s to lead a holy life and to walk softly in the presence of
the holy One. How often a young man is kept back from yielding to the
temptations that surround young manhood by the thought that if he should
yield to the temptation that now assails him, his holy mother might hear
of it and would be grieved by it beyond expression. How often some young
man has had his hand upon the door of some place of sin that he is about
to enter and the thought has come to him, "If I should enter there, my
mother might hear of it and it would nearly kill her," and he has turned
his back upon that door and gone away to lead a pure life, that he might
not grieve his mother. But there is One who is holier than any mother, One
who is more sensitive against sin than the purest woman who ever walked
this earth, and who loves us as even no mother ever loved, and this One
dwells in our hearts, if we are really Christians, and He sees every act
we do by day or under cover of the night; He hears every word we utter in
public or in private; He sees every thought we entertain, He beholds every
fancy and imagination that is permitted even a momentary lodgment in our
mind, and if there is anything unholy, impure, selfish, mean, petty,
unkind, harsh, unjust, or in anywise evil in act or word or thought or
fancy, He is grieved by it. If we will allow those words, "Grieve not the
Holy Spirit of God," to sink into our hearts and become the motto of our
lives, they will keep us from many a sin. How often some thought or fancy
has knocked for an entrance into my own mind and was about to find
entertainment when the thought has come, "The Holy Spirit sees that
thought and will be grieved by it" and that thought has gone.

II. _Many acts that only a Person can perform are ascribed to the Holy
Spirit._

If we deny the personality of the Holy Spirit, many passages of Scripture
become meaningless and absurd. For example, we read in 1 Cor. ii. 10, "But
God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for _the Spirit searcheth_
all things, yea, the deep things of God." This passage sets before us the
Holy Spirit, not merely as an illumination whereby we are enabled to grasp
the deep things of God, but a Person who Himself searches the deep things
of God and then reveals to us the precious discoveries which He has made.

We read in Rev. ii. 7, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what _the Spirit
saith_ unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the