01.02. Address of Welcome (Wilson)

II. ADDRESS OF WELCOME. BY BISHOP A. W. WILSON. A MORE grave and momentous theme for consideration could not be presented than is contained in the subject of this Conference. In the later days of his incarnate life, when it was more than ever needful that his disciples should be provided against possible defect and failure in the ministry committed to them, our Lord kept in their thought and fixed their hope upon the Holy Spirit, the promise of which he had received from the Father. He would take of the things of Christ and show them to them. He was to be the teacher and guide into all truth, and bring to their remembrance all things that the Lord had said. When they should stand before the rulers of this world he would teach them what they should say. They should receive power after that the Holy Spirit should come upon them. When the Lord’s bodily presence was taken from them they waited until " they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" before entering upon their ministry, and at the Spirit’s dictation , on the day of Pentecost, they spake in the manifold tongues of earth the wonderful works of God. From that hour they thought only of the guidance of the Spirit, and gave implicit obedience to his command; and each decisive movement of the church was made under the impulse and at the word of the Holy Ghost. Witness the consecration of the church’s property, when Levi in person of Joses, a Levite, gave not the tithe, but the whole, to the service of Christ, and Ananias and Sapphira were smitten to death for having " lied unto the Holy Ghost; " the ministry of Philip to the eunuch of Ethiopia, of Peter to Cornelius; and the separation of Saul and Barnabas for the missionary work to which the Spirit called them. The Acts of the Apostles are but the acts of the Holy Spirit.

Looking at the large place filled by the Spirit and the emphasis laid upon his work, in the utterances of our Lord, and in the early history of the church, it is somewhat surprising that so little stress is laid upon his ministry in these last days. May not much of our weakness and many of our failures be attributed to our ingenious efforts to find substitutes for his personal agency?

We are warned in the terms of the notice of this Conference of the dangers to which the church of God is exposed by neglect of the person and power of the Holy Spirit, and are invited to a prayerful discussion of the third person of the blessed Trinity, and meditation upon his functions in relation to the church, the individual believer and the world. It is intended to be, not merely a theological or speculative discussion, but practical, making prominent the experience of the Spirit’s work in all aspects of it. It ought to be a Conference very bountiful in results in individual religious life and in the work of the churches. To these ends let us give our earnest attention and direct our prayers.