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GIVING THE GREAT GIFT

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 25, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 21.

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GIVING THE GREAT GIFT.

By H. A. St. John

BY H. A. ST. JOHN.
“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Luke 11:13. The wise parent exercises discretion in the matter of giving good gifts to his children. He will not only present good gifts, but he will endeavor to present them in a manner, and at a time, to make them of the most value to the child. He knows what good gifts are; and he knows how to give them. And our heavenly Father knows all this much better than any earthly parent can know.
The sum total of all good gifts that heaven bestows upon mortals, is the gift of the Holy Spirit. In fact, it includes every other gift. The forerunner of the first advent of the Messiah, said of himself, that he was not worthy to stoop down and unloose the shoes of Him who would come after him, and that while he baptized with water, the coming One would baptize them with the Holy Spirit.
Thus we see that John Baptist, inspired by the Holy Spirit, when presenting the exalted character and blessings of the coming Messiah, passed over all the mighty words and works of Jesus while among men, to reveal the love of God, and mentioned only the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the one culminating blessing of Jesus to the world, which was not given during the period of His humiliation, but after His ascension, when He was glorified.
The Lord knows how to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. The Holy Spirit is a gift of God to men; it is the greatest of God’s gifts to men. And from the circumstance of His not bestowing that invaluable gift upon His most intimate disciples during the whole period of His personal association with them, we may be assured that it is a gift of too great value to be bestowed upon men at an inappropriate time or place, or in an inappropriate manner.
A period, longer or shorter, of discipline, experience, education, and preparation is necessary in order to the reception of this enduement of power from on high; and the Lord alone knoweth how and when to crown His work of grace for the individual by the bestowal of this inestimable gift, which will constitute the “fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ.” It is the Lord’s good pleasure, yea more, it is His most earnest desire, that every one of His children should hasten with all possible speed the intelligent consecration of themselves as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable unto the Lord, their reasonable service, and thus become wholly transformed by the renewing of the mind; and then, and not till then, can they prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. Then may they go about doing good, teaching, both by precept and example, that perfect will.