It is a fact that Christ has made atonement for sin; in conversion

faith appropriates this fact in order to our justification. It is a

fact that the Holy Ghost has been given; in consecration faith

appropriates this fact for our sanctification. One who writes upon

this subject with a scholarship evidently illuminated by a deep

spiritual tuition, says: "If a reference to personal experience may be

permitted, I may indeed here 'set my seal.' Never shall I forget the

gain to conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul, not long

after a first decisive and appropriating view of the crucified Lord as

the sinner's sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious

hold upon the living and most gracious personality of the Spirit

through whose mercy the soul had got that blessed view. It was a new

development of insight into the love of God. _It was a new contact as

it were with the inner and eternal movements of redeeming goodness and

power, a new discovery in divine resources._"[9]

Well is our doctrine described in these italicised words: "_A contact

with the inner movements of Divine power_." The energy of the Spirit

appropriated, even as with uplifted finger the electric car touches the

current which is moving just above it in the wire and is borne

irresistibly on by it.--Thus does the power which is eternally for us

become a power within us; the law of Sinai, with {96} its tables of

stone, is replaced by "the law of the Spirit of life" in the fleshly

tables of the heart; the outward commandment is exchanged for an inward

decalogue; hard duty by holy delight, that henceforth the Christian

life may be "all in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God."

[1] Rev. E. Boys, "Filled with the Spirit," p. 87.

[2] It is assumed by some that because those that walked with Christ of

old received the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire at Pentecost, more

than eighteen hundred years ago, therefore all believers now have

received the same. As well might the apostles, when first called, have

concluded that because at his baptism the Spirit like a dove rested

upon Christ, therefore they had equally received the same blessing.

Surely the Spirit has been given and the work in Christ wrought for

all; but to enter into possession, to be enlightened and made partakers

of the Holy Ghost, there must be a personal application to the Lord,

etc.--_Andrew Jukes_, "_The New Man_."

[3] William Kelly, "Lectures on the New Testament Doctrine of the Holy

Spirit," p. 161.

[4] It is a great mistake into which some have fallen, to suppose that

the results of Pentecost were chiefly miraculous and temporary. The

effect of such a view is to keep spiritual influences out of sight; and

it will be well ever to hold fast the assurance that a wide, deep, and

perpetual spiritual blessing in the church is that which above all

things else was secured by the descent of the Spirit after Christ was

glorified.--_Dr. J. Elder Cumming_, "_Through the Eternal Spirit_."

[5] It will be observed that the inscription on the seal is

substantially the same as that upon the forehead of the High Priest,

[Hebrew characters]--HOLINESS TO THE LORD (Exod. 39: 30).

[Transcriber's note: I have not attempted to insert the transliterated

Hebrew characters in the above footnote. As best my research can tell

me, they are, from left to right, H (het, hei), V/O/U (vav), H (het,

hei), Y (yod, yud), L (lamed), a blank space, S/Sh (shin), D (dalet) or

R (resh, reish), and Q (qof/kuf).]

[6] The allusion to the seal as a pledge of purchase would be

peculiarly intelligible to the Ephesians, for Ephesus was a maritime

city, and an extensive trade in timber was carried on there by the

shipmasters of the neighboring ports. The method of purchase was this:

The merchant, after selecting his timber, stamped it with his own

signet, which was an acknowledged sign of ownership. He often did not

carry off his possession at the time; it was left in the harbor with

other floats of timber; but it was chosen, bought, and stamped; and in

due time the merchant sent a trusty agent with the signet, who finding

that timber which bore a corresponding impress, claimed and brought it

away for the master's use. Thus the Holy Spirit impresses on the soul

now the image of Jesus Christ; and this is the sure pledge of the

everlasting inheritance.--_E. H. Bickersteth, "The Spirit of Life," p.

176_.

[7] John Owen, D. D., "Discourse Concerning the Spirit," pp. 406, 407.

[8] "Through the Eternal Spirit," by James Elder Cumming, D.D., pp.

146, 147.

[9] "_Veni Creator Spiritus_," by Principal H. C. G. Moule, p. 13.

{97}

VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

{98}

"In his intimate union with his Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique

organ by which God wills to communicate to man his own life, the

supernatural life, the divine life--that is to say, his holiness, his

power, his love, his felicity. To this end the Son works outwardly,

the Holy Spirit inwardly."--_Pastor G. F. Tophel_.

{99}

VI

THE COMMUNION OF THE SPIRIT

The familiar benediction which invokes upon us the "communion of the

Holy Ghost" has probably a deeper meaning in it than has generally been

recognized. The word "communion"--_choinônia_--signifies the having in

common. It is used of the fellowship of believers one with another,

and also of their mutual fellowship with God. The Holy Spirit dwelling

in us is the agent through whom this community of life and love is

effected and maintained. "And truly our fellowship," says John, "is

with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1: 3). But this

having in common with the first two persons of the Godhead were only

possible through the communion of the Holy Ghost, the third person. In

his promise of the Comforter, Jesus said: "He shall take of mine and

show it unto you." As the Son while on earth communicated to men the

spiritual riches of the invisible Father, so the Spirit now

communicates to us the hidden things of the invisible Son; and if we

were required to describe in a word the present office-work of the Holy

Ghost, we should say that it is to make true _in_ us that which is

already true _for_ us in {100} our glorified Lord. All light and life

and warmth are stored up for us in the sun; but these can only reach us

through the atmosphere which stands between us and that sun as the

medium of communication; even so in Christ are "hidden all the

treasures of wisdom and knowledge," and by the Holy Spirit these are

made over to us. It will be our endeavor in this chapter to count up

our hid treasures in Christ, and to consider the Spirit in his various

offices of communication.

1. _The Spirit of Life: Our Regeneration_. Not until our Lord took

his place at God's right hand did he assume his full prerogative as

life-giver to us. He was here in the flesh for our death; he took on

him our nature that he might in himself crucify our Adam-life and put

it away. But when he rose from the dead and sat down on his Father's

throne, he became the life-giver to all his mystical body, which is the

church. To talk of being saved by the earthly life of Jesus is to know

Christ only "after the flesh." True, the apostle says that "being

reconciled" by Christ's death, "much more being reconciled we shall be

saved by his life." But he here refers plainly to his glorified life.

And Jesus, looking forward to the time when he should have risen from

the dead, says: "Because I live, ye shall live also." Christ on the

throne is really the heart of the church, and every regeneration is a

pulse-beat of that heart in souls begotten from above {101} through the

Holy Spirit. The new birth therefore is not a change of nature as it

is sometimes defined; it is rather the communication of the Divine

nature, and the Holy Spirit is now the Mediator through whom this life

is transmitted. If we take our Lord's words to Nicodemus: "Except a

man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God," and press the

"again" _anôthen_ back to its deepest significance, it becomes very

instructive. "Born _from above_," say some. And very true to fact is

this saying. Regeneration is not our natural life carried up to its

highest point of attainment, but the Divine life brought down to its

lowest point of condescension, even to the heart of fallen man. John,

in speaking of Jesus as the life-giver, calls him "_he that cometh from

above_" (3: 31); and Jesus, in speaking to the degenerate sons of

Abraham, says: "Ye are _from beneath_, I am _from above_" (John 8: 23).

It has been the constant dream and delusion of men that they could rise

to heaven by the development and improvement of their natural life.

Jesus by one stroke of revelation destroys this hope, telling his

hearer that unless he has been begotten of God who is above as truly as

he has been begotten of his father on earth, he cannot see the kingdom

of God.

Others make these words of our Lord signify "born _from the

beginning_." There must be a resumption of life _de novo_, a return to

the original {102} source and fountain of being. To find this it is

not enough that we go back to the creation-beginning revealed in

Genesis; we must return to the precreation-beginning revealed in John,

the book of re-genesis. In the opening of Genesis we find Adam,

created holy, now fallen through temptation, his face averted from God

and leading the whole human race after him into sin and death. In the

opening of the Gospel of John we find the Son of God in holy fellowship

with the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

toward God", _pros ton theon_--not merely proceeding from God, but

tending toward God by eternal communion. Conversion restores man to

this lost attitude: "Ye turned to God, _pros ton theon_, from idols to

serve the living and true God" (1 Thess. 1: 9). Regeneration restores

man to his forfeited life, the unfallen life of the Son of God, the

life which has never wavered from steadfast fellowship with the Father.

"I give unto them eternal life," says Jesus. Is eternal life without

end? Yes; and just as truly without beginning. It is uncreated being

in distinction from all-created being; it is the I-am life of God in

contrast to the I-become life of all human souls. By spiritual birth

we acquire a divine heredity as truly as by natural birth we acquire a

human heredity.

In the condensed antithesis with which our Lord concludes his demand

for the new birth, we have both the philosophy and the justification of

his {103} doctrine: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that

which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you,

Ye must be born anew" (John 3: 7, R. V.). By no process of evolution,

however prolonged, can the natural man be developed into the spiritual

man; by no process of degeneration can the spiritual man deteriorate

into the natural man. These two are from a totally different stock and

origin; the one is from beneath, the other is from above. There is but

one way through which the relation of sonship can be established, and

that is by begetting. That God has created all men does not constitute

them his sons in the evangelical sense of that word. The sonship on

which the New Testament dwells so constantly is based absolutely and

solely on the experience of the new birth, while the doctrine of

universal sonship rests either upon a daring denial or a daring

assumption--the denial of the universal fall of man through sin, or the

assumption of the universal regeneration of man through the Spirit. In

either case the teaching belongs to "another gospel," the recompense of

whose preaching is not a beatitude but an anathema.[1]

The contrast between the two lives and the way {104} in which the

partnership--the _choinônia_--with the new is effected, is told in that

deep saying of Peter: "Whereby he hath granted us his precious and

exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become

partakers--_choinônia_--of the divine nature, having escaped from the

corruption which is in the world by lust" (2 Pet. 1: 4, R. V.). Here

are the two streams of life contrasted:

1. The corruption in the world through lust.

2. The Divine nature which is in the world through the incarnation.

Here is the Adam-life into which we are brought by natural birth; and

over against it the Christ-life into which we are brought by spiritual

birth. From the one we escape, of the other we partake. The source

and issue of the one are briefly summarized: "Lust when it hath

conceived bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth

forth death." The Jordan is a fitting symbol of our natural life,

rising in a lofty elevation and from pure springs, but plunging

steadily down till it pours itself into that Dead Sea from which there

is no outlet: To be taken out of this stream and to be brought into the

life which flows from the heart of God is man's only hope of salvation.

