kept time to all its paragraphs. Here we find, centuries in advance, God’s inspired prophecies of coming events, which have all been fulfilled so literally as to read more like history than prophecy. When Babylon was in its glory, Daniel dared to say that it would fall and be superseded by the Persian Empire. He lived to see the prophecy fulfilled.

When Cyrus was flushed with universal conquest, again Daniel looked through the horoscope of prophecy and saw the coming of Grecian and Roman conquerors. Again all the events of later times and history have literally fulfilled the visions of Daniel, and are fulfilling them today.

What but a divine mind could have given these predictions? What but an inspired book could contain such records?

Even in the minutest particulars we see the traces of divine wisdom and omniscience. The ancient prophet declared in one place that Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, should be carried to Babylon, and in another place he declared that Zedekiah should never see Babylon. It looked like a discrepancy at first, but history literally fulfilled it. Zedekiah, blinded by Nebuchadnezzar before He reached the city, entered it a captive, but never saw it with his sightless eyes. Thus has God been confirming His Word as the ages have come and gone.

One of the greatest mosques of the Mohammedan world has recently been destroyed by fire in the city of Damascus. It was an ancient Christian temple, on whose facade was cut in stone this inscription, “Thy kingdom, O Christ is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy word endureth to all generations.” When the Moslems captured Damascus, and took possession of the old Christian church, they obliterated the inscription on the front by plastering it over and emblazoning in gold a verse from the Koran above it.

As ages went by, that archway spake only the message of the false prophet. But by-and-by time wore off the plaster, so that within the past two years the old Christian inscription has come out again, and God’s word stands forth through all the wreck of time. When a few weeks ago the old church was burned down, strangely enough, the tower was left standing with the inscription untouched by the destroying elements; and there it stands today, declaring to the world, “Thy word, O Christ, endureth to all generations.”

3. We have our responsibility for God’s Holy Word. If this is the inspired Word of God, how solemn and supreme its claims! Let us believe it implicitly; let us believe it without compromise or questioning.

Let us not try to eliminate the supernatural and bring it down to the plane of our own reason and knowledge; but let us bow submissively before the throne of Him who speaks from heaven, and say with every fibre of our being, “It means just what it says.”

But let us also obey. Believe means to “live by.” Our faith has two sides; one is faith, the other is faithfulness. One is trust, the other is trustworthiness. They are the two wings that bear us above the dark abyss; they are the two oars that carry us through the dangerous rapids; they are the two hands that grasp and hold fast forever the eternal covenant.

Obedience is always the condition of faith. Only as we live by this blessed book can we fully claim its promises and rest upon its words of grace.

Let us live up to the fullness of our Bible. Let us translate every word of it into our lives. Let each of us be a new edition and a new version of the Scriptures, translated into flesh and blood, words and acts, holiness and service.

God has spoken to the successive generations, expecting each age to correspond to the message given; but to our generation He has given the largest measure of His truth and the fullness of His revelation. He expects from us a deeper, fuller, larger life. Let us live out the whole Bible in this dispensation.

There is a day coming when we shall have larger revelations of truth and an eternity in which to live them out: but in this life let us measure up to the Word of God without abatement, and, like the Master Himself, fulfill every word of Scripture before we shall have run our course.

Have we lived out all the Bible? Have we proved its every promise? Have we illustrated its every command? Have we translated it into the living characters our own record? God help us, not only to have a Bible, but each of us to be a Bible.

Finally, if this is God’s inspired Word, it can be understood only by inspired men. There are two senses in which inspiration can be received and understood. The inspiration of the apostles and the prophets was to write the Bible, but we need an inspiration just as real to read it and to understand it. It was not written for the cold intelligence of natural man, but for the spiritual
eyes of the heart. And so no man knoweth the things of God, save the Spirit of God which is in him. We must have “the mind of Christ” and the Holy Ghost before we can rightly and fully understand the Holy Scriptures.

Shall we receive His blessed Spirit to understand His blessed Word? Shall we read the Bible, not as a book of history and biography, but as the love letter of a Friend, the personal message of our Bridegroom and our Lord? Then shall we understand it, love it, and know its blessed meaning and heavenly power.

A poor blind girl was dying. Her cold fingers had ceased to feel. She called for her dear old Bible, and tried to read the raised letters once more, but all sense having gone from her hands, she turned away with sorrow, and clasping it to her bosom, and pressing it to her lips, she said, “My dear Bible, I cannot read you longer, but; I love you still.” At that very moment she found that as her lips touched the characters they could still feel and read them. She gave a great cry of joy, and as she passed her lips from line to line the words still spake to her intelligence and to her heart.

Beloved, let us take the Bible a little closer, and we shall understand it better, and it will speak from the heart of God to our inmost heart as the living message of His love.

“And it shall some to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” Joel 2: 28.

Joel was the oldest of the prophets of Judah whose writings have come down to us. His little book contains the substance and the text of the deeper and larger unfoldings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the later prophets, and is the keynote of the Day of Pentecost and the Christian Dispensation.

It is the text of all the volumes that have been written about the Holy Ghost, and the germ of all the manifestations of His power and grace throughout the ages that have followed this ancient message.

Just as God gave to Habakkuk, in one little verse, the text of the whole Gospel of salvation, so He gave to Joel the text of the whole doctrine of the Spirit. Like a rainbow upon the storm cloud, like a gleam of sunshine out of a dark sky, like a blossom amid the regions of eternal snow, so Joel’s beautiful vision comes out of a dark calamity, a great national catastrophe.

It opens with the picture of an invasion of locusts, one of the most frightful scourges of the East. But beyond this little picture there is evidently some greater trial suggested, and some more formidable enemy foreshadowed. Perhaps the locust plague was but the type of the invading armies of the Chaldeans, and of the more dreadful judgments that are yet to come to Israel.

In the midst of this great national trial the prophet was sent to utter the trumpet call to the people to come together in fasting, penitence, humiliation, and prayer, and to seek the interposition and deliverance of their covenant God. Nor did they call upon Him in vain. He sent the gracious answer; and, as He always does, He gave more than they asked, even the promise of His own personal coming to dwell among them, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the fullness of Pentecostal times, and the brighter promise of the glory which is to follow through the advent and reign of the Son of God Himself.

The whole vision is a kind of ground plan of the Dispensations, and especially of the Christian Dispensation and the times of the Spirit. It is also a sort of outlined sketch of God’s dealings with the Church still in the manifestation of His presence and the outpouring of His Spirit; and not only with the Church, but with every individual soul.

I. THE MINISTRY OF REPENTANCE. Before the promise of the Spirit could be fulfilled, there must come the dispensation of repentance, humiliation, and earnest prayer. There came, therefore, the call to national penitence. “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people, sanctify the congregation.” It was to be a general and deeply earnest movement, including all classes. “Gather the children and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, `Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach.'”

Such a dispensation of repentance must precede at every season of spiritual blessing. Its great type is John the Baptist and his ministry of warning and reformation. Doubtless it is prefigured by the vision of the prophet, and it preceded the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. So, still, before any church or people can receive the showers of heavenly blessing, they must humble themselves before God; turn from sin, worldliness, and disobedience; publicly recognize God as the Author of their blessing; and wait upon Him in definite acknowledgment of their dependence. Then there will come to them the same gracious answer which the Prophet Joel was sent to bear to God’s ancient people: “Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things. . . . Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for He hath given you the former rain moderately, and will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain.”

II. THE COMING OF CHRIST. Next, there came the personal presence of the Lord Himself. “Ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.” This personal manifestation of the Lord in the midst of Israel was fulfilled in its most emphatic manner by the coming of Jesus, and His incarnation and ministry on earth after the preparatory ministry of John the Baptist. So Jesus must come personally before we can receive the full baptism of the Holy Ghost. Jesus does come to the penitent heart, the surrendered heart, the humble heart, and makes it His abode. “But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.”

