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should communicate new truth, and quicken their memory of past instructions. "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." His testimony will strengthen and confirm their witness of Christ's ministry from the first. This Comforter, "even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me and ye shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning."

It was better for them and for the world that Jesus should depart, for the Spirit, who would not otherwise come, would work graciously and extensively in the world, and in making Christ himself more clearly known by his people. He would make the sin of all unbelief in Christ conspicuous, and give assurance that Christ's work on earth was an acceptable ground of justification with God, and that Christ had utterly vanquished the devil; and also besides new revelations of truth, he would add new glory to Jesus by making brighter exhibitions of him; all which is taught in his saying, "When he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged." "He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." &

1 John xiv. 26.

2 John xv. 26, 27.

3 John xvi. 7-15.

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And at a former time Christ had foretold their com ing persecutions, and that they need have no anxiety about answers to charges in their arraignments before courts and councils, for the Spirit would inspire them. "When they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer; for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say." And after Christ's resurrection and his commission to the apostles, just at the hour of his ascension, he refers to this promise of the Spirit in saying, "Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high." And then Luke enlarges upon this charge in another writing, that, Christ and the disciples being assembled together, "he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, ye shall be witnesses unto me." 3

and

According to this charge there given, the disciples went back from the Mount of Olives, after Christ's ascension, and took an upper room in Jerusalem, and abode in that city, having constant communion and prayer" with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."4 Here also at the

Luke xii. 11, 12.

3 Acts i. 3, 5, and 8.

2 Luke xxiv. 49.

4 Acts i. 13, 14.

counsel of Peter, they cast lots, and appointed Matthias to the place in the apostleship "from which Judas by transgression fell." All were thus in expectancy, waiting the coming of the Holy Ghost.

4. THE ACTUAL DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST. The Passover prefigured redemption by Christ, and thus, as it was, the crucifixion appropriately occurred at the hour for killing the paschal lamb. Fifty days after the institution of the first Passover and Israel's departure from Egypt was the giving of the law from Sinai, and the annual feast of first fruits was instituted afterwards to occur at the same period. The sacrifices of burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, and the sinoffering were made at the time of this "feast of weeks," so called because the fifty days made an intervening week of weeks, and which Pentecost feast was in perpetual remembrance of deliverance from Egyptian bondage,2 and of which the Spirit's freeing the soul from the bondage of sin was the antitype, and so appropriately the descending power of the Holy Ghost was on the day of Pentecost. The full account is given in the second chapter of Acts.

The hundred and twenty disciples of Christ, then made, were by agreement together in one place, and a sound like the roar of a strong wind filled the room where they were, and flickering flames appeared on the heads of the disciples, and the power of inspira tion, and miracles, and speaking with tongues, was at

1 Acts i. 15-26.

2 Lev. xxiii. 15-21; Deut. xvi. 9-12.

MANNER OF THE SPIRIT'S COMING.

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once communicated to them. The wondrous eveRSITY

drew the multitudes from all lands at the feast to this meeting of Christ's disciples, and each nation, in its own tongue, heard from these Galileans the Christian truths to which "the Spirit gave them utterance." Some mockers said it was drunkenness from new wine, but to most the phenomenon was inexplicable. Peter stood up, and so expounded and applied the occurrence, and the truths involved, that three thousand believed in Christ, were baptized, and added to the one hundred and twenty as a Gospel Church the same day. The Holy Ghost thus signalized his first special descent, and from that time forward the church has depended on the presence of the Holy Spirit to guide her ministry and membership, and make their evangelical work and example effectual in converting the world to Christianity. Jesus Christ appeared to Saul supernaturally after this, and thus qualified him as an apostle, to be a witness to Christ's resurrection; but with this exception, the divine authority and power of the Christian church have been under the immediate dispensation of the Spirit. In the apostolic age miraculous gifts, prophecy, and speaking with tongues, were communicated by the Spirit for eminently accrediting some disciples, but the mass of Christians and Christian ministers then and since have relied on his indwelling in the heart.

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SECTION II.

THE MANNER OF THE SPIRIT'S AGENCY.

THE Spirit came like the Saviour's representation of it to Nicodemus; a "wind," that one might "hear the sound thereof, but could not tell whence it came nor whither it went."1 No sense perceives the Holy Ghost, nor is there any consciousness of his presence, and we can know directly nothing of him except as reason sees him in his moral effects, just as reason sees the Creator in his works, or except as revelation may describe him. All communion of disembodied. spirits is beyond our sense-consciousness, and especially must the communications of the Absolute Spirit be a secret to human experience, as to the mode of giving over what is his to be an impartation to us. And yet the facts given in experience and divine revelation do permit the insight of reason to determine many things with strong positiveness about the. manner of the Holy Spirit's operation upon the human soul. Our creed here need not, and should not, be mere credulity.

1. IT IS AS MORAL POWER DISTINCT FROM PHYSICAL FORCE. Like the life-energy, the Spirit uses and

1 John iii. 8.