his mind, or how he had conveyed his influence to ink and paper. The changing influence was in the truths of the letter, yet it was not the mere influence of the truths, but the influence of his friend conveyed in those truths. This would not be moral suasion, for no other person presenting the same truths would have produced the same effects. It would not be affirmed that the honor of having changed that mind was due either to the letter, the receiver, or the reader, but to the author of the letter in India; yet he did not accomplish it without the due operation of the others in their order. Drop the letter from the links in the operations, and it is impossible to trace the change to the friend in India; put it in the series, and it accounts for the whole process. Without the instrumentality of the gospel, man, in the phenomenon of conversion, is all in all; for, if he originated or self-determined the change, he is his own Saviour; or, if he was converted miraculously, his own testimony is the only evidence; but with the instrumentality of the gospel, the Holy Spirit alone is the author and originator of conversion.

SECTION III.

On the Instrumentality of the Church in Conversion.

Our world is a system of means and instruments, mediations and agencies; a system in which it is evident that God bestows nothing immediately; at least, he bestows immediately nothing which he has made the duty of man to attain or accomplish. To illustrate this system of agency in religious phenomena, take the influences of the Spirit in the scripture character of fire. We want the fire to ignite gunpowder for blasting a rock, or to liquefy ice. For the desired end, the fire must be brought into contact with these subjects. The fire may be latent in a flint, or piece of steel, which is buried under the powder, or incased with ice; but in that state it will not produce the desired effect. The agency of God has supplied the fire with its properties and tendencies, and has posited it in the flint, but man must employ his own agency to produce it in a state fit for action, and, in that state, to present it in contact with the given materials. For this he must have a medium or vehicle to contain the fire, and become himself the instrumental agent to bear it, in that medium, to the subjects on which it is to act. Just so Divine influence is in the Truth, and the word is Truth. This influence cannot be con

veyed but in the truth as its appropriate vehicle, and to affect men, it must be introduced into contact with their minds. Neither the unconscious vehicle itself, nor the powerful influence in it, nor the Supreme Agent who placed it there, will do this. This is to be effected by another distinct and separate agency, the agency of good men, or the agency of the church of Christ.

1. In both the Old and the New Testaments, good men are supposed to be the means and the instruments, of communicating to others any extraordinary endowments of mind or temper, which were possessed by themselves, and are always esteemed as the gifts and grants of God. So Moses having selected seventy men, at God's request, "took of his Spirit the communications of God to himself, and "put it on them." The very last words of our Saviour on earth were these, "Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." "And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight." When the church began to enter seriously on the work of converting the world, the powers of the world asked her, "By what power or by what name are ye doing this?" and so she is asked to this very day, and her only reply to every challenge is that recorded at first in Acts, iv. 10: "By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead." When the apostles were commanded by worldly powers to withdraw and discontinue their instrumentality, their noble and dignified answer silenced and awed their persecuting judges: "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye; for," however you judge, "we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." These passages are cited to prove that the early church of Christ considered her own instrumentality, in the series of agencies and operations for the conversion of the world, a Divine institution, and that it continues to be so as long as the scriptures are a valid revelation.

2. In every age God has been pleased to attach much importance to the instrumentality of his church. Though the eunuch possessed the truth, and shared in Divine influences, yet he was not to be converted without the agency of Philip. In like manner, the instrumentality of Peter was necessary to the conversion of Cornelius to the Christian faith, though

the Holy Spirit was already influencing his mind by means of some Old Testament truths. In both cases, we may suppose the influence of truth and the influence of the Spirit to be present, yet these did not produce the phonomenon of conversion without the instrumentality of Philip and Peter as the representatives of the church. Since God has invested this instrumentality with such dignity and importance, the church herself ought to magnify her office. The agency of the church is employed in supplying the world with the truth, or the gospel as the vehicle of the truth; in cultivating and exercising its gifts and ordinances, to explain, recommend, and enforce what the truth exhibits; in presenting to the world her own character as evidence and illustration of the truth which is furnished to the world; and in employing all the winning and persuasive energies of that character, in direct efforts on individual minds for their conversion. Every idle and avaricious Christian, and every inactive and niggard church, ought to demonstrate two things; first how even God can accomplish these things without the instrumentality of Christians; and secondly, on what grounds we may expect God to operate in the manner which shall be pointed out in such a demonstration.

