(2) Indioelling. — " And shall be in you." It would be esteemed a rare privilege to have a great and truly noble person dwell with us, a Paul, a Chrysostom, an Augustine ; to have such an one as our perpetual monitor, and adviser, and exemplar; to have him show us how to act, how to speak, how to live ; to have the benefit of his oversight, his wisdom, his favour. But then the person thus favoured might never fully copy the devotion of an Augustine, the eloquence of a Chrysostom, or the holiness of a Paul. How different, however, would the case be if there were a process by which the spirit of those great men, in its wholeness could be infused into the minds and hearts of otliers, so that instead of dwelling with an Augustine, Augustine should by his spirit dwell in them ; instead of living with a Chrysostom, Chrysostom should live his life in them ; instead of copying a Paul beside us, Paul should dwell in us as the abiding spirit. What a difference there would be ! The indwelling spirit of an Augustine would make a second Augustine ; the infused spirit of a Chrysostom would make another golden-mouthed preacher; and a Paul living in us would reproduce the spirit and the deeds of the great Apostle in our own life and work. The Comforter, as the Spirit of truth, not only dwells with us as a guest, but dwells in us as the inner controlling, shaping, enlightening, sanctifying Spirit, evolving out of Himself through the functions and faculties of our being, the fruits and graces of a holy life, and the beautiful character of a true Christian.
^ The artist who paints a picture, or chisels a statue, impresses a certain amount of his own genius on flat canvas or cold marble.
154 THE GIVING OF THE COMFORTER
It is not a beauty developed from within, working outward ; but something put upon the passive canvas or marble, by an outside process that never goes beneath the surface, never imparts life within. But the artist power of the Holy Ghost is seen in that, taking up His abode in the heart, He renews and sanctifies that heart, and the outward life is but the development of the inward grace.^
To all the world mine eyes are blind;
Their drop serene is — night. With stores of snow piled up the wind
An awful airy height.
And yet 'tis but a mote in the eye:
The simple faithful stars Beyond are shining, careless high,
Nor heed our storms and jars.
And when o'er storm and jar I climb —
Beyond life's atmosphere, I shall behold the lord of time
And space — of world and year.
Oh vain, far quest ! — not thus my heart
Shall ever find its goal ! I turn me home — and there thou art,
My Father, in my soul ! ^
^ The Old Testament is full of the thought of the presence of God with His people. With very few exceptions — which are found chiefly in the Psalms — it is always " with." " My presence shall go with thee." " When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee." This thought — and it is a very grand and comforting one — characterizes the whole of the ancient dispensa- tion. Neither is it forgotten in the New. " Lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." But the new and determining feature of the Second Testament is the " in," the " in you." " I am in you." " Christ in you." " The Holy Ghost which is in you." " God is in you of a truth." " I will dwell in them, and walk in them." '
' W. B. Stevens. ' George MacDonald. • James Vaughan.
Where He Delights to Dwell.
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Literature.
Bonar (H,), God}s Way of Holiness, 153.
Bourdillon (F.), Short Sermons, 109, 119.
Griffiths (W.), Onward and Upward, 65.
Humberstone (W. J.), The Cure of Care, 109.
McClelland (T. C), The Mind of Christ, 167.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : John ix.-xiv., 350,
Meyer (F. B.), The Soul's Pure Intention, 35.
Miller (J.), Sermons Literary and Scientific, ii. 336.
Moberly (R. C), Christ our Life, 52.
Pope (W. B.), Discourses on the Lordship of the Incarnate Redeemer, 223.
Robertson (A. T.), The Teaching of Jesus: God the Father, 117.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1. (1904) No. 2895.
Telford (J.), The Story of the Upper Room, 128.
Watson (J.), The Inspiration of our Faith, 1 79.
Westcott (B. F.), Peterborough Sermons, 39.
Whately (R.), Sermons on the Principal Christian Festivals, 107.
Christian World Pulpit, viii. 148 (Beecher) j xii. 298 (Gallaway) ; li. 244
(Black). Keswick Week, 1905, p. 87 (Sloan).
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Where He Delights to Dwell.
If a man love me, he will keep my word : and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. — John xiv. 23.
1. The Judas, in reply to whose question our Lord spoke these words, held but a low place among the Apostles. In all the lists he is one of the last of the groups of four into which they are divided, and which were evidently arranged according to their spiritual nearness to the Master. His question is exactly one which a listener, with some dim, confused glimmer of Christ's meaning, might be expected to ask. He grasps at His last words about manifesting Himself to certain persons; he rightly feels that he and his brethren possess the qualification of love. He rightly understands that our Lord contemplates no public showino- of Himself, and that disappoints him. It was only a day or two ago that Jesus seemed to them to have begun to do what they had always wanted Him to do — manifest Himself to the world. And now, as he thinks, something unknown to them must have happened in order to make Him change His course, and go back to the old plan of a secret communication. And so he says, "Lord! what has come to pass to induce you to abandon and falter upon the course on which we entered when you rode into Jerusalem with the shouting crowd ? "