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THE SHORT COURSE SERIES 
 
 THE: POWER ‘OF (THE SPIRE 
 
 \ 
 
Volumes Already Published i a 
 
 The Redemption of Man. — Ne i 7 
 By Prof. T. B. Kizpatricx, D.D. ep 
 
 The Power of the Spirit. Sih oF 
 By Rev. Stuart GARDINER, M.A. . \ a : 
 
 ie | 
 
 A Cry for Justice: A Study in Amos. ie 
 By Prof. Joon E. McFapven, D.D. f 
 The Beatitudes. ee: 
 By Rev. Rosert H. Fisuer, D.D. 
 
 The Lenten Psalms. 
 By the Epiror. 
 
 The Psalm of Psalms. 
 By Prof. James Statxer, D.D. 
 
 The Song and the Soil. 
 By Prof. W. G. Jorpan, D.D. 
 
 The Higher Powers of the Soul. 
 By Rev. GrorcE M’Harpy, D.D. 
 
 Jehovah-Jesus. 
 By Rev. THomss WuitTEetAw, D.D. 
 
 The Sevenfold / Am. 
 By Rev. THomAs MarjorrBanks, B.D. 
 
 The Man Among the Myrtles. 
 By the Eprror. 
 
 The Story of Joseph. 
 By Rev. Apam C. WeEtcu, B.D., Th.D. 
 
 The Divine Drama of Job. 
 By Rev. CHARLES F. AKED, D.D. 
 A Mirror of the Soul: Studies in the Psalter. 
 By Rev. CANON VaucuHAN, M.A. 
 In the Upper Room. 4g 
 By Rev. D. J. Burra, D.D., LL.D. a 
 The Son of Man. 
 By AnprEw C. Zenos, D.D., LL.D. 
 The Joy of Finding. 
 By Rev. ALFRED E. GARVIE. 
 
 Fhe Prayers of St. Paul. 
 By Rev. W. H. Grrrrita Tuomas, D.D. 
 
 The Emotions of Jesus. 
 By Prof. RoBpert Law, D.D. j 
 Belief and Life. d 
 By W. B. Setsré, M.A., D.D. 
 The Prophecy of Micah. 
 By Rev. ArtHur J. Tart, D.D. 
 The Expository Value of the Revised Version. 
 By GrorcE Mriuican, D.D, 
 
V7 , | 
 The Sbort Course Series 
 
 EDITED BY ' 
 Rev. JOHN ADAMS, B.D. \ 
 
 THE 
 POWER OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 THE NEED OF THE CHURCH 
 
 BY | 
 
 Rey. F, STUART GARDINER, M.A. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
 1920 
 
TO THE 
 
 MEMBERS OF THE TWO CONGREGATIONS 
 IN 
 
 COLERAINE AND KINGSTOWN 
 WHOM IT HAS BEEN MY PRIVILEGE TO SERVE 
 IN THE MINISTRY OF OUR LORD AND 
 
 SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/powerofspiritneeOOgard 
 
PREFACE 
 a 
 
 Tue subject discussed in these studies is one 
 which the Church of Christ, by the solemn 
 events of Providence, and by the tremendous 
 problems by which she is faced, is to-day 
 being summoned by God seriously to con- 
 sider. ‘The truths contained in them are 
 not so much theoretical, as urgently prac- 
 tical. The Church is up against a task too 
 great for her. And she knows it, and is 
 conscious of her weakness. Here is set forth 
 the source of that invincible Power she needs 
 for the accomplishment of her mission. God 
 is calling her to a united endeavour “ to get 
 at’ this Power, the Power of the Holy 
 Spirit, and to use it on behalf of the coming 
 of His Kingdom. 
 
 The work of the Holy Spirit is God’s en- 
 
 vil 
 
Preface 
 
 deavour to enter into fuller and closer union 
 with Man for his spiritual regeneration and 
 renewal. 
 
 The Scriptures are a partial record of 
 Man’s experience as God has worked out 
 His gracious purpose in him. The life of 
 each saint is another page in that sacred 
 Book. | 
 
 But not till the people of God, made 
 perfect in holiness, are gathered together 
 in the Heavenly City, shall the story be 
 complete. 
 
 This book is a humble attempt to outline 
 how God works out His plan, in Man, and 
 how men may co-operate with God in the — 
 fulfilment of His purpose. | 
 
 N.B—It is suggested that the Scripture 
 references prefixed to each chapter should 
 
 be carefully studied. 
 F, STUART GARDINER, 
 
 Viil 
 
- 
 
 CONTENTS 
 ee 
 I. THE Hoty SPIRIT IN NATURE AND MAN 
 
 Il. THE Hoty SPIRIT IN THE BLESSED 
 TRINITY . y : A 
 
 III. THE HoLy SPIRIT IN OUR LORD JESUS 
 GHRIST . : d ; : 
 
 IV. PENTECOST: THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 CHURCH . ? : 4 5 
 
 V. PENTECOST: THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 
 CHURCH— (continued) . ‘ 4: 
 
 VI. THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE INDIVIDUAL . 
 
 VII. THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 (continued) : : ‘ ‘ 
 VIII. SINS AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT . ¢ 
 INDEX . F 3 Bi el a a 
 
 PAGE 
 
 17 
 
 35 
 
 55 
 
 79 
 
 95 
 
‘is to dented the New Testament, ee the 
 Christian Sages 
 
I 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN NATURE 
 AND IN MAN 
 
«©The secret of the world was mine, 
 I knew. I felt... 
 . . - What God is, and what we are, 
 What Life is, how God tastes an infinite joy 
 In infinite ways, our everlasting bliss, 
 From whom all being emanates, all power 
 Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore, 
 Yet whom existence in its lowest form 
 Includes; . . . and all lead up higher, 
 All shape out dimly the superior race, 
 The heirs of hopes too fair to turn out false, 
 And Man appears at last.’ 
 Brownine’s ‘* Paracetsus.’ 
 
 3 
 
I 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN NATURE 
 3 AND IN MAN} 
 
 = ol 
 
 Proressor I'YNDALL, in his famous address 
 as President of the British Association in 
 1874, quoted with approval the saying of 
 Lucretius, “‘ The mechanical shock of the 
 atoms is the all-sufficient cause of all things,”’ 
 and that of Giordano Bruno, ‘“ Matter the 
 universal Mother who brings forth all things 
 as the fruit of her own womb.” ‘Then he 
 made the following declaration, “ By an 
 intellectual necessity I cross the boundary 
 of the experimental evidence, and discover 
 in that matter, which we, in our ignorance 
 
 1 Scripture Rererences.—Gen. i. 1-2, vi. 1-3, xli. 38; Ex, 
 XXViii. 3, xxxi. 1-4; Num. xi. 25; Deut, xxxiv. 9; Judg. iii. 
 10, Vi. 34, xi. 29, xiii. 25, xiv. 6, 19; 1 Sam. x. 5-6, 10, xi, 
 6, xvi. 14; 1 Kings xxii, 23; 2 Chron, xv. 1-2; Neh, ix. 20, 
 30; Job xxvii. 3, xxxii. 8, Xxxili. 4; Ps. li. 10-11, civ.29- 
 30, cxxxix. 7; Isa, xi. 1-3, xxxii. 15, Ixi, 1-3, Ixiii, 10-11; 
 Ezek. xxxvi, 27, xxxvii, 1-143 Joel ii. 28-32. 
 
 ) 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 of its latent powers, and notwithstanding 
 our professed reverence for the Creator, 
 have hitherto covered with opprobrium, 
 the promise and potency of all essential 
 life.” It is true that later in the same 
 address he admitted that the views of 
 Lucretius, Bruno, Darwin, and Spencer 
 might be wrong, or might require modi- 
 fication. And in this he was certainly 
 correct. For as men continued to reflect 
 on the great problem of the origin of all 
 things, it became increasingly clear that the 
 materialism of ‘Tyndall did.not cover all the 
 phenomena. A striking indication of the 
 recoil which had taken place is that in 1898, 
 twenty-four years later, Sir William Crookes, 
 the President for that year, referring to the 
 dictum, did not hesitate to say, “I should 
 prefer to reverse the apophthegm, and to 
 say that in life I see the promise and potency 
 of all forms of matter.” To-day there is 
 no more authoritative voice in philosophy 
 than M. Bergson. And in such a book as 
 Creative Evolution, God is conceived of as 
 pure creative activity. He is unceasing life, 
 
 4 ~ 
 
Spirit in Nature and in Man 
 
 active freedom. Spirit is regarded as an 
 emanation from God. He believes that 
 there is a spiritual force behind evolution, 
 something in the Universe which science 
 cannot weigh, measure, or calculate, and. 
 that if Nature is one, its unity rests on a 
 spiritual element. Such leaders of Science, 
 Philosophy, and Psychology as Ward, 
 Eucken, Bosanquet, M‘Dougall, Lloyd 
 Morgan, and William James are agreed that 
 mind has not emerged from a merely physical 
 and mechanical soil. In fact Haeckel, in his 
 Riddle of the Universe, is now about the sole 
 remaining representative of a thorough- 
 going materialism. And he is regarded as 
 out of date. We are indeed compelled by 
 the latest investigations of modern biology, 
 physiology, and psychology to grant con- 
 sciousness a self-subsistence of its own. 
 Such a life, though connected with the 
 body, is a reality, and the consciousness 
 of possessing it will convince a man that 
 though he knows not how, the life of the 
 soul has had a heavenly origin, and wends 
 its way towards its heavenly home. The 
 
 5 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 general trend, therefore, of the latest scien- 
 tific and philosophic thought is to teach us 
 that we are living in a spiritual world in 
 the midst of the present world: that that 
 spiritual world has in the first place to be 
 known, and that this knowledge has then to 
 be turned into an experience of the soul. 
 
 1. [Tue Spirit oF Gop 1n RELATION TO 
 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Man is confronted by the material Uni- 
 verse, and is for ever trying to understand 
 it. ‘That we, with our minds, can in-some 
 measure apprehend it, is an evidence that 
 it originates in a Mind akin to our own. 
 The Universe is no chaotic flux. It 
 is an orderly system of things. Atoms 
 combine in mathematical proportion. It 
 is a coherent Universe in which each 
 element combines and harmonizes with the 
 rest. And all the links binding the various 
 elements together are obviously spiritual. 
 Moreover, the Universe is one. ‘The same 
 
 chemical elements, obeying the same laws, - 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
Spirit in Nature and in Man 
 
 are found in the stars as in this world. All 
 proceeds from one Mind, from one Spirit. 
 Now what is the relation of this Spirit to 
 the Universe He has brought into being? 
 Pantheism teaches us that all Nature is 
 God. This makes Him'a part of Nature, 
 and thus, in its ultimate effect, Pantheism 
 is not distinguished from Materialism. De- 
 ism speaks of a distant God, who transcends 
 Nature, and is wholly separate from it: 
 who, having once started the vast machine, 
 leaves it to its own working, and does not 
 any longer interfere. The truth lies in a 
 combination of these two theories. God is 
 at once in Nature, and above Nature. We 
 may find an analogy in the relation between 
 our own spirit and body. Our spirit is in 
 our body, and yet it transcends it. It 
 controls and directs it. Akin to this is the 
 relation between the Eternal Spirit and the 
 Universe He has brought into being. 
 
 God’s Immanence 1n Nature 1s Progressive.— 
 He dwells in it by His Spirit. He is in all 
 Nature. He is in tree and flower, and every 
 living thing. For all live in Him and by 
 
 7 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 Him. By Him the life of the world is 
 
 evolved on an ever-ascending scale. But it 
 is only when man is reached, with his reason 
 and his conscience, that God by His Spirit 
 becomes in a high degree immanent in 
 Nature. For we must never forget that 
 man is a part of Nature. Man has a moral 
 and spiritual nature, because God by His 
 Spirit is in man. And the evolution of 
 the spiritual nature of man is the result of 
 the indwelling and working in him of the 
 Holy Spirit of God. Through man’s con- 
 science and moral nature the Spirit of God, 
 for the first time, finds a voice which can 
 bear witness to Him, and through these 
 God can reveal Himself. The spiritual 
 element everywhere is one. It means that 
 God’s Spirit is there. It is true that in its 
 beginnings (for conscience has a natural 
 history of its own) the voice of God can only 
 faintly and imperfectly express itself. But 
 implicitly and potentially the Spirit of God 
 is there from the beginning in its fulness, 
 and attains gradually a freer development 
 and power; till we come to the voice of 
 pes) 
 
Spirit in Nature and in Man 
 
 God speaking clearly in the conscience of 
 the Saint, and the Spirit of God controlling 
 the spirit of man. Thus gradually has God 
 prepared for Himself a home, a shrine in 
 the soul of man. 
 
 2. Tue Spirir or Gop In Man. 
 
 The Spirit of God is immanent in every 
 man, as He is also in all Nature. Every 
 normal man is possessed of a reasonable and 
 moral nature, however undeveloped, to 
 which the Spirit can appeal, and in which 
 He works. And the brooding Spirit of 
 God is ever striving in love with man, and 
 seeking a closer union with him, and a 
 fuller dwelling within him. Many a man 
 is not conscious that the Spirit of God is 
 at work in his soul, and yet He is there. 
 We have all been witnessing in connection 
 with the present war, with a kind of awe, 
 the most magnificent and splendid of the 
 Christian virtues, such as utter unselfishness, 
 self-sacrifice, courage, and devotion to duty 
 shown by men who are not consciously- 
 
 9 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 religious. Yet who can doubt that the 
 Spirit of God is in their souls, and that it is 
 He who has thus inspired them? He is 
 using them as He used Cyrus of old to do 
 great things for His Kingdom, and He is 
 saying to them what He said to him, eT 
 have surnamed thee, though thou hast not 
 known Me: I girded thee, though thou 
 hast not known Me.” But may we not 
 say that God does not fully guide and 
 control a man, until he yields himself to His 
 holy dominance? In every race of man, 
 and in all the religions of the world, we see 
 the movement, and the inspiration of the 
 Holy Spirit of God. In all races, and in 
 all ages, man has sought after God, inspired 
 thereto by upward surgings of the Spirit of 
 God within. However dim these gropings 
 after God, as expressed in the other re- 
 ligions of the world, there is some truth in 
 them all, and some element of the Divine. 
 And as God: hateth nothing that He hath 
 made, so we may be sure God looks with | 
 compassion and love on these gropings 
 after Him, hampered and distorted as 
 10 
 
Spirit in Nature and in Man 
 
 they are, through the weight of indwelling 
 sin. oe 
 
 This Immanent Spirit is spectally seen in 
 Israel.—It is the true glory of Israel that in © 
 her the Spirit of Ged found the most con- 
 genial sphere for His operations. There He 
 was able to develop His gifts for the good of 
 mankind more fully. In Israel we see a 
 moral and spiritual development such as we 
 see in no other nation, and an ever-deepening 
 consciousness of God, and understanding of 
 His Will. And Israel realized that all that 
 was best and noblest in her was due to Him, 
 and so ascribed to Him the skill given to the 
 artificers who conceived the building and 
 ornamentation of the Tabernacle, the wis- 
 dom of their judges, the herculean feats of 
 Samson, the martial prowess of their military 
 leaders, the ruling capacities of their kings, 
 as well as the inspiration of the prophets. 
 All this is fitted to remind us that the spring 
 and inspiration of every noble achievement 
 in literature, in science, in art, is the Spirit 
 of God working in the spirit of man. The 
 poets, the discoverers, the great artists are . 
 II 
 
‘The Power of the Spirit 
 
 all, even when not conscious of it, God- 
 inspired men. ‘Thus more and more the 
 Spirit of God dwelt and wrought in Israel, 
 until at last, “‘in the fulness of time,”’ one 
 was found, a pure virgin, worthy to receive 
 
 “that holy thing” fashioned by the Spirit - 
 
 of God, and God became incarnate in Man, 
 and a Man became truly the Son of God. 
 Here God’s immanence in Man found its 
 culmination. Here was One fully indwelt 
 
 by the Spirit of God. 
 
 3. Tue Earztier MANIFESTATIONS OF THE 
 SPIRIT 
 
 It is noticeable that in Israel, in the earlier 
 part of the history, notions are expressed 
 regarding the working of the Spirit of God 
 which are crude. Nothing, for instance, 
 can be more entirely unethical than the 
 exploits of Samson, yet we are told that 
 “the Spirit of God came upon him,” when 
 he accomplished them. Again, we are in- 
 formed that “‘ an evil spirit from the Lord ”’ 
 came upon Saul, and that God sent “a 
 
 12 
 
 = 
 
Spirit in Nature and in Man 
 
 lying spirit”? into the prophets, who pro- 
 phesied falsely. And, generally speaking, 
 it is worthy of remark that in the Old | 
 Testament it is the abnormal which is 
 ascribed to the Spirit of God, as seen in 
 trances, in visions, in religious excitement or 
 ecstasy, and, of course, in the inspiration of 
 the prophets. When Saul met some of them, 
 we are told “ the Spirit of God came upon 
 him ” also, and he went on and prophesied, 
 until he came to Naioth in Ramah, and he 
 stripped off his clothes, and prophesied 
 before Samuel in like manner, and lay 
 down naked all that day, and all that night. 
 Wherefore they say, “ Is Saul also among the 
 prophets?’ Whatever was the nature of 
 this religious frenzy, there was little that 
 was moral or spiritual about it, as is clear 
 from his subsequent conduct and career. 
 And the remarkable thing is that seldom is 
 the Spirit of God, in the Old Testament, 
 referred to as the source of moral purity 
 and excellence. Only in such exceptional 
 utterances as the Psalmist’s do we find it, 
 
 as when he prays, “Take not Thy Holy 
 3 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Spirit away from me,” or when the prophet 
 prays, “Thy Spirit is good, lead me into 
 the land of uprightness.” There is, on the © 
 whole, a marked reserve in the gift and 
 operation of the Spirit of God in the Old 
 Dispensation. It had to do with the ab- 
 normal, rather than with the moral, and was 
 the special gift bestowed on such persons 
 as the prophets. But the greatest minds 
 among them, such as Joel, looked forward 
 to a time when the gift of the Spirit would 
 not be the special reserve of the few, but 
 the common heritage of all. ‘“ And it shall 
 come to pass afterward, that I will pour 
 out My Spirit upon all flesh: and your 
 sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 
 your old men shall dream dreams, and your 
 young men shall see visions, and it shall 
 come to pass that whosoever shall call on 
 the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 
 
 It is not, therefore, surprising that in 
 the New Testament, after Pentecost, there 
 should be also traces of the abnormal in 
 the effects of the Spirit’s working, as seen, 
 for instance, in the speaking with tongues, 
 
 14 
 
Spirit in Nature and in Man 
 
 and the temporary ministry of the New 
 Testament prophets. These charismatic 
 gifts were apt to lead to disorder and con- 
 
 fusion in the first Christian assemblies, and 
 
 Paul had to give some stringent regulations 
 intended to keep these manifestations within 
 bounds, so that all things might be done 
 “ decently and in order.” And the Apostle, 
 though he claims that he spoke with tongues 
 more than they all, yet adds emphatically, 
 “In Church, I would rather say five words 
 with my own mind for the instruction of the 
 people than ten thousand words in a tongue.” 
 He saw the perils connected with these and 
 all scenes of religious excitement, and he 
 taught that all the gifts of the Spirit were to 
 be valued in proportion as they could be 
 used for the edification of the Church. It 
 was this Apostle’s great contribution to our 
 understanding of the work of the Spirit 
 that he showed that His main work had to 
 do, not with the abnormal, but with the 
 moral and spiritual, that His presence and 
 power were no longer to be reserved for the 
 exceptional illumination of a few inspired 
 
 15 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 men, but were the common heritage of the 
 whole Christian Church, the common pos- » 
 session of every believing man and woman: 
 and that the Spirit was given to aid us in 
 the ordinary life and duty of each day, and 
 to produce in all His people those “ fruits 
 of the Spirit’? by which they should be 
 able in all things to adorn their Christian 
 profession. 
 
