against the Spirit is seen as a sin comparable in kind with railing against the holy personal Saviour.

For myself I feel, as surely many a Christian does, how very much easier it is to say what this great acme and last development1 of sin is not than what it is. Whatever it is, it is always and for ever true that the man who as a fact comes penitent to the feet of Christ for pardon finds it. And whatever it is, the Saviour's own words of warning surely imply that it is not, so to speak, a terrible accident of the sinful soul's action but (see Müller cited in the note) a development, the result of a process, the outcome of a deliberately formed condition. In order to it there needs, assuredly, the concurrence of great and God-given light upon good and evil, sin and salvation (see Heb. vi.), with a resolved, deliberate, and matured hostility and repulsion on the part of the will; a personal hatred of recognized eternal holiness.

1 See some excellent remarks on the Unpardonable Sin as being not an isolated sin but sin in its full development, in Julius Müller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, T. & T. Clark's Eng. Trans., i., p. 418, etc.

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Because,

Why is this sin unpardonable? surely, it is such a closing of the door of repentance by the created personality against itself as, by laws of spiritual nature which we cannot analyse but may in part divine, shuts up the personality finally against grace; denies all possible ground, all nidus, to the action of Him whom it has in some sense seen and yet deliberately hated. And some further light, if I mistake not, is thrown on this irremissibility by the fact that the Gospel, the Dispensation of the Spirit (see e.g. 2 Cor. iii. 6-8), is seen in Scripture as the final message of divine mercy. He who in the full light of this final Gospel deliberately rejects its message and its Messenger, casts off the last offers, the justly and necessarily last, of salvation. No more powerful, tender, prevailing secrets of conquest and persuasion lie beyond. This comes out in Heb. x., where the possible apostate back from Christ to antichristian Judaism is warned that no new sacrifice for sin will meet his awful. need. The old offerings have done their work for ever; and Calvary will not be repeated. From one point of view we may thus say that

the warnings of the Saviour in the Gospels mean, in effect, that while a merciful forbearance could, in the nature of things, be extended for His sake to that rejection of Him which was committed "in the days of His flesh," while He stood before His enemies as preeminently "The Son of MAN," it would be otherwise when He was deliberately and finally refused under the dispensation of that Holy Spirit who should bear witness to Him in His accomplished work and glory as "the Captain of salvation made perfect."1

Can the truly regenerate commit this sin? I venture to say yes, and no. In themselves, and as relying more on their regeneration than their Regenerator, yes. In Him, and under His covenant of grace, I humbly believe, no and never. Heb. vi. 4-8, as it appears to me (the weighty remarks of J. Müller notwithstanding), deals with the case not of the soul vivified with the divine life of holiness and love by the Spirit of Christ, but of the soul gifted by that Spirit with the fullest light separable from

1 See Whitby, On the New Testament, Appendix to St Matthew xii.

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love. Balaam's recorded condition remarkably illustrates every detail of Heb. vi. 4-8.

Meanwhile let us take heed, watching and praying, not to grieve the Spirit of love and holiness. It is better to be dismayed than to presume. But it is best of all most reverently

to trust.

CHAPTER. II

ENI CREATOR SPIRITUS, was the thought

VENI

with which our previous chapter closed. Let us begin again with the same. In following the scriptural traces of the doctrine of the blessed Spirit we will remember that He is the promised "Guide into all the truth." By Him we will seek “a right judgment in all things" concerning His revealed glory, such a judgment that we may evermore rejoice in His holy comfort," the comfort of a happy insight into what He is as Comforter.

John xvi. 13.

I propose to treat in this chapter of two important sides of the doctrine of the Spirit: the Forthcoming of the Spirit in the Holy Trinity from the Father and the Son ("the Dual Procession "), and the work of the Spirit in relation to the Human Nature of our Lord Jesus Christ.