The Three-Fold Secret of the Holy Spirit

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...in the incoming of the Spirit but starts with it; that such indwelling is not the cap-stone but the base-stone of the entire structure of his inner life and outward service. Yet so accustomed have we become to the former view of this subject that the first thing we do after we yield our lives in surrender to Him is to begin to look for Him to enter, to wait for the promise, to expect His indwelling. Now it is as against all this that we urge the child of God to trust in His indwelling. Do not await it, believe it; do not expect it, accept it; do not seek for it, recognize it; do not build up to it, build upon it as a sure foundation. "What," you say, "accept the indwelling of the Spirit as a fact before surrender without any conscious incoming after it, without any feeling or emotional experience of His acceptance of my yielded life?" Precisely. Accept the fact of the Spirit's indwelling exactly as you accepted the fact of the remission of your sins when you believed on Jesus Christ, by evidence a thousand fold more certain and reassuring than your shifting feelings, namely, the eternal, immutable word of God. That word is plain. God asks of you only one thing, namely, that you examine yourself and see whether you are in the faith; that is, a believer (II. Cor. xiii. 5). If so, then He assures you that He dwells in you; He reiterates again and again that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom ye have of God, who dwells in you forever (I. Cor. iii. 16, etc.). He does not ask you to inspect your emotions for this, but to take His word for it. He does not ask you to wait for a feeling but to rest upon a fact, accepting His plain word as the evidence of that fact. Then, apart from any consciousness of His indwelling,...