the necessity of His death and resurrection. — " Now," says our Lord, " I bestow on you the Spirit of knowledge. Let the time past suffice to have seen through a glass darkly. Receive the Holy Ghost, open your eyes and see all things clearly." — In fact I believe the words point to the very thing which, St. Luke says, our Lord did on this occasion : " then opened He their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures." (Luke xxiv. 45.) Light was the first thing made in the day of creation. Light in the heart is the first beginning of true con- version. And light in the understanding is the first thing re- quired in order to make a man an able minister of the New Testament. Our Lord was commissioning His first ministers, and sending them out to carry on His work. He begins by giving them light and knowledge : — " Receive ye the Holy Ghost. I commission you this day, and confer on you the office of ministers. And the first gift I confer on you is spiritual knowledge." That this is the true view of the words, is proved to my own mind by the extraordinary difference in doctrinal knowledge which from this day the Apostles exhibited.
Theophylact thinks that our Lord only meant, " Become fit for receiving the Holy Ghost." This seems weak and poor.
The expression before us is one of those which seem to me to supply strong indirect proof of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as well as from the Father. It seems to me that when the Lord Jesus Christ could say with authority, " Receive the Holy Ghost," it is very strange to say that tlie Holy Ghost does not proceed from Him ! Yet the Greek Church does not admit this.
The expression before us is one which, strictly speaking, no one but our Lord Jesus Christ could use. It is evident that no mortal man has the power of conferring the Holy Ghost upon another. This is a prerogative of God alone and of His Christ. When, therefore, the ordination service for Presbyters, in the Church of England Prayer-book, puts into the Bishop's mouth these solemn words, " Receive the Holy Ghost." I have never felt a doubt that the compilers of our Liturgy only meant the words to be used as in an optative, and not a positive sense, as a 'prayer : " I pray that thou mayest receive the Holy Ghost." — Archbishop Whitgift, in his Reply to the objections of the fa- mous Cartwright, says, " To use these words in ordaining of ministers, which Christ Himself used in appointing His Apos- tles, is no more ridiculous and blasphemous than it is to use the words that he used in the Lord's Supper." — " The Bishop, by speaking these words, doth not take upon him to give the Holy Ghost, no more than he doth to remit sins, when he pro- nounceth the remission of sins ; but by speaking these words of Christ, he doth show the principal duty of a minister, and assureth him of the assistance of God's Holy Spirit, if he labor in the same accordingly." (See Blakeney on the Common Prayer, p. 513.) While, however, I say this, I shall never