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THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 Edited by JOHN H. KERR, D. D. 
 
 THE TEACHING OF JESUS 
 
 CONCERNING 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 Louis Burton Crane, A. M, 
 
THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
 
 CONCERNING 
 
 HIS OWN MISSION. Frank H. Foster. Ready. 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH. 
 Geerhardus Vos. Ready. 
 GOD THE FATHER 
 
 Archibald Thomas Robertson. " 
 
 THE SCRIPTURES. David James Burrell. 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT. Louis B. Crane 
 CHRISTIAN CONDUCT. Andrew C. Zenos " 
 
 HIS OWN PERSON In preparation. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 THE FUTURE LIFE 
 
 THE FAMILY 
 
 A Series of volumes on the " Teachings of Jesus " 
 by eminent writers and divines. 
 
 Cloth bound. i2mo. Price 75 cts. each postpaid. 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
THE TEACHING OF JESUS 
 
 CONCERNING 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 By 
 Louis Burton Crane, A. M. 
 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
 
 1 150 NASSAU STREET 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 cl A ° 
 

 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 DEC 5 1905 
 
 Copyright Entry 
 CLASS cX. XXc. No, 
 
 / 3 / 3 7 6~ 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright, 1905, by 
 AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
 
TO MY MOTHER 
 
PREFACE 
 
 rHE application of the results of 
 the study of psychology to the 
 Biblical writings has opened up 
 a most interesting field for the student of 
 religion. It is profitable to consider the 
 origin and growth of religious sanctions 
 from the point of view of the individuals 
 who cherished them, and to mark the 
 order in which the various impressions 
 which in their sum constitute author- 
 ity came to their own in the human heart. 
 I can but think, however, that only a 
 partial view is gained when the great fact 
 of revelation is disregarded in these at- 
 tempts. It is one thing to ask how, God 
 and His message assumed, men regarded 
 
 vii 
 
viii Preface 
 
 Him, how much they comprehended 
 of His will and how they conceived 
 themselves to be doing His will as spoken ; 
 and quite another thing to assume that 
 all the efforts of men to feel after God if 
 haply they may find Him are on the same 
 plane with the instructed beliefs of those 
 who were within the sphere of revealed 
 truth. It may be admitted without ques- 
 tion that revelation was at first partial, 
 and that it was from the first progressive. 
 But unless all real authority is to be de- 
 nied to the religion which issued in 
 Christianity the first fact to be recognized 
 in the study of Bible doctrine is God. 
 
 Consequently we are not considering 
 in this brief study the psychology of the 
 Holy Spirit or of His influence upon 
 men. It is no especial concern of ours, 
 for our present purpose, how men con- 
 ceived of Him who were outside the 
 circle wherein He caused His name to 
 be known. Did the primitive seeker 
 after God derive the idea of the Spirit of 
 
Preface ix 
 
 God from his own spirit, thus reasoning 
 from the less to the greater ? Or did he 
 argue from the name " spirit " which in 
 both Hebrew and Greek languages means 
 also " wind, " that God was therefore like 
 the wind " unsearchable in origin " and 
 " immaterial in essence " ? These are 
 interesting questions to the student of 
 the origin of religion but they are not the 
 immediate concern of Biblical Theology. 
 Did men at first generally ascribe all that 
 was unusual and surprising in their ex- 
 perience to the Spirit of God ? Perhaps 
 so, where they were without definite 
 knowledge of Him. But the Old Testa- 
 ment describes how God chose out of 
 the world certain individuals and after- 
 ward a people to whom to make Him- 
 self known and we cannot therefore 
 attribute to them such ignorant and su- 
 perstitious conceptions. 
 
 If we desire to know what was the 
 origin of the notions of power and mys- 
 tery which were from the first attached 
 
x Preface 
 
 to the term " Spirit of God " we shall 
 probably not go astray in deriving them, 
 not from the idea of "spirit " but from 
 the descriptive phrase "of God." God 
 had revealed Himself as powerful and 
 awe-inspiring. Hence His Spirit must 
 naturally be above the limitations of the 
 finite. Our task, however, is to discover, 
 on the basis of a belief in an authoritative 
 revelation, what was actually revealed. 
 Of course we must not neglect the ele- 
 ment of progress. We dare not attribute 
 Paul's conception of the truth to Moses 
 nor need we expect to find even in Isaiah 
 the teachings of Jesus. That we do find 
 some of the later doctrines anticipated in 
 the earlier writings is for us a proof of 
 the unity of revelation. 
 
 What did Jesus teach concerning the 
 Holy Spirit ? We find the phrase upon 
 His lips early in His ministry. He feels 
 no necessity for its definition. He con- 
 sequently uses the term conscious that it 
 had already a definite connotation, and 
 
Preface xi 
 
 without express correction of any previous 
 erroneous teaching. We must therefore 
 begin with the Old Testament in order 
 to discover what is there taught about 
 the Spirit of God. Jesus uses the phrase 
 or its equivalents at intervals throughout 
 His teaching activity, according to the 
 record of all four evangelists. We as- 
 sume as not needing justification in this 
 place that all four are equally authorita- 
 tive as witnesses to what He said, and 
 that they present a trustworthy record of 
 His teachings. It is hardly necessary to 
 state that it is the apostles to whom we 
 must go for the mature truth about the 
 Holy Spirit. Jesus taught in full view 
 of the fact that He was entrusting the 
 development of His teaching to those 
 men whom He had chosen, whose writ- 
 ings with their records of the Master's 
 words and deeds make up our New 
 Testament. It is in the epistles, particu- 
 larly of Paul, that we find the ripe, com- 
 pleted doctrine. The historical reason 
 
xii Preface 
 
 for this fact we will try to unfold in the 
 course of our treatment. 
 
 This study is offered to Christians with 
 the prayer that the Spirit of the Truth 
 with whom it is concerned may make ef- 
 fective whatever in it is His work, and 
 overrule for the truth's sake whatever is 
 inspired by the spirit of error. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Spirit of God in the Old 
 
 Testament i 
 
 II. The Distribution of the Teach- 
 ing 24 
 
 III. The Equipment of the Messiah . 35 
 
 IV. The Spirit and the Kingdom . 42 
 V. The Sin against the Holy Spirit. 53 
 
 VI. The Father's Chief Gift ... 62 
 VII. The Promise of the Paraclete : 
 
 His Mission to the Twelve . 70 
 VIII. The Promise of the Paraclete : 
 
 The Christian Life . . . .102 
 IX. The Promise of the Paraclete : 
 
 The Conviction of the World. 120 
 X. The Promise of the Paraclete : 
 His Relation to the Father 
 
 and to the son i30 
 
 XI. The Great Commission .... 143 
 
 XII. Summary 152 
 
 XIII. Indices . . . , 159 
 
 xiii 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 The Spirit of God in the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 rHE allusions in the Old Testa- 
 ment to the Spirit of God fall natu- 
 rally into three classes : First, 
 those which refer to the Spirit's activity 
 in creation ; second, those which indicate 
 the relation of the Spirit to the redemp- 
 tive purpose of God ; and third, those 
 which express the superintendence of the 
 Spirit over the spiritual lives of individ- 
 uals. 
 
 The Spirit and the Cosmos 
 
 The Spirit is first revealed in the Old 
 
2 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Testament as the power of God work- 
 ing in creation. In Gen. i. 2 it was the 
 Spirit of God that moved upon the face 
 of the waters. The word by which this 
 activity is described is an interesting one. 
 It is found also in Deut. xxxii. 11, where 
 it refers to the brooding of the mother 
 bird over her young. So here we may 
 understand that this action of the Spirit 
 of God is not only that of protecting 
 but that it produced results in the order 
 and life of the Cosmos. God works in 
 creation, according to the writer of 
 Genesis, by the agency of His Spirit. 
 Not only the inanimate and the brute 
 creation but man himself must look to 
 the Spirit as the source of being. We 
 read that God breathed into man's 
 nostrils the breath or the Spirit of life 
 and he became a living soul (Gen. ii. 7). 
 This creative energy of the Spirit is the 
 general belief of the Old Testament 
 writers. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, 
 they are created " ; referring to the brute 
 
In the Old Testament 3 
 
 creation (Ps. civ. 30). " By his Spirit the 
 heavens are garnished " (Job xxvi. 13). 
 " The Spirit of God hath made me and 
 the breath of the Almighty giveth me 
 life " (Job xxxiii. 4). 
 
 The truth seems to be that God works 
 by His Spirit in the creation and preser- 
 vation of His world. There is no dis- 
 tinction in person between God and His 
 Spirit such as one familiar with the New 
 Testament would expect. The Spirit of 
 God in the Old Testament is rather God 
 at work. God worked in the creation 
 of the world and in establishing its order. 
 God works since creation in the continual 
 preserving of the order and harmony of 
 His creation, in maintaining its life and 
 in providing for the sustenance of His 
 creatures. All this He does by His Spirit. 
 
 The Spirit in the Theocracy 
 
 A second and much more frequent 
 employment of the phrase " Spirit of 
 God " in the Old Testament is in relation 
 
4 The Holy Spirit 
 
 to the purpose of God to make for Him- 
 self a people. Many of the uses of the 
 term which seem otherwise difficult to 
 explain become on this view plain enough. 
 Why should it be said of Gideon and of 
 Samson and of Saul that the Spirit of God 
 came upon them, causing them, un- 
 worthy instruments perhaps, to triumph 
 in battle, to display surprising feats of 
 strength before the Philistines, to proph- 
 esy with the prophets ? (Judges vi. 34 ; 
 xiii. 25 ; I Sam. x. 6). Simply because 
 these men were in the theocratic line, 
 being the agents of God in the establish- 
 ment of His great redemptive purposes. 
 The lesson that they teach is not that 
 God in the Old Testament record is in- 
 different to personal character, but that 
 He can and does use even wicked and care- 
 less men as the agents of His theocratic 
 kingdom, to accomplish His almighty 
 will. So then in the historical develop- 
 ment of the redemptive purpose of God 
 the Spirit of God was the agent. He 
 
In the Old Testament 5 
 
 was known even by Pharaoh to have 
 possessed Joseph in Egypt (Gen. xli. 
 38). He was characteristic of Moses 
 during the days of his leadership of the 
 people, and He inspired the seventy men 
 who assisted Moses in administering the 
 laws to the people (Num. xi. 17, 25-30). 
 The Spirit came upon Bezalel to en- 
 dow him with wisdom and understand- 
 ing and knowledge, and skill in all 
 manner of workmanship ; to work in 
 metal and stone and wood for the taber- 
 nacle, the cradle of worship for the infant 
 people of God (Ex. xxxi. 3). Whether 
 we are to regard this endowment as a 
 special and new thing, so as to make 
 Bezalel able for kinds of work of which 
 he knew nothing before, as some hold, or 
 whether it simply acted so as to enhance 
 his own natural powers, as others believe, 
 we are not told. Nor is it of much mo- 
 ment. The point is that Bezalel's fit- 
 ness for this special service for the the- 
 ocracy was due to God acting by His Spirit 
 
6 The Holy Spirit 
 
 upon him. The lesson to be impressed 
 upon Israel through all the history was 
 that the nation was what it was because 
 God had by His own grace chosen to 
 call a people to Himself, and give them 
 laws and provide them a home. The 
 tabernacle was God's thought not Is- 
 rael's. His Spirit used men to make it 
 but it was His gift for their communion 
 with Him which was their highest good. 
 
 The Inspiration of the Prophets 
 
 The guidance of the events which made 
 history in the days of the old covenant, 
 we are taught on every page of the Old 
 Testament as well as in the New Testa- 
 ment, was due to God. That guidance 
 was made concrete in the persons of an 
 especial order of men called prophets. 
 The prophet might be a fore-teller, 
 but according to Old Testament belief he 
 was preeminently a for-teller. He might 
 and often did predict the future in the 
 course of his prophetic work. But to 
 
In the Old Testament 7 
 
 be a prophet was to be the spokesman 
 of God, to be God's representative on 
 the earth, to declare His will. He knew 
 God's thought — in part. He was in di- 
 rect communion with Him — at times at 
 least. To obey him was to obey God ; 
 to reject him was to reject God. 
 
 Now the prophets were regarded as 
 the peculiar recipients of the Spirit of 
 God. Our word inspiration is our record 
 of the strength of the impression gained 
 from the Bible that the prophets were 
 breathed into by the Holy Spirit and that 
 what they said they said under the im- 
 pulse of God. This was not only the 
 case with the prophets who lived and 
 worked before the time from which we 
 have written prophecy. It is no less true 
 of those who have left us the records of 
 their activity. We may say then that 
 the oral and written guidance of Israel 
 during all the time of their national life 
 was directly due to the Spirit of God. 
 It may not yet be perfectly clear to us 
 
8 The Holy Spirit 
 
 just what effect the influx or efflux of the 
 Spirit had upon a man selected to be a 
 prophet. What hints Scripture gives us 
 are evidently not given for the purpose 
 of satisfying our curiosity. They are 
 meant to conserve the facts, not to add 
 to the data for abnormal psychology. 
 Yet we may believe that these men, 
 faulty men of their time, were so acted 
 upon by the Spirit of God as to make 
 them different, as to make them the 
 mediators of truth which had it been 
 heeded would have caused a new history 
 of Israel to be enacted. 
 
 The Spirit and the Messianic Age 
 
 But these men not only sounded forth 
 a futile warning to Israel under the in- 
 fluence of the Spirit of God. They tes- 
 tified of a new era coming to Israel and 
 to the world. They were the heralds of 
 a new day which should succeed the 
 night of national apostasy. A personal 
 Messiah was to appear. A Messianic 
 
In the Old Testament 9 
 
 age was to dawn when a king should 
 rule in righteousness. And from the 
 beginning that new day was associated 
 in a very peculiar manner with the Spirit 
 of God. Isaiah (xxxii. 15) connects the 
 time of the regeneration of Israel, when 
 the wilderness should become a fruitful 
 field, with the outpouring of the Spirit 
 of God as from on high. " Then justice 
 shall dwell in the wilderness ; and right- 
 eousness shall abide in the fruitful field. 
 And the work of righteousness shall be 
 peace ; and the effect of righteousness, 
 quietness and confidence forever" (xxxii. 
 16, 17). Again, " Fear not, O Jacob my 
 servant ; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I 
 have chosen. For I will pour water 
 upon him that is thirsty, and streams 
 upon the dry ground ; I will pour my 
 Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing 
 upon thine offspring " (Isa. xliv. 2, 3). 
 The time of revival when all the evil ef- 
 fects of the sin and apostasy of the old 
 Israel should be forgotten and overcome 
 
io The Holy Spirit 
 
 in the obedience and joy of the new 
 Israel, was to be preeminently a day of 
 the Spirit of God. The Spirit was to be 
 the agent and accompaniment of this 
 glorious work of restoration and renewal. 
 Ezekiel (xxxvi. 27) makes the advent of 
 the Spirit a time of moral and spiritual 
 renewal in Israel. " I will sprinkle clean 
 water upon you, and ye shall be clean 
 . . . a new heart also will I give you. 
 . . . And I will put my Spirit within 
 you, and cause you to walk in my stat- 
 utes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, 
 and do them" (see also xxxvii. 14). The 
 well-known passage in Joel (ii. 28 ff.) ex- 
 presses the same thought. In this case, 
 however, we have the New Testament's 
 express identification of the time of Jesus 
 with the time of which the prophet 
 spoke (Acts ii. 16). 
 
 So that we may freely say that the glo- 
 rious era of Israel's history when their 
 backsliding should be healed and the re- 
 demption long promised should be real- 
 
In the Old Testament u 
 
 ized was to be brought about by the 
 Spirit of God. He was to be the agent 
 of the change. 
 
 The Spirit and the Messiah 
 
 But we can go still further ; for this 
 new day was made still more definite by 
 these old men of God. They were given 
 to see not only a new epoch for the 
 nation when all their sorrows should be 
 passed and the days of their weeping 
 should be ended, but they were given 
 the vision of the One by whom and 
 through whom all this was to be accom- 
 plished. For the redemption of Israel 
 was to be effected by a Redeemer. The 
 course of the development of the con- 
 ception of the personal Messiah is famil- 
 iar to all Bible students. We know how 
 this figure in prophecy at first dim and 
 shadowy gradually became to the vision 
 of the seer more definite until in the 
 later days of the great prophet there 
 stood before the nation the presentment 
 
12 The Holy Spirit 
 
 of the suffering Saviour, the One who 
 was to be led as a lamb to the slaughter — 
 " wounded for our transgressions, bruised 
 for our iniquities." But the significant 
 thing for our study is that the same Scrip- 
 tures represent this personal Messiah as 
 in a very peculiar and sympathetic rela- 
 tion to the Spirit of God. If Isaiah tells 
 of the shoot out of the worn-out stock 
 of Jesse and the fruit-bearing branch out 
 of his roots, he adds as quite in natural 
 order, " and the Spirit of Jehovah shall 
 rest upon Him," which is " the spirit of 
 wisdom and of understanding, the spirit 
 of counsel and of might, the spirit of 
 knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah" 
 (xi. 1). That is, the equipment of the 
 Messiah for His great work shall be due 
 directly to the Spirit of Jehovah. 
 
 In the latter part of the book of Isaiah 
 where we read of the Servant of Jehovah 
 the same combination is found (xlii. 1). 
 There is of course no doubt that the Ser- 
 vant is in some passages not thought of 
 
In the Old Testament 13 
 
 as a single person, that He is identified so 
 to speak with the Messianic people, but 
 from the whole drift of the teaching 
 concerning the Servant we gather that 
 the Messianic people were to be gathered 
 up in one personal representative. What 
 He does, He does as the idealized head 
 of the true Israel, the Servant of Jehovah 
 as Israel will come to be in Him, in the 
 new time of which the prophet speaks. 
 So also the Servant speaking in the 48th 
 chapter of Isaiah in a remarkable passage 
 whose meaning is not altogether clear, 
 claims the accompaniment of the Spirit 
 in a work of judgment upon the enemies 
 of Jehovah and of chastening for Israel. 
 " Behold, I have refined thee, but not as 
 silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace 
 of affliction. . . He whom Jehovah 
 loveth (Israel) shall perform his pleasure 
 on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the 
 Chaldeans. . . Come ye near unto 
 me, hear ye this ; from the beginning I 
 have not spoken in secret ; from the time 
 
14 The Holy Spirit 
 
 that it was, there am I : and now the 
 Lord Jehovah hath sent me and his Spir- 
 it' ' (vv. 10, 14-16). We are probably 
 to take "his Spirit " here as object and 
 not as subject of the sentence, and if so 
 it simply corroborates our previous find- 
 ings as to the relation between the Ser- 
 vant and the Spirit of God. 
 
 The Spirit and the Individual 
 
 The third function of the Spirit in the 
 Old Testament was the promotion of 
 fellowship with God and the cherishing 
 of the spiritual life of the individuals 
 whom God called to Himself. That 
 there was a personal religious life taught 
 and practiced by the Old Testament 
 saints it is impossible to deny without 
 disregarding the plain teaching of the 
 Psalms and much of the prophets. 
 There are passages which indicate that 
 the Spirit was the guide and helper of 
 the man who was ambitious after holi- 
 ness. " Cast me not away from thy 
 
In the Old Testament 15 
 
 presence; and take not thy holy Spirit 
 from me" (Ps. li. 11). " Teach me 
 to do thy will ; for thou art my God : 
 thy Spirit is good" (Ps. cxliii. 10). 
 This sanctifying agency of the Spirit is 
 not yet fully developed. It needed the 
 fuller teaching of Jesus and His apostles 
 to bring it to maturity ; but as surely as 
 sanctification was possible under the old 
 covenant so surely was it the Spirit who 
 effected it. Much could not be revealed 
 about the way of sanctification until its 
 means were provided for all men. God's 
 sacrifice for sin must first be offered, and 
 the Old Testament from first to last is pri- 
 marily concerned with the preparation 
 for a Redeemer. We must expect 
 therefore, to find that the function of the 
 Spirit of God on which most stress is laid 
 is the function which is most intimately 
 related to the purpose of God to provide 
 a Redeemer. 
 
