Comforter: A Feeling

We need a better teaching than this. We need "the Spirit of truth," whose especial office is to take the truth of God, and to open up, reveal, make known, apply, and seal it with His own gracious operation, divine influence, and holy power upon the heart and conscience. Do not you who fear His great name find at times darkness pervading your souls?an Egyptian darkness, a darkness that may be felt?so that there seems not a ray of divine light in your breast? Whence comes this dreary feeling, this sinking down of your whole soul under the power of darkness, as the earth sinks under the power of the shades of night? Because the Spirit of truth has come into your heart to convince you of the darkness in which you were born, and to show you that it still hovers as deeply as ever over your carnal mind.

Remember this, that as the carnal mind is ever "enmity against God," darkness wholly possesses it; for as love is light, enmity is darkness, and the light of life has no more penetrated the carnal mind than the love of God. It is light in your spiritual mind that makes you see this darkness; it is the teaching of God's Spirit in your soul that makes you groan and sigh beneath it. Now as you mourn and sigh under this darkness you feel the indispensable necessity of the Spirit of truth to open up, apply, reveal, and make known the truth of God to your soul, for you can no more give yourself light than give yourself faith or love.

But, through rich and unspeakable mercy, there are times and seasons when a spiritual light seems to shine upon the sacred page. You read the Bible with enlightened eyes. Power and sweetness seem to stream, as it were, in rich unction through the Word of truth, and as you read it with softened heart and tearful eyes, the truth of God shines from it into your understanding as brightly and as clearly as the sun in the noonday sky. You wonder how anyone can doubt or deny the truth of God; it is so clear to you that you think he who runs may read.

And why? Because the Spirit of truth is opening it up to your understanding and applying it with power to your heart. You wonder how any man who reads the Bible can deny the Deity of Christ, His eternal Sonship, the atoning blood, the justifying righteousness, the dying love of the Lord the Lamb. You wonder how any man can read the Bible and deny the covenant of grace, the electing love of God, the full salvation wrought out by His dear Son, and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Why is the matter so clear to you? Because the Spirit of truth is illuminating your mind, radiating light from the Scriptures into your soul, and opening up the truth of God with divine power to your heart. This He does as the Spirit of truth, for as the Spirit of truth He makes the Word of God to be spirit and life to the soul.

2. But not only at times do you see the truth of God plainly and clearly, but you believe as well as see. There is a divine movement in your soul, whereby your heart is brought under the holy influence and sacred impression of God's truth. As the wax to the seal, as the clay to the potter's hand, so your heart is softened and melted within you, and you receive God's truth stamped upon your heart with a heavenly hand. Does not this show that the Spirit of truth is not only enlightening your understanding, but quickening your conscience, renewing your heart, and spreading a divine influence through your soul? Truth by itself can only stand at the portal, or look in at the window; it cannot come within to regenerate or renew; but the Spirit of truth enters with truth in His mouth, and breathes it into the heart as a living breath, as the prophet saw in "the valley of vision," for until "the breath" came into the slain they did not live (Ezek. 37:10).

3. Under this sacred and spiritual influence there are times and seasons when your conscience seems in an especial manner wrought upon. The evil of sin is set before you as perhaps you have never seen it before. Your conscience bleeds with the guilt and weight of it. You see what a dreadful and an evil thing sin is, how loathsome, how detestable! You could almost weep tears of blood that you have been such a sinner. Your backslidings rise up to view as so many mountains of iniquity. The wickedness of your heart is laid bare, and you feel that there cannot be such another wretch on earth. Your corrupt nature is opened up in all its filth and gore; you wonder how the long suffering of God could have borne with you so many years in the wilderness. And not only so, but tears flow down your cheek; sobs of contrition heave from your breast; you could almost weep your life away, because you have sinned so deeply against such love and against such blood. Why is this? The Spirit of truth is breathing upon your conscience, and the feeling of sin there is His work.

4. Then, again, there are times and seasons when your heart seems in a special manner lifted up to heavenly things. It is as if a live coal from off the altar touched your inmost affections. You see Jesus by the eye of faith at the right hand of the Father; your heart goes out after Him in love and affection; you feel that, be you what you may, you do love Him with every faculty of your soul, and your desire is to live to His praise, and die in the sweet enjoyment of His love shed abroad in your heart. And yet you feel that you never can upon earth love Him as He is to be loved. You must have an immortal tongue to sing His praise, and a glorified soul to hold all that His love can bestow. Why is this? Because the Spirit of truth is love in your affections.

In this way, then, we have the Spirit of truth as light in the understanding, life in the heart, feeling in the conscience, and love in the affections; and by these four things He is made vitally and experimentally known to the saints of God as the Spirit of truth. Can the letter of truth, however clear or sound, do all this? Can a sound creed or a mere form of words effect a work in the least degree approaching to it? I feel sure they cannot, for words as words cannot reach beyond the surface; they cannot sink or penetrate into the very core of the heart's deepest feeling. It is therefore indispensably necessary that the Spirit of truth should put, as it were, a soul into the body of truth, or to speak more correctly, should Himself regenerate, renew and sanctify the saint of God that he may have a living union and communion with the Lord of life and glory; for "he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit," and he becomes this when he is baptized by the Holy Spirit into that spiritual baptism which makes him a living member of the body of Christ.