ing come to the brazen altar, we might
expect a rebuking voice to be heard from heaven: "Not yet the washing of
water"; and such a saying would signify exactly the same as: "Not yet the
Holy Ghost."

Again, when the leper was to be cleansed, observe that the blood was to
be put upon the tip of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and
the great toe of his right foot; and then the oil was to be put upon the
right ear, the right thumb, and the right foot--_the oil upon the blood
of the trespass-offering_ (Lev. 14). Never, we venture to say, in all
the manifold repetitions of this divine ceremony, was this order once
inverted, so that the oil was first applied, and then the blood; which
means, interpreting type into antitype, that it was impossible that
Pentecost could have preceded Calvary, or {29} that the outpouring of the
Spirit should have anticipated the shedding of the blood.

Then let us reflect, that not only the order of these two great events of
redemption was fixed from the beginning, but their dates were marked in
the calendar of typical time. The slaying of the paschal lamb told to
generation after generation, though they knew it not, the day of the year
and week on which Christ our Passover should be sacrificed for us. The
presentation of the wave sheaf before the Lord, "_on the morrow after the
Sabbath_"[1] had for long centuries fixed the time of our Lord's
resurrection on the first day of the week. And the command to "count
from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf
of the wave offering, _seven Sabbaths_,"[4] determined the day of
Pentecost as the time of the descent of the Spirit. We sometimes think
of the disciples waiting for an indefinite period in that upper room for
the fulfillment of the promise of the Father; but the time had been fixed
not only with God in eternity, but in the calendar of the Hebrew ritual
upon earth. They tarried in prayer for ten days, simply because after
the forty days of the Lord's sojourn on earth subsequent to his
resurrection, ten days remained of the "seven Sabbaths" period.

To sum up what we are saying: The Spirit of God is the successor of the
Son of God in his {30} official ministry on earth. Until Christ's
earthly work for his church had been finished, the Spirit's work in this
world could not properly begin. The office of the Holy Ghost is to
communicate Christ to us--Christ in his entireness. However perfectly
the ph