The Unspeakable Secret

‘** Unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”’ — 2 Cor. xii. 4.

Yes, but it is only as a man has something unspeakable within him that he is able to speak with irresistible power. The “unspeakable ’’ influences everything he says, and gives to every word the mystic suggestion of the infinite and the eternal. The man who can say everything has never very much to say. It is the nameless something, always struggling for expression, and yet never expressed, which carries the awful energy of God. It is when we have some ‘‘ secret of the Lord,’’ deeply hiding in the soul and refusing all the manifold vehicles of speech, that our speech becomes heavily weighted with the power of the Holy Ghost.

Take the unutterable secret of conversion. How much can we say about that hidden wonder? How far’ do the words of the apostle Paul lead us into his own lonely experience? He often referred to it, but how little he unveiled! And yet that unspeakable secret speaks in everything he ever said. It makes the atmosphere of all his speech; it determines its tones, and it gives their colour and warmth to all his words. Nothing can carry the secret, but everything bears its seal. And so it was when the apostle, in one ecstatic experience, was “caught up into Paradise.”’ All words became like broken vessels, yet the light of the glory of that experience burns in every letter he wrote in after days.

What language can tell the secret wonders in the heart of a young girl when love is just shyly awaking in the seclusion of her soul? Words are almost idle ministries in the rising glory, and yet the unspeakable secret glows and burns in everything. And so it is with a saint’s love for the Lord, and with a saint’s discoveries of the love of the Lord. The things are unspeakable, and yet they are always speaking, expressing themselves in graces, and adorning every issue in life with strength and loveliness. These secrets cannot be manifested, neither can they be hid. They are unutterable, and yet there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

And so we must seek for the unspeakable if we would be powerful witnesses for the King. We must “take root downward if we would bear fruit upward.’ We must be reverently led into the secret place of the Most High, where the secret of the Lord is made known to them that fear Him. And with these tremendous experiences in our souls, things that cannot be spoken, we shall yet be manifesting their presence all the day long.