The Pure Intention of the Soul Realised Through the Holy Spirit

In Paul’s greatest epistle, that to the Romans, there is a paragraph which speaks of the three-fold groaning of Creation, of the Saints, and of the Spirit. In each case the groans are not unto death but unto life, they indicate the throes of birth. And we learn also that the groans of the Spirit are in harmony with the mind and will of God. ‘He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according

to the will of God” (Rom. viii. 27). 55

In this marvellous passage, the depths of which pass human understanding, we have to notice first, that it announces and accentuates the literal Presence with us of the Comforter. If one were asked to indicate in a word the difference between the Church of to-day and the Church of the first age, surely it might be summed up thus — that the early Christians believed, as we do not, in the literal Presence with them of the Holy Spirit.

Every age has been inclined to think that there was more of God in previous ages than in itself. Thus, when Jesus Christ was pursuing His ministry in Galilee and Jerusalem, teaching as none ever taught, working miracles on the leper and the dead, and showing forth in His character and

life the very splendour of the nature of

God, His contemporaries were constantly referring to the ancient past, when God gave His people deliverance from Egypt, made a way through the Red Sea, rained manna out of heaven, and led them into the promised land. It seemed to them that there was more of God in the age of the Exodus, than in the Life which was being enacted before their eyes.

It may be that the Church of to-day is making the same mistake. She looks back upon the first preaching of the evangel, as having been the unique time of God’s residence amongst men, a residence which has been withdrawn and can never be replaced; whereas, if we look at the matter in the light of our Master’s teaching on the eve of His death, we shall discover that, as

distinct as Christ’s Advent was the Advent of the Spirit; and as distinct as His work was for thirty-three years, is the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Would that, instead of straining our eyes into the remote past or into the dim future, to detect the presence of God, we dared to believe that the Holy Spirit zs come, that He zs here, that the only thing which keeps Him from manifesting Himself in His glorious might is our unbelief, our hardness of heart, our occupation with our dead selves! If once the Church of God believed that, she would go forth “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.”

It seems as if there are four different groups of people in regard to this matter. The first group are little else than admirers

of Christ. They have heard Him speak, look upon Him as the Divine Teacher, in some sense view Him as the Saviour of the world, but they have never gone as far as Calvary. They look upon the Spirit of God merely as a breath or influence, and have never appreciated His Divine Present Power.

There is a second group, who have gone a step further. These know that Jesus Christ is more than the Divine Teacher — that He died upon the Cross, and by His precious death made propitiation for sin; but they never get beyond that Cross. Beholding only the Blood, they have no idea that there is anything more, by which the glorious benefits of our Saviour’s death can become efficacious.

There is a ¢htvd group of people. These

are always in that upper room, always engaged in agonising prayer, always entreating that the Spirit of God may come, not realising that He has come, that the rushing sound of wind has been heard, the fire has burnt, the footfall of His Advent has been recognised. Ah! happy are they who have passed into the fourth group, who look back on Pentecost as a definite moment, when the third Person of the Blessed Trinity came to reside in the Church, so that as Jesus incarnated Himself in the body born of the Virgin, so the Holy Spirit has definitely incarnated Himself in the hearts and lives of those who believe.

THE HOLY SPpIRIT’s LITERAL PERSON-ALITY. — On the eve of His betrayal our Lord said that “Another” should come.

Now is it at all possible that He would have been content that His successor should be an influence or a breath? Does not the fact that he spoke of Axother, as coming to take His place indicate that in His judgment and forethought that Other was to be as distinct a Personality as Himself, leading, searching, guiding, encouraging, witnessing, and inspiring.

Let us pass from those days to the early Acts of the Apostles. We find the Spirit of God in the Church so personally, that when Ananias and Sapphira conspired together, Peter warned them that they were deceiving the Holy Ghost. You cannot deceive an influence. We remember also, that in the case of Peter and Cornelius, it was the Holy Spirit who sent the message which brought these two men together for the

new great departure of the Church in preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, ‘The

Spirit said unto him.” Afterwards it was He who said, “Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto / have called them’; and, lastly, in the great council of the Church, the Apostles said: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” He was as real a Person as they were. All through the Gospels, especially in the closing scenes, and markedly in the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit is spoken of as being the representative of Christ, the one Divine Person who is in the very heart of the Church.