I] 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 BLESSED TRINITY 
 
Resets: “Though i: nitely mysterious, the ‘revelation is hed Aan fi) 
 rat one God as ! _ other, Son, and Holy Spirit fulfils the ‘Ag 
 “ profoundest, the richest, and the noblest Slay hike of ¥ 
 the Divine. Life.””—Dr. Date. ; 
 ltd i ve 
 aide 
 i : / 
 
II 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE BLESSED 
 TRINITY? 
 
 Mr. H. G. We tts, in his book, God, the 
 Invisible King, has given us the very latest 
 religion, and he writes with all the earnest- 
 ness and passion of one who for himself has 
 found God. His is so interesting a figure 
 in the intellectual life of to-day, and his 
 books have given so much instruction and 
 delight to many, that one hesitates to say 
 anything derogatory about what has meant 
 so much to him, although he does not spare 
 the deepest and tenderest convictions of 
 
 1 ScripTuRE ReFERENCES,—Matt. vii. 22-23, xii. 31, xiii. 30, 
 41, xvi, 27, xxv. 31-33, xxviii, 19-20; Luke i. 35, xii. 3-9; 
 John i, 1-18, iii, 16, iv. 24, v. 16-18, x. 14-15, 30-38, xi. 27, 
 Xv. 263 xvi. 13-14, XVii. 2-5, 24, xx. 28; Acts xiii, 2; Rom. 
 i. 3-43 1 Cor. ii. 8-11, vi. 19, viii. 6, xii. 11, xv. 24-27, xvi, 
 22-233 2 Cor. iii. 3, iv. 3-6; v. 10, xiii, 14; Eph, ii.213 
 Phil, ii. 6-11; Col. i. 15-17; Tit. ii. 13; Heb. i. 1-5, 
 ii. 5-10, ‘ 
 
 i 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Christians, but lashes them with needless 
 scorn. On many pages, it is evident 
 that his conception of Christianity is very 
 partial, and that he criticizes what he has 
 failed to understand. His own theory ap- 
 pears to be that the ultimate of existence is 
 a Veiled Being which seems to know nothing 
 of life or death or good or ill. Of that 
 Being, whether it is simple, or complex, 
 or divine, we know nothing. The new 
 religion does not pretend that the God of 
 its life is that Being, or that He has any 
 
 relation of control or association with that ~ 
 
 Being ; yet coming out of this Veiled Being, 
 proceeding out of it in a manner altogether 
 inconceivable, is another lesser Being, an 
 impulse thrusting through matter, and 
 clothing itself in continually material 
 forms, the maker of our world, Life, the 
 Will to be. And it is this second Being, 
 the God within us, the God of our Life, our 
 Comrade God, whom Mr. Wells worships, 
 and to whom he prays. About this Being 
 he writes much which is wholly admirable, 
 and with which every Christian will agree. 
 20 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Trinity 
 
 But the fact seems to be that the God whom 
 he thinks he has discovered is in reality 
 none other than God the Holy Spirit, the 
 God within us, our Comrade God, and that 
 the truth concerning Him has been long 
 ago much more fully and felicitously set 
 forth in the pages of the New Testament 
 than by Mr. Wells. 
 
 When we try to make clear to biflee 
 what is meant by the Holy Spirit, we are 
 at once led up into a transcendental 
 realm. We are face to face with the pro- 
 found mysteries concerning the Being and 
 Nature of God. And when we meditate 
 on these things, we must do so in the pro- 
 foundest humility, acknowledging that we 
 have no plummet wherewith to sound these 
 depths. In the Revelation given to us we 
 must be conscious that the words used are 
 but symbols and hints, and that the Divine 
 Reality, that abyss of Ineffable Light and 
 Love, must be something infinitely greater 
 than we are able to imagine or conceive. 
 
 21 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 f 
 
 1. How THE DoctriNE OF THE TRINITY 
 WAS ARRIVED AT. | 
 
 The doctrine of the Trinity was arrived 
 at by the Church, not by the way of philo- 
 
 sophical speculation on the nature and 
 
 being of God, but by the way of spiritual 
 experience. The revelation which God has 
 given us of Himself has been a progressive 
 one. Before Christ, He was first of all made 
 known to men as the God of Israel, and then 
 
 as the one God of the whole world. “Hear, | 
 
 © Israel, Jehovah our God is one Lord.” 
 No internal distinctions are attributed to 
 Him. There is no teaching of a Trinity 
 in the Old Testament, though there may 
 be dim foreshadowings of this. In Christ 
 there was given a new and richer manifesta- 
 tion of God. He appeared as a man, leading 
 a man’s life. But He claimed to stand in 
 a unique relationship to God. And the 
 disciples felt that there was that in Him 
 which vindicated His claim. And so the 
 Church of the New Testament worshipped 
 
 Christ, prayed to Christ, and gave Him 
 
 prayed i 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Trinity 
 
 Divine honours. Ananias described Paul 
 as having authority from the High Priests 
 to put any one in chains “‘ who invokes Thy 
 Name.” Yet the God who sent Ananias 
 to Paul is still “‘ the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ,” the first abiding object 
 of worship, and Christ was exalted and 
 honoured with Him. The Church viewed 
 the Risen and Ascended Christ, in whom 
 they believed, as exalted to the right hand of 
 God, and as having entered into the life 
 and power of God, because they felt that 
 His rightful phce was there. One can see 
 the beginnings o. this conviction, for in- 
 stance, in the mina. “! the Apostle Peter, 
 when, in the presence u* 2 sublime mani- 
 festation of power, he exclaimed, “ Depart 
 from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 
 He felt that He who was with him in the 
 boat belonged to a different order or cate- 
 gory from himself. He realized that Jesus 
 was not as other sinful men. Thus. the 
 effect of the life of Christ on earth was to 
 give Him a place as Son beside God the 
 Father, and so to enrich the conception of 
 
 23 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 God’s Fatherhood by that of Sonship. God 
 was thenceforth thought of as the Father, 
 and Jesus as the Son of the Father. ‘Then 
 after Christ’s Ascension came the abiding 
 activity of the Holy Spirit. Christ had 
 foretold this gift, and always in terms in- 
 . dicating Being, as distinct from mere in- 
 fluence, and including a will and a purpose. 
 After Pentecost, the Church realized that 
 the promised Helper had come, and was 
 present with them. The energy of the 
 convincing and renewing Spirit who wrought 
 on the world through them was such that 
 they felt that the results achieved could 
 not be due to any merely human agency, 
 but must be traced to a Divine influence 
 proceeding from a Divine Person. Thus 
 the Divine Spirit came to be adored and 
 worshipped with the Father and the Son. 
 This is the living practical Trinity, the only 
 Trinity known to the primitive Church. 
 And so believers were baptized into “ the 
 Name of the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Ghost.” ‘Three are mentioned, but 
 the Name is One. And the same is seen 
 
 24 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Trinity 
 
 in the benediction—‘ The grace of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and 
 the communion of the Holy Spirit be with 
 you all.” | 
 
 2. How To ConcEIVE OF THE TRINITY. 
 
 As the Church began to reflect on these 
 wonderful facts of experience, it was in- 
 evitable that the question should be raised, 
 “Tf there be but one God, how are we to 
 think of Him as also three—the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Spirit ?”’ And so it has 
 endeavoured, not always wisely, to set forth 
 a doctrine which would in some measure 
 correspond to the facts of experience. It 
 is much to be feared, however, that the 
 popular conception of the Trinity is little 
 short of a belief in three Gods. If sacred 
 art only be taken as any indication, how 
 often have we seen in the great continental 
 galleries representations of God the Father 
 as an old and venerable man, with a long, 
 white beard, seated on a throne, while 
 beside Him stands or sits the Son, the Holy 
 
 25 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Spirit being rather vaguely indicated by a 
 Dove hovering over the heads of both, or 
 else completely displaced by the figure of the 
 Mother of our Lord, benignant and tender, 
 interceding with her sterner Son? All this 
 is shockingly crude, so far as religious truth 
 is concerned. And if such ideas are present 
 in the mind, it is impossible to deny that 
 such thinking is open to the charge of be- 
 lieving in three Gods. But we must never 
 forget that the doctrine of the Trinity is 
 an endeavour to affirm the Unity of God. 
 And we must so conceive of the Trinity in 
 Unity as jealously to safeguard this sacred 
 truth. It is almost incredible to us that the 
 great Schism which took place in the eleventh 
 century between the Western or Roman 
 Church and the Eastern or Greek Church 
 was over the question whether the Holy 
 Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as 
 from the Father. The Western Church 
 affirmed, the Eastern Church denied this. 
 To us in these days, subtle metaphysical 
 distinctions suggested by such phrases as 
 “eternal generation,” “the procession of 
 26 
 
The Holy Spirit in the ‘Trinity 
 
 the Spirit from the Father and the Son,” 
 have hardly any meaning. There must surely 
 be some possibility of setting forth the 
 Nature of God, in so far as He has revealed 
 Himself to us, in such a way that the plain 
 man, who is not a professional theologian, 
 can understand it. The doctrine of the 
 Trinity is often stated in such a way as 
 to confuse the mind and confound the 
 reason. 
 
 We only mystify ourselves by using, in 
 this connection, the word “ Person.” Our 
 -modern English word has certainly come to 
 mean a separate individual. Now it is 
 nonsense to say that there is one God and 
 then to say that in the One God there are 
 three Persons in the sense in which we 
 ordinarily use that word. If there are three 
 separate individualities, with three separate 
 wills, and three separate centres of con- 
 sciousness, then there are three Gods. But 
 we know that there is but One living and 
 true God. God is not Three in the same 
 _sense in which He is One. ‘Therefore it is 
 better for us to drop altogether, in this 
 
 27 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 connection, the use of the word Person. 
 It only confuses us. 
 
 3. DiIsTINCTIONS IN THE GODHEAD. 
 
 In Nature we see life becoming more and 
 more wonderful in its ascent. At first it is 
 simple in its being, but gradually becomes 
 more complex, until we reach the marvel 
 of man’s nature. In him there is a trinity 
 of a kind, for we speak of him as having 
 body, soul, and spirit. And yet this trinity 
 is a unity. Should it surprise us, then, to 
 know that in the Infinite and Eternal Being, 
 the Source of all Life, there is a still pro- 
 founder and richer complexity of nature 
 which is made known to us under the names 
 of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet 
 that this Being is One God? Instead of 
 using the word ‘“‘ persons,” let us say that 
 there are distinctions in the Godhead. 
 There is a threefoldness in His Nature. The 
 essence of God is Love. But if so, then, 
 before the world was, before He summoned 
 the Universe into being, and the morning 
 
 28 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Trinity 
 
 stars sang together, the Eternal Love must 
 have had some object for His Love, and He 
 found it within His own Being. ‘There was 
 a mutual outgoing of Love between the 
 Eternal Father and the Eternal Son, and 
 the bond between them was the Eternal © 
 Spirit. God is a Spirit. And we cannot 
 think of the Holy Spirit of God as in any 
 sense separate from that Spirit. “The 
 Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep 
 things of God.” 
 
 The Names of the Spirit point 1n the same 
 Direction—He is called “The Spirit of 
 God,” “The Spirit of the Father,” “The 
 Spirit of the Son,” “ The Spirit of Christ,” 
 thus indicating the essential unity between 
 them. For we cannot separate between God 
 and His Spirit, or between Christ and His 
 Spirit. Nor is there any attempt to do soin 
 Scripture. As Paul puts it, “ Now the Lord 
 (and by the Lord he meant the Lord Jesus) 
 1s that Spirit.” The Spirit of God is God 
 in His essential nature, as He goes forth to 
 dwell in the Eternal Son, and, through Him, 
 in the sons of men. : 
 
 29 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 4. A GROUND FOR THESE DISTINCTIONS IN 
 THE BEING oF Gob. | 
 
 God first manifested Himself as the 
 Creator and Source of all things, the Father 
 of men. Then He manifested Himself as 
 the Redeeming Son, the Saviour. And, 
 finally, He manifested Himself as the in- 
 dwelling, regenerating, sanctifying Spirit, 
 ever with us. ‘* Closer is He than breathing, 
 and nearer than hands or feet.” And be- 
 cause there were these three modes of mani- 
 festation, it has been inferred that a ground 
 for them must exist in the Being of God 
 Himself, and that there is a threefoldness 
 in God’s essential nature. And this is 
 made known to us in Scripture. In the 
 Fourth Gospel, for instance, Christ asserts 
 His pre-existence. ‘‘ Before Abraham was, I 
 am,” ‘Glorify thou Me with the glory 
 which I had with thee, before the world was.” 
 John tells us, “‘In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God.” ‘The 
 Word was the medium of God’s Creation. 
 * All things were made by Him.” In the 
 
 30 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Trinity 
 
 years of time, the Word became flesh, and 
 tabernacled among men, and they beheld 
 “the glory of the only-begotten of the 
 
 Father.” Now here there is a distinction, — 
 
 God, and God with God. The office of the 
 latter is utterance, forthgoing, action. ‘Thus 
 there is a duality in God. The unique 
 nature and mission of Christ are thus traced 
 to something in the being of Ged. But 
 Christ and the Holy Spirit are so related, 
 as we shall see, that both must be essentially 
 within or essentially without the Godhead. 
 God lives as the Father, God Original. He 
 lives as God uttered, the Word. God going 
 forth is related to God Original, as your 
 word is to your mind. The third element 
 is the unifying Spirit, the common life of 
 the Father and the Eternal Word. If God 
 creates, He will act as God going forth, and 
 so all things come into being through the 
 Word. If He enters into a race of created 
 beings like ourselves in order to restore them 
 ‘to Himself, He will do so by His Spirit. 
 Yet all such works of Word and Spirit are 
 essentially works of God the Father, and 
 
 , 31 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 neither. of them work apart from Him, nor 
 are even to be thought of as separate from 
 Him. They are ever one with Him. This 
 conception of the Trinity avoids separating 
 God into parts. Neither the Son nor the 
 Spirit is a section of the Godhead. No one 
 of the three has attributes that the others 
 do not possess. The Father is Eternal 
 Love. The Son is Eternal Love. The 
 Spirit is Eternal Love. 
 
 Such a conception of the Trinity in Unity 
 does not confound the Reason. It suggests 
 a wealth of being in God, a social element in 
 the nature of God, which is more congenial 
 to our thinking than the cold, remote unity 
 suggested by Deism. And it is confirmed 
 by the spiritual experience of the Church, 
 and by the manner in which it fits in 
 with the Grand Economy of Redemption 
 revealed in the Gospel. Without such a 
 threefoldness in God, the redemption of 
 man would have been impossible. But 
 when we conceive of there being such a 
 distinction in the Being of God as has been 
 suggested, we can at least dimly understand 
 
 32 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Trinity 
 
 how the Eternal Father gave His Son for 
 the redemption of the world, how the Word 
 became flesh and dwelt among us, how He 
 bore our sins in His own body on the Tree, 
 and how the Holy Spirit of God goes forth 
 to dwell in man, to regenerate him, to 
 enable him to make his own the redeeming 
 work of the Saviour, so that it shall become 
 effectual for him, and thus restore the 
 broken fellowship between God and man. 
 For God the Holy Spirit is God going forth 
 to dwell in man, and make him once more a 
 son of God. | 
 
 33 
 
III 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN OUR LORD 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
‘The essence of the Christian religion lies in its 
 realization of the truth that the union of the Human and 
 the Divine is possible. It proclaims that God and man 
 may have communion with one another. This fact is not 
 a theory, or a speculation, but an experience that was 
 perpetually exhibited in the soul of the Founder, and to 
 which we are asked perpetually to look, and which can 
 happen in the depth of every soul. This has to be 
 believed before any great change can come over mankind 
 or over the affairs of this world. Mankind must perforce 
 realize that it 1s missing infinitely much for its own 
 strength, freedom, and blessedness when it misses this 
 message of the possibility of the union of the Human 
 and the Divine, and of the possibility of the creation of 
 ever-new spiritual qualities within the soul.””-—Dr. W. 
 Tupor Jones. 
 
Iit 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN OUR LORD 
 JESUS CHRIST? 
 
 It would be impossible to emphasize too 
 strongly the closeness of the connection 
 both in Being and Work between the Holy 
 Spirit and our Lord Jesus Christ. We have 
 already tried to set forth His place in the 
 Blessed ‘Trinity. We have seen something 
 of His work in creation, and how He sought 
 an ever fuller entrance into humanity. But 
 it was not until Christ came, Himself a 
 Child of the Spirit, that God could obtain 
 the entrance He desired. The danger of 
 any study of the Holy Spirit is that it is 
 apt to become vague and transcendental. 
 
 1 ScripTuRE REFERENCES.—Matt. i. 18, 20, iii. 11, iv. 1; Mark 
 $118.5, Luke \i.' 35, 41-425" iil, 225. iv. 1-2, 14,18 > John a 
 32-33, iil. 34, xiv. 16-18, xv. 26-27, xvi. 7-16; Acts i. 2, 5, 
 x. 38; Rom. i. 3-4; 1 Cor. xii. 3, xv. 45; 2 Cor, iii. 17-18; 
 Phil. i. 19; Heb. ix. 14; 1 John iv, 1-2, 
 
 37 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 But Jesus Christ is true Man. And it will 
 keep our subject human if we remember 
 that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus 
 Christ. So close is the connection that in 
 Scripture they sometimes seem to be iden- 
 tified. As when Jesus says that He will 
 pray the Father to send the Spirit, and adds, 
 “I will not leave you forlorn. I am coming 
 to you.” But in other passages the dis- 
 tinction is clearly made. “I will ask the 
 Father to give you another Helper to be 
 with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.” 
 He is given by the Father, yet sent by the 
 Son. And He is to come to take the place 
 of Christ, as His Substitute and Repre- 
 sentative. So that when we think of the 
 Holy Spirit, we shall do well to think of 
 Him as the continued Presence of Christ. 
 St. Paul did not hesitate to say, “ Now the 
 Lord is that Spirit.” 
 
 When we examine the teaching of Scrip- 
 ture in regard to the various events in the 
 life of our Lord, we see illustrated and 
 confirmed in a remarkable manner the 
 closeness of the union between Christ 
 
 38 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 and the Holy Spirit. He is Christ’s Alter 
 Ego. | | 
 
 1. THe Horny Spirir aND THE BirRTH OF 
 CuristT. 
 
 That we owe the Incarnation of the Son 
 of God to the Holy Spirit is plainly taught 
 in Scripture. The promise to Mary, the 
 Mother of our Lord, was this, ‘‘ The. Holy 
 Spirit will come upon you, the power of the 
 Most High will overshadow you: thus, 
 what is born will be called holy, the Son 
 of God.” 
 
