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God. What if I should miss the path! What if, when at the end of my days I think myself at the door of heaven, I should find myself at the gate of hell! O cold and cruel thought! Why should I indulge it? There can be only two just reasons for dread; and if these be not well grounded, there are no more. One is in the subject itself. If the leading of the Spirit be impossible to be known; if there be no certain rule to distinguish the work of the Spirit from every other work; then indeed I am liable to a fatal mistake, and become an object of the greatest pity, the greater for being invited by a respectable book to search after what the wisest in the world can never find. The other is, although the subject may be understood, yet if I have no heart to search, it would be madness to expect to understand. Peace be with all your consciences! The first I am sure, is a groundless fear; for God is so different from every other being, and the religion he hath taught us so distinct from every other exercise in the world, that there is no more danger of a man's not finding this part of the Christian religion, if he looks for it, than there is of his not finding the sun. If you be sincerely seeking to be directed by the Holy Scriptures, I can inform you for your comfort, that you will succeed; for we know who said, "Seek and ye shall find; every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth. Do you think, the Scripture speaketh in vain ?"

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The first thing that struck me in thinking of being "led by the Spirit," was, What am I thinking about? Who or what is the Spirit of God? I turned the subject on every side, began below to try to climb upward, and said, "Who knoweth the spirit of a beast that goeth downward?" Not I. "Who knoweth the spirit of a man that goeth upward?" Not I. Who hath heard the voice, or seen the shape" of God? "No man at any time:" for the "bodily shape like a dove," called "the Holy Ghost," and said to "descend upon Jesus," and "light upon him," was neither the Holy Ghost in person, nor a real dove, nor a form like either the Holy Ghost or a dove; but it was a bright light hovering over Jesus, and at length settling upon his head, just as

a dove hovers and lights upon the ground. How then can any one know the Holy Spirit of God? There is only one way, and that Jesus Christ teacheth in these words, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." It is to Jesus Christ then, and not to scholars and philosophers, nor to our own conjectures, that we are to go for information on this subject. Our Lord very often spoke of it, and what he hath declared is all we know, or can know of the matter. Now, as we have often observed to you, should we make a list of all the subjects, which Jesus Christ taught, and of those which he mentioned only incidentally and by the way, and ask, What hath the "only begotten of the Father declared" on these subjects, the proper answer would be, He hath declared their uses but not their NATURES, their influences upon us, but not the materials of which they are made, and the manner in which they subsist.

To give you an infallible example of this manner of expounding Scripture, I quote to you a passage in the first Epistle of John. The apostle repeats the same expression, "No man hath seen God at any time," once in his Gospel without an exposition, and only saying Jesus declared him, and once in his Epistle with an exposition how he declared him. "No man hath seen God at any time:" but if "we love one another, God dwelleth in us. We dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit . . . God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." In this manner the Scriptures expound themselves, and on this account I said just now it was as easy to find the truth as to discover the sun: but, alas! people are not looking for what Jesus declared, but for something of somebody's else declaring, for which indeed they have a name, but of which they have no idea. Should I set one of you, not skilled in astronomy, any day to look for the sun, you would soon find it; but should I say, brother, be so kind as look upward, east, west, north, and south, and find Andromeda, you might very well never find, when you did not know what you was looking for.

I wish, with all my soul, I could be so happy as to convey this idea so that it could not possibly be misunderstood; and admit the goodness of my intention as an excuse for a homely way of speaking. Suppose I were to take two samples of corn to market for two farmers at a distance, whom no man had seen or could see. Suppose yourselves to buy two loads of corn by these two samples. Suppose, when they were delivered, one should be as good as the sample, and fair Winchester measure, and the other worse than the sample, and short measure. Would not you instantly know these two unknown men? Yes, say you, we should know, and we should not know; we should not know whether they were tall or low, fat or lean, fair or brown, old or young; but we should know that one was wise and honest, and the other weak or wicked; and by looking into the Holy Scriptures we should know what the unseen and unknown God thought of them, for he saith, "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in measure. Just weights and a just bushel shall ye have," for "divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the Lord. A just weight is his delight. Shall I count him pure with the bag of deceitful weights, and the scant measure that is abominable ?" These are not the practices of good men, whom "the Lord requireth to do justly;" these are "treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked." May God pardon us for speaking of him below his dignity! What can we, poor mortals, crawling out of darkness into daylight, do! though we first "see men like trees walking," yet after the great master "puts his hands again upon our eyes," we shall look up, and see every man clearly."

