212 AN EXPEDIENT DEPARTURE
II.
The Coming of the Spirit.
Christ's going away was a provision for the future life. The absent Lord prepares a place there; the absent Object of faith educates the souls of the faithful to possess and enjoy it. But He provides for the life that now is. And His going away has to do with the present as much as with the life to come.
^ One day when Jesus was in Peraea, a message came to Him that a very dear friend was sick. He lived in a distant village with his two sisters. They were greatly concerned about their brother's illness, and had sent in haste for Jesus. Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus their brother ; but He was so situated at the time that He could not go. Perhaps He was too busy, perhaps He had other similar cases on hand; at all events. He could not go. When He went ultimately, it was too late. Hour after hour the sisters waited for Him. They could not believe He would not come; but the slow hours dragged themselves along by the dying man's couch, and he was dead and laid in the grave before Jesus arrived. You can imagine one of His thoughts, at least, as He stands and weeps by that grave with the inconsolable sisters, — " It is expedient that I go away. I should have been present at his death-bed scene if I had been away. I will depart and send the Comforter. There will be no summons of sorrow which He will not be able to answer. He will abide with men for ever. Everywhere He will come and go. He will be like the noiseless invisible wind, blowing all over the world wheresoever He listeth." ^
1. The Spirit comes to continue Christ's ministry. The spiritual and distinctive ministry of the Holy Spirit follows the personal and Messianic ministry of the Christ. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are represented as conditioned upon the mediatorial work of the Christ. The Father purposes human redemption; the Son, by His atoning work, enables the righteous forgiveness of sin ; and the Holy Spirit quickens spiritual life in forgiven men. The dispensation of the Father is followed by the dispensation of the Son ; the dispensation of the Son by the dispensation of the Spirit.
* H. Drumniond, The IdccU Life, 72.
ST. JOHN XVI. 7 213
^ The development of Christian experience, throughout all its changes, depends upon one unchanging personality. The Christ was to depart and the Comforter was to come, but the Comforter was to come as the messenger of the departing Christ. " If I go, I will send him unto you." There is no real brokenness in spiritual experience, in spite of what seem to us to be variations in its intensity or gaps in its record or occasional hours in which its life has lain in trance : behind it all has been and is to-day the power of the ever-living Christ. And this is the one great fact to which we must come back for security when our faith in Divine things is like to fail because we do not always see them with the same clear sight, and because they do not always thrill us with the same sweeping currents of joy — the fact that in whatever way holy things may touch us, it is Christ who brings them near, that whether they rouse a passion of holy rapture or draw out the quieter sensibilities lying hidden in our souls, it is Christ who orders their attendance upon us ; that the outward spiritual ministries which excited the earliest stirrings of our faith, and the inward spiritual ministries by which we live to-day, have all been under Christ's control.^
2. The outward is changed to the inward. The Divine presence and teaching, and redeeming death of the Son were, so to speak, outside the man. Hence but little spiritual result followed Christ's personal ministry. He made but few disciples : " the Spirit was not yet given." Though He had done so many mighty works among them, yet did they not believe on Him. He promised, therefore, a still greater ministry than His own — a life- giving Power, who should quicken religious feeling within them, who should be, not an outward teacher, but an indwelling life- giver and sanctifier ; and who should do His mighty spiritual work by taking the things of Christ and showing them unto us. Hence- forth the Spirit would work in the hearts of men, not through the partial and imperfect truths of the old Jewish dispensation, but through the new and transcendent truths of Christ's incarnation and atonement.
The Day of Pentecost was simply the special manifestation, the formal inauguration of the dispensation of the Spirit. Hence- forth, men were to be taught by purely spiritual ideas, and were to be made holy by purely spiritual forces. Miracles and prophesyings were to cease ; the personal teaching and example * H. W. Clark, Laws of the Inrur Kingdom, 68.
214 AN EXPEDIENT DEPARTURE
of Christ were withdrawn ; the atoning death was accomplished and Christ ascended to heaven. The revelation of God's truth and love was completed; and henceforth only spiritual forces were to work in the hearts of men.