ianity? without the Christian religion? without
the Church?

But before these questions can be answered, we must define, it is
discovered, what we mean by Christianity, the Christian religion, the
Church.

And it is found--or I at least believe it will be found--more safe and
wise to ask a deeper and yet a simpler question still: What would the
world have been without that influence on which Christianity, and
religion, and the Church depend? What would the world have been without
the Holy Spirit of God?

But some will say: This is a more abstruse question still. How can you
define, how can you analyse, the Spirit of God? Nay, more, how can you
prove its existence?--Such questioners have been, as it were, baptized
unto John's baptism. They are very glad to see people do right, and not
do wrong, from any well-calculated motives, or wholesome and pleasant
emotions. But they have not as yet heard whether there be any Holy
Spirit.

We can only answer, Just so. This Holy Spirit in Whom we believe defies
all analysis, all definition whatsoever. His nature can be brought under
no terms derived from human emotions or motives. He is literally
invisible; as invisible to the conception of the brain as He is to the
bodily eye. His presence is proved only by its effects. The Spirit
bloweth whither it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but thou
canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth.

Such words must sound as dreams to those analytical philosophers who
allow nothing in man below the sphere of consciousness, actual or
possible; who have dissected the human mind till they find in it no
personal will, no indestructible and spiritual self, but a character
which is only the net result of innumerable states of consciousness; who
hold that man's outward actions, and also his inmost instincts, are all
the result either of calculations about profit and loss, pleasure and
pain, or of emotions, whether hereditary or acquired. Ignoring the deep
and ancient distinction, which no one ever brought out so clearly as St
Paul, between the flesh and the spirit, they hold that man is flesh, and
can be nothing more; that each person is not really a person, but is the
consequence of his brain and nerves; and having thus, by logical
analysis, got rid of the spirit of man, their reason and their conscience
quite honestly and consistently see no need for, or possibility of, a
Spirit of God, to ennoble and enable the h