Much is said about the Holy Spirit in the Pharisaic literature, without any attempt to make all that is said consistent. But, behind all such utterances, there is the unwavering belief in the direct communion of God with man. The Holy Spirit was naturally most often referred to in the case of the prophets, in whom its manifestation was most conspicuous. But its influence is implied in the fact of prayer, and is nowhere denied in regard to men in general. "Whatever the righteous do, they do it by the Holy Spirit." That is the utterance of a Pharisee (Tanḥ. Vajeḥi, xiii. p. 110ª), and it is the key to the whole Pharisaic conception of the relation of man to God. So, too, in regard to Faith, while the word does not appear so often on the pages of the Talmud as it does in the Epistles of Paul, the thing was an essential element in the religion of the Pharisees as it was in that of Paul. They never defined precisely what faith meant; it appears as a simple and unquestioning trust in God; and they thought about it after a simple fashion, without, however, being thereby shown to be wanting in it. "Great is faith," says a Midrash (Mechilta Beshall. ii. 6, 33^b). "For Israel believed in Him who spake and the world was; and as a reward for believing in the Lord, the Holy Spirit rested on them, and they uttered a song: as it is written, 'They believed on the Lord.... Then sang Moses, etc.'" (Exod. xiv. 31; xv. 1). "And so you find" (continues the Midrash) "that Abraham our father did not inherit this world and the world to come except by the merit of faith, because he believed in the Lord. As it is written, 'And Abraham believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness'" (Gen. xv. 6). R. Nehemiah said, "Everyone who receives even one commandment in faith is worthy that the Holy Spirit should rest on him." So even the Pharisees could appeal to the same Abraham, whom Paul called as a witness against them; and they did so with the most obvious sincerity, as having a perfect right to do so, and probably with complete ignorance that the Christian apostle had appealed to Abraham in support of his argument against their religion. And it was well done of the compiler of the Midrash to add the closing words of the passage I quoted; for I know of hardly any other saying which so illumines the inner side of Pharisaism as this, that "Every man who receives even one commandment in faith is worthy that the Holy Spirit should rest on him."