O Jesu, grant that the ministry of Thy Church may evermore be true to the operation of Thy Holy Spirit. Oh, since Thou hast called me to have part therein, suffer me not to act in anything save as Thy Holy Spirit of life requires.

My son, great is My joy when the ministrations of My Body are carried into effect according to the truth of holy discipline. Then does the Eternal Spirit manifest is Divine power in that which is done. But when Mine Apostles are unfaithful then is My Spirit grieved, and Ny work is hindered, and My people, even Mine own members, pine, and the world thinks scorn of Me, and the powers of darkness prevail over souls whom I redeemed.

O Lord, evermore let me hold fast to Thee as the Head of the Body, that I may experience in all I do the energy of Thy risen and glorious life.

Yea, My son, because I live, ye live also, and this life wherewith ye live is My very

own.

Glory be to Thee, O Lord, according to the power of that resurrection wherein Thou dost appear to us. Grant that we may duly value all the ministrations of Thy grace, because thereby we are sustained in active fellowship with Thyself as our Head.

Yea, My son, separated from Me ye can do nothing, but I am verily the Head of the Body, the Church, and that which is done by My Church is done by Myself. If I do it not, it is found to be nothing and comes to nought. That which is done by Me abides for ever.

O let me always look up to Thee, that the acts of my ministry may be made effectual according to Thy wisdom by the power of Thy grace.

Behold Me acting by the Person of the Holy Ghost in one and all of My members, and rejoice in that which is done whether by thyself or by any other, for it is My doing, for He who does if, whether in thee or in them, comes from Me to do it in My name.

Even so, Lord Jesu. O Blessed Spirit of Christ, bind me evermore in the communion of saints, and so let me lose all thought of self. In myself I am dead, but in the fellowship of Thy living power, Thou callest me to share with all the saints the glory of the risen Lord.

MEDITATION XLIV.

The Gift of the Holy Ghost.

Jesus therefore said to them again, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.-St. John xx. 21, 22.

1. THE HOLY GHOST CONSUBSTANTIALLY

COMMUNICATED.

THE Breath of Jesus was the communication of the Holy Ghost, for the Holy Ghost is the Spiritual Agent of the Son of God in all His actions. The Divine Breath never can be without a personal principle. It never can be an impersonal emanation, a thing, a cloud, a motion, separate from the personal life of the Godhead. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, sustaining in Divine life that which the Son of God does.

We must, however, take this truth in connection with what our Lord says, viz., that the Holy Ghost cannot come to the disciples until He has Himself departed from them. This gift of the Holy Ghost is therefore not what we properly understand by the Personal descent of the Holy Ghost. It was an operation of the Holy Ghost within the sphere of our Lord's humanity. The Breathing was a human act to which the Divine Spirit gave efficacy. It was not, as the subsequent mission of the Holy Ghost, an

act of personal Divine authority. We may take this act as the last act of our Lord while acting in subjection to the anointing Spirit, or as the first act of His Spirit in the moment of His glorification.

Jesus had already given His Body and Blood to His Apostles, but that Body and Blood as yet unglorified had not the property of Self-communication. The Flesh of Christ cannot thus act save by the quickening power of the indwelling Spirit, and that power does not result simply from the hypostatic union. The Flesh of Christ acquires this power as an element of its glorification, having passed through death. Until He died and rose again our Lord expressly assures us that His Body must be like the corn of wheat which abideth alone (St. John xii. 24).

When our Lord rose again, His Body did not merely begin to exist with a power of life different from the breath of nature and a quality of substance freed from the laws of matter, but it also acquired, probably by gradual increase in the various stages of His ascension, the property of uniting other substances to its own spiritual being and communicating the power of the Spirit of Life whereby that Flesh itself was living.

As the Apostles had received into their bodies. the Body of Christ, that Body in them must have participated in the changes to which it was subjected by our Lord's death and resurrection. Our Lord appeared in the midst of them having a spiritual Body. He breathed on them with the Breath of God. That exercise of the spiritual power of His Body must have been operating within them

as well as outside of them. The Breathing which they witnessed upon their outer frame must have been the expression of a Self-communicating energy acting upon them interiorly.

The effect of our Lord's Breathing would thus be different upon the Apostles who had received His Body, from what it was upon the other disciples who had no preparatory gift of communion with Christ's Body. The initial Eucharist of which they had partaken before the Passion would put them in a different position with reference to this Breathing from what could be occupied by any one else. This substance fitted them to be the foundation of the Church of God, as living stones primarily related to the Living Stone which is the one foundation, the nucleus of life. The Spirit of Christ would unite the others in the fellowship of the same Body, and the previous gift of the Body to the Apostles may have had an important effect in accomplishing the work of incorporation. We may be sure, however little we may be able to know respecting such a process, that the previous sacramental gift could not be without some effect. Reverently we may speculate upon the mode of its operation, although we are obliged to confess our ignorance. The words are true of the Mystical Body of Christ thus sacramentally constituted which are written concerning the formation of the natural frame, Thine eyes did see My substance yet being imperfect, and in Thy Book were all My members written which day by day were fashioned when as yet there was none of them (Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16).