.Al~ A  I/'5




THE
HOLY COMFORTER:
His PERSON AND His WORK.
BY
JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D.
NEW YORK:
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH,
No. 770 Broadway.
1866.




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866,
BY ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
Southern District of New York.
NEW YORK:
E. O. JENKINS, STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER, 20 NORTH WILLIAM ST.




TO THE CONGREGATION
OF THE
WHOM FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS I HAVE SERVED
IN THE GOSPEL,
AND BY WHOSE FAYOR
I AM AGAIN PERMITTED TO SEEK REST AND REFRESHMENT IN
FOREIGN LANDS,
THIS
33emeimbrancer of mn;tMinistra
IS INSCRIBED
BY THEIR
GRATEFUL PASTOR.
(3)




9
x o 4
MM




CONTENT S.
CHAPTER  I.
THE NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
The Paraclete, 7.-The Spirit of Truth, 12.-The Spirit of Grace, 16.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOLY SPIRIT A DIVINE PERSON.
Of the Personal Pronoun, 18.-Of Personal Offices and Acts, 25.The Spirit a Divine Personality, 31.
CHAPTER III.
THE SPIRIT IN HIS RELATIONS TO THE TRUTH.
The Spirit in the Written Worcd, 36.-Inspiration of the Apostles, 43. —Revelation and Inspiration, 4$.-The Truth a LifePower, 52.-The Spirit in Preaching, 54.-Pyrotechnics not
Power, 61.-Preaching not Infallible, 63.-Preaching to be
Practical, 64.
CHAPTER  IV.
THE COMFORTER ALSO A REPROVE-R.
His Coming to the World, 68.-The Work of Conviction, 73.His Reproof Infallible and Irresistible, 77.
CHAPTER V.
SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST.
Of Grieving and Resisting the Holy Spirit, 82.-The Unpardonable Sin, 85.-The Warning of Chlrist, SO.




Vi                   CONTENT'S.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SPIRIT AS LIFE.
Seen in the Hebrew Prophets, 93.-The Soul in Spiritual Death,
95.-Life not Self-Originated, 99-Truth Alone will not give
Life, 102.-The Divine Quickening, 104. —Methods of the Spirit's Operation, 108.
CHAPTER  VII.
THE HOLY GHOST AS DYNAMIC POWER.
The Working-Energy of Believers, 114.-The Silence of Divine
Forces, 116.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HOLY SPIRIT AS A PLENARY PRESENCE.
The Pentecost his Advent, 121.-Miracles not the Highest Gifts,
124.-The Spirit bas Already Come, 180.-The Holy Spirit in
Revivals, 136.-Of Extraordinary Manifestations, 140.-A Difficulty Relieved, 141.
CHAPTER IX.
THE TEMPLE OF THE SPIRIT.
He Dwells in the Church, 144.-Every Christian a Temple, 149
Neither Pantheistic nor Mystical, 151.-Analogy of the Temple, 155.-Tokens of the Spirit's Indwelling, 163.-The Glory
of this Indwelling, 167.
CHAPTER X.
THE TRINITY MANIFESTED BY THE SPIRIT.
The Baptismal Consecration, 172.-The Trinity of the New Testament, 178 —The Unity of God, 181.-The Tri-Personality,
18. —The Facts the Basis of Faith, 194.
CHAPTER  XI.
THE TRINITY IN REDEMPTION.
Man's Need of the Father, 197.-Man's Need of the Son, 200.Man's Need of the Spirit, 202.-Tho Trine-Redemption the
Most Glorious Manifestation of God, 204.-Man Ennobled by
this Redemption, 208.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.
CHA PTER I.
THE NAMES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.
The Paraclete.
"]HE shall give you another Comforter."'
- Jesus himself had been the comforter
of his disciples, and the name Paraclete, by
which he here designates the Holy Ghost, is
applied by John to his own office of mediation between the erring disciple and the
holy Father. "If any man sin, we have
a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous." The term Advocate by which
the name Paraclete- is rendered in the Epistle, is equally significant with the term Comrn'John xiv. 16. 1 John ii. 1.
(7)




8        THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
forter in the Gospel. Neither is the exact
equivalent of the original word; both alike
express important phases of its meaning;
and there is no one English word which will
at once convey all that is consolatory in the
thought of a " Comforter," and all that is
encouraging in the thought of an "Advocate."
Jesus had been to his disciples a guide,
a teacher, a consoler, an intercessor. They
had been able to look to him continually for
counsel, to lean upon him for help. As he
was about to go away, he said, " I will not
leave you orphans;" and he promised to
make good his own place among them by
sending " another Paraclete" who should
abide with them forever. The Holy Ghost,
would not only console them for the absence
of their Lord, but would make good to them
his presence; would avert from them the
sorrow, the loneliness, the helplessness of orphanage, and be to them all that Christ had
been as a Paraclete. To conceive what. it
was for the first disciples to enjoy the per



THE HIOL Y COXFORTER.9
sonal presence of Christ is, at the same time,
to realize what is the function of the Holy
Ghost as the abiding Paraclete in the
Church.
The etymology of this term warrants both
the significations given to it in our English
Bible-" Comforter " and " Advocate."  If
taken actively, it denotes one as callingwho calls another near for the purpose of
aiding or comforting him, or calls to him
by way of encouragement or cheer; and such
is the Comforter. If taken passively, it denotes one who is called near for assistance,
a helper, an Advocate. Jesus both cheered
his disciples by his word and was invoked
by them in their need. And so the Holy
Spirit is in the Church as the Caller and
the Called- cheering faint and troubled
hearts with his voice of peace, and ever
within call of those who seek his help. The
Paraclete is he who is ever at hand as helper, who stands by us in all our need; nigh
to speak to us words of counsel and of comfort, nigh to answer our call when we turn




10      THE HOLY COMFORT'R.
to him for aid. As one who calls, the Paraclete utters consolations or exhortations;
as one who is called, he is appealed to as an
advocate to maintain a cause.' The two
thoughts are beautifully interblended in the
eighth chapter of Romans;  the Spirit
brings to us the comforting, animating assurance, that we are the children of God;
and the "Spirit also helpeth our infirmities,
and maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."
By the Holy Ghost, God is in the church
as the Helper of yearning, sorrowing, struggling souls. He did not finally withdraw
from the world when he ceased to be incarnate among men, but. only changed the form
of his manifestation; laid aside the flesh to
reappear in the Spirit-making a manifestation not local as at the first, but universal as
his church; not' to wondering eyes, but to
believing hearts. Thus the name "Paraclete"
is the annunciation of the Divinity as Helper, as Immanuel-Jesus was: the annuncia-'Ebrard on 1 John ii. 1.




THE HOLY COMFOR TER.        1
tion of God with us as Saviour. Man nmust
have a God to lean upon, to trust in-whose
presence he can somehiow realize, whose
help he can somehow feel. The Pagan represented the Deity in statue and painting,
in order thus to bring him nigh to the conception of the worshipper. The Pantheist
conceives of the Deity as an animating spirit
in Nature, and would see him in the sky and
the sea, and feel him in the pulsations of life
as a very part of the universe and of man.
But neither nature nor art can bring God
so near to our thoughts as he comes in this
manifestation of the Spirit. Newer before
was there such a conception of God-immeasurably grand and awful-unspeakably
tender and precious-the Spirit of truth,
holiness, power-abiding with human souls
to help them in all their need;In us, for us, intercede,
And, with voiceless groanings, plead
Our unutterable need,
Comforter Divine!




I2       THE ROL Y COMFOR TER.
In us " Abba, Father," cryEarnest of our bliss on high,
Seal of immortality —
Comforter Divine.
The Spirit of Truth.
as WHEN He, the Spirit of Truth is come,
he will guide you into all truth."'
It is truth in the absolute sense which is
here predicated of the Holy Spirit. Not
only does he reveal truth, giving certainty
to the statement of truth in the Scriptures,
and definiteness to our conceptions of truth,
but in him truth is vivified and personified,
made real and made alive. In him truth is
no longer an abstraction to be intellectually
contemplated, nor a formula of doctrine to
be believed; but a living power that addresses the soul through the revealed word,
and also speaks within the soul itself, as
with the very voice of God.
All spiritual truth, as it were, finds shape
and utterance through this Holy Spirit.
1 John xvi. 13.




THE HOLY COiMFORTER.       1 3
The deepest things of the infinite mind are
his; the secret thoughts of human hearts
are his also. He can reveal what unaided
reason could not discover, and can impart
to the mind that spiritual discernment which
looks through the veil of sense upon the
spiritual realities around us, and to the spiritual glories before us. "Eye hath not seen,
or ear heard, neither have entered into the
heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love Him. But God
hath revealed them unto us by His Spiritfor the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the
deep things of God." 
He is the Spirit of Truth; —he cannot err,
for he knoweth all things; he cannot be deceived, for he knoweth all hearts; and as
Christ was the manifestation of God incarnate in love, so is the Holy Ghost the manifestation of God in the way of truth, by his
holy presence and mighty power, to convince men of sin, and to renew and sanctify
the heart. He is sent into the world, here
1 Col. ii. 9, 10.
2




1 4      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
to abide as the Truthl-to guide us into all
truth, showing to us the things of God.
With what awe should we come to the
Holy Scriptures when we remember that
the Spirit of Truth is here. For God is in
the Bible as in nothing else that we see or
touch. The sun displays the glory of God,
yet brings God no nearer than his own
place in the heave~ns. His beams are but
reflections of that glory. But God himself
is in this book of truth-a living Spiritsearching our hearts when we open its
pages, and speaking to us with the voice
that once shook the earth. " Say not, who
shall ascend into heaven, to bring Christ
down from above; or who shall descend into
the deep to bring up Christ again from the
dead."' There is no further need of signs
and wonders-no need of a new incarnation
or resurrection —for, "The word is nigh
thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart." - The
Spirit of truth is here — the living God,
speaking face to face, moving heart by
heart. Dare we then trifle with this Word
1  Io x. 6, 7.




TnfE HOLY COMFORTER.'5
of truth?  Dare we cavil at this Spirit of
truth and blaspheme the Holy Ghost? Dare
we neglect or despise the voice of eternal
truth speaking in this Book?
But if we humbly seek to know God, he
is not afar off, but nigh; not in heaven only,
but on earth also; and this, not by laws or
influence merely, but in the living presence
of his Spirit still in the world to follow up
his.truth, the great argument of his love in
sacrifice of Christ. More momentous than
the manifestation of God in the creation,
more glorious even than the incarnation
-could we but discern it-is this abiding
presence of God in the Church by his Spirit,
to teach, call, sanctify and save!
Holy Ghost, the Infinite.
Shine upon our nature's night
With thy blessed inward light,
Comforter Divine I
Search for us the depths of God;
Bear us up the starry road,
To the light of thine abode,
Comforter Divine!




16       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
The Spirit of Grace.
THIS epithet of the Holy Spirit occurs but
once in the New Testament, but in a
passage of peculiar significance. In warning the Hebrews against apostacy under the
new dispensation, the writer makes the
crowning guilt of such apostacy consist in
having'"done despite unto the Spirit of
grace."' The act here described, that of
insult, clearly points to the Holy Spirit as
the subject of thought; since only a living
person can be susceptible to grief,-to dishonor, to insult.  He is the "Spirit of
grace" in that he is at once the dispenser
of divine grace to the soul and the earnest
of divine favor in the future. The work of
regeneration and of sanctification is ascribed
to him. All the graces of the Christian
character - love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance-are the fruits of the Spirit. All
the special gifts bestowed upon the early' Hebrews x. 29.




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.           17
Christians, and known as the Charismnzata,
were the dispensation of the Spirit of grace.
And the work of the Holy Spirit in the
gracious recovery of the soul to communion
with God is " the earnest of its inheritance,
until the redemption of the purchased possession."' Himself the crowning gift of grace,
and the author of all grace in the heart and
life, he is the Spirit of grace.
We are sinful; cleanse us, Lord;
We are faint; thy strength afford;
Lost-until by thee restored,
Comforter Divine!
Like the dew, thy peace distil,
Guide, subdue our wayward will,
Things of Christ unfolding still,
Comforter Divine I
Ephesians i. 14.
2*




CHAPTER IL
THE HOLY SPIRIT A DIVINE PERSON.
Of the Personal Pronoun.
THE descriptive titles of the Holy Spirit
clearly imply a Person of whom the various functions of Helper, Teacher, Sanctifier are predicated. As Jesus was a person,
so " another Paraclete " who should come in
his stead to abide with the disciples, to
teach them all truth, to comfort them in sorrow, to succor them in need, must fairly be
assumed to possess the properties of personality - consciousness, understanding, will,
affections; and these all are attributed to
the Holy Spirit. It was not simply a divine
agency, influence, attribute or power, concerning which the promise of " coming" and
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THE iOL Y COMFORTER.        J9
"abiding " was made, but a distinct porsonality.
The term "spirit," indeed, is not conclusive upon this point, since this is often used
to denote simply an influence, power', or energy, proceeding from a person or thing,
and not of necessity the personality of an
intelligent being. When we speak of the
spirit of patriotism, the spirit of loyalty, the
martial spirit, as animating a nation, we attach no thought of personality to the word.
And, again, when we speak of a man as actuated by a certain spirit, as showing a
spirit of benevolence, or self-denial, or public spirit, the word describes the temper,
disposition, or action of a person, and not
the person himself as one possessing such
and such attributes.  Hence, some have
argued, that in the Scriptures the term Holy
Spirit describes an influence or energy proceeding from God, and not a distinct person.
It must be admitted that in the Old Testament the phrase "Spirit of God" or




20       THE hIOL Y CO.,MFORTER.
"Spirit of the Lord " may sometimes signify
the will or energy of the divine being under
certain forms of activity. The declaration
that "the Spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters " might be taken simply
as an announcement of the Spiritual Essence of the Creator.  Only by spiritual
power was creation possible. And thoughll
we read in the Hebrew Scriptures that " the
Spirit of God" came upon Balaam, Saul
and others and prompted their prophetic
utterances, were there nothing more explicit
in the Bible touching the personality of the
Holy Spirit, we might understand by such
phraseology simply a divine energy or influence acting in the manner described. But
it is impossible thus to explain the language
of the New Testament touching the Holy
Spirit. For the New Testament speaks of
the Spirit in terms only appropriate to a
person-applying to him the personal pronouns, and all the attributes and actions
of a distinct personal existence.
But this, it may be said, was in the orien



THE HOLY COMFORTER.         21
tal style of personification, as, for example,
in the book of Proverbs, IWisdom is personified-described by personal pronouns, and
as speaking and acting as a person. She is
represented as dwelling with God from eternity, taking part in the creation, coming
forth to guide men to virtue and life. But
this is obviously a poetic representation-as
when Milton says,
" Hail, holy Licg1t! Thee I revisit now!"
apostrophizing the Light as if it were a living, intelligent substance.
Such personification is frequent in poetry.
But there is no trace of poetry in the last
discourse of Jesus to his disciples. In the
solemn and tender hour that intervened between the institution of the Supper and
his going forth to the agony in Gethsemane, when he would fain comfort and
strengthen the hearts of his friends so burdened with sadness and fear, Jesus did not
speak to them in parables. There was no
vague generalization concerning the love of
God, no metaphorical representation of the




22       TTHE HIOL Y 1COMFORTER.
coming of divine influence upon their souls,
but the definite promise of another Paraclete to take his place and abide with
them; a PRESENCE, which though not corporeal and visible like his own should
be real and felt; another coming of
God into the world, so wondrous in its nature, so glorious in its effects, that Jesus
must needs withdraw his corporeal presence,
that this spiritual presence might be had in
his stead. "I will pray the Father, and he
shall give you another Comforter, that he
may abide with you forever, even the Spirit
of Truth; the Comforter, which is the Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my
name, he shall teach you all things."
The Scriptures apply to the Holy Spirit
the personal pronouns and personal properties in a way that cannot be reconciled with
the idea that the Spirit is only an influence
or energy proceeding from God, but lacking consciousness and personality.  To
speak thus of an unconscious influence,'John xiv. 16, 17 and 26.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        23
would be an extravagance in language for
which there is no warrant even in the highly
wrought poetry of the East. In thewords
just quoted, there cannot be a question
that Christ and the Father were spoken of
as persons. Whatever view may be held
concerning Christ-whether he is regarded
as man merely, or the created head of the
universe, or as God-all sects and schools
agree that he had a personality distinct from
the Father.
In the promise "I will pray the Father,
and he shall give you another Comforter,"
we clearly recognize a distinction of persons;-the I who prays, is a person; the
Father who gives or sends, is also a person.
How then can we regard the Comforter
who is sent, as a mere unconscious influence,
when the same personal pronoun is applied
to the Spirit: "HE  shall teach you all
things."' By what rule of interpretation,
by what example anywhere in human lan1John xiv. 26. TO irivevja Tr rylOV a ietVO bvoju aS dt6eit
Wr.vra.




24       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
guage, could we justify such a violent transition from the personal actors in the beginning of the sentence to an impersonal agent
at its close, while yet the personal pronoun
is applied as freely to this agent the Spirit,
as to the Father and the Son? True, the
term Spirit-Pneuma, is neuter; but this
was the term by which the human soul as
an intelligence was distinguished from the
body; and God is himself a Pneuma.' And
the same pronoun is applied alike to the
Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
"The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the
Father will send in my name, he [notit, but]
he shall teach you all things." "If I go not
away, the Comforter will not come unto
you; but if I depart I will send [not it, but]
him unto you; and when he [not it] is come,
he will reprove the world of sin.... When
he [not it] the Spirit of Truth is come, he
will guide you into all truth...... HE
shall glorify ME."3
1John iv. 24. CJohn xiv. 26. 3 John xvi., 8, 13, 14.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        25
Call this repeated, purposed and significant use of the personal pronoun with respect to the Holy Spirit, denote anything
less than his distinct personality? To warrant such language as Jesus used in describing his coming, must he not possess consciousness, understanding, will, affections,
in a manner as distinctly personal as were
these properties in Christ himself?
Of Personal Offices and Acts.
";IT is impossible to prove the Father to
-  be a Person, or the Son to be a Person,
any other way than we may prove the Holy
Ghost to be so. For He to whom all personal properties, attributes, adjuncts, and
operations are ascribed and to whom nothing is ascribed but what properly belongs
to a Person, he is a Person; and so are we
taught to believe him to be. Thus we know
the Father to be a Person, and the Son also........But there is no personal property
o




26       TIE R OOL Y COMFORTER.
belonging to the Divine Nature that is
not equally ascribed to the Holy Ghost."'
In addition to the unqualified use of the personal pronoun with reference to the Holy
Spirit, the Scriptures ascribe to the Spirit
such acts and relations as are possible only
to a Person, and which could not with any
propriety of speech be ascribed to an unconscious influence. "The:Holy Ghost spake
by the mouth of David.....     and by
Esaias the prophet." 3 On the day of Pentecost the Spirit gave utterance to the apostles through unknown tongues.4 Jesus had
distinctly promised that the Holy Ghost
should be the teacher and prompter of the
disciples in the propagation and defence of
his Gospel: " Whatsoever shall be given
you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not
ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost."5 " The
churches walked in the fear of the Lord
and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost."`
Dr. John Owen, on the Holy Spirit; chapter iii.
2 Acts i. 16.  3 Acts xxviii. 25.  4 Acts ii. 4.
M6 ark xiii. 11.    o Acts ix. 31,




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.         27
The Spirit speaks of himself as a Person
having authority in the church. "The Holy
Ghost said, separate [unto, or for] me Barnabas and Paul, for the work whereunto I have
called them."' He directed that they be
set apart for the missionary work, and he
8ent them forth to the Gentiles. Then, in tlihe
course of their tour they were forbicdden by
the Holy Ghost to go to this or that place,'
and in all their steps were under his direct
personal control. It was the Holy Ghost
who made the elders at Ephesus overseers
of the flock of God.3  It is the Holy Spirit
who teaches, guides, enlightens, comforts,
sanctifies believers; it is he by whom both
Jews and  Gentiles have  access to the
Father; it is he who helps our infirmities
in prayer and "maketh intercession for the
saints according to the will of God;,,4 it is
he who dwells in the renewed heart as in
a temple, and who strengthens us "with
might in the inner man."5  But such acts'Acts xiii. 2.   2 Acts xvi. 6.   s Acts xx. 28.
4 Rom viii. 27.  5 Eph. iii. 16.




