But worst of all hindrances to the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit in any life is the harbouring of sensual appetite or craving, passion, or indulgence. No man can expect the Holy Spirit of God to make its home in such unclean company. It is on this account that there is nothing which so soon grows to depraved habit, to God-abandoned state, as sensual appetite; nothing which so rapidly dulls the higher affections in the heart and saps all the finer elements of life.

Therefore, when we are thinking of God's gift of the Holy Ghost, and of spiritual power as the saving and uplifting influence in our soul, we do well to reflect a little on those hindrances which will be fatal to all such power in us, if they are allowed to take possession of our life and to prevail in it.

We do well to reflect in this way, because such reflection will make us very careful against harbouring or encouraging any of these fatal hindrances, and careful also against any other form of spiritual waste.

There is no surer guide to a right use of all liberty than this reflection upon the power of the indwelling spirit in us, and the things that add to it or destroy it.

Recognising that this Spirit, which, in the language of your confirmation prayer, is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness and of holy fear; recognising that this Spirit, with its sevenfold gifts, is the saving element in all free life, you begin to look with fresh feelings on all your leisure hours, on all your hours of liberty, when you are released from task work or supervision, when your life is what you yourselves are making it, and you begin to consider whether these times, as you spend them, are indeed times of growth or, it may be, of waste, times of genuine freedom or of slavery to some form of lower life. When you think of this Holy Spirit of God as a power in every good life, it becomes a very real question what and of what sort is the power that is holding sway over you in your leisure hours.

This is indeed a question which never sleeps, and to-day we ask, What is your Whitsuntide answer to it?

If there be any one to whom such a question is not yet a matter of living concern, it is the purpose of this Pentecostal festival to rouse him to new thoughts about it.

If there be any older person in this congregation who lets his years slip from him, not caring or forgetting the importance of it, and not striving to leaven all his hours of work or leisure with the thought of this indwelling Spirit from above; or if there should be any young boy who, in utter thoughtlessness, or from perversity or coarseness, or any induced depravity of taste, allows any evil spirit to bear rule in his life, our prayer for such an one to-day is that the baptism of fire may descend upon his soul, and the power of a new spirit be felt in it.

And indeed there is not one of us but needs to come at such a time with this same prayer for his own life; for our own experience is too often very like the vision of Ezekiel. Under the influences that come between us and the Spirit of the living God, our soul is in continual danger of being like the prophet's valley of dry bones, which lay lifeless, unmoved, till the breath of the Lord breathed over them, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

So we pray that our life may prove responsive to these influences of the Pentecostal season. And the first response it gives is when it rises up in the consciousness of the Spirit of God as a living power in the heart, a power to drive out evil, and to inspire and strengthen us for what is good.

And if, under the inspiring associations of this historic and holy day, you feel your soul touched with a new spirit or consciousness rising up in you from the grave of its own dead self to new desires and new thoughts, and a new sense of the living nearness of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, then you know—and you need no prophet to tell you—that the Pentecostal gift has not failed, and there is good hope that you will not spoil either your youth or your manhood with any form of ignoble life.



XIX. SANCTIFIED FOR SERVICE.

"We are labourers together with God; ye are God's husbandry; ye are God's building."—1 COR. iii. 9.

In this passage St. Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for that spirit of party which was dividing them into followers of this or that teacher and so destroying their unity in Christ. You do not belong, he says, to Paul or to Apollos; we have no claim upon you; ye are not to be called by our name: you are God's husbandry, and God's building, not ours; we are but labourers in His service and ministers for your good. Therefore, see to it that you live as one society in Christ Jesus, discarding all divisions, factions, and party passions and watchwords, imbued with one spirit. It is a noble exhortation to unity of life and purpose; but we may notice in it more than this.

As Paul himself disclaims all personal merit—as he presses it on their attention that neither is he that planteth anything nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase, he is unconsciously exhibiting to us an example of that rare humility which is characteristic of all the greatest and most effective workers; whilst in the vivid and expressive metaphors of my text—ye are God's husbandry, God's building—he makes us to feel the value and the dignity of each human soul.

