INTRODUCTION.

Over forty years ago that great scholar, Bishop Thirlwall, expressed the opinion that

' the great intellectual and religious struggle of our day turns mainly on this question, Whether there is a Holy Ghost.'

When it is remembered that the Bishop was one of the ablest thinkers of his time, we can appreciate the insight and foresight of this statement. Still nearer our own day, Bishop Westcott, referring to Bishop Thirlwall's remark, said:

' I will venture to define this statement more closely and say that the struggle turns upon our belief in a Holy Ghost sent in the Name of Jesus Christ according to His own emphatic promise.'

The prominence and emphasis given in the New Testament to the Holy Spirit are at once the cause and the vindication of these utterances, and we may legitimately argue that the importance of the subject can be rightly measured by the place given to it. Other doctrines of great importance, as, for example, those of the Church and the Sacraments, do not obtain anything like the notice given in the New Testament to the Holy Spirit. No one can fail to be impressed with the frequency, variety, fulness and prominence of the references to the Spirit all through the New Testament Scriptures. Instead of stopping with the Resurrection, the New Testament leads on to the subject of the Holy Spirit and His work.

In truth, the Holy Spirit is in several ways the unique and ultimate Fact and Force in Christianity. He is the culmination of everything in the revelation of Divine redemption. Other religious systems have their founders, their sacred books, their ethics. But not one has anything corresponding to the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the only means of guaranteeing religion as personal communion with God. The Divine revelation given historically in the Person of Christ is mediated and made real to the soul by the Holy Spirit. This, again, is a mark of uniqueness in Christianity, since only therein is religion realised as a matter of personal communion with the Deity.

The Holy Spirit is also the true articulus aut stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae. John Owen regards the Holy Spirit as the touchstone of faith to-day just as the Persons of the Father and of the Son respectively have been tests in days past.1 Thomas Arnold said it is

' the very main thing of all. We are living under the dispensation of the Spirit; in that character God now reveals Himself to His people. He who does not know God the Holy Ghost cannot know God at all.' 2

The Holy Spirit is the unique element of Christianity as a living power to-day. The vindication of the Gospel of Christ will never be accomplished merely by the presentation of a moral ideal, still less by any statement in terms of philosophic thought. It is only as a ' dynamic ' that Christianity will recommend itself to the life of to-day, and, according to the New Testament, this ' dynamic ' is only possible by the presence and grace of the Holy Spirit. 3

The question at once arises whether the subject of the Holy Spirit has received due attention compared with that given to other doctrines of the Faith, e.g. Christology or Ecclesiology. After making every allowance for historical circumstances, it is surely not without significance that the Apostles' Creed contains ten articles on the Person and Work of Christ, with only one on the Holy Spirit. And when we consider the scarcity of references in the New Testament to the Holy Communion, contrasted with the prominence given to it in the history of the Church, we have another significant illustration of the comparative neglect of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the principle of cause and effect seems to obtain here, for probably if the Church had realised more of the meaning of the Holy Spirit, there might have been less need of controversy on the Holy Communion. In the Expository Times ten years ago, the Editor remarked: ' The doctrine of the Holy Spirit still suffers neglect among us.' 4 And even the valuable books published since then cannot be said to have adequately redressed the balance.5

Many considerations tend to make us emphasise the special importance of this subject at the present time. Materialism in science and also in commerce bulks largely in many lives. The teaching of Haeckel in Germany, and the recent suggestion of Professor Schafer in regard to the solution of the problem of life by means of chemistry alone, show a distinct but happily receding trend of modern scientific thought. And in commercial life, the craving to ' get rich quick,' the power of Trusts, and the over-mastering force of speculation in Real Estate constitute another serious element in the practical materialism of to-day. It will only be by the incoming of the New Testament message of the Holy Spirit that Materialism will be overcome and prevented in future.

In the opposite direction we cannot fail to observe the revolt against Materialism in such movements as Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy. We are bound to recognise the truth behind these tendencies, which seem to be in great measure due to a reaction from the blank agnosticism of the days of Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall. And yet no mere denunciation will suffice to meet their dangers. The craving for the non-material, the emphasis on mind rather than matter, and the belief in the reality of the spiritual world expressed in one way or another by these movements can only be adequately met by an insistence on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,

Nor dare we forget the purely negative criticism of Christ and Christianity from the time of Strauss to the present day. All such efforts of thought have tended towards a naturalistic Christ, robbed of everything distinctively Divine and supernatural, and brought within the limits of our own humanity. While processes of reasoning and historical scholarship will do much to meet this criticism, it remains true that only by the Holy Spirit shall we be fully enabled to see the futility and fatality of such a conception of our Lord.

The problems arising out of Modernism and Mysticism constitute another appeal to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Modernism with its efforts to cut loose from miraculous Christianity while retaining a belief in religion, and Mysticism with its endeavour to sublimate the Gospel into a religion free from all connection with the past, both tend towards the essential destruction of vital Christianity. And it is only in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit of God that such dangers can be met. A purely intellectual and natural religion can never satisfy the human heart, while philosophy, however true, cannot form, and never yet has formed, the basis of religion. The Holy Spirit applying to the soul the reality of God's revelation in Christ can alone suffice for the foundation of true religion.

The emphasis laid on the Church and Sacraments in certain quarters tends to the undue exaltation of the community in relation to the individual, to the exaggeration of the specific place and proper proportion of the Sacraments in relation to the other means of grace, and to a check on the spiritual liberty of the individual. The various ecclesiastical problems will find their true solution only as proper attention is given to the full New Testament teaching on the Holy Spirit.

There are those who charge Christianity to-day with failure as a vital force. The Bampton Lectures by Archdeacon Peile are perhaps the most striking recent discussion of this view.6 There is only one way of demonstrating Christianity as a supernatural religion, and that is by a constant insistence on the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. If we are to have a safeguard against fluctuating experiences of the Church, as seen through the centuries, and if we are to keep the Church immune from spiritual weakness, disease, and death, we must make much of the Divine Spirit.

The subject can perhaps best be studied along the lines of the following plan:

1. The Biblical revelation as the spiritual foundation of the doctrine.

2. The historical interpretation of the doctrine in the history of the Church.

3. The theological formulation of the doctrine in the Creeds and Confessions, and its spiritual presentation in the Christian life of the individual and the community.

4. The modern application of the doctrine to the various movements of to-day.

And so in different ways and from several quarters the call comes to us for a fresh enquiry into the meaning of, and a fresh emphasis on the value of that Article in the Creed, ' I believe in the Holy Ghost.' The supreme requirement is that the subject be considered from the standpoint of one who knows the realities of the Spirit by personal experience, not by intellect only.

'While lack of spiritual experience is a drawback in the study of any department of theology, it is absolutely fatal here. Critics may discuss Christology from the point of view of history or of literature; but, when they come to deal with the work of the Holy Spirit, without spiritual knowledge they are so far at a loss that they give up the attempt with a sneer at its futihty.'7

1 Pneumatologia, Book I. ch. i. Quoted by Moule, Veni Creator, p. 1 f.

2 Sermons, 1st Series, XXVIII. Quoted by W. L. Walker, The Holy Spirit, p. 7.

3 W. L. Walker, The Holy Spirit, ch. i.

4 May, 1903.

5 E.g. Swete, Downer, Davison, Humphries (see references later).

6 The Reproach of the Gospel.

7 W. T. Davison, The Indwelling Spirit, p. 30.