CHAPTER I

THE REVELATION IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

IT is my hope in this Essay to examine with as much care as possible the teaching of our Lord Himself and of His Apostles after Him in regard to the Holy Spirit, and then to determine what light it throws or is capable of throwing upon the religious problems of the modern Christian world. It is true that that teaching cannot be fully understood without reference to the anticipations of it in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, and to the interpretations of it or inferences from it among the Fathers of the Church, as well as in some degree. to the belief and language of our Lord's own time. For every religious teacher, and the greatest as much as the humblest, teaches in a certain intellectual or spiritual atmosphere: he makes assumptions, or does not make them, according as they are or are not warranted by the opinion of his day; he uses expressions which are naturally intelligible, as being familiar, to the minds of the persons to whom he speaks or writes or stands in some special relation ; and as it is his immediate predecessors who pave

B

the way for his teaching upon any subject, so it is his immediate successors who receive it from his hands and carry it on to its legitimate and reasonable consequences. Still, in the judgment of the Christian Church, as indeed in the nature of things, the words of our Lord occupy the first, and the words of His Apostles the second, place of authority. There is no authority equal or parallel to theirs. If it be possible, then, to arrive at any definite conclusions. upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as enunciated in the New Testament by our Lord and His Apostles, without taking any account of other witnesses, that itself will be a positive result of considerable value; and if it shall appear that these conclusions agree with the general tenor of thought in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and in the early patristic writings, the result will be greatly confirmed. For to know the mind of Christ and to follow it in life is the essence of vital Christianity.

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the cardinal articles of the Christian faith. It is an important element in the system of belief which is the common property of the whole Christian world, which unites all Christians and distinguishes them from all who are not Christians. It is expressly declared in all the three Creeds of the Catholic Church; it ranks in Christian ecclesiastical history as second only to the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity. If the one doctrine was determined at Nicæa, the other was determined at Constantinople. It was the cause of the strangest and saddest of all schisms, by which the Churches of the East and of the West have, on a point of mere definition (which prob

ably does not represent diversity of belief), been separated for more than eight centuries. It has been celebrated alike in the Eastern and in the Western Church from primitive antiquity by the annual festival of Whitsunday. Nor has there ever been a lack of theologians who have discerned in it the hope or promise of a solution - not indeed perfect or complete, but at least approximate of many speculative difficulties which have long agitated the conscience of humanity. "Whitsunday," says F. D. Maurice, "as connected with Trinity Sunday and leading to it, seems to me to contain the most marvellous and blessed witness of the whole year, and that without which all the rest would be in vain." "The great intellectual and religious struggle of our day," says Bishop Thirlwall, "turns mainly on the question, whether there is a Holy Ghost." And the late Professor Milligan speaks of "that doctrine of the Holy Spirit which, hardly less than that of the Resurrection of our Lord, has been too much neglected in the theology of our time." May it be permitted me to affirm my own belief that no doctrine-apart from the Incarnation itself is such a solace and strength to Christian hearts in the present difficult days as the Personality of the Holy Spirit?

But the doctrine, in spite of its historical interest, has not been realised in its full practical importance. It has not been uniformly felt as a living influence upon all that Christians believe and all that they do. How few churches, for example, have been dedicated to the Holy Spirit! How scanty is the contribution which sacred art or music or literature has