A Keswick Experience
O NE memorable evening, towards the close of a convention of unusual power, a quiet, eager crowd of some twelve hundred people gathered in the great tent to seek a fresh enduement of the Holy Spirit. The time was spent in prayer and praise, and quotation of Scripture expressive of experiences which were lifting many to the open gate of Paradise.
As I knelt in a retired corner of the platform, I realized that the Lord was coming manifestly and sensibly to many of His temples, for the fact of His presence was attested by their almost tumultuous joy. But in all this I had no share other than to long with vehement desire to be included in the gifts which were being so bountifully bestowed. I was suffering at the time from nervous depression, the reaction from a long spell of work; and it seemed to me as though I were standing in some outer circle, with which I must be content, whilst those whose emotional life was more exuberant, were participating in
303 spiritual communications of the rarest type. At last I could bear it no longer, and whilst the meeting was still proceeding I slipped through the tent curtains into the night, speaking to no one, and only eager to be away on those hills which to so many have been Pisgahs of vision and Hermons of transfiguration.
During the week, beneath the searching light of those eyes which are as a flame of fire, I had put away what had been revealed of the filthiness of the flesh and spirit, and there was therefore no reason why the blessing should be delayed. When I reached a familiar spot, I cried aloud: — “My Father, if there is one soul more than another within the circle of these hills that needs the gift of Pentecost, it is I; but I am too weary to think, or feel, or pray intensely. Is it not possible to receive it without the tide of emotion which so often accompanies its advent or renewal in the soul?” ’
Then a voice, sweet and low, seemed to say, ‘ 1 Claim and receive it by an act of faith, apart from feeling. As thy share in God’s forgiving grace was won for thee by the dying Christ, so thy share in the Pentecostal gift is held for thee by the glorified Christ; and as thou didst take the former, so thou must take’ the latter, and reckon that it is thine, by a faith which is utterly indifferent to the presence or absence of resulting joy. According to thy faith, so it will be done unto thee.” Then it seemed to me as if I took a deep inspiration of that wind which bloweth where it listeth. I opened my mouth and panted. I took from the hands of the living Christ my share, or as much of it as I could then receive, of the fullness of the Spirit, which the Father had entrusted to Him on my behalf; and as I turned to retrace my steps to the town I dared to reckon that it was mine as never before.
On my way to take a farewell glimpse of the lake, it being about midnight, I came on a group of friends, engaged in discussing the meetings of the day and the alb engrossing theme of how to receive the Pentecostal gift. They were full of holy ecstasy, in strong contrast to my own recent experience, and seemed astonished at the thought that the same breath of God had not elicited a similar rapturous response as it swept the chords of my heart.
And so we passed through the swinggate, and by the side of the church, rearing itself above us in somber silence, and came on the terrace, from which we could see Derwentwater gleaming below, at the foot of the encircling hills. The night-clouds were sweeping over it, veiling the stars and descending at intervals in light showers of rain. So we drew two forms together, and gathering dose began to compare our experience.
All alike confessed their liability to alternations of feeling, and even relapse in the inner life, when the conditions of soul-health were neglected; but they laid a considerable stress on emotion as the test of their spiritual condition, and especially on the consciousness of joy or power in attesting the reception of the Holy Spirit. They reckoned that they were filled of the Spirit, so far as they felt His strivings and workings within; whereas, as I had received Him without emotion, I might expect ever to retain and enlarge its measure, whether the song-birds of summer or the stillness of winter occupied my heart.
After we had gone round the little circle, and every one had recited the sacred inner story, a young business-man broke in somehow thus: “Is there not a danger of your fixing your attention too much on the Holy Spirit and His methods and too little on Him whom the Spirit came to reveal and glorify? My experience of the Holy Spirit is that He reveals Christ. It is the one desire of my life that He should make the Lord real to me; then sin cannot tempt or danger frighten. I am a business-man; and if I lose the sense of His presence for half an hour, I lock myself into my counting-house and ask the Holy Spirit what I have done to grieve Him and cause Him to veil that radiance from my heart. 1 ’ ‘ ‘That’s it,” we all exclaimed; “it is more of Jesus that we need. The Spirit is come to bear witness of and glorify Him.” Then we bent our heads, and under a strong impulse humbly claimed that we might so receive the Holy Spirit that, whatever our company, or engagements, or experiences, Jesus might increasingly become the dear Companion and Guide of our lives.
