evangelization of the world. The world without
the Holy Ghost would be as dark, spiritually, as the material world was
in the beginning before the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,
and God said, 'Let there be light'.

Going over Peter's sermon on that occasion, we find him quoting Joel's
very wonderful prophecy, claiming its fulfilment that day. And amongst
all the glorious truths that have been proclaimed in our own time,
there is none grander than that God will dwell with men--yea, the
Spirit of God will dwell _in_ men.

You cannot read your Bibles, nor look through the books of human
experience, without seeing that God's great purpose in the outpouring
of the Spirit was the setting up of His Kingdom upon the earth. And we
see that as the Son of God humbled Himself to earth's poverty,
ignominy, and death, to redeem men, so the Holy Ghost is sent to be the
great operating force in leading the world back to God. The hope of the
world is in the presence of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ.

_It is so in relation to the individual soul._ The Holy Ghost stands at
the door of the Kingdom of God, either to bar the entrance or to fit
the soul to enter. You remember the Saviour's words to Nicodemus,
'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the
kingdom of God'. There is, and can be, no entrance without conversion.

'No man', says Paul, 'can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.' And
when some would have put outward religion or the profession of it in
the place of this conversion, the deciding point was stated in
unmistakable terms: 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of His.' The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of
Health, the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Power, and there would be no
hope for the human soul or the individual life apart from His gracious
presence and influence.

This matter cannot be explained in terms of ordinary language, but it
is none the less real and definite in human experience. To Nicodemus,
Jesus said, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit'. The Spirit, like
the wind, is mysterious in movement, uncontrolled by human restriction,
and yet its influences are all-pervading. The courses of the wind are
to be discerned by the effects; equally so will the Spirit's
operations; mysterious, unfettered, unexp