live unto God. And therefore surely we shall pray earnestly to God for His continual grace, seeing that without it our trying is the vainest thing in the world. Look at our own hearts, and what power do we find in them by nature of loving God entirely? But God raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them; He has done so to thousands; nor yet is His arm shortened now. He will do it to thousands; He will give us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, if we ask Him earnestly for the gift of Christ's Spirit. Seek the Lord while He may be found, and He surely will be found. Seek Him in prayer, and pray that He will reveal Himself to our hearts and minds; that He will teach us to know Him and to love Him. Pray also that we may watch, that the enemy may not for ever find us sleeping; that we may, some of us, as many as God's love shall touch truly, stand fast and grow up unto God daily, learning to believe more and more fully that Christ's words shall not pass away.

October 10, 1841.

SERMON XVI.

THE SEAL OF THE SPIRIT.

EPHESIANS, iv. 30.

Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

WHEN We read this and other such passages of the Scripture, so long as we do not think practically about them, they give us very little concern or perplexity; partly because we are so many of us so very indifferent to the sense of what we read, and partly because the meaning of the words historically, that is, as regarding the men to whom they were in the first instance written, may be made out very satisfactorily. But when we come to consider what is their sense to us, what they mean, not as St. Paul's words to the Ephesians, but as God's words to us; then when we begin to think distinctly about the question, it becomes very full of difficulty.

If we do not take the Bible as applying to ourselves, there is no use in our studying it. Good men have ever felt this truth; they could not bear to regard its words as past, but as present; they could not consent to resign the whole interest in them to the church of one generation; they claimed a share in them for the church of their own days also; they felt that the words must be living oracles, ever flowing forth freshly from the seat of God's majesty, yesterday, to-day, and for ever the same; addressed to them as to their fathers, to their children as to them. Yet there was mixed with this most true feeling something of error. Not content with believing that the words were for them as well as for their fathers, they seemed to believe also that they stood to them exactly in the same position as their fathers had done; that as God's word was the same, so the church to which it was addressed was the

same also. If a grace was spoken of as communicated to the early church, the same grace, it was argued, must be communicated now; and where no such grace was manifest, it was declared to be secret and invisible, because it was assumed as certain that it must exist. Then men began to speak of God's mysterious and incomprehensible working, how He exists all around us, yet undiscernible; how His secrets are far beyond our comprehension, yet their existence not therefore to be

denied. A true language, if rightly applied; and capable of ministering to our edification. A true language, if applied to what may be called our natural relations to God; for, in that state, mystery no doubt does surround us on every side, we know not what to affirm or what to deny; we can scarcely dare to say where God is, or where He is not, for our view is everywhere stopped by darkness. Neither is this darkness even now altogether supplanted by light: there is enough of mysterious and incomprehensible on every side of us to convince us of our own ignorance, to show us that, without a light vouchsafed to our path, we can tread in no direction far or confidently. But where the light is given, there we see clearly, and in it is no darkness at all. It does not fill our whole world with light; it does not reveal all things, but where it does shine, there it does reveal. The mystery, the vagueness, the uncertainty which exist in other parts of our life, are banished where the sunshine of God's light is poured upon us. And so the Holy Spirit of God was pleased to reveal himself to Christ's church, as the Author and Giver of spiritual life, and also as the Author and Giver of many precious gifts which might minister to spiritual life in ourselves or others. So He exists in His church, and no otherwise. His manner of working is not revealed, and of that we can know nothing; but the fruits which He works,

whether they be powers or graces, are things known, intelligible, perceptible; if there be no such fruits, the tree is not good, and if the tree be not good, assuredly the Lord and Giver of life has not visited it.

Therefore when we enquire what it is to be sealed by the Holy Spirit to the day of redemption, we may be sure that it is nothing vague, fanciful, mystical, but as befits the nature of a seal, something sure, positive, discernible. The Holy Spirit seals men by His gifts or by His graces, or by both. If we possess neither the one nor the other, we have not his seal; and there is then a difference between us and the Ephesians, of which it more concerns us to enquire the cause than to deny its existence.

Now the Holy Spirit's seal of power has been withdrawn from the church generally for many ages. It is withdrawn, that is, in the form in which it was manifested in the early church. Gifts clearly super-human, and showing to all men that the finger of God is amongst us, are not now vouchsafed to us. But that amongst God's people, what we call natural gifts may truly be regarded as gifts of the Spirit; that such gifts do, in many cases, correspond very closely to the gifts mentioned in Scripture; that they confer a power more than other men possess, a power which we may use or abuse, a power which has its appointed