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 Princeton Chenlogiral Seminary 
 
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WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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 ee 
 
VENI CREATOR: 
 
 LHOUGHTS ON THE PERSON AND WORK OF 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT OF PROMISE. 
 
 H.C.GeMOULE: M.A: 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF RIDLEY HALL, AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY 
 COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; 
 
 Author of “ Thoughts on Christian Sanctity,” “On Union with Christ,” ete. 
 
 FIFTH THOUSAND. 
 
 | Londons 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCXCII. 
 
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tson, & Viney, Ltdy London and Aylesbury. 
 
 | Printed by Hazell, Wa 
 
 4 - 7 SS et - i 
 
I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK 
 TO 
 THE DEAR AND HOLY MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER. 
 
 ‘ 
 
 IN WHOM THE SPIRIT OF GOD DWELT 
 AND 
 
 THROUGH WHOM HE WORKED, 
 
 Piet, 
 1801 — 1880, 
 M. M. M. 
 1801 -—— 1977. 
 
 IN PACE. 
 
 “Yea, saith the Spirit; that they may rest from their labours, 
 and their works do follow them.” 
 
“Tuou holy Spirite, we pray to the 
 
 Strengthe our fayth and increase it alwaye; 
 
 Comforth our hertes in adversite 
 
 With trewe beleve bothe nyght and daye. 
 Kirieleyson, 
 
 “Thou worthy lyght, that art so cleare, 
 Teache us Christe Jesu to knowe alone; 
 That we have never cause to feare 
 In hym to have redempcyon. 
 Kirieleyson. 
 
 “Thou swete love, graunt us altogether 
 To be unfayned in charite ; 
 That we may all love one another, 
 
 And of one mynde alwaye to be. 
 Kirieleyson. 
 
 “Be thou our comfortoure in all nede; 
 Make us to feare nether death nor shame; 
 But in the treuth to be stablyshed, 
 That Sathan put us not to blame. 
 Kirieleyson,.” 
 BisHop CovERDALE, 1488—1569. 
 
PAM AE Ip Oe 
 
 HE subject of the following chapters needs 
 
 no prefatory introduction to the Christian 
 reader. In itself eternally and divinely im- 
 portant, it has become in the mercy of God 
 a special subject of our own time. Far and 
 wide in the Christian Church, amidst too 
 many phenomena of peril and perplexity, we 
 hail as a phenomenon of good and glorious 
 omen an ever-deepening attention to the divine 
 promises which gather round the truth of the 
 Holy Ghost. More and ever more it is re- 
 -cognized by those who name the Name of them 
 Son that, alike for individual blessing and for 
 the work and witness of the Community, we 
 depend with an absolute need upon the pre- 
 sence and power of the SPIRIT. 
 
vill PREFACE. 
 
 May these pages, for all their fragmentary 
 character, be used in some measure by Him 
 of whom they speak to stir up His saints so 
 always to lay hold on Him that He evermore 
 may lay hold on them, and graciously fill them 
 with Himself. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, 
 March 28th, 1890. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER: I: 
 
 PAGE 
 Purpose of the Book—Owen’s theory of successive tests 
 
 of orthodox faith—Present supreme importance of 
 
 the truth of the Holy Spirit—The Venz Creator at 
 
 the Pleissenburg—The Personality of the Holy Spirit 
 
 —John xiv.-xvi. the ruling passage for its proof— 
 
 Affecting the interpretation of Scripture testimonies 
 
 at large—Reserve in the Scripture exhibition of the 
 
 Personality—Why ?—Christ not Himself His subject 
 
 in the Scriptures—And in His dealings with the soul 
 
 —The truth of His Personality is full of life and 
 
 love—The writer’s testimony—It is a truth meant 
 
 to be prominent in faith and experience—Rightful- 
 
 ness of prayer addressed to the Spirit—Addendum 
 
 —The Sin of Railing against the Holy Ghost . . 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (1) “ Zhe Dual Procession’’—Here to be studied spirit= 
 ually—What the phrase imports—Light thrown by 
 it on the words, God zs Zove—And on the connexion 
 between the works of the Spirit and of Christ— 
 Scriptural basis for the belief—Redeeming work of 
 the divine Persons correspondent to Their inner 
 Relations—(z) Work of the Spirit in relation to 
 the Human Nature of Fesus Christ—The Incarna- 
 tion—The Baptism—The Ministry—The Resurrection 
 
(1) 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 —The Epistles to the Churches—The Spirit produced 
 and maintained the Manhood, the Son assumed It— 
 No independent Personality of the Manhood—Yet its 
 holiness and power was by the Holy Spirit — 
 Strengthening power of this truth—Place of Christ 
 in the Spirit’s saving work for us—All parts of the 
 life of grace and faith are by the Spirit—And the 
 Life itself is Christ, in the mystical Union—Thus 
 the Spirit imparts not Himself, but Christ—Practic2l 
 spiritual importance of holding this truth and wit- 
 nessing to it . ‘ 2 : ; ° ° ° 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Union with Christ by the Spirit—Bearing ot 
 previous enquiry on this truth—-Its spiritual comfort 
 and power—The Spirit’s work in material creation— 
 Noticed only in passing—(z) Zhe Spzrzt’s work in 
 relation to the Scriptures—Not an easy subject to 
 treat at the present day—Prevalence of humanitarian 
 views of Scripture—Its main cause in a certain 
 mental bias—Unification of phenomena—Inspira- 
 tion, a term vaguely used—Awthority of Scripture— 
 Scripture as literature bears witness to Scripture 
 as oracle—‘‘ Consciousness ’’ of the Scripture wrzfers 
 not known in most cases—But the w*zfzzes inspired 
 —So viewed and used by our Lord—The Holy Spirit 
 the ultimate and ruling Author—Testimonies to this 
 —How far this limits speculation as to the ‘‘ human 
 element ’’—The First Homily on study of Scripture . 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 (1) Zhe Holy Spirzt as the Interpreter of Scripture— 
 
 Cowper’s hymn—How is the work done ?—Not by 
 supernatural illumination of the nature of infallible 
 
 PAGE 
 
 24 
 
 43 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 PAGE 
 intuition— But by impartation of spiritual recep- 
 tivity —(2) Zvamination of leading passages im 
 the New Testament dealing with the doctrine of 
 the Holy Spirit—These mainly in St Paul and 
 St John—St John iii, 1-8—Study of ver. 8— 
 ‘‘ Born of the Spirit’’—A phrase to be studied in 
 the light of Scripture on the signs of spiritual son- 
 ship—Augustine on 1 John v. 7—“‘ Born of the 
 Stirzt’’—The whole process is His work—*‘ So is 
 every one,’’ etc.— Universality of the statement— 
 Significance of the simile employed, the wind — 
 Secrecy of process—Independence on human will— 
 Evidence in results—Bearing of these remarks on 
 our view of the function of Baptism—Beveridge on 
 Regeneration . : . ; : . ° 62 
 
 CHAPTER V;, 
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin—We retrace our steps, to 
 study in more detail the subject of the New Birth— 
 Conversion—Conviction of sin—John xvi. 8-11—Points 
 to be remembered in this passage — ‘‘ Zhe World”’ 
 the sphere of the work—Some interpret the passage 
 accordingly with slight reference to tnadtvidual con- 
 victions of sin—But these latter are at least not 
 excluded from the meaning of the words—Individual 
 convictions of sin have a powerful influence on 
 general conviction—Appeal to the reader—Convic- 
 tion of sin experienced irrespective of differences 
 of circumstance and character—Varieties of expe- 
 rience of it—Influence of the experience upon our 
 insight into the whole Gospel—The Cross and the 
 Resurrection are now seen in their true glory— 
 Beata culpa—Such conviction makes personal ex- 
 perience deep—And pastoral ministry faithful and 
 fruitful—Need to the last of an abiding and deve- 
 loped work of conviction of sin : ; : ey 
 
Xli 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Spirit glorifying Christ to the Soul—This is His 
 
 congenial and beloved work—A fact often forgotten 
 —Bonar on Zhe Gospel of the Spirit’s Love—The 
 Spirit’s gift of faith—Proof from Scripture that faith 
 zs a ‘‘ gift’’—How the gift is given—By the mani- 
 festation of Christ’s all-sufficiency to the awakened 
 soul—lIllustration from common experience—A recent 
 personal example—The work is at once natural and 
 supernatural—The case and testimony of Count Zin- 
 zendorf—Personal appeal to the reader—Realities 
 of experience, lighting up truths of doctrine—Let 
 us love Him who loves thus to bless us—Hart’s hymn 
 
 CHAPTER -VIt- 
 
 The Spirit’s Work as further seen tn our Lord’s last 
 
 Discourse and Prayer, John xiv.-xvii.—The whole 
 iife of the regenerate is to the last by the Spirit— 
 In the present passage the Holy Spirit is implied 
 even where not mentioned—And the passage bears 
 not on the Apostles only, but on all believers—Who 
 are in some respects represented by the Apostles— 
 Oneness of believers with Christ by the Spirit—Depth 
 and preciousness of that truth—An appeal—They 
 live by Christ, through the Spirit—Holy realities of 
 personal experience of this—A record and testimony 
 —Fruit-bearing by the Spirit—Prayer in the Spirit— 
 Its connexion with fruit-bearing—Miss F. R. Havergal 
 —‘‘ Greater works than these’’—Teaching work of 
 the Holy Spirit—The ‘‘unction”’ of 1 John ii.—The 
 keeping and sanctifying of the saints by the Spirit— 
 Let us liveinthe Upper Chamber . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I0O0 
 
 122 
 
CONTENTS. xlil 
 
 CHAPTERS VITE: 
 
 PAGE 
 The Spirit’s Work as seen tm John vii. and xx., etc.— 
 A chapter of fragments—(i) John vii. 37-39—Lhe 
 Tabernacle-feast—The Saviour’s ‘‘ cry’’—A majestic 
 invitation and promise—At once interpreted by St 
 John—How ‘‘the Spirit was not yet given ’’—Diffu- 
 sive character of the Gospel age—How the water 
 shall flow from the man—(ii) John xx. 21-23—The 
 occasion—The act of breathing and its significance 
 —The words—What they do zo¢ mean—They mean 
 not mediation, but declaration—To be done by all 
 true Christians, though not anarchically—To be 
 done in the power of the Spirit—(iii) 1 John 1142055275 
 iii. 24—The spiritual believer is in a humble sense 
 a prophet—(iv) Rev. v. 6—The Spirit seen in vision 
 as the Vehicle of Christ’s power and presence for 
 
 His Church below . ; . : . 145 
 
 CHAPTER. IX. 
 
 The Spirit in the writings of St Paul: tin general— 
 Great fulness of Pauline teaching on the Spirit’s 
 work—This is the more remarkable, as St Paul is 
 the Apostle of Justification—Lessons of this fact— 
 Justifying Righteousness and the Spirit’s Work dis- 
 tinct in conception, indissoluble in divine intention 
 —And in the true experience of the Christian—St 
 Paul’s witness to the Personality of the Spirit—And 
 to the Union of being and work between the Spirit 
 and the Son—And to the agency of the Spirit in the 
 whole work of grace—New Birth—New) Life and 
 Walk—Union with Christ—Revelation of divine truth 
 and blessing—Of the certainty of Adoption—And of 
 paternal Love—Rom. v. 5 explained—And Rom. viii. 
 16—The work of the Spirit in the believer’s soul 
 and life seen in details—The flesh and the Spirit— 
 
XIV 
 
 CONZLIVI'S. 
 
 Encouraging aspect of Gal. v. 17—Liberty in the 
 Spirit—Need of realizing our possession of power by 
 the Spirit . : ; : : ° \ . : 
 
 CHAPTER X, 
 
 the Spirit in the writings of St Paul: the Frutt of 
 
 the Spzrzt~—Topics of the Epistle to the Galatians— 
 Justification —And the Spirit’s work—Their con- 
 nexion—Abundance of teaching on the work of the 
 Spirit towards the close of the Epistle—‘‘ Not under 
 the law’’—‘‘Led by the Spirit ’’—‘* Sowing to the 
 Spirit’’—The Fruit of the Spirit contrasted with the 
 works of the flesh—Significance of the singular 
 number, Fruit—The place of ‘diligence’ in fruit- 
 bearing — Meanwhile, it is a power not our own 
 
 which bears the fruit—It is the Holy Spirit—While 
 
 Christ is the Life He gives—The Fruit—Primarily, 
 it consists in not doing, but being—Not that the 
 spiritual Christian is to isolate himself from common 
 life and duty—The Fruit is a Character—Its elements 
 —Nine, in three triads—All harmonized in one— 
 This character is essentially one of love and light— 
 And of yielding and forbearance—And of vigilant 
 practicality The description of the Fruit of the 
 Spirit should be a touchstone of the inner life. < 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Lhe Spirit in the writings of St Paul: the Fulness 
 
 of the Sfir7¢—Scriptural illustrations of the phrase— 
 Varying phases of the “ Filling”— Connexion between 
 the Fulness and miraculous gifts—Are the two always 
 connected P—No; the Fulness has a more abiding 
 connexion with consecration to the will of God—Not 
 that miracles are necessarily confined to the first 
 age—Eph. v. 18 explained—It refers not to an ab- 
 
 PAGE 
 
 163 
 
 186 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Mar rene eaaciece (rer ubi voces De 
 
 PAGE 
 normal crisis, but to the rule and habit of life—Filled 
 ‘in’? the Spirit; how ?—Practical meaning of the 
 precept—Surrender to the presence of the Spirit— 
 The Baptism of the Spirit—Passages examined—Is 
 it to be sought for, like the Filling ?—Apparently not 
 Work of faith in receiving the fulness of the Spirit 
 —Blessed results in detail—The Sealing, Harnest?, 
 
 and Lirstfrutts of the Spirtt—A Prayer « - 209 
 
 GHUAPEER RG SITS. 
 
 The Spirit in the writings of St Paul: Christ dwelling 
 in the heart by faith—Sacred treasures of the close 
 of Eph. iii—The passage takes up that at the close 
 of Eph. ii.—Likeness and difference between the two 
 passages—The former contemplates the Community, 
 the latter rather the Individual—Context of Eph. iii. 17 
 —The Indwelling—It means more than the Vital 
 Union—Significance of the word ‘“‘ heart’’—The In- 
 dwelling designed for all believers—And to be con- 
 tinuous—The language implies an Arrival in order 
 to dwell—In what senses such an arrival is and is 
 not for all Christians—The work of the Holy Spirit 
 in this matter—Strengthening—In order to a willing 
 welcome of the divine MASTER—Nature in, the fall 
 shrinks from this—So the Spirit’s enabling is needed 
 —Significance of the words “‘ dy fatth’’—Faith in 
 this as in all its work is the Spirit’s gift—Conclusion 
 —Dying words of Adolphe Monod . : ‘ - 228 
 
 INDEXES . : ° . . ° . : : - 248 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Bee following chapters have a very simple 
 
 purpose. They are not intended to con- 
 stitute a technical treatise, certainly not to 
 carry the reader into elaborate enquiries into 
 the history of doctrines. They are intended 
 to be a reverent review of some, and only 
 some, of the main teachings of the Holy 
 Scriptures concerning the ever-blessed Spirit 
 of God, the heavenly Paraclete, the eternal 
 Third Person, the Lord and Life-Giver, and 
 His revealed work in Redemption. And this 
 review shall be made, by His most merciful 
 assistance, with a constant reference to the 
 actual needs of the human soul, the actual 
 experience of the people of God. 
 
 The theme is one of altogether special im- 
 portance for the believing Church of these 
 latter days. In John Owen’s Pueumatologia, 
 his deep, massive, and most spiritual ‘“‘ Discourse 
 
 I 
 
Z VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Concerning the Holy Spirit” (1674), occurs a 
 remarkable passage (bk 1, ch. i.), in which he 
 traces through the ages and dispensations a 
 certain progress of divine tests of living ortho- 
 doxy, related to each of the Three Persons in | 
 succession. Before the First Advent the great 
 testing truth was “the oneness of God’s nature 
 and His monarchy over all,” with special respect 
 to) the “Person of the ‘PathereeAt, the thirst 
 Advent the great question was whether a 
 Church orthodox on the first point would now 
 receive the divine Son, incarnate, sacrificed, 
 and glorified, according to the promise. And 
 when the working of this test had gathered out 
 the Church of Christian believers, and built it 
 on the foundation of the truth of the Person 
 and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the 
 Holy Spirit came in a new prominence and 
 speciality before that Church as a touchstone of 
 true faith. ‘‘ Wherefore the duty of the Church 
 now immediately respects the Spirit of God, 
 who acts towards it in the name of the Father 
 and of the Son; and with ‘respect unto Him it 
 is that the Church in its present state is capa- 
 ble of an apostasy from God... . The sin of 
 
VITAL IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBFECT. 3 
 
 despising His Person and rejecting His Work 
 now is of the same nature with idolatry of old, 
 and with the Jews’ rejection of the Person of 
 the Son.” 
 
 The statement is perhaps too absolute in 
 form to embrace all the data of revelation and 
 experience. But it is at least an indication of 
 great spiritual facts, and a solemn caution to the 
 Christian of the present day to take heed lest 
 he lose hold of the truth of the blessed Spirit 
 in its humbling but beatifying fulness. All too 
 easily, amidst prevalent fashions of opinion in 
 the modern Church, we may insensibly, uncon- 
 sciously, let that truth fall from us. We may 
 take up with a view of human nature in its fallen 
 estate which shall practically dispense with the 
 need of the regenerating and sanctifying Holy 
 Ghost. We may take up with a view of sacred 
 order and divine ordinances which shall in 
 effect put His sovereign and mysterious work 
 into other hands than His. May He, the Lord, 
 the Life-Giver, personal, sovereign, loving, 
 mighty, preserve us from unfaithfulness of re- 
 gard towards His blessed Person, from untruth 
 of view of His divine work. May He keep us 
 
4 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 indeed “men of the Spirit,” filling us, that we 
 may be so, with Himself. 
 
 As we approach our subject more immedi- 
 ately, let us very deliberately take the attitude 
 of invocation and adoration. Who can rightly 
 think and discourse about the Holy Spirit of 
 God save by that same Spirit, and as seeking 
 with humblest reverence to follow the very 
 syllables and footsteps of that written Word 
 which has Him everywhere for its true 
 Author ? 
 
 It is recorded in the story of the German 
 Reformation that on one of its most memorable 
 occasions, the disputation between Eck and 
 Luther before Duke George of Saxony at the 
 castle of the Pleissenburg, the controversy was 
 preluded by the solemn chant of the Venz 
 Creator, sung thrice over while the whole as- 
 sembly knelt." With the voices of the soul 
 may we, writer and reader, so now unite, as we 
 approach not a great battle of arguments but a 
 
 1 D’Aubigné, Ast. de la kéformation du xvi Stécle, liv. v., 
 ch. iv. Késtlin, Luthers Leben, p. 149. 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE SPIRIT. 5 
 
 series of quiet meditations upon the Person and 
 the Work of the Lord the Spirit. 
 
 “Veni, Creator Spiritus, 
 Mentes tuorum visita ; 
 Imple superna gratia 
 Que Tu creasti pectora ; 
 
 “ Oui Paraclitus diceris, 
 Altissimi donum Deli, 
 Fons vivus, Ignis, Caritas, 
 Et spiritalis Unctio.” ? 
 
 In the present chapter I propose to speak of 
 the revealed Personatity of the Holy Spirit 
 as the all-important preliminary to all other 
 thoughts concerning Him. Upon His Divinity, 
 His Deity, there is little practical need that | 
 
 nT at 
 
 1 Rendered thus among the “ Hymns” formerly appended to 
 the Prayer Book :— 
 
 “ Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come, 
 And visit all the souls of Thine; 
 Thou hast inspired our hearts with life, 
 Inspire them now with life divine. 
 
 « Thou art the Comforter, the Gift 
 Of God most High, the Fire of love, 
 The everlasting Spring of joy, 
 And holy Unction from above.” 
 
 See the whole ancient hymn in Trench’s Sacred Latin Poetry, 
 p. 184. It appears to be certainly older than its reputed author, 
 Charlemagne. See too the beautiful hymn to the Holy Spirit by 
 King Robert the Second of France (A.D. 997), 2072, p ‘196. 
 
6 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 should dwell, so plain it ison the very surface of 
 Scripture that the Holy Spirit, whether personal 
 or not, is divine, isa Power of the divine Order. 
 But is it He, or Ir? Is it a divine faculty, 
 influence, phase, mode, or a divine Person ? 
 Now the most direct answer to this question, 
 and at the same time the deepest and tenderest, 
 is to go at once to the central passage of all 
 Scripture in the matter. All over the blessed 
 Book from its very first lines onward lie scat- 
 tered mentions of the Spirit and His work. 
 Here and there we have passages which go 
 almost the length of revealing explicitly His 
 personality; here and there passages which fully 
 go that length, fairly interpreted. But there is 
 one precious section of Scripture which is to 
 these scattered rays as their combining focus, 
 the glorious ruling passage of the subject. 
 And where and what is it? Not some great 
 chapter of apostolic argument and exposition, 
 such as those in which the Godhead of the Son 
 is asserted, or the holy paradox of Justification 
 by Faith explained and applied to the trembling, 
 weary conscience and longing heart. No; for 
 the decisive teaching on the Personality of the 
 
THE PASCHAL DISCOURSE. 7 
 
 Holy Ghost we go yet deeper into the Scrip- 
 ture tabernacle ; we enter its Holiest ; we open 
 the pages where the Lord Jesus Himself 
 teaches with His own lips the secrets of spiri- 
 tual life. There, as it were under the John xiv-xvi. 
 
 Shechinah itself, lies our doctrinal stronghold 
 for this article of faith. There speaks the Christ 
 of God, in an hour of supreme tenderness, and 
 from which all ideas of the rhetorical and the 
 merely poetical are infinitely distant; and He 
 speaks with repetition and emphasis of this 
 same Holy Spirit, and He speaks of Him as 
 personal. My readers are well aware of the 
 fact. But it is never in vain to impress such a 
 fact again upon the soul by re-examination of the 
 infallible words. Let me ask that the Greek 
 be once more opened, and this divine gram- 
 matical anomaly once more studied—the neuter 
 [Iveda associated repeatedly and markedly 
 with the masculine Tlapakhyros, the Jonnxiv. 16,173 
 
 He ae Rint XV. 20557 XVi. 
 masculines 6s, éxetvos, avtds.. And ** 
 
 let this be read in the light of the wonderful 
 context, in which this blessed Paraclete, this 
 
 1 And if the question is asked, what language did the Lord 
 Jesus speak that night, Greek or Aramaic; and if Aramaic, how 
 
8 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 A dvocatus,' ‘called in” to the aid of the other- 
 wise ‘‘ orphaned ” Church, is seen to be such, 
 and to act so, as to be indeed the Substitute, the 
 more than substitute, for the unspeakably real 
 personality of the Saviour in His seen presence. 
 The passage sets the Holy Spirit before us as 
 not the Father, as not the Son, and yet as the 
 “Vicar of Christ” (the phrase is Tertullian’s’), 
 the ample Consolation for the absence of the 
 familiar company of the beloved Saviour. It 
 scarcely needs the impressive testimony of the 
 Greek grammar of the sentences to assure us 
 with deep and restful certainty that to the mind 
 of the Saviour that night the Spirit was indeed 
 present as a Person. 
 
 In this central and decisive passage then we 
 have the Holy Ghost revealed to us in so many 
 
 was the contrast between masculine and neuter conveyed? we 
 reply that the question, most interesting and important in itself, 
 is not in point in our enquiry. For us as believers in the divine 
 character of the Written Word the discourses of the New Testa- 
 ment, and of the Old Testament too, are before us as veforts 
 corrected and edited by the Author. 
 
 1 For a vindication of the rendering Advocate for Paracletus 
 see Lightfoot, Ox a Fresh Revision of the N.T., pp. 50-56 
 Meantime the dear familiar word Comforter, Cozfortator, remains 
 as a true Jaraphrase of Paraclete. 
 
 * De Virginibus Velandis, c. 1. 
 
words as Him, not only as It; as the living and 
 conscious Exerciser of true personal will and 
 love, as truly and fully as the First :Johnii.:. 
 ‘“Paraclete,” the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 
 And now this central passage radiates out its 
 glory upon the whole system and circle of 
 Scripture truth about the Spirit. From Gen. i. 
 2 to Rev. xxii. 17 it sheds the warmth of divine 
 personal life into every mention of the blessed 
 Power. With the. Paschal Discourse in our 
 heart and mind, we know that it was He, not 
 It, who “brooded” over the primeval deep. 
 He, not It, “strove with man,” or Genie. 
 ‘“ruledin man, ‘of old:. He, -not® Gen. vis. 
 It, was in Joseph in. Egypt, and Gen. xi. 3s. 
 upon Moses in the wilderness of Numb. xi. x. 
 wandering, and upon judges and kings of 
 
 1] well know that it is maintained that in the Greek New 
 Testament, as a rule, ré Ilvedpa denotes the Personal Paraclete, 
 
 and veda without the article not the Person but the influence. | v 
 
 With some exceptions I believe this rule holds good. But it 
 leaves quite untouched the line of reasoning in the text here. 
 When we kave ascertained that 7d IIvedua is indeed a Person 
 we know that mvedua is a personal influence. And in the general 
 light of Scripture teaching on divine Influences we are abundantly 
 secure in saying that this means nothing less than the divine 
 Person at work, 
 
10 
 
 Judges vi. 34. 
 
 t Sam. &. |ro, 
 
 THIS hank d:0:06 by FP 
 
 2 Kings ii. 9, 15. 
 
 2 Chron. xv. 1. 
 
 Matt. xxii. 43. 
 
 Heb. x, 15. 
 
 1 Peter i. 11. 
 
 2 Peter 1. 21. 
 
 Heb. ix. 8. 
 
 x Chron. xxviii. 
 12. 
 
 Ezek, ii. 2. 
 Luke i. 35. 
 Luke ii. 22. 
 Luke iv. 1. 
 Acts il. 4. 
 
 Acts viii. 39. 
 
 after-days. He, not It, “spake by 
 
 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the prophets,’ ‘“ moving” those 
 ‘holy ‘men? of=God.% = He, notght 
 drew the plan of the ancient ‘Taber- 
 nacle and of the first Temple. He, 
 not It, lifted Ezekiel to his feet in 
 the hour of vision. He, not It, came 
 upon the Virgin, and anointed her 
 Son at Jordan and led Him to the 
 desert of temptation, and gave utter- 
 ance to the saints at Pentecost, and 
 caught Philip away from the road 
 
 to Gaza, and guided Paul through Asia Minor 
 to the nearest port for Europe. He, 
 not It, cftects the new birth of regenerate 
 John iii. s,6,8 man, and is the Breath of his new 
 
 Acts xvi. 6, 7. 
 
 Gal. v. 25. life, and the Earnest of his coming 
 pom val ti glory,’ By ftiim); ot bys. pethe ‘be- 
 Gal. v. 25. liever walks, and mortifies the deeds 
 Rom. viii x3 of the body, filled not with It, but 
 Eph. v. 28, Him. He, not It,“issthe Spirit-of 
 
 faith, by whom it is “given unto us 
 to believe on Christ.” He, not It, 
 speaks to the Churches. He, not 
 It, says trom heaven that they who die in the 
 
 BiCOL, 1 Vert 30 
 
 Phil. i. 29. 
 
 Rev. ii. 7, 11, 293 
 111, 6, 13) 22. * 
 
RESERVE OF SCRIPTORE; ITS REASON. 11 
 
 Lord are blessed, and calls in this Rev. xiv. x3. 
 life upon the wandering soul of man to come 
 to the living water. | Rev. xxii. 17, 
 And let us not wonder, by the way, that the 
 exhibition of His Personality is comparatively 
 so reserved in Scripture; that we have need, 
 as in the case of the Personality of the Father 
 and of the Son we have not at all, to place 
 Scripture by Scripture and make an induction 
 on the subject. The reason lies in the nature 
 Oi the «case. the -Holy Spiritis “the strue 
 Author of the Written Word; and Heb. x.:5, 
 His authorship there is occupied with the 
 main and absorbing theme not of Himself 
 but of another Person, the Son of God. _ In- 
 cidentally, like some of His human agents in 
 the production of the Scriptures—like Moses, 
 and Jeremiah, and Paul, and John—He dis- 
 closes enough of His blessed Self to give 
 us full apprehension of His personal reality ; 
 but His theme, His burthen, is Jesus Curist. | 
 And again in the unfolding and application 
 of Redemption His work is above all things 
 secret, internal, subjective. It is to take of 
 the things of Christ, to deal with the blessed 
 
12 VENESCREAT OR: 
 
 objectivity of the finished work and inexhaust- 
 ible riches of Christ, and with inmost touches 
 and new-creating whispers to manifest them to 
 the spirit of man. It is to bring man, by a 
 divine but inscrutable operation, to believe in 
 Christ and to possess Him, with a spontaneity 
 truly man’s own while yet Another is in it. As 
 to His saving operations, the Spirit lies hidden 
 as it were behind Christ Jesus and in our own 
 inner man. So it is also in measure in His 
 revelations of Himself in His holy Word. 
 However this is by the way. The point 
 before us now, in the matter of the Personality 
 of the Spirit, is just this: that we have the 
 central and open revelation of that personality 
 given us in Scripture ina place and under cir- 
 cumstances charged with indescribable tender- 
 ness and sacredness. The truth thus appears 
 not only as a demand on the obedience of faith 
 —though this it is indeed—but as a gift to the 
 believing soul of heavenly love, of love deep 
 and warm as the heart of the Redeemer. 
 There seems to be a drift and set at the 
 present day, in many quarters where what are 
 called liberalizing tendencies in theology prevail, 
 
TENDERNESS OF THIS TRUTH. 13 
 
 Ee eee eee eee a aoe FEN eee RBAT 
 
 to discredit, or minimize, or ignore, the belief of 
 the Personality of the blessed Spirit. In what 
 interest and to what end, one asks, is such 
 a tendency accepted or promoted? Surely not 
 with the hope of presenting the Christian plan, 
 the process of eternal love and goodness, in 
 fairer, tenderer, or more living colours and 
 glories. If a reference to personal experience 
 may be permitted I may indeed here “set to 
 my seal.” Never shall I forget the gain to 
 conscious faith and peace which came to my 
 own soul, not long after a first decisive and ap- 
 propriating view of the Crucified Lord as the 
 sinner’s Sacrifice of peace, from a more intelli- 
 gent and conscious hold upon the living and 
 most gracious Personality of that Holy Spirit 
 through whose mercy the soul had got that 
 blessed view. It was a new development of 
 insight into the Love of God. It was_a new 
 contact as it were with the inner and eternal 
 movements of redeeming goodness and power, 
 a new discovery in divine resources. At such 
 a “time of finding,” gratitude, and love, and 
 adoration gain a new, a newly realized, reason, 
 and motive-power and rest. He who with 
 
14 VENT CREATOR. 
 
 His secret skill, and with a power not the less 
 almighty because it violates nothing, has awak- 
 ened and regenerated the man, now shines before 
 his inner sight with the smile of a personal 
 and eternal kindness and amity, and is seen 
 standing side by side, in union unspeakable yet 
 without confusion, with Him who has suffered 
 and redeemed, and with Him: who laid the 
 mighty plan of grace, and willed its all-merciful 
 success, and spared not His own Son, giving 
 Him over for us all. If I may reverently use 
 the simile, it is as when to two notes of the 
 musical triad the related third note is added, and 
 there results, in the words of the music-loving 
 poet, “not a fourth sound, but a star.”? 
 
 As our enquiry proceeds we shall have con- 
 tinual occasion of course to recur to this 
 primary theme, the Personality of the Holy 
 Ghost ; and much that is omitted in this pre- 
 liminary statement will thus be supplied. But 
 we have at least aimed here at the great mark 
 of setting the sacred fact, as a fact, well before 
 us, and letting it take its large place anew in 
 
 1 Browning, Adt Vogler. 
 
LIACLATM SS  AGLARGE: PLA CE. 15 
 
 the consciousness, and so in the action, of the 
 believing man. That place is surely meant to 
 be a large one, in the light of the Paschal 
 Discourse, as we have traced itsimport. There 
 the blessed Person of the Paraclete is revealed 
 as just about to fill the void of the disciples’ 
 hearts with a whole wealth of personal, gracious 
 action, abiding, revealing, teaching, leading, 
 conveying into the inmost receptacle the 
 presence of Christ, so that. He while absent 
 should be present, while invisible should be 
 seen. Surely such a presence and such an 
 action was intended to call forth on the happy 
 Christian’s part a reverent and loving recipro- 
 cation. If thus the Spirit was to deal with 
 him, he was to deal with the Spirit in holy 
 recognition, and adoring gratitude, and con- 
 fiding love. ‘“ The Spirit with our Rom. viii. x. 
 spirit” is a phrase meant to carry endless 
 blessed applications in the experiences of the 
 life of faith. 
 
 As we close, the question perhaps arises from 
 the thoughts just suggested, whether acts of 
 direct adoration to the Holy Spirit are pre- 
 scribed to us in the Scriptures. It is certainly 
 
16 : VENI CREATOR. 
 
 remarkable that we have very little in their pages 
 which bears explicitly on the question, a fact — 
 which however falls very naturally in with what 
 we have already seen of the general com- 
 parative reticence of the Author of the Book 
 about His own nature and glory. And, again, it 
 is a fact in harmony with what we have seen of 
 the character of His work for the Christian, a 
 work pre-eminently subjective, so profoundly so 
 as to occasion. such a statement as that of St 
 Paul that the Spirit intercedes for the saints 
 Rom. viii,27, with groanings that cannot be uttered, 
 words whose context at least suggests that the 
 intercession has its action in the region of the 
 inner man, and breathes itself or groans itself 
 forth through the regenerate human spirit. If 
 it is the Holy Spirit’s special function not only 
 to speak to and deal with, but also to speak 
 and work through, the man He renews and 
 sanctifies, we can just so far understand that 
 He the less presents Himself for our articulate 
 adoration. But meanwhile the sacred rightful- 
 ness of our worship of the Holy Spirit is as 
 surely established as anything can be “that 
 rests on large and immediate inferences from 
 
PRAY BRL OWT L: SPIRIT. 17 
 
 the Scriptures. If He is divine, and if He is 
 personal, how can we help the attitude of 
 adoration when, leaving for the moment the 
 thought of His work in us, we isolate in our 
 view the thought of Him the Worker? Scrip- 
 ture practically prescribes to us such an attitude 
 when it gives us our Lord’s own account, in 
 His baptismal formula, of the Eternal Name as 
 His disciples were to know it—“ The Name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost ;” and when in the Acts and the Epistles 
 the Holy Ghost is set before us as not only 
 doing His work in the inmost being of the 
 individual but presiding in sacred majesty 
 over the community ; and when in acy. i 
 the Revelation He, in the mysti- fia aa 
 cal sevenfoldness of His operation, * © 13. 
 Seven yet One, appears in that solemn pre- 
 lude as the concurrent Giver, with the Father 
 and the Son, of grace and peace; een 
 above all when in the Paschal Dis- J" *” 
 course the adorable and adored Lord Jesus 
 presents Him to our faith as. co-ordinate 
 with Himself in glory and grace, ‘‘ another 
 Comforter.” 
 
18 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 So, while watchfully and reverently seeking 
 to remember the laws of Scripture proportion, 
 and that according to it the believer’s relation 
 to the Spirit is zot so much that of direct adora- 
 tion as of a reliance which wholly implies it, let 
 us trustfully and thankfully worship Him, and 
 ask blessing of Him, as our spirits shall be 
 moved to such action under His grace. Let us 
 ever and again recollect, with deliberate con- 
 templation and faith, what by His word we 
 know of Him, and of His presence in us and 
 His work for us, and then let us not only “ pray 
 
 Jude2, 22 the Holy Ghost” but also Zo Him, 
 whether in the words of some ancient Vez, or 
 in the many songs of supplication which have 
 been given us, surely not without His leading, 
 in these latter days of His gracious dispensation. 
 One such out of many let me quote and let me 
 use, breathed from the soul and mind of my 
 own beloved and Spirit-taught father long ago, 
 and sung by him (how often! in tones how 
 well remembered !) in his hours of adoration to 
 the last : 
 
 “ Come, Holy Comforter, celestial Light, 
 Relieve from all obscurity our sight ; 
 
THE SIN AGAINST THE SPIRIT. 19 
 
 Se ey 
 
 Come, Holy Comforter, celestial Fire, 
 
 Our souls with love and purity inspire ; 
 
 Hear, Holy Ghost, our supplicating cry, 
 
 Nor leave the grace Thou gav’st to droop and die. 
 
 “Come, Holy Comforter, a Saviour’s love 
 Reveal, and fix our hearts on joys above ; 
 Come, Holy Comforter, the flesh subdue, 
 And aid us, one with Christ, His will to do; 
 Hear, Holy Ghost, our supplicating cry, 
 Nor leave the grace Thou gav’st to droop and die.” 
 
 ADDENDUM TO CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SIN OF RAILING (SAacdnula) AGAINST THE 
 HOLY GHOST. 
 
 (Matt. xii. 31, 32; Mark iii. 28-30; Luke xii. 10. See Heb. vj. 
 4-8, x. 26-31 ; 1 John v. 16.) 
 
 On this awful and mysterious subject I offer 
 only a very few words, and these are offered 
 mainly because of the connexion of the subject 
 with that of the Personality of the Holy Spirit. 
 For it appears to be justly reckoned among the 
 proofs of the Personality that this unspeakably 
 dread warning should be given, in which railing 
 
20 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 FO ne eran ee 
 
 against the Spirit is seen as a sin comparable 
 in kind with railing against the holy personal 
 Saviour. 
 
