otographer's plate has been prepared, there can be no picture until
his subject steps into his place and stands before him. Our Saviour's
redemptive work was not completed when he died on the cross, or when he
rose from the dead, or even when he ascended from the brow of Olivet.
Not until he sat down in his Father's throne, summing up all his ministry
in himself,--"I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive
forevermore,"--did the full Christ stand ready to be communicated to his
church.[5] By the first Adam's sin, God's communion with man through the
Holy Ghost was broken, and their union ruptured. When the second Adam
came up from his cross and resurrection, and took his place at God's
right hand, there was a restoration of this broken fellowship. Very
beautiful are {31} the words of our risen Lord as bearing on this point:
"I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."[6] The
place which the divine Son had won for himself in the Father's heart, he
had won for us also. All of acceptance and standing and privilege which
was now his, was ours too, by redemptive right; and the Holy Ghost is
sent down to confirm and realize to us what he had won for us. Without
the expiatory work of Christ for us, the sanctifying work of the Spirit
in us were impossible; and on the other hand, without the work of the
Spirit within us, the work of Christ for us were without avail.

"_And when the day of Pentecost was fully come._" What these words mean
historically, typically, and doctrinally, we are now prepared to see.
The true wave sheaf had been presented in the temple on high. Christ the
first-fruits, brought from the grave on "the morrow after the Sabbath,"
or the first day of the week, now stands before God accepted on our
behalf; the seven Sabbaths from the resurrection day have been counted,
and Pentecost has come. Then suddenly, to those who were "all of one
accord in one place," "there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing
mighty wind, and it filled all {32} the house where they were sitting,
and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and sat
upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." As the
manger of Bethlehem was the cradle of the Son of God, so was the upper
room the cradle of the Spirit of God; as the advent of "the Holy Child"
was a testimony that God had "visited and redeemed his people," so was
the coming of the Holy Ghost. The fact that