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but a point vital to the christian faith-one that belongs to the very foundation of a scriptural knowledge of God, and to the central mysteries of the christian system.

It is a point, moreover, in regard to which it has been easy and common to fall into error. There have been, and still are, large communities of professed Christians in which the Holy Ghost is regarded as a mere energy or influence of God, or of His word, and where personal being is denied Him. Such were the Arians of old, and the Socinians in and after the reformation.

It is a question, also, that may at least be asked, whether with many who professedly stand under a better faith, He is not practically regarded as a mere influence, as a result of the preached word, or as a potence coming from God or Christ in answer to prayer-not as a divine being to be worshipped as God, and with God; but only to be received from God as His own direct influence. This false feeling is sometimes unconsciously betrayed even in prayer when the word "it" is applied to the Holy Ghost, as though He were a thing, an influence, and not a personal being.

Persons are no doubt thoughtlessly led into this false feeling by carelessly deriving it from the word Spirit as applied to the Holy Ghost. As spirit is intangible to the senses, and a word allied in its very meaning with the idea of wind or breath, and in scripture often applied to mere influences, the mind-if not firmly held to the high mysteries of faith, but suffered to run carelessly over the surface of divine revelationmay easily glide into the habit of regarding the Holy Spirit as on the same level. Thus it is easier to think of Spirit as mere influence than it is to think of it as personality; and a careless, thoughtless person may fall into the habit of thinking that personality belongs merely to an embodied being, and belongs not to Spirit. But how false does a moment's reflection on the consequences of such an idea show it to be. For if we deny personality to spirit we must deny it to God who is a Spirit; to Angels who are personal spiritual beings; and to ourselves when separated from the body at death.

This false feeling may come also from the fact that influence is so prominently attributed to the Holy Ghost in the scriptures Thus His influences are thought of whilst His personality is overlooked; and thus, because His person is lost to our thoughts behind His influences, we easily fall into the habit of regarding these influences themselves as the mere general energies and influences of God. But how we forget in this careless habit of thinking that the very fact of influences being ascribed to the Holy Ghost, points us to His person whence these influences proceed.

In the answer to the question, "What believest thou concerning the Holy Ghost, the personal pronoun "He" is throughout applied to Him. This is designedly done, that thereby he may be set before our faith as a person and not as a thing-an energy or influence, to which "it" would be properly applied. It is thus that the holy scriptures uniformly speak of Him. "He shall teach you all things." John 14: 16 "I will send Him unto you And when He is come He will reprove the world of sin. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show you things to

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come John 16: 7, 15. So in many other places. Thus in the very mode of speaking of Him is His personality pre-supposed and taken for granted.

Personal attributes are ascribed to the Holy Ghost in the scripture, such as belong only to a personal being and not to an energy or influence. Thus thought, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom. "The Spirit searcheth all things; yea, the deep things of God." "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in Him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." 1 Cor. 2: 10, 11. A personal will is ascribed to Him. "All these things worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to each man severally as He will." 1 Cor. 12: 11. Will belongs not to an influence, but to a personal being. The properties, acts and feelings of a person are ascribed to Him. "Thus it is said, that He teaches, comforts and guides us into all truth; that He calls and sends apostles, and speaks in them. Luke 12: 2. Acts 13: 2. 16: 7. So it is said that He declares things to come; that He foretold the death of Simon, the destruction of Judas the traitor, the journey of Peter to Cornelius, the chains and afflictions by which Paul was detained at Jerusalem, the apostacy of the last times, the signification of the entering of the High Priest into the most holy place, the new covenant, the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow; that He makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered; that he causes us to cry, Abba, Father; that he is tempted by those who lie unto Him; that He bears witness in heaven with the Father and the Son;" that He is grieved by the resistance of sinners, and that blasphemy may be uttered against Him. "All these belong to a person existing, living, willing and acting with design." All this becomes meaningless, and even worse, the moment we seek to apply it to an influence.

2. The Holy Ghost is a divine person. "True and co-eternal God

with the Father and the Son."

