The Loneliness of the Spirit

‘Then the Spirit entered into me, and set me upon my feet, and said unto me, Go, shut thyself within thine house.”” — EZEK. iii, 24.

WE, Y first experience of Christ’s Spirit is a

E’ sense of solitude; it shuts me within my house. I feel myself to be alone amidst a crowd. It is not that I am ushered into new scenes; it is that the old scenery yields a new result. Yesterday I was quite filled by them; to-day, even while in contact with them, I am miles beyond them. Is not this a hard price to pay for being a Christian? Why should the Spirit of Christ bring me this asceticism, why should it shut me up within my own house? Why indeed? Think you the Spirit desires such a solitude? Think you the Son of Man would not have been glad if He could have trodden the winepress in company instead of alone? ‘Think you that the goal of the Spirit is anything else than communion with humanity, that the will of the Spirit is anything else than the attainment of this goal? Do not blame the

Spirit that its entrance into thy heart makes thee solitary; it is the world that thou shouldst blame. The Spirit longs to be in every house as well as in thine. As long as it is shut up within thy house it is a spirit in prison, and it makes thee a spirit in prison. It pants to share itself with the world, and its panting becomes thy thirst. Its solitude is its cross; so is thine, O my soul. Thy house is not thy home; thy home is the house of humanity. Thine isolation is but for a moment, and shall melt in the brotherhood of man. When it pleases God to reveal His Son in thee, immediately thou communest not with flesh and blood; but it is only immediately, not ultimately. Thou shalt not linger for ever in Arabia; thou shalt return to Damascus, to Jerusalem, to Rome. Thou shalt not dwell for ever in Patmos; the time will come when there shall be no more sea. It is only at the grey dawn of morning that the Spirit say a “Shut thyself within thine house.”