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 BR 45 .H36 v. 15 
 
 Candlish, James Stuart, 1835 
 
 -1897. 
 
 The work of the Holy Spirit 
 

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 antr Situate ^tuUents. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
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PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB, 
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 DUBLIN, ..... GEORGE HERBERT. 
 
 KEW YORK, .... SCRIBNER AND VVELFORD. 
 
THE 
 
 WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES S. "CANDLISH, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. The Spirit of God in the Old Testament, . , .11 
 ,, II. The Spirit of God in the New Testament, . . 21 
 
 ,, III. The Spirit of God in the Creeds of the Church, . 29 
 
 TART II. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 Chapter I. The Work of the Holy Spirit on Christ, . 
 
 II. The Sending of the Holy Spirit by Christ, , 
 
 III. The Work of the Spirit in the External Call of th 
 Word, 
 
 IV. The Work of the Spirit in Conviction, . 
 V. The Work of the Spirit in Conversion, 
 
 VI. The Work of the Spirit uniting us to Christ, 
 VII. The Work of the Spirit in Sanctification, . 
 VIII. The Work of the Spirit as a Witness and Teacher, 
 IX. The Work of the Spirit as our Helper in Prayer, 
 X. The Comforting Work of the Holy Spirit, • 
 
 37 
 
 43 
 
 49 
 58 
 67 
 85 
 89 
 97 
 106 
 in 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The work of the Holy Spirit of God in our salvation from sin is 
 known to us only through the Christian revelation recorded in 
 Scripture. The blessed and beneficent effects of it are indeed to 
 be traced in the great improvement and elevation of the moral 
 state of mankind under the influence of Christianity, and these 
 afford evidence of a strictly historical nature that Christianity is 
 indeed of divine origin. But we could not from these effects 
 alone ascertain with any degree of minuteness the nature and 
 working of the divine agency by which they are produced. Such 
 information, however, is given us in the inspired records, espe- 
 cially ci the New Testament, from which we learn what Jesus and 
 His apostles taught as to the way in which the hearts and lives of 
 men are renewed and purified, as well as how they are reconciled 
 to God. Our inquiry therefore into this subject is to be prose- 
 cuted in the first place and chiefly by the study of the Bible, 
 although we may expect to find the conclusions to which that 
 leads us confirmed by the experience through which we pass if we 
 obey the practical precepts and directions of the gospel. 
 
 The salvation that Christianity brings to sinners is represented 
 in Scripture as consisting of two principal parts — deliverance from 
 guilt, condemnation, and wrath, which is ascribed directly to the 
 work of the Lord Jesus Christ for us ; and deliverance from the 
 
 9 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 love and habit and power of sin in ourselves, which is represented 
 as especially the work of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom 
 Jesus said His Father would send in His name. It is the latter 
 of these that is the subject of this treatise ; and in order to 
 ascertain in a methodical way the teaching of Scripture on it, it 
 will be suitable to consider it under two general heads — the Holy 
 Spirit Himself, and the work that He does in our salvation. 
 These accordingly will be the two principal parts of this hand- 
 book. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The name "spirit of God" is one that occurs very often in the 
 Bible from its first page to its last, and in many different con- 
 nections, so that it is not always easy to determine what is meant 
 by it. The words in the original languages rendered " spirit " in 
 English mean primarily "wind" or "breath;" and like similar 
 words in most languages, are used in a figurative sense to denote 
 the soul or mind of man. The breath that is in his nostrils, that 
 never ceases to respire as long as there is life in the body, and 
 that forms in articulate sounds the expression of his thoughts 
 and feelings, is taken to represent the life itself or the thinking 
 self-conscious " I," that he feels himself to be. In like manner, 
 the phrase " spirit of God" is sometimes used for the life that is 
 in God, or God himself as a spiritual being. In Ps. cxxxix. 7, 
 "Whither shall I go from thy spirit?" is parallel to "Whither 
 shall I flee from thy presence?" and the next verse, "If I ascend 
 up into heaven, thou art there," shows that God's spirit here 
 means the same as God Himself. In Isa. xl. 13, "the spirit of the 
 Lord " is also parallel to " him," and is rendered by Paul (1 Cor. 
 
 ii. 16) " the mind of the Lord." It has the same meaning in 
 
 11 
 
12 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 Zech. vi. 8; and the similar word "soul" is used of God in 
 Isa. xlii. i, Matt. xii. 18. 
 
 But much more frequently the phrase Spirit of God is used 
 after a more literal analogy, and denotes a power or influence 
 coming forth from God, as the breath comes out of the mouth of 
 man. As the thunder is called in Biblical poetry the voice of 
 the Lord (Ps. xviii. 13, xxiw 3-9), so tLz stormy wind is some- 
 times called the breath of God, " the blast of the breath of his 
 nostrils" (Ex. xv. 8 ; Ps. xviii. 15 ; Job iv. c, ; Isa. xxx. 33 ; and 
 in the New Testament, 2 Thess. ii. 8) ; and the notion of the 
 breath of God is also connected with the milder and beneficent 
 agencies of the wind in nature, as in Ps. civ. 30, where the 
 renewal of the face of the earth, and the reproduction of living 
 things, are ascribed to the spirit or breath of God. So in the 
 narrative of the Creation, at the very outset it is said, "the spirit 
 of God moved on the face of the waters" (Gen. i. 2). This may 
 be taken in close connection with what follows : " And God said, 
 Let there be light : and there was light" (v. 3) ; the spirit being, 
 as it were, the breath of God that forms His word of creative 
 power. So it seems to be meant in Ps. xxxiii. 6, " By the word of 
 the Lord were the heavens made ; and all the host of them by 
 the breath of his mouth." Again, in Job xxvi. 13, it is said in 
 reference to creation, "By his spirit the heavens are furnished;" 
 where it is not so much the idea of breath, as that of wisdom, 
 that seems to be meant. 
 
 More particularly the breath of life in man is said to have been 
 breathed into his nostrils by God (Gen. ii. 7) ; and this is 
 especially applied to the intellectual life of man, Job xxxii. 8, 
 "there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth 
 them understanding ; " xxxiii. 4, " The spirit of God hath made 
 me, and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life." So it is said, 
 by a somewhat different figure, " the spirit of man is the lamp of 
 the Lord, searching all the innermost parts of the belly " (Prov. 
 xx. 27), where reference seems to be made to what we call the 
 voice of conscience. Compare Rom. ii. 14, 15. The same thing 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 3 
 
 may also be meant in Gen. vi. 3: ''The Lord said, My spirit 
 shall not strive with (or rule in) man for ever, for that he also is 
 flesh : yet shall his days be an hundred and twenty years." The 
 only previous reference to the spirit of God in man was in Gen. 
 ii. 7, where it is described as the source of his life. The meaning, 
 however, cannot be that individual men should not live for ever ; 
 for that had been made abundantly plain before : it must refer to 
 the race as a whole, and declare that after a respite of 120 years 
 it should be swept away; as it was by the flood. If the rendering 
 " strive " be correct, the passage would imply that man's God- 
 given soul is a moral witness against sin, as we see in the nar- 
 ratives of the remorse of Adam and Cain (Gen. iii. 7-10, iv. 14, 
 15) : if the translation should be " rule, or abide, in man," then it 
 would simply denote the presence and power of that spirit of life 
 that God breathed into man at the first. However this may be, 
 it seems clear that the godly Israelites recognised the voice of 
 God in the teachings of their own consciences. Of this we have 
 a striking illustration in Ps. xvi. 7 : — 
 
 " I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel; 
 Yea, my reins instruct me in the night seasons." 
 
 The same thing is described in the two parallel clauses, first from 
 the side of God and then from that of man. It is the Lord's 
 counsel that has moved the Psalmist to choose Him as his portion ; 
 but it has come to him by the voice of his own reins or heart. In 
 like manner, an evil conscience was regarded as of God, and the 
 evil spirit that troubled Saul after his sin and rejection by God is 
 called " an evil spirit from the Lord " (1 Sam. xvi. 14), " an evil 
 spirit of God, of the Lord" (i Sam. xviii. 10, xix. 9); and even 
 absolutely "a spirit of God" (1 Sam. xvi. 23). These phrases 
 can hardly mean a wicked spirit possessing the unfaithful king, 
 like the demoniacs of whom we read in the New Testament : 
 they rather denote his own guilty conscience stirred up by divine 
 influence to accuse and torment him. 
 
 But besides these general uses of the name spirit or breath of 
 
14 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 God, for the working of His power and wisdom in the world of 
 nature and in the soul of man, we find it employed in a peculiarly- 
 distinctive sense in the region of God's special covenant relations 
 with Israel as His people. There it appears as a gift bestowed 
 upon selected persons, giving them power and capacity for various 
 functions in the service of God and of His people. It is said of 
 Abraham, that he was a prophet (Gen. xx. 7), which according to 
 the explanations given later would imply the possession of the 
 spirit of God, though in the narrative in Genesis it was only said 
 before that the word of the Lord came to Abraham (Gen. xvi. 1), 
 and that the Lord appeared to him (Gen. xvii. 1, xviii. 1). 
 Pharaoh is represented as calling Joseph " a man in whom the 
 spirit of God is/' forasmuch as God had showed him what was to 
 come, and he was discreet and wise (Gen. xli. 38, 39). Then 
 Moses is described as having the spirit of God upon him, though 
 this is said only incidentally (Num. xi. 17, 25), and no express 
 account is given of the bestowal of the spirit upon him, except 
 that when he was called to be the deliverer of Israel God said, 
 " I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt speak " 
 (Ex. iv. 12); and it is implied through all the narrative of his 
 work that he was taught and guided by God. Bezaleel, the chief 
 artificer of the tabernacle in the wilderness, is said to have been 
 filled with the spirit of God in all wisdom for his work (Ex. 
 xxxi. 3) ; and when the work of Moses in governing the people 
 was to be shared with seventy of the elders, we read that God 
 took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto them 
 (Num. xi. 17, 25). From the context of these passages we may 
 see, that while the spirit of God is spoken of in them, not as 
 being in all men, as in the texts formerly adduced, but as a 
 special gift to particular persons ; still this gift is closely con- 
 nected, on the one hand with what we should call natural 
 endowments, and on the other hand with the presence of God 
 Himself. The spirit, in these cases, is something more specific 
 and individual than the rational soul or conscience common to 
 all men, but it is not entirely separate from that, but simply high 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 5 
 
 and special powers of intellect or moral sense, wisdom, unselfish- 
 ness, godliness. These qualities, too, are not merely regarded as 
 gifts of God in general, but the insight, guidance, and power that 
 they give, are viewed as really the teaching and help of God 
 Himself. As man's intellectual nature in general is represented 
 as due to God's having breathed into him the breath of life ; so 
 special powers of mind or soul are considered to be due to a 
 special communion with God on the part of those who have 
 them. 
 
 In the days of the Judges, the spirit of the Lord is spoken of 
 in connection with deeds of courage and prowess, and even of 
 physical strength, as it is said to have come on Othniel (Judg. iii. 
 10), Gideon (vi. 34), Jephthah (xi. 29), and Samson (xiii. 25, 
 xiv. 6, 19, xv. 14). In these cases there is no direct reference to 
 moral qualities ; but it is to be observed that they were all men 
 who believed in Jehovah, and were fighting for His cause and 
 His people. In many cases the special token and proof of the 
 presence and working of the spirit of God was prophecy ; and 
 so in Hos. ix. 7, "the prophet" is used as a parallel to " the man 
 that hath the spirit ;" and in Joel ii. 28, when God promises to 
 pour out His spirit on all flesh, the effect is to be, "your sons 
 and your daughters shall prophesy," etc. But it would seem 
 that in early times the notion of prophecy in Israel was similar to 
 that entertained in other ancient nations, unpremeditated utter- 
 ance of lofty, vehement, or mysterious language, often in a state 
 of trance or ecstasy approaching that of madness. As in such 
 utterances the deliberative judgment is not in exercise, they 
 seemed more directly due to a divine impulse, and so were 
 ascribed to the Spirit of God, whatever was their moral character 
 and tendency, and without being regarded as conveying a 
 message from God that ought to be observed and obeyed. It is 
 only by some such idea as this that we can understand how 
 Joshua could propose to forbid Eldad and Medad prophesying 
 in the camp (Num. xi. 28). So, too, Saul is represented as pro- 
 phesying, when under the power of the evil spirit of God, he tried 
 
l6 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 to smite David with his javelin (i Sam. xviii. 10, n), as well as 
 when the spirit of God that was on the prophets came upon him 
 (i Sam. xix. 23. 24). This is probably the explanation of the 
 strange pictorial vision of Micaiah (1 Kings xxii. 19-23), in 
 which the spirit of prophecy is personified. The lying spirit is 
 not an evil spirit in the New Testament sense ; neither can it be 
 absolutely identified with the Divine Spirit ; it is rather a personi- 
 fication of the prophetic afflatus, the impulse to rapt enthusiastic 
 utterance, considered as a gift of God, in itself neither morally 
 good nor evil, but becoming evil in the mouths of evil men bent 
 on flattering the king. The breath of the Almighty gave them 
 the power of fervent impassioned language, and thus enabled 
 them to persuade Ahab to his destruction. Such seems to be, 
 expressed in modern language, the substantial meaning of that 
 remarkable vision : and it rests on the general conception of the 
 spirit of God as the author of all mental powers and manifes- 
 tations, and more especially of those in which human delibera- 
 tion falls into the background. The constraining power of the 
 spiritual impulse to prophecy appears in the case of Elihu 
 (Job xxxii. 18-20), and Jeremiah (xx. 9), as also in Ps. xlv. 1. 
 As God's training of His people advanced from stage to stage, 
 He taught them, that the true test of prophecy as His word to 
 them is not the enthusiastic and unusual mode of its utterance, 
 but its moral power over the hearts and lives of the hearers 
 (Jer. xxiii. 22-29) '■> an d its fulfilment in the course of Providence 
 (Deut. xvii. 21, 22). When this came to be known, there are no 
 longer such ascriptions of evil powers and influences to the spirit 
 of God as in earlier days. 1 The divine agency continues indeed 
 to be recognised in the downward career that sinners are ever 
 prone to run : but this is expressed in the way of God leaving 
 them to themselves and to the natural consequences of their own 
 
 1 The latest instance that approaches this is in Acts xxi. 4, where the 
 advice not to go up to Jerusalem is said to have been given to Paul " through 
 the Spirit," but disregarded by him, unquestionably in accordance with the 
 will of God. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. I 7 
 
 sin (Ps. Ixxviii. 29-31, lxxxi. 12 ; Ezek. xx. 25, 26; Hos. iv. 17 ; 
 and most distinctly Rom. i. 24-32). 
 
 In the later portions of the Old Testament we also find the 
 spirit of God more and more associated with moral qualities. 
 The epithet holy is given to the spirit of God in Ps. li. 11, where 
 the psalmist is penetrated with a penitent sense of sin, and in 
 Isa. Ixiii. 10, 11, where reference is made to the history of the 
 Exodus and wilderness journey. When the prophet says, " they 
 grieved his holy spirit," that phrase may simply refer to God 
 Himself as the Holy One ; but when he says, " He put his holy 
 spirit in the midst of them," it must mean the spirit given to 
 Moses and the elders, here more especially described as holy. 
 Similarly in Neh. ix. 20, in reference to the same histor)', it is 
 said, " Thou gavest also thy good spirit to instruct them ; " and 
 from the context it is plain that moral goodness must be meant : 
 and in another of the penitential psalms (cxliii. 10), God's spirit 
 is also called good in the same sense. It is clear, therefore, that 
 latterly at least the spirit of God was recognised as the source 
 not only of power, and wisdom, and prophecy, but of moral 
 goodness as well ; and that this aspect of it becomes gradually 
 the most prominent. There are many places in which the spirit 
 of God, though not expressly called holy, is described as giving 
 the fear of the Lord (Isa. xi. 2-5), judgment and righteousness 
 (Isa. xxxii. 15-17), devotion to the Lord (Isa. xliv. 3-5), hearty 
 obedience (Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27), penitence and prayer (Zech. xii. 
 10). But the general bestowal of the spirit as the source of 
 holiness is spoken of as a thing of the future, one of the blessings 
 of the promised reign of God over His people. In the theocracy 
 in Israel, the spirit of God had been given to certain chosen men 
 as leaders and rulers of the nation, and doubtless wherever there 
 was genuine godliness, that was due to the working of the spirit ; 
 but there is no indication that the mass of the nation, though the 
 professed people of God, was filled with the spirit, in the sense in 
 which the Christian Church after the Pentecostal gift was so. 
 What distinguished the chosen people as a nation from others, 
 
1 8 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 was the possession of the revelation and law of God. " He 
 showeth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments 
 unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation, and as for his 
 judgments, they have not known them'"' (Ps. cxlvii. 19, 20). This 
 was done through Moses and the prophets : but the higher 
 blessing of being all directly taught of God, having His law 
 written in their hearts, and His spirit poured out upon them all, 
 was longed for by Moses (Num. xi. 29), and foretold by the 
 prophets as one of the good things of the latter days, to be 
 bestowed in connection with the Messianic salvation (Isa. liv. 13; 
 Jer. xxxi. 33, 34 ; Joel ii. 28, 29). It came to be perceived more 
 and more in the course of Israel's history, that the want of this 
 was the great obstacle to the reformation and restoration of the 
 nation as the people of God. The prophets gave solemn and 
 awful warnings, which generally made an impression at the time, 
 and when aided by the kings and civil authorities, produced an 
 outward reformation in the order and conduct of the state : but 
 new forms of evil were ever coming up, as old ones were ban- 
 ished : formalism and hypocrisy took the place of idolatry and 
 debauchery ; and the prophets after the exile, though they had 
 not to denounce the same sins that their predecessors rebuked, 
 still must address the people as ungodly and backsliding, and 
 look forward to some more effective cure for their corruption in 
 the time to come. Such a cure was to be found only in the 
 outpouring of the spirit of God on the people, to change their 
 hearts and turn them to the Lord. Jeremiah foretells that there 
 is to be a new covenant, in which the law shall be written in the 
 people's hearts, and they shall not be dependent on the teaching 
 of others, but all shall know the Lord (Jer. xxxi. 31-34). Ezekiel 
 speaks of the same blessing, and connects it expressly with the 
 spirit of God (Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27). In Isaiah, and especially 
 in the later prophecies in that book, we find these promises 
 connected with the coming of the Son of David, the Lord's 
 servant, who is anointed with His spirit (Isa. xi., xii., 1\\, lxi.) ; 
 and in Zcchariah and Malachi there are similar representations. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 9 
 
 It was in the line and in the spirit of these prophecies, that 
 after a long term of silence in the divine oracles, John the son 
 of the priest Zacharias came from the wilderness where he had 
 dwelt alone with God, calling Israel to repentance, and baptizing 
 in Jordan those who complied with his call. What he demanded 
 was not mere sorrow for past sin, or outward reformation of 
 conduct, but a change of mind, for that is the real meaning of the 
 word rendered "repentance" in English. It is the same change 
 that is spoken of in the Old Testament as circumcising the 
 heart (Jer. iv. 4), making a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 
 xviii. 35). John called for this from all, even from the Pharisees 
 and the Sadducees, the most religious and influential of the people ; 
 and he symbolized their cleansing from sin, by plunging them in 
 the water of Jordan to rise out of it again as it were new men. 
 This was to be the preparation for the kingdom or reign of God, 
 which the old prophets had foretold as future, and which he 
 now announced as at hand. At the same time he declared that 
 he was not the Messiah, that he only baptized with water, but 
 that One greater than he was coming after him, who should 
 baptize with the Holy Spirit, that is to say, who should fulfil 
 these old prophecies, and really give the spirit of God as a 
 renewing and sanctifying influence to the mass of men. 
 
 In all these Old Testament representations, it is to be observed, 
 the spirit of God is regarded not merely as a gift bestowed by 
 God yet separate from Himself, but, according to the original 
 meaning of the phrase, as the very breath of God, so that it is 
 God Himself who is with men and teaches them inwardly, when 
 His Spirit is bestowed on them. The same things are said to 
 be done sometimes by God and sometimes by the spirit of God. 
 For God to write His law in the heart of His people (Jcr. 
 xxxi. 33), is the same as to put His spirit within them (Ezek. 
 xxvi. 27) ; and in another place it is said, " The LORD of hosts 
 shall be ... for a spirit of judgment to him that sitteth in 
 judgment " (Isa. xxviii. 5, 6). So also in the last words of David 
 we read, " The spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word 
 
20 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 was upon my tongue. The God of Israel said, The Rock of 
 Israel spake to me " (2 Sam. xxiii. 2, 3). Thus the idea of the 
 spirit of God is somewhat like that of the word of God, or the 
 angel {i.e. messenger or message) of the Lord, both sent from 
 God and yet Himself God. These peculiar representations led 
 many of the Jewish teachers to recognise a certain distinction 
 in the Divine Being, between God as He is in Himself, as the 
 infinite, invisible, incomprehensible First Cause, and God as He 
 made Himself known to men by that Wisdom and Power, that 
 are truly divine, yet seen in the works of Creation, Providence, 
 and Grace. More than this general idea of distinction in the 
 Godhead, and of a spirit working in men that is both of God 
 and also God Himself, cannot be said to have been revealed in 
 Old Testament times, when the great fact of God reconciling 
 the world to Himself was only dimly seen in the future : the 
 distinction was apt to be refined away into a philosophical 
 abstraction, and its full meaning as a religious truth was not yet 
 seen. More particularly from the Old Testament alone the 
 difference between the word and the spirit of God could not be 
 clearly gathered ; and there was a tendency to identify them 
 and recognise only a twofold distinction in the Godhead. That 
 which distinctly revealed the Trinity in the Godhead, which the 
 older oracles but hinted at, and philosophy uncertainly groped 
 after, was the manifestation -of Jesus Christ as the Word made 
 flesh, and His teaching about Himself as truly God, and about 
 the Spirit of God that He not only received, but promised to 
 give. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 WHAT our Lord Himself taught about the Spirit of Gocl is quite 
 in harmony with the Old Testament promises, and the pro- 
 clamation of His forerunner the Baptist ; while it throws new 
 light on what the earlier revelation still left dark. His more 
 popular teaching, which was mostly given in Galilee, has been 
 reported chiefly by the first three Evangelists. We learn from 
 these, that he spoke of the Spirit of God being upon Him, as 
 when in the synagogue at Nazareth he applied to himself the 
 words of the Servant of Jehovah in Isa. lxi., "The Spirit 
 of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach 
 good tidings to the poor," etc. (Luke iv. 18-20); and the truth 
 of this claim was shown by the graciousness and power of his 
 words causing astonishment to those who heard them, — an 
 effect which is described also by Matthew (xiii. 54) and Mark 
 (vi. 2). More particularly, Jesus declared that it was by the 
 Spirit of God that He cast out demons, and that this proved 
 that the reign of God was come upon them, i.e. that God was 
 really setting up His kingdom on earth (Matt. xii. 28). In 
 Luke's account, the expression is " by the finger of God " 
 (xi. 20), which might merely denote divine power, but that Jesus 
 meant to indicate the moral character of His power as holy, is 
 clear from the obvious gist of His argument against those who 
 ascribed His expulsion of demons to Beelzebub. Since the 
 
 kingdom of God is, according to all the Old Testament repre- 
 
 21 
 
2 2 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 sentations, a kingdom of holiness, the Spirit by which it is 
 established must be holy ; and by its opposition to all unclean 
 spirits is recognised as the Spirit of God. Hence the guilt of 
 speaking against or reviling the Holy Spirit is immeasurably 
 greater than that of speaking against the Son of man. The 
 Messiah may be reviled ignorantly, by men who do not see His 
 divine Sonship in the human nature which He wears ; and for 
 such sin there is forgiveness by God's grace to those who 
 repent : but if a man reviles that very spirit of holiness whereby 
 God reveals himself, he sets himself against holiness itself, seen 
 and known as such ; and how shall such an one be delivered from 
 sin and obtain forgiveness ? Jesus thus distinguishes the Spirit 
 of God from Himself the Son of man ; while He speaks of 
 both as the objects of blasphemy, i.e. reviling, an offence that 
 can properly be committed only against a person, not against a 
 mere power or influence. 
 
 It is also taught in the discourses of Jesus recorded in the 
 Synoptic Gospels, that the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, that 
 was on Him, was to speak in His disciples, and this seems to have 
 been said by Him on more than one occasion. Matthew reports 
 it in connection with the sending out of the twelve (x. 20) ; Luke 
 gives it along with the warning against blaspheming the Holy 
 Spirit in a somewhat loosely-connected series of discourses at a 
 later time (xii. 12); and Mark embodies it in our Lord's discourse 
 to His disciples about the future on the Mount of Olives (xiii. 11), 
 in a connection in which Luke reports him as saying, " I will give 
 you a mouth and wisdom" (xxi. 15). This is one of the indica- 
 tions in these Gospels, that Jesus gives the Spirit, or as the Baptist 
 put it, baptizes with the Holy Spirit. He declares that the Father 
 will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him (Luke xi. 13); and 
 Luke also records sayings of Jesus after His resurrection, that 
 clearly point to the gift of the Spirit as bestowed by Him on His 
 disciples according to the promise of the Father (Luke xxiv. 49; 
 Acts i. 8). 
 
