trust God's will implicitly, though it lead you in the way of sorrow and death; I have trusted it, and have not been confounded;—and it assures me that as many as follow that voice, and are led by him whose voice it is, they also become the sons and the elect of God— they are justified by the faith of Jesus-for they have the same faith that He had, and the same righteousness.

It is by no natural faculty, that man can hold communion with His Creator. His intellect may guide him to the conclusion that there is a First Cause, and his imagination may surround that First Cause with the fulness of all which is now seen in part; but in order to meet the living God in truth and reality, he must have something uncreated— he must have God's own Spirit. And that he might be thus provided, the Word, who was God, has come into the root of man's nature, that He might be there a fountain of the divine Spirit, from which a rill might run to every individual of the race, not compelling any one, but enabling every one, to know God and walk with Him.

The intimations of the Spirit in the conscience, are often much mixed up with the actings of the intellect and the imagination,

and are often used by them as materials for their own buildings;-but it must itself be predominant, it must be the user and not the used, if we would know God and walk with Him. That Divine Spirit, given to us in Jesus Christ, is the eternal life-it is the life of God Himself, given to us that we also may live by it, and thus may be partakers of the Divine nature-the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty; for "this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son."

This eternal life, which appears in our hearts under the form of the will of God, has striven with man ever since the fall, contending against, and condemning the carnal life, which is the will of man, and which on its side seeks to shut the ears and the entrances of our hearts against its heavenly rival, or to deaden and corrupt its intimations by polluting mixtures.

Let us now compare what has been said of man's position between the drawings of these two spirits, with 1 Cor. ii. 9-14, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him; but God

hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, (or human things,) save the spirit of man which is in him? even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God," &c. And first, what is the true meaning of the expression, "We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is of God?" Is it not most certain that Paul and his fellow-labourers, had the spirit of the world in their flesh? Was it not continually seeking to draw them away from God? Assuredly it was; else he could not have written such a word as that which we find in 1 Cor. ix. 27, "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." What, then, does he mean by saying that he had not received the spirit of the world, but that he had received the Spirit of God? The meaning can only be, that when these two spirits.

were both, as it were, pressed on his acceptance, or seeking the mastery in him, he accepted the one, and refused the other.

This use of the word receive, is very common in the Bible. Thus, in John i. "He came unto His own, and His own received him not; but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God." The question is not, whether God has given the Spirit, but whether man will accept it. Paul accepted it, and thus it was that he knew the things that were freely given him of God, whilst those who resisted the Holy Spirit, knew them not. The only way by which any man knows the things of God truly, is by receiving the Spirit of God as his guide; and the only reason for any man's ignorance of the things of God, is his refusing or quenching the Spirit of God, and receiving the spirit of the world as his guide. "For the natural man (or the 'soulish man,'as it is literally,) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned." The soulish man is the man who lives in the First Adam, who was made a living soul; and the spiritual man, is the man who lives in the Second

Adam, who was made a quickening spirit. If we live in the first, we cannot know the things of God, nor be subject to the law of God; and if we live in the second, according to the measure of our so doing, we shall be free from ignorance and from sin. We may live sometimes in the one, and sometimes in the other; but the choice is always fixed upon one of them in opposition to the other, so that we walk willingly and designedly in the one, whilst it is against our design, and as it were by surprise, that we walk in the other. These are the two masters concerning whom Jesus warns us, saying, "No man can serve two masters, for either he will love the one, and hate the other," &c.; and thus a yielding to the one, is really a resisting the other; as a resisting the one, is a yielding to the other.

In Matt. xvi. we have an example of Peter judging first in the one and afterwards in the other. When he confessed the man of sorrows to be the Christ of God, Jesus said to him, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven;" and, afterwards, when the prospect of the cross offended him, Jesus said to him, "Get thee behind me Satan, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things