A Whitsunday Sermon

“And they said unto him: We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” — ACTS xix. 2.

IT is always strange to us to find other people entirely ignorant of what makes the whole interest of our own life. We can hardly understand how it is possible that men should live along year after year, it may be generation after generation, knowing nothing about what really makes life for us. If we did not have this or that resource we should die, we should not care to live. Here is a man who has it not, and yet his life seems to be worth a great deal to him. He goes on bright and contented. Apply this to your love of reading. What would it be to you if every book were shut? What would you do if all communication with great minds through literature were broken off, if all the stimulus which comes to your own mind were stopped? And yet there are plenty of these men whom you meet every day who never open a book! Or take the exercise of charity. You would find little pleasure in life perhaps if you were shut in on yourself and could do nothing for anybody else. At least there are people of whom that is true. To find some one whom you can help, and have him near you so that you can help him, is as necessary to you as your food and drink. But there are people enough who seem to thrive abundantly with out one act of charity. No self-sacrifice breaks the smooth level of their selfish days. They live without that which is your very life. So of a multitude of things. To one man it is incredible that life can be worth having without wealth; another cannot understand how men can live without amusement; and an other, with his social nature, looks at his friend who lives in solitude, and wonders how and why he lives at all.

But nowhere is all this so clear as in the matter of religion. One who is really living a religious life, one who is really trying to serve God, who is loving God and believes with all his heart that God loves him, who finds all through his daily life the thick-sown signs that he is not alone, that Christ is helping him and saving him, how strange and almost impossible it is for him to conceive of a life that has nothing of all that in it. How desolate it seems! How tame it looks! One man’s days are full of “joy in the Holy Ghost.” He is always looking up for inspiration and always receiving it. When he wants comfort there is the Comforter close beside him, nay, deep within him. And then he opens the gate into some brother’s life and learns how he is living, and finds that there is nothing at all there of what is so dear to himself. That brother “has not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.”

This was just the position in which St. Paul found himself at Ephesus. He had been a Christian now for many years. It was far back in the past, the time when Jesus had appeared to him at mid-day and made him His disciple. He had felt the powerful aid of the Holy

Spirit in many a difficult moment of his life. All that he did and said was in the confidence and by the help of this unseen Friend who was nearer to him than any of his closest earthly friends. And now he came to Ephesus where there were some people who called themselves Christians, and looking for their sympathy and fellow-feeling he inquired, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” And they said unto him, “We have not so much as heard if there be any Holy Ghost.” What was everything to him, they knew nothing at all about. No wonder that his soul yearned over them and he stayed with them and taught them. We can’ picture his joy as gradually they became sharers in his happiness. What greater joy can any man desire than to bring any other man who has known nothing of it into the knowledge and the power of the Holy Ghost? -tt-C*

This is our subject for,Whitsunday morning. What is it to know and not to know “whether there be any Holy Ghost?” Are there not many men among us who, if Paul asked them the old question, would have to give the old Ephesian answer? “Have you received the Holy Ghost, my friend?” Be honest, and must you not answer as they answered, “Indeed I have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. The name indeed has sounded in my ears; but as a real person I have not got any true idea of His existence?” Indeed the element of personal experience is so involved with all our knowledge of the Holy Spirit, that for any man to say “Yes, I know Him,” is a vastly profounder acknowledgment than the statement of any other knowledge. That is the reason why it is often so vague and hesitating; but just for the same reason there comes a time when a man certain of his experience can say “Yes, I hays received, I do know the Holy Spirit” with a certainty and distinctness with which he cannot lay claim to the knowledge of any other thing or person.

In order to understand ’ our question let us turn to this story of the Ephesians. They were Christian believers. They are called “disciples.” They had been baptized after the baptism of John. They believed Christian truth and they accepted Christian duty. They had a knowledge of, a faith in Christ, but they had no knowledge of the Holy Spirit. The perception of a present God who should fill out belief in truth with personal apprehension, and who should make duty delightful by personal love, this they had not reached; no one had told them of it.

