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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

THE INDWELLING GOD

The Deeper Life Series*

Handsomely printed and daintily bound.
Illustrated.

Price, 2j cents each, postpaid.

WELL-BUILT.

Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D.

ANSWERED!

Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman, D. D.,
Rev. R. A. Torrey, D.D., Rev. C.
H. Yatman, Rev. Edgar E. David-
son, and Thomas E. Murphy.

THE INDWELLING GOD.

Rev. Charles A. Dickinson, D. D.

LITTLE SERMONS FOR ONE.
Amos R. Wells.

A FENCE OF TRUST. {Poems.)
Mrs. Mary F. Butts.

United Society of Christian Endeavor*

Boston and Chicago.

'BEHOLD I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK.

FROM A PAINTING BY CARL SCHONHERR.

The Indwelling God

For Power
For Character
For Service

Charles Albert Dickinson, D. D.

' There is a secret chamber in each mind,

Which none can find
But He who made it, — none beside can know
Its joy or woe."

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Copyright^ i8g8
By United Society of Christian Endeavor

JUN241898

Colonial Press :
Electrotyped and Printer
C. H. Simonds &= Co.
Boston, U.S. A.

TWO COPIES RECEIVED.

find copy
1898.

TO

MY LIFELONG FRIEND

AND BELOVED BROTHER IN CHRIST

iFrancis 3E^ Clatfe, 10. ©.

THROUGH WHOM GOD HAS WORKED MIGHTILY

FOR THE UPBUILDING OF THE CHURCHES AND

THE BETTERMENT OF THE WORLD

I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

PREFACE.

THREE modest blossoms of heartsease I give
thee, my reader, plucked from the hastily tilled
flower border of a busy pastorate. They have been
grown among the dust and din of the great city, and
they lack the freshness and beauty of flowers that
grow in quiet gardens. But they have sprung from
a personal experience which has been greatly
deepened and enriched of late through God's good
grace ; and I send them forth with the hope that even
their faint fragrance may suggest the blessedness of
the life that is hid with Christ in God, and with the
prayer that before they wither they may remind some
seeker after truth of the fadeless joys which he may
find who walks with the Master in the King's gar-
dens.

Berkeley Temple^ Boston^ Mass,

CONTENTS

PART PAGE

I. For Power 13

II. For Character 35

III. For Service 53

Part 1.
FOR POWER

THE FATHER ALMIGHTY.

" In him we live and move, and have our being."

" T T E is the author of all life. In this sense he
A A is not merely our Father as Christians, but
the Father of mankind ; and not merely the Father
of mankind, but the Father of creation; and in
this way the sublime language of the prophet may
be taken as true literally. ' The morning stars sung
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.'
The deeps, the fountains, the rills, all unite in one
hymn of praise, one everlasting hallelujah to God
the Father, the Author of their being."

^' Within thy circling power I stand ;
On every side I find thy hand ;
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded still with God."

THE INDWELLING GOD.

FOR POWER.

The God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people.
— Ps. 68: 35-

^O WER belongeth unto God," says David,
and no one had a larger sense of the
power of God than did he. He saw
God in everything. All the forces and
laws of nature were only expressions of the divine
omnipotence. As he stood out under the star-
sprinkled dome of night, and with rapt soul gazed
upon the swinging constellations, he said, reverently,
"It is God's handiwork." As he stood upon the
seashore and saw the reluctant and angry waters
churned into foam, and made to roll and break into
mighty waves upon the beach, by the relentless hand
of the storm spirit, he exclaimed, " The Lord on high
is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than
the mighty waves of the sea."

13

14 THE INDWELLING GOD.

As he saw the storm-wrack, leaden and ominous,
lifting its flashing and thunderous expanse above
the horizon, and casting its chill shadow across the
fields, which seemed to cower and shrink in antici-
pation of the tempest, he said, ** Thou art the God
that doest wonders. The voice of thy thunder was
in the heaven ; the lightnings lightened the world ;
the earth trembled and shook.''

And as he witnessed the returning spring coming
with gay apparel and smiling face from the ice dun-
geons of the winter ; as he saw the fountains bursting
their ice shackles, and start off with a song down the
gorges of the Judean hills, and the trees, from some
mysterious force from within, weave for themselves
garments of softest green, and the grass thrusting
its millions of spearlets up through the sere brown
carpet of the earth, he exclaims, " He sendeth the
springs into the valleys, which run among the hills.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars
of Lebanon which he hath planted. He causeth
the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the
service of man.'*

All was of God, and from God. He was the con-
trolling spirit among the stars, and in the affairs of
men; the God of nature and of nations. "By ter-
rible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O
God of our salvation, who art the confidence of all
the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off

FOR POWER. 15

upon the sea, which stilleth the noise of the seas,
and the tumult of the people."

And yet, says David, God gives of his strength
and power to his people. There is a vital connection
between omnipotence and finite weakness, whereby
the latter can be so changed that it will have not a
few of the characteristics, and not a little of the
powers, of the former.

There is little Benjamin, for example, the smallest
and the weakest of the tribes, and there are the
princes of Judah and Zebulun and Naphtali, — all
human, all weak. Yet God commanded their strength.
He made them great. It is he who can rebuke the
company of spearmen. He can scatter the people
who delight in war.

" Ascribe ye strength unto God. His excellency
is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds. O
God, thou art terrible out of thy holy places ; the
God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power
unto his people. Blessed be God."

Power belongeth unto God. God giveth power
unto man. Here in a nutshell is the summary of
the world's history.

Man in the world is like Aladdin before his good
genius. By complying with certain conditions he
becomes possessed of marvellous powers, and can
command vast treasures. He is like a man in a
good man's storehouse, having the keys to many

1 6 THE INDWELLING GOD.

Storerooms in his hands, and permission to help
himself to the stores. It is as though some arch-
angel, having been intrusted with all the riches and
forces of nature, had made for himself a vast and
magnificent citadel, furnished with all sorts of com-
partments, where under lock and key were placed
the secret springs which control the world's destiny.
Here in one great room is the massed wealth of the
world's Klondikes; here the garnered and sifted
knowledge of the world's libraries ; here room after
room containing the delicately adjusted machinery
which controls the mysterious forces of nature ; and
here, man in the midst of all, delegated and em-
powered by the master of the citadel to open every
door, and make use of every treasure, and manipu-
late every piece of machinery.

This is man as David saw him, only a little lower
than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor,
made to have dominion over creation, and with all
things under his feet. This is man as Christ saw
him when he said, "Ask, and it shall be given
you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you." And this is man as Paul saw
him when he said, " All things are yours."

This is a truth which astounds our small faith,
and makes most of us like paralyzed gold-seekers in
the midst of boundless but unappropriated treasures.
We do not believe our senses. We say. It cannot

FOR POWER. 17

be true. It is one of the old doctrines of our faith,
but dressed in the language of modern thought it
has appeared to many as quite a new discovery.

God is the centre and source of all power. He is
the fountain of all life and activity, the dynamo
which supplies the universe with energy. Nature
in its manifoldness of form and force is but the
varied expression of his omnipotence.

