How precious, in the next place, is this office of the Holy Spirit in prayer! He reminds us of promises that we can plead, of mercies that we have experienced; so that we can urge, as the Psalmist does in the 4th Psalm, the mercies received yesterday as reasons for new blessings to be received to-day. And how important is this office of the Holy Spirit in days of abounding error! Men come and state things so plausible, that we are almost constrained to say, I must have been "mistaken." It is very wrong, however, to suppose that, when a person gives an argument against the Bible which we cannot answer, we must, therefore, accept that argument; we are to lay it aside and say, "I cannot answer it; but I have not a doubt that it can be answered; I will ask those who know more than I do, and see whether an answer can be given or not." A very foolish man may ask a question that two wise men will require twenty days to answer. I must never think, because a plausible objection is stated, through the sophistry of which I cannot see, that therefore nobody else can see through it. It is not that the argument is sound, but that I am not enlightened. But when the Holy Spirit thus brings to our remembrance plain, simple truths in his own blessed word, by one of those texts we may repel the objector, as our blessed Lord repelled the tempter: "It is written; it is written; it is written." Thus the Holy Spirit is precious to us as our Remembrancer. John Newton, an excellent and accomplished divine, was a refugee from his home, far off; he was standing at the helm, tossed upon a tempestuous ocean, in the momentary prospect of a watery grave. A text flashed on his memory, he knew not how, we know now, and he knew before he

died, a text that his mother taught him when a child, listening to her- the most effective teaching of all; and that text was the secret of his salvation. No doubt it was the Holy Spirit that brought up that buried fragment, that cast new and holy light upon that almost faded flower; that brought to his recollection a truth long buried - but not dead, and it became a living seed, and grew up unto life eternal.

31*

VIII.

The Spirit the Source of Victory.

ZECHARIAH speaks of the erection of a material temple-tells us the decree of Heaven that it was to be completed, not by the resources of human power, nor by the expedients of human wisdom, however proper these might be as instrumentalities in their place, but by the direct and almighty power of the Holy Spirit of God. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

What applies to a holy temple that has passed away, not one stone of which rests any more upon another, may be still more justly, I think, applied to that spiritual temple which is composed of living stones, resting on the Rock of Ages: the only Church in the universe that God truly consecrates, and the only Church, one stone of which shall never be removed.

Power is the thirst, the consuming thirst of millions of mankind. Conquest, one of its passions, has been long the aim and the maddening ambition of the nations of the earth. Many a conqueror has felt what one of old is recorded to have said, that he would rather be the first in the humblest hamlet, than be the second in imperial Rome. So strong is the instinctive.