except saving influences. They know that all the physical influences that renew the face of the earth come from God, but they take care to use all means to put their farms and gardens in a position, which shall be adapted to the operation of these benign energies; and they feel conscious that these influences, though present and powerful, would avail them nothing while the means were neglected by which they operate. All good men recognize also that the intellectual influences, which enlarge and exalt the mind, come from God; but they very laudably take good heed that, by the discipline of a wise and good education, the minds of their children be put in a right position for these influences to act upon them.

Why does not the church act thus in its estimate of saving influences? It is because its estimate is wrong; and its estimate is wrong because it has been formed either by the traditions of theological men, instead of the commandments of God, or by the misinterpretation of scriptural facts in the miraculous history of the Jews. The constitution of the Jewish church was a theocracy, a government by miracles, and by immediate Divine interpositions. The most conspicuous penalties and rewards, in this form of government, consisted of physical evils or temporal good. Hence, for the disobedience or rebellion of the people, the Supreme Organ of the theocracy suspended the physical influences of the season, commanded the clouds to rain no rain on the land, and withheld or blasted the harvests. This administration of physical influences, under the theocracy, has been applied by many Christians to the exhibition of saving influences under the official agency of the Holy Spirit. The theology of the Bible never represents the ministration of the Spirit and the exhibition of his saving agency as being, like the theocracy, of a miraculous character, and without the operation of means. The means and the instrument of salvation, or of conveying saving influences, is the truth. Where the gospel is unknown, conversions are unknown. The proposition, that God saves only by means of the gospel, is the corner-stone of all missionary institutions. All persons, who have been brought under the influences of salvation, acknowledge their deep obligations to the gospel. The gospel is the only link of communication between the soul of man and the Holy Spirit; and it is by furnishing men with the gospel, that the church can put a district or a country in a position for the influences of the Spirit to bless it. Let my reader spread

before him a map of the world, and place his finger on the name of a given place in India or China, and ask himself, "What is there here which the Holy Spirit can bless to convert and save the inhabitants ?" There is much there that can be blessed for physical, or mental, or moral good, but nothing which can be productive of saving good. My reader has in his possession the means that will put that city or village in a position to receive saving good; and he is under obligations to furnish that village with these means of salvation. Salvation will never be known there until these means are furnished. Christ gave himself a ransom for the life of that village, and the reprieve of that village is in the office of the church, and it is her duty and business to find agents to deliver the King's pardon to those who are ready to perish. The mechanic might as reasonably wait, with folded arms, to see his axe and saw and hammer "moved" to build an edifice, as the church expect the world to be converted and saved, without her own vigorous effort in the use of her holy apparatus. To expect the Holy Spirit to do more than manifest his influences, in the use of his own appointed means, is not faith but presumption, not humility but arrogance.

The reason why the influences of the Holy Spirit are not more abundantly manifested in the church, where the means of salvation are actually present is, that the church does not continue to employ them for the one grand, paramount, purpose of SALVATION. Seasons of conversions and revivals are in the church, as the sojournings of a "wayfaring man," transient and fleeting. The church does not cordially believe that they are manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit, doubts the sincerity of his work, and frequently keeps aloof from it as fanatical. These seasons of refreshing and life call the church to a new series of duty and labor. Wherever God is, "his work is with him," and he calls his people to increased and enlarged and multiplied activity, from which a Laodicean church always shrinks. The means were intended, and appointed, and entrusted to the church, to save sinners; if they are turned and wrested to any other purpose, such as ceremony or parade, they will not secure their purpose. God has only promised to bless his own means as employed by the church; if the church does not exhibit them, there is nothing which God can bless; for he can bless only something DONE, and done not by him but by the agency of

his people. As by employing the appointed means for food, we are in a position for God to give us our daily bread; and as by taking the remedial means, the sick are in a position for God to give them "health and cure;" so by using the means of grace, we are in a position for the grace and the saving influences of the Holy Spirit to bless us.

III. The means of salvation may be exhibited in a manner which is prejudicial and disastrous to the manifestations of the influences of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit himself has taught us, by the writings of Paul, that the gospel may be preached in such a manner as to become of none effect. The whole history of conversions demonstrates that the Holy Spirit, in manifesting his influences, regards the manner, as well as the matter, of our holy ministrations. Our own judgment tells us that such and such a style of preaching, that a ministry of such a character, or a book of such a description, is not likely to do good, not likely to be useful; by all which we mean, that it is not adapted, in manner, to communicate the saving and converting influences of the Holy Spirit; while we think another manner to be highly calculated for usefulness.