It would be interesting to dwell on these calls to unity of life in Christ, and the close connection between such unity and the spirit of humility; in fact, we might say, the absolute necessity of the spirit of humility and self-forgetfulness in individuals if there is to be unity in the society. And we might apply the thoughts with much profit to our own social relations, for they are never out of date; but I desire to turn to- day to that which is suggested by these descriptive metaphors, the value and dignity of each human life.

St. Paul pressed it on these Corinthians that their souls were nothing less than the seed-field of which God Himself was the Husbandman, or the temple built by His hand; and they could hardly have listened to such language without being stirred to take care how they sowed in that field, or without feeling the consequent value of their life in the sight of God.

If they were thus the objects of the Divine care they could not be thought of as insignificant units in a crowded city; or as living an obscure life which was of no particular importance, as they might otherwise have been tempted to fancy, as we are still sometimes tempted to think about an individual life. This picture of each life amongst us in its relation to God, as His seed-field or His temple, is a continual reminder that where a human soul is concerned there is no such thing as insignificance or obscurity.

As St. Paul thought of that little company—a company small and obscure to the outward eye—what he saw in them was the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the spiritual life that was breathing there was a Divine life; and this intense conviction of the value of each soul and each society and its consequent sanctity was a never-failing inspiration to him.

Through it he saw in every one who listened to his words, as he went from city to city, a man created and endowed with a Divine mission and Divine capacity, if they could only be roused.

It transformed every soul that crossed his path, so that he looked on life with new eyes. The common crowd had a new interest for him, the suffering poor, the downtrodden slave, the heathen in his blindness, the degraded sinner.

And it has been so with all the great servants of God; out of this feeling the love of souls has grown in men.

But this feeling of the value of each individual life, because of the Divine element and presence in it, is a peculiar gift of the Christian revelation.

In the ancient pagan world a man's life was of little account; it is out of the Bible that this new thought has come that every soul has in it an indefinite element of Divine possibilities, and is therefore of value in the sight of God. It is by virtue of this contribution to our thought that the Bible is truly described as the Great Charter of human rights, and as the source of the great stream of charity and self-sacrifice, of that enthusiasm of humanity which more than all else separates and distinguishes our life from that of heathen antiquity.

It would indeed be difficult to point to any one single thing which makes so great a difference between the quality of one man's life and another's as the presence or absence of this feeling about the value, the possibilities, the sanctity of each individual soul.

"Let man estimate himself," said Pascal, "let him estimate himself at his true value, honour himself in his capacities, and despise himself in his neglect of those capacities." Yes, if a man is once brought to this condition that he feels the greatness of the ends for which God has made him, and that he estimates his life by the possibilities of growth that are in it, and by the thought of the Divine influences that work in it; and if he despises himself for neglect of these capacities or possibilities and of these influences, he has awoke to a sense of the first word of Christ and His Apostles.

Your soul is God's seed-field, God's building; we are labourers together with God. Such a description of each individual life is very significant everywhere, and not least in such a society as ours.

To us who are here in this society as masters they are just a parable of our own life; setting forth to each of us what should be his estimate of his own work and aim and purpose, exhibiting to him his field of work with the Divine light on it, and interpreting to him his own endeavours as a fellow-labourer with God, hoping to contribute in some degree towards the filling in and completing that Divine plan, that ideal picture of the life of every one of you which is in the heavens, and which in imagination he sees as a thing some day to be realised, and the realisation of which, or its failure, may largely depend on his own share in our life and work. It is this feeling that every heart contains the germ of some perfection that makes our life so profoundly interesting, and, it may be added, our responsibilities for the cultivation or neglect of any such germ or capacity so serious and engrossing.

But to you, too, these apostolic suggestions about the Divine influences at work in each heart, and the value of each life in God's sight, and the Divine voices claiming to be heard in it, should be quite as stimulative as they are to us.

They have in them the germ of all striving after purity and goodness, and of all hatred of sin, and enthusiasm for the uplifting of social life.

The words of Paul to his Corinthian converts may furnish you with new interpretations of your own daily life and duty.

If they were God's husbandry, or God's building, are not you? If the Spirit of God dwelt in them, how does He not dwell likewise in you? striving for your growth in holiness and good purpose, and for your salvation from sin and its defilements, as he strove for theirs?