28 -     THE HOLY COfEORTEIR.
and operations as these can be affirmed only
of a person, not of a mere influence. The
Holy Spirit is described as having supreme
knowledge and as imparting wisdom to
others. He is described as distributing his
gifts according to his own will. He has affections also, and can be grieved, offended,
resisted, as a person.
The fearful warning of Christ to such as
are guilty of blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost, and the saying of Peter to Ananias,
" Satan hath filled thy heart.to lie unto the
Holy Ghost"' are decisive of the personality of the Spirit. Can men commit blasphemy against an influence or an attribute,
which has no consciousness? Can one lie
to a thing, an emanation, an energy, which
has no life or intelligence?
"If a wise and honest man should come
and tell you, that in a certain country where
he has been, there is an excellent governor,
who wisely discharges the duties of his office; who hears causes, discerns right, disActs v. 3.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.         29
tributes justice, relieves the poor, and comforts the distressed; would you not believe
that he intended by this description, a righteous, wise, diligent, intelligent person?..
Could you imagine him to mean that the
sun or the wind, by their benign influences,
rendered the country fruitful and temperate, and disposed the inhabitants to mutual
kindness and benignity? and that the governor was a mere figure of speech? It is
exactly thus in the case before us. The
Scripture tells us, that the Holy Ghost governs the church; appoints overseers of it;
discerns and judges all things; comforts the
faint; strengthens the weak; is grieved and
provoked by sin; and that in these and
in many other affairs, he works, orders and
disposes all things, according to the counsel of his own will. Can any man credit
this testimony and conceive otherwise of
the Spirit, than as a holy, wise, intelligent
Person? Can such expressions refer to a
quality, an effect or influence of the power
of God, who doeth all these things figura



30        THE HO LY COMFORTER.
tively; that he has a will figuratively; and
understanding figuratively; is sinned against
figuratively and so of all that is said of
Him?
" It is true that some things peculiar to
persons are sometimes ascribed to things;
as Charity is said to hope, to believe,
to bear.; the Scripture is said to see,
and foresee, to speak and to judge.  The
heavens and the earth are said to hear;
and the fields to sing and clap their hands.
But these ascriptions are only occasional,
and a plain description of the things themselves is given us in other places. But
as to the Spirit of God, the constant uniform
expressions concerning him are such as declare him to be a person, endowed with all
personal properties."'
Dr. John Owen On the Spirit, chap. iii.




THE HOL Y COYTFORTER.       3
The Spirit a Divine Personality.
IT is conceded even by those who deny the
Trinity in the godhead that the Holy
Spirit is divine, since they regard the Spirit
as only an influence or emanation from God.
But we have seen that the Scriptures clearly
teach the personality of the Holy Spirit, and
they no less clearly affirm the divinity of
this personality. What is the distinction
in the godhead set forth by the terms Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, we may not be able -to
state with philosophical precision; only we
can affirm with John Howe, that " as it cannot be less than is sufficient to sustain distinct predicates and attributions; so it cannot be so great as to intrench upon the
unity of the godhead; which limits on the
one hand and the other, God bath himself
plainly set us."' It is enough for the present argument that the Scriptures teach
that the Holy Spirit, who is distinctly a perHowe's Calm Discourse of the Trinity. Works
Bohn's edition, p. 137.




z32     TITHE HOL Y COMFORTER.
son, is in his nature divine. Every attribute
of divinity is ascribed to the Holy Spirit as
fully as to the Father.
The Spirit is omniscient-for he " searcheth all things even the deep things of God "'
-he knows the mind of God in its inmost
depths as truly as a man knows his own
thoughts through consciousness. The Spirit
is omnipresent-for at the same instant he
can witness his presence in the hearts of believers who are separated by the earth's
diameter-making intercession for you, as
you kneel in your ceiled closet, and at the
same time for the converted Hottentot who
steals away among the bushes that he may
cry "Abba, Father." The Spirit is omnipotent; he inspired the minds of the apostles,
revealing the things of the invisible world
and things to come; he gave miraculous
powers to the early disciples; for all these
things, miracles, gifts of healing, prophecy,
tongues, "worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man sever11 Cor. ii. 10, 11.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.         33
ally as he will.", All supernatural gifts
are his, and in their dispensation he is a
sovereign, doing his own pleasure. Can He
who knows all human hearts and rules the
realm of supernatural powers, be less than
God? The Spirit has infinite wisdom.
He knows all truth; he is the truth; he
guides men into truth-showing to them the
things of God.2  The Spirit is declared to
be eternal,8 which as an attribute of existence can be applied only to God; and in a
word, every attribute and work that belongs to the Deity alone, is ascribed without qualification to the Holy Ghost.
Moreover, he is expressly called God. Peter said to Ananias, " Why hath Satan filled
thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?-thou
hast not lied unto men but unto God."'
And in the formula of baptism and the apostolic benediction, the Holy Ghost is by
name associated with Christ and the Father.
This indicates both his personality and his
1 Cor. xii. 11.   2 John xiv. 26 and xvi. 13, 14.
3 ebrews ix. 14.  4 Acts v. 3, 4.




T34E HOLY COMFORTE'R.
divinity. "Go teach all nations," was the
Lord's command, "baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost."'
We baptize in the name of a person, not
of an influence;-and would any one less
than God be associated with his name in
this solemn act of consecration? We speak
indeed, of being baptized with the spirit of
patriotism i. e., consecrated to the service of
the country. The Israelites were baptized
to Moses, i. e.. they covenanted under his
leadership to obey the word he had received
from God; but they were not baptized in
the name of Moses and of Jehovah. It
would shock all piety, and reverence, if
one should baptize in the name of the Father
and of the Son, and of Paul, or of Moses, or
of the angel Gabriel; or in the name of the
Father and the Son and the Bible, or the
truth, or of a divine influence. In this most
solemn transaction, the public consecration
of a human person to God by baptism, we
1 Matt. xxviii. 19.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        3 5
can associate with the high and sacred
nane of Father only the names of ye7rsons
who are with himself in Being, Power and
Glory. And when the apostle gives forth
the benediction-" The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Ghost be with you
all," —the laws of language and the sense of
fitncss demand that we regard the Holy
Spirit as divine.




CHAPTER III.
THE SPIRIT IN HIS RELATIONS TO TUE
TR UTH.
The Spirit in the Written Word.
WTE have seen that the Holy Ghost is
called the Spirit of Truth, and the
teacher of truth. The Scriptures were indited through an influence from the Holy
Spirit upon the minds of their several writers;-" No prophecy of the Scripture is of
any private interpretation "- it was not
merely the prophet's own conception or exposition of the will of God-" for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man; but holy men of God spake as they
were moved-incited and borne along-by
the Holy Ghost."1 And the gospel of the
1 2 Peter i. 20, 21.
(36)




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.       37
New Testament was preached by the apostles " with the Holy Ghost sent down from
heaven;''-" which things we speak, not in
the words which man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth;" for
" eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered in the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that
love him "-mere human speculation had
not attained to these sublime discoveries"but God hath revealed them unto us by
his Spirit." 
Our knowledge of the Holy Spirit in his
direct personal relations to the truth is derived primarily from the Bible; yet in the
constitution of the human mind and its conscious spiritual wants, we find a preparation
for-an adaptation to-this very manifestation of God; and in the process and effects
of regeneration and sanctification, we find
certain phenomena or experiences which this
doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the Revealer,
the Illuminator and the Applier of Truth,
1 Peter i. 12.  2 1 Cor. ii. 9, 10, 13.
4




3 8      THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
fully explains, and which no philosophy that
leaves out of view the Spirit acting in and
by the truth, can adequately explain. When
we say then, that the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit as a divine personality manifesting
his power in human consciousness by the
truth, is purely a doctrine of revelation, we
do not mean that this is contrary to reason,
that it is unsupported by facts in the world
of mind, or even that it is unintelligible;but only that the first distinct idea upon
the subject is given us in the Bible, not
formed by us from our own reflections upon
facts of observation and experience. This
idea received from the Scriptures, explains
facts already within our knowledge and experience, and those facts in turn confirm the
doctrine.
If you arrive after dark in a strange valley, you may be puzzled in the night to decide whether the sound you hear is the rain,
or the wind, or a waterfall, and may hold
a disputation concerning it without reach
ing a conclusion-but when in the morning




THE HOLY COMFORTER.         39
sun you look out and see the stream pouring
down the hill-side, you say at once, " Ah,
this is what I heard in the night;"-so when
you see a man shaken in his soul as by a
mighty wind, and suddenly changing his
whole course of life, and you "hear the
sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it
cometh and whither it go'eth," but in the
clear light of God's word you read, " So is
every one that is born of the,Spirit,"' you say
now " this explains it all;- for though I cannot yet distinguish how it was, I see clearly
whose work it is."  This is "the testimony
of God, in demonstration of the Spirit, and
of power; that your faith should not stand
in the wisdom of mcn, but in the power of
God." 
In considering the function of the Holy
Spirit as the revealer of truth, we should
carefully define the sphere of human philosophy upon such a subject. Plainly there
can be no a priori reasoning about it; that
is, we are not competent to say, before com1John iii. 8     2 1 Cor. ii. 1-5.




40       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
ing to the Scriptures, whether God exists in
one person or in three-or whether in the
sphere of mind he acts directly as a person,
or only by laws and influences, such as he
is supposed to employ in the world of matter.
From the study of natural phenomena we
deduce the law of gravitation, the law of
attraction, the law of magnetic influence;we do not need to go to the Bible to discover these, and the Bible says nothing
about these. But we cannot argue that, bccause in the world of matter, God works
largely by fixed laws and established influences or forces, therefore in the world of
mind he must act only by fixed laws, and
never by a direct personal power. In the
nature of the case, our knowledge of God
is so limited, that with respect to the mode
of his existence and his operations, we can
not affirm beforehand what God is or is not,
or what he can or cannot be, or do. Upon
such a point, holding our philosophy in suspense% because it has no data to work upon,




TIIE HOLY COMIFO RITER'.   4J
we must first, as wise men, endeavor to learn
what God has revealed concerning himself;
and with the facts thus ascertained from his
testimony, we can reason -about them and
apply them to what we know of the human
mind and its operations. That is to say,
our philosophy in this matter must not attempt to make the facts, nor to determine
upon merely natural grounds what ought to
be the facts touching the existence and the
operations of God as a Spirit; but our philosophy must reason upon the facts as given
to us in the word of God. We can get the
facts fromn no other source.
But while the personality and the work
of the Holy Spirit lie beyond the discovery
of unaided reason, yet when made known
by revelation from God, far from being contrary to reason, they rationally explain and
corroborate other facts already known.
Hence the fact of such a manifestation of
God as is given in the Holy Spirit working
in and by the truth, is not unreasonable nor
unintelligible, and therefore not incredible
4*




T[I HEOLY COMFOR TER.
as a fact, though its philosophy may still lie
beyond our grasp. We believe upon sufficient evidence the fact as we here find it to
be revealed; and it is not necessary that
we should explain or attempt to explain the
manner -of the Spirit's working through the
truth, in order rationally and heartily to believe that he does. so work. That must be
a bold man, indeed-a most audacious man
-who would say that he understands the
constitution of the human mind and the nature of God so thoroughly, that he knows it
to be impossible for the divine Spirit to act
directly upon our minds; and he must be a
weak man indeeda —most foolishly weakwho would say that he will not believe wllat
the Bible teaches concerning the power of
the Holy Spirit in the truth, until he can
see just how, when, and where that Spirit
acts. Our wisdom is, to lay aside speculation till we come at the facts; and to seek
for these by a careful. and honest study of
the Word of God, where, in the nature of
the case, the facts can alone be found,




TIHE HOLY COM~FORTER.     43
Inspiration of the Apostles.
HllE Apostles claimed that they spoke and
wrote under the dictation or the direction
of the Holy Spirit. I use these two words,
dictation and direction, to mark the distinction between a special revelation by the
Holy Spirit, and his guidance in interpreting
and expounding truth. The apostles had
both the ordinary and extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit. The Saviour promised them that the Comforter should teach
them all things; should guide them into all
truth: " He shall receive of mine, and shall
shew it unto you;" " he will shew you things
to come."' These promises cannot mean
less than that the Holy Spirit by direct
communication with their minds, would
make clear to them what then seemed so
obscure touching the character and mission
of Christ; that the Holy Spirit would interpret to them in a new light the teachings
and the death of their Lord; would recall'John xvi. 13, 14.




THE FIOL Y COMFORTR.
his words in their true meaning, would
guide them to a true understanding of what
was enigmatical or mysterious, and would
reveal to them the future things of his kingdom;-in a word, the promise included both
the revelation of truth to their minds by supernatural teaching, and the inspiration of
their minds for the clear perception and
statement of truth and for prophetic utterances. The Book of Acts and the letters
of the apostles give convincing proof that
this promise was fulfilled. The Comforter
did make clear to their apprehension the
divine mission of Christ for the work of redemption; he did guide them into the truth
so that they had no further doubt concerning the person of Christ or the design of his
death; he did strengthen them by the conviction of truth, and with moral courage, so
that they spake the Word of God with boldness; he did comfort them with his presence, coming to their help in every emergency, so that the very men who had skulked
away when their Lord was led to the judg



THE HOL Y COMFORTER.       45
ment hall, now openly confronted priests
and rulers with the testimony of Jesus, and
" daily in the temple, and in every house,
ceased not to teach and preach Jesus
Christ," refusing to be silenced, and " rejoicing that they were counted worthv to
suffer shame for his name."' And when we
pass on to the epistles, we find a wonderful
clearness, depth and power of reasoning,
and an earnestness of conviction upon spiritual subjects, and especially in unfolding the
redemptive work of Christ, and the life of
the soul in him, from the pens of Peter and
John who were at the first confounded at
his death, and the pen of Paul who at first
despised the name of Jesus and persecuted
his followers.
This change can be accounted for by none
of the ordinary or natural transitions of
human thought or feeling.  Men intelligently and ardently devoted to a principle
or a leader, have rallied with a new vigor
from seeming defeat, and have drawn fresh'Acts v. 41, 42.




46       TIfE HIOLY COMFORTER.
life and energy from the graves of martyrs.
The fall of a Winthrop, a Lyon, a Baker
at the beginning of the war, was but the
rising of many who should wrest victory
from disaster. Men who had misjudged or
calumniated a patriot or reformer while living, have afterwards done honor to his
memory and given their own lives to his
cause. But these first Christian disciples
were men who, while their leader was living, though they loved him with all devotion, failed to comprehend him or his teaching, and who imagined that his death was
as much a surrendry on his part as a triumph- of his enemies; —who after his death,
did not rally round a principle, a system, a
cause to which they were before committed
but renounced alike the prejudices and the
expectations they had clung to while their
leader was with them, and took up a view
of himself, his character, and his mission,
utterly opposite to their fond hopes of the
Messiah in his life-time, and opposite as
well to the apparent facts of the case-as




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        47
wide as possible from any natural and
merely human schemes and calculations;and having embraced this view, they staked
their all upon it, and with no possibility of
earthly advantage, but at the daily risk of
life they proclaimed their new-found doctrine of salvation for sinners through faith
in a divine Redeemer. How shall we explain this fact? —how reconcile the views
and conduct of the apostles in the book of
Acts, with their views and conduct as recorded by the evangelists, except by their
own testimony;-" We are his witnesses of
these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost,
whom God hath given to them that obey
him." I
Any other theory of this change is as
wide of the mark as that of the mockers
who said: "These men are full of new
wine." We first see these men weak, ignorant, timid as children, afraid to be forsaken by their Lord, yet all forsaking him
and fleeing every man to his own place.
I Acts v. 32.




48       THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
We hear, however, the promise of the master "I will send the Comforter; he shall
teach you all things;" and again, after his
resurrection "ye shall receive the power
of the Holy Ghost coming upon you and ye
shall be witnesses unto me;"' and presently
we hear them teaching in every tongue the
name and doctrine of Jesus; we see them
with personal boldness and with most effective power witnessing for Christ; and the
word at their lips convincing and converting the multitude.  Facts such as these,
which no philosophy of human nature could
explain, are made clear and credible by the
single statement that the Holy Spirit, as
promised by Christ, had manifested Himself
in the truth and in their hearts by the truth.
Thenceforth the preaching of the apostles
was throughout " a ministration of the
Spirit." It is impossible upon any other
theory to account for the establishing of the
Christian Church amid storms of obloquy
and persecution.
1 Acts i. 10.




THE HOL;Y COMFOR TER.      49
Revelation and Inspiration.
TrHIS ministration of the truth by the Spirit
was two-fold-by dictation and by direction. Sometimes the apostles received truth
by express revelation-the Holy Spirit dictating or suggesting to their minds what
lay beyond the power of human discovery.
This they declared, and confirmed the declaration by signs and wonders of the Holy
Ghost; and this the very subject-matter of
their teachings upon divine and eternal
things requires us to believe.
"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them
that love him;" the doctrines of redemption
and of the sanctification and glorification
of believers in Christ, could never have
been invented by the mind of man; no philosopher hath penetrated so deeply the counsels of divine wisdom; no poet hath soared
so high upon wings of divine love; but




50       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
" God hath revealed them unto us by his
Spirit;-for we have received not the Spirit
of the world;" the doctrine we teach is not
the sensuous philosophy that measures human happiness by the gratification of present desire, nor the more refined intellectualism that still rises not above the human in
its conceptions and aims; but " we have received the Spirit which is from God; that
we might know the things that are freely
given to us of God "-the treasures of wisdom  and happiness revealed by Him —
"which things also we speak, not in the
words which man's wisdom teacheth, but
which the Holy Ghost teacheth."' From
time to time, as Christian doctrine required
to be unfolded, or as believers were prepared for higher disclosures of the work of
God in redemption, special revelations were
made to the apostles by the Holy Spirit.
Thus the relation of Gentiles to the Gospel kingdom was communicated to Peter by
express revelation, when he was called to
1 Cor. ii. 8-14.




TIlE HOLY COMFORTER.
visit Cornelius. And Paul speaks of his
knowledge in the mystery of Christ, as that
which is " revealed unto the holy apostles
and prophets by the Spirit."
But this revelation of unknown and otherwise unattainable truth was by no means
the sole agency of the Spirit in the apostolic
ministry.
Inspiration, that teaching and guidance
of the Holy Spirit which would authenticate their preaching as of divine authority,
was not limited to the special revelation
by the Spirit of things unknown. This influence present in their minds, giving clearness, definiteness, force to their conceptions
and utterances, bringing to remembrance
words of Christ in their true meaning, showing the things of Christ under new aspects
and relations, all this was that divine guidilg into truth, which was the promise of the
Fattier and the legacy of Christ in the gift
of the Holy Ghost.




