Power for Sonship and Power for Service
“There are two schools of doctrine among professing Christians as to the offices and relations of the Lord. The first speaks thus; Any work or office, held by Christ, cannot be held by us; it usurps His right if we pretend to share them. The other, which is the old doctrine, answers thus: If the Incarnation means anything, if Christ and His church are really one body, all Christ’s offices first held and exercised by Him on be-. half of men must likewise be held and shared by His members, because He lives in them just as they apprehend that for which they were apprehended. ‘The former view, which I feel assured is a mistake, arises from a misconception of the first great truth of Christ for us, to the denial of the greater truth of Christ zm us, and we His members. ‘The latter opens the riches of the glory of the mystery, which is now revealed, which is Christ im us, the hope of glory. The latter is the Church’s faith which, however caricatured and abused cannot be denied without sore loss to the deniers. For this faith confesses the Incarnation, that the Lord still dwells in flesh and blood, and that because He dwells in us, though in ourselves we can do nothing, we can yet do all things through Christ, who is the power in us; and because He is ‘the same yesterday, to-day and forever,’ if He live in us, He will yet do His proper works, in and through those who grow up out of self to live in Him.” — Andrew Fukes.
POWER FOR SONSHIP AND POWER FOR
SERVICE.
7 S many as received him, to them gave he
aN power to become the sons of God,” says the Scripture. Christ for us, as our life must first of all be appropriated in order that we may stand in the place of sonshipto the Father. We do not work for life, but from life; we do not by our own power attain unto Christ, but we receive Christ in order that we may have power to attain. “We preach Christ crucified the power of God,’ * says the apostle. That is, we hold up this external fact of the Son of God bearing our sins and putting them away, and we beseech the sinner to look at this fact and accept it and rest in it. This is the gospel, and the Scriptures declare that this gospel of Christ is “the power of God unto salvation t to every one that believeth.” By no striving of our
* 1 Cor. 1: 18. J Rom. 1: 16, own, by no energy of will or strength of repentance can we attain unto salvation. Eternal life is the gift of God, which, when we receive it, makes us partakers of “the power of an endless life;”’ it is not an attainment which we can grasp by the power of our own finite life. In other words, we are first of all to accept Christ’s life and work and redemption for us, as that which can alone put us into relations of sonship and justification and fellowship with the Father.
But to such as have already become the sons of God, there is a promise given of still greater attainment, the power of the indwelling Spirit. “But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost its come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me.” Before it was power to become the sons of God; now it is power to serve as the sons of God. And it is very significant to observe how constantly this kind of energy is connected in the Scriptures with the Holy Ghost. “The power of the Spirit of God.” * “The demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” + ‘“With the Holy Ghost and power.” — These are illustrations, which might be greatly multiplied, of the constant association of
* Romans 15: 19. 47 4 Cor 23 4s Acts 10° 38.
these two ideas. Christ’s ascension to the Father, as we know, was the condition of the descent of the Spirit; and concerning this the Lord said, “The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than these shall ye do, because [ go unto my Father.’* Thus the ministry of the Spirit was announced to be mightier in results than that of the Son. This would not seem easy to credit. If we were ignorant of the facts of science, and some one were to show us a reservoir of water, and tell us that this element is capable of three manifestations, liquid, vapor and solid, and ask us which would be the most powerful, we might say the solid form; and looking at the iceberg which can crush a huge ship as you grind a dry leaf between your fingers, this conclusion would seem to be justified. But science would point at once to the vapor — so light, so impalpable, and in its finer forms so invisible, and remind us that this is the power that is moving our huge steamships, and drawing our countless railway trains, and driving our ponderous factories — the greatest motive force in our modern civilization. The blessed Trinity has been manifested to us in two forms in this dis-
* John 14: 12, pensation. First, he came as the Word made flesh, the incarnate Lord,with the might of his divine manhood, that could silence the winds, still the waves, open the gates of the grave, and reverse the laws of gravitation. Is not this the most powerful revelation of God? ‘Greater works than these shall is his answer. When God comes as the ye do,’ secret invisible Spirit, like the wind which we cannot see, and cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; and when this Spirit shall dwell in his fullness in believers, moving their wills, inspiring their words and energizing their actions, then shall be seen the greatest things for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, that have yet been witnessed. It is this gift of the Spirit as a divine power for service and testimony, that we wish to unfold in the remaining part of this chapter.
