But if this be so, what will your share be in this coming life? The Spirit of God, as we now understand it, comes to us with calls of this kind.
If you would hasten the Advent of Christ in your own soul and in the souls of others, you must discard selfishness, you must rise above self-indulgence, you must prepare to merge yourself in the social life, for the social good; seeing that the growth of this good is the only sure and certain sign of the coming of the Lord. So, then, the Angel of the Advent is thus calling us. The future before you is big with social and religious issues, and the Spirit of Christ is brooding over it, and you and such as you are to be His chosen instruments in helping forward these issues.
XVIII. SPIRITUAL POWER.
“And behold I send the promise of My Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.”—St. Luke xxiv. 49.
“Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”—Acts i. 8.
To-day we are celebrating the last of the series of historical festivals which mark the springtime of our Christian year. And without this one the rest would leave us with a sense of incompleteness; for we should be without its gift of the abiding and indwelling Spirit, and the fulfilment of the last promise.
What, then, are we learning of its practical lessons, and gathering into our life? We have read the Pentecostal narrative, and others that illustrate it. We have sung Pentecostal hymns. We have joined in special prayer for the light of the Holy
Spirit to shine in our hearts, giving us a right judgment; and if we are led to ask, “To what purpose is all this?” the answer is to be seen in the texts I have just read to you, the burden of which is the gift of power from on high. Do we not recognise this as the end of the New Testament revelation? And do we not acknowledge that this revelation fails, so far as we are concerned, if it gives us no such power? It is, indeed, in considering this power of the Spirit that we touch to the quick the real influence of religion in the practical life of men; for experience shows that it is possible for a man to be endowed with almost every other gift and yet to lack this one—this indwelling gift of the Holy Ghost the Comforter.
Our life is filled with almost everything we could ask or require to enlighten us or to guide and direct, and yet it fails sometimes.
It may be failing in some of us here to-day, just from want of this Divine spark,
this influence of a Spirit from above taking up His abode in us, burning and shining in our hearts so as to purge our affections from sinful taint and purify our tastes, lifting up and enlarging our capacities, and rousing our energies—in one word, fusing all our life into a new form with its refining power.