p. 365 | A Dream by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 17, 1913

A Dream

By G. B. Thompson

The Holy Spirit—No. 14

A Dream

G. B. THOMPSON

THE late Rev. A. J. Gordon, one among the most spiritual and earnest ministers of recent years, relates a dream that he once had, which led to marked results in his own life, and reforms in the church of which he was pastor. As a result of this dream he says there “came a blessed and ever-to-be-remembered crisis in my spiritual life when from a deeper insight into Scripture the doctrine of the Holy Spirit began to open to me.” “I had known the Holy Ghost as a heavenly influence to be invoked, but somehow I had not grasped the truth that he is a person of the Godhead, who came down to earth at a definite time and who has been in the church ever since, just as really as Jesus was here during the thirty-three years of his earthly life.”

Concerning the changes which ensued, he speaks thus: “Instead of praying constantly for the descent of a divine influence, there was now a surrender, however imperfect, to a divine and ever-present Being. Instead of a constant effort to make use of the Holy Spirit for doing my work, there arose a clear and abiding conviction that the true secret of service lay in so yielding to the Holy Spirit that he might use me to do his work.”

The dream was as follows:—

“It was Saturday night, when wearied from the work of preparing Sunday’s sermon, that I fell asleep and the dream came. I was in the pulpit before a full congregation, just ready to begin my sermon, when a stranger entered and passed slowly up the left aisle of the church, looking first to the one side and then to the other, as though silently asking with his eyes that some one would give him a seat. He had proceeded nearly half-way up the aisle when a gentleman stepped out and offered him a place in his pew, which was quietly accepted. Excepting the face and features of the stranger everything in the scene is distinctly remembered,—the number of the pew, the Christian man who offered its hospitality, the exact seat that was occupied. Only the countenance of the visitor could never be recalled. That his face wore a peculiarly serious look, as of one who had known some great sorrow, is clearly impressed on my mind. His bearing, too, was exceedingly humble, his dress poor and plain, and from the beginning to the end of the service he gave the most respectful attention to the preacher. Immediately as I began my sermon my attention became riveted on this hearer. If I would avert my eyes from him for a moment, they would instinctively return to him, so that he held my attention rather than I held his till the discourse was ended. “To myself I said constantly, ‘Who can that stranger be?’ and then mentally resolved to find out by going to him and making his acquaintance as soon as the service should be over. But after the benediction had been given, the departing congregation filed into the aisles, and before I could reach him the visitor had left the house. The gentleman with whom he had sat remained behind, however, and approaching him with great eagerness, I asked: ‘Can you tell me who that stranger was who sat in your pew this morning?’ In the most matter-of-course way he replied: ‘Why, do you not know that man? It was Jesus of Nazareth.’ With a sense of the keenest disappointment I said: ‘My dear sir, why did you let him go without introducing me to him? I was so desirous to speak to him.’ With the same nonchalant air the gentleman replied: ‘O, do not be troubled! He has been here to-day, and without doubt he will come again.’”

“And now came an indescribable rush of emotion. As when a strong current is suddenly checked, the stream rolls back upon itself and is choked in its own foam, so the intense curiosity which had been going out toward the mysterious hearer now returned upon the preacher; and the Lord himself, ‘whose I am, and whom I serve,’ had been listening to me to-day. What was I saying? Was I preaching on some popular theme in order to catch the ear of the public? Well, thank God it was of himself I was speaking. However imperfectly done, it was Christ and him crucified whom I was holding up this morning. But in what spirit did I preach? Was it ‘Christ crucified preached in a crucified style’? or did the preacher magnify himself while exalting Christ? So anxious and painful did these questionings become that I was about to ask the brother with whom he had sat if the Lord had said anything to him concerning the sermon, but a sense of propriety and self-respect at once checked the suggestion. Then immediately other questions began with equal vehemence to crowd into the mind: What did he think of our sanctuary, its Gothic arches, its stained windows, its costly and powerful organ? How was he impressed with the music and the order of the worship? It did not seem at that moment as though I could ever again care or have the smallest curiosity as to what men might say of preaching, worship, or church, if I could only know that he had not been displeased, that he would not withhold his feet from coming again because he had been grieved at what he might have seen or heard.”

