ment, and will persist in profligacy and vice, and oppose all the influences of rank, character, and future happiness. He will, in like manner, resist the influence of God upon his mind.

Certain defences of the Divine character always remind us, that the character of the blessed God is safest in his own hands, and that it is our highest wisdom to let the Holy Spirit be his own advocate. If there be any meaning in words, it is the universal testimony of the entire Scriptures, that the influences of the Holy Spirit are resisted, suppressed, quenched, and overcome. God has proclaimed this testimony against men, in different ages, for more than four thousand years. Various messengers have been employed in different circumstances, among different nations; but all agree in charging man with resisting the Holy Spirit. The first Christian martyr, sealed this testimony with his blood; and with his dying breath charged his hearers, saying, "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." (Acts vii. 51.) Why, therefore, should we deny it, or attempt to explain it away ? The sentiment must stand or fall with the book that contains it.

The doctrine of the irresistibleness of Divine grace seems to originate in an imagination, that, in the process of conversion, God concentrates all his influences to bear upon an individual mind as upon a point, and that consequently the supposition, that a finite essence of acknowledged feebleness could resist all this energy, must be absurd and monstrous. It is said, that the influences of the Spirit invariably produce the fruits of the Spirit; or that where the fruits of the Spirit are not, there his real influences are not, and consequently they have not been resisted. Such a statement is in opposition to all analogy. It is against the doctrine of latent energies, such as of latent heat that has never been elicited, and of vegetable life that has never germinated. When we say that a man quenches fire, we do not mean that he has extinguished the power of latent heat in matter, but that he has prevented the effects, and mastered the operations of fire. There are infinite and boundless masses in which heat is really present, though its fruits or effects have never been developed, and, consequently, have never been extinguished.

The complete control which man can exercise over divine influences, may be instanced in the fall of Adam, and in the abuse of miraculous gifts. Divine influences were in their

fullest and freest energy in Adam; but, that they were under his control, and susceptible of resistance, is evident from a fact, that has stunned our whole nature. Miraculous influences are the energies of the infinite and omnipotent God; but even these were under the control of man. Directions are given by the Holy Spirit himself how to control them, so that the spirits of the prophets should be subject to the prophets; and form a perfect contrast to the priests of the tripod when filled with an afflatus from Apollo. These supernatural impulses could be directed in a wrong course, and controlled for wrong ends, and abused for ostentation, pride, and gain. The unbelief of the Jews of Galilee did not extinguish the miraculous power of the Lord Jesus Christ. It could not do this. It did what it could; it prevented and quenched its supernatural manifestations; for "he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief." (Matt. xiii. 58.) When we see all these energies susceptible of resistance from man, it must, in the absence of revealed testimony, be a mere figment of mysticism to suppose that gracious influences are either irresistible or unresisted.

The influences of an infinite Being are not necessarily infinite in their exercise, for, evidently the energies of an omnipotent Being are not in their phenomena necessarily omnipotent. God himself is omnipotent, but his influences and energies in their exercise and operation are not omnipotent. They are not omnipotent, for this immovable reason, that God himself has set a LIMIT to their exercise. Is his influence in the bud of a rose, in the growth of an oak, or the movements of an insect, omnipotent? Even the mighty influences, which he issues from his throne to renew the face of the earth, are controlled by man, and are constantly neglected and avoided, or perverted and abused. In resisting gracious influences, man opposes the measure that is in a given truth, or in a given number of truths. Every one of my readers believes, that every truth, though really divine, does not possess equal power and equal influence to save and convert; and that some are more powerful and adapted than others. This is the very thing for which I am pleading. The influences of God in the truth are like his influences in the universe, infinite and omnipotent in some respects, but limited and gentle and pliant in all the relations in which we can discover and use them; and certainly gentle and mild where they appear necessary for the use and the improvement of

man. Man cannot annihilate one of them, but he can resist each and all of them, though, in some instances, at his immense and stupendous peril.

Experience teaches us that, with some influences, it is infinitely more dangerous to trifle than with others: and the scripture revelation informs us, that most of all is it perilous to trifle and dally with saving influences. Picture yourself on the strand of a river, where there is a crowd of benevolent men employing all their skill, in attempts to restore the suspended animation in a man just discovered drowned. The current of breathing life is just returning, and the bosom begins to heave with its animating swell, and as the resuscitated man is in the act of respiration, one of the by-standers rushes forward, and with rude hands covers the face of the patient, stops his breath, and extinguishes the restored impulse of life. A shock of extreme horror convulses the whole multitude, and fearful shrieks of terrible dismay express their abhorrence and indignation. Is it possible to conceive a spectacle more frightfully hideous than this? Yes, there is another. Suppose, that while the benevolent individuals employed in the measures of resuscitation were, with intense anxiety watching for the signs of life, and when their generous hearts beat high with the appearances of reanimation, and when the patient himself was just awaking to a consciousness of the glowing powers of life, he, himself, in a moment, madly stifled the commencing inspiration, and quenched the kindling spark. All stand aghast-all are stunned, and all become petrified at a deed of such frantic atrocity. But, imagine the compassionate men again to repeat their measures, and again to succeed; and again, the stirrings of life to be strangled by the patient himself. Yet, in the moral world, such appalling atrocities, repeated over and over again are but faint representatives of the part which the obdurate sinner is acting every time he feels the force of truth; the same is the part which every church is acting, when its inconsistencies damp the convictions of a young convert, and when its formality suppresses the operations of religious revivals.

