The First Announced Withdrawment of the Spirit

God’s gracious purpose of saving sinners is “through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” The character and work of this divine agent, though by no means so clearly in the Old Testament as in the New, are yet clearly revealed. When, just before the flood, the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man,” he teaches us, that there is such an agent; that he strives with men; and that he shall not strive always.

The Spirit of God possesses a distinct and personal existence. Notwithstanding the modern refinements of some few Trinitarian writers, we still hold to a personal distinction in the Godhead; it is not a mere nominal distinction, to which the Scriptures refer, when they speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. There are three equally distinct and divine persons in the one God; yet, mysterious truth, they are “the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” They are distinct without being separate; just as the faculties of the human mind are distinct, without being separate faculties. And they are inseparably united in one God, just as the faculties of the human mind are inseparably united in one intellectual and moral existence. Nor can we understand the wondrous method of redemption which distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, without receiving this truth.

There are those who teach that the Holy Spirit is God acting in a distinct office; this was the belief of Sabellius of the third century, and the heresy which was condemned by the council of Constantine. There are those who teach that He derives his existence from the Father and the Son; such is the Arian heresy; it sprang up in the church of Alexandria in the early part of the fourth century, and was condemned both by the council of Alexandria and the council of Nice. The Socinians and modern Unitarians teach that the Holy Ghost is not a person, but a mere divine energy, or influence, an attribute of the Deity, and not himself divine.

It is one of the peculiarities of Christianity, that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three distinct, inseparable persons in one God. The Spirit of God is not a mere influence, power, or emanation of the Deity; but an intelligent Person, perceiving, thinking, choosing, acting. Personal properties, personal characteristics, personal works, are attributed to him.

The Scriptures instruct us that he possesses intelligence: “The Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God.” He possesses will and choice: “The Spirit, dividing to every man, as he will.” He possesses power: “All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit.” He teaches and dictates: “He shall teach you all things;” it is “not you that speak, but the Holy Ghost.” He commands, commissions, and sends forth: “The Spirit said, Arise, for I have sent them;” being “sent by the Holy Ghost, they departed.” He is called the Sanctifier, the Witness, the Comforter. If such personal properties and acts do not distinguish him from a mere principle, or influence, and imply personal agency, we know not how we are to ascertain the personality of God himself. It is not in the embellished style of poetry and rhetoric, iThat these properties are ascribed to him; it is in the language of didactic discourse and of historical records; and some of it in the more precise language of grant and covenant. A mere emanation, or quality, cannot be said to create, to see, to search, to receive, to speak, to intimate his mind and will. A plain, unlettered man, whose mind has not been perverted by the subtleties of error, must rise from an impartial view of the Scriptures with the conviction that the Spirit of God is a living agent, designing and working with consciousness, will, and power.

This fact, if we mistake not, goes far toward proving his true and proper divinity. The Scriptures also familiarly appropriate to him the true and proper names of the Deity. He is called the God of Israel, the Rock of Israel; and Christians are spoken of as “the Temple of God,11 because” the Spirit of God dwelleth in them;” the inhabitant is a divine Person. We are instructed that, to “He unto the Holy Ghost” is not to “He unto men, but unto GodP The unpardonable sin is committed against the Holy Ghost. The prophet Isaiah informs us, that “he heard the voice of the Lord”11 speaking to him; and in the Acts of the Apostles, the writer affirms that the Person thus addressing the prophet was the Holy Ghost. “Well spake the Holy Ghost, by Esaias the prophet.” In the prophecies of Ezekiel, the writer speaks of a time and place where “the hand of the Lord fell upon him;” and then immediately afterward he declares, “The Spirit lifted me up;” while in the course of his narrative, we find the same Spirit attending the prophet, and the prophet invoking him as the Lord God. In the book of Deuteronomy, it is affirmed that “Jehovah alone did lead his people;” while the prophet Isaiah,

VOL. II. — 8 referring to the same fact, declares, the “Holy Spirit led them.” In the Old Testament it is written, “If there be a prophet among you, I, Jehovah, will make myself known to him;” and in the New Testament it is declared, that” holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost?

The Scriptures also ascribe to the Spirit the essential attributes of the Deity. He is called the eternal Spirit — the omniscient Spirit — the omnipresent Spirit — the Spirit of poioer; while the mighty signs and wonders which accompanied the introduction of Christianity, are declared to have been wrought “by the power of the Spirit of God.” What created being possesses such attributes as these?