Different parts of material nature become chan-
nels and instruments of this omnipotence in varying
degrees, according to their constitution and condi-
tions. God, as an omnipotent life force, for exam-
ple, gives strength and power to certain combinations
of inert matter, called germs and seeds, as they lie
amid the dull clods of earth, and forthwith they
spring up in multitudinous beauty in trees and grass
and flowers.

God, as the omnipotent mechanical force, gives
strength and power to every atom of material dust in
his universe, and forthwith the stars with balanced
attractions, called gravitation, swing into their orbits,
and move in paths so clearly defined and regular
that their position in space can be foretold a thou-
sand years hence, and every object on this earth of
ours becomes so related to the earth's centre, and so
drawn to it, that the divine strength and power thus
operating through it become known as an established
and unvarying law.

1 8 THE INDWELLING GOD.

And again, God, as an omnipotent electrical or
magnetic force, gives strength and power to certain
forms of matter, or to matter under certain condi-
tions, and forthwith we have the aurora borealis, the
thunder-storm, the cyclone, the magnetic compass,
the telegraph, the telephone, and the electric lights.

And so in a thousand other ways God is filling
his creation with varied life and energy by impart-
ing of his own power to the things which he has
made and fitted for its reception and use. This
power divine, this omnipotent energy, is like an at-
mosphere enveloping all created things. You can-
not tell whence it comes or whither it goes. It presses
around all things and upholds all things, and all that
is needed is for a person or a thing to be under
certain conditions to receive it and to be energized
by it. The seed, because it contains the proper con-
ditions of embryotic life, receives into itself the all-
encompassing power as a life force, and becomes a
growing tree or plant, such as a pebble or a piece of
coal cannot become.

The rain-drops, because they have conformed to
certain conditions, and reached a certain density,
yield to the force of gravitation and fall to the earth,
while the clouds from which they fell must remain
floating above the earth so long as they are uncon-
densed.

The iron wire and the copper wire, because they

FOR POWER. 19

are metal, receive and transmit the omnipotent power
which we call the electrical current, while the glass
rod, because it is not rightly conditioned, is useless
as a transmitter.

Everything depends upon the conditions of recep-
tivity. God is everywhere. God's power is every-
where waiting to be used. It is used in a thousand
ways. It is constantly finding the conditions under
which it can manifest itself ; and yet it is safe to say
that as yet, even on this our globe, which is but a bit
of star-dust among the heavenly worlds, we have not
yet witnessed a tithe of the power which God is
ready and willing to manifest through the things
and the people which he has created here. As a
world and as a race we are yet in the childhood of
our experiences of the power of God. We have not
yet found our working adjustments with him. We
are groping ignorantly and blindly after the harmo-
nious conditions under which we shall become the
free channel and the facile instrument of the power
divine, — after that universal atonement, or at-one-
ment, whereby all things sensate and insensate shall
be reconciled to God, and made to work in delight-
ful accord with him ; the conditions which Paul had
in mind when he said, *' The earnest expectation of
the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons
of God ; " that is, for the manifestation of the
strength and the power of God through those who

20 THE INDWELLING GOD.

are his children. " For," he says, " we know that
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now." All creation, even the physical
world, through many birth pangs occasioned by its
slow evolutions from chaos to order, and the tardy
development of those conditions which are essential
to make it the perfect instrument of the divine
power, has been groaning in expectancy, waiting
eagerly for the time when even its unfertile deserts
shall blossom as the rose, its lions shall lie down
with its lambs, and all of its crude conditions shall
be so perfected that the divine power may be
manifested through them in the interests of a re-
deemed race, with the least friction and the least
suffering.

This millennial realization of the power of God
has its special and striking prophecies in the won-
derful discoveries and developments of the present
century. Never was there a century which has made
more direct connections with omnipotence, in a
physical and material way, than this nineteenth cen-
tury has made.

Just think what physical energy was lying dor-
mant in the earth and sea and air a hundred years
ago, which was not even dreamed of by the genera-
tion of that time. God was all around them, waiting
to bear their speech and their commerce on wings
fleeter than those of the wind, waiting to open to

FOR POWER, 21

them vast stores of treasures, and they knew it not.
They plodded over rough roads in bungling stage-
coaches, when they might have been borne in
plush comfort on steel rails. They waited long for
momentous tidings which might have been trans-
mitted in the fraction of a second. They lived and
died in ignorance of the great world, while, had they
but connected with the powers of God which their
children appropriated, that world might have been
laid open before them every morning.

It only took a few men who were a little more
thoughtful and patient, and who had a little more
faith in the unseen than their fellows, to discover and
apply the physical powers of God, so as to change
this world of the nineteenth century so completely
that our grandfathers of the old century would
hardly know it. One man, Thomas Edison, has
revolutionized the whole world by his marvellous in-
ventions. That is, God gave to him strength and
power, just as he gave them to Bezaleel of old, by
giving to him an understanding of the conditions
under which the divine power acts. This discovery
and understanding of conditions makes the inventor.
Edison making his eighteen hundred experiments
before he discovered the proper substance for the
incandescent light, and his six or seven thousand
experiments before he solved the problem of prepar-
ing the products of his great iron mills for the blast-

22 THE INDWELLING GOD.

furnace, is the most striking example in history of a
man waiting consciously or unconsciously for the
revelation of the secret of God, and for that endue-
ment of power which was to give him control of a
vast physical realm.

Thomas Edison, standing as the central figure
in that new town of Edison, N. J., watching that gigan-
tic steam-shovel as, with ravenous jaws and spiteful
puffs and snorts, it eats its way into the bowels of the
iron mountain, surrounded with those Titanic crush-
ers which make nothing of reducing bowlders of ten
tons to powder, and with those magnets which gather
the iron from the dust by the car-load, and with
those engines which act like intelligent beings as they
carry on the wonderful process from the time that the
ore is snatched from its native bed to the time when
it is reduced to briquettes of pure iron and sent to
the blast-furnace — Edison, standing in the midst of
all these marvels, in the white light of the electric
lamps, and within calling distance of the whole com-
mercial world as it stands at the other end of his tele-
phone, is the century's conspicuous illustration of
how God gives material power to those who rightly
seek it.

Not long ago, the town of Edison was a rocky,
useless wilderness. Its hills were too rugged for
cultivation, and not rich enough in ore to warrant the
usual processes of reduction; but a man of faith

FOR POWER. 23

came there ; and lo, the mountains are being re-
moved and cast into the midst of the furnace. Bar-
ren and rugged though the place was, like every other
part of God's world it was full of strength and power.
Iron by the million tons was scattered all through its
rough rocks, and it was only waiting for the man who
should understand and apply God's conditions of
extracting it.

I have dwelt somewhat at length upon this side of
our subject, because I believe that what we call the
natural and supernatural are but the two sides of
the same shield.

That God gives strength and power in a physical
and material way to those who conform to certain
conditions, is the blazing and much talked about
truth of this age. That he gives strength in a spir-
itual way is just as certain, though it may not be so
generally acknowledged ; and yet it is coming to be
more generally talked about than it was. A new
interest is springing up on all sides in this subject of
spiritual power. It is not always talked about in
the old-time religious terms. It sometimes takes on
a dress of language which quite disguises the old
truth from Christian eyes, and yet whatever there is
of truth about it is the old truth.

Theosophy, Christian Science, and even Mental
Science, are all based on the fundamental fact that
the Father of spirits touches and inspires and ener-

24 THE INDWELLING GOD,

gizes man's spirit, and gives him a certain control
over spiritual things.

