The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 108

HOLY SCRIPTURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

6S

and then the word springing therefrom as token

tions, first life,

of

the conscious life?

Evidently history proves the very opposite.

In Paradise the

word precedes and the life follows. To Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, first the word " Get thee out from thy country, and I will bless thee, and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." In the case of Moses it is first the word in the burning bush and .

then the passage through the

pointed way.

He

first

Red

Sea.

This

is

the Lord's ap-

Or more correctly. He These two stand in closest

speaks, then works.

by speaking He quickens. Not as tho the word causes life for the Eternal and Triune God is the only Cause, Source, and Fountain of life. But the word is the instrument with which He wills to complete His speaks, and

connection.

work

;

in our hearts.

We

can not stop here to consider the work of the Father and the

Son, which either preceded or followed that of the Holy Spirit, and which is interwoven with it. Of the miracles we speak only be-

we discover in them a special twofold work of the Holy The working of the miracle is of the Father and of the Son, and not so much of the Holy Spirit. But often as it pleased God to use men as instruments in the performance of miracles, it is the cause

Spirit.

work to qualify them by working faith in their Moses smiting the rock believed not, but he imagined that by smiting he himself could produce water from the rock; which God alone can do. To him that believes it is the same whether he speaks or smites the rock. Stick nor tongue can in the least affect The power proceeds from God alone. Hence the greatness of it. He thought that he was to be the worker, and the sin of Moses. not God. And this is the very work of sin in God's people. Hence we see that when Moses cast down his rod, when he cursed the Nile, when Elias and other men of God wrought miraAnd by virtue of their cles, they did nothing, they only believed. Spirit's special

hearts.

faith

they became to the bystanders the interpreters of God's

testi-

mony, showing them the works of God and not their own. This is what St. Peter exclaimed " Why look ye so earnestly on us as tho by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?" To work this faith in the hearts of men who were to perform His second was to these miracles was the Holy Spirit's first task. quicken faith in the hearts of those upon whom the miracle was to be wrought. Of Christ it is written, that in Capernaum He could :

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