And the method of effecting this transition is plainly stated, "through

these," or by means of the precious and exceeding great promises. As

in grafting, the old and degenerate stock must first be cut off and

then the new inserted, so {105} in regeneration we are separated from

the flesh and incorporated by the Spirit. And what the scion is in

grafting, the word or promise of God is in regeneration. It is the

medium through which the Holy Spirit is conveyed, the germ cell in

which the Divine life is enfolded. Hence the emphasis which is put in

Scripture upon the appropriation of divine truth. We are told that "of

his own will begat he us _with the word of truth_" (James 1: 18).

"Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of

incorruptible, _through the word of God_, which liveth and abideth" (1

Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Very deep and significant, therefore, is the saying of Jesus in respect

to the regenerating power of his words, in the sixth chapter of the

Gospel of John; He emphasizes the contrariety between the two natures,

the human and the divine, saying: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth,

the flesh profiteth nothing." And then he adds: "The words which I

have spoken unto you are spirit and life." As God in creation breathed

into man the breath of life and he became a living soul, so the Lord

Jesus by the word of his mouth, which is the breath of life, recreates

man and makes him alive unto God. And not life only, but likeness as

well, is thus imparted. "So God created man in his own image; in the

image of God created he him," is the simple story of the origin of an

innocent race. Then follows the temptation and the fall, and then the

story of the {106} descent of a ruined humanity: "And Adam begot a son

in his own likeness, after his image."

And yet how wide the gulf between these two origins. The notion is

persistent and incurable in the human heart, that whatever variation

there may have been from the original type, education and training can

reshape the likeness of Adam to the likeness of God. "As the twig is

bent the tree is inclined," says the popular proverb. True; but though

a crooked sapling may be developed into the upright oak, no bending or

manipulation can ever so change the species of the tree as to enable

men to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Here again the

dualism of Jesus Christ's teaching is distinctly recognized. "A good

tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring

forth good fruit." And what is the remedy for a corrupt tree? The

cutting off of the old and the bringing in of a new scion and stock.

The life of God can alone beget the likeness of God; the divine type is

wrapped up in the same germ which holds the Divine nature. Therefore

in regeneration we are said to have "put on the new man who is renewed

in knowledge _after the image of him that created him_" (Col. 3: 10),

and "which _after God_ hath been created in . . . true holiness" (Eph.

4: 24).

In a word, the lost image of God is not restamped upon us, but renewed

within us. Christ our life was "begotten of the Holy Ghost," and he

became {107} the fount and origin of life henceforth for all his

church. This communication of the divine life from Christ to the soul

through the Holy Spirit is a hidden transaction, but so great in its

significance and issues that one has well called it "the greatest of

all miracles." As in the origin of our natural life we are made in

secret and curiously wrought, much more in our spiritual. But the

issue has to do with the farthest eternity. "As when the Lord was born

the world still went on its old way, little conscious that one had come

who should one day change and rule all things, so when the new man is

framed within, the old life for a while goes on much as before; the

daily calling, and the earthly cares, and too often old lusts and

habits also, still engross us; a worldly eye sees little new, while yet

the life which shall live forever has been quickened within and a new

man been formed who shall inherit all."[2]

2. _The Spirit of Holiness: Our Sanctification_. "According to the

Spirit of holiness" Christ "was declared to be the Son of God in power

by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1: 4). How striking the

antithesis between our Lord's two natures, as revealed in this passage,

Son of David as to the flesh, Son of God as to the Spirit. And "as he

is so are we in this world." We who are regenerate have two natures,

the one derived from Adam, the other {108} derived from Christ, and our

sanctification consists in the double process of mortification and

vivification, the deadening and subduing of the old and the quickening

and developing of the new. In other words, what was wrought in Christ

who was "put to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit" is

rewrought in us through the constant operation of the Holy Ghost, and

thus the cross and the resurrection extend their sway over the entire

life of the Christian. Consider these two experiences.

Mortification is not asceticism. It is not a self-inflicted

compunction, but a Christ-inflicted crucifixion. Our Lord was done

with the cross when on Calvary he cried: "It is finished." But where

he ended each disciple must begin: "If any man will come after me let

him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever

will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for

my sake shall find it" (Matt. 16: 24, 25). These words, so constantly

repeated in one form or another by our Lord, make it clear that the

death-principle must be realized within us in order that the

life-principle may have final and triumphant sway. It is to this truth

which every disciple is solemnly committed in his baptism: "Know ye not

that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his

death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, that

like as Christ was raised up from the dead by {109} the glory of the

Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6: 3, 4).

Baptism is the monogram of the Christian; by it every believer is

sealed and certified as a participant in the death and life of Christ;

and the Holy Spirit has been given to be the Executor of the contract

thus made at the symbolic grave of Christ.

In considering the great fact of the believer's death in Christ to sin

and the law, we must not confound what the Scriptures clearly

distinguish. There are three deaths in which we have part:

1. _Death in sin, our natural condition_.

2. _Death for sin, our judicial condition_.

3. _Death to sin, our sanctified condition_.

1. _Death in sin_. "And you . . . who were dead in trespasses and

sins," "And you being dead in your sins" (Eph. 2: 1; Col. 2: 13). This

is the condition in which we are by nature, as participants in the fall

and ruin into which the transgression of our first parents has plunged

the race. It is a condition in which we are under moral insensibility

to the claims of God's holiness and love; and under the sentence of

eternal punishment from the law which we have broken. In this state of

death in sin Christ found the whole world when he came to be our

Saviour.

2. _Death for sin_. "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead

to the law by the body of Christ" (Rom. 7: 4). This is the condition

into {110} which Christ brought us by his sacrifice upon the cross. He

endured the sentence of a violated law on our behalf, and therefore we

are counted as having endured it in him. What he did for us is

reckoned as having been done by us: "Because we thus judge, that one

died for all, therefore all died" (2 Cor. 5: 14, R. V.). Being one

with Christ through faith, we are identified with him on the cross: "I

have been crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2: 20, R. V.). This condition

of death for sin having been effected for us by our Saviour, we are

held legally or judicially free from the penalty of a violated law, if

by our personal faith we will consent to the transaction.

3. _Death to sin_. "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto

sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6: 11, R. V.). This is

the condition of making true in ourselves what is already true for us

in Christ, of rendering practical what is now judicial; in other words,

of being dead to the power of sin in ourselves, as we are already dead

to the penalty of sin through Jesus Christ. As it is written in the

Epistle to the Colossians: "For ye died," judicially in Christ,

"mortify"--make dead practically--"therefore your members which are

upon the earth" (Col. 3: 2, 5, R. V.). It is this condition which the

Holy Spirit is constantly effecting in us if we will have it so. "If

ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body {111} ye shall

live" (Rom. 8: 13). This is not self-deadening, as the Revised Version

seems to suggest by its decapitalizing of the word "Spirit." Self is

not powerful enough to conquer self, the human spirit to get the

victory over the human flesh. That were like a drowning man with his

right hand laying hold on his left hand, only that both may sink

beneath the waves. "Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon," said

the Reformer. It is the Spirit of God overcoming our fleshly nature by

his indwelling life, on whom is our sole dependence. Our principal

care therefore must be to "walk in the Spirit" and "be filled with the

Spirit," and all the rest will come spontaneously and inevitably. As

the ascending sap in the tree crowds off the dead leaves which in spite

of storm and frost cling to the branches all winter long, so does the

Holy Ghost within us, when allowed full sway, subdue and expel the

remnants of our sinful nature.

One cannot fail to see that asceticism is an absolute inversion of the

Divine order, since it seeks life through death instead of finding

death through life. No degree of mortification can ever bring us to

sanctification. We are to "put off the old man with his deeds." But

how? By "putting on the new man who is renewed in knowledge after the

image of him that created him." "For the law of the Spirit of life in

Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:

2), {112} writes Paul. It is a pointed statement of the case which one

makes in describing the transition from the old to the new in his own

experience, from the former life of perpetual defeat to the present

life of victory through Christ. "Once it was a constant breaking off,

now it is a daily bringing in," he says. That is, the former striving

was directed to being rid of the inveterate habits and evil tendencies

of the old nature--its selfishness, its pride, its lust, and its

vanity. Now the effort is to bring in the Spirit, to drink in his

divine presence, to breathe, as a holy atmosphere, his supernatural

life. The indwelling of the Spirit can alone effect the exclusion of

sin. This will appear if we consider what has been called "the

expulsive power of a new affection." "Love not the world, neither the

things that are in the world," says the Scripture. But all experience

proves that loving not is only possible through loving, the worldly

affection being overcome by the heavenly.

And we find this method clearly exhibited in the word. "The love of

the Spirit" (Rom. 15: 30) is given us for overcoming the world. The

divine life is the source of the divine love. Therefore "the love of

God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto

us." Because we are by nature so wholly without heavenly affection,

God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives us his own love with which to

love himself. Herein {113} is the highest credential of discipleship:

"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love

one to another" (John 13: 35). As Christ manifested to the world the

love of the Father, so are we to manifest the love of Christ--a

manifestation, however, which is only possible because of our

possessorship of a common life. As one has truly said concerning our

Saviour's command to his disciples to love one another: "It is a

command which would be utterly idle and futile were it not that he, the

ever-loving One, is willing to put his own love within me. The command

is really no more than to be a branch of the true vine. I am to cease

from my own living and loving, and yield myself to the expression of

Christ's love."

And what is true of the love of Christ is true of the likeness of

Christ. How is the likeness acquired? Through contemplation and

imitation? So some have taught. And it is true, if only the

indwelling Spirit is behind all, beneath all, and effectually operative

in all. As it is written: "But we all with unveiled face, reflecting

as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image

from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3: 18,

R. V.). It is only the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us that can

fashion us to the image of the Lord set before us. Who is sufficient

by external imitation of Christ to become {114} conformed to the

likeness of Christ? Imagine one without genius and devoid of the

artist's training sitting down before Raphael's famous picture of the

Transfiguration and attempting to reproduce it. How crude and

mechanical and lifeless his work would be! But if such a thing were

possible that the spirit of Raphael should enter into the man and

obtain the mastery of his mind and eye and hand, it would be entirely

possible that he should paint this masterpiece; for it would simply be

Raphael reproducing Raphael. And this in a mystery is what is true of

the disciple filled with the Holy Ghost. Christ, who is "the image of

the invisible God," is set before him as his divine pattern, and Christ

by the Spirit dwells within him as a divine life, and Christ is able to

image forth Christ from the interior life to the outward example.

Of course likeness to Christ is but another name for holiness, and

when, at the resurrection, we awake satisfied with his likeness (Ps.

17: 15), we shall be perfected in holiness. This is simply saying that

sanctification is progressive and not, like conversion, instantaneous.

