Grieving the Holy Spirit. This sermon was originally preached on October 9, 1859 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text for today comes from the book of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 30. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. There is something very touching in this admonition. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. It does not say do not make him angry. A more delicate and tender term is used. Do not grieve him. There are some men with such hard characters that to make someone angry does not seem to bother them at all. And indeed, there are many of us who are scarcely moved by the fact that someone is angry with us. But the hardest heart is one that is so hard that it is not moved one bit when it knows that it has caused others grief. Grief is a sweet combination of anger and love. It is anger, but all the bitterness is taken from it. Love sweetens the anger and turns the edge of it, not against the person, but against the offense. We all know how we use the two terms in contrast to one another. When I commit any offense against some friend who has very little patience, then they suddenly snap and are angry with me. The same offense committed against a loving father causes him to be grieved. There is anger in his heart, but he is angry and does not sin. For he is angry against my sin, and yet there is love to neutralize and modify the anger towards me. Instead of wishing me harm as punishment for my sin, he looks on my sin itself as being harmful to me. He grieves to think that I am already injured from the fact that I have sinned. I say this is a heavenly mix, more precious than all the ointments of the merchants. There may be the bitterness of myrrh, but there is all the sweetness of frankincense in the sweet term to grieve. My friends, I am certain that I do not flatter you when I declare that I am sure that most of you would grieve if you thought you were grieving anyone else. You perhaps would not care much if you had made anyone angry without reason, but to grieve him, even though it was without cause and without intention, would nevertheless cause you distress of heart, and you would not rest until this grief had subsided, till you had made some sort of explanation or apology and had done your best to alleviate the hurt and to take away the grief. When we perceive anger in another, we at once begin to feel hostility. Anger gives rise to anger, but grief gives rise to pity. And pity is comparable to love. And we love those whom we have caused to be grieved. Now, isn't this a very sweet expression? Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Of course, the language is to be understood as speaking from man's perspective. The Holy Spirit of God knows no pain and no suffering, but nevertheless, His emotion is described here in human language as being that of grief. And it is a tender and touching thing, so much so that the Holy Spirit directed His servant Paul to say to us, do not grieve. the Holy Spirit. Do not excite his loving anger. Do not displease him. Do not cause him to mourn. He is a dove. Do not cause him to mourn because you have treated him harshly and ungratefully. Now the purpose of my sermon this morning will be to exhort you not to grieve the Holy Spirit And I shall divide it into three parts. First, I shall discuss the love of the Spirit. Secondly, the seal of the Spirit. And then thirdly, the grieving of the Spirit. The few words I have to say on the love of the Spirit will all be pressing forward to my great goal, stirring you up not to grieve the Holy Spirit. For when we are persuaded that someone loves us, We at once find a very powerful reason why we should not grieve him.

The love of the Spirit, how shall I speak of it? Surely it needs a vocalist to sing it, for love is only to be spoken of in words of song. The love of the Spirit, let me tell you of his eternal love towards us. He loved us without beginning. In the eternal covenant of grace, as I told you last Sunday, He was one of the contracting parties in the divine contract whereby we are saved. All that can be said of the love of the Father, of the love of the Son, may be said of the love of the Spirit. It is eternal. It is infinite. It is sovereign. It is everlasting. It is a love which cannot be dissolved. which cannot be decreased, a love which cannot be removed by those who are the objects of it.

Permit me, however, to refer you to his acts rather than his attributes. Let me tell you of the love of the Spirit to you and to me. Oh, how early was that love which he manifested towards us, even in our childhood. My brethren, We can clearly remember how the Spirit was striving with us. We went astray from the womb-speaking lies. But early in our life, the Spirit of God stirred up our conscience and solemnly corrected us on account of our youthful sins.

Frequently since then, the Holy Spirit has persuaded us. How often under the ministry of the Word, as He compelled our hearts to melt, and cause tears to run down our cheeks. And he has sweetly whispered in our ear, my son, give me your heart. Go to your room, shut your door, confess your sins and seek a savior's love and blood. Oh, let us blush to tell it. How often we have ignored him. When we were in an unregenerate state, we resisted him. We quenched the spirit. He strove with us, but we strove against him.

