'The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man
to profit withal.'--1 COR. xii. 7.
The great fact which to-day[1] commemorates is too often regarded as
if it were a transient gift, limited to those on whom it was first
bestowed. We sometimes hear it said that the great need of the
Christian world is a second Pentecost, a fresh outpouring of the
Spirit of God and the like. Such a way of thinking and speaking
misconceives the nature and significance of the first Pentecost,
which had a transient element in it, but in essence was permanent.
The rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire, and the
strange speech in many languages, were all equally transient. The
rushing wind swept on, and the house was no more filled with it. The
tongues flickered into invisibility and disappeared from the heads.
The hubbub of many languages was quickly silent. But that which these
things but symbolised is permanent; and we are not to think of
Pentecost as if it were a sudden gush from a great reservoir, and the
sluice was let down again after it, but as if it were the entrance
into a dry bed, of a rushing stream, whose first outgush was attended
with noise, but which thereafter flows continuous and unbroken. If
churches or individuals are scant of that gift, it is not because it
has not been bestowed, but because it has not been accepted.
My text tells us two things: it unconditionally and broadly asserts
that every Christian possesses this great gift--the manifestation is
given to every man; and then it asserts that the gift of each is
meant to be utilised for the good of all. 'The manifestation is given
to every man to profit withal.'
I. Let me, then, say a word or two, to begin with, about the
universality of this gift.
Now, that is implied in our Lord's own language, as commented upon by
the Evangelist. For Jesus Christ declared that this was the standing
law of His kingdom, to be universally applied to all its members,
that 'He that believeth on Him, out of him shall flow rivers of
living water'; and the Evangelist's comment goes on to say, 'This
spake He of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should
receive.' _There_ is the condition and the qualification. Wherever
there is faith, there the Spirit of God is bestowed, and bestowed in
the measure in which faith is exercised. So, then, in full accordance
with such fundamental principles in reference to the gift of the
Spirit of God, comes the language of my text, and of many another
text to which I cannot do more than refer. But let me just quote one
or two of them, in order that I may make more emphatic what I believe
a great many Christian people do not realise as they ought--viz. that
the gift of God's Holy Spirit is not a thing to be desired, as if it
were not possessed or confined to select individuals, or manifested
by exceptional and lofty attainments, but is the universal heritage
of the whole Christian Church. 'Know ye not that ye are the temple of
the Holy Ghost?' 'We have all been made to drink into one Spirit,'
says Paul again, in the immediate context. 'If any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of His,' says he, unconditionally. And
in many other places the same principle is laid down, a principle
which I believe the Christian Church to-day needs to have recalled to
its consciousness, that it may be quickened to realise it in its
experience far more than is the case at present.
Let me remind you, too, that that universality of the gifts of the
Divine Spirit is implied in the very conception of what Christ's
work, in its deepest and most precious aspects to us, is. For we are
not to limit, as a great many so-called earnest evangelical teachers
and believers do--we are not to limit His work to that which is
effected when a man first becomes a Christian--viz. pardon and
acceptance with God. God forbid that I should ever seem to underrate
that great initial gift on which everything else must be built. But I
am not underrating it when I say, 'Let us prophesy according to the
proportion of faith,' and the 'proportion of faith' has been
violated, and the perspective and completeness of Christian truth,
and of Christ's gifts, have been, alas! to a very large extent
distorted because Christian people, trained in what we call the
evangelical school, have laid far too little emphasis on the fact
that the essential gift of Christ to His people is not pardon, nor
acceptance, nor justification, but _life_; and that forgiveness,
and altered relationship to God, and assurance of acceptance with
Him, are all preliminaries. They are, if I may recur to a figure that
I have already employed, the preparing of the channel, and the taking
away of the obstacles that block its mouth, in order to the inrush of
the flood of the river of the water of life.
This life that Christ gives is the result of the gift of the Spirit.
So 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.' The
life is the gift considered from our side, and the Spirit is the gift
considered from the divine side. 'Every man that hath the Son hath
life'; because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has made him
free from the law of sin and death. So you see if that is true--and I
for my part am sure that it is--then all that vulgar way of looking
at the influences of the Holy Spirit upon men, as if they were
confined to certain exceptional people, or certain abnormal and
extraordinary and elevated acts, is swept away. It is not the
spasmodic, the exceptional, the rare, not the lofty or
transcendentally Christlike acts or characters that are alone the
manifestation of the Spirit.
Nor is this gift a thing that a man can discover as distinct from his
own consciousness. The point where the river of the water of life
comes into the channel of our spirits lies away far up, near the
sources, and long before the stream comes into sight in our own
consciousness, the blended waters have been inseparably mingled, and
flow on peacefully together. 'The Spirit beareth witness _with_
our spirits'; and you are not to expect that you can hear two voices
speaking, but it is one voice and one only.
Now, that universality of this divine gift underlies the very
constitution of the Christian Church. 'Where the Spirit of the Lord
is there is liberty,' said Paul. It is because each Christian man
has access to the one Source of illumination and of truth and
righteousness and holiness, that no Christian man is to become
subject to the dominion of a brother. And it is because on the
servants and on the handmaidens has been poured out, in these
days, God's Spirit and they prophesy, that all domination of classes
or individuals, and all stiffening of the free life of God's Church
by man-made creeds, are contrary to the very basis of its existence,
and an attack on the dignity of each individual member of the Church.
'Ye have an unction from the Holy One' is said to all Christian
people--and 'ye need not that any man teach you,' still less that any
man, or body of men, or document framed by men, should be set up as
normal and authoritative over Christ's free people.
Still further, and only one word--Let me remind you of what I have
already said, and what is only too sadly true, that this grand
universality of the Spirit's gift to all Christian people does not
fill, in the mind of the ordinary Christian man, the place that it
ought, and it does not fill it, therefore, in his experience. I say
no more upon that point.
