Part 9 (2/2)
The world outside is always with us and acting in this way, distracting thought, setting up its own standards, drawing us into its channels, and deadening the Spirit in us. This is one of the inevitable conditions of life as you will have to live it, and the man who is in earnest recognises it as a paramount reason why he should never drop out of his personal practice the habit of separate prayer and communion with G.o.d. Or again, we may, and often do, let these hindrances grow up within us through our own fault, and quite apart from any active influences of the outer world.
We contract a dulness of spirit, so that spiritual things have no interest and faith has no living power in the heart; and all this very often not because any person, or anything outside of us, can be said to have led us away and entangled us, but simply because we have taken no pains to keep our life within the range of spiritual influences; we have let prayer slip out of it; we have lived in no spiritual companions.h.i.+p; we have done nothing to keep our soul alive in us. This is how men choose the lower life, and surrender their birthright out of pure inertia, so that they lose their spiritual capacity.
But worst of all hindrances to the indwelling of G.o.d's Holy Spirit in any life is the harbouring of sensual appet.i.te or craving, pa.s.sion, or indulgence. No man can expect the Holy Spirit of G.o.d to make its home in such unclean company. It is on this account that there is nothing which so soon grows to depraved habit, to G.o.d-abandoned state, as sensual appet.i.te; nothing which so rapidly dulls the higher affections in the heart and saps all the finer elements of life.
Therefore, when we are thinking of G.o.d's gift of the Holy Ghost, and of spiritual power as the saving and uplifting influence in our soul, we do well to reflect a little on those hindrances which will be fatal to all such power in us, if they are allowed to take possession of our life and to prevail in it.
We do well to reflect in this way, because such reflection will make us very careful against harbouring or encouraging any of these fatal hindrances, and careful also against any other form of spiritual waste.
There is no surer guide to a right use of all liberty than this reflection upon the power of the indwelling spirit in us, and the things that add to it or destroy it.
Recognising that this Spirit, which, in the language of your confirmation prayer, is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the Spirit of knowledge and true G.o.dliness and of holy fear; recognising that this Spirit, with its sevenfold gifts, is the saving element in all free life, you begin to look with fresh feelings on all your leisure hours, on all your hours of liberty, when you are released from task work or supervision, when your life is what you yourselves are making it, and you begin to consider whether these times, as you spend them, are indeed times of growth or, it may be, of waste, times of genuine freedom or of slavery to some form of lower life. When you think of this Holy Spirit of G.o.d as a power in every good life, it becomes a very real question what and of what sort is the _power_ that is holding sway over you in your leisure hours.
This is indeed a question which never sleeps, and to-day we ask, What is your Whitsuntide answer to it?
If there be any one to whom such a question is not yet a matter of living concern, it is the purpose of this Pentecostal festival to rouse him to new thoughts about it.
If there be any older person in this congregation who lets his years slip from him, not caring or forgetting the importance of it, and not striving to leaven all his hours of work or leisure with the thought of this indwelling Spirit from above; or if there should be any young boy who, in utter thoughtlessness, or from perversity or coa.r.s.eness, or any induced depravity of taste, allows any evil spirit to bear rule in his life, our prayer for such an one to-day is that the baptism of fire may descend upon his soul, and the power of a new spirit be felt in it.
And indeed there is not one of us but needs to come at such a time with this same prayer for his own life; for our own experience is too often very like the vision of Ezekiel. Under the influences that come between us and the Spirit of the living G.o.d, our soul is in continual danger of being like the prophet's valley of dry bones, which lay lifeless, unmoved, till the breath of the Lord breathed over them, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.
So we pray that our life may prove responsive to these influences of the Pentecostal season. And the first response it gives is when it rises up in the consciousness of the Spirit of G.o.d as a living power in the heart, a power to drive out evil, and to inspire and strengthen us for what is good.
And if, under the inspiring a.s.sociations of this historic and holy day, you feel your soul touched with a new spirit or consciousness rising up in you from the grave of its own dead self to new desires and new thoughts, and a new sense of the living nearness of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, then you know--and you need no prophet to tell you--that the Pentecostal gift has not failed, and there is good hope that you will not spoil either your youth or your manhood with any form of ign.o.ble life.
XIX. SANCTIFIED FOR SERVICE.
”We are labourers together with G.o.d; ye are G.o.d's husbandry; ye are G.o.d's building.”--1 COR. iii. 9.
In this pa.s.sage St. Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for that spirit of party which was dividing them into followers of this or that teacher and so destroying their unity in Christ. You do not belong, he says, to Paul or to Apollos; _we_ have no claim upon you; ye are not to be called by _our_ name: you are _G.o.d's_ husbandry, and _G.o.d's_ building, not ours; we are but labourers in His service and ministers for your good. Therefore, see to it that you live as one society in Christ Jesus, discarding all divisions, factions, and party pa.s.sions and watchwords, imbued with one spirit. It is a n.o.ble exhortation to unity of life and purpose; but we may notice in it more than this.
As Paul himself disclaims all personal merit--as he presses it on their attention that neither is he that planteth anything nor he that watereth, but G.o.d that giveth the increase, he is unconsciously exhibiting to us an example of that rare humility which is characteristic of all the greatest and most effective workers; whilst in the vivid and expressive metaphors of my text--ye are G.o.d's husbandry, G.o.d's building--he makes us to feel the value and the dignity of each human soul.
It would be interesting to dwell on these calls to unity of life in Christ, and the close connection between such unity and the spirit of humility; in fact, we might say, the absolute necessity of the spirit of humility and self-forgetfulness in individuals if there is to be unity in the society. And we might apply the thoughts with much profit to our own social relations, for they are never out of date; but I desire to turn to- day to that which is suggested by these descriptive metaphors, the value and dignity of each human life.
St. Paul pressed it on these Corinthians that their souls were nothing less than the seed-field of which G.o.d Himself was the Husbandman, or the temple built by His hand; and they could hardly have listened to such language without being stirred to take care how they sowed in that field, or without feeling the consequent value of their life in the sight of G.o.d.
If they were thus the objects of the Divine care they could not be thought of as insignificant units in a crowded city; or as living an obscure life which was of no particular importance, as they might otherwise have been tempted to fancy, as we are still sometimes tempted to think about an individual life. This picture of each life amongst us in its relation to G.o.d, as His seed-field or His temple, is a continual reminder that where a human soul is concerned there is no such thing as insignificance or obscurity.
As St. Paul thought of that little company--a company small and obscure to the outward eye--what he saw in them was the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the spiritual life that was breathing there was a Divine life; and this intense conviction of the value of each soul and each society and its consequent sanct.i.ty was a never-failing inspiration to him.
Through it he saw in every one who listened to his words, as he went from city to city, a man created and endowed with a Divine mission and Divine capacity, if they could only be roused.
It transformed every soul that crossed his path, so that he looked on life with new eyes. The common crowd had a new interest for him, the suffering poor, the downtrodden slave, the heathen in his blindness, the degraded sinner.
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