Spiritual Religion

“It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing.” John vi, 63.

To a casual reader it looks as if the meaning of this passage lay upon the very surface; but he that has studied the chapter will find that it is a sentence replete with many difficulties as to the exact interpretation of it. I shall not, however, waste your time by entering into any critical discussion of it; but shall only and simply try to give you what I believe to be the mind of the Spirit, as uttered by the lips of Jesus in this passage, and, after I have done that, I shall then revert to what I shall call the meaning which any person would give to it who is not a usual student of Scripture. That being true, although not the truth taught in the passage, I shall briefly enlarge upon it. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” I suppose there is not a man in the world who could form any intelligent idea of what a spirit is. It is very easy for persons to define a spirit by saying what it is not; but I query whether there is, or ever could be, any man who could form any idea of what it is. We sometimes talk about seeing a spirit; ignorant persons in ages gone by, and some now, in benighted villages, talk about seeing spirits by night. They must know that they talk contradictions. Matter can be seen; but a spirit, if it clothed itself in any light substance, could not even then be seen; it would only be the substance that would be seen. The spirit itself is a thing which can neither be tasted, handled, seen, nor discerned in any way whatever by our senses, for if it could be it would then be proof positive that it was not a spirit at all, but belonged to the realm of matter. We divide all things into matter and spirit, and whatsoever can be recognised by the senses in any way is matter, depend on it. Spirit is itself a thing too subtile to be either seen or in any other way recognised by the senses. I say, then, I suppose there is no man living, and never will be any man in this mortal state, who will be able to define a spirit as to what it is, though he may say what it is not.

Now, there is a region where there are spirits dwelling without body. It is certain that in the world to come, in that state which now intervenes between the death of the saints and the day of the resurrection, they are dwelling before the throne of God in a disembodied state — pure spirits, without any embodiment whatever. It may be that angels have some form of bodies; we could not imagine what angels were, if they had not some kind of semblance of appearance; but it is quite certain that the saints before the throne have no semblance of shapes whatever. Tlicy are pure spirits; beings whose substance we cannot imagine; purely immaterial, as they are also immaculate. But on earth you will find no such a thing as a pure spirit. We are all spirits in bodies, and, somehow, from the fact that wherever we find souls and spirits, they are always found in bodies, we are very apt to confound bodies and spirits together. But let us always understand that bodies and spirits are distinct things; and though it hath pleased God in this world never to make a spirit without making a house for it to dwell in, called the body, yet the body is not the spirit. “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

Now, you will easily learn this, for in man’s body no one can tell where the life is. In vain the surgeon lays the body on the table and dissects it; he will find life neither in the brain nor in the heart; he may cut the body in pieces as he pleases — he will not find any thing that he can lay hold upon tangibly and really, and say, “That is life.” He can see all the effects — he can see the parts moving, he can see all the appearances of life caused by a supernatural something; but life he cannot see. It is altogether beyond his ken; and after all his searching he would lay down his scalpel and say at once, “There now, the task is all over; there is a spirit that quickeneth this body, but in my search after life this flesh profiteth me nothing. I might as well search for a soul within a stone or within one of the pillars that support this house as search for a soul within mere flesh and blood if I look for something which I can see, which I can lay hold of, or which, by either taste, sight, smelling or any thing else I can distinguish and designate as being a spirit.”

Now, then, brethren, this illustration just brings me to a truth. We are here assembled at this moment spirits, souls. Here we are, bodies; but these bodies are not ourselves; they are the houses in which we live. I question whether there is any man who can define himself; the most any man can say is, “I am; I know I have an existence; but what kind of thing my spirit is I do not know; I cannot tell; I have no knowledge of what it is. I feel it; I know it moves my body; I feel its outward manifestations; I am certain of my existence; but what I am I know not: God alone can say.” “I am that I am,” is comprehensible to himself; but man is a being himself incomprehensible; and though God may allow him to say, “By God’s grace I am what I am,” he cannot tell what he is; he understandeth not his own existence. Understand, then, that as in our being there is a mystery in our flesh, so religion, the true religion of the blessed God, in order to be made like unto us and to be a something which would suit us, must be a religion of spirit; but because we have a body it naust have a body in which to clothe itself. Allow me, if I can, to try to make this plain; for if you do not understand it now you will before I have done, I am certain. We are spirits in bodies. Well, then, in order to meet our cases, the great work of God in us must be a spiritual thing; but in order that I may be able to talk about it to you, and that you may be able to hear it with your ears, that spiritual thing must be encased in a body; or else, if it were a pure spiritual thing, I could not talk to you about it, any more than I could talk to you about a spirit, if there were no body in which a spirit could be found, and no body in which I should be able to live to talk about it in. I want to show you this, because there are some persons that are so busy about the body of religion that they forget that religion has got a spirit at all.

