to be led by Him. Of righteousness, in that the world would learn what was the condition which made a man acceptable to God. In contradistinction to Pharisaic righteousness-ceremonial religion—and scribal righteousness-intellectual religion -the Holy Spirit would convince of true righteousness-spiritual religion. The conviction of sin in itself would inevitably reveal this righteousness. In the hideousness of the one would be seen the beauty of the other. The positive would appear from the negative. And this would happen because Jesus was going to the Father, and the world would see Him no more. This means that in the light of His departure, the world would have clearer vision. Then peasant birth, humble environment, Jewish descent, obscurity, ignominious death-the accidents of His life would be lost sight of in appreciation of His character, His teaching, His aim, and His self-sacrificing servicethe realities of His life. Then the world would have the true perspective; until then, it would see through a glass darkly. Men, indeed, are never appreciated at their true value, while they are alive. True biography must be written in the perspective of time.

The world would also be convicted of judgment, "because the prince of this world was judged." In the Crucifixion of Jesus, the world seemed to have passed judgment upon Him. In reality this event had passed judgment upon the world. The prince or ruler of the world was judged, in that a new standard of value was given to man; the former glory of the world, reveling in the blood of Jesus, was seen to be its shame. A great crisis, indeed, in human affairs had come. Henceforth men must judge all things in accordance with a new principle: the very principle, in fact, which they had crucified. The world was even then standing in the shadow of an impending judgment. Spiritual insight, indeed, had already revealed to Jesus the Crown supplanting the Cross.

One can see at once in view of these declarations of Our Lord, how intimately the work of the Holy Spirit was related to the idea of the Kingdom of God. The Spirit would be Heaven's agency in the extension of the Kingdom; Heaven's supplement of man's endeavor, vitalizing the seed of truth sown by man in the congenial soil of human hearts. With the Spirit's advent, a new era would dawn for the Kingdom; its ma

chinery for extension would be complete. Hence Jesus, in spite of the fact of His departure, urged His Apostles to be joyous.1

1 "Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me ye would rejoice, because I said I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I. (St. Jn. 14:28.) Because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." (St. Jn. 16:6, 7.) Symbolic, too, of Jesus' promise was His action on the night after the Resurrection, when He appeared to the Apostles, and said: "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." (St. Jn. 20:21-23.)

The fulfilment of the Master's promise is recorded in Acts 2, if we accept the narrative as historical. On the Day of Pentecost, when thousands of Jews had assembled in Jerusalem from foreign parts to observe the feast, "there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, filling all the house where the Apostles were, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, which sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." The sound of the rushing wind probably recalled at once Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, in which He had revealed the mysterious and the absolutely indefinable working of the Spirit: "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (St. Jn. 3:8.) In view of this teaching, the attempt to enchain the Spirit to the water, or even to the act of Baptism, or to the elements, or even to the act of the Lord's Supper, is futile on the very face of it. The Holy Spirit may organize men, but men cannot organize the Holy Spirit. Jesus, indeed, must have been unalterably opposed to such materialistic conceptions; while His spirit and teaching made Him the inveterate opponent of the idea of an ecclesiastical institution, which should be the chief depository of the Holy Spirit, and its chief channel of communication: in other words, an ecclesiastical trust or monopoly, the earliest of all monopolies, the parent of all trusts, and the most remorseless. The darting tongues of fire would recall John's promise of the Messiah's baptism, which would "burn up the chaff" of error, sham, and evil “with unquenchable fire." (St. Mt. 3:11.) The gift of tongues, or the ability to speak in foreign languages, which enabled the Apostles to gain on that day many converts for the Kingdom, who would become its witnesses upon their return to their homes, thus pre

