CHAPTER VIII. THE revelation through St John of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit has now for some time occupied us. 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 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 1 Dr A. Edersheim, The Temple and its Services, p. 244. of the meaning of the glorious imagery :-" This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him should receive." The reference was to the Holy Ghost, in His soon-coming development of presence and operation in the believing Church; "for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given], because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Not, surely, that no rich and redundant blessing would have resulted then and there to each believer who took the Saviour at His word that hour; but that in the great order of God's ways such redundancy was not quite yet to be the rule, the open and manifest usage of grace. For must we not observe that, although the fullest allowance is to be made for large and bright exceptions, there was just this difference of rule between the spiritual conditions of the Old Dispensation and the New-that while the Old was a dispensation of conservation the New is a dispensation also, and in wonderful prominence, of diffusion and impartation through the New Israel and through the New Israelite? To a degree altogether unprecedented this began to be at Pentecost. The Church, and the saint, were then so filled from above that LIVING CHANNELS OF DIFFUSION. 149 it was manifestly the purpose of the Lord that not now and then only, and in exceptional cases only, but all the true people of God always should be open channels of blessing to men around, conduits of life, by becoming living vehicles for a living witness to the glory and all-gracious power of Christ. What Abraham, and David, and Josiah, and Ezra, as regards their personal life and its rule, were not altogether meant to be, the whole company of believers, each and all, were altogether meant to be now; channels of effusion and diffusion for the parched and weary world, in which they were to live as men filled with the Spirit who manifests and imparts the Lord. Much might be said of course on questions in detail which gather around this great truth and principle. We might turn aside to discuss the question of the "miraculous gifts," and whether they are at all in view here. I think they are not, for I think that here, as in the parallel passage of the Well of Sychar, the John iv. 14. very tone and accent, so to speak, of the words of Jesus Christ lead us straight to the needs of the inmost human soul, and to the supply of |