three persons in the words we have read? C they obstruct our perceiving the Father, to whom all things belong; the Son, who participates in all things which belong to the Father: the Holy Spirit, who receives and reveals those things to the church? I ask again, whether by this propriety of thought, and precision of argument, we can understand an action of Providence, from what is ascribed to the Holy Spirit? And whether, without offering violence to the laws of language, one may substitute for the term spirit, the words action and Providence, and thus paraphrase the whole passage; ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when this action of Providence is come, even this action of Providence, it will guide you into all the truth; for it shall not speak of itself; but whatsoever it shall hear, that shall it speak; for it shall receive of mine, and shall show them unto you.' We frankly confess, my brethren, nothing but the reluctance we have to submit our notions to the decision of Supreme Wisdom can excite an apprehension, that a distinct person is not designated in the words we have cited. And, when it is once admitted, that the Holy Spirit sent to the church is a divine person, can one, on comparing the words of our text with those we have quoted, resist the conviction, that the same Spirit is intended in both these passages? goeth,' John iii. 8.-You, who especially admit, that the more conscious we are of the want of grace, the more we should exert our natural gifts; that, the more need we have of interior aids, the more we should profit by exterior assistance, by the books we have at hand, by the favourable circumstances in which we may be providentially placed, by the ministry which God has graciously established among us! Fear not to follow those faithful guides, and to adopt precautions so wise; under a pretext of reducing metaphors to precision, never enfeeble their force; and, under a plea of not admitting imaginary mysteries, never reject the real. This was our second rule. And here is the third In addresses to society in general, what belongs to each should be distinguished. St. Paul here addressed the whole church: but the whole of its numerous members could not have been in the same situation. Hence, one of the greatest faults we commit in expounding the Scriptures, and especially in expounding texts which treat of the agency of the Spirit, is, the neglecting to distinguish what we had designed. This is one cause of the little fruit produced by sermons. We address a church, whose religious attainments are very unequal. Some are scarcely initiated into knowledge and virtue; others approach perfection; and some hold a middle rank beIn the class of those, who, under a pretext tween the two. We address to this congreof not admitting imaginary mysteries, reject gation certain general discourses, which cansuch as are real, we arran e those divines, not apply with equal force to all; it belongs who deny the agency of this adorable per- to each of our hearers, to examine how far son on the heart, in what the apostle calls, each argument has reference to his own case. unction, seal, and earnest: those supralapsa- | rian teachers, who suppose, that all the operation of the Holy Spirit on the regenerate, consists in enabling him to preach; that he does not afford them the slightest interior aid, to surmount those difficulties which naturally obstruct a compliance with the grand design of preaching. The Scriptures assert, in so many places, the inefficacy of preaching without those aids, that no doubt can, in my opinion, be admissible upon the subject, But, if some divines heve degraded this branch of Christian theology, by an incau- ¡ tious defence, to them the blame attaches, and not to those who have established it upon solid proof. Those divines, who, by a mode of teaching much more calculated to confound, than defend, orthodox opinions, have spoken of the unction of the Spirit, as though it annihilated the powers of nature, and as though they made a jest ;-yes, a jest, of the exhortations, promises, and threatenings addressed to us in the Scriptures:-Those divines, if there are such, shall give an account to God for the discord 'hey have occasioned in the church, and even for the heresies to which their mode of expounding the Scriptures has given birth. Apply now to the words of our text the general maxim we have laid down; you will recollect the ideas we have attached to the terms used by the apostle, to express the agency of the Holy Spirit on the heart. We have said that these terms, unction, seal, earnest, excite three ideas. And we can never understand those Scriptures, which speak of the operations of the Holy Spirit, unless those three effects of the divine agency are distinguished. Every Christian has not been confirmed by the Spirit of God in all those various ways. All have not received the threefold unction, the threefold seal, the threefold earnest. To some the Holy Spirit has confirmed the first, availing himself of their ministry for the achievement of miracles, or by causing them to feel that a religion, in favour of which so many prodigies have been achieved, could not be false. To others, the second confirmation was added to the first; at the moment he carried conviction to the mind, he sanctified the heart. With regard to others, he communicated more; not only persuading them that a religion, which promises celestial felicity, is true; not only enabling them to conform to the conditions on which this felicity is promised, but he also gives them foretastes here below. You, however, brethren, embrace no doctrines but those explicitly revealed in the II. and III. I could better explain my senScriptures;--you, who admit the agency of timents, did I dare engage, in discussing the the Holy Spirit on the heart, unsolicitous to second part of my subject, to illustrate the define its nature.