And yet we must admit the force of what a devout and thoughtful writer

says as to the danger of regarding it as _only_ a gradual growth. If a

Christian looks upon himself as "a tree planted by the rivers of water

that bringeth forth his fruit in his season," he judges rightly. But

to conclude therefore that his growth will be as {115} irresistible as

that of the tree, coming as a matter of course simply because he has by

regeneration been planted in Christ, is a grave mistake. The disciple

is required to be consciously and intelligently active in his own

growth, as a tree is not, "to give all diligence to make his calling

and election sure." And when we say "active" we do not mean

self-active merely, for "which of you by being anxious can add one

cubit unto his stature?" asks Jesus (Matt. 6: 27, R. V.). But we must

surrender ourselves to the divine action by living in the Spirit and

praying in the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, all of which

conditions are as essential to our development in holiness, as the rain

and the sunshine are to the growth of the oak. It is possible that

through a neglect and grieving of the Spirit a Christian may be of

smaller stature in his age than he was in his spiritual infancy, his

progress being a retrogression rather than an advance. Therefore in

saying that sanctification is progressive let us beware of concluding

that it is inevitable.

Moreover, as candid inquirers, we must ask what of truth and of error

there may be in the doctrine of "instantaneous sanctification," which

many devout persons teach and profess to have proved. If the

conception is that of a state of sinless perfection into which the

believer has been suddenly lifted and of deliverance from a sinful

nature which has been suddenly eradicated, we must {116} consider this

doctrine as dangerously untrue. But we do consider it possible that

one may experience a great crisis in his spiritual life, in which there

is such a total self-surrender to God and such an infilling of the Holy

Spirit, that he is freed from the bondage of sinful appetites and

habits, and enabled to have constant victory over self, instead of

suffering constant defeat. In saying this, what more do we affirm than

is taught in that scripture: "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not

fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5: 16).

Divine truth as revealed in Scripture seems often to lie between two

extremes. It is emphatically so in regard to this question. What a

paradox it is that side by side in the Epistle of John we should have

the strongest affirmation of the Christian's sinfulness: "If we say

that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us";

and the strongest affirmation of his sinlessness: "Whosoever is born of

God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot

sin because he is born of God" (1 John 1: 8; 3: 9). Now heresy means a

dividing or choosing, and almost all of the gravest errors have arisen

from adopting some extreme statement of Scripture to the rejection of

the other extreme. If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as

a heresy, we regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater

heresy. And we gravely fear that many Christians make the {117}

apostle's words, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves," the

unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It

were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of

sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate

them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness.

Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling

throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.

What then would be a true statement of the doctrine which we are

considering, one which would embrace both extremes of statement as they

appear in the Epistle of John? _Sinful in self, sinless in Christ_--is

our answer: "In him is no sin; whosoever abideth in him sinneth not" (1

John 3: 5, 6). If through the communication of the Holy Spirit the

life of Christ is constantly imparted to us, that life will prevail

within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as incapable of defilement

as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the sun. In

proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the

completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that

there are Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such

absolute surrender, and who through the upholding power of the Spirit

have been so kept in that condition of surrender, that sin has not had

dominion over them. If in them the war between the flesh and the

spirit has not been forever ended, there has {118} been present victory

in which troublesome sins have ceased from their assaults, and "the

peace of God" has ruled in the heart.

But sinning is one thing and a sinful nature is another; and we see no

evidence in Scripture that the latter is ever eradicated completely

while we are in the body. If we could see ourselves with God's eye, we

should doubtless discover sinfulness lying beneath our most joyful

moments of unsinning conduct, and the stain of our old and fallen

nature so discoloring our whitest actions as to convince us that we are

not yet faultless in his presence. Only let us gladly emphasize this

fact, that as we inherit from Adam a nature incapable of sinlessness,

we inherit from Christ a nature incapable of sinfulness. Therefore, it

is written: "Whosoever is born of God cannot sin, for his seed

remaineth in him." It is not the nature of the new nature to sin; it

is not the law of "the law of the Spirit of life" to transgress. For

the new-born man to do evil is to transgress the law of his nature as

before it was to obey it. In a word, before our regeneration we lived

in sin and loved it; since our regeneration we may lapse into sin but

we loathe it.

3. _The Spirit of Glory: Our Transfiguration_. "The Spirit of glory

and of God resteth upon you," writes Peter (1 Peter 4: 14). Let us

recall this apostle's habit of dividing the stages of redemption into

these two, "the sufferings of Christ and the {119} glory that should

follow," in which he seems to conceive of our Lord's mystical body, the

church, as passing through and reproducing the twofold experience of

its Head, in humiliation and in subsequent exaltation. Even in the

time of her humiliation she has the Spirit of glory abiding on her, as

the cloud of glory rested down upon the tabernacle in the wilderness

during all the pilgrimage of the children of Israel. And is not

Peter's saying the same as Paul's, in his picture of the suffering

creation: "But ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the

Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the

adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8: 23). Not yet

have we reached the consummation of our hope, at the "appearing of the

glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2: 13, R. V.);

but the Spirit, through whose inworking power this great change is to

be wrought, already dwells in us, giving us by his present quickening

the pledge and earnest of our final glory. And so we read in another

Scripture: "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead

dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken

your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8: 11).

It is not our dead bodies which are here spoken of as the objects of

the Spirit's quickening, but our mortal bodies--bodies liable to death

and doomed to death if the Lord {120} tarry, but not yet having

experienced death. Hence the quickening referred to has to do rather

with the vivifying of the living saints than the resurrection of the

dead saints.

Of course the consummation of this vivifying is at the Lord's coming,

when those who have died shall be raised, and those who are alive shall

be transfigured; but because of the Spirit of life dwelling in us, who

shall say that the process has not even now begun? To explain: "Behold

I shew you a mystery," says Paul; "we shall not all sleep, but we shall

all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last

trump" (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52). That is, as at Christ's coming the dead

saints will be raised, so the living saints will be translated without

seeing death. A change will come to them, so far as we can understand,

like that which came to Jesus at his resurrection--the body glorified,

all of mortal and earthly belonging to it by nature eliminated in an

instant, and the Holy Ghost so completely transforming and

immortalizing it that it shall become perfectly fashioned to the

likeness of Christ's glorified body. But having the Spirit dwelling in

us we have, even now, the first-fruits of this transformation in the

daily renewing of our inward man, in the helping and healing and

strengthening which sometimes comes to our bodies through the hidden

life of the Holy Ghost. Sanctification is progressive, waiting to be

{121} consummated in the future; so is glorification in some sense

progressive, since by the presence of the Spirit we already have the

earnest of the glory that is to be. As Edward Irving beautifully

states it, condensing his language: "As sickness is sin apparent in the

body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption, and as

disease of every kind is mortality begun, so the quickening of our

mortal bodies by the inward inspiration of the Spirit is the

resurrection forestalled, redemption anticipated, glory begun in our

humiliation."

When is sanctification completed? At death, is the answer which we

find given in some creeds and manuals of theology. This may be true;

but we say it not, because the Scripture saith it not. So far as we

can infer from the word of God the date of our sanctification or

perfection in holiness is definitely fixed at the appearing of the Lord

"a second time without sin unto salvation." Our sanctification, now

going on, is glory begun in us; our glorification then ushered in will

be glory completed in us. The Spirit of glory now working in us brings

forward and already works within us the beginning of the perfect life.

Because we have been made "partakers of the Holy Ghost" we have thereby

"tasted the powers of the age to come" (Heb. 6: 4, 5, R. V.), that age

of complete deliverance from sin and sickness and death. But at most

we have only tasted as yet; we have not {122} drunk fully into the

fountain of immortal life. It is at Christ's advent that this blessed

consummation is fixed: "To the end he may establish your hearts

unblamable in holiness before our God and Father _at the coming of our

Lord Jesus with all his saints_" (1 Thess. 3: 13, R. V.). Not simply

blameless but faultless, seems to be the condition here foretold, since

it is unblamable in the sphere and element of holiness.

And with this agrees another text in the same epistle: "And the God of

peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and

body be preserved entire without blame _at the coming of our Lord Jesus

Christ_" (1 Thess. 5: 23, R. V.). The time appointed for the

consummation of this blameless wholeness is at the Saviour's advent in

glory. And how suggestive the order maintained in naming the threefold

man: "Your spirit, soul, and body." Our sanctification moves from

within outward. It begins with the spirit, which is the holy of

holies; the Spirit of God acting first on the spirit of man in renewing

grace, then upon the soul, till at last it reaches the outer court of

the body, at the resurrection and translation. When the body is

glorified, then only will sanctification be consummated, for then only

will the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, have come under the

Spirit's perfecting power.

We may see the difference between progressive {123} sanctification and

perfected sanctification, or glorification, by comparing familiar

texts. One already has been quoted in this chapter: "We all, beholding

as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image

from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor. 3: 18).

Here are degrees of progress "from glory to glory," and it is a

progress in the glorified life--gradual conformity to the Lord of

glory, through successive stages of glory, effected by the Spirit of

glory. The word-painting of the passage inevitably associates it in

our thought with the great transfiguration experience of our Lord, when

by a kind of rapture he was for a little while taken out of "this

present evil age" (Gal. 1: 4), and translated into "the age to come,"

and made to taste of its powers as "he appeared in glory" (Heb. 6: 5,

R. V.). So says the apostle: "Be not fashioned _according to this

age_, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds" (Rom. 12: 2,

R. V.). That is, by his inward transformation the Holy Spirit is to be

daily repeating in us the Lord's glorification, separating us from the

present age of sin and death and assimilating us to the age to come,

with its resurrection triumph and its perfected restoration to God,

when we shall be presented "faultless before the presence of his glory

with exceeding joy" (Jude 24). This is our step-by-step advancement

into a predestined inheritance; and it must for the present be {124}

step by step. "Of his fullness have all we received," but we can

appropriate that fullness only "grace by grace" (John 1: 16). Of his

righteousness we have all been made partakers, but we only advance in

its possession "from faith to faith" (Rom. 1: 17). Even in passing

through the valley of Baca we can make it a place of springs, going

"from strength to strength" as we appear "before God in Zion" (Ps. 84:

6). Thus our growth in grace is our glory begun; but the progress is

like the artist's slow and patient perfecting of his picture. Turn now

to another statement: "We know that if he shall be manifested we shall

be like him, for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John 3: 2, R. V.).