This special enduement of strength from the Holy Spirit we have already alluded to in a previous chapter We shall now consider it more at length, as revealed in the divine word and in human lives.
In the case of our Lord Jesus Christ there ts a distinct recognition of this enduement, as constituting his preparation for his ministry. After the visible descent of the Holy Ghost upon him at the Jordan, we read that he “returned zz the power of the Spirit” into Galilee,’ * and that he went into the synagogue at Nazareth and read and applied to himself the words of the prophet, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” In the Acts of the Apostles we hear Peter declaring “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth wzth the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.”
In the case of his apostles, we find a constant recognition of the same fact. ‘Now he which establisheth us with you in Christ, axd hath anotnted us ts God,’ t says Paul writing to the Corinthians. ‘The anointing which ye have recetved of him abideth in you,’ § writes John. And these, Jesus Christ and his apostles, we boldly affirm to be our exemplars and models in this as in all other things. And the history of God’s church abundantly confirms the view that those who have done the greatest work for God, have done it
* Luke 4: 14. T Acts 10: 38. € 2 Cor, 13 226 § 1 John 2: 27. through the unction of the Holy Ghost and power which was on them.
To some this anointing has come almost simultaneously with conversion; to many it has come at a considerable period afterward. The apostles Peter and Paul furnish types of the two classes. Peter we must suppose to have been a regenerated man when he made his confession, ‘“‘ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But how weak an apostle for one naturally so strong; how timid for one so bold; how inefficient for one so zealous! Yet after that on the day of Pentecost he had been baptized with the Holy Ghost, he was utterly changed. He who had cowered before a maid and denied his Lord, now preached like a lion and boldly declared Jesus to be both Saviour and Lord, in the face of all his foes. Paul, on the other hand, was the same man from the very beginning,* because his conversion and his anointing came close together. There have been some Pauls in the modern church, but more Peters — and we shall
* “St, Paul was born a man, an apostle; not carved out as the rest in time, but a fusile apostle, an apostle poured out and cast ina mould. As Adam was a perfect man in an instant, so was St. Paul an apostle as soon as Christ took him in
hand.” — ¥ohn Donne, 1573-1631.
cause examples of both to pass in review before us. Let us select from our own times an illustration of a powerful revival preacher.
An eminent authority expressed the opinion some years ago, that probably no man since the days of Whitfield had been instrumental in turning so many souls to God by his preaching as Rev. Charles G. Finney.* Certainly we should not know where to look in recent times, to find such startling and overwhelming supernatural results attending the proclamation of the gospel, as those which were witnessed under his ministry. As he went from place to place evangelizing, whole communities would be thrown under conviction at once; upon his very first utterance the feeling would sometimes be such as “‘to make the stoutest men writhe on their seats as if a sword had been thrust into their hearts.” Hearers who succeeded in repressing their emotion in church would rush home, and unable to contain themselves longer, would ‘fall upon the floor and burst out into a loud wailing in view of their sins.” In one place, so utterly abandoned and godless that it had acquired the name of Sodom, he preached; and
* Kirk’s Lectures on Revivals, p. 142.
as at the close of his sermon he began to apply ‘the truth to the people’s consciences, he says: “I had not spoken to them in this strain of direct application, I should think more than a quarter of an hour, when all at once an awful solemnity seemed to settle down upon them; the congregation began to fall from their seats in every direction and cry for mercy. If I had had a sword in each hand, I could not have cut them off their seats as fast as they fell. Indeed nearly the whole congregation were either on their knees or prostrate, I should think, in less than two minutes from the first shock that fell upon them. Every one prayed for himself, who was able to speak at all.” * And the results were even more wonderful than the impressions. Vast ingatherings attended his labors wherever he went. Of the fruits of one revival which sprang forth under his preaching, so judicious an observer as Dr. Lyman Beecher declared that it “was the greatest work of God and the greatest revival of religion that the world has ever seen in so short a time, one hundred thousand being reported as having connected themselves with churches as the results of that great revival.”
* Autobiography, pp. 103, 161. H ends, 1D. 30%.
