The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 602

LOVE

562

The following

illustration will

make

this clear.

An

English

millionaire, well supplied with bank-notes, in an African village

reduced to beggary.

finds himself

The

natives, ignorant of his

wealth and not understanding the value of bank-notes, refuse to sell him anything but for their own currency. Hence with all his treasure he is in that distant place poor and destitute. In like manner, being pilgrims and sojourners in the earth, the saints

would be spiritually poor and needy if there were no Comforter, no Go-between, who out of His heavenly treasure could supply all their need during all the days of their pilgrimage. And this Gobetween is the Holy Spirit. Of Himself He has nothing. By Himself He could never save a sinner. He never adopted the flesh and blood of children and dwelled among us; never suffered, died, and rose again in their behalf. All that He can do is to pray for them with groans that can not be uttered, and in divine love come and dwell with them. But what the Holy Spirit does not possess Christ possesses, who, in our flesh, rich in His cross-merits, lives with the

Father in our behalf. And from that treasure in Christ the Holy Spirit takes and imparts to the saints, as the money exchanger supplies the English traveler with the native currency. Not only does He give them the spiritual gold and silver as it lies in Christ's treasury, but He converts quire.

it

into such forms as their present needs

And

this is the peculiarly

Spirit's work.

He

and

conflicts re-

comforting feature of the Holy

does not scatter this treasure from heaven pro-

miscuously, but brings

it

home

to each of us in a

form adapted to

meet our every condition and capacity. He does not give strong meat to babes nor milk to adults, but to every spiritual patient according to the nature of his complaint.

Better than the patient

He

understand the nature of his infirmity, to which as the divine Physician He adapts the remedy.

himself does

To

the saints of Jerusalem and to those of the present time

Christ must be a rial

property in

common possession. As the former had their matecommon — and this the latter should have also, in

higher sense, through the works of mercy

we our

common

— so had they and so have

same ImBut the saints being unable rightly to divide their treasure, the Holy Spirit divides it for them. He takes every member's portion as it lies in Christ, marked with His spiritual treasure as a

manuel, who enriches

all.

possession, in the

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