-X, ., 

 
 mtm jfonmrn*, 1863,
 
 ittisiraii0tt 0f % 
 
 SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED ON 
 
 THE EVENING OF EACH WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY 
 
 DURING 
 
 0f f mi, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ST. MARY-THE-VIRGIN, 
 OXFORD. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK. THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 PROFESSOR MANSEL. J. R. WOODFORD, M.A. 
 
 CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 
 
 T. L. CLAUGHTON, M.A. DANIEL MOORE, M.A. 
 
 A. P. STANLEY, D.D. W. C. MAGEE, D.D. 
 
 T. T. CARTER, M.A. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 WITH A PREFACE 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 
 AND 377, STRAND, LONDON: 
 
 JOHN HENRY AND JAMES PARKER. 
 1863.
 
 iniib bg Iflwsrs. Uarktr, (Eornmarhd,
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Sermons comprised in this volume were 
 preached at St. Mary's Church on the Wed- 
 nesdays and Fridays of Lent, 1863, according to 
 a custom now of some years standing, by preachers 
 appointed by myself. Each one of this annual 
 series of Sermons has dealt in detail with some 
 great verity of Christian doctrine, or some import- 
 ant feature of the Christian life. But amongst all 
 of these no subject is of deeper moment than that 
 which has occupied the preachers of this year, nor 
 is there any one upon which the special dangers 
 of the present time make a calm earnest statement 
 and a devout consideration of its great features 
 more important. 
 
 May it please God to give His blessing to this 
 attempt to set forth His truth. 
 
 S. OX-ON. 
 CUDDESDON PALACE, 
 May, 1863. 
 
 2066372
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, the 
 Fulfilment of Chrisfs Promise. 
 
 BY THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK. 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 The Spirit, a Divine Person, to be Worshipped and Glorified. 
 BY H. L. MANSEL, B.D. 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 BY CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 BY T. L. CLAUGHTON, M.A. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 BY A. P. STANLEY, D.D. 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 The Sin against the Holy GJiost. 
 BY T. T. CARTER, M.A.
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 BY THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 BY J. R. WOODFORD, M.A. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 BY E. B. PUSEY, D.D. 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 BY DANIEL MOORE, M.A. 
 
 SERMON XL 
 
 Growth in Grace. 
 
 BY W. C. MAGEE, D.D. 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 BY THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY.
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 ,bibm0 ^uuna of tyt Spirit in % 
 % Jf wMm^nt 0f Christ's |Jrmras* 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK.
 
 gliding $ame of to Spirit in 
 (Khimh, tto 4ul)ilnwtt of (fthrisf a f romm, 
 
 JOHN xvi. 7. 
 " NEVERTHELESS I TELL YOU THE TRUTH ; IT is EXPEDIENT 
 
 FOR YOU THAT I GO AWAY : FOR IF I GO NOT AWAY, THE 
 
 COMFORTER WILL NOT COME UNTO YOU ; BUT IF I DEPART, 
 
 I WILL SEND HlM UNTO YOU." 
 
 words were addressed to the twelve whom 
 it had been the principal work of Jesus to train 
 for the ministry of His Church. And He had 
 trained them through many long months of con- 
 stant and close companionship. He had taught 
 them not by a measured hour of formal teaching, 
 but by admitting them into the inmost circle of His 
 life. All that little band, Master and scholars, had 
 hungered and thirsted together, and wandered on 
 the shores and hill-slopes of Galilee, till their feet 
 were weary. They had shared the admiration of 
 the people in common ; in common had been asked 
 to depart out of their coasts. He had studied 
 every shade and change of their character, as the 
 daily accidents of life played over them, as the 
 strong sun had looked down on the Sea of Galilee, 
 now bright as glass, now rippled by the breeze, now
 
 2 The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 beaten into storm. And in every emergency He 
 had been nigh to guide them. Their foolish pride 
 and rivalry, their halting doubts and weak de- 
 spondency, had been treated with the medicine that 
 best suited each. And they basked in the light 
 of His presence; thought with His thoughts, and 
 moulded themselves on the pattern of His life ; cared 
 not for food or raiment, being sure that He would 
 clothe and feed them ; leaned on the strong staff of 
 His counsel, and felt, in all better moments at least, 
 that they were safe. Something of this we all 
 know, and yet perhaps we may not have fully per- 
 ceived how large a share this plan of education for 
 the disciples occupied in His ministry; how He 
 trained them rather than taught the people; how 
 He unfolded His doctrines in succession as they 
 could bear them best; how the communion they 
 enjoyed already with the Lord was the type of His 
 union with His Church. 
 
 And now these twelve are told that He must 
 leave them. More : they are assured that it is ex- 
 pedient for them that He should go away. How, 
 they ask themselves, could it be expedient for them 
 to lose their Friend, their Counsellor, their Head, 
 their Life ? What could they have in exchange 
 for Jesus, the Christ of God, that would not leave 
 them a balance of irreparable loss ? And so these 
 words seemed to them the most difficult of the 
 words of Jesus. They brought the disciples to the 
 verge of a deep mystery of God, that it was in some 
 way essential to the growth of the Church and to
 
 the Fulfilment of Christ's Promise. 3 
 
 the growth of Christian life in their individual 
 hearts, that their Lord should ascend where He was 
 before, and the work that He had begun should be 
 carried on by another. Another, yet not another ! 
 No longer Christ visible in the flesh, but Christ 
 dwelling in them by His Spirit, was the power that 
 was to conquer evil and renew them to salvation. 
 They could not understand it; nor can we. We 
 cannot tell why the Lord tarried but a few years in 
 His tabernacle of flesh, why the Church at Pente- 
 cost should be founded, when His visible presence 
 had been already withdrawn; but thus much at 
 least we know, that Christ by His Spirit has ever 
 been present with His Church ; that lie is now pre- 
 sent with us by the same Spirit, in a true and 
 literal sense; that the tokens of His working are 
 manifold ; and that we may reckon on His presence 
 and comfort to the end. 
 
 I. All that tender care and loving nurture of 
 the Apostles failed to make them know their Lord. 
 Their last words almost were to doubt His pro- 
 phecy about His sufferings, their last act almost 
 was to flee from His side. Some mighty power 
 must have intervened between the time when they 
 shrank from their Master, faint of heart and blunt 
 of apprehension, and the time when they stood up 
 before rulers and kings, and with clear speech and 
 high courage set forth the way of life. The trans- 
 formation was too great to be accounted for as the 
 reaction of their own thoughts ; it was not shame, 
 nor the conviction of sin, nor further study, nor
 
 4 Tlie Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 pressure from without, that turned them from the 
 timid companions to the brave messengers of the 
 Lord. Such causes would have operated as fa- 
 vourably whilst their Lord was present with them. 
 If we passed through a forest where we had once 
 been before, and saw the trees cleared away from 
 a particular spot, and instead of their umbrage the 
 sunlight streaming down upon the open, and in- 
 stead of fungus and bracken the young shoots of 
 corn sparkling in ranks over the field, we should 
 say without the smallest doubt, Here man's hand 
 has been, and left these marks of cultivation. And 
 so it is legitimate to say, comparing the Peter of 
 the Acts with the Peter of the Gospel, or the Paul 
 that preached at Corinth with the Paul who per- 
 secuted at Jerusalem, that God's hand has been 
 there, felling the old stocks of tradition and dig- 
 ging out their roots, letting in the new light and 
 breath of heaven, and planting good seed for future 
 fruit. Whatever may be the case now, nothing 
 is more fair to say, more certain to believe, than 
 that there was even an accession of power and 
 energy in the work of Christ after He Himself 
 had left it and committed it to the Holy Spirit. 
 It was even expedient for a Paul or a Peter that 
 Christ should go away, and the Comforter should 
 come. Not that this implies a comparison and 
 rivalry between two, but that His going away, 
 and the mode of that going, were the sources of 
 new power over evil. It is rather a comparison 
 between the Lord in His human pilgrimage, strait-
 
 the Fulfilment of Christ's Promise. 5 
 
 ened and pained till He should have been baptized 
 with the baptism of suffering, and the Lord when 
 He had paid the ransom of sin, triumphed over 
 death, and begun to intercede in heaven for those 
 whom He loved. It was expedient that the march 
 of God's purpose should not be arrested in any of 
 its steps agony, suffering, death, resurrection, as- . 
 cension ; and therefore it was expedient that Jesus 
 should depart. But study well, I beg of you, the 
 greatness of that transformation of human souls ; 
 and say whether it was wrought by any other 
 power than that of the present God. 
 
 And now turn to the other form of the same 
 work, the growth of the Church on earth in the 
 face of every kind of danger. Go back, if you will, 
 to the year of salvation 64, when Rome, the queen 
 city of the world, was almost burnt to ashes, and 
 the Christians were denounced to an exasperated 
 people as guilty of that desolation. What more 
 could be needed for the destruction of Christianity ? 
 The Christians shall be dragged out of every hiding- 
 place, and imagination shall be taxed to find new 
 modes of death for them. Who could believe that 
 through this storm of hatred the frail bark of the 
 Church could ride safe? Those that escaped the 
 sword and flame, must yield to the moral torture 
 of the universal abhorrence of men. Yet through 
 that persecution, and many another as fierce, the 
 faith of Christ remained on the earth; nay, grew 
 and prospered on that which would have ship- 
 wrecked any worldly institution. The martyred
 
 6 The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 blood and ashes, to use our own poet's well-known 
 image, were like seed sown which bare fruit a 
 hundredfold. And when we question our histories 
 as to the causes of the success of the Gospel, and 
 receive from them this and that partial answer, 
 the very insufficiency of all these answers put toge- 
 ther proves that without the one cause the power 
 of God working in and with the Gospel we have 
 no account to give of so great a phenomenon. 
 
 II. And what is it that now strikes sadness into 
 many a religious mind? Is it not the latent fear 
 that the fire which once burnt shines for us no 
 more? A religion, to be a support to us, must 
 bring us near to God's presence. To me it would 
 be nothing that you should point to heaven and 
 say, ' Far off, beyond yon screen of shining stars, is 
 the eternal throne, where He sits in an atmosphere 
 of light, and glory, and praises.' Is not the answer 
 ready ? ' The God I need is not a God that dwells 
 afar off, whom I am to know through books and 
 discourses, but One that will be near me always, 
 giving me refuge under the shadow of His wings 
 from all terror ; one who will lift me up to feelings 
 of love, to efforts of duty, of which I thought my 
 nature incapable. More blessed it were to walk 
 for one half-hour by the side of the Sea of Tiberias, 
 to listen to a present Saviour's living words, than 
 a whole life of a religion of history and disquisi- 
 tion, which is in effect no better than a banishment 
 from God.' 
 
 And this is the kind of feeling which has driven
 
 the Fulfilment of Christ's Promise. 7 
 
 many to seek the Divine presence by ways of their 
 own devising, by great religious excitement, by * 
 forming new sects and unions, in the hope that into 
 the new body a new spirit may descend. This has 
 given power to those impostors who offer new books 
 of revelation, or profess to commune directly with - 
 the world of spirits. There is in all who know the 
 power of religion at all the wish to live before the 
 presence of God ; they are drawn towards Him, and 
 yearn to be near Him, and so much the more, the 
 more their religion is sincere. And yet this state 
 of dejection, or of wild searching after new religious 
 manifestations, seems to overlook the promises of our 
 Lord when the Comforter was sent. The Comforter 
 was to abide with us for ever ; and His functions 
 were to benefit the Church perpetually. For ever 
 He was to convince the world of sin, and righte- 
 ousness, and judgment ; of its own sin and Christ's 
 righteousness, and the judgment of God that shall 
 be hereafter. There was no day fixed at which He 
 should cease to testify of Christ, to bring all things to 
 our remembrance that Christ has said, to intercede 
 for us, to comfort us. Whatever be the present state 
 of the Church, Christ promised beyond all doubt 
 that the life and power of the Spirit should be with 
 it for ever. There must be then the same vitality, 
 the same power of growth in the Church ; there 
 must be the same life-blood to quicken our hearts, 
 as that which made Paul strong in the faith, and 
 sustained the courage of a Stephen, or a Polycarp 
 at the stake. And before we admit even to our-
 
 8 The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 selves that Christianity is a growth of the past, 
 which has left to us only its withering leaves and 
 hollow trunk, let us reverently ask whether God is 
 not present now, as of old, to help, to comfort, to 
 renew us. Let us examine well the tokens of His 
 presence ; and if Christ be still " God with us," 
 let us banish our doubts and fall down before Him, 
 and say with one that doubted, " My Lord and my 
 God !" 
 
 III. This age has little to tell of the splendid 
 triumphs of the Gospel over whole countries ; 
 although our missions have their fruit, and the 
 promise even of fruit more abundant. But it is 
 not to India, or New Zealand, or Madagascar that 
 we need go for examples of the power of the Holy 
 Spirit over the world of evil. Its evidences are all 
 about us and within us. That even one man should 
 be turned from the power of Satan unto God, would 
 be as clear a proof of Divine intervention, as was 
 the raising of a Lazarus from the grave. But when 
 thousands and tens of thousands are feeling and 
 owning the Spirit's working within them as a fact 
 that cannot be gainsaid, we ought to marvel that 
 we could ever have doubted of His presence. He 
 convinces of sin : daily the Word of God comes home 
 with a terrible power to some stricken heart, and 
 points to the gulf that divides sin from godliness. 
 Daily some soul, shuddering with the felt leprosy 
 of sin, comes to God praying for deliverance. He 
 teaches : and the venerable words of Scripture, ob- 
 scure because so familiar, flash out with all their
 
 the Fulfilment of Chrises Promise. 9 
 
 meaning upon some prepared soul. He comforts : 
 and after the sense of estrangement from God comes 
 the sweet hope of reconciliation. " The Spirit itself 
 beareth witness with our spirit that we are the 
 children of God." And taught by Him, many 
 a mind draws waters of comfort even out of the 
 stony rocks of adversity ; lays aside ease and plea- 
 sure that it may do something for God ; loves the 
 good with increasing affection ; hates sin more than 
 it hates bodily death ; would be willing that God 
 should purge out of it every worldly lust and wish ; 
 desires to know and live by the truth. And thus 
 the fruit of the Spirit amongst us is the sense of 
 sin, the love of our Father, a belief in a higher 
 world, and the transformation and renewal of our 
 mind by the Holy Ghost, our own will constantly 
 recognising and going along with His work. Facts 
 such as these are not chronicled in newspapers, 
 cannot be reduced to a money value, cannot be 
 debated on in Parliament, or suggest nice points 
 for forensic acuteness. But they are facts. Over 
 ten thousand parishes in England this kind of work 
 is done daily. Who then shall say that Christ our 
 Master is not with His disciples still ? 
 
 Now all this seems trite and obvious. But yet 
 I do not know any one subject more suitable for 
 a season of more solemn meditation, and for a place 
 like Oxford. We are told, and we have accorded 
 it a too ready belief, that amongst the more culti- 
 vated minds the work of the ministry has lost its 
 savour ; that we shall see fewer and fewer men of
 
 io The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 powerful minds willing to devote themselves to the 
 task of preaching the Gospel to Christ's people, 
 because of some notion that that work has lost its 
 
 \ reality, and is rather a tradition of a Divine opera- 
 tion than a Divine operation actually going on. 
 And when such a state of things is believed to 
 exist, the belief promotes and fosters it. Let it 
 be admitted, however, that in some cases there is 
 a feeling that the machinery of the Church is less 
 strongly impelled by the force of the Divine Spirit ; 
 and how shall such a feeling be met ? Let us ap- 
 peal from the tribunal that pronounces the decision, 
 so crude, so hasty, so half-sighted. Let us appeal 
 from the clever journalist, with his quips and jokes 
 about long services and sermons all too soothing, to 
 the Bible-reading men and women of England, to 
 
 V whom God's "Word is a law, whether interpreted 
 tamely or by the most lively eloquence. Let us 
 appeal from the critic in his closet, who perhaps 
 never apprehends one truth but his subtle mind 
 suggests with it six objections, to the practical 
 
 1 evidence of those who shape their whole life and 
 stake their whole prospects upon the truth of 
 
 God's Word and of the hopes it holds out to them. 
 
 Let us appeal from literary criticism (which yet 
 
 I would not undervalue) to the test of results ; to 
 x the humility, and forbearance, and chastity, and 
 1 brotherly love, and sense of dependence on God 
 
 produced in Christian minds by the Gospel ; to the 
 * respect for law and order ; to the sanctity of family 
 . life ; to the good- will between classes, which it has
 
 the Fulfilment of Christ's Promise. 1 1 
 
 been the means of diffusing through society. Or 
 ask the scholar to lend us his aid in comparing the 
 best nations where Christianity was not, with the 
 state to which it has brought us. Let him shew 
 us countries literally depopulated by enervating 
 vice and corruption ; let him compare for us Chris- 
 tianity in its earliest growth with the filthy soil in 
 which it grew ; and we shall see how much cause 
 there is to be thankful even on social grounds for the 
 glorious gift of the Gospel. You that wish to take 
 part in the ministry of Christ to follow Him, and 
 be. His fishers of men be sure that there is no 
 place for misgiving as to the worthiness of your 
 aim, as to the hopes you may form of doing good 
 to your country and your kind. You glance back 
 over the ages, and in spite of accidental differences, 
 the conflict between good and evil has been in all 
 ages the same. Ever has the call of God been 
 listened to by His children, been treated with 
 silent contempt by many, and by many been an- 
 swered with malice and acrimony. It has ever 
 brought peace and a sword ; it has broken down r 
 the hard walls of some hearts by the very sound of 
 its words, whilst others have resisted it unto death. 
 But He that promised to be with us always to the 
 end of the world, has been present with us by His 
 Spirit as He promised. We know there is no 
 change in Him who gives life to the Church, be- 
 cause the life has shewn no change. And your 
 reward, if you labour for the Lord, will be the same 
 in kind as that which sustained Paul, and John,
 
 
 1 2 The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 and Peter when the world looked rugged all about 
 them, and strove to frown them into inactivity. 
 The child shall learn from you the way to God, 
 and the evil passions it was born with shall be 
 subdued. Taught by you, the bereaved family of 
 some beloved father or mother shall learn not to 
 sorrow as those without hope ; the chastened grief 
 of the Christian is far different from the wild 
 funeral cries and gestures of the heathen's de- 
 spair. You shall dig channels from the rich man's 
 swollen purse to the poor man's barren dwelling, 
 and the streams that flow down them shall bless 
 both rich and poor alike. You shall tell the poor 
 man of his dignity, as a soul beloved of Christ that 
 bought him, and the suffering man of the elevation 
 of mind he may reach through pains and troubles 
 borne with resignation. Over your people and over 
 you shall hover the perpetual shadow of God's pre- 
 sence ; and you shall tell them that God is very 
 near, as holy as He is clear-sighted, as just as He 
 is holy. A great and glorious mission ; only fruit- 
 less to that slothful servant that hides his Master's 
 talent in the earth. To be messengers of God, 
 ambassadors of Christ, sure that our message will 
 be ratified by the Sender and accepted by the sent ; 
 to turn the people whom God loves from darkness 
 to light, from the power of Satan unto God, and 
 to present them to your Master on the day of ac- 
 count as those whom you have brought into His 
 salvation, earth has no better task for you ! 
 
 Let me add, in conclusion, a few words of caution.
 
 the Fulfilment of Christ's Promise. 13 
 
 11 Ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath 
 said, I will dwell in them and walk in them ; and 
 I will be their God, and they shall be My people." 
 Such is the mode of God's dealing with us. Our 
 religion is not a book nor a Church, though it has 
 both ; it is an indwelling of God in the souls of His i 
 people, to sanctify them for Himself. Now as the ! 
 miracles were given for an outward support of the 
 Apostles' faith, so the works of the Spirit going on 
 round us are the natural supports of ours. We 
 have arrived at our own belief in the Gospel from 
 the pious mothers, holy households, deeds of charity, 
 able expounders of God's Word, that are scattered 
 round us for a witness. And it is when we lose, or 
 discard, or undervalue these supports, that critical 
 enquiry becomes dangerous. It is not amongst the f 
 men that wrestle every day with evil in its practical 
 shapes that misgivings spring up about the truth of 
 the Gospel, but among men who within the four 
 walls of their study look out upon the unmeasured , 
 ocean of possible doubts. And if any one who hears 
 me now, feels strongly some of these doubts, I would 
 not have him attempt to win through them by study 
 alone. I would place him where Christian work 
 was being done already, and ask him to make proof , 
 of his own power of well-doing. I would shew him 
 that the Gospel was true for others by the evidence 
 of their whole lives, and that in his own hands it is ; 
 operative, potent, prevailing. Many a man has thus 
 found peace instead of doubt, whose position was 
 once full of peril. Had such a man, for example,
 
 14 The Abiding Presence of the Spirit in the Church, 
 
 with a spirit of doubt ever rising within him, and 
 yet with a willingness to devote himself for duty's 
 sake, gone forth as a missionary and endeavoured 
 to preach, to those who knew nothing of God, the 
 i Gospel he fain would believe to be true, all his 
 dangers would have been increased. No response 
 at first from those he taught, no cheering sight of 
 the effects of the Gospel, no atmosphere of Christian 
 peace to brace him, nothing but one man uttering 
 as in the wilderness the announcement of the king- 
 dom of heaven, in a voice of uncertain sound, and 
 the mocking echoes answering him in his spiritual 
 solitude ! Deprived of the natural supports of faith, 
 he would have been unable perhaps to resist the 
 first opponent he might meet with, and the brute 
 stolidity of one who could only say "This cannot 
 be," might overthrow his faith and turn him back- 
 ward. One of our holiest missionaries, when first 
 exposed to the keen air of Hindu unbelief, found 
 himself obliged for his own sake to reconsider the 
 evidences of Christianity from the beginning. 
 
 Read then the Bible and examine it. Cast upon 
 
 \ it whatever light history or scholarship can throw. 
 But do not forget that to understand the ways of God 
 
 i you must adore Him as a living power working ever 
 in the world, whose footsteps are known by sin 
 conquered and holiness established. We will not 
 only read, we will adore the Lord who has hallowed 
 our earth and made of our bodies His temple ; who at 
 the head of all that will fight for Him is carrying on 
 the fight with Satan that has gone on for centuries,
 
 the Fulfilment of Christ's Promise. 1 5 
 
 and will last till the sun of the world shall set for 
 ever. In the ranks of that army we shall find sup- 
 port for our faith. And the light from heaven shines 
 not more dimly in the nineteenth century than it 
 shone in the first. We shall be near Him if we 
 work with Him, if we conquer lusts and selfishness, 
 if we love the truth and the right. God the Holy 
 Spirit is ready to take possession of our minds. 
 "To be spiritually minded is life and peace." " The 
 God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in be- 
 lieving, that ye may abound in hope through the 
 power of the Holy Ghost."
 
 SERMON II. 
 t to 
 
 BY 
 
 H. L. MANSEL, B.D., 
 
 WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY.
 
 pirit, a JJifeim IJtiMtt, 10 foe 
 ratr (liarifittr* 
 
 GENESIS i. 2. 
 
 "AND THE EARTH WAS WITHOUT FORM AND VOID; AND 
 DARKNESS WAS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEEP. AND THE 
 SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS." 
 
 ANE of the most remarkable features in the 
 language of the Old Testament Scriptures is 
 its power of adaptation, if we may so call it, which 
 enables it in many instances to serve a twofold 
 purpose in relation to those to whom it was first 
 given, and to those who were to come after them. 
 Principally, though not exclusively, is this character 
 to be found in those portions of the earlier Eeve- 
 lation, which by way of prophecy, of type, and in 
 some instances even of apparently mere narrative, 
 were yet designed by the Holy Spirit through 
 whose inspiration they were written,, as an intima- 
 tion and foreshadowing of Him that was to come, 
 of Him of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote, 
 unconsciously perhaps, or with but a partial con- 
 sciousness of the full import of that which they 
 were writing ; but guided under a higher influence 
 than their own to utter and record words whose 
 full significance it was reserved for a later revela-
 
 4 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 tion to declare. How often do we find in Scrip- 
 ture that remarkable phenomenon of words bear- 
 ing a double sense, looking partly to the present, 
 but more fully to the future ; having a meaning 
 to convey and a purpose to serve towards those to 
 whom they were first given, which yet was not their 
 whole meaning; pointing onwards, faintly indeed 
 and darkly, as must needs be the case till they 
 are read by the light of their fulfilment, but yet 
 certainly, to some further signification which in 
 the fulness of time is seen to fit itself to them ; 
 bearing an interpretation, unsuspected it may be, 
 until the event to which it points shall have 
 appeared, yet nevertheless when that event has 
 appeared, seen at once and manifestly to be a true 
 interpretation. Some obvious examples of this, for 
 instance, are furnished by those precepts and ob- 
 servances under the elder covenant which have 
 a remote and typical as well as an immediate and 
 literal significance. The Passover, to a devout 
 Jew before the coming of Christ, had a meaning 
 and a purpose, as a commemoration of the delivery 
 of his people from the bondage of Egypt ; but 
 how much fuller and deeper significance does it 
 acquire in our eyes, as pointing forward to. the 
 sacrifice of the true Passover, the Lamb without 
 blemish and without spot, slain for the sins of the 
 whole world. The ceremonies of the Day of Atone- 
 ment conveyed to the Jewish worshipper their les- 
 son concerning sin and its penalty and its expia- 
 tion, of an offended and propitiated God ; yet how
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 5 
 
 much new light is thrown on the seemingly strange 
 and obscure details of its observance by the Chris- 
 tian interpretation of their further import, " Christ 
 being come an high priest of good things to come, 
 by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made 
 with hands, that is to say, not of this building ; 
 neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by 
 His own blood He entered in once into the holy 
 place, having obtained eternal redemption for us a ." 
 The brazen serpent, lifted up in the wilderness, 
 had its immediate purpose in the healing of those 
 who looked upon it ; yet our Lord tells us of a fur- 
 ther meaning fulfilled in Himself, " As Moses lifted 
 up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the 
 Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth 
 in Him should not perish, but have eternal lifeV 
 With the key to this method of Scripture furnished 
 by such plain and striking examples as these, we 
 may proceed with more confidence to the recog- 
 nition of the same principle in other instances 
 where the twofold application enters in a somewhat 
 different manner; in the language of David for 
 example, in the twenty -second and sixty -ninth 
 Psalms, uttered in the first instance as a prayer 
 called forth by his own sufferings, but moulded 
 at the same time, under the influence of the Holy 
 Spirit, to be a more exact prediction of the fu- 
 ture sufferings of Christ : in the language of the 
 same royal prophet, partially declaring in the first 
 instance the establishment of his own kingdom, 
 a Heb. ix. 11, 12. b St. John iii. 14, 15.
 
 6 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 but finding a fuller and more complete application 
 in relation to the spiritual kingdom of Christ c : 
 in the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah, answer- 
 ing in some degree, and no doubt in earlier times 
 understood as answering, to the temporal restor- 
 ation of their country from captivity, but con- 
 taining much also which can hardly have borne 
 any clear and definite meaning till its further ful- 
 filment in the spiritual restoration of mankind by 
 Christ 4 . And finally, led on by the clear evidence 
 of the existence of such a method in Scripture, we 
 shall be able to accept with less hesitation those 
 less obvious instances in which the primary sense 
 of the passage appears at first sight to exhaust its 
 entire significance, as it probably did exhaust all 
 of which the sacred writer himself was conscious, 
 as when the language of Hosea, having a natural 
 reference to the past history of his nation " When 
 Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my 
 son out of Egypt 6 ," is yet, by the use of the sig- 
 nificant words " a child" and " my son," made to 
 bear a further meaning in reference to an event 
 corresponding by way of antitype in the life of the 
 infant Saviour; or when the words of Jeremiah, 
 referring directly to the captivity of Israel f , yet, 
 by being more directly associated with one portion 
 of the captive tribes and one spot of the desolated 
 country, the children of Eachel and her grave in 
 
 c e.g. Ps. ii., Ixxxix., cxxxii. d Isa. Hi., Jer. xxxi. 
 
 " Hosea xi. 1 ; St. Matt. ii. 15. f Jer. ran, 15; St. Matt. 
 
 ii. 17, 18.
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 7 
 
 the road leading to Bethlehem, are made to bear 
 a second relation, unknown till the event brought 
 it to light, to the slaughter of the Innocents around 
 the spot of our Lord's birth. 
 
 It is, perhaps, not altogether fanciful, if we seem 
 to discern some traces of an analogy in this respect 
 between the method of Scripture in dealing with 
 those religious truths which it is directly designed 
 to teach, and its method in relation to those natural 
 truths which do not lie within its direct province, 
 but which, nevertheless, incidentally and indirectly, 
 it has at times occasion to take notice of. It may 
 be that the language of Scripture, in relation to the 
 phenomena of nature^ is cast for the most part in 
 a mould adapted to the knowledge and intelligence 
 of the age in which it was written, and naturally 
 so, as having an immediate significance in relation 
 to that age : it may be that that language, inter- 
 preted by that knowledge alone, and without the 
 aid of the light cast upon it by subsequent dis- 
 coveries, would not of itself suggest the existence 
 of another possible application beyond : it may be 
 that the sacred writers themselves, in making use 
 of language intelligible in their own day, were not 
 distinctly conscious of any other import : it may be 
 that their own positive knowledge in this respect 
 was not greater than that of others of "their age and 
 nation ; still, when all this is admitted, there yet 
 remain two remarkable facts to be taken into con- 
 sideration ; first, the fact of an expansiveness in the 
 text of Scripture, whereby it is enabled in natural
 
 8 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 things to adapt itself to new discoveries of science, 
 as we have seen that in spiritual things it adapts 
 itself to new revelations of religious truth ; and 
 secondly, carrying the analogy into further detail, 
 the fact that there are parts of the language of 
 Scripture which, when interpreted only by con- 
 temporaneous knowledge, seem dark and unintelli- 
 gible, or even altogether erroneous, but which ac- 
 quire meaning and consistency, and even scientific 
 accuracy, when viewed by the light of a later ad- 
 vancement of knowledge. A remarkable instance 
 of the first of these facts will be found if we com- 
 pare the Mosaic account of the creation of the world 
 with any of the various cosmogonies of heathen 
 poetry and mythology. In examining the various 
 methods which have been adopted by Christian 
 students of science in order to reconcile the Scrip- 
 tural narrative of the creation with the results of 
 modern discoveries, we may find, no doubt, inter- 
 pretations of the language of Scripture which would 
 not have suggested themselves as the most probable 
 meaning of the words to the majority of men read- 
 ing them before those discoveries were made (though 
 some of these interpretations have even by such men 
 been sometimes adopted as possible, prior to any ap- 
 parent scientific necessity for their adoption) : we may 
 find also alternative hypotheses, suggesting differ- 
 ent possible modes of reconciliation, between which, 
 in our present state of knowledge, we are unable 
 positively to decide which is entitled to the pre- 
 ference : we may find some difficulties not satis-
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 9 
 
 factorily cleared up by any method as yet proposed, 
 and perhaps awaiting the solution of a more ad- 
 vanced state of science and a more comprehensive 
 survey of its conclusions than is at present possible : 
 we may find all this, (and something very like this 
 might have been found by a pious Jew, studying 
 the types and prophecies of the Old Testament be- 
 fore the light that was shed upon them by the 
 coming of Christ) ; but along with all this we also 
 find, in the general tenor of the narrative, and to 
 some extent even in its minuter details as well, 
 a breadth, an expansiveness, a capacity of meet- 
 ing new facts as they arise, which merely human 
 imaginations and traditions wholly fail to exhibit. 
 And when the defenders of the Bible, as an inspired 
 record, are taunted, as they sometimes are by an- 
 tagonists, with stretching the language of Scrip- 
 ture to meet the necessities of the case, let us ask 
 ourselves, as we well may, what manner of book 
 that must be which can stand the process and not 
 give way under the tension. Try the same process 
 on a heathen legend, it remains rigidly immoveable, 
 or it breaks to pieces in your hands. Let us re- 
 member also that many an interpretation which has 
 seemed strange and unnatural while it was new, 
 has shewn itself natural and reasonable as it has 
 become more familiar, as it has established itself 
 as part of the accustomed current of men's thought 
 and speech. Older sciences have had their day of 
 supposed antagonism to Scripture, and Scripture to 
 them, which now move quietly along with it side
 
 io The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 by side, neither harming and neither fearing the 
 other. The time has been when the truth of Scrip- 
 ture was supposed to be in jeopardy from its alleged 
 discrepancies with astronomical observations, and 
 even with mathematical theorems ; the same ob- 
 jections when revived by captious criticism now, are 
 justly regarded as too contemptible to be worth a 
 serious thought. The time may come, may even 
 now be not far off, when the difficulties of our own 
 day may meet with a similar fate, and, like all such 
 difficulties when once fairly overcome, may but add 
 to the strength of the fortress they were designed 
 to overthrow. 
 
 The other characteristic of the language of Scrip- 
 ture, that advancing knowledge sometimes renders 
 portions of it clearer and more intelligible which 
 might once have seemed obscure or erroneous, is 
 remarkably illustrated by one of the details of the 
 same narrative. That God said " Let there be light, 
 and there was light," before the formation of the 
 apparent sources of light, the sun, the moon, and 
 the stars, has constituted so much of a stumbling- 
 block in the way of receiving the record as it 
 stands, that unbelievers in earlier times have tri- 
 umphed in bringing it forward as insurmountable ; 
 and moderns, who might have known better, have 
 repeated the worn-out cry as a new discovery. Yet 
 in point of fact this apparent anomaly is one not only 
 allowed, but absolutely required, by one of the most 
 plausible theories which modern science has pro- 
 posed in explanation of the origin of our planetary
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 1 1 
 
 system, a theory invented with no reference to the 
 Scripture narrative, yet harmonizing with it in this 
 respect almost as closely as if it had been devised 
 for the very purpose. Another illustration of the 
 same kind is furnished by the wonderful coincidences 
 between science and Scripture in the broad out- 
 lines of their several statements; in the harmony, 
 too close to be the result of mere accident, as re- 
 gards the general method and order of the creative 
 work; and in the circumstance, that these agree- 
 ments for the most part are found in unambi- 
 guous statements concerning matters of fact, while 
 the apparent discrepancies for the most part turn 
 upon questions of interpretation, such as that of 
 the literal or figurative meaning of isolated words 
 or sentences. 
 
 It may, therefore, be reasonably maintained that 
 there is evidence of the existence of a method in 
 Scripture, a method pursued alike in relation to 
 those religious truths which it is its direct purpose 
 to communicate, and to those natural truths which 
 it touches upon only indirectly and in passing by, 
 a method, the characteristic feature of which is, 
 that it refuses to anticipate that which is hereafter 
 to be made known, whether by a fuller revelation 
 in God's appointed time, or by the gradual progress 
 of man's natural knowledge; and that, in conse- 
 quence of this refusal, its earlier announcements 
 are expressed in language partially imperfect and 
 obscure, and admitting of various modes of supple- 
 ment and explanation, until the time comes when
 
 12 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 the correlative facts are made known in their com- 
 pleteness, and the counterpart vindicates its own 
 claim, by fitting into and harmonizing with all 
 that has gone before. 
 
 The best example, perhaps, of this method will 
 be seen by comparing the fulfilled prophecies re- 
 lating to our Lord's first advent upon earth with 
 the yet unfulfilled prophecies of His second advent ; 
 the predictions of Isaiah, for instance, with those 
 of St. John in the Apocalypse. How hard it would 
 have been beforehand to construct an imaginary 
 portrait of any one life and character, which should 
 realise in all its details that marvellous combination 
 of majesty and lowliness, of glory and humiliation, 
 of power and suffering, which are shadowed forth 
 in the prophetic description of the Messiah; yet 
 how perfectly is every lineament realised, when we 
 compare the whole with the Christ of the New 
 Testament. How hard it is now, in spite of many 
 remarkable coincidences which subsequent history 
 has supplied, to conceive the exact course of events 
 which shall fulfil in all its details the Apocalyptic 
 vision; which yet doubtless, in its own time, will 
 explain itself, as the Old Testament prophecies have 
 done, by the light of its fulfilment. To believe this, 
 is but to believe that that will be true concerning 
 the method of Scripture in time to come, which 
 has been true concerning the method of Scripture 
 in time past. 
 
 We have seen this method of the Holy Spirit in 
 Scripture exhibited in two of its applications, as
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 13 
 
 regards the visible world, and as regards the re- 
 demption of man and the person of the Eedeemer. 
 It remains that we examine it in relation to that 
 which is more immediately the object of our present 
 meditations. With the Spirit's witness concerning 
 nature, and the Spirit's witness concerning Christ, 
 we have to compare a third instance, the Spirit's 
 witness concerning Himself. 
 
