altar with irregular, worldly-minded, self-complacent thoughts. Pray for me that I may free myself from all pride, all ambition, all uncharitableness. You cannot think how a little word which you dropped one day, the last we met together at Oxford, struck me, and how it has abode with me ever since. You cautioned me against Formalism ; I thought it hard at the time, but now I know you had too good reason. Help me by your prayers, your advice, if any occurs to you ; and your reproof, if you at any time think I need it, to get rid of that dangerous habit." x
IIL
1. Human might has limits set to it, if it were only because it cannot achieve the highest and best results. It can civilize, but it cannot redeem. It can bring changes, some of them excellent changes, in the shape of social, physical, and even intellectual benefits ; but it cannot Christianize. It can reform, but it cannot convert. It can alter circumstances, but it cannot change character. It can do much on the surface ; but it cannot go deep down to the roots of the nature, and produce radical changes, the highest and eternal results. Now, it is just here that the magnificent claim of the text comes in. At the point where social reform and human culture lie baffled and broken, the Christian faith comes in with its supreme influence, because it is backed by the Divine power of the Spirit. It aims at the best results. It is omnipotent in the sphere of moral and spiritual things. It changes the heart and renews the mind. It redeems the soul and cleanses the character. It goes down to the springs of human nature ; hence it revolutionizes the life ; and thus it redeems society, because it first redeems the individual. Its sphere is found where human might and resource know no way of admittance. It deals with the soul, with the heart, with the eternal part of human nature. It speaks to men of sin and righteousness, of death and eternity and judgment, of salvation and heaven and life everlasting. It introduces new motives, and instils new desires. It implants new aims, holds up new and glorious ideals, gives grace and strength to work up to them. Where human might cannot enter, the Spirit of God has supreme 1 J. T. Coleridge, A Memoir qf the Rev. John Keble, i. 59.
442 THE SUPREMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL
dominion. Where human power falls back hopeless and helpless, the Spirit of God achieves its grandest results. Human empires come and go; they rise and fall, and others take their place; but the Empire of the Divine Spirit retains its early power to regenerate human hearts and renew and glorify human lives.
Tj When I was turned from one whose business was to shirk into one whose business was to strive and persevere, it seemed to me as though all had been done by some one else. I was never conscious of a struggle, never registered a vow, nor seemingly had anything personally to do with the matter. I came about like a well-handled ship. There stood at the wheel that unknown Steersman whom we call God.1
Tf Not by power are we to conquer, but by the sacred energies of the Holy God. " By my Spirit " ; shall we reverently give it the old translation and say, " By my wind " ? It is the breath of the Lord, creating atmosphere sometimes like a cool, refreshing air, sometimes like a withering simoom; sometimes like a tempestuous whirlwind. " He breathed upon them and said, Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost." But here is the other ministry of the same breathing : " The grass withereth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it." It is an atmosphere in which the good is quickened, and in which all that is evil is inevitably destroyed. It is, therefore, with this mystic wind, this spiritual minister, that we are to go about our work. We are to do it in the intimate fellowship of the Lord.2
2. Now, may we not say that, in regard to the work of the Christian Church, this power is indispensable and essential ? that where there is not the power of the Spirit of the Lord of Hosts all else is vain? We can never count upon success when the Spirit of God is absent. Every dry and barren period of the Church's history tells the same tale. There may be intellectual gifts and literary culture. There may be riches and worldly resource. There may be social status and human influence. But over against these, with all the goodness that may be in them, we hear the cry echoing through the vaulted corridors of the Church's life, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." These, at their best, are of the earth, earthy. They are but parts of human might and earthly resource, which have their limits appointed to them. But this supreme 1 R. L. Stevenson. 2 J. H. Jowett
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force of the Spirit of God is Divine ; it is Almighty. It partakes of the nature of Him who is everlasting and omnipotent. Those others are the hands that lay the train ; or, rather, they are the materials laid upon the pile. This is the magic flash of fire that kindles them into a mighty flame. This is the electric touch that can call forth all the force that lies in these, and make them truly mighty for the overthrow of strongholds of sin and Satan. Learn- ing and scholarship, literary power, tact, address, resource ; who shall despise them ? They are all needed in the work of the Kingdom. But the first essential that can make men truly powerful is the Spirit of the Lord of Hosts.