It would form an interesting study to take up the various titles of the Spirit of God as found in the New Testament and consider their significance. This brief article is concerned with the title which heads it.

The title, The Eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14), might be considered as setting forth His Godhead and His relation to the eternal purpose of God displayed in the sacrifice of Christ; The Holy Spirit (John 14:26), as setting forth His essential nature; The Spirit of Truth (John 16:13), as witnessing to the exact and absolute relation of all things toward God as brought to light in Christ; The Spirit of His Son (Gal. 4:6), as the One who makes good the blessedness of sonship in our souls.

But, as stated above, this article is concerned with the title, "The Spirit of Christ," found in Rom. 8:9 and in 1 Pet. 1:11.

Rom. 8:9 reads:"If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His." Question has been raised as to the force of "none of His" in this passage, as to whether it betokened a condition of immaturity in a child of God or whether it marked those spoken of as not belonging to Him. This question is based on the expression "none of His" being more correctly rendered by "not of Him." That "not of Him" is the more literal rendering is not in dispute.

But in 2 Tim. 2:19 we have the same expression translated, "that are His." The passage is:"Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His." Can any just question be raised as to the meaning of the expression here? What comfort and yet what rebuke is found, amidst the abounding looseness and confusion of the last days, in these words:"The Lord knoweth them that are His," that is, "that are of Him." Surely it is the Spirit in person that is spoken of in Rom. 8:9 as the Spirit of Christ.* *"Here I suppose He is designated Christ's, not as if it were another Spirit than God's, but as having displayed Himself there above all in the perfection of a life consecrated to God from first to last."-William Kelly, "Notes on Romans," page 130.*

We turn to the second occurrence of this title, the "Spirit of Christ," as found in 1 Pet. 1:10-12, which reads:

"Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into."

The Spirit of Christ is here seen as He who, in the Old Testament prophets, testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. When those prophets enquired into the meaning of their own utterances, it was revealed to them that what they uttered applied to a future generation and not to themselves. In Peter's second epistle (chap. 1:16-21) the "glory that should follow" the sufferings of Christ is set before us. In the vision on the holy mount, to which Peter alludes as witnessing the majesty of our Lord Jesus in the power and coming of His kingdom, "we have the prophetic word made surer" (2 Pet. 1:19, J.N.D.). This prophetic word which concerns the glory that should follow the sufferings of Christ was uttered by holy men of God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (ver. 21).

In view of this passage (2 Pet. 1:16-21), dealing as it does with the glory that should follow the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet. 1:11), and especially in view of the explicit statement of verse 21 that the Holy Spirit was the Author of the prophecy concerning that glory, ought it to be questioned that the title, the Spirit of Christ, as used in 1 Pet. 1:11, speaks of the Spirit of God and not of Christ personally? How fitting that the Eternal Spirit, through whom Christ offered Himself without spot to God, should be called, in prophetic relation to Christ's sufferings and glory, the "Spirit of Christ."

Furthermore:"For Christ indeed has once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also going He preached to the spirits which are in prison, heretofore disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, into which few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water" (1 Pet. 3:18-20, J. N. D.).

We are here taught that the Spirit, in the power of whom Christ was made alive in the flesh (after He had suffered for sins), was the One by whom He had gone and preached to the men of Noah's time while the ark was preparing, whilst the longsuffering of God waited on them, and because they were disobedient to that preaching they are now in prison.

Gen. 6:3 reads:"And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." "My Spirit" here is surely the Spirit of God who, through Noah, a preacher of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5), strove with the disobedient men of Noah's day. Is not thus the Spirit in which Christ went and preached to the disobedient antediluvians shown to have be