 Concerning the Person of the Divine Spirit, as 
 concerning the Person of the Divine Son, we find 
 intimations in the Old Testament, harmonizing with 
 and naturally interpreted by the fuller revelation 
 of the New ; intimations which, without that fuller 
 revelation, might be regarded rather as permitting 
 than as necessitating such an interpretation ; while 
 with it they are seen to fall into their natural 
 place in the order of a gradual and progressive 
 manifestation of God to man, forming a part of 
 a regular and connected whole, the work of one 
 Divine Mind, " fitly joined together and compacted 
 by that which every joint supplieth." In the open- 
 ing words of Scripture, in the record of the crea- 
 tion of the world, we read that " the Spirit of God 
 moved upon the face of the waters :" and that this 
 language does not denote a mere poetic personifica- 
 tion of a Divine Attribute, but refers obscurely in- 
 deed, but naturally and properly to a personal plu- 
 rality in the Divine Nature, which in that plurality 
 is yet One, is intimated by the words which follow 
 shortly afterwards, "And God said, Let us make 
 man in our image, after our likeness;" compared
 
 14 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 with the succeeding verse, " So God created man 
 in His own image*." Such words, when read with- 
 out the key which the Christian revelation supplies, 
 would naturally seem strange and incongruous, and 
 such as the natural knowledge of a mere human 
 writer would hardly have suggested to him; but 
 they acquire consistency and significance by the 
 light that is shed upon them through the mani- 
 festation of God as a Trinity in Unity. Eeading 
 on a little way, we meet with another intimation 
 of the nature and operation of the Divine Spirit : 
 He is spoken of as striving against the wickedness 
 of man: "And the Lord said, My Spirit shall not 
 always strive with man h ;" words which again ac- 
 quire a new and fuller significance when supple- 
 mented by the language of our Lord, which tells 
 us how the Comforter, when He is come, will re- 
 prove the world of sin, and that of St. Paul, con- 
 trasting the works of the flesh with the fruits of 
 the Spirit, the one contrary to and lusting against 
 the other 1 . In the later books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, the Spirit of God is represented with further 
 indications of His work in relation to man. The 
 Spirit of God speaks by the prophets. He is made 
 known as the inspiring power through whom the 
 long series of God's servants who delivered His 
 commands to His chosen people were commissioned 
 and qualified for their task. The Spirit is upon 
 Moses and upon the elders appointed to assist him ; 
 
 Gen. i. 26, 27. h Gen. vi. 3. 
 
 1 St. John xvi. 8 ; Gal. v. 1723.
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 1 5 
 
 " and when the Spirit rested upon them, they pro- 
 phesied, and did not cease k :" the Spirit that was in 
 Elijah in like manner rests upon Elisha 1 : Ezekiel is 
 brought in a vision by the Spirit of God into Chal- 
 dsea" 1 : Zechariah testifies concerning " the words 
 which the Lord of Hosts hath sent in His Spirit by 
 the former prophets 11 ." And not of the prophets only, 
 but of Him to whom the prophets bare witness, is 
 it testified beforehand that the Spirit of the Lord 
 should be upon Him. Isaiah, speaking in the name 
 of Christ, declares, " The Lord God and His Spirit 
 hath sent me ;" and again, " The Spirit of the Lord 
 God is upon me;" and of Him, "The Spirit of the 
 Lord shall rest upon Him :" and the fulfilment of 
 these predictions is shewn, when at His baptism 
 the Spirit of God was seen descending like a dove 
 and lighting upon Him, and confirmed by His own 
 words when in the synagogue at Nazareth He opened 
 the book of Isaiah and read the place where it was 
 written, " The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me p ." And 
 finally, that same gift of the Holy Spirit which 
 Isaiah announces in prophesying of Christ, is fore- 
 told by Joel in like manner concerning the servants 
 of Christ : " And it shall come to pass afterward, 
 that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh ; and 
 your sons and your daughters shall prophesy ; your 
 old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall 
 see visions ; and also upon the servants and upon the 
 
 k Numb. xi. 17, 25. > 2 Kings ii. 15. m Ezek. xi. 24. 
 n Zech. vii. 12. Isa. xlviii. 16; Ixi. 1 ; xi. 2. ' St. Matt. 
 iii. 16; St. Luke iv. 1619.
 
 1 6 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 handmaids in those days will I pour out My Spirit :" 
 and the fulfilment of this prophecy is proclaimed by 
 St. Peter on the day of Pentecost, when the cloven 
 tongues as of fire sat upon the Apostles, and they 
 were all filled with the Holy Ghost q . 
 
 If we compare together the language of the Old 
 and of the New Testament in relation to the Second 
 and the Third Persons of the blessed Trinity, so far 
 as the Divine Nature alone is spoken of, it is scarcely 
 possible not to be struck with the exact analogy 
 between the methods pursued in the revelation of 
 each; it is scarcely possible not to see how each 
 revelation, from a similar beginning, advances gra- 
 dually but surely towards a similar conclusion. If 
 the nature of the Divine Son is dimly indicated 
 to the people of the elder dispensation as the 
 Angel of the Divine Presence, the Messenger of 
 the Covenant, the Word of the Lord by whom the 
 heavens were made r , expressions which, until 
 interpreted by a later revelation, might be con- 
 sidered as permitting or at most suggesting, rather 
 than as necessitating, the belief in a distinct Divine 
 Person; the import of such language becomes no 
 longer doubtful when it is viewed as an anticipa- 
 tion and foreshadowing of the more explicit declara- 
 tions of the New Testament, converging to and 
 summed up in the emphatic and unambiguous de- 
 claration of St. John, " In the beginning was the 
 "Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
 
 q Joel ii. 28, 29; Acts ii. 1618. r Exod. xxLi. 20 ; 
 
 xxxiii. 14; Isa. Ixiii. 9 ; Mai. iii. 1 ; Ps. xxxiii. 6.
 
 to be Worshipped and Glorified. 1 7 
 
 was God s ." And so too, if the language of the 
 Old Testament concerning the Divine Spirit, taken 
 alone and by itself, might leave some doubt on the 
 minds of its readers whether it is to be understood 
 as denoting a Divine Person or merely a divine 
 influence, the doubt is for ever set at rest, and 
 the right interpretation authoritatively fixed, by 
 supplementary revelations in the New Testament, 
 which admit of one meaning and one meaning only, 
 " The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom 
 the Father will send in My name, He shall teach 
 you all things 1 :" " If I go not away, the Comforter 
 will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send 
 Him unto you ; and when He is come, He will 
 reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and 
 of judgment 11 :" "The Spirit helpeth our infirmi- 
 ties ; . . . the Spirit itself maketh intercession for 
 us x :" " But all these worketh that one and the self- 
 same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He 
 will 7 ." Words like these, summed up as they are 
 and consecrated to the perpetual use of the Church 
 by the parting injunction of her Lord, that injunc- 
 tion which contains at once the confession of the 
 Church's faith and the form of admission into her 
 fold, "Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them 
 in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost 2 ," declare clearly and beyond all 
 question what was the purport from the beginning 
 of that continuous revelation, and the truth to 
 
 8 St. John i. 1. * Ibid. xiv. 26. u Ibid. xvi. 7, 8. 
 
 x Rom. viii. 26. * 1 Cor. xii. 11. l St. Matt, xxviii. 19.
 
 1 8 The Spirit, a Divine Person, 
 
 which it leads us teach plainly and unambigu- 
 ously the doctrine to which all Scripture bears 
 witness that of the Divine Personality, as of the 
 Son, so also of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Such is the method, and such the teaching, of 
 the Divine revelation concerning the Holy Spirit. 
 Gradually has its light advanced, brightening as 
 it advances, from the first streak of dawn to the 
 fulness of noon, from the first record of the crea- 
 tion of the world by Divine power to the last 
 tidings of man's salvation by Divine love, telling 
 us of one and the same Triune God, taking His three- 
 fold part in the first work and in the last. Eound 
 this culminating truth of the nature of the third 
 Divine Person of the blessed Trinity gathers, as 
 round its nucleus and centre, all that the same 
 Scripture tells us of His dealings with us or of our 
 duties towards Him. In that revelation of God the 
 Holy Ghost we learn to know His blessed work in 
 supplying the helplessness and strengthening the 
 weakness of our fallen nature. He is manifested to 
 us in His various oifices of love and mercy, teach- 
 ing, reproving, interceding, comforting, sanctifying. 
 "We learn, too, our duties towards Him, and those 
 duties invested with additional solemnity and sanc- 
 tity by the awful and mysterious doctrine of His 
 presence in us. We learn not merely the special 
 duties necessarily implied in our acknowledgment 
 of Him as God, the duties of worship and obedience, 
 of prayer and praise and giving of glory ; but those 
 moral obligations also, which the light of nature
 
 2,o The Spirit, a Divine Person, fyc. 
 
 make this prayer in sincerity ; and to receive that 
 renewing of the soul whereby alone we can walk 
 worthily of our calling, through the operation of 
 that blessed Spirit from whom the gift cometh ; to 
 whom, with the Father and the Son, three Persons 
 and one God, be ascribed all honour and glory, 
 world without end.
 
 SERMON III. 
 pirit, % C*at|)*r 0f % 
 
 BY 
 
 CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D., 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER.
 
 Cjioe Spirit, % Cmfytr 0f % 
 
 JOHN xiv. 26. 
 
 " THE COMFORTER, WHICH is THE HOLT GHOST, WHOM THE 
 FATHER WILL SEND IN MY NAME, HE SHALL TEACH YOU 
 ALL THINGS." 
 
 " TT is expedient for you that I go away/' said 
 -*- our Blessed Lord to His disciples a little be- 
 fore His Passion, " for if I go not away, the Com- 
 forter will not come unto you ; but if 1 depart, I 
 will send Him unto you a ." And the benefits which 
 the Holy Ghost would confer upon them are ex- 
 pressed in these words; "When He, the Spirit of 
 Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth b ;" 
 and again, " The Comforter, which is the Holy 
 Ghost, whom the Father will send in My Name, 
 He shall teach you all things .' 7 And our Lord 
 added the cheering assurance that the Holy Ghost, 
 once given, would never depart from His Church : 
 " I will pray the Father, and He shall give you 
 another Comforter, that He may abide with you 
 for ever ; even the Spirit of Truth ; whom the world 
 cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither 
 knoweth Him : but ye know Him ; for He dwelleth 
 with you, and shall be in you d ." Thus, then, we 
 see that Christ, who is the Truth, has promised 
 
 8 John xvi. 7. b Ibid. 13. c Ibid. xiv. 26, 
 
 d Ibid. 16, 17.
 
 4 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 that the Holy Ghost should remain for ever in His 
 Church, to teach her all things, and to guide her into 
 all truth. 
 
 The Holy Spirit's office of teaching and guidance 
 is twofold. He performs it, first, by producing 
 right moral dispositions ; and secondly, by giving 
 clear spiritual perceptions. 
 
 The former is His work of sanctification ; the 
 latter, that of illumination; and in order that we 
 may be illuminated, we must first be sanctified. 
 
 Whatever the world may think, it is evident 
 from Holy Scripture that right moral dispositions 
 are an essential pre-requisite for clear spiritual per- 
 ceptions. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning 
 of wisdom ;" and our Blessed Lord says, "If any 
 man willeth to do God's will, he shall know of 
 the doctrine V 
 
 1. The need of the Holy Spirit's teaching and guid- 
 ance is evident from our natural state. Our condi- 
 tion by nature is one of darkness and uncertainty, 
 of proneness to evil and aversion from good. " God 
 hath made man upright ; but they have sought out 
 many inventions g ;" "The natural man receiveth 
 not the things of the Spirit of God : for they are 
 foolishness unto him, because they are spiritually 
 discerned 11 ." 
 
 Ps. cxi. 10 ; Prov. ix. 10. 
 
 f John vii. 17. 'Eai/rtj 6e\ri TO Qe\r)fjLa avrov iroieiv yj/axrerat 
 1tfft\ r)j SiSa^r}?. 
 
 g Ecclcs. vii. 29. '' 1 Cor. ii. 14.
 
 The Spirit, Lhe Teacher of the Church. 5 
 
 The world's history bears witness to this truth. 
 The progress of Icnoivledge is a very different thing 
 from the increase of wisdom. Intellectual gifts 
 often co-exist with much spiritual blindness. Ke- 
 member the dark picture which St. Paul has drawn 
 of the moral and spiritual condition of the most 
 illustrious nations of antiquity ; they were "filled 
 with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness ; full 
 of envy, deceit, malignity ; despiteful, proud, boast- 
 ers, disobedient to parents, without natural affection, 
 implacable, unmerciful V 
 
 He does not deny that they had many intel- 
 lectual gifts, but he asserts that these gifts were 
 even a snare to them, because they engendered 
 pride. "The world by wisdom knew not God j ." 
 No; rather its " knowledge puffed it up k ;" "pro- 
 fessing themselves wise, they became fools ; they 
 were vain in their imaginations, and their foolish 
 heart was darkened 1 ;" they were "alienated from 
 the life of God through the ignorance that was in 
 them, because of the blindness of their heart m ." 
 
 2. Not only was this the case with the world, 
 but even with the Church herself as long as she 
 was without the teaching and guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Although the Apostles enjoyed intimate com- 
 munion with Christ during His ministry on earth, 
 yet even at its close they were defective in right 
 
 1 Rom. i. 2931. J 1 Cor. i. 21. k Ibid. viii. 1. 
 
 1 Rom. i. 21, 22. ra Eph. iv. 18.
 
 6 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 moral dispositions and in clear spiritual percep- 
 tions. Even at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, 
 the Christian festival of love, they " contended 
 which of them should be the greatest n ;" even after 
 His resurrection He had cause to reprove them for 
 their blindness and hardness of heart : " fools, and 
 slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have 
 spoken ;" "He appeared to the eleven, and up- 
 braided them with their unbelief and hardness of 
 heart V And even at the end of the forty days, 
 just before His ascension, they were still very im- 
 perfectly schooled in the nature of His kingdom, 
 and were ambitious of temporal sway : " Lord, 
 wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to 
 Israel q ?" As yet the veil was on their hearts : and 
 why ? Because the Holy Ghost was not yet given. 
 
 3. But a new era was at hand. The promise of 
 Christ was about to be fulfilled. "Ye shall re- 
 ceive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come 
 upon you. Ye shall be baptized with the Holy 
 Ghost not many days hence V 
 
 The day of Pentecost arrived. Christ " was now 
 gone up on high, and had led captivity captive, and 
 had received gifts for men. He sent a gracious 
 rain upon His inheritance, and refreshed it when it 
 was weary 9 ." The place in which the Apostles were 
 assembled shook as with a mighty rushing wind, 
 and the Holy Ghost descended on them " in tongues 
 
 n Luke xxii. 24. Ibid. xxiv. 25. P Mark xvi. 14. 
 
 Acts i. 6. r Ibid. 8, 5 ; Luke xxiv. 49. * Ps. lx\iii. 9, 18.
 
 The Spirit^ the Teacher of the Church. 7 
 
 of fire, which sate upon each of them." The wind 
 and the earthquake shewed the might of the Spirit. 
 The fire and the light were witnesses of His power 
 in illumining the heart with the beams of heavenly 
 wisdom, and in warming it with the holy flame of 
 zeal and love. The streaming down of the tongues 
 in a golden shower from heaven was a sign that 
 He would endue them with divine eloquence ; and 
 the diffusion of the fiery tongues, and the burning 
 of a heavenly flame on the head of each of them, 
 as if each was now consecrated to be an altar of the 
 Holy Ghost, was a token that the light of the 
 Gospel, revealed from heaven, would rest upon 
 them, and would burn brightly, and run like a 
 living fire throughout all the world. 
 
 4. Let us remark the effects of the coming of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 The Apostles became new men. They, who a few 
 days since had forsaken Christ and fled, now suffered 
 gladly for Him. One of their number, who had 
 quailed at a woman's voice in the high-priest's 
 hall, and had thrice denied his Master, now valiantly 
 confessed Him in the presence of priests and Pha- 
 risees, and charged them with having killed the 
 Just One*. They who had taken refuge in an 
 upper room with closed doors "for fear of the 
 Jews," now came forward in streets and public 
 places, and in the sight of all men " spake the 
 word with boldness u ." They who so lately had 
 
 1 Acts iii. 14, 15, vii. 52. u John xx. 19 ; Acts iv. 31.
 
 8 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 striven together who should be the greatest, now 
 " had all things common V They whose eyes 
 were blinded that they could not understand the 
 Scriptures concerning their Master, had now a 
 " mouth and wisdom which all their adversaries 
 were not able to gainsay w ," and now proved from 
 those Scriptures that He is very Christ. They who 
 had been dumb with dismay, and could scarcely 
 speak their own language with propriety, (for the 
 Galilean dialect of St. Peter bewrayed him to be 
 illiterate and of a despised province 1 ,) now spake 
 with holy eloquence in every language under hea- 
 ven, " as the Spirit gave them utterance y ." 
 
 Such was the agency employed by God to teach 
 the Apostles : such were the results of the coming 
 and operation of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 5. Here, then, is our guide and example. The 
 baptism of the Apostles with the Holy Ghost and 
 fire from heaven declared that He is the Author 
 of all virtuous practice and the Giver of all true 
 wisdom. "The Comforter, which is the Holy 
 Ghost, He shall teach you all things, He shall 
 guide you into all truth." 
 
 Therefore let us boldly say that no system of 
 teaching can produce the blessed fruits of truth, 
 peace, and love, unless the Spirit of truth, and 
 peace, and love, the Heavenly Dove, brood over it 
 with His silver wings, and His feathers like gold. 
 
 T Acts ii. 44, iv. ?2. w Luke xxi. 15. 
 
 * Matt. xxvi. 73. * Acts ii. 4.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church, 9 
 
 No parent or teacher can teach aright, no scholar 
 can learn aright, unless they are under the influ- 
 ence of the Holy Ghost. No parent or teacher can 
 move the deeply-rooted mountains of pride, per- 
 verseness, frowardness, and wilfulness in his own 
 heart) and in that of his children and scholars, 
 except by the divine lever of prayer for the gifts 
 and graces of the Comforter. Without His vivify- 
 ing power we lie lifeless, like Lazarus, in a dark 
 and noisome cave ; we are wrapt and bound with 
 grave-clothes ; we are sealed up with a heavy stone 
 on the tomb's mouth : and so we must remain for 
 ever, unless the divine voice says to us, " Lazarus, 
 come forth." 
 
 6. Let us not, however, be misunderstood. 
 
 We do not now expect to see the heavens opened, 
 or to hear divine voices, or to feel our churches 
 shaken with a mighty rushing wind, or to behold 
 fire shooting from the clouds, or cloven tongues 
 rained down upon us from the sky, or to see men 
 suddenly rapt with divine ecstasies, and endued 
 with gifts of prophecy, and speaking languages 
 which they never learnt. No, these marvellous 
 endowments were vouchsafed at the day of Pente- 
 cost, and in the first ages of the Church. They 
 were given to prove the power and love of the 
 Everlasting Spirit, and to shew us where our 
 strength lies. But they were only for a time, 
 and are now withdrawn, not because the a Lord's 
 arm is shortened," or because He does not now
 
 i o The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 operate upon us, but because they have served their 
 purpose, and done their duty of proving our need, 
 and His might and mercy; and because He now 
 gives other, ordinary, graces in their place, which 
 are abundantly sufficient for the work of Christian 
 teaching. 
 
 The Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pente- 
 cost in fulfilment of Christ's promise, and ever 
 since that time, He the Blessed Comforter has 
 been, is, and ever will be, with the Church. He 
 will remain with her even to the end. And we 
 are not now to look for His operations in the earth- 
 quake, or in the mighty wind, or in the fire, 
 but in the still small voice of prayer, and in the 
 gentle motions and whisperings of the Spirit in the 
 hearing and reading of God's Holy Word ; and in 
 the silent hours of meditation, and in the calm 
 effusions of grace, in the regular ministries of reli- 
 gion, in the house of God. 
 
 Let us not, however, imagine that these ordinary 
 operations of the Holy Ghost, which are. now vouch- 
 safed to us, are less supernatural, because they 
 are less audible and visible. No ; they are as 
 much beyond all human power and knowledge as 
 was the descent of the fiery tongues on the day 
 of Pentecost. 
 
 The silent, dove-like descent of the Holy Spirit, 
 gliding down on inaudible and invisible wings into 
 the soul of a sleeping infant at Holy Baptism ; the 
 yearnings of the heart of the adult before Baptism, 
 and for Baptism, like the stirrings of the unborn
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 1 1 
 
 babe in its mother's womb, the gentle fall of 
 grace, like that of a spring shower, or soft drops of 
 dew, on the heart, in the hours of pious contem- 
 plation, these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. The 
 illumination of the soul with the beams of divine 
 radiance, shed upon it in the hearing or reading of 
 God's Word, and enabling it to see " the wondrous 
 things of His law ;" the kindling of devout affec- 
 tions and longing aspirations, of the pure flame of 
 love, and of the fires of holy zeal, these are gifts 
 of the Holy Ghost. The stirring of the languid 
 heart with fresh breezes from heaven ; the making 
 of the tongue vocal with sacred eloquence in prayer 
 and praise ; the opening of the spiritual eye to the 
 sight of heavenly joys at the sound of holy music ; 
 the thrill which vibrates to the inmost soul at the 
 laying-on of apostolic hands in the holy rite of 
 Confirmation ; the forgetfulness of earth and the 
 unfolding of heaven before the eyes in the partici- 
 pation of the Holy Eucharist ; the drinking-in of 
 new life, like sap received by the branch from the 
 True Vine, making it put forth fresh leaves and rich 
 fruits, in dutiful obedience, in lively faith and 
 fervent love, in humility, quietness, and gentle- 
 ness, in resignation, patience, hope and joy, amid 
 the sorrows and dreariness of this life ; the cheer- 
 ing of the drooping spirit in hours of grief and 
 despondency, all these are gifts of the Holy Ghost. 
 And though they are vouchsafed every day, every 
 hour, and every moment of the Church's existence, 
 yet they are no less mysterious and supernatural
 
 1 2 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 than the opening of heaven and the descent of the 
 Spirit on the heads of the Apostles on the day of 
 Pentecost ; and they are some of the modes in 
 which the Holy Ghost now exercises His divine 
 office of teaching the world, and performs the work 
 of moral sanctification, and fulfils our Lord's pro- 
 mise, u The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, 
 He shall teach you all things." 
 
 Let us now proceed to consider what was the 
 charge which Christ gave to the Apostles, with a 
 view to the teaching of mankind, when they them- 
 selves should have been taught by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 When Christ founded His apostolic school for 
 the world, He said to them, " Go ye, teach all 
 nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost y ." This was 
 His royal charter of incorporation. The baptis- 
 mal covenant is the germ of the world's educa- 
 tion ; and baptismal grace is the early rain which 
 makes the tender shoot put forth its first leaves, 
 which are afterwards to be watered with the fresh 
 dews and latter rain of the Spirit, in prayer, and 
 in the reading of God's Word, and in the gift of 
 the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, and in the Holy 
 Eucharist, and in the other regular ministrations 
 of religion. 
 
 It has pleased God of His goodness to us to 
 
 convey grace to our souls by these channels. And 
 
 although He could, if He so willed it, give us grace 
 
 by any other means than these, or ivithout any means 
 
 y Matt, xxviii. 18, 19.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 1 3 
 
 at all, yet since He has instituted these means for 
 the purpose of conveying grace to us, we have no 
 warrant to expect grace, unless we use use dili- 
 gently, thankfully, and devoutly those means 
 which He has appointed for that purpose, with 
 express command to us to employ the same. 
 
 Hence the apostolic school of Christianity is thus 
 described by the Holy Ghost : u They that were 
 baptized continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doc- 
 trine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, (that 
 is, in participation in the Holy Eucharist,) and in 
 prayers 2 ." 
 
 II. Let us now apply these principles to our 
 own practice. 
 
 1. In reviewing the history of mankind, and the 
 provision made for its education by Christ Him- 
 self, we arrive at this conclusion, that no system 
 of teaching (that is, of training for eternity) can 
 do its proper work except it lay its foundation in 
 a recognition of man's fall, and consequent weak- 
 ness, blindness, and corruption, with regard to his 
 best and highest interests. 
 
 2. Next, since " the preparations of the heart 
 are from the Lord a ," every sound system of teach- 
 ing will proceed to acknowledge the necessity of 
 Divine influence to purify the corruption, lighten 
 the darkness, and assist the weakness of human 
 nature. 
 
 3. Next, it will confess, and act habitually on 
 
 z Acts ii. 41, 42. a Trov. xvi. 1.
 
 1 4 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 the conviction, that this work of sanctification, illu- 
 mination, and assistance, can only be performed by 
 the HOLY GHOST. Let us, therefore;, never imagine, 
 that even instruction in Scripture itself will be 
 profitable, without the spiritual help of Him by 
 whose inspiration Scripture was written. 
 
 4. Next, since the grace of the Holy Spirit is 
 given through regular channels, every right system 
 of teaching will look to receive grace by those 
 means; and will not expect grace unless it avail 
 itself of them. 
 
 Let us, therefore, never concur -with any who 
 would divorce instruction from the public offices of 
 religion. Schools and Colleges without prayer and 
 Sacraments are " wells without water; clouds and 
 wind without rain V They are without the teach- 
 ing of the Holy Spirit, the author of peace and love, 
 who alone can " teach us all things and guide us 
 into all truth." 
 
 5. Next, since Christ has instituted His Church 
 to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, every sound 
 system of teaching will look for grace, and truth, 
 and peace where Christ gives it, and where it is 
 sure of finding it. It will act on the persuasion 
 that it cannot hope to teach aright except in com- 
 munion with the Church of Christ. 
 
 III. Consider now the office of the Holy Ghost in 
 teaching spiritual truth. The Holy Spirit was pro- 
 mised and given in order to abide for ever in the 
 
 b 2 Pet. ii. 17 ; Jude 12 ; Prov. xxv. 14.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 1 5 
 
 Church, which is to extend to all place, and to sub- 
 sist for all time j and the promise of our Lord was 
 that the Holy Ghost would teach her all things, 
 and guide her into all truth ; that is, would teach 
 her all things that are necessary for her spiritual 
 mission to the world, and guide her into all truth, 
 that is, into all spiritual truth that is requisite for 
 our growth in grace here, and for our attainment 
 of glory hereafter. 
 
 1. The question then is, In ivhat manner has this 
 divine promise been fulfilled ? How does the Holy 
 Spirit perform His office in the Church, of teaching 
 all spiritual truth ? 
 
 2. He has performed it in part by delivering 
 to the Church the Holy Scriptures, which He has 
 " written .for our learning ," and which are a able 
 to make us wise unto salvation through faith which 
 is in Christ Jesus ; and which are profitable for doc- 
 trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
 righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, 
 throughly furnished unto all good works V And 
 He continues to perform it by guarding Holy Scrip- 
 ture and diffusing it by the agency of the Church, 
 and by assuring us of the inspiration of Holy Scrip- 
 ture by her instrumentality; and also by giving 
 us, by her means, the true interpretation of Holy 
 Scripture. 
 
 What, let us ask, is the principal cause of doubt 
 and disbelief with regard to the truth and inspiration 
 of Scripture ? It is this : men have forgotten the 
 c Rom. xv. 4. d 2 Tim. iii. 1517.
 
 1 6 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 office of God the Holy Ghost, as the Guide and 
 Teacher of the Church. They take up the Bible 
 as " a common book," and criticise it as they would 
 some Egyptian papyrus, or some ancient roll dis- 
 interred from the ashes of Pompeii or Herculaneum. 
 They seem to forget, that as soon as the five Books 
 of Moses were written, Almighty God provided an 
 external witness, to assure men of their truth and 
 inspiration. He separated those Books visibly and 
 publicly from all other writings, by enshrining them 
 in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle, and by 
 placing them under the wings of the cherubim 6 . 
 They appear to forget, that there never has been 
 a Bible without a visible Church to guard and 
 authenticate it, and to assure the world of its truth 
 and inspiration. Thej r separate the Message from 
 the Messenger ; they take away the Light from the 
 Candlestick in which God's hand has placed it; 
 they separate the Bible from the Church, and so 
 they grieve the Holy Ghost, who speaks in the Bible 
 and dwells in the Church ; and they lose both the 
 Bible and the Church. They overlook the all-im- 
 portant fact, that when the Son of God Himself 
 came down from Heaven, and was u anointed with 
 the Holy Ghost f ," He set His own divine seal on the 
 Old Testament, and avouched it to be true, genuine, 
 and divine. They seem also to forget the no less 
 momentous fact, that when the Son of God had as- 
 cended into heaven, and had given the Holy Ghost 
 to His Church for the express purpose of " teach - 
 e Deut. xxxi. 9, 2426 ; Josh. xxiv. 26. * Acts x. 38.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 1 7 
 
 ing her all things," and of " guiding her into all 
 truth," the Holy Ghost Himself gave His own 
 divine testimony in the Church by the lips of the 
 holy Apostles, to the truth, genuineness, and inspi- 
 ration of the Old Testament ; and that He has de- 
 clared that " all Scripture is given by the inspira- 
 tion of God g ," and that "no prophecy of Scripture 
 is of private interpretation ; for prophecy came not 
 in old time by the will of man : but holy men of God 
 spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost V 
 They seem also to overlook the fact, that the New 
 Testament has been delivered to the Church by Apo- 
 stles and Evangelists, who were taught, guided, and 
 inspired by God the Holy Ghost, and that it was 
 delivered by them for the express purpose of being 
 read publicly in the Church; yes, of being read 
 as of equal dignity with the Old Testament, which 
 the Son of God Himself had acknowledged to be 
 divine; and that the New Testament has been so 
 received and read by the Church Universal, to which 
 Christ promised that He would send the Holy Ghost 
 to "teach her all things, and to guide her into 
 all truth." And therefore this reception of the New 
 Testament by the Church is no other than the wit- 
 ness of God the Holy Ghost to its truth and in- 
 spiration. 
 
 3. Thus, then, we see an uniform divine plan 
 from the time in which the first letter of Scripture 
 was written, even down to our own days, for avouch- 
 ing the truth and inspiration of the Bible. The 
 8 2 Tim. iii. 16. * 2 Pet. i. 20, 21.
 
 1 8 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 Pentateuch was placed in the Holy of Holies in the 
 Tabernacle, and under the wings of the cherubim, 
 and thus its inspiration was proclaimed by God to 
 the world ; and both Testaments are now placed 
 under the wings of the Holy Ghost, the Divine 
 Dove who descended on Christ at His baptism; 
 they are safe under His feathers, in the tabernacle 
 of the Christian Church. 
 
 4. If these truths are forgotten, as, alas ! they 
 too often are in these our days, which proudly boast 
 their intellectual light but are clouded over with 
 spiritual darkness, is it wonderful that men should 
 disparage Scripture, and carp and cavil at it ? 
 No ; these cavillings of theirs are the consequences 
 of that spiritual blindness, which is their punish- 
 ment for despising the witness of God the Holy 
 Ghost. They will not listen to His teaching in the 
 Church ; they will not follow His guidance, and so 
 they grieve the Holy Ghost, and provoke Him to 
 leave them to themselves. And how can they see 
 without Him who is the light ? It is impossible. 
 Impunity in sin is the worst punishment, and un- 
 consciousness of blindness is the worst blindness. 
 So awful is the punishment which they endure for 
 despising the light of the Holy Ghost, that they 
 presumptuously imagine that they themselves alone 
 can see, and disdainfully despise others as blind, 
 who are walking meekly and humbly " in the path 
 of the just, which shineth more and more unto the 
 perfect day i ." 
 
 1 Prov. iv. 18.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 1 9 
 
 5. It is manifestly the intention of God that 
 young children in our village schools and aged 
 peasants in our cottages should believe that (as St. 
 Paul affirms) " all Scripture is given by inspiration 
 of God ;" and it is also God's will that they should 
 be able to give a reason for this belief, as St. Peter 
 commands them to do : " Be ready always to give 
 an answer to every man that asketh you a reason 
 of the hope that is in you j ." 
 
 But can it be imagined that children and peasants 
 should examine all the objections that have been 
 brought, or may be brought, against the inspiration 
 of Scripture, or that they should postpone their 
 belief in it till all those objections are examined 
 by others ? Assuredly not. If this were the case 
 they would be condemned to live without love, and 
 to die without hope. What then shall they do? 
 They will humbly and reverently listen to the 
 teaching of God the Holy Ghost dwelling in the 
 Church, and testifying to the inspiration of the 
 Bible. Here they are safe. The Bible is sheltered 
 by the wings of the Holy Ghost dwelling in the 
 Church. And if a child in our village schools or 
 a peasant in our cottages is asked why he believes 
 the Bible to be inspired, he may boldly give this 
 answer, c I believe the Bible to be inspired, because 
 I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and because 
 I believe in God the Holy Ghost, and because I be- 
 lieve that God the Holy Ghost came down from 
 heaven according to Christ's most true promise, 
 J 1 Pet. iii. 15.
 
 20 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 to teach the Church all things, and to guide her into 
 all truth ; and I therefore receive the testimony of 
 the Church Catholic to the inspiration of Holy 
 Scripture, as no other than the testimony of God.' 
 
 And this is the ground on which the belief in 
 the inspiration of Holy Scripture is placed by the 
 Church of England in her Sixth Article : " In the 
 name of Holy Scripture" (i.e. of divinely-inspired 
 writings, for the word ypafyrj, or Scripture, is not 
 applied in the New Testament to any other writings) 
 " we do understand those canonical Books of the Old 
 and New Testament, of whose authority was never 
 any doubt in the Church. . . . All the Books of the 
 New Testament, as they are commonly received, we 
 do receive, and account them canonical." Of course 
 the Church of England does not exclude the other 
 internal evidences of inspiration, in the Books them- 
 selves, and in the heart of the believer, who has 
 the witness of the Spirit within him ; nor does she 
 forget the external evidences of inspiration, from 
 fulfilment of prophecy, and from the good effects 
 produced by the Scriptures : but the main ground 
 on which she insists is the testimony of God the 
 Holy Ghost in the Church Catholic, receiving all 
 Holy Scripture as divine. 
 
 6. Once more. To believe in the inspiration of 
 the Bible, is to believe the testimony of God ; but it 
 is not enough to believe in the inspiration of the 
 Bible, we must also have the true interpretation
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 2 1 
 
 of the Bible. The true sense of the Bible is the 
 Bible ; a wrong interpretation of the Bible is not 
 the Bible, but a corruption of it ; it is a substitu- 
 tion of the word of man in the place of the Word 
 of God. 
 
 It is plainly requisite, therefore, and it is mani- 
 festly God's design, that children in our schools 
 and peasants in our cottages should have the 
 right interpretation of the Bible in all things neces- 
 sary for their salvation. Can we, then, imagine 
 that God intended that they should be left to 
 gather the doctrines of the Christian faith out of 
 the Bible for themselves, or that they should be 
 the victims of discordant sects and rival teachers, 
 each claiming to have the true sense of the Bible ? 
 Assuredly not. What, then, is the true state of the 
 case ? Almighty God has not only given us a Bible, 
 but He has also instituted and appointed a Church 
 to declare to us its meaning ; ancl accordingly the 
 Church is described in Holy Scripture as the " Body 
 of Christ k ," " the pillar and ground of the truth 1 ." 
 He has sent the Holy Ghost from heaven to " lead 
 her into all truth," to " teach her all things," espe- 
 cially the true meaning of the Bible. The Holy 
 Ghost enabled the Apostles to interpret the types and 
 prophecies of the Old Testament. And if men had 
 duly considered this office of God the Holy Ghost 
 in interpreting the Old Testament in the New, 
 is it possible that we should have ever heard, what 
 alas ! we have lived to hear, the miserable cavils 
 k Col. i. 18, 24. I 1 Tim. iii. 15.
 
 22 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 of shortsighted men against the interpretations 
 which He has given us of those prophecies, when 
 He declares their true sense in the earlier chapters 
 of the Gospel of St. Matthew, or in the sermons of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles ? 
 
 And as to Christian doctrine, is it credible that 
 we should have such unhappy bickerings as prevail 
 among us concerning the meaning of Scripture with 
 regard to the main articles of the faith, and such 
 strainings and wrestings of single texts of Scripture 
 in contravention of the drift and tenor of the whole, 
 if we had duly remembered Christ's promise to His 
 Church to send the Holy Ghost to " teach her all 
 things, and lead her into all truth, and to abide 
 with her for ever," and if we had duly revered 
 that teaching as embodied in the common consent 
 of the Catholic Church, especially in her Creeds and 
 Confessions of Faith m ? 
 
 m See Richard Baxter's Introduction to Catholic Theology, 
 1675. Baxter, who will not be charged with overrating the 
 authority of the Church in Creeds and Confessions of Faith, 
 thus writes : " The Baptismal Covenant expounded in the 
 ancient Creed, is the sum and symbol of Christianity. . . . 
 Though I am not of their mind, that think the twelve 
 Apostles each one made an Article of the Creed, or that they 
 formed and tied men to just the very same syllables and every 
 word that is now in the Creed ; yet that they still kept to the 
 same sense and words, so expressing it, as by their variation 
 might not endanger the corrupting of the faith by a new sense, 
 is certain from the nature of the case, and from the agreement of 
 all the ancient Creeds which were ever professed at baptism from 
 their days ; that cited by me (Appendix to " Reformed Pastor") 
 out of Irenceus, two out of Tertullian, that of Marcellus in Epipha- 
 nius, that expounded by Cyril, that in Ruffinus, the Nicene Creed, 
 and all mentioned by Ussher and Vossius, agreeing thus far in
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 2,3 
 
 Surely it is a providential circumstance that the 
 Church of Rome, amid her manifold errors and cor- 
 ruptions, has never ventured to use, in administer- 
 ing the Sacrament of Baptism, any other Creed 
 besides the Apostles' Creed; and that in the cele- 
 bration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper she 
 has never dared to add her own Trent innovations 
 to the ancient Nicene or Constantinopolitan Creed. 
 And even the very vehemence with which the 
 Eastern Church has debated with the Western on 
 one minor article (concerning the procession of the 
 Holy Ghost) of that Creed serves to bring out more 
 strongly and clearly the consent of East and West 
 in that Creed. 
 
 Here, then, we have Christ's promise fulfilled; 
 here we have the teaching and guidance of the Holy 
 Ghost in the Church. To this teaching and guidance 
 our children and peasants may resort. Here they 
 may find shelter. " Thou shalt hide them privily 
 by Thine own presence, Lord, from the provoking 
 of all men : Thou shalt keep them secretly in Thy 
 tabernacle from the strife of tongues n ." 
 
 7. Finally, let me remind you, my younger bre- 
 thren, that no intellectual gifts alone, however bril- 
 liant, will qualify you to discover or to receive divine 
 
 sense. And no one was baptized without the Creed professed. 
 As Christ Himself was the author of the Baptismal Creed and Cove- 
 nant, so the Apostles were the authors of that exposition which 
 they then used and taught the Church to use. And they did 
 that by the Holy Ghost, as much as their inditing of Scripture" 
 " Ps. xxxi. 22.
 
 24 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 truths. You must have moral dispositions for the 
 perception of spiritual verities. The Holy Spirit, as 
 His Name declares, is a Spirit of purity, and no one 
 is able to understand the teaching of the Spirit un- 
 less he leads a holy life. " The wisdom from above," 
 says St. James, " is first pure, then peaceable ." 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall see 
 GodV "Flee therefore youthful lusts' 1 ;" they 
 cloud and dim the spiritual eye ; and remember that 
 your bodies are " temples of the Holy Ghost which 
 is in you r ." Consecrate them to His service, and 
 then you will be like the beloved disciple St. John, 
 who leaned on Christ's bosom at supper, and drank 
 heavenly wisdom from His mouth. 
 
 Remember also that the Holy Spirit is a dutiful 
 Spirit, and will not dwell with the proud and vain- 
 glorious " disputer of this world," who sets up his 
 own reason as a judge of divine revelation ; but 
 that He loves to abide with the humble-minded and 
 meek-hearted. "I thank Thee, Father," said 
 Christ, " that Thou hast hid these things from the 
 wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes "." 
 Heaven forbid that we should check enquiry. No : 
 "Prove all things: hold fast that which is good 1 ." 
 But remember the precept of the Apostle, which pre- 
 cedes that which has been just cited. Before say- 
 ing "Prove all things," he says " Quench not the 
 Spirit u ." And why ? because it is vain to attempt 
 
 James iii. 17. p Matt. v. 8. > 2 Tim. ii. 22. 
 
 r 1 Cor. vi. 19. Matt. xi. 25. * 1 Thess. v. 21. 
 
 Ibid. 19.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of tlie Church. 25 
 
 to prove any thing that is spiritual if we quench 
 the Spirit who enables us to prove it. It is futile 
 to enquire without the light of the Spirit, which is 
 quenched by pride and self-conceit. Enquire ; yes, 
 but enquire with reverence and meekness, and with 
 a humble sense of your own weakness and short- 
 sightedness, and, most of all, your perpetual need of 
 the help and illumination of God the Holy Ghost. 
 " Mysteries are revealed unto the meek V " Them 
 that are meek shall He guide in judgment: and 
 such as are gentle, them shall He learn His way y ." 
 We must " become as little children, if we would 
 enter the kingdom of God V 
 
 Next, also, the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of fairness, 
 honesty, and truth. He abhors all disingenuousness 
 and equivocation. They who tamper with their 
 own consciences are morally disqualified for the dis- 
 covery or reception of spiritual truth. The fact is, 
 and it must be spoken, (for the unhappy circum- 
 stances of our own days require it,) any person who 
 is admitted to any office in the Church, on making 
 certain sacred engagements, and who, after he has 
 been admitted thereto on the strength of those 
 engagements, uses his office as a vantage-ground 
 for attacking the truths which he has solemnly 
 pledged himself to maintain, is guilty of grieving 
 and provoking God the Holy Ghost ; and it would 
 therefore be a marvellous thing if he could discover 
 or receive divine truth. His very objections against 
 the truth of Holy Scripture, his cavils against its 
 
 x Ecclus. iii. 19. ' Ps. xxv. 8. Matt, xviii. 3.
 
 2,6 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 
 
 inspiration, are precisely what might be expected 
 under the circumstances of the case ; they are the 
 recoil of his own sin on himself for resisting the 
 Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost punishes him with 
 blindness, because he turns away his face from the 
 true light ; He punishes him by allowing him to im- 
 agine that he can see, and even to boast of his own 
 illumination, when all the while he is immersed in 
 spiritual darkness. 
 
 "When I was young," says St. Augustine, "I 
 studied the Bible with shrewdness of disputing, 
 and not with meekness of enquiring, and thus I 
 shut the door of Scripture against myself with my 
 own handV "In order to understand Scripture, 
 the first requisite is the fear of God. This fear 
 of God makes us meditate upon death and judg- 
 ment to come, and to bewail our own sins, and to 
 nail our proud thoughts to the cross of Christ, and 
 to bow down in lowly adoration before the majesty 
 of Scripture; and to love God and man, and to 
 cherish that purity to which the light of God's 
 countenance is vouchsafed, and the truth in His 
 Holy Word is revealed. The man who fears God 
 seeks to learn God's will there. Such a man loves 
 not strife, but is gentle and devout. He has skill 
 in languages for the exposition of Holy Scripture ; 
 and he has the true text of Scripture derived from 
 correct manuscripts. Thus furnished, he comes to 
 its interpretation ; and wherever he is in doubt he 
 consults the Rule of faith, which is formed from the 
 a St. Aug. Serra. li.
 
 The Spirit, the Teacher of the Church. 27 
 
 plain places of Scripture, and from the authority of 
 Christ's ChurchV 
 
 Let us, therefore, seek the truth, not in proud 
 disputations, but on our knees ; in private prayer 
 in our secret chamber, in public prayer in the 
 Church of God ; in the breaking of bread where 
 Christ " is made known to us c ;" in the teaching 
 of God the Holy Ghost, speaking to us in Christ's 
 Church, to which He has promised His presence 
 for ever : " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
 the end of the world d ." 
 
 b St. Aug. De Doct. Christian., ii. 9, iii. 1, 2, 
 Luke xxiv. 35. d Matt, xxviii. 20.
 
 SERMON IV. 
 Spirit, ifr* <iite 0f fife. 
 
 BY 
 
 T. L. CLAUGHTON, M.A., 
 
 VICAR OF KIDDERMINSTER.
 
 pirit, % (lite of fife. 
 
 GENESIS i. 2. 
 "AND THE SPIRIT or GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF 
 
 THE WATERS." 
 
 A T the time concerning which these words were 
 * written, the whole substance or matter of 
 which all things were to be created lay buried in 
 water, a dark and shapeless void, of commingled 
 and confused elements primaeval chaos. "Who 
 could infuse life into this mass ? Who could pro- 
 duce order out of such confusion ? beauty and 
 harmony of parts, where no one thing either re- 
 sembled, or was different or discrete from another ? 
 None but God. 
 
 We read accordingly that " the Spirit of God 
 moved upon the face of the waters." The word 
 " moved " here is a comprehensive word, contain- 
 ing both the idea of motion and of rest ; it is the 
 word by which we should describe the motion of 
 the eagle fluttering over her nest, or the brooding 
 of the hen over her young. And it is here used 
 to signify the accession and effectual presence of an 
 all-pervading Power, in which was life or breath, 
 warmth, light, order, shape, and comeliness, to be
 
 2 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 communicated in successive developments to the 
 dark waters which lay still and dead till this In- 
 fluence passed upon them. " Thou sendest forth 
 
 | Thy Spirit ; they are created : and Thou renewest 
 
 ' the face of the earth," says the sweet Psalmist of 
 Israel summing up in those few words the history 
 both of the original creation and of the continuance 
 of life in every part of it ; fathoming the depth of 
 Moses' words, and ascribing unto that very Power 
 whose operation is described to us in the words 
 of the text the whole development of life in the 
 material world, as it is seen to this day. The 
 Holy Ghost moves : He is the first author and 
 beginner, as He also establishes and perpetuates 
 all life. We see in Him how the world began; 
 how it still subsists; yea, and shall subsist, re- 
 
 i modelled, restored, and renewed, for ever. He 
 moves upon the face of the waters, and they, and 
 all that lay beneath them, become by virtue of 
 that operation instinct with life, or the seminal 
 principle of life; capable of producing those crea- 
 tures which they afterwards brought forth, in their 
 various kinds and specialities. 
 
 Now we cannot doubt that He who was so won- 
 derful in counsel and excellent in working fore- 
 casting, as an artificer does, the form and effect 
 and beauty of that which He designed was not 
 as some have imagined a mere power of God, but 
 
 i Very God Himself; which, though the Jews saw 
 not, we in explicit teachings of the New Testa- 
 ment, which the Jews will not allow, recognise and
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 3 
 
 adore. And yet they might have seen and understood 
 if they had considered, and there were those among 
 them all along who did consider who saw the Lord 
 of Life in His works of providence and in the gra- 
 cious deliverances which He wrought for His peo- 
 ple. Did not one of their own prophets bless and 
 praise Him. in the song " as clothed with majesty 
 and honour; as crowning Himself with light as 
 with a garment, and spreading out the heavens 
 like a curtain ; laying the beams of His chambers 
 in the waters, and making the clouds His chariot, 
 and walking upon the wings of the wind :" but 
 much more than this, as prescribing limits to the 
 waters, that they should no more overflow the \ 
 earth, but go down into the valleys, and run among 
 the hills, to refresh man and beast ; as giving food 
 to all flesh, to every kind that sort of food which 
 is adapted to sustain life, the green herb for the 
 cattle, and wine and bread for man ; as appointing 
 the moon to regulate the seasons, the rising and 
 setting of the sun for labour and for rest ; as open- 
 ing His hand and filling all things with good ; and 
 (which is the matter we are especially considering) \ 
 as giving, or by His departure taking away life at 
 His will ? Surely all this is consistent only with 
 the idea of the Personal Godhead of Him whose 
 moving on the face of the waters, as the first re- 
 corded act of creation, was in the mind and me- 
 mory of all the children of Abraham. They were 
 familiar, moreover, with the Book of Job, wherein 
 the whole course of nature, as we call it, is ascribed
 
 4 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 to the working and the counsel of God, from the 
 day when the foundations of the earth were fas- 
 tened, and the sea shut up with doors, and the 
 light divided from the darkness, down to the pre- 
 sent personal experience and observation of them 
 that were living upon the earth. Nor was the lan- 
 guage of the Books with which they were so well 
 acquainted less explicit as touching that influence 
 of the Divine Spirit on the hearts and on all the 
 ways of men, which established Him in their minds 
 as the Lord and Giver of spiritual as well as natural 
 life. To Him David prayed, " Thou art my God : 
 Thy Spirit is good ; lead me into the land of up- 
 rightness." And of Him spake Elihu, "The Spirit 
 of God made me, and the breath of the Almighty 
 gave me lifeV Again, if Elihu complained that 
 men were slow to acknowledge that they owed to 
 the Creator Spirit the wisdom, and the speech, and 
 other natural gifts they enjoyed above the rest of 
 the creation : " None saith, Where is God my Maker, 
 who giveth songs in the night; who teacheth us 
 more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us 
 wiser than the fowls of heaven b ?" so did David 
 ascribe to Him (for of whom else could he speak ?) 
 the purification of the inward parts, the knowledge 
 of wisdom in the hidden part, i.e. of true spiritual 
 wisdom, which is the life of the soul, for the soul 
 that hath it not does not live, but is dead ; without 
 spiritual light is no life. It is the consciousness 
 
 Job xxxiii. 4. b Ib. xxxv. 10, 11.
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 5 
 
 of God's presence by which men live, and in which 
 the life of the Spirit truly consists. This was the 
 life which Hezekiah craved in his recovery from 
 sickness, not the prolongation of his bodily life 
 only: "they that go down to the pit," he said, 
 " cannot hope for Thy truth." The thing he longed 
 for was life wherewith to celebrate the praises of 
 the Lord. And whence did he hope for the gift 
 but from the Spirit of Life ? 
 
 And in all this they ascribed a personal agency 
 to the Lord the Spirit. That our sin is an offence 
 against Him, our righteousness no gain to Him, is 
 taught as plainly by the words of Elihu as by those 
 of St. Paul. " If thou sinnest, what doest thou 
 against Him? or if thy transgressions be multi- 
 plied, what doest thou unto Him? If thou be 
 righteous, what givest thou Him ? or what receiveth 
 He of thine hand ?" His presence was acknow- 
 ledged in the journeyings of the people; He was 
 the Strength of Joshua, the Leader of the host of 
 the Lord. He came on Balaam, on Othniel, Gideon, 
 Jephthah, Samson, on Saul, on Azariah the son of 
 Oded in King Asa's time. Zedekiah the son of 
 Chenaniah, in his insulting question to Michaiah, 
 recognised the Spirit of the Lord acting on the 
 mind of the prophets. Micah was full of power by 
 the Spirit of the Lord. Ezekiel, on God's business, 
 was taken up by the Spirit and brought in a vision 
 by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to them of the 
 
 c Job xxxv. 6, 7.
 
 6 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 captivity. Yea, of Him was the calling of the pro- 
 phets, the anointing of the Son of God. 
 
 But there was a time to come when these things 
 should be yet more plainly revealed and more fully 
 understood, i.e. in such part of them as was yet 
 dark and uncertain, albeit profitable, yea, needful 
 unto salvation, for men to understand aright. In 
 regard of the works of nature, and the creation of 
 nature with that power to work, by the Spirit of 
 God, the Jews saw as deep as we see into the 
 Divine mysteries; they felt, as deeply as we feel 
 them, the blessed and holy influences of this glori- 
 ous and beautiful creation. Nor could they be far 
 behind us in imputing all providential agencies in 
 the world to Him who first moved in its creation. 
 But they knew not yet how the mystery of the 
 waters bringing forth the world by the power of 
 the Spirit, contained under it another and a deeper 
 mystery, viz. how the Church of God should be 
 born by the same means how life should come 
 again by water and the Holy Ghost. Nor had 
 even those who lived toward the close of that dis- 
 pensation gathered yet what we have gathered, by 
 the teaching of the Lord Himself, from the salva- 
 tion of Noah and his family in the ark from perish- 
 ing by water, nor from the passage of the Israel- 
 ites through the Red Sea, nor from the rock which 
 Moses smote, no, nor from the words of the Pro- 
 phet, " I will pour water on him that is thirsty, 
 and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour My 
 Spirit upon thy seed : and My blessing upon thine
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 7 
 
 offspring : and they shall spring up as among the 
 grass, as willows by the water courses ;" so abun- 
 dant shall be the gifts that I shall give them: 
 they could not, I say, fully understand these 
 things: for why? The Holy Ghost was not yet 
 given given as a Gift ; the way into the holiest of 
 all was not yet manifest. The true ministration 
 of the Spirit, the ministration of righteousness, 
 the free gift which came upon all men unto jus- 
 tification of life was not yet established, because 
 the first tabernacle was still standing. Jesus was 
 not yet glorified. Men had yet to learn what the 
 abundance of grace and the gift of life was, con- 
 cerning which Jesus Christ spake those truly mar- 
 vellous words, " He that belie veth on Me, as the 
 Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water." But at length the ful- 
 ness of time was at hand, when the Lord, the 
 Giver of life, should indeed dwell among His peo- 
 ple, when God should pour out His Spirit upon 
 all flesh. 
 
 He came with such gentleness as of itself be- 
 tokened the nature of His work. He came, as He 
 came at the first, moving on the water; yea, we 
 believe He wrought on the waters in the creation 
 because He designed to do so in the regeneration of ' 
 man. He consecrated water to be the instrument of 
 life. The record of this second spiritual creation is 
 as grand as it is simple : " Now when all the peo- 
 ple," all, that is, on a certain day, who had laid 
 John the Baptist's words to heart, " when all the
 
 8 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus 
 also being baptized and praying, the heaven was 
 opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily 
 shape like a dove upon Him." Xot that He had 
 need of baptism unto life, or illumination, or any 
 gift, who was the Light and Life Himself, and in 
 whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt; but 
 that in passing through the water for us He made 
 it the instrument of our regeneration, and so ful- 
 filled all righteousness ; and established, beyond 
 all doubt, the ark of Noah and the passage of the 
 Eed Sea to be^types and figures of Baptism unto 
 life. I say beyond all doubt, in the face of much 
 doubt and questioning, of words that eat like 
 a canker ; but whose words ? The words, alas ! of 
 those who, by their own admission, enquire at 
 the living oracles to find excuses for unbelief, 
 and in hope that the weakness of the answer 
 may justify them in at least partial unbelief; 
 whom God therefore, as He is wont, answereth 
 according to the idol they have set up in their 
 heart; causing the shadow in which they walk, 
 disquieting themselves in vain, to rest upon their 
 unhallowed manner of dealing with His Word. 
 And so it will rest till they shall be brought to 
 search the "Word in another spirit, as some have 
 been brought already who had gone far astray, 
 as more will be brought ; though it can scarcely be 
 supposed but that the influences of this present 
 time will lead more many more astray, and these 
 seeds of doubt, sown broadcast, will increase yet
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 9 
 
 unto more ungodliness, and overthrow the faith of 
 many. But let no man think that the Spirit of 
 life can become the Spirit of death, as these would 
 make Him to be ; and that He whom the Saviour 
 Himself foretold should come as the Spirit of Truth 
 to guide His people into all truth, should mislead 
 should have misled through so many ages the 
 best and holiest of mankind. 
 
 It were impossible absolutely impossible that 
 the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground 
 of the truth, should have been proclaiming a lie 
 throughout all these ages; should be a savour of 
 death to those who sought to her for life ; a shroud 
 of darkness to the baptized, the illuminated, the 
 chosen and beloved of God. Let no man doubt 
 that the great salvation prefigured jby the saving 
 of Noah and his family in the ark from perishing 
 by water, and by the baptism of Israel in the 
 cloud and in the sea, is secured to us and to our 
 children by an ordinance for ever ; and that all we 
 who have been baptized into the death of Christ, 
 shall, if we die with Him unto sin by continual 
 mortification of our corrupt affections, have our 
 part likewise in His glorious resurrection. Be it 
 our comfort to know that in Holy Baptism the 
 three witnesses coincide, the Spirit, the Water, and , 
 the Blood: the Blood there signifying our sin, 
 that could only be expiated by blood ; the Water 
 our burial, through which we must pass unto our 
 resurrection; and the Spirit imparting unto that 
 body, dead through sin, the gift of life, as it is
 
 io The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 written, "If Christ be in us, the body is dead 
 because of sin ; but the spirit is life because of 
 righteousness." 
 
 But there is a yet further mystery of lifegiving 
 by the Holy Spirit, which St. Paul goes on from the 
 words just now quoted to declare, which is this : 
 " If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from 
 the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ 
 from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies 
 / by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." So that the 
 goodness and mercy of God which have followed 
 a true Christian all the days of his life, ever since 
 the day when having been baptized into Christ he 
 put on Christ, will not fail him even in the hour 
 ^ of dissolution, and when the last enemy shall come 
 ' upon him. For his body being made a temple of 
 the Holy Ghost, who is the Lord of Life, shall by 
 the power of the Spirit of Life be quickened into 
 r life eternal. The blessing he has received by the 
 power of the indwelling Spirit now, shall be as 
 nothing to that which is in store for him when 
 at the resurrection the Spirit of Life will enter 
 again into the earthly tabernacle, and change it by 
 His marvellous power from a corruptible to an in- 
 corruptible body. Then shall He enlighten our 
 eyes, and enlarge our capacity, to behold the glory 
 and majesty of God Himself: in the which hope 
 David surmounted all his trouble; prophesying 
 indeed of Christ when he said " My flesh shall rest 
 \ in hope ; for Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, 
 I neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 1 1 
 
 corruption," but believing also that he himself 
 should share that blessedness and glory, for he 
 sang also, "As for me, I shall behold Thy pre- 
 sence in righteousness : and when I awake up 
 after Thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it." 
 
 But now, my brethren, it is certain that men 
 think not so much of the operation of the Holy 
 Ghost as they do of other spiritual matters. As the 
 doctrine of the Trinity is the most difficult matter 
 in our religion to conceive, so in the doctrine of the 
 Trinity is the person and the office of the Holy 
 Ghost. We can conceive of a Father, and a Son, 
 when we cannot conceive of One who proceedeth 
 from Them, and is equal to Them. Our ordinary 
 notion of the relations of a family is no help to us 
 here. We can conceive Him who, forasmuch as 
 we are partakers of flesh and blood, Himself also 
 took part of the same. We can conceive the Father, 
 the brightness of whose glory the Son was, and the 
 express image of His Person, when we fail to con- 
 ceive concerning the Holy Spirit, whence it cometh 
 and whither it goeth. Our reason and intelligence 
 help us less concerning the Spirit as a Person than 
 concerning the other Persons in the blessed Trinity. 
 And yet it is more for want of meditation than for 
 want of light in Holy Scripture to guide us ; more 
 for want of searching the Word than (reverently be 
 it spoken) for any defect therein. And it may be 
 one great and blessed use of this course of sermons 
 which have for their object the encouragement 
 of deeper and fuller meditation on this part of the
 
 12 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 Eevelation of God to turn men's thoughts more 
 this way, and to teach them that indeed the higher 
 contentments of our nature, which some men are 
 pleased to imply cannot be found in theology as at 
 present taught, need not be sought in deviations 
 therefrom, or in refinement of speculation upon its 
 simple verities, as though the spirit of enquiry could 
 not rest satisfied in those verities as ordinarily re- 
 ceived, (which is the whole temper of the present 
 day) ; but that in strictest accordance with all that 
 has been held in the Church for so many ages, 
 (and which must either continue to be held, or an 
 apostacy so terrible ensue as these men themselves 
 would shrink from contemplating,) the investiga- 
 tion of the work of the Holy Ghost in the world 
 and in ourselves, contains abundant matter for the 
 greatest intellects that ever yet handled high and 
 mysterious truths to exercise themselves on abun- 
 dant space wherein the grace of God, which we 
 have in Christ Jesus our Lord, blending with our 
 faculties, and tempers, and the dispositions and 
 affections of our hearts, may grow and increase 
 and fructify amazingly, to the establishment of the 
 
 , Church in such sort as by reason of her many 
 defects the world hath not yet seen. Yea, it is 
 by some growth and increase, tending probably in 
 
 . this direction, that the fulness of the Gentiles is 
 to come in, and through that the blindness of 
 Israel to be removed, and the veil that is still 
 upon their hearts in the reading of the Old Testa- 
 ment to be taken away, and they to be received
 
 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 13 
 
 back again into the Church, and thereupon the 
 great gathering in of the Gentiles to ensue, of which 
 the Apostle saith, it shall be as "life from the 
 dead." It is in speaking of this marvellous con- 
 summation that St. Paul uses the expression, " Now 
 the Lord is that Spirit ;" i.e. ' to whom are we 
 to look for bringing about such unlocked for and 
 glorious events ? To the Lord ! But Christ here 
 is the Spirit of Christ. The Lord is that Spirit 
 by whom this wondrous change shall be wrought ; 
 and in that universal freedom which shall then 
 ensue, we all we Gentiles beholding as in 
 a glass the glory of the Lord, shall be changed 
 into the same image, from glory to glory, from 
 one degree of glory to another, even as by the 
 Lord the Spirit, i.e. the Holy Ghost ; whose office 
 it is, as the Author of all life and being, to re- 
 generate^ to renew, to sanctify and transform us 
 into the image of God in Christ.' 
 
 In all these diversities of operation, therefore, 
 we are bound, as intelligent readers of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, to recognise the Holy Ghost as the Giverj)|L 
 Life. From the day when He first moved upon 
 the waters unto this day, He hath given to all this 
 visible creation "life and breath and all things." 
 Of quickening power we know by Eevelation no 
 other source than Him : no, nor have all the re- 
 searches of reverent men nor even of those who, 
 vainly puffed up with the fleshly mind, have some- 
 what rashly intruded into things they have not 
 seen discovered any other. Men of science, wor-
 
 14 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 shipping the things they are conversant with, or 
 something in them which they deem divine, by 
 their own confession " worship they know not 
 what." We know what we worship ; for this is 
 the very privilege of our salvation. "We worship 
 the Holy Ghost, the Giver of Life, believing with 
 all our hearts that which is written; confessing 
 that we cannot stir one step beyond that which is 
 written, in so high and mysterious a matter, with- 
 out peril of being ourselves bewildered and deceiv- 
 ing others. In this and all other things pertain- 
 ing unto life, God has been pleased to reveal to 
 us whatever is good and profitable for us to know. 
 For the rest, we know to Whom to pray, and 
 through WTiorn to pray, and from Whom to expect 
 the things we pray for ; meanwhile, with the help 
 of the Holy Spirit, we search all things, yea, so 
 far as this light guideth us, even the deep things 
 of God. In all the operations of nature, in all this 
 visible world, in the starry heavens, in the moonlit 
 sea, in the blaze of noon, in wind and storm, in 
 snow and vapour, in herbs, and flowers, and trees, 
 and in the tribes of living creatures that dwell in 
 them, we see Him whom we worship. The Holy 
 Ghost is all. All in the glorious universe we see, 
 all in the things we cannot see ; all in the world of 
 sense, all in the world of spirits ; all in the past 
 and present, all in the future ; all within us and 
 without us, is HE. 
 
 The Song of the Three Children, as it is called, 
 expresses our imperfect adoration of the Creator
 
 The Spirit^ the Giver of Life. 15 
 
 Spirit. But these are the least parts of His works. 
 Our chiefest joy is to recognise His presence in the 
 regeneration, whereby that which robbed the crea- 
 tion of its glory, the sin of man, is to be remedied, 
 redressed, repaired, .and the fallen creature to be 
 renewed after the image of his Creator ; in a word, 
 as the Regenerator of the soul, as ever engaged in 
 carrying on this work, from the day of Baptism 
 until the day of death, fulfilling in each of God's 
 elect that righteousness unto which he is called 
 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, 
 through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience 
 and sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ. And 
 when we think that not this only, but all things in 
 order to this, are His work; that by Him every 
 stone of the living temple is prepared, adjusted, 
 and firmly laid ; that every word spoken in truth 
 is inspired by Him ; that every wise counsel, every 
 pure and worthy deed is from Him ; that it is Ho 
 who hath guided His people into all truth, and 
 guarded them from all fatal and deadly error, we 
 have then, brethren, seen the whole work of the 
 lifegiving Spirit in the world that now is, and we 
 may understand in some measure why sin and 
 blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is more un- 
 pardonable, seeing that all such have not only 
 rejected the truth presented to them upon evidence 
 which in earthly matters would be reckoned incon- 
 trovertible, but have also resisted, it can scarce be 
 without consciousness of what they were doing, the 
 power and influence of the Spirit of Life. Brethren,
 
 1 6 The Spirit, the Giver of Life. 
 
 it is impossible, humanly speaking, but that some 
 of you in the present unsettled state of opinion 
 should have to pass through this form of tempt- 
 ation. May the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus in- 
 form, enlighten, guide you ; .make you free, as in 
 respect of other snares of the adversary, so in this 
 also, from the law of sin and death ; keep you firm 
 and stedfast in the ancient faith and confession of 
 the Church ' 1 1 believe in the Holy Ghost, the 
 Lord and Giver of Life." 
 
 , forninarhti, *otb.
 
 SERMON V. 
 (Snefrmg 0f tjj* 
 
 BY 
 
 A. P. STANLEY, D.D., 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, AND CANON OF 
 CHRIST CHURCH.
 
 rafting 0f % Spirit. 
 
 EPHESIANS iv. 30. 
 " GRIEVE NOT THE HOLY SPIRIT or GOD." 
 
 "IT7E all know the general terms in which the 
 Bible sets forth the conflict going on between 
 good and evil, between the Tempter and the tempted. 
 But what is meant by this special warning of the 
 Apostle, planted as it is in the midst of a series of 
 the most homely and practical exhortations ? 
 
 Two things are said in this short sentence. One 
 is that we do wrong to " the Spirit," " the Holy 
 Spirit," " the Spirit of God," (TO Tlvevfjia, TO "Ayiov, 
 TOV 0eoO) ; the other is that we do wrong to the 
 Spirit of God by " grieving" Him, by causing Him 
 sorrow. 
 
 To each of these points I desire to call your 
 attention. 
 
 I. First, what is meant by the appeal of the 
 Apostle, in this conflict of the soul, to the Holy 
 Spirit of God ? It is always instructive and edify- 
 ing to ask why, in the Bible, one turn of expression 
 is used rather than another, what is the reason of 
 the preference of one phrase to another, seemingly 
 of the same general intention. Most evidently is
 
 4 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 this the case in the sacred words which express the 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 
 
 From certain points of view, we see, we are 
 told of nothing except the Love, the Power, the 
 Providence, of our heavenly Father. From another 
 point of view, we see, we are told of nothing except 
 the Life, the Death, the Eesurrection, the Character 
 of our blessed Lord. From a third point of view, 
 we see, we are told of nothing except the work 
 and influence of the blessed Spirit. Each of the 
 Three has indeed, so to speak, the same back- 
 ground : " The Godhead of the Father, of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost is all one : the glory equal, 
 the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such 
 is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost." But each 
 Divine Object, as viewed by itself, seems for the 
 moment to shut out from our view everything else. 
 The description of each, whether we use the Latin 
 name Persona, or the Greek name Hypostasis, is of 
 sufficient substance and force to occupy the whole 
 horizon of our vision. We have but to stand in 
 one of three positions, and each of the Three for the 
 moment represents to us the whole Godhead. It is 
 in the third of these positions that we stand to- 
 night, and during the whole course of these ser- 
 mons. It is the third of these Divine Names on 
 which I have to dwell; and I cannot sufficiently 
 impress on theological students the importance of 
 studying the exact force and meaning of the word, 
 the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, as it is used through- 
 out the Scriptures; significant always, but, in our
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 5 
 
 own times, of absolutely peculiar significance. He 
 who has thoroughly grasped what he means, or what 
 he ought to mean, when he says, " I believe in the 
 Holy Ghost," has obtained the master-key to the 
 special difficulties, the true solution of the special 
 questions of modern times and of the coming age. 
 
 The speculative applications of this great doc- 
 trine I reserve for other occasions. I confine myself 
 now to the practical application made of it by the 
 Apostle. "WTiat is meant when he refers us for 
 our safeguard against evil, not to the love of the 
 Father or to the grace of Christ, but to our com- 
 munion with the Holy Spirit ? He means this- 
 That there is a power not out of ourselves, but 
 within ourselves, resting on no external proof, but 
 on its own internal evidence, deep-seated in our 
 own innermost conscience and consciousness, which 
 is no less than the power and presence of God Him- 
 self. Those good thoughts which dart across our 
 souls we know not whence or how, those flashes of 
 a better light than that which we meet in common 
 every-day life, those tender emotions and noble 
 instincts which shrink from the presence of every- 
 thing base, or treacherous, or impure ; that stern 
 voice of conscience which 'rules, and condemns, and 
 approves, what we do, and think, and say ; these 
 are not the mere passing, fleeting results of this 
 earthly human frame; they are the breathings, 
 the messages, the expressions, the intimations of 
 the near Presence of Almighty God, the Lord of 
 heaven and earth. If we listen to them, we are
 
 6 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 on His side ; if we refuse to listen to them, we 
 place ourselves on the side, it may be, of success 
 now, but of total, hopeless failure at the end. In 
 that wonderful account of the first battle of the 
 Crimean war a , which many of us, I doubt not, 
 have lately read, it is maintained that "the turning 
 moment of a fight is a moment of trial for the 
 \ soul, and not for the body ; and it is therefore that 
 such courage as men are able to gather from being 
 gross in numbers can be easily outweighed by 
 
 the warlike virtues of the few According to 
 
 the grand thought which floated in the mind of 
 the churchman who taught to the Eussians" (so the 
 historian of the battle draws out this remarkable 
 thought) a their form of prayer for victory, there 
 are Angels of Light and Angels of Darkness and 
 Horror, who soar above the heads of the soldiery des- 
 tined to be engaged in close fight, and attend them 
 into battle. When the fight grows hot, the angels 
 hover down near to earth, with their bright limbs 
 twined deep in the wreaths of smoke which divides 
 the combatants. But it is no coarse bodily help 
 that these Angels bring. More spiritual than the 
 old Immortals, they strike no blow, they snatch no 
 man's weapon, they lift away no warrior in a cloud. 
 What the Angel of Light can bestow is valour, 
 priceless valour; a light to lighten the path to 
 victory, giving men grace to see the bare truth, 
 and, seeing it, to have the mastery. To troops who 
 are to be blessed with victory, the Angel of Light 
 Kinglake's History of the Invasion of the Crimea, i. 458.
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 7 
 
 seems to beckon and gently draw them forward to 
 their destined triumph." 
 
 Such is the account given of an actual battle by 
 an eyewitness, who had the genius to see into 
 the inner causes of success and failure. But, if it \ 
 be true of the conflict of physical forces in war, how 
 much more is it true of the conflict of the moral 
 forces in the soul. There, indeed, it is no external 
 agency which will help us ; it is the Holy Spirit of , 
 God working with and through our spirits. It is 1 
 not on physical force, or worldly station, or ap- 
 plauding multitudes, no, nor even the oracles of 
 human authority, however venerable, nor the ad- 
 vice and support of friends, however dear, that we 
 must lean in the last resort. We must lean on 
 God and on our own souls; on God in our own v 
 selves; that is, on all that is best and purest in 
 ourselves ; that is, on the strength and the light 
 which can be given only by the indwelling of the , 
 Divine Spirit itself, not in the mere outer cham- 
 bers of our opinions, or our manners, or our lan- 
 guage, but in the very innermost sanctuary of all, 
 our hearts, our consciences. Give us this, God, 
 and Thou givest us everything. Give us Thyself 
 to enlighten, elevate, strengthen. Give us Thyself 
 not in nature only, not in history only, not in Thy 
 fatherly love only, not in Thy redeeming grace 
 only, but in Thy close communion and fellowship , 
 with our own souls, and minds, and judgments. 
 Make our wills strong with the strength of Thy 
 will; make our hearts holy with the freshness of
 
 8 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 Thy holiness ; make our judgments independent 
 with the independence of Thine own eternity; 
 make our souls in their search for truth to be " safe 
 under Thy feathers, for Thy faithfulness and Thy 
 truth shall be our shield and buckler." This, and 
 nothing less than this, we ask of Thee in all time 
 of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in all 
 our thirst for knowledge, in all our sense of igno- 
 rance, in the war which we have to fight, in the 
 decision which we have to decide, in the solution 
 which we hope to find for our thousand difficulties. 
 This is what we have to seek. Within ourselves, 
 not without ourselves, in the court of our own con- 
 sciences, which is the throne of the Holy Spirit of 
 x God, must each decision be made for good or for 
 evil in that struggle, which gives its true value 
 to life and to death, across the dark river, and 
 through the tangled thicket, and amidst the flying 
 shots, and up to the distant height, where we 
 shall stand at last victorious through the might of 
 that blessed Spirit, which is indeed " our Refuge 
 and Strength, our very present Help in trouble." 
 
 This, then, is the scene of our main conflict, our 
 own hearts and souls. This is the main support to 
 which we must look, God's Spirit working with, 
 and through, and in, our spirits, by those gifts, and 
 impulses, and breathings of moral strength and 
 spiritual purity which are parts of His own essen- 
 tial nature. 
 
 II. And now comes the other word in the Apo- 
 stle's warning. He describes, in a figure no doubt,
 
 The G-rieving of the Spirit. g 
 
 but still in a figure full of life and force, how it is 
 that this sacred Guest and Friend is, if I may so say, 
 affected by the movements, the unconscious, unin- 
 tentional movements, of our own hearts and spirits. 
 " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." He does not 
 say " Eesist not the Spirit," or " Quench not the 
 Spirit," or "Anger not the Spirit," though he might 
 say all of these. He says, and this is the point to 
 which I have to invite your thoughts, " Grieve not 
 the Spirit." 
 
 Forgive me if I venture to explain this figure of 
 the Apostle by an illustration which draws out in 
 a living image the thought which lies hid in his 
 emphatic phrase. 
 
 There is a well-known German picture, repre- 
 senting a young man playing at chess with the 
 Tempter of his soul. He is intent on his game ; 
 his head is leaning on his hand ; he sees only the 
 moves of the pieces immediately before him; he 
 thinks that he still has the play in his own grasp. 
 Opposite to him sits the exulting Fiend: there is 
 a look of triumph over the easy prey ; already piece 
 after piece has been taken: here a good deed is 
 gone ; there a prayer has been removed ; there an 
 act of faith ; there an act of love ; there an act of 
 hope. A few more successful moves on the Tempter's 
 side, and the game is won, and the soul is lost. 
 
 But there is yet another Figure, which gives to 
 the scene at once a deeper pathos and also a ray 
 of hope. Behind the young man, unseen by him, 
 unnoticed by the Tempter, stands the Guardian
 
 i o The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 1 Angel. The wings are spread for flight ; the face 
 is already turning away. It is a face not of anger, 
 not of disappointment, not of despair, not of resist- 
 ance, but of profound compassion and grief. 
 
 That picture represents to us well the state of 
 many amongst ourselves; it represents also the 
 meaning of the mournful, strange, almost singular 
 expression of the Apostle, " Grieve not the Holy 
 Spirit of God." 
 