Whatever difficulty may arise from another translation of this passage,

one thought seems to be taught in the entire connection, viz., that the

unveiled manifestation of God will bring the full perfection of his

saints. Thus Alford sums up the meaning of the passage. As the

believer, having by a knowledge of God been regenerated, "becomes more

and more like God, having his seed in him, so the full and perfect

accomplishment of this knowledge in the actual fruition of God himself

must of necessity bring with it entire likeness to God." In a word, it

seems to us that the sanctification taking place at the manifestation

of our incarnate Lord will be as the instantaneous photograph compared

with the Spirit's slow and patient limning of the {125} image of Christ

in our present state. "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," "we

shall be changed" (1 Cor. 15: 52). Then the glorified body and the

glorified spirit, long divorced by sin, will be remarried. So long as

this twain are separated by death, or are at war in our present earthy

life, our perfection in holiness were impossible.

It is because the resurrection and translation of the saints are

instantaneous that we affirm sanctification to be instantaneous at the

coming of the Lord. The Scripture is always harmonious with itself,

however widely separated the writers of its books by time or distance.

David struck the same joyful note with John, though the learned may

insist that he did not know of the resurrection. "As for me, I shall

behold thy face in righteousness"--the seeing him as he is and being

made fit to see him. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy

likeness"--the conformity to the Divine image at the instant sound of

the resurrection trump. (Ps. 17: 15.) Perhaps we may conjecture

wherein will consist the perfection of the resurrection state. We may

find it in that one saying: "It is raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15:

44). _Now_, how often the body dominates the spirit, making it do what

it would not; but _then_, the spirit will dominate the body, making it

do as it will. In a house divided against itself there can be neither

perfection nor peace. Such is the condition in our present state {126}

of humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us

may be at war with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his

description of certain who separated themselves, saying that they are

"sensual, having not the Spirit" (Jude 19). The soul, the middle

factor in the man, if we may say so, instead of being in alliance with

our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the lower, the flesh,

so that instead of being spiritual we become "earthly, sensual,

devilish" (James 3: 15). The whole man must be presented blameless at

the coming of the Lord before we can enter upon a state of blessed

perfection. Our spirit must not only rule our soul and our body, but

both these must be subject to the Holy Spirit of God. Dimly and

imperfectly do we thus image to ourselves the perfection of our

"spiritual body." Now the body bears the spirit, a slow chariot, whose

wheels are often disabled, and whose swiftest motion is but labored and

tardy. Then the spirit will bear the body, carrying it as on wings of

thought whithersoever it will. The Holy Ghost, by his divine inworking

will, has completed in us the Divine likeness, and perfected over us

the Divine dominion. The human body will now be in sovereign

subjection to the human spirit, and the human spirit to the divine

Spirit, and God will be all and in all.

[1] Milton probably gives the true genesis of this doctrine in these

words, which he puts into the mouth of Satan:

"The son of God I also am or was;

And if I was, I am; relation stands;

All men are sons of God."

[2] Andrew Jukes, "The New Man," p. 53.

{127}

VII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

{128}

"The Holy Ghost from the day of Pentecost has occupied an entirely new

position. The whole administration of the affairs of the Church of

Christ has since that day devolved upon him. . . That day was the

installation of the Holy Spirit as the Administrator of the Church in

all things, which office he is to exercise according to circumstances

at his discretion. It is as vested with such authority that he gives

his name to this dispensation. . . There is but one other great event

to which the Scripture directs us to look, and that is the second

coming of the Lord. Till then we live in the Pentecostal age and under

the rule of the Holy Ghost."--_James Elder Cumming, D. D._

{129}

VII

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SPIRIT

The Holy Spirit, as coming down to fill the place of the ascended

Redeemer, has rightly been called "The Vicar of Jesus Christ." To him

the entire administration of the church has been committed until the

Lord shall return in glory. His oversight extends to the slightest

detail in the ordering of God's house, holding all in subjection to the

will of the Head, and directing all in harmony with the divine plan.

How clearly this comes out in that passage in the twelfth chapter of

First Corinthians. As in striking a series of concentric circles there

is always one fixed center holding each circumference in defined

relation to itself, so here we see all the "diversities of

administrations" determined by the one Administrator, the Holy Ghost.

"Varieties of gifts, but _the same Spirit_"; "diversities of working,

but _the same God_"; different words "according to _the same Spirit_";

"gifts of faith _in the same Spirit_"; "gifts of healing _in the one

Spirit_"; miracles, prophecies, tongues, interpretations, "but all

these worketh the _one and the same Spirit_, dividing to each one

severally as he will." Whether the authority of this one ruling {130}

sovereign Holy Ghost be recognized or ignored determines whether the

church shall be an anarchy or a unity, a synagogue of lawless ones or

the temple of the living God.

Would one desire to find the clue to the great apostasy whose dark

eclipse now covers two-thirds of nominal Christendom, here it is--the

rule and authority of the Holy Spirit ignored in the church; the

servants of the house assuming mastery and encroaching more and more on

the prerogatives of the Head, till at last one man sets himself up as

the administrator of the church, and daringly usurps the name of "The

Vicar of Christ." When the Spirit of the Lord, speaking by Paul, would

picture the mystery of lawlessness and the culmination of apostasy, he

gives us a description which none should misunderstand: "So that he, as

God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2

Thess. 2: 4). What is the temple of God? The church without a

question: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the

Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Cor. 3: 16). Whose prerogative is

it to sit there? The Holy Ghost's, its ruler and administrator, and

his alone.

When Christ, our Paraclete with the Father, entered upon his ministry

on high, we are told more than a score of times that he "sat down at

the right hand of God." Henceforth heaven is his official seat, until

he returns in power and great glory. {131} When he sent down another

Paraclete to abide with us for the age, he took his seat in the church,

the temple of God, there to rule and to administer till the Lord

returns. There is but one "Holy See" upon earth: that is, the seat of

the Holy One in the church, which only the Spirit of God can occupy

without the most daring blasphemy. It becomes all true believers to

look well to that picture of one "sitting in the temple of God," and to

read the lesson which it teaches. We may have no temptation toward the

papacy, which thrusts a man into the seat of the Holy Ghost,[1] or

toward clerisy which obtrudes an order of ecclesiastics--archbishops,

cardinals, and archdeacons into that sacred place; but let us remember

that a democracy may be guilty of the same sin as a hierarchy, in

settling solemn issues by a "show of hands," instead of prayerfully

waiting for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in substituting the voice

of a {132} majority for the voice of the Spirit. Of course, in

speaking thus we concede that the Holy Spirit makes known his will in

the voice of believers, as also in the voice of Scripture. Only there

must be such prayerful sanctifying of the one and such prayerful search

of the other, that in reaching decisions in the church there may be the

same declaration as in the first Christian council: "It seemed good to

the Holy Ghost and to us" (Acts 15: 28).

In some very profound teaching in 2 Cor. 3 we seem to have a hint as to

how we hear the voice of the Lord in guiding the affairs of the church.

There, the administration (_diachonia_) of the Spirit is distinctly

spoken of in contrast with the administration of the law. Its

deliverances are written "not with ink, not in tables of stone, but in

the tables that are the hearts of flesh, with the Spirit of the living

God" (R. V.). There must be a sensitive heart wherein this handwriting

may be inscribed; an unhindering will through which he may act. "Where

the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," it is written in the same

passage; liberty for God to speak and act as he will through us, which

begets loyalty; not liberty for us to act as we will, which begets

lawlessness.

To us there is something exceedingly suggestive in the teaching of the

Lord's post-ascension gospel, the Revelation, on this point. The

epistles to the {133} seven churches we hold, with many of the best

commentators, to be a prophetic setting forth of the successive stages

of the church's history--its declines and its recoveries, its failures

and its repentances, from ascension to advent. And because the bride

of Christ is perpetually betrayed into listening to false teachers and

surrendering to the guidance of evil counsellors, the Lord is

constantly admonishing her to heed the voice of her true Teacher and

Guide, the Holy Ghost. How forcibly this admonition is introduced into

the great Apocalyptic drama! As in the opening of the successive

seals, representing the judgments of God upon apostate Christendom, the

cry is repeated, "Come"! "Come"! "Come"! "Come"! (Rev. 6)--as

though the church under chastisement would repeatedly relearn the

advent prayer which her Lord put into her mouth in the beginning: "Even

so, come, Lord Jesus," so at each stage of the church's backsliding a

voice is heard from heaven saying: "He that hath an ear, let him hear

what the Spirit saith unto the churches." It is the admonition "of him

that hath the seven spirits of God," seven times addressed to his

church throughout her earthly history, calling her to return from her

false guides and misleading teachers, and to listen to the voice of her

true Counsellor.

From this general statement of the administration of the Holy Spirit

let us now descend to the {134} particular acts and offices in which

this authority is exercised.

1. _The Holy Spirit in the ministry and government of the church_. In

speaking to the elders of Ephesus Paul says: "Take heed unto

yourselves, and to all the flock in the which the Holy Ghost hath made

you bishops, to feed the church of God" (Acts 20: 28, R. V.). Clearly

in the beginning bishops or pastors were given by the Spirit of God,

not by the suffrages of the people. The office and its incumbent were

alike by direct divine appointment. We find this distinctly set forth

in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "When he ascended on high, he led

captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. . . And he gave some to be

apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors

and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of

ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4: 8-12,

R. V.). The ascent of the Lord and the descent of the Spirit are here

exhibited in their necessary relation. In the one event Christ took

his seat in heaven as "Head over all things to his church"; in the

other the Holy Ghost came down to begin the work of "building up the

body of Christ." Of course it is the Head who directs the construction

of the body, as being "fitly framed together it groweth into a holy

temple in the Lord"; and it is the Holy Ghost who superintends this

construction since "we are {135} builded together for an habitation of

God in the Spirit." Therefore all the offices through which this work

is to be carried on were appointed by Christ and instituted through the

Spirit whom he sent down. Suppose now that men invent offices which

are not named in the inspired list, and set up in the church an order

of popes and cardinals, archbishops and archdeacons? Is it not a

presumption, the worst fruit of which is not alone that it introduces

confusion into the body of Christ, but that it begets insubordination

to the rule of the Holy Ghost? But suppose, on the other hand, that we

sacredly maintain those offices of the ministry which have been

established for permanent continuance in the church, and yet take it

upon us to fill these according to our own preference and will; is this

any less an affront to the Spirit?

Doubtless the mistakes of God's servants, as given in Scripture are as

truly designed for our instruction and admonition as their obedient

examples. We think we do not err in finding such a recorded warning in

the opening chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. A vacancy had

occurred in the apostolate. Standing up in the upper room, amidst the

hundred and twenty, Peter boldly affirmed that this vacancy must be

filled, and of the men who had companied with them during the Lord's

earthly ministry, "one must be ordained to be a witness with us of his

resurrection." But the {136} disciples had hitherto had no voice in

choosing apostles. The Lord had done this of his own sovereign will:

"Have I not chosen you twelve?" Now he had gone away into heaven, and

his Administrator had not yet arrived to enter upon his office-work.

