From B. B. Warfield’s sermon “The Leading of the Spirit,” first published in 1903 (HT: Fred Zaspel):
Let us go onward, in hope and triumph, in our holy efforts.
Let our slack knees be strengthened and new vigor enter our every nerve.
The victory is assured.
The Holy Spirit within us cannot fail us.
The way may be rough; the path may climb the dizzy ascent with a rapidity too great for our faltering feet; dangers, pitfalls are on every side.
But the Holy Spirit is leading us.
Surely, in that assurance, despite dangers and weakness, and panting chest and swimming head, we can find strength to go ever forward.
In these days, when the gloom of doubt if not even the blackness of despair, has settled down on so many souls, there is surely profit and strength in the certainty that there is a portal of such glory before us, and in the assurance that our feet shall press its threshold at the last.
In this assurance we shall no longer beat our disheartened way through life in dumb despondency, and find expression for our passionate but hopeless longings only in the wail of the dreary poet of pessimism:—
“But if from boundless spaces no answering voice shall start,
Except the barren echo of our ever yearning heart—
Farewell, then, empty deserts, where beat our aimless wings,
Farewell, then, dream sublime of uncompassable things.”
We are not, indeed, relieved from the necessity for healthful effort, but we can no longer speak of “vain hopes.”
The way may be hard, but we can no longer talk of “the unfruitful road which bruises our naked feet.”
Strenuous endeavor may be required of us, but we can no longer feel that we are “beating aimless wings,” and can expect no further response from the infinite expanse than “a sterile echo of our own eternal longings.”
No, no—the language of despair falls at once from off our souls.
Henceforth our accents will be borrowed rather from a nobler “poet of faith,” and the blessing of Asher will seem to be spoken to us also:—
“Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
There is none like unto God, O Jeshurun,
Who rideth upon the heavens for thy help,
And in His excellency on the skies.
The eternal God is thy dwelling-place,
And underneath are the everlasting arms.”
