THE INDWELLING SPIRIT

"PERHAPS the oldest and most persistent of all our religious ideas," says Prof. E. F. Scott, "is that of the Spirit." ¹ The idea itself is by no means limited to the Christian religion. It appears in Zoroastrianism and is even more significant in later Stoicism. The mystery religions also deal with the idea of a divine presence or power coming to the initiate through their rites. But quite beyond the instances where the idea seems more definitely expressed, there is the conception common to both primitive and advanced religions of the divine as a power that moves in human life. The New Testament bears witness to the central place which this idea occupied in the early Church. Jesus is represented as being filled and empowered by the Spirit, especially at the beginning of his work. Pentecost appears as the birthday of the Christian communion. Not only are the leaders fitted for their tasks by the gift of the Spirit, but the Church as a whole is the dwelling place of the Spirit and every disciple as disciple shares in this gift. No one can read these pages sympathetically without feeling the deep and joyous sense that these early Christians had that God dwelt in their midst and that they were indeed living in the presence and by the power of the Eternal.

In view of all this the neglect of the doctrine of the Spirit in the Church is surprising. Compared with other great doctrines, the thinkers of the Church have given it little attention. In the earlier centuries when the ecumenical creeds were being shaped, and the doctrine of God was the central question, thought was centered almost wholly on the person of Christ and the Trinity. Later generations have not given it greater consideration. The attitude of the great body of Christian believers has corresponded to this* and in the minds of most of them the term calls forth only the vaguest of ideas as compared with their thought of God as Father or of the historic Jesus.

There are definite reasons for this and of various kinds. First is the lack of clear and adequate conceptions. The idea of the Spirit is one that roots back in primitive religious life and thought, beginning with animism and spiritism, and at no point has spiritual and ethical thinking taken longer to do its work. Older ideas lingered on. We see the process of change in the Old Testament, and there are survivals of the earlier ideas in the New. The Spirit has been too much conceived in terms of force, rather than as ethical and truly spiritual It has been limited too much to the unusual, and its meaning for normal Christian life and experience has not been appreciated.

A second reason is that this doctrine, usually in some inadequate form, has been especially exploited by groups that have been more distinguished by enthusiasm than by sound judgment or even, in many cases, by solid moral qualities. The early Church shows us the conflict of bishop and prophet, where the bishop appealed to tradition and stood for order, while the prophet with equal force stood for the conviction of the early Church that truth and guidance came from the Spirit of God who dwelt in the Church and spoke through whom it chose without special reference to elections and appointments. But authority and order won out, and the emphasis on the doctrine of the Spirit remained with groups and sects that were inclined to be the more extreme because of the attitude of the general Church toward them. Montanism represents the type, and later history shows corresponding groups from the Anabaptists down to the Holy Rollers of our day.

The third is the influence of ecclesiasticism here. The Church, of course, did not give up the doctrine of the Spirit, but the work of the Spirit was defined and confined until it came under the control of the institution and became perfectly safe. In the Roman Catholic Church the Spirit spoke infallibly through Scripture and tradition and general council and, finally, through the ex cathedra utterance of the pope. The Protestant Church tended more and more to make the Scriptures such an infallible expression, culminating in a doctrine of verbal infallibility that was as dangerous to the free religion of the spirit as Catholicism. In many cases, moreover, its attitude toward its creeds put them practically in the same class of inspired and infallible organs. ²

But however imperfect the thinking, and however much the abuse of the doctrine in practice, this idea of the indwelling Spirit has persisted in the Church and is rightly receiving new interest and new attention to-day. The reasons for this are plain. Historically there is, first of all, the place which this idea has in the New Testament. There is, secondly, the persistent religious experience of men who have found a life and strength that came not of themselves, a power that fitted them for their tasks, a spirit of love that changed their attitude toward others, a peace and joy that filled their hearts. The meaning of this for our concept of religion comes next. For it is here that Christianity finds the union of the religious and the ethical which we demand, in a Spirit that is God's gift to dependent man, while at the same time it is essentially man's own spirit, his own life possessed and expressed in freedom and responsibility. Finally, the idea of the indwelling Spirit is essential to the Christian thought of God and to those elements which are gaining increasing significance for us: the God who dwells with men and moves in all the world's life, the God of love whose very nature it is to give himself, the God of moral personality who is like men and with whom it is therefore possible for man to have communion, that is, the sharing of life. To this study we are further impelled because the negligence of the Church has furthered the growth of such movements as Christain Science, New Thought, and Theosophy, which appeal to men at this point, as the old mystery religions did, by professing to relate men to the divine realities and to enable them to share in their powers.