 I have said that our condition is, or may be, like 
 that of the young man in this . familiar picture. 
 "We may see him in many forms, in many stages of 
 life : not perhaps here in this church, or now at 
 this moment ; but often elsewhere, often before or 
 hereafter. He is in. the midst of his companions. 
 He is the life and soul of the party. The guests are 
 full of fun and play. The evening wears on, and the 
 conversation and the mirth grows faster and louder : 
 and then comes the very temptation of which the 
 Apostle is speaking in the chapter which contains this 
 warning, " Corrupt communications." " Corrupt," 
 (a-curpo?) : it may be only that worthless, rotten, 
 foolish talk, which has no direct mischief, but which 
 weakens, unnerves, dissolves the strength of our 
 souls. "Corrupt:" it may be that darker, defiling 
 current of ambiguous stories, and filthy jests, and 
 loose songs, which gladly lend themselves to the 
 ready lips of him who speaks, and are caught up 
 gladly by the ready ears of those who hear. He 
 plunges into this downward stream ; he sees no- 
 thing but the excited faces of his hearers ; he hears
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 1 1 
 
 nothing but the peals of laughter which he calls forth. 
 
 < 
 
 But behind that roar of merriment there is a sadness I 
 which is not of this earth. There is a sadness of 
 the departing Angel of Light, to whom every word 
 so uttered is a pang of misery. There is a sadness 
 such as would cloud the brow of father, and mother, 
 and sisters, were they there to hear ; not anger, not 
 even disgust, but deep, unutterable grief. There is 
 a sadness which even in the intervals of this loud 
 and wild talk pierces his own soul, and which breaks 
 in upon him with a deadly faintness when the tables 
 are cleared and the guests are gone, and he is left 
 alone to think of the nonsense and filth with which 
 he has polluted and degraded his own lips, or the 
 friends whom those foolish, wicked words have mis- 
 led, and wronged, and defiled, and corrupted. 
 
 Or shall we follow him a step further than words ? 
 Has that game still gone on ? Has the Tempter 
 carried off not words only but acts ? Has the young 
 man, still unconscious, still with his head as it were 
 between his hands, still thinking no evil, still mean- 
 ing no mischief, has he been led across the fatal 
 threshold? Has he been plunged not only into 
 words, but deeds of darkness dark, deep, entan- 
 gling sins, which drag on a long train behind of 
 concealment, and extravagance, and misery, and 
 shame? There are many warnings that might be 
 used. But I repeat this one of the Apostle. Think 
 not of the disgrace, or the defilement, or the loss, 
 but think of the grief, of the sorrow that follows. 
 Think of the sadness, deepening, and ever deepening
 
 12 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 still, on those beloved faces of which I spoke be- 
 fore, of father, mother, brother, sister. Think of 
 the pang which will shoot across your own soul, in 
 the sudden shock that rouses you at night, or the 
 first bitter waking thought of the morning. That 
 sadness, those pangs, are but the shadows of the 
 sadness which broods over the Holy Spirit and 
 Mind of God, as He sees the work of His hands 
 destroyed, as word after word and act after act 
 disfigures, corrupts, and ruins the spirit which was 
 His appointed dwelling-place. 
 
 Or look at another scene. Most perhaps of those 
 who hear me would turn a deaf ear to those tempt- 
 ations of which the Apostle speaks. But there is 
 another game which the Tempter can play. The 
 young man is yet more unconscious than before, 
 of easy good-nature, of high generous spirit, per- 
 haps of great capacities, of grand hopes, and great 
 opportunities. He is there, he sits in his room, 
 surrounded with comforts and luxuries. Hour after 
 hour comes and goes, and he cares not to use them. 
 All these golden Oxford years, which contain the 
 promise of his future usefulness, are stolen away 
 from him by the Enemy, not through vice, not 
 through mischief, but through sheer indolence, and 
 reckless idleness. He lounges from room to room ; 
 he leans out of his window ; he hangs by his door ; 
 he loiters by the street, or the gate, or the quad- 
 rangle ; and piece by piece, year by year, term by 
 term, and week by week, those precious hours are 
 snatched away, and he leaves this place worse
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 13 
 
 educated, worse instructed than he came ; he enters 
 on life worse prepared for its trials than had he 
 never set foot within these walls. He looks back 
 on nothing mournful, or disgraceful, or painful ; 
 all seems to have been easy, and sunny, and joy- 
 ous. So it seems. But is there not here also a 
 sadness, a grief in the background ? not, as in the 
 former case, sharp, acute, and piercing, but yet 
 a sadness which creeps even over our earthly 
 friends and our own memories, when we think 
 what labour, what care, what money has been spent 
 on our education, and spent, alas ! almost wholly 
 in vain; a sadness which in its fulness can only 
 belong to that Divine Mind, which sees the future 
 as well as the present, which sees with the vivid- 
 ness of omniscience what we might have been and 
 
 what we are not. 'Extern} oSuVr?, the bitter grief 
 which sees the evil which it cannot repair, and 
 which it cannot prevent. For we cannot repair the 
 loss of the irrevocable past, and to restore that past 
 to us is the one task which, as the ancients said, 
 even God Himself cannot accomplish. 
 
 Or go a step higher yet. There are those who 
 have yet greater destinies, and whose lives seem 
 even now, in some measure, to correspond to those 
 destinies. There is the youth blameless in act, 
 zealous in study, with a mind or with a charac- 
 ter which, if all go well, must exercise an ennobling, 
 elevating influence over the circle in which he will 
 hereafter be placed ; over the prospects, it may be, 
 of the whole coming generation.
 
 1 4 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 Rejoice in him ; hope for him. 
 
 But here, also, the Tempter has his hand on the 
 chessboard. That blameless, gentle youth gets en- 
 tangled in the meshes of some absorbing enthusiasm, 
 or one-sided system ; or he shuts himself up within 
 some narrow circle ; or he unwinds for himself uncon- 
 sciously, almost mechanically, those cords which bind 
 him to God or to his brethren : he drops, if he be 
 of a mere intellectual turn of mind, the blessed 
 charities of home, or the blessed moments of morn- 
 ing and evening prayer, or those exalting, invigorat- 
 ing, soothing influences of the more sacred ordin- 
 
 
 
 ances of Christendom, from which few, very few, 
 can part without feeling a deep and serious loss ; 
 or he breaks away, if he be of another disposition, 
 from the genial intercourse with his felloe men ; he 
 learns to despise his old Mends; he looks with 
 suspicion, jealousy, irritation, on all that is better, 
 and freer, and grander than that which falls within 
 his immediate vision. 
 
 And so the ardent student dwindles away into 
 a captious, critical cynic; and so the kind, loving, 
 gentle, humble companion of our youth grows up into 
 a hard, narrow, supercilious dogmatist; and so the 
 generous philanthropist stiffens into a worldly, eager, 
 bitter partisan ; and he whose mind was once open 
 to all the approaches of truth, to whom truth was 
 once dearer than any worldly interests, or any selfish 
 aims, or any cherished fancies, loses his hold upon 
 it; he becomes satisfied with any argument, how- 
 ever feeble, in behalf of what he wishes ; he becomes
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 1 5 
 
 indifferent to any consideration, however noble, 
 which disturbs or contradicts his accustomed habits 
 of thought or life. 
 
 And so God's work which should have been 
 done by these, or the like of these, and which can 
 be done by no one else, is left undone, and the 
 world and the Church groan and pine for them, 
 and groan and pine in vain. Surely "this too is 
 vanity and vexation of spirit ;" vexation and grief 
 to the spirit of man, but vexation and grief, mul- 
 tiplied a hundred-fold, to the Holy Spirit of God. 
 A lost opportunity ; a lost life ; a loss which, in the 
 sight of God, leaves a scar on the face of the whole 
 generation, this is indeed a blow to the Spirit of 
 Truth, and the Spirit of Goodness. We do indeed, as 
 we come across such cases as these, seem to hear 
 not indeed the one piercing lament that mourns 
 over one lost soul, but something which is more 
 pathetic still, " the long sorrowful wailing sound" 
 which is described, after a hard-fought battle, " as 
 though it had been wrung from the heart of brave 
 men defeated 1 *;" the tokens observed with bitter 
 grief by the historian of the last days of Jeru- 
 salem, the awful signs of departing Deity, when 
 through the Temple courts was heard, or thought 
 to be heard, the motion, the sad despairing cry, as 
 of a great multitude, saying " Let us go hence." 
 
 I have dwelt on this side of the conflict between 
 good and evil, because the text invites it, and be- 
 cause it is well for a moment to be recalled not 
 
 b Kinglake's History of the Invasion of the Crimea, ii. 332.
 
 1 6 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 merely to the serious, but to the tragical side of 
 human sin ; to be reminded not only of the anger 
 and the love, but the grief of Him whose Spirit is 
 not merely despised and outraged, but vexed and 
 grieved, as with a father's or a mother's grief, as, 
 one by one, His armies of good thoughts, and noble 
 words, and just intentions, seem to be withdrawn or 
 driven off either from the individual soul or from 
 the collective spirit of man. "The Lord repented 
 that He had made man, and it grieved Him at His 
 heart." Deduct from this expression all that you 
 will of figure, metaphor, and analogy, yet still it 
 remains a sublime and pathetic expression of one 
 side of the Divine Nature and of the Divine Pro- 
 vidence. Not once only, but often in the course of 
 history, must this Divine repentance have brooded 
 over the world, and the Heart of God been grieved 
 at the failure of the noblest characters, at the waste 
 of the fairest opportunities, at the relapse and re- 
 trogression of a whole nation, a whole generation, 
 a whole race of mankind from the mission which 
 lay before them. 
 
 " My Spirit shall not always strive with man." 
 Such is the result which the sacred writer ascribes 
 to this awful Penitence of God. These great op- 
 portunities for good come once in a man's life, and 
 do not return. They come once in a century, nay, we 
 may almost say, they come once only in an age. 
 The generation, the century, the age itself, may be 
 
 c Gen. vi. 3, 6. The substance of this will be true in what- 
 ever way we interpret the Hebrew word translated " strive."
 
 The Grieving of the Spirit. 1 7 
 
 like that unconscious victim of the Tempter's arts. 
 It may oppose to the Spirit of God no violent re- 
 sistance, nothing but the force of inertness, of in- 
 activity, of incapacity, the vis inertice of human 
 nature. But the effect is the same. " The Spirit is 
 grieved," " vexed d ," thwarted, driven away by the 
 unsympathetic, unrecognising, unconscious opposi- 
 tion, and the opportunity comes no more. These, 
 and such as these, are the sad freaks of human na- 
 ture that make angels weep. This, and such as this, 
 was the prospect which drew tears from the eyes 
 of Him whose Spirit we seek to win. "He, when 
 He beheld the city, wept over it, and said, If thou 
 hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, 
 the things which belong to thy peace ! but now 
 they are hid from thine eyes e ." 
 
 This, then, is the lesson which I wish to leave 
 upon your minds, the sorrow, the profound grief, 
 which strikes here and there, even in places where 
 you least expect it, even into the very Heart of 
 God, even into the very counsels of His Providence, 
 even into the very movements and yearnings of His 
 Spirit, by your undesigned, unconscious, uninten- 
 tional omission, ignorance, forgetfulness, apathy, 
 pre-occupation, prejudice, want of presence of mind, 
 want of forethought, want of care for yourselves or 
 for others. 
 
 The time is coming when you will be sorry for it. 
 You have spread sorrow far and wide already; at last 
 it will reach yourself. : 
 
 d Isa. Ixiii. 10. Luke xix. 42.
 
 1 8 The Grieving of the Spirit. 
 
 Yet I would not so leave the subject altogether. 
 For, if you can grieve the Spirit of God, you can 
 also rejoice the Spirit of God. 
 
 Even that long, sorrowful wail, of which I spoke 
 before in the battles of earthly warfare, is not with- 
 out hope, " it is the cry of those who are not con- 
 tent to yield." And so much more in spiritual war- 
 fare. There is the rush of joy in your own hearts 
 \ and in the courts of Heaven, when you have re- 
 covered your lost game : there is the joy which 
 irradiates the faces of all whom you know and love 
 when the prodigal returns, when the angels wel- 
 come back the penitent sinner f : there is a deep 
 joy which reaches up from man to God, and down 
 from God to man, when the courageous rebuke or 
 the silent look has put to shame the filthy jest 
 or the ill-natured sarcasm ; or when the idle, 
 careless, spendthrift youth shuts his door against 
 intruders, and turns over a new leaf, and makes 
 good use of the time that still remains to him ; 
 or when the blamelessness and guilelessness of 
 youth grows up stedfastly along with the honest, 
 mature, sincere mind of the full-grown man; or 
 when an unexpected sorrow, or trial, or vicissitude 
 of life once more opens the soul to the return- 
 ing Spirit of Holiness ; or when the reading of 
 a new book, or the question of an innocent child, 
 or the inquiry of a simple peasant, tears asunder 
 the veil which kept out the Spirit of Truth. 
 
 Then we see the true happiness of man, then we 
 ' Luke xv. 10, 24.
 
 The G-rieving of the Spirit. 1 9 
 
 perceive the joy of angels ; then we recognise (if 
 we may so say) the happiness and the joy of God. 
 Look at such an one look at that constant, serene, 
 cheerful, open countenance. Listen to his free, 
 hearty, genial laugh. See how the cares, and per- 
 plexities, and doubts of this world pass by him as 
 though they concerned him not. See how from 
 the real griefs and sorrows of earth he draws new 
 strength, new comfort, new life. This is indeed 
 ' 'joy in the Holy Ghost:" this is the joy that 
 transfigures the outward man, because it comes 
 from the joy of the Eternal Spirit within : this is 
 the exuberant, overflowing joy of the Psalmist, 
 when he emerges even out of the depths of crime 
 and sin, " Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye 
 righteous : and shout for joy, all ye that are up- 
 right in heart g ." " Cast me not away from Thy 
 Presence : and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. 
 give me the comfort of Thy help again : and 
 stablish me with Thy Free Spirit V 
 
 * Ps. xxxii. 11. h Ps. li. 11, 12.
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 Sin against % J0Ijr <{r0si 
 
 BY 
 
 T. T..CARTER, M.A., 
 
 RECTOR OF CLEWER.
 
 Cjxe Sin against i\t IMg (Sjxcrst 
 
 ST. MATTHEW xii. 31, 32. 
 
 ""WHEREFORE I SAY UNTO YOU, ALL MANNER OF. SIN AND 
 BLASPHEMY SHALL BE FORGIVEN UNTO MEN : BUT THE 
 BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST SHALL NOT BE 
 FORGIVEN UNTO MEN. AND WHOSOEVER SPEAKETH A 
 WORD AGAINST THE SON OF MAN, IT SHALL BE FOR- 
 GIVEN HIM : BUT WHOSOEVER SPEAKETH AGAINST THE 
 HOLY GHOST, IT SHALL NOT BE FORGIVEN HIM, NEITHER 
 IN THIS WORLD, NEITHER IN THE WORLD TO COME." 
 
 of Satan's chiefest snares is to make the 
 soul distrust the mercies of God. "Where he 
 fails to produce disobedience, he may cause dis- 
 trust, or doubt, or despondency. He may make 
 the soul of the righteous sad, whom God has not 
 made sad, and thus open the way to further tempt- 
 ations, to loss of energy, to distaste for prayer, to 
 fears that dishonour God, to recklessness, or in- 
 difference, destroying effort and hindering the way 
 of perfection, checking the soul's advance where he 
 cannot destroy. Or if such temptations fail, he may 
 work such overpowering sadness, such dark de- 
 spair, as to make religion an intolerable burden, 
 and scare away many who shun the melancholy 
 sight, checking in others the desire of a religious 
 life, though the saddened soul itself may still faith-
 
 4 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 fully cling to its once bright hope more precious 
 even in its present gloom than all that the world 
 can offer. 
 
 There is no text which has been more commonly 
 employed, for the prince of infidelity and wicked- 
 \ ness will clothe himself in armour of light, no text 
 has been more commonly employed as a weapon thus 
 to slay or wound the fearful soul, than this. Few 
 there are who have not at times trembled at it, who 
 have not asked, Is it I ? Some have gone on their 
 way, unable to solve the awful doubt. Some have 
 even died with its terror harrowing their conscience 
 to the very last. How constantly has the guide of 
 souls to seek to give assurance that the text is 
 misapplied, and the fear utterly vain ! 
 
 And yet there must be cases where this text 
 does apply, or it would not be written in the Word 
 of Truth ; it would not have issued out of the lips 
 of Christ. Nor could it be meant to be limited to 
 the Jews, or to that one generation. There is no 
 restriction to any special people in the " whosoever 
 blasphemeth ;" it is a world-wide term that is used 
 to denote the possibly guilty one. And indeed the 
 words imply that this fearful doom could not be ful- 
 filled in its extreme sense at the time it was spoken ; 
 for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, and the full 
 blasphemy against the Holy Ghost could not precede 
 His full manifestation. The words, when spoken, 
 were a warning before the time of its possible fulfil- 
 ment, not a threat of its immediate judgment. Nor, 
 again, can it be limited to the times immediately sue-
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 5 
 
 ceeding the eoming of the Holy Ghost ; for as the 
 dispensation of the Spirit extends to all time, so 
 must the possible sin against Him extend also to 
 all time. It is left on the page of Holy Scripture, 
 as a declaration of terror which cannot pass away, 
 and must be intended to work in the soul a health- 
 ful spirit of holy fear, like the bounds about the 
 Mount, set there lest the fire should break through 
 and consume ; but to be cleared of all doubt, lest it 
 should hinder perfect peace where God has willed 
 peace. And indeed this very text ought to ensure 
 peace. There is no text in the Scriptures so full 
 of love and hope, notwithstanding all its cause of 
 terror ; for while it speaks of the blasphemy which 
 shall not be forgiven, "neither in this world, nor 
 in the world to come," it at the same time says ; 
 "All manner of sin and blasphemy," "All blas- 
 phemies wherewith soever men shall blaspheme a ," 
 however long continued, however profane, saving 
 only this one, " shall be forgiven unto men." 
 
 St. Augustine has said of this text, that " there 
 is not in all the Holy Scriptures found a more 
 important or more difficult question ;" and he con- 
 fesses that he had " always in his discourses to the 
 people avoided the difficulty and embarrassment of 
 it, though he had not been negligent in asking and 
 seeking and knocking ; and only at last, one day, as 
 he listened to this lesson, and heard this gospel 
 read, there was such a beating at his heart that he \ 
 believed it was God's will, that the people should 
 
 a St. Mark iii. 28.
 
 6 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 hear something on this subject by his ministry;" 
 and then he expounded it b . So great is the need 
 then which we have, brethren, of the special aid of 
 God in venturing now on such a subject, which 
 according to the order of this series, not of our own 
 seeking, but of the mind of one set over us, has 
 been appointed for this evening. 
 
 The true interpretation of this momentous text is 
 to be found, not in viewing it by itself alone, but in 
 viewing it in connexion with its context, nay more, 
 in connexion with the entire revelation of God. 
 For this, the one only utterly hopeless state of man, 
 cannot be viewed as a single sin, and so taken sepa- 
 rately, but as a whole and complex state; not a 
 single offence, but the entire antagonism to the 
 entire revelation of mercy ; and therefore as exten- 
 sive in its bearings as the revelation itself, as the 
 undoing of the whole work of Christ, as the coun- 
 teraction of the full predestination of God's love for 
 man. Like some dark orb in space, wholly eclipsing 
 the sun, so this fearful doom traverses the face of 
 Holy Scripture, and as it passes across our vision, 
 shuts out all light and hope and love. It is the 
 state described by St. Paul, which it was " impos- 
 sible to renew unto repentance ;" it is "the sin 
 
 | unto death d " of St. John ; the state " devilish, hav- 
 
 \ ing not the Spirit e " of St. Jude. 
 
 Let us therefore view this text in this its wide 
 
 b St. Aug, Homilies on the New Testament, Serm. xxxi. ; 
 Library of the Fathers, vol. xvi. p. 172. 
 
 Heb. vi. 46. d St. John v. 16. St. Jude 19.
 
 TJie Sin against the Holy Ghost. 7 
 
 bearing. The Holy Scriptures reveal to us the 
 existence of a state of creatures who have finally 
 rejected God, rejected Him deliberately, with a full ^ 
 knowledge of Him whom they have rejected, with 
 a desperate perversion of their being, alienated % 
 from God and from a desire after God, hopelessly 
 for ever. Such is the state of devils, to whom is 
 " reserved the blackness of darkness for ever f ." - 
 They have rejected and blasphemed God in the full 
 light and consciousness of God, with a hopeless 
 obduracy. Such a state may be reproduced in 
 man ; it is the Satanic life ; not like the first fall of ^ 
 man, the yielding to temptation through weakness, 
 
 but the deliberate choice of evil and hardened ha- 
 
 \/ 
 
 tred of all that is of God. 
 
 The possibility of such a state in man appears 
 throughout the Holy Scriptures. There have been 
 three dispensations since the early patriarchal period, 
 and under each dispensation the warning of such 
 a state is given. In the first covenant, the Law, 
 there was no forgiveness for blaspheming the Name 
 of Jehovah. That covenant revealed the unity, 
 the essential essence of Godhead, and therefore to 
 reject this truth was to reject all the light which 
 that covenant gave. There was forgiveness for sin 
 under the first covenant, through the anticipated 
 virtue of the promised atonement; but there was 
 no such forgiveness for this blasphemy. It was the 
 absolute final rejection of all that the covenant con- 
 tained, and of Him Who gave it. " Thou shalt 
 ' St.Jude 13.
 
 8 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever 
 curseth his God shall bear his sin. And he that 
 blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely 
 be put to death, and all the congregation shall 
 certainly stone him : as well the stranger, as he 
 that is born in the land, whosoever blasphemeth 
 the name of the Lord, shall be put to death g ." 
 
 This sentence was but the prophetic type of 
 a yet greater guilt, as the Mosaic covenant was but 
 a type of a better revelation. As the better revela- 
 tion was given, so a yet more awful blasphemy 
 appears. When the revelation of the Son of Man 
 was given, then appeared the possibility of man 
 blaspheming God even when manifested before his 
 eyes in the flesh. Such blasphemy was the special 
 sin of the dispensation of the Son of Man. This 
 sin was indicated by our Lord when He said of the 
 Jewish leaders; " If I had not come and spoken 
 unto them, they had not had sin : but now they have 
 ; no excuse for their sin V It was not meant that 
 they had no sin, in any sense of the term, but that 
 they had not the sin, the sin of rejecting Him, re- 
 jecting the Godhead manifest in the flesh, the sin 
 of obduracy in finally rejecting this fuller revelation 
 of Divine love. 
 
 But yet even this rejection of the Son of Man 
 was but a type, a forerunner of the completed and 
 hopelessly final condemnation of man ; for the rejec- 
 tion of our Lord was pardonable. The dispensation 
 of the Son of Man was not the final dispensation of 
 Levit. xxiv. 15, 16. h St. John xv. 22.
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 9 
 
 mercy, and therefore the doom of its rejection was 
 not final. There was a revelation of God yet to 
 come, a revelation more fully manifesting the Di- 
 vine Nature ; and therefore there was yet to come 
 the complete condemnation which admitted no more 
 hope, no more pleading for sins. The dispensation 
 of the Spirit was to succeed the dispensation of the 
 Son of Man ; and then, and only then, fell the full 
 doom of a judgment, which was to close the door 
 for ever against the possibility of forgiveness, whe- 
 ther " in this world, or in the world to come." This 
 final dispensation was yet to come, when our Lord 
 uttered the words of the text, and therefore the 
 final doom He pronounced, was yet to come *. 
 The Jews of old bordered upon this unpardonable 
 
 1 Some of the Fathers thought that our Lord was here 
 speaking of a sin at the time committed, and expressed in its 
 fulness in the saying of the Pharisees. Thus St. Athanasius : 
 " The Saviour when before He rebuked them for many sins, yet 
 exhorted them to repent ; but when they said, ' He casteth out 
 devils by Beelzebub/ He speaketh of this no longer as a sin, but 
 as blasphemy so great, that on those who dared this, punishment 
 must come, without escape and pardon." Thus, too, St. Jerome : 
 " He who sees My mighty works, and reviles Me who am the 
 Word of God, and says that the works of the Holy Spirit, 
 working by Me, are the works of Beelzebub, hath no forgive- 
 ness ;" quoted by Wordsworth in loc. 
 
 The analogy, however, of the successive dispensations, as well 
 as the contrast involved in the passage of the text between the 
 Son of Man and the Holy Ghost, seem to coincide with the view \ 
 supported by the authority of St. Augustine, and adopted in 
 this sermon, though the completed sin may by implication have 
 been then committed. Perhaps the two apparently different 
 views are thus to be reconciled.
 
 io The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 sin, when they blasphemed the Name of Jehovah. 
 The Jews in our Lord's day bordered upon it, when 
 they blasphemed the Son of Man. "We know not 
 how far either of these two blasphemies involved 
 the individual soul guilty of them in the further 
 guilt which was foretold. Their sin in either case 
 may by implication have reached the full, the com- 
 plete malignity of the extreme and final guilt ; but 
 this final guilt was not as yet the revealed doom, 
 not as yet the penalty of the dispensation then 
 vouchsafed, because as yet the dispensation of the 
 Spirit was not come. The final doom was the re- 
 jection of the final dispensation. 
 
 It is to be carefully noted, that not every blas- 
 phemy against the Holy Ghost is in the text spoken 
 of, but "the blasphemy," thus marking a special 
 and distinctive sin. When the atonement was ac- 
 complished, and the Spirit speaking in St. Peter 
 called the Jews to repentance, there was no limit 
 assigned to the possibility of forgiveness open to 
 them for their sins past. Even those who asciibed 
 our Lord's miracles of healing to an evil spirit, 
 thus blaspheming the Spirit in Him, could be for- 
 given. Even the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory, 
 the seeking to destroy and cast out, as far as this 
 act of extremest guilt availed, the very Spirit 
 Who abode in Him, even this could be forgiven. 
 Only afterwards was to come the completed blas- 
 phemy against the Holy Ghost, which could not be, 
 till the Holy Ghost was revealed; and, therefore, 
 " he that speaketh a word against the Son of Man,
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 ii 
 
 it shall be forgiven him : but whosoever speaketh 
 against the Holy Ghost," the full revelation of the 
 Holy Ghost, " it shall not be forgiven him, neither 
 in this world, neither in the world to come k ." The 
 dispensation of the Holy Ghost was the last dispen- 
 sation of God, and therefore it, and it alone, had 
 the doom of final and hopeless condemnation. 
 
 Nor is it merely because the dispensation of the 
 Spirit is the last, that therefore, to use the language 
 of St. Augustine \ " the persevering hardness of the 
 impenitent heart" against it is hopelessly unpardon- 
 able, but also because of the character of this dis- 
 pensation. More close to the soul, more intimate, 
 more full, more inwardly working in and upon our 
 nature, is the Presence of the Spirit. He is equally 
 the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, and where 
 He is, They Both are. Therefore His Presence is 
 the completion of the Presence combined of the ever- 
 blessed Trinity. It is through the Spirit that Christ 
 enters into us. It is the Spirit Who specially is 
 the Indweller in human hearts. He is the con- 
 vincer of sin. He is the illuminator of the mind. 
 He is within us " the well of water springing up 
 unto everlasting life." He is the consecrator of the 
 Body of Christ, whether in the collective commu- 
 nion of the saints, or in the individual member. His 
 is "the unction" of the Holy One, by which we 
 " know all things." His is the active energy, and 
 
 k St. Matt. xii. 32. 
 
 1 St. Aug., Serm. xxi. ; Library of Fathers, vol. xvi. p. 182, 
 ad fin.
 
 1 2 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 the inward light, and the Divine consolation. He 
 is the revealer of the hidden things of God to the 
 soul. He is the witness that "witnesseth with our 
 spirit." He re-creates, He renews, He is the seal 
 impressing the mind, the being of God. He in- 
 
 (tercedes within us with the voice that cannot be 
 uttered. He is the bond of the living bridal union 
 between the soul and her Lord. 
 
 Therefore to reject the work of the Spirit, " the 
 persevering hardness of an impenitent heart" fully 
 set against Him when fully revealed in the final 
 dispensation, is to reject not only the last reve- 
 lation of Divine love, but also the more inner Pre- 
 
 \ sence with a closer working of a clearer light, a 
 more complete Manifestation. It argues a stronger 
 will for evil, a greater obduracy, a more impene- 
 trable hardness of conscience, a colder heart, a more 
 
 settled determination of a more fixed enmity against 
 God, as well as a wilful closing up of the last door 
 of hope. If all the gracious movements, and in- 
 fluences, and strivings, and convictions, and allure- 
 ments, and terrors, and misgivings, and holy aspi- 
 rations, and tender wooings, and illuminations and 
 suggestions, which with unceasing flow, as " the 
 wind blowing where it listeth," breathe over and 
 within the soul, as an abiding Presence making It- 
 self heard and felt in recesses of being where no 
 human voice can reach, no human contact can ap- 
 proach, if all this avail not, if the regenerate soul 
 is proof throughout the whole period of its pro- 
 bation, and to the very close of its season of trial,
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 13 
 
 against all such impressions ever renewed with un- 
 wearied long-suffering ; or if ever acted on by them 
 has again hardened itself with renewed energy of 
 evil against them ; and this continues to the very 
 moment at which the soul passes within the veil, 
 yea and beyond the veil, within the mysteries of 
 other worlds, abiding still in the same obdurate 
 antagonism to the whole manifestation of God, 
 then hath come " the blasphemy" which knows not, 1 
 and never can know, the sweetness of the forgive- 
 ness of God ; it is sealed with an eternal malignity 
 against all the appealing tenderness of Divine com- 
 passion, or rather is only the more obdurately 
 hardened by the infinite manifestations everywhere 
 abounding of the truth and justice of God, of His 
 mercy and His love. 
 
 In some pictures which represent the Last Supper > 
 the painter has not ventured to depict the form of 
 Judas. He has left an empty seat, on which a gar- 
 ment is flung, and immediately beneath opens a dark 
 chasm, where no form is seen. But the imagination 
 fills up the picture, and follows the departed traitor, 
 as he went forth in haste, when " it was night." 
 Even so along the track of the history of the Church 
 there are some on whom their own generation 
 looked, as men thus hopelessly given over, sealed 
 unto death in an amazing hardihood of hatred against 
 the truth, of personal resistance to God; monu- 
 ments, as far as human eye could discern, of the 
 unpardonable sin. To speak with certainty in such 
 cases who can dare ? How or when God may vouch-
 
 14 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 safe repentance ; what measure of repentance may 
 grow out of secret germs here undiscovered, and be 
 developed in the countless ages of other worlds into 
 a complete reconciliation with God ; what possibi- 
 lity of such an after term of advancement there may 
 be arising out of the least faintest desires of the first 
 workings of good in this world, who can venture to 
 judge ? But we can tell, and this with certainty, who 
 have not committed the unpardonable sin, and who 
 in their present state exhibit no tendencies to such 
 a state. They who grieve with the apprehension 
 
 \ of being thus reprobate, cannot possibly have fallen 
 into it, from the very fact of their grieving; for 
 they manifestly have at heart at least the wish, the 
 desire of penitence, and the unpardonable sin is irre- 
 concilable with even the faintest movement of re- 
 pentance. They, too, who fear lest they should 
 some day fall into this sin, have the surest safeguard 
 against it in this very fear. They too who though 
 continually falling into sin yet continually mourn 
 over it, from the very fact that they thus feel their 
 falling, cannot have sinned with this sin of blas- 
 
 \ phemy ; for they have the consciousness of sin, the 
 absence of which is one of its essential features. Nor 
 can we say even of any one most hardened in his 
 opposition to God, and given over to wilful iniquity, 
 that he has committed the unpardonable sin; for 
 where there is time for repentance, there is hope of 
 repentance ; and who knoweth of any man whether 
 he may not yet turn and repent ? And yet assuredly 
 this terrible doom is not to be dismissed from our
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 15 
 
 minds as though none had cause to fear ; or as 
 though it were not needful to arm ourselves against 
 the possibility of approaching so terrible an end ; 
 for though we may escape the entire guilt, yet we 
 may contract some measure of its malignity we 
 may come within its shadow. There are manifold 
 degrees in evil, and even the least degree of such 
 a Satanic alienation from God, of such a tendency 
 in the soul, is beyond measure terrible to conceive. 
 Unspeakably dreadful is the faintest possibility of 
 any seed of such ungodliness developing more fully 
 in another world, where habits will become more 
 intense, and tendencies will reach their final stage, 
 and the distinctions between good and evil will 
 be seen in their full consummation, either of 
 blessed conformity with God, or of variance witji 
 Him. 
 
 There are grievings of the blessed Spirit, in- 
 finite, far short of the unpardonable sin, which 
 may never arrive at such a development, but yet 
 which may partake of its character, which may in 
 the eyes of God be identified with it, as a fruit 
 of the same evil root, as possible forerunners of it, 
 as types on which the fearful image of blasphemy 
 is stamped, forming a likeness with those, who- 
 soever they may be, who lie under the uttermost 
 curse. We cannot doubt that the terrible warning 
 is given in mercy as well as in judgment, that the 
 elect, the children of His love, may learn to keep 
 far away from the fearful vision, fleeing from even 
 the faintest shadow of such a blackness of dark-
 
 1 6 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 ness, avoiding the very least kindred fellowship 
 with such a state of utter hatred and alienation 
 from God, as one would hasten to extinguish the 
 feeblest spark of fire, when explosive materials are 
 . close at hand, and one's home and all dear to one- 
 I self within reach of its possible ravages. One part 
 of a living faith, one sure sign of a soul right with 
 God, one necessary token of acceptance, is the fear 
 ' of offence, the childlike shrinking from the very 
 i least approach to any utterly forbidden thing. One 
 mark of a true love and of a growing tendency to 
 union with our Lord, is to take earnest heed against 
 every remotest thought or inclination of the soul, 
 which in the sight of God might wear even the 
 faintest resemblance to the hated object. Love 
 would put away from itself in the sight of the 
 loved one every imaginable memorial of a state, 
 which to the Divine Heart must be the one brood- 
 ing sorrow above all sorrow, as it is the one sin 
 which is beyond the influences of the precious 
 Blood, beyond the reach of all sacrifice to atone 
 or reconcile. 
 
 No one, moreover, fell at once into extreme sin. 
 Small as a man's hand, as a speck on the horizon, 
 is the cloud in which a prophet's eye can read the 
 sweeping hurricane, the " sound of the abundance 
 of rain." Not by one heedless indulgence is a 
 whole life of the regenerate extinguished. Not 
 at the beginnings of alienation from God are all 
 the workings of earlier purer faith and love finally 
 stamped out of a soul. Mostly by insidious, in-
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 17 
 
 direct, unconsidered approaches steals on the dark- 
 ening of the holy light. Very slight are the first * 
 gradual weakenings of the bonds of love, which 
 nevertheless tend to final separation. To be keenly 
 sensitive, therefore, to the least suspicion, or fear 
 of the first admittance of aught that bears a trace 
 of the one unpardonable sin, must be a sure mark 
 of the faith of God's elect. 
 
