r if we understand them to apply to
a people through whom God was manifesting his presence by supernatural
demonstrations, but many of them lack meaning when applied to people of
God who no longer exhibit these supernatural powers.

VIII

THE SPIRIT AND THE WORLD

Hitherto we have been treating the Holy Spirit in terms of the past, but
now we come to the present tense. Is the Holy Spirit a power in the
present age? If so, what kind of a power? Is he making an issue with men
as a direct power and working upon them immediately, or is he working
through an instrumentality, and, if so, what is the instrumentality?

The Spirit is undoubtedly dealing with two classes of persons in his
work to-day.

First, those who are not believers, and therefore unconverted and
"aliens from the commonwealth of Israel."

Second, those who have believed and obeyed the gospel, and are therefore
children of God.

We shall devote this chapter to the influence of the Spirit upon the
unbelieving world.

In the very nature of things, the work of the Spirit is to make
believers out of unbelievers, and convert the perverted. We all believe
this. We believe that all believers are made by the power of the Spirit.
We differ about whether he exercises that power directly from himself to
the individual soul, or whether he exercises that power through the
gospel, through the apostles and through Christ's word of truth. Reason,
philosophy and experience exhausted themselves in discovering but two
methods by which one spirit can exercise an influence over another.

First, a direct mechanical, immediate influence taking possession of the
will and influencing the mind of and controlling the speech and actions
of the subject. This takes place in hypnotism and is supposed to take
place in clairvoyance and clairaudience.

Second, a rational moral influence exerted by ideas impressed upon the
mind by teaching and words that represent ideas.

There is, there can be, no third way by which one spirit can influence
another. You may study till you are gray-headed or bald-headed, for
that matter, and you will discover no other way.

The Holy Spirit has used both of these methods in the past.

1. In the case of the apostles and prophets, he immediately,
mechanically and directly controlled their actions and speech, so much
so that Jesus told them that under the influence of the Spirit they
should take no thought what they should say. "For it is no