THIS phrase, “baptism with the Holy Ghost” — especially in its less accurate form, “the baptism of the Holy Ghost ”’ — is of very frequent occurrence in the devotional writings and religious meetings of our time. And this is the more noteworthy, considering how few seem to have clear ideas concerning it and, also, how slight is the use made of it in Scripture. It is used only once by Jesus, and only once by any of the apostles, both times in the Acts; and it is not found at all in the epistles. It would seem to have been a favorite expression with John the Baptist, for each of the evangelists records his use of it. And it is not difficult to see why the Baptist, who doubtless originated it, should have been particularly fond of it. Baptism was the great feature of his work. He was constantly baptizing with water upon profession of repentance and faith in the coming Messiah. Hence he naturally expresses the superiority of this Messiah by saying that the prominent feature of his work, the sign which should be connected with the establishment of his kingdom, in other words, his baptism, would be with the Holy Ghost, and that the people should receive from him, not simply water, but the Spirit, the substance of which the water was but the type and shadow.

This figure, then, emphasizes and perpetuates the contrast between the two dispensations; and we accordingly find it especially current just at the transition period, when the new dispensation, that of the Holy Ghost, was being inaugurated and the prophecy of the Baptist was necessarily fresh in all minds. But as time wore on and John’s work somewhat faded the apostles no longer spoke of the giving of the Spirit as a baptism, but came to use other forms of expression which seemed to them preferable. It was called the “anointing,” the “sealing,” the “earnest,” the “indwelling.” All these terms, it is very evident, have reference to substantially the same thing as is denoted by the “ baptism.” And Luke, in the Acts, employs still other equivalent phrases. He speaks of being “filled with the Holy Ghost,” of “receiving the Holy Ghost,” of having “the gift of the Holy Ghost,” of having the Holy Ghost “fall on,” or be ‘‘poured out on,’ or “descend on,” or “come upon” the people. These terms all refer to precisely the same incident, which is also called being “ baptized with the Holy Ghost.” Hence, they must be equivalent expressions, used simply to give variety to the writing. It is manifestly one and the same thing which is meant, whichever of these dozen or more words is uttered.

Precisely what is the thing meant? What is it to be baptized, anointed, sealed, filled, indwelt by or with the Holy Ghost? Is it something possessed by all who truly believe on Jesus Christ and are saved by him under the present dispensation, or is it something possessed solely by those few who have attained to Christian perfection?

That this latter idea is somewhat widely held all who are familiar with the current literature of the theme must be aware. We could give extended quotations showing it from a variety of authors, some of them deservedly in high reputation. But it is hardly necessary, especially as these very same authors in other passages appear to teach that the baptism of the Holy Ghost is a special induement with power subsequent to, and distinct from, entire sanctification. Indeed, the same confusion that rules in regard to nearly all the nomenclature of this general subject finds abundant illustration in the varied treatment of this particular term. We cannot think it necessary in this, any more than in any of the other branches of the theme. Nor can we at all agree with the greatly respected and beloved brethren who maintain, in all honesty and fullness of conviction, that the various expressions, “anointing,” “earnest,” “indwelling,” “sealing,” “baptizing,’ and so on, with the Holy Ghost, as they occur in the Acts and epistles, simply refer to the ‘‘second blessing.” We do not believe that view has any sanction from the Scriptures. It is difficult for us to see how any one who candidly examines this class of terms can resist the conclusion that they are manifestly used to express the state of all true believers, the state of the Church in general or of the great body of the disciples, and, hence, could not be meant simply for that small part of them who had gone on to perfection and had become of full age.

Let us look at the term “anoint.” It occurs just four times: “ Now he that stablisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God”’ (2 Cor. i, 21); “Ye have an anointing from the holy one” (1 John ii, 20); “As for you, the anointing which ye received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach you; but as his anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even — as it taught you, ye abide in him” (1 John ii, 27). When Paul and John declared to their fellow-disciples that God had anointed them, that they had received the anointing, and that it abided in them, it seems sufficiently plain that the statements could not refer simply to a select few. There is nothing whatever in the context to indicate that they regarded it as true of only a part of the Church, instead of the whole. The clear teaching is that all true believers were priests and kings and, as such, were anointed of God. To say that only the perfect are anointed is to say that only such are priests and kings, which is not the doctrine of the Scriptures or of the Church.

