Filled with the Spirit

Be filled with the Spirit speaking to one another.* — Eph. v. 18.

THESE words are a command. They enjoin - upon us, not what the state of apostles or ministers ought to be, but what should be the ordinary consistent experience of every true-hearted believer. It is the privilege every child of God may claim from his Father, to be filled with the Spirit. Nothing less will enable him to live the life he has been redeemed for, abiding in Christ, keeping His commandments, and bearing much fruit. And yet, how little this command has been counted among those which all ought to keep! How little it has been thought possible or reasonable that all should be expected to keep it!

One reason of this is undoubtedly that the words have been wrongly understood. Because with the day of Pentecost, and on more th’an one subsequent occasion, the being filled with the Spirit was accompanied with the manifest enthusiasm of a supernatural joy and power, such a state has been looked on as one of excitement and strain, quite inconsistent with the quiet course of ordinary life. The suddenness and the strength and the outward manifestation of the Divine impulse were so linked with the idea of being filled with the Spirit, that it was thought to be something for special occasions, a blessing only possible to a very few. Christians felt as if they could not venture, as if they did not need, to fix their hopes so high; as if, were the blessing given to them, it would be impossible in their circumstances to maintain or to manifest it.

The message I have to bring to-day is that the command is indeed for every believer, and that, as wide as the precept, is the promise and the power too. May God give us grace, that our meditation on this His Word may waken in the heart of every reader, not only strong desire but the firm assurance that the privilege is meant for him, that the way is not too hard, that the blessing will in very deed yet become his own.

In a country like South Africa, where we often suffer from drought, we find two sorts of dams or reservoirs made for catching up and storing water. On some farms you have a fountain, but with a stream too weak to irrigate with. There a reservoir is made for collectinjij the water, and the fillino; of the reservoir is the result of the gentle, quiet inflow from the fountain day and night. In other cases, again, the farm has no fountain at all; the reservoir is built in the bed of a stream or in a hollow where, when rain falls, the water can be collected. In such a place, the filling of the reservoir, with a heavy fall of rain, is often the work of a very few hours, and is accompanied with a rush and violence not free from danger. The noiseless supply of the former farm is, at the same time, the surer, because the supply, though apparently feeble, is permanent; in tracts where the rainfall is uncertain, a reservoir may stand empty for months or years.

There is the same difference in the way in which the fulness of the Spirit comes. On the day of Pentecost, at times when new beginnings are made, in the outpouring of the Spirit of conversion in heathen lands, or of revival among Christian people, suddenly, mightily, manifestly, men are filled with the Holy Ghost. In the enthusiasm and the joy of the newly-found salvation, the power of the Spirit is undeniably present. And yet, for those who receive it thus, there are special dangers. The blessing is often too much dependent on the fellowship with others, or extends only to the upper and more easily reached currents of the soul’s life: the sudden is often the superficial; the depths of the will and the inner life have not been reached. Other Christians there are who have never been partakers of any such marked experience, and in whom, nevertheless, the fulness of the Spirit is no less distinctly seen in the deep and intense devotion to Jesus, in a walk in the light of His countenance and the consciousness of His Holy presence, in the blame! essness of a life of simple trust and obedience, and in the humility of a self-sacrificing love to all around. They have their types in what Barnabas was: ’ a son of consolation, a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost.’

And which of these is now the true way of being filled with the Spirit? The answer is easy. There are farms on which both the above-named reservoirs are to be found, auxiliary to each other. There are even reservoirs, where the situation is favourable, in which both the modes of filling are Qiade use of. The regular, quiet, daily inflowing keeps them supplied in time of great drought; in time of rain they are ready to receive and store up large supplies. There are Christians who are not content but with special mighty visitations: the rushing mighty wind, floods outpoured, and the baptism of fire — these are their symbols. There are others to whom the fountain springing up from within, and quietly streaming forth, appears the true type of the Spirit’s work. Happy they who can recognise God in both, and hold themselves always ready to be blessed in whichever way He comes.

And what are now the conditions of this fulness of the Spirit? God’s word has one answer — faith. It is faith alone that sees and receives the Invisible, that sees and receives God Himself. The cleansing from sin and the loving surrender to obedience, which were the conditions of the first reception of the Spirit, are the fruit of the faith that saw what sin was, and what the blood, and what the will and

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306 THE SriEIT OF CHRIST.

the love of God. Of these we do not speak here again. The word is for believers who have been faithful in their seeking to obey, and yet have not what they long for. By faith they must specially see what there is that needs to be cast out. All filling needs emptying. I do not here speak of the cleansing out of sin, and the surrender to full obedience. This is always the first essential. But I speak of believers who in this think they have done what God demands, and yet fail of the blessing. The first condition of all filling is emptiness. What is a reservoir but a great hollow, a great emptiness prepared, waiting, thirsting, crying for the water to come? Any true abiding fulness of the Spirit is preceded by emptying. ‘I sought the blessing long and earnestly,’ said one, * and I wondered why it did not come. At last I found it was because there was no room in my heart to receive it.’ In such emptying out there are various elements. A deep dissatisfaction with the religion we have hitherto had. A deep consciousness of how much there has been of the wisdom and the work of the flesh in it. A discovery, and confession, and giving up of all in life that had been kept in our own hands and management, in which self had hitherto reigned, of all in which we had not thought it necessary or possible, that Jesus should directly be consulted and pleased. A deep conviction of impotence and utter helplessness to grasp or seize what is offered. A surrender, in poverty of spirit, to wait on the Lord in His great mercy and power, ‘according to the riches of His glory, to strengthen us mightily by His Spirit in the inner man.’ A great longing, thirsting, waiting, crying, a praying without ceasing for the Father to fulfil His promise in us, and take full possession of us within. Such an emptying is on the way to the filling.

With this is needed the believing which accepts, which receives, which holds the gift. It is through faith in Christ and in the Father that the Divine fulness will flow into us. Of the same Ephesians, to whom the command is given, ‘Be filled with the Spirit,’ Paul had said, ‘In Christ, having believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.’ The command refers to what they had already received: the fountain was within them; it had to be opened up, and way made for it; it would spring up and fill their being. And yet not as if this was in their own power: Jesus had said, ‘He that believeth in me, rivers of living water shall flow out of him.’ The fulness of the Spirit is so truly in Jesus, the receiving out of Him must so really be in the unbroken continuity of a real life-fellowship, the ceaseless inflow of the sap from Him the living Vine must so distinctly be met by the ceaseless recipiency of a simple faith, that the upspringing of the fountain within can only be in the dependence on Jesus above. It is by the faith of Jesus, whose baptism with the Spirit has as distinct a commencement as His cleansing with the blood, but is also maintained by as continuous a renewal, that the

P>OS THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST.

inflow will grow ever stronger until it comes to the overflowing.

And yet the faith in Jesus, and the hourly and evergrowing upspringing of the Spirit, will not dispense with faith in the Father’s special gift and the prayer for His special renewed fulfilment of His promise. For these same Ephesians, who had thus the Spirit within them as the earnest of their inheritance, Paul prays to the Father ’ that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.’ The verbs both denote not a work, but an act, something done at once. The expression, ’ according to the riches of His glory,’ indicates something which is to be a great exhibition of the Divine love and power, something very special and Divine. They had the Spirit indwelling. He prayed for them that the direct interposition of the Father might give them such mighty workings of the Spirit, such a fulness of the Spirit, that the indwelling of Christ, and a life in the love that passeth knowledge, and a being filled with the fulness of God, might be their blessed personal experience. When the flood came of old, the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep were together opened. It is still so in the fulfilment of the promise of the Spirit: ‘I will pour floods upon the dry ground.’ The deeper and clearer the faith in the Indwelling Spirit, and the simpler the waiting on Him, the more abundant will be the renewed down-coming of the Spirit from the heart of the Father dhect into the heart of His waiting child.

There is one more aspect in which it is essential to remember that this fulness comes to faith. God loves when He appears to come in lowly and unlikely appearance, to clothe Himself in the garment of humility which He wants His children to love and wear. ‘The Kinsdom of Heaven is like a seed: ’ only faith can know what glory there is in its littleness. Thus was the dwelling of the Son on earth; thus is the indwelling of the Spirit in the heart. He asks to be believed in, when nothing is seen or felt. Believe that the fountain that springs up and flows forth in living streams is within, even when all appears dry. Take time to retire into the inner chamber of the heart, and thence send up praise and offer worship to God in the assurance of the Holy Ghost within. Take time to be still and realise, and let the Spirit Himself fill thy spirit with this most spiritual and heavenly of all truths — that He dwells within thee. Not in the thoughts or feelings first, but in the life, deeper than where we can see and feel, is His temple. His hidden dwelling-place. When once faith knows that it hath what it has asked, it can afford to be patient, and can abound in thanksgiving even where the flesh would murmur. It can trust the Unseen Jesus and the Hidden Spirit. It can believe in that little and unlikely seed, the smallest of all the seeds. It can trust and give glory to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all it can think, and can mightily strengthen in the inner man, just when all appears feeble and ready to faint. Believer! expect not the fulness of the Spirit in the way which thy human reasoning deviseth, but even as was the coming of the Son of God without form or comeliness, in a way that is folly to human wisdom. Expect the Divine Strength in great weakness; become a fool to receive the Divine wisdom which the Spirit teacheth; be willing to be nothing, because God chooseth the thino-s that are not to brincj to nought the things that are. So shalt thou learn not to glory in the flesh, but to glory in the Lord. And in the deep joy of a life of daily obedience and childlike simplicity, thou shalt know what it is to be filled with the Spirit.

0 my God! Thy fulness of love and of glory is like a boundless ocean — infinite and inconceivable. I bless Thee that, in revealing Thy Son, it pleased Thee that all the fulness of the Godhead should dwell in Him bodily, that in Him we might see that fulness in human life and weakness. 1 bless Thee that His Church on earth is even now, in all its weakness, His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all; that in Him we are made full; that by the mighty working of Thy Spirit, and the indwelling of Thy Son, and the knowledge of Thy love, we may be filled to all the fulness of God.

Blessed Father! I thank Thee that the Holy Spirit is to us the bearer of the Fulness of Jesus, and that in being filled with the Spirit we are made full with that Fulness. I thank thee that there have been men on earth since Pentecost, not a few, of whom Thou hast said that they were full of the Holy Ghost. 0 my God! make me full. Let the Holy Spirit take and keep possession of my deepest, inmost life. Let Thy Spirit fill my spirit. Let thence the fountain flow through all the soul’s affections and powers. Let it flow over and flow out through my lips, speaking Thy praise and love. Let the very body, by the quickening and sanctifying energy of the Spirit, be Thy temple, full of the Life Divine. Lord my God 1 I believe Thou hearest me. Thou hast given it me; I accept it as mine.

Oh, grant that throughout Thy Church the Fulness of the Spirit may be sought and found, may be known and proved. Lord Jesus! our glorified King, oh, let Thy Church be full of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

/, Filled with the Spirit. It is not in the emotions, not in conscious light or power or joy, that the filling of the Spirit must first be sought, but in the life, in the hidden, inmost part, deeper than knowledge or feeling, — the region to which faith gives access, and where we are and have before we know or feel.

2. Would you know what it is to be filled with the Spirit — see Jesus. Look at Him on the last night, ’ knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God, and went to God, ’ washing the disciples’ feet. In the deep calm of the consciousness that He was of God, see the fulness of the Spirit. Seek it thus; in due time it will break out in testimony, in the fellowship of the saints, or for the saving of the lost.

3. Notice carefully the connection: ‘Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another.’ It is only in the fellowship of the body, its building up in hue, that the Spirit reveals His presence. Jesus said, ‘The Spirit shall bear witness, and ye shall bear witness.’ It is in action on our part, in obedience, that the full consciousness of the Spirit’s presence comes. ‘They were filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak,’ Hauing the same Spirit of faith, therefore we speak. The fountain must spring up: the stream must flow. Silence is death.

4. ‘Grieue not the Holy Spirit of God: ’ this word precedes the other, ‘Be fitted with the Spirit.’ We cannot give the life or the growth, but we can remove the hindrance. We can give up to obedience; we can turn from the flesh to wait on God; we can yield to the Spirit as far as we know God’s will: the filling comes from above. Wait for it, tarrying at the footstool of the throne in much prayer. And as thou prayest, turn inward, and believe that the Unseen Power hath indeed possession of thy whole being.

5. ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ It is the duty, the calling, the privilege of every believer. A Divine possibility, in virtue of the command; a Divine certainty, in the power of faith. God haste the day when every beiieuer will belieue this I NOTE A.

The Baptism of the Spirit (Chap. 2).

The blessed promise that our Lord should baptize with the Holy Spirit has given rise to considerable difference as to the way in which its fulfilment may be expected. This is surely a proof of how much we are lacking its full exppiience. Where the Spirit is in great power, He would bring His own evidence that we have the Baptism and what it includes. There are specially two diverse views to which much attention has been directed of late. The one maintains that, as every believer receives the Holy Spirit in regeneration, there can be no thought of a Baptism of the Spirit still to be sought for. Tie promise was fulfilled to the Church in the Gift of Pentecost, and of that heritage of the Church e ery believer gets his share on believing in Christ. The opposite view holds that just as Christ’s disciples, and Philip’s converts at Samaria, and the twelve men at Ephesus, were true believers, and yet needed specially to receive the promised Spirit, so now every believer must seek and may exjtect this baptism subsequent to his conversion. A third view takes somewhat middle ground, and lhile agreeing with the first, that the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer, it maintains that the believer may from time to time receive very sy)ecial conscious renewals of the Spiril’s presence and power from on high, and that these may justly be regarded as fre.-h baptisms of the Spirit. I cannot better compare the two former views than by giving extracts from two representative little books: the one — ‘Be Filled with the Spirit; or, Scrijjtvral Studies about the Holy Ghost,’ by E,ev. Ernest Boys; the other, ‘The Bajjtism of the Holy Ghost,’ by liev. Asa Mahan.