The rapid spread of these various schools of
thought and belief is a part of the evidence that
a mighty reaction is setting in against the gross
materialism of the former part of the century, and a
more pronounced type of this evidence is the deepen-
ing interest of the people in the spiritual writings
of such men as F. B. Meyer and Andrew Murray
and other representatives of the so-called Keswick
school.

I have sometimes thought that the very things
which some have most dreaded, these scientific dis-
coveries, and this phenomenal advance in material
prosperity, have prepared the race for a spiritual
advance. God has given man so much in a material
way for the asking, he has astonished us so fre-
quently by his lavish impartations of power over
material things, that we almost unconsciously say to
ourselves, " Why not expect great things of him in a
spiritual way ? '' And so I do not see in our present
absorption in the scientific triumphs of the age
that tendency to a fatal materialism which some
seem to find there, but rather a preparation for
what I sincerely believe to be near at hand, — a
great spiritual revival in which the manifestations of
the power of the Holy Ghost will be as much grander
and more comprehensive than anything heretofore

FOR POWER. 25

witnessed, as the material development of this age
is superior to that of any past age.

God is just as willing to give spiritual power as he
is to give any other kind of power, and he will give
it whenever his conditions are complied with.

The Bible labors to impress this truth upon its
readers. It represents God as more than willing to
make every soul which he has created a mighty
spiritual force in the world. Power, limitless
power, like the iron in our hills, like the electricity
in our earth and air, is only waiting for the man
of faith.

To appropriate the forces of nature and utilize
them for humanity is a very blessed and wonderful
thing to do, but it is not half as great or blessed
as to be able to control the vast enginery of God's
spiritual powers, and so to be workers together with
him in the redemption of the world.

To have the power to win men to Christ and make
them holy is far better than to have the power
merely to make them more comfortable in a physical
way.

To stand in the barren wastes of selfishness
among the chaotic ruins of primeval sin, among
prodigals and magdalens, of whom the world says,
" It is no use ; there is not ore enough to pay for
reduction," and to be able by the application of the
mighty powers of God to make them vessels meet for

26 THE INDWELLING GOD,

his kingdom, is better, infinitely better, than to
be able to reduce the Jersey mountains to the ap-
pliances of commerce.

" Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost
is come upon you.'^ This was the promise of the
risen Christ to the little band of disciples who were
going out to possess the world. The Holy Ghost
came upon them, and they had power, — a strange
new power which seemed to the world like madness,
but which was the only power which could make
a mad world sane, — the only power which could
crush the stony heart of man, separate its ore from
its dross, and fit it for heavenly uses.

How wonderfully this power worked ! You know
if you have read the world's history. You know how
it has possessed and transformed men and nations,
how it has made the humblest members of the race its
mightiest spiritual conquerors ; how it has strength-
ened men for toil and suffering and death ; how it has
lifted men from shame to honor, from slavery to
freedom, from the slums of sin to sainthood. You
know how, through this power, all that is best and
highest has come into being, and how, without this
power. Christian religion would be but a lifeless
philosophy in a lifeless world, a dead battery lying
against a pulseless body.

Our usual confession of faith declares, " We
believe that all who experience faith in Christ are

FOR POWER. 27

renewed by the Holy Spirit, and by him sanctified
and made partakers of eternal life."

The power of the Holy Ghost does two things for
a man.

First, it changes his inner life and purpose. It
transforms the dormant root into a growing, blossom-
ing plant ; the dead, black carbon into an incandes-
cent, throbbing coil. This is the old doctrine of
regeneration, or, to use Christ's words, of being
born again, and it is the central doctrine of our
orthodox faith. Nothing can serve in its stead.
Reformation, moral resolution, changed environment,
are not, and cannot be, substituted for this deep, all-
powerful, all-transforming grip of the Holy Ghost
upon the heart of man. God, and God only, can
save the soul. " Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy
he saved us by the washing of regeneration, and
renewing of the Holy Ghost." The power that can
create a world can recreate it. The power that
can generate a world can regenerate it, and there is
no other power outside of God that can do either.
" The Holy Ghost," as some one has truly said, " can
take a man dead in trespasses and sins and make
him alive." Yes ; he can take a man by nature and
by practice vile and corrupt, and so change him
that he shall have God's nature, think God's
thoughts, will what God wills, love what God loves.

28 THE INDWELLING GOD,

and hate what God hates. He is doing this every
day. He is saving the chief of sinners, the wicked-
est man in New York, and Boston, and London, and
he is doing it just as easily as he is making growing
trees out of the dead earth, or palpitating light out
of the inert darkness which surrounds the dynamo.
He is giving strength and power to souls dead in
selfishness, so that they are able to rise up with
commanding influence, and sometimes carry not
only their families, but the whole community, over
into the fields of aspiration and holy desire and
faith.

The other thing which the power of the Holy
Ghost does for a man is to develop him, or, to use
the old word, sanctify him. " From strength to
strength " is the watchword of the spiritual as well as
of the material world. No inventor stops with his
first crude discovery. The telephone of to-day is a
vast improvement upon the instrument which first
transmitted the human voice. The omnipotent
power in the material world is forever working
towards perfection, and so in the spiritual world we
may have the fulness of that power just in propor-
tion as we are willing and fitted to receive it ; and
just here most of us are weak when we ought to be
strong. I believe Mr. Torrey speaks the truth when
he says: "To the extent that we understand and
claim for ourselves the Holy Spirit's work, to that

FOR POWER. 29

extent do we obtain for ourselves the fulness of
power in Christian life and service that God has
provided for us in Christ. A very large portion of
the church know and claim for themselves a very
small part of that which God has made possible for
them in Christ, because they know so little of what
the Holy Spirit can do for us and longs to do for
us."

To the extent that we understand and claim for
ourselves the Holy Spirit's work. These are two of
the conditions of using the power and increasing it.
There is iron all around us, mountains of it, the air
is full of reducing forces, the trouble is that we do
not make our shovels and crushers and magnets
large enough.

O ye of little faith, how large and strong, how
rich, you might be, if you would only use what God
has made ready for you ! You content yourself with
a few pickings from the field, when you might have
your cars loaded with treasure. You stop with a
few flashes of the power, when you might have a
steady increasing current, which would fill your
whole life with light, and illumine the entire com-
munity. You ask little, petty things of God, and
hardly expect to receive them, when you might ask
and receive great things. You play Christian. You
go through the forms of religion like children play-
ing with a toy telephone, when you might make a

30 THE INDWELLING GOD,

connection with men's souls, and speak to them
words that would save them. You are worried and
troubled about many things. You sing morbid
hymns, and live at a poor dying rate. You mourn
because you are doing so little for Christ. You
think that you have no jewels in your crown, that
your spring of salvation is getting stagnant, that the
world, the flesh, and the devil are too active and
too assertive for you, that the world is going to the
bad, when all the while you are a child of him who
made the world, and a joint heir with Christ to the
power that is to save it.

" Why should the children of a King
Go mourning all their days ?
Great Comforter, descend and bring
Some tokens of thy grace.

Dost thou not dwell in all thy saints,
And seal them heirs of heaven?

