II. IF YOU WANT TO BE MADE TO FEEL, YOU MUST LOSE NO TIME IN GOING NEAR
TO A FATHER’S THRONE.
You will never feel warm while you stand shivering outside the city. You
must go inside, even while you are cold, and there have your heart warmed
by the Lord Himself. Remember that the great heart-warming subject is
the tender love of God as displayed in Christ Jesus. If the love of
Christ does not make you feel, nothing else will. Do not, therefore,
stand afar off gazing on your own coldness, but turn at once to the Cross
of Christ. Study Him in the garden bowed down under the heavy burden of
sin; study Him on the cross forsaken even of the Father, and remember
that all that was borne for you, even for you. Remember there was a
personal connection between Him and you in the whole of that great
transaction, and so abide, as it were, gazing on the Lord Jesus, on His
life, on His meekness, on His burden, on His cry. Pray God that you may
realize your part in the whole matter. Confess before Him your own cold,
dead, lifeless condition. Trust Him, as He died for you, to save you
from it; and so you may hope that, though you feel so cold as you
approach Him, you may experience something of His love when you gaze on
Him, and know something even of His joy when you go on your way justified
through His grace.
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}