 What then have we found as to the 
 teaching of the Old Testament about the 
 
1 6 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Spirit ? Chiefly this. That the Spirit is 
 God active in the world. That He is 
 especially the divine principle working 
 for the redemption of men. God in the 
 Old Testament works, at least from 
 within, on the hearts of men, by His 
 Spirit. We should doubtless find that He 
 exercised His rule from without, by ex- 
 ternal manifestations, by the Angel of 
 Jehovah. But the redemptive agent 
 that worked in men's hearts was His 
 Spirit, His good Spirit, His holy Spirit, 
 as it is variously called. From the be- 
 ginning of the manifestations of the The- 
 ocracy, in the life and work of Moses, 
 in the building of the tabernacle, in the 
 work of the prophets of Judah and of 
 Israel, and lastly and most gloriously in 
 the mission of the Messiah and in the 
 promised wonders of the Messianic age, 
 it is the Spirit who is God active, equip- 
 ping lawgiver and artificer, prophet and 
 king to do God's work to prepare Israel 
 and the world for the great work of re- 
 
In the Old Testament 17 
 
 demption through the Messiah of Je- 
 hovah. 
 
 Other functions of the Spirit are not 
 dwelt upon. The cosmic Spirit is given 
 his true place and left in order to describe 
 his more important function of guiding 
 the progress of the Kingdom toward 
 Jesus Christ. So also we have found the 
 Spirit to be the agent of God in sanctifi- 
 cation, but as already indicated this func- 
 tion could not as yet be revealed in its ma- 
 turity. The Old Testament looks toward 
 Christ. It is therefore natural that the 
 chief function of the Spirit of God should 
 be the superintendence of the plan of sal- 
 vation whose preparatory stages it was the 
 purpose of the Old Testament to de- 
 scribe. 
 
 We have found also that there was 
 foretold a time when the Spirit then 
 working within limits which were pre- 
 scribed by the historical necessities of 
 the case, would be poured out without 
 measure. This thought of the two eras 
 
1 8 The Holy Spirit 
 
 of the Spirit's power and influence we 
 must keep clearly in mind as it is not 
 possible to understand the teaching of 
 Jesus without giving it its full weight. 
 
 The Trinity in the Old Testament? 
 
 But what shall we say as to the Trinity 
 in the Old Testament ? Merely this, 
 that the doctrine is not therein revealed. 
 The Spirit is God active in the hearts of 
 men to accomplish His glorious pur- 
 poses, chiefly of redemption. In the 
 same way the doctrine of the Son of 
 God is not specifically revealed in the 
 Old Testament. This does not affect 
 our attitude to the very explicit teaching 
 of the New Testament concerning the 
 eternal Sonship of Christ. We can by 
 the aid of the later teaching trace His 
 working in the days of the older revela- 
 tion and find a fine harmony between 
 the dim and shadowy outlines of the past 
 and the clearly defined presentation of 
 the present era. So with respect to the 
 
In the Old Testament 19 
 
 doctrine of the Spirit. There were no 
 doubt reasons which we cannot fathom 
 why God chose so to unfold His nature 
 step by step to His people. The weak 
 and faulty minds of men could not re- 
 ceive the whole truth at once. Particu- 
 larly in Israel where there was so much 
 inclination to idolatry He no doubt re- 
 vealed Himself in His unity rather than 
 in His triune nature to save His people 
 from further temptation to this sin. 
 
 There are, however, not lacking indi- 
 cations which in the light of the later 
 teaching we may translate into manifesta- 
 tions of the advanced doctrine of the 
 nature of God. There are passages 
 where God and the Spirit are distin- 
 guished. The Spirit is sent from God as 
 if it were a distinct entity. Men are said 
 to grieve the Spirit of God. Further, 
 God in creation speaks in the plural, 
 " Let us make man in our image. " 
 Some have held this to be an indication 
 of the other persons in the Godhead. 
 
20 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Others have regarded it as a plural of 
 majesty. But God never hesitates to say 
 " I." Others again have thought that 
 it was addressed to the angelic host. But 
 we lack any other hint that the angels 
 were God's agents in creation or that we 
 are made in their image. The first in- 
 terpretation is therefore the safest. Fi- 
 nally, the passage which we have already 
 quoted contains, if our reading of it is 
 the true one, a grouping of the persons 
 of the Trinity which in the light of later 
 teaching is most striking. The Servant 
 of Jehovah says (Isa. xlviii. 16) " Now 
 the Lord Jehovah hath sent me and his 
 Spirit/ ' 
 
 The so-called " historical " interpreta- 
 tion of the Old Testament will of course 
 reject these discoveries of latent New 
 Testament truth in the older writings. 
 Its advocates insist that we are to find 
 nothing in the Old Testament but what 
 was currently known and believed at the 
 time of the composition of the books. 
 
In the Old Testament 21 
 
 But on the contrary, it is the view of the 
 New Testament that these " holy men of 
 old " were frequently used by the Spirit 
 to utter truth which they did not them- 
 selves fully grasp (I Pet. i. 10-12). If in- 
 deed the prophets themselves are compe- 
 tent witnesses as to their relation to the 
 Spirit of God we need not be surprised 
 to find them far in advance of their day 
 in the teachings that they utter. 
 
 No doubt we are to treat these intima- 
 tions, if they are such, as nothing more. 
 We are not to seek for the full-rounded 
 teaching of the New Testament in these 
 preparatory days, but nevertheless it is 
 instructive to one who believes in the 
 progress of revelation to find that the 
 Old Testament has left room for the 
 more specific teaching of the New. 
 
 If you go into a modern printing office 
 where the full-color illustrations for one 
 of our great magazines are prepared you 
 will find that as many plates are required 
 as there are primary colors. First, the 
 
22 The Holy Spirit 
 
 yellow values of the artist's conception 
 are printed. A little here and a little 
 more there, deep or pale according to the 
 degree of intended combination with 
 other colors to be later applied. Then 
 the red values are added in the same way, 
 superimposed upon the first printing so 
 as to furnish all the red and yellow tones 
 which will exist in the finished proof. 
 What the picture will be like no one ex- 
 cept an expert can tell. But when the 
 blue values are applied in the third process 
 and the lines are more perfectly defined 
 by the black ink of the fourth process, 
 the full glory of the artist's idea appears. 
 It is somewhat the same with the pic- 
 ture of the Spirit's nature and work in 
 the successive revelations of the Old and 
 New Testaments. It is not easy to read 
 the final state of the doctrine from the 
 first impression. The first values to be 
 applied are necessary to the full and final 
 form. But they can only be perfectly 
 understood by a glance at the finished 
 

 In the Old Testament 23 
 
 truth made complete at the hands of the 
 Christ and His apostles. For when with 
 delicate and sure articulation those later 
 hues have been applied we gain the full- 
 rounded and mature idea of the Master 
 Artist. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Distribution of the Teaching. 
 
 TJyT' HEN we come to examine the 
 ^)r four Gospels which are the 
 main sources of our knowledge 
 as to the teaching of Jesus, we are 
 struck with a significant fact. We dis- 
 cover that in the Synoptic Gospels there 
 is little if any advance upon the teach- 
 ing of the Old Testament. We know 
 little more about the Spirit of God when 
 we have read the first three Gospels than 
 we do when we have studied the passages 
 of the Old Testament which refer to the 
 Spirit. There are only two or three pas- 
 sages in these Gospels in which appreci- 
 24 
 
Distribution of Teaching 25 
 
 able progress is made and these would 
 not be intelligible had we not other say- 
 ings of Jesus by which to interpret them. 
 The new teaching is almost all found in 
 the Gospel of John and in that Gospel 
 almost all in the last discourses of Jesus 
 which are characteristic of it. 
 
 The Teaching of the Synoptic Gospels 
 
 In the Synoptic Gospels we have em- 
 phasized with some force the relation 
 which we marked in our review of the 
 Old Testament doctrine, of the Spirit to 
 the Messianic age and to the personal 
 Messiah. Jesus appears at Nazareth and 
 claims to be the one foretold in the 
 prophecy of Isaiah. " The Spirit of the 
 Lord is upon me, because He anointed 
 me " (Luke iv. 18) to do the things 
 which from of old have been promised 
 of the Messiah (Isa. lxi. 1). In a con- 
 troversy with the Pharisees in which they 
 ascribe His power to cast out demons to 
 the spirit of evil He replies, " If I by the 
 
26 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the 
 kingdom of God come upon you " (Matt. 
 xii. 28). These are simply identifica- 
 tions of the predictions of the Old Tes- 
 tament concerning the relation of the 
 Spirit to the Kingdom and the Messiah. 
 They point to the fulfillment of proph- 
 ecy. 
 
 Likewise the passage in regard to the 
 sin against the Holy Spirit, which follows 
 in the same connection in Matthew's 
 Gospel. As we shall attempt to show, 
 (ch. v.) the sin of the Pharisees was 
 against the Spirit as the superintending 
 agent of redemption. It was not that 
 the Holy Spirit was more inviolable in 
 His person than the Father or the Son, 
 but because His work was the prepara- 
 tion of a salvation for men, and rejection 
 of that salvation was therefore peculiarly 
 sin against Him. He was the accompani- 
 ment of the kingdom of God — to oppose 
 it was to oppose Him, and this was the 
 climax of ingratitude to God. 
 
Distribution of Teaching 27 
 
 We have also the corroboration of Je- 
 sus of the Old Testament view of the 
 source of the power of the prophets. 
 He attributes the prediction of David in 
 which he testified of the Messiah, to the 
 Spirit (Ps. ex. 1 ; Matt. xxii. 43, 44 ; cf 
 Mark xii. 36). This simply reiterates the 
 earlier teaching that when the Old Tes- 
 tament prophets worked and wrote it 
 was in the power of the Spirit of God. 
 We find therefore thus far no advance 
 upon the former conceptions of the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Transition to the later Teaching 
 
 A connecting link between the earlier 
 and the later teaching is, however, prob- 
 ably to be seen in the passage in Matt. x. 
 19, 20, (cf Mark xiii. 11 ; Luke xii 12). 
 " When they deliver you up, be not anx- 
 ious how or what ye shall speak ; for it 
 shall be given you in that hour what ye 
 shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, 
 but the Spirit of your Father that speak- 
 
28 The Holy Spirit 
 
 eth in you." Here is continued the 
 earlier idea that God's called servants are 
 equipped with the Spirit for the work 
 which is given them to do. But the 
 passage contains the further notion which 
 we have not as yet seen that there was a 
 day coming in which the Spirit would be 
 the personal helper and guide of God's 
 messengers. No explicit mention is made 
 of His personal character to be sure. 
 But the sort of help which is here prom- 
 ised would be unintelligible unless this 
 speaking Spirit were personal. As such 
 the passage becomes a foregleam of the 
 Johannine promise of the Paraclete or 
 Advocate who should plead their cause 
 before men. It is at least an intimation 
 of the time when the Spirit should be 
 revealed in His personal and sympathetic 
 character. 
 
 The two remaining references in the 
 Synoptic Gospels to the Holy Spirit were 
 spoken by Jesus after His resurrection. 
 We should naturally expect them to be 
 
Distribution of Teaching 29 
 
 tinged with the thoughts of the last dis- 
 courses uttered just before His crucifix- 
 ion. One of them is indeed couched in 
 language in which direct allusion is made 
 to the promise of the Paraclete (Luke 
 xxiv. 49 ; Acts i. 4). The other could 
 not be understood except on the basis of 
 that promise (Matt, xxviii. 19). 
 
 The Teaching of John s Gospel 
 
 Turning now to the Gospel of John 
 we find that the teaching that is charac- 
 teristic of that Gospel is that which we 
 have found by allusion only in these last 
 three passages of the Synoptic Gospels. 
 Especially in the chapters which contain 
 the farewell discourses of Jesus is it par- 
 ticularly developed (xiv-xvi). " He shall 
 give you another Paraclete, that He may 
 be with you for ever, even the Spirit 
 of truth. But the Paraclete, even the 
 Holy Spirit . . . He shall teach you 
 all things," etc. This Comforter, Ad- 
 vocate, Paraclete, is to take Jesus' place; 
 
30 The Holy Spirit 
 
 is to be the personal helper and friend of 
 the disciples ; is to be the superintendent 
 of the work which Jesus introduced and 
 founded ; is to convince the world of 
 the truth of the claims which He made, 
 and in general to be the power of God 
 in developing and carrying on the gracious 
 work which Jesus had begun in the world. 
 It is just at this point that the teaching 
 of the apostles concerning the Holy Spirit 
 begins. We should be at a loss to ac- 
 count for the advanced truth which these 
 men, and particularly Paul, utter concern- 
 ing the loving, tender and thoroughly per- 
 sonal aid and comfort of the Spirit, were 
 it not for these precious words which 
 the apostle John records for us in his 
 Gospel. Do we need any explanation of 
 this fact ? Is it not plain for us on the 
 face of the Gospel record that Jesus was 
 leading these men step by step as they 
 could grasp His teaching ? He was teach- 
 ing them not only by His words, but by 
 His example and by His life. That 
 
Distribution of Teaching 31 
 
 teaching could not be finished until the su- 
 preme act of His life by which He made 
 all the rest intelligible, was accomplished. 
 The prophets had joined the new era 
 of the Spirit to the Messianic age, but 
 according to their custom they did not, 
 even if they were able, distinguish be- 
 tween near and far. The Messianic day 
 for them was the day of the regeneration 
 of the world through the Messiah. But 
 the Messiah came in the course of his- 
 tory. His life had to be lived among 
 men. His teachings about the Father 
 must go forth. The wonderful creden- 
 tial which His miracles furnished had to 
 be presented to the world, culminating 
 in the stupendous sign of the resurrec- 
 tion, before the world was ready for the 
 outpouring of the Spirit of God. The 
 Spirit was intended in the divine economy 
 and according to the teaching of Jesus 
 to carry on the redemption of the Father, 
 but He could only do so when redemp- 
 tion was accomplished. 
 
32 The Holy Spirit 
 
 These twelve men were human, faulty 
 and imperfect. Their minds were in- 
 capable of receiving the whole teach- 
 ing at once. It was necessary therefore 
 for Jesus to lead them by a gradual un- 
 folding to the necessity of His sacrifice 
 before He could show them how that 
 sacrifice was to become effectual for the 
 sin of men and the redemption of the 
 world. Consequently, until the death 
 of Jesus was imminent and they had be- 
 gun to look into the future with appre- 
 hension in view of their impending be- 
 reavement, the revelation of the Spirit's 
 nature and work could not naturally be 
 made. And although the Synoptic Gos- 
 pels do not contain the discourses in 
 which this revelation is made, yet we do 
 find in their record of words of Jesus 
 which were uttered after that teaching 
 was given that they knew of it. 
 
 In short, Jesus in Matthew and Luke 
 and the Acts assumes the previous teach- 
 ing in John's Gospel. How much more 
 
Distribution of Teaching 33 
 
 the Great Commission means to us when 
 we reflect that He had already given the 
 promise of the Paraclete and had taught 
 them His mission in the scheme of re- 
 demption ! How much more it means 
 to us when we read in Luke the 
 promise of the power from on high, 
 to know that the nature of that power 
 had already been revealed to these wait- 
 ing men! 
 
 The New Era explains the Distribution of 
 the Teaching 
 
 The New Era of the Spirit — that was 
 the secret of the progress of the teaching 
 of the Lord about the Holy Spirit. The 
 Messianic age must be fully inaugurated 
 before the outpouring which had been 
 connected with it in the promise could 
 be effective. " If I go not away the 
 Paraclete will not come." The work 
 which the Paraclete is sent to do must be 
 ready for Him. He is sent to make 
 effective the sacrifice of Christ. That 
 
34 The Holy Spirit 
 
 sacrifice must therefore have been ac- 
 complished. 
 
 The three years of Jesus' ministry 
 though immensely important to us for 
 the glimpse they give us of His person, 
 and for the historical record they afford 
 of the manner in which God fulfilled His 
 promises to provide a salvation, are not 
 after all the greatest years in the history 
 of redemption. They were necessary, 
 for without them the further history 
 could never have been enacted. But the 
 Messianic age as an age of salvation ac- 
 tually began at Pentecost when in the 
 outpouring of the Spirit the promise of 
 the Father began to be realized. The his- 
 tory of the work of the Holy Spirit can 
 never therefore be fully written for it is 
 yet in course of accomplishment. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Equipment of the Messiah. 
 
 rHERE has been much discussion 
 of recent years among certain 
 
 Biblical critics as to whether Jesus 
 actually claimed to be the Messiah during 
 the first part of His ministry. Some 
 have even dared to doubt that He posses- 
 sed so early the consciousness that He 
 was the Messiah. It is not in our prov- 
 ince to attempt to answer these doubts 
 but in speaking of the equipment of the 
 Messiah for His work we immediately 
 touch upon Scripture which ought to be 
 conclusive against them. At Jesus' first 
 
 3S 
 
36 The Holy Spirit 
 
 visit to Nazareth after His public ministry 
 had begun, we find Him participant in a 
 scene which seems conclusively to show 
 that He was not only thoroughly con- 
 scious that He was the long promised 
 One, but that He intended others to 
 know what exalted claims He was mak- 
 ing (Luke iv. 18). 
 
 Here Jesus appropriates the passage 
 from Isaiah (lxi. 1), where the Servant 
 of Jehovah is in the first place the sub- 
 ject of the prophecy. It was a definite 
 claim that He was about to fulfil that 
 which had originally been promised of 
 the Servant. Let us see what is the con- 
 tent of the utterance and estimate its 
 value for our purpose. " The Spirit of 
 the Lord is upon me, because He an- 
 ointed me to preach good tidings to 
 the poor ; He hath sent me to proclaim 
 release to the captives, and recovering of 
 sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
 that are bruised, to proclaim the accept- 
 able year of the Lord. " The quotation 
 
Equipment of the Messiah 37 
 
 is essentially the same as the passage in 
 Isaiah, the Septuagint version being the 
 source of the Greek words. As such it is 
 Jesus' own testimony to the authority 
 of His mission. He deliberately identifies 
 Himself in words which were originally 
 spoken by the prophet in the person of 
 Jehovah's ideal servant as the one who 
 should bring release from captivity and a 
 return to the restored Jerusalem. The 
 joy of that glad time is compared to the 
 joy of the year of Jubilee when all slaves 
 were set free. What admirable figures 
 these were to describe the work of Jesus 
 as Messiah and Redeemer is evident to 
 us when we have comprehended the 
 meaning of His life and death. That 
 they were not understood by those who 
 heard them in the synagogue at Nazareth 
 is not strange when we consider the false 
 notions of the manner in which the Mes- 
 siah was to come which had grown up 
 in Israel. For the attempt to kill Him 
 which followed His address we must at- 
 
38 The Holy Spirit 
 
 tribute rather to anger at the refusal to 
 work signs in their midst than to out- 
 raged feelings that such a one should 
 claim to be the Messiah. 
 
 But the main point in the claim is that 
 the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of Jehovah, 
 was upon Him. It was through the 
 power of the Spirit that He expected to 
 fulfill His mission. It was by the power 
 of the Spirit that the delivery of the cap- 
 tives was to be accomplished, and that 
 the whole of the Messianic work de- 
 scribed with so much of tenderness and 
 sympathy by the prophet was to be car- 
 ried on. It is a significant thing for our 
 study that Jesus in coming before His 
 own people among whom He had been 
 brought up should choose just this pro- 
 phetic passage with which to assume and 
 claim His place in the plan of God. No- 
 tice the words by which that assumption 
 and claim are made. The word " anoint- 
 ed' ' is in the aorist tense — the tense of 
 definite action in past time. As if He 
 
Equipment of the Messiah 39 
 
 would say, Once for all in the past I was 
 set apart by the anointing of the Spirit of 
 God for my definite work. The word 
 translated "sent" is on the other hand 
 in the perfect tense. As if to say, He 
 sent me and here I am on His mission. 
 
 The Baptism of Jesus 
 
 What was this definite action in the 
 past to which Jesus refers and by which 
 He had been consecrated for His wcrk ? 
 Luke means us to ask the question and 
 he has so arranged his material that the 
 answer is plain. For we read in the same 
 chapter the story of the Temptation in 
 which " full of the Holy Spirit " Jesus 
 was "led in the Spirit'' into the wilder- 
 ness. Following back still further this 
 reference to the Spirit we find in the pre- 
 vious chapter the account of the way in 
 which the Spirit came upon Him for 
 His mission. In other words, Luke ap- 
 parently reads the answer to the question 
 in the account of the Baptism, and means 
 
40 The Holy Spirit 
 
 us to do the same. The reference of 
 Jesus to the anointing of the Spirit was 
 to His baptism when the Holy Spirit de- 
 scended upon Him and the voice came 
 out of heaven, "Thou art my beloved 
 Son; in thee I am well pleased." Jesus 
 nowhere makes direct reference to His 
 baptism but we are certainly justified in 
 thinking of Him as here sanctioning the 
 historical account of the descent of the 
 Spirit at His baptism. 
 
