Westminster Sermons / with a Preface

by Charles Kingsley

The true doctrine, it seems to me, is laid down most clearly by the famous bishop, Cyril of Alexandria; who, whatever personal faults he had—and they were many—had doubtless dialectic intellect enough for this, and even deeper questions. And he says—“The Holy Spirit moves all things that are moved; and holds together, and animates, and makes alive, the whole universe. Nor is He another Nature different from the Father and the Son: but as He is in us; of the same nature and the same essence as they.” And so says another divine, Eneas of Gaza—“The Father, with the Son, sends forth the Holy Spirit; and inspiring with this Spirit all things, beyond sense and of sense—invisible and visible—fills them with power, and holds them together, and draws them to Himself.” And he prays thus to the Holy Spirit a prayer which is to my mind as noble as it is true—“O Holy Spirit, by whom God inspires, and holds together, and preserves all things, and leads them to perfection.” I quote such words to shew you that I am not giving you new fancies of my own: but simply what I believe to be the ancient, orthodox and honest meaning

of that same Nicene Creed, which you just new heard; where it says that the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life; and the meaning of the 104th Psalm also, where it says—“Thou lettest Thy breath—Thy Spirit—go forth, and they shall be made, and Thou shall renew the face of the earth.”

And now—if anyone shall say—This may be all very true. But what is it to me? You are talking about nature; about animals and plants, and lands and seas. What I come to church to hear of, is about my own soul—

I should answer such a man—My good friend, you come to church to hear about God as well as about what you call your soul. And any sound knowledge which you can learn about God, must be—believe me—of use to your immortal soul. For if you have wrong notions concerning God: how can you avoid having wrong notions concerning your soul, which lives and moves and has its being in God?

But look at it thus. At least I have been speaking of the works of God. And are not you, too, a work of God? The Lord shall rejoice in His works, even to the tiniest gnat that dances in the sun. Is the Lord rejoicing in you? I have said—Whither shall a man go from God’s presence? Are you forgetting or remembering God’s presence? And—Whither shall a man flee from God’s Spirit? Are you, O man, fleeing from God’s Spirit, and forgetting His gracious inspirations; all pure and holy, and noble, and just and lovely and truly human, thoughts, in the whirl of pleasure, or covetousness,

or ambition, or actual sin? If so, look at the tiniest gnat which dances in the air, the meanest flower beneath your feet; and be ashamed, and fear, and tremble before the Living God, and before His Spirit. For the gnat and the flower are doing their duty, and pleasing the Holy Spirit of God; and you are not doing your duty, and are grieving the Holy Spirit of God. For simply: because that Spirit is the Spirit of God, He is a Holy Spirit, who tries to make you—O man and not animal—holy; a moral, and spiritual, and good being. Because you are a moral and spiritual being, God’s Spirit exercises over you a moral power which He does not exercise over the plants and animals. He works not merely on your body and your brain: but on your heart and immortal soul. But if you choose to be immoral, when He is trying to keep you moral; if you choose to be carnal like the brutes, while He is trying to make you spiritual, like Jesus Christ, from whom He proceeds: then, oh then, tremble, and beware, and be ashamed before the very flowers which grow in your own garden-bed; for they fulfil the law which God has given them. They are what they ought to be, each after its kind. But you are not what you ought to be, after your kind; which is a good man, or a good woman, or a good child.

Oh beware lest the Lord should fulfil in you the awful words of this Psalm; lest He should hide His face from you, and you be troubled; and lest when He takes away your breath you should die, and turn again to your dust; and find, too late, that the wages of sin are death—death not merely of the body, but of the soul. Rather

repent, and amend, and remember that most blessed, and yet most awful fact—that God’s Spirit is with you from your baptism until now, putting into your heart good desires, and ready to enable you—if you will—to bring those good desires to good effect: instead of leaving them only as good intentions, with which, says the too true proverb, hell is paved.

So will be fulfilled in you the blessed words of the next verse—When Thou lettest Thy Spirit go forth, they shall be made; and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth—words which St Augustine of old applied to the work of God’s Spirit on the souls of men.

For well it is with us—as St Augustine says—when God takes away from us our own spirit, the spirit of pride and self-will and self-righteousness; and we see that we are but dust and ashes; worse than the animals, in that we have sinned, and they have not. Confess—he says—thy weakness and thy dust: and then listen to what follows:—Thou shalt take away from them their own spirit; but Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit on them, and they shall be made and created anew. As the Apostle says, “We are God’s own workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” And so—he says—God will indeed renew the face of the earth with converted and renewed men, who confess that they are not righteous in themselves, but made righteous by the grace of the Spirit of God; and so the Lord shall rejoice in His works; you will be indeed His work, and He will rejoice in you.