When wilt thou banish our complaints
And show our sins forgiven ? "

I would be glad enough to remove the veil of
unreality which is so often drawn around this spirit-
ual side of our truth, and bring you face to face with
it as you stand face to face and fully convinced be-
fore the material side of it. If I could do this, I
should confer a far greater blessing on you than
I could possibly do by discovering for you God's

FOR POWER. 31

secret of extracting gold from sea-water, or trans-
muting carbon into diamonds.

Would that every Christian might know as he
has never known before the secret of the Lord in
this higher realm of his being ; that he might know
more of that comfort and peace and liberty and joy
which come from a consciousness of resting abso-
lutely in the power of God.

I hardly dare to tell you what I believe to be possi-
ble to him who has been endued with this power from
on high, for you might say it is mystical and vision-
ary, and yet I go not beyond the language of Scrip-
ture when I say, " All things are possible to him that
believeth." " Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall
be done unto you." " Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you." " If ye have faith, and
doubt not, ye shall say unto this mountain. Be
thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and
it shall be done." These are the promises which
stagger the thing which we call our faith, but they
have back of them the power which controls all
forces and all treasures, — a power which is giving
to scientific faith about everything which it asks
in the physical world, even the control of the
thunderbolt, and the removal of mountains, and
which I am quite sure will open to the coming
generations a world of spiritual wonders which

32 THE INDWELLING GOD.

doth not yet appear to our dull eyes. A few
here and there anticipate the coming conquests of
faith even in this generation ; a few like Miiller
are proving the promises here and now ; a few in
humbler walks of life are mighty spiritual powers.
May God increase that number and bring on the
promised day of Israel.

PART IL
FOR CHARACTER

THE SON INCARNATE.

" And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

"'T^HIS is the true belief in Christ. It regards
A him as an ever-flowing fountain of spiritual
and moral life, divine, because the image of the un-
seen God ; divine, because bringing God to us and
us to him. It makes him the ever-living, ever-
present, head of the church, the human brother as
well as the celestial Master. It gives our hearts the
dearest object of love. ... It supplies us with a
friendship which earth cannot give nor take away.
In this view of Christ is progress, growth, sincerity,
union, and peace. This is the Master and Friend
whom we need; who says to us always, ^ Abide in
me and I in you.' "

" O Lord and Master of us all,
Whatever our name or sign,
We own thy sway, we hear thy call.
We test our lives by thine."

34

FOR CHARACTER.

Christ in you the hope of glory. — Col. i : 27.

BECAME deeply interested some time
ago in a sketch of the life of Carlo An-
tonio Pensenti, an untutored monk who
lived in Genoa, and whose name has
become immortal because of a single work of art
which he executed under remarkable circumstances.
In the city of Genoa was an immense block of
ivory which had excited the wonder of the people
there for many years. While Pensenti was looking
at it one day, the thought took possession of him
that it was his duty to carve from it a figure of the
Saviour on the cross. A strange thought for a man
who knew little or nothing of the sculptor's art, and
one which would have drawn much ridicule from
the monk's friends, had they known of it. But he
managed to secure the precious piece of ivory,
and in the quiet of his cell, with prayer and
wonderful patience, he worked over it for many
months.

The Saviour to whom he had devoted his life

35

36 THE INDWELLING GOD.

seemed ever before him. For him to live was
Christ. The vision of the Crucified filled and in-
spired his soul, and, flowing out, as it were, through
his unpractised fingers, materialized itself in the
pure white ivory before him. At the end of four
years the image was finished, and it was pronounced
a " work w^orthy of the great sculptors of ancient
Greece, or the old Italian masters, possessing the
same characteristics as their most celebrated pro-
ductions, — exquisite beauty combined with perfect
accuracy and purity of style.'^

The figure was purchased by the American consul
at Genoa, and carried to Florence, where it was
criticised and admired by Mr. Powers and other
celebrated artists. It was afterwards exhibited in
London, where the first artists and anatomists pro-
nounced it a masterpiece of anatomical accuracy,
and manly beauty, and divine expression ; and, in
course of time, it found its way to this country, and
became a permanent adornment in a great metro-
politan cathedral.

When these facts came to my knowledge, there
came to my mind the words which I have chosen
for my text, *^ Christ in you the hope of glory," and
the words seem to me to take on a new meaning in
the light of this incident. Here was a man unac-
quainted with the technicalities of art, yet so filled
with the image of Christ, so moved by his religious

FOR CHARACTER. 37

feeling, that he was enabled to work out for himself
even an earthly glory which hardly pales before that
of the great masters.

Surely this suggests the truth that Christ in us is
not only the hope or guaranty of the heavenly glory,
but he is also our surety of the highest success here
in this life. In other words, the religious element
is essential to the highest type of human glory here
and hereafter.

" Glory," as here used by the apostle, means mag-
nificent completeness, radiant fulfilment, blessed
fruition.

It differs according to the thing to which it relates.
There is one glory of the sun, and another of the
moon, and another glory of the stars. There is one
glory of the trees, and another glory of the flowers,
and another glory of the grass.

Everything has its possible glory stage, its time
when it is at its best. The sun is in its glory when
its own luminous atmosphere is least convulsed by
darkening tempests. The moon is in her glory
when, full-orbed, she lifts her head above the hori-
zon and floods the earth with her silver splendor.
The trees and flowers are in their glory when the
conditions of their growth are such as to bring them
to their completest stature and beauty. In each
case, the hope, or assurance, of their glory depends
chiefly upon certain conditions within themselves, —

38 THE INDWELLING GOD,

a spirit, as it were, within, shaping things to a certain
end, working towards fulfilment.

And so, passing over into the human realm of
human affairs, everything has its glory goal, its
^' consummation devoutly to be wished."

There is one glory of art and another of science ;
one glory of poetry, another of statecraft ; and it
could easily be shown how Christ is in each of these
the source of their highest perfection.

Take the realm of art. From the time when
Bezaleel, the son of Uri, was filled with the spirit
of God to devise curious works in gold and silver
and brass, most of the greatest sculptures and paint-
ings have been those associated with, or expressing,
the religious sentiments. Angelico, we are told,
never began any work, whether an elaborate fresco
or an illumination for a missal, without praying, and
he always carried out the first impression, believing
it to be an inspiration ; and it was this spirit of rapt
religious devotion which gave birth to the few tran-
scendent masterpieces which occupy the highest
places in the galleries of genius.

The same is true of music. There is an old
legend that the practice of antiphones was intro-
duced through St. Ignatius, who had heard the
angels singing psalms in alternate strains before the
throne of God. However this may be, everybody
recognizes in the sacred music of the great com-

FOR CHARACTER. 39

posers " a glory which excelleth." Its theme is
Christ. It Ufts us above the rasping cares of Hfe,
and makes us feel that harps of gold and angelic
choirs are no vain imagination. One must be con-
vinced, when Handel's " gorgeous music peals upon
the amazed ear," that the great master had listened
to the music of the spheres, and that when in his
solitude his fingers swept over the keys, something
of that holy influence encircled him, which a great
artist once symbolized under the guise of the angels
who guard St. Cecilia.