And if it was good for every man in that Corinthian community to be warned how he built upon the foundation of life that had been laid in Christ; if it was good for them to be reminded that every man's work would be made manifest, and that the fire would try it, of what sort it was; it is good also for us, masters and boys alike, to remember that we are living under the same law, and that we should take care lest haply we be found to be working against God.

That Epistle of St. Paul's was written in pain and anguish of heart. The seeds of Christian life which he had sown among them, the purifying influences of the Holy Spirit which were working among them through him and his fellow-labourers, all these ought to have produced fruits easily described, such as peace and love, and purity, and good works; but instead of these, and threatening their destruction, there had sprung up dissension and strife, party spirit, self-conceit, and gross sins which I need not name.

In all this there was grief, disappointment, bitterness; for did they not prove that his work was threatened with failure?

Yet in all that storm of feeling his chief exhortation is this reminder of the dignity of their calling. In the midst of all their sin and failure, though he does not spare rebuke and warning, he always aims at inspiring them by uplifting. And we know that this is the true method, because there is nothing which exercises an influence so strong to uplift and purify as the feeling of our kinship with the life above us, and that we are degrading our life when we forget this or ignore it. And herein is the value of this word of his that God is dwelling and working in us. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, that the Holy Ghost dwelleth in you, and that God's temple is holy? and if any man destroy the temple of God, him shall God destroy."

Let us then begin again our common life with a determination to bear in mind the possibilities and the sanctity of each separate soul that comes amongst us.

Living in crowds, we are apt to forget this; and, forgetting it, some treat their own souls as if they were of no value, and some the souls of others, and so the work of sin and waste goes on from generation to generation.

But in our best moments, in our times of serious thought, if we have been once enlightened, we can never again cease to feel the dignity and the value of each human life.

When we think of God's care for us we feel it; when we think of the possibilities He has ordained for us we feel it; when we think of the endless life that lies before us we feel it; above all, we never fail to feel it when our thoughts revert to any life that has been snatched away from us. Some of you are thinking to-day of the master whose home is darkened by the presence of the angel of death. You think of her whom God has taken, who was moving among you not so long ago, as your tender, considerate, and helpful friend. It may be that you were not uninfluenced by her self-devotion and holiness.

When you think of such an one you feel no doubt about the value and the sanctity of each human life.

Well, then, transfer this feeling to your own life, or to the life of the boy who sits beside you, or who lives as your companion. In the purpose of our common Father, your lives also are destined for holy uses.

To remember this may be a safeguard against temptation or sinful habit; it may inspire you with a new feeling of the value of all the lives around you, and a new sense of the duty you owe to the good life of this society in which God has placed you, that you may prove a vessel of honour sanctified for His service.



XX. HE THAT OVERCOMETH.

"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son."—REVELATION xxi. 7.

Year by year as at this time, when the week of our Saviour's Passion and Death is just in front of us, and the shadow of His Cross is falling over us, one generation after another of the boys of this school gather here, and in the face of the congregation, young and old, they take upon them the vows of a Christian life. So we met last Thursday, and your vow is still fresh upon a great many of you, as indeed it can hardly fail to be fresh in the memory of every one in this congregation who has ever taken it. Let us pause for a moment and repeat its plain words. You have declared your faith in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the Father, the Redeemer, the Sanctifier of your life. You have vowed that you renounce the devil and his works, that you renounce covetous desires, that you renounce the carnal desires of the flesh, so that you will not follow nor be led by them. And you have vowed that you will keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in them all the days of your life. And you take this upon you, let us hope, in sincerity and honesty of purpose.

And, if so, the text I have read to you declares God's promise, if you persevere, just as another text in the same chapter declares that into the City of God there shall not enter anything that defileth or worketh abomination or maketh a lie. This, then, is the promise—"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son." But as we think of this and look forward, we have to remember that this life to which you are dedicated is not an easy matter. If you are to succeed in it, you have to think of it always as a life under a vow, as in fact a consecrated life, consecrated by your own promise and profession. And this is a great safeguard if you bear it always in mind.

It is indeed the first condition of safety from the attacks and the impulses of sin, this consciousness which you will carry about with you, that you are self-dedicated—that there was a day on which you said "I will"—so that if you are to be true to your profession and declared purpose, you will strive to keep near to God in the spirit, and you will have no dealings with the devil and his works, and you will resist all the degrading solicitations of the flesh, and will live in the atmosphere of things that are pure and of good report.

