works of the law or by the hearing of faith?" (3: 2). "That ye
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (3: 14). These
texts seem to imply that just as there is a "faith toward our Lord
Jesus Christ" for salvation, there is a faith toward the Holy Ghost for
power and consecration.

If we turn from New Testament teaching to New Testament example we are
strongly confirmed in this impression. We begin with that striking
incident in the nineteenth chapter of Acts. Paul, having found certain
disciples at Ephesus, said unto them: "Did ye receive the Holy Ghost
when ye believed? And they said unto him, Nay; we did not so much as
hear whether there is a Holy Ghost." This passage seems decisive as
showing that one may be a disciple without having entered into
possession of the Spirit as God's gift to believers. Some admit this,
who yet deny any possible application of the incident to our own times,
alleging that it is the miraculous gifts of the Spirit which are here
under consideration, since, after recording that when Paul had laid his
hands upon them and "the Holy Ghost came upon them," it is added that
"they spake with tongues and prophesied." All that need be said upon
this point is simply that these Ephesian disciples, by the reception of
the Spirit, came into the same condition with the upper-room disciples
who {72} received him some twenty years before, and of whom it is
written that "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to
speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." In other
words, these Ephesian disciples on receiving the Holy Ghost exhibited
the traits of the Spirit common to the other disciples of the apostolic
age.

Whether those traits--the speaking of tongues and the working of
miracles--were intended to be perpetual or not we do not here discuss.
But that the presence of the personal Holy Spirit in the church was
intended to be perpetual there can be no question. And whatsoever
relations believers held to that Spirit in the beginning they have a
right to claim to-day. We must withhold our consent from the
inconsistent exegesis which would make the water baptism of the
apostolic times still rigidly binding, but would relegate the baptism
in the Spirit to a bygone dispensation. We hold indeed, that Pentecost
was once for all, but equally that the appropriation of the Spirit by
believers is always for all, and that the shutting up of certain great
blessings