And then there is science, the princes of which,
^^ on whose brow the ivy is still green, have not been
slow to lift an anthem of praise to God." As we
read their biographies we are impressed with their
reverence for God. They found him in all his
works. We hear Galileo, athrill with the inspiration
of true science, saying aloud, " Sun, moon, and stars
praise him." We hear Kepler, overwhelmed with
what he saw among the swinging constellations, say-
ing : " God has passed before me in the grandeur of
his ways ! Glorify him, ye stars, and thou, my soul,
praise him ! " They saw in every law the hand of
God, in every discovery a new revelation of his
wisdom and power.

But that phase of our truth which will most interest
us is the personal one. Paul is speaking directly to
the Colossians. " Christ in you," he says. These

40 THE INDWELLING GOD.

Other facts which we have been considering depend
upon this personal fact. The Christ in the heart
brings glory to the individual, and, through the in-
dividual, to art, science, literature, — to civilization.
Now all this is but saying that to be a Christian is
but fulfilling the highest end of our being. But I
am aware that much misunderstanding beclouds this
Pauline doctrine of Christ in us. The apostle has
a great deal to say about it. He says in one place,
" To me to live is Christ," and in another, " I live,
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," as though his
whole being had been adjusted and vitalized by
some new and powerful life, which is actually the
case when Christ comes into the heart. He brings
with him a new life-plan and motive power, through
which the highest possibilities of manhood and
womanhood are achieved. It is a part of the econ-
omy of things that spirit shall have power over spirit,
that soul shall work in soul. Some other than our-
selves is working in and through each of us to-day.
We are consciously or unconsciously moved by those
about us. In a certain sense it may be said to many
here to-day : " You are in your friend the hope of
glory. You are making him to be what he could
never be without you." Sometimes one person
dwells in another through the power of love. In
this sense the pure and beautiful Beatrice was in
Dante the hope of his glory. Meeting her when

FOR CHARACTER. 4 1

she was but nine years old, he came under the
wondrous spell of her influence. Though he saw
but little of her during her lifetime, she grew in his
mind and imagination to be the embodiment of
divine truth itself. She was his Lady Beautiful, his
inspiration, his guiding star. Her image within
him stirred all the poetic emotions of his great soul,
kindled his mighty genius, and resulted in that im-
mortal tribute to woman, the Divine Comedy. Had
it not been for Beatrice, Dante's fame might have
been shorn of half of its glory.

Sometimes one person dwells in another through
the power of instruction. In this sense Aristotle
was in Alexander the Great the hope of his glory.
Alexander himself confesses this. He admits that
the education which he received at the hands of the
great philosopher shaped his destiny, and secured
for him the conquests of after-years. Aristotle's
power in disciplining the judgment was great. He
instilled into his pupil's mind the principles which
helped him to make far-reaching plans and to exe-
cute them wisely. His teachings went with the
conqueror everywhere.

Sometimes it happens that one person dwells in
another and becomes to him the hope of his glory in
both of these senses. Love and instruction work
together. The life of John Wesley is familiar to
you. You remember how his mother was in him in

42 THE INDWELLING GOD.

this double sense the hope of his glory. A poor
ignorant ignoramus, the world called him, when he
was a boy. No common ambition was his, much
less a spark of genius. Sleepy, unaspiring, with
apparently but one redeeming feature, — an intense
love for his mother. Ah, yes ! and in that love was
the surety of his future greatness. She, though a
humble woman, was a great woman. She conceived
the idea which has since developed into the greatest
ecclesiastic system of modern times. She spurred
John Wesley on to great achievement. She was his
beloved friend and teacher. His love for her moved
him to receive her teaching, and thus she was in him
constantly directing his life to its goal.

This thing is of frequent occurrence. Many a
mother is in her son his hope of honesty and purity.
He goes away from her into the great city, and yet
not away from her, for she is with him, in him, still.
Her image is before his eyes, her instructions in his
memory. He is tempted, evil forces conspire to rob
him of his manhood. He comes near falling, but
the mother-face and the mother-voice interpose. He
says, " I will not do this thing, for her sake," and so
is saved.

The question frequently comes, What is it to be
a Christian ? It is a pity that the difference is not
more easily detected than it sometimes is, for a life
which has Christ in it ought to reveal something of

FOR CHARACTER. 43

the glory which belongs to it. The firefly shines be-
cause it has within it that which must shine. Put
him with a host of other insects in the dark, and his
flight alone will be traced by its pulsations of light.
Imprison him in your hand, and he will illumine his
little dungeon with his unquenched flame. Let a
man really take Christ into his heart, and the Christ
glory must inevitably appear in his life. Of course
it will. And why ? Because God who made the soul
knows what the soul needs to bring it to its best
estate. Left to itself, it comes short of its glory.
Sin is an ugly fact. Man under the power of evil
goes down to shame. He needs for his betterment,
for his salvation, just such a personality in his life
as that of Jesus Christ. As Beatrice inspired Dante,
as Aristotle inspired Alexander, as the mother in-
spires her son, so, in a higher, holier sense, did Jesus
inspire John and Peter and Paul. So he ought to
inspire his disciples to-day. I care not into what
department of life you carry your explorations. I
care not in what your block of unhewn ivory may
consist, it shall bring you the highest glory only
when you carve upon it the form and features of
the perfect One.

Perhaps that unhewn block lies before you this
morning in the form of educational aspirations.
You are striving after culture. Now culture, unless
it be crowned and interfused with religion, is but a

44 THE INDWELLING GOD.

soulless, mechanical statue. You may perfect and
polish it, you may spend months and years upon its
details, but still it will lack that indescribable some-
thing which alone can give it a place in the niche
of the immortals. Great scholars there are who
never acknowledge their allegiance to Jesus Christ.
Cultured men, so called, there are, all about us, who
condemn the Bible to the limbo of myths and fables ;
and yet the fact still stands that the scholar who
tries to ignore Christ, or to read God out of history
and science, is very much like that writer who is try-
ing to prove that there was no Shakespeare. The
plain, common-sense man cannot help feeling that
there is something lacking in such a scholar's mental
make-up, — a little daft, as the Scotch say. The full-
rounded scholar is he whose higher religious nature
has expanded with his lower intellectual nature, so
that all the material facts which are gathered into
the one find their spiritual reflection in the other.
How it enlarges, how it glorifies, a man, to be able to
interpret all his knowledge in the light of a religious
faith ! Such a man is lifted above the level of earth.
His brow is aflame with the glory of the Beulah
heights. Well says Professor Shairp, in his little
book on " Culture and Religion," which, by the
way, I wish you all might read : —

" There is no more forlorn sight than that of
a man of highly gifted, elaborately cultivated in-

FOR CHARACTER. 45

tellect, with all the other capacities of his nature
strong and active, but those of faith and reverence
dormant."

And perhaps your unhewn block of ivory is made
up of business hopes and plans. You stand before
it and say : " Ah ! I shall make something fine out of
this. I will hew me out a success which will make
men wonder." And so you acquaint yourselves
with the maxims of trade ; but even here there is
no real glory for you except the Christ himself is
breathed from your daily life into your work. Other-
wise your ivory will take on under your hands the
pinched and careworn features of that miserly god,
Mammon.