For one crowning proof let us look again into this marvellous verse quoted in our opening paragraph. It makes a distinct reference to the Personality of God the

Father, and as distinct a reference to the

Personality of the Holy Ghost. “He that

searcheth the heart” — who can this be but the Omniscient God who searches all things, the First Person of the Holy Trinity? It is He who searches the heart, and knows what is the mind of the Spirit. The Spirit has a mind. Evidently, then, there is as true a distinction between the personality of the Father and the personality of the Spirit, as there was of old in the Incarnation between the personality of the Father and the personality of the Son.

It has been asserted that the Spirit of God is only another name for our own energy; but notice how clear a discrimination the Apostle makes between the Spirit of God, God who searches the heart, and the heart of man. God, who searches the

human heart, knows what is the mznd of the

Spirit, who is resident in che heart. Here we have God who is searching our hearts, and the Spirit of God immanent in the heart as its guest, and the heart which is yielded voluntarily to welcome Him. As Jesus intercedes in heaven, so does the Holy Spirit intercede in the heart of every believer, and in the heart of the Church. There is the distinct voice raised by the Mediator on the Throne, and a distinct response raised by the Paraclete on earth, and these two are one. The Son in the glory and the Spirit in the heart intercede in unison. li there tweres 0 .other based in the whole Bible, these words not only open up the mystery of the Eternal Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, but make clear that the Spirit of God has His residence, not in

illimitable space, nor yet wholly on the

PAasOUGH THE: HOLY: SPIRIT-65 throne of God. As the Second Person of

the Trinity condescended to be born of a virgin, so the Blessed Spirit of God has condescended to our hearts and lives to reproduce in us the image of Jesus Christ. Oh, soul of man or woman, dost thou understand, perceive, and realise, that if thou art regenerate, if believing and penitent, the Holy Spirit of God is actually resident within thee? He may have been grieved, quenched, but He is still there. Let everything which limits the Holy Spirit be removed, so that His presence may be allowed free scope; and let every whit of the inner Temple say, Glory (Ps. xxix. 9). “THE MIND OF THE SPIRIT.” — Every personality has a mind, a thought, a distinct intention; and we who have received the

Spirit into our hearts must believe that He E has come for a purpose. Below the veil of superficial thought and emotion in the subconscious depths of our soul-life, the Spirit of God is most certainly brooding, as once He moved on chaos, producing order out of confusion, light out of darkness. Each is a universe; in each nature an abyss; in each the Spirit works. And that is our hope; for if it were not so we could never become saints. Our one hope is that the Spirit of God is literally within; and that He is there with a mind, ze. with a fixed thought, purpose, and intention.

So far as we understand it, the Divine intention in the creation of the universe was that God might realise and reproduce Himself in His works. For this purpose He began with the inorganic, and pursued

His way upwards to the organic; next, there was the marvellous in-breathing of the breath of life. Afterwards, the unfolding purpose of God climbed, like a spiral staircase, until the lower creation was finished, and a platform was provided upon which His consummate art should have full scope. Next, man was made, and a great step forward was taken for the fuller realisation of God in His creation, Through long ages the human mind was conscious of the Divine strivings within it, but the progress was small and slow, until in the person of Jesus, He realised Himself perfectly, and in an ecstasy the Divine voice resounded from Heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” In Jesus Christ the Divine Ideal was realised perfectly. That was the moment for which the ages had been

travailing, for which the Jewish race had been separated from other races, and for which the long discipline of the Old Testament religion had been preparatory.

Throughout the earthly life of our Lord the Spirit dominated and moulded His human nature, He rested on Him “without measure,” and this inevitably exposed Him to hatred and death; but, through death He passed up into the glory, and the fulness of God more and more indwelt and glorified His human body. He is the “Man Christ Jesus,” and also “God manifest in the flesh.” It has pleased the Father that in Him all fulness should dwell.