In his book Mr. Boys goes through the whole of the New Testament, noting all the passages that have reference to the Spirit, to find the answer to the question, ‘Whether believers are already possessed by the Spirit in all His fulnf ss and power, as a permanent and abiding ])resence, or whether they are to look for some peculiar experience called by some, “the Baptism of the Spirit.” ‘He thinks that ’ a careful study of the New Testament leads to the conclusion that every true believer is called, not to wait to enjoy the possession of the Holy Si)irit in His fulness and power, but is entitled to believe that he already enjoys the glorious privilege, and is to act accordingly.’ ‘The operations of the Holy Ghost in producing faith and regeneration we believe to be His work on rather than in the heart. How far they involve His actual entrance into the heart it is beyond our power to determine. But of this we are sure — that when there has resulted that faith which makes one the child of God, then there takes place, in the case of every one, a real entrance into, and a permanent abiding indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart.’ ‘Whatever be the believer’s attitude and relationship towards the Spirit in matters of Christian life and experience, he is not to spend his time and prayers in seeking a further indwelling of the Spirit. This, in all its fulness, is a glorious fact already. But he is to enter more thoroughly into an intelligent and spiritual perception of what at y)resent actually exists.’

In speaking of the day of Pentecost, he very strongly urges the thought that in His descent then. He came permanently to dwell on earth. ‘In Acts ii. we have the personal descent of the Holy Ghost to take up His abode in the Church on earth, and to “abide with it for ever” (John xiv. 16). As the Son of God became incarnate by union with a really human body, so there is a sense in which the Holy Ghost became incarnate also at Pentecost, uniting Himself with the human bodies of men and women who believed in Christ. He has dwelt in the Church, as the Body of Christ, only by dwelling in the heart of each individual who is a real member of that Body, and thereby uniting him with Christ as the Head. And now, we believe, it is from this earthly dwelling-place, and not, as it wtre, afresh from heaven, that He communicates Himself afresh to each new member of the spiritual body, working also in and through the believers. Each believer is thus not only an agent, through whom the Holy Ghost manifests and carries home the reality of Di ine truth to others, but is also, in a certain sense, a source from which He personally communicates Himself to other hearts ’ (John xv. 26, 27, vii. 38, 39).

Speaking of the prayer in Eph. iii. 14-21, he writes: ‘In searching Scripture, we shall find that in no one single case are believers after Pentecost exhorted to ask for the Holy Spirit as a gift not yet received, but that the Holy Spirit, already dwelling in them, mav carry on with power His various offices in the inner man.’ And in summing up at the conclusion, he says: ‘If language means anything at all, we have the constantly-repeated assurance of the inspired writers, that the indwelling of the Holy Gho.st is a present reality in every one who is a true child of God. ... It must be confessed, however, that there is very little indication uf the Spirit’s indwelling to be seen in the lives and conduct of a vast number of Christian professors. In view of things as they are in the Christian Church, we do not wonder that godly people are looking about for a remedy, and that they turn to the Holy Spirit as they look for this. But we are astonished that men do not Bee that the secret is an open one, and that the remedy is very near them — indeexl, already witliiii them. What we want is that same simple childlike faith in the person of the Holy Spirit within us, as we have been taught to exercise in all the work of Christ on our behalf.... All spiritual experience springs, in the first instance, frum a simple belief in facts which cannot appear real to our consciousness until we simply believe them, in spite of all feelings and appearances to the contrary. Let us bring this simple and childlike fiith to bear upon the truth of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling in our hearts, and let us start afresh on a lift of surrender to His leadings, and in the realization of the Scrijjture exhortations which have been unfolded in the previous chapters. So shall we find the true secret of happiness, of holiness, of spiritual power — which is, daily and huuily to be filled with the Spirit.’

I have of set purpose given somewhat full extracts, both because I wish to insist on the deep importance of the aspect of truth here presented, and to indicate how after all it is only one side of the truth. In connection with the former object, I may say that for a Conference held in the course of this year, at which some twenty-seven ministers met and spent six days in prayer and study on the work of the Holy Spirit, a copy of Mr. Boys’ book had been sent to each member some weeks before. When we met, more than one testified to the blessing that had been received in using it. There was one passage to which one referred as having been made a great blessing to him, and by which others had been struck, as making clear the position we ought to take tuwards the Holy Spirit, without which our prayers for His workings would avail but little. Mr. Boys writes (p. 29): ‘H” we were asked very briefly the true meaning of being “filled with the Spirit,” we should say that it involved, 7iot, our having “more of the Spirit,’’ hut rather the Spirit having more of us. There is a vast difference between the two; and many who earnestly seek this fulness of the Spirit fail to see this. They are longing, waiting, praying for God to give tl em something more; when, in order to be “iilh’d with the Spirit,” they must give Him something more than they have given already.’ Not many days later a similar testimony was received from one who had been prevented from coming, but who wrote of its having been to him like a new revehition, to see that he had all of the Holy Ghost he needed to have or ever could have. I am certain that there are many Christians, and many ministers in Christ’s Church, with whom this is the one thing they lack, the living faith that the Spirit is dwelling within them, equal to every emergency, and only waiting to be admitted to a more entire possession and a more complete control. In our evangelical preaching we need to have every young convert fully instructed in this truth, that the only living assurance of acceptance, the only power of holiness and fi’iiitfulness, the only i)ossibilily of the enjoyment of Christ’s presence and indwelling, are to be found in the faith of the indwelling Spirit.

Let us now turn to the other side. In Dr. Mahan’s book. The Baptism of the Spirit, we have an entirely different aspect of God’s truth from one who equally desires only to know what the mind of God in Scri])ture is. A few sentences from the pi’eface to a new edition will make his position clear. Referring to John xiv. 15-17, he writes: ‘The Holy Spirit had convinced the disciples of sin, had induced them to believe in Christ, to love Him, and to keep His commandments. From the hour of their conversion He had been with them, and their bodies had been His temples. During the ten days these disciples waited at Jerusalem, waiting the promise of the Father, the same Spirit was with them still, perfecting their obe<lience, intensifying their aspirations, unifying their accord, and completing their preparation for the inward enlightenments and induements of power which were to result from the approaching Baptism. All that preceded Pentecost was preparatory to this Baptism, but no part of it. Their conversion and subsequent preparation were the work of the Spirit just as much as the Baptism, and the former was indispensable to the latter. Had the apostles continued in the preparatory stage of their experience, or had they gone forth to their work prior to the reception of the promise of the Spirit, the world would never have felt their influence. Waiting, on the other hand, “the promise of the Father,” and going forth as Christ did, “in the power of the Spirit,” they soon turned the world upside down.

‘The same holds true of all believers, the least as well as the greatest, under the present dispensation, — the dispensation of the Spirit. As with the apostles and their associates, so with every believer in Jesus. After inducing repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit abides with and works in him, as He did in them prior to Pentecost, and this for the one purpose, to perfect his love and obedience and inward preparation, that “the Holy Ghost may full on him as He did on them at the beginning.” If the convert stop short of this consummation, and if he does this especially under the belief that he did receive the Baptism of the Holy Ghost in conversion, he va ill almost inevitably remain through life in the weakness and darkness of the Old, insti ad of going forward to his life-work under the induement of power and spiritual illuminations peculiar to the New Dispensation.

‘Here this great doctrine is met by the counter one, that every new-born soul does receive the promised Baptism of the Spirit, and all accompanying induements of power at the time of his conversion. In confirmation of this doctrine such passages are adduced as those which affirm that “all have been baptized into one body,” and that the bodies of all believers are “temples of the Holy Ghost.” All this, we teach, is true of every convert now, and has been true of every converted person since the fall. The apostles must have had the Spirit of Hhrist, or they could not have been His. Yet, in the New Testament pense of th wonl, “the Holy Ghost was not yet given,” and they were not “bai)tizecl with the Holy Ghost” until Pentecost had fully come. So, of all converts in this- dispensati<^ii, they have the Spirit of Christ, and their bt.dies are His temples. This was true of all the converts in Samaria before Peter and John came there. Yet the Holy Ghost had not fallen upon one of them. How any person can contemplate the revealed results of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and then affirm, in presence of paly)able facts, that every such convert has received the “in<luement of power” included in “the promise of the Spirit,” is a mystery of mysteries to us. Language is without meaning if “the promise of the Spirit” does not await the believer after he has entered into a state of justification, and then in a state of “love and obedience,” and supreme consecration to Christ, “tarries” before God until he is “endued with power from on high.”’

In this statement of Scripture truth we have perfect agreement with the previous one on the one great point, that every belitiver has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, that he ought to know this, and believe that the Spirit will work in him what he needs for further growth and strength. The difierence arises when the question comes to the way in which the believer is to attain the full experience of all that the iiidweiiijig of the Spirit implies. While the former answer is, Relieve that He is within you, open up and surrender your whole being to Him, He will fill you; the second speaks. Wait before the Throne for this filling as a special distinct gift, the fulfilment of the Father’s promise.

Let me say at once, th it if it be maintained in connection with this second view that every believer must consciously seek and receive, as a distinct experience, such a Baptism, this does not appear to me what the Word of God teaches. But if it be put in this way, that in answer to believing prayer many believers have received, and those who seek it will often receive, such an inflow of the Spirit of God as will to them indeed be nothing less than a new Baptism of the Spirit, I cannot but regard it as in harmony with the teaching of Scripture. I have already expressed my deep sense of the truth and value of the positive part of the teaching in Mr. Boys’ hook, but with the extent to which he goes in denying that we should still pray for the Spirit I can hardly agree, and am anxious to point out how, as it appears to me, there are aspects of the truth in God’s word by which his view must still be supplemented.

There is one truth of which I cannot Itut think he has somewhat lost sight. In a pnssagf. quoted above, he speaks very strongly about the Spirit having come to this earth, and taken up His abode in the Body of Christ, the Church; so much so, that all communications of the Spirit to the unconverted come through believers. This is an aspect of the truth of the utmost importance, and far too little realized. But there is another aspect that must not be lost sight of. The Spirit is the Spirit of God. He is not only in the Church, hut aho in the Father and the Son. The Father, the Son, and His Body the Church: the Spirit is the one life in which these have their fellowship. God has not given His Spirit to believers, in the sense of parting with Him; or as if, by once giving, He did not now need any more to give.’ By no means. All Divine giving is in the power of the Eternal Life, the power of a continuous life-flow from God through Christ to His people. And it is therefore consistent with the fullest acknowledgment of the Spirit dwelliuii; in us that the believer calls for more. That there is a great deal of prayer in which the presence of the Spirit is forgotten, is ignored, I admit and deplore; and I deeply feel the loss which the Church suffers by it. And yet it would be falling into the other extreme, if,

‘We are not to think of the “giving” of the Spirit as an isolated deposit of what, once given, is now locally in possession. The first “gift” is, as it were, the first point in a series of actions, of which each one may also be expressed as a gift.’ — Moule on Eph. i. 17. because God has given and we have received the Spirit, we were no longer to pray for more of Him.

It is often said, But how can you ask for that which you have? The answer is a very simple one. The fingers that hold the pen with which I write are as full of blood as can be in perfect health; and yet, if they could speak, would we not continually hear them ca’ling to the heart, Oh, send in the fresh blood, without which we cannot live! The branch that hangs full of fruit is as full of sap as it can hold, and yet it unceasingly offers its emptiness and need to the vine for that unceasing suyply without which the fruit could not be ripened. The lungs are full of breath, and yet call for a fresh supply every moment. Just so with the believer who understands that he has not the Spirit as a power he can use or dispose of, or as a Person who renders him independent of the Son, but as His Spirit, who brings into living connection with Him and increasing dependence; his whole life of prayer will be the harmony of a faith that praises for the Spirit that has been received, and yet always waits for His fuller inflow out of Him in whom His fulness dwells.

We see this union of having and asking in the life of the Son. He knew that the Father had given Him all things, yea, that the Father was in Him, and yet He felb the need of prayer. He had had the indwelling Si)irit from His birth, and yet His receiving the Spirit from above at His Baptism was a real Divine transaction; as He prayed, the heavens opened, and the S[)irit descended. We see it too in Paul’s Epistles. He had just reminded the Ephesians that they had been sealed with the Holy Si)irit of promise, when he told them that he prayed for them that God might give them ‘the Spirit of wisdom and revelation.’ He not only asks that the Spirit in them may make them wise; he is not afraid to jjray for ’ the Spirit of wisdom.’ And so later on, when he asks that the Father would, ‘according to the riches of His glory,* as something very wonderful and Divine, ’ strengthen them with might by the Sy)irit,’ he indicates to us how it is not enough that we know and believe that the Spirit is in us, but that it is in prayer to the Father that the increase of the Spirit’s power will come, and we be filled with Him. His interchange of the exi)ression, ‘Give 3’’0u the Spirit of wisdom,’ and ‘Give you to be strengthened with the Spirit,’ gives us liberty to ask in either way, if we only realize that the Spirit is already in us, and that it is only in the prayer of faith to the Father where the Spirit is, that the increased inflow of His presence and power can come. The faith that He is in us, the assurance that He wants more of us, and that if He only has us wholly will fill us, will just urge us to prayer to the Father, whose it is, unceasingly and evermore, in the power of the endless life, to give the Spirit through the Son. It would indeed be sad if a believer, on once having received the Spirit, were to feel that Christ’s precious word, * How much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him,’ was something he had now outgrown, and that this chief of blessings He need now no longer ask. No, as the anointing with fresh oil is a daily need, it is daily received in living fellowship with the Father throuL^h Him in whom the fulness ever abides. And just so the thought of Jesus baptizing with the Spirit is not a remembrance of what is now a past thing, done once for all, but a promise of what may be a daily, continuous experience. The faith that we have the Spirit within us, even when it has almost come like a new revelation, and filled us with joy and strength, will lose its freshness and its power except as the inflow is maintained in living fellowship with the Father and the Son. The lesson of Pentecost holds good for all ages. As our Lord is seated on the Throne in the glory to give the Spirit, the footstool of the Throne remains the place where the Spirit is received. The deeper our faith becomes that we have the Spirit, the more continuous will be our ])rayer that the Father grant us His mighty workings. It is only in the living intercourse with the Father and the Son, in the worship and prayer of faith, that the Spirit will work mightily.

