of which the higher must prevail against the lower; but his spirit is above nature, competent to control natural appetite and all its gratifications, and to sacrifice and reject any degree of happiness for self-approbation in righteousness. And to this the Spirit strives, and the truth prompts, and neither can go any further, for the pious yielding or the impious resisting must be of the human spirit's originating. Hence the earnest caution against "resisting the Spirit," "quenching the Spirit," and the manifest accounting the sinner himself guilty in doing it.1

5. THE EFFECTUAL CALLING OF THE SPIRIT INDUCES A COMPLYING WILL.-The human preacher calls and warns, invites and persuades, but he necessarily stands outside of the minds he addresses; and can only do his work through the truth he uses. He can only use means, and be himself but an instrument in saving sinners. The Holy Ghost most gloriously reverses this order of working on human hearts. He comes directly to the human spirit, and beyond all means works on it, and quickens every faculty and susceptibility of the man. He rouses conscience that it cannot sleep, and quickens convictions of guilt the man cannot repress, and stirs sympathies that soften and melt the soul's obduracy, so that he cannot but sigh and weep over his sins. In this effectual working, though the spirit is competent to struggle on and cleave to its sensual bondage, it takes a new disposing,

1 1 Acts vii. 51; 1 Thess. v. 19; Eph. iv. 30.

and renounces flesh and sense, and wakes and acts in the recovered freedom of its own sovereignty. It now rules, and does not serve, the lusts of the flesh; and the will is in it, and the choice upon it. With all the power of the Holy Ghost effectually working, the human spirit also has as freely worked in the change as in any act in his life when no special power of the Holy Spirit was present. What the Spirit has done has secured what the sinner has done, but the Spirit's doing has been his own, and the sinner's doing has been his, and without the former the change would not have been, and without the latter the change could not have been, for the change is just this new disposing.

6. THE ASSENTING WILL MUST BE TO THE TRUTH. The power of the spirit is not on nor through truth, but directly on mind; yet the truth must be also on the mind in order that the assenting will may be. No intelligent willing can be in darkness, and this assenting spiritual disposing is in the end of known truth and conscious obligation. The operation of the Holy Ghost is other than the action of truth; and if it were conceived to be when truth was not, and sufficient for securing the change when the new disposing shall come, yet could not that new disposing occur but in the presence of truth. The willing must have its end as truly as the knowing and feeling, and the very end of the pious willing is the truth itself. Hence conversion of spirit, and growing sanctification of spirit,

must be by the Holy Ghost, as effectually working in mind, and must also be through the truth as that to which the mind turns and embraces; and hence, too, the propriety and consistency of the prayer of the Saviour, "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth."1 God sanctifies as God renews - by the power of the Holy Spirit; but neither is done except in the presence and to the end of truth, which is the word of God.

SECTION III.

THE WORK WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT ACCOMPLISHES.

In creation, no substantial forces are made by the Son which are not systematically arranged in connec tion by the Spirit; and so in redemption, no work wrought by the Son is overlooked by the Spirit, but in his own time and manner he puts it in available communication with the human mind for executing the eternal plan of the Father. It was foretold that he should "not speak of himself," but should "take of the things of Christ and show them unto us." What power Jesus Christ has put in the world of humanity by his incarnation, life, and death, the Spirit applies by his power in obtaining the designed result in

1 John xvii. 17.

buman salvation. In the sphere of redemption the whole work of the Holy Spirit is upon mind, and in full consistency with human freedom and responsibility; but without his working the work of the Son would be unavailable. His agency is as necessary, and as lovingly gracious in the interest of human salvation, as that of the suffering Saviour.

1. THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN INSPIRATION.

The Incarnation, and thereby the open manifestation of God in humanity, was in one age and among the people of one country, and yet this was destined to become known and felt in every age and among all people. In order to reach coming ages and distant lands, it was necessary to so embody and retain the living truth in its power that it might be perpetuated and transmitted to all future generations. The wisest way conceivable for this was purposed by inspiring some selected minds with the divine communication, and prompting them to record, as was needed, the heavenly messages, and duly authenticate their record, that it should be received and work its power out upon the world wherever it should be sent. The essential thing is the truth of the record, and that it is the truth which God designed to communicate to men; hence the prime importance of the attestation of this divine inspiring in the men who received and recorded the messages. The writers claim for themselves inspiration on the face of the record itself, and they have given valid proof for it; but with this proof

we are not now concerned, and only with the consideration of inspiration itself as a work of the Holy Spirit. It is the work of Absolute Reason within the individuality of finite reason, and so a work of the divine Spirit in the human spirit, and which cannot be phenomenally perceived, but must be spiritually discerned.

We may be much assisted in rendering this spiritual work intelligible by following out its fair analogy in the field of rational art, inasmuch as the work of reason in and through sense in any one case is very far explanatory of all other cases. The artist must first be fully possessed with the idea he is about to embody. He will never get out in expression more than is contained in his archetype. The patternthought may be an origination of his own genius, or an adopted and perhaps modified form from some other, but the idea must stand clear in his own mind as the necessary pre-requisite of his communicating anything to others. And when such bright ideal is in possession, it ever proves an inner stimulus, strenu ously prompting in some way to its outer manifestation. It makes a mental unrest that cannot be quieted except as there is given to it some fitting state of fixed expression. And in doing this the artist's hand is guided by the inner eye of reason intent on this created or adopted ideal.

Even so with the inspired Messenger from heaven. He must have the divine idea in clear contemplation, and as it must be no original of his own, but wholly

1