 When we try to set forth in words what 
 actually took place at the Incarnation, we 
 are conscious that such a theme is dark with 
 excess of light, and blinds our dim eyes. It 
 may be that the Church has not yet been 
 led into all the truth on this subject. It is 
 more than doubtful whether we can rest 
 satisfied with the decisions of past Councils 
 in regard to the Person of Christ. They 
 are all more or less dominated by the 
 subtleties of Greek philosophy. It is diffi- 
 cult, for instance, any longer to accept the 
 
 39 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 teaching of two natures in One Person. As 
 the personality is Divine, this theory in- 
 volves the conception of an impersonal 
 human nature. Jesus Christ was Divine, 
 and had a Divine Nature. But if so, the 
 human nature He had must have been im- 
 personal, else there had been two Persons. 
 But an impersonal human nature is meaning- 
 less to us. For human nature includes 
 mind, will, reason, affections. But how 
 can these exist without personality? And 
 any idea of two minds, or two wills, or a 
 double consciousness is contrary to “ the 
 simplicity which is in Christ.’ By no 
 external combination of this sort can you 
 define the One glorious Divine-human being 
 portrayed in the Gospels, and shining in 
 His beauty there. Nor could He ever thus 
 be true Man, a real member of the human 
 race, or the real head of it. The truth must 
 be something simpler than this. 
 
 In the Incarnation, we see God going out 
 of Himself as Son to realize His life in human 
 form. Only by thinking of the Incarnation 
 as a process, by which God as Son realized 
 
 40 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 Himself in humanity, can we arrive at the 
 truth. And in order that this might be 
 accomplished, a long process of moral and 
 spiritual development had to take place in 
 that chosen race, whose glory it will ever be 
 that the Spirit of God found there the most 
 congenial sphere for His indwelling. The 
 Spirit dwelt in this race ever more fully, as 
 we have seen, down the long ages of Israel’s © 
 history, lifting up the people gradually to 
 a higher spiritual level, until in the fulness 
 of time a pure Virgin was found capable of 
 receiving His complete and perfect indwelling. 
 This view has, at least, this advantage that 
 it suggests that Mary had a moral and 
 spiritual fitness for the unique honour con- 
 ferred on her in being the Mother of our 
 Lord, and that her selection was not purely 
 arbitrary. So that Christ’s appearance in 
 the flesh was the culmination of a long pro- 
 cess. ‘The Incarnation was the crown of a 
 gradual becoming of God in Man. And this 
 process was accomplished by the Spirit, 
 whose aim had ever been more fully to’ 
 possess man. Previous to this, God was in 
 
 41 
 
d 
 
 The Power of the Spirit 
 
 the world in an impersonal way. But the 
 new element in Christianity was that in 
 Christ God entered humanity in a personal 
 form, and becomes its quickening Spirit. 
 In Christ we see not so much a union of the 
 human and the Divine, as a full expression 
 of the Divine in the human; of God in 
 Man. 
 
 God, we know, works always through 
 Law. All the sequences of Nature follow 
 an orderly succession, and in a clearly linked 
 chain of cause and effect. God’s method 
 of working is by Evolution, by an unfolding 
 of Creation through an immanent principle 
 of Life. The Spirit of God was the primal 
 cause of the material Creation, and He it 
 was who set in motion the great process 
 which culminated in the Word being made 
 flesh. We see in this a new creative act of 
 God through the Holy Spirit, in virtue of | 
 which a Child enters the world without 
 human paternity. The substance of His 
 humanity was received from His Mother. 
 But the vitalizing power which brought Him 
 into being in human form came from the 
 
 42 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 Holy Spirit who imparted to Him the sinless 
 image of God. The Christ is the Child of 
 the Holy Spirit. He was the Eternal Son 
 of God in virtue of His possession of the 
 Eternal Spirit as the immanent principle 
 of the life of God. This involved no abrupt 
 breaking-in of the supernatural. At each 
 stage in the upward march there is a fresh 
 action of the Holy Spirit. This was so in 
 the passing from the inorganic to the organic, 
 when life appeared. It was so when the first 
 man was born, made in the image of God. 
 And it is because there is in man this kinship 
 with God, this capacity to become one with 
 God, that it was possible for God to become 
 Man. And it was so now when at last a Man 
 appears, who is wholly after the Spirit, the 
 Son of God. Now the Divine Life is fully 
 tealized in Man. It was a new entrance of 
 God as Son into humanity. ‘‘ No form of 
 doctrine which supposes an entrance of the 
 Son of God into this world, as from without, 
 canever give us both God and Manin Christ, 
 with no loss either to His Deity or to His 
 Humanity.” The spiritual element in the 
 
 43 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 world isone. It is Godin Man. It is God 
 the Holy Spirit ever seeking to dwell in man. 
 And when, in the fulness of time, this was 
 possible in its perfection, the Incarnation 
 took place. In Christ, humanity is one with 
 God, and to be a Son of God, indwelt by 
 God, is the ideal of every man. 
 
 2. Tue Hory Spirit anp THE Baptism. 
 
 Jesus was baptized with the Holy Spirit. 
 “The Holy Spirit descended in bodily form 
 like a dove upon Him; and a voice came 
 from heaven, ‘Thou art My Son, the 
 beloved, in Thee I am well pleased.’ ” 
 This is not the place to speak of the thirty 
 years of privacy and obscurity in Nazareth. 
 His development was truly human, for “ He 
 increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in 
 favour with God and man.” But at last 
 the hour arrived for Him to take up His real 
 life-work as the Messiah and Saviour of men. 
 It is not easy to understand why this Child 
 of the Spirit needed a fresh baptism of the 
 Spirit. But at least we can see that He had 
 
 at 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 to be equipped for His mission, and to be 
 endowed with powers needed for His special 
 work. ‘These powers were not given till 
 
 they were required. He needed not to be ~ 
 
 born again, for from the beginning of His 
 earthly life He was born of God. But now 
 He had to be anointed for His work as 
 Prophet, Priest, and King. At His baptism, 
 He passed through an experience analogous 
 to what the disciples passed through at 
 Pentecost, when they were equipped with 
 the powers they needed for the task which 
 confrontedthem. His baptism was a marked 
 stage in His development. It seems to 
 have been the occasion when He received 
 His miraculous powers, for up to this time, 
 so far as we know, He had wrought no 
 miracle; but immediately after this, His 
 mighty works began. We may not fathom 
 what His consciousness had been as He grew 
 up at Nazareth, or when it began to dawn 
 upon Him who He was, but may we not 
 venture to say that now at His baptism He 
 came into the full consciousness of His 
 unique relation to the Father, and of the 
 
 45 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 unique mission entrusted to Him? And it 
 should give us pause when we see that even 
 the Holy One had to be equipped by the 
 Holy Spirit ere He went forth to fulfil His 
 task. How much more then do we need this 
 baptism of the Spirit ere we venture upon 
 our work for God ? : 
 
 3. Tue Hoty Spirit anp tHe Temprarion, 
 
 Following the Baptism came the Tempta- 
 tion, and here also we see the Holy Spirit 
 at work, “From the Jordan Jesus came 
 back full of the Holy Spirit, and for forty 
 days He was led by the Spirit in the desert, 
 while the Devil tempted Him.” St. Mark 
 puts the matter still more strongly. “Then 
 the Spirit drove Him immediately into the 
 desert,” that wild, rocky country between 
 Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, which one 
 sees on the left hand on the way down to 
 Jericho. God is in eternal antagonism to 
 evil, When He conferred on man the awful 
 power of free will, He gave him the power 
 to choose between Good and Evil, and man, 
 
 46 
 
 4 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 to the grief of the Eternal Love, chose evil, 
 to his own undoing and misery. But now 
 at last God has found a Champion in a Man 
 fully possessed by the Spirit, and perfectly 
 equipped for the contest. 
 *¢O loving wisdom of our God 
 When all was sin and shame, 
 A second Adam to the fight 
 
 And to the rescue came. 
 
 O wisest love! that flesh and blood 
 Which did in Adam fail 
 
 Should strive afresh against the foe, 
 Should strive and should prevail.” 
 
 The. conflict was fierce, but the victory 
 was complete. The enemy of souls came, 
 and found nothing responsive to evil in 
 Christ. And though the attack was con- 
 stantly renewed, the issue was ever the same. 
 So that Jesus could issue the immortal 
 challenge, ‘“‘ Which of you convinceth Me 
 of sin?” And in His victory, ours, through 
 the same Holy Spirit, is presaged and 
 
 assured. 
 
 47 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 4. Tue Hory Spirit anp THE Ministry 
 OF JESUS 
 
 After the Temptation, it is written, 
 “‘’Then Jesus came back in the power of the 
 Spirit to Galilee.” ‘In the power of the 
 Spirit,” that was the keynote of all His 
 ministry, and in that power it was all ful- 
 filled. The Spirit abode upon Him. This 
 was the beginning of the permanent indwell- 
 ing in man of the Spirit of God, which 
 yet shall be realized in all men. What an 
 inward reinforcement this was to Jesus may 
 be inferred from these words used of Him 
 on one occasion, “ He, thrilled with joy in 
 the Holy Spirit, said...’ That was 
 always the source of His joy and strength. 
 Here was His secret fount of power and 
 victory. We are plainly told that His 
 miraculous deeds were done in the power of 
 the Spirit. ‘And if I, by the Spirit, cast, 
 out devils...” But all His teaching was 
 similarly explained. ‘‘ He whom God has 
 sent utters the words of God; God gives 
 Him the Spirit in no sparing measure.” 
 
 48 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 One of the most marvellous features in the 
 ministry of this Child of the Spirit, to whom 
 the Spirit had been given in no sparing 
 measure, is that even He needed to have 
 His powers replenished by long seasons of 
 communion with God. Hence the nights 
 spent thus on the mountain-top. Surely 
 here there is a deep lesson for all God’s 
 people. They have the Spirit. They 
 may even have been “filled with the 
 Spirit.” But if Christ needed to be) re: 
 plenished by fellowship with the Eternal, 
 how much more do we? No wonder that 
 when Jesus began to teach, men recognized 
 that they were listening to the voice of God, 
 and said, ‘This is new teaching with 
 authority behind it.” It was the authority 
 of the Holy Spirit of God which men recog- 
 nized. And Jesus explained it when He 
 said, ‘‘ The words I have spoken are not 
 Mine but His that sent Me,” “I have 
 given them Thy words,” “ ‘The words I have 
 uttered to you are Spirit and life.” The 
 whole ministry is admirably described by 
 St. Peter when he said, ‘“‘ God anointed 
 
 a 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power, 
 who went about doing good.” He was able 
 to go about doing good, because He had 
 been anointed with the Holy Spirit and with 
 power. Here is summed up in these simple 
 words the whole Christian life, and the true 
 secret of it. If we would follow in the 
 Master’s steps, we must be anointed with 
 
 the Holy Spirit, as He was. 
 
 5. Tue Hory Spirit anpD THE DeaTH OF 
 CurRIST 
 
 The ministry was crowned in His death. 
 The death of Christ was not inevitable, 
 as the death of most other men is. 
 It was voluntary. “No man taketh My 
 life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.” 
 It was the final achievement of His earthly 
 life. ‘This is not the place to enter into a 
 full discussion of this momentous theme, 
 which has so many aspects. The point to 
 notice here is that it also was accomplished 
 “in the power of the Spirit.” It is true 
 _ that the verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 
 50 
 
- 
 
 The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 which refers to this is a difficult one, and: 
 its correct rendering somewhat uncertain. 
 The Authorized Version is, ‘‘ How much more 
 shall the blood of Christ, who through the 
 Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot 
 to God, purge your conscience from dead 
 works to serve the living God?” The 
 Revised Version maintains the reference to 
 the Holy Spirit, “‘ who through the Eternal 
 Spirit offered Himself without blemish to 
 God.” Dr. Weymouth, in his translation, 
 is even more explicit, “‘ who, strengthened 
 by the Eternal Spirit offered Himself to 
 God.” Dr. Dale considers that the point 
 here emphasized is, that the voluntary 
 sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ was a 
 Divine act. He assumed the nature of man, 
 but even in His humiliation He was God 
 still. It was God who made Himself of no 
 reputation, and became obedient to death, 
 even the death of the Cross. It was through 
 the Eternal Spirit, the Divine personality and 
 will which constituted the very centre and 
 root of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, that 
 He endured the Cross, despising the shame. 
 
 51 
 
 ¢ 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 6. Jesus Curist Baptizes wiTH THE HoLy 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 Said the Baptist in anticipation, ‘I 
 indeed baptize you with water, He shall 
 baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Said 
 St. Peter, “‘ This Jesus God raised, as we all 
 can bear witness. Uplifted, then, by God’s 
 right hand, and receiving from the Father 
 the long-promised Holy Spirit, He has 
 poured on us what ye now see and hear.” 
 The thought should ever be before our 
 minds, “Christ gives the Spirit. Christ 
 baptizes with the Spirit.” With what holy 
 boldness may we go to Christ and ask Him 
 to impart to us His own gift? He knows 
 the greatness of our need. And the whole 
 end and purpose of His mission is that we 
 might receive this gift, and have God 
 dwelling within us. For He knows that only 
 thus can we obtain the dominion over sin. 
 
 §2 
 
The Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ 
 
 7. Finatty, THe Hory Spirir coMPLETES 
 THE Work oF CuristT. 
 
 The Holy Spirit came in the fulness 
 _ of His power at Pentecost to take Christ’s 
 place in the Church. Christ, hitherto, 
 had been their Helper. Now here is that 
 other Helper whom He had promised — 
 to send. And His work is “to take of 
 the things that are Christ’s and show 
 them unto us.” The Spirit is not to speak 
 of Himself, but of Christ. And so Christ 
 said, “ He shall glorify Me.” And this the 
 Holy Spirit delights to do. Any spirit that 
 does not glorify Christ is not the Holy 
 Spirit. It is He who makes us feel our 
 need of Christ, by convincing us of our sin, 
 and awakening within us a divine discontent. 
 It is the Holy Spirit who opens our eyes to 
 the beauty and all-sufficiency of Christ, as 
 meeting our need. It is the Spirit who 
 quickens the soul into newness of life, and 
 enables us to apprehend Christ. It is the 
 Spirit who grafts us into Christ, as branches 
 into the True Vine. It is through the 
 
 53 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Spirit that Christ becomes “ Christ in us.” 
 It is He who makes Christ to be to us 
 “wisdom, and righteousness, and sancti- 
 fication, and redemption.” ‘The Spirit is 
 the Spirit of Christ ; Christ is the fountain, 
 and the Spirit the fertilizing stream. It is 
 He who uplifts the sweet glory of Christ 
 before the aching eyes of the contrite, and 
 applies the soft balm of Christ to the 
 wounds which sin has made. The Spirit 
 manifests to the soul Christ as He is, and 
 then the soul embraces Christ with joy. 
 The Spirit gives faith by providing the facts 
 on which faith can work. Then the soul 
 sees, trusts, appropriates the manifested 
 Christ, and thus believing has life through 
 His Name. 
 
 54 
 
PEN TECOST : THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 IN: THE CHU RCH 
 
a oe « The ‘one thing 1 ‘ | 
 ae es our day is to- be filled with: the . Spi.” Asa 
 | Murray. | Roe | 
 
IV 
 
 PENTECOST: THE HOLY SPIRIT IN 
 ’ THE CHURCE * 
 
 ““Wuen the day of Pentecost was fully 
 come” (24th May a.p. 33), a new era in 
 the world began, a new stage in the great 
 process of redemption was reached, in which 
 the Holy Spirit of God gained a fuller en- 
 trance into humanity than before. And 
 yet how unheeding the great, busy world 
 was of what was happening, even as it had 
 been at the Incarnation, when Jesus Christ. 
 was born. When the Lord Jesus on the 
 last day—that great day of the feast—had 
 
 1 Scriprure Rererences.—John xiv, 25-26, xx. 223 Acts i, 8, 
 ii. 3-4, 17-18, 38, 41, iv. 8, 31, Vv. 3, 32, Vi. 3, 7-8, viii. 14-18, 
 29, 39) 1X. 17, 31, X- 19, 44-48, xi. 12, 15, 28, xiii; 2, 52, 
 XV, 8-9, 28, xvi. 6-8, xix.2, 6, xx. 22, °28, xxi, 4, 1% 5 
 4 Cor. xii.’ 7-11, 13, xiv. 1-2,°§3,2 Cor. xi. 4; Eph, iii. 
 5, iv. 3-4; Phil. ii. 1; 1 Tim. iv. 143 2 Tim. iii. 16-19; 
 Heb, iii..7, x. 15; 1 Pet. i 10-11; 2 Pet, i, 213 1 John v, 7; 
 Rev. i. 10, ii. 7, iii. 1, iv. 2, xiv. 13, xix. 10, xxii. 17. 
 
 57 
 
The Power of ‘ie Spirit 
 
 stood and cried, saying, “‘ If any man thirst, 
 let him come unto Me and drink. He who 
 believes in Me, out of his body, as Scripture 
 says, streams of living water will flow,” 
 John’s comment in recording this is, “Thus 
 spake He of the Spirit which those who 
 believed in Him were to receive; as yet 
 there was no Holy Spirit, because Jesus had 
 not yet been glorified.” 
 
 1. [HE RESERVE OF THE SPIRIT BEFORE 
 PENTECOST. 
 
 What he probably meant was that in 
 comparison with the wonderful manifesta- 
 tions of the presence and power of the Spirit 
 from Pentecost onwards, to which, after 
 fifty years of experience, he could look back, 
 it seemed as if before that the Holy Spirit 
 had not been. ‘There had been such com- 
 parative reserve in His manifestations. Yet 
 He had been the Creator of all things, and, 
 during the millenniums, He had _ been 
 entering ever more fully into the world in 
 the living creatures, and in man. He had 
 
 58 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 been operating in every soul, in every land, 
 in every veligion; the good man every- 
 where has ever been God’s workmanship 
 
 through the Spirit; but especially in Israel’s 
 
 history, in King, in Prophet, in Psalmist. 
 Then came the supreme event of the In- 
 carnation, when a Man appeared who was the 
 Child of the Spirit, and who lived His whole 
 life possessed, controlled, dominated by 
 the Spirit. The Spirit had been at work 
 also in the hearts of His disciples, revealing 
 Christ more fully to them, regenerating 
 them, uniting them to Him in faith and 
 love. After His Resurrection, He had 
 breathed on them, and said, ‘‘ Receive ye 
 the Holy Spirit.” Still, there had been a 
 marked reserve in the giving and in the work 
 of the Holy Spirit before Pentecost, and that 
 for several reasons. First, because the Holy 
 Spirit of God needed to be revealed by 
 Christ. In His incarnate life He gave 
 visibility to the Spirit’s qualities. He is the ~ 
 -perfect example of the Spirit-filled man, 
 shown in complete obedience, all-embracing 
 “love, filial assurance, courage, hope, whole- 
 
 59 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 hearted sacrifice. Till men had seen all 
 this, their notions of the Spirit must have 
 been vague. But when they saw the Spirit- 
 filled man, they began to long for this noble 
 and excellent possession. Second, because 
 the Cross was the supreme manifestation of 
 the Divine Love, through which the Spirit 
 was to take possession of the hearts of be- 
 lievers. It was the crowning act of Christ’s 
 life-work. And until that had taken place, 
 He could neither be witnessed to nor 
 understood in the completeness of His 
 character as the Redeemer of men. Neither 
 was it possible for the Divine Spirit to take 
 of the things that are Christ’s, and to show 
 them unto men, until the most glorious 
 thing that Christ had come to do for men 
 had been accomplished on the Cross. The - 
 Spirit could not unfold the meaning of that 
 act, until the great act itself had been com- 
 pleted. The Spirit is none other than the 
 Spirit of Christ, the sum and source of all 
 the influence proceeding from His life, His 
 death, and His resurrection from the dead. 
 Therefore the Spirit could not be fully 
 60 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 given, while Jesus was not yet glorified. 
 Third, because the Spirit in His fulness 
 could only be communicated to men by 
 One who had redeemed them, and who, 
 having tasted death for them, has been 
 raised to absolute dominion. The coming 
 of the Holy Spirit was the sign that the 
 great Propitiation for sin had been accepted, 
 and that the Redeemer of men had been 
 exalted to the Throne of God. Pentecost 
 was won for us on Calvary. And the coming 
 of the Spirit then was the token that Christ 
 had secured new and glorious privileges for 
 men by which they might be made partakers 
 of the Divine nature. At Pentecost a new 
 stage was reached in that great process, 
 which it is one of the objects of these lectures 
 to unfold, by which the Spirit of God enters 
 into an ever deeper and fuller union with 
 the spirit of man. At the Incarnation, God 
 came by His Son to dwell with man. At 
 Pentecost, He came by His Spirit to take up 
 His abode zm man, and so to lift him up into 
 abiding fellowship-with Himself. 
 