 For myself I feel, as surely many a Christian 
 does, how very much easier it is to say what 
 this great acme and last development’ of sin zs 
 not than what it is. Whatever it is, it is always 
 and for ever true that the man who as a fact 
 comes penitent to the feet of Christ for pardon 
 finds it. And whatever it is, the Saviour’s own 
 words of warning surely imply that it is not, so 
 to speak, a terrible accident of the sinful soul’s 
 action but (see Miller cited in the note) a 
 development, the result of a process, the out- 
 come of a deliberately formed condition. In 
 order to it there needs, assuredly, the concur- 
 rence of great and God-given /ght upon good 
 and evil, sin and salvation (see Heb. vi.), with 
 a resolved, deliberate, and matured hostility | 
 and repulsion on the part of the will; a personal. 
 hatred of recognized eternal holiness. 
 
 1See some excellent remarks on the Unpardonable Sin as 
 being not an isolated sin but sin in its full development, in Julius 
 Miiller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, T. & T. Clark’s Eng. Trans., 
 Ly Pp. 410, étc. 
 
THE SIN AGAINST THE SPIRIT. 21 
 
 ———— - 
 
 —— 
 
 Why is this sin unpardonable? Because, 
 surely, it is such a closing of the door of repent- 
 ance by the created personality against itself as, 
 by laws of spiritual nature which we cannot 
 analyse but may in part divine, shuts up the 
 personality finally against grace; denies ail 
 possible ground, all zzdus, to the action of Him 
 whom it has in some sense seen and yet deli- 
 berately hated. And some further light, if I 
 mistake not, is thrown on this zrvremzsszbzlity 
 by the fact that the Gospel, the Dispensation 
 of the Spirit (see e.g. 2 Cor. ili. 6-8), is seen 
 in Scripture as the fzal message of divine 
 mercy. He who in the full light of this final 
 Gospel deliberately rejects its message and its 
 Messenger, casts off the /as¢ offers, the justly 
 and necessarily last, of salvation. No more 
 powerful, tender, prevailing secrets of conquest 
 and persuasion lie beyond. This comes out in 
 Heb. x., where the possible apostate back from 
 Christ to antichristian Judaism is warned that 
 no new sacrifice for sin will meet his awful 
 need. The old offerings have done their work 
 for ever; and Calvary will not be repeated. 
 From one point of view we may thus say that 
 
22 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the warnings of the Saviour in the Gospels 
 mean, in effect, that while a merciful forbear- 
 ance could, in the nature of things, be extended 
 for His sake to that rejection of Him which 
 was committed “in the days of His flesh,” 
 while He stood before His enemies as pre- 
 eminently “The Son of Man,” it would be 
 otherwise when He was deliberately and finally 
 refused under the dispensation of that Holy 
 Spirit who should bear witness to Him in His 
 accomplished work and glory as “the Captain 
 of salvation made perfect.” } 
 
 Can the truly regenerate commit this sin ? 
 I venture to say yes, and zo. In themselves, 
 and as relying more on their regeneration than 
 their Regenerator, yes. In Him, and under 
 His covenant of grace, I humbly believe, xo 
 and never. Heb. vi. 4-8, as it appears to me 
 (the weighty remarks of J. Miiller notwith- 
 standing), deals with the case not of the soul 
 vivified with the divine life of: holiness and love 
 by the Spirit of Christ, but of the soul gifted by 
 that Spirit with the fullest Aight separable from 
 
 1See Whitby, Ox the New Testament, Appendix to St 
 Matthew xit. | 
 
THE SIN AGAINST THE SPIRIT.. 23 
 
 Jove. Balaam’s recorded condition remarkably 
 illustrates every detail of Heb. vi. 4-8. 
 Meanwhile let us take heed, watching and 
 praying, not to grieve the Spirit of love and 
 holiness. It is better to be dismayed than to 
 presume. But it is best of all most reverently 
 to trust. | 
 
CHAPTER II 
 Vas I Creator Spiritus, was the thought 
 
 with which our previous chapter closed. 
 Let us begin again with the same. In 
 following ‘the scriptural traces of the doc- 
 trine of the blessed Spirit we will remember 
 that He is the promised “Guide into all the 
 Johnxvi.z3. truth.” By Him we will seek “a 
 right judgment in all things” concerning His 
 revealed glory, such a judgment that we may 
 “evermore rejoice in His holy comfort,” the 
 comfort of a happy insight into what He is 
 as Comforter. 
 
 I propose to treat in this chapter of two 
 important sides of the doctrine of the Spirit : 
 the Forthcoming of the Spirit in the Holy 
 Trinity from the Father and the Son (“the 
 Dual Procession”), and the work of the Spirit 
 in relation to the Human Nature of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
THE DUAL PROCESSION OF THE SPIRIT. 25 
 
 ced 
 
 1. The words Procession of the Spirit can 
 scarcely be spoken or written without calling 
 up associated thoughts of strife and division 
 within the Christian Church, and the hardly 
 less unhappy remembrance of that ultra-specu- 
 lative treatment of divine truths which has — 
 too often proved a fruitful source of divisions. 
 Not seldom even the most pious and reverent 
 minds have been beguiled into discussing the 
 Nature of God and the eternal Relations of 
 the divine Persons in a tone which would be 
 justified only if we had actually “found out the 
 Almighty unto perfection” and saw _ Jobxi.7. 
 before us, arranged in a series of absolutely 
 certain premisses, major and minor, all that 
 He knows about Himsetr. Hence in no 
 small measure arose that great controversy 
 of East and West upon the Dual Procession 
 which led to a final rupture about the year 
 1050, a rupture never since healed, nay so 
 little healed that as recently as 1863* a de- 
 claration was issued from Constantinople con- 
 -démning as heresy the Western belief, confessed 
 
 1 See Smeaton, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 259. 
 
26 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 in our two longer Creeds and in the Fifth 
 Anglican Article. 
 
 But notwithstanding all this it is fully possi- 
 ble, I trust, to treat this subject of the Dual 
 Procession, great and also tender as it is, with- 
 out either a long discussion of the history of 
 belief* or an unconscious imitation of the specu- 
 lative tendency referred to. All I ask now to 
 do is to take this doctrine, which our Church, 
 both before and after the Reformation, has as a 
 fact avowed to be Scripture truth, and to look 
 upon it in the serene and blessed light of the 
 revealed and experienced work of the Lord 
 the Life-Giver in His ministry for Christ in the 
 Church and in the soul. We shall surely find it 
 to be no mere phantom of abstract and unli- 
 censed speculation, but a truth of life and love. 
 
 What then in effect do we mean when we 
 speak of the Procession of the Spirit from the 
 Father and the Son? We mean that in the 
 revealed inner relations of Godhead, in those 
 eternal and necessary relations (‘ necessary” in 
 
 the well-understood sense that they are rela- 
 pe a te ate ect ea 
 
 1 For a brief conspectus of the history I may venture to refer 
 to my Outlines of Christian Doctrine, pp. 146, etc. 
 
WHAT THE DUAL PROCESSION MEANS. 27 
 
 tions lying in the very Nature of God, relations 
 which in that Nature wzust dc, even as holiness 
 must be in it), while the Father is the eternal 
 Origin of the Eternal Spirit, the Son is con- 
 currently His eternal Origin also. We mean 
 that Godhead is eternally in the Spirit because | 
 of the Son as well as because of the Father. 
 We do not mean that the blessed Son is 
 thus the Spirit's Origin in an independent and 
 separated way. 4/7 that the Son is, as the 
 Second Person of the Holy Trinity, He is “of 
 the Father,’ and of the Father alone. To 
 this He bore abundant personal witness ‘in 
 the days of His flesh.” But we Johnv.2s, ete. 
 believe that the ‘‘all” which He thus eternally 
 derives includes zxz¢ter alza this—that He is, 
 with the Father, the concurrent Origin of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Such a humble belief is neither an arbitrary 
 and barren demand upon a bewildered or unre- 
 flecting assent, nor a thing so sublimated and 
 vanishing as to find no point of contact with 
 life and love. In the first place, it throws some 
 
 1 See Pearson, Exposition of the Creed, p. 136, etc. 
 
28 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 precious light of its own upon that Sanctum 
 Sanctorum of life and love, the inner relations 
 of the Persons of the blessed Godhead. He 
 who is at once the Spirit of the Father and | 
 the Spirit of the Son, and One with Both—is 
 He not, in His blessed personal existence, the | 
 Result, the Bond, the Vehicle, of Their ever- 
 lasting mutual delight and love? That such: 
 He is was the belief of Christians long ago, a 
 belief resting not indeed upon direct revelation, 
 but upon inferences deep and lawful suggested 
 by it. It is put into articulate statements by | 
 St Augustine, in his treatise Ox the Trinity, | 
 vi. 5. It falls in with the doctrine of the Dual 
 Procession in a true harmony. And surely the 
 study of anything which casts light on the 
 revelation of that Mutual Love is full of prac- 
 tical blessing to thoughtful faith, for it is a 
 contribution to the study of that inexhausti- 
 rJohniv.8,16. ble text, “Gop 1s Love.” Yes, not 
 only does God do acts of love, however great. 
 - In the inmost heart and secret of His Being 
 Fienscas 4Love.’! 
 
 And when we come from the revealed inner 
 life of Godhead to the divine work of redemp- 
 
PRACTICAL BENEFIT OF THE BELIEF, 29 
 
 tion we find a manifest aid and blessing in the 
 belief of the eternal Forthcoming of the Holy 
 Spirit from the Son as well as from the Father. 
 In the light of this belief, every part and detail 
 of the work of the Spirit in connexion with the 
 Person and work of Christ gains indefinitely in 
 our view in respect of closeness and tenderness 
 of contact. In the light of this belief, He who 
 “testifies of’ Christ, and “glorifies” Him, and 
 imparts Him, does all this blessed work not 
 only as the holy Messenger and Co-operator of 
 the Saviour but as the Stream from Him the 
 Fountain. Deep must be the harmonies of 
 such co-operation. Absolute must be the truth 
 and fulness of such testimony. Close, unspeak- 
 ably close, must be the union effected by such 
 an Intermediary. 
 
 Meanwhile the scriptural basis for this belief 
 is strong, and capable of simple statement. In 
 Scripture the Spirit is as freely called “the 
 Spirit of the Son,” ‘the Spirit of Rom, vii. 
 Christ,” as “the Spirit of God,” +Pe-ir. 
 “the Spirit of the Father.” And impact 
 He is as freely said to be ‘‘sent” by the 
 Son as by the Father. But we gather from 
 
30 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Scripture, with abundant fulness, and in many 
 directions, that the works of the blessed 
 Three Persons in redemption bear always a 
 deep and steadfast reference to their eternal 
 inner relations. Thus the Eternal Father of 
 the Son, and not the Son, is the Father 
 of the believer. The Eternal Son, and not 
 the Father, is the First-born among many 
 brethren. Therefore, by the rule of a deep 
 and holy analogy, we believe that the relation 
 of the Spirit to the Son in respect of saving 
 work rests upon their relation in respect of 
 eternal Being. Him who is “the Spirit of the 
 Son, sent by the Son,” for us men and for our 
 salvation, we humbly and adoringly believe to 
 be related to the Son in the inner sanctuary 
 of Godhead after the manner of an unbegin- 
 ning and unending Procession, Forthcoming, 
 of Divine Life. 
 
 If such is indeed the truth, let our insight 
 into it rise higher, infinitely higher, than any 
 mere analysis or record, however careful, of a 
 great Church controversy. It isa thing which 
 can and should lead us up to look upon the 
 very springs of life eternal. It is one of the 
 
THE SPIRIT AND CHRIST'S MANHOOD. 31 
 
 mighty truths which converge upon the inex- 
 haustible glory and preciousness of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; upon His central position for us 
 in the plan of salvation; upon the close con- 
 nexion with Him, the infinitely close connexion, 
 of all parts of that plan and work; the parts 
 which concern our holiness as truly as these 
 which concern our acceptance. 
 
 2. This last thought leads me to a few con- 
 siderations on our second present topic; the 
 work of the Holy Spirit in relation to the 
 Human Nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. On 
 this topic I dwell in order above all to empha- 
 size some practical spiritual truths about the 
 Spirit’s regenerating and sanctifying work for 
 us who come to Christ and are in Him. 
 
 It is but rapidly, and as collecting specimens 
 of illustration, that I need remind my readers 
 of the large and deep connexion revealed in 
 Scripture between the Holy Spirit and the Son 
 or Man. 
 
 The Holy Spirit was the immediate Agent in | 
 the Immaculate Conception of ‘‘that  Lukei.ss. | 
 holy Thing.” Not that He was therefore the 
 
32 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 —_— 
 
 Father of the blessed Son; but He was the . 
 vehicle of the Paternity. Not again that He 
 so acted that the Son as God had nothing 
 to do with the act of the Incarnation. The 
 Son, in divine will, willed to assume our 
 nature, and so assumed it; but again the 
 blessed Spirit wrought the process whereby 
 that will was carried out. And then, thirty 
 years later, the Spirit descended upon the 
 youthful Lord at His baptism,- in some in- 
 Matt.iii. x6;ete. Scrutable speciality of presence and 
 Lukeiv.r power. In this ‘ power of the 
 Spirit” He went forth first to temptation and 
 then to ministry. It was in the Spirit, ‘given 
 without measure,” that He ‘spoke the words 
 Jonn iti. a4 Of God.” It was “by means of the 
 Eternal Spirit,” wonderful phrase, that He 
 Heb.ix.u. ‘Offered Himself without spot to 
 God.” We find indications that the Spirit 
 had great things to do with the bodily resurrec- 
 Rom. viii.1x. tion of the buried Lord. After 
 resurrection it was “by the Holy Spirit” that 
 Actsiin, He “gave commandment to the 
 Apostles.” And when in the Revelation the 
 glorified Jesus, as the slain One risen again 
 
THE SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S MANHOOD. 33 
 
 —— 
 
 and ascended, speaks to the seven Churches, 
 the voices of the Saviour and of the Spirit 
 are aS one. Rev. ii. 1-7, etc. 
 With the reserve of humblest reverence, may 
 we not say that the Manhood of our dear Re- 
 deemer was produced, and maintained all along 
 in its absolute and unalterable perfection, not 
 by His own action as God the Son but by that 
 of God the Holy Spirit? His own divine act 
 in the matter’: was, as we have said, and as 
 Owen said long ago,’ to assume the Manhood, 
 but no more. Never indeed, not for one 
 moment from the first, was that Manhood dis- 
 sociated from the Godhead of the Son. Never 
 for a moment had it a personality independent 
 of that of God the Son. The very Person 
 who said, in the days of His flesh, “ Before 
 Abraham was, I am,” the Person _Jobn viii. ss. 
 who under His great humiliation said to a 
 whole world of sin and sorrow, ‘‘ Come unto 
 Me,” was then and there as truly  att.x 2. 
 Gop’ as He was before the world was. But 
 
 1 See Pueumatologia, bx. ii., ch. iii. 
 
 2 And not God in abeyance, as some have seemed to say, 
 giving to His Kemdszs (Phil. ii. 7) a meaning not borne out by 
 Scripture. On the theory that He so “made Himself void” as 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
34 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 all this leaves untouched the sacred truth that 
 the Manhood He took was, in the divine order 
 and law, manhood begun and maintained in its 
 perfect holiness and power by the Holy Spirit 
 as the immediate personal divine Worker. It 
 is accordingly by the Holy Spirit that the Lord 
 Jesus Christ is the Second Man. It is by the 
 Holy Spirit that He, as the Second Man now 
 glorified, is the Receptacle, the Reservoir, the 
 Fountain-head, of that “all fulness” 
 which dwells in Him for us. 
 
 We pass almost instantly in the treatment 
 of such a subject into regions beyond our 
 analysis. But we see enough to deepen and 
 
 COUNT IO’ 
 li, 9, 18. 
 
 to become liable to mental error, mistakes of fact and reasoning, 
 for example about the age and nature of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures, see by all means Liddon, Lampton Lectures, Lecture 
 viii. It may be enough here to point out that to view such a 
 voluntary fallibility on our Lord’s part as an instance of His 
 blessed sel/-humitation involves a certain confusion of concep- 
 tions. It would stand, supposing it to be true, under a very 
 different description from, for instance, His voluntary liability to 
 fatigue, sorrow, and death. A rich and refined philanthropist, 
 bent on elevating a degraded tribe, would give a beautiful in- 
 stance of self-humiliation in consenting, if it were expedient, to be 
 as poor, and as badly lodged, as they. But if, while coming as 
 their teacher, he consented to share their ignorance (were it 
 possible) on matters on which he undertook to teach them, he 
 would deprive himself to their loss and disadvantage. 
 
CHRIST’ S PLACE IN THE SPIRIT’S WORK. 35 
 
 strengthen our ‘faith in the operation of 
 God,” to impart a growing definite- co. ii 2. 
 ness of view, and a fuller peace in the heart, 
 and a more humble adoration, as we ponder 
 our own transition, by the power of the Spirit, 
 ‘from death unto life,” and onwards 
 always to “life more abundant.” 
 For in this recollection of the truth of the 
 Spirit’s work on and in the Manhood of our 
 
 John v. 24; 
 xX. 10, 
 
 blessed Head we are brought directly to a 
 fuller recollection also of the PLace or Curist 
 (if I may express myself so) in the Holy Spirit’s 
 saving work for us. Let us take this up as our 
 closing topic for this chapter. 
 
 We who believe indeed in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ know on the evidence of God’s Word 
 that we owe our saving faith to the Lord the 
 Spirit, “the Spirit of faith.’ We cor. iv.r3. 
 who were once “dead in trespasses Eph. ii.r. 
 and sins,” and who now live, know on the 
 same evidence that we were, in ‘abundant 
 mercy,” “born of the Spirit,” and  Johniii.s, 
 that every step which we take in that life 
 we take “by the Spirit.” Is the  Galv.os. 
 “sound” of regenerate vitality and action 
 
36 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 a 
 
 “heard,” in however small a whisper yet 
 audibly, in our souls and in the outward life 
 which manifests their condition? It is the 
 blessed Spirit’s presence in special grace. It | 
 is the evidence, the one evidence, of our real 
 new birth, new creation, by Him. I say, 
 it is the one evidence of this. For let us 
 remember that across all the problems of sacra- 
 mental operation we must read always those 
 words of our Lord about the mystic Wind. 
 Wherever that Wand is, yes, wherever it 1s, 
 by its very nature as wind z¢ moves; it is not 
 merely latent ; it is heard: ‘Thou hearest the 
 sound thereof; so zs every one that is born of 
 the Spirit.” But on this I do not linger now.’ 
 Our concern now is with the experiences of the 
 life of grace in Christ, and their connexion with 
 the personal working of the Spirit. Accord- 
 rPet.ii2, ingly, “in the sanctification of the 
 Spirit,’ that is to say in His whole work of 
 our separation to God, we were by Him at 
 Jonnxvi.s, first brought through conviction 
 rPe.ii2, ‘unto obedience to, and _ blood- 
 sprinkling of, Jesus Christ.” And when the 
 
 1 See further below, p. 74. 
 
OUR NEW LIFE ALL BY THE SPIRIT. — 37 
 
 a — —————— 
 
 last step of the blessed process shall come, 
 and we shall rise transfigured from the grave, 
 possessing “the adoption, to wit Rom. viii. 23. 
 the redemption of our body,” it will still and 
 for ever be ‘because of the Spirit Rom. viii. 1. 
 who dwelleth in us.” Between this Alpha 
 and this Omega of our personal salvation all 
 is of “the same Spirit.” Does the peaceful 
 power of grace pervade our regenerate being, 
 and claim effectually for our Lord all we are 
 and all we have, and bring spirit, soul, and 
 body into a delightful captivity and bondservice 
 to our Head and Possessor? It is Eph. v.x8. 
 “the fulness of the Spirit.’ Do we day by 
 day ‘“‘mortify the deeds of the body”? It is 
 “by the Spirit.” Do we in truth Rom. viii 13. 
 breathe “the Abba, that prayer of faith alone” ? 
 It is the Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, the 
 Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts. gon viiiers,s7 
 Do we pray in truth the prayer of aoa 
 holy faith and love, the prayer that asks ac- 
 cording to His will? It is “in the  Judezo 
 Holy Ghost” it is ‘the Spirit making inter- 
 cession for us with groanings that Rom. viii. 2. 
 cannot be uttered.” Do “ we wait by faith for 
 
38 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the hope of righteousness,” the glory reserved 
 Galw.5. ~ for (the: qustihede pit) is“! bythe 
 Spirit.” Does “Christ dwell in our hearts by 
 faith?” Itis because the Spirit has “ strength- 
 Eph. iii. x6. ened us with might in our inner man, ’ 
 
 Am I needlessly dwelling upon truths which 
 are, thanks be to God, our most familiar friends 
 among the treasures of the Gospel? It is not 
 wholly for argument that I do so. To me 
 there seems to lie in the very recitation of our 
 creed of the Hidden Life a charm and power 
 which the Spirit Himself can wonderfully em- 
 ploy to revive or to develop in the soul the 
 realization and the use of the precious things 
 which are in some respects so familiar. 
 
 But I come now to what was my. main 
 reason for this review of some of the blessings 
 given us by the Lord the Life-Giver. I come 
 to say something of the Place of Christ in the 
 Spirit’s work. | 
 
 And here for the present I will speak not 
 only briefly but in one direction alone. I will 
 not dwell upon the all-beloved truth of the 
 propitiating Cross, and upon the Spirit's witness 
 to it in our awakened hearts. I will not dwel 
 
THE SPIRIT UNITES OS TO CHRIST. 39 
 
 Se 
 
 at all indeed upon the Spirit’s wetness to the 
 Lord Jesus. I look at present in the direction 
 only of our Union with Jesus Christ in new | 
 birth and life by the Spirit. 
 
 The Spirit, as our Communion Creed con- 
 fesses, is the Life-Giver, the Maker-alive.* 
 But what is the Lire which He gives, with 
 which He works? I listen, and I hear another 
 Voice, which is yet as if also His; jonni os; 
 mice it says; “ib am jthe +Life,” as 
 febher) ie. Eternallis in. the Son: He 
 that hath the Son hath the Life.” Johny. x. 
 I read these great, these blessed words in 
 the light of what we have recollected now ot 
 the Holy Spirit’s work on and in the Holy Son 
 of Man; and I thus see in them a remembrance 
 that what the Spirit does in His free and all- 
 powerful work in the soul which He quickens 
 into second life is, above all things, to bring 
 it into contact with the Son. He roots it, He 
 orafts it, He embodies it, into the Son. He 
 deals so with it that there is a continuity wholly 
 spiritual indeed but none the less most real, 
 
 1 TS Zworroiy 
 
40 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 unfigurative, and efficacious, between the Head 
 and the limb, between the branch and the 
 Root. He effects an influx into the regenerate 
 man of the blessed virtues of the nature of the 
 Second Adam, an infusion of the exalted life 
 of Jesus Christ, through an open duct, living, 
 and divine, into the man who is born again into 
 Him the incarnate and glorified Son of God. 
 I see on the one hand the blessed Spirit poured 
 without measure upon the Head. I see Him 
 on the other hand, not independently of that 
 Head but in deepest relation to Him and union 
 with Him, pouring Himself richly into the 
 member. I see Him the divine Factor in 
 the becoming and being of the Manhood of the 
 Second Adam. I see Him equally the divine 
 Factor in the new creation of the sinner into 
 a true child of God, a true regenerate member 
 of the new race. And all this combines to 
 remind me that the blessed process all the 
 while has Jesus Christ for its inmost Secret. 
 What does the Holy Life-Giver impart, infuse, 
 develop? What is my Life Eternal in the last 
 analysis? Not Himself, the blessed Worker 
 and Conveyer, but my incarnate, sacrificed, and 
 
CHRIST-OUR LIFE, BY THES SPIRIT. 41 
 
 glorified Redeemer and Head. The Spirit 
 pours into me Him, to be my Eternal Life for | 
 deliverance, for victory, for peace, for service, 
 as truly as He the same Saviour is my par- 
 don and righteousness in His once-wrought 
 propitiation. 
 
 The Life-Giver is the Giver of Christ who 
 
 is our Life. 
 
 “Deep through the springs of mind and soul 
 Thee the great Comforter inspires ; 
 Thy savereign thoughts our thoughts control, 
 Thy love our love divinely fires.” 
 
 We live in a time when every fundamental of 
 the old and blessed Gospel is too often denied, 
 or disparaged, or minimized, even by commis- 
 sioned ministers of the Word, in favour of 
 something alleged to be more large, and loving 
 and living. Let us not be moved. Let us not 
 “drift away” with the stream. Let Heb. ii.:. 
 us not, for lack of taking heed, for lack, 
 above all, of taking heed in secret for our- 
 selves, go away with the multitude. John vi. 66, 67. 
 But meanwhile let our steadfastness and per- 
 sistence manifest itself never in mere negatives 
 
42 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 of rebuke or caution, but more and more in 
 the presentation of our glorious positive. In 
 the tranquil power of the Giver of light and 
 life let us evermore bring into our faith and 
 into our teaching that blessed fulness of the 
 truth as it is in Jesus which is nowhere found 
 more certainly than when we view in their 
 harmony, and use them as we view them, 
 those twin treasures of the old unique Gospel | 
 —the saving work of Him who is the one Life, 
 and the saving work of Him who is the one 
 Life-Giver. | 
 
IE als Pnlaous ele 
 
 gents far we have dealt almost exclusively 
 with the revealed truth of the Blessed 
 Spirit's personality and divine glory, only turn- 
 ing aside to remember that most sacred and 
 wonderful of all His works, His action in the 
 Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ and in 
 the Human Life of the Incarnate One. I do 
 not attempt to retrace any of these steps in the 
 present chapter. Only let me again claim for 
 that last aspect of the doctrine of the Spirit 
 the most earnest, reverent, loving attention 
 of the believer, as he “lives by faith Gal. ii. 20 
 in the Son of God.” A great wealth of spi- 
 ritual blessing surely lies ready for use, for the 
 Christian who will recollect it and use it, in 
 the truth of the Spirit’s work for, on, and in, 
 the Incarnate Lord. That work, that unspeak- 
 ably deep and precious connexion of the Spirit 
 
44 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 with the Redeemer in the work of redemp- 
 tion, is meant to throw the full light of life 
 eternal upon owyv connexion by the Spirit with 
 Christ Jesus, who is our Life. We shall recur 
 often to this side of truth in later pages; but 
 let it be kept always in view. We, every one 
 of us who believe on the name of the Son of | 
 1Cor.vixz, God, are “joined unto Him, one | 
 Spirit.” Our contact, our union, our embodi- 
 ment, is such as to be rightly described in the 
 holy Word by that surprising phrase. And 
 is not light thrown upon the phrase by the 
 remembrance that the Spirit who has given 
 us our Life, who has imparted to us Christ, 
 is indeed the Spirit of Christ, not only in the 
 inner relations of Deity, but in the blessed 
 Incarnation of our glorious Head? He who 
 is Himself thus doubly united to Christ—if I 
 may express it so—can He not indeed with 
 richest and holiest fulness pour into us Christ's 
 members the power and virtues of our Head? 
 Indeed He can. And we therefore, the 
 favoured members, will bear that fact in wonder- 
 ing and loving memory. We will cherish it in 
 our heart of hearts. We will use it in our hourly 
 
MYSTICAL UNION; A TRUTH FOR USE. 45 
 
 a a a 
 
 life. Having the Spirit, we will remember how 
 fully and truly by the Spirit we possess the 
 Son. And in weakness, in sadness, in tempta- 
 tion, under the burthening sense it may be of 
 spiritual decline, we will without delay or mis- 
 giving wse our wonderful treasure. We will 
 by the Spirit exjoy our possession of the Son, 
 not after the hour of need but in it. With 
 such a Bond to such a Head, why should we 
 for one minute walk in failure? Nay, “when 
 
 we are weak, phen are we S{cOng sassy iilastne 
 name of the Lord Jesus, and by , 6. xi. 5 
 the Spirit of our God.” * ae ake 
 
 And now to advance more directsy to the 
 study of the work of the Holy Spirit “for us 
 men and our salvation.” And do Thou, most 
 blessed Spirit of God, shine on us and in us 
 as we go! 
 
 1 | would earnestly commend to my readers Marshall's Gospel 
 Mystery of Sanctification (first published about 1680). . It is 
 very old-fashioned, and by no means light reading ; but it is 
 full of truth inestimably precious to those who seek to walk with 
 God at once in humble watchfulness and holy liberty. See 
 further p. 174. 
 
46 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 It might seem right that we should here 
 first consider His divine work in creation, in 
 the “old creation,” in ‘‘nature.” For in a large 
 range of Scripture passages, from Gen. 1. 2 
 onwards, we find Him mysteriously but dis- 
 tinctly revealed as the immediate divine Agent 
 in the making and manipulation, so to speak, 
 of material things. 
 
 But our proposed subject a 1) is the 
 Spirit's work zz vedemption, a subject which 
 indeed will give us material enough. All I 
 would do here is to call attention in a general 
 way to this Scriptural connexion of the SPIRIT 
 with the world of Matter. It is one among 
 the many suggestions in the divine Word that 
 matter has for its immediate basis the abso- 
 lutely immaterial will and power of God ; that 
 in this respect, as in others, la derniére raison 
 des choses, cest Dreu.* , And, like all those other 
 suggestions, it reminds the believer, as he rests 
 on his God for sfzrztual life and power, that 
 the whole material universe, wrought by the 
 
 1 Pascal. For a good account of pagan, apocryphal, and 
 Scriptural views of matter see the note (by. Dr F. W. Farrar) 
 on Wisdom xi. 17 in the Speaker's Commentary. 
 
THE SPIRIT AND THE SCRIPTURES. 47 
 
 Pe ee op ey mee er er 
 
 same will that saves him, is infinitely pliable 
 in its Maker's hands for the ultimate good of 
 His spiritual new creation. 
 
 Reverently leaving alone, then, this field of 
 truth I turn deliberately to another for some 
 brief but earnest recollections and suggestions. 
 That other field is the work of the Holy Spirit 
 in relation to the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 I hardly need say that I am aware of the 
 present gravity of that subject, and of the 
 extreme difficulty of speaking upon it to edifi- 
 cation amidst the unsettlement, and indeed 
 tumult, of present speculations and negations. 
 But it may be both possible and helpful to take 
 it up in this chapter along a line single, in a 
 sense simple, and yet all-important. We will 
 adhere strictly to the terms of our great subject 
 —the Holy Spirit's work in relation to the 
 Scriptures. It appears to me that many widely 
 prevalent present views of the nature and func- 
 tion of the written Word, however much truth 
 of detail may enter into their formation, err 
 in their ensemble by their deeply humanitarian, 
 naturalistic character. Taking up the perfectly 
 true position that human agency and natural 
 
48 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 process are largely present as factors in the 
 production of Scripture, many an able theorist 
 declines, or however fails, to see that never- 
 theless the resultant of the factors of pro- 
 duction is not humanitarian, nor naturalistic, 
 but the divine Word, the supernatural Oracle. 
 All this failure is the effect far less of a 
 patient and inductive study of the phenomena 
 than of the general influence of the modern 
 tendency to simplify and unify phenomena 
 under laws as general as possible. It comes 
 not a little of an instinctive wish to see a 
 likeness, a homogeneity, and ultimately a one- 
 ness, under all spiritual operations and expe- 
 riences. And so the “inspiration” of Prophet 
 and Apostle is classified as the same in genus, 
 and even in sfecies, as the “ inspiration © of the 
 Christian believer of our day in his walk of faith 
 and obedience; as,a development—in some 
 respects very high, no doubt, but still only a 
 development—of the general “ consciousness ” 
 of the Church and its members. Isaiah, or the 
 Isaiahs, and St Paul, were inspired undoubt- 
 edly; but so, and in essentially the same 
 way, were Augustine and Anselm, Tauler and 
 
IS THE BIBLE SAS“ ANOTHER BOOK” P': 49 
 
 Savonarola, Luther and Bunyan, Oberlin and 
 Elizabeth Fry, nay Plato and Virgil, Shake- 
 speare and Wordsworth, nay the earnest 
 explorer of the structure and processes of 
 material nature, or of the human spirit, or of 
 the written products of that spirit, in whatever 
 region, “secular” or “sacred,” human or 
 divine. To all Christian minds and lives, in- 
 deed to all grave and elevated minds and lives, 
 Christian or not, some fragments of eternal 
 verities have been somehow disclosed. These 
 they have rendered into word, or act, or both, 
 not always exactly, not always truly, perhaps 
 not always even truthfully, but still so as to 
 give some hints and ‘broken lights” of the 
 eternal archetype and original. To the devout 
 men who produced the Biblical Literature such 
 disclosures were made in a very remarkable 
 degree, and Scripture accordingly gives us 
 hints of archetypal and eternal truths in a 
 very remarkable way. But to them, as to 
 others, those hints were conveyed only 
 naturally, through their moral nature, through 
 experience and reflexion. And so in order to 
 gather up these hints given in the Bible we 
 
 A 
 
50 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 have to 
 “look 
 
 Wisely upon it, as another book.” 1 
 
 We have to get the gold of eternal Truth out 
 of the rock of an indefinite amount of human 
 prejudice, mistake, and partial points of view on 
 the part of the human reporters of the truth. 
 We are to expect more gold, no doubt, from quar- 
 rying the Psalms, and the Gospels, and the Epis- 
 tles than from quarrying the Pedo, or the 
 Divina Commedia, or the Pelgrim’s Progress. 
 But we dig our shaft and sift our diggings in 
 precisely the same way in all the cases. 
 
 I-am very well aware with what mental 
 energy and skill, and along with what a range 
 and depth of various knowledge, such theories 
 
 eC ee a eS a 
 
 1 «* And now,’ he cried, ‘I shall be pleased to get 
 ‘Beyond the Bible—there I puzzle yet.’ 
 
 “He spoke abash’d—' Nay, nay!’ the friend replied, 
 ‘You need not lay the good old book aside ; 
 ‘ Antique and curious, I myself indeed 
 ‘Read it at times, but as a man should read; 
 ‘A fine old work it is, and I protest 
 ‘I hate to hear it treated as a jest; 
 ‘The book has wisdom in it, if you look 
 ‘Wisely upon it, as another book.’” 
 CRABBE, Zale xxi., The Learned Boy. 
 
ITS WITNESS TO: LTTSELP; 5! 
 
 in many instances have been constructed and 
 propagated—lI hardly need say now “defended,” 
 so vast a currency have they obtained. Com- 
 paratively few and far between are the modern 
 literary theologians who quite definitely and 
 unmistakably hold that the Holy Scriptures are 
 truly and properly saz generis among books as 
 being (as well as containing) the Word of God, 
 and as carrying in a way quite of their own 
 that precious. thing, Divine AutTHority. But 
 I also recollect that in many a past period and 
 crisis the deep tide of intellectual conscious- 
 ness has taken directions which, on the whole, 
 needed afterwards to be reversed, on a fuller 
 discovery or more calm and reverent review of 
 great facts which had remained all the while 
 unaltered. And I humbly believe that the day 
 will come when the intellectual consciousness 
 of Biblical scientific students as a class will be 
 vastly more alive than it is now to the super- 
 human and authoritative aspect of the Holy 
 Bible and to the immense significance of that 
 aspect. And such a change of general mental 
 
 1 Some weighty words on this subject will be found in Bp 
 Ellicott’s recent little volume, Salutary Doctrine. 
 
52 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Ce ee ee eee —— 
 
 attitude will vastly modify many present theories 
 about the construction of the Bible, theories 
 built much less than is sometimes thought upon 
 the whole facts. 
 
 What I attempt to do here is simply to recall 
 my reader’s attention earnestly, gravely, and 
 with deep conviction to the witness which 
 the Holy Scripture bears to its own unique 
 character among books as the Book whose 
 Author is none other than the Third Person of 
 the Blessed Trinity. And need I say that this 
 is no argument in a circle? I ask the Bible 
 to witness to the Bible; but I ask the Bible as 
 literature, as history, to witness to the Bible 
 as revelation, oracular, authoritative, divine. As 
 history, capable of verification, it shows me Jesus 
 Christ, God and Man, living, dying, rising, 
 proving Himself to be profoundly, ultimately, 
 trustworthy. But this Jesus Christ, as presented 
 in the same historical mirror, is seen laying one 
 hand upon the Prophets and the other upon the 
 Apostles, and bidding His followers regard with 
 an altogether unique attention their uttered 
 messages. And I attend accordingly to those 
 messages. And in them I find disclosures and 
 
MODES OF INSPIRATION. 53 
 
 EE De EE renee aaa 
 
 ‘ntimations as to the quality and authority of the 
 Biblical writings as the oracles of God which, 
 if words have meaning, put those writings—as to 
 their total character—on a level different in kind 
 from all other literature. I find nothing to 
 forbid me to ask, with deep reverence, whether 
 human personality and natural process were 
 not factors to the product ; and I assuredly find 
 that they were. But I find it emphasized with 
 vastly greater earnestness and fulness that so 
 did the other factor of ultimate divine Author- 
 ship govern and manipulate the lower factor 
 that the true Designer and Architect of the 
 Book has Aad His way all along, in the total 
 and in the details too. 
 
 I find nothing to enable me to define, in any 
 full or exhaustive way most certainly, the mode 
 of the supreme Author's management of the 
 subordinate authors. I find nothing to tell me 
 “what it felt like to be inspired.” In many 
 and many a case, | can well believe, it “felt 
 -like”—nothing ; nothing distinguishable from 
 other things. I can well believe that when 
 St Paul wrote to Philemon he “felt” nothing 
 supernatural, any more than when Luther wrote 
 
54 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 to Melanchthon, or Newton to Cowper. J ao 
 not say that 7t was so; but it may have been 
 so, for all that we are told. On the other hand 
 I not only can believe, but am sure, that Daniel 
 and St John received their revelations in a state 
 manifestly and entirely abnormal, as Abraham 
 and Moses on certain occasions had done before 
 them ; unless we are to put quietly aside the 
 profoundly solemn assertions to this effect made 
 in Scripture as if they were so much poetical 
 and imaginative excrescence, or framework, 
 because there is so little in human experience 
 outside Scripture, outside this Record of the di- 
 vine Redemption of fallen man, to verify them. 
 Yes, it is impossible to define or describe. 
 Scriptural inspiration as a subjective experience. 
 The mode, as to any general account of it, is 
 unknown. “Our theory is not to have a 
 theory.” But I do find abundant testimony 
 on the historic surface of the New Testament 
 Scriptures for the strong and unalterable con- 
 viction, sure as the historical reality of Jesus 
 Christ our Lord, that a humanitarian, natural- 
 istic view of Scripture is wholly and gravely 
 inadequate to meet the mysterious facts. 
 
