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"It is evident that the present dispensation under which we are is the
dispensation of the Spirit, or of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. To
Him in the Divine economy has been committed the office of applying the
redemption of the Son to the souls of men and women by the vocation,
justification, and salvation of the elect. We are, therefore, under the
personal guidance of the Third Person as truly as the apostles were under
the guidance of the Second." (Edward Manning)
"Therefore, the Holy Ghost on this day—Pentecost—descended into the temple of His apostles, which He had prepared for himself, as a shower of sanctification, appearing no more as a transient visitor, but as a perpetual Comforter and as an eternal inhabitant. He came, therefore, on this day to His disciples, no longer by the grace of visitation and operation, but by the presence of His majesty." (Augustine)
"The name Paraclete is applied to Christ as well as to the Spirit; and properly. For it is the common office of each to console and encourage us and to preserve us by their defense. Christ was their [the disciples'] patron so long as He lived in the world. He then committed them to the guidance and protection of the Spirit. If anyone asks us whether we are not under the guidance of Christ, the answer is easy: Christ is the perpetual guardian, but not visibly. As long as He walked on the earth He appeared openly as their guardian. Now He preserves us by His Spirit. He calls the Spirit 'Another Comforter,' in view of the distinction which we observe in the blessings proceeding from each." (John Calvin)
"But now the Holy Ghost is given more perfectly, for He is no longer present by His operation as of old, but is present with us so to speak, and converses with us in a substantial manner. For it was fitting that, as the Son had conversed with us in the body, the Spirit should also come among us in a bodily manner." (Gregory Nazianzen)
"To the disciples, the baptism of the Spirit was very distinctly not His first bestowal for regeneration, but the definite communication of His presence in power of their glorified Lord. Just as there was a twofold operation of the one Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, of which the state of the disciples before and after Pentecost was the striking illustration, so there may be, and in the great majority of Christians is, a corresponding difference of experience. . . . "When once the distinct recognition of what the indwelling of the Spirit was meant to bring is brought home to the soul, and it is ready to give up all to be made partaker of it, the believer may ask and expect what may be termed a baptism of the Spirit. Praying to the Father in accordance to the two prayers in Ephesians, and coming to Jesus in the renewed surrender of faith and obedience, he may receive such an inflow of the Holy Spirit as shall consciously lift him to a different level from the one on which he has hitherto lived." (Andrew Murray)
"In His intimate union with His Son, the Holy Spirit is the unique organ by which God wills to communicate to man His own life, the supernatural life, the divine life—that is to say, His holiness, His power, His love, His felicity. To this end the Son works outwardly, the Holy Spirit inwardly." (Pastor G. F. Tophel)
The Holy Ghost from the day of Pentecost has occupied an entirely new position. The whole administration of the affairs of the Church of Christ has since that day devolved upon Him. . . . That day was the installation of the Holy Spirit as the Administrator of the Church in all things, which office He is to exercise according to circumstances at His discretion. It is as vested with such authority that He gives Him name to this dispensation. . . . There is but one other great event to which Scripture directs us to look, and that is the second coming of the Lord. Till then, we live in the Pentecostal age and under the rule of the Holy Ghost." (James Elder Cumming)
"Have you visited the Cathedral of Freyburg, and listened to that wonderful organist, who with such enchantment draws the tears from the traveler's eyes while he touches one after another, his wonderful keys, and makes you hear by turns the march of armies upon the beach, of the chanted prayer upon the lake during the tempest, or the voices of praise after it is calm? Well, thus the Eternal God, embracing at a glance the keyboard of sixty centuries , touches by turns, with the fingers of His Spirit, the keys which he had chose for the unity of His celestial hymn. He lays His left hand upon Enoch, the seventh from Adam, and His right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. From the the one the strain is heard: 'Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of His saints': from the other: 'Behold He cometh with clouds.' And between the notes of this hymn of three thousand years there is eternal harmony, and the angels stoop to listen, the elect of God are moved, and eternal life descends into men's souls." (Gaussen's Gheopneustia)
"The Comforter in every part of His threefold work glorifies Christ. In convincing of sin, He convinces us of the sin of not believing on Christ. In convincing us of righteousness, He convinces us of the righteousness of Christ, of that righteousness that was made manifest in Christ going to the Father, and which He received to bestow on all such as should believe in Him. And lastly, in convincing of judgment, He convinces us that the prince of the world was judged in the life and by the death of Christ. Thus throughout, Christ is glorified. And that which the Comforter shows to us relates in all its parts to the life and work of the incarnate Son of God." (Julius Charles Hare)
"The Apostle Paul evidently saw the redemption of the bodies of the saints and their manifestation as the sons of God and with them the redemption of the whole creation from its present bondage to be the complete harvest of the Spirit, whereof the Church doth now possess only the first-fruits; that is, the first ripe grains which could be formed into a sheaf and presented in the temple as a wave-offering unto the Lord. 'The Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance,' saith the same apostle—the earnest, like the first-fruit, being only a part of that which is to be earned . . . yet a sufficient surety that the whole shall in the fullness of the times, be likewise ours." (Edward Irving) |
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