I Believe in the Holy Ghost
Consider His Works!
The earth of old was a mere shapeless mass, the star-dust of which contained moisture enough to make all the oceans, and matter enough for continents and mountains. What reduced ‘this chaos to the ordered beauty of the world in which we live? ‘The Spirit of God moved (brooded) on the face of the waters.”
From the death of Abel to the days of Noah, there was a godly seed, and men called on the name of Jehovah; the line of the sons of God was kept uncontaminated by the enormous sins of the Antediluvian world. How was this possible? “‘ The Spirit of God strove with man.”
The time between the Deluge and the Birth of Christ was lit by the words of noble men — Psalmists, Prophets, Law-givers, and Historians — words which shine for ever from the pages of the Bible, and which the world will never let die. How is it that a nation so peculiar, so separate, so marked as the Hebrew race, was able to give
its religious literature to the world, and though 171 placed in the fiercest crucible it has never yielded anything but high morality, truth, and common-sense. How is this phenomenon to be accounted for? There is but one reply, “‘ Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” ‘* All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God.”
One of the most remarkable facts in history is the change which came upon the disciples within ten days of the Ascension of Christ. Before that hour they were constantly showing their ignorance of the first principles of His Kingdom, afterwards they never mistook; before, they were as timid sheep, afterwards as lions; before they had no power to move or change men’s hearts, afterwards their mere quotation of Scripture seemed potent enough to convict thousands of sin. What explanation can be given, except that when Jesus was welcomed to the Father, He asked and received that other Paraclete of whom He had spoken, and shed Him down on the gathered handful of the upper room.
How is it that the name of Jesus is spreading from land to land, from shore to shore? By what means have the Triumphs of the Cross been won? Why, these ruined temples, these deserted shrines, these idols thrown to the moles and bats? There is again but one reply, Christ is gone, but the Spirit is here. Christ has sent Him forth from the mediatorial throne to be His Vicegerent.
We stand at Wittemberg and behold the waves of the Reformation rising and overflowing Europe; see Huss and Jerome perish in the fires, but lighting fires that never die down; listen to Savonarola’s burning eloquence; hear Cranmer’s dying testimony; follow Whitfield in his seraphic labours; study Wesley’s magnificent masonry in the Methodist Church; chronicle the successive revivals that have swept over the world, bearing hundreds of thousands into the Kingdom of God! and we have no option than to confess, that we believe in the Holy Ghost.