“We speak of ‘a momentous occasion.’ This, though in sleep, was recognized as such by the dreamer—a lifetime, almost an eternity, of interest crowded into a single solemn moment. One present for an hour who could tell me all I have so longed to know; who could point out to me the imperfections of my service; who could reveal to me my real self, to whom, perhaps, I am most a stranger; who could correct the errors in our worship, to which long usage and accepted tradition may have rendered us insensible. While I had been preaching for a half-hour, He had been here and listening who could have told me all this and infinitely more—and my eyes had been holden that I knew him not; and now he had gone. ‘Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me.’”

“One thought, however, lingered in my mind with something of comfort and more of awe. ‘He has been here to-day, and no doubt he will come again;’ and mentally repeating these words as one regretfully meditating on a vanished vision, I awoke, and it was a dream.”—“How Christ Came to Church,” pages 28-32.

Speaking further concerning the heart-searching effect of the dream and the personal presence of Christ through the Spirit, Dr. Gordon says: “When it became a realized and unquestionable fact that in the person of the Holy Ghost, Jesus is just as truly in the midst of the church as he once stood in the company of his disciples and ‘showed them his hands and his feet,’ then the whole house began to be searched as with a lighted candle.” The question of “pew rentals” began to trouble him, with the “sittings so graded that one could read the relative financial standing of the worshipers by noting their position in the broad aisles.” The “popular desire for eloquence, for humor, for entertainment, for wit,” as a minister, also came under prayerful scrutiny.

Then the question of a paid choir, with fine voices administering the service of song, the larger part of whose members “made no profession of discipleship, and some were confessed disbelievers,” was pressed upon his mind. His conscience was distressed in reference to such “singers standing above the communion table, leading a divinely appointed ministry of song.” “Minstrels from Egypt” had taken the place of that “chastened, self-denying, holy song which no man can learn but they that have been redeemed.”

From this searching of the sanctuary, occasioned by the mysterious stranger in the pew seen in the dream, he was led to the conviction that “performers brought from the opera or from the theater on Sunday to regale the ears of the church with some flighty song of artistic musical display,” was wrong.

“When I can consent,” he said, “to have the communion table moved out into the court of the Gentiles, and call upon the thoughtless and unconverted to receive the sacred elements lying thereon, then I may see the propriety of bringing a choir of unregenerated musical artists into the holy of holies of the church, and of committing to their direction the service of song. This conviction rests upon neither prejudice nor preference, but upon the fixed assurance that in the house of God I am servant, not the master, and that I have no alternative but to comply

strictly with the divine arrangements of the church fixed by the Lord himself.”

He was further led to give consideration to the question of church festivals, and felt horrified at the thought of being identified with such frivolities. Concerning this he says: “Church amusements are simply parasites hiding underneath a religious exterior, while they eat out the life of Christianity. Sacred concerts, church fairs, ecclesiastical entertainments—how well the words sound in the ears of the unwary. But when the Lord appeared walking among the golden candlesticks with countenance like the sun shining in his strength, their real inwardness was instantly revealed.”

The lesson contained in this dream is a most instructive and searching one. It led Dr. Gordon to seek for Spirit-filled church officers, to root up some strange plants he found growing in the sanctuary courts; pew rentals were abolished, ecclesiastical entertainments were dropped off, unconverted musical artists were dispensed with, interest in foreign missions was deepened, and the church quickened. It should lead every minister of the world to a prayerful inquiry concerning his ministration of the word, for this Stranger sits in the pew before him. The lesson may be studied with profit by every congregation of believers. It should lead to deeper personal piety and consecration, to greater reverence and quiet decorum in the house of God, and to a study of the forms and ceremonies which attend the altar, that the Spirit be not grieved from the temple and leave the sanctuary of Jehovah desolate, and that the incense of praise which arises from our altars be rich with fragrance.