But that is not all. It was not enough for God to realise Himself in one lily flower. Pentecost signifies that this glorified human nature is to be repeated through all the ages

in those whom He has made His own.

That is “the manifestation of the sons of God.” God could not be content to realise Himself in Jesus Christ alone, by the Spirit He desires to repeat Himself in each of His people. We are but infants in swaddling clothes, the work has only just begun. We are mumbling but the inarticulate utterances of babyhood, but the Spirit of God has entered our hearts with a sublime purpose, an intention to consummate the likeness of Christ, which cannot be disappointed. This is His mind. Often we say, “I have made up my mind what to do,” or “This is my mind, I will go through with it”; so the Holy Ghost has come into our hearts with His mind made up, and, if we will let Him, He is resolved to reproduce Jesus Christ in us, so that we may be conformed to the

image of God’s Son.

Do you understand this? Do you know that some day you are going to satisfy God? Do you realise that somehow, somewhere, sometime, God is set on making in you a counterpart of Jesus, on which He will look and say: “I am satisfied!”

THE EXPRESSION OF THE SPiRIT’S PUR-POSE. “With gvroanings that cannot be uttered.’ — They are too deep for speech. There is agony in a groan; and there is agony with the Spirit of God at our earthliness, at our sensuality, at our repeated plunges into the sea of ink, at our return like the dog to its vomit. It is keen pain to Him each time we permit an outbreak of sin; there is suffering when we know the better and deliberately choose the worst, There is the groan, like that of Christ at the

grave of Lazarus, or His tears over Jerusalem.

What is the remorse that we experience, but our response to these groanings of the Spirit?

A groan not only expresses agony at sin and failure, but is inarticulate. ‘That cannot be uttered,” indicates that the Spirit of God has yearnings which cannot be expressed in our humanity as it is now. There is no musician who has not groaned at his inarticulate expression of the perfect song; he has heard harmonies which he cannot beat out in any notes that he can obtain from an earthly orchestra — songs without words. Does not every writer get glimpses of truths for which he has no language? Does not expression fail us when in love? We say over and over again, “I love you! I love you!” Love surpasses all our speech; it is illimitable.

When the Spirit enters the human heart,

He is so restrained, so compressed. He fills the stellar spaces, and when He is crowded into one little soul, it stifles Him. He wants so much for us. He is so eager, so passionate, so intense, His groanings for and over us cannot be put into human speech, and God who is searching the heart hears the groans of His own Spirit, grieving at our lethargy, our tardiness to respond, our relapses — — - groanings which, if only we had given Him better heed, might have been saved. God knows all about this, and how He makes intercession in us and for us according to His will.

What are we to do? First, be very thankful that the Holy Spirit is within. Let us never doubt it, but hold to it as our anchor. Second, we must let Him have

His way. Do not thwart, do not grieve, do not quench, Then as the marble chips, the image will grow; and there will be a fifth gospel added to those according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the gospel in our lives of the gradual reproduction of the image and nature of our Lord.

There is no uncertainty that this result will be achieved, perhaps not to-day nor to-morrow, but at last. The groans of the Holy Spirit guarantee that it shall be so, because throughout this magnificent paragraph they are evidently the groans of birth not death, of hope not despair. ‘The creature groaneth and ¢ravazleth in pain....”

We have no hope in ourselves. So fickle, so unstable, so changeable are we, that we dare not reckon on any vows we swear or resolutions we forge. As likely as not we

shall fall away within an hour. We have proved the brittleness of our heroic hours to carry us through great crises of the soul; but everything is altered, so soon as we learn that we are the subjects of the anxious heed of the Spirit of God.

When He puts His hand to the plough He never looks back. There are no unfinished pictures or torsos in His workshop. He has made, and He will bear; He has begun, and He will perfect; He has created desires and ideals, which He will gratify, We are the children of His love, and He can withhold from us no good thing. If we resist and grieve, so much. the worse for us, so much more acute our pain, but to yield to Him is to hasten the fulfilment of His eternal purpose of bringing many sons unto glory, and conforming them to

the image of the Son,