But blessed be his dear name, and let him have everlasting praise for it. He would not let us go. We would not be saved, but he would save us. We sought to throw ourselves into the fire, but he sought to rescue us from the burning. We tried to jump off of a cliff, but he wrestled with us and held us back. He would not let us destroy our souls. Oh, how we ill-treated him, how we completely ignored his counsel, how we scorned and scoffed at him, how we despised the gospel which would lead us to Christ. How we resisted the holy cord which was gently drawing us to Jesus and to his cross.

I am sure, my brothers and sisters, that as we remember the persevering struggles of the Spirit with us, that we must be stirred up to love him. How often did he restrain us from sin when we were about to plunge headlong into a course of evil. How often did he constrain us to do good when we would have neglected it? You perhaps would not have been in church at all and the Lord would not have met you if it had not been for that sweet spirit. Who would not let you become a blasphemer? Who would not allow you to forsake the assembling of God's people? Who would not permit you to become a regular attendant at the places of vice? but checked you and held you in as it were with bit and bridle. Though you were like a bull, unaccustomed to the yoke, yet he would not let you have your way. Though you struggled against him, yet he would not release the reins. But he said, I will have him. I will have him against his will. I will change his heart. I will not let him go till I have made him a trophy of my mighty power to save.

And then think, my friends, think of the love of the Spirit after that. Do you remember the time, the spot of land where Jesus and you did meet when he first took you by the hand, your bridegroom's love, how sweet? Then in that blessed hour, do you remember, was it not the Holy Spirit who guided you to Jesus? Do you remember the love of the Spirit when, after awakening you, He took you aside and showed you Jesus on the cross?

Who was it that opened your blind eye to see a dying Savior? Who was it that opened your deaf ear to hear the voice of pardoning love? Who opened your tightly closed and crippled hand to receive the tokens of a Savior's grace? Who was it that broke your hard heart and made a way for the Savior to enter and live within? Oh, it was that precious Spirit, that self-same Spirit to whom you have been very spiteful to, whom in the days of your flesh you had resisted.

What a mercy, what a mercy it was that he did not say, I declare on oath in my anger that they shall never enter my rest, for they have irritated me and I will leave them forever. Or that he might have said this, Ephraim is joined to idols, I will leave him alone.

And since that time, my brothers and sisters, how sweetly has the Spirit proved his love to you and to me. It is not only his first strivings and then his divine awakenings, but in all that followed, how much we owe to his instruction. We have been slow learners with the word before us, plain and simple, so that he that reads may read, and he that reads may understand. Yet how small a portion of his word has our memory retained? How little progress have we made in the school of God's grace? We are still only learners, unstable, weak, and apt to slide.

But what a blessed instructor we have had. Has he not led us into many truths and taken the things of Christ and applied them to us? Oh, when I think of how stupid I have been, I wonder that he has not given up on me. When I think what a fool I have been, when he would have taught me the things of the kingdom of God, I marvel, I marvel that he should have had such patience with me.

Is it any wonder that Jesus would become a baby? Is it not an equal wonder that the spirit of the living God would become a teacher of babies? Is it not a marvel that Jesus should lie in a manger? Is it not an equal marvel that the Holy Spirit should become a teacher in the sacred school to teach fools and make them wise? It was condescension that brought the Savior to the cross. But is it not equal condescension that brings the mighty Spirit of grace down from heaven to dwell with stubborn, unruly, wild donkeys? to teach them the mystery of the kingdom and make them understand the wonders of a Savior's love.

Furthermore, my brethren, do not forget how much we owe to the Spirit's consolation. Do not forget how much we owe to the Spirit's consolation. How much He has manifested His love to you in cherishing you in all your weaknesses and sicknesses, assisting you in all your labors, and comforting you in all your distresses.

He has been a blessed comforter to me. I can testify when every other comfort failed, when the promise itself seemed empty, when the ministry was void of power, it was then, it was then that the Holy Spirit has proved a rich comfort to my soul and filled my poor heart with peace and joy in believing.

