If it be true,
that to every one of us is given _the_ grace, how comes it that so many
of us dare not profess to have any vivid remembrance of possessing it,
of having possessed it, or of any clear consciousness of possessing it
now? There may be gifts bestowed upon unconscious receivers, but surely
this is not one of these. If we do not know that we have it, it must at
least remain very questionable whether we do have it at all, and very
certain that we have it in scant and shrivelled fashion.

The universality of the gift was a startling thing in a world which, as
far as cultivated heathenism was concerned, might rightly be called
aristocratic, and by the side of a religion of privilege into which
Judaism had degenerated. The supercilious sarcasm in the lips of
Pharisees, 'This people which knoweth not the law are cursed,' but too
truly expresses the gulf between the Rabbis and the 'folk of the earth'
as the masses were commonly and contemptuously designated by the former.
Into the midst of a society in which such distinctions prevailed, the
proclamation that the greatest gift was bestowed upon all must have come
with revolutionary force, and been hailed as emancipation. Peter had
penetrated to grasp the full meaning and wondrous novelty of that
universality, when on Pentecost he pointed to 'that which had been
spoken by the prophet Joel' as fulfilled on that day, 'I will pour forth
of my Spirit upon all flesh ... Yea, and on my servants and handmaidens
... will I pour forth of my Spirit.' The rushing, mighty wind of that
day soon dropped. The fiery tongues ceased to quiver on the disciples'
heads, and the many voices that spoke were silenced, but the gift was
permanent, and is poured out now as it was then, and now, as then, it is
true that the whole company of believers receive the Spirit, though
alas! by their own faults it is not true that 'they are all _filled_
with the Holy Spirit.'

Christ is the giver. He has 'power over the Spirit of Holiness' and as
the Evangelist has said in his comment on our Lord's great words, when
'He stood and cried,' 'If any man thirst let him come unto Me and
drink,' 'This spake He of the Spirit which they that believed on Him
were to receive.' We cannot pierce into the depth of the mutual
relations of the three divine Persons mentioned in the context, but we
can discern that Christ is for us the self-revealing activity of the
divine nature, the right arm of the Father, or, to use