On the other hand, the Spirit is the Paraclete of God with and in man, sent to carry on His cause and to make perfect the surrender to Him and the service of His people. The term ' .sent ' is used officially of the Spirit, as of the Incarnate in regard to His historical manifestation. The distinction must not be unduly pressed ; but the Paraclete's work in the hearts of the disciples themselves is the prominent assurance of Jn 14'*- ^^, His work through them on the world that of Jn 16"^-, whilst Jn IS^"'- is intermediate, and combines the qualify- ing grace with the incitement to witness.
The Paraclete is not mentioned by that name elsewhere in the Gospels ; but His functions as such are referred to not only in the intimate con- versation on the evening of the betrayal, but in such preparatory words as Jn P* 7^^''. And though the word is Johannine, the teaching has its parallels in the Synoptics (Mt lO^o, Mk 13'i, Lk 11'^ 12'- 24^'') ; and the general idea which our Lord, accord- ing to the testimony of all the Evangelists, sought to communicate and to expand, seems to have been that since He could no longer remain in the flesh to promote the cause of God in His disciples, He would act in heaven as their representative with the Father, and the Holy Spirit would come to dwell in them and to further whatever tended to their perfection and to God's glory.
Literature. —To the works cited in Hastings' DB iii. 668, add Welldon, Reoelation of the Holu Spirit, 107 ff. ; G. G. Findlay in Exp. Times, xii. (1901) 445 ; and Jastrow, Diet, of Targ. etc., s.v.
B'S''is. R. W. Moss.
PARADISE.— The word is a Persian one, and was adopted by the Hebrews from the mildest and most benevolent of their conquerors. Like most words with sufficient impetus to find their way into another language, it brings with it something of the character of the race from which it conies. It means something that the NT receives ' Legion ' and ' Prsetorium ' from Rome, and ' Paradise ' from Persia. It seems in its first home to have denoted a park-like garden, — an enclosure fenced in from evil influences out- side, and yet not so artificial as to be solely the work of man and devoid of natural landscape beauties. Herds of deer and other wild animals found a happy home in the old Persian paradises (Xen. C'l/r. i. 3. 14, Anab. i. 2. 7). But a word enter- ing the speech of a strong nation does not remain unaltered. The strength of Israel was religious, and the word ' Paradise ' became on her lips re- stricted to the great garden where God at the first had talked with man. Paradise became to her the lost Eden, the garden of the four rivers and the two mystic trees. It was impossible, however, to the Hebrew that anything religious should remain a mere memory. In process of time it became a heavenly and an inspiring hope. A cool and fragrant Paradise awaits the faithful Hebrew after death. The Golden Age creates the future home of the people of God.
It was to little purpose that the Alexandrian Jewish school combated this conception as too materialistic and earthy. The popular mind saw ' nothing attractive in the allegorizing which taught that Paradise meant ' virtue,' and the trees of the garden the thoughts of spiritual men. The strangely mingled life man lives, half in, half out of the spiritual world, will not suffer a system which ignores so large a portion of his consciousness.
This was its meaning to the mass of men in Gospel times. It appears thrice in the NT, — in Lk 23^^ in 2 Co 12\ and in Rev 2^— and its history on the sacred page seems that of a .spiral curve ui^wards. St. Paul's reference is so mystic as to remain somewhat indefinite, yet it is ^lp to Paradise he is caught. But in Revelation the .spiritual meaning shines through the thin veil of the pk-- torial promise to the Ephesian ' angel. '
It is not without interest to observe that in later times and outside Scripture the word seems in two directions to take a downward slant : first, among Mohammedans as applied to their carnal heaven, and afterwards in the Mediaeval Church as indicating a place (the Limhus Patrum) reserved for departed souls who are only in partial and imperfect communion with the faithful.
Our Lord's solitary use of the word constitutes by far its greatest interest to Christians. He M'ho spoke of ' the kingdom of God ' or ' the kingdom of heaven ' to the Apostles, used the word ' Paradise ' to the dying brigand on the cross. The connota- tion of a term rises and falls with the mood of the speaker. But with the Speaker on this occasion, His mood is always regulated by the receptivity of the hearer. This man never knew much of any world beyond his own world of violence and rapine. He was dying now. What he needed was a form of comfort — real and true, no doubt, but such as he could reach and relish. He was writhing in thirst and agony, and the simple, common, current idea of Paradise, with its rest and relief, was to him, for the time being, the chiefest good. The hope of such a change was a simple hope ; .but a plain thought may be as true, as far as it goes, as a complex one ; just as an outline may be as correct as a finished portrait. Anything more advanced would have meant nothing to the repentant robber. He who ' knew what was in man ' gave the promise. See, further, art. ' Paradise ' in Hastings' DB, and tlie Literature cited there.