If we turn now to the Bible to note the idea of the Spirit there contained, we shall find two constant elements, First, the work of the Spirit is always thought of in relation to man, not in connection with the operation of God in nature. Secondly, the Spirit is thought of in terms of power, a power from God coming into human life, Beyond these simple elements, however, there is wide diversity in conception. Nor is it simply that the earlier ideas are more crude and the later more developed. We find rather the divergence of two broadly distinguished tendencies, which rest back naturally upon the difference in the way in which God is conceived in his nature and his relation to his world, One of these conceptions may be called the primitive, though its influence persists to our day.

Turning to this more primitive conception first, we find its distinguishing mark in its thought of God as power or essence alien in nature to man. When the Spirit of God comes upon a man, it is as ; a strange and alien power that it seizes hold of him. There ;is nothing necessarily moral in its nature. In Samson, for example, we find it in a man of anything but ideal character, and what it does for him apparently is simply to contribute superhuman physical strength. The spirit of his exploits is about as remote from what Paul identifies as the fruit of the Spirit as well could be. Sometimes the Spirit produces a state of ecstasy or frenzy. The -man's own spirit goes out ; as the Spirit of Jehovah comes in; in a somewhat literal way he is thought of as beside himself or, as the Germans phrase it, outside himself. Something like this seems to be illustrated in the incident of "Saul among the prophets." ³ The great prophets stand over against all this. It was probably because of this situation that Hosea declared: "The prophet is a fool; the man that hath the spirit is mad." ⁴ And this may explain why Jeremiah, the most spiritual of the prophets, deeply conscious that Jehovah is speaking through him, yet makes no reference to the Spirit, and why Amos flatly protests that 'he is not a prophet nor a member of any prophet school. In all this the work of the .Spirit is seen in the unusual and abnormal, is thought of in terms of an alien power, and is associated commonly with a high emotional state,

This conception of the Spirit, which is not distinctly Christian but has most likeness to what is found in other religions, lingers in early Christianity and recurs in later times. We see it represented in the speaking with tongues. If we take Paul's discussion in his letter to the Corinthians as our guide, and this of course is a first-hand testimony, then the speaking with tongues appears to have been an unintelligible utterance under high emotional strain, and this ecstatic state the Corinthians viewed as a peculiarly notable work of the Spirit greatly to be coveted. Here again is the Stress on emotion and the idea of a power that comes in as alien to a man and takes him out of himself. The same conception appears in a widespread idea of inspiration. The earliest illustration of this we have in Philo, but his theory reappears very soon in Christian writers. "A prophet/ 1 says Philo, "utters nothing of his own, but the foreign message of another who speaks through him." "His own intelligence departs at the arrival of the Divine Spirit, and returns with its departure, for it is not lawful for the mortal to dwell with the immortal." Nor is the prophet, according to Philo, able to understand what he utters. ⁵ Here again the Spirit is thought of as an external power, of a nature essentially alien to man, and with a method of control more or less mechanical and compulsive. Along this line move all the theories of verbal inspiration. The essential kinship between God and man is denied. The Spirit does not come in to change and renew the spirit of a man in thought, in discernment, in love and truth, so that seeing he may speak. The action of the Spirit has no necessary relation to a man's moral character; it is simply a force controlling, communicating words, restraining from error, and the picture of the writer as the passive pen in the hand of God is used again and again. ⁶

It is here that a modernist like Kirsopp Lake steps in with the suggestion that this whole conception of the Holy Spirit be given up. "Does the experience of controlling force which the prophet feels really come from some external influence, or is it merely his consciousness of ordinarily unknown depths in his own nature? It is obvious that a theory of prophecy could be made on lines rendered familiar by psychologists, by suggesting that what happens in a prophetic experience is the sudden 'coming up' of what is ordinarily 'subliminal.' It is, however, important to remember that this is merely a modern hypothesis just as the Jewish view of inspiration was an ancient one, But it is impossible in a rational theology to combine fragments of two wholly different explanations of life and of the universe. 'The Spirit' was an admirably intelligent phrase in the Jewish or early Christian view of the universe; it does not fit in well with the modern view of the universe. Similarly the theory of subliminal action fits very well into the modern view, but not into that of traditional theology." ⁷

