486 THE ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP
the exact weight and rhythm of the pendulum that swings there, or the faultless going-order of the well-cleaned wheels. It is possible for the local mechanism to be at fault and to vary in its time-keeping virtues, and the citizens are not left to the mercy of its supposed inerrancy. At noon a gun is fired or a ball made to fall, or some other delicate adjustment is brought into play by an electric current sent direct from the Eoyal Observatory at Greenwich, the centre of scientific precision and faultless and authoritative reckoning. There is local mechanism fairly trust- worthy in its way, but that is guaranteed and controlled by the message of absolute astronomical truth.1
3. These two witnesses must agree. Notice the words : " the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit." It is not so much a revelation made to my spirit, considered as the recipient of the testimony, as a revelation made in or with my spirit considered as co-operating in the testimony. It is not that my spirit says one thing, bears witness that I am a child of God ; and that the Spirit of God comes in by a distinguishable process, with a separate evidence, to say Amen to my persuasion ; but it is that there is one testimony which has a conjoint origin — the origin from the Spirit of God as true source, and the origin from my own soul as recipient and co-operant in that testimony.
^f To produce a perfect chord in music two things are necessary. The things brought into play must be attuned to each other. Unless there is this perfect adjustment when the notes are struck, instead of the faultless chord you will have jarring, dissonance, torture. So our wills must be brought into agreement with the will of the Spirit. We must forsake all sin, and give ourselves up to His skilful modulation and adjustment.
I saw on earth another light
Than that which lit my eye Come forth, as from my soul within,
And from a higher sky.
Its beams still shone unclouded on,
When in the distant west The sun I once had known had sunk
For ever to his rest.
1 T. G. Selby.
ROMANS viii. 16 487
And on I walked — though dark the night,
Nor rose his orb by day, — As one to whom a surer guide
Was pointing out the way.
'Twas brighter far than noonday's beam,
'Twas duty shone within, And lit, as by a lamp from heaven,
The world's dark track of sin.1
(1) From the teaching of this passage, or from any of the language which Scripture uses with regard to the inner witness, it is not to be inferred that there will rise up in a Christian's heart, from some origin consciously beyond the sphere of his own nature, a voice with which he has nothing to do; which at once, by its own character, by something peculiar and distinguishable about it, by something strange in its nature, or out of the ordinary course of human thinking, shall certify itself to be not his voice at all, but God's voice. That is not the direction in which we are to look for the witness of God's Spirit. It is evidence borne, indeed, by the Spirit of God ; but it is evidence borne not only to our spirit, but through it, with it. The testimony is one, the testimony of a man's own emotion, and own conviction, and own desire, the cry, " Abba, Father."
(2) Again, there are those who conceive that a certain feeling of assurance suddenly rises in the Christian, which is a conviction of his election, and that this feeling is the witness of the Holy Spirit. Hence, men have waited for it with anxiety. Many of the most earnest have prayed in tears of agony for its dawning. They have wasted many a darkened hour by the fear lest this feeling should never come, and have longed, like men watching for the morning, for the moment when it should suddenly flash across the darkness of the soul and light it with confident joy. Now, we need not dispute the fact that a sudden emotion may come, but this is certainly not the assurance of which Paul is speaking here. For he speaks of a Divine Spirit witnessing with our spirit; to rely on any emotion as certainty is to rely upon our own spirit bearing witness with itself ; for if we trust to any feeling in us we are not trusting to the Spirit of God.
1 Jones Very.
488 THE ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP
T] The substance of the conviction which is lodged in the human spirit by the testimony of the Spirit of God is not primarily directed to our relation or feelings to God, but to a far grander thing than that — to God's feelings and relation to us.1
IV.
How is the Witness confirmed?
The confirmation of sonship is the spirit of a son. There is no evidence that can supersede the actual recognition of God as Father, the actual filial affection which prompts the cry, " Abba, Father." And so, there is no evidence of the Spirit and no confirmation of His witness to be compared to the fact that we are in our daily life bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit. But there are three ways in particular to be noticed here in which the evidence of the Spirit can be confirmed. They are the ways in which St. Paul is showing the operation of the Spirit.