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In speaking of this agency however, let us be guarded against the extravagance of which some men have been guilty, in supposing that the office of the Spirit is to make new revelations to the mind. His influence, we apprehend, as a spirit of light, is but to make plain revelations which are already upon record. Our condition as those who live under the light of the gospel, is not that of a heathen, who is searching after God, if haply he may find him—not that of one who has heard no voice of the Deity except that which is echoed from the visible creation. We have a revelation. God has spoken to us, unfolding every thing it is needful for us to know, in order that we may guide our steps aright, and lay hold upon the hope of the future. We have not to say who shall ascend into heaven for us?-who shall go over the sea for us?" The word is nigh us. Here is the book containing God's revelation, and the question is, can we understand it so as to perceive the reality and power of its truths? To give us this understanding is the precise work of the Spirit. His agency does not consist in revealing unwritten truths, but in bringing to our minds distinctly that which is already written. The influence of the morning sun as it clears the atmosphere, and brings distant objects to view, does not terminate upon the objects, but upon the medium through which we look at them. They had the same reality, their outline was as clearly defined, before the shades were scattered as now that the darkness of night has vanished. The telescope does not give to that distant star its brightness; the microscope does not people an atom with its busy tenantry-they only help our vision to discover them. The sun in his glory, is no more a reality than the star inaccessible to our unassisted organs; the plumage of the bird of paradise is no more sparkling than the imperceptible down upon an insect's wing. The difference is, we have an eye for the one, and not for the other. The objects which God has crowded into the domain of revelation; the spiritualities of our existence; the interests and occupations of an unseen world, are as real, as the things which we see around us-the events which are taking place in a world of sense, and the interests and occupations of our temporal existence which absorb our thoughts. But carnal prejudice, and the mists of worldly passion, the pride and self-sufficiency natural to the heart prevent our perception of them, and the Spirit of God, when he comes to discharge his of fice-work, does but take the truths which He has Himself indited, and show them to the soul. He does not bring them as new revelations, but He so influences the mind and heart, that the affections no longer blind the understanding, that there is beauty, and there is glory seen where all before was "without form and comeliness;" and the man who sits down to the study of the Bible, rises from it again wondering not more at what he has discovered upon its pages, than at the fact that he has so often heard, but

never understood, so often read, but never perceived. Such is the agency of the Holy Spirit, when He descends to enlighten the mind in the things of God.

Of the reality of this agency, and its absolute necessity in order to any thing like spiritual apprehension, we can never have too distinct or firmly settled ideas. We do not mean to depreciate the value of any of the external evidences of truth. We admit their importance, nay, their indispensableness; but then let us not forget, that the letter of the Bible to which these outward evidences relate, is a vastly different thing from the spirit of the Bible, which nothing but the agency of the Holy Ghost can reveal. The perception of spiritual things themselves, the faith which gives them an actual subsistence to the mind, and an actual power over the heart, is a very different thing from that assent of the understanding which is given to a logical and well arranged demonstration of their reality. I may have a full intellectual conviction of the truth of a particular statement, while the subject-matter of the statement itself may be without interest, if indeed it has any reality to my mind. Now it is not the simple perception of the fact that this Bible is the word of God, which constitutes the evidence of spiritual light; but the perception of the meaning itself of the Bible, and a felt, deep, effective interest in its communications; and this is the result only of the influence of the Holy Ghost.

Upon this influence, as promised by Jesus Christ to his disciples, is dependent the success of the gospel in the world. Aside from this, resting upon the minds of the apostles, they had never put forth any intelligent, and well-directed efforts to accomplish their Master's designs, and except as it accompanied their preaching, all their labors must have been fruitless.

What was true of the apostolical age, is equally true of our own. No mere exhibition of truth, no outward means or appliances, no system of external instrumentality, however wisely constructed and faithfully used, can, independently of this direct and special agency of the Holy Ghost, avail to build up the kingdom of Christ, or change a human being from a carnal into a spiritual man. This idea seems to be interwoven in all God's arrangements for our world. We cannot look over the history of the past, without perceiving how in every process, through which great spiritual results have been brought about, God has shown Himself exceedingly jealous of His own honor; how in compassing His ends, He has not selected any complicated or costly apparatus, such as human wisdom might pronounce competent, but has used feeble and apparently insufficient means, to develope the most glorious issues. The divine supremacy in the spiritual world, the nothingness of man in contrast with the sufficiency of God, are seen everywhere throughout the gospel; and when

its dispensation shall be finished, because its results shall have been developed, then shall the new heavens and the new earth, which are to rise upon the ruins of the old, illustrate in their every part this grand truth, "not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

A distinct perception and belief of this truth, a felt and controlling sense of dependence upon God's special influence, constitutes in our apprehension, a barometer to indicate the state of the spiritual atmosphere in any particular locality or association. The state of religion in any community, the vigor of Christian character and effort, the success of the gospel in accomplishing its purposes is to be estimated, not by any outward show, not by the number of outward formalities, not by any variety or extent of outward means, nor yet by appearances of great external prosperity; but by an effective pervading sense of absolute dependence upon the special agency of the Holy Ghost, as promised by the Father.

