of the contact with the Spirit of God into which we are brought!  How it represents all our being as flooded with that transforming power!  But, apart from the intensity communicated to the promise by such a figure, there is another important matter brought distinctly before us by the words, and that is Christ’s personal agency in effecting this saturating of man’s coldness with the fire from God.  This testimony of John’s is in full accord with Christ’s claims for Himself, and with the whole tenor of Scripture on the subject.  He is the Lord of the Spirit.  He is come to scatter that fire on the earth.  He brings the ruddy gift from heaven to mortals, carrying it in the bruised reed of His humanity; and, in pursuance of His merciful design, He is bound and suffers for our sakes, but, loosed at last from the bands by which it was not possible that He should be holden, and ’being by the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this.’  His mighty work opens the way for the life-giving power of the Spirit to dwell as an habitual principle, and not as a mere occasional gift, among men, sanctifying their characters from the foundation, and not merely, as of old, bestowing special powers for special functions.  He claims to send us the Comforter.  We know but little of such high themes, but we can clearly see that, while there may be many other reasons for the full bestowment of the Spirit of God having to be preceded by the gift of Christ, one reason must be that the measure of individual and subjective inspiration varies according to the amount of objective revelation.  The truth revealed is the condition and the instrument of the Spirit’s working.  The sharper that sword of the Spirit is, the mightier will be His power.  Hence, only when the revelation of God is complete by the message of His Son, His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, was the full, permanent gift of the Spirit possible, not to make new revelations, but to unfold all that lay in the Word spoken once for all, in whom the whole Name of God is contained.

[2] Meyer.

However that may be, the main thing for us, dear friends, is this—­that Christ gives the Spirit.  In and by Jesus, you and I are brought into real contact with this cleansing fire.  Without His work, it would never have burned on earth; without our faith in His work it will never purify our souls.  The Spirit of God is not a synonym for the moral influence which the principles of Christianity exert on men who believe them; but these principles, the truths revealed in Jesus Christ, are the means by which the Spirit works its noblest work.  Our acceptance of these truths, then, our faith in Him whom these truths reveal, is absolutely essential to our possession of that cleansing power.  The promise is of ’that Spirit which they that believe on Him should receive.’  If we have no faith in Jesus, then, however we may fancy that the gift of God can be ours by other means, the stern answer comes to our fond delusions and mistaken