These remarks may have prepared the way for what appears to me the scriptural light in which the prayer for the Baptism of the Spirit may be offered, and an answer expected.

1. To the disciples the Baptism of the Spirit was veiy distinctly not His first bestowal for regeneration, but the definite communication of the Presence in power ot their glorified Lord.

2. Of this Spirit, with which the Church of Christ was baptized, every believer is made a partaker; he has the Spirit of Christ dwelling in him.

3. Just as there was a twofold operation of the one Spirit in the Old and New Testament, of which the state of the disciples before and after Pentecost was the most striking illustration, so there may be, and in the great majority of Christians is, a corresponding difference of experience. This difference between the bare knowledge of His presence and His full revelation of the indwelling Christ in His glory, is owing either to ignorance or unfaithfulness.

4. When once the distinct recognition of what the indwelling of the Spirit was meant to bring is brought home to the soul, and it is ready to give up all to be made partaker of it, the believer may ask and expect what may be termed a Baptism of the Spirit. Praying to the Father in accordance with the two prayers in Ephesians, and coming to Jesus in the renewed surrender of faith and obeditnce, he may receive such an inflow of the Holy Spirit as shall consciously lift him to a different level from the one on which he has hitherto lived.

5. The way in which the Baptism comes may be vrry different. To some it comes as a glad and sensible quickening of their spiritual life. They are so filled with the Spirit that all their feelings are stirred. They can speak of something they have distinctly experience as a gift from the Father. To others it is given, not to their feelings, but to their faith. It comes as a deep, quiet, but clearer insight into the fulness of the Spirit in Christ as indeed being theirs, and a faith that feels confident that His sufficiency is equal to every emergency that may arise. In the midst of weakness they know-that the Power is resting on them. In either case they know that the blessing has been given from above, to be maintained under obedience and deep dependence on Him from whom it came.

6. Such baptism is specially given as power for work. It may sometimes be received before the believer fully understands his calling to work, and while he is chiefly occupied with his own sanctification. It cannot be maintained except as the call to witness for the Lord is obeyed. The baptism of Pentecost was distinctly given as preparation for work. The baptism of Cornelius and his praying company, as. God’s seal to their faith, and their full participation in the blessings of the kingdom of God, at once opened their mouths to speak. We must beware of laying down fixed rules. God’s gifts and love are larger than our hearts. Every believer who longs, up to the light he has, to be surrendered fully to the glory of his Lord, may come and claim the fulness of the gift. It will prove its own power to open the mouth and bring forth testimony for God.

7. The preparation for the baptism is ever the same as with the first disciples. Having called them to forsake all for Him, our Lor«i had first kept them three years in His school, training them into the knowledge and love and obedience to His will. Great personal attachment to Jesus was the first requisite. He had then led them, in the fellowship of His death, to give up all hope in themselves, or in His outward appearance, all confidence in the flesh. As they were thus taught the utter insufficiency of the flesh, either in their own good purposes or His bodily presence, to conquer sin or give deliverance, the need was awakened for something higher. And last of all, He kept them, first the forly da3’s, and then again the ten days, in waiting expectancy, looking to Himself to give them something above what they could ask or think. With great diversity of mode and degree, every believer will have to pass through some preparation not entirely different. Blesse«l they who allow the Master Himself to take them into His Baptism class, to regulate their course of training, and rest content with nothing less than to be full of the Holy Ghost. To some it comes without any idea of a baptism at all; in intense devotion to their Lord, they know that He dwells in them, and has them wholly as His own.

Whatever difference there still may be in our way of expressing what we seek, let us remender that our Father understands each of His children better than they do themselves. Let us rejoice, even amid varying modes of expression, that the desire is growing among God’s people to have nothing less than what God meant by His promise of a Baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Let us be faithful to the Spirit, as He dwells within us. Let us stir up ourselves and each other to wait for, from our God, who is able to do above what we ask or think, an experience of His mighty inworking and His overflowing fulness in believers and the Church, such as we can form no conception of.

NOTE B.

The Spirit as a Person (Chap. 5).

If we are to understand the place and work of the Holy Spirit in us, we must know somewhat of His place and work in the Divine Being. He has been given to make us partakers of the Divine life and nature, to Lo in us and to do for us what He is and does in the Father and the Son. The adoring and reverent contemplation of what He is as the Spirit of the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity, of what He was and wrought in the man Christ Jesus on earth, and what specially His relation is to our glorified Lord Jesus, need not lead us away from the practical question of what He is to ourselves, but may help us greatly in realizing the wondrous glory and mystery of this, the united gift of the Father and the Son — their own Spirit, the Spirit of their personal life, to be the Spirit of our personal life. The following suggestive quotations from one of the most deeply scriptural and spiritual theologians, J. T. Beck, may help us in our effort to apprehend what God has revealed to us in His word. It is a most blessed thing when a believer begins to realize, ‘The Spirit of God dwelleth in me,’ and knows that God has given Him something Divine — yea, a Divine Person — as his life. But it becomes a thousandfold more wonderful to him when he begins to see how really it is the A’^ery same Spirit who is the personal life of the Father and the Son, who has now become his own personal life, his inmost self.

* In Christianity, revelation appears, not only in the character of an elementary witness for God, as in the revelation of nature, nor only, as in the Old Testament revelation, in the character of special legislative organization and ideal promise, but as a new life-organization of the quickening Spirit. Christianity thus brings a revelation in which the supernatural, the Divine, is Sj)irit and Life, dynamically and substantially, to become personal. With this in view, it must be mediated differently than in the previous stages; it must have a higher organ for its revelation. If the Divine is indeed dynamically and substantially as a personal life to be organized into the human individuality, the only adequate organ for such a mediation will be one in which the revelation, or the Divine principle of organization, shall make itself personal in a human being. That is, it will not be sufficient that the Divine should reveal itself in some man only, with whatever strength, in the way of his consciousness through the channel of conscience. As little that it should, as by way of inspiration, develop its power to influence and elevate in the life of Reason or Spirit, after the manner of prophecy. Conscience ard inspiration do not suffice as the means of revelation, in the revelation that is to be perfect. What is needed is a mediation, in which God concentrates His own pccuhar Spirit and Life as a principle in a human individual to be personally appropriated. In a revelation, which is really to translate the Divine into man’s individual personal life, in truth, to form men of God, the Divine as such — that is, as a personal life — must first be embodied in a personal centre in humanity. For this reason. As soon as something strictly new is concerned, something that in its peculiarity has not yet existed, every new type of life, before it can multiply itself to a number of specimens, must first have its full contents combined in perfect unity, in an adequate new principle. And so, for the making personal of the Divine among men, the first thing needed is one in whom the principle of the Divine life has become personal. Christianity concentrates the whole fulness of revelation in the one human personality of Jesus Christ as Mediator — that is, as the mediating central principle of the new Divine organism, in its fulness of Spirit and Life, in and for the human personal life. AVith the entrance of Christ into the human individual, the Divine life becomes immanent in us, not in its universal world-relation, but as a personal principle, so that man is not only irotr^a ©eoO, a being made of God, but tIkvov ®eov, or a being begotten of God. And with the growing transformation of the individual int-) the life-type of Christ there is perfected the development of the personal life out of God, in God, and to God — the development not only of a moral or theocratic communion, but a communion of nature. By the fall of man the Divine and human in man had been rent asunder, aiul the separation has grown into estrangement and enmity, Man has become an ungodly personality. In opposition to this, both the Divine and the human have been reconciled and united in Christ’s Divine -human personality as the human manifestation of the otherwise invisible God.’ (Forksungen Chr. Glaubenslehre, i. 383 )

‘As regards the Spirit, it is never said of Him — the Spirit is God, or the Si)irit is the Lord; but, on the contrary, God is Spirit, the Lord is the Spirit, “the quickening Spirit.” It is thus the Spirit, through whom God and the Lord each is the person that He is, is ©co?, is Kt’pio?. But the Spirit does not on this account belong to the Divine Being without an independent existence. As little is He a seiarate person outside of the Father and the Son; but He Himself forms the Divine personality within the Father and the Son. Outside of God, in the world and man. He effects an independent revelation of God, which reaches into the hidden depths of Deity on the one side, and on the side of man inwardly communicates God’s very own life, even to the production of a Divine Son-life. The one Divine personality of the Father is the all-including Divine central subject, in whom the Son and Spirit, in unity of Being, yet have a self-standing existence, and from whom they proceed — THE Son as the speaking Self of the Father, in whom He reveals Himself as in His imnge; the Spirit as the inner Self of the Father and the Son, in whom the inner life of God in the power of its personal Being,

* See Leitfaden der Chr. GJaubensJehre, p. 229: — ‘The Spirit is so far from being, as with us, something belonging to God, that it is said: God is Spirit, the Lord is the Spirit, so that it really is just the Spirit, through lohom God is the person that He is. The Divine Spirit is not only, as with us, something belonging to and in the Father and the Son, but that very thing through which Father and Son is God; the Spirit is the personal being of God in Father and Son. Therefore He is called the Holy and Holyniaking, the Power and the Quickener; in Him the very own personal being of the Father and the Son is begotten into man. It is just in the Spirit that the personal life of God is centred; so little can He Himself be anything impersonal.’ maintains and communicates itself. It is just because the Spirit is the bearer of the Inner Life of God that He does not manifest Himself externally, that there is no ])ersonal appearance as of the Son. Just as in the Son the Phanerosis (manifestation) of the Father took plate externally, as in His outward self (John xiv. 19, xii. 45), so in the Spirit, as the inward self of the Father and the Son, all belongs to the inner life, that the perfected Phanerosis, the manifestation of God to us, may become the Apokalypsis, the revelation of God within us.’ [Voiiesungen ilber Chr. Glaubenslehre, ii. 136.)

‘What is needed for the Redemption of human nature out of its bondage to the world and its sin, and the revival within of the Supernatural, for which it had been destined, was such a union with the Divine Life that it should be revealed in man not only as a Law or a Hope, as the Postulate of the Will or the Desir-’, as an Ideal, but as an actual fulfilling of the real need of the personal life; that is, that the Divine life should become the real personal life. In virtue of its absolute worth, belonging to it by its very nature, the Divine can never be satisfied with being accepted as one of other elements only having a place in our personal thinking, willing, and doing. It is not enough that, along with other things that touch and interest us, it too should have a place in our regard or actions, and be something from which we gain certain desirable results for our life. Such an apparently moderate or sober view drags the Divine down and places it on a line with the objects of this world. Nor does it make any real difiPerence when the Divine is spoken of as the highest and most worthy of all object. The Divine only receives its true acknowledgment when it is accepted as what it really is, the absolute wmid-iwinciple, and becomes the absolute Life-principle of our personal development. The Divine has, however, 170 longer creative personal power in our bondage to the power of the world, with its sin and death. To make the Divine become the Personal in us is what under such circumstances, our spiritual power, or Reason, cannot accomplish. This needs the organization of a new nature, and to organize anew is the M^ork of the Creator and of the “Divine Principle of organization in the worhl. And this is now that in which Revelation finds its perfection, in the organizing of the Divine as a living formative Spirit, “the Hfe-giving Spirit,” so that as a productive Life-jwinciple, or as the ptower of a personal life, it could become immanent in man’s moral life, and so that out of that, in continuous development, the Divine could he reproduced in the individual as his personal life, and so God, in harmony with His idea as the Absolute, should indeed be the all - determining life - principle in man; it is in this that revelation finds its perfect completion’ (i. 380).

,’ Christ, as the personal word of Go<l, had first as the incarnate Son to perfectly organize His special witness and mediation, before the Holy Spirit could in a new, hitherto transcendent, way of working, come forth from God as the Spirit immanent in the Father and the Son, as the Divine Personal Life-principle, and as the personconstituting principle begin His life - begetting work. The Divine Personal Spirit, flowing forth from the Divine Personal Word, now becomes the highest principle of Inspiration, which apprehends the mysteries of the Kingdom, as well as the highest personal life -forming principle of a new type of man, the image of the only-begotten Son’ (ii. 104).

‘The Personality has its ground in the individualizing of the Spirit. It was thus in the first creation, when, by God breathing the Spirit of life, man became a living soul, a personality. It is even so in the second creati n, in regeneration, when in the imparting of the Spirit to man, not only this and that becomes renewed in him, in his consciousness or conduct, but there comes into existence a new man, a new God-like personality ’ (ii. 107).

Dr. Dorner writes as follows: — The Difference between the Revelation of God IN Christ, and in the Holy Spirit.

‘The character of Christ’s substitution is not negative, nor repressive of personality, but productive. He is not content with the existence in Himself of the fulness of the spiritual life, into which His people are absorbed by faith. Believers are themselves to live and love as free personalities; Christ’s redeeming purpose is directed to the creation, by the Holy Spirit whom He sends, of new personalities in whom Christ gains a settled, established being. But by this very means God exists in them after a new manner; new, not only because the power of redemption inheres only in God’s being in Christ, but new also because, although Christ remains the Principle of this life, this life shapes itself in freedom and distinctness from Christ. Only by means of such freedom can the bond betwet-n Christ and man, instead of remaining a one-sided one, become two-sided, and therefore all the firmer, — the reciprocal relation of love. But, at the same time, the fulness of the Spirit of light and life, grace and truth, which dwells objectively in Christ, no longer remains merely objective to the world, but lives and unfolds itself in the world, as a living treasure of salvation. Through the Holy Spirit it comes to pass, that Christ’s impulse is not simply continued and extended to men, but becomes fn indigenous impulse in them, a new focus being formed for naturalized divine powers. As a new Divine principle, the Holy Spirit creates, though not substantially new faculties, a new volition, knowledge, feeling a new self-consciousness. In brieP, He creates a new person, dissolving the old union -point of the faculties, and creating a new pure union of the same. The new personality is formed in inner resemblance to the second Adam, on the same family type, so to speak. Everything by which the new personality, in its independence, makes itself known, is ascribed by Holy Scripture to this third Divine principle. Through the Holy Spirit the believer has the consciousness of himself as a new man, and the power and living impulse of a new huly life, that is free in God, lie is the spirit of joy and freedom, in opposition to the gramma or letter; subjection to the Divine impulse is now, in the bh-nding of necessity and freedom, without spontmeous impulse; mere passivity and receptiveness are transformed into spontaneity, nay, productiveness and independence. Through the Holy Spirit the individual personality is thus raised to complete charismatic personality. By all these means the Holy Spirit plants and cherishes the one relatively independent factor, — the presuy)position of the origin of the Church, namely, the new believing personality.’ (Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine iv. 161.)