We apprehend that "the signs of the times," the indications in this way furnished, of the state of our own spiritual atmosphere, are far from being favorable. Not that the doctrine before us has been expunged from the creed of any class, in evangelical Christendom, nor that any who make pretensions to evangelical religion, deny the necessity of the special influences of the Holy Spirit in the conversion and sanctification of the soul; and yet we should be blind indeed to events which are transpiring all around us, if we did not see evidences of a disposition sometimes to invest second causes with efficiency, sometimes to explain the supernatural results of the Spirit's agency upon natural principles in either case, to render doubtful, or dim, the necessity of a special spiritual influence, or reduce the office-work of the Holy Ghost to the exertion of a power in the spiritual world, not different in its nature, from that which God exerts in the natural world, upholding, directing, and controlling all things in all places of his dominions.

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Now it strikes us that the early history of Christianity presents scenes, fatal in their influence to every theory which fails to bring in as their exponent a special power from on high. We know not where we shall look for a greater apparent disproportion between means and ends-a more wondrous and magnificent issue, resulting from such feeble and insignificant causes, than is presented in the preaching and its effects, of the first propagators of our faith. Take your position on some eminence overlooking the scene, where the first disciples of the Redeemer made their onset upon the world. It was the golden age-the age of all that was commanding and elevating in civilization, all that was vigorous in philosophy, and all that was beautiful in the arts. The relics of those days clearly show a wonderful enlargement of the

human mind, and attainments, serving in many respects to eclipse the boasted glory of succeeding generations. It was an age too, when religion exercised an unbounded sway; a religion indeed, of idolatry and superstition, and yet of such commanding influence as to pervade and give a cast to all governmental arrangements. It was an age when human pride was at its height, and human sensuality was rampant, when if human wisdom and human policy and human strength, had done their utmost, still human nature in a moral point of view, was deeply depressed. Against this mighty combination of philosophy and power, and sensuality and pride, Christianity arrayed itself. It could advance only by showing the folly of human wisdom, only by neutralizing human power, only by securing the crucifixion of human lust, only by trampling down human altars, and planting upon their ruins the standard of the cross. And by what means is such a result to be secured? In what way are the moral wastes of the world to be reclaimed? How is a transforming element to be infused into this mass of ignorance, and pride, superstition, and sensuality and an influence to be brought to bear upon human character, which like the power of a magician's wand, shall charm the proud into the humble, the sensual into the spiritual, the superstitious devotee into the intelligent worshipper of the living and true God? The only instrumentality which human wisdom would pronounce at all competent to such a result, or to any degree in keeping with an enterprise so magnificent, must be that of men to whom impossibilities are unknown, men of wondrous energies and power of endurance, men perfectly equipped at all points with skill and learning, and prepared to grapple with all the mighty principalities of evil. Now upon the supposition that the gospel was to achieve its results by mere human agency, such reasoning would be perfectly correct. But God, as though He would set at nought all human calculation, and give a decisive demonstration of the reality of the special influences of the Holy Spirit, constructed all His arrangements upon a principle directly the opposite. The men who, at the first establishment of Christianity, entered the lists to contend with the philosophy and learning, the pride, the superstition and sensuality of the world, were to human appearance, of all men least calculated to meet the exigencies which had called them forth. To an eye of carnal wisdom, the primitive apostles, deficient in early training and accomplishments, lacking in physical courage and energy, seem, as they go out in their insignificance to contend with the wise and the mighty, little better than a band of daring and desperate enthusiasts. Yet mark the issue. The effect of their instrumentality upon every thing which opposed the kingdom of the Redeemer, was like an effect upon the earth when an earthquake stirs it. Every thing gave way before it.

The prejudice of the Jew, which had but just shown its strength in the successful plotting against Jesus of Nazareth, and the time-consecrated superstition of the Gentile yielded. Adherents clustered around the cross, and in a very short time, the influence of that cross wrought an entire revolution, triumphing wherever it went, until eventually it became ascendant in the world.

And now as we look upon this scene, what are we to make of it? How are we to explain this wondrous march of Christianity? Who that values his reputation as a man of wisdom or common sense, will pretend to solve these mysteries by the operation of the laws of natural causes and effects? We do not say the attempt at such an explanation has never been made. It has been, and the philosopher who in writing the history of "the decline and fall of the Roman empire," spent much of his strength upon this point, has only demonstrated the futility of the effort, while at the same time he has shown how hatred to spiritual religion can bring down a mighty mind to puerilities at which an idiot might almost blush. We come and look at the scene, and we can in no way understand it, except as presenting to us the fulfilment of "the promise of the Father," for which the disciples waited at Jerusalem-except as an illustration of the reality and power of the special influences of the Holy Ghost.

For ourselves, we are prepared to go farther than this. We do not look upon the scenes of Pentecost, and of the times immediately succeeding, as at all anomalous, or called for only by the exigencies of the establishment of Christianity, and the infant state of the Church; but as exhibiting the grand principle pervading all God's arrangements for building up his kingdomtypes of similar scenes, which are to mark the history of the Church until the end of time, and through which the final triumph of the gospel over the world is to be secured.

The fulfilment of the "promise of the Father," the wondrous working of the Holy Spirit, not merely as an agent who pervades all nature, superintending its operations, causing the sun to shine, and the rain to fall, and the grass to grow, the mind to think, the heart to feel, and the hands to act-but as a special agent, discharging a peculiar office-work, in the exertion of an influence over and above and different from that of all means and natural laws, constitutes the sole ground of our dependence now, and the object of our hope, as truly as it did the ground of dependence, and the object of hope to the apostles, while they were waiting at Jerusalem, in obedience to the Savior's commandment.

The conversion of a single sinner from the error of his ways, the beginning of a new and spiritual life in the soul of one individual, has not indeed that attractive power, and air of won