 This is more fully declared in the great farewell discourse after 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 23 
 
 the last Supper, recorded by John (xiv.-xvi.), in which Jesus speaks 
 of the Holy Spirit as to be sent by the Father at His request, to 
 supply to the disciples His own absence. There He not only uses 
 the personal pronouns in reference to the Spirit (see especially 
 xiv. 26 and xv. 26), but promises that the Spirit will be to them 
 what He had been in His earthly life, " another Comforter." The 
 word in the original is Paraclete, and is only used elsewhere, as 
 applied to Christ, by John in his First Epistle (ii. 1), where it is 
 rendered Advocate in English. This is its literal meaning, one 
 who is called in, to give instruction, encouragement, or help, or to 
 appear and plead on our behalf before an adversary or a judge. 
 All this Jesus had done for His disciples during His earthly 
 ministry. He had taught them the secrets of the kingdom of 
 God ; He had been ever at hand when called for to give help in 
 clanger, as in the storm on the sea of Galilee, or to solve difficul- 
 ties, as when they brought questions that perplexed them to Him 
 to answer ; He had spoken in their defence when they were 
 accused by the Pharisees of breaking the Sabbath and neglecting 
 the traditions of the scribes ; He had prayed for them to God 
 when they were exposed to the temptations of the world and its 
 prince. But now that His bodily presence was to be no longer 
 with them, He promises to send another advocate to do for them 
 what He had hitherto done in person. They felt not only the 
 want of His powerful help in view of the difficulties that stared 
 them in the face as they were to carry on the work He had begun, 
 but more especially the loss of His affectionate loving fellowship : 
 and this feeling, which chiefly filled their hearts, could not be met 
 by the promise of a mere impersonal divine influence that would 
 give them wisdom and courage. To speak, in such an hour, of a 
 mere power or influence from God in figurative language that 
 would naturally suggest a person, would be a cruel mockery of 
 their sorrow, which we cannot ascribe to Jesus. He must have 
 meant His words to be understood, in their obvious literal meaning, 
 of a divine Agent as truly personal as Himself. 
 
 The presence of the Holy Spirit was to be, in a true and higher 
 
24 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 sense, Jesus' own presence. He speaks of His coming to them, 
 and of the Spirit's coming, as if these expressions both referred to 
 the same thing (John xiv. 16, 18, xvi. 13, 16). He was to be with 
 them by the Spirit. Hitherto He had been with them in the flesh ; 
 they had known Him, just as men know their fellow-men, through 
 the body He had assumed ; they had seen its form and heard His 
 voice with their bodily senses. This was no longer to be ; but 
 He was to manifest Himself to them in a higher and better way 
 than that, by the Spirit, w T ho should take of His and show it to 
 them, so that He should really be with them again, by His Spirit 
 having fellowship with their spirits. His coming thus to them 
 would also be the coming of the Father (John xiv. 23, 24), as when 
 they really knew Him they should know the Father also. 
 
 It is remarkable, that the evangelist who has recorded those 
 sayings of Jesus does not in his own writings speak of the Spirit 
 in such a way as clearly to imply personality ; but uses figures, 
 such as the anointing (1 John ii. 20, 27), and God giving us of His 
 Spirit (1 John iv. 13), which seem to refer to a power or influence. 
 This may prove that John did not so fully unfold the revelation 
 given by Jesus as we might have expected : but it shows us all the 
 more how true and faithful is his record of Jesus' words. 
 
 In the Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude, there is a similar 
 indistinctness of teaching. The brevity and practical character of 
 these letters sufficiently account for little being said of the Holy 
 Spirit ; and while there is nothing that certainly implies His 
 personality, there is nothing in the slightest degree inconsistent- 
 with it. In the Book of Acts and in the Apocalypse the Spirit is 
 described as speaking and using personal pronouns of Himself 
 (Acts viii. 29, x. 19, 20, xi. 12, xiii. 2 ; Rev. ii. 7, xiv. 13, xxii. 17). 
 
 In the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose great theme is the con- 
 trast of the Jewish and Christian dispensations, the Holy Spirit 
 comes into view as given in the former to prophets and other 
 inspired men, and in the latter to all the people of God, but 
 chiefly as manifested in miraculous gifts. 
 
 But the fullest teaching about the Spirit in the New Testament 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 25 
 
 is to be found in the Epistles of Paul, which most distinctly unfold 
 the nature of Christianity, especially in its inward and experimental 
 aspects. In these Epistles there are attributed to the Holy Spirit 
 various things that can belong only to a personal being, such as 
 "mind," in the sense of purpose or intention as expressed in 
 intercession (Rom. viii. 27), "searching all things" (1 Cor. ii. 11), 
 "dividing to every man severally as he will" (1 Cor. xii. 11), 
 "being grieved " (Eph. iv. 30). Paul calls the Spirit, the Spirit of 
 Christ (Rom. viii. 9), the Spirit of God's Son (Gal. iv. 4) ; speaks 
 of Christ being in us, and Christ's Spirit being in us as the same 
 thing (Rom. viii. 9, 10) ; and ascribes the same work indifferently 
 now to God, now to Christ, and now to the Holy Spirit. 
 
 In the teaching of Paul the Holy Spirit is represented as dwell- 
 ing in Christians as the principle of moral and religious life. 
 This is found in all his Epistles, from the earliest (1 Thess. i. 6, 
 iv. 8 ; 2 Thess. ii. 13), through the central group (Rom. viii. 
 2-17 ; Gal. v. 13-26 ; 1 Cor. ii. 12-16) on to the latest (Eph. iii. 
 16 ; 2 Tim. i. 7, 14), while in them all the Spirit is also re- 
 cognised as the source of supernatural gifts, such as prophecy, 
 tongues, miracles. But it is hardly correct to say, as some have 
 done, that the former of these representations is peculiar to 
 Paul, and that the other New Testament writers only speak of 
 the Spirit as the source of miraculous gifts. The notion of the 
 Spirit of God as the giver, not only of prophetic or miraculous 
 gifts, but of holiness, is found even in the Old Testament (Ezek. 
 xxxvi. 27 ; Ps. cxliii. 10) ; and is implied in the words of John the 
 Baptist, that the Messiah should baptize with the Holy Spirit. 
 It could hardly be absent from the mind of any devout Israelite, 
 and seems to be involved in the very name, the Holy Spirit, 
 which is not found in the earlier Old Testament writings, but 
 which is used by all the penmen of the New Testament. There 
 are also express recognitions of this function of the Spirit of 
 God in 1 Pet. i. 2, iv. 14; Jude 19, 20; 1 John iii. 11, and iv. 16 ; 
 and perhaps in Jas. iv. 5, as well as in our Lord's conversation 
 with Nicodemus (John iii. 3-8). These passages show at least 
 
26 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 that the idea was not unknown, though it is undoubtedly true, 
 that Paul has unfolded it much more fully than the other New 
 Testament writers ; and that in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 views of the Christian life are given which do not require the 
 consideration of this function of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 It has also been thought by some, that Paul's conception of 
 the Holy Spirit, as the principle of the Christian life, does not 
 require a recognition of anything more than a power proceeding 
 from God ; and that the passages where Paul ascribes know- 
 ledge, purpose, and will to the Spirit, are merely personifications. 
 But it seems clear that what Paul meant to teach was not 
 merely that a power from God is at work in believers, but that 
 God Himself works in them. The Spirit of God is not indeed 
 in his view an independent personality ; that is not implied in 
 the doctrine of the personality of the Spirit ; but as the spirit of 
 a man is to the man, so according to Paul the Spirit of God is 
 to God, in one sense the same, but in another sense distinct. 
 The principle of the Christian life is not a mere impersonal 
 power, but God Himself in a mysterious way dwelling and 
 working in the soul. But it is God working in man to lead him 
 to God as He is above him ; hence the Spirit of God that works 
 in him must be distinguished from God, yet not as a different 
 being, but just as the spirit or mind of a man may be dis- 
 tinguished from the man, and may be said to know the things 
 of a man (i Cor. ii. 10-16). 
 
 Paul's doctrine of the Spirit in this place is parallel to John's 
 doctrine of the Word (John i. 1-18) ; and both point to an 
 analogy between the nature of man and that of God. In man 
 we must distinguish the soul itself from its functions of under- 
 standing, feeling, and will, which are yet one with it ; and in 
 the divine Being, revelation teaches us to distinguish the 
 Father, His Son or Word, and His Spirit, who are yet one God. 
 The doctrine of the Spirit of God as a divine person rests on 
 the more clearly revealed doctrine of the Word or Son of God 
 who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. If we are satisfied that 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 27 
 
 the Word is the same as the Son of God, and is not merely a 
 divine power or influence moving and strengthening the man 
 Christ Jesus, nor yet a created and finite being, but one 
 possessing all the attributes and receiving the worship proper to 
 God ; then we must conceive the Deity as not absolutely simple 
 in all respects, but having a certain mysterious distinction in 
 the manner of subsistence, on the one hand as Father, and on 
 the other hand as Son ; the Father being God as He is the 
 source of all being, and the Son, or Word, God as He knows 
 and manifests Himself. But if any such distinction is recog- 
 nised in the Deity, then the way in which Jesus and His apostles 
 speak of the Holy Spirit requires us to regard the Being so 
 described as similar in nature to the Word ; and so to recognise, 
 not merely a twofold, but a threefold distinction in God. The 
 doctrine of the Holy Spirit depends upon that of the person of 
 Christ, and comes after it, both historically and logically. Jesus 
 taught His disciples to believe in Him as the Son of God, 
 before He spoke to them of the Holy Spirit, as another Advo- 
 cate ; and while the Church implicitly believed in both from the 
 first, it was not till after she had, by much discussion, come to 
 a distinct understanding of her faith in Christ as divine, that 
 she arrived at similar clearness in regard to the Holy Spirit. 
 When, too, the doctrine of the Spirit came to be discussed, 
 appeal was made to the previously ascertained doctrine of the 
 true deity of Christ. If it were possible to believe that Jesus 
 was a mere man, then there would be no antecedent reason to 
 recognise any distinction in the deity beyond that of attributes 
 or powers, such as the Platonists and Alexandrian Jews held ; 
 and what is said about the Spirit might be regarded as mere 
 figurative or exaggerated descriptions of a divine influence. But 
 if, as we believe to be the fact, we cannot do justice to the 
 character and claims of Jesus or to the worship paid Him by 
 His disciples, without acknowledging Him to be truly God ; 
 then we see from His relation to the Father, that the sayings 
 which speak personally of the Spirit may be taken more literally, 
 
28 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 while at the same time, if they are the teaching riot merely 
 of a man sent from God, but of one who is Himself God, 
 they cannot be so freely handled as on the other theory they 
 must be. 
 
 Were we to confine our view of the New Testament doctrine 
 on this subject to passages that speak especially of the Holy 
 Spirit ; we might be apt to think, that those which distinctly 
 suggest a personal being are but few, and balanced by others 
 which point rather to an impersonal power ; and that where 
 cxegetical considerations are so doubtful, the preference is due 
 to the view which implies no transcendently mysterious doctrine, 
 and only requires allowance to be made for some rather bold 
 personifications. But the matter will appear differently, ■ if we 
 consider, that the understanding of what is meant by the Holy 
 Spirit in the New Testament depends on the answer to the 
 larger question, What is the Christian idea of God? If that 
 implies, that the divine Being is not an absolutely simple unity, 
 but is distinguished in itself as Father and Son ; if Christians 
 are consecrated in baptism to the name of the Father and of 
 the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt, xxviii. 19) ; if in the 
 bestowal of spiritual gifts on the Church there are recognised 
 one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all (1 Cor. xii. 4-6 ; 
 Eph. iv. 4-6) ; and if blessings are invoked from the Lord Jesus 
 Christ and the Holy Spirit as well as from God (2 Cor. xiii. 14) ; 
 the evidence that the New Testament represents the Spirit as a 
 person, in the same sense as the Word, is seen to be much more 
 extensive and conclusive. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 THE truth implied in the various representations of Scripture 
 about the Spirit has generally been expressed by theologians in 
 the statement, that the Spirit of God is not merely a power or 
 influence from God, but God Himself as working in the minds 
 and hearts of men, or in other words, a divine person, though 
 not separate or separable from the Father and the Son, but one 
 with them in being, in perfections, and in acting. When we 
 assert the personality of the Holy Spirit, we use the word person, 
 not in the sense it has when applied to men, but in a modified 
 and quite special sense. We employ it to denote a mysterious 
 distinction in the divine Being, that Scripture makes known 
 to us, the nature of which we cannot positively conceive ; but 
 in virtue of which we believe that the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit are truly distinct, and each is truly God ; while yet there 
 are not three Gods, but one God only. We do not profess to 
 be able to explain wherein the distinction lies ; we can only say 
 negatively, that it is more than a distinction of different modes 
 of viewing the same being, as when we think of God as 
 almighty, wise, and good ; but less than that of different beings, 
 as when we distinguish God, angels, and men. The word person 
 is really only a distant and imperfect analogy, — a term thrown 
 out at an object which we cannot grasp in thought. It has a 
 certain justification from the fact that Scripture uses personal 
 pronouns, /, Thou, He, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 
 29 
 
30 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 Spirit, and represents them as using these of and to one another ; 
 but our use of it does not mean that there are three persons in 
 the same sense in which we speak of three men as three human 
 persons. Indeed it is only in modern times that this meaning 
 of the word person has become common : at the time when 
 it was first applied to the Godhead, it was quite correct to 
 say, that one man might unite in himself three persons, that is, 
 parts or characters ; and the difficulty then felt about the word 
 was, that it seemed to make the distinctions in the Godhead too 
 slight ; though in modern times, if understood in its ordinary 
 sense, it makes them too great. The fact is, that it was adopted 
 to denote something intermediate between the ancient and the 
 modern meaning. Though we cannot positively explain what 
 that is, it cannot be proved to involve a contradiction that there 
 should be such a distinction in the incomprehensible being of 
 God. This distinction is most clearly revealed to us in Jesus 
 Christ. He spoke of Himself as the Son of God in a peculiar 
 sense, so as to make Himself equal with God (John v. 17-23) ; 
 as one with the Father (John x. 30-39) ; as the only one who 
 knows the Father and is known by Him alone (Matt. xi. 27), 
 as deserving supreme and exclusive love from all (Matt. x. 27 ; 
 Luke xiv. 26) ; and by His immediate and inspired disciples He 
 is called God and worshipped (John i. 1, xii. 41, xx. 28 ; Acts 
 vii. 59; Rom. ix. 5 ; 1 Cor. i. 2 ; 2 Cor. xii. 8; 1 Pet. iii. 15; 
 Rev. i. 17, v. 8-14). Yet it is equally clear that He is distinct 
 from the Father since He habitually prayed to Him, spoke of 
 Him as sending, commanding, sustaining Him. What this 
 relation of oneness and yet distinction is in itself, we cannot 
 understand ; but that there is such a relation, that the Father 
 and the Son are both God and are distinct from one another, 
 and yet are not two but one only, is proved by facts and testi- 
 monies too many and too clear to permit us to doubt it. Now 
 in like manner, the Holy Spirit which is given and sent by the 
 Father and the Son, just as the Son is given and sent by the 
 Father is described as having divine attributes, and doing divine 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH. 3 1 
 
 works, and is associated with the Father and the Son in the 
 institution of baptism (Matt, xxviii. 19), and in the benediction 
 (1 Cor. xiii. 14). Therefore the great body of Christians have 
 believed that the Holy Spirit, like the Son of God, is truly God, 
 yet distinct from the Father and the Son ; and have expressed 
 what they conceive God's revelation to teach on this subject, by 
 saying, first in the Apostolic Creed, " I believe in the Holy 
 Ghost," that is, not merely, " I believe that there is a Holy 
 Ghost," as I believe the Holy Catholic Church, but " I trust in 
 the Holy Ghost," as I trust in God the Father Almighty, and in 
 Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord. 1 Afterwards, when the 
 true deity of the Holy Spirit was denied by some, the faith of the 
 Church was asserted in this form : " We believe in the Holy 
 Ghost, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceedeth from the 
 Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped 
 and glorified, who spake by the prophets." 2 The Church of 
 Scotland in all her branches expresses her adherence to these 
 ancient confessions of faith, by teaching her children to say : 
 " There are three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, 
 and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one God, the same in 
 substance, equal in power and glory." We call the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost, persons, because though they are not 
 so called in the Bible, they are represented as using personal 
 pronouns, /, Tkou t He, of themselves and each other, e.g. John 
 xv. 26, " When the Comforter is come, whom / will send unto 
 
 1 The distinction between believing in an object of faith and simply 
 believing is carefully observed in the Creed ; and the former phrase is used 
 in the first three articles, the latter in all the rest. Following many of the 
 Fathers, the Reformers laid great stress upon this, as showing that the 
 relation of believers to the Church is entirely different irom their relation to 
 God and Christ. We believe the Church, as we believe the forgiveness of 
 sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting ; i.e. we regard 
 these blessed privileges as true and real ; but we do not believe in them, i.e. 
 trust in them, as we do in God the Father, and Jesus Christ, and the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 2 Creed of the First Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, commonly called 
 the Nicene Creed. 
 
32 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 you from the Father, even the Spirit cf truth which proceedeth 
 from the Father, He shall bear witness of mej n xvii. 6, "And 
 now, O Father, glorify Thou me with thine own self with the 
 glory which / had with Thee before the world was ; " Acts xiii. 2, 
 " The Holy Ghost said. Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the 
 work whereunto / have called them." We say that they are 
 " in the Godhead," and by that we mean, the being or essence 
 of God ; and the word " substance " here means the same as 
 " Godhead." What is the essence of God we cannot compre- 
 hend ; but the Bible says, when it comes nearest to telling us, 
 "God is Spirit" (John iv. 24), "God is Light" (1 John i. 5), 
 " God is Love " (1 John iv. 8,16). Now the Comforter, whom 
 Jesus associates with the Father and Himself, is Spirit, unseen, 
 yet living and powerful; He is light, as holy; and He is the 
 Spirit of love. When we say that the Holy Spirit is " the same 
 in substance " with the Father, we mean that He has all divine 
 perfections, and is as truly to be worshipped and trusted as the 
 Father and the Son. 
 
 We say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, as Jesus 
 Himself said (John xvi. 26) ; and we understand that to mean the 
 same as when He is called, as He so often is, the Spirit of God, 
 or from God, that is, as it were, the breath of God. The Father is 
 said to send the Spirit, but the Spirit is never said to send the 
 Father ; hence we infer that the order in which they act is not a 
 mere variable one, but depends on their mode of being, in which 
 the Father is of none, while the Spirit is of the Father, not created 
 or made in time, but eternally proceeding, or breathed out, as it 
 were, from the Father. It is because of this mysterious relation 
 that we can say that the Father works by the Spirit, and that our 
 recognition and honour of the Holy Spirit do not detract from 
 the worship due to the Father, but are a part of it. 
 
 Then, as we find that the Holy Spirit is also sent by Christ, and 
 is called the Spirit of God's Son ; and that Christ is represented as 
 working by the Spirit, we think it proper to say, that the Holy 
 Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father. Though 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GOD IN THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH. 33 
 
 that is not said in so many words in Scripture, yet we think these 
 other expressions show, that the thing that is meant by them is as 
 true in relation to the Son as to the Father. On this point there 
 is a difference between the Eastern or Greek Church and the 
 Western or Roman ; for the theologians of the East did not 
 recognise the force of the arguments just indicated ; and thought 
 it better to keep to the express words of Jesus, and say only, that 
 the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father; while the Western 
 Church added to the Creed the words, "and from the Son" 
 (Filioque). The Protestant Churches have generally thought 
 that the doctrine thus asserted is true ; but that it is not so 
 clearly revealed, or so practically important, as to warrant a 
 separation of Churches on account of different views about it. 
 
 The doctrine of the Holy Spirit being a divine Person, one 
 with God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son, is one that can 
 not only be proved from Scripture as a revealed truth, but also, 
 to some extent, verified in the religious experience of Christians. 
 Every one who is earnestly seeking to live a life of holiness and 
 communion with God, must feel that he has great difficulty and 
 opposition to contend against. The world, with its business, and 
 cares, and pleasures, tends to draw his mind away from thoughts 
 of God and intercourse with Him who is unseen : the passions, 
 or habits of selfishness, sloth, or pride, make him disinclined to 
 the active disinterested love that is the fulfilling of the moral 
 law : strong and subtle temptations often present themselves to 
 him. He cannot overcome these by any efforts or resolutions of 
 his own will ; and the divine law, with all its authority and repre- 
 sentations of absolute duty, is unable to raise him above them. 
 He is conscious of an experience similar to that which Paul 
 describes in Rom. vii. 14-25. But when he looks to Christ, and 
 trusts in God's grace and love, is he not conscious of another 
 power in him, lifting him above the influence of the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil, and moving him to love and serve God ? It 
 is the power of divine grace or love that has taken possession 
 of his soul. There is something in the Christian's experience 
 
 C 
 
34 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 beyond his own conscious efforts of will or purpose, something 
 that influences him, he cannot tell how or why ; it does not come 
 at his will, but often seizes hold of him when he has not been 
 wishing or expecting it ; a passage of Scripture, or a truth of 
 religion, or an example of Christian character, may be at one 
 time the means of arousing deep feeling and heavenly aspiration, 
 when at other times these very things may be presented to him 
 without making any impression. This influence that is at work 
 upon him is therefore independent of outward circumstances, as 
 well as of his own will : it is a power not himself that is 
 working for righteousness. But if so, can it be different from that 
 power which so works in the world, and which we believe to be 
 not a mere impersonal stream of tendency, nor a power absolutely 
 inscrutable, of which we can know nothing, but the living God ? 
 There is the same reason to believe that the power making for 
 righteousness of which we are conscious in ourselves is personal, as 
 that the power we see in the moral government of the world is so. 
 Yet this power working in us prompts us to adoration, love, and 
 prayer to God as our Father, and to trust in Christ as our 
 Saviour ; hence we are naturally led to conclude, that this power, 
 which the Bible calls the Spirit of God, is a divine Person 
 distinct from God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son, though 
 one in character and being with both. So it has been found in 
 the history of the Church that many men, like Thomas Scott x and 
 Robert Hall, 2 have been led by their spiritual experience to the 
 Trinitarian doctrine of the Holy Spirit ; and generally those who 
 have accepted this doctrine have done so not only because it has 
 appeared to be taught by revelation, but also because it satisfied 
 some of the deepest wants of their consciences and hearts. 3 
 
 1 See Scott's Force of Truth, Part ii. 
 
 2 See Dr. Gregory's Memoir of Robert Hall, in Hall's Works, vol. vi. p. 52. 
 
 3 SeeWace, Christianity and Morality, Boyle Lectures, 1875; Lecture vii., 
 "The Doctrine of the Trinity a Moral Revelation." 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 ■o- 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 In the Old Testament, as we have already seen, the Spirit of 
 God is described as working in the creation, preservation, and 
 government of the material world. To this agency there is no 
 direct reference in the New Testament, though it is logically 
 presupposed in the fact that various physical as well as moral 
 effects are ascribed to the Spirit of God, such as miracles, 
 speaking with tongues, and the transportation of persons from 
 one place to another (Acts viii. 39, 40). An agent that can 
 produce such effects in the material world, cannot be limited to 
 mental and moral influence ; and since the Spirit is called the 
 finger of God (Matt. xii. 28 ; Luke xi. 20), and identified with 
 God Himself, we cannot doubt that Jesus and His apostles 
 assumed the Old Testament view of God creating and preserving 
 all things by His Spirit as well as by His word, though they had 
 no occasion directly to assert it. As they have not done so, it is 
 well not to enter into speculations on this work of the Spirit 
 further than to observe, that as the doctrine, that God made and 
 sustains all things by His Word, implies that the universe is not 
 only a work of God but a manifestation of Him, so the corre- 
 sponding doctrine, that God made and sustains all things by His 
 Spirit, shows that God is to be regarded, not merely as a remote 
 
 First Cause, but as a present agent in all things, in whom we live 
 
 35 
 
36 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 and move and have our being. And both doctrines together 
 show, that Christianity, which is our fellowship with the Son and 
 the Spirit of God, is a world-wide and world-subduing religion, 
 because it is the communion with those divine agencies by which 
 the whole universe is created, preserved, and governed. This 
 principle underlies the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 and Paul's triumphant confidence in Rom. viii. and elsewhere. 
 