The issue here, however, is a much larger one than that contained in the question as to what happens to the prophet, and the alternative even in the prophet's case is not that of traditional theology versus the subliminal consciousness. We are dealing here with the question that underlies our whole discussion: Can the divine enter into the human? How is God related to man? Leaving particular theories aside, there is involved here the fundamental Christian conviction that God and man can have real fellowship, that God, creating, redeeming, transforming, giving of his own life, can and does thus enter into human life. That is what God means to us, the creative Power pouring forth its life in the shaping of his world. If he gives life thus on the lower plane, shall we draw the line when we come to life at the highest, and say that here in the rational, moral being of man God cannot give of that truth and love and righteousness which make the heart of his being? The criticism of Professor Lake obtains against a particular theory. It does not, however, reach the question whether there is such an intercourse between God and man in which God through his Spirit enters into man. It simply assumes that a psychological description is an ultimate explanation. Nor does Professor Lake appreciate the presence in the Bible ,of another conception of the Spirit and its work which is of greater significance for us.

In the conception which we have just considered God is conceived as Being or Power above man and fundamentally different in nature. The Spirit is then thought of as a force that controls as it were from without, whose work is seen in extraordinary gifts or experiences. The conception to which we now turn emphasizes the nature of God as personal and especially his moral character. Religion then becomes more and more a personal relation morally conditioned* To this the idea of the Spirit naturally corresponds.

We begin with the prophets. What the prophets did for the idea of the Spirit was not so much through what they said about the Spirit of Jehovah, as through their thought of God. Their idea of the righteousness of God was not wholly new, but they brought out its meaning and made it determinative. God was not first of all an overlord to be pleased with offerings, not a strange power and majesty to be approached with correct ritual prescription. God was righteousness. Religion became essentially a personal relation marked by reverence and righteousness in the worshiped and the service of God was to be found in a life of justice and mercy shown to fellow men. God was not a mysterious and alien power whose Spirit laid hold of the prophet and wrought ecstatic experiences. Rather he was known in his historical dealings with his people. Where this idea of inspiration was not denounced as with Hosea, or passed by as with Jeremiah and the seventh-century prophets, it became as with Micah moral insight and moral passion: "But as for me, I am full of power by the Spirit of Jehovah, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin." ⁸ Such a conception of God and of religion turned the thought more and more to the moral and spiritual as the sphere of God's action in man. The Spirit is to come to the messianic king and to the people of the new age as the spirit of a new life. The Spirit will mean wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge and the fear of Jehovah. ⁹ Poured out upon the people, the Spirit will bring justice and righteousness and peace and confidence. ¹⁰ Jeremiah does not refer to the Spirit, yet contributes the supreme Old Testament declaration concerning spiritual religion.¹¹ Ezekiel still has place for trance and ecstasy and vision in the prophet's life, but he also makes clear this inner and moral work of the Spirit: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. , . . And I will put my Spirit within you." ¹²

It is to Paul, however, that the Church owes what is most distinctive in its doctrine of the Spirit. The prevalent Christian thought as he met it still saw the work of the Spirit in that which was unusual, extraordinary, and striking, and conceived of the Spirit as a power coming from without and laying hold of a man. Such works and gifts as this still have their place with Paul, but his emphasis is distinctly upon the ethical. That appears above all from the way in which he relates Christ and the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not some strange force; it is the Christ spirit, the spirit of love and truth and holiness which was seen in Jesus. We recall the extraordinary way in which Paul uses interchangeably Spirit, Holy Spirit, God, Christ, spirit of Christ, when he speaks of the divine presence dwelling in man. However he may conceive the relation of the Spirit and Christ, this much at least is clear: first, the Holy Spirit is for him ethical through and through and that in terms of the character of Jesus; "the Lord is the Spirit" was one of Paul's epoch-making words. ¹³ Second, Paul sees the work of the Spirit in the whole range of Christian experience; all love and truth and grace, all spiritual insight and moral power, flow from this. ¹⁴ Third, while the early Church emphasized quite in the traditional Jewish manner the extraordinary as the special work of the Spirit, Paul saw its supreme work in the ordinary and normal Christian life. He did this "on the basis of his experience, which showed him that the Christian himself was the greatest miracle."¹⁵ His chapter on love, coming in the midst of his discussion of the gifts of the Spirit, is eloquent witness to his doctrine. Fourth, the Spirit is for Paul the Spirit of God, Whatever Paul's teaching may mean for trinitarian doctrine, the Spirit is not some intermediate being or some power put forth by God, but is God himself dwelling in men* Finally, though the Spirit is thus a supernatural gift, yet it is part of his own conscious life; the love, the truth, the purity are man's own spirit, his thought and will and emotion. The religious and the ethical are here united. The life is wholly the gift of God, the work of the Spirit; and yet it is wholly a life of faith, that is, of man's trust and obedience. It is true there are other elements in Paul's conception, not merely in his recognition of such gifts as tongues, but possibly even in his conception of the sacraments. What has been pointed out is simply those elements in which the higher and the distinctively Christian teaching appear.

