When he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth.
John 16.13

This all-important truth-fulfilling property of the Holy Spirit is announced by Jesus in the context of his Farewell Discourses (John 13.33 up to and including chapter 17). He tells his disciples that there is still much that he could say to them, but the burden would be too great for them at that stage. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to continue where he of necessity must come to an end. The Holy Spirit does not speak on his own authority, but only communicates what he hears. He will both make known to them the things that are coming, and give glory to Christ, for everything that he makes known to them he will draw from Christ and therefore from the Father, since all that is the Father's is also Christ's (John 16.12-15).

What does the Holy Spirit hear? Firstly, what is going on in the person's inner life. We may try to separate ourself from the turmoil within us - entertainments on the one hand and furious activity, even for good causes, on the other, are both beguiling ways of escape - but in the end our true situation will be revealed in dreams. If we refuse to pay attention to what these are telling us, the Holy Spirit will bring the lesson home even more definitively in our behaviour and eventually in our state of health.

The Holy Spirit also makes known to us the trend of events in the future; in other words, the creative process is not static, but continues with the life of the universe. Religious faith itself cannot remain static, but is meant to evolve according to the inspiration brought by the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that the basis of faith is mutable; if this were the case any heresy could be passed off as a new revelation of God. What the inspiration of the Holy Spirit brings is a new understanding of God's glory as made evident in the incarnation of his Son Jesus Christ.

A good example of this progressive evolution of spiritual understanding is the emancipation of the slaves. This was not so much as recommended by St Paul when the apostle wrote to Philemon exhorting him to receive his runaway slave Onesimus in charity and forgiveness. That the institution of slavery was wicked was not generally accepted until less than two centuries ago (the Quakers, a group strongly guided by the Holy Spirit, would have no truck with slave-holding earlier on). In the same spirit, we now know that racial, religious and sexist discrimination are intolerable; terrible events in our own time have enlightened even the most stolid members of society.

While this upheaval has proceeded on a spiritual level, the human has steadily come to grips with his environment through inspired scientific research. God who showed his nature as an incarnate being has also revealed the holiness of matter to us, and given us the power to harness it for our own purposes. Whether we proceed beneficially or not depends on our obedience to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who leads us to the knowledge of God in Christ when we are humble and actively receptive in contemplative prayer. Jesus himself said, "Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to complete" (Matt. 5.17). This is the function of the Holy Spirit, who is to work in all of us.

I like these words:

Our greatest truths are but half-truths. Think not to settle down for ever in any truth, but use it as a tent in which to pass a summer night, but build no house on it, or it will become your tomb. When you first become aware of its insufficiency, and descry some counter-truth looming up in the distance, then weep not, but rejoice: it is the Lord's voice saying, "Take up your bed and walk".

The writer was Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), a politician later to become Prime Minister of Great Britain.

May I ever be so well about your business, Lord, that I do not fail to hear the voice of your Spirit summoning me on to new ventures and fresh fields of service as my accustomed way of thought is rudely jolted by the prompting of the present necessity.