host woman." But if we once grasp the
thought that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person of infinite majesty, glory
and holiness and power, who in marvellous condescension has come into our
hearts to make His abode there and take possession of our lives and make
use of them, it will put us in the dust and keep us in the dust. I can
think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought
that a person of Divine majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready
to use even me.

It is of the highest importance from the standpoint of experience that we
know the Holy Spirit as a person. Thousands and tens of thousands of men
and women can testify to the blessing that has come into their own lives
as they have come to know the Holy Spirit, not merely as a gracious
influence (emanating, it is true, from God) but as a real Person, just as
real as Jesus Christ Himself, an ever-present, loving Friend and mighty
Helper, who is not only always by their side but dwells in their heart
every day and every hour and who is ready to undertake for them in every
emergency of life. Thousands of ministers, Christian workers and
Christians in the humblest spheres of life have spoken to me, or written
to me, of the complete transformation of their Christian experience that
came to them when they grasped the thought (not merely in a theological,
but in an experimental way) that the Holy Spirit was a Person and
consequently came to know Him.

There are at least four distinct lines of proof in the Bible that the Holy
Spirit is a person.

I. _All the distinctive characteristics of personality are ascribed to the
Holy Spirit in the Bible._

What are the distinctive characteristics, or marks, of personality?
Knowledge, feeling or emotion, and will. Any entity that thinks and feels
and wills is a person. When we say that the Holy Spirit is a person, there
are those who understand us to mean that the Holy Spirit has hands and
feet and eyes and ears and mouth, and so on, but these are not the
characteristics of personality but of corporeity. All of these
characteristics or marks of personality are repeatedly ascribed to the
Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments. We read in 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11,
"But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth
the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the
things of God knoweth no man, but