question the reverent Bible student will see Him, One but Sevenfold, in those Seven Spirits before the throne who are named with and between the Father and the Son as the Source of grace and peace-to xxii. 17, where the Spirit with the Bride, the blessed LifeGiver with and through the Body which He fills with the true Life, says Come," to the thirsty soul of man asking for the living water which is given in the gift of Himself. I have touched already,' and perhaps sufficiently, on the beautiful phenomenon of Rev. ii., iii., the identification, or rather union, of the voice of Christ with the voice of the Spirit. It may be enough further to call attention to that one glorious passage where the exalted Redeemer, recent from the wounds. of the Cross, is seen "having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth." The imagery, sublime in its boldness, carries manifestly with it some great truths concerning the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Lord

Rev. v. 6; see iii. 1.

1 Above, p. 10.

THE SPIRIT IN REVELATION V.

161

Jesus and to His presence with His Church below. It reminds us with peculiar and vivid force of the depth and closeness of the connexion of life and work between the Spirit and the Son. It shows us, "in the visions of God," how the Spirit is inherent in the Son, if I may dare to say so, inherent with an unspeakable union of being, and harmony of will, and order of working; and how He is sent forth by Him, radiates forth from Him. In particular it indicates that the glorified Christ, in all the exercises of His perfect Power (the seven horns") and most real Presence (the "seven eyes") "in all the earth," in all His dealings with and for His people here below, has, for the divine Vehicle of that power and presence, the Holy Ghost in His sevenfold perfectness of gift and working. The effluent presence of the Lamb, if I may use the phrase, is made, is conveyed, for us on earth, for all the members "in all the earth," by the Holy Ghost. It is He who in perfectness of power "strengthens us in the inner man" Eph. iii. 16, 17. that Christ in perfectness of presence may "dwell in our hearts by faith." It is by

Him that we are "joined unto the Lord."

Eph. iv. 4.

It

1 Cor. vi. 17. is He who makes the "one body," by the union of each believer with the Head, and so with all the members. The force, the presence, the voice, of the Lord Christ Jesus-all is by the Spirit; not by physical, or quasi-physical, contact with the glorified Body of the Redeemer, but by part and lot in His Spirit.1

"Where that Spirit is," said the Dean of Llandaff a few years ago in the Cambridge University pulpit, "there is the Body of Christ; and only there."

Come, then, blessed Spirit, evermore come, and in all the sevenfold fulness of Thy infinitely gracious operation bring us the members into an ever deeper union, spiritual, heavenly, holy, with Him who is our Head.

1 I may refer in passing to a passage in Bp Jeremy Taylor's treatise of the Real Presence (Sect. vii., 8), where he examines the process of divine benefit in the faithful recipient at the Eucharist: "The benefit reaching to the body by the holy Eucharist comes to it by the soul; . . . therefore by faith, not by the mouth." The words have a special argumentative reference, but also touch the general subject of the mode of the mystical Union.

CHAPTER IX.

WE approach the revelation of the blessed

Comforter and His work given to us through St Paul. In the present chapter we shall attempt a sort of conspectus of the subject, and in the remaining chapters seek to take up in more detail some of the greater and more commanding truths thus given.

It is a large and wonderful field. The writings of St John, as we have seen, present us with a mass of treasure for our doctrine of the Spirit. On the great subject of His Personality in particular their witness is supreme in importance. But the Epistles of St Paul fairly overflow with the glorious theme of the Spirit and His work, and in respect of some of His great redeeming and sanctifying operations their witness is practically unique. Is not this remarkable, let me ask by the way, this fulness

of the doctrine of the Spirit in St Paul? We are accustomed, and rightly, to regard St Paul as the great commissioned teacher and vindicator of that other region of vital truth-our Acceptance, our Justification, for the Redeemer's merits, by faith in His blood, by simplest acceptance of the divine imputed Righteousness.1 It is then all the more impressive to find that to this same St Paul we must go for the fullest scriptural account of "Christ in us by the Spirit as well as of "Christ for us" in His merits. If the precious sentences, "Justified Rom. iii. 24, 26. freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus"; "That He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus," are deeply and distinctively Pauline, so too are those others, "Your body I Cor. vi. 19. is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you"; "The love of

Rom. v. 5.

God is shed abroad in our

hearts by the

1 On that side of doctrine I may refer to Hooker's great Discourse of Justification, and to G. S. Faber's Primitive Doctrine of Justification. I venture to add, as giving briefer or more popular statements, my own Outlines of Christian Doctrine, pp. 183, etc.; Union with Christ, pp. 65, etc.; and The Lord our Righteousness, a tract.