Such is our view of the first Christian Pentecost, as an outpouring of the Divine Spirit, virtually a new lawgiving, a sacred confirmation of the word of Him who came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets. At such a time remarkable external phenomena might be expected, for it was indeed a new moral creation, — an opening of heaven and God to men as well as an opening of men to heaven and God. It was the inauguration of the Christian kingdom on earth, — a kingdom whose essential law was to remain after the peculiar circumstances of its inauguration ceased. It was an expressive sign indeed, that the souls of those present were so opened to each other, that all understood the Gospel preached, each as in his own speech, and that they who were to bear the everlasting word to the nations should be designated by tongues of flame. -- The transient occurrences must be distinguished from the permanent truths connected with the occasion. Every great cycle in the order of Providence is ushered in by remarkable events; and principles afterwards work in quiet, which were introduced in storm and fire. There are convulsions in nature in the great periods of her changes, convulsions in society in the rise of new dynasties and the development of new powers. The giving of the law on Sinai was with cloud and tempest and fire, and the code thus solemnly consecrated afterwards became the established faith of Israel, bringing peace to her homes and palaces. To gather a lasting lesson or educe a permanent influence from the first Christian Pentecost, we need no more ask to have those peculiar circumstances repeated, than we should ask that the events of the American Revolution which attended the rise of our national institutions should be repeated every time a new citizen is received or a new administration inaugurated. Nay, we should no more ask that every Christian experience should repeat the miracle of Pentecost, than ask that Sinai should thunder every time a child first learns the ten commandments, and thus the Mosaic law is enacted anew. All periods of creation have their signal marks, and after the new order is established a regular law of cause and effect appears. But the promise was that the predicted witness, the Spirit of Truth from the Father, should remain. And it has remained, confirmed by the voice of ages, and by every Christian experience. The door then opened in the heavenly world has been kept open, and divine influence has ever been given as declared. That witness of God, of Christ, and of the eternal life has never been withdrawn. Men have tried to argue it down, and to sin it away, but in vain. All their infidel shrewdness, all their earth-born philosophizing, has been strangely baffled by the Spirit in man that still bears witness of things unseen, and in every age the mouths of conspicuous scoffers have been closed by the force of this very evidence working within themselves, allying itself with what is divine in reason and conscience. This witness has been in Christendom, and is now, in a manner that no creeds can define, and to an extent which no bigotry can bound. There may be various theories of the nature of the Spirit, and also of the method of its coming. Some may call it a third person in the Godhead, and others, like ourselves, in a simpler faith, may deem it the breath of God, the Spirit of the Most High; yet the real marks of its influence are still the same, for it still speaks within the soul, of God the Heavenly Father, and of Christ the Divine Image and the appointed Way. About methods of winning the heavenly witness men may dispute. "It is here," say thousands, "and here alone, alone in the line of our favorite creed of substitution and imputation; for how can man," asks the Calvinist, "receive this mark of God's love, unless some holy one bears his pains for him, and lends his righteousness to him?" There it may be, but not because of that creed; there it is surely, if the soul in any way has been reconciled to God by the Saviour, and known the sentiment of true reconciliation. "It is here, and here alone," say millions of another stamp," alone under the seal of baptism and the bread of communion as administered by elect hands, able to impart the seed of regeneration and the food of angels." There it may be, but not there alone, nor because of any priestly prerogative. There, if at all, because Christ has been received in a far nearer sense, and the witness of reconciliation has been his cleansing and nurturing word. Its Under all forms of faith, and in all ages of the Church, the essential of Christian experience is the same. essential consciousness is the sense of reconciliation with God. Its essential form is Christ by his mission and spirit reconciling God with man. Its essential fruit is piety and charity. Mediately and immediately the witness is won; mediately through all the agencies of example, advice, sacred literature, the influence of the Church, and all the institutions that are in the least imbued with Christianity; immediately by all acts of the soul or graces of heaven that bring man into direct communion with God. Both aids we need, all that the wisdom, piety, and charity among men can do, and all that our own presence at the mercy-seat can do, to keep the heavenly influence thus far granted, and to open to ys still more largely the sources of blessing. Such do we deem to be the truth regarding the promised Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, to the Christian. Believing thus, we have faith at once very enlarged and very specific. It is enlarged. It excludes no other evidence in its zeal for its own peculiar gift. It accepts the witness of nature and the testimony of the law, nay, confirms and completes them both. How nature is interpreted by a reasonable communication of the mind of its Lord, how creation is transfigured by a fuller expression of the spirit of its Creator, as that Creator is presented by his chosen Son! The yearly festival of the Paraclete has always been a time of rejoicing in the beauty and plenty of the earth. The faithful have looked upon this beautiful season with a deeper joy from believing in a Word less evanescent than the withering grass, and in a spirit that views things visible as the vestibule of the kingdom not seen and eternal. The true man will allow no artificial relations, no walls, although of gold, no exemption from the lot of the tiller of the soil, to shut him out from direct relations with nature, whether in its smiling landscapes or its fruitful fields. The book that God gave him to read, he will read, and the book outspread to his gaze will never fail to stir the spirit within to new faith and praise. To him nature will be more and more a witness of God. Indeed, is it not true, that Christianity has created the true poetry of nature, and given the landscape its true interpretation to the artist, and ocean and stars their true voice to the poet? In what school have the Spensers and Miltons, the Herberts and Wordsworths, learned to look through nature to its God, and catch gleams of the interior glory through this screen before the shrine? Who speaks this truth better than that pure and gifted poet, who in calm and happy old age has of late gone from the world, as years ago, in the gladness of the May season of the Christian Pentecost, he wrote his Ode on Immortality? "And oh, ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, Think not of any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway; I love the brooks which down thy channels fret Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun, The Law he will not reject. Nay, its evidence he will the better appreciate from the witness within. God's mind he will more clearly see in the revelation to Moses. Beatitudes to him will take the place of threats, and the discipline there set forth for the family and the state, in their relations to an earthly kingdom and a chosen tribe, will have deeper significance when interpreted from a higher point of view, |