 61 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 2. THe Boox or THe Acts oF THE Hoty 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 As the Gospels unfold the ministry of 
 Christ in the flesh, the Book of the Acts 
 unfolds His ministry in the Spirit. The 
 Acts of the Apostles might well be called 
 the acts of the Holy Spirit. And _ this 
 ministry was inaugurated at Pentecost. 
 What took place then is memorable in the 
 history of the Church and of humanity. 
 There was a vast concourse of Jews in 
 Jerusalem from all parts of the Empire to 
 celebrate their great harvest festival. ‘The 
 disciples of Jesus spent their time together 
 in united prayer, their whole being intent 
 on one thing. They were a little company, 
 feeble, uninfluential, utterly unable in their 
 own strength to fulfil the solemn ministry 
 entrusted to them of making Jesus known as 
 the Saviour of men. So they were waiting 
 for their equipment. They were tarrying 
 in Jerusalem until they were endued with 
 the Power from on high. They did not 
 dare to enter on their task until they had 
 
 62 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 received the needed power. Observe the 
 Spirit was not given to men individually 
 
 and separately. He was given to this little, .. 
 company of believing men and women’ * 
 
 assembled as the Church of Christ, in unity 
 of Spirit, and engaged in earnest prayer for 
 this one gift. The Spirit came in answer 
 to believing prayer, and it is always thus 
 He comes. And not till a reunited Church 
 seeks the lost Power she needs, and combines 
 in earnest, believing prayer, shall she recover 
 it. Perhaps the day is drawing near when 
 the Church shall be driven into union, and 
 to her knees by her very impotence in face 
 of the awful world problems which now 
 confront her. 
 
 That the Church of to-day has not the 
 power she requires is painfully clear to her 
 own members, and to’ those who are outside 
 her borders. ‘This is evidenced by the com- 
 parative fewness of those who come forward 
 year by year to confess their faith in Christ. 
 There is, in fact, a decreasing membership 
 in all the churches. The habit of church- 
 going is steadily waning. ‘The numbers in- 
 
 63 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 crease of those who say they have no need 
 of the Church, to whom its existence is 
 quite negligible. Multitudes of men do not 
 hate the Church. They simply regard it 
 as of no account, which is almost worse. 
 It was stated by a Committee among the 
 Chaplains specially appointed to inquire 
 into the matter, that not more than 30 per 
 cent. of the men in the new armies had 
 ‘any connection whatever with any Church. 
 When the-Church gets into grips with the 
 Drink Traffic, the latter wins every time, 
 though the great victory in America and 
 Canada bids us hope. The horrible scandal 
 of the slums is a monument to the inertia 
 of the Church. The Commission on Ven- 
 ereal Diseases tells us that 10 per cent. of 
 the civil population are suffering from this 
 fell plague. Its ravages in the Army need 
 nocomment. A section of Labour does not 
 hesitate to threaten bloody revolution, and 
 is in love with what has happened in Russia. 
 And the War has emphasized the power- 
 lessness of the Church. By reason of her 
 divisions she can speak with no authoritative 
 
 64 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 voice. Had she been united, and filled with 
 the Spirit, there would have been no war, 
 for the causes that led up to the War would ~ 
 have been rendered impossible. And who 
 looks to the Church to secure peace? ‘The 
 Pope’s appeal, in which the great moral 
 issues at stake were ignored, and the crimes 
 of Germany were condoned, was without 
 moral passion, and so it failed. When the 
 Reformed Churches met in the great Mis- 
 sionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1g10, 
 to consider the mighty work they had 
 been called to undertake in the evangeliza- 
 tion of the world, the following were some 
 of their conclusions: ‘‘ The fundamental 
 difficulty is not one of men or money, but 
 of Spiritual power. The only hope of the 
 Church being able to meet the opportunity 
 is that there should be a new vitalizing of 
 the whole Church.” ‘If our missionaries 
 are to be fitly and tully prepared ‘ to con- 
 vince the world,’ they must go forth from 
 a Church in which the Spirit of Christ is 
 evidently at work, in whose whole policy, 
 and character, and life, the Gospel is con- 
 
 65 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 tinuously and irrefutably proved to be in 
 very truth the Power of God unto salvation.” 
 But these requirements are not fulfilled. 
 The Church is not Spirit-filled. Without. 
 the Power from on High the work cannot 
 be done. And so the great and noble pro- 
 gramme for winning the world to Christ 
 remains still only a programme. Clearly 
 there is something seriously wrong with the 
 Church. She progresses neither at home 
 nor throughout the world as she ought to do 
 if her Gospel be true, and her mission divine. 
 What is wanting? The Church needs the 
 baptism of the Spirit to-day as urgently as 
 the Primitive Church needed it, when they 
 waited on their knees for the’ promised 
 power, and it came. It is very solemn to 
 think that there is a Power adequate to meet 
 the tremendous responsibilities of the Church 
 which is largely unused. A distinguished 
 scientist said recently that ‘‘ every cubic 
 inch of the ether of space is full of the most 
 portentous possibilities. It is full of an 
 energy beside which the sporadic energy of 
 material bodies shrinks into insignificance. 
 
 66 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 I have reckoned that every cubic millimetre | 
 
 horse-power station working day and night 
 for thirty thousand years. But how to get 
 at it—neither I nor anyone at present has 
 the slightest idea. But once that is dis- 
 covered, every other source of energy will 
 sink into insignificance, for the store is 
 omnipresent and absolutely exhaustless.”’ 
 When will the Church learn to get at the 
 omnipresent, inexhaustible storehouse of 
 spiritual power which is at her disposal 
 now in the Omnipotent Holy Spirit of God? 
 When that Power is free to work, how 
 wonderful are the results! I remember, 
 when I was called to be minister of Coler- 
 aine, I went to tell my old clergyman, Dr. 
 Moody Stuart, about it. I did not think 
 that the old gentleman would know anything 
 of this place in Ireland, but the moment I 
 mentioned the name, he startled me by 
 saying, “‘ If I were a young man I should like 
 to be a minister in Coleraine.” I asked, 
 “Why?” His answer was striking, ** Because 
 
 67 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 there the people once saw the mighty Power of 
 God.”? ‘Then he read to me extracts from 
 his diary recording the amazing scenes he 
 had witnessed there during the great revival 
 of 1859, when the whole life of the place was 
 shaken to its foundations. And when | 
 went there, I found that many of the best 
 Christians were the abiding fruit of this 
 work of the Spirit. | 
 
 ass Tue Day or PENTECOST—THE SPIRIT 
 GIVEN TO ALL. 
 
 What happened on the Day of Pentecost ? 
 “ Suddenly there came a sound from heaven 
 like a violent blast of wind, which filled the 
 whole house where they were seated. They 
 saw tongues like flames distributing them- 
 selves, one resting on the head of each, and 
 they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” 
 It was not a wind. It was like a wind. An 
 irresistible power of a Spiritual nature came 
 upon them, like the wind impalpable and 
 unseen, but felt. Flames were not seen, — 
 but tongues like flames, symbolic of the 
 
 68 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 cleansing, purifying influence of the Spirit, 
 burning up the dross in the human soul, 
 symbolic also of the power they needed to 
 speak for Jesus Christ. It was given to — 
 each separately, but only to each separately : 
 when all were together. The Spirit in His 
 fulness did not come to any stray disciple 
 who had separated himself from the corporate 
 body of the Church. But those who were 
 assembled together as the Church of Christ 
 were all filled with the Holy Spirit. The 
 gift came not to the Apostles only, but to 
 all the members. The gift came to women 
 as well as to men. It was not confined to 
 any priestly class, or ordained clergy. It 
 was bestowed on every member of the 
 Church. Every Church member was en- 
 dowed with the Power to be a witness to 
 Christ, and the women as well as the men. 
 How grievously the Church has forgotten 
 the evident lessons of Pentecost! In vain 
 has she rested on ministerial succession, on 
 organization, on education, on ritual, on the 
 power of the State. She has largely confined 
 the task of witnessing to Christ to the clergy 
 
 69 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 } . 
 who are supposed to be paid to do so, and 
 in the churches she has silenced the voices 
 of holy women. The policy of the Church 
 has been too like the hesitating jealousy of 
 Joshua, who, when Eldad and Medad, having 
 received the gift of the Holy Spirit in the 
 olden time, began to prophesy, said to 
 Moses, “My lord Moses forbid them.” 
 Surely we must return to the generous 
 spirit of Moses, who replied, “‘ Would God 
 that all the Lord’s people were prophets, 
 and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon 
 them!” Here, indeed, Moses anticipated 
 Pentecost. We must cease leaving the task 
 of witnessing for Christ to any caste in the 
 Church. We must no longer put any bar 
 upon Christian women, who have received 
 the endowment of the Spirit, from using 
 their gift for the glory of God, and the 
 salvation of sinners. The gift bestowed on 
 all on the Day of Pentecost was not a re- 
 
 __~ generating gift. These men and women 
 “were already regenerate. But now very 
 definitely they received the power needed 
 _> for effective service. And that power all 
 
 7O 
 
S 
 ‘e 
 
 The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 who would work for Christ to-day need even 
 as they. 
 And let it never be forgotten that THE 
 
 SPIRIT WAS GIVEN TO THE CORPORATE CHURCH. | 
 
 —Men are asking to-day, Is there any need 
 for an organized Church at all? They are 
 telling us that religion is a matter between 
 the individual soul and God. If men had 
 felt that through the Church the Spirit of 
 God was being imparted to them for their 
 regeneration and spiritual uplift, such a 
 question would never have been raised. 
 Those who have received the grace of God 
 through the ministry of the Church, honour 
 and value the Church. Christ in His 
 wisdom founded the Church when He 
 chose His twelve Apostles, and trained them 
 that they might teach others, and gave them 
 the Holy Sacrament to be the bond binding 
 them together in a League of Love. He saw 
 that true religion, if it were to spread over 
 the world, must have a Society formed for. 
 the express purpose of its propagation. So 
 when a man is united to Christ, he becomes 
 a member of Christ’s Body. He has an 
 
 7% 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 individual life. But he has also a corporate 
 life, as a member of the Body, which entails 
 special privileges and responsibilities. His 
 own soul is enriched thereby, and he helps 
 to enrich others. And so the Spirit was 
 given to the Church, but only that through 
 the Church He might be given to the world. 
 
 4. THe Practica, Usz oF THE GIFT. 
 
 The Church having received this most 
 precious gift from God immediately pro- 
 ceeded to use it for the benefit of the world. 
 The disciples went forth from the upper 
 room, and began to witness for Christ. And 
 with what result ? St. Luke records that after 
 Peter’s sermon “* about three thousand souls 
 were brought in that day.” “Also day by 
 day, the Lord added to their number those 
 whom He was saving.” ‘A number of 
 those who heard them speak believed, 
 bringing up their numbers to about five 
 thousand.” “ ‘The Apostles gave their testi- 
 mony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus 
 with great power, and great grace was upon 
 
 72 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 them all.” ‘And the Word of the Lord 
 spread; the number of the disciples in 
 Jerusalem greatly increased, and a host of 
 priests became obedient to the faith.” 
 ** Now those who had to scatter (owing to 
 the persecution) went everywhere preaching 
 the Gospel.” ‘“* Now all over Judea, Galilee, 
 and Samaria, the Church enjoyed peace; 
 it was consolidated, inspired by reverence 
 for the Lord, and by its invocation of the — 
 Holy Spirit, and so increased in numbers.” 
 Paul and Silas in Iconium “so spake that a 
 great multitude both of the Jews and also 
 of the Greeks believed.” ‘“* And they went 
 forth and preached everywhere, the Lord 
 working with them, and Cana ane the 
 word with signs following.” Such success 
 attended the labours of the oe filled 
 Church. 
 
 ¢ Intruth the Church was.born ina Revival | 
 Some people to-day look askance at revivals, 
 and are suspicious of sudden conversions. 
 But the Church owes its existence to a 
 revival, and all these first conversions were 
 sudden. Some look with disfavour on re- 
 
 73 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 vivals partly because they are connected in 
 
 __) their minds with a particular type of religion 
 ‘\ represented by the American Evangelist, 
 
 and his peculiar methods. “They are identi- 
 fied with halls, and harmoniums, and catchy 
 hymns, and after-meetings, and hortatory 
 appeals to stand up and confess Christ, 
 accompanied by the announcement in the 
 tones of a, Spiritual Auctioneer of the 
 numbers saved. But revivals of religion are 
 not all of that type. ‘There were revivals 
 in the Old Testament Church under Samuel, 
 David, Solomon, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Heze- 
 kiah, Josiah, and Ezra. While not limited 
 to Christianity (for other religions have 
 their waves of religious emotion) they are 
 supremely characteristic of it. Periodicity. 
 seems to be a law of the Kingdom of God. 
 Such events are a witness to the world of 
 the permanence of spiritual realities, and of 
 the working of the Spirit of God in human 
 history. ‘There are revivals in literature and 
 art; witness the great movement of the Re- 
 naissance. There are also revivals inthe world 
 of trade and commerce. The nineteenth 
 
 74 
 
i 
 
 The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 century is memorable for a great revival of 
 Science. And so there are periodic revivals 
 of Religion. And this fact reminds us that 
 the great gift of the Spirit at Pentecost has 
 never been withdrawn. He is working 
 mightily in our world to-day. But there is 
 -an ebb and flow in His working. And he 
 works in different ways at different times. 
 There was a great revival of Religion in 
 Italy in the twelfth century, yet it would 
 be hard to imagine a figure more alien 
 to Mr. D. L. Moody than Francis of 
 Assissi. ‘There was a great revival at the 
 time of the Reformation in the sixteenth 
 century, and under Wesley in the eighteenth 
 century, and in the North of Ireland in the 
 nineteenth century. But how very varied 
 were the instruments employed, the means 
 used, and the type of truth which came home 
 to human hearts, and the fruits of the Spirit 
 which appeared. Looking back, it would 
 seem that a time of spiritual revival usually 
 has come after a time of spiritual deadness. 
 But such barren seasons have their limits, 
 and are succeeded by a glorious spring-time 
 
 e5 
 
‘The Power of the Spirit 
 
 of joy, and light, and beauty, and fruitfulness. 
 Generally speaking, the new forces set in- 
 motion radiate forth from one man who is 
 the prophet of his generation. And when a 
 revival begins, it spreads like a contagion. 
 Usually there is a deep and poignant sense 
 of sin, such as was seen recently by the 
 missionaries in Manchuria, followed by a 
 wonderful outburst of joy and _ gladness, 
 which expresses itself in praise, as souls 
 leaped out into the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God. But God does not repeat 
 Himself. ‘The Holy Spirit works in diverse 
 ways suited to the needs of each particular 
 time. To-day a Revival seems due. The 
 Church has largely lost its ancient power. 
 ‘We want a Revival which will weld together 
 the divided Church in a spiritual unity in 
 Christ. Then the One Church shall speak 
 with authority in the Councils of Christen- 
 dom. We want a Revival which will affect 
 politics, and commerce, and social life. We 
 want a Religion, concerned indeed to save 
 the individual soul, but more concerned to 
 save, through the multitude of saved souls, 
 76 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 the State and the world. Revivals have 
 always been preceded by the Spirit of prayer, 
 arising out of a deep sense of need. The 
 
 Church to-day should be driven to its knees, 
 
 for its impotence is great, and a distracted 
 world sorely needs a season of refreshing from 
 the presence of the Highest, 
 
V 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH 
 (continued) 
 
‘Now was I come up in Spirit through the flaming 
 sword, into the paradise of God.” 
 
 «The earthly spirit of the priests wounded my life.’ 
 
 ‘At another time, as I was walking im a field on a 
 first day morning, the Lord opened unto me that being 
 bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and 
 qualify men to be ministers of Christ.” 
 
 ‘¢ That which I was moved to declare was this—that 
 the Holy Scriptures were given forth by the Spirit of 
 God, and all people must first come to the Spirit of God 
 in themselves, by which they might know God and 
 Christ, of whom the apostles and prophets learnt, and by 
 the same Spirit know the Holy Scriptures: for as the 
 Spirit of God was in them that gave forth the Scriptures, 
 so the same Spirit of God must be in all them that would 
 understand the Scriptures; by which Spirit they might 
 have fellowship with the Son, and with the Father, and 
 with the Scriptures, and with one another; and without 
 this Spirit they can know neither God nor Christ, nor 
 the Scriptures, nor have right fellowship one with 
 -another.’’—-Extracts FROM THE JouRNAL oF GrorcE Fox. 
 
 80 
 
V 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH 
 
 (continued) 
 
 Tose good men amongst us who are looking 
 and praying for “‘ another Pentecost ” seem 
 to labour under some confusion of thought. 
 Pentecost needs no repetition. The Holy 
 Spirit once given by an ascended Lord has 
 never been withdrawn. He is now in the 
 Church. What is true is that His gracious 
 operations are impeded, thwarted, hampered 
 by her divisions, and her connivance at sin 
 within her own border. What is needed 
 is that the Church, by lowly penitence, 
 should put away her sin, so that the Holy 
 Spirit may have free course and be glorified. 
 All round the coast there are buoys, on 
 which are affixed lights which burn a specially 
 prepared gas. The-greatest storms will not 
 put out these lights, though the waves be 
 81 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 washing over them. But a little speck of 
 dust in one of the valves will. So sin in the 
 Church prevents the Holy Spirit from work- 
 ing as He longs to do. How the Church 
 has grieved the Holy Spirit by her sin! As 
 St. James says, ‘‘ The Spirit which He has 
 caused to dwell in our hearts yearns jealously 
 over us!” ‘The Holy Spirit would have the 
 Bride of Christ to be holy. He is jealous of 
 her because she has defiled herself by sin. 
 And because of this He cannot work through 
 her as He longs to do. 
 
 1. THE CuurcH MUST BE Pure. 
 
 The testimony of history proves conclus- 
 ively that though the Spirit has never been 
 withdrawn from the Church, yet the 
 Church by her unfaithfulness may make it 
 impossible for the Spirit to use her. ‘The 
 Holy Spirit is in the Church, and in 
 that branch, of it which acknowledges 
 the Pope as its head. But sin in the 
 Church silences the voice of the Spirit, 
 and has rendered her Councils on many 
 
 82 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 occasions the voice of error and false-_ 
 hood. Some of her Popes and Bishops have 
 been morally leprous, and have come down 
 through history as incarnations of monstrous 
 wickedness. Her world became full of limit- 
 less ambition and nefarious intrigue, till a 
 large part of Christendom became weary of 
 her, and flung off her authority. But sin 
 has also quenched the light of the Spirit in 
 the Reformed Churches, and in them there 
 have been dark periods of spiritual dulness 
 and impotence. 
 