II. And now let me say a word, secondly, about the many-sidedness of
this universal gift.
One of the reasons why Christian people as a whole do not realise the
universality as they ought is, as I have already suggested in a
somewhat different connection, because they limit their notions far
too much of what the gift of God's Spirit is to do to men. We must
take a wider view of what that Spirit is meant to effect than we
ordinarily take, before we understand how real and how visible its
universal manifestations are. Take a leaf out of the Old Testament.
The man who made the brass-work for the Tabernacle was 'full of the
Spirit of God.' The poets who sung the Psalms, in more than one
place, declare of themselves that they, too, were but the harps upon
which the divine finger played. Samson was capable of his rude feats
of physical strength, because 'the Spirit of God was upon him.' Art,
song, counsel, statesmanlike adaptation of means to ends, and
discernment of proper courses for a nation, such as were exemplified
in Joseph and in Daniel, are, in the Old Testament, ascribed to the
Spirit of God, and even the rude physical strength of the
simple-natured and sensuous athlete is traced up to the same source.
But again, we see another sphere of the Spirit's working in the
manifestations of it in the experience of the primitive Church. These
are, as we all know, accompanied with miracles, speaking with tongues
and working wonders. The signs of that Spirit in those days were
visible and audible. As I said, when the river first came into its
bed, it came like the tide in Morecambe Bay, breast-high, with a
roar and a rush. But it was quiet after that. In the context we have a
whole series of manifestations of this Divine Spirit, some of them
miraculous and some being natural faculties heightened, but all
concerned with the Church as a society, and being for the benefit of
the community.
But there is another class. If you turn to the Epistle to the
Galatians, you will find a wonderful list there of what the Apostle
calls 'the fruit of the Spirit,' beginning with 'love, joy, peace.'
These are all moral and religious, bearing upon personal experience
and the completeness of the individual character.
Now, let us include all these aspects in our conception of the fruit
of the Spirit's working on men--the secular, if we may use that word,
as exhibited in the Old Testament; the miraculous, as seen in the
first days of the Church; the ecclesiastical, if we may so designate
the endowments mentioned in the context, and the purely personal,
moral, and religious emotions and acts. The plain fact is that
everything in a Christian's life, except his sin, is the
manifestation of that Divine Spirit, from whom all good thoughts,
counsels, and works do proceed. He is the 'Spirit of adoption,' and
whenever in my heart there rises warm and blessed the aspiration
'Abba! Father!' it is not my voice only, but the voice of that Divine
Spirit. He is the Spirit of intercession; and whenever in my soul
there move yearning desires after infinite good, child-like longings
to be knit more closely to Him, that, too, is the voice of God's
Spirit; and our prayers are then 'sweet, indeed, when He the Spirit
gives by which we pray.' In like manner, all the variety of Christian
emotions and experiences is to be traced to the conjoint operation of
that Divine Spirit as the source, and my own spirit as influenced by,
and the organ of, the Spirit of God. If I may take a very rough
illustration, there is a story in the Old Testament about a king, to
whom were given a bow and arrow, with the command to shoot. The
prophet's hand was laid on the king's weak hand, and the weak hand
was strengthened by the touch of the other; and with one common pull
they drew back the string and the arrow sped. The king drew the bow,
but it was the prophet's hand grasping his wrist that gave him
strength to do it. And that is how the Spirit of God will work with
us if we will.
III. Finally, consider the purpose of all the diverse manifestations
of the one universal gift.
'To profit withal'--for his own good who possesses it, and for the
good of all the rest of his brethren.
Now, that involves two plain things. There have been people in the
Christian Church who have said, 'We have all the Spirit, and
therefore we do not need one another.' There may be isolation, and
self-sufficiency, and a host of other evils coming in, if we only
grasp the thought, 'The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every
man,' but they are all corrected if we go on and say, 'to profit
withal.' For every one of us has something, and no one of us has
everything; so, on the one hand, we want each other, and, on the
other hand, we are responsible for the use of what we have.
You get the life, not in order that you may plume yourself on its
possession, nor in order that you may ostentatiously display it,
still less in order that you may shut it up and do nothing with it;
but you get the life in order that it may spread through you to
others.
'The least flower with a brimming cup may stand,
And share its dew-drop with another near.'
We each have the life that God's grace may fructify through us to
all. Power is duty; endowment is obligation; capacity prescribes
work. 'The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to
profit withal.'
You can regulate the flow. You have the sluice; you can shut it or
open it. I have said that the condition, and the only condition, of
possessing the fulness of God's Spirit is faith in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, the more you trust the more you have, and the less your
faith the less the gift. You can get much or little, according to the
greatness or the smallness, the fixity or the transiency, of your
desires. If you hold the empty cup with a tremulous hand, the
precious liquid will not be poured into it--for some of it will be
spilt--in the same fulness as it would be if you held it steadily. It
is the old story--the miraculous flow of the oil stopped when the
widow had no more pots and vessels to bring. The reason why some of
us have so little of that Divine Spirit is because we have not held
out our vessels to be filled. You can diminish the flow by ignoring
it, and that is what a host of so-called Christian people do
nowadays. You can diminish it by neglecting to use the little that
you have for the purpose for which it was given you. Does anybody
profit by your spiritual life? Do you profit much by it yourselves?
Has it ever been of the least good to anybody else in the world? 'The
manifestation of the Spirit is given to' you, if you are a Christian
man or woman, more or less. And if you shut it up, and do never an
atom of good with it, either to yourselves or to anybody else, of
course it will slip away; and, sometime or other, to your
astonishment, you will find that the vessels are empty, and that the
Spirit of the Lord has departed from you. 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit
of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.'
[Footnote 1: Whitsunday.]