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Are you living in the power of the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit? His advent on the Day of Pentecost was a distinct historical event, as distinct and as definite as the advent of our Lord to Bethlehem. You are living in the enjoyment of the blessings resulting from the latter; are you living also in the full experience of those which have accrued from the former? If not, you are missing the distinctive mark of Christianity, which gives it a unique position among all the religions of the world.
The Apostles believed in Christ and called Him Master and Lord before Pentecost.
In doing so, they bore witness to the operation of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. He had been working in the hearts of men from the beginning. But there was an immense difference between what they were up to the Day of Pentecost and what they became as soon as the Spirit had come. It is evidently possible, then, for a man to be a believer in Christ, and even to own Him Lord, through the gracious work of the Holy Ghost; and yet he may miss the deeper experiences of which Pentecost was the sign and seal. Is this your case?
On which side of Pentecost are you living? Historically, no doubt, you live, on the hither side of that great day; but experimentally and practically you may be living on the other. You are in the great light, but you don’t see it; you are in a gold region, but you are none the richer for it. Before you stands an open door into the heart of Divine knowledge and power, but you have never essayed to enter it. Whilst thousands are living practically as though Jesus had never been incarnate, died, and risen, you are living much as .you would have done had the gift of Pentecost never been bestowed. Think! Is there anything in your Christian life that would have been different if the hour of Pentecost had never struck?
If not, be sure that there is something in Christianity that you have never tasted. There is a dividend awaiting you under Christ’s new testament which you have never claimed, but which, if once apprehended and appropriated, would make your life rich, fragrant, and vocal as a garden in May.
There are several tests by which you may know whether you have participated in that filling of the Holy Spil’d which is characteristic of the Pentecostal gift. Among these are the following: —
1. — A consciousness of the presence of Christ. Mr. Spurgeon said once that he never passed a single quarter of an hour in his waking moments without a distinct consciousness of the presence of the Lord. When the Spirit fills the heart, Jesus is vividly real and evidently near. What is He to you? Do you wake in the morning beneath His light touch and spend the hours with Him? Can you frequently look up from your work and perceive His face? Are you constantly seeking from Him power, grace, direction? If He is but a fitful vision, you have not realized the first mark of the Pentecostal gift.
2. — Deliverance from the power of sin. The Holy Ghost is like fire. As fire cleanses metal, so does He the heart. When He is within the heart in power, the air is so rarefied that the germs of contagion are rendered harmless. When the spirit is filled with the Holy Spirit, it will be conscious of temptation, more keenly alive to its least approach than ever before; but it will have no fascination, no power. People talk much of a clean heart; it seems to me wiser and truer to speak of the Holy Spirit as Indweller and Cleanser, whose presence is purity.
3. — Minute and direct guidance. Not mere vagary or impulse, but guidance, in harmony with the word of God on one hand and the drift or trend of circumstances on the other. But we must be more quiet before God to detect it. Dr. Pierson showed me in his study at Philadelphia an armchair with special associations. He had been comforting a brother-minister, who had been confined to his bed for six months, by suggesting that perhaps God had been compelled to lay him aside in order to get an opportunity of saying things which in his busy life he was unable to receive. Then suddenly the thought occurred to him that he too was giving God but few opportunities of communicating His will, and he resolved that thenceforth he would spend at least half an hour each night sitting before God when his family had retired and the house was still. He said that during those times of retirement he had been distinctly conscious that God spoke with him and told him His will. If you are not led by the Spirit, be sure that you are not filled by Him.
4. — Power in service. There is a difference between the Spirit being in and on us. It is the same Spirit, though in two different manifestations of His grace. Some have the Spirit of God in them for character, but they are not gifted by Him for service. Our Lord Jesus, though conceived of the Holy Ghost, yet stood beneath the opened heavens to be anointed of the Spirit before He entered on His public ministry; and the Church was held back from her work of evangelizing the waiting world until she had received the Pentecostal enduement of power. Yet how many Christians are attempting to do this work without this power.
When speaking on this theme to a recent students’ convention at Northfield, Mr. Moody was completely broken down, and in utterances choked with weeping confessed that he was deeply conscious of his lack of this special power. The whole of the students broke down too, and he asked them to give up the customary afternoon sports and to meet him in the neighboring woods, that they might together seek a fresh anointing for service. Are we conscious of possessing this qualification for soul- winning? If not, why do you not claim your share of the Pentecostal life from your Trustee and Representative?
