(.3) It is a power for service. — " Tarry ye in the city of \ Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high." There f is no such force for the spreading of Christ's Kingdom, and the \ witness-bearing work of His Church, as the possession of this I
^ J. A. Hammerton, Stevensoniana, 313.
2 Hugh Stowell BroAVD, in Life, by W. S. Caine, 305.
EPHESIANS III. i6 131
Divine Spirit. Plunged into that fiery baptism, the selfishness and the sloth which stand in the way of so many of us are all consumed and annihilated, and we are set free for service because the bonds that bound us are burnt up in the merciful furnace of His fiery power.
^ If we allow the record of St. Paul's experience in Christian service to cast light upon his prayer, we see that to be " strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man " means the supply of energy which enables us to toil for Christ without spiritual exhaustion, and to bear one another's burdens, for His sake, without so soon becoming faint and weary. " Wherefore, we faint not," exclaims St. Paul. Christian workers need, in hours of disappointment, to remember his secret. Discouragement in the Master's service cannot always be cured by greater diligence. To labour hard, even for Him, is no guarantee of happiness. Indeed, the higher the service, the deeper will be our dejection if we fail to lay hold of the hope set before us in our glorious calling, because the task assigned proved to be beyond our strength.
Happy we live, when God doth fill Our hands with work.
If that were the only condition, most Christians could be happy every day and happy all the day. But our realization of the Beatitude depends, not upon the filling of our hands with work, but upon the filling of our hearts with zeal.
Happy we live, when God doth fill
Our hands with work, our hearts with zeal.
Significantly we speak of being " disheartened " in our work for Christ ; our use of the word should warn us against allowing the inward altar-fires to die down, or even to burn low. Without the Holy Spirit's strengthening with power in the inward man, it is impossible for the heart to be always as full of zeal as the hands are full of work.
The sum of all is — Yes, my duty is great :
My faith's still greater ; then my faith's enough.^
^ John MacNeil had always watched himself with consider- able jealousy lest the fire within him should burn less brightly as he grew older. It distressed him to see many men, who in their youth had been ardent spirits, gradually cool off into a
1 J. G. Tasker.
132 POWER IN THE INWARD MAN
prudent moderatism, " Shall I ever get like that ? " he would ask. " Is it necessary for a man's ardour to decrease as his years increase ? " and then, answering his own question, would reply emphatically — " No ! ly God's grace, I will not alter if I live to be eighty ; people will be as glad to come and hear me when I preach leaning oji-a staff, as they are now." It was a great com- fort to him to run over the long list of honourable names of white-haired old men who are serving God as enthusiastically now as when their blood ran faster in their veins. It was one great charm in John MacNeil that he never did alter. He was the same at forty as at twenty. In him " zeal " never " curdled into ambition," nor did his enthusiasm ever abate. He was the same eager, hopeful, courageous soul from beginning to end.^
IV.
The Measuee. " According to the riches of his glory."
1 " According to the riches of his glory " — that is the measure. There is no limit except the uncounted wealth of His own self- manifestation, the flashing light of revealed Divinity. Whatso- ever there is of splendour in that, whatsoever there is of power there, in these and in nothing on this side of them lies the limit of the possibilities of a Christian life.
" The riches of his glory " ! How sublime a conception ! We are not to ask according to the strength of our faith, the large- ness of our hearts, or the breadth of our thoughts, but " according to the riches of his glory " ! Paul wants us to take time and think of the glory, and of its inconceivable riches, and then in faith to expect that God will do nothing less to us than according to the riches of that glory. What is to be done in our inward man is to be in very deed the glory of God shining into our heart, and manifesting the riches of His power in what He does there within us. Our faith dare not expect the fulfilment of the prayer until it enters into and claims to the full that God will do in us "according to the riches of his glory." Let us take time and see that nothing less than this is to be the measure of our faith.
* John MacNeil, Evangelist in Australia, 207.