THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE SPIRIT
To know GOD and to find Him revealed in Jesus Christ is not enough. To
have set before one in the human life of Jesus an ideal of character,
a pattern of perfect manhood for imitation, if the message of the
Gospel were regarded as stopping short at that point, could only be
discouraging to men conscious of moral weakness, of spiritual
impotence and incapacity. It is probable that one of the reasons why
the plain man to-day is so very apt to regard Christianity as
consisting in the profession of a standard of ideal morality to which
he knows himself to be personally incapable of attaining, and which
those who do profess it fail conspicuously to practise, is to be found
in the entire absence from his mind and outlook of any conception of
the Holy Spirit, or any belief in the availability of the Spirit as a
source of transforming energy and power in the lives of men.
As a matter of fact, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is of absolutely
vital importance in the Christian scheme: and like all the great
Christian doctrines, it has its basis in the realities of living
experience. The opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles set
before us the picture of the earliest disciples, assured and no longer
doubtful of the reality of the Resurrection, waiting in Jerusalem for
a promised endowment of "power from on high." And the story of
Pentecost is the record of the fulfilment of "the promise of the
Father."
We are making a mistake if we fix our attention primarily upon the
outward symbols of wind and fire, or confuse our minds with the
perplexities which are suggested by the references to "speaking with
tongues." These things--however wonderful to the men of the Apostolic
generation--are in themselves only examples of the psychological
abnormalities which not infrequently accompany religious revivals.
They are, as it were, the foam on the crest of the wave: evidences
upon the surface of profounder forces astir in the deeper levels of
personality. The disciples felt themselves taken hold of and
transformed. Henceforth they were new men. "GOD had sent into their
hearts through Jesus Christ a Power not of this world: only such a
power could achieve what history assures us was achieved by those
early Christians. By its compelling influence they found themselves
welded together into a religious and social community, a fellowship of
faith and hope and love, the true Israel, the Church of the living
GOD. Enabled to become daily more and more like Jesus, they developed
an ever fuller comprehension of His unique significance: and so they
went about carrying on the work and teaching which He had begun on
earth, certain that He was with them and energizing in them. They
healed the sick in mind and body, they convinced Jewish and Pagan
consciences of sin and its forgiveness, they created a new morality,
and established a new hope: life and immortality were brought to
light. And then, as need arose, they were inspired to write those
books of the New Testament, in which their wonderful experience of GOD
at work in them remains enshrined, the norm and standard of Christian
faith and practice for all time. The Power which enabled them to do
all this they called the Holy Spirit." [Footnote: _The Holy Spirit,_
by R. G. Parsons, in _The Meaning of the Creed_. (S.P.C.K., 1917)]
To be "filled with the Spirit," to be "endued with power from on
high," to be made free by the Spirit, so as to be free indeed--
released from the tyranny of a dead past, from bondage to law and
literalism, from the power of sin and of evil habit--and to be brought
forth into the glorious liberty of the sons of GOD: this was a very
vital and essential part of what Christianity meant in the experience
of those first disciples. The new morality of the Gospel, the new
righteousness which was to exceed the righteousness of Pharisees and
Scribes, was a thing as widely removed as possible from painful
conformity to the letter of an external code: it was a fruit--a
spontaneous outcome--of the Spirit. S. Paul has described for us the
fruits of the Spirit as he had seen them manifested in the lives of
men--"love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, meekness, self-control": they are the essential
lineaments of the character of Christ: they are summed up in the
thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians in S. Paul's great hymn to Charity
or Love, which itself reads like yet another portrait of the Christ. A
Christianity which through the Spirit brought forth such fruits was
true to type. The Spirit, in short, reproduced in men the life of
filial relationship towards GOD: He is described as the Spirit of
adoption, whereby men are enabled to cry Abba, Father.
The Holy Spirit, moreover, is a Spirit of insight and interpretation,
quickening men's faculties, enlightening their minds, enabling them to
see, and to understand. He brings to remembrance the things of Christ
and unfolds their significance: under His inspiration Christian
preaching was developed, and a Christian doctrine about Christ and
about GOD. In confident reliance upon His advocacy and His support the
Apostles were made bold to confront in the name of Jesus a hostile
world. Is it any wonder that in the eyes of their contemporaries they
appeared as men possessed, as men made drunk with the new wine of some
strange ecstasy, or mad with the fervour of some inexplicable
exaltation? Yet the Spirit did not normally issue in ecstasy. It is
not the way of GOD to over-ride men's reason, or to place their
individual personalities in abeyance. The operation of the Spirit is
to be seen rather--apart from His work in the gradual purification and
deepening of character and motive, the bringing to birth and
development in men's souls of the "new man" who is "Christ in them,
the hope of glory"--in the intensification of men's normal faculties
and gifts, and the direction of their exercise into channels
profitable to the well-being of the community. For the Holy Spirit is
the Spirit of brotherhood: and His gifts are bestowed "for the fitting
of GOD'S people for the work of mutual service": they are for the
upbuilding of the Body of Christ. The real miracle of the Christian
life is simply the Christian life itself: and that a man should love
his neighbour as himself is at least as wonderful as that he should
speak with tongues.
Reflecting upon the experience which had come to them, Christian men
came to see that the Holy Spirit, who was the Spirit of the Father and
the Son, was Divine, even as Jesus was Divine. In this strange Power
which had transformed their lives they discovered GOD, energizing and
operative in their hearts. Instinctively they worshipped and glorified
the Spirit as the Lord, the Giver of Life. Those who have entered upon
any genuine measure of Christian experience are not prepared to say
that they were wrong.
The Christian life depends upon the Spirit, now as then. Only in the
power of the Holy Spirit is Christianity possible, and no one ever yet
made any real advance in personal religion except in dependence upon
an enabling energy of which the source was not in himself. "It is the
Spirit that maketh alive." "The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." "I
know that in myself, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing."
"If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask Him." It is because of our lack of any living or effectual
belief in the Holy Spirit, and because of our consequent failure to
seek His inspiration and to submit ourselves to His influence, that
the Christianity of men to-day is often so barren and so poor a thing;
and the corporate life of Christendom languishes for the same reason.
The Church is meant to be a fellowship, a brotherhood: the most real
and living brotherhood on earth. Men find to-day the realization of
brotherhood in a regiment: they find it in a school or in a club: in a
Trade Union: or in such an organization as the Workers' Educational
Association. They fail to find it in the Church of Christ.
The Church can never be a brotherhood save in the Holy Spirit: for
Christianity is essentially and before all things a religion of the
Spirit, and the external organization and institutions of the Church,
apart from "His vivifying breath, are a mere empty shell. Where there
is no vision the people perish: and it is only under the inspiration
of the Spirit that men see visions and dream dreams. Come from the
four winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these dry bones of our modern
churchmanship, that we may live: and so at last shall we stand upright
on our feet, an exceeding great army, and go forth conquering and to
conquer in the train of the victorious Christ."