For ever closed to all but Thee;
Seal Thou my breast, and I shall wear
The pledge of love for ever there.
XIII
The Baptism of the Spirit
'And suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.... And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.' (Acts ii. 2, 4.)
The Holy Ghost is the active force in all spiritual life. It is, therefore, important that we should realize the close connexion between the experience of Holiness and that 'Promise of the Father' for which the early disciples were to wait. All followers of Jesus should realize, as truly as the disciples did on that historic day, that their day of Pentecost has fully come, and each of us should be able to say, 'Not only was the Holy Ghost outpoured upon the waiting host in that Jewish centre, but Pentecost has come to my heart. The Spirit of the living God has come to me.'
Now, whatever manifestations of the Holy Ghost there might have been in Old Testament times—and without question there were some wonderful displays—the age in which we live is the dispensation of the Holy Ghost for us. Our Lord said that He should come to convince the world of sin, and to produce many other mighty effects.
To my mind, that Pentecostal event was like the launching of God's great campaign for the evangelization of the world. The world without the Holy Ghost would be as dark, spiritually, as the material world was in the beginning before the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, 'Let there be light'.