52      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
The Truth a Life-Power.
NOT only did the Holy Spirit inspire the
truth as uttered and recorded by prophets, evangelists and apostles, but he abides in
the truth as a life-power to the souls of men.
One who is acquainted with Dante only
through an English version fails to perceive
much of that depth and beauty of meaning
which for six centuries have so delighted
the cultivated mind of Italy, and have given
to the author of the Divine Comedy a foremost place among the great poets of the
world.  The marvelous illustrations of the
poet from the pencil of Dore may quicken such
a reader's perception of Dante's meaning by
embodying it in more tangible forms, and
by exhibiting the power of the poet over the
imagination of the artist. If now the reader
should acquire the Italian language, and
read the poem under the guidance of a competent and sympathetic Italian scholar, his
soul would be penetrated with a power and
beauty more subtle than the pictures of Dore




THE HOLY C03FORTER.        53
can convey. Something of the spirit of the
poet would infuse itself into passages before
unintelligible.
But if, in such a frame, the reader could
hear the voice of Dante himself, and through
his intonation and expression catch his
every shade of thought, the whole work
would glow with a new life. Even so after
we have many times read some passage of
the Scriptures with but a vague and sluggish sense of its meaning, and by the help
of commentators and teachers have tried to
realize what it is that has stirred the genius
of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, of Milton
and of Dante himself, there will come in
some favored hour a glow of light and life
upon the printed page that seems to transform it into a present voice of God. To
explain this, would be to explain the mystery of the divine; to deny this is to deny
the possibility of the divine.
5*




54      ETHE IHOLY COMFORTElR.
The Spirit in Preaching.
THE doctrine of the abiding presence of
the Holy Spirit in the Word of God has
its correlative in the doctrine of his personal influence upon the human mind
through its excitation under the truth. It
is because of this that the preaching of the
Gospel may be expected to produce effects
which would not result from a merely human wisdom and eloquence exercised upon
the same themes.  The New  Testament
ascribes tile regeneration of the soul and its
sanctification in the higher life to the direct
action of the Holy Spirit through the truth.
The renewed soul is " born of the Spirit;" 
the true baptism is "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost;,2
believers are chosen " through sanctification
of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Christ;"' they " have purified
their souls in obeying the truth through the
Spirit."4 And so whenever the truth of God
1John iii. 5.      S1 Pet. i. 2.'r Titus iii. 5.   41 Peter i. 22.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        55
comes effectively into contact with the mind
of man-this is by virtue of the Holy Spirit
who is Truth, who convinces the world of
sin, who teacheth us all things.
All true Scriptural preaching proceeds
upon this basis. The Christian ministry
was inaugurated by the Holy Spirit, and it
can only fulfil its office in the world, when
in the mind of the preacher and in its effect
upon the hearer, it is a" demonstration " or
a setting-forth of the truth convincingly as
proceeding from the Spirit and power of
God.  To us remains an interest in that
great and precious legacy of Christ —
the promise of the Spirit of truth to abide
with his disciples and guide them into all
truth. As Tauler, one of the most effective
preachers of the middle ages, interprets the
promise: " The Holy Ghost will not teach
us all things, so that we shall know whether
there will be a good harvest and vintage,
whether bread will be dear or cheap,
whether the present war will come to an
end soon; but he will teach us all things




5 6      GTHE HOLY COMFORTER.
which we can need for a perfect life; and
for a knowledge of the hidden truth of God,
of the bondage of nature, of the deceitfulness of the world, and of the cunning of evil
spirits. Thus, when the Holy Ghost comes
to us he teaches us all truth."
The preaching of the Gospel is not human
argumentation and persuasion upon certain
theses of theology and ethics, but a medium
of communication between the divine ~~pirit
of truth and the souls of men. The argument is good for expounding the truth and
making it plain; the persuasion is good for
drawing men to receive and obey the truth;
but the virtue of preaching lies not in excellency of speech or of wisdom-not in the
rhetoric or the logic of it —but in the manifestation of the truth to every man's conscience, and this comes to pass efficiently,
not through persuasive words of man's wisdom, but by the demonstration of the Spirit
wielding in the moral world the power of
God.
This doctrine of the influence of the Holy




THE HOLY COOMFORTER.        57
Spirit through the truth points to the true
dignity, worth and power of the pulpit. It
troubles me not that with the change of
times, the advance of popular education, the
growth of the press as a power, the increase
of private and public libraries and of the
means of knowledge in the community, the
ministry as a learned profession is less conspicuous and perhaps less influential than in
the early days of New England. It troubles
me not that the opinions of a minister have
less authority than when he was almost the
oracle of the town, and that there is less
deference for his person and office than
when the congregation rose as he entered
the meeting-house, and stood uncovered as
he passed out of the porch, and when Dr.
Bellamy could break in upon a festival which
he deemed improper, and order the members of his parish to their homes. I have
no fear that the Christian ministry is losing
ground because such things have passed
away. Nor do I apprehend that the pulpit
is void of power if its weekly utterances do




58       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
not find large audience of the people-if not
every preacher is a Whitfield, a Summerfield or a Spurgeon. I remember that slender, scholarly preacher of Northampton, in
voice and manner delicate as a woman,
reading his notes almost without gesture,
but setting forth the truth with such clearness and precision, such gravity and solemnity, and withal such inward fervor, that
his voice was sometimes drowned in the
sobs and groanings of an assembly smitten
by the great power of God. I remember
too, that Nettleton, so wise in winning souls,
preferred to talk in the lecture-room or the
school- house, and was little at home in the
higher efforts of the pulpit; but his speech
was in demonstration of the Spirit and of
power. The dignity, the worth, the power
of the ministry pertain not to the gifts or
accomplishments of the man, nor to the
sanctity of his office-whatever the theory
or the mode of investiture —but to its relation to the work of the Holy Ghost in the
hearts of men by the ministration of the




THiE IOLY COMFORTER.       59
truth. We are "laborers together with
God " —there is the dignity;-"let a man so
account ofi us, as of the ministers of Christ
and stewards of the mystery of God." 1 We
are "ambassadors for Christ "-there is the
function and its worth: " Our Gospel came
not unto you in word only, but also in power,
and in the Holy Ghost. And we have this
treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not
of us."' All natural gifts, all human attainments should be consecrated to this
high and sacred work; all study, and care,
and culture should be bestowed upon the
performance of its duties; but all are too
mean to give it dignity, too poor to give it
worth, too weak to give it power; the eloquence of a Chrysostom, the learning of an
Owen, the logic of an Edwards, the fervor
of a Baxter combined in one, could add nothing of dignity or power to the preaching of
the Gospel; for in this high matter of proclaiming divine truth for human salvation.
I 1 Cor. iv. 1.  2 1 Thess. i. 5, and 2 Cor. iv. 7.




60       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
" we are not sufficient of ourselves to think
anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency
is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament." 1 How shall
not then the "ministration of the Spirit,"
transcending all human wisdom and persuasion, "be rather glorious? " 2
The true function of preaching is performed in proportion as the divine Spirit of
truth is thereby brought into contact with
the minds of men to reform, sanctify and
control them. That body of truth in- which
the Holy Spirit is specially manifested is
given us in the Gospel. The Bible not only
was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but is in
spired by that Spirit who dwells within the
letter as a quickening power; and the office
of the ministry is, by studying to know the
mind of the Spirit, so clearly, directly, earnestly to bring out the truth, that in the consciences of men it shall be demonstrated as
of the Spirit of God. The increase of
church and pulpit power is to be sought by
pastors and people in this direction.'1  Cor. iii. 5. 6.    2 Cor. iii. 8.




THE Ho0L Y COMFORTER.       61
Pyrotechnics not Power.
WE cannot hope to increase the power of
the pulpit by modifying the doctrines
of the Gospel, or by substituting something
else for the Gospel as the subject-matter
of pulpit discourse.
We may thus increase the popularity of
the pulpit, as a rostrum for stump oratory,
or a desk for philosophical disquisition.
We may make the pulpit a higher sort of
Lyceum, good in its way as an educating
power in literature, philosophy, economics,
politics, taste, manners, morals, ethics;-but
preaching as an institution of Christ for the
largest and highest welfare of mankind, can
be true to its function only by studiously
and scrupulously proclaiming the truth of
the Gospel, in reliance upon the Spirit of
God. Bring all possible mental power and
training to bear upon the investigation of
truth; bring all possible eloquence and culture to bear in the presentation of truth;yet must we never lose sight of the fact that
6




62       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
the preaching is appointed to unfold the
truth and nothing else, and that its efficacy
will be in proportion as by the Spirit of
God it brings home that truth to the hearts
and lives of men.
We could not increase the power of a
steam-engine by turning off the steam from
the piston-chamber to blow through a calliope; we should make more noise and attract more attention, but should not add to
the motive-power. Nor could we increase
that power by taking the steam-engine in
pieces and making a hundred sewing-machines of its materials.  We should get
more clatter, more apparent animation,
more motion in a small way, but gain no
motive power. The only way to increase
the power of a steam-engine is to enlarge
its capacity for generating steam.
We cannot increase the power of the pulpit by modifying the Gospel or substituting
something else for the Gospel; we must bring
the preaching into a larger, freer, fuller
union with the Spirit of truth. You could




THIE HIOL Y COMFORTIER.   63
not have subdued the rebels by setting up
Edge's fire-works in sight of Richmond and
letting off brilliant pieces on the Union,
Liberty and the Constitution.  We conquered by using the powder in rifled cannon
and well-made bombs. No pulpit pyrotechnics will subdue the rebellion of the heart.
For this we need the whole armor of God,
and especially "the sword of the Spirit
which is the Word of God."
Preaching not Infallible.
BUT while insisting that the function of
preaching is to unfold the truth of the
Gospel according to the mind and by the
power of the Holy Spirit, we must guard
against ascribing to the utterances of the
pulpit, however sound and true, the infallibility that belongs only to the inspired
word. The power of the Spirit pertains
not to the man, nor to his words as if
suggested by inspiration, but to the truth
which he brings forth from the Word of




64  TTHE IOL Y COMF'ORTER.
God. It is the very essence of fanaticism
that one imagines himself inspired with
divine wisdom above his fellows, and then
imperiously and vehemently insists that
men shall accept his opinions, under penalty
of excommunication here, if not damnation
hereafter. Popish dogmatism, infallibility
and intolerance lose even the pretence of
antiquity and veneration in a Protestant
pulpit, and sink into a pitiable egotism.
The doctrine of the Spirit's influence in
preaching, warrants no claim of inspiration
and authority in the preacher; his office is
so to interpret the truth, as to manifest that
to every man's conscience in the sight of
God.
Preaching to be Practical.
BUT it is no less a mistake to  assume
that, since preaching is to be the unfolding of Gospel truth by the power of
the Holy Spirit, therefore it can have to
do only with the spiritual acts and exercises of the soul, and not with the morals




THE HOLY COMFOR TER.      65
and the manners of the life of society.
Just because preaching is not the setting
forth of human advice and opinion upon
secular affairs or the details of life, but the
endeavor to bring the Spirit of truth into
the heart to reform and to sanctify it, therefore should the preaching carry that truth
into every thought and feeling of the man,
and every act and interest of the life. See
how the Spirit himself deals with human
life in his application of the truth. He begins with the individual heart, bidding that
become regenerate and holy; he applies
truth to the family, bidding husbands love
their wives, and wives reverence their husbands, and children obey their parents in
the Lord; forbidding all jealousy, impurity,
contention, disorder in the household; he
carries truth into the church-relation, requiring mutual love and helpfulness, forbidding all partizanship, clanship and caste;
all domineering of rich over poor, of strong
over weak; he applies truth in society,
teaching men how to use money, and wo6*




66       THE HOLY COMFOR TER.
men how to adorn themselves; forbidding
frivolity and revelry as offensive to himself,
-" be not drunk with wine, but be filled with
the Spirit;" forbidding the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eye, the pride of life; he carries the truth into business - requiring
things honest in the sight of God and man,
and forbidding all lying and fraud; he carries truth into social relations and institutions, requiring just and equal wages,
brotherly kindness, good-will to all, and
thus making it impossible that a Christian
should treat a fellow-man as a chattel, or
that a Church seeking his presence should
harbor such a crime; he applies truth to
civil government, teaching us to support
government as a divine ordinance, and yet
in a conflict of human and divine law to
"obey God rather than man;" and thus
everything, eating, drinking, dress, wages,
business, marriage, the family, conversation,
company, politics —the whole circle and
work of human life-comes legitimately
within the sphere of the pulpit, not for hu



THE HOLY COMFORTER.       67
man dogmatism but for the unfolding of the
mind of the Spirit through the Word of
truth. He is the truest minister who most
faithfully and successfully brings home the
truth of God to the every day life, and
causes all human words and works to be
tested by the searching Spirit of Truth.




CHAPTER IV.
THE CO'MORTER ALSO A REPROVER.
His Coming to the- World.
THE coming of the Paraclete was not intended solely for the comfort and edification of the Church of Christ. Only to the
disciples of Jesus would the Spirit come as
the Comforter; only to them would he
come as an inspiring power; only with
them would he abide, witnessing in their
hearts by all gracious affections and fruits,
that they were born of God-and taking up
their broken cries of penitence and their
yearnings after holiness, with his own sympathetic " groanings," pour these with " unutterable" intercession into the bosom of
the Father.
But beside this mission to the hearts of
(68)




THE HOLY COMFORTEIR.       69
the disciples, the Spirit would come to the
world at large in the demonstration of his
power. The world had rejected Christ.
Blinded to the purity and innocency of his
life, and the righteousness which he wrought
out and exemplified for men, the world
branded him as an imposter. The world
in the persons of the Jewish Sanhedrim
and the Roman Governor, sat in judgment
upon Jesus, condemned him as a blasphemer-" making himself the Son of God;" 
as a seditious pretender —" saying that he
himself was Christ a King;" 2 and the world
cast him out to be crucified. But he who
yielded so meekly to all this insult and injury, who suffered himself to be " led as a
lamb to the slaughter," who, before his accusers and tormenters was dumb "as a
sheep before the shearers," hath sent the living, personal, almighty Spirit of God, to
convict the world of its guilty unbelief in
rejecting the Redeemer, to vindicate the
personal righteousness of Jesus in that God'John xix. 7.     2 Luke xxiii. 2.




70        THE BOLY COMFORTER.
had put to his testimony the seal of the resurrection; to set forth also his propitiatory
righteousness, in that he who " was delivered for our offences, was raised again for
our justification;" 1 and above all, to convince the world that the cross of Christ
was a tribunal also; that the prince of this
world who had thought to defeat the mission of Christ by the ignominy of his death,
was himself there judged and condemned;
his power broken; his victims enfranchised,;
that the cross stands as the great test of
character, and the judge of the moral
state of man; and that in this spiritual condemnation of sin and Satan through the
cross, there was foretokened that higher
judgment when "he that loved us and
washed us from our sins in his own blood,"
shall " come with clouds," and " every eye
shall see him, and they also which pierced
him."' 2 When He, the Paraclete, the Spirit
of truth is come, he will convict the world
of sin because they believe not on me;
Rom iv. 25.         2 Rev. i. 7.




TH1E HOLY COMFORTER.        71
he will convince the world of my righteousness, because though despised and
rejected of men, I go to the presence and
glory of the Father; he will strike through
the world a terror of the judgment to come,
because by me the prince of this world, the
very head and front of iniquity, the incarnate spirit of evil, is judged and condemned.'
Such is the sublime mission of the Spirit
in and upon the world at large. To the
church' his office is mainly that of instruction
and consolation; to the world his office is
primarily that of conviction, with a view to
repentance and regeneration. In the ear
of the believer, the Spirit whispers of acceptance, adoption, peace, joy, fellowship with
God; in the ear of thce sinner, the Spirit
cries the warning of sin proved upon the
conscience; of righteousness enthroned in
Christ; of judgment even now going forth
in condemnation, because of unbelief. The'John xvi. 8-12. See also Hare's " Mission of the
Co9mforter."




72       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
Spirit is in the world for Reproof and Conviction; " Reprove" our English Bible has
it; "convince " it is in the margin;-a better reading, though neither is quite full or
strong enough. One may be reproved or
rebuked without being brought to a conviction of his fault; "reproof" or " accusation " may be unjust, or if deserved may be
ineffectual; but, the word used by Jesus,'
"implies not merely the charge, but the
truth of the charge, and the manifestation of
the truth; nay, more than this, very often
the acknowledgment if not outward, yet inward, of the truth of the charge on the side
of the party accused; it being the glorious
prerogative of thie truth in its highest operation not merely to assert itself, and to
silence the adversary, but to silence him by
convincing Aim of his error or wrong." 2
Thus did the Spirit convince the world
upon the day of Pentecost, when there cname'E';eyee. John xvi. 8.
2 Archbishop Trench, Synornyms of the New Testaonnt. f) nyv,,




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        73
upon the disciples the power of the Holy
Ghost, and to the very multitude who had
rejected and crucified Christ, Peter declared
his divine mission as their Messiah, his perfect righteousness and regal supremacy, and
their guilt in refusing him.  "Jesus of
Nazareth, a man approved of God, as ye
yourselves also know, him ye have taken,
and by wicked hands have crucified and
slain; Him God hath raised up." 
Thus did the Holy Ghost bring home
to them, sin, righteousness, judgment, till
they were pricked in their heart and cried
"Men and Brethren what shall we do?" 2
The Work of Conviction.
HE conviction of sin in the human soul
is none the less the work of the Holy
Spirit to-day than when with tongues of fire
he accused the murderers of Christ. The
commonness and universality of sin obActs ii. 22, 23, 24. 32.  2 Acts ii. 27.
7




74       TITE IIOL Y COXFORTER.
struct or impair the conviction of personal
sinfulness. In the mephitic atmosphere of
a depraved world, conscience itself becomes
sluggish and is well-nigh paralyzed. Averse
to self-inspection, partial in judging themselves, familiar with sin by habit, accustomed to superficial standards of character
in society, men would never of their own
accord look upon sin as it appears in the
sight of God. The- very sin which, under
the Gospel, is the specific ground of condemnation -the unbelieving rejection of
Christ-is by men regarded as an indifferent matter of opinion. Therefore has the
Holy Ghost come into the world to convince men of sin.
By what subtle laws or what special action the Holy Spirit produces conviction, it
is not given us to know. But the fact that
he is in the world to convince it of sin is a
satisfactory explanation of the frequent
phenomena of involuntary conviction. Conviction may be the sequence of a voluntary
introspection of the motives of conduct,




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.       75
But though a man take pains to avoid reflection, and to ward off the reproofs of conscience, conviction will often come in spite
of him and overwhelm the conscience with
its power. For conviction is light; and it
is not possible to shut out all light from the
soul. Conviction is feeling, springing up
spontaneously from mysterious depths; and
it is not possible to seal up conscience so
that it will no more be agitated. Conviction is memory recalling past misdeeds,
bringing them up at unawares to confront
us in their guiltiness, stripped of all the excuses and disguises that covered them at the
time.
Conviction may be forced upon the mind
by a thinking that it does not invite, and
yet cannot repress. And when through so
many avenues, the conviction of sin is pressed home upon the mind without its seeking
or consent, we may well believe that this is
the work of the Holy Spirit. Though men
may " always resist the Holy Ghost" by refusing to turn from their sins, his power to




76       THE HOl Y COMFORTER.
convince them of sin is irresistible. He
knows avenues to the soul that preachers
cannot reach, and yet that sinners cannot
bar. One may keep himself away from sermons and Christian appeals, or he may rebut
argument and ward off reproof; yet while
he fancies himself safe in his sins, some
stroke of Providence from without, or some
unaccountable uneasiness within, will bring
him under an agony of conviction. He may
bolt his door against all human access, and
then lie down to toss upon his pillow with
the torments of remorse. "I remembered
God and was troubled.  Thou holdest
mine eyes waking. -I am so troubled that
I cannot speak."'
As with those rebel ports which were
fortified against every approach from the
landward side, yet lay open toward the sea,
the sinner may entrench himself in his
position, and fortifying his mind against all
human approaches, may defiantly run up
the flag of rebellion; but while he is thus'Psalm lxxvii. 4.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        77
secure upon the landward side, the great
ocean of truth rolls around him, and God
is Sovereign there. And when the divine
forces come sailing in, and deliver their
blows of rebuke and conviction upon the
inmost citadel of conscience, every blow
shaking down defences, exploding errors,
kindling within and about him the fires of
retribution, his boasted arguments are dismounted; he dare not trust himself upon
his own battlements, he cannot sight his
resistance against such a power; the battle
is within his fortifications; and though he
may remain an unrepentant rebel, he finds
his "refuge of lies " a prison and a hell.
His Reproof Infallible and Irresistible.
I REPEAT, then, that while conversion
can be effected only with the free action
of the human will, the conviction of sin by
the Holy Spirit is irresistible. This arises
from the fact that the Spirit has direct
7*




78       THE HOLY COM1FORTER.
access to the mind, can penetrate through
all habits and disguises, and strike at the
very centre of the soul.
Your watch is out of time and you try
by moving the regulator now forward, now
backward, and changing the hands every
day at XII. and every evening at IX., to
keep it in harmony with the city clocks.
But all your experiments fail. The hands
upon the face, the dial of the regulator, do
not reach the seat of the evil; nor can any
such inspection as you are able to-make,
detect the real cause of the irregularity.
But the instant your watch-maker fastens
upon it his microscopic lens he detects the
dustthat clogs the wheels, or the congealed
oil about the pivots, or the spring strained
till its wonted elasticity is gone, or coiled
irregularly and therefore playing with uneven beat. He puts his pencil or his forceps upon the very seat of the irregularity
and points out the defect. You might have
taken the watch apart and have discovered
nothing; but from the symptoms of the




THE IIOLY COMFORTER.      79
disorder and his knowledge of the interior
structure he knows just where to look for
the cause. It may be that the derangement which you supposed to be slight
has communicated itself to the whole mechanism; so that instead of regulating,
your watch requires cleaning; instead of
a new crystal and key or a new dial plate,
you need a new main-spring-perhaps a
new motion throughout.
Now the Spirit, a! The author of the
mind, goes direct to the seat of the evil
that is in the mind. He knows what
causes the derangement. If the dust and
soil of this world have clogged the sensibilities and aspirations of the soul for good,
he at once detects it. If fleshly lusts pervert the will and draw the soul from God,
the Holy Spirit can detect and expose this.
The mental analysis of a Hume or a Hamilton, might no more discover the cause of
the aberration than your analysis of your
watch would reveal its defects. But the
author of the mind can go behind all forms




80       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
and barriers, all appearances and shields,
to the very inmost springs of life and
action; he can search out the evil there,
and cause us to see and own it also. Not
only can he infallibly detect the evil, but he
can irresistibly expose it to our view. The
watchmaker causing you to look through
his lens while he should point out the
interior of your watch, might enable you
to comprehend the nature of the difficulty.
But the author of your mind, when he
searches out its hidden evil, can compel
you to see it; can so quicken the eyes of
conscience which you had sealed, that you
must see yourself as you are in his eyes.
He can bring upon you the sense of God's
immediate presence, and of your accountability to him as your judge. Did the sinner stand face to face with God he would
have no cloak for his sins. Did he feel
that all-seeing, all-searching eye fastened
upon his inmost soul, he would need no
voice of God to charge him with his guilt
and pollution.  To the guilty soul, the




THE ROLY COIMFORTER.       81
thought of God as a pure, holy, and just
Sovereign, is attended with a secret dread
of meeting him in judgment. The contrast
of his own character with the character of
God is that of darkness with light, of impurity with holiness; —and such holiness
and light as might blast him by its very
shining. Therefore he shuns the thought
of God. But the Holy Spirit can bring
the eye of God upon his soul so that he
shall feel it there; can give him glimpses
of him who is invisible, the law-giver, the
judge, which shall cause him to cry out,
"Behold, I am vile. Now mine eye seeth
THEE, wherefore I abhor myself and repent
in dust and ashes."' " He shall convince
the world of sin."'Job xl. 4, and xlii. 5, 6.




