after infinite good, child-like longings to be knit more closely to Him, that, too, is the voice of God’s Spirit; and our prayers are then ’sweet, indeed, when He the Spirit gives by which we pray.’  In like manner, all the variety of Christian emotions and experiences is to be traced to the conjoint operation of that Divine Spirit as the source, and my own spirit as influenced by, and the organ of, the Spirit of God.  If I may take a very rough illustration, there is a story in the Old Testament about a king, to whom were given a bow and arrow, with the command to shoot.  The prophet’s hand was laid on the king’s weak hand, and the weak hand was strengthened by the touch of the other; and with one common pull they drew back the string and the arrow sped.  The king drew the bow, but it was the prophet’s hand grasping his wrist that gave him strength to do it.  And that is how the Spirit of God will work with us if we will.

III.  Finally, consider the purpose of all the diverse manifestations of the one universal gift.

’To profit withal’—­for his own good who possesses it, and for the good of all the rest of his brethren.

Now, that involves two plain things.  There have been people in the Christian Church who have said, ’We have all the Spirit, and therefore we do not need one another.’  There may be isolation, and self-sufficiency, and a host of other evils coming in, if we only grasp the thought, ’The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man,’ but they are all corrected if we go on and say, ’to profit withal.’  For every one of us has something, and no one of us has everything; so, on the one hand, we want each other, and, on the other hand, we are responsible for the use of what we have.

You get the life, not in order that you may plume yourself on its possession, nor in order that you may ostentatiously display it, still less in order that you may shut it up and do nothing with it; but you get the life in order that it may spread through you to others.

  ’The least flower with a brimming cup may stand,
  And share its dew-drop with another near.’

We each have the life that God’s grace may fructify through us to all.  Power is duty; endowment is obligation; capacity prescribes work.  ’The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.’

You can regulate the flow.  You have the sluice; you can shut it or open it.  I have said that the condition, and the only condition, of possessing the fulness of God’s Spirit is faith in Jesus Christ.  Therefore, the more you trust the more you have, and the less your faith the less the gift.  You can get much or little, according to the greatness or the smallness, the fixity or the transiency, of your desires.  If you hold the empty cup with a tremulous hand, the precious liquid will not be poured into it—­for some of it will be spilt—­in the same fulness as it would be if you held it steadily.