"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." — John 16:7.

This promise refers to the incoming of the Holy Ghost as an abiding guest in the heart of a believer. It was given by Jesus to the disciples, and through them to all believers of all time. It does not refer to the preliminary work of the Spirit in conviction and conversion; it refers to the permanency of the indwelling Spirit in the heart of the perfected believer. A great mistake is made in the matter of an advanced Christian experience, by confounding the witness of the Spirit in conversion with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The witness of the Spirit had already occurred in the hearts of these disciples. Jesus was acting in the office of the Witnesser when He said to His disciples, "Your names are written in heaven"; but this promise refers to what was to succeed the work of Christ.

We know that the Holy Ghost was in the world from the beginning. He moved upon the "face of the waters and adorned the heavens. The Holy Ghost was striving with the hearts of the antediluvians; the Holy Ghost changed the hearts and inspired the faith of saints in past generations; yet all this was done before He made His personal advent in the world. Jesus was in the world before He made His advent. He talked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; appeared in the flesh to Abraham; He walked with Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar, and with the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace. All this personal manifestation was before His advent into the world. So that Jesus and the Holy Ghost were both of them working in all past generations; and yet in the fullness of time Jesus made His personal advent, and after His glorification the Holy Ghost made His personal advent into the world. . . . The disciples had already been regenerated. Jesus testified that their names were written in heaven; they had cast out devils. To-day there are thousands who have believed on Jesus and received the initial work of the Holy Ghost, who have been translated from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of Christ, yet they are as ignorant of the gift of the Holy Ghost as the Ephesians when Paul first visited them. Jesus represents this incoming work of the Third Person of the Godhead as the crowning work of the kingdom of God, and He teaches us that there are advantages that cannot be secured by the visible presence of Jesus Himself.

I. In the first place, in securing a higher degree of spiritual understanding than could be by the bodily presence of Christ. It is the office of the Spirit to take the words of Jesus and reveal them unto us. It is the office of Jesus to reveal the truth in word, but it is the work of the Spirit to reveal that truth in the heart. It is not the work of the Spirit to give us light in all the minor matters of life and nature. The headlight on a locomotive throws light on the track; some beams may spread out and light up the farms and forests, but that is incidental. The Spirit throws light only on the track to heaven. The aim is not to illuminate nature, nor science. The Spirit may illuminate a man's mind so that he better understands science, but that is incidental. His especially ordained work is to throw light on the way to glory — on revealed Bible truth; not natural, providential, nor governmental truth. The Holy Ghost does not add anything either to the Bible or to the soul. He is not the creator of facts. All things in heaven or in earth were created by Jesus Christ. He is to take what has been made, and to reveal the one and to cleanse the other. When the film is drawn from the eye, the physician does not add a new function to the eye, but purifies it. When the telescope shows distinct worlds, it does not add new stars; it draws back the veil, and shows what God has created. So the Holy Ghost does not create a new power in the soul, but removes the him; purges and glorifies what is already in the soul. Not a new verse does He add to the revealed will of God, but takes the Word of God already existing, gives a clearness and distinctness to what had been previously existing through the ages. We are not to look to the Holy Ghost to make a revelation not made through the Word. To suppose that the Holy Ghost will give us a new truth is to suppose that He will break the Word of God. God has said he that addeth to or taketh from His Word shall suffer for it; and the Holy Ghost will not take from nor add to. Those men on Pentecost had nothing added to or taken from; but they had a better understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures than ever before, though they had been with incarnate deity. We see Peter teaching from the Old Testament as never before.

There is in the human soul a native darkness that no amount of learning can dispel, though we walk with Solomon or talk with the bodily Savior. Conversion cannot fully remove it; conversation with the Lord Jesus for three years could not remove it. It is something that nothing but the entire sanctification of our souls will ever remove. All things combined are inadequate to remove the native blindness of the soul without holiness. Hence we find the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the only safeguard against heresy. A man may be a heretic, though he be as wise as Solomon. We may talk as we will, there is a grain of heresy in every unsanctified soul in the universe. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is the divine remedy to remove spiritual heresy. There are many ministers, though they are professedly orthodox, who themselves are heterodox. Some unconsciously lean towards Unitarianism; some towards Universalism; some towards Spiritualism; some towards soul-sleeping; some towards the annihilation of the wicked: some have heresy one way, some another. These things are in their hearts in spite of their wills; they are native there. Only by the baptism of the Holy Ghost are they removed. As the chaff is burned in the furnace of fire, so the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the only consumer of darkness and safeguard, according to Christ's own words. No minister of any age or any Church is entirely freed from it until entirely sanctified. So that a plain man entirely sanctified, without learning, and with the Bible in his hands, has an understanding of the divine promises, sees farther into the prophecies of God, gets a firmer grasp on God's Word, than all the doctors of divinity that are not sanctified. It is not the will of God that His saints are to walk in darkness or error to any degree spiritually, and He has furnished a prevention to secure His people in all ages; and if any one walks in error, it is because he is unsaved.