Jesus is the giver of the Holy Ghost, “He that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost;” and we must receive Christ before we can receive the Spirit. The sinner’s first act is not to receive the Holy Ghost, but to receive Jesus, turning to penitence from all sin, and opening his heart to the Savior. “As many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God.” And then He gives the heart in which He dwells the same Spirit which dwelt in Him.

IV. THE COMING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered.” This is the very promise the Apostle Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost as the explanation of that extraordinary manifestation of the presence of God.

1. First, we will notice that it is a personal coming of the Spirit. It is not, “I will pour out of my Spirit,” but “I will pour out my Spirit.” It is the Spirit Himself who comes.

The Third Person of the glorious Trinity removed His residence from heaven to earth, just as literally as the Second Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, removed His residence from heaven to earth when He became incarnate and dwelt for thirty-three and a half years in Galilee and Judea.

This world is now the home of the Holy Ghost, a real personal Being, with affections, intelligence, and will like our own. The very Spirit that dwelt in Jesus during His earthly ministry is now residing among us, and is willing to dwell within every consecrated heart.

2. The abundance of the outpouring is very strongly expressed. The Hebrew word “pour” means a very large effusion, a boundless filling of the Spirit. God does not give some of the Spirit, but gives the Spirit in all His infinite fullness. There is no limit whatsoever. He gives the Spirit “without measure” unto Jesus, and Jesus gives us all that He has of the Spirit’s fullness.

We have not yet begun to realize the illimitable power and resources which God places at the call of His people’s faith and obedience.

3. The extent of the outpouring is universal “upon all flesh.” Hitherto the Spirit’s manifestations had been confined to individuals and to a single nation. Now there was to be no distinction of race or nation. It was to be a universal blessing for Jews and Gentiles, and equallyopen to all the human race.

There is, perhaps, an intimation of the physical aspect of the blessing. The Holy Ghost makes our flesh His home and our body His temple.

4. There was to be no distinction of age. The promise was to “the young men and to the old men,” to “the sons and daughters” as well as to the sire. Henceforth even experience, age, and natural advantages were not to count; but the Holy Ghost was to be the wisdom and power of all that trusted Him. He would use the youngest; as well as the oldest, and “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings” would “ordain strength” and “perfect praise.”

As we reach nearer to the climax of the age, the fullness of the Spirit, and the coming of the Lord, we find God choosing the young as well as the old, and making them the special instruments of His power. Many of the saintliest lives of today are those of young men heroes and young women heroines of the mission field, the holy ones whose consecration is more marked because it is not expected so much from them, amid the attractions and allurements of their youth and their worldly surroundings. Oh, that the young might know that the blessed Holy Ghost is willing and able to possess them in all the enthusiasm of their nature, in all the freshness of their love, in all the glow of their ambition, and not only to fill and satisfy their own hearts, but to use them as “burning and shining lights”!

The saintliest man that ever lived in Scotland was young McCheyne, whose spirit still lives in the present generation. The most influential lives that have ever adorned the mission field have been those of the young men and the young women who have given up their life as a sacrifice for Christ. Yes, and the very Leader whom we love to follow was Himself a young man, and never will be old. He will put His young heart, and His glorious Spirit, into the youngest as well as the oldest, and will accept the bright and beautiful offering of a consecrated youth, and give to it the glory that the world can never bestow. Let us receive Him, and give Him our brightest and best.

5. All social classes and conditions without distinction had the promise. “The servants and the handmaids,” mentioned in the next verse, literally mean the slaves, for the servants in ancient families were bond-slaves, and the absolute property of their masters. Upon this class the especial gifts of the Holy Ghost were to descend under the Christian Dispensation.

There is no record of a slave’s having been called specially into service and divine enduement in the Old Dispensation; but under the New, the poorest, the lowliest, and most unlikely classes were to be elevated and to receive the enduement of power from on high, and the honor of special service in the kingdom of God. So we find in the New Testament, Onesimus, the slave, recognized as the friend of Paul, and commended to the affection of Philemon, his former master. In his epistles the Apostle Paul enjoins the servants to accept their position as service for Jesus, and promises them an equal recompense in the kingdom of the Lord, when all social positions maybe reversed and they may win the crown of highest service in the millennial age.

Indeed, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon the servants and handmaids is specially emphasized in this verse. The two little words, “and also,” are meant to designate this class as the particular objects of the divine care and blessing. Surely it has been true that the outcast classes of society have been raised up under the Gospel to be the vessels of God’s richest mercy, and many of them the instruments of His noblest work.

N o man is so low nor so pressed down by natural hindrances as to prevent his taking the highest place in the kingdom of Christ. Let the young, let the lowly, let even the illiterate know that the Holy Ghost is willing to choose them as the vessels of His grace, and is able to train them for the highest spiritual culture and the most honored service for that blessed Master, with whom is no respect of persons.

6. Special gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit were to be bestowed. “Your sons and your daughters shalt prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” These various expressions have reference to the peculiar gifts of the Spirit in the revelation of His will to man, and the high service for which He fits us.

Prophesying is speaking the divine message in the power of the Spirit. Dreams and visions refer to the special illuminations which He is pleased to give to His consecrated servants.

Of course, it includes the peculiar ministry of inspiration of which we have formerly spoken, and which is not continued in the Church. But there is a sense in which God still opens the inner ear to hear His voice, and illuminates the “eyes of the heart” to behold the visions of His glory and His Word.

It would seem as if to the aged it came in dreams and to the young in visions. To the old, the faculties of nature being somewhat suspended, the voice of God has to be more direct. In the young the spiritual and mental powers are still in vigorous activity, and they are illuminated and quickened to catch the heavenly vision.

We do not encourage such an interpretation of these words as would give liberty for the extravagant and dangerous spiritualistic manifestations of the trance and medium, the pretended revelation, and other illusions and vagaries of our times. But after we have made necessary provision for holy caution, and the sober regulation of all spiritual manifestations, there is ample room for the quickening of the spiritual mind, the illuminating of the spiritual eye, and the unfolding of the mind of the Spirit to the humble, holy, and listening ear. God does give His visions still, especially to the young. He gave them to Joseph, He gave them to Timothy. He gave them to Paul. He gave them in the hour of consecration, in the season of waiting upon God, in the retirement of the closet, in the time when the nearest heart looks out upon a world of sin, and upon the vision of prophecy and inspired truth. God does make real to us His purpose for our lives, His purpose for the world, and the great prophetic plan which He is pleased to unfold through the Holy Ghost to the humble heart. He will “show us things to come.” He will give to us inspirations, illuminations, aspirations, hopes, assurances, which become to our faith and hope like the little glimpse of sunlight which comes to the mariner on the pathless ocean, when for a moment the clouds divide, and a single observation can be taken of the sun in the blue heavens; and then the clouds return and the ship sails by that little glimpse of sunlight for the days to come.

God does give the holy heart its visions. Let us be sure they are the voices and the visions of God; then let us cherish them, let us live by them, let them lift up, and lead us on to all the heights of His love and will. “Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.” “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

7. The coming of the Holy Ghost will bring salvation to all who are willing to receive it. Not only does He endue the few with power for special service, but he opens the doors of mercy to all who are willing to believe and receive the Savior.

In the day of His coming it shall come to pass that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” And so the Day of Pentecost is not only a day of blessing to the disciples, but a day of salvation to the multitude, and when He comes to us, “he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.”

How easy it is to lead souls to Christ when we are filled with the Holy Ghost! How the whole atmosphere charged with heavenly power when God’s waiting people are baptized with the fullness of His Spirit! Then the consciences of men are stricken sometimes without a single word, and hearts are led to seek the Savior through an influence that they cannot understand.

Doubtless, as the days go by and the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, there shall be great revivals, times of wonderful awakening, seasons of special blessing, when multitudes shall seek the Lord, both at home and abroad, and there shall be great ingatherings from among the unsaved.