-You, who say with Jesus nature, and prove the reality of the Spirit's Christ, the wind bloweth where it listeth.agency on the heart. But how can I attempt and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst the discussion of so vast a subject in one not tell whence it cometh, and whither it discourse, when so many considerations re strict me to brevity? We shall, therefore, speak of the nature and reality of the Spirit's agency on the heart, so far only as is necessary to furnish matter for our third head, on which we are now entering; and which is designed to trace the dispositions that favour, and such as retard, the operations of the Spirit: a most important discussion, which will develop the causes of the anniversary of Pentecost being unavailing in the church, and point out the dispositions for its worthy celebration. What we shall advance on this subject, is founded on a maxim, to which I solicit your peculiar attention; namely, that every motion of the Spirit on the heart of good men, requires correspondent co-operation; without which his agency would be unavailing. The refusal to co-operate is called in Scripture, quenching-grieving-resisting-and doing despite to the Spirit. Now, according to the style of St. Paul, this quenching-grieving resisting and doing despite to the Holy Spirit, is to render his operation unavailing. Adequately to comprehend this maxim, and at the same time to avoid a mistaken theology, and a corrupt morality, concerning the agency of the Spirit, make the following reflection: that the Holy Spirit may perhaps be considered in one of these three respects; either as the omnipotent God; or as a wise lawgiver or as a wise lawgiver and the omnipotent God, in the same character. Hence the man on whom he works, may perhaps be considered, either, as a physical, or a moral being; or as a being in whom both these qualities associate. To consider the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration as the omnipotent God, and the man for whose conversion he exerts his agency, as a being purely physical and to affirm that the Holy Spirit acts solely by irresistible influence, man being simply passive, is, in our opinion, a morality extremely corrupt. To consider the Holy Spirit simply as a lawgiver, and man merely as a moral being, capable of vice and virtue; and to affirin, that the Holy Spirit only proposes his precepts, and that man obeys them, unassisted by the divine energy attendant on their promulgation, is to propagate a theology equally erroneous. But, to consider the Holy Spirit as the omnipotent God, and legislator in the same character, and man as a being both moral and physical, is to harmonize the laws moral and divine, and to avoid, on a subject so exceedingly controverted, the two equally dangerous rocks, against which so many divines have cast themselves away. The adoption of this last system (which is here the wisest choice), implies an acknowledgment, that there are dispositions in man which retard, and dispositions which cherish, the successful agency of God on the heart. What are these? They regard the three ways, in which we said the Holy Spirit confirms to the soul the promises of immortality and life. These he confirms, first, by the persuasion he affords, concerning the truth of the gospel; causing it to spring up in the heart on review of the miracles performed by the first Christians. Secondly, he confirms them by the inward work of sanctification. Thirdly, he confirms them by foretastes of celestial delight, communicated to some Christians even here below. Each of these points we shall resume in its order. First, the gift of miracles was a seal, which God affixed to the ministry of the first heralds of the gospel. Miracles are called seals: such is the import of those distinguished words of Christ; Labour not for the meat that perisheth; but for that meat which endureth unto eternal life, which the Son of man shall give unto you, for him hath the Father sealed, John vi 27. The seal which distinguished Jesus Christ, was the gift of miracles he had received of God, to demonstrate the divine authority of his mission: so he himself affirmed to the multitudes: The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness that the Father hath sent me,' John v. 36. The inference, with regard to the Lord, is of equal force with regard to the disciples. The miraculous endowments, granted to them, sanctioned their mission; as the mission of the Master was sanctioned by the miraculous powers with which it was accompanied. What seal more august could have been affixed to it? What demonstrations more conclusive can we ask of a religion which announces them to us, than all these miracles which God performed for its confirmation? Could the Deity have communica ted his omnipotence to impostors? Could he even have wished to lead mankind into mis take? Could he have allowed heaven and earth, the sea and land to be shaken for the sanction of lies? As there are dispositions which retard the agency of the Spirit, who comes to impress the heart with truth, so there are others which favour and cherish his work. With regard to those which retard, I would not only include infidelity of heart, whose principle is malice; I would not only include here those eccentric men, who resist the most palpable proofs, and evident demonstrations, and think they have answered every argument by saying, 'It is not true. I doubt, I deny.'