The Pre-eminence of the Bible for the Influences of the Holy Spirit

We have already remarked that the Bible furnishes all those truths and motives which are the appropriate materials of a spiritual mind, and as such constitute the great and only means of personal holiness. Truth and love are the weapons which the Author of the Scriptures makes use of in the great moral contest that is going on in our world. In this respect, the religion of the Bible differs from all other rehgions. Other religions have employed force, authority, stratagem: the power of the sword, the authority of princes, the policy of priests and statesmen have all been made use of to accomplish their selfish designs. But the Bible knows nothing of this. Though it reveals a system of truth, and requires affections every where opposed to the selfishness of the human heart, and the pride of human reason, — a system at war with human worldliness and sensuahty, and that neither flatters the pride, nor tempts the avarice, nor pampers the lusts of men 5 yet does it reject with indignation every attempt to influence them, except by considerations which commend themselves to the conscience. Frank and ingenuous in the expression of its claims, candid and open in the designs it aims at accomplishing, it counts on success only as its truths enlighten the understanding, awaken and regulate the conscience, and purify the heart. True religion has its seat in the soul. It is a matter not of external forms and observances, but of conviction and feeling. No man possesses it any farther than he voluntarily embraces its principles and feels their power. The Bible therefore must necessarily depend for its triumphs, not upon the authority of human governments, or the tricks of sordid policy, or any concealment of its ultimate objects, or any appeals to human selfishness, but upon its own inherent excellence and high-born claims. Falsehood and sophistry never made a man at heart the friend of the Bible. Every true believer in the word of God has the witness within his own bosom, that he is not led away by “cunningly devised fables and the craftiness of men,” but that his confidence in it is justified by the begun and growing conformity of his heart to the heavenly character which this word requires. The truths of the Bible have been brought home to his own soul “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” There is an agency that gives them effect which is exerted by God himself We do not hear this still, small voice, nor is it in any way an agency that is the object of our senses. The hand that accompHshes the work is unseen, and all that we can behold is the work itself accomplished. It is the supreme, the almighty agency of God, by the unseen power of his Holy Spirit. It is an influence that controuls the thoughts, dispositions and affections, and that makes the Bible the “wisdom of God and the power of God to salvation.”

Now this constitutes one great pre-eminence of the Holy Scriptures, and is fitted to show the obligations of the world to this sacred volume. It has higher claims to our regard even than the excellence of its truths. It reveals the existence and interposition of an omnipotent agent, known in the method of redemption by Jesus Christ, whose province it is to enlighten and renovate the heart, and give power and energy to his own revelations. This can be affirmed of no false religion. Just before the author of the gospel left our world for his throne in the heavens, he promised his disciples that he would send the heavenly Paraclete, who should “reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment 5” who “should guide into all truth 5” who “should take of the things that are Christ’s, and show them unto his people.” The religion of the Bible therefore has this high and peculiar pledge of its efficacy, that it is associated with an omnipotent agency, which, by its controul over the intellectual faculties and moral dispositions, renders the truth which God has revealed effectual in the moral transformation of men.

God has revealed himself in the Scriptures as One in Three. So distinct are the three, that they sustain distinct offices in the work of Redemption, and possess the properties of distinct persons j and yet so intimately are they identified in the divine nature, that they are the One only living and true Jehovah. This is a great mystery, and we receive it on the testimony of God. The Holy Spirit is not a mere influence, or power, or emanation of the Deity, but a living agent, to whom the Scriptures ascribe intelligence, choice, and power. He is represented as teaching, instructing, dictating, commanding, commissioning, sending forth, convincing, sanctifying, and bearing witness. To him are appropriated the true and proper names of the Deity. He is spoken of as eternal, omnipresent, omniscient, and as one who is worshipped as God. He is the direct and immediate Author of the Scriptures, while miraculous gifts and operations are every where ascribed to his power. There are also internal operations of the Spirit*, that is, operations immediately exerted upon the mind itself. It is his province to illuminate the ignorant and benighted; to awaken the thoughtless*, to convince the obdurate j to renew and sanctify the heart j to comfort and seal the heirs of salvation for their final inheritance, and fit them for the glory to be hereafter revealed. The truths of the Scriptures, though divine in their origin, are only the instrumental cause of all holy impressions. Their saving efiicacy, in all cases, depends on the power and agency of the Holy Spirit. Nor are the nature and mode of this influence altogether undefined. It is in every instance, connected with the truth 5 imparting to the mind clear perceptions of what God has revealed in his word, and rendering these perceptions impressive and effectual to the formation of a spiritual character. Truth is the motive of the change, and the agency of the spirit its cause.

