The injunctions in Eph. 4:30, and Thess. 5: 19, do not apply to all men, but are addressed to believers only. The former warns those who are sealed by the Holy Ghost unto the day of redemption not to grieve Him; the latter exhorts the brethren to " quench not the Spirit;" to " despise not prophesyings." It is clear that the one regards the saint individually as to his own walk with God; the other guards him against hindering the action of the Holy Ghost in those whom He makes His mouthpiece. The striving of God's Spirit in Gen. 6 evidently refers to the testimony given to the antediluvians, and especially Noah's preaching for 120 years. Resisting the Holy Ghost is said of the Jews: "as your fathers did, so do ye." It was shown in their persecution and slaughter of the prophets, and crowned by their treachery against and murder of the Just One. With all their boast about the law, the land, and the temple, they had rejected in every age God's testimony: "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost." What man had done before the" deluge, was the dreary history of Israel, till they stumbled upon their own Messiah, refused Stephen's declaration of His heavenly glory as peremptorily as they had scorned his own personal humiliation, and thus turned that which ought to have been a foundation into a stone of stumbling and rock of offense. But it was not the Jew only who was guilty. "He was in the world, and the world knew Him not." "Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out." The personal coming of the Holy Ghost testifies of this. His very presence in the church on earth convicts the world of sin, etc. For He came down, as sent by Him whom the world had rejected instead of believing in. Of other sins no doubt the world was guilty, but this was the great sin in God's sight. He had sent His Son, and the world hated His Son. They had now no cloak for their sin. Christ, rejected by man, glorified by God, sends down the Comforter to be in His own, and thus convicts all outside of sin; because if they believed in Him, they too would have the Holy Ghost. The passage does not speak of what the Spirit produces in the
heart of every one who comes to a saving knowledge of God and His Son. It is rather the truth that the presence of the Holy Ghost in the church proves all without to be under sin and judgment, because of the rejection of Jesus, whom God proclaims to be the Righteous One, by receiving Him to His own right hand. May I recommend " a well-digested and full reply on this subject," in a little book entitled " Operations of the Spirit of God"? More details still may be found in " Lectures on the New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit."