The Convictive Work of the Holy Ghost

There was a tone of sorrow in the voice of our Lord when He said that the Spirit of truth “will reprove the world of sin because it believeth not on Me.” Our Lord knew that viewed outwardly, as a question of station or numbers, His personal ministry upon the earth had been a failure, yet it was to be proved by another, whom He Himself would send, that the failure was due to the very sublimity of His character. A character like His was not to be compassed and honoured by the public mind in three short years. With less ofrandeur He migflit have drawn around Himself a wider homage; or with a grandeur undegraded by Nazarene associations He might have carried that homage to the very point of superstition, and so have wielded an influence the more commanding from its being spectral and mysterious. But to be just what He was — divine yet human — the supreme anomaly and contradiction in the whole range of history — proved the stumbling-block and rock of offence against which His contemporaries bruised themselves by their obstinacy and unbelief. In withdrawing from the world He said that His case would be completed by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, who would so operate upon the moral nature

,1 14 TJie Paracliie.

of mankind as to establish a perfect rig-hteo.isness and an incorruptible judgment, and in so doing would show the absolute need of Himself as Mediator and Saviour. This would seem to be the purport of the words “because they believe not on Me.” The world has never cared to own its need of the Son of man. He has always been a stranger, viewed with suspicion and listened to with reluctance. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; He was despised and rejected of men,. a man of sorrovv’s and acquainted with oTief, and we hid as it were our faces from Him. The world has never known exactly what to do with this stranger in the house, it has approached Him, and recoiled from Him: it has owned Him, and discarded Him in a breath; it has hailed Him as king, and crucified Him with thieves; He has been at once the spell and the dread of all who have known Him. He was aware of this, and said in effect: — You will not come unto Me; you are determined to go to the Father through some other way; I cannot remain longer in the body, but I will send the Spirit of truth, and when He is come He will con’ince you of sin because ye believe not on Me. To this point we shall come again, after some anal)’sis and reasoning.

To convince the world of sin is much more than to convince the world of crime. The world is satisfied with rough definitions, and therefore it has unhappily used the words “crime” and “sin” as equivalent and interchangeable terms. In the higher reasoning this is a ^tal error. There may be sin where there is no crime, but wherever there is crime there is sin to account for it. Society is organized to defend itself against crime, yet every member of it is guilty of sin. This has to be made clear by the Holy Ghost, and has already in a measure been made clear to every one of us. Thus: Society condemns murder; so in his reasoning with us the tloly Ghost begins with this admission, and proceeds to say — You condemn murder, but this is merely a gross and vulgar morality, little better, indeed, than selfishness stimulated by fear; you must find out how murder begins, — it begins in uiilioly anger; that anger may never have spoken one word or shown one sign of impatience, yet by so much as )’ou have given way to it in the secrecy of your inmost heart you are guilty of murder in the sight of God! It required a Ghost to teach us that. We had no moral instrument of our own fine enough and keen enoucrh to make so delicate a distinction; we could only get so far as to make some difference between murder and- manslaughter, or between murder with extenuating circumstances and murder without them. There society paused, being unable to go further; and precisely there the Spirit began His work, taking the crime to pieces, tracing it back to its orio-in, and’ findino- that origin in a secret and perhaps long-hidden excitement of the heart, and laving found it, the Spirit said — 1 his is the murder; the outward deed was a social outrage, an odious and revolting vulgarity; tJiis movement of hatred in the heart, this unbridled passion, is the murder. “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” Thus we are brought to subtler definitions than have hitherto satisfied our rude morality, and the measure of our assent is the measure of our self-conviction. Those of us who have walked up and down in society as blameless men suddenly find ourselves in the presence of a new law of judgment, and are compelled to own that if murder is traceable into the region of motive, feeling, latent or unconfessed abhorrence of a mc’i.n, it is more than possible that we ourselves may be murderers in the sight of God. To accept such a doctrine is to Invest life with a most solemn a.’id tragic grandeur, and is to do something further which will appear as the analysis proceeds.

Society- has made murder penal, but It has rot been able to set falsehood amongst the crimes which are to be punished by the magistrate. By society itself falsehood is treated more spiritually than murder; so we come into a higher region of the operation of the Holy Spirit. We ourselves make further admissions In this case than we were prepared to make in the other. We own, for example, that a man may act a lie as well as tell one: that he may use words with two meanings: that he may guard himself and mislead others by mental reservations. These are great admissions, far more spiritual, it will b’

The Coiivictive JJ’or/c of the Ho.’y Ghost. 117

observed, than were made in the case of murder. What more can the Holy Ghost Himself do? It is not indeed needful that more be done if the object be merely to secure self-conviction. Yet more is possible. The Holy Ghost says that a form of words may be true, and yet it may express a lie! A conversation may be reported veibatini et litc7’-atim, yet, by a mere change of tone, by the omission of a facial expression, by a skilful variation of pause or emphasis, the report may be a falsehood from beginning to end. Farther and deeper still, a man may be false to himself. He may actually have treated himself so dishonestly as to have suspended or destroyed the very power by which he knows right from wrong. His conscience is “seared as with a hot iron,” and human speech has lost all value and use as a moral medium. Some men are spoken of as “given over to believe a lie;” that is to say, the natural conscience itself, the primary element of responsible life, is dispossessed of its proper function, and belief has become an instrument of self-delusion. Under such circumstances the man is somethinc more than a liar, he himself is actually a lie I When a man is guilty of lying there may be some hope of his restoration because of certain counterbalancing virtues on other sides of his character; but when the man himself is a livino lie, the whole nature is in so false a condition as to leave no hope of penitence and recovery.

Under such difficulties who but the Spirit of God can undertake the work of convincing the heart of sin? There must be a process in a heart so lost, which can only be typified by the most terrible displays of power which take place in the material world, — eruption, and earthquake, and lig”htnincrs like the q;lance of God.

But the process becomes still more spiritual. Murder and falsehood are at all events nominally condemned by every man who has any sense of social decency; but what of virtues which are praised as the very security and crown of human society? The Spirit of God seeth not as man. seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. The form of sfodllness is to be distinguished from its power. An illustration taken from every-day life will help us to see the meaning of this. Take an act of almsgiving, and let it be outwardly the choicest specimen of Its class: the gift is large, most timely in its presentation, and most deservedly bestowed; many a heart was made glad by the donation, and many an anxiety was set at rest; the gift was given with such cordiality too: the tone of the giver was cheerful, and gladdening to all who heard it; altogether the charity was marked by every desirable beauty. Beyond this point society does not carry its judgment, — man looketh on the outward appearance. Where man ends, the all-searching Spirit begins: He hok: the candle of the Lord over the secret places o.

The Convictive Work of the Holy Ghost, i 1 9

the heart; he tries the motives of the soul by the fires of the supreme judgment; and having done so, He says in effect to the applauded man, —” Your love went not with your gift; had you been left wholly to the motion of your own will you never would have given it; it was an oblation to your own vanity; it was a bribe by which you bought reputation and goodstanding amongst men; it was not given to the poor, it was given to yourself T This conviction may be made so clear to a man, and brought to bear upon him with such urgency, as to cause him the most painful suffering at the very time when human applause is most general and vehement. Here, then, is the point of departure from such cases as murder and falsehood, the point of excellent appearance where the informing spirit is vicious and detestable.

We are now upon the line every point of which adds to our lnowledge of spiritual realities as distinguished from formal facts. How near, for example, are we to the point which shows that prayer itself may be a lie! We turned from murder with disgust, and from falsehood with a sense of shame, but what of the prayers so much •^cjDproved for every charm of expression and tone? iIay our religioji be the chief of our ijiimoralities y You prayed in the house of your friend, and made your prayer the medium of personal compliment to his supposed excellences and deserts; you praised the creature to the Creator, making mention of his virtues, but not daring to hint at his sins; with many a compHnientary reference you hngered upon the case of the master, but you dismissed the servants in one hurried and shallow sentence: would you have so prayed for the man if he had not been listening to you? Answer that question distinctly. Would you have called him God’s ‘’dear servant” if he had been a mile away? Would you have prayed at all if you could decorously have escaped the duty? Not only does the Holy Ghost ask these questions. He compels you to answer them to your shame, nor does He cease His piercing and destructive ministry until you own that y-ou have turned your religion into a crime and uttered blasphemy at the very gate of heaven. So, the period of mere definition is passed, and the time of direct and irresFstible application has come.