Turning to the term “sealed,” we find the same state of things. It occurs, in this connection, just three times: 1. “Who also sealed us” — all of us, Corinthians and apostles (2 Cor. i, 22). 2. “In whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” (Eph. i, 13). This seems very explicit: Ye Ephesians, all of you who believed in Christ, were, as a natural consequence, as a necessary result or accompaniment of that believing, also sealed with the Spirit. Certainly there is no trace of particularism here. 3. ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption’’ (Eph. iv, 30). Here the connection shows conclusively that Paul is writing to the mass of common believers, for it occurs in the midst of exhortations that are applicable only to such. They were not mature or advanced disciples, but had recently been plucked out of heathenism, and had still to struggle hard against very common temptations into which they too often fell; but still they had been all sealed by the Spirit, his mark had been put upon them, they had been stamped as his property that he proposed to claim at the last day. Are none sealed as his except the perfect?

The term “earnest’ also occurs as a noun just three times: “Who also ... gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Cor. i, 22); “The Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance” (Eph. i, 13, 14); “God, who gave unto us the earnest of the Spirit’ (2 Cor. v 5). ‘Unto us.“ in the last passage, must mean “unto all of us believers,” for that is the unmistakable meaning of the pronoun throughout this chapter. And the verse appears clearly to signify that God gave to all of us when we were born again an earnest, that is, a portion, a pledge, an installment of the Spirit, as a taste of what was to come and an assurance that very much more should come. There is not the smallest hint of the earnest being confined to a few; there is everything to indicate that it pertains to all the children of God.

If we examine the other terms referred to we find as little trace of any restriction in their application as in those already mentioned. Paul speaks eight times of the Spirit’s dwelling or abiding in us. Rom. viii, 8, 9 is a good specimen: “They that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.” Here a broad distinction is drawn between the Church and the world, the children of God and the unregenerate, with the clear declaration that in the latter, that is, all the latter, the Spirit of God dwells. So in 1 Cor. iii, 16: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Although he says in the same chapter, that he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ, that is, partly carnal, yet he does not hesitate to call them temples of God, in whom the Spirit of God dwells. Rom. viii, 11; 1 Cor.iii. 16, vi, 19, Eph. ii, 19-22, 2 Tim. i, 14, are the other passages, and they all confirm the thought of the two above quoted. So also do the texts, only a few in number, where Paul speaks of our “receiving the Spirit.” He makes the statement of all Christian disciples, as may be seen by reference to Rom. viii, 15, “For ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father;” and 1 Cor. ii, 12, “We received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.”

Why need further quotations be made? Are not these enough to convince unbiased minds? Is it conceivable that Paul and John could have used these terms as they did if they had considered them as expressing the state of Christian perfection, or entire sanctification? They never speak of the whole Church, or of the believers in general to whom they wrote, as having been entirely sanctified or brought to perfection. They exhort them to go on to perfection and to be perfect in holiness; they pray that they may be sanctified wholly or perfected; but it is always something to be accomplished in the future, never a work accomplished in the past. Paul could not possibly declare to the Corinthian Church or to the Ephesian Church that they had been wholly sanctified or made perfect in love, while on the very same page he was reproving them for their many violations of the spirit of love and exhorting them to put away a variety of most evil things. Yet he does say to them most distinctly, “Ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit;” “Ye received the spirit of adoption.” “The Spirit of God dwelleth in you.’’ It would seem that words could not more clearly indicate that in the opinion of Paul all who had become the children of God, by receiving Jesus Christ and believing on him, were anointed and sealed by the Spirit and made partakers of the Holy Ghost, who, indeed, took up his dwelling in them. In full harmony with this most natural interpretation we find it well remarked in McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia, vol. ix. p. 947, ‘Under the Christian dispensation it appears to be the office of the Holy Ghost to enter into and dwell within every believer.’ All spiritual life is the product of the Holy Spirit. He who has only a little spiritual life has that little as directly from the Holy Spirit as does he who has a great deal; and he has received the Holy Ghost, in receiving Jesus Christ or receiving the pardon of his sins and the witness to his adoption, as really and truly as he ever can receive him, though he has not come as thoroughly under his influence and is not as quickly responsive to his voice as he will be at subsequent periods if he goes forward.

The passages most commonly relied upon by certain authors to prove the positions which we deem erroneous are found in the Acts of the Apostles. Their interpretation is, perhaps, somewhat more open to question than that of those thus far reviewed; but, approaching them from the vantage ground of the clearer light of the epistles, we shall not have much difficulty in seeing what they must mean.