CIAAPTER  V.
SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST.
Of Grieving and Resisting the Holy Spirit.
IN considering the operations of the Holy
Spirit in the human soul, we should never
lose sight of the fact that he has to do with
that which is spiritual in its essence, and
voluntary and free in its powers and modes
of action. It is because of this that the
Scriptures warn men, with a dread emphasis of repetition, against resisting, grieving,
and quenching the Spirit. The personal
influence of the Holy Spirit upon the mind
to bring it to repentance may be resisted
to the last by a stubborn or reckless will.
The power of the Spirit to convince men
of sin, we have seen, indeed, to be irresistible. But conviction is not conversion; the
(82)




THE HOLY COMFORTER.         83
consciousness of guilt is not repentance.
If it were so, there would be no ground
for the distinction between repentance and
remorse; and'well nigh all mankind would
be converted, since at some time they are
convicted of sin. Conviction rests in the
understanding and the conscience; but conversion involves distinctly an act of the
will. The will may not be able to ward
off conviction from the understanding and
the conscience,- but the will can and often
does resist the end of conviction, which -is
conversion. Hence the power of the Holy
Spirit, however irresistible in the way of,
conviction upon the understanding and the
conscience, may be resisted by the will at
the essential point of turning from sin to
holiness. The distinction lies in the nature.
and sphere of the will, and in the nature
of sin and holiness as voluntary states of
the soul.:
The change which: the Bible,: under various figures, describes as a new birth, a
new creation, a resurrection from the dead,




84       THE- HOL Y COMFOR TER.
is a radical change of moral character,
whose seat is in the will and the affections.
It cannot take place but with the free consent of the will; for it lies in the choice
of God and holiness in place of self and
sin; it consists in renouncing sin and the
world as objects of affection, and transferring the heart's best affections to God,
its supreme love and devotion to his cause.
This must be voluntary to have any worth;
it must be voluntary or it cannot be at all.
The physical terms under which it is symbolized, birth, creation, resurrection, and
the like, would be mutually contradictory
if taken literally, yet these are none too
strong to describe the thoroughness of the
change.  But such a change cannot be
mechanical. The Holy Spirit may come
to the mind with overwhelming force of
conviction; may silence the arguments and
cavils of unbelief, may fill the understanding with a blaze of light, may kindle the
conscience to a fiery glow of rebuke, may
even touch the emotions and affections so




THE BIOL Y COMFORTER.      85
as to awaken yearnings toward a higher
life, aspirations, desires to be freed from
the yoke of sin, to be reconciled to God,
may seek to draw the will back to its forsaken allegiance-but just then and there,
where the man must decide for himself, he
may do "despite to the Spirit of grace."'
The Unpardonable Sin.
THE Scriptures teach that there is a sin
which " shall not be forgiven unto men." 2
What is that sin that holds this dread preeminence of guilt and condemnation'? Idolatry? That breach of the second commandment, so directly offensive to God, was forgiven again and again to apostate but repenting Israel. Adultery? David bewailing his guilt with a broken and contrite
heart, was purged as with hyssop from that
crime. Murder? Saul of Tarsus with his
hands yet dripping with the blood of the
1 Heb. x. 29.     2 Matt. xii. 31.
8




86      MTEli HOLY COMfFORTER.
saints and his tongue fuming out blasphemy
against the name of Jesus, was forgiven and
made a chosen vessel to bear that name to
the Gentiles.:Lying and profaneness? Peter denied his Lord with oaths and curses,
yet Jesus appeared to Peter after his resurrection and commissioned him to feed his
sheep and his lambs.
This unpardonable sin is nothing gross
to outward appearance, perhaps not even
startling to the mind itself. It is not to be
sought for in the category of the vilest
crimes; it does not stamp the sinner in human eyes as with the brand of Cain. It
lies directly. between the soul and God;
and no outward sign may indicate to the
world how or when it is committed. And
yet the awful verdict has gone forth from
the lips of the Son of God, "All manner of
sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto
men; but the blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men."'
Jesus himself was despised and rejected,'Matt. xii. 31.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.         87
mocked, scourged, crucified as an impostor,
yet on the cross he prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers. But those lips of
gentleness and love, breathing forgiveness
for every injury against himself, uttered
also the warning of this unpardonable sin:
"Whosoever speaketh a word against the
Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him: but
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost,
it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this
world, neither in the world to come."
The beloved disciple, who reflected so
much of the gentleness of his Lord, and
who sets forth so fully the efficacy of the
blood of Christ to cleanse from sin, and the
efficacy of prayer through the Redeemer's
intercession, says expressly; "If any man
see his brother sin a sin which is not unto
death, he shall ask, and God shall give him
life for them that sin not unto death." This
phraseology alone would suggest that there
is a limit somewhere to forgiveness-a limit
somewhere to the power of intercessory'Matt. xii. 32.




88       THE HOLY COMFORTER.
prayer. And then the apostle adds, with a
point and emphasis that may well strike the
soul with awe. " There is a sin unto death;
I do not say that he shall pray for it."'
What that sin is, we are taught in such
passages as these: "He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never
forgiveness; but is in danger of eternal
damnation;"' or to speak more strictly, is
judicially subjected to a condemnation,
which, as the sin will never be remitted,
must be eternal. This is the sore and hopeless punishment of one who hath " trodden
under foot the Son of God and hath counted
the blood of the covenant wherewith he was
sanctified an unholy thing, and hath done
despite to the Spirit of Grace."' The unpardonable sin is the knowing, wilful, persistent, contemptuous, malignant spurning
of divine truth and grace, as manifested to
the soul by the convincing and illuminating
power of the Holy Ghost.
1 John v. 16.     2 Mark iii. 29.
3 Iebrews x. 29.




THE BOLTY COMFORTER.       89
The Warning of Christ.
WHEN Jesus by the Spirit of God had
cast out devils, the Scribes and Pharisees said: "He hath Beelzebub, and by the
prince of the devils casteth he out devils."'
Now this name Beelzebub was a name of
contempt for one of the vilest of the heathen
deities. No more gross or insulting epithet
could have been applied to Jesus, than this
which represented him as acting under the
influence of the most unclean of spirits.
Yet he could forgive the insult, the derision
offered to himself; but he warns them of
that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that
shall not be forgiven. No personal resentment moves his reply —no vindication of his
own dignity and honor from the foul aspersion-but an awful sense of the sin against
the Holy Ghost. )
The Pharisees saw with their own eyes
the deaf and'dumb made to speak and hear,
1 Matt.




90       THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
by the casting out of the devil that possessed him. The evidence of their senses,
and their training in the Jewish faith, alike
taught them that this was a direct act of
divine power. They knew the fact; they
could not deny it. But as selfish, grasping
rulers and managers, they could not bear to
see the people turning away from their authority to follow Jesus; and therefore they
derided him, and sought to fasten upon him
a contemptuous and loathsome epithet.
They went contrary to evidence, to reason,
to conviction, to their own religious faith;
they did this wilfully and spitefully for selfish ends. Jesus ascribes this miracle in the
sphere of evil spirits to a direct manifestation of God as the Spirit of holiness and
power; and therefore warns them lest their
derision of himself be also blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost: for that is the unpardonable sin.
It would seem that this sin is singled out
for a condemnation so extreme and final,
because, in the power of the Holy Spirit




THE HOI'Y COHFORTER.       91
acting directly upon our spiritual nature,
God himself comes nearer to the human
mind than in any outward manifestation of
his attributes, in works of creation, providence and redemption. And therefore, the
scornful rejection of the evidences of the
Spirit, the resistance of truth and conviction
brought home by his power, is the highest
affront to the majesty, the goodness, the
glory of God in his own person;-for it is
God in person and not any work, messenger or agent of God, that is offended in the
Holy Spirit.
And again, by his coming in the Holy
Ghost, God makes the highest manifestation
that the nature of mind and the action of
spiritual powers can admit of, for the conviction, illumination and sanctification of
the soul: and therefore, when this is spurned, God's utmost grace is thrust away, and
judgment must have its course. And hence
to do despite to the Spirit of Grace is to
thrust away all hope and all mercy, and to
despise God in the personal operation of his




92      5THE HOLY COMFORTER.
mind upon ours, to bring us to himself. In
the nature of the case, by the laws of spiritual action and re-action, this act must consign the heart to irrevocable obduracy.




CHAPTER VL.
THE SPIRIT AS LIFE.
Seen in the Hebrew Prophets.; DID the Hebrew Prophets speak as they
were moved by the HIoly Ghost? Did
they so speak as no men but they and the
apostles, have ever spoken or written? We
should seek a reply to this question in the
answer that must be given to another question. Is there a life divine-is there a life
of the soul toward God? Is there a communion of the finite spirit with the INFINITE,
on terms of intimate correspondence in
which the deepest and the most powerful
affections of human nature are drawn forth
toward and centred upon the perfections
of the INFINITE BEING?  If there be-and
there is-a life of the soul toward God-a
(93)




THE HOLY COMFOR TER.
life not mystical, not vague and abstractive
-then we find our reply to the included
question concerning the Hebrew Prophetic
Scriptures; for it is in these, and it is nowhere else-no, not to the extent of a line,
a fragment-it is within this range that the
Spiritual Life is embodied, and is expanded
and is uttered in a distinct and articulate
manner. It is within the compass of the
Hebrew Poetic and Prophetic Scriptures
that all moods and occasions-all trials and
exercises-all griefs and perplexities-all
triumphs and all consolations -all joys,
hopes and exultations-all motives of patience, and all animated expectations of the
future, find their element and their warrant
also. In a word, if there be a life of the
soul toward God, and if this life be real, as
toward God-then are the Hebrew writers
true men of God;-then is it certain that
they were instructed and empowered-each
of them in his time-to set it forth, for the
use of all men, to the end of the world." 1
1 isaac Taylor, Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, chap xvi.




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.       9S
The Soul in Spiritual Death.
THE life of the soul in God which is portrayed in the Scriptures, is produced subjectively by the Holy Spirit who awakens
the soul to anew life-principle and power.
Sin and holiness are contrasted as death
and life. The sinning soul is under a law
of spiritual death-already dead, in fact,
in trespasses and sins. And when we consider what the soul of man is, with what
faculties and powers it is endowed, and of
what attainments and  enjoyments it is
capable;  not merely a sentient creature
with m6st exquisite susceptibilities and
tastes; not merely an animal organization
of wondrous delicacy and perfection, and
with the highest variety and combination
of powers and adaptations for use and for
pleasure; but a rational creature, capable
of knowing its relations to its Maker and
to the universe-capable of comprehending
the reason and propriety of things, and the




96       THE ROL Y COMFOR TER.
principles and motives that should govern
its actions;-a voluntary being, having the
power of choice; not under mere natural
law nor the control of habit, nor the direction of instinct, nor subject to coercion like
"dumb-driven cattle;" but capable of knowing right from wrong, good from evil, of
choosing between them, choosing freely an()
without dictation, and of fixing its will and
its affections upon such objects as it may
choose; a being having a consciousness of
its own thoughts, motives and actions, " selfknowing," as Milton describes it, so that it
need not act in anything from blind impulse-but conscious of its own personality,
of its powers, of its obligations, conscious
of its thoughts, motives, feelings, affections;
a being endowed also with a consciencequick to pronounce upon the morality of
actions, to urge the right and forbid the
wrong; a being capable of indefinite progression in knowledge and love, and of the
very perfection of virtue-in one word a
being capable of knowing and loving God,




THE tIOL Y COMFORTER.      97
and of becoming like God in holiness and
in joy;-when we thus consider the nature
and capacities of the human soul, we see
that the true end of such a being is moral
perfection, and that its development in intellect, heart and will should always be in the
line of conformity to the character of God,
and the requirements of his law.
When the soul fails of this development,
when its thoughts, its motives, its aims, its
activities are not God-ward, nor in the direction of its truest, noblest end, then to all intents it is even as dead. The grandest functions of its being are unperformed-the one
great object of its creation not only unattained but unattempted. In the low region
of sentient-existence, as a mere creature related to sensible objects of earth and time, or
as a creature of intellect and affections, concentrating these upon the narrow sphere of
self and its related interests, of this life and
its arrangements, the man may seem all alive
in activity and enjoyment. But with respect to that sphere of moral life, purity
9




98       THE HOL Y COMFORTIBR.
and joy, for which every power and faculty
of the soul was adapted and designed by
its maker, such a one gives no sign of life,
performs no true function of his being.
He makes no development of his rational
and voluntary powers on the high plane of
virtue. He does not seek to know God; he
does not aim to love God; he does not
strive to be like God; he sees no beauty in
holiness; he hears no voices of truth and
goodness speaking from heaven to his inmost soul; so far as God's honor and glory,
God's will and end in his existence are concerned, he is as one dead.
Every adaptation he has, indeed, for that
original end and glory of his creation;
every means within reach for its accomplishment-the latent power and capacity
for living unto this high end —but all his
faculties so blinded and bound by sin, that
he has no spirit within him toward such a
life. Only when the principle of holiness
enters into union with the natural powers
and faculties of the soul, vivifying and con



THE HOLY COMFORTER.        99
trolling these, only when thus pervaded and
animated by a loving obedience to God,
does any soul begin to live.
Life not Self-originated.
WHAT now shall raise the soul from such
a death as this? -what shall send
through this spiritual organism-bound by
sense and sin, as Lazarus was bound hand
and foot with grave-clothes-the quickening
pulses of a new and higher life, awakening it
to holy, loving thoughts of God, to noble
purposes of duty, to self-purification, to prayerful vigilance against sin, to a delight in the
law of God, and aspirations toward moral
perfection? What shall restore this fallen
creature to God's original design in the creation of a soul in his own image?
All experience teaches that it will never
come to this true and exalted life simply of
its own motion. True, it is endowed with
every capacity for such a life;-capable of




100     ITHE HOL Y COMFORTER.
discerning truth; capable of discriminating
right from  wrong; capable of knowing
God; capable of appreciating virtue; capable of approving holiness; and capable of
loving him whose character is the highest
expression of holiness.  With respect to
capacity for its proper life, as an intelligent
being the soul has need of nothing.
Nor can we find any defect of natural
constitution with respect to voluntary powers.  The power of choice in all moral
acts pertains to the nature of man as a moral
being. If this freedom did not exist, there
could be, no responsibility: since to compel the will by a coercive power from without would be to destroy it as a will. It
belongs to the very nature of the will that
it is not capable of compulsion, but, withiin
the sphere of moral conduct, has entire
freedom of-choice and of action.
But while this is true of man's adaptation
or capacity for the higher life, and his latent
natural ability to pursue that life, it is none
the less true that the soul does not, and will




THE HIOLY COMFORTER.      101
not, enter upon a life of holiness simply of
its own motion. It may make fitful and
painful efforts in that direction; it may try
to arouse itself to a life of holy obedience;
but it will not enter upon and sustain such
a life of itself. As with Paul, the inward
man, the awakened conscience may approve
the law of God; but there is "another law
in the members warring against the law of
the mind," sinful lusts against reason, against
judgment, against conscience; bringing the
man " into captivity to the law of sin which
is in his members."' H e is like one who, in
attempting his own life, or by overindulgence in opiates, has taken so much laudanum that he has brought upon his faculties
the stupor of death. If he shall be revived,
it must be by the reaction of his own vital
powers against the stupefying potion; but
this vital action within must be stimulated
by most vigorous appliances from without.
The effort is not to put into him, as by miracle, some.new power of life to resist the
l Rom vii. 23.
9*




oz      TIE IIOL Y COMI OR TEI'.
invasion of death, but to call into action the
vital forces that are still within the man,
but are sinking into a fatal lethargy.  So
in this attempted suicide of the soul, or
this overindulgence of the sensual nature,
which has brought upon the seat of life in
the soul the benumbing grip of death, there
is the capacity for life, and the latent power
of a higher, nobler activity; but this will not
arouse itself, and as in some horrid nightmare, the very will lies impotent before the
stupendous peril.
Truth alone will not give Life.
NOR will life be imparted to the soul
merely by truth, though it be the revealed
truth of God. The truth may startle, awaken, convict, terrify, but of itself it brings
no life. Nay, truth alone may be but the
agent of death. For to a mind made suddenly conscious of its guilt and its need of
holiness, and stirred to some effort in that




THE HOLY COMFOR TER.      I o103
direction, the naked truth concerning God
as a righteous sovereign and judge — the
hater of iniquity-the truth embodied in the
form of law requiring perfect obedience in
holy living, may but smite the soul with
a deeper dread, by bringing it under sentence of condemnation. " The law worketh
wrath,"' and so the soul that is already dead
in trespasses and sins, is twice dead by the
sentence of death upon it from the law of
God. "The letter killeth;"2 mere naked
truth, truth in the form of precept, by
showing what is required for God's favor,
kills out hope in the soul just awaking from
its sins, and brings upon it the killing sentence of the law and the judge.
"If there had been a law which could
have given life, verily righteousness should
have been by the law."' But there is no
life-giving power in naked law. The law
req.iires holiness, does not impart it. The
law  oundemns the want of righteousnessdoes not supply that lack. To a being who
1Rom. iv. 15.  2 2Cor. iii. 6.   Gal. iii. 21.




104      THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
has not sinned, the law adopted into the
soul may be the principle and power of an
endless life; but once sin has entered the
soul, the law follows only to rebuke and
condemn; and thus "the commandment
which was ordained to life, is found to be
unto death."' 
ThAe Divine Quickening.
IT is obvious then that the spiritual resurrection of the soul must be effected by a
power extraneous to itself; a power which
acts not mechanically, nor spasmodically,
nor yet miraculously, but in harmony with
the constitution of the soul and the laws of
its moral agency and responsibility. It is
a degradation of the.term law, to restrict it
to phenomenal sequences in the physical
world. And it is a degradation both of
the nature of God and the nature of the
soul to suppose that nothing can come to
1 Rom. vii. 10.




THIE HOL Y COMFORTER.     105
pass between God and the soul, save within
the plane either of physical-causation or of
an absolute necessity.
A theistic writer who denies the possibility of the miraculous within the sphere of
physical laws, and who therefore rejects
the supernatural claims of the Bible, has
nevertheless recognized, upon metaphysical
grounds, the intercommunion of the Divine
Spirit with the human soul;-that, " there
is a world of realities behind the world of
appearances which alone our senses perceive, and that the fixed chain of necessary
sequence, which binds all things in the
world of sense, cannot bind the supersensible world, whereof (as well as of the lower)
man is an inhabitant by right of his twofold nature....  God is himself a Supersensible Being; and so also, in his high_
est nature, is man —Creator and creature
meet then in that world where the chain of
physical laws has never been extended." 
Religious Duty, by Frances Power Cobbe, p. 183.




