John 14:17. Even the Spirit of the truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it beholdeth him not, neither learneth to know him: ye learn to know him, because he abideth with you, and is in you. What this Advocate is, is now explained more fully. He is the Spirit of ‘the truth,' the Spirit whose essence is ‘the truth,' and who is the medium by which ‘the truth' comes to men. This Spirit the world cannot receive, because it has no perception of the things with which He deals, no sympathy with them, no adaptation to them. As it cannot ‘hear God's words, because it is not of God' (chap. John 8:47), so it cannot receive the Spirit of the truth, because it has no eye for the spiritual and invisible, and no growing apprehension of them. The Spirit comes to the world, and would stay with it; but it will not have Him for a guest, and it never attains to that experimental knowledge of Him which is alone worthy of the name. But the disciples are ‘of the truth;' they welcome the heavenly Guest; He ‘abides' with them; He ‘is' in them; they advance to ever deeper knowledge of what He is and does. How much by these words ‘abideth' and ‘is' is the analogy between the presence of Jesus and of the Spirit with us brought out. No two words of the Gospel are more characteristic of the former.

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Old Testament