themselves desire to look into." It is possible enough that the truths themselves, as a system, may be known to the ungodly : but, in their use, their excellence, their importance, they are known to those only who are taught of God. To these God has revealed the source and depth of their own depravity ; the suitableness and sufficiency of Christ's atonement; the fulness of grace that is treasured up in him ; and the blessedness of all those who experience his salvation. These things, " great and mighty" as they are, are brought to their minds " with power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance :" and, by the revelation of them to their souls, they are " made wise unto salvation."]
2. To the enlightened —
[It is not at first only that " God brings us into marvel- lous light :" there is, in the spiritual, as well as the natural world, a progress from the glimmering of the early dawn to the splendour of the noon-day sun. Job had known much of God by the hearing of the ear ; but far more when he could say, " Now mine eye seeth thee." And Moses had bright discoveries of Jehovah on various occasions ; but brighter far, when God was pleased to " proclaim to him his name," and " make all his glory pass before his eyes." Thus, however advanced the believer may be in knowledge and in grace, there are in God, and in the wonders of his redeeming love, heights and depths and lengths and breadths, of which he has yet no adequate conception. Not that any fresh truths shall be revealed to him, much less any which are not contained in the Holy Scriptures : but the same truths shall be applied to his soul with a clearness and energy vastly surpassing any thing he has before expe- rienced, provided he give himself unto prayer, and wait upon God for the teachings of his Spirit : " The light of the moon shall be to him as the light of the sun ; and the light of the sun seven-fold, as the light of seven daysd."]
We shall conclude this subject with a word, 1. Of reproof —
[Scarcely any subject is so reprobated by ungodly men, as this. They consider the influences of the Holy Spirit as chimerical ; and all expectation of answers to prayer, as en- thusiastic and absurd. They have never experienced these things themselves ; and therefore they suppose that no one else can. But they have never used the means; how then should they attain the end ? Suppose a person to affirm, that, with the help of glasses, he could see things invisible to the naked eye : would not any one, refusing to make the experiment, be justly deemed
d Isai. xxx. 26.