1o6      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
No philosophy is competent to affirm that
supernatural powers cannot operate directly
upon the human spirit, and this in harmony
with its own modes of thought, feeling and
action. Neither the powers nor the laws
of the spiritual world are sufficiently understood to warrant such an affirmation. But
on the contrary the moral renovation of the
human soul, changing all its aims, tastes
and desires with respect to spiritual objects,
is a phenomenon which is fully explained by
the teaching of the New Testament concerning the quickening, energizing power of the
Holy Spirit acting upon the mind through
the truth.
The Scriptures always ascribe to the
Holy Ghost the authorship of spiritual life
from its beginning in regeneration, through
the whole growth of sanctification, until the
perfection of life shall be attained through
a spiritual and glorified body united with a
perfected soul. Jesus in his discourse with
Nicodemus declared, that to enter into the
Kingdom of God, every one must be "born




'tHE HOLY COMFORTER.        107
of the Spirit;"' and we are saved according to the mercy of God, by "the washing
of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy
Ghost;" 2 we are washed, we are sanctified, we are justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." 
We are chosen to salvation, "through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth "4 - "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through
sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus
Christ." 5 We pray in the Spirit, we walk
in the Spirit, we are an habitation of God
through the Spirit; all the graces and virtues of the Christian life are the fruits of
the Spirit; and the promise to all believers
is, " If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus
from the dead dwell in you, he that raised
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken
your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."6 Thus the whole process of
John iii. 8.  2'itus iii. 5.  1 Cor. vi. 11.
2 Tless. ii. 13    1 Peter i 2. 6 Romans viii. 11.




'108     THE HOLY COMFOR TER.
bringing man from death to life, beginning
in the quickening of the soul to that spiritual life which emancipates it from the bondage of the flesh, and culminating in the
union of a spiritual and glorified body with
a sanctified and perfected soul-this whole
wondrous work of life is the direct work
of the Holy Spirit.
-Methods of the Spirit's Operation.
T IE mode of the Spirit's operation our
Lord has likened to the invisible wind.
But as science takes observations of meteorological phenomena though their laws may
yet be inscrutable, so it is reasonable and
scientific to accept the facts of the Spirit's
operation in the world of mind, though the
methods of his work are not discoverable
by reason nor revealed in the Scriptures.
Two general statements at least, are warranted:
(1.) The Spirit imparts life to the soul
by bringing home to it with convincing, per



THE HOLY COMFORTER.       109og
suasive, efficient, saving power, the way of
life revealed in the Gospel.  Even that
amazing expression of the love of God
which is given in the sacrifice of Christ
to take away our sins, stands as a dead letter
upon the page of history, until the Spirit
of God makes it alive to us and-makes
our hearts alive to it.
Hawthorne represents the sculptor as
standing pensively before his own completed
work, and saying: "The inevitable period
has come-for I have found it inevitable in
regard to all my works-when I look at
what I fancied to be a statue, lacking only
breath to make it live, and find it a mere
lump of senseless stone, into which I have
not really succeeded in moulding the spiritual part of my idea." 1 And the despairing
sculptor is ready to destroy his work with
his own mallet. Such a feeling is not the
disappointment of a novice at his imperfect
skill; rather it increases with the growth of
the ideal in the mind of the artist; and there'The Marble Faun.
10




110      THE HOLY COMFORTEiR.
is a tradition that Michael Angelo himself
on completing one of his grandest worksthe statue of Moses-dashed his chisel at it
in a frenzy of despair because it would not
speak. The human soul made perfect in all
powers of organization and of action, educated by the most careful masters, and
chiselled as it were to the most artistic point
of culture, stands statue-like in its impassiveness toward God until " the Spirit giveth life." 1
The possibility of life, indeed, is- there.
The soul is not an unconscious marble, it is
not a senseless thing; it has latent capacities for love, truth, virtue-in one word, for
holiness-which being roused would make it
alive unto God. Yet education and appeal
fail to call forth these powers until the Holy
Ghost brings truth to the mind as light, and
the light coming with the power of this dixine actinism produces effects upon the soul
that are like a new creation. A pupil may
play a sonata of Beethoven correctly with
12 Cor. iii. 6.




THE rOLY COMFORTER         I 1
respect to notes and time, but when the master touches the keys the soul of the composer
enters into them and causes them to speak
his thoughts. And the divine Spirit can so
touch the native chords of feeling in the
soul, that where hitherto there have been
but formal mechanical utterances or a deadness of sound, there shall now be voiced
forth heavenly truth and harmony. How
this is effected we may not understand.
When we receive in New York a telegram from San Francisco, we do not question that it has crossed the continent, nor
doubt the reality of the electric force, because we cannot see the fluid as it traverses
the wires. So when we see the soul quickened by the message of God, it is not needed
that we should see the operation of the Holy
Spirit before accepting the fact and its result.  And all the phenomena of regeneration teach, that did not the Spirit bring
the truth into quickening contact with the
soul, the Word of God itself would lie silent
as the cable in the depths of the sea.




I12     STHE IfOL Y COMFOR]TER.
(2.) The Spirit by his gracious presence
in the soul keeps in constant activity the
principle of holiness which is "the power
of an endless life." The voluntary adoption of the will of God as the supreme law
of the soul, the yielding of the heart to God
in a loving obedience, is the new life into
which the soul is born through " the renewing of the Holy Ghost."' But this new
principle, in its incipiency, may be much
hindered, if not overborne, by habits long
subservient to the flesh.  It is to those
whose minds are already renewed, and who
have adopted the true law of spiritual life,
that the admonition is yet addressed," if
ye live after the flesh, ye shall die." 2
The reactionary tendency of carnal desires cannot be overcome by mere force of
resolution. But the purpose to subdue
those desires unto the new law of life is
made effective through the co-working of;he Holy Spirit. " The Spirit helpeth our inirmities"`-takes hold with us to bear us
l Titus iii. 5.  2 Rom. viii. 13.  s Rom. viii. 26.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        I 3
along, to carry us through - and " if we
thraough. the Spirit do mortify the deeds of
the body, we shall live."' The principle
of holiness, which springs up within the soul
in the act of conversion, is kept alive and
strengthened and at last made dominant
over the flesh, by the Spirit of God dwelling in us.2 Nearer than the counsel of a
father interposed to restrain a child from
wrong, or to nerve him for the right, nearer
than the presence or the memory of a mother
whose look is often the solvent of doubts
and fears and the inspiration of hope and
love, is the suggestion, the incitement, the
kindling presence of the Paraclete within
the soul, searching the things of a man with
the deep things of God. Rightly to believe
this, is to know it. To doubt this, is to call
in question the omniscience and the omnipresence of the divine Spirit, and his yearning for the spiritual life of his children.
Shall we refuse to live in the Spirit because
we cannot comprehend what life is?
Rom. viii. 13.  2 Rom. viii. 9.
10*




CIIAPTER VII.
THE HOLY SPIRIT AS D YNAMIC PO WFR.
The Working-energy of Believers.
(:    E shall receive power after that the
Holy Ghost is come upon you."'was
the promise of Jesus at his ascension; and
the promise was fulfilled to the first disciples
on the day of Pentecost. Besides the power:
of the Holy Spirit upon the soul in its regeneration and sanctification, there is a
power from the Spirit communicated to the
believing soul which makes that soul a
special, and at times even a supernatural,
power in the world. This dcnamis was
not strictly the power of working miracles, for the apostles had already "power
i Acts i. 8.
(114)




TIIE HOLY COAFORTER.         X5
and authority over all devils, and to cure
diseases;"' but it was a power that should
pertain to their personality through a participation of the Holy Ghost; a power expressly fitting them to propagate the Gospel as "witnesses  2 for Christ.  I call it
dynamic to denote that it conveyed -to the
minds that received it a special motivepower or energy in the Christian work. To
its first recipients the coming of this power
was attested by miracles, and the miracles which they afterwards wrought are
classified as " powers " aamong the gifts of
the Holy Spirit-a certain dynamic energy
from the Holy Spirit giving them power
over the forms and laws of the material
world.
Power is an attribute of person. Spirits
are powers as distinguished from things,
from  effects and from  laws.  Within the
limitations of finite being, they can both
originate and execute.  And the divine
Luke ix. 1 and x. 17. 2 Acts i. 8.  1 Cor. xii. 10,
dunumeis, the effect being put for the cause,




1 16     THE HIOLY COMFOR TER.
Spirit can and does communicate to holy
souls a special power for the work of righteousness in the world, so that their holy
living and doing, like the speech and preaching of Paul, are "in demonstration of the
Spirit and of power,"' i.e., of the dynamic
energy of the Holy Ghost. It is not necessary to the reality of such power that it be
ostensible to the senses. The rushing wind
that shook, as by earthquake, the house in
Jerusalem; the cloven flame that played
about the heads of the disciples; the sudden inspiration of different tongues, reversing the miracle at Babel- these all were
but outward symbols of the Holy Ghost.:His power entered dynamically into the
souls of the disciples.
The Silence of Divine Forces.
POWER is measured not by noise nor outward signs, but by efficiency, the capacity to produce effects. Even in physical
1    Cor. ii. 4.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        I 17
dynamics the most effective forces are often
secret and silent. There is no visible machinery of the heavens, no apparatus of
cogs, cranks, bands, wheels, by which the
planets are guided in their courses; yet
these enormous masses of matter move on,
year after year, age after age, without danger of collision, and without moving a hair'sbreadth from their appointed place. The
force or law of gravitation is silent and invisible.
We cannot see the cold. We cannot tell
what it is, but call it the absence of caloric
-which is only defining in a circle. But
"who can stand before his cold"?   Silent
and invisible the frost steals over the
face of the earth. It sinks down into the
soil and makes it as a bed of rock or iron;
it touches the roots of plants and they die;
it chains the rivers; it binds even the restless waves of the sea; it stops the flow of
water to our dwellings; it stops the commerce and the travel of the world; it snaps
1 Psalm clvii. 17,




l118     T[E  HIOLY COMFORTER.
the iron rail, and makes the huge frame of
the locomotive as crisp and brittle as a
toy; it breaks in sunder bars of brass and
steel; it cracks the iron girders of floors
and roofs, and tumbles stores and depots
into ruin. We philosophize upon it as the
result of an irregular contraction and expansion-an uneven congelation of particles; but the force that thus masters all
human works, and puts the vitality of nature
under its ban, is itself noiseless and invisible. It cometh not with observation; but
its reality is shown by its efficiency.
How silent falls the rain!  A multitude
of tiny drops, falling one by one-each too
small to hurt an infant's head-scarce wetting the pavement under your feet-they
give you no idea of force.: But let it rain
and rain and rain, hour after hour, day
after day; the icy fetters are dissolved;
that which man could not cut nor break,
slowly melts away; the frozen earth grows
moist again; the floods lift up their voice;
the rivers burst their bonds, and bridges,




ITHE IIOL Y COMFOR TER.   119
fences, barns, houses, stock, merchandize, are
borne on the resistless tide of tiny drops.
Cities are submerged, and  men stand
aghast before the sudden and mighty force.
The returning sun touches the Arctic
zone, and the fields of ice which steam
could not penetrate, become an open sea.!
Yet what is heat?  And what gives this
marvellous power to the calorific rays of
the sun? Once more our philosophy sends
us round and round in the defining circle.
Heat is caloric and caloric is heat, and cold
is the sensation produced by the loss of
caloric or heat. But the reality we know
by its effects. Ah, these silent invisible
forces, which we cannot grasp or measure or
define!-more than the thunder, the whirlwind or the storm, are these the demonstration of power. Even so with the energy
of the Holy Ghost. We may not have the
earthquake, the flame, the tongues, the
rushing wind, but we may receive the
dynamic power, if, with a believing heart,
we will receive the Holy Ghost,




20     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
Pascal has said that " God has established
prayer in order to communicate to his creatures the dignity of causality, and in order
to remind us from whom we have power."
If by prayer we are in living communion
with the Holy Ghost, we shall ourselves
become powers, having causality in the
spiritual world, working together with
God, and approving ourselves as his servants, " by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost,
by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by
the power of God." 
12 Cor. vi. 1-8.




CHAPTER VIIL
THE HOLY SPIRIT AS A PLENARY
PRESENCE.
The Pentecost his Advent.
THE manifestation of the Holy Spirit
under the New Testament is of the character of a plenary and abiding presence.
Under the Old Testament the distinct gifts
of the Holy Spirit to believers, so far as
these are recorded, were occasional and
limited. Yet there was a prophetic promise that the pouring out of the Spirit upon
the Church with plenitude and universality,
should usher in the new era of the Messiah.
That promise was fulfilled upon the day of
Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost came upon
all the disciples with diversity of gifts and
plenitude of power, and came to abide in
the Church.
11           (121)




122      TIiE HOLY COMFOR7WR.
The true significance of the miracle of
Pentecost was not a manifestation of the
Spirit once for all time-as the crucifixion
of our Lord was an atoning sacrifice made
once for all; the Pentecost was not merely
the inauguration of the new religion; it
was the pledge and sign that the Holy
Spirit had come into the world according
to the promise of Christ, thenceforth to use
his direct, personal, complete and constant
agency in carrying forward the work of redeeming grace in the hearts of men. He
is always in the world as the Spirit of conviction, attending with his power the truth
and the providences of God, convincing
men of the guilt of sin, the need of righteousness, the reality of judgment and retribution. He is in the world as the Spirit
of truth-a living spirit within the truth
he has indited-illumining the sacred page
with his own light, and purging the believing soul of darkness and error, that he may
guide it into all truth. He is in the world
as the Spirit of holiness, sanctifying the




THE HOLY COMFORTER.
heart by his presence and power, so that
they who taste this heavenly gift are " made
partakers of the Holy Ghost and are sealed
unto the day of redemption."'   He is in
the world as the Spirit of adoption, bearing
witness.with our spirit that we are the children of God. He is in the world as the
Spirit of grace and supplications, making
intercession for the saints according to the
will of God. He is in the -world as the
Spirit of consolation. the Comforter, enabling tried and sorrowing saints to walk
inl the comfort of the gospel.  He is in
the world, as the Spirit of wisdom. He
"searcheth all things, yea the deep things
of God;,2 and by his illuminating power
helps us to discern those spiritual realities
that bring to us the very mind of Christ.
He is in the world as the Spirit of life,
making us free from  the law of sin and
death. Yea, He is in us as the power of
an endless life; for "He that raised up
Christ from the dead shall also quicken our
I Heb. vi. 11.     2 Cor. ii. 10.




124      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth
in us."l
All this plenitude of spiritual offices and
gifts, is with us always through the abiding
presence of the Paraclete. In the first age
of the Church, following the manifestation
at the Pentecost, there were special modes
of the Spirit's working which were meant
to be transient. These had to do with
establishing Christianity as a divine revelation by supernatural signs, and were not
designed to be permanent accompaniments
of Christianity or a part of its regular
working agency.
Miracles not the Highest Gifts.
MIRACULOUS gifts were not confined
to the. apostles, but were.widely shared
by believers during the apostolic age. In
the church at Corinth, one had gifts of
healing; another had the general power of
1Rom. viii. 11.




THE HOLY COMFOR TER.       2 5
working miracles; another, power to foretell the future; another, power to discern
spirits, whether to read character, as Peter
read Ananias and Simon Magus, or to detect evil spirits, as Paul- detected the spirit
of divination in the woman of Philippi;
another, the gift of speaking in many
tongues; another was empowered to interpret unknown tongues. These miraculous
gifts seem to have continued in force, more
or less, throughout the first century or the
apostolic age, but gradually subsided as
Christianity gained a foothold in the moral
consciousness of the world. Viewed in the
distance, they appear very superior as evidences of Christianity, and very fascinating
as gifts or powers to be used for its advancement. In moments of ecstatic fervor,
when religious contemplation grows imaginative and seems transfigured into vision,
we may think the first disciples enviable
because of these supernatural gifts, and
fancy that could we rise a little higher in
our own experience, we could grasp the
11*




I 26     THE HOLY COOMFORTER.
same gifts and wield the same powers. In
almost every age some have professed to
have attained to the miraculous endowments
of the Spirit-like Irving with his gift of
tongues, or Miller with his wonder-working prayers —and some devout persons'-imagine that the age of miracles would return,
if only there were enough of spirituality
and faith among Christians to permit it.
But why should it return? Is there any
conceivable advantage to Christianity in
respect either to evidences or to moral
power, to be anticipated from a return of
the age of miracles?
I hesitate not to say that any respectable
church of modern times is superior to the
church of Corinth in true moral power.
Indeed I should be loth to minister'to
such a sorry set of Christians as were the
Corinthians, with all their miracles and
tongues. Wrangling about Paul, Apollos,
and Cephas, running after false teachers, full
of envying, strife and division, harboring an
incestuous person without discipline, deo



THE HOL Y COMFORTER.      127
grading the Lord's Supper into a feast of
appetite, giving to Paul constant sorrow
and anxiety, the Corinthians needed miracles to give them a respectable title to the
Christian name; and they so abused miraculous gifts by jealousy and contention,
that they turned their Sabbath assemblies
into cabals of men and women shouting,
singing, praying, prophesying, pell-mell,
without decency or order. I have no desire
to return to that age of Christianity with
all its miracles. No doubt these Corinthians, converted pagans, ignorant and rude,
with all their errors and defects, were true
Christians, and the Spirit worked through
them to give Christianity a footing in the
world of Grecian idolatry and corruption.
Yet'the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were
not evidences of extraordinary piety in
their recipients, nor the divine seals upon
a spirituality and a faith since departed.
Nor are such gifts to be looked for or even
desired, as if they belonged to some higher
dispensation of the Spirit in the future;




128      THE HOLY COMFO R TER.
but the spiritual gifts which we all may
enjoy by faith, are higher in value and
in testimony than were those miraculous
powers. In the Corinthian church itself,
Paul placed the intellectual and moral expounders of Christianity above the rank of
miracles, gifts of healing, diversities of
tongues. " Tongues are for a sign to them
that believe not;"' an outward evidence
of supernatural power to convince the
world of the divine origin of Christianity.
But when Christianity had gained foothold
in the world as a moral power, it was
thenceforth greater in life and doctrine
than in outward miracles. Hence miracles
subsided, not through a decline of faith and
piety, but because faith and piety had grown
into a permanent living power for the moral
conviction of the world.
" Five words spoken with the understanding," for the intelligent, hearty exposition
of the gospel, teaching others also, are better than "ten thousand words in an unCor. xiv. 22.




THEE IOL Y COMFORTER.      129
known tongue."   Paul sets forth as the
best gifts, those to be earnestly coveted,
not miracles, nor inspired tongues, not the
unusual and wonderful signs of the Spirit,
but, morally, the spirit of charity, a large,
earnest, sincere, catholic, working love; and
next, spiritually, that enlightenment of the
mind in the things of -Christ which enables
one to speak to men unto edification, exhortation, and comfort-these are the
best gifts; the best fruits of the Spirit;
worth more in these days for the proof of
Christianity, than would be the dreams and
visions, miracles and tongues of former
times. We misconceive the dispensation
of the Spirit, we dishonor his best work,
when we crave to be seers and miraclemongers, instead of studying to be holy
exemplars of truth and love.
Setting aside then the outward miracles,
which ceased when they had served their
purpose of attesting and certifying Christianity, we find in the essence of the Spirit's
1 Cor. xiv. 19.




1 30     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
advent at Pentecost, a pledge and a type
of his whole dispensation under the gospel.
The Spirit has already come.
THE Holy Spirit is not a vibratory medium between heaven and earth, oscillating in his movements according to the temperature of our spiritual frames. Hee is not
continually coming and going; since by the
original promise of his coming he came' to
abide" with the disciples of Jesus " forever,"'
came to " dwell" in the church, making it
" a habitation of God through the Spirit."2
If therefore we are indeed the children of
God, that which we need for increase in
the enjoyment of the Christian life and in
the manifestation of spiritual power is not
that the Holy Spirit should come to us, as
if from heaven or from afar, but that we
should come to him, come to the realization
of his presence through a higher consciousness of the truth that he unfolds, and the'John xiv.- 16. -   a Eph. ii. 22.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        I31
love that he imparts, and through cherishing
that purity with which he dwells.
This plenary presence of the Holy Spirit
in the world' since the day of Pentecost, is
a peculiar glory of the New Testament dispensation. The prophets of the Old Testament had pointed to the plenary outpouring
of the Spirit as a note of the beginning of
the new era of the Messiah. The Apostle
Peter declared the manifestation of the
Spirit at the Pentecost to: be the fulfilment
of that prophecy. "The Holy Ghost had
thus far only temporarily and sporadically
visited the world, to enlighten certain specially favored individuals, the bearers of the
Old Testament revelation. Now-he took
up his permanent abode upon earth to reside and work in the community of believers,
as the principle of divine light and life, to
apply more and more deeply and extensively
to the souls, of men the redemption objectively wrought by Christ."' This plenary
1 Dr. Philip Schaff. History of the Apostolic Church,
p. 191.