As we consider the issues of such a mighty ministry, we naturally ask, what was the secret spiritual history of this extraordinary instrument of God. An intense personality, a vehement will, a fearless courage and a fiery enthusiasm, these will be referred to at once by many as yielding the true secret of his power. Very efficient as a medium we admit these qualities to be, but utterly inadequate as a motive force for such results. Natural qualities are sufficient for natural ends, but not for supernatural. Savonarola the man, cannot account for Savonarola the preacher. Nature had withheld from him, they tell us, almost all the gifts of the orator. But when we read of his intense and enrapt communion with God, his unconquerable persistence in seeking the power of the Highest, till “his thoughts and affections were so absorbed in God by the presence of the Holy Spirit, that they who looked into his cell saw his upturned face as it had been the face of an angel,” we are not amazed at the character and effects of his preaching — so pathetic, so melting, so resistless that the reporter lays down his pen with this apology written under the last line — “Such sorrow and weeping came upon me that I could go no further.”
Finney was a Pauline preacher because he had a Pauline experience — the peace of God and the power of God coming to him almost together. And giving all due consideration to his uncommon natural endowments, we are constrained to find the chief secret of his success in his remarkable spiritual history. Let us read this as he has written it for us.
He had been converted after passing through powerful spiritual exercises, and immediately after, on October 1oth, 1821, while alone in his law office,
he.says< — —
“I then received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was such a thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me like immense wings. No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad ‘in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ‘I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.’ I said, ‘ Lord, I cannot bear any more.’ Yet I had no tearor dealt. ip 5’s Thus I continued till late at night. I received some sound repose. When I awoke in the morning the sun had risen, and was pouring a clear light into my room. Words cannot express the impression that this sunlight made upon :ne. Instantly the baptism that I had received the night before returned upon me in the same manner. I arose upon my knees in the bed and wept aloud with joy, and remained for some time too much overwhelmed with the baptism of the Spirit to do anything but pour out my soul to God. It seemed as if this morning’s baptism was accompanied with a gentle reproof, and the Spirit seemed to say to me, ‘Will you doubt? Will you doubt?’ TI cried, ‘No! I will not doubt; I cannot doubt.’ He then cleared the subject up so much to my mind that it was impossible for me to doubt that the Spirit of God had taken possession of my soul,” *
* Autobiography, pp. 20, 21.
Then followed the same results as in the apostolic times. First a powerful assurance of sonship in the inward witness of the Spirit; then power for utterance — such that as he went forth preaching whole neighborhoods would be seized with deep religious impression at once.
Upon which fact we pause to observe that this is the divine way of quickening men to seriousness and repentance. ‘Give us a revival moved and begotten by the Holy Spirit, and not one stirred up by the coming of an evangelist,” is the cry of many Christians — a demand as reasonable as that your telegraphic message shall be brought to you without the intervention of the wires. The Holy Spirit acts through a medium, the word of God, and through an agent, the man of God; and it is by Christians anointed and filled with the Holy Ghost, that the Spirit’s convicting and regenerating power is brought to bear on souls.
Here too, in a degree, the Master’s example holds for the disciples in all time. John the Baptist had this test of the true Messiah given him. “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.”* The abiding and
* john 1: 33.
indwelling of the Spirit constituted Christ’s power not only for personal service, but for communicating spiritual energy to others. He who on the banks of the Jordan was filled with the breath of God, could breathe on his disciples and say, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”
But when the disciples were baptized with the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, they no longer possessed the Spirit by measure. They had now his abiding presence. He “sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” * Now John could say to his brethren, “But the anointing which ye have received of Him adbideth in you.” F And as with the Lord so with the servants, they could communicate the Spirit unto others. Ananias is sent to Saul immediately upon his conversion, “and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight avd be filled with the Holy Ghost.’ t+ Peter and John are sent to the Samaritans as soon as it is known that they have received the word, and they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost. §
* Acts. 2: 4. al) dial ole ee Acts 9%, 174 § Acts 19: 6.
Not to enter into the difficult question of the laying on of hands, this much is evident from these instances, that it is God’s way to communicate his Spirit through human vessels which have been filled and sanctified for this purpose. And this fact is not strange or foreign to present Christian experience. We have the remembrance of having once or twice come in contact with consecrated servants of Christ, who have imparted to us a Spiritual influence as real and sensible, as the electric shock which the galvanic battery gives when its knob is touched. As impossible as it is that our thoughts should effect the world and stir men to action till they have been incarnated in human speech, so contrary to God’s method is it that, the Holy Spirit should accomplish his convicting and renewing and sanctifying work except by operating through the tongue and life and energy of living men and women. The mimicry of revivals, effected by the skill of magnetic preachers, we indeed too often see. But that an evangelist, filled with the Spirit of God, should stir whole communities with a sudden and resistless religious impulse, is not a strange fact, but one in perfect accordance with scripture teaching and precedent.
