The Holy Spirit and Christian service

Front matter

1 ahs SPA ae Robertson, The Holy ee ee het

» mal tS Sa ee we SS

Te BE OT Ya S Pip Rial:

II

i vt

I]

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN SERVICE

God for His service needeth not proud work of human skill ; They please Him best who labour most to do in peace His will. WORDSWORTH.

In the first lecture of this course we began by drawing attention to the intimate relations which should exist between the Holy Spirit and Christian service. We had the feeling of those who were seeking to recover a forgotten article of belief. This truth, which it is the main object of our speaking here to revive, has been called “a lost gospel,” so completely has it sunk out of the living consciousness of the Church. There are, alas! many evidences of this. These we cannot wait to enumerate. Beyond a doubt much of our feebleness and failure in God’s service spring from the common ignoring of the necessary part which He should have init. For the same reason also, we find leading Christian teachers describing the Holy Spirit as a “thin, shadowy effluence,

24 ZLHE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE proceeding from the Father and Son, as the breath proceeds from the human body.” These things would have been impossibilities if we had given this doctrine the same place in our living beliefs which it had in the minds of the first founders of the Christian Church. It is a vague conviction of this kind that has evoked the cry, happily beginning to be popular in certain circles of the Church, “ Back to Pentecost ! Back to Pentecost!” It might be wiser if we strove to bring Pentecost down into the present, by making more room for the Holy Spirit’s co-operation in our work, Then we should have an experience similar to that of the disciples immediately after the Resurrection. We should have a new and abundant coming of the Holy Spirit into our midst, a more abiding experience of His presence in each, and a consequent increase in the power of all to work for their risen Master.

But it may be asked: How can the Holy Spirit co-operate with us in service? How can an infinite and omnipotent mind and will act in and through us without destroying our responsibility and freedom? Are we to be mere passive subjects used by Him, controlled by Him, and deriving all our life and power from Him? If so, would not this be to take away the glory of serving Him? Is not the chief value of our homage and obedience to be found in the fact

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN SERVICE 25 that it is rendered freely and willingly, rather than of constraint? Would it not be robbing man of the peculiar attributes which belong to him, as made in the Divine image, if we thus make him an instrument in the hands of a Divine agent? Ah, my friends! these ideas are foreign to the life and activity that are the result of God’s union with man’s efforts through the Holy Spirit. We cannot bring the analogies that are connected with mechanical action in the outward world into this higher sphere of spiritual freedom. As well might we expect that God would make the fields fertile by preaching to them, or the flowers grow by singing to them. The means used must be appropriate to the effects which it is sought to produce. And if mind is to act upon mind, it will not be through forces of a material kind, or agencies like those which are at work in nature. We influence our fellows in a thousand ways that are more subtle and persuasive than mere physical contact or compulsion; and so it is with God in relation to us. He communicates impulses and inspirations, intuitions and desires, in the light of which alone our work for Him among men can be rightly carried through. Nay, just as with the poet or the painter, and the inspirations of his genius, we do our best work when we yield to Divine intimations, instead of following our own poorer and meaner wisdom.

26 THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE EDAAL EDU AMON TOA AS

Moreover, if communion with a larger mind and heart often unseals fountains of thought and feeling, may not the Holy Spirit awaken new powers and reveal new possibilities. Heights become visible, and depths we never sounded are fathomed by the light that dawns from above. We get strength for duty and temptation, difficulty and trial, through fellowship with men; shall we not be incomparably more helped by the higher fellowship with God in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Here, if anywhere, we find the secret springs of sacred endeavour and spiritual service. In alliance with God, all things are possible ; without Him we can do nothing.

Therefore we are none of us asked to work in our own strength or wisdom, nay, we are expressly forbidden to do so. We could not stand before men, and urge them to enter upon a new life, were we not fully conscious that above them and within them there is One who pleads more effectually than we can do. After all, the Holy Spirit is the great worker, without whom no heart can be changed and no character renewed, purified, and ennobled.