Surely if the divine order was to be, that having "ascended on high" he

was "to give some apostles," it were better to await the coming of the

Paraclete with his gifts. Not only so, but we are persuaded that, with

Christ departed and the Holy Spirit not yet come, a valid election of

an apostle were impossible. But in spite of this, a nomination was

made; prayer was offered in which the Lord was asked to indicate which

of the candidates he had chosen; and then a vote having been taken,

Matthias was declared elected. Is there any indication that this

choice was ever ratified by the Lord? On the contrary, Matthias passes

into obscurity from this time, his name never again being mentioned.

Some two years subsequent, the Lord calls Saul of Tarsus; he is sealed

with his Spirit, and certified by such evident credentials of the

Divine appointment that he boldly signs himself "Paul, an apostle, _not

of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father_" (Gal.

1: 1).

We believe that the apostolic office has passed away, the qualification

therefor, that of having been a witness of the Lord's resurrection,

being now impossible. But the office of pastor, elder, bishop, or

{137} teacher of the flock still remains. And the divine plan is that

this office should be filled, just as in the beginning, by the

appointment of the Holy Ghost. Nor can we doubt that if there is a

prayerful waiting upon him for guidance, and a sanctified submission to

his will when it is made known, he will now choose pastors and set them

over their appointed flocks just as manifestly as he did in the

beginning. Very beautiful is the picture in Revelation of the

glorified Lord, moving among the candlesticks. There are "seven golden

candlesticks" now, not one only as in the Jewish temple. The Church of

God is manifold, not a unit.[2] He who "walketh in the midst of the

seven golden candlesticks" "holdeth the seven stars in his right hand."

These stars are "the angels of the seven churches"--their ministers or

bishops as generally understood. The Lord holds them in his right

hand. Does he not require us to ask of him alone for their bestowal?

Yes. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send

forth laborers into his harvest" (Luke 10: 2). There is no intimation

in Scripture that we are to apply anywhere but to him for the ministry

of his church. Does he not give {138} such ministry, and he alone?

Yes. "When he ascended on high . . . he gave some . . . pastors and

teachers." And now, speaking to the church in Ephesus, the elders of

which, chosen by the Holy Ghost, Paul had so affectionately exhorted,

he is seen in the attitude of Chief-shepherd and Bishop--giving pastors

with his own hand; placing them with his own right hand, and warning

the church that though they have tried and rejected false apostles,

they have nevertheless left their "first love." Significant word! On

this love our Lord conditioned the indwelling of the Father and of the

Son through the Holy Spirit (John 14: 23). Losing this the peril

becomes imminent that the candlestick may be removed out of its place;

and so the warning is solemnly announced: "He that hath an ear, let him

hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Without the Spirit the

candlestick can shed forth no light, and loses its place of testimony.

Dead churches, whose witness has been silenced, whose place has been

vacated, even though the lifeless form remains, have we not seen such?

And what is the safeguard against them, if not that found in the

apostle's warning: "Quench not the Spirit?" The voice of the Lord must

be heard in his church, and to the Holy Ghost alone has been committed

the prerogative of communicating that voice. Is there any likelihood

that that voice will be heard when the king or prime minister of a

civil {139} government holds the sole function of appointing the

bishops, as in the case of State churches? Is there any certainty of

it when an archbishop or bishop puts pastors over flocks by the action

of his single will? We may congratulate ourselves that we are neither

in a State church nor under an episcopal bishop; but there are methods

of ignoring or repressing the voice of the Holy Ghost, which though

simpler and far less apparent than those just indicated, are no less

violent. The humble and godly membership of the little church may turn

to some pastor, after much prayer and waiting on God for the Spirit's

guidance, and the signs of the divine choice may be clearly manifest;

when some pulpit committee, or some conclave of "leading brethren,"

vetoes their action on the ground, perchance, that the candidate is not

popular and will not draw. Alas! for the little flock so lorded over

that the voice of the Holy Ghost cannot be heard.

And majorities are no more to be depended upon than minorities, if

there is in both cases a neglect of patient and prolonged waiting upon

the Lord to know his will. Of what value is a "show of hands" unless

his are stretched out "who holdeth the seven stars in his right hand?"

Of what use is a _viva voce_ choice, except the living voice of Christ

be heard speaking by his Spirit? One may object that we are holding up

an ideal which is impossible to be realized. It is a difficult ideal

we admit, as {140} the highest attainments are always difficult; but it

is not an impossible one. It is easier to recite our prayers from a

book than to read them from the tables of a prepared heart, where the

finger of the Spirit has silently written them; but the more difficult

way is the more acceptable way to him who seeks for worshipers who

"worship in Spirit and in truth." It is easier to get "the sense of

the meeting" in choosing a pastor than to learn "the mind of the

Spirit" by patient tarrying and humble surrender to God; but the more

laborious way will certainly prove the more profitable way. The

failure to take this way is, we are persuaded, the cause of more decay

and spiritual death in the churches than we have yet imagined. From

the watch-tower where we write we can look out on half a score of

churches on which "Ichabod" has been evidently written, and the glory

of which has long since departed. They were founded in prayer and

consecration, "to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his

Son from heaven." Why has their light been extinguished, though the

lampstand which once bore it still remains, adorned and beautified with

all that the highest art and architecture can suggest? Their history

is known to him who walks among the golden candlesticks. What violence

may have been done, by headstrong self-will, to him who is called "the

Spirit of counsel and might"? What rejection of the truth which he,

"the Spirit {141} of truth," has appointed for the faith of God's

church till at last the word has been spoken: "Ye do always resist the

Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye." Is it only Jewish

worshipers to whom these words apply? Is it only a Jewish temple of

which this sentence is true: "Behold your house is left unto you

desolate"? The Spirit will not be entirely withdrawn from the body of

Christ indeed, but there is the Church, and there are churches. A man

may yet live and breathe when cell after cell has been closed by

congestion till at last he only inhales and exhales with a little

portion of one lung. Let him that readeth understand.

The Spirit is the breath of God in the body of his church. While that

divine body survives and must, multitudes of churches have so shut out

the Spirit from rule and authority and supremacy in the midst of them

that the ascended Lord can only say to them: "Thou hast a name to live

and art dead." In a word, so vital and indispensable is the ministry

of the Spirit, that without it nothing else will avail. Some trust in

creeds, and some in ordinances; some suppose that the church's security

lies in a sound theology, and others locate it in a primitive

simplicity of government and worship; but it lies in none of these,

desirable as they are. The body may be as to its organs perfect and

entire, wanting nothing; but simply because the Spirit has been {142}

withdrawn from it, it has passed from a church into a corpse. As one

has powerfully stated it: "When the Holy Spirit withdraws, . . . he

sometimes allows the forms which he has created to remain. The oil is

exhausted, but the lamp is still there; prayer is offered and the Bible

read; church-going is not given up, and to a certain degree the service

is enjoyed; in a word religious habits are preserved, and like the

corpses found at Pompeii, which were in a perfect state of preservation

and in the very position in which death had surprised them, but which

were reduced to ashes by contact with the air, so the blast of trial,

of temptation, or of final judgment will destroy these spiritual

corpses."[3]

2. _The Holy Spirit in the Worship and Service of the Church_. Is

there anything, from highest to lowest, which we are called to do in

connection with the worship of God's house, of which the Holy Spirit is

not the appointed agent? Believers are the instruments indeed through

which he acts; but they have no function apart from his inspiration and

guidance, any more than the organ-pipe has without the wind, which

breathing through it causes it to resound. To make this clear, we may

consider the several parts of the service of the church as we are

accustomed to participate in it, and observe their relation to the

divine Administrator.

{143}

(1) Preaching is by general consent an important factor of the work of

the ministry, both for the pastor and for the evangelist. In what

consists its inspiration and authority? We "have preached the gospel

unto you _with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven_" (1 Peter 1: 12),

is Peter's simple story of the apostolic method. And the words direct

our thought to the Spirit not as instrumental but as inspiring. "_In

the Holy Ghost_," the words mean literally. The true preacher does not

simply use the Spirit; he is used by the Spirit. He speaks as one

moving in the element and atmosphere of the Holy Ghost, and mastered by

his divine power.

In this fact the sermon differs immeasurably from the speech, and the

preacher from the orator. How distinctly Paul emphasizes this contrast

in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 2: 4). The sole substance of

his preaching he declares to be "Jesus Christ and him crucified," and

the sole inspiration of his preaching, the Holy Ghost: "And my speech

was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of

the Spirit and power." What did good Philip Henry mean by his resolve

"to preach Christ crucified in a crucified style"? More perhaps than

he thought or knew. "He shall testify of me," is Jesus' saying

concerning the promised Paraclete. The Comforter bears witness to the

Crucified. No other theme in the pulpit can be sure of commanding his

co-operation. {144} Philosophy, poetry, art, literature, sociology,

ethics, and history are attractive subjects to many minds, and they who

handle such themes in the pulpit may set them forth with alluring words

of human genius; but there is no certainty that the Holy Ghost will

accompany their presentation with his divine attestation. The

preaching of the Cross, in chastened simplicity of speech, has the

demonstration of the Spirit pledged to it, as no secular, or moral, or

even formal religious discourse has. And when Paul writes to the

Thessalonians: "Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also _in

power and in the Holy Ghost_, and in much assurance" (1 Thess. 1: 5),

we need only to be reminded that "our gospel" meant but one thing to

Paul, the setting forth of Jesus Christ crucified in the midst of the

people, and we have found the secret of evangelical power. Ought it

not therefore to be the supreme question with the preacher, what themes

can assuredly command the witness of the Holy Spirit, rather than what

topics will enlist the attention of the people? Let us set the popular

preacher and the apostolic preacher side by side, and consider whose

reward we would choose, universal admiration or "God also bearing

witness, both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles, and

_gifts of the Holy Ghost_, according to his will" (Heb. 2: 4)--the

sermon greeted with applause and the clapping of hands, or "_the word

received with joy of {145} the Holy Ghost_" (1 Thess. 1:

6)?--admiration of the preacher possessing all who listen to the

discourse, or "_the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word_"

(Acts 10: 44)? Language cannot express the vital moment of the

question which we are here discussing. Our generation is rapidly

losing its grip upon the supernatural; and as a consequence the pulpit

is rapidly dropping to the level of the platform. And this decline is

due, we believe, more than anything else, to an ignoring of the Holy

Spirit as the supreme inspirer of preaching. We wish to see a great

orator in the pulpit, forgetting that the least expounder of the word,

when filled with the Holy Ghost, is greater than he. We want the

gospel, forsooth; but in the strenuous demand that it be set forth

according to the "spirit of the age" we ignore the supremacy of the

"Spirit of God." And the method of discourse soon tells upon the

matter. We cannot very long have the truth in the pulpit after we have

lost "the Spirit of truth" therefrom. "When one possesses not the

whole of life," says Vinet, "he possesses not the whole of truth."

