The Personality of the Holy Spirit
THE wonderful, blessed grace of the Holy Spirit is that it makes God present with the believer, wherever he may be, or howsoever many he may be. In His incarnation Jesus could be present in only one place at a time. His disciples did not have the faith to grasp that His power reached beyond His personal presence. "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," was an expression of their general faith. The Roman centurion who declared that he was unworthy that Jesus should come under his roof, to heal his servant,—nor was it necessary, if Jesus should come, He had but to speak the word,—grasped the larger thought which was yet dark to the disciples. Therefore it was "expedient," necessary, for the faith of the disciples, that Jesus in His human, bodily presence should go away. But Jesus did not leave them alone. His promise was, "I will not leave you orphans; I will come unto you." Again, "If a man love Me, he will keep My Word; and My Father will love him, and We [the Father and the Son] will come unto him, and make Our abode with him." How this is accomplished is thus stated: "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He [the Father] may abide with you forever." Therefore no one ever saw a person of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit witnesses of Christ, and takes of the things of Christ and declares them to the believer. (For the above quotations and references, see John 14, 15, 16.) The Spirit, the great life of God, through Jesus Christ has the power of making personally present both the Father and the Son; and this as literally to each believing soul though worlds apart. Man has a faint illustration of this wonderful truth in the wireless telephone and telegraph. These instruments make the voice or the message of the speaker or sender, everywhere present as far as its power extends. By His Spirit God becomes everywhere present in His universe, and especially so to the hearts of His children who are in perfect harmony with Him.