Spirit to a system of ritual observances. They can apprehend nothing but what strikes the eye, recognise nothing but what is tangible, and in the end, with them spiritual religion will be nothing but an outward formality.

Then on the other hand, there are those who must explain everything upon natural principles. With them there is nothing in any department of God's kingdom not to be explained by some natural law, which is discoverable by us; and in an endeavor to reach that law which may be brought in as an exponent of spiritual results, it is forgotten for the time being, that we live under the "ministration of the Spirit" who "works in us to will and to do." His special agency is lost sight of, or if it is brought so distinctly into view, by the plain statements of the word of God, that it cannot be overlooked, but must be recognised, then it is nothing but that universal Divine agency which pervades alike the natural and spiritual systems, and the promised influence from above, which was to work such wonders in the transformation of the world, is but an influence which is to superintend the working of natural laws, and through them bring about the promised spiritual results.

Now it should not be amiss, were it possible, to whisper a word in the ear of those who doubtless with the most upright and honest intentions, run into idle speculations upon this subject, and that word should tell them that they are not the first who have attempted to philosophize the special influences of the Spirit out of the gospel, and if they will look over the past, they will see numberless theories, wise and plausible as their own, hanging up in history, like models of the perpetual motion in the cabinets of the curious. They had their day, they cost labor, they were ingeniously put together, beautifully polished, but they were failures.

To our minds, however, this tendency of which we are speaking, assumes a more serious aspect. It seems very much akin to the efforts of the great adversary of truth, who bends the mental peculiarities of the present age to his own purposes, who takes its philosophical speculations, and not a few of its really brilliant discoveries, and converts them into machines to batter down the fortress of the Christian faith, or corrupt its fountains with deleterious infusions. And how that God, who is jealous of his own honor, and will not give his glory to another, regards this tendency, may perhaps be learned from the results which such tendencies have developed in ages of the Church which have gone by. It cannot be doubted, that if those who came after the apostles had been marked by their spirituality, and gone forth leaning upon the same "promise of the Father," which nerved the hearts and hands of primitive disciples, and secured to them such abundant

success, the page of the Church's history should have told a different tale from that which now deforms her records.

The darkness which covered our earth in those days, when the Christian religion seemed to be but a near relation of Paganism, and the heathen altar and the Christian temple differed apparently only in name, admits of a very simple explanation. Its shades began to gather, when the confessors of the early faith thought more of the deductions of human reason than of the simple verities of the word of God, and clothed themselves with the worldly dignity of sages, rather than with the meek and unambitious virtues of the Christian disciple. No sooner did the influence of the Academy supersede the plain teaching of the gospel, no sooner was unbaptized philosophy brought in, as the only true expositor of revealed truth, and the word of God forced to speak the language of human theories, than the vital principle of Christianity seemed as if it were palsy-stricken; and though this deference to human wisdom seemed to take off much that is humiliating from the doctrines of the cross, and add to the numerical strength of its professed adherents, it did so, only by perverting those doctrines themselves, and it increased the strength of the nominal, only as it increased the weakness of a spiritual Christianity. Thereafter, we find the influences of the Spirit of God very much overlooked in planning for the advancement of religion, and to a very great extent, their necessity and reality denied, while dependence for success was placed exclusively upon outward means, rites, and ceremonies; appeals to the senses took the place of appeals to conscience, and human authority was pressed into service to the entire neglect of the life-giving energy of the Holy Ghost. The result was, that in a spiritual point of view "darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people." The Spirit of God, grieved, seemed to have forsaken the earth, and the Church, reared for his dwelling-place, gave too evident tokens of his departure; for though it advanced in outward glory, and gathered around itself the treasures and armies and honors of the earth, yet when you look for Christianity, you find it but a lifeless corpse, drained of its life-blood, as though a vampire had fastened upon its vitals. And when afterwards we discover a lonely Saxon, unknown beyond the cloisters and precincts of his own country, catching a glimpse of the spiritualities of religion, and speaking as taught by, and in dependence upon the Holy Ghost, though he stands alone, and it seems that his voice must be drowned, yet securing a response from multitudes, you have evidence not only of the fulfilment of "the promise of the Father," through which alone such magnificent issues could have resulted from such inadequate means, but also of the great truth upon which we are insisting, that God pours out upon, or withholds from the world his blessings, according as THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. NO. 1.

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the reality of his Spirit's influences is admitted, their necessity recognised and felt, or their reality overlooked, and their importance undervalued or denied.

So it has been universally-whenever a darkness such as might be felt has come over the churches of Jesus Christ-whenever the gospel has seemed as though it were stripped of its life-giving power, then has "the promise of the Spirit" been forgotten, other dependencies have been introduced, spirituality has been lightly esteemed, "the form " has superseded "the power of godliness," and moral death has walked abroad to do its work, if not wearing, at least surrounded by, the emblems and symbols of life.

We are no enemies to philosophical investigation, even when it has religion for its subject, provided it keeps within its own sphere; but of all men, we know not one more dangerous than the mere theorizer about revealed things-the man, who must reduce everything to the standard of nature, and explain everything by natural laws; because when he has finished his system, he has explained away everything which is distinctive about Christianity. He has a beautiful theory of religion, but it wants one thing-life; he has all the technicalities and forms of Christianity, but not one particle of its spirituality; he has scarcely the letter which killeth, certainly none of the spirit which maketh alive.