Religious worship is also paid to the Spirit in the formula of Christian baptism, and in the apostolic benediction. Of the same import also is that expressive benediction in the Apocalypse, “Grace be unto you from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before the throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful and true Witness!” Here in the same act of worship with the self-existent, eternal, and unchangeable Jehovah, and with the divine and co-equal Son, is associated “the seven spirits which are before the throne,” denoting the perfection and fulness of the Spirit’s gifts and operations, as the Fountain of life, grace, and peace, and as one with the Father and the Son. No created spirit would have been thus associated as one with him who is God over all, blessed for evermore.

No such representations could have been made concerning the Holy Spirit, if he were not truly and properly God. Nor may we forget that all the considerations in proof of the doctrine of the Trinity furnish concurrent demonstration of the divinity of the Spirit; and that whatever evidence is furnished of a plurality of persons in the Godhead bears directly upon the fact, that the Spirit is “the same in substance, and equal in power and glory” with the Father and the Son.

When the Scriptures teach us that God’s Spirit strives with men, they teach us that he sustains an important office in the work of redemption. The second person in the adorable Trinity sustains a special and peculiar office in this great work, which was to become incarnate and suffer and die on the cross to make an atonement for the sins of men, to pass into the heavens, and as a merciful and faithful High Priest ever-living to make intercession for us. The peculiar province of the Spirit is the human mind; they are his internal operations upon the soul of man by which he is chiefly known and honored.

When the promise of the Holy Spirit was given by the Saviour to the apostles, it was a promise they did not fully understand. He was to prepare them for their great work of establishing and diffusing Christianity in the earth. He was to compensate them for the departure and absence of their adored Master; to take the place of his personal presence, and more than supply the comforts and consolations which they had been wont to receive immediately from him. Nor was this promised blessing limited to the apostles; it was to affect the state of the world. It was not to give them wealth, honor, or dominion; but to “take of the things that are Christ’s, and show them unto men.” It was to be a copious blessing; the early Christians were to be baptized with it; and it was to come upon them like the dew of Hermon, and like the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion. It was to fall as the rain upon the parched wilderness, to be poured out like floods that water the earth, cleansing it from its filthiness, and making its sterile soil like a fertile garden. It was to be a permanent blessing, a fountain of living waters, that should never be exhausted.

Facts tell us what it was; and that the promise of it was worthy of being called by the Saviour himself, “The promise of my Father.” It was like God, and worthy of God. The fulfilment of it gave birth to a series of events which continued through the apostolic age; which con-THE FIRST WITHDRAWMENT OP THE SPIRIT. 173

tinue to the present day; which will continue to the end of time, and the glorious effects of which will be fully realized only in the coming eternity. Ages, places, churches, and men on whom the Spirit descends, are the marked ages in the history of time, the distinguished spots on the face of our globe, the favored individuals of our race. He is emphatically the inward witness, that God manifest in the flesh, having made propitiation by the blood of his cross, rose from the dead, ascended up on high, and lives to send down that which his people see, hear, and feel. He ever has done, and still performs what no miracles can accomplish, and that which can be accomplished by no force of evidence, no light of truth, and no power of moral suasion. He gives repentance unto life. He makes men see, and feel, and confess their vileness, and look to the despised and crucified One for pardon and life; so that the Saviour they once despised, they now confide in; truths they once hated, they now love; instructions they once scoffed at, they now obey. They are called from darkness to light; they have passed from death unto life; they have turned from the power of Satan to the living God, by the greater power of the Spirit.