The terms and illustrations by which the Scriptures represent the work of the Spirit are strongly significant. Sometimes it is represented by the metaphorical language of the “new birth.” When, in the moral history of man, a rebel becomes a child, it is because he is “begotten, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Sometimes it is exhibited as a “new creation.” When from the confusion, darkness, and disorder of the natural mind, men are formed anew, and adorned with all the glories of a spiritual transformation 5 they are “his workmanship, created anew in Christ Jesus after the image of him that created them.” Sometimes it is set forth as a “resurection from the dead.” If the dead in sin burst the bars of their cold sepulchre and come forth; it is because “he quickens them,” and his Spirit is the sole author of this new and holy life. If the apostate child of Adam becomes the child of God 5 if his moral nature lives by new culture, and his faculties acquire a new developement 5 if he sustains new relations, possesses new tastes, preferences, and pleasures j if he is devoted to new pursuits 5 if he has a new heart and a new spirit ‘, it is from “the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” “He that hath wrought him for this self-same thing is God.”

I need not tell you that a different theology than this has, to no inconsiderable extent, pervaded the Church of God in almost every age. Pelagius, as early as the fifth century of the Christian era, taught, that “for us to be men, is of God 5 but that for us to be righteous, is of ourselves.” Of the same class are those teachers in modern times, who affirm, that while God cannot regenerate men, men regenerate themselves! We have no fellowship with views so directly opposed to the instructions of the Bible, and so utterly at variance with the experience of good men. I have often wondered at the rashness of those who have ventured thus to tamper with principles of such extreme delicacy and importance. There is nothing we should approach with greater fear and trembhng than the work of that Almighty Spirit, to whom so much is entrusted, and whose office and honours are protected by such fearful sanctions. It is easy to give a wrong touch to the Ark of God. The great principle of the Spirit’s influence is to the Christian system what the main spring and shaft are to a dehcate and exact machinery. It is an impulse of prodigious power, and may not be jostled out of its place by curious and unhallowed hands. I cannot but regard the immediate, effectual interposition of the Holy Spirit, superadded to all the means of grace and salvation, as one of those fundamental truths that are settled in heaven and ought never to be unsettled on earth. It was just observed that the error to which we refer is at variance with all sound experience. What is more common than for men under strong convictions to be thrown into deep distress and agony from a view of the difficulties in the way of their conversion? What pious man has not been deely sensible of his insufficiency to change his own heart, and a thousand times gratefully acknowledged that the change is to be attributed to a cause without himself? Who has not evidence within his own bosom, which is instead of a thousand exterior arguments, that there are obstacles to be surmounted in this great work, to which nothing is adequate but divine power? Nay, is not this insufficiency one of the first lessons in the school of Christ?

I have seen men who went up to the house of God with the unbending spirit of rebellion against their Maker, who went away with the meekness and docility of little children. I have seen men of all ranks and ages, of all opinions and prejudices

found in Christian lands, of every degree and variety of information from the shrewd jurist to the humble artizan, of all dispositions and characters, become alike and together the subjects of a moral transformation, the reality of which has been demonstrated by a subsequent life of practical godliness, and under the influence of light and motives which they had often previously resisted and which others around them still resist. How are these moral phenomena to be accounted for? If there be a divine influence in regeneration, there is nothing ambiguous, nothing doubtful, nothing wonderful in such results, except as they are expressive of wonderful power and mercy. When I see the forests bend and the sturdy oaks tremble; when I hear the tempest howl and behold the ocean foam with fury 5 though I see neither the cloud nor the air, I know there is “a strong and mighty wind.” So when I see a whole assembly moved as the trees of the wood 5 when I behold the fountains of human depravity broken up, its deep abyss boil, its troubled waters cast up mire and dirt, and after the storm listen “to the still, small voice j I know that the arm of the King eternal, invisible and immortal is made bare. “The wind bloweth where it hsteth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goethj so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

