when that which is perfect shall come, and that which is in part shall be done away. If they ask for an explanation of the fact that these powers have ceased in the Church, I answer, that they have decayed just as faith and holiness have decayed; but that they have ceased is not a matter so clear. Till the time of the Reformation, this opinion was never mooted in the Church ; and to this day, the Roman Catholics and every other portion of the Church but our- selves, maintain the very contrary. . . . And I would say, that this gift hath ceased to be visible in the Church because of her great ignorance concerning the work of Christ at His second coming, of which it is the continual sign; because of her most culpable ignorance of Christ's crowned glory, of which it is the continual demonstration; because of her indifference to the world without, for preaching to which the gift of the Holy Ghost is the continual furnishing and outfit of the Church. . . . But things are taking a turn. Let the Church know that things are taking on a mighty turn. There is a shining forth of truth in these subjects beyond former days. The power and glory of a risen Lord, as well as the holiness of a Lord in flesh, is be- ginning to be understood and discussed of; and the enemy would spread a curtain of their sophistry between the Church and the bright dawn; he might as well hide the morning by drawing before our eyes the spider's web or the frost- work of the night, which the rising sun quickly dissipates. . . . The Church . . . will have her full dignity restored to her of testifying ... of a risen Lord in power and glory, crowned for His Church and in His Church putting forth unto the world a first-fruit of that power and government over all creation which in her He will ever exercise over all creation. These gifts have ceased, I would say, just as the verdure, and leaves, and flowers, and fruits of the spring and summer and autumn cease in winter, because, by the chill and wintry blasts which have blown over the Church, her power to put forth her glorious beauty hath
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been prevented. But because the winter is without a green leaf or beautiful flower, do men therefore argue that there shall be flowers and fruits no more? ... If the Church be still in existence, and that no one denies; and if it be the law and end of her being to embody a first-fruit and earnest of the power which Christ is to put forth in the redemption of all nature; then what though she hath been brought so low, her life is still in her, and that life will, under a more fervent day, put forth its native forces." "Unless men, therefore, be left so far to themselves as to say that God hath ceased to testify to the work which Christ performed in the flesh — of casting Satan out ; of re- deeming all flesh from death, and disease its precursor; of restoring the animal and vegetable world, and all creation, to their original sinlessness, innocency, and subserviency to mankind — unless men be disposed to say, that they know God hath ceased to be at any pains or charges in giving testimony to this work of His Son, they have no ground for believing that the age of miracles is past. ... As to the fact which they allege, that there have not of a long time been any such seals ; granting their allegation to be a truth, which I do not believe, the answer to it is, that there hath been no testimony to the great work of Christ's redemption such as to be worthy of being so sealed unto ... in Chris- tendom, since the first three centuries. . . . The subject of the gifts, commonly called extraordinary, and rashly conceived of as given for a local and temporary end, is one of far greater importance than the advocates of either opinion have dared to conceive, or, at least, have ventured to express: being as I judge, connected in the closest manner with the edification of the Church in love and holiness; with her witness among the nations for their conversion unto Christ; with the glory of God as the creator of the human soul for His shrine, agent, and interpreter ; with the glory of Christ, as the head of the Church, subordinating all the members unto Himself for the use of the Creator;
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with the glory of the Holy Ghost, as the very life and mind and substance of Godhead, inhabiting, informing and mani- festing forth the being of God, in such wise that the Church should be God's manifested fullness, the fullness of God, who filleth all in all."10