TESTIMONY OF CHRIST. 55 
 
 I find our Lord and Master Himself handling 
 the Old Testament Scriptures with the manner 
 of One who not only owns their general signi- 
 
 ficance but personally cherishes, I dare to say 
 reveres, their authority, even in details of 
 expression ; and I find Him doing this not only 
 in the early stages of His course but even more 
 in the latter, in the last. And I see Him doing 
 it nowhere more fully and unreservedly than 
 when He has overcome death, and Luke xxiv. 
 come back from the Unseen in the power of 
 endless life. And when, exalted into heaven, 
 He “sends” the blessed Paraclete, His own 
 promised Representative, the Spirit of Truth, | 
 find that one main result of the glorious emis- 
 sion was the incessant use by the Apostles of the 
 writings of the Prophets, in precisely the spirit, 
 no less and no more, of their Master before 
 them. 
 
 And I observe one remarkable phenomenon 
 of the whole case. I find that the Lord and 
 the Apostles make comparatively little, if I 
 may reverently say so, of the sacred wreters 
 of the Old Testament and comparatively every- 
 thing of the sacred wretings. They dwell not 
 
56 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 so much on who sazd it as on what ts written. 
 
 No grades of authority appear in their estimate. 
 What stands within the scrolls of what we 
 familiarly call the Old Testament, and what He 
 called the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, 
 is in the eyes of Jesus Christ His Father's 
 Word, whatever else it is. As such it is His 
 weapon in the Temptation, His credential on 
 the Mount of the Sermon, His mysterious 
 solace in the Garden, His death-word on the 
 Cross, His theme upon the Emmaus Road on the 
 _ Easter afternoon and in the Upper Chamber 
 where He stood that evening in His immor- 
 tality. Oh blessed road and blessed chamber ! 
 Let us often take our Bibles out with us on 
 the one, up with us to the other. We shall 
 be the less likely then to think that to “look 
 on the Bible as on another book” is to look 
 upon it “wisely,”, even from the point of 
 view of the strictest induction of truth from 
 facts. 
 
 But now all this mysterious Divinity of the. 
 
 Bible, this properly miraculous character of it, 
 this nature of it so entirely refusing to be 
 accounted for by natural process and human 
 
 —. 
 
THE SPIRIT IS THE TRUE AUTHOR. 57 
 
 consciousness, is assigned by itself not to God 
 in general only, but to the Hoty Spirit in’ 
 particular. This is our immediate concern in 
 this enquiry. The statement of the fact is 
 almost all the treatment I give to it; but what 
 a fact it is to state! 
 
 He who was the divine Agent in the blessed 
 Incarnation, He who made and sustained the 
 Manhood of the Second Adam, adjusting it 
 with infinite skill to the blessed Filial Godhead, 
 it is He who was the divine Agent in this glo- 
 rious parallel process, the construction of Scrip- 
 ture. He, the all-blessed Spirit, in that double 
 union of His with Christ of which we spoke 
 above, so managed the long antecedent march 
 of prophecy, both its substance and its phraseo- 
 logy, that Moses, whatever was the Prophet's 
 “consciousness” in writing, wrote John v. 46, 47. 
 of Christ, and ‘“‘ David in the Spirit ° Matt. xxii. 43. 
 called Him his Master, and Isaiah John xii. 39-47. 
 saw His glory and spake of Him; yes, so 
 that the risen Redeemer Himself found ‘‘ zz 
 all the Scriptures the things concerning Him- 
 self.” So did He design, mani- Luke xxiv. 27. 
 pulate, and accomplish, that ‘‘every Scripture 
 
58 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 a 
 
 hath in it the Spirit of God.” * 2Tim iii. x. 
 
 So did He fashion “the Word” that it is 
 “the Sword of the Spirit.” So did Eph. vi. x7. 
 
 He speak by the Prophets that when an apo- 
 stolic Writer quotes the words of Heb. x. 15-1. 
 
 Jeremiah he ignores, as it were, the Prophet's 
 personality, intense, tender, and profoundly 
 interesting and instructive as that particular 
 personality was. MJajortbus intentus est; he 
 is aiming deeper. He is citing the words 
 as capable of carrying authoritative, decisive 
 weight on eternal principles and facts. And 
 he sees nothing for that purpose but their 
 ultimate Authorship: ‘‘Whereof THE Hoty 
 Guost also is a Witness unto us; for after that 
 He had said before, This is the covenant that 
 I will make with them after those days, saith 
 the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, 
 and in their minds will I write them, [then said 
 He,] And their sins and their iniquities will 
 Jer. xxxi.33,34 I remember no more.” The words, 
 are, in a sense, in a true sense, Jeremiah’s. 
 
 1 The rendering, “Every Scripture inspired of God zs also 
 profitable,” is not demanded by the Greek. Compare the Greek 
 of.1 Tim. 1v.4. 
 
PRESENT IMPORTANCE OF THIS TRUTH 59 
 
 But for the Writer to the Hebrews they are 
 simply the words of the Holy Ghost. And so 
 they must be tous, let me add, if we would lean 
 the whole weight of our human need on them 
 in life and in the hour of death. Evacuate 
 Scripture of its divine authority, and you so far 
 paralyse its power for divine consolation. 
 
 I thus state something of the outline of the 
 revealed facts of this great and inestimably 
 precious work of the Holy Spirit. I well know 
 that it is but a fragment; it is but a suggestion; 
 it is, in some of its parts, little more than a 
 confession of faith, and a confession of a kind 
 not always very easy to make at the present 
 time. But such as it is I make it to my reader 
 as in the presence of our Lord and Master. 
 At this period in the history of the Church, if I 
 mistake not, it is important in the highest degree 
 to hold fast, and to hold in the foreground of 
 our convictions and our consciousness, the super- 
 natural, the miraculous, the divinely authorita- 
 tive, aspect of the Holy Scriptures, as the work 
 throughout of none other than the Holy Spirit 
 of God, the blessed Lord of truth and light. 
 
 That conviction leaves me, as I have said, 
 
60 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 free to enquire into the mode and the materials 
 of the construction of the Scriptural books 
 by their human sub-authors; but with one 
 important exception. It does not leave me 
 free, as I believe, to entertain the theory 
 that any book of the holy Canon, being as to 
 its ultimate authorship the work of the Spirit 
 of Truth, was, from the side of its human 
 authorship, a late fabrication, whose writer 
 sought to borrow an illegitimate prestige by the 
 use of a venerated name and an immemorial 
 date, other than his own.’ 
 
 In conclusion, if indeed the Holy Book is 
 thus the work and word of the Holy Spirit, 
 we have good cause to turn with humble and 
 glad expectation to that Spirit, who dwells in 
 
 1 I take occasion to direct the reader’s attention to the late 
 Lord Hatherley’s Continuity of Scripture, to the Rev. C. H. 
 Waller’s Authoritative Inspiration of Scripture, and to the Rev. 
 A. Cave’s recent Congregational Union Lectures on the /zsfz7- 
 ation of the Old Testament. See also a recent sermon by 
 Dr Liddon, Zhe Worth of the Old Testament. | 
 
 It is scarcely needful to point out that the later “editing” (1 
 use the fevmz under some protest) traceable in many passages is 
 a quite different thing from fabrication. The Book of Ecclesiastes 
 may have undergone considerable linguistic editing, and yet be 
 no fabrication. 
 
CHRVSOSTOM ON BIBLE READING. 61 
 
 Christ and in us, to open up to the inmost 
 soul as we read it the things of Christ which, 
 according to Christ, are in it everywhere. 
 
 Let me quote a few sentences from that grand 
 and “Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and 
 Knowledge of Holy Scripture,” our First 
 Homily of the First Book, and so conclude :— 
 
 “ The Scripture is full as well of low valleys, 
 plain ways, and easy for every man to use 
 and to walk in, as also of high hills and 
 mountains, which few men can climb unto. 
 And ‘whosoever giveth his mind to Holy 
 Scripture with diligent study and burning 
 desire, it cannot be,’ saith St John Chrysostom, 
 ‘that he should be left without help. For 
 either God Almighty will send him some godly 
 doctor to teach him, ... or else, if we lack 
 a learned man to instruct and teach us, yet 
 God Himself from above will give light unto 
 our minds, and teach us those things which 
 are necessary for us, and wherein we be igno- 
 rant. And in another place Chrysostom saith 
 that ‘man’s human and worldly wisdom needeth 
 not to the understanding of Scripture, but the 
 revelation of the Holy Ghost, who inspireth 
 
62 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the true meaning unto them that with humility 
 and diligence do search therefor.’ ” 
 
 ‘Here is the cause’ of all our evils,” says 
 the same Chrysostom,’ “ our not Hom. ix.in Col. 
 knowing the Scriptures.” 
 
 * Tovro mdvtwv airtoy Ty KaKOv, TO pi eidévat Tas yeadhds. This 
 is but a specimen of the language about Scripture used by the 
 Fathers of the first centuries. And yet their age was an age of 
 seething speculation and discussion. They would scarcely have 
 endorsed what has been recently said (not bya Romanist), ‘‘ The 
 Bible is the most dangerous of God’s gifts to man.” 
 
 L 
 
 * 
 ‘ 
 7 
 
WEA Ea Baa Ve 
 
 | ee previous three chapters are in some 
 
 measure introductory only. Let us pro- 
 ceed now to the more detailed study of our 
 sacred subject, by the method, at once the 
 simplest and the surest, of taking up some of 
 the great passages of Scriptural revelation and 
 discourse upon it and listening anew to their 
 message in reverent, believing meditation. 
 And as we do so we will remember that (the 
 blessed Spirit is not only the true Author of 
 the written Word but also its supreme and 
 true Expositor. ) Not all my readers know 
 the noble hymn,’ found in few modern collec- 
 tions, strange to say, in which Cowper has 
 set this forth; and I quote it accordingly in 
 full :— | 
 
 1 Olney Hymns, bk ii., No. 62. 
 
64 VENI CREATOR. 
 “The Spirit breathes upon the word, 
 And brings the truth to sight : 
 Precepts and promises afford 
 A sanctifying light. 
 
 “A glory gilds the sacred page 
 Majestic, like the sun ; 
 
 It gives a light to every age ; 
 
 It gives, but borrows none. 
 
 “The hand that gave it still supplies 
 The gracious light and heat ; 
 His truths upon the nations rise ; 
 
 They rise, but never set. 
 
 ** Let everlasting thanks be Thine, 
 For such a bright display 
 As makes a world of darkness shine 
 With beams of heavenly day. 
 
 ** My soul rejoices to pursue 
 The steps of Him I love, 
 Till glory breaks upon my view 
 In brighter worlds above.” 
 
 It is true ; we need the Author to be also, in 
 
 the inmost secret of the matter, the Expositor, — 
 
 the Interpreter. Then will the Written Word 
 shine, like the Living Word, with the light as 
 of a transfiguration, its countenance and its 
 garments also, Then shall we trace all through 
 the holy pages “the steps of Him we love,” of 
 
HOW DOES THE SPIRIT INTERPRET? 65 
 
 SS 
 
 Him who has Himself assured us tute xxiv. 5 
 that they are to be found there, —_Joun v.39. 
 
 It may be well here, however, to say one 
 word of caution as to the use made by the 
 Christian of this truth of the Spirit’s expository 
 work. Zow may we expect Him normally to 
 exercise for us this merciful function ? Is it by 
 direct illumination, such that this text or that 
 passage shall be seen by the soul, in the way 
 of supernatural intuition, to mean this or that ? 
 If I am not mistaken, this impression is widely 
 spread among Christians; and I would not 
 lightly or without sympathy speak in correction 
 of it. Nevertheless it must be obvious, on 
 reflection, that to expect the Holy One to act 
 upon us in such a manner as this is to expect 
 the gift, just so far as such action goes, of 
 
 prophetic infallibility. It makes my interpre- ~ 
 
 tation, arrived at under such illumination, as 
 truly a divine revelation as the text itself, and 
 it precludes any criticism of my interpretation, 
 because it thus is, at least in essentials, the 
 interpretation of God. When I hear or read, 
 as I sometimes do, that a Christian believer 
 speaks of this or of that as having been ‘‘shown 
 5 
 
66 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Md A a ee RETREAT TS 
 
 to him” in such and such a text, I am well 
 aware that the meaning of the phrase, as the 
 speaker intends it, may be most true, healthful, 
 and trustworthy. But it is also possible that it 
 may involve a claim, a dangerous claim, to hold 
 and teach the interpretation in question as one 
 above examination, because inspired, because 
 divinely intuitive. What then are we to think 
 of the matter? Are we, after all, to apply our- 
 selves to Scripture study without special prayer 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 and special expectation? Are we to assume | 
 
 practically that “the natural man do¢h receive 
 Sedz Cor.iisra the things of the’ Spirit of Godte 
 ” that 
 they are not, necessarily and only, “ spiritually 
 discerned” ? Shall we, after all, in face of all 
 that we recollected in the previous chapter, think 
 that to look on the Bible as on ‘another book” | 
 is to look upon it “wisely”? No; the mistake | 
 
 that they are zot “ foolishness unto him ; 
 
 of doing so is not only great but fatal in our 
 Scripture study, and we will not make it. We 
 clergy at least, in the words of our Second 
 Ordination Service, ‘‘will continually pray to 
 God the Father, through the mediation of 
 our only Saviour Jesus Christ, for the heavenly 
 
HOW DOES THE SPIRIT INTERPRET? 67 
 assistance of the Holy Ghost, that by daily 
 reading and weighing of the Scriptures we may 
 Wax riper and stronger in our ministry.” And 
 what the clergyman thus does in view of his 
 special function, the private Christian will do in 
 view of his, in view of his sacred “ministry,” 
 his “work of ministry,”! his whole Eph. iv. 12. 
 life as laid at the Lord’s feet for His use, 
 But the point is this. We shall ask, not for 
 mental infallibility, which is asking in effect 
 for a gift that has been “annulled,” — Cor. xiii, 
 but for spiritual submission, receptivity, and 
 harmony with the Spirit of God, such that 
 Our reverent inquiry into the meaning of the 
 Spirit's words may be carried on :conii 13. 
 in spiritually “dry light.” We shall pray for 
 such presence and power of the Holy One 
 within us, at the “springs of thought and will,” 
 that we may be morally ready for the least hint, 
 the tenderest suggestion, given in the blessed 
 Book, about the will and mind of the author of 
 the Book. Sucha prayer will on the one hand 
 recognize at every step our helplessness where 
 Sees oe EE a ee 
 
 1 Avaxoma: see the construction of the Greek sentence, 
 
 ——.. 
 
68 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 oS 
 
 we really are helpless. It will on the other 
 hand only quicken us in the diligent and patient 
 work of attention, and research, and comparison, 
 as we use that precious mental faculty which 
 the Lord who made us, and remade us, has 
 given us to be used as in His presence and 
 for Him. And the result will be no mere 
 prolonged uncertainty, as if we were perpetually 
 in fear lest new Scriptural evidence should 
 upset our deepest spiritual certainties. By the 
 grace of God it will be a calm and settled 
 certainty, solid yet developing, the resultant of 
 spiritual simplicity and of the genuine mental 
 discovery and acquisition which such simplicity 
 powerfully assists. It will be a certainty, as 
 to all things of salvation, practically absolute 
 to ourselves. But it will be kept clear of all 
 untenable claims to have prophetic authority 
 over others.* | 
 
 1 I may refer the student to an excellent passage on this 
 subject in an excellent book, the late Mr G. Stanley Faber’s 
 Primitive Doctrine of Justification, pp. 233, etc. (ed. 1839). 
 Mr Faber is dealing with Bishop Bull’s peculiar theory of Justi- 
 fication by Faith, a theory as to which the Bishop says that he 
 attained to a firm persuasion of its truth after earnest prayer for 
 mental illumination. 
 
THE SPIRIT IN SS. JOHN AND PAUL. 69 
 
 I have digressed at some length. And I 
 would close my digression with an appeal, all 
 the more earnest after the cautions on which | 
 have ventured, to make the closing verses of 
 1 Cor. ii., after all, one of our ruling mottoes 
 
 for all study of the Word of God. 
 
 Approaching now some of the great Scriptural 
 passages which discourse of the Holy Spirit 
 and His work, I observe that these are to be 
 found, in the main, in the writings of St John 
 and of St Paul. I propose then to take some 
 such passages from each of these Apostles in 
 turn, and to examine their witness, with a 
 special view always to the spiritual life of 
 myself and of my reader. St Paul’s writings 
 will afford us several such passages, mainly 
 from the Roman, Corinthian, Galatian, and 
 Ephesian Epistles. In St John’s Gospel we 
 have, above all things, the precious Discourse 
 of ‘the Upper Chamber, but also John xiv-xvi. 
 passages in the third, seventh, and twentieth 
 chapters. In the First Epistle we have much 
 incidental material. In the Revelation the 
 blessed Spirit appears again and again, and 
 
70 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 in connexions full of doctrinal and_ spiritual 
 teaching. 
 
 Let us take St John’s Gospel first, both 
 because it comes first in the Canon, and because 
 in it, with scarcely any exception, the teaching 
 about the Spirit comes from the very lips of 
 the Son. The passage of passages here is the 
 Paschal Discourse. But some shorter while all- | 
 important, passages precede it, which we now 
 take up, for brief but most reverent meditation 
 on their divine instruction. 
 
 The first passage, the only one I can touch 
 
 Jon iii. 8. at present, is the first part of the 
 conversation with Nicodemus. 
 
 How shall I deal with it? First, necessarily, 
 by excluding from the inquiry many extremely 
 interesting subsidiary points. I do not forget, 
 but I must not now consider, the connecting 
 “but,” or “now”, (unaccountably omitted by | 
 the Authorized Version), which links the pas- 
 sage to the statements just before. I do not 
 forget, but I must now pass by, the question 
 what precise motive brought Nicodemus to the 
 
 1 "Hy S€ dvOparos, KrX. 
 
THE SPIRIT - AND THE NEW BIRT. 71 
 
 a 
 
 Lord, and what led the Lord to speak instantly 
 to him about the 2¢mgdom and entrance into it. 
 And indeed I do not forget the weighty im- 
 portance of the passage in the study of the 
 doctrine of Christian Baptism, to which I cannot 
 doubt reference is made in the word Johniii.s. 
 
 “water,” though I know that much has been 
 thoughtfully said on the other side. But I do 
 not dwell upon this now. Not that I undervalue 
 the momentousness of the question raised; not 
 that I regard the divine Sacrament with feelings 
 other than humble reverence and thankfulness. 
 But I believe that the passage contains elements 
 of truth which have usually received far less 
 attention, certainly in current thought in the 
 Church at large, than the baptismal reference 
 has received, and which yet have the most 
 important bearing on that reference, such that 
 they should help to interpret it rather than it 
 claim to explain them. And these elements I 
 find above all in ver. 8: “The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
 thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, 
 and whither it goeth; so is every one that is 
 born of the Spirit.” “Ye must be born again.” 
 
72 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Take this sacred utterance up in detail. 
 
 I. “ Born of the Spirit.” Read the phrase : 
 as if new, as if in a recently discovered docu- 
 ment of the first century. How powerful the 
 term is, how profound! The word is not merely 
 altered, influenced, reformed, reinvigorated. 
 It is born, born again, born from above, touched 
 with a dcogeneszs which is indeed the impartation 
 of a higher order of life,! for it is Life Eternal. 
 The man is taken back to a new beginning, set 
 going again under new provisions and conditions 
 of life, stamped with a new spiritual impression,” 
 the living family likeness of the sons of God. 
 Would we estimate the weight and fulness of 
 what is meant by this wonderful phrase ? Then 
 let us take the New Testament, and examine 
 Eg. Rom. vill, again, under the Spirit’s illumination | 
 ete. on our spirits, all the many passages | 
 where “childhood” and “sonship” of the | 
 a OS ee 
 1 Readers of Natural Law in the Spiritual World will 
 recognize my allusion to the first chapter of that book, I cannot 
 go with all Professor Drummond’s contentions in the book, 
 believing that he not seldom sees identities where analogies 
 would be a truer word. But the lessons and suggestions of the 
 
 first chapter seem to me very valuable indeed. 
 ? Xapaxrnp. 
 
BOLI CORt(LAL * ShIARL LY 73 
 
 spiritual kind are spoken of; the places which 
 direct us how to know the “children of God,” 
 what are their notes and marks, what are 
 their characteristic thoughts of God, of Christ, 
 of the brethren of Christ, what, in short, they 
 are, and what they do, as “the sons and 
 daughters of the Lord Almighty.” 2Cor. vi.zs. 
 “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the 
 world;” ‘“‘As many as are led by the Spirit 
 of God, they are the sons of God;” “ Behold, 
 what manner of love, that we should be called 
 the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth 
 us not, because it knew Him not.” These are 
 celestial words, penetrating and searching the 
 soul. Well may St Augustine say,’ “ Let all 
 sign themselves with the Cross, let all say the 
 Amen and the Hallelujah, let all be baptized, 
 let all enter the church doors; the children of 
 God are distinguished from the children of the 
 devil only by love. They who have love are 
 born of God; they who have not love are 
 TOisase 
 
 1 On 1 John v. 7. 
 * I venture to refer the reader to a little treatise of my own, 
 Lhe New Birth. 
 
74 VENI CREATOR. 
 SE a a Lee arta ene ta le “oe tr 
 
 2. “Born of THE Spirit.” To Him, the 
 blessed Third Person, the sacred Subject of our 
 studies, the Lord Jesus Christ here assigns the 
 immediate agency in the New Birth. He takes 
 in hand the man, and deals with him in regyener- 
 ating efficacy. He conveys to him the eternal 
 life whose secret and at the same time whose 
 manifestation is love generated of the love of 
 
 God. He ploughs the ground of the soul, , 
 
 convincing it of sin, righteousness, and judg- 
 ment. He inserts the vivifying seed, so that 
 *Pet.i23, the man is “born again by the word 
 of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.” 
 Rom.v.s. He ‘* pours out the love of God in 
 the heart.” He both gives the child-state and 
 Rom. viii.zs, teaches the new-born man to under- 
 ide yo SStanidshit nto cry ‘“ Abba Father,” 
 “the Abba, that prayer of faith alone,’ to 
 the Eternal and Invisible. 
 
 3. “So is every one that is born of the 
 Spirit.” We come last to the first word of 
 this divine sentence : “So.” Of the « men,” of 
 the human beings, thus born again, born of the 
 
 1 Paul Gerhardt’s Song in the Day of the East Wind. 
 
 ts ee an 
 
SZCRECY OF THE PROCESS. 75 
 
 rrr a a 
 
 Spirit, a certain something is universally, is at 
 the very least normally, true ; true not of some 
 of them, not of a kind or class among them, 
 but of “every one.” Ovdrws éori was 6 yeyevn- 
 pévos €k TOU Ivevparos. 
 
 The reference of “so” is clear, is unmis- 
 takable.. The Lord has just used a familiar 
 but vivid illustration, as was His wont. He 
 has spoken of the breath of air, the “ spirit” 
 of material nature, of its mystery and of its 
 evidence. In certain of its phenomena He 
 sees the counterpart of the case of ‘every one 
 that is born of the Spirit.” 
 
 And this in three main respects, which I 
 briefly indicate, though perhaps there is slight 
 need that I should do so. 
 
 First, there is in the two cases an analogous 
 secrecy of process. The breathing atmosphere 
 fans my forehead, plays in the tree above me, 
 whispers in the grass and rushes of the river- 
 side below me. It is in itself meanwhile an 
 infinitely delicate and quite invisible wave or 
 current in the airy ocean; and all the combined 
 observation and inference of mankind could 
 not tell—certainly I could not tell—where that 
 
76 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 wave in the pure deep began and where it 
 will sink into repose again. ‘So is every one 
 that is born of the Spirit ;” the process is mys- 
 terious.. The man receives a divine power 
 upon him, within him. He is alive unto God, 
 knowing Him, loving Him, lovingly bent upon 
 pleasing Him “as His own son that serveth 
 Mal. iii.x7- Fim.” And he knows that he did not | 
 originate for himself this condition ; he did not. 
 beget and bear himself again to fae hope, to 
 loving life. Perhaps he knows definitely when, 
 in some day or hour of mercy, he was awakened, 
 convinced, enlightened, enabled to give himself 
 to God. But this is but part of the secret, 
 one mighty symptom of the process. He does | 
 not know when and how the holy work really 
 began, how long the Spirit, who brought him 
 to the New Birth at last, who was, in Hooker’s 
 words ‘thus effectual in the secret work of 
 regeneration unto newness of life,” had been 
 preparing for that bright hour, by secret plead- 
 ings, by unnoticed providences, by even slighted 
 means of grace—slighted, yet leaving some 
 
 1 Serm ¢@. on Jude 17-21. 
 
SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PROCESS. 77 
 
 mark on thought and will. He may know 
 when the wind manifestly swayed him ; he does 
 not know whence and how it came on its holy 
 path. And truly he knows not whither it 
 goeth ; “it doth not yet appear what : John iii. 2 
 he shall be.” 
 
 Secondly, the air-wave illustrates the mystery 
 of the New Birth by its zzdependence as regards | 
 the will of man. Putting aside exceptions 
 which are altogether trivial, the streams of the 
 vast atmospheric ocean do indeed not obey the 
 will of man. He cannot originate, he cannot 
 steer for one mile, for one yard, the broad 
 current either of the zephyr of the summer 
 evening or of ‘‘the storm that wrecks the 
 winter sky.” From his point of view “it 
 bloweth where it listeth.” Even so the Spirit 
 ‘distributeth,” divideth, giveth, moveth, ‘as 
 He will.” The sons of God are :Cor xii: 
 “born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
 will of man (avyp), but of God.” It Jobni ss. 
 is a truth never meant to discourage, to repel, ; 
 to bewilder ; for this sovereignty of will is the 
 sovereignty of Him whose ‘fruit is Gal.v. 22. 
 love, joy, peace,” of Him concerning whom it is 
 
78 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 written, “‘ Your heavenly Father shall give His 
 Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” But it is 
 Luke xi.z3. a truth meant to humble, meant to 
 keep us low indeed before the eternal Will. 
 Thirdly, the New Birth is illustrated by the 
 action of the wind in respect of evidence given 
 iz results. Here is one plain point in our 
 blessed Lord’s parable, all-important, yet often 
 overlooked. The wave of air, in its origin, 
 course, and issues, is mysterious, invisible, unde- 
 finable ; but its presence around me and in my 
 surroundings is to be known by practical re- 
 sults, and by them alone: “Thou hearest the 
 sound, the voice.” The trees of the wood, the 
 waters of the mountain lake, you “hear the 
 wind” in them and on them; and thus you 
 ascertain its presence there. ‘So is every one 
 that is born of the Spirit;” every one. The 
 divinely mysterious process produces known 
 and observable effects : and its presence, its 
 presence not in the abstract but here or there, 
 is to be verified by them, and by them alone. 
 Regeneration, the coming to be one of the chil- 
 dren of God, in Augustine’s sense of that term, 
 in John the Apostle’s sense, in the Lord’s sense, 
 
EVIDENCE OF RESULTS. 79 
 
 is indeed a “secret thing” in itself; but. its 
 evidences are practical and plain. The Spirit is 
 eternal, divine; but where He effectually works 
 the New Birth, there, in one degree or another, 
 so says the Lord here, you will hear the sound, 
 you will trace results. And what zs the sound 
 of the heavenly Wind in the being, in the life? 
 It consists of things which indeed belong to, 
 though they are not the creatures of, the 
 circumstances of the common day: “‘love, joy, 
 peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith- 
 fulness, meekness, self-control.” It Gal.v. 22, 23. 
 consists, in fact, of love, love in distribution, 
 heaven-given love to God and to man in God. 
 It will be obvious that these remarks have 
 much to do, supposing them to be true, with 
 our interpretation of the function of the blessed 
 Sacrament of Baptism, and in particular of the 
 language of our own baptismal ritual. Into the 
 deeply interesting and important questions so 
 suggested, questions Scriptural, ecclesiastical, 
 historical, questions amongst others of the 
 nature of the absolute language of ceremony 
 as against the more guarded language of bio- 
 graphy, I do not enter here, for I think they 
 
80 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 are not in place in these meditations... Only it 
 is right that I should say for my own part that 
 not one word above written has been written 
 in forgetfulness of my obligations as a presbyter 
 of the English Church, or with faltering con- 
 victions as to the rightness of the language of 
 its sacramental ritual. All the more earnestly 
 would I say, and not least to my brethren 
 in the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, 
 Let nothing, absolutely nothing, be allowed to 
 obscure our sense of the unutterable moral 
 weight of our Redeemer’s words in this great 
 passage of St John: ‘“ Ye must be born again. 
 So is every one that is born of the Spirit.” 
 
 William Beveridge, Bishop of St Asaph 
 (1704—1708), was no half-hearted Churchman. 
 Among our elder divines few use language 
 about the holy Sacraments more reverent, | 
 might say more rapturous, than his. Let me 
 close then with a brief extract from his seventy- 
 third printed sermon’: “‘ Chrest’s Resurrection 
 the Cause of our Regeneration :”— 
 
 3 
 1 I venture to refer to my Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 
 
 p. 249, etc. 
 2 Works, ed. 1824, vol. iv., p. 240, 
 
BEVERIDGE ON REGENERATION. 81 
 
 ‘By your care and pains about the things of 
 this world you may perhaps get something in 
 it, and perhaps not, and how much so ever it 
 be, it is nothing at all in comparison of what 
 the children of God all have; ‘all things are 
 theirs,’ all things that God hath made, and He 
 Himself too that made them. And what can 
 they desire more ?. There is nothing more for 
 them to desire; and therefore their minds must 
 needs be at rest, and their souls as full as they 
 can hold of all true joy and comfort. 
 
 “Who then would not be in the number 
 of these blessed souls? Who would not be 
 regenerate,-and made a child of God, if he 
 might ? And who may not, if he will? Blessed 
 be God, we are all as yet capable of it, for now 
 that Christ is risen from the dead and exalted 
 at the right hand of God, to be a Prince and a 
 Saviour, to give repentance and forgiveness of 
 sins, if we do but apply ourselves to Him and 
 believe and trust on Him for it, His Father 
 will be ours too; He will beget us again in His © 
 own likeness, and admit us into the glorious 
 liberty of His own children.” 
 
Gia bale im iee Ne 
 
 Gus last thoughts were given to the work 
 
 of the Holy Spirit as He effects the New 
 Birth. We considered Him as He deals with 
 Eph.ii.r. man “dead’in trespasses and sins,” 
 and brings him into that wonderful ‘“ newness 
 Rom, vis 4 of life,” in= which “Shenceforth mene 
 Rom. vill. 15. ig to “walk by the Spirit,” pos- 
 sessing “the Spirit of adoption, in whom we 
 
 Clyne Dba, ater 
 
 “Our quicken’d souls awake and rise 
 From the long sleep of death ; 
 On heavenly things we fix our eyes, 
 And praise employs our breath.” 
 
 In the present chapter I ask my reader to 
 take a step in some sense backward. In 
 studying the work of Regeneration we also 
 studied, by reason of the spiritual connexion 
 of the two things, some of the phenomena of 
 
CONVERSION. 83 
 
 Conversion; that wonderful turning about of 
 the inward man which corresponds as nearly as 
 possible in its idea to the great Scripture word 
 Repentance. For let it never be forgotten 
 that Repentance means more, very much more, 
 than regret, or even remorse, or even “godly 
 sorrow.” 2 It is a deep, decisive alteration in 
 the attitude of the soul towards God, and His 
 glory, and His claim, and His salvation. ‘The 
 sinner that repenteth” is the sinner Luke xv. 710. 
 
 that is converted, turned back, brought back 
 from loss to salvation, from the wilderness to 
 the fold, from the far-off land to the Father's 
 home. . 
 
 This however is by the way. I was recalling 
 the fact that we have already considered some 
 of the main phenomena of that blessed change 
 which is as to its divine secret and agency 
 New Birth, and as to its human experience 
 Conversion. ) And thus we take in some sort 
 a step backward to consider now the great 
 initial step of that work as wrought by the 
 
 1 Meradvoua. 
 2 See 2 Cor. vii. 10 for clear proof of this, in a passage full of 
 jnstruction on the matter. 
 
a4 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 | 
 
 Spirit, whether for the world or the soul, that | 
 step which is called Conviction of Sin. ‘This © 
 
 line of inquiry, however, will not be retrograde 
 in any unreasonable way. Not seldom a great 
 subject is best studied first by a brief view of 
 its whole, and then by closer attention to its 
 parts. In this chapter and in some subsequent 
 pages we will deal thus with the decisive work 
 of our blessed Life-Giver, looking for His 
 merciful light. 
 
 The Scripture which puts prominently for- 
 ward the convincing work of the Holy Spirit 
 is, I hardly need say, John xvi. 8-11 ; part of 
 that divine Discourse to which we owe, as we 
 have remembered already, our central revela- 
 tions about the blessed Spirit’s Personality, and 
 about very much of His work. The wording 
 of this particular passage calls of course for 
 most careful study. And so I would not fail 
 to notice two leading features of it; first, that 
 
 it speaks of the Spirit's convincing work as | 
 
 done in and on “the world,” distinguished from 
 the disciples of Jesus ; secondly, that it connects 
 that work in the closest way with the Lord 
 
CONVICTION OF THE WORLD. 85 
 
 Jesus Christ Himself :—“ because they believe 
 not on Me;” “because I go to My Father.’ 
 Nor do I forget that “conviction of szz” is 
 only one of three convictions spoken of in the 
 passage ; I do not lose sight of the “ righteous- 
 ness” and the “judgment.” But on this latter 
 point it will appear, I think, as we go on that 
 so close is the relation of the two latter con- | 
 victions to the first, and that they are in some 
 respects so subordinated to the first, that we 
 may venture lawfully to group the whole work 
 under the title of Conviction of Sin. 
 
 Now first a few words on the reference o1 
 this great work to “¢he world,” that is to the 
 mass of unregenerate humanity. It has been 
 thought by some interpreters that this mentiun 
 of the world excludes from the. passage a dis- 
 tinct reference to the Spirit’s saving operation 
 in individual souls. And so the point and 
 bearing of the Saviour’s sentences here has 
 been supposed to be directed towards what | 
 may call Audlic human opinion about Christ’s 
 character and work, and about the momentous 
 _awfulness of szz, as the great contradiction to 
 righteousness (now glorified in Christ), and as 
 
86 VENI CREATOR. ~ 
 
 the sure subject of coming judgnient to be 
 exercised by Christ, who has already given 
 earnest of His final exercise of judgeship in 
 His victory over the world’s Prince. In this 
 view we are to look for the fulfilment and 
 explanation of the words in such great phe- 
 nomena as, for instance, the awe which fel] 
 upon the Jews as a nation when the Pentecostal 
 effusion came and the Gospel work began ; 
 an awe indicated in one way or another all 
 through the Acts. Or again, to take a yet 
 larger example, we may look for the fulfilment 
 in that greatly deepened sense (for such it is) 
 of the shame of wrong, and the glory of 
 righteousness, and the depth and solemnity of 
 coming retribution, which has pervaded man- 
 kind as a mass wherever Christianity has been, 
 even inadequately, proclaimed. And certainly 
 this is one of the greatest facts of human 
 history, however it is explained. And to the 
 believer no explanation of it will be adequate 
 which does not connect it with the work of the 
 Holy Spirit upon the human conscience, as He 
 makes the human soul able to interpret to 
 itself, however dimly, the moral and spiritual 
 
CONVICTION OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 87 
 
 significance of the Person, Character, and Sacri- 
 fice of Jesus Christ. And it is perfectly true 
 that such public, general, universal conviction — 
 may, and alas continually does, fall quite short 
 in individuals of the conviction which “‘worketh 
 repentance unto salvation ;” and that therefore 
 it may be studied as a work which moves out 
 side the inner circles of the Spirit’s saving 
 action upon souls; as a work emphatically in 
 “the world.” 
 
 But all this says only, at most, that the 
 words of our Master in John xvi. do, or may, 
 refer to a so to speak indefinite and diffused 
 operation of the Spirit, but it does not say 
 that they do not also, and in a special and 
 central degree, refer to His inner circles of 
 effectual blessing. For surely wherever that 
 effectual blessing takes place, wherever a soul 
 in its mysterious individual personality is awak- 
 ened from the sleep of sin and born of the 
 Spirit, it is a case in which a member of ‘the 
 world” has been dealt with, in the world, to 
 be brought out of the world. It is a case in 
 which the blessed Agent, like Him whom He 
 glorifies, has gone into the outer wilderness. 
 
&8 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 and has led from it a rescued wanderer, lately 
 dead in sins, blinded by the god of this world, 
 Eph.ii.2,  “‘ walking according to its course.” 
 In this new convert, whether from open 
 heathenism, or heresy, or infidelity, or from 
 a profession of the blessed Faith which is in 
 name only, we find just the general facts of 
 “the world” individualized. Just that which, 
 in a sense less definite and intense, is done 
 by the Spirit for the world as world, is done 
 by the same Spirit in a sense most definite, 
 most effectual, for this member of the world 
 as individual will and soul. He has brought 
 the man to “conviction of sin, righteousness, 
 and judgment,” in the light of Christ. 
 
