As we read the Bible, we see how the Holy spirit not only prepared the way for Christ by the mouth of the prophets, and not only effected his human birth, but also perpetuates and interprets the work of redemption through the ages. He shall guide you into all truth; He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have spoken unto you.

Now, in these and many other passages the Spirit is described as having a being of his own, distinct from that of the Father and of the Son, though indissolubly united with theirs in aim and operation. He is sent by the father, and bears witness to the Son; He intercedes with the Father, and takes the place of the Son as another Advocate on earth; and at the same time is in such unbroken union with them that in his coming the Father and the Son will come and abide in the hearts of Christians. God is thus revealed to us not as a bare abstract unit, nor as a single divine Person existing alone in utter isolation; rather we are taught that the Godhead consists in three distinct centres of conscious life, inseparably united one with another,-three Persons in one God. The unity of God thus presented to us is a truer unity than any that has been dreamt of in other systems. The divine Tri-unity is a living unity, a unity of thought, purpose and activity; a unity which ascribes to God in himself an eternal life of blessed communion and fellowship and love. I am not dealing here with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but in this connexion I should like to point out that it is important to distinguish the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Spirit from a view held by influential thinkers of the day, who are favourably disposed towards Christianity, but seem unable to grasp its fundamental principles. These writers welcome and approve the high position given by Christians to the Holy Spirit, but they do not understand his relationship to the Father and the Son in Catholic theology. They do not appreciate the inseparable union between the Divine Persons which that theology posits, and so maintain that the doctrine of the Trinity surrenders and contradicts the unity of God, which they are most anxious to uphold. But they are met at once by this difficulty, that if God is a blank undifferentiated unit, he can have no personal life or real existence of his own. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity could and did ascribe to him a real personal, or supra-personal, life and existence quite apart from any relationship to the world; but when this doctrine which makes an intelligent view of Godhead possible, is rejected, God himself is reduced to a shadow, an abstraction, a blank form with nothing to fill it up; no possibility of love or fellowship or anything that we mean by personal life. But this is an unsatisfactory, an intolerable, position and these writers have to attempt to supplement and enrich it somehow or other. They grapple with the difficulty by telling us that we are not to think of God at all as he is in himself, but only and exclusively of God in his relation to the world, as though it were only through his relation to the world that he attain to life and reality. By thus binding him to an inseparable union with the world, they try to give back to him the substantial reality which they had taken away; a gross material reality being substituted for the pure spiritual reality posited by the Christian Creed. The point of contact between this theory of theirs and the Catholic doctrine lies in the word "Spirit." The Catholic Faith tells us that the Holy Spirit is immanent in the world, and our philosophers say, Yes; God is Spirit, and this Spirit is in the world, and inseparable from it, is identified in fact with the world's history and development. But our Faith goes on to say that, though the Holy Spirit is in the world, he is not of it; he is not merged in the world, but is present in it as its guide, its monitor and its judge, convincing it of sin; he is in the world, not as belonging to it, but as proceeding into it from the Father who is above and beyond it all. Transcendence and immanence are both ascribed to God by the Christian religion, transcendence being especially associated with the Father and immanence with the Holy Spirit; but the two truths are inseparably united in the sense that the transcendent Father loves the world in which the Spirit dwells, and the Spirit dwelling in the world in the Spirit that comes forth from the transcendent Father, and himself belongs to the high and holy places of eternity. We must be on our guard, then, against a common tendency to reduce the living truths of our religion into principles of a non-Christian philosophy; and especially beware of people who are ready to accept our doctrine of the Holy Spirit, provided they can tacitly drop the "Holy," and use the term "Spirit" to give plausibility to their pan-theistic theory of the universe. We mean something quite distinct and different by the Holy spirit; we mean the Third Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, who is doing a definite work upon the world by carrying forward the scheme of the Incarnation, safeguarding the Revelation and perpetuating the Redemption effected by its Incarnate Lord, and sanctifying those who are his members.

And now I want to say a few words in the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christians to-day. We constantly speak of the "spiritual life," but often wit ha ver y vague idea of what we mean by it. I suppose that what we ought to mean by it is a life dominated, guided, and inspired by the indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost. Such presence of the Holy Ghost in us is a natural sequel to our Lord's work of Redemption. Because that work of Redemption has won for us the position of sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, that our sonship might be made an effectual fact, a verified fact of personal life, whereby we cry "Abba, Father."

