pare a home for his absent ones in the Father's house; the Spirit would come here and possess a dwelling for Himself in the saints. The Lord knew His absence would be, or ought to be, a sorrow; the Spirit would abide with them, and be in them a Comforter. Oh! let me ask you, do we know Him as such? Does it give you sorrow that the Lord is now absent, and does it comfort you to have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, that other Comforter, who is to abide with us for ever? Alas! many of us seem as if in this sense of Him we have scarcely heard if there be a Holy Ghost. Else why stand we gazing up into heaven, when the blessed ONE promised is already with us, and shall be in us?

But, a step further. I need scarcely say, that these words are not now simply promise; they have been fulfilled, and have accordingly become fact. Our natural normal state as saints is, that, whether we know it or not, we have the Spirit, and are to have Him for ever; that He is with us, and shall be in us; that since His descent He has never been withdrawn, but is, and will be, always with us. As with a thousand other things, we may be but ill instructed in it, but the truth is so, and cannot be changed. As I have intimated, the knowledge of the dying thief on the cross must have been very limited. He knew not how to distinguish between the coming kingdom and paradise, yet was he a saved sinner, a child of God-nay, he was a son and heir; and on dying entered paradise, for which, in a moment of time, independent of all his own attainments, he was perfectly and eternally meet. Thus is it with many truly saved souls, who, alas! but imperfectly have thought of what Christ, in heaven, is doing for them, or what the blessed Paraclete, here, is doing in them. They are anxious, it may be, they strive, they labour, they groan. Yet may the striving, and the groaning be not self-born, but of the Spirit who is in them. The life in them which mourns over evil

longs after God-languishes for Christ, and holiness, and heaven-is a life not natural to them as carnal, but is of God, through His Spirit, who is in them. They may not know this as they ought. Yonder peasant, reaping in that harvest field, has natural life in him, yet he has been working for thirty or sixty years in the daily use of that principle, without ever giving it a thought. He is living in singular ignorance as to the power which enables his hand to reap the corn, and his arm to gather the sheaves to his bosom. It is the power which dwells-shall I say-specially in the head, that gives life to, and animates the whole body. Thus is it with Christ and His Church. But see a saint living on his knowledge of Christ, in whom he is complete, and with whom he is accounted by God as one, yet, oftentimes not knowing that the power which enables him to do so, is the power and presence of the Spirit of God who is in him. Beloved, one is burdened in soul at the thought, that there are believers of the nineteenth century who need to be brought back from where they are, as to this truth, to the calm first hour which saw it fall from the lips of the blessed Lord Jesus, " And if I go, I will send another Comforter, who shall abide with you for ever." And now, Jesus had said, "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come;" accordingly, when He had gone the Comforter came. He had commanded His disciples to "tarry at Jerusalem, until they were endued with power from on high." The disciples did tarry at Jerusalem with "one accord and one mind," until at Pentecost the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they were "filled with the Holy Ghost." It was at this early date, after the Lord ascended, that the Spirit came- -came as He had said, not on a mere visitation, but to abide-" to abide with us, and in us, for ever."

But how or wherefore came He? He came as a

witness; He witnessed to them of the truth of what Jesus had said-viz., "I go to my Father, and if I go, I will send the Comforter." So when the Spirit came, He was a witness that Jesus had gone to the Father. He is, in fact, the great witness we have down here that Jesus has, in reality, gone to, and has been received by, His Father. How else, after such promise, do we know that He went to His Father? We cannot see inside the gates of Paradise ; but this we know, Jesus had said, "If I depart, I will send the Comforter." The Comforter came; and when He came, He was a witness that Jesus had gone to the Father, that the atonement was accepted, that complete and perfect satisfaction for our sins had been made, and that now, in righteousness, along with Christ, we have liberty to enter into the holiest by His blood," as He said, He shall convince you of righteousness, because I go to my Father. The fact that we have the Spirit, shows that He is now with the Father; but He could not be there, except in righteousness. The Spirit tells us He is there, therefore in righteous

ness.

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But further, He came as an unction. In the Levitical dispensation the most beautiful spices, myrrh, cinnamon, and cassia were bruised, and mixed together with oil, to form a holy anointing oil, which, when made, was poured on Aaron's head and came down to the very skirts of his garments, and the perfume, or pleasure-shall I say joy-filled the place. Witness the joy of Pentecost when the Spirit, the unction from the Head, came down on the members. They, the saints, were filled with joy, so much so that it was said, "They were full of new wine." They had the anointing of the Head flowing down on, and into the newly formed body of the Church; they had the Holy Ghost, the promise of the Father, the Paraclete.

He came as a guest. He who then came to the

body, now dwells in the body. It is not to say, He may dwell in it; He does dwell in it. Any new member added to the body makes no difference. Raise a house (to change the metaphor) another story higher, it is the same life dwelling in it. Each stone conscious, or not, is but part of the habitation for the same life. So with the Spirit and the Church. If the body be of a thousand, or of a thousand million members, it is all the same. They are the habitation of God through the Spirit. He dwells in Christ, and in them. The Head and body form one new man. The Spirit it is who brings the fulness of the Head down into the body.

He came as a seal, God putting His own mark on the young Church, as if to say, This is the body of Christ; these are members, of which He is Head. It was God owning the Church, setting His own seal on it. Says Paul, "Ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise;" and again, speaking of the Spirit, "Whereby ye are sealed to the day of redemption."

And further: He came as a Teacher. 66 "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance;" and truly, He had much, through the word, to reveal; as Paul says, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." The deep things— Christ for us and in us, the gift of God's eternal and unchangeable love to us as sinners; His love as Father, loving us with the same love with which, from eternity, He has loved His Son; God's estimate of sin, its evil, its doom, as seen in the cross; God Himself, as seen in the death of His Son; His grace, holiness, justice, love; our own rank as sons and heirs, our inheritance with Christ, our hope of coming glory. What things are these!

how deep, how vast! It is the Spirit who teaches them to us, else had we never known them. The natural eye never sees them, the natural ear never hears them. It is by these He sanctifies-" Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth." Especially was He to be a Comforter-another Comforter. The Lord Himself had been a Comforter. Oh, that I could transport you to that evening when Martha and Mary walked back to their home in Bethany with Lazarus, their own risen one, with them. Methinks they scarcely knew how to break the silence of their astonished minds, or, that silence, once broken, cease to tell of what the Lord had done. But whether did the risen Lazarus or the truth afford the greatest joy. Said Jesus, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Perchance, as they retired to some one room of their blest home together, they said, "Was there ever such a Comforter! Such words! Such deeds! Wonderful that He ever made our house His resting place-our hearts His sol

ace.

What a Saviour! Death, the grave, corruption, all as nothing to Him." It was the same with the homes of Jairus and the Nain widow, and many others; they never could forget His grace and love, never fail to call Him Comforter. How especially did His disciples know Him as one who comforted them. How they felt it when He was about to leave them, and gathered around Him after His resurrection; at one time five hundred brethren at once. They had gathered specially to look on Him who had been dead; they identified their risen Lord. How the imagination might look on those five hundred, and ask who they were. There might have been such as Bartimeus, whose eyes He had opened, and the young man of Nain, who had been raised from the dead, and the living daughter of Jairus, and Mary Magdalene, out