In the nineteenth chapter of the Acts there is an incident related concerning some converts at Ephesus of which the authors above alluded to make very extensive use, referring to it repeatedly as furnishing conclusive proof that after conversion a second work, called “receiving the Holy Ghost,” is essential to the full equipment of the believer. The special verse on which they build this doctrine, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?”’ would seem to give some sanction to it were it not for the fact that it is a very manifest mistranslation. It has been long known as such to scholars, has been corrected by all the commentators for the last thirty years, and has now been rightly rendered in the Revised Version, so that no one, whether scholar or not, has any more the faintest apology for misquoting it in an argument. “Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye believed?” is undoubtedly the proper reading; and this gives an entirely different turn to the thought. So also does the fact, too often ignored, that these twelve, if not simply and solely John the Baptist’s disciples, as Hackett and some others think, were, at least, more that than anything else, very imperfectly instructed as yet in Christian truth, and on that account destitute of the full marks of Christian discipleship. They had probably just come to Ephesus when Paul found them ; and he, noticing doubtless something peculiar in them, and knowing, also, very well what a great number of half-taught, irregularly baptized disciples there were all about, wished to ascertain their spiritual state and, hence, put this question to find out what they really understood by their discipleship. Then it came out that, although in a general, broad sense they might be styled disciples, or learners, they were by no means complete Christians, but were still in the old dispensation of the Son, having been baptized simply with John’s baptism, the baptism of repentance and faith in the Coming One. As soon as they were informed of their deficiency and were properly instructed they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus, as the Messiah who had come, and the Holy Ghost came upon them. The Holy Ghost had not come upon them before, it is evident, simply because they were not Christians in the full sense of the term, were not baptized in the name of the Trinity, and had not even heard of the giving of the Holy Spirit. The implication plainly is that all who were full-fledged Christian believers, properly instructed and baptized, as believers are now, did receive the Holy Ghost when they became believers. The only way in which any capital can be made out of this incident, by those who seek in it proof that receiving the Holy Ghost means experiencing entire sanctification, is by ignoring the great difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism and assuming that, under the former preparatory and rudimentary teaching, Christian disciples, with the full privileges of the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, could be and were made.

A very similar case is that of Cornelius and the other Gentiles who are mentioned in chapters ten, eleven, and fifteen of the Acts. It is claimed that “the conclusion is inevitable,” the demonstration is ‘‘incontrovertible,” from this case that the baptism of the Holy Ghost is “a synonym for entire sanctification.” But to reach this result it has to be assumed, in the face of all the facts, that these men were Christian disciples before Peter came to them, that they had been born again and adopted into the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ, whereas it seems abundantly clear that this was not the case. They were simply devout, God-fearing Gentiles, or heathen, who prayed much and gave much alms and were acceptable to God because they did so well according to the light they had. They were dissatisfied with their old faith, were ready to receive a new one, were, perhaps, almost as much Jews in point of creed as Gentiles, but were not Christian believers, in any sense of the term. It is replied that Peter. declares that God cleansed their hearts ‘“by faith.” But this is simply an essential accompaniment of their conversion, nothing more. God purifies the heart of every man when he receives him into his family; to give a man a new heart is to give him a clean heart. Nowhere is it said that God perfectly purified the heart of Cornelius, or cleansed it from all sin. That is an entirely different thing. If one declares that he will cleanse a certain garment or purify a certain liquid he merely means, as a rule, that he will make it cleaner or purer than it was before; an absolutely perfect purification is not probably in his thought or his power. Every child of God is made pure in the general sense, pure as distinguished from impure, and every forward step, every accession of strength, makes him purer than he was before, though it may leave him considerably short of perfect purity. What possible reason is there for confounding purity and perfect purity and assuming that, because God purifies a heart, he perfectly purifies it; because he makes a person clean as opposed to unclean, a saint as opposed to a sinner, he necessarily cleanses him from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit and perfects his holiness?

We come now to the scene of Pentecost, which has been greatly relied upon by many as proving that baptism with the Holy Ghost is the same as Christian perfection. But what are the facts? Setting aside the extraordinary miraculous gifts — which we do not here enter into, as they have nothing to do with the question before us — and confining our examination to that which is purely spiritual, we find substantially the same state of things here as in the cases already mentioned. The chief point to be noticed is that we have here what is practically a change from one religion to an- other. It was the inauguration of a new dispensation, that is, a new stage in the history of redemption, a new phase in the process of salvation. Before this the disciples had been Jews, rather than Christians; they had been thoroughly Jewish in their views, their practices, their expectations. They were far from being Christians, in the complete sense in which we use the word now of those who are born anew in the full blaze of the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. They had been baptized simply with John’s baptism, and they had been groping and stumbling in the dim twilight of the dispensation of the Son. They had as yet very imperfect apprehensions of the truths of the new religion which they were to preach. The kingdom of heaven had not yet been set up in the earth. Just as he that is least in this kingdom which was inaugurated at Pentecost is greater than John the Baptist, so is such a one greater than the apostles were before Pentecost — greater in his privileges, both intellectual and spiritual.

