the Spirit. In business, in the love of lucre, in science, and the pursuits of fame, they think that it is good to be zealously affected. The use, then, of this language by a Christian, or by a Christian church, in reference to the influences of the Holy Spirit, sounds much like the tolling of the knell of devotion.

When there is no sense of personal responsibility for the continued maintenance and preservation of fervid religious emotions, and when there is a voluntary yielding to the influence of carelessness, indifference, and unconcern about the vestal fire, the tendencies of these hallowed energies are as effectually quenched, as a fire in our hearths is put out by the heedlessness of our mid-day slumbers. The history of experimental religion supplies numerous instances, - alas! too numerous -in which Christians, before they went "to sleep as do others," in stupor and lethargy, extinguished, at the signal and the peal of the world's curfew, all the fires of devout feelings, and put out the light of piety.

An engagedness of heart in worldly pursuits, and a devotedness of mind to temporal speculation, and a bustling activity in harassing anxieties, dispose the soul to an utter neglect of the warm and glowing emotions of religious fervor; just as the busy individual allows his fire to become extinct, because he has something else to do than attending to cherish it. In men of worldly minds this is to be expected, but in Christians it is a sacrilegious outrage. Christians

are the priests of the Most High God, and to feed and preserve the hallowed fire of his Spirit, is their fixed, and determinate it is their unique, business, to which every other employ should be subordinate, and with which no other work should be allowed to interfere.

The mental temper, which has with fatal certainty extinguished holy emotions in thousands and millions, is a morbid and fanatic expectation of finding, in the real influences of the Holy Spirit, some more rushing energy, more penetrating force, more overpowering seizure, and more vehement glowings than they have yet discovered. They know that the influences of the Spirit are a kindling light, but they are waiting for a glaring blaze; instead of fire, they are looking for a conflagration; and instead of a gentle glow of a permeating heat, they expect the Spirit to affect them with the thundering shocks of a volcano, or the irresistible percussion of lightning. In the frenzied and groundless hope of meeting

with these overwhelming energies, they give no heed to the genial strivings of Divine influences with their hearts; and the small but bright scintillations produced by the collision of truth with their consciences, they neglect, and allow, through their habitual delays and procrastinations, to expire and vanish. The man who neglects the seed, is not likely to have a harvest suddenly lavished on him. The man, who treats with contempt a small favor from his prince, cannot calculate on a more splendid largess. Oh! when will sinners feel, and when will the church teach the world to think, that to trifle with the incipient and tender influences of the Holy Spirit, is not the way to bring down the burning flame that shall at once consume "the living sacrifices" of God?

II. The tendencies and operations of Divine influences on the mind are suppressed, by employing means which are not adapted for their developement, and which are unlikely to sustain and continue them.

Fire will develope its energies only according to settled laws, and in fixed combinations. If from ignorance, or fancy, or caprice, we attempt to maintain and perpetuate it by improper means, we shall inevitably quench it. We may as well expect emotions of fervid piety to be maintained by unsuitable and incongruous means, as that we should preserve a fire by heaping on it blocks of ice, or sustain the flame of a lamp by a supply of water. The fact deserves notice, that even in the miraculous influences of the Holy Spirit, those who neglected to exercise their supernatural gifts, or attempted to use them in a wrong way, or abused them for wrong ends, generally quenched them. This is the ground on which Paul cautions Timothy against neglecting his gift, and excites him to stir it up into vigorous activity. In the same manner those who neglect, or make a wrong use of gracious influences, choke and suppress their holy operations.

The Spirit is said to "depart" when his influences are no longer found in the usual means. This phrase does not imply that his influences are really absent from the means: it only announces a fact, that the applicants, who use the means, do not find in them the influences which they expected. The reason of their not finding them is neither in the character of the means, nor in the absence of the Holy Spirit, but is in the state of the applicants themselves; they may come to the means too late, they may wish to direct Divine influences in inconsistent relations, or they themselves may be in a condi

tion unsuited to their manifestations. It is thus a remedy loses its influence, or exerts no influence, on a disorder in a given state of virulency. It is not meant that the influence of the medicine has been really exhausted, or extracted out of it; but the disease has reached such a state as to reject its operations. Thus also a reason, an argument, a motive that was wont to have a powerful influence on the mind, has, by love of sin, dislike of restraint, and frequent trifling, lost all power on the hardened and obdurate. The argument or motive itself has all the virtue and force which it used to have; but it is now of no avail to a mind in such a state; and should the man, in a state of remorse, recur again to that motive, it would probably exert no influence on him.