 But can we go further than this ? 
 
 Luke tells us not only of the operation 
 of the Spirit at His baptism but he de- 
 scribes in a most circumstantial way the 
 agency of the Spirit in the appearance of 
 Jesus upon earth. To him the prophe- 
 cies of the relation of the Spirit to the 
 plan of God for redeeming men and to 
 the Messianic day which Luke saw dawn- 
 ing for the world meant something, and 
 he did not hesitate to ascribe to the 
 Spirit of God the conception of Jesus and 
 
Equipment of the Messiah 41 
 
 the whole course of the supernatural his- 
 tory by which the Son of the virgin was 
 born and protected during His infancy 
 and equipped for His unique work. 
 The supernatural conception was never 
 the subject of Jesus' own teaching. But 
 the author of this Gospel evidently un- 
 derstands Him to join in a most signifi- 
 cant way His own testimony to the 
 Spirit's agency in His Messianic work to 
 the facts which the evangelist has gathered 
 from other sources as to His origin and 
 preparation for the assumption of that 
 work. And as we see it develop and 
 come to its culmination we can do no 
 other. The Spirit of God, or to speak 
 by the New Testament name, the Holy 
 Spirit, was the agent who made possible 
 the work that Jesus did. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Spirit and the Kingdom. 
 
 /N the last chapter we found Jesus 
 making the claim that He was the 
 Messiah and asserting that He had 
 been anointed by the Holy Spirit for His 
 work. We find now a passage in the 
 Gospel of Matthew in which this asser- 
 tion receives a still further emphasis. 
 Matthew does not record the scene in 
 Nazareth, but when we know from 
 Luke's Gospel that it had taken place 
 we gain help in the understanding of the 
 passage before us. " If I by the Spirit 
 of God cast out demons, then is the 
 42 
 
Spirit and the Kingdom 43 
 
 kingdom of God come upon you " 
 (Matt. xii. 28). Luke has the same pas- 
 sage in the same connection but substi- 
 tutes the phrase " ringer of God " for the 
 " Spirit of God " (Luke xi. 20). This is 
 quite in accordance with the ideas of the 
 Spirit of God which prevailed in Old 
 Testament times and which persisted in 
 the time of Christ, before the more ex- 
 plicit teaching about the nature of the 
 Spirit was given. The Spirit of God was 
 God active for the redemption of men — 
 God working. Luke simply gives us an 
 equivalent for the term " Spirit of God " 
 — one which brings out more plainly the 
 activity of God. The Spirit of God and 
 the finger of God might well be equiva- 
 lent terms in this case. Matthew on the 
 other hand consistently set forth Jesus as 
 the fulfillment of Old Testament proph- 
 ecy and, as we have seen, it was a com- 
 monplace of prophecy to connect the 
 Spirit of God with the Messianic time. 
 To suppose that Luke has here the orig- 
 
44 The Holy Spirit 
 
 inal phrase and Matthew the explanatory 
 one is to reverse the natural order. 
 
 The Power of the Spirit a Sign of the 
 Kingdom 
 
 This was the occasion when after the 
 healing of a demoniac the Pharisees 
 charged that He casts out demons by the 
 power of Beelzebub, the prince of the 
 demons. Jesus shows by a very simple 
 argument that this could not be the case, 
 and then makes the sublime assertion 
 that His dispossession of demons is the 
 natural effect of His Messianic power. 
 The Spirit of God was the promised ac- 
 companiment of the Messianic time and 
 the power by which the Messiah was to 
 do His work. A claim of casting out 
 demons by the power of the Spirit was 
 equivalent to a claim to be the Messiah. 
 But He makes it even clearer than this 
 inference would be. He says, The Spirit 
 as you all know and believe is to furnish 
 the power and energy for the kingdom 
 
Spirit and the Kingdom 45 
 
 of God which God has promised to es- 
 tablish. Now when I by the Spirit do 
 these wonderful works it is a sign that 
 the Kingdom is at hand, — the Kingdom 
 of God is come upon you. 
 
 It would be easy to show from the 
 teaching of Jesus about the Kingdom 
 that it was regarded as both present and 
 future. That it was looked upon by 
 Jesus as established potentially on the 
 earth during His ministry and at the same 
 time that it was to be gloriously fulfilled 
 in the future. We have already seen 
 how in the prophetic writings of the Old 
 Testament the Spirit was to be the en- 
 ergizing power of the Kingdom (p. 9). 
 Jesus simply emphasizes this promise. 
 He makes the claim that since the Spirit 
 is revealing Himself by His signs it is an 
 unfailing indication that the Kingdom is 
 at hand. It was a claim to be that one 
 who was anointed by the Spirit (at bap- 
 tism), who had been conceived by the 
 Spirit (perhaps), at least whose whole life 
 
46 The Holy Spirit 
 
 according to the historians of the Gos- 
 pels was lived by means of the Spirit and 
 in the sphere of the Spirit. This very- 
 working of Jesus was a sign of the Mes- 
 siah's kingdom, for it had been foretold 
 that the Kingdom would be accompanied 
 by the coming of the Spirit and that the 
 Messiah would be endowed with the 
 Spirit in an especial manner. 
 
 Entrance to the Kingdom 
 
 If we turn now to the Gospel of John 
 we will find that this relation is still further 
 emphasized. It is true that John does 
 not attribute the phrase " Kingdom of 
 God," or " Kingdom of Heaven " to 
 Jesus very frequently. He uses more 
 often equivalents of the term. But in 
 chapter three he has furnished us with 
 the key to his variation. Here we find 
 the assertion to Nicodemus "Except one 
 be born anew, he cannot see the King- 
 dom of God" (iii. 3). And again, "ex- 
 cept one be born of water and the Spirit, 
 
Spirit and the Kingdom 47 
 
 he cannot enter into the Kingdom of 
 God " (iii. 5). The Kingdom is here 
 the chief good to be desired. But in the 
 further development of the thought it is 
 not the Kingdom but eternal life which 
 is the chief good for men (iii. 15, 16, 36). 
 We can therefore treat these two terms 
 as equivalent in John's Gospel. We have 
 found the Kingdom's progress every- 
 where marked by the presence of the 
 Spirit of God. The presence of the 
 Kingdom is to be detected by the signs 
 of the Spirit's presence. From the 
 Synoptic representation we should be 
 more likely to think of the Kingdom as 
 an external manifestation in the world. 
 But we here receive the descriptive idea 
 that the Kingdom is in progress only as 
 men are born again, or born of the Spirit. 
 Not only is the casting out of demons a 
 sign of the Kingdom but dispossession 
 must be followed by possession by the 
 Spirit of God. Nicodemus is represented 
 as being blind to the spiritual realities of 
 
48 The Holy Spirit 
 
 life. He comes to Jesus with the con- 
 fession that Jesus is some heaven-sent 
 teacher because of the miracles which 
 He worked. In this observation Nico- 
 demus meant more than the words imply 
 and Jesus, as His frequent custom was, 
 answered the thought rather than the 
 words. Nicodemus meant that like other 
 bearers of a divine commission in the 
 past Jesus had His credentials. Jesus 
 answers that to receive the real benefit of 
 His mission one needed not simply eyes 
 and ears, but a new life, a new creation 
 through supernatural birth, and a growth 
 fostered by heavenly impulses. 
 
 The rest of the discourse merely en- 
 forces upon Nicodemus' blindness the 
 same truth in different aspects. No man 
 can expect to enjoy the fruits of Jesus' mis- 
 sion, that is, the Kingdom, or eternal 
 life, who is earth-born. Spiritual goods 
 require spiritual faculties to appropriate 
 them. This supreme spiritual good was 
 to come to men through being born of 
 
Spirit and the Kingdom 49 
 
 water and of the Spirit. Jesus further 
 explains that it comes through faith. 
 " The Son of man must be lifted up ; 
 that whosoever believeth may in Him 
 have eternal life." Entrance to the 
 Kingdom therefore is obtained by the 
 agency of the Spirit. It comes also 
 through faith. Jesus does not attempt 
 the harmony of these two statements. 
 It does not seem to have occurred to 
 Him that there was need of adjustment. 
 We need the later teaching of Jesus and 
 His apostles to make the articulation be- 
 tween these two aspects of the truth. 
 What we are concerned with here is the 
 agency of the Spirit in the new birth. 
 
 " Born of Water and of the Spirit " 
 
 Jesus says, " Except a man be born 
 anew," or "from above." Which of 
 these two renderings is the true repro- 
 duction of our Lord's words we shall 
 not attempt to decide. For our purpose 
 it is of little importance. For it is abun- 
 
50 The Holy Spirit 
 
 dantly evident that the source of that new 
 birth is heavenly. The agent of it is the 
 Spirit (John iii. 5). But the new birth 
 is described as being " of water " as well 
 as " of the Spirit.'' The preposition here 
 means " out of " which suggests the bap- 
 tism " in water " and " in the Holy Spirit 
 to which reference is made in the preach- 
 ing of John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 11). 
 As the water was the cleansing agent 
 of the body so the Spirit would be the 
 cleansing agent of the soul. 
 
 But to be born " of water " signified 
 here more than this. Why is it coupled 
 with the Spirit as necessary to the new 
 birth ? Is there anything more intended 
 than that the new birth must be an 
 awakening of the spiritual nature ? John 
 the Baptist has already furnished us with 
 the answer to the question. He has con- 
 trasted the two baptisms in a way to call 
 attention to their essential differences 
 (Matt. iii. 11 ; John i. 32, 33). Johns 
 baptism was "in water." It was also a 
 
Spirit and the Kingdom 51 
 
 baptism "unto repentance/' Water is 
 symbolical of cleansing, washing away of 
 sin, putting away the past. The baptism 
 of the Spirit is "in fire." Fire was the 
 symbol by which the presence of the 
 Spirit was made known at Pentecost. It 
 stood for the energy, the fervor and the 
 contagion which should characterize the 
 disciples of the Kingdom. It rested 
 upon every disciple's head. This was 
 a sign that the new ardor would spread 
 from disciple to disciple until the glow 
 of the new life should have filled the 
 world. The new birth must then con- 
 tain the two elements. It must wipe 
 out the past and it must furnish the living 
 principle of future love and service. 
 
 Jesus is not here referring to Christian 
 baptism but He is emphasizing the same 
 truths which were afterward embodied 
 in it. No man enters the Kingdom until 
 he has been cleansed of sin and the holy 
 principle of life has been implanted 
 within him. John the Baptist was the 
 
52 The Holy Spirit 
 
 embodiment of the Old Testament. 
 His testimony to Christ was the witness 
 of the old dispensation to the new. He 
 was the forerunner, the crown and rep- 
 resentative of that forerunning revelation 
 which had prepared the way for Christ 
 all through the history of the people of 
 Israel. His baptism was an Old Testa- 
 ment rite. It was the utmost that the 
 Old Testament could do toward the new 
 life. It could preach righteousness, it 
 could advocate cleansing, it could demand 
 repentance. But that baptism to be truly 
 effectual needed the new principle of 
 life. This could only be supplied 
 through the work of Christ, the symbol 
 of which was the Spirit's fire. John's 
 baptism was not unnecessary. On the 
 contrary, every candidate for the Kingdom 
 must experience that cleansing which was 
 the characteristic of John's baptism. But 
 he must also experience that which was 
 the peculiar feature of the Christian era. 
 He must be born of water and the Spirit. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Sin Against the Holy Spirit, 
 
 /N the Gospels of Matthew and Mark 
 the passage about the unpardonable 
 sin follows the ascription to Jesus of 
 demonic power by the Pharisees because 
 He cast out a demon. By these two 
 evangelists the saying is placed in close 
 connection with this incident and is evi- 
 dently intended by them to describe 
 Jesus' further words on the same occa- 
 sion. Luke has the former passage es- 
 sentially as it is given by the other two 
 {c / Matt. xii. 22-32 ; Mark iii. 19b-30 ; 
 Luke xi. 14-26), but the passage about 
 
 53 
 
54 The Holy Spirit 
 
 the sin against the Holy Spirit he has re- 
 corded in another connection (xii. 10). 
 Luke's habit in this portion of his 
 Gospel is topical, and he has here col- 
 lected a number of sayings of Jesus 
 which will be helpful when persecution 
 comes. 
 
 " Be not afraid of them that kill the 
 body. . . Fear him, who hath power 
 to cast into hell." Your Father careth 
 for you. The sparrows are not forgotten 
 and ye are of more value than many 
 sparrows. Confession of Christ will be 
 followed by His confession of you. On 
 the other hand, it is possible by denying 
 the divinity (asserting the demoniacal 
 character) of Jesus' work and mission to 
 offend the Holy Spirit. But you need 
 not fear lest you will do this unawares 
 when you are brought before councils, 
 for the Holy Spirit will Himself help you 
 to bear a good testimony and will even 
 give you words to speak in the hour of 
 trial. 
 
Sin against Holy Spirit 55 
 Matthew's and Mark's Order Chronological 
 
 It is possible that this saying was ut- 
 tered twice by our Lord. But if not 
 then there can be no question that Mat- 
 thew and Mark have the true historical 
 setting. In its context according to these 
 Gospels we get a strong light on the 
 meaning of the words. It has long been 
 matter for controversy what the saying is 
 intended to teach. But a closer study of 
 the passage in its connection reveals its 
 true meaning and delivers us at the same 
 time from any morbid fear lest by some 
 means or at some time unknown to us 
 we may have committed the sin. 
 
 What was the Unpardonable Sin ? 
 
 Notice that the sin whatever it may be, 
 is closely connected with the denial of 
 Jesus' mission as the Messiah. These 
 Pharisees had attributed to Him demonic 
 power in working His miracles. That 
 is, they had so far repudiated God their 
 
56 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Father in His great redemptive purpose 
 as to blaspheme His Son. A more awful 
 example of ingratitude, of utter abandon- 
 ment can hardly be imagined. It was 
 railing at the sovereignty of God. It was 
 insulting His fatherhood. It was con- 
 temptuously disregarding His almighty 
 purpose to save men from sin and to re- 
 store them to His favor. It was a slight 
 upon His grace. When we consider 
 how the successive acts of grace and love 
 had been performed by God for this peo- 
 ple, and how all in succession had been re- 
 jected or at least undervalued and forgot- 
 ten by them, we begin to see how wicked 
 was this attitude of the Pharisees. This 
 was by no means the first act of the kind 
 in their history. It was rather the begin- 
 ning of the crowning act of ingratitude 
 and wicked spite by which they rejected 
 God in crucifying His Son. It was in 
 the same series with their successive re- 
 jections of God under the old covenant to 
 which Jesus Himself later refers and to 
 
Sin against Holy Spirit 57 
 
 which Stephen alludes in his defence 
 (Matt, xxiii. 29-39 ; Acts vii. 51). 
 
 Now this rejection of God was the re- 
 jection of His purpose to redeem Israel. 
 It was the slighting of His promises. It 
 was disobedience to His commands. 
 But these commands and these promises 
 were all vitally connected with the King- 
 dom of God and the Kingdom was, ac- 
 cording to the prophets, to be the special 
 care of the Spirit of God. The Spirit 
 was still the agent of redemption now 
 that the personal Redeemer was mani- 
 fested. He was active in the conception 
 of Jesus ; He was present at and effect- 
 ive at His baptism ; the Spirit led Him 
 into the wilderness to receive His repre- 
 sentative trial by Satan ; and the Spirit 
 was the power by which He was enabled 
 to perform His gracious acts of healing. 
 To reject Jesus therefore, to repudiate 
 utterly and irrevocably the purpose of 
 God in Jesus Christ, was to insult and 
 blaspheme the Holy Spirit. 
 
58 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Jesus does not say that these Pharisees 
 had committed the great sin, but He 
 certainly intimates that they were in 
 danger of it. We know indeed that 
 they had many other invitations to accept 
 Jesus, and that even on the cross He 
 prayed for their forgiveness, implying 
 that by repentance they might be saved. 
 The apostles after the resurrection 
 preached to the Jews, — perhaps even to 
 some who had been active in the cruci- 
 fixion, and besought them to repent. 
 So that we can see that no isolated act on 
 the part of these men could be construed 
 as the sin against the Spirit. 
 
 On the other hand, the consistent at- 
 titude of opposition against God which 
 these men — this nation — had manifested 
 revealed a disposition which must at this 
 time have become fixed. An omniscient 
 mind could therefore read the inevitable 
 end of their opposition and characterize 
 their attitude as the sin against the Spirit 
 even though that sin was not yet made 
 
Sin against Holy Spirit 59 
 
 complete. In fact from man's point of 
 view their sin was not yet inevitable. But 
 the Son of God knew that this blasphemy 
 was part of that final act by which they 
 would refuse the offer of mercy of their 
 Father and insult their covenant God. 
 He therefore characterizes it as the sin 
 against the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit had 
 been the promised accompaniment of 
 that offer of mercy in its historic mani- 
 festation — had been indeed the agent of 
 God in its preparation and actual appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Can we commit the Unpardonable Sin ? 
 
 When we come to translate this lan- 
 guage of our Lord into the religious life 
 of to-day and ask, What is the sin against 
 the Holy Spirit ? we have accordingly no 
 other answer than this. It is the persis- 
 tent and irrevocable rejection of the offer 
 of mercy in Christ. The Spirit is re- 
 vealed as especially concerned with the 
 redemption of men. In promise and in 
 
60 The Holy Spirit 
 
 fact God by His Spirit set out to save 
 men. Jesus Christ was the special object 
 of the Spirit's activity on earth and after 
 His ascension according to His own 
 words it is the office of the Spirit to re- 
 veal Him and to apply His gracious work 
 to the hearts of men. 
 
 To reject Christ therefore is to repu- 
 diate God's Spirit. To persist in that re- 
 jection until that subtle line has been 
 crossed beyond which character is set for 
 good or bad, is to commit the blasphemy 
 for which there is no forgiveness. The 
 apparent contrast between the sin against 
 the Spirit and sin against the Son of man 
 must have reference to the appearance 
 of Jesus in the form of a man. So long 
 as men had not refused finally the salva- 
 tion which God by His Spirit had pre- 
 pared they were in the line of forgive- 
 ness. A sin against Jesus as Son of man, 
 as a prophet, as the worker of miracles, 
 could be forgiven, for they were not yet 
 conscious that the power by which He 
 
Sin against Holy Spirit 61 
 
 worked was the Holy Spirit. But now 
 they had been warned that Jesus was the 
 embodiment of God's redemptive pur- 
 pose. They had been expressly told that 
 His miracle working was the evidence of 
 the Spirit of God. He was now for 
 them identified with the promised King- 
 dom in which the power of the Spirit 
 was to be supreme. Sin against that 
 Spirit was unpardonable because it in- 
 volved so much. Separation from God 
 must follow the final refusal to enter His 
 Kingdom and presence. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Father s Chief Gift, 
 
 /N the eleventh chapter of Luke's 
 Gospel (v. 13) we find a saying of 
 Jesus which is particularly illumina- 
 ting for our study of the Holy Spirit. 
 " If ye then, being evil, know how to 
 give good gifts unto your children, how 
 much more shall your heavenly Father 
 give the Holy Spirit to them that ask 
 Him." 
 
 This saying closes a section in which 
 
 Luke gathers together some of our 
 
 Lord's teaching about prayer. The 
 
 disciples come to Him and ask Him to 
 
 62 
 
The Father s Chief Gift 63 
 
 teach them to pray. He responds by 
 giving them the model which we call 
 the Lord's Prayer. The author is then 
 led by the likeness of subject to narrate 
 further teaching of Jesus about prayer. 
 He records a parable which is found 
 nowhere else, in which persistence in 
 prayer is taught — the parable of the 
 Friend in Bed. " I say unto you, . . . 
 because of his importunity he will arise 
 and give him as many as he needeth." 
 Then follows the manifest teaching of 
 the parable. " Ask . . . seek . . . 
 knock." Be importunate in your prayers. 
 God would have you reveal your sincer- 
 ity by your persistence. After this we 
 have a third saying of Jesus on the same 
 subject. One which teaches the disposi- 
 tion of our Father to answer prayer shown 
 from His Fatherhood. This is the pas- 
 sage in question. 
 
