Divine Spirit of God was given to them when they believed. Ah! I
wonder if that is true about us professing Christians; if we are
aware in any measure of a higher life than our own having been
breathed into us; if we are aware in any measure of a Divine Spirit
dwelling in our spirits, moulding, lifting, enlightening, guiding,
constraining, and yet not coercing? We ought to be, 'Know ye not that
the Spirit dwelleth in you, except ye be rejected?' Brethren, it
seems to me to be of the very last importance, in this period of the
Church's history, that the proportion between the Church's teaching
as to the work of Christ on the Cross, and as to the consequent work
of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts and spirits, should be changed.
We must become more mystical if we are not to become less Christian.
And the fact that so many of us seem to imagine that the whole Gospel
lies in this, that 'He died for our sins according to the
Scriptures,' and have relegated the teaching that He, by His Spirit,
lives in us, if we are His disciples, to a less prominent place, has
done enormous harm, not only to the type of Christian life, but to
the conception of what Christianity is, both amongst those who
receive it, and amongst those who do not accept it, making it out to
be nothing more than a means of escape from the consequences of our
transgression, instead of recognising it for what it is, the
impartation of a new life which will flower into all beauty, and bear
fruit in all goodness.

There was a question put once to a group of disciples, in
astonishment and incredulity, by this Apostle, when he said to the
twelve disciples in Ephesus, 'Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you
believed?' The question might well be put to a multitude of
professing Christians amongst us, and I am afraid a great many of
them, if they answered truly, would answer as those disciples did,