Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
That fulness will be a growing fulness, for our spirits are capable, if
not of infinite, at any rate of indefinite, expansion, and there is no
limit known to us, and no limit, I suppose, which will ever be reached,
so that we can go no further--to the possible growth of a created
spirit that is in touch with God, and is having itself enlarged and
elevated and ennobled by that contact. The vessel is elastic, the walls
of the cup of our spirit, into which the new wine of the divine Spirit
is poured, widen out as the draught is poured into them. The more a man
possesses and uses of the life of God, the more is he capable of
possessing and the more he will receive. So a continuous expansion in
capacity, and a continuous increase in the amount of the divine life
possessed, are held out as the happy prerogative and possibility of a
Christian soul.
This Stephen had but a very small amount of the clear Christian
knowledge that you and I have, but he was leagues ahead of most
Christian people in regard to this, that he was 'filled with the Holy
Spirit.' Brethren, you can have as much of that Spirit as you want. It
is my own fault if my Christian life is not what the Christian lives of
some of us, I doubt not, are. 'Filled with the Holy Spirit'! rather a
little drop in the bottom of the cup, and all the rest gaping
emptiness; rather the fire died down, Pentecostal fire though it be,
until there is scarcely anything but a heap of black cinders and grey
ashes in your grate, and a little sandwich of flickering flame in one
corner; rather the rushing mighty wind died down into all but a dead
calm, like that which afflicts sailing-ships in the equatorial regions,
when the thick air is deadly still, and the empty sails have not
strength even to flap upon the masts; rather the 'river of the water of
life' that pours 'out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb,' dried up
into a driblet.
That is the condition of many Christian people. I say not of which of
us. Let each man settle for himself how that may be. At all events here
is the possibility, which may be realised with increasing completeness
all through a Christian man's life. We may be filled with the Holy
Spirit.
II. If we are 'full of faith' we shall be filled with the Spirit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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