Have You Experienced the Comforter?

If the Lord has given to any of you eyes to see and hearts to receive this divine Comforter, praise, bless, and adore your God and Father, and most merciful Benefactor, for His distinguishing grace in giving you to know Him as your Comforter; and if He has ever dropped into your soul any of His sweet teachings, bless Him that you have received Him also as the Spirit of truth into your conscience. What but sovereign grace?rich, free and super-abounding grace?has made the difference between you and them? But for His divine operations upon your soul, you would still be of the world, hardening your heart against everything good and godlike, walking on in the pride and ignorance of unbelief and self-righteousness, until you sank down into the chambers of death.

O, it is a mercy if but one drop of heavenly consolation has ever been distilled into your soul; if ever you have felt or found any relief in your sorrows and distresses from the work and witness of the Holy Spirit; if you have ever gathered any solid comfort from any promise applied with power, from any text dropped into your heart with a sealing testimony, from any manifestation of the love and blood of Christ, or from any communication of liberty, joy, or peace, such as are produced by the operation and influence of the Spirit of God. It may have been but little, nor did it last long, but it has given you a taste of its blessedness, and made you long for another sip, another crumb, another visit.

What has that Comforter done for you as a Comforter? What has that Spirit of truth revealed and made manifest to you as the Spirit of truth? Let us examine for a few moments how He is made known to the family of God, and what He does by His power and grace in their heart and conscience.

1. First, He convinces of sin; that is His special office. He, opens up the law, discovers the curse attached to it, makes the soul feel its spirituality, its breadth, and length, and condemning authority. Do you know this Spirit as a Spirit of conviction in having convinced you of sin? Has He ever laid guilt upon your conscience by opening up the law, and condemning you as a transgressor against it, so that you have put your mouth in the dust and confessed you were guilty before God? If you have felt conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit, you know Him; if not as a Comforter, yet as preparing the way for comfort. You know Him in His killing, if not in His reviving; in His bringing down, if not in His raising up; in His discovering sin, if not in revealing salvation.

2. But He is known also as a Spirit of grace and of supplication. When the Lord is pleased to awaken the soul by His Spirit and grace, He gives Him as 'an internal intercessor' to intercede "with groanings that cannot be uttered." Was that ever given to you, so that upon your bended knees you besought the Lord with that earnestness, that sincerity, that pouring out of the heart before Him, with all that simplicity and brokenness, with those tears and sighs, which mark and manifest His internal intercession, and distinguish it from mere formal prayer? If so, you have received Him as a Spirit of grace and of supplications; you "know Him."

3. But has He ever dropped an encouraging word into your heart? As you have sat to hear me or any other minister opening up the work of grace upon the soul, exalting the Lord the Lamb, speaking of His blood and righteousness, tracing out the sacred work of God upon the conscience, have you felt an internal testimony that these things you know for yourself in the depths of your own heart? Then you know Him, for it is He who has given you this encouraging testimony; it is He who blessed the Word with a witnessing power to your conscience.

4. Or have you ever had a revelation of Christ to your soul? Did you ever see Him by the eye of faith at the right hand of God? This can only be by the testimony of the Spirit, for it is His covenant office to take of the things of Christ and to reveal them to the soul. He glorifies Christ by manifesting Him. If you have seen Christ by the eye of faith, if you have had a manifestation of the Son of God and a revelation of Him with power to your soul, "you know Him," because it is He who gave you that most blessed manifestation, such as eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.

5. Has Jesus ever been made precious to your heart? Did you ever hold Him, as it were, in the arms of faith, as a mother clasps her babe to her bosom, and love Him with a pure heart fervently? Who kindled that love? Who touched your heart with that sacred flame? The Comforter, the Spirit of truth. Then you know Him; for "the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit."

6. Have you ever experienced any of that spirituality of mind which is life and peace, any lifting up of your affections to things above, where Jesus sits at God's right hand, so that you felt that earth was no place for you; the things of time and sense you could tread under your feet; and your heart was so taken up with the blessed things of eternity, that they became the very element in which your soul could bathe, the only happiness you knew below? Then "you know Him," because it was He, and He alone, who lifted up your heart and affections to these heavenly things.