That is a sad state of mind into which some men
get when they mistake the glory of material success
for the glory of character ; when they think the
public is admiring them, while it is only wondering
at their crowded warerooms and overflowing tills.
I know that men will tell you that strict integrity
and stanch virtue are impossible things in the
busy world of industry and commerce, that character
largely flavored with piety is at a discount, that he
who would succeed must throw away his conscience.
Better fail if this be so, for a conscience thrown away
is sure to come back again, and with a sting in it.
But is it true that there can be no Christ in bus-
iness ? Has it come to this, that he whose indwell-

46 THE INDWELLING GOD.

ing spirit has brought the world up to its present
stage of civilization, whose principles have changed
the thievishness of the savage into Christian com-
merce, can no longer have a place in the realm
which he has purified and glorified? Since the
mists of night are scattered and you have come out
into the day where the grass revels and the flowers
open their bright eyes in the sunlight, will you dis-
pense with the sun ? Will you push it back below
the horizon ? That is what they would do who tell
you that the gospel is not for business.

Grant that it is hard to live honestly, to show the
spirit of Christ in the rough jostlings of business
life. Herein is the glory of such characters as those
of Buxton and Dodge. Their Christian principles
carried them over the difficulties. Says Edmund
Burke : '' One source of greatness is difficulty.
When any work seems to have required immense
force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand. The
Druid circle in Keswick, England, has no ornament
about it, but those huge masses of stone set on end
turn the mind on the immense force necessary for
such a work." And just so I think we are impressed
by the rugged characters which we find standing
stanch and firm in their Christian integrity in the
business circle. We think of the force within, and
through their lives Christ seems to us doubly
glorious.

FOR CHARACTER. A^J

But I turn to another application of our text.
The glory of human life is to be blessed here and
for evermore. We all seek happiness. We try to
find it now in this thing, and now in that. We
chase with butterfly carelessness the fleeting joy of
the moment, or with philosophic forethought we
plan for the joys of .the future. Now I am quite
sure that he who takes Christ into his life gets the
most real enjoyment now, and the promise of the
greatest blessedness hereafter.

Take, the present life, for example. Put Christ
anywhere but at the centre of your being, put your
will against his will, and the whole life is out of
gear. It rattles, and jolts, and meanders, like a
derailed car. Christ knew about this kind of moral
and spiritual derailment, and out of his infinite pity
came the invitation, " Come unto me, all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
As though he had said : " Your unrest and dis-
couragement are the result of your being far from
me. Take me into your heart, and I shall become
your spring of blessedness, your hope of glorious
peace."

Temptation takes a great deal from a man's best
achievement. More than anything else it robs him
of his joy, and blurs the glory of his old age. I
think of the temptations which with unseen fingers
are tarnishing some of our lives or picking away the

48 THE INDWELLING GOD,

graces from our characters as those Mexicans about
whom Mr. Miller writes picked away the rubies and
emeralds from the prostrate idol on the uplands. I
think how these temptations vary in form and in-
tensity, coming to Joseph and David and Peter in
just the way they least expect them to come, but
always coming where the link in the virtues is weak-
est, and the possibilities of shame and remorse are
greatest.

Then, too, there are sorrows which seem to rob us
of half the glory of this present life. I think of the
trials which have come to many, changing the bright-
ness of the noontime into the gloom of midnight.
I think of plans frustrated, hopes crushed. Yes, I
think of these temptations and these trials, and
then I think of two promises : one to the tempted
man, '^ My grace is sufficient for thee," and one
to the mourner, " Thy sorrow shall be turned into
joy."

I cannot tell you how Christ in the heart fulfils
these promises ; I only know that he does. As Dr.
William Taylor once beautifully said : " Two persons
may sit side by side in the sanctuary, parent and
child, wife and husband, friends, partners, or neigh-
bors. The one enjoys this indwelling Christ ; to the
other it is but a dream. The one sees not Christ
in anything ; the other sees him in song and sacra-
ment, in labor and sacrifice, in pain and pleasure.

FOR CHARACTER, 49

Indeed, you must extract his very consciousness from
him before you can rob him of this experience.
These two persons are different, and they will be
different eternally unless the grace which has trans-
formed the one shall renew the other."

And all this leads on to thoughts of the life to
come, — the thought which was doubtless in Paul's
mind when he wrote to the Colossians.

The glory of the soul hereafter will depend not
upon its environment, but upon that spirit which is
within it.

The glory of the lily is latent in the bulb. The
life of heaven is earth's consummate blossom. As
we are here in heart, we shall be there in life and
action. The grandeur and beauty of the full-blown
life of an immortal soul none can know save the
angels who dwell in the supernal gardens.

When these faculties have been touched and
vitalized by the Christ within there should be no
limit to their growth. " Beloved, now are we sons
of God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be."

O, the inspiration of this thought ! How it ought
to move us to high endeavor !

How mean and unworthy all selfish living seems
when we stand in the Ught which streams upon us
from the yet unattained heights of our Christian
manhood and womanhood !

Let us walk in this light. Let us make Christ a

50 THE INDWELLING GOD.

power within. Let us show forth his spirit. Let
us give up the sins which hold us back from the full
fruition of our hope of glory, and let us be able to
say with the apostle, " I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me/'

PART III.

FOR SERVICE

THE SPIRIT OPERATIVE.

" But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every
man severally as he will."

T

HE Holy Spirit is not a freak of the divine

fested in power, in proportion as God is manifested
in character and in hfe."

" We want to get possession of the power and use
it. God wants the power to get possession of us and
use us. If we give ourselves to the power to rule in
us, the power will give itself to us to rule through
us."

*' 'Tis God the Spirit leads
In paths before unknown ;
The work to be performed is ours,
The strength is all his own."

52

FOR SERVICE.

And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which
worketh all in all. — i Cor. 12 : 6.

MASSING over a Massachusetts road some
time ago, I was struck with the marvel-
lous coloring of the autumn leaves. The
woods were aflame with crimson banners,
and the green and the gold vied with each other in
their multitudinous shades. The hills looked as
though a thousand Turners had been splashing the
remnants from their easels over them, and in the
maze and whirl of color one could almost imagine
that he saw startling pictures. As I looked upon
this gorgeous tapestry of the hills I remembered
that, only a few weeks before, these crimsons and
gold and browns were all a vivid green, and that a
few weeks earlier they were a pale tender hue, like
that of buds just waking into life. How quickly the
hues had come and gone ! How, in the ceaseless
moving of the months, the same spirit of life work-
ing within had appeared now in this shade, and now
in that, until at last it had burst out in this wild riot
of color. Divers operations, but the same spirit.

53

54 THE INDWELLING GOD.

This is the law of divine action in nature and in the
human soul. Whether we take humanity as a whole
or in part, we find this law working itself out in
infinite variety. Paul, in the twelfth chapter of first
Corinthians, is illustrating this fact.

If you have really been touched and vitalized by
the divine Spirit, he says, this Spirit will be mani-
fested in and through you in different ways ; but it is
the same Spirit, whether it appears in the flaming
red of Peter's character, the mellow gold of John's,
or the less pronounced colors of the character of the
other disciples.

The first thing to be noticed is that there is such
a person as the Holy Ghost, and that he is none
other than God himself, working in man. Paul is
very explicit on this point. " I give you to under-
stand," he says, " that no man speaking by the Spirit
of God calleth Jesus accursed." The Jews claimed
to be of God v/hen they were persecuting and cruci-
fying Christ. This could not be. Like detects like,
spirit answers to spirit, as face to face in water. God
in the heart could not revile the Son of God on the
cross. The divine Spirit within can but recognize
the Christ without. Many a man, thinking himself
a Christian, and assuming to criticise or condemn
the professions of others, has been wofully mistaken
as to his own faith.

