Evening, November 4, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“In your light we see light.” — Psalm 36:9

No mouth can tell the love of Christ to the heart until Jesus himself speaks within. Descriptions all fall flat and tame unless the Holy Spirit fills them with life and power; until our Immanuel reveals himself within, the soul does not see him. If you wanted to see the sun, would you gather together all the common means of illumination, and seek in that way to behold the star of the day? No, the wise man knows that the sun must reveal itself, and only by its own fire can that mighty lamp be seen. It is so with Christ. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-jona:” he said to Peter, “for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.” Purify flesh and blood by any educational process you may select, elevate mental faculties to the highest degree of intellectual power, yet none of these can reveal Christ. The Spirit of God must come with power, and overshadow the man with his wings, and then in that mystic holy of holies the Lord Jesus must display himself to the sanctified eye, as he does not to the blind sons of men. Christ must be his own mirror. The great mass of this bleary-eyed world can see nothing of the indescribable glories of Immanuel. He stands before them without special form or beauty, a root out of a dry ground, rejected by the vain and despised by the proud. Only where the Spirit has touched the eye with eye-salve, enlivened the heart with divine life, and educated the soul to a heavenly desire, only there is he understood. “To you that believe he is precious;” to you he is the chief corner-stone, the Rock of your salvation, your all in all; but to others he is “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.” Those to whom our Lord manifests himself are happy, for his promise to such is that he will make his abode with them. Oh Jesus, our Lord, our heart is open, come in, and stay forever. Show yourself to us now! Favor us with a glimpse of your all-conquering charms.