September 22
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeTenth Sunday after Trinity
Concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. I CORINTHIANS xii. 1.
"I BELIEVE in the Holy Ghost." What does that involve? If words mean anything, if I have any sort of belief in the self-consistency of truth, it involves that I believe in the existence of a supersensuous world, within and upon which the Divine Spirit lives and acts. The Divine and Infinite Spirit acts on our human spirit. He penetrates it, lightens it, warms it, and strengthens it. The Eternal Spirit, too, has set up in the world a school of morals; He whispers within the soul a deeper and purer code than nature dreams of. See the contrast between the works of our lower self, animated by the principle of concupiscence, and the fruits of the Spirit. The fruits of the Spirit are no mere negation of the vigorous forms of wickedness which make up the catalogue of the works of the flesh. They rise higher, they have about them an undemonstrative character, singularly contrasting with the ostentation of natural morals, and imply that in the school of the Spirit, the soul, like Mary at the feet of Jesus, is listening to a Teacher Who has awed her into the silence which becomes self-knowledge. How unnatural, men say, are the fruits of the Spirit! They are unnatural; not in the sense of contradicting nature so much as in that of transcending it.
Come, Spirit, from above!
And with Thy gentle might Heal us, and help us to be good.