More: even if we are unassailable at any of the great points now indicated — crime, falsehood, selhshness, impious pra)’er — yet there is another kingdom wherein the divine judgment is set up, the kingdom of unuttered desire and thought. Every man has two lives — the life of motive, and the life of behaviour, inlo the first of which none can enter but the Spirit of spirits. “He knoweth our thought afar off,” before it is a complete thought, when k is too dim an outline to have any relation to the uses of human speech, and before it leaves the shia’ows of its inception He declares its quality and metes to It the judgment of righteousness. So solemn is life, so peril-OLis, so painful! Through your heart there shot a desire which scorched on, though no human eye will ever see the blister which it left, and the very memory of that desire will make you dumb whilst others sing; it will sting you, humble you, and make a coward of you all your days. Into your mind there came what was only the hint of a thought, yet it struck you like a thunderbolt, so evil did it seem to be even in its incompleteness! These are the visitations which, when rightly understood, show a man that there is something worse than crime, and make him impatient with the deceitful comforters who would “heal his hurt slightly.”

Thus we come back to the point with which we started, viz., “The Spirit of truth will convince the world of sin, — of sin because they believe not on Me.” The Holy Ghost will so vividly and thoroughly show the nature of sin, that those who thought themselves the best examples of human society will be afflicted with the keenest compunction because of what they know themselves to be in the presence of God. It will no longer be a question of comparison as between one class and another, or between one man and another; the judgment will lie wholly between man and God, and every heart will see itself as if it were the only heart in all the universe. This personal consciousness is to be so vivid and intense as to become painful; a man will see himself as he never saw himself before, and feel the burden of life with a new and intolerable oppresslon. His moral sense will be so purified and perfected that he will feel even an evil thought to be an unpardonable sin; and so humbled will he be >’ findinof that even his best deeds are tainted, and that his very prayers are but a refinement of impiety, that all strength will go out of him and all self-hope will expire. Can he in that moment of despair turn to others for help? No; because they are in the agonies of the same experience, groaning because of a common paralysis and helplessness. The hour is too solemn to admit of trifling by comparing one degree of sin with another; there is no question of degrees; whatever difference there may be In the mere accidents of crime, under all surfaces there is the terrible fact that every heart has broken away from the rule of the Divine King. What then y When the conviction is so keen and relentless, when every concealing shadov»r is chased from the inmost life by the fierce light of infinite purity, the heart will begin to know that in turning away from Jesus Christ, that strange and tormenting middle quantity by which it was so fretted In the days of its own haughtiness and selfsufiiclency, it turned from the Son of God, the only mediator of the covenant of peace, and then the agony will be like the very pains of hell. This is the conviction of sin which the Spirit of God Is to work In hearts which have not believed in the Saviour of the world. Jesus Christ cannot be understood until sin Is understood. So long as sin is regarded from a merely social point of view,

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the cross of Christ must appear to be an exaggeration, — justice assuming a sensational attitude. Why do with blood a work which could be done as well with water? Why sacrifice a man when the blood of a beast would answer every purpose? These inquiries are legitimate so long as sin is underrated or misunderstood, but the moment that sin Is seen under »the illumination of infinite holiness, the cross of Christ alone is equal to the tragic awe and appalling horror of the situation. The hrst clear view which any man gets of the sinfulness of sin marks the crisis of his life. From that time he elects his destiny. It is questionable whether there can be any repetition of that view, so Intense, so intolerable, is the light. Jesus Christ, then, would seem to say, In the words now under discussion, something to this effect: — “You do not understand Me now; you think you can do without a mediator between yourselves and God; so little do you know of sin as God knows It, that you suppose yourselves equal to every occasion which can arise In working out all the dispensations of divine righteousness; so must It be for a little while, but not for ever; when the Spirit of truth Is come He will give you such views of the sinfulness of sin, and show you so clearly the true condition of vour own hearts, that under His ministry you will cry out for mediation, and remember in the anguish of your pain that you would not come unto J/^ that you might have life.”

In the light of this ex^DosItlon we may see the uay clear to some practical conclusions.

I. All attempts to establish a satisfactory life on the basis of what is commonly known as morality, must be given up. Morality has become one of the fine arts. It is an attitude, a fine balancing of calculations, a tacit understanding with evil powers, at best but an armed neutrality. The surface of society is not ill-conditioned; its politeness was never so polished; its laws of giving and ‘taking were never so admirably codified. This social behaviour is only the fit expression of individual virtues which conspicuously abound, and which are properly used as bonds of intercourse in carrying on the business of daily life. But what if morality be only an art, — the most cunning and profitable of tricks? What if the partitions which we call our “rights “be saved from destruction merely because it pays better to repress the fire of passion than to eive it free course ‘^ This is not said cynically, but rather with bitterness of sorrow. The Holy Ghost teaches that we cannot be right with one another until we are right with God. He says we must be religioics before we can be profoundly and truly moral. By being religious the Holy Ghost means that the human will must be under the control of the will of God; and it is precisely at this point that a great controversy arises between the human and divine. By so much as a man subtracts anything from the sovereignty of God’s control, and transfers it to himself, he assumes that it is possible to create a satisfactory morality without divine help. The Holy Ghost says,” No; you mi st be.

