Part 17

(5) Closely related to the foregoing thought, like the wind the Holy Spirit is _life giving_. This thought comes out again and again in the Scriptures. For example, we read in John vi. 63, A. R. V., “It is the Spirit that giveth life,” and in 2 Cor. iii. 6, we read, “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” Perhaps the most suggestive passage on this point is Ezek. xxxvii. 8, 9, 10, “And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was _no breath_ in them. Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto _the wind_, prophesy, son of man, and say to _the wind_, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded me, and _the breath came into them, and they lived_, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army” (cf. John iii. 5). Israel, in the prophet’s vision, was only bones, very many and very dry (vs. 2, 11), until the prophet proclaimed unto them the word of God; then there was a noise and a shaking and the bones came together, bone to his bone, and the sinews and the flesh came upon the bones, but still there was no life, but when the wind blew, the breath of God’s Spirit, then “they stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army.” All life in the individual believer, in the teacher, the preacher, and the church is the Holy Spirit’s work. You will sometimes make the acquaintance of a man, and as you hear him talk and observe his conduct, you are repelled and disgusted. Everything about him declares that he is a dead man, a moral corpse and not only dead but rapidly putrefying. You get away from him as quickly as you can. Months afterwards you meet him again. You hesitate to speak to him; you want to get out of his very presence, but you do speak to him, and he has not uttered many sentences before you notice a marvellous change. His conversation is sweet and wholesome and uplifting; everything about his manner is attractive and delightful. You soon discover that the man’s whole conduct and life has been transformed. He is no longer a putrefying corpse but a living child of God. What has happened? The Wind of God has blown upon him; he has received the Holy Spirit, the Holy Wind. Some quiet Sabbath day you visit a church. Everything about the outward appointments of the church are all that could be desired. There is an attractive meeting-house, an expensive organ, a gifted choir, a scholarly preacher. The service is well arranged but you have not been long at the gathering before you are forced to see that there is no life, that it is all form, and that there is nothing really being accomplished for God or for man. You go away with a heavy heart. Months afterwards you have occasion to visit the church again; the outward appointments of the church are much as they were before but the service has not proceeded far before you note a great difference. There is a new power in the singing, a new spirit in the prayer, a new grip in the preaching, everything about the church is teeming with the life of God. What has happened? The Wind of God has blown upon that church; the Holy Spirit, the Holy Wind, has come. You go some day to hear a preacher of whose abilities you have heard great reports. As he stands up to preach you soon learn that nothing too much has been said in praise of his abilities from the merely intellectual and rhetorical standpoint. His diction is faultless, his style beautiful, his logic unimpeachable, his orthodoxy beyond criticism. It is an intellectual treat to listen to him, and yet after all as he preaches you cannot avoid a feeling of sadness, for there is no real grip, no real power, indeed no reality of any kind, in the man’s preaching. You go away with a heavy heart at the thought of this waste of magnificent abilities. Months, perhaps years, pass by and you again find yourself listening to this celebrated preacher, but what a change! The same faultless diction, the same beautiful style, the same unimpeachable logic, the same skillful elocution, the same sound orthodoxy, but now there is something more, there is reality, life, grip, power in the preaching. Men and women sit breathless as he speaks, sinners bowed with tears of contrition, pricked to their hearts with conviction of sin; men and women and boys and girls renounce their selfishness, and their sin and their worldliness and accept Jesus Christ and surrender their lives to Him. What has happened? The Wind of God has blown upon that man. He has been filled with the Holy Wind.