Some aspects of this Divine co-operation are illustrated by what you find in other spheres, - In all the work of the world, behind the feeble efforts of men, there is the almighty power of

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN SERVICE 9 |

God. Every human occupation depends upon one or more of the forces of nature for its efficiency. The telegraphic operator would be useless without electricity ; the sailor counts upon the forces of the wind, or the stored-up energy of the sun, if he is to bring his vessel into port; the farmer avails himself of the frosts of winter, as well as the sunshine of summer and the showers of spring, if he is to secure a harvest. The healer of men’s bodies counts upon the presence of curative forces which were at work before him, and will be after him. The merchant and the statesman utilise social forces in the prosecution of their vast and varied enterprises. Have Christian workers no resources outside themselves, no spiritual forces which they can rely upon, no energies and influences more in-reaching than their own? Surely that would be an anomaly, if all the lower kinds of labour were provided for by God, but this highest order of activity were left unsupported. Many of you will feel irritated by such a suggestion, and some will condemn these analogies as shockingly imperfect. So they are, we admit. For we have not only forces to work with, but a Person in whom these forces are all summed up, centralised, and made more completely available for us. He has all the considerateness, freedom, power of determination and adaptation that we a EE ee he ATE supremely need. He has all the interest in the work that we have, and infinitely more. He has all the power that we lack, all the initiation and wisdom that are so often absent from our efforts to serve Him. To whom then can we go in the first and the last resort but to Him? As we have seen, it is the very greatness and holiness of the Helper, and the littleness and unworthiness of the helped, that give rise to difficulties in thought as to our working with Him. These it would be out of place to attempt to resolve here. They belong to other studies, and can be better dealt with there.

What we have chiefly to remember is that the Holy Spirit not only co-operates with us in Christian service, but His is also the sole and exclusive right to administer our activities. Since Pentecost He has taken the place of rule within the Kingdom of God. He has come down into human life in room of the ascended Redeemer. To Him has been committed the supreme control in the affairs of the Kingdom. His _ oversight and direction extend to the minutest details of its ordained life. He is the rightful sovereign to whom all workers should be subject. In harmony with His will, all Christian work should be undertaken and completed. When He is recognised, and our dependence upon Him acknowledged,

THE HOLY SPIRIT IN SERVICE 20 there will be blessing. When He is ignored or thwarted, it is the beginning of barrenness and misrule. We must accept these relations to Him as the ABC of all Christian service worthy of the name.

What is the practical conclusion from these principles? Is it not that as workers we have to put ourselves wholly in the hands of the Holy Spirit? That may not be always easy to do, for we have all much of the old Adam clinging to us. But that that ought to be the relation between us and Him there can be no question to the sincere Christian mind and the upright Christian heart. You are to allow Him to work with, and in, and through you. The obedience must be unconditional if He is to own and further your work.

The necessity for this self-surrender may be made plainer by a simple and homely illustration. If we are working with any instrument, we require that it should be wholly subservient to our purpose. Let us suppose for a moment that the pencil with which we write became animated and came to have a will of its own. If then it persisted in going up or down, or contrary to the way we were endeavouring to lead it, how could we continue to use it? We wish to trace with it certain characters containing an intelligent meaning ere i i Ee ee and message; but if it refuses and goes its own way, its utility would be at an end. Some other means for effecting our purpose would require to be taken, and we should discard the animated but disobedient pencil. If, to change the figure, it is a horse which we wish to ride, we all know that it requires to be broken in, trained, and made obedient, before it can be of much use. This last is true even of strong-willed children, if they are to grow up to be useful in the Church and in the world.

Is it otherwise with us in relation to the Holy Spirit? We must be broken, subdued, moralised, and spiritualised, before He can work with us for the highest ends of the Kingdom.

The opposition to this view in Christian minds springs either from a wrong idea of the Holy Spirit, or erroneous and narrow notions as to the ways in which He helps us, and makes His will known to us. In regard to both of these there are innumerable and _ obstinate misconceptions requiring to be removed.

The Holy Spirit is God in us, striving to realise the ends and complete the work for which Christ was sent into the world. To be disobedient to Him is to be disobedient to God, and there are none of you who would deny the sin and futility of that.

The chief reasons why this is not clearly and finally apprehended are connected with the erroneous and narrow views held as to the way in which He helps us and manifests His will to us in service. These, we hope, the lectures that follow may do something to correct. But we may say now that there can be no doubt from the testimony of Revelation and experience, that the co-operation of the Holy Spirit with us in service is mediate as well as immediate, indirect as well as direct. His mediate and indirect working may be through the circumstances in which we have been placed, the faculties with which we have been entrusted, and the special spiritual gifts which He has distributed to us for our particular work in life.

