By Henry Aloysius Barry
The Holy Ghost appeared in the Old Law and, on the occasions just alluded to, in the New Law. It is, therefore, difficult to account for the oblivion into which the world has so effectively cast the august Third Person. "It is wonderful, then, how men with the page of the New Testament before them can fail to see this" (Manning.) For, if the Holy Ghost has shown Himself, whether this was achieved through ministering angels or appearances, it matters not materially in the final computation or valuation of the plain fact that he wishes to be known, and, if the New Testament has for its distinguishing legacy to mankind the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, it is no less true that He has had a joint and also a separate, appropriate or personal influence upon the world, upon Israel and the prophets. In the ancient dispensation, His footprints are everywhere visible on men and things, from the dawn of creation, yet, to us His name is not on the sign, as it were. We make the Third Person a kind of silent partner, a retired member of the firm, if one were not irreverent in taste to employ such a commonplace in so sublime a subject, whereas, he is the active person immersed in the details and government of our lives.
Another step upward on Sion's slope. Musing-on Godhead, in meditation and prayer, a thousand thoughts flash upon one's soul, a thousand fancies weave themselves into spiritual phenomena, that enrich and strengthen one. The sun and stars irradiate one's interior more resplendently, as one mounts skyward. Below one sees the hurrying, jostling throng, fretting, deceiving one another, on the old, old theme of weights and measures, of bread and butter and place—a scene whose grouping is of dull, cold, unspiritual hearts, a goodly portion plashing in the pool of ribaldry, and, only a few brave hearts who earnestly care to acquire the true art of living and cultivate the real end of man. By-the-by, I see the dove is symbolic of the Holy Ghost. Lo, I stretch forth my hands to catch the dove and put the white-winged creature in a golden cage —my heart and my mind.— "I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh." "I will put My spirit in the midst of you and I will cause you to walk in My commands, and to keep My judgments and to do them." (Ezech., xxxvi. 26, 27.) The dove, I know, can only live on its own kind of nutriment—spirit food lf I fail to feed it on the proper kind of nourishment it must die in me. "The hour cometh, and now is when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth."—" God is a spirit and they who adore Him, must adore Him in spirit and in truth." (John iv., 23, 24.) The world wants not the Holy Ghost, with His piercing light, His chivalry, His purity, His justice and His truth. It is carnal, materialistic ; it gives no soul-worship, no spirit-tribute, — hearty at least, no tithes of interior cult and adoration. — "The Spirit of Truth," says Our Lord, "Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him not, but you shall know Him because He shall abide with you and shall be in you." (St. John xiv, 17.) "And because you are the sons of God, He hath sent the spirit of His Son into your hearts crying: 'Abba,' Father." (Gal., iv. 6.) —feed the gentle dove.
To have the Holy Ghost, one's heart must cultivate the precept of sanctification, —"That you abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess His vessel in sanctification not in the passion of lust." (I. Thes. iv.( 3.) The dove may escape by the open senses or lake wing through broken bars. The cry goes up from the slums of Cairo, from the dead sea of Paris and London,—"Tis Nature! Ah! ye Gentiles, that know not God." (v. 5.) The cry goes forth from the Exchange and market-places "others do it." Yes, but has not the Holy Ghost said by the apostle's lips " that no man overreach, nor circumvent his brother in business." How little of that justice inspired by Christianity finds application in daily business life! Competitive lies, injustices in weights and measures, spurious wares, falsely branded. "The old man with his deeds" gets rich and powerful on his ill-gotten gains. The man who brings the Holy Ghost into his business, "filled with a knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding," determined to walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing, gets left behind by the unjust.
His unscrupulous competitor will have his regal residence located, of course, in an exclusive district, overlooking, perhaps, the public park; he will have his broad, well-cropped lawns, his costly imported works of art, curios and bric-a-brac, his horses and large corps of servants; his house will be a Mecca for the strenuous worshippers of the golden calf; fashion's butterflies will suck his honey. His fellow-citizens will call attention to him on the streets; the papers will refer to him and his jewelled wife at the opera; whilst in the meantime the honest merchant may be living in a humble side street; his wife will have to ride in a public conveyance, his children will attend free schools. He will have few visitors, no one will point him out on the street; should he patronize the symphony, he takes his modest place in the balcony. Before the triumphs of the wicked and unjust, the Christian men of to-day need to be "strengthened with all might, according to the power of His glory, in all patience and long.suffering with joy." It is the Holy Ghost that illumines the soul on this great enigmatic, dark, spiritual and social phenomenon. In lieu of blasphemies hurled against God and tirades launched against the unjust, the Holy Ghost touches our hearts interiorly to give "Thanks to God the Father, Who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the Law of the Saints in life." Wherefore, not thanks, forsooth? Pray tell me, should you and I be different to those who are now rich, if we had immense fortunes? Could we better resist its poison? —nay! See, yonder flies the dove again! Yes it descends to the ground to find subsistence, but, it is guarded; it never seeks swamps, it submits to the necessary and quickly returns to its lofty abode in the eaves. How white its wings! They remind one of the truly Christian mind and heart,—" the wings of the soul." Many souls have but one wing and cannot fly to God; they have been shot through the other wing. The devil knows God but has no love for Him. Hark, the fiendish huntsman's bugle call, the blasphemous, the horrid yell of triumph: the world has shot the wing of the soul, has won her love, — that love for which a God died. The dove falls wounded by venial sin or stone dead by mortal sin. Alas! poor bleeding dove! -Alas, O soul, poor dead thing! Behold the clouds like a white squadron sailing through the oceans of ether betraying the majesty of the Holy Ghost. Once more the call — ascende superius.