born again — )’Oii must come into thorough newness of life, and not into a mere readjustment of habits and behaviour — you must die unto yourself, that 3-0U may live unto God.” His work is thus fundamental. He will not attempt to do anything that is merely on the outside; He says that the very nature of man must be born again, and that until regeneration takes place, so-called “morality” is but a well-contrived device of selfishness. This is clearly a magnificent basis of life, supplying as it does eternal guarantees of purity and nobleness. In the absence of such a basis there can be no dependence upon the loudest professions of confidence and friendship; they must be taken for what they are worth, as very pleasant to the outward ear, but as liable to be blown away by the first cross wind which assails our popularity. On the other hand, where the heart has been born again, and as a consequence draws all the considerations which govern it immediately from the will of .God, there must be incorruptible truth and invincible constancy. If we plead that when thrown entirely on our own resources we can develop a very beautiful life, the Holy Ghost says, “No; your results are artificial; they express study and contrivance on your part; they are rather a group of negations which attest a more or less severe discipline, they are not the natural outcome of a moral condition which cannot be changed by outward circumstances; you make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but the inside is full of rottenness and death.”

126 The Paj’aclde.

So the very morality which we boast may be, as already said, the last aggravation of our wickedness. Recollect how severe Jesus Christ was with the “righteous” men of His day; He never spared them; He never had one approving word for them; when they gathered up their ceremonial skirts and ran away from the path of the “sinner,” He damnedthem with infinite condemnation as hypocrites, devourers, and whited sepulchres. This ministry of His is continued by the Holy Ghost, — “He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you,” — and the ministry thus continued cannot cease until man throws down his artificial morality as a burden and a lie.

2. All hopes founded upon what are thought to be different degrees of sin must be abandoned. There are, of course, different degrees of crime, but the question does not turn upon crime at all. The murderer is undoubtedly a greater criminal than the pilferer; but the murderer is i-6’/;^6’//^/;/^;;/^r than a murderer, and the pilferer than a pilferer. The murder and the theft are accidental forms, nothing more. For all the purposes of criminal law it may be sufficient to classify men according to the mere accidents of the r mischievous behat-iour, so that punishment may be assigned with some degree of proportion to the shock which public feeling has sustained; but another standard must be set up when the offence is between man and God. “Would you send a murderer and a speculative sceptic to the same hell?” it may be asked. But stop! It is not the murderer, accidentally as such, that is sent to hell, nor the speculative sceptic, accidentally as such, that Is shut out of heaven. The question Is one of death not of disease, of’ the heart not of the hand. According to the teaching of the Holy Ghost It may be (even considering the question as one of degrees) that the heart through which has passed an unholy desire may be in a worse condition than the heart whose momentary passion has vented Itself in murderous vengeance. There Is an Iniquity which Is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel, a secret enjoyment of sin; and there are also moments in which Is revealed to the soul a horrible possibility of sin where such possibility was least suspected, a revelation known only to the* soul because too dreadful to be put into words and communicated to a stranger. The fu’st time, in our sunny youth, we realised this awful possibility, can It ever be forgotten? It was only a shadow that swept over the heart, not a thing for words at all, yet the very memory of it chills us like the toucji of death. Or It was a demand of the heart made at a time of festivity, it came upon us without warning, it made the heart bound as if it had been secretly touched with fire, — in that moment we saw that our life is being daily spent on the edge of an abyss. Left to ourselves as a community of men, we can set up comparisons and contrasts, and actually shudder at enormities which secure

128 The Panic Icle.

for themselves a bad eminence; but introduced into the presence of God, and searched by the Holy Ghost, .we feel that a look may be blasphemy and that unkindness may be cruel as murder. The thing to be understood is that sin is spiritual, and that if; is to be judged spiritually, without reference to the vulgarity or noise which may make it socially noticeable.