In other words, in working with us the Holy Spirit makes use of means.

For example, do we need His guidance in our work? We may get it through believing prayer. Try this means of grace and the Holy Spirit will assuredly fulfil His office, and lead you into all duty as well as into all truth.

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet—

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

But He requires that we should use the means

He has ordained if we are to receive the grace He has promised. When the atmosphere of the soul is purified by devotion, He will make the highest meaning of life plain. You will then learn that He can communicate with you through the inward eye and the spiritual ear, as well as co-operate with you through the outstretched hand of Faith.

If these means fail, there are others you can use for getting His guidance in service. The Scriptures are full of the will of God for you. Is there no law in them to direct you? If so, are you obeying it? Is there no principle applicable to your case? Live in the Spirit which inspires the Scriptures with their peculiar power, and they will divulge the deepest secret of the Divine. mind for your guidance.

Above all, look to the Saviour everywhere so visible in Holy Writ. Put aside for the moment the Divine Christ. Ask what the human Jesus would do in your position. Which course would he choose? Then, do as he would do were he in your place.

Moreover, there are your circumstances, your Church, and the Christian friends in whose disinterested affection and practical wisdom you trust. Through all these and a hundred other channels the Holy Spirit may make known His will for

THE HOLY SPIRIT AN SERVICE 33

SEER eRennEE ee ——s you. These are all parts of the Providential ordering of your life, and the guidance that comes through them should not lightly be set aside.

Nor must you leave out of account the faculties and powers with which God has endowed you. It would be a poor compliment to your Creator if you undervalued the message which they bring you from Him. It would be stark atheism to discard the light that comes through these and the exercise of your native powers of reason and judgment.

But after all use of right means in your search for guidance, you must not exclude the possibility of direct and immediate action of the Holy Spirit upon your mind and heart. Belief in its reality may require to be tempered and tested by sanctified common sense lest it should lead you into onesidedness and a foolish fanaticism. But after every deduction and every allowance for God’s co-operation with us through secondary causes, it remains profoundly and unalterably true that the final decision ought to be reached in accordance with the mind and will of the Spirit active within you. God knows you better than you know yourself. He also loves you; and asa proof of His love He desires to regulate even the details of your life if you will allow Him. His, then, is the light in which you should interpret every other indication D

—— — aie — a of His will for you. When all these guiding influences combine and harmonise, their united testimony should be decisive in all ordinary circumstances. If not, then you must be content to wait. It was a great principle in Christ’s life: “Mine hour is not yet come.” May it not also be so with you in regard to the new course upon which you propose to enter.

If the Holy Spirit can thus co-operate with you in such a variety of ways while you are seeking His guidance, may not His help in other directions be equally varied as to the means through which it reaches you. If this be so, is it not evident that your right relation to Him is that of genuine dependence upon His power and sincere obedience to His will.

No doubt there have been perversions of this principle, but in itself it is thoroughly sound and good.

Our wills are ours, we know not how ;

Our wills are ours to make them Thine.

Our so-called natural freedom is that of caged birds. The environing cage is not all; there is the bird-lime of sin upon all the perches.

Natural needs to be changed to moral freedom if it is to be real. When that has taken place, and the soul is cleansed from sin and sanctified by the Spirit, then our powers of moral choice and

LHI! HOLY SPIRIT AN SERVICE 35 self-determination are changed and become allies —humble allies and co-partners with the mighty God.

Thereafter, the fuller our dependence upon Him, the greater will be our independence of the world, and the more will our freedom be a living reality. We never lose what we give to God, either in the moral or in the material sphere. The coin of earth is changed into the currency of heaven, and a false liberty is exchanged for the true.

The blind obedience of the Jesuits to their Head—embodied in the famous maxim “ Prodnde cadaver —1is but a sorry parody of the true relation of every worker to the Holy Spirit. Bad as it is, and evil as its fruits have been for the most part, yet the early and startling success of this Order showed that the founders had got hold of a right principle, though by the wrong end.

Lastly, you must not imagine that this relation to the Holy Spirit can be wholly passive.

It is not passive, for it is never taken up nor maintained without frequent and repeated effort on our part. The first decision for Christ is sorely against the grain of our nature, and every subsequent step upwards to a higher and higher life is apt to be through strain and stress. It must chafe against, if it does not trample upon,

——— your love of power or pleasure, praise or popularity, honour or ease, money or personal advancement. We are not carried up to heaven upon beds of eider-down.