How many times would your heart have broken if the spirit had not held it together? How often has he who is your teacher also become your physician? And how often he has closed the wounds of your poor bleeding spirit and has covered those wounds with the ointment of the promise and has so stopped the bleeding and has once again given you back your spiritual health.

It does seem to be a marvel that the Holy Spirit should become a comforter, for comforting is, to many minds, an inferior work in the Church, though really it is not. Many are found in the Church who want to teach, or preach, or command with authority because this is honorable work. But to sit down and bear with the weaknesses of the creature, to enter in all the schemes of unbelief, to find the soul a way of peace in the midst of seas of trouble. Ah, this is compassion like God.

Oh, that the Holy Spirit should stoop down from heaven to become a comforter of miserable spirits. What, must he himself bring the medicine? Must he wait on his sick child and stand by his bed? Must he make his bed for him and his afflictions? Must he carry him in his weakness? Must he breathe continually into him his very breath? Does the Holy Spirit become a waiting servant of the Church? Does He become a lamp to enlighten? Does He become a staff on which we may lean?

This, I say, should move us to love the Holy Spirit, for we have in all this abundant proofs of His love towards us. Do not stay here, beloved. There are larger fields yet unseen, now that we are speaking of the love of the Spirit. Remember how much He loves us when He helps us in our weaknesses. Remember how much He loves us when He helps us in our weaknesses.

No, not only does He help us in our weaknesses, but when we do not know what to pray for as we ought, He then teaches us how to pray. And when we ourselves groan within ourselves, then the Spirit Himself makes intercessions, intercessions for us with groans that words cannot express. Groans that we should groan, but more audibly, so that our prayer, which would have been silent, reaches the ears of Christ and is then presented before the Father's face.

To help us in our weaknesses is a mighty example of love. When God completely overcomes our weakness or removes it, there is something very noble and grand and sublime in the deed. When he permits the weakness to remain and yet works with the weakness, this is indeed tender compassion. When the Savior heals the lame man, you see his Godhead. But when he walks with the lame man, limping though his walk may be, when he sits with the beggar, when he talks with the sinner, when he carries the baby in his arms, then this helping of our weaknesses is a manifestation of love almost unequaled.

Except for Christ bearing our weaknesses on the cross and our sins in his own body, I know of no greater or more tender instance of divine love than when it is written, in the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Oh, how much you owe to the Spirit when you have been on your knees in prayer. You know, my brethren, what it is to be dull and lifeless there, to groan for a word and yet you cannot find it, to wish for a word and yet the very wish is lethargic, to long to have desires and yet all the desire you have is a desire that you may be able to desire.

Oh, have you not sometimes, when your desires have been kindled, longed to get a grip of the promise by the hand of fate? Oh, you have said, if I could only plead the promise, all my needs would be met, and all my sorrows would be put to rest. But no, the promise was beyond your reach. If you touched it with the tip of your finger, you could not grasp it as you desired. You could not plead it, and therefore you came away without the blessing.

But when the Spirit has helped us in our weaknesses, oh, how we have prayed. Why, there have been times when you and I have begun to knock on the gate of mercy, and have knocked with such tremendous force that it seemed as if the very gate itself was caused to shake and wobble. There have been times when we would have grabbed hold of the angel, have overcome heaven with prayer, have declared we would not let Jehovah Himself go unless He would bless us. We have, and we say it without blasphemy, moved the arm that moves the world. We have brought down upon us the eyes that look upon the universe. All this we have done, not by our own strength, but by the might and the power of the Holy Spirit. and seeing that he has so sweetly enabled us, though we have so often forgotten to thank him, seeing that he has so graciously assisted us, though we have often taken all the glory to ourselves instead of giving it to him, then shouldn't we admire his love? For it must be indeed a fearful sin to grieve the Holy Spirit by whom we are sealed.

Another token of the Spirit's love remains. Namely, His indwelling of the saints. His indwelling of the saints. We sing in one of our hymns, Do you not dwell in all the saints? We ask a question which can only have one answer. He does dwell in the hearts of all God's redeemed and blood washed people. And what a condescension this is. that he whom the heavens of heavens cannot contain lives in your heart, my brother. That heart and chest is often covered with rags, and may be a heart often agitated with anxious care and thought, a heart too often defiled with sin, and yet he still lives there. The little narrow heart of man is the place where the Holy Spirit has made his home. Though it is only a cottage, a little hut, and all unholy and unclean, yet the Holy Spirit condescends to make the heart of His people His continual home.

Oh, my friends, when I think how often you and I have let the devil in, I wonder why the Holy Spirit has not withdrawn from us. The final perseverance of the saints is one of the greatest miracles on record. In fact, it is the sum total of miracles. The perseverance of a saint for a single day is a multitude of miracles of mercy. When you consider that the eyes of the Spirit are too pure to look upon evil, and yet he dwells in the heart where sin often intrudes, a heart out of which comes blasphemies and murders and all kinds of evil thoughts and lusts, Is it any surprise if he is sometimes so grieved that he withdraws and leaves us to ourselves for a time? It is a marvel that he is there at all, for he must be grieved every day with all these evil guests, these false traitors, these vile intruders who thrust themselves into that little temple, that little temple which he has honored with his presence, the temple of the heart of man.

I am afraid, dear friends, we are too much in the habit of talking about the love of Jesus without thinking of the love of the Holy Spirit. Now I would not wish to exalt one person of the Trinity above another, but I do feel this, that because Jesus Christ was a man, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and therefore there was something tangible in him, something that could be seen with the eyes and handled with the hands, Therefore, we more readily think of Him and fix our love on Him than we do upon the Spirit.

But why should it be that way? Let us love Jesus with all our hearts and let us love the Holy Spirit too. Let us have songs for Him, gratitude for Him. We do not forget Christ's cross. Let us not forget the Spirit's operations. We do not forget what Jesus has done for us. Likewise, let us always remember what the Spirit does in us.

Why, when you talk of the love and grace and tenderness and faithfulness of Christ, why do you not say the same about the Holy Spirit? Was there ever a love like this that He should visit us? Was there ever a mercy like this that He should bear with our ill manners and sins, though constantly repeated by us? Was there ever a faithfulness like His that multitudes of sins cannot drive Him away? Was there ever a power like His that overcomes all our sins and yet leads us safely on, though a host of foes within and without would rob us of our Christian life?

O, the love of the Spirit I sing! By whom is redemption applied? Unto His name be glory forever and ever.

This brings me to the second point, my friends. Here we have another reason why we should not grieve the Spirit. It is by the Holy Spirit we are sealed. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are sealed. With whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

I shall be very brief here. The Spirit himself is expressed as the seal. even as He Himself is directly said to be the pledge of our inheritance. The sealing, I think, has a threefold meaning. First, it is a sealing of confirmation. It is a sealing of confirmation.

I want to know whether I am truly a child of God. The Spirit Himself also bears witness with my spirit that I am born of God. I have the writings, the title deeds of the inheritance that is to come. I want to know whether those are valid, whether they are true, or whether they are mere counterfeits written out by that old scribe of hell, master presumption, and carnal security. How am I to know? I look for the seal.

After we have believed on the Son of God, the Father seals us as His children. by the gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now it is God who makes us stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. No faith is genuine which does not bear the seal of the Spirit. No love, no hope can ever save us, except it is sealed with the Spirit of God. For whatever does not have his seal upon it is counterfeit.

Faith that is unsealed may be a poison, it may be presumption, but faith that is sealed by the Spirit is true, real, genuine faith. Never be content, my dear friends, unless you are sealed, unless you are assured by the inward witness and testimony of the Holy Spirit that you have been born again, born again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is possible for a man to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is secure of heaven. He may not only hope so, but he may know it beyond a doubt. and he may know it by being able with the eye of faith to see the seal, the wide stamp of the Holy Spirit set upon his character and experience.

It is the seal of confirmation. In the next place, it is a sealing of appropriation, a sealing of appropriation. When men put their mark on an article, it is to show that it is their own. The farmer brands his tools so that they may not be stolen. They are his. The shepherd marks his sheep that they may be recognized as belonging to his flock. The king himself puts his seal on everything that is his property. Likewise, the Holy Spirit puts the mark of God on the hearts of all his people. He seals us. You shall be mine, says the Lord. in the day when I make up my treasured possession. And then the Spirit puts God's seal on us to signify that we are God's reserved inheritance, his special people, the portion in which his soul delights.

But again, my friends, by sealing is meant preservation. By sealing is meant preservation. Men seal up that which they wish to have preserved, and when a document is sealed, it becomes valid from that day forward. Now it is by the Spirit of God that the Christian is sealed, that he is kept, that he is preserved, sealed unto the day of redemption, sealed until Christ fully comes to redeem the bodies of his saints by raising them from the dead, and fully to redeem the world by purging it from sin. and making it a kingdom for himself in righteousness.

We shall persevere. We shall be saved. The chosen seed cannot be lost. They must be brought home in the end. But how? By the sealing of the Spirit. Apart from that, they would perish. They would be destroyed. Everything that does not have the seal of the Spirit on it shall be burned up. but the men whose forehead has the seal shall be preserved. They shall be safe amid the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. Their spirits rising above the flames shall dwell with Christ eternally. And with that same seal on their forehead, upon Mount Zion, they shall sing the everlasting song of gratitude and praise.

I say this is a good reason why we should love the Holy Spirit and why we should not grieve Him. I come now to the third part of my sermon, namely, the grieving of the Holy Spirit. How can we grieve Him? What will be the sad result of grieving Him? If we have grieved Him, how can we bring Him back again?

First, how can we grieve the Holy Spirit? I am now speaking of those who love the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God is in your hearts, and it is indeed very, very easy to grieve Him. Sin is easy as it is wicked. You may grieve the Holy Spirit by impure thoughts. You may grieve the Holy Spirit by impure thoughts. He cannot bear sin. If you indulge yourself by telling sexual jokes or stories, or even if you allow your imagination to dwell on any immoral act, or if your heart seeks after greed, if you set your heart on anything that is evil, the Spirit of God will be grieved.

For I can hear him speaking of himself, I love this man, I want to have his heart, and yet he is entertaining these filthy lusts. His thoughts, instead of running after me and after Christ and after the Father, are running after the temptations that are in the world through lust. And then his spirit is grieved. He sorrows in his soul because he knows what sorrow these things must bring to our souls.

We grieve the Holy Spirit yet even more if we indulge in outward acts of sin. We grieve the Holy Spirit yet even more if we indulge in outward acts of sin. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is so grieved that he leaves us for a season. For the dove will not dwell in our hearts if we bring loathsome, decaying flesh in there. A dove is a clean creature. and we must not strew the place which the dove frequents with filth and mire. If we do so, he will fly elsewhere. If we commit sin, if we openly bring disgrace upon our Christianity, if we tempt others to go into sin by our evil example, it is not long before the Holy Spirit will begin to grieve.

Again, if we neglect prayer, if our closet door is cobwebbed, If we forget to read the scriptures, if the pages of our Bible are almost stuck together by neglect, if we never seek to do any good in the world, if we live merely for ourselves and not to Christ, then the Holy Spirit will be grieved. For he has said, they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

I think I now see the Spirit of God grieving. I see Him grieving when you are sitting down to read a novel and there is your Bible unread. I see the Holy Spirit grieving when you are sitting down to read a novel and there is your Bible unread. Perhaps you take down some book of travels. And you forget that you have a more precious book of travels in the Acts of the Apostles and in the story of your blessed Lord and Master. You have no time for prayer, but the Holy Spirit sees you very active about worldly things and having many more hours to spare for relaxation and amusement. And then he is grieved because he sees that you love worldly things better than you love him. His spirit is grieved within him. Take care that he does not go away from you, for it will be a pitiful thing for you if he leaves you to yourself.

" Again, ingratitude tends to grieve the Holy Spirit. Ingratitude tends to grieve the Holy Spirit. Nothing cuts a man to the heart more than after having done his utmost for another. that person turns around and repays him with ingratitude or insult. If we do not want to be thanked, at least we love to know that there is thankfulness in the heart upon which we have conferred a blessing. And when the Holy Spirit looks into our soul and sees little love to Christ, no gratitude to him for all that he has done for us, then he is grieved.

