Therefore, to rest on any other source of power is to lean on a bruised reed that will break and pierce the hand that leans upon it. What constitutes the power of a church ? Numbers ? God would rather have seven consecrated men and women than seven thousand who are living according to the course of this world. Where lies the strength of a church ? In human wealth and patronage? Sometimes these are curses instead of blessings. The power of any church is the Holy Spirit. If He be in the preacher and in the believer, and in the general body of disciples, there is no telling what wonderful things may be done.
Tj The baptism of the fulness of spiritual energy, of moral force, is a mysterious and an extraordinary event in the history of the race. " God hath spoken once ; twice have I heard this ; that power belongeth unto God." The Old Testament knew the manifestation of this power in varying measures, yet it never witnessed the revelation of that power in its fulness. The Eomans with pick and spade could do little in making roads through rocks and mountains. The use of gunpowder in the seventeenth century raised blasting to a science. The intro- duction of dynamite, thrice as powerful as gunpowder, entirely revolutionized that science. And then, again, nitro-glycerine, half as strong again as dynamite, has largely superseded dynamite. In the moral world, in various directions and ages, men have proved in various degrees the spiritual power by which they subdue sin and achieve holiness, but to us is the Spirit given without measure. Do I realize the saving, sanctifying Power ? 1
3. Did not the Lord who breathed on His Apostles, saying, " Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost," also charge them to tarry at 1 W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 132.
444 THE SUPREMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL
Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high. For nothing less than the power from on high could fit them for their arduous work, and nothing less than the Spirit of God could effect the great change to be wrought in the hearts and lives of the people. So it came to pass that, when God's time came, even the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit of God gave the Apostles new powers and gifts, and the people new ears to hear and hearts to feel and understand. In a word, the Spirit of God breathed the breath of spiritual life into the new gospel creation. Jiis life was the source of the Church's spiritual power then and has been ever since. We must get back, therefore, to the primal sources of spiritual power ; to prayer and meditation, to the study of the Bible, to sacramental grace and the realization of the Divine Presence. There are many among us who seem to have no capacity for suffering ; and if we cannot suffer, how can we save ? If we are never haunted by the sinfulness of the world, if we never know what it is to be crushed, humbled by the littleness of our own work and the greatness of men's need — if we are satisfied with the tiny circle of our own self-complacent career, and never look out into the wide wilderness about us where men toil and faint and suffer and despair — let us go back to the Bible and learn to see in that cross which throws its splendour and its shadow on every page the bitterness of human sorrow and the awfulness of human sin. The story of the cross, the story that changed the world, is the means by which the Divine Spirit works His great miracles. The cross of shame, the cross of bitter agony, the cross of terrible defeat, but also the cross of atoning love, love gloriously triumphant, — by this sign the Spirit conquers, proving Himself stronger than warlike might and earthly substance. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit " revealing to sinful men a crucified and risen Eedeemer, the sinner's refuge, the sinner's hope, the sinner's plea.
T[ The Spirit of the Lord of Hosts is love — the sacrifice of might and power. The world has been made great by the gentlest of all its forces. Man had no dominion over the beast of the field until the advent of love. The animal raged within him unsubdued until the Christ came. Thunder, earthquake, and fire strove in vain to quell it ; it yielded only to the still small voice. The Jew proposed the terrors of the law ; the philosopher advised the crucifixion of feeling. Neither could suppress the passions of
ZECHARIAH iv. 6 445
the soul. But when love came, it conquered the old passions by a new passion. It sent not thunder but lightning. It forbade nothing; it crucified nothing; it destroyed nothing; it simply flashed on me the light of a new Presence and the old presence died. There was no mutilation of the heart; there was no destruction of the heart's ancient possessions ; there was just a transcendent glory which made the ancient possessions valueless ; they were destroyed " by the brightness of his coming." x
4. We often speak and act as though we expected the presence of the Spirit to be shown in the same miraculous manner as on the Day of Pentecost, but have we any right to expect this ? We forget that we are living after Pentecost, not before it ; that the Holy Spirit has come to this earth and has not departed. Our Lord's words were, "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever." If we read the Epistles carefully, we shall not find a single passage commanding Christians to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Ghost; only one passage that can possibly be interpreted as a prayer of the writer that the Church might receive the blessing of the Holy Ghost ; but scores of passages implying that the Holy Ghost is already in the Church, and that what Christians have to do is not so much to pray that He may come as to take heed lest by their own unfaithfulness they lose the blessing which is already theirs. The warning, " Quench not the Spirit," is addressed not to unbelievers but to believers ; and the way in which we quench the Spirit is by refusing to open our hearts to the influences that are always waiting for entrance. Are we wrong, then, when we pray to be filled with the Spirit, when we pray that that Spirit may take more complete possession of our hearts ? By no means. There is none of the good gifts of God that we do wrong to pray for. But we do wrong if we pray for the Spirit, and then, when His voice speaks, close our ears. We do wrong if we pray for the Spirit, and then bolt the door of the heart. How often we clamour for more light, when all that we need is to open our eyes !