The change of which the spirit of God is the author is a moral, a spiritual change. It does not effect a transformation in the essential properties of the soul 5 but rather so enlightens and influences its existing properties, that, in a moral view, it becomes a new creature, and possesses altogether another spiritual character. It does not impart any new intellectual faculty, but rather enriches faculties that have become impoverished by sin 5 directs faculties that have been ill-directed; imparts sensitiveness and integrity to the conscience, and holiness to the heart. Nor is the influence that causes it, an influence that is necessary in order to originate, or sustain the obligations to holiness. There is enough of intellect and conscience in the most reprobate sinner to make it every way suitable and proper that he should be required to be holy, even though the influences of the Holy Spirit were forever withheld. The obligations to holiness are destroyed by nothing short of idiocy. “He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

The reasons for the necessity of this divine influence may be stated in very few words. All men by the fall lost communion with God. Not only have they no original righteousness, but deeply seated original sin. Mental blindness, unfaithfulness of conscience, and a total depravation of all the moral affections constitute the character of every natural man. That character is written in three memorable words, — “enmity against God.” Now it were marvellous if such a man were the cause of his own regeneration. Love produced by enmity — holiness caused by sin — light created by darkness! The reason then why a divine influence is necessary is, that men never will, and never can become holy without it. “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life 5 — no man can come to me, except the Father who hath sent me draw him.” Both these representations are alike entitled to our confidence. Until God draws them, no matter what the variety and novelty of their mental developements, no matter what the rigour of their external reformation, no matter what the strength of their most solemn purposes of repentance, they depart farther from him.

It has been already intimated that the Divine Spirit acts on the mind itself. A misconception of the truth in this particular has induced error. The disciples of the Arminian school do not, in expressed terms, deny the doctrine of divine influence. And yet they virtually deny it. Dr. Whitby himself concedes that “God vouchsafes some inward operations, or assistance to incline men to what is good, and work conversion in them j” while at the same time he asserts, that this influence is confined “to a more clear representation of the truths that we may have a fuller evidence and stronger conviction of it.” Such is the modern doctrine of the same school. Men are not wanting at the present day who affirm that all the influence which the spirit of God exerts is a moral, or suasory influence; and that it is impossible the mind should be subjected to any other. But this whole system is untrue. Who has told us that he who created the human mind cannot controul and govern it 5 and that when light and motives can no longer influence its course, by the same voice by which “he spake and it was done, and commanded and it stood fast,” so express his omnipotent will that the sinner shall turn and live? What is there in the laws of mind to prevent omnipotence from arresting its attention, impressing its conscience, and changing its affections? Away with all this philosophy falsely so called I The single question is, does the spirit of God, in changing the heart through the intervention of truth, act upon the truth or upon the mind? How does it act upon the truth? Does it change it? does it present it in such a way that the hostile mind falls in with it? The door is closed. The mind itself is inaccessible. The heart must be first opened, as was the heart of Lydia when she received the things that were spoken by Paul. The Saviour made use of clay to open the eyes of him that was born Wind. But it was not the clay that opened them, but the Saviour himself And though the analogy does not hold in all respects, it illustrates the thought we wish to convey. The change in regeneration is effected by the Holy Spirit through the truth, while the influence of the Spirit is exerted, not on the truth, but on the understanding and heart. Men may not always know how this moral transformation was effected, except that it was by an influence above all the power of second causes. With the man who was born bHnd, they can say, “One thing I know, that whereas I was once blind, I now see.” And if any doubt the immediate power of God in their conversion, with him they might well reply, “Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes!”

What is the change effected in regeneration? Is it a mere resolution to forsake the ways of sin and death? Is it the mere preference of religious duties and a religious life to the world? What then prevents the anxious and convinced sinner from being converted, when he forms resolution upon resolution to become the child of God, and when, amid the agonies of his conviction, the world to him is a mere cypher? What prevents the dying sinner from being converted, when he would give ten thousand worlds for one smile of mercy? What prevents the benighted sinner from being converted, when, in contempt of every worldly interest, he prostrates himself beneath the idol-car? What prevents the self-righteous sinner from being converted, when he “gives all his goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burned,” in order to obtain the favour of God? Regeneration lies deeper than this, else might it indeed be effected by moral suasion. It consists in a “new heart and a new spirit.” It is a state of mind that hates sin and loves holiness *, that believes the record that God has given of his Son, and trusts in him alone for salvation 5 that not only resolves to love God, but loves him, — more than the world, more than self, more than every thing. In effecting such a change, there are difficulties which no influence merely suasory, be it human, angelic, or divine, can remove. There is not a consideration in the universe sufficiently alluring to win, or weighty enough to break, a supremely selfish heart. The Holy Spirit imparts no omnipotence to motives 5 he exerts it himself. They do not open the eyes of the blind, but he opens them. They do not take away the heart of stone and give the heart of flesh; he does it, himself” working in men, to will and to do of his own good pleasure.