 The Church of the early days realized 
 the deadly danger to her life when Ananias 
 and Sapphira, shortly after Pentecost, com- 
 mitted their sin. And the awful severity 
 of its disciplinary punishment was an in- 
 
 _ dication of the menace to the Church when 
 
 it harbours or condones sin. And their sin 
 was a sin against the Holy Spirit. They lied 
 to the Holy Spirit. What was their sin? 
 It was not one of the sins of the flesh. It 
 was a sin of covetousness and of insincerity. 
 And the Apostles felt that were such sins to 
 be tolerated, they would render the Church 
 83 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 unholy, and destroy the work of the Holy 
 Spirit. Hence the appalling nature of the 
 punishment. The Church has always pro- 
 fessed the endeavour to keep herself pure. 
 She has never abandoned the practice of 
 enforcing discipline. Yet discipline even 
 among the Reformed Churches is almost 
 completely in abeyance. And this is one 
 of the reasons why the Holy Spirit cannot 
 use her. She is not holy. Where there is 
 discipline, it has been too much narrowed 
 down to dealing with the sins of the flesh, 
 impurity and drunkenness. ‘This has been 
 a deplorable error on the part of the Church. 
 While condemning these two sins, she has 
 condoned others quite as great as they. 
 How has the modern Church dealt with the 
 sin of covetousness ? For instance, drunken- 
 ness is to a large extent the result of the 
 pestilential dwellings in which masses of the 
 poor are condemned to live, and these exist 
 because the slum landlord is in haste to be 
 rich, and cares neither for the souls nor for — 
 the bodies of men. But what Church has 
 dared to discipline a slum landlord? Men 
 
 84 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 at the head of rich firms making large profits 
 pay their work-girls three shillings, five 
 
 shillings, and seven shillings and sixpence per 
 
 week, and lay terrible temptations in their 
 path, but then perhaps they give largely to 
 Missions, and therefore are honoured, and not 
 disciplined by the Church as they ought to 
 be. Meanwhile the sons of labour are largely 
 hostile to the Church because they know 
 these things, and who can wonder at it? 
 The Church must widen her idea of sin. To 
 condone sins such as these silences the voice 
 of the Spirit in the Church, and renders 
 her impotent as an instrument for securing 
 social righteousness. Yet in His mercy 
 the Holy Spirit has not wholly withdrawn 
 from the Church. He is still in the midst 
 of her, waiting to work mightily as in the - 
 early days through her, when she has put 
 away her sin. When will she arise, and 
 cleanse herself and put on her beautiful 
 garments, and stand forth as the Champion 
 for God, “ clear as the sun, fair as the moon, 
 and terrible as an army with banners” ? 
 
 85 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 2. Tue Hoty Sprrir AND THE DEVELOP- 
 MENT OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 It is interesting to see how close is the 
 connection between the Holy Spirit and 
 every step in the development of the infant 
 Church. It was the Holy Spirit who used 
 _ the words of St. Peter to the conversion of 
 3000 souls. When a man speaks “in the 
 power of the Spirit,’ how effective an 
 instrument he becomes in God’s hands! I 
 remember taking part in a Mission in which 
 some noted Evangelists gave help. ‘Their 
 addresses were able and eloquent. But the 
 ‘people were not seriously moved. Then 
 there came among us a minister, neither 
 eloquent nor brilliant, but he was filled with 
 the Spirit. He spoke in the power of the 
 Spirit to the consciences of the people. 
 And the Spirit used him mightily. As he 
 drew towards the close of the address, he 
 seemed to use only the words of Scripture, 
 and in his hands they proved themselves to 
 be “ the Sword of the Spirit.” The people 
 were spellbound, and could hardly be in- © 
 
 86 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 duced to go away, so eager were they to 
 have expounded to them the way of God 
 more perfectly. Many were born again that 
 night. ‘This man so spake that many be- 
 lieved. But this was not accomplished by 
 eloquence, but by the Holy Spirit speaking 
 through him. When deacons were ap- 
 pointed, in order that the Apostles might 
 give themselves to prayer and the ministry 
 of the Word, they sought out “ men of good 
 reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” 
 When the Apostles at Jerusalem heard that 
 Samaria had accepted the Word of God, 
 “they dispatched Peter and John who came 
 down and prayed that the Samaritans might 
 receive the Holy Spirit. Then they laid 
 their hands upon them, and they received 
 the Holy Spirit.” When God would save 
 the Ethiopian Eunuch, it was the Spirit 
 who said to Philip, “Go up and join that 
 chariot.” When Paul met the Risen Lord 
 on the way to Damascus, and yielded to 
 Him, Ananias came to the persecutor blind ~ 
 and helpless, in his room in the Straight 
 Street, and said, “ Saul, my brother, I have 
 
 87 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 been sent by the Lord, by Jesus, who 
 appeared to you on the road, to let you re- 
 gain ie sight, and be filled with the Holy 
 Spirit.” When Peter, by the vision on 
 the housetop in Joppa, had been taught 
 the lesson that he was no longer to regard 
 Gentiles as unclean, it was the Spirit who 
 told him to go with the messengers of Cor- 
 nelius, who were awaiting him; and when 
 Peter addressed this Gentile Centurion and | 
 his friends “ the Holy Spirit fell on all who 
 listened to what he said.” And the Jewish 
 believers who accompanied him were amazed 
 that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been 
 actually poured out on the Gentiles. And 
 Peter, in describing the scene to the Apostles 
 and brethren in Jerusalem, said, “ Just as 
 I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on 
 them as upon us at the beginning.” It was 
 the Holy Spirit who broke down the middle 
 wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. 
 It was the Holy Spirit who taught the 
 founders of Christianity that God ignores 
 all boundaries of race, and colour, and 
 nation, and that the Saviour is for all 
 88 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 mankind. And so when Barnabas, that good 
 man who was “ full of the Holy Spirit and 
 of faith,” had come down to Antioch to 
 
 inquire what had been happening there, he 
 
 found that as the disciples were worshipping 
 the Lord, the Holy Spirit said, ‘* Come, set 
 me apart Barnabas and Saul for the work 
 to which I have called them.” And after 
 fasting and praying, they laid their hands 
 on them, and let them go.” These were the 
 first Foreign Missionaries. Foreign Missions 
 were inaugurated by the Holy Spirit, and 
 can only be carried out under His guidance 
 and power. It is worth noting how Paul, 
 the prince and model of all Foreign Mis- 
 sionaries, did all his work under the con- 
 trol and guidance of the Holy Spirit. When 
 he and his companions had crossed Phrygia 
 and the country of Galatia, “the Holy 
 Spirit having stopped them from preaching 
 the Word in Asia, they tried to enter 
 Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not 
 allow them.” He had work for them to do 
 at Troas. ‘The distinctive thing about the 
 work was that wherever they went, those 
 
 89 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 who believed received the Holy Spirit, and 
 were filled with joy. Christianity was dis- 
 tinctively the reception of the Holy Spirit 
 consequent on believing in Jesus. As Peter 
 said in regard to Cornelius and his friends, 
 “Can anyone refuse water for the baptism 
 of these people, who have received the Holy 
 Spirit just as we have ourselves.” That was 
 the distinctive mark of the Christian. What 
 do we make of that mark now? To what 
 neglect has it been relegated ? When will 
 the Church ask all her candidates for the 
 Holy Ministry this question, ‘“ What reason 
 have you for thinking that you have received 
 the Holy Spirit?’ Yet that one question 
 kindly put might have kept many an un- 
 worthy minister out of the Church of God. 
 Men-made ministers, if they have not been 
 commissioned by the Holy Spirit, are im- 
 potent and useless. It was thought an utterly 
 abnormal thing that when Paul asked the 
 Ephesian disciples, “Did you receive the 
 Holy Spirit when you believed?” they 
 should have to confess, ““No! We never 
 even heard of His existence!” But after 
 
 go 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy 
 Spirit came upon them. They needed 
 that, ere-they became normal Christians in 
 the primitive Church. But now a man — 
 “filled with the Spirit ” is almost abnormal. 
 He is at any rate something out of the 
 common. How ashamed the Church ought 
 to be that it is so, and how eager to reach 
 again the standard of the early days! 
 
 3. THe CuHurcH MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THE 
 Sprrit’s PrREesENCE AND Power. 
 
 And when we. turn to the first Church 
 Council at Jerusalem, the members of it 
 were so conscious of the guidance and control 
 of the Holy Spirit, that, in pronouncing their 
 decision, they did not hesitate to say, ‘* The 
 Holy Spirit and we have decided.” Is the 
 Holy Spirit’s presence and guidance as 
 clearly recognized to-day in our Church 
 Councils? We rely too much on organiza- 
 tion, on business ability, on statesmanship, 
 and sometimes on less worthy things than 
 these. But do we really believe in the 
 
 gi 
 
‘The Power of the Spirit 
 
 presence of the Holy Spirit to guide and 
 control us? Do we with tremulous eager- 
 ness pray for it and expect it? 
 
 Yet there is no greater heresy than to deny 
 the presence of the Holy Spirit in the 
 Church. A Church without the Spirit is 
 dead, and a cumberer of the ground. But, 
 notwithstanding our sins, the Holy Spirit 
 has not left the Church. He is in the midst 
 of us, working in many hearts, and waiting 
 to be honoured as in the first days. The 
 ignoring of His presence crops up in un- 
 expected ways. One of the functions of the 
 Holy Spirit is to lead the Church into all 
 truth. Yet there are good men who will 
 have it that while the Holy Spirit did guide 
 the Church into truth in New Testament 
 times, and perhaps at the Reformation, and 
 during the sittings of the Westminster 
 Assembly, He does so no longer. In 
 some miraculous manner, according to these 
 good men, these Westminster Divines were 
 enabled to grasp the whole counsel of God 
 for all time, and to express it in forms which 
 cannot be improved. And now any attempt 
 
 g2 
 
The Holy Spirit in the Church 
 
 to depart from their conceptions is branded 
 as heresy. This is practically to deny that 
 
 the Holy Spirit is in the Church now, and ee 
 
 to assert that He has no new truths for these 
 new days. How absurd is the notion that 
 any men have ever grasped or ever can grasp 
 the whole truth of God! To attempt to 
 crush the Church under the dead hand of the 
 past, and so practically to deny the presence 
 of the Holy Spirit now to guide her into all 
 truth, is perilously near a great sin against 
 the Holy Spirit, and is one of the sources of 
 the weakness of the Church. While this 
 may be maintained in the name of ortho- 
 doxy, it is really one of the gravest of 
 heresies. 7 
 
 The Holy Spirit was the life of the primi- 
 tive Church. He is willing to be the life 
 of the Church to-day, and to lead her 
 forward into unrealized truths, and un- 
 imagined triumphs in the new age now 
 opening out before us, if we honour Him 
 and put away our sin. To this the Church 
 of our day is being summoned by the 
 solemn presence of these stupendous events 
 
 93 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 which are taking place before our eyes, and 
 without the Spirit the Church is helpless. 
 The paramount need of the Church is to be 
 filled once more with the power of the 
 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 94 
 
VI 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 INDIVIDUAL 
 
“¢To every man there comes at times a consciousness 
 that there blows through all the articulations of his body 
 the wind of a Spirit not wholly his.””—R. L. Stevenson, 
 
VI 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 INDIVIDUAL}? 
 
 Ir may be truly said that the whole mission 
 of the Redeemer was to impart the Holy 
 Spirit to man in order that He might make 
 man holy. And in the New Testament we 
 have the record of how this gracious purpose 
 of His was actually accomplished in the 
 first Christians. It is a mistake to regard 
 the Epistles as a quarry for proof texts on 
 behalf of certain theological theories. Much 
 rather are we to regard them as a record of 
 a wonderful Christian experience, of which 
 the Holy Spirit from first to last was the 
 fountain. For instance, they speak of “a 
 
 1 Scripture Rererences.—Luke xi. 11-13; John iii. 3, 5, 8, 
 vi, 63, xvi. 7-14; Acts xi. 15-16, xv. 8-9, xix. 2; Rom. viii. 
 2,9, 16, xii, 23 1 Cor, ii. 4, 12-15, iii. 16, vi. 11, 19, Vii. 40; 
 2 Cor, iii. 6, vi. 16; Gal. iii, 2-3, 5, 13-14; Eph. i. 17-18; 
 Tit, iii. 5-6; Heb. vi. 4-6; 1 Pet.i.2; a hot i, eae 1 John ii. 
 
 20, 27, iv. 2, 12-13. 
 | 97 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 hope which never disappoints us, since God’s 
 love floods our hearts through the Holy 
 Spirit which has been given us.” “ Think 
 what a love the Father has for us in letting 
 us be called children of God.” ‘“ We know 
 we have crossed from death to life because 
 we love the brotherhood.” ‘ And when we 
 cry ‘ Abba,’ ‘ Father,’ it is this Spirit testi- 
 fying along with our own spirits that we are 
 children of God.” 'These are a few indica- 
 tions of what these men and women ex- 
 perienced of the power of the Spirit of God. 
 And the perpetual miracle of the Holy 
 Spirit is that men and women in our day. 
 have the same holy and happy experiences. 
 
 1. How WE RECEIVE THE Hoty Spirit. 
 
 If any one is in any doubt about this, it 
 might be well to consider how we receive the 
 Holy Spirit, because it is certain that no one 
 need for one moment be without Him and all 
 His gracious aid in the conflict of life. And 
 if you have not hitherto ‘‘ obeyed the Gos- 
 pel,” when you hear how simple the con- 
 
 98 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 ditions are which have to be fulfilled in order 
 to receive this peerless gift, will you ask to 
 be enabled to fulfil them now, so that in 
 
 future there may be no doubt in your mind — 
 
 that you are in the enjoyment of this, the 
 Christians’ heritage? To begin with, do 
 _ not forget that there is a natural affinity 
 between the Divine Spirit and your human 
 spirit. You have been made in the image of 
 God. There is a kinship between His 
 nature and yours. And it is your high 
 privilege that pees the Spirit of God 
 you may become “a partaker of the Divine 
 nature,” and thus “escape the corruption 
 which is in the world through lust.” You 
 have~not to fight this battle in your own 
 strength. Next remember, that Christ is 
 the Giver of the Holy Spirit. It was the 
 Baptist who said, “‘ He on whom you see the 
 Spirit descending and resting, that is He 
 who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” Some- 
 times the Lord puts it in another way, “I 
 will ask the Father to give you another 
 Helper to be with you for ever, even the 
 Spirit of truth.” “If I do not depart, the 
 
 99 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Helper will not come unto you, but if I 
 depart, I will send Him unto you.” And 
 when the Spirit came in His mighty power 
 at Pentecost, Peter explained it thus, “‘ Up- 
 lifted, then, by God’s right hand, and re- 
 ceiving from the Father the long-promised 
 Holy Spirit, He (Christ) has poured on us 
 what ye now see and hear.” The Holy 
 Spirit, then, is given by the Father through 
 Christ. Christ sends Him. Christ gives 
 Him. You cannot have the Holy Spirit 
 without Christ or apart from Christ. If 
 you would have this Mighty Helper, this 
 Comrade God, accomplishing His holy work 
 in your soul, ask Christ to give Him to you. 
 For it is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. 
 
 But there are certain conditions on our 
 part which have to be observed. These 
 conditions are, to begin with, ethical. A 
 man must be morally in earnest and single- 
 minded. ‘This Divine gift is no toy, no 
 spiritual luxury to afford us a passing 
 pleasurable excitement or enjoyment. It is 
 only for the man who is in dead earnest to 
 be done with sin. Hence the Lord says, 
 
 100 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 “If ye love Me, keep My commandments,” 
 and then He adds (when you have given this 
 proof of your moral earnestness), “I will 
 pray the Father, and He shall give you 
 another Comforter, that He may abide with 
 you for ever.” The next condition is Faith. 
 John tells us, “‘ This spake He of the Spirit 
 which they that believe in Him should 
 receive.” It is a condition of our receiving 
 this Divine Helper that we should believe 
 in Christ. And this is no mere theoretical 
 assent to His high claims. It is a personal 
 committal of ourselves to Him as Saviour 
 and Lord. Then we at once receive the 
 Spirit. And when He comes He is ever 
 within us the power to a holy life. There is 
 nothing magical or semi-physical about His 
 coming or influence. Do not confound this 
 heavenly gift with any physical sensation, 
 or outburst of emotion. He is truth flashing 
 into the mind with a light from Heaven. 
 He is Divine power coming into the soul to 
 destroy the power of evil there. He is the 
 very Spirit of Christ Himself suspense 
 to us the mind of Christ. 
 IOI 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 One must not overlook the fact that in 
 more than one Scripture the reception of 
 the Spirit is also connected with Baptism. 
 As when Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I 
 tell you, unless one is born of water and 
 Spirit, he cannot enter God’s realm.” On 
 the Day of Pentecost, Peter’s command was, 
 “‘ Repent, and be baptized in the name of 
 Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins ; then 
 you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” 
 But lest we should suppose that Baptism is a 
 necessary condition of receiving the Spirit, 
 or a mechanical cause through which alone 
 the Spirit is given, when Peter went to the 
 house of Cornelius and his friends, we are 
 told “* while he was yet speaking to them, the 
 Holy Spirit fell on all who listened to what 
 hesaid.”? And afterwards, Peter asked, ‘“‘Can 
 any one refuse water for the Baptism of 
 these people who have received the Holy 
 Spirit just as we have ourselves?” ‘These 
 Gentiles were not baptized in order that they 
 might receive the Holy Spirit. They were 
 baptized because they had already received 
 Him through Faith. | 
 
 102 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 2. THe Work OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 (1) Ats first work 1s that of Regeneration.— 
 In regeneration the Spirit does not create 
 the spirit of man. He imparts to it a new 
 quality of life. The teaching of the New 
 Testament is that every man, because of 
 the havoc wrought by sin in his soul, needs 
 this new birth. When Jesus said inexor- 
 ably, ‘‘ You must be born again,” He said 
 it to an upright and religious man like 
 Nicodemus. It was to him the Lord said, 
 “Truly, truly, I tell you unless one is born 
 of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter 
 God’s realm.”’ It is an unwelcome announce- 
 ment. It is humbling to human pride, as 
 all the doctrines of grace are. Scripture 
 does not deny that in a real sense every man 
 is ason of God, one of the offspring of God, 
 created in the Divine image. What it 
 asserts is that that image has been defaced 
 by sin, and must be restored. The basis of 
 a new life is laid by i imparting a new nature. 
 And this new nature is essential for one who 
 would belong to the Kingdom of God. 
 