 The Promise in Matthew 
 Matthew has the passage almost ver- 
 
64 The Holy Spirit 
 
 batim from the words " Ask, . . . 
 seek, . . . knock . . ." An im- 
 portant change, however, is that he sub- 
 stitutes " good things" for "Holy 
 Spirit/' reading, " how much more shall 
 your Father who is in heaven give good 
 things to them that ask Him" (Matt. 
 vii. 7-11). 
 
 The Two Promises Identical 
 
 At first sight these good things seem 
 to be material goods, and if this were the 
 case we should discover a lack of har- 
 mony between the two passages which 
 we should find it difficult to resolve. But 
 on closer examination it will be seen that 
 Jesus in Matthew also is teaching the 
 willingness of the Father to care for the 
 spiritual good of His children, so that the 
 passage becomes identical with Luke's 
 version. We should remember that 
 Matthew's record of the Sermon on the 
 Mount is to some extent topical, part of 
 the sixth and much of the seventh chap- 
 
The Father s Chief Gift 65 
 
 ters being arranged under the heading of 
 the Sermon, because they, like it, were 
 characteristic of the kind of teaching 
 which He gave during the Galilean min- 
 istry. The account of the Lord's Prayer 
 in Matthew belongs to this class of say- 
 ings. There is of course no reason for 
 thinking that Luke's occasion for the 
 Prayer is more chronological than Mat- 
 thew's. His arrangement is topical also, 
 but the occasion itself is more probably 
 the true occasion than is Matthew's. He 
 collects sayings about prayer which are 
 bound together by that common thought 
 and so much more likely to have been 
 spoken in the same circumstances. So 
 taken we may use some of Luke 's sayings 
 to interpret the others. Making use of 
 this method we find that the subjects of 
 the prayers have not been predominantly 
 material but spiritual. Jesus has to be 
 sure bidden them pray for daily bread. 
 But He has also charged them to plead 
 for the coming of the Kingdom (which 
 
66 The Holy Spirit 
 
 we have seen was to be specially marked 
 by the presence and power of the Spirit). 
 They are to ask also for forgiveness of 
 sins — the victory of the will of God on 
 earth — all spiritual gifts. This is no less 
 true in Matthew's Gospel than in Luke's. 
 Indeed in a later verse in the sixth chap- 
 ter (v. 33) Jesus has named the chief ob- 
 jects of seeking for a child of God. " Seek 
 ye first His Kingdom and His righteous- 
 ness." When therefore in the seventh 
 chapter Matthew records the words of 
 Jesus " seek and ye shall find," we in- 
 evitably conclude that the Lord is still 
 referring to the Kingdom, and means — 
 seek the Kingdom and ye shall find it. 
 
 In later teaching He still further de- 
 velops this thought and represents the 
 Kingdom as the chief object worth striv- 
 ing for. He devotes two parables to the 
 enforcement of this idea, The Hidden 
 Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. 
 So that we may fairly say that He is still 
 speaking of the spiritual life — of the 
 
The Father's Chief Gift 67 
 
 Kingdom. Still further, when He says 
 " Knock and it shall be opened unto 
 you," he means, Knock at the door of 
 the Kingdom and it will not remain closed 
 against you. So that the words in Mat- 
 thew though they are probably divorced 
 from their connection may be seen after 
 all to refer to spiritual things no less than 
 in Luke. When Jesus promises in Mat- 
 thew " good things " it is the same prom- 
 ise as when in Luke He promises the 
 "Holy Spirit." The saying in both 
 places is relevant to the willingness of the 
 Father to bestow spiritual gifts. The 
 Kingdom is the realm of the Spirit's 
 activity. When one evangelist reports 
 Jesus as saying that the Father will give 
 the goods things of the Kingdom to them 
 that ask Him, and the other records that 
 it was the Holy Spirit that was promised, 
 we need not go far for an explanation. 
 One simply gives Jesus' exact phrase and 
 the other interprets it for us. In both 
 the teaching is the same. 
 
68 The Holy Spirit 
 
 The Meaning of the Promise 
 
 What then does Jesus mean to say? 
 Just this. You who are parents do not 
 mock at the natural requests of your 
 children for food. It is indispensable to 
 their life. Shall then your heavenly 
 Father mock at your pleadings for that 
 which is equally necessary for your spirit- 
 ual life ? The Holy Spirit represents in 
 the parallelism — food — the sustenance of 
 the body. Jesus therefore teaches the 
 necessity of the Spirit for that life which 
 is life indeed. The Father is its source 
 and He is disposed to give it to those 
 who show willingness to receive. The 
 Holy Spirit is the " good thing " which 
 embraces every other good thing. It is 
 the foundation of our relation to God as 
 Father. As food is the first thing and 
 the indispensable thing which we give to 
 our children, so this chief gift the Father 
 will not withhold if we ask Him. 
 
 Here is not simply the Old Testament 
 
The Father s Chief Gift 69 
 
 idea that the Spirit of God is the neces- 
 sary equipment for God's service. It is 
 an advance upon that idea. The Spirit 
 is not here the uniform of the messenger ; 
 it is the very means of his life. How 
 this is to be is not yet explained. The 
 full doctrine of sanctification is not yet 
 revealed. It would therefore not be 
 fitting to detail the Spirit's agency in that 
 spiritual process. But we have certainly 
 a hint of what Jesus was afterward to 
 teach in the Fourth Gospel and which 
 the apostle Paul was still further to de- 
 velop in his epistles. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Promise of the Paraclete : His 
 Mission to the Twelve. 
 
 rHERE is a passage in the Synop- 
 tic Gospels which may well serve 
 to introduce this subject though 
 it is not expressly concerned with the 
 Paraclete. It is recorded by the three 
 evangelists in three different connections. 
 Matthew presents it in the original charge 
 to the twelve (x. 20). Mark includes it 
 in the discourse of Jesus on the Last 
 Things (xiii. 11). While Luke as we 
 have already noticed collects it with 
 the others which are apparently intended 
 70 
 
Mission to the Twelve 71 
 
 to represent our Lord's teaching about 
 behavior under persecution (xii. 12). 
 Luke's use of the passage has therefore 
 no bearing upon its chronological rela- 
 tions. It is uncertain whether Matthew 
 or Mark has the historical connection of 
 the passage. Matthew is frequently topi- 
 cal in this part of his book. He pre- 
 sents his material according to its subject 
 rather than with reference to its histori- 
 cal relations. This leaves us with a preju- 
 dice in favor of Mark's order and yet 
 as has been remarked by competent crit- 
 ics there is no reason why such a saying 
 as this may not have been uttered twice 
 by our Lord. It would be equally ap- 
 plicable to the situation in Matthew and 
 Mark. In the former Gospel the occa- 
 sion of its utterance was the first mission 
 of the twelve, in the latter it forms part 
 of the final charge to the same men. 
 
 The Promise of the Paraclete Anticipated 
 Assuming then that whether or not 
 
72 The Holy Spirit 
 
 they were spoken at any other time, they 
 were at least part of the instructions given 
 to the twelve ; in view of the impending 
 departure of Jesus they form a very in- 
 teresting introduction to the Johannine 
 teaching. When the apostles are brought 
 before magistrates they are not to be anx- 
 ious about the witness which they shall 
 bear to Christ. They are not to fear lest 
 on the one hand they shall unworthily 
 represent their Master, or on the other 
 lest they shall needlessly bring their lives 
 into jeopardy. It shall be given them in 
 that hour what they shall say. " For it is 
 not ye that speak but the Holy Spirit." 
 The Spirit is to say for them just the 
 things which will worthily represent them 
 before the rulers as followers of Jesus and 
 yet in such a way that they will not be 
 rashly exposing their lives to danger. 
 They are to refrain from worry and anx- 
 iety. Their Advocate is a mighty one 
 who has their case upon His heart. As 
 such the passage is a remarkable fore- 
 
Mission to the Twelve 73 
 
 gleam of that other teaching which was 
 so soon to follow, according to John's 
 record, when after supper He began, 
 " Let not your heart be troubled." He 
 was to leave them. They were to be 
 left to bear the brunt of the persecution 
 without the comfort of His bodily pres- 
 ence, but the Paraclete from the Father, 
 the Advocate, the Comforter, would be 
 in them and would speak for them. 
 
 The New Teaching 
 
 But this precious doctrine was to re- 
 ceive a much more definite and express 
 emphasis and its truth was to be made 
 more reasonable in the teaching about 
 the nature and work of the Spirit which 
 was now to follow. 
 
 The four chapters of John's Gospel 
 beginning with xiv. 1 contain very many 
 precious thoughts and have become most 
 naturally the inner sanctuary of the 
 Christian's Bible. But for no part of 
 their teaching are we more indebted to 
 
74 The Holy Spirit 
 
 our Lord than for the very wonderful 
 words which describe to us the mission 
 of the Paraclete. 
 
 Meaning of Paraclete 
 
 The word paracletos (7rapaK\r)To<;) so 
 frequently used in these chapters needs 
 perhaps a word or two of comment. 
 Neither the translation " comforter " in 
 John's Gospel, nor "advocate" in the 
 First Epistle (ii. 1) expresses the full 
 content of the Greek word. The verb 
 from which the noun here used is de- 
 rived means not only to comfort, but in 
 the first place, to call to one's side for 
 aid. It then means to speak to, to ad- 
 dress, to call on ; and then as modifica- 
 tions of this general idea, it may mean to 
 admonish, or to exhort, or to beseech, or 
 to comfort, or even to teach. The noun 
 paracletos therefore may be used with 
 any or all of these ideas clinging to it. A 
 paracletos may be a helper before a judge, 
 technically an advocate ; or an interces- 
 
Mission to the Twelve 75 
 
 sor in any sense, formal or informal ; or 
 simply a helper or assistant. It is a preg- 
 nant word for which we have no ade- 
 quate equivalent in English. The Ger- 
 man word " Beistand " or our colloquial 
 term " standby " comes near to giving 
 the sense of the expression. 
 
 We are not however at a loss to inter- 
 pret the meaning of our Lord even 
 though we have no adequate word to 
 reproduce it. The thought of the situa- 
 tion in which these men stood will help 
 us to realize what were the various ideas 
 which the word was intended to convey 
 to their minds. " Comforter " is no 
 doubt the first sense which the expres- 
 sion was intended to bear. Jesus began — 
 " Let not your heart be troubled." He 
 Himself was to be taken away but they 
 were to be comforted with the promise 
 of the Spirit who would take His place, 
 to do for them that which even He had 
 been unable to do. They feared for the 
 future. They were oppressed by their 
 
76 The Holy Spirit 
 
 great responsibilities, but Jesus promised 
 them the Spirit to be their guide and 
 teacher. They had been entrusted with 
 the interests of the Kingdom but He 
 who was the Kingdom's special sponsor 
 and superintendent would be to them 
 not only a personal friend and helper but 
 also continue to fulfill His historic mis- 
 sion with respect to the Kingdom. As 
 representatives of the faith that was to 
 transform the world into the paradise of 
 God, they stood in a new and responsible 
 position toward that world now lying in 
 wickedness. But they were now taught 
 that He would convince the world with 
 respect to sin and righteousness and judg- 
 ment. With Him was the power and 
 they were to be the instruments in His 
 hands. 
 
 So much and more we may believe lay 
 enwrapped for these men in this wonder- 
 ful word Paracletos. And for us there 
 is no other way of interpretation. We 
 are to read the meaning of the word in 
 
Mission to the Twelve 77 
 
 the revelations of the nature and mission 
 of the Spirit as given to us in these chap- 
 ters. Our happiness and usefulness as 
 Christians will depend upon how fully 
 we understand and appreciate our possi- 
 bilities as instruments of this same Spirit. 
 
 The New Era 
 
 For we must remember that Jesus was 
 now announcing the advent of that new 
 reign of the Spirit which the prophets 
 had long ago foretold as the sure accom- 
 paniment of the Messiah's Kingdom. 
 That Kingdom had, to be sure, been 
 already inaugurated, but the ministry of 
 Jesus in His earthly life was in a very 
 real sense preliminary to the work of 
 saving the world by means of His life 
 and death, and this could only be ac- 
 complished after He had arisen and gone 
 to His Father. He said to His disciples, 
 " It is expedient for you that I go away ; 
 for if I go not away, the Paraclete will 
 not come unto you " (John xvi. 7). The 
 
78 The Holy Spirit 
 
 manner of His going was the secret of 
 the meaning of this sentence. His de- 
 parture was through suffering and death 
 and the Spirit was given for the purpose 
 of making that sacrificial work effective 
 in the hearts of men. The Spirit could 
 not come until all was ready. Now how- 
 ever we see Him on the verge of His 
 trial and before He goes He must tell 
 the disciples the meaning of His death 
 and His provision that it should not be 
 in vain. The plan of God for us men 
 and our salvation embraced three stages : 
 First, the era of preparation, which is 
 described in the Old Testament. Second, 
 the era of realization, which includes the 
 earthly life of our Lord, His death, res- 
 urrection and ascension. Third, the era 
 of application, which embraces the story 
 of the conquest of the world by Chris- 
 tianity from Pentecost on. In the first 
 was the promise of the salvation, in the 
 second the fact of salvation, and in the 
 third is the gradual appropriation of the 
 
Mission to the Twelve 79 
 
 fact. The first was the Father's day in 
 which He was the one revealed person 
 of the Godhead ; the second was the day 
 of the Son of God ; the third is the day 
 of the Spirit of God. 
 
 We find our Lord therefore at the 
 close of His brief time making prepara- 
 tions for the dawn of a new day, when 
 all the promises of God were to be ful- 
 filled. 
 
 The Promise for Personal Comfort 
 
 It is a sign of the close human friend- 
 ship of Jesus for these men — a token of 
 the reality of His humanity that there was 
 a personal message in the promise of the 
 Spirit for these twelve disciples, or rather 
 for the eleven, for if Judas heard any of 
 the promises they must have fallen on 
 deaf ears. The first word about the 
 Paraclete was uttered to relieve their very 
 natural despair at the thought of His de- 
 parture from them. They had companied 
 with Him for two years. They had 
 
80 The Holy Spirit 
 
 come to depend upon Him and to trust 
 and love Him. He was the head of the 
 movement and at the thought of His 
 separation from them very natural feel- 
 ings of grief and loss and bewilderment 
 possessed them. Jesus did not rebuke 
 this attitude. He understood it and felt 
 that the time had come to assuage their 
 grief by the revelation of the necessity of 
 His departure. Not that they would or 
 did fully comprehend it, but now hence- 
 forth they would have the means of com- 
 fort or at least of explanation when they 
 should be brought into the position of 
 witnesses for Him to the people. And 
 so He says to them, " Let not your heart 
 be troubled : believe in God." Do not 
 fear that He who has already fulfilled 
 His promises to His people will fail at 
 this point of critical significance. Our 
 relations which have been so sweet and 
 intimate will not be disturbed by my 
 going but rather they will assume an 
 even more tender and intimate character. 
 
Mission to the Twelve 81 
 
 And if you are in despair because the 
 works which seem to you so important 
 will stop — let not this affect your faith ; 
 for if you maintain this relation of faith 
 in me, fully trusting in what I have been 
 and am to you, " greater works than these 
 shall ye do, because I go unto the Father,' ' 
 and the new era of the Spirit's power 
 will have been inaugurated. " And I 
 will pray the Father and He will give you 
 another Paraclete." As I have been 
 with you during these years, these two 
 precious years, teaching, correcting and 
 comforting you and revealing the will of 
 the Father unto you, so this new and 
 other Paraclete will do for you after I am 
 gone. 
 
 It was a promise of a real substitute, 
 not a temporary makeshift, but a real 
 compensation for the losses which they 
 were to sustain. So He bids them not 
 even to mourn when they considered the 
 nature of the provision which the Father 
 was to make for them. The promise 
 
 F 
 
82 The Holy Spirit 
 
 must be taken at its face value. It was 
 no attempt of Jesus to lessen the force 
 of a personal loss by pointing out unreal 
 partial compensations. The Paraclete 
 was to undertake no tentative work. 
 Their heart was not even to be troubled, 
 for did they but know it the substitute 
 would be to them as real a Paraclete as 
 He Himself had been. 
 
 // was also a Promise to the Heralds of the 
 Kingdom 
 
 But we must not lose the force of this 
 promise by making it altogether or even 
 chiefly a personal one. Jesus did have 
 compassion on their human weakness and 
 did cheer their human grief but they 
 must presently have divined more than a 
 personal message of comfort in His 
 words. His teaching about the King- 
 dom and their relation to it had been too 
 explicit for them not to realize that they 
 were soon to have enormous responsibili- 
 ties upon their shoulders. The King- 
 
Mission to the Twelve 83 
 
 dom coming and the King departing! 
 The Messianic reign to commence and 
 the Messiah dead and gone ! How can 
 we estimate the effect of the scene at 
 Caesarea Philippi (Matt. xvi. 15 ff.) with- 
 out imagining some such thoughts as 
 these in their hearts. Surely part of the 
 burden that oppressed them was due to 
 perplexity amounting almost to despair 
 for those new true principles whose force 
 as taught and lived by Him had begun 
 to dawn upon them. Apart from Him 
 how could they win their appropriate 
 victory over the world ? 
 
 Jesus answers this unspoken but inevi- 
 table apprehension. " I will not leave 
 you orphans : I come unto you." I will 
 be with you as truly after my bodily de- 
 parture as when you could see and touch 
 me. Through the Spirit you will have 
 me with you and will be able to com- 
 municate with me as truly as you do now. 
 " We will come unto him and make our 
 abode with him" (the man who loves 
 
84 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Christ and keeps His word). In other 
 words, Jesus promises His presence with 
 true disciples after His bodily separation 
 just as truly as before. The communion 
 will however not be by means of sense 
 but through the Spirit. 
 
 Still further notice the second clause 
 of this verse : (16) u He will abide with 
 you forever.' ' Here was another ground 
 of superiority of the new relation over 
 the old. The old bodily intercourse was 
 limited to times and seasons. At the 
 most it must be bounded by the ordi- 
 nary limits of human life. But the other 
 Paraclete was to abide forever. Jesus 
 would come to them through the Spirit 
 and His coming thus would be for al- 
 ways. No more separations would dis- 
 turb them. There is also here a sign of 
 the world mission of the disciples. This 
 was spoken to these men as representa- 
 tive of their class. They would pass 
 away but other disciples would take their 
 places. Disciples as such there would 
 
Mission to the Twelve 85 
 
 always be and their support— their Para- 
 clete — would be this other one as Jesus 
 had been the Paraclete of the first disci- 
 ples. 
 
 The Spirit of the Truth 
 
 One other aspect of the promise to 
 these chosen friends and helpers of the 
 Lord must be noticed. This other Para- 
 clete was the Spirit of the truth. It is 
 no doubt true that the individual Chris- 
 tian may claim this promise for himself. 
 So also he may expect to be taught by 
 the Spirit and to have his memory quick- 
 ened as to the life of Jesus and its 
 reference to his own salvation just as 
 truly as these first disciples of our Lord 
 (xiv. 26). 
 
 But there is surely a special reference 
 of these words to the apostolic circle. 
 For they were the first representatives of 
 the truth whom the Father was to send 
 out into the world. It was they who 
 needed most the comfort of this promise 
 
86 The Holy Spirit 
 
 that when He who was the truth incar- 
 nate should be withdrawn, truth would 
 still prevail in their hearts and in the 
 world ; and that when He who had 
 taught them all they knew of spiritual 
 things should be separated from them 
 their education would not cease but 
 would go on until they should know all 
 things and in the presence of their glori- 
 fied Lord receive His " Well done/' 
 
 We must seek the meaning of the 
 phrase in the customary usage of the 
 apostolic writers. John who here records 
 the word " truth " uses it almost invari- 
 ably in its absolute sense. It is truth, not 
 as opposed to falsehood ; not as equiva- 
 lent to the credibility of a fact or series 
 of facts ; not truth as sincerity as of a man, 
 for example ; but truth as embodying the 
 highest realities that man can grasp ; the 
 nature and character of God, the duty 
 and destiny of man and the relation of 
 God to man. That is, the truth is the 
 essence of the Gospel. (Cf. Gal. ii. 5. 
 
