One point of interest in Acts is the relation of the Spirit to baptism. The gift of the Spirit is itself represented beforehand o? a liaptism (P 'ye shall be baptized with holy spirit not many days hence'). After Pentecost, instead of displacing and annulling water- baptism, as we might have anticipated, the baptism with the Spirit is re- garded as normally coincident with the other : ' Repent and be baptized . . . and ye shall receive ■ ■■ - ■ " ■ - — ef. 0""-). When
e Holy
normal
it. It spoken rs, and .f their
the gift of the Holy Spirit' {-2^. peopTe believed and were baiitiz. Spirit did not fall on any of then. and disconcerting, — at least on !- (gi4-i7)^_and steps were taken i< must be remembered that the onl, of in Acts is that of adult penile that for such persons the pulilii' c faith, in a ritual act, was naturally the occasion of profoundly moving experiences — experiences which, as rising into higher ranges of thought and feeling than usual, were ascribed by the early Church to the Spirit. To find in Ac S'''" or 19'"' an analogue of 'confirmation,' a sacrament supplementary to baptism, and capable of being conferred only by an Apostle or by a bishop as his successor, is an anachronism. The gifts of the Holy Spirit be- stowed on these two occasions when Apostles prayed and laid their hands on the baptizeil, were what may be called spiritual gifts falling within the sphere of the senses ; ' they spoke with tongues Jind prophesied' (19"). In confirmation, this is neither asked nor wanted, but this and notlung else is what is desiderated by St. Luke. The emotional stimulation, which liberates the hidden powers of human nature, is itself the gift of the Holy Spirit in virtue of which people become glossolalists or prophets. But though, for the reason already stated, the gift of the Spirit is the normal aceoiupaiiiment of baptism, the order of the two things may be reversed. Cornelius and his house- hold are baiitized, not in order to receive, but
738
HOLY SPIRIT
HOLY SPIRIT
because they have received, tlie Spirit (lu-"**). And more important than any single observation is the fact that in Acts, as elsewhere in the NT, the reception of the Spirit is the whole of Chris- tianity. ' They received the Holy Spirit even as we did' (10^' II" 15"'-). All that makes a man a Christian is in this, and where this is there can be no distinction of Jew or Gentile more. The Church is one in the unity of the Spirit.
12. In St. Paul's Epistles the Holy Spirit is men- tioned nearly 120 times, and may be said to have a prominence and importance which it has nowhere else in the NT. It is impossible to discuss it in detaU here. On the one hand, we have repre- sentations of the Spirit, and of the eft'ects jjroduced by its reception, entirely similar to those in Acts : St. Paul's wlicile ministry, in word and deed, has been aceompli-hcil in tliejiower of the Holy Spirit (Ko 15'3') ; tliosf wild re<eive his gospel receive the Spirit ; the chief x^P'o'/taTa, or spiritual gifts, are speaking with tongues and prophesying (1 Th 5^^-^, 1 Co 12-14). Though St. Paul was distin- guished himself, above everyone at Corinth, by iiis experiences of the glossolalic ecstasy, and thanked God for it (1 Co 14'*), and though lie dis- couraged the sober - minded Thessalonians who would have hastily repressed it (tliis is what is meant by ' Quench not the Spirit' in 1 Th 5'^), he was not insensible to its dangers. There was something morbid in it ; it might be tainted -with vanity and self-indulgence ; there was nothing in it to edify the Church. Good Christians might even be conceived as thanking God that they did not speak -with tongues. Even the higher gift of prophecy needs criticism and control. The man
' ri.-\i'I.ifiiin ' iiKij- ruiiif in tin- S|iiiit. -In- may be
is lie i-xrmpt from the critii-ism uii.l ccmtnil of the Church. ' Prophets' spirits are subject to prophets ' (1 Co 14^-) : the Divine impulse under wliich the propliet in eacli case speaks is not an uncontrol- lable force whicli must have its way irrespective of order or decorum. Neither does it guarantee in- fallibility : the human individuality counts for something in every utterance, and when two or three ' prophets ' have spoken the others are to judge (1 Co 14-'). The Christian common sense of the community, so to speak, is felt to be more inspired than the most ardent utterance of any individual. St. Paul even mentions among x''-P^<'- nara one which he calls StaKpftrets Trvev/iaTojv — the faculty of deciding on each occasion what is the true character of the impulse under which a man sjicaks, and in particular whether it is of (Jiiil or not. The conception of a spiritual gift of this liin.l— an instinctive sense for what is or is not in keeping with the gospel — is peculiar. It brings us within sight of what is characteristically Pauline in the conception of the Spirit, namely, a possession of the Spirit which is beyond all par- ticular 'gifts' or 'operations' of a spiritual kind, which is, in short, identical with Christian life. To quote from Mr. Wood {op. cit. 268) : ' Paul grasped the idea of the unity of the religious life, and spoke of the spirit not merely as God acting in an occasional extraordinary and emotional ex- perience, but as being the Di^ane source and basis of all the Christian life. For him the Holy Spirit is the cause not only of religious experiences, but of religious experience. The test of the Spirit of God in a man is no longer subjective emotion, but the objective value of his life for the progress of the will of Cod as working itself out in the Church.' In ci.mjiarisi.il v itli the Spirit in this large .sense, the |i:n tiiiilar iiiaiiirestations or gifts of the Spirit which arc iHschsmmI at length in Ro 12, 1 Co 12-14, E|.h 4, have a subordinate though a vital import-