The regard which the Spirit of God claims arises principally from what he performs. He does not claim honor without deserving it. The garlands upon his brow are unfading, because they are formed of deeds of power and grace, which none but the God of omnipotent power and love can perform. The fact is sometimes overlooked that he does not so much assert his honors, as prove and demonstrate them. It is written of him, and they are memorable words, that “He shall not speak of himself.” Yet what he refrains from uttering, he is mighty to achieve. It is when he arrests the understanding, penetrates the conscience, takes away the heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh, and fills the soul with the love of God; that he appears in his godlike prerogatives. It is when he takes the feet of the conscience and law-smitten sinner from the horrible pit and the miry clay, and sets them upon a rock, and puts a new song into his mouth, that he constrains even the unbelieving world to say, “Behold what hath God wrought!” It is when he deigns to draw near to men and hold communion with them; when he fills the heart with his grace, and the sanctuary with his presence, and there “makes the place of his feet glorious,” that the most unthinking and fearless say, “How awful is this place; this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” In the revelations he has made of himself in the Scriptures, he is the least prominent of the three sacred Persons in the ever-blessed and adorable Trinity; while in the progressive accomplishment of his gracious purposes, he, with them, is decked with light as with a garment, and arrayed in majesty and excellency. Our Lord told the Jews, that “He had greater witness” than that which was furnished either by the testimony of the Old Testament Scriptures, or that of his illustrious forerunner. “The wwh-s which the Father hath given me to do, these same works that I do, bear witness of me. If ye believe not me, believe me for the works’ sake.” The works of the Spirit of God speak for him, and will be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. A creature might as well commission the sun to rise, and appoint the place of his going down, as perform these works of the wonder-working Spirit. He speaks and it is done, he commands and it stands fast. Obstacles disappear at his coming, and opposition melts away. He touches the hills and they smoke; the mountains, and they are moved; the hard and granite hearts of men, and they become hearts of flesh. These acts of his power are accumulative, and destined to become more splendid and refulgent. He has but just entered on his career of wonders. His mighty arm has scarcely yet been made bare; his still, small voice scarcely been heard; his glory has been sometimes eclipsed, and more often beheld only in dim retirement, compared with those exhibitions of it which will hereafter overlay the earth, and with which he will one day be encircled.

It is not any retired department in the work of redemption which he occupies; his honors are won in the very front of the great moral contest which is yet to be carried on in this revolted world. He has come to our dark and sinful world on the kindest errand, and must be duly honored. The Apostle speaks of “the love of the Spirit;” and how beautiful a thought is it in its relations to what he performs. How wondrous, how free and sovereign that love in his operations on the heart! How excellent is it in enlightening the dark mind, convincing the conscience, renewing the will, revealing Christ to the soul, comforting it, and enabling it to joy in God! How condescending is it, dwelling in the heart as his temple, assisting in prayer, sealing to the day of redemption, invigorating for duty, changing from glory to glory, and becoming the earnest of the eternal inheritance! How sweet are its fruits, and in what a cold and unfriendly soil are they cultivated! And what will be its issues, when the soul is filled with all the fulness of God! O for a deeper sense of the love of the Spirit!

We would fain magnify the work of God’s Spirit. He is a jealous God; he knows his own worthiness. His sacred ministrations constitute the last dispensation of grace, and the last and most significant

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interposition by which the God who is invisible brings himself to the view of men. Never are the divine existence, the divine power, the divine justice, mercy, forbearance, sovereignty, faithfulness, and glory so truly seen and acknowledged, and so deeply felt, as when he takes of these things, shining as they do in the face of Jesus Christ, and shows them to the minds and hearts of men. The great work for his people has been effected by God the Son; the great work in them is to be effected by God the Spirit. He now descends and fills the chasm made by the Saviour’s absence, that the church may not be left without a Sanctifier, nor the world without the Deity. His presence is not confined to time and place. He dwells with the millions of his people, and he never utterly departs from them. “Whither shall we go from his Spirit, and whither shall we flee from his presence?” Is he not everywhere in this guilty world, if it be only to restrain the wrath of man? Most truly will he yet fill the whole earth with his glory. He will yet bow his heavens and come down; the mountains shall flow down at his presence. Revival shall succeed revival, and these effusions of mercy shall be as when the heavens drop down righteousness, and the earth opens and brings forth salvation.

But while the Spirit of God thus strives, there are those with whom lie will not strive always.

The Scriptures speak of resisting, and grieving, and quenching the Holy Spirit. Not a few are alarmed and convinced of sin, who resist these inward operations, and at last perish. That deep impression of personal sinfulness, those fearful apprehensions of the displeasure of a holy God, that humbling consciousness of dependence and inexcusableness which are often felt by those who are not Christians, constitute a state of mind which is in every view solemn and affecting. Yet is it often thrown off and dismissed. Men drop the subject and resist the Spirit. They turn back like the dog to his vomit, and like the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

If you ask how they do this, I answer, some do it by avoiding the external duties of religion; and they do it on purpose to prevent, or destroy serious impressions. Others do it by thinking lightly and speaking lightly of the Spirit himself, and of the work he performs; and they do it with the view of resisting his influences, and fortifying their own minds against them. Some do it, by shunning the society of the inquiring and anxious; and it is for the purpose of keeping their own minds from being thrown into deeper anxiety and distress. Some do it by murmuring against God, and quarrelling with his truth; and thus they counteract the merciful design of the Spirit, who would otherwise make the truth the power of God to salvation.