But you win naturally ask. Is this influence effectual, wherever it is exerted? It is effectual. It overcomes resistance. The struggle of the depraved mind, and all its angry conflict with truth and motives is over, when the mighty Spirit speaks. No sooner does he touch the heart, than the work is accomplished. The effect is produced just as certainly as the influence is exerted. The cause is controlling and decisive. It acts upon the will and destroys resistance. It is “effectual calling.” And it is a signal act of mighty power — a power that speaks into being, what had no being before — a power that lays its commands on things that do not exist, and eflfectually enforces obedience No laws of matter or of mind can accomplish this mighty work. No means, no second causes can accomplish it. Parents cannot accomplish it by all their solicitude and faithfulness. Christians cannot accomplish it by all their expostulations and counsel. Ministers cannot accomplish it by all their preaching. Bibles and Sabbaths cannot accomplish it by all their combined and concentrated energy. The law cannot accomplish it by its terrors, nor the gospel by its tenderness. The selectest mercies cannot accomplish it, nor the heaviest judgments. Wars, earthquakes and pestilence cannot accomplish it. The rending rocks, the deep thunder, the vivid lightning, cannot accomplish it. Angels cannot accomplish it by all their watchfulness and guardianship. The Spirit of God alone accomplishes it, and by the excellency of his power.

It is not unnatural also to inquire, whether this influence is extended to all? If it were, one thing is certainly true, that all would become holy, and finally saved. It is therefore a sovereign influence. It is imparted and withheld, not without reason; not without the best of reasons 5 but for reasons unknown to us. In this, as in other things, the Sovereign Arbiter does not treat all ahke. It is not extended to all to whom God is able to extend it, but to all to whom he is pleased to extend it. There is a theory which aflirms that God shows mercy to as many as he is able to show mercy 5 while the theory of the Bible unequivocafly and in strong contrast affirms, that he extends this agency to as many as he sees best, and “hath mercy on whom he will have mercy.” It required no more effort in Omnipotence to create the world, than to create an atom; and it requires no more effort from him to regenerate one man, than another. If you ask why he ever withholds this gracious influence, I must cover my face and be silent. Or if I give utterance to a single thought while dwelling on this inscrutable mystery, can only say, “Even so. Father! for so it seemed good in thy sight.” This is one of the “secret things which belong to God.”

Will any think it strange that with this last characteristic of the Spirit’s influence, I still say, that it is one of the distinguishing glories of the Bible? It has no greater glory; nor has the Divine mind any greater mercy than is here unfolded. And those who deny him this, take away the only ground of hope. We may say of this great truth, what the great Reformer so justly said of another. It is the “Articidiis aid stantis aut cadentis ecclesi{B.^^ With it the Church and the Bible stand, or fall. The denial of it is a virtual subversion of the whole gospel. Though too searching a principle, and too humbling to the pride of man not to be frittered away, unless there be great self-renunciation and simplicity of spirit, and great union of heart, of effort, and of prayer 5 yet can it never be too highly appreciated. Every holy affection and purpose that finds a dwelling among men, and that is cherished in the cold bosoms of this low world, is from this eternal source. The holy and happy emotions that light up so many smiles within the otherwise cheerless and curtained chambers of the soul; the benignant designs that diffuse such a charm over this otherwise desponding world, and throw their perspective into the far vale of futurity, would all be turned again into gloom and darkness, but for this power of the Highest that overshadows them. “Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers *, yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city. The pastures shall be forsaken; the multitude of the city shall be left a joy of wild asses, a pasture of flocks, until the Spirit be poured from on high.” The shades of night will never be chased away; the rigours and silence of winter will lock up the world in its icy chains, until this Sun of Righteousness arise. It is the pre-eminence of the Bible that it discloses this dispensation of the Spirit.

