and the “apostles”—­between the things done and the men by whom they were done—­and then let him ask if there is any explanation which does really bridge the gulf short of this, that behind Peter and John and the rest there stood Another, speaking through their lips, working through their hands, Himself the real Doer in all those wondrous “acts”?  When D.L.  Moody was holding in Birmingham one of those remarkable series of meetings which so deeply stirred our country in the early ’seventies, Dr. Dale, who followed the work with the keenest sympathy, and yet not without a feeling akin to stupefaction at the amazing results which it produced, once told Moody that the work was most plainly of God, for he could see no real relation between him and what he had done.  Is not this disparity the very sign-manual of the Holy Spirit’s presence?  “Why,” asked Peter, when the multitude were filled with wonder and amazement at the healing of the lame man, “Why fasten ye your eyes on us as though by our own power or godliness we had made him to walk?” Work that is really of God can never be accounted for in that fashion.  There is always a something in the effects which cannot be traced back to a human cause.  Let “our own power and godliness” be what they may—­and they can never be too great—­they are all vain and helpless apart from the power of God.  “I planted, Apollos watered; God gave the increase.”  Wherefore let the Church trust neither in him that planteth nor in him that watereth, but in God who giveth the increase.

(2) We come now to the Holy Spirit’s work in the world.  And, just as in speaking of the “Church” it was not any visible organization which we had in mind, so now by the “world” is not meant merely the persons who are outside all such organizations.  There is, as we are often reminded nowadays, a Church outside the Churches; and, on the other hand, not a little of what Christ meant by the “world” is often to be found inside what we mean by the “Church.”  The “world,” then, is simply the mass of men, wherever they are to be found, who are living apart from God.  Now, of this world Christ said it “cannot receive” the Spirit of truth; “it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.”  If, therefore, there is a ministry of the Spirit in the world, it must be wholly different in kind from that spoken of above.  And this is what we learn from Christ’s teaching:  “He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”  There is a ring of judicial sternness in the words; they call up to our minds the solemnities of a court of justice—­the indictment, the conviction, the condemnation.  And yet one can well believe that there were hours in the after life of the apostles when, of all the comforting, reassuring words which Christ had spoken to them in that Upper Room, there were none more helpful than these.  For they knew now that, when they stood up to bear their witness before a hostile world, they had a fellow-witness in