In the light of this teaching of Jesus about the Holy Spirit, the sublime meaning of the Baptismal Formula again comes into view. Into that Spirit of Truth and of Holiness, into which the Father had baptized Him-the Spirit, which according to Jesus' own testimony, was the source of His Teaching and His Miracles (St. Mt. 12:28; St. Lu. 4:18; St. Jn. 14:10), He would baptize the Apostles, who in turn should baptize the nations of the earth. Language is inadequate to do justice to the sublimity of this conception. That Jesus' emphasis, however, was upon the function rather than the "Personality" of the Spirit is patent to every reader of the New Testament page. While He did perhaps speak of the Spirit as "he," and thus appears to justify the orthodox Christian faith, yet many thoughtful minds have agreed with Beyschlag that this personal reference is "just a pictorial personification," and that "the notion of the Holy Spirit as a third Divine personality-is one of the most disastrous importations into the Holy Scriptures" ("N. T. Theology," Eng. Translation. Vol. 2, p. 279), and yet they have not lost faith in the Spirit's work. This brings vividly to our attention one of those monstrous anomalies which exist and thrive in the Christian Church: A man may deny totally the Holy Spirit in the conduct of his daily life, and yet be a member of the visible Church, have obsequious attention paid to him by titled ecclesiastics-upholders of the much-talked of "Catholic Faith"-while the man whose whole life is attuned to the Spirit's guidance, yet who cannot and does not accept the "personality" of the Holy Spirit, cannot be a member of the orthodox (?) Church, and is often, with much patronizing condescension on the part of both intellectual and moral vacuity, accounted a "heretic." Manifestly, God's ways are not man's ways, nor are His thoughts man's thoughts even in His "Holy Church" of which we frequently hear so much.

Having now considered some of the supernatural features of the Gospel, let us say that, whatever may be our attitude toward the Supernatural and the Kingdom, any candid mind must admit that there is a unity, a harmony, and congruity in

paring the soil for the future labors of the Apostles, was a distinct evidence of the universal aim or extent of the Kingdom. This gift, however, was not a permanent one. (Cf. St. Mk. 16:17.)

the relation of the two as they are disclosed in the Gospels that makes for truthfulness. The Supernatural occurrence and the Teaching harmonize; the miraculous events accord with each other; part fits in with part; the whole is logical and rational. Further, the very idea-"The Kingdom of God"-posits a supernatural element. Such an element, indeed, was to be expected in view of what Jesus was endeavoring to do with a sinful humanity: establish the sovereignty of God. This thought, also, assists us in interpreting the miracles of the Old Testament; not that we are to accept unquestioningly the miraculous character of every event which purports to be a miracle, for we are rather to question them severely. We should, however, bear in mind the unique mission of Israel, which, under certain circumstances, would render the performance of miracles likely. This thought also gives the point of view from which to determine the possibility and the probability of the various New Testament miracles, and also of later ecclesiastical miracles.

CHAPTER XV

THE VICEGERENT OF THE KINGDOM

IN view of the Teaching and the Works of Jesus, we are not surprised to find that men both wondered and questioned with regard to Him. "From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?" (St. Mk. 6:2, 3.) Yet "never man spake like this man." "Who is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?" The problem, indeed, that perplexed his countrymen has perplexed the world. Who was this man of this august idea, these mighty works, this majestic personality? He flashed across the sky of human life like a meteor, brilliant and dazzling, whose splendor was unequaled before and has remained unrivaled, challenging comparison and classification. Jesus and His idea, indeed, are so intimately related-the idea being incarnate in the Man-that any study of His idea would be incomplete without some consideration as to His Person. Hence we ask: Who was this Man? What, especially, did He say of Himself?

As soon as this question is asked, Jesus' self-selected and self-imposed title-"Son of Man"-presents itself for consideration. This title is represented as being used by Jesus about eighty times in the Synoptic Gospels, while it is never applied to Him by His followers except in the speech of St. Stephen (Acts 7:56). If we study these various passages in detail, we find that they refer to Jesus under two rather paradoxical aspects: that of suffering or humiliation, and that of majesty. This at first sight perplexes. We know also that the title was not a commonly accepted designation for the Messiah, because Jesus carefully concealed His Messiahship, while