Now let us appeal to the Divine Word.  When the apostle Peter promised “the gift of the Spirit,” he followed it with the words, “For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all them that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.”  He distinctly states that the gift of the Spirit is in fulfillment of “the promise.”  Now, is there in the Scripture any promise of a personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a result of obedience?  Let us search the words of the Master.  In Luke 11:13 our Lord says:  “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” This passage may be disposed of by saying that in the original it is a holy spirit and does not refer to the Holy Spirit at all.  It represents God’s willingness to give a holy disposition.  Matthew explains it in the words “good gifts to them that ask him.”  In John 7:38, 39 we have recorded another promise:  “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.  But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive:  for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.”  This is evidently a supernatural gift, as he represents the recipient of it as a fountain from which flows rivers of living water.  This is obviously not true of us to-day.  Our Saviour also dates the bestowal as following his glorification, or on the day of Pentecost.  In Mark 16:16-18:  “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned.  And these signs shall accompany them that believe:  in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”  These five things that accompanied the believers are all supernatural.  Of the three promises of Jesus—­which are all that are recorded in the New Testament—­only two refer to the Holy Spirit, and both of these to its supernatural manifestation.

If we go back of the Saviour to the Old Testament, we find a distinct promise of the gift of the Spirit:  “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:  and also upon the servants and upon the hand-maids in those days will I pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28, 29).  This promise is the one quoted by Peter to explain the manifestations on the day of Pentecost to the people drawn together by that wonderful event.  From it he delivers by the Spirit a sermon on the claims of our Lord.  He shows that they had taken the Lord by wicked hands and had crucified and slain him; that God had raised him from the dead