the church. Of this they are as sure as that physical influences are permanent in the creation. In the health of the body, in the nutriment of food, and in the production of harvests, every man has the witness in himself, that whatever influence was contained in the early promise of "summer and winter, seed-time and harvest," is still abiding and continuing in the world. The Christian has a corresponding witness in himself. He feels in himself his own insufficiency to produce, of himself, the effects accomplished by the Gospel. His own comforts, and hopes, and joys, and supports, are what, without the Gospel, the world could not give him; and what, with the Gospel, the world cannot take away. These are effected in the Christian, not by the intellectual clearness and moral force of the arguments in the Gospel; but by the influences of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel. Every such consolation is an instance, and a standing testimony, that the "other Comforter" is come, "and abides with us for ever." To the perpetuation of the Christian church, constant and continued accessions of converts are as essential as its internal holiness and consolations. Though all the members of the church must pass the gates of death, the gates of death shall not prevail against the church itself, because it shall have a progressive and "constant accession," and the Lord himself will add to it daily such as shall be saved. The church will derive no strength or glory from accessions, unless the accessions come to the church baptised with the influences of the Holy Spirit. Nothing has so overpowered and enfeebled the church as unholy accessions, for accessions of men "without the Spirit" have always proved to her a Saul's armour — or rather, "a body of death," dangling on her march, and giving an offensive odour to her best graces.

II. Jesus Christ is maintaining a constant intercession with the Father, that the influences of the Holy Spirit might be permanent in the church.

He who ever liveth to make intercession for us, said, "I will pray the Father for you, and he shall send you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." This intercession is not yet closed, and as long as "the blood that speaketh" pleads for us, the church has warrants, by which it is impossible for God to lie, to expect that the influences of the Comforter will abide in it, fresh, strong, and lively, for ever. Our Lord gave to his church a pledge which he has never recalled: "I will not leave you orphans: " but never

were orphans more destitute, desolate, and forlorn, than would a Christian church be without the Holy Spirit. The love which impelled him to make this promise on earth, still urges him to remember it in heaven. The church, therefore, may expect and calculate, on grounds that cannot be shaken, that the intercession of Christ shall be continued, and will be prevalent. His intercession pleads for that which is known in heaven to be indespensably necessary for the church; and which is the honorable fulfilment of his own solemn promise and declaration. All the instructions of our Saviour concerning the Holy Spirit are intended to excite in the church the strongest and the highest expectations; expectations which he will never disappoint while "on his head are many crowns.' To animate his church to enlarged desires for the Spirit, he says, "My father will send him;" thus pledging all the character, the authority, and the resources of the Godhead, for the fulfilment of this delightful promise. By teaching us that even our prayers and solicitations for the Holy Spirit will always prevail, he gives us a decisive intimation that his own glorious intercession would always be successful. great design of the influences of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ himself, an end infinitely worthy of being secured, and dear to the heart of the Redeemer, and therefore, as he will see of the travail of his soul" only as he is "glorified in his saints," his intercession for the permanency of spiritual influences in the church will be continued and successful. disciples, after the ascension, believed that their Master and Friend had commenced this intercession, and they were therefore, with one accord, waiting for the promise of the Father to prove its success, and they were not disappointed. The church has to day, therefore, the same grounds to believe, that Christ ever liveth to sustain and continue his intercession; and let us, believing, expect that he will prevail, and we also shall rejoice in "the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven.

66

The

The

III. The Gospel dispensation takes its particular designation and character from the Holy Spirit, which implies that his influences in the church are ever present and permanent.

The Christian dispensation is preeminently designated "the ministration of the Spirit;" because his personality, divinity, and agency, are so transcendently manifested in Gospel times as to outshine all former manifestations, and indeed to render them as if they had not been, by reason

"of the glory that excelleth." The Holy Spirit formed the character of the author and subject of the Gospel; endows with various gifts and talents the ministers of the Gospel: appoints to ministers their respective spheres of labor; and gives to every agent and laborer for souls a determinate measure and kind of success. All the ordinances of the sanctuary, and all the means of grace, and all the duties and privileges of the Christian church, have a direct and constant reference to the Holy Spirit.