 103 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Spiritual life begins with a spiritual birth. 
 It is a strange fact that probably no one is 
 conscious of the change at the moment when 
 it takes place. The man recognizes that 
 something has happened, because he knows 
 that now he looks at life, sin, holiness, and 
 religion with a new eye. For the first time 
 he perceives the beauty of Christ. He is 
 conscious that “old things have passed 
 away, and that all things have become new.” 
 There is a marked severance from the old 
 life. Paul writing to the Corinthians de- 
 clares that the drunken, the immoral, the 
 dishonest, will not inherit the Kingdom of 
 God, and he adds, ‘‘ Some of you were once 
 like that: but you washed yourselves, you 
 were consecrated, you were justified in the 
 name -of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the 
 Spirit of God.” ‘This is what regeneration 
 had done for them. It made them new 
 men in Christ. It is well to point out, 
 however, that the severance from the old 
 life, which marked the experience of these 
 Corinthians who had been nurtured in 
 Paganism, cannot be repeated in those whose 
 104 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 happy privilege it has been “ to be brought 
 up in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord,”’ and who cannot remember a time 
 when they did not love God. They have 
 been children of God from the very be- 
 ginning of their lives, consecrated to God 
 by devout parents ere they were born, 
 dedicated to God in Baptism, and accepted 
 by Him. None the less their possession of 
 regeneration is due to the Spirit of God. 
 Writing to Titus, Paul says, “ But the 
 goodness and affection of God our Saviour 
 appeared : and He saved us, not for anything 
 we have done, but from His own pity for us, 
 by the water that means regeneration, and 
 renewal under the Holy Spirit which He 
 poured on us richly through Jesus Christ 
 our Saviour.” He here distinguishes be- 
 tween regeneration and renewal. Regenera- 
 tion is the initial act, and renewal is that 
 which takes place subsequently in sancti- 
 fication day by day. He connects regenera- 
 tion with baptism, when he speaks of ‘‘ the 
 water which means regeneration.” But the 
 Spirit is the efficient cause, the baptism is 
 105 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 the occasion, and that in the sense already 
 explained. When that great change is 
 effected, God’s own life passes into man; he 
 is made a partaker of the Divine nature, 
 and this imparts a new character to his life. 
 As we shall see, it is the very substance of 
 Christ’s life and character which becomes 
 his.’ For “Sof God, Christ. is made unto 
 him sanctification.” 
 
 (2) The Conviction of Sin.—This is nearly 
 an invariable experience, though there is 
 no hard-and-fast rule in the things of the 
 
 Spirit. One true saint has testified, “The * 
 
 Spirit of God just kissed me awake.” But 
 think what agonies John Bunyan had to 
 pass through ere he found peace. It is a 
 mistake to suppose that this experience 
 comes only to those who hold orthodox 
 opinions in theology. A very remarkable 
 modern instance is that of Miss Florence 
 Nightingale. She was a highly intellectual 
 and deeply religious woman, but she certainly 
 would have declined to sign any of the 
 ancient Creeds. Yet her calling to her life- 
 work was clearly the work of God’s Holy 
 106 
 
 Sa a 
 
% 
 
 Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 Spirit. Her parents were wealthy and moved 
 in good society. She was an ardent student 
 and scholar, winning in personality, and 
 distinguished in appearance. But, to her, 
 luxury, wealth, gaiety became little less than 
 hateful. On 7th May 1852 she wrote, 
 “You do not know what it is when one has > 
 sinned with such aggravations as I have. 
 No one has had such advantages, and I have 
 sinned with all these, and after having been 
 made to know what sin was, and what my 
 obligations were. No one has so grieved 
 the Holy Spirit. I have sinned against my 
 convictions, and, as it were, standing before 
 God’s Judgment Seat.” And again, “‘ The 
 sorrows of hell compassed me about. We 
 have to know what these are beforehand, 
 when we cannot command our thoughts to 
 pray, when all our omissions give themselves 
 forms of life, and shut us up within a wall 
 over which there is no looking, no return, 
 when they hold us down with relentless 
 power, and we are hemmed in with our 
 remembrances, like a cell compassing us 
 about.” “The Unspeakable Presence may 
 107 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 be joy and peace unspeakable. But it may 
 be a Horror, a dweller on the threshold, a 
 Spirit of fear to the stricken conscience.” 
 Truly for her the bitter came before the 
 ‘sweet. It was out of these depths of sorrow 
 and distress that she emerged to become to 
 so many the Angel of Mercy. This con- 
 viction of sin does not always take the form 
 of a sense of guilt, or a fear of punishment. 
 In some it is more a divine discontent, a 
 weariness with life as lived without God, 
 and without purpose, a deep conviction of 
 not being right with God, and an anxiety to 
 get right. Our Lord told us plainly that 
 this work of conviction of sin would be 
 one of the functions of the Holy Spirit 
 whom He would send. ‘‘ When He comes, 
 He will convict the world of sin, convincing 
 men of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- 
 ment; of sin, because they believe not in Me; 
 of righteousness, because I go to the Father ; 
 of judgment, because the Prince of this 
 world is judged.” ‘This is the Spirit’s 
 strange work, for He would rather fill the 
 hearts of His servants with joy than with 
 108 
 
 f —*- 
 —— 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 sorrow. But He acts like a skilful surgeon. 
 He wounds only that He may heal. It is 
 said that coolies on certain plantations in 
 the East used to be drugged with. opium 
 daily, that they might forget their misery, 
 and be content to remain as they were. Sin 
 drugs us into a similar spiritual apathy. 
 Then comes the Spirit, and stabs us awake 
 to our real condition, but only that He may 
 bring us deliverance. No one need con- 
 gratulate himself on never having had any 
 sense of sin. It may be due to ignorance, or 
 mere shallowness of nature, or to the searing 
 of the conscience. ‘There was a time when 
 Paul thought himself blameless. But when 
 the Spirit dwelt with him, he thought him- 
 self ‘‘the chief of sinners,’? because of his 
 attitude to Christ and His Church. 
 
 (3) A third work of the Spirit is enlighten- 
 ment.—Like a lamp let down from heaven 
 burning with a divine and heavenly flame, 
 the Spirit of God illumines the soul from 
 within, and opens to us a new world. In 
 his wonderful story, The Country of the 
 Blind, Mr. H. G. Wells tells of a traveller 
 
 109 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 who, by extraordinary mischances in his ex- 
 ploration, found himself in a land where all 
 the people were blind, who had lost all 
 conception of the faculty of sight and had 
 adapted themselves to their condition. 
 When he spoke to them of the wonders of 
 sight, of the beauty of the flowers and the 
 meadows, and the wonder of the stars, they 
 mocked him, and declared that he was raving 
 or an imbecile. For fourteen generations 
 they had been blind and cut off from the 
 seeing world, and the memory of it was 
 faded and changed to a child’s story. They 
 had ceased to concern themselves with 
 anything beyond the rocky slopes which 
 hemmed in their valley like a circling wall. 
 Blind men of genius had arisen among them 
 and questioned the shreds of belief and 
 tradition they had brought with them from 
 their seeing days, and had dismissed all 
 these things as idle fancies. Even so the 
 pride of the human mind resents any idea 
 that it is wanting in any faculty, or that it is 
 not sufficient to itself. Yet the fact remains — 
 that the mind unaided by the Spirit of God 
 IIQ 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 cannot penetrate the spiritual realm, and 
 cannot apprehend or appreciate spiritual 
 truth, and even mockingly denies that it 
 exists. Paul puts it in this way, “ What 
 no eye hath seen, what no ear hath heard, 
 what never entered the mind of man, God 
 has prepared all that for those who love 
 Him ; and God has revealed it to us by His 
 Spirit, for that Spirit fathoms everything, 
 even the deep things of God.” And he 
 adds, “‘ The unspiritual man rejects these 
 truths of the Spirit of God; to him they 
 are sheer folly, he cannot understand them. 
 And the reason is that they must be read 
 with the spiritual eye.” There is no truth 
 which, however unpalatable it may be to 
 the pride of man, is more confirmed by the 
 actual experience of multitudes than this. 
 They know how true it is that to them, for 
 many a day, the mysteries of Divine grace 
 and love were no more than “ sheer folly.” 
 But one day there came a flash of insight 
 from the Spirit of God. They saw the King 
 in His beauty, and the things of His King- 
 dom were revealed to them. From that 
 Iit 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 moment, two worlds were theirs, one which 
 is material and temporal, another which is 
 spiritual and eternal. And they can say 
 with the blind man whose eyes were opened 
 by the Lord, “ Whereas I was blind, now 
 I see.” The explanation of the change is 
 that a new power of spiritual vision was 
 imparted by the Holy Spirit. And if it 
 requires a musical faculty to appreciate 
 Tchaikowsky, or an artistic faculty to appre- 
 ciate Velasquez, why should it appear 
 incredible that it requires a spiritual faculty 
 created by the Spirit of God to appreciate 
 the mysteries of the Kingdom of God? It 
 is the function of the Spirit to teach and to 
 lead into the truth. One of the commonest 
 assertions to-day is that the simple plain 
 teaching of Jesus in the Gospels has been 
 smothered by the theological writings of 
 Paul and the other Apostles in the Epistles, 
 and that the whole truth of Christianity has 
 been distorted thereby, so that Jesus Himself 
 would hardly recognize what the disciples 
 have made of His teaching. Now it is right 
 to place the teaching of Jesus on a level by 
 TI2 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 itself. But we know that, ere He left this 
 world, He distinctly promised a Divine 
 Helper, even the Spirit of God, to take His 
 place when He would be gone, and that one 
 of His functions would be to lead men into 
 a clearer understanding of the truth about 
 Himself. It is not unreasonable that the 
 significance of the birth and death and life 
 of Jesus should be more clearly understood 
 when all had been completed than when all 
 was in process. And so the Lord Himself 
 said, ‘‘I have yet many things to say unto 
 you, but ye cannot hear them now. I have 
 told you all this when I am still with you, 
 but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the 
 Father will send in My name, will teach you 
 ‘everything that I have said.” ‘“ He shall 
 glorify Me, for He will draw upon what is 
 Mine, and disclose it to you.” We know .- 
 that this Helper came when the Spirit was 
 given at Pentecost. And the Epistles which 
 unfold the glory of Jesus, and the wonders 
 of His redeeming work, are the fruits of the 
 teaching of the Spirit in the minds of the 
 Apostles. And as He taught them to ex- 
 113 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 pound these things, so now He teaches us 
 to appreciate what has been thus revealed. 
 
 3. Tue Hoty Spirit anp THE Work oF 
 Curist. 
 
 This leads me to remark that the great 
 end of the Holy Spirit’s work is to render 
 effectual the work of Christ. Seeing that the 
 Holy Spirit, who is God in us, is the Spirit 
 of Christ, it is natural that His purpose is 
 to make Christ our life, our wisdom, our 
 righteousness, our sanctification, and our 
 redemption. The Holy Spirit will never 
 belittle Christ. He always glorifies Him. 
 He unfolds the glory of Christ to the aching 
 eyes of the contrite, and reveals the whole 
 Christ, in all the excellence of His Person, 
 in all the beauty of His life, and in all the 
 wonder of His redemptive work. And the 
 Church has not yet learned all that the Holy 
 Spirit has to teach her in this respect. She 
 has failed to present to men acomplete Christ. 
 
 And the Christ she has presented to men has 
 not been the Christ they need. Chaplains 
 
 114 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 at the Front mourn over the utter miscon- 
 ception of the real Jesus in the minds of 
 the men. ‘There has been a too exclusive 
 emphasis of Jesus as the Man of Sorrows, as 
 meek, gentle, and uncomplaining, as the 
 Rest-giver for weary hearts, as the Hope of 
 the disappointed. And for young and virile 
 men full of exuberant vitality, far too little 
 has been made of the joyful, sunny Christ, 
 of the Man who had a strange fascination 
 for and sympathy with those on whom the 
 religious world frowned, of the Christ who 
 was so cheery, and so enjoyed the society 
 “of all sorts and conditions of men” that 
 His enemies called Him “the friend of 
 sinners ”?—‘‘ A gluttonous man and a wine- 
 bibber”’; too little has been made of the 
 courageous Christ who never knew fear, of 
 the Man who hated hypocrisy and religious 
 pretence more than those failings for which 
 the Church has mainly reserved her censures, 
 who had an amazing sympathy for the poor 
 and the outcast ; of the magnanimous Christ 
 who with all His zeal for God made so little 
 of any word spoken against Himself; of the 
 115 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 stern Christ who drove out of His Father’s 
 House those whose only interest in religion 
 was a source of gain; of the born leader of 
 men whom young men, when they got to 
 know Him, were willing and glad to follow 
 to the death. The Church has failed to 
 learn what the Holy Spirit has to teach on 
 themes like these so as to make Him glorious 
 in the eyes of those gallant lads who have 
 fought for us, and make them feel that He 
 is the Brother, the Friend, the Master, the 
 Captain that they need. 
 
 The Epistles are full of the truth that the 
 living Christ 1s in us by His Spirit. Paul 
 prayed for the Ephesians that “ God would 
 grant a mighty increase of strength by His 
 Spirit in the inner man,” and then he added, 
 “‘ May Christ dwell in your hearts by faith.” 
 To him the Spirit of God and the Spirit of 
 Christ are interchangeable terms. “ But you 
 are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, 
 since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any 
 one who does not possess the Spirzt of Christ 
 is none of His.” And it is not until the Holy 
 Spirit works His holy will in us that the 
 
 116 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 work of Christ for us becomes effectual for 
 our salvation. But when He shows us our 
 need, and unfolds the glory of Christ as 
 our Redeemer, then we embrace Christ as 
 the Saviour we need; we make Him our 
 own by faith. And then, ‘‘ Of God, Christ 
 is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, 
 and sanctification, and redemption.” The 
 mystical union of the soul with Christ is not 
 an esoteric doctrine for the few. It is a 
 great practical truth for all believers. 
 
 *¢Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born 
 
 But not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn: 
 
 The Cross of Golgotha thou lookest to in vain 
 Unless within thyself it be set up again.” 
 
 As Paul puts it, “Do you understand that 
 Jesus Christ isin you? Otherwise you must 
 be failures.” It is the life of Christ; the 
 nature of Christ, the thoughts of Christ, the 
 virtues of Christ, which the Holy Spirit 
 communicated to believers. He moulds us 
 after the Master’s pattern. The sanctification 
 of the believer consists in the imparting to 
 him by the Spirit of those moral and spiritual 
 qualities which were found in Christ. 
 
 117 
 
VII 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 INDIVIDUAL (continued) 
 
“O Life Divine— 
 Poured out instead of mine— 
 O Sacrifice— 
 Who by Thy death hast paid my ransom price— 
 In Whom I see 
 The righteousness which God accepts for me. 
 
 Pour out Thyself within me now; 
 Life of my life be Thou; 
 As deeper in Thy death I die, 
 Rise Thou within and sanctify 
 Thy Temple—working in me to fulfil 
 O living Chriss—Thy Father’s will.” 
 E. H. Divatt. 
 
 120 
 
Vil 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE 
 INDIVIDUAL (continued)? 
 
 Tue Holy Spirit’s purpose in taking up His 
 abode in the believer’s heart is the production 
 of Christian character. In the accomplish- 
 ment of this, He is the active agent. Paul 
 asserts that they (believers in Christ) are not 
 to live and act as mere men of the world, 
 but that they are to be “ transformed by the 
 entire renewal of their minds, so that they 
 may learn by experience what God’s will 
 is—that will which is good, and beautiful 
 and perfect.” ‘They must seek sanctification 
 by the Holy Spirit, and sanctification in 
 obedience. Sanctification is to regeneration 
 
 1 ScripruRE REFERENCES.—Acts xiii. §2 ; Rom. v. §, viii. 6, 11, 
 12, 13-15, 23, 26-27, Xiv. 17, XV. 13,19 5 2 Cor. i. 22, ili, 3, v. 5; 
 Gal. iv. 6, v. 5, 16-18, 22-23, 25-26, vi. 8, Eph. i. 13-14, 
 18, ii, 21, v. 18, vi. 17-185 Col. i, 8, 293 1 Thess. i, 5-6, iv. 
 7-8, v. 23-24; 2 Tim i. 7, 14; Jas, iv. §; 1 Pet. i, 2, Wites 
 1 John ili, 9, 23-24. 2 
 
 121 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 what growth is to birth. It is the Christian- 
 izing of the Christian. In this work the 
 Holy Spirit is the ever-present agent. He 
 nourishes and strengthens the holy life 
 implanted. He brings home fresh truth to 
 the heart so that it illumines the mind and 
 moulds the life. He turns the events of 
 life into sanctifying influences. The glory 
 of the Christian life is the indwelling of the 
 Spirit of God. And the mind He creates 
 within us is the mind of Christ. The basis 
 of Christian sanctification is the truth that 
 a changed nature results in a changed life. 
 Make the nature new, and then we shall 
 “ walk in newness of life.” 
 
 I. Tue WARFARE WITH SIN. 
 
 The great hindrance to our becoming 
 holy and like Christ is the power of sin in 
 the soul, which still remains after regenera- 
 tion has taken place. Hence there is unceas- 
 ing battle going on within, between the 
 forces of evil and the new impulses of the 
 new nature. And in this spiritual warfare our 
 
 122 
 
Holy Spirit te the Individual 
 
 Helper is our Comrade God. Paul says to 
 the Galatians, “Let your lives be guided 
 by the Spirit, and then you will certainly 
 not indulge the cravings of your lower 
 natures, for the cravings of the lower nature 
 are opposed to those of the Spirit, and the 
 cravings of the Spirit are opposed to those 
 of the lower nature; because these are 
 antagonistic to each other, so that you 
 cannot do everything to which you are 
 inclined.”” And he goes on to remind us 
 what some of these doings of our lower 
 nature are—‘‘ fornication, impurity, inde- 
 cency, enmity, strife, jealousy . . . and the 
 like.’ ‘“* And as to these I forewarn you... 
 that they who are guilty of such things will 
 have no share in the Kingdom of God.” 
 And he exhorts us, ‘‘ If we are living by the 
 Spirit’s power, let our conduct be governed 
 by the Spirit’s power.” \ 
 
 There are few subjects more inscrutable 
 than the union in men of body and spirit. 
 But we are becoming increasingly aware of 
 the amazing interaction between the two: 
 of the wonderful influence of the spirit upon 
 
 123 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 the body, and of the body on the spirit : 
 
 and we are seeing more and more clearly that 
 the health of the one is the health of the 
 other. Holiness is simply the health of the 
 whole man. The great hindrance to the 
 sanctification of the spirit is the fact that the 
 body is the seat of unruly passions. And the 
 conflict between the flesh and the spirit is 
 part of the Christian’s experience as depicted 
 in the seventh chapter of Romans. Now 
 one of the reasons why our Comrade God 
 comes to dwell within us is for the sancti- 
 fication of the flesh, and to enable the man 
 to keep his unruly passions under control. 
 This must be done, if there is to be any 
 purification of the spirit. As Paul puts it, 
 *‘’They that are Christ’s have crucified the 
 flesh with its affections and lusts.” This 
 means pain and agony. ‘There is no cruci- 
 fixion of the lower nature without real 
 suffering. It is true that the functions of 
 the body are God-given. They are not in 
 themselves evil. They may be used in 
 accordance with the will of God. The 
 problem is how to use them and not to misuse 
 124 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 them; how to use them under the control 
 ‘of the Spirit. What the Christian has to 
 crucify is all excess, all unruly passion. 
 That is what defiles and degrades. Paul 
 tells us, “Do you not know that your 
 bodies are a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit 
 which is within you—the Spirit which 
 you have from God?” And again, “ If 
 any man is marring the sanctuary of God, 
 him will God mar; for the sanctuary of 
 God is holy, which you all are.’ The 
 thought of this is to be our great safeguard 
 against impurity, for it should fill us with a 
 holy fear. How terrible is “the corruption 
 which a man reaps when he sows in the 
 flesh !”? Therefore the command is given 
 with inexorable stringency, ‘Flee from 
 fornication; any other sin that a human 
 being commits lies outside the body; but 
 he who commits fornication sins against his 
 own body.” ‘There is no appeal for con- 
 tinence comparable to this. And let no 
 man say, ‘‘ It is impossible.” Multitudes of 
 chaste men have proved that false, and that 
 this command can be obeyed. This is a 
 125 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 time when this teaching needs to be uttered 
 in trumpet tones. The body is the shrine 
 of the Spirit of God, and because the Spirit 
 is holy, the shrine must be holy too. ‘'There- 
 fore, brethren, it is not to our lower natures 
 that we are under obligation to live by their 
 rule; for if you so live, death is near; but 
 if through being under the sway of the 
 Spirit you are putting your old bodily 
 habits to death, you will live.” : 
 
 2. Tue Guest oF THE HOLY AND THE TRUE. 
 
 The Spirit makes us holy, not merely by 
 delivering us from the bondage of evil habits 
 leading to death, but by implanting in us 
 holy affections, desires, ideals, and by foster- 
 ing within us certain qualities of spirit and 
 temper, certain graces and virtues, which 
 marked the holy character of the Lord Jesus 
 Himself. The Holy Spirit produces in us 
 the fruit of the Spirit. In writing to the 
 Colossians, Paul mentions that Epaphras had 
 informed him of ‘ their love, which is in- 
 spired by the Spirit.” And to the Galatians 
 
 - 12 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 he says, “The Spirit brings a harvest of 
 
 love, joy, peace: patience towards others, 
 kindness, benevolence : good faith, meekness, 
 self-restraint.”” Yet these things are the 
 essence of true holiness; in the exhibition 
 of these consists ‘‘ the higher life”; and if 
 _ spiritually minded men and women were 
 unceasing in prayer to the Holy Spirit 
 that such a harvest as this might be found 
 in their lives, through His indwelling, and 
 thought less of abnormal ecstasies and -ex- 
 periences, they would powerfully influence 
 the world for good, and commend to others 
 the religion of Christ. 
 