Now, what Jesus meant in this passage was,.” The mere embodiment of religion profiteth nothing; it is the spirit that quickeneth.” Just as, to use my figure over again, in order to perform an act, the mere flesh and blood and arms and legs profit nothing, it is the spirit that quickens all the bones and makes the nerves ply as they ought to do, and the sinews work as they should, so religion has its outward form, it has its ceremonies, it has its outward developments, its body, but the mere outward body of religion is of no use whatever, except the spirit quickeneth it.

I. To begin, then, I will first show you this order as our Saviour, I think, meant it when he first of all stated it. There were some people in our Saviour’s day who admired Christ. They admired him as a man, and they thought there was some marvellous efficacy in his flesh and blood. Now, Jesus Christ said to them in the words of our text, “Even my flesh will profit you nothing: it is the spirit that quickens.” We would state this truth very cautiously, but very plainly. When our Saviour was upon earth there were some, we say, who admired his person. You remember those who said, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck;” and you remember our Saviour rebuked them. He would not have people admire his flesh and think so much of his mere humanity. “No,” said he, “blessed are they that hear the Word of God and do it.” There were some again who wanted to take the Lord Jesus and make him a king. Said lie to them, “My flesh, if you exalt it to a throne, will profit you nothing. I did not come here that you might bow down and venerate my mere flesh, that you might think the mere admiration of myself is religion. It is the spirit, the Gospel that I came to preach, that will benefit you. It is not these outward acts; it is the thoughts and words, of which they are the exponents.” Hear what the Saviour says in the next sentence. “It is not your admiration of my flesh that is of any use to you, for my flesh profits nothing; it is the spirit that quickens, and if you want to know what is the spirit of my incarnation, I tell you that the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. It is not your venerating my flesh and blood; it is your venerating my doctrines that will be the soul and heart of the religion that I desire you to feel.”

Our Saviour, however, was led to make these remarks from the fact that the poor Jews, when he talked about eating His flesh and blood, thought that He meant they were to turn cannibals, and eat Jesus Christ up. Now, any man may smile at so ridiculous an idea; but we know that the idea is still rife in the Church of Rome. The Romanist priest solemnly assures us that the people who eat the bread and wine, or stuff he calls bread and wine, which he hands round, do actually act the part of cannibals, and eat the body of Christ, and drink His blood. You ask him seriously; you say to him, “You mean they do it in a figure, my dear sir, spiritually V “No,” says he, “I don’t; I mean to say that after I have pronounced certain words over that bread, it becomes Christ’s flesh, and after I have said a certain hocus pocus over that wine, it becomes actual blood.” “Well,” we reply to him, “it is very singular, certainly, and I should say that you do not expect us to believe you, whilst God allows our heads to be occupied by brains; but even if we do believe you, my dear sir, we refer you to this passage here that says, ‘The flesh profiteth nothing, it is the spirit that quickeneth,’ and you tell the people that they do actually and really receive body and blood. Suppose they do, it is no earthly use to them, the mere body and blood of Christ; and even if they could carnally press it with their teeth, and drink it with their throats, would be of no more use to them than the eating of the flesh and blood of any other man, could be of no service whatever to them, for He himself denounces the error of transubstantiation, and He declares that even His flesh profiteth nothing. It is only the spirit, the spiritual receiving of that flesh and blood that can be of any avail whatever.”