7. Do you love the people of God? Can you say, with all your darkness, and doubt, and fear, that you do love the image of Christ which you see in His people? that taking away all other evidences, this seems still to you so plain that you cannot deny it, and Satan cannot beat you out of it, that you do love those who love Jesus? Whence comes this love? From the Spirit of truth and love, who alone can enable us to love the saints as we love the Savior, to love the members as we love the Head. Then "you know Him."

8. Has any deliverance ever come to you from the power of temptation? Have you had any manifestation of the sufferings of the Lord of life and glory; any solemn, heart-melting views of the garden of Gethsemane; any standing at the cross of Calvary; any view by the eye of faith of the blood that fell from the Redeemer's sacred brow as filled with sorrow in the garden, or crowned with thorns upon the cross; any sympathy, any union, any fellow-feeling with the Man of Sorrows? Whence came this? By the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter. Then "you know Him."

9. Has your heart ever felt true repentance for sin, any godly sorrow, any forsaking of your bosom lusts, any breaking to pieces of your fondest idols, any loosening of earthly ties, any willingness to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts? The Spirit of truth alone can accomplish this. Then "you know Him."

10. Has the fear of death ever been removed? Did you ever look that gaunt 'king of terrors' in the face? Did you ever look beyond the narrow isthmus of time and the dark and dreary river which flows between you and eternity, and believe that when death came it would be a messenger from the Lord to take your soul into His bosom? Has the Lord ever been made so dear, near, and precious that you have felt as if you could gladly drop the body and mount on eagle's wings from earth to heaven? Then "you know Him"; for who but He could deliver you from the fear of death, and make you, instead of shrinking from him with terror, even welcome the last enemy as your best friend? To have felt this, is it not to have known the Spirit as the Comforter?

And oh what a blessing it is also to have received the same gracious and heavenly Teacher as the Spirit of truth! If this is your happy case, you know the truth for yourself, and the truth is dear to your soul; it has been ingrafted by a divine witness in your heart, and inlaid by the power of God in your conscience. The truth as it is in Jesus is very, very precious to you. You cannot part with it; it is your very life. Sooner than part with God's truth and your interest therein, you would be willing in favored moments to lay down your life itself.

But what makes you love God's truth? What has given you a heart to embrace and delight in it; and when you have come to the house of prayer, it may be with a fainting body and a troubled mind, has yet supported your weary steps and brought you in; or when you have gone home from hearing the Word, has cheered your heart in the dark and gloomy night as you have lain upon your bed, and drawn your affections up to the Lord Jesus Christ? The Comforter, the Spirit of truth. He, and He alone, could give it so firm and enduring a place in your heart, conscience, and affections.

Then live that truth, as well as love it, and proclaim its power and efficacy in your life and conversation. If the Spirit has written His truth upon your heart, He will bring forth that truth in your lips and in your life. He will make it manifest that you are "children that cannot lie." You will show forth the power of truth, in the sincerity of your speech, in the uprightness of your movements, in your family, in the church, in your business, in your general character and deportment, and in everything which stamps the reality of religion and the power of vital godliness.

But the Lord Himself gives two reasons why the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth. The first is, "It sees Him not;" the second is, "It knows Him not." The world?that is, the world dead in sin, and the world dead in profession, men generally destitute of the life and power of God?must have something that it can see. It cannot receive that which it sees not. Nature, sense, reason can never go beyond earthly things; thus, while men have no divine faith, they are under the entire influence of their natural minds; and, as heavenly things can only be seen by heavenly eyes, they cannot receive the things which are invisible. Things must be either presented to their natural eye, or be such as their rational understanding can grasp, or they cannot and will not receive them. Now this explains why a religion that presents itself with a degree of beauty and grandeur to the natural eye will always be received by the world, while a spiritual, internal, heartfelt and experimental religion will always be rejected. The world can receive a religion that consists of forms, rites, and ceremonies. These are things seen. Beautiful buildings, painted windows, pealing organs, melodious choirs, the pomp and parade of an earthly priesthood, and a whole apparatus of religious ceremony, carry with them something that the natural eye can see and admire. The world receives all this external worship because suitable to the natural mind and intelligible to the reasoning faculties. But the quiet, inward, experimental, divine religion, which presents no attractions to the outward eye, but is wrought in the heart by a divine operation, the world cannot receive this, because it presents nothing that the natural eye can rest upon with pleasure, or is adapted to gratify the general idea of what religion is or should be.