Here To-Day
Ere to-day, and to come again.” In this single sentence the two critical turning-points of an extended ministry are marked. It is not what we have but what we know that we have which determines our material or spiritual wealth. A poor farmer owned a piece of hard, rocky land from which, at the price of only the severest toil, he was able to support his family. He died and bequeathed his farm to his eldest son. By an accident the son discovered traces of gold on the land which, being explored, was found to contain mineral wealth of immense value. The father had had precisely the same property which the son now possessed, but while the one lived and died a poor man the other became independently rich. And yet the difference between the two depended entirely upon the fact that the son knew what he had, and the father did not know.” Where two or three are gathered in my name there a77t I in the midst of them,’” says Christ.
Then the dream was literally true, was it?
V i Yes. If this promise of the Son of God means what it says, Jesus of Nazareth was present not only on that Sunday morning, but on every Sunday morning when his disciples assemble for worship. “Why, then, oh preacher, did you not fix your attention on him from the first day you stood up in the congregation as his witness, asking how you might please him before once raising the question how you might please the people, and how in your ministry you might have his help above the help of every other? Was the dream which cam.e to you in the transient visions of the night more real to you than his own promise, ‘Lo, I am with] you alway,’ which is given in that word which endureth forever?” Alas, that it was ever so! It is not what we know but what we know that we know which constitutes our spiritual wealth. I must have read and expounded these words of Jesus again and again during my ministry, but somehow for years they had no really practical meaning to me. Then came a blessed and everto-be-remembered crisis in my spiritual life when from a deeper insight into Scripture the doctrine of the Holy Spirit began to open to me. Now I apprehended how and in what sense Jesus is present: not in some figurative or even potential sense, but literally and really present in the Holy Spirit, his invisible self. “And I will pray the Father, j and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever’’ (John 14: 16).
The coming of this other Paraclete was conditioned on the departure of Jesus: “If I go I will send him unto you.” And this promise was perfectly fulfilled on Pentecost. As truly as Christ went up, the Holy Ghost came down: the one took his place at the Father’s right hand in heaven, the other took his seat in the church on earth which is” builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.” And yet, lest by this discourse about his going and the Comforter’s coming we should be led to think that it is not Christ “who is with us, he says, clearly referring to the Spirit: “I will not leave you orphans; / will come to you.’” Thus it is made plain that the Lord himself is truly though invisibly here in the midst of every company of disciples gathered in any place in his name.
If Christ came to church and sat in one of the pews, what then? Would not the minister constrain him to preach to the people and allow himself to be a listener? If he were to dechne and say: “I am among you as one that heareth,” would he not beg him at least to give the congregation some message of his own through the lips of the preacher? If an offering for the spread of the gospel among the heathen were to be asked on that morning, would not the Master be besought to make the plea and to tell the people how he himself “though rich, for our sakes became poor that we through his poverty might be rich “? If any strife existed in the flock, would there not be an earnest appeal to him, the Good Shepherd, to guide his own sheep into the right way and to preserve the fold in peace?
Ah, yes. And Christ did come to church and abode there, but we knew it not, and therefore we took all the burden of teaching and collecting and governing on ourselves till we were often wearied with a load too heavy for us to bear. Well do we remember those days when drudgery was pushed to the point of desperation. The hearers must be moved to repentance and confession of Christ; therefore more effort must be devoted to the sermon, more hours to elaborating its periods, more pungency put into its sentences, more study bestowed on its delivery. And then came the disappointment that few, if any were converted by all this which had cost a week of solid toil. And now attention was turned to the prayer meeting as the possible seat of the difficulty — so few attending it and so little readiness to participate in its services. A pulpit scourging must be laid on next Sunday, and the sharpest sting which words can effect put into the lash. Alas, there is no increase in the attendance, and instead of spontaneity in prayer and witnessing there is a silence which seems almost like sullenness! Then the administration goes wrong and opposition is encountered among officials, so that caucusing must be undertaken to get the members to vote as they should. Thus the burdens of anxiety increase while we are trying to lighten them, and should-be helpers become hinderers, till discouragement comes and sleepless nights ensue; these hot boxes on the train of our activities necessitating a stop and a visit of the doctor, with the verdict over-work and the remedy absolute rest.
It was after much of all this of which even the most intimate friends knew nothing, that there came one day a still voice of admonition, saying,” There standeth one among you whom ye know not.’’ And perhaps I answered, “Who is he. Lord, that I might know him?” I had known the Holy Ghost as a heavenly influence to be invoked, but somehow I had not grasped the truth that he is a Person of the Godhead who came down to earth at a definite time and who has been in the church ever since, just as really as Jesus was here during the thirty and three years of his earthly life.
Precisely here was the defect. For it may be a question whose loss is the greater, his who thinks that Christ is present with him when he is not, or his who thinks not that Christ is present with him when he is? Recall the story of the missing child Jesus and how it is said that “they supposing him to be in the company went forward a day’s journey.” Alas, of how many nominal Christians is this true to-day! They journey on for years, saying prayers, reciting creeds, pronouncing confessions, giving alms, and doing duties, imagining all the time that because of these things Christ is with them. Happy are they if their mistake is not discovered too late for them to retrace their steps and to find, through personal regeneration, the renewed heart which constitutes the absolute essential to companionship with the Son of God.