-Men that seem to have made a model of the Pharisees, who, when unable to deny the miracles of Christ, and to elude their force, ascribed them to the devil. This is a fault so notorious, as to supersede the necessity of argument. But I would also convince you Christians that the neglect of studying the history of the miracles we celebrate to-day, is an awful source of subversion to the agency we are discussing. Correspond, by serious attention and profound recollection, to the efforts of the Holy Spirit in demonstrating the truth of your religion. On festivals of this kind, a Christian should recollect and digest, if I may so speak, the distinguished proofs which God gave of the truth of Christianity on the day whose anniversary we now celebrate. He should say to himself; 'I wish to know, whether advantage be taken of my simplicity, or whether I am addressed as a rational being; when I am told, that the first heralds of the gospel performed the miracles, attributed to their agency.' 'I wish to know, whether the miracles of the apostles have been narrated, (Acts ii.) and inquire whether those holy men have named the place, the time, the witnesses, and circumstances of the miracles: whether it be true that those miracles were performed in the most public places, amid the greatest concourses of people, in presence of Persians.ciety, never were questions more important of Medes, of Parthians, of Elamites, of dwell ers in Mesopotamia, in Judea, in Cappadocia, in Lybia; among Cretes, Arabs, and Jews. 'I wish to know, in what way these miracles were foretold; whether it be true, that these were the characteristics of evangelical preachers, which the prophets had traced so many ages before the evangelical period; and whether we may not give another interpretation to these distinguished predictions: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come,' Hag. ii. 5, 6. I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophecy. Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, fire, and pillars of smoke,' Joel ii. 28-30. 'I wish to know, how these miracles were received; whether it be true, that the multitudes, the myriads of proselytes, who had it in their power to investigate the authenticity of the facts, sacrificed their ease, their reputation, their fortune, their life, and every comfort which martyrs and confessors have been accustomed to sacrifice: I wish to know, whether the primitive Christians made these sacrifices on embracing a religion chiefly founded on a belief of miracles. 'I wish to know, in what way these miracles were opposed; whether it be true, that there is this distinguished difference between the way in which these facts were attacked in the first centuries, and in the present. Whether it be true, that instead of saying, as our infidels assert, that these facts were fabulous, the Celsuses, the Porphyrys, the Zosimuses, who lived in the ages in which these facts were recent, took other methods to evade their force; attributing them to the powers of magic, or confounding them with other pretended miracles.' This is the study to which we should proceed; wo be to us if we regard it as a tedious task, and excuse ourselves on inconsiderable pretexts! Is there any thing on earth which should interest us more than those important truths, announced by the apostles; and especially those magnificent promises they have delivered in the name of God? Mortal as we all are, merely appearing on the stage of life, most of us having already run the greater part of our course, called every moment to enter into the invisible world, destined there to destruction, or eternal existence, is there a question more interesting than this? Is it for destruction, or eternal existence, I am designated by my Maker? Are the notions I entertain of immortality; of pleasures for evermore at God's right hand; fulness of joy around his throne; of intimate intercourse with the adorable Being; of society with angels, with archangels, with che rubim and seraphim; for ages, millions of ages, an eternity with the blessed God, are the notions I entertain, realities, or chimeras?' No my brethren, neither in a council of war, nor legislative assembly, nor philosophical sodiscussed. A rational man should have nothing more at heart than their elucidation. Nothing whatever should afford him greater satisfaction, than when engaged in researches of this nature, in which he discovers some additional evidence of inmortality; and when he finds stated with superior arguments, the demonstrations we have of the Holy Spirit's descent upon the apostles, the anniversary of which we now celebrate. 2. If there are dispositions which retard, and cherish, the first agency of the Holy Spirit on the heart, there are also dispositions which retard and cherish the second. The Holy Spirit, we have said in the second place, confirms to us the promises of the gos pel, by communicating the grace of sanctification. What success can be expected from his gracious efforts to purify the heart, while you oppose the works? Why have those gracious efforts hitherto produced, with regard to most of you, so little effect? Because you still oppose. Desirous to make you conscious of the worth of holiness, the Holy Spirit addresses you for that purpose in the most pointed sermons. In proportion as the preacher addresses the ear, the Holy Spirit inwardly addresses the heart, alarming it by that declaration, The unclean shall not inherit the kingdom of God,' 1 Cor. vi. 10. But you have opposed his gracious work; you have abandoned the heart to irregular affection; you have pursued objects calculated to inflame concupiscence, or enkindle it with additional vigour. The Holy Spirit, desirous to humble the heart, exhibits the most mortifying portraits of your weakness, your ignorance, your dis sipation, your indigence, your mortality and corruption.