 And it is manifest, by the way, that the 
 large, wide, work of conviction in the sphere 
 of general opinion is done in no small measure 
 through these isolated occurrences, these deep, 
 individual convictions of sin. So it has been 
 from the beginning. The thousands of defi- 
 nite convictions, repentances, and baptisms at 
 Pentecost, were a mighty means for diffusing 
 through the Jewish public mind an impression 
 about Christ and the Gospel far short indeed 
 
LHE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD. 89 
 
 in itself of regeneration and salvation, yet incal- 
 culably precious and important. And so it is 
 to this day. Nothing can more powerfully 
 contribute to keep up, and to raise up, ‘‘the 
 world’s” public consciousness of sin, righteous- 
 ness, and judgment than the presence in it, as 
 salt-grains in the mass, of individuals intensely 
 and savingly convinced of those three things 
 for themselves, in the light of immediate deal- 
 ings for themselves with God in Christ. And 
 nothing would so fatally lower “the world’s” 
 public moral and quasi-Christian consciousness 
 as that such individual convictions, such per- 
 sonally convinced ones, should become few and 
 fewer, till religion itself should be dissociated 
 in common opinion from the very ideas con- 
 veyed by the words, “JZ have: sinned against 
 the Lord ;” ‘What must J do to be saved a 
 So without misgiving I take these words of 
 the Lord Jesus, and see in them His assurance 
 that the Holy Spirit, in the Gospel Age, and as 
 the divine Messenger to souls, and Illuminator 
 of souls, about Himself the Saviour, should 
 convince the individual unregenerate heart, in 
 merciful speciality, of sin, and righteousness, and 
 
go VE IVINC Rae Oa 
 
 judgment. He should ‘‘open” it to “attend to” 
 
 Actsxvi.r4. itS unspeakable zeed of Christ; and 
 to the szz against the love of God, and against 
 itself, of indifference or refusal in presence 
 of a manifested Christ; and to the awful 
 glory of vzghteousness, the eternal antithesis to 
 all trangression of the law, a glory now trans- 
 cendently displayed in the exaltation of the 
 crucified Christ Jesus to the heavens; and to 
 the ineffable rightness, certainty, and eternity 
 of the zudiczal ruin of sin and all that sides 
 with sin—a ruin already in effect accomplished 
 by the personal triumph of the Son of God 
 over His mysterious personal Antagonist, the 
 world’s prince and god. So, according to this 
 passage, should the Spirit of truth, holiness, 
 and love, deal with the individual. Such 
 should be the personal conviction of sin, right- 
 eousness, and judgment, under His operating 
 hand. In a way that should make use of cll 
 the moral faculties of the man, and yet should 
 work from infinitely above them, and penetrate 
 if it be possible beneath them, He should bring 
 the inner eyes to see something of the realities 
 
 of this great matter, so that the man should 
 
 ) 
 
LS THIS THE READER'S EXPERIENCE ? QI 
 
 ee 
 
 say with the voice of his inmost bemoan a] 
 have sinned against the Lord and His glorious 
 Christ ; what must I do?” 
 
 May I make bold to turn to my reader, and 
 laying aside the tone of mere enquiry and dis- 
 cussion, speak to him as to a brother man reat 
 venture to ask you, does this brief, fragmentary 
 indication of the Spirit’s sin-convincing work 
 correspond in any degree to your consciousness, 
 to your experience? Ah, surely it does. For 
 indeed such things have been taking place in 
 souls ever since the day when at the great 
 Effusion, azd as tts very first result, three 
 thousand human individuals “were pricked in 
 their heart, and said, Men and brethren, what 
 shall’'we do?” . Paul was convinced. actett. 37. 
 of sin, and so was the Philippian. Jailer, and so 
 was Augustine, and so was Luther, and so were 
 Hooker, and Pascal, and Bunyan, and Brainerd, 
 and Wesley, and Simeon, and Chalmers, — 
 strange collocation of names, men in almost 
 every respect dissimilar, but alike in this com- 
 -mon characteristic of conviction of sin. And 
 who shall count the examples of the same work, 
 
92 VENT CREATOR. 
 
 here and now, in our time, in our land, in every 
 land where the Gospel of the Son of God has 
 found its way? No law of sex, or age, or tem- 
 perament, or circumstances, can be traced in the 
 matter; no law but that “of the Spirit of life in 
 Rom. vii. 2. Christ Jesus.” This convicting whisper 
 and unveiling finds its way to the youngest and 
 to the most aged conscience, to the miserable 
 and to the happy in external conditions, to the 
 savage and to the scholar, to the profligate and _ 
 to the man who on every standard short of that 
 of God in Christ is, as Saul of Tarsus was, 
 sincerely moral. So I count it altogether likely 
 that my reader is one who can “‘set to his seal” 
 that the doctrine of individual conviction of sin 
 by the Holy Spirit is true, is true for him. I 
 do not know, I cannot guess, how it has come 
 to him; the manner, and method, and occasion. 
 Perhaps, as a matter of biography, it has come 
 not in the first pages of his Christian experi- 
 ence, but later. So Zinzendorf, whose con- 
 version came in the first phase of it through an 
 overpowering insight into the love and loveli- 
 ness of his Redeemer,’ was taught not till later 
 
 t See further below, p. 112. 
 
EXPERIENCES VARY-IN DETAIL. 93 
 
 ae 
 
 the depths of his need of that Redeemer's 
 sacrifice. Perhaps it has come, not as one 
 great critical occasion, one narrow while intense 
 cloud to be passed through, but rather stage by 
 stage, in intervals and developments of self- 
 discovery. Or perhaps—and indeed such cases 
 do take place-—it was really the decisive jrs¢ 
 handling of your soul, so far as you can estimate 
 such facts, by the great Regenerator. In some 
 course of open or hidden rebellion against the 
 light, or just in the midst of dull or complacent 
 indifference; in the house of God, in the 
 mission-hall, amidst many awakened ones, or 
 quite as likely in the walk on the hill-side or in 
 the street, or in your own room at college, or 
 at home; lo, the Spirit touched you into an 
 insight you had not even imagined before ot 
 sin, and righteousness, and judgment ; of the 
 necessity and the reality of Christ. And as in 
 that conviction, soon or slowly, you were led by 
 the same blessed Worker up to the point ot 
 simplest acceptance of your crucified Lord for 
 your Saviour and your King, you know how 
 the whole colour and texture of subsequent 
 faith was affected through and through by 
 
94 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the initial conviction. Everything took results 
 from it. Your insight into the wonder, glory, 
 and virtue of the Propitiation ; your submission 
 Rom.iis to the revealed ‘indignation and 
 wrath” of the righteous Judge, and your re- 
 jection for ever of the ‘vain words” which 
 try to say that that wrath is not actually 
 Eph.v.6. “coming upon the children of disobe- 
 dience;” your pity and love for souls as yet 
 entranced in the sleep from which you have 
 been awakened; all became what they could 
 not be, could not possibly be, without some 
 genuine personal experience of the Spirit's 
 convincing power, 
 
 You understood now, in the moral sense of 
 understanding, what is meant by the remark 
 that \ “ Christianity este: be proved except 
 to a bad conscience.” For “bad” you read 
 “awakened ;” 
 (The Gospel is a message not for man in the 
 abstract, but for man a sinner.) Till you saw 
 yourself to be this latter, under the Spirit's 
 convictions, the Gospel was a something for 
 which you seemed to find in yourself no true 
 receptacle, a key which did but rattle, so to 
 
 and it is indeed true for you.) 
 
CONVICTION AFFECTS THE WHOLE MAN. 95 
 
 speak, in a lock not made exactly for it. Now 
 the Spirit has spoken to your soul of sin; and- 
 with a blessed intuition you behold, and believe, 
 the divine provision for your release alike from 
 its guilt and from its power. “ Rock of Ages” is 
 a new hymn to the man who is convinced by 
 the Paraclete of sin, righteousness, and judg- 
 ment. And wonderfully now does the Bible 
 open itself to that man, and fall into order and 
 relation before him, and disclose its inner har- 
 monies in his sight. The Protevan- Gen. iii. 1s. 
 
 gelium of Genesis is no myth to him now, nor 
 are the sacrifices of the Mosaic altar an invention 
 of man. Every type and prophecy is lighted up 
 by its relation to the Cross, and in turn lights 
 up the convinced man’s apprehension of the 
 Cross in the holy details of its ever-blessed 
 significance. And precious indeed to him now 
 is every trace of apostolic doctrine which un- 
 folds the treasures of the accomplished mystery 
 of Calvary. The third chapter of the Romans, 
 and of the Galatians, and the whole teaching of 
 the Hebrews, culminating in xill. 20, 21, are 
 dear to him now with a sense of personal com- 
 panionship and intimacy. So Jesus Crucified, 
 
96 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 —- 
 
 like the celestial bow upon the cloud, is mani- 
 fested as God’s Antithesis to the manifestation 
 of the guilt of sin. And so is Jesus Risen 
 manifested, as He had not been, as He could 
 not be before, in all the glory of His finished 
 work, and His indwelling and sin-subduing 
 Presence (by the same Spirit who has thus 
 convinced the soul), and in all the warmth and 
 tPet.ii3. radiance of that “living hope” to 
 which the man is now personally and indi- 
 vidually “begotten again.” And as this richly 
 blessed penitent looks forward to the now dear 
 and happy prospect of the life to come, in the 
 peace and strength of an evidence of its reality 
 as real as it is internal, what is his anticipation? 
 He looks for a world, a life, a work, of sinless 
 bliss, of entire and positive holiness in ever- 
 lasting personal joy ; but he looks to live, love, 
 and serve there as one who will for ever rejoice 
 (wonderful paradox) to remember that “ when 
 Rom.v.8. we were sinners, Christ died for 
 us,’ and to praise the blessed Name not of 
 an abstract Deity but. of “‘Gop and of THE 
 Rev. vii. 0. [JAMB.” 
 
 Was it too bold of the medieval believers 
 
CONVICTION, THE PASTOR’S NEED. 97 
 
 to say, ‘‘O deata culpa, gue talem meruistt 
 Redemptorem,” ‘Blessed guilt, which hast 
 won such a Redeemer” ? 
 
 We need conviction for ourselves as indi- | 
 viduals, if our personal religion is to strike 
 voot downward, and so to bear fruit upward. 
 The man who knows little of conviction of sin, 
 as a genuine element in personal experience, 
 may be many good things, but I do not think 
 he can be a deep Christian. 
 
 And greatly do we pastors need this for 
 our ministry. A full, strong current of opinion 
 in the professing Church of Christ runs at the 
 present day directly against a grave, thorough- 
 going, doctrine of sin, and its correlative truths 
 of eternal judgment, and of the unspeakable 
 need of the atoning blood, and of living per- 
 sonal faith in the Crucified and Risen One, 
 “according to the Scriptures.” One would 
 think that some even earnest teachers had 
 learned, by some other path surely than that 
 of the Word of God, to look with temperate 
 eyes upon sin, as a phenomenon sure at last 
 to disappear under long processes of divine 
 Order; a discord awaiting only its musical 
 
 7 
 
98 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 resolution; a ‘fall upward,” perhaps, on to 
 some higher level of enriched consciousness. 
 
 Let no man deceive us with vain words, 
 And let us pray that our lips may never pass 
 them on. And to that intent may the Holy 
 Spirit of Promise evermore teach us, close to 
 the Cross and to the open Grave, His lessons 
 of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. 
 
 Even so. But from every other aspect of 
 the matter we must say, we must cry, the very 
 opposite of “O deata culpa.’ And we who 
 believe, and who have been convinced of sin, 
 righteousness, and judgment, must humbly and 
 persistently look to the same holy Convincer 
 who began the work that He may deepen it 
 and develop it throughout our whole lives, 
 and (let me add to my ministerial brethren) 
 throughout our whole miristry. If in. one 
 aspect the conviction of sin is the great initial 
 work of the Spirit, from another aspect it is 
 a work which we can never dare to wish Him 
 to wind up here below. Has the believer ever 
 reached the real end of self-discovery ? Has 
 he ever really seen with ultimate adequacy 
 how truly his happiest actual obedience “ cannot 
 
CONVICTION, OUR NEED TO THE LAST. 99 
 fect Aa Sha eel a a Mal ei a ta 
 endure the severity of the divine judgment” ?} 
 
 Has he ever quite fully realized his need of 
 “Christ for him” ? No, he has not. So now, 
 and to-morrow, and always, we will ask the 
 Convincer to carry on in the blessed home o: 
 Grace the lesson He mercifully began upon 
 the desert sands; to keep us alive and awake, 
 tenderly, humbly, and evermore, to sin, and 
 righteousness, and judgment, in the light, in 
 the blissful light, of Christ. 
 
 ' Article XII. See below, p. 188. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 E have endeavoured to think eut some- 
 thing of the great subject of Conviction 
 of Sin by the Spirit of God. Perhaps I should 
 rather say not to think it out, but to think it 
 in; to turn inward in view of it, and question 
 our souls, writer and reader together, about our 
 Rom. vii x3. OWn insights into the “ exceeding 
 sinfulness of sin” in the light of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 I turn now to the glorious other side of the 
 operation of the Spirit in His work of new 
 creation, re-constitution, of us sinners. I turn to 
 His dealings with us in. the way of making our 
 Lord Jesus Christ to be to us what He is given 
 to. be to such as we are—our spiritual “life, 
 and breath, and all things ;” our righteous- 
 
 rCori.3 ness, and sanctification, and redemp- 
 tion” ; our joy, our peace, our power, our hope. 
 We have seen the Heavenly Worker ploughing 
 
THE SPIRIT REVEALING CHRIST. IOI 
 
 the soil, breaking up the fallow, crushing the 
 underlying rock into dust. We see Him now 
 dropping the seed, letting fall the divine “corn 
 of wheat” into the ground. We John xii. 2. 
 
 see Him applying Christ to the sorely needing 
 soul, now conscious of its need. And we see 
 Him to this end dealing with it as the Spirit 
 of Manifestation, ‘“ revealing in it the Son of 
 God.” Gal. i. 16. 
 
 Here is indeed the Holy Spirit’s congenial, 
 beloved work. For He is the “Spirit of 
 Christ.” And in our second chapter we saw 
 how deep the indications of that phrase go; 
 how the Spirit is not only the Emissary of 
 Christ but, in the inner Life of Godhead, the 
 Stream from Him the Fountain. Wonderful 
 is the union of nature and of operation so 
 indicated ; wonderful, blissful, divinely deep 
 and tender, the union and communion of that 
 Love of the Spirit and the Son. — 
 
 Let us dwell a little on this point of truth. 
 It is possible, and it is not uncommon, so to 
 dwell on the convincing work of the Spirit as 
 to associate His action mainly with that side 
 of grace; as if His characteristic were to 
 
102 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Sa RI INNTar rims rapes eee ale Sve) DL 
 
 penetrate, to detect, to expose the soul to 
 itself, to cast it down wounded and broken. 
 But ino, itis not so.) I have strivenito lay 
 all the emphasis I can on the unspeakable 
 importance of the work of conviction. But 
 therefore I am all the more free to remind 
 my reader and brother that this is after all 
 the Spirit’s “strange work.” The Eternal 
 Neh. ix.20. Dove, the Spirit of grace, the “ Good 
 Spirit,” has for His dear and welcome function 
 the uplifting of the sweet glory of Christ to 
 the aching eyes of the contrite; the applying 
 of the soft balm of Christ to the wounds He 
 Himself has mercifully made through “soul 
 Heb. iv.x2, and spirit.” 
 
 There is a delightful little book by the late 
 venerable Dr Horatius Bonar, Zhe Gospel of 
 the Spirit's Love. It is only a tract, of less 
 than fifty pages ;1 but it is full of that 7; heology 
 of Consolation® which has few better modern 
 expositors than the deeply taught saints and 
 ia Edinburgh: A. Stevenson, North Bank Street. 2nd ed., 
 ey borrow the phrase from the title of a very valuable 
 
 historical doctrinal work by the Rev. D. C. A. Agnew. (Edin- 
 burgh: 1881.) 
 
BONAR ON THE SPIRITS LOVE. 103 
 
 thinkers trained in the thorough views of our 
 sin and ruin expounded in the Scottish Con- 
 fession, and in that adoring insight into the 
 wonder, and glory, and tenderness of the work 
 of grace which seems specially given to those 
 who have accepted the whole truth of man’s 
 ruin. I commend this little book to my reader. 
 It will press home on him on every side the 
 conviction that indeed “ Thy Spirit zs Ps. exliii. ro, 
 
 good;’’ that the Love of the Spirit, as truly as 
 that of the Son, “‘ passeth knowledge ;’’ that it is 
 a deep mistake, a fallacy which chills and blights 
 the soul’s life, to fail to recognize this; “as 
 if there were something in the Spirit which 
 repelled us, whatever there might be in Christ 
 to attract us; as if the light which the Cross 
 throws upon the love of the Spirit were not 
 quite in harmony with that which it reveals of 
 the love of Christ; as if the Spirit were not 
 always as ready with His help as is the Son” 
 (p. 21). And one passage, close to this short 
 quotation, speaks in words pregnant with truth 
 about our special subject here, His glorification 
 of Christ to us :—‘‘ The want of stable Zeace, 
 of which so many complain, may arise from 
 
104 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 imperfect views of the Spirit’s love. True, our 
 peace comes from the one work of the Substi- 
 tute upon the Cross, from the blood of the one 
 Sacrifice, from the sin-bearing of Him who has 
 made peace by the blood of the Cross. But 
 it is the Holy Spirit who glorifies Christ to us, 
 and takes the scales from our eyes. If, then, 
 we doubt His love, can we expect Him to 
 reveal the Son in our hearts?) Are we not 
 thrusting Him away, and hindering that view 
 of the peace-making which He alone can give? 
 . . . Perhaps the want of fazt#, which we often 
 mourn over, may arise from our not realizing 
 the Spirit’s love. ‘Faith’ (no doubt) ‘cometh 
 by hearing, and hearing by the word of God ;’ 
 yet it is the Holy Spirit who shines upon the 
 word ; it is He who gives the seeing eye and 
 the hearing ear. Under the pressure of unbelief 
 have we fled to Him, and appealed to His 
 love? ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine un- 
 belief, may be as aptly a cry to the Spirit as 
 to the Son of God. He helpeth our infirmities ; 
 and in the infirmity of our faith He will most 
 assuredly succour us. It is through Him that 
 we become strong in faith; and He doves to 
 
THE SPIRIT LOVES TO REVEAL CHRIST. 105 
 
 impart the needed strength. He giveth to all 
 men liberally, and upbraideth not. Yet in our 
 dealings with Him regarding faith let us 
 remember that He does not operate in some 
 mystical or miraculous way, as if imparting to 
 us a new faculty called faith ; but by taking of 
 the things of Christ and showing them to us; 
 so touching our faculties by His mighty yet 
 invisible hand, that, ere we are aware, these 
 disordered souls of ours begin to work aright, 
 and these dull eyes of ours begin to see what 
 was all along before them, but what they had 
 never perceived, ‘the excellency of the know- 
 ledge of Christ Jesus our Lord’” (pp. 23-5). 
 
 So it is the “loving Spirit” who, having con- 
 vinced us, testifies of Christ, and glorifies Christ, 
 with the heavenly skill and power of a love as 
 tender, as gentle, as it is divine. He brings 
 the soul down into self-knowledge, into a Kuzow 
 Thyself of the true sort, and then He brings it 
 up into the glorious counterpart, into the know- 
 ledge not of a “better self” but of Jesus Christ, 
 in all the fulness of what He is. And He loves 
 todo it. It is not only His eternally appointed, 
 but surely also His eternally beloved work. 
 
106 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 As we pass on let me call attention to Dr 
 Bonar’s statements quoted just above regarding 
 the Spirit's gift of faith to us, and His mode of — 
 giving. My readers well know that it has been 
 a grave question whether the Spirit, whether 
 God, does “ give” faith; whether rather faith 
 is not just that which we have to contribute of 
 our own store to the work of conversion. I am 
 indeed aware of the mysteries which connect 
 themselves with that question. But I am quite 
 sure that Scripture does nevertheless teach us 
 that a living and saving faith is as truly a gift 
 
 Actsv.3. Of God as is, for instance, “ repent- 
 ance.” I find this stated in Eph. 11. 8; a passage 
 where, if the context is attended to, the stress 
 of the argument is all in favour of explaining the 
 words “and that not of yourselves, it is the gift 
 of God,” to mean that the matter just before 
 mentioned, namely the presence of faith in the 
 saved, is the gift of God. I read the same 
 truth in the phraseology of Phil. 1. 29, where 
 alike the power to believe and the call to suffer 
 are seen as ‘the gift” given to the saints. 
 And I see it very clearly, in a yet deeper 
 and more suggestive connexion, in 2 Cor. iv. 
 
-PAITH IS THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT. 107 
 
 13, where the Apostle speaks of himself and 
 his fellow-workers as “having the same spirit 
 of faith” with the Old Testament saints. I 
 believe the word “spirit” there to refer to the 
 blessed Personal Spirit!; but that point is not 
 necessary to the present purpose. What any- 
 wise the passage intimates is that faith is not 
 of nature, but of grace. It is from above, not 
 from the resources of human nature ; it is the 
 special and supernatural gift of God. I know 
 the mystery involved, and indeed I feel it ; but 
 I entrust it to Him who, unlike me, knows the 
 whole eternal case, and will one day gloriously 
 justify those ways of grace which He calls us 
 now to trust. And so I hold, and I am sure 
 it is good to hold, that, where a man believes to 
 life eternal, it will be made plain hereafter, if 
 not now, that every link in the chain, not every 
 link except one, was “mercy from first to last,” 
 and very special mercy too. 
 
 But then on the other hand? this view of the 
 gift of faith, as Dr Bonar well puts it, does not 
 
 1 See above, p. 9. 
 * How often, in pondering the things of God, we need to Say 
 “on the other hand” | 
 
108 VENI GREATOKR. 
 
 for a moment lead us to think of faith as of an 
 alien or exotic something inserted, like a life- 
 germ from another planet, into our nature. 
 ‘Faith is trust,’ say what the Council of 
 Trent’ may. Our Lord’s use of the word wictis 
 in the Gospels proves this. Faith is trust, 
 reliance, personal confidence. And _ personal 
 confidence, self-entrustment to another, is in 
 itself a perfectly xatural exercise of the human 
 soul. What then is swperynatural, what is divine 
 gift, about it in this great instance of saving 
 faith? Why, surely, just that which can be 
 illustrated from the experiences of human life, 
 whenever anything ‘gives me confidence” in 
 another. In such a case, the fact of my need 
 being presupposed, and the fact of my con- 
 sciousness of my need—the fact, for instance, 
 of my knowing myself to be very ill—what 
 “gives me confidence” in such or such a 
 physician? The convincing manifestation to 
 
 1 In the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, c. ix. of 
 Session vi. is devoted to the “refutation” of the zzanis heretico- 
 rum fiducta; and Canon xii. of the Session anathematizes those 
 who say jidem justificantem nihil aliud esse quam fiduciam divine 
 misericoraie, peccata remittentis propter Christumt. 
 
| HOW IS FAITH “GIVEN” > 109 
 
 Saas ca tae a TN te Se Meas pe 
 
 me of his personal trustworthiness. Suppose 
 me fully conscious of my urgent need of a 
 physician, with a consciousness so strong that 
 ipso facto 1 am willing to use a physician, and 
 suppose the trustworthiness of that particular 
 man manifested to me by good proofs ; there 
 is thus and then “given” to me the gift of 
 faith in him. 
 
 Transfer this to the case of (not anyone 
 but) the awakened sinner. The Spirit has 
 convinced him of his need—deep, wide, and 
 urgent—of salvation. The Spirit now “takes 
 of the things of Christ, and shows Jonnxvi. 1. 
 them to” the soul thus prepared to behold 
 them to purpose. The Lord and Saviour, in 
 His fitness, His adequacy, His unspeakable 
 trustworthiness, stands before it. The need, 
 divinely shown, is met by the response and 
 the supply, divine and shown divinely ; and 
 the man lays his hand, sets his foot, upon the 
 Rock, because it is wanted and because it is 
 there. He entrusts himself to his manifested 
 Saviour, and is His. He believes, and it is 
 with a faith that is the gift of God: 
 
 It is important, if I understand the case at 
 
110 VENT CREATOR. 
 
 all, to remember clearly in this whole matter 
 what in it is natural and what is supernatural. 
 The natural element is the action of a human 
 soul, conscious of exceeding need, accepting 
 the perfect provision for that need, seen to be 
 such. And from this point of view it is the 
 preacher’s, and the private friend’s, blessed 
 privilege and duty to point the awakened person 
 as directly, simply, and practically as possible 
 to the facts of the Lord Jesus Christ's Person, 
 work, willingness, love. No considerations of 
 the supernatural ought for a moment to disturb 
 that action, any more than if we were concerned 
 in recommending a tried physician to a friend 
 in illness, Only to-day it has been my duty 
 and my blessing to try to deal thus with a 
 wearied and burthened mind and soul ; and my 
 steady aim was, secretly indeed to invoke the 
 Spirit's grace, but ,also to point out in the 
 simplest and most practical terms the “reason 
 x Pet. iii 1s. Of the hope that is in us;” the central 
 certainty of the Resurrection of the buried Lord 
 of Calvary, and the light (amidst whatever 
 surrounding darkness) which that one precious 
 fact sheds upon all He did, and said, and is. 
 
 = . 
 
A PERSONAL ILL USTRA TION. III 
 
 1 1G Tega ney mean oe enone ne Mae da ce 
 
 And with the effort to state the « reason of the 
 hope” it was inevitable also to bear personal 
 witness to the experienced reality of its power, 
 the experienced mercy and love of this Risen 
 Saviour, and thus to bring in the forces, so far 
 as possible, of the sympathy of soul with soul. 
 All this was, from one point of view, a natural 
 proceeding ; as natural as if I had been as- 
 serting and justifying my recommendation, on 
 grounds of common reason and experience, of 
 some médical or legal adviser of whose aid my 
 friend stood in need. But all the while I knew 
 full well that “God must give the  : Cor. iii, 
 
 increase,” God the Holy Spirit. I had a bright 
 hope that He would use my poor reasoningss and 
 witness in order to bring the soul of my friend 
 (who is very little likely ever to read these 
 words) to a Saving view of Jesus Christ ; or 
 that anywise He would somehow cause the 
 veason of the Gospel to present itself satis- 
 factorily to his mind. But well I knew that 
 there needed also, in order to that man’s 
 believing unto life eternal, a special dealing by 
 the Holy Ghost with those materials of argu- 
 ment and witness, It was needful that He, 
 
112 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 divine and personal, should speak in ways 
 in which I cannot, and no man can, to the 
 depths of that spirit about “this same Jesus ;” 
 should “testify of Him” and ‘“glo- 
 
 John xv. 26; 
 XV1. 14. 
 
 rify Him,” as no man can, to that 
 human consciousness. He must in His own 
 way make the facts more than mere facts, the 
 witness more than just credible, the Lord 
 more than an assured certainty of the past, 
 or of the unseen present; even the ineffably 
 attractive magnet, desire, repose, of this 
 burthened soul. The mystery of the Fall is 
 a fact. Man’s spirit does not of itself ‘see 
 beauty in Him that it should desire Him,” 
 (though no act of inward seeing is more 
 2 Cor. iii 17,18. absolutely reasonable,) until “the 
 Spirit of the Lord” gives that “liberty” 
 which comes along with a new grace-given 
 intuition into “the glory of God in the face 
 2Cor.iv.6. Of Jesus Christ.” 
 
 Thus, naturally at once and supernaturally, 
 the blessed Spirit ‘‘gives faith” in Jesus. Natu- 
 rally, by providing that the facts about Him, 
 and His work, and His love, shall come in 
 some genuine measure before the mental eyes. 
 
HOW IS FAITH “ GIVEN”? 113 
 ee ae as ih RG 
 
 Supernaturally, by bringing the soul, fallen 
 from that original righteousness in which it 
 was in sympathy and harmony with God, back 
 into sympathy with the blessed facts. And this 
 He does in part through His work of convic- 
 tion of sin, and in part through shedding upon 
 “the truth as it is in Jesus,” in ways Eph.iv. 2. 
 wholly of His own, a light of glory and beauty, 
 or however of reality, which “eye + Cor.ii.g30. 
 hath not seen,” but which “God revealeth by 
 His Spirit.” And so the soul sees, and the 
 man believes and comes, entrusting himself to 
 the divinely manifested Christ, and “believing, 
 hath life through His Name.” John xx, 3r. 
 It is most true that saving faith is not always 
 so given as that the order of the process of its 
 giving can be described just as above. There 
 are conversions where the process is, in a 
 certain sense, reversed. Such a cotversion 
 was that of Count Zinzendorf,! the second 
 
 at 
 
 * Since writing this passage I have examined Bishop Spangen- 
 berg’s Life of Zinzendorf (English translation, 1838), which as 
 the work of the Count’s intimate Christian friend is the best 
 authority on such a subject as this. And I do not find all the 
 statements in my text quite borne out. The narrative runs 
 thus, p. 15 :— From [F rankfort-on-the-Main] they proceeded to 
 
 8 
 
114 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 founder of the ‘“ Moravian” Church, the Uxztas 
 Fratum, with its marvellous missionary enter- 
 prises. His new birth to righteousness and God 
 was wrought, so the story runs, through the 
 sight of a picture of the Crucifixion, bearing the 
 
 Diisseldorf, where the Count’s attention was particularly attracted 
 by the excellent Ecce Homo in the picture-gallery, under which 
 was the following inscription: ‘All this I have done for thee; 
 what doest thou for Me?’ He reflected that he would scarcely 
 be able to answer this question, and besought his Saviour to 
 force him into the fellowshtp of His sufferings, if he should ever 
 be disinclined to it.” He was just nineteen at the time; and his 
 own account of his earlier years makes it plain that he both was, 
 and knew himself to be, a believer long before that time. “It 
 was my happiness early to experience a heartfelt impression of 
 the Saviour ; after this all my wishes and desires were directed 
 towards the Bridegroom of my soul, that I might live unto Him 
 who atoned for me” (p. 3). But something not wholly unlike the 
 account given in the text is alluded to in another extract (p. 4) 
 from his own words :—“ I was told [as a child] concerning my 
 Creator, that He became a man... ._ I felt happy in conversing 
 with Him, and grateful for His having remembered me for good 
 in His Incarnation, But I did not wholly understand the 
 greatness and sufficiency of His meritorious sufferings, nor was 
 my own wretchedness and inability sufficiently obvious to me. 
 I did also what I could in order to be saved, wztil one extra- 
 ordinary day, when I was so much affected by what my Creator 
 had suffered for me that I shed an abundance of tears, and 
 attached and joined myself still more closely to Him.” 
 
 On the whole I have preferred to leave the text as it stands, 
 with this note. The experience which without quite adequate 
 evidence is assigned in it to Zinzendorf is however an experi- 
 ence realized in many instances. 
 
 ae a 
 
ZINZENDORFE’' S EXPERIENCE. IIs 
 
 inscription, “ Zhzs have I done for thee, what 
 hast thou done for Me?” He gazed, loved, and 
 rejoiced “with exceeding joy,” turning from a 
 life of indecision at once, and without a pang, 
 to Christ. But do not think that the element of 
 conviction was absent in Zinzendorf s experience 
 as a whole. It came later, and with power. 
 And it was an element most necessary, as his 
 life-story shows, in order to save him from some 
 grave wanderings from sound faith in the matter 
 of Christian experience, and from a tendency 
 to drift away from a steady anchorage on the 
 atoning work of the Lamb of God! And I 
 
 * I quote as follows from a French memoir (Bover’s, i., Pp. 224) 
 of his life:—“ About this time I met with the work of Dippel, in 
 which the doctrine of Imputed Righteousness is attacked. Its 
 system seemed to aim at eliminating from the idea of God the 
 notion of His wrath; and just so far as I sympathized with that 
 view I liked the system. I was then in the attitude of the natural 
 theologian ; and the ‘good God’ distressed me when His acts 
 seemed to lack a sequence of mathematical precision. I sought 
 to justify Him, at all costs, to men of reason. But when I came 
 to think over my own conversion I saw that in the death of Jesus 
 and in the word Ransom there lay a profound mystery—a mystery 
 before which Philosophy stops short, but as regards which 
 Revelation is immovably firm. This gave me a new intuition 
 into the doctrine of Salvation. I fonnd its blessing and benefit 
 first in the instance of my own heart, then in that of my brethren 
 and fellow-workers [in the Unitas Fratrum]. Since the year 
 
116 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 am well assured that that after-gift of spiritual 
 conviction tended in its turn only to deepen and 
 develop for Zinzendorf the first gift of joy and 
 love. The elements which we have dwelt upon 
 as characteristic of conversion and its life were 
 there, though the order of their arrival, if I may 
 call it so, was abnormal. His faith in its sum 
 total was the repose of the divinely awakened 
 soul in the divinely manifested Saviour. 
 
 I appealed in my last chapter to my reader’s 
 own experience. May I do so again in this 
 brighter and more blessed connexion ? In any- 
 thing but an inquisitorial spirit, I do venture 
 to say to you, has the Holy Spirit testified 
 to you of Jesus Christ, glorified to you Jesus 
 Christ, taking of His things and showing 
 them unto you? I do not ask, have you had 
 this vivid crisis of consciousness, that almost 
 vision of the unseen and eternal? I am not 
 one of those who speak lightly of such things, 
 as if they were to be estimated off-hand 
 
 1734 the doctrine of the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus has been, 
 and will for ever be, our treasure, our watchword, our all, our 
 panacea against all evil, alike in doctrine and in practice.” 
 
A PERSONAL APPEAL. 117 
 
 as so many illusions, a discredit to sober 
 faith. Faith is magnificently sober as to its 
 grounds, and as to its nature. But when we 
 remember that what it clasps is JESUS CHRIST, 
 and what it receives is the life eternal and 
 the hope of glory, shall we think it necessarily 
 fanaticism if sometimes, and in some Christians, 
 “the sweet unveilings of His face” have been 
 such as even to agitate greatly the faculties of 
 the mortal tabernacle ? 
 
 “‘ My earthly by His heavenly overpower’d 
 Sank down.” 
 
 But I do not speak to you now of these 
 things, which certainly are not the dazly ‘‘ bread 
 of life.” I only ask, has the Lord Jesus Christ 
 been so “revealed in you” that it is no forced 
 figure of speech to say that He has been 
 ‘“olorified” ? Has He been so shown to the 
 eyesight of the inner man as the Lamb of 
 Calvary that you not only hold (as it is so good 
 to hold) the clearest mental convictions about 
 Justification by Faith, as our Second and 
 Eleventh Articles put that great truth, but 
 that the Crucified, the Shedder of the justi- 
 
118 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 fying blood, is the adored and beloved of your 
 awakened and confiding soul? Has He been 
 so shown within you as the Son of the Father, 
 the Only Begotten in the Father's bosom, that 
 you not only reject with fullest intellectual con- 
 viction the misbeliefs of a Sabellius, an Arius, 
 or a Socinus, in their oldest or their most 
 modern phases, but that your spirit does indeed 
 Ps.iixz. kiss the Son” with the deepest 
 homage of worshipping love, responding in 
 sweet harmony to the Voice out of the 
 Matt. vii.s. bright cloud—‘ This is JZy beloved 
 Son”? Has He been so shown within you 
 as your sovereign Master that you not only 
 reasonably own His claims but find that a 
 complete submission to them is pure happi- 
 ness, because it is so real a means to feeling 
 the bond which unites you for ever to Him? 
 Has He been so shown within you as your life, 
 your power, your wealth of resource against the 
 devil, the world, and the flesh, and your en- 
 ablement for humble service to His will, that 
 you not only applaud a spiritual theory, and 
 take pleasure in its exposition, but “‘ ¢ake 
 Pleasure in infirmities, that the power of Christ 
 
LE) SPIRIT GLORIFVYING CHRIST, 119 
 
 may rest upon you,” and His beloved 2 Cor. xii. ». 
 presence be felt as it hardly can be felt without 
 the cross ? 
 
 Is it thus with you? Is it not thus with you? 
 It is a divine reality, is it not? Calm and pure 
 in its holy essence, this glorification of Christ 
 yet moves and thrills with a “ joy unspeakable 
 and full of glory.” And it is the :Pet.is 
 Holy Spirit to whom immediately the thanks 
 for that joy are due. You, convinced and 
 believing soul, reaping these fruits of living 
 faith in the Son of God, are a subject of the 
 best-beloved work of the loving Spirit. His 
 breath has moved the cloud for you from the 
 face of Eternal Beauty, and has quickened you 
 into the consciousness of what it is. ‘“ Her hath 
 been thus effectual in this secret work of your 
 regeneration unto newness of life;” in this new 
 birth ‘‘ unto a living hope.” x Pet. i. 3. 
 
 Love Him, adore Him, give “thanks to Him. 
 And meanwhile seek and expect His abiding 
 and continuous work of loving grace. Look 
 up to the Father, in this as in so many other 
 spiritual connexions, with the prayer, sure to 
 be answered, “‘ Take not Thy Holy Spirit from 
 
120 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 —_—___.—— 
 
 ”) 
 
 me. Expect, and humbly receive, not only 
 Ps.liixx. an ever deeper view of the sinful- 
 ness of sin, but also an ever deeper view of 
 the glory of Christ, seen in the secret places 
 of present communion with Him and obedience 
 to Him. The Spirit will unfold more to you, 
 Eph. iii.8 and yet more, of ‘the unsearch- 
 able riches” and their applications. He will 
 Eph. iii, 16, xy, — Strengthen you in the inner man,’ 
 ie so that “Christ shall dwell in your 
 heart by faith” with a blessed development of 
 continuousness and power, and so that you 
 shall “know the love of Christ,” with the joy 
 of an ever new discovery. — 
 
 “Come, Holy Spirit, come, 
 Let Thy bright beams arise ; 
 Dispel the darkness from our minds 
 And open all our eyes. 
 
