(a) He is the Spirit of truth, the Divine Remembrancer:  “He shall guide you into all the truth;” “He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you;” “He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.”  It is not, it will be observed, all truth, but all the truth of Christ, with which the Spirit deals—­the truth concerning Him, and the truth which He taught.  Nor is it a new revelation which the Spirit gives, but rather a more perfect understanding of that which has been already given in Christ.  Here, then, is the test by which to try all that claims the authority of spiritual truth.  Does it “glorify” Christ?  Does it lead us into a fuller knowledge of Him “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”?  “Whosoever goeth onward,” says St. John, in a remarkable passage, for which English readers are indebted to the Revised Version, “and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God.”  In other words, no true progress is possible except as we abide in Christ.  If He be ignored and left behind, though we still keep the name and boast ourselves “progressives,” we have lost the reality.  On the other hand, every new discovery, every movement in the life of men, every intellectual and spiritual awakening which serves to make manifest the glory of Christ as Creator, or Revealer, or Redeemer, is a fresh fulfilment of His promise concerning the guiding Spirit of truth.  Perhaps our best commentary is the history of the Church.  In the New Testament itself we have the first-fruits of the Spirit’s work.  There we may see, in Gospels and Epistles, how the Spirit took of the things of Christ and showed them unto His disciples.  And all through the varied history of the Church’s long past, that same Divine Remembrancer has been at work, calling us through the lips of an Augustine, a Luther, or a Wesley, into the fullness of the inheritance of truth which is ours in Christ Jesus.

(b) The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of power.  “Behold,” said the ascending Christ, “I send forth the promise of My Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city until ye be clothed with power from on high.”  And, again, “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”  Of Jesus Himself it was said by one of His disciples “that God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and with power”; and of His disciples Jesus said:  “He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall He do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father.”  Here, again, our best commentary is the history of the Church, and especially the first chapter of that history as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles.  This was the promise, “Ye shall receive power,” and this, in brief, the story of its fulfilment, “With great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”  Let any one read the early chapters of St. Luke’s narrative; let him mark the utter disparity between the “acts”