efficacious, and is as sure of conveying Divine influence in the contact, as the loadstone to develope its magnetism in the presence of iron. But a church that has not "a mind to work," will rather amuse or puzzle itself with the question, "How will a mind adverse to the truth ever become attentive to it, without a miraculous impulse from God?" Such a church does not trouble itself with the inquiry, how does he come by his attention to sin and the world, without any miraculous impulse? The fact is, that man lives among objects, good or bad, calculated to arrest his attention; and, if we place the gospel among these objects, it also is fitted to gain his attention.

If man be the first to command his heart to pay attention to the gospel without a direct impulse from God; then, objects the metaphysical church, "man is the author of his own conversion." This objection is so frightful, that like a spectre, it has scared away many sober men even from a calm examination of it; and, in the path of theological inquiry, it has stood as a chimera so terrible, that many have at once turned their back, and concluded, that "the way of truth" led no farther in that direction. But in this case, by commanding his attention,-a thing which he does a thousand times a day without any miracle,—how is he the author of his own conversion? Is he the author of his own cure, in commanding attention to the prescriptions, and summoning resolution to take the nauseous and unwelcome medicines, of the physician? Was the Syro-phoenician woman the author of her own healing, by forming within herself the determination to touch the hem of the Saviour's garment? When man yields his moral state to be influenced by the atonement, he is not supposed to be the author of his own redemption. Why, then, when he yields his moral frame to the influence of spiritual truth, should he be thought the author of his own conversion and sanctification? Man can pay no attention to an object till the object be presented to him. The Holy Spirit, in the gospel, presents an object, which shall act as a motive to excite or draw his attention; and as the Spirit is the originator of the motive, man is no more the author of his own conversion by attending, than he is the author of his own sight by looking on an object. Man's power of commanding his attention, must therefore, in all saving measures, be provided for, with the most delicate care as to the time, the order, and the mode, of presenting truth for its exercise.

3. All plans for the conversion of the world must embrace means and methods suited to man's consciousness of right and wrong. The church must make all her efforts bear upon the conscience of the world. This was the grand method of the apostles, to manfest truth in such a manner as to commend their object to every man's conscience. We can never address a Christian truth to any man, without knowing that we have in his breast a witness on our side; for no man has ever yet been discovered who did not regard something as wrong, and its opposite right. Christian measures should deal largely in such truths and statements as take hold upon the conscience, and insist upon them in such a manner as to make conscience uneasy until it yield compliance. The subjects to be submitted to conscience should be presented so distinctly, so clearly, and so vividly, as that conscience should have nothing to do but discern their evidence, feel their force, and assent to their message. Paul preached to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ TO MAKE ALL MEN SEE. What a noble model for a Christian missionary, and for a Christian minister! Our Saviour preached with such a directness to conscience, that the Pharisees perceived that he meant them: and this was the characteristic of the apostle's preaching. They appealed to every man's conscience, calling upon it to judge the claims presented to it, and to pronounce upon them immediately. They never sent their hearers away, and told them to think of these things at home; they prayed men in Christ's stead to be reconciled there.and then, while the overture of mercy was made to them. We have no authority to postpone the decision of men, or to encourage them to postpone it, for the only day and the only period of salvation is NOW.

If conscience be sluggish, or indolent, or drowsy, it must be awakened. As the Macedonian widow appealed from PHILIP drunk to PHILIP sober, the church must appeal from conscience asleep to conscience awake; and she must use means to awake it, and to arouse it to do its office; she must urge it to a decisive answer, must meet all its counter-reasonings, and answer all its cavils, and give it no rest day or night, until it submit to the authority of Christ. In no measures do Christians appear to the world so disinterested as in the measures which bear upon conscience alone, and in no other class of truths, does the power of God appear so signally and so gloriously great. The moment a missionary lands on a foreign shore, he has a warrant to arraign the con

science of the first man he meets with at the bar of God, to pronounce on it God's condemnation of sin, and proclaim to it God's gracious pardon.

4. Man is a creature of feeling, as well as of mind and conscience, and therefore all measures intended for his good, must be calculated for his affections. Paul sums up all rules that can bear on this question in this one recommendation, "speaking the truth in love." It is not detracting from the force of truth or attaching too much worth to persuasion, when we say, that the success of truth depends very much on its adaptation to man's affections, and on the spirit of love in which it is administered. In making religious truth acceptable to the mind, we cannot expect God to depart from his usual mode of making any other truth agreeable; or to interfere by power to render that winning and persuasive to the affections, which we exhibit in a mode and manner forbidding and repulsive.