Again, the Holy Spirit is especially grieved by our unbelief. The Holy Spirit is especially grieved by our unbelief. When we distrust the promise he has given and applied, when we doubt the power or the affection of our blessed Lord, then the Spirit says within himself, they doubt my faithfulness. They distrust my power. They say Jesus is not able to save to the uttermost. Thus again, is the spirit grieved.

Oh, I wish that the spirit had an advocate here this morning. One who could speak in better terms than I can. I have a theme that overpowers me. I seem to grieve for him, but I cannot make you grieve, nor speak out of the grief I feel. In my own soul, I keep saying, oh, this is just what you have done. You have grieved him. Let me make a full and frank confession before all of you. I know that too often, I as well as you have grieved the Holy Spirit. There has been much within us that has caused that sacred dove to mourn. And I marvel, I marvel that He has not departed from us and left us utterly to ourselves.

Now suppose my dear friends, that the Holy Spirit is grieved. What is the effect that is produced on us? What is the effect that is produced on us when the Holy Spirit is grieved?

When the Holy Spirit is first grieved, He bears with us. He is grieved again and again and again and again, and still he bears with it all. But finally his grief becomes so excessive that he says, I will suspend my operations. I will leave. I will leave life behind me, but my own actual presence I will take away.

And when the Spirit of God goes away from the soul and suspends all his operations, what a miserable state we are in then. He suspends his instructions. We read the word. We cannot understand it. We go to our commentaries. They cannot tell us the meaning. We fall on our knees and ask to be taught, but we get no answer. We learn nothing.

He suspends his comfort. We used to dance like David before the ark, and now we sit like Job on the pile of ashes and scrape our sores with a piece of pottery. There was a time when his light shone around us, but now he is gone. He has left us in the blackness of darkness.

Now he takes from us all spiritual power. Once we could do all things, now we can do nothing. We could slay the Philistines and lay them heaps upon heaps, but now the lila can deceive us and our eyes are put out and we are made to grind in the mill.

We go preaching and there is no pleasure in preaching and no good follows it. We go out to share the word with others and in our Sunday schools, but we might as well be at home. There is the machinery there, but there is no love. There is the intention to do good, or perhaps not even that, but sadly, there is no power to accomplish the intention. The Lord has withdrawn himself. His light, his joy, his comfort, his spiritual power, all are gone.

And then all our graces fade. Our graces are much like that flower called hydrangea. When it has plenty of water, it blooms. But as soon as the moisture fails, the leaves wilt immediately. And so when the spirit goes away, faith shuts up its flowers. No perfume is given out. Then the fruit of our love begins to rot and drops from the tree. then the sweet buds of our hope become frostbitten and they die.

Oh, what a sad thing it is to lose the Spirit. Have you never, my brethren, been on your knees and have been conscious that the Spirit of God was not with you? And what awful work it has been to groan and cry and sigh and yet to go away again and no light to shine upon the promises. not so much as a ray of light through the small opening of the dungeon wall. All forsaken, forgotten, and forlorn, you are almost driven to despair.

You sing with Calper, what peaceful hours I once enjoyed, how sweet their memory still, but they have left an aching void the world can never fill. Return, you sacred dove, return, Sweet messenger of rest, I hate the sins that made you mourn and drove you from my breast. The dearest idol I have known, whatever that idol be, help me to tear it from its throne and worship only thee.

It is sad enough to have the Spirit withdrawn from us, but, my brethren, I am about to say something with the utmost love. which perhaps may look severe, but nevertheless, I must say it. The churches of the present day are very much in the position of those who have grieved the Spirit of God.

For the Holy Spirit deals with churches just as He does with individuals. These past few years, God has done very little in the midst of His churches. Throughout England, at least some four or five years ago, and almost universal apathy had fallen upon the visible body of Christ. There was little action, but it was sporadic. There was no real vitality.

Oh, how few sinners were brought to Christ! How empty had our places of worship become! Our prayer meetings were dwindling away to nothing, and our church services were nothing but a farce. You truly know that this is the case with many churches to this day, and there are some that do not mourn over it. They go to their usual pew, and the minister prays, and the people either sleep with their eyes shut or else with their hearts closed, and they go out and there is never a soul saved.