.;I.3 z  THE H'OL Y COMFORTER.
advent of the Spirit corresponded to the
incarnation of Christ as a manifestation of
the presence of God with men. It was the
rehabilitation of the divinity in the world.under a spiritual instead of a fleshly form.
Peter furthermore declared it to be the fulfillment of the parting promise of Jesus to
his disciples, that he would send them another Comforter: " being by the right hand
of God exalted, and having received of the
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he
hath shed forth this which ye now see and
hear."' But that promise was that the
Holy Spirit should come to abide with the
disciples forever; it was a promise not to
the twelve, personally, but to them as disciples, and consecutively to all disciples. It
was a coming which by the permanence and
universality of its manifestations should
compensate for the absence of the visible
Saviour. The demonstration of the Spirit
as a plenary presence on the day of Pentecost was " not an isolated and transient oc-'Acts ii. 33.




TIIE hIOL Y COMFORTER.       13 3
currence, but the generative beginning of a
vast series of workings and manifestations
of God in history-the fountain of a river
of life, which flows with unbroken current
through all time, till it merge in eternity." 
After that manifestation the New Testament no more speaks of the "outpouring"
of the Spirit, or of the "coming" of the
Spirit, as blessings to be sought in prayer
or looked for in.the future of the Church.
Such expressions are used only with reference to certain transient communications -of
miraculous powers; -but the wondrous,
glorious truth that the Holy Spirit had
come into the world, and had made believing souls his habitation, is continually
recognized for the comfort, the encouragement, the admonition, the quickening, the
sanctification of the disciples of Christ.
" The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit
that we are children of God."'  "Because
we are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit
1Schaff. Apostolic Church, p. 191.
2 See the following section. 3 Rom. viii. 16.
12




i1 34    THIE IOL Y COMFOR  TER.
of his Son into our hearts, crying Abba,
Father."   By the Spirit we "have access
unto the Father."   "The fruit of the
Spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness
and truth." "If we love one another, God
dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected
in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in
him, and he in us, because he hath given us
of his Spirit.""  To all true believers the
Holy Ghost is now present with the plenitude of his gifts.  What was the occasional
inspiration of the Hebrew prophet concerning things to come, what the gift of miracles, at distant intervals, to the favored
few, compared with this plenary presence
of the Holy Spirit for our every use and
necessity? How awful, how blessed, how
inspiring the thought that God in the person of the Holy Ghost is ever with us, ever
in the world prosecuting to a successful result in human souls the work of redemption
accomplished through the incarnation and
Gal. iv. 6.   2 Eph. ii. 18.   9 Eph. v. 9.
4 1 John iv. 12, 1S.




THE HOLY CO'MFORTER.      135
sacrifice of the Son. How carefully and
holily should we live, and yet how trustfully and joyfully withal, did we recognize
this constant ministration of the Spirit.
How earnestly and hopefully should we
speak the truth of God in the ear of an unbelieving world, did we realize that the
Holy Ghost, who came with such power of
conviction on the day of Pentecost, is with
us alway. How grand would be the faith,
how sublime the energy of the Church of
God did she live in the consciousness of the
plenary presence of the Holy Ghost!
It is the transient awakening of this consciousness that gives a seeming periodicity
to "revivals of religion."  The Government
and Constitution of the United States were
ever present as latent powers, and were
recognized by occasional acts of loyalty;
but when war was made upon the flag of
the nation, millions came to an instantaneous realization of their presence and authority as never before felt: and so the
sudden shiftinw by the hand of Providence




136      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
of material scenes that hinder spiritual perceptions may cause such a realization of the
presence and power of the Holy Ghost that
a nation shall be born in a day.
Thle Holy Spirit in  Revi.dl.s.
rfHE presence of the Holy Spirit with the
Church is not intermittent but abiding.
"'He that believeth in me," said Jesus, "out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living watcr.
But this spake he of the Spirit which they
that believe on him should receive, for the
Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that
Jesus was not yet glorified." 1 This clearly
-implies that after the return of our Lord to
the glory which he had with the Father, the
Spirit would be given to his disciples in a
manner which would mark his coming as an
epoch. The Holy Ghost was thus " given"
upon the Day of Pentecost.
In the progressive economy of redempJohn vii. 38, 39.




THE HOEY COMFORTER.        137
tion, the Father first manifested himself in
the promise to Adam, in the covenant with
Abraham, and in the law given at Sinai.
After the work of preparation was accom.plished, " when the fullness of the time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, to redeem
them that were under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons."  There were
intimations of Christ under the Old Testament, and some suppose that it was he who
appeared in the early theophanies.  But
his' coming" was through the incarnation.
In like manner the Holy Spirit was active
under the old dispensation, as the inspirer
of prophecy- and the sanctifier of the penitent; but he was not yet manifested in the
wokrld as a distinct Person of the Godhead
performing a special work in the redemption of bur race. In the divine plan this
manifestation was withheld until the end
of Christ's incarnation should be accomplished. It was announced upon the eve of'Gal. iv. 4, 5.
12*




138      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
his crucifixion, and it came to pass after
Jesus was glorified. The Holy Ghost was
then "given" to the body of Christ upon
earth-to the household of faith-thenceforth to be in all prayers and praises, in all
ministrations and sacraments, in all gifts,
graces and labors, as the abiding Paraclete.
An occasional, periodical, spasmodic piety,
to which the Holy Spirit is now present,
now absent, now near and urgent, now in
heaven to be invoked, was not in the contemplation of that dispensation of the Spirit
which began with his coming at Pentecost.
Neither the renewed soul nor the spiritual
church should be as a garden whose fruitfulness is dependent upon occasional showers, but should have within itself rivers of
water bearing a continual freshness and
life from the indwelling Spirit of God.
After the day of Pentecost we find in the
Book of Acts four instances in which the
Holy Ghost is said to have " come," to have
" fallen," to have been "poured" out; but
in each of these this language is used to de



THE HOLY COMFORTER.           39
scribe the impartation of supernatural gifts,
attested by notable signs, such as speaking
with tongues and prophesying;  while with
respect to the work of conviction and of
sanctification, to all that pertains to the
spiritual advancement of the kingdom of
Christ, the Holy Spirit is represented as in
the world always for these very ends. Such
terms as "coming," "outpouring," and the
like, may be used poetically, metaphorically,
to denote some higher manifestation of his
presence, some deeper consciousness of his
power; but these should never betray us
into the feeling that the Holy Spirit ever
ceases to be in the world by his personal
presence, caring for the kingdom of holiness. So true is that saying of Irenveus,
"where the church is, there is also the
Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God
is, there is the church." 2
1 See Acts. viii. 13-21. x. 44-47. xi. 15-18. xix.
2-6.
2 Ireneus adv. Hcereses, Lib. IIr., xxxviii. 1.




140      THE iHOLY COMFORiTER.
Of Extraordinary Manifestations.
THIS doctrine of the plenary presence of
the Holy Spirit is in entire harmony
with seasons of extraordinary religious interest in churches or communities, known
as revivals or "times of refreshing." As
the Providence of God, which is both universal and particular, at times so manifests
itself that men regard it as a special, almost
a miraculous interposition, as sickness or
death which are always from his hand will
impress men as special judgments when they
sweep over nations in the mysterious waves
of pestilence or the horrid blasts of war, so
the Holy Spirit though always present and
always active for the truth, may use these
same providences for his own impressions,
or may shift the scenes of the spiritual
world and make men suddenly conscious
of realities which are near at every moment. The divine government of the universe, both physical and spiritual, includes
what to human view is special and occa



THIE HOLY COMFORTER.      14 
sional, in perfect harmony with what men
see to be general and uniform laws.
Moreover, human temperaments, sympathies, dispositions, occupations are variable;
and hence there will always be " times and
seasons" more favorable than others to concentrated; sustained, and elevated religious
impressions. We should be wise to improve
such opportunities, and all the more because
we do not need to go about in quest of the
Holy Spirit, nor to plead with God as if he
were reluctant to bless, but because the
Spirit is in the world in his plenary presence, and these very tokens of awakening
are proof of that fact. Hence we should
not direct our prayers and labors toward a
revival as an end, but should endeavor to
realize more fully the presence of the Spirit
and pray for the demonstration of his power.
A Difficulty Relieved.
BUT  some will say, "We have often
prayed for the conversion of persons
dear to us, and for the reviving of religion




142      THE HIOLY COMFORTER.
in our church and neighborhood, and have
received no answer. How could this be if
the Spirit is always present in his fullness
for the work of conviction and regeneration?'  The apostle teaches that prayer in
accordance with the will of God is always
answered in the fact that it is heard. " This
is the confidence that we have in him, that,
if we ask anything according to-his will, lie
heareth us; and if we know that he hear
us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we
have the petitions that we desired of him." 1
Hence some infer that in the cases just instanced, either they have not prayed aright,
or-the subject of their prayers was not in
accordance with the will of God.  Yet
neither: inference may be warranted.  It
may be that you have prayed sincerely and
in faith; it may be'also, that the thing desired, the conversion of a friend, the reviving of religion, is in accordance with the
moral preference or desire of God, who, in
that sensense," will have all men to be saved
1 John v. 14, 15.




TfEI HOLY COMFORTER.       4 3
and to come unto the knowledge of the
truth." 1 But it is not, it cannot be, according to the will of God to violate the fundamental laws of moral being, to annihilate in
man that power of choice which may be
used even in resisting God. It may be that
God hears your prayers, that the Holy
Spirit does convince your friend of sin; but
notwithstanding all your pleading and all
the striving of the Spirit, that friend will
not come to Christ that he might have life.2
Whatever the laws or methods by which
the Holy Spirit works upon the human soul,
he will not subvert the moral constitution
of the soul nor destroy the responsibility of
the man for his own salvation or perdition.
If therefore there be no present revival and
no specific conversion, we should still pray
in the faith that God hears us, and that the
Holy Spirit is in the believing soul as a
plenary presence and a dynamic power.
I1 Tim. ii. 4.      2 John v. 40.




CHAPTER IX.
THE TEMPLE OF THE SPIRIT.
Hle dwells in the Church.
THE presence of the Spirit is in a manner
localized in the Church. The dwelling
of God with his people which, under the old
dispensation was symbolized by the material
temple with its ark of the covenant in the
most holy place, is actualized under the new
dispensation, in the Church-the collective
body of believers, who by virtue of their
personal union with Christ, are "builded
together for a habitation of God through
the Spirit."' This divine inhabitation of a
body which is not corporate nor territorial,
but spiritual and universal, declares in the
most impressive manner the spirituality and
universality of the religion of the New Tes1 Eph. ii. 22.
(144)




THE HOL  COMFORTER.       145
tament in contrast with the ceremonial
and national features of the Jewish dispensation. The Jewish Temple was not only
sacred as to the locality, the building and
the divine proprietorship therein, but restricted also in various degrees as to the
privilege of worshipers, by nationality, sex
and tribe. The Holy of Holies, the highest
and innermost sanctuary, could be entered
by the high priest alone, and by him only
on the great day of atonement, once a year.
It was death for any other person to enter
it, or for him to enter it at any other time.
Before this sanctuary was " the court of the
priests," and the altar at which the sons of
Levi ministered in the daily worship; and
surrounding this "the court of Israel," into
which only male Jews, ceremonially pure,
could enter. In front of this again, and at
a lower level was the " court of the women;"- not for women exclusively, since
the men must cross it to enter their courtbut so called because women were forbidden to go up the steps to the court of Israel
13




146      THE ROOL Y COMFOR TER.
and of the priests; and below and in front
of this court of the women  the "outer
court" of the temple, just within the walls
of the enclosure, but at the farthest remove
from tile sacred building-was "the court
of the Gentiles," into which proselytes from
the heathen to the Jewish faith might come
to worship and bring their gifts. No person, who for any reason given in the Levitical law was ceremonially unclean, could
pass even the outer gate of the sacred enclosure. The heathen proselyte, having
been initiated into the Jewish faith, could
enter the first court of the consecrated area.
But between this court and that of the women, was not only the platform elevated by
several steps, but a balustrade with pillars
at intervals bearing an inscription in various languages, forbidding foreigners to advance into this sacred court under penalty
of death. A mob was raised against Paul
at Jerusalem, by the cry that he had taken
Greeks into the temple and had polluted the
holy place.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        147
Such were the limitations under which
the Jewish law of purity placed the Gentile
worshiper at the temple-gate.  He could
stand in the lower and outer court, and
looking up beyond successive courts and
walls and flights of consecrated steps, might
see afar off that holy place where was enshrined the ark of God's covenant with Israel.  Both national birthright and ceremonial purity were needed as qualifications
for the full privileges of the temple-worship.
But the dispensation of the Gospel abolishes nationality and ceremonialism from
the sphere of religion, and introduces a
spiritual power and privilege, of equal and
universal application.
The epistle to the Ephesians teaches that
believers collectively constitute "a holy
temple in the Lord;" in whom they all are
"fitly framed together "' as one building.
And with reference to the national and ceremonial distinctions of the old temple wor1 Eph. ii. 21.




148      THE HOLY COMFORTEW.
ship, the apostle wrote to these Gentile
converts, " In time past ye were aliens from
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers
from the covenants of promise; but now in
Christ Jesus, ye who were far off, are made
nigh by the blood of Christ, who hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us "'-that old temple wall which
separated Jews from Gentiles in their worship-" for through him we both have an
access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now
therefore, ye are no more strangers and
foreigners, but fellow- citizens with the
saints, and of the household of God." 
And not only are they within the temple,
having equal privileges of worship, but they
are of the temple, as constituent parts of
that spiritual house, the Church. of Christ,
which takes the place of the old material
temple as the seat of God's glory and grace
in redemption. "For ye are built upon the
foundation of the apostles -and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner1Eph. ii. 14.       2 Eph. ii. 18, 19.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       149
stone; in whom  ye also are builded together "-these very Jews and Gentiles
once separated in the temple itself by walls
of partition, walls of race, walls of prejudice,
walls of caste-they are not brought only together by Christ, but are builded together
in Christ, "for a habitation of God through
the Spirit." How sublime this conception
of the spirituality, the unity, the holy blessedness of the Church of God!
Every Christian a Temple.
NOT only is the aggregate fellowship of
Christian believers the sphere in which
God manifests his sanctifying presence and
grace as in the temple of old; not only does
the totality of believers which is the true
body of Christ, enjoy that peculiar glory
of the divine presence which is no longer
given to any place or building upon earth;
but each individual Christian is himself a
temple of the Holy Ghost, a "habitation
13*




15 0     THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
of God through the Spirit."' The Gentile
who could only stand in the lowest, outermost court of the Jewish temple, and look
with timid glances toward the Holy of
Holies, which he might not venture to approach, is himself the temple of God's presence, consecrated to his service, and made
holy by the indwelling of his Spirit. All
of sacredness and glory that the presence
of Jehovah imparted to the temple on
Moriah, is now brought to the believer himself through the consecrating gift and presence of the Spirit; and the realization of
this dwelling of the Spirit within us as his
temple, is the highest perfection of being,
the highest conception of fellowship with
God, the highest measure of spiritual life
and power, the highest blessedness in religion possible to the human mind, until,
with spiritualized and glorified bodies we
shall inhabit that world where " there is no
temple, for the Lord God Almighty and
the Lamb are the temple of it."2
Eph. ii. 22.   2 Rev. xxi. 22.




THE HOLY COM.FORTER.       15
Neither Panthzeistic nor Mystical.
T HIS doctrine of the divine inhabitation
of the souls of believers is altogether
different fromn the Pantheistic notion that
God is in man, is in nature, is in the universe as a-'soul or a spiritual force, just as
the principle of life is in our bodies. Pantheism leaves out of view the personality
and the holiness of God, and makes his
presence like the law of gravitation in the
heavenly bodies, like the vital force in living creatures, like the sap in a tree —a controlling power or influence acting upon the
material organism. But the Biblical doctrine of the indwelling of the Spirit is not
that a supernatural power takes forcible
possession of the bodily organization, according to the notion of " spiritual possession" held by Mohammedan dervishes and
Hindoo devotees, nor that a vague, impersonal influence from the Deity pervades and
actuates the human spirit, but that the Holy




i5 2     THE IOL Y COMFORTER.
Spirit purifies and controls the body through
a renovated soul. That the Spirit is a person, that he is holy, and that he aims to
produce holiness in men, are essential points
in the Bible doctrine of his indwelling.
On the other hand, there is a mystical
notion that the Holy Spirit, as an essence,
somehow dwells in the innermost heart of
a renewed man as in a shrine, quite apart
from the man himself and his mental and
moral acts-a mysterious entity, of whose
presence the mind is vaguely conscious as
a something distinct from itself, and which
acts upon the mind in the way of direct
inspiration, impulse, vision, or spiritual
exaltation; that is to say, the Spirit's indwelling is a mysterious something that
produces certain supernatural frames and
experiences within the soul apart from the
normal action of its own faculties. But
the Bible represents this indwelling neither
as physical nor as fanciful; neither as a
power acting upon the nerves and organs
of the body, nor a light, a voice, a mystery




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.      1  53
addressing the imagination; but as the
personal influence of the Holy Spirit upon
the will and the affections, inciting and disposing these to holy love and holy living.
Whatever the influence of the Spirit upon
the man, it is directed to the renovation
and sanctification of his moral nature.
Hence we must keep always in view the nature of the substance upon which the Spirit
acts, namely, the immaterial, intelligent,
voluntary soul; and, as says John Howe,
"Because it was a rational subject that was
to be wrought upon, it is also to be expected
that the work itself be done in a rational
way. Now, the forcing of a man's will
implies a contradiction in the terms; for
we have no other notion of force than the
making one do a thing against his will.
But it is impossible a man should will or
be willing against his will."'
The Holy Spirit acts on the body only
through the soul, which guides and controls
1 Howe's Living Temple; Works, Bohn's edition, pp.
80 uand 101.




1 5 4    TitE HOLY COMFORTER.
the body; and it acts upon the soul only
through the proper laws of its being-leading, inciting, sustaining it in the choice and
practice of what is true, lovely, pure, excellent, noble, godlike. When the will thus
comes into harmony with the will of God,
loving holiness and seeking truth and righteousness, then the divine Spirit is said to
enter into a man; and when this devotion to
the will of God is continuous, as the purpose
and habit of the soul, then the Holy Spirit
is said to dwell in the man. And since he
who thus devotes himself to God will not
seek his own pleasure, will deny ungodliness
and worldly lusts, will "no more make
provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts
thereof," but will "keep the body under,"
such a one is said, even in his body, to be
a temple of the Holy Ghost; being consecrated in thought, word and act to the
service of a holy God, and instead of yielding the mind to the control of carnal impulses and desires, regulating these by the
higher law of life in the soul, "Ye are




THE HOLY COMFORTER.      15 5
not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be
that the Spirit of God dwell in you."'
Analogy of the Temple.
( KNOW ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
which ye have of God, and ye are not your
own? For ye are bought with a price;
therefore glorify God in your body and in
your spirit, which are God's." 2 The analogy of the body of the believer to the
temple is twofold. The temple was the
dwelling-place of God in the symbols of
his glory. Though the ark of the covenant
was secluded from the common gaze in the
Holy of Holies, yet the presence of that
symbol in the oracle imparted a sacredness
to the entire building, with its courts and
appurtenances, so that nothing unclean
might enter it. Upon certain occasions,
as at the dedication, the splendor of the
I Rom. viii. 9.  a1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.




