carelessness of worldly affairs and worldly judgments, going on to awful shame and agony-so beautiful, so pathetic is that figure even now, as the scanty records of words and deeds enable us to see it.

And then let us think of the entrance of the Divine life into humanity, of which process Jesus is the representative, and its growth going on and on, and the wonderful future.

CHAPTER IV

THE HOLY SPIRIT

THE relation of the Holy Spirit in redemption to Christ, and the inter-relations of God the Father with the Son and the Spirit, have been subjects of immense and intricate theological discussion. Violence has been done to both logic and Scripture in order to prove and express abstruse dogmas of the Church. But this kind of procedure is not such as to give a deep understanding of Divine truths. Rather must we try to grasp the experience which gave rise to the idea of the Holy Spirit.

In the Hebrew religion the external experience of the life of Nature suggested the idea of the breath of God, breath being thought to constitute life. The word in the Old Testament translated "spirit" signified wind and breath. Then it came to mean life and in particular the vitalizing energy of God. The Spirit of God is the agent in creation: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis i. 2); "By His spirit the heavens are garnished (Job xxvi. 13). The Spirit is the source of life: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis ii. 7). “Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the ground" (Psalm civ. 30). "Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field become a forest " (Isaiah xxxii. 15).

When the prophet was moved to declare a message from Jahwe, he felt that the Divine Spirit was being breathed into him. And so the Spirit is spoken of as operative in prophecy : "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them" (Numbers xi. 29). "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was upon my tongue" (2 Samuel xxiii. 2). “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek" (Isaiah lxi. 1). "And it shall come to pass afterwards, that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also upon the servants and handmaids will I pour out My Spirit" (Joel ii. 28, 29). The Spirit of God is also the agent in moral purification and improvement : "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me" (Psalm li. 11). "And I will put My Spirit upon you, and cause you to walk in My statutes (Ezekiel xxxvi. 27). In the Old Testament, though the Spirit of God is thought of as in some degree separate from God, He is never really personified. The nearest approach to personification is perhaps in Isaiah xlviii. 16: "Now the Lord God hath sent me and His Spirit." In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is sometimes spoken of as the agent in prophetic inspiration and in revelation (Luke i. 15, 67; ii. 26; Mark xiii. 11; Acts ii. 4), and indeed generally in the operations of God on men (Matthew i. 18, 20; iii. 16; xii. 28; Acts x. 38). But He has a function transcending all others—namely, to be the medium and the ground of that Divine life which corresponds to the fact of Jesus Christ. On account of Christ men receive Divine life from the Holy Spirit, and enter into that living fellowship with God which is life in the Holy Spirit.

This function of the Holy Spirit is hardly to be

found in the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels; for the Kingdom of God, as Jesus calls the coming Divine life of mankind, has hardly begun to be realized. We may notice, however, in this connection the saying: "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 !" The book called "The Acts of the Apostles" is practically just the record of the coming of the Holy Ghost into the followers of Jesus. The Holy Ghost is promised by the risen Jesus, and soon after comes in a signal manner to the assembled disciples; and this Peter regards as the commencement of the time prophesied by Joel, when the Spirit of God, instead of coming occasionally to a few, should be the universal and continuous possession of mankind. That men should receive the Holy Ghost is accounted the chief aim of preaching the Gospel (viii. 15, ix. 17, x. 44, xi. 16, xv. 8, xix. 2). In this book we find the transition in process from the view of the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit is the agent by which God inspires knowledge and strength, to the specifically Christian view that the Holy Spirit is the agent by which God gives and sustains the Divine life.

This conception of the work of the Holy Spirit we find in the writings of St. Paul, as the following passages testify: "We received the Spirit which is of God." "Ye are a temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you." "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." It appears that here the Spirit of God in man, the Spirit of Christ in man, and Christ in man are to some extent identified. Distinction should, however, be drawn between the Spirit of God in man, which is equivalent to being spiritually acted

on by God, and Christ in man, considered as the personal nature of the soul, such as is intended in the expression, "Christ being formed in man." "Sonship to God" in St. Paul's writings doubtless implies the Divine life in the soul, but is, more explicitly, the status of man in which God acts upon the soul through the Holy Spirit : As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.

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Ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." "And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father."

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But the doctrine of St. Paul is ambiguous, because he sometimes attributes to Christ what he elsewhere attributes to the Spirit. Once indeed he identifies the Twain: The Lord is the Spirit." But there is this difference on the whole, that Christ represents rather the static in the Divine in relation to human redemption, whereas to the Spirit is assigned rather the action of the Divine both in God and in the soul. The Holy Spirit brings love, joy, strength, holiness, truth. Conversely, the Holy Spirit prays in men to God (Romans viii. 16, 26; Galatians iv. 6), and works in their faith and goodness (Galatians v. 5, 22).

According to the Fourth Gospel, the Spirit is to give the new life when Jesus has departed. The Spirit will come and make the believers in Christ founts of that water which shall quench the thirst of souls (vii. 37-39). The Holy Spirit is promised under the name of "Another Helper," who is to dwell with and in the disciples of Jesus. The coming of the Spirit is equivalent to the return "after a little while" of Jesus.

The experience upon which the idea of the Holy Spirit is based is communion with God. This was formerly just the sense of occasional inspiration. Under Christianity it is communion corresponding to the fact of Christ-communion, that is, of which the historical