Our own generation has witnessed some examples of these great movements; and we may be encouraged to look for them still, as we go forth in the power of the Spirit, and give the Gospel in its fullness and simplicity to men.

8. This promise also includes the supernatural manifestation of divine power. “I will shew wonders in the heavens above, and signs in the earth beneath.”

The Holy Ghost came at Pentecost with supernatural power; and He still operates through the faith of His people in His healing and wonder-working might, as a testimony to His word and a witness to an unbelieving world that He is still the living and the present God.

These wonders also include the manifestations of His providence in answering prayer, in removing difficulties, in breaking down barriers, in providing means for the carrying on of His cause, and in all those wonders of providence and grace of which so many examples have been given in our own time.

The Holy Ghost, who dwells in the Church, is the omnipotent Executive of the Godhead, and is able to control the hearts of men, the elements of nature, and the events of providence, and to work together with His people, not only in the ordinary operations of His grace, but in the extraordinary manifestations of divine power which may best bear witness to His word and work.

We may trust Him for all the power we need for the carrying on of His work, and for the accomplishment of His will. If He dwells within us, He will work without us. If He is pregnant in our hearts, He will show His dominion in the whole empire of His Divine power, both in the things that are in heaven, and the things that are on earth, and the things that are under the earth.

9. Once more we see the coming of the Holy Ghost leading up to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The vision of the wonder-working Spirit leads right up to the events that preceded and ushered in the advent of Christ. The next chapter is the picture and prophecy of His coming. It is full of profound prophetic interest.

Among its pictures are the restoration of Israel from their long captivity, the final conflict of the ungodly nations with Christ and His people, the great battle of Armageddon, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the establishment of His blessed kingdom.

Just as the coming of Jesus brought the Holy Ghost, now the coming of the Holy Ghost in the fullness of His power will bring the second coming of Jesus; and as that advent approaches, His power will be more gloriously manifested, and His people will better understand His great purpose and His infinite resources. Oh, let us understand His special business, which is to gather out of the nations a people for Christ, to finish the work of the Gospel, to sanctify and prepare the Bride for her coming Lord, then to present her to Jesus, and hand over to Him the government of the millennial world.

The Holy Ghost is longing for Christ’s coming, and longing for a people that can understand Him and can cooperate with Him in bringing it about.

Just as the coming of the Holy Ghost in His fullness will bring the millennial Advent, so there is a sense in which His coming to each heart will bring a millennial blessing to that heart.

There is a millennium for the soul as well as for the Church. There is a kingdom of peace and righteousnessand glory into which, in a limited sense, we can enter with Him here. There is a Kingdom of God which in within us, which is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Come, blessed Comforter, and usher it into every willing heart.

“Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers.” Acts 28 : 25.

The name “Isaiah” means the “Salvation of Jehovah.” Isaiah is the prophet of salvation, and the revealer of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, the divine agent in the work of salvation.

1. ISAIAH’S CONSECRATION. Isaiah’s revelation of the Holy Ghost begins with his own call and consecration. We have the account of this remarkable experience in the sixth chapter of Isaiah. It began with a vision of the glory of God, which the Apostle John tells us, was the vision of Christ in His primeval glory.

The immediate effect of it was the revelation of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, and he threw himself upon his face, crying, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, . . . for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

Every true baptism of the Holy Ghost must begin with the revelation of our sin, and this must come from the revelation of God’s holiness and glory. As soon as we get undone, God is willing to begin to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.

Isaiah took the place of death, and then came the touch of life. A living coal from the heavenly altar was brought by one of the seraphim and laid upon his lips. What an angel’s fingers could not endure, the lips of mortals can receive. This was the baptism of fire, and its effect was to cleanse his lips and purge away his iniquity, that he might be fitted for his great commission.

No man is fit to represent God and be the instrument of the Holy Ghost until he first receives the cleansing power of God. It is not the baptism of power we first receive, but the baptism of purity, of fire that consumes and cleanses intrinsically and utterly.

Like the baptism of Pentecost, which was a tongue of fire, so it came to Isaiah’s lips and so it must come to ours. The effect was consecration for service. Then he could hear the voice of God. Then he could see the great purpose of Jehovah, desiring to fill the earth with His glory. Then he could hear the heavenly cry, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And then he could answer unreservedly and unconditionally, “Here am I; send me.”

God wants to send His workers, but He will send only volunteers. There must be perfect partnership. We must be willing to go, and then we must be sent.

But how was Isaiah sent? He was sent to do the hardest work. He was sent to a people that would not receive him. He was sent knowing that his message would be rejected. He was sent to a place of failure and persecution, and, at last, to a martyr’s death. He was sent to know that his words would come back as echoes in his own lifetime, and that not until later generations would they be fully received and the glorious harvest gathered.

This knowledge, however, made no difference to Isaiah. Enough that God had sent him, and that he was carrying out the divine commission. Some would receive it; but it would be a tenth, a remnant, a little flock, who would hearken to his voice and become the seed, the holy seed, of a future harvest.

So God sends us, when we receive the baptism of fire. Often there is hard, uncongenial, unrequited service. Let us go, like Isaiah, as the witnesses even of unpopular truth and a misunderstood ministry. So long as the Master is honored and pleased, what are men?

We are talking through the telephone of the ages. Some day the answer will come, and the Lord will say, “Well done!”

2. THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Isaiah’s next unfolding of the Holy Ghost is in connection with the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives us three pictures of the baptism of Jesus with the Spirit.

The first is in the eleventh chapter, from the second to the fourth verse: “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.”

Here we have three sets of qualities which the Holy Ghost was to bring Christ. First are His intellectual enduements, “The spirit of wisdom and understanding.”

Wisdom is the power to apply knowledge, understanding knowledge. Both are necessary to real practical wisdom. One may know much, and yet not know how to use it to advantage.

The Holy Ghost gives not only knowledge, but practical wisdom. So He rested upon the Lord Jesus, as He will rest upon those in whom Jesus still abides, unfolding the will of God, the mind of Christ, the meaning of the Scriptures, their particular messages to us, and the lessons of our lives and our times.

In the second class of qualities bestowed on Christ is executive power, the spirit of counsel and might. Counsel is the power to plan rightly, and might the power to execute our plan.

Without a good plan the most earnest work is often a failure, and without executive ability the best plans often come to nought. In human affairs, these are usually divided; one has the conceiving mind, and another the executive right arm. But the Holy Ghost is both, and He gave both to the Lord Jesus Christ, making Him the Wonderful Counselor, and, at the same time, the Mighty God, whose counsel shall stand and who will do all His pleasure.

The third class of attributes represents the moral and spiritual: “The spirit of understanding, and the fear of the Lord.” And this is still further amplified by the words, “He shall make him of quick understanding (or quick smell) in the fear of the Lord.” These are highest attributes of character. These the Lord Jesus possessed in an infinite measure.

The Scotch have a phrase which is very expressive. They talk of “sensing” things. To sense a thing is not to reason it out or know it by information, but it is to know it by instinct and intuition. It is somewhat like the sense of smell, or the instinct of the bird that knows the poison berry by the flash of intuition, while the scientist must analyze it and detect the poison by a chemical search.

Jesus had this intuition of right and wrong, this instinctive intuition of His Father’s mind and will, this holy fear of evil, and this holy intuition of good; and this the sanctified soul has in proportion as it knows the Lord Jesus and is filled with the Holy Ghost.

It may seem strange to talk about Jesus, the Son of God, having the fear of His Father. But the more intimate we are with the truest lives, the more respect and veneration we have for them. Love is not opposed to fear in this high, sweet sense, for the more we love and trust a friend, the more we will dread to displease him, fear to offend him, and sensitively seek to please him.

This is the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, which the Holy Spirit is willing to give to every true and sanctified heart. Beloved, let us receive this indwelling Christ and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which He brings in wisdom, executive power, and the quick sense of right and wrong.

