It is by being omnipresent, incorporeal, and without any conceivable vehicle of personal subsistence, that the Holy Spirit is an agent so gloriously appropriate to undertake this official ministration. It has been shown, and I hope clearly shown, that the Holy Spirit is in the church, in the same sense as God is in the world, giving evidences of his presence and manifestations of his agency by the action of means, and by the operation of the influences with which they are impregnated. God does not ordinarily act in the world without means; but, wherever means are put in certain juxtaposition, there God usually gives a corresponding manifestation of his agency. In the same manner the Holy Spirit always works by means, and wherever scriptural means are put in right combinations, there the exercise of his agency may always be expected.

As the Comforter substituted for Christ, the Holy Spirit influences the minds of men in the same way as our Lord himself influenced them: which was invariably by the operation of means. Our Saviour, in the days of his flesh, produced no miraculous conversions. If the conversion of the thief on the cross be demonstrated to be supernatural, it would supply only a singular exception to the general rule. He went about doing good, and gained converts by the divinity of his doctrine, the clearness of his parables, and the influence of his character. The Holy Spirit exercises his substituted and vicarious* administration on similar principles, always working with the word and means, and never without them. For the method of our Saviour's influences we must look to the gospels; and for the exposition of the Holy Spirit's influences, we must read and digest the Acts of the apostles. The first intimation, which Jesus Christ gave of another agent to fill his place, was in the discourse which he had with his disciples the evening before his death. "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." (John xiv. 16.) On the day of his ascension he again referred his disciples to this Holy Agent, and "commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, you have heard of me; and you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." (Acts

* Mississe vicariam vim Spiritus Sancti, qui credentes agat. -TERtull. DE PRESC. 13.

i. 4, 5.) These passages prove the truth of a proposition intimated in a preceding section, that the events of the day of Pentecost were the real and full MEANING of the promise of the Holy Spirit. From this proposition springs another of commensurate weight and power, which is, that whatever was the meaning of the original promise, IT, in all its extent and fulness, length and breadth, was to ABIDE in the church for ever. The church is never to be without it. It is at all times to expect its presence. It is never to count it strange and extraordinary. If the church ever comes to regard the presence and activity of this Holy Agent as either strange or extraordinary, it is from inattention to her own charter, a disposition to sink below her privileges, or from bondage to state and lucre. In such a frame the church is estranged from the Spirit, and is therefore cursed with barrenness and decrepitude.

The design of this section is to show, that Christians of the present day have grounds as good, and as solid, to expect the fulfilment of the promise of the Spirit now, as the disciples had at its first promulgation.

SECTION I.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church a permanent Blessing.

The events of the day of Pentecost gave no new or additional meaning to the truths revealed in the ministry of the Saviour. Each truth, that was preached by Christ, contained in it even then, as in an incorruptible seed, all the influences and virtues which have been unfolded and expanded from that period to the present: and in heaven these truths will ever develope only the beauties and the glories, which were really inherent in them when they dropped from his lips. During the personal ministry of our Lord the disciples "could not bear" all the energies and influences contained in his doctrine: for it contained light too strong for their intellectual vision, and remedies too powerful for their religious temperament. The crucifixion of Christ opened their understandings a little, but not fully; for, even after his resurrection, they still clung to the real materiality of the kingdom to be restored unto Israel. The ascension of Christ to heaven completely destroyed all the worldly media through which they had been accustomed to look on the momentous truths revealed by their

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Master. They returned from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, and immediately retired to an upper room, where they all assembled for devotion. Here they waited for the manifestation of the promised Spirit. Their minds dwelt on "THE PROMISE" with an engagedness which they never felt before. They now all felt as men who have one grand object in view, and, in high and intimate connexion with this, they "all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication," uniting unwearied fixedness of thought with pure and fervent devotion. In the interval between the Thursday of the ascension and the next Sunday week of the Pentecost, they began to see more of the grandeur and glory of Christian truth, and they received into themselves larger communications of its melting influences, than during the whole of our Saviour's ministry. Through the means of these two events, the death of Christ, and his ascension, the Holy Spirit displayed his glorious influences both to enlarge their minds, and to lead them into all truth.

When the Pentecost was fully come, the influences of the Holy Spirit manifested themselves under a two-fold aspect: the miraculous and the ordinary, or the immediate and the mediate. On the apostles the influences were partly ordinary and partly miraculous. On the three thousand converts the influences were ordinary alone. This is evident from the different results of the respective classes of influences. The effects of the immediate influences on the apostles were, that they spake with other tongues, and wrought various miracles. The effects of the ordinary influences on the converts were, that "they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And they continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and fellowship."

