the Spirit, has at every step been intelligent, and in view of truth, and usually deep and marked, in proportion to the clearness and distinctness of the dispensation of truth under which the subject has lived, until it issues in repentance and reconciliation to God. At first, perhaps, the fear of wrath has awakened the concern of the sinner, and the prerogatives of God troubled his soul. But further thought and progress convince him that God is right and his claims just, and that his own course must be condemned even at the bar of his own conscience. Sin grows more sinful in his view, and the record of his delinquencies more and more fearful. God, the law, reason, truth, conscience, all bring in the verdict of condemnation upon him; self-righteous hopes disappear, and he stands self-condemned and helpless on grounds of law; guilt presses on his spirit; and weighed down by a sense of sin and ill-desert, and of his utterly hopeless condition while out of Christ, he sinks for mercy at the foot of the cross. As a rational agent, he acknowledges his sin, and casts himself on the provision of grace in the gospel. He repents, and from reasons inherently adapted to induce repentance: he believes, in view of truths appropriate to that affection: he loves God, from the apprehension of his loveliness: he submits to God, from considerations suited to induce submission. A course of right action commences in the will in view of the truths which urge it, and in the legitimate exercise of the proper functions of his being as a responsible creature of God.

Thus have the phenomena of conversion often presented themselves, and thus must they have fallen under the notice of the experienced pastor.

The process under the conduct of the Spirit is every way intelligent and rational;-open as daylight, as the Bible designed it should be, on a subject the most practical and important, and the most seriously submitted to our individual responsibility and experience, of any with which the human mind is conversant ;—and one which should not be encumbered with the phraseology of the dark ages, to make it utterly enigmatic and unintelligible. The change is effected as the

mind is changed upon any other subject or concern, as to any question in mental philosophy appertaining to it. It is through the prevalence of considerations suited to it-by gaining the predominance of motive thereto, through reason and conscience, and the use of truth; thus gaining over the will, and thus securing the voluntary action of the man, in the right direction. It is by leading the sinner to do just what he ought to do of himself, and just what he has constituent powers of mind to do, just what his intelligence and the truth call upon him to do, and just what he never would do, after all, but for the agency of the Spirit sent down in his behalf. The greatness of the change in its fact or results, does not take it out of the same category of other changes of mind or will. The benevolent economy of the Spirit therein does not remove it; we cannot conceive of an intelligent and responsible change otherwise wrought. The Bible and common sense place it here. Every exhortation from the pulpit and the press, and all experience together, say it is here, and expect the reign of sinful habit and propensity to be broken up, and their influence and effects to be progressively worn from the soul, by the expulsive power of a new affection, and the growing energies of a new and divine life thus commenced and sustained by the Spirit of God.

We add the following remarks.

1. The work of the Spirit, in the department under consideration, is, in its nature, resistible by the human mind. All moral influences are. This is implied in the very nature of choice. The privilege of selecting between two objects, involves the power of selecting either. Not that two and variant volitions can occur at once; but that when two objects or courses of action lie before the mind, it can select either. This is the invariable showing of consciousness. It is involved in our honest convictions concerning responsible action, and no sophistry in the world can dislodge the impression. The guilty man feels that he need not have committed that deed of death, which is to send him to the gallows, but that he had, at the time of willing it, the power of contrary