 But the work of the Spirit that is directly described in the New 
 Testament, is that which has to do immediately with our salvation. 
 That work may be designated generally in our Lord's own words 
 us glorifying Him (John xvi. 14), even as Christ's work was to 
 glorify the Father (John xvii. 4). Now just as Christ's work of 
 glorifying the Father included both a subjective work of making 
 Him known to men — " I manifested thy name unto the men 
 whom thou gavest me out of the world . . . the words which 
 thou gavest me, I have given unto them" (John xvii. 6, 8), and an 
 objective work of satisfying God's justice for them — " for their 
 sakes I sanctify myself" (John xvii. 19) ; so the work of the Holy 
 Spirit glorifying Jesus may be viewed also as falling into two parts; 
 there is an objective part, which is outside of those who are to be 
 saved, and includes all that the Spirit does to make Jesus 
 glorious, and manifest Him as such ; and a subjective part which 
 is within the souls of men, and includes what He does to enable 
 us to see Christ to be glorious, and to give glory to Him by faith, 
 love, and obedience. The objective or outward work of the 
 Spirit includes His work on Christ, His being sent by Christ, and 
 His presenting Christ to the world in the Word : the subjective or 
 inward work of the Spirit includes His operations in the soul, 
 convincing, converting, sanctifying, teaching, and comforting. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ON CHRIST. 
 
 The New Testament is pre-eminently the dispensation of the 
 
 Spirit, fulfilling the promises that God would pour out His Spirit 
 
 on all flesh (Joel ii. 28), put His Spirit within His people's hearts, 
 
 and so write His law there (Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27). This was also 
 
 predicted to be done through the Servant of Jehovah, the root 
 
 out of the stem of Jesse, who was to be Himself anointed with the 
 
 Spirit of God (Isa. xi. 1-4, xlii. 1-4, lxi. 1-3). Accordingly we 
 
 find in the New Testament that the Holy Spirit is represented 
 
 primarily as working upon and in Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the first place, the Holy Spirit is described as the agent in 
 
 the miraculous conception of Jesus (Matt. i. 20 ; Luke i. 35). 
 
 Though this fact is mentioned explicitly only by these evangelists, 
 
 their accounts are manifestly independent, and while varying in 
 
 details agree in substance. The one may represent the report 
 
 transmitted from Joseph, and the other that coming from Mary. 
 
 But if not expressly stated, it is presupposed by other New 
 
 Testament writers, that the beginning of Jesus' human life was 
 
 not an ordinary one. John reports His saying, "that which is 
 
 begotten of the flesh is flesh," and therefore needs to be begotten 
 
 again: but He excludes Himself when He says, "ye must be born 
 
 again ; " hence we may infer that He was in some peculiar way 
 
 begotten not of the flesh but of the Spirit. Paul says that God 
 
 sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and that while 
 
 He was born of a woman, of the seed of David according to the 
 
 37 
 
38 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 flesh, He knew no sin. Since all men born according to the 
 ordinary law of nature inherit sin and death from Adam, He who 
 has no sin and saves His people from their sin must needs have 
 been begotten of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 In virtue of this agency it was that He grew up filled with 
 wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him (Luke ii. 40) ; that 
 He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and 
 men (Luke ii. 52), needing no repentance or conversion, but holy, 
 harmless, undefiled, tempted in all things like as we are, yet 
 without sin (Heb. iv. 15, vii. 26). 
 
 The holiness of the human nature of our Lord is not to be 
 ascribed directly to its union to the divine nature by the Incarna- 
 tion. The proper effect of that was to elevate it to the highest 
 dignity, inasmuch as it became the human nature of the eternal 
 Son of God, the soul and body that was for ever a part of His 
 very self. But this wonderful union did not make His soul or 
 body one whit less truly human ; and the holiness he had in His 
 human nature is human holiness, not something above our nature, 
 but the very perfection and crown of it ; and in this He is like 
 His brethren, receiving the aid of the Holy Spirit. His being 
 God did not make the preservation of holiness in an ungodly 
 world at all more easy to His flesh and blood, nay His task 
 was all the harder. Hence we read that He received the Holy 
 Spirit, was filled with the Spirit, led of the Spirit, anointed with 
 the Holy Spirit ; that He was much in prayer to God, and was 
 encouraged by voices from heaven, and strengthened by an 
 angel. 
 
 The various points or stages in His life on earth, at which 
 special mention is made of His being under the influence of the 
 Spirit, are worthy of notice. 
 
 The first is when He entered on His public work, identifying 
 Himself with those whom John called to repentance, by receiving 
 baptism from one who confessed that he had need to be baptized 
 by Jesus. Then He saw the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit 
 descending on Him in visible form as a dove, and heard a voice 
 
THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ON CHRIST. 39 
 
 from heaven saying, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am 
 well pleased." This was for Him a testimony of His Father's 
 approval, which would strengthen and encourage His human 
 soul ; and it would seem that along with it there was not a mere 
 symbol, but an actual communication to His human nature of the 
 gracious influence of the Holy Spirit. Immediately afterwards 
 we read that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit (Luke iv. 1), and 
 we can hardly avoid connecting that with the occurrence at His 
 baptism. He was now endowed to the full in His humanity with 
 all the wisdom, and power, and zeal, and love, needed for carrying 
 out His great commission as the Saviour of the world. 
 
 Then He was led (Matt. iv. 1 ; Luke iv. 1), or as Mark (i. 12) 
 expresses it, driven forth by the Spirit into the wilderness to be 
 tempted by Satan. Before beginning His Messianic work, He 
 sought retirement : away from His townsmen of Nazareth and the 
 throngs surrounding the Baptist, He would fix His mind on the 
 nature and means of His enterprise. Here He encountered and 
 overcame those suggestions of the prince of this world, that would 
 have led Him to attempt His work in a selfish, vainglorious, or 
 worldly spirit. He suffered being tempted, yet without sin, for 
 He was full of the Holy Spirit, and had been led to this conflict 
 by the Spirit. 
 
 Next we read that He returned in the power of the Spirit 
 (Luke iv. 14) to begin His work of proclaiming and establishing 
 the kingdom of God. Thereafter He speaks of Himself as 
 having the Spirit of God on Him in His teaching (Luke iv. 8), 
 and of casting out demons by the Spirit of God (Matt. xii. 28) ; 
 and Peter afterwards declared that " God anointed him with the 
 Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and 
 healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with 
 him" (Acts x. 38). 
 
 We can hardly doubt also that the great act by which He 
 gave Himself a sacrifice for the sins of men was performed in 
 the power of the Holy Spirit ; and this is possibly the meaning 
 of the saying in Heb. ix. 14, that He " through the eternal Spirit 
 
40 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 offered himself without blemish to God ; " although some of the 
 best interpreters prefer to understand the eternal Spirit as His 
 own divine nature. The reference to the Holy Spirit has however 
 a great deal in its favour. 
 
 After His resurrection He is still represented as giving com- 
 mandment to His apostles through the Holy Spirit (Acts i. 2) ; 
 and thus from first to last His work is described as carried on in 
 the power of the Spirit of God given to Him. This is that 
 anointing which He had for His office, in virtue of which He is 
 the Messiah or Christ, i.e. the Anointed One ; and this shows us 
 that He is qualified for all the parts of our salvation, not only as 
 God but also as man. He is able perfectly to teach us as a 
 prophet, not merely because He knows all things as God, but 
 because His human mind is enlightened and taught by the Spirit 
 of God : He can appear for us as a great high priest, because He 
 can bear gently with the ignorant and erring, for that He Himself 
 also was compassed with infirmity, and needed the support of the 
 Holy Spirit : He can rule us as a perfect king, because He is not 
 only Almighty God, but our brother, conquering His and our 
 enemies by the power of the Spirit. 
 
 Hence, too, when He bestows the Holy Spirit He gives a 
 blessing that He has Himself received and enjoys, and makes us 
 joint-partakers in it with Himself. Thus we read, not only of the 
 gift, but of the communion of the Holy Spirit, i.e. partaking in 
 common of the privilege and blessing of having the Spirit of 
 God given to us. It is a fellowship of believers with one another, 
 but also with Christ ; they receive the same anointing as He did ; 
 it is like the precious ointment on the head of Aaron, that flowed 
 down his beard, and descended even to the skirts of his garments. 
 All the members of our great high priest partake of the anointing 
 of the Holy Spirit, that is given to Him their Head. 
 
 This work of the Holy Spirit on Christ affords an explanation 
 of a passage that has caused not a little difficulty to commentators, 
 John xiv. 16, 17 : " I will pray the Father, and he shall give you 
 another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever ; even 
 
THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ON CHRIST. 4 1 
 
 the Spirit of truth : whom the world cannot receive, for it behoklcth 
 him not, neither knoweth him : ye know him, for he abideth 
 with you and shall be in you." The gift of the Spirit here 
 promised is future ; the disciples received it after our Lord's 
 departure, when so remarkable a change appeared in their whole 
 mental and moral character. How then does Jesus say, "he 
 abideth with you," giving that as the reason why they knew Him? 
 Many understand these statements, though present in form, as 
 future in meaning, so that the sense would be, Ye shall soon know 
 Him, for He shall abide with you. This however is not satis- 
 factory, because the contrast with the world's ignorance, which is 
 undoubtedly present, requires that the disciples' knowledge be 
 present too. Besides, that knowledge is clearly given as the 
 reason why they can receive the Spirit, as the world cannot. It 
 is more in accordance with the force of the words to understand 
 " He abideth with you " as referring to the dwelling of the Spirit 
 in Christ, from which they had come to know Him, though He 
 was not yet in them as He was afterwards to be. 1 The presence 
 of the Spirit of God in Jesus was manifested by His speaking the 
 words of God ; as the Baptist said, " He whom God hath sent 
 speaketh the words of God : for he giveth not the Spirit by 
 measure" (John iii. 36); and the disciples had recognised this, 
 when Peter said, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? thou hast the 
 
 1 This explanation is given by J. C. Hare, Mission of the Comforter, pp. 
 308, 309: " If we make a distinction between the outward and the inward 
 presence of the Spirit, and suppose that the apostles as yet had only enjoyed 
 the former, recognising His power in a measure, as manifested in the life and 
 discourse of their Lord, and being so far enlightened by Him as to discern the 
 divine character of that power, then the promise of the higher gift to them 
 would be in full conformity with that principle, which runs through the whole 
 Scripture, as it does through all the dispensations of life, that to him who has 
 shall be given." In confirmation of this view it may be noticed, that the words 
 rendered "with you" are not the same as in ver. 16. There they mean 
 exactly ' ' along with you ; " here, ' ' beside you. " On the other hand, however, 
 many weighty authorities read in the last clause of ver. 17 "is in you," for 
 " shall be in you." If that be correct, the interpretation just given must be 
 abandoned. But while the external evidence is pretty equally balanced, 
 internal considerations are in favour of the future tense. 
 
42 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou 
 art the Holy One of God" (John vi. 68, 69). It was the blindness 
 and sin of the Pharisees that they would not and could not recog- 
 nise in Jesus' works the agency of the Holy Spirit, but ascribed 
 them to Beelzebub. 
 
 In His work on the man Christ Jesus, the Spirit of God is more 
 fully revealed as the Holy Spirit than ever before. Under the 
 Old Testament He had been recognised as the spirit of wisdom 
 and skill in a leader like Moses or an artificer like Bezaleel, as 
 the spirit of strength and courage clothing men like Gideon, 
 Jephthah, Samson, and as the spirit of prophecy in Samuel and 
 his successors : but there had never been seen a perfectly holy 
 man. That was the new thing that appeared in Jesus. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SENDING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BY CHRIST. 
 
 Jesus was described by John the Baptist not only as one 
 who had the Holy Spirit dwelling in Him in a manner and 
 fulness that no other man ever had, but also as baptizing with the 
 Holy Spirit (Matt. iii. n ; Mark i. 8 ; Luke iii. 16 ; John i. 33). 
 This is what marked Him out as the Messiah, or Founder of the 
 kingdom of God ; for there were numerous prophecies which 
 declared that the reign of Jehovah, that was to bring blessedness 
 to His people, was to be established by the Spirit of God. So 
 Jesus Himself spoke of the Holy Spirit as the best gift of God to 
 men, which as the Heavenly Father He will give to them that 
 ask Him (Luke xi. 13). When He invited all the thirsty to come 
 to Him and drink, and promised to give to everyone that believed 
 in Him an abundant supply, so that he should be a well of living 
 water, the evangelist tells us that He spake of the Spirit which 
 they that believed in Him should receive ; and the same evange- 
 list has recorded those farewell discourses in which Jesus promised 
 to send to His disciples another Comforter to supply His place 
 and carry on His work. 
 
 Of the fulfilment of these promises there was an outward and 
 visible proof in the events of the day of Pentecost after Jesus' 
 death. But the signs that then appeared to the senses, the sound 
 as of a mighty rushing wind from heaven, the tongues of fire, and 
 even the rapt prophetic utterance of the praises of God by the 
 
 Galilean disciples of Jesus in strange tongues, formed but the out- 
 
 43 
 
44 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 ward and less truly divine side of the event. More truly wonderful 
 was the inward change effected in the disciples and in the people 
 of Jerusalem. In the disciples of Jesus we see a new understand- 
 ing, a new courage, and a new love : in the multitude an entire 
 revolution of their views and feelings about Jesus. 
 
 The disciples had already indeed received some spiritual en- 
 lightenment, for they had recognised Jesus as the Messiah, and that 
 not only because of the miracles He did, but because they felt 
 that He had the words of eternal life. They had clung to this 
 faith, even when others were offended by His refusal to accept an 
 earthly crown and by His claim of a heavenly origin. Still they 
 had no idea that it was through suffering and death that He was to 
 enter into His glory ; and they looked for places of worldly distinc- 
 tion in His kingdom. They thought He should call down fire 
 from heaven on those who would not receive Him, and even at 
 the last they looked for an immediate restoration of the kingdom 
 to Israel. But on the day of Pentecost we find them proclaiming, 
 that Jesus who had been crucified had entered upon His kingdom, 
 and was really reigning, and no longer do they think of any earthly 
 reign of the Messiah. 
 
 But while they thus showed new and enlarged knowledge, the 
 new courage with which they uttered their convictions was still 
 more remarkable. Formerly, when their Master was not with them , 
 they had been timid and inconsistent : in His absence they failed 
 to do works of healing which they attempted ; when He set His 
 face to go up to Jerusalem, they were amazed and afraid, and 
 followed Him with fear as to certain death (Mark x. 33 ; John 
 xi. 8, 16) ; in His hour of danger all forsook Him and fled, and 
 Peter was ashamed to confess Him even before the maid-servants 
 of the high priest. Even after His resurrection they only ven- 
 tured to meet with closed doors for fear of the Jews. But on the 
 day of Pentecost they openly declare their faith in Jesus, and 
 boldly accuse the people of the unspeakable guilt of rejecting 
 and crucifying the Messiah, for whom Israel had been looking so 
 long. 
 
THE SENDING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BY CHRIST. 45 
 
 There is further manifest in the bearing and discourse of the 
 disciples a wonderful tone of forbearance and love to those who 
 had been the enemies and murderers of their Master. Naturally 
 they might be filled with the bitterest indignation and wrath ; and 
 if before they were ready to call down fire from heaven on a 
 Samaritan village simply for not receiving Him on His journey, 
 what threatenings and vengeance might they not be expected to 
 breathe out against the people of Jerusalem who had forced the 
 Roman governor to crucify Him ? They do indeed press home 
 on their consciences the awful guilt of their conduct ; but they 
 do it evidently more in sorrow than in anger : they do not in 
 the least exaggerate the crime or dwell on its atrocity ; they 
 denounce no judgment upon it ; they address the guilty people 
 as brethren ; they earnestly exhort them to repentance, and 
 cordially convey to them God's promise of forgiveness and the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit if they will but repent. In Peter's speech after 
 the healing of the lame man, he dwells on the fact that their great 
 sin was committed in ignorance, and was overruled by God for 
 the accomplishment of His gracious purpose (Acts iii. 17, 18). In 
 all this there is a tone of generosity, of fellow-feeling, of love, like 
 that of Joseph toward his brethren (Gen. xlv. 5 foil.), yea like that 
 of Jesus Himself, from whom they learned it through the influence 
 of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Such was the spiritual change wrought on those who had 
 already believed in Jesus : it was largely due, no doubt, to the fact 
 of His resurrection, and without that it would be incredible ; but 
 they ascribed it also to the influence of the Spirit that Jesus had 
 promised, giving them power to be witnesses for Him. 
 
 This Spirit too, according to His promise, wrought on the 
 hearts of those who heard their testimony. The outward sign of 
 their speaking with tongues produced wonder and gained atten- 
 tion to Peter's address ; but the address itself carried conviction to 
 the hearts of those who had not many weeks before clamoured 
 for the death of Jesus as a deceiver and blasphemer, and made 
 three thousand willing to enrol themselves as His disciples, 
 
46 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 though He was still so regarded by the authorities. This too 
 they did under a sense of guilt, and by accepting the rite of 
 baptism, which signified the giving up of their entire past life as 
 polluted, and the acceptance of forgiveness and renewal in the 
 name of Jesus : and they did begin a new life with a love, hope, 
 and joy unknown before, parting with all their goods and casting 
 them into a common stock, and doing all this with alacrity, 
 eating their meat with gladness and joyfulness of heart. 
 
 Thus as an actual historical fact the Church of the New 
 Covenant was founded by the Spirit of God sent down from 
 heaven, working in men's hearts as a purifying and animating fire, 
 cleansing them from earthly affections, and warming them with 
 brotherly love and charity : and this renewing influence was given 
 in connection with the testimony of the exaltation of Him who 
 had first taught and shown such holiness and love to men. There 
 are also various indications given, that the connection of the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit with the work of Christ as our Redeemer is 
 peculiarly close and necessary. The fourth evangelist, remarking 
 on Jesus' promise of living water (vii. 39), says " the Spirit was 
 not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified ; " and he records 
 Jesus' saying (xvi. 7), " If I go not away, the Comforter will not 
 come unto you ; but if I go, I will send him unto you." That 
 Jesus' departing and being glorified have special reference to His 
 death appears not only from His sayings in John xii. 23, 24, 
 xiii. 31-33, but from that recorded by Luke xxiv. 49, where, 
 after saying that the Scriptures must needs be fulfilled that the 
 Christ should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 
 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached 
 in His name unto all the nations, he adds : "And behold I send 
 forth the promise of my Father upon you " (compare Acts i. 4, 
 5, ii. 33). Paul states the connection still more explicitly when 
 he writes to the Galatians, " Christ redeemed us from the curse 
 of the law, having become a curse for us . . , that the blessing 
 of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, that we might receive 
 the promise of the Spirit through faith" (iii. 13, 14); and again, 
 
THE SENDING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BY CHRIST. 47 
 
 "God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the 
 law, that He might redeem them that were under the law, that 
 we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are 
 sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts 7 ' 
 (iv. 4-6). The principle of this connection is indicated when 
 Paul says that God hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings 
 in Christ ; for these blessings include not only redemption and 
 forgiveness, but also the seal and earnest of the Spirit which 
 are all ours in Christ (Eph. i. 3, 7, 13, 14). Sin excludes man 
 from God's blessing, and exposes him to God's wrath and curse, 
 and that implies that God gives over the sinner to his own evil 
 passions (Rom. i. 18, 24, 26, 28). This is the righteous judgment 
 of God, and whatever good is yet bestowed by God on sinners, 
 even His forbearance, not less truly than His forgiveness, is 
 based upon that manifestation of His righteousness made by 
 Christ, whom God hath set forth as a propitiation in His blood 
 through faith (Rom. iii. 24-26). This passage also indicates how 
 these statements of the dependence of the gift of the Spirit 
 on the atoning work of Christ are to be harmonized with the 
 undeniable fact, that the Holy Spirit was bestowed on men in 
 various ways long before Jesus came in the flesh. For it tells 
 us, that His work had a bearing on the passing by of the sins 
 of the past, as well as on the justification of believers at that time 
 and later. As justifying God's gracious dealings with men, it had 
 a retrospective as well as a prospective bearing. Its results were 
 applied by anticipation as it were, because its accomplishment 
 was absolutely certain from the beginning. Hence Jesus, as the 
 spotless Lamb by whose blood we are redeemed, is said to have 
 been foreknown before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. i. 20), 
 and is called the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world 
 (Rev. xiii. 8). As a transaction in the moral government of 
 God the atoning death of Christ has, we may say, no date ; it is 
 not conditioned by time at all, but is ever present to the eternal 
 mind of God, as it is also present to our faith, which overleaps 
 the limits of time and place and apprehends a dying Saviour here 
 
48 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 and now, as often as we look to Him. The dependence of the 
 work of the Holy Spirit on that of Christ is not essentially chrono- 
 logical, but logical and ideal ; and so, even when the Spirit was 
 bestowed on men earlier in time than the redemption of Christ 
 was accomplished, it was given on the ground of that redemption 
 as a necessary condition. But as it was designed that the con- 
 nection should be made manifest, the most signal and abundant 
 effusion of the Spirit was historically after Christ's redemption 
 had become an accomplished fact. Then the Spirit began to exert 
 His gracious influence not only on a few outstanding men in the 
 community, as leaders, prophets, or kings, but on the mass of the 
 people as a whole, and on each single soul among them. Then 
 too the Spirit could work with more power in manifesting to 
 men the love and grace of God, since these had been actually 
 exercised in the highest and most wonderful degree in the life 
 and death of God's Son for sinners. The redemption of Christ 
 is not only the necessary condition, but the appropriate instru- 
 ment of the Spirit's work. He bears witness of Christ along 
 with the messengers whom He sends (John xv. 26, 27), and when 
 He convinces the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of 
 judgment, it is by making man see what Jesus had done and 
 suffered. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN THE EXTERNAL CALL OF 
 
 THE WORD. 
 
 While Jesus and His disciples alike teach, in accordance with 
 
 the intimations of Old Testament prophecy, that the kingdom of 
 
 God is to be established by the working of His Spirit in the hearts 
 
 of men ; they declare with equal emphasis that it is also needful 
 
 that the kingdom be proclaimed, and men called to receive and 
 
 enter it. The announcement, that the reign of God foretold by 
 
 the prophets is at hand, is the gospel or glad tidings, that occupies 
 
 so large and prominent a place in the New Testament ; of which 
 
 Jesus said, " This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the 
 
 whole world for a testimony unto all the nations " (Matt. xxiv. 14) ; 
 
 of which Paul says, " How shall they believe in him whom they 
 
 have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher ?" 
 
 (Rom. x. 14) ; and which Peter declares to be " the Word of the 
 
 Lord which abideth for ever" (1 Pet. i. 25). This proclamation 
 
 is accompanied with a call to believe and obey the reign of God, 
 
 or, as it is often expressed, to repentance, that is, to a change of 
 
 mind and heart, giving up sin as a rebellion against God, trusting 
 
 in His mercy to forgive it, and returning to our allegiance to Him 
 
 as our rightful and chosen King. 
 
 The importance attached in Scripture to the gospel indicates 
 
 the general principle, that while God turns us to Himself by the 
 
 power of His Spirit, He deals with us in accordance with our 
 
 nature, as creatures possessing reason and free-will. He does 
 
 not move men to faith and obedience by the same kind of power 
 
 v 
 
5<D THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 by which He guides the planets in their courses, or bring back 
 wandering prodigals by laws such as those that bring comets 
 from the depths of space back to their central sun. Neither does 
 He move them by any mere blind overpowering instinct, like 
 those by which " the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed 
 times, and the turtle and the swallow and the crane observe the 
 time of their coming :" He addresses a call to their understand- 
 ing, their conscience, their affections, and their will ; and brings 
 all these powers of the soul into action, when He creates them 
 anew in Christ Jesus unto good works. 
 
 This call of the gospel, however, derives its power, even as an 
 external invitation, from its being the call of God Himself, and 
 not merely of our fellow-men. It comes to us indeed through 
 our fellow-men, and it is accompanied with their earnest advice 
 and entreaty to comply with it ; but if it is to warrant and 
 encourage us to come to God as penitent sinners, trusting His 
 mercy, we must have the assurance that it really expresses the 
 mind and will of God Himself. Now that which gives us this 
 assurance in connection with the gospel call, is that work of the 
 Holy Spirit which is commonly called inspiration, the effect of 
 which is, that we can regard the Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testaments as the Word of God written, and our infallible rule 
 of faith and life. 
 