When a sinner, hardened in impenitence, callous in irreligiousness, sorry to be detected and apprehended by death, but not sorry for his iniquities, comes to read the scriptures, all the promises have lost their sweetness, all the invitations have lost their unction, and all the assurances have lost their power; and his conscience then awakes to the dread fact, that it is impossible for him to be renewed. In this awful case have the influences of the Holy Spirit been withdrawn from the gospel? No: these very promises and assurances are, at the moment in question, the power of God unto a thousand penitents, and will continue wells of salvation to thousands to come. The gospel has undergone no change. The means of grace have lost nothing; their tendencies, blessings, and fulness, are, like their author, in all places, in all times, and in all circumstances, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The influences of the Holy Spirit have not quitted the word, though the hardened sinner does not find them there. He finds that the word is in actual possession of all the energies and influences, which his state will admit of, for he finds a full and thrilling influence, in the denunciations and the anathemas of the gospel, to condemn him. These are influences which he did not formerly discover in them, though they had been always present; but even now he is in a state with which they rush into full and ready combination. The savor of the Holy Spirit is still there, but it is the savor of death to the man who has voluntarily sought perdition.

If the saving power and the "sweet influences” of the Holy Spirit are truly in the word, how comes it to pass that the impenitent applicant does not discover them? They are in honest verity still there, and he might have found them;

but they would not enter into the combinations which he desired-just as if a man would wish to elicit fire by striking steel, or flint, against an iceberg. He really wishes for fire, and there is fire truly present in the flint, but it will not combine with the iceberg. In a northern latitude a palace of ice was once erected. It was perfectly comfortless, without heat. When fire, so evidently longed for, was introduced, it was extinguished, because it was foolishly wished that the fire would radiate its influences without destroying the ice. The inmates wished to be warm, and yet retain their palace. The sinner wishes in the same manner to find genial influences, that will save him without dissolving his heart, or melting away his beloved sins: he wishes Divine influences to save him from drunkenness, without removing the cup of intoxication, and from covetousness, without diminishing his dishonest gains. He wants these influences to operate in such a way, as must counteract the established relations and tendencies of the very influences themselves. It is no wonder, then, that he does not discover such influences as he fondly expected. The influences to save him were really present; but if they developed and radiated themselves, they must destroy his sin: and because they tend to do this, he becomes maddened, stifles their operations, and does despite to the Spirit of grace.

How evidently was this the case with Saul. "When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets." (1 Sam. xxviii. 6.) The Lord had not withdrawn his presence and influence from the Urim, and from the prophets: God was still in them, though Saul, in such a state, could not find him; but his holy influences would not unite with the materials supplied by Saul. It is true that, in some instances, even the people of God may be in a state, with which the influences of the Holy Spirit will not coalesce and combine, such as a disregard of means, selfishness, covetousness, unrepented sin, and bigotry. A church, wishing to convert the world, and believing the influences of the Holy Spirit will enter into such processes, is akin to an army intent on springing a mine by a train of snow, or firing its ordnance with matches of icicles.

III. Men quench the influences of the Spirit, by voluntarily and designedly opposing their operations, and checking their tendencies.

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The man who stifles his religious convictions, and suppresses his holy emotions, quenches the influences of the Spirit, as a man quenches a fire by not allowing it vent, free access of air, and range of play, or by choking it with a damper. The man who covers his religion with indolence, formality, fashion, and state, quenches it as effectually as another extinguishes fire by heaping on it earth and ashes. There are many painful instances, in which heavenly affections have been allowed to expire, by the influence of dazzling prosperity, pomp, and power, as the domestic fire dies in the overpowering glare and lustre of the sun's rays. Others quench the Spirit, by presenting against his influences elements directly opposite to their tendencies, and surely destructive of their operations: such in a church, are the waters of strife, envy, contention, pride, levity, doctrinal error, and superstitious ceremony.

Many good and wise men have argued, that it is derogatory to the attributes of God, and to the character of the Holy Spirit, to assert that Divine influences on the human mind are capable of being resisted. Three ways have been invented to vindicate the Divine character in this connexion: first, that it is the truths of the Spirit that are resisted, and not his influences. Secondly, that his influences may for a season be resisted, but they will eventually prove invincible. And thirdly, that the real influences of the Holy Spirit are not only irresistible, but their distinctive mark is, that they are unresisted and never opposed.

Let my reader keep these vindications in his mind, and consider whether or not he can discover any influences of God operating on the physical universe, which man is not able to resist, which he does not resist successfully, and resist with deliberation, design, and contrivance. He can resist gravitation, atmospheric pressure, the heat of the sun, the force of the wind, &c. Any one of these influences has, in itself, power sufficient to crush and destroy him; but each influence apart, or several influences in combination, he can both resist and master. The susceptibilities of psychological, intellectual, and moral influences, are of the same character with those of the physical, though probably their evidences might not be made to all so palpable. Man will meet the lion and the tiger of the forest, and resist the most powerful influences of danger and fear. He will voluntarily and stubbornly resist all the influences adapted for his mental improve