III. Remember well that Feeling is the Gift of the Holy Spirit, and that you cannot work yourself up to it.
It is very clearly the work of the Holy Spirit to call forth feeling. He does not act on the head only, but on the heart also. He opens the understanding, but His great office is to make His people feel what they already know. Thus of the nine fruits of the Spirit [27a] the first three are all emotions. Their seat is neither in the head nor in the practice, but they are all feelings of the heart, “Love, joy, peace.” They all lead to practice, and all are founded on principle, but all three are sacred emotions implanted there by the Holy Ghost Himself.
If, therefore, your cold, unfeeling heart is a real sorrow to you; if the trouble of your heart is that your sins trouble you so little, and that you feel so coldly towards that Blessed Saviour who has felt for you so deeply, rest not content, but throw yourself before God that the Spirit of grace and of supplication may enable you to look upon Him whom you have pierced, that He may take of the things of Jesus and show them unto you; that He may call forth in your soul His own fruits of love, joy, and peace, and that so He may answer you the Apostle’s prayer—“The God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” [27b]
A PEACEFUL DEATH-BED
“Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word:
“For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”—St. Luke ii. 29, 30.
Our thoughts are often directed to the blessed prospect of our Lord’s return, and there cannot be a doubt that His personal coming is the crowning hope of the Church of God. At the same time, it is most important for us to be, if I may so express it, familiar with the thought of the present heaven. The youngest amongst us may be cut down at any moment, and the old amongst us must be convinced that our time is short, and that our places must soon be filled by others. We ought, therefore, to know where we are going, and what it is that awaits us when “the earthly house of this tabernacle shall be dissolved.” [28a]
The words of our text, so often chanted in our churches, express a sentiment to which, I fear, many who chant them are entire strangers, for they express the peaceful readiness with which Simeon was looking forward to his death. It had been “revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” [28b] He had, therefore, spent his latter days waiting and watching for the promised Christ, and at length, when the Child was presented in the Temple, he saw in that Child the Messiah for whom he had been waiting, and then it was that, his hope being fulfilled, he could bless God and say, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”
There are three subjects suggested by his words.