need for a New Testament if all men possess this Paraclete? How can one
man deny the claims of another whom he admits to be divinely guided into
all truth?

Some have thought that Christ bestowed the Paraclete upon the apostles
when he breathed upon them and said: "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." At
best that was a prophetic and not an actual bestowal, for after that
onbreathing we find Peter (Acts I) calling upon the assembly of brethren
to _take a vote_ as to who should succeed Judas in the apostolic
college. If he had possessed the Paraclete at that time, he would not
have been compelled to resort to the judgment of his brethren to
determine such a question. Moreover, Christ indicated when the Paraclete
would come, by stating the work that would follow his coming: "_When he
is come_ he shall convict the world [age] of sin, of righteousness and
of judgment." How did he do this?

1. His first act at his coming was to baptize the apostles in the Spirit
and endow them with the Paraclete. "Ye shall be baptized in the Holy
Spirit not many days hence" (Acts 1:5).

2. When the Spirit baptized these apostles with divine guidance he began
his work of convicting the world through them.

(1) _To convict the world of sin_. Not of sin in general. It is a
mistaken idea that the Spirit is sent to personally convict a man of the
sin of lying, stealing or defrauding his neighbor. When I was a boy in
old Kentucky the colored people used to hold great revivals; they
generally selected corn-planting-time or harvest-time for these
meetings. Many of them would lie for days in a cataleptic condition,
which, they said, was a "conviction of the Spirit." A man would go