How, then, does the indwelling Spirit do this work of dominating, guiding, and inspiring our lives? In two main ways: first, through the Church as an institution with its organised and covenanted means of grace; and, secondly, through his free, direct, immediate action on the soul. The former way is pre-eminently social; it tells the Christian that he is essentially a member of a great society, and offers him God's grace in virtue of that membership. Thus one great Sacrament grafts him into the Body of Christ's church, and another strengthens and refreshes him in a life of communion with Christ and with his fellow Christians; and in both sacraments it is the Spirit who is at work, the Spirit who sanctifies the water of baptism, and the Spirit who makes the bread and wine of the Eucharist to be the body and Blood of Christ. So, too, it is the Spirit who confirms, and the Sprit who absolves; the Spirit who brings the merits and blessings of Christ's Redemption to all the members of redeemed humanity. Here, then, the spirit dispenses the treasures of Grace which Christ in his universal aspect as the Saviour of mankind has committed to his Church, and which are the common heritage and privilege of all the members of that Church.

But, in the second place, there is another method by which he deals with us more especially as individuals, with the special difficulties, temptations, aspirations and vocations which mark the individual life. In addition to the common Christian life which we share with others there are the abysmal depths of our own distinct personality with its own peculiar trials and perplexities and longings. We, each of us, know these inner facts; " the spirit of man knoweth the things of a man," and can search and scrutinise them; but we are not left to this mere natural understanding of the facts of our personal nature; we have received, besides, the Spirit which is of God, which searches the deep things of God, and which can therefore give us a spiritual understanding of God's revelation to us. That is, we are not merely self-conscious beings who can be aware of our own problems and perplexities, but spiritual beings who can know and understand them in the light of God's truth, from a standpoint which cannot be attained or appreciated by the natural man, in the light and from the standpoint of God's Spirit who is also ours. The fellowship or communion of the Holy Ghost dwelling in us is the source and support of all genuine spiritual life. Our individual difficulties and perplexities, again, are largely due to the dualism of body and spirit which we know so well. In the state of discord and uncertainty which results, we cannot pray as we ought; but the spirit within us prays for us in sorrowful, inarticulate aspirations; and God, who searches our hearts, recognises in these groanings not mere human complaints but the "mind of the Spirit" who has fellowship with us; and they are acceptable to the Father, because it is his will that the Spirit should thus intercede in us and on our behalf. Spiritual life, then, in the life of the Holy spirit within us, a life which is in closest fellowship with our own, a life which takes our life up into itself, uttering our own aspirations after holiness and rendering them acceptable to the Father; and a life which gradually overcomes the dualism of body and soul-a dualism due to sin, communicating to us the first-fruits of that victory now, and giving us a blessed assurance of the complete redemption or adoption of the body at last; so that, this life ended, our mortal bodies may be quickened to everlasting life "through the Spirit who dwelleth in us."

I have quoted these passages, because in such utterances St. Paul gives us a great charter of mystical spiritual experience, as an aspiration-a battle, an adventure, a gradual transmutation of our nature under the Spirit's guidance, till it is able to stand complete and perfect before God at last.

This work of the Spirit in our hearts is an intensely individual work, in which each separate soul is dealt with in accordance with its special needs and capacities and difficulties and temptations. And because this spiritual experience is such a personal and individual matter, it cannot be defined or even described in general terms. It is just the consciousness of a fuller and more abundant life, a life coming to awareness of its own meaning and purpose and destiny, an eternal life, a life hid with Christ in God. Its notes are progress and simplicity: progress in the cleansing of our nature and in our readiness to learn fresh truths, and simplicity in committing ourselves wholeheartedly to the guidance and transmuting energy of the Holy spirit. Apart from the Spirit's work we fail in both point these points; we are the slaves of habit, and so fail to make progress in the spiritual life; and are fussy and self-assertive in our devotions, and so fail to attain to simplicity. Habit in spiritual life is intended to garner and express God's past revelations and commands, and to prepare us to receive fresh revelations and commands in the future; habits are not permanent mansions for our spirit, but rungs in a ladder by which it is to mount higher and higher towards God; and the Spirit of Life within us will make this progress possible. And so, too, we are to rest quietly upon God, waiting for indications of his will, without fussiness or self-assertion; and the Spirit within us will offer these silent aspirations, and speak in our name to God, and from God to us.

