The Holy Spirit

‘As a... wind.’ — Acts ii. 2.

THAT is the Holy Ghost? How does He come? What is the nature of His influence upon the life of man? No one can put into speech an immediate interpretation of the Spirit’s work. We can search for parable and symbol. We can call in the aid of the natural to dimly shadow forth the supernatural. How does the Holy Spirit come to me? Like wind. How does the Holy Spirit influence the spirit of man? Like wind. 1 Like a wind.’ Then He creates an atmosphere and a temperamre for the soul. How susceptible we are to the influences of the wind I The north wind blows, and we are chilled with the diffused presence of ice and snow. The south wind blows, balmy, gentle, wooing, and its touch is like a soft caress. Yes, we are sensitive to the presence of the wind. It creates an atmosphere in which breathing becomes a luxury or an agony. The Holy Spirit comes like the wind. How does the atmosphere He creates affect and influence the life? In two ways.

i. ‘It is the Spirit that quickeneth.’ Then the influence He creates is like the warm, alluring, out-calling breath of the spring. How appallingly poor even a rich garden appears in the early days of March! The riches are there, but they are buried and dormant. The garden is just a graveyard, full of buried seeds and roots, waiting for the touch of some magician’s wand to people it with life and beauty. It abounds in sleeping possibilities, which will not be roused into wakeful realities until some warm breath has thawed their frozen life, and urged it in healthy and aspiring circulation. At last there comes the spring, breathing resurrection warmth into the graveyard, sending a vitalizing call into the deepest tomb, and the buried powers feel the quickening touch, and clothe themselves in the beautiful garments of light.

‘It is the Spirit that quickeneth, Why, then, is man a graveyard? Yes, many of us are just tombs in which are lying possibilities buried and unsprung. I believe that God has planted seeds of possible

power within us which only a few have realized. Spiritual organs remain undeveloped and dormant. For instance, there is the power of spiritual apprehension — the power to lay hold of God. How rarely we find it thoroughly awake and mighty! There is the power of spiritual imagination. How rarely we find it with clear eye, and strong, soaring wing! There is the power of loving the outcast, the power of detecting the lovely wherever it is hidden, and of exulting in the discovery. Are not these powers, in the majority of men, lying in the tomb, waiting the spring breath, the wind of resurrection?

2. But here is another word which suggests mother influence of this wind of the Spirit: ‘The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it.’ The Lord breathes, and some things are withered. The wind of the Spirit creates an atmosphere in which some things are destroyed. That is a note of the gospel in which I rejoice. [ rejoice in the withering power of the wind. »[ am glad that the breath that quickens also consumes. I look into my heart, the heart [hat I have consecrated to the King, and there is still so much there that can only be described as chaff. What shall I do with it? This is my hope: ‘He shall burn

up the chaff with unquenchable fire, The fire of the love that saved me will burn away my chaff. That is a promise, and not a threat, to the Christian man. And so with this word about the withering winds. The word that quickens the spiritual, withers that which is carnal. It makes an atmosphere in which only the angels can live, and which the devil is unable to breathe. The coming of the Spirit means the torture of the devil. * Art Thou come hither to destroy us? ‘Yes, always and ever. The wind that quickens also consumes. When the soul-desert has been turned into a garden, no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast, but it shall all be beautiful with the presence of redeemed and fully sanctified life.