Purity, March 23

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8.YRP 91.1

When one is fully emptied of self, when every false god is cast out of the soul, the vacuum is supplied by the inflowing of the Spirit of Christ. Such a one has the faith which works by love and purifies the soul from every moral and spiritual defilement. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, can work upon the heart, influencing and directing, so that he enjoys spiritual things. He is “after the Spirit” (Romans 8:1), and he minds the things of the Spirit. He has no confidence in self; Christ is all in all. Truth is constantly being unfolded by the Holy Spirit; he receives with meekness the engrafted word, and he gives the Lord all the glory, saying, “God has revealed them unto us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10). “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (verse 12).YRP 91.2

The Spirit that reveals also works in him the fruits of righteousness. Christ is in him “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). He is a branch of the True Vine, and bears rich clusters of fruit to the glory of God. What is the character of the fruit borne? “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” Mark the words—love, not hatred; it is joy, not discontent and mourning; peace, not irritation, anxiety, and manufactured trials. It is “longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (Galatians 5:22, 23).YRP 91.3

Those who have this Spirit will be earnest laborers together with God; the heavenly intelligences cooperate with them, and they go weighted with the Spirit of the message of truth which they bear. They are a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. They are ennobled, refined, through the sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. They have not brought into the treasury of the soul wood, hay, stubble, but gold, silver, and precious stones. They speak words of solid sense, and from the treasures of the heart bring forth pure and sacred things according to the example of Christ.—The Home Missionary, November 1, 1893.YRP 91.4