The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 84

RE-CREATION

44 \vhich

would be untrue. To the Gentiles at Athens, St. Paul says: live and move and have our being." And again:

Him we

"In

For of His offspring we are." To say nothing of plant or aniis on earth no life, energy, law, atom, or element but the Almighty and Omnipresent God quickens and supports that life from moment to moment, causes that energy to work, and enforces that law. Suppose that for an instant God should cease to sustain and animate this life, these forces, and that law in that same The energy that proceeds from instant they would cease to be. God must therefore touch the creature in the very center of its Hence there is no being, whence, its whole existence must spring. sun, moon, nor star, no material, plant, or animal, and, in much higher sense, no man, skill, gift, or talent unless God touch and "

mal, there

;

support them

all.

coming into immediate contact with every creaanimate or inanimate, organic or inorganic, rational or irrational, that, according to the profound conception of the Word of God, is performed not by the Father, nor by the Son, but by the It is this

act of

ture,

Holy

Spirit.

And

work

of the

Holy

ent from that in which for

many

years the Church has looked upon

it.

this puts the

The general impression

grace only, and

is

Spirit in a light quite differ-

that His

work

refers to the life of

confined to regeneration and sanctification.

This due more or less to the well-known division of the Apostolic Creed by the Heidelberg Catechism, question 29, " How are these of God the articles divided?" which is answered " Into three parts Father and our creation, of God the Son and our redemption, and of God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification." And this, too, altho Ursinus, one of the authors of this catechism, had already declared, in his " Thesaurus," that " All the three Persons create and redeem and sanctify. But in these operations they observe this order that the Father creates of Himself by means of the Son; the Son creates by means of the Father; and the Holy Spirit by means of both." But since the deeper insight into the mystery of the adorable Trinity was gradually lost, and the pulpit's touch upon it became is

is

—

:

:

—

both rare and superficial, the Sabellian error naturally crept into the Church again,

viz.,

that there were three successive periods in

the activities of the divine Persons: First, that of the Father alone

creating the world and upholding the natural

was followed by a period

life of all things.

of activity for the Son,

This

when nature had

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