THE SPIRIT'S KEEPING POWER.

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By

and possess, the Father and the Son. Him, the Spirit of faith, they were, and are, "kept through faith unto salvation."

I Pet. i. 5.

"Praying in Him," they "keep themselves. in the love of God." Of the Jude 20, 21. Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, comes all keeping power, all sanctifying, separating, consecrating grace. Let us adore the threefold Work; and now specially let us not forget, in our love and praise, the Third and immediate blessed Worker.

So we leave the Upper Chamber. Or rather so we close our enquiry into what was said there by the Lord Jesus about the life which is to be lived by us in the Spirit, only that we may now and always "there continually dwell." Amidst the stress and fulness of life and duty, amidst the realities of trial and temptation, there may we dwell indeed, in internal recollection and experience, "sitting at the table1 with" our beloved Lord, John xii. 2.

1 I need not point out in detail how large and rich, in the light of the truths we have here considered, should be our fruition of our life in Christ by the Spirit when we assemble at the Lord's Table, the Table of the Paschal Chamber, at the Lord's most

leaning upon His sacred breast, and listening to His voice as He teaches us how to live that life of union, abiding, prayer, fruitfulness, spiritual insight, all under divine safe-keeping, which is laid up for those who by the 2 Cor. v. 17. Spirit are indeed "in Christ, a new creation."

loving command. Not that I limit for a moment the phrase in the text to Eucharistic occasions. Faith and love can turn our social table into "God's board" in a true sense; for certainly they can create a sanctuary in all the places and events of life.

THE

CHAPTER VIII.

'HE revelation through St John of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit has now for some time occupied us.

We go

once more to the same great Apostle, before turning, as we shall then do, to the "beloved brother Paul."

In St John's Gospel there remain two passages in which the Holy Ghost is explicitly mentioned by the Lord Jesus, and whose messages to the believer, and to the believing Church, are of the weightiest import. In the First Epistle we have some few further precious contributions of truth on the Spirit's work. In the Revelation finally we have Him repeatedly presented, in His heavenly glory and in His work for men. Let us make this a chapter of fragments, taking up these successive passages each for brief remark and meditation.

(i.) John vii. 37-39.-Here stands the Saviour before us" in the last day, that great day of the feast," the joyous Tabernacle Feast of Autumn, following with significant closeness on the Day of Atonement. The occasion must have been a scene impressive indeed in its externals. "After the priest had returned from Siloam with his golden pitcher, and for the last time poured its contents to the base of the altar; after the Hallel' had been sung to the sound of the flute, the people responding and worshipping as the priests three times drew the threefold blasts from their silver trumpets-just when the interest of the people had been raised to its highest pitch, [it was then] that from amidst the mass of worshippers, who were waving towards the altar quite a forest of leafy branches as the last words of Psalm cxviii. were chanted a voice was raised, which resounded through the Temple. It was Jesus, who 'stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.' Then by faith in Him should each one truly become like the Pool of Siloam, and from his inmost being 'rivers of living water flow.' . . . The effect

"THIS SPAKE HE OF THE SPIRIT." 147 Even the Temple

was instantaneous.

guard . . . owned the spell of His words, and dared not to lay hands an Him. 'Never man spake like this man,' was the only account they could give of their unusual weakness." 1

It was a voice mighty with the power at once of authority and promise. Above and through the mighty maze of symbolism it called the soul of man directly, without one intermediary film or interval, to "come to" HIM who spoke, to come with an absolute and therefore perfectly simple faith to HIM. And it promised, it guaranteed, with a self-evidencing majesty, that to all and several who should so come the very amplest blessing should result. The river of life eternal should so flow into them from Jesus Christ as to flow out through them to others. "As the Scripture had said,"—such Scriptures as Isai. xii. 2, 3 (observe the connexion of those verses) and lviii. 11,—“out of the belly" of each such believing man "should flow rivers of living water."

We are at once informed by the Evangelist

' Dr A. Edersheim, The Temple and its Services, p. 244.