In a statement formerly made, that the events of the day of Pentecost were nothing more nor less than the meaning of the promise of Christ concerning the Holy Spirit, it was not intended to produce the impression, that the miracles of that hallowed period were essential elements of that promise; nor to intimate that the grounds are as firm for expecting miraculous powers to continue in the church, as they are for expecting the saving influences of that day to be permanent in the ministrations of the gospel.

Miracles cannot be permanent; for, if they were permanent, they would cease to be miracles. Their very intent is temporary. They were never designed to explain the meaning of any doctrine, or to establish the validity of any scriptural interpretation. The meaning of a revealed message is supposed to be clear, and the miracles which may accompany it are not intended to throw light on its meaning, but to confirm its authority, and establish its obligation. The message itself derives no force nor influence from the miracle which attests it; it had all its influence and efficacy intrinsically previous to the miracle; and the miracle only bore witness to the Divine influences and efficacy that were in it already. The scriptural history of supernatural interpositions of God teaches us, that miracles have only been employed, either to introduce a new revelation from God, or to establish and confirm the authority and claims of a truth revealed. On the day of Pentecost the miraculous influences in the apostles were of great use, for they drew attention to the Christian message; they impressed on the public mind the reasonable conviction, that men possessing such powers must be the messengers of God; and they tended to snap the chain of prejudices for old traditions and against all religious innovations.

The New Testament condemns a demand for miraculous exhibitions, as being nothing more than the prying of idle curiosity, disposed rather to amuse itself with the splendid draperies of revelation, than to yield to the authority and influence of the message itself. The whole tenor of Christianity declares that the experimental and practical use of the message itself, is a frame of mind infinitely superior to the possession and exercise of miraculous endowments. Our Lord himself has said, "blessed are they who believe and have not seen," clearly intimating that real miraculous exhibitions would cease "to be seen" among believers. In the apostolic epistles, many faithful cautions and serious warnings are addressed to Christians, to put them on their guard against all mysterious performances, and astounding productions, effected by art and cunning and all the deceivableness of unrighteousness, and purporting to be miraculous. These admonitions against crafty impostors and presumptuous enthusiasts, who would try to practise on the credulity and weakness of men most obviously prove that, with the apostolic age, miraculous influences were to close their operations.

The ecclesiastical historians and divines most distinguished for their judiciousness and sobriety, have concluded that the administration of miraculous influences closed with the age of the apostles. The promise of Jesus Christ, in Mark xvi. 17, 18, that "signs shall follow them that believe," does not imply the perpetuity of miraculous gifts in the Christian church. A limitation is implied, though not expressed in the promise. As even the abettors of modern miracles suppose, in the promise, a limitation to certain persons, so the deduction is equally valid that there is also a limitation as to period. If the promise extends to all periods it must embrace all persons. It is, however, evident, that on the day of Pentecost, all the believers were not possessed of miraculous gifts, for Peter said unto them, "Repent, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you and your children." Yet the historian of these events observes, with a remarkable definiteness, that "wonders and signs were done," not by the converts, but "by the apostles." The conclusion, therefore, is established, that the promise of Christ concerning the perpetuity of the influences of the Holy Spirit, furnishes Christians with no ground to expect, in the church, a permanency of miraculous endowments.

The supernatural influences which accompanied the Pentecostal phenomenon were, speaking philosophically, the accidents suited and necessary for that occasion only, rather than the essential elements of the promise and design of Jesus Christ. The grounds, therefore, on which the Christian church is warranted to expect saving influences to continue in permanent operation, remain undisturbed and impregnable. On these grounds I take up the position, that the converting and saving influences, which the Holy Spirit manifested on the day of Pentecost, are always to continue in the church, and ought always to be as much expected and waited for as they were by the first disciples.

I. The influences of the Holy Spirit are essentially necessary to the continuation of the Christian church in the world. If any man, and if any church, have not the Spirit of Christ, they are none of his. To any church the absence of Divine influences is death. With the exception of the miracles, there was nothing in the plentiful effusions of the day of Pentecost, which every Christian does not daily need, and which every Christian church must continually have, or languish. Christians have the witness in themselves that the influences of the Holy Spirit are abiding and permanent in