promises are perfectly explicit; and although they refer primarily to a particular emergency, in which the apostles would especially feel their need of divine guidance, they cover, in their spirit, all other emergencies.  We cannot read them without the conviction that they contain the promise to the apostles of all needed help and guidance in the work committed to them.  If they were divinely qualified to defend the gospel before their adversaries without error—­“I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist”—­so were they also to record the facts of the gospel, and to unfold in their epistles its doctrines.

The promises recorded in the gospel of John are more general and comprehensive in their character.  It will be sufficient to adduce two of them:  “These things have I spoken unto you being yet present with you.  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”  John 14:25, 26.  “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.  Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:  for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak:  and he will show you things to come.  He shall glorify me:  for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.  All things that the Father hath are mine:  therefore said I that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.”  John 16:12-15.  In the former of these passages the special promise is that the Holy Spirit shall bring to the remembrance of the apostles and unfold to their understanding all Christ’s personal teachings; so that they shall thus have a fuller apprehension of their meaning than they could while he was yet with them.  The second promise is introduced with the declaration that the Saviour has yet many things to say to his apostles which they cannot now bear.  Of course these things are reserved for the ministration of the Spirit, as he immediately proceeds to show:  “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”  The Spirit shall glorify Christ; for he shall take of the things which are Christ’s, and reveal them to the apostles.  And what are the things which are Christ’s?  “All that the Father hath;” for the Father has given all things into the hands of the Son.  John 13:3.  Among these “all things” are included all the Father’s counsels pertaining to the way of salvation through the Son.  These are given to the Son; and the Holy Ghost shall take of them and reveal to the church, through the apostles, as much as it is needful for the church to know.  In these remarkable words we have at once a proof of our Lord’s deity, and a sure guarantee to the apostles of supernatural illumination and guidance in the work committed to them—­all the illumination and guidance which they needed, that they might be qualified to finish without error the revelation of the gospel which Christ had begun.