_"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another
Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit
of truth."_--JOHN xiv. 16.
_"It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not
away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I
will send Him unto you."_--JOHN xvi. 7.
It was the night in which He was betrayed. Jesus and His disciples were
spending their last hours together before His death. For Him the morrow
could bring with it no surprise. He knew that His hour was come--the
hour to which all other hours of His past had pointed; and He was ready.
Before He left that Upper Room, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and
said, "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son." But to the disciples
that night was a night of darkness, and terror, and confusion. They
remembered how He had told them He must die; they knew the bloodhounds
in Jerusalem were on His track; they could see the shadow's black edge
creeping nearer and nearer; and yet they could do nothing; they could
not even persuade Him that anything needed to be done. Nay, it almost
seemed as if He were taking part with His enemies against them. "It is
expedient for you," He said, "that I go away"--veiling in His pity the
horror of His going. "Expedient" for them? How could He speak like that?
Was He not everything to them? If He went away, what was to befall them?
They would be as sheep in the midst of wolves, as orphans in an unkindly
world. Is it any wonder that sorrow filled their hearts?
And not only to these His first disciples, but to many of His followers
in later days, this word of Jesus has proved a hard saying. If only, we
think, He were with us as He was with Peter and James and John; if only
we could hear Him teach in our streets, or in our church, as once He
taught in the streets of Jerusalem and the synagogue at Nazareth; if
only He could enter our homes, as once He entered the home at Bethany,
how easy it would be to believe! But, now He is no longer here, the air
is filled with doubting voices, and faith is very hard.
So sometimes we speak. But, have we noticed, this is never the language
of the New Testament. To begin with, it is not the language of Christ.
There is an unmistakable emphasis in His words: "Because I have spoken
these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I
tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away." When Paul
was a prisoner in Rome, he wrote to the Philippians, saying, "I am in a
strait betwixt the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ;
for it is very far better; yet to abide in the flesh is more needful for
your sake." That is how a good man, in the prospect of death, naturally
feels towards those who are in any way dependent on him. But Christ's
language is the very opposite of this; He says, not that it is needful
to abide, but that it is expedient to depart. And in every reference to
Christ by the apostles after His Ascension, the same note is struck. It
is hardly too much to say, as one writer does, "that no apostle, no New
Testament writer, ever _remembered_ Christ."[24] They thought of Him as
belonging, not to the past, but to the present; He was the object, not
of memory, but of faith. Never do they wish Him back in their midst;
never do they mourn for Him as for a friend whom they have lost. On the
contrary, they felt that Christ was with them now in a sense in which He
had never been. There is no hint that any even of the Twelve would have
gone back to the old days had it been possible. They had lost, but they
had also gained, and their gain was greater than their loss. "Even
though we have known Christ after the flesh," they also would have said,
"yet now we know Him so no more." Read over again St. Luke's account of
our Lord's Ascension: "He led them out until they were over against
Bethany; and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. And it came to
pass, while He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up
into heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with
great joy; and were continually in the temple, blessing God." Christ had
gone from them a second time, no more to return as before He had
returned from the tomb; yet now it is not despair but joy which fills
their hearts: "They returned to Jerusalem with great joy." When in the
Upper Room, Christ had said, "It is expedient for you that I go away,"
sorrow had filled their hearts; but, now that He is gone, their sorrow
is turned into joy. How shall we explain this strange reversal?
I
It is to be explained in part, of course, by the Resurrection of Christ
from the dead, but mainly--and this is the fact with which just now we
are concerned--by the gift of the Holy Spirit whom Christ had promised
to His disciples to abide with them for ever. But now, what do we mean
when we speak of the gift of the Holy Spirit? What is the Holy Spirit,
and what is it that He does for us? Many of us, I think, must have felt
how extremely unreal, and therefore unsatisfying, the discussions of
this great subject often are. The doctrine somehow fails to find a place
among the proved realities of our Christian experience. It remains, so
to speak, outside of us, a foreign substance which life has not
assimilated. And hence it has come to pass that there is no small danger
to-day lest New Testament phrases about being filled with the Spirit,
baptized with the Spirit, and so forth, become the mere jargon of a
school which wholly fails to interpret the mind of Christ. Doubtless
there are faults on both sides, the faults of neglect and the faults of
false emphasis, and for both the true remedy is a more careful study of
the teaching of Jesus.
What, then, is the Holy Spirit, and what is it He does for us? "I will
pray the Father," Christ said, "and He shall give you another
Comforter," or "another Paraclete." The word translated "Comforter,"
which occurs so often in this discourse of our Lord, is found nowhere
else in the New Testament except in the First Epistle of St. John, where
it is rendered "Advocate"; "If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." And this, without doubt, is a more
faithful rendering of the word which Christ used than the more familiar
"Comforter." An advocate is one who is called to our side to be our
friend and helper, more especially to plead our cause in a court of
justice; and this also is the meaning of the word "Paraclete." Perhaps,
however, the word "Comforter" may be retained without loss, if only we
remember to give it its full and original meaning. To "comfort" is not
primarily and originally to console, but to strengthen, to _fort_ify;
and the "Comforter" whom Christ promised to His disciples was not only
one who should soothe them in their sorrows, but should stand by them in
all their conflicts, their unfailing friend and helper.
Further, Christ said God "shall give you _another_ Comforter." That is
to say, Christ Himself was a Comforter, and all that He had been to His
disciples the Holy Spirit should be also. And, if we examine the three
chapters of this Gospel which contain this great discourse of our Lord,
we shall find this idea taken up, and repeated, and developed in passage
after passage. The Holy Spirit was to come in Christ's name, as Christ's
representative and interpreter. "He shall not speak from Himself,"
Christ said; "He shall bear witness of Me. He shall glorify Me; for He
shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you." In the presence of
the Spirit Christ Himself would be present: "I will not leave you
desolate," He said; "I come unto you;" "I will see you again, and your
heart shall rejoice." And, for the sake of such a presence, a presence
which was to be not for a little while but for ever, it was best for His
friends that He should leave them.[25]
It is in these words, I believe, that we have the key to the New
Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of
Christ; He is sent by Christ; He comes to continue the work of Christ.
He is, as one writer has it, Christ's _alter ego_, or, as it was said
long ago, Christ's "Vicar," or substitute, on the earth.[26] When,
therefore, we speak of the presence of the Spirit, what we mean, or what
we ought to mean, is the spiritual presence of Christ. In the Holy
Spirit Christ Himself is present, wherever, as He said, two or three are
gathered together in His name. In the Holy Spirit, given to be with us
for ever, He makes good to His disciples the great word of His promise,
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." This is the
fact continually to be kept in mind--the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ;
for, if this be forgotten, then, as all experience shows, either the
doctrine is wholly ignored, or it is made the subject of that vague,
unreal way of speaking, which, alas! is so often the bane of spiritual
truth.
At the same time, what has been said must not be interpreted so as to
suggest that the Holy Spirit is merely an impersonal influence. On the
contrary, the words of our Lord quoted above distinctly imply what we
call "personality," and a personality separate from His own. If all that
Jesus really meant to teach was that He would manifest His own invisible
presence to His disciples by spiritual influences, we can only conclude
that His words have been tampered with; as they stand, it is impossible
that this should exhaust their meaning. To teach, to bear witness, to
guide, to bring to remembrance, to declare the things that are to
come,--these are the acts, not of a Power, but of a Person; and all
these things, Christ said, the Holy Spirit should do. Indeed, it is not
easy to see how language could have been framed to set forth the idea of
a Divine Person, separate alike from the Father and the Son, more
explicitly than we find it in these chapters.[27]