We come now to the question of first importance, namely, Who can be baptized with the Holy Spirit? At a convention some years ago, a very intelligent Christian woman, a well-known worker in educational as well as Sunday-school work, sent me this question, “You have told us of the necessity of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, but who can have this baptism? The church to which I belong teaches that the baptism with the Holy Spirit was confined to the apostolic age. Will you not tell us who can have the baptism with the Holy Spirit?” Fortunately this question is answered in the most explicit terms in the Bible. We read in Acts ii. 38, 39, R. V., “And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him.” What is the promise to which Peter refers in the thirty-ninth verse? There are two interpretations of the passage; one is that the promise of this verse is the promise of salvation; the other is that the promise of this verse is the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit (or the baptism with the Holy Spirit; a comparison of Scripture passages will show that the two expressions are synonymous). Which is the correct interpretation? There are two laws of interpretation universally recognized among Bible scholars. These two laws are the law of usage (or “usus loquendi” as it is called) and the law of context. Many a verse in the Bible standing alone might admit of two or three or even more interpretations, but when these two laws of interpretation are applied, it is settled to a certainty that only one of the various possible interpretations is the true interpretation. The law of usage is this, that when you find a word or phrase in any passage of Scripture and you wish to know what it means, do not go to a dictionary but go to the Bible itself, look up the various passages in which the word is used and especially how the particular writer being studied uses it, and especially how it is used in that particular book in which the passage is found. Thus you can determine what the precise meaning of the word or phrase is in the passage in question. The law of context is this; that when you study a passage, you should not take it out of its connection but should look at what goes before it and what comes after it; for while it might mean various things if it stood alone, it can only mean one thing in the connection in which it is found. Now let us apply these two laws to the passage in question. First of all, let us apply the law of usage. We are trying to discover what the expression “the promise” means in Acts ii. 39. Turning back to Acts i. 4, 5, R. V., we read, “He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for _the promise of the Father_, which, said He, ye