Hence, it is idle to try to institute a close comparison between the condition of the disciples before Pentecost and the condition of Christian believers now. The circumstances are so different that no exact parallel is possible, and the application of our ordinary terms, in anything except a vague, general way, will be quite sure to lead us astray. It is asked, sometimes with much indignation, ‘What! were the apostles, when with Jesus, not converted?” But the answer would have to depend on the meaning attached to the word “converted.” It is a very ambiguous term, meaning many things. It does not mean precisely the same thing when used of a little child as when used of an adult, or when used of one who turns from another form of faith to be a Christian as when used of one who simply changes his conduct, not his views. In a certain sense the apostles were doubtless converted; but the word, if applied to them, could not signify exactly the same thing as when applied to sinners who give their hearts to God in an ordinary church revival to-day. The case of the disciples before Pentecost, of Cornelius before Peter preached to him, of the twelve at Ephesus before Paul catechized them is paralleled in heathen lands now much more nearly than in Christian countries. Everyone who has been to a foreign mission field has met just such cases — men not fully instructed, not perfectly acquainted with the whole truth, doing well so far as they know, abundant in prayer, giving much alms, honest, upright, God-fearing men according to their light, and ready to go forward when more light shall come. They are not Christians, would not be reckoned so in any careful enumeration, but they are prepared to become such. They have not the Holy Ghost, for they have not heard of him; but as soon as their understandings are opened to perceive their privilege in this respect they receive him, and he, entering, purifies their heart more fully than it was purified before, and just as fully as is compatible with their degree of faith and consecration.

John Wesley himself is a shining example of the great difficulty of strictly classifying by our modern terms one whose views of truth underwent great changes and who really passed out of one dispensation into another, instead of simply passing from carelessness to faithfulness of life. Was Wesley really converted or not previous to the strange warming of his heart in that Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street? He finds it hard to say himself. He wrote on one occasion, “I, who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God.” But he subsequently added, “I am not sure of this.” Again, he says, “This, then, have I learned in the ends of the earth, .. . that, alienated as I am from the life of God, I am a ‘child of wrath,’ an heir of hell.” ‘The greater wisdom of later years caused him to correct this hasty judgment by appending, “I believe not,” and “I had even then the faith of a servant, though not of a son.” In other words, he was really at that time accepted of God in the dispensation of the Father or of the Son, up to which point alone his light had thus far reached. But of the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, so far as it meant the joys of conscious adoption through an assured faith and the clear witness of the Spirit, he as yet knew nothing. So that wonderful night, May 24th, 1738, when he received the assurance that his sins were taken away cannot strictly be termed his conversion in our usual sense, nor can it be said that he then attained entire sanctification. The facts do not sufficiently bear out either statement. All that can be truly said is that he entered upon a decidedly advanced stage of Christian experience, which gave him very different apprehensions of saving truth and a very much greater power to do good.

A strikingly similar case has occurred in more recent days — that of the distinguished author and theological teacher, the Rev. Daniel Steele, D.D. In November, 1870, he being at that time a professor in Genesee College, he tells us that, “after an earnest and persistent struggle,” he “entered into a spiritual enlightenment utterly inconceivable before, a permanent spiritual exaltation and fullness” (Love Enthroned, pp. 272, 273). As to his previous life he says: “My experience was never marked. I never could tell the day of my conversion. .. . Hence, my utterances have been feeble and destitute of power” (p. 274). “I will not dwell upon the unpleasant theme of a ministry of twenty years almost fruitless in conversions, through a lack of the unction from the Holy One. ... The Holy Spirit, though formally acknowledged and invoked, was practically ignored” (p. 278). “I believe myself to have been in the pre-pentecostal state. ... I believe that I dwelt a long time in the dispensation of the Father, a shorter period in that of the Son, and that now at length, by the grace of God, I have entered that of the Holy Ghost. In the first, I enjoyed the first element of the kingdom, righteousness or justification — δικαιοσύνη — an act of the Father; in the second place, the legacy of the risen Jesus; and, in the third, joy, the endowment of the Holy Ghost” (pp. 292, 293).

