The First Message of the Spirit
“In whom, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that i Spirit of promise.” — EPH, i. 13.
MMHE first gift of life to my soul is a promise. It is so with natural life. wx“Its earliest consciousness is neither of to-day nor of yesterday, but of to-morrow, {ts vision is that of streets paved with gold, of suns that never set and of days that never rain; it begins its youth where Moses began his old age — on the summit of Mount Nebo. The Spirit of divine life also begins with Mount Nebo; its first message to the heart is a vision of the promised land. Before it asks me to take one step of the journey it presents me with the grapes of Eshcol — the specimen fruits of the glory yet to be. It shows me the end at the beginning — shows it nearer than the reality. It conceals the intervening spaces — the brakes and briars between. It takes me out like Abraham below the stars and it says N to my proud spirit, “So shall thy seed be,” but it does not tell me that betwixt me and the stars there intervenes that terrible hill of Moriah with its great ordeal of faith and its mighty surrender of will. It says, ‘Surely I come quickly,” but it conceals as yet that it “cometh with clouds;” it hides the sword of crucifixion during the shepherd’s song; it is the Spirit of promise.
O Thou beneficent Spirit, I thank Thee for this first message to my soul. I thank Thee that Thy first voice to me has been the voice not of warning but of promise. I thank Thee that my earliest vision has not been the cross of Calvary but the opened heavens and the descending dove. The journey is too long and too arduous to be encountered without good cheer. I need a draught of joy before starting; I want a stimulus of the heart to help me on, I would faint by the way if I did not get bread before leaving. Therefore, O Spirit, I bless Thee that first of all there has come the beatific vision, that Thou hast shown me the crown of glory before the crown of thorns. The brightness of Thy morning shall keep me all the day. It shall keep me through the cloud and the cold; it shall keep me mid the burden and the care; it shall keep me in the labour and the strife. It shall lift me up in the depression of the valley; it shall hold me erect in the monotony of the plain; it shall make me calm on the billows of the sea. I shall walk aloft through the storm when I hear Thy morning song behind me, and the yoke of toil shall be easy when I remember Thy promise in the dawn.
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