JOHN xiv. 26. “The Comforter,
which is the Holy Ghost.”
CREATURES with an experience like our own specially
need two things. They need that the consequences of
their own wrong-doings or misdoings should be capable of
retrieval. They need also that power and strength such
as theirs, so untrustworthy, yet charged with such vast in-
terests, which so often go wrong, yet which must learn to
go right unless everything is to be lost, should be assisted
and fortified for good. The remedy for the sin of the
world is the life and sacrifice of the eternal Son of the
Father.
I. The aid for man is the Eternal Spirit. Like the Divine
remedy, it is not only a Divine influence, or endowment, or
gift, or power, it is a Divine Person. This was the great
revelation of the last days of our Lord on earth. This is
the clear and constant teaching of the New Testament.
In Him we have a real Person to assist us, who under-
stands, who feels, who cares, who loves, who holds all
power to help; who, if we pray, joins with us in intercession
with plaints unutterable.
II. We cannot translate this great truth into the lan-
guage of sense, of sight, of daily experience. We are
called to run our course as if we were running it alone, and
yet with the consciousness that we are not alone; that we
have something over and above the general care of God in
the world; that One is ever beside us whom the mind of
man cannot comprehend, but who, to the humblest of
Christ’s servants, is the secret of their hope and steadfast-
ness.
III. What a change it would make in the lives of many
of us if we realized this Divine Gospel mystery. Irrever-
ence, all formal worship, unsettled moods of feeling, selfish,
loveless isolation would all disappear.
R. W. Church, D.C.L.