Sensibility

Sensibility includes sensitiveness, and sensitiveness is the power to receive delicate impressions. The soul can be so sensitive that it be made to feel what God feels. It can feel the presence of God everywhere. It can also feel the presence of evil. This is a wonderful safeguard of the soul. It feels the presence of evil in the vagrant thought, in the lightly spoken word, the hasty action, and flees to God at once for refuge. It feels the presence of evil in those little, worldly things which many say are harmless. The sensitive soul detects evil there and avoids them. It is acquainted with the voice of the Shepherd. It can distinguish between His voice and that of a stranger. The more perfect the manhood, the more perfect the sensibility. The higher we rise into the manhood of Jesus the quicker-scented we become, the more easily we detect the presence of God and the presence of sin. This is necessary to all holy living. Many a soul today has lost the sensitiveness they once experienced. Evil things that they once fled away from in horror they are now embracing. It is our privilege to grow more sensitive as we grow in years of service to God. The farther we walk with Him, the closer we can walk with Him. We can keep step with Him more perfectly.

The scriptures tell us that Christ was of such quick understanding that He did not judge by the sight of His eyes or reprove by the hearing of His ears (Isaiah 11:3). In the margin it reads, “scent, or smell.” Christ was quick to detect an ill odor. He was sensitive to the presence of sin. The more we become like Christ the more sensitive we shall become. Christianity is a life. It is a Divine life. In that life there are senses that can sense Divine things. That life is susceptible to the impulses of the Holy Spirit. The soul can feel God, taste Him, hear Him. It is “alive unto God.”* (Romans 6:11) The soul, in this Divine life, is not only inwardly sensible to all the movements of the Holy Spirit, but is also sensitive to the feelings of men. The sensitive soul feels, not only what is in God, but is sensible also of what is in man. It is thus that when one member in Christ’s body, the Church, suffers, all the other members suffer with it. They feel what the suffering member feels. Is that day past? Not with all. The sensitive soul weeps with Christ over a lost world. It feels what Jesus feels.