The Dangers of the Spirit
“Lest peradventure the Spirit of the Lord hath taken him ap, and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley.” — 2 KINGs ii, 16,
ESTRANGE that such dangers should be attributed to the possession of God’s Spirit. And yet the dangers are true. The man who has got the Spirit has to beware of two extremes — the mountain and the valley. He may be lifted up to such a height of ecstasy as to become unpractical; he may be cast down into such a depth of self-abasement as to become morbid. A man without the Spirit is in neither of these dangers; he has neither the sight of the divine to elevate nor the contrast of the human to depress; it is easy for him to keep on the plain. But the man of the Spirit has like Paul both his third heaven and his thorn. He may be exalted above measure or he may be sunk in depths that are fathomless; he may forget the actual perils of the way or he may cry in the bitterness of his soul, ““O wretched man that I am!”
Spirit of Christ, let Thy chariot of fire lift me above both the valley and the mountain. In Thee alone shall I find the refuge from Thine own dangers. It is my little knowledge of Thee that is a dangerous thing. If my flight were only higher I would be in no fear from either the mountain or the valley. Both would dwindle into insignificance before the contemplation of a heavenly glory. I would cease to think of myself either joyously or despondently; I would lose myself in the brightness of Thy sunshine. I would be independent of the variations of my feeling — alike of my exaltation and of my despair; viewed from the height of Thy heaven my mountain of pride and my valley of tears would look equally small. Therefore, Thou Spirit, lift me from the partial into the full knowledge of Thyself. Lift me high enough to lose sight of all but Thee. Lift me so near to heaven that I shall forget to measure the heights and depths of earth. Raise me so close into communion with Thyself, that I shall be unable any longer to commune with myself, that my lights and my shadows alike shall pale before Thy splendour. When I have reached Thy fulness I shall reach Thy peace; when I have entered Thy chariot of fire I shall steer the middle way between the mountain and the vale.