It is then from the Holy Scriptures that we are to derive our notions of the Holy Spirit; and our first work shall be to examine the history of the Holy Spirit as these oracles of God report it . . . Having done this we will examine how the Holy Spirit leads or guides all good men . . . and these two articles will fully explain the text, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God," remembering all along, that we are not in search of an imaginary being set up before-hand

in our own fancies, but we are inquiring what conclusion we ought to come to under the direction of those infallible guides, inspired men. I think also, I need not inform you, that we are not to determine any thing concerning the nature of the Holy Ghost by the similitudes used in Scripture to describe his influence in the world. The Spirit of God is not fire, he is not breath or air, he doth not come or go, or proceed from one to another, heis not capable of being grieved; the Spirit of God is God, and none of these things agree with the eminence of his perfections. He "moved upon the face of the waters... He garnished the heavens, and his hand formed the crooked serpent . . . He filled Bezaleel and Aholiab with wisdom to teach the engraver, the embroiderer, and the weaver, how to work all manner of work for the service of the sanctuary He is in man, giving him life and understanding . . . He is one Spirit, the Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all;" all the universe is a body, of which he is the soul, and " in him we live, and move, and have our being." It is not the Spirit of God in any of these senses that we are searching for. It is not God in the mere exercise of his power as the Creator and Governor of the world; but it is God in the exercise of his holiness as the author and maintainer of religion, after which we are inquiring; and it is to fix our attention on this, that the New Testament calls God, exercising his holiness in the church, near a hundred times the "Holy Ghost," or the "Holy Spirit ;" for the old English word ghost signifies Spirit. Indeed our forefathers were such children in understanding, as to think that the souls of departed men might return to this world, and walk about, and be seen, especially in the dark, and such a waiking Spirit they called a ghost; and hence came the word ghastly, that is dismal, horrible, melancholy in the countenance; but nothing of all this belongs to God, whom, as we have before observed, "no man hath seen at any time," and of whom we know nothing except what is declared in Scripture, and the Scriptures declare nothing of God in religion, except that all his influences are to be known by their holiness.

The first appearance of God in religion, the ground of all the rest, was in revealing, or making known future events, "signifying before hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." In this, the first view, God proposeth himself to our consideration as a "spirit of prophecy," the first of which is, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head, and the serpent shall bruise his heel." This information was given by God himself to our first parents. In after times, during four thousand years, it pleased God to communicate more of this subject to many men, sometimes in dreams, sometimes by visions, and at other times by suggesting new and extraordinary thoughts, and along with them an irresistible impulse to impart their knowledge to others. About two thousand years after the first prophecy, it pleased God to give his church by Moses a clear law to determine all cases of prophecy; for as prophesying gained credit in the world, a temptation rose to induce bad men to feign themselves prophets. Foolish and wicked men, who could do nothing else to procure the benefits of this life, could easily make a lie, and if that lie could gain credit, it answered all the end of ability and industry. The law of Moses is quite clear on this subject. It describes the case and determines the punishment. If the prophecy" came to pass," and if the prophet led men to holiness, then he was thought to be sent of God; but if either the prophecy did not come pass, or if it did, and the prophet added, "Let us serve other gods," then, saith the law, "That prophet shall die." The Jewish prophets not only foretold an event that was to come to pass long after their death, as the birth of Christ; but they foretold other events, which came to pass in their own times. When they spoke of very distant events, they were to be judged of by their moral character; and when they spoke of very near events, the accomplishment was to determine. Two passages of Scripture confirm this. Jeremiah says to a false prophet, "Hear thou this word, which I speak in thine ears, and in the ears of all the people. The prophets that have been before me, and before thee of old, prophesied both