e inner circle, but these greatly
increased crowds,--all this said one thing in clear unanswerable tones
of unmistakable power, _Christ is crowned_.[4] For the sending down of
the Holy Spirit was the act of the crowned Christ.

And every touch of the Holy Spirit's presence within trusting
hearts,--the sweet peace, the quiet assurance, the longing for purity,
the drawing away to prayer, the hunger for God's Word, the intense
desire to have others saved, the passion to please this wondrous God of
ours,--all these simple marks of the Holy Spirit's presence in our
hearts, all tell us, and each tells us, in unmistakable tones, that
Christ is crowned. For this wondrous Spirit within is the gift of the
crowned Christ.

When Jesus went up from the earth, holding as His sure captive the
captivity of suffering and death to which He had with such great
strength yielded, He received gifts, coronation gifts. The Father gave
Him all. He gave Him the disposal and control of all. This was the
crowning.

And in His great out-reaching love Christ received these gifts _on
behalf of men_, His blood brothers. And at once He gave to men, to His
trusting disciples, the all-inclusive gift, the Holy Spirit, His
coronation gift.[5] So God came anew to dwell with men as originally
planned.

This blessed Presence within tells me, by His mere presence, that Christ
is crowned.

The writers of the New Testament make a chorus of sweet music on this
chord, ringing out in clear tones the full notes of delight and joy.
Luke's simple narrative sounds the note four times. Paul swells it out
with a joyous fulness that grows in volume and intensity as his
narrowing prison walls shut out more and more the lower lights, and
centres his upward gaze upon Jesus, "far above all rule, and authority,
and power, and dominion, and every name that is named," with "all things
in subjection under His feet."[6] John's special companion and working
partner, Peter, makes this note blend with and dominate the minor chord
of suffering for Christ's sake.[7]

The Christian Hebrew who wrote so eloquently to his fellow-countrymen of
the immense superiority of Jesus and so modestly withheld his own name,
strikes this note five times with strong, clear touch.[8] He quotes
that Eighth Psalm, which so wonderfully gives God's own ideal for man's
mastery over all creation. And then he tells us that in Jesus the ideal
will yet be fully realized. And that while the whole plan has