Among the very first conditions of being qualified for membership in the Bridehood of Jesus is that of having a willing and obedient heart to hear voice of the Holy Spirit. Seven times within the the limits of the second and third chapters of Revelation, Jesus commands us to hear what the Spirit shall say. Our Savior tells us that nobody can come to the Son of God, except the Father shall draw him. It is the office of the Father, through the operation of His law applied by the Spirit, to awaken us and draw us in the spirit of repentance, to go to Jesus for pardon and renewal of life. Then when Jesus receives us, and remits our sins, and gives us power to become sons of God. He then leads us to the personality and fullness of the Holy Spirit. He tells us to tarry until we are endued with power from on high, and that He will pray the Father, and we shall receive another Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, who will sanctify us through the truth, and take the things of Christ, and reveal them unto us. When it is said, the Lord is my Shepherd, and He leadeth me beside the still waters, it is simply a picture of Jesus, after saving us from our sins, leading us to the clear river of the ever-flowing Holy Spirit, that we may be filled with pure love, and put under the dominion of the abiding Comforter. Then, when the Holy Spirit gets possession of our nature and life, He in turn leads us back to the eternal Father, and reveals to us in ever-widening and brightening fields of light, the personalities, and love, paid fellowship, of the Father and the Son. The Father leads us to the Son, and the Son leads us to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit leads us back to the uncreated and unbegotten person of the Father, from whom eternally comes the Son, and from whom eternally proceeds the Holy Spirit. This is the beautiful, fascinating circuit, around which the redeemed soul travels, with ever-increasing light and love.

1. In order to hear what the Spirit saith, we must have ears that are Spiritual, to know His voice. Man has a body, Greek soma, and a soul, Greek psyche, from which we get the word "psychological," and then he has a spirit, Greek pneuma. A failure to recognize this threefold nature of man, has been the cause of a thousand blunders in religious teaching and experience.

The great mass of professed Christians simply regard man in his twofold nature, of body and soul, and thereby confound the reasoning faculties, with man's moral and spiritual being, and hence regard the Christian religion as a mere system of doctrines, and opinions, and creeds, and that religious experience is merely on the plain of the natural, mental faculties, a mere thing of sentiment and psychology. The Scriptures abundantly teach us, that there is an "inner man" of the spiritual nature, and that this "inner man" has spiritual senses of hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling, and is endowed with spiritual intuitions, and instincts, which are just as definite and real as those which the body has in connection with the nervous and mental system. In the case of the natural man, this spiritual nature is utterly dormant, the inner senses are there, but closed in a state of sleep. There are certain animals that hibernate during the winter, or lie frozen for months in the ground, and are utterly unconscious of life or sensation. But in the spring they thaw out, and their senses are brought to life by the warm sun, then they can see and hear and move. In like manner the spirit of a sinner is in a state of moral death, as if frozen, but under the warm light of repentance, and saving faith, and the new birth, these inner spiritual faculties are open to consciousness, and the play of divine things upon them. Then, under the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, these senses of the inner spirit are purified, and intensified, and enlarged, so that they can detect the sights, and sounds, and sweetness, and beauty, and realty of spiritual things, of divine truth, and divine personalities, and heavenly experiences. This is why our Lord says so often, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear."

2. Unless we have this threefold nature of man in mind, and clearly recognize the realm of the inner spirit, as being that part of our nature, upon which the Holy Ghost operates in a direct manner, producing supernatural and heavenly experiences, we will never understand the full teachings of Scripture, or the real sphere of the spiritual life. The soul is that part of our nature which looks out through the body, toward the realm of nature, through the bodily senses, with its reason, comparison, and natural affections, and sentiments, and emotions. Our inner spirit opens out toward God, and toward the whole supernatural world. There are two words for "love" in the Greek Testament, one is philia, which always means human love, and should have been translated uniformly by our word "affection." The other word is in the Greek agape, which invariably means divine love. Now the word philia. or human affection, has its seat in the soul, in the mental nature, but the word agape, divine love, has its seat in the inner spirit. Hence those two words in their uses in the Greek Testament, mark the distinction between man's soulish nature, and spiritual nature. Now there are myriads of professed Christians, who have never had their spiritual nature thoroughly aroused, and renewed, but who have a mental religion, and love God merely in their human, soulish philia, or human affection. Thousands on thousands in the church, love God just about like they love the founders of their country, or as they love their political parties, or their earthly friends. Such persons are not saved, and it is exceedingly difficult to get them to see the need of a divine, supernatural salvation. This truth is forcibly manifested in the conversation which James had with Peter, just before our Savior's ascension. After restoring the disciples to Himself, after His resurrection, Jesus said to Peter, who claimed to love Christ more than anybody else, "Simon, do you have divine love for me?" (Greek Agape.) Peter said. "Thou knowest I have human affection for you" (Greek Philia. ) The second time, Jesus said. "Have you divine love for me?" and the second time, Peter said. "I have human affection for you." And then the third time, Jesus dropped down to the level of Peter's human love, and said. "Do you really have human affection for me?" and this pierced Peter's heart to the core. But after pentecost. Peter rose to the level of Christ's spiritual love, and used the word agape. divine love, ever after. Now in order for us to hear what the Spirit saith. we must be spiritual beings, with our spiritual nature vitalized, and illuminated, so that we can recognize things in the spiritual world, just as readily and vividly, as our inward senses recognize the phenomena of the material world.

