It cannot excite astonishment that prayers for such a presence are not answered, and that expectations of such an agency are disappointed. In these we certainly err, "not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God," nor the character of his influence and agency. The personal presence of the Holy Spirit is the same as the presence of the Holy Spirit, as He is a person and a distinct subsistence. The PERSON of the Holy Spirit is, like the person of the Father, omnipresent: it is therefore by essential necessity everywhere. A presence that is necessarily everywhere cannot be made the subject of a promise, nor can it be granted as the distinguishing honor of a believer, and of the Christian church.

It is indeed within the range of POSSIBILITY that the Third Person may assume a body, and come into union with the person of a Christian, as the Second Person was in union with the humanity of Jesus Christ; but there is not in the Sacred Scriptures any intimation of the probability of such a union. Such a fact would be an incarnation of the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to explain, because it is impossible to conceive, how the person of the Holy Spirit can be and dwell in the persons of Christians. We have but very indistinct perceptions of the Second Person's "tabernacling" and residence in the human nature of Christ; but this presence of the Holy Spirit in the numerous and countless persons of believers, is still more unapproachable, as being an endless complication of absurdity. This language would be unjustifiable if the personal residence of the Holy Spirit were a revealed fact beyond the sphere of reason: it is as a gratuitous assumption, equally without scripture and against reason, that its hollow pretensions deserve our reprobation.

When we speak of Christ's being and dwelling in a believer, it is far from our thoughts that the person of the Son of God is really in the persons of Christians. Just think what a vortex of absurdities such a doctrine would be. Keep your eye for a moment on some of the whirling eddies on the surface of such a proposition, and view the person of the Son of God resident in Jesus Christ,-in John the Baptist,-in Paul,-in Peter, James, and John, so that all these, and many more, were severally incarnations, or at least bodily shrines, of the Second Person. Upon the concession of such a personal union of Christ with believers, our difficulties multiply; for the scriptures ascribe the same kind of presence and residence in Christians to the Father as to the Son. It were delirious

divinity to assert that the Omnipresent person of the Father dwells and resides in a good man; and the theology which supposes in the believer a residence of the person of the Holy Spirit is not less incoherent and impertinent.

In our theological disquisitions and religious sentiments, undue importance has been attached to what has been interpreted a personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us. It is to this exposition that we are to trace two deadly errors, which have withered the loveliest bloom of Christian piety, and blighted the health of the most powerful ministry. It is this that sends the experimental Christian to "brighten his evidences" of real religion, by poring on the undetectable processes of his mental operations, and lulls the "hearer only" into idle waiting for some supernatural afflatus to descend on him, which shall raise a tumult of strange emotions in his mind, in order to convince him that he ought to love God, repent of sin, and believe Jesus Christ. It is indisputable that the scriptures, with equal frequency and distinctness, assert that Christians are in the Holy Spirit as that the Holy Spirit is in them. The same importance is attached to one representation as to the other; and the importance of each and of both is unspeakably momentous. When the scriptures speak of Christians being in the Spirit, it is not meant that the persons of Christians are in the person of the Holy Spirit. There does not seem to be in our minds any element, on which could be delineated any trace of a conception, that our persons could maintain and hold a personal indwelling in the Inaccessible person of the Holy Spirit. The absurdity is oppressive and distressing to the mind.

In the sense intended by Jesus Christ, the promised presence and dwelling of the Holy Spirit were realized, and confessed, by the disciples after the day of Pentecost. It is clear, from the Acts of the Apostles, that the Holy Spirit, on and after the day of Pentecost, never made any personal manifestation of himself. His person was not in the sound of a rushing wind that filled the room, nor was it in the cloven tongues of fire. We cannot conceive of an angel retaining his personal unity in various äerial bodies, and we find it equally impossible to imagine a personal individuality of the Holy Spirit dwelling in each and all of the "cloven tongues like as of fire." Had our Savior meant, in the promise which he gave, that the Holy Spirit should make a personal indwelling and lodgment in any case, we should expect it to

have been in the supernatural, wonderful, and sensible, instances in the case of his own apostles. As this kind of presence is not found in them, the church should not expect it in the present day.

The Holy Spirit, as he was given to the apostolic church, was susceptible of distribution, of diversified impartations and allotment, which cannot be predicated of a personal inhabitation. "God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his will." (Heb. ii. 4.) Here "gifts" mean distributions, parts, shares, imparted in several portions. Of these the Holy Spirit, as a person, cannot be susceptible; but in the sense that he is present in the church, he evidently is. The force of this conclusion is not weakened by supposing that the reference of the text is to the miraculous endowments communicated by the Holy Spirit; for if His person can be imagined to be anywhere physically present, it would be where he is miraculously interposing by an immediate agency. What was present and indwelling in the apostles was capable of impartation and dispersed variety, and, consequently, was not personal. As the exercise of a miraculous and supernatural energy did not imply a personal residence, so the operations of gracious influences do not necessarily involve it.

