11 Of judgment, beoause the prince of this world is judged.
12 1 have yet many things to say ■unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall
hear, that shall he speak ; and he will shew you things to come.
14 He shall glorify me : for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
15 All things that the Father hath are mine : therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
When our Lord in this passage speaks of the Holy- Spirit " coming," we must take care that we do not misunderstand His meaning. On the one hand, we must remember that the Holy Ghost was in all believers in the Old Testament days, from the very beginning. No man was ever saved from the power of sin, and made a saint, except by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Abraham, and Isaac, and Samuel, and David, and the Prophets, were made what they were by the operation of the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, we must never forget that after Christ's ascension the Holy Ghost was poured down on men with far greater energy as individuals, and with far wider influence on the na- tions of the world at large, than He has ever poured out before. It is this increased energy and influence that our Lord has in view in the verses before us. He meant that after His own ascension the Holy Ghost would "come " down into the world with such a vastly increased power, that it would seem as if He had " come " for the first time, and had never been in the world before.
The difficulty of rightly explaining the wondrous say- ings of our Lord in this place is undeniably very great. It may well be doubted whether the full meaning of His words has ever been entirely grasped by man, and whether there is not something at the bottom which has not been completely unfolded. The common, superficial explanation, that our Lord only meant that the work of the Spirit in saving individual believers is to convince