revealed. The Father and the Son gave and sent Him to complete the work of redemption. There is now no more need of sacrifice and suffering; the price is paid, and redemption is free; but that the gift of Christ may become saving grace, it must become regenerating and sanctifying grace. The sinner must be convicted of his sin, and enabled to accept Christ as his Saviour; his heart must be renewed by the Holy Spirit; and then he must be sanctified until he shall be made meet for heaven. The Holy Spirit must give him entrance into the kingdom of heaven through Christ the way. Christ wrought salvation for the sinner; but the Spirit's work is further necessary to work salvation in the sinner-one is the complement of the other.

The love of the Spirit is just as necessary, in its place, to the salvation of a sinner as that of the Father and the Son; and it will detract nothing from their love to magnify the love of the Spirit, but will rather glorify it.

*

I cannot make this plainer than does Mr. Philip. "The real question is now, What was wanted after Christ had finished His atoning work? There was His sacrifice, perfect, allsufficient, and glorious! Nothing could be added to its merits, or its efficacy, or its acceptableness

* "Love of the Spirit," chap. i.

before God as a ransom for souls. But still around that sacrifice stood a world, yea, a Church, which knew neither its merits nor its meaning, and which never could have understood them had not the Spirit explained them, and never would have employed them had He not applied them. Thus, although the fountain for sin and uncleanness was opened by the death of Christ, there were none to wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb until the love of the Spirit enlightened and led them. But for His love, therefore, the love of Christ would have remained unappreciated and unknown both to the world and to the Church."

"But for what the Spirit did, all that Christ endured would have had no saving effect upon man. It is the very glory of the Saviour's love that it depended as much on the sanctifying love of the Spirit, as the paternal love did on the blood of the Lamb."

Dr. Wardlaw also well says: "The work of Christ and the work of the Spirit are mutually necessary to each other's efficacy; and are thus both alike indispensable to the salvation of a sinner. Without the work of Christ the Spirit would want the means, or the instrument of His operation; and without the work of the Spirit the means would remain inefficacious and fruitless."

The necessity of the work of the Spirit to the efficacy of the work of Christ could not be more strongly put than by St. Paul, when he says, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Spirit."

Concerning the motive of the Spirit's work, Dr. Owen says: "The principle or foundation of all the Spirit's actings for our consolation is His own infinite love and condescension. He willingly proceeded and came forth from the Father to be our Comforter. He knew what we were and what would be our dealings with Him. He knew we would grieve Him, provoke Him, quench His motion, defile His dwelling-place, and yet He would come to be our Comforter."

Thus the fullness of the Divine love appears only when we try to measure the love of the Father in planning, the love of the Son in procuring, and the love of the Spirit in applying redemption. The grace of God came from the Father, through the Son and by the Spirit, bringing salvation; originating in the love of the Father, made free by the love of the Son, and efficacious by the love of the Spirit. The Father shows His love by what He gave; the Son His love in what He suffered, and the Spirit His love in what He does; and this is intensified beyond measure by the fact, that it is Divine love for the ungodly, for sinners, for the enemies of God.

70 LOVE OF THE TRINITY CONTRASTED.

The love of the Father and the Son also sent the Spirit into the world, that He should, with His own Divine love and power and grace, be our personal Comforter, to dwell and work in and with us forever.

The Father's love was infinite benevolence, divinest compassion toward a perishing world; deserving to perish as sinners against His holy law. For the same sinners, and while they were yet sinners, Christ died, the just for the unjust, love passing knowledge. To the same sinners the Holy Spirit came and gave Himself to abide

with them.

The incarnation of the Son of God, with His humiliation and suffering in the flesh, is the great mystery of godliness. For three-and-thirty years He lived on this earth, buffeted of Satan and disowned and despised and rejected of men; when He rose from the dead: ascended into heaven, and is now at the right hand of the Majesty on high, our ever-living Intercessor.

Is it not also a like humiliation for the Holy Spirit to come from Heaven to earth to live with and dwell in sinful flesh to the end of the world? The association with and contradiction of sinners which Christ endured so meekly a few years, the Spirit endures continually in His love for Christ and for us. This appears still more vividly when we consider that the Spirit is the Holy

Spirit; holy in His nature and character, and will and work; infinitely delighting in holiness and utterly abhorring sin; the giver and executor of the holy law; the very conscience of the Godhead itself; who could not look upon sin, or do aught but take holy vengeance upon it, except through the blood of Christ; who also approved of Christ as a sin-offering before ever He would undertake to atone for man's guilt or bear its penalty. Conceive of what it would be for the saintliest man of earth to go into a saloon and stay there in association with the intemperate; amidst the smoke of tobacco and the fumes of liquor; obliged to listen to the coarse blasphemy and the disgusting vileness of its inmates, and we get a faint idea of what it means for the Holy Spirit to come to strive with sinful man even to save him.

For Him to have anything to do with sin, to be where it is, to dwell in the midst of it, to show it any favor, would be infinite condescension and boundless love.

He who finally destroys forever from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power sinners out of Christ; preserving and maintaining eternally the purity of holy heaven; yet comes to this sinful and accursed earth to abide; the very last place, in the universe of God, where we would expect to find the Holy Spirit, except