THE SPIRIT OF LIFE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 4, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 31.

THE SPIRIT OF LIFE.

WHETHER or not the Spirit of God is more than life we will not now discuss. Suffice to say that it is life to the believer. “The Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Rom. 8:10. By faith it brings to every believer, direct from the great central Fountain, the life of God.

That life comes from Jesus Christ to the believer, bringing the very presence of Christ with it. It makes Christ present to every individual believer. An understanding of this great truth shows us how God can be everywhere present. His conscious presence may be known and felt by a believer in the worlds about Alcyone at the same moment it is felt by a humble believer on earth.

Our understanding of what are now facts of common knowledge will help us to realize how this is. We have the telegraph, which writes afar off; the telephone, which speaks afar off; the phonograph, the writer of sound; and it is proposed to soon make common the telephone, by which pictures may be produced at a distance. Much is said about the science of telepathy, or thought transference between minds without words or visible signs. It has been demonstrated that telegraphing could be carried on without wires a distance of twenty miles or more.

All these are faint shadows of wonderful facts in God’s kingdom. As the telephone enables us to listen to the very tones of voice of a father or mother over the intervening distance of a hundred miles, so Christ speaks to us through the life-current of the Spirit over the intervening distance between earth and His throne. As one mind of earth comes in harmony with another mind and controls it or is controlled by it, the stronger transmitting its thought and will to the weaker, so to the mind submitted to God’s will, our heavenly Father pours out His thought, and controls to the good of all who believe Him His thoughts and purposes. God has written His will in His Word, but the mighty Spirit of life, to the child of faith, energizes that Word, and brings it as it were fresh from the mouth of God.

A half dozen may hear the great man at the other end of the telephone wire; but ten million may listen to the voice of God. True souls throughout His universe may feel His conscious presence brought by the great currents of the Spirit. Loyal hearts keeping time-beat and tune with the great heart of God may know His thoughts in the silence of the soul, while others pass heedless on to night and chaos.

O, to be in perfect harmony with God! That is the secret of living. To know His perfect will is to hear His voice, is to think His thoughts, is to receive His Word, is to know His power and presence; for He “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” O soul, would you know these things? —“Yield yourselves unto God.”