Mission to the Twelve 87 
 
 " The truth of the Gospel " means the 
 truth which is the Gospel.) The Spirit 
 of the truth then is the Spirit whose func- 
 tion in the divine economy is to superin- 
 tend and to guide the action of the truth ; 
 who is the truth's agent because He is 
 the truth's essence. If Jesus were the 
 truth incarnate, the Spirit was the same 
 truth in disembodied form. As God's 
 Son Jesus had revealed the truth ; as 
 spiritual agent of the same truth the 
 Paraclete was to come to men. It is on 
 account of this spiritual quality that the 
 world cannot receive Him (xiv. 17), as it 
 was on account of the same quality in 
 Jesus' claims and person that the world 
 as such did not receive Him. It was a 
 spiritual work that Jesus came to do, 
 that is, the Gospel is the satisfaction of 
 spiritual needs and the world is material 
 and so cannot feel those needs as real 
 (John viii. 47). But the disciples have 
 seized the Gospel — they are therefore of 
 the truth and they know the Paraclete 
 
88 The Holy Spirit 
 
 already though they have not understood 
 that he was a different person. " He 
 abideth in you/' Already He was in 
 them though He was to be manifested 
 in power when Jesus had gone. " He 
 shall be in you." In verses 18-24 of this 
 chapter we have described in most won- 
 derful manner the effect of the Spirit 
 upon them as the Spirit of the truth. 
 He will open their eyes to see things of 
 which they have never dreamed. He 
 will cause them to see Jesus in a light 
 which should be brighter than Trans- 
 figuration even. " I will not leave you 
 desolate; I come unto you." Yes, and 
 in that coming the scales will fall from 
 your eyes and you will see me as I have 
 never appeared to you. " Yet a little 
 while and the world beholdeth me," 
 that is, from now to resurrection, by the 
 eye of flesh. " But ye behold me " — in 
 a different fashion both now and then. 
 He speaks of the spiritual vision which 
 the eleven were beginning to have of 
 
Mission to the Twelve 89 
 
 Him and which in the reign of the Spirit 
 should be made so much clearer. 
 
 He proceeds, " Because I live/' that 
 is, because I am absolute life which can- 
 not be disturbed by the death of the body, 
 "ye shall (so) live also," and so in the 
 Spirit shall ye " behold me." Still fur- 
 ther, " In that day ye shall know that I 
 am in my Father." This should be in- 
 terpreted to mean not the day of resur- 
 rection, nor of Pentecost alone, but that 
 long day which is daytime indeed, which 
 began with the return of Jesus to the 
 Father when they should know Him by 
 the Spirit. When the Spirit of truth 
 shall possess you ye shall then know the 
 truth about my relation to the Father, 
 which is a relation which embraces you 
 also. Jesus in the Father ; His own in 
 Him and He in them. That wonderful 
 union takes place in the realm of the 
 Spirit. It cannot occur while He is 
 still on earth, for God is Spirit. It 
 must occur in that sphere in which the 
 
90 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Spirit can come unhampered to His 
 rights. 
 
 This is part of the truth which the 
 Spirit of truth is to mediate to them as 
 disciples of Jesus. Verse 26 of the same 
 chapter (John xiv.) continues the same 
 assurances of the work of the Spirit of 
 truth upon these men. Here we find 
 the phrase " Holy Spirit " for the first 
 time in these last discourses of Jesus. 
 This is the name which is so common in 
 Christian experience and in theology. 
 The adjective " holy " here as elsewhere 
 in this Gospel denotes not only moral 
 purity, but, with a retrospective glance 
 at the original meaning of the Hebrew 
 word which it represents, " complete 
 separation from all that is of the world 
 and complete consecration to all that is 
 spiritual and heavenly/' This Holy 
 Spirit is to be sent in the " name " of 
 Jesus (v. 26). Name in Scripture means 
 character. The Father therefore sends 
 the Spirit on the ground of what He has 
 
Mission to the Twelve 91 
 
 in Jesus revealed Himself to be. Jesus 
 was the Father's revelation of redemp- 
 tion. Just because He was that must 
 the Father send the Spirit. 
 
 The Holy Spirit as 'Teacher 
 
 "He shall teach you all things, and 
 bring to your remembrance all that I said 
 unto you/ 5 Jesus spoke incompletely 
 to His disciples because they were hin- 
 dered by His bodily presence from re- 
 ceiving the full spiritual vision. It was 
 not until He had laid down the body of 
 His flesh in sacrifice that they could ap- 
 preciate the full meaning of His mission 
 and His person. " I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
 bear them now" (xvi. 12). But after 
 His departure the Spirit was to continue 
 and complete their education. He is the 
 Spirit of the truth. He would therefore 
 cause them to know the truth. " He shall 
 teach you all things. " This must refer to 
 the truth of the Gospel and mean that the 
 
92 The Holy Spirit 
 
 whole bearing of the message of salvation 
 in Christ would be revealed to these men. 
 We cannot hope therefore to add any- 
 thing to what was known by these disci- 
 ples about the Gospel. Their words are 
 as final — if they spoke what they were 
 taught — as those of Christ Himself. 
 
 The promise in the latter half of the 
 verse is also of special importance. "He 
 shall bring to your remembrance all that 
 I said unto you." These are promises 
 which deal particularly with the function 
 of these men as workers for the King- 
 dom. Their human frailties were to be 
 swallowed up in the new capacities which 
 were to be given to them. Their human 
 inabilities were to be replaced by spiritual 
 power. It was only those who had ac- 
 tually heard Him who could have their 
 memories of Him made perfect. So 
 that this promise must refer to these men 
 in a direct and particular sense. It must 
 be a promise of equipment which only 
 His apostles were to enjoy. As such 
 
Mission to the Twelve 93 
 
 how much force are we to allow to it ? 
 It is a significant thing that John, the ac- 
 curacy of whose memory has been so 
 often challenged, should be the one of 
 the evangelists to record this saying of 
 Jesus. He seems to have realized that 
 what he told of Jesus must seem to his 
 readers to be too detailed and circum- 
 stantial to be the product of pure human 
 memory ; that his reports of the sayings 
 and doings of Jesus carried a claim of 
 greater accuracy than was possible. So 
 he tells on what grounds he claimed to 
 be able to narrate the whole truth. One 
 may indeed hesitate to say just what de- 
 gree of accuracy in the recalling of 
 Jesus' teaching this promise may imply. 
 But it certainly may be pressed so far as 
 to make the apostles credible witnesses, 
 even beyond that which the ordinary 
 unaided human powers could compass, of 
 the truth of the Gospel. 
 
94 The Holy Spirit 
 
 The Allusion to the Paraclete in Luke 
 
 Another passage may be cited to show 
 what effect this coming of the Paraclete 
 was intended to produce upon these 
 men. It is found in the last chapter of 
 Luke's Gospel. " Behold, I send forth 
 the promise of My Father upon you : 
 but tarry ye in the city, until ye be 
 clothed with power from on high " 
 (v. 49). This promise is repeated and 
 enlarged upon in the first chapter of the 
 book of Acts. The fourth verse may in- 
 deed be a repetition which Luke gives 
 in his second book, taking up the sub- 
 ject where he had left off. The eighth 
 verse of the same chapter, however, 
 must have been spoken at a subsequent 
 time, probably at the Ascension. Both 
 verses form a commentary upon the pas- 
 sage in Luke and must be studied with 
 it. Luke represents it as having been 
 spoken at one of the appearances of our 
 Lord during the forty days which, as he 
 
Mission to the Twelve 95 
 
 tells us, intervened between the Resur- 
 rection and the Ascension. Jesus had 
 just been teaching them what were the 
 great fundamentals of the Gospel mes- 
 sage which they were going out into the 
 world to proclaim : the fulfillment of the 
 Old Testament revelation concerning 
 Himself ; the necessity of His suffering 
 and death and resurrection ; repentance 
 and remission of sins to be preached in 
 His name to all the nations. They were 
 to be witnesses of these things. These 
 were the truths they were to proclaim. 
 He thus specifies the central doctrines 
 which they were to preach and for this 
 great work He gives them the promise 
 — the expectation that the long-heralded 
 promise of the Father will be fulfilled in 
 them. It was the promise of the new era 
 of the Spirit. Here is direct reference to 
 such predictions as Isa. xliv. 3 ; Ezek. 
 xxxvi. 27 ; Joel ii. 28 ; Zech. xii. 10. It 
 was a renewal of the promise of the Para- 
 clete with special reference to themselves. 
 
96 The Holy Spirit 
 
 The "promise" means the thing 
 promised. That which had been joined 
 inseparably to the Messianic Kingdom in 
 the prophetic vision was now that the 
 Kingdom had been inaugurated by the 
 death of the King to receive its fulfill- 
 ment also. There is no doubt here a use 
 of the Spirit in the manner of the Old 
 Testament. The Spirit was to equip 
 them for special service. Jesus says to 
 them, If you are disheartened at the 
 magnitude of the task which is commit- 
 ted to you, be assured that you have not 
 to go to your work alone. He will be 
 with you — the Father's promised pres- 
 ence. He will furnish you for what is 
 before you. More than this He will be 
 the power actually at work. It is a prom- 
 ise of the establishment of the Kingdom 
 of God through them by the Spirit who 
 was the invariable accompaniment and 
 agent of the Kingdom in prophecy and 
 in fact. The Father's promise that in 
 those days He would pour out His Spirit 
 
Mission to the Twelve 97 
 
 upon all flesh ; the Father's promise that 
 He would pour His spirit upon His 
 spiritual Israel and that they should 
 spring up among the grass as willows by 
 the water courses ; the Father's promise 
 that the Lord Jehovah would come as a 
 mighty One and that His arm would rule 
 for Him ; that He would come with 
 His reward and would " feed His flock 
 like a shepherd . . . gather the 
 lambs in His arm, and carry them in His 
 bosom and gently lead those that have 
 their young" (Isa. xliv. 3 ; xl. 11). 
 
 It was a reminder of what almighty 
 forces were conspired together that their 
 labors should not be in vain. We know 
 by the succeeding events how the prom- 
 ise was fulfilled. To them however it 
 must have seemed simply like a reitera- 
 tion of the glorious prophecies of the 
 Old Testament about the Messianic 
 Kingdom — summed up and represented 
 by that one phrase, the promise of the 
 Father. 
 
98 The Holy Spirit 
 
 Indeed in the passage in Acts, they ask 
 in words that betray their blindness to 
 the spiritual import of His teaching : 
 " Dost thou at this time restore the 
 Kingdom to Israel ? " (i. 6). This shows 
 that the promise of the Father was to 
 them synonymous with the establishment 
 of the Kingdom. 
 
 The Allusion in Matthew 
 
 It is to be remembered that Matthew 
 also in a passage which we have yet to 
 discuss records a saying of Jesus which 
 in the light of our previous exegesis be- 
 comes one with the present one. After 
 the commission which He gives to His 
 apostles in Galilee He reminds them of 
 His presence and power which are to be 
 with them. " Lo, I am with you all the 
 days, even unto the consummation of the 
 age " (Matt, xxviii. 20 Am. R. V. mg.). 
 Just as the promise of Jehovah's coming 
 was fulfilled by the setting up of Mes- 
 siah's Kingdom by the Spirit in the per- 
 
Mission to the Twelve 99 
 
 son of Jesus (Isa. xl. 10), so the words of 
 Jesus promising that He would be with 
 them are to be fulfilled by the descent 
 of the Holy Spirit to abide in power with 
 them forever. We shall have occasion 
 to cite this passage again but it is worth 
 while in passing to note how rapid and 
 unexplained are the changes in person in 
 the prophecies of the Messianic time 
 both in the Old and New Testaments. 
 We should be hopelessly confused if we 
 were not elsewhere given the explanation 
 in the triune nature of God. 
 
 One other clause in the verse in Luke 
 calls our attention. "Tarry ye in the 
 city, until ye be clothed with power from 
 on high." See also the passage in Acts 
 (i. 8), " Ye shall receive power when the 
 Holy Spirit is come upon you." In the 
 Old Testament the Spirit of God is 
 synonymous with superhuman power. 
 " Not by might nor by power (human 
 might and power) but by my Spirit, saith 
 Jehovah of hosts" (Zech. iv. 6). The 
 
ioo The Holy Spirit 
 
 Spirit in the Old Testament was Jehovah 
 in action in the hearts of men. Because 
 He was God His Spirit was omnipotent. 
 The command was therefore to tarry 
 until God's equipment made them invin- 
 cible. The promise of the Father in its 
 many expressions took no account of hu- 
 man insignificance. In some of them it 
 was represented as clothing the children 
 of the true Israel with supernatural 
 powers (e. g., Joel ii. 28). This charge 
 is to wait the definite moment when 
 those prophecies should be fulfilled in 
 their case. Their natural hesitation will 
 then all be overcome, their natural weak- 
 ness will all be swallowed up in the 
 power from on high. It was the definite 
 prediction of the Pentecostal miracle. 
 It was the announcement of the immi- 
 nence of the new era of the Spirit's 
 power. He had been in the world be- 
 fore, for creation, for the superintending 
 of the preparation for the Kingdom, for 
 the sanctification of individual believers. 
 
Mission to the Twelve 101 
 
 But now at the end of the ages He was 
 to be revealed in power to establish the 
 Kingdom in the earth, to make effective 
 in the hearts of His people everywhere 
 the benefits of the Father's supreme act 
 of redeeming love. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Promise of the Paraclete: The 
 Christian Life. 
 
 FT is but natural that the relation of 
 I the Spirit to the individual believer 
 should be little developed in the 
 teaching of Jesus. We should expect to 
 find that the apostles to whom the Spirit 
 was given to teach them all things would 
 be left to define more closely the work 
 of the Spirit in sanctification. God's 
 method is the natural one with men and 
 He has revealed to them as they were 
 fitted to receive them the various stages 
 of His plan for their redemption. So in 
 
 102 
 
The Christian Life 103 
 
 this respect we should expect to find that 
 until the Christian church was formed 
 and the training of Christians actually 
 begun, not much would be revealed 
 about the specific work of the Spirit in 
 affecting the growth of the holy life. 
 
 Accordingly we are prepared for the 
 discovery that it is in the writings of the 
 apostles, especially of Paul, that the teach- 
 ings of our Lord with respect to the 
 work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian 
 life are developed and supplemented. 
 
 But we need not go so far to find the 
 seeds of the teaching. There are in 
 the Gospels, particularly in the Gospel 
 of John, hints which in the light of 
 the later developments are very signifi- 
 cant. 
 
 The New Birth revealed by the New Life 
 
 We have already seen that Jesus in 
 the conversation with Nicodemus has 
 represented the entrance into the King- 
 dom under the figure of the new birth. 
 
Io4 The Holy Spirit 
 
 That is to say, that the service of Christ 
 is so revolutionary in its effects upon the 
 standards and ideals of men that some 
 such phrase is necessary to describe it. 
 But a new birth issues in a new life. 
 And if the new birth can be effected by 
 the Spirit alone, so the new life can be 
 lived only in the sphere of the Spirit. As 
 the Spirit is the agent who calls into new 
 being the dead soul and introduces him 
 into the more abundant life, eternal life, 
 to use John's phrase, so the same Spirit 
 it is who is the sole effective power that 
 enables the newborn soul to live. The 
 implanted life must bring forth its appro- 
 priate fruit. 
 
 Two elements are involved in the new 
 birth. Putting off and putting on. The 
 latter unavoidably carries with it the idea 
 of permanence. The new life is eternal 
 life. Does therefore the Spirit's work 
 apply only to the initiation of that life or 
 not rather to the whole course of it ? 
 Unmistakably the latter. The chief pas- 
 
The Christian Life 105 
 
 sages which teach this truth are of course 
 in the verses which describe the promise 
 of the Paraclete, but before we discuss 
 their bearing on this topic there are sev- 
 eral places in which we find their teach- 
 ing anticipated. 
 
 Jesus and the Samaritan Woman 
 
 The fourth chapter of John's Gospel 
 contains a conversation of Jesus with a 
 Samaritan woman in which He reveals 
 some of the most fundamental truths of 
 the Christian life. The woman of Sychar 
 like Nicodemus at first understands Jesus 
 literally — in the material sense — and her 
 material, formal notions of religion ap- 
 pear throughout the chapter. Jesus un- 
 covers to her what is the essence of 
 religion, in what consists eternal life and 
 what is the true relation of man to God. 
 The Holy Spirit is not mentioned by 
 name, but there can be no doubt that the 
 figure of the living water which will 
 quench the deepest thirst of the soul, 
 
106 The Holy Spirit 
 
 which will be in every one who drinks a 
 fountain of eternal life, is intended to 
 stand either for the Holy Spirit or for 
 some larger idea of which the conception 
 of the Holy Spirit is a part. Notice the 
 wording of the separate verses. Jesus 
 seated on the well waits for the return of 
 His disciples who have gone into the 
 village to purchase food. The woman 
 comes to draw water. Jesus uses her 
 common bodily need to direct attention 
 to the greater needs of her soul. When 
 she wonders at His having addressed her, 
 a Samaritan, Jesus replies that if she had 
 been truly cognizant of God's universal 
 gift she would not have thus recognized 
 a fictitious barrier between them. Sa- 
 maritan and Jew have that in common 
 which makes void all the external man- 
 made social and national divisions. It is 
 their common destiny as possible recipi- 
 ents of the gift of God. " If thou 
 knewest the gift of God, and who it is 
 that saith to thee, Give me to drink ; thou 
 
The Christian Life 107 
 
 wouldest have asked of Him, and He 
 would have given thee living water." 
 
 Is the " Gift " the Holy Spirit or Jesus 
 Himself? 
 
 What was the gift of God here referred 
 to ? Is it Jesus Himself or is it the fa- 
 miliar promise of the Old Testament to 
 which Jesus is alluding — the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit ? The structure of the sen- 
 tence seems at first to point to the former 
 alternative. For the " gift of God " 
 seems to be parallel with "Him who 
 saith to thee." We find Jesus also in the 
 conversation with Nicodemus, or the 
 evangelist's comment upon it, referring 
 to God's only begotten Son as the Father's 
 gift to men (iii. 16). Paul also once 
 uses the same word which is here trans- 
 lated " gift" to refer to the gift of Christ 
 (II Cor. ix. 15). But on the other hand 
 we have seen that Jesus alludes to the 
 Holy Spirit as the Father's chief gift to 
 man. The word here used to mean 
 
108 The Holy Spirit 
 
 "gift" is never employed elsewhere 
 in the Gospels, but it is the regular 
 word in the Acts for the gift of the 
 Spirit of God (Acts ii. 38 ; viii. 20 ; 
 x. 45 ; xi. 17). We may therefore just 
 as reasonably read the passage in this 
 light. " If thou knewest the gift of 
 God/' that is, what provision God has 
 made for supplying your spiritual thirst : 
 "and who it is that saith to thee, 
 etc., ,, that is, that One is here who can 
 mediate the gift to you ; "thou wouldest 
 have asked of Him, and He would have 
 given thee living water/' which is the 
 description of the gift by its effects. The 
 evangelist himself, in the other place 
 where Jesus speaks of the living water, 
 understands Him to refer to the Holy 
 Spirit (John viii. 39). This thought 
 therefore should have the preference 
 here. 
 
 The Perpetual Fountain 
 Accordingly, we have the figure of the 
 
The Christian Life 109 
 
 perpetual fountain which once sprung 
 forth from within the life of the individ- 
 ual becomes a never-failing source of bles- 
 sedness and joy. This is the same truth 
 which the Lord expressed in the conver- 
 sation with Nicodemus but it is adapted 
 to the different circumstances in which it 
 was uttered. There eternal life is set 
 forth under the figure of the new birth. 
 But birth is the entrance to new life. 
 One enters by regeneration into a blessed 
 state. We not only enter but we con- 
 tinually possess eternal life. The new 
 birth implies a continuous life under the 
 influence of the same forces which ef- 
 fected the birth. This new life we call 
 in theological language, sanctification, as 
 we call the act of entrance, regeneration, 
 or the new birth. So here the initial act 
 of taking the living water may be paral- 
 leled with the new birth, while the perpet- 
 ual fountain of blessing that is introduced 
 into the life may be set over against the 
 continuous, upward, progressive, sanctify- 
 
no The Holy Spirit 
 
 ing process that is worked in our hearts 
 when we have entered the Kingdom. 
 
