y because he cannot believe, but when the Holy Spirit touches a
man's heart, he no longer looks upon unbelief as a mark of intellectual
superiority; he does not look upon it as a mere misfortune; he sees it as
the most daring, decisive and damning of all sins and is overwhelmed with
a sense of his awful guilt in that he had not believed on the name of the
only begotten Son of God.

II. But the Holy Spirit not only convicts of sin, _He convicts in respect
of righteousness_.

He convicts the world in respect of righteousness because Jesus Christ has
gone to the Father, that is He convicts (convinces with a convincing that
is self-condemning) the world of Christ's righteousness attested by His
going to the Father. The coming of the Spirit is in itself a proof that
Christ has gone to the Father (cf. Acts ii. 33) and the Holy Spirit thus
opens our eyes to see that Jesus Christ, whom the world condemned as an
evil-doer, was indeed the righteous One. The Father sets the stamp of His
approval upon His character and claims by raising Him from the dead and
exalting Him to His own right hand and giving to Him a name that is above
every name. The world at large to-day claims to believe in the
righteousness of Christ but it does not really believe in the
righteousness of Christ: it has no adequate conception of the
righteousness of Christ. The righteousness which the world attributes to
Christ is not the righteousness which God attributes to Him, but a poor
human righteousness, perhaps a little better than our own. The world loves
to put the names of other men that it considers good alongside the name of
Jesus Christ. But when the Spirit of God comes to a man, He convinces him
of the righteousness of Christ; He opens his eyes to see Jesus Christ
standing absolutely alone, not only far above all men but "far above all
principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is
named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come" (Eph. i.
21).

III. The Holy Spirit also convicts the world of judgment.

The ground upon which the Holy Spirit convinces men of judgment is upon
the ground of the fact that "the Prince of this world hath been judged"
(John xvi. 11). When Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross, it seemed as if
He were judged there, but in reality it was the Prince of this world who
was judged at the cross, and, by raising Jesus Christ from the dead, the
Father made it plain to all coming ages that the c