On the other hand, how many true Christians toil on, bearing burdens and assuming responsibilities far too great for their natural strength, utterly forgetful that the mighty Burden-bearer of, the world is with them to do for them and through them that which they have undertaken to accomplish alone! Happy also for these if some weary day the blessed Paraclete, the invisible Christ, shall say to them, ’ ‘Have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou 7iot known me f ‘So it happened to the writer. The strong Son of God revealed himself as being evermore in his church, and I knew him, not through a sudden burst of revelation, not through some thrilling experience of instantaneous sanctification, but by a quiet, sure, and steady discovery, increasing unto more and more. Jesus in the Spirit stood with me in a kind of spiritual epiphany and just as definitely and irrevocably as I once took Christ crucified as my sin-bearer I now took the Holy Spirit for my burden-bearer.
“Then you received the baptism of the Holy Spirit did you?” some one will ask. Well, we prefer not to use an expression which is not strictly bibhcal. The great promise, “Ye shall be baptized in the Holy Ghost” was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost once for all, as it seems to us. Then the Paraclete was given for the entire dispensation, and the whole church present and future was brought into the economy of the Spirit, as it is written: “For in one Spirit were we all baptized ) into one body” (i Cor. 12: 13, R. V.). But for God to give is one thing; for us to receive is quite another. “God so loved that he gave his only begotten Son,” is the word of our Lord to Nicodemus. But it is written also: “As many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” In order to regeneration and sonship it is as absolutely essential for us to receive as for God to have given. So on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit, as the Comforter, Advocate, Helper, and Teacher and Guide, was given to the church. The disciples who before had been regenerated by the Spirit, as is commonly held, now received the Holy Ghost to qualify and empower them for service. It was another and higher experience than that which they had hitherto known. It is the difference between the Holy Spirit for renewal and the Holy Spirit for ministry. Even Jesus, begotten by the Holy Ghost and therefore called” the Son of God, did not enter upon his public service till he had been “anointed,” or “sealed,” vnth that same
Spirit through whom he had been begotten. So of his immediate apostles; so of Paul, who had been converted on the way to Damascus. So of the others mentioned in the Acts, as the Samaritan Christians and the Ephesian disciples (19: 1-8). And not a few thoughtful students of Scripture maintain that the same order still holds good; that there is such a thing as receiving the Holy Ghost in order to qualification for service. It is not denied that many may have this blessing in immediate connection with their conversion, from which it need not necessarily be separated. Only let it be marked that as the giving of the Spirit by the Father is plainly spoken of, so distinctly is the receiving of the Spirit on the part of the disciples constantly named in Scripture. When the risen Christ breathed on his disciples and said: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” it is an active not a passive reception which is pointed out, as in the invitation: “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Here the same word is used as also in the Epistle to the Galatians.” Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” (3:2).
God forbid that we should lay claim to any higher attainment than the humblest. We are simply trying to answer, as best we may from Scripture, the question asked above about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. On the whole, and after prolonged study of the Scripture, we cannot resist this conviction: As Christ, the second person of the Godhead, came to earth to make atonement for sin and to give eternal life, and as sinners we must receive him by faith in order to forgiveness and sonship, so the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, came to the earth to communicate the “power from on high”; and we must as believers in like manner receive him by faith in order to be qualified for service. Both gifts have been bestowed, but it is not what we have but what we know that we have by a conscious appropriating faith, which determines our spiritual wealth. Why then should we be satisfied with “the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. i: 7), when the Lord would grant us also “according to the riches of his glory, to be strenghened with might by his Spirit in the inner man “? (Eph. 3: 16.)
To return to personal experience. I am glad that one of the most conservative as well as eminent theological professors of our times, has put this matter exactly as I should desire to see it stated. He says: “If a reference to personal experience may be permitted, I may indeed here set my seal. Never shall I forget the gain to conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul not long after the first decisive and appropriating view of the crucified Lord as the sinner’s sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious hold upon the living and most gracious personality of the Holy Spirit through whose mercy the soul had got that view. It was a new development of insight into the love of God. It was a new contact, as it were, with the inner and eternal movements of redeeming love and power, and a new discovery in divine resources. At such a time of finding gratitude and love and adoration we gain a new, a newly realized reason and motive power and rest.”
“A conscious hold upon the personality of the Holy Spirit;” “a newly realized motive power.” Such it was; not the sending down of some new power from heaven in answer to long waiting and prayer, but an “articulating into” a power already here, but hitherto imperfectly known and appropriated. Just in front of the study window where I write is a street, above which it is said that a powerful electric current is constantly moving. I cannot see that current: it does not report itself to hearing, or sight, or taste, or smell, and so far as the testimony of the senses is to be taken, I might reasonably discredit its existence. But I see a slender arm, called the trolley, reaching up and touching it; and immediately the car with its heavy load of passengers moves along the track as though seized in the grasp of some mighty giant. The power had been there before, only now the car lays hold of it or is rather laid hold
1 Principal H. C. G. Moule, Ridley Hall, Cambridge, Eng., “Veni Creator Spiritus,” p. 13.
of by it, since it was a touch, not a grip, through which the motion was communicated. And would it be presumptuous for one to say that he had known something of a similar contact with not merely a divine force but a divine person? The change which ensued may be described thus: Instead of praying constantly for the descent of a divine influence there was now a surrender, however imperfect, to a divine and ever-present Being: instead of a constant effort to make use of the Holy Spirit for doing my work there arose a clear and abiding conviction that the true secret of service lay in so yielding to the Holy Spirit that he might use me to do his work. Would that the ideal might be so perfectly realized that over whatever remains of an earthly ministry, be it shorter or longer, might be written the slightly changed motto of Adolphe Monod:
’ ‘All through Christ: 17i the Holy Spirit: for the glory of God. All else is nothing.”