These, then, are the two great ways in which the Spirit works: through the sacred ordinances of the Church, by which grace is offered to all its members; and through his indwelling guidance of each individual soul. Sometimes people are not content to distinguish these two methods and spheres of his working, but insist on opposing them one to another as rival types of religion: institutional religion, on the one hand relying on external authority and proffering sacramental means of grace; and, on the other hand, spiritual religion illuminated by an inward light and supported by inner promptings of the Holy Ghost. But it is a fatal mistake to oppose or even contrast them; since the Holy Spirit works equally well in both. He dwells in the Church as an institution as well as in the individual soul; he gives to all alike the Sacraments of the Church, and then makes them effective for the individual needs of each. In the Blessed Sacrament he brings Christ to us: by his inner guidance he brings us to Christ. He trains the individual souls; yes, but the individual can only be trained to a full personal life through relationship with others in the great fellowship of the Church. Again, the Holy Spirit guides the Church as an organised visible Society and inspires her with ideas of perfection as the Heavenly Jerusalem; yes, but these ideals of perfection can only be realised in the inner life and character of her individual members. Institutional religion is only religion at all in as far as it is thus manifested in the lives of individuals; and individual mystical religion in its turn depends alike for directions and nourishment on the creeds and ordinances of the Church as an institution. The one sphere is as spiritual as the other; the two are, in fact, the work of one and the selfsame Spirit looked at from different angles. He dwells in the Church as a hole, and guides each individual member of it. Do not let us rend asunder aspects of religion which are essentially united in the unity of the Holy Ghost.

What we need to-day is to take the Creeds and ordinances and Sacraments of institutional religion, and make them the starting point for mystical devotion, so that Creeds and Sacraments may expand and grow into phases of mystical experience. Sacraments are not ends in themselves, but are strength and food enabling us to engage on a great spiritual adventure. In the boat of the Church we should push out into the deep on a voyage of discovery; the end of the adventure, and the goal of the discovery is God, not considered only as an object of faith, but also as a fact of experience. Like the shepherds, we shall go to Bethlehem to see those things which have been make known to us; like Mary, we shall ponder them in our hearts till they become living truths firing and enlightening our souls. The Holy spirit is the Spirit of Gospel and Creed and Sacrament; and, just because he is that, he is also the Spirit of life and progress, of adventure and discovery, revealing to us new aspects of truth, new modes of service, new avenues of devotion.

A great deal of the failure of religion to-day is due to the severance of these two methods of the Spirit's work. On the one hand there are people who accept the Creeds and frequent the Sacraments, but who say that they have no turn or capacity for meditation or anything of that sort, and whose religion tends to become formal and stereotyped and stagnant. They treat themselves in their general aspect as members of the Church, not in their individual personal aspect as souls who have to seek God and find and love Him on the special line to which the Spirit calls them.

And there are others who neglect the ordinances of the Church and her means of Grace, and practise what they call a spiritual religion of their own; and such religion is indeed a personal experience of the individual, but, cut off from the support and guidance of the Church, it lacks objectivity and authority, and tends to sink into private ideals and day-dreams, backed by a comfortable feeling of superiority to others who are in bondage to the Church. But in the unity of the Spirit the two sides, the inner and outer, the institutional and mystical, are held together, and combine to produce a religion which can reach out boldly into the sphere of spiritual adventure just because it rests on the Catholic convictions and the garnered experience of the Church. And when the two sides are thus joined together, when the Sacraments nourish and kindle the inner life in its quest for God, and when that inner life is itself lived in the communion and fellowship of the Church, religion will be more of a live thing than it is to-day. The God whom we seek in the inner life will be sought not as the source of selfish spiritual enjoyment for ourselves, but as the God and Father of others too, who calls us to the love and service of our brethren; and this love and service will be best and most effectual when the prayer of inward devotion is that from which it springs, since prayer is both the strongest help to service and also itself the most effective service that we can render to our neighbour.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is calling us now to a deeper and stronger and simpler form of religion. There is a widespread feeling of discontent with the formal observances of the past, the conventional modes of prayer and meditation and stereotyped rules of approach to God; a feeling also of the futility of attempting to argue or worry ourselves into a religious and devotional frame of mind. In some cases these feelings are leading people to despair of religion altogether; what they ought to do is to lead us to a religion which makes more of God and less of self, and which relies more wholly and more humbly on the gifts and guidance and presence of the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Life, within us. Then the Fellowship of the Holy ghost will be a constant assistance to us; then our prayers will be simpler and more trustful; our Communions will permeate and control our lives; and we shall be ascending step by step to a fuller experience of God'' presence and to greater joy in his service.

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