A. B. Simpson
Is it empty in your spirit or is it filled with
some other face, or is it dedicated to and occupied by your blessed
Lord? Is it His shrine and His home and has He accepted it and made
it the seat of His glorious abode and throne of His blessed kingdom
of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost? Or are there some who read
these lines who have not yet even learned the meaning of their own
spirit and do not know whether it has yet been quickened from the
dead and prepared to be the seat of Christ's indwelling?
All that they know of life consists
in the physical organism, their mental faculties and their human
affections. They have a keen, quick, human life, all aglow with emotion and
mental activity, but the spirit, alas, alas! is so dead and cold that it
has not even caught the grasp of these higher thoughts that we have been contemplating.
Ah, beloved! There is one world that
you have not yet entered, and that is the eternal world to which you
are hastening. The life you are living can never introduce you to the
sphere of heavenly beings, for “flesh and blood cannot inherit
eternal life, nor corruption in corruption.” Your physical life will wither
like the flowers of summer, your mental endowments will rise to the highest human
rank, but will not touch the joy of that celestial realm. You must have
another nature before you can enter the kingdom of heaven. “Except a man be
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Just suppose for a moment a man going to a
great musical festival in Germany. He enters the great Concert Hall
but he does not know a single word of the language spoken nor has the
faintest germ of musical taste. To him the words are unmeaning
gutturals, and the notes a jargon of confusing noises. He could understand a
problem in mathematics, he could discourse with them with eloquence in
English on questions of politics or philosophy, but he is out of place, he
does not possess the key to their society or enjoyment.
And so let us suppose the highest intellect of earth entering
the society of heaven. To him their songs and joys would all seem as incomprehensible as
the conversation of a cultivated home circle would be to the little
dog that sits at their feet or the canary that sings in the window. It belongs
to a different race and cannot touch their world. Nor could such a man have one
point of contact with these heavenly beings. It would be another world, a
world unknown, a world as barren as a wilderness; and from its scenes he would
be glad to hasten to find some congenial fellowship. He cannot reach its range
because it is a spiritual race of beings, and he has but an intellectual nature.
And, on the other hand, they would have as little in common with him
as his range is infinitely below theirs.
We can imagine the porter of yonder gates
asking him what he knows, and he begins to tell them about the lore
of classical culture, the mythologies of Greece or the monuments
of Egypt. The angel smiles with pity and answers, “Why, these splendid memories of
which you speak are not worthy of comparison with the world in which we
dwell. The grandest temple of Egypt would not make
a pedestal for one of the stairs of heaven.” Perhaps he tells them of astronomy,
the distance or magnitude of the stars. “Why,” the angel answers, “we have
no need of these dim and distant calculations here.
There is not one of yonder worlds we
have not visited and we could tell you ten thousand times more of its
mysteries than you have ever dreamed of, but the glories of these cannot be
compared with the glory of Him who sits upon the throne, whom you have not
eyes to see, or the sweetness of these redemption songs which you cannot even
hear because you have not ears to hear. One thrill of the rapture we feel
you cannot ever know because your heart has not been quickened in one heavenly chord.
You do not belong here. You live in the lower realm of mind alone, but
this is the Home of God and those who have received His nature, His Spirit, and
are admitted as His children to dwell in His presence and share His infinite and
everlasting joy.
Beloved, this is the high calling which is
given to every one of Adam's race who has heard the gospel. You may become a
son of God, you may receive a new spirit which can know and enjoy
Him, and that spirit can be so sanctified, so cleansed, so enlarged, so
filled with Himself, as to be able to reach the highest sublimity of
His grace and glory and joy. Will you separate it from all that
defiles and dwarfs it? Will you dedicate it to Him to be exalted to
its highest possible destiny and will, henceforth receive Him to be its life
and purity, its satisfaction, its nature, and its ALL and in ALL?
These four short lines of simple poetry express
the depth and height of holiness, namely, as a great need and an
infinite supply for that need in God. Beloved, will they
express, henceforth, your emptiness and your divine filling?
In the heart of man-A cry;
In the heart of God-Supply.
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