Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 86:342 (Apr 1929)
Article: The Holy Spirit And The Human Spirit
Author: Christopher G. Hazard

BSac 86:342 (April 1929) p. 163

The Holy Spirit And The Human Spirit

Christopher G. Hazard

We do not in this consideration contemplate a mere emanation or influence, for according to Christ’s teaching, the Holy Spirit, that Reprover of the world and Comforter of the Church, whose coming was to be the sequel of the departure of our Lord and the inauguration of the dispensation of grace under which we live, would share in the great name of the personal God: the disciples of Christ were to be baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a personal and universal presence. There has never been any escape from the Holy Spirit. Whither could the psalmist go from Him? Whither could he flee from his presence? If we consult the earliest chapters of the world’s history we shall find Him moving upon the face of the heaving waters: if we turn aside from primitive chaos to look upon the formlessness and emptiness of modern social and religious conditions, behold, He is brooding over them, also. As order and beauty emerged under his spell from the dark and apparently hopeless effects of some primeval cataclysm, so, in the higher realm of soul and spirit He is working a renascence. In both creations, the physical and the spiritual, He follows the creative and restoring work of that Word who was in the beginning, without whom nothing was ever made, and by whom all things are reconciled to God. He is the Executor of that great will and provision made in Christ which must culminate in the deliverance of the whole creation, the regeneration of earth and man. Universal as fire, force, air, and water; He worketh everywhere and with regard to everyone, and by such means as He pleases to use, the will of God as it is in Christ. He is the Voice of Christ, crying in a wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of Jehovah.” “Make straight in the desert a highway for God.”

Acknowledging the relation of the Holy Spirit to all history and to all men, we would, however, confine our

BSac 86:342 (April 1929) p. 164

present thought of Him to his peculiar dealings with the Christian Church. Our topic is “The Holy Spirit and the Human Spirit,” not The Holy Spirit and the Human Soul. For, only “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” and the Holy Spirit is in special relation to it. He enters the Church as He cannot enter the world. He is known by the Church as He is not known and as He cannot be known by the world. Salvation consists in the creation of a clean heart and the renewal of a right spirit in man, and it is to the cleansed and renewed man that the Holy Spirit is given, never to be taken away.

Our Saviour was greatly straitened before His baptism into death and ascension into glory. Not till thes...