This thought that the Spirit of God, as the Spirit of the Divine personality, becomes the life-principle of our personality, is one of extreme solemnity and of infinite fruitfulness. The Spirit not only dwells in me as a locality, or within me, alongside and around that inmost Ego in which I am conscious of myself, but, within that I, becomes the new and Divine life-principle of the new personality. The same Spirit that was and is in Christ, His inmost Self, becomes my inmost self. What new meaning it gives to the word, * He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit with Him ‘! And what force to the question, ‘Know ye that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? ‘The Holy Spirit is within me as a Personal I Power, with a Will and a Purpose of His own. As I yield up my personality to His I shall not lose it, but find it renewed and strengthened to its highest caj)acity. Oh to see how entirely the Spirit will take the charge which the flesh has hitherto had! We thought ourselves free, and were slaves. The Holy Spirit working out His will and purpose in me, teaching me to work it out, makes me free.

NOTE 0.
The Place of the Indwelling (Chap. 6).

In studying the teaching of Scripture on the indwellino of the Holy Spirit, it is of great consequence to see clearly what it tells us of the place where the Spirit dwells, and the mode in which He works. And to this end we need to be specially careful to seek correct views as to the difference between the soul and the spirit of man, and their mutual relation.

/ In the history of man’s creation we read, ‘The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,’ — thus was his body made, — ’ and breathed into his nostrils the breath ’ or spir it ’ of life: ’ thus his spirit came from God; ’ and man became a living soul.’ The Spirit quickening the body made man a living soul, a living person with the consciousness of himself. The soul was the meeting-place, the point of union between body and spirit. Through the hody man, the living soul, stood related to the external world of sense; could influence it, or be influenced by it. Through the sirlrlt he stood related to the spiritual world and the Spirit of God, whence he had his origin; could be the recipient and the minister of its life and power. Standing thus midway between two worlds, belonging to both, the soul had the power of determining itself, of choosing or refusing the objects by which it was surrounded, and to which it stood related.

In the constitution of these three parts of man’s nature, the spirit, as linking him with the Divine, was the highest; the body, connecting him with the sensible and animal, the lowest; intermediate stood the soul, i)artaker of the nature of the others, the bond that united them, and thruugh which they could act on each other. Its work, as the central power, was to maintain them in their due relation; to keep the body, as the lowest, in subjection to the spirit; itself to receive through the spirit, as the higher, from the Divine Spirit what was waiting it for its perfection; and so to pass down, even to the body, that by which it might be partaker of the Spirit’s perfection, and become a spiritual body.

The wondrous gifts with which the soul was endowed, specially those of consciousness and self-determination, or mind and will, were but the mould or vessel into which the life of the Spirit, the real substance and truth of the Divine life, was to be received and assimilated. They were a God-given capacity for making the knowledge and the will of God its own. In doing this, the personal life of the soul would have become filled and possessed with the life of the Sjdrit, the whole man would have become spiritual. We know how the opposite of this took place. The soul yielded to the solicitations of sense, and became its slave, so that the Spirit no longer ruled, but vainly strove to vindicate for God His place, until God said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he al&o is flesh,’ wholly under the power of the flesh. The spirit in man became dormant, — a capacity for knowing and serving God which would have to wait its time for deliverance and quickening. The soul ruled instead of the spirit, and the great mark of all religion, even in its most earnest struggles after God, is that it is the soul, man’s own energy without the Divine Spirit, putting forth its effort to find and to please God.

In regeneration it is this spirit of man which is quickened again and renewed. The word regeneration, or being born again, Scripture uses as that change whereby the soul passes from death to life, effected like the natural birth, at once and once for all. The word renewed is used of that continuous and progressive work by which the life of the Spirit of God enters more fully into our life, and asserts its supremacy through our entire nature.

In the regenerate man the original relation between the soul and the spirit has been restored. The spirit of man has been quickened to become an habitation of God’s Spirit, who is now to teach and to lead, by communicating as a Divine life, as something subbtantial and real, the Truth, the actual good things which Christ has for us. This Divine leading into the Truth by the Spirit of God takes place not in our soul or mind, in the first place, but in our spirit, in the inner recesses of a life deeper than mind or will. And it takes place only as the soul, in the confession of how blinded it has become, of how slowly its faculties really become spiritual and divinely enlightened, in the willingness to be foolish and ignorant, and in teachableness to wait on God’s Spirit to give His Truth in the life, yields itself to that complete supremacy of the Spirit which was its original destiny.

And now comes the most important lesson, not easy to learn, for the sake of which we have at some length spoken of the relation between the soul and spirit. The greatest dan.^er the religion of the Church or the individual has to drad is the inordinate activity of the soul, with its power of mind and will. It has been so long accustomed to rule, that even when in conversion it has surrendered to Jesus, it too easily imagines that it is now its work to carry out that surrender, and serve the King it has accepted. Many a believer has no conception of the reality of the Spirit’s indwelling, and of the extent to which He mu.-^t get the mastery of the soul, that is, of our whole self in all our feeling and thinking and willing, so as to purge out all confidence in the Hesh, and work that teachableness and submissiveness which is indispensable to the Spirit’s doing His work. The call of the Master to hate our own life, not to seek it but to lose it (the word used is psyche — soul), is the call to give the soul, with its power of willing and actinu’, unto death, that it may find its true life again in the quickening and leading of the Spirit. As long as this is not understood, there will not be that fear of self and its wisdom, that absolute dependence and waiting on the Spirit, which is the first condition of the spiritual life.

To those who would be saved from these dangers, who would fain return to the normal state in which, and for which, God created man, the way is open, though not always easy. Begin with the prayer that we may hww the Holy Spirit, His dwelling-place, His way, and His work, and what He claims. Seek a deep impression of the holy mystery and the Divine reality of His indwelling. As truly as God dwelt in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, so truly, though in a different way, doth He dwell in Thee. Have a deep reverence for the Holy Presence. Be very jealous of aught that would grieve Him. Remember especially that what grieves Him most, next to bin, and what is sometimes more dangerous to ourselves than sin, is the soul repeating the first offence, and following its own thoughts about what is good and wise. Understand that thou hast received the Spirit, that now the soul may be entirely under His dominion. Imagine not that the fact of thy admitting that thou needest the Spirit’s teaching, or that thou askest for Him, is enough to secure His working. No indeed. It needs a very real giving up of the life of the soul, of all its strength and wisdom day by day, and a very real subjection of the whole mind and will to wait for His quickening and His teaching, if thou art indeed to learn to know and worship God in the Spirit.

To gather up what has been said. The spirit is the seat of our God - consciousness; the soul of our self-consciousness; the body of our world-consciousness. In the spirit God dwells, in the soul self, in the body sense. As long as the right relation existed, and the soul with its self was subject to the spirit, and through it to God, all was well. But sin came as the assertion of self in seeking its life through sense and not obedience to the spirit. And so the soul, self, selfishness became the ruling principle of man’s life.

In the regenerate man there is no more subtle temptation than this, that even in the service of God self still seeks to assert itself, and in its will and strength to do God’s will, instead of waiting in dej)endence on the Holy S[>irit for Hiui to work, both to will and to do. This is why the Lord Jesus s .id so distinctly, ‘Let a man deny himself, and take up his cross;’ the life ;ind the p .wer of self must be sacrificed and given up for the Spirit to work. Even so He speaks of our hating and loving our life (soul) if we are to find the true life, the life of the Spirit. In the believer there is ever going on a secnt struggle between the soul and the Spirit. On behalf of God, the Spirit seeks to possess and pervade all. On behalf of self, the soul seeks to take the first place, and to assert the right of independent action. As long as this is the case, and the soul takes the lead, expecting the Spirit to follow, and help and bless what it does, our life and work will be barren of truly spiritual result;. Ordy when the soul, with all of self, its willing nnd running, is daily denied and laid in the dust for the Spirit to work, will the Power of God be manifest in our service. Her J is the cause of such frequent failure in the spiritual life, of the evanescent character of many of our most precious experiences; our faith stood more in the wisdom of man, in the influence of human teaching and human apprehension, than in the power of God and His Spirit.

This is what is meant in Heb. iv. 12:’ The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit.’ Just as in creation the first work of the word was to divide, separating between light and darkness, earth and sea, so, as the Living Word, by the Holy Spirit, does it work in us, the difference between the spirit as the higher and the seat of the Divine, and the soul as the lower, ever with all its powers to be kept subject to the spirit, becomes clear to us. And we learn to understand that in the renewed spirit is the home of Gud’s Holy Sy)irit.

‘Master, where dwellest Thou?’ the disciples asked, when first they began to know Jesns. * Come anrl seo, was His answer, and they abode with Him that night. ‘Holy Teacher, where dwellest Thou? ’ is a question we may indeed ask, as we long to know the Spirit. The answer Jesus has given us: ‘He shall be in you.’ In that inner shrine of our wondrous nature, the spirit, fleeper than the soul, with all its life of feeling, and thought, and will, which God made for Hiniself, in the spirit quickened by His power, there dwells the Holy S/Arit. There, in the life which He has imparted, there He dwells; that life He leads ever deeper into the Truth, the actual possession of the substance of the grace revealed in Christ. It is only the soul that knows that He dwells there, and waits for His teaching there, to whom will be given as much as it needs and can bear of that truth in the intellect, which otherwise is so impotent and even dangerous. Paul writes: ‘God, whom I serve in my spirit.’ It is as I know that I have a spirit, ‘the seat of self-collectedness, the inner sanctuary,’ formed for receiving the communications from the Divine world, deeper than thought or feeling, and retire there to wait on God’s Spirit, and set it open to Him, that I will learn to know where He dwells. Only when He is acknowledged and honoured there, will He come forth from the secret place, to manifest His power in the region of the soul and its conscious life. When speaking of the believer as a temple, I shall have occasion again to point out the difference between the holy place, the soul, and the most holy, the spirit. (24//i Day.)

NOTE D.

Growth in the Knowledge of the Spirit (Chap. 8).

In the following extract from Dr Saphir’s Christ Crucified: Lectures on I Corinthians ii., the thought is put very distinctly, that as a rule the believer in the first stage of the Christian life hardly knows that he owes his faith and the power of the Criristian life to the direct working of I he Holy Spirit. As a consequence of this ignorance there very often comes a time of darkness, with the very view of wakening him up to seek for the reason of his failure, and the power of restoration and abiding growth. The discovery of the work and indwelling of the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, is what he needs, to see how all that is in Christ can in very deed be his in continuous experience. I am sure that clear teaching in regard to this advance in the knowledge of the Christian, and the proclamation to the very feeblest of God’s children that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is their privilege and their strength, is just what is needed in the Church in our day, and cannot fail of bringing light and blessing to many.

‘We read that the Apostle Paul found disciples in Ephesus, whom he asked, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since you believed 1 “And their reply wa«:,” We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” As the Lord Jesus said to Philip, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me? “so may the Holy Ghost say to some true and sincere believers,” Have I been so long wi(h you, revealing unto you the truth as it is in Jesus, working in you faith, shedding abroad in your hearts God’s love, comforting you in your sorrow for sin, helping your infirmities in prayer, opening to your understanding wonders out of God’s word, and yet have you not kuoicn me? “This ignorance arises, to some extent, from the fact that the Spirit testifies not of Himself, but of the Father and the Son. It is His to glorify Christ. As when in the dark night a bright light is concentrated on one point, the light-bearer himself remains unseen; so the blessed Spirit, unperceived by the awakened sinufT, causes all light to fall on the crucified Saviour jind the loving Father, The soul exclaims: How great is the love of God! How marvellous is the grace of Jesus! He who has kindLd the Hglit, who lias opened the eyes of the heart, who has renewed the soul, is as yet “• unknown and unohserved. John the Baptist compared himself with the friend of the brilegroom, who standeth and rejoiceth greatly because of the bridtgroom’s voice. In like manner does the Spirit direct the soul to Christ, and fills the heart with joy in believing Jesus, while as yet He does not reveal His own love and work.

‘Another reason by the young believer knows little of the Spirit is because the Holy Ghost is so gentle. His approach is so soft, His adaptation to our peculiarities of character so perfect, His intliiences so deep and penetrating, that we think our own reason, imagination, will, conscience, have been acting of their own accord and with perfect spontaneity.

‘How little do we know that the Holy Ghost has been influencing every faculty, every emotion, every mental process; so noiselessly, so quietly, so lovingly, so inwardly has the great Spirit been working, preparing, and chiselling, and fitting every stone of the building — thus at the building of Solomon’s temple no sound was heard. With perfect knowledge and with infinite love the Holy Ghost deals with our spirits, and when the creative fiat goes forth, it is mostly as the still small voice which came to Elijah after the earthquake and the tempest and the fire.

‘Yet the believer knows that he has experienced Divine grace and power. God has revealed to him Christ. God has created him anew. It is a supernatural influence of which he is conscious; and as it is unique, so it brings with it the assurance cf its truth. There is a testimony within his heart that the true light now shineth. “I know whom I believe.” Now, we ourselves know. Yet “the reason why we ourselves know is that our knowledge is not of ourselves but of God.” Hereby we know that we know Him, by the Spirit He hath given to us. And this light is sweet. There is a blessedness in this knowletlge of the Father and the Son, a peace and joy which satisfy the heart and fill the immortal soul, so that there is perfect rest. Whence is this] Because the Holy Ghost, who is God, lias revealed to us the things which are freely given us of God, because by the Spirit we call the Father Abba, and Jesus, Lord.