 And there are lesser faults which have been ever 
 regarded as indications of possible approach to this 
 fatal doom of blasphemy. Such, e. g., is the im- 
 pugning, or even making light of, known truth. 
 Even the least truth is the presence of the Spirit 
 in the soul, for God is Truth, and everything lead- 
 ing to the truth is of His precious love, and is' 
 a seed of His eternal life. Such too is an ob- 
 stinate purpose to continue in any grievous sin, 
 when known to be sin; and even a carelessness 3 
 about such continuance partakes of the same cha- 
 racter ; for each conviction of sin is a work of the 
 Holy Ghost, a direct revelation of His presence in - 
 one of His most vital workings in our restoration, 
 as the Eeprover of sin. Such too is the presum- f +. 
 ing on God's mercy, it may be the venturing on 
 a course which He forbids, or the neglect of His 
 warnings, or the wilfulness that would force Him 
 to follow one's own devices rather than obey His, 
 or the obstinacy that would tempt Him to leave one 
 to oneself, disregarding His loving care. Such too. 
 is the untruthful concealment of sin which He has 
 stirred the soul to confess, keeping it back ; or the
 
 1 8 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 loving to dwell on the remembrance of some sin, 
 feeding on its images, thus letting it keep its 
 deadly hold over the heart ; sparing and indulging 
 oneself in the allowed consciousness of what God 
 hates, thus suffered to stand between God and one- 
 self in one's own soul, as the " abomination of de- 
 solation " standing in the holy place ; or even the 
 trifling with it, as though its stain injured us not. 
 Such too is the continued resistance to the plead- 
 ings of the Spirit to advance higher, the clinging 
 to the death of one's old nature, the refusal to 
 accept the gracious stirrings mercifully interposed 
 between oneself and the evil one, the preference of 
 one's own way to His way, the Barabbas choice 
 rather than the choice of Jesus as one's life and 
 aim and desire, the slothful unwillingness to cor- 
 respond with His loving movements within us, to 
 acknowledge His claims over every region of one's 
 soul, the keeping back part of the price of our 
 Saviour's purchase which the Holy Ghost mani- 
 fests Himself on Christ's behalf to claim for Him 
 as His own, thus counteracting the effects of the 
 combined love of the ever-blessed Trinity in their 
 common seeking to transform the lost one, and 
 renew His faded image in His redeemed. Such, 
 again, is the denial of the grace of the Spirit in 
 others, the joining in evil suspicions, unjust judg- 
 ments, reckless condemnations, hasty calumnies or 
 reports, the imputing false motives, questioning the 
 realities of grace, countenancing mere popular dis- 
 likes or disparagements or unreasonable outcries,
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 19 
 
 with loss of reverence and breach of charity, with- 
 out fear, without humility, perhaps to the dishonour 
 of God, or even feeding self-exaltation at the cost of 
 the honour of God, indulging envy at His gifts in 
 others, grieving souls wherein He would shed peace, 
 and hindering His work, which He would accom- 
 plish through His own chosen instruments. Such 
 too is the indifference to lesser sins, as though they 
 mattered not ; the saying to oneself in the soul, 
 " It is a little matter after all ; how can God heed 
 such small things ? Why so much said about such 
 a trifle ? Are there not thousands of greater sins 
 freely indulged around me ? Why molest me in such 
 a slight indulgence ?" And yet if God has in any way 
 pointed out this one thing as evil in His sight ; if 
 God has counted this small thing enough to awaken 
 His efforts to work conviction within thy soul ; if 
 a revelation has been vouchsafed to thee on this 
 very point ; if, too, there may be many other lesser 
 faults as yet undiscerned, and the removal of this 
 is the condition of further light ; if, too, the indul- 
 gence of this small thing causes a relaxation in the 
 whole soul, indisposes it to spiritual acts, enfeebles 
 prayer, destroys energy, opens the way to further 
 incursions of Satan, prevents progress, stays in- 
 creasing illuminations, is gradually forming into 
 a habit, and is all the while grieving the Holy 
 Spirit, how different must be its estimate in the 
 mind of God and thine own, and how much more 
 fatal its consequences than the first heedless thought 
 discerned them to be ! Such too must be the delay
 
 2,0 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 of penitence ; the putting off the necessary change, 
 or act of restitution ; the thinking to find for one- . 
 self the more convenient season, as though the 
 spirit of contrition would wait one's own time, 
 and come when oneself wills ; the keeping up to 
 the last time the sins ever growing of years as 
 they pass, till impenitence become a habit, and 
 procrastination is an allowed state, an established 
 impulse, and the fear of sin is more and more 
 lessened by its continuance. Such too must be 
 a negligence as to the means which the Holy Ghost 
 has ordained for His manifestations, and through 
 which He would come and fulfil His work of love 
 and restoration lack of diligence in prayer ; of the 
 study of prayer as the science of communion with 
 the Unseen ; of careful preparation of heart for 
 holy ordinances ; of reverence in the churches ; 
 of care to understand what one says, and professes, 
 and acts before God; of devoutness in act and 
 tone ; of longings for more as we become prepared 
 for more of the Divine communications, of the 
 sealing of the sacred gifts; the lack of earnest 
 discipline to cleanse the soul through the divinely 
 chosen means by which the Holy Ghost remits 
 sin in His Church ; the omitting the one thing 
 which He suggests to the soul as the possible 
 means of communicating His love ; more especially 
 the delay of seeking Him in the blessed Sacra- 
 ment of the Body and Blood of our Lord; or 
 neglect of careful and constant thanksgiving, as 
 valuing His gifts, as desiring to return back to the
 
 Tfie Sin against the Holy Ghost. 21 
 
 Giver the only offering we have to make, the praises 
 of one who has been blessed, and would bless in 
 return. If the ordained array of Sacramental forms 
 be indeed of God, as the framework for the In- 
 visible to clothe Himself withal, and to take shape, I 
 that He may reveal and impart Himself, then in- 
 deed how must every neglect of these things be 
 a very opposing of the Divine presence and pur- 
 poses within the very centre of our being ! 
 
 But rather instead of leaving it to be a question, 
 whether or no we are denying, or opposing, or 
 shrinking from the movements and revelations of 
 the Spirit of the living God, ought we not, would 
 it not be the true instinct, the only faithful long- , 
 ing of the child-heart of the elect, to seek the ut-; 
 most development of His free Spirit, to be even 
 forward to attain fresh graces, to make ever-in- . 
 creasing advances to cover the multitude of sins 
 past with greater charity, to correspond more and 
 more with the gracious onward movements of love, 
 to watch more and more intently for the gentle 
 accents of the still small voice, to be ever arising at 
 the ever-renewed merciful calls, to long to know 
 more and more, and to love more and more, and to 
 do more and more, and, if it be so, to suffer more 
 and more, to look on each grace already given as 
 only the incitement to advance, the condition of 
 increased faithfulness, to desire with longings more 
 and more unquenchable for ever-growing union 
 with God. If these, His first gifts be so fair, so 
 sweet, so congenial to one's higher aspirations, what
 
 22 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 must be the yet higher manifestations, what must 
 be the promised recompense of faithfulness in the 
 fervour of the first love, what the inner heart of 
 
 love, when its first wooings are so winning, so 
 attractive ! 
 
 Rather, then, let a largeness of desire, with this 
 determination of onward progress, be the sure, the 
 acceptable mode of shunning the unpardonable sin ; 
 rather let a loving, earnest stretching forward be 
 the way of securing oneself from the terrible doom, 
 and not the attempt to stay oneself up from back- 
 ward fallings; rather the reaching out to things 
 that are before, than the vain hope of security in 
 
 lingering on the debatable borders of what is law- 
 ; ful. Rather labour and be diligent, that wherever 
 
 the soul feels itself most weak, there to strengthen 
 it; whatever graces are the most feeble and fail- 
 ing, those be most sure to increase ; and pray that 
 \ the love of sanctity may grow with the desires 
 of a deepening contrition, and wherever in times 
 past one has failed, there to seek the implanting 
 of the needed graces, thus making one's very faults 
 the occasions of giving greater glory to our God. 
 Rather let the onward movement of the rege- 
 nerate spirit be one of hopeful aspiration, than 
 of fear and trembling, the waiting with the ever- 
 ready response for the ever-ready manifestation 
 of love passing all understanding, the wondrous 
 meeting of the Spirit with our spirit in the mu- 
 tual consciousness of a common life, and responsive 
 longings after a perfected union. And this Eternal
 
 The Sin against the Holy Ghost. 23 
 
 Voice ceases not to speak in our hearts. " The 
 Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that 
 heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst 
 come. And whosoever will, let him take the water 
 of life freely m ." 
 
 m Eev. xxii. 17.
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON.
 
 pirit r0nfoinnng 0f 
 
 MARK vi. 16. 
 " Bur WHEN HEROD HEARD THEREOF, HE SAID, IT is JOHN, 
 
 WHOM I BEHEADED : HE IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD." 
 
 CONSCIENCE has two offices it tells us to do 
 ^ what is right, it reminds us that we have done 
 what is wrong. In both the Holy Spirit of God 
 also works. The natural conscience performs both ^ 
 offices in a degree, but very imperfectly; the en- 
 lightened Christian conscience performs both more > 
 perfectly. I am to speak now especially of the 
 conviction of sin wrought not by the natural con- 
 science, but by grace. The two are interwoven, yet 
 have they great differences. What is the know- 
 ledge of our duty suggested by the natural con- 
 science compared with that clear intimation of the 
 right which is revealed to the enlightened Chris- 
 tian conscience? And so also, what are those uneasy 
 feelings on account of mistakes, and faults, and even 
 crimes, which the natural conscience suggests, com- 
 pared with the deep contrition of the Christian 
 heart ? Now we have before us in the text a wicked 
 worldly man, whose natural conscience was stirred 
 and no wonder, for he had committed a murder 
 a foul deliberate murder; not the less detestable 
 because it was perpetrated with a certain pretence
 
 4 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 of principle ; at least such principle as wicked 
 worldly men acknowledge, more respectful to the 
 opinions of those about them, than to any fixed 
 rules of right. We read "for his oath's sake" 
 partly, but more really "for their sakes which sat 
 about him," Herod consented to the petition of 
 Herodias' daughter, and ordered the executioner 
 to do his work. Now this Herod Antipas, though, 
 like most of the others who bore his name, he was, 
 as we all know, a very bad man, and did many bad 
 things, living in adultery or incest with his brother 
 Philip's wife, still, like other bad men, he was 
 not altogether bad, he had natural good feelings ; 
 besides, he had received sound religious instruction 
 as a Jew, so that he could not fail to know much 
 as to what was right, neither could he fail to have 
 some uneasy feelings if he did what was wrong. 
 The narrative tells us he respected the Baptist, be- 
 cause " he was a just man and an holy, and observed 
 him ; and when he heard him, he did many things, 
 and heard him gladly a ." This seems a hopeful ac- 
 count of Herod, but we know how it all ended. He 
 was ready to do many things, except indeed to give 
 up his cherished sin ; he was entangled with Hero- 
 dias, and had fallen under her dominion, and though 
 he had a great respect for the Baptist, and was un- 
 easy and afraid under his warnings, he could not 
 make up his mind to free himself and act as his 
 conscience, roused by John, told him that he ought. 
 Lamentable example, illustrated by the experience 
 Mark vi. 20.
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 5 
 
 of thousands who have listened to the seductions of 
 this class of sins ! How well is their effect described 
 by Solomon : " With her much fair speech she 
 caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips 
 she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, 
 as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the 
 correction of the stocks ; till a dart strike through 
 his liver ; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and know- 
 eth not that it is for his life. Hearken unto me 
 now therefore, ye children, and attend to the 
 words of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline 
 to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she 
 hath cast down many wounded : yea, many strong 
 men have been slain by her. Her house is the way 
 to hell, going down to the chambers of death V 
 As is always the case, trifling with conscience he 
 now became worse instead of better. Nothing can 
 be .more despicable than the picture of his weakness, 
 working on which this bad woman and her daughter 
 persuaded him to slay the man whom he revered as 
 good and holy, who had found the way to touch his 
 conscience, whom he dared not look in the face un- 
 moved, but whom he sent an executioner to deal 
 with secretly in the prison. 
 
 Oh wretchedness of weak bad men ! What avail 
 their good impressions, their good resolutions, or 
 even their good deeds. " He heard him, and did 
 many things," but it all ended in the murder of 
 him whom God had sent to be His good angel. 
 What a lesson for the worldly ! Half measures 
 b Prov. vii. 2127.
 
 6 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 will not avail half repentance, half amendment. 
 After all the seeming good which John had wrought 
 in him, the last state of this wretched man was 
 worse than the first. No wonder that he could not 
 forget what he had done ; no wonder that his natural 
 conscience was sensitively uneasy ; no wonder that, 
 as it has been with so many other sinners, he was 
 tortured not only by pangs of self-condemnation, but 
 by some strange superstitious dread. John's dis- 
 ciples had come with pious care, and taken the 
 mangled trunk and laid it in a tomb ; but Herod's 
 conscience whispered that the blood so unrighteously 
 poured forth called to Heaven against him, and that 
 the tomb could not restrain the murdered prophet's 
 power of vengeance. We read in the text, when 
 afterwards he heard of Jesus, and the great things 
 He did, and all were speculating who it could be 
 who wielded so great a heavenly power, Herod said, 
 " It is John, whom I beheaded : he is risen from 
 the dead." 
 
 It fared badly with Herod in worldly matters from 
 this time forward, and his misfortunes had a direct 
 connexion with his sin. His story is given in all 
 text-books. How the father of his first wife, whom 
 he had deserted for Herodias, eager to avenge the 
 insult offered to his daughter, attacked him and 
 totally destroyed his army ; how he was for a time 
 rescued from ruin by the interposition of the Em- 
 peror, but afterwards, when new difficulties stood 
 in his way, went to Rome, where court favour soon 
 turned against him, so that both he and Herodias
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 7 
 
 were banished to the distant West, where he died 
 unhonoured. No doubt uprightness is the best 
 policy, even in this life ; and though it is but pro- 
 bable that Herod's conscience, drugged by indul- 
 gence, soon ceased to rebuke him for the sinfulness 
 of what he had done, no doubt he often thought 
 bitterly of its f&jly, and allowed to himself, and com- 
 plained we may believe reproachfully to Herodias, 
 that the one notorious false step of his life had been 
 his unlawfully and wickedly persisting in her society 
 in spite of all the Baptist's warnings. Truly those 
 who live recklessly in the world find before life is 
 over that they have very many causes of bitter 
 self-reproach even if they can drug and stupify 
 their consciences. 
 
 My friends, how many an old man, now sonred 
 in spirit, is taking himself to task with bitter but 
 unavailing reproaches for a youth misspent, for 
 evil habits or dangerous friendships contracted in 
 college days, which have hung like a chain around 
 him, and ever prevented his rising, as his talents 
 and opportunities might fairly have entitled him to 
 expect. For one who extricates himself from such 
 meshes hundreds plunge on for ever hopelessly in- 
 volved. Be wise while it is time. Flee the early 
 contagion and the early bondage. Even in this 
 world it will be better. Who can tell how much 
 better when we come to the inevitable death-bed ? 
 
 But to return. Conscience, we have said, has two 
 offices. We read that the Holy Spirit convinces 
 
 c Johu xvi. 8.
 
 8 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. The 
 natural conscience in its degree also works this three- 
 fold conviction ; it lets men know what is wrong, 
 convincing them of sin; and what is right, con- 
 vincing them of righteousness ; and if they follow 
 what is wrong it stirs within them some uneasy 
 forebodings that they must one day suffer, thus 
 convincing them of judgment. The first and the 
 last of these offices of the natural conscience may 
 be classed together : they have at least an inti- 
 mate connexion. The same uneasy feeling which 
 reminds a man of his sin whispers to him that judg- 
 ment will follow, and indeed by the very pain it 
 inflicts is a foretaste of that judgment. Conviction 
 of sin and of judgment, then, are closely allied. 
 Nay, if, as we know it has been urged, the most 
 real terrors of the day of judgment are to spring 
 from the memory being preternaturally stirred sud- 
 denly to remember and clearly see every particular 
 of every sin of the whole life, however long it may 
 have lain buried in forgetfulness, no doubt the sharp 
 pangs which such stirring of the memory must in- 
 flict would be a fiery trial. Like that strange phe- 
 nomenon told us by men who have been rescued 
 from drowning, who say that when sensation ceases 
 and death is imminent the soul in a dreamlike state 
 wanders back, in a few seconds perhaps through 
 many years, and sees familiar faces and hears voices 
 long since forgotten, so it may be (for all we 
 know) with death in every form ; for no one comes 
 back from a deathbed and tells us what are the
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 9 
 
 soul's experiences in the act of dying. Certainly 
 
 '*^ j** 
 
 in many cases of sickness which are apparently 
 leading to death, the memory is strangely stirrad, * 
 and the spectres of old forgotten sins come back to - 
 gibe at us, when we had hoped they were laid for 
 ever. All know how even at other times of no 
 intense excitement, unexpectedly and inexplicably, 
 as it were by accident, some strange association of 
 sight or sound will recall a bitter memory, and 
 a pang will pierce the heart, which not only re- 
 minds us of sin but punishes us for its commission. 
 Bad men, I suppose, the worse they become, are 
 less and less troubled with any such uneasy feel- * 
 ings, till it comes to the last. Then, indeed, there 
 is reason to believe that the drugged conscience 
 awakes from its torpor, and the poignant recollec- > 
 tion of wicked deeds, at last seen to have been as 
 foolish as they are wicked, becomes itself a hell. 
 
 God has given to us, then, the natural conscience, 
 (I say not here how dependent, like every other 
 faculty of mind or body, on favourable circum- 
 stances conducing to its development,) but God 
 has given us the natural conscience to make wicked- 
 ness have its pain, its secret pain in itself, quite 
 irrespective of any superadded penal consequences. 
 God intends this natural conscience to be a help at 
 first, warning us against sin ; and though we may 
 trifle with it, and send it to sleep, and think that 
 it is dead, it will awake at last either when we are 
 dying or, more usually, after death and vindicate \A 
 its right as the commissioned voice of God within
 
 i o The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 us, to cause His sentence against wickedness to 
 I ring in our ears, repeating ever in sounds which no 
 obtuseness can mistake, 'Be sure, sinner, that 
 thy sin will find thee, has found thee out.' 
 
 Now if God has provided this natural protest 
 against sin by the ordinary laws of conscience to be 
 a help to all men, all men, I mean, who are not 
 idiots or sunk in some unnaturally degraded, savage 
 state, if God, I say, has provided this natural 
 protest against sin, so when, through His great 
 mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ, He sent the Holy 
 Spirit to give us supernatural help, He ordained 
 
 I that the Spirit, convincing us of sin, should work, 
 as it were, through the natural organs. The Chris- 
 tian conscience, enlightened, quickened by the Holy 
 
 \ Ghost, is the conscience still ; and the voice of God 
 within Christians, speaking supernaturally, preserves 
 the analogy of its natural utterances and effects. 
 Let no man, then, think lightly of the natural con- 
 
 \ science, disparaging it because of grace, for grace 
 acts through it. Indeed, this seems to be a charac- 
 teristic of all the operations of the Holy Spirit, that 
 they are not manifested in some way unknown till 
 the day of Pentecost, or never heard of at best 
 beyond the circle of God's chosen people. Eather 
 the Holy Spirit of God, in all His developments, 
 works through natural organs, natural faculties, 
 natural affections. He uses while He quickens, 
 exalts, and purifies them. Eead in the 12th chap- 
 ter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians the list 
 of the spiritual gifts : are they not all heavenly
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 1 1 
 
 manifestations of powers which in some low imper- 
 fect way could be exercised, often with much diffi- 
 culty, and weakness, and many efforts, and after all 
 most imperfectly, but still which could be exercised 
 in some sort of way by man naturally? Natural 
 eloquence or the utterances of natural wisdom trans- 
 formed by the fire from off the altar touching the / 
 lips with prophetic power ; gifts of healing taking 
 the place of the slow processes of the physician's ) 
 art ; natural longings and natural amiable feelings 
 elevated into Christian graces of faith and love. 
 And so when the Holy Spirit wakens the Divine 
 voice within the soul, to guard it against sin, He 
 speaks through the natural conscience, and does its | 
 work, but with a constraining force and efficacy 
 which tells of a Divine power directly intervening. 
 The Christian conscience in its office as convincing 
 of sin, is then like the natural conscience, but it is 
 a far more real protest, a protest more direct from i 
 God it makes itself heard with His Almighty 
 power. 
 
 True that there is a sort of intermediate state 
 of the conscience, between the natural and the fully 
 enlightened. The natural conscience in some men, 
 from the very condition of their birth, is very nearly { 
 akin to the Christian conscience. The blessing of 
 Christian parents descends in this respect on their . 
 children. It is at once the privilege and the trial 
 of those who have received an early Christian train- 
 ing, that they cannot, for some years at least, shut 
 their ears to the echoes of the Divine voice. They
 
 T 2 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 will succeed at last to their ruin if they persevere 
 in resistance : but it is long before God gives them 
 up, and while His warning is urgent to be heard 
 they suffer at times very severely. Voices heard in 
 childhood home scenes a mother's or a sister's 
 love how graciously are all softer feelings of our 
 common humanity used by God in His dealings 
 with the children of Christians, that He may check 
 the excesses of thoughtless youth, while, in spite 
 of natural conscience, it is hurrying to reckless and 
 hopeless manhood. Let parents take courage to 
 persevere in all efforts for the Christian training 
 of their children, when they think of the power 
 God thus gives to His appeals. A young man 
 brought up in a Christian home cannot be happy 
 in sin; and this is something. Truly the uneasi- 
 ness will in time wear away, and the upbraiding 
 memories cease to vex him, if he doggedly resists : 
 but happy he whom they compel to listen, in 
 whom they work conviction, and at last stedfast 
 repentance, so that this weak, natural, half-Chris- 
 tian conscience becomes wholly Christian. 
 
 Then blessed be God in Jesus Christ, it does not, 
 like the natural conscience, speak of judgment only, 
 but of judgment and mercy united in Jesus Christ. 
 The enlightened Christian conscience is very sensl- 
 tive as to sins committed ; it pains us and grieves 
 us with the memory of them ; it points to the com- 
 ing judgment as a proof of sin's heinousness ; but 
 then it points also to that merciful arrangement 
 whereby the Saviour is the judge, and tells the
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 13 
 
 wounded heart where, in Him, to find the balm 
 of forgiveness. 
 
 A few words will set forth this work of the 
 Spirit. May it be traceable in our own hearts and 
 lives, and may our feelings as to sin be such as 
 God the Holy Spirit calls up through the Christian 
 conscience ! A man then, say, has been brought up 
 (as all of us have) more or less as a Christian ; bap- 
 tized in infancy, instructed in childhood, no novice 
 as he passes from boyhood into manhood as to what 
 God commands and Christ has done, and the helps 
 afforded to a Christian life. But then, perhaps, the 
 whole matter has been to him a sort of formality, 
 words by rote. It is curious to read in the old 
 philosopher how people in his day repeated, with- 
 out any real thought of their meaning, the maxims \ 
 of the poets, just as Christians now have texts and 
 extracts from formularies interwoven in their ordi- I 
 nary discourse, but have other maxims in their , 
 hearts. Ushered into life in the world or into that 
 dangerous lesser world which is so full of tempta- f 
 tions here in this frame of mind, with strong pas- 
 sions and weak convictions, according to his peculiar ? 
 temperament the man either falls into notorious sin, 
 or seeking as his heaven those objects which are 
 best obtained by worldly respectability, exercises i 
 a worldly self-control, and grows up a respectable 
 man, however irreligious. Where is the conscience 
 in such a man? It is wonderful how in the world, 
 and even here, a man may preserve his self-respect 
 and the good opinion of others in spite of grievous
 
 14 The Spirit convincing of Sin. 
 
 sins. The very society he lives in being respect- 
 able, the very training and restraints to which he 
 is subjected being more or less Christian, tends to 
 
 ' quiet and deaden conscience. No doubt, as the 
 months pass, openly or secretly he does many things 
 of which conscience ought to be ashamed, but it is 
 sleeping. What is the one thing we desire for such 
 a man if he is to have spiritual life? That God 
 
 .would startle him, though it be by some sharp judg- 
 ment; that the Holy Ghost, taking his conscience 
 fully into His own keeping, would make it sensi- 
 
 K tive, would make it understand that many things 
 
 . are sins which before it thought lightly of; that 
 thus convincing him of sin, the Spirit of God may 
 shake him out of his easy, careless life, make him 
 see the purity of God and the sinfulness of man in 
 their true antagonism ; and thus leading him to be 
 disquieted and to distrust himself, may bring him 
 to the Saviour for pardon and strength. 
 
 There is nothing more needful for every one of 
 us than that we may see sin, all sin, and especially 
 the sin we most cherish, in its true colours ; dislike 
 
 p 
 
 it ; feel uneasy from the thought of its power over 
 us ; strive to be free from it ; and thus turn in 
 prayer and with good resolutions to Him who alone 
 can make us free. To convince us of sin is the 
 Holy Spirit's office. Lord, send us Thy Holy 
 Spirit thus to work in us ! 
 
 And thus convinced of our sin, how are we 
 saved from despair? Here, I repeat, is one great 
 difference between the natural and the enlightened
 
 The Spirit convincing of Sin. i $ 
 
 Christian conscience. The natural conscience the 
 more active it becomes renders us the more des- t \ 
 perate ; the Christian conscience does not convince 
 us of sin without leading us to the sinner's Friend. 
 Herod's conscience was like that of Judas. Both ,t 
 these men thought of their sin. The one appears, 
 notwithstanding all his alarms, to have succeeded 
 in silencing conscience through life; but despair 
 came at last. The other could not silence it even 
 for a few days, and so in despair before the week 
 was ended he had hanged himself. But the Chris- 
 tian conscience has its likeness in David. The 
 Psalmist, overwhelmed by his guilt, bitterly la- 
 mented it day by day, as his Psalms prove; he ' 
 confessed his sin, and God put it away from him. 
 And Peter, within an hour of his fall, was weeping 
 bitterly, not from the motive of mere human shame 
 when the Lord's eye was turned on him, but be- 
 cause he had scarcely committed his sin before he ' 
 abhorred it. As soon as an opportunity offered, he 
 was amongst the very first to hurry to his Saviour. 
 Lord, convince us of sin ; but may the convic- 
 tion work in us a stedfast desire to keep near to 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, the sinner's Friend !
 
 SERMON VIII 
 Spirit i 
 
 BY 
 
 J. R. WOODFORD, M.A., 
 
 VICAR OF KEMPSFORD.
 
 irit itrfmtbtng. 
 
 ROMANS viii. 27. 
 
 "BECAUSE HE MAKETH INTERCESSION FOR THE SAINTS 
 ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GoD." 
 
 TT is worth while, when we are constrained by 
 - what is passing around us, to review all the 
 foundations upon which our faith rests, to walk 
 about Sion and go round about her, telling the 
 towers thereof, to observe in how remarkable a de- 
 gree the fundamental revelations of Scripture ac- 
 count for some of the most remarkable dispensations 
 of God's Providence, and the most subtle pheno- 
 mena of our moral being. 
 
 For example, what a marvellous mixture of 
 light and darkness, nobility and meanness, igno- 
 rance and knowledge, is the soul of man. How 
 strangely are our vices the distortion of good ra- 
 ther than independent creations of evil. Take the 
 lust of power. It has given birth to the foulest 
 crimes, it has made the earth a desolation; yet 
 ambition has in it, we instinctively feel, an element 
 of greatness. Take again the desire of reputation. 
 It can shew itself in the most childish exhibition 
 of eccentricities. Yet to wish to live in the hearts 
 and on the lips of mankind, who, while thoroughly
 
 4 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 aware of what unprincipled actions and unhallowed 
 words this craving after honour has been the source, 
 does not recognise in it a passion possessing much 
 of that which is divine ? And the Scripture doctrine 
 of an original creation in uprightness, and a subse- 
 quent fall, furnishes at once the key which unlocks 
 these secrets of our moral being ? The lust of do- 
 minion, what is this but the form which the lord- 
 ship over creation assigned to the first man, as- 
 sumes in a spoiled and disorganized being? The 
 sense of shame, even its falsest application, what 
 is it but the relic of that high nature which was 
 fashioned for ineffable communion with the Lord 
 God Himself? 
 
 So, once more, when we look inwards, we discern 
 the operation in our souls of three distinct powers. 
 There is an influence dark, subtle, unwearied, ever 
 leading us to make the lower passions of our nature 
 the rule of action; and there is a contrary influ- 
 ence, whispering to us of a better way, of loftier 
 destinies, of a truer happiness ; of the glory and the 
 bliss of a victory over self; and above these contend- 
 ing forces, holding the balance between them, the 
 sole arbiter of the contest sits enthroned in myste- 
 rious sovereignty, the Will of the individual Man. 
 
 And, again, we sayfUow exactly does the Scrip- 
 ture teaching correspond with our personal ex- 
 perience. No better explanation, none which so 
 commends itself to the general conscience of hu>- 
 manity, has ever been offered of the perpetual strife 
 between truth and error, light and darkness in man,
 
 The Spirit interceding. 5 
 
 than that which the Bible gives of the source of 
 the eternal war, the agency of a good Spirit in 
 whom all that is holy is gathered up, and of an 
 evil spirit in whom all evil is concentrated ; and, 
 co-existing with these, the thorough freedom of the 
 human will. 
 
 It is on the work of one of these Powers that we 
 have to fix our thoughts to-night. We are to speak 
 of the " Spirit interceding." It is a subject which 
 will lead us to touch upon some of the profoundest 
 sensibilities of the soul of man : but here too will 
 be found what we have mentioned by way of intro- 
 duction the thorough accordance of the doctrines 
 of Revelation with the instincts and cravings of our 
 own moral nature. St. Paul, in the eighth chapter 
 of his Epistle to the Romans, alludes to many of 
 the operations of the Holy Ghost. He describes \ 
 -Sim as the Spirit of adoption, as the Spirit which \ 
 witnesses conjointly with the human spirit as to 
 our religious state, as the Helper of our infirmities. 
 And then he passes on to another work of the same 
 Divine agent, a work which at first sight does not 
 seem so properly to be assigned to Him as to the 
 second Person in the Trinity, " the Spirit itself 
 maketh intercession for us." And in the text " He 
 maketh intercession for the saints according to the 
 will of God." 
 
 We have to examine into the nature, object, and 
 manner of the intercession of God the Holy Spirit. 
 
 I. And first let us consider what the intercession 
 of the Spirit is not.
 
 6 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 (a.) Now, the great difficulty which hangs about 
 the whole subject relates to the Person of the blessed 
 Trinity, to whom the intercessory act is ascribed 
 by the Apostle. We are accustomed to speak of 
 Christ as our Mediator and Intercessor. "He," 
 it is said, " ever liveth to make intercession for us." 
 Again, "It is Christ that died, yea rather that is 
 risen again, Who is even at the right hand of God, 
 Who also maketh intercession for us." And so dis- 
 tinctly and pre-eminently is this His work, that it 
 was repeatedly prefigured in the ancient dispensa- 
 tion. The intercession of the Spirit must not then 
 be understood in any such way as would trench 
 upon the office of Christ as our eternal High Priest 
 and Intercessor. There is, indeed, perfect unity of 
 action between the second and third Persons in the 
 Trinity. The Holy Ghost dwells within us as the 
 Spirit of Christ. So complete is the unity that it 
 is written of Christ, "The Lord is that Spirit." 
 \ Yet He is ever described as a distinct independent 
 Agent. All His offices have a direct relation to 
 Christ, but they are never confounded with those 
 of Christ. " He," says our Lord, " shall receive of 
 Mine." "He shall bring all things to your remem- 
 brance, whatsoever I have said. Whatsoever He 
 shall hear, that shall He speak." All these passages 
 indicate distinct action. And so of intercession. 
 The Intercession of Christ is, if we may so say, a 
 local work, carried on in one spot ; viz. the highest 
 Heaven. It consists (1) in the receiving the prayers 
 of men below, and wafting them onward to the
 
 The Spirit interceding. j 
 
 Father. Hence the force of that cry in the Gloria 
 in Excelsis, " Thou that takest away the sins of the 
 world, receive our prayer," as though He, our 
 Aaron, must first take into His hands the offering 
 of worship which is to be laid before the mercy- 
 seat. It consists (2) in a perpetual pleading for 
 us before the Throne His own death and Passion. 
 Therefore did He convey into Heaven His own hu- 
 man Body, bearing still the marks of the nails, and 
 the spear, that in the house not made with hands 
 there might be continued, as in the earthly temple, 
 a perpetual remembrance of His death. Thus, as 
 our Intercessor, Christ not only receives our peti- 
 tions, so that aspirations in themselves too feeble to 
 enter into God's ear, are reiterated by Him, and 
 gifted with an irresistible force by His advocacy, 
 bu,t that as He prayed for His disciples on earth so 
 still in heaven, by His wounded though glorified 
 Body, He urges the cause of His people. Now, the 
 intercession of the Holy Spirit is distinct from this. 
 There seem to be two great characteristics of the 
 work of the Holy Ghost in the Church ; the first, 
 that it is sutjjective rather than objective, the se- 
 cond, that its -scene is not heaven but earth. Christ 
 departed from the earth in order that the Spirit 
 might descend and abide with us; communicating 
 unto and impressing upon the soul, to its renewal 
 and sanctification, that which Christ had wrought. 
 We look accordingly for the intercession of the 
 Spirit not in the Holy of Holies above, not in the 
 depths of the light inaccessible, not amid the burn-
 
 8 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 ing ranks of angels and archangels, but here, in 
 the tabernacle of the human soul, amid the cloud 
 and darkness of a half- illumined nature, amongst 
 the infirmities and errors of a marred and shattered 
 creation. 
 
 (b.) But further, the intercession of the Divine 
 Spirit may not be confounded with the praying of 
 the human spirit. To consider His prayers for the 
 saints, which St. Paul dwells on, as the same thing 
 as their prayers for themselves, as though the plead- 
 ing of the Spirit for men were only a theological 
 way of expressing men's pleadings for themselves, 
 would be to take away all force from the Apostle's 
 language. It may indeed be very difficult when 
 we have determined the place of the Spirit's inter- 
 cessions to be in the soul of man, to draw the line 
 clear between His action and the soul's action. But 
 this is only one example of that great difficulty 
 which meets us at every step of our search into the 
 things of God, the difficulty of separating the divine 
 and human element where both co-exist. See how 
 this runs through every Christian mystery. The 
 union of the two Natures in the Person of Christ, 
 how impossible is it for us to reconcile and explain 
 the action of each nature, whole and perfect as we 
 believe it to be ; to describe how He, who knew all 
 things, could grow in knowledge; how He, who 
 was one with the Father, could continue all night 
 in prayer to the Father; how He, to whom the 
 future was as the present, could hope or fear. In 
 the life of our Blessed Lord the twofold elements of
 
 The Spirit interceding. 9 
 
 His mysterious personality are continually coming 
 up, defying our reason to lay bare this secret of- 
 the Lord. 
 
 It is the same with the doctrine of Sacraments, 
 Here, too, there is a union of the divine and human, 
 the natural and the spiritual. Yet the manner of 
 the union distances all the strivings of our intellect 
 to sift and define. And is it not precisely the same 
 difficulty which besets us in regard to the question 
 of inspiration ? The work of the Spirit and the 
 work of man in the compilation of Scripture ; where 
 the influence of the Divine agent ends and that of 
 the human begins ; the way in which the one oper- 
 ated upon the other all these are but the transfer 
 to the subject of inspiration of the self-same inex- 
 plicable questions which exercised the mind of the 
 Church in earlier times with reference to the Incar- 
 nation of Christ and Sacramental grace. 
 
 And we must be prepared, therefore, for similar 
 difficulties, when we have to deal with the conjoint 
 work of the Spirit of God and the spirit of man. 
 That the natural conscience is quickened and en- 
 lightened by the Holy Ghost may be readily con- 
 ceived ; but it is hard to penetrate further into that 
 deep where He worketh, so as to separate the steps 
 of that united operation. Similarly with the In- 
 tercession of the Spirit. It is within the temple of 
 the soul that this ineffable pleading of the Holy 
 One is carried on. It is a cry out of the human 
 heart, from Him that sitteth co-equal with the 
 Father and the Son upon the throne; a cry from
 
 
 i o The Spirit interceding. 
 
 the Eternal Life-giver ; a real Intercession for the 
 saints ; by no means to be explained away as 
 though it were the same thing as the natural 
 utterance of the human soul. Distinct in origin, 
 although blending (He alone knoweth how) with 
 the voice of the creature; the one heavenly, the 
 other of the earth ; the one human, the other 
 divine; the interceding of the Spirit is no mere 
 poetical expression to denote the sinner's own 
 
 | prayers for himself, but a true and proper utter- 
 
 jance of the Holy One. 
 
 We exclude, therefore, from the notion of the 
 Spirit interceding any such solemn interpellation 
 and exposition of human need before the Everlast- 
 ing Throne such as forms the special work of Christ 
 Jesus. We exclude also such a conception of it as 
 would deprive it of all reality. How in the depths 
 of our moral being, amid the broken fragments of 
 that once sinless sanctuary, the Lord of Life and 
 the soul unite in the uplifting of one voice of sup- 
 plication, belongeth to those hidden things which 
 we may never fathom ; nevertheless, we are not to 
 be deterred in this, any more than in other subjects, 
 by the confessed difficulty of harmonizing the human 
 and the divine, from putting aside any explanation 
 which would not leave it a vital reality, the inter- 
 cession of the Spirit for the saints according to the 
 will of God. 
 
 II. But now we pass on to consider the positive 
 side of the question. What is that intercession 
 wherewith the Spirit of God intercedeth for us out
 
 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 ii 
 
 of the ark of our own souls, yet with a real and 
 personal action of His own? There is a parallel 
 passage referring to the defence which the Apo- 
 stles would have to make from time to time, 
 which may help us at this point. "When they 
 shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what 
 ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that 
 same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye 
 that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which 
 speaketh in you." We are not to understand the 
 passage as though our Lord encouraged them to be 
 careless and idle in preparing themselves for giving 
 an answer as to the hope that was in them ; He 
 does not exhort them to take no pains about their 
 own defence ; but only not to be over-disturbed and 
 anxious as to their qualifications for the task, just 
 as on another occasion he warns them not to be 
 over-careful about to-morrow. He does not mean 
 that there should be given them instantaneously 
 such a degree of supernatural aid as would render 
 useless all previous human diligence ; but that they 
 were to prepare themselves calmly and collectedly 
 for the great controversy with Heathen and Jew, 
 believing that in the hour of trial One would be 
 on their side whom their enemies knew not, prompt- 
 ing their thoughts, and elevating their intellect, 
 and lending power to their speech : and this so 
 completely that their words would be transformed 
 in their passage from their lips into the words of 
 One mightier than they. And exactly as the Eternal 
 Spirit co-operated with the Apostles when called on
 
 iprra/f* -*- v^y 
 
 \ \ 
 
 2 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 for their defence before rulers and kings, does He 
 act with our hearts in the preparation and out- 
 
 I pouring of that full and earnest prayer which finds 
 
 * its way upward into God's ears. The faint and 
 ignorant cry of the human soul, dead in trespasses 
 and sins, desiring to pray, yet, like the disciples, 
 requiring to be taught, He, the indwelling Spirit, 
 knowing far better than we know our wants, know- 
 ing also the very mind of God, adopts, and purifies, 
 and deepens; our imperfect petitions are trans- 
 figured by His power so as to become as much His 
 as ours. They reach not heaven as they leave our 
 
 1 hearts, but as they are quickened and rendered 
 
 \ complete by Him. 
 
 There are two ways in which the Divine Spirit 
 thus deals with our prayers, so marvellously chang- 
 ing them as that they become His own. 
 