In conclusion, are we speaking to any who have resisted the Holy Spirit, and in so doing have missed their first vocation? You have taken the low instead of the high road in life, and you are not filling the place nor doing the work which God meant for you. Do not despair. If the highest and best is now beyond you, there is still some good thing appointed for you in the Divine counsels. Out of evil God can bring good; out of the worst, He sometimes brings the best ; and although you can be no longer all that you might have been, or do all that you might have done, God will yet use you and your experience in a service open to no other, and for a purpose higher than you ever dream of.

Ii

Hie HOLY SPIRI PS DISTRIBUTIONZOR DIFFERENT GIFTS FOR SERVICE

7 y

VOT OT;

1A ; M yi a | A e., ed Sa ie A ron

hy

. "i y hi on DER

Ill

THE HOLY SPIRIT’S DISTRIBUTION OF DIFFERENT GIFTS FOR SERVICE

So works the All-wise ! our services dividing Not as we ask ; For the world’s profit, by our gifts deciding Our duty-task. NEWMAN.

In our first lecture we saw that, according to the Christian idea, our life is neither a luxury nora penance, but a spiritual service. As service, it includes work for God among men, as well as worship. In Christianity the service of God is also the service of men. But it is not that service of man which the Religion of Humanity exacts from its disciples. It is not limited to their material and social well-being. In Christ we are called to be fellow-workers with God in the regeneration of the whole nature of man.

In the second lecture we saw that we have the co-operation of the Holy Spirit in this great work, He is the real worker; we are the instruments, the persons whom Heuses. Hence our obedience

40 LHE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE

Se ee eee to Him should be unconditional, if He is to acknowledge the work, Furthermore, His co-operation is of two kinds—mediate and immediate, indirect and direct. In this and the following lecture we have chiefly to speak of His mediate co-operation through our gifts and our circumstances,

For Christian service we have been blessed by the Holy Spirit with gifts, and to-night we are to consider the nature, distribution, and purpose of these. With a view to this we shal] ask and answer three questions :—

1. What are the gifts which have been distributed among us?

2. Why is there so much variety in their distribution ?

3. By what principle are we to estimate their value ?

1. What are the gifts which have been distributed among us?

As a preliminary, we have to ascertain what are gifts. In one sense, everything is a gift which we have not made, bought, or earned for ourselves, When we further ask where gifts come from, we have to answer that ultimately every blessing we possess is the gift of God the Father. We have nothing which we did not receive from Him. Our bodies, our souls, our life and the means of living, our endowments and possessions, all come from His hand. The very food we eat is the outcome of His beneficence. The tiller of the soil may sow the grain, the miller grind it, the baker prepare it for use, but the creative part of the work is done by God. He gives the increase ; He made the earth and the air; He sent the sunshine and the rain. To His goodness, therefore, we owe our food. It is His gift. In like manner the higher endowments of the mind are from Him. No one would ever be so foolish as to imagine that he bestowed them upon himself. Nor can they have come from the flesh and blood of our bodies. They have been begotten in us by the creative Spirit of God. And if all these things have been given, it is that by their means we might live our lives and do our work. « Nevertheless, by gifts, in this connection, we mean something over and above these common blessings and essential requisites of a human life —something which enables us to live that life better, and more powerfully to advance the interests of God’s kingdom in the world. Gifts of this order are of two kinds——natural and spiritual. Let us look first at those which are natural.

What is a natural gift? It is any dzstincteve power of mind or heart or will, any superiority of

42 ZLHE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE position or opportunity which can be used by the Holy Spirit in Christian service. Of natural gifts we at once see that some are internal, others external. Internal gifts are a part of our nature ; external gifts arise out of our circumstances. The former have their seat within us; the latter spring from comparatively outward conditions and relations. Exceptional health or strength, wealth, or social influence, are examples of external gifts ; natural eloquence or energy, tact, or amiability, are internal.

