^ The thinnest sheet of paper placed under the trolly of an electric car will stop the car, provided it is not punctured by the mechanical pressure. Cut a copper wire carrying an electric current, file the ends square, place a piece of writing paper be- tween the ends and press them together : the current which was transmitting thousands of horse-power is stopped ; it is incapable of passing through the insulating substance of the paper. No other agency for transmitting power can be stopped by such slight obstacles as electricity. A sheet of writing paper placed across a tube conveying compressed air would be instantly ruptured. It would take a wall of steel at least an inch thick to stand the pressure which is driving a 10,000 horse-power engine. A thin layer of dirt beneath the wheels of an electric car can prevent the current which propels the car from passing to the rails, and thus back to the power house. So sensitive is the Holy Spirit to sin in the heart of a believer that its presence there is a complete obstacle to the manifestation of His love and power.^
(1) He is grieved by insincerity and falsehood, for He is the Spirit of truth. — All that is against truth, all that is against justice and honesty, is hateful to Him. He is grieved at all false- hood, in word or in deed. How much is He grieved then at the insincerity of Christians towards one another, when we change our words towards our neighbours to their face and behind their back ; when we speak them fair as long as they are before us, but have quite a different story when they are gone and cannot hear
1 J. S. Holden, The Spirit of Life, 62.
' C. H. Tyndall, Electricity mid its Similitudes, 78.
2i8 GRIEVING THE SPIRIT
our opinion of them ; when we make a show of friendship as long as we think they may be useful to us and do us good, but speak roughly as soon as we have nothing more to get from them. Surely there can be few greater griefs to the Spirit of truth and faithfulness than to see those whom He is striving to bring into the ways of truth so hollow in heart, so full of false professions, and unmeaning, untrue words.
^ Among her many virtues, one thinks first of her sincerity. She gave to everybody an immediate sense of truth, such as we have when a sum comes right. She could not be disloyal or dis- ingenuous ; she had no use for any sort of trick or artifice ; it was not in her to act or pose or rehearse effects.^
^ " More and more," he said once, " I see that nothing is so necessary for the religious condition of the mind as absolute simplicity. We know what we have got to do, and the only thing is to ask ourselves whether we are doing it as well as we can." ^
(2) He is grieved hy malice and unkindness, for He is the Spirit of love. — How must it grieve Him to see how love is set at nought among Christian people. How must it grieve Him to see how little some people seem to think of cherishing malice and ill-will in their hearts, to see how hard a matter it is to get them to give up a quarrel and really forgive what they suppose is an injury. How must it grieve Him as He accompanies us through the day, watching our dangers, ever anxious to help our weakness, to hear the words of unkindness, of peevishness, of jealousy, which drop from our mouths as the hours wear on, and which we take no care to stop. How must He grieve at the uncharitable suspicions and surmises, at the obstinacy with which we try to put the worst appearance on things, and stretch them from the truth to make them seem as bad as possible.
^ We have read of the old teacher Pythagoras, who had a school of rhetoric, dialectic, and general disputation. All the scholars in the school, we read, used to spring at one another, so to say, and in hot dispute chase the hours of the day ; but their habit was, when the shadows gathered and the school was done, to fall upon each other and with a kiss of peace and brotherhood to close the intellectual fray.^
^ Said of Mrs. Paget, in Francis Paget, Bishop of Oxford, 75.
^ George Frederic Watts, ii. 224.
' J. Parker, The Epistle to the Ephesians, 126.
EPHESIANS IV. 30 219
2. The great instrumentality of the Holy Ghost is conscience. There is a natural conscience in every heathen man, according to which he will be judged at the last day. In the Christian the conscience is more — it is the vehicle of the voice of the Holy Ghost. It needs, of course, to be instructed, or else it will be a morbid or false conscience. But the Spirit's seal is on the conscience. And to silence conscience is to grieve the Spirit. By resisting His warnings and whisperings in our consciences, by going contrary to what He puts into our hearts and makes us see to be right, by refusing to be led by Him when He shows us what we ought to do, we may show more and more that we do not belong to Him, that we do not wish for His help and guidance, that we prefer to walk alone, till at last, wearied out by our provocations and hardness of heart. He lets us have our way, and gives us up to the imaginations of our own hearts. That is what we are always in danger of whenever we grieve Him. That is what we must come to if we grieve Him too long, and presume too far on His patience.