May we not easily see in view of this great peculiarity of the Scriptures, why it is that the gospel of the Son of God has made such progress in our world? The strength of false religions lies in the power of custom and habit, in the most unworthy appeals to the passions and interests of men, in the constraints of human authority and in the sword. They have all failed for want of some inherent power, some attendant influence upon the mind to render them eflfectual 5 — an influence which they could not secure because they were false. Not one of them has been able to stand forth alone, and perpetuate itself unaided by artifice, or arms, or the power of the civil government; and none of them could look to any higher source for aid. Mahomet was occupied three years in making fourteen converts. After seven years effort, when he fled from Mecca to Medina, lie numbered but one hundred and one followers. Neither the religion of Mahomet, nor any of the forms of paganism carried with them their own inherent evidence of their truth, and of their divine origin 5 nor has that great and Almighty Being who governs the moral as well as the natural world, given them any testimony of his approbation. The Bible on the other hand, carries with it this evidence of its divine origin, that it is attended with the mighty power of God. When the despised Son of Mary hung upon the cross, who would have thought that the religion of which he was the Author was destined to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Who would have thought, that contrary to all human probabilities, in opposition to all human power, and striking as it did a deadly blow to all the idolatry of self, it would have so triumphed over error, superstition and wickedness, changed the heart of man, the form of human society, and the religion of the world? Look a moment at this wonderful fact. Here is a system, the leading principles of which are not discoverable by the lights of nature and reason, a system that is to be propagated not by force, but by conviction, becoming the living religion of all the nations of the earth. At the expiration o forty days after the death of its founder, it numbered one hundred and twenty followers; immediately after, three thousand J and soon after, five thousand more. In the progress of a single century, it extended itself, over Syria and Lybia, Egypt and Arabia, Persia and Mesopotamia, pervaded Asia Minor, Arminia and Parthia, and even large portions of Europe. Unfolding as it did God in human nature, declaring as it did the substitution of the innocent for the guilty, insisting as it did upon a radical transformation of the human heart, — principles which are to the Jew a stumbling block, and to the Greek foolishness — it entered upon the conquest of the world. The learning of Athens, the wealth of Corinth, the pride of Rome bowed before it. It waved its standard amid the refinements of civilization and triumphed over the degradations of barbarism. No climate arrests its progress; no form of human society can exclude it. Everywhere its effects are the same; the same its illuminations of the understanding, its convictions of the conscience, its renovation of the heart; its holiness, its hopes, its joys, its prospects the same. It is natural to ask, whence this success? Never was a change wrought in the character of man by means so simple, so unostentatious, so utterly at war with all the pride and egotism of the human heart. We see no power proportioned to the effect. What was it? It cannot be difficult to see what it was. God was with it. The secret of its success is found in the attendant power of its Author. No natural causes can account for such a phenomenon as the wide extension and the hallowed effects of the Bible. It is a phenomenon

altogether unique in its kind, and produced only by the instrumentality of truth under the broad seal of heaven. Nor have its triumphs ceased. These commendations and honours are not flowers thrown upon its tomb. The moral efficacy of the Scriptures is demonstration that they are “living oracles,” and that the word of God is “quick and powerful” beyond all other power. Men are conscious of the spiritual excellence it reveals and imparts. When we can look round upon this magnificent and beautiful creation, and doubt whether it is the work of the divine hand, then too we may look at the effects of the Bible, and doubt whether they discover the work of the divine mind. And this they will discover more and more. The evidence is accumulative, and accumulating every hour. It is unlimited, but by the boundaries of the earth’, it is prospective, and shall never terminate, but with the end of time. Not only has the gospel made rapid progress in our world, but it shall make still more wonderful progress. The Spirit of God has but begun to descend. The chief part of his work and reward is yet in expectation. These Scriptures go forth, not only under the sanction, but under the promised, assured, effectual, and still more abundant blessing of their Author in time to come. He has said, “As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and prosper in the thing whereunto I sent it.” With the Bible in their hands and the Spirit of God among their people, the ministers of salvation “shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before them into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle-tree 5 and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off”.” With this influence, the wilderness shall be turned into a paradise, and Lebanon into Carmel. The Bible will march onward in defiance of all the indifference of a world that lieth in wickedness, of all the arts of philosophy, and all the virulence of relentless persecution. While other religions, devised by human wisdom, and propagated by the secular arm, shall be seen to possess no self-perpetuating power, and pass away, and leave no memorial behind them 5 the religion of the Bible shall live, and be diffused, and find its triumphs in the moral purity and happiness of “a great multitude which no man can number.” Myriads, by this gracious influence, will yet be delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son 5 and myriads more will yet rise up “an exceeding great army,” from the valley where there were “bones very many and very dry,” and where breath came upon them from the four winds. Go and stand in the midst of some of those numberless scenes of wonder and of mercy, of sovereignty and of omnipotence, where the Spirit of God has moved the assemblies of his people j where hundreds have trembled as on the verge of wo; and where, after the storm was past, the voice of mercy has whispered divine peace, and awoke their everlasting songj and you may appreciate, in some small degree, the love and power of the Holy Spirit. If you look forward to what this celestial Comforter will yet accomplish, when the great mass of human minds shall be subjected to his gracious influence j when so many hearts shall be purified, and so many lives renewed 5 when every land shall be redeemed from its