The divinity of the Holy Ghost has its best argument in the general manner in which He is spoken of in the scripture-in the habit of scripture of pre-supposing and taking for granted His divinity-in the fact that the doctrine of His divinity underlies, and is interwoven with the whole structure of revelation and salvation. It is involved in the divinity of the Son, and is required by it. Every argument that establishes the divinity of the Son, also requires the divinity of the Spirit.

Hence we find the two always stand or fall together. Those who deny the divinity of the one deny that of the other. So also it stands together with the structure of salvation. When the divinity of the Son and Spirit are denied, every doctrine and fact of salvation is affected. Not one can be held without it in the same way, and in the same sense, as it is held with it. It becomes radically, and in all its parts a different scheme of salvation. This is at once seen from an examination of the theological schemes of those communities in which the duty of the Son and Spirit is not allowed to hold a place.

In such schemes there is no real union of God with man through the incarnation of the divine Son, and the indwelling of the divine Spirit, so that to be pious is to be "partaker of the divine nature." But Christ is a mere prophet and teacher, revealing the truth; and the Spirit is merely the influence of that truth upon the heart and mind of man, ac

companied, perhaps, by a vague divine energy which is ascribed to God as a Spirit. Conversion is regarded as affected by moral suasion, by which man's views are changed; and, through his views, his feelings, habits and actions.

The natural depravity of man, by which his will is enfeebled, his understanding darkened, his affections perverted, so that he is unwilling and unable of himself to receive the truth, is denied. It is taught in such schemes that he will and can be persuaded to piety by arguments and motives from the truth without the Holy Spirit. Hence, being not wholly depraved and dead in sin, he needs not regeneration by water and the Spirit, but only reformation by the moral suasion of the truth and the help of God in the way of general divine influence, which is bestowed in answer to prayer.

Then, too, in such a system, sacraments hold a secondary place, and lose their true and full significance. They become mere symbols of truth, a kind of figurative preaching, or a mere mode of testifying love to the commandments of Christ. They are no more the real media of a union and communion with God through Christ and the Spirit.

Then the Church is no more the body of Christ and the home of the Spirit, and the mother of saints, but a collection of believers, who without it have been persuaded and changed by the truth-not a mother and nursery of saints, but a mere receptacle or meeting place for them.

In short, the whole system of supernatural mysteries which bring to us, through Christ, the Spirit, the Sacraments, and the word and worship, the powers of salvation, uniting man with God in a life above all that is merely natural and earthly, is changed into a scheme of merely moral and natural forces-in which God indeed speaks to man, but is not truly and divinely united with Him by the Son's taking our nature, so entering it, and by the Spirit's indwelling sanctifying our souls and bodies by His divine life, and making us His temples of habitation forever.

Thus we see how denying the divinity of the Holy Ghost affects the whole system of revealed truth; and how deeply it underlies the whole scheme of salvation. In this fundamental truth we ought to be well and firmly established, holding without wavering this mystery of faith, that the Holy Ghost "is true and co-eternal God with the Father and the Son."

TRODDEN FLOWERS.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

THERE are some hearts that, like the loving vine,
Cling to unkindly rocks and ruined towers,

Spirits that suffer and do not repine

Patient and sweet as lowly-trodden flowers

That from the passer's heel arise,

And give back odorous breath instead of sighs.

LORD ROCHESTER.

THE POWER OF SIN AND O F GRACE.

JOHN WILMOT, afterwards earl of Rochester, was born in 1647, at Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. After his education was completed, he travelled into France and Italy; and, at his return, devoted himself to the court, and was in great favor with Charles the Second. He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he seemed to have totally subdued in his travels; but afterwards falling into dissolute and vicious company, he gave way to his former propensity, and became corrupt in his principles, and depraved in his manners He lost all sense of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity.

As he excelled in that noisy and licentious merriment which wine excites, his companions eagerly encouraged him in excess, and he willingly indulged it; till, as he confessed to Dr. Burnet, he was for five years together so much inflamed by frequent inebriety, as in no interval to be master of himself.

Thus, in a course of drunken gaiety, and gross sensuality, with seasons of study perhaps yet more criminal, with an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard to every moral law, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation, he lived worthless and useless, and blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness; till, at the age of one-and-thirty, he had nearly exhausted the fund of life, and had reduced himself to a state of weakness and decay.