 Moses and the prophets of Israel, who as we have seen were 
 moved by the Spirit of God, spoke in His name, saying, "Thus 
 saith the Lord," and so their utterances were the Word of God. 
 The earlier prophets wrought chiefly by speech and action, as 
 Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, and Elisha, who have left no written 
 records of their prophecies ; but the history of Israel was written 
 in the prophetic spirit in a series of books regarded by the 
 Hebrews as divine, and called "the former prophets ;" and these 
 were followed by a collection of the works of the inspired men, 
 who committed their discourses to writing, " the later prophets." 
 These, together with the five books of the Law, giving Israel's 
 divine legislation set in the history of the people from the begin- 
 
IN THE EXTERNAL CALL OF THE WORD. 5 1 
 
 ning, and with a collection called Scriptures, or holy writings 
 {Kcthubhim, Hagiographd), including the Psalms, the Solomonic 
 writings, and others of later date, constituted the sacred books of 
 Israel. Though some questions as to its precise limits were 
 discussed by the Rabbis at and after our Lord's time, in general 
 the collection was recognised as the written Word of God from a 
 much earlier date ; and the Law and the Prophets were regularly 
 read in the synagogues as divine. In moral and spiritual cha- 
 racter these books show a very marked superiority to later Jewish 
 religious writings, some of which were mixed with them in the 
 Greek translation of the LXX., and having been used as Scripture 
 by some of the early Christians, were put by the Council of Trent 
 on a level with the books of Scripture. 
 
 The actual words of Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, who 
 spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes, are doubt- 
 less in the most direct sense the Word of God. Even in these, 
 as we have seen, the agency of the Spirit is to be recognised. 
 But Jesus acknowledged the absolute authority of the Old Testa- 
 ment Scripture as divine, and on a perfect level with His own 
 words ; and on one occasion at least, when appealing to it as 
 such, He indicated that it was the agency of the Spirit that gave 
 it that character ; when reasoning with the scribes as to the 
 dignity of the expected Messiah, He asked, "How doth David 
 in the Spirit (or in the Holy Spirit) call him Lord ? " (Matt. xxii. 
 43 ; Mark xii, 36). 
 
 Jesus also intimated, that what He actually said with His own 
 lips did not constitute the whole of what He had to teach His 
 disciples ; for He had many things to say to them, which they 
 could not bear, even at the very end of His personal training of 
 them (John xvi. 12) ; but He promised that the Spirit, being the 
 Spirit of truth, would guide them into all the truth, for He should 
 speak at Jesus' command and unfold to them the things of Jesus, 
 which include all that the Father hath. These words, as they 
 indicate distinctly a completion by the Spirit of the teaching of 
 Jesus, seem to denote not merely that gracious enlightenment of 
 
52 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 the Spirit which is common to all believers, and to which most of 
 His sayings in this discourse refer, but a special divine influ- 
 ence, that would make what was said or written under it as truly 
 the Word of God as the Law and the Prophets, and the discourses 
 of Jesus Himself. Accordingly we find that there were in the 
 early Church prophets (Acts xiii. I ; Rom. xii. 6 ; i Cor. xii. xiv.), 
 whose gifts are ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The disciples from 
 the day of Pentecost onwards were filled with the Holy Spirit, 
 and spoke with authority in the name of God ; and their words, 
 like those of the Old Testament prophets, were often attested by 
 miraculous signs to confirm their authority. Similar authority 
 is claimed for what they wrote in the form of epistles for the 
 instruction and confirmation of their converts. Paul, who was 
 probably the first to adopt this plan, says : " If any man think 
 himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge, that 
 the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the 
 Lord'' 5 (i Cor. xiv. 37); and in the other epistles of the New 
 Testament there is a similar tone of authority. One book, the 
 Apocalypse, is in form and substance prophetic, and records 
 visions asserted to have been received in the Spirit (Rev. i. 10) ; 
 and while the writers of the Gospels and Acts refer sometimes to 
 their human means of knowledge, and make no express claim to 
 divine inspiration, they give forth their records as possessing a 
 certainty that may be the ground of saving faith (Luke i. 4; 
 John xx. 31). The collection of the New Testament as a whole has 
 the same marks of moral and spiritual excellence, as compared 
 with the immediately following Christian literature, as the Old 
 Testament has in comparison with later Jewish religious writings. 
 Thus, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, there has been 
 composed a volume which is entitled to be called the Word of 
 God. The nature of the inspiration by which this has been 
 effected is, like every operation of the Spirit of God, mysterious ; 
 and as this work in particular is not, like His converting and 
 sanctifying agency, one of which all Christians have experience, 
 it is on this account also impossible'of explanation. We can only 
 
IN THE EXTERNAL CALL OF THE WORD. 53 
 
 know its results ; and these are twofold. On the one hand, what 
 is thus written possesses absolute authority as a message from 
 God ; for if Jesus was content to bow with implicit submission to 
 the saying, "It is written," how much rather should we? On 
 the other hand, the teaching of the Spirit of God comes to us 
 through men of like nature to ourselves, whose faculties have 
 not been superseded, but used, by the inspiration of the 
 Spirit. It is therefore intelligible to us ; and its meaning 
 can be correctly ascertained by the rules by which ordinary 
 human writings are interpreted. The inspired writers use 
 the language of their country and of their time with perfect 
 freedom, fall into grammatical and rhetorical irregularities ; do 
 not display literary perfection of style ; employ the customary 
 liberty of disregarding minute accuracy of detail where that would 
 be needless or out of place ; and adopt popular views on matters 
 of science and history. They have each his own character, not 
 only in style, but in the views of truth which they present, and 
 sometimes apparently contradict, while they really supplement 
 each other. A complete view of revealed truth is only to be 
 obtained by comparing and combining all their lights ; but each 
 portion of the Word, when read in the light of its connection, 
 has some message from God to men. 
 
 In virtue of this work of inspiration, the Holy Scripture is the 
 Word of God, and more especially of the Holy Spirit ; and 
 passages from it are quoted by Jesus and His apostles as spoken 
 by God (Matt. xix. 4, 5), or by the Holy Spirit (Acts xxviii. 25 ; 
 Heb. iii. 8, ix. 8; 1 Pet. i. 11), and sometimes the Scripture is said 
 to speak, when the meaning is that God speaks by the Scripture 
 (John xix. 37 ; Gal. iii. 8). To Scripture therefore belongs supreme 
 authority ; and to it is due absolute deference, as the Word of 
 God and infallible rule of faith and practice. God's revelation 
 of Himself in Jesus Christ for our salvation, having been thus 
 committed to writing, enables each one of us to hear His voice 
 speaking to ourselves, without being dependent on the interven- 
 tion of any human priest or prophet. We may indeed be greatly 
 
54 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 helped by the knowledge, wisdom, and teaching of our brethren ; 
 but we are never in a position in which we absolutely need them 
 to tell us what is the mind and will of God concerning us ; we 
 may through the Scriptures learn that from God Himself, and be 
 sure that God is speaking to us, and that we hear His voice. 
 Indeed, as long as we know the truth, however fully and correctly, 
 only from the teaching of others, we know nothing as we ought 
 to know ; if we would really hear and obey the Word of God, we 
 must read the Bible for ourselves, to be convinced that it is the 
 Word of God, and perceive its real meaning. That we may be 
 able to do so, the Scripture possesses a self-evidencing and self- 
 interpreting power, which makes it independent of external testi- 
 mony and explanation. Its self-evidencing power, or internal 
 evidence, consists chiefly in its efficacy to enlighten the mind, 
 awaken the conscience, and draw the heart towards God. This 
 power belongs in substance to the matter of Scripture, the gospel 
 embodied in it, and is felt also when that is faithfully presented 
 in uninspired speech or writing; but it is found in a special 
 degree as the gospel is received in the original form and with the 
 direct authority which it has in Scripture. The self-interpreting 
 power or perspicuity of Scripture arises from the fact that it is 
 written by men like ourselves, the Holy Spirit using not only 
 their lips and pens, but their minds, their imaginations, their 
 feelings ; so that by a natural unstrained interpretation, in 
 accordance with the common rules of language, we reach the 
 real meaning. Had Scripture been a series of oracles like those 
 that human superstition has imagined, dictated by the Deity 
 without the intervention of a human mind, its interpretation 
 would have been arbitrary and ambiguous, and there would have 
 been need of some authoritative interpreter to guide us to its real 
 meaning ; but since it is truly human as well as divine, its import 
 can be clearly and certainly ascertained. Since indeed it was 
 given at sundry times and in divers manners, some of its parts 
 are not so easily intelligible as others ; but a variety of form and 
 style was necessary for a book intended for all men in all ages ; 
 
IN THE EXTERNAL CALL OF THE WORD. 55 
 
 and this very variety, as it presents the same truths in different 
 points of view, affords, when carefully studied, the better means 
 of making sure that we understand them aright. 
 
 In regard to its contents, the Scripture, thus written by men 
 inspired by the Holy Spirit, so as to convey to us the Word of 
 God, is a unity, having for its one great subject the grace of God 
 bringing salvation, which has appeared to all men in Jesus Christ. 
 He said Himself of the Scriptures which the Jews searched, " These 
 are they that testify of me" (John v. 39). Paul says, that the glad 
 tidings of God concerning His Son, unto which he was separated, 
 had been promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures 
 (Rom. i. 2); and an angel declares in the Apocalyptic vision, 
 "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Rev. xix. 10) 
 Because this salvation is a historical salvation, accomplished 
 under fit conditions of place, time, and preparation, the message 
 about it is set in a history, and largely embodied in historical 
 records : because it is a holy salvation, its announcement is 
 accompanied with instructions and precepts of holiness ; but 
 the centre and sum of the Word of God is the joyful message of 
 God's mercy and grace to sinners through Jesus Christ, with the 
 invitation and command to all men to accept it as freely offered 
 to them. 
 
 This is the external call by which God turns sinners to Him- 
 self : it is conveyed to us by the work of the Holy Spirit inspiring 
 the writers of Scripture ; and this outward call of the Word, not 
 the inward work of the Spirit in our hearts, is the ground and 
 warrant of our faith. It is our duty to believe and accept God's 
 grace in Christ, simply because He testifies and offers it to us in 
 the gospel, whether or not we experience any working of His 
 Spirit in our hearts. The external call is well fitted to form a 
 ground of our faith, because of the qualities that belong to it. 
 
 It is gracious, proceeding from God's free undeserved mercy 
 and love to men, not due in justice or equity. We are told that 
 God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to 
 hell (2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Jude 6) ; and that He taketh not hold of angels 
 
56 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 to save them (Heb. ii. 16) ; and in perfect justice He might have 
 dealt so with men ; but in His sovereign mercy He has " so loved 
 the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." Both 
 the salvation itself and the offer of it are therefore entirely of 
 free grace ; and the offer is unfettered by any condition, to be had 
 simply for the taking, that is by faith, without money and without 
 price. 
 
 Again, God's call in the gospel is sincere : God is in earnest in 
 making it ; and it expresses His real and sincere desire that all 
 men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth 
 (1 Tim. ii. 4). He declares in the most solemn terms, con- 
 descending even to confirm it with an oath, that He has no 
 pleasure at all in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked 
 should turn from his wickedness and live (Ezek. xxxiii. 11) ; He 
 " is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, 
 but that all should come to repentance " (2 Pet. iii. 9). True, it 
 is a firm principle of His kingdom, that except men repent they 
 shall all perish ; and He will execute judgment on all who obey 
 not the gospel of His Son : but if any perish, it is not because 
 God has any pleasure in that, or has made it necessary, but 
 because they would not repent and believe the gospel. If any 
 will not do so, God will certainly and justly punish them ; but 
 oh, how much rather would He have them believe and live ! 
 
 Further, the gospel call is universal, addressed to men as such, 
 and therefore to all men without exception and without dis- 
 tinction ; not to any one nation or class, but to all ; not to the 
 civilized, or the moral, or the awakened, or the earnest, but to all 
 alike, to the most degraded and worst of sinners, as truly as to 
 the most enlightened and earnest seekers after God. True, it is 
 not actually made known to all men in the world ; but whose 
 fault is that ? Not God's ; for He has sent a Saviour for all, and 
 given His disciples a commission to go into all the world and 
 make disciples of all nations. Had they been faithful to their 
 charge, and had men been as anxious to receive, and as ready to 
 
IN THE EXTERNAL CALL OF THE WORD. 57 
 
 welcome the gospel as Christ was to send it, long ere now every 
 human being would have heard it. But many to whom this 
 gracious message came refused and rejected it, persecuted and 
 slew its preachers ; and the efforts of Christians were dis- 
 couraged ; and their faith and love grew cold ; and they ceased to 
 seek to evangelize the world. It is to these and similar causes, 
 all arising from the unbelief and sin of man, that it is due, that 
 the gospel has not been actually proclaimed to all men, not to 
 anything that God has done. 
 
 Once more, the gospel call is powerful, because not only has 
 the Scripture as inspired by the Holy Spirit an intrinsic might 
 and efficacy, but the same Spirit also accompanies the Word with 
 a direct work on the souls of those who hear it. The Spirit of 
 God accompanies the outward call of the gospel with an inward 
 call, by which the Word is brought home to the consciences and 
 hearts of men ; so that it is not only heard but understood, and 
 in some measure felt, in its commanding authority and persuasive 
 grace. Thus the gospel that is addressed to all men through the 
 Word, which the Holy Spirit has inspired and accompanies with 
 His convincing influence, is sufficient to render those who hear it 
 inexcusable if they do not obey it. Being gracious, sincere, 
 universal, and made intelligible and appreciable by all, it affords 
 ample motive and warrant for faith ; and if men were only willing 
 to receive it, there is nothing whatever to prevent them. Since 
 God has provided such a salvation, and made such an offer of it 
 to sinners, if any who hear it are not saved, the blame of this 
 cannot be laid on God, but must be ascribed entirely to them- 
 selves. God is willing and earnestly desirous that they should be 
 saved through Christ ; but they will not come to Christ that they 
 may have life. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVICTION. 
 
 The work of the Holy Spirit on all those who hear the gospel 
 deserves more particular consideration, as it affords a link of 
 connection between those of His operations which are entirely 
 external to the believer, as His work on Christ and His inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, and those that are carried on in the believer's 
 own soul in his conversion, sanctification, instruction, and con- 
 solation. By the inspiration of Holy Scripture, the Spirit makes 
 the message conveyed in it to be really the Word of God ; and by 
 His work of conviction, accompanying the preaching of the Word, 
 He secures that it is known and felt by the hearers to be God's 
 Word to them. Without this it could have no power either to 
 convince the mind that it is really the mind of God, or to over- 
 come the misgivings of an evil conscience, or the alienation of a 
 selfish and worldly heart from God. But the Spirit of God makes 
 a direct communication between God and the soul of man ; so 
 that the gospel as it comes to us is really known and felt to be 
 the Word of God (see I Thess. ii. 13, cf. i. 5), not merely men 
 speaking to us about God, but God Himself speaking to our 
 souls. Paul seems to indicate that this is the difference between 
 those cases in which the gospel is ineffectual, and those in which 
 it leads to a new faith and life : and is it not really so ? There 
 are many who know the great truths of Christianity, and often 
 hear its lessons enforced, yet show no appearance of that new 
 life that Paul ascribes to the faith of the gospel. They do not 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVICTION. 59 
 
 disbelieve the truths they hear ; but they receive them merely as 
 what their ministers tell them, or what divines have drawn from 
 the Bible, without any sense or idea that God Himself is speaking 
 to them. Can we wonder that the gospel produces little or no 
 effect on them ? It is when men are brought face to face with 
 God, as He has come near to us in Jesus Christ, that they are 
 really influenced by His Word. 
 
 Now it is by His Spirit, as we have already seen, that God 
 comes into direct contact with man : the human spirit as breathed 
 into man by God at the first, is akin to the divine, and the Spirit 
 of God has access to that of man. Hence even the earthly 
 ministry of Jesus Himself the Son of God could not effectually 
 win the hearts of men, save through the Spirit of God. He 
 indeed perfectly revealed the Father, and in His cross revealed 
 Him as forgiving sins, a just God and a Saviour; but it was 
 needful that He should depart in bodily presence and come by 
 the Spirit, that men might be brought to turn to the Father in 
 penitence, love, and obedience. But it is by revealing Christ as 
 the image of God to the inmost soul of man, that the Spirit of 
 God works ; He glorifies Christ, for He takes of His, and shows 
 it to men, and that which is Christ's includes all that the Father 
 hath (John xvi. 14, 15). So also Paul teaches that the Spirit 
 reveals Christ in us, and enables us to call Him Lord, and to see 
 in Him the glory of God, so as to be conformed to the same 
 image (Gal. i. 16 ; 1 Cor. ii. 10-16, xii. 3; 2 Cor. iii. 3, 18, 
 iv. 6). 
 
 What is meant by this may be understood if we consider how 
 God is known by man. While there are undoubtedly evidences of 
 the being and attributes of God in His works, that appeal to the 
 understanding, and that can be exhibited, as they often have been, 
 in the form of arguments ; there is reason to think, that these 
 seldom have been the earliest means of leading men to believe that 
 God is, but that they have first come to this belief through the 
 sense of the absolute authority of the law of duty, and of the 
 reverence and obedience due to it. They feel themselves under 
 
60 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 law, and therefore under a Supreme Lawgiver and Judge. Thus 
 first do we come into any personal relation to God. 
 
 But the moral sense, as we know, is very apt to be blunted and 
 vitiated. When pleasure or self-love prevails over the dictates of 
 duty, it becomes painful to listen to the voice of conscience, and 
 so attention is turned away from it ; and by disuse the delicacy of 
 its discernment is blunted, and the authority with which it speaks 
 is forgotten. Thus it comes to pass that the true knowledge of 
 God is lost, because the faculty by which it is received is dis- 
 ordered ; and if men in this state still go on thinking and arguing 
 about God, they are led farther and farther into error. They have 
 no true understanding of His character, or His will, or His works; 
 and this is what is meant by the mind being blinded, and unable 
 to apprehend spiritual things. 
 
 Now when the mind is in this state, and both Scripture and 
 experience declare, that the minds of all men are by nature in 
 such a state, there is needed, in order to their enlightenment, not 
 only the presentation of objects of knowledge, but the restoration 
 of the power of knowing in the mind itself. There must therefore 
 be, not merely the proclamation of the gospel to the mind, but 
 some work on or in the mind, enabling it to see that this is indeed 
 a message from God, and to perceive its meaning. This is the 
 enlightening or convincing work of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Yet this work is not the creation of a new faculty entirely 
 absent before ; it is the restoration of power to a faculty that had 
 become blind and impotent by disuse. Now the analogy of nature 
 teaches us, that in such cases the power is to be restored by using 
 it so far as it remains. The faculty of moral discernment is there, 
 though in regard to God and the things of God it has lost its 
 power. That power must be restored by the exercise of the 
 faculty on what it can discern. So, for example, when David had 
 been living in sin, untouched with any sense of its evil, Nathan 
 opened his eyes to see that, by presenting, in the parable of the 
 ewe lamb, a case in which he still could judge correctly, and by 
 calling him to judge in this case, enabled him to judge himself. 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVICTION. 6 1 
 
 In like manner, the Spirit opens the eyes of men to see their real 
 relation to God, and their moral state in His sight, by setting 
 these things before them in such a palpable way that they can 
 discern them. "When he is come," said Jesus, "he shall convince 
 the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment ; of sin, 
 because they believe not in me, of righteousness because I go to 
 the Father and ye see me no more, of judgment because the prince 
 of this world is judged." These convictions are to be brought 
 home to men through their knowledge of the life and work of 
 Jesus ; and the way in which this is done is shown by the record 
 in the Book of Acts, of the fulfilment of that promise. The gift of 
 the Holy Spirit to the disciples of Jesus on the day of Pentecost 
 was set forth as a proof of His resurrection (Acts ii. 32, 33) ; and 
 that again was evidence that He was Lord and Messiah (Acts ii. 
 36). Their unbelief therefore, the guilt of which they had not moral 
 discernment to perceive in itself, now appeared to them as crucify- 
 ing their Messiah and King ; and when they heard that, they were 
 pricked in their hearts, and said, " What shall we do ?" (Acts ii. 37). 
 The Holy Spirit was convincing them of sin, inasmuch as He was 
 manifestly working in the disciples of Jesus, and so presenting to 
 the Jews the sin of their conduct in a way in which they could not 
 but see it. 
 
 This, we may believe, was the use of the outward miracles that 
 accompanied the preaching of the gospel, and also many of God's 
 earlier messages. They presented to the dull and hardened 
 minds of men broad outlines and bright colours which they could 
 discern ; and by thus calling their moral judgment into exercise, 
 made it capable of perceiving truths to which at first it was blind. 
 But the same purpose is served, more extensively and not less 
 effectually, by those graces and virtues of the Christian life which 
 are the fruits of the Spirit as truly and unmistakably as the extra- 
 ordinary gifts that have now ceased. These serve to convey to 
 the minds of ignorant and prejudiced men conceptions of spiritual 
 and divine things formerly strange to them. For example, a 
 missionary goes to preach the gospel of Christ to the savage 
 
62 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 tribes of Central Africa, or the South Sea Islands : he tells them 
 of the love of God to men ; but they cannot take it in ; they have 
 no such feeling in their own hearts, and they can form no idea of 
 what it is. But he lives among them, shows them kindness, bears 
 patiently with their hostility, heals them in sickness, saves them 
 from death ; and they gradually come to see what love is, and 
 recognising the love of man, they are led to believe the love of 
 God. Then too they will come to see the moral evil of their 
 inhumanity, and ingratitude, and vice ; and thus their minds will 
 be enlightened, and their consciences convinced of sin. So in 
 other cases an inability to understand Christian doctrine may be 
 removed, in accordance with the laws of our mental nature, by 
 the presentation of the reality of Christian life ; and this is the 
 work of the Holy Spirit acting indirectly on the world. 
 
 In this sense Christ's disciples are the light of the world : 
 having received light from Him, they reflect it on others. They 
 have been raised to the position of a city set on a hill, where the 
 light of the Sun of righteousness shines. The world is in the 
 valley below, where that light is not seen directly ; but men can 
 see it reflected from the city that cannot be hid, and may thus be 
 persuaded to come up thither. " Let your light," said Jesus, " so 
 shine among men, that they may see your good works and glorify 
 your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. v. 16). So the same 
 work of conviction, that is ascribed by Christ to the Spirit, is 
 assigned by Paul to Christians, as having been once darkness but 
 now light in the Lord. " Have no fellowship with the unfruitful 
 works of darkness, but rather even reprove them. . . . But all 
 things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light " 
 (Eph. v. 11-13). But this conviction and illumination is also 
 ascribed to Christ (v. 14). Christ works through His Spirit in 
 His own people, presenting Christianity to the world in such a 
 way that men come to see things to which they were formerly 
 blind, and to feel convictions to which they were before 
 insensible. 
 
 This is the reason why our Catechism says, that the Holy Spirit 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVICTION. 63 
 
 makcth "the reading, but especially the preaching, of the word 
 an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners." The 
 preaching of the word, according to Christ's appointment, is the 
 proclamation of it by a man who feels its truth and preciousness, 
 who is influenced by its power and trusts its promises. Hence in 
 such preaching the word is accompanied by the living personality 
 of a Christian man, and so the reality of Christian life is presented 
 along with the verbal declaration of it ; and the spiritual power of 
 preaching lies greatly in the personality of the preacher as a man I 
 of God. 
 
 We are not indeed to suppose, that it is only through His work 
 in Christians that the Holy Spirit enlightens and convinces the 
 world. He may exercise some direct influence upon them, though 
 of the nature of that we can form no distinct conception ; and He 
 does work often by the Word alone, and makes it the means of 
 giving light to those blinded by prejudice and sin. Indeed, there 
 is reason to believe that the gospel is never unaccompanied with 
 this work of the Spirit ; and that all the convictions, relentings, 
 misgivings, desires, and aspirations that are felt under the 
 preaching of the gospel, are due, not merely to the truth in itself, 
 nor to the eloquence of the preacher, but to the working of the 
 Holy Spirit. That this is so appears from the familiar facts, that 
 the same truths often have very different effects, not only on 
 different persons, but on the same person at different times, so 
 that what at one time we hear with indifference, at another time 
 stirs us with emotion to the very depths of our soul ; and that it 
 is not always the most eloquent preachers who have been most 
 blessed in the awakening and conversion of souls. In the way in 
 which men are convinced of sin and awakened to see religious 
 truth under the preaching of the gospel, there is something more 
 than can be accounted for by the ordinary principles of logic and 
 rhetoric : the Bible leads us to ascribe this to the Spirit of God ; 
 and we have seen that if we recognise such an agent working in 
 the hearts of men, the facts of experience are sufficiently and 
 naturally accounted for. God is awakening into exercise faculties 
 
64 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 dormant or diseased by disuse, in a way analogous to that in 
 which such a process ordinarily goes on. 
 