It was a strange condition. It is not easy to reconcile it with many of our Christian notions, but yet it is a condition which represents the state of many people whom we know, who seem to have just what they had and to be lacking in just what they wanted. Lxmppofifr AnaaftB — and it is not all a supposition, the specimens are all around us — who believe/ the Christian truths. That there is a God who made and governs everything, that this God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, that He has lived and taught among men, and that at last He died for men in all the torture of the cross, and rose out of the grave in all the inherent power of His immortality, — this they believe. And all that God requires, all that Christ commanded, they accept. The duties of a good life, purity, honesty, resignation, self-denial, all of these they acknowledge. They try to do these duties. Their lives are often wonderful with the severe and lofty standards that they set themselves. They work heroically to fulfil the Master’s will. Do we not know such men? They often puzzle us. The aim of all their life is high. Perhaps as I describe them you know that you are such a man yourself. You know that Christ is the great Master. His truth and His commandments you receive. But all the time you know that something is lacking, — a vividness, a life, a spring, a hopefulness and courage which you hear of other people having, which you sometimes see suggested in the things you do, which you seem to be often just upon the verge of, but which after all you do not get, and for the lack of which you are forever conscious of a certain dryness in your belief and a certain shallowriess in your duty. What is it that you lack? This lack which, if I speak to your consciousness at all, you recognize, this something which you want, I take to be precisely the Holy Spirit. I do not know any other way in which He can become so real to a true, earnest man, as in the realization of just this want.

Let us separate the two departments to which I have referred, and speak more particularly, first of Belief and then of Duty. We have all been familiar all our lives with the distinction between head-belief and heart-be lief. We have been taught, sometimes in such a way that it puzzles us, sometimes in such a way that it was confirmed by all our deepest experience, that simply to know, even with the most unquestioning conviction, that certain things were true, was not really having faith in those things. We go up to the very limit of the belief that can come either by traditional acceptance or by the conviction which argument produces, and there we stand. We cannot advance one step farther. We seem to have exhausted all the power that is in us. But we are sure that out beyond there is a region which, though we cannot enter it, is real, and is the true completion of the region through which we have already travelled.

How familiar this is in our dealings with our friends! I meet a man whom I have heard of long. Every authority in which I trust has told me that that man is wise and good. I come to know him well, and for my self I see the evidence of his wisdom and goodness. He proves it to me by the things he does. I no more doubt it than I doubt the sun. I say that I believe in him and I do believe in him; but all the time I am aware that out beyond the limit of this belief which I have reached and on which I stand, there is a whole new country, the region of another sort of belief in him into which I have not entered, where if I could enter for an hour everything would be different and new. I may be helpless. I may not be able to drag my feet across the border. I may stand as if chained by magic on this line which separates the head’s belief from the heart’s confidence and trust; but, powerless as I may be to enter it, I know that all this other world is there, with the mists hanging over it and hiding it, but real and certain still, the land of personal friendship and communion.

And just the same is true of truths. I know that some great truth is true; our human immortality, let us say. Every one whom I trust has told me so. Those whose words are to me like gospel have assured me of it. I may even hear and believe that voice that speaks out of eternity itself. I may put full trust in the word of Christ which tells me that the dead are not dead but are living still. And my reason may be all convinced. I may be persuaded by every natural argument that the soul does not perish in its separation from the body, but goes on in its unbroken life. All this I steadfastly be lieve. But what then? Here I stand upon this clear sharp line. I am immortal. I say it over to myself and know that it is true. But still I am not satisfied. This certainty of immortality is nothing to me but a mere conviction. I get nothing out of it. It does not flow up into my duties and experiences. I am not stronger for it. I have not taken hold of it, nor has it taken hold of me. And, until this comes to pass, I feel a sense of incompleteness. I know in all my surest moments that there is an assurance which I have not reached. I know when my feet are planted the firmest on the outmost line of rational conviction that there is beyond that line a region of spiritual confidence which I have not entered.

Here then are the two kinds of belief in persons and in truths. What is the difference between them? The first is clear, definite, and strong. I know that he whom I believe in, be it man or God, is true and good. I know that the truth that I accept is certain and impregnable. But there is something hard, dry, literal, about my faith. I can write it all down and say all that I know about it in letters inscribed upon a book. I may contend for it vigorously, but I do not feed upon it. The other belief has in it just what this belief lacks. It has spirit. I cannot write it down in letters. My heart is full of it and it takes me right into the heart of the Being or the truth that I believe in.

Surely this difference is very clear. Surely we all know well enough that struggle after the heart and spirit of what our minds have accepted, which lets us understand it all. How often we have felt that disheartening certainty that we are holding tight the shells, the mere outside of our richest beliefs, and not getting at their soul and life. Sometimes have we not contended earnestly for our faith and told some unbeliever that he was losing precious truth because he did not hold it, and then gone off from our discussion saying to our selves gloomily, “Yes, it is all true, but still, if he held it only on the outside as I do, would he be so much richer after all?” How often do we seem to ourselves to be like starving men, holding fruits that we know are rich and nutritious within, but cased in iron rinds which no pressure of ours is strong enough to break.