An evasion of this direct inference has been attempted, by supposing that the "gifts," or portions alluded to, refer to the distributions of which the Holy Spirit is the author, and not to impartations of which he is the subject, as implied in the construction of a genitivus materiæ. This is obviated by the fact, that Paul, in the same epistle, applies the same term to the human soul. "The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing and pentrating into the parts and portions of the life and soul." (Heb. iv. 12. Parts or portions here do not mean communications of which the soul is the author, but distributions of which it is a capable subject. SCHLEUSNER and others translate the word "intimi recessus," inmost recesses; which must imply parts and allotments. This passage does not mean that the energy of the Gospel divides the life and soul, the psychological life and the intellectual soul, into two "sundered" personalities; or in such a way as that the person of the soul should be distributed into various portions. The word does not

* Πνεύματος ἁγίου μερισμοῖς.

† Αχρι μερισμοῦ ψυχῆς.

pierce to divide the personal unity of the soul; but it does penetrate so as to affect the energies, capacities, agencies, and influences of the soul. It was in this sense that Paul wished to impart and to convey to all the Thessalonians not the Gospel only, but "his own soul." He did not intend to transfer his personal spirit into theirs, but to communicate to them, all the energies, virtues, influences, and graces of which his own soul was the subject. It is, I hope, borne in mind that in this discussion we are contemplating the Holy Spirit, not as he is in the Deity, but as he is declared to be in the church.

This interpretation of the distribution and impartation of the Holy Spirit in the church is sanctioned, by what might be called undesigned allusions in the Scriptures. Such a subjective distribution is obviously employed in the promise of God to Moses. "I will take of the Spirit that is on thee, and put it on the elders." (Num. xi. 7.) This promise is absurd on the presumption of a personal habitation; but is intelligible and clear on the supposition of influences and virtues. Sometimes, again, the Holy Spirit, as he is present in the church, is supposed to be susceptible of measure and degrees, which would be offensive as ascribed to a personal presence. Elisha acted on this religious doctrine, when he prayed that the Holy Spirit, as in Elisha, might be doubled in himself. He supposed a portion to rest on Elijah his master, and that this was capable of being doubled in impartations and distributions to himself. The New Testament speaks also of the Blessed Spirit as communicated in measure and portion. Our Lord Jesus Christ had the Spirit without measure, but in the church it is "according to measure of the gift or donation of Christ. Hence the diversified manifestations of miraculous powers were called "vεvμαTα," spirits; and the church was encouraged to be zealous of "spirits," and to acquire aptness in the discerning of " "spirits.". Since our blessed Lord had the Holy Spirit without measure, as an honorable distinction, it is implied that others have this Spirit in measure, and according to the degree and diversity of his influences. Except in degree, the Holy Spirit is in the Church precisely in the same manner as he was in Christ himself. We never conceive of the person of the Holy Spirit as indwelling in the person of the Mediator. If we might expect to discover such a personal indwelling in any person, it would certainly be here; and as we fail to find it in his

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person, we search in vain for it in any other individual, or in any community of persons.

Enough I hope has been said to dissuade Christians from expecting or supplicating such a personal presence; I crave indulgence, however, to one remark which will be corroborative of the position I have taken.

The scriptures often speak of other spiritual agents beside the Holy Spirit, as influencing, or being in, the spirits of men ; even in instances of invisible agency. When Satan entered the breast of Judas to betray Christ, and filled the hearts of Ananias and Sapphira to lie unto the Holy Ghost, it is not supposed that the person of a fallen angel was occcupying and inhabiting their spirits; or that an individual demon was exercising a direct and immediate influence on their minds. Satan secured his triumph without such an indwelling, in the case of our first parents; and, in the above instances, he employed his agency and influence by the use of means. In Judas and Ananias there was no possession, for we never suppose that they were demoniacs. In demoniacal cases, where an evil spirit exercised a direct and immediate agency, we never think the possessed to be accountable beings, and subjects of praise and blame, because they act only by the coercive energy of another agent. The phrases sometimes employed by incautious Christians concerning the presence of the Holy Spirit, would almost lead to the belief that "to have the Spirit of Christ," is something analogous to being POSSESSED; with the exception only that the believer is possessed of the Holy Spirit, and the others of a demon. When, therefore, the Holy Spirit is sometimes prayed for, something is expected to take place like the movements, and impulses, and mastering powers, put forth by a possessing spirit; a spirit not to work with us and by us, but personally to work ourselves. In this case the possessed has no agency of his own, for the actuating spirit works his faculties and members, as truly and as physically, as steam works the valves, and cranks, and wheels, of an engine.

Blessed Spirit! is this what thy church expects and prays for? It was not thus thou didst influence the three thousand converts on the day of Pentecost! It was not thus that thou didst move the pure energies of the soul of the Redeemer! It is not thus that thou influencest even the spirits of just men made perfect!