3. Under such realisation of sin the work of Jesus Christ is seen in its true light. On this point some remarks have just been offered, but we may recur to it as the chief point in the discussion. Here it is emphatically true that “they that be whole need not a physician but they that are sick.” The analogy will help us to higher truths. A man who has never known the agony of pain or the prostratior of weakness may feel himself at liberty to trea* very lightly the claims of men who follow the pre fession of medicine. From his own point of view he may feel himself entitled to sneer at such men and may plead his personal robustness as an argu itient against their pretensions. He may, if of a narrow and obstinate nature, even go so far as to contend that other people might all be strong as he is, and consequently to withdraw his sympathy from them. But let that boastful and austere’ man awake to the fact that in his own body there is a slowly developing disease, painless in its early stages, but surely advancing upon his very life; let him come to the convictioiL that at any moment his pulse may

The Conznctive Work of the Holy Ghost. 1 29

cease, and instantly his attitude towards the medical profession may be totally changed. A new conviction has given him a new feeling and compelled him towards a new policy. Ask him the reason of the change, so complete and striking, which he has undergone, and at once he will justify himself by his new consciousness. Jesus Christ makes use of this very experience to throw light upon His own ministry: “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; “*’ They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Everything, therefore, is made to depend upon conviction. Where there is no conviction there will be no pressure of necessity. Where there is no thirst, who cares for the fountain; but in the desert, under. n intolerable sun, who can calculate the value of a cup of cold water? Jesus Christ awaits the demands of spiritual necessity. He knows that the Holy Ghost will so torment the heart with a sense of sin as to compel the sufferer to pray for mercy, and at that point of anguish He will show Himself to be the Saviour of the world. Jesus Christ cannot work in the absence of conviction. Whefi the physician lays his finger upon the strong man’s pulse, the strong man smilingly anticipates an exclamation of surprise and congratulation; but when the pulse of the dying man is felt, it is amidst the silence of anxiety and fear. Tell the Pharisee that Jesus Christ died for him, and the man is shocked; but tell the sinner who knows the torment of remorse that the Son of God died to save him, and the

K statement becomes “the glorious gospel of the blessed God.” Through his remorse he sees what he never could have seen through his philosophy. For years he may have vainly studied the Cross as a controversialist, but in a moment he saw all its meaning when his heart was broken because of his sin. In the light of these reflections we may see how far removed from the region of mere controversy is such a doctrine as the atonement. It does not express a controversial result, so how can it be reached by controversial means? It came out of feeling — that is, out of the tender pity and love of God — and cannot therefore be understood but by the aid of feelinof. The losfician is out of his beat here. The broken heart will see farther than the keenest intellect. It is only for a moment now and then that any man really and truly sees himself, and such moments are times, not of equable and serene complacency, but of intense excitement and passion, — times of madness which the world cannot understand: how, then, can a being who can see himself only now and then, see God always, and explain in easy words the sorrow and the grace of the Eternal? No man could bear the strain of continual conviction of sin. It kills him, that he may be made alive again by the Spirit, and ever afterwards he speaks of it as a memory rather than as a current experience. The agony upon the cross was soon past, and it could come again no more. It is so with this conviction which reveals the cross: however long the preparation, it is but momentary in the final pain, yet long enough to show sin, God, and salvation. This being so, the atonement cannot be dealt with in coolness and patience, like a problem which appeals but to one set of faculties, it must be seen at ojice, through the agony of broken-hartedness, or it can never be seen at all. Though soon seen it Is never forgotten. It rules the life evermore. Fruits of the Spirit will attest by noble confirmation the reality of the Spirit’s ministry. The anguish of the birth is forootten so soon as the man is born, but the man has to live under discipline and to be the willing and grateful scholar of the Spirit to whom he owes himself.