-a train of humiliating considerations in which your own character may be recognised. But you have opposed his work; you have swelled your mind with every idea calculated to give plausibility to the sophisms of vanity; you have flattered yourselves with your birth, your titles, your dignities, your affected literature, and imaginary vir tues. Improve this thought, my brethren, confess your follies; yield to the operations of grace, which would reclaim you from the sins of the age, and make you partakers of the divine purity, in order to a participation of the divine felicity. Practise those virtues which the apostles so strongly enforced in their sermons, which they so highly exemplified in their lives, and so poweriully pressed in their writings. Above all my brethren, let us follow the emotions of that virtue which is the true test, by which the Lord knows his own people, Í mean charity: such are the words of Christ, which we cannot too attentively regard; This is my commandment that ye love one another,' John xv. 12. When I speak of charity, I would not only prompt you to share your superfluities with the indigent, and to do good offices for your neighbours. But a man, who, when celebrating the anniversary of a day in which God's love was so abundantly shed upon the church, in which the Christians became united by ties so tender, feels reluctance to afford these slight marks of the love we describe;—a man who, wrapt up in his own sufficiency, and in the ideas he forms of his own grandeur, sees nothing worthy of himself in the religion God has prescribed, would, however, converse with his Maker, and receive his benefits, but who shuts his door against his neighbours, abandons them in their poverty, trouble, and obscurity;-such a man, far from being a Christian, has not even notion of Chris tianity. At the moment he congratulates himself with being distinguished from the rest of mankind by the seal of God, he has only the seal of the devil,-inflexibility and pride. On these days I would, my brethren, require concerning charity, marks more noble, and tests more infallible, than alms and good offices: I would animate you with the laudable ambition of carrying charity as far as it was carried by Jesus Christ. To express myself in the language of Scripture, I would animate you to love your neighbour as Jesus Christ has loved you. In what way has Jesus Christ loved you? What was the grand object of his love to man? It was salvation. So also should the salvation of your neighbours be the object of your love. Be penetrated with the wretchedness of people without hope, without God in the world,' Eph. i. 12. Avail yourselves of the prosperity of your navigation and commerce, to send the gospel into districts, where creatures made in the image of God, know not him that made them, but live in the grossest darkness of the pagan world. Be likewise impressed with the wretchedness of those, who, amid the light of the gospel, have their eyes so veiled as to exclude its lustre. Employ for the great work of reformation, not gibbets and tortures, not fire and faggot, but persuasion, instruction, and every means best calculated for causing the truth to be known and esteemed. Be touched with the miseries of people educated in our own communion, and who believe what we believe; but who through the fear of man, through worldly-mindedness, and astonishing hardness of heart, are obstructed from following the light. Address to them the closest exhortations. Offer them a participation of your abundance. Endeavour to move them towards the interests of their children. Pray for thein; pray for the peace of Jerusalem; pray that God would raise the ruins of our temples: that he would gather the many scattered flocks; pray him to reinvigorate the Christian blood in these veins, which seems destitute of heat and circulation. Pray him, my fellow countrymen, that he would have pity on your country, in which one prejudice succee is another. Be afflicted with the affliction of Joseph, be mindful of your native land. here below to highly-favoured souls. On this subject, I seem suspended between the fear of giving countenance to enthusiasm, and of suppressing one of the most consolatory truths of the Christian religion. It is however, a fact, that there are highly favoured souls, to whom the Holy Spirit confirms the promises of celestial happiness, by a communication of its foretastes here on earth. By foretastes of celestial happiness, I mean the impression made on the mind of a Christian, of the sincerest piety, by this consolatory thought; My soul is immortal: death, which seems to terminate, only changes the mode of my existence: my body also shall participate of eternal life; the dust shall be reanimated, and its scattered particles collected into a glorious form' By foretastes of celestial happiness, I mean, the unshaken confidence a Christian feels, even when assailed with doubts,-when oppressed with deep affliction, and surrounded with the veil of death, which conceals the objects of his hope: this assurance enables him to say, I know in whom I have believed, and I am persuaded he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day,' 2 Tim. i. 12. 