 This work of the Spirit, however, is one that may be resisted 
 and overcome, and does not always lead to conversion. There 
 is in the natural heart of man a tendency to resist it ; for the con- 
 victions which it produces are very humbling and painful. It 
 dispels the self-complacency in which men may have been in- 
 dulging, thinking that they are tolerably virtuous, or at least not 
 worse than others ; it awakens them to a sense of ungodliness 
 and unbrotherliness ; it shows them that they ought to make a 
 most humiliating confession of sin to God, and a most thorough 
 change of heart and life. To this their pride, their selfishness, 
 their indolence and love of ease, are strongly opposed ; and these 
 sometimes induce men to put away from them the unwelcome 
 message, and to stifle the inward conviction of its truth. They 
 may put off the consideration of the claims of Christianity, and 
 plunge into the business or pleasures of the world ; or they may 
 set themselves in violent opposition to the gospel, and endeavour 
 to persuade themselves that it is not true ; and in some such way 
 it often happens that convictions that were once serious and 
 seemed to be deep pass away. 
 
 When this takes place, the result is, that the heart becomes 
 hardened until it may at last be entirely insensible and unimpres- 
 sible even by the most powerful and touching appeals. This 
 is in accordance with two general laws of our mental and moral 
 nature. One is, that impressions in which the soul is passive, 
 when they are not yielded to, become more and more feeble, until 
 at length they may cease to produce any effect at all. In this way, 
 those who hear the gospel at first with much feeling, and seem to 
 be almost persuaded to comply with it, but yet refuse or delay to 
 do so, will hear it again with less emotion ; and if they continue to 
 disobey the call, they may come to such a state, that they cannot 
 feel the power of the truths that once impressed them so deeply. 
 Such impressions are therefore not to be trifled with. They are 
 precious and useful as helps towards conversion, and may greatly 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVICTION. 65 
 
 promote our spiritual life, if they are cherished and obeyed ; but 
 their continuance cannot be counted on ; and if they are 
 neglected, they will disappear and give place to utter hardness of 
 heart. But this is not all ; for since, according to the law of 
 habit, while passive impressions become feebler, active efforts 
 become stronger by repetition, the effort that the ungodly mind 
 must make to shake off impressions that are strongly made by 
 the gospel tends, every time it is made, to become easier and 
 more likely. Thus by a twofold process, perfectly in accordance 
 with the ordinary course of nature, the gospel becomes to those 
 who refuse it a means of hardening, not as it is intended to be, 
 of conversion. This effect of the unbelieving hearing of the 
 divine call is often spoken of in Scripture ; and as it may end 
 when it runs its full course in utter and hopeless hardness of 
 heart, this is probably the explanation of the solemn and mysterious 
 statements by our Lord and His apostles about blasphemy 
 against the Holy Spirit, as a sin that has no forgiveness (Matt. 
 xii. 31, 32; Mark iii. 28, 29 ; Luke xii. 10), the sin unto death 
 (1 John v. 16, 17), the wilful apostasy, from which it is impossible 
 to renew men again to repentance (Heb. vi. 4-6, x. 26-29). 
 When we compare with these sayings the plain and repeated 
 statements of revelation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to 
 save sinners even the chief, that His blood cleanses from all sin, 
 that all men, even the most guilty, are assured of forgiveness, if 
 they repent and believe in Jesus ; we perceive that this sin is not 
 unpardonable because of its great or peculiar guilt, but because 
 by its nature it makes repentance and faith impossible. Hence 
 it is not so much a definite or particular offence, as a certain 
 frame of mind, or manner of sinning ; and it is mentioned in 
 Scripture in the obscure way that has sometimes caused per- 
 plexity, for this practical reason, that the purpose of revelation is 
 not to make us anxiously cautious against one special sin, while 
 comparatively careless about others ; but to make us hate and 
 resist all sin, and feel the evil and danger even of the least ; since 
 there is no form of sin, however apparently trifling, that if 
 
66 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 indulged, may not lead to that which is unto death. There is no 
 sin that appears to worldly men more light and trivial than that 
 of unbelief ; yet nothing approaches nearer to a description of 
 the sin against the Holy Spirit than persistent and final unbelief. 
 Thus we have constant need to be saying with the Psalmist, 
 " Who can understand his errors ? Cleanse thou me from secret 
 faults, keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins. So 
 shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great trans- 
 gression" (Ps. xix. 12, 13). 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 
 
 The gracious call of the gospel of Christ is universal, addressed 
 to sinners of mankind as such, and to all men alike, and is a 
 result and evidence of God's philanthropy (Tit. iii. 4), or love 
 to men, and earnest desire that all men should be saved and 
 come to the knowledge of the truth. This is further confirmed 
 by that awakening, enlightening, and convincing work of the 
 Spirit that accompanies the proclamation of the gospel. But 
 all do not believe in Jesus as offered in the gospel ; and many 
 who experience convictions wrought by the Spirit of God, resist 
 and stifle these and become hardened in impenitence and sin ; 
 while others are brought to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. 
 What is the cause of the difference ? In the case of those who 
 continue in sin, this result must be ascribed entirely to them- 
 selves. All that God does tends to lead them to repentance : 
 He has sent a Saviour who is both able and willing to save 
 them ; He sincerely invites and urges them to come to Him that 
 they may have life ; He awakens them by His Spirit to a sense 
 of their sin and misery, and pricks them in their consciences 
 and hearts. If they will not turn to Him, it is because their 
 weak self-love and guilty pride hinder them ; not because God 
 puts any obstacles in their way ; and if God is said sometimes 
 to harden their hearts, He does so because of their wilful unbe- 
 lief, and that simply by leaving them to themselves as they 
 desire ; He endures in great long-suffering vessels of wrath 
 
 67 
 
6S THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 fitted, by themselves, for destruction ; and they become hardened 
 under the very means that God uses to soften others. This 
 simply means, that God does not interfere with the laws of our 
 mental and moral nature, according to which impressions dis- 
 regarded become more and more feeble, while actions repeated 
 become habits, and habits indulged acquire the strength and 
 persistency of a second nature. 
 
 But on the other hand, when men are led to faith in Christ, 
 this is not due to their own will, but to the grace of God. So 
 the Bible uniformly represents it ; and so all earnest Christians 
 have practically acknowledged. The will is indeed exercised in 
 the act of faith and repentance ; it is a voluntary act by which 
 the soul turns from sin and trusts in Jesus Christ as the Saviour 
 of sinners. But this act it is moved and enabled to perform by 
 the influence of the grace of God. Jesus asserts in the most 
 emphatic manner the absolute necessity of being born from 
 above in order to enter or even see the kingdom of God (John 
 iii. 3, 5, 7, 8) ; and Paul describes those who believe as having 
 been dead in sins, and as quickened to a new life by a power as 
 great as that which raised Christ from the dead (Eph. ii. i-io). 
 James (i. 18) describes them as brought forth of God's will by the 
 word of truth ; Peter (i Pet. i. 23), as begotten again of 
 incorruptible seed by the word of God ; and John, as begotten 
 of God (1 John ii. 29, iv. 7, v. 1). The same thing is indicated 
 by the promises that God will circumcise the heart (Deut. 
 xxx. 6), give a new heart and a right spirit (Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27), 
 write His laws in the heart (Jer. xxxi. 31-34), and the like. 
 
 Christian experience seems to show that this is done in con- 
 nection with very different forms of consciousness in different 
 cases. Sometimes the great change seems to be sudden and 
 abrupt, as in the conversion of Paul ; sometimes, while there 
 has been a long and gradual preparation for it, the change at 
 the last is decisive and clearly marked, as in the case of 
 Augustine ; while in other instances the process may be so 
 steady and gradual that no distinct transition can be marked at 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 69 
 
 all. Yet in all cases it is found, that the purpose and will of 
 the Christian life has to contend against opposing and downward 
 tendencies in the soul, — tendencies which we can see, either 
 in an earlier stage of the same life, or in other lives, have 
 unresisted sway, and draw men down to utter selfishness and 
 worldliness. These downward tendencies prevail wherever men 
 are left to themselves without the elevating influence of the 
 grace of God in Christ ; and they sometimes overcome even the 
 moral influence of that grace, and the convictions awakened by 
 the Holy Spirit in connection with the gospel of Christ. The 
 presence of these downward tendencies, even in the souls of 
 those who have from their earliest days of conscious life been 
 seeking God, and can trace no definite beginning of religion in 
 their hearts, convinces them, that however early they have come 
 to strive upwards, it has been not of themselves, but by God's 
 drawing that they have done so. Scripture teaches that God 
 can and does sometimes bestow His Holy Spirit on men from 
 their very birth ; but even when there is reason to think 
 He has done so, there is evidence that the goodness that 
 begins so early is due, not to their own nature, but to God's grace. 
 In these cases, the grace of God is most clearly seen to be, 
 as theologians have called it, prevenient, i.e. going before any 
 efforts of man after goodness, and really calling these into 
 exercise. But this is not less true in all cases. The renewal of 
 the soul cannot be traced to any uniform antecedent on the part 
 of man. Sometimes indeed it may seem to be the result of 
 earnest desire and strenuous effort after holiness or peace of 
 mind ; but in many other cases, it is effected where there has 
 been no such previous desire, and sinners are arrested in the 
 full course of worldliness and vice. Sometimes, again, it may 
 seem as if the very force and earnestness of character, that makes 
 some men plunge recklessly into evil, was a preparation for their 
 being as earnest and thoroughgoing in good, when once the call 
 of Christ is presented to them. But there are many, on the 
 other hand, whose very failing has been weakness and indecision 
 
70 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 of purpose, but who have been laid hold of by the power of the 
 gospel and made decided and earnest in faith. In like manner, 
 a profoundly emotional nature, like that of Augustine, may 
 sometimes appear to explain why a man is converted ; but there 
 are many other cases of conversion, in which nothing of that 
 kind can be traced. This is a great encouragement to all who 
 are earnestly desirous to have the life of Christ in them, but 
 may be in doubt or anxiety whether what they experience is 
 really the renewing work of the Spirit, and may fear that they 
 are not earnest enough, or not susceptible enough, or have not 
 enough depth of spiritual nature, to be really converted and bcrn 
 again. It is reassuring to know, that the new birth does not 
 depend on any such conditions, but on the free grace of God, 
 who is often found of those who seek Him not, but never allows 
 any to seek Him in vain. He shows His sovereignty, not in 
 the way of denying the gracious influence of His Spirit to any 
 who desire it, but in bestowing it on many who desire it not, or 
 even strongly oppose it ; while in other cases, he leaves to their 
 own devices those who obstinately resist that work of His Spirit 
 that is common to all. The general rule of the bestowal of His 
 grace is that they who seek shall find : it is never less than 
 that ; but oftentimes it is much more, and they who seek not 
 are found of God, and even those whose selfish and worldly will 
 is strongly set against Him are often arrested in their downward 
 course, awakened to serious thought, and turned to God. 
 
 How this is done consistently with the freedom of their will, 
 is indeed a profound mystery. When we consider the state- 
 ments of Scripture describing the work of the Holy Spirit in 
 conversion as a new creation, a quickening and raising from the 
 dead, a begetting again ; and when we observe how the most 
 vehement and persistent opponents of Christianity have often 
 been transformed into sincere and fervent believers, we cannot 
 doubt that the Holy Spirit does exert a power which changes 
 the natural current of the affections, and overcomes the obstinacy 
 of the evil heart. Yet no violence is done to the will of those 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 7 I 
 
 who are thus converted : their chcice is not coerced by irresistible 
 force ; nor is their reason overpowered by uncontrollable passion : 
 they have the full exercise of all their faculties ; and they repent 
 and accept Christ as their Saviour and Lord freely and willingly. 
 The renewing work of the Spirit of God is in a region beneath 
 the sphere of consciousness ; and so it must ever remain hidden 
 in itself, though it is made clearly manifest by its results. We 
 know that we are subject to many influences of which we have 
 no consciousness or direct knowledge. We inherit certain 
 characters from our parents ; we are affected by the unconscious 
 influence of friends, of society, of the spirit of the times ; some 
 of these causes may transform our habits and course of conduct ; 
 and we may be quite sensible of the change that has taken place, 
 though we cannot explain it ; we feel that it has not been 
 due to our own will, while yet it has done no violence to our 
 freedom. These are indeed merely analogies ; and we cannot 
 but regard the influence of the Spirit of God as more deep and 
 lasting than any of these earthly and human influences ; but 
 when we see that the freedom of the soul is not infringed by any 
 of these, powerful as they are, we may have less difficulty in 
 believing that the soul may be turned to God by an almighty 
 influence of His Spirit, while yet it turns freely, being made 
 willing by His grace. 
 
 We speak of the influence of the Spirit in conversion as 
 almighty ; and we are warranted to do so by the way in which 
 it is spoken of in Scripture, and by the very fact that the Holy 
 Spirit is divine. But we must remember that this work is not 
 in the material, but in the moral sphere ; and therefore the 
 omnipotence we ascribe to it is not that of physical force but 
 of moral and spiritual influence. The power by which a sinner is 
 turned from the world to God is not of the same kind as that by 
 which the Red Sea was divided or Jordan turned back before 
 Israel : it is not merely the divine will working on nature : it is 
 the power of truth working on the mind, of duty affecting the con- 
 science, and above all of infinite grace, melting and moving the 
 
72 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 heart. The certain and effectual working of it is expressed in such 
 utterances as these : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast 
 the words of eternal life" (John vi. 68); "The love of Christ 
 constraineth us " (2 Cor. v. 14). Thus, while it is certainly- 
 effectual, it is not harsh, violent, or overbearing ; but sweet, gentle, 
 and loving : it is, as Augustine called it, " victorious delight ; " 
 as the Synod of Dort described it, " most powerful and at the same 
 time most sweet ; " or as Dr. Chalmers put it, " the expulsive 
 power of a new affection." 
 
 The terms regeneration and conversion, which are both used 
 for this work of the Spirit, ought in strict accuracy to be dis- 
 tinguished ; and some important practical ends are served by the 
 distinction. Sometimes indeed they may be used interchangeably. 
 Thus Jesus said on one occasion (Matt, xviii. 3), " Except ye 
 turn (or be converted), and become as little children, ye shall in 
 no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven ; " and on another 
 occasion (John iii. 3), " Except a man be born anew, he cannot see 
 the kingdom of God ; " and the meaning is substantially the same. 
 But from the use of the word conversion, and its cognate verb 
 in other places, we find that it is equivalent to repentance and faith. 
 In Acts iii. 19 conversion is enjoined along with repentance, 
 cither as a fuller description of what repentance means, or as 
 the change of conduct that follows the change of mind ; and in 
 Acts xv. 3 the conversion of the Gentiles is used to describe their 
 faith in Christ (xiii. 48, xiv. 23, 27). In the same sense the word 
 is employed in Matt. xiii. 15, John xii. 40, and Acts xxviii. 27. 
 Further, it is not limited to the first acts of faith and repentance, 
 by which one becomes a Christian, though it is more frequently 
 used of them ; but is also employed for the restoration of a 
 backslider (Luke xxii. 32 ; Jas. v. 19, 20). Thus it describes a 
 moral change in which man is conscious and active, though he is 
 also moved by the Spirit of God, and one that must be continued, 
 and may often be renewed in the course of the Christian life. 
 Regeneration, on the other hand, is never identified with the 
 conscious acts of faith and repentance ; but is distinguished 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 73 
 
 from faith as its cause (John i. 12, 13 ; 1 John v. 1). So too the 
 good works that are the fruits of faith and repentance are 
 described by Paul as proceeding from the act of God quickening 
 the soul that had been dead in sin (Eph. ii. 4-10). 
 
 Conversion is thus the act of the new spiritual life, more 
 especially its first act or beginning ; but regeneration is the 
 implanting of the new life by God ; and so it is also called a 
 quickening, or making alive, a raising from the dead, a new 
 creation, the giving a new heart. This comes first in the order 
 of nature, though in time both may be contemporaneous. If we 
 take Paul's figure of a resurrection, and compare the quickening 
 of the dead soul to Jesus' raising Lazarus from the grave ; regene- 
 ration corresponds to the supernatural act by which life was 
 imparted to the dead body, and conversion to his coming out of the 
 tomb in the exercise of that restored life. Both alike were connected 
 with the voice of Jesus, when He cried with a loud voice, " Lazarus, 
 come forth ; " and thus regeneration and conversion are associated 
 with the call of the gospel to sinners to believe and repent ; but 
 just as that voice would have had no power to raise the dead had 
 it not been uttered by Him whom the Father heareth always, 
 and who is Himself the resurrection and the life ; so the gospel 
 call cannot of itself turn men to God, unless it come not in word 
 only, but in power, and in the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. i. 5). The 
 connection of the call of the gospel with conversion is easily seen, 
 just as the connection of Lazarus' coming forth with Jesus' voice. 
 When once the dead man was made alive, his coming out of the 
 tomb was but the natural response to the Saviour's call ; and so 
 if there be spiritual life, it is the most natural thing in the world, 
 that the gracious invitations of God's word should call forth 
 faith and repentance. But how the loud voice of Jesus was 
 accompanied with the restoration of life to the dead man, so that 
 his ear heard it and his limbs obeyed it, who can explain, save 
 that Jesus' prayer was equivalent to the prophet's invocation, 
 " Come from the four winds; O breath, and breathe upon these 
 slain that they may live " ? (Ezek. xxxvii. 9). So in addressing 
 
74 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 the spiritually dead the wisdom of God is able to say, " Turn ye 
 at my reproof: Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you ; I will 
 make known my words unto you" (Prov. i. 23). 
 
 Hence we see why conversion may be repeated, while regenera- 
 tion is never so spoken of, but as a change effected once for all. 
 Eternal life can only be once communicated ; but the activity of 
 life may be renewed and called forth again and again, as often 
 as it has fallen into sloth. The call may need to be addressed 
 to a real Christian who has become careless, "Awake, thou that 
 sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon 
 thee" (Eph. v. 14). There is life presupposed here, it is a sleeper 
 in a field of the dead, where " thousands have sunk on the 
 ground overpowered, the weary to sleep, and the wounded to 
 die." If he be not awakened, and his eyes enlightened, he may 
 sleep the sleep of death ; but he is called to awake and arise 
 from among the dead. So a disciple of Christ may need to be 
 called to repent and do the first works. So Peter, after his 
 denial of his Lord, needed to be converted, but not to be born 
 again ; for Jesus prayed for him that his faith fail not (Luke xxii. 
 32). That faith which had been given him not by flesh and 
 blood but by the Father in heaven (Matt. xvi. 17), which enabled 
 him to cleave to Jesus when many turned back (John vi. 68), 
 also made his heart melt at the look of Jesus (Luke xxii. 61), 
 and brought him back to the Saviour in penitent love, when Judas 
 turned away in despair. 
 
 We find also that the necessity of regeneration is asserted in 
 far more absolute terms than that of conversion. " Except a man 
 be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." " Except a 
 man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom 
 of God. Ye must be born again " (John iii. 3, 5,7) ; "If any man 
 be in Christ, he is a new creature " (2 Cor. v. 17) ; " If ye know that 
 He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness 
 is begotten of Him" (1 John ii. 29). These statements are 
 unlimited, applying to all, every, any man. There is no such 
 absolute statement of the necessity of conversion. Jesus indeed 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 75 
 
 says, addressing men who showed evidence of sin and selfishness, 
 " Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in nowise 
 enter the kingdom of heaven " (Matt, xviii. 3) ; and the prophet 
 cries to his ungodly people, " Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die ? " 
 (Ezek. xxxiii. 11) ; but all such sayings have reference to those 
 to whom they are addressed, and do not necessarily imply that 
 every one of mankind must pass through a conscious process of 
 conversion. On the contrary, it was prophesied of John the 
 Baptist, "he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his 
 mother's womb ; " and his spiritual growth is described as un- 
 marked by any decisive change ; " the child grew and waxed 
 strong in spirit, and was in the desert until the day of his showing 
 unto Israel" (Luke i. 15, 80). To be filled with the Holy Spirit 
 can hardly denote anything less than regeneration ; and thus it 
 seems to be taught that this vital change may take place even in 
 infancy. This is confirmed by Jesus' saying of little children, 
 " Of such is the kingdom of God " (Mark x. 14 and parallels), 1 
 when that is taken along with His statement that except one be 
 born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 
 If regeneration be a creative act of divine power on the soul, the 
 occurrence of it in infancy implies no contradiction, but only the 
 same mystery as is involved in the communication to infants of 
 mental and moral capacities and powers that are afterwards 
 brought forth into actual exercise ; whereas conversion, faith, and 
 repentance cannot be ascribed to infants without doing violence 
 to psychological truth. The history and experience of many who 
 have been brought up under Christian influences confirm this ; 
 for in such cases there is often no decisive change, such as con- 
 version commonly is ; though there is real evidence of a God- ward 
 
 1 Some good interpreters indeed understand "such" to mean men of a 
 childlike spirit ; but it is more accordant with the general use of the word 
 and the scope of the context, to understand it of actual children. When it is 
 said the kingdom is of such, the meaning is not necessarily that these are all 
 its members, but only that it includes these ; as when Jesus says of those 
 persecuted for righteousness' sake, " theirs is the kingdom of heaven" 
 (Matt. v. 10). 
 
76 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 and heaven-ward principle striving against the natural, selfish, 
 and earthly tendencies of the soul. 
 
 In the case of those who are born again in mature life, regenera- 
 tion and conversion coincide in point of time ; for the new 
 spiritual life is essentially active, and where its exercise is not 
 delayed by the imperfect development of the mental powers, 
 shows itself at once in turning to God in Christ in obedience to 
 the gospel call. Hence, while the soul is said by theologians to 
 be passive in regeneration, according to the passive forms of 
 expression used in Scripture, that means simply that it is acted 
 upon in a mysterious way by the power of the Holy Spirit. But 
 the soul is never absolutely inactive, and within our consciousness 
 there is always activity in one direction or another, for sin, or for 
 God. There may often be a hesitation and halting for a time 
 between two opinions ; but when the decisive choice is made, we 
 cannot but believe that there has been an influence secretly at 
 work beyond and beneath consciousness ; though within the 
 range of consciousness there has been no cessation of activity, 
 but only a change of activity. Strong language has sometimes 
 been used, comparing the natural heart of man to a stock or 
 stone, and Scripture speaks of hearts of stone ; but this language 
 is rhetorical and not exact ; and those who have used it admit 
 that the soul is never absolutely like a stock or stone, nay it is 
 worse than if it were merely inert, for naturally it actively resists 
 the gospel. 
 
 The result to which this secret work of the Holy Spirit leads, 
 and in which it shows its reality, is variously described in 
 Scripture as coming to Christ, believing in Christ, turning to 
 God, repentance towards God, believing in God through Christ. 
 Christ is ever presented in the New Testament as the revealer 
 and representative of God to us, so that the exercise of soul by 
 which we are brought into a right religious state is sometimes 
 viewed as having God, and sometimes Christ for its object ; but 
 we are always to understand that in reality it is directed to both, 
 through Christ to God. If Jesus asks us to believe in him, it is 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 77 
 
 because He doeth the works of God, and the Father is in Him 
 and He in the Father ; if He calls us to repent and turn from sin 
 to God, it is because the kingdom of God is at hand in virtue of 
 His appearing. 
 
 The two exercises of faith and repentance are not separate 
 things, of which one may take place without the other, or one at 
 one time and the other at another ; they are inseparably con- 
 nected as acts of the sours conversion or reconciliation to God ; 
 though for certain purposes they need to be distinguished and 
 considered separately. Together they give a complete view of 
 the great change by which a man from being an enemy to God, 
 as he is by nature, comes to be at peace with Him as his God and 
 Father. In one aspect of it that is a change of character and 
 conduct, from the practice of sin to that of holiness, and this is 
 what is called repentance, i.e. a change of mind. This has rela- 
 tion more especially to God, as the lawgiver and moral judge of 
 all the earth ; and implies a sense of the evil of sin in His sight, 
 and a turning from it. But this would not be possible, unless we 
 were assured that God, though holy, is also merciful, and ready to 
 receive sinners to His fellowship, and grant them forgiveness and 
 favour. This assurance we have in the gospel, which declares 
 that God pardons sinners for Christ's sake ; and therefore our 
 coming to Him must be in reliance on Christ as our Mediator, or 
 on God through Christ. This is what is meant by faith in the 
 New Testament, where it is spoken of as the means of our salva- 
 tion. It is not, as has too often been thought, the belief of a 
 doctrine or set of doctrines, however true and important these 
 may be, nor the acceptance of a new view about God, and His 
 relation to man, and His love and purposes for man ; but a 
 childlike trust in God and Christ. No doubt Jesus and His 
 apostles did call upon men to believe the gospel which they 
 proclaimed, and that implied in many cases the acceptance of 
 truths that had not been known before, and sometimes the giving 
 up false theories and even whole systems of belief. But they 
 called for much more than that : they called on men to have trust 
 
78 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 or confidence in God as gracious, merciful, and loving, and in 
 Jesus as the Son of God who had come to save the world by His 
 death ; and they never speak of any one being saved by faith 
 where there is not such personal trust in God and Christ. So it 
 was in the case of the centurion of Capernaum (Matt. viii. 5-1 1) ; 
 of the harlot in Simon's house (Luke vii. 44-50) ; of the palsied 
 man and his friends (Mark ii. 5, 6), and others who believed 
 during our Lord's earthly ministry : so too in the case of those 
 who were converted on the day of Pentecost and afterwards by 
 the preaching of the disciples of Jesus. The amount of know- 
 ledge that these various converts possessed, and the doctrines 
 that they believed, must have been very different in different 
 cases, sometimes more and sometimes less ; what was common 
 to them all was their trust in Christ as revealing the grace and 
 love of God, and through Him in God. This trust in God we 
 can also see is the same as that which is so often expressed in the 
 Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, as the essence of Israel's 
 religion ; and the only difference is that in the New Testament 
 God is revealed as in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not 
 imputing their trespasses to them ; whereas in earlier times all 
 that was distinctly revealed was, that God is merciful and gracious, 
 and that there is forgiveness with Him. 
 