3. This saving instrumentality is the revealed glory of the church. The church must awake to the immense importance and worth of her own instrumentality. False humility is as bad as any other false grace. Under the pretence of checking pride, the church has been tempted to speak and think slightingly, and, in some instances, contemptuously, of her own high agency. Our pulpits have often sounded with loud warnings against what is called reliance on means; but I never could see any grounds, or any occasions, for such admonitions. Is it wrong in the physician to rely on his medicines, or the mariner on his magnet? The physician does not rely on his medicine for more than God has put into it. He only relies on God's being faithful to the fixed laws which he has given to the remedy. He relies on it as means to the end for which God himself has adapted it. The Holy Spirit gives us no caution against reliance on means. In the maxim "not by might or by power, but by my Spirit," a reliance on resources for influences, with which God has not fraught them, and an employment of means for an end to which they were not adapted, are condemned; but not confidence in the means of God's own arrangement. When Paul said, "Neither

is he that planteth, nor he that watereth, anything," he did not mean to say, "do not rely on planting, or do not rely on watering, but rely on God only;" for it would have been wrong to rely on God without relying on planting, and through planting, on Him. Indeed, "planting and watering" are only the expressions of our reliance on God for giving "the increase."

The efficaciousness actually resides in the means, not as the source, but as the medium of conveyance. If they reside in God only, why use means? and why think some means more likely to contain it than others? The efficaciousness residing in the means is a derived one, and derived from God. Paul taught his fellow-passengers to rely on God for the salvation of their lives, by relying on "the boards and the broken pieces of the ship," and any reliance on Him that implied neglect of means, he would have discountenanced. As an apostle he relied on the gospel as the power of God to salvation, wheresoever he introduced it. For the end to which God has adapted the gospel, and in the order where he has adjusted it, the church cannot depend too much on it; but rather ought to trust more in it, than it has ever yet done. Paul would as soon have expected tents to arise all the way from Jerusalem to Illyricum, by the fortuitous concourse of his saw and chisel, and hammer and nails, without his instrumentality, or that of some other human agent, as expect the gospel to raise temples for the Spirit in those districts, without the ministrations of the church.

4. In the distinguished achievements of the apostles, "the Lord was working with them." The Lord was not working without them, nor were they working without the Lord. The Lord extended the gospel and its salvation just so far as the church extended them, and no farther. This order of his operations has never been altered. With the church the Lord will do all things; but without the church he has promised to do nothing. Nothing, therefore, can be more insulting to God, and grieving to the Holy Spirit, than to hear, amidst the groans and travail of a dying world, the drowsy mutterings of a Laodicean church, "If God intends to convert the world, let him do it in his own time." As the Lord did formerly all things with the church; the church can do all things now, even save the world, with the Lord.

SECTION IV.

On the Agency of Man in his own Conversion.

§ I. - The Reality of Human Agency.

In metaphysical philosophy, in moral science, and in scholastic theology, no subject has been so ably discussed, so variously handled, so often settled, and so often agitated again, as the question of the agency of man. In the history of the

controversial disquisitions upon this topic, there are two facts which ought to have convinced all the disputants, or, at least, to convince my readers and myself, of the utter futility and uselessness of such polemics for any religious purposes. The first fact is, that all the discussions, argumentations, and demonstrations of philosophers, and all the biblical interpretations of scholastic divines have never brought a single individual to believe and feel that he is not free. Amid the collisions of these arguments, and the flashes of these demonstrations, he still feels that what he does he does voluntarily; that what he cannot do he feels no guilt that it is not done; that whatever obligation he wills to discharge he has power adequate to it; speaking, of course, of what is within the range of his capacities. The second fact is, that no philosopher or theologian, who has pleaded that human agency is not free, has ever yielded to his own arguments. The stoutest champion of the bondage of the will, has reasoned and written as a free man to free men. He employs his agency freely in selecting, weighing, examining, and rejecting, the arguments of his antagonists; and he also thinks them deserving of blame for their bad arguments, erroneous principles, and wicked designs. Then he always reasons with his hearers, or writes to his readers, as if they were at full liberty to reject the assumptions of his opponents; supposes that they are able, and that they ought, to yield to the force of his argumentation; and asserts, that if they do not perceive the clearness of his demonstrations, it is because they are prejudiced and perverse; and that if they reject his doctrine they act wrong. He reasons with them as free men, while he is trying to persuade them that they are bound.

The principal reason of all the controversies which have beseiged this subject, is the simple fact, that the matter in dispute is not known to any man. No man can tell what will is,