SERMON XXVII.
THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT.

WHITSUNDAY.

ROM. viii. 16.

"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God."

THE Comforter! That you know is the special Name by which it has pleased the Holy Spirit of God to make Himself known to His people, and come among them, as on this great Day. He came also to be our Guide, by leading us into all Truth: our Advocate, by prompting us inwardly in our hearts, how to pray to the Father and plead with Him, in union with the prayers and pleading of our Intercessor Jesus Christ: and most of all He came to be our Sanctifier, by changing our hearts, giving us a new nature, making us holy by uniting us to the Incarnate Saviour. The Holy Spirit came to be all this and more to us, more than we could ask or think. But the Name by which in His good Providence He vouchsafed to be especially known to us was the gracious and condescending Name, Comforter. By that Name our Saviour promised Him: "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever;" and again, "The Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My Name;" and again, "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." By that Name we own Him in our hymns; "Also the Holy Ghost the Comforter;" and,

"Thou art the very Comforter
In grief and all distress."

And for His coming as Comforter we are taught to pray especially during the time that we commemorate our Lord's Ascension: "We beseech Thee, leave us not comfortless: but send to us Thine Holy Ghost to comfort us."

Now a Comforter, we know, is one who strengthens and refreshes another; cheers him up and supports him, and soothes and heals the wounds of his heart, in any distress or pain or loss or sorrow with which it may please God to visit him; and no doubt when the Blessed Spirit teaches us to call Him the Comforter, we are to understand that by Him more immediately the Holy Trinity visits all poor and needy creatures with all merciful and loving gifts. The Holy Spirit is the Gift and the Promise and the Consolation, in which all other gifts, promises, and consolations are contained. Nevertheless there is a special meaning, no doubt, in the word Comforter, by which He first made Himself known to the Apostles, and now continues to make Himself known to each of us. There was a special sorrow which at that time hung heavy upon them, and He came to comfort them under it. What was that special sorrow? It may be put in one word: they were orphans. He Who was their Father and more than Father, was departing from them, and leaving them, outwardly, alone and helpless in the world. That was the sorrow which filled their heart. They were on the point of being bereaved of Him Whom their soul loved, their Friend and Father and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Therefore our Lord expressly promises them, "I will not leave you comfortless" (the word in the original Greek is the very word orphans) "I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you." See how the Blessed Lord, reading their hearts, touched the very string which He knew was moving them so deeply. They feared they should lose Him their Father and so be left orphans. He promises them, in the first place, that He would not leave them orphans; they should not be without a Father: and in the next place, because He had said, "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter;" and the word "another" might make them jealous, as if they were going to lose Him, and they might say in their hearts: "If Jesus goeth, it matters not who cometh; we cannot be happy without Jesus," lest they should go on so troubling themselves, He adds, "I will come to you; I Who am now departing in Body will come to you again in Spirit: that other Comforter will work so marvellously with you and with Me, that in Him I shall be nearer to you, unspeakably nearer, than I am at present while you see Me; and that, never to depart more, for He will abide with you for ever, and by Him I shall abide also." Thus the second Adam, the Father of all Christian souls, promised the Holy Ghost to comfort His Apostles, His eldest children in the Faith, under the sorrow of losing Him.