 “‘ Convince us of our sin, 
 Then lead to Jesu’s blood, 
 
 And to our wondering view reveal 
 ‘The secret love of God. 
 
 “Show us that loving Man 
 That rules the courts of bliss, 
 
 The Lord of Hosts, the mighty God, 
 The Eternal Prince of Peace, 
 
A HYMN-PRAVER. 121 
 
 “Tis Thine to cleanse the heart, 
 To sanctify the soul, 
 
 To pour fresh life in every part 
 And new-create the whole. 
 
 *‘ Dwell, therefore, in our hearts, 
 Our minds from bondage free ; 
 
 Then we shall know, and praise, and love, 
 The Father, Son, and Thee.” 
 
 So, a hundred and thirty years ago, wrote 
 Joseph Hart ; and the need, the promise, and 
 the prayer are the same this day. 
 
CHAPGER = V1II-. 
 
 E have considered now, in our view of 
 
 the revelation through St John of the 
 
 Holy Spirit’s work, three main passages deal- 
 ing with that work. We have seen the Spirit 
 as our Regenerator from spiritual death into 
 John iii, spiritual life, and as our Convincer, 
 Jomxvii and as the Glorifier of Christ in 
 the souls of the convinced. In this study 
 we have looked from different points of view 
 upon His supremely important function and 
 action in bringing the individual into that 
 living Union with the Son of God of which 
 we treated in a previous chapter. That 
 union, as we there’ remembered, is altogether 
 by the Holy Spirit, and is normally effected 
 by Him through the processes of repentance 
 
 1 Page’39. See also below, p. 131. 
 
LAE SPIRIT:AND THE NEW: LIFE. 123 
 
 and faith, under which the man lays hold of 
 and receives Him who is our Life, and re- 
 ceives in Him all His blessed fulness, the 
 “grace for grace” of a perpetual Jonni: 
 and ever-new supply of the peace and power 
 which is in Christ. 
 
 We have thus as it were seen the soul safe 
 arrived at its Union with the Lord; and now 
 henceforth its life, the whole life of the man 
 thus united, is to be a new life, a spiritual life, 
 a perpetual reception out of Christ following 
 upon that initial entrance into Him. How 
 then is this life to be led? Is the man now 
 to take his spiritual affairs into his own hands ? 
 Flas the Spirit led him up to his Redeemer, 
 and there left him? No, most certainly. True 
 it is that the experiences of this new life are 
 to be as personal, as conscious, as truly volun- 
 tary (let us not forget this), as those of the 
 old. “No will is so fully equipped for work 
 as the regenerate will.” The whole Scripture 
 overflows with illustrations and reminders of 
 that fact. Nevertheless the new life, if the 
 man is living it indeed, is to have in it from 
 first to last this divine and glorious new factor, 
 
124 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the inworking presence of the blessed personal 
 Paraclete, who in a sense now new and special 
 is both to guard and animate the “first springs 
 of thought and will,” and above all to keep 
 alive, by continuous application of Christ, the 
 life He gave by first application of Christ. 
 Thus, in the words of a aun dear to many 
 a believing heart, 
 
 “¢ Every virtue we possess, 
 And every victory won, 
 And every thought of holiness, 
 Are His alone.” 
 
 Following now our proposed method of 
 Scripture study, I keep still to the Gospel 
 according to St John, reserving for after study 
 the forms of truth given through St Paul. 
 And to illustrate from St John the work of 
 the Spirit in the developing experience of the 
 regenerate believer, I go again to the same 
 Paschal Discourse of our beloved Lord which 
 we have approached in the two previous 
 chapters. We have found there His own 
 account of some initial steps in the Spirit’s 
 saving work. We shall now find there, in the 
 
THE SPIRIT IN ¥OHN XIV—XVI. 125 
 
 words of the same Teacher, a delineation of 
 some of the inmost characteristics of the true 
 life of His true followers, such as it was 
 already in a measure then, and such as it soon 
 was to become in rich development under the 
 developed in-working of the Spirit. 
 
 In this whole delineation we have to re- 
 member that although the Holy Spirit is only 
 occasionally mentioned He is everywhere im- 
 plied. For the discourse on the whole mani- 
 festly deals with the disciples’ experience in 
 view of the withdrawal of the bodily presence 
 of Jesus Christ. And the promised equivalent, 
 and more than equivalent, for that presence, 
 was to be the developed presence of the 
 Comforter. As therefore the whole previous 
 walk and life of the disciples had been bound 
 up with the presence and power of their dear 
 visible Master, so now their whole walk and 
 life was to be bound up, in a connexion as 
 necessary, tender, and powerful as possible, 
 with the presence in them of this His holy 
 Representative; by whom already they had 
 come to believe on the Name of the Son of 
 God and to be, however little they understood 
 
126 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 it as yet, united to Him in the eternal life. 
 We read then rightly all through the Discourse, 
 and all through the High Priestly Prayer at 
 its close, the underlying truth of the work of 
 the Spirit, effecting every blessed experience 
 in the whole new life of the disciple. 
 
 And here let me point out the rightness of 
 referring these promises of the Paschal Chamber 
 not to the Apostles only but to us, to every 
 member of the believing Church. There are, 
 I doubt not, words in the Discourse and the 
 Prayer which have a primary reference to the 
 Apostles, and to their past and present ex- 
 perience, and to their coming work as the 
 Spirit-taught, infallible, teachers of the Church. 
 But there are indications everywhere that the 
 Apostles then, as on many another occasion, 
 were viewed by the Lord Jesus zot only as 
 guides and teachers of the Church, but as 
 “the Church by representation,” if I may use 
 the phrase. In the fourteenth chapter, for 
 example, we find our Lord continually passing 
 from words bearing a primary special reference 
 
 ‘T owe the remark to my friend the Rev. C. H. Waller. 
 
THE PASSAGE IS FOR ALL BELIEVERS. 127 
 
 to the Apostles to words completely inclusive 
 
 in their terms. ‘‘Hethat believeth  ver.x. 
 - on Me, the works that I do shall he do 
 also;” ‘He that hath My com- © vera. 
 
 mandments and keepeth them ... I will 
 manifest Myself to him;” “If a man love 
 Me... We will make Our abode ver. 23. 
 with him.” And indeed all through the 
 great passage, with hardly an exception, we 
 feel that it is rather the C4vrestzan life and 
 character than specially the apostolic that is 
 in view; the same life and character which the 
 First Epistle of St John depicts and explains 
 without any reference at all to special ministerial 
 functions assigned to any sharers in it. So with- 
 out hesitation or reserve I read these precious 
 words of the Lord Jesus, spoken on the eve 
 of His death and glory, as on the one hand 
 bearing throughout on the work of the Spirit, 
 and on the other hand applicable throughout 
 to the life, needs, privileges, and possibilities, of 
 every true believer. With these principles: in 
 mind let us come to the study. 
 
 I read then first in this Discourse some divine 
 revelations about the Oneness of the saints with 
 
128 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Christ, and with the Father, and so with one 
 another. ‘At that day” (the day, surely, of 
 John xiv.2. the promised coming of the Com- 
 forter), “ye shall know that I am in My 
 Father, and ye in Me, and I in you in Sete 
 they all may be one; as Thou, 
 Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
 that they also may be one in Us;” “And the 
 glory which Thou gavest Me I have given 
 them ; that they may be one, even as We are 
 one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they 
 may be made perfect in one;” “And I have 
 declared unto them Thy name, and will declare 
 it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved 
 Me may be in them, and I in them.” Ponder 
 the words, as if you had never read them before. 
 I well remember an occasion when they were 
 
 John xvii, 21, 22, 
 23, 20. 
 
 thus brought forcibly and anew to my mind. 
 It was an anxious hour of public religious dis- 
 cussion on the nature of the divine life in the 
 Christian. One deeply earnest speaker carried 
 his statements to a length which in my view was, 
 as it still is, at variance with the holy propor- 
 tion of revealed truth; leading through truth 
 out of truth toa related error which lay beyond 
 
LD id LS ILS a de LIAL LORS £5129 
 
 it. But God sometimes overrules even a mani- 
 fest exaggeration or distortion to call attention 
 to something which it distorts but which we, 
 perhaps, have neglected and ignored. So it 
 was with me then. The solemnity, the intense 
 significance, the pregnant emphasis, with which 
 my friend and opponent that day repeated the 
 words of John xiv. 20: “ At that day ye shall 
 know that Iam in the Father, and ye in Me, 
 and I in you,” sank deep into one heart at least 
 of those present and asked it whether there did 
 not lie in those words treasures of grace as yet 
 unsuspected and unclaimed ; and so there did. 
 May I again, as I have done more than once 
 before, turn to my reader and ask if perhaps it 
 is so now with him? And if so, may I in my 
 turn entreat him to listen to those divine words 
 “in the silence of the soul, as to a revelation 
 of principles, and powers, and experiences, and 
 possibilities, which have not the remotest neces- 
 sary connexion with fanaticism but which may 
 nevertheless szeax an inner life far different 
 from a life of fitful and intermittent faith, love, 
 joy, peace, and power for witness-bearing 
 and light-bearing for Christ? The verses 
 
 *. 
 
130 VENT CREATOR. 
 
 cited above from the seventeenth chapter 
 have, I well know, a momentous bearing 
 on questions of Church Unity, and are a 
 standing caution of the utmost gravity and 
 tenderness against the spirit of schismatic 
 separation and antagonism in external Christian 
 life. But while remembering this, and re- 
 minding my reader of it, I must yet more 
 earnestly point out that the inner and intense 
 meaning of the words has to do with regions 
 of truth, life, and experience compared with 
 which even the sacred and important truths 
 of exterior Church Unity are a lower region. 
 It has to do primarily with the vital, spiritual, 
 Heb. xii. 23. eternal union of “the Church of the 
 firstborn written in heaven” with their glorious — 
 Head, union in a life which is altogether of God 
 in its root and fruit. It has to do with “ know- 
 ledge” and experiences to which “the world” 
 is an utter stranger, with insights into ever- 
 lasting love and joy coming down from the 
 Father of Lights, and with a cohesion and co- 
 operation, a united work and witness, which 
 depend absolutely for their possibility and power 
 on the recognition and following out of sach prin- 
 
UNION WITH CHRIST. 13) 
 
 ciples of union. Blessed will it be for Church 
 and for World when these principles shall so 
 vastly prevail as to find expression naturally 
 and from within in a harmonious counterpart 
 of order; a far different thing from what is, 
 I cannot but think, an illusory prospect—the 
 attainment of such internal unity by a previous 
 exaction of exterior governmental uniformity. 
 
 But this is by the way. My point is now 
 to call attention to the wonderful depth and 
 height, and personally searching and alluring 
 power, of these words of the Lord about One- 
 ness, and then to remind my reader that the 
 realization of those words lies in the work of 
 the Holy Spirit. It is as He unites me, and 
 unites thee, to Christ, by His new-creating and 
 life-giving touch and drawing, that we enter 
 into this amazing oneness with the Son, and 
 the Father, and one another ; a oneness spiritu- 
 ally organic, in which each personality, while 
 quite exempt from zzvaszon, falls under the 
 power of a divine coheszon whose results in 
 spiritual harmony of life and action will develop 
 for ever. “These things worketh that one and 
 the selfsame Spirit,”’ blessed be His Name. 
 
132 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Along with this revelation of spiritual and 
 Spirit-wrought oneness between the believer 
 and the Lord, and between believers in the 
 Lord, I gather up from this same Discourse 
 many another precious kindred word. There 
 is that great promise, ‘‘ Because I live, ye shall 
 John xiv.19. live also.” It is a promise not 
 merely of the Rescuer to the rescued, of the 
 
 Saviour to the saved, of the Leader to the 
 
 led, but of the Head to the limb, of the Vine 
 to the branch. We rest on that promise, we 
 Heb. xii.2, humbly believe it. ‘ Looking off? 
 unto Jesus,” (very definitely and very neces- 
 sarily “of unto’? Him,) we appropriate it, and 
 take it for granted, and act on it amidst the 
 realities of life. ‘“ When thronging duties 
 press,” when by the providence of God we 
 have to meet men, to walk up and down in 
 the world of the present day, we yet fall back 
 internally on the truth that “he that hath the 
 rJohnv.xz. Son hath life.” The basis of our true 
 being, the spring-head of our true life-pulse, is 
 in Him. Even so; and therefore, while He 
 
 ’ 
 
 1 "Adopartes. 
 
 4 
 ; 
 3 
 ; 
 ‘ 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST. ee 
 
 liveth, and because He liveth, we “shall not 
 die but live.” And this too “ spake He of the 
 Spirit.” The Worker of this our abiding life is 
 “the Lord, the Life-Giver,” the Giver to us in 
 inward reality of the Son who is our Life." And 
 shall we not bless His Name? 
 
 Closely in the same connexion I read here of 
 blessed articulate experiences and realizations 
 of this union and life. I read of “ union turned 
 into communion.” I listen to the Son of God 
 speaking not only to John and to Peter, but to 
 me, that Paschal evening; and I hear Him 
 say, “I will not leave you orphans ; Jobnaiv.:8, x. 
 I will come to you;” ‘ The world seeth 
 sTo-will.see 
 
 ) 
 
 Me no more, but ye see Me; 
 you again, and your hearts shall re- j... vi.or, 2, 
 joice;” “I will manifest Myself to ™ 
 
 him ;” ‘“ My Father will love him, and We will 
 come unto him, and make Cur abode with him.” 
 I read these promises, coming direct from the 
 lips of our Lord and Life, and I remember 
 along with them those other words which 
 He spoke out of His glorified life through 
 
 1 See above, p. 39. 
 
134 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 this same John: “To him that overcometh 
 Revi [ will give to eat of the hidden 
 manna;” “TJ will come in to him, and will 
 
 Rev. iii 20. sup with him, and he with Me.” 
 And we bless Him for even the least realiza- 
 tion of what they mean. And we remember 
 that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about 
 these realizations in us, who gives us to 
 
 know in any measure what is meant by 
 
 the indwelling and overshadowing of Jesus 
 Christ. And as we possess and enjoy this 
 wonderful, this infinitely merciful gift of the 
 known presence of the Son of God, and of the 
 Father in Him, we thank and adore the per- 
 sonal and gracious Holy Spirit that it is thus 
 with the soul. 
 
 “Shall I ever forget the summer morning, 
 in 1886,” writes one whom [| know, ‘“‘ when on 
 the sunny slopes of a Yorkshire moor, on a 
 brief holiday, not long after that blessed time 
 of spiritual discovery and strengthening in the 
 
 knowledge of God, I experienced indeed a ‘ joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory’ in the sight of 
 our Lord and Life? Walking out alone I fell 
 into prayer, prayer to be conformed in all things 
 
A RECORD OF EXPERIENCE. 135 
 
 to the will of Him who had redeemed me and 
 drawn me to Himself. As I proceeded, while 
 heart and mind were kept in the deepest peace, 
 and not the slightest enthusiastic disturbance of 
 judgment was to be suspected, it was yet as if 
 a heaven was opened around me, and the joy 
 of the Lord flowed in divine effusion over my 
 being. The glory and beauty of my Saviour’s 
 Person, the indescribable reality of His presence 
 both in me and around me, the absolute ‘all- 
 sufficiency’ of His grace and power, the love- 
 liness and attraction of His ‘ perfect will ’"—all 
 shone upon me with a brightness of which 
 the August sunshine seemed but a type and a 
 shadow. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ said the 
 inmost spirit in that holy hour. In a sense, 
 the glory passed away, as to special excitation. 
 But in a sense, in a yet deeper sense, it abode, 
 diffused among the experiences of life, and 
 proving its ‘sober certainty of waking bliss’ 
 by its power amidst these experiences, to calm, 
 and purify, and lift above the selfishness of the 
 old life.’ And “all this worked that one and 
 the selfsame Spirit.” It is by Him John xvii. 3. 
 
 that we “know the only true God, and Jesus 
 
136 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Christ whom He hath sent,” with that know- 
 ledge which is no mere result of information 
 and inference mentally collected. It is “eternal 
 life.” Shall we not bless the Spirit’s Name 
 that thus we know ? 
 
 And so I may go on through the Paschal 
 John xv.x8. Discourse. I may take the Lord’s 
 _ words about the True Vine, and the branches 
 which are in Him, and which abide or remain - 
 in Him, and by virtue of their conjunction and 
 abiding bring forth fruit ; and under this whole 
 paragraph I may read the presence and work 
 of the uniting and life-giving Holy Spirit. To 
 deviate for a moment to St Paul, and to a 
 Gal.v.22. passage with which we shall deal 
 more fully later,! we recollect that the sweet 
 fruit of holiness in the disciple’s life is “the 
 fruit of the Spirit. He it is who so works 
 in the man that, having “come to Christ” 
 Jomniizz; and ‘received Him,” he also abides 
 yor in Him as the days and years go 
 iene Ons, uk he qaman freely and truly 
 “chooses life,” welcomes and cherishes his 
 
 a 
 
 1 See ch, x, 
 
THE LIFE AND WORK OF PRAYER. 137 
 
 Lord’s precious indwelling presence and power ; 
 but that he freely does so is of the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost. Because of Him, present and 
 inworking, the man “abides in the jonnxiv. 27; 
 ieee Oliss uOrd, eand sain aldis (Aas aise 
 friendship, and in His peace, and responds 
 with full joy to His joy. John xvi. 33. 
 And again, how much we have here about 
 the work and life of prayer! <‘ Whatsoever 
 ye shall ask in My name that will jonnsiv.cs,z4; 
 iecdos lf) Ye. shall, ask anything *<7) 75" 
 in My name, I will do it;” ‘Ask, and ye 
 shall receive, that your joy may be full;” “I 
 have ordained you, that ye should go and 
 bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should 
 remain; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the 
 Father in My name, He may give it you.” 
 In those last words we have surely an indica- 
 tion of the deep, vital connexion between 
 ‘true prayer and true fruit-bearing ; such that 
 the two things are as it were convertible terms. 
 It is as if He said, “I have ordained you to 
 produce real and lasting spiritual effects for 
 Me; zz other words, I have ordained you to 
 be, in Me, prevailing petitioners with My 
 
138 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Father that you may be bearers of such fruit.” 
 The ‘things asked of the Father in Christ’s 
 
 b] 
 
 name” are that the disciple may be a vessel 
 meet for the Master’s use, a branch pregnant 
 with holy fruit; and there is therefore a deep 
 and living correspondence between the bearing 
 and the asking. Now here again is the opera- 
 tion of the Spirit, “the Spirit of grace and 
 Zech. xii.xo Of Supplications.” The prayer here 
 meant is no mere devout performance of 
 duty, the due utterance of an expression of 
 reverence and dependence; it is ‘‘ prayer in 
 Jude 20. the Holy Ghost,” who “maketh in- © 
 Rom. viii. 26,27. tercession for us .. . according to 
 (the will of) God.” It is the prayer of a 
 heart filled with Him, and therefore filled 
 with the humble but intense desire that His 
 will may be done, and in particular that His 
 implement may be used for His glory. Results 
 of life, word, and work in answer to such prayer 
 are “fruit that remaineth.” And indeed it is 
 “fruit of the Spirit.” 
 
 I write* close to the tenth anniversary of the 
 
 1 June, 1889. 
 
THE LATE MISS F&F. R. HAVERGAT, 139 
 
 blessed death of that truly sanctified servant of 
 God, the late Miss Frances Havergal. Her 
 life and work has just now been much in my 
 mind, with its rich lesson and holy example. 
 Speaking not for myself only but assuredly for a 
 multitude of other readers, I may truly say that - 
 I never read her words of witness for our Lord 
 without a sense of peculiar spiritual weight, in- 
 fluence, and holy persuasion, coming from those 
 words to my heart. In a very marked manner 
 
 ”) 
 
 her fruit seems to me to “remain ;” the per- 
 sonal warmth and emphasis of her testimony 
 “remains,” as if the page had a living voice. 
 And for my part I attribute this to the fact that 
 while that devoted Christian was kept by the 
 Spirit of God remarkably loyal to the foundation 
 truths of the ancient and only Gospel of grace 
 she was by the same Spirit led to, and kept in, 
 an attitude of unreserved self-consecration to 
 the holy Master’s work and will which charac- 
 terized her every effort, literary or otherwise, 
 in His service. By the Spirit she asked to be 
 fruitful, and by the Spirit she bore fruit indeed, 
 “fruit that remaineth,” and shall remain. In 
 Our measure. as we too are “vessels of the 
 
140 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 ate 
 
 Lord,” let it be likewise with us, by the same 
 secret. 
 
 Is it not somewhere in this direction that the 
 humble Christian may look for God’s fulfilment, 
 in His own way, of that mysterious promise, 
 
 John xiv.x2. ‘Greater works than these shall 
 he do”? Very possibly these words bear in 
 their ultimate meaning not so much on the 
 personal work of the individual Christian as 
 on that of the Christian as a member of the 
 Body and Bride of Christ; as if to say, “ He 
 shall have a real, living, full share in that 
 -wonderful work of ingathering and upbuilding 
 Acts i. x. which I his Master did but ‘ begin,’ 
 leaving it to My Bride to do more in ¢hat 
 See Col. i. 24. A222 than I had done.” But such 
 
 a view of the passage can only be true if it 
 
 leaves clear the fact that wonderful possibilities 
 
 of fruitful service are open, in the life of the » 
 
 Spirit, to the individual disciple who by the 
 Spirit really lives and walks as a servant and 
 implement of Christ. 
 
 John xiv. 26; Another class of passages in this 
 SR aS ohn : sae 
 xvi. 7- divine Discourse bears explicitly 
 
 upon the dzeaching work of the Holy Spirit 
 
 le cts Fe 
 EE gt ay ene 
 
 Pepe 
 i 
 
 5 
 
THE TEACHING “ UNCTION.” I4l 
 
 Here, I willingly and reverently own, we 
 have a plain primary reference to the special 
 knowledge and authoritative, infallible teach- 
 ing of the inspired Apostles. But I do not 
 think the words can be wholly limited to 
 them. An instructive parallel is 1 John u. 
 20, 27, where an inspired Apostle is address- 
 ing all the “little children” of his flock, and 
 reminding them of their heavenly “unction, » 
 and of its mysterious power to give super- 
 natural knowledge. And I gather from that 
 passage that the true disciple is promised, 
 not apostolic infallibility, but a more than 
 natural instinct, in the use of divine revela- 
 tion, to discern between essential error and 
 essential truth in the things of salvation; a 
 divinely given feeling, if 1 may put it so, for 
 the sound word and against the illusory, coun- 
 terfeiting substitute for it; and that this is 
 the gift, the presence, the light, of the Holy 
 Spirit in the soul regenerated by Him. Like 
 many other great promises it needs to be read 
 side by side with complementary and cautionary 
 truths; but it is there, it is a reality, it is 
 never to be forgotten, it is to be welcomed 
 
142 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 —— 
 
 and used. And the Holy Worker is to be 
 blessed and thanked. 
 
 In closing I point to those precious words 
 of the High Priestly Prayer which speak of 
 the “keeping” and the “sanctifying” of the 
 disciples by the Father, who has given them 
 bis aitraties eternal life in the Son: ‘“ Holy 
 Sag Father, keep in Thine own name 
 those whom Thou hast given Me, that they 
 may be one, as We are;” “I pray not that 
 Thou shouldest take them out of the world, 
 but that Thou shouldest keep them from the 
 evil;” “Sanctify them in Thy truth; Thy 
 word is truth.’ Need we elaborately explain 
 that here the Spirit’s work is to be seen, 
 though His name is not named? How in 
 fact was this prayer of the Son answered 
 in the life and history of the Church of the 
 children of God? It was by the effusion 
 of the Spirit, by whom, in a sense and mode 
 so large and full that it was more than com- 
 pensation for the seen presence of the Son, 
 the true members and the true body were 
 “ governed and sanctified” in the new, wonder- 
 ful life of the Gospel. By Him they possessed, 
 
TES Lt Se LE IINGT LOWER, 143 
 
 —_—_~— a 
 
 and possess, the Father and the Son. By 
 Him, the Spirit of faith, they were, and are, 
 “kept through faith unto salvation.” — Pet.i.s. 
 Peeraying sul iiim, +. they -*! keep «themselves 
 in the love of God.” Of the Judean, 2r. 
 Father,. through the Son, by the Spirit, comes 
 all keeping power, all sanctifying, separating, 
 consecrating grace. Let us adore the three- 
 fold Work; and now specially let us not for- 
 get, in our love and praise, the Third and 
 immediate blessed Worker. 
 
 So we leave the Upper Chamber. Or rather 
 so we close our enquiry into what was said 
 there by the Lord Jesus about the life which 
 is to be lived by us in the Spirit, only that 
 we may now and always “there continually 
 dwell.” Amidst the stress and fulness of life 
 and duty, amidst the realities of trial and 
 temptation, there may we dwell indeed, in 
 internal recollection and experience, “ sitting 
 at the table! with” our beloved Lord, John xii. 2. 
 
 ) 
 
 1 J need not point out in detail how large and rich, in the light 
 of the truths we have here considered, should be our fruition of 
 our life in Christ by the Spirit when we assemble at ¢he Lord’s 
 Table, the Table of the Paschal Chamber, at the Lord’s most 
 
144 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 leaning upon His sacred breast, and listening 
 to His voice as He teaches us how to live 
 that life of union, abiding, prayer, fruitfulness, 
 spiritual insight, all under divine safe-keeping, 
 which is laid up for those who by the 
 2Cor.v.17. Opirit are indeed ‘in Christ, a new 
 creation.” 
 
 ee 
 
 loving command. Not that I limit fora moment the phrase in 
 the text to Eucharistic occasions. Faith and lové can turn our 
 soctal table into ‘‘God’s board” in a true sense; for certainly 
 they can create a sanctuary in all the places and events of life. 
 
GHARVER VIII: 
 
 pee revelation through St John of the 
 
 Person and Work of the Holy Spirit 
 has now for some time occupied us. We go 
 once more to the same great Apostle, before - 
 turning, as we shall then do, to the “ beloved 
 brother Paul.” 
 
 In St John’s Gospel there remain two pas- 
 sages in which the Holy Ghost is explicitly 
 mentioned by the Lord Jesus, and whose 
 messages to the believer, and to the believing 
 Church, are of the weightiest import. In the 
 First Epistle we have some few further precious 
 contributions of truth on the Spirit’s work. In 
 the Revelation finally we have Him repeatedly 
 presented, in His heavenly glory and in His 
 work for men. Let us make this a chapter. of 
 fragments, taking up these successive passages 
 each for brief remark and meditation. 
 
 10 
 
146 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Di ae alle ens ors Smeets Da er Saree ane oe 
 
 (i.) John vii. 37-39.—Here stands the Saviour 
 before us—‘ in the last day, that great day of 
 the feast,” the joyous Tabernacle Feast of 
 Autumn, following with significant closeness on 
 the Day of Atonement. The occasion must 
 have been a scene impressive indeed in its, 
 externals. ‘After the priest had returned from 
 Siloam with his golden pitcher, and for the last 
 time poured its contents to the base of the 
 altar ; after the ‘ Hallel ’ had been sung to the 
 sound of the flute, the people responding and 
 worshipping as the priests three times drew the 
 threefold blasts from their silver trumpets—just 
 when the interest of the people had been raised 
 to its highest pitch, [it was then} that from 
 amidst the mass of worshippers, who were 
 waving towards the altar quite a forest of leaty 
 branches as the last words of Psalm cxvili. were 
 chanted—a voice was raised, which resounded 
 through the Temple... . It was Jesus, who 
 ‘stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let 
 him come unto Me, and drink.’ Then by faith 
 ‘1 Him should each one truly become like the 
 Pool of Siloam, and from his inmost being 
 ‘rivers of living water flow.’ ... The effect 
 
ppl ld] Si pha tle tiie Ofte LiL he SPILRLT..” 147 
 
 Was instantaneous. . . . Even the Temple 
 guard . . . owned the spell of His words, and 
 dared not to lay hands an Him. ‘Never man 
 spake like this man,’ was the only account they 
 could give of their unusual weakness.” ? 
 
 It was a voice mighty with the power at once 
 of authority and promise. Above and through 
 the mighty maze of symbolism it called the soul 
 of man directly, without one intermediary film 
 or interval, to ‘come to” Him who spoke, to 
 come with an absolute and therefore perfectly 
 simple faith to Him. And it promised, it 
 guaranteed, with a self-evidencing majesty, that 
 to all and several who should so come the very 
 amplest blessing should result. The river of 
 life eternal should so flow into them from Jesus 
 Christ as to flow out through them to others. 
 “As the Scripture had said,”’—such Scriptures 
 as Isai. xii. 2, 3 (observe the connexion of those 
 verses) and lviii, 11,—“ out of the belly” of 
 each such believing man “should flow rivers 
 of living water.” 
 
 We are at once informed by the Evangelist 
 
 1 Dr A. Edersheim, Zhe Temple and its Services, p. 244. 
 
148 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 ASTANA aa mee ne Oc owe eta 
 of the meaning of the glorious imagery :—" This 
 spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe 
 on Him should receive.” The reference was 
 to the Holy Ghost, in His soon-coming develop- 
 ment of presence and operation in the believing 
 Church; “for the Holy Ghost was not yet 
 [given], because that Jesus was not yet glori- 
 fied.” Not, surely, that no rich and redundant 
 blessing would have resulted then and there 
 to each believer who took the Saviour at His 
 word that hour; but that in the great order of 
 God’s ways such redundancy was not quite yet 
 to be the rule, the open and manifest usage of 
 grace. For must we not observe that, although 
 the fullest allowance is to be made for large and 
 bright exceptions, there was just this difference 
 of rule between the spiritual conditions of the 
 Old Dispensation and the New—that while the 
 Old was a dispensation of conservation the 
 New is a dispensation also, and in wonderful 
 prominence, of diffusion and impartation through 
 the New Israel and through the New Israelite? 
 To a degree altogether unprecedented this 
 began to be at Pentecost. The Church, and 
 the saint, were then so filled from above that 
 
LIVING CHANNELS OF DIFFUSION. 149 
 
 it was manifestly the purpose of the Lord that 
 not now and then only, and in exceptional cases 
 only, but .all the true people of God always 
 should be open channels of blessing: to men 
 around, conduits of life, by becoming living 
 vehicles for a living witness to the glory and 
 all-gracious power of Christ. What Abraham, 
 and David, and Josiah, and Ezra, as regards 
 their personal life and its rule, were zo¢ alto- 
 cether meant to be, the whole company of 
 believers, each and all, were altogether meant 
 to be now; channels of effusion and diffusion 
 for the parched and weary world, in which they 
 were to live as men filled with the Spirit who 
 manifests and imparts the Lord. 
 
 Much might be said of course on questions in 
 detail which gather around this great truth and 
 principle. We might turn aside to discuss the 
 question of the ‘“ miraculous gifts,” and whether — 
 they are at all in view here. I think they are 
 not, for I think that here, as in the parallel 
 passage of the Well of Sychar, the Jonniv.u. 
 very tone and accent, so to speak, of the words 
 of Jesus Christ lead us straight to the needs of 
 the inmost human soul, and to the supply of 
 
150 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 those needs. And those are needs which, be 
 it said with reverence, would be poorly met 
 indeed by even “unknown tongues” and “gifts 
 of healing.”* But I will not enter on any 
 details of such a question here. We may be 
 certain that, whatever else lies in these divine 
 words, ¢hzs lies in them—the assurance that 
 the believer, the believer indeed, drawing the 
 depth and fulness of the divine life from Christ 
 by the Spirit, shall in his wholly subordinate 
 way, yet in a way most real, be wonderfully 
 used in the conveyance of that life around 
 him. He shall not be an original fountain- 
 head ; only One can be that. But he shall be 
 a living watercourse ; a living secondary cause 
 in others of living faith, and hope, and love, by 
 the Holy Ghost. He shall not merely speak 
 truth about Christ and the Spirit; he shall 
 speak it as living by it, as living it; he shall 
 Eph. iii.2. speak by ‘the power that worketh 
 in him”; he shall touch his brother’s conscience, 
 and will, and love, with a contact whose power 
 is not of him while yet it comes through him. 
 
 | See further below, p. 212. 
 
HOW THE BELIEVER IS A CHANNEL. 151 
 
 2 SONS Base ee 
 
 If I may quote my own words written else- 
 where,! the Lord “will use the man, or the 
 woman, who is really drinking the heavenly 
 water from the Rock, who is really filled for 
 life’s needs with the supplies of life eternal, in. 
 a mysterious way, and yet a way all the while 
 profoundly natural. Through that personality 
 the Spirit shall be pleased to work special 
 blessings, for He will have made it fit to be so 
 used... . It ‘shall be a vessel unto 2 Tint. ii. 2. 
 honour, sanctified and serviceable to the Master. 
 The believer in question may perhaps ézow that 
 he is thus privileged and employed, or he may 
 
 never know it at all. But that matters com- 
 paratively little.” What matters is the promise 
 of the all-faithful Lord that we, even we, shall 
 somehow be channels for the lifegiving opera- 
 tion of the Eternal Spirit, on condition that we 
 “come unto Him,” for ourselves, “and drink,” 
 and that we live “believing,” live by faith in 
 the Son of God. 
 
 Blessed be He for such a promise, and for 
 such a condition. Blessed be the Spirit who 
 
 1 Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, p. 147, 
 
152 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 wills to flow forth, true to that promise, through 
 the being of even us. 
 
 (ii.) John xx. 21-23.—We step here into_ 
 a very different scene. The stir and festal 
 triumph of the Tabernacle Day are hushed. It 
 is the glorious calm of the evening of the first 
 Easter, in that large Upper Room, so carefully 
 barred and bolted, where the disciples with 
 gladness saw the Lord. I need not recite at 
 length His blessed words, the very first words 
 addressed to them as a company by Him who 
 now stood there amongst them in ‘‘the power 
 . Heb. vii.x6. of an endless life.” Enough to re- 
 member that they were words first of divine 
 peace to themselves and then, immediately, 
 words of mission, mission into the world, with 
 a view to the “remitting” and “retaining” of 
 sins. And this mission was accompanied by 
 a marked and deeply significant action: ‘‘ He 
 breathed on them, and saith unto them, Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Ghost.” 
 
 Here again we might turn aside to more 
 than one enquiry by the way; for example to 
 the question whether the Risen Lord’s action of 
 breathing was the sacrament, so to speak, of an 
 
THE SPIRIT IN ¥OHN XX. 153 
 
 immediate, or of a coming, gift of the Spirit ; 
 whether He then and there conveyed to them 
 a special afflatus, or significantly assured them 
 of the great afflatus so soon to come. But for 
 our present purpose this enquiry is not necessary. 
 In either case we gather unmistakably from 
 the words and action some great spiritual facts. 
 We see that the mission was one for which a 
 special gift of the Spirit's power and presence 
 was required. And we see that that gift was 
 to be given in the very closest connexion with 
 the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus slain 
 and risen again. The symbolic Breath came 
 from His holy lips. As on the Pentecostal 
 day so now it was “He who shed forth,” 
 whether it was in act or in prospect, the Spirit, 
 His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Comforter 
 in His blessed power, One with Christ, glorify- 
 ing and imparting Christ. 
 
 As regards the terms of the mission I do not 
 speak at length. Illustrated by the recorded 
 work of the Apostles and other first preachers 
 of the Gospel, it is surely plain what they do 
 mot mean. They do not mean that the divine 
 pardon of the soul is so put in charge of any 
 
154 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 EIA Te ae I ie a Bs i mE CT) 
 
 man, or any body of men, as that for one 
 moment that man, or that body, even if the 
 body were the whole Church, can intercept the 
 soul’s direct appeal to the Lord and His direct 
 voice of peace to the soul; or can provide a 
 substitute for either. If this were the place, 
 it would be easy to show how the claims of 
 the Roman Catholic priesthood (and all really 
 kindred claims) to act as intermediaries in the 
 actual conveyance of divine remission are quite 
 without ground either in Scripture or in really 
 primeval antiquity after it; and how the ap- 
 plication of the words of this passage to the 
 work of the Christian presbyter comes up not 
 till comparatively late in Church history ; and 
 how even when the words were first so applied 
 the reference was understood to be to what we 
 may call the Church’s pardon rather than the 
 Lord’s, to the ministry of exclusion from and 
 re-admission to the ordinances and fellowship 
 of the Christian community.’ But it may 
 be enough now to say that Scripture itself 
 
 hy ed Pe ee 
 
 1 See The History and Claims of the Confessional (Longmans), 
 by the present Bishop (Reichel) of Meath. And the author's 
 Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 220. 
 
LH WHOLE, CHURCH ADDRESSED. 135 
 
 abundantly witnesses to the Apostles’ own 
 unconsciousness of the possession of a really 
 mediatorial power and position ; as for instance 
 in the words of St Peter to Simon Magus at 
 Samaria. And the practically one Acts viii. 22. 
 alternative interpretation here is that the remis- 
 sion and retention are declaratory. The mes- 
 sengers here commissioned are to make known, 
 for the world’s need, how sin is forgiven in 
 Christ, and how it is not forgiven. 
 
 And we surely gather that this work for the 
 Lord is the work not of Apostles only, not of 
 the sacred Ministry only, distinct and special as 
 its functions are, but of the whole true Church 
 of Christ. More persons were present in the 
 Upper Room than the apostles. Certainly 
 the two friends from Emmaus were Luke xxiv. 33. 
 there, and those two had found on their 
 arrival “others with” the Eleven. And the 
 Lord is at no pains to draw distinctions on 
 this occasion, as He had been on others. No, 
 He was empowering His whole true Church, 
 there present by representation before Him, 
 to be His delegate, His representative, in 
 that part of His own mission from the Father 
 
156 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 which consisted in the unveiling to human 
 hearts how sin is to be forgiven, how man 
 is to enter into peace with God. 
 