One conclusion has become plain from this discussion. The doctrine of the Spirit cannot be settled by discussing it as a theologumenon by itself—and what doctrine can? In a specially intimate manner it depends upon our thought of God and of the relation between God and man, that is, of religion. Paul is in the line of the prophets and Jesus. God is not thought of first of all in terms of power, strange and distant, or of the sovereign ruler. Religion is not an institution to which men submit, whether of law or creed or ecclesiastical rule, nor is it the incursion of some alien force into human life. God is personal and rational and perfectly good. He is like us or, to put it the other way, we are made in his likeness. Religion is a personal relation, a fellowship which demands above all else moral likeness. The supreme declaration about God is that he is Christ-like. The supreme revelation of religion is that given us in the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, in the life that he lived as Son with his Father, as man with his brother men. It is on this basis that we must understand what the Spirit of God is and how the Spirit is given to men.

We may summarize then this second conception of the nature of the Spirit. The Spirit is the .Spirit of God, not something apart from God sent by him to man. The Spirit is our term for God conceived as giving himself to man and dwelling in man. The Spirit is personal and ethical as God is personal and ethical, and in the measure in which the Spirit is shared by man he shares in this higher being of God. As God is Christlike, so the character of the Spirit is Christlike, and the final test of its presence in a man is Christlikeness of spirit.

The higher conception of the Spirit here suggested did not maintain itself in purity in the history of the Church. Two other points of view in particular were influential. The first is the idea already considered, deriving from primitive religion and coming to early Christianity through Jewish thought. The Spirit is here conceived in terms of power, not a moral-personal power acting from within but a compulsive power moving from without. Thus we have the modern instances of speaking with tongues, and the ecstasies and trances and jerks and similar phenomena that have appeared with certain kinds of camp meetings and revivals and types of mystical experience. The same idea of the Spirit as "power" lies back of certain conceptions of sanctification and of the "higher life." The symbols of fire and water as suggesting the Spirit and its action have their justification, but their use by certain groups suggests that men forget that these are only symbols, while they press the literal picture until they have a process conceived as really mechanical. Here again the Spirit becomes an external force working in mechanical and not in moral-spiritual fashion. Or take a scene in which, with a maximum of noise and emotion and a minimum of thought and moral purpose, men call for the "power" to come down, and find the answer to their prayer in some ecstatic experience, This too is the primitive idea of the Spirit. This conception has had special place in the "enthusiastic" sects and groups from Montanism down to the Holy Rollers. We must not overlook the fact, however, that they represented a justified protest against the effects of ecclesiasticism and institutionalism on personal religion. Rightly they asserted that religion was a living experience of God in the conscious life of men, that each soul might receive in the Spirit of God a life and power higher than himself, and that for this he might go to God himself.