The second picture of the baptism of Jesus with the Spirit is in the first four verses of the forty-second chapter of Isaiah: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.”

Here we have a beautiful blending of gentleness and power in the character of the Lord Jesus Christ. “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.”

Every truly great character is simple and gentle. Jesus is the perfect combination of the lion and the lamb, of the dove and the eagle; and He will so fill us that we shall be crowned with the glory of meekness and the strength of love.

There is a third picture of the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ with the Holy Ghost. It is found in the first four verses of the sixty-first chapter: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might he glorified. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.”

This well known passage was directly applied to Himself by the Lord Jesus Christ in His public address at Nazareth. Here we see the Holy Spirit anointing the Lord Jesus; first, for the ministry of the Gospel of salvation to the poor; secondly, with the ministry of healing; thirdly, the ministry of deliverance for the captives of sin; fourthly, the ministry of teaching, the recovery of sight to the blind; fifthly, with the message of His coming, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; and, finally, the message of comfort and consolation to all that mourn.

This was Christ’s ministry, and He fulfilled it in the power of the Holy Ghost. He did not presume to preach the Gospel until He had received this enduement; neither should we. And, as we receive the same Spirit, ours will be a ministry of salvation, a ministry of healing, a ministry of sanctification, a ministry of teaching, a ministry of hope, a ministry of consolation, joy and gladness.

There is a very striking order in these three passages respecting Christ’s baptism. First, it is promised in the second chapter, by the prophet. Next, it is proclaimed in the forty-second chapter by the Father to the Son. Here, it is confessed by the Savior, and claimed by Himself, as He goes forth to exercise the ministry and claim the power.

Only thus can we receive the baptism of the Spirit. It is promised to us as well as to Him, and there must come a moment when it is really given by the Word of God and our act of consecration. Then there must come a third step when we ourselves confess it, accept it, and step forward to realize it in the actual exercise of the gift we have claimed, by proving our faith in our obedience. As we, like Jesus, go forth with the Gospel of salvation in dependence on the power of the Spirit, we, too, shall find, like Him, that we are endued with power from on high.

3. THE HOLY SPIRIT ON ISRAEL AS A NATION. We have a beautiful picture of this outpouring of the Spirit upon Israel in Isaiah 27: 15-18: “Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever. And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.”

This follows a long season of national depression and sorrow. It brings a complete and blessed revolution, turning the nation to righteousness and God, and changing every sorrow into prosperity, blessing, and peace. The first droppings of this blessed rain are already beginning to come, and the remnant of Israel is turning to God, as well as many to their ancient fatherland.

The Holy Ghost is beginning to visit the seed of Abraham, and soon the wilderness of Palestine shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. Let us pray for Israel, and its restoration will be to the Gentiles and to the world as life from the dead.

There is another picture of the same national blessing in Isaiah 59: 19-21. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, quoted from this passage with direct reference to the coming of Christ and the return of Israel. This is to be accompanied by a wide effusion of the Spirit from on high, which is to be a permanent and everlasting presence.

The Holy Ghost is not going to leave this world when Jesus comes back, but, as of old He dwelt in Christ in the days of His suffering and humiliation, so He shall dwell in Him again as He comes to reign in glory.

All that we know of His comfort, joy, love quickening life, and effectual power, is but the merest foretaste of the glory with which He will fill us in those coming ages. Then we shall know not only the fullness of Jesus, but we shall receive the residue of the Spirit, and it shall be true of Israel and of the Church of Christ, “My Spirit that is upon thee, . . . shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever.”

IV. THE HOLY SPIRIT FOR EACH OF US AS INDIVIDUALS. There is another and a greater promise of the Holy Ghost in Isaiah which each of us may claim for ourselves. It is found in the forty-fourth chapter, verses three to five. “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thy offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses. One shall say, I am the Lord’s; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel.” The only limitation of this promise is our fitness and capacity to receive it. We have here a beautiful picture of the field, the flood, and the fruit.

First, the field is “the thirsty and the dry ground.” In nature as well as in grace there must be a preparation of the soil for the seed and the harvest. The same seed on one field comes to nothing, and on another it produces one hundredfold; so the Holy Ghost is affected by the personal qualities of the heart in which He dwells, and the capacity of the soul for spiritual life, power and blessing. Some seem to be vessels prepared unto glory, and others only for sin and evil.

Two men sit down at the same table. To one it is a feast, to another it is a famine, simply because the one is hungry and the other satisfied. The very best dish on our dinner table is a good appetite. So God’s spiritual preparation for the coming of His Spirit is a deep hunger and thirst. Let us thank Him as He gives it to us, and show more need than fullness, more want than blessing; for “blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”

Our best preparation for the Holy Spirit is emptiness, a sense of need, and a real spiritual capacity. Sometimes God has to bring this about by our very failures, and a revelation to us as to our nothingness and worthlessness.

Next, we find that on such a soil He will pour out “floods.” It is not merely a few drops of rain, but the abundant rain, the ample, boundless overflow of His Holy Spirit. Oh, that we might prove the richer fullness of this promise, and let Him pour out a blessing until there should not be room to receive it!

Finally, there is a threefold fruition. First, there is the salvation of individuals. “One shall say, I am the Lord’s.” Next, there must be the public confession of those who are saved. “Another shall call himself by the name of Jacob.” And, thirdly, there is the deeper consecration of God’s people. “Another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and call himself by the name of Israel.” This describes a higher spiritual life.

This is a covenant voluntarily signed between the soul and the Lord, in which there is a perfect and entire surrender, and a complete claim of all His blessing and fullness.

Then comes the new surname, which, as with the patriarch Jacob of old, marked a crisis in his history, and a new departure of power and blessing. Israel means “a Prince with God,” the conquering soul, the life that has entered into the divine fullness.

This is the work of the Holy Ghost, to lead us on to all these things; first, to accept the Lord, then to unite with His people and to acknowledge Him publicly, and then to go on into all the fullness of His grace and blessing.

As we receive the Holy Ghost, we must go on, and only as we go on, can we continue to receive His increasing and satisfying fullness. Beloved, have we taken all the steps? Have we signed the personal covenant? Have we special relations with God? Is He to us what He is to no one else? Have we received the eternal surname, and are we written in heaven in characters which no one knoweth, save Him that gave the name and the soul on whom He has inscribed it?

Such, then, is Isaiah’s vision of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit that came first upon him and enabled him to reveal it to others in his yet more glorious ministry, in the person of the Lord Jesus, in the future glory of the Jewish nation, and in the soul that receives His fullness.

All this has come to pass in the ages since Isaiah’s time. We are living in the noontide light and glory of the Holy Ghost. Have these ancient promises and prophesies been fulfilled to us? Has the vision been translated into our life? Have we proved this part of God’s holy Scriptures?

Let us come to Him as did Isaiah, in deep spiritual hunger, self-renunciation, and consecration. Let us receive the living seal which the hand of Jesus is ready to put upon our lips and leave upon the altar of our hearts; then let us go forth like Isaiah, in the power of the Spirit to proclaim His grace and fullness, and to become spiritual conductors, passing the blessing on to the souls that are hungering and perishing around us; let our lives, like Isaiah’s signify “the Salvation of Jehovah.”

JEREMIAH, although occupying in comparison with Isaiah the second place in our Old Testament canons, really occupied the highest place in the mind of his people, and in the estimation of the rabbis and religious leaders of the Jews. So supremely was he regarded as the guardian spirit of Judah and Jerusalem that they expected him to come back from the dead and to usher in some new bright era of national hope and prosperity. Therefore, when Jesus of Nazareth was performing His wondrous miracles upon earth, and was attracting the attention of all the people, we find that many of them supposed that He was no other than Jeremiah who had risen from the dead.

