Wesley Corpus

What saith thy heart? Does God dwell therein? And doth it now echo to the voice of God? Hast thou the continual inspiration of his Spirit, filling thy heart with his love, as with a well of water, springing up into everlasting life? 9. Art thou acquainted with the “leading of his Spirit,” not by notion only, but by living experience? I fear very many of you talk of this, who do not so much as know what it means. How does the Spirit of God lead his children to this or that particular action? Do you imagine it is by blind impulse only? by moving you to do it, you know not why? Not so. He leads us by our eye, at least, as much as by the hand; and by light as well as by heat. He shows us the way wherein we should go, as well as incites us to walk therein. For example: Here is a man ready to perish with hunger. How am I “led by the Spirit” to relieve him? First, by His convincing me it is the will of God I should; and Secondly, by His filling my heart with love toward him. Both this light and this heat are the gift of God; are wrought in me by the same Spirit, who leads me, by this conviction as well as love, to go and feed that man. This is the plain, rational account of the ordinary leading of the Spirit; but how far from that which some have given I Art thou thus led by the Spirit to every good word and work, till God hath thereby made thy faith perfect? Dost thou know what faith is? It is a loving, obedient sight of a pre sent and reconciled God. Now, where this is, there is no dead form; neither can be, so long as it continues. But all that is said or done is full of God, full of spirit, and life, and power. 10. But perhaps, as much as you talk of them, you do not know the difference between form and spirit; or between worshipping God in a formal way, and worshipping him “in spirit and in truth.” The Lord is that Spirit. The seeing and feeling and lov ing him is spiritual life.