bidden of the _Holy Ghost_ to
preach the gospel in Asia. . . They assayed to go into Bithynia but
_the Spirit suffered them not_" (16: 6, 7).

Very striking is this record of the ever-present, unfailing, and minute
direction of the Holy Ghost in all the steps of this divine enterprise.
"But this was in apostolic days," it will be said. Yes; but the
promise of the Spirit is that "He shall abide with you for the age."
Unless the age has ended he is still here, and still in office, and
still entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out that work which
is dearest to the heart of our glorified Lord. Who can say that there
is not need in these days of a return to primitive methods and of a
resumption of the Church's primitive endowments? The Holy Spirit is
not straitened in himself, but only in us. If the Church had faith to
lean less on human wisdom, to trust less in prudential methods, to
administer less by mechanical {162} rules, and to recognize once more
the great fact that, having committed to her a supernatural work, she
has appointed for her a supernatural power, who can doubt that the
grinding and groaning of our cumbrous missionary machinery would be
vastly lessened, and the demonstration of the Spirit be far more
apparent?

[1] Of course Catholic writers claim that the pope is the "Vicar of
Christ" only as being the mouth-piece of the Holy Ghost. But the
Spirit has been given to the church as a whole, that is to the body of
regenerated believers, and to every member of that body according to
his measure. The sin of sacerdotalism is, that it arrogates for a
usurping few that which belongs to every member of Christ's mystical
body. It is a suggestive fact that the name _kleros_, which Peter
gives to the church as the "flock of God," when warning the elders
against being _lords over God's heritage_, now appears in
ecclesiastical usage as the _clergy_, with its orders of pontiff and
prelates and lord bishops, whose appointed function it is to exercise
lordship over Christ's flock.

[2] By the candlesticks being seven instead of one, as in the
tabernacle, we are taught that whereas in the Jewish dispensation,
God's visible church was one, in the Gentile dispensation there are
many visible churches; and that Christ himself recognizes them
alike.--_Canon Garratt, "Commentary on the Revelation," p. 32._

[3] "The Work of the Holy Spirit in Man," by Pastor G. F. Tophel, p. 66.

[4] It was impossible u