The life of Jeremiah is inseparably linked with the last days of ancient Judaism and the fall of Jerusalem. The period of his ministry, occupying as it did about forty years, was singularly parallel to the forty years of the ministry of Moses in the beginning of Israel’s history. It was parallel, also, to the forty years of trial and probation which preceded the fall of Jerusalem in later centuries, after the testimony of Christ and His apostles had been at length rejected.

These three periods of forty years were all times of probation, and, alas! of provocation, on the part of Israel. Just as Moses was the divine messenger under the first, so Jeremiah stood under the second with loving loyalty to his country and supreme fidelity to His God. He strove to avert the awful catastrophe which he saw so swiftly and surely coming upon his people. When at last he could not prevent it, he shared it with his people; and finally, it seems probable, perished at their cruel hands.

The story of his life and the record of his testimony are full of the most touching and beautiful manifestations of the divine character and love and of the working of the Holy Ghost.

The New Testament has borne most distinct witness to his inspired messages, and recognized his words as the messages of the Holy Ghost. We shall glance first, at his personal call; next, at the relation of his life and ministry to his own people and times; and, finally, at his messages for later ages and for us through the Spirit.

1. JEREMIAH’S CALL AND COMMISSION. Jeremiah has given an account of his call and commission in the first chapter of his prophetic book. It is not unlike the story of Isaiah’s consecration in the sixth chapter of his prophecy. God came to him and announced to him before his birth he had been called to be a prophet unto the nations.

His commission is a very glorious one. “I have this day set thee,” He says, “over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, . . . and to plant.” Not only did his commission extend to his own people, but at his prophetic word the mightiest nations of his time rose and fell. The mighty armies that traversed the whole earth and made the nations to tremble, moved at the word of Jeremiah through the Holy Ghost. Alone in his quiet home at Anathoth, or suffering in his lone dungeon in Jerusalem, he was really the mightiest force of his time. It was his prophetic word that decided the fate of dynasties and kingdoms.

There is nothing more sublime than the simple power which the Holy Ghost gives to the humblest saint; and the ministry of prayer which He enables the lowliest child of God to exercise. Is there a spectacle more glorious than the picture given us nearly a century later of that mighty sovereign of the east, the all victorious Cyrus, after he had subdued the nations, after proud Babylon had fallen beneath his feet, after the whole world had become his empire, compelled by an influence that he could not understand, to fulfill the very words of Jeremiah’s prophecy?

His was a peculiar prophetic ministry, no doubt; but God will give a similar power to every true saint who is willing in the name of Lord Jesus to accept the high commission and the holy ministry of prayer, and to grasp the scepter of faith through which He can touch the world with the power and blessing of the eternal God.

The commission of Jeremiah was a very remarkable one. Naturally he seemed wholly unfitted for it. Everything is his nature recoiled from the task to which he was called. He was sensitive, shrinking and loving. It was a fearful sacrifice of all his feelings to be compelled to stand in constant antagonism and to utter God’s rebukes against the people that he loved, against princes, priests, and prophets.

Far sweeter would it have been for him to weep for Israel’s sorrows and even to suffer for her sins; but God called that gentle nature to be the messenger of His most fearful warnings and judgments, and to pass through an ordeal of suffering from which the bravest heart might shrink. He did shrink. “I am a child,” he said, but God would not allow him to plead his weakness. It was not Jeremiah’s strength that was to prevail, but God’s mighty enduement of power from on high. So the hand of God stretched out and touched his lips. The power of God was communicated to his shrinking weakness, and he was commanded to stand forth without a doubt or a fear, and to speak the words that God should inspire, and to be like a wall of adamant and a fortress of fire against the priests, the princes, the prophets, and the people of the land.

In like manner God often calls us to ministries for which we are naturally unfitted; but if He calls and enables, what need have we to fear? Indeed, the only thing we have cause to fear is the spirit of fear; and when we step forth at the divine command to fulfill such sacred trusts, we must stand in fearless courage and absolute obedience. Yes, we might almost say, audacity is the only safe position. “Be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them” is still as true for us as it was for Jeremiah of old.

2. JEREMIAH’S RELATION TO HIS OWN PEOPLE AND TIMES. Jeremiah lived and testified through the reign of four of Judah’s kings. He was called to his ministry early in the reign of young Josiah, who, having inherited a corrupt throne, found himself, while yet but a child, the sovereign of a people who had been stereotyped in idolatry and sin. The long reign of Manassah, which covered half a century, was paralleled only by the days of Ahab and Jezebel; and, although the last days of his life led him, through divine judgment, to sincere repentance, yet they were too short to undo the fearful crimes of a long reign. After the short reign of a son as wicked as himself, Josiah ascended the throne.

He was destined to be one of the best of Judah’s kings, and to take his place beside Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah among the true successors of David. Beginning early to struggle against evil, he labored courageously and consistently till the close of his reign for the reformation of his kingdom. In these efforts he was seconded by the faithful Jeremiah. Indeed, there is no doubt that the reformation was due, under God, chiefly to the labors of Jeremiah himself.

Day by day he stood in the streets of Jerusalem, uttering his tender and solemn messages. His earlier addresses have been preserved to us in the beginning of his prophecy. Reminding the people of God’s ancient covenant and their former faithfulness and blessing, he appealed with tender solemn pathos to their hearts. “Thus saith the Lord,” he would cry, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thy espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness.” And that he would renew the appeal, and cry, “Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness?” “My people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

Then as he saw, perhaps, their cold indifference or scornful unbelief, there would follow some solemn message, the vision of coming calamity, the dramatic picture of the invader and the besieging army from the north and the impending fall of Jerusalem. Or sometimes his heart would break out in a wail of despair and anguish, “Oh, that mine head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!” “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

Thus he preached and pleaded and warned and waited, year after year. Gradually some improvement appeared, until after a while it seemed as though the clouds were passing, and the nation were returning to their God.

At this time a strange and important incident occurred. It was the finding of a lost copy of the law amid the rubbish of the temple. The house of God had become like a filthy stable, and had been given up to the rites of idolatry for generations. But, as they were cleansing it at the commandment of Josiah, they found amid the wreck and debris an old copy of the law of Moses. Perhaps it was the book of Deuteronomy; perhaps it was a larger scroll containing the entire law. It made the deepest impression upon the prophet and the king.

It was like the finding of Luther’s Bible in the sixteenth century. It was solemnly brought to the king, and then the priests and the people were gathered together in public convocation and the sacred book was read. As thy listened to the voice of God, and learned His precepts and commandments, which for ages they had neglected and disobeyed, there began to fall upon them something like the spirit of a true humiliation and reformation.

Following up the movement, Josiah summoned the whole nation to Jerusalem, and sent out a universal call for a great Passover. They came from north and south and east and west; and some even of the remnant of Israel gathered with them; and there they kept the Passover as it had not been kept for generations.

One would have thought that all this must have filled the heart of Jeremiah with joy and confidence. Doubtless he did appreciate fully even the transient awakening. But it brought to him one of those crises which are most trying to a faithful minister. He saw the shallowness of the movement. He saw the deep insincerity on the part of the leaders. He saw that the heart of the people was wedded to idolatry and sin, and that all this was but superficial and would soon pass away. They were willing to go so far; but a radical revival that would separate them from all idolatry and sin, and from the gross vices and unrighteousness which pervaded the whole national life, for this they were unwilling. He saw with the vision of divine discernment that nothing short of this revival would avert the impending stroke.

So he pleaded more solemnly that ever. He summoned the princes, the priests, the prophets, and the people to righteousness and holiness; to circumcise their hearts and not merely rest in a ceremonial worship or an outward reformation.

But his messages found little response. The transient reformation passed by; the hearts of the people were still unsanctified; the prophet was sure that the day of judgment for Judah was only delayed but not averted.

It was not long before clouds began to gather more dark and hopeless than before. In an evil hour Josiah was led into a foolish and hasty campaign against the king of Egypt. Neglecting the warning which God sent to him through the lips of that heathen king, he rashly ventured into the forbidden conflict, and left his life upon the bloody field of Megiddo.