In all that we have said we do not ignore the human element in

preaching, nor undervalue good learning and sanctified mental training,

as a furnishing for this high office. We only emphasize the extreme

peril of making that supreme which God has made subordinate. As it is

genius which raises the great {146} painter or poet far above the

common man, so it is the Holy Spirit which lifts the preacher far above

the man of genius. A gifted artist spoke wisely when one, thinking

only of the implements of his profession, asked, "With what do you mix

your paints?" "With brains, sir," he replied. The preacher who

brought three thousand to believe on a crucified Christ, under a single

sermon, anticipated the question of those who, with an eye upon the

mere human accessories of his sermon, might ask after the secret of his

power; and he unfolds that secret in a single terse sentence: "With the

Holy Ghost sent down from heaven."

(2) Prayer is a most vital element in the worship of God's church.

"Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Jesus

complied literally with this request of his followers. As John, under

the law, could only give rules and rudiments, not yet having come to

the dispensation of grace and of the Spirit, so did Jesus give a form

of prayer, a lesson in the "technique of worship." But only when he

reaches the eve of his passion, when he announces the coming of the

Comforter, does he lead his disciples into the heart and mystery of the

great theme, teaching them to pray as John _could not_ have taught his

disciples. "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name," said Jesus, in

his paschal discourse. But now that he was about to enter into his

mediatorial office at God's right {147} hand, and to send forth the

Comforter into the midst of his disciples, this joyful privilege was to

be accorded to him: "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father _in my name_ he

will give it you"[4] (1 John 16: 23). The words are equivalent to "_in

me_." The thought is not surely that of using the name of Jesus as a

password or as a talisman, but of entering into his person and

appropriating his will; so that when we pray, it shall be as though

Jesus himself stood in God's presence and made intercession. Nor is it

"as though"--it is the literal fact. We become identified with Christ

through the Spirit, now sent down, and his will is wrought within us by

the Holy Ghost, so that to ask what we desire of him is to ask what he

desires for us. We are inwilled by his will, because inspired by his

Spirit, who lives and breathes within us. Therefore we may know that

we are always heard, since we are in him who can boldly say to the

Father: "I know that thou always hearest me." It is Christ's

mediatorship with the Father, and the Holy Ghost's mediatorship with

us, that gives us this high privilege of praying in the name of Jesus,

as it is written: "For through him we both have access _in one Spirit_

unto the Father."

When therefore, under the fuller development of {148} doctrine as found

in the epistles, we read of "praying always with all prayer and

supplication _in the Spirit_" (Eph. 6: 18), and of "praying in the Holy

Ghost" (Jude 20), it is simply an admonition to use our privilege of

asking in the name of Jesus. For to be in the Spirit is to be in

Christ, united to his person, identified with his will, invested with

his righteousness, so that we are as he is before the Father.

In that fullest exposition of the doctrine of the Spirit, given in the

eighth of Romans, we see clearly that the ministry of the Comforter

consists in his effectuating in us that which Christ is accomplishing

for us on the throne. Especially is this true of prayer. In the

Epistle to the Hebrews we read: "Wherefore also he is able to save to

the uttermost them that draw near to God through him, _seeing he ever

liveth to make intercession for them_" (Heb. 7: 25, R. V.). In the

Epistle to the Romans we read: "And in like manner the Spirit also

helpeth our infirmity; for we know not how to pray as we ought, but

_the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us_ with groanings which

cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the

mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints

according to the will of God" (Rom. 8: 26, 27, R. V.). These passages,

read together, clearly show the Spirit doing the same thing _in_ us

which Christ in heaven {149} is doing _for_ us. And, moreover, they

reveal to us the method of the glorified Christ in helping those who

know not what to pray for as they ought, teaching them, not by an

outward form, but by an inward guidance. Indeed, the prayer inspired

by the Holy Spirit is often so deep that it cannot be expressed in

formal words, but reaches the ear of the Father only in unspeakable

yearnings, in unuttered groanings. The keynote of all true

intercession is the will of God. In the disciples' prayer, as taught

them by the Master, this note is distinctly sounded: "Thy will be done

on earth as in heaven." In the Saviour's garden-prayer it is heard

again, as with strong crying and tears the Son of God exclaims: "Not my

will but thine be done"; and in the revelation of the doctrine of

prayer through an inspired apostle we read: "If we ask anything

according to his will he heareth us." It is the Spirit's deepest work

in the believer to attune his mind to this exalted key, as he "maketh

intercession for the saints _according to the will of God_." There is

a promise which all disciples love to quote for their assurance in

prayer: "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that

they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in

heaven" (Matt. 18: 19). The word translated "agree" is a very

suggestive one. It is, _sympsônêsôsin_, from which our word "symphony"

comes. If two shall _accord_ {150} or _symphonize_ in what they ask,

they have the promise of being heard. But, as in tuning an organ all

the notes must be keyed to the standard pitch, else harmony were

impossible, so in prayer. It is not enough that two disciples agree

with each other; they must both accord with a Third--the righteous and

holy Lord--before in the scriptural sense they can agree in

intercession. There may be agreement which is in most sinful conflict

with the divine will: "How is it that ye have agreed together

[_synepsônêthê_, the same word] to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?" asks

Peter (Acts 5: 9). Here is mutual accord, but guilty discord with the

Holy Ghost. On the contrary it is the Spirit's ministry to attune our

wills to the Divine; thus only can there be praying in the Holy Ghost.

We cannot therefore emphasize too strongly the administration of the

Spirit in directing the worship of God's house. The use of liturgical

forms is a relapse into legalism, a consent to be taught to pray as

"John taught his disciples." True, there may be extemporaneous forms

as well as written forms, praying by rote as well as praying by the

book. Against both habits we simply interpose the higher teaching of

the Spirit, as belonging especially to this dispensation, in which the

Father seeketh worshipers who "worship in Spirit and in truth." To

pray rightly is the highest of all attainments. And it is so because

the secret lies {151} between these two opposites; a spirit supremely

active while supremely passive, a heart prevailing with God because

prevailed over by God. "O Lord," says a high saint, "my spirit was

like a harp this morning, making melody before thee, since thou didst

first tune the instrument by the Holy Spirit, and then didst choose the

psalm of praise to be played thereon." Most solemn and suggestive

words these have always seemed: "The Father seeketh such to worship

him." Amid all the repetition of forms and the chanting of liturgies,

how earnestly the Most High searches after the spiritual worshiper,

with a heart inwardly retired before God, with a spirit so sensitive to

the hidden motions of the Holy Ghost that when the lips speak they

shall utter the effectual inwrought prayer that availeth much!

If any shall interpose the objection that what we are saying is too

high to be practical, it may be well to confirm our position by the

witness of experience. We are not speaking of pulpit prayers

especially, in what we have said. The universal priesthood of

believers, which the Scriptures so plainly teach, constitutes the

ground for common intercession, for "the praying one for another" which

is the distinctive feature of the Spirit's dispensation The prayer

meeting, therefore, in which the whole body of believers participate,

probably comes nearer the pattern of primitive Christian {152} worship

than any other service which we hold. To apply our principle here,

then, what method is found most satisfactory? Shall the service be

arranged beforehand, this one selected to pray, and that one to exhort;

and during the progress of the worship, shall such a one be called up

to lead the devotions, and such a one to follow? In a word, shall the

service be mapped out in advance and manipulated according to the

dictates of propriety and fitness as it goes on? One, after many years

of experience, can bear emphatic testimony to the value of another

way--that of magnifying the office of the Holy Spirit as the conductor

of the service, and of so withholding the pressure of human hands in

the assembly that the Spirit shall have the utmost freedom to move this

one to pray and that one to witness, this one to sing and that one "to

say amen at our giving of thanks," according to his own sovereign will.

Here we speak not theoretically but experimentally. The fervor and

spirituality and sweet naturalness of the latter method has been

demonstrated beyond a peradventure, and that too, after an extended

trial of both ways, the first in ignorance of a better way, with

constant labor and worry and fret, and the last with inexpressible ease

and comfort and spiritual refreshment. Honor the Holy Ghost as Master

of assemblies; study much the secret of surrender to him; cultivate a

quick ear for hearing his inward voice and a ready tongue {153} for

speaking his audible witness; be submissive to keep silence when he

forbids as well as to speak when he commands, and we shall learn how

much better is God's way of conducting the worship of his house than

man's way.[5]

(3) The service of song in the house of the Lord is another element of

worship whose relation to the Spirit needs to be strongly emphasized.

Spiritual singing has a divinely appointed place in the church of

Christ. Church music, in the ordinary sense of that phrase, has no

such place, but is a human invention which custom has, with many,

unhappily elevated into an ordinance. We often quote the exhortation

of the apostle: "Be filled with the Spirit," without marking the

practical service with which this fullness stands immediately

connected: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual

songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord" (Eph. 5:

19). As immediately as prayer is connected with the Holy Ghost in this

same epistle: "Praying at all seasons _in the Spirit_"; and our

edification in the church: "Builded {154} together _in the Spirit_"

(Eph. 2: 22, R. V.); and our spiritual energizing: "Strengthened with

power _through his Spirit_" (Eph. 3: 16, R. V.); and our approach to

God, "Access _in one Spirit_ unto the Father" (2: 18, R. V.), so

intimately is the worship of praise here connected with the Holy Ghost

and made dependent on his power. Therefore it would seem too obvious

to need arguing, that an unregenerate person is disqualified from

ministering in the service of song in God's house. Scripturally this

seems incontestable; and as to the teaching of experience, we should

hardly know how to name any custom which has brought a sorer blight

upon the life of the church, or a heavier repression upon its spiritual

energy, than the habit, now so general, of introducing unsanctified,

unconverted, and even notoriously worldly persons into the choirs of

the churches.

Now the teaching of the text just cited is decisive, not only against

such performers in choirs, but against the choirs themselves, if by the

latter term is meant certain ones employed to dispense music for the

delectation of the congregation. For observe how distinctly the mutual

and inter-congregational character of Christian singing is here pointed

out: "Speaking _to one another_ in psalms and hymns and spiritual

songs." The one feature of the worship of the church, which

distinguishes it radically and totally from that of the {155} temple,

is that it is mutual. Under the law there were priests and Levites to

minister and people to be ministered to; under the gospel there is a

universal spiritual priesthood, in which all minister and all are

ministered to. Every act of service belonging to the Christian church

is so described. There must be prayer, and the exhortation is, "Pray

_one for another_" (James 5: 16). There must be confession, and the

injunction is: "Confess your sins _one to another_" (James 5: 16, R.