If the means of salvation be exhibited in a manner that is defective, partial, adulterated, or neutralizing, we cannot expect salvation to result. The whole counsel of God must be administered, diminishing not a word and adding nothing. A prescribed medicine, however sovereign and efficacious, will not heal, if only one-half of the ingredients be compounded, or if it be dashed with other elements. The caution, "take heed to thy doctrine," implies that even sound doctrine may be exhibited in a manner that shall be preventive of the conversion of men. A doctrine tinctured with the lusciousness of false philosophy, or the sourness of a metaphysical system, or the astringency of sectarianism, is not calculated to be saving. The instances are many and painful, in which the operations of Divine influences, have been as much checked by a departure from a right spirit, as by defection from the right means of conversion. In blessing the means of conversion, God does not depart from his established and usual mode of affecting the human mind, as it is found in the adjusted and fixed laws of thought and emotion. We cannot calculate on his blessing upon means, when they are exhibited in a manner that shocks and disgusts the mind. The same Spirit, who said

"preach the gospel to every creature," instructs us to "speak the truth in love." An unwelcome medicine may be administered in a manner that conciliates the mind, both to its character, and its tendencies. Deep-rooted and inveterate prejudices against the means of salvation have been frequently rendered more rancorous by a harsh, dogmatical, intemperate, unlovely, or even an injudicious, manner of administering them. Cicero refused to plead the cause of a client, because his manner of recounting his wrongs was not that of an injured man. Α physician neglected to visit a patient in the agonies of death, because the messenger, who came for his aid, related the circumstances in a manner inconsistent with apprehensions of danger. The thought is solemn and awful, that sinners may perish under the ministry of truth, by our manner of exhibiting it; and that thousands are now in destruction, whose ruin may be traced to the improper and inconsistent conduct of Christians, who did not "walk in wisdom towards them who were without."

IV. The influences of the Holy Spirit do not manifest themselves when men, who are furnished with means, neglect to employ them, or resist their tendencies and operations.

These means of Divine influences were established and furnished to be used. There is no mystic charm in their presence: the mere possession of them has no occult power or tailsmanic spell. All their power and efficacy develope themselves, only by being employed, and employed in the relations, and for the ends, to which they are adapted. They must be used by man, by man himself, and by every man for himself. An angel using them for us will not benefit us. The Holy Spirit is not to use them for us, or instead of us. We never expect the Spirit to preach the gospel for us, or hear the word for us; yet thousands seem to expect the Spirit to feel for them, to believe for them, and repent for them. These things would have been too absurd to mention, if men were not so absurd as to expect the Holy Spirit to be doing some of these things for them. Every man who has the means of grace can use them. He can read the gospel as well as other books: he can attend the means of grace as well as the courses of education: he can enter into the ordinances of God's house as well as into civic institutions: he can see evidence in what God says as well as in human demonstrations: he can believe his Maker as well as believe his neighbor: he has the same susceptibilities and powers of repenting for

a wrong to his God, as for an injury to his friend. Had God given to man, for his salvation, an unwieldy apparatus of means, and enjoined him to put the unmanageable machinery in operation, man would have appeared an object of sympathy. Probably one of the best tests for trying the soundness of a doctrine is, to attempt to use it in devotional exercises with God. At such moments who can say unto him, “Thou askest me to love thee, to repent of my sin, and to believe thy gospel, when thou knowest that I am utterly destitute of all faculties to love or repent or believe?" Every man would stand self-condemned as he tried to mutter these blasphemous and false sentiments, before his Maker.

Every individual, who possesses these means, is under indissoluble obligations and responsibilities to use them for his salvation. They are no vain thing to him, seeing that they are his life, and that to neglect them is death. The obligation to use them is not enforced by the motive that the influences of the Holy Spirit shall be given to help him, for he is supposed capable of performing his duty towards the word without them, and therefore he is condemned for not having the Spirit. While sinful man is expecting some mechanical momentum to push and force him to do his duty, he will always be waiting for what he has no authority to expect. Saving influences in the gospel are to man exactly what magnetical influences in the needle are to the mariner. The magnet will direct the mariner in his course, but it will not steer at the helm, nor spread the sails. It will do for the mariner nothing that he can do himself. The influences are ever present in the magnet, but will be available to him only as they are used, and as they are allowed free exercise. The needle must not be checked in its tendencies to one direction, or impelled to another, that the course may be pronounced to be according to the magnet. This were only an image of men, who are systematically wresting the scripture to their own destruction. On reaching the port, it is found and avowed that the influences in the magnet have done everything for the mariners, though they accomplish nothing instead of them. What the mariners could not do, the influences of the magnet did for them. The physical influences in the magnet influenced the mind of the steersman; their effect on his mind led to the course of the vessel, this regulated the positions of the sails, and directed the labors and efforts of the crew. Had these influences been neglected or opposed, the end would