 Since God is revealed by Christ, not only as merciful and 
 gracious, but also as holy, and hating sin with a perfect hatred, 
 even while He loves and forgives sinners ; and since Jesus' work 
 was to save His people from their sins ; that trust in God that 
 responds to this gospel must be accompanied with a desire, or 
 at least a willingness, to be delivered from sin ; and that implies 
 a real sorrow and hatred of sin, a confession of it to God, and 
 a desire and effort after the holiness that He loves and requires. 
 This is what is denoted by repentance in the New Testament; 
 yl where it means, not merely regret for a past act of wrong, but 
 a change of mind. It is most simply and beautifully depicted 
 by our Lord in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke xv. 
 11-32), from which we may learn the most essential points about 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 79 
 
 it. We see there that it implies an entire change of life and 
 conduct, as well as a frank confession of sin. The undutiful son 
 returns from the far country, where he had spent his substance in 
 riotous living, and desires henceforth to live with and obey his 
 father, while he frankly confesses his sin and unworthiness, and 
 attempts no excuse for his conduct. But the change is much 
 deeper than the outward conduct ; he has now evidently a quite 
 different state of feeling towards his father from that which he 
 had before. Hence it is said of him at the turning-point of his 
 career, il he came to himself," as if he had been beside himself, or 
 out of his right mind before. This change, too, is connected 
 with faith ; for it was the feeling of trust in his father's love and 
 kindness that encouraged him to return, otherwise a conviction 
 Ot sin might only have driven him to despair. Such was its 
 effect on Judas, even when it moved him to confess and forsake 
 his sin ; but while Jesus spoke of the evil of sin, and warned men 
 of its terrible consequences, He at the same time encouraged 
 them to trust in God's mercy, and it was the very purpose of this 
 parable to exhibit that mercy. 
 
 We can see therefore how that coming to God through Christ, 
 which implies both faith and repentance, is really a decisive 
 moral change in the soul ; and how it may truly be said, that 
 the sinner who repents, " was dead and is alive again, and was 
 lost and is found." The faith by which we are saved is thus no 
 mere intellectual act or head work ; it implies the consent of 
 the heart, as well as the assent of the mind, to the saving work 
 of Christ ; and cannot be conceived as remaining a mere un- 
 practical belief in the soul, but must be active in the way of 
 repentance, love, and holiness. This is the sort of faith of which 
 Paul makes so much ; of which he says, not only that we are 
 justified by it, without works of law ; but that it unites us to Christ, 
 makes us children of God, and works by love. This great change, 
 which is a matter of real experience in the case of multitudes, is 
 ever ascribed in Scripture, not to any effort, or industry, or good- 
 ness of men, but to God, calling us by His grace in the gospel, 
 
80 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 and also by the power of His Spirit working secretly in our hearts, 
 inclining and enabling us to comply with the call. This makes 
 us new creatures, animated by a new principle or motive, which is 
 faith working by love, or love as the effect of faith. This consti- 
 tutes as great a difference among men morally as the presence of 
 animal life does between the living and the lifeless in the physical 
 world. This seems to be implied in the scriptural representations 
 of the saving change as a new life, being begotten of God, a new 
 creation, being raised from the dead, and the like. These are too 
 numerous and uniform to be explained as mere figures of speech, 
 though clearly they are not to be taken literally, but as indicating 
 a true analogy. Just as animated matter is moved not only by 
 mechanical laws but by those of life ; and just as rational creatures 
 are guided not merely by laws of animal life and instinct, but by 
 those of reason and conscience ; so those who are turned to God 
 in Christ are animated by a principle of divine love, to which 
 unconverted men are strangers. 
 
 This may to a certain extent be verified by observation, not 
 indeed in individual cases, the discrimination of which eludes 
 our scrutiny, but in general, wherever the distinction between 
 Christians and non- Christians can be seen on a large scale. The 
 entire absence of love to God in the Christian sense implies a state 
 which may be as truly described as being destitute of spiritual 
 life as a crystal is destitute of animal life, or a dog is destitute of 
 intellectual life. There is indeed this difference, that such a state 
 in man is an abnormal and degraded state, and so also one from 
 which he may and should be raised ; and therefore, especially 
 since it implies the possession of intellectual as well as animal 
 life, it may also be considered as a state of disease, as it is some- 
 times called in Scripture. But that it implies as great a difference 
 as that which separates the living from the lifeless in the lower 
 kingdoms of nature, may be seen by considering the moral 
 character of the motives that must animate those destitute of love 
 to God. These may be various, and must be judged each for 
 itself, as love of self, or of earthly things, natural affection, friend- 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 8 1 
 
 ship, patriotism, or philanthropy. They may be divided in 
 general into those that are selfish, and those that are unselfish 
 yet ungodly. 
 
 As to the former there is little difficulty. There are and have 
 always been men who have no higher motive than selfishness, 
 and no higher aim than self-interest in some form or other more 
 or less refined. Of all such we need have no hesitation in saying 
 that they are destitute of what is really a higher kind of life, the 
 life of godliness, such a life as Jesus lived. Whether their ruling 
 passion be love of pleasure, or of wealth, or of power, or of honour; 
 and in whatever way it may be pursued, whether so as to lead to 
 unbridled indulgence of appetite and passion, or to a hypocritical 
 pretence of virtue, or to a really sober, honest, and industrious 
 life ; still if it is only self that is had in view in all this, there is a 
 part of human nature that is utterly insensible and inactive in such 
 men ; and as to it they are really dead. Some philosophers have 
 attempted to explain human nature on the assumption that there 
 are no principles or motives in it which are not at bottom self- 
 regarding ; and there have been many men of the world who have 
 acted on this principle, holding that every man has his price, and 
 that there is no such thing as disinterested virtue. But the policy 
 of such worldlings has ever been defeated by Christian principle, 
 and the philosophy that underlies it is shallow and onesided. 
 
 It is more difficult to judge of lives animated by motives that 
 are not selfish, and yet not distinctly Christian or even religious. 
 Such are the family affections, friendship, patriotism, philanthropy. 
 The family affections may indeed be merely instinctive, and in 
 some cases may even be selfish, when a man loves his family as 
 a part of himself, or for his own gratification and pride ; but they 
 may be, and often are, in the highest degree unselfish. Still more 
 does the love of friends, of one's country, or of men as such, 
 possess a disinterested character, and raise those who are ruled 
 by such motives to a higher life than that of the mere selfish 
 worldling. Yet these unselfish motives may, no less than the 
 selfish ones, prompt to acts of falsehood, wrong, or cruelty, when 
 
82 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 they are not combined with a regard for righteousness and morality. 
 Such was the case with some of the best of the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans, whose patriotism, though sincere and disinterested, was 
 unscrupulous, and not ruled by any high principle. In such cases, 
 must we not say, that the want of regard to right for its own 
 sake shows that, though not dead to the sympathetic feelings, 
 they have their moral nature destroyed or undeveloped, and so 
 have no life in fellowship with God, who is revealed in the moral 
 sense of man, even more directly than in the phenomena of 
 nature ? 
 
 When, however, unselfish motives are accompanied with regard 
 for truth and right, and men are found seeking to live for their 
 families, their friends, their country, or their fellow-men, in accord- 
 ance with virtue, or when they have been making virtue itself 
 their great aim, even though they have no clear knowledge of the 
 living and true God, and no conscious love to Him, we cannot 
 say that such are destitute of spiritual life ; but should rather 
 say that they really are living to God, though they know it not, 
 if they are indeed living for that moral goodness which is the 
 essential character of God. For in so far as they regard and 
 pursue true virtue, they are seeking that which is the will and the 
 nature of God, whether they know it or not. Such cases there 
 may have been among the heathen, and we know of Socrates 
 and Epictetus ; but history shows them to be very rare apart 
 from Christianity, for it is hard to attain to a real love of 
 moral goodness in all its extent, except through the revelation of 
 it in the character of God in Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Bible view is, that the love of God is the love of goodness j 
 to seek God is to seek goodness (Ps. xcvii. 10; Amos v. 4-15; 
 Zeph. ii. 3 ; Isa. lv. 6, 7 ; 1 John v. 3) : and so we can understand 
 how the knowledge and love of God is eternal life ; and they who 
 have it are born of God (John xvii. 3 ; 1 John ii. 29, iv. 7, 8). One 
 who is destitute of regard for moral goodness, however he may be 
 endowed with prudence, benevolence, or patriotism, is as to one 
 all-important part of his nature, practically dead. It may, how- 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN CONVERSION. 8$ 
 
 ever, be said that the love of goodness does not necessarily imply 
 the love of God, and that there may be a want of love to God, 
 where there is not that moral and spiritual death, which is 
 involved in the want of love to goodness : and examples may be 
 found in Buddha, and in some of the modern agnostic or atheistic 
 philosophers, who have a high sense and regard for moral 
 excellence, to show that ignorance or denial of God does not 
 necessarily imply the absence of the highest life of the soul. But 
 to this it may be replied, that when sincere lovers of goodness 
 have denied or ignored a personal God, this has been due to an 
 extreme reaction against an immoral heathen mythology, as in 
 the case of Buddha and some Greek philosophers, or to some 
 distorted view of the phenomena of the universe, by which men 
 have been hindered from seeing them to be the work of a perfectly 
 good Being. But if there really is such a Being, then the love of 
 goodness is the love of His character, even in those who un- 
 happily may not be able to believe His existence. Thus Paul, 
 while he describes the heathen as alienated from the life of God 
 because of the ignorance that is in them (Eph. iv. 18), yet recog- 
 nises those who built an altar to an unknown God as worshipping 
 unknowing the true God (Acts xvii. 23); and those who do the 
 things of the law of God as showing the work of the law written 
 in their hearts (Rom. ii. 14, 15). 
 
 We are not therefore entitled to deny, that there may be real 
 spiritual life outside the pale of those who have received the 
 revelation of God's grace, and in men who know not the living 
 God. The occurrence of some such cases illustrates the power 
 and sovereignty of the Spirit of God, who can, where it seems 
 good to Him, change men's hearts even without the ordinary 
 means. But it is a simple historical fact, that nowhere have 
 purity, love, and truth been generally loved and diffused in any 
 community, except where the doctrines of Christianity have been 
 preached. Only there has the Spirit of God been poured out on 
 all flesh, because the actual knowledge of God, as revealed in 
 Christ crucified, is the only thing that can bring home to the 
 
84 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 mass of men the love of God, which is the moving spring of the 
 new life. But the Spirit of God did work on many under the 
 Old Testament, and doubtless on many also in heathendom, 
 though these were but scattered lights, and could effect no 
 general reformation. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT UNITING US TO CHRIST. 
 
 The regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, producing faith and 
 repentance, effects a union of believers to Christ and to one 
 another in Christ, a union which, though inward and unseen, is 
 ) et most real in itself and powerful in its results. Our very faith 
 in Christ of itself implies the union of a covenant of love and 
 friendship : for it is a mutual interchange of promises and assur- 
 ances of fidelity. There is on the part of Christ the offer of His 
 grace and help in the gospel ; and our faith responds to that by a 
 trusting acceptance of the offer. Then there is on our part the 
 giving of ourselves to Christ to be led and saved by Him, and 
 His acceptance of us as His people, and assurance that He will 
 save us. These reciprocal offers and acceptances constitute a 
 covenant, and effect a union of alliance and affection between 
 Christ and believers. So it is often represented in Scripture ; as 
 when He says, " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and 
 they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life" (Johnx. 27, 28). 
 By their mutual recognition and acceptance of each other as 
 Leader and followers, the union between the Shepherd and His 
 sheep is formed. So too when the relation between Christ and 
 His Church is compared to the marriage union of husband and 
 wife, one point of the comparison is, that it is formed by mutual 
 consent and the interchange of vows of faithful love (2 Cor. xi. 
 2, 3 ; Eph. v. 22-33 5 John iii. 29). 
 
 But since Christian faith and repentance are the result of the 
 
 S5 
 
&6 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 working of the Spirit of God in our hearts, and the same Spirit 
 also wrought in Christ as the incarnate Son of God in His work 
 on earth, the union of believers to Christ is something more and 
 deeper than a mere covenant union of mutual trust, love, and 
 sympathy. Beneath the agreement in these feelings, there is the 
 one Spirit of God that is the source of them, working alike in 
 Christ and in His people, and making them spiritually one body, 
 because all animated by one Spirit. This is the other favourite 
 illustration of Paul. The Church, he says, is the body of Christ ; 
 He is the Head and every believer is a member of the body, each 
 having its own proper function, but all united to each other and 
 to their common Head (Rom. xii. 4, 5 ; 1 Cor. xii. 12-31 ; Eph. i. 
 22, 23, iv. 4-16). That which makes them thus one is the one 
 Spirit dwelling in them all ; and the indwelling of the Spirit is the 
 same thing as the indwelling of Christ, whose Spirit He is (Eph. 
 iii. 16, 17). The one life which animates all believers is the life of 
 Christ ; and so it is truly said Christ lives in them, and is their 
 life (Gal. ii. 20 ; Col. iii. 3, 4). Those in whom Christ is by His 
 Spirit are also described as being in Christ (Rom. viii. 1, 9, 10). 
 The same twofold and seemingly opposite way of speaking is used 
 by Jesus, when He illustrates His disciples' relation to Him by 
 the parable of the vine and its branches (John xv. 1-8). They are 
 in Him, but also He is in them : and both statements are needed 
 fully to express the union from different points of view. Looked 
 at extensively, as it were, believers are in Christ, as the branches 
 are in the vine, being parts of the one ' whole, making up the full 
 complement of the plant as an extended organism, consisting of 
 root, stem, and branches. But looked at intensively, so to say, 
 it is equally true, that the vine is in the branches : the life of the 
 vine is in them, the sap of the vine flows through them and 
 nourishes them ; the fruit of the vine is borne by them. So 
 believers are in Christ, because belonging to Him as His covenant 
 people, and they abide in Him by faith ; while He is in them 
 by His Holy Spirit dwelling and working in them. 
 The reality of this is shown by the life and character of Christ 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT UNITING US TO CHRIST. 87 
 
 appearing in them, especially in the emotions of godliness, 
 brotherly kindness, and charity, that animated Him, and also 
 animate them. This threefold form of love, to God our Father 
 in heaven, to the children of God as our brethren in Christ, and 
 to all men as those whom God loves and for whom He gave His 
 Son, is the characteristic mark of Christians, and the common 
 sentiment of the Christian Church. It necessarily flows from 
 faith in Jesus Christ and conversion to God, wherever these are 
 genuine ; and it constitutes the actual and working unity of the 
 Church of Christ. This is what is meant by the unity of the 
 Spirit, which Paul exhorts Christians to give diligence to keep 
 (Eph. iv. 3) ; and probably also by " the love of the Spirit," l to 
 which he appeals as a motive for united prayer (Rom. xv. 30). 
 In virtue of this unity, earnest Christians, however unlike and 
 even opposed they may be in' nationality, character, customs, and 
 opinions on many points, find themselves at one in their common 
 faith and love of their Saviour and interest in His cause : they 
 have an affection and concern for one another for the sake of 
 their common Lord, and have similar sentiments and desires for 
 the wellbeing of their fellow-men. This unity of the Spirit 
 requires indeed to be cultivated ; for it may be hindered or 
 interrupted by the selfish feelings, or narrow prejudices, or 
 worldly sentiments that are apt to linger in the hearts even of 
 those who ought to be brethren. If any one is unwilling to 
 humble or deny himself for the sake of his Master and his 
 brethren ; or is making the interests of his nation, or his order, 
 or his party, of more importance than those of the cause of Christ 
 and the world's salvation ; or has too narrow ideas of the kingdom 
 and work of Christ, and considers the opinions, or customs, or 
 forms of his own section of the Church essential to Christianity ; 
 such an one will not find himself drawn in sympathy and love to 
 
 1 This phrase might also mean the love that the Holy Spirit has to us, and 
 as Paul elsewhere speaks of the mind and the will of the Spirit, he might quite 
 well have ascribed love also to Him. But as he never uses any expression 
 exactly similar, it is perhaps more likely that it means the love of Christians 
 which is wrought in them by the agency of the Holy Spirit. 
 
88 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 all who love the Lord Jesus, but repelled and shut out from some 
 of them : and in so far as any of these tendencies prevail, the 
 unity of the Spirit is marred and weakened. Hence we need 
 to give diligence to keep it. We do so just by following the 
 leading and yielding to the movements of the Holy Spirit, or, to 
 express the same thing in other words, by living the life of 
 faith and love that is implanted in us by the Spirit's work of 
 regeneration. 
 
 It is not an adequate expression of what the New Testament 
 teaches to say, as Schleiermacher did, that the Holy Spirit is just 
 the common life that animates the body of Christians. That is 
 the result of the Spirit's work ; but we must go beyond the effect 
 to the cause that produces it, to find the Holy Spirit Himself. 
 Yet undoubtedly the Christian spirit or frame of mind, as a 
 humble, devout, unselfish, holy, and loving disposition, which 
 unites those who have it in common devotion to God and Christ, 
 and a common longing and effort for the deliverance of man from 
 sin and misery, is the chief manifestation of the existence and 
 activity of a divine Agent in the hearts of men. 
 
 This aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit affords the basis of 
 the doctrine of the Catholic Church of Christ, as unfolded in 
 Paul's later epistles, in its ideal as invisible, and in its approximate 
 realizations by means of the various gifts, offices, and functions 
 of its members, according to the order and directions given by 
 Christ and His apostles. The consideration of what that order 
 and these directions arc, belongs to the department of Church 
 government : x the work of the Spirit, which secures the real 
 inward growth and perfection of the Church, is wrought in its 
 members individually, each for himself, by the process of sanctifi- 
 cation, edification, and comfort. 
 
 1 On these subjects the reader is referred to previous handbooks in this 
 series: The Church, by William Binnie, D.D. , Professor of Church History, 
 Aberdeen; and Prcsbylcrianism, by the Rev. John M'Pherson, M.A. 
 Findhorn, 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 In conversion, as we have seen, according to Scripture and 
 
 Christian experience, the Holy Spirit effects a radical change in 
 
 the soul. By working in us faith and repentance, He imparts to 
 
 us a new principle of life, the principle of godliness or love to 
 
 God, which is the ruling motive of every genuine Christian. This 
 
 seems to be what is called in one remarkable passage " the seed 
 
 of God" (i John iii. 9), and in another "that which is begotten 
 
 of the Spirit" (John iii. 6) ; and the possession of this divine 
 
 principle of life makes an essential difference between those who 
 
 are born again and even the best of those animated by merely 
 
 selfish or earthly motives But this does not imply that the child 
 
 of God is at once perfect in holiness. On the contrary, since the 
 
 Spirit of God may and often does lay hold of the very lowest and 
 
 most sinful ; the materials, so to speak, on which this work is 
 
 wrought are often very unlikely ; and as it is not done magically, 
 
 or by mere power, but by the influence of grace, in accordance 
 
 with the essential constitution of man, and in the way of a vital 
 
 process, it is only by degrees that the soul is completely renewed. 
 
 A new principle or ruling motive is imparted by regeneration, and 
 
 the Christian is no longer under the influence of selfishness as his 
 
 highest impulse, but is really possessed with love to God and 
 
 faith in Jesus Christ. This new principle more or less influences 
 
 the whole nature : the thoughts, the feelings, the desires, the 
 
 actions, all are affected by it ; so that in a true sense it may be 
 
 S9 
 
90 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 said there is an entire renewal. The regenerate has not only a 
 new belief, or a new hope, or a new love, or a new conduct, but 
 all these together ; he is a new man, a new creature. 
 
 Yet his renewal is not complete in any part. The faith of the 
 Christian, though real and sincere, is not perfect at first, but often 
 mingled and interrupted with distrust ; his love, though genuine, 
 may not be strong enough to encounter hardships or temptations : in 
 a word, though he has a germ of spiritual life implanted within him, 
 which in principle is higher than anything of which unrenewed men 
 partake, he is still beset with allurements to sin, and possessed 
 with tendencies or habits of yielding to these allurements. He 
 really loves God and hates sin ; that is the ruling principle of his 
 soul : but that does not remove all possibility of sin, it does not 
 make the pleasures of sin less attractive to his senses, or the self- 
 denial that God requires less painful to flesh and blood : it does not 
 destroy the power of habit which may have been contracted by 
 former acts of self-indulgence ; nor does it obviate the possibility 
 of missing the path of duty through mistake or heedlessness. 
 Such is the state in which the New Testament describes the 
 converts to Christianity as being, with their hearts filled with a 
 new affection, love to God and Christ, yet prone to many sins, 
 sometimes of a gross and shocking nature, and needing to have 
 the most plain moral duties enforced on them. The spirit is 
 willing, but the flesh is weak ; nay, the flesh lusteth against the 
 spirit. 
 
 By these adverse influences the principle of love to God in the 
 heart might be overcome and choked, were it not continually 
 nourished and strengthened by the same power that implanted it 
 at first. If the influence of the Holy Spirit in regeneration were 
 a merely transient impulse, however powerful, the renewal effected 
 by it would not be complete, and might not be lasting. The new 
 impulse of love to God would be continually opposed by the 
 remaining tendencies and temptations to evil, and would be in 
 clanger of either degenerating into a mere sentiment, without 
 influence on practical life, or being entirely extinguished in course 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN SANCTIFICATION. 91 
 
 of time. In order to escape these dangers, the new life in the 
 soul must be fed and encouraged, so that it may grow and gain 
 strength ; and this, Scripture declares, is done by the Holy Spirit 
 in the work of progressive renewal or sanctification. 
 
 The Holy Spirit is said not only to be given, but to dwell in 
 Christians (Rom. viii. 9, 11 ; 1 Cor. vi. 19; John xiv. 17 ; 1 John 
 ii. 27) ; and this indicates His continual working. As the Spirit 
 of God is in His essence omnipresent, His coming upon any one 
 denotes, not any local movement, but His beginning to work 
 upon such a one in a way He had not done before ; and so His 
 abiding upon, or dwelling in men, means His continuing to 
 influence them as He had begun. The Holy Spirit kindled the 
 new life of faith and love in a twofold way, outwardly by pre- 
 senting the grace and love of God in the gospel, and inwardly by 
 opening the heart to receive that grace and love. In a like 
 twofold manner He continues His work, and thereby nurtures the 
 faith that He implanted at first. By the Holy Spirit the grace of 
 God as revealed in Christ continues to be presented to the soul ; 
 and the gospel, as it is the means of our new birth, so also is 
 it the means of our growth in spiritual life. Hence Peter, after 
 reminding Christians that they have been born again of incor- 
 ruptible seed through the Word of God, exhorts them as new-born 
 babes to "long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, 1 that 
 they may grow thereby unto salvation" (1 Pet. ii. 2). The 
 spiritual nourishment of our souls is the gospel, or Christ who is 
 presented in the gospel. Christ crucified is, as Augustine said, 
 both milk for babes and meat for men. This spiritual food 
 nourishes the soul as it is received by faith and love ; and the 
 gospel presenting Christ to us calls forth these graces into con- 
 tinual and active exercise, and so promotes their growth and the 
 increasing perfection of the Christian character. The revelation 
 
 1 This rendering of the Revised Version is more in accordance with the 
 usage of the language than " the sincere milk of the word ; " but though the 
 reference to ch. i. 23 is thereby effaced, we need not doubt that it is the word 
 of God that is meant. 
 
92 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 of God that is made in the person, and teaching, and work of 
 Jesus, and in the blessings that flow from these, is most fitted to 
 increase and confirm that faith or trustful reliance on God's 
 mercy, and that repentance or aversion from evil and turning to 
 God, which form the beginning and principle of Christian life. 
 These when continued in exercise tend to promote that life, by 
 acquiring the strength and persistency of a habit, and gradually 
 weakening or expelling contrary habits and overcoming tempta- 
 tions. This is that walking by the Spirit (Gal. v. 25), after the 
 Spirit (Rom. viii. 4-14), in Christ (Col. ii. 6), repeatedly enjoined 
 on Christians as the work of their life and the means of their 
 growth. It denotes a continual exercise of faith and repentance 
 as at the first, looking ever to Christ and to God, with the same 
 feelings of trust, penitence, and love, as when the gospel first 
 came to the soul with its blessed message of glad tidings. For 
 this end the Word of God must be the constant study of the 
 believer ; and it is a means that the Holy Spirit uses for his 
 sanctification. 
 