 (a.) First, He corrects what is amiss in the breath- 
 ings of the soul in which He dwells. Theologians 
 have stated a variety of ways in which a sincere 
 Christian, a saint as St. Paul calls him in the text, 
 may unwittingly err in his prayers : if he desires 
 any temporal good which may be injurious to his 
 spiritual welfare ; if, on the other hand, he prays as 
 the Apostle prayed, to be rid of any thorn in the 
 flesh, any bodily infirmity which is really essential 
 to his soul's health; if he covets any high grace 
 out of mere worldly emulation, as the sons of 
 Zebedee besought a true honour but from an un- 
 worthy motive; if he craves what is wrong from 
 a sincere but mistaken zeal; if he beseeches the
 
 The Spirit interceding. 13 
 
 immediate gift of what .would be more profitably / 
 deferred; if he seeks any condition of life unsuited 
 to his peculiar character. Now these, you will 
 observe, are all defects which may pertain to the 
 prayers of an honest and loyal heart. And what is 
 the action of the Holy Ghost upon them ? 'Why, 
 that He, residing in, and acting with, the regene- 
 rate soul, knowing our necessities before we ask, 
 and our ignorance in asking, illumines the soul as 
 to what its want is, or pleads for that true need 
 which lies at the root of every prayer, so that under 
 His gracious influence our prayers are accepted as 
 the desire of our hearts, not for the false good which 
 we have ignorantly implored, but for the real good 
 which we know not. The human spirit asks for 
 silver, and the Divine Intercessor pleads that the 
 prayer be answered with gold. This is the meaning 
 of that clause in the collect of St. Chrysostom, the 
 infinite wisdom of which so few appreciate, " Fulfil 
 now, Lord, the desires and petitions of Thy ser- 
 vants as may be most expedient for them ;" not ac- 
 cording to the outward expression of our lips, but 
 according to the deeper, truer meaning of the Holy y' 
 Ghost that dwelleth in us ; that Spirit which, as He [ 
 prompteth us to pray at all, so doth He transform 
 the prayers of the saints that they become His own ; 
 and in the erring utterances of finite knowledge is 
 heard the unerring voice of the Eternal Spirit, up- 
 lifted for the real welfare of him who prays." 
 
 (b.) Nor is this all. "The Spirit itself," says 
 the Apostle, "intercedeth for us with groanings
 
 14 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 which cannot be uttered." The verse follows a 
 
 I wonderful description of the whole creation groan- 
 ing and travailing in pain together ; as though all 
 the disorders of the present system, the sufferings of 
 animal life, the convulsions of the material universe, 
 the earthquake that shatters, and the tempest that 
 devastates, the pestilence that walketh in darkness, 
 as they are the consequences of the fall, were also 
 the birth-pangs through which is to be generated 
 a nobler creation. "And we ourselves also, who 
 have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within our- 
 selves." If all around, animate and inanimate, bears 
 the impress of an imperfect and transitory state; 
 if it is manifestly at once the wreck of a holier life, 
 and the embryo of a more glorious being, not less 
 in the human soul are there ever-ringing voices, 
 not of this earth, asserting an affinity with higher, 
 vaster, mightier existences ; ceaselessly pleading to 
 be free from the weariness and disappointment of the 
 present troubled condition; to shake off the mists 
 which obscure our vision, the fetters that impede 
 our progress, and to go forth into wider ranges of 
 thought and knowledge than is at present permitted. 
 All that dissatisfaction which attends the greatest 
 worldly success; that weariness of living which 
 sometimes falls like a cold shadow upon the path 
 of those who have lived most honourably and use- 
 fully ; all those speculations after truth, which at 
 once so strangely fascinate and disturb the mind ; 
 the restless impatience of being bound down to 
 follow in the wake of other men's thoughts ; all
 
 The Spirit interceding. 15 
 
 that untiring effort to widen the horizon of the 
 human mind and push further back the thick dark- 
 ness which may be felt; the constant attempt to 
 hurry into day more of the secrets of the universe, 
 fulfilling again and again the words of Solomon, 
 "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, neither I 
 the ear with hearing ;" what are all these but the 
 groanings of the human soul after its true but un- 
 discovered home, its proper but unknown life, 
 groanings which cannot be uttered, ineffable de- 
 sires not to be clothed in speech, after an infinite 
 but indescribable good ? 
 
 And here, again, we may find a sphere for the 
 action of the eternal interceding Spirit. It is His 
 gracious work in the hearts of God's servants to 
 direct aright to right objects and in a right channel 
 these groanings of redeemed humanity ; His work, 
 to give form and substance to these profound but 
 vague aspirations of the soul of man ; to prevent 
 men from lapsing into mere idle dreamers, instead 
 of being energetic labourers in God's world, which 
 is the great snare of intellectualism ; to convert 
 these undefined desires, groanings not to be put 
 into words by human philosophy, into specific anx- 
 iety to be shewn God's will and enabled to do it, 
 specific prayers for the mastery of passion, the 
 purification of the appetites, the extermination of 
 sin; for the being made earnest fellow-workers 
 with God here in the dispersion of ignorance and 
 the relief of suffering, for the being conformed 
 now unto His likeness in all purity and truth, and
 
 1 6 The Spirit interceding. 
 
 thus prepared for a closer vision of Himself here- 
 after. 
 
 Surely here is intercession real as that carried 
 on "by Christ in the courts above; nor to be con- 
 founded with the faltering utterances of the human 
 mind, lisping, childlike, of truths wholly beyond 
 its ken, telling of wants and fears whose root lies 
 deep in mysteries it dreams not of. Aye, and just 
 as the well-taught man catches out of the mouth of 
 babes and sucklings the unconscious enunciation 
 of some sublime verity, so what God hears and 
 answers from His holy place is not the indefinite 
 yearnings of His servants, but in and through 
 them the mighty pleading of His own indwelling 
 Spirit, making intercession for them not according 
 to their degree of knowledge, but according to His 
 own perfect will concerning them. 
 
 Men and brethren, it is a very practical subject 
 on which we have dwelt, a subject full at once of 
 warning and encouragement. If it be certain that 
 when we pray, out of our hearts prayeth the Spirit 
 of God likewise, then what an unspeakable so- 
 lemnity attaches to every act of devotion. Is it 
 indeed so that when I kneel down to pray, the 
 Everlasting Spirit waiteth to catch my soul's speech 
 to adopt it for His own, and echo it on in a deeper, 
 truer sense, and with more exceeding power ? Then, 
 assuredly, I can never venture to hurry over my 
 prayers drowsily and thoughtlessly, seeing not I 
 alone, but the Holy Ghost, prayeth with me, and 
 that I am, as it were, to put words in His mouth.
 
 The Spirit interceding. i j 
 
 And contrariwise, if He so intercedeth for me, then 
 if I do strive to pray aright, to concentrate my 
 thoughts and lift up my soul, although the weak- 
 ness of my nature cause me ofttimes to ask feebly 
 and to ask amiss, yet not in vain shall I have 
 worshipped, because He, the Spirit, into my falter- 
 ing accents will have thrown His strength, and 
 through my blinded speech will have poured forth 
 the prayer of His all-perfect knowledge.
 
 SERMON IX. 
 Spirit r0mf0rtiitg, 
 
 i 
 
 BY 
 
 E. B. PUSEY, D.D., 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH,
 
 Cjxe Spirit r0mf0rtht0* 
 
 ST. MATTHEW v. 4. 
 
 " BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN : FOR THEY SHALL BE 
 COMFORTED." 
 
 TI7E live in an awful world. Look which way 
 * ' we will, within us or without, on God's reve- 
 lation of His holiness, or His unutterable conde- 
 scension, the unspeakableness of His free infinite 
 love, or His just condemnation of sin, the mar- 
 vellous fertility of His ways in winning us to Him- 
 self, and the almost boundless prodigality of the 
 riches of divine mercy, or that dreadful condition 
 of His creature, which has made itself for ever in- 
 capable of His love, our existence is an awful 
 gift. The infinity of His condescension in our 
 redemption, and the endless sufferings of those 
 who have to the end shut out God, are in sad 
 harmony together. It can have been for no light 
 cause that God abhorred not the Virgin's womb, 
 God was born, God, in the likeness of man, and 
 having united that Man for ever with Himself, 
 went about among us, partook of all our sinless 
 infirmities; God (not the Godhead) suffered; God 
 the Lord of glory was crucified a ; God, not the 
 
 1 Cor. ii. 8.
 
 4 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 Godhead, but He who " in the beginning was with 
 God, and was God," died. To persevere in sin 
 against such inventiveness of the love of God, what 
 is it but "an Angel's hopeless fall b ?" God has 
 done more for us than for them. The mysteries 
 of the redemption were wrought for man, not for 
 the devil and his angels. 
 
 The Gospels are full of love, for they are full 
 of the words and works of Jesus. Yet you can 
 scarcely open a page of them, but your eye will 
 fall upon words of awe ; so false as well as deadlily 
 delusive to the soul is that teaching which so 
 dwells upon that infinite love of God as to blot 
 out the thought of His awful holiness, and shut 
 out from sinners the wholesome terror of hell, until 
 they fall into it irremediably. 
 
 Even God's words of comfort shew the unreality 
 of such pictures of this our being, in which God 
 has entrusted us, His creatures, with that awful 
 choice, upon which our eternity depends, freely to 
 choose or to refuse for ever Himself, the All-Good. 
 One special office, one title of God the Holy Ghost 
 is, to be " the Comforter." Our Comforter is Al- 
 mighty, is God. His Presence is an especial gift 
 of our departing Lord to His Church, to ourselves. 
 " I will pray the Father for you, and He shall give 
 you another Comforter, that He may abide with 
 you for ever ; even the Spirit of Truth ; whom the 
 world cannot receive c ." Another Comforter ! An- 
 
 b Keble's Christian Year, Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. 
 c St. John xiv. 16, 17.
 
 The Spirit comforting. 5 
 
 other to replace Himself! and He, God proceeding 
 from God, to abide with us and in us, if we will, 
 for ever. But then what a condition of life does 
 this open to us ! An Almighty, ever-present, di- 
 vine Comforter implies a continual, universal, un- 
 ceasing need of comfort. 
 
 Comfort! The world hates the thought. For 
 comfort implies sorrow, and the world would have 
 none of it ; or, at the most, it would have it only, 
 when it cannot escape it, when sorrow does come ; 
 and even then, it would have as little as may be to 
 do with supernatural comfort, or, alas ! with the Com- 
 forter. Then, too, it would rather remove or displace 
 its griefs with fresh cause of grief ; fresh pleasures, 
 again to pall; fresh joys, again to fade; fresh 
 hopes, again to fail ; fresh honours, ambitions, de- 
 lights, vain-glories, to perish with this perishing 
 world. As our Blessed Lord prophesied, so it is, 
 "Whom the world cannot receive, because it 
 seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." The world 
 shrinketh from the Spirit of Truth, because it clings 
 to its errors; it loathes the thought of the Com- 
 forter, because it would be all-sufficient to itself in 
 its joys, and would know no sorrow. 
 
 But is then sorrow only for those afflictive visita- 
 tions of God, by which He awakens men out of 
 sin's death-sleep to themselves and to Him? Is 
 there no abiding sorrow, no abiding consolation, 
 no supernatural sorrow, and supernatural comfort? 
 Our Lord does not speak of any passing feeling 
 or quickly-fading grace, when He pronounces the
 
 6 The Spirit comforting, 
 
 blessedness of the poor in spirit, the merciful, the 
 pure in heart, the a-hungered and athirst after 
 righteousness. So neither is it a passing grace, 
 much less is it mere natural sorrow over those 
 causes of sorrow, with which God, in His love, 
 mercifully besprinkles the absorbing pleasures of 
 this life. Rather it is an abiding sorrow, sweeter 
 than all life's sweetnesses; for it is a sorrow from 
 God, unto God, according to God ; a sorrow, the 
 fruit of grace, the parent of joy, the condition of 
 supernatural consolation. " Blessed are they that 
 mourn : for they shall be comforted." 
 
 Is this our home ? are we in Paradise ? are we 
 in that state, in which and for which God made 
 us? are we in possession of our heavenly birth- 
 right ? are we at rest in ourselves ? are we satisfied 
 with our past or present? is our future secure? 
 is our relation to God what we wish ? True ! we 
 have consolations of nature, which, when pure, are 
 earnests of the love of God. "We may have un- 
 speakable consolations of grace. But consolations, 
 (as I said,) imply a need of consolation ; they imply 
 a sorrow of heart, which has to be comforted. 
 
 Our Lord's words are so large, that they must 
 comprise all which is not " of the nature of sin." 
 In itself, the word " mourn" almost always belongs 
 to a tender sorrow. It is originally the mourning 
 over the dead d ; it is the inner feeling expressed 
 by tears; it is sorrow over that which has been 
 and is not. In this sense, too, "blessed are they 
 d The word is
 
 The Spirit comforting. 7 
 
 that mourn ;" and so we may well think that our 
 Lord meant to include these too in His blessing, 
 if the sorrow have but that condition, which is 
 presupposed in any blessing from His mouth, that 
 it be "a sorrow according to God e ," in conformity 
 with, subdued to, following the track of, His All- 
 Holy Will. He who had known all earthly joy, 
 and glory, and wisdom, and fame, first of His day, 
 with whose wisdom none competed except to be 
 vanquished, was chosen as the organ of revealing 
 the blessedness of sorrow. " It is better to go to 
 the house of mourning," [i.e. where they mourn the 
 life just fled,] " than to go to the house of feasting: 
 for that is the end of all men ; and the living will 
 lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter : 
 for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is 
 made better f ." Blessed is a joy according to God, 
 abounding in thanksgiving, bounding upward to 
 its God, holding His gifts unvaryingly from Him- 
 self, delighting not only in them, but because they 
 are choice gifts of its Father's Hand. But deeper 
 far is a " sorrow according to God." For in joy we 
 love God in, for, with, His gifts; in sorrow the 
 gifts are gone, and we adore God mutely for His 
 wisdom in withdrawing them, and love Him for 
 Himself. Mourning drives a person into himself. 
 It takes off the false glare of this showy treacherous 
 world. It wakens up old memories, which he would 
 wish buried for ever. It is a lightning flash on 
 a precipice before his feet, and, below, the pit of 
 2 Cor. TU. 10. f Eccl. vii. 2, 3.
 
 8 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 hell. It speaks of death, and of what is to be after 
 death. It shews him to himself as a whole ; how 
 evil acts have become habits; how things in him, 
 seemingly unconnected, are bound together by one 
 unseen thread, and that thread sin, or of sin ; how 
 all or most of his good has been cankered by this 
 secret unsuspected worm; how self has been, in 
 all, his secret law, his lawgiver, his idol, his god. 
 Blessed, then, is the outward condition of mourn- 
 ing, blessed far above all outward joy, which be- 
 comes, through repentance, the vestibule of heaven. 
 Yet piercing as is the unveiled sight of that 
 resurrection of man's buried sins; crushing as is 
 their accumulated number, as they exhibit them- 
 selves all at once to his gaze, (faint image of the 
 Judgment Day, because our Lord's reproachful look 
 is not there,) or as they throng in long procession, 
 another, and another, and another, until the brain 
 turns dizzy at the sight of self; shocking as it is 
 to see what seemed good deeds look mere counter- 
 feits, with which we would have bribed conscience 
 and mocked God be the sight a baptism of fire, 
 there is a rainbow in the thick cloud, there is, in 
 the sight, an earnest of God's mercy. God would 
 not have shewn us the sight in this life, but that 
 He willed us to repent, and to forgive us. "No 
 interval separates the tears of the sinner and the 
 mercy of the Saviour." God who said " Let there 
 be light," and there was light, by the greater Om- 
 nipotence of His love, says of repented sin, Let it 
 be as though it had never been ; and forthwith, it
 
 The Spirit comforting. 9 
 
 is not, to condemnation ; it exists only in memory, 
 the safeguard of humility, the quickener of for- 
 given love. Yet not only so. Sorrow is evermore, 
 through God, the parent of Divine joy. Whatever 
 has been our course, whether preserved in Bap- 
 tismal grace, and in the main ever looking heaven- 
 wards, or brought back to ourselves and to God by 
 affliction, one is the experience of all, who are now 
 in a state of grace and know themselves. "It is 
 good for me that I have been in trouble, that I 
 might learn Thy statutes ;" " Thou in faithfulness 
 hast afflicted me g ." 
 
 Deep were those thoughts of one still young, who 
 having thanked his God for all His marvellous love 
 in childhood, boyhood, and in the bolder range of 
 "reason's awful power," went on in words which 
 once were here well-known familiar tones h : 
 
 " Yet, Lord, in memory's fondest place 
 
 I shrine those seasons sad, 
 "When, looking up, I saw Thy Face 
 In kind austereness clad. 
 
 " I would not miss one sigh or tear, 
 Heart-pang or throbbing brow ; 
 Sweet was the chastisement severe, 
 And sweet its memory now. 
 
 *' Yes, let the fragrant scars abide, 
 
 Grace-tokens in Thy stead ; 
 Faint shadows of the spear-pierced Side 
 And thorn-encompassed Head." 
 
 And so it is unto the end. Not success, but 
 checks; not praise, but dispraise; not gain, but 
 
 Ps. cxix. 7175. 
 h Lyra Apostolica, n. 23 ; Chastisement, (Dr. Newman's).
 
 i o Tlie Spirit comforting. 
 
 loss; not this world's joy, but sorrow; are, to 
 hoar hairs, God's choicest gifts, sorrow turning into 
 joy, privation crowned by the riches of His con- 
 solation; the touch, from which the flesh shrinks, 
 is the token of the presence of that Spirit of ]bum- 
 ing, which scorches to save. 
 
 "I would not part with one pang that I have 
 had, no not for the whole world," were the almost 
 parting words 1 of one, who had had high rank, 
 wealth, political position, talent, brilliant wit, po- 
 pularity, and a closing year of intensest bodily 
 suffering. 
 
 Yet although these are part of a law of God, they 
 do not work their effects by force of that law. De- 
 spair, not repentance, would be the natural fruit of 
 chastisement; passionate, profitless grief would be 
 the natural produce of deep loss; discontent the 
 result of bodily suffering. Not of itself, but by 
 the brooding of the Spirit over the troubled chaos, 
 is it hushed into order and repose, and yieldeth 
 life ; only through the healing presence of the Com- 
 forter does "the sorrow of this world," which 
 "worketh death," become "the sorrow according 
 unto God," which "worketh the repentance unto 
 salvation not to be repented of." 
 
 Yet neither the sorrow through which God brings 
 back the dead soul to life, nor those other sorrows 
 through which He quickens it anew to deeper, more 
 inward life in Him, or burns out what might ex- 
 
 1 The words were said to the late Bishop of Oxford, who 
 told them to me.
 
 The Spirit comforting. 1 1 
 
 haust, or weaken, or choke that life, can come up 
 to the full meaning of our Lord's words. For then 
 He would rather have said, " Blessed are they that 
 have mourned," or, "that shall have mourned;" 
 not, " the mourning," that is, " they who are ever 
 mourning k ." 
 
 This leads us to a deeper thought as to our 
 Lord's words. For now we have two seeming con- 
 tradictories, an abiding mourning and an abiding 
 joy. We have joy, yea exceeding joy, an ex- 
 ulting, bounding joy \ as a Christian duty, a tri- 
 umph" 1 given to us by God in Christ; and Christ 
 Himself pronounces us blessed, if we are ever 
 mourners^ 
 
 Plainly, then, the mourning must be something 
 quite other than the world means by it. For mourn- 
 ing may have peace; nay, rather, true mourning 
 will always have a deep still peace ; but how 
 should it have exuberance of joy ? 
 
 k I find this in St. Gregory of Nyssa (De Beatitud., Or. iii. 
 Opp., torn. i. p. 781) : " The Word seemeth to me, in that pro- 
 longed action of mourning, to suggest something deeper than 
 I have said, leading us on to conceive of something beside this, 
 For if He had pointed only to repentance for transgression, it 
 had suited better with this, if those had been pronounced blessed, 
 who 'have mourned' (TOVS jrevdri train-as], than those ' who are ha- 
 bitually mourning' (TOVS eto-ael TTfv6o\ivTas] ; as, to compare their 
 condition who are in a diseased state, we pronounce those 
 happy who have been cured, not those who are in a continual 
 course of cure." 
 
 1 dya\\iaa-6f, St. Matt. V. 12; dya\\iacris, Acts ii. 46; dya\- 
 
 \tao-6f xP<} di/eKXaXjjro), 1 Pet. i. 8 : add Acts xvi. 34, 1 Pet. i. 6, 
 iv. 13. m 2 Cor. ii. 14.
 
 1 2 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 It has the joy all the more because it is habitual. 
 Look at any deep loss of this earth, which has 
 severed life in twain, because for the time it has 
 severed those who were as one. Time flows by ; 
 the impassioned grief is mellowed ; there comes a se- 
 rene calm and reigns, and is the habitual state of 
 the soul. But the survivor is not as before. Life is 
 gilded from above ; duty done to God, love to God, 
 kindness and love to man, natural affections, bring 
 a peaceful joy; yet, deep below, there is one un- 
 changing feeling, such as that which, after years 
 had passed, burst from the aged Patriarch's soul, 
 " Joseph is not." 
 
 I said mourning (the word which our Lord uses) 
 especially relates to sources of joy, which we have 
 had and have not. What is it which the whole 
 human race had and has lost ? What is it, which 
 we all more or less deeply lose, and which we never 
 in this life can recover ? Innocence was that great 
 gift of God to man in Paradise, blameless life, un- 
 clouded intercourse with God. " What we now," 
 says a Father n , " conceive of only by imagining, all 
 were shed around that first man, immortality and 
 bliss, self-rule untyrannised, life without grief or 
 care, passed in things divine, gazing on the All- 
 good, with unveiled mind. Such were we. How 
 then can we but mourn, contemplating our present 
 wretchedness by the side of our then blessedness ? 
 What in us was lofty, lowered; what was in the 
 image of the heavenly, inearthed ; what was destined 
 
 " St. Greg. Nyss., 1. c., pp. 785, 786.
 
 The Spirit comforting. 13 
 
 to reign, enslaved; what was created for immor- 
 tality, corrupted by death ; what was passionless, 
 exchanged for this passionate and perishing life ; 
 our unenslaved freewill now lorded over by ills so 
 many and so great, that we cannot easily count the 
 tyrants over us ! For each of the passions in us, 
 when it gains the mastery, becomes the lord over 
 its slave, and, like a tyrant, seizing the citadel of 
 the soul, afflicts our subjected nature by the things 
 subdued to him, using at his will our thoughts as 
 his servants. So are anger, cowardice, rashness, our 
 passions pleasurable or painful, hatred, strife, merci- 
 lessness, harshness, envy, flattery, memory of injuries 
 and unfeelingness, and all the contrary passions, so 
 many tyrants and masters, enslaving the soul, as 
 a prisoner of war, each to his own dominion." 
 
 A storm without might be with great peace 
 within. Strife is afflictive, but leaves, by God's 
 grace, no sting or stain of sin. Few and fleet are 
 our pilgrim-years here ; and God has engoldened our 
 transient dwelling-place with multiplied radiancy 
 of His love. Not the strife, but the defeat ; not 
 even our want of self-mastery, as such, but our own 
 free evil choice, is life's deep sorrow. The embitter- 
 ment of life is sin against the infinite love of our 
 all-good God. 
 
 The bitterness is sweetened by forgiveness ; the 
 gentle, still, deep, sorrow remains; the deeper, be- 
 cause the more still. Think of one deeply loved who, 
 under whatever temptation, had been guilty of the 
 blackest ingratitude to father, husband, friend; (it
 
 14 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 is the very picture of us in the Prophet, " Go love 
 a woman, loved of a husband (himself) yet an adul- 
 teress, according to the love of the Lord to the chil- 
 dren of Israel, who look to other gods ;") could 
 the forgiven ever cease to mourn? would not the 
 exceeding tenderness of forgiving, unreproaching, 
 Jove, draw forth the deeper sorrow ? 
 
 What were all created love, gathered and con- 
 centrated into one, compared with the love of God 
 for each of us ? I would not say, it were nothing. 
 Yery beautiful is pure, created, love, because it is 
 His highest creation, the image of His Being, "Who 
 is Love. But all conceivable love, which God has 
 created, or shall create, or could, if He so willed, 
 ever create, were but finite ; and His love to each 
 one of us is infinite. And against this infinite love 
 we have sinned. Each act of wilful sin casts back 
 upon God this His infinite love, compares His crea- 
 ture with Himself, and tells God to His face, " I 
 choose this pleasure, this pride, this vanity, this 
 lie, this misery, rather than Thee, and Thine in- 
 finite love." What, when such sins have been 
 accumulated ? What, when years of life have been 
 spent in such preference of self, self-will, ambition, 
 vilenesses, to God ? What, when at best almost all 
 life is one ingratitude, since at best all love which 
 we return for that infinite love is so poor, so mean, 
 so self-seeking, that people would be ashamed to 
 offer it all to any good creature of His whom they 
 deeply loved I 
 
 Hos. iii. 1 ; see Comm. p. 23.
 
 The Spirit comforting. 1 5 
 
 And all this, on repentance for love of Himself, 
 God has forgiven, blots out, ignores, reproaches not. 
 " God is a God of the present." He accepts the dis- 
 obedient penitent son, who told Him to His face, " I 
 go not," yet goes at last, as if he had, from the first, 
 done His will. Should we not have hearts of stone 
 if this untiring, despised, provoked, overcoming, 
 and then unreproaching love of God, did not melt 
 us? And can we then enjoy the manifold, daily, 
 ever- varying goodness of our God, and not mourn 
 that we ever sinned against it ? 
 
 This mourning is not sad, or dejected, or down- 
 cast. It casts no cloud over the brightest cheerful- 
 ness whichT God spreads over life. Bather, it is the 
 supernatural source of comfort above nature. For 
 He who gives the sorrow gives also the joy. In all 
 eternity redeemed man cannot forget what he has 
 been. His own special blessedness would be less, if 
 he could. For our bliss will be, by God's mercy, 
 in the infinite love of our God ; and we should know 
 less of that infinite love, if we did not know how 
 much He had forgiven us, how His victorious love 
 had won us to Himself. St. Peter's bliss would be 
 less, if he could forget that look which won him 
 back to himself and to his Lord. St. Mary Mag- 
 dalene would be less blessed in her Lord's love, if 
 she could forget His love, when she washed His 
 feet with her tears. The robber would not, if he 
 could, be deprived of the memory of his Lord's love, 
 which pardoned that his last blasphemy on the cross, 
 accepted the confession which it had given, and ad-
 
 1 6 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 mitted him alone of His redeemed to His side in 
 Paradise. 
 
 But since the memory of forgiven sin will in- 
 tensify the joy of heaven, so penetrated will it be 
 and transfigured with Divine love, then neither, by 
 the grace of God, will it cast any shadow over life's 
 pure joys here. Nay rather, there is no true joy 
 without it. True joy can never be in partial igno- 
 rance, or in looking away from oneselves. The self 
 we would flee from, meets us unbidden ; any chance 
 word, any old remembrance, awakens it. Some 
 word of God suggests it. We are in doubt and 
 must have misgiving about ourselves ; and that mis- 
 giving relates to eternity and our eternal doom ! 
 God will not, in His mercy, let us rest, where rest 
 is disease or death. There is no health, until the 
 last drop of bad blood has been squeezed out or 
 transmuted by His grace. Our only joy can be, 
 not in ourselves, but in God ; not in ignorance that 
 we are sinners, or how deep our sins, but in pouring 
 out all our sins at the feet of Jesus and in His for- 
 giveness. And then man's true joy is in thankful- 
 ness to God, and to Jesus God Man, for atoning, 
 pardoning love. So God transmutes our poverty 
 into the riches of His grace ; our short-comings into 
 the overflow of His love ; our badness into the oc- 
 casions of His goodness ; our hateful memories of 
 what is hateful, sin, into channels of His purifying 
 grace, the joy of redeemed love. 
 
 Our humility, repentance, hatred for sin, meek- 
 ness and tenderness to our fellow-sinners, safety
 
 The Spirit comforting. 1 7 
 
 against relapse, thankfulness to God, growth, in 
 grace, all are involved in the vivid memory that 
 we are forgiven sinners. Blessed, then, is the 
 mourning, in itself, which is the guardian of our 
 restored grace, which makes us of one mind with 
 God, hating what He hates, and tender with His 
 tenderness, compassionate towards our fellow-ser- 
 vants, even as He had pity on us. 
 
 But through the exuberance of His love, the 
 bitter waters are turned into sweetness by the wood 
 of His Cross. They shall be comforted. Comfort is 
 not the mere negation, or absence of sorrow. It 
 is not, (as men's comfort is,) a powerless sympathy, 
 soothing, in a measure, for the love which there is 
 in it, but not reaching to the depths of the wound 
 below. God's comfort, as "His Word," "is with 
 power 5 ." The comfort is from the Almighty Com- 
 forter, who comforts, not in word but in deed. It 
 were little in comparison, had He said, that their 
 mourning should be ended, that their tears should 
 be wiped away. He says much more, " They shall 
 be comforted." Their comfort is not, then, from 
 within, but from without ; it is an action upon the 
 soul, and that from God, who vouchsafes to take, 
 as one of His titles, "the Father of mercies," 
 (mercies as manifold as our needs,) " and the God 
 of all comfort q ." 
 
 We have then an abiding, supernatural comfort 
 from an Almighty Comforter. Mourning and com- 
 fort meet together; "deep crieth unto deep," the 
 " Ps. xxix. 4 ; St. Luke iv. 32. q 2 Cor. i. 3.
 
 1 8 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 depth of man's misery to the depth of God's mercy. 
 Wherever the cry of the soul is, there is the ear 
 of God. "Thou preparest the heart; Thine ear 
 hearkeneth thereto r ." 
 
 It bespeaks, as I said, one universal troubled 
 state of man's being, that God the Holy Ghost 
 should have that title and office towards us, the 
 Comforter. Yet this being so, what is in itself 
 evil is, by the touch of God, transformed into 
 a superabundance of good. " Where sin abounded, 
 there the grace superabounded "." Where sorrow 
 comes, there is a proportioned superabundance of 
 consolation. 
 
 But consolation were as nothing without the 
 Consoler. What man needs is God. Natural joy 
 cannot content the heart, which was made for God. 
 Nothing can content it, except what is from God 
 and to God. The joy of consolation is that it is the 
 touch of God. "They shall be comforted" by the 
 Comforter, a continual action of God on the soul 
 meeting the soul's continual desire. 
 
 And so that last treasure of man's innocence, for 
 which he mourns, the intercourse with God, is, by 
 his mourning, restored to him. Not that consola- 
 tion, or any spiritual sweetness, must be our end. 
 Nothing in ourselves must be our end, but God 
 only. Our end is, by God's grace, to become holier, 
 less unlike God, less ungrateful to Him for His 
 forgiving love. Our sorrow must not take its eyes 
 off from God. We wish, if we could, to make 
 
 * Ps. X. 17. vrrfptirfpivvfvtrfv, Eom. V. 20.
 
 The Spirit comforting. 1 9 
 
 amends to Him ; we cannot tell Him often enough 
 to satisfy ourselves, "Would, God, for love of 
 Thee, I had never, never, displeased Thee I" We 
 know that we cannot change the past, whatever it 
 has been ; but we can oppose a strong contrary will 
 to that will, wherewith we offended God ; and speak- 
 ing thus to God strengthens our will and longing, 
 as speaking to man, except in the view of God, 
 weakens it. For God looks on the soul which 
 He has led by His grace to look up to Him; 
 He strengthens the soul, which looks to Him, its 
 strength. Every such longing of the soul is a por- 
 tion of the unutterable groanings of the Spirit*, 
 whereby He suggests desires mightier than words 
 can utter, more than the heart knows how to con- 
 tain; "Would that I had ever loved Thee 1" And 
 what the Spirit suggests within is heard on high ; 
 for it is the voice of God, which means more than 
 our thoughts can grasp, pleading with God, by 
 virtue of His merits Who, being God, for us sin- 
 ners became man. 
 
 This is the special value of the deep penitential 
 character of the prayers of our Church. This is 
 why we, instinctively, love the Litany ; why, before 
 the Communion, the deeper confession after the 
 Commandments, and that in which we own "the 
 burden of our sins intolerable," suit our heart so 
 well. It is in the presence of the deepest love that 
 the sense of forgiven sin is deepest. The penitence 
 which suits Lent, in another way suits Easter or 
 
 * Bom. viii. 27.
 
 20 The Spirit comforting. 
 
 Pentecost, or the reception of our Lord's Body and 
 Blood. The sorrow of forgiven love is a festival 
 joy ; for we sorrow, because we have been, are, so 
 unworthy of that infinite love, wherewith God hath 
 loved us, wherewith He loveth us. 
 
 God grant, my sons, that ye may have no deeper 
 cause for sorrow than ye now have, that ye may 
 not need that mighty burst of sorrow, wherewith 
 a soul is restored from death. Yet there must be, 
 I fear, among you some, whom deadly sin crept 
 over, in years yet earlier than yours even now 
 are, less deadly then, because you knew not its 
 whole deadliness. One cannot but have fears, when 
 the body is so much pampered, the "keeping un- 
 der," which an Apostle thought needful to himself, 
 so despised. Abuse not what I have said, as though 
 ye might have the pleasure of sin now, the joy 
 of forgiven sinners hereafter. To sin, in hope of 
 God's forgiveness hereafter, is one of the fore- 
 runners of the sin for which there is no forgive- 
 \ ness, because there is no repentance. Your Saviour, 
 who hath revealed Himself to you, looketh to " see" 
 in you "of the travail of His soul," and to be 
 "satisfied." God the Father, who loved you in 
 all eternity, and who made you in and for His 
 infinite love, looketh and waiteth, that ye should 
 answer the end for which He made you. God the 
 Holy Ghost, by whose agency, ere you knew good or 
 evil, ye were severed from the world, and who made 
 you sons of God and members of Christ, who has 
 ever put every good thought into you, who now
 
 The Spirit comforting. 2, 1 
 
 perhaps is reminding you of your high nobility and 
 suggesting to you to live worthily of your birth of 
 God, waiteth to give you all the treasures of His 
 grace, love, joy, peace, the unutterableness of His 
 consolations. Defraud not God of yourselves. De- 
 fraud not yourselves of God Give to God that 
 which is His, His image, the price of the Blood of 
 God, yourselves. Say to God, " I am Thine. Would, 
 for love of Thee, I had ever lived to Thee, I had 
 never disobeyed Thee, never preferred anything to 
 Thee ! Would I may never more so offend Thee !" 
 Say it from thy heart of hearts, and thou wilt know 
 a joy, a joy, which if thou hast never so wholly 
 given thyself to God before, thou hast never yet 
 known, the joy of a personal love of God, as thine 
 own God, the individual love of Jesus, Who saveth 
 thee from thy sins. Blessed are they who so mourn, 
 for they shall be comforted. 
 
 GOD, who didst teach the hearts of Thy faith- 
 ful people, by the sending to them the light of Thy 
 Holy Spirit ; Grant us by the same Spirit to have 
 a right judgment in all things, and evermore to re- 
 joice in His holy comfort; through the merits of 
 Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth 
 with Thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, 
 world without end. Amen.
 
 SERMON X. 
 Spini toitmmnQ foriilj owr spm! 
 
 BY 
 
 DANIEL MOORE, M.A., 
 
 INCUMBENT OF CAMDEN CHURCH, CAMBERWELL, AND LECTURER 
 AT ST. MARGARET'S, LOTHBURY.
 
 pirit foitmssing ixritjr 0m 
 spirit a . 
 
 EOMANS viii. 16. 
 
 " THE SPIRIT ITSELF BEARETH WITNESS WITH OUR SPIRIT, 
 THAT WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF GOD." 
 
 TOTEKPKET these words as we may, they must 
 * be allowed to announce a principle of unspeak- 
 able importance. The moment we hear them, we 
 feel that we are dealing with a matter which con- 
 cerns our life. The design of the passage may be 
 to supply us with a rule for the trial of our own 
 spirits, to enable us to see whether we are in the 
 faith or not ; or it may be to set before our spiri- 
 tual ambition one of the higher attainments of the 
 saintly life, the crown of an Abraham's faith, or 
 the peace of an Enoch's walk: yet, on either of 
 these views of the passage 2 a great blessing we 
 
 a The preacher thinks it necessary to say that this Sermon 
 was prepared, not for the St. Mary's, but for the St. Giles's 
 course, and consequently without the least idea of publication. 
 On his arrival at Oxford, however, it was deemed expedient 
 that he should occupy the place of the appointed preacher, 
 who was unavoidably prevented from appearing at St. Mary's ; 
 and hence, at the Bishop's request, the publication of the 
 Sermon.
 
 4 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 feel it must be to be able to say, " The Spirit it- 
 self beareth witness with our spirit, that we are 
 the children of God." 
 
