Rom. viii. 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of his.
IN our two preceding discourses, we touched on points necessary to be considered in order to a just apprehension of our subject ; but they were rather of an introductory nature, than a direct unfolding of the subject itself. We now come to that which is of prime importance, and in which our present and eternal interests are most deeply involved, namely, the work which the Holy Spirit accomplishes in men, in order to their becoming the people and the pro- perty of Christ. And in our statements we will exercise all imaginable caution — not, on the one hand, to fall short of what the Scripture indis- pensably requires ; nor, on the other hand, to strain any requirement of Scripture beyond what it plainly and incontrovertibly imports : for if, on the one hand, we are bound, at the peril of our souls, not to with- hold any thing that can be profitable to you ; so we are extremely anxious, on the other hand, not by carrying any part of our subject to excess, to " make sad the heart of any whom God would not have made sada."
In prosecution of the plan before laid down, I now come to state,
III. What the Holy Spirit will work in us in order to our being Christ's. And here I shall comprehend the whole in those three acknowledged duties, — repentance, faith, and obedience. I say then, that, in order to bring us to Christ, the Holy Spirit will, — first, Convince us of sin ; secondly, He will reveal Christ to us, as the appointed and only Saviour; and, thirdly, He will lead us to an unreserved surrender of ourselves to God, in a way of holy obedience.
First, — He will convince us of sin. This is the first work of the Spirit in bringing us to Christ ; and
a Ezek. xiii. 22.
1865.] THE spirit's work in unbelievers. 239
till this is accomplished, we neither are, nor can be, Christ's. Of this work, there is not any real expe- rience in the natural man. He may have, as we often see, a spirit of bondage ; which appears from the apprