he
contradiction.

The indignant questions of my text may be taken, with a little possibly
permissible violence, as expressing and dismissing some untrue
explanations. One explanation that sometimes is urged is, the Spirit of
the Lord _is_ straitened. That explanation takes two forms. Sometimes
you hear people saying, 'Christianity is effete. We have to go now to
fresh fountains of inspiration, and turn away from these broken cisterns
that can hold no water.' I am not going to argue that question. I do not
think for my part that Christianity will be effete until the world has
got up to it and beyond it in its practice, and it will be a good while
before that happens. Christianity will not be worn out until men have
copied and reduced to practice the example of Jesus Christ, and they
have not quite got that length yet. No shadow of a fear that the gospel
has lost its power, or that God's Spirit has become weak, should be
permitted to creep over our hearts. The promise is, 'I will send
another Comforter, and He shall abide with you _for ever_.' It is a
permanent gift that was given to the Church on that day. We have to
distinguish in the story between the symbols, the gift, and the
consequences of the gift. The first and the last are transient, the
second is permanent. The symbols were transient. The people who came
running together saw no tongues of fire. The consequences were
transient. The tongues and the miraculous utterances were but for a
time. The results vary according to the circumstances; but the central
thing, the gift itself, is an irrevocable gift, and once bestowed is
ever with the Church to all generations.

Another form of the explanation is the theory that God in His
sovereignty is pleased to withhold His Spirit for reasons which we
cannot trace. But it is not true that the gift once given varies in the
degree in which it is continued. There is always the same flow from God.
There are ebbs and flows in the spiritual power of the Church. Yes! and
the tide runs out of your harbours. Is there any less water in the sea
because it does? So the gift may ebb away from a man, from a community,
from an epoch, not because God's manifestation and bestowment fluctuate,
but because our receptivity changes. So we dismiss, and are bound to
dismiss, if we are Christians, the unbelieving explanation, 'The Spirit
of the Lord is straitened,' and not to sit with our hands folded, as if
an inscrutable sovereignty, with whic