This saying the Apostles may have found hard to comprehend; for it must have seemed to them impossible that it could ever be for their good for their Master to leave them; and, why the Comforter should not come, while they all continued together, would by no means be clear to their minds. Neither here nor elsewhere does our Lord explain to the Apostles either the reason of His regimen or the way in which it was to work. He tells them simply the fact, without a word as to _how_ or _why_. He never leads them to examine into the _modus operandi_ of His treatment, He would have awakened—what He carefully avoids—self-consciousness, if He had so done. That they could not learn, at the same time, from Him in the body and also from the Comforter in their own souls, arose, not from any “determinate counsel of God,” but because the mind cannot perform two operations at once. It rested on the positive psychological fact that we cannot walk by Sight and by Faith at the same time; that we cannot turn one ear to an earthly monitor, and keep the other open to the whispers of a spiritual guide. The posture of our minds when we are hanging on the lips of a living Master, is different from that in which we set ourselves to listen for the Comforting Voice from within. The Apostles would not have learned to hearken to the promptings of the Spirit so long as they could turn to Christ by their side; and it was therefore “expedient for them” that Christ should go away. They would not otherwise have reached full communion with the Spirit on high. Instances in the Acts shew us in what way the Spirit acted in the hearts of believers. Sometimes, when human judgment and inclination seemed to agree, an unaccountable inward reluctance to follow their dictates was nevertheless felt—a repugnance, not resting on a new argument, but simply saying “No.” When men experienced such feelings, some might overbear them by will; but Paul and Silas recognised in them the voice of the Spirit. For we hear that they “went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.”(343) Again Christ’s Church was to be everlasting and universal, and this it could only become by changing outward and visible for inward spiritual rule. So long as the Lord was in bodily presence among them, the disciples naturally looked only to Him. Where He was, there and there only to their minds was His Kingdom and His Church. For His sway to become universal it was essential that He should go away, for it is only Spiritual influence that can be everywhere at once. The fire had to be set alight at a particular spot and at a particular time, but it was then to be left to spread over the earth and to go on burning, seemingly all of itself.