 What then does Jesus say about the 
 Christian life ? Just this. That to be- 
 come a Christian one needs but a draught 
 of the living water. That the Holy Spirit 
 is to us what water is to the bodily thirst. 
 It is living, fresh, and invigorating water 
 flowing ever to satisfy the thirst of our 
 souls. No aspiration of our souls for 
 what is highest and best need ever go 
 unsatisfied. No longing for holiness and 
 likeness to Christ but may, through this 
 living self -perpetuating fountain, have its 
 appropriate response. The gift of the 
 Spirit is once for all. This fountain is 
 not intermittent. We may grow in ca- 
 pacity for the living water. We doubt- 
 less will learn to appreciate its health- 
 giving qualities, but when we have once 
 truly partaken of its refreshing stream it 
 will be in us a well or fountain of water 
 springing up unto eternal life. The Holy 
 Spirit is ours. Nothing is required for 
 
The Christian Life 1 1 1 
 
 His perpetual and inspiring presence but 
 the willingness to call upon His ever 
 present aid. New thirst will send us 
 anew to the fountain. But now we have 
 learned the path which leads to its side. 
 Jesus therefore teaches here the sure, in- 
 evitable progress of the true Christian in 
 the ways of God. He uses a figure 
 which without undue straining leads us 
 to the conclusion that the Christian has 
 not to agonize in prayer for the gift of 
 the Spirit. The Spirit is in our hearts. 
 It was He who brought us to Christ and 
 He will not leave us, but will inhabit us 
 with ever more pervading power as we 
 yield ourselves up to Him. It is cer- 
 tainly a real comfort to the discouraged 
 man who sees his desires for holiness con- 
 tinually thwarted, who feels the obstacles 
 to righteousness in his own heart, who 
 has known the agony of battle with the 
 old man of sin within him, to know that 
 our Lord has likened his growth in the 
 things of the Kingdom to the upspring- 
 
1 1 2 The Holy Spirit 
 
 ing of a perpetual fountain which shall 
 truly flow until his whole nature has been 
 purified and cleansed. 
 
 A Life-giving Fountain 
 
 But we have more than this on the 
 word of Jesus. There is a further prom- 
 ise in the passage in the seventh chapter 
 to which we have already referred. " If 
 any man thirst, let him come unto me 
 and drink. He that believeth on me, as 
 the Scripture hath said, from within him 
 shall flow rivers of living water' ' (vii. 
 37, 38). Every true Christian longs to be 
 of service in the Kingdom. He feels the 
 desire to live no longer unto self, but unto 
 Him who for his sake died and rose again 
 (II. Cor. v. 15). But there comes inevita- 
 bly the thought of unfitness. The world's 
 notions of material equipment are apt to 
 discourage his endeavor. Others have 
 more of wealth and talent. But Jesus 
 answers such a thought. These rivers of 
 living water will flow not from within 
 
The Christian Life 113 
 
 him who has much of this world's trea- 
 sures of gold or of talent, but from within 
 him who believes in Him. 
 
 Here John expressly identifies the liv- 
 ing water with the Holy Spirit. "But 
 this spake He of the Spirit, which they 
 that believed on Him were to receive : 
 for the Spirit was not yet given ; because 
 Jesus was not glorified " (v. 39). By this 
 John does not mean that there was as yet 
 no gift of the Spirit but only that the new 
 era of the Spirit had not yet arrived, for 
 the peculiar period of His activity was 
 not yet come. The promise awaits the 
 glorification of Jesus. His death, resur- 
 rection, and ascension to glory are logi- 
 cally prior to any participation in their 
 benefits. John therefore understands 
 Jesus to mean that whoever, on the basis 
 of His sacrifice, receives the Holy Spirit 
 into his life, whoever has tasted of the 
 living water, shall become himself a foun- 
 tain of blessedness and service, cheering, 
 uplifting everyone with whom he comes 
 
 H 
 
ii4 The Holy Spirit 
 
 in contact. He will receive through his 
 belief in Jesus a vital impulse, an inter- 
 pretation of the meaning and the purpose 
 of life so new and revolutionary that it 
 can only be compared to the bursting 
 forth of a flowing spring of water out of 
 a dry and desert place. He will himself 
 become a source of eternal life. 
 
 The Significance of the Figure 
 
 This figure had special appropriateness 
 here just as it had at the well of Jacob. 
 Every morning during the feast of Taber- 
 nacles the priest went down to the pool 
 of Siloam and drew from it water which 
 he carried in a golden urn and poured out 
 before the Lord. This was a sign of the 
 manner in which the Lord had graciously 
 supplied their thirst in the desert wander- 
 ing. It looked backward. But as we 
 learn from the Talmud the Jews also 
 connected the ceremony with the prom- 
 ise in Isaiah (xii. 3) " With joy shall ye 
 draw water out of the wells of salvation." 
 
The Christian Life 115 
 
 It consequently looked forward as well. 
 It was a peculiarly typical act — typical of 
 God's former leading of them and of His 
 promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
 in the glad Messianic time. Jesus says 
 to them practically : — Henceforth this 
 ceremonial act need no longer look for- 
 ward, for the promise which it celebrates 
 has already come to pass. I am the ful- 
 fillment both of the type and the prom- 
 ise. The type looked forward to me ; 
 the promise was a prediction of the bless- 
 ing which should come into the world 
 when the promised Messiah should ap- 
 pear. The rivers from the desert ground 
 are ready to spring forth. Just as it took 
 only an act of faith on Moses' part to 
 cause your thirst to be supplied, so now 
 it takes only an act of faith on the be- 
 liever's part to cause his spiritual aspira- 
 tions to be satisfied. Such a fountain will 
 flow forth from within him as will not 
 only be the satisfaction of his own desires 
 but it will extend and increase its life- 
 
u6 The Holy Spirit 
 
 giving so long as it flows and be the 
 means of life to other desert lives. The 
 life that is dead in sin, fruitless, unhelp- 
 ful, becomes through this living water 
 poured into it, that is, through the Holy 
 Spirit, not only itself new and living, but 
 a missionary force spreading the refresh- 
 ing influences on every hand. 
 
 The Paraclete Chapters confirm these 
 Promises 
 
 But these blessed truths of Jesus were 
 but hints given in the case of the Samari- 
 tan woman in secret, and at Tabernacles 
 in veiled form because those who heard 
 were not yet ready for the fuller teaching 
 of the new era of the Spirit. In the Para- 
 clete chapters Jesus makes plain to the 
 minds of His disciples what He had be- 
 fore spoken in parable. They said, " Lo, 
 now speakest thou plainly, and speakest 
 no dark saying' ' (7rapot/xta, xvi. 29). 
 
 So we find in these chapters abundant 
 teaching about the Spirit's place and func- 
 
The Christian Life 1 1 7 
 
 tion in the Christian life. Much of what 
 we have said in the previous chapter about 
 the Spirit and the apostles may be applied 
 with equal force to the individual be- 
 liever. For though some of these prom- 
 ises were no doubt meant for the apostles 
 in a special sense yet they have for us 
 also their undoubted application. Just as 
 the Paraclete was given to recall to the 
 minds of the apostles what they had ac- 
 tually heard Him say, so we may believe 
 He is given to us to make real in our 
 minds the words and the person of Jesus. 
 When we are in deepest discouragement 
 with the result of our labors, either for 
 self or for the Kingdom, it is the Spirit 
 who recalls us to the Saviour. 
 
 So the Spirit is also our teacher. We 
 may on the strength of this promise rely 
 upon Him to open our eyes and show us 
 the truth. The Spirit of the truth is our 
 Paraclete no less truly than He was theirs, 
 though the special functions which we 
 may be called upon to perform are dif- 
 
n8 The Holy Spirit 
 
 f erent. So also though we have not been 
 with Christ from the beginning in the 
 flesh as were the twelve (xv. 27), yet have 
 we also personal experience of His power 
 in our lives of which through the Spirit 
 we may testify to others. 
 
 These three chapters of John's Gospel 
 (xiv., xv., xvi.), are utterly incomprehen- 
 sible without the teaching of the Para- 
 clete. That is the central part of them. 
 The disciples' comfort in view of His 
 departure is the Spirit. Prayer for what- 
 ever they shall need is answered because 
 the Holy Spirit helps them to pray 
 and guides their judgment (xiv. 13 ). 
 The peace which is definitely promised 
 (xiv. 27) and which radiates through all 
 the chapters is a possibility because of 
 the promise of the Spirit and only so. 
 The charge to abide in Him as the 
 branch in the vine is only possible to 
 the disciples after His departure or 
 ever for us through the Holy Spirit. 
 Fruit-bearing for Him is only possi- 
 
The Christian Life. 119 
 
 ble if the fountain of life-giving water 
 has entered our lives. Persecutions for 
 His sake will follow, but the Holy Spirit 
 will furnish in that hour the words for 
 our testimony. More than this He will 
 convince the world, the unsympathetic, 
 persecuting world, of sin and of right- 
 eousness and of judgment. Your labor 
 though apparently in vain will be vindi- 
 cated by that same Spirit. So that the 
 result for the Christian of the Lord's 
 teaching about the Paraclete is to give 
 him the notion, the precious promise of 
 a great and all-powerful helper for every 
 time of discouragement and trial. A 
 guide in difficulty, peace in trouble, and 
 a leader and advocate who shall make the 
 Christian's cause His own and whose 
 pleading will not be in vain. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Promise of the Paraclete : the 
 Conviction of the JVorld. 
 
 rHE " world " in the writings of 
 John is the world of human be- 
 ings considered apart from God. 
 Apartness from God naturally flows into 
 the thought of separation from God. 
 These human beings are fallen beings 
 and they naturally impress their character 
 upon the order which is their field of ac- 
 tivity. The world then is the present 
 evil world as opposed to God. It is 
 God's rival in working out His glorious 
 plan to redeem men (John i. 10 ; xvii. 
 1 20 
 
Conviction of the World 1 2 1 
 
 25 ; I. John iii. 1). Yet God loved it and 
 sent His Son to bear away its sin (John i. 
 29), who also became its Saviour (xii. 47). 
 The world was separated into two por- 
 tions by the coming of Christ. Some 
 were chosen out of the world by Him 
 and some hate Him (xv. 19). So Christ 
 and His disciples on the one hand are 
 opposed by the world. 
 
 John therefore uses the word to denote 
 the evil forces as a whole that are opposed 
 to Christ. It is the rebel world to which 
 He refers when He uses the term. And 
 yet it is important that those who belong 
 to the world may become reconciled to 
 God and may cease to be of the world 
 by becoming united to Christ. The 
 rebels may lay down their arms. This 
 is the mission on which the disciples are 
 sent into the world (xvii. 16-23). 
 
 It was important, therefore, that the 
 apostles and through them the Christian 
 church should have some notion of the 
 relation in which the Spirit would stand 
 
122 The Holy Spirit 
 
 to this world as opposed to God. They 
 were utterly insufficient for its conquest. 
 The world hated them — they were not 
 of it. They were left in it for a specific 
 purpose. What should be their attitude 
 towards it ? Jesus makes a part of His 
 teaching about the Paraclete to bear upon 
 His relation to the world, the rebel world 
 opposed to God and to the plan for its 
 redemption. 
 
 Jesus' Departure was Necessary 
 
 It is necessary to observe in the first 
 place, that all this later teaching is de- 
 pendent upon what He has already made 
 plain to them — that He must go away. 
 He reiterates that His departure is neces- 
 sary (xvi. 5, 7). The disciples must be 
 made to realize that Jesus' life on earth 
 was but the preparation for that era of 
 the Spirit when the glorified Christ 
 should through the Spirit win men to 
 Himself. That era was the real climax 
 of the history of God's purpose to re- 
 
Conviction of the World 1 23 
 
 deem men. As John the Baptist said, 
 " He must increase but I must decrease/' 
 so in a real sense Jesus must renounce the 
 personal adherence of His disciples to His 
 bodily presence in order that they might 
 truly receive His spiritual presence. It 
 was no longer to be Jesus in the flesh. 
 Henceforth it was to be the glorified 
 Saviour. And this glorified Saviour it 
 was the Spirit's mission to reveal to men. 
 Jesus came to be the Saviour of the world. 
 He was the first to break this untried path. 
 The end of His course was not incarna- 
 tion but glory. Thus does He become 
 the " first-born among many brethren." 
 The truth that He came to utter was a 
 spiritual one, the Kingdom that He came 
 to found was spiritual. It was a spiritual 
 relation that He came to make possible. 
 Hence anything that called attention to 
 the material must be removed. Any 
 possible misconception of the spiritual 
 character of His mission must be averted. 
 Any attempt to localize Christianity must 
 
124 The Holy Spirit 
 
 be guarded against. His work was for 
 the world and was to continue through- 
 out the age. His human life must there- 
 fore become glorified and spiritualized 
 and so be made a matter of faith for un- 
 born millions, who could not otherwise 
 know Him than as a spiritual presence. 
 
 Then too, it was as a crucified Saviour 
 that He was to fulfill His mission. In 
 God's plan the death of Jesus was neces- 
 sary to complete His work. Not until 
 His work for men had been finished on 
 the cross could His work in men be 
 carried forward. So that the disciples 
 not only could not become witnesses of 
 Him as Son of God until His work as in- 
 carnate Son had been done, could not be- 
 come heralds of salvation until salvation 
 was accomplished, but they could not 
 themselves enjoy the fullness of the hope 
 in Christ until He had departed, via Cal- 
 vary, for He died for them as well as for 
 the world. And so He says again in this 
 chapter, " It is expedient for you that I go 
 
Conviction of the IVorld 1 25 
 
 away, for if I go not away the Paraclete 
 will not come/' 
 
 Meaning of the Word " Convict " 
 
 " When He has come, He will convict 
 the world in respect of sin, and of right- 
 eousness, and of judgment :" This word 
 " convict' ' (ikeyxco) means more than re- 
 prove, or convince. The translation in 
 the Revised Versions is not too strong. 
 It implies that what the Spirit says, the 
 world will recognize as just. It alludes 
 to the answer of conscience to the voice 
 of God which concurs in the judgment 
 and makes every man his own judge as 
 well as the object of the justice of God. 
 But notice also that conviction does not 
 carry with it conversion. Some individ- 
 uals out of this rebel world the Spirit will 
 undoubtedly win to Himself. Indeed 
 we may believe that there will be many 
 and that there have been innumerable 
 multitudes not only convicted but con- 
 verted, but the world as John uses the 
 
126 The Holy Spirit 
 
 term is and will be still hostile. The 
 promise is that the world shall stand 
 self-condemned before these men, the 
 heralds of the Kingdom. There is no 
 other promise now. There is no other 
 excuse for the man who is striving to 
 reach the world through " the foolish- 
 ness of preaching. " 
 
 Conviction of Sin 
 
 "In respect of sin." Jesus Himself 
 interprets the meaning of these phrases 
 ( vv. 9-11 ). " Because they believe not on 
 me." Can we still proclaim the old- 
 fashioned truth that rejection of Jesus is 
 the crowning sin ? Jesus makes the 
 daring statement that the world was all 
 astray concerning the nature of sin. The 
 world conceived of sin as residing in the 
 infraction of commandments. Jesus says 
 the Spirit will show men that it consists 
 not in sinful act, but in sinful attitude — 
 attitude to God — to truth. So that the 
 chief, the determinative sin of Jesus' day 
 
Conviction of the World 127 
 
 and, shall we not say, of our day also, was 
 in maintaining an attitude of indifference 
 to Him who was the crowning revelation 
 of God and the truth incarnate. It was 
 no arbitrary condition which was thus set 
 up, but one which was in the nature of the 
 case absolutely significant. Sin is oppo- 
 sition to God — to truth. God has mani- 
 fested Himself — truth has been revealed. 
 Attitude to God and to truth is revealed 
 by attitude to the manifestation of God 
 — as the revelation of the truth. So 
 there is no need to mention other sins. 
 It is not sins but sin with respect to which 
 the world needed conviction. 
 
 Conviction of Righteousness 
 
 "In respect of righteousness. ,, No 
 less than in respect of sin did the world 
 entertain false notions in respect of right- 
 eousness. Conformity was the world's 
 standard and the world of that day boasted 
 of its righteousness by conformity. Jesus 
 had already said that it was worthless 
 
128 The Holy Spirit 
 
 (Matt. v. 20). His mission had been to 
 provide a righteousness by which men 
 could be pronounced righteous in the 
 sight of an all-holy God. Hence when 
 His work has been done and He has gone 
 to His Father with that righteousness 
 provided, the work of the Spirit will be to 
 convince the world that it is God's gift 
 and not man's achievement. 
 
 Conviction of Judgment 
 
 " In respect of judgment, because the 
 prince of this world hath been judged. " 
 Jesus was at that moment under the ad- 
 verse judgment of the world represented 
 by the Sanhedrin. The next day they 
 would put Him to death in the execution 
 of it. But they were exulting prema- 
 turely. That act was really the act of 
 Satan, the prince of this world. It was 
 to be the moment of his potential defeat 
 and not of victory. The prince of this 
 world had already been judged and con- 
 demned, and from that cross would begin 
 
Conviction of the World 129 
 
 and continue to go forth the power of 
 the Spirit of God — the influence that 
 should undermine the prince's apparent 
 power and make actual the victory now 
 already pronounced and potential. With 
 such words as these does Jesus reassure 
 His half -halting disciples as they tremble 
 at the thought of facing the hostile world. 
 No more than when He Himself was 
 present with them in the body were they 
 to be left alone. The great heathen as 
 well as the Jewish world, rebellious and 
 wicked, was to be convicted of its sin, 
 taught a true righteousness, and made to 
 tremble before the just judgment of a 
 holy God. And so He could sincerely 
 tell them to be of good cheer for He had 
 thus overcome the world (xvi. 33). 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The Promise of the Paraclete : His 
 
 Relatioit to the Father and to the 
 
 Son. 
 
 J * JVT'E have neglected certain aspects 
 i'3' of the promise of the Paraclete 
 in view of the inevitable ques- 
 tion which arises in our minds as to the 
 nature of the Spirit. One who had such 
 exalted offices to fulfill must in His per- 
 son, if we may so say, be also highly ex- 
 alted. If we had not explicit teaching 
 and direct references of Jesus to the per- 
 sonality of the Spirit we must have in- 
 ferred it from the mission He was given 
 130 
 
Relation to the Godhead 131 
 
 to perform. But we are not left to con- 
 jecture upon so important a subject. 
 
 The Holy Spirit a Distinct Person 
 
 And we are led first to affirm that in 
 the teaching of Jesus the Spirit is a per- 
 son distinct from the Father and from 
 the Son. Not all the passages in which 
 reference is made to the Spirit teach this 
 truth plainly. For this reason some have 
 denied it, holding that the Spirit is either 
 simply an influence which comes from 
 God or that the Spirit is the personal 
 presence of the glorified Jesus. Such 
 passages are those which speak of the 
 Spirit as coming upon one, or of one be- 
 ing anointed by the Spirit, born of the 
 Spirit or the like. But there are other 
 references which make both of these in- 
 terpretations impossible if the plain mean- 
 ing of words is not to be disregarded. 
 
 1. Actions are attributed to Him and 
 functions ascribed to Him which would 
 be almost if not quite meaningless if He 
 
132 The Holy Spirit 
 
 were not a distinct person. "It is not 
 ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father 
 that speaketh in you" (Matt. x. 20 and 
 parr.). " He shall convict the world of 
 sin, etc. (John xvi. 8 ff.). "He shall teach 
 you all things," <( He shall bear witness 
 of me " (John xiv. 26 ; xv. 26). These 
 are actions requiring for their perform- 
 ance a sentient, willing personality. 
 
 2. The personal pronoun " he " is used 
 to describe the Spirit. The word which 
 we translate "spirit" is in Greek of the 
 neuter gender. It is a sign therefore 
 that special emphasis is intended to be 
 laid upon the masculine personal nature 
 of the Paraclete when in several instances 
 the masculine personal pronoun is used 
 in referring to the Spirit and to the neu- 
 ter relative, both of which precede (John 
 xvi. 13, 14 ; xiv. 26 ; xv. 26). 
 