II. The indwelling of the Spirit secures a higher degree of certainty than we could have with the visible Jesus without the Spirit. The Scriptures want us not only to understand, but to know. Understanding is through the mind, but knowledge is through the consciousness. It is not the intent of the Bible that we should rest on a "perhaps" or a "guess so." Take the concordance, and you will be astonished to see how often the words "know" and "knowledge" are used in the Bible, and what we may know by the Holy Ghost. "They shall know my name"; "know my voice"; "I will make you to know my way"; "We know we have passed from death unto life"; "I know whom I have believed"; "We know all things work together for good"; "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands." There is a vast range of truth that is so adapted to your consciousness, that you may know it as certainly as an archangel. There are facts in relation to the divine government, etc., that you cannot know; but those facts that lie between you and God, — between you and heaven; all those that come between you and your God, — the moral facts between you and your fellow-creatures, you can know with absolute certainty. When the Holy Ghost comes to abide in your heart, He takes His abode in your spiritual nature. We must remember there are three kinds of knowledge. We have a body of bones, muscles, nerves; there is sensibility. We know all material facts through the sensibilities. Behind that we have a mind, which Paul calls the soul; through that we have knowledge of time, cause and effect, recollection, imagination, and deduction; that is mental- knowledge, and is in many cases more certain than the other. You may be more certain that two and two are four, than of the temperature of your body. Higher than that is the spirit, called in the Old Testament, heart, and in the New Testament, pneuma, spirit. In your spirit, in your heart, far beyond all physical knowledge, far beyond all mental knowledge, you know by spiritual intuition. You know you are one, and not two. In the heart you know without reasoning and without sensation. You are conscious of spiritual facts and states without education, whether you have done much thinking or not. The spirit gets its knowledge by intuition, not by the reasoning powers. You will find that the Bible explains this; the Holy Spirit operates on that part of your nature. The witness of the Spirit is not to your physical — it is not to your reasoning faculties. A religion that has to be reasoned out has not yet got into the central heart. In the old tabernacle there was the outside court for the sacrifices, hemmed in by a curtain, but was open to the sunshine and rain. That represents your physical nature, which is at the play of nature's forces. In beyond the first veil was the sanctuary, with the table of showbread and the golden candlesticks, where the lamps were kept burning night and day. That lamp represented the mind, the laws of human instruction, mental beliefs and reasoning.

But beyond the second veil was the holy of holies. Nothing was allowed there, so far as light was concerned, but the blazing light of the Divine Shekinah. A thick curtain of badger skins kept out sunlight and lamplight; and if God did not shine there, there was nothing but total darkness. Now, your spirit is reached by the Holy Spirit. The powers of the mind can never illuminate your heart; unless God shines in your spirit, it remains in total darkness. So when the Holy Ghost makes His advent He penetrates through the body, through the mind, and enthrones Jesus in the heart, and there from your spirit He shines out through your mind and through your body. In course of time your very face will wear a heavenly smile; but if your face wears a heavenly smile it is because of the blazing Shekinah in your spirit. The knowledge you have in your spirit far exceeds your knowledge of physical or mental things. Men put physical knowledge as the most certain, mental knowledge less certain, and religious knowledge least certain. The fact is, the physical is the least certain. Our eyes, our ears, our sense of touch all deceive us. Mental knowledge is a little more certain. A man knows that there are three angles in a triangle. Spiritual and religious knowledge is most certain of all. What we know in religion we know as truly as Gabriel. I say in the presence of that Bible that spiritual and religious knowledge is indubitable. When it comes, it comes instantaneously; and you cannot imagine a doubt. The light of noon puts the thought of doubt to flight. The Holy Ghost will take those things in the Word of God (never outside) and put them into your consciousness, so that where you previously believed in your mind, now you know. So that if you have doubted the divinity of Christ, from that instant you are as conscious that He is divine as that you are not divine; so that we can be just as conscious that Jesus is infinite as that we are finite. The apostles believed on Christ, but they did not know that He was divine. Jesus said, "When the Holy Ghost comes you will not only believe, but you shall know that I am in my Father and my Father in me. You shall know by an infallible proof that I am as truly God as that my Father is God." It was shown to me by the Spirit. I am just as conscious that Jesus Christ is divine as if I had lived with Him a thousand years. Any one who has a doubt about the divinity of Jesus Christ should get sanctified, and he will know that He is divine if he does not see Him for a million years yet. The Holy Ghost takes the blood of Christ and applies it to the heart, for it is the baptism that sanctifies; at that instant that you are fully sanctified, the Holy Ghost enters; but it may be some time before He reveals all the facts in the case. When He enters in He will take the virtue of Christ's blood and reveal it to your consciousness, so that you may be conscious of the blood. That may seem extravagant, but it is in the Word. Previously you have believed in the blood, and accepted it as the meritorious ground of salvation, but in the indwelling of the Comforter He gives you the fulfillment of your faith with power. You may believe in the blood without feeling it; but the Holy Ghost makes you conscious of it, so that you not only believe that the blood cleanses, but in the Spirit's indwelling He makes you to feel and know that it cleanses; and a soul can feel that it is pure.

