The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 637

!

TEMPORARY HARDENING

597

A blessed emotion unknown for years makes itself felt. The dry eye becomes dim and the inflexible knee and stiff neck bend in prayer. And the mercy and long-suffering of God cause the fresh oil to flow, and, with a self-abasement hitherto unknown, the soul believes and praises and adores once more the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the rich mercy of His God.

Altho a real hardening, yet streams and trees,

fields in winter,

it is

when

like that

which

Spring

is

fall

upon the from the

But that winter

the sun-rays slant, and the waters congeal.

does not last forever.

falls

the yellow leaves

And when

coming soon.

the

green again and the birds sing in the woods, it seems as tho, after its winter sleep, nature is quickened into a richer and more glorious life. Such is the temporal hardening of the called grass

is

of God a winter followed by spring, until the dawn of the eternal morning in the realms of the everlasting light. But the permanent, the eternal hardening is not so. This causes us to think of the world of eternal snow and ice in the polar regions, where it freezes never to thaw, and where nature is covered with somber cerements, to be uncovered only when the Lord shall come upon the clouds, and the whole world shall melt with fervent :

heat. It is true,

even amid that eternal snow and

for a while pierce the darkness, the icicles

may

ice,

may

a single ray

may

drop, and the ice-

separate but the heart of that ice-world remains unand its eternal foundations unmoved. One iceberg may get loose from the rest, but it remains an iceberg. It can not thaw out; eternally hardened, even in nature! And that world of ice is the awful image of the Sihons and Pharaohs, and of every one who is permanently hardened and given over to the judgment of God. The Love of God has been sinned against forever, and every expression of life only adds to the callousness of the heart, until all feeling, conception, and sensibility fields

;

affected

with reference to spiritual things are utterly gone.

be any

And

if

there

and growth left, they are the life and growth of the mildew which poisons, of the parasite which destroys. So fearful is the hardening that the subject himself is utterly insensible of it. In his temporal hardening the child of God shall weep at last; but the other moves on with boisterous laughter to meet his doom. The Lord God have mercy on us! God's judgment of hardening is such an awful thing life

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