The other conception of the Spirit has a philosophic source, coming into the Church principally through Greek thought and religion. God is conceived here in terms of substance or essence rather than of power. Humanity belongs to the order of that which is sinful, perishable, mortal. God is infinite, spiritual, incorruptible. Salvation is the transformation of corruptible being into the incorruptible, of the mortal immortality, of the human into the divine; Here is the basis for the whole ecclesiastical-sacramentarian conception of salvation. Consistently with this idea of. God, the Spirit given to man is conceived more as a divine substance transforming our humanity. This divine substance, is infused through, the sacraments. As a Roman Catholic authority says, "It is understood to be 'subjected' (tp inhere^ in the essence pi the soul;, it is more commonly regarded as a: 'physical' entity, not a moral participation in ; the Divine nature" ¹⁶

These last considerations; have brought us, to heart of our study: how does the Spirit of God to men and work in men? The Christian doctrine of the Spirit, involves always a two-fold conviction: first, that all our spiritual life is the, gift, and deed of God, all truth and love and goodness, that we may possess; second that this gift is not something which we hold apart from God, but rather that this is the very life of God himself, his presence in us, It; becomes then a question of supreme importance, How does man share this life of God? Around this question; moves the whole doctrine of salvation when rightly conceived, and the Christian idea of grace is but another way of stating the same matter.

Here again it is the idea of God that men have that is determinative, and this must first be illustrated by a consideration of traditional doctrines of the way in which men are assumed to receive the Spirit, or divine grace. When God is conceived primarily as sovereign Power, as in the Augustinian-Calvinistic tradition, then you have logically the idea of irresistible grace whose action is wholly dependent upon the will of God and does not necessarily work through the conscious and moral experience of the subject, who is indeed essentially passive and impotent. Back of sacra-mentarianism is likewise, as we have seen, an absolutistic conception of God except that now he is absolute essence, an order of being in sharp contrast with humanity. But again it is not personal-ethical experience that is needed; the divine is not primarily personal and ethical, and as substance it can be mediated through such impersonal media as the physical materials of the sacraments. In both cases, this idea of the absolute transcendence of God plays into the institutional idea of religion; the divine is not present in personal fellowship, but mainly in such divine agencies or ordainments as the Church and its sacraments, the inspired writing, and the authoritative creed. What may be called the ecstatic-emotional conception of the Spirit follows the same line. For it God is not the being akin to man with whom man may therefore have fellowship in the normal experiences of life; as the transcendent and mysterious Being his Spirit enters man with an inrush of emotion as something extraordinary if not abnormal.

The contrasted conception, as we have seen, is that which thinks of God first of all as personal and ethical. However dependent it may see man to be, however imperfect or even sinful, yet it emphasizes the likeness of being in man and God at this essential point. With this goes an idea of religion plainly contrasted with the institutional conception suggested above or the relation of the mere dependent to his Sovereign. The heart of religion becomes a personal fellowship morally conditioned.

Such a fellowship permeates all of man's life and demands it all. Man is to love God with his mind, not vaguely to feel or blindly to submit, but to hear the God who says, "Son of man, stand upon thy feet; come now, and let us reason together." It is the religion not of servants, but of friends who know what their Lord doeth. It calls upon the will, not for blind obedience it is true, but for a devotion which goes far beyond what the mere servant can yield. The religion of fellowship demands that higher righteousness of the Sermon on the Mount, where man is one with God as his son in the inmost spirit of his life. It asks us to see the high purpose of God for ourselves and the world and to make that purpose the ruling motive of life. It is a fellowship that includes man's heart, his emotions. It calls for awe and reverence that is all, the deeper because this most high God offers men the privilege of life with him. It involves love and trust, and thus the joy and peace which flow from these. It unites heart and will when it asks us to share the life of God in our attitude toward our fellow men, so that in the spirit of service and utter good will we may show ourselves children of our Father.

This is the religion to which God summons us, the religion of personal fellowship realized in communion with him and in right relations with our fellow men. But this religion is not only our life, it is God's gift; it is in and through such personal fellowship that this God gives himself to men. That is the significant fact for our discussion of how the indwelling Spirit is received. The analogy of human friendship illustrates this most simply. This man is my friend. He has riches, he has position and influence; he has What is far more, the wisdom of years, the wealth of broad culture, the treasures of a great soul. The great treasures of life come from such friendship, and the greatest of these is the friend himself, his own wisdom and love and spirit as they enter into my spirit. And he gives himself to me through the practice of our friendship. So God gives himself, his Spirit, to become a new life in men. Was not this the message of Jesus? It is true he did not discuss it, but he set it forth in parable, in saying, above all in his own life. His picture of religion was just this picture of a life of fellowship which the children live with their Father. He made plain its demand of utter devotion, of inner likeness of spirit, of unwavering trust, of reverent fear. But he also made clear how God gave himself in this fellowship, how eagerly he desired his children thus to come to him, how freely he gave to them. There is more of the Christian doctrine of salvation here than one would surmise who had simply studied volumes on the atonement or discussions of the various kinds of grace.

