Luke, if he be the writer of the Acts, goes on with his analysis. He
has done with the first fold, the outer garment, as it were; he strips
it off and shows us the next fold, 'full of the Holy Ghost.'
A divine Helper, not merely a divine influence, but a divine Person,
who not only helps men from without, but so enters into a man as that
the man's whole nature is saturated with Him--that is strange language.
Mystical and unreal I dare say some of you may think it, but let us
consider whether some such divine Helper is not plainly pointed as
necessary, by the experience of every man that ever honestly tried to
make himself good.
I have no doubt that I am speaking to many persons who, more or less
constantly and courageously and earnestly, have laboured at the task of
self-improvement and self-culture. I venture to think that, if their
standard of what they wish to attain is high, their confession of what
they have attained will be very low. Ah, brother! if we think of what
it is that we need to make us good--viz. the strengthening of these
weak wills of ours, which we cannot strengthen but to a very limited
degree by any tonics that we can apply, or any supports with which we
may bind them round; if we consider the resistance which ourselves, our
passions, our tastes, our habits, our occupations offer, and the
resistance which the world around us, friends, companions, and all the
aggregate, dread and formidable, of material things present to our
becoming, in any lofty and comprehensive sense of the term, good men
and women, I think we shall be ready to listen, as to a true Gospel, to
the message that says, 'You do not need to do it by yourself.' You have
got the wolf by the ears, perhaps, for a moment, but there is
tremendous strength in the brute, and your hands and wrists will ache
in holding him presently, and what will happen then? You do not need to
try it yourself. There is a divine Helper standing at your sides and
waiting to strengthen you, and that Helper does not work from outside;
He will pass within, and dwell in your hearts and mould and strengthen
your wills to what is good, and suppress your inclinations to evil,
and, by His inward presence, teach 'your hands to war and your fingers
to fight.'
Surely, surely, the experience of the world from the beginning,
confirmed by the consciousness and conscience of every one of us, tells
us that of ourselves we are impotent, and that the good that is within
the reach of our unaided efforts is poor and fragmentary and
superficial indeed.
The great promise of the Gospel is precisely this promise. We terribly
limit and misunderstand what we call the Gospel if we give such
exclusive predominance to one part of it, as some of us are accustomed
to do. Thank God I the first word that Jesus Christ says to any soul
is, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee.' But that first word has a second that
follows it, 'Arise! and walk!' and it is for the sake of the second
that the first is spoken. The gift of pardon, the consciousness of
acceptance, the fact of reconciliation with God, the closing of the
doors of the place of retribution, the quieting of the stings of
accusing conscience, all these are but meant to be introductory to that
which Jesus Christ Himself, in the Gospel of John, emphatically calls
more than once '_the_ gift of God,' which He symbolised by 'living
water,' which whosoever drank should never thirst, and which whosoever
possessed would give it forth in living streams of holy life and noble
deeds. The promise of the Gospel is the promise of new life, derived
from Christ and maintained in us by the indwelling Spirit, which will
come like fresh reinforcements to an all but beaten army in some
hard-fought field, which will stand like a stay behind a man, to us
almost blown over by the gusts of temptation, which will strengthen
what is weak, raise what is low, illumine what is dark, and will make
us who are evil good with a goodness given by God through His Son.
Surely there is nothing more congruous with that divine character than
that He who Himself is good, and good from Himself, should rejoice in
making us, His poor children, into His own likeness. Surely He would
not be good unless He delighted to make us good. Surely it is something
very like presumption in men to assert that the direct communication of
the Spirit of God with the spirits whom God has made is an
impossibility. Surely it is flying in the face of Scripture teaching to
deny that such communication is a promise. Surely it is a flagrant
contradiction of the depths of Christian experience to falter in the
belief that it is a very solid reality.
'Full of the Holy Ghost,' as a vessel might be to its brim of golden
wine; Christian men and women! does that describe you? Full? A
dribbling drop or two in the bottom of the jar. Whose fault is it? Why,
with that rushing mighty wind to fill our sails if we like, should we
be lying in the sickly calms of the tropics, with the pitch oozing out
of the seams, and the idle canvas flapping against the mast? Why, with
those tongues of fire hovering over our heads, should we be cowering
over grey ashes in which there lives a little spark? Why, with that
great rushing tide of the river of the water of life, should we be like
the dry watercourses of the desert, with bleached and white stones
baking where the stream should be running? 'O! Thou that art named the
House of Israel, is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? Are these His
doings?'