Holy Spirit of God to make its home in
such unclean company. It is on this account that there is nothing which
so soon grows to depraved habit, to God-abandoned state, as sensual
appetite; nothing which so rapidly dulls the higher affections in the
heart and saps all the finer elements of life.

Therefore, when we are thinking of God's gift of the Holy Ghost, and of
spiritual power as the saving and uplifting influence in our soul, we do
well to reflect a little on those hindrances which will be fatal to all
such power in us, if they are allowed to take possession of our life and
to prevail in it.

We do well to reflect in this way, because such reflection will make us
very careful against harbouring or encouraging any of these fatal
hindrances, and careful also against any other form of spiritual waste.

There is no surer guide to a right use of all liberty than this
reflection upon the power of the indwelling spirit in us, and the things
that add to it or destroy it.

Recognising that this Spirit, which, in the language of your confirmation
prayer, is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel
and ghostly strength, the Spirit of knowledge and true godliness and of
holy fear; recognising that this Spirit, with its sevenfold gifts, is the
saving element in all free life, you begin to look with fresh feelings on
all your leisure hours, on all your hours of liberty, when you are
released from task work or supervision, when your life is what you
yourselves are making it, and you begin to consider whether these times,
as you spend them, are indeed times of growth or, it may be, of waste,
times of genuine freedom or of slavery to some form of lower life. When
you think of this Holy Spirit of God as a power in every good life, it
becomes a very real question what and of what sort is the _power_ that is
holding sway over you in your leisure hours.

This is indeed a question which never sleeps, and to-day we ask, What is
your Whitsuntide answer to it?

If there be any one to whom such a question is not yet a matter of living
concern, it is the purpose of this Pentecostal festival to rouse him to
new thoughts about it.

If there be any older person in this congregation who lets his years slip
from him, not caring or forgetting the importance of it, and not striving
to leaven all his hours of work or leisure with the thought of this
indwelling Spirit from above; or if there should be any young boy who