 So here is a passage in which every true 
 child of God, every true member of Christ our 
 Head, may read what is to be the essence of 
 his own life-work for Him. It means no eccle- 
 siastical anarchy, I am sure. The Lord is the 
 God of order, not confusion. ' But 
 it does mean that that is no true 
 order which would debar the humblest Christian 
 from his ‘part, or her part, in this most blessed 
 
 See x Cor. xiv. 
 33 
 
 Eph. iv. 12. ‘“ work of service,” this earnest, 
 Phil. ii, 16. loving, “holding out of the word 
 of life.’ And on the other hand it solemnly, 
 tenderly, reminds all such, as with the voice o 
 Jesus Himself, that the inmost qualification for 
 that work is not mere energy of character, or 
 ease of utterance, or fancied fulness of know- 
 ledge, or even truth of view. It. 18 thevine 
 breathed and inbreathing presence of the Holy 
 Spirit. If the message is to be not only true 
 
 1 See Prof. Westcott’s annotation on the passage. And see 
 some remarks in an admirable book, the late Dr Hanna’s Forty 
 Days after our Lord’s Resurrection, pp. 72-85. 
 
THE SPIRIT AND CHRISTIAN WORK. 157 
 
 but truly carried, truthfully handled, presented | 
 as the solemn, blissful reality it is, the mes- 
 senger, be he who he may, must be sfzrituat, 
 must possess, must be possessed by, the Spirit 
 of the Son of God. The Holy Ghost must 
 have taught Azm indeed the realities of sin, and 
 of its remission. The Holy Ghost must work 
 in and through him as in a vessel meet for the 
 Master’s use. If he bears the commission and 
 orders of the Church of God let him thank his 
 Master for the blessed privilege and advantage; 
 but let him not forget that the Church gave 
 him that gift on the solemn understanding that 
 he believed himself to be already, in a special 
 sense, dealt with for the purpose by the Holy 
 Ghost. And let the lay worker for the Lord 
 equally remember that his title to be a witness- 
 bearer of the way of salvation is vitally con- 
 nected, as between him and his Saviour, with 
 his being indeed spiritual, ‘‘ worshipping by 
 the Spirit of God,” ‘walking by the Phi. iiis. 
 
 Spirit,” bringing forth the Spirit's Gal. v. 22s. 
 holy, humble “fruit.” So we come round 
 again, in essence, though under quite different 
 imagery, to the truth conveyed by John vii. 38. 
 
158 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Se ee eT 
 
 (iii.) 1 John ii. 20, 27; iii. 24.—A very few 
 words will suffice on these two passages of the 
 precious First Epistle. The former has been al- 
 ready treated incidentally,’ and little moreneeds 
 saying here in this ‘‘ chapter of fragments” than 
 to call the reader to observe the imagery of 
 ‘anointing’ used by the Apostle. The “little 
 child” in Christ is reminded by this that the 
 eift to him of the illuminating Spirit, who pours | 
 through conscience, mind, and affections the 
 pure light of the eternal principles and truths of 
 grace, constitutes him in his new life a “ king 
 and priest” to his Father, and, ix: a humble 
 but real sense, a ‘‘ prophet” too; a man who 
 has, under the guidance of the Word of God, 
 more than nature’s insight into truth and error 
 concerning salvation. The second passage, 
 with its truly heavenly context, will indeed 
 reward close and prayerful study as the believing 
 reader ponders the tender, gracious command- 
 ment (not commandments) to “believe on the 
 name of His Son, and to love one another ;” 
 the love being the sure outcome of the faith, 
 just as far as the faith is true and full. All that 
 
 | Page I4I. 
 
THE SPIRIT IN I ¥OHN III. 159 
 
 shall be said here is, of course, on the explicit 
 reference to the blessed Spirit. What is its 
 assertion ? It is that the sure way to ascertain 
 that God ‘“abideth in us” is, to render the 
 Greek literally, “out of the Spirit which He 
 gave us.’ From that blessed Gift our proofs 
 must be drawn. And how and where shall we 
 find them? The immediate following context 
 gives part of the answer ; it is by finding our 
 souls respond with a full Amen to the Scriptural 
 revelation of the glory of the Incarnate Son 
 and His precious work. And the whole New 
 Testament suggests the rest of the answer; it 
 is by finding our wills respond with a love and 
 loyalty which only God can give to His own 
 description of “the fruit of the Spirit,” “ His 
 will, even our sanctification,” His holy, hum- 
 bling, chastening will. 
 
 (iv.) A few words on the manifested glory 
 and work of the Holy Spirit as seen in the 
 Book of the Revelation shall close this chapter. 
 The book abounds in mentions of Him. They 
 range from i. 4—where beyond all reasonable 
 
 1 See Dr R. S. Candlish, Te First Epistle of John (Lecture 
 xxviii.) ; a book of the highest spiritual value. 
 
160° “VENI CREATOR. 
 
 question the reverent Bible student will see 
 Him, One but Sevenfold, in those Seven 
 Spirits before the throne who are named wth 
 and between the Father and the Son as the 
 Source of grace and peace—to xxii. 17, where 
 the Spirit with the Bride, the blessed Life- 
 Giver with and through the Body which He 
 fills with the true Life, says “Come,” to the 
 thirsty soul of man asking: for the living water 
 which is given in the gift of Himself. I have 
 touched already,’ and perhaps sufficiently, on 
 the beautiful phenomenon of Rev. ii, ili., the 
 identification, or rather union, of the voice of 
 Christ with the voice of the Spirit. It may 
 be enough further to call attention to that one 
 glorious passage where the exalted 
 
 Rev. v. 6; see 
 iLook 
 
 Redeemer, recent from the wounds 
 of the Cross, is seen “having seven horns 
 and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits 
 of God, sent forth into all the earth.” The 
 imagery, sublime in its boldness, carries mani- 
 festly with it some great truths concerning 
 the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Lord 
 
 1 Above, p. 10. 
 
 .* 
 
Ltd LOSE fed da DN REVELATION V. 161 
 
 Jesus and to His presence with His Church 
 below. It reminds us with peculiar and vivid 
 force of the depth and closeness of the con- 
 nexion of life and work between. the Spirit 
 and the Son. It shows us, “in the visions of 
 God,’’ how the Spirit is inherent in. the Son, 
 if I may dare to say so, inherent with an 
 unspeakable union of being, and harmony of 
 will, and order of working; and how He is 
 sent forth by Him, radiates forth from Him. 
 In particular it indicates that the glorified Christ, 
 in all the exercises of His perfect Power (the 
 “seven horns”) and most real Presence (the 
 “seven eyes”) ‘in all the earth,” in all His 
 dealings with and for His people here below, 
 _ has, for the divine Vehicle of that power and 
 presence, the Holy Ghost in His sevenfold 
 perfectness of gift and working. The effluent 
 presence of the Lamb, if I may use the phrase, 
 is made, is conveyed, for us on earth, for all 
 the members ‘in all the earth,” by the Holy 
 Ghost. It is He who in perfectness of power 
 “strengthens us in the inner man” Eph. iii. 16, x7. 
 that Christ in perfectness of presence may 
 “dwell in our hearts by faith.” It is by 
 II 
 
162 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Him that we are “joined unto the Lord.” It 
 -Cor.viz7. is He who makes the “one body,” 
 Ephiv.s. by the union of each believer with 
 
 the Head, and so with all the members. The 
 
 force, the presence, the voice, of the Lord 
 
 Christ Jesus—all is by the Spirit; not by 
 
 physical, or quasi-physical, contact with the 
 
 glorified Body of the Redeemer, but by part 
 and lot in His Spirit.’ 
 
 “Where that Spirit is,” said the Dean of 
 Llandaff a few years ago in the Cambridge 
 University pulpit, “there is the Body of 
 Christ ; and only there.” 
 
 Come, then, blessed Spirit, evermore come, 
 and in all the sevenfold fulness of Thy infinitely 
 gracious operation bring us the members into 
 an ever deeper union, spiritual, heavenly, holy, 
 with Him who is our Head. 
 
 1 [ may refer in passing to a passage in Bp Jeremy Taylor's 
 treatise Of the Real Presence (Sect. vii, 8), where he examines 
 the process of divine benefit in the faithful recipient at the 
 Fucharist: “The benefit reaching to the body by the holy 
 Eucharist comes to it by the soul; ... therefore by faith, not 
 by the mouth.” The words have a special argumentative refer- 
 ence, but also touch the general subject of the mode of the 
 mystical Union. 
 
GLEAN P PER? Tx, 
 
 WE. approach the revelation of the blessed 
 
 Comforter and His work given to us 
 through St Paul. In the present chapter we 
 shall attempt a sort of conspectus of the subject, 
 and in the remaining chapters seek to take up 
 in more detail some of the greater and more 
 commanding truths thus given. 
 
 It is a large and wonderful field. The 
 writings of St John, as we have seen, present 
 us with a mass of treasure for our doctrine of 
 the Spirit. On the great subject of His Per-v 
 sonality in particular their witness is supreme 
 in importance. But the Epistles of St Paul 
 fairly overflow with the glorious theme of the 
 Spirit and His work, and in respect of some of 
 His great redeeming and sanctifying operations “ 
 their witness is practically unique. Is not this 
 remarkable, let me ask by the way, this fulness 
 
164 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 vide eee tins Vine ine Mickie es eS oT a 
 
 of the doctrine of the Spirit zz S¢ Paul? We 
 are accustomed, and rightly, to regard St Paul 
 as the great commissioned teacher and vindi- 
 cator of that other region of vital truth—our 
 Acceptance, our Justification, for the Redeemer's 
 merits, by faith in His blood, by simplest ac- 
 ceptance of the divine imputed Righteousness.’ 
 It is then all the more impressive to find that 
 to this same St Paul we must go for the fullest 
 scriptural account of “ Christ in us” by the 
 Spirit as well as of “ Christ for us” in His 
 merits. If the precious sentences, “ Justified 
 Rom. iti 24, 26. freely by His grace, through the re- 
 demption that is in Christ Jesus”’ >“ Thatble 
 might be just and the justifier of him that be- 
 lieveth in Jesus,” are deeply and distinctively 
 Pauline, so too are those others, “‘ Your body 
 
 -cor.vig. is the temple of the Holy Ghost 
 Ro we. which us“ineyou.”’; “ Dheslovegay 
 God is shed abroad in our hearts by the 
 
 1 On that side of doctrine I may refer to Hooker’s great Dzs- 
 course of Justification, and to G. S. Faber’s Primitive Doctrine 
 of Justification. 1 venture to add, as giving briefer or more 
 pepular statements, my own Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 
 pp. 183, ete. ; Union with Christ, pp. 65, etc.; and The Lord our 
 Righteousness, a tract. 
 
THE SPIRIT IN ST PACL’S WRITINGS. 165 
 
 Holy Ghost”; “Strengthened with might by 
 His Spirit... that Christ may dwell Eph. iii. 16, x7. 
 in your hearts by faith”; ‘Be ye Eph.v.:. 
 filled with the Spirit”; ‘Walk by Gal.v.es. 
 the Spirit” ; “By the Spirit mortify the deeds 
 of the body”; and so on, through Rom. viii. 13. 
 a long chain of utterances living and glowing 
 with the blessedness of our divine life, and 
 peace, and strength, and “ joy in Rom. xiv. 1. 
 the Holy Ghost.” In this double phenomenon 
 of the writings of St Paul—this large and 
 jealous vindication on the one hand of. the 
 way of our Acceptance through ‘the obe- 
 dience of the One’’ and through it Rom. v1. 
 alone, and yet this even more pervading and 
 continuous assertion of our life and walk by the 
 Spirit on the other hand—I read great and 
 pregnant lessons. For one thing I learn that 
 what God has so joined together man must not 
 from either side put asunder, in faith, or teach- 
 ing, or life. Perfectly distinct in conception, the 
 two ranges of truth are indissolubly wedded 
 together in purpose and in result. And for 
 another thing I learn that in some all-important 
 respects the one of these ranges of truth exists 
 
166 VENT CREATOR. 
 
 and is revealed for the sake of the other, and 
 not the other for the sake of the one. Justifica- 
 tion, Acceptance, Peace with God, Redemption 
 from the Curse of the Law—these things are 
 revealed (thanks be to God, they ave revealed) 
 not for themselves, so to speak, as if they were 
 ends and goals in the way of grace, but for the 
 sake of our living by the Spirit, and walking by 
 the Spirit, and being the living temples of the 
 Spirit, and thus being conformed to the image 
 of the Son of the Father, and entering thus ona 
 never-ending course of ‘serving in the newness 
 
 Rom. vii.6. of the Spirit.” St Paul’s writings, 
 alike in their argument and in their proportions, 
 are inspired reminders to us how to keep these 
 things related in our own thought, and faith, 
 and life. We are redeemed from the just sen- 
 tence of the broken law “zx order that we may 
 receive the promise of the Spirit by faith ;” 
 so it stands explicitly, and most memorably, in 
 Gal. iii. 13, 14. Not for one moment, really, 
 are we viewed as simply saved from present 
 and future wrath as if that were an end in 
 itself, the change of our hearts and lives coming 
 in merely as evidence that we are secure. That 
 
OTL ACCEEIANCE AND HOLINESS: 167 
 
 change is, we may boldly say, the absolutely 
 necessary vazson détre of the work of ransom 
 and acceptance. We are accepted that we may 
 
 be holy ; that we may live entirely to the Lord ; 
 - “that Christ may be magnified in Phil. x20. 
 our body”; in other words that the blessed 
 Spirit, now as it were liberated to flow upon 
 us and to spring up within us, may have His 
 way and will in all we are and all we shall 
 be for ever. | 
 
 Is it not so? And shall not our faith, our 
 witness, our teaching, take this apostolic line ? 
 Shall we not stand fast, faster than ever, in the 
 truth of the Justifying Righteousness received 
 by faith alone, but so as always to enjoy and to 
 commend the always related and always crown- 
 ing truth of “the promise of the Spirit,” 
 received also by faith alone? Happy the soul 
 which, standing on the rock of the one truth, 
 drinks the inexhaustible fountain of the other, 
 day by day, and hour by hour. Happy the 
 Church where that rock and that fountain alike 
 “do follow them,” in the work of witness ir 
 word and in life to the reality of God in 
 Christ. 
 
168 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 *©So Christ shall be our daily food, 
 Our daily drink His precious blood ; 
 And thus the Spirit’s calm excess 
 Shall fill our souls with holiness.” } 
 
 But it is time to come to some more detailed 
 view of what St Paul was guided to say of the 
 glory and work of the Holy Ghost, and of the 
 believer’s dependence on Him and power in 
 Him. Our view will not profess, however, to 
 be at all exhaustive ; the reader will find abun- 
 dant gleanings left in the blessed field. 
 
 (i.) The witness of St Paul to the Personality 
 of the Spirit, though less full than that of the 
 Lord Jesus in St John, is unmistakable to the 
 submissive reader. Nowhere indeed in St 
 Paul (in the Greek, though here and there in 
 eg. Rom. vii. Our Authorized Version) do we find 
 
 27; 1 Cor. xii. 
 II. masculine pronouns, He, Him, His, 
 used of the Spirit. But we find in St Paul 
 
 1 Chandler, from St Ambrose: Hymus of the Primitive Church, 
 1837, p. 32. The original Latin runs :— 
 
 “ Christusque nobis sit cibus, 
 Potusque noster sit fides ; 
 Lzti bibamus sobriam 
 Ebrietatem Spiritas.”—/d7@., p. 163. 
 
ST. PAUL ON@THE: PERSONALITY, EHIC. 169 
 
 that the Spirit can be not only ‘ quenched ” 
 but) oneved that “the vopirit uP... 
 “intercedeth for the saints with “”™® 
 unutterable groanings,’ and that Rom. viii.26, 27 
 “He who searcheth the hearts” the Greek 
 regards the Spirit, in that intercession, as the 
 Bearer, the Subject, of a ‘“‘ mind,” an intention, 
 a characterizing thought. All this speaks of 
 Personality. And we find the Spirit revealed, 
 through St Paul, as the Lord of the “temple” 
 of the Christian's body, and that :Cor. vir. 
 in a context which is as remote as_ possible 
 from associations of mere poetry or figure. A 
 Person, and a divine Person, is presented to us 
 here as dwelling in us. 
 
 (ii.) The unspeakably deep Unzon of Being 
 and Work between the Spirit and the Son comes 
 out clearly in St’ Paul. The ‘Spirit is “the 
 Spirit of Christ”; and in the im- Rom. viii ». 
 mediate context there we see the Two Blessed 
 Persons so united that what in one breath is 
 called the indwelling of the Spirit Rom. viii. x. 
 is called in the next the indwelling Rom. viii. :. 
 of Christ, and this again the indwelling of the 
 Spirit. 
 
170 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 (iii.) When we come to the Pauline revelation 
 of the Process of the Work of Grace we find 
 that from first to last, from the new birth to the 
 coming glory, the Holy Spirit is the immediate 
 Agent, Life-giving, Life-sustaining. The true 
 Gal. iv. 29. child of God is “born after the 
 Spirit.” He “lives-dy the Spirit. 
 It is the Spirit who unites him to 
 his Lord, his vital Head; for “he that is 
 joined” in the mystic bridal “to the Lord 
 rCor.vixz if one Spirit.” It is. the Spirit 
 
 Gal. v. 253 So 
 render. 
 
 who in His own infinitely wise and effectual 
 way makes known to him the reality and 
 the sweetness of the eternal things so as he 
 could not possibly know them by the powers 
 rCor-iio-ry. Of nature; for ‘“‘it is written, 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; 
 but God hath revealed them unto us by His 
 Spirit. . . . We have received . . . the Spirit 
 which is of God, that we might know the things 
 which are freely given to us (ra xapro0&Ta) of 
 God. .. . But the natural man receiveth not 
 
 the things of the Spirit of God; for they are 
 
“EVE HATH NOT SEEN.” 171 
 
 foolishness unto him, neither can he know 
 _them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 
 And this unveiling has to do, let us observe, 
 not only with an eternal future but still more 
 with a supernatural present. The main re- 
 ference is to the present gifts of grace, the 
 present and actual ‘‘riches of Christ,” which are 
 ours, now and here, in Him. ‘The things 
 which eye hath not seen” are not only, as we 
 read it in one of the loveliest and most pathetic 
 of all English poems,’ the things “ beyond the 
 clouds and beyond the tomb.” They are the 
 things which “ave, have been, freely given to 
 us of God.” They are, in St Peter’s magni- 
 ficent words, ‘all things which 2Petis. 
 
 pertain to life and godliness,” and which now, 
 as a fact, “His divine power hath given us.” 
 They are a present fulness of divine ac- 
 ceptance, and a present fulness of divine 
 
 ) 
 
 spiritual riches ; 
 
 Our never-failing treasury, fill’d 
 With boundless stores of grace.” 
 
 And so the Holy Spirit’s work is to show us 
 
 1 The Better Land. 
 
172 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 what we ad ¢hts monient possess, for our present 
 wonder, and joy, and use, and our present 
 glorification of the Giver. 
 
 This interior revealing work of the indwelling 
 Teacher, who is Creator too, is set forth in 
 detail in several passages of St Paul. Thus 
 we see Him, we hear Him, imparting to usa 
 supernatural insight into our blessed new child- 
 hood, new sonship, in the life and family of 
 grace, and a supernatural consciousness and 
 Rom. viii.rs. assurance of it. ‘Ye have re- 
 ceived the Spirit of adoption, whereby we 
 chy, Abba; Fathers. *Godi hath’ ssente cre 
 Gal, iv. 6. Spirit of His Son into your hearts, 
 erying? Abba, Pathern); Jo Lhe Spiiit mipscis 
 Rom. viii.z6,17. beareth witness with our spirit that 
 we are the children of God, and if children 
 then heirs.” In some way of His own (let us 
 leave the details of the holy secret to Him) He 
 takes and teaches the believing sinner, and 
 shows him the strong, sweet, heavenly certainties 
 of the Word of God as true for him, so as not 
 the most exact nor the most profound exegesis 
 without Him could show them. Under His 
 mysterious touch of truth and love it becomes 
 
FT ie Ole GOD EEO GR EI OL W173 
 
 = 
 
 strangely and gladly clear that the promises and 
 welcomes of grace mean what they say ; that 
 ‘he that cometh” is ‘‘in no wise cast John vi. 37. 
 out,” and that this ‘‘not cast out’? means a most 
 glorious and wonderful ‘‘welcomed in;” a union, 
 a filiation, an incorporation into the blessed 
 family of God, in the divine Firstborn Brother, 
 which implies beyond a doubt for the believing 
 sinner all the adoptive privileges of sonship, 
 and the full admission of the heavenborn child 
 to the responsive intimacies of divine love. 
 
 The same view of the Spirit’s work, though 
 under less definite imagery, comes out in Rom. 
 v. 5: “The love of God hath been poured out” 
 (so literally) ‘‘in our hearts by the Holy Ghost 
 which is given unto us.” This has been ex-, 
 plained by some to mean that He has now 
 imparted to us, in rich effusion, a divine ower 
 or faculty of loving ; has caused us to love with 
 a love which is the love of God. I cannot but 
 differ from such an exposition. With what it 
 probably means at its heart, so to speak, I am 
 entirely at accord. Fully assured I am that, 
 while we can only love God with the same con- 
 ‘stitutional human faculty or moral organ, with 
 
174 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 which we love man, still our union by the Spirit 
 with the blessed Head of regenerate manhood 
 has put such a new condition into that organ, 
 and connected it so with His love who is our 
 Life, that we may speak of our regenerate souls 
 as loving with His love; ‘“‘zx the heart of Jesus 
 
 Puil.d, 8.) (ChYiSiie aseroty haul sexpressesmar 
 With inmost assent of mind and faith would I 
 echo those words of Miss Frances Havergal’s: 
 
 ‘*Thy love, Thy joy, Thy peace, 
 Continuously impart 
 Unto my heart, 
 Fresh springs that never cease 
 But still increase.” } 
 
 Only I would use them as remembering 
 always that this most blessed connexion and 
 infusion never invades our personality, nor 
 annuls our responsibility.2 But the context of 
 
 — 
 
 1 Hymns of Consecration and Faith, No. 264. (2277). Cater te ~) 
 2 On this subject, our derivation of the whole secret of the 
 new life from our Head by the Spirit, see Marshall, Gosfel 
 Mystery of Sanctification. See particularly Direction iii., near 
 the beginning: ‘One great mystery is that the holy frame and 
 disposition whereby our souls are furnished and enabled for 
 immediate practice of the law must ‘be obtained by receiving it 
 out of Christ’s fulness,’ as a thing already prepared and brought 
 
7 HherLOVLuOr, GOD LOOCRE DI OUT. t35 
 
 Rom. v. goes clearly, as it seems to me, against 
 our explaining “the love of God” here of our 
 love to Him. . It is “‘ His love which . Rom.v.s. 
 
 He commendeth toward us, in that, while we 
 were yet sinners, Christ died for us” ; a love alto- 
 gether His, not in origin only but in expression 
 and direction, while yet the manifestation of it 
 to and in the heart of the justified believer has 
 everything to do with his waking up to “love 
 the Lord His God with all” that “heart.” 
 And it is this manifestation which the blessed 
 Spirit effects; so we read here. Dwelling in 
 the man He has regenerated, He so deals with 
 the regenerate consciousness that the apprehen- 
 sion of mercy, the acceptance of acquittal, comes 
 to be transfigured into an intuition into an 
 
 to an existence for us in Christ, and treasured up in Him; and 
 that as we are justified by a righteousness wrought out in Christ 
 and imputed to us, so we are sanctified by such a holy frame and 
 qualifications as are first wrought out and completed in Christ 
 for us, and then imparted to us; , . . so that we are not at all to 
 work together with Christ in making or producing that holy frame 
 in us, but only to take it to ourselves, and use it in our holy 
 practice, as made ready to our hands.” The whole context, and 
 indeed the whole book, are the best vindication of this statement, 
 which, in Marshall’s sense of it, means to recommend anything 
 - rather than a life of spiritual indolence. 
 
176 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 PO ata WAN caesar ne ek EEO Ne ESTEE Yoh 
 
 “everlasting love” as tender as it is almighty. 
 The man finds, he knows not how, outpoured 
 in his heart (éxxéxvrau), that “‘rest of bliss,” that 
 “sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort,” * 
 which rises direct from the certainty not that he 
 loves but that he is thus wonderfully loved. 
 “‘ Loved with everlasting love, 
 Led by grace that love to know— 
 Spirit, breathing from above, 
 Thou hast taught me it is so!” ? 
 
 We have here then.a work of the Spirit of 
 Love, supremely characteristic. ‘Ne shall see 
 the presentation of it in yet more developed, 
 vivid, and as it were concrete forms when we 
 come in a later chapter to study St Paul’s 
 
 Eph.iii ry, later written words about the 
 dwelling of Christ in the heart by faith. And 
 we find it, as we have already noticed, re- 
 appearing in this same Roman Epistle, where 
 Rom, vii. x6. ‘the Spirit itself beareth witness 
 with our Spirit that we are the children of 
 God.” Observe the phraseology there. The 
 
 1 Art. XVII. . 
 2 See the whole noble hymn (by the late Rev. Wade Robinson), 
 in Hymns of Consecration and Faith, No. 260.\ \-=..\ 
 
 ig 
 
 eee, ee ie 
 
“THE MIND OF THE SPIRIT.” 177 
 
 Spirit appears as witnessing not to, but with, 
 Our spirit; a statement of the precious facts 
 which gives us a view of them not so clearly 
 given in ch. v. 5; for here, in viii. 16, we have 
 “our spirit” brought in as a concurrent witness. 
 On the Holy Spirit’s part the “witness” is, 
 ‘‘ Doubtless thou art His child ;” on our spirit’s 
 part the “witness” is, “‘ Doubtless Thou art my 
 Father,” seen, welcomed, chosen, loved as such 
 by even me. And the two distinct lines of 
 witness meet in one strong, happy, humble 
 certainty. 
 
 The man thus dealt with by the Holy One 
 is seen, in St Paul, as the subject of His 
 presence and power in many a sacred detail. 
 In his human spirit he has so received the 
 Spirit that he is said, wonderful as the phrase 
 is, to have “the mind (¢pdvnpa) of the Spirit,” 
 His moral characteristics. Our version of 
 Rom. viii. 6, “To be spzritually-minded is life 
 and peace,” is inadequate while true. It fails 
 to give, as the literal version does, the truth 
 of the unspeakable connexion in the life of 
 grace between the Spirit and the spiritual man ; 
 the glorious mystery of the Vital Union as it 
 
 12 
 
178 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 regards the Spirit's indwelling presence and 
 power. Reading literally, “ Zhe mind of the 
 Spirit is life and peace” (see ver. 27), we see 
 the believer, mortal, sinful, the ceaselessly 
 needy recipient of “mercy from first to last,” 
 yet so wonderfully visited and inhabited by his 
 Regenerator, his Sanctifier, that along the lines . 
 of his own real will, understanding, and aftfec- 
 tions, there runs the power of the personal 
 Presence, yea, of the personal Character, of 
 ‘the Lord the Life-Giver. The more the man 
 humbly, and in watchfulness and prayer, but 
 with entire willingness and simplicity, “ yields 
 Rom.virz *himself unto God” thus present, 
 the more shall he, intact in personality, have 
 carried out in’him the workings of that 
 “mind.” And what will the result be? No 
 sensationalism, no fanaticism. A great con- 
 quest and captivity will be one side of the 
 aCor.x.s result; “every thought brought into 
 captivity unto the obedience of Christ.” A 
 holy prayerfulness, deep and yearning, will 
 Rom. vii. 26; be another side of the result. A 
 
 see Eph. vi. 18, : k 
 and Jude 20.’ loving, joyful, peaceful, trustworthy, 
 
 meek, self-controlled walk in human life and 
 
RESULTS OF POSSESSION OF HIS ett L IV D2 176 
 intercourse, will be another. A tendency to- 
 wards all such union with other chil- cau. v. 22, 23. 
 dren of God as is obstructed by the Rc orater 
 life and spirit of self, will be another. i ras 
 
 A joy and delight in adoration, and i= 
 generally in being at the will and service of 
 the adored Lord, will be another. pnit iii, 
 
 A deepening consciousness of the truth and 
 conquering power of the Word of God, as the 
 sword in the spiritual combat, will rps. vi. x. 
 be another. A growing gladness in the ex- 
 perience of a meek and lowly but most real 
 sacrifice and surrender in all things to God, 
 will be another; as the believer realizes his 
 union, by the Spirit, with Him who “ by 
 means of the Eternal Spirit offered Himself 
 without spot to God.” A quiet Heb. ix. 14, 
 readiness, as one aspect of the same blessed 
 fact, to be “led by the | Spirit??* Roni vii.z4. 
 will be another; and that leading will always 
 be oué of the way and will of self zy¢o that 
 of God; out of the ambitions and interests 
 of self into a daily aim and inmost choice 
 and longing that “ Christ may be Phil. i. zo. 
 magnified in my body,” that | may ‘shew 
 
180 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Sa ie Manu IPL a Ale Mk Oeil Lyk nel chet ee ws SE SRT 
 
 forth the praises of Him who hath called me 
 Petia, out of darkness into His marvellous 
 light,” that I may be, for the help of all 
 »Tim.ii2x. around me, “a vessel meet for the 
 Master’s use,” an implement ready to His 
 hand. And another side of the result of 
 having “the mind of the Spirit” will be a 
 larger insight into what is meant by a life of 
 faith, a life of unreserved reliance on the pro- 
 mises and will of God, a reliance ever more 
 childlike in its simplicity and ever more ma- 
 ture, and strong, and prevailing in its results. 
 For the faith by which Christ dwells in the 
 heart is but the effect in my soul and will of 
 Eph. iii. 6,17. the blessed Spirit’s “ strengthening.” 
 »cor.iv.3. He is “the Spirit of fazth.” And 
 on the other hand it is “by faith,” by the 
 simplest faith, that we “receive the promise 
 Gal iii,zs. -- Of the | Spirit, as )-regardamgbiie 
 developed inworking and empowering. 
 
 And if we take that aspect of the regenerate 
 life which has specially to do with ‘victory 
 and triumph against the devil, the world, and 
 the flesh,” the threefold ever-present enemy, 
 how great are the assurances given us in the 
 
THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT. 181 
 
 writings of St Paul, as regards the power 
 and working of the Holy Spirit! All Bible 
 readers are familiar with the antitheses, so 
 especially Pauline, between ‘“‘the flesh” and 
 “the Spirit.” But not all are familiar. with the 
 fact, which surely comes out under any careful 
 enquiry, that by the Spirit, in such connexions, 
 the Apostle habitually means not a “better 
 self” or “nobler powers” of even: regenerate 
 man, but the indwelling Paraclete Himself. 
 So that the man who “sows to _ Gal. vis. 
 
 the Spirit” means the man who casts the 
 seed so to speak of all life’s experiences upon 
 that divine soil; in other words, commits it to 
 the Holy Ghost within him to deal victoriously 
 with temptation and to put forth as the re- 
 sult the fruit of holiness. And the man who 
 in the realities of our life in the body, that 
 body which is practically our one immediate 
 vehicle of contact in all things with the world 
 around, “ mortifies the machinations Ron. viii. x3. 
 
 (rpages) of the body,” does it, if he does it 
 indeed, “by the Spirit.” He brings to bear 
 upon the whole range of motion and solicita- 
 tion to evil, incident to him as a dweller in 
 
182 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 “this tabernacle,” the glorious fact that “he is 
 1 Cor. vi.x7,x0. Joined unto the Lord, one Spirit ;” 
 that His ‘‘body is the temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, which he hath cf God, and that he is 
 not his own.” He recalls Gal. v. 16, 17: 
 “Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfl 
 the lust of the flesh; for the flesh lusteth 
 (emifujet) against the Spirit, and the Spirit 
 against the flesh; and these are contrary the 
 one to the other; so that ye cannot do the 
 things that ye would.” Is not that passage 
 too often read as if ver. 17 had nothing to 
 tell us but (what it assuredly doves tell us) that 
 the “infection of nature doth remain, yea, in 
 them that are regenerated,”! and that to the 
 last? True; it isa truth of constant merciful 
 humiliation and caution. But what is the main 
 purpose of the Apostle in this passage? Is it 
 not emphatically to press the bright side of the 
 antithesis, the side of peace, and victory, and 
 liberty, and power? Its message, in the con- 
 text, is altogether one of encouragement. It is 
 
 written, like the treasures of truth in 1John i, 
 ea deh cc as Se RIN Sc 
 
 1 Article IX.: Manet etiam in renatis hec nature adepravatio, 
 le. 
 
GAL. v. 16, 17, 4 MESSAGE OF HOPE. 183 
 
 “in order that we may not sin.” St Paul is 
 intent on showing the believer how, + Jobnii.. 
 although ‘the flesh” is always present, carrying 
 with it always the ingredients, so to speak, of 
 the experience analysed in detail in Rom. vii. 
 7-24, there yet is something else always present 
 also, and present in force. It is “the Holy 
 Ghost given unto us.” It is the living and 
 personal Comforter, dwelling in our body, and 
 making present in us “the life of 2Cor. iv. 10 1. 
 Jesus.” It is the Spirit “lusting against the 
 flesh” —a force, a tendency, a personal Power, 
 on the side of our deliverance and victory, 
 gloriously competent to overcome its antago- 
 nist, and to make us, the subjects of it, as we 
 yield to it and welcome it, mercifully “ wxadce 
 to do the things we would” in the life of the 
 ' flesh, in the life of self. 
 
 So “there is liberty where the Spirit of 
 the Lord is”; a blessed liberty, 2 Cor. iii. x. 
 meek and lowly, but strong and thankful 
 too. We find an emancipation from ‘old 
 sins,’ and a wonderful precaution 2Pet.ics. 
 and prophylactic against new ones, in the 
 secret of an indwelling strength, or rather 
 
184 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Strengthener, who is not ourselves yet is as 
 near to us as ourselves. He is at the same 
 time our always enlightening Convincer, as He 
 unfolds to us the divine Holiness and our “ ex- 
 ceeding need.” But also, blessed be God, we 
 shall find in Him, as we welcome Him, our 
 internal Liberator, present always, not some- 
 times only; our “victory and triumph” in a 
 way which forebodes no exhaustion by its 
 own efforts, for it is the Almighty One working 
 in us. We come very quickly, in the interior 
 conflict, to the edge of our own strength. But 
 to rest upon the presence of ‘‘the Spirit lusting 
 against the flesh” is to repose upon a Power 
 which has no edge, and no bottom. And 
 conscious weakness is that which reposes most 
 simply and most effectually upon it. 
 
 Let me close this brief general view with the 
 remark that no call is louder to the Church, 
 and to the Christian, of the present day than 
 that we hasten to discover (if we still have that 
 to do), and then always watchfully to use, our 
 “great strength” in the Spirit of God for 
 deliverance from “serving sin,” that so we may 
 be filled with His “calm excess,” and may 
 
THE LIFE TO WHICH WH ARE .CALLED. 185 
 
 overflow for blessing in the world around. 
 The call, for one and for another, may not be 
 to a life of any extraordinary apparent sacrifice, 
 -or external exhaustion or hardship; though 
 who may say that it shall not be so? But 
 most assuredly, for all who would be on the 
 Lord’s side in these days of ours, it is a call 
 toa life of just such “coming out and being 
 separate” from the world externally (while yet 
 we are ready every hour lovingly to serve that 
 world for our Lord) as arises from a true separa- 
 tion from the life of self and of sinning inter- 
 nally. How shall it be? How shall we indeed 
 be sanctified, sinners that we are, in order to 
 this witness and service of word and work? 
 There is only one way. It is ‘in xCor.vi.r. 
 the name of the Lord Jesus, and by THE 
 Spirit of our God.” 
 
Charade Re OX. 
 
 A GENERAL view of the revelation through 
 
 St Paul of the Holy Spirit and His work 
 lies now before us. We proceed in the chap- 
 ters which remain to a more detailed study of 
 some leading Pauline passages, in which the 
 Spirit’s blessed operation and its results stand 
 out manifested with peculiar glory. 
 
 May our “ meditation of Him,” by His great 
 Ps.civ.3. grace, “be sweet.” May thought 
 and word be in some true sense His, and — 
 may the whole result be for Him. 
 
 I take up in the present chapter the great 
 passage about the Fruit of the Spirit, generated 
 and produced in ‘‘the spiritual man.” The 
 
 Gal. v. 22,23. words thus specially before us are 
 part of a context, and indeed of an Epistle, full 
 to overflow of the truth of the Holy Ghost. 
 What we observed in the last chapter 
 
MESSAGE OF THE GALATIAN. EPISTLE, 187 
 
 regarding the doctrine of St Paul in general 
 is seen in the Galatian Epistle, and in this 
 section of it, eminently. 
 
 The Epistle is an urgent protest against a 
 false doctrine of Justification. It states with 
 strong and jealous firmness and precision the 
 truth of the finished work of the atoning Cross, 
 and the absolute necessity and simplicity of the 
 function of faith, faith only, in order to the 
 sinner’s entrance into the merits of the Crucified, 
 into acceptance in Him who ‘bought us out 
 from the curse, being made a curse Gal. iii. 13. 
 for us.’ It protests that a Gospel which leaves 
 this out, which has not this for its message, is 
 not a Gospel but a fatal perversion of the Gospel. 
 But does the Epistle stand still there? Is Jus- 
 tification its whole message? No; it conveys 
 quite as much a warning, a testimony, an affir- 
 mation, about the work and power of the Holy 
 Ghost. ¢ The all-importance, for St Paul, of the 
 truth of Justification resides after all in this, 
 that for the justified, and for them only, lies 
 open the life, and walk, and victory, and fruit- 
 
 bearing, which is by the Holy Ghost alone. ) 
 
 As guilty sinners they take refuge by faith in 
 
188 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Jesus Christ “made a curse for them;” and 
 then, and so, they become possessed of all that 
 is laid up in that same Saviour risen and glori- 
 fied, and who now by the same Spirit who led 
 them to Him, dwells in them. 
 