‘As the believer progresses, and his path becomes more complicated, he is taught more about the Spirit, for he needs this doctrine increasingly for his comfort and growth. His faith is not so strong and unwavering as he imagined; the ardour of his love soon vanishes; the power of sin, which at first he fancied was utterly broken, makes itself felt again; prayer becomes languid, and, joy seems to have taken flight. In other words, God leads him into the valley, and lest he should make a Christ of his faith, and a well-spring of a cistern, he is taught something of himself. Who does not know of this second stage in the Christian life, at first so painful, so humiliating, and filling the soul with perplexity? It is thus that we learn that the Spirit who has reneivcd our hearts must also sustain the new life; that we depenTi entirely on Divine grace and power, not merely to bring us to Christ, but to keep us in Him.

‘Thus, as in all God’s dealings, there is progress in ever-increasing, widening, and deepening cycles. The believer experiences again in a more enlarged and profound manner what he was taught at his first conversion. He sees now more clearly the guilt and helplessness of man, our utter dependence on a Father to love us, on a Saviour to save us by the shedding of His blood, and on a Divine Spirit to quicken and enlighten the soul, and fill it with the love of God. He feels now with deeper humility and truer joy that salvation is of God, that Divine grace lays the foundation and performs the good work in us untd the day of Christ. Then he beholds the gift and the Indwelling of the Hohj Ghost. Thus was it that the first disciples, after a season of childlike peace and joy in the presence and corapanionsliip of Jesns, lost the Saviour; and with Him the garden of the soul, trees and flowers and songs of birds, vanished, and all was winter, cold, silent, and dead. And then He returned unto them never to leave them; and, on the day of Pentecost, He, in the person of the Comforter, descended and made all things new; and it was summer, full of fra2;rance and briditness. They had to lose Jesus for a while, to long for the Spirit, and to rejoice in His coming.

‘The gift of the Holy Ghost is the most precious gift of that love which the Father has towards us for the sake of His dear Son, and because we love Him, and believe that He came from God. It is the gift in which the purposes of God towards us are fidfilled a7id consummated. “~ ‘The Messiah and the Spirit always go together; and the gift of the Spirit is the great purpose of the Messiah’s coming and the first-fruits of His work ’ (pp. 116-123).

*I shall never forget the gain to conscious faith and peace which, in my own experience, came not at, but after, a first decisive and appropriating view of the Crucified One as the sinner’s sacrifice of peace — came from a clearer and more intelligent hold upon the personality of that Spirit through whose mercy the soul had seen that blessed view. It was a new development of insight into the love of God; a new contact with the inner ami eternal movements of redeeming mercy; a new discovery of Divine resources. Gratitude and love and adoration found a new, a newly-realized reason, and spring, and rest. He who had awakened, who had regenerated, shone before the soul with the smile of a personal and eternal kindness and friendship, standing side by side in union unspeakable, yet not in confusion, with Him who had suffered and redeemed, and with Him who had given His Son, who had laid the eternal plan of grace, and willed itfe all-merciful success.’ — Rev. H. C. G. Moule.

NOTE E.
The Spirit of Truth (Chap. 9).

We are so accustomed to think of the word Truth as meaning doctrine, that it is only by a distinct and oft repeated effort that we can realize that it is in a very different and very much higher sense that our Lord uses it. When John speaks of Christ as full of grace and Truths and then explains this by saying, ‘The Law came by Moses; Grace and Truth by Jesus Christ,’ we notice at once that he contrasts the powerless shadows and forms of the law with the living substance and reality of what Christ brought, as the real communication of the eternal life of God from heaven. The following extract from Beck (Prop. p. 2) may help us to lay hold of the thought that Truth has indeed a Life and Kingdom of its own: —

‘Man’s creative power, both spiritual and bodily, can never attain to any true and real life, except as there is something already given and received to work on and to work out. It always supposes an objective external creation. So in nature we must always have the real matter, with its own life-power in it formed for us, before we can with our powers secure any product: in the real sense, whether spiritual or physical, we never produce, we only reproduce. Nature is an independent kingdom within which we live and work, but in which we call into existence or create nothing. And just so. Truth, the spiritual world, is an independent kingdom, which we do not bring forth out of our spirit, but which must in its self-existence reveal itself to us, that out of it we may receive the substance and elements of a real life before we can produce aught spiritually. An actual existence must in its own original power reveal itself to us, and with its creative energy enter into us, before we can produce aught from within. And where is now this actual existence, this Life Kingdom of Truth? This question compels every honest thinker to come out of his own isolated self, and in this objective world (it may be the inner one, as far as it has an actual objective existence) to seek for the revelation of Truth, that he may open to it his spirit and reproduce what it has set before him. And so faith is the substance of Christian truth, which enters into man as his spiritual property, and in living power becomes immanent within him. As a faith Christianity is neither idea, nor law, nor feeling, but a life, a d«ep, penetrating, and all-pervading life. ’

It is of this Life Kingdom of Divine Truth, of actual Divine Life, that Jesus came to earth as the embodiment. It is of this Truth that the Holy Spirit is the animating principle, the very life. And when He comes out of Christ who has said, ‘I am the Truth,’ He comes as the bearer of all there is in Christ to make Him Truth within us, an actual living possession. It is only as we thus possess Christ the Truth that our knowledge of the doctrine-truth will be living and profitable. The Spirit of Truth gives us life-truth in the inmost part, thence He leads it into truth of conduct and character. And only as we yield to Him in this, is the doctrinal truth we hold really the Truth of God to us. The Church or the individual has only so much of the Truth of God as we have of the Spirit of God.

NOTE F.

On the Mission of the Spirit (Chap. 9).

* Love Revealed: MedHafions on the Parting Words of Jesus with His Disciples in John xiii. to xvii. By George Bo wen.’ Such is the title of a book from which I give some extracts, in which the thought is put with great clearness and force that many Christians are living on an ante-pentecoital level, and that the promise of Christ to reveal His Power to the world by His presence among His people, made manifest through the Spirit, is Btill waiting its fulfilment in our experience. To those who are not yet acquainted with this hook I can most confidently recommend it as full of spiritual instruction.

* “/ will love himj and will manifest myself to him” (John xiv. 21).

‘If we wish, therefore, to sound the depths of this promise, “I will manifest myself to him,” we must honour Christ and the Father and the Spirit by believing in the power of the Spirit. To have faith in Christ and not to have faith in the Spirit seems to be a great contradiction, yet we submit it for the judgment of candid inquirers if this contradiction is not strikingly exhibited in the case of almost all who profess to be followers of Christ. To know the Father we must know the Son; to know Christ we must know the Sjnrit. “He shall glorify me,” said Christ. Believest thou this? Is this thy conception of Christ’s glory, that it is a glory that the Spirit of God can enable thee to behold? When the omni])Otent Spirit has been allowed by our faith to go to the full extent of His resources in the revelation of Christ, it will be time enough for us to turn away irom Him to some more perfect way of bringing Christ near to us.

‘Our Lord Himself tells us that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven — the kingdom that He came to establish — was greater than any of the prophets that had been in the world before His advent. Greater? Why ‘i Because he is a habitation of God through the Spirit, because that magnificent gift which Christ died to ol)tain for us has been bestowed.

‘Now all these views of the glory of the present disjienation seem to vanish into night when we subject ihem to a comparison with the actual experiences of Christians in general. But we do them foul injustice in this way. We are rather to submit the experiences of Christians to the test of Scripture. When we do so, does it not appear that tlif’ Chiircli lias fallen hack into an ante-pentecostal state? — that it has slipped out of its own dispensation? There was a measure, a feeble measure, of spiritual infiu nee enjoyed by the disciples before the death and resurrection of Christ, else would they not have been able to call Jesus Lord; but it was nothing in comparison with what they rec<ived on the day of Pentecost. The day of Pentecost was a pattern day; all the days of this dispensation slioidd have been like it, or should have exceeded it. But, alas! the Church has fallen down to the state in which it was before this blessing had been bestowed, and it is necessary for us to ask Christ to begin over again. We, of course, in respect to knowledge — intellectual kno ledge of spiritual things — are far in advance of the point where the disciples were before Pentecost. But it should be borne in mind that when truths have once been fully revealed and been made a part of orthodoxy, the holding of them does not necessarily imply an operation of the Spirit of God. We deceive ourselves, doubtless, in this way, imagining that, because we have the whole Scripture and are conversant with all its great truths, the Spirit of God is necessarily working in us. We need a Baptism of the Spirit as much as the apostles did at the time of Christ’s resurrection; we need that the unsearchable riches of Christ should be revealed to us more copiously than they were to Isaiah in the temple.

‘We profess to love Him. We profess, there ‘’ore — the inference is unavoidable — to desire to enjoy higher and more satisfactory manifestations of Him than have been yet vouchsafed unto us. It follows, then, that we ought to feel very greatly the pressure of the obligation to seek the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Blessed be God! the Holy Spirit is being poured out in many churches, and many Christians are at this very hour enjoying such views of Christ as fill them with a preternatural joy and love and strength. But we have not yet entered into the fulness of this glorious dispensation. If we love Christ, we will press deeper into it, believing that Omnipotence will find ways of revealing itself in the spiritual world of which we have as yet no conception.

* “Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Cortfoiier will not come unto you; hut if I depart, I will send Him unto you” (John xvi. 7).

‘Strange and scarcely credible though the announcement may appear to you, I nevertheless tell you but the simple truth when I say that it will be for your advantage that I ascend unto the Father and send to you the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to be your perpetual guide. And when I say that it will be for your advantage, I do not mean that the Holy Spirit is greater than I am, or that He will prove a truer friend to you. In fact, the special office of the Spirit will be to bring you and myself into a more intimate and a more blessed union than has yet been revealed to your consciousness. Though you have journeyed with me during these latter years of my earthly pilgrimage, yet there is no use in disguising the fact that a moral chasm yawns between us. You yourselves must often have felt the deepest pain in reflecting upon the very feeble amount of influence exerted upon you by One who is manifestly God in the likeness of men. You have mourned that the words and acts of One who was proclaimed the Only-Begotten of the Father, who was transfigured before you, was served by angels, who spake unto the winds and the waves and they obeyed Him, — you have mourned that the discourse and acts of such a One should have wrought so feebly in your hearts. The desire for sanctification exists in you, but the new and elevated conception of holiness, which has been introduced into your minds, only makes you the more sensible of your gre.»t moral deficiencies. If miracles could have given you the victory over your sins, you would now be the holiest of men. Since that hour when one of you fell at My feet, exclaiming, “Depai-t from mo, for I am a sinful man,” how many glorious displays of my power have you witnessed! Yet are you still sadly aware that pride, ambition, worldliness, have authority over yoiL

‘Surely you must have admitted to yours’dves that if three and a half years of such fetupendous exhibitions of power have left you the unsanctified men you are, ten years of such displays would nob give you the victory over your evil natures. For three and a half years you have listened to a greater than Solomon, — to one who spake as never man sy)ake, to the wisdom of God; and you have enjoyed such opportunities as never before were enjoyed by mortal man to know the mind of God concerning the way in which He would be served, and what is the result? You yourselves are constrained to admit that the result is very unsatisfactory.

‘Ah, if all that man needed were to have a teacher, were to have lessons of Divine wisdom set before him in the most intelligible and most expressive forms, then would you now be incomparably the holiest of men, proof against all temptation, superior to ad eaithly influences. But what is the fact 1 Was it not necessary that I should this very evening begin the work of instruction over again, as it were, by washing your feet? Have you not this very evening been disputing among yourselves who shall be the greatest? Are you not this very night to make even the unprofessing woild astonished by deserting me in my hour of trial 1

‘Why do I now dwell upon these things? Simply that you may be assisted to recognise that my life on earth, however marvellous and glorious as part of the Divine system by which God is bringing you to Himself, is yet of itself unable to eflect your spiritual redemption. It is one thing that the image of God should have been placed before you; it is a very different thing that you should be changed into that image. Man foolishly asserts that he only needs to know the true, the good, the beautiful, to be liimse’f the embodiment of truth and goodness and beauty. Heaven has come down to earth; the very King of Heaven has tabernacled amoni!: men; He whom Isaiah saw in the temph, high and lifted up, adored by seraphim, has come down from His throne, dismissed the seraphim to heaven, and dwelt with the people of Isaiah year after year, yet it is not seen that the men so amazingly distinguished have been rendered seraphic in holiness and love. Something else, then, is necessary that men may not only be made acquainted with the image of God, but changed into the same.

* But not only must you be sensible that you have little remembered, little learned, little obeyed, of all that 1 have told you and shown you; you must be keenly cogn’sant of the fact that your influence as my servants and the expounders of my gospel is all but nothing. In presence of a perverse and reb-llious race your hearts sink within you, and you ask yourselves. How shall we ever be able to bring men over to our views of Christ 1 You feel your need of some unknown power by which the minds of men mny be rendered obedient to the truth. You find yourselves utterly at a loss to communicate your deepest convictions. You are ready to ask. Is there not something beyond miracles even? something beyond tii« power of a holy life? Is there not in the resources of God some means of reaching the hearts of men, and subduing that hostility by which they are hindered from receiving the testimony of a holy life and a blessed gospel 1 There is. I die that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly. I ascend on high that the Comforter may come unto you. Then shall you be strengthened with a strength of which you have hitherto had no consciousness. Rivers of living water, even of the water of life, shall flow forth from you. Then the wilderness shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.’

‘” And when He is come, He unll reprove the world of sin, and of rif/hteousness, and of judgment’’ (John xvi. 8).