V.). There must be exhortation, and the command is: "Exhort one

another" (Heb. 3: 13). There must be love, and we are enjoined to

"love _one another_" (1 Peter 1: 22). There must be burden-bearing,

and the exhortation is: "Bear ye _one another's_ burdens" (Gal. 6: 2).

There must be comforting, and the command is: "Wherefore comfort _one

another_" (1 Thess. 4: 18). So with the worship of song. Its

reciprocal character is emphasized, not only in the passage just

quoted, but also in the Epistle to the Colossians: "Teaching and

admonishing _one another_ in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs"

(Col. 3: 16). This is according to the clearly defined method of the

Spirit in this dispensation. He establishes our fellowship with the

Head of the church, and through him with one another. All blessing in

the body is mutual, and the worship which is ordained to maintain and

increase that blessing is likewise mutual.

{156}

As now the Spirit is the inspirer and director of the worship of God's

church, he must have those who have been renewed and are indwelt by

himself as the instruments through whom he acts; and by a teaching of

Scripture too clear to be misunderstood all others are disqualified.

How distinctly is this shown even in the types and symbols of the old

dispensation. The holy anointing enjoined in Exodus for Aaron and his

sons, is confessedly a type of the unction of the Holy Ghost. And mark

the rigid and sacred limitations in its use: "And thou shalt anoint

Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them that they may minister unto me

in the priest's office. And thou shalt speak unto the children of

Israel, saying: This shall be a holy anointing oil unto me throughout

your generation. Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured; neither

shall ye make any other like it, after the composition of it; it is

holy, and shall be holy unto you; whosoever compoundeth any like it, or

whoso putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his

people" (Exod. 30: 30-33).

Now, of these minute directions and prescribed transactions we may say

confidently that "they happened unto them for ensamples and they are

written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world [ages] are

come" (1 Cor. 10: 11). The three rigid prohibitions here named touch

just the errors which are most characteristic of the present {157}

generation. "_Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured_"; honoring the

natural man, and exalting human nature into that place which belongs

only to the regenerate. This is the error of those who believe in the

universal sonship of the race, and call the carnal man divine.

"_Whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger._" This is the sin of

those who thrust into the ministry and service of the church persons

who have never by the new birth through the Spirit been brought into

the family of God, into the household of faith. "_Whosoever

compoundeth any like it._" This is the artificial imitation of the

Spirit's offices and ministration. Let the Christian reader pause and

ponder well this last prohibition. In the story of the primitive

church sample sins are given for our warning, as well as specimen

graces for our emulation. One such sin, so subtle, so dangerous, and

so constantly recurring in Christian history, having taken the name of

its first author and being called "simony," has been handed down from

generation to generation. "Because thou hast thought that the gift of

God can be purchased with money" is the solemn indictment against one

who had purposed to buy the power of the Holy Ghost. Many desire the

gifts of the Spirit who little care for the Spirit himself. Divine

music is greatly coveted. Why not, with our thousands of gold, buy

this spiritual luxury? Bring the singing men and singing women from

the {158} opera and from the concert hall; bid them compound a potion

of sanctuary music, which shall entrance all ears and draw to the

church those who could not be drawn thither by the plain attractions of

the Cross. But what is the exhortation of Scripture? "By him

therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that

is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name" (Heb. 13: 15).

This kind of sacrifice costs--earnest prayer, deep communion, and the

fullness of the Spirit; but no sum of gold, however large, is adequate

for its purchase, nor can any musician's art, however ingenious,

imitate it. Is there no approach to the sin of simony in those

churches which spend thousands yearly in artistic music? And is not

this attempted purchase of the Holy Ghost closely linked with the other

sin of robbing God, considering how this lavish expenditure on

artificial worship is almost always accompanied with meagre giving for

the carrying out of the Great Commission? Our conclusion is, that the

service of song has been committed to the church, and to the church

alone, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some of her number may

be appointed to lead this service, if they themselves are under the

leadership of the Spirit. But the church cannot commit this divine

ministry to unsanctified hireling minstrels, without affront to the

Spirit of God and serious peril to her own communion with God.

{159}

If again any object that we are setting up an exaggerated and

impossible ideal, let the voice of experience be heard in evidence.

Let pastors be called to testify of the added blessing and fervor which

have come to their sanctuaries when this ideal has been approximately

realized. Let history repeat its story of song driven in times of

apostasy into some narrow stall of the church, and into the hands of a

few trained monopolists of worship; and then, in eras of revival, of

the bursting of the barriers and the people of God seizing once more

their defrauded heritage and breaking forth, a great multitude, into

"hallelujahs of the heart." The annals of the Lollards, and of the

Lutherans, and of the Wesleyans, and of the Salvationists bear

harmonious witness on this point, and are deeply instructive.

3. _The Holy Spirit in the Missions of the Church_. In the Gospels

which contain the story of Christ's earthly life we have the record of

the giving of the Great Commission: "Go ye into all the world and

preach the gospel to every creature." In the Acts, which contains the

story of the life of the Spirit, we have the promise of the coming of

the Executor of that Commission: "But ye shall receive power when the

Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses, both in

Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the

earth" (Acts 1: 8, R. V.). Nowhere is the hand {160} of the Spirit

more distinctly seen than in the origination and superintendence of

missions. The field is the world, the sower is the disciple, and the

seed is the word. The world can only be made accessible through the

Spirit--"When he is come he will convict the world of sin"; the sower

is energized only through the Spirit--"Ye shall receive the power of

the Holy Ghost coming upon you"; and the seed is only made productive

through the quickening of the Spirit--"He that soweth unto the Spirit

shall of the Spirit reap eternal life" (Gal. 6: 8, R. V.). In the

simple story of the primitive mission, as recorded in the thirteenth of

Acts, we see how every step in the enterprise was originated and

directed by the presiding Spirit. We observe this:

(1) In the selection of missionaries: "_The Holy Ghost_ said, Separate

me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (13: 2).

(2) In their thrusting forth into the field: "So they, being sent forth

by the _Holy Ghost_, departed unto Seleucia" (13: 4).

(3) In empowering them to speak: "Then Saul, who also is called Paul,

filled with the _Holy Ghost_, said" (13: 9).

(4) In sustaining them in persecution: "And the disciples were filled

with joy and with the _Holy Ghost_" (13: 52).

(5) In setting the Divine seal upon their {161} ministry among the

Gentiles: "And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving

_them the Holy Ghost_, even as he did unto us" (15: 8).

(6) In counseling in difficult questions of missionary policy: "It

seemed good _to the Holy Ghost_ and to us" (15: 28).

(7) In restraining the missionaries from entering into fields not yet

appointed by the Lord: They "were forbidden of the _Holy Ghost_ to

preach the gospel in Asia. . . They assayed to go into Bithynia but

_the Spirit suffered them not_" (16: 6, 7).

Very striking is this record of the ever-present, unfailing, and minute

direction of the Holy Ghost in all the steps of this divine enterprise.

"But this was in apostolic days," it will be said. Yes; but the

promise of the Spirit is that "He shall abide with you for the age."

Unless the age has ended he is still here, and still in office, and

still entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out that work which

is dearest to the heart of our glorified Lord. Who can say that there

is not need in these days of a return to primitive methods and of a

resumption of the Church's primitive endowments? The Holy Spirit is

not straitened in himself, but only in us. If the Church had faith to

lean less on human wisdom, to trust less in prudential methods, to

administer less by mechanical {162} rules, and to recognize once more

the great fact that, having committed to her a supernatural work, she

has appointed for her a supernatural power, who can doubt that the

grinding and groaning of our cumbrous missionary machinery would be

vastly lessened, and the demonstration of the Spirit be far more

apparent?

[1] Of course Catholic writers claim that the pope is the "Vicar of

Christ" only as being the mouth-piece of the Holy Ghost. But the

Spirit has been given to the church as a whole, that is to the body of

regenerated believers, and to every member of that body according to

his measure. The sin of sacerdotalism is, that it arrogates for a

usurping few that which belongs to every member of Christ's mystical

body. It is a suggestive fact that the name _klêros_, which Peter

gives to the church as the "flock of God," when warning the elders

against being _lords over God's heritage_, now appears in

ecclesiastical usage as the _clergy_, with its orders of pontiff and

prelates and lord bishops, whose appointed function it is to exercise

lordship over Christ's flock.

[2] By the candlesticks being seven instead of one, as in the

tabernacle, we are taught that whereas in the Jewish dispensation,

God's visible church was one, in the Gentile dispensation there are

many visible churches; and that Christ himself recognizes them

alike.--_Canon Garratt, "Commentary on the Revelation," p. 32._

[3] "The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man," by Pastor G. F. Tophel, p. 66.

[4] It was impossible up to the time of the glorification of Jesus to

pray to the Father in his name. It is a fullness of joy peculiar to

the dispensation of the Spirit to be able to do so.--_Alford_.

[5] It were well for us to give more heed to the voice of Christian

history as related to such questions as these. The rise of "sporadic

sects" like the "Quietists," the "Mystics," the "Friends," and the

"Brethren," with their emphasis on "the still voice" and "the inward

leading," is very suggestive. If we may not go so far as some of these

go in the insistence on speaking only as sensibly moved by the Spirit

we may be admonished of the hard, artificial man-made worship which

made their protest necessary.

{163}

VIII

THE INSPIRATION OF THE SPIRIT

{164}

"Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that

wonderful organist, who with such enchantment draws the tears from the

traveler's eyes while he touches, one after another, his wonderful

keys, and makes you hear by turns the march of armies upon the beach,

or the chanted prayer upon the lake during the tempest, or the voices

of praise after it is calm? Well, thus the Eternal God, embracing at a

glance the key-board of sixty centuries, touches by turns, with the

fingers of his Spirit, the keys which he had chosen for the unity of

his celestial hymn. He lays his left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from

Adam, and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of

Patmos. From the one the strain is heard: 'Behold the Lord cometh with

ten thousand of his saints'; from the other: 'Behold he cometh with

clouds.' And between the notes of this hymn of three thousand years

there is eternal harmony, and the angels stoop to listen, the elect of

God are moved, and eternal life descends into men's souls."--_Gaussen's

Theopneustia_.