In the heart of man there are such deep-rooted prejudices against the truths to which we invite his attention, that we need to present them in every form of alluring and fascinating aspect of which they are capable. When Christ exhibited to the world the great truths which he had brought from heaven, he clothed them in the robe of love, and the garment of grace. Even angels look to, and contemplate, the salvation of the world with excited emotion, not as severe logicians, or rigid mathematicians, but as benevolent and amiable intelligences. In this respect, Christian seraphs cannot be too soon “like unto the angels." It is supposed that a good man can "win souls," but he who achieves this is described as wise, knowing the elements of the soul, and how to act on them. They that would win souls, must go wisely about it; for if they fail, it is through lack of wisdom, not through the want of influences. God has given laws to the emotions, as well as to the perceptions, of the soul: and he has fixed laws for his own operations, as well as for the elements on which he carries on his work. Since God observes such laws, we ought to observe them; for in so doing we shall not be laboring at random and in uncertainty, but we shall be employing and spending our strength to the highest possible advantage. Inattention to the laws of emotion has contributed more than anything else to the short duration, and consequently so far, to the disrepute of religious revivals. When we have succeeded in enlisting the affections on our side, we are tempted

to think that we never have too much of their fervid influence; but they are too much like the genii and sprites of wizard enchantments; for unless a range of sufficient labor and activity be found for each and for all of them, they become too powerful for us, and consequently injurious and destructive. The affections cannot be maintained long in a state of feverish excitation without injury. They should be excited just until they kindle the conscience to burn, and then the end of the emotions is gained; and until that electric spark is struck, nothing is effectually gained. The emotions are intimately connected with the constitutional temperament, and the healthy or sickly state of the body; and religious revivals have proved so fluctuating, partly through the church's inaptness for her machinery, and partly through her unacquaintedness with the laws of her apparatus, and of the materials on which she made her experiments. In her anxiety to save, she has increased the number and the amount of her converting means, until minds have flagged, and bodies have shrank under them, both having become wearied with the unceasing exercise and intense effort to which they were put. In this case there would be neither substratum nor room for strong emotions to operate; the receiver being exhausted, the weightiest truths and the most trivial facts fall with equal weight. When the affections glow on the altar of the church, there is a danger of adopting certain means and measures that might produce desirable effects at that time, but which would, afterwards, entail on the church a long train of disorders, improprieties, confusions, and errors; excite a powerful and painful prejudice in the world against all measures for conversion; and thus cause a stumbling and offence to a greater number than is benefited. It is saving one soul at the expense of many.

In surveying these difficult and delicate operations, well might the church exclaim, " And who is sufficient for these things?" Still she is not to cower before the magnitude of her difficulties, or stand appalled at the grandeur of her enterprise, but to believe "our sufficiency is of God,” and immediately commence her operations, study, as she proceeds, the science of doing good, and become "apt to teach," and to disciple all nations. It is by knowing man that we can become all things to all men, that we might save some.

SECTION V.

On the Efficiency of the Holy Spirit in Conversion.

Towards producing the phenomenon of conversion, the real efficiency is not in the influence of the truth, or in the instrumentality of the church, or in the sinner's own agency in using means, but in the Holy Spirit; yet this efficiency is not communicated without the operation of the others in their proper place and order. God requires from all Christians a distinct recognition of the agency of the Holy Spirit in conversion. This is one reason why we are baptized in the name of the Holy Ghost. In our devotions and services, He does not expressly demand an adorable acknowledgment of the subserviency of instruments, and the fitness of means; but he does emphatically require, as essential to acceptable service and true worship, that we should honorably own, and distinctly acknowledge, the efficiency of his Spirit.

To understand and to value the efficiency of the Holy Spirit, we must have distinct conceptions of what he is expected to do in conversion. In the process of conversion, we think that the Holy Spirit does nothing to the word, or the vehicle of truth. The word of the Lord is perfect, and. requires no modification, nothing to be added to it to fit it for producing conversion; it remains the same, and retains the same "perfectness," whether the sinner be converted or not. Neither is the Holy Spirit expected to do, in conversion, what the church of Christ can do: he will not multiply copies of the scripture, or become a vocal minister and interpreter of their truths, nor will he produce the gospel where the church does not send it. Nor will the Holy Spirit do anything to suspend the agency of the sinner; he will not interfere by miraculous or immediate impulse with any of the laws of his agency; he will not force him to employ it aright; he will not think good thoughts in the sinner; neither will he believe and feel for and instead of the sinner.

Then, WHAT IS THE HOLY SPIRIT TO DO? He exercises a personal will and spontaneous agency, in wielding the spiritual and moral influences, which he has deposited in the truth, for the spiritual rectification, the religious improvement, and the moral well-being of man. In other words, he wields his spiritual influences in the word to affect the minds of men, without disturbing the intellectual and moral laws