The Acts of the Holy Spirit

The Acts of the Apostles forms a fifth Gospel, and can be properly understood only in its relation, not alone to the narrative previously written -

by Luke, but to the whole fourfold Gospel which precedes it.

We have our Lord Jesus Christ thus presented to us in five aspects of his blessed person and work, which remind us of his fivefold “name,” as given in prophecy. Matthew exhibits Dy De him as the “Wonderful” Messianic King; Luke as the gracious human “Counselor”; Mark as the “Mighty God,” the miracle-worker; John as the “Everlasting Father,” in his essential nature; and in the Acts we have him as the ‘Prince of Peace,” ascended to his throne and sending the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, as his ascension gift to believers, to conduct, in his name and behalf, the great work and warfare of this dispensation, the age of outgathering from all nations,

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The Book of the Acts, however closely linked with the Gospel according to Luke, as being from the same human author, is therefore a proper sequel to all the four books which precede it; and may be compared to the mercy-seat, which both rested upon and held united the four sides of the sacred ark of the testimony. We may even carry the comparison further; for, as it was this mercy-seat, the cover of the ark, where the Shechinah fire burned and glowed, it is in the Acts of the Apostles that the Holy Spirit’s fire is first seen to burn and shine in latter-day glory.

The Acts of the Apostles should therefore be studied mainly for this double purpose: first, to trace our Lord’s unseen but actual continuance of his divine teaching and working and, secondly, to trace the active ministry of the Holy Spirit as the abiding presence in the church. For it must be observed that Luke’s former treatise of “all that Jesus degan both to do and teach” implies that this latter treatise has to do with what he continues to do and teach, in the person of the Paraclete. Hence the discriminating student will here see at once the sequel to the great works of our Lord’s earthly ministry, and the record of the “greater works” which were to be wrought by the Holy Spirit after his return to the Father. The brief study of the Acts which follows is really no more than a first glimpse into a land of promise. It is the announcement of a discovery made by the writer that this narrative is a revelation of the Holy Spirit in his relations to believers as Christ’s witnesses, and to the church as the witnessing body, and that, from the opening chapter on, there is a progressive unfolding of this great theme, which it is our humble endeavor to trace. Nothing is claimed for what follows, save a suggestion, like all discoveries, it needs confirmation by a fuller examination and more thorough exploration. But if the hints herein found shall prove grapes of Eshcol, tempting others, who are more competent, to search this goodly land more successfully and thoroughly, and lead God’s people to its more thorough occupation and enjoyment, the desire and purpose of the author will be fulfilled, ARTHUR T. PIERSON.

The revelation of the highest truth needs both words and works for its completeness — theory enforced and illustrated by practical example.

The revelation of the mission and ministry of the Paraclete waited for Christ’s incarnation to be fully taught, and for his ascension to be fully explained and understood, when the Spirit was poured out in a glorious baptism of divine energy, a Pentecost of power.

We accordingly find that the great body of our Lord’s teaching as to the person and work of the Spirit is found, not in the records of his earlier

ministry, but later, in the single dis-John xiv., xv.,

course immediately preceding his cru- he

cifixion, and the last on record, preserved for us in those three precious chapters of the Gospel according to John. Here the Spirit of God is first known by that mysterious name, PARACLETE, the full meaning of which no one English word can convey or ex-Hapaxdyros press, and which, perhaps, it would be better to transfer direct, in its original form, into our translation, like other untranslatable words, such as “Jehovah,” “Abba,” ‘‘ hallelujah,” etc. This word “paraclete,” like its nearest Latin equivrJohn ii. 2. alent, “‘ advocate,’”’ which is once used to translate it, seems to embody mainly the conception of being called to one’s aid or summoned to act as a substitute; as, in a court of law, an advocate appears to conduct a case or cause in another’s behalf and as his representative. Whatever other conceptions may properly pertain to the name, Paraclete, this seems to be central and controlling: the Holy Spirit comes when Christ goes — comes to take the place of the absent Lord Jesus; to become, therefore, to the believer, and to the church as the collective body of believers, all that Christ would have been had he remained on earth, with this added advantage: that, as a condition of his humiliation, the Lord Jesus submitted to certain limitations of his and our humanity, and was therefore, while in the flesh, not practically omnipresent; whereas the

Holy Spirit, not having assumed a human body as his mode of incarnation, is, equally and everywhere, resident in and abiding with every believer. Hence it was“expedient” for his disciples that Christ should “go away”; for when he departed he sent the Paraclete to act in his stead.

The fact is both curious and significant that what is found in the Gospel narratives, in the form of precept or teaching, reappears in the Acts of the Apostles in the form of practice or example; and so the great truths taught about the Holy Spirit, in that “farewell discourse” recorded by John, are in the Book of the Acts illustrated and illuminated, being exemplified and applied in actual history.

If, therefore, we are to study the Acts of the Apostles, with a view to the understanding of the Holy Spirit’s person and ministry as there exhibited, it is first of all desirable and needful to combine, in one continuous form of statement, all that our Lord taught upon this subject in the discourse already referred to, especially as it holds in germ all the teaching afterward illustrated in the Acts and expanded in the Epistles.

We tarry, then, at this point, to present the combined body of testimony concerning the Spirit, preserving that obvious parallelism which pervades the whole of this teaching, imparting to it that peculiar poetic rhyme and rhythm of thought which are of the very genius of Hebrew poetry, and help to give insight into the relations of corresponding ideas:

‘* ] will pray the Father,
And he shall give you
Another Paraclete,
That he may abide with you forever;
Even the Spirit of truth;
Whom the world cannot receive,
Because it seeth him not,
Neither knoweth him:
But ye know him;
For he dwelleth with you,
And shall be in you.
These things have I spoken unto you,
Being yet present with you.
But the Paraclete,
Which is the Holy Ghost,
Whom the Father will send in my name,
He shall teach you all things,
And bring all things to your remembrance,
Whatsoever I have said unto you.
When the Paraclete is come,
Whom I will send unto you from the Father,
Even the Spirit of truth,
Which proceedeth from the Father,
He shall testify of me:

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