source. Reflect upon those profound words of our Lord: 'The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but
canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. So is every one
that is born of the Spirit.' They describe first the operation of the
life-giving Spirit, but they describe also the characteristics of the
resulting life.

'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' That spiritual life, both in the
divine source and in the human recipient, is its own law. Of course
the wind has its laws, as every physical agent has; but these are so
complicated and undiscovered that it has always been the very symbol
of freedom, and poets have spoken of these 'chartered libertines,'
the winds, and 'free as the air' has become a proverb. So that Divine
Spirit is limited by no human conditions or laws, but dispenses His
gifts in superb disregard of conventionalities and externalisms. Just
as the lower gift of what we call 'genius' is above all limits of
culture or education or position, and falls on a wool-stapler in
Stratford-on-Avon, or on a ploughman in Ayrshire, so, in a similar
manner, the altogether different gift of the divine, life-giving
Spirit follows no lines that Churches or institutions draw. It falls
upon an Augustinian monk in a convent, and he shakes Europe. It falls
upon a tinker in Bedford gaol, and he writes _Pilgrim's Progress_. It
falls upon a cobbler in Kettering, and he founds modern Christian
missions. It blows 'where it listeth,' sovereignly indifferent to the
expectations and limitations and the externalisms, even of organised
Christianity, and touching this man and that man, not arbitrarily but
according to 'the good pleasure' that is a law to itself, because it
is perfect in wisdom and in goodness.

And as thus the life-giving Spirit imparts Himself according to