QUES. 4.-Will you please, through help and food, give the meaning of Acts 19:6? We find in Acts 2 :1-4 the Holy Spirit given to the Jews, and in Acts 10:45-48 poured out on the Gentiles. Also, in Eph. 1:13, that a soul, upon believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, is sealed with the Spirit. Why, then, this delay in Acts 19:6?

ANS.-Because the Holy Spirit is not given in connection with John's baptism, which was only unto repentance. John did not preach salvation through an accomplished work by Christ; he preached repentance. He said so himself:"I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance:but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear:He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire" (Matt. 3:11). Repentance is but a preparatory work to let Christ in; and, important and of absolute necessity as it is, it is not what the Holy Spirit dwells with. It is Christ He has come to glorify, and it is faith in Christ which He seals and dwells with.

But there is evidently more than this involved in the case of Acts 19:6; for even after they have received Christian baptism they do not receive the Holy Spirit until Paul laid hands on them. Is it not for a reason similar to that seen in chap. 8 :14-17 ? " Salvation is of the Jews,",the Lord had said to a Samaritan, for the Samaritans had left the worship of God at Jerusalem to follow after golden calves. They must be made to feel therefore the shame of their departure. Though they had received the word of God and Christian baptism, men from Jerusalem must come and pray for them, and lay hands on them, and then they receive the Holy Ghost.

So here now at Ephesus :God is disowning Jerusalem. Him true testimony is not there now; for they would keep alive a Judaism He has cast off. It is from there indeed that disturbers and corrupters of Christianity issue. The true testimony is with Paul, and these Jewish believers are made to know it by their receiving the Spirit through the laying on of his hands.

QUES. 5.-Would you please say in help and food if the following paragraph, which I recently read, teaches the truth? "It is only in the ' old man' that the devil finds anything upon which he can carry out his work; and as we reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God, his temptations to sin find no place in us. As we hourly and momentarily so live unto God, we shall know He is able to save and to keep His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21), and others shall know it too."

ANS.-We do not believe that one truly taught of God would thus mix the devil with indwelling sin. Scripture does not so. Romans, chapters 5 and 6, treats very fully of indwelling sin, and of the manner of hindering its activity ; there is not one word there about the devil. We hear much of him in Ephesians-an altogether different sphere, and the one where his activities are now displayed.

The use of Matt. 1:21 in this connection would indicate the writer knows little as to redemption, and is more taken up with his life before men than with his relations with God.

This is a time when men are more ready to speak than to hear, and much is said and printed which, if not positively evil, only befogs God's people.