The Dispensation of the Spirit

’ In demonstration of the Spirit.” — i Corinthians ii. 4.

To every clear and sincere mind a demonstration is a most welcome thing. The moment which brings it is full of light and joy. To have it made absolutely certain that a thing is true, to have a fact set clearly in the mind’s domain, never thereafter to be questioned or dislodged, that brings a sense of solidity and peace. The eye sparkles, the heart leaps, the feet are planted firm and strong when, at the end of a long process, the lines gather in to a conclusion, and the result is grasped and set firmly among the treasures of the mind. That fixed certainty becomes a new starting-point. The future opens out of it. Demonstrations which are yet unreached loom dimly in the distance. That which has been held loosely in the hand, not truly believed because we were not sure that it was sure, grows solid as we hold it, and out of its heart, when once we are assured of it, beat meanings which it could not give us while it was yet in doubt.

We all are holding propositions which yet wait for the hour of their demonstration. We think that they are true, but we cannot give full and final reasons for our faith either to ourselves or to each other. It is like watching the east before the sunrise comes. At last the sun leaps from the horizon and the sky is bright. Then the clouds disappear. The darkness scatters. The eyes no longer wander here and there. They are fixed certainly on this new certainty. A new day has set itself firm in history. The proof is there round and red and radiant. The demonstration is complete.

But there are various kinds of demonstration according to the different kinds of truths and persons. St. Paul intimates this in the verse from which my text is taken. The whole verse reads thus: “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of men’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” He says that there was one method of demonstration which he had not used to make the Corinthians believe his truth, and another which he had used. The one which he had not used is clear enough — “Not with enticing words of men’s wisdom,” he declares. He had not been a teacher silencing dispute with arguments, compelling assent by the complete answer of every difficulty, leaving syllogisms in his hearers’ minds by which they might convert any man they met upon the street. Something more subtle, more spiritual, more personal, than that had been his power. If he had had the choice of methods, he had chosen to make his message not an argument but a force. Indeed he feels as if he had had no choice. The nature of his message and the kind of his belief and the needs of those to whom he came had made this the only possible kind of approach. And so he had come to them with what he calls the “demonstration of the spirit of power,”

These three elements are what determine the character which every demonstration must assume. The nature of the teacher, the nature of the learner, and the nature of the message. And of the three the last is most despotic. A teacher may teach in various ways, a learner may be open upon various sides, but the message decrees its own method of impartation and will be imparted in no other. A problem in mathematics, for instance, is devoid of feeling. It presses on from its statement to its solution by a process purely of the reason. It depends entirely upon the clearness of its statement. It has no atmosphere. It is independent of times and places. It is precisely the same in the times of Euclid and in the times of Pierce. It might be spoken through a phonograph and would be as convincing as if it issued from the dearest human lips. A problem of natural history is proposed to the student who has been busy with his mathematics, and immediately he feels a difference. Here is another kind of subject, a new material, and, however it may seem to need only the powers of observation, it must inevitably suggest something of the mystery of richness of the nature which lives in such profound connection and sympathy with man. A question in human history involves still other elements. Man in all his complexity comes in. The doubtfulness of records, the doubtfulness of motives.

the prejudices of the speaker and the hearer — all these have to be taken into account, and though at last, as the result of all, the demonstration may be perfect and the conclusion may be irresistible, it has been reached in different ways and is of different value from the conclusions about mathematical truth or the phenomena of nature. I am as sure that Christ lived and was crucified in Jerusalem as I am of the sum of the angles of a triangle or of the earth’s revolution on its axis, but my certainty comes to me in a different way, and is a separate and special possession of my mind, clothed in its own value, kept in its own treasury.

