THE MESSAGE THE REVEREND ROBERT FORMAN HORTON, D. D., LONDON IN THE seventh chapter of John, the thirty-seventh verse, we read: "On the last day [it might have been to-day], Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water." The message of Christianity, which we possess and therefore are bound to pass on, is that God, as the Holy Spirit, is able and willing to enter, and to dwell in, every human heart, in every human society, in the whole body of humanity, making it the temple of God. And further, that only by that indwelling of God can any human life be right, only by that indwelling of God can any human society be sound, and only by that indwelling of God can the nations be knit together into a genuine humanity, as the family of the Heavenly Father. Now, that message is delivered to us, and that spiritual dwelling of God within is mediated to us by Jesus Christ our Lord. As the text has just told us, it is by believing on Him that that spiritual life becomes an actual reality, and all its wonderful results begin to flow out of a human life. The briefest statement, therefore, of the message of Christianity is in these simple words in the Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." But when we come to examine and analyze this belief, we find that it opens from within, and that within it are revealed four great conditions, on which the indwelling of the Holy Spirit depends, and the conditions are fulfilled by the exercise of this faculty of faith which is given to us for that express purpose. These four conditions are asking, repenting, surrendering, obeying. The first condition that the Spirit of God shall dwell in you is that you shall ask Him to come. It is significant that our Lord Jesus Himself, though He was born of the Holy Ghost, received the Spirit in His baptism in the form of a dove while He was praying, and that He told us expressly that we should ask, and God would give the supreme and all-inclusive gift of the Holy Ghost. The first condition is that you shall ask-and continue asking daily, hourly-for the Spirit of God. I mentioned on Wednesday the little prayer that John Smith of Harrow learned originally from a Sunday-school teacher, and then passed on to the boys at Harrow School for a quarter of a century. That little prayer: "O Lord God, for Jesus Christ's sake, give me the Holy Spirit," has gone out far and wide, and its fruit never can be reckoned on earth, but, O my brothers and sisters! the thought possesses me that if that prayer should come from every one of you every day for the rest of your lives, and if you would pass on that message as the briefest and most compendious form of the Christian religion, out of this assembly might flow rivers of living water that would cover the earth. I want to ask you to tell people that brief prayer. The other day, while crossing the Atlantic, I tried to teach this prayer to my stateroom steward, who was a German. I translated it into German for him, and his eyes filled with tears; but he said that it was not for him. I told him that it was for him. He said that he had had great trouble; he had lost his friends, his parents; he was alone. "That is the reason why it is for you," I said; and I urged it upon that poor fellow, and until I left the ship I saw his grateful, wistful eyes always following me. He thanked me from his heart, I could see; and though he thought the prayer was not for him, I believe that by now that prayer is answered, and that that dear man has received the Holy Ghost. I say, therefore, ask, and tell others to ask. Jesus says, "How much more shall your Heavenly Father give" the Holy Spirit to them that ask. But we are quickly brought up against the second condition, for the desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit will make you aware of the sinful state of your own heart, and you will begin to see that the obstacle to the dwelling of the Holy Ghost in you is that your heart is unclean. The purpose is too divided; the stains of guilt are on the conscience; the habits of vice have undermined the character, and that guilty soul says: "He cannot enter here, because I am unclean." Hence the second condition which must be fulfilled. You must find your way to the cross; you must find an atonement; you must find a pardon, a cleansing, a regeneration. Try as you will—and many a man has tried his best-you cannot get your soul clean. Try as you will, you never will get it to Pentecost except by the way of Calvary. It is only there, at the cross, that the guilt, the stain, the shame are put away, and the burdened soul can receive the Divine Guest, who cannot abide iniquity or dwell in a heart where sin is determined to stay. You must come to the cross. It is true, you may have a spirit without the cross, but never the Spirit, never the Holy Spirit. Your utmost efforts at self improvement and discipline, like Luther's, only lead you to a certain austere satisfaction in achievement, or to a pitiful sense of failure. You cannot do it unless there is a cross, and a pardon, a propitiation for sin-for your sin, as well as for the sin of the world. This is your one hope of the Holy Ghost ever dwelling and abiding and working within you. That brings us to the third condition. When the cross has really touched you, when you have found there the pardon and the cleansing of your sin, you are not a human being unless within you rises the most amazing desire of surrender to Him who has washed you and made you clean in His precious blood. You are brought, like Zinzendorf, in the gallery at Düsseldorf, face to face with the picture. There He is upon the cross, and He says to you: "I did this for thee; what hast thou done for me?" And you stand transfixed, like Zinzendorf, and within you rises the answer: "Nothing have I done, but everything will I do for Thee who hast died for me.” We heard a story from America which touches me afresh every time I think of it, because it goes to the very heart of the matter. In the old slavery days, in the slave-market at New Orleans, a beautiful mulatto girl was put up for sale, and the bidding went up from one hundred dollars, step by step, to close on the limit of the price ever bid for a human being, when a Northern man began to bid, and pushed the bidding beyond the power of any one there to compete. At last, for some fabulous sum, the girl was knocked down to the man. The next morning he came to take his purchase. The girl was wistful and sad at the thought of leaving her Southern home and going to the unknown North; but she saw her purchaser and said she was ready. "I do not want you to come," he said, and put into her hand the indenture of her freedom. She looked at him and asked: "Am I free, am I my own, may I go where I wish?" "Yes; that is what I did it for," was the reply. Then she said: "Sir, I will go with you wherever you take me." That is the secret of the cross. "Sir, I will go with you wherever you take me, because you redeemed me." You cannot get away from the love that will not let you go, the love of Christ who died; but you never feel that love, it never grips you until you know what He said, that He died for you and purchased you with His precious blood. It is that which makes poignant the appeal of the message of Jesus. He purchases your love by the love that dies for you. I think that in all this wonderful Convention the thing that has touched me most has been the little lyric that our four brothers here sang to us on the opening day: "The Treasures of Love in Christ Jesus." That is the one thing. If you feel that, you will do anything. If you do not feel that, no orthodox opinions, no religious appeal, no enthusiasm of a great meeting, will carry you any |