3. When our inward spirits are thoroughly purified, and tilled with the indwelling Comforter, it becomes by far the dominant and controlling part of our compound being. Persons who live on the plane of the animal nature, regard the body and its senses as all-powerful. But persons who have their soulish nature enlarged, and exercised, and their minds greatly illuminated, and educated, come to realize that the mind is greater than the body. But when the spirit is thoroughly purified, and supernaturalized by the great floods of pure love, and divine light, it arises to an altitude of strength, and dominion, over all the reasoning faculties, and the bodily senses. It is in this condition, that the imagination and reasoning and propensities of the mind and the body, are brought in subjection to that lofty, and serene Christ-life, which is spoken of by the apostle.

4. The Holy Spirit who made the voice, and made language, can most certainly utter Himself in the inner being of His own children, in such a way as to be clearly understood. The inner spirit of man is the region of intuition, and the birthplace of axiomatic truisms. As the body has its appetites, and senses, and as the mind has its reasoning, so the spirit has its intuition, and instinctive perception of divine verities. Hence the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the channel of these intuitions, which always act instantaneously, and independent of our surroundings, and superior to logic. The Spirit often speaks to us by inward mental voices, distinctly recognized by the spiritual ear, and this voice may be at times, so penetrating, and distinct, that it seems an audible voice uttered through the' air upon the outward ear, as in the case of young Samuel. The Holy Spirit may again speak to us, by vision, that is by flashing upon the inward retina of our spirit, a beautiful vista of light, or open up spiritual scenery, and spiritual events, to the interior eye of the mind, which are oftentimes more indelibly fastened upon us than any scene in nature. He may also speak to us through dreams. If we belong to God, we are just as much His when we are asleep as when we are awake, and in all generations the Holy Spirit has spoken to His servants in the dreams of night, and when He so speaks, there is something so peculiar and extraordinary in it, that the believer never confounds such dreams with the ordinary vagaries of a lawless imagination. At other times He speaks to us through His word, by directing to some special passage, or marvelously lighting up some obscurity in the Scriptures, or revealing whole trains of new truth. Again He speaks to us through our love nature, drawing us out after God, with intense yearnings and sweet attractions towards the things He wants us to know. Again He speaks to us by giving extraordinary discernment into the movements of Providence, and causing us to see through the network of His government in the affairs of men as through a thin veil. The ignoring of the voice of the Holy Spirit is the bane of modern Christianity, which has fallen below the plane of the supernatural, and recognizes nothing but the laws of nature, by which is meant the physical world, and the processes of carnal reason.

5. Many think it is dangerous to get into a spiritual realm, where we can hear the voice of God and become familiar with supernatural phenomena in the life of the soul. But the danger lies in a fictitious religion, which is open to all the devices of Satan. It is always dangerous to run a ship in shallow water, and real safety lies in going out to sea. So with the spiritual life, the danger lies in a lack of the Holy Spirit. The blessed Holy Ghost is as safe a guide as is the eternal Father, or the lowly Jesus, and it must grieve His infinite loving nature that myriads of professed Christians are afraid of Him, and will not dare trust themselves to His full possession. The Holy Spirit in all the manifold operations within us, will never do a thing that contradicts the revealed word of God, or that clashes with a manifest Divine Providence. God cannot antagonize Himself, and the inner and the outer movements of His will are always found to harmonize. It is the reality of the abiding Holy Spirit within us, bringing us into conscious communion with the three persons of the one ever-blessed God, and speaking to us through His many-languaged dialect, that gives real supernatural power to our lives, and puts into our work a divine force, and makes us in many instances an incomprehensible enigma to carnal people, just because He is making us more beautifully intelligible to that innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and the church of the first born, into whose blessed fellowship we are brought by the Spirit of glory and of God which abides in us.