Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Power: 47. The Fullness of the Stature of Man
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Power (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 47. The Fullness of the Stature of Man
Other Subjects in this Topic:
The Fullness of the Stature of Man
Now note some of the changes in the personality which attend the Spirit's unrestrained presence. Without doubt the face will change, though it might be difficult to describe the change. That Spirit within changes the look of the eye. His peace within the heart will affect the flow of blood in the physical heart, and so in turn the clearness of the complexion. The real secret of winsome beauty is here. That new dominant purpose will modulate the voice, and the whole expression of the face, and the touch of the hand, and the carriage of the body. And yet the one changed will be least conscious of it, if conscious at all. Neither Moses nor Stephen knew of their transfigured faces.
It is of peculiar interest to note the changes in the mental make-up. It may be said positively that the original group of mental faculties remain the same. There seems to be nothing to indicate that any change takes place in one's natural endowment. No faculty is added that nature had not put there, and certainly none removed.
But it is very clear that there is a marked development of these natural gifts, and that this change is brought about by the putting in of a new and tremendous motive power, which radically affects everything it touches.
Regarding this development four facts may be noted.
First fact:—Those faculties or talents which may hitherto have lain latent, unmatured, are aroused into use. Most men have large undeveloped resources, and endowments. Many of us are one-sided in our development. We are strangers to the real possible self within, unconscious of some of the powers with which we are endowed and entrusted. The Holy Spirit, when given a free hand, works out the fullness of the life that has been put in. The change will not be in the sort but in the size, and that not by an addition but by a growth of what is there.
Moses complains that he is slow of speech and of a slow tongue. God does not promise a new tongue but that he will be with him and train his tongue. Listen to him forty years after in the Moab Plains, as with brain fired, and tongue loosened and trained he gives that series of farewell talks fairly burning with eloquence. Students of oratory can find no nobler specimens than Deuteronomy furnishes. The unmatured powers lying dormant had been aroused to full growth by the indwelling Spirit of God.
Saintly Dr. A. J. Gordon, whose face was as surely transfigured as was Moses' or Stephen's, used to say that in his earlier years he had no executive ability. Men would say of him, "Well, Gordon can preach but-" intimating that he could not do much else; not much of the practical getting of things done in his makeup. When he was offered the chairmanship of the missionary committee of the Baptist Church, he promptly declined as being utterly unfit for such a task. Finally with reluctance he accepted, and for years he guided and molded with rare sagacity the entire scheme of missionary operation of the great Baptist Church of the North. He was accustomed with rare frankness and modesty to speak of the change in himself as an illustration of how the Spirit develops talents which otherwise had lain unsuspected and unused.
The second fact:—ALL of one's faculties will be developed to the highest normal pitch. Not only the undeveloped faculties, but those already developed will know a new life. That new presence within will sharpen the brain, and fire the imagination. It will make the logic keener, the will steadier, the executive faculty more alert.
The civil engineer will be more accurate in his measurements and calculations. The scientific man more keenly observant of facts, better poised in his generalization upon them, and more convincing in his demonstrations. The locomotive engineer will handle his huge machine more skillfully. The road saves money in having a christian hand on the throttle. The lawyer will be more thorough in his sifting of evidence, and more convincing in the planning of his cases. The business man will be even more sharply alive to business. The college student can better grasp his studies, and write with stronger thought and clearer diction. The cook will get a finer flavor into the food. And so on to the end of the list. Why? Not by any magic, but simply and only because man was created to be animated and dominated by the Spirit of God. That is his normal condition. The Spirit of God is his natural atmosphere. The machine works best when run under the inventor's immediate direction. Only as a man-any man-is swayed by the Holy Spirit, will his powers rise to their best. And a man is not doing his best, however hardworking and conscientious, and therefore not fair to his own powers, who lives otherwise.
Someone may enter the objection, that many of the keenest men with finely disciplined powers may be found among non-christian men. But he should remember two facts, first, that a like truth holds good in the opposite camp. There are undoubtedly men whose genius is brilliant because inspired by an evil spirit. There are cultured scholarly men, and keen shrewd business men who have yielded their powers to another than God and are greatly assisted by evil spirits, though it is quite likely that they are not conscious that this is the true analysis of their success.