Say not in thy heart, Oh cautious Christian, that the revival is not of God because it is brought by a man; that the divine sovereignty has been ignored and sent to the rear because a human agent appears conspicuously at the front. ‘ When God would save man” says Jeremy Taylor “he did it
”
by way of a man;’’ and whether it be salvation or sanctification, the conviction of sinners or the quickening of believers this is always his method.
But there are various operations by the same Spirit, and the same enduement is given for other kinds of service. Let us take an example from among the Christian philanthropists.
Does one speak too strongly who calls the orphanage at Bristol, England, ‘“‘ the standing miracle of the nineteenth century?’’ We simply point to the fact of one man sheltering, feeding, clothing, and educating thousands of poor children through a series of years with no funds or resources to draw from except what God has sent him in answer to prayer. And remembering also that the money expended in this work has amounted in all to some millions, we concede at least that it is an extraordinary enterprise. We look at the man who has been the human agent in guiding this vast beneficence, and we instinctively desire to get a glimpse into his closet to discover if possible what secret transactions with God, lie behind this great public transaction. And here we find the same story which has been told over and over again in this book,
George Müller was converted in 1825 while a student in the University of Halle, but until 1829 he seems hardly to have known whether there be any Holy Spirit. He has graphically told us how in that year while staying at Teignmouth in Eng. land he was made acquainted with the person and office-work of the Comforter, and how the blessed secret of the Spirit’s guidance and illumination and enduement was made known to him. It all came to him now as a divine baptism. Of the joy and exaltation which followed he thus speaks.
“In the beginning of September I returned to London, much better in body; azd as to my soul the change was so great that it was like a second conversion, After my return to London, I sought to benefit my brethren in the seminary, and the means I used were these. I proposed to them to meet together every morning from six to eight for prayer and reading the Scriptures; and then that each of us should give out what he might consider the Lord had shown him to be the meaning of the portion read. One brother in particular was brought into the same state as myself, and others I trust were more or less benefitted. Several times when I went to my room after family prayer in the evening, I found communion with God so sweet that I continued in prayer till after twelve, and then being full of joy, went into the room of the brother just referred to, and finding him also in a similar frame of heart, we continued praying until one or two, and even then I was a few times so full of joy that I could scarcely sleep, and at six in the morning again called the brethren to. gether for prayer.” *
He who four years before had drank of the water of life, now found it ‘within him a well of water springing up into everlasting life;” and the third experience began at once to follow — “out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.” How many orphaned lives have those streams since enriched and made glad?
What Mr. Müller discovered in this experience was, that the Holy Spirit can do for us those things which with endless toil and endeavor we undertake to do for ourselves. He will lead us
* Life of Trust, p. 71 into all truth if we will only let him, instead of taking philosophy and logic as our schoolmasters. Finding out this, he says: “The result was that the first evening I shut myself into my room to give myself to prayer and meditation over the Scriptures, I learned more in a few hours than I had done during a period of several months previously.” Hear this, ye teachers in the schools of the prophets. Some of us think that you have gone down to Egypt for help in summoning science and metaphysics and rational learning into your class rooms to furnish you the key of knowledge. ‘There standeth One among you whom ye know not.’ Ask Him who has been sent to take of the things of Christ and shew them unto you, what is the meaning of this mystery and that, and He will reveal it unto you. We have a delightful glimpse into one theological lecture-room, whose doors we would desire to set open before the eyes of every teacher and student of divinity. Fletcher of Madeley was for a while the Principal of Lady Huntingdon’s training college for ministers at Trevecca in Wales. One who sat under his instructions tells us how he taught. Speaking of his sessions in the class-room, he says: “Such seasons generally terminated in this. Being convinced that to be filled with the Holy Ghost was a better qualification for the ministry than any classical learning, after speaking a while in the school-room he used to say, ‘As many of you as are athirst for the fullness of the Spirit follow me into my room. On this many of us have instantly followed him, and there continued for two or three hours, wrestling like Jacob for the blessing; and praying one after another till we could not bear to kneel any longer.”
