When the Holy Ghost is Come

by Samuel Logan Brengle

Occasionally, the call comes to a man who is ready and responds promptly and gladly. When Isaiah received the fiery touch that purged his life and purified his heart, he “heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” And in the joy and power of his new experience, he cried out, “Here am I; send me!” (Isaiah vi. 5-8).

When Paul received his call, he says, “Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. i. 16), and he got up and went as the Lord led him.

But more often it seems the Lord finds men preoccupied with other plans and ambitions, or encompassed with obstacles and difficulties, or oppressed with a deep sense of unworthiness or unfitness. Moses argued that he could not talk. “O Lord!” he said, “I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy servant; but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.”

And then the Lord condescended, as He always does, to reason with the backward man. “Who hath made man’s mouth?” He asks, “or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord? Now, therefore, go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say” (Exodus iv. 10-12).

When the call of God came to Jeremiah, he shrank back, and said, “Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.” But the Lord replied, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee” (Jeremiah i. 6-8).

And so the call of God comes to-day to those who shrink and feel that they are the most unfit, or most hedged in by insuperable difficulties.

I know a man, who, when converted, could not tell A from B. He knew nothing whatever about the Bible, and stammered so badly that, when asked his own name, it would usually take him a minute or so to tell it; added to this, he lisped badly, and was subject to a nervous affliction which seemed likely to unfit him for any kind of work whatever. But God poured light and love into his heart, called him to preach, and to-day he is one of the mightiest soul-winners in the whole round of my acquaintance. When he speaks the house is always packed to the doors, and the people hang on his words with wonder and joy.

He was converted at a Camp meeting, and sanctified wholly in a cornfield. He learned to read; but, being too poor to afford a light in the evening, he studied a large-print Bible by the light of the full moon. To-day, he has the Bible almost committed to memory, and when he speaks he does not open the Book, but reads his lesson from memory, and quotes proof texts from Genesis to Revelation without mistake, and gives chapter and verse for every quotation. When he talks his face shines, and his speech is like honey for sweetness, and like bullets fired from a gun for power. He is one of the weak and foolish ones God has chosen to confound the wise and mighty (1 Cor. i. 27).

If God calls a man, He will so corroborate the call in some way, that men may know that there is a prophet among them. It will be with him as it was with Samuel. “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of His words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord” (1 Samuel iii. 19, 20).

If the man himself is uncertain about the call, God will deal patiently with him, as He did with Gideon, to make him certain. His fleece will be wet with dew when the earth is dry, or dry when the earth is wet; or he will hear of some tumbling barley cake smiting the tents of Midian, that will strengthen his faith, and make him to know that God is with him (Judges vi. 36-40; vii. 9-15).