This is very interesting and very important. We do not at all doubt but that a large part of the controversy as to the necessity and significance of the “second blessing” might be amicably settled by reference to this distinction in the real character of the change wrought at conversion. Why should it be commonly assumed that the change is always one and the same thing, or that all persons enter upon the same state of grace, the same degree of advancement, when they give themselves to God? As Dr. Steele himself says, ‘‘There is a gradation of amicable relations between an enemy and a spouse.” Some are servants, some are friends, some are sons, some are brides. And different persons gain at conversion all these different relations, or pass into one or the other of the above mentioned dispensations, according to their circumstances, their temperament, their training, their knowledge, their consecration, their faith. Very many are so definitely, thoroughly, and signally born of.the Holy Spirit at conversion — born into the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, as it is the privilege of all to be in these days — that they come at that time into an experience not essentially different from that which John Wesley and Daniel Steele waited many years to get. Others at conversion — or what it would seem charitable, if not, indeed, necessary, so to call — appear to get only one foot, as it were, within the threshold of the kingdom; but, steadily, though slowly, going forward, they become established at last, even so as to be “strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man,” “rooted and grounded in love,” and “strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” These latter, of course, will stand in a very different attitude toward further blessings or, baptisms than the former, will stand in much greater need of them, and will theorize very differently concerning them; for every one’s opinions are more or less shaped, frequently with entire unconsciousness, by his experience. A comprehensive and satisfactory statement of doctrine must certainly make room for all grades and forms of experience, since there is no one pattern that can be imposed upon all.

These two modern instances throw light on the transition experienced by the disciples at Pentecost, by Cornelius, and the rest. They took a forward step, they came into a new dispensation, they received a larger measure of grace, proportioned to their new faith; and this faith was necessarily dependent on their instruction, as well as their consecration, on the reception of the new light, as well as the fuller dedication of their powers to God. This is about all that can be said with certainty. When we come to stretch these cases on the unyielding frames of modern theological systems and try to fit them out with exact terms according to our stringent metaphysical. theories, difficulties arise which it is better to face than to ignore. It is the part of wisdom to look at the facts precisely as they are and adjust theories to them, rather than to distort and mangle the facts in order to adjust them to a preconceived theory. It seems to the writer that only by this latter process can baptism with the Holy Ghost, as we find it in Scripture, be made either “a synonym for entire sanctification,” or an “‘induement with power” — whatever that may mean — subsequent to entire sanctification. John Wesley had occasion in his day to rebuke this very error. In a letter given in his Journal (October 29, 1762), he says, “I dislike your directly or indirectly depreciating justification, saying a justified person is not in Christ, is not born of God, is not a new creature, has not a new heart, is not sanctified, not a temple of the Holy Ghost.” And in a letter to Rev. Joseph Benson, in 1770, he says, speaking of being “saved from all sin and perfected in love,’’ “If they like to call this ‘receiving the Holy Ghost’ they may; only the phrase in that sense is not scriptural and not quite proper, for they all ‘received the Holy Ghost’ when they were justified. God then ‘sent forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’”

What then is “receiving the Holy Ghost,” or being “baptized with the Holy Ghost?” We believe, with John Wesley, that it means, primarily, the receiving a clear witness to our acceptance with God and our adoption into his family. This common experience, the witness. of the Spirit, shared by all genuine, fully instructed, thoroughly converted believers, received at the time of their justification if they are taught to look for it, has all the marks of correspondence, more nearly, at least, than anything else, with the baptism of the Holy Ghost which we find described in the New Testament. When Peter said to the crowd of Jews at Jerusalem on that day of Pentecost, ‘Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost,” he apparently meant that, if they would repent of their sins and exercise faith in Jesus for their remission, showing that faith, also, by outward works and open confession in baptism, they should receive the assurance, or witness, that their sins were remitted and their repentance was accepted. So when Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John vii, 38), referring, as John explains, to the coming gift of the Spirit, what more natural, more inevitable, than to understand him as saying that every one who believed on him, every believer, should have the Spirit dwelling in him, and that that indwelling Spirit would infallibly show itself in works of beneficence, even as a river blesses the thirsty lands through which it flows? What can it be called but unnatural forcing of the plain sense of the words to find here any allusion to entire sanctification? What surer way is there of depreciating justification than by robbing Christians in general of their right to this class of texts? It should be unwaveringly maintained that the Spirit of God falls upon or baptizes every properly instructed believer in Jesus Christ when he believes. If he subsequently declines from that state and loses the witness then received he should seek to have it renewed. If as his light goes on he does not correspondingly go on he will inevitably lose ground and come into doubt or darkness. Then must he seek, through repentance and faith, as at the first, a new assurance or acceptance, which may be termed, if one so likes, a new baptism.