 Let us glance for a moment at the connection 
 of the passage. The Apostle had been speaking 
 of the methods of adoption known among the an- 
 cients. In the case of a childless family, a stranger 
 was adopted as a son; often a favourite slave, to 
 whom the promise of freedom was given, and who 
 was trained and educated for the position he was 
 to occupy, and the family honours he was to enjoy. 
 In like manner, those who are children of God by 
 faith in Christ Jesus are described as being rescued 
 from condemnation ; emancipated from the bondage 
 of sin and Satan ; considered as sons and daughters 
 of the Lord Almighty ; and as such, placed under 
 a course of spiritual discipline to qualify them for 
 their future inheritance. Hence the servile and 
 slave -like spirit is here supposed to give way, 
 and the aspirations due to freedom and a nobler 
 destiny are assumed to have place in the heart : 
 "For ye have not received the spirit of bondage 
 again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of 
 adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." And 
 then follow the words upon which I am asked to 
 speak to you, " The Spirit itself beareth witness 
 with our spirit, that we are the children of God." 
 
 The topic falls in appropriately with that which 
 it seems to have been the leading design of this 
 course of sermons to set forth, namely, the para- 
 mount importance of the Holy Spirit's influence in
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit, 5 
 
 the renewal and sanctification of the human mind. 
 It is a doctrine of the Church, as a witness and 
 keeper of Holy Writ, that the production of true 
 religion in the heart is the result of an agency, 
 absolutely Divine. And, in the passage before us, 
 the same influence, requisite for the original pro- 
 duction of the principle, is exhibited as equally 
 needful for keeping in healthy activity all the ex- 
 ercises and emotions of an inward and spiritual life. 
 The two leading points to which the text re- 
 quires that I should direct your attention are, first, 
 the NATURE OF THE "WITNESS which is here spoken 
 of; and secondly, the FORMS in which we may ex- 
 pect it to be MANIFESTED. 
 
 ijL In considering the nature of the witness, we 
 must first advert to the spiritual relationship to be 
 witnessed to, namely, that "we are the children 
 of God." 
 
 This lies at the foundation of the Apostle's argu- 
 ment, that, by the power and grace of the Spirit, his 
 converts had been emancipated from their former 
 condition, and adopted into the family of heaven. 
 As applied therefore to ourselves, it supposes a 
 great fact, namely, that we are in a state of re- 
 conciliation with God; that we are the objects of 
 Heaven's favourable regards; that there has been 
 imparted to us, and still abides in us, that principle 
 of heavenly life, which constitutes us " members of 
 Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the king- 
 dom of heaven." And this attestation is made, in 
 the passage before us, to take the form of a grave
 
 6 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 judicial testimony. There is nothing to favour that 
 mystical notion, which would resolve the witness 
 of the Spirit into some preternatural intimation 
 from above, some still small whisper to the ear 
 of the inner man, testifying that we are the chil- 
 dren of God ; but the great fact is to be established 
 on the joint authority of two witnesses, namely, 
 the witness of the Holy Spirit and the concurring 
 testimony of our own hearts. 
 
 And here we see, at the outset, the practical 
 value of our fundamental doctrine, that the Holy 
 Spirit is essentially and co-equally one with God. 
 The believer's saving and confirmed reception into 
 God's family is no overt act. It belongs to the deep, 
 silent, unfathomed actings of the Eternal Mind ; and 
 we feel that He must be one, in and with that mind, 
 who should be so far privy to its unuttered pur- 
 poses, as to be able to assure us that we are num- 
 bered among God's elect. " What man knoweth 
 the things of a man save the spirit of a man which 
 is in him ? Even so the things of God knoweth 
 no man but the Spirit of God." This then is our 
 confidence in the attestation. As being Himself 
 a Divine Being, the witness is competent to speak. 
 He knows the mind of God as intimately as we 
 know our own. He searcheth all things. The deep 
 things of God are open to Him, the counsels of 
 His will, the thoughts of His heart, the methods of 
 His grace, the goings forth of His love, and peace, 
 and reconciliation, the Spirit not only knows ail 
 these, but is Himself the actuating energy of their
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 7 
 
 accomplishment. And He " beareth witness that 
 we are the children of God." 
 
 With this witness, however, the Apostle asso- 
 ciates another, which, perhaps, we are to regard as 
 not another so much as a medium for transmitting, 
 to our own consciousness, the testimony of the first. 
 This witness is the spirit of man himself, the re- 
 sponsive testimony of our own hearts, echoing the 
 silent utterances of the Holy Ghost, and, in the ex- 
 perience of filial thoughts and tempers, assuring us 
 of a re-instated friendship with God. Hence, in 
 the way of direct and originating testimony, the 
 human spirit can witness nothing. It is the inter- 
 preter of another: it is the passive recipient and 
 reflector of a Divine impression : it is the witness 
 to a witness ; as if, according to the preferred ren- 
 dering of some, the passage had stood, " The Spirit 
 itself beareth witness ' to' our spirit, that we are the 
 children of God." 
 
 What then do we mean when we say that a man 
 has " the witness of the Spirit ?" Well, generally 
 we mean this, that he has a happy sense of recon- 
 ciliation to God, bestowed upon him by the Divine 
 Spirit, but at the same time made manifest to his 
 own consciousness by a perceived correspondence 
 between the scriptural conditions of sonship and 
 his own religious experience. No place is left for 
 a credulous enthusiasm in this definition. The co- 
 incident verdict of conscience with the witness is 
 assumed, and yet the witness itself is one which con- 
 science alone is incompetent to supply. Conscience
 
 8 The Spirit ivitncssiny with our spirit. 
 
 cannot testify that we are the children of God, 
 except the Spirit reveal in us the existence of those 
 moral dispositions, which prompt us to act as children 
 act and to feel as children feel. Conscience makes 
 the comparison, but the Spirit gives the power of 
 perceiving the things compared : those things being 
 the written Word, which defines what the character- 
 istics of sonship are, and our own minds, which are 
 to tell us whether these characteristics be found in 
 ourselves. The perceived agreement between these 
 two, the Scripture calling and the heart answer- 
 ing, the Spirit of God in His Word insisting on 
 certain commanded feelings, and our own spirits 
 testifying that we have such feelings, these con- 
 stitute our double witness, our joint testimony in 
 heaven and earth, our realized part in the ex- 
 perience, " The Spirit itself beareth witness with 
 our spirit that we are the children of God." 
 
 To those who should object to this view that it 
 virtually makes the witness of the Spirit to be 
 nothing more than the witness of the .Word, and 
 that, consisting as it is thus made to do in a per- 
 ceived correspondence between what the Bible says 
 we should feel, and our own hearts testify we do 
 feel, any man may obtain it for himself, we should 
 answer first by a plain question, Could any inward 
 witness to our salvation, any form of interior reve- 
 lation, any whisper or breath from heaven satisfy 
 us where the correspondence here spoken of was not 
 found ? Is it possible that the Spirit should con- 
 tradict the Word, or testify to a reconciliation be-
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 9 
 
 tween God and the soul, whilst the Bible testified 
 to some particulars in which God and that soul 
 were not agreed ? If not, the agreement set forth 
 in our definition is a necessary element of the in- 
 ward witness. The Spirit cannot speak two lan- 
 guages. His word must be the authorized exponent 
 of His work, and His work must be evidenced by 
 results, in accordance with the requirements of His 
 "Word. The Spirit is in the Word : and the witness 
 of the Word is the witness of the Spirit. 
 
 Neither would it be fair to charge upon the view 
 here given, that it reduces the witness of the Spirit 
 into a mere deduction of the religious conscience. 
 The deduction is in harmony with the witness, be- 
 yond question ; but no man could draw it of him- 
 self without the aid of the Holy Spirit. This is the 
 reason why many of the true children of God, 
 many, in whom the correspondence we are con- 
 tending for, actually exists, are not spiritually 
 happy, but are desponding and cast down. They 
 possess the required evidence of the filial state, in 
 the agreement between the Bible description and 
 the predominant bias of their desires and aims, but, 
 through the depressing influence of despondency 
 or doubt, it is as yet no evidence to them. Thus 
 they have the hope of children, without the comfort 
 of the hope. They could abide a trial of their 
 spirits, as far as the verdict of a rational judgment, 
 exercised on the statements of Scripture is con- 
 cerned ; but the actual assurance is not their own. 
 And, until this cloud is dissolved, we cannot have 
 the comfort of adoption. We may compare, and
 
 i o The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 judge, and trust that there are found in us the 
 marks of spiritual character, but we cannot, in all 
 the deep, and full, and esoteric significance of the 
 words, affirm that " the Spirit itself beareth wit- 
 ness with our spirit that we are the children 
 of God." 
 
 II. "We proceed, therefore, to our second enquiry, 
 or THE FORMS in which this inward witness may be 
 expected TO MANIFEST ITSELF. 
 
 i. And first, we may note that the testimony is 
 coincident with, and not opposed to, our own con- 
 sciousness. " The Spirit beareth witness WITH our 
 spirit," says the Apostle, not against it, not with- 
 out it, not before it, but only in addition to it, and 
 in corroboration of its testimony. All the acts and 
 exercises of personal religion take place within. 
 The graces of the Spirit, as they are called, faith, 
 repentance, hope, love, are personal acts; the 
 development of an active, intelligent spirit within, 
 and their own witness that they descend from above. 
 Apart from these evidences, therefore, apart from 
 the assiduous culture of holy principles and affec- 
 tions, no witness of the spirit can be expected. 
 Conscience has given an adverse verdict already, 
 and its witness is conclusive. " If our heart con- 
 demn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth 
 all things ; but if our heart condemn us not, then 
 have we confidence towards God." 
 
 ii. We observe, next, that the witness of the Spirit 
 is not demonstrative , but evidential ; being, for the 
 most part, gradually and progressively attained.
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 1 1 
 
 Here it may be competent to us to enquire, Is the 
 witness of the Spirit to our being the children of 
 God a privilege, always and universally enjoyed by 
 men who have the spiritual mind, or is it a rule to 
 be applied, deciding whether we have the spiritual 
 mind at all? This is an enquiry, which plainly 
 sends us back to the antecedent question, What is 
 necessary to salvation ? What is that attribute of 
 moral character which causes that a sinner shall be 
 pronounced justified in the sight of God ? Because, 
 if strong assurance be an element of this justifying 
 quality, then the absence of this consolation would 
 be fatal to our hope. Now the justifying quality, 
 as we know, is faith, by which we mean an act 
 of trust, exerted objectively on the mediation of 
 Christ, in all its parts, and on that alone. And 
 justification actual is an instantaneous effect, en- 
 suing closely on this act of exerted trust, as a fact ; 
 though it may be a long time afterwards before we 
 are made conscious of our new condition, or can 
 have had any experience of its resulting peace. 
 We cannot make an uninterrupted assurance of our 
 sonship to be an integral part of saving faith, with- 
 out confounding two things, plainly distinguishable 
 in themselves, as well as separable in the order in 
 which they are experienced by the subject-mind. 
 In themselves, we say the two things are distin- 
 guishable. The one is faith in something done for 
 us, the other is faith in something done in us. The 
 one is faith in the certainty of Christ's work itself, 
 the other is faith in the certainty of our interest in
 
 1 2, The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 that work. "The one" (to quote the words of 
 Archbishop Usher) " is faith exerted on God's pro- 
 mises, the other is but a faith in our own faith." 
 Nor can we consent to look upon these as light and 
 unimportant distinctions. It is just the difference 
 between a man's trust reposing on some fluctuating 
 and uncertain feeling in his own mind, and its being 
 made to turn absolutely on the fixed, finished, in- 
 defeasible eincacy of the atonement of our Lord. 
 Let us not disturb the majestic simplicity of the 
 Divine processes. Faith is the ordained instrument 
 by which we are to lay hold on the promises of God 
 in Christ ; and it is to be exerted in them directly, 
 because they have an objective certainty of their 
 own. But if, instead of the promises, faith lays 
 hold only on an inward witness, or secret persuasion, 
 or any thing internal to ourselves, then, that on 
 which it lays hold has no objective certainty what- 
 ever ; but is certain only so far as the mind which 
 apprehends it believes it to be certain. We cannot, 
 therefore, without the utmost danger to our souls, 
 allow the necessity of any mediate internal impres- 
 sions to connect our faith with Him, who is its 
 proper, sole, and all-sufficient object. Assurance, 
 if made the ground of our confidence, will, in the 
 day of trial, be found of all things the least sure. 
 It must partake of the fluctuations of our physical 
 and moral being. Whereas faith looks to an object 
 which is without, fixed, unchanging, and eternal, 
 " I know whom I have believed." 
 And it is a confounding of the order of spiritual
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 1 3 
 
 sequences too, this making assurance to be an ele- 
 ment of a justifying faith. This order is thus laid 
 down by St. Paul, "being justified by faith we 
 have peace with God." Faith, justification, peace, 
 this is the law of the divine procedure : the first, 
 the conscious though divinely-prompted act of man ; 
 the second, the gracious bestowment of God; the 
 third, a usual, but still, it may be, a long-delayed 
 fruit of both. It is manifest that we may be safe, 
 before we know that we are safe. We see a ship 
 labouring, and ill piloted, on a dangerous coast. 
 We see her make a point, at which the danger is 
 over ; but as the crew do not know this, their fears 
 run on ; and thus, while we are rejoicing in their 
 safety, they live on in momentary expectation of 
 that awful crash which splits the keel, and bears 
 away the mast, and fixes the eye of despair on the 
 in-rush of the wasting flood. And just so it will 
 often be in our spiritual deliverances. We cannot 
 realize the conviction that the point of danger is 
 past. We dare not, all at once, discard our servile 
 fears. Our ancient bonds cleave to us, and we fear 
 to claim those rights of adoption, whereby, in all 
 the spring and joyousness of an emancipated nature, 
 we say, Abba, Father. Indeed, the Apostle himself 
 is evidence that assurance comes not simultaneously 
 with acceptable faith. For the time of the latter 
 coincides with the moment when he resolved he 
 would not be " disobedient to the heavenly vision;" 
 so that, virtually, he was justified, or ever he came 
 to the gates of Damascus. Yet, had he not, of
 
 14 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 many days, a sense of peace with. God. And he 
 wept, and prayed, and fasted, and trembled, and 
 wondered, even while the shining hosts of heaven 
 were hailing him, inaudibly, as "Brother Saul," 
 and tasking the powers of their highest, holiest 
 minstrelsy for that so great a sinner had repented. 
 
 Whilst, therefore, we put the assuring witness of 
 the Spirit among promises which may be attained, 
 and which, therefore, should be sought after, we 
 are not to regard it as a constituent of our justifica- 
 tion, or as an attainment invariably indispensable to 
 the saving of the soul. It were to put a stumbling- 
 block in the way of many weak brethren, to falsify 
 the admissions of the most extended pastoral expe- 
 rience, yea, to unparadise the souls of many, whom 
 all our charities oblige us to regard as now asleep 
 in Jesus, to say that no man could be saved who 
 had not at all times, perceptibly to himself, the 
 witness of the Spirit bearing witness with his spirit 
 that he belonged to the children of God. To be 
 able to say this is a privilege, and a privilege which 
 it will cause the loss of much comfort to ourselves, 
 much honour to our religion, much praise to our 
 God and Saviour, if we fail to realize : yet fail of 
 such experience we may, under certain conditions 
 of the religious life, and not fail of salvation. We 
 may have the faith of reliance, when we cannot 
 get the faith of assurance ; and when, through the 
 weakness of the flesh, we cannot lay hold on the 
 witness that is within us, we may yet be saved by 
 laying hold on the hope that is set before us.
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 15 
 
 iii. "We observe, once more, that while the pre- 
 sence of the Spirit may be seen, as much in our most 
 humiliating as in our most joyful experiences, when 
 we are in the valley as when we are on the mount, 
 such divine consolations are only to be looked for 
 in connection with our own moral endeavours, and 
 in the use of all divinely-appointed means. 
 
 All promises of spiritual influence are made over 
 to us on these terms. Even with regard to the 
 great promise, to Israel of old, of a new heart and 
 a new spirit, we have it said, " I will yet for this 
 be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for 
 them." Not without means, therefore, diligent, 
 earnest, persevering means, can we expect to realize 
 this precious gift of "the witness of the Spirit." 
 With regard to the means best suited to this end, 
 if the view we have taken be right, that the mediate 
 evidence of its existence to our own consciousness 
 is a discovered resemblance between the revealed 
 type of Christian character and our own moral ex- 
 perience, no practical direction can be more obvious 
 than the duty of being much in the study of the 
 two things to be compared the word and the work, 
 the book and the man, the saint's life and our life. 
 Much shall we be aided in this work by a daily and 
 believing contemplation of Gospel truth ; an intent 
 fixing of the mental eye on the revealed doctrine of 
 Christ; a diligent gathering of materials for faith 
 to believe, and hope to lay hold on, and love to 
 cling to, and gratitude to adore. If we would have 
 the witness of the Spirit, we must first learn the
 
 1 6 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 language in which His witnessings are given ; and 
 until the word of truth has been brought home to 
 our convictions, the word of promise can give no 
 peace to the heart. By searching the Scriptures 
 daily, therefore, we are enabled to keep constantly 
 before us the authentic and divinely-traced portrait 
 of a child of God. And we observe its features, 
 and mark its expressions, and see what a Christian 
 is, and thinks, and feels, and does : till at last, im- 
 bued with the feeling and living spirit of the pic- 
 ture, we become like the thing we look on, and 
 reflect the graces we admire. 
 
 And then, how further needful to this desired 
 peace is it that we be much in self-examination : 
 seriously entered upon, impartially conducted, and 
 diligently followed up by the repairing of all con- 
 scious deficiencies, and the renouncing of all dis- 
 covered faults. Institute what forms of spiritual 
 test we may, they must all be coincident with this, 
 and all terminate in this, an ascertained con- 
 formity of our desires, and aims, and principles of 
 conduct with the revealed will of God. The Epistle 
 of St. John abounds with Christian marks, yet as 
 the Alpha and Omega of all proofs, he remits us 
 to the one practical demonstration, " Hereby do we 
 know that we know Him, if we keep His command- 
 ments." This will be to us a witness always. Is 
 sin our hatred, holiness our delight, the favour of 
 God our chief good ? Can we bear meekly, forgive- 
 easily, help others cheerfully, and as cheerfully 
 deny ourselves ? Is there life in our devotions,
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 1 7 
 
 sincerity in our obedience, in our dealings with 
 the world, do we maintain an unoffended con- 
 science, and in our intercourse with God a simple 
 and undissembling heart ? Such testimonies, if given, 
 will not long give forth their utterances alone. 
 They will be confirmed by a voice from heaven. 
 " The Spirit itself will bear witness with our spirit 
 that we are the children of God." 
 
 But what if, as we have allowed to be possible, 
 this confirming testimony in the way of consola- 
 tion should not come ? Why, then there is a rea- 
 son for its not coming. God has further and more 
 important ends in view for us than our spiritual 
 peace. Here is one. "This is the will of God, 
 even your sanctification." Keep your eye on that 
 mark: whatever furthers that, conduces to that, 
 leads ultimately to the establishment and advance- 
 ment of that, must be better for you than all the 
 inward witnessings and spiritual comforts in the 
 world. At all events, if God see fit to withhold 
 these testimonies, be assured it is for some reasons 
 connected with your soul's growth and sanctifi- 
 cation. What these reasons may be, I cannot tej.1. 
 Perhaps He sees you would lean upon such comfort- 
 able experiences, if you had them; would make 
 a righteousness of them. Or perhaps the with- 
 holding is to keep you humble ; to punish you for 
 your past careless walking ; to make you look more 
 to the depth and sincerity of your repentance; to 
 keep you from doing the work of the Lord negli- 
 gently, and, as it were, thinking to have part in the
 
 1 8 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 
 
 joys of heaven before your time. Anyhow, we are 
 sure the reason is a wise one, and a kind. The 
 assuring witness of the Spirit is not a good thing 
 for you, at least not yet. God sees that you need 
 the waters of sanctification more than the oil of 
 gladness. More happy in your Christianity, you 
 would be less watchful ; more assured, less safe. 
 
 Wherefore, brethren, comfort one another with 
 these words. I have said nothing to disparage the 
 reality, the blessedness, the unspeakable privilege 
 of this witness of the Spirit to our sonship. On 
 the contrary, I cannot magnify its benefits too 
 much. It inspires us with new love to God. It 
 drops sweetness into the cup of our earthly enjoy- 
 ment. It quickens all the powers of the soul to 
 more devoted obedience. It strengthens the shield 
 with which we beat back temptation. It bears up 
 the heart against all outward suffering. It enables 
 us to confront, without trembling, and without dis- 
 may, death, and the grave, and the opening door of 
 the eternal world. And yet, I say, you may be 
 destitute of this choice gift of God's grace, and 
 still your soul may be safe, safe in its hold on 
 Christ, safe in its part in the covenant, safe in that 
 unseen work of the Spirit, by which you are num- 
 bered with the children of God, and "if children 
 then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ." 
 Yes, brethren, look at those marks of the Holy 
 Spirit's work which you find scattered over "the 
 face of this glorious chapter. They will be your 
 best guides after all. The desires and tendencies
 
 The Spirit witnessing with our spirit. 1 9 
 
 of the heart towards God and goodness are the true 
 tests, and if not belied by actual sin, they never 
 did and never can deceive. They are the root. 
 The assurance of sonship is the fruit. And the 
 fruit will appear in its season. If you walk in 
 the Spirit, and live in the Spirit, and are led by 
 the Spirit, and look to be helped in your infirmities 
 by the Spirit, in due time you shall have the seal- 
 ing testimony of the Spirit too, " the Spirit itself 
 bearing witness with your spirit that you are the 
 children of God." Amen.
 
 
 w*/jLt 
 
 kv>i
 
 SERMON XI. 
 rofoijj in (ira.ce. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. C. MAGEE, D.D., 
 
 PRECENTOR OF CLOGHER, AND RECTOR OF ENNISKILLEN.
 
 rV4A-
 
 dir0toi{j in 
 
 2 PETER iii. 18. 
 
 BUT GROW IN GRACE, AND IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR 
 LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST." 
 
 Christian life, like the Christian faith from 
 -*- which it springs, is a great mystery. It is 
 indeed but a part of that one great " mystery of 
 godliness" which that faith reveals; for it, too, is 
 a manifestation of " God in the flesh." Every re- 
 newed man is a real revelation of God. "God 
 dwelleth" in him and "he in God;" and the Di- 
 vine and indwelling Spirit reveals Himself in and 
 by him to the world. " I in them and Thou in 
 Me, that the world may believe that Thou hast 
 sent Me," are the words in which our Lord sets 
 forth the deep mystery of the Divine life in the 
 soul of man. Not in figure or in metaphor, but in 
 truest and most awful reality, are we made, by our 
 living union with Christ, "partakers of a Divine 
 nature." A nature which displays itself in words 
 and works that are human, and yet that are also 
 superhuman, -in a life which is that of a man, 
 and yet which is life in God and with God. 
 
 Such a life is a great mystery. It presents, 
 though in an infinitely lower degree, that difficulty 
 which the idea of the Incarnation presents to our
 
 4 Groivth in Grace. 
 
 minds, the difficulty of conceiving of any real union 
 of the human and the Divine ; any union, that is, 
 of God and Man, in which God shall still be truly 
 i and perfectly God, and Man truly and perfectly 
 Man. However we may succeed in defining this 
 idea in words, we find it all but impossible to real- 
 ize it in thought. The moment we attempt to do 
 so, it escapes from us, and we find ourselves ex- 
 cluding the thought of what is human that we may 
 realize the idea of the Divine; or excluding the 
 thought of the Divine, that we may realize the idea 
 of what is human. "We never can contemplate long 
 that " strange sight," humanity indwelt by the 
 Divine glory, without imagining that the inferior 
 nature is consumed, or at least in some measure 
 lost in the higher, the finite in the Infinite, the 
 creature in the Creator, or without being tempted 
 to doubt if the glory that we see be indeed the 
 presence of the very God of heaven. 
 
 Such we know has been the history of the doc- 
 trine of the Incarnation. We know how, ever as 
 men insisted on the truth of our Lord's divinity, 
 they were almost insensibly led into denying, or 
 forgetting, the truth of His humanity ; or as they 
 asserted the reality of His human nature, they were 
 led into denial or forgetfulness of His Divine nature. 
 And as with the idea of the Incarnate "Word, so with 
 the idea of the written Word : here, too, we have 
 a union of the Divine and of the human, a Word 
 that is God's word, and yet that is also the word of 
 man. And we know only too well how some have
 
 Growth in Grace. 5 
 
 insisted on the Divine authorship of this Word, 
 until it ceased for them to have in any real sense 
 a human authorship, until Prophet and Apostle were 
 no longer men u moved by the Holy Ghost," but 
 masks through which passed a voice not their own. * ' 
 And we know how others, revolting against this 
 false conception of it, have insisted on the evident 
 proofs of its human authorship, until they have 
 come to deny that God is in any real and distinctive 
 sense its Author too. And as with the idea of the 
 incarnate Christ and the inspired Word, so with 
 the idea of the Christian life. It, too, as we have 
 seen, has its Divine and its human element, and it 
 in like manner has been distorted by one-sided at- 
 tempts to bring out either of these ideas to the ex- 
 clusion of the other. We know how one school of 
 writers dwell almost exclusively on the Divine and 
 supernatural aspect of this life, until its natural 
 and human aspect vanishes almost entirely from 
 their descriptions of it ; until it becomes an utterly 
 unnatural and unreal state, in which man is seen 
 the mere passive instrument of a creating and con- 
 trolling Omnipotence. 
 
 By such teachers the science of the Divine life is 
 and must be almost entirely neglected. They treat 
 mainly of its first beginnings, or its more marked and 
 striking crises when the Divine power is most start- 
 lingly manifested, and the soul may be seen stirred 
 to its depths by the power of the Spirit. They 
 would fain dwell always on the Mount of Trans- 
 figuration, or in the chamber of Pentecost, where 
 
 B
 
 6 Grotvth in Grace. 
 
 the Divine Presence is seen in rays of glory, or in 
 tongues of fire ; but they seem to shun the lower 
 *V>4-*u paths of daily life, in which the Christian seems to 
 walk only with the common light upon his path, 
 and to speak the common speech of men. And the 
 natural and necessary result of this exaggerated 
 and one-sided statement of the great doctrines of 
 grace has been, as violent and one-sided a reaction 
 f against them. Men have wearied of what seemed 
 to them the unreality of such a religion ; they have 
 sickened of what they call its cant expressions, in 
 which every word seems to lose its natural meaning 
 and acquire some strange new one ; they have in- 
 sisted that man is something more than a machine ; 
 they have claimed for his reason and for his heart 
 their place in the work of his own reformation; 
 they have asserted for human life in this world its 
 > real worth and dignity. But they have gone be- 
 yond all this, and, asserting the human side of 
 Christianity, they have denied the Divine. "While 
 proclaiming that the Christian life is not wwnatural, 
 i^\ they have made it no longer supernatural ; they 
 insist that there is nothing in religion really true 
 or valuable but its moral precepts and its idea of 
 God; they maintain there is nothing that is real 
 in its duties that is not within the reach of all 
 men; that the Heathen stands in this respect on 
 a level with the Christian, and that we have but 
 to obey the better instincts of our common nature, 
 and we need no new birth, no higher nature, no 
 divine grace.
 
 Growth in Grace. 7 
 
 y 
 
 Now against both these extreme views, each the 
 exaggeration of a great truth, and each therefore \ *&dUr<jJi 
 a most dangerous error, the Word of God gives I 
 its clear and repeated testimony. In every word 
 which tells us of our state of spiritual death, and 
 of our absolute need of a resurrection and a new 
 birth; in every word which describes that new 
 birth as the work of the quickening Spirit who is < 
 " Lord and giver of life ;" in every word which de- 
 scribes the newness of that spiritual life in its irre- 
 concileable opposition to the old and fleshly nature 
 which could therefore never have given it birth; 
 in every word which ascribes the first motions of 
 all that is holy in us the inspiration of every 
 good thought, the awakening of every holy desire, 
 the suggestion of every holy purpose to an Al- , 
 mighty Spirit dwelling in our spirit, and working 
 in us both to will and do of His good pleasure ; in 
 every word which describes that new life as sus- 
 tained by heavenly and mystic food, not fed " by 
 bread alone, but by every word proceeding out of 
 the mouth of God ;" in every word which describes 
 the Christian life as a progress from victory to 
 victory over the world, and the flesh, and the 
 devil, all unattainable' by the natural powers of 
 the greatest man, all attainable by the weakest 
 and lowliest possessor of this spiritual nature ; in 
 all these descriptions of this new life, from its birth 
 to its glorious and completed manifestation, the 
 "Word of God sets forth for us an existence to 
 which mere human nature, unaided and unchanged, 
 
 B2
 
 8 Growth in Grace. 
 
 could never reach, of which it could never even 
 
 I conceive ; it testifies of this new creation, as of the 
 old, that it " declares the glory of God and sheweth 
 His handiwork." 
 
 But, on the other hand, equally clear, equally 
 full, is the testimony of Scripture to the human 
 and the natural aspect of this Christian life. In 
 every word which appeals to our human reason, 
 and pleads with our human affections, and addresses 
 itself to our human sympathies; in every word 
 which exhorts us to "work out our own salvation 
 with fear and trembling," to "give all diligence to i 
 add to our faith" every needed grace; in every 
 exhortation to heed and watchfulness against all 
 spiritual enemies; in every call to the use of or- 
 dinances; in every institution and appointment of 
 Christ's Church that makes us dependant for such 
 ordinances on human ministrations ; in every warn- 
 ing against neglect of these ; and above all, in every 
 warning against "resisting," "grieving," "quench- 
 ing" that very Spirit of God which works in us with 
 all the power of Omnipotence ; in every such word 
 
 which seems to make us in part authors of our own 
 
 -* '"** 
 salvation, and altogether authors of our own destruc- 4 
 
 tion, which sets forth the awful power of the human 
 will to shape the destiny of man for good or evil, 
 does Scripture testify that the supernatural element 
 of our new life does not overpower or destroy the 
 natural, and that though God works w every re- 
 newed man, yet that every such man works also 
 with God.
 
 Growth in Grace. 9 
 
 Such opposite statements are for the most part 
 scattered throughout Scripture without any attempt i 
 to harmonize them, or to fit them into any one 
 logical system. They are given us separately, that 
 we may use them each in their turn as we need 
 them ; calling to our help in hours of despondency 
 all words that tell us that it is the Most High God ^ 
 who is our Eedeemer ; calling to mind in our hours 
 of carelessness and presumption all words that % 
 speak of our salvation, as a gift from Him that we 
 may lose or cast away. 
 
 But there are passages in Scripture which bring 
 together in one both these views of the Christian 
 life, which express at once its supernatural and its 
 natural, its human and its divine elements. Such 
 a passage, for instance, as that in which we are 
 bidden to " work out our own salvation," because \ \ 
 "it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of 
 His good pleasure." And such a twofold statement 
 is given us in our text. 
 
 When the Apostle bids us " grow in grace," he 
 tells us, on the one hand, that our life is from above ; 
 that to live it we need a grace a free and gracious ^ 
 gift from God a communication to us of "that , 
 thing which by nature we cannot have :" but then 
 he bids us see that we " grow in this grace," that 
 is, he tells us that this grace, though miraculous in 
 its origin, is yet subject to natural laws in its pro- 
 gress. It has its growth, its normal and real de- ! 
 velopment: a growth which we may help by our 
 care, or hinder by our neglect, or destroy by our
 
 io Growth in Grace. 
 
 injurious treatment. The analogy here to the 
 growth of the plant or the animal is perfect. The 
 life of any living thing we cannot give. The vital 
 
 * principle that dwells in it is not of our creation. 
 It has God alone for its author. But once that 
 life is begun, once it manifests itself, as all life 
 must, by growth, then we have power over it to 
 shape, direct, and improve, or to distort and dwarf, 
 or destroy. True it is that the creative power that 
 gave it being at the first sustains it in all its after 
 growth ; that without this it would not grow : yet 
 it is also true that the supplies of food or culture 
 that are necessary to its growth are left to us to 
 give or to withhold. 
 
 And this analogy, so frequent in Scripture, be- 
 tween the life of the soul and that of the plant, sug- 
 gests an answer to the objection that is frequently 
 brought by those who insist upon the irresistible 
 character of Divine grace, that it is surely impossible 
 for man to resist or defeat the purposes of God; 
 that if His Holy Spirit have begun a work on our 
 spirits, it cannot be that we should have power to 
 prevent the completion of that work. Those who 
 I BO speak forget that the same might be said of many 
 another work of God. Every seed that He has 
 
 - created is made and designed especially to grow 
 < and to bring forth fruit after its kind. And yet we 
 
 have the power to spoil this work, to frustrate appa- 
 rently this design of God. The plant which He 
 ' made to grow we can prevent from growing. The 
 fruit which, according to His plan, it ought to have
 
 Grotvth in Grace. 1 1 
 
 borne, we can say it shall never bear. And in both 
 cases the answer to this seeming difficulty is the 
 same. It is true that God works in the life of the 
 seed as in that of the soul. It is also true that He 
 has been pleased to set such bounds to the manner 
 of His working that we may help or hinder the 
 growth of either. It is not we who are in either 
 case stronger than God. It is God who has in His 
 original design left these limits within which our 
 power may be exerted, and within which His will 
 shall not overmaster ours. 
 
 But if the progress of our spiritual life depends 
 so largely upon ourselves, if we are responsible for 
 our growth or our decline in grace, then it is all 
 important for us to have some standard by which 
 we may measure this growth or this decline, some 
 conception, that is, of what this life should be in its \ 
 perfection. Every life tends to complete itself ac- 
 cording to its own nature, tends to realize the true 
 and perfect form of itself; and unless we know what 
 that form should be, we cannot know how near it 
 approaches or how far it falls short of this. 
 
 Where, then, is the perfect life by which we may 
 measure our imperfections ? Where is that form to j 
 which all our growth should assimilate us? You 
 do not need, brethren, to be told where we are 
 to find the example of a perfect life. We know 
 that one such, and one alone, stands out among 
 all the records of our race unstained by sin, un- 
 dimmed by imperfection ; the life of Him who " did 
 no sin," and in whose mouth there was " no guile ;"
 
 12 Groivth in Grace. 
 
 the "beloved Son," in whom His Father was "well 
 
 , pleased." And we know that this life is the ideal 
 
 and the type of our own. It is to this Image, 
 
 faultless and glorious as it is, that we are "pre- 
 
 destined to be conformed :" it is to the fulness of 
 
 the height of the stature of Christ Jesus, high as it 
 
 ' rises above all human excellence, that we are all yet 
 to attain. To be like Him in all things, "grace 
 > for grace," to have His character fully formed in 
 us, this is the perfection to which our Christian 
 life ever tends, and which at last it is to reach. 
 This perfection is not indeed fully revealed to us ; 
 I " it doth not yet appear what we shall be ;" that 
 last development of our life, when grace shall pass 
 into glory, is yet hidden from our sight. But we 
 know that all the glory of it shall consist in its like- 
 ness to Him. " We shall be like Him, for we shall 
 \see Him as He is." Our growth in grace, then, is 
 nothing else than our increasing likeness to Christ. 
 To know if we are so growing, we have but to com- 
 pare our life with His, to see how much of His 
 Spirit dwells in us, how far " the mind that is in 
 us" is the "mind of Christ;" to see how far we 
 love what He loved, hate what He hated, desire 
 what He desired ; to see how far we can enter into 
 that fellowship with Him which can only arise from 
 
 j increasing likeness to Him ; how far we can under- 
 stand and know Him, as kindred natures alone can 
 understand and know each other ; how far we have 
 been baptized with His baptism, drank of His cup, 
 shared in His death, and know the fellowship of
 
 Growth in Grace. 13 
 
 His sufferings and the power of His resurrection. 
 It is only by such comparison of ourselves with 
 Christ our great example that we can learn how far 
 we are growing in grace. All other comparisons of 
 ourselves with others, or with our past selves, are 
 uncertain and dangerous. The standard of com- 
 parison in either case is so low that it is only too 
 easy for us to flatter ourselves that because we have 
 reached or even passed it, we have made great pro- 
 gress in the spiritual life. And so pride, and care- 
 lessness, and self-righteous complacency will check 
 our growth in grace ; or if we be given to despond, 
 we shall be cast down often with as little reason, 
 writing bitter things against ourselves, because we 
 are not all we see others are, or all we think we 
 once were ; while, it may be, the very difference we 
 see is a sign not of decay but of growth, not of de- 
 cline but of progress. But no such danger arises 
 from comparing ourselves with our true example, 
 Christ. Infinitely above us as that example is; 
 contrasting, in all its bright perfection, with our 
 imperfect imitation of it; humbling us, as it does 
 whenever we behold it, until we are ashamed even 
 to think of our miserable shortcomings, yet no 
 despondency need mingle in our humility, for vast 
 as is the height at which that life stands above us, 
 we may, even as we scan it, have within us the 
 assurance that we shall yet traverse it. Glorious as 
 that ideal of excellence is, we may possess a pledge 
 that we shall yet attain to it. For we know that 
 He has not come to mock us with the display of
 
 14 Growth in Grace. 
 
 a perfection that never can be ours. We know that 
 that life of His, all-glorious as it is, He has lived, 
 just for this, that it may be ours too. And we 
 know, too, that as it has its perfection in Him, so it 
 must have its beginnings in us, must have its gra- 
 dual increase and growth, and that if we can recog- 
 nise its beginnings, if we can only see in ourselves 
 the first faint motions of the new and heavenly 
 nature, then may we hope and believe that the life 
 so begun, which is none other than His life, shall 
 grow to that fulness of glory that we see in Him. 
 Wrapped up in the acorn lies, from the first, all the 
 strength of the oak. Hidden in the dark colourless 
 root lies all the beauty of the flower. And the first 
 small green leaf that peeps above the surface gives 
 sure promise of all the future growth of flower and 
 of tree. So, as we watch the first growth of the new 
 life in us, as we recognise in it the essential charac- 
 ( ter that marks it for what it is, even as we grieve to 
 see that it is yet so small and weak, even as we 
 tremble as we think of all the dangers that threaten 
 its existence, and shrink from the thought of all the 
 watchful care and toil we must bestow to foster and 
 defend its growth, we may still in all humility and 
 godly fear, yet with all faith and hoj^e, rejoice as we 
 hail the appearance of this work of God, and be- 
 lieve that He who has begun it will carry it on to 
 the end. 
 
