Can that blessed Spirit of God be indeed there, and yet no sign of his presence be manifest?  It may be so, or to speak more truly, it might have been supposed to be so, if God’s word had not declared the contrary.  What God’s secret workings are; in how many ways, to us inscrutable, he may pervade all nature; in how many cases he may be near us, and we know it not; may, perhaps, be amongst those real mysteries, those truths revealed to none, nor to be revealed; those yet uncleared forests, so to speak, of the world of nature, into which the light of grace has not been permitted to penetrate.  But all such mysteries are to us as if they did not exist at all:  we have nothing to do with them.  God has told us nothing of his unseen and undiscernible presence; when and where he is so present, he is to us as if he were not present at all.  God was in the wilderness of Horeb before the bush was kindled; but he was not there for Moses.  God, in some sense discernible, it may be, to other beings, may be in that house which, to us is empty; but God, our own God, the Holy Spirit, into whose service we were baptized, where he is, the house is not empty to us, but full of light.  Invisible in himself, the signs of his presence are most visible:  where no works, no fruits of the Holy Spirit are to be discerned, there, according to our Lord’s express declaration, there the Holy Spirit is not.

But the light which declares his presence may indeed be a little spark; just to be seen, and no more.  It may show that he has not abandoned all his right to the house of our tabernacle as yet; that he would desire to possess us fully.  Such a little spark, such an evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence, is to be found in the outward profession of Christianity.  They who call Jesus Lord, do it by the Holy Ghost; and, therefore, it is quite true in this sense, that in every baptized Christian, who has not utterly apostatized, there is that faint sign of the Holy Spirit’s still having a claim upon him; he is not yet utterly cast off.  This is true; but it is not to our present purpose; such a feeble sign is a sign of God’s yet unwearied mercy, but no sign of our salvation.  The presence with which the parable is concerned, is a far more effectual presence than this; the house in which there is no more than such a faint sign of a divine inhabitant, is, in the language of the parable, empty.  To no purpose of our salvation is the Spirit of God present in the house, when the light of his presence does not flash forth from every part of it, when it is not manifest, not only that he has not quite cast it off to go to ruin, but that he has been pleased to make it his temple.