The Earnest of the Spirit

% Given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts,” — 2 Cor. i, 22,

heart; it is a wish to be good. The

= Spirit has tremendous heights before it — heights of knowledge, heights of action, heights of Calvary; but its beginning, its earnest, its springtime, is a simple desire. The bud from which the Rose of Sharon springs is a longing. The first gift of God to my soul is a sense of want, the feeling of an empty heart. It is the feeling of an empty heart that tells me I am more than the beast of the field. That which prophesies my greatness is not what I possess but the sense of what I do not possess. The earliest measure of me is the intensity of my cry. When the Spirit first came to me I only knew of its coming by my hunger. The only change of which I was conscious was a change from satisfaction inte dissatisfiedness. The birds had lost the sweetness of their song, and the fields the freshness of their green, and the days the lustre of their joy. The Spirit came with the clouds of heaven — came with a shadow to my heart. But the shadow was an earnest of coming light. What made the birds lose their song and the fields their green and the days their lustre? It was the glimmer of a glory above the brightness of the sun. My heart had caught sight of an aperture in the prison wall and thenceforth it knew it was in prison and panted to be tree;

Son of man, my thirst for Thee is the herald of Thee. The earnest of Thy coming is the shadow on my heart. The shadow on my heart is Thy shadow; only by the viszon of Thee can I learn my want of Thee. In the world of sense I can hunger before I have known the taste of food, but in the world of spirit I must taste before I can hunger. Therefore it is that my hunger for Thee is my earnest of Thee; I know by the craving of my heart that Thou must be at the door. It is the approach of Thy footsteps that has put everything else in silence. It is the music of Thy voice that has made all other things seem discord. It is the light of Thy countenance that has left the surrounding world in shadow. It is the vision of Thy moral beauty that has emptied my heart of its treasures and made it vacant, cold. O eloquent silence! O harmonious discord! O luminous shadow! O vacant heart prophetic of an overflowing fulness! I will not fear to enter into that cloud, for J know, Thou Divinest life, that the cloud is an earnest of Thee.