We do hot insist that exercises like this should constitute the sum of all theological teaching. Let learning have its proper place; but we believe that the Holy Spirit should be Head Master in every school of divinity; and that whatever diplomas or degrees we may win, all are nothing in comparison with this one which was conferred upon the first disciples, ‘‘ Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”
And discovering that the Spirit of Truth is the best instructor for the preacher, Mr. Müller concluded also that he might be the best collector for the philanthropist. Why not? Cannot he who openeth and no man shutteth, send his Spirit to move the will, to unlock the coffers and to give the silver and the gold which are His? That most humiliating office of begging the Lord’s money from the Lord’s people, the gracious Paraclete has undertaken for him through long years, so that he has lacked nothing when he has cried unto God for hungry mouths. Oh to learn well this lesson with all the rest. The shortest way to our neighbor’s heart is through the gates of heaven. If the Spirit of grace and supplication rests on us, we shall talk less to our brother to make him willing to give, and more to God to give him the willingness. We once heard Mr. Müller allude to this crisis in his experience as the time when he determined to become “out and out for God.” And how certainly when we are so, will the Holy Spirit become out and out for us, ready to execute the burdensome temporalities of Christian work for us; doing the begging of funds, and the drawing of congregations, and the filling of pews, which the lame faith of this generation is trying to accomplish by fairs and festivals, by art and amusement and sensationalism. Crutches for a limping Christianity are all these. How quickly they would be thrown away if the church were truly filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost.
And this suggests to us to consider for a little the work which the Spirit can accomplish through a consecrated Christian, in parish growth and extension. The history of the most conspicuous leaders in the great Evangelical revival of the last century in England, is singularly instructive on this point. The experience of several of them was identical — years of barren ministry and meagre congregations; then in that mighty awakening, a new anointing and illumination from the Holy Ghost, and then crowded churches and wide-spread harvests of souls. Not to speak of itinerants like Whitfield and Wesley, whom we have alluded to elsewhere, we may instance pastors of flocks like Berridge and Venn and Walker of Truro and Grimshaw. Where in the history of the church can we find the difference between a ministry of culture, and a ministry of the Holy Ghost, so strongly marked?
“Holy William Grimshaw”’ was for many years a diligent formalist, preaching the truth so far as he knew it, but with worldly aims and no personal acquaintance with the Spirit of truth. Then came a great change, of the particulars of which we only have glimpses. But one glimpse is enough, as found in that solemn instrument of self-dedication which he drew up during this transition period. We can quote only a fragment of it: —
“Glory be to thee, O my triune God! Permit me to repeat and renew my covenant with thee. I desire and resolve to be wholly and forever thine. Blessed God, I most solemnly surrender myself to thee. Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth! I avouch this day the Lord to be my God, Father, Saviour, and portion forever. I am one of his covenant children forever. Record, O eternal Lord, in thy book of remembrance that henceforth I am thine forever. From this day I solemnly renounce all former lords — world, flesh, and devil — in thy name. No more, directly or indirectly, will I obey them. J renounced them many years ago, and I renounce them now forever. This day I give myself up to thee, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto thee, which I know is my reasonable service. To thee I consecrate all my worldly possessions; in thy service I desire and purpose to spend all my time, desiring thee to teach me to use every moment of it to thy glory and the setting forth of thy praise, in every station and relation of life I am now or may hereafter
be in.”
This covenant, with the one of which it is a renewal, made fourteen years before, marks the first decade of his pastorate at Haworth. And what a pastorate was that! To have power to move men mightily as an evangelist is a great gift of the Spirit; but to be the instrument of reclaiming a vast desert waste to the Lord, and making it rejoice and blossom as the rose — would that more of Christ’s servants coveted this honor! Haworth was territorially a desolate waste, — rugged, weather-beaten and mountainous. Spiritually it was so abandoned that when Grimshaw came to it, he declared that he could ride half a day on horseback towards either point of the compass without meeting a single serious soul. But as this Spirit-baptized pastor began to preach, such power attended his ministry, that where at first he found hardly more than a score of worshippers, the church now became so crowded that many had to stand without and listen through the windows. His words were like a flame of fire, and as he preached “it was amazing to see and hear what weeping, roaring and agony, many people were seized with at their apprehension of their sinful state and the wrath of God.”