 And of the character_of this Divine life in us of 
 that which, when we see it, distinguishes the new 
 nature from all other the Word of God leaves us
 
 Growth in Grace. 15 
 
 in no doubt. That character is sonship. "To as 
 many as believed on Him to them gave He power ' 
 to become the sons of God." The essential prin- 
 ciple of this new life, that which makes it altogether 
 new, is that in it we regain our lost relation to the 
 Father of our spirits, and become once more His 
 children. " Behold," says the Apostle John, " what 
 manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that 
 we should be called the sons of God." " I will arise 
 and go to my Father," is the first word of the new / 
 life in him who was dead and had been made alive ; 
 and in that word lay folded up the whole joy and 
 glory of his return ; just as in the word of selfish 
 and unfilial separation, " Father, give me the por- \ , 
 tion of goods that falleth to me," lay all the sin and ) 
 misery of his exile. "Abba, Father," is the first \ 
 word that " the Spirit of adoption" whispers in our \ 
 hearts. " Our Father," is the daily speech of that 
 new nature which that Spirit bestows. " Father, 
 into Thy hands I commend my spirit," is the last 
 utterance of that nature as it enters into its last 
 trial and undergoes its last change. It is this filial 
 spirit which, all through its progress, rules and 
 shapes the Christian life. It is the vital principle 
 according to which growth in grace developes itself. 
 It is this which, infusing itself into all the nature 
 of the renewed man, changes it ; not by bestowing 
 new faculties or powers, but by restoring the old to 
 their true use, and giving them their true aim and 
 direction. It is this which ever wars against and 
 expels the old evil lusts of the flesh. It is this
 
 1 6 Growth in Grace. 
 
 which casts out disobedience from the will, and law- 
 lessness from the desires, and impurity from the 
 heart. It is this which, entering into all the reli- 
 gious emotions, makes them in like manner new: 
 changes the " sorrow of the world" into " godly sor- 
 row ;" fear of wrath into fear of sin, and morality into 
 holiness, and formal service into spiritual commu- 
 nion, and hope of heaven as an alternative to hell, 
 into longing for the presence and the vision of God. 
 
 From first to last, then, this Spirit of adoption is 
 the characteristic of the new life. " Beloved, now 
 are we the sons of God :" here is the beginning of 
 that life. " When He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him :" here is its completion, and all that lies be- 
 tween these two is " growth in grace." 
 
 Now though, as I have said, if we measure our 
 growth in grace by comparing any of our graces 
 with the perfect example of those in Christ, we 
 shall only learn how infinitely we fall short of 
 them ; yet if we measure it by the degree in 
 which this Spirit of Christ, this filial and loving 
 Spirit, is growing in us, we may find evidence of 
 a real growth in grace. For we may find it not 
 only, or perhaps chiefly, in any great increase of 
 any Christian graces, or of all of them; we may 
 find it rather in the grief that we feel because there 
 is so little of such growth, in the earnest desires 
 \ and longings for more grace, in the increasing con- 
 sciousness of evil in us, proofs not that the evil in 
 us is increasing, but that our power of discovering 
 it, and our pain at its presence, is increasing. Not
 
 Growth in Grace. \ j 
 
 always in the strength of our will, or the fervour 
 of our love, or the freedom of our prayer, or the 
 fulness of our peace, is the best proof given of our < 
 growth in grace. It may be given, though we fail 
 at first to see it, in the discovery of the weakness 
 of our will, and the coldness of our hearts, and the ' 
 sinfulness of our lives. It may be, as we " mourn 
 in our prayer and are vexed," and as we long in 
 the very disquietude of our hearts to flee away and 
 be at rest, that we have the best proof that things 
 belonging to the Spirit live and grow in us, and 
 that all carnal affections are dying in us. And, ' 
 further, if it be this filial character of our new 
 nature that really is its vital principle and rules 
 its growth, we learn that we can lay down no fixed 
 and rigid rule for the order of that growth. We 
 may not say, for instance, that in every case the 
 new life begins with contrition, and then passes \ 
 through faith and assurance of forgiveness to per- \ 
 feet peace. No such rigid and uniform rule as this 
 is laid down in Scripture. We might as well say 
 beforehand in what order the leaves in spring 
 should burst out upon the budding trees. In every 
 true child of God all the phases of spiritual life 
 will surely display themselves, but not all in the 
 same order. In some the new life may begin in 
 tears and agonies of sorrow, and pass on into smiles 
 of joy and peace ; in others it may begin in quiet 
 and peaceful trust and happy service, to be dis- 
 turbed, it may be ere long, with deep contrition of 
 sin begotten, not of fear, but of love. It is the
 
 1 8 Growth in Grace. 
 
 height of presumption to attempt to limit the man- 
 ner of the Spirit's working, or to judge of His pre- 
 sence by any other test than the presence of the 
 . work of the Spirit, the conformity to the image of 
 \ Christ. "Wherever there is a ChrisTlike~soulptKere 
 is Christ and the Spirit of Christ ; wherever there 
 is not this likeness, then, be the feeling or emotion 
 ever so strong, or ever so strictly according to the 
 prescribed rule, there Christ is not. 
 
 But if we are to grow in grace, we must know 
 not only the tests but the conditions of such growth. 
 Every life is fitted to exist only under certain con- 
 ditions ; it has its proper element, its proper food, 
 | and deprived of these it perishes. And as in the 
 natural, so in the spiritual life, the supply of these 
 is left in a great degree under our own control. 
 The Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 I for instance, by which the soul is " strengthened 
 and refreshed;" the "sincere milk of the Word," 
 by which the newborn life in us should grow ; the 
 ~ secret prayer, that opens for us an entrance into the 
 treasury of heaven ; the worship of the sanctuary, 
 that brings into the midst of the assembled saints 
 the presence of their Lord, all these means of 
 grace, through which fresh supplies of food from 
 heaven should reach our souls, are ours to use or 
 to refuse; we may, if we please, deprive ourselves 
 of any or of all of these. "We may in our slothful- 
 ness neglect them, or in our presumption despise 
 them, and in each such case we know that our 
 soul's health must suffer, our growth in grace must 

 
 Growth in Grace. 19 
 
 languish, if it do not altogether cease. Our first 
 question, then, when we find any symptoms of de- f 
 cline in grace, should be, Am I diligently using all 
 appointed means of grace, or have I neglected any , 
 one of them ? Or, still worse, have I dared to choose 
 between them, and to use some one especially toUTe A 
 disparagement of any other ? to put, for instance, 
 private prayer in place of public worship, or hear- \ 
 ing and reading the Word in place of the Holy 
 Communion ? as if God had given us more means \ 
 of grace than we needed ; or as if we, not He, were i I 
 to judge of what " food is convenient for us." 
 
 Or, again, we may be diligent in the use of all 
 means of grace, and yet use them all amiss. We 
 may so partake of the Lord's Supper as to eat and 
 drink in it only our condemnation. We may so 
 read or hear God's Word that it shall be to us 
 a savour not of life, but of death. We may so 
 pray that our prayer shall bring not blessings but 
 judgment. We may so worship in the sanctuary 
 that our service shall be an abomination, and our \ 
 sacrifice an offence. And all the while we may be 
 deceiving our own selves, deeming this regular and 
 formal observance of set duties in itself a proof of 
 grace ; dwelling, like the unloving elder brother, J 
 in the father's house, but dwelling there as ser- J 
 vants, not as sons; serving God not for love, but i 
 for hire. In such a case there can be no growth 
 in grace. All the rich abundance of the feast in our 
 Father's House will profit us nothing, unless we sit 
 down to it in the spirit of the repentant, forgiven, 

 
 20 Growth in Grace. 
 
 loving son, whose feast is not so much upon his 
 father's gifts as on his father's love. If, then, 
 while we cannot accuse ourselves of neglecting any 
 one means of grace, we yet find in our souls no 
 growth in grace, then let us see in what spirit, 
 with what aim, we are using all these means. Are 
 we using them as if the grace were in the means, 
 and not in Him who gave them to us ? 5re~ we 
 forgetting the Giver in the gifts, and seeking to 
 have even these spiritual riches apart from God? 
 If we are, and just so far as we are, will God with- 
 hold from us His best gift Himself; and this 
 very feast of good things He fias spread for us be 
 to our souls but as unsatisfying husks. 
 
 But we grow in grace not only by the right use 
 of all means, but by the du^perfo_rmance_of all 
 duties. For the soul's health, as for that of the 
 body, there is needed the vigorous and active use 
 of all its powers. Disuse and decay are as clearly 
 connected in the one as in the'other. The grace 
 which we do not exercise, like the limb we never 
 use or the faculty we never exert, withers and 
 dies at last. The duties that are appointed us are 
 not arbitrarily chosen, they are each of them de- 
 signed to exercise and strengthen some one or other 
 spiritual faculty. And the neglect of any one of 
 these can never be compensated by any additional 
 activity in' the performance of any other ; we never 
 can omit any one of these without injuring and 
 weakening some corresponding grace, without mak- 
 ing our Christian character one-sided and distorted,
 
 Growth in Grace. 21 
 
 and therefore weak and sickly. And yet how 
 strongly are we tempted to do this, how constantly 
 do we find ourselves making a selection among our \ 
 duties, and excusing ourselves for our neglect of 
 some, by extra zeal in the performance of others. ( 
 For some, home duties are the plea for taking no y 
 part in the great works of the Church ; for others, 
 a noisy and busy activity in these is made the . 
 excuse for the neglected and deserted home. In 
 their zeal for the Church or for their family, some 
 have no time or thought for their own inner life ; ;> 
 busy in watering the vineyards of others, theyv 
 leave their own to lie waste and untended : while 
 others, again, in their alleged anxiety for their 
 own spiritual progress, profess to have no time or 
 thought for aught beside : all of us only too ready ' 
 to tythe mint and cummin in the doing of what we 
 like best or find easiest to do, all of us only too 
 ready to forget those other matters of the law, 
 those other duties which, just because we like them 
 least, are for us the weightiest and most pressing. 
 
 And indeed as a rule we may take for granted, 
 that the duty which we choose, by way of prefer- 
 ence, is just the one that we least need to practise ; j 
 and that the one we most neglect is just the one 
 we most need to observe. We may be sure that it 
 is because there is in the task we shrink from 
 more of the cross for us, and therefore more of the 
 discipline ancTtraimng that we need, than in any 
 other, that we are shrinking from it. And we may 
 be sure of this too, that so long as we refuse to 
 
 c
 
 22 Growth in Grace. 
 
 take up that cross, so long will He who has ap- 
 
 |k| 
 
 pointed it for us withhold the blessing which He 
 has hound to it for us; so long will our spiritual 
 life continue faint and languishing, even if at last 
 it do not altogether perish. 
 
 } But the endeavour "to fulfil all righteousness" 
 helps our growth in grace for another reason. It 
 leads us to the encounter jwith alljinrighteousness : 
 " The Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh 
 against the Spirit ; and these two are contrary one 
 to the other." Against every duty stands its op- 
 posing temptation; against every grace its corre- 
 sponding sin. Love strives with hate, and faith 
 with doubt, and hope with fear, and gentleness 
 with wrath, and obedience with lawlessness, and as 
 
 \ they strive theygrow. Stronger and still stronger 
 does each grace within us wax, as it gains in its 
 turn its victory over its opposite. And deeper and 
 stronger too grows in us that essential element of 
 our perfection hatred of sin. We cannot be holy 
 without this. The holiness of an unfallen being 
 may consist in mere ignorance of evil ; the holiness 
 and safety of a fallen and regenerate being can only 
 consist in the horror of evil that is gained by long 
 and bitter experience of it. He who has known 
 what it is to wrestle in agony with his bosom sin, 
 or face with a desperate courage some terrible and 
 haunting temptation ; he who has known how the 
 sin that he deemed slain will start up again mightier 
 than ever, and the temptation once repelled with 
 such desperate effort can return again and again ;
 
 Growth in Grace. 23 
 
 he who has discovered how what seemed the very \ 
 smallest sin as he indulged it, seems armed with 
 a giant might when he attempts to oppose it; he 
 who finds how the evil tenants of his heart, that 
 seemed such harmless guests there, so long as they } 
 held undisturbed possession, can tear and rend that 
 heart asunder ere they will depart from it ; he l 
 who after some such deadly struggle has gained 
 the victory at the cost of agony unspeakable, or 
 has known the shame and the humiliation of defeat, 
 he has learned, as none save he can learn, the " ex- i 
 ceeding sinfulness of sin." And as he learns it, ' 
 as he sees all evil in him to be the deadly and 
 loathed enemy of his life, which if he slay not, 
 must slay him, he has gained a growth in grace 
 he never could have gained at lesser cost, for he 
 has been taught to "love righteousness and hate i 
 iniquity," by the deep conviction wrought, by all 
 his suffering, into his inmost soul, that righteous- 
 ness is life and sin is misery and death. f 
 
 But this thought, of the help temptation may 
 give to our growth in grace, suggests the thought 
 that there are conditions of that growth which 
 seem to lie altogether beyond our control, helps and < 
 hindrances which are not of our choosing, but of 
 God's appointing. All the ^xternal circumstances 
 of our life, for instance ; all those distinctions of 
 rank, wealth, education, profession, social and family 
 ties, that make such difference between man and 
 man ; these are, for the most part, not of our v 
 making, and these all we know largely influence
 
 24 Growth in Grace. 
 
 our character and shape our history. How do 
 these of themselves necessarily affect our growth 
 in grace ? How far is our spiritual life the " crea- 
 ture of circumstances ?" We answer, ' Not at all.' 
 Not in the very least degree does our growth in 
 grace depend on anything without us. To say that 
 it did, were to say that God could place us in cir- 
 cumstances which forbid our becoming holy, and 
 yet required from us holiness ; this were to make 
 Him indeed an austere Master, " reaping where 
 He had not sown, and gathering where He had 
 not strawed." 
 
 Wherever the renewed man finds himself in this 
 world, there is the best place for him, the place in 
 which he is put, that in it he may grow in grace ; 
 " For all things work together for good to them that 
 love God." " All things are ours, whether Paul, or 
 Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, 
 or things present, or things to come ; all are ours, 
 and we are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Here 
 is the reason why nothing in our position need 
 hinder our growth in grace, for " we are Christ's ;" 
 and where we are He will be with us still ; and so 
 though we walk with Him through the furnace of 
 temptation sevenfold heated, no smell of fire even 
 need pass upon our garments : God is with us there, 
 for " Christ is God's." Never let us, then, accuse 
 our circumstances for our decline in grace; never 
 let us yield to the vain and sinful wish to be else- 
 where than just where we are ; never let us forget 
 that all that we dislike in our present condition,
 
 Growth in Grace. 25 
 
 all that seems in it unfavourable to our growth in 
 grace, is not only appointed of God, and appointed 
 for this very purpose, that it should help our sanc- 
 tification, but that it is also known to God; that 
 He sees, far more clearly than we see, all the diffi- 
 culties of our position, and has provided for us the 
 "sufficient grace" to meet them. "I know thy 
 works, and where thou dwellest^ was His message 
 to one whose dwelling was "where Satan's seat 
 was." I know, that is to say, all in thy position 
 that makes it hard for thee to serve Me; never- 
 theless that knowledge hinders not the warning, 
 " Eepent, and do the first works ;" nor yet the 
 promise, a To him that overcometh will I give to 
 eat of the hidden manna." 
 
 And never let us forget either, that as circum- 
 stances and events in our lives cannot of them- 
 selves hinder, so neither can they of themselves 
 promote our growth in grace. It is not the event, 
 it is the use we make of the event, it is noT the 
 circumstance, it is the manner in which we deal 
 with the circumstance, that makes us the better 
 or the worse for it. Place two men in precisely the 
 same circumstances, and yet how differently will 
 they be affected by them. The .danger that makes 
 the brave man braver, makes the coward more 
 timorous; the wealth that makes the spendthrift 
 lavish, makes the miser more miserly ; the loving 
 devotion that wins in return the unspeakable love 
 of one heart, only increases the tyrannical selfish- 
 ness of another.
 
 26 Growth in Grace. 
 
 So is the effect of all God's providences upon our 
 spiritual character; they are not self-acting, they 
 are to us what we make them. " Trials come for 
 our good," as we so often hear men say ; but the 
 good must be drawn by us out of the trial, or it 
 profits us not. The same chastening that brings one 
 sinner to " bis God right humbly," drives another 
 further from Him ; just as the same fire that melts 
 gold will harden clay. Even those outward con- 
 ditions, then, that seem most beyond our control, 
 are like those other means of grace of which we 
 have spoken, solemn responsibilities, trusts to be 
 accounted for, talents to be improved, opportu- 
 nities on which may hang eternal life or eternal 
 death. A solemn thing, then, brethren, unspeak- 
 ably solemn and awful, as well as a glorious and 
 a blessed thing, is this Christian life of ours. For 
 it is a life, the glory and blessedness of which con- 
 sist in this, that through and in it all may be felt 
 the presence of the indwelling, guiding, teaching, 
 sanctifying Spirit of God. It is a life whose every 
 event and circumstance may, by the power of that 
 Spirit, be made to work for us an exceeding and 
 eternal weight of glory, for it is a life which in its 
 every event and circumstance might be made to 
 minister to our growth in grace. But then how 
 awful does this life appear, when we remember that 
 in us lies the power of turning every one of its bless- 
 ings into a curse, when we think that accord- 
 ing as we use them, may means of grace become 
 means of destruction, and opportunities for good
 
 Growth in Grace. 27 
 
 become occasions of evil, and merciful chastenings 
 become hardening judgments, and all our history 
 one long growth in sin, one long terrible ripening 
 for the inheritance of sinners in eternal misery. 
 
 May God preserve us all from the sin of a wasted 
 life ! May God grant us all " by His holy inspi- 
 ration to know what things we ought to do, and 
 grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same !" 
 Amen.
 
 SERMON XII. 
 $trfctor mark of % Spirit. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE VERY REV. THE DEAN OF CANTERBURY.
 
 eredttr $H0rk 0f % Spirit. 
 
 MAEK iv. 29. 
 
 "WHEN THE FRUIT IS BROUGHT FORTH, IMMEDIATELY 
 HE PUTTETH IN THE SICKLE, BECAUSE THE HARVEST 
 IS COME." 
 
 THE subject on which I am to address you, the 
 perfected work of the Spirit, seems of necessity 
 to include two separate considerations ; the perfec- 
 tion of the Spirit's work here, and the perfection of 
 the Spirit's work hereafter. And the wonderful 
 words which I have read to you appear to take 
 account of both. The fruit is one, the harvest is 
 the other. The fruit is brought forth that tells of 
 the past, of the seed, and the springing up, and the 
 blade, and the ear, and the full corn in the ear : 
 the harvest is come that looks on to the future, to 
 the storing in the garner of God, to the fitness for 
 the Master's use in all the glorious employments of 
 the final and perfected state. 
 
 And it is to these two in order that I would 
 endeavour to direct your attention ; to the one in- 
 deed, which we see, at more length and with more 
 certainty ; to the other, which we see not, in fewer 
 words, and more in the language of hope than of 
 knowledge. First, let us speak of the perfection of ! 
 the Spirit's work here on earth. Now it is very 
 obvious and very easy to speak in language which
 
 4 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 
 may be perfectly true, so as to depreciate any even 
 the furthest advance of this work of God's Spirit 
 on the character of man on this side the grave. If 
 we are to measure it by the pattern set us by 
 Christ, if we are to compare it with the least con- 
 ceivable degree of perfection in our glorified nature, 
 it must appear scanty indeed. But I would not 
 invite you thus to measure, or thus to compare. I 
 would take the perfection of the Spirit's work on 
 earth in reference to the actual material on which 
 the Holy Ghost operates here below. I would take 
 it as we find it, and tiy to ascertain what are its 
 ripest and highest manifestations, and also when its 
 work may be perfected, and we least suspect it. 
 And surely this is the way in which we ought to 
 consider the subject. The Holy Spirit has not come 
 down on the Church for nothing. The estimate to 
 be formed of His working is not to be a low and 
 mean one. God is among us; God is working 
 mightily in us; His arm is not shortened. That 
 more excellent way, which came in when outward 
 spiritual gifts ceased, has not proved a way of 
 disappointment, nor a fool's journey. The per- 
 fected work of the Spirit has been carried on in 
 a great multitude whom no man can number; is 
 reached every day around us ; nay we ourselves are, 
 we humbly hope, advancing towards it. 
 
 What then is it ? wherein does it consist ? 
 
 The parable in the text may serve to guide us to 
 an answer. It is found, when the fruit offers itself. 
 It then has place, when the man is, according to
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 5 
 
 his measure, filled with the blessed influence of 
 the indwelling Spirit; when that degree has been 
 reached in the way towards absolute perfection, 
 further than which the Spirit, who knows what is in 
 man, sees that he cannot advance : when that fruit 
 of the life hangs ripe on the branch, to bring forth J 
 which was the work of that life. 
 
 Very various is this, both in kind and in degree ; * 
 as various, as the ever-differing ages and places and 
 dispositions of men. In some, the work is perfected 
 at a time of life when in others it is but begun : in 
 some, it is finished at a point of its progress which 
 in others is but a halting-place for a moment. To 
 us, it often seems to be cut short prematurely ; but 
 in reality it never is. It may be that to the eyes 
 of man, a new race was beginning, a new line of M 
 duty scarcely entered upon, when the sudden acci- 
 dent, or the few days' illness, blighted the fair 
 promise. But God seeth otherwise than we "do. 
 On some branches there was the fresh graft just 
 inserted, and we thought of the wonder of the new 
 leaves, and future produce not its own : but on 
 others, the fruit hung ripe, and the great Husband- 
 man knew better than we did that the time of 
 harvest was come. The little child, blessed our 
 home with its beauty, and its winning ways were 
 gentleness itself, and it began to lisp its parents' 
 names, and to run after the early flowers ; and we 
 wondered whether an angel was ever fairer, and 
 blessed God for it night and morning, and were the 
 better for its gentleness, and calculated on its com-
 
 6 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 
 , panionship ; and then God struck it, and it withered, 
 and we wept over it a few days, and after that laid 
 it in its grave. Yet even there was the Spirit's per- 
 fected work; that very beauty, that soul of gen- 
 tleness, those winning ways, that dawning love for 
 God's creatures, all these were the blessed fruits of 
 that Holy Spirit who worketh in all according to 
 the measure of all, that Spirit whose operations 
 man is so apt to limit, and so inapt to comprehend. 
 Yea, and from this upwards, all through the growth 
 and the acquirements of the boy and the youth and 
 the man, of the girl and the maiden and the matron, 
 He who has begun the good work abandons it not 
 in the midst, but ever brings it to its close, as He 
 only sees when and how, and gathers His wheat 
 into His garner. 
 
 And as this perfection of the Spirit's work is not 
 hindered by lack of time, so neither is it by dis- 
 advantage of station, or scantiness of earthly oppor- 
 tunities. For so may we have known the faithful 
 domestic, found ever at his duty in the garden or 
 the offices, with no thoughts beyond his daily work, 
 and no learning further than to follow at family 
 worship in his Bible, and he has become gray and 
 bent, and on a day palsy has laid her hand upon 
 him, and so he dropped out of his place, and his 
 master comes and stands now by his bed-side, and 
 ere long follows him to his grave. And another 
 serves in his room, and to all seeming his trace is 
 lost. Yet has that humble old man been a father 
 in Christ, and in him too has the Spirit's work been
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 7 
 
 perfected. And sayings uttered by him, when he 
 walked in his narrow path of light, live in the 
 memory of those who knew him, and shall come , 
 back to them in the day of sorrow, and light them 
 through the dark valley ; because they were of God, 
 who dwelt in him by His Spirit which leadeth 
 into truth, and gave him to utter things which the 
 heart of man hath not conceived. 
 
 in how many blessed examples like this is the 
 Spirit's work perfected. And various are the ways 
 which He chooses for carrying it on to perfec- 
 tion. By joy and by sorrow, by the toil of health 
 and the patience of sickness, by meditations in soli- 
 tude and the sweet trials of social life, in the 
 dazzle of courts and in the humble monotony of 
 retirement, by the presence and by the privation 
 of the desires of a man's heart, in every occupation 
 and when every occupation is gone, at all times 
 and in all ways, is the holy work going on in the 
 heart and character. Man knows it not ; the heart 
 itself cannot feel it, and cannot trace it minutely : 
 but its fruits are seen ; more maturity of know- 
 ledge, more holy unction in speaking of the things 
 of God, more conformity to His blessed will, in- 
 creasing gentleness coupled with increasing wis- 
 dom. And as we have contemplated some lowly 
 instances in which, notwithstanding appearance, 
 the work was perfected, so may it be permitted 
 us to contemplate others than which I know not 
 whether there be any object more glorious, the 
 sight of the exalted human spirit, furnished by
 
 8 'Hie Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 
 acquirement of knowledge and trained by culture 
 and discipline, dwelt in and hallowed by the Holy 
 Spirit Himself. It is, thank God, a sight, though 
 not of every day, still by no means uncommon. It 
 is found not in seats of learning only, nor only 
 among those who have read most and thought 
 most, according to human methods. God has His 
 own way of granting knowledge, and His own 
 school for training those who are to be made wise 
 unto salvation. It is granted to us sometimes to 
 find, where we little expected it, this ripeness, and 
 balance, and calm exercise, of the powers and af- 
 i fections, which results from long teaching by the 
 Blessed Spirit ; and sometimes also, where we most 
 expected it. Sometimes it is in the invalid, for 
 years laid by from active life, communing only 
 with books and choice friends; from whom comes 
 forth the sentence of wisest counsel as from an 
 oracle of God ; in whom the power of the Spirit 
 is mighty, and the discriminating vision keen and 
 unerring, and the deciding voice silver-clear and 
 never to be questioned; in whom severity and 
 love seem for ever to have run into one; from 
 whom the kindest rebuke is the sharpest, and the 
 sharpest the kindest. what a bright sun in a 
 household is such an one ; what a preserving salt 
 in a social neighbourhood. "What a bulwark of 
 strength for purity and for holiness do we feel it 
 to be for our nation, when we know that there 
 are very few households, and hardly any neigh- 
 bourhood, without such an one to advise and en-
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 9 
 
 courage, and to rebuke ; when we know that the 
 outposts of the Church's army are studded with 
 these bright sentinels ever at their guard, before 
 whom the hosts of darkness crouch and tremble. 
 
 And sometimes again, we find this where we 
 expected and looked for it ; the pearl comes to our 
 search, as it came without our search. We heard 
 of giant powers of thought and ample learning 
 sanctified by the salt of the sacrifice, and wielded 
 under the guidance of the directing Spirit, and we 
 half distrusted the report ; for we knew how subtle 
 and fatal are the snares of exalted talent, and how 
 dangerous a temptation it is to dogmatize and to \ 
 overbear, and how inaccessible commonly is one 
 who knows to those who know not. But when we 
 were brought near, our distrust turned into wonder, 
 and our suspicion into hearty joy; for we found 
 largeness and openness of heart, and wide enter- ~\ 
 tainment of other men's views, and simplicity, and 
 gentleness, and all-embracing love ; we witnessed 
 a mind which had risen, in the Spirit's upward lead- 
 ing, far above the banners of the hosts encamped in 
 the valley ; which knew no party leader, and dealt , 
 with things for themselves, and as God seeth them. 
 Nor is this, again, the only form in which the per- 
 fected work may be found where it was expected. 
 It is perhaps the noblest example, but it must not 
 exclude others. To rise above all partizanship, to 
 keep the oneness of the Spirit in the connecting 
 bond of peace, this is the furthest and highest 
 attainment of the Christian character of love ; but
 
 io The Perfected Work of the 
 
 we may find the perfected work of the Spirit also 
 where this is not. He who dwells in peace, and 
 hears from a distance the sound of the conflict, 
 and carries his mind and his affections above it, has 
 a glory of his own, and a balanced perfection be- 
 longing to himself ; but it is a glory also to mingle 
 in the combat, and to contend for the faith ; and in 
 the champions of the various parties in Christ's 
 Church we may sometimes also find this perfected 
 work of the Spirit, zeal united with love and 
 guided by judgment, admirable temper, and forbear- 
 ance, and forgivingness ; jealousy for the honour of 
 God and the maintenance of the truth ; keen in- 
 sight into the tactics and wiles of the opponents, 
 and vast influence for good in a particular line and 
 a circumscribed circle. Let us not doubt that the 
 Holy Spirit is perfecting His blessed work in many 
 such, who notwithstanding doubt and suspect one 
 another. The history of the Church, and the his- 
 tory of our own experience, will bring before us 
 abundant examples. In the very days of the Apo- 
 stles themselves, no one can say that the spirit of 
 St. James was identical in tendency with that of 
 St. Paul, yet no one surely will say that the Holy 
 Spirit's work was not perfected in both. And so, 
 we may well venture to believe, has it ever been in 
 the great controversies agitating God's Church ; the 
 Holy Spirit has worked in holy men severally as 
 He would, imparting to one the spirit of fervent 
 zeal, to another the power of skilful argument, to 
 another the winning of the affections of men, but
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 1 1 
 
 in all, according to the measure of each, filling up 
 and perfecting His work. 
 
 This, then, is the sum. of what we have said, 
 that the Spirit's perfected work in this world is in 
 each man in whom He dwells the bringing forth 
 of his life's fruit, the advancing him to that for 
 which God intended him, the wonderful guiding, 
 and teaching, and building up, and tending, through 
 paths other than man devised, by ways which his 
 foresight never pointed out, of which it may be 
 truly said in every one's case, what He doeth we 
 know not now, but we shall know hereafter. 
 
 Let us not, however, pass on to that glorious 
 consideration before we have noticed that as the 
 Spirit perfects His work in every one of the sons of 
 God, so is He doing also in that living temple 
 which is the aggregate of them all, the Church, 
 the Body in which He dwells. It is His work to 
 prepare and deck the Church as a bride is prepared 
 for the bridegroom. And as the other operations 
 were mysterious, so is this. To us, and doubtless 
 to every meditative Christian in almost every age, 
 the Church has seemed rather to be in process of 
 disarraying and disadorning; rent by divisions, 
 with love waxed cold, become paralysed in her 
 Master's work, loaded with fetters of worldliness 
 and self-indulgence, she rather prompts the ques- 
 tion, " Where is now their God ?" than gives evi- 
 dence of the perfecting of the work of the Spirit. 
 Yet here again, God seeth not as man seeth. 
 " The King's daughter is all glorious within ;" and
 
 1 2 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 
 He who hath begun His work in her will not cut 
 it short, but will complete it to His everlasting 
 glory. And then it will likewise be, as in the in- 
 dividual Christian life : when the fruit is put forth, 
 when the Redeemer has seen of the travail of His 
 soul and is satisfied, when the number of God's 
 elect shall have been accomplished, then will He 
 put in His sickle, because the harvest is come ; and 
 the perfected work of the Spirit here will be trans- 
 lated into the new and glorious state of which its 
 highest measures have been but a poor and scanty 
 foretaste. 
 
 And may we venture, before we conclude, to say 
 anything of a matter of which we know so little as 
 the Spirit's perfected work on that other side ? 
 Few indeed, and wholly inadequate, must be any 
 words of man, to shadow forth things which it 
 hath not entered into man's heart to conceive : 
 still I believe we may with profit close our medita- 
 tion with some surmises concerning it. And be- 
 fore all let us observe this, that we cannot con- 
 ceive of that continued work of the Spirit there, 
 that it is otherwise, in one respect, than it is here. 
 If we hold fast in any sufiicient degree the con- 
 tinuity of personality in that final state, we must 
 believe that as on this side death the Spirit filled 
 each son of God according to his measure, so like- 
 wise will it be there. The measure of each will 
 not be the same as here; but the relative differ- 
 ence may be the same. Immense, and to us incon- 
 ceivable, will be the advance in each man's mea-
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 13 
 
 sure. Truly the first here are less than will be 
 the last there. How will the glorious faculties of 
 man's spirit expand as from bondage, when all sin 
 is removed ! How will all our energies nerve 
 themselves afresh and spring up like a strong 
 man that has burst his chains, when the new 
 powers of the glorified body are given them to 
 work with, and feebleness and sickness and decay 
 have ceased to hem them in ! . How calm and un- 
 erring will be the judgment when we shall know 
 even as we are known, and no shadow of bye pur- 
 pose ever crosses our path, no bias of selfish con- 
 sideration ever turns us aside ! Yet this change 
 will be, we may humbly believe, in each according 
 to the place of each, in each according to the advance 
 towards perfection here below. The babe here 
 shall not become the pattern and leader there. It 
 was Moses andJElias who appeared in glory ; it is 
 to the principalities and powers in the heavenly 
 places that shall be known through the Church the 
 myriad-coloured wisdom of God. There shall be 
 those there who can stand and gaze nearer and 
 more undazzled, and there shall be those who shall 
 work God's will in the outskirts of the radiance 
 from His throne : but in all shall the Spirit's work 
 be perfected ; in all shall this being of man, body, 
 soul, and spirit, be advanced to its highest, and 
 filled to the fullest with His divine indwelling 
 and energizing. 
 
 And the Apostle has given us, in that great chap- 
 ter which has been called the Psalm of Love, some
 
 14 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 
 glimpse of the conditions under which that perfected 
 work shall be carried on. Knowledge shall be i 
 superseded by intuition, prophecy shall have ceased, 
 all partial, all progressive gifts shall be no more ; 
 but three conditions of thought and affection shall 
 remain, and no exaltation nor glorification of man 
 shall ever supersede them; and these three are ' 
 faith, hope, love. 
 
 When the soul of man shall have been brought 
 into the closest union with God, when the purged 
 human vision shall pierce through the veils which 
 now hang before the Divine purposes, and far 
 vistas of light lie open to its upward search, still 
 there shall ever be inner chambers unexplored, new 
 avenues up to glory which shall look but as stars 
 in the distance. None shall ever see how the con- 
 verging threads of fate are folded around the divine 
 Hand which holds and weaves them all. And 
 therefore the perfected work of the Spirit there will 
 ever be under the condition of faith more unity 
 with God's purpose, more reliance on God's wisdom, 
 more resting in God's power, more persuasion of 
 God's love. 
 
 And so likewise will it be under the condition of 
 hope. I believe that one of the most blessed ele- 
 ments in perfect blessedness will be an unclouded 
 future, in which hope may ever spread its wings of 
 unblamed and unfailing adventure. The yearning of 
 the soul, the progress ever onward, the to-morrow 
 better than to-day, are not these the very nerve 
 and sustentation of our inward being ? And in that
 
 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 15 
 
 perfect life they surely will not fail us. The good 
 man's days here are no mean sample of what will 
 be there. To-day was full of blessed deeds and 
 thoughts; prayer and praise began it, prayer and 
 praise ended it, and good works filled the space 
 between ; yet to-morrow shall be better, in that it 
 shall see the carrying out of aspirations formed 
 to-day. And so doubtless will it be there; and 
 that perfected work of the Spirit, faultless yester- 
 day, faultless to-day, faultless to-morrow, will never 
 pall, will never want zest nor stimulus, because it 
 will live and glow from day to day in the light of 
 hope, with the rays of a future brightening and 
 brightening for evermore. 
 
 And need I say, after what has already been 
 said, that the condition of love is, above all and 
 together with all, that of the perfected work of 
 God's Spirit, as here, so there also ? there, where 
 there shall be no jar of rivalry, no pang of jealousy, 
 no bar of misunderstanding ; where, among the in- 
 finite differences of the spirits and characters of the 
 sons of God, the blending of the glorious whole 
 shall be but more perfect for the distinctness of the 
 individual parts. It is the world that loveth its 
 own ; it is of the world to love only those who are 
 like ourselves and reproduce our own likings. It 
 is of God to love that which we have not ; to yearn 
 towards the example of another portion of His 
 likeness ; to discern and recognise all that is good 
 in all. And so will it be where that love abfdeth, 
 which is the very uniting bond of all perfectness.
 
 1 6 The Perfected Work of the Spirit. 
 
 So will it be where the Spirit's work is finally and 
 gloriously perfected. 
 
 Lord God the Holy Ghost, perfect, we be- 
 seech Thee, in each of us here Thy present work ; 
 whether it be by the whispered accessions of Thy 
 teaching in common daily life, or by Thy mighty 
 voice sounding in the tempests of sorrow, whether 
 it be by a service prolonged to the last limit of 
 man's time on earth, or against a call which we 
 look not for in the midst of our days, cause Thou 
 us to put forth our fruit for God ; that when the 
 harvest is come, we may be gathered in where Thy 
 work is perfected for evermore. 
 
 Now to the Creator Spirit, proceeding from the 
 Father and the Son, co-equal and co-eternal in 
 the ever-blessed Godhead, be all honour and glory, 
 world without end. Amen.
 
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 1876, each 2s. 
 
 Division Lists for the years 1867, 1868, each Is. 6d. 
 
 for the years 1869, 1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 
 
 1876, each 2s.