Then take this idea of God's special providence. The indwelling Sanctifier converts the Bible truth of providence into an absolute certainty. A regenerated man may believe in special providences, but the Holy Ghost takes the facts of special providences and reduces them in His burning crucible into a glorious consciousness. "We know that all things work together for good." We know that the hairs of our heads are all numbered. We know when wrapped around by cares, and our hearts are aching with sorrow, we know that He has a love for us that is specific — that is minute, that is abiding. And we live under these laws of the Holy Ghost, and under the conscious drapery of the fingers of God. No sanctified soul ever has any shaking on the subject of special providences. All these matters about which we had a little doubt, — that is all gone, and we are in the domain of certainties. A South Carolina minister, at a National Camp Meeting, when sanctified said, "The uncertainties of a lifetime are gone." What this world is dying for is ministers to preach what they absolutely know, congregations to sing and testify of what they know. All the men that walk this green earth are more or less in uncertainty until they are sanctified. All that are sanctified walk on rock, and know that it is rock. I do not mean that a converted man does not know that he is converted, but there are some things in religion he is uncertain about. God has provided that we should walk this earth with some degree of certainty. We walk amid quagmires and crooked paths, but the sanctified believer walks on marble.

III. The indwelling Holy Ghost insures a higher degree of security than we could otherwise have, though walking with the visible Jesus. It is the will of God that we be not only certain, but secure in religious things. We are living in a state of probation. It does not end until we die or Christ calls us up. If we were free from danger, we would not be probationers. The idea of trial involves danger. The problem of salvation is to take us through this world of dangers and make us as secure as possible, — to take us through probation as secure as possible with the facts of probation. Take the Word of God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and you are furnished with provisions for the highest security that is compatible with probation. God knows there are liabilities and possibilities of falling, or it would be no probation; but He wants to make this life as secure as possible. In the indwelling of the Holy Ghost the dangers of life are reduced to their minimum, and the securities of life are raised to their maximum. That is the mathematical problem God has solved, — so that we will be tried and tested for all eternity, and yet make us as secure as possible. That is God's insurance. Taking that view of it, where are the dangers that beset a believer? Those that lie in the external world, those that appeal to the five senses, those that appeal to the mind, — they are one class; another class lurks within, — an unsoundness at the center, an inward aptitude for unholy things. Those dangers that lie within a man are greater than those that lie without. A seed of sin within the soul is like a beautiful palace with a keg of powder concealed within it, — it may be the house will never burn down, but it would be a great deal safer with the powder away. A seed of sin in the soul is like the keg of powder in the closet, and the devil shooting Greek fire all around you. It is the work of the Holy Ghost to destroy the love of sin, and thereby open a fountain within of things good and heavenly; so that by purifying the fountain He makes the stream pure. When the Holy Ghost takes hold of the will -the rebellion is gone, and the will reposes on the bosom of God. If the Holy Ghost keeps the heart the dangers are all on the outside. In the law of gravitation there is a wonderful force, but it is so invisible and intangible that it is beyond our grasp. What is it that moves the worlds as they run on their lightning-footed marches? God has put His hand at the center, and they go better by being moved at the center than if they ran in iron grooves. God proposes to hold you and me by sending the Holy Ghost, whom no man " hath seen or can see," and putting Him in our souls, in our desires, in our wills, to guide us in our marches, better than if we had guardian angels by our side or the visible Jesus. Men have been known to backslide within the finger touch of Jesus. You and I are less liable to fall, and are better off, than if we had the visible Christ without the Holy Ghost; we are better off than Adam in the garden of Eden. He was a holy man and fell into sin; we were in sin and can fall upward into holiness. I had rather be a poor yet saved crippled man, halting like Jacob, than to be Adam in Eden. Sanctified men can fall, but in an overwhelming number of cases they will not fall.

Nothing but a lack of faith in these great truths robs us of our power. There are sanctified people who keep praying for power; their very unbelief confesses they have lost the power. They may pray for twenty years, but they will never have it until they believe. People want a sort of phenomenal power. Our power lies in believing God; there is your power. We lose power by telling ourselves we are not strong. In the name of God, tell the world you are strong; tell the devil you are strong. Believe the promises without feeling; if you fail and fall by believing, then you can confess for power.

I believe God has placed us under the most favorable circumstances. I would rather walk here with the Holy Ghost in my soul, than with Moses yonder with the pillar of fire over his head, or with uncovered feet at the burning bush. I would rather walk here with the Holy Ghost in my heart, than to tread with apostles the shores of Galilee.

The Father in His dispensation gave us law. Jesus gave Himself, His virtue and sacrifice He sent the Holy Ghost to sanctify believers. The Holy Ghost in His dispensation applies the law, appropriates the death of Jesus, and preserves us until His coming again. Then we shall have the capacity for the double revelation of Jesus within by the Spirit, and Jesus without by vision. Then on through the summer years of eternity, with the Holy Ghost within and the blazing body of Jesus without, we shall see Him as He is, and live with Him forever and ever. Glory to God! Amen.