choice; and every attempt you make to convince him that he had not, only hardens his heart, or turns the reprobations of his outraged conscience back in indignant scorn upon you, as the apologist of his crimes and the tempter to his remorse. Power of will correlates not with motive-influence, but lies in the intelligence back of it. Motive does not create our moral powers, though the condition of their exercise. They are the same in the presence or absence of motives to influence them. We may not logically infer that a man's acts of will, in "the appropriate circumstances of his being," could not have been otherwise than they have been that because he has not acted differently, under the motives which have attended him, therefore he could not. Modify such a position as you will, and it contains the essence of fatalism. It is saying, that any sinner who has not repented, could not ;-that Christians cannot fall from grace, because they do not ;-that men cannot be perfect, because they are not ;-that Adam or the sinning angels could not have maintained their integrity, because they did not; nor could the history of any being in the universe be otherwise than it has been. It annihilates the discrepancy between the is and the can be of human conduct. But common sense brings in a quite different verdict on the subject. It holds a man competent to do right, whatever may be his temptations to do wrong. Though motives, run mountain-high to commit murder, it asserts his power to withhold his hand; and every man feels the irrepressible conviction, that, in a thousand instances, situated just as he was, he could have done differently from what he did. This is an integral element in the feeling of regret and remorse; efface it, and you extract the anguish of the worm that never dies. No responsible being was ever placed where he could not do right. The power of both right or wrong action is inherently, and under all circumstances, an attribute of all amenable to law. Any man can repent of his wrong, and do what reason, conscience and truth require. He can, whether he will or no. Deprive him of this power, and he is no longer a moral agent. The discipline of childhood is on this principle ;

-the laws of society and the laws of God. The existence of such a power is presupposed in every effort to induce its exercise, on the part of our earthly or immortal relations. It is the intelligent basis of the Spirit's influences, and of all presentation of motives for obedience to law, or conformity with God. The conventional distinction asserted, between natural and moral power, has been of little avail with the practical convictions of men. The biblical phraseology from which this distinction may have derived its origin, does not sustain it, as a generic classification of science, in our occidental languages. The Saviour, in undoubted reference to the subject in hand, said, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life." Convince any unlettered man that he has not power to repent of sin and do right, and you do but undermine his sense of obligation to repent and do right. Consistency teaches him that he may as well repent, as take acceptably any incipient steps thereto, and that all exhortation is misplaced, if he may not do just what God requires.

On the principle above elucidated we assert, that power of will does not correlate with moral influence, and of course not with the work of the Spirit in conversion. A man is converted, not because he cannot resist the Spirit, but because he voluntarily yields to his influences. A Christian makes progress in sanctification, not because he cannot "grieve the Spirit," and has not temptations thereto; but because he freely follows the leadings of the Spirit. Some are referred to in the Bible, as those who "do always resist the Holy Ghost:"-believers are exhorted not to grieve the Holy Spirit, and all warned of the sin against the Holy Ghost concerning which there is no forgiveness.

The classification of the Spirit's work in the theology of men, into common and special influences, has arisen out of the effects produced of success with the sinner in the one case, and the failure of it in the other.

This supposed distinction assumes, that all cases are of equal obduracy, or that the Spirit's influence cannot be increased in amount without being different in kind; but of THIRD SERIES, VOL. 11. NO. IV.

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neither alternative is there proof. Facts, under the ministration of the gospel, look the other way; and the Saviour says, "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes." So also,. in the philosophic language of Luke, "The seed is the word; those by the wayside are they that hear; then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved."

The purposes of God, touching the formation of moral character and its issues, are accomplished, not by irresistible and irresponsible influences, but in the compass of a probationary providence, which secures destined results consistently with the laws of mind, and its voluntary and responsible action.

2. The doctrine of the Spirit does not disparage the use of appropriate means, for giving success to objective truth on the minds of men, but stands in intelligent connection and correspondence with them.

All the laws of influencing the will, are in as full play, on the subject of religion, as on any other whatever. The superadded and benevolent economy of the Spirit does not confound and embarrass them, but is a helper to all, co-ordinate and direct. A sound mind and a good heart in the preacher -wide research and accurate theology-fair logic and cogent reasoning, making full use of the truth-acceptable words and happy illustrations-good rhetoric, and a wise regard to time, place, and circumstances-defined aims, and a judicious and skilful use of the appropriate means of conviction-striving after just that in the hearer which God requires, depending on the co-operating agency of the Spirit, in direct and immediate connection with the truth uttered, and the effort made.

Lack of expectation unnerves the efforts of the preacher; an impression of the fortuitous presence of the Spirit neutralizes his engagedness. He is tempted to regard the dispensation of the truth in the light of a merely positive institution, and as