ABSTRACT
In Hebrew the word ruakh continued to be used equally for 'wind' and for 'spirit'. And the wind has one notable positive characteristic in common with spirit: just as man from the beginning found out that feelings and volitions, things belonging to the spirit, caused the material masses constituting his limbs to move, so the wind, being invisible, could move material masses in the world round about him, sometimes in a terrific way. The wind had a voice whose cadences seemed to express sorrow or grievance or rage just as a human voice did. The Coming One will baptize with the Spirit and with fire. And in the account of the coming of the Spirit which the author of Acts must have derived from some Palestinian source the coming is manifested to the senses by the sound of a rushing mighty wind and by tongues of fire.