The conviction of sin is to be accompanied by the conviction of righteousness and the conviction of judgment, — accompanied by, rather than followed, for these great spiritual quickenlngs and movements would often seem to involve many simultaneous experiences which are only in appearance separated by intervals of time. It may be taken that the convictive work of the Holy Spirit Is one great act, describable, however, by a threefold effect, and that such work Is Initiated at once in all its complexity. Commentators have not found it easy to give a clear and satisfactory rendering of our Lord’s words upon this subject, nor are we bold enough to hope that we can simplify what they have found It so difficult to explain. The meaning of the words would seem to be substantially this; The world has its own notion of wrong-doing’; the world has its own notion of propriety, or justice as between man and man; the world has its own notion of moral differences, of right and wrong, of good and bad,^ — but when the Spirit is come, He will seize upon all these notions, and with convincing refutation will show them to be onlynames, to be superficial, shallow, altogether inadequate, fallacious, and misleading; having done this negative work, He” will proceed to His affirmative mission, and in doing so He will replace the word “wrong-doing” with the word sin, the word “propriety” with the word righteousness, and the word “differences” with the word judgment; He will show the spiritual essence and reality, of which the world has but a dim and imperfect notion; He will throw the world into discontentment with all its own moral theories, and bring it to see that it has been mistaking appearances for realities; thus, negatively and positively, the Spirit will carry out a profound and vital work of spiritual conviction. But the point which is to be specially observed is that the convictive mission of the Holy Ghost is entirely identified with the name and ministry of yesus Christ. The conviction, regarded simply as the result of spiritual argument, might have been accomplished in the very first ages of human history; it must, therefore, be something more than an intellectual conviction, and for its accomplishment it must have required every aid that is implied in the gift of the Son of God as the minister of salvation. Mark the statement and the reason: The C()mforter will convince the woi’ld of sin — because they believe not on Me; the Comforter will convince the world of righteousness — becaiLse I go to the Father; the Comforter will convince the world of judgment — because the prince of this world is judged (is cast out) for, for this purpose was I manifested that I might destroy the works of the devil. In the light of this connection the whole passage may be treated in free paraphrase thus: When the Comforter is come He will convincingly refute the world’s theory of wrong-doing by showing God’s idea of sin as proved by the shedding of My blood, which blood the world has trampled under foot and ‘accounted an unholy thing; in future when men want to know what sin really is (not merely in its accidental expression but in its essence) they will see God’s revelation and estimate of it in My cross. When the Comforter is come He will convincingly refute the world’s theory of righteousness, which relates wholly to appearances, and is more or less a successful adaptation of expedients, and this He will do by taking up and continuing My work which I now lay down that I may go to My father. I have spoken the word, I have also shown the example; now a great spiritual process must set in, and My outward and visible work must receive spiritual illumination and exposition. When the Comforter is come He will convincingly refute the world’s theory of

judgment, which is founded upon the most obvious differences only, and has no reference to those deep spiritual elements and facts which underli(; and account for all human conduct; He will show the meaning of My temptation, the purport of My answers in the wilderness, and the discriminations with which I startled the men of My day — such as preferring the publican to the Pharisee, and the mites of the widow to the cold of Dives: all this He will do, and then will be seen that My work is not the broken column which it now appears to be, not a failure, not a humiliating overthrow, but the beginning of a klnodom fair as the sun and everlastlnsf as the heavens.

This conviction is being wrought out by many instrumentalities; as, for example, by the wise exposition of the living Word; by loyal obedieace to the statutes and ordinances of Jesus Christ; by holy and unblamable lives, whereby ungodl)- men are silently rebuked and instructed; by startling developments of spiritual power by which the people are now sobered by great fear and anon made glad with sure and exultant hope; by good coming out of evil; by sudden and terrible reproofs of powers haughty and defiant in their self-sufficiency; by the honour of methods and plans thought to be feeble and useless; — in all these ways, and in others many and wonderful, a great work of spiritual conviction is proceeding in society, and is showing itself In the higher legislation and the keener discipline of mankind.

Such work is necessarily slow in its progress. Conviction is probably the slowest of all work. By its very nature it is both negative and positive; that is to say, .It has to penetrate error and prejudice, and actually to destroy them, before it can begin its con-The Convidive Work of the Holy Ghost. 135

structive processes. This is the very force of the word tkeyyo’i as employed by our Lord in this passage, — a word which involves condemnation, remorse, penitence, and better-mindeclness and health of soul. Work of this kind is not to be done in a day, or if so done it may be as quickly overthrown. The kino-domx of heaven is in nowise to be hurried in its construction, and inasmuch as it is the highest of all kingdoms it is the least susceptible of impatient influences. It resents them. For a time, godly labour will seem to disappear in nothingness, and to leave the labourer without reward or joy; but afterwards there will come up signs and tokens which cannot be mistaken for auo-ht but the hire and honour of those who do well. Sin, righteousness, and judgment, are not to be seen objectively, or the work would be easy enough; they must be revealed subjectively, in much painfulness, self-accusation, and controversy of heart, for thus only can they become part of our very consciousness and live for ever amidst the ruling memories of human life. Jesus Christ commits His great work to the ages, and to the ministry of the Eternal Spirit, assured that in the lono- run the world will trace its true ideas of sin, righteousness, and judgment, to the Golgotha of His sorrow and the Olivet of His ascension. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” “Thou fool, that which diou so west is not quickened except it die.” “Verily, verily, I say unto you. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: Ijut if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”