Holy Spirit

“ There is the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus—the Spirit of holiness—the Holy Spirit dwelling in us as a Divine Person, entering into fellowship with us, and leading us into the fellowship of the Living Christ. It is this fills our life with hope and joy. The Risen Saviour breathed the Holy Spirit on His disciples: the Spirit brings the Risen One into the field, into our hearts, as a personal friend, as a Living Guide and Strengthener. The Spirit of holiness is the Spirit, the Presence, and the Power of the Living Christ. ”

“ The Holy Spirit is the Divinely appointed Substitute for and representative of the personal and humanised Christ. How much is He to us! And how we are to be filled by Him, live in Him, walk in Him, and be led by Him! How we are to conserve and kindle to a brighter and more consuming glow the holy flame! How careful should we be never to quench that pure flame! How watchful, tender, loving ought we to be so as not to grieve His sensitive, loving nature! How attentive, meek and obedient, never to resist His Divine impulses, always to hear His voice, and always to do His Divine will. ”

“ Oh that the sinfulness of our nature, and all that is of self, may be so discovered to us, that it may be no longer possible to live in it! May the Light that reveals this, reveal too, how Thy Holiness is our only hope, our sure refuge, our complete deliverance. O Lord! speak into our souls the word, ‘The Holy One, your Redeemer,’ ‘Your Holy One,’ with such power by Thy Spirit, that our faith may grow into the assured confidence that we can be holy as Thou art holy. ”

“ And every touch of the Holy Spirit's presence within trusting hearts,—the sweet peace, the quiet assurance, the longing for purity, the drawing away to prayer, the hunger for God's Word, the intense desire to have others saved, the passion to please this wondrous God of ours,—all these simple marks of the Holy Spirit's presence in our hearts, all tell us, and each tells us, in unmistakable tones, that Christ is crowned. ”

“ O Holy God! give Thou Thyself the answer to Thy question, and teach us and the world what manner of persons Thy people can be, in the day of Thy power, in the beauty of holiness. We bow our knee to Thee, O Father, that Thou wouldst grant us, according to the riches of Thy glory, to be mightily strengthened in the inner man by the Spirit of Holiness. ”

“ Jesus said of the Spirit, ‘Ye know Him.’ Is not our great need to know this Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, of His Holiness and of ours? How can we ‘walk after the Spirit’ and follow His leading, if we know not Him and His voice and His way? ”

“ It is this, the indwelling of God through the Spirit, that alone can explain and enable us to appropriate the wonderful promises given to prayer. God gives the Spirit as a Spirit of Supplication, too, to maintain His Divine life within us as a life out of which prayer ever rises upward.
Without the Holy Spirit no man can call Jesus Lord, or cry, Abba, Father; no man can worship in spirit and truth, or pray without ceasing. ”

“ Let us enter more firmly and more fully into that faith in Him in whom we are, by which our whole life will be covered and taken up in His. Let us beseech the Father to teach us that His Holy Spirit does dwell in us every moment, making, if we live by faith, Christ with His Holiness, our home, our abode, our sure defence, and our infinite supply. As He which hath called us is holy, let us be holy in His own Son, through His own Spirit, and the fire of His Holy Love will work through us its work of judging and condemning, of saving and sanctifying. A sanctified soul God will use to save. ”

“ Into that heaven ascended Christ the Lord, that He might fill all things with His power and His rule, and might send from thence on us His Holy Spirit, the Spirit whom we worship this day, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. ”

“ Let each one of us ask himself: "Is it my great study to know the Holy Ghost dwelling in me, so that I may help others to yield to the same indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and that He may reveal Christ fully in His divine saving and keeping power?" ”

“ Holy, the Father, God above us, High and Lifted up, whom no man hath seen or can see, whose Holiness none dare approach, but who doth Himself in His Holiness draw nigh to make holy. Holy, the Son, God with us, revealing Divine Holiness in human life, maintaining it amid the suffering of death for us, and preparing a holy life and nature for His people. Holy, the Spirit, God in us, the Power of Holiness within us, reaching out to and embracing Christ, and transforming our inner life into the union and communion of Him in whom we are holy. ”

“ In the consciousness of the utter impotence of our own wisdom or understanding to know God, our souls must in contrition, brokenness from ourselves and our power or efforts, yield to God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to reveal God as the Holy One. ”

“ The Holy Spirit illuminates the mind; reveals pardon to the conscience; and sheds abroad the love of God in the heart, plants his fear in the soul, and enables us to take the will of God for our Rule, as it is expressed in the Gospel.—This is our rule of walk, conduct, and conversation—the Lord help us to walk in this light, as God is in the light. ”

“ Consider yourself and all the fallen world, as having nothing to wish for, but by the spirit of prayer to draw into your soul this divine, meek, loving, nature of God. Consider the holy Jesus as the gift of God to your soul, to begin and finish this within you, in spite of every inward or outward enemy. ”