Some do it by dissipating their minds by worldly cares and amusements. Most successfully do they grieve the Spirit thus; and by thus yielding to the incessant importunity of the world, kill their convictions. They grieve God’s Spirit by all their self-justifying pleas, by all their delay to accept offered mercy, and by all their halting between two opinions.

There are not many sins greater than thus resisting the Spirit. There are not many in which men sin so directly against God; because when his Spirit strives with them, God is immediately before their minds. There are not many in which they sin so directly against his authority; because his Spirit brings the commandment home. There are not many in which they sin so directly against their own consciences; because their conscience is then broad awake. There are not many in which they so practically justify all their other sins; because their sins are then set in order before them, and the single question is presented to their minds, whether they will “leave their sins and go to heaven, or have their sins and go to hell.” Nor are there many sins by which they so violate their own resolutions, vows and prayers; and in defiance of them all, force themselves back to stupidity and darkness. Nor are there any by which they so resist the strongest motives to repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ. There is every motive, and every combination of motives resisted, when men resist the Holy Ghost.

And because he is thus resisted, he no longer strives. He sees the sinner is growing worse and worse, and leaves him to his own chosen way. Some he abandons sooner than others, and some he strives with long. But when he ceases to strive, the fate of the resisting is the doom of the reprobate. He will not strive always, because there is a limit beyond which his long-suffering may not be extended; because it is of no use; because it is of disservice to the sinner to keep up this sharp controversy with God; because his iniquity is already full, and justice will exact its full recompense at another day.

Thus it was with the old world. The Spirit was withdrawn, and the flood came and swept them all away. They did not know when he departed; nor did they believe that he was in earnest in his threatenings. All flesh had corrupted his way on the earth, and God’s patience was exhausted. Men were given up of God, and had nothing to contend with in establishing one universal empire of infidelity and crime. There were giants in the earth in those days; men who had boldly apostatized from the true religion; men of rapine and blood; mighty men, and men of renown; men of great courage and great wickedness. They had become a sensual and brutalized race. Blasphemy and impiety in every form, injury and wrong in all their excesses, degrading and diabolical passions, had prepared them for overwhelming wrath. Yet because God’s Spirit no longer strivecl with them, they were thoughtless and unconcerned; frivolous and immersed in the world. They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away.

As it was then, so is it now. Those from whom God’s Spirit is withdrawn may read their own history in the overthrow of that abandoned and ungodly generation. They may return to their thoughtlessness, and mingle with the sons and daughters of pleasure in all the joys this world can give. Not another pang of conviction may shoot through their obdurate bosoms, and not another solemn thought ever cast a shade upon their brow. But it is the maniac joy that shouts on the brink of a precipice. It will cost them little effort to rush on in their mad career. Days of gladness will roll over their heads as placidly as though no thunder was gathering in the heavens, and no fountains of the great deep were about to be broken up. Nothing moves them, because God’s Spirit has ceased to strive. Those who listened to the counsels of heavenly wisdom, have entered into the ark, and he who openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth, has “shut them in.” From sea to sea, and from shore to shore, he who holds the winds in his fists and the waters as in the hollow of his hand, bars the fountains of his de’ep anger until they are housed from the storm. But there is no escape for those who have vexed and grieved the Holy Spirit. Sudden destruction cometh upon them, like the waters of the flood, when the roaring of its waters proclaimed how wide the desolation, how pitiless its empire.

When God sent his prophet to premonish the idolatrous ten tribes of his approaching judgments, he uttered the emphatic words, “Woe also to them, when I depart from them!” Ministers may preach then; providences may alarm and invite; but it is all in vain. The streams of mercy, though never dry, flow not through this forsaken heritage. Instead of the beauty and richness of spring, there are the chill blasts and sterility of winter. Every cloud is sealed up, and Zion’s mountains, and even her once verdant plains, are covered with snows. Her ways are mournful, “because few come to her solemn feasts.” And while this thoughtlessness and obduracy distinguish the men of the world, God’s people languish and are ready to die. Few enjoy the light of God’s countenance, while many walk in darkness. The house of God and the circles of prayer are strangely deserted; while that mutual love and fellowship and united effort for the salvation of men, in which they once so greatly delighted, are intermitted and forgotten. A deathlike slumber pervades the church. Darkness covers her, and she sits in sackcloth. Languor and lethargy paralyze her courage, and she sinks in despondency.