corruption and bondage, and the world assume a character which shall be the counterpart to the great truths which this divine agent impresses on the soul *, with overwhelming gratitude may you recognize the pre-eminence of his great work. We anticipate with confidence the ultimate triumphs of the Bible because there is no inconstancy of purpose, no weakness, no despondency in the mind of the Spirit. The work of the adorable Saviour was finished, when he bowed his head and sunk upon the cross; while the ever-blesssed Spirit has but just entered on his wonder-working career. It is 28 reserved for him to gather his laurels from the sheaves of the coming harvest, and find his reward in the purity and blessedness of a regenerated world.

Permit me also to remind you, my young friends, that the same divine influence which is the hope of the world is also your hope — your only hope — your great and only incentive and encouragement in the divine life. Thus Paul considered it, when he said, “When I am weak, then am I strong.” Thus a pious female of the last century considered it, when uttering the emotions of all the effectually called, she exclaimed, “Though I am perfect weakness, I have omnipotence to lean upon.” Thus the ever-blessed Spirit himself considered it, when he left the injunction, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure.” I know not why men should stumble at the threshold of their inquiries, over their dependance on the Spirit of God 5 as though this discouraged, rather than encouraged them; as though it shut the doors of heaven, rather than kept them open 5 as though it retarded and bewildered them in their progress, rather than led them onward 5 as though, because “without Christ they can do nothing,” they cannot do all things “through Christ strengthening them.” I know not why it is not your privilege and mine to make the same practical use of our dependance on the Spirit of grace that was made by patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. And sure I am, the use they made of it was, not to relax the bonds of obligation, encourage indifference, and sanction sloth and procrastination 5 but to impart strength in weakness, hope in despondency, courage in depresssion, darkness, and difficulty, and induce them to “take hold of God’s strength and be at peace.” Man in his best estate is weak and fallible. Of the choicest human endowments, we may say, “This treasure we have in earthern vessels.” Your strength is made perfect by conscious weakness. If the Spirit of God help not your infirmities, you are truly weak. But confident of his support, ‘•’ with a thousand perils in your eye,” you may say, “None of these things move me 5 neither count I my life dear to myself, so that I might finish my course with joy.” Not a little of the darkness and despondency which perplex men in the present world, is to be attributed to the low views they entertain of the divine power and goodness. Just views of these attributes would always dispel the cloud. “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” Whatever reasons men have to distrust themselves, they have none to distrust him.

I will not close this lecture without adding another thought. How obvious, in view of the principles which have been suggested, is the privilege and duty of prayer. “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven, give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” I know of no other way of procuring these divine influences than to sohcit them. “Ask, and ye shall receive 5 seek, and ye shall find 5 knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” A man who feels that his heart is wholly inclined to evil, “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” yea, “enmity against God,” cannot live without prayer, and indulge any hope that he will ever become a converted man. He will find his conscience more and more obdurate, his heart more and more fortified against the claims of the Bible, and hardened in sin; while the spirit and maxims of the world, and the subtle and ceaseless power of him who “goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,” rivet the chains of sin and death. The Christian who would resist the strength of his natural corruptions, and surmount the hindrances which beset his path to heaven, and who would not sink in utter despondency before the responsibility and perils of his high calling, must daily aspire after that divine aid which makes his progress certain and his triumph sure. The minister of the gospel who would be raised above discouragement in view of his own insufficiency and the greatness of his work, may, if he have the faith and prayer to ally his own weakness with the energy of the Holy Spirit, persevere in his labours, not only with undiscouraged cheerfulness and resolution, but comforted hopes. The church that “sows in tears may reap in joy.” The spirit of prayer will give her confidence and hope. Whom she cannot awaken.

and convince, and convert, God can rouse from their apathy, open their hearts to understand his word, and at a time, and in a way that shall make his own power and grace the most conspicuous. Prayer makes the doubting hope, the feeble strong. It gives humility and confidence in God. It makes every effort for the salvation of men spiritual and holy. “Prayer moves the hand that moves the world.” Who would be insensible to the value of prayer?