At the Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended, and how marvelous was His power! Plain as had been the words Jesus spake, the apostles yet utterly misconceived the most vital truths; but when the Spirit of truth came, the Gospel, in its grandeur and power, stood clearly revealed before them. The men who before had timidly cowered in the presence of danger now rejoiced that they "were counted worthy to suffer shame" for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts v. 41). They whose selfish ambition had aspired to be "greatest in the kingdom of heaven" now forgot their mean rivalries, and were inspired with single-hearted consecration to the Master; and the multitudes who before had despised and rejected their words, now convicted "of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment," bowed before this unseen, mighty Power, and cried out, "Men and brethren, what must we do?" (Acts ii. 37). Now, it is plain that the Holy Spirit, this special "power from on high," was promised, not to the Apostles only, but to the ministry in all ages. In the New Testament period He dwelt, a living, quickening Divine presence, in all the servants of Christ, revealing truth, inspiring faith, and making their words the power of God unto salvation. They prayed in the Spirit; they spake in the Spirit; they lived in the Spirit. The promise of Jesus was fulfilled: "Lo! I am with you alway" (Matt. xxviii. 20); for the Christ-presence was continually revealed in them--a revelation of Him, not, indeed, to the eye, but to the soul, and unspeakably more blessed than had been His bodily presence when on earth. Not the Apostle only, but every servant of God, could say: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. ii. 20); and in the hour of peril, when all men forsook him, the Christian confessor triumphantly affirmed: "Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me" (2 Tim. iv. 17). In every subsequent age the indwelling Spirit of God has been the fountain of power in the ministry; and the mightiest men in the pulpit, renouncing self-sufficiency, have confessed, with Paul: "Our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament" (2 Cor. iii. 5, 6). Conscious of need, they have turned their souls upward to God, and this Divine Helper has entered and filled them; and all the faculties and culture of the man, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, have been transfused, elevated, enlarged, by this invisible but mighty Power. It has been truly said: "The virtue of an electric wire is not in the wire, but in its connection with the voltaic battery. The power of the minister is not in the polish of his style, the pictorialness of his illustrations, the fervor of his manner, the order and arrangement of his discourse, but in his living connection with God and his capacity to act as a connecting-link between God and the human soul. It is God in the soul which is the secret of true pulpit power."