the one the least sensibly felt and realized is his EVER-PRESENT agency. During the last hundred years this doctrine has been working itself into the notice of the church and the world, by Revivals of religion, and by the impulses of Missionary enterprise. Its deserved prominency in the ministration of the Gospel will be at once the signal and the admiration of millennial glory. Since the days of the apostles the church does not seem to have been ever in full union with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit has always said to a world ready to perish "Come!" but the Bride has not said "Come!" or if she has, it has been in a voice not strong enough, or not sustained enough to be heard. She has drunk so deep into stupefying heresies, that she has dreamed, that the souls of men were in a state as literally lifeless and inactive as inert blocks and logs, that their conversion was a mere affair of predestinated decree, and that if God would wish them converted, he must convert them himself. Since the church began to work for Christ in the world, eighteen hundred years have rolled over it, and swept to eternity sixty generations of the human race. In all this time, not only is the greatest part of the world totally unacquainted with the existence of a band of people destined to convert it; but this very band has not made itself acquainted with the sin and the misery of the nations, which Christ commissioned it to convert. Its mighty energies have been blocked up, or rather its agents have been incased in ice of worldliness and selfishness. It is as of the ice, icy. It has loved the world and sought its own ease. Its affections have been so intent upon gain, fashion, state, and honor, that there is left neither room nor reason for strong emotions concerning the ruin and salvation of a world lying in wickedness. From this dead insensibility the Spirit has been for eighteen centuries endeavoring to awake her, sometimes by expostulation and command, and anon by encouragement and entreaty; still enterprise, influence, talent, wealth, and feeling, are not consecrated and tasked to the work. Hitherto the spectacle has been, not the church converting the world; but the world converting the church. As yet the mountain of the Lord's house is not established in the top of the mountains, nor exalted above the hills. The church has not made the cause of Christ the chief, the supreme, the unique cause of a world. It is impossible it should rise to this mountain eminence by any late efforts. The church has been charmed with other mounts and heights in her scenery; she has made Parnassus

the nursery and the sphere of the energies of her sons; and there, in witching dalliance, they have forgotten the mount, on which the last tones of the Redeemer pronounced their commission to convert the world. But of all the mounts on earth, the mount of Ophir seems as if it were the Atlas of its heavens. Its redeeming and converting energies are paralyzed by its worldliness. The church seems, now and then, to be awakened out of her swoon; but is still prone, after a few convulsive and fitful struggles, to relapse. It is true she has done much, when compared with NOTHING; but little, compared with the extent of her commission, and with the powerful resources and influences entrusted to her. The greatest part of the work done has been done, not by the entire church, but by a few congregations, and by few in those congregations. Should all congregations, and the whole Christian church, press forward to the onset on the world, with the momentum and the efficiency of "the few," the kingdoms of this world would soon become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. In the church, as a whole, we shall look in vain for the melting compassion, the decision of character, the singleness of purpose, the disinterested enterprise, the firm resolve, and the untiring effort, of that stalwart vigor "which every joint supplieth. After the ascension of Christ a handful of men mastered the world; but that handful, scanty as it was, consisted of all the disciples. There were none weak or feeble among them. The attack of such gallant spirits, in full body, and in close columns, advancing with redoubled energy and quickened step, gave a shock to the powers of darkness, and pushed their conquests to the boundaries of the world. It was by their living and healthy union with the Holy Spirit that they achieved these triumphs. They received their commission on Mount Olivet, and on the day of Pentecost, "the Spirit of the Lord raised up a banner," for the rescue of the world: this banner they heartily joined, and, with this at their head, they went forth, kept the faith, and claimed the world for Christ.

It is a happy truth, that God has never withdrawn this banner of the Spirit from the Christian Camp. Some churches have indeed deserted it, renouncing its shelter, and rejecting its way; while others have straggled from the line of march, and seeking easier quarters, have shrunk from the heat of the onslaught for the deliverance of the world. With others it is preserved, furled up in a creed, as a sacred relic,

the boasted and bragged memorial of what Christianity was, not the triumphant standard of what it now is; nor is it as yet in its right place, an elevated flag streaming gallantly at the head of an advancing host, who will know no fatigue, or give any peace, till it be lodged on the turrets of the foe, and wave over a converted world.

The design of these pages is to call the attention of the church to the fact, that it has in its possession this accredited symbol of the Divine presence, a symbol given to it expressly "to be displayed because of the truth; to be lifted up and borne along for the mustering of its forces, for the animating of its confidence, for the concentration of its efforts, and the guidance and direction of all its onsets, until it become the conspicuous signal of its victories and triumphs over all nations.

