al visions, but morning
dreams, which are proverbially sure to be fulfilled. God is love;
therefore the man who trusts Him shall not be put to shame.

But you will notice that here the Apostle not only adduces the love
of God as the staple, so to speak, from which these golden chains
hang, but that he traces the heart's being suffused with that love to
its source, and as, of course, is always the case in the order of
analysis, that which was last in time comes first in statement. We
begin at the surface, and go down and down and down from effect to
cause, and yet again to the cause of that cause which is itself
effect. We strip off, as it were, layer after layer, until we get to
the living centre--hope comes from the love, the love comes from the
Spirit in the heart. And so to get at the order of time and of
manifestation, we must reverse the order of analysis in my text, and
begin where it ends. So we have here three things--the Spirit given,
the love shed abroad by that Spirit, and the hope established by that
love. Now just look at them for a moment.

I. The Spirit given.

Now, the first point to notice here is that the Revised Version
presents the meaning of our text more accurately than the Authorised
Version, because, instead of reading 'is given,' it correctly reads
'was given.' And any of you that can consult the original will see
that the form of the language implies that the Apostle is thinking,
not so much of a continuous bestowment, as of a definite moment when
this great gift was bestowed upon the man to whom he is speaking.

So the first question is, when was that Spirit given to these Roman
Christians? The Christian Church has been split in two by its answers
to that question. One influential part, which has taken a new lease
of life amongst us to-day, says 'in baptism,' and the other says 'at
the moment of faith.' I am not going to be tempted into controversial
paths now, for my purpose is a very different one, but I cannot help
just a word about the former of these two answers. 'Given in
baptism,' say our friends, and I venture to think that they thereby
degrade Christianity into a system of magic, bringing together two
entirely disparate things, an external physical act and a spiritual
change. I do not say anything about the disastrous effects that have
followed from such a conception of the medium by which this greatest
of all Christian gifts is effected upon men. Since the Spirit who is
given is