15 6     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
divine manifestation so awed and overpowered the priests, that they could not stand
to minister because of it: For " the glory
of the Lord filled the house of the Lord." 1
Moreover, the temple, thus made sacred
by the presence of Jehovah in the symbols
of his grace and glory, was consecrated to
him  as a possession. It was a free-will
offering from man to God. From the day
of dedication Solomon had no title in the
building; no proprietorship over it; no
lien upon it; no reversionary interest in
the land, the house, or its furniture. It
was set apart from all human property and
interests as a divine possession-" the house
of the Lord forever;"-Jehovah, its alone
proprietor, sanctifying it as his abode.
When Manasseh set up an idol in the temple, he " polluted the house of the Lord;"
when invaders carried away the vessels of
the temple, this was the crime of' sacrilege.
These two features of the Jewish temple
were the basis of the analogy between that'I Kings viii. 11.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       157
temple and the body of the believer. As
the temple was made sacred by the presence
of Jehovah, so is the body of the believer
made sacred by the indwelling of the Holy
Ghost. "Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?  If any man defile the
temple of God, him shall God destroy: for
the temple of God is holy, which temple
ye are."'  And again, as the temple was
consecrated to the service of Jehovah, so
that its proprietorship was not in man, but
in God, so they in whom the Spirit dwells
are set apart as God's possession, consecrated not only by their act, but by his purchase of redemption. " Ye are not your
own; ye are bought with a price." Therefore, the apostle argues, the believer should
glorify God even in his body, as in a temple consecrated to his worship and employed
only in his service. The gospel, so far
from inculcating indifference toward the
body, "honors the body as the permanent
1 Cor.iii. 16, 17.
14




15 8     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
organ of the soul, glorified with it through
the Holy Spirit. The body is the dwelling,
the temple of the soul; but the Holy Ghost,
working in and on the soul, transforms it
into his own nature, and thus dwells in the
human body as in a temple;" 1 and since
believers have been purchased by the blood
of Christ, and are in the possession of the
Holy Spirit as his temple, the apostle reminds them not only of the sanctity of the
temple to be preserved, but of this divine
proprietorship to be respected.  " Ye belong no more to yourselves, that ye may
govern yourselves by your own wills, but
God is your Lord, and ye must be led by
his Spirit. Know ye not that your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is
in you." 2
This two-fold analogy suggests two principal conditions upon which the Holy Spirit
thus abides in the believer. Since he gains
possession of the soul only through the
will yielding itself to his conviction and
I Olshausen, Corn. on 1 Cor. vi. 18, 19.   2 Ibid.




THE HOLY COMFORTE1R.
persuasion, and placing itself under his
guidance, and since he enters the soul for
the one purpose of quickening, guiding, and
sustaining it in the work of its own sanctification, so he will abide in the soul only
on the condition that holiness is there cherished and advanced. Hence it is to Christians that the warning -is given, " Grieve
not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye
are sealed unto the day of redemption." 
The soul must be kept from contamination through those desires of the flesh which
have been the ministers of sin.  Carnalnindedness, whether in the grosser appetites
and passions, or in the form of pride, vanity
or any inordinate self-gratification, is directly contrary to the mind of the Spirit.
He who lives to please himself cannot
please God.  The Scriptures lay stress
especially upon the regulation of the body
by Christian principle, as both a token and
a condition of the Spirit's presence. The
fruits of the Spirit are put in contrast with'Eph. iv. 30.




i6o       THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
the works of- the flesh.  "They that are
Chiist's have crucified the flesh with the
affections and lusts." i " Walk in the Spirit
and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and
the Spirit against the flesh, and these are
contrary the one to the other." 2 "Abstain
from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul."3 " Put off the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be
renewed in the spirit of your mind; and
put on the new man, i. e., a new character,
spirit, and habit of life-which after God
is created in righteousness and true holiness."4 In the epistle to the Romans, this
subjection of the body to the law of holiness is treated at much length, especially
in the sixth, seventh and eighth chapters.
"Let not sin reign in your mortal body,
that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but
Gal. v. 24.  2 Gal. v. 17.  31 Peter ii. 4.
4 Eph. iv. 24.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        161
yield yourselves unto God, as those that
are alive from the dead, and your members
as instruments of righteousness unto God." 
The analogy of the temple strikingly
enforces watchfulness against the corruptions of the flesh. To profane or defile the
temple was a crime worthy of death. The
holy God would not dwell in a polluted
sanctuary. " Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?  If any man defile the
temple of God, him shall God destroy; for
the temple of God is holy, which temple
ye are." 2 " And what agreement hath the
temple of God with idols? for ye are the
temple of the living God. Wherefore come
out from among them and be ye separate,
and touch not the unclean thing."3 "Having, therefore, these promises, let us cleanse
ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and
spirit, perfecting' holiness in the fear of
God." 4'Rom. vi. 13.   21 Cor.iii. 16, 17.
2 Cor. vi. 16, 17.  4 2 Cor. vii. 1.
14*




I6z      THE HOL Y COllFORTER.
The other condition of the indwelling of
the Spirit is the consecration of all our
powers to God and their employment in
his service. Following the analogy of the
temple, there must be the dedication of
ourselves to him as an abode, which implies
watchfulness against all defilement of sin;
and there must also be the consecration of
ourselves to him as a possession, which implies the relinquishment of all selfish interests and claims. The conclusion of Paul
from his grand exhibition of the goodness
and grace of God in redemption is, " I beseech iou, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your reasonable service."  " Ye
are not your own, ye are bought with a
price." 2
1 Rom. xii. 1.     2 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.




THE iHOLY COMFOR'TER.       163
Tokens of the Spirit's Indwelling.
SINCE the coming of the Spirit into the
soul is not by way of visions, revelations, or other objective supernatural appearances, nor by means of ecstacies and
like abnormal subjective phenomena, his
presence is betokened, not by mysterious
frames and impressions, but through that
cardinal law  of character which is laid
down by the apostle: " They that are after
the flesh, do mind the things of the flesh;
but they that are after the Spirit, the things
of the Spirit."'  There are also specific
fruits of the Spirit which are infallible
tokens of his indwelling. " The fruit of
Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance' 2 this combination of virtues and
graces so contrary to the selfish inclinations
of men, argues- a divine transformation of
the spirit and temper of the soul; for
Rom. viii. 5.        2 Gal v. 22.




I 64     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
though some of these virtues may be cultivated singly and to a limited extent by unrenewed minds, the combination of them
all in one character, and their continuous
manifestation in the life, is evidence that
the mind is filled with the Spirit. Such
evidence is surest in kind, and is permanent in its quality. Rhapsody may mislead
and does not long abide. And no extraordinary illumination within the soul could
compare for evidence with this steady, luminous quality of the soul itself, when the
Spirit shines through its graces as through
a transparency. The one is a sky-rocket,
the other a constellation.
Yet there are internal evidences as well
as external fruits of the indwelling of the
Spirit; evidences which have no tincture
of mysticism or of enthusiasm, but are as
clear and reliable as are the tokens of
health in the body. Since the Holy Spirit
alone can produce in the mind of man a
just and adequate conviction of sin-an
enlightened conscientiousness mav be taken




THIE HOL Y COMFORTER.      I65
as an evidence of his abiding in the soul; an
enlightened conscientiousness -not merely
an awakened conscience, for one may have
that, who is resisting the Spirit; not a
mere scrupulosity about outward acts, for
that may be the very spirit of Pharisaism,
will-worship or legality, a piety compounded
of mint, anise and cummin, and omitting
justice, mercy, faith, and the love of God;
but a conscience so intelligently alive toward God and duty that it shrinks with
the most sensitive aversion from the suggestion or shadow of sin, and looks for
guidance not to the bit and bridle of the
law, but to the pure, holy, loving eye of
the Master. When conscience delights to
place itself under the eye of God, this is a
token of the presence of the Spirit in the
soul. And, moreover, since it is the Holy
Spirit who quickens the soul dead in trespasses and sins-making it alive with new
motives, aims, principles and hopes —an
honest, thorough, earnest, positive love of
holiness, and the constant cultivation of




166      THE HOLY COMIFOR TER.
holy affections and exercises, is a token
that the Spirit has taken up his abode in
the heart. Where its own sanctification
for the glory of God is the supreme and
constant desire of the soul, there is evidence of the highest kind that the Holy
Spirit has made that soul his dwellingplace.
And for the same reasons, a lively sense
of the preciousness of things spiritual and
divine, and especially the preciousness of
communion with God in Christ, is a token
of the indwelling of the Spirit, since it is
preeminently as the medium of filial, joyful, satisfying communication between the
soul and God, that the Spirit abides in the
soul that he renews. Wherever the heart
that has renounced sin and has consecrated
itself to God in Christ is moved with filial
love and confidence to cry "Abba, Father,"
there the Holy Spirit witnesses his presence,
making that heart the temple of his intercessions.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.      167
The Glory of this Indwelling.
THE true dignity and exaltation of humanity can come only through its inhabitation by the Spirit of God. The Epicurean philosophy pampered and abused the
body because it was to perish at death.
The Stoical philosophy despised and degraded the body, as a hindrance to the
soul. Christianity discerns in the body a
temple in ruins-a temple once glorious
with the presence of God, the habitation
of a soul made in God's image, and capable of being built again for a habitation
of God through the Spirit.  Therefore
Christianity will neither worship the body
nor despise it; but would renovate it for
the abode of all heavenly graces, the glory
of the Divine presence. This invests our
humanity with a dignity that it could never
assert for itself.
We count it a great advance in political
philosophy that man as man is recognized




168      THME HOL Y COM[FORTER.
as an integral part and power in the state.
Yet the highest advance of political science
in exalting the individual falls infinitely
short of the- teaching of Christianity on
this point. Political science deals only with
the human, the earthly, the transient. The
essential rights of man, his intelligent personality and his moral nature, forbid that
he should be subjected to violence and oppression when guiltless of crime. But when
we conceive of a temple of the Holy Ghost
set up on the auction-block to be knocked
off to the highest bidder, there is a horror
of that crime which no vaunting of human
nature or of political freedom could inspire.
The claims of God are outraged; the temple of God is defiled; it is the crime of
sacrilege joined to blasphemy against the
Holy Ghost!
Philanthropy is tame until we bring into
view the glorious possibilities of human nature as renewed, possessed and occupied by
the Spirit of God. If man is only a higher
sort of animal, if his chief interests are




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.        169
those of time and sense, then the motive to
care for him  is proportionately low and
narrow. " Multiply the epicure's paradise
by the accumulated science of a thousand
years, and I do not think it proves us a bit
nearer the conversion of this earth into a
kingdom of God. The invention of piquant sauces, luxurious furniture, tasteful
jewelry, etc., I humbly decline to accept as
proofs of anything, beyond- the fact that
man is a very sagacious and surprising
beaver."' So of all social progression in
the mere line of material interests; it is
"of the earth, earthy."  The "'coming
luan" who is the ideal of the socialistic
philosophy can be found only in tile " new
man" of the Gospel of Christ.  The highest dignity of man is to be consciously a
child of the Infinite Father, through the
inhabitation of himself, body, soul and
spirit, by the Holy Ghost.
This consecration of our humanity by
the. Spirit gives a glorious significance to
F. W. Robertson, Letters, vol. ii. p. 51.
15




170      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
the Christian doctrine of the resurrection.
Christ entered into our humanity not only
to redeem and save, but to ennoble and
glorify it. When death touched and destroyed the temple of his body, he raised
it again on the third day, and was thus
"declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the Spirit of holiness."  And
now, in all his relations to the body and to
death the Christian believer dates not from
the first Adam, "of the earth, earthy," but
from the second Adam, "the Lord from
heaven-a quickening Spirit."2  The body
of the true believer is the temple of the
Holy Ghost. Death may dishonor but shall
not destroy it. The temple of the Holy
Ghost shall be built again. "If the Spirit
of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. The
working of the life-producing Spirit shall
not stop at the purely spiritual resurrecI Romans i. 4.  2 Cor. xv. 45-48.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.         171
tion, nor at that of the body from  dead
works to serve the living God, but shall
extend even to the building up the spiritual body in the future new and glorious
life." 
1 Alford, Com. on Romans viii. 11.




CHUAPTER X.
TiHE TRINITY MANIFESTED BY THE SPIRIT.
The Baptismal Consecration.
AFTER his resurrection Jesus commanded
his disciples to " teach all nations, baptizing them in the. name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."' This,
then, is the universal formula of Christian
discipleship as given by the Lord Jesus
Christ. Baptism under this form is the
mode of initiation into the Christian Church;
yet one may be baptized a disciple of Christ,
as was the Ethiopian eunuch by Philip on
the wayside, without thereby entering into
communion with any particular Church.
It is also a symbolic rite setting forth the
repentance and regeneration, or in.one.word,
1 Matt. xxviii. 14.
(172)




THE' HOLY COMFORTER.      173
the spiritual cleansing of the subject of it.
Yet this does not exhaust its meaning, for
John preached the baptism of repentance
for the remission of sins, but his baptism,
though it was a sign of spiritual cleansing
and also of faith in the coming Messiah, was
not Christian baptism; and, hence the disciples at Ephesus who had received only
John's baptism, were baptized again by
Paul in the name of the Lord Jesus.
We must add to these ideas of initiation
into the communion of saints and of symbolic cleansing from sin, which we associate
with baptism, the further ideas of a declaration of faith and a vow of consecration in
the form herein prescribed. Men are made
disciples of Christ-openly recognized and
declared his followers-by being baptized
into the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost. To be baptized
" into the name " of any one is to avow faith
in him if he be a teacher, to pledge obedience to him if he be a leader. In this formula both elements are combined; —the
15*




174      THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
baptism is a declaration of belief, and a vow
of consecration, or in a now current phrase,
an "oath of allegiance." It is equivalent
to this: "I, A. B., believing in the Father,
and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, as revealed in the Scriptures, confessing and renouncing my sins, do give myself up to serve
and honor that sacred Name with the allegiance: of all my powers."
The formula of discipleship was proescribed by Christ himself, and is universal
and perpetual. On the one hand, we are
not at liberty to modify or omit it; and on
the other, we must be careful to accept and
to apply it in its whole and exact meaning.
This formula of Christian discipleship is not
simply a declaration of belief in God and
of consecration to his service. When the
people of Israel were convoked to enter into
a national covenant with Jehovah, the solemnity began in this wise: " Hear, 0 Israel;
the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all




THE JOL Y COMFORTER.       17 5
thy might." 1 But this Christian formula
brings in another element. It is no less
important now than in the days of Israel
that pagans should be converted from their
belief in many gods, to a belief in the one
only living and true God; and yet the heathen upon becoming Christians are to be
baptized, not simply in the name of Jehovah as the one Lord, but " in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost." 2
Moreover, this formula is not simply nor
specifically a declaration of discipleship
unto Christ, or of adherence to Christ personally as teacher, leader, Saviour. To accept Christ as the highest teacher, even as
perfect and infallible in wisdom and in truth,
to accept Christianity as the ultimate truth
in morals and religion, and to be baptized
into that faith and profession, does not come
up to this formula of discipleship. The
Israelites who went out of Egypt are said
to have been " all baptized unto Moses in the
I Duet. vi. 4, 5.  2 Matt. xxviii. 19.




176      THIE HOL Y COMFORTER.
cloud and in the sea;"' —by following the
pillar of cloud as Moses bade them, and at
his word entering into the divided sea, they
committed themselves as by a covenant of
baptism to his guidance and authority. In
like manner the disciples of Christ are baptized unto his leadership and authority-to
observe all things whatsoever he has commanded;-but this avowal of Christ as our
Master does not cover the whole extent of
the formula of discipleship enjoined by
Christ himself.
Nor is this formula exhausted by a declaration of faith in Christ as the representative of God to men, and in Christianity
as a revelation divinely authenticated.
The Musselman sums up his creed in the
article that " there is no God but Allah,
and Mohammed is his prophet." With
true Moslems this declaration is their call
to prayer and their battle-cry; their test of
loyalty and their pledge of devotion. They
may be said to be steeped in this as their
I Col. x. 3.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       177
faith.- And so the Christian makes God
revealed in Christ the essence of his faith,
the substance of his hope, the power of his
life -for "this is life eternal, that they
might know thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."' Yet
even this belief in the one true God and in
Jesus Christ his ambassador of truth and
grace, does not exhaust Christ's own formula
of discipleship  " Go teach or make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost." The baptism that Christ
appointed for the initiation and recognition
of his disciples is a declaration of faith in a
three-fold yet common name, and a covenant of consecration unto " the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Ghost." The coming of
the Holy Spirit made complete the manifestation of the Trinity, and the realization of
the offices of the Trinity in the work of
redemption.
I John xvii. 3.




178      THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
The Trinity of the New Testament.
THE formula of Christian discipleship discriminates between the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost. Whoever or whatever these are, they are distinguished each
from the others. Each is introduced with
the definite article-the Father, the Son, the
Holy Ghost, and they are linked together
by the copulative and.  Hence there is
some ground or reason by which they are
severally distinguished.
The three, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
are parallelized in this formula. Though
they are mentioned in a certain order, there
is nothing in this that implies a descending
series-the inferiority of either to another.
On the contrary, by being linked together
in the high and sacred formula whereby the
believer declares his faith and enters into
covenant, these three, the Father, the Sonl,
and the Holy Ghost are set before us on a
parallel as objects of that faith and parties




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        179
to that covenant. And yet, while thus presented as distinct and as parallel we find
that these three are conjoined in one name.
The formula does not read " Baptizing them
in the name of the Father, and in the name
of the Son, and in the name of the IHoly
Ghllost "-but in the one common name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Whoever or whatever these terms
signify, while each is distinguished by a
separate title, the three are conjoined in one
name as tile object of faith and of allegiance
in the act of baptism, that seals and certifies a Christian discipleship. Clearly then
the formula of discipleship given by Christ
postulates, in some sense, a TRINITY IN
UNITY as the complete conception of the
godhead.  The name into which we as
Christians are baptized, is the name of
God; no inferior name, no other name can
be assumed as that to which we bring our
reverent homage, our adoring faith, our
formal and spiritual consecration, through
this sealing confession of discipleship. Yet




180    TIlE JIOL Y COMFOR TER.
in the formula itself the name given is not
God or Jehovah, but the three-fold name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Here, beyond a cavil, is a threeness in one-ness.
Thus without recourse to metaphysical
theology or to the historical dogmas of the
Church, but by a simple and plain analysis
of Christ's own words, we have come at the
fact that in the name into which as Christians we are baptized, there is the Father,
and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, distinguished each from the others, made parallel
in this consecrating rite, and conjoined in
one. And the same fact repeats itself substantially in the apostolic benediction:"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Ghost, be with you all." 1 What then
is the import of this fact? What is the
Trinity set forth in the New Testament?
or, in other words, what do the Scriptures
teach concerning God in the mode of his
existence?
1 2 Cor. xii. 14.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       I81
The Unity of God.
THE Bible teaches that there is one and
only one God. This truth is declared
uniformly, consistently and with emphasis,
both in the Old Testament as a protest
against polytheism, and in the New Testament as the basis of one universal faith and
worship.  It is proclaimed as an official
declaration. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord
our God is one Lord."   " 0 Lord God of
Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of
all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast
made heaven and earth."    The unity of
God is proclaimed in promise and prophecy.
"All nations whom thou hast made shall
come and worship before thee, 0 Lord;
and shall glorify thy name. For thou art
great and doest wondrous things; thou art
God alone."3 "Thus saith the Lord the
Deut. vi. 4.   2 2 Kings xix. 15.
3 Psalm lxxxvi. 9, 10.
16




1S8 2    THE HOLY COMFORTER.
king of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord
of hosts; I am the first and I am the last;
and besides me there is no God. Is there
a God besides me? Yea, there is no God." 
Not to Israel only was this said, but to
Cyrus the king of a nation of idolaters,
whose heart was moved to do good to Israel,
it was declared with repeated emphasis: " I
am the Lord, and there is none else, there
is no God besides me......  A just God
and a Saviour; there is none besides me."'
Jesus reiterated this truth in his personal
teaching. When asked, which is the first
commandment, he answered: " The first of
all the commandments is, Hear, 0 Israel,
the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind and with all thy strength;"' and
he approved and endorsed the answer of the
scribe; "Master, thou hast said the truth:
for there is one God, and there is none other
Isaiah xliv. 6, 8.  2 Isaiah xl. 21.
3 Mark xii. 29.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        I 83
but he."' And again Jesus in his prayer recorded by John, addresses his Father as
"the only true God." 2 "We know," says
Paul," that an idol is nothing in the world,
and that there is none other God but one.
For though there be that are called gods,
whether in heaven or in earth; to us there
is but one God;" _-this truth lics at the
foundation of the Christian faith and worship as it lay at the foundation of the Jewish religion and nationality. The apostle
describes the conversion of the Gentiles as
the " turning to God from idols, to serve
the living and true God."4  And not only
is the truth that there is but one God thus
positively and emphatically declared-but
the recognition of any other God beside Jehovah is threatened with his extreme displeasure. "Thou shalt have no other gods
before me, or beside me; for I the Lord thy
God am a jealous God."~ "Ye shall not
fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them,
Mark xii. 32. 2 John xvii. 3. 3 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6.
4 1 Thess. i, 9,   6 Ex. xx. 3-b.