Higher than these, and with more immediate reference to Christian service, we have spiritual cifts. But you must remember that it is not always easy to distinguish between what is natural and spiritual in gifts. There is ‘no fixed and immovable line of demarcation. As the worker is, so are his gifts. When he experiences a change of heart, and becomes a genuine and decided follower of Jesus, he carries his natural faculties with him, whatever they are. As he changes, they are changed. As he _ becomes sanctified and devotes his life to spiritual purposes, they share in the consecration. The strong memory which makes the past live over again, the vivid imagination which makes the future glorious, get a baptism of the Spirit and are applied to spiritual objects. Even external gifts

THE HOLY: SPIRTI’S GIFTS FOR SERVICE 43 are lifted up to the same spiritual level when they are lovingly used in the service of God. It is often wonderful how many results of the most blessed character follow the wise use of wealth or social influence in the interests of the Kingdom of God.

But the exercise of undoubtedly spiritual gifts is that which is fruitful of the highest order of blessing, and we have to ask ourselves what these are. They are so numerous and varied that we can never hope to name them all. No exhaustive list of them can be given. Even that of Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians is notable, not so much because of the fulness of its contents, as for its representative character. Every one of the gifts he mentions is typical. If we found the word of wisdom among ourselves, we should understand how appropriately it stands where it does ——at the head of the list. For it was used. to characterise the Christian worker who had an eminent power of apprehending revealed truth about God and man and their relations in Christ, and who could also bring this to bear upon the practical life of others through the persuasive use of speech. That is unquestionably a supreme gift for service at all times in the Kingdom. Springing from the heart rather than from the head, it empowered him who possessed it to point out what was best both in life and doctrine. Second to it Paul ranks the word of knowledge. It is not less indispensable to us than it was to the first Apostles. For it is a gift of speech arising primarily out of personal experience of spiritual realities. As such, it is always in demand. But it implied also a knowledge of men, their nature and life, their spirit and surroundings. When these two qualifications met in one man, they fitted him both for convincing of sin and building up in righteousness. As to the next, you may say: We do not prophesy now! That gift is not part of the equipment of a Christian worker. We are not so sure of that. For by prophesying here is not meant predicting the future. It is a kind of inspired preaching— a process of planting new ideals in men’s hearts through the power of an original vision of moral and spiritual truth—backed by great earnestness of manner and life. Is not this as necessary now as ever it was? Is it not one of the crying wants of our time? Amid millions of echoes, where are the voices? In a multitude of preachers, how few have the mantle of the prophet. The reason of this in our day is connected with the lack of the next gift, that of faith, For that was more than a species of the common trust in God. It was a gift of the Spirit—special and individual—which

HF HOLY ASPIRLLAS GIL Lo LOL SLAVICLE 45 a stimulated and quickened all those powers of the mind and heart which make God and the unseen world real—palpable to living, breathing, active men and women. The other gifts of governing ability and general helpfulness we have in a degree more proportional to our need. We do not say this because they are of minor importance, but simply because the conditions of modern life have developed them to an extent unparalleled even in the few great civilisations of the ancient world.

But you will say: Surely the other five gifts specified by St. Paul have no bearing upon those which are needed for Christian service now? Were they not eccentric outbreaks of spiritual life and power—puzzling to us rather than helpful and suggestive? Are they not out of sympathy with the habits, and alien to the thoughts of our more scientific generation? We cannot altogether agree with this view. The gifts of healing and miracle-working, the discerning of the spirits, the speaking with tongues and the interpretation of them, were gifts constituting a significant, if a minor, part of the living force of the primitive Church in the formative period of its history, and they are not so utterly foreign to our modern modes of action as they seem at first sight. Strip them of what was, to some extent, local and temporary, and you will find elements of power and forms of influence by no means obsolete among ourselves. Let us bear in mind that it was then the spring-time of the Christian faith, when all the buds of the new life were bursting forth after the Pentecostal showers and the rising of the Sun of Righteousness to His. place in the heavens. Do you wonder if the Holy Spirit signalised His new and abundant coming into human nature and life by empowering the first believers to achieve much that now lies beyond the limits of our activity? Do you wonder that He should work through the bodies as well as through the souls of believers upon others, in ways that are to us inaccessible. Our union of the healing art with the work of the missionary, our exercise of discipline within the church, and the preaching of the Gospel to all nations, are nineteenth - century developments of these first supernatural endowments of the Holy Spirit.

Still, many of you are feeling that in enumerating gifts distributed among workers, I have not alluded to some of the most precious. That is very probable, for there must ever be new developments and manifestations of gifts to meet the varying necessities of Christian service.