which inaugurated a new era in their spiritual life. If questioned, they would give different accounts, probably, of how they received this experience, and describe it differently, but they suddenly became bold, mighty, aggressive, and conquering. They had received their Pentecost, and the Holy Spirit was in them the fire of love, the light of assurance, and the unction of power.

As far as God is concerned, there is no reason why weary wastes of disappointing years should stretch between Bethel and Peniel, between the Cross and Pentecost. It is not the will of God that forty years. of wilderness wandering should lie between Egypt and the promised land. In apostolic days there was generally a brief interval between conversion and the baptism of the Spirit, but new converts were introduced at once to this fulness of blessing, and taught to expect it as a positive, conscious, and present experience. Under the preaching of Philip in Samaria, many were converted, and "when they believed they were baptised, both men and women." The successive steps through which they passed are mentioned; attention to the word, faith, great joy, and baptism with water. But before they should be disheartened by difficulties and demoralised by defeat, Peter and John were sent unto them from Jerusalem for the special purpose of leading these newly-saved ones into the fulness of blessing. They prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost, and they laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

St. Paul's first question to "certain disciples," which

he found at Ephesus, was, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" "Jesus hath sent me," said Ananias to the newly-converted Saul of Tarsus, "that thou mayest be filled with the Holy Ghost." How many backslidings would be prevented if we returned to primitive methods, and urged our converts to seek this experience at the beginning of their Christian life! None can deny that the ordinary Christian in our churches, weakened as he is by doubt and palsied by fear, with his worldliness and backslidings, far more resembles the condition of the disciples before Pentecost than after it. Who can read the Acts of the Apostles without coming to the conclusion that the Apostolic Church enjoyed a much larger measure of the Spirit's fulness than is generally experienced by Christians to-day? We claim to be sharers in pentecostal privileges, and yet how few enjoy the fulness of blessing which Christ is exalted to bestow! If we are not filled with the Spirit, at whose door does the blame lie? The question is not, "Has God given?" but, "Have we received?" The might of God was not exhausted on the day of Pentecost. That baptism was simply a pledge and earnest of what God intends to do for His people. We are still in the dispensation of the Spirit, and the promise still stands, "The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even to as many as the Lord our God shall call " (Acts ii. 39). The promise is as far-reaching and extensive as the need, and means that by virtue of our new birth it is our individual privilege or birthright to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Each believer has the right to aspire to

this, the right to pray for it, and the right to expect it to-day.

It is interesting to note the gradation in the teaching of St. John's Gospel. In chapter iii. we have the "life" in its beginning-the new birth (John iii. 7). In chapter iv. we have "life abundantly "-" a well of water springing up." We fill our cup and drink, and keep on drinking from this inexhaustible supply. Those who have learned to do this shall never thirst. The well is for the supply of personal need. But Christianity extends beyond the individual; provision is made for the needs of those about us. Hence we are taught in the seventh chapter that rivers of blessing shall "flow out " from all believers who are filled with the Spirit. "He that believeth on Me, as the Scriptures hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Blessing is promised here on a magnificent scale. Notice its hugeness, its Godlike vastness! Rivers," not a babbling brook, or a streamlet; not even a river, but "rivers." What Divine prodigality! In this experience, "Grace, not in rills, but in cataracts rolls." If it means anything, it means that there is no limit to the blessing God can send, through the feeblest of His servants, if they are prepared to receive what He is ready to bestow. There shall not only be fulness, but overflow. Spirit-filled believers carry life, and satisfaction, and gladness wherever they go. Their presence is life-giving, fructifying, refreshing, even as a river which blesses as it flows. "Everything shall live whithersoever the river cometh," The weakest, feeblest member of the body of Christ may be so instinct with the most vigorous life, that

there shall come forth from him a holy river-like abundance to the blessing of the souls of others.

Let us not confuse this fulness of the Spirit with any particular modes of blessing. Sometimes His coming distils as the dew, or it may be like the gentle summer shower, or as the mighty rushing wind. Some have an overwhelming sense of His presence; to others He comes, as it were, without observation, in a quiet gladness and confidence. Souls are brought into this blessing with as much diversity as sinners are brought into pardon and peace. He who blesses knows best what we need, and will adapt His gifts to us with infinite wisdom. But though His modes of coming vary, when He does come in fulness to the soul all its chambers are filled with light, and not a taint of impurity remains.

We often speak and act as if it were the most difficult thing in the world to obtain the fulness of the Spirit, and yet it is certain that there is no blessing which the Father is so ready to bestow upon those who ask Him as this very gift. More willing is He to give the Holy Spirit to each believer than a mother to give the healing medicine to her dying child, or a father to give food and raiment to his soldier son who has just returned from the war. "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?"

Τ'

CHAPTER XII.

A Living Sacrifice

tical economy

HERE were two kinds of sacrifice in the Leviof atonement and of acknowledgment. The former found their fulfilment and their end in the Lamb of Calvary, and are to be offered no more; but the sacrifice of acknowledgment is perpetual in the Church.

Having clearly demonstrated, in the Epistle to the Romans, that justification could not come by the law, the apostle shows that the Gospel absorbs into itself the sacrificial ideas of the law, spiritualises them, and in their most perfect form re-issues them as the rule for the Church in succeeding ages. "Present," he says, "your bodies," not your oxen, and sheep, and goats the one great sacrifice on Calvary hath swept these away for ever. The sacrifice required now is not blood but service, not death but noblest life. "A living sacrifice" refers to the contrast between the death of the victim under the law and the life which is now to be presented to God; and to be consumed not by fire, but in doing God's will, and in the service of humanity. Just as the Jew brought the