184      THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
nor sacrifice to them." Z "Go not after other
gods to serve them, and worship them, and
provoke me not to anger with the works of
your hands "  (i. c. with false divinities).
" I am the Lord; that is my name; and my
glory will I not give to another."' "Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel my called;
I am he; I am the first, I also am the last..... My hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath
spanned the heavens...... I will not
give my glory unto another." 
Concerning the lapse of Israel into idolatry it is said " they provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations
provoked they him to anger. And when
the Lord saw it, he abhorred them. They
have moved me to jealousy with that which
is not God. See now that I, even I am he,
and there is no God with me; I kill, and I
make alive; I wound and I heal; neither
is there any that can deliver out of my
1 2 Kings xvii. 35.  2 Jer. xxv. 6.
Isa. xlii..8.   4 Isa. xlviii. 14.




TIHE HOL Y COfFORTER.      185
hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven,
and say, I live forever."   "Thou shalt
know no God but me." 2
Hence the starting point in the Biblical
doctrine of the Trinity, the point about
which the whole subject must revolve, and
to which every fact revealed concerning the
mode of Divine existence must be adjusted,
is that.there is and can be, only one God; and
the constituting more than one God in form
or in thought, the acknowledging more than
one Being as -God, whether by a formal object of worship or a metaphysical dogma, is
contrary to the Scriptures, and is specially
abhorrent to him who is God alone. The
bare conception of more than one God entertained as a reality, cherished as a belief,
is an infringement upon his prerogative of
self-existence, a detraction from his majesty
and glory, which the God of the Bible denounces as the most offensive sin. It matters not whether we make three gods or the
three hundred million gods of India, whether
Deut. xxxii. 16, 19, 39.    2 Hosea xiii. 4.
16*




186     TJIE HIOL Y OMFORTER.
we shape these divinities into idols or embody them in dogmas of theology-any departure from the strict idea that there is
one only living and true God is unbiblical,
unphilosophical, impious.
No Christian communion holds any other
faith than this-that there is but ONE GOD;
and therefore it is a wrong to the Church
universal for any body of Christians to assume that the unity of God is an exclusive
tenet of their theology; that the distinction
between them and others is, that they believe in only one God. There is no such
distinction. Whoever and whatever God
is, wherever and however he exists, under
whatever modes and conditions he is revealed, there is and can be but one such
Being in the Universe. This is the faith of
Christendom.




THE HOLY (COMFORTER.       r-87
The Tri-personality.
4ITH this fundamental truth of the Oneness of God, lying at the basis of the
Christian revelation, we find also that in
the New Testament, the Father is set before
us with all the attributes of God; the Son
is set before us with all the attributes of
God; and the Holy Ghost is set before us
with all the attributes of God; and in the
most solemn acts and invocations of religion, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost are made parallel. It is unnecessary
to argue the divinity of the Father from
texts of Scripture, since the "Father of
spirits," the " Father of lights," the " Father
of mercies," is acknowledged to be the infinite and absolute God. But the New Testament declares no less explicitly that the
Word who "was made flesh and dwelt
among us " was God;' that Christ who, "as
concerning the flesh"" came of " the fathers,"
I John i. 1.




188      THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
is "over all God blessed forever."' He
who was " made in the likeness of men, and
became obedient unto deatlh, even the death
of the cross," was "in the form of God," and
by this humiliation emptied himself, not insisting upon his own eternal prerogatives
as the equal of God.2 Jesus declared himself the Son of God, knowing that the Jews
understood him as thus "making himself
equal with God;"  and he accepted from
Thomas the adoring homage, "My Lord
and My God."4
Moreover all the proper attributes of divinity are ascribed to Christ. He is "the
first and the last" 6-therefore eternal; he
is the "I AM;"6 therefore infinite and
self-existent; he searches the reins and
hearts, and "knows what is in man," 7 and
is therefore omniscient; he has " all power
in heaven and in earth," he rules the worlds
of nature and of spirit, and raises the dead
Romans ix. 5.    2 Ellicot on Phil. ii. 5-8.
3 John v. 8, x. 30.  4 John xx. 28.
6Rev. i. 2.   6 John viii. 58.  7 Matt. xxv. 18.




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.        189
— he is therefore omnipotent; he is " with
his disciples always,"' therefore omnipresent; " all things were made by him," 2 and
he " upholdeth all things by the word of his
power;"' he is the creator and preserver
of the worlds; " in Him is life;"  " he only
hath immortality;"  he has control, therefore, of the higher region of spiritual realities; he forgives sin, and he will "judge
the world " — he is therefore the moral governor of the universe; he is "alpha and
omega, the beginning and the ending-the
Lord which is, and which was, and which is
to come, the Almighty,"' the " blessed and
only Potentate, the King of kings, and the
Lord of lords."  He who in God's own book
wears these titles and is described as possessing these attributes, must be God. If
the Father is God, the Son is God by the
same marks of divinity.
The divinity of the Holy Spirit has been
1Matt. xxviii. 20.   2 John i. 13.  3 Heb. i. 3.
John i. 4.   s 1 Tim. i. 16.  6 Acts xvii. 31.
7 Rev. i 8.          1 Tim. 6. 15.




190o    THE HOlY COMFORTER.
proved in a preceding chapter; and thus it
is clearly established that the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost are severally set
before -us in the New Testament- under the
name and with the attributes of God.
Are -there then three Gods?- three distinct beings eacL of whom is a complete
God?  We hold fast the first truth established by the Scriptures - that there is
only one living and true God. We cannot
set that aside-we cannot modify -it. The
Bible does not contradict. itself. T-here is
but -"one God and one Mediator between
God and men;" and to make other gods
than one is sin.
Whatever is meant by ascribing the names
and the attributes of God severally to the
Father, and to the-Son, and to the.Holy
Ghost, it cannot: be: meant that there are
three Gods.
Is thoen the name of God applied to two
of the three in some accommodated or restricted sense, and are the attributes deriv1 Tim. ii. 5.




THE HOLY COMFORTER.        191
ative and subordinate in the Son and in the
Holy Ghost? But there is no indication of
a qualified use of language, or of subordination in attributes, in the texts that ascribe
to the Son and to the Holy Ghost the names
and the powers of God. There is just as
much propriety in limiting these when ap
plied to the Father, as when given to the
Son, or to the Holy Ghost. In each case the
titles are absolute, the attributes complete,
and we violate every rule of language if
we attempt to qualify them. Beside —these
three, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, are
associated upon one parallel, or with an
equal reverence and significance, in the
solemn acts of baptism and of benediction;
the covenant is with each and all alike; the
blessing is from each and all alike.
Are, then, these three but different official or modal manifestations of God, different representations under which he a)ppears to men, himself having the while but
one proper personality?  The Pope, for
instance, is head of the Roman Catholic




I 92     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
Church throughout the world; he is the
temporal sovereign of Rome, and he is a
member of some particular order. Abraham Lincoln was a citizen of Illinois, the
President of the United States, and the
commander-in-chief of the army and navy.
Now, does this idea of three several relations, three distinct modes of manifestation
or action, fairly express the Biblical Trinity?
By no means. For in every such case there
is throughout but one person, having but
one consciousness, in each and all these relations.  Mr. Lincoln acted now in his
civil character as President, and again in
the military phase of that character, while
as a citizen of Springfield he paid his towntaxes; but he, as President, did not speak
to himself as commander, and say, "I, the
President, send thee, the commander, to look
after thy homestead, thou citizen of Springfield."  This were absurd; for all the
while there was but one and the same consciousness.  But the peculiarity of the
Biblical Trinity is that each of the three




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       193
speaks to and of the others as distinct from
himself;' and each performs acts which the
other does not.  The Father sends the
Son -the Son does not send the Father.
The Son prays to the Father, the Father
does not pray to the Son. The Son says,
" I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another Comforter, even the Spirit of
truth." T The Son returns to heaven in
order that this other Comforter may come.
The proofs of distinct personality, given in
a preceding chapter, forbid the supposition
that the names'the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost denote merely different
relations assumed by the same person.
The Biblical Trinity is. something more
than a trinity of mode or manifestation.
From  the teachings of the Scriptures
we have the following induction of particulars concerning the Biblical doctrine of
God:
(1.) There is one and only one God.
(2.) The Father, the Son, and the Holy
1 John xiv. 16.
17




I 94     THE HOLY COMFORTER.
Ghost are set forth severally under the
names and the attributes of God.
(3.) They are presented as distinct in
acts and in consciousness.
(4.) They are made parallel in dignity
and reality in the formula of baptism, and
are there conjoined in one name.
Thle Facts the Basis of Faith.
THESE facts being all established by the
Word of God, it remains to harmonize
them in one proposition. But this is not
necessary to receiving them as facts. Each
of these four statements presents an intelligible fact, explicitly declared in the Scriptures. No philosophy of Being can demonstrate that there is any contradiction
between these facts. It is therefore rational and scientific to receive them, each
and all, upon the testimony of the Bible,
though we may not be able to combine
them into one philosophical proposition.




THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
195
Moreover, it is reasonable to suppose
and modest to admit, that there may be
something in the nature of God which lies
beyond our present comprehension; something concerning which he can instruct us
by his word, and yet for which human
language has no terms sufficiently clear and
precise for the whole truth. We cannot
affirm a priori that God exists or must
exist thus and so; or that it is impossible
he should exist in any manner different from
our conception. We learn much concerning God from the constitution of our own
minds; but God is not a man immensely
magnified!  We cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection.  These Biblical
statements concerning the divine existence
can best be harmonized by some special
adjustment of our ideas of being and of person. In common speech these are often
confounded; but we know our personal
identity only through consciousness; others
know this only by its attributes; while of
being, we know absolutely nothing. For




196      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
what is spirit? What is the essence or substratum of the soul? We can only say
that God is such a Being in his substance
that he exists in a threefold personality
with respect to attributes and consciousness, without thereby dividing or qualifying the oneness of the substance. We believe in one God, the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Ghost.




CHAPTER XI.
THE TRINITY IN REDEMPTION.
Man's Need of the Father.
E ACH person of the Trinity is revealed
in a distinct relation to the work of
man's redemption-the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost together making this the
highest manifestation of the wisdom, the
grace, the glory of God. Every soul that
embraces the Gospel is a witness to the
redemptive work of each person of the
Godhead: —" elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through
sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus
Christ."'
1 Peter i. 2.
(197)




198     THE HOLY COMTFOR TER.
There is a special adaptation to man's
condition and wants in the Trinity as thus
revealed. As a creature, weak and dependent, man needs the thoughtful love of
the infinite Father. Though he has alienated his soul from God by sin, he can find
no comfort in Atheism; since the thought
that above this world of sin and wrong
there is no God of truth and right, is more
dreadful than the thought that a God of
justice is on the throne-who, though we
have offended him, is still the God of love.
Man, needy and dependent, cannot find
repose in the mere lap of nature-now soft
with flowers and balmy wiith fragrance,
and again hard, stern and frozen. Nature
addresses the senses, the reason, the taste,
the imagination, but nature cannot respond
to the heart with the living warmth of
love. Physical laws are fixed, and whether
kind or severe in their bearing upon the individual, they are unchanging. Man may
learn to adapt himself to them, but he cannot move them by his own emotions, nor




THE RJOLY COMFORTER.     199
feel emotion from them. There is no love
nor pity in a law of nature.
The notion of a mysterious power or
energy in the universe —whether we call
it Fate, or Providence, or Divinity-affords
man nothing to lean upon, to trust in, to
love, so long as this remains an abstraction, without personality, without heart.
There are painful perplexities in human
affairs, private and public, personal, social,
commercial, political, harrowing reverses
often, in which man's wisdom and strength
are as nothing, and for which there is no
relief in metaphysical abstractions concerning the course of events, and the mysteries
of life. Man needs one above himself to
think for him, to plan for him, and above
all, to love him.
Nature alone, would teach us the naked
goodness and the naked justice of Godsometimes apparently irreconcilable in the
course of human affairs-and one or the
other of these conceptions predominates in
the old Pagan theodicies and in monothe



00zoo    THE HOL Y COMFORTER.
ism, whether Jewish, MohaImmedan, or rationalistic. Only through the revelation of,the Trinity do we gain a conception of that
love which shows mercy to the sinner, and
yet in so doing maintains justice in the
moral universe, and promotes holiness in
the individual reclaimed.  Here God is
more than Sovereign, more than Lawgiver,
more even than Father in the vague sense
of paternity by creation; he has emotions,
he has sympathies, he has moral affections,
he has pardoning grace.
Man's Need of the Son.
BUT the sense of want and dependence is
not the only feeling that troubles us;
there is a feeling deeper and far more painful in the sense of sin; and, therefore,
though we know that in his own nature
God is a Father, and disposed to regard
his creatures with paternal love, we may
doubt whether he will be a Father to us,




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       201
since we have offended Him by disobedience, by impurity, by wilfulness, by selfishness, by all manner of iniquity; and guilt
demands atonement, satisfaction to justice
which we are all inadequate to render,
and guilt incurs penalty which we are unable to avert.
How wondrous here the adaptation of
that revelation of God which brings him
nigh as a Savior, and thus causes us to
know him as a Father! What precious
words are these-" if any man sin, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous;" and " the blood of Jesus
Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."'
This Sonship in the Godhead revealed as
thle Redeemer, is the wondrous adaptation
of the Trinity to our need of reconciliation. " He that spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all
things?"' 2
1 John i. 7 and ii. 1.  2 Rom. viii. 32.




202      THE HOLY CgOMFORTER.
Man's Need of the Spirit.
UT the soul thus redeemed from penalty,
and brought to know God as a reconciled Father, feels at once the aspiration to
become like God. The privilege of redemption, the consciousness of reconciliation,
brings with it the longing for purity; a
new life is stirred within the heart, a new
purpose of living takes possession of the
man; and freed from the bondage and
curse of sin, he would fain be freed from
its every trace and stain, in thought, imagination, habit, even in the members of the
body once the willing agents and abettors
of iniquity. But who is sufficient for these
things? Who can lift himself out of his
old earthliness, even when the shell is
broken, and soar away toward God and
heaven?.Who that has tried this in his
own strength, has not been baffled by the
instability of his purpose, by the feebleness
of his endeavors, by the power of some easily




THE HOLY OM'FORTER.       203
besetting sin? As in a vision, he had
seen an angel of light beckoning him to
the upper glory; he has seemed to follow
with that exhilarating freedom with which
the mind in dreams will vault out of the
body into the regions of pure spirit; when
suddenly some old habit of earth and sense
seizing him as with the clamps of nightmare, drags him down, and he awakes
with his own groaning to see the blissful
vision vanish, and to bewail again, "Oh
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver
me from this body of death?"I But just
here, in his utmost necessity, when all that
Christ has done for him would else be lost,
there comes to him a Spirit indeed; not a
vision of the night, not a phantom of the
imagination, but the Spirit of light, of
truth, of holiness, who enters the heart and
whispers, " Abba, Father," assuring it that
the sanctification for which it, struggles
and yearns is the very will of God concerning it; and who Himself abides in the will1 Rom. vii. 24.




204      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
ing, praying mind as in a temple, and sanctifies all its outgoings of thought, affection,
purpose, will. He may become holy by this
helping Spirit. And so the Trinity as related to man's redemption, instead of being
a dry dogma of theology is a living power
in the heart, bringing to all the conditions
and necessities of man the loving Father
the redeeming Son, the sanctifying Spirit.
The Trine-redemption the most glorious Manifestation of God.
THE work of man's redemption alone acquaints us with the glorious mystery of
the divine existence in the persons of the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Nothing in the material universe had ever
revealed this mystery of the being of God,
whereby he himself has society in unity,
and whereby he adapts himself to all the
wants of intelligent creatures. God is not
an infinite solitude of Being-not a Mont




THE HOLY COMFORTER.       205
Blanc lifted above all other existence only
to stand in cold, solitary, inaccessible grandeur. Though high above the heaven of
heavens, he dwells in love-having within
his own nature the social element of being
which love demands; and by this also communicating'with his creatures, in modes and
relations that bring him near and make
him dear to every heart that' is willing to
know and enjoy him.
We may conceive of God in his simple
unity of Being, as the Creator, the Governor, the Preserver of the world; —but in
Redemption the three persons whom the
Scriptures reveal as existing in that unity,
are all engaged, with varying offices and
relations, but equal power, interest and
glory.
They engage in it also with their direct
activity as persons. The physical universe
has its appointed laws, to which every orb
and every atom is alike obedient; and the
grandeur of their scope and the precision of
their movement fill us with admiration and
18




206      THE HOL Y COFORTER.
delight. The world of Providence, in the
course of the seasons and the productions
of the earth, has its appointed laws, and the
regularity of their working, and the extent
and variety of their combinations, are subjects for praise and thanksgiving. But in
this personal agency of the triune God in
Redemption, we behold a wonder and glory
transcending all that Nature and Providence have revealed, by as much as the
spiritual and eternal transcends the physical and the temporal. For, this work of
man's redemption, begun in the counsels
of the divine mind before the world was,
sweeps through all the ages of time, from
eternity unto eternity. It lay in the loving
thought of God the Father before the foundation of the world; it was announced in
the world as soon as the curse of sin had
entered Eden; it was the central thought
in the religion and the history of that people
whom Jehovah called to be his own. Yet
it was not left to words and signs and ordinances; God was in it still; and when the




THE HOLY COMFORTEiR.     207
groaning ages cried for a Deliverer, and
prophecy gave birth to expectation, then
" in the fullness of time" the Son of God was
manifest in the flesh, and suffered and died
for our redemption. Nor was even the
sublime truth of the incarnation left to do
its own teaching in the world-the church,
the ministry, the sacraments, the system of
gospel truth and ordinances made the alone
agencies for the furtherance of this work.
But God is in it still;-the Holy Spiritthe third in the blessed unity of the Godhead, is in the world forevermore till redemption shall be fulfilled in the life everlasting. And his ad-vent, we have seen, is
the crowning wonder and glory of the work
of redemption; for by the Holy Spirit, God
comes nearer to us than when he talked
with Abraham as a Father, nearer to us
than when Jesus sat lovingly in the midst
of his disciples, and bade them eat his flesh
and drink his blood; for this coming of the
Holy Ghost is no one visible phenomenon,
no single memorable event to look back




zo8      THE HOLY COMFORTER.
upon in history-but a presence, an abiding,
in most intimate communication with the
soul of man. It is a coming into the sphere
of mind, of thought, feeling, affection, as
distinguished from outward phenomenaand is in its own nature the highest manifestation of God to man.
Man ennobled by this Redemption.
WHAT an argument for the worth of the
soul is given in this Trine-manifestation
of God for its salvation; —the Father bending over it with a compassionate longing
for its recovery; the Son dying for its redemption; the Spirit seeking, striving,
pleading, that he may win it to holiness I
What a warrant for faith and hope in
labors to bring men to God, is given in the
fact that he who " spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all," has sent
the Holy Spirit to prosecute the work of
man's restoration by his personal presence




THE HOLY COMFORTER.      209
and power. The renovation of the soul is
not a scheme of humanitary philosophy, of
socialistic reform. It is the purpose and
work of God; it engages his whole being,
and partakes of the greatness and the glory
of his nature.
Through this Trine-manifestation man is
raised to fellowship with God. Since the
Word was made flesh and the Spirit has
come'into the world to abide, man may
know God not only through contemplation,
but by communion. Through Christ Jesus
we have access by the Spirit unto the
Father;' " our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son Jesus Christ; 2 and it is
given us to be " strengthened with might by
the Spirit in the inner man" that we may
"be filled with all the fullness of God."'
No philosophy of human development, no
philanthropic dream of progress can approach this redeeming, ennobling, sanctifying love of the Triune God. Though the
Eph. ii. 18.      2 1 John i. 3.
3 Eph. iii. 19.
18*




210      THE EHOLY COMFORTER.
reason may not grasp it, the heart can take
it in. We will lift up the gates of the soul,
the everlasting doors of praise and joy,
that this Redeeming King may enter in!
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