At this time he was led to an acquaintance with Dr. Burnet, to whom he laid open with great freedom the tenor of his opinions, and the course of his life; and from whom he received snch conviction of the reasonableness of moral duty, and the truth of Christianity, as, by the Divine blessing, produced a total change both of his manners and opinions. Some philosophers of the present age will probably suppose that his condition and conviction were purely the effects of weakness and low spirits, which scarcely suffer a man to continue in his senses, and certainly not to be master of himself; but Dr. Burnet affirms, that he was "under no such decay as either darkened or weakened his understanding; nor troubled with the spleen or vapors, or under the power of melancholy." In proof of this assertion, the following letter is produced, in which nothing is omitted but some personal compliments to the Doctor:

"Woodstock-Park, Oxfordshire, June 25, 1680.

"MY MOST HONORED DR. BURNET

"My spirits and body decay equally together: but weak as I am in per son, I shall write you a letter. If God be yet pleased to spare me longer in this world, I hope, by your conversation, to be exalted to such a degree of piety, that the world may see how much I abhor what I so long loved, and how much I glory in repentance, and in God's service. Bestow your prayers upon me, that God would spare me, if it be his good will, to show a true repentance and amendment of life for the time to come; or else, if the Lord please soon to put an end to my worldly being, that he would mercifully accept of my death-bed repentance; and perform that promise he has been pleased

to make, that at what time soever a sinner doth repent, he would receive him. Put up these prayers, most dear doctor, to Almighty God, for your most obedient, languishing servant, "ROCHESTER."

Soon after the receipt of this letter, Dr. Burnet visited him. Lord Rochester expressed to him in strong terms, the sense he had of his past life; his sad apprehension for having so offended his Maker and dishonored his Redeemer; the horrors he had gone through; the sincerity of his repentance; and the earnestness with which his mind was turned to call on God, and on his crucified Saviour, to have mercy upon him.

Discoursing one day of the manner of his life from his youth, and bitterly upbraiding himself for his manifold transgressions, he exclaimed, "O blessed God! can such a horrid creature as I am, who have denied thy being, and contemned thy power, be accepted by thee?-Can there be mercy and pardon for me? Will God own such a wretch as I am?" About the middle of his sickness, he said: " Shall the unspeakable joys of heaven be conferred on me? O mighty Saviour! never, but through thy infinite love and satisfaction! O never, but by the purchase of thy blood!"

From the first of his yielding assent to the truths of the Christian religion, his faith seemed sincere and fervent. He highly reprobated "that foolish and absurd philosophy, propagated by the late Hobbes and others, which the world so much admired, and which had undone him, and many persons of the best parts in the nation." His hope of salvation rested solely on the free grace of God, through Jesus Christ. He often prayed that his faith might be strengthened, and cried out: "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief."

He expressed great esteem for the Holy Scriptures, and resolved that if God should spare him, he would frequently read them and meditate upon them: "for, having spoken to his heart, he acknowledged that all the seeming absurdities and contradictions, which men of corrupt and reprobate judgment supposed to be in them, were vanished: and now that he loved and received the truth, their beauty and excellence appeared."

He frequently implored God's Holy Spirit, to comfort and support him, to preserve him from wicked thoughts and suggestions, and from every thing prejudicial to that religious temper of mind with which he was now so happily endued. One night having been much disturbed by evil imaginations, "I thank God," said he, "I abhor them all. By the power of his grace, which I am sure is sufficient for me, I have overcome them. It is the malice of the devil, because I am rescued from him, that thus troubles me; but the goodness of God frees me from all my spiritual enemies."

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He often called for his children, and spoke to them with a warmth of feeling that can scarcely be described. See," said he to Dr. Burnet, "how good God has been to me, in giving me so many blessings! and yet I have been a most ungracious and unthankful creature!" He expressed much concern for the pious education of his children: and "wished his son might never be a wit; one of those wretched creatures," as he explained it, "who pride themselves in denying the being or the providence of God, and in ridiculing cligion; but that he might become an honest and a pious man, by which means only he could be the support and blessing of his family."

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