And then it is that there are such mournful excesses in wickedness; and “iniquity abounds,” because “the love of many waxes cold.” It is not within the hallowed sphere of the Spirit’s influence that the great adversary most successfully allures. Gross vice is then frowned out of countenance. The places of vain amusement and dissipation are deserted for the place of prayer, and the careless sinner, the cold-hearted scoffer, and it may be the stubborn infidel may be found in his closet and on his knees. There is a majestic awfulness in these footsteps of the King of Zion when he walks amid the golden candlesticks. When his Spirit ceases to strive, these restraints are withdrawn. Wicked men then sin with boldness; vice, once restrained, like an impetuous river, returns to its own channel with a violence only augmented by the temporary impediment thrown in its way. Immorality stalks abroad at noon-day, and infidelity reviles and blasphemes. Men glory in their shame, and with the sinners of other times, say, “The Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.” And then it is that men and communities ripen fast for destruction. They become like lands that are burnt over and “given to salt;” the waters of the sanctuary never visit them; every tree, and plant, and shrub withers, and is cut down.

Does it not then become all classes of men — ministers and people, parents and children, good men and bad — to prize more highly the presence of God’s Spirit? Not more certainly was the coming of Christ the great promise to the saints of the Old Testament, than the outpouring of the Spirit is the great promise to the Christian dispensation. Most truly may we say, that the Holy Spirit is the hope of the world. “Upon the land of my people shall come up briers and thorns; yea upon all the houses of the joyous city, until the Spirit be poured from on high.”

Who feels the need of this sacred influence? Who is driven from every other resource and helper, to this only refuge? Who abjures all reliance on an arm of flesh, and feels that his help must come from God?

Who desires this influence? Who is so prepared for it, that it would be no disappointment to him, should the Spirit of God come and search Jerusalem as with candles; and no grief of heart to him should he come with his fan in his hand and thoroughly purge his floor? Who can make him welcome, when lie comes to derange their ambitious plans, to disturb their worldly joys, and demand their thoughts, their time, their efforts, and their hearts for the things that are not seen and are eternal? Who can enjoy his presence, should he build up Zion, and appear in his glory?

Who truly seeks and prays for this influence? It is not an unsolicited good. It was not on the day of Pentecost; nor is it ever. O, where are the men of prayer, who stir themselves up to take hold on God? God gives his Holy Spirit to them that ask him. Who asks him? In the secret of his closet, amid the sacredness of his domestic altar, amid the sweetness of Christian fellowship, who asks him? Who asks him humbly, fervently, importunately? Who asks the more importunately, because he is for a time denied? Who wrestles with the angel of the covenant, and to the forbidding words “Let me go,” replies with Jacob, “No, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me?”

And who grieves and resists this Holy Ghost? Who shuts his eyes when the finger of God thus opens them? Who, when God speaks thus audibly, stops his ear? Who, when God touches his conscience, hardens it to adamant, and “always resists the Holy Ghost?” Though he comes down from his high abode to make their bodies temples for himself to dwell in; though he would restore their polluted minds to the image of their Maker; though he would make them the servants and children of God; though he would give them all the blessings of Jesus’ love, and fit them for the residence, the employments, the blessedness of saints and seraphs before the throne; yet they resist him. Others have done so before them, and have gone to their last account. And where are they now; while those with whom he still strives occupy this world of hope, have their place in his sanctuary, and so near the mercy-seat?

Yet did the God, thus long-suffering and gracious, early say, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” This is among the first lessons he ever gave to the world. Men may resist him, and he may depart. They may resist him, and never hear his voice again, till the last trumpet calls them to the judgment.

With what unutterable tenderness did the Psalmist once say, “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me!” Why should others be brought into the kingdom of God, and the reader be left out? Why should others die in peace, and his death-bed be curtained with gloom and despair? Why shall others, on the morning of the resurrection, rise to glory, honor, immortality, and he rise to shame and everlasting contempt? And when the wicked shall be severed from among the just, and the Lord of the harvest shall gather the wheat into his garner, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire; why should the reader mourn at the last, and take up that bitter lamentation, “The harvest is past, and the summer is ended, and I am not saved!”