The means of grace in the possession of the church are, in meaning and design, means of Divine influences; or means of receiving, and of conveying to others, the influences of the Holy Spirit. As, in the constitution of the universe, nothing is communicated from one agent, and received by another, without junction and impact, the relation or connexion which exists between the Blessed Dispenser and the recipients of his influences, is what is here meant by the union of the Holy Spirit and the Church.

The doctrine of the influence of the Holy Spirit is not identically the same with the doctrine of Divine influences. In explanation of this position a remark or two will for the present suffice.

God is in constant union with the elements of the physical universe; "By him all things consist," and he "upholds all things by the word of his power." The preservation of the world consists only in renewed acts of creative energy, and fresh emanations of creative influences. When a mass of matter has discharged its electricity, or a seed lost its germinating power, it can be recovered only by the influence of its Creator. This unremitted connexion between God and the material world is, as distinguished from his moral government the doctrine of Providence.

According to the testimony of the Scriptures, God was in mysterious union with the person of Jesus Christ. The person of our Lord was "God manifest in the flesh." This was

a novel and unexampled evolution of the Divine nature, exhibited for the most stupendous purposes, and destined to

influence every thought and every emotion in the comprehension of existence. This union between God and the person of Jesus Christ is the doctrine of redemption.

The sacred Scriptures, with equal light and distinctness, inform us of a connexion, or union, between God and all good men. When a good man has come into union of disposition and interest with God, the influence of the Divine energy has, by means of truth, gained access to his mind. This is the doctrine of Divine influences.

According to the arrangements of theological science, in the doctrine of Providence, physical and moral, God, as the Supreme Organ of government, is supposed to preside. In the doctrine of redemption all interests seem to centre in the person of the Son and in the doctrine of Divine influences the Holy Spirit appears the absolute and sovereign Agent, dispensing to all severally as he pleases. In dispensing these influences, the Holy Spirit exercises a personal will, a spontaneous desire of his own, an individual complacency, as well as official design. It is the exercise of this personal will and intent, in the disposal of the Divine influences, that forms, what is called in theology, the doctrine of the influence of the Holy Spirit.

CHAPTER II.

THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE STRICTLY INDUCTIVE.

WERE this book written on the union between the agency of nature, understanding by nature the God of nature, and the agency of man, in the production of physical phenomena, it would not be expected to define and explain the manner of union, or the process of contact. It would accomplish its end by showing the character and illustrating the attributes of the agency of nature, demonstrating thereby that the agency of nature is designed for the use of man, that up to a given point it can be directed, controlled, and called forth by the agency of man; that it is pregnant with energies which it never will develope without human agency; that without it, beside it, or beyond it, the agency of man will effect nothing; and that the moment he attempts to constrain it, or to force it into some

improper combinations, either human agency utterly fails, or the agent himself is destroyed by the energies evoked in the rash experiment.

This, and this alone, should be expected in a theological work on the union of the Holy Spirit and the Church; that union which combines their respective agencies for the production of the moral phenomenon, the conversion of the world. In the inductions of physical research, philosophical statements stand or fall with nature itself. There they are, or there they are not; Metaphysical theories, and logical dialectics can neither give them, nor refuse them the "local habitation." On the same inductive principle, a theological writer has to present a statement of the operations of the agency of the Spirit and of the agency of man, as he finds them in the Scriptures, leaving his speculations to stand or fall with Inspiration. In the Scriptures the combinations and operations of Divine and human agency are not stated in logical propositions; but they are wrought out and developed in facts, in characters, in events, and in recorded phenomena; they are in the history of Joseph, in the journeys of the Israelites, in the crucifixion of the Redeemer, and in the successful promulgation of the gospel by the apostles.

THE BIBLE IS A BOOK OF INDUCTION. It contains the accumulated and registered experience of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The writers were all students of OBSERVATION, and they noticed and recorded effects as they occurred, without any specific reference to preconceived theory, or hasty generalization. Besides, we believe this Book of Induction to be the Book of God, who, in its composition, employed the writers as his mere amanuenses. The Author of this book is the Author of mind and matter. He put into action and operation a series of means and agents, adjusted with a view to an end, controlling them at his pleasure, varying their positions, their number, and their combinations, as he thought best, and marking and recording the results as they appeared. The Bible, therefore, on the supposition of having God for its author, is strictly an inductive record of EXPERIMENTS, Conducted by that God who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. In the register of these sublime experiments we are taught that the vast globe was erected for their laboratory; that truths and men are the agents put in combination; that all events are the results of