“ If you would not do so, at once bow the knee to the Father, that He may grant you the Spirit’s [p139] mighty workings in the inner man. Believe that the Holy Spirit, bearer to you of all the Holiness of God and of Jesus, is indeed in you. Let Him take the place of self, with its thoughts and efforts. ”

“ How then can the Holy Spirit be otherwise than grieved to behold the tongues of men so much employed about temporal subjects, as totally to exclude those that are spiritual and eternal;—those subjects which excite the most adoring wonder and rapturous songs of joy among the redeemed in glory. ”

“ Be ye holy, as I am holy.
Most Gracious God and Father! again do I thank Thee for that wondrous salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit, which has made us holy in Christ. And I thank Thee that the Spirit can so make us partakers of the life of Christ, that we too may be unblameable in holiness. And that it is the Lord Himself who makes us to increase and abound in love, to the end our hearts may be so established; that the abounding love and the unblameable holiness are both from Him. ”

“ On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all, and the Holy Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, nobleness. ”

“ And as you worship, listen to His voice: ‘Thus saith the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.’ It is as the Spirit strengthens us mightily in the inward man, so that Christ dwells in our heart by faith, and the Father comes and makes with Him His abode in us, that we are truly holy. ”

“ The Father kindly guides our eyes to the promises, the invitations, the precious declarations, and kind words of the Saviour in the Gospel. These draw the heart; and as faith gathers sweet views, so hope springs up, and the fears of death and hell, with a sense of God’s anger, gradually abate. The Holy Spirit testifies of Jesus in the word, and in our hearts; gives us blessed views of his person and love, his infinite condescension, and his most blessed work in putting away sin, and fulfilling the law; conquering death and subduing hell ”

“ Still, let it be a matter settled between God and the soul, that your longing for holiness is that you may be fitter for Him to use, and that what He has given you of His Holiness in Christ and the Spirit is all at His disposal, waiting to be used. Be ready for Him to use; live out, in a daily life of humble, self-denying, loving service of others, what grace you have received. You will find that in the union and interchange of worship and work, God’s Holiness will rest upon you. ”

“ We may now understand how spiritual life originates. It enters the heart by faith. Christ reigns in the heart with His Holy Spirit, who sees, hears, speaks, works, suffers, and does all things in and through us over the protest and the resistance of the flesh. ”

“ We are to ‘worship Him in the beauty of holiness,’ ‘to sing praise at the remembrance of His Holiness;’ it is only in the spirit of worship and praise and joy that we fully can know God as holy. Much more, it is only under the inspiration of adoring love and joy that we can ourselves be made holy. It is as we cease from all fear and anxiety, from all strain and effort, and rest with singing in what Jesus is in His finished work as our sanctification, as we rest and rejoice in Him, that we shall be made partakers of His Holiness. ”

“ Do be still now, and listen to your Father calling you. Ask for and count upon the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Holiness, to open your heart to understand this holy calling. And then speak out the answer you have to give to this call. ”

“ In linking holy and without blemish (or without blame) so closely, the Holy Spirit would have led us to seek [p222] for the embodiment of holiness as a spiritual power in the blamelessness of practice and of daily life. ”

“ I praise Thee for the teaching of the Spirit of Thy Holiness, leading Thy saints, and me too, to see how it is Thy Holiness, and the call to become partaker of it, that gives redemption its value; how it is for Thyself as the Holy One, to be Thine own, possessed and sanctified of Thee, that we are redeemed. ”

“ And if you will but confess that there is in you no wisdom or power for holiness, none at all, and allow Christ, ‘the Wisdom of God and the Power of God,’ by the Holy Spirit within you, to lead you on, and prove how completely, how faithfully, how mightily, He can be your sanctification, He will do it most gloriously. ”

“ What a mercy for us that all divine teaching is the gracious work of God the Holy Spirit; and when we view, in his own light, what He is, as He has condescended to set himself forth in his own word, we are amazed at his condescension. He is called the Eternal Spirit; He is Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent; He is a person—and what is a person but a living, thinking, acting, intelligent agent? And what we have professed at church, when, perhaps, we did not understand what we said, is a most noble and glorious testimony—“I believe in God, the Holy p. ”

“ I ask Thee especially to teach us that, in deep poverty of spirit, in humility and contrition and utter emptiness, in the consciousness that there is no holiness in us, we can sing all the day of Thy [p192] Holiness as ours, of Thy glory which Thou layest upon us, and which yet all the time is Thine alone. O Father! open wide to Thy children the blessed mystery of the Kingdom, even the faith which sees all in Christ and nothing in itself; which indeed has and rejoices in all in Him; which never has or rejoices in ought in itself. ”