 The graces of the Christian character have 
 ever a God-ward as well as a man-ward look. 
 In this they differ from natural human 
 excellences, which are of real worth and 
 beauty, but their outflow is directed mainly 
 towards their fellow-men. But it is not 
 so with the new affections implanted by the 
 Spirit of God. There God in Christ is 
 supreme, and hence Christian experience 
 confirms Paul’s statement that ‘“ God’s love 
 for us floods our hearts through the Holy 
 
 127 
 
x 
 
 The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Spirit which has been given to us,” and con-, 
 sequently we can say from the heart, ‘“ We 
 love Him because He first loved us.” And 
 we should never forget the other graces 
 which have a God-ward look, namely, joy 
 and peace. ‘These two are a most precious 
 part of that lovely cluster, which in their 
 combination form ‘‘ the fruit of the Spirit.” 
 The Christian will be conscious that he is at 
 peace with God because Christ has made 
 peace by the blood of His cross, and therefore 
 there is now for him “‘no more condemna- 
 tion.” And as the result of this, there will 
 bea deep inward joy. Paul could speak of 
 “ sorrowing, yet always rejoicing,” and ex- 
 hort us in the glowing words, “ Rejoice in 
 the Lord at all times, and again I say 
 rejoice.” 
 
 I fear that this fruit of the Spirit is 
 not so commonly seen in the character 
 of Christians as it ought to be. They are 
 thought by many to be grave, and even 
 gloomy. More might with advantage take 
 Bishop Hacket’s motto, “Serve God and 
 be cheerful.” Few Christians seem to 
 
 128 
 
 f 
 
— 
 
 Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 possess those “‘ happy morning faces’? which 
 Stevenson desired. There is much serious- 
 ness at our public worship, and often there is 
 a decorous earnestness. But why is there not 
 more joy? ‘There ought to be in every 
 true Christian “ joy and peace in believing 
 in Jesus.” And how attractive it is when 
 the Christian carries sunshine with him 
 wherever he goes! ‘Thus it was that St. 
 
 - Francis and his companions drew to them the 
 
 multitudes in Italy as they passed along the 
 roads carolling their songs of Christian joy. 
 
 -It has been my lot to go each day into the 
 
 room of an aged saint and bid her good 
 morning. As soon as it is light, it has been 
 her custom to get “her books,” namely, 
 her Bible and her hymn-book. And many a 
 time have I seen on her face such a light as 
 never shone on sea or land, transfiguring her 
 countenance with heavenly beauty, because 
 of the peace and joy within. And the beauty 
 faded not from her face with the advancing 
 day, but remained, so that many remarked 
 on it. But I knew whence it came. If 
 more Christians were like this, many would 
 
 129 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 seek to learn their secret, for the world is 
 very hungry for peace and joy. 
 
 There are, no doubt, perils in regard to 
 religious emotion, but we stifle it too much. 
 When the emotion is real, it ought to be 
 expressed, and not crushed down. And how 
 better can Christian joy be expressed than 
 in Christian song? Says Paul, “ We are to 
 shun excess in wine, but we are to drink 
 deeply of God's Spirit. And as the result 
 there will be a spiritual exuberance which 
 will express itself in psalms, and hymns, and 
 spiritual songs.” And here it may be 
 pointed out that we have no right to pick 
 and choose among the various elements 
 which compose “the fruit of the Spirit.” 
 They are a perfect combination, when the 
 cluster is complete, but the absence of any 
 one mars the beauty of the whole. It is 
 well for a man to have love; joy, peace. 
 But what if he be lacking in kindness or 
 benevolence? I have known more than one 
 instance of the beauty and influence of 
 Christian character being marred simply by 
 stinginess! There are too many one-sided 
 
 130 
 
 / 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 Christians. Like Ephraim, they are “as a 
 cake not turned.” We should aim at a 
 harmonious Christian life, undisfigured by 
 any grievous blank or blemish. 
 
 3. Tue NEED OF USING THE GIFT. 
 
 It cannot be too clearly emphasized that 
 the possession of the abiding Spirit in the 
 _ believer is not a spiritual luxury for his own 
 enrichment and enjoyment merely. It is a 
 spring of living water in the soul; but it must 
 have an outflow, or it will become stagnant 
 and dry up. It must flow forth in deeds of 
 love, and in acts of willing service for the 
 good of others. As we have freely received, 
 so we must freely give. There is an essential 
 diffusiveness in the life of Christ. If the 
 Spirit be in us, the mystic river will begin 
 to flow out from us. If we are foolish 
 enough to put barriers in the way or attempt _ 
 to dam it up, it will be to our loss. For the 
 Spirit will be withdrawn. The living water 
 will become stagnant. But when we allow 
 the river its natural outflow, wherever it 
 
 131 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 comes it will bring life and fruitfulness, and 
 cause the desert once more to blossom as 
 the rose. 
 
 The solemn thing to remember is that if 
 we do not use the power we have through our 
 possession of the indwelling Spirit, it will be 
 withdrawn. We must use it, or lose it. 
 You may have noticed that each servant in 
 the Parable of the Pounds received the same 
 amount. ‘This is the gift of the Holy Spirit 
 which is common to every believer. But in 
 the Parable of the Talents the sums bestowed 
 vary, indicating the great differences in the 
 endowments bestowed. But all have the 
 Holy Spirit. This alone conveys the power 
 needed for service, and with the power thus 
 given comes a new responsibility. If we 
 have a power given for the saving of men’s 
 lives, is it not criminal not to use that? 
 The slothful servant was afraid of the 
 responsibility and shirked it. And you know 
 what befell him. Our capacity for serving 
 God is not to be measured by our own 
 natural abilities, but by the Divine power 
 entrusted to us for use. And see what 
 
 132 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 great things the humblest believer may do 
 when using that power! ‘T'wo men stand 
 out conspicuously in the nineteenth century 
 as having accomplished much for the King- 
 dom of God—the one was Spurgeon, the 
 greatest of evangelical preachers, the other 
 was Lord Shaftesbury, the pioneer of Social 
 Christianity. ‘The one was converted by an 
 unlettered cobbler, the other owed _ his 
 salvation to his nurse. When you consider 
 what these humble believers accomplished 
 by winning these two men for Christ, 
 keeping in view the multitudes who were 
 and are being blessed by their beneficent 
 labours, you see the great possibilities of the 
 trust committed to each one of us, would 
 we but use it. It is very solemn the con- 
 demnation of idleness in the Parable, “Thou 
 wicked and slothful servant.” His wicked- 
 - ness consisted in his sloth. Let us remember 
 that the possession of this gift implies the 
 equipment needed for fruitful service, and 
 woe be to the man who fails to use it! 
 There are varieties of talents, but the same 
 Spirit ; varieties of service, but the same 
 
 133 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Lord ; varieties of effects, but the same God, 
 who is everything in every one. Each re- 
 ceives his manifestation of His Spirit for 
 the common good. But all these effects 
 are produced by one and the same Spirit, 
 apportioning them severally to each indi- 
 vidual as he pleases. Let each one of us 
 daily ask, “Lord, show me Thy gift of the 
 Spirit to me that I may use it for Thee!” 
 
 4. Ture PLepcE oF SUCCESS. 
 
 This is found in being “filled with the 
 
 Spirit.” God claims the whole man—body, 
 soul, and spirit—for Himself, in order that 
 He may fill him with Himself. And so the 
 command is given to all, “ Be filled with the. 
 Spirit.” As has already been stated, the 
 
 Spirit is not given tous apart from Chiist.'4 
 
 Nor can we have the fulness of the Spirit 
 without a spiritual apprehension of the 
 
 fulness of Christ. It is not enough to know s 
 
 Christ as Prophet and Teacher, we must 
 know Him also as Saviour and Redeemer, as 
 Lord and King. The doctrines of grace, 
 
 134 
 
 > a 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 as they are interwoven with the sublime 
 realities of the Person and work of Christ, 
 produce in the soul that evangelical humility 
 which makes room for the incoming of the 
 Spirit in His fulness. When self dies, the 
 Spirit reigns within. Christ Himself was 
 filled with the Spirit. So at Pentecost were 
 the disciples. ‘‘ They were all filled with 
 the Holy Ghost.” Frequent references to 
 this are made in the Acts of the Apostles. 
 The command given by Paul to theEphesians, 
 from the tense used, suggests an experience 
 both present and continuous. Every be- 
 liever has the Spirit, but certainly every 
 believer is not “‘ filled with the Spirit,” and 
 that we must aim at attaining. The fulness 
 of the Spirit is the Divine remedy for the 
 low level of Christian living which is all too 
 common, and also for the comparative i1m- 
 potence of the Church. The whole mind 
 of the Church should be concentrated on 
 experiencing this fulness of the Spirit. This 
 is a higher spiritual stage than “ being born 
 of the Spirit.” Egypt always has its Nile. 
 But it is the overflow of the Nile which 
 
 135 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 secures her fertility. Every Christian has 
 the Spirit. But it is “the fulness of the 
 Spirit ” that renders him “ fruitful in every 
 good word and work.” How are we to 
 obtain this highest boon of Heaven? ‘There 
 must be on our part a full surrender to God. 
 We must open every chamber in our souls 
 to the Divine indwelling. We must be 
 ready that God shall be dominant in every 
 phase and department of our life. Not all 
 are willing for this. Most of us have 
 chambers of the soul locked against Christ. 
 While that is so, we cannot be “ filled with 
 the Spirit.” When Mahmoud, one of the 
 conquerors of India, entered one of the 
 Hindu temples, he was besought to spare an 
 idol regarded as specially sacred. Heat once 
 cut it-down with his sword. And from the 
 shattered head there poured forth a shim- 
 mering shower of diamonds of incalculable 
 value. It is when we strike down all the 
 idols of the soul that the wealth of the 
 Spirit for us is revealed. The “fulness of 
 the Spirit ”’ implies much prayer and com- 
 munion with God. “If ye, being evil, 
 136 
 
 ee ee ee 
 
 eae ne ees 
 Se ee, ee ee 
 
 Se OER Oe 
 
 tl cae 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 know how to give good gifts unto your 
 children, how much more will your Father 
 give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ?”’ 
 
 There must be continuous asking in the spirit 
 
 of faith and receptivity. It is “by faith 
 that we receive the promise of the Spirit.” 
 
 5. Tue Spirit AND PRAYER. 
 
 Avoiding all mechanical conceptions in 
 connection with the presence and work of 
 the Holy Spirit in our souls, we shall not 
 imagine that we have the Spirit in the sense 
 that we have a sum of money in a box, which 
 will remain there till we take it out. We 
 
 may venture to affirm that even as a tropical Vo 
 
 plant could not live if transplanted to~ 
 Arctic snows, so the Holy Spirit of God 
 can only live and work in a congenial atmo- 
 sphere, and that He cannot and will not 
 continue to work in an atmosphere of cold- 
 ness, worldliness, or wilful sin. There © 
 is only one way by which to retain the 
 presence of God in the soul, and that is by 
 prayer. In this also, as in all connected 
 
 137 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 with the spiritual life, the Holy Spirit is 
 our Helper. As the Apostle reminds us, 
 ‘The Spirit assists us in our weakness ; for 
 we do not know how to pray aright, but the 
 Spirit pleads for us with sighs that are 
 beyond words, and He who searches the 
 
 human heart knows what is the mind of . 
 
 the Spirit, since the Spirit pleads before 
 God for the Saints.” He tells us too that it 
 is “‘ by the one Spirit that we enjoy access 
 to the Father.” Prayer without the Holy 
 Spirit is not true prayer. There is as much 
 difference between true prayer and formal 
 prayer as between real and artificial fruit. 
 If we do not pray in the Holy Spirit, we do 
 
 not pray at all, and our prayers “ never to 
 Heaven go.” ‘True prayer goes to God, 
 but it also comes from God. God only 
 answers prayers inspired by Himself. It is 
 the Holy Spirit who inspires true prayers in 
 our hearts. Prayer is partly the act of man, 
 and partly the act of the Holy Spirit. It 1s 
 a delicate and difficult matter how to relate 
 the activities of our moral and spiritual 
 nature, and how to distinguish between them. 
 
 138 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 We may gain some insight into this in the 
 matter of prayer. The believer knows by 
 experience that, when on the Mount of 
 
 Communion, his own personality seems at 
 
 times to dwindle to a vanishing point, while 
 the Intercessor breathes forth heavenly 
 thoughts and holy aspirations, and God 
 answers by flooding the soul with light, and 
 love, and power. ‘This is the mystic com- 
 munion of Saints with Heaven, and here the 
 work of thé Holy Spirit and the activity otf 
 our own moral and spiritual nature when at 
 its highest commingle in heavenly harmony, 
 and flood the soul with grace. And this is. 
 needed for the continuance and increase of 
 the spiritual life within. Without such 
 prayer, the life dwindles and dies. Do we 
 attach sufficient importance to this in our 
 scheme of life ? The masters of the spiritual 
 life have all recognized it, and acted on it. 
 Luther used to say, “‘ I am so busy at present 
 that I cannot get on without three or four 
 hours of prayer.” A friend of mine told me 
 that he knew a family with whom a very 
 
 distinguished Cardinal stayed when in Italy 
 139 
 
- The Power of the Spirit 
 
 a few years ago. They said the Cardinal’s 
 day was unusual. He rose at four, and at 
 five his chaplain, who was also his secretary, 
 had to be with him for the transaction of 
 business and correspondence. ‘This went on 
 till half-past eight, when he breakfasted. 
 At half-past nine he retired to his room, 
 and the chaplain said that from then till 
 twelve o’clock his Eminence spent the time 
 in devotion, principally on his knees. When 
 my friend asked, “‘ But don’t you find that 
 in the days of great pressure of work this 
 arrangement must be set aside?” his 
 reply was, ‘“‘ It is never set aside for anything. 
 His Eminence believes that 7¢ 15 on his knees 
 that things are done which really matter.” 
 This is how one of the busiest and most in- 
 fluential ‘men in our time spends the best 
 hours of each day. There is something here 
 for Protestants to ponder. 
 
 Finally, this indwelling of the Holy Spirit 
 in our hearts is God’s pledge and guarantee to 
 us of eternal life. As Paul joyfully puts it, 
 “It is God who consecrated me, who stamped 
 me with His seal, and gave me the Spirit as 
 
 140 
 
 ee 
 
Holy Spirit in the Individual 
 
 a pledge in my heart.” Looking forward 
 to the mystery of death, and the laying aside 
 of this our mortal tent, he says, “ I am pre- 
 
 pared for this change by God, who has given __ 
 
 me the Spirit as its pledge and instalment.” 
 And he prays that “the God of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may grant 
 you the spirit of wisdom and revelation by 
 the knowledge of Himself, illuminating the 
 eyes of your heart, so that you can under- 
 stand the hope to which He calls us, the 
 Wealth of His glorious heritage in the 
 Saints.” From these glowing words we can 
 understand what an aged saint once said, 
 when he was dying, to a friend who called 
 to see him, and inquired whether he had a 
 hope of heaven. His startling reply was, 
 “I have been living there for years.” He 
 had drunk in the Spirit of the Apostle’s 
 words, and had verified them in his own 
 experience. And this is what we all may 
 do. The Spirit is now the guarantee of our» 
 everlasting felicity. To dwell for ever with 
 God is the natural consummation of enjoying 
 
 His indwelling here. We should appropriate 
 141 
 
The Power of. the Spirit 
 
 for ourselves the great words, “Thus you 
 are strangers and foreigners no longer; you 
 share the membership of the saints; you 
 belong to God’s own household; you are 
 a building that rests on the apostles and 
 prophets as its foundation, with Jesus Christ 
 as its Chief Corner Stone: in Him the 
 whole structure is welded together, and 
 rises into a sacred temple in the Lord, and 
 in Him you are yourselves built into this to 
 form a habitation for God in the Spirit.” 
 
 142 
 
VIII 
 
 SINS AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
« 
 
 “ Ah, Lord, we all have pierced Thee! Wilt Thou 
 be 
 -Wroth with us all to slay us all? 
 Nay, Lord, be this thing far from Thee and me; 
 By whom should we arise, for we are small, 
 By whom if not by Thee? 
 
 Lord, if of us who pierced Thee Thou spare one, 
 Spare yet one more to love Thy Face, 
 
 And yet another of poor souls undone, 
 
 Another and another—God of Grace 
 
 Let mercy overrun.” 
 
 Curistina G. Rosetti. 
 
 144 
 
' VIII 
 SINS AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT? 
 
 From the preceding studies we have seen 
 how great a place the Holy Spirit occupies 
 in the teaching of the New Testament, and 
 in the experience of the first Christians. 
 How very different is the place He occupies 
 in the thoughts and in the experience of the 
 average Christian to-day! Perhaps this is 
 the explanation of much of the superficiality 
 and much of the impotence of our modern 
 Christianity. It was a familiar cry recently 
 in theology, “‘ Back to Christ!” To that 
 we have much reason to add, “‘ Back to the 
 Holy Spirit ! ” 
 
 When we consider how conspicuous is His 
 work in our salvation, that it is He who 
 regenerates us, illumines our minds, enables 
 
 1 Scripture ReFERENcEs,—Gen. vi. 3; Matt. xii. 32; Mark 
 iii, 28-30; Acts v. 3, 9, vii, 51, viii, pecea Eph, iv. 30; 
 1 Thess. v, 19; Heb. x. 29. 
 