We are then very often where these Ephesians were. What came to them and saved them was the Holy Spirit. What must come to us and save us is the same Holy Spirit. There they were holding certain truths about God and Jesus, holding them drearily and coldly, with no life and spirit in their faith. Paul came to them and said,” These truths are true, but they are divine truths. You can really see them only as you are sharers in divinity yourself, and look at them with eyes enlightened by the intelligence of God. God must come into you and change you. His Spirit must come into you and occupy you; and then, looking with His Spirit, you shall see the spirit of the truths you look at; full of the Holy Ghost, the ghfjpl, the heart, the soul of these great verities shall opeoraself in all its holiness to you. You shall see Jesus. You shall lay hold on immortality not on the outside but on the inside, in the very heart and spirit. Is not this intelligible, rny dear friends? If Raphael could enter into you as you stand before his picture, would you not see deeper than you do now? Would not the Raphael in the picture come out from depths which you have never fathomed? If a child can be filled with the father’s spirit, will not the spirit of the household, the intention, the purpose of it all, come out from the hard skeleton of its structure to meet the new spiritual apprehension? And so if you can be filled with God, will not the soul of God’s truth of every sort, as you stand face to face with it, open to you deeper and deeper depths, changing your belief into a more and more profound and spiritual thing?

This was what Paul prayed for and this was what came to those Ephesians. God the Holy Spirit came into them and then their old belief opened into a different belief; then they really believed. Do you ask what we mean by that? Do you insist on knowing in exact statement how God entered into these people? Ah, if you ask that, you must ask in vain. If you insist upon not receiving God until you know how His life comes to your life, you must go on godless forever. You must know more than you do know, more than any man knows, of what man is and what God is and what are the mysterious channels that run from one life into the other, before you can tell how God flows into man and fills him with Himself. Tell me, if you can, the real nature of your friend’s influence, the inflow of his life on yours that makes you full of him. Only one thing I think we can know about this filling of man by God, this communication of the Holy Spirit, that it is natural and not unnatural, that it is i nrrtiornil of communication, that it is a reenthronement of God where He belongs, that the prayer which invokes the Holy Ghost is the breaking down of an artificial barrier, and the letting in of the flood of divine life to flow where it belongs, in channels that were made for it. If we know this, then the occupation of man’s life by God is simply a final fact. It is just like the occupation of the body by the soul. No man can tell how it is; but that it is, is testified by every form of human strength and beauty in which our eyes delight.

Pause then a moment and think what Whitsunday was, the first Whitsunday. We read the story of the miracle. We hear the rushing of the mighty wind and see the cloven tongues of fire quivering above the heads of the apostles. Perhaps we cannot understand it. It seems natural enough that when Jesus is born the sky should open and the angels sing; that when Jesus dies the skies should darken and the rocks should break. The great events were worthy of those miracles, or greater. But here at Pentecost what was there to call out such prodigies? If what we have said is true, was there not certainly enough? It was the coming back of God into man. It was-, the promise in these typical men of how near God would be to every man henceforth. It was the manifestation of the God Inspirer as distinct from and yet one with the God Creator and the God Redeemer. It was primarily the entrance of God into man and so, in consequence, the entrance of its spirit and full meaning into every truth that man could know. It was the blossom-day of humanity, full of the promise of unmeasured fruit.

And what that first Whitsunday was to all the world, one certain day becomes to any man, the day when the Holy Spirit comes to him. God enters into him and he sees all things with God’s vision. Truths which were dead spring into life and are as real to him as they are to God. He is filled with the Spirit and straightway he believes; not as he used to, coldly holding the outsides of things. He has looked right into their hearts. His belief in Jesus is all afire with love. His belief in immortality is eager with anticipation. Can any day in all his life compare with that day? If it were to break forth into flames of fire and tremble with sudden and mysterious wind, would it seem strange to him — the day when he first knew how near God was, and how true truth was, and how deep Christ was? 0 have we known that day? 0, careless, easy, cold believers! if one should come and ask you, “Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?” dare you, could you, answer him, “Yes “?