 3. He is joined with the Father and 
 the Son, both conceived of as separate 
 persons, so that the reasonable conclusion 
 is that the Spirit is also a distinct person 
 
Relation to the Godhead 133 
 
 (Matt, xxviii. 19 ; Matt. xii. 31, 32). In 
 the latter passage we have also a further 
 confirmation in the words of the refer- 
 ence to the Spirit. Blasphemy against the 
 Spirit is blasphemy against a person. You 
 cannot blaspheme an influence. 
 
 His Relation to the Father 
 
 In John xv. 26 a phrase is used which 
 has been much discussed in its bearing 
 upon inter-Trinitarian relations, " which 
 proceedeth from the Father." The 
 Greek church has used it as a proof 
 text for one of their chief differences 
 with other Christian churches. They 
 have held from early times that the pas- 
 sage means that the Spirit proceeded from 
 the Father and not from the Son. They 
 consequently rejected on the basis of this 
 text the clauses of the Athanasian and 
 later creeds in which confession was 
 made of a belief in the procession of the 
 Spirit from the Son. But a closer glance 
 at the words used will show that no 
 
134 The Holy Spirit 
 
 teaching is here intended as to the mu- 
 tual relation of being between the per- 
 sons of the Godhead. The word trans- 
 lated " from " does not mean out of but 
 away from in the sense of being sent on a 
 mission. The phrase refers to the offi- 
 cial relation of the Spirit to the Father 
 and not to the essential relation. It is in- 
 tended to teach that just as Jesus had 
 come from the Father to accomplish 
 His great redemptive purposes so the 
 Spirit was to come from the Father on a 
 mission of equal definiteness. The words 
 are part of the message of comfort to the 
 disciples. Through the Spirit their rela- 
 tion to the Father will not be less close 
 than when Christ was with them. 
 
 We are no doubt to see in this state- 
 ment a revelation of a relation to the 
 Father which is in some sense subordi- 
 nate. Whether this subordination is a 
 real one or whether we are to look upon 
 it as simply an economical inferiority we 
 cannot say from these words of Jesus. 
 
Relation to the Godhead 135 
 
 But the latter is implied in the other 
 places where the Father and the Spirit 
 are joined. The Son will pray to the 
 Father and He will send another Para- 
 clete. That is, the Spirit is to come from 
 God as Jesus had come and to do the same 
 things for men that Jesus had done, /. e., 
 to take His place. Again, He is called the 
 Spirit of the truth. Not a spirit or agent 
 of the truth, but He is by reason of His 
 nature the very truth itself in spiritual 
 form. Jesus proclaimed Himself to be 
 the truth, a declaration that was in itself 
 a claim to divinity. So the Spirit of the 
 truth as the revealer and agent of abso- 
 lute truth, of the very essence of things 
 could be no less than God. Still further, 
 His work is a divine work. He convicts 
 of sin. He begets a new and super- 
 natural life. As the author of life He per- 
 forms the functions of Deity. The sin 
 against the Holy Spirit is also represented 
 to be sin against a person of divine value. 
 All sin is against God; hence to sin 
 
136 The Holy Spirit 
 
 against the Holy Spirit is to sin against 
 God. When, finally, Jesus brings the 
 Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit 
 into a single expression and commands a 
 baptism into one name, the name, not the 
 names of the Father, etc., He simply ex- 
 presses naturally and with apparent un- 
 consciousness the essential Deity not only 
 of the Father and of the Son but of the 
 Spirit also. 
 
 Relation to the Son 
 
 We have already in the preceding sec- 
 tion attempted to unfold the teaching of 
 Jesus about the essential relation of the 
 Spirit to the Son. Jesus is God — the 
 Spirit is God. But there is a relation also 
 of office which is very definitely drawn out 
 in these chapters which have for their 
 chief subject the promise of the Para- 
 clete. The first mention of the Spirit in 
 this connection is a definite promise that 
 He will take the place of Jesus. " I will 
 pray the Father and He shall give you 
 
Relation to the Godhead 137 
 
 another Paraclete " (John xiv. 16). That 
 is, whatever of help and of comfort I 
 have been to you will hereafter be sup- 
 plied by Him who comes to be in my 
 place. Throughout these chapters we 
 find Him referred to by Jesus as intended 
 to be His real representative after His 
 glorification. He is not to supersede 
 Jesus but to carry on and bring to ful- 
 fillment the work which Jesus had al- 
 ready begun with them. They had been 
 associated with Jesus in many precious 
 hours and had learned from Him many 
 precious lessons. The Spirit would cause 
 that none of those experiences should 
 fail of its intended effect. For through 
 Him not one should be lost to them ; 
 He would bring to their remembrance 
 all that He had said to them (xiv. 26). 
 We may even say that the work of the 
 Spirit as revealed to these men would be 
 more important than the work of Jesus 
 had been, as the work of making the 
 seed fruitful and germinant is of more 
 
138 The Holy Spirit 
 
 importance than the sowing of the seed. 
 For He is to bear witness of Christ. He 
 is not to speak of Himself. But He 
 shall take of the things of Christ and 
 show them unto His own (xvi. 14). 
 
 Jesus in other words intrusts the en- 
 tire work of carrying on His influence in 
 the world and of making it persistent and 
 effective to that same Spirit, the Paraclete. 
 What men have known of Jesus from 
 that day to this, that is, what they know 
 of His work and His revelation of the 
 Father's love, and by experimental knowl- 
 edge of His gracious redemption, they 
 have known by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 " He shall glorify me " (John xvi. 14). 
 Here is one further reference to the re- 
 lation of the Paraclete to the Son. Jesus 
 could wait in simple patience for His 
 glory. He could go to a shameful death, 
 confident that though the spite of men 
 was being wreaked upon Him and His 
 name was not respected but rather hated, 
 yet in the new era of the Spirit of God 
 
Relation to the Godhead 139 
 
 He would come to His own. Glory 
 would be His through the agency of the 
 Paraclete. And so it is, wherever the 
 name of Jesus has received its appropri- 
 ate homage, wherever He has been hon- 
 ored as God's incarnate Son, wherever He 
 has been glorified, there we may see the 
 graciously effective work of the Paraclete. 
 As Christ is the truth so the Paraclete is 
 the truth's agent to make that truth ef- 
 fective in the world (xiv. 17 ; xvi. 13 ; 
 see also I. John v. 7). 
 
 The Spirit the Medium of Fellowship with 
 God 
 
 Jesus makes it abundantly plain through- 
 out these chapters that whatever of fel- 
 lowship with the Father or with the Son 
 men were hereafter to enjoy they were 
 to enjoy through the Spirit of God, for 
 their intercourse was henceforth to be 
 spiritual. Jesus said to the woman at the 
 well, " God is a Spirit : and they that wor- 
 ship Him must worship Him in spirit and 
 
140 The Holy Spirit 
 
 in truth " (John iv. 24). That is, worship 
 being communion with a spiritual being 
 must take place in the sphere of the 
 Spirit. Heretofore men had received 
 many material manifestations of God : 
 the theophanies of the Old Testament ; 
 the presence of specially inspired and dele- 
 gated men, the prophets ; and now at 
 the last His own Son in the flesh ; but 
 henceforth men were to know Him and 
 approach Him in the Spirit. One great 
 purpose of Jesus' coming into the world 
 was to reveal the Father, and no other 
 news about Him was more important 
 than the knowledge that He is a spirit- 
 ual being and must be worshipped and 
 served in the sphere of the Spirit. So 
 that " spirit with spirit may meet." This 
 takes out of worship all perfunctoriness, 
 banishes the possibility of hypocrisy and 
 deceit, and opens up a real and vital union 
 with God. And all this according to 
 Jesus is accomplished by the Paraclete. 
 Judas asks, " What is come to pass 
 
Relation to the Godhead 141 
 
 that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, 
 and not unto the world?" (John xiv. 
 22). Jesus answers, " If a man love me 
 he will keep my word : and my Father 
 will love him, and we will come unto 
 him (by the Spirit), and make our abode 
 with him." Devotion to the will of 
 Jesus, keeping His word, will admit a 
 man to this spiritual union with the 
 Father and with the Son. In the day 
 of the Spirit's power God is with us not 
 less really but rather more so, than when 
 Jesus was present in the flesh. 
 
 We can see therefore a relation of the 
 Spirit to the Son, in some respects appar- 
 ently subordinate, being sent at His 
 prayer and in His name and even by 
 Him (xiv. 16, 26 ; xvi. 7) ; nevertheless 
 we see Him associated in a relation of 
 absolute equality with the Son, associ- 
 ated in the work of redemption just as 
 vitally as either the Father or the Son. 
 The secret of this intimacy of relation 
 we cannot fully grasp. We may, how- 
 
142 The Holy Spirit 
 
 ever, express it to ourselves by the term 
 which has served the church for many 
 hundred years as the confession of her 
 faith. The Trinity, the Triune God, the 
 three Persons in the Godhead, — the same 
 in substance, equal in power and glory. 
 
 This conclusion is confirmed by the 
 last word of Jesus on the subject of the 
 Spirit which we shall discuss in the next 
 chapter. The Great Commission (Matt. 
 xxviii. 19) ends with the command to 
 baptize in the name of the Father and of 
 the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the 
 light of what has been said by Jesus about 
 Himself and about the Spirit these words 
 become intelligible. They associate the 
 Three in one phrase as the conjoint trust- 
 worthy sponsors for the act of baptism. 
 Because of this God, Father, Son and 
 Spirit, men are given the privilege of 
 baptism, and because of such a God 
 comes the certainty that the holy symbol 
 will not be wholly symbol, but will stand 
 for a real and blessed fact. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Great Commission. 
 
 rHE last interview of Jesus with 
 His disciples in Galilee before 
 His ascension was marked by an 
 event which for magnificent daring, for 
 splendid presumption must have revealed 
 Him as an impostor had He been less 
 than He claimed to be. On the eve of 
 His departure from His little band of dis- 
 ciples He bids them go out and make 
 converts of all nations and adds the com- 
 mand to baptize them in the name of the 
 Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 143 
 
144 The Holy Spirit 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that in 
 these words Jesus prescribes a formula to 
 be used in baptism. It is, however, nat- 
 ural that they should soon be elevated 
 into a formula by those who loved Him. 
 And this was what actually occurred. 
 Jesus is not just now teaching men what 
 is their relation either to the Father or to 
 the Son or to the Spirit. He is assuming 
 what He has previously taught. The 
 point of the passage is that it is a com- 
 mand to preach truths which they had 
 already learned. They had been the re- 
 cipients of His instruction for two years 
 and more. In this interview He is tell- 
 ing them what was the purpose of that 
 closeness of personal relation which they 
 alone had enjoyed. They were being 
 trained for the work of discipling the 
 nations. What they had learned they 
 were now to teach. So Jesus does not 
 expressly say what relation should subsist 
 between the Father and the believer, be- 
 tween the Son or Spirit and the believer. 
 
The Great Commission 145 
 
 That has already been made sufficiently 
 plain. He simply alludes to the fact that 
 there are relations which should exist and 
 allows their memories to prompt the 
 thoughts which should fill the gap. He 
 says, " In the name of. " The "name ,J 
 stands for the thing or person named. 
 It alludes to character. " In the name " 
 of a person means in virtue of all that 
 that person is. "The name of Jesus," 
 for example, in the New Testament is a 
 short and pregnant expression to denote 
 all that He is. So here, instead of saying 
 fully that those who were to be baptized 
 must be in a relation of love to the 
 Father, penitently accepting His gracious 
 pardon for sin ; and of trust with respect 
 to Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on their 
 behalf has made that pardon possible ; 
 and of hospitality toward the Holy Spirit 
 who by His work in their hearts has 
 made the world's Redeemer their Re- 
 deemer ; instead of saying this which they 
 had been taught many a time, He simply 
 J 
 
146 The Holy Spirit 
 
 names the three persons to whom the 
 new disciples were to confess allegiance 
 as one God. Jesus does not expressly 
 define the necessary relation of the be- 
 liever to each of the Three. For this 
 was the ceremony of entrance to the 
 Kingdom. Admitting men to the King- 
 dom u in the name " of these Three 
 was admitting them in virtue of the rela- 
 tion which each of the Three bore to 
 the Kingdom. Jesus has proclaimed 
 God as Father. He shall be confessed 
 therefore as Father by those who seek 
 admission to the Kingdom. This implies 
 repentance for all the old rebellious, un- 
 filial manner of life. Jesus has claimed 
 to be and has shown Himself to be the 
 only begotten Son of the Father and by 
 His death has fulfilled the mission of the 
 Father to save men. He therefore is the 
 mediator of this new fellowship with 
 God. The Spirit who has been steadily 
 promised as the accompaniment of the 
 Messianic age has been further defined 
 
The Great Commission 147 
 
 as the originator of the new life and the 
 personal friend and advocate of the can- 
 didate for admission to the Kingdom. 
 Confession of Him also must therefore 
 be made in baptism. None of these ele- 
 ments is unnecessary. Without this three- 
 fold equipment their admission to disciple- 
 ship would be a meaningless form. This 
 is doctrine reduced to its lowest terms. 
 Without it baptism would be empty and 
 without significance. Jesus therefore 
 binds the Spirit to the Father and the 
 Son in a necessary unity. 
 
 These words have been challenged in 
 recent years on the ground that they are 
 not conceivable in the circumstances. Of 
 course this view generally depends also 
 on the rejection of John's records of the 
 teaching of Jesus. For it is difficult to 
 receive at its face value what Jesus said 
 as recorded by John with respect to His 
 relation to the Father, and with respect 
 to the relation of the Paraclete to Father 
 and to Son, and at the same time to be 
 
148 The Holy Spirit 
 
 surprised at this intimate association of 
 the Three under one name. 
 
 But the words as they stand are con- 
 sistent with the majesty of the scene. 
 They cannot be a reflection of a later 
 age. This was a commission which our 
 Lord was giving to His church through 
 her representatives. He is revealing to 
 His followers of every age their mission 
 to the world. He is announcing the 
 reality of the truth which He earlier fore- 
 told in parables like that of the Leaven 
 and of the Mustard Seed. Was it not, 
 therefore, harmonious with the character 
 of the scene that He should thus gather 
 up all that He had taught about God into 
 one living and glowing phrase, in one 
 sentence preserve and proclaim the full 
 significance of the message they were go- 
 ing out to herald ? Is it altogether out 
 of keeping with the nature of the case 
 that He should connect that sentence 
 with the very act by which converts were 
 to be initiated into the Christian brother- 
 
The Great Commission 149 
 
 hood ? Jesus was never willing to gain 
 followers at the expense of principle. 
 He never wanted disciples who were not 
 willing to accept the doctrinal significance 
 of the step they were taking. This last 
 address was no less exacting than His 
 former habit. Men were to be dis- 
 cipled, taught to believe upon Him, but 
 they were to be instructed that disciple- 
 ship with Him would necessarily involve 
 acceptance of His teachings about God 
 in His person as Father, in His person as 
 Son and in His person as Holy Spirit. 
 
 We may even say that some such words 
 as these must have been used by Jesus be- 
 fore He left the earth. We cannot ex- 
 plain on any other supposition the im- 
 mediate and general use of Trinitarian 
 language by the writers of the New Tes- 
 tament epistles, nor can we account for 
 the early Trinitarian formula for baptism, 
 nor the presence of the idea at least in 
 the Apostles' Creed. There is not only 
 not the least improbability that these 
 
150 The Holy Spirit 
 
 words were spoken by Jesus as recorded 
 by Matthew, but if they had not been 
 recorded we must have known that some 
 revelation of this character was given, or 
 else have been at a loss to explain how 
 all these things came to pass. We should 
 have guessed at the fact had it not been 
 recorded. 
 
 But now if this be the case what defi- 
 nite teaching of Jesus concerning the 
 Holy Spirit have we in the Great Com- 
 mission ? It is the confirmation of what 
 we have found to be the fact in John's 
 Gospel. Namely, that now that Christ 
 has risen we are in the new era of the 
 Spirit's power and that His work is nec- 
 essary to make effective what Jesus has 
 done. We see that at a time when atten- 
 tion is called to the actual work of the 
 extension of the Kingdom of God in the 
 world on the basis of the sacrificial work 
 of the Saviour, it was necessary for full 
 statement of the truth to join the Spirit 
 with the Father and the Son as directly 
 
The Great Commission 151 
 
 co-responsible with them for the progress 
 of the Kingdom. This is not dwelt 
 upon. That has already been done. As 
 was natural, Jesus simply alludes to for- 
 mer teaching and in this summary man- 
 ner testifies again to its importance. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Summary. 
 
 rO sum up in brief our findings as to 
 the teaching of Jesus concerning 
 the Holy Spirit, we find that — 
 First, in the Old Testament the Spirit 
 was revealed in His cosmic, in His theo- 
 cratic, and in His individual relations. 
 That the second of these relations is by 
 far the most prominent. That the Spirit 
 was the divine superintendent, ab intra, 
 in the work of redemption, filling prophet 
 and judge, artificer and king for their 
 work of preparation for the Kingdom. 
 That even in Old Testament times 
 152 
 
Summary 1 53 
 
 there was promised a Messiah whose 
 age should be marked by a mighty out- 
 pouring of the Spirit when new and 
 strange forces should possess men and 
 the knowledge of God should be spread 
 abroad in new and wonderful measure. 
 
 That as yet the Spirit was not revealed 
 in His personal character, but was always 
 spoken of as the power or energy of God 
 working in the world and particularly in 
 His chosen ones to accomplish His wise 
 and holy purposes. 
 
 Second, that the secret of the peculiar 
 distribution of the New Testament teach- 
 ing about the Spirit is due to the peculiar 
 relation of Jesus' earthly work to the ob- 
 ject of His mission, being in a sense pre- 
 paratory and having to be completed by 
 His death and resurrection, when first the 
 world could enter into the full benefit of 
 His life and death through the Spirit. 
 
 Third, that according to Jesus Himself 
 He had been prepared for His Messianic 
 work by an anointing of the Holy Spirit 
 
154 The Holy Spirit 
 
 as the Old Testament prophets had pre- 
 dicted. That this possibly carries with it 
 the sanction of Jesus upon the New Tes- 
 tament accounts of His conception and 
 birth, and almost certainly involves His 
 testimony to the Spirit's activity at His 
 baptism as recorded by the evangelists. 
 
 Fourth, that with respect to the King- 
 dom of God Jesus also reiterates the 
 teaching of the prophets as to the close 
 connection of the Kingdom with the 
 Spirit and in dependence upon it re- 
 bukes the Pharisees because they had 
 not argued the presence of the Kingdom 
 and hence of the Messiah from the signs 
 which He wrought in the power of the 
 Spirit. That entrance into the Kingdom 
 is effected by the transforming power of 
 the Spirit, so revolutionary that it may 
 fairly be called a new birth. 
 
 Fifth, that the sin against the Holy 
 Spirit was a sin against the redemptive 
 purpose of God. It had reference to 
 the Spirit because of His activity in the 
 
Summary 155 
 
 plan to redeem men. That the sin prob- 
 ably consisted in the persistent and final 
 rejection of Jesus as the impersonation 
 of a redeeming God. 
 
 Sixth, that Jesus in one place at least 
 makes explicit confirmation of this view 
 of the importance of the Spirit in the 
 Christian life, by assuming that it is 
 God's chief gift to men, by which all 
 other heavenly gifts are received and 
 appreciated. 
 
 Seventh, that both the Synoptic Gospels 
 and John record that Jesus announced 
 the imminence of the new era of the 
 Spirit when the wonderful promises of 
 the Old Covenant should be fulfilled. 
 The name He gives to the Spirit in John 
 is the Paraclete, a pregnant expression to 
 indicate the climax of helpful power. 
 That this promise had special reference 
 to the twelve apostles and was intended 
 in the first place to comfort their natural 
 sorrow at the prospect of His death. 
 That it was then intended to reassure 
 
156 The Holy Spirit 
 
 them in the face of the enormous re- 
 sponsibilities which were upon them. 
 The church was safe for the Paraclete 
 would abide forever. As the Spirit of 
 truth He would also quicken their facul- 
 ties and guide them in the perception and 
 in the transmission of the truth. 
 
 Eighth, that Jesus taught also the im- 
 portance of the work of the Spirit in the 
 life of the individual Christian. That a 
 new birth implies a new continuous life, 
 is in order to eternal life. That the water 
 of life implies continual supply of increas- 
 ing soul-thirst. That participation in this 
 eternal life, possession of this Spirit, issues 
 in service, and admits to the peace which 
 the world cannot give. 
 
