When He promised His disciples that He would send them the Spirit of
Truth, to console them, He gave as the distinctive mark by which they
would know the Holy Spirit, that the world could not receive Him
because it has no knowledge of Him. Hence the opposition that exists
between the world and the spirit of the New Law is so great that any
compromise is impossible. The world is absolutely incompetent to
receive or understand the spirit of Jesus Christ. Another fact will
render this manifest opposition still more palpable. When Jesus
addressed His eternal Father that beautiful prayer preceding His
agony and passion, He excluded the world by a positive act of His
will, in order to give all to understand that the world could never
have any share with Him. "_I pray not for the world but for them
whom thou hast given me. The world hath hated them because they are
not of the world as I also am not of the world._" (John xvii. 9,
14.)
St. Paul interprets these words in that energetic style so
characteristic of his writings, when he says to the Corinthians that
"we have not received the spirit of this world whose wisdom is folly
before God.
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