ght, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

This is Isaiah's description of the Spirit of Whitsuntide; the royal
Spirit which was to descend, and did descend without measure, on the
ideal and perfect King, even on Jesus Christ our Lord, the only-begotten
Son of God.

That Spirit is the Spirit of God; and therefore the Spirit of Christ.

Let us consider a while what that Spirit is.

He is the Spirit of love. For God is love; and He is the Spirit of God.
Of that there can be no doubt.

He is the Spirit of boundless love and charity, which is the Spirit of
the Father, and the Spirit of the Son likewise. For when by that Spirit
of love the Father sent the Son into the world that the world through Him
might be saved, then the Son, by the same Spirit of love, came into the
world, and humbled Himself, and took on Him the form of a slave, and was
obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.

The Spirit of God, then, is the Spirit of love.

But the text describes this Spirit in different words. According to
Isaiah, the Spirit of the Lord is the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of Counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear
of the Lord--in one word, that I may put it as simply as I can--the
spirit of wisdom.

Now, is the spirit of wisdom the same as the spirit of love?

Sound theology, which is the highest reason, tells us that it must be so.
For consider:

If the spirit of love is the Spirit of God, and the spirit of wisdom is
the Spirit of God, then they must be the same spirit. For if they be two
different spirits, then there must be two Holy Spirits; for any and every
Spirit of God must be holy,--what else can He be? Unholy? I leave you
to answer that.

But two Holy Spirits there cannot be; for holiness, which is wisdom,
justice, and love, is one and indivisible; and as the Athanasian Creed
tells us, and as our highest reason ought to tell us, there is but one
Holy Spirit, who must be at once a spirit of wisdom and a spirit of love.

To suppose anything else; to suppose that God's wisdom and God's love, or
that God's justice and God's love, are different from each other, or
limit each other, or oppose each other, or are anything but one and the
same eternally, is to divide God's substance; to deny that God is One:
which is forbidden us, rightly, and according to the highest reason, by
the Athanasian Creed.

But more; experience will shew us that the spi