and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord," and St. Paul adds " that though there be diversities of graces, it is the same spirit who worketh all in all."
Brethren, in the presence of this doctrine so plainly scriptural, so consistent with reason, the arguments of the enemies of the Holy Ghost seem absurdly puerile. Especially childish was their attempt to disprove His divinity from the words of the prophet Amos: " He [God] formeth the thunder and createth the spirit." The passage being the prophet's appeal to Israel to return to God through fear of His greatness, he adduces a thunderstorm as an example of the awful power of Him whom the winds and the seas obey. The force of the objection, therefore, consists in a misinterpretation of the word " spirit " which here evidently signifies the winds. It is a fair example of the devices to which heretics resort to pervert Scripture and combat the truth. Their method is to wrest Scripture into conformity with their own ideas, and when this is impossible, to reject altogether the more stubborn passages. Speaking with the Samaritan woman, Christ said: " The Spirit is God, and they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth," and although the text may more correctly be quoted of the divine nature, meaning that God is a spirit, etc., still the Arians in their frantic efforts to prove that the Spirit is not God, totally erased these words from their Bibles. The Lutherans adopted a similar method in dealing with Machabees and St. James, where they