With Josiah’s death the last hope of Judah died, and Jeremiah uttered over him a lamentation which wasthe very cry of despair. Then began that chain of crimes and ccalamities which culminated in the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of Judah.

Jehoiakim, the immediate successor of Josiah, was a counterpart of Ahab and Jeroboam in the worst days of Israel. He set at naught all the counsels and warnings of the prophet. When, at last, Jeremiah had Barak to read to him from his prophetic scroll the solemn judgment which God had pronounced against him, instead of the least show of repentance, he took his penknife, cut the objectionable words out of the scroll, and threw them into the fire.

The prophet returned to his house, rewrote the threatenings of Jehovah with many terrible additions, and read them back to the king. Again and again was Jehoiakim warned of his impending ruin; but his heart seemed given up to an utter infatuation of willfulness and wickedness, until, at last, after an infamous reign of eleven years, he was slain in a night attack by the BabyIonian army upon Jerusalem, and his lifeless body was exposed in the open fields. Men said in after ages that on the withered forehead could be read in awful characters the name of the evil spirit whom he had followed all his life.

Jeremiah had predicted long before that the wicked king should be, “buried with the burial of an ass,” and his wretched life ended in shame and ruin. His reputation was so desperate that he was not even buried in the sepulchres of the kings.

He was followed by Jehoiachin, who was really the puppet and creature of the Babylonian monarch. After a short and uneventful reign, he in turn was succeeded by Zedekiah, the last of Judah’s kings.

Zedekiah was weak and irresolute rather than obstinately wicked. His whole reign was marked by vacillation and cowardice. He had a certain measure of respect for the messages of Jeremiah, sometimes sending for him, and seeming to listen to his counsels and to desire to carry them out; but he feared the princes and the people, and had not the courage to obey his own convictions.

Again and again did Jeremiah assure him that, if he would but obey the voice of God, even yet he and his kingdom would be spared; but as surely as he persisted in the counsels of the people and the princes, and depended upon the alliances of the neighboring nations, both he and his kingdom should perish.

Many were the vicissitudes and trials of the faithful prophet during these last years. Again and again was he exposed to the charge of disloyalty and treated as an enemy of his country. Again and again did the false prophets testify against him and try to bolster up the hopes of the people by deceiving visions of coming prosperity. Sometimes he was pursued for his life. Often he was exposed to imprisonment and the severest hardships, and left even for days to sink in the mire of his dungeon, and was saved from death only by the interposition of compassionate strangers.

And so the years rolled by, until at last the cup of iniquity was full and the divine judgment could wait no longer. The Babylonians invaded the land. The cordon of destruction tightened around Jerusalem, and, at last, the walls were broken up and the Chaldeans entered. Zedekiah sought for safety in cowardly flight, and succeeded in reaching the plains of Jericho with a tartan retinue; but he was pursued by the Babylonians and captured. He and his sons were taken into the presence of Nebuchadnezzar. His sons were murdered before his eyes; and, as if to stereotype this last and hideous vision forever on his memory, his eyes were then cruelly put out, and he was taken in blindness and bondage to Babylon, and left to end his days as a royal captive.

What was the fate of Jeremiah? He had been true to God, and God had not failed him in this dark and dreadful hour. The Babylonian king having heard of his high and heroic character, gave orders to his officers that Jeremiah should be carefully sought out and guarded from all harm. Not a hair of his head was touched, but he was treated with honor and every consideration. He was given his choice of going to Babylon, with liberty and ample provision for his every need, or of remaining among his own people. Of course, he chose the latter. He had lived for them, and he was ready to die with them; and so he remained among the remnant that were left after the deportation of most of the leading citizens of Jerusalem as captives to Babylon.

It is said that he went down with those who went to Egypt and dwelt among them, still counseling them and teaching them the messages of God; but they refused his warnings and counsels, and ultimately, tradition has reported, they even took the prophet’s life. He became one of the glorious list of martyrs of truth who sealed their testimony with their blood.

Humanly speaking, his life was not a success; but when the books shall be opened and the rewards shall be given, it will be found that Jeremiah’s life outweighed the most successful and brilliant career. His was the high honor of remaining true to God and faithful to his trust, even in the fact of seeming failure and the martyr’s death.

This is true success, and this was the glorious testimony of Jeremiah’s life.

3. HIS MESSAGE TO OUR TIMES. Let us look finally at his message to us in later ages. His prophetic writings are full of messages for future times. The very failure of the kingdom of Judah was but a background for the vision of the true kingdom which the future was to bring.

He saw, as no other had ever seen, how powerless was the highest teaching or the severest suffering to lead to virtue and faithfulness. Alas! the secret of failure was found in the wretched material of poor, fallen human nature and the need of a strength higher than human purpose, or even the light of truth and example. He looked forward with deep longing to the bright day of the New Testament, the coming Savior, and the Holy Ghost.

As a result, Jeremiah has given to us out of the darkness and failure of his own time, the inspired vision of the new covenant, the Gospel, and the work of the Spirit. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews has repeatedly quoted from this ancient prophet the most comprehensive statement of the new covenant which has ever been given to the Church of God.

It is found in the thirty-first chapter of Jeremiah, from the thirty-first verse to the thirty-fourth. “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord; But this shall be the covenant that I shall make with the house of Israel; After these days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”

The distinguishing feature of this new covenant which Jeremiah announced lies in the fact that God promises to write His law upon our hearts, and to “put it in our inward parts.” The old covenant gave light and law, but it did not give the power and disposition to obey it. But the new covenant writes it in our inmost being; makes it part of our very nature; incorporates it into our will, our choice, our desires, our very intuitions, so that it becomes second nature to us, our spontaneous desire, and our deepest life.

This is the work of the Holy Ghost. This is the meaning of sanctification. This is the great purpose of Christ’s redemption and His indwelling in the heart of the believer through the Spirit.

It is God who undertakes to keep this covenant. It is not dependent upon what we do; but He becomes our God first and makes us His people. He undertakes to teach us and to reveal to us by the Holy Spirit the meaning of His will, the nature of His covenant, and the purposes of His grace and love.

We are not dependent upon outward instruction merely; but each of us has access to Him, and may enjoy the personal teaching of the Holy Ghost.

It will be noticed that the forgiveness of sins is not the primary promise of this chapter. It is secondary, and follows as a matter of course; but the primary feature of the great promise is the power of divine grace to keep from sin, and to lead us into righteousness and holiness.

This is the glorious Gospel which Jesus has come to bring in its fullness, and of which the Holy Ghost is at once the Revealer and the Enabler. It brings not merely the message of repentance and forgiveness with the dreary prospect of continued sin. It comes not only to forgive the past, but to assure us of a power that will keep us for the future, and put into us a nature that is in its tendency holy and divine, and that leads us to choose the will of God and the life of holy obedience.

Beloved, have we learned this blessed message of the Holy Ghost through Jeremiah? Have we come into this new covenant? Have we proved the fullness of salvation through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and the law written upon our inmost hearts?

Another message which Jeremiah has left for later times is the lesson of faith which he has given in the thirty-second chapter of his prophecy. It was a very striking object lesson. In the days when the future was as dark as calamity could make it, when the whole land was in the possession of the Chaldeans, and the city was about to fall; at a time when real estate in Judah was practically worthless, Jeremiah was commanded to invest his means in his patrimonial estate in the village of Anathoth. It would seem like throwing money away; but instead of hesitating, he immediately obeyed the divine command, and, publicly, before all the people, completed the purchase, subscribed the papers, had the transaction duly attested and sealed, and put his littlefortune into the piece of property which he knew for two generations would be under the blight of the long captivity of Judah.

What did it all mean? It was a practical expression of his faith in the future of his country, and of the fact that a day was coming when that inheritance would be worth all its cost, when that estate would come back to his family again, and when his own glorious promise of Israel’s restoration would be fulfilled.

It was stepping out in the dark hour and committing himself to the promise of God. It was counting upon the things that are not as though they were. It was the faith that anticipates the future, and in the midnight hour lifts up its song of praise, and puts its foot upon the seeming void “and finds the rock beneath.”

This is the spirit of true faith in every age. We too, like Jeremiah, must count upon God’s Word when there is nothing else to count upon, and must exercise that faith that is “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.” We must step out, in the dark and empty void, and know that God is underneath us, and that the vision of faith and the promise of the future are as certain and real as His eternal throne.

There is yet another message for future times which Jeremiah has left us, and on which for a moment we linger. It is found in the eighteenth chapter of his prophecy. It is the figure of the potter and his vessel. The prophet, having gone down to the potter’s house, saw him working a vessel upon a wheel; but, through some cause, the vessel was marred in the hand of the Potter. Perhaps the clay did not yield to his touch, and would not lie plastic in his hands. He had to throw it aside, and it seemed as if his work had failed, and that even the material was rejected. Oh, how solemnly it speaks to us of our past failures! Perhaps God took us in hand, and began to work out in our life some gracious purpose; but we shrank from the ordeal; we refused to submit to His will. We asked an easier way, we held back from the cross; and God seeming unable to accomplish His high and holy purpose, had to put us aside and let His gracious plan seem, for the time, to fail. Oh, how sad and solemn the wrecks that lie behind us through our willfulness, our unbelief, and our unwillingness to trust our Father’s wisdom and love in the testing hour!

But there is a beautiful sequel to Jeremiah’s parable. The clay was not thrown away; but the potter took it up again and fashioned it again, another vessel, “as it pleased the potter to make it.” There was a time when I think I interpreted this vision wrongly, and thought it meant that God took up our broken lives and made the best of them that He could; but that it was not all that He had at first intended. I believe that the grace of God loves to triumph even over our self-will, and I cannot but think that even in the very terms of Jeremiah’s object lesson, there are lines of hope and divine encouragement, and that we may dare to believe that the vessel which the potter made the second time was even a better vessel than he had tried to make before, because, we are told, “He made it again another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it.” This time it was not our pleasure but His that was accomplished. Perhaps he gave us grace to yield our stubborn will and to submit with confidence to his hand. Perhaps, in His wondrous and over-ruling mercy, He brought us to full surrender and subdued our willfulness. At least, His mighty love triumphed over all hindrances, His will was accomplished, and His high purpose was fulfilled. Yes, the grace of God is able, not only for Satan and for sin, but for self too, and strong enough to overcome the opposition of our weak and willful hearts.

Thank God for One whose sovereign grace saved us when we were dead in sin, and whose all-sufficient power is able to save us to the uttermost, to bring us to the place, where, some day, we shall say, “Not unto us, O God, not unto us, but unto Thy name be all the glory.”

“Grace all the work shall crown,
To everlasting days,
It lays in heaven that topmost stone
And well deserves the praise.”

“The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was there upon him.” Ezekiel 1:3.

The ministry of Ezekiel was dramatic and pathetic. Like Jeremiah’s, it was connected with the fall of Judah, but it differed in this, that while Jeremiah was present amid the scenes of sorrow connected with that awful tragedy. Ezekiel was far removed and saw it in vision only, from the distant banks of the river Chebar. God showed it all to him, and day by day the painful panorama passed before his eyes and was reproduced to his countrymen around him in his inspired visions; so that, the very day the city fell, he knew it in his spirit, although the tidings did not reach him until years afterward.

Indeed, in his own personal life he became a sort of object lesson of the events which he described, and in which he was so deeply interested as a prophet and a patriot. In his own person he suffered in type and figure what his country and people were enduring. He went through the days of famine, eating unclean food, and setting forth in his own sufferings the horrors of the approaching calamities.

The day that Jerusalem fell, his own wife died, and he knew that she was made in God’s mysterious providence an awful picture of the blow that had fallen upon Jerusalem. Thus he both lived and taught the lessons of his time, and left the wondrous record for the instruction of later ages.

The events that were transpiring around him formed a fitting framework for the message of faith and hope which he was sent to unveil for the future. Through the wreck of Israel’s national history, he was able to see, as through the broken walls of a ruined building, the light of the coming dispensation and the promise of a better hope.

His pages shine with the light of the Gospel, unfolding with a clearness, that even Isaiah does not surpass, the times of the Messiah, and especially the person and work of the blessed Holy Spirit. Nowhere are there more sublime heights of holy vision, and nowhere more clear, spiritual and practical unfoldings of truth revealing the spiritual life and the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. Let us look at three remarkable visions of his prophecy.

1. THE VISION OF THE GLORY. The prophecy opened with an extraordinary vision of peculiar sublimity and majesty, revealing the glory of the Lord in the mighty working of His Spirit and providence.

First, he saw a whirlwind coming from the north, the direction from which the enemies of Israel came, and where the great world empires had their seat. In the midst of this whirlwind there was a fire enfolding itself; a sort of whirlwind fire, turning upon its own axis, and sweeping on in majesty and glory. The whirlwind and the fire have already been made familiar as the symbols of God and His manifested presence and glory.

Next, he beheld in the midst of the fiery whirlwind four living creatures. These were the cherubim. We have already seen them at the gate of Eden and in the Tabernacle and the Temple, and they reappear in the vision of the Apocalypse.

They are special symbols of the Lord Jesus Christ, and God’s infinite attributes and mighty workings through Him. The faces of the lion, the ox, the eagle, and the man represent the sovereignty, the power, the intelligence, and the love which guide all the government of God and the whole plan of redemption which He is working out through the Lord Jesus Christ.

These cherub forms were robed in fire, and they moved like the lightning and the living flame. As in the other representations of the cherubic figures, they had six wings, denoting the swiftness and celerity of their movements. To still heighten the figure, there were, next, four mighty wheels, so vast in the sweep of their circumference that, to the prophet’s eye, they seemed terrible in their majesty. Their tires were full of eyes, all around their vast circumference.

These wheels kept time to the movement of the wings of the cherubim, and bore the cherubic forms wherever the Spirit directed: for “the Spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.”

This wonderful vision represented the majesty, the grandeur, the power, and the celerity of the operations of God’s mighty Spirit and universal providence. It was the sublime figure of the omnipresence and infinite activity of the living God and the Holy Spirit, who, as the divine Executive, is ever carrying out His purposes and plans.

All this sublime imagery was but the foundation for something still grander. For the prophet next beheld, above the cherubim, the wings, and the wheels, a mighty firmament, shining in its transparent brightness like the terrible crystal; and on this firmament a glorious throne like a flaming jasper; on this throne, as the centre of the whole vision and the sublime climax of the whole picture, was “the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.”

This was the glorious mediatorial throne of the Lord Jesus Christ, and around about it was the rainbow of covenant promise, softening all the awful brightness,and proclaiming to His people that He was their covenant King.

What a majestic vision of the glory of God, of the Son of Man, and of the Holy Spirit, through whom He works out His mighty plans, and whose swiftness, strength, omnipresence and omniscience are so majestically represented in the consuming fire, the gleaming lightning, the awful whirlwind, the cherub forms, the manifold wings, the living wheels full of eyes around their whole circumference, the crystal firmament, the sapphire throne, the Son of man; above it all, the rainbow of covenant promise, and the Holy Spirit working out all the purposes of God’s infinite love and grace!

Such was the vision with which Ezekiel’s ministry began. Such was the mighty One whose messenger he was called to be. Soon after, the personal call came, God commanded him to take the roll containing his message and eat it; and, as he did so, it became as honey in his mouth and in his bowels. Then the vision returned once more, and the glory again appeared before his sight, and God sent him forth to repeat the message, and to be a watchman unto His people, and to warn them from Him; and he went forth to his lifework, armed with the consciousness of that glorious presence, in view of which the power and the persecutions of his enemies were as naught.

