resolution; a "fall upward," perhaps, on to some higher level of enriched consciousness. Let no man deceive us with vain words. And let us pray that our lips may never pass them on. And to that intent may the Holy Spirit of Promise evermore teach us, close to the Cross and to the open Grave, His lessons of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.

Even so. But from every other aspect of the matter we must say, we must cry, the very opposite of "O beata culpa." And we who believe, and who have been convinced of sin, righteousness, and judgment, must humbly and persistently look to the same holy Convincer who began the work that He may deepen it and develop it throughout our whole lives, and (let me add to my ministerial brethren) throughout our whole ministry. If in one aspect the conviction of sin is the great initial work of the Spirit, from another aspect it is a work which we can never dare to wish Him to wind up here below. Has the believer ever reached the real end of self-discovery ? Has he ever really seen with ultimate adequacy how truly his happiest actual obedience "cannot

CONVICTION, OUR NEED TO THE LAST. 99

endure the severity of the divine judgment"?ו Has he ever quite fully realized his need of "Christ for him"? No, he has not. So now, and to-morrow, and always, we will ask the Convincer to carry on in the blessed home of Grace the lesson He mercifully began upon the desert sands; to keep us alive and awake, tenderly, humbly, and evermore, to sin, and righteousness, and judgment, in the light, in the blissful light, of Christ.

Article XII. See below, p. 188.

W

CHAPTER VI.

E have endeavoured to think out something of the great subject of Conviction of Sin by the Spirit of God. Perhaps I should rather say not to think it out, but to think it in; to turn inward in view of it, and question our souls, writer and reader together, about our Rom. vii 13. own insights into the "exceeding sinfulness of sin" in the light of the Holy Ghost.

I turn now to the glorious other side of the operation of the Spirit in His work of new creation, re-constitution, of us sinners. I turn to His dealings with us in the way of making our Lord Jesus Christ to be to us what He is given to be to such as we are our spiritual "life, and breath, and all things;" our righteous1 Cor. i. 30. ness, and sanctification, and redemption"; our joy, our peace, our power, our hope. We have seen the Heavenly Worker ploughing

THE SPIRIT REVEALING CHRIST. ΙΟΙ

the soil, breaking up the fallow, crushing the underlying rock into dust. We see Him now dropping the seed, letting fall the divine "corn of wheat" into the ground. We John xii. 24. see Him applying Christ to the sorely needing soul, now conscious of its need. And we see Him to this end dealing with it as the Spirit of Manifestation, "revealing in it the Son of God."

Gal, i. 16.

Here is indeed the Holy Spirit's congenial, beloved work. For He is the "Spirit of Christ." And in our second chapter we saw how deep the indications of that phrase go; how the Spirit is not only the Emissary of Christ but, in the inner Life of Godhead, the Stream from Him the Fountain. Wonderful is the union of nature and of operation so indicated; wonderful, blissful, divinely deep and tender, the union and communion of that Love of the Spirit and the Son.

Let us dwell a little on this point of truth. It is possible, and it is not uncommon, so to dwell on the convincing work of the Spirit as to associate His action mainly with that side of grace; as if His characteristic were to penetrate, to detect, to expose the soul to itself, to cast it down wounded and broken. But no, it is not so. I have striven to lay all the emphasis I can on the unspeakable importance of the work of conviction. But therefore I am all the more free to remind my reader and brother that this is after all the Spirit's "strange work." The Eternal Neh. ix. 20. Dove, the Spirit of grace, the "Good Spirit," has for His dear and welcome function the uplifting of the sweet glory of Christ to the aching eyes of the contrite; the applying of the soft balm of Christ to the wounds He Himself has mercifully made through "soul Heb. iv, 12. and spirit."

There is a delightful little book by the late venerable Dr Horatius Bonar, The Gospel of the Spirit's Love. It is only a tract, of less than fifty pages;1 but it is full of that Theology of Consolation which has few better modern expositors than the deeply taught saints and