[THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD]

(Part of the Collection, Kersey's Essays)

Jesse Kersey

Taken From  A Narrative of the Early Life, Travels, and Gospel Labors of Jessey Kersey, Late of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Chapman, 1851, pages 220-221.

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[p. 220] He who was famed for wisdom at one period of his life, said, "A man that hath friends, must show himself friendly; and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."

By this friend I understand king Solomon to mean the Divine gift, or the manifestation of the spirit of God. To know the teaching of this gift, and clearly to distinguish it from the impressions made upon the mind by other causes, has been supposed to be almost impossible. But our difficulty in the case does not arise from any mysterious circumstance connected with the subject;--but from the habitual tendency in the minds of many of looking for more than is consistent with the wisdom of God to grant or furnish. We should be content with such indications of the Divine voice as are to be heard in the soul, when we are gathered into a state of separation from all worldly ideas or images of material things. When the mind may be said to be alone, and centered in a state of inward stillness; it is then that God speaks to man, when he is in a waiting state, and has not any other thing to occupy his attention. Under this circumstance, it pleases him to manifest himself to his creatures. If it be to rebuke us for any mistake we have made, or to reprove us for any improper action or conduct we have been guilty of,--we feel the rebuke by the sense of condemnation spread over us. If no rebuke has been merited, we may feel a humbling and tender impressions of his love, by the calming influence of which We may be satisfied that we are [P. 221] favored with a feeling sense of the goodness of God towards us.

With a view, however, more fully to illustrate the important doctrine of the teaching of this divine gift, it may be remarked that we find it confirmed by all the penmen of the holy scriptures. The word of the Lord was communicated to Noah, and he in obedience thereto built the ark. It appeared to Abraham; and he was thus informed of the intended destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. From those two eminent men I might go on to name all the great characters found in the Old Testament; and to these might be added all the apostles mentioned in the New, for they all agree in testimony to the manifestation of the spirit to the mind of Man. It is therefore an extraordinary case, that any who profess a belief in the scriptures of Truth, should doubt the reality of this precious gift of God to man.