The influences of the day of Pentecost continue, to this day, undiminished and unchangeable, in the perpetual inspiration and power of the New Testament. Other means of inspiration have ceased; the Shekinah is for ever quenched; the Urim and Thummim have withdrawn their splendors; the Bath Kol has hushed; angelic visits are discontinued; dreams and visions are annulled; but the scriptures, "the word of the Lord abideth forever." The events of the Pentecost prove that the New Testament is the revelation of the Spirit, and the abiding medium of his inspiration. The author of the Acts of the apostles always describes the preaching of the Gospel by a word * derived from the office of the Holy Paraclete; and the transmission of the Gospel to succeeding ages, and to other nations, is always a conveyance (dianovla) of the influence of the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel is called a ministration of the Spirit to distinguish it from the dispensation of law. God influenced his people under the Mosaic institutions, not by simple truth acting on their minds, but by a series of ceremonial customs and duties detaining them at his work. Under the gospel he governs them by his truth acting in their minds as his law in their hearts. A king holds strangers and foreigners in subjection by tributary dues, and by ceremonies of homage and obeisance, but governs his children by the verities and principles of his paternal character. There are, indeed, under the gospel, a few ordinances, but the worship and service are in the spirit and truth of their meaning, and not in their form and letter. Why cannot we live to God without ordinances? Ordinances are only evidences and memorials of our carnality and slavery to sense, and are in such a state alone the helpers to our faith and joy. This world would be a heavenly kingdom if men learnt to know God without preaching, if parents

* Παρακαγεῖν.

communicated holy knowledge without Bibles, if every day were so holy as that we should not need a sabbath, if business were carried on in such a manner, and on such principles as not to unfit us for communion with God, if our children were so surrendered to God as not to need baptism, and if our meditations on the atonement were so pure and incessant as not to need the aid of the Lord's supper. Thus we would do the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven; for there is no temple there, and no ordinances. Heaven alone is the

pure ministration of the Spirit, and all offices and duties and operations here are only preparations, advancements, and ripening progressions, towards the day and the opening of that holy consummation.

The ministration of the Spirit is not yet become what it is intended and calculated to be, the power of heaven on the mind, exercised universally and uninterruptedly, as the common element of our holy nature. The influences of the Holy Spirit in these ministrations were designed, like the influences of the atmosphere that we breathe, to be everywhere present and ever abiding with us. Our lives would be distressing in the variations and transitions of gusts of air, just like our spiritual life amid the changes and transports of religious emotion and excitement. We often long for revivals, but the church will not be in vigorous health until it acquires such a frame and tone of devotion as not to need a revival of religion. The church will in that case be always alive, and always awake. Its religion will not be the convulsive vigor of temporary excitement and fitful emotion, but the calm, perpetual, continuous, and progressive state of healthy, blooming, and manly devotion. Christians will have no deplorable intervals of languor, and sad declension of apathy and deadness, which have hitherto always marred their brightest and fairest seasons. To make the influence of a revival to be lasting, every member in the church, and every church in the land, should feel responsible for the duration of revivals, should with caution and foresight prevent and avoid everything likely to abridge them, and aim with self-denial and effort at rendering them continuous and permanent. Should this, remembering that we are in the flesh, be found impracticable, the church should not leave a single energy unmustered that can keep the way open for the return of these seasons, but be always in a frame ready to welcome them, and, by such means, to be

ever preparing and preserving a people fit for the Lord, and for the abiding home of the Holy Spirit.

IV. The influences of the Holy Spirit are at all times accessible to any Christian, and to any church.

The gospel benediction assumes that the communion of the Holy Spirit shall be in the church as permanent as the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God our Father. God has furnished the church with a regular system of means, which he has designedly adjusted and contrived to put Christians in direct communication with the supply of the Spirit. The conventional name given to these ordinances is most felicitous: they are called "the means of grace." These means are always the channels and conduits for the communication and conveyance of holy influences. No thirsty applicant has ever found them empty vessels; for the supply of the spirit is always in them. In our Father's house there are influences accessible to every one that asketh, and if any have not found there "bread enough and to spare," it is because they prefer the husks of the prodigal. God instituted and ordained these means that all might be supplied with "living water." He invites all, without exception, and without limitation, to come and share in the rivers of his pleasure. He even challenges all Christians and all Christian churches to put him to the test, to ascertain whether or not his ordinances are truly means of grace, and channels of Divine influences. "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord. TRY whether I am a wilderness to my people; TRY whether my ordinances are broken cisterns; TRY whether the means of grace are clouds without water; TRY whether the word is at any time without the influence of the Holy Spirit; TRY whether the Gospel is not always pregnant with influences able to save the chief of sinners." It is impossible to ponder this solemn challenge without feeling the conviction, that God always regards the means present in the church as being ever full of his influences, and that, if his people do not partake of them, it is because they have no relish for the fountain of living waters, and, therefore, seek refreshing at foreign cisterns.

There is nothing in the scriptures to suggest the supposition that the means of grace are ever without the grace, and that sinners have come to them to be refreshed, and have been disappointed. The grace is always in the means, and, therefore, men are really blamed for coming to them and