While I am here just allow me to say one word; for Popery prevails in this day, and that happens to be the bulwark of Popery, the doctrine that the bread and wine are turned into the body and blood of Christ. Dr. Carson, of Coleraine, son of Dr. Carson, the eminent baptist, has settled off Dr. Cahill in a remarkable way. He has challenged Dr. Cahill to prove that he can turn the bread and wine used in the sacrament into Christ’s body and blood. He offers to give Dr. Cahill a hundred pounds if he will let him make a wafer for him, and if Dr. Cahill will then put it on his own tongue and swallow it in Mr. Carson’s own presence. “If the Doctor is not dead in an hour,” says Dr. Carson, “I’ll give him a hundred pounds.” “No,” says one, “that is not fliir.” “Oh! but if he can turn it into the body and blood of Christ, it cannot hurt him, whatever I make it of.” “What! would you make it of poison, then 1” “Yes, the deadliest I could find.” “Would you give him poison?” “I should not give it to him; he would swallow it himself; he would do it of his own voluntary choice.” And Dr. Cahill backs out of that; he cannot turn it into the body and blood of Christ; if he could, Dr. Carson says it could not hurt him, for the body and blood of Christ would poison no one. But some wise Romanist says, “That is not fliir; the Doctor does not pretend to turn poison into the body and blood of Christ; it is only clean bread.” “Very well,” says Dr. Carson, “I’ll try him another way. I will let him choose a youth from seven or eight Catholic boys; he shall take a quart of wine, and turn this wine in his own peculiar way into the blood of Christ. The boy shall drink the quart, and if he is not drunk in six hours, I’ll pay the hundred pounds.” “Now,” says Dr. Carson, “if that is the blood of Christ, it will not make him drunk; he might drink a hogshead of it, and it would not make him intoxicated.” But Dr. Cahill dare not come to such a trial as that; for I think it would very soon be found that the wine would make the boy intoxicated as much as any other wine; therefore, it could not have been turned, even by the great Doctor himself, into any thing like the blood of Christ. The fact is, the lie is so palpable, the delusion is so absurd, that any child of any age would as soon think of believing the cock and bull story we used to read in our childish days, about what the bull said, and wdiat the cock said, to be actual truth, as to imagine it to be a literal fact that any priest, or any man in the world, could ever turn bread and wine into flesh and blood. But even if they could, hear the words of the text: “The flesh profiteth nothing; it is the spirit that quickeneth.” So, then, after all, the Roman Catholic Sacrament, if it be actually a cannibal’s feast upon the body and blood of Christ, is of no earthly use; but that Sacrament wherein we do spiritually receive the flesh and blood of Jesus, and in a spiritual way hold communion with Him, is that which quickeneth, and that only.

Now, this brings me to the truth that I want specially to be arrived at. As Christ Jesus in his flesh was the embodiment of his own doctrine, and yet not His flesh, but the spirit of His doctrine quickeneth souls, so the outward forms and ceremonies which Christ has made to be the body to contain the spirit, are. of no earthly use at all, unless the Spirit of God be in them. We come to baptism; there are the pool and the water; that pool and that water are, so to speak, the flesh and blood of dedication; that holy ordinance signifies that we do devote ourselves to the Lord Jesus. Suppose, however, our hearts are in a wrong condition, or that we are not converted persons — suppose there is no influence of the Spirit resting upon us during the act of baptism, then the act of baptism is like the flesh to the body, it is a dead thing, it profiteth nothing, because it is without the soul. We come the next Sabbath to the Lord’s table: there is the bread broken by God’s servant, there is the wine decently handed round by the deacons of the church, and it is sipped; but, mark you, however reverently it is performed, except the Spirit of the living God breathes through the whole divine ordinance, “the flesh,” that is, the mere embodiment of communion, will profit you nothing. You might sit at a thousand Sacraments, and you might be baptized in a myriad of pools, but all this would not avail one jot or tittle for your salvation, unless you had the spirit that quickened you. Nay, to go farther, it is not just these two outward ordinances only that need in them the Spirit; it is so in every thing else. You have sometimes read, dear friends, of some great Christians that grew to have much fellowship with Christ by prayer. Perhaps you imbibed the idea that if you were to go home and spend as many hours in your closet as they did, you would get as much profit by it; and, not thinking about the Holy Spirit, you simply devote yourself to your closet as you would to any manual exercise, with a hope of profiting by the closet alone. I tell you, you might be on your knees till your knees were bare, and you might be in your closet till the steam of your devotion ran down the walls; but unless the Spirit of the Lord was in that closet with you, the mere fleshly exercise of praying would no more avail you and profit you than if you had been chaunting songs to the moon, or standing in the street to sell your goods. Another hears that a certain person has been very much blessed by reading a text of Scripture. “Oh!” says he, “has that text been blessed to such a one? I’ll go and read the same passage too.” You think that if you do the same act as he does you will be equally blessed; and you are marvellously surprised that when you read the passage, it does no good to you. It made his spirit leap for joy, it filled his soul with the wine of the kingdom, but to you it is like a dry well, or an empty bottle. Why is this? The mere letter in which the promise is put profiteth you nothing; it is the spirit of the promise; it is the life of the Spirit running through the veins of the promise that alone can profit you. You hear that another man meditates on God’s law day and night, and becomes like a tree planted by the rivers of water. You say, “I will take care that every morning I will read a chapter, and that every night I will read two chapters.” There are certain people who think if they read a good long bit of Bible they’ve done a great deal. In that spirit they might just as well read a bit of Hudibras; for they just read it straight through, without thinking of understanding it. Many of our ministers think they must read a certain quantity of the Scriptures, and they take perhaps three long chapters out of Ezekiel, and not a soul knows