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worins destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God,' Job xix. 25, 26. O God, though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,' Ps. xxii. 4. I have set the Lord always before me; because he is on my right hand, I shall not be moved. Ps xvi. 8. By foretastes of celestial happiness, I mean, the delights of glorified saints in heaven, which some find while dwelling on earth; when far from the multitude, secluded from care, and conversing with the blessed God, they can express themselves in these words, My soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness, when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate upon thee in the night watches,' Ps. lxiii 5, 6. Our conversation is in heaven,' Phil. iii. 20. By foretastes of celestial happiness, I mean, the impatience which some of the faithful feel, to terminate a life of calamities and imperfections; and the satisfaction they receive every evening on reflecting that another day of their pilgrimage is passed; that they are one step nearer to eternity. In this tabernacle we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, 2 Cor. v. 2. My desire is to depart, and to be with Christ,' Phil. i. 23. Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why do his coursers proceed so slow? • When shall I come and appear before God,' Ps. xl. 2. My brethren, in what language have I been speaking? How few understand it! To how many does it seem an unknown ton rue! But we have to blame ourselves alone if we are not anointed in this way, and sealed by the Holy Ghost; and if we do not partici3. We have said lastly, that the Holy pate in these foretastes of eternity, which are spirit confirms the promise of celestial feli-the genuine earnests of heaven. But ah! city, by a communication of its foretastes our taste is spoiled in the world. We have contracted the low habits of seeking happiness solely in the recreations of the age. Most, even of those who conform to the precepts of piety, do it by constraint. We obey God, merely because he is God. We feel not the unutterable sweetness in these appellations of Father, Friend, and Benefactor, under which he is revealed by religion. We do not conceive that his sole object, with regard to man, is to make him happy. But the world, the world,-is the object which attracts the heart, and the heart of the best amongst us. Let us then love the world, seeing it has pleased God to unite us to it by ties so tender Let us endeavour to advance our fa milies, to add a little lustre to our name, and some consistency to what is denominated, fortune. But Ŏ after all, let us regard these things in their true light. Let us recollect that, upon earth, man can only have transient happiness. My fortune is not es sential to my felicity; the lustre of my name is not essential to my felicity; the establish ment of my family is not essential to my felicity; and, since none of these things are es sential to my happiness, the great God, the Being supremely gracious, has without the least violation of his goodness, left them in the uncertainty and vicissitude of all ublunary bliss. But my salvation, my salvation, is far above the vicissitudes of life. The mountains shall depart, and the hills be moved; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, Isa. liv. 10. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment; but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished, Isa. li. 6. May God indulge our hope, and crown it with success. Amen. SERMON LXXXVIII. THE FAMILY OF JESUS CHRIST. MATTHEW xii. 46--50. While he yet talked to the people, behold his mother, and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, behold, thy mother, and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? And who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and suid, Behold my mother, and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. HE'said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor know his own children,' Deut. xxxiii. 9. So oses said of the tribe of Levi. Was it to reproach, or applaud? Following the first impression of this sentence, it contains undoubtedly a sharp rebuke, and a deep reproach. In what more unfavourable light could we view the Levites? What became of their natural affection, on disowning the persons to whom they were united by ties so tender, on plunging their weapons in the breasts of those who gave them birth? But raising the mind superior to flesh and blood, if you consider the words as connected with the occasion, to which they refer, you will find an illustrious character of those ministers of the living God; and one of the finest panegyrics which mortals ever received. Nature and religion, it is admitted, require us to love our neighbour, especially the mem bers of our families, as ourselves; and if we may so speak, as our own substance. But if it be a duty to love our neighbour, it is not less admissible, that we ought to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.' In fact we ought to love God alone. Farther, our love to him ought to be the centre of every other love: when the latter is at variance with the former, God must have the preference; when we can no longer love father and mother without ceasing to love God, our duty is determined; we must cease to love our parents, that our love may return to its centre. These were the dispositions of the Levites. Obedient children, affectionate brethren, they rendered to the persons to whom God had united them, every duty required by so close a connexion. But when those persons revolted against God,when they paid supreme devotion to an ox that eateth grass,' as the psalmist says; when the Levites received this commandment from God, their Lawgiver and Su |