The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 620

—

XXXI. The Hardening Operation

of Love.

" Being grieved for the hardness ol their heart."

Love may to enrich,

it

also be reversed.

consumes and destroys.

Mark

iii.

5.

Failing to cherish, to uplift, and

This

is

a mystery which

man

can not fathom. It belongs to the unsearchable depths of the divine Being, of which we do not wish to know more than has been revealed.

No

But

this

does not alter the

fact.

creature can exclude itself from the divine control.

No man

can say that he has nothing to do with God that he or any other creature exists independent of God for God upholds, bears, and ;

;

him from moment to moment, giving him life and power and all his faculties. Even Satan is not self-existing. If it pleased God to discontinue his existence, he would cease from being. Satan and all his demons and all flesh live and move and have their being in God. This apostolic word does not signify an intimate carries

acquaintance with the secret of the Lord, but is merely the clear and sober statement of every creature's essential relation to the Whether sinner or saint, angel in heaven or demon in Creator. hell, even plant or animal, each lives, moves, and exists in God. Hence to withdraw oneself from God is utterly impossible. Psalm cxxxix. is not merely a sketch of the divine omnipresence, but much more, in holy sense, a testimony and confession from the very root of man's being, of the creature's absolute inability to withdraw himself from God's active control. The misery of the lost in hell consists in the fact that in their unholy and wicked hearts they are subject to the active, divine control.

The cry

which once escaped from moaning lips, " Let me alone before I go hence" (Job xx. 21), is the presentment of the unavoidable control If of God, which overwhelms the ungodly as a calamitous flood. God would let them alone, there would be no hell and no misery. The unquenchable fire would be quenched, and the worm would

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