{165}

VIII

THE INSPIRATION OP THE SPIRIT

Inspiration signifies inbreathing. Both the scribe and the Scripture,

both the man of God and the word of God were divinely inbreathed. In

that memorable meeting of the risen Lord and his disciples within the

closed doors, we read that "_He breathed on them_ and saith unto them,

Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are

forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained"

(John 20: 22, R. V.). Well may the question of the scribes concerning

Jesus now arise in our hearts concerning his disciples: "Who can

forgive sins but God only?" And the answer should be: "True; God alone

can forgive sins. And it is only because the Spirit of God, who is

God, is in the apostles, endowing them with his divine prerogatives,

that they are able to exercise this high authority."

We are persuaded, however, that this commission was not given to all

Christians, though all have the Spirit. In a note in Olshausen's

Commentary the matter seems to be correctly stated: "To the apostles

was granted the power, absolute and unconditioned, of binding and

loosing, just as to them was {166} given the power of publishing truth

unmixed with error. For _both_ they possessed miraculous spiritual

endowments." Only we should say "sovereign" rather than "miraculous"

endowments. "_The Spirit breatheth where he wills_, and thou hearest

his voice," said Jesus.[1] While miraculous gifts were not confined to

the apostles, Christ may have committed to these, and to these alone,

the sovereign prerogative of forgiving sins; gifts of healing, on the

other hand, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of

spirits, and tongues, being distributed throughout the church; "but all

these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally

even _as he will_" (1 Cor. 12: 11, R. V.). In a word, the action of

the Holy Ghost was supremely sovereign in the assignment of spiritual

offices, and when Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost, and

gave them authority {167} to remit sins, he separated them unto a

prerogative of which others, indwelt by the same Spirit, might have

known nothing. It is very generally held that the order of apostles

ceased with the death of those who had seen the Lord and companied with

him until the day that he was received up. But the reason for this

cessation has been too little considered. May we not believe that the

apostles and their companions were commissioned to speak for the Lord

until the New Testament Scriptures, his authoritative voice, should be

completed? If so, in the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration;

in the gospel a stereotyped inspiration; the first being endowed with

authority _ad interim_ to remit sins, and the second having this

authority _in perpetuam_. The New Testament, as the very mouthpiece of

the Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation who truly

repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with

the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively.

But when it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility

for teaching and absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has

descended through a succession of ministers called the clergy, the

answer seems to be, that this authority has not been perpetuated in any

body of men apart from the Scriptures, but was transferred to the New

Testament and lodged there for all time. Historically, at least, it

seems to have been {168} the fact, that as the apostles and prophets of

the new dispensation disappeared, the Gospels and Epistles took their

place, and that henceforth the divine authoritative voice of the Spirit

could be distinctly recognized only in the written word. As coal has

been called "fossil sunlight," so the New Testament may be called

fossil inspiration, the supernatural illumination which fell upon the

apostles being herein stored up for the use of the church throughout

the ages.[2]

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God

[_theopneustos_--God-breathed], and is profitable for doctrine, for

reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (3 Tim. 3:

16). As the Lord breathed the Spirit into certain men, and thereby

committed to them his own prerogative of forgiving sin, so he breathed

his Spirit into certain books and endowed them with his infallibility

in teaching truth. God did not choose to inspire all good books,

though he has chosen to

{169} inbreathe one book, thereby separating it and setting it apart

from all other books.[3] The phrase, "the Bible is simply literature,"

which some are using to-day, as a suggestion against bibliolatry, is

not true. Literature is the letter; Scripture is the letter inspired

by the Spirit. What Jesus said in justification of his doctrine of the

new birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration: "That

which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the

Spirit is spirit." Educate, develop, and refine the natural man to the

highest possible point, and yet he is not a spiritual man till, through

the new birth, the Holy Ghost renews and indwells him. So of

literature; however elevated its tone, however lofty its thought, it is

not Scripture. Scripture is literature indwelt by the Spirit of God.

The absence of the Holy Ghost from any writing constitutes the

impassable gulf between it and Scripture. Our Lord, in speaking of his

own doctrine, uses the same language, to show its separateness from

common teaching which he employs above to mark the distinction of the

new man. He says: "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh

profiteth nothing; _the words that I have spoken unto {170} you are

spirit and are life_" (John 6: 63, R. V.). Words they were, and in

that respect, literature; but words divinely inbreathed and therefore

Scripture. In fine, the one fact which makes the word of God a unique

book, standing apart in solitary separateness from all other writings,

is that which also parts off the man of God from common men--the

indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we may say truly of the Bible,

not merely that it _was_ inspired, but it _is_ inspired; that the Holy

Ghost breathes within it, making it not only authoritative in its

doctrine but life-giving in its substance, so that they who receive its

promises by faith "have been begotten again, not of corruptible seed,

but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth"

(1 Peter 1: 23, R. V.).

Thus far in this volume we have been dwelling upon the various works

and offices of the Paraclete. Now we come to consider that the Holy

Spirit not only acts but speaks. Let us listen to the repeated

affirmations of this fact. Seven times our glorified Lord says,

speaking in the Apocalypse: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what

_the Spirit saith unto_ the churches" (Rev. 2: 7). The Paraclete on

earth answers to the Paraclete above, so that to the voice from Heaven

saying: "Write, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from

henceforth," the response is heard: "_Yea, saith the Spirit_, that they

may rest from their labors," etc. (Rev. 14: 13). {171} This accords

with the general tenor of Scripture as to its own Author. In referring

to the Old Testament, Peter says: "This Scripture must needs have been

fulfilled, _which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before_

concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus" (Acts 1:

16). And again: "David himself _said by the Holy Ghost_" (Mark 12:

36), our Lord thus plainly recognizing the voice of the Spirit in the

voice of the psalmist. So again: "_The Spirit of the Lord spake by

me_, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock

of Israel spake to me" (2 Sam. 23: 2, 3), and "Wherefore as _the Holy

Ghost saith_, To-day if ye will hear his voice" (Heb. 3: 7).

And what is it to speak? Is it not to express thought in language?

The difference between thinking and saying is simply the difference of

words. Therefore, if the Holy Ghost "_saith_," we are to find in the

_words_ of Scripture the exact substance of what he saith. Hence

verbal inspiration seems absolutely essential for conveying to us the

exact thought of God. And while many affect to ridicule the idea as

mechanical and paltry, the conduct and method of scholars of every

shade of belief show how generally it is accepted. For, why the minute

study of the _words_ of Scripture carried on by all expositors, their

search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention

to the {172} minutest details of language, and to all the delicate

coloring of mood and tense and accent? The high scholars who speak

lightly of the theory of literal inspiration of the Scriptures by their

method of study and exegesis are they who put the strongest affirmation

on the doctrine which they deny. Then we cannot forget what we imply

when we say that language is the expression of thought. Words

determine the size and shape of ideas. As exactly as the coin answers

to the die in which it is struck, does the thought answer to the word

by which it is uttered. Vary the language by the slightest

modification, and you by so much vary the thought.

As ultra spiritualism interprets Paul's words "_a spiritual body_," to

mean a ghost, when the accent is as strongly on the _sõma_ as on the

_pneumatichon_, his real thought evidently being that of a _body

spiritualized_; so some, remembering that "the letter killeth," would

etherealize Scripture by telling us that the divine idea is the chief

thing, and the language quite secondary. But wisely and well has

Martin Luther reminded us that "Christ did not say of his Spirit, but

of his _words_, they are spirit and life."

To deny that it is the Holy Ghost who speaks in Scripture, is an

intelligible position; but admitting that _he speaks_, we can only

understand his thoughts by listening to his words. True, he may beget

within us emotions too deep for expression, as when {173} "The Spirit

himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be

uttered" (Rom. 8: 26). But the idea which is really intelligible is

the idea that is embodied in speech. For finite minds, at least, words

are the measure of comprehensible thoughts. Evidently Jesus claims for

his teaching not only inspiration, but verbal inspiration, when he says

that his _words_ are "spirit and life." And to this agrees the saying

of Paul, in speaking of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost: "But God

hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all

things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things

of man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of

God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not

the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might

know the things which are freely given to us of God, which things also

we speak, _not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the

Holy Ghost teacheth_, comparing spiritual things with spiritual" (1

Cor. 2: 10-13).

And what if one objects that this theory makes inspiration purely

mechanical, and turns the writers of Scripture into stenographers,

whose office is simply to transcribe the words of the Spirit as they

are dictated? It must be confessed that there is much in Scripture to

support this view of the case. Should we see a student who, having

taken down {174} the lecture of a profound philosopher, was now

studying diligently to comprehend the sense of the discourse which he

had written, we should understand simply that he was a pupil and not a

master; that he had nothing to do with originating either the thoughts

or the words of the lecture, but was rather a disciple whose province

it was to understand what he had transcribed, and so be able to

communicate it to others. And who can deny that this is the exact

picture of what we have in the following passage from Scripture: "Of

which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who

prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, _searching what, or

what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify,

when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory

that should follow_; unto whom it was revealed," etc. (1 Peter 1: 10,

11). Here were inspired writers, studying the meaning of what they

themselves had written. If they were prophets on the manward side,

they were evidently pupils on the Godward side. With all possible

allowance for the human peculiarities of the writers, they must have

been reporters of what they heard, rather than the formulators of that

which they had been made to understand. How nearly this also describes

the attitude of Christ,--a hearer that he might be a teacher: "All

things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you" (John

15: 15); {175} a reporter that he might be a revealer: "I have given

unto them _the words_ which thou gavest me" (John 17: 8).

In these days scholars are very jealous for the human element in

inspiration; but the sovereign element is what most impresses the

diligent student of this subject. "The Spirit breatheth where he

wills." Concerning regeneration by the Holy Ghost, we are carefully

told that it is "not of the will of the flesh, nor _of the will of

man_, but of God"; and concerning inspiration by the Spirit, the

teaching is equally explicit: "For no prophecy ever came _by the will

of man_, but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost" (2

Peter 1: 21, R. V.).

The style of Scripture is, no doubt, according to the traits and

idiosyncracies of the several writers, as the light within the

cathedral takes on its various hues from passing through the stained

windows; but to say that the thoughts of the Bible are from the Spirit,

and the language from men, creates a dualism in revelation not easy to

justify; so that we must quote with entire approval the words of an

eminent writer upon this subject: "The opinion that the subject-matter

alone of the Bible proceeded from the Holy Spirit, while its language

was left to the unaided choice of the various writers, amounts to that

fantastic notion which is the grand fallacy of many theories of

inspiration; namely, that two spiritual agencies were in operation, one

of which {176} produced the phraseology in the outward form, while the

other created within the soul the conceptions and thoughts of which

such phraseology was the expression. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary,

as the productive _principle_, embraces the entire activity of those

whom he inspires, rendering their language the _word of God_."[4]