 But the Spirit also acts more directly on the soul in this work. 
 The various virtues of the Christian character are described as 
 the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. v. 22) ; by the Spirit God reveals to 
 us His hidden wisdom (1 Cor. ii. 10) ; by the Spirit we are 
 transformed into the image of the Lord (2 Cor. iii. 18) ; by the 
 Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body (Rom. viii. 13) ; by the 
 Spirit we are strengthened in faith and love (Eph. iii. 16). These 
 and other passages indicate a work of the Spirit that consists 
 not merely in presenting to us the revelation of God in Christ, 
 which is fitted to draw our faith and love into continual exercise ; 
 but in opening our minds to perceive and our hearts to feel the 
 grace of God thus revealed, and so actually producing in us the 
 exercise of faith and love. We find from experience, that in the 
 progress as in the beginning of Christian life, we are not entirely 
 dependent on the external presentation of God's grace. The 
 very same passages of God's Word or views of its truths, that 
 at one time produced the most deep and salutary effects, enlighten- 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN SANCTIFICATION. 93 
 
 ingthe mind, melting the heart to penitence and love, stimulating 
 and encouraging the soul to resolutions and efforts after holiness, 
 may at another time be read or heard, and understood exactly 
 in the same way, and yet fail to make any such impression 
 These spiritual effects, that are not traceable merely to the mora 
 influence of the truth, and that can as little be accounted for by 
 our own will or by external circumstances, are most reasonably to 
 be ascribed to that direct working of the Holy Spirit on the souls 
 of believers of which Scripture speaks. If in the primitive Church 
 the Spirit of God was recognised as the author of the extraordinary 
 gifts of prophecy, tongues, healing : must we not assign to the 
 same source that spiritual insight by which the truths of God are 
 opened up, that devotional fervour that finds spontaneous utter- 
 ance in earnest pleading prayer, and that zeal for good works 
 that effects things for the good of men that seemed impossible 
 before ? The abiding graces, of faith, hope, and love, are in Paul's 
 estimate higher and more divine than the best of the supernatural 
 gifts, and they cannot be conceived as less directly due to the 
 agency of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 More particularly, the Holy Spirit works in the process of 
 sanctification by producing in the soul those special virtues which 
 may be lacking in particular persons, or needed on particular 
 occasions. One Christian, for example, may be constitutionally 
 defective in courage, another in meekness, another in patience, 
 and so on. These special qualities the Spirit of God can and 
 does bestow ; as Paul reminds Timothy, who seems to have 
 been naturally of a timid and shrinking disposition, " God gave 
 us not a spirit of fearfulness, but of power, and of love, and of 
 discipline " (2 Tim. i. 7) ; or as the fiery spirit of the son of 
 thunder was chastened and refined, so that he became the 
 Apostle of love. There are special aspects of God's revelation 
 in Christ fitted to draw forth special virtues, and to discourage 
 and check the faults opposed to them ; and these the Holy Spirit 
 uses for these ends ; as we may see how Paul's second letter to 
 Timothy sets forth those views of Christian truth and experience 
 
94 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 that are most likely to encourage and strengthen a timid dis- 
 ciple ; and Jesus, when He had occasion to rebuke the intolerant 
 zeal of James and John, showed them in word and deed the 
 grace and love of His mission. 1 The dealings of Providence 
 too, more especially the trials and afflictions of life, are made 
 the means of promoting and perfecting in believers special virtues 
 in which they may be defective, such as meekness, patience, 
 hope. At the same time, there is also a direct agency of the 
 Holy Spirit here ; for all these virtues are described as the fruit 
 of the Spirit ; they are all developments in various directions of 
 the right state of heart towards God, expressed in faith and 
 repentance, which is wrought and maintained by the Spirit of 
 God in the heart. The new life of Christianity is a unity ; and 
 though, on account of the imperfect and abnormal condition of 
 most Christians, it does not show itself with perfect symmetry ; 
 yet it tends towards moral excellence and perfection in every 
 direction, and the more vigorous the central principle of religious 
 life is, the more will particular virtues be developed and 
 increased. 
 
 The Spirit's work of sanctification is thus the continuance and 
 development of regeneration ; and is related to it as preserva- 
 tion is to creation in the natural world. But just as preservation 
 differs from creation in this, that in it God works by means, and 
 with the co-operation of the creatures ; so in the Spirit's work of 
 sanctification there is a co-operation of the human will, such as 
 cannot be admitted in regeneration. In implanting the new life 
 at first, the Holy Spirit has to deal with a soul, that is indeed 
 essentially active^ but in regard to spiritual religion insensible 
 or opposed to the call of God. Hence this work is entirely due 
 
 1 Luke ix. 54-56. The words, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye 
 are of : for the Son of man came not to destroy men's lives, but to save 
 them," are indeed of doubtful authenticity ; but they are thoroughly in the 
 Spirit of Christ, and more likely to have been omitted than added in the 
 time of the oldest MSS. Anyhow we may be sure that it was what he 
 saw and felt of the love of Christ, that softened the natural character of 
 John. 
 
THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT IN SANCTIFICATION. 95 
 
 to the divine power ; we are His workmanship, created in Christ 
 Jesus unto good works. But in the preservation and develop- 
 ment of the new life, the Spirit has to deal with a soul that is 
 now spiritually alive, that is able and inclined to work in the 
 same direction as His work. Hence in this process of sanctifica- 
 tion we are called to be fellow-workers with God ; we are to 
 work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it 
 is God that worketh in us to will and to do. Such exhortations 
 continually occur in the Epistles, in close connection with state- 
 ments of the work of God by His Spirit in our sanctification. 
 The knowledge we have of the reality of that work ought not to 
 lead us to be less earnest and diligent in our own efforts, but 
 rather more so : for it assures us that our efforts shall not be 
 in vain, as we might fear they would be, if we had only them to 
 look to for success. Nor does the sanctifying work of the Holy 
 Spirit render our co-operation needless ; for though the Spirit's 
 power is indeed divine, and therefore all-sufficient, yet it is 
 exercised in a way suited to our nature, not only as men, but as 
 now having spiritual life, and able to know, desire, and seek for 
 spiritual blessings. The fear and trembling, with which Paul 
 says Christians ought to engage in the work, are not due to 
 uncertainty or want of hope as to the issue, but are the emotions 
 that ought naturally to arise from the knowledge that we are so 
 closely associated with God in the work. If we have any right 
 apprehension of the greatness, the glory, the holiness of God, 
 we must feel that it is a solemn and awful thing to be fellow- 
 workers with the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, 
 whose name is holy. With what reverence should we engage in 
 the work of purifying ourselves, how careful should we be that 
 our hearts are right with God, and our ends and aims in harmony 
 with His, how fearful lest by heedlessness or self-seeking we 
 provoke His holy anger ! In Scripture there are warnings not 
 only to unbelievers that they resist not the Holy Spirit, but also 
 to Christians that they do not grieve that blessed Agent (Eph. 
 iv. 30) ; and it is indicated that the Spirit is grieved when we 
 
96 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 indulge in anger, bitterness, or malice, or anything opposed to 
 God's holy law. If we rebel and grieve His Holy Spirit, God 
 may turn to be our enemy and fight against us (Isa. Ixiii. 10) ; 
 and whenever we fall into any grievous sin, we have reason to 
 pray with the Psalmist, "Take not thy holy spirit from me" 
 (Ps. li. 11). If it is the holy God who thus works in us by His 
 Spirit, well may we be filled with fear and trembling as we work 
 out our own salvation. 
 
 Yet we have the assurance that God our Saviour is able to 
 keep us from falling, and to present us blameless before the 
 presence of His glory with exceeding joy (Jude 24) ; that 
 saints are kept by the power of God through faith unto salva- 
 tion (1 Pet. i. 5) ; and that He who hath begun a good work in 
 us will perfect it until the day of Christ (Phil. i. 6). So we may 
 give ourselves to this work in the confidence and hope that such 
 promises are fitted to inspire, and be strong in the Lord who 
 sanctifies us, and who has said, " I will never leave thee nor 
 forsake thee." 
 
CHAPTER VII T. 
 
 THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT AS A WITNESS AND TEACHER. 
 
 The agency of the Holy Spirit in originating and carrying on the 
 new life of Christian faith and love in the soul may be said to 
 include the whole of what He does in us for our salvation ; for 
 it includes the renewal and sanctification of the whole man, and 
 might be traced in detail through the various parts of our nature, 
 the mind, the conscience, the heart, the will. To attempt this, 
 however, would involve us in psychological discussions on 
 which Scripture, as it is written for practical rather than theoretical 
 ends, affords little direct light. There is, however, one special 
 aspect of the Spirit's work which it is practically important to 
 consider separately, and which has a distinct prominence given 
 it in the New Testament, His work on the mind, as a witness 
 and teacher. It was in this character especially that Jesus 
 promised the Holy Spirit to His disciples (John xiv. 26, xv. 26) ; 
 in the character of a witness He is appealed to by the apostles 
 (Acts v. 32 ; Heb. ii. 4) ; and His work in teaching and witnessing 
 is described as assuring the faith of believers (Rom. viii. 16 ; 
 1 Cor. ii. 4, 10-16 ; 1 John ii. 20, 27, v. 7—1 1). These and other 
 passages speak so emphatically of a witness or teaching of 
 the Spirit, as to lead us to inquire specially what this means, 
 and how it is realized. They describe the Spirit of God as 
 not merely working in us, but addressing Himself to us, and 
 communicating knowledge and certainty of the truth. 
 
 According to the usage of Scripture language, the words, 
 
98 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 " teach," "testify," and the like, may be used of impersonal things 
 which by their existence or appearance convey knowledge to 
 men. So it is said, " The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth 
 speech, and night unto night teacheth knowledge" (Ps. xix. 1) ; 
 and again, the water and the blood bear witness as well as the 
 Spirit (1 John v. 8). In some of the passages above referred to, 
 the Holy Spirit may be said to testify simply in this way, the 
 fact of Jesus' disciples being endowed with spiritual gifts being 
 a proof of the divine authority and exaltation of Jesus. But it is 
 impossible fairly to apply this explanation to all those statements ; 
 some of them plainly have a different meaning. Where passages 
 from the Old Testament are quoted with the phrase, "the Holy 
 Spirit saith," "the Holy Spirit beareth witness" (Heb. iii. 7, 
 x. 15), the meaning is that the sacred writers having been 
 moved by the Holy Spirit, their teaching is that of the Spirit to 
 us. In the same sense Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit testifying, 
 through the utterances of Christian prophets, that bonds and 
 afflictions awaited him (Acts xx. 23). Now when we find such 
 expressions used ; we cannot doubt that Jesus' saying to His 
 disciples, that the Holy Spirit would teach them, and testify 
 along with them (John xv. 26, xvi. 13-15), meant that He would 
 communicate truth to them, and through them to others. This 
 promise includes the inspiration of the apostles and prophets 
 of the New Testament ; while in the light of other sayings we 
 can hardly doubt that it conveys also a promise of the teaching 
 of the Spirit to all who believe in Jesus. For John says to 
 Christians in general, " Ye have an anointing from the Holy One, 
 and ye know all things, . . . and his anointing teacheth you 
 concerning all things" (1 John ii. 20, 27). This plainly means 
 that this divine anointing, which is the Holy Spirit, teaches us 
 not merely by the fact of the effects which it produces, or by 
 the utterances of inspired men, but by a direct communication 
 to our souls. The same thing is taught by Paul, when he says 
 that " his speech and his preaching were in demonstration of 
 
WORK OF THE SPIRIT AS A WITNESS AND TEACHER. 99 
 
 the Spirit and of power," that is, his gospel had been proved to 
 them by the Spirit and by power. This cannot refer to any 
 miraculous gifts of the Spirit ; for these would have formed a sign, 
 such as the Jews vainly sought : it can only mean, that the 
 Holy Spirit showed to the hearers the truth of the gospel. So 
 also, when he writes to the Thessalonians, that the gospel came 
 to them in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance 
 (1 Thess. i. 5), he must mean that the Holy Spirit enabled them 
 to see the gospel to be the word of God, and to embrace it as 
 such. This is in the fullest sense a testimony of the Spirit; 
 because the gospel comes to us as the word of God given by 
 His Spirit, and the same Spirit enables us to see that it is so. 
 This latter work is not an objective communication of truth 
 additional to what is contained in the gospel, but a subjective 
 opening of our minds to see it. God gives the spirit of wisdom 
 and revelation in the knowledge of him, that the eyes of our 
 understanding being enlightened, we may know what is the hope 
 of His calling (Eph. i. 17, 18). When the Holy Spirit thus works 
 in us along with the gospel, we have the testimony of the Spirit 
 in and with the word in our hearts, which gives us absolute 
 certainty that the gospel is the word of God. 
 
 In the same way the Spirit interprets the word to us, and 
 enables us to understand its true meaning ; and this in accord- 
 ance with the principles that are universally applicable in such 
 matters. In order to understand correctly any writing, we must 
 not only be acquainted with the language in which it is written, 
 and the things of which it treats, but also have something in us of 
 the spirit of the writer. Poetry, for instance, is unintelligible to 
 those who have nothing of the poetic spirit in them, and many 
 exquisite poems are not only unappreciated, but entirely mis- 
 understood, by those who are destitute of imaginative feeling. 
 So also one may read a work of philosophy, understanding the 
 meaning of all the words and sentences, and yet have no real 
 apprehension of the problems that are dealt with, so that the 
 whole treatise may seem to such a one unintelligible or foolish, 
 
IOO THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 In like manner the expressions of religious feelings and experi- 
 ences by men like Augustine, Luther, Cromwell, or Bunyan, have 
 often seemed insane ravings or hypocritical pretences to critics, 
 acute enough in the judgment of worldly matters, but strangers 
 to such deep spiritual experience. The only way in which this 
 want of understanding can be remedied is the personal contact 
 of soul with soul. If we not merely read or hear the words of 
 poetry or philosophy, but have direct intercourse with a living 
 man in whom is the poetic or philosophic spirit, we may come to 
 have a feeling and insight into the meaning of these studies, such 
 as we had not before ; and many can look back to a time when 
 the understanding of poetry or of philosophy was first opened to 
 them in some such way. Only in all such cases what is done is 
 to awaken or call into exercise a faculty that already exists in 
 the soul ; in the revelation of spiritual truths there is needed a 
 power that can revive the faculty of spiritual discernment from 
 a state in which it is practically impotent. Hence, however useful 
 and helpful human aid may be, it must be the work of the Spirit 
 of God to enable us really to know the things that are freely 
 given to us by God. 
 
 This work of the Spirit is the foundation of the certainty of our 
 faith, as resting not merely on the testimony of men but on that 
 of God. Under His teaching we may have, not only a probable 
 opinion, but a full assurance in regard to the things that concern 
 our spiritual life and comfort. These are, the fact that God has 
 spoken and does speak to us, the meaning of the message He 
 addresses to us, and our personal interest in His promises. For 
 none of these do we need to depend either on the authority of 
 men, or on the inferences of reason, when we have the testimony 
 of the Spirit of God ; though both the experience of other men, 
 and the rational powers of our own minds, are useful as auxiliaries 
 and confirmations of our faith. 
 
 The Holy Spirit gives us infallible assurance that God has 
 spoken at sundry times and in divers manners by the prophets, 
 and in the last days by His Son ; and how great a thing is it to be 
 
WORK OF THE SPIRIT AS A WITNESS AND TEACHER. IOI 
 
 assured of that, so that we are not left to feel after Him in the 
 dark by the indirect discovery of His works, but have His voice 
 speaking personally to us ! His voice indeed carries its own 
 evidence with it ; for it is worthy of Himself, divine, so that He 
 challenges comparison with all counterfeits : " What is the chaff 
 to the wheat ? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a fire, and 
 like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" (Jer. xxiii. 28, 
 29). But unless the Spirit, through whom the word is given, open 
 our ears to hear it, we cannot perceive this ; when He does so, 
 then we recognise the voice of God, and the saying of Jesus about 
 Himself as the true shepherd is fulfilled, " The sheep follow him, 
 for they know his voice, and a stranger they will not follow, for 
 they know not the voice of strangers." The majesty, and holiness, 
 and truthfulness, and tenderness, and grace, that shine in the 
 word of God, the power with which it awakens the conscience 
 and melts the heart, are demonstrations of its divine origin to 
 those who are enabled by the Holy Spirit to perceive them ; and 
 thus by the witness of the Spirit they are assured that God does 
 really speak to them. 
 
 But men have understood this word in so many different ways, 
 that it seems difficult or impossible to be sure about its meaning. 
 Hence we need a guide in the interpretation of it. Yet that is not 
 to be sought for outside, in the teaching of the learned, or of the 
 Church, but in the Holy Spirit enabling us to receive God's word 
 in meekness of wisdom, and understand its plain meaning in its 
 own light. Jesus promised that the Comforter would take of His 
 and show it to His disciples, and the apostles pray that their 
 converts may be enlightened by the Spirit to understand the truth. 
 There are indeed many things in the Bible about the meaning of 
 which competent and candid scholars doubt or differ, and prob- 
 ably will always do so ; but these are matters of subordinate 
 importance ; and when there are differences about the main drift 
 of its teaching, these arise from carelessness, or prejudice, or 
 presumption : and when the Holy Spirit frees the mind from the 
 warping influence of these, and enables us to read the word with 
 
102 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 simplicity, docility, and diligence, its meaning, as to the great 
 essentials, is plain and certain to us. 
 
 But further, the believer receives the word of God as a personal 
 message of God to him, and testimony of God's goodwill to him 
 in Christ ; and in this aspect of it also the Holy Spirit gives us 
 assurance of its truth. The gospel is not indeed addressed to 
 each individual by name, as God's words have sometimes been to 
 the prophets ; but it is addressed to men in general, and testifies 
 to each one God's earnest desire that he should be saved from 
 sin, and the certainty of his being saved if he will but trust in 
 Jesus. Now if this were all, we should have a divine testimony to 
 the general truth of the gospel, but not to our personal interest in 
 it ; that we could only learn from our own reflection or examina- 
 tion of ourselves. That can give us some knowledge, but it can 
 never be absolutely certain. But along with the call of the gospel, 
 the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, moving and enabling us to 
 receive it in faith, and to enter into the enjoyment and apprecia- 
 tion of its blessings. When He thus enables us personally to 
 return to our God, and receive His free forgiveness and recon- 
 ciling love, even as the prodigal son returned to his father ; when 
 He leads us to know the peace and joy that come with such faith ; 
 when He gives us boldness to cry to God, " Our Father in 
 heaven," can we have any doubt that God is gracious to us, and 
 that we are reconciled to Him ? Have we not a witness of this in 
 our hearts, the witness not merely of our own consciousness or 
 conscience, but of the Spirit of God dwelling and working in us ? 
 " The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit 
 which is given to us." " The Spirit itself beareth witness with 
 our spirits that we are the children of God." " He that believeth 
 on the Son of God hath the witness in him, . . . and the witness 
 is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his 
 Son" (Rom. v. 5, viii. 16; 1 John v. 16). 
 
 It is to be observed that this function of the Holy Spirit as our 
 teacher and witness is not a thing distinct and apart from His 
 general work in renewing and sanctifying our souls. He enables 
 
WORK OF THE SPIRIT AS A WITNESS AND TEACHER. IO3 
 
 us to see the Scriptures to be the Word of God, to understand 
 their true meaning, and to be assured of God's goodwill to us, 
 and of our interest in His promises, no otherwise than by bringing 
 our minds and hearts into sympathy and harmony with God's 
 mind and heart as declared in His word : and that is just the 
 work wherein our sanctification consists. To revert to the analogy 
 before noticed, just as we come to understand and appreciate 
 poetry or philosophy more deeply and truly, the more we grow 
 in the poetic or philosophic spirit ; so it is in proportion as we 
 advance in Christian life in general, that we learn to perceive 
 more easily, more correctly, and more fully, the mind of God in 
 His word. Hence we find that enlightenment is promised in 
 Scripture to various spiritual graces. " To him that ordereth his 
 way aright will I show the salvation of God" (Ps. 1. 23). " Unto 
 the upright there ariseth light in the darkness " (Ps. cxii. 4). 
 " If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching" 
 (John vii. 17). "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
 God" (Matt. v. 8). "Every one that loveth knoweth God" 
 (1 John iv. 7). This is what secures this great truth of the 
 testimony of the Holy Spirit from the danger of being perverted 
 into an encouragement to fanaticism, by men mistaking the 
 suggestions of their own fancy, or interest, or wishes, for the 
 teaching of the Holy Spirit. If it is ever borne in mind, on the 
 one hand that the Spirit's testimony is in and with the Word, and 
 on the other hand that it is just a special aspect of the work of 
 sanctification as a whole ; these abuses of this doctrine may be 
 avoided, and it may be seen to be consistent with truth and 
 soberness, and in harmony with well-ascertained facts of our 
 experience. 
 
 Of the way in which the Holy Spirit as a teacher is a guide to 
 believers, in the details of practical life, and the steps they should 
 take in various circumstances, we have a remarkable illustration 
 in Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, both in the advice he gives 
 to them, and in what he says about his own plans and proceedings. 
 They had asked his opinion on several questions of practical 
 
104 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 conduct, about marriage, about meats offered to idols, about the 
 conduct of religious meetings, and the exercise of spiritual gifts ; 
 and he gives answers to these inquiries in successive sections of 
 his first epistle to them. In them all he carries the question of 
 detail in the first place up to some general principle, on which 
 the Word of God gives a clear and authoritative decision ; then 
 he indicates how the application of this may be modified by 
 circumstances, and how in some cases other principles come to 
 bear upon the question, so as to define the path of duty one way 
 or another ; then he refers to various alternative suppositions, 
 as to what might occur in actual life, and shows how 
 the general principles of Scripture determine the right course 
 variously in various circumstances. In each of these discussions 
 we see lofty and comprehensive principles laid down ; but then 
 these are not left in their generality, but at the same time are so 
 explained and applied to actual cases, that we have not mere vague 
 commonplaces, but distinct directions capable of being applied 
 and acted upon in practice. Now what has enabled Paul thus to 
 combine lofty principles with precise application, is his ample 
 acquaintance with Scripture, his clear apprehension of its real 
 meaning, and his thorough sympathy with its spirit, and honest 
 resolution to apply it fearlessly to varying circumstances. But 
 these are qualities that may be possessed by ordinary Christians, 
 without Paul's supernatural inspiration or rare intellectual gifts. 
 If the Word of God dwell in us richly, so that we can readily 
 perceive, when any practical question arises, what general prin- 
 ciple Scripture has given which covers it ; if we have a clear and 
 right apprehension of the meaning of that principle, and if we are 
 free from the tendency to apply it in a one-sided way, and are 
 resolved honestly to decide and act upon it, then we may see how it 
 plainly directs our path of duty : the Word of God is a lamp to our 
 feet and a light to our path ; but it is the Holy Spirit, quickening 
 and nourishing Christian life in us, that enables us to use it as such. 
 Still more strikingly do we see this guidance of the Spirit in 
 Paul's own conduct, as it comes out in these epistles. When he 
 
WORK OF THE SPIRIT AS A WITNESS AND TEACHER. 1 05 
 
 wrote his first epistle, he had already given up a former intention of 
 going at once to them, from Ephesus, before the visit he had to 
 pay to the churches in Macedonia. He made this change because 
 he desired to make a longer stay with them (1 Cor. xvi. 5, 6) ; and 
 also, as he assures them in his later letter, to spare them and give 
 them time to reform the abuses for which he had blamed them, 
 so that he might not have to come to them with the sorrowful 
 duty of exercising discipline (2 Cor. i. 23-ii. 3). Thus we see 
 how in this matter of timing his journeys he was guided by high 
 Christian principle. The great opportunity, and at the same 
 time the dangers of the work at Ephesus, determined him to 
 remain there till Pentecost (1 Cor. xvi. 8, 9) ; but when he had 
 left that city, his anxiety about the Corinthian Church impelled 
 him to hurry on from Troas to Macedonia to meet Titus (2 Cor. 
 ii. 12, 13). Here we see him led, not so much by calm considera- 
 tion of duty, as by warm impulse of Christian love. Again, in the 
 arrangements he makes about the second mission of Titus to 
 Corinth with the delegates of the Macedonian churches, we see how 
 Paul was guided by the high principle of providing things honour- 
 able not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of men (2 Cor. 
 viii. 6-21;. Throughout these proceedings he was evidently 
 guided by the general precepts of Scripture, to which he frequently 
 refers ; while we cannot but admire the clearness and practical 
 wisdom with which he sees the application of these general 
 precepts to the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed. 
 We seem to see in this how he was guided by the Spirit in his 
 Christian walk; and so, when he was accused of duplicity or 
 indecision in his proceedings, he asserts his disinterestedness 
 and straightforwardness, and declares that he has been enabled 
 in this to imitate the stedfastness of Christ Himself, because God 
 has anointed and sealed him and given the earnest of the Spirit 
 (2 Cor. i. 19-22); while at the same time he indicates that this is 
 not a privilege peculiar to him, but a blessing in which they and 
 all believers may share. " He who establisheth us with you unto 
 Christ is God." 
 