In the process of resuscitation, we think any signs of life are better than death; and even the most convulsive and irregular movements of the limbs, are deemed far better than the decent and the garnished "laying out" of a corpse. We seem to think otherwise in religion. We seem afraid of life,

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lest there should be an irregular and unorderly action. Hence the alarm at the stirrings of a revival. Revivals will indeed disturb, but they will disturb nothing except the studied and factitious regularity of what is dead. Jesus Christ never intended that his church should attract the attention of the world by a pomp of lying-in-state. Should revivals in the church disturb some orderly ceremonials, which have been decreed by worldly fashion, throw into confusion the flowers and herbs that bedeck the shroud and chasten the odours of death, and even burst her perfumed cerements, and shatter the wood and the lead that confine her for her burial, it were no sad event: the world would not be worse. The wilderness and the solitary place would be glad for it, and the desert would rejoice and blossom as the rose. Oh glorious hour! thrice hail! the welcome day. "Awake, awake, put on the strength, O Zion! put on the beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city! for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust arise and sit down, O Jerusalem! loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion."

SECTION III.

On the Withdrawment, of the Holy Spirit.

Every church has an individuality of character. Sometimes this character is formed of elements, which stifle the influences, and quench the emotions of the Holy Spirit as effectually as personal guilt and resistance. In such a church, though it still retain the word and means of grace, there are no evidences that the influences of the Holy Spirit are in active operation. In opposition to the doctrine of the permanency of Divine influences in the Christian church, there is an hypothesis which assumes that, in the history of experimental and practical religion, there are seasons when the Holy Spirit, in a sovereign manner, withdraws his communications and withholds his efficacious operations. This hypothesis is in almost universal acceptation: and it holds spellbound the feelings, the resources, and the energies, of the Christian community. Some qualify this dogma by the sentiment, that the Christian church is truly in constant communion with the Holy Spirit; but that now and then, for sovereign reasons, he imparts his influences more sparingly than at some given periods. Either and both of these statements

compose a quietus for an indolent church, and produce in it apathy, listlessness, and complacent content in her guilty unfruitfulness.

Men's views of Divine sovereignty have always a powerful effect upon their character. The sovereignty of Divine grace is as liable to abuse as any other doctrine; and perverted views of sovereignty have ever exerted a pernicious influence on Christian churches, both on their attempts to save the souls of others, and on the purity of their own fervency of spirit. In the creeds of many, Divine sovereignty means an arbitrary determination, or rather a capricious fitfulness of operation, by which the influences of the Holy Spirit have only a kind of loose, flitting, fickle, and uncertain, connexion with the instrumentality of means. Though it were true, that Divine influences are originally sovereign, yet it does not follow that their administration is, by that fact, rendered capricious and arbitrary. This would be inconsist ent with other instances of sovereign arrangements in the works of God. When God, out of all possibles, selected the present boundless system of the universe, he exercised sovereign WILL; but having selected, produced, and adjusted it, the sovereignty which he exercises in its administration is not the sovereignty of will, but the sovereignty of WISDOM, of TRUTH, and of LOVE. He himself has set up limits and bounds, within which we are to expect the exercise and the manifestation of his will and power. The exercises of his will, and the influences of his agency, are now carried on and dispensed according to determinate laws, and fixed rules of communication. Forgiveness of sin, answers to prayer, providential guidance, are all blessings truly sovereign, but not arbitrary; for every hearer of the gospel, and every Christian believer, knows by what means they are communicated, and how they are to be obtained. The influences of the Holy Spirit, are of the same character. They are sovereign but not arbitrary and fickle. With them there is no variableness nor the shadow of capriciousness. To prove that they are 66 sure mercies" certainly obtainable, and within the reach of the church, for the conversion of the world, we plead the distinct, specific, and unrecalled promises, of God; the actual establishment of a system of means contrived and adjusted for communicating them; the practical and practicable facts in the past history of the promulgation of the gospel; and the unchangeable aspect of the character of God