*' No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by

FOR SERVICE. , 55

the Holy Ghost." The divinity and spiritual head-
ship of Jesus Christ come to man as a special revela-
tion from God himself. The pure in heart shall see
God. The Holy Spirit in the heart convinces us of
the divine character of Christ as no miracles or argu-
ments can convince us. He flashes this divinity
upon us as he did upon Peter, when, amazed and
humbled, that disciple exclaimed, " Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God ! " or as he did
upon Thomas, when, with hesitant finger upon the
nail-prints, he exclaimed, " My Lord and my God ! "
No person or church can monopolize the Holy
Spirit. He comes to all who desire him. An
earthly father is not more willing to give good gifts
to his children than is God to give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask him. The man or sect that pre-
sumes to an exclusive appropriation of the Spirit,
and denies him to those who happen to hold a dif-
ferent opinion, or who differ from them in creed or
practice, is doing just what Paul is rebuking the
Corinthians for doing, in this chapter from which
our text is taken. There were certain persons in
the Corinthian church who were very proud of their
spiritual gifts, and had a great deal to say about
them. For this reason Paul felt called upon to
warn the church against being misled by these
ambitious and vainglorious men. Do not, he says,
in substance, make the mistake of thinking that the

56 THE INDWELLING GOD,

Holy Ghost manifests himself only in showy ways,
or in pretentious sanctities. He is the direct in-
spirer of varied ministrations, and is often most
forceful in unpretentious service.

" To one is given by the Spirit the word of wis-
dom." Such a one is not able to talk much about
his religion ; he is a man of few words, but his words
weigh much. Five minutes with him are worth an
hour with some other men. His brain is made to
distil truth, not to dilute it ; and when the power of
the Spirit is upon him, he is one of the most helpful
counsellors in Corinth.

"To another is given the word of knowledge."
He is not born wise like the other man. He gets
knowledge by hard work. His brain is a net which
gathers fish from all seas, a repository of facts. He
is not especially popular or practical. Like Gama-
liel, he has no crowd at his feet ; but serious people,
like Paul, sit there, and when the power is upon him,
he stimulates men's intellect and strengthens their
souls.

"To another, faith." Quiet, retiring, yet pos-
sessed of a strongly magnetic and inspiring person-
ality, this man stands in the community as the
daysman between multitudes of Littlefaiths and the
Lord. Men absorbed in worldliness lean upon him
and believe in him, and all Corinth gets a glimpse
of heaven through his upper window. God makes

FOR SERVICE. 57

his faith a ladder upon which men climb up out of
their Sloughs of Despond to ground where he gives
them a ladder of their own.

" To another, the gift of healing/' Some say this
was a temporary manifestation of the Spirit, which,
like the gift of miracles, was to vanish with the
early disciples. Others contend that it is as com-
mon in Boston to-day as it was in Corinth, and as
much a privilege of the believer as wisdom, knowl-
edge, and faith. Sure it is, the power of spirit over
matter, the tendency of thought to quell certain
physical disturbances and conquer pain, and the
influence of prayer and a quiet trust in God over
many bodily ills, all belong to the acknowledged
therapeutics of these modern times ; and he who
believes that it is the province of the divine Spirit
in man to make him not only holy, but whole,
according to John's desire for Gains, may be nearer
right than some of us think. " Beloved, I wish
above all things that thou mayest prosper and be
in health, even as thy soul prospereth."

" To another, prophecy." The gift of vision. A
John, at Patmos, with the world's future swinging
in dazzling cyclorama around him. The man and
the woman of these latter days who are so full of
the divine Spirit that they see and foresee events
something as Christ did ; who stand out in the com-
munity and in the church as fearless denouncers of

58 THE INDWELLING GOD.

social and political corruption and mighty apostles
of righteousness ; who with eye ablaze with the light
of the New Jerusalem, and ear resonant with millen-
nial music, utter their oracles of rebuke or cheer,
and with divine eagerness, not unmixed with human
impatience, strive to bring on the day when the
golden anticipations of the ages shall be fully real-
ized, and the Christ shall be crowned Lord of all.

" To another, discerning of spirits." A Peter who
can look through and through a man, and detect the
hypocrisy and imposition which are lurking in him,
as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. An Elisha
who is able to see in the heart of the young Hazael
a future of selfishness, murder, carnage, and devas-
tation. The seer whom you will find in almost every
band of disciples, whose spiritual insight is so keen
that he can look into the souls and characters of
men, detect their virtues and their vices, and lay
them as bare as were the muscles of the flayed
Marsyas.

"To another, divers kinds of tongues; and to
another, the interpretation of tongues." The glottis
gift, the power of the orator who sways men's minds
and controls their wills. The power of the man who
is master of men's thoughts and emotions, whose
magnetic personality gives him free range through
the hearts of men of every nation and tribe and
tongue.

FOR SERVICE, 59

"All these worketh that one and the selfsame
Spirit, dividing to every man as he will." In other
words, God can use every kind of talent ; and
when he takes full possession of a man, he uses
that man most efficiently along the line of his bent.
He takes him just as he finds him, with the ten-
dencies and powers which he first implanted within
him, and develops him, just as he takes a bed of
bulbs and tubers in the springtime, pours his sun-
shine and rain over them, and brings to their glory,
here a tulip and there a hyacinth, and, later on, a
dahlia, a lily, or a clematis, each beautiful in its time.
This coming to full-blown tuliphood or lilyhood is the
working of the same spirit of life. For a tulip bulb
to say : " I, and I only, have in me this life power.
We tulips have a monoply of it. If you want to
get it, you must be like us, with a smooth, glossy ex-
terior, and a straight, stiff stem, with one, and only
one, blossom at the end. You hyacinths, with your
gay, scented bells, and you dahlias, with your many
tuberous roots and multiplied* branches, reaching
out in all directions, and blossoming high and low
on all sides of yourselves, you make a great mistake
in thinking that you have this life spirit," — for a
tulip to say this would be like what some good peo-
ple are saying about other people, who believe in
Young Men's Christian Associations and Chris-
tian Endeavor societies and institutional churches.

6o THE INDWELLING GOD.

" You have too many roots and branches," they say.
" You blossom out on too many sides of Hfe to be a
channel for the Spirit. You are too secular to be
saintly. Come out from the world. Be separate
from it. Seek the things that are above. Be sin-
gular, stiff, and blossom tulipwise, and then we will
grant that you have the gift of the Spirit."

The mere possession of the Spirit is not enough.
Power is good for nothing until it is applied and
becomes operative. The spirituality that shuts its
eyes, and sways to and fro, and talks pessimistically,
and does little else but talk, may be of the genuine
sort; but a more effective kind is that which our
Saviour declared to be the one condition of disciple-
ship, — many-sided ministration in his name. " In-
asmuch as ye did it unto the least of these." Here
we have the application of the Spirit's power, — not
merely the possession of something, but the doing
of something very practical, and very secular, be-
cause of that possession ; the Spirit in us ; Christ
in us working out into tangible, helpful, every-day
service.

