BOSTON REVIEW.

VOL. III.-SEPTEMBER, 1863.-No. 17.

ARTICLE I.

THE PERSONALITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

“A PERSON,” says Locke, "is a thinking, intelligent being." In this is implied understanding, reason, will, emotions, feelings, and consciousness. So a person is more than an attribute, influence, or action of a being. They are but modes and manifestations of being, and have in themselves no wholeness of being, or separateness or independence of existence. They pertain to personality, and have necessary dependence on a person, while the person has wholeness, completeness of being in itself. A person understands, reasons, wills, loves, hates, commands, obeys, influences. This it is to be a person, and to have personality.

In view of such a definition, is the Holy Spirit a person? This is our inquiry in the present paper; and in the outset we mark off the limits of the question. It is not whether the Holy Spirit is a person of a certain grade, or above all grades, even supreme and divine. Nor is it the question whether the Holy Spirit is a being emanating from the Father, or from the Father and the Son, or whether, like them, he is possessed of an unproduced and eternal personality. Nor yet is it whether the Holy Spirit sustains peculiar relations to the Father and the Son in a mysterious union with them in essence and substance, constituting and called God. In other words, our inquiry is not concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit, nor concerning

the doctrine of the trinity. Is the Holy Ghost a person? This is the question.

Furthermore and preliminary, this question must be answered by revelation alone. As neither nature nor reason could raise such a question, so neither can solve it. Reason may and must judge whether the professed revelation propounding this question is real or spurious; pure as first from God, or corrupted by the human channels in which it has run along through the centuries. Reason must also determine the import of the answer that revelation may give. But it lies not within the province of reason to determine what answer may or must be given. For the human understanding is merely the recipient, not the dictator of a divine communication. We protest against the rationalistic attitude of turning the ear toward heaven with the assumption that God may or may not say this or that. That awful and impious arrogance of self-sufficiency and umpire does not become him who is of yesterday's dust and crushed before the moth. God the Infinite and Eternal knows more than man, and he can communicate so much of this knowledge to man as man's capacity can receive or his need require. God is not so dull a teacher as man a pupil. He who has made the ear can fill it.

Nor may reason refuse the answer of revelation to our question, because it cannot locate it, use it, or work it in with its notions on other doctrines, or with its previous system of theology. If the obvious answer of the Scriptures is that the Holy Ghost is a person, that answer must be admitted. One may not reject it because it will give him difficulties on the divinity of the Holy Spirit, or on the doctrine of the trinity. An evident and obvious truth of revelation must be retained, let the cost of retaining be what it may. This article of divine furniture may compel the total emptying of the theological room of our mind to give it and other articles in keeping a place. Be it so; God has a right to furnish that room.

Nor may the revealed answer to our question be rejected because its relations to other truths, or its uses may not be fully understood. It is not supposable that human reason can understand all that God may see fit to reveal; yet faith may receive as fact what reason cannot analyze and understand. A clear,

intelligible statement of God may be above and beyond the grasp of our reason in all its relations, and yet faith apprehend and admit it, as a single truth. Faith supplements the reason, as the telescope does the naked eye, and resolves and makes evident what before was nebulous. Only what is palpably contrary to the reason may the reason reject. As a statement above the reason, but from a credible source, it must be passed up to faith for a reception. To reject a statement of revelation as contrary to reason, one must first compass, surround and take it in, as one must know all the shore to declare the land an island.

To reject the doctrine of logarithms or the asymptote one must understand the higher mathematics, but a child may believe the father's statement of them. So God may give us definitions, propositions and declarations of truth, as serviceable as they are incomprehensible, and faith be strong where reason staggers, in their reception. In our pride of intellect we incline to call that contrary to reason or absurd which we cannot understand in its nature. Humility and faith should come to our relief in such cases, specially if the communication is from God or concerning him. It should not trouble us to admit that the nature of God, the mode of his existence and manifestation, and the process of his providence in human affairs, are beyond our comprehension; while a simple declaration of fact concerning these things may be intelligible to reason and acceptable to faith. If we discriminate properly between facts and modes, what is and how it is, and concede that God may reveal the one and not the other, we shall find ample and harmonious scope for both reason and faith. A belief that God knows more than man, and can declare facts without explaining them, and then a belief in the facts divinely given, without a rationalistic analysis of their modes, has the double blessedness of a human contentment and the divine approbation.