 Ninth, that the Paraclete has also a 
 mission to the world, the hostile rebel 
 world, which shall relieve His disciples 
 of the responsibility of the world's recep- 
 tion or rejection of Jesus. Their duty is 
 to present ; His function is to convict. 
 That this conviction is to render the 
 
Summary 157 
 
 world without excuse, as it consists in so 
 awakening conscience as to make the 
 world its own judge. 
 
 Tenth, Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit 
 is a person distinct from the Father and 
 from the Son. That while for economic 
 reasons He is represented as subordinate 
 to the Father and to the Son yet that He 
 is to be regarded as co-equal with them 
 in substance and in authority. That the 
 Father sends the Spirit as He sends the 
 Son and yet the Spirit's work is peculiarly 
 His own. That the Son prays the Father 
 for the Spirit's descent and yet that the 
 Son's work must be carried on and ap- 
 plied by the Spirit. 
 
 Eleventh, that Jesus joins the Three in 
 one summary phrase which indicates that 
 a relation to each of the three persons of 
 the Godhead is implied in the acceptance 
 of Jesus and in entrance upon the Chris- 
 tian life. That the symbol which stands 
 for admission to discipleship had Father, 
 Son and Spirit indelibly inscribed upon 
 
158 The Holy Spirit 
 
 it to call attention to this threefold rela- 
 tion. That this is the promise of the 
 permanence of the disciples' work and 
 the sure pledge of the victory of the 
 Kingdom in the hearts of men. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 
 
 A 
 
 Abiding in Christ- — through Holy Spirit, 118. 
 
 Admission to Kingdom, 146. 
 
 Advocate, 29. 
 
 Apostles credible witnesses to Jesus, 93. 
 
 Apostles' Creed, 149. 
 
 Apostles teach mature doctrine of Trinity, 22, 23, 
 
 Apostles' teaching final, 92. 
 Artificers, equipped by Spirit, 16. 
 Athanasian Creed, 133. 
 
 B 
 
 Baptism — admission to the Kingdom, 146. 
 
 by fire, 52. 
 
 Christian, 51. 
 
 in name of Trinity, 136, 142, 144, 147. 
 
 of Jesus, 39,45,57- 
 
 of John, 52. 
 Beistand, 75. 
 
 159 
 
160 Index of Subjects 
 
 Believer, a source of eternal life, 1 14. 
 Blasphemy against Holy Spirit, 26, 53, 57, 
 Blindness of Apostles, 98. 
 
 Caesarea Philippi, Scene at, 83. 
 
 Chief Gift of the Father, 62 ff. 
 
 Christian Baptism, 51. 
 
 Claims of Jesus to Messiahship, 35. 
 
 Comforter, 29, 75. 
 
 Communion with Father and Son through Paraclete, 
 
 83,89,118. 
 
 Confession of Holy Spirit in Baptism, 147. 
 " Convict," meaning of, 125. 
 Cosmos, Spirit and the, 1, 17. 
 Creation, Agency of Spirit in, 2, 3. 
 Crowning Sin, Rejection of Jesus, 126. 
 Crucifixion must precede Spirit's coming, 124. 
 
 D 
 
 David's predictions of Messiah, 27. 
 
 Death of Jesus logically prior to its benefits, 113. 
 
 Demons, Dispossession of by Jesus, 42. 
 
 Departure of Jesus necessary, 122 f. 
 
 Disposition of the Father to answer Prayer, 63, 68. 
 
Index of Subjects 161 
 
 Distribution of Teaching concerning Holy Spirit, 
 
 24 ff. 
 Doctrine of Trinity, Development of, 19 ff. 
 
 Education of the Twelve by the Spirit, 91. 
 Entrance to the Kingdom, 46. 
 Equality of Holy Spirit with the Father, 135. 
 Equality of Holy Spirit with the Son, 141. 
 Eternal Life a continuous gift, 109. 
 
 Faith required for entrance to Kingdom, 49. 
 
 Father's chief gift, The, 62 ff. 
 
 Fellowship with God, Spirit the medium of, 83, 89, 
 
 139 ff. 
 " Finger of God," Meaning of, 43. 
 For-teller, Prophet a, 6, 
 Fore-teller, Prophet a, 6. 
 Fountain, Perpetual, 108. 
 
 Four Gospels, Sources for Teaching of Jesus, 24. 
 Friend in Bed, Parable of, 63. 
 Fruit-bearing, through the Spirit, 118. 
 
 Gideon, 4. 
 K 
 
1 62 Index of Subjects 
 
 Gift, Father's Chief, 62 ff. 
 
 " Gift" in New Testament, 107 f. 
 
 " Gift of God " is Holy Spirit, 107. 
 
 God in Old Testament Works by His Spirit, 16. 
 
 Gospels, Sources of Teaching of Jesus, 24. 
 
 Gospel, John's, Teaching concerning Spirit in, 
 
 29, 73 f - 
 Gospels, Synoptic, Teaching concerning Spirit in, 
 24 ff. 
 Johannine Teaching assumed 
 in, 32. 
 Great Commission, 33, 142 f. 
 Greek Church on "Procession of the Spirit," 133. 
 
 H 
 
 Hidden Treasure, Parable of, 66. 
 
 Historical Criticism and Intimations of Trinity in 
 
 Old Testament, 20. 
 Holy Spirit, a permanent Gift, no f. 
 
 and dispossession of demons by Jesus, 
 
 42 f. 
 
 and Sanctification, 102 ff. 
 
 and Peace, 118. 
 
 and Prayer, 118. 
 
 and the Baptism of Jesus, 39, 45, 57. 
 
 and the Christian Life, 102 ff. 
 
Index of Sttbjects 163 
 
 Holy Spirit and the Cosmos, I, 17. 
 
 and the Individual, 14, 117 ff. 
 
 and the Kingdom, 42 ff. 
 
 and the Messiah, 11, 35. 
 
 and the Messianic Age, 8, 21. 
 
 and the New Birth, 49 ff. 
 
 and the Plan of Salvation, 17. 
 
 and the Prophets, 6 ff. 
 
 and the Supernatural Conception of 
 
 Jesus, 40, 45, 57. 
 and the Tabernacle, 5. 
 and the Theocracy, 3 ff. 
 assures Christian Service, 112 f. 
 as Teacher, 91. 
 Confession of in Baptism, 147. 
 Conviction of World by, 120 ff. 
 Distribution of Teaching concerning, 
 
 24- 
 Equality of, with Father and Son, 141. 
 Father's Chief Gift, 62 ff. 
 God active in the World, 16. 
 in Education of the Twelve, 91. 
 in Old Testament, 1 fr. 
 in Persecution, 24, 54, 119. 
 is " Living water," 107. 
 Meaning of, 90. 
 
164 Index of Subjects 
 
 Holy Spirit, Medium of Fellowship with God, 83, 
 89, 139. 
 Name of, 16. 
 Personality of, 131 ff. 
 " Procession "of, 133. 
 Regeneration by means of, 46 ff. 
 Sanctifying agent in Old Testament, 
 
 i 4 f. 
 
 Sin against, 26, 53 ff. 
 
 Spirit of the Truth, 85, 91, 117. 
 
 Subordination of, 134, 141. 
 
 Teaching concerning, in John's Gos- 
 pel, 29, 73 f. 
 
 Teaching concerning, in Synoptic 
 Gospels, 24 ff. 
 
 Two eras of manifestation, 17 f., 33. 
 
 Importunity in Prayer, 63. 
 Individual, Spirit and the, 14, 117 ff. 
 Inspiration of Prophets, 6 ff., 27. 
 Intimations of Trinity in Old Testament, 19 ff. 
 " In the Name of," 145. 
 
 j 
 
 Jesus Christ, a crucified Saviour, 124. 
 
Index of Subjects 165 
 
 Jesus Christ, desire of instructed disciples, 149. 
 
 mission to reveal the Father, 140. 
 
 Rejection of, 126. 
 John's Gospel, Teaching concerning Spirit in, 29, 
 
 73 ff. 
 
 Joseph, 5. 
 
 Judas, not Iscariot, 140. 
 Judgment, Conviction in respect of, 128. 
 of Satan, 128. 
 
 K 
 
 Kingdom, Entrance to, 46, 146. 
 
 The, a Spiritual one, 123. 
 
 of God, Spirit and the, 26, 42 ff. 
 Kings of Israel equipped by Spirit, 1 6. 
 
 Lawgivers of Old Testament equipped by Spirit, 
 
 16. 
 Leaven, Parable of, 148. 
 Life-giving Fountain, 112 ff. 
 Living Water, 106 ff. 
 
 Localization of Christianity guarded against, 123. 
 Lord's Prayer, 63, 65. 
 
1 66 Index of Subjects 
 
 M 
 
 Mark's Gospel, Order of, 55, 71. 
 
 Matthew's account of Sermon on Mount, 64 f. 
 
 Gospel, Order of, 55, 71. 
 Messiah, 8. 
 
 Messiah, Development of Doctrine of, 11 ff. 
 Equipment of, 12, 35 ff. 
 The Spirit and the, 1 1 ff. 
 Messianic Age, The Spirit and the, 8, 31, 34. 
 People, The, 13. 
 Prophecy, 8 ff., 99. 
 Ministry of Jesus preliminary, 77. 
 Mission, Jesus' testimony to His own, 37. 
 Mustard Seed, Parable of, 148. 
 
 N 
 
 " Name in Scripture," 90. 
 " Name in Jesus," 90. 
 Nazareth, Jesus at, 25, 36. 
 New Birth by Spirit, 49 ff. 
 
 by water, 49. 
 
 revealed by new Life, 103 ff. 
 New Era of Spirit, 17 ff., 33. 
 Nicodemus, 46 ff., 103. 
 
Index of Subjects 167 
 
 Old Dispensation witness to New, 52. 
 Old Testament, preparation for Redeemer, 15. 
 Teaching concerning Spirit 
 1 ff. 
 Order of Mark's Gospel, 55, 71. 
 
 Matthew's Gospel, 55, 71. 
 
 Parable, of Friend in Bed, 63. 
 
 of Hidden Treasure, 66. 
 of Leaven, 148. 
 of Mustard Seed, 148. 
 of Pearl of Great Price, 66. 
 Paraclete, 29. 
 
 chapters, 29, 73, 116, 118. 
 
 Foregleams of later Teaching, 28, 72. 
 
 in Luke's Gospel, 94 ff., 99. 
 
 in Matthew's Gospel, 98 ff. 
 
 in Synoptic Gospels, 70 ff. 
 
 Meaning of, 74 ff. 
 
 Personal Helper of Disciples, 30, 70 ff., 
 73> 7 6 > 118,119. 
 
 Promise of, to the Twelve, 79 ff, 85, 92, 
 
 93- 
 
1 68 Index of Subjects 
 
 Paraclete, Relation to the Godhead, 130 fF. 
 Relation to the Father, 133 fF. 
 Relation to the Son, 136 fF. 
 Substitute for Jesus, 29. 
 Superintendent of work of Redemption, 
 
 to convict the world, 30, 119, 120. 
 Peace through the Spirit, 118. 
 Pearl of great Price, Parable of, 66. 
 Pentecost, Prediction of, 100. 
 Persecution, Spirit's Help in, 27, 54, 119. 
 Personality of Holy Spirit, 131. 
 Pharaoh, 5. 
 
 Pharisees and unpardonable Sin, 58. 
 Pharisees, Controversy of Jesus with, 25, 42, 53. 
 Plan of Salvation, Stages in development of, 78. 
 Pool of Siloam, 114. 
 Prayer, Jesus' Teaching about, 62 fF. 
 
 Lord's, 63,65. 
 
 through the Spirit, 118. 
 " Procession of the Spirit," 133. 
 Promise, Meaning of, 96. 
 " Promise of my Father," 94 fF. 
 Prophecy, Messianic, 8 fF., 99. 
 Oral, 7. 
 Written, 7. 
 
Index of Subjects i6g 
 
 Prophets equipped by Spirit, 16. 
 
 Inspiration of, 6 ff., 27. 
 
 of Judah and Israel, 16. 
 
 Representative of God, 140. 
 Psychology, Scriptures not to teach, 8. 
 
 R 
 
 Redeemer for Israel, 11, 
 
 Redemption Agent, Holy Spirit, 16, 18. 
 
 Regeneration by Holy Spirit, 46 ff. 
 
 of Israel, 9. 
 Rejection of Jesus, crowning Sin, 126. 
 
 Sin against Holy Spirit, 60. 
 Religious Life of Old Testament Saints, 14. 
 Righteousness, Conviction in respect of, 127 ff. 
 God's gift, 128. 
 
 Samaritan woman, 105, 116, 139. 
 
 Samson, 4. 
 
 Sanctification, Work of Spirit in, 102 ff. 
 
 Sanctifying agency of Spirit in Old Testament, 15, 
 
 Satan, author of Jesus' Condemnation, 128. 
 Saul, 4. 
 
1 70 Index of Subjects 
 
 Sermon on Mount in Matthew's Gospel, 64 f. 
 
 Servant of Jehovah, 12 ff., 36. 
 
 Servants of God equipped with Spirit, 28. 
 
 Service, Christian, assured by Spirit, 112 f. 
 
 Sin, Conviction in respect of, 126 f. 
 
 Sonship of Christ in Old Testament, 18 
 
 Spirit of God (see Holy Spirit). 
 
 Spirit of Truth, 85 ff., 91, 117. 
 
 Spiritual Kingdom, 123. 
 
 Stages of Plan of Salvation, 78. 
 
 Subordination of Holy Spirit, 134, 141. 
 
 Suffering Saviour, 12. 
 
 Superintendence of Redemption by Spirit, 17. 
 
 Supernatural Conception, 40,45, 57. 
 
 Sychar, 105. 
 
 Synoptic Gospels, Johannine Teaching assumed in, 
 
 3 2 - 
 
 Teaching concerning Spirit in, 
 
 24 ff. 
 
 Tabernacle, Building of, 5. 
 Tabernacles, Feast of, 114, 116. 
 Talmud, 114. 
 Teacher, Holy Spirit as, 91. 
 
Index of Subjects 171 
 
 Temptation of Jesus, 39, 51. 
 
 Testimony of Jesus to His own Mission, 37, 
 
 " That Day," meaning of, 89. 
 
 Theocracy, Spirit in, 3 ff. 
 
 Theophanies of Old Testament, 140. 
 
 Three Years of Jesus' Ministry, Importance of, 34. 
 
 Topical character of Luke's Gospel, 54, 71. 
 
 Transition in Gospel Teaching concerning Spirit, 
 
 27. 
 Trinitarian baptismal formula, 149. 
 
 language in epistles, 149. 
 Trinity in Christian Doctrine, 142. 
 Trinity in Old Testament, 18 ff. 
 "Truth" in John's Gospel, 86 f. 
 Truth, Spirit of, 85 ff., 91, 117. 
 Two elements in New Birth, 104. 
 Two eras of Spirit's Power, 1 7 ff. 
 
 U 
 Unpardonable Sin, 26, 53 ff., 59. 
 
 W 
 
 Well of Jacob, 114. 
 
 Wicked men, God's use of, 4. 
 
172 Index of Subjects 
 
 World, Conviction of, by Spirit, 1 20 ff. 
 " World " in writings of John, 120 ff. 
 
 Year of Jubilee, 37. 
 
INDEX OF TEXTS 
 
 Genesis i. 2 2 
 
 i. 26 2 
 
 ii. 7 2 
 
 xli. 38 5 
 
 Exodus xxxi. 3 5 
 
 Numbers xi. 17 5 
 
 xi. 25-30 5 
 
 Deuteronomy xxxii. 1 1 
 2 
 
 Judges vi. 34 4 
 
 xiii. 25 4 
 
 1 Samuel x. 6 4 
 
 Job xxvi. 13 3 
 
 xxx. 4 3 
 
 Psalms li. II 15 
 
 civ. 30 3 
 
 Psalms ex. 1 
 
 27 
 
 cxliii. 10 
 
 15 
 
 Isaiah xi. 1 
 
 12 
 
 xii. 3 
 
 114 
 
 xxxii. 15-17 
 
 9 
 
 xl. 10 
 
 99 
 
 11 
 
 97 
 
 xlii. 1 
 
 12 
 
 xliv. 2, 3 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 97 
 
 xlviii. 10 
 
 l 3 
 
 14-16 
 
 13^4 
 
 16 
 
 20 
 
 lxi. 1 
 
 25, 3 6 
 
 Ezekiel xxxvi. 27 10, 95 
 xxxvii. 14 10 
 
 Joel ii. 28-30 10, 95, 
 
 100 
 
 *73 
 
174 
 
 Index of Texts 
 
 Zechariah iv. 
 
 6 
 
 99 
 
 Luke xi. 
 
 20 
 
 43 
 
 xii. 10 
 
 
 95 
 
 xii. 10 
 12 
 
 
 54 
 27,71 
 
 Matthew iii. 1 1 
 
 50 (bis) 
 
 xxiv. 49 
 
 
 29.94 
 
 V. 20 
 
 
 128 
 
 
 
 
 vi - 33 
 
 
 66 
 
 John i. 
 
 [0 
 
 120 
 
 vii. 7-1 1 
 
 
 64 
 
 29 
 
 
 121 
 
 x. 19, 20 
 
 
 27 
 
 32, 
 iii. 3 
 
 33 
 
 50 
 46 
 
 20 
 
 
 70,132 
 
 
 
 
 xii. 22, 23 
 
 
 53 
 
 5 
 
 
 47.50 
 
 28 
 
 
 26,43 
 
 15- 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 47 
 107 
 
 3^3 2 
 
 
 x 33 
 
 
 
 
 xvi. 15 ff. 
 
 
 83 
 
 iv. 1 
 24 
 
 
 105 
 140 
 
 xxii. 43,44 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 38 
 
 
 
 
 
 vii - 37 •> 
 
 112 
 
 xxiii. 29—39 
 
 
 57 
 
 39 
 
 viii. 39 
 
 
 "3 
 108 
 
 xxviii. 19 29 
 20 
 
 ,1 
 
 33. H2 
 
 98 
 
 
 
 
 
 47 
 
 
 87 
 
 
 
 
 xii. 47 
 
 
 121 
 
 Mark iii. 19b- 
 
 "30 53 
 
 xiv— xvi. 
 
 29, 
 
 73. Il6 > 
 
 xii. 36 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 118 
 
 xiii. 11 
 
 
 27,70 
 
 xiv. 13 
 
 
 118 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 84, 
 
 i37. Hi 
 
 Luke iv. 18 
 
 
 25, 3 6 
 
 17 
 
 
 87. J 39 
 
 xi. 13 
 
 
 63 
 
 18- 
 
 25 
 
 88 
 
 14-26 
 
 
 53 
 
 22 
 
 
 141 
 
Index of Texts 
 
 175 
 
 John xiv. 26 
 
 90, 
 
 *3 2 > 
 141 
 
 John xvii 
 
 . 25 
 
 121 
 
 27 
 
 
 118 
 
 Acts i. 4 
 
 
 29 
 
 xv. 19 
 
 
 121 
 
 6 
 
 
 98 
 
 26 
 
 132 
 
 »!33 
 
 8 
 
 
 99 
 
 27 
 
 
 118 
 
 ii. 16 
 
 
 10 
 
 xvi. 6, 7 
 
 
 122 
 
 38 
 
 
 108 
 
 7 
 
 
 141 
 
 vii. 51 
 
 
 57 
 
 8 ff. 
 
 
 132 
 
 viii. 20 
 
 
 108 
 
 9-1 1 
 
 
 126 
 
 x.45 
 
 
 108 
 
 12 
 
 
 9 1 
 
 xi. 17 
 
 
 108 
 
 J 3 
 
 
 139 
 
 
 
 
 13^4 
 
 
 132 
 
 11 Corinthians v. 
 
 15 112 
 
 14 
 
 
 138 
 
 ix. 15 
 
 
 107 
 
 26 
 
 
 85 
 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 
 116 
 
 Galatians 
 
 ii. 5 
 
 86 
 
 33 
 
 
 129 
 
 
 
 
 xvii. 16—23 
 
 
 121 
 
 1 Peter i. 
 
 10-12 
 
 21 
 
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