Now the Scriptures seem to teach that there is a second stage in spiritual development, distinct and separate from conversion; sometimes widely separated in time from it, and sometimes almost contemporaneous with it-a stage to which we rise by a special renewal of the Holy Ghost, and not merely by the process of gradual growth. We shall be especially careful not to dogmatize here. But there is a transaction described in the New Testament by the terms the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sealing of the Spirit, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and the like. The allusions to it in the Acts and in the Epistles mark it unmistakably as something different from conversion. What is this experience? We take our place as learners, before the Scriptures and before the biographies of holy men, and seek an answer to this inquiry. We come to this study under two impulses. The one has been derived from a fresh study of the Acts of the Apostles, and from the conviction begotten by such study that there is more light to break out of that book than we have yet imprisoned in our creeds; the other has been derived from new experience in revival work, and from the observation of what great things the Spirit of God can still accomplish when he falls upon believers and fills them with his power. Here is the lesson, above all others, which this generation needs to learn. Do we mourn that ours is a materialistic age? Would that it were only so on the scientific and rationalistic side. But what we have most reason to fear is that subtle materialism which is creeping into our church life and methods. How little dependence is there on supernatural power as all sufficient for our work! How much we are coming to lean on mere human agencies!-upon art and architecture, upon music and rhetoric and social attraction! If we would draw the people to church that we may win them to Christ, the first question with scores of Christians nowadays is, what new turn can be given to the kaleidoscope of entertainment ? What new stop can we insert in our organ, and what richer and more exquisite strain can we reach by our quartette? What fresh novelty in the way of social attraction can we introduce; or what new corruscation can be let off from the pulpit to dazzle and captivate the people? Oh for a faith to abandon utterly these devices of natural ism, and to throw the church without reserve upon the power of the supernatural! Is there not some higher degree in the Holy Spirit's tuition into which we can graduate our young ministers, instead of sending them to a German university for their last touches of theological culture? Is there not some reserved power yet treasured up in the church which is the Body of Christ, some unknown or neglected spiritual force which we can lay hold of, and so get courage to fling away forever these frivolous expedients on which we have so much relied for carrying on the Lord's work? The enduement of the Spirit for power, for service, for testimony, for success- this in brief is the subject of this book. That we might set the matter most effectively before our readers, we have adopted the following method : I. First, we have considered the subject under the head of "the two-fold life," in order to mark clearly the distinctions between the first and the second stages of spiritual experience. For one of the most serious mistakes touching the whole matter, has been the habit of confounding what belongs to sanctification with what really belongs to justification, and vice versa. It is very common, for example, to find writers on the Higher Christian life urging us to become "completely crucified with Christ," and "utterly dead to sin.” But these are not experiences or attainments; they are fundamental facts. The Revised New Testament throws a flood of light on this point, by putting all allusions to the believer's death with Christ, in the past definite tense where they belong. It is simply a fact that when Christ our substitute died on the cross for us, we died virtually or judicially through him, to the law and to sin. As saith the Scripture, "If One died for all, then all died."* It is this past definite transaction which forms the basis of our acceptance with God. "He that hath died is justified from sin." † Here is something that has to do directly with our justification by faith, and not with our sanctification by the Spirit. On the other hand, the error has sometimes been committed of insisting on the higher spiritual experiences as an evidence of conversion; the witness of the Spirit and the sealing of the Spirit being demanded as prerequisite to baptism and 2 Cor. 5: 14. admission to the church. A glance at the Acts of the Apostles shows us that it was not so in the beginning. The record of the first admissions to the church is very simple. "Then they that gladly received the word were baptized." A consent of the heart to Christ and to his gospel was the solitary condition of initiation into the church, and the deeper operations of the Holy Ghost followed in their order. In what we have written we have given far larger space to the second stage of the two-fold life, but we have brought it into constant contrast with the first, in order to emphasize these distinctions and set them clearly before the mind. 2. We have endeavored to throw all possible light on this subject from the records of Christian experience. It is evident, if we stop to think of the matter, that the Spirit must be studied in his operations. The fault of most treatises on the third Person of the Trinity is that they are too abstract. A Spirit can only be made known to us by his outward acts and manifestations. Our Lord hints this in his simile of the wind blowing where it listeth. We can see the swaying of the trees and the heaving of the waters, but we can |