hall bear witness of Me. He shall glorify Me; for He
shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you." In the presence of
the Spirit Christ Himself would be present: "I will not leave you
desolate," He said; "I come unto you;" "I will see you again, and your
heart shall rejoice." And, for the sake of such a presence, a presence
which was to be not for a little while but for ever, it was best for His
friends that He should leave them.[25]

It is in these words, I believe, that we have the key to the New
Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of
Christ; He is sent by Christ; He comes to continue the work of Christ.
He is, as one writer has it, Christ's _alter ego_, or, as it was said
long ago, Christ's "Vicar," or substitute, on the earth.[26] When,
therefore, we speak of the presence of the Spirit, what we mean, or what
we ought to mean, is the spiritual presence of Christ. In the Holy
Spirit Christ Himself is present, wherever, as He said, two or three are
gathered together in His name. In the Holy Spirit, given to be with us
for ever, He makes good to His disciples the great word of His promise,
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." This is the
fact continually to be kept in mind--the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ;
for, if this be forgotten, then, as all experience shows, either the
doctrine is wholly ignored, or it is made the subject of that vague,
unreal way of speaking, which, alas! is so often the bane of spiritual
truth.

At the same time, what has been said must not be interpreted so as to
suggest that the Holy Spirit is merely an impersonal influence. On the
contrary, the words of our Lord quoted above distinctly imply what we
call "personality," and a personality separate from His own. If all that
Jesus really meant to teach was that He would manifest His own invisible
presence to His disciples by spiritual influences, we can only conclude
that His words have been tampered with; as they stand, it is impossible
that this should exhaust their meaning. To teach, to bear witness, to
guide, to bring to remembrance, to declare the things that are to
come,--these are the acts, not of a Power, but of a Person; and all
these things, Christ said, the Holy Spirit should do. Indeed, it is not
easy to see how language could have been framed to set forth the idea of
a Divine Person, separate alike from the Father and the Son, more
explicitly than we find it in these chapters