Blessed be God, the power of religion does not reside in its theory, but in its facts and truths. We can know the truth and influence of religion without knowing anything of its theory. The ancient philosopher who thought the sun a fixed body no larger than the hill at which he looked from his windows, derived as much benefit from its rays as did Sir Isaac Newton. I can sustain nature, in the use of appropriate food, as well as the chemist or physiologist, on some accounts perhaps better-and so I can go to the Bible, and receive its truths, upon the simple testimony of their author, and they become to me elements of spiritual life, though I understand nothing of the philosophy of a single fact or doctrine therein contained. But when I will not believe that the things which God tells me, are so, before I understand how they are so, then I am in danger of losing sight of what constitutes the vitality of the system, and failing to find its true law, of destroying the principles which compose it ;-and this is precisely the way in which the power of the gospel is paralysed, and its successes are prevented in the world.

Let men say what they can, and theorize as they please upon this subject, the conversion of the human soul unto God, and the onward triumphant march of the gospel to the achievement of a world's redemption, is not to be explained upon any principles of mere human philosophy, or by any mere natural laws whatsoever. Every onward step which the Church of Christ takes, in

fulfilling the design of her Master; every soul gifted with spiritual life, every community brought to obedience to the truth, will show the folly of human wisdom, as they set in a light too strong to be unnoticed, and too clear to be mistaken, this great principle of God's government-" not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord."

In these days, when the intellect of man is so greatly on the stretch, so full of its own power, and so confident in its own resources, while there is a manifestly growing repugnance to anything like dependence upon an invisible agency, it is well for the friends of truth to stand nobly by the doctrine of the special influences of the Holy Ghost. The experience of the past, no less than the Word of God, has taught us, that a forgetfulness or denial of this doctrine has prepared the mind for the reception, and made way for the working of the most dangerous errors. When men have been too blind to see, too infatuated to confess the necessity of special spiritual influences, God has abandoned them to the vanities of their own wisdom. The vital truths of the gospel have been lost sight of, the religion of men has become little else than a cold, and heartless, and almost heathen morality. There has been no moving among the dry bones in the valley of spiritual death, and the truth of the Bible relative to the agency of the Comforter," has been plainly demonstrated amid the abuses and formalities of a spurious religion.

It is then upon the fulfilment of this "promise of the Father," upon the manifestation of the Spirit, that we build the hopes of the Church and the world. If ever one soul now out of Christ is brought to the experience of the power of the gospel, it must be through the special agency of the Holy Ghost. If this world is to be converted to God, it must be by copious effusions of His influence, of which the scenes on the day of Pentecost were but the types and earnests. Sad indeed will it be for the Church of God, when her members become blind, or sceptical, in reference to the "ministration of the Spirit" as the peculiarity of our age. The history of the Church of Christ puts beyond all question, not simply the necessity of the Spirit's influences, but the necessity likewise of their copious effusions. Without them, the daily, hourly movement of the Church is retrograde, while her life and energy are inseparable from her advancement. There has been, we apprehend, a growing scepticism, for some time past, as to the advantage, if not the necessity of these outpourings from on high, and the result we have before us, in a manifest leaning to mere formalism on the one hand, and in efforts to bring down religion to the mere natural effect of a natural cause on the other -a result which has furnished to doubters and unbelievers this problem for their solution:-how long, at the present rate of progress, will it be, before spiritual Christianity, which now scarcely

holds her own, shall, according to the sure word of prophecy, overspread the earth? The ages which have gone by have been signalized by wondrous outpourings of the Holy Ghost. Scarce a land upon the earth, not one blessed with the revelation of Jesus Christ, but has been more or less refreshed by these spiritual visitations; and these revivals of Pentecostal days have endowed the Church of Christ with new elements of spiritual power, or quickened into new action those which had ceased to work. It is indeed so (as President Edwards has conclusively demonstrated in his History of Redemption), that, by means of these special and abundant influences shed down from on high, God has established and carried forward his work in the world.

To them mainly, is religion in our land indebted for its foothold and its influence; and if they are withheld from us, we are lost. As our numbers swell, and the field of our action widens, and worldly influences become more and more rampant, vice, immorality, scepticism, and divers forms of error walk onward with strides too large, and a pace too quick to be overtaken by any ordinary means; and when the necessities of our case lead us to plead for revivals of religion, as our only hope, we feel that we are but pleading for what is embraced in the glorious promises of the gospel, whose meaning has been made plain amid the scenes where their fulfilment has been witnessed. The posture of the early disciples, as they remained secluded in Jerusalem, according to the commandment of the Savior, was a posture of believing expectation. With their eye upon the promise of their Master, they waited in faith, and hope, and prayer, for its fulfilment, and the result showed neither a visionary faith, nor a deceitful hope, nor an unanswered prayer.

Such should be our posture now-the posture of those who believe in great things, and hope and look for great things to come; for we have the same word of our truthful Master upon which to rely. The promise upon which their faith laid hold, and which kindled their sanguine expectation, was not the promise of the Spirit for a temporary purpose, but of a Spirit, who was to abide with the Church for ever. It stands upon record now, as a warrant for our faith, and hope, and prayer; and our right to look for the effusion of the Spirit is as clear and strong as was that of the primitive disciples, previous to the day of Pentecost.

Nay, more than this, the Spirit of God is yet to do his greatest work, and magnify his power more wonderfully than ever upon the earth. The prophecy has yet to be fulfilled, when "a nation shall be born in a day." The analogies of things, as well as the sure word of prophecy, teach us to look for outpourings of the Holy Spirit, more copious in quantity, and more frequent in occurrence, than any which have marked past ages in the history