THE SPIRIT AND THE NEW LIFE. 123

and faith, under which the man lays hold of and receives Him who is our Life, and receives in Him all His blessed fulness, the "grace for grace" of a perpetual John i. 16. and ever-new supply of the peace and power which is in Christ.

We have thus as it were seen the soul safe arrived at its Union with the Lord; and now henceforth its life, the whole life of the man thus united, is to be a new life, a spiritual life, a perpetual reception out of Christ following upon that initial entrance into Him. How then is this life to be led? Is the man now to take his spiritual affairs into his own hands ? Has the Spirit led him up to his Redeemer, and there left him? No, most certainly. True it is that the experiences of this new life are to be as personal, as conscious, as truly voluntary (let us not forget this), as those of the old. "No will is so fully equipped for work as the regenerate will." The whole Scripture overflows with illustrations and reminders of that fact. Nevertheless the new life, if the man is living it indeed, is to have in it from first to last this divine and glorious new factor,

:

the inworking presence of the blessed personal Paraclete, who in a sense now new and special is both to guard and animate the "first springs of thought and will," and above all to keep alive, by continuous application of Christ, the life He gave by first application of Christ. Thus, in the words of a hymn dear to many a believing heart,

"Every virtue we possess,

And every victory won,
And every thought of holiness,
Are His alone."

Following now our proposed method of Scripture study, I keep still to the Gospel according to St John, reserving for after study the forms of truth given through St Paul. And to illustrate from St John the work of the Spirit in the developing experience of the regenerate believer, I go again to the same Paschal Discourse of our beloved Lord which we have approached in the two previous chapters. We have found there His own account of some initial steps in the Spirit's saving work. We shall now find there, in the

THE SPIRIT IN JOHN XIV-XVI.

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words of the same Teacher, a delineation of some of the inmost characteristics of the true life of His true followers, such as it was already in a measure then, and such as it soon was to become in rich development under the developed in-working of the Spirit.

In this whole delineation we have to remember that although the Holy Spirit is only occasionally mentioned He is everywhere implied. For the discourse on the whole manifestly deals with the disciples' experience in view of the withdrawal of the bodily presence of Jesus Christ. And the promised equivalent, and more than equivalent, for that presence, was to be the developed presence of the Comforter. As therefore the whole previous walk and life of the disciples had been bound up with the presence and power of their dear visible Master, so now their whole walk and life was to be bound up, in a connexion as necessary, tender, and powerful as possible, with the presence in them of this His holy Representative; by whom already they had come to believe on the Name of the Son of God and to be, however little they understood it as yet, united to Him in the eternal life. We read then rightly all through the Discourse, and all through the High Priestly Prayer at its close, the underlying truth of the work of the Spirit, effecting every blessed experience in the whole new life of the disciple.

And here let me point out the rightness of referring these promises of the Paschal Chamber not to the Apostles only but to us, to every member of the believing Church. There are, I doubt not, words in the Discourse and the Prayer which have a primary reference to the Apostles, and to their past and present experience, and to their coming work as the Spirit-taught, infallible, teachers of the Church. But there are indications everywhere that the Apostles then, as on many another occasion, were viewed by the Lord Jesus not only as guides and teachers of the Church, but as "the Church by representation," if I may use the phrase. In the fourteenth chapter, for example, we find our Lord continually passing from words bearing a primary special reference

1

THE PASSAGE IS FOR ALL BELIEVERS. 127

to the Apostles to words completely inclusive

in their terms. "He that believeth

ver. 12.

on Me, the works that I do shall he do

also;" "He that hath My com

ver, 21.

mandments and keepeth them

I will

...

manifest Myself to him;" " If a man love

Me

...

We will make Our abode ver. 23. with him." And indeed all through the great passage, with hardly an exception, we feel that it is rather the Christian life and character than specially the apostolic that is in view; the same life and character which the First Epistle of St John depicts and explains without any reference at all to special ministerial functions assigned to any sharers in it. So without hesitation or reserve I read these precious words of the Lord Jesus, spoken on the eve of His death and glory, as on the one hand bearing throughout on the work of the Spirit, and on the other hand applicable throughout to the life, needs, privileges, and possibilities, of every true believer. With these principles in mind let us come to the study.

I read then first in this Discourse some divine revelations about the Oneness of the saints with