The Great Glorifier

He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.

John 16:15

The Spirit is the Great Conveyer of Christ to the soul.  Placing Himself between the Fountain and the believer, He purposes to convey all blessing, to supply all need, by taking the things of Christ's mediatorial fullness and bringing them into our blest and holy experience.  Having gone before to prepare the soul for the blessing, by discovering its poverty of state and creating its poverty of spirit, He now takes of the atoning blood and applies it to the conscience; the justifying righteousness, and wraps it around the soul; the sanctifying grace, and conducts it into the heart.  In a word, He reveals Jesus to the mind, testifies of Christ to the soul:  how divine He is, therefore able to save; how loving He is, therefore as willing as He is able; how gracious He is, therefore stooping to our lowest circumstance; how tender He is, therefore trampling not upon our weak faith; nor despising our little grace; how sympathetic He is, therefore turning not away His ear, and withdrawing not His heart from our tale of sorrow or our burden of grief.

Oh, what a Glorifier of Christ is the divine Spirit!  All that we truly know of Jesus, all that we have inwardly experienced of His grace, has been of His teaching and conveyance.  He has conducted us to the Fountain; He has led us to the robing-chamber of the King; He has anointed us with the "oil of gladness"; He has caused our garments to "smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces" (Ps. 45:8); He has opened the treasury, taking of the precious, glorious things of a precious, glorious Christ, spreading them out in all their vastness, suitableness, and freeness before our longing eye.  How often, when the soul has hungered, He has broken up to us the bread that came down from heaven!  When it has thirsted, He has smitten the rock, and satiated us with its life-giving stream.  How often, when guilt has distressed us, He has sprinkled anew the peace-speaking blood; and when sorrow has oppressed, and difficulties have embarrassed, and dependences have failed, and resources have become exhausted, and creatures most deeply loved have most deeply wounded us, He, the tender, loving Comforter, the blessed Teacher, the great Glorifier of Jesus has given to us some new and appropriate and precious view of our Immanuel. 

In a moment, the storm has passed, the waves have stilled, and peace, serenity, and joy have shed their luster on the soul.  One glimpse of Jesus in deep tribulation, one glance in heart-rending bereavement, one discovery of His countenance when all is dark, and dreary, and desolate, one surprisal of His love when the heart sinks into loneliness, one touch of His cross when it is depressed, and bowed, and broken by sin--oh, it is as though heaven had expanded its gates, and we had passed within, where neither tribulation, nor bereavement, nor darkness, nor loneliness, nor sin, is known any more forever!

~Octavius Winslow

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