The baptismal waters are seldom stirred, but the saddest part of all this is this. that the churches are willing to have it this way. They are not serious or concerned about having a revival of Christianity. We have been doing something wrong. The church at large has been doing something wrong. I cannot just now put my finger on what the sin is, but there has been something, something done which has driven away the Spirit of God from us. He is grieved and he is gone.

Thankfully, he is present with us here. I thank his name. He is still visible in our mist. He has not left us. Though we have been as unworthy as others, yet he has given us a long outpouring of his presence. These five years or more, we have had a revival which is not to be exceeded by any revival on the face of the earth. without cries or shoutings, without falling down or swooning, steadily God adds to his church numbers upon numbers so that your minister's heart is ready to break with joy when he thinks of how clearly the Spirit of God is with us.

But brethren, we must not be content with this. We want to see the Spirit poured out on all churches. Look at the great gatherings there were in St. Paul's Cathedral, and in Westminster Abbey, and Exeter Hall, and other places. How is it that no good was done, or so very little? I have watched with an anxious eye, and I have never from that day forth heard of but one conversion, and that was in St. James Hall. From all these services, it seems strange. The blessing may have come down in larger measure than we know, but not in so large a measure as we might have expected if the Spirit of God had been present with our ministers.

Oh, that we may live to see greater things than we have ever yet seen. Go to your houses, humble yourselves before God, you members of Christ's church, and cry aloud that he will visit his church and that he would open the windows of heaven and pour out his grace upon his thirsty hill of Zion. That nations may be born in a day, that sinners may be saved by thousands, that Zion may prevail and may bring forth children.

Oh, there are signs and tokens of a coming revival. We have just heard recently of a good work among the poor schoolboys at St. Giles. and our soul has been glad on account of that. And the news from Ireland comes to us like good tidings, not from a far country, but from a sister province of the kingdom. Let us cry aloud to the Holy Spirit, who is certainly grieved with His church, and let us purge our churches of everything, of everything that is contrary to His word and contrary to sound doctrine. And then the Spirit will return and His power shall be manifest.

And now, my friends, in conclusion, there may be some of you here who have lost the visible presence of Christ within you, who have in fact so grieved the Spirit that He is gone. It is a mercy for you to know that the Spirit of God never leaves His people completely. He leaves them for chastisement, but not for damnation. He sometimes leaves them that they may gain some good by knowing their own weakness, but He will not leave them ultimately to perish.

Are you in a state of backsliding, weakness, and coldness? Listen to me for a moment and God bless the words. Brothers and sisters, do not stay a moment in a condition so perilous. Do not be comfortable for a single second in the absence of the Holy Spirit. I beg you to use every means by which that Spirit may be brought back to you. Once more, let me tell you distinctly what the means are. Search out for the sin that has grieved the Spirit and give it up. Slay that sin on the spot. Repent with tears and sighs. Continue in prayer and never rest until the Holy Spirit comes back to you. Frequent a strong and serious ministry. Get close with serious and holy saints. But above all, be much in prayer to God. Let your daily cry be, return, return, O Holy Spirit, return and dwell in my soul.

Oh, my friends, I beg you not to be content until that prayer is heard. For you have become weak as water and faint and empty while the Spirit has been away from you. Oh, it may be that there are some here this morning with whom the Spirit has been striving during the past week. Oh, yield to Him. Do not resist Him. Do not grieve Him, but yield to Him. Is He saying to you now, turn to Christ? Listen to Him. Obey Him. He moves you. Oh, I beseech you, do not despise him. Have you resisted him many times? Then be careful that you do not do it again. For there may come a last time when the Spirit may say, I will go to my rest and I will not return to him. The ground is cursed. It shall be given up to barrenness.

Oh, I hear the word of the gospel. unless you separate yourselves from your sins. For the Spirit speaks effectually to you now in this short sentence. Repent and be converted, every one of you, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And hear this solemn sentence. He that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and is baptized will be saved, but he that does not believe will be damned.

May the Lord grant that we may not grieve the Holy Spirit. Amen.