Let us take now a few moments to consider the other part of the Holy Spirit’s influence, the way in which, when He enters into a soul, He not merely gives clearness to truth, but gives delight and enthusiastic impulse to duty. These Ephesians had not merely believed much Christian truth, they had been trying also to do what was right; they had accepted the Christian law so far as they knew it. We can think of them as very patient, persevering workers, struggling to do everything that they were told they ought to do. Now what did Paul do for them here when he brought them the knowledge of the Holy Spirit? I think the answer will be found in that verse of the Savior’s in which He described what the Holy Spirit’s work should be. “He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you,” Jesus had said. The work of the Spirit was to make Jesus vividly real to men. What he did then for any poor Ephesian man or woman who was toiling away in obedience to the law of Christianity, was to make Christ real to the toiling soul behind and in the law. He took the laborer there in Ephesus who only knew that it was a law of Christianity that he ought to help his brethren, and made it as personal a thing, as really the wish of Christ that he should help his brethren, as it had been to the twelve disciples when they were living under Christ’s eye, while he was with them in Judea or while they were distributing the bread and fish at his command to the hungry men by the sea of Galilee. This was the change which the Holy Spirit made in Duty. He filled it with Christ, so that every laborer had the strength, the courage, the incitement to fidelity which comes from working for one whom the worker knows and loves.

And very often when our tasks are pressing on us is not this the change we need? Your Christian duties, the prayers you pray, the self-denials that you practise, the charities you give, — what is the matter with them? The temptations you resist, the good word that you speak to some brother, the way you teach your class, the way you condemn some prevailing sin, — what is the matter with them all? What is the reason why they are so dull and tame? Why are they not strong enthusiastic work? The reason must be that there is no clear person for whom you do these things. You serve yourself, and how clear you are to yourself; and so, what life there is in every act of your own service; but you serve Christ and how dim He has grown! and so, how list lessly the hands move at His labor! Now if the Holy Spirit can indeed bring Him clearly to you, is not the Holy Spirit what you need? And this is just exactly what He does. I find a Christian who has really “re ceived the Holy Ghost,” and what is it that strikes and delights me in him? It is the intense and intimate reality of Christ. Christ is evidently to him the clearest person in the universe. He talks to Christ. He dreads to offend Christ. He delights to please Christ. His whole life is light and elastic with this buoyant desire of doing everything for Jesus, just as Jesus would wish it done. So simple, but so powerful! So childlike, but so heroic! Duty has been transfigured. The weariness, the drudgery, the whole task-nature, has been taken away. Love has poured like a new life-blood along the dry veins, and the soul that used to toil and groan and struggle goes now singing along its way, “The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

O my dear friends, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? Since you began to do your duty has any revelation come to you of Him who is the Lord of duty? Have you caught any sight of Christ, and be gun to know what it is to do it all for Him? Has the love with which He lived and died for you been so brought home to you that you are longing only to thank Him by a grateful and obedient life? Have you so made Him yours that He has made you His? If so, the life of heaven has begun for you. Only to know Him more and more forever and so to grow into completer and completer service, there is your eternity already marked out before you. It stretches out and is lost beyond where you can see; but it all stretches in the one direction in which your face is set; deepening knowledge, bringing deeper love, forever opening into more and more faithful service. Go on into the richest developments of that life, led by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Both in belief and in duty then, this is the work of the Holy Spirit; to make belief profound by showing us the hearts of the things that we believe in; and to make duty delightful by setting us to doing it for Christ. 0, in this world of shallow believers and weary, dreary workers, how we need that Holy Spirit! Remember, we may go our way, ignoring all the time the very forces that we need to help us do our work. The forces still may help us. The Holy Spirit may help us, will surely help us, just as far as He can, even if we do not know His name or ever call upon Him. But there is so much more that He might do for us if we would only open our hearts and ask Him to come into them. Remember, He is God, and God is love. And no man ever asks God to come into his heart and holds his heart open to God, without God’s entering. Gfejld*ea, on this Whitsunday pray the dear G0drtneblessed Holy Spirit, to come and live in^rdur heart and show you Jesus, afid make youyve to do what is right for His sake. Old men, aspire to taste already here what is to be the life of your eternity. Men and women in the thick of life, do not go helpless when there is such help at hand; do not go on by yourselves, struggling for truth and toiling at your work, when the Holy Spirit is waiting to show you Christ, and to give you in Him the profoundness of faith and the delightfulness of duty.

Let us -eoaw to Christ’s Communion Table and celebrate our i/nion with Him and with one another, putting all fear and selfishness aside, and praying Him to show us pere how rich a thing it is to believe in Him and ho sweet a thing it is to serve Him by His Holy Spirit.