THE HOLY SPIRIT AND PERSONAL QUESTIONS.

The value and power of the Bible doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to individual life is seen in the fact that it is the solution of several modern problems and the safeguard against several perils that concern the soul.

There is the problem of Spiritual Uncertainty. Scarcely anything presses more heavily and seriously on life to-day than the problem of spiritual certitude. ' Who will show us any good? ' is the cry heard all around. Dr. Forsyth once said that the prophets in their definiteness and fearlessness of position said without hesitation, ' Here am I,' while to-day men are groping in the twilight, and amidst moral uncertainty are asking, ' Where am I '? The constant and persistent pressure of the problems raised by science, philosophy, and criticism has shaken the foundations of life for many, and people know not where to turn for satisfaction. It is particularly striking that the age which has been most hopeful and expectant in regard to science, because always on the verge of fresh discoveries, has shown itself the most hopeless in reference to religion. So much so, that a leading scientist of our day coined the word ' agnostic ' to express his attitude towards some of the deepest things in life.

And yet the New Testament is clear: ' That thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed ' (Luke i. 4). St. Paul says, ' I know Whom I have believed ' (2 Tim. i. 12); 'I am persuaded ' (Rom. viii. 38). And he speaks of ' boldness and access with confidence' (Eph. iii. 12). To the same effect, St, John writes his Epistle for the express purpose of giving moral and spiritual certitude. ' These things have I written unto you... that ye may know ' (1 John v. 13). What, then, are we to do in the face of all these clear considerations? There is only one answer. ' The Christian certainty amid the modern perplexity ' is found by reverting to the Gospel of God in Christ:

' The base and condition of all independent certainty was the experience in the Holy Ghost of the apostolic Gospel.'1

It is in the realm of grace, ministered by the Holy Spirit, that we shall lose our fears, resolve our doubts, and get rid of our hesitation. All efforts to arrive at certainty in connection with the Church, or philosophy, or reason, will fail. There is only one secret of certitude, the personal acceptance of the Divine Gospel of redemption, mediated by the Holy Spirit. We are thankful for knowledge; we are grateful for the results of enquiry; we are prepared to accept every absolutely assured result of criticism; we rejoice in all philosophical justification of our position; we glory in the historical vindication of Christianity. But beneath, behind, and above all, we have the presence and power of the Holy Spirit witnessing to Christ, and assuring us of ' Safety, Certainty, and Enjoyment.' There is such a thing as Grace, or rather, there is such a reality as the presence of God in Christ, a presence that guarantees grace through the Holy Spirit, and the possession of and experience of this is the foundation and spring of all certitude. This is the essential meaning and vital power of the doctrine known as ' The Witness of the Spirit.' ' The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God ' (Rom. viii. 16). This testimony, resting on and connected with the redemptive Gospel of Christ, is the secret of assurance and the guarantee of satisfaction. But it does not involve any reversion to the subjectivity which makes certitude depend on the Christian consciousness. While it is within, it is not from within. Christian consciousness is of immense value in relation to the religious life, but it cannot possibly be made the ground of certainty in religion.

' A real authority, we have seen, is indeed within experience, but it is not the authority of experience, it is an authority for experience, it is an authority experienced. All certainty is necessarily subjective so far as concerns the area where it emerges and the terms in which it comes home. The court is subjective but the bench is not. Reality must, of course, be real for me. It must speak the language of my consciousness. But it makes much difference whether it have its source in my consciousness as well as its sphere.'2

There is also the danger of Modern Pessimism. Nothing could be more disheartening and hopeless than much modern thought in science and literature. The laws of causation and heredity are being pressed in certain quarters to exclude all possibility of right living, while the law of determinism tends to destroy all sense of moral responsibility. Scientists like Huxley and Haeckel, authors hke Hardy and Ibsen, and even earlier writers like George Eliot and Hawthorne teach the nemesis of broken law and the utter impossibility of escape and recovery. The note of pessimism in modern fiction is one of the most significant and even startling phenomena of to-day.

In opposition to this comes the message of the Gospel of grace, administered by the Holy Spirit. It tells of sin, but also of pardon; it speaks of failure, but also of recovery; it emphasises weakness, but also power; it declares law, but also grace.

' If we have not a Gospel against heredity it is very doubtful if we have any Gospel at all.'3

Dr. Forsyth4 has pointed out that three things are ignored by pessimism: Sin, Redemption, Personality. The idea of sin in much modern writing is very largely associated with its physical and moral consequences, not with its lawlessness and guilt in the sight of God. And as to Redemption, modern thought has nothing whatever to say, its one idea being punishment and destruction. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ, while emphasising sin to the utmost and preaching without qualification or reserve,

' Be sure your sin will find you out,' nevertheless proclaims redemption from the condemnation and guilt of sin, and deliverance from its power in the Person of the Divine Christ, Who died on Calvary and lives for evermore. So that, as Forsyth remarks, we arrive at the great fundamental and eternal principle:

' Pessimism cannot be the final reading of the world and life, because holiness is a greater interest than happiness, sin is blacker than misery, and guilt is only revealed by grace. No experience of life shows a world so bad, black, perverse and hopeless as it is shown by the revelation of its holy salvation.'5

This redemption is made real to the soul by the Holy Spirit, and when we make much of the Holy Spirit it is impossible to be pessimistic. Not that we shall be optimistic in the modern sense of a cheap, superficial consideration of human ills without any serious regard to their reality and removal, but we shall be possessed by an optimism which in spite of, and indeed in face of the deepest and most potent results of sin fearlessly declares that ' the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin; (1 John i. 7). ' There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.... For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death ' (Rom. viii. i, 2). The man who has received into his life the inestimable benefits of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus knows for a surety that all is well for time and eternity, and he cannot possibly be pessimistic because ' the joy of the Lord is his strength ' (Neh. viii. 10).6

There is also the danger of regarding Christianity merely as a system of Ethics, depicting a moral ideal which cannot be realised. The practical result of such a position is an aspect of the modern hopelessness already considered. Christianity has a system of ethics and a moral ideal, but first and foremost it is and has a dynamic. From time to time young men are exhorted to follow the advice of Emerson, and ' hitch their wagon to a star.' But nothing in Emerson, or those who use him, tells how this is to be done. Yonder is the star, here is the human wagon; but how are they to become connected? Christianity not only tells men to hitch their wagon to the star, but provides that which connects the wagon below with the star above. The ' dynamic ' of the Gospel is the prominent feature of the Pauline theology, and its constant theme may be expressed in two statements of the Apostle:

' The Holy Spirit is the real dynamic of the Christian religion. Surely there are historic facts and mental conceptions which the Holy Spirit utilises, but these facts and conceptions are but useful pivots of power and not the power itself. The power itself is the energising will of the Holy Spirit. Without Him, the Christian religion would be, at the most, but an empty intention to rescue men. The rationalists, some of the extreme ones, are wont to say that we need more truth, that truth will lift men out of all their failure. We do need truth, more and more of it; but under all that need is the paramount need of a vitalised moral personality.'7

It is at this point that the work of the Holy Spirit is particularly noteworthy. By dwelling in the soul and revealing Christ to it, all human needs are met; the warfare of the flesh is. overcome (Gal. v. 17, R. V.); the fruit of the Spirit is produced (Gal. v. 22, 23); and victory over the devil and the world is accomplished.

' The objective dynamic of Christian Ethics is the Holy Spirit, or God exerting moral creative power. The Holy Spirit is not simply the immanent Spirit of God, as that is generally viewed. Its character is revealed and its power acts through Jesus. A great moral activity of God has been manifested in the earthly life of Jesus, consummated in His death, and exhibited as completed in His resurrection, which makes the beginning of specific ethical Christian experience possible. Hence Christianity is a Gospel of God (even as an ethical system), not the product of man's working or thinking, but an offer of life impinging on man for acceptance. Christian moral experience, then, takes for granted the Holy Spirit of God uniting His help to our weakness (Rom. viii. 26).'8

In this close union between the Holy Spirit and the believing soul all that is necessary is made absolutely secure (John xiv. 17; Rom. viii. 9, 11; 1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 17; Jas. iv. 5).

Not the least pressing of modern dangers is that of a merely intellectual conception of Christianity. This peril is particularly urgent because ideas are so widespread and tend to dominate human life. But ideas alone cannot save. If they could, the disciples would not have been powerless until the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. It is the province of the Holy Spirit to make the Christian ideas real and vital in their informing and inspiring force for human life. Man's true motto is Sancte et Sapienter,9 and both the Sancte and the Sapienter are made possible by the Spirit of Holiness and the Spirit of Truth.

' " Arouse man," Schelling once said, " to the consciousness of what he is, and he will soon learn to be what he ought." This is about half true, true in its appreciation of the worth of full self-consciousness, false in its lack of appreciation of the significance of personal freedom. You cannot make any man right by intensifying his self-consciousness. But it is true, and momentously true, that no man can have a profound moral life until he has a profound personal life. And the Holy Spirit does give a profounder personal life.'10

1 Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, p. 153.

2 Forsyth, op. cit. p. 83; see also p. 89; Mullins, Freedom and Authority in Religion, pp. 296-299.

3 Rendel Harris, Communion with God, p. 263.

4 Forsyth, ' The Pessimism of Mr. Thomas Hardy,' London Quarterly Review (October, 1912).

5 Forsyth, ut supra, p. 210.

6 Morris Stewart, The Crown of Science, p. 74; Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, ch. iv.

7 Curtis, The Christian Faith, p. 117; see also J. M. Campbell, After Pentecost, What? p. 243; Morris Stewart, The Crown of Science, p. 72; Walker, The Holy Spirit, p. 52.

8 Mackenzie, Article ' Ethics and Morality (Christian),' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. V. p. 469.

9 The motto of King's College, London.

10 Curtis, op. cit. p. 118.