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The Fundamentals crisis had been hardly worth the name of Christian. What ever explanation or “philosophy” of such experience may be given, the following is true of the majority. The full truth of the sonship and salvation of believers may not have been taught them when they first believed; the life may have begun under a yoke of legal bondage; the freedom of filial access may have been doubted, even though their hearts often burned within them because of the pres ence of the unknown Spirit; and thus weary, ineffective years passed, attended with but little growth in grace or fruitful service, or patient resignation, until a point was reached in various ways, and through providences often unexpected and most marvelous, when at last the Holy Spirit made Himself manifest in the fulness of His love and power. That there is with God an interval between justification and the giving of the Spirit (an interval such as certain theories contend for), cannot be proved. The unsatisfactory experience of the ignorant Christian may lead him to think he never had the Spirit. There are, however, certain intervals recorded in the New Testament which should be considered. The one between the ascension and Pentecost was for a peculiar preparation through prayer and waiting on the Lord; that of the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension was a con tinuation of the presence of Jesus the other Comforter, and of whom it is written, “He opened their understanding that they understand the Scriptures,” so doing what His Holy Spirit was to do when He came; and during the previous days of His public ministry not only did Jesus teach, but as attested at the confession of Peter, also the Father was reveal ing truth to men: “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.” In the light of this word to Peter it may be said that up to Pentecost the Spirit of God was at work in the world in the modes of the old dispensation, but that when the Day of
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