 So in this Epistle of Justification, as it draws 
 to its wonderful close, we have more and more 
 of the Holy Ghost. ‘“ Walk by the Spirit, and 
 
 Gal.v.x6 ye shall not fulfil the lust of the 
 flesh ;” let us observe the definiteness and 
 decision of that promise, my Christian brother 
 and reader, and humbly claim it. Again, 
 “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and” 
 (we dwelt on this divine side of the matter 
 in the last chapter) “the Spirit against the 
 flesh.” Again, “If ye be led by the Spirit, 
 Gal. v.17,18. ye are not under the law;” not in 
 collision with it, as it is the royal proclamation 
 of your Father’s will. Do you challenge His 
 inspection as solely and only Jupce? Ah, that 
 would to the last involve a sternly judicial 
 condemnation." But do you lovingly, and with 
 
 1 Observe the well-weighed words of Article XII.: “Good 
 works, which are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, 
 cannot .. . endure the severity of God’s JUDGMENT.” 
 
THE SPIRIT IN THE GALATIAN EPISTLE. 189 
 
 the heart of the child born again of the Spirit, 
 look up to Him as FaTuer, and, giving your- 
 self to be led along the way of His will by 
 His Spirit, say, “ Oh how I” (not  Ps.cxix. 7 
 challenge, but) “love Thy law,” Thy will 
 revealed? Then indeed, as regards your 
 personal relation to that law, you are not 
 “under it;” it is not ‘over you” as the 
 judicial sword. Not only has your blessed 
 Redeemer met it for you as you have violated 
 it, and as you fall short of it; you also now, in 
 a sense most humble, led by the Spirit, meet 
 it with the sincerity of a loyal will, loving » 
 the Lawgiver “from the soul.” .. yi 6; so 
 Again, a few verses later, comes hires 
 
 the significant precept, “If we live by the 
 Spirit,” if indeed we have by His power thes, 
 new birth and life, “let us also ¢ake step by | 
 step (ororyapev) by the Spirit.” Let us con- 
 sciously, with recollection, and zz detail, apply 
 our life-power, yield to our Life-Giver, in 
 the daily path. Not only as to the large 
 scope of existence but in the minutest things 
 of this hour, in the small but strong temp- 
 tations of ordinary intercourse, in the facile 
 
190 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 commonplace occasions for loss of temper, loss 
 of humility, loss of purity, failure to love, to 
 serve, to remember that we are not our own, 
 let us “take step by step” by the Holy Ghost. 
 Can I too earnestly press that precept, with all 
 its speciality of phrase in the Greek, upon my 
 reader, upon myself? Again, a little further 
 Gal. viz. on we have “the Spirit of meek- 
 ness,” the blessed Paraclete ready to guide 
 us “step by step” through one of the specially 
 
 ’ 
 
 rough and crooked places of common Christian 
 life. And a little lower again, in a passage 
 Gal. vis. which we touched upon in the last 
 chapter, we find the Christian entreated to 
 “sow to the Spirit,” to cast, by faith, upon 
 the presence and power of the Holy Ghost 
 within him, as upon a divine soil, the seed 
 given by each trying incident of life. The 
 issue of such sowing shall be “life everlast- 
 ing ;” developments of the life of God within 
 him now, and eternal developments from each 
 such sowing hereafter, to His glory. 
 
 But I must not pursue too far, though it is all 
 
 —_——_—_——— = 
 
 1 Page 181, 
 
‘SER OLE P AN DA RVORK SU Igt 
 
 to the purpose, the context of our special pas- 
 sage, nor the general teaching of this Epistle on 
 the relations between acceptance in Christ and 
 life by the Holy Ghost. We come now at once 
 to a view of the FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 Here first observe the light thrown by con- 
 trast on the word “fruit.” Just be- Gal. v. t-2:. 
 fore we have had recounted to us “the works 
 of the flesh.” The difference of the phrases 
 is significant.’ In the one the noun in question 
 is plural, in the other singular. A weary course 
 of discords and internal collisions, a life in pieces 
 and out of joint, is thus contrasted with a life 
 whose growth is one harmonious development 
 from one rich central principle, germinating 
 and fructifying into a result of purity and 
 peace Here is already a lesson for the 
 spiritual man. As far as the Holy Spirit is in 
 possession of him, as far as he is being led 
 by the Spirit, and is yielding himself to the will 
 
 1 See some excellent remarks on this point in the Rev. Hugh 
 Macmillan’s 7rue Vine, p. 142. 
 
 2 I do not mean that the word “ works” can of ztse/f suggest 
 the meaning above given. This would be obviously untenable. 
 But its position here, close to “ fruit,” and in antithesis to it, 
 suggests that meaning. ) 
 
192 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 and mind (dpdvyyza) of the Spirit, so far is his 
 Rom. viii.6. life set free from the internal wear 
 and restlessness of ‘the works of the flesh,” 
 and drawn together into a peace and unity 
 which is possible only where what is made 
 for God rests in Him and lives for Him. 
 But this singular number, this “ Fruit,” not 
 “fruits,” of the passage before us, has more 
 to say, besides this lesson of contrast. It re- 
 minds the Christian, as he reads over the blessed 
 list of elements in the heavenly Fruit, that 
 they are essentially parts of one thing, and not 
 isolated things, in the Lord’s idea of the ser- 
 vant's life. They are not separable characters, 
 but a character. They are not put before the 
 man who “lives by the Spirit” in order that he 
 may pick and choose, and prefer to develop 
 some one or two of them, perhaps those which 
 he feels instinctively have most affinity with his 
 natural dispositions. They are in the divine 
 intention always inter-related, indivisible; the 
 whole character of the Christian. We may 
 Matt. v.32. Compare the Beatitudes, which as- 
 suredly describe not various persons but one 
 person, the true disciple of Jesus Christ seen 
 
LRUITFULNESS AND “ALL DILIGENCE.’ 193 
 
 from many points of view. And we may com- 
 pare also that remarkable passage, 2 Peter i, 
 5-7, where, under widely different phraseology, 
 the believer, the man who has “obtained 
 precious faith,” is entreated to “give all 
 diligence” to seek for a holy completeness and 
 harmony in the manifestation through him of 
 the life of God which is in him. 
 
 That passage, by the way, may caution us 
 against a disproportionate inference from the 
 precious imagery of “the fruit” in this. The 
 ideas suggested by fruit and fruitbearing are 
 not those of effort and care in the fruitbearing v 
 branch ; effort and care are the cultivator’s part. 
 But St Peter reminds us that the analogy 
 between the impersonal fruit-tree and the per- 
 sonal believer cannot be in all respects complete. 
 In the conscious and responsible man, as such, 
 there must always be place for “all diligence.” 
 Such “diligence” does not create life, or 
 generate it, nor does it in a direct way de- 
 velop the issues of life. But diligence is the 
 believer's duty in connexion with that de- 
 velopment ; it means, if done in spirit and 
 in truth, the believer's “laying 1 Pet. iis, 
 
 13 
 
194 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 aside,’ in the Lord’s name, every known 
 thing that Azuders the outgrowth and fulness 
 of the fruit. 
 
 But when this is said, by way of balance and 
 clearness, then without reserve we can throw 
 our thankful attention upon the blessed sug- 
 gestions and significance of the word “fruit.” 
 What does it tell us? It tells us, the branches 
 of the true Vine, that in us, yet not of us, there 
 is a mighty fructifying PrincipLe. It tells us 
 that the holy characteristics, the holy character, 
 here painted before us must not be worked up 
 by weary efforts out of the materials of self, 
 somewhat re-adjusted and assisting one another's 
 weakness, if they could do so. The happy, 
 pure phenomenon has a nobly adequate vital 
 Cause behind it. It grows; it is not manu- 
 factured. It is not acquired from our sur- 
 roundings, but produced amidst them. It 
 is the result of a secret of Lire; Life, that 
 most wonderful of forces, while most silent ; 
 the force which in the natural world can, in 
 the tender shoots of the young tree, lift the 
 massive stone, and rend the joints of rock- 
 like masonry ; and which in the spiritual 
 
 ae , , 
 SS A ee ee ee — 
 
WHERE DOES OUR" GREAT STRENGTH” LIE? 105 
 
 world can make the weak strong, and do 
 silent miracles with what once seemed impos- 
 sibilities in character within and circumstances 
 without. 
 
 Let the anxious, the discouraged, Christian 
 ponder this word “fruit,” recollecting this its 
 special significance. Let it remind him where 
 his “great strength” lies. It lies in nothing 
 that is properly and personally his. All that is 
 his, all such that is not sin, is capable indeed of 
 wonderful use by his ‘great strength.” Gifts, 
 talents, faculties of mind, or body, or’ estate, be 
 they very large or very, very small, all are 
 precious, all are usable. But none, absolutely 
 none, is his true strength. That lies wholly in 
 a divinely given secret, principle, force, which. 
 is in him but not of him, and whose power is 
 not for a moment to be measured by his weak- 
 ness. “From it is his fruit found.” see tos. xiv. s, 
 Let him be at rest about the adequacy of 
 that Cause to produce the effect of holiness. 
 Let him in humble faith “lay aside” all 
 known hindrance; and then in the same 
 humble faith, watching and praying, but not 
 struggling to force out the mighty Life, let 
 
196 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Rom viz him “vield himself unto God” for 
 
 a divinely natural fruitfulness. 
 
 For this fruit is “the fruit of THe SprRit.” 
 Here is the all-important and all-welcome fact 
 for us, in our present enquiry. This vital 
 secret, force, principle, of which we have spoken 
 —what is it? No abstract truth, no ideal of 
 duty, no awe-inspiring but never life-giving 
 “T ought.’ tis the Holy Ghost, the Personal 
 and Loving Paraclete. It is the Lord, the 
 Life-Giver, whose tender and mighty working 
 has drawn me to Christ, and knit me into Him, 
 and imparted Him to me; blessed be His 
 Name. Because of Him, by virtue of Him, 
 thanks to Him, through Him in-dwelling, in- 
 working, filling, welcomed in to have His way 
 
 :Cor.vixy. in His temple, the fruit of holiness 
 begins to be, to grow, to come forth, to take 
 its gracious shape, to ripen into its sweetness 
 for the service of God and Man. And so 
 our way, our indirect way, to contribute to 
 the blessed result is clear. It is to remove 
 in His name the obstacles, but then to re- 
 member with thankful and peaceful joy that 
 the work of life-giving and fruit-producing is 
 
 °°" = 
 
 ee Fa a gee HP 
 
CARTSTEOGR ALIFE, SDS LHS I LIRI TS . 197 
 
 His alone. From this point of view, my part 
 is a blessed and wakeful Quietism'; a rest, 
 that He may work. 
 
 Need I at any length remind my reader that 
 this view of the operation of the Spzrzt as the 
 secret of the fruit of holiness leaves wholly 
 
 inviolate the primary truth that “ Chrdst is - 
 
 our Life’? We saw early in our Col. iii. 4. 
 enquiry? how clear and full is the certainty 
 of that truth; that while the Spirit of God 
 
 is the Life-Giver the Son of God is the . 
 
 Life. But then, the Spirit zs the Life-GIver. 
 By Him, in His infinitely gracious personal 
 operation, you and I “have the = :Jobnv.:x. 
 Son.” And His own divine vital connexion 
 with the Son is such that where Heis, savingly, 
 there Christ is, and where Christ is there He 
 is. If I may quote words of my own written 
 elsewhere: ‘‘ The Spirit is the eternal and 
 divine personal Vehicle ; Jesus Christ, ‘who is 
 
 ) 
 
 Oureite,asethe Ching /conveyed.4. 5 ..Lo 
 
 1 IT use the word Quietism to express one side of truth, and only 
 so. In the history of theological language it has some associa- 
 tions with dangerous error. 
 
 aE ps30; etc, 
 
198 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 borrow an imperfect analogy from physical 
 science, Christ is as the Sun of the soul, the 
 Spirit is as the luminiferous Ether by whose 
 vibration we have the Sun’s light and heat.” } 
 
 And now we come to St Paul’s delineation 
 of this pure and sweet Fruit of the Spirit. Let 
 us take it up for a few very practical enquiries 
 and remarks. 
 
 The first point for observation, an ‘obvious 
 one, but none the less to be definitely con- 
 sidered, is that the Fruit of the Spirit consists 
 in its essence not of doing but of being. There 
 is nothing in this description which directly 
 speaks of energetic enterprise, multiplied labours, 
 severe sufferings, great material sacrifices. The 
 activities of life are in fact almost absent from 
 the immediate view, and the passive, the patient, 
 aspect of the spiritual man’s contact with life 
 and men is alone very visibly present. 
 
 What do we read in this? That the spiritual 
 man is called, as his highest calling, to cut 
 himself off from active, willing, practical service 
 of others? That the celestial fruit will grow, 
 
 1 Outlines of Christian Doctrine, p. 136. I may refer also to 
 Thoughts on the Spiritual Life, pp. 60, 61. 
 
 ale : 
 cS ter 
 
LIFE iS FOR WORK, WORK IS NOT LIFE, 199 
 
 ee etapa NSE EUS EINa> stim 
 
 and ripen, and be ready for the festival of God, 
 most favourably in a “life of contemplation,” 
 in a desert, or a cloister, or a jealously isolated 
 study ? The whole New Testament negatives 
 such a thought. In it, the ideal Christian life 
 is the life in which the Lord is glorified and 
 manifested amidst the manifold relative duties 
 and labours of the life of home, of citizenship, 
 of public ministry, of active evangelization. It 
 is a life in which the cross is daily carried,—the 
 cross not of our wilful and ambitious choosing 
 but of the Lord’s humbling and searching 
 allotment in the daily path. If the life of a 
 monastery were contemplated in the New Tes- 
 tament at all, as it is not, surely it would be 
 presented there as a “counsel” not “ of per- 
 fection” but of imperfection ; a lower path of 
 surrender and of service, while the higher path 
 was that of the mother, the child, the servant, 
 who in the midst of common life “ did the will 
 of God from the soul.” Eph. vi. 6. 
 But then, the impartial Gospel does not say 
 that work is therefore life. It points to the 
 eternal necessity of right being in order to 
 right doing. It bids the Christian live to serve, 
 
\ 
 PS See 
 
 200 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 but live dehznd hzs service in and with his Lord 
 
 and Life. It asks, ultimately, not whether 
 tCor. xiii. 3. yOu give your goods to the poor, or 
 
 your body to the fire, but whether you love. 
 
 So ‘the Fruit of the Spirit” is a divinely 
 given and developed Cnaracter, drawn out 
 of the fulness of Christ; a character which 
 must express itself in service, but whose 
 Col iii.3. - essence “is hid’ with Christ’ in 
 God.” This is the “fruit” which, according 
 to the Lord Jesus Christ's own words, we 
 shall surely bear if by the Spirit “we abide 
 Johnzv.48 in Him.” Of this fruit, says the 
 same Teacher, we are to bear “ much? sare 
 the glory of His Father. We may or may 
 not, in His providence, have much to do for 
 Him in enterprise, in effort, in public testi- 
 mony, in memorable suffering. Perhaps His 
 will for us, as we submit ourselves wholly 
 to it, humbly ready to “toil and not faint” in 
 His name, may be to do the most silent of 
 domestic duties, or to bear the most exhaust- 
 ing weakness or pain in a neglected sick-room. 
 But these questions touch the accidents of the 
 matter, not the essence. The “ fruit” is the 
 
 ae: a 
 
THEY PROLIVNANALY SEL). 201 
 
 character drawn for us by the Holy Spirit from 
 Jesus Christ our Head. The “ much fruit” 
 is that character not stunted and dwarfed by 
 the frosts of unbelief, but expanding in sweet 
 and strong development in the sunny open air 
 of the simplest faith. 
 
 And now we will look at the particulars of 
 the description, at the elements which this 
 inspired analysis shows us in the texture of 
 this fruit of Paradise grown on earth. 
 
 Those elements are nine: ‘‘ Love, joy, peace, 
 longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, 
 meekness, self-control.’”» And we may with- 
 out over-refinement trace a threefold grouping 
 igmtuemnine. «Love, “joy, peace,-.if lo read 
 their reference aright, describe the character 
 in its immediate relation to the Lord, who is 
 
 its spring of “love,” its cause of ‘‘joy,” its, 
 
 living law of internal ‘‘peace.’ ‘ Longsuffer- 
 ing, gentleness, goodness,” describe it in its 
 relations with men, as the Christian comes 
 evermore from the “secret of the Ps. xxxi.2. 
 
 Presence” to live his ‘‘hidden” life, unharmed 
 
 1 Eyxpareva. 
 
202 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 and bearing blessing with it, amidst “ the 
 plotting of men” and “the strife of tongues.” 
 ‘‘ Faithfulness, meekness, self-control,” denote 
 the Christian’s characteristics not so much 
 under the trials of opposition or provocation 
 as in the common ‘calls and duties of the day. 
 And so the ‘‘fruit” appears in its fair roundness 
 and ripeness. So the man, born of the Spirit, 
 led of the Spirit, taking step by step by the 
 Spirit, filled with this same blessed Spirit (a 
 “filling” of which we shall say more in the 
 next chapter), lives, moves, and has his being, 
 with and for God and man. He 1s one per- 
 sonality, and so his regenerate and Spirit- 
 developed character is one, from the “love” 
 to the “self-control”; from his inmost inter- 
 course with his Lord to his act of most watch- 
 ful and practical self-discipline in open human 
 life. ‘What he is as indeed a Christian, 22 Zofo, 
 that is the Spirit’s Fruit. 
 
 As we close, let us observe some main truths 
 about our Christian character, conveyed to us 
 in this view of the Fruit of the Spirit. 
 
 First, it is a character essentially of love and 
 
THE NEW LIFE ALIFE: OF BRIGHTNESS. 203 
 
 light. There are other qualifying facts about 
 it assuredly. There is in the true Christian 
 a gravity, an earnestness, a recollectedness, the 
 lack of which would put the man out of 
 character. This we have set before us here 
 in the word ‘‘temperance,” self-control. But 
 the material, the essence, of the life and 
 character thus governed and controlled is 
 “love, joy, peace.” Let the disciple remem- 
 ber this, and see that nothing hinders the 
 manifestation of it. He is a man in whom 
 dwells that Spirit whose special function it is 
 to “pour out the Jove of God in the Rom. ve 5: 
 heart.’ That Spirit was shed upon the exalted 
 Head as “the oil of gladness,” and Heb.i.s. 
 
 as such He flows down upon the member of 
 fuauetieadto; give him “zoyin the, 4.38 
 Holy Ghost.” And He is the Dove **""""* 
 of divine deace; His “mind” 1s Rom viii. 6. 
 as well as “‘life;” He is “the Spirit 
 of faith,’ and “peace” as well as 2Cor.iv. 13. 
 
 ) 
 
 «< ) 
 peace 
 
 “Joy” comes by “believing.” His Rom. xv. 1s. 
 
 unhindered in-working must come out then in 
 a life which the known love of God makes 
 loving—loving towards the Lord, and, in the 
 
204 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Lord, towards men; joyful, with a calm but 
 
 contagious and beneficent happiness, in its 
 blessed certainty of Christ possessed in His 
 glorious fulness; and. peaceful, with a rest- 
 fulness which cannot but diffuse itself around, 
 as the Spirit shows our spirit that “we have 
 Rom.v.x.', peace™) with «God, . and=thatestue 
 “peace of God” can indeed “keep our hearts 
 Phil. iv. and thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” Let 
 us remember, let us yield ourselves up, that 
 we may manifest this essential threefold bright- 
 ness of the life and character of the spiritual 
 man. The Holy Ghost, giving us possession 
 of Christ, is the heavenly Antidote to coldness, 
 to “unpleasantness,” to reserve of sympathies 
 and service, to melancholy, to beclouding 
 “worry.” Self-control may have to carve deep 
 lines in heart and life; but the chisel need 
 never deface the brightness of the material, 
 Again, the character of the Spiritual man is, 
 in the relations of man with man, a character 
 which is essentially ready to give way, to for- 
 bear, to bear. No elaborate qualification is 
 needed here of this statement. I remember 
 well what energy for service the Holy Spirit 
 
 wt 
 4 
 4 
 1 
 4 
 ; 
 
THE NEW LIFE A LIFE OF YIELDING. 205 
 
 aa aT 
 
 can and does impart to the weakest, and what 
 ‘mmovable firmness for truth, for principle, He 
 can and does develope in the most sensitive and 
 timid. But deep below such manifestations, 
 where they are indeed His work, there lies in 
 the order of grace the presence, by His in- 
 dwelling, of a tender and willing surrender to 
 others, because first to the Lord, of every mere 
 claim and jealousy of self. In proportion to 
 the fulness of the Spirit's in-working Jesus 
 Christ really occupies the throne usurped before 
 by self. And in proportion to that occupation 
 of the throne by its true King the man will 
 be, more than anything else—whatever else he 
 has to be in the direction of activity and firm- 
 ness—‘ long-suffering, gentle, good.” 
 
 Lastly, the truly spiritual character will, in 
 its God-given development, issue always in a 
 practical and wakeful life. Bright with a secret 
 happiness, long-suffering with a deep and 
 genuine surrender, the spiritual man will be 
 
 “faithful” 1 in every particular Of Guiyang tale 
 
 1 That the word alors in this passage means “ faithfulness” 
 not “faith” is clear by its collocation with words in which rela- 
 tive duties are plainly in view. See, ¢.g., Titus ii. 10. 
 
206 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 will be loyal to every promise made or trust 
 undertaken. He will be to be depended on in 
 the business of the day. His correspondents 
 will receive punctual answers ; his friends, faith- 
 ful and careful counsel. His employers will get 
 a service out of him in which their just interests 
 will beashisown. His servants and dependants 
 will find him watchfully equitable, considerate, 
 and courteous. He will take great care to 
 Rom. xii 8. ““OWe no man anything.” His church 
 and parish will be truly served, be they ever 
 so large, or small, or unresponsive. He will 
 be known to be one who will take trouble 
 for others, and who is glad to be their servant 
 indeed for Jesus’ sake. He will be « meck,” in 
 the sense of a jealous avoidance of a manner 
 and habit of self-assertion among his brethren - 
 in matters of opinion or of work. And with 
 and over it all he will be “ sedfcontrolled.” He 
 will, for the glory of his Master, and that he 
 may be truly serviceable among his fellows for 
 Him, watch and pray over his own acts and 
 habits ; over bed, and board, and literature, and 
 companionship, and recreation, and imagination, 
 and tongue. Not that he will try to exercise 
 
GALAWi22,023. A SLIRILOAL TOUCHSTONE. 207 
 
 the Stoic’s fancied empire of self over self; but 
 he will humbly, recollectedly, with decision, 
 bring the whole of his life, hour by hour, to his 
 glorious Master for orders and for discipline. 
 He will ‘keep under his body, and : Cor. ix. 2. 
 bring it into subjection,” by a steadily main- 
 tained surrender of it as “a living Rom. xii.s. 
 sacrifice,” in all its faculties, to Him of whom 
 it is written, “the body is for the «Cor. vi.:s. 
 Lord, and the Lord for the body.” For the 
 spiritual man, a true self-surrender is the deep 
 secret of a true self-control. 
 
 So we shut the Epistle, and close our 
 enquiry into the Fruit of the Spirit. But we 
 will do so only to turn again to life with a fuller 
 recollection of what is the character we are 
 intended to bear as spiritual men, and what 
 is the divine provision, present and perfect, 
 for the being of that character in us and its 
 manifestation by us. 
 
 We will take this Scripture to be to us, 
 amongst other things, a touchstone of our 
 spiritual health. Not long ago I heard of a 
 pious and devoted woman who used it habitually 
 
208 VENT, CREATOR. 
 
 for this purpose. If in any degree conscious 
 of a decline or obscuration in her life and 
 work for her Lord, she took Gal. v. 22, 23, 
 and read the words over as in His presence, 
 and asked herself before Him in what particular 
 of the Fruit of the Spirit any recent failure 
 was apparent. Such asking and finding led 
 at once to a repentant renewal of surrender 
 and of faith, and so back to the rest, and to 
 the readiness, which are for us, by the Holy 
 Ghost, in Jesus Christ our Life. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AE are still engaged upon the revelation 
 
 through St Paul of the Holy Spirit and 
 His work. In the present chapter we take 
 up a group of Pauline words and phrases on 
 the subject, rich in materials for enquiry and 
 for faith. 
 
 And, first, and mainly, the FuLness oF THE 
 Spirit. The precise phrase is not Pauline; 
 indeed it is not verbally Biblical. But equiva- 
 lent expressions are abundant, in many parts 
 of Scripture. In the Mosaic age we find the 
 sacred artificer Bezaleel “filled with Exod. xxxi. 3. 
 the Spirit of God” for the work of con- 
 structing and adorning the Tabernacle, whose 
 true Designer was none other than Heb. is.s, 
 the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel age the 
 Lord Jesus Himself is seen going up from 
 Baptism to Temptation “full of the  Lureiv.: 
 
 14 
 
210 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Holy Ghost.” His Forerunner was “filled 
 Lukei. 13,674. With the Holy Ghost, even from his 
 mother’s womb.” And both the father and 
 mother of the second Elijah were on special 
 occasions “ filled with the Holy Ghost.” At 
 Pentecost the gathered company, apparently 
 
 the “hundred and twenty” of Acts 1 15, 
 
 Actsii4 were “all filled with the Holy 
 Ghost.” Peter was specially “filled” when 
 
 he met the Jewish Council for the first time, — 
 
 Acts iv.8,31 Witnessing to his Lord; and so, 
 immediately afterwards, were all the brethren. 
 Actsix.x7 So was Paul at his baptism, and 
 when he sentenced Elymas to blindness. So 
 Acts xiii. 9,32. were the disciples at the Pisidian 
 Antioch in their hour of trial and joy. The 
 Actsvis. seven “Deacons” were chosen as 
 “men of honest report, full of the Holy 
 Ghost and wisdom.” And Stephen, in the 
 Acts vii. ss. act of confession, ‘being full of the 
 Holy Ghost, saw heaven opened.” Barnabas 
 Acts xi.24. is described as a man “ full of the 
 Holy Ghost and of faith.” 
 
 Such are the main Scriptural parallels which 
 by way of illustration may be gathered around 
 
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF “THE FULNESS.” 211 
 
 the great Pauline passage on the Fulness of 
 the Spirit, Eph. v. 18: “Be not drunk with 
 wine, wherein is excess, but be ye filled in ‘the 
 
 Spirit.” 
 
 Let us approach the text through the avenue 
 of the parallels, and ask what they have to tell 
 us on this great and precious fact and phenome- 
 non of the New Life. | 
 
 In the first place we gather very plainly that 
 “the Filling” is not identical in idea, whether 
 or no it coincides in time, with the initial work 
 of the Spirit as the Life-Giver. The Filling is 
 always seen as taking place where there is 
 already present the New Birth; and the posses- 
 sion of that Birth is thus the occasion for a 
 holy desire and longing to possess in some 
 sense the Filling. 
 
 Again we gather that there are upon the 
 whole two main aspects or phases of the 
 Fulness of the Spirit. There is a special, criti- 
 cal, phase, in which at a great crisis it comes 
 out in marked, and perhaps wholly abnor- 
 mal, manifestation, as when it enables the man 
 or woman to utter supernatural prediction 
 
212 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 or proclamation. And there is also what we 
 may call the habitual phase, where it is used 
 to describe the condition of this or that be- 
 liever’s life day by day and in its normal course. 
 Thus the Seven were not so much specially 
 “filled” as known to be “full;” and so was 
 Barnabas. Into this holy habitual fulness Paul 
 entered, it appears, at his baptism. On the 
 other hand the same Paul experienced from 
 time to time the other and abnormal sort of 
 filling ; and it thus results that the same man 
 might in one respect be full while in another he 
 needed to be filled. 
 
 There is a close connexion from one point of 
 view between the Fulness of the Spirit and 
 what we commonly mean by miraculous powers 
 and works, particularly the miraculous work 
 of infallibly “inspired” speaking.. The imme- 
 diate result at Pentecost was an instantaneous 
 
 Acts.ii4 ‘speaking with other tongues, as 
 the Spirit gave them utterance.” St Peter, 
 St Paul, St Stephen, all spoke supernatural 
 words of testimony, or authority, or vision, 
 when thus “filled with the Spirit.” The 
 Lord Jesus Himself in the Fulness of the 
 
Se PL LeL OLIVE wie IV GILLS. 213 
 
 —EEEE 
 
 Spirit sustained six weeks of fasting and met 
 the Tempter under mysterious conditions. 
 And some may think that we should infer 
 a similar reference wherever the Fulness is 
 spoken of; as if it implied a miracle-working 
 power for instance in the Pisidian Christians, 
 or in the Ephesians who are here enjoined to 
 bees filledvin the: Spirit.” 
 
 But it seems clear that this inference is by 
 no means necessary. And the proof of this 
 statement lies in the general testimony of the 
 Word of God, which now in successive chapters 
 we have been collecting, to the character of the 
 highest ranges of the Holy One’s work. Those 
 highest ranges have to do with not the miracu- 
 lous, in our common sense of that word, but 
 the moral; the transfiguration of the will, of 
 the heart, of the soul, by the immediate action 
 of the Lord the Spirit. And there would 
 be surely an anomaly, a disproportion, in a real 
 appropriation of the glorious phraseology of 
 His Futness to the abnormal and (from a true 
 view-point) not noblest and most perfect kind 
 of His operation. As we study the description 
 of the Fruit of the Spirit, and (what will be 
 
214 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 BE Ee ST 5 ce a el ee ee 
 before us in our closing chapter) the Indwelling 
 of Christ in the heart by the. Spirit, we are 
 surely right in being certain that, whatever the 
 Fulness has to do with tongues and prophecies, 
 it has its very highest concern with the believer's 
 spiritual knowledge of His glorious Lord in the 
 life of faith, and with the true manifestation of 
 that life in the loveliness of a holy walk. Tobe 
 filled with the Spirit is a phrase intensely con- 
 nected with the fulness of our consecration to 
 the will and work of God in human life. 
 
 I would not be mistaken, as if I meant to 
 relegate off-hand to the apostolic age alone 
 all manifestations of the presence and power 
 of God through His people in the way of sign 
 and wonder. I do gather, both from the 
 history of the Church and from that pregnant 
 Scripture, 1 Cor. xiii, &, that oz the whole the 
 commonly called miraculous displays of that 
 power were intended for the first days only, 
 or at least in a degree altogether peculiar. 
 That period had characteristic conditions and 
 needs which.can never quite recur, even where 
 the Gospel is a new thing among the heathen 
 ef our time, For the Gospel was then every- 
 
OUGHT WE TO “CLAIM MIRACLE-GIFTS ?” 215 
 
 where and absolutely new, with no_ history 
 as yet behind it, no results of long years to 
 give it their credentials. I do not think, with 
 some earnest Christians, that the Christian 
 Church is “responsible” for the abeyance of 
 miraculous manifestation, by a lack of faith 
 while faith might at any time claim the 
 wonder-working power. I believe on the 
 other hand that subtle dangers and strong 
 temptations lie concealed where the Christian, 
 or the community, is eager for the gift of such 
 miraculous faculties rather than for an ever- 
 deepening abasement of self before the Holy 
 One and an ever closer and more chastened 
 walk with Him. But meanwhile it is no part 
 of such convictions to deny @ priord the pos- 
 sibility of signs and wonders in any age, our 
 own ‘or another, since the apostolic. Only 
 it seems to me to be certain not merely that 
 upon the whole such operation is not the will 
 of God now as it was of old, but that this is 
 so because more and more His people are to 
 be led in His plan of teaching to rest in that 
 “more excellent way ” which already in that 
 wonderful first age the Apostle preferred to 
 
216 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 1Cor. xii.3r. even “ the best gifts” of the other 
 kind. 
 
 But let us now take up the Apostle’s word 
 to the Ephesians: Be ye filled with the Spirit ; 
 TAnpovobe &v Tvevmare. 
 
 It will be seen, as we look into the context, 
 and as we recall what has now been said 
 on the two phases of manifestation of the 
 Fulness, that we have here a precept not for 
 a crisis but for the whole habit of the Chris- 
 tian's life. Not the least reference to works 
 of wonder occurs in the context. ‘ Psalms, 
 and hymns, and spiritual songs,” are the - 
 manifestation of the Fulness specially and at 
 once in view, and the blessed habit of thank- 
 fulness, and the habitual readiness to forget 
 self in the interests of others, and then all 
 the lovely details of the life of a sanctified 
 home. And we must observe that the pre- 
 ceptive verb (z\npovoGe) is in the present or 
 continuing tense. It enjoins a course, a habit, 
 not a critical effort or venture. It lays it upon 
 
 1 I commend to the reader’s attention the late Dean Goode’s 
 Modern Claims to the Possession of the Extraordinary Gifts of 
 the Spirit, stated and examined (1834). 
 
pdt? Rt LIN Se hLIN LLL, AV, 18: Mg 
 
 the believer so to use the open spiritual secrets 
 of his life in the Lord as to enter upon and 
 walk in a state of divine Fulness which shall 
 be, above all things, useful and rich in blessing 
 for the needs of the daily path, and shall 
 result, whatever else it results in, in a temper 
 of continual modesty and unselfish serviceable- 
 ness towards all around him. We must observe 
 further the exact wording of the phrase in 
 its last words: ‘“ Be ye filled zz the Spirit, é& 
 Ivevpar.” It is as if the Apostle had written 
 at large, ‘Be filled wth that Holy Spirit zz 
 whom you are; you ave zm the Spirit, if so 
 be that the Spirit of God dwell in Rom. viii.«, 
 
 you; see now to it that by His grace you 
 are in such relations of faith and submission 
 with Him that He who is within you shall 
 be no longer, if hitherto, a well-head hidden 
 beneath the débvis of disobedience and un- 
 belief, but springing, rising, unhindered in 
 His blessed overflow, till a// regions of the 
 inner man ‘live’ indeed where that ‘ river 
 cometh ;’ till a parts of your Ezck. xvii. o. 
 
 outward walk and work are ruled by the 
 Spirit of God, and a- holy abundance goes 
 
218 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Johnvii.38,39. forth through you to the blessing of 
 the souls of others,” 
 
 Such, I believe is a simple account of the 
 Fulness of the Spirit as it is presented here 
 in this divine word of appeal, exhortation, and 
 implied promise. The Apostle in effect calls 
 
 Rom.vix3. upon the believer to “yield himself 
 
 unto God” the Holy Ghost as to a Power 
 and Presence already dwelling in living real- 
 ity within him, but waiting, as it were, for 
 the welcome of the soul to come forth from 
 within and take entire possession of the whole 
 circle and range of life. It is no invitation 
 to a spasmodic or tempestuous enthusiasm. 
 It is a call to let the water from the mountain- 
 springs of God rise in the man, in his pur- 
 poses, in his affections, in his works, in his 
 will, calmly and surely towards its blessed 
 level. | 
 
 Let us not forget the holy reality under its 
 sacred imagery. This appeal of the Spirit by 
 St Paul is sent straight to the innermost heart 
 of my reader, and of myself. What does it 
 mean in our life, as that life is to be lived this 
 day? By grace we believe in the Son of God 
 
A PERSONAL APPEAL. 219 
 
 revealed. Therefore most surely the Spirit is in 
 us, for without His inworking we should never 
 have ‘called Jesus Lord.” But are :cor. xii. 
 we filled, nay are we filling, with the Spirit ? 
 Is\H_is blessed power upon our “‘first springs 
 of thought and will” a power fully welcomed 
 there? Are we watching and praying over 
 the matter, and humbly resolved, looking up for 
 light, that nothing we know of in act, or habit, 
 in occupation, in recreation, in thought and 
 word about our neighbour, in use of time or 
 means, is such as to obstruct the rise of His 
 “calm excess” through all we are and all we 
 have? St Paul calls us to this humble and 
 holy watching and resolve; and assuredly the 
 whole Word of God promises a blissful result, 
 to the glory not of ourselves but of our Lord, 
 upon our so doing in His name. 
 
 So let us do then, in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 As I said, this precept implies a promise. And 
 the promise is unto not great or exceptional 
 Christians, but to the Christian—who yields 
 himself to God. At Ephesus, it was meant 
 for the everyday Christian believer; husband, 
 wife, parent, child, master, slave. They were 
 
220 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 all meant to live lives divinely full, full from 
 within ; 
 
 ‘Not roughened by those cataracts and breaks 
 Which humour interposed so often makes ;” 
 
 and which are made indeed by anything and 
 everything in which the soul at all rebels against 
 the Holy Ghost; but equal, equable, under the 
 welcomed power of the Lord. And what this 
 precept meant at Ephesus it means in England, 
 it means to the man who writes these words in 
 his study at Cambridge, and to his brother in 
 Christ who reads them wherever God has bid 
 him dwell. 
 
 Are our lives “ full” with the fulness of mul- 
 tiplied duties, of heavy calls. upon every hour ? 
 Let us calm them and illuminate them with this 
 other Fulness in its divine simplicity. Let the 
 Spirit, the Life-Giver, the Revealer of Christ, 
 the Imparter of Christ to us, have His way, 
 and rise and fill the man. Then the life full 
 of toil will be a life full also of internal peace. 
 
 It will be in place here to remark on the 
 phrase the Baptism oF THE Spirit. That 
 
LHE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT. 221 
 
 phrase is not precisely Pauline. We have 
 only an approach to it in the words, “by one 
 Spirit we were all baptized into :cor. xii: 
 one body.’ But its connexion with the sub- 
 ject of the Fulness of the Spirit, as seen in 
 the Ephesian Epistle, is close and important. 
 It occurs in each of the Gospels Matt, iit, x1 
 and twice in the Acts. It will be Ton iisecd 
 seen that the Lord Jesus appears xc 
 there always as the Baptizer. And it will be 
 seen also that while the mentions of the holy 
 Filling are frequent the recorded occasions 
 of the Baptism are two only; the Day of 
 Pentecost, and the closely parallel occasion 
 when in the house of Cornelius St 
 Peter, the Apostle of Pentecost, was 
 permitted solemnly and for ever to “open the 
 door of faith to the Gentiles.” Nowhere in 
 the Epistles does the precise phrase ‘“‘ Baptism 
 of the Spirit” occur. Are we not thus led to 
 
 see Acts xi,.15, 
 10, 
 
 the conclusion that the Baptism is not to be 
 identified with the Filling, and is not, like the 
 Filling, presented to us as a blessing for which 
 the Christian is to seek ? 
 