In fact, any reviving or quickening of spiritual life, any marked influx of blessedness, any strong impression made by the Spirit of God on the soul may be called, if it is thought best, a baptism of the Holy Ghost. Whenever any of the fruits of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, are, in a special or sudden way, produced or increased in the believer, whenever a manifest effect of the Spirit is felt or seen, there he may find and point out a baptism, or bestowment, or gift, or anointing of the Spirit. But it is a very different matter to talk about the baptism of the Holy Ghost, as if it were a certain, definite thing, experienced by the disciples at Pentecost, and equally obligatory upon, and available for us now if only we wait before God in prayer with sufficient earnestness a sufficient length of time. It ought to be declared with great positiveness that Pentecost cannot be repeated. The Holy Spirit has come once for all to take the place of Jesus; the promised Comforter is here and will not depart. He abides with and in the Church. His dispensation has been set up and is going on. We have not the slightest need to wait ten days or ten hours or ten minutes for this precious gift to be poured out upon us. He is here always, and waits for us to get ready to give him larger room and warmer welcome. Whenever we do so he takes more and more complete possession of our souls, shedding abroad within us the love of God, the peace that passeth all understanding, the joy that is unspeakable. We cannot properly pray for him to come into the world; but we may pray for him to come into our hearts if we are not conscious of having him at all, or to come more fully and possess us more completely if we are conscious of a lack in this direction. But it is well to remember that he always comes when opportunity is afforded him. He does not need to be vehemently urged — the Father is more willing to give the Holy Spirit than we are to give good gifts to our children. And, hence, if we have asked without avail we may certainly know that we have not asked properly, that we have failed to comply with the conditions of receiving.

A baptism with the Holy Ghost, as the words are used now — that is, a quickening, or strengthening, or uplifting of the spiritual life — may be a very great thing or a comparatively small thing, something permanent, or something evanescent, according to circumstances. So, being “filled with the Holy Ghost” may mean much or more or most. For “full’’ is a word having a great diversity of significance and very rarely used in an exact or absolute way. A number of people in the Bible are especially said to have been full of, or filled with, the Holy Ghost — namely, Jesus, John the Baptist, Zacharias, Elizabeth, Peter, Stephen and the others chosen with him, Barnabas, and Paul. But there is no indication that the word was employed with any theological or scientific exactness, or that these different persons are to be regarded as being in precisely the same spiritual condition and having the same degree of spiritual strength. The general idea seems to be that they were especially conscious of the presence of God with them, were thoroughly devoted to his service, and were persons of great zeal and faith and power. To attempt to put upon it a more definite meaning than this is to depart from the spirit of the Scriptures; for the Bible is not a scientific treatise or a work on systematic theology.

Our conclusion is that all true Christians, when they are born of the Spirit, are filled with the Spirit up to their capacity at that time, are baptized with the Spirit, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, even the spirit of adoption, or the spirit of holiness, whereby they cry to God, “Father!” and are made holy. Then, as they go on, having it for their chief business to perfect this holiness which has been planted in them, to grow out of infancy into manhood, to become of full age, mature, perfect, they will have, from time to time, other special quickenings, or baptisms, or blessings, from the Holy Spirit. The most important of these they may, perhaps, call the “second” ‘blessing, counting it, as indeed it is, a very wonderful and precious and stirring epoch in their experience. But they should not fall into the habit of calling it “the’’ baptism of the Holy Ghost, in any such way as to obscure or minimize the importance of that first baptism which they had when the Spirit told them they were born again, or of those other subsequent baptisms which they undoubtedly will have if they press diligently on. A close walk with God, such as all Christians may and should have, implies not only constant communion with the Spirit, but also special bestowments of favor, special upliftings and enlightenings and empowerings from time to time, as occasion may demand. Let them come — the more the better. But let no one be in haste to conclude, with reference to any one of them, that it is the final touch, absolutely eradicating or removing the very last possible remnant of depravity; and let no one call it, ignoring the uniform usage of Scripture, “the” baptism with the Holy Ghost.


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