One reason for this haze and vagueness is due to the fact that the Spirit has generally been supposed to act suddenly, miraculously, and “as He lists,” so that no law or principle or method of His operation can be discovered. He has been conceived as working upon or through the individual in such a way that the individual is merely an “instrument,” receiving and transmitting what comes entirely from “beyond” himself. Consequently to be “in the Spirit” has meant to be “out of oneself,” _i.e._ to be a channel for something that has had no origin in, and no assistance from, our own personal consciousness. As Philo, the famous Alexandrian teacher of the first century, states this view: “Ideas in an invisible manner are suddenly showered upon me and implanted in me by an inspiration from on high.” There is no doubt that in some cases in all ages men and women have had experiences like that of Philo’s. But they are by no means universal; they are extremely rare and unusual. God does sometimes “give to His beloved in sleep” and He does apparently sometimes open the windows of the soul by sudden inrushes of light and power. It is, however, a grave mistake to limit the sphere and operation of the divine Spirit to these sudden, unusual, miraculous incursions. It is precisely that mistake—made by so many spiritual persons—that has kept Christians in general from realizing the immense importance of the work of the Spirit in everyday religious life. The mistake is, of course, due to our persistent tendency to separate the divine from the human as two independent “realities,” and to treat the divine as something “away,” “above,” and “beyond.” St. Paul, in spite of all his rabbinical training and the dualisms of his age, is still the supreme exponent of the genuine, as opposed to the false, idea of the Spirit. Whether the sermon on the Areopagus as given in Acts is an exact report of an actual speech, or not, the words, “in Him we live and move and are,” express very well St. Paul’s mature conception of the all-pervasive immanence of God, though they by no means indicate the extraordinary richness and boldness of his thought. He identifies Christ and the Spirit—“the Lord is the Spirit.”[2] The resurrected and glorified Christ, he holds, relives, reincarnates Himself, in Christian believers. He becomes the spirit and life of their lives. He makes through them a new body for Himself, a new kind of revelation of Himself. They themselves are “letters of Jesus Christ,” written by the Spirit. He is no longer limited to one locality of the world or to one epoch of time. He is “present” wherever two or three believers meet in loyalty to Him. He is revealed wherever any of His faithful followers are working in love and devotion to extend the sway of His Kingdom. The Church, which for St. Paul means always the fellowship of believers, living in and through the Spirit, is “a growing habitation of God.”