The second fact to note is that no matter how keen or developed a man's powers may be either as just suggested, or, by dint of native strength and of his own effort they are still of necessity less than they would be if swayed by the Spirit of God. For man is created to be indwelt and inspired by God's Spirit, and his powers cannot be at their best pitch save as the conditions of their creation are met.
The third fact:—There will be a gradual bringing back to their normal condition of those faculties which have been dwarfed, or warped, or abnormally developed through sin and selfishness. Sometimes these moral twists and quirks in our mental faculties are an inheritance through one or more generations. The man with excessive egotism often carries the evidence of it in the very shape of his head. But as he yields to the new Spirit dominant within, a spirit of humility, of modesty will gradually displace so much of the other as is abnormal. The man of superficial mind will be deepened in his mental processes. The man of hasty judgment or poor judgment will grow careful in his conclusions. The lazy man will get a new lease of ambition and energy.
These results will be gradual, as all of God's processes are. Sometimes painfully gradual, and will be strictly in proportion as the man yields himself unreservedly to the control of the indwelling Spirit. And the process will be by the injection of a new and mighty motive power. The shallow-minded man will have an intense desire to study God's wondrous classic so as to learn His will. And though his studies may not get much farther, yet no one book so disciplines and deepens the mind as that. The lazy man will find a fire kindling in his bones to please his Master and do something for Him, that will burn through and burn up his indolence. The man of hasty judgment will find himself stopping to consider what his Master would desire. And the mere pause to think is a long step toward more accurate judgment. He will become a reverent student of the word of God, and nothing corrects the judgment like that.
The self-willed, headstrong man will likely have the toughest time of any. To let his own plan utterly go, and instead fit into a radically different one will shake him up terrifically. But that mighty One within will lovingly woo and move him. And as he yields, and victory comes, he will be delighted to find that the highest act of the strongest will is in yielding to a higher will when found. He will be charmed to discover that the rarest liberty comes only in perfect obedience to perfect law.
And so every sort of man who has gotten some moral twist or obliquity in his mental make-up will be straightened out to the normal standard of his Maker, as he allows Him to take full control.
The fourth fact:—All this growth and development will be strictly along the groove of the man's natural endowment. The natural mental bent will not be changed though the moral crooks will be straightened out. Peter's rash, self-assertive twists are corrected, but he remains the same Peter mentally. He does not possess the rare logical powers of Paul, nor the judicial administrative temper of James, before the infilling, and is not endowed with either after that experience. John's intensity which would call down fire to burn up supposed foes is not removed but turned into another channel, and burns itself out in love. Jonathan Edwards retains and develops his marvelous faculty of metaphysical reasoning and uses it to influence men for God. Finney's intensely logical mind is not changed but fired and used in the same direction.
Moody has neither of these gifts, but has an unusually magnetic presence, and a great executive faculty which leaves its impress on his blunt direct speech. His faculties are not changed, nor added to, but developed wonderfully and used. George Mueller never becomes a great preacher like these three; nor an expositor, but finds his rare development in his marked administrative skill. Charles Studd remains a poor speaker with jagged rhetoric and with no organizing knack, though the fire of God in his presence kindles the flames of mission zeal in the British universities, and melts your heart as you listen. Shaftsbury's mental processes show the generations of aristocratic breeding even in his costermonger's cart lovingly winning these men, or after midnight searching out the waifs of London's nooks and docks. Clough is refused by the missionary board because of his lack of certain required qualifications, and when finally he reaches the field none of these qualities appears, but his skill as an engineer gives him a hold upon thousands whom his presence and God-breathed passion for souls win to Jesus Christ. Carey's unusual linguistic talent. Mary Lyon's teaching gift is not changed but developed and used. The growth produced by the Spirit's presence is strictly along the groove of the natural gift. But note that in this great variety of natural endowment there is one trait-a moral trait, not a mental-that marks all alike, namely a pervading purpose, that comes to be a passion, to do God's will, and get men to know Him, and that everything is forced to bend to this dominant purpose. Is not this glorious unity in diversity?