When Satan can no longer rock people to sleep with religious
lullabys, or satisfy them with the lifeless form, then he comes
as an angel of light, probably in the person of some professor or
teacher of religion, and seeks to usurp the place of the Holy
Spirit; but instead of leading "into all truth," he leads the
unwary soul into deadly error; instead of directing him on to the
highway of holiness, and into the path of perfect peace, where no
ravenous beast ever comes, he leads him into a wilderness where
the soul, stripped of its beautiful garments of salvation, is
robbed and wounded and left to die, if some good Samaritan, with
patient pity and Christlike love, come not that way.
1. When the Holy Spirit comes in His fullness, He strips men of
their self-righteousness and pride and conceit. They see
themselves as the chief of sinners, and realise that only through
the stripes of Jesus are they healed; and ever after, as they
live in the Spirit, their boast is in Him and their glory is in
the cross. Remembering the hole of the pit from which they were
digged, they are filled with tender pity for all who are out of
the way; and, while they do not excuse or belittle sin, yet they
are slow to believe evil, and their judgments are full of
charity.
"Judge not; the workings of his brain
And of his heart thou canst not see:
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,
In God's pure light may only be
A scar, brought from some well-won field,
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.
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