CHAPTER IX, 
 
 THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AS OUR HELPER IN PRAYER, 
 
 Besides the function of the Holy Spirit in making known to us 
 the mind of God, there is also ascribed to Him in Scripture a 
 special action in connection with our making known our requests 
 to God in prayer. We have the promise of the spirit of grace 
 and of supplications (Zech. xii. 10) ; the Spirit is said to help our 
 infirmities in the exercise of prayer, and to make intercession for 
 us (Rom. viii. 26, 27) ; the Spirit is said to cry in our hearts, 
 Abba, Father (Gal. iv. 6) ; and we are exhorted to pray in the 
 Holy Spirit (Jude 20). 
 
 In the first of these passages there is no reason to believe that 
 the prophet had the idea of a personal divine agent ; it is rather 
 a disposition or tendency in the human soul that is suggested by 
 his words. But it is a disposition of a truly religious and devo- 
 tional nature, including love or kindness in the heart, and the 
 outcome of that in humble petitions for pardon and blessing ; and 
 this frame of mind is promised to be given by God, and to be 
 such as to lead to a thorough conversion of the people from 
 ungodliness and idolatry. Even here therefore we can hardly 
 fail to see, that true prayer is represented as a special result of 
 that renewing work of God in the souls of men, which we learn in 
 the New Testament to ascribe especially to the Holy Spirit. In 
 so far as he implants and nourishes in us the new life of faith, 
 repentance, and love, the Spirit of God stimulates and helps the 
 exercise of prayer ; for that is, as it were, the breath of the new 
 
 106 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT OUR HELPER IN PRAYER. 107 
 
 life, the natural and spontaneous action of it. Like every exercise 
 of spiritual life, prayer presupposes the existence of that life itself, 
 and it will be energetic and abundant in proportion as the life is 
 healthful and strong. So, as that life both in its beginning and 
 in its continuance and growth, depends on the power of the Holy 
 Spirit, the habit and activity of prayer may be traced to His 
 agency. " Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name,'' must 
 ever be the language of God's people. 
 
 But the New Testament seems to point to a more special con- 
 nection of the Holy Spirit with the prayers of believers in Jesus. 
 In the same chapter in which he speaks of the Spirit bearing 
 witness with our spirits that we are children of God, Paul says 
 that the Spirit also helps our infirmities in the way of prayer. 
 The infirmity here specially in the apostle's view is our ignorance, 
 not our disinclination to come to God in prayer : the remedy for 
 that he had spoken of before, when he said that we "have received 
 the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. 
 viii. 15). But even when we are enabled thus to address God as 
 our Father, we may be at a loss in prayer, from want of knowing 
 what we should pray for as we ought. We know that we need 
 much for our complete salvation ; we have been saved in hope, 
 but not yet in full fruition ; we feel the evils that beset and sur- 
 round us ; and we are assured by our faith in Christ that these 
 shall yet be entirely removed ; but what really are the roots of 
 these evils, or in what way we are to look and labour for their 
 removal, we do not distinctly know. In our ignorance and con- 
 fusion, we may often be apt to pray for the removal of what is 
 really for our good, or for the bestowal of things that would be 
 pernicious. Hence we need the aid of the Holy Spirit. But He 
 helps us, not by revealing to us precisely what we should ask for 
 in each particular emergency, but by securing that our groanings, 
 even though they cannot be articulately expressed, shall serve the 
 purpose of prayer. The Spirit makes intercession for us with 
 these very groanings that cannot be uttered ; that is, He not only 
 prompts them, but presents them to God in such a way that they 
 
Io8 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 are heard and answered. He who is the hearer of prayer searches 
 the hearts, and does not need that their desires should be expressed 
 in words, in order that He may know what they are ; and when 
 they are wrought by His own Spirit in the hearts of those who are 
 His own people, His holy ones, He knows that they are according 
 to His will. Thus, since the Holy Spirit, dwelling in us and 
 moving us to prayer, is ever in fellowship and union with the 
 Father and the Son; our desires, however confused and inarticulate 
 they may be in our consciousness, are yet the expression of the mind 
 of the Spirit, and so are acceptable and prevailing prayers. To 
 offer up our desires to God, under the influence of the Spirit, and 
 trusting to His intercession, seems to be what is meant by praying 
 in the Holy Spirit (Jude, 20), crying by, or in, the Spirit, Abba, 
 Father (Rom. viii. 15), having access through Christ by, or in, 
 one Spirit unto the Father (Eph. ii. 18). Again, as the mystical 
 connection of the believer with the Spirit is variously expressed, 
 now by saying that he is in the Spirit, and again that the Spirit 
 is in him ; so this agency of the Holy Spirit is also described as 
 His crying in us, "Abba, Father" (Gal. iv. 6). The prayers of the 
 children of God, and even their inarticulate longings after the full 
 accomplishment of salvation, are utterances of the will of the 
 Spirit of God, who is one with the Father and the Son in the 
 wonderful purpose of love from which salvation springs. 
 
 In this function of the Holy Spirit, as making intercession for 
 us, we may see, more distinctly than in any other of His works, 
 the meaning and importance of the scriptural statements about 
 the Spirit not merely working, but dwelling in believers. As before 
 observed, these statements cannot refer to the essential presence 
 of the Spirit of God, for being divine, that is everywhere ; but 
 they denote that the Holy Spirit works in the souls of Christians 
 in a way that He does not work in those of others. Yet it is not 
 merely the works of the Spirit, or the gracious feelings and inclina- 
 tions wrought by Him, that we mean, when we speak of, or pray 
 for, the indwelling of the Spirit. Were this all that is promised 
 and granted to us, it might indeed, for ought we know, be sufficient 
 
THE HOLY SPIRIT OUR HELPER IN PRAYER. TOO. 
 
 for our faith and holiness ; but on that supposition it could not 
 be said in any natural sense, that the Holy Spirit made intercession 
 for us. That action implies personality and personal agency ; 
 and so we must conclude that not merely the gifts or operations 
 of the Spirit, but the Spirit Himself is given and sent into our 
 hearts. Whatever difficulty there may be in forming a conception 
 of how this is so, this is the meaning obviously suggested by our 
 Lord's promises in the farewell discourses recorded by John; and 
 although He does not there speak of the Spirit making interces- 
 sion for them, He gives that view of the Spirit as a person, which 
 makes His intercession intelligible ; and when He calls Him 
 another Comforter or Advocate, who is to supply His place, and 
 remain with His disciples always, He at least suggests this as 
 one of His functions. 
 
 The evidence to individual Christians of the Spirit's help and 
 intercession in their prayers is not always their freedom and 
 fluency of expression, or their comfort and delight in the exercise, 
 or their fervour and rapture of devotion. All these may some- 
 times be due to natural causes, or to baseless imagination ; and 
 they may sometimes be absent when there is really prayer in the 
 Holy Spirit. The only true and unfailing test of His assistance is 
 the accordance of the prayer with the mind of God. That includes 
 two things : for as prayer is essentially the offering up of our 
 desires to God, it is needful that the desires themselves be right, 
 and that they be offered up aright. By renewing and sanctifying 
 our affections, the Holy Spirit secures that our desires are for 
 things agreeable to God's will, moving us to seek His face and 
 favour as our chief good, and raising us above mere selfish and 
 worldly inclinations. When we are desiring holiness, and hating 
 sin, longing for the glory of God and the truest good of our fellow- 
 men, and wishing temporal comforts and happiness only in sub- 
 ordination to these ends, and as far as they conduce to them, then 
 our desires are in harmony with God's will, and as such desires 
 are not natural or spontaneous in the heart of any unrenewed 
 man, and even in the heart of the renewed have to contend with 
 
110 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 many opposing tendencies, we may be sure that where they really 
 exist, in however small a degree, the Holy Spirit has been their 
 author, and so is helping to pray. 
 
 But it is as necessary for acceptable prayer, that the desires be 
 offered to God aright, as that they be right in themselves. They 
 are to be offered in the name of Christ, with confession of our 
 sins, and thankful acknowledgment of God's mercies. Now, these 
 things are all involved in Christian faith, and are secured if we 
 have faith in Christ as He is offered to us in the gospel. For that 
 implies, that we feel and acknowledge that we are sinners, guilty 
 and inexcusable, and that any good that we enjoy is altogether 
 undeserved and of God's free mercy ; that we have and express 
 humble thankfulness to Him for all the benefits He bestows ; and 
 that we trust in Christ for forgiveness, and all blessings that we 
 need and ask in prayer. Such sentiments and convictions as 
 these are the work of the Holy Spirit moving and enabling us to 
 repentance and faith ; and to pray under the influence and 
 impression of them is to pray in the Holy Spirit. But as these 
 convictions are in their nature of a humbling and self-abasing 
 tendency, the aid of the Holy Spirit in prayer may oftentimes 
 appear in the intense grief, self-loathing, and self-distrust with 
 which our petitions are offered. Thus Zechariah describes the 
 pouring out of the spirit of grace and of supplications as leading 
 to the bitterest mourning ; and Paul speaks of the Spirit making 
 intercession for us with unutterable groanings. The Spirit indeed 
 always prompts the childlike cry, "Abba, Father; " and thus gives 
 confidence, even when we are most cast down ; often too His 
 help in devotion may be seen in the freedom, and delight, and 
 hopefulness with which we are enabled to make known our 
 requests to God ; but we are not to suppose that when these 
 joyful feelings are absent, we are without His assistance. The 
 true test is the holiness and the faith with which we pray. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE COMFORTING WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the name Comforter, by which we render the title 
 Paraclete or Advocate, given to the Spirit by Jesus, must be 
 understood to include many more functions besides what we 
 generally mean by comfort ; yet there can be no doubt that it 
 does comprehend the narrower use of the word, in the sense of 
 giving consolation in trouble or sorrow ; and there are other 
 passages of Scripture that describe the agency of the Holy Spirit 
 in this special way. We must not indeed separate this part of 
 His work from the others ; for indeed one great lesson that we 
 should learn from all our consideration of the work of the Holy 
 Spirit is, that no part of it can be isolated from the others, and 
 that the various functions that we ascribe to Him, of convincing, 
 converting, sanctifying, witnessing, interceding, and comforting 
 are rather different aspects of one and the same great work. We 
 cannot study deeply any one of the special works of the Spirit, 
 without finding that it rests upon His agency in creating and 
 fostering spiritual life in the soul, and is but a special form or 
 application of that work. Yet we do well to consider distinctly 
 these several aspects of the Spirit's work in us ; for not only are 
 they all suited to our several wants, but each reveals a special 
 aspect of the Holy Spirit Himself. Thus His converting and 
 sanctifying work especially illustrates His power and His holi- 
 ness ; His function as a witness shows His truth and faithfulness ; 
 
 111 
 
112 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 and above all His agency as the Comforter reveals His love. For 
 this work has to do with men considered as liable to dejection 
 trouble, and sorrow ; and has for its object to relieve these painful 
 affections, and to fill our souls with joy. Now this can proceed 
 from nothing but love, desiring and delighting in the happiness 
 of the loved ones. The deliverance of men from actual danger of 
 perishing may be due simply to pity or compassion ; their sancti- 
 fication may be due to a love of holiness ; but to seek their comfort 
 is sure evidence of love. Out of mere pity one might procure the 
 release of a criminal from prison; out of zeal for virtue one miaht 
 labour to reform him ; but both these ends might be secured 
 though nothing were done to relieve him from sad feelings of 
 gloom and self-reproach, and to make his life positively happy • 
 and if one were found caring for this too, and taking pains to 
 comfort and cheer him, this would show, that such a benefactor 
 was moved, not merely by general philanthropy, but by personal 
 affection. So, when the Holy Spirit is revealed in Scripture as 
 not only saving and sanctifying us, but undertaking the office of 
 a Comforter, to fill us with joy and peace, we see in this a most 
 wonderful evidence of His love. 
 
 This office the Holy Spirit performs partly by presenting to our 
 minds the objects best fitted to give encouragement and comfort 
 especially the person and work of Christ, and the grace and 
 faithfulness of God therein revealed. This is what Jesus speaks 
 of the Spirit as doing, when He promised Him as a Comforter 
 to supply His place. "He shall teach you all things, and bring 
 to your remembrance all that I said unto you ;" "He shall bear 
 witness of me ; » " He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine 
 and declare it unto you" (John xiv. 26, xv. 26, xvi. 14). This is 
 a particular aspect of His work as a witness, of which Jesus 
 speaks more generally. His testimony to the ungodly and 
 unbelieving world is also of Christ, but is such as to produce 
 conviction of sin, and so awaken feelings of distress, anxiety, and 
 alarm. But the person and work of Christ are the only things 
 that can give real comfort to the soul in a religious point of view, 
 
THE COMFORTING WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 113 
 
 and hence to those who look to Christ in faith, this work of the 
 Holy Spirit is truly one of consolation. In giving us ever clearer 
 views and more certain convictions of what Jesus is and has done 
 as our Saviour, the Spirit acts as our Comforter. 
 
 But He also performs this work inwardly, inasmuch as peace, 
 and joy, and hope, which form the elements of comfort, are the 
 effects of His presence and work in the soul. We read of the 
 disciples who heard in faith the tidings of the grace of God being 
 filled with joy and the Holy Spirit (Acts xiii. 52) ; and of the 
 Thessalonians, to whom the gospel came in power, and in the 
 Holy Spirit, and in much assurance, receiving it with joy of the 
 Holy Spirit (1 Thess. i. 5, 6). Paul includes in the fruit of the 
 Spirit joy and peace (Gal. v. 22), and declares the kingdom of 
 God to be righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit 
 (Rom. xiv. 17), and prays that God would fill his readers with all 
 joy and peace in believing, that they may abound in hope by the 
 power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. xv. 13). These passages show 
 that joy is not merely the effect of the truths of the gospel, of 
 which the Holy Spirit gives us evidence, but a direct exercise of 
 that new life in the soul, of which the Holy Spirit is the author. 
 Nor is this a thing hard to explain. Joy is an element of healthy 
 religious life, without which it would be defective. It is right and 
 proper for one who is a child, under the care of an all-wise and 
 loving God, not only to adore and love and trust his Father in 
 heaven, but also to rejoice in thinking of His greatness, His 
 goodness, His love. Indeed, there cannot be genuine religious 
 feeling without some measure of that delight in God that is so 
 often expressed in the devotional utterances of Scripture. If then 
 the Spirit of God produces in us that life of devotion, there cannot 
 but be awakened, as a part of it, holy and religious joy. Thus 
 the Holy Spirit is our Comforter, not only by presenting to us 
 those objects that are fitted to dispel grief and fear, and cause joy 
 and hope, but also by inwardly moving us to cherish and exercise 
 holy joy. The former function is connected with His work as a 
 Teacher and Witness, the latter with His work as the Author and 
 
 H 
 
114 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 Nourisher of spiritual life. This twofold function may also explain 
 the striking language of Scripture about the sealing and the 
 earnest of the Spirit. 
 
 When the figure of sealing is used in this connection, it is God 
 who is said to have sealed believers in Christ with the Holy Spirit 
 (2 Cor. i. 22 ; Eph. i. 13, iv. 30). In the first of these passages, 
 a parallel is drawn between Christ and His followers primarily in 
 regard to stability or constancy of purpose, and then also in regard 
 to those spiritual endowments that produce that constancy. Paul 
 s defending himself against the charge of duplicity or fickleness, 
 of wavering in promise or purpose from yea to nay. He affirms 
 that he had not done so, because Christ, whom he proclaimed as 
 the Son of God, had not done so ; and God had made him, and 
 his readers too, stedfast, had established them unto Christ. In 
 allusion to the meaning of that title, he adds, that God had 
 anointed them also, and sealed them. This reminds us of Jesus 
 saying of Himself, "Him the Father, even God, hath sealed" 
 (John vi. 27). That was the assurance He gave to the people 
 that they might safely trust Him for the food which abideth 
 unto eternal life. Now as the Holy Spirit is elsewhere compared 
 by Jesus to food (Luke xi. 11-13), and as we are taught that Jesus 
 was able to baptize with the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit 
 descended and abode on Him ; we are led to regard the sealing 
 He speaks of having received as referring to the gift and mani- 
 festation of the Holy Spirit on Him. The sealing in His case was 
 chiefly a testimony to others, though doubtless also to His own 
 human soul ; in the case of believers it is mainly for their own 
 encouragement that the seal of the Spirit is referred to. 
 
 The special use of sealing, to which allusion is made in these 
 applications of the idea, both to Christ and to Christians, seems 
 to be that of marking property to which the owner attaches value, 
 but which may be in danger of being neglected or lost. When 
 God sent His Son into the world, the world knew Him not, and 
 sought for a sign that they might believe. Jesus said, that the 
 Father had borne witness to Him, and sealed Him, and so 
 
THE COMFORTING WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 115 
 
 marked Him out as His own, doing the works of God in the 
 power of His Spirit. So too God takes those who believe in 
 Christ to be His special possession, which He has purchased or 
 obtained for Himself. 1 But they are not at once taken out of the 
 world, but left in it, often unknown and unesteemed by men. 
 Meanwhile God has marked them for His own, as men mark 
 valued property, with the seal of His Spirit until the time when 
 He shall openly take them to Himself in full possession. This 
 idea is also implied in the use made of the figure of sealing the 
 servants of God in the Apocalyptic vision (Rev. vii. 1-8, ix, 4), 
 that they may be marked as those who are to be spared in 
 impending judgments (compare also Ezek. ix. 4-6) ; but there is 
 no indication to connect that sealing especially with the work of 
 the Spirit. The Pauline idea of the sealing of believers by the 
 Spirit may possibly bear an allusion to the restoration of the 
 image of God through Christ, who is said in Heb. i. 3 to be 
 the very image of His substance (lit. impress or stamp, as 
 on a seal) ; but it is not to be identified with the progressive 
 work of moral renewal ; for it is always described as done at 
 once, and when we believe. It is therefore rather that spiritual 
 or religious likeness and affinity to Christ, that is a token of real 
 union to Him, even where there is much imperfection of moral 
 character ; that trustful love and loyalty that shows a heart right 
 with God amid much that is sinful in conduct. Such was the 
 love of the sinful woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears 
 (Luke vii. 36-50) ; such that of Simon Peter even after he had 
 denied his Master in the hour of temptation (John xxi. 15-17). 
 So also Paul speaks of bearing branded on his body the marks 
 of Jesus (Gal. vi. 17), in the scars of his stripes and wounds for 
 Jesus' sake, which gave evidence, not of his moral perfection, but 
 of his loyalty and love to his Lord. This unmistakable seal of 
 
 1 The word "purchased" is used in the Authorized Version of the Bible in 
 its old sense, from the French po?irchasser, to chase after, to obtain for one- 
 self, without necessarily implying the payment of a price. So Shakspeare 
 uses it : "I sent thee forth to purchase honour " (Rich. II., Act 1. Sc. 3). 
 
Il6 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 true godliness is what distinguishes such a man as David, with 
 strong unruly passions, that often hurried him into great crimes 
 of sensuality and cruelty, but with as passionate a devotion to 
 God, repentance for sin, and longing for purity as well as pardon, 
 from one like Saul less outwardly guilty, but cold, timid, and 
 worldly. "The Lord hath set apart him that is godly for him- 
 self," one whom He favoureth, and who responds to that favour 
 in the prayer of childlike trust (Ps. iv. 3). While many who 
 profess and seem to be godly give way before error and tempta- 
 tion, the firm foundation of God abides, the people whom He has 
 built on Christ the foundation-stone, having the twofold seal : 
 " The Lord knoweth them that are his," and, " Let every one that 
 nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness" 
 (2 Tim. ii. 19). In writing thus, Paul had probably in his mind 
 the narrative of the rebellion of Korah (Num. xvi.), where it is 
 said on the one hand (v. 5), " In the morning the Lord will show 
 who are his, and who is holy, and will cause him to come near 
 unto him ;" and on the other hand (v. 26), " Depart, I pray you, 
 from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, 
 lest ye be consumed in all their sins." They who act in the spirit 
 of these two sayings, have the seal of God marking them as the 
 people whom He has made His own, and will finally deliver 
 from all evil ; and the Holy Spirit enabling them so to do, seals 
 them unto the day of redemption. 
 
 The Spirit whereby they are thus sealed is also the earnest of 
 the inheritance destined for them (2 Cor. i. 22, v. 5 ; Eph. i. 14 l ). 
 An earnest is not only a pledge but a foretaste or anticipation of 
 the benefit secured by the pledge ; and when this name is given 
 
 1 The word translated "earnest" in these places is the same that is 
 rendered "pledge" in Gen. xxxviii. 17-20 ; indeed the Hebrew word has 
 simply passed into the Greek and Latin languages, probably through com- 
 mercial dealings with the Phoenicians, the great trading people of ancient days. 
 Originally it meant no more than a pledge ; but in usage it came to denote 
 that particular kind of pledge which is a part of the full price of an article 
 paid in advance ; and as it is joined with the figure of a seal when applied to 
 the Spirit, it seems to be used by Paul in this specific sense. 
 
THE COMFORTING WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. I 1 7 
 
 to the Holy Spirit, we are taught that His gracious presence and 
 working in us constitute a foretaste of the blessedness of heaven. 
 The same thing seems to be indicated when Paul speaks of the 
 first-fruits of the Spirit (Rom. viii. 23), which is most naturally 
 interpreted as meaning the Spirit as the first-fruits of glory. 
 These representations refer to the Holy Spirit as the source of 
 joy and peace. The sealing of the Spirit may often be not joyous, 
 but painful; it may imply a self-denying departing from iniquity, 
 or an endurance of suffering for Christ's sake ; the chastisements 
 of our heavenly Father are pledges of the blessing He has in store 
 for His children, though in themselves they are of an opposite 
 nature. But He who knows our frame, and remembers that we 
 are dust, is graciously pleased to give us, not only pledges of 
 future blessedness, but foretastes of it also. The former appeal 
 to our faith, and may be even painful to our sensibilities : the 
 atter are necessarily joyful, and are meant for our comfort. 
 
 This truth, that the joy of the Holy Spirit is a beginning of the 
 blessedness of heaven, is of great practical use, as a safeguard 
 against dreamy and fanciful ideas, that may even degenerate into 
 earthly and sensual expectations of future bliss. There is ever a 
 danger of this when we regard the joy that is set before us as 
 something of which we have no experience here. It will in that 
 case be either entirely vague and indistinct, or we shall introduce 
 into our thoughts of it those enjoyments of this world that we 
 have to deny to ourselves for the sake of Christ, and we shall 
 simply hope to be recompensed in a future life for the sacrifices 
 made in this. If however we have any experience of a holy joy, 
 even amid the sins and sorrows of this world ; if we know in any 
 measure what Peter meant when he said, that believing in Christ 
 we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and what Paul 
 meant when he spoke of rejoicing in tribulations, and rejoicing in 
 God through Jesus Christ our Lord ; then we can form a concep- 
 tion of one element at least in the future blessedness that is not 
 in the least degree earthly or sensuous. We have also a strong 
 assurance of the truth and certainty of our hope. It promises us 
 
Il8 THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
 
 nothing different in kind from what we already enjoy imperfectly, 
 though in degree something inconceivably more pure and perfect. 
 Here it may only be fitfully and in snatches that we have, or 
 believe that we have, something of the joy of the Holy Spirit : 
 we hardly dare trust ourselves to enjoy it ; and we are encom- 
 passed and interrupted with much that humiliates, pains, tempts, 
 and wearies us. We just know enough of this holy joy to make 
 us feel how real it is, and to give us a faint idea how great must 
 be the blessedness when it is perfect, unalloyed, and unbroken. 
 The Spirit that makes Christians happy in the midst of shame 
 and suffering is called the Spirit of glory and of God (i Pet. iv. 
 14), as the Spirit who possesses the glory of God, who glorifies 
 Christ, and will glorify all who are Christ's. This title is an 
 appropriate sequel to that of the spirit of grace, for glory is but 
 grace perfected, as grace is glory begun. He is the Spirit of 
 grace, as beginning the new life in the sorrows of self-accusing 
 repentance ; and the Spirit of glory as completing it, in the joy of 
 the open manifestation and glorious liberty of the sons of God. 
 
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 HISTORY OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES 
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 Br Professor E. REUSS, D.D. 
 Translated from the Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. 
 
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 is given by the author with a compression and a mastery that have never 
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Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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