Let us look more closely now at this personal fellowship as the channel through which God gives his Spirit to men. The significance of the sacraments of the Church is not, of course, denied here. They have their value in quickening devotion, in aiding our sense of the invisible, in uplifting us through acts of common worship, and so in furthering communion with the highest and making access for God to man. But that God has limited himself in special manner to these ways, or that the material or visible in itself may become the channel for a necessary operation of grace, this falls below the plane of personal and spiritual religion. Nor is there a denial here of the value and need of the emotional. The error lies in supposing that the apprehension of the mind and the attitude of the will are of minor importance, or in supposing that the occasional intense emotional experience is the one door by which the Spirit comes in. The fault of traditional thought, on the whole, has been rather in what it has excluded than in what it has emphasized in considering how God shares his Spirit with men. The whole idea of grace and the means of grace needs greatly to be broadened and especially to be ethicized and humanized. The following paragraphs point out three of the doors by which the Spirit of such a God as ours enters into human life; in their brevity they are intended simply to be suggestive.

The Spirit of God is the Spirit of truth and as such works through the truth. There is no access to the human soul, not even for God himself, except through the truth. That does not mean that correct knowledge and spiritual experience are one, nor that the Spirit of God is excluded by imperfect understanding. The God of faith is not so much a theological doctrine as a practical demand; he comes as love and righteousness asking obedience. The first summons that comes to primitive man asking him to give himself for something that is higher than himself involves some apprehension of the divine whether he gives to it the name of God or not. And history shows how, amidst all the divisions and isms, men have come into living fellowship with God and showed by their lives the presence of his Spirit. Yet in every case there is a truth, an ideal, to which men surrender, a light which they follow. The larger truth, then, though it does not necessitate, yet makes possible the larger entrance of God. As a matter of fact the great periods of forward movement or of religious quickening in the Church have been connected with some new or renewed apprehension of truth. , One needs but think of such names as Paul and Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Luther, and John Wesley.¹⁷ Here is the significance of that relation between Jesus and the Spirit which is revealed in the New Testament. The early Church was deeply conscious that it was through Jesus that its new experience of the Spirit had come, and we have seen the close relation in Paul's thought. In Jesus there had come a new and vivid apprehension of God and his purpose and of the meaning of life; that truth was an open door by which could enter a new experience of God's presence. Here is enforced also the value of meditation. It may take but a moment to assent to a statement of fact or to grasp a theoretical proposition; but the truth involved in moral and spiritual ideals is made our own only as we meditate upon it and indeed live with it.

The Spirit of God is Holy Spirit and as such works through moral fellowship, through a right moral relation.. In its original sense the word "holy" here no doubt meant transcendent, as it did elsewhere; it bore the thought that this Spirit was from above and not of man. That truth remains, but for our current use the adjective has a moral meaning; the Spirit is goodness, love, righteousness, or, as Paul put it, the Christ spirit. Such a Spirit can be received by man only in a life of moral obedience, a fellowship of will. We come here to the aspects of spiritual life which Jesus especially emphasized. Here is involved the devotion, or consecration, of life to God, the constant expression of that devotion in the varied affairs of life, the openness to truth, the aspiration toward good and God, the inner loyalty of spirit, and above all the active expression of the Divine Spirit in our relations with men. This Spirit of God man can receive only in moral loyalty and can possess only as he constantly lives it out.

We need to note also the significance of man's social life in relation to the Spirit of God. It is in the fellowship of man with man that fellowship with God is most deeply enjoyed; it is in and through the social group that God can most freely and fully give himself. The reason for this is not hard to find. It is simply stating the religious meaning of the familiar fact that human personality is social and is achieved only in social relations, Here is God's way of making men; not in the isolation of the individual, but in the social group. Here lies the first meaning of the Church, but how commonly that meaning has been missed by the ecclesiast. It does not mean that the Spirit speaks only through the authority of the Church or works only through her controlled channels of grace. It is not the institution that counts here, but the fellowship, the koinonia which the New Testament sets forth. Here Is a spirit of common faith and love and devotion and sense of God; the early Church felt that that spirit of the group was the Spirit of God. The Spirit was the real life of the Church, and the fellowship was the great way that God had of imparting his Spirit to the individual. But though this is first, we cannot stop here. All true fellowship is an open door for God's entrance and an expression of his presence. "Where love is, God is." The highest fellowship will, of course, be mutual and be that which is joined to the highest Interests of life. But he who goes where human need is, he who takes to men a spirit of good will, a passion for righteousness, a devotion to service, he will receive of the Spirit of God as surely as does he who bows in worship with the great congregation. This is the message that underlies the poem, "The River of God," dedicated to Jane Addams and offering an interpretation of her life.¹⁸