‘“When He.” “He” in the original is emphatic. It might be rendered “that one.” He it is who, coming, will convince mankind of sin. His very advent will revolutionize their ideas of sin, being a teitimony from heaven more striking than that of the voice from heaven at the baptism of Jesus, to the fact that Jesus the crucified is none other than Christ the glorified. By the simple fact that the world has placed itself in opposition to Jesus, testimony to Jesus will be testimony against the world. Observe that the promise of the Spirit was unto the disciples: “I will send Him unto you;” and the change here intimated as to be wrought in the sentiments of men generally was to be in consequence of the descent of the Spirit of God upon the disciples. The gospel is preached to convince men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The disciples of Christ are in the world that they may make known the sin of men, the judgment of God, and the means of escaping that judgment by means of the righteousness of Christ. But here we are told that the work of introducing the new convictions on these subjects into the minds of men is to be accomplished by the Syirit of God. Accordingly the apostles speak of themselves as having preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

‘What is here promised, then, is such an outpouring of the Spirit of God as shall not only reveal itself in the consciousness of the disciples, but substantiate itself as an undeniable and wonderful fact to the apprehensions of the onlooking world. And such was the advent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. “He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear,” said Peter to the multitude. That which they both saw and heard did what all the miracles, the incomparable words, the irreproachable life of Jesus, had failed to do. Let us say that these mii’acles began now to be seen, thogu Divine words began now to he heard, for the first time. By the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples the people of Jerusalem bfgan to look upward, and see Jesus at the right hand of the Majesty on high. They saw their own sin, heinous beyond all conception; saw the righteousness of Him whom they had put to death, the Prince of Life; saw it to be such a righteousness that in comparison the entire race of man stood forth apparelled in darkest iniquity; and they saw the judgment of God, inevitable and dire, against all who should be found in opposition to Christ. It was as though they had been taken up into heaven, and had seen the judgment-seat, the books opened, and their own deeds manifested in the unerring light of that tremendous scene. Sublime arrangements of Him whose wisdom is unsearchable! Are the people of God at all awake to all that is implied in the promise of the Spirit 1 Is it enough that they languidly recognise their obligation to make known the gospel to their fellow-men, and take various stej)S to have it preached? Is not the great thing wanted this — that the Spirit of God should be so poured out upon Christ’s people that men should be made aware of His presence with them, and of the presence of Christ at the right hand of God 1 so poured out that there should be a coming together, in som-e sense, of the blessed God and of the world which has boparatcd itself from Him; that the powers of the world to come should take hold upon men, and constrain them to cry out, “Men and brethren, what must we do?”

‘The Greek is wonderfully felicitous in that it does not represent the Spirit of God as coming once for all, but as persistently coming. He it is who, coming, shall convince. He comes as the rain from heaven, that must still come and come again; as the wind, that must still blow and blow again. We are not to look back for our Pentecost. The Pentecost of the Acts is simply given to make the Church of Christ acquainted with the privileges belonging to this dispensation. It is only the first step in a ladder of Pentecosts by which the world and the kingdom of Christ are to be brought together. It is the specimen to accompany the promise, that we may be stirred up to plead the promise with the greatest fervency

‘Oh, it were unpardonable if, in a day when God is doing so much to inspire us with lofty conceptions of the power of the Holy Spirit, we should still refuse to apprehend the glorious illimitableness of this promise. Consider it. We are to look at the work here assigned to the Holy Spirit, in order that we may obtain a just view of His power. Look abroad upon the earth, and see the nations, tribes, and tongues refusing to be convinced by all that God in His Providence has taught them during thousands of years; by all that missionaries are teaching them, at this eleventh hour, of sin, of righteousness, of judgment; form an estimate of the wickedness which envelopes the earth like a dense and deadly atmosphere, scarce suffering any of the rays of the Sun of Righteousness to penetrate it; then consider that the Spirit of God, for whose effusion we are taught to pray, is pledged to rain conviction upon the world, and anticipate for a most sublime and blessed end the final judgment by leading men to look to the righteousness of Christ, the Desire of all nations.

’ “These things I have spoken unto you in proverhs, hut the time Cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but 1 shall show you plainly of the Father” (John xvi. 25). When figures are made use of in speech, there is an outside meaning and an interior meaning. As the shell conceals and yet protects the kernel, so a truth conveyed tropically may be unperceived at first. Afterward, when additional light is given, it becomes manifest, and the saying ceases to be a riddle. The gospel is full of parables that could very little be understood until Christ had suffered and entered into His glory. When the Spirit of God was poured out upon His disciples, the veil which had been over the words of Jesus disappeared, and the interior truths flashed forth upon them in all their lustre. Christ Himself was such a proverb. Once His Divine glory had flashed forth upon their astonished gaze, but that was by way of anticipation, it very little dissipated the confusion of their minds. Nothing about Christ could produce its legitimate and full effect upon them until they had been brought out of the restricted and depressed valley of Judaism, and placed upon the elevated platform of the New Dispensation.

‘The Spirit of God inundates the minds of men with truths which previously had no meaning to them. Now it appears to us that an observation of no little importance may here be made. Truths which the Holy Ghost has taught us may be retained in the mind by the mere natural power of memory. Are we not thus in dancjer of deceivino; ourselves as to the measure of spiritual power enjoyed by us? We might have as scanty a measure of the Spirit’s influence as the disciples had in the days preceding the death of Christ, and yet be immensely in advance of them in respect to the amount of our knowledge of the way of life. Is it not to be feared that in those portions of the Church which have not yet been visited by a true revival, Christians are to be compared with the first disciples, not as they were on the day of Pentecost, but as they were previously — compared, we mean, as regards the actual divine influence enjoyed by them? Because they have the truth, they imagine they have the Spirit oj truth. Perhaps the word of Christ to them is: “Tarry ye in Jerusah-m until endued with power from on high.” We are baffled, bewildered, confounde<l, by our utter unfitness to convince men of sin, of righteousness, and of the judgment to come. Is it not that we fail to realize how absolute is our need of the mighty and manifest advent of the Spirit 1 It is possible for Christ so to cause the Holy Spirit to be seen descending upon us that the world around shall discover, by this fact alone, the heavens opened and the Son of God standing at the right hand of God.’

‘Many in these days occupy no worthier position than that first inferior one of the apostles. The aposiies were not absolutely without the influence of the Spirit during the time that Jesus tabernacled among them, but these influences did little more than make the present darkness visible, and show them in the dim distance the light of the future. Without knoAing ir, there are thousands of Christians who have that feeble and equivocal measure of influence which belongs to a different dispensation from this, and shows th<^^m to be two thousand years behind their privileges. We have said it, and without shame we say it again. They have of course knowledge such as the ante-pentecostal Church had not. It is the consciousness of this superior knowledge that tends to keep them ignorant of their spiritual destitution. Their position is appalling, for they are familiar with the inspiring promises, and have no faculty to catch a glimpse of the glorious things proffered in these promises. They actually suppose that these promises have no more exalted interpretation than that which their own emotionless and inglorious experience affords. Blessed be God! we are not limited to one Pentecost under this dispensation. Let us but become aware of the abnormal state in which we are, and take knowledge of the lofty experiences to which God is inviting us. Pentecost was not so much a mountain summit as a mountain high path or tableland, along which the Church should have travelled to the New Jerusalem. Let us look stedfastly up above, and see among the clouds this highway of holiness, and prove the power of the Saviour to bring us to it.’

KOTE G.
On the Namk Comforter (Chap. 10).

It is admiitt’d on all hands that the word Comforter does not give the full meaning of the Greek word paraclrtos. There is an active form, paracleto?’, of which comforter is the correct translation. The passive form, paracletoSj just like the Latin advocatus, means one who has been called in to assist, to take charge of a case, or to plead a cause. Among those who take Advocate as the correct rendering, there is more than one way of applying the word. Some think of Him as bearing this name because He has been called in of Christ to undertake His cause with the disciples and the world; others as one who can be called in by the disciples when they are in need of advice or strength. With those who think that the rendering Advocate expresses fully what our Lord meant, there is also a diversity of exposition. Owen says, ‘He is an Advocate for the Church, in, with, and against, the world.’ So also Howe, * The Advocate, a great jjleader, who undertakes to manage the cause of Christ and Christianity against the world.’ In this view the work of the Spirit in meeting the personal need of the believer does not come out sufficiently. Other.s think of the Spirit as the Advocate for Christ with believers. This is thus expressed by Bowen: ‘Chiist is our Advocate with the Father, and the Holy Spirit Christ’s Advocate with us. As Christ pleads for us at the throne of grace, so the Spirit pleads for Christ in our hearts. The Spirit vindicates Him from our unworthy thoughts, shows Him to be the chief among myriads, and altogether lovely.’

These views give but partial aspects of the work of the Blessed Paraclete. ‘The word has an incomparably larger meaning than Advocate on the one hand, and Comforter on the other. It includes both, but takes in a ‘^rviit deal more than either. It means one who u identified with our interests, ce who undertakes all our cause, one who engages to see us through all our iifficulties, one who in every way becomes our represen- •!itive, and the great personal agent that transacts our Aisiness for us.’ — W. Kelly, The IVork of the Spirit.

And yet even this does not appear to coNer all the ground. An advocate is indeed a representative. But rhe most comprehensive and most precious aspect of the spirit’s work is this, that He was to be the Representative ‘f Jesus. He was to make Jesus always [)resent to us. This was the sorrow of the disciples, that they were to lose their Lord. This was the comfort Jesus promised, hat they wouhl have One in whom His presence should be restored. And this makes the Spirit the other Advocate, that He has been called in and given by Jesus to represent Him, and make His presence real to them, to reveal and impart all that our Lord is to us. When Jesus, in speaking of another Paraclete, implies that He is the first, and when He bears that name in John ii. 2, we must regaid Him as api)ointed and given by the Father as the medium of intercourse between Him and us, obtaining and communicating His blessing. The word Paraclete or Advocate covers His whole work and person as He mediates the Divine life and love to us, securing for us all the Father has to give, and bringing to the Father all we have to offer. This is the true and full meanieg of Christ’s work as Advocate, of which His intercession is only one aspect. And when He gives us the Paraclete as the other Advocate, it is that His work should take in, in ail its breadth, Christ’s own work, to make it life and reality within us. Just as Christ, as Advocate, mediates with the Father, so the Spirit mediates with Christ, revealing in our hearts, as a present and continuous expei’ience, iii the power of the endless life, all that Christ’s advocacy secures to us. The Holy Spirit is the other Advocate, the alter ego in our hearts of Christ in heaven.

It would be difficult to discard the use of the word Comforter in English It will not be needed if we remember that the sorrow of the disciples to be removed was at the loss of Jesus’ presence, that the comfort to be given was the restoration, in greater power, of the presence of Him, thtir Divine Advocate. It is because the Spirit is the indwelling rej)resentative of Jesus as the Advocate in heaven, making Him always present in the heart, that He is the other Advocate or Comforter.

NOTE H.

The Glory of Christ (Chap. 11).

The glory of God does not consist in His surroundings, or the circumstances amid which He dwells. His glory is the perfection and power of His Divine will, the Divineness of the mode of His being and working. When God glorified Christ in Himself, He not only exchanged the circumstances of His earthly life for those of the heavenly world, but entered upon an entirely new mode of existence. Instead of being limited by flesh, by time and space. He passed as man into the life of God, who is a Spiiit. On eaith He could only work on His disciples as men next Himself and separate from Himself through means of words and example, reaching only thi’ir mind and affections, but not renewing their very spirit. From heaven He could, as out of His Divine glory, in the power of the Spirit, begin and woik in them m a very different way, entering their hidden life, and, throuirh Him, coming to dwell in their heart. It is as the Glorified One — the one that has exchanged the limited life of external eff<’rt and influence for the inner life of power by which He flileth all things — that He gives the Sj)irit, the Spirit of Glory. And the work of this Spirit is to gloriiy Jesus. That does not mean to givi’ us some sense of His glory in heaven. No, but to c ‘nimunicate to us p rsonally that presence and power of Jesus which, in virtue of His Divine gh:>iy, He can now manifest within us. But it is only the soul wholly yielded to the teaching of the Holy Spirit who thus knows ’ the Lord of Glory.’

The thought of the Lord of Glory being glorified within us by the Spirit of Glory looks very simple when once understood. And yet it is a deep spiritual mystery only reached in the way Christ reached His glory — through conformity to His sufferings and the fellowship of His cross. Each new impartation out of the glory must be according to the riches of God’s glory and the mighty strengthening of His Holy Spirit — a most real and direct act of God’s ineffable grace continuing and increasing to the soul the gift of His love.

To understand the way in which this glory works, we must notice carefully the connection between suffering and glory. ‘Behoved it not the Christ to suffer, and to enter into His glory? ’ On earth Christ was the Lord of Glory (John i. 14; 1 C(»r. ii. 8), but that glory was hidden under the lowliness of the human manifestation. And so, when the Spirit of the Glorified Lord enters us to glorify Him in us, the glory is hidden amid the feebleness and humiliation of our nature. And it is olten only as we suffer in the flesh that tl.e quickening of the Spirit is experienced.

The fatal error of the Jews was that they looked for the glory of the Messiah as something visible and in accordance with their worldly conceptions. Even the disciples suffered from this, and were all offended at tht-ir Lord. The glory of the Spirit-life into which Christ ha3 now entered and in which He now works is a hidden mystery, the mystery of godliness, working not in that which is outward or sensible, but in the unseen, the inner life. When we read of Christ manifesting Him-

1 Compare Rom. viii. 17, 18; 2 Cor. iv. 16, 17: Heb. ii. 9, 10; 1 Pet. iv, 13-16.

Belf, of His dwelling in the heart, we almost always form some conception of joy and triumph, as at the entrance of a king into his capital. And Jesus said. The king-lom of heaven is as a seed. A seed is something that contains life Id! den in the most dead, unlikelylooking form possible. Who that had never heard of a seed growing coidd imagine the oak or the pine contained in its seed? And this seed, with its hidden life, muftt itself again be hidden under the earth. And so the Kingdom of heaven comes to us in the seed of the word, so small and dead-looking that no one exyects such mighty ])ower from it. And it must be hidden, not in the thoughts or feelings that We can recognise and watch over, but deeper down, in the mysterious depths of the spirit. There Christ, who is in the unseen Spirit-life of the Father, finds the unseen depths of our Spirit-life and enters there. He is Himself the Living Word, the Living Seed; the Spirit is the Life of the Seed.

False views of what glory is have been the great stumbling block of the Jews and discij les of the Church and individual believers. God’s Glory is His Holiness revealed in His good and perfect will. Christ’s glory is, that, having glorified God by entering into, doing, and sufftiing that will. He was taken up into the fellowship of the Father’s glory, of that Life of Holiness and Power in which God dwells. Christ is glorified in us as we enter into His will in obeying and doing it, and have His presence revealed within us in Divine Power. That which in Christ was feeble and despised, the very opposite of human glory, the lowliness and suffering of the cross, was the hidden seed of His Divine Glory. In lowliness and obedience, in poverty of spirit and the absence of ‘jvhat can he seen or felt, in the death of the flesh and the patient waiting on God, is the seed of Christ glorified within us by the Spirit.

NOTE I.

On the Presence of the Spirit in the Church

(Chap. 14).

* The present enjoyment of the Spirit is but an carnrst. a gift beforehand, a pledge of the coming fulness. St. Paul speaks (Rom. viii. 23) of those “which have the first-fruits of the SiDirit,” and in his other epii«tles he uses equivalent expressions (Eph. i. 13, iv. 30; 2 Cor. i. 22, V. 5). What can be meant by such words but that the spiritual life is a continual progression, receiving, with its widening capacities, richer gifts of the wisdom and holiness of God? The Church is in its infancy as to valuation of spiritual blessing. It is, too, so much engaged in controversy that it can hardly be preparing itself for the completion of the holy promise. By mistaking the part for the whole, it is in danger of settling itself into premature satisfaction, as if it had exhausted the possibiliti«”s of prayer! Will it be uncharitable to susfsrest that the Church is too much engasred in that worst and most cankering of all worldliness, the elevation of one sect above another, and the angry defence of forms, which are but transient conveniences’? What is delaying the outpouring of the fulness of the Spirit? There is indeed a still sterner inquiry, which cannot be put without emotion, yet it may not be honestly suppressed. Is not the presence of the Hohj Ghnst in the Church less distinct to-day than in the apostolic age? Certairdy there is not much appearance of Pen’ecostal inspiration in contemporary Christianity. Why has n<»t a Church eighteen hundred years olH a fuller realization of the witness of the Holy Ghost than had the Church of the first century? Has the Church accomplished all the purpose of God, and passed for ever the zenith of her light and beauty?’ — The Paraclete, p. 173.

NOTE J.
The Outpouring of the Spirit (Chap. 15).

I give another note from Professor Beck, on the Spirit and the work He does in the believers and the Church, as well as in the world, in virtue of His being poured out on all flesh (ChrlsUich. Ethik, i. 124). Anything that helps us to meditate on what was needed to prepare for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, what its object was, and how He comes to do that work, will help to free us from those very limited ideas we have of what a Spirit, and who the Holy Spirit is, and what the blessed work He has come to do in us.

‘As concerns the relation of the Spirit to Christ, He is the Witness who takes of what Christ contains and possesses to bring it to us, and thereby reveal and glorify Christ. (John xv. 26; xvi. 7, 14.) The witness of the Spirit has this peculiarity, that He acts as the Power from on High, and that where His witness enters, the Life comes in Divine Power. The Spirit is thus the Dynamic Princi{)le, in whom concentrate all the life powers that flow from Christ, and from whom they are divided as the powers peculiar to each, as gifts and graces. He is thus the Formative Power, which from out of the substantial reality of what there is in Christ, begets and develops the individual life. His Witnessing mediates the Begetting; as the dynamic principle He is also the generative principle. Through Him the Christ is born in us, becomes, with His life of grace, our inner personal life, so that we are clothed upon with the Power from on High, with a supernatural life power. We have thus the grace of Christ, not only as an object without us, but within us as a Power of God. In the Spirit there dwells within us that Power of Divine Grace, in which all the powers of the new life concentrate. Spirit, Life, Power, are therefore in Scripture correlated ideas, just as, on the other side, Flesh, Weakness, Death, are one. The Eternal Life System, which from its Divine Head is again to bring the earth, the world of flesh, into organic union with the upper, the Spiritual world, can alone be built up on a heavenly Dynamics, on the action of the Spirit as the Power of the Heavenly Life.

‘This action of the Spirit is, however, only mediated for the world by the Reconciliation which Jesus Christ has effected, and by His being glorified. Previous to this reconciliation, the Divine Spirit worked on earth either as the Spirit in nature, as the power of the earthly life, or as the Spirit of the Theocracy, with special temporary manifestations for special functions, as in the case of the prophets. But not in such a way that the Eternal Life, as it belongs to the Divine nature, and dwells in the Father and the Son, that the Spirit of the Divine personal life could become the personal life of man, the property of his inmost nature. In this special aspect the Spirit in the Old Testament was only a promise to be realized in Christ, and therefore bears the name of the Spirit of Promise. In the New Testament Spirit the promise becomes fulfilment, actual bestowment, and possession. Before this, however, could take place with any human individual, the Spirit had first as the Power of the Most High, that is, as He had hitherto existed only in the transcendence of the Divine nature, to form and secure for Himself in human nature a centre, whence He miht communicate Himself. In this central nature the Spirit had to be brought into a free organic union with man’s psychical and physical nature as existing in the flesh, and that nature had even so to be formed into the organ of the Spirit. In one word, a man, anointed and permeated with the Holy Spirit, the Anointed, had to be formed. And then, in this spiritually perfected central personality of Jesus Christ, the flesh had, by a voluntary sacrificial death, to be transformed into the true spiritual existence of the Divine Being- or glorified and lifted up into God, and so the reconciliation of the world with Goil accomplished. In this way alone conLl tin’s visible life system, the organism of the sensible so’il life, become juilicially and ethically accessible to the oiierafion and paiticip<itiou of the Divine Spirit, out of the Keconcil r and through Him. Thus alone could the Spirit, in His new character, be set free out of the nature of Christ as now glorified in God, out of the Divine-human nature, to be poured out as the power of the heavenly life, the power of the eternal life, upon all flesh.

‘The question now comes, How have we to represent to ourselves this Outpouring of the Holy Spirit?

‘The outpouring of the Spirit is not identical with the individual indwelling of the Spirit, but is the universal presupposition of the latter, for it is spoken of (see Acts. ii. 16, comp. 33) as an outpouring down upon all flesh (cTTt indicati s the direction), of which the being filled with the Spirit individually is only the consequence; the individual entering in of the Spirit is mediated by the universal outj/ouring. The relation is the same as that in which the universal reconciliation, as a reconciliation of the world stands to the personal reconciliation, which is mediated by the former. Each of these, the reconciliation of the world and the outpouring of the Spirit, stands as an all-embracing fact, accomplished once for all, an objective universality, while in subjective realization but few are partakers of either. The outpouring on all flesh is thus neither the inpouring in all flesh, nor a mere rhetorical expression for the inpouring in a few individual men, but indicates its direction and destiny for the whole of men. And yet a;^ain, not as a mere ideal destiny, for this it was already in the Old Testament; in the New it is a fact that has taken place (Acts ii. 33). Having received the promise of the Father, He hath shed forth this. Corresponding to this destination for the whole, for all flesh, there is also a world-einbracing operation of the Spirit on the whole. Our Lord Himself, speaking of the coming or outpouring of the Spirit (John xvi. 8), attribnted to Him a work on the unbelieving world, even when they do not individually receive Him. It is thus a work independent of His reception, a judicial one.

‘We are thus led to regard the matter in this light: that the Spirit, as sent down or pound out, has now, by His descendence out of His previous transcendence, become a Power covering and influencing the worLl, a new Cosmic Power proceeding from Christ, on the ground of the accomy)lished reconciliation of the Kosmos in Christ, even while the Spirit — as individual gift, a subjective possession — has become personally immanent in but few. As Outpoured Spirit He is, and orks in the world, independent of His indwelling in special individuals, even as the exalted Christ also exists and works as the Lord who fills heaven and earth, as a Cosmic Power. With the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh a new Life Power has been set free from above, which now as Spirit, thus invisible, pervades the world system according to its own laws, as the Reaction of a holy Cosmic Spirit Power against the Cosmic Power of the Spirit of Falsehood and Destruction which had hitherto ruled the world. This latter does not only exist as a Spiiit immanent in individual men, but as an independent Power, the Prince of this world. The operation of the new, holy, and spiritual World-power thus acts partly as general, as it works in the world, partly ns special and individual, as it works in the Church of Christ. On the side towards the world, we have the world-judging work of the Spirit. The Spirit works as the Fire cast upon earth from above, in its separating and judging power embracing not only the moral, but even the physical world (Luke xii. 49, 51; iii. 16; the baptism and burning up with fire. Rev. iv. 5).

‘This is the foundation and ])reparation of the moi especial opera’ion, in which the Spirit, as the new Life-Stream from above, flows into the individual souls that are united with the Lord, and fills them (John iii. 5; vii. 38; iv. 10, 14). Here, in His quickening power, the Spirit is in union with ivatr-r, jii’-t as in His JLid,L:itig power with fiie. Comp. (Ten. i. 2; (Water, Spirit, Lighr) Matt. iii. 1 1; (Spirit, Fire, Water) Rev. iv. 5; xv. 2 ’

:ii. 1.

‘Whire the Spirit is thus represented as Fire and Water, it anpears as a Puwer in nature, — but it is a Power of nature Divine and Spiritual, making itS’ If felt within the physical world as a Cosmic Power, — this, however, not for daily objects in connection with the world, but at special epochs for objects in connection with the Kingdom of God. As such a cosmic power, the outpoured Spirit forms the connecting link between the Kedeemer of the World, in as iar as His whole nature has been lifted up into the Spirituality of heaven, and the Redemption and Transformation of the world of flesh out of its natural state, without the Spirit and against the Spirit, into a spiritual corporeality. The Outpouring of the Spirit is thus, just as the reconciliation, — of which it is the immediate result, — a real, perfected organization in this earthly world of the holy Spirit-influence, through which, in opposition to the unholy Spirit-influence, the operation, and entrance of a substantial heavenly S[)irit-life in humanity (Eph. i. 3; Heb. vi. 4), and at last in all nature (Horn. viii. 19), is mediated, and so the full destruction of the Satanic power obtained (I John iii. 8; xii. 31; xvi. 8, 11).’

NOTE K.

On the Spirit of Missions (Chap. 16).

The great International Missionary Conference has just been held, followed by what has been called a Missionary Crusade in Scotland. I have joined with many in the prayer to our Lord for His presence in the meeting, in thanking Him for success vouchsafed, in praising Him for the results. And yet I feel as if there is one remark I cannot withhold. I noticed with great intnrest a paper, issued before the meeting, in ThA Christian, by Dr. A. Pierson, pointing out what might be hoped for from such a gathering, and concluding with the remark that urdess it issued in a great baptism of prayer it might still be a comparative failure.^ What I have felt in regard to some other large gatherings of God’s servants in the hoi)’ ndnistry impressed me here too, that there was too little time given to the united confession of our need of, our expectation of, our fait’i in, the power of the Holy Ghost. We all admit that what the steam is to the engine that draws the train, what the fire is to the cannon with its powder and ball, the Holy Spirit is to the work of the Church and of Missions. And why should not, at such gatherings for eight or ten days, the very best of the days be set apart for persevering united supplication for the mighty indwelling and working of the Holy Spirit in God’s servants, present or represented in such a gathering, for His mighty power in the assembly, and for the deepening throughout the Church of the conviction that both for life and work the one thing needful is Christ’s indwelling presence revealed by the Holy Spirit? Instead of the meetings for prayer being the smallest, should they not be the largest and most important! It was ten days of contiiuiing with one accord in prayer and supplication at the footstool of the exalted Lord that prepared that feeble company of discii)les for the struggle in which they defied the power of Jerusakm and Rome, and conquered. Oh, we need above every-

1 ‘There is one outcome for which we hiok with greater confidence and hopefulness than for all other results combined. What the Church just needs above all else is a baptism of prayer. ... If that C^mference in London shall not issue in a new baptism of prayer, the highest result will not be attained. Let the whole Christian Church unite in one mighty and moving entreaty that in these latter days it may come to pass that God shall povir out His Spirit upon all flesh, and Joel’s prophecy shall at last receive its grandly complete fulfilment.’

NOTES. 3G7

tiling to lu’ln each other to continue in prayer that we may b” mightily strengrhened by God’s 8[>irit. “” 1 feel confident that if at such gatherings we could be brought to make waiting upon God our first work, there would nut only be the blessing at the time for th »te who meet, but it- would be a living testimony of unspeakable a alue to the blessed truth that it is by the floly Ghost filling each individual believer that ouri bh’ssed Lord is waiting to bless the world.

In reading the stirring reports of the Missionary Crusade in Scotland, the same thought presented itself in a dilTerent shape. When one or more men, full of a holy enthusiasm for missions, address large audiences, they may succeed in imparting somewhat of their fire to their hearers, the Spirit in them touches deejjly those who thus come under their influence. And yet the permanent result is often very small, and the process has to be continually repeated.^ What the Church netds, what our Lord asks and longs to give, is something more. It is not enough that Christians, living ar feeble, sickly Christian life, should from time to time be stirred. If the interest of the individual believer in missions is to be wll-pleasing to the Master, and a real spiritual force in the world, it must come, not from Continual appeals from without, but as the spontaneous outflow of a he rt in which the Spirit of Jesus is dwelling. Every branch of the vine must bear its fruit from the direct inflow of the life-giving sap — the Holy Spirit. If the confessions that have been made in these past 3 ears of terrible shortcomings and unfaithfulness, while we have only been playing at missions, are to mean anything, we must all labour for the restoration of the half-forgotten truth, that every believer is expected to be full of the Holy Ghost. All the Church’s appeals for

I Dr. Pierson says in the same paper, ‘Dependence is frequently placed upon mere organization. A transient enthusiasm is awakened that is like the morning cloud or early dew, and passes as quickly away.’ support and prayer must be accompanied by the teaching, in the power of the Spirit, that where the Holy Spirit dwells and rules, sacrifice for Christ and entire personal devotion to His interests is nothing but the natural outcome of a healthy Chribtian life. Christ did not call His Church to be His witness to the whole earth without first premising the power of the Spirit coming on her.