To have conceived such a purpose as this, to have opened your heart to its influence, to have lived in it even for a little while, to have felt its purifying and strengthening breath upon your soul even for a few weeks, may be enough, as some of you know very well, to lift your life up to a new level, so that it becomes and is felt by you to be a quite different life from what you lived before—a life of new thoughts, of new notions about what is good or what is evil, about the degrading character of sin and the misery and hatefulness of it, as also about the happiness of a life that is inspired by good aims and purposes, and is free from a sense of God's wrath upon you for some low standard of conduct, or some sinful appetite or passion. If you have once felt the influence of this change in your heart, you know the difference henceforth between the higher life and the lower, the life that is clinging to God, however feebly, and is in the way of salvation, and the life of sin which will inevitably end in degradation and in death.

But this life in Christ to which you are dedicated is not an easy one; let us not suppose it. It is a noble life, and every one who strives to live it is doing something to ennoble his society; but it is not an easy life. It is never so represented to us in the Bible. There is a sense no doubt in which our Lord invites us to see how easy is His yoke compared with the yoke of sin—but He Himself calls upon every believer to take up his cross and follow Him. That call may bring to any of us not peace but a sword. St. Paul sets the Christian life before us as a race to be run with patience; as a conflict which will sometimes be very hard. In St. James we see it as the discipline of sore temptation, and in St. Peter it is the fiery trial that is to try us.

And again, in the Revelation of St. John, we have this picture of blessing only to those that endure, and to those who have not defiled their garments, and those who have come through great tribulation.

And all our personal experience confirms this language of Holy Scripture, reminding us, as it does, how hard it is for an individual to keep in the narrow way of the spotless Christian life, and how it is still harder to stamp the mark of Christian purpose upon a society.

Yet these are the two things to which God is calling us. These you have in fact vowed that you will strive after; and if you are unfaithful in either respect, if you give up your effort for an easy, drifting life, you are letting go your confirmation vows; and whereas you were intended to be the salt of your society, your salt will lose its savour. To consider this just now may save some of you from discouragement and some from waste and failure.

Men are stronger to meet their difficulties if they know that they have to meet them or else to fail and sink. And so it will be with you. You will be more likely to go forward strong in earnest purpose, strong in the strength which God supplies, if you bear it in mind that, as St. Paul would have expressed it, we are appointed unto these trials; and that a soldier of Christ must expect to have to endure hardness; and in fact that it is a law of our spiritual life that one of the chief roots of all growth in strength and goodness is suffering. We grow through trial and suffering to true manhood in Christ.

So, if you look at your own life and experience, you will find that some suffer through a sore struggle with their own temptations, or their own weaknesses—their desires, their appetites, their fears, or the habits they have contracted, and their struggle may be so hard that it needs all the grace of God to keep them firm in their purpose. Some again suffer not from internal but from external hindrances. Companions may be against them, or a low public opinion may be against them, and they may feel as if they could hardly stand firm in isolation, or under suspicion, or mockery, or enmity; and some may suffer because the conscience around them is depraved, and they feel too weak to fight against it, though they know and acknowledge its depravity. But however hard may be the fight there should be no discouragement, if only you are able still to say in all honesty that you are holding fast to the good purpose which you uttered in your confirmation vows. Two quite simple warnings may sometimes do us great service—one, is that we are very apt to exaggerate the forces against us. They seem very strong when we are feeling weak; but they sometimes break up and disappear if they are met with a little courage. And the other warning is this, that we sometimes let ourselves sink and drift into sinful ways or moral cowardice, by neglecting the helps which God gives us for the strengthening of a good life in us.

Thus if we neglect real prayer, or do not seek the support of good companionship, if we take no pains to live in a good atmosphere and amidst good surroundings, if there is little of devout thought or habitual worship in our life and still less of Holy Communion, if we thus allow ourselves to drift out of the range of the higher moral and spiritual influences, our vows are forgotten and our good purposes fade away, our will becomes weak, and the world with all its temptations is very likely to overcome us.

Feeling the infinite issues that hang on such considerations as these, let us carry about with us the inspiring and invigorating call and the promise contained in the text with which I began this sermon—"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son."

THE END