The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 27

— BY PROFESSOR WARFIELD

xxvii

range of the matter in its appropriate place in their completed But when monographs came to be written, they have tended to confine themselves to a single segment of the great cirtire

systems.

and thus we have had

cle;

treatises rather on, say, Regeneration,

or Justification, or Sanctification, on the Anointing of the Spirit, or the Intercession of the Spirit, or the Sealing of the Spirit, than on the

work

of the Spirit as a whole.

It

would be a great mistake

to

think of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as neglected, merely be-

cause

it

has been preferably presented under

parts, rather

than in

its entirety.

How

its

easily

several rubrics or

may

one

fall

into

by certain criticisms that have been recently passed upon the Westminster Confession of Faith which is (as a Puritan document was sure to be) very much a treatise on the work of the Spirit — as if it were deficient, in not having a chapter specifically devoted to " the Holy Spirit and His Work," The sole reason why it does not give a chapter to this subject, however, is because it prefers to give nine chapters to it and when an attempt was made to supply the fancied omission, it was found that pretty much all that could be done was to present in the proposed new chapter a meager summary of the contents of these nine chapters. It would have been more plausible, indeed, to say that the Westminster Confession comparatively neglected the work of Christ, or even the work of God the Father. Similarly the lack in such an error

is fairly illustrated

;

our literature of a large

work

of the

Holy

number

of comprehensive treatises on the

Spirit is in part

due to the richness of our

ture in treatises on the separate portions of that work severally.

litera-

The

Kuyper's book is, therefore, in part due only to the fact that he has had the courage to attack and the gifts successfully to accomplish a task which few have possessed the breadth either of outlook or of powers to undertake. And it is no small gain to be able to survey the whole field of the work of the Holy Spirit in its organic unity under the guidance of so fertile, so systematic, and so practical a mind. If we can notlook upon it as breaking entirely new ground, or even say that it is the only work of its kind since Owen, we can at least say that it brings together the material significance of Dr.

belonging to this great topic with a systematizing genius that is very rare, and presents it with a penetrating appreciation of its

meaning and a richness

of apprehension of its relations that is ex-

ceedingly illuminating. It is

to be observed that

we have not

said without qualification

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