But was the comfort for the Apostles only, and for those who had known our Lord's Face in the flesh? No, surely: it was intended for us all: for by nature and birth we are all spiritually orphans, all without God our Father in the dangerous, forlorn, cruel world: all and every one, as surely as we are of Adam's seed, are in the condition of that poor helpless prodigal, who wandered as far as he could from his father's house, and made haste to spend all his substance in riotous living. And as the great thing to that poor wanderer, when he came to himself, was, to be received back again, on any terms, into his father's house, and the offended father, still loving him most dearly, and knowing all that was in his heart, not only received him, but received him as a son; running to meet him, and falling on his neck, and kissing him, and ordering out the fatted calf, the shoes and the ring and the best robe, and so adopting him again into all the privileges which he had forfeited, and not suffering him to doubt, that he was his son as much as ever: such is the work of the Comforter for us sinners, bringing us one by one into our Father's house again, first by Baptism, afterwards, if need be, by a harder but no less sure way, by repentance. He gives us this sure comfort, that whereas we were outcasts from our Father and our home, now we are admitted to a place in the family again, not as servants but as sons; by virtue of our union with Him, Who is the True, natural, Eternal Son. So long as men are out of God's family, they are, as our Lord saith, of their father the devil; but when He adopts us for His own in His beloved Son, then God is our Father, Christ our elder brother, heaven our inheritance, Angels our ministers, the Bread of heaven our nourishment. This, our adoption to be children of God, is the great Whitsun Gift: for this, most especially, the Holy Ghost came down from heaven as at this time with all those mighty signs and wonders. He came down, to work in each one of us that change, which our Lord calls being born again, and S. Peter, a partaking of the Divine Nature6. The Spirit came down, I say, to work this change in each one of us; and He signified His coming by the cloven tongues like as of fire, the rushing mighty wind, and the rest, that dutiful persons might have the comfort of knowing His blessed Presence, and their share in it. Thus He was their Comforter, sealing to them their adoption. The wonders which they saw and heard confirmed the deep inward conviction, which the Spirit itself, at the same time entering into them, wrought in their hearts, that they were now really taken into a new and heavenly state, adopted into God's family, endowed with a new and heavenly life. We, my brethren, as Christians, have our portion in the same blessings, sealed to us by the same Spirit; only, instead of the fiery tongues and the rushing mighty wind and the other miracles connected with that first outpouring, we have His Presence sealed to us by His sure promises to be with His Church and in His Sacraments to the end of the world. E. g. little children are brought here, Sunday after Sunday, and are baptized, as He ordered, with water, "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And the Spirit itself is there; for so our Lord promised, both making and declaring each one of those little ones to be verily a child of God. This the Spirit itself testifieth, before the child can have any will or knowledge. Bye and bye, as time goes on, God Almighty blessing the work of His Church, parents, godfathers, teachers, Pastors, not altogether neglecting their duty, and the children themselves not wilfully breaking away from His loving Hand, that which S. Paul calls "the witness of our spirit" comes to be added to the witness of God's Spirit. As long as we are too young to think on the matter, the Holy Ghost bears His witness alone, that we are children of God. He beareth witness with our spirit, when we come to have serious thoughts; thoughts of God, thoughts of eternity, thoughts of our Lord and His Cross; and more especially, the Apostle here teaches, doth He, the Holy Comforter, bear His proper witness in our hearts, when we try in earnest to pray. Mark the holy and comfortable words: "Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." As if He should say, "Here you are, so many Christians of different ages, men and women, youths and maidens; for one and all Christ died: to one and all He gave His good Spirit in Baptism, and if you had died that moment, you would have surely died children of God. Now, would you not wish for the comfort of a reasonable hope that you are still in His family, that, whatever your backslidings may have been, you have not quite cut yourselves off from Him, but are still His sons and daughters, however erring and imperfect? Well, the Apostle seems to say, here is a sign, a token which God points out to you by me, whether you are yet His children or no. Do you really try to pray in earnest? Do you really wish, and endeavour to speak to God as your Father, because it is your duty, because you know in your heart, that you belong to Him, and cannot be happy without Him? Do you feel vexed, really vexed and grieved and ashamed in heart, that your prayers have been and are so very imperfect and irregular? that you know not, what you should pray for as you ought? And do you in your secret heart call upon your good Lord, and wish that by His help you may pray better? Like the disciple who so earnestly said, "Lord, teach us to pray," and so helped to win for himself and us that great 'gift of the Lord's Prayer. If these are your thoughts, and you encourage them when they come, and try to make much of them, it is a good and hopeful sign for you: the Spirit of God is so far testifying with your spirit that you are the child of God; the Ear that heareth all things will distinguish even in your faint unsteady tones the call which you have learned of your Saviour, 'Abba, Father,' even as parents know the meaning of the imperfect sounds their infants make long before they can speak plain. Thus even in the humblest beginnings of sincere prayer that gracious and wonderful saying may have an accomplishment, "We know not what we should pray for, as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the Will of God."

It is of the greatest consequence, brethren, that we fall into no mistake in this matter. Consider: would it not be sad indeed, exceeding dangerous, if a person, because he has occasional good feelings, and so far thinks himself in earnest, should therefore say in his heart, "The Spirit itself bears me witness; I feel in myself that I am a child of God?" And yet perhaps all the while that man may be going on in some great and deadly sin: lying, or cheating, or thieving, or uncleanness, or evil-speaking, or selfish unkind-ness. O, is it not dismal to think of the words which will too likely be spoken to such a man bye and bye, when he with the foolish virgins shall stand without and knock at the door, and the answer will come from within, "I know you not:" and the self-deceiving heart perhaps would say, "I felt the witness within me, I had great comfort in my religion:" but still there would be but one reply, "I know you not;" "depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity." As you would escape this worst of miseries, observe, I pray you, my brethren, that it will never do to trust our own feelings simply. The Holy Spirit is not given to make us comfortable but to help us to heaven. If you want to know whether His witness agrees with that of your own heart, the only safe way is to examine yourself strictly; how you pray, and how you live. If you come to God constantly in prayer, in Church and out of Church, as a child to a parent, wishing you could pray better, and really trying to do so: if the eye of your soul look singly and in faith towards that unseen inheritance which is promised, where we read, "If we are children, then heirs: heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together;" if the love of Christ, growing in us more and more, lead us to think more and more of seeing Him in that world (for you see the Christian's hope is not only to be an heir of God, but still more to be joint-heir with Christ;) and lastly if, devoting ourselves to Him, we make up our minds to suffer with Him: all these are happy signs indeed; and where they are, the humble heart may reasonably, and assuredly say within itself, "I trust it is not my fancy alone, but that I really have the comfortable witness of the Spirit: God give me grace never to grieve, never to tempt, never to vex that good Spirit: God keep me from ever so relying on His consolations, as to become less careful of my ways!"

These, my brethren, are some of the great Whitsuntide thoughts: very deep and serious thoughts indeed: thoughts, which we cannot put away from us, without great risk and hazard of losing our souls. Encourage them, I beseech you, by all means in your power. Set your heart to meditate deeply on that which occurred at Jerusalem to-day; not only, nor chiefly, for the greatness of the miracles, but because it was the beginning of His deep mercies in converting men's hearts, joining them to Christ, leading them in His steps, and so preparing them for heaven. Think also much of your own Baptism: that day, whenever it happened, was a sort of Whitsunday to you, the Holy Spirit coming down for the first time upon you individually, to seal to you your portion in Christ. Remember your Baptism, and the vows that are upon your soul ever since; and as the Apostles, after the first Whitsunday, went out and preached everywhere, so do you lose no time in setting about your special duties. Do all to Him, for Him, by Him; as knowing, that you can do nothing at all without Him. "And may the very God of Peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!"

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