 I am aware that the question is not without 
 
222 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 its special difficulties. The analogy of the 
 Sacrament of Baptism would in itself lead us to 
 connect the Baptism of the Spirit rather with 
 the beginning of the new life than with a great 
 development of it; but we can hardly do this 
 without reserve, in view of the fact that the 
 Apostles themselves were not till the Day of- 
 Pentecost subjects of this Baptism. Still, both 
 the Pentecost and the Visit to Cornelius were 
 not only historical events but great representa- 
 tive occasions, each of which was as it were a 
 birth-time of the true Church by the power of 
 the Spirit. And each may thus be held to 
 typify and signify on a great scale the true 
 birth-process and birth-time, by the same 
 power, in the case of the individual soul. Any- 
 wise it is remarkable and significant that the 
 developed teaching of the Epistles contains 
 no appeal to the man already in Christ to seek 
 the Baptism of the Spirit. We are to be filled, 
 and to be full of Him, as those who have 
 already received Him “from the height that _ 
 knows no measure.” 
 
 In view of these facts of Scripture may I say, . 
 with tenderness and deep spiritual sympathy, 
 
ISTHE “BAPTISM” TOBE WAITED FOR? 223, 
 
 that a mistake appears to underlie the practice, 
 not uncommon now among earnest Christians, 
 of wazteng for a special “ Baptism of the Spirit” 
 in order to more effectual service for the Lord ? 
 Surely, “by one Spirit we have been baptized 
 into one body.” And now our part :Cor, xii. 1. 
 is to open in humblest faith all the avenues 
 and regions of the soul and of the life, that 
 we may be filled with what we already have.! 
 And how shall this be done? St Paul gives 
 the answer: ‘“ That we might re- Gal. iii. 14. 
 ceive the promise of the Spirit ¢hrough 
 faith.” Yes, through faith, the mouth of 
 the inner man, “opened” that He Ps. tsxxi. 20, 
 who has promised may “fill” it. In this 
 brief, loving appeal to the Ephesian saints, 
 the Apostle does but ask them to open and 
 
 ’ I may refer to an admirable little tract in verse by an anony- 
 mous Writer; Zhe Baptism of the Holy Ghost. The tract is 
 “to be had of the Secretary of the Mildmay Letter Mission, 
 66, Mildmay Park, London.” A short quotation shows what its 
 drift is :— 
 
 ‘* Thine is the throne-room of the soul ! 
 Its Ruler, break each barrier down ; 
 As with full tide o’erflood the whole, 
 Self overborne by Thee alone: ... 
 Spirit of truth, of holiness, 
 We cry not ‘ender,’ but ‘ possess.’ " 
 
224 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 ——- 
 
 receive; to take their stand upon a promise. 
 Not by mighty spiritual effort but in order to 
 it is that “promise” to be “received.” We 
 are to take the Lord at His word, to trust © 
 Him to bless us fully in His keeping His word. 
 We are to open to Him all the inner doors of 
 the soul, the chamber doors, as we have opened 
 the main portal. And we are to use the same 
 key, ‘the key of promise,” which is, from the 
 other point of view, the key of our simplest and 
 most confiding faith. | 
 
 Believing, we receive. And blessed then 
 will be the manifestations of the holy Gift 
 received, in one special direction and another. 
 We shall know something of what it is to be 
 Rom. xv.13. “ filled with all joy and peace in 
 believing, that we may abound in hope, by 
 the power of the Holy Ghost.” We shall be 
 PhiLixz. On our way to be “filled with the 
 fruit of righteousness ;” “filled with the 
 Col. i. 9. knowledge of His will.” We shall 
 be realizing something indeed, by the power 
 of Him who is the Bond betwixt us and our 
 Head, of that Filling which we already possess 
 (but possession is not realization) in Him in 
 
LTHE SEALING, EARNEST, AND FIRSTFRUITS. 225 
 (DL SIRT RRS eS NES 9 a el ON 
 whom “all the Fulness dwells.” Yes, we shall 
 
 be filled, we shall be filling, in our Cisiee Git 
 finite receptivity, with that “Fulness ** 
 
 of God” which means whatsoever xpb. iii 16. 
 being glory in Him is capable of becoming 
 grace in us. 
 
 Here will be a blessed and continuous answer 
 to the prayer of our Communion Service, that 
 wonderful and pregnant petition: “We humbly 
 beseech Thee that all we, who are partakers of 
 this holy Communion, may be FUL-FILLED with 
 Thy grace and heavenly benediction.” 
 
 Let us not forget the words which, with 
 profound significance, just precede that prayer: 
 “Here we offer and present unto Thee,«@ 
 Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a 
 reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.” 
 We yield ourselves to Him for His will. He 
 meets us with His sacred Fulness. 
 
 To this same range of truth we may re- 
 fer the language of St Paul about ae 
 Lay pil. 1, 13,14 5 
 the Srauine by the Spirit, and the Poawes 
 
 oes Rom, viii. 23. 
 Earnest of the Spirit, and the : 
 Firstrruits of the Spirit. No doubt the 
 
 T5 
 
226 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 “ Gifts” of the primeval Church are con- 
 siderably in view in each of those phrases. 
 But surely the same reasons which have con- 
 strained us to apply’ the Apostle’s language 
 about the Fulness to the “more excellent 
 way” of the divine life of faith, hope, and love, 
 apply here. The believer, already a believer 
 by the Spirit’s lifegiving operation, is now 
 also “sealed” as the property of his Master 
 by the same Spirit’s developed possession of 
 Him. And this possession, with its holy fruit, 
 is the “ earnest ” of his full possession of his 
 God for ever in eternity; the ‘‘ first-fruits ” 
 
 Ga. vis. of the harvest of “life everlasting” 
 which is to be reaped “of the Spirit’ then 
 at length. 
 
 Come forth then, eternal Spirit, and be ever 
 coming forth, from Thy secret place within our 
 -spirit, into all that we are, and all that we have, 
 to fill all in all in us, and to overflow through us. 
 Fill Thou us in a blessed continuousness and 
 habit, enabling us in humble continuousness to 
 
 1 Page 2165. 
 
it ie ee Le 227 
 
 receive Thee, day by day and hour by hour, 
 through faith. At each crisis of need fill us 
 with Thy special fulness out of Thy habitual. 
 And when the hour of death shall come, so fill 
 us that we may see with our spirit’s eyes, 
 in Thy light, heaven opened, and the Son 
 of Man standing at the right hand of God. 
 
 Amen. 
 
GH ACE ROOST: 
 
 OR the main theme of our enquiry in the 
 last chapter we went to the Epistle to 
 
 the Ephesians. And now, for the last of our 
 
 successive explorations of this continent of 
 living truth, we come to the same Epistle 
 again, and to a passage more full if possible 
 
 than even that other of the inmost treasures | 
 
 of the doctrine of the Spirit. 
 
 Who has not read and re-read the closing 
 verses of the third chapter of the Ephesians 
 with the feeling of one permitted to look 
 through parted curtains into the Holiest Place 
 of the Christian life? Who has not longed to 
 step into that sanctuary in a personal experi- 
 ence of its riches and blessings? Who that 
 in any true sense has entered in by grace does 
 not feel, does not know, that indeed it is rest 
 and joy beyond all exposition to be there? 
 
 lt ie a _ 
 
 ‘ 
 i ee - 
 
THE SPIRITUAL PEM ELL jx delle 11.5) LIL. 226 
 
 It is the spiritual swmmum bonum of the 
 Pilgrimage. It is the beginning of the happi- 
 ness of the eternal Country. 
 
 Approaching this very sacred passage for 
 some special meditations on one glorious part 
 of it, let us first briefly recall its contents as a 
 whole. 
 
 It forms the resumption of a dropped subject. 
 At the close of ch. ii. the Apostle had written 
 of the building of the great spiritual Temple, 
 the true Church of God, the holy structure in 
 which every stone is living and in living contact 
 with the Augulare Fundamentum, the Stone of 
 the Corner. That structure he had described 
 as rising, growing, “into an holy sanctuary in 
 the Lord ;” preparing for the eternal Day of 
 its final consecration, when it should be ready 
 at length and for ever to be the “abiding 
 habitation of God in the Spirit.” — Eph. ii. 22. 
 Then followed a long and memorable digres- 
 sion, in which the imagery of sanctuary and 
 habitation disappears. But at the fourteenth 
 verse of the next chapter, our present chapter, 
 it comes up again. We read again, and in a 
 like connexion with the work and grace of 
 
230 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of a “ perma- 
 nent inhabitation.”’ We see again a divine 
 Indweller, abiding in a shrine constructed as 
 it were of human materials and prepared for 
 His presence by the skill and power of the 
 Spirit. But there is a difference. The former 
 passage had to do rather with the believing 
 Company as such, the Temple of the true 
 Church. This has to do rather with that com- 
 pany as seen in its individuals; it speaks of the © 
 
 Eph. iii.r7, ‘‘ Leavts” of the saints, a word full 
 of the thought of separate personalities ; it con- 
 . templates them as each an abode for the divine 
 Indwelling. Each living stone is as it were 
 taken by itself, and seen as a miniature of the 
 Living Temple; not so that the glorious total 
 is forgotten, for it appears throughout the whole 
 passage in the use of the plural (“ your hearts,” 
 
 Eph. iii.28. and ‘‘with adZ saznts”), but so that 
 the individual aspect of the matter is the most 
 prominent for the time. This form of the divine 
 Inhabiting St Paul here dwells upon, and suppli- 
 
 Eph.iii.x6. Cates the Father of the great Family 
 
 1 The karouxynoa of iii. 17 takes up the caroxnrnpiov of ii. 22. 
 
LHE PRAYER OF EPH. Ii. 231 
 
 that by the Spirit it may take place fully and 
 decisively in each Ephesian disciple. And then 
 he proceeds to prayer on prayer, all xph. iii. x7-21. 
 springing from this same root of blessing. He 
 asks that the saints, thus each possessed by 
 Christ as perpetual Inhabitant, “rooted and 
 grounded” in that eternal Love which is 
 manifested and conveyed through Him, may 
 all together in some sort grasp the measureless 
 dimensions of that Love, and all get a new and 
 blissful knowledge in particular of the Love 
 of Christ Himself, and all be filled with “the 
 Fulness of God,” with “the plenitude of those 
 blessings which the Infinite One is willing and 
 able to bestow at each moment upon the finite 
 recipient.” Then follows that great Doxology 
 in which ‘“elory is given,” now and in the 
 endless prospect, to the Father of the Son and 
 of the saints in Him, in view of His almighty 
 and unmeasured power to bless, and of the 
 coming eternal manifestation of His praise “ in 
 the Church, and in Christ Jesus.” } 
 
 We have thus in some slight sense traversed 
 
 ‘ T use the preferable reading here, év ty éxkAnoia kal év Xpior@ 
 "Inoov. 
 
232 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 the paragraph and reviewed its outline. I do 
 so partly because there is a sort of sacred 
 necessity to do so; to be so near such treasures 
 of revealed grace and life, and to say nothing 
 about the rest of them because our precise con- 
 cern is with only one or two, is at least difficult. 
 But also this view of the passage as a whole 
 brings out what I would wish to remember 
 throughout our present enquiry, that the pro- 
 foundly individual blessing and experience 
 with which we are specially concerned is set 
 forth in connexion with more than individual 
 interests. It is a thing which does not termi- 
 “nate in the saint; it goes out through him to 
 “all the saints,” and it finds its rest and goal 
 in the glory of God. 
 
 But now to come to the treasures of truth 
 which are our immediate subject. They are, 
 the Dwelling of Christ in the heart by faith, 
 and the connexion of this great gift of grace 
 with a special work of the Hoty Sprrir. 
 
 Let me speak very simply, and at no great 
 length, of the Inhabitation of the Lord in the 
 heart. The theme is one rather for believing 
 
 _—_— = ee ee ee ee 
 
CHRIST DWELLING IN THE HEART. 233 
 
 and adoring prayer, and reception, and experi- 
 ence, than for much explanation or disquisition. 
 A few great points stand out however so 
 clearly from the words that I may reverently 
 say a little of them, as in the presence of our 
 Lord the Indweller. 
 
 First we plainly have here a truth more 
 special than the underlying truth that “in” 
 every true believer Christ is, by the Holy 
 Spirit. Precious beyond all estimate is that 
 truth, and happy the man who habitually 
 remembers it and acts upon it. Yes; “Jesus 
 Christ is in you, except ye be 2Corsxiiis, 
 counterfeits ;” and great indeed are the in- 
 ferences meant to flow direct from that fact 
 into the Christian’s faith and life.1. But there 
 is something more special here. For these 
 Ephesians are addressed as no counterfeits in 
 spiritual life; and yet St Paul prays that Christ 
 may dwell in their hearts. 
 
 Secondly, the kind of speciality is indicated 
 by the word “your hearts ;” not your nature, 
 your being, but your hearts. And “the heart” 
 
 =: —— a, 
 
 1 See above, ch. ii, 
 
234 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 is a word which, in Scripture, means very much 
 the organ of the whole inner consciousness, of 
 living thought, affection, will. Accordingly the 
 Indwelling here must be something appropriate 
 to that organ ; a blessed Presence of the Lord 
 in the saint’s recollection, and love, and pur- 
 poses. “In” the Christian off his guard the 
 Lord still ‘‘is,” in His patient mercy; but not 
 ‘dwelling in his heart.’ To borrow the 
 imagery of a Puritan commentator’ on the 
 Ephesian Epistle, Christ may be present in 
 the Temple, in the Church, of the believer's 
 being, while yet He is not sitting enthroned 
 in its Choir. Ay | 
 Thirdly, the words of the Apostle assure 
 us that it is the plan and purpose of the Gospel 
 that such a session of Christ in the sanctuary 
 of affections and will should be the experience, 
 and the abiding experience, of every disciple. 
 Not some of the Ephesian saints but all of 
 them are contemplated in this great prayer; in 
 each heart of all the company Christ is thus 
 to abide. No esoteric privilege, to be won by 
 
 1 Bayne, or Baynes, of Cambridge; odzz¢ 1617, 
 
A CONTINUOUS PRESENCE IS MEANT, 235 
 
 special achievements, or by special austerities, 
 or under exceptional surroundings, is here in 
 view. The means of attainment, or rather of 
 reception, are divinely simple, as we shall 
 presently see; this sacred bliss of the Presence 
 is to be entered upon “by faith.” And it is 
 meant to be not an intermittent and precarious 
 glory, dropped for a season through the rolling 
 clouds of doubt and fear, and soon to fade 
 again into twilight. The word? selected to 
 describe it is a word made expressly to denote 
 residence as against lodging, the abode of a 
 master within his own home as against the 
 turning “aside for a night” of the  Jerxiv.a, 
 wayfarer who will be gone to-morrow. Holy 
 and welcome intimation! It is within the scope 
 of prayer, and of humblest expectation, and 
 of believing reception, that this most sacred 
 Presence of our Lord, in a mode which affects 
 the inmost experience of His servant, shall be 
 as continuous and as regular (may I not venture 
 to say ?) as the very consciousness of our own 
 personality. ‘“ Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” 
 
 1 Karoxeiv. 
 
236 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Lastly, the grammatical shape here of this 
 same verb, its aorist tense,’ suggests to the 
 reader the thought not only of a divine In- 
 dwelling in the heart, but of a certain coming 
 wm of the Indweller, a taking up of His holy 
 residence within. It conveys the idea of an 
 initial entrance in order to a stated perma- 
 nence of presence. And the inquiry presents 
 itself, whether this teaches us that for each 
 Christian, in the law of his spiritual life, there 
 is intended to take place at some stage of 
 his progress a definite and solemn step from a 
 lower to a higher experience, from an ordinary 
 to an extraordinary state of communion with 
 his Lord. Did St Paul view the Ephesians 
 as all then occupying a lower level from which 
 they were all to rise decisively and forthwith 
 to another as yet unknown to them? I cannot 
 think that his meaning can be put precisely 
 thus, in view of the whole context, and of his 
 whole teaching. I do not trace in the New 
 Testament at large any formed and deliberate 
 doctrine of such a single and ruling crisis as 
 
 1 Karockjoat 
 
IS AHERE ALWAYS A CONSCIOUS CRISIS ?: 237 
 
 divinely intended in every case of life and 
 faith, and accordingly to be sought by every 
 convert. The blessing indicated has nothing 
 in it to forbid that it should coincide with 
 the earliest living acceptance of Christ by the 
 awakened man; and it has nothing in it to 
 forbid the belief that in countless instances 
 it should be truly present while yet its arrival, 
 its development, was unnoticed by the man 
 and took place through a process which he 
 cannot even seem to analyse. Let no Christian 
 judge another in this matter. But then let no 
 Christian whose record is thus uzzformitarian 
 (if we may borrow a word from the geologist) 
 think that for his friend or brother there can- 
 not be a critical and decisive experience of the 
 Indweller’s “arrival to reside in the heart.” 
 Testimonies innumerable, and given by gravest 
 witnesses, tell us that such experienced arrivals 
 of Jesus Christ there are, followed by a resi- 
 dence in the heart which is indeed a new and 
 blissful experience to the man, as he discovers 
 that what has before been an occasional and 
 exceptional communion of soul with His living 
 and present Redeemer may be, and in fact 
 
238 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 proves to be, prevailing and habitual. Such 
 
 cases St Paul I doubt not contemplates here, 
 assured that within the large community at 
 Ephesus there were many for whom such a 
 crisis was the great spiritual need. And he 
 includes the whole company in his prayer; 
 partly, if I read him aright, to remind each 
 disciple that whatever might be his experience 
 of the Arrival there was no man who might 
 not possess, and ought not to possess, the 
 experience of the Presence; but partly for 
 another reason. The holy Reality, in this as 
 in other things of the soul, inevitably tran- 
 scended any single metaphor of it. Arrival 
 and Residence were ideas not narrowly to be 
 limited to any one crisis of the life of faith, 
 however great and memorable. Even for the 
 most fully experienced, each access of conscious 
 knowledge of the power of that Presence .in 
 the heart would be as it were a new arrival 
 for another stay. Such is He of whom the 
 writer speaks, and such is His indwelling, that 
 in the very heart itself, in the very same heart, 
 He may from one point of view be lastingly 
 present while from another point of view He 
 
THE SPIRIT’S WORK IN THIS MATTER. 239 
 
 may be arriving even now. ‘‘ Even so come, 
 Lord Jesus.” 
 
 But while we thus speak of this sacred In- 
 dwelling, this dear inner secret of the Christian 
 life, are we forgetting our true theme, the work 
 of the Holy Spirit? No, we are not. I have 
 dwelt thus far upon ver. 17 in order to put with 
 the more emphasis the truth of ver. 16, the 
 revealed action of the Spirit in this matter. 
 
 Observe then that it is HE who so to speak 
 stands behind this whole wonderful experience 
 as its immediate Agent:.and Secret::° The 
 Apostle bows his knees to the Father that these 
 dear Ephesians, each and all, one by one, may 
 be dealt with in divine speciality by the Holy 
 Ghost. Her must act in them and through 
 them if Christ is thus to dwell within. Deep 
 below the Christian’s consciousness, within 
 those springs of thought and will which are 
 such mysteries to the person himself, the Spirit 
 of the Father—and of the Son—must do the 
 work of ‘strengthening with might in the inner 
 man. Operating there with the divine skill 
 which violates nothing in the nature He has 
 made, and with the divine power which can do 
 
240 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 what He will in and with that nature, He must 
 give, He will give, supernaturally to the man’s 
 inmost self a spiritual firmness and vigour which 
 shall discard certain deep fears and do certain 
 acts that could not otherwise be done. 
 Sacredly significant indeed is the phraseology. 
 In order to a reception into me of what is alto- 
 gether the gift of God and not the sequel or 
 remuneration of any toils or endurances of 
 mine, I yet need to be “strengthened with 
 might by the Spirit in” (‘deep within,” as the 
 Greek! seems precisely to indicate) ‘‘the inner 
 man.” And I ask what this means, what is the 
 occasion in this matter for a divine strengthen- 
 ng, where perhaps I might have looked rather 
 for such words as subduing or alluring. And 
 I read the answer in the light of the truth that 
 the blessing in question is the residence always 
 in the heart of its Master and Lorp, who 
 where He dwells must rule ; who enters not to 
 cheer and soothe alone but before all things 
 else to reign. And I remember that nature, 
 nature in the Fall, does not like that Presence 
 in that aspect; fears greatly to admit ‘‘this 
 
 1 Ris tov gow avOpwror. 
 
WHY HIS “STRENGTHENING” TS NEEDED, 241: 
 
 Man to reign over us.” I remem- Luke xix. 14. 
 
 ber that the regenerate soul itself—such is 
 the dimness of sight and the spiritual im- 
 becility of even the child of God ‘‘in this 
 tabernacle ”—all too easily loses its conscious 
 certainties of the absolute tenderness along 
 with the absolute sovereignty and royalty of 
 the Lord who “stands at the” inner Rev. iii. 20. 
 
 ‘door and knocks;” it trembles lest His in- 
 coming should of necessity bring some nameless 
 shock or sorrow in its train. ‘‘I dreaded to 
 yield myself without reserve to Jesus Christ,’ 
 said a Christian kinswoman of my own, relating 
 to a little circle the story of her own experi- 
 ence; ‘I felt so sure that He would take from 
 me my little Hugh.” But the strength of a 
 quiet confidence in the perfect wisdom and love 
 of the claimant King, along with a calm intui- 
 tion into His adorable beauty and desirableness, 
 at length overcame that dread; and the door 
 was opened, cost what it might. He has come 
 in—and the child has not been taken from the 
 mother’s embrace, or rather it has been given 
 back to her, “ Isaac-like,” more than ever her 
 
 own, out of that supreme surrender. 
 16 
 
242 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Do we not understand in the light of such an 
 instance the need of the Holy Spirit’s strength- 
 giving work, in order to the reception of the 
 Lord Christ as the abiding and ruling Inhabi- 
 tant of the very heart? And do we not see 
 how it is the special function of none other than 
 THE Spirit so to deal with the inner man? He 
 ‘s the Glorifier of Christ; it is His, as we have 
 seen above,’ to 
 
 «* Show us that loving Man 
 That rules the courts of bliss, 
 The Lord of hosts, the mighty God, 
 The eternal Prince of Peace.” 
 And in the sacred matter of the Indwelling, it 
 is He accordingly who so “shows” Him to 
 the wistful soul that it sees, with an intuition 
 truly its own yet supernatural in its conditions, 
 how safe, how satisfying, how blissful is His 
 all-ruling presence, not only in “the courts of 
 bliss” but in the believing sinner’s heart. So 
 the door is opened, for this private but royal 
 entrance of the King of Glory. So work Thou 
 then in us all, O Spirit of the Father and of 
 the Son. 
 
 ne eee 
 
 | Page 120, 
 
AOI TM a bed: 243 
 
 —_—— 
 
 And here, as our meditation on this bright 
 oracle closes, let us lastly remember those 
 words of ver. 17; “dy faith.” They are all- 
 important to a practical use of the truth and 
 promise of our Lord’s Indwelling. On the one 
 hand they remind us that, if that Indwelling is 
 to be our experience indeed, there is need of 
 genuine personal action on the Christian’s own 
 part, action God-taught and God-granted, as 
 we have seen, yet not the less the man’s own, 
 The Lord “stands at the door and _ Rew. iii. 2. 
 knocks ;” the man, the inner man, must rise 
 and set it open. Faith is the act of man though 
 it is “the gift of God;”! and “by — Eph. ii. 8, 
 means of faith” Christ arrives in the heart to 
 dwell there. But on the other hand, because 
 the action of the soul zs in this case faith, 
 and nothing else, the words remind us for 
 our “comfort and good hope” that the action 
 is in effect nothing but the utmost sim- 
 plicity of reception. Do we need to define 
 “faith” to ourselves over again?? Has not 
 every instance of the use of the word by our 
 
 hs Sana Te eae ia an a 
 
 1 See above, p. 106, ? See above, p. 108. 
 
244 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Et re re 
 
 Lord Himself in the Gospels long ago as- 
 sured us that it means just personal reliance, 
 personal trust, personal entrustment 1? 3 Legis 
 the open arms which in their emptiness em- 
 brace Christ, the open lips which receive Him 
 as the bread of the soul, the life, the all. As 
 in Justification so in this its glorious sequel, our 
 part is to take the Promise as it stands, to take 
 the Thing in the envelope of the Promise, and 
 to act upon its holy presence and reality. 
 
 Well has it been said that weak faith may 
 indeed do but weak works but that it can— 
 open a door. 
 
 And He who is “the Spirit of faith” is 
 2Cor.iv.13 faith’s appropriate Giver, for this as 
 for all things.’ For this, as for our earliest 
 acts of trust, Hr enables us, by manifesting 
 Christ in His divine trustworthiness and 
 putting the soul into contact with Him, the 
 seen, the trusted, the welcomed Lord. 
 
 ‘© Son of God, who lovest me, 
 I will be Thine alone ; 
 
 And all I have, and all I am, 
 Shall henceforth be Thine own.” 
 
 1See Bp O’Brien, Nature, etc., of Faith, ch. i. 
 
CONCLUSION. 248 
 
 It is a “full and glad surrender.” “ And 
 all this hath worked that one and the selfsame 
 SPIRIT.” 
 
 Our enquiries and meditations on the Person 
 and the Work of the Holy Spirit here draw to 
 a close. It is needless to spend words in own- 
 ing how fragmentary, how imperfect, even on 
 a very modest standard, the attempt has been. 
 But I can hope and can pray that my reader 
 may have gained here and there a suggestion, 
 perhaps about some forgotten side of a familiar 
 truth, and that he may have felt some stimulus 
 to an ever-deepening search into the divine 
 Word for more and yet more of the treasures 
 of the truth of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 And may writer and reader both be found, 
 through His great grace, among the happy ones 
 who, living by the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, 
 and by the Spirit draw continually out of the 
 fulness of Jesus Christ, to whom by the Spirit 
 they are conjoined in an unspeakable union. 
 
 More than thirty years ago that great man, 
 great thinker and preacher, and great saint, 
 
246 VENI CREATOR. 
 
 Adolphe Monod, lay on his sorely suffering 
 and comparatively early deathbed at Paris. 
 Led in his youth through experiences of com- 
 plicated doubt and profound - melancholy to 
 the foot of the atoning Cross of a divine and 
 personal Redeemer, and to the solemn and 
 glad experiences of the work of the Spirit in 
 the believer’s life, and to a holy submission 
 and repose before the whole revealed truth of 
 our salvation by grace, he had spent his years 
 and used all his great gifts of intellect and of 
 heart “in the defence and confirmation of the 
 Gospel,” with the one longing, loving desire 
 to bring others into the peace and certainty 
 he had found, and to build them up in it.’ 
 Now he was dying, at the age of fifty-four. 
 His beloved ministry was over, and he was 
 looking back on work and onward into the 
 heavenly rest from his Pisgah-top of suffering. 
 One day,? in the midst of much _ physical 
 distress, a few words escaped him, his brief 
 
 1 An impressive word-portrait of M. Monod is given in M. 
 Guizot’s Méditations sur 0 Etat actuel de la Réligion Chrétienne 
 (1866), pp. 170-184. | 
 
 2 Vie, p.470; Life and Letters (English translation), p. 244. 
 
ALTAOVeTHE HOLY SPIRIT. 247 
 Se ee i Ear ee 
 
 summary of a Christian’s peace, strength, aim, 
 and all. I close by repeating them, and invite 
 my reader with me to make them the motto 
 not only of our death hereafter but of our life 
 this day: 
 
 “All in Christ ; hy the bolp Spivit ; for the 
 Glory of God. All elge is nothing.” 
 
“Du Athem aus der ew’gen Stille, 
 Durchwehe sanft der Seelen Grund ; 
 Full’ mich mit aller Gottesfulle, 
 Und da wo Siind’ und Grauel stund, 
 Lass Glaube, Lieb’, und Ehrfurcht grtinen, 
 Im Geist and Wahrheit Gott zu dienen. 
 
 “O Geist, O Strom, der uns vom Sohne 
 Er6éffnet, und krystallenrein 
 Aus Gottes und des Lammes Throne 
 Nun quillt in stille Herzen ein, 
 Ich 6ffne meinen Mund und sinke 
 Hin zu der Quelle, das ich trinke.” 
 
 TERSTEEGEN, 1697—1769. 
 
INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND NAMES. 
 
 Acnegw, Rev. D. C. A., 102. 
 
 Ambrose, St, 168. 
 
 Apostles, representing 
 whole Church, 126. 
 
 Articles (XXXIX.) quoted; 
 TX er 182)s X11 .90;-189; 
 VAL, 170. 
 
 Atonement, Zinzendorf on, 
 1I5 
 
 Augustine, St, 28, 73. 
 
 the 
 
 BaprTisM, sacrament of, 79. 
 
 Baptism of the Spirit, 220. 
 
 Baptism of the Spirit, a tract, 
 223: 
 
 Bayne, 234. 
 
 Better Land, The, 17%. 
 
 Beveridge, Bishop, 80. 
 
 Blasphemy against the Holy 
 Spirit, ro. 
 
 Bonar, Dr H., 102. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 14. 
 
 CaNDLISH, DR R. 5., 159. 
 
 Cave, Rev. A., 60. 
 
 Channels, living, 149. 
 
 Curist our Life, by the Spirit, 
 40, 132, 161, 197- 
 
 Curist revealed and glorified 
 by the Spirit, ror. 
 
 Curist, His place in the 
 Spirit’s work, 35, 38. 
 
 CHRIST, communion 
 133; 
 
 Chrysostom, St, 61. 
 
 Come, Holy Comforter, 18. 
 
 Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, 
 come, 5. 
 
 Come, Holy Spirit, come, 120. 
 
 “Comforter,” the word, 8. 
 
 Confessional system, 154. 
 
 Conversion, 83, 113. 
 
 Conviction of sin, 84. 
 
 , a need of our day, 97. 
 
 , an abiding need, 98. 
 
 Cowper, 62. 
 
 Creation and the Spirit, 46. 
 
 with, 
 
250 
 
 Crabbe, 50. 
 
 D’AUvBIGNE, 5. 
 
 ippelar rs: 
 
 Dispensations, Old and New 
 their difference, 148. 
 
 Doctrine and Life, their rela- 
 Hon se 14. 
 
 Drummond, Professor, 72. 
 
 “ EARNEST of the Spirit,” 225. 
 
 Edersheim, Dr, 147. 
 
 Exaggerations of statement 
 sometimes used for good, 
 129. 
 
 Faser, G. STANLEY, 68, 164, 
 
 Faith, the gift of God, 106. 
 
 , what it is, 108, 243. 
 
 ——, its relation to Christ’s 
 indwelling, 243. 
 
 Faith and soberness, 117. 
 
 Farrar, Dr F. W., 46. 
 
 “ First fruits of the Spirit,” 225. 
 
 Flesh and the Spirit, 181. 
 
 “ Fruit of the Spirit,” 130, 186. 
 
 Fruit-bearing and diligence, 
 193. 
 
 Fulness of the Spirit, 37, 210. 
 
 —————/Of C70d,,22 1, 
 
 ‘GIFTS, SPIRITUAL,” 140, 212. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Goode, Dean, 216. 
 
 | Guizot, M., 246. 
 
 | Hanna, Dr, 156. 
 
 Harter2i: 
 
 Hatherley, Lord, 60. 
 
 Havergal, Miss F. R., 130. 
 174. 
 
 Heart, the, 234. 
 
 Homily, the first, 
 5o. 
 
 Hooker, 76, 164. 
 
 Humanity of Christ, its rela- 
 tion to the Spirit, 31. 
 
 quoted, 
 
 INDWELLING of Christ, 232. 
 
 ——, how effected by the 
 Spirit, 240. 
 
 Inspiration, 48. 
 
 , “consciousness ” of, 53. 
 
 attaches to the sacred 
 writings, 55. 
 
 Interpretation of Scripture, 
 the Spirit’s work in, 64. 
 
 Joy, an essential element in’ 
 Christian character, 203. 
 Justification by faith, 68, 164. 
 , its relation to life by 
 
 the Spirit, 165, 187. 
 
 “ KEEPING PowER” of the 
 Spirit, 142. 
 
INDEX. 251 
 
 Kenésis of Christ, 33. 
 Kostlin, 5. 
 
 LANGUAGE used by our Lord, 
 "7. 
 
 Liddon, Dr, 34, 60. 
 
 Life and work, relations be- 
 tween, I99. 
 
 Love of the Spirit, ror. 
 
 Luther and Eck at the Pleis- 
 senburg, 4. 
 
 MAcMILLAN, REv. H., rot. 
 
 Marshall, Walter, 45, 174. 
 
 Monasticism not contemplated 
 in N. T., 199. 
 
 Monod, Adolphe, 246. 
 
 Miller, Julius, 20. 
 
 New Birth, 72. 
 
 O’BRIEN, BISHOP, 244. 
 
 Order, Church, 156. 
 
 Ordinal, Church, quoted, 66. 
 
 Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 
 26, 80, 154, 164, 198. 
 
 Owen, 1, 33. 
 
 PASCAL, 46. 
 Paschal Discourse, 7, 82, 100, 
 122, 
 
 Passive aspect of 
 life, 205. 
 
 Paul, St, his teaching on the 
 Holy Spirit, 163. 
 
 Pearson, Bishop, 27. 
 
 Personality of the Spirit, 5, 
 168. 
 
 why spoken of in Scrip- 
 ture with a certain reserve, 
 ie 
 
 Ivetvpa and Td Ivedpa, 9. 
 
 Prayer to the Spirit, 15. 
 
 in the Spirit, 137. 
 
 Procession, the Dual, 24. 
 
 spiritual 
 
 QUIETISM, 197. 
 
 REGENERATION, 80. 
 
 Reichel, Bishop, 154. 
 
 Repentance, 83. 
 
 Leighteousness, The Lord our, 
 a tract, 164. 
 
 Robinson, Rev. Wade, 176. 
 
 SANCTIFICATION defined, 35. 
 
 ——., its whole process is by 
 the Spirit, zdzd. 
 
 Scripture and the Spirit, 47, 
 56, 63. 
 
 Scripture not “as another 
 book,” 50. 
 
252 
 
 Scripture, authority of, 51. 
 
 , its testimony to itself, 
 
 Soe 
 
 , patristic estimate of, 
 61. 
 
 “ Sealing of the Spirit,” 225. 
 
 Separation from the world, 
 185. 
 
 Sin, conviction of, 82. 
 
 , moral effect of, 94. 
 
 Smeaton, Professor, 25. 
 
 Spangenberg, Bishop, 113. 
 
 SPIRIT, THE Hoty, fassim ; 
 
 see under headings in detail. 
 
 TABERNACLES, FEAST OF, 146. 
 
 Table, the Lord’s, 143. 
 
 Taylor, Bishop Jeremy, 162. 
 
 Tertullian, 8. 
 
 Testimony, a personal, 134. 
 
 Tests, divine, of orthodoxy, 2. 
 
 Thoughts on Spiritual Life, 
 TS 1etOOs a 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 5. 
 
 LNDEX. 
 
 Trent, Council of, 108. 
 
 UnctTIon, DIvINE, 141, 158. 
 Union with Christ by the 
 Spirit, 39, 43, 127, 162. 
 Unitas Fratrum, Church of 
 
 the, 114. 
 Unity, Church, 130. 
 and uniformity, 131. 
 
 Vent Creator, 5. 
 “Vicar of Christ,” the Spirit 
 as the, 8. | 
 
 WALLER, Rev. C. H., 60. 
 
 Westcott, Professor, 156. 
 
 Whitby, 22. 
 
 Work rightly done only in the 
 Spirit, 159. 
 
 Work not an equivalent for 
 life, 199. 
 
 ZINZENDORF, COUNT, 92, 113. 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURES MORE 
 
 Matt. xii. 31, 32 
 Mark iil. 28—30 
 
 Luke. 35 
 —— xii. 10 
 Joundiiel—o 
 See 37-39 
 ——- xlV.—XVIL. 
 —— xvi. 8—IlI 
 
 XX. 2I—23 
 Rom. v. 5 
 
 Vili. 6 
 —— g—II 
 —— 13. , 
 —— 16, 17 
 —— 23. ‘ 
 ——- 26, 27 
 PC Orgs. Ona 14 
 
 vi. 17 
 Bore 122) e 
 —- iv. 13 
 —— vii. Io . 
 
 Gal. ili. 13, 14 
 
 Ohi LESS 
 
 EXPLAINED. 
 FAG PAGE 
 " 19 | Gal. v. 5 ° gts: 
 19 16, 17 183, 188 
 ROM re a eed 186, 191 
 4 SEARS ery pire y . 189 
 BOMU ON) Toe vi. 8 181, 190 
 er6 Eph. i. 13, 14 225 
 Baroy ,a0A 2 —— i. 8 . 106 
 | Beemer BI . 220 
 (aOR | Serer ili. 14—21 230 
 L730 (eam nos » 225 
 Mery ye lea ks ae a10 
 TOOr| rae 3e . 225 
 : yam v. 18 37, 216 
 . 172,176 | 2 Tim. iii. 10. an 
 . 225 Heb. vi. 4—8 20 
 BOF L.0;-100 X, 15-17 57 
 : 170 | 2 Pet. 1. 5—7 LOG 
 . 44,170 | r John il. 20,27 - 141, 152 
 225 iil. 24 whe 
 106 Viator 3G 
 , a 7842 leRevs Vi0 . » 160 
 
 . 166, 223 
 
; i 
 4 
 ae 
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