what they are at. If they were to read h Dutch sermon in an English church it would do about as much good. There is a lot about ephahs, and wheels within wheels, but no one understands much about them. Instead of reading as Ezra did, and expounding to the people, they must go on reading, — hedge, hedge, ditch, ditch — one continual steeple-chase! Instead of stopping to break the shells and give the kernels of truth to the jpeople, they must read right on. To such persons we would simply say,” Your Bible reading is but the flesh; it is no use to you; it is the spirit that quickeneth; the mere flesh, the mere outward fashion and form of Bible reading will not profit anybody. One bit of Bible prayed over, and bedewed with the Spirit, and made alive, though it be only a short sentence of six words, will profit you more than a hundred chapters without the Spirit, because the hundred chapters without the

Spirit are ‘flesh’ — dead; but the one verse with the Spirit is the thing that quickeneth.”

I do not know whether I have as yet brought my lull meaning out; but I want to let every one understand that it is not the mere outward embodiment of our religion that saves the soul and that profits us; it is the inner spirit of the thing that does it. Mark, I would not find fault with any of these forms, any more than I would find fault with our bodies, because they are not spirits; our bodies are good things for the spirits to live in; and the forms are good things for the spirit to live in; but the form without the spirit, though it be the most decorous, and apparently the most devout that can be performed can be of no use for our soul’s eternal profit and ultimate salvation. “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

Now, my dear friend, Mr. So-and-so, if you will just take your pencil out and cast up your accounts for all the years of your life, they wdll come to very little, if what I say be true. “I think,” say you, “I am a tolerably good sort of man; I have a few faults, but look now what I have done. I have been to chapel twice every Sunday almost since I was a boy — I don’t know that I missed once, except when I was ill; that has been very good of me, and no mistake. I always read the Bible every morning; I always have family prayer; that is very good of me; another down to my account. I say my prayers when I go to bed at night, and when I get up in the morning; I very frequently go to prayer-meetings; I don’t think any one can find fault with me; really 1 think I do every think to make me a truly religious man.” Ah! and did you put at the end of it, “Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, unjust, extortioners,” and so on, or even like that poor fellow, a Sabbath-breaker, that you saw going the opposite wlay, and not going to your place of worship. Pity you didn’t finish it up; but, however, if you did not in words, you finished it up in your heart. But I pray God to show you that all these beautiful things of yours are good for nothing. There you are — there are your chapel-goings — all flesh; there are your Bible readings — flesh; there are your family prayers — all flesh; there are your good works and excellences — all flesh. You have never received the Spirit of the living God: you dare not say you have. Well, then, all these things will profit you nothing whatever. It is the spirit alone can quicken; for you know, my dear sir, and let me speak very pointedly — you know you never enter into the spirit of the thing; though you go to your church or chapel regularly, yet you know you might very often as well be at home; for when they sing, you do not sing with all your heart; and when the minister preaches, it is seldom there is much that touches you, unless it is a good intellectual discourse, and happens to fit you, and you believe it, and it meets your views, and so on. You know that into the inward soul, and marrow, and bowels of devotion you have never yet’ learned to plunge. You know your devotion is like that ox which was slain once in the time of siege in Rome, and was said to portend ill, because when the augur slew it he declared he could not find a heart anywhere. He looked through all the entrails, and no heart could he discover; and hence, the Romans said their city must be destroyed. It was a solemn angury, they said, when the sacrifice had no heart in it. It is just the same with you. You have done all these things; oh! yes, and there has been as much reality in what you have done as there was devotion in the poor Kalmuck’s windmill, when he tied the prayer to it, and put it up in the garden, and every time it blew round, that was just one more prayer. There was as much heart in your prayer as there was in his windmill; that is to say, none at all. There it is! How far have you got 1 Go on no longer with this useless round of performances. I would not have you give the performances up. Stop awhile, and ask God to give you that inward spirit that quickeneth, for that is what is needed; “The flesh profiteth nothing.”

