[From Alexander McLaren, D. D., in Sunday School Times.] The central fact of that day was the gift itself, not the transient symbol, nor the transient consequence. Mark the universality of the gift. “They were all filled.” In old times, prophets and leaders had been endowed with the Spirit for various offices, but in Christ’s kingdom it is to be poured out on “servants” and “handmaidens.” The sun at rising touches only the peaks, but at noonday it floods the valleys. Every Christian possesses that gift, and has a new life given at first, and continuously sustained, by the indwelling Spirit. Alas that so many of them do not recognize the fact! Alas that so few of them are as completely possessed by that Spirit as they might be! For the completeness of the gift is emphatically marked. “They were5all filled,”—their whole nature was charged with the subtle, all-pervading influence, which, permeating every part, would manifest itself thru all vital actions, in the varied manner proper to each. The same life gives swiftness to the foot and strength to the arm, tints the cheek and brightens the eye, clears the mind and melts the heart. “All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit.” Every Christian may be thus filled with a divine life. But how shrunken the tide, in the case of most of us, compared with the full river of God that might water our souls, and make all manner of things live whithersoever it came!