Throughout this wild region this devoted pastor went week by week, testifying of the grace of God publicly and from house to house, and warning men night and day with tears. He would often preach five times a day, rarely less than three or four, travelling forty or fifty miles to accomplish it. His spiritual communion meanwhile was so exalted that he sometimes had to ask the Lord to stay his hand, lest his mortal frame should be overpowered. From twelve communicants whom he found on coming to the parish, the number arose to twelve hundred, and this let it be remembered not amid a crowded city population, but in a sparsely settled country, where his hearers had often to come many miles to attend the service. Such, after a ten years’ barren ministry, was the change effected when the Spirit of God came and possessed this minister of the gospel. His humility deepened meanwhile as his piety became more illustrious, so that looking on to the end he could say, ‘‘ When I die I shall then have my greatest grief and my greatest joy, — my greatest grief that I have done so little for Jesus, and my greatest joy that Jesus has done so much for me. My last words shall be, ‘Here goes an unprofitable servant. Let pastors
who complain of a sterile soil and a sparse and hardened population as insuperable obstacles, look towards this parish of Haworth and take courage. “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”
Would that we had space to cite other examples. We should turn our readers’ eyes to Samuel Walker of Truro, England, preaching for two years with great diligence, but acting only under the inspiration, as he afterwards confessed, of two motives — ‘“‘a desire of reputation and a love of pleasure” — and the result wide spread spiritual darkness and death; then the great change, — a ministry “not in word only but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance;”’ and the result, “such crowds attending his preaching that the thoroughfares of the town seemed deserted during the hours of service,” while converts were numbered by the hundred yearly. Or we would point to Pastor Harms of Hermannsburg in the kingdom of Hanover. We see in the foreground a vast field beset with difficulties; in the background a young pastor kneeling far into the night in his closet, seeking for the power of the Spirit. “I prayed fervently to the Lord; laid the matter in his hand; and as I rose at midnight from my knees I said with a voice that almost startled me in the great room, ‘ Forward now in God’s name.’” And after years the result is seen. From a parish ten miles square, with seven villages, but all overgrown with the tares of unbelief and formalism, a thousand at a time are seen flocking to church; no year passes without a revival; the number of communicants rises to eleven thousand. And the desert of 1845 is transformed into such a paradise in 1865, that it has been stated that probably no parish in Christendom equalled it in spiritual attainments, as it stood before the world in that year. What cannot the Holy Spirit accomplish if he can only find in men the “vessels unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master’s use and prepared unto every good work’?
Let it not be thought, however, that the power of the Spirit’s anointing is to be found only in such immense visible results. In the humblest service and in the lowliest sphere we observe the same fruits. It may require as much divine boldness to speak face to face with a single sinner, as to preach to thousands. And in some who have felt themselves called of God to the service of
personal conversation, we have noticed the most marked exhibitions of the Spirit’s power. Time would fail us to tell of those who have been signally anointed for such work in all ages; from Catherine of Siena in the 14th century, who used to talk with penitents all day without once stopping for food, so filled was she with the Spirit that she could say, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of,’ to Harlan Page and John Vassar in our own times, who won hundreds of single souls by the power of the Spirit that spoke through them.
Missionaries have by the preparation of the Spirit been “baptized into a sense of all conditions” — that hardest of all attainments to realize. Henry Martyn, at first but an indifferent Christian, writes one day in his diary, “I have resigned in profession, the riches, the honors, and the comforts of this world; and I think also it isa resignation of the heart;’’ and a little later he speaks of “the almost supernatural fervor and deep devotion which came upon me whilst [ declared that Thad rightfully no other business each day but to do God’s work, as a servant constantly regarding his pleasure.”
Authors have been endued with the Spirit to write for God. Ah! where is the divine baptism more vitally needed? “The same anointing teach- - eth you of all things,’ writes John. Julius Müller, with all his theological learning, seems to have needed a kind of spiritual laying on of hands, which he received from contact with the pious Tholuck, to qualify him to write his great work, “The Doctrine of Sin”; and not less did .D’Au. bigné require that deeper experience and illumi. nation referred to on another page, to fit him ta produce the History of the Reformation — that historic exposition of the doctrine of justification by faith. There are things of God hidden in the Scriptures, diffused through human history, and inwrought with religious experience, which na intellectual acumen, however subtle, can grasp. Therefore for every kind and quality of service we need the Paraclete. ‘ For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have re. ceived not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.”