Every man’s mind, because it is a distinct and individual thing has, of necessity, its choice among the various kinds of demonstration, and it is hard for almost every man to thoroughly believe that other kinds of surety are as absolutely sure as that in whose processes his own mind happens to delight. The mathematician accepts the naturalist’s conclusions, but does not feel that they are quite as perfectly proved as are the formulas which he has worked out on his slate. The historian supposes that the metaphysician is right, but is puzzled by the absence of old chronicles which are the foundations on which his truth is built. But mankind as a whole is larger than any man, and humanity holds its various truth on various evidence, yet holds it all securely. It may feel sometimes that all demonstration has its weakness and its limits, that nothing is absolutely demonstrated in all the realm of truth. But in the actual conduct of life, however it may be with men, man holds that there are various kinds of demonstration which bring various kinds of truth with practical certainty before the mind, and justify it in bidding the active powers go forward boldly and confidently upon its belief.

Let us beware of that especial bigotry which consists in giving value only to that particular kind of demonstration which appeals to our peculiar minds. Let us keep open, let us, if need be, force open all the doors through which truth comes to the human mind. Those doors all exist in every one of us, however it may be that only some of them have ever yet been opened in each man. Others there are, fixed fast with rust or overgrown with vines, and looking like a portion of the solid wall, yet capable of being opened and of letting in some truth of which our souls have need.

With all this clear in our minds, our next step is to recognize that, while every kind of truth has its own kind of demonstration, there are yet great general lines, running through the whole mass of truth, and dividing it into groups, to each of which in general some method of demonstration will belong. The kinds of truth which I have used as illustrations appeal either, as in the case of mathematics, to pure reason, or, as in the case of history, to human testimony. There are, however, other kinds of truth which for their demonstration and acceptance demand something different. They ask for spiritual conditions, for a certain spiritual atmosphere through which the evidence of their truth can be sent and received. They demand personal qualities in him who utters them and in him who hears. Let me remind you what some of the truths of this sort are.

1. Take first the truth of beauty. “This statue is beautiful,” we say. How do we know that? No argument can prove it to us, so that the conviction of its beauty becomes really our possession. No authority can make us sure of it. No man can tell us it is beautiful and by his mere telling make our hearts believe. It must tell us its own wondrous tale. It must speak itself directly to our souls. It must find perceptions in us and claim them. Arguments may come in afterwards to analyze and justify our love. Authority may reassure us by letting us know that other men have felt the power that we feel. But the essential demonstration must come directly from the beautiful thing to our power of perceiving beauty. The spiritual must be spiritually discerned.

2. Or, take the truth that any particular course of action is right or wrong. The real, vital demonstration of that truth must spring like a sunbeam directly from the heart of the action to our moral sense. You cannot prove it in the literal and ordinary way. Any attempt to reduce its demonstration to a syllogism degrades its character. The authority of every living man may pronounce the action to be right, and yet my moral sense may tell me absolutely that it is wrong. It is spirit speaking to spirit, the spirit of the action to the spirit of the man. Into the stirred conscience falls the shadow of the deed, and the conscience instantly declares its verdict; and the man is sure.

3. Or, take the truth that any character is noble or ignoble, fine or mean. Prove me that this your friend deserves your confidence, state me the argument which justifies the flashing eye with which you kindle at one of the spell-working names of history. Who told you that that deed of the hero was a glorious thing? How your soul scorns all such appeals! “I know it,” you declare, “I know it as I know the sun. That is enough. There is that in me which catches and holds such nobleness as the eye catches the landscape, as the hand grasps the stone. It is mine because I am I and it is it.”

4. And, what is still more striking, think of the subtler fact of the affections. Who ever reasons to himself that he should love? Or, yet more, who ever lives upon authority, because some one who knows has told him that this fellow-life is lovable? It is life bearing direct testimony of itself to life that makes the demonstration. The nature and conditions of the two lives are all-important elements, and affection leaps from one to the other as fire leaps from wood to wood.

In all these illustrations what we see is this — that there are kinds of truth which make demonstration of themselves not by the pure reason nor by authority, but by direct spiritual testimony, borne immediately from the nature of the truth to the nature of the receptive and believing man.

