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then be forced to commit ourselves to a wisdom w h i c h has been dis credited by the Lord and p r o v e d Worthless by human experience. Sadly enough, there.is nothing to prevent Us from going on day after day com mitting our churches to an inadequate human strategy, at h u g e financial cost, to say nothing of the immense waste of labor, and the spiritual bar renness which results. To look these facts squarely in the face is to lose confidence In ourselves and in all our busy planning. “They that are in the flesh cannot please God,” however sound t h e i r doctrine may be, however sincere and well in- tentioned their efforts to serve the Lord. God's Way Dark as the picture may seem, it ap pears so only to the flesh. The true, children of God áre not left in a blind impasse; they aré not oompelled to trust to their own resources. God has provided a way for us if we will but humble ourselves to accept it: it is the way of self-abnegation and meek sur render to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. "The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way” (Psa.. 25:9), The Holy Spirit made the difference between blundering disciples, in wardly blind, and the spiritually acute Apostles who led the early church to blazing victories. It was not experi ence, but the Holy Spirit that made the change. Apart from the Spirit, experience may only .confirm us in our mistakes; time may but deepen our basic errors. Religious history teaches this too plainly for any of us to miss. The' times call for believers who have the inner light, Whose lives ride the never-failing beam. Indoctrina tion is not enough. Israel had the Law, but she must have also the fiery pillar to lead her through the wilder ness. To the church of Christ, the Holy Spirit is not a luxury; He is a neces sity. We dare not dismiss the whole thing with the remark that everything is all right now that we are living in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. It is not the dispensation, it is spirit ual experience that matters: experi ence with the Holy Spirit, not experi ence apart from Him. True, we are living chronologically on the near side of Pentecost, but at the same time it is altogether possible for us to be living on the far "side of Pentecost experien- tia lly . Whatever our theological views, we must humble ourselves and receive— Dy our moment -by •moment yielding —a mighty fullness of the Spirit for light, for power, and for purity.
B NE of the first things we need to learn—and the last we usu ally do learn—is that we are tuition that will enable us to know the mind of God: This is probably the hardest of all hard t r u t h s for human conceit to swallow. It exposes the poverty, of our nature in its most' humiliating form. Of nothing are we so inordinately proud as of our reason. To be told that our best wisdom is ^>ut childish ignorance, and that it is rejected in toto by the Creator, is a painful blow at human pride, and is considered by many an unwarranted affront to their native dignity. It is a deeper humilia tion still to discover that God rejects not our ignorance only, but also our learning—not our worst, but our best —and that He flatly declares that the brightest, most penetrating thoughts of the natural mind are but foolish ness with Him. It is disquieting to discover in the Gospels that every time the disciples offered- a suggestion or expressed an opinion concerning spiritual things they were wrong, dead wrong, and had to be set right by the Lord Him self, T h e i r Ideals, methods, plans
were almost never approved by fheir divine Master. Though they were the favored descendants o f those to whom the oracles had first been committed, though they must have often heard the Law and the Prophets read in their synagogues, they were still pitifully blind to the true light of God. Their -religious education had apparently helped them little; they lacked the inward illumination necessary to un derstand God’s mysterious ways. Yet, judged as men, they were not inferior. Subsequent developments re vealed an I. Q. level remarkably high, and an average of gift and ability well above the ordinary. Query: What reason have we to be lieve that we in our day can do any better than they did in theirs? For instance, why should we assume that a board of a dozen men meeting the first Tuesday after the first Monday of each month shall be able to dis cover the sure will of God for the church, when that first board of a dozen Apostles scarcely succeeded in thinking the thoughts of God once in three years? Our natural egotism may prompt us to redact these observations as being excessively -pessimistic. If we do, then I see no help for us. We shall
by nature devoid of any spiritual in
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