We have extended these preliminary remarks for the relief of some who have difficulty in receiving separate truths from God, or truths that they cannot fully understand, or that do not at first seem to harmonize with other truths as clearly revealed. A better understanding of the nature and claims of a revelation from God would prepare the way for a better reception of it, specially its isolated truths and mysterious declarations.

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The association of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost in the same offices implies a personality in the latter as much as in the two former. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Mat. xxviii. 19. To baptize one in or unto the name of any one is to devote him supremely in affection, service and obedience to the person named. But there is no baptism unto an attribute, influence, or principle. Or if it were so, how singular thus to join two persons and an attribute in a formula of dedication. Some regard the Holy Ghost here as the guiding influence which proceeds from God." Discourses on the Unity of God. By Dr. W. G. Eliot of St. Louis, p. 22. unto God the Father is it not to God entire?

But in a baptism

Is his "guiding must be added by

influence" so overlooked or excepted that it specification as a supplement or erratum? When it is said that the Israelites were baptized unto Moses," it were a superfluity to add," and unto his guiding influence." That is necessarily included in Moses and in baptism unto him. Moreover, of all the attributes, powers and influences of God, why single out that one, and baptize unto it?

We find a similar union of two persons with the Holy Ghost in the apostolic benediction. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen." 2 Cor. xiii. 14. This is a prayer that those for whom it is offered may enjoy the grace of Christ and the love of God. Is the addition; "the communion of the Holy Ghost," but the fellowship of an attribute, principle or emanation of God? The Holy Spirit has the rank of personality in the formula as truly as the other two invoked.

Again, when the Saviour could no longer be a personal teacher, comforter and guide to his disciples, he said; “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." "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.' John. xiv. 16, 26. Here would seem to be three persons. One asks, another sends, and a third comes. The Comforter here is called "another," thus filling the place of an absent person. He is "given" of

the Father, an expression not applicable or used in the ordinary exercise of an attribute or influence in comforting one. In his promised office as Comforter he has not yet been given to abide with Christians; and this is what could not be said of any of the powers of comforting possessed by a gracious God. Then, what is prayed for and promised is not comfort, as a state, or the comforting exercise of some power of the Father, but a comforter, an agent. This agent seems to be as truly a person as the Saviour praying for him or the Father sending him. He is to come" to the disciples, to abide " with them, to" teach" them, and bring the sayings of the Lord Jesus to their remembrance. In all these offices the attributes and activities of personality are as definitely and as fully ascribed to the Holy Spirit as to the Father and the Son. Indeed we may make this statement general and remark on it more fully.

As great a variety of attributes and states, feelings and acts, pertaining to a person, is ascribed to the Holy Spirit as to the Father and the Son.

"The Spirit

The acts of a person are ascribed to the Spirit. said to Peter"; "the Spirit said to Philip"; "the Spirit saith unto the church." He guides into truth, he leads the sons of God, he helps our infirmities, he bears witness with our spirits, he testifies of Christ, he reveals to prophets and apostles, he moved holy men of old to speak, he makes intercession for us, he confers gifts, as wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, of miracles and of tongues, he regenerates and sanctifies, he separates men to the apostleship, and sent for the preachers, and forbade their labors in certain places. These are the acts of an agent, a person. They are acts inseparable from personality. No acts of the Father or of the Son, or of an apostle point more definitely to a person as the actor. We can find no evidence more positive to prove the personality of the Father.

In like manner the feelings of a person are attributed to the Holy Spirit. The communion of the Holy Ghost" is spoken of, and we are urged to "grieve not the Holy Spirit." Here are affections and feelings that pertain necessarily and only to a person. We cannot so speak in simple, prosaic language