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Purity, March 23
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
.
When one is fully emptied of self, when every false God is cast out of the
soul, the vacuum is supplied by the inflowing of the Spirit of Christ. Such a
one has the faith which works by love and purifies the soul from every moral
and spiritual defilement. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, can work upon the
heart, influencing and directing, so that he enjoys spiritual things. He is “after
the Spirit” (
Romans 8:1
), and he minds the things of the Spirit. He has no
confidence in self; Christ is all in all. Truth is constantly being unfolded by
the Holy Spirit; he receives with meekness the engrafted word, and he gives
the Lord all the glory, saying, “God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit”
(
1 Corinthians 2:10
). “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but
the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given
to us of God” (
verse 12
).
The Spirit that reveals also works in him the fruits of righteousness. Christ
is in him “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (
John 4:14
). He
is a branch of the True Vine, and bears rich clusters of fruit to the glory of
God. What is the character of the fruit borne? “The fruit of the Spirit is love.”
Mark the words—love, not hatred; it is joy, not discontent and mourning;
peace, not irritation, anxiety, and manufactured trials. It is “longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no
law” (
Galatians 5:22, 23
).
Those who have this Spirit will be earnest laborers together with God;
the heavenly intelligences cooperate with them, and they go weighted with
the Spirit of the message of truth which they bear. They are a spectacle to
the world, to angels, and to men. They are ennobled, refined, through the
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. They have not brought into
the treasury of the soul wood, hay, stubble, but gold, silver, and precious
stones. They speak words of solid sense, and from the treasures of the heart
bring forth pure and sacred things according to the example of Christ.—
The
Home Missionary, November 1, 1893
.
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