The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 26

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

xxvi

when he appears again before us; he seems rather be one of our own prophets to whose message we have a certain right, and a new book from whose hands we welcome as we would a new gift from our near friend charged in a sense with care for our welfare. The book that is at present offered to the vorable notice,

now

to

American public does not indeed come fresh from his hands. It has already been within the reach of his Dutch audience for more than a decade ever, that Dr.

(it was published in 1888), Kuyper has come to belong

It is

only recently, how-

and the pubbook in English, we may hope, is only another step in the process which will gradually make all his message ours. Certainly no one will turn over the pages of this volume much less will he, as our Jewish friends would say, " sink himself into the book" without perceiving that it is a very valuable gift which comes to us in it from our newly found teacher. It is, as will be at once observed, a comprehensive treatise on the Work of the Holy Ghost — a theme higher than which none can occupy the attention of the Christian man, and yet one on which really comprehensive to us also,

lication of this

—

—

treatises are comparatively rare.

It is easy, to

be sure, to exag-

There never was a time, of course, when Christians did not confess their faith in the Holy Ghost and there never was a time when they did not speak to one another of the work of the Blessed Spirit, the Executor of the Godhead not only in the creation and upholding of the worlds and in the inspiration of the prophets and apostles, but also in the regenerating and sanctifying of the soul. Nor has there ever been a time when, in the prosecution of its task of realizing mentally the gerate the significance of the latter fact.

;

treasures of truth put in

its

charge in the Scriptural revelation, the

Church has not busied itself also with the investigation of the mysteries of the person and work of the Spirit; and especially has there never been a time since that tremendous revival of religion which we call the Reformation when the whole work of the Spirit in the application of the redemption wrought out by Christ has not been a topic of the most thorough and loving study of Christian men. Indeed,

it

partly arises out of the very intensity of the study given

few comprehensive have been written. The subject has seemed so vast, the ramifications of it have appeared so farreaching, that few have had the courage to undertake it as a whole. Dogmaticians have, to be sure, been compelled to present the en-

to the saving activities of the Spirit that so treatises on the

work

of the Spirit

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