This is the same truth that we have in our text
and context, — divers operations, varied manifesta-
tions. The Holy Ghost within us, impelling us to
visit the sick, comfort the afflicted, welcome the
stranger, care for the poor, is just as truly the Holy
Ghost as he is when he helps us to pray and wor-

FOR SERVICE. 6 1

ship. He is just as real a presence in our lives
when he helps us to control our tongues as when he
helps us to use them. A silence which is full of
the unpretentious deeds of love has far more spiritu-
ality in it, more of the Holy Ghost, than the most
religious speech unaccompanied with the minister-
ing hand. Prophesying and the gift of tongues are
for the few. They are rare gifts ; they are useful
gifts. Blessed is he who by tongue or pen can
move men to better lives. But the gift which our
Lord speaks of when he talks about the man in
prison, the stranger, the hungry, the naked, and the
sick ; the gifts of which he speaks in his Sermon on
the Mount, and in his other discourses upon his
new commandment, — the gift of loving our ene-
mies, letting our light shine, bearing good fruit,
improving our talents, forgiving one another, sup-
pressing revenge, and refraining from slander, —
these are the common gifts which all can have
for the asking; which all, indeed, must have,
or the inference will be that they have not the
Spirit.

The true test of the Spirit's presence is the mani-
festation which he makes of himself. The man who
claims to have a power, and fails to use it, will not
be believed. Application, action, results, — these
are the proofs of power. If you have spiritual
power, we shall all find it out. You may not make

62 THE INDWELLING GOB.

a show of it, but we shall discover it. You will find
your place and fill it. The Holy Ghost does not
need your position or your trade for his channel.
He needs you. When he has possessed you, and
filled you, and kindled the faculty by which he
intends to make you felt in the world, he will set
you to work, wherever you are, to win the world to
Christ. He will present the Saviour to men through
you, by helping you to be Christlike. You may be
a humble carpenter. That makes no difference.
Apply your power. Show how the Holy Spirit can
work through the carpenter. Be honest; be true.
Saw your boards, and drive your nails with a hand
athrill with the power of the Holy Ghost. Let all
the wheels of your inner life — love, hope, patience,
forbearance, joy, peace, mercy — move ceaselessly
on under the impulse of this power, so that their
hum shall be as suggestive of energy as that of the
dynamo. You and the Holy Ghost can make any
calling a great one. If the Spirit divine appeared
as the mighty Jehovah, the Creator of all things,
when he first made the w^orld, remember that he
came in the low^y guise of a carpenter to remake it.
The weak things has God chosen to confound the
mighty, that no flesh should glory before him. No
king by virtue of his kinghood can say, " I have
done this great thing." God can do just as great
and greater things through the king's servant.

FOR SERVICE. 63

Joseph was greater than Pharaoh. Luther, the
despised monk, was greater than the Pope. The
Atlas bearers of the world have made their muscle at
obscure forges. The pauper with a righteous cause
is often greater than a prince with a kingdom, " that
no flesh may glory."

John Brown, of Haddington, was once visited by
a young man of a very excitable temperament, and
was told by him that he wanted to preach the gos-
pel. The shrewd pastor saw that the young man's
zeal was greater than his knowledge, and that his
conceit was greater than either, and so he advised
him to stay where he was. " But,'' said the young
man, "I want to preach, and glorify God." The
old commentator replied : ^' My young friend, a man
may glorify God making brooms. Stick to your trade,
and glorify God by your life and conversation."

Then comes the thought that we are a part of
"one stupendous whole." Your prophesying, and
that other man's discerning, and that other's faith,
are interlinked, and mutually supporting members
of one body. Your work, and my work, and our
brother's w^ork go together, as the hand, the arm,
and the eye, and together we can strike a vigorous
blow.

This is very comforting to discouraged workers,
and to those who have come to think that they
have no great power spiritually. You stand in your

64 THE INDWELLING GOD.

place and toil on, wondering why, if you really have
the power of the Spirit, you do not make more
impression on the world, and see more results.
Men seem so busy and unresponsive, and to care
so little for what you say. You put your heart into
your work, and think you are doing it with Christ's
approval, and yet the world does not seem to notice
it. In fact, you have about concluded that the more
unselfish your work is, the more men will call you a
fool, or an enthusiast. You almost begin to doubt,
and you say to yourself, " Does it pay, after all ? ''
A finger plunged for an instant into the ocean, and
then withdrawn, a yellow leaf kissing the granite
bowlder and falling to decay, a rain-drop brushing a
rose petal and mingling with the earth, — each, you
think, leaves about as much impression behind as
you will leave when your life-work is done, and the
funeral tears are shed.

Failure seems to face you. Friends drop off one
by one. You are getting old, and the world is ever
young; you are getting serious, and the world is
gay. What is the use ?

Mrs. Browning tries to comfort you a bit : —

*' Though we fail indeed,
You, I, a score of such weak workers, He
Fails never. If he cannot work by us,
He will work over us. Does he want a man,
Much less a woman, think you ? Every time

FOR SERVICE, 65

The star winks there, so many souls are born
Who shall work, too. Let our own be calm.
We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,
Impatient that we 're nothing."

To my mind it is cold comfort to think that God
does not want a man or a woman to work with ; that
he could do without us just as well, — cold as the
starlight under which Mrs. Browning would have us
sit in silence. I find better comfort in our text and
context, "Members of one body," the less comely
parts honored even more than the comely ones;
something for each to do, and no thought of being
left out alone, pining under the unsympathetic stars.
God can work by us, and with him in us we cannot
fail. Our work will last. It is as imperishable as
the walls of heaven. It is a part of those walls.

Yes, he fails never, and because we work with
him we cannot fail. What we do becomes a part
of his glory. Our toil and sacrifice and suffering
are the medium of his power, the channel of his
energy. Our tears make his rainbows. I saw a
rainbow last week, magnificent, full-arched, and bril-
liant. There it lay off in the east, expanding from
the dark bosom of the storm its seven-colored petals,
a gorgeous blossom of the skies called into being
by the westering sun. But how many rain-drops it
took to make that rainbow, falling, ever falling, in
countless numbers ! And how brief was the bril-

66 THE INDWELLING GOD,

liance of each falling drop, and how many bows
such a drop helped to make on its journey earth-
ward, one for every angle of vision ! How full was
that dark cloud and that falling shower of rainbows,
rainbows which I could not see, which no one saw !
And how these rain-drops, after touching the earth
for awhile, would in time get back again into the
skies and help to make other rainbows, and so on
throughout the ceaseless circle, till the sun shall set
forever !

Your life, my brother, is a rain-drop reflecting
the Sun that never sets. It shines out upon this
beholder and that ; and when it gets below the angle
of their vision, they call it ended, and others take
your place in the swift passage through the pris-
matic space. Even you do not see your own glory,
and you get discouraged towards the end. But the
end is only the beginning. Are they not all minis-
tering spirits 1 Does not their work go on ? Others
take their earth places, and make rainbows for
earthly eyes ; but they, having fallen to the dust,
have risen again a great cloud of witnesses, radiant
in the upper skies, reflecting still the Sun of right-
eousness, showing forth his glory, a part of the
rainbow which encircles the throne of the eternal.

THE END.

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