The Prayer for the Spirit

«Tf ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto yout children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” — LUKE xi, 13,

MUCH more;” I would have said “much f less.” Because I ask and receive a paltry material boon from a frail mortal, am I to expect that I shall receive for the asking the Spirit of the Almighty Himself? The very suggestion almost takes away the breath. Yes, my brother, but you are startled by the wrong end of the ladder. The thing to be wondered at is your power to ask for such a boon. Our prayers are always the measure of our possibilities. No man can aspire beyond the range of his nature, any more than a bird can fly beyond the compass of its wings. How can you ask for God’s Spirit except through the lips of that Spirit itself? Flesh and blood could not have revealed to thee thy want of it; only thy Father which is in heaven. Only that which is divine can recognise its need of the divine; the emptiness that cries for God has already begun to be filled.

Holy Spirit, I thirst for Thee, as in a dry parched land; I pant for the streams of Thy grace. It seems almost presumption thus to desire Thee, but my very thirst emboldens me. How could thirst for Thee if Thou wert not the Spirit of my Father? How could I desire Thee if there were not already in me the same nature as Thine? It is by my need of Thee that I know my kinship with Thee, with my Father. I have no argument but my need, ne language but my cry. I ask for Thee because I require Thee, and I require Thee because I I was made for Thee. The prayer that beats against the doors of Thy heaven is the protest of my unfinished nature against its own incompleteness; I shall only be complete in Thee. Come, therefore, and finish Thy divine creation. Thou wilt not leave me in the sixth morning amid the beasts of the field. Let me enter into Thy seventh day, into thy Sabbath rest, into Thine Eden’s joy. Thou satisfiest the want of every living thing just because its need gives it a right to live; shall not my thirst for Thee, O Spirit of holiness, give me also a right to the river of Thy pleasures?