But I must speak to you that are the children of God, and I must say to you. How often do you forget this 1 I know it is not often of a morning that I Mould leave my chamber without prayer: but oh, brethren, I have often left my chamber without having the spirit of prayer; I should not like to pass a day without reading the Scriptures, but I am afraid it is very often the mere “flesh” of Scripture reading, and not the spirit breathing in the Word that I get. And how often is our conscience satisfied with the mere form without the spirit! Now, if we were what we ouht to be, we should never be content with the form, unless we could see the spirit in it. Mother, would you be content to have a child at home that was dead 1 Suppose some one should say to you, “Why, this child is just as good a child as ever it was! Look at it! It has not lost a leg, or arm, or any thing!” “Ah, but,” you say, “it is dead.” “Oh!” says one, “there is no difference. It looks as beautiful now as ever it did.” “Ah!” she says, “but there is a vast deal of difference between what it was when it was alive, and what it is now it is dead.” And now just transfer that to your poor dead prayers, and your poor dead’ Bible reading, and your poor dead Sacraments, and your poor dead goings to chapel, and all that! Ah! how many of our sacrifices are just poor dead things, when we bring them, they have died in the night, and then we come and offer them before God! How frequently do we satisfy ourselves with having the “flesh,” the embodiment of the sacrifice, and forget the spirit! But let us remember, God only looks for the life: He does not look for the body; so we ought, in all we do for Him, to take care, first of all, for the spirit, and then we may rest quite sure the flesh and blood of the devotion will take care of themselves. II. This, I believe, is the meaning of the passage. But the common rendering of it, if any one read it without noticing the context, would be, “Why, that means, it is the Spirit that quickeneth; that is to say, it is the Holy Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” Our friends will excuse me when I say, it cannot mean that; you notice the “s” in the text has got no capital to it. If it meant the Holy Spirit, it would always be noted so, to separate it from the spirit to which I have just referred — the inward spirit, the life of a thing. This word “spirit” here does not mean the Holy Spirit; still, almost every ordinary reader would make that mistake, and say, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” Well, it is a mistake that will not do him any hurt because if it does not say so there, it does say so somewhere else; and if it is not true in this one particular text, it is true all over the Bible, and it is true in a Christian’s experience, so that a man may make a great many worse mistakes than that. Well, then, let us take and make that mistake, and then let us get at the truth of it: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.”

How often have I thought, “There is a young woman in the gallery, or a young man: how interested they look during the sermon!” I have met with them, I have admired their characters; they have had an amiable carriage and deportment; there has been much in them that everybody would tell others to imitate and emulate. I have said, “Ah! I shall soon have them added to the Church; there is so much good about them, it will be such an easy transition for them; they are so moral and excellent, it will be very easy for them surely to take a step into the kingdom of heaven.” I don’t say I have said so in words to my heart; but that has been about what I have thought. Well, there has been a fellow who came into chapel one evening, a queer-looking object certainly; he came running in one Thursday evening, towards the end of the service, not washed or any thing; he only just came to hear something that would make him laugh, as he thought. I did not expect to see him converted. The next time I sat to hear inquiries, in he came, cleaned and washed a bit; but I recognized him for all that, and I said to him, “Didn’t you come in one Thursday night, after you had been hammering and tinkering somewhere 1 I thought you looked a strange one, certainly.” “Yes,” said he, “and the Lord met with me.” Now, I sat many and many a night, and I did not see the young man or the young woman come. Why was this 1 The Lord meant to teach his servant that “the flesh profiteth nothing.” “No,” said he, “that man seemed far from God, that young man and that young woman seemed very near to me: I will just let you see that all their morality and all their goodness did not put them near the kingdom of heaven, or help me a bit, I could save one as well as the other, and if I chose to show my sovereignty, I might even let publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of heaven before those who, becoming proud of their morality, would not stoop before me.” Have you not sometimes met with a person of such a peculiar character that you have said, “Is it not a pity some one cannot talk with that man “?” I often have notes: a father writes, “I wish you could get hold of my son; he is a very interesting young man; if you were to put the truth before him to suit his turn of mind, he would be sure to lay hold of it, for if you knew how his mind was constituted, you would say at once there was a peculiar adaptation in his mind for the reception of the gospel.” Well, I have been told that a dozen times; but I never found it true once — never. “The flesh profiteth nothing.” No peculiar adaptation of mind is any more susceptible of gospel influences than another. Dead sinners are all dead, and all dead alike. Some may be black, and some may be white; some may be well washed and dressed, and some may have all the mire and filth of sensuality about them. They are all dead alike, and when converting grace comes to deal with them, it finds as much for its exercise in the one case as in the other; it finds as much to help it in the one heart as in the other — that is to say, it finds nothing to help it at all. It brings it all within itself: it kindles its own fire with its own torch, it blows the fire with its own breath, and asks for nothing in the sinner, be he who he may.