I must ask my readers to forjiive me if I appear to repeat too frequently this one thought. I feel as one who has a message to bring, but is c ‘Uscious that he stammers, and feats that his message will not be rightly understood. We are all so sure that we believe in the Holy Ghost, and that we understand how indispensable His operation is, that it is with difficulty we can look on the deep spiritual truth, that our Almighty Lord Jesus is waiting, by His Holy Spirit, to work in ev. ry believer, and so throuuh His Church, the greater works He promised, something exceeding abundantly above what we ask or think, according to the power that is working in us. The beginning of the change must he that, in the ordinal y ministry of the word, every individual belirver must We educated into the full consciousness that to be filled with the Holy Ghost is an absolute necessity for a life truly fruitful and well-pleasing to God. May every appeal for missions, every effort, in presence of the hundieds of millions whom we have been leaving to perish, to bring the Church to a sense of her guilt, and a surrender to her glorious calling, may all speaking and writing and praying, may all our conferences and Church councils, lead to the deepening of the conviction — the Holy Spirit is the Church’s power for all her work and her missions, and that power will only act mightily as the number increases of individual believers who give tlum.>elves to be possessed, to be led, j to be used of the Spiiit of Christ.

NOTE L.
On Conscience (Chap. 21).

If man be the antitype of the temple, and his spirit the most holy place where God dwells, it is not difficult to fix the place and the meaning of that part of its furniture which typifies conscience. This is none other but the ark of the covenant. The marks of identilication are three. The ark was that in which the hiw of God was contained and carried. Conscience is that power which lias God’s law as its contents; as far as the law, whether as written in the heart of the heathen, or as transcribed in the heart of the believer by the Spirit, is present there, so far conscience is able to do its work. Even as the ark, it is the receptacle or holder of the law. And then it was on the ark that the mercy-seat rested, that the sprinkling of blood was effected, and the throne of grace then set up for God to be worshipped. And so it is specially to the conscience that the blood is applied within us, and that the Spirit witnesses of our being well-pleasing to God. The ark was called the ark of the testimony, containing God’s law or His testimony to Israel. And so the Holy Spirit, as writing the livmg law in the heart, is God’s testimony to His ledeemed people, the witness both of His will and of His favour. And conscience, sprinkled with the blood, and keeping watchful guard over the childlike life of obedience, is the spiritual organ within our spirit, to which, and through which, the Holy Spirit gives His “witness. ‘My conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit.’

With what care was the ark treasured in Israel! With what confidence followed by the hots when passing through Jordan to conquer Canaan and its hosts! With what qui- 1 ex23ectancy borne around Jericho! With what joy a place was prepared for it,

2 A and God’s presence with it claimed! (Ps. cxxxii.). Christian, treasure above everything the ark of the testimony within thee. The law of the Spirit is within it, the Blood is upon it. It is the place where thy God dwells and rests and communes with thee. It is the meeting-place, the point of contact, between God and the soul — the seat of faith and the seat of God. Above everything, bow in fear and reverence before the Holy Presence which rests above the ark. Keep a conscience void of offence.

NOTE M.

The Light of the Spirit (Chap. 22).

(From Dr. A. Saphir, Christ Crucijied, p. 109.)

‘But it may be asked: God revealed Himself and His purpose in Christ, Why is another light, another teacher, needed 1 The necessity is obvious from history. The heathen world by wisdom knew not God, and when Christ came He was rejected; they who received Him confessed it was owing to a supernatural illumination, to the Spirit of God. Israel taught by holy men inspired of God, in possession of the Scriptures, the perfect portrait of Him that was to come; Israel, thus highly favoured and fully instructed, was not able to discern the Divine features of that countenance, of which Moses and the prophets, of which all their institutions, testified. He came to His own, but His own received Him not. They crucified Him. What greater proof can Ave haA’e that Christ Himself remains unseen light, unless the Sjdrit reveals Him?

‘But look at the very disciples of our Lord. They M ere drawn to Jesus by the Father. Their knowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, came not by nature, by flesh and blood, but it was from above.

Thev lovec Jesus with all their hearts, cleavina; unto Him with all the pities of their affection. And yef, while He was here, they understood not the Scripfires. Even the instructions of the blessed Master, received with intensest admiration and affection, were not sufficient. They stood at the threshold of truth: the Holy Ghost alone can lead us into the Truth. God is in Christ; but the Holy Ghost alone reveals Him who is God manifest.

‘But let us go higher than the proof of actual history and experience. God in His love reveals Himse’f, It is His gracious will that I should know Him. In Christ Jesus He reveals Himself perfectly. Jesus is Light, full of brightness and sweet tenderness. And yet I require another light to see the True Light. How is this 1

‘Simply because there is no other God but the Triune, — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God knows Himself in His Spirit. It is in the Spirit of God that God is Light in Himself, and therefore by the Spirit He sends forth light into the world and into the hearts of His children.

‘God reveals Himself. But who is God revealed? Who else but the Son 1 And by whom does the Father know and love the Son? By that very Spirit by whom Ha reveals Himself to man. Scripture is of the Father; its substance is Christ, and it is revealed by the Holy Ghost. A revealing God, a revealed God, is the true God, — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

‘So it is in redemption. We do not exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, or approach Him more closely, when we forget the Father and the Spirit. It is the glory of Christ that He reveals the Father, and baptizes with the Holy Ghost. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one in majesty and glory, and one in love and grace.

‘Remember, there is no bridge from this world unto the land of glory; remember, there is no ladder from this earth unto heaven, unless from yonder shore and from yonder height, God, the Triune, Himself come a down and brings us salvation. Amor descendit, was a saying of the ancients. Love descends from heaven. What God in His infinite love, wisdom, and power hath treasured up in Christ Jesus, Himself must give us by the power of the Holy Ghost. And thus we know and assuredly believe, that nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, because Christ is ours, not by our own reason, not by our own energy, not by our own faithfulness, but by the Holy Ghost Himself, who is very God and eternal God, who links us unto the Lord Jesus Christ, to be His for evermore.

‘The Holy Ghost, who is in essential and perfect communion with the Father and the Son, reveals unto us eternal realities. He alone knows the infinite love of God with which He has loved us, for He alone can fathom the depth out of which this love proceeds. Thus, what the Holy Ghost reveals and imparts is the knowledge of realities which are eternal in God.

‘He brings a living knowledge; His light is the liht of life. It is not informatic/U, an insight into the connection of truths, and an appreciation of their beau y and grandeur. Men may have such knowledge vast and deep, and yet be destitute of the grace of God and uninhabited by the Divine Spirit. To know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent is life eternal. This knowledge of God, beholding Him and Christ, is the spiritual, never-ending life which the Spirit creates within us. Dead knowledge is not the work of the Holy Spirit — knowledge which remains quiescent, silent, and lonely; for the knowledge which the Spirit gives is communion. We see the Father and the Son ^5 seeing us. When we behold them by the revelation of the Spirit, it is as beholding us with infinite love, and bestowing upon us the blessings of grace. We know because we are known. “Thou Father, Thou Son, see»t me,” is the immediate consciousness of the soul, when there is a spiritual perception of God. In other words, adoration, love, petition, lift’ ning to God’s voice. reieiving the love and peace of Christ, communion, is invoked in this knowledge.

‘This knowledge is therefore also an cxjierience of God; when we know, we possess and recei e God and His gifts. We know the Father, and He is our Father; we know Chtist, we see His mediation; we have come to the blood of the new covenant, and we possess Christ, and experience the power and efficacy of His death and resurrection. We know the spiritual blessings in heavenly places, and knowing them we possess them. We have not merely the picture or image, but the substance of Divine realities.

*It is the Spirit Himself who teaches and enlightens. The truth itself, the preaching of the Gospel, the reading of the Scriptures, has no inherent yower to bring knowledge into the soul. These are only the instruments, the Spirit is the agent; tpey are only the sword, the Spirit is the energy, the hana that wields it. They shall be taught of God. God causes the light of the Gospel to shine into our hearts. How little we realize this truth, so comforting and full of encouragement! How apt are we to foi’get the living Spirit in the gifts and channels which He uses! How fond we are of placing ourselves in God’s place; if not in the Father’s, in Christ’s; if not in Christ’s, in that of the Spirit! *

NOTE N.

On the Spirit guiding the Church (Chap. 23).

The whole teaching of the apostle to the Corinthians, in regard to the need of the Spirit’s revelation, if the truth is to maintain its Divine power and freshness, and if we are to be led farther and deeper into it, suggests to us the danger that may attach to creeds as the expression, in words of human wisdom, of the truths of Scripture. While they have their very high value as temporary and secondary embodiments of the faith of the Church, they may so easily in practice usurp the place which theoretically we accord to the word of God alone. They may especially become hurtful when they are regarded as a sufficiently perfect and final formula of what the word has to teach us, and unconsciously close the heart against the expectation of any further teaching of the Spirit for the clearer and fuller unfolding of what is revealed in the word. The Holy Spirit has been given to the Church as a whole to guide her into all truth. We have to trace the way in which, during the first five centuries, amid human controversy and weakness, some of the great outstanding truths of revelation were mastered and formulated. We thank God for the restoration at the time of the Reformation of truths that had been lost sight of, and displrced by error. But is there no danger that many consider the leading of the Spirit to have become less needful after our Reformation creeds had been settled 1 They can hardly bear to think that the Holy Spirit may have more to teach His Church, or that a clearer and fuller setting forth of Divine truth than is to be found in our standards may be expected. This attitude towards the Holy Spirit and His teaching is one of great danger. It closes the heart against that teachable and expectant spirit to which alone the Divine Spirit can reveal the truth of God in power. It fosters that spirit of self-contentment with the correctness of cur orthodoxy which unconsciously robs Holy Scripture of its authority at the very moment we are insisting on our allegiance to it. It tends toward the position of the Jews in the time of Christ, in which, while they fondly imagined that God’s word was everything to them, it was their human exposition of it, their human image of God’s truth, for which they were so zealous. We must learn to trust the Hdy Spirit more in our theology; He has still much to teach us. As the life and work of the ministry comes more under the power of the Spirit, and the leading of the Spirit in every believer, as a necessity and a privilege, is acknowledged, we shall become familiarized with the thought of His leading the Church into the truth, and look in confidence to Him to do His work in ways we cannot beforehand mark out.

What makes many so unwilling to accept this truth is the apparent danger connected with it. They see a great number engaged in the task of reconciling the truth of revelation to the instincts of the human mind, to the spirit of the age, to the requirements of science. All these seek emancipation from the creeds, not with the view to the restoration of a more purely scriptural theology, but in order to be free from all trammels in the construction of a system of religion that shall satisfy what is considered the religious consciousness of human reason. It is not difficult to see how far asunder these two parties stand, though both plead for liberty in regard to the creeds. The one pleads for liberty of judgment, to be free to follow the dictates of Reason as uttered by our wisest men; the other for the liberty of the spirit, to be free to receive and to follow the teachings of the Holy Spirit, as revealed to the Church wholly under His rule, and waiting for His opening up of what Scripture contains. It is well, in the interest of the Church, to have these two parties carefully distinguished. The Church and the faith have no truer friends than those who, while acknowledging that in Reformation truth a noble foundation was laid, yet believe that in raising the superstructure there is still much that the Holy Spirit needs to do, is willing to do, in revealing the full proportion of Scripture truth, if He find the Church ready to listen and obey His leading.

The following remarks, from one whose attachment to the form of sound doctrine and deep insight into Scrij)- ture are above all question, are worthy of careful consideration. In his Christ and the Scrijjtures Dr. Saphir says: —

‘There is among us an uneasy feeling, a secret consciousness of something being wrong. The development of doctrine which is clearly opposed to that gospel which has proved itself to the heart and experience of man the power of God, is one cause of alarm; and a return to the bulwark of the Reformation creed and theology is naturally the remedy suggested. But against this two considerations are urged. In the first place, Israel ought never to look and turn back. The Lord Himself (and not an image of Him) is a wall of fire round us. Life alone can combat the errors of death. But, in the second place, if the creeds could not even retain and preserve life (as history proves they were not able to do), how much less will they be able to rekindle a dying flame or to bring to life the dead! It is out of these very creeds that the present state of things has come, either as a development or as opposition, and our aim ought to be to find out whether, in these creeds, the absence of some sciiptural element, or the false representation and emphasis of some scriptural element, be not the root of the disease which is manifesting itself.

‘And here it is evident that two parties meet which may be essentially and radically different: those for whom the crteds contain too much of the scriptural element, and those for whom they contain too little of that element, or do not contain it in sufficient purity. The objectors to the creeds may be such either because the cri etls are too Shemitic, or because they are not Shemitic enough.’

Let u”:; still listen to the words of another. When John Kobinson, pastor of a congregation of refugee Puritans at Leyden, was bidding farewell to the party of exiles who were leaving in the Mayflower for New Englaiifl, and were to become celebrated under the name of ’ the Pilgrim Fathers,’ he spoke these memorable parting words: ‘I charge you, that you follow me no larlher than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has more truth to break forth out of His holy word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the Reformed Churches, which are come to a period in religion, and will go, at present, no farther than the instruments of their reformation. Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in their times. Yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God. I beseech you remember it; it is an article of your Church covenant — that you shall be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from God’s word.*

The whole subject is one of deep importance and no little difficulty. The only safety for the Church is in renewed faith and the unceasing expectation of the Holy Spirit’s working in the life of her believing members; out of this will grow that intense surrender to Him which will quicken her capacity for taking in the whole truth C’f Holy Scripture, and reproducimr it in life and testimony in words which the Holy Spirit teacheth.

NOTE 0.