To us, beloved, may not come the majestic vision which Ezekiel saw; but faith can clothe the gentle Presence that whispers to our hearts with all the majesty of those ancient garments. We can know that He who speaks to us so gently and works so patiently in our lives is the same majestic Presence that filled the heavens with His glory, whose mighty wheels of providence sweep with the celerity of the lightning around the vast circumference of the universe.

The vision has passed away, but the glory still remains.Though that glory is veiled today, yet it is nonetheless real; and some day we shall behold it, too, as Ezekiel saw it of old by the river Chebar.

2. THE DEPARTING VISION. This glorious vision which Ezekiel saw was yet in the midst of Israel. It was the Presence which had led them through all their history. It was the same God who had marched before them and hovered above them in the pillar of cloud and flame, dividing the Red Sea and the Jordan, conquering the Canaanites, establishing the throne of David, exalting Solomon to all his glory, and manifesting Himself in the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, and in the wonders of divine love and power through all the centuries of Israel’s history. Now, however, the incorrigible sins of the nation had worn out His patience and almost grieved Him away.

That glorious Presence was about to leave the temple that He had loved. Judah was ready to fall, desolate and forsaken, into the hands of her cruel foe.

There is nothing more tender and sublime than the vision of this departing glory. Like a mother bird, it seems to hover, unwilling to depart, lingering with fluttering wings above the cherubim and above the threshold of the house, and last upon the brow of Olivet, before it can bear to take its long, sad flight, and leave their house unto them desolate.

In the third verse of the ninth chapter, we see it beginning to depart, “The glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house.”Again, in the fourth verse of the tenth chapter it would seem that He had gone back and once more poised His wings and attempted the same flight. “The glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord’s glory. And the sound of the cherubim’s wings was heard, as the voice of the Almighty God when He speaketh.”

Then again, in the eighteenth verse of the tenth chapter we see His flight begun. “Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim, and the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight; when they went out, the wheels also were beside them; and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house.”

But not yet did the vision take its final flight, for, in the twenty-second verse of the eleventh chapter, we see the glory lingering yet on Mount Olivet. “Then did the cherubim lift up their wings, and the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above. And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city.”

Still God’s patience waited and pleaded, and His judgment sought to awaken and change their stubborn hearts of sin; but all in vain. At length we hear the mournful conclusion, “Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. . . . Her priests have violated my law, and profaned mine holy things. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, and to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity, and divining
unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord, when the Lord hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy. . . . And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore, have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads.”

It was like that later vision, when the same Son of man stood upon the same Olivet, looking down upon the city that had refused His warnings and miracle of love, and said: “How often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: . . . ye shall not see me, until the time cometh when ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

So the Spirit left them, and the next chapter begins the vision of judgment and destruction. Beloved, the same story has often been reenacted. It was reenacted when Jesus left the temple. The Roman legions followed, and Jerusalem fell again. It was reenacted when the Church of the Holy Apostles became corrupt and sank to medieval darkness because the Holy Spirit was grieved away.

The same calamity is threatening the Church again. The blessed Spirit is being grieved from her sanctuary and from her altars by compromises with worldliness and sin, and He is seeking a home in humble hearts and lowly missions and little companies of those who will obey Him and fully trust Him. It may be enacted in your life; for you, too, can vex the Holy Ghost and grieve Him away. The temple of your heart may be left desolate and forsaken, and your life become exposed to the judgments of God and the calamities of sorrow.

Many a sad life and many a sad death is but the story of Israel repeated once more. Oh, let us not grieve Him! Oh, let us not permit Him to pass away! Oh, let us cherish Him, honor Him, obey Him, make our heart His home, and Him our Holy Guest!

3. THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT’S RETURN. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness and all your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. I also will save you from all your uncleannesses; and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities, and for your abominations. Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord God, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel. Thus saith the Lord God, In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited. Then the heathen, that are left round about you, shall know that I the Lord build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.” (Ezek. 36:25-36).

Of course this promise has a primary reference to Israel as a nation, and will yet be graciously fulfilled in their restoration from the captivity of ages and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the nation; but it has also a distinct reference to the New Testament times, and shines with the light of the Gospel of full and free salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are three very distinct stages in the promised blessing. The first includes forgiveness and conversion; that is the sprinkling of the clean water upon them, the forgiveness of their sins, and the taking away of the hard and stony heart, and the giving of the heart of flesh, the work of justification and regeneration.

There is no need to say more respecting these earlier verses. The teaching is as simple and clear as the third chapter of the Gospel of John or the epistles of St. Paul. But there is a second stage of blessing which is distinct and important. It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the incoming of His cleansing and sanctifying power in the heart of the believer.

“I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.” This is something different from the new spirit and the new heart. It is God Himself coming to dwell in the new spirit by His Holy Spirit, and bringing a constraining and efficient power that causes the soul to walk in holiness and enables him to keep His commandments.

Could we put on canvas the picture it would be something like this; first, we would paint the natural heart black and sinful; then, second, in the centre of this black heart we would place a little white heart, denoting the regenerated spirit, the new heart that comes at conversion, but which is still in the midst of darkness and sin, and has to maintain a painful and often unequal struggle with the surrounding and encompassing evil.

In the third place, we would paint a ray of heavenly light, or a living coal of celestial fire, which we would put in the center of this new heart; and from it the effulgent rays of life and light would reach out into all the darkness round about, filling the new heart and the old, until the darkness and sin are crowded out, and God Himself possesses the whole being, enabled it to think and feel, to trust and love, to obey and persevere, even as Christ Himself would walk.

This is the Spirit that sanctifies; this is the cleansing power that our poor weak heart needs. This Is the efficient strength which the Holy Ghost wants to give to every heart that will surrender fully to His prower and receive Him in His all-sufficiency. Beloved, have we done so? Have we received not only the new Spirit but the divine Spirit, and learned to know the mystery which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory”?

There is still another stage in the promised blessing to be found in the outworking of this indwelling Spirit and the influence of the sanctified and victorious life upon our circumstances and external life. “Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers.” We become established, and get settled in God’s will and blessing. “I will call for the corn, and will increase it and lay no famine upon you.” We become nourished, joyful, happy Christians, and every one beholds in us the satisfied and benignant rest and glory of a victorious life.

“I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field.” Our work is blessed, our fruit abundant, and our blessing extends even to “the heathen.” This is contemporaneous with our spiritual blessing. “In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded.” The barren wastes of life shall blossom as the rose. The things that have been sad and fruitless will become blessed and beautiful. The years that have been lost will be restored, and all we do shall prosper.

Nay, He says, “The desolate land shall be tilled, . . . and they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced and are inhabited. Then the heathen that are left round about” it shall know that God has done it.

Of course, this is yet to be fulfilled to Israel as a people. Already we begin to see the foretokening of that Millennial spring that is opening for the long downtrodden land and people. But it has a beautiful meaning to each individual Christian life. For God is “able to do for us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.”

The soul that receives the Holy Spirit in all His fullness will find the providence of God keeping pace with His inward blessing, and the grace that we have experienced in our heart will reflect itself in all our outward life. The King that reigns supreme upon the throne of the heart will sway His scepter around the whole circle of our life, and bring into subjection everything that hurts or hinders us.

He will heal our bodies; He will answer our prayers; He will bless our homes; He will prosper our business; He will remove our difficulties; He will open our way; He will “cause the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose,” and “instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier, shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

The blessings of God’s providence are inseparably connected with the indwelling of His Spirit and the experience of His sanctifying grace. It is only to those “who love God and are the called according to His purpose” that “all things work together for good.”

They know that they work together for good. It is not a struggle to believe it. It is not a desperate effort to count it. When we walk with Him in holy trust and obedience, the inmost consciousness of our spiritual being bears witness to the promise, and we know without doubt or fear that all things are ours, for we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.