sing God increases as we
increase in sanctity. Those who have completely yielded themselves to
God in a life of sanctity become in a deep sense the representatives of
God: they have, in S. Paul's phraseology, His mind. To be capable of so
becoming the divine instrument it is necessary, not only to offer no
opposition to God's purposes, but to make ourselves the active
executants of them. Our Christian vocation is thus to be the instrument
of God, to be the visible demonstrations of His power and presence.
There is a true inspiration, a true speaking for God to-day, no doubt,
as true as at any time in the Church's history, wherever there is
sanctity. What is lacking to present day utterances of sanctity is not
the action of the Holy Spirit, but authentication by the Church: that is
given only under certain special circumstances and for special purposes.
But there is no need to limit the inspiring action of the Holy Spirit to
such utterances as for special reasons have received official
recognition.

What we need to feel is the constant action of the Holy Spirit--that He
wants to speak through every man. And it helps to clear our minds if we
go to our Bibles with the expectation of finding here, not exceptions to
all rules which obtain in common life, but types of the divine action.
The isolation of Bible history has done much to create a feeling of its
unreality. What has happened only in the Bible can, we are apt to feel,
safely be disregarded in daily life in the twentieth century. But if
what we find there is customary modes of divine action in life,
exceptional in detail rather than in principle, the attitude we shall
take will be wholly different. We shall then study them with the feeling
expressed in S. Paul's saying, "These things are written for our
learning," and we shall expect to find in us and about us the same order
of divine action, we shall learn to look on our lives as having their
chief meaning in the fact that they are possible instruments of God; we
shall learn to regard failure as failure to show forth God to the world.

In a way we can read our facts backward: the fact that "Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Ghost," and the fact that Mary under the same
divine impulse gave utterance to the words of the Magnificat, is a
revelation of the character of these two women which would satisfy us of
their sanctity had we no other evidence of it. The choice of them by God
to be His instruments is evidence of