be seen in the endurance of the saints of God, to be exemplified in our daily works and words, to be established and confirmed by these our appointed labours, and to be approved by Him, before whose judgment-seat we shall all one day stand.

LECTURE VI.

THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT.

ST. JOHN iii. 10.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

THE operation of Christianity upon the heart and life of man, may be defined to consist in a gradual assimilation of his thoughts and ways to the thoughts and ways of God. And so different is this process from anything which takes place in the man not subjected to religious influence, that it is represented to us in Scripture as a new life, endowing men with new faculties and new sensations. The entrance into it is described as a new birth-a being born again, or from above. Now this new life is asserted in Scripture to be the great gift which the Redeemer came to confer upon the human race: and its completion, in the full action of all its faculties, and the full exercise of all its senses, is the great end to which we are taught to look, as the purpose and aim of our

redemption. Following the analogy of the comparison, Scripture teaches us that the man who thus lives, is conversant with, and moves amongst, the objects of an unseen eternal world; that he walks by faith, not by sight; that he knows nothing and no man after the flesh, but every thing and every person by the aid of other principles, and through the medium of other thoughts, than those furnished by the present state of time. And further yet, as our natural life was produced, and is upheld, by the imparting to a mass of inert matter a vivid and mysterious influence from God the Creator, in whom we live and move and have our being; so we are taught that this inner and deeper life is created and continued by the inspiration into our souls, dead and incapable before, of a vital influence from God our Redeemer, acting by and with the counsel of His will, who is the Father of lights, and from whom cometh every good and perfect gift. We believe that to confer this influence, Christ was raised up to the right hand of God; that with this influence he was anointed specially and above his fellows; and that he does, in his heavenly abode of glory, dispense and shed forth this quickening power upon the souls of men. We believe this power to be the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, and being the third person in the ever-blessed Trinity, as revealed to us in the covenant work of redemption. Now,

if these things be so; if without holiness no man shall see the Lord; if without the influence of the blessed Spirit of God no man shall become holy; if this process of assimilation to God be indeed a new and wonderful life, an enlightening, a comforting, and a purifying process; and if, on the other hand, there were holy men of old, who lived faithful lives and died triumphant deaths, and have passed to their rest in the heavenly city of God,-then I say that this spiritual life, this birth into new senses and faculties, with its Lord and Giver the Holy Spirit, must have been by these ancient worthies felt and known. For whatever additional knowledge may in the course of ages have been conferred upon the Church, in the unfolding of the purposes of Providence, we cannot conceive any time when God's people were left without this knowledge, so entirely essential to the very existence of religion in the heart.

Now to illustrate this a priori argument by testimony to the fact, that things were as I have insisted, is the object of my present Lecture. Before doing so, however, one remark is necessary. The gift of the Holy Spirit being so essential and important as we have described it, we may expect to find that this, the great result of the Messiah's coming, was distinctly recognized, and frequently referred to, in proportion to its value and dignity. For it would not argue

that consistency in the Divine conduct for which I am contending, if we found that doctrinal truths which stand lower in the scale of importance were in full possession of the ancient Churches, while this, the first and highest of all, was but seldom recognized, or darkly hinted at.

I proceed then first to consider the direct testimony of Scripture itself. In examining the Old Testament, we find that by far the majority of passages where the Spirit of God is mentioned, have reference to his work of extraordinary inspiration. Prophetic powers are universally and plainly ascribed to the agency of this Spirit, as also in several places is the skill of a consummate workman. To the Spirit is ascribed the power of transporting from place to place, in order to furnish prophetic visions. In one passage in the book of Job, and in the celebrated 2nd verse of Genesis, creative power is referred to the same Spirit. And with regard to the latter passage it may be observed, that the words 'the Spirit of God' can hardly with any fairness be explained away as some have attempted: and that even if they could be, there still would remain for my present purpose the consent of the ancient Church, which explained them as we do now.

Before we notice other operations ascribed to this Spirit, let us consider the use of his name in the connexions already mentioned. I need not here remark, that in the three principal theological