Scripture, with abundant fulness, and in many directions, that the works of the blessed Three Persons in redemption bear always a deep and steadfast reference to their eternal inner relations. Thus the Eternal Father of the Son, and not the Son, is the Father of the believer. The Eternal Son, and not the Father, is the First-born among many brethren. Therefore, by the rule of a deep and holy analogy, we believe that the relation of the Spirit to the Son in respect of saving work rests upon their relation in respect of eternal Being. Him who is "the Spirit of the Son, sent by the Son," for us men and for our salvation, we humbly and adoringly believe to be related to the Son in the inner sanctuary of Godhead after the manner of an unbeginning and unending Procession, Forthcoming, of Divine Life.

If such is indeed the truth, let our insight into it rise higher, infinitely higher, than any mere analysis or record, however careful, of a great Church controversy. It is a thing which can and should lead us up to look upon the very springs of life eternal. It is one of the

THE SPIRIT AND CHRIST'S MANHOOD. 31

mighty truths which converge upon the inexhaustible glory and preciousness of our Lord Jesus Christ; upon His central position for us in the plan of salvation; upon the close connexion with Him, the infinitely close connexion, of all parts of that plan and work; the parts which concern our holiness as truly as these which concern our acceptance.

2. This last thought leads me to a few considerations on our second present topic; the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Human Nature of our Lord Jesus Christ. On this topic I dwell in order above all to emphasize some practical spiritual truths about the Spirit's regenerating and sanctifying work for us who come to Christ and are in Him.

It is but rapidly, and as collecting specimens of illustration, that I need remind my readers of the large and deep connexion revealed in Scripture between the Holy Spirit and the SON OF MAN.

Luke i. 35.

The Holy Spirit was the immediate Agent in the Immaculate Conception of "that holy Thing." Not that He was therefore the

Father of the blessed Son; but He was the vehicle of the Paternity. Not again that He so acted that the Son as God had nothing to do with the act of the Incarnation. The Son, in divine will, willed to assume Our nature, and so assumed it; but again the blessed Spirit wrought the process whereby that will was carried out. And then, thirty years later, the Spirit descended upon the youthful Lord at His baptism, in some inMatt.iii. 16; etc. scrutable speciality of presence and Luke iv. 1-14. power. In this 66 power of the Spirit" He went forth first to temptation and then to ministry. It was in the Spirit, "given without measure," that He "spoke the words of God." It was "by means of the Eternal Spirit," wonderful phrase, that He Heb. ix. 14. 'offered Himself without spot to God." We find indications that the Spirit had great things to do with the bodily resurrecRom. viii. 11. tion of the buried Lord. After resurrection it was "by the Holy Spirit" that Acts i. 2. He gave commandment to the Apostles." And when in the Revelation the glorified Jesus, as the slain One risen again.

John iii. 34.

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and ascended, speaks to the seven Churches, the voices of the Saviour and of the Spirit

are as one.

Rev. ii. 1-7, etc.

With the reserve of humblest reverence, may we not say that the Manhood of our dear Redeemer was produced, and maintained all along in its absolute and unalterable perfection, not by His own action as God the Son but by that of God the Holy Spirit? His own divine act in the matter was, as we have said, and as Owen said long ago,1 to assume the Manhood, but no more. Never indeed, not for one moment from the first, was that Manhood dissociated from the Godhead of the Son. Never for a moment had it a personality independent of that of God the Son. The very Person who said, in the days of His flesh, "Before Abraham was, I am," the Person John viii. 58. who under His great humiliation said to a whole world of sin and sorrow, "Come unto Me," was then and there as truly GOD 2 as He was before the world was.

1 See Pneumatologia, bk. ii., ch. iii.

att. x. 28.

But

2 And not God in abeyance, as some have seemed to say, giving to His Kenôsis (Phil. ii. 7) a meaning not borne out by Scripture. On the theory that He so "made Himself void" as

all this leaves untouched the sacred truth that the Manhood He took was, in the divine order and law, manhood begun and maintained in its perfect holiness and power by the Holy Spirit as the immediate personal divine Worker. It is accordingly by the Holy Spirit that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Second Man. It is by the Holy Spirit that He, as the Second Man now glorified, is the Receptacle, the Reservoir, the Fountain-head, of that "all fulness" ii. 9, 18. which dwells in Him for us.

Col. i. 19;

We pass almost instantly in the treatment of such a subject into regions beyond our analysis. But we see enough to deepen and

to become liable to mental error, mistakes of fact and reasoning, for example about the age and nature of the Old Testament Scriptures, see by all means Liddon, Bampton Lectures, Lecture viii. It may be enough here to point out that to view such a voluntary fallibility on our Lord's part as an instance of His blessed self-humiliation involves a certain confusion of conceptions. It would stand, supposing it to be true, under a very different description from, for instance, His voluntary liability to fatigue, sorrow, and death. A rich and refined philanthropist, bent on elevating a degraded tribe, would give a beautiful instance of self-humiliation in consenting, if it were expedient, to be as poor, and as badly lodged, as they. But if, while coming as their teacher, he consented to share their ignorance (were it possible) on matters on which he undertook to teach them, he would deprive himself to their loss and disadvantage.