Then, again, we have sometimes said, “If such a one were converted, dear me, what a shining Christian he would make! He is a man of brilliant talent, of great intellectual power, and of extensive fortune. Oh if he were converted, what a jubilee it would be to the Church of God! How much would he do!” Well, do you know, I have always found that these fine people, who, when they were converted were to be somebody, if they have been converted, and we have got them, have not turned out to be quite so great after all! I knew a minister once, who with great joy and gladness baptized a man. It was on a New-Year’s Day, and I remember with what self-congratulation he said, “The Lord has sent me one of the best New-Year’s gifts I ever had;” and he looked upon that man and said, “Ah! this is a brother; he is a great gain to the church; he is a man of such active spirit, of such excellent turn of mind — he is every thing that could be desired.” Well, I have just happened to live long enough to see that man rend the church in sunder, and drive the minister out of his pulpit, and he is alive still, a thorn in the side of that church, and a huge prickly bramble that they would be glad enough to eradicate, but that they scarcely have power enough to do. No; the Lord will show us that “the flesh profiteth nothing.” “You may have him,” says the Lord. “if he is such a fine fellow; take him, take him; you will find he will not be so much after all. I ^yiIl let you know that ’ the flesh profiteth nothing;’ it is the spirit alone ’ that quickeneth.’ “‘’ On the other hand, we have seen some come whose flesh could not help them. They were the poor, the mean, the illiterate, the despised; and we have seen the grace of God blaze up in their hearts to an eminence of fervor, and we have seen them stand confident and strong, notwithstanding the nothingness of the flesh; and then we have said, “Verily, O God, it is marvellous how, when the flesh is weak, thy grace is strong;” and we have heard an answer from “the excellent Glory,” which said, “Ah! the flesh profiteth nothing; it is the spirit that quickeneth.”

Now, I do not believe that there is any form of our flesh, nor any act of our flesh, nor any thing that our flesh can do, or attempt to do, or think of, or suggest, that can in any way assist in the great spiritual work of our salvation. It is the spirit alone that quickeneth; and you will find till you die that “the flesh profiteth nothing,” except the devil, and it often profits him; but in God’s ways and in God’s holy Gospel you will always find the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. You will have to feel this truth, that the flesh at its best estate profiteth nothing. “It is the spirit that quickeneth.”

Now, my brethren, in conclusion, I will ask thee the question — Hast thou received the influence of the Holy Spirit? and have those influences led thee to worship God, who is a spirit, “in spirit and in truth “?” For if not, though some may put thee in the cradle of ceremonies, and rock thee to sleep, I will not be one of them. Although men may tell thee thou art right enough, because thou art so outwardly religious, because thou art no sabbath-breaker, no swearer, no drunkard, I warn thee that unless thou art born again from above thou canst not see the kingdom of God; and when drunkards and harlots, and all manner of ungodly persons, shall be driven from the presence of God, you also shall share their fate, for you are dead in sin and must be quickened by the spirit. No more shall I say, but solemnly entreat the Spirit of the blessed God to touch your hearts with this solemn thought, and lead you to renounce the works of the flesh, and put your trust in Him who is “the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe.” The Lord’s mercy rest on you for Jesus’ sake! Amen.