For several years our mind has been laboring to invent some concise expression for the sum of all the offices of the Third Person of the Trinity, in the transformation, sanctification, and habitation of souls who fully believe in Christ Jesus. At last Dr. Hodge, [President of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Princeton, N.J. U.S.A.] has struck out with his die the very coin which our own mint has failed to stamp and contribute to the currency of Christian experience and theological discussion. "The Holy Ghost is the Executive of the Godhead." We telegraph our thanks to Princeton. May Dr. Hodge's mint continue to pour out its golden coin into our religious literature for many years more. This clear cut conception and expression of the work of the Spirit is exceedingly beautiful because it is indisputably true. Law emanates from the Father, and mercy and judgment are committed to the Son, while the Executive of both Persons is the ever blessed Spirit. Here we have the three departments of government: the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. Through the Holy Spirit the Father and the Son operate on human souls, reproving, regenerating, witnessing and sanctifying. We now see how a person may honor the Father, and in a measure the Son, and yet fail of obtaining the highest spiritual grace through a failure to honor the Holy Ghost, the blessed Comforter; just as a man may show all proper respect to the lawmaking and law-interpreting departments of our own government, and secure their action, and then miss his purpose at last by ignoring the last link necessary to its realization — the executive officer, without whose agency statutes and courts are ineffectual. We fear that there are many Christians who inadvertently fail in their tribute of respect, faith, and worship to the Holy Ghost, regarding him as an impersonal emanation or influence streaming from God, or as only another name for the Father, who can just as well without Him reach and transfigure their sin-stained souls, through the blood of the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world.