 145 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 us to embrace Jesus Christ, unites us to 
 Him, completes His work for us, teaches us, 
 guides us, inspires us, moulds us, makes us 
 holy, and fits us for the inheritance of the 
 saints in light ; when we remember that He 
 is Christ’s own continued Presence in the 
 Church and in our hearts, our Comrade God 
 who abides with us for ever; when we re- 
 flect that in Him alone resides the power 
 needful to equip us not merely for the tasks 
 and duties of each day, but to combat and 
 solve successfully the tremendous problems 
 that await the Church in the future, it is 
 indeed strange that He occupies so compara- 
 tively small a place in the thoughts and 
 desires and aspirations of believers to-day. 
 We must restore the Holy Spirit to the place 
 He occupied in the New Testament Church ; 
 then, and then only, can it be with us “as 
 it was with them at the beginning.” Here 
 is our Divine Comrade and Ally come to 
 give us the victory in the great war with sin 
 in our own souls and in the world. Surely it 
 is madness on our part to ignore Him, to be 
 ignorant of what He is doing and will do, or 
 
 146 
 
 OE a ge 
 
 ee a 
 
 Po ee a Ee ee nena ae 
 
 ein wie IN 
 
 < 
 
Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 to regard Him with suspicion, or coldness, or 
 shrinking, or unbelief. Surely we ought to 
 stir up our souls to utter an oft-repeated 
 
 prayer, ‘‘ Come, Holy Spirit! come and work 
 
 in us and for us in Thine Almighty Power, 
 for without Thee we are nothing and can do 
 nothing.” 
 
 t. A Wrone ATTITUDE, 
 
 There are devout religious people who 
 undervalue this Comrade God, this abiding 
 Helper, because they are living on the wrong 
 side of Pentecost. Their attitude is very 
 largely that of Old Testament believers, or 
 at least of the disciples of Jesus before 
 Pentecost. ‘They cannot say with the 
 Ephesian Christians, ‘‘ We have not even 
 heard of His existence.” For they have 
 heard of the Holy Spirit. But He does not 
 occupy His fitting place in their thoughts, 
 affections, life, and work. He is not con- 
 sciously a living Power in their lives. They 
 desire to do the Will of God, and to obey 
 the teaching of Christ, and, they say, “ they 
 do their best’; but they are often sorrow- 
 
 147 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 ful, because their religion has so little growth, 
 and their service so little fruit. How can 
 any intelligent reader of the New Testa- 
 ment fail to see that after Pentecost a new 
 Power came into the Church for holy living 
 and fruitful service, and that the holiness 
 and power made manifest in the lives of the 
 first believers is all due to the Holy Spirit of 
 God? Pentecost was the inauguration of 
 the Dispensation of the Spirit which con- 
 tinues to this day, and is to abide. And the 
 weakness of much of our modern Chris- 
 tianity is that we have too much ignored, 
 and set at naught, the power He means us 
 to use. 
 
 There are Christians who, even yet, do 
 not seem to realize that the Holy Spirit of 
 God is the birthright of every believer. 
 They have the indwelling Spirit, yet they 
 ignore Him. ‘They are like a man living in 
 penury, while in a secret drawer in the old 
 cabinet in his room is a will; which if he 
 knew of it and fetched it out, would at once 
 place him in possession of vast wealth. The 
 document is within his reach, but he does 
 
 148 
 
 ant ee 
 
Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 not know that it is there. So he lives and 
 dies in poverty. May God open the eyes 
 of every believer to realize that the Holy 
 
 Spirit is within him, and that in Him he has 
 
 the fountain of inward holiness, the spring 
 of growth, the secret of fruitfulness, the 
 talisman of power, which will enable him to 
 do great things for God, and that this our 
 Comrade God is waiting and eager to be 
 made use of. 
 
 There are various passages which indicate 
 the mistaken or definitely sinful attitude 
 which both believers and unbelievers take 
 up in regard to the Holy Spirit, our Comrade 
 God. 
 
 Eiad 
 
 2. Certain Cunpasre Acts. 
 
 (a) Grieving the Spirit.—Paul in his letter 
 to the Ephesians says, “‘ Grieve not the Holy 
 Spirit of God.” Many are doing this, some 
 unwittingly. You may anger a stranger by 
 treating him slightingly. You can grieve 
 only one who loves you. And the Holy 
 Spirit is Holy Love. The meaning of the 
 text seems to be, ‘‘ Do not give pain to one 
 
 149 
 
~The Power of the Spirit 
 
 who so loves you.” Many a young man has 
 turned from terrible temptation when the 
 thought came home, “That would break 
 my mother’s heart.” So it has pleased 
 God to put before us a similar considera- 
 tion, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of 
 God.” We may grieve the Spirit by in- 
 sincerity and falsehood, for He is the Spirit 
 of truth. All injustice and dishonesty 
 is hateful to Him. He is grieved at all 
 falsehood in word or deed, at all insincerity 
 on the part of Christians towards one 
 another, at all fear of truth, at all economy 
 of truth, at all evasion, at all pretence. We 
 may grieve Him by malice and unkindness, 
 for He is the Spirit of Love. How it must 
 grieve Him as He accompanies us through 
 the day to witness our storms of passion, or 
 words of unkindness, our peevishness, our 
 jealousy. By Him we have been sealed unto 
 the day of redemption, and this is His mark 
 of ownership. Surely, then, we shall no 
 longer in ways such as these grieve Him who 
 so tenderly loves us, and who wants to do 
 so much for us. 
 150 
 
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' Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 (b) Resisting the Holy Spirit.—Stephen 
 said to the members of the Sanhedrin, 
 “You do always resist the Holy Spirit.” 
 
 When are we in danger of acting thus? — 
 
 _ If you have not yet yielded to Christ, you 
 are certainly doing so. For His whole aim 
 and purpose has been all through your life 
 to bring you into living union with Christ. 
 Have you hardened your heart? Have you 
 put off the decisive act to a more convenient 
 season? All that means resisting the Holy 
 Spirit. But Christians also resist Him. 
 Suppose the Spirit wants to lead you to a 
 more consecrated life, to a life of much more 
 active and definite Christian service, and 
 you hang back and prefer your present 
 easy-going ways, what are you doing but 
 resisting the Holy Spirit ? Only they who 
 are “led by the Spirit” are the sons of 
 God. But what if we decline to follow 
 where He leads? Are we not then resisting 
 Him ? 
 
 (c) Quenching the Spirit.—The Apostle, in 
 his letter to the Thessalonians, speaks of 
 “quenching the Spirit.”” In this figure the 
 
 151 | 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Holy Spirit is likened to a fire, and we are 
 exhorted not to put it out. How do you 
 quench a fire? ‘There are more ways than 
 one of doing so. You may refuse or neglect 
 to put any fuel on, and then it will gradually 
 die down and go out. And if you neglect 
 the Word of God, and prayer, and the other 
 means of grace, you provide the Spirit with 
 nothing on which to work, and His light 
 dies out in the soul. Or you may put out 
 a fire by putting on what will not burn— 
 bad coal or damp wood. Soif you fill your 
 soul with earthly things, with worldly in- 
 terests and ambitions, or if you constantly 
 harbour thoughts of sin or unbelief, the fire 
 of the Spirit within the soul will gradually 
 flicker out. It cannot live on such as these. 
 
 Or you may put out a fire by pouring water 
 
 on it. So you may put out the holy fire in 
 the soul by deliberately harbouring sinful 
 purposes, or by wilfully going on in sin. 
 Then whatever work of grace may have been 
 begun in the heart, whatever holy aspirations 
 may have been awakened, will certainly dis- 
 appear and cease to be. And when the fire 
 152 
 
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 Van ae aiek oeeeeee 
 
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 Sts; * = ig c 
 
Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 is extinguished in the heart, what is left ? 
 Nothing but ashes, and you can make nothing 
 
 of them. So when the flame of the Spirit _ 
 
 is quenched in a human soul, only the ashes 
 of a nature remain which seem to be no 
 longer susceptible of spiritual life, or open 
 to spiritual impressions. It is a terrible 
 thing to quench the fire of God’s Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 (Z) Insulting the Spirtt.—The author of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “ Of how 
 much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he 
 be thought worthy who hath done despite 
 to (or insulted) the Spirit of Grace?” 
 When are we in danger of doing so? When 
 we make light of the Spirit’s work, and 
 imagine that we may know all there is to 
 know about Christ, or that we may follow 
 and serve Him in our own strength, without 
 the aid of the Spirit. And do we not do so 
 when we presume to do God’s work without © 
 the aid of God’s Spirit, and suppose that we 
 can accomplish all that is needed by tact, 
 insight, earnestness, and the power of human 
 sympathy? ‘These can do much, and are all 
 
 153 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 required. But without the aid of the 
 
 Spirit, not one human soul can ever be 
 quickened into newness of life. And are we 
 not in danger of this sin when we dismiss 
 all thoughts of the Spirit from our minds, 
 as if this were something too mysterious to 
 be intelligible, or too transcendental to be 
 understood by ordinary practical folk? We 
 have no more right to ignore what took place 
 on the first Whitsunday than that which 
 occurred on the first Christmas Day. On 
 this last, the Saviour of the world was born, 
 and on the former the Dispensation of the 
 Spirit began. We may not ignore, despise, 
 or insult Him without injury and loss to 
 ourselves. 
 
 3. In THE Grip oF ETERNAL SIN. 
 
 There is no more appalling verse in Scrip- 
 ture than that in St. Mark’s Gospel which 
 says, “ But he that shall blaspheme against 
 the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but 
 is in danger of eternal damnation.” ‘This is 
 known as the Unpardonable Sin, and strikes 
 
 154 
 
Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 the imagination with horror. The expres- 
 sion is unfortunate and misleading, for, as 
 we shall see, it is never one isolated act of 
 transgression, however dark, heinous, or 
 flagrant. There have been hideous and 
 horrible and revolting deeds done under the 
 sun, so loathsome that they do not bear 
 talking about. But no one sin is so heinous 
 as to exhaust the virtue that flows from the 
 Cross of Christ, nor is any single sin un- 
 pardonable. What Christ was speaking of 
 was not one isolated act, but a persistent, 
 continuous course of sinning, culminating at 
 last in a state of mind which places a man 
 irrevocably outside the Divine mercy to the 
 grief of the Divine Love. The proper 
 translation of the verse is, “‘ But whosoever 
 shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath 
 never forgiveness, but is in the grip of (or is 
 guilty of) eternal sin, because they said He 
 hath an unclean Spirit.” These are the 
 ~words of Jesus, and note the close and in- 
 timate relation between Himself and the 
 Holy Spirit. The blasphemy was against 
 Him, because they said He had an unclean 
 
 155 
 
f 
 
 The Power of the Spirit 
 
 Spirit, yet it is called blasphemy against the 
 Holy Spirit. ‘The Pharisees had committed 
 this sin by taking up a certain attitude 
 towards Jesus Christ. They had reached 
 this awful state of mind—that they hated 
 Christ because of His goodness. They hated 
 Him because He rebuked their formalism, 
 their greed, their pride, and their hypocrisy, 
 and though they knew He was right and 
 ‘they were wrong, yet they silenced the 
 protests of their consciences and hated the 
 Truth because He spoke the truth to them. 
 One could have understood an attitude of 
 doubt and misgiving in regard to Christ on 
 their part; He was so different a Messiah 
 from what they had been trained to expect. 
 There may be this doubt and this hesitancy 
 now, for the mysteries are great. ‘This is 
 not to commit the sin referred to here, 
 There may even be an attitude towards 
 Christ of convinced rejection of His claims 
 on the part of a man anxious to adhere to 
 the truth in so far as he understands it. 
 There is an honest disbelief in Christ. But 
 this is not committing this sin. Jesus says 
 
 156 \ 
 
 aia 
 
Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 in His magnanimous way, “ Whosoever shall 
 speak a word against the Son of Man, it 
 shall be forgiven him.” Even in regard to 3 
 the howling mob who rejoiced in His death 
 He cried, “ Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do.” They sinned in 
 ignorance. But this sin is something quite 
 different. It is the consciously and de- 
 liberately setting oneself against what one 
 knows to be right. It is a persistent sinning 
 against the inner light of conscience through 
 _ which the Spirit of God works. It is doing 
 sO without compunction, remorse, or shame. 
 It is wilfully rejecting, maliciously perverting, 
 persistently opposing what one knows in 
 one’s heart to be true. This is the sin which 
 cannot be forgiven. And why? Not be- 
 cause the mercy of God is outrun. So long 
 as there is penitence, there will certainly be 
 forgiveness by a God who delighteth in 
 mercy. But when a man is in the grip of 
 eternal sin, he is in a condition of hard 
 and scoffing callousness, he is in a region 
 of utter impenitence. For he has said, 
 
 * Evil, be thou my good.’ And the grip: 
 157 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 of this sin grows ever stronger. And after 
 
 a certain stage is reached, he can no longer 
 
 be forgiven, because he can no longer 
 repent. 
 
 4. THe True ATTITUDE TO THE 
 Hozy Spirit. 
 
 Such are some of the mistaken, dangerous, 
 sinful attitudes which men may take up in 
 regard to the Spirit of God. May God 
 keep us from every one of them! When one 
 reflects how patient, how tender, how loving 
 the Holy Spirit of God is; when one con- 
 siders what our Comrade God has come for, 
 to be with us in the great conflict, to re- 
 generate us, to strengthen us, to guide us, 
 to encourage us, to make us more than con- 
 querors at last, surely none of us can ever 
 act towards Him thus. The true attitude 
 towards Him may be summed up in one 
 word. It is docility, the willingness to be 
 taught by Him. Jesus has promised, “ He 
 will guide you into all truth.” There are 
 some whose experience of spiritual change is 
 
 158 
 
 aoe 
 
 Fe me Pete ee ee 
 
 = 
 
 eo ee een ee 
 
Sins against the Holy Spirit 
 
 sudden. The light flashes on the soul in a - 
 moment. But with most it is not so; the 
 
 light dawns gradually as the daylight comes. 
 
 _ The idea of guidance is of a gradual process. 
 We place ourselves at the disposal daily of 
 the Spirit of God, and He leads us on step 
 by step. One thing after another becomes 
 clear. It is beautiful to see this process 
 taking place in a human spirit, one peak 
 slowly climbed and won after another, one 
 
 truth after another being appreciated, till at 
 
 last the soul cries, after long quest, “Thou 
 hast set me in a large room. ‘Thou hast set 
 my feet on a Rock, and established my 
 goings.” We may well believe that this 
 being led by the Spirit does not end with 
 this life. There will be wonderful new 
 discoveries within the veil. For the realm 
 of truth can never be fully explored. We 
 all know only a small arc of the great circle. 
 Let us not be impatient, but wait for the 
 _ dawning of a clearer day when the shadows 
 shall depart, and all the mists of time. If 
 only we be docile, the Spirit will guide us 
 unto all truth. And there is this encourage- 
 
 159 
 
The Power of the Spirit 
 
 ment, “ He that doeth truth cometh to the 
 light.” The sincere, honest, upright soul 
 cannot finally be left in darkness, but 
 cometh ever nearer to the perfect radiance 
 of the nightless day. 
 
 And we must honour the Spirit in our 
 daily life. He must be more to us than He 
 has ever been. Consciously we must look 
 to Him for aid each day. And we must 
 honour Him in all our work. Without Him 
 we can effect nothing for God. That we 
 may be vessels meet for the Master’s use, 
 we must be empty of self, and filled with the 
 Spirit. This means the supremacy of Christ 
 in the soul. And the promise is a definite 
 one, “He giveth the Holy Spirit to them 
 that ask Him.” If there be this constant 
 self-emptying, and constant asking, and full 
 surrender, then we may be sure that ulti- 
 mately we shall be “filled with all the 
 fulness of God.” 
 
 160 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABNORMAL, manifestations 
 of Spirit, 14. 
 
 Acts of Holy Spirit, Book 
 or, 62. 
 
 Back to the Holy Spirit, 
 
 145. 
 
 Baptism and Holy Spirit, 
 IOs. 
 
 Baptism of Christ, Holy 
 Spirit and, 44. 
 
 Baptizes with Holy Spirit, 
 Jesus Christ, 52. 
 
 Birtn of Christ, Holy Spirit 
 
 and, 39. 
 Body, Holy Spirit and, 126. 
 Browning, 2. 
 
 Cardinal and Prayer, 139. 
 
 Christ in us by His Spirit, 
 116. 
 
 Church, alienation from, 64. 
 
 Church corporate, Spirit 
 given to, 71. 
 
 Church, evil of divisions, 
 64. / 
 
 Church, Holy Spirit in, 91. 
 
 Church must be pure, 82. 
 
 Completes work of Christ, 
 Holy Spirit, 53. 
 
 Conditions for receiving 
 Holy Spirit, 110. 
 
 Conviction of Sin, 106, 
 
 Crookes, Sir William, 4. 
 
 Dale, Dr., 18. 
 
 Death of Christ, 
 Spirit and, 50. 
 
 Denney, Principal, x. 
 
 Development of Church, 
 Holy Spirit and, 86. 
 
 Discipline, the Church and, 
 84 
 
 Holy 
 
 | Distinctions in Godhead, 
 
 28. 
 Divall, E. H., 120, 
 Docility, 159. 
 Drink Traffic and Church, 
 6A! : 
 
 Emotion, religious, perils of, 
 
 I 30. 
 
 Enlightenment, Holy Spirit 
 and, 109. 
 
 Experience, Christian, and 
 Holy Spirit, 98. 
 
 Flesh, sins of, 124. 
 
 Fox, George, 80. 
 
 Francis of Assisi, 129. 
 Fruit of Holy Spirit, 128. 
 
 Grieving the Spirit, 149. 
 Guarantee of Eternal Life, 
 140, 
 
 Heresy, denial of Holy 
 Spirit’s presence, 92. 
 Holiness, the Spirit and, 99. 
 
 | 161 
 
Index 
 
 Insulting the Spirit, 153. 
 Israel, Holy Spirit in, 11. 
 
 Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit 
 in, 37: 
 
 Jones, Dr. Tudor, 36. 
 
 Joshua, jealousy of, 70. 
 
 Joy, Fruit of Spirit, 129. 
 
 Kinship, Human and 
 
 Divine, 99. 
 
 Labour 
 64. 
 
 Mahmoud and the Idol, 
 136. 
 
 Man, Holy Spirit in, 9. 
 Ministry of Christ, Holy 
 Spirit and, 48. 
 Ministry and the Holy 
 
 Spirit, 90. 
 Misrepresentation of Christ, 
 116. 
 Missions, Holy Spirit and, 
 8 
 
 and Revolution, 
 
 9. 
 Murray, Andrew, 56. 
 
 Mystical union with Christ, 
 
 CTF 
 _ Nightingale, Florence, 106. 
 Old Testament, Holy 
 
 Spirit in, 12. 
 
 Pentecost, 57. 
 Power needed, 63. 
 Power of God, 67. 
 
 Prayer, the Spirit and, 137. 
 Purity, 125. 
 
 Quenching the Spirit, 151. 
 
 Regeneration, Holy Spirit 
 and, 103. 
 
 Reserve of Holy Spirit, 58. 
 
 Revivals, place of, 73. 
 
 Rosetti, Christina, 144. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 133. 
 Sin, war with, 122. 
 Spirit-filled Church, 135. 
 Spiritual power, want of, 65. 
 Spurgeon, C. H., 133. 
 Stevenson, R. L., 96. 
 Stuart, Dr. Moody, 67. 
 Success, pledge of, 134. 
 
 Temptation of Christ, Hol 
 Spirit and, 46. ; 
 
 Trinity, doctrine of, 22. 
 
 Tyndall, Professor, 3. 
 
 Universe, Spirit in relation 
 to, 6. 
 
 Unpardonable sin, 154. 
 
 Using the Gift, 131. 
 
 | Venereal Disease, 64. 
 
 Wells, H. G., 19, 109. 
 
 Women, Ministry of, 69. 
 
 Work of Christ, Holy Spirit 
 and, I14. 
 
 Wrong attitude 
 Holy Spirit, 147. 
 
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