"'There is a river the streams whereof

     Make glad the City of God.'

I went through death to find this thing

     And all through heaven I trod.

 

"Now heaven's a wide and wonderful place,

     But the people are much as we,

So I came back home in sorrow and thirst,

     And there one said; to me:

 

" '0 fool, you have traveled far to find

     What you've crossed over time and again;

For the River of God is in Halsted Street

     And is running black with men,'

 

" 'And low in the rushes the river sings,

     And sweet is its spirit lure,

For it waters the joys of loving and living

     That grow in the hearts of the poor.'

 

"So I took me a place in the City slums

     Where the River runs night and day,

And there 'I sit 'neath the Tree of Life

     And teach the children to play.

 

"And ever I soil my hands in the River,

     But ever it cleans my soul,

As I draw from the deep with the Silver Cord,

     And fill the Golden Bowl."

One point more needs to be made in connection with this conception of religion as fellowship, and of fellowship as the way by which God comes into human life. Does it not bring us nearer to a satisfactory answer to the question how the religious and the ethical may be joined together, how God and man may really meet? On the one hand is the demand on man's part for a religion of freedom and initiative; the life that we want must be our life, our deed, our achievement. On the other hand is man's need and the great query whether indeed God can come into human life. You cannot answer that question by simply equating God and man, after the manner of pantheism; it does not meet our need to lump our poor humanity together and call it God. You cannot meet the problem by so setting man and God over against each other that a real union is impossible, or by so setting the God of might above man that man becomes creature and puppet. You can meet it if your God is supreme not simply as all-dominating power but as truth and holy love, lifting man up through the ages of increasing purpose to the level of personal life, and then giving himself to man in free and gracious personal fellowship. And so at our close, our highest conception takes us back to the words of Jesus: "When ye pray, say, Father."

1) "The Spirit in the New Testament," page 11.

2) Note the quotation from J. G. Machen in Richards, "Christian Ways of Salvation," page 219. Professor Machen denies that the Westminster Confession is a denominational affair or "merely one expression of the progressive Christian consciousness. It is rather a final and absolute statement of Christian truth ultimately to be accepted by the whole world." Consider also what was implied in the action of the Methodist Episcopal Church in seeking to place its Articles of Religion beyond possibility of any revision or amendment. Viewed from one side, this would seem to imply a pretty wide assumption of absolute inspiration on the part of the General Conference which took such action and which undertook to determine thus what must be believed for all future time by the Church. On the other hand, it apparently denies the conviction of the presence and continued guidance of the Spirit in the Church which has had so much emphasis in Methodism.

3) 1 Samuel xix. 18-24.

4) Hosea ix. 7.

5) Sec Rees, "The Holy Spirit," pages 50, 51. Compare Plato, cited by E. F. Scott, "The Spirit in the New Testament," page 166. "God takes away the minds of the poets and uses them as his ministers, and he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."

6) Hodge, "Systematic Theology," I. 155: "Inspiration in itself has no sanctifying influence." See R. A. Torrey, "What the Bible Teaches," pages 282, 283, for a recent statement insisting upon inspiration as the communication of infallible words.

7) "Landmarks of Early Christianity/' pages 43, 44.

8) Micah iii. 8.

9) Isaiah xi. 2.

10) Isaiah xxxii, 15-17.

11) Jeremiah xxxi. 31-35.

12) Ezekiel xxxvi. 26, 27.

13) 2 Corinthians iii. 17.

14) Galatians v. 16-255 Romans viii. 4-6.

15) Gunkel, "Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes," pages 80, 81.

16) "Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics," article "Grace," VI, 368.

17) "See "The Next Revival of Religion," in "Living Issues in Religious Thought," by H. G. Wood.

18) Frank Crane.