The first thing of which we have to assure ourselves is that this is true demonstration. We may not institute comparisons and say whether it is true or less true than other kinds of demonstration which are appropriate to other kinds of truth. Enough that this kind is genuine and real, a sohd, strong foundation on which a genuine beHef may rest.

And then we are prepared to turn to Paul and see how exactly it is on this foundation that he says he has built his claim that the Corinthians should take his gospel. “Not with enticing words of men’s wisdom, but by demonstration of the Spirit.” “By demonstration of the Spirit “! Could any words more perfectly tell that which I have been trying at such length to describe? Paul says that what he brought one day into the bright gate of the brilliant city was not an argument to which convinced reason must give its assent, and not a commandment to which the tyrant’s authority should compel obedience, but a new presence which should claim their spirits, a soul which their souls should recognize and love. We may almost see it stated in the terms of the successive illustrations which I used just now. He brought a beauty which appealed to their spiritual perceptions and demanded and received their recognition. He brought a righteousness which their consciences knew and stood up upon its feet to honor. He brought a character into whose eyes they looked and felt the essential nobility of life. He brought a Friend whom their hearts loved.

How the description takes us back to the old vanished city. It is all gone. There on the isthmus between the two blue gulfs stand a few columns of a Doric temple which alone are left of the great splendid city. A modern town of squalid huts has taken the place of the old palaces. Above, to the blue sky, soars the great hill, the Acrocorinthus, which seeks in vain at its feet the gorgeous metropolis that it guarded so long. It is all gone, and yet how the life which souls lived there comes back! Behold, here it was that the great Christian apostle came “with demonstration of the Spirit.” Men met him on the street and their souls stirred in their sleep. He spoke a few words of his Christ and their closed doors flew open. Here men and women came to life. Here the Christ who stood in the person of His servant was “received,” and to the man who received Him — some poor forgotten dead Corinthian — gave the glorious “power to become the Son of God.”

And are we ready now to take the next step? Nay, have we not already taken it? When Paul declared how he came to the Corinthians, he was not merely telling a bit of his biography, he was declaring also the perpetual and universal method of the Christian faith. As he came into Corinth so the Gospel always comes to men. “In demonstration of the Spirit,” whatever else we know or fail to know about it, we must know this first truth of the character of the demonstration which the Gospel makes, or we are all wrong. Because so many men have not known this they have been all wrong when they have talked about the Christian faith and its acceptance or rejection by mankind. “In demonstration of the Spirit.” The other demonstrations have their place and their relation to it. The demonstration of argument and reason has its work to do as it establishes the facts of Christian history, declares the character of the great Christian Book, and finds the relations in which Christian truth stands to all the truth which man knows everywhere. Authority comes in and testifies to the acceptance of those truths in every age. But when the work of reason and authority is complete, what have they done? They have built a platform down which comes a moving presence, strong, gracious, imperious with love, majestic with holiness — the Christ coming to claim the soul. He can come over the rudest and most fragmentary evidence, over the most trembling and unobstructed testimony. Nay, He can come, we believe, without argument and without testimony, manifesting Himself essentially even to souls which have never heard His name, and which can offer neither description nor vindication of His power. Even so He can come, and, as a nameless influence, a friend felt but not known, can teach and help and save the soul. But He must come. The best-built platform does but make His coming easier and more complete. It cannot make His coming needless.

Because this has not been made and kept always clear Christianity has suffered in every way. Let us make it perfectly clear to our souls if we can. Your friend approaches you with all the proof of Christianity entirely complete. There is not left a single doubt. You are perfectly convinced. Are you a Christian? No! You believe as Jesus terribly said that the devils do. Another friend comes to you and in some rich way opens your soul to Christ. With multitudes of questions about Him still unan« swered, with a strange incapacity to sweep a definition round His life, Christ, the great spiritual presence, is with you through something which that friend has done. Are you a Christian? Yes! Beyond all doubt. You will be more a Christian when through the opened spiritual nature more of Christ comes in to you. But you are a Christian now! Nothing can make you more a Christian except what comes in through your spiritual apprehension. No amount of truth believed which is not transmuted into spiritual life and power enriches your Christian character. The soul, the soul alone it is which is capable of Christian life. Whatever does not reach the soul falls short. And nothing but soul can reach the soul. Therefore it is always, as it was in the days of St. Paul, in demonstration of the Spirit that the Christ must come.

There are two representations of what I have been saying — or, perhaps, it Would be more proper to call them two inferences from it — which we want most distinctly to discern. They are not part of our doctrine. They are wholly foreign to and inconsistent with it. The first of them is the idea that, since the birth of Christian life comes only by the meeting of soul with soul, therefore everything else, all the external facts of Christianity, are insignificant and unimportant; which is very much as if one said that since the railroad tracks never yet made a journey, therefore they were of no use and the engine might go its way and reach its destination as well without as with them. The facts of Christian history give their direction to the spiritual power. He who knows what Christ has done knows what Christ is. And he who knows what Christ is, is ready for Christ’s power on his soul.

The other idea is that all this teaching reduces the whole matter of Christian evidence to the soul’s choice and whim. If nothing can be received as true but what the soul accepts, it is easy to go on and say that whatever the soul accepts may be received as true, and then to add still further that the only reason for accepting any religious truth as true is that the soul desires it. “I know that this is true because I want it to be true.” What shall we say of such a method. Strangely enough, there is a certain truth in it, as there is in the most erroneous error. It always has been recognized that what the human soul deeply and permanently and universally desires carries in the very fact of that desire a certain presumption of its really existing. The being of God, the immutablity of the soul — these great beliefs have always found part of their warrant for their truth in the way in which the soul of man everywhere has claimed a Father, and the human nature has refused to think that it must die at death. It may be that if the human soul could be certainly known to be free from all obscurity and prejudice, entirely and purely itself, and if its testimony were absolutely unanimous and universal, the witness it might bear would be enough for any truth to rest upon. But now it can set forward no such claim. We do not hold the truths of our faith to be true because we want them to be true. We hold them on their proper and sufficient evidence. But they are of such a nature that we could not hold them upon any evidence if they did not find and satisfy our spiritual natures. That is a difference which any thoughtful man can surely understand.

We talk about ourselves — we talk about St. Paul — but who are we or who is he that in any one less than the greatest we should seek and find the type of Christian power? How was it in Jesus? Was it not absolutely and manifestly true that in Him the power of God was not an argument and not a commandment, but a spiritual force. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, so is every man that is born of the Spirit.” Those were His words to Nicodemus. Why did Peter and John believe Him when He stood by the lakeside in the clear morning and called them? Why did the Magdalen believe Him when He bent over her bowed agony and pitied her? Why did Lazarus believe Him when through the grave clothes which bound the poor dead face the voice came piercing with the summons to arise? It was because He was a force. It was by demonstration of the Spirit.

O Peter, Magdalen, Lazarus, that force, that divine spiritual force is in the world to-day! The wind still blows out of the treasuries of God. The Christ still touches souls which will be touched to life. Only (and this is the outcome of what I have been saying to those who are the receivers of the influence He brings) the soul must be confederate with the force, or even the divine force is helpless. You may muffle yourself in worldliness and yet understand an argument. You cannot muffle yourself in worldliness and yet be responsive to a love. Oh, it is terrible, the way in which men and women stand wrapped in their selfishness and say, “Why does not Christ soften and convert me?” He cannot, so long as you hide yourself in your selfishness. He can and He will the moment that you tear yourself open and want Him, and want what He wants. Then to you who receive Him He gives the glorious power to become the child of God, It may be that that is being done here now. If it is, this is indeed a holy place, a holy hour.

And who are you who wish and pray that you might be the medium through which the Christian life may come to some one who is needing it, perhaps needing it all the more because he does not know his need? What you require to know (and this is the outcome of what I have been saying to those who are the givers of the influence of Christ) is that it is through the spiritual life that your influence must move. How great a strength there comes with that assurance! You say, “I cannot argue down these strong objections; I am not wise enough to prove that I am right. That of which I am spiritually sure I cannot argumentatively sustain.” What then? In quietness and confidence must be your strength. If you cannot argue, live! Conviction comes through argument, but life comes through life. Fathers and mothers with your children, students among your fellow-students, clerks in the great store, men and women in the great world, this is what lies open to you all — the demonstration of the Spirit. Be true and pure and lofty and devout, and He who ever seeks the souls of men shall find His way to some of them through you. Among the Christian doctrines the one which many Christians find it harder to give an account of to themselves than any other is perhaps the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. They hear about the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, — that we are living in it now, that it is to go on, growing and growing, until it shall take possession of all life. I should be glad to think that what I have said this afternoon might do a little something to make clearer what the dispensation of the Holy Spirit is. Can you picture to yourself a world where every soul should bear direct witness of itself to every other, the great communication being that which the soul of God bears to them all, — their own communications to each other being indeed only the reflections of His utterance, as the colors with which objects shine on each other are but expressions of the light with which the sun shines on all. Every nature is spoken to directly by the perfect nature, and every nature spontaneously and naturally tells its best messages to all the other natures. It is like a room through whose heated atmosphere fire leaps instantly from fuel to fuel, and the flame springs everywhere at once. In such a world two things are true, — the will of God is felt everywhere as the moving spirit of it all, and what one soul possesses of strength and truth becomes the true possession of the whole — openness and sympathy! In such a world, when it is complete, there is no jealous hoarding of the good which any nature has; nor, on the other handis there a frenzied eagerness and restless craving to express, as if expression were an unnatural thing; but steadily, certainly, calmly, each soul bears witness of itself by its very being, as a star shines, and in the demonstration of the Spirit the power of good influence distributes and reduplicates itself on every side. That is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit.

In such a world the power of evil influence repeats itself as well as the power of good. The baleful flame leaps through the heated air as easily as does the fire of God. And so the struggle of the evil and the good with one another grows more tense and terrible. And therefore nearer draws the day when the good, because it is divine, shall conquer and cast out the evil.

Are we indeed living in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit? And is it ripening towards the fullness of its power? We must not take our judgment from a few short years. We must look widely over all the long reach of Christendom; and when we do look so I do not see how we can help discerning these two great spiritual qualities, openness and sympathy, — openness to receive influences from above and from below, and sympathy to make the wealth of one the wealth of all; — discerning, I say, these two filling all Christian history as they have never filled the history of heathen times. There is a great community of life. There is a spirit of the time. There is a sense of mutual responsibility, and there is a fierceness of conflict between spiritual forces, which makes Christian history so critical, so splendid, and so terrible.

All that is destined to increase and grow. The dispensation of the Spirit is to deepen as the years i go on. The demonstration of the Spirit is to / become more rich and universal. The strifp, of good and evil is to become more furious. The atmosphere of life is to wax more intense. What any one man is will grow more and more critical for other men. The individual and the race will tell more and more immediately and powerfully upon each other. And into this opened sympathetic life God will pour His power with more rich profusion and a freer and freer bestowal of Himself.

In such a world it is a privilege to live. In such a world — let this be the closing earnest exhortation of my sermon — in such a world it is a more and more dreadful thing to be a trifler. It is a more and more blessed thing to be brave and sincere. O my brethren, live nobly in these noble times! It matters little whether your field of activity be great or small. Only, do not be mean! Do not be cowards! Do not be false! Love God. Serve God. Make your life such that He can shine through you. There is no little. There is no great. But everywhere there is a good, there is a bad. God save us from the bad! God help us to the good, and give us all the right to say humbly at the last that which His Son our Saviour said, “I have glorified Thee on the earth!”