The Mission of the Spirit
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted.” — IsA. 1xi, 1.
GREAT thinker has said that Christianity first taught man the reverence for things beneath him. It is profoundly true. The Spirit of Christ can say distinctively, “He hath sent me to bind the broken heart.” It has come through other channels for other purposes, but through this channel it has had but one purpose. Sometimes its mission has been to teach me God’s majesty, sometimes to reveal His beauty, sometimes to proclaim His law. But here in the heart of Jesus the mission of the Spirit is to show me a new exhibition of
God’s power — His power of infinite stooping.
The divine majesty has ceased to dwell in the
heavens; it has begun to bend downwards. It
has refused to admit any longer that it is outside the world of suffering; if it be infinite it must include the cross as well as the crown. Men have sought to honour it by denying it a home amid the sorrowful; it repudiates such a limit to its universal presence. It demands admission into lowly things. It claims access into the hearts and homes of the sad. It knocks at the door of the child-life. It asks an entrance into the struggles of youth. It solicits participation in the cares and toils of manhood. Its latest glory is the glory of incarnation; it empties itself.
O Thou divine Spirit, I have found in the Son of man a new test of Thy presence. I used to see Thee by the vision of the eye, by the light of stars and systems, by the beauty of wood and field. But now I have lost somewhat of that ancient glory. Science has stolen the splendour of the stars, destroyed the spontaneity of the woods and fields; I speak of law where once I spoke of will. Art Thou gone then from my modern life, Thou Spirit of the Highest? No; Thou art only gone into a new channel — from the stars into the soul. I see Thee now in the cross, in the tidings brought to the meek, in the binding of wounded hearts. I see Thee in my reverence for things beneath me, in my interest for pain, in my sympathy with tears. I see Thee in the elevation of every valley, in the depression of every mountain, in the crooked ways made straight and the rough places plain.
I see Thee in the charity that beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things; in the love that seeketh not her own; in the mercy that rejoices against judgment, in the forgiveness that welcomes even from the grave. These are the tests of Thy presence. The heavens may tell of Thy glory in more broken accents than of yore, but the strain has been taken up by loftier harps than theirs. It has passed into the hands of those who preach good tidings to the meek.