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We often wish that we could have been amongst the favored group when the Day of Pentecost had fully come and they were all together in the upper room. We think that we should, of course, have heard the sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind and received on our brows the encircling flame, in our hearts the blessed filling. But in all likelihood, if we had been there in our present condition, the hurricane of blessing would have swept past, leaving us dry and insensible. Whilst if that Pentecostal group were living now, they would detect as much of the Spirit’s presence, they would be as conscious of the working of the Lord Jesus, they would find life as full of God, as in the days when the age was young. Peter would still be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak; Paul would be caught up into the seventh heaven and need a thorn to counterbalance the splendor of the revelations; John would find doors opening into heaven, amid the conditions of our modern life, not less than when the chime of the Aegean rose from the beach of Patmos.
A change, you say, is needed. But there need be no change in your circumstances, in the atmosphere or environment of your life. There is as much of the Holy Ghost within your reach as was present on the Day of Pentecost. This is the age of Pentecost. He waits to fill you as He did the hundred and twenty gathered in the upper room. The miraculous gifts have passed away because no longer needed. They are replaced by evidences that were not possible in those early days. But the essence of the Pentecostal gift, the filling of the Spirit, is as possible to-day as ever. “The promise,” said the Apostle, alluding to our Saviour’s words, “is unto all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts i. 4; ii. 39).
But of what use is it to live in a very ocean of power and love if we are unable to discern its presence or appropriate its marvelous properties? Of what use is it that the land of the Hottentots is as full of electricity as London is if they know not and cannot use its mighty energy? Of what use is it that the summer days are full of dews, and heat, and light, and other materials out of which peaches and nectarines are made if there are no peach-blossoms nestling on the boughs to detect or use them? Of what use is it that the floor is covered with nourishing food if the new-born babe which lies beside it is unconscious of its existence and incapable of assimilating it?
There is no need, then, to sigh for the lost age of gold, since the King of all ages is here. Had we lived with Him in His earthly life, the benefit would have been infinitesimal apart from appropriating faith; but if we have that, though we see Him not, we may secure His choicest gifts. These conditions, however, must be fulfilled before you can exercise that faith and receive that supreme gift: —
1. — Be careful that you desire the filling of the Holy Spirit only for the glory of God. If you want it that you may realize a certain experience, or attract people to yourself, or transform some difficulty into a stepping-stone, you are likely to miss it. You must be set on the one purpose of magnifying the Lord Jesus in your body, whether by life or death. Ask that all inferior motives may be destroyed, and that this may bum strong and clear within you.
2. — Be cleansed from all sin of which you may he conscious. If you have grieved God by impurity, or anger, or unkind judgments of others, seek forgiveness, restoration, and cleansing. The cleansed heart is an essential of Spirit-filling.
3. — Present yourself and your members to Ood. There should be no reserve, no locked cupboards, no closed doors, no vault barricaded from sun and air by a great slab of stone. Open every door and window of your being to the Holy Spirit, and He will certainly come in, though you may not be aware of the moment or method of His entrance.
4. — Give time to prayerful meditation on the word of God. There is no such way of communing with God as to walk to and fro in your own room or in the open air, your Bible in hand, meditating on it and turning its precepts and promises into prayer. God walks in the glades of Scripture, as of old in those of Paradise.
5. — Then by faith reverently and humbly take the Father’s gift through Jesus Christ. Let it be a definite transaction. Ask for the filling of the Spirit, after the measure of Pentecost. Dip your bucket deep down into the brimming well and bring it back dripping with crystal drops. Beckon that God has answered your prayer and has granted the petition you made. Meet every suggestion of doubt by the decisive answer that God is faithful and must do as He has
Baid. But specially dare to act faith, going to the temptation in the desert or the ministry among men assured that you have received all the equipment that you could possibly require.
Whenever you are conscious of leakage; when the exhaustion of service has been greater than the reception of fresh supplies; when some new avenue of ministry, or freshly discovered talent, or new department of your being, has presented itself, go again to the same source for a refilling, a recharging with spiritual power, a reanointing by the holy chrism.
Three tenses are used in the Acts of the Apostles of the filling of the Spirit, which have their counterparts still: —
Filled: a sudden decisive experience for a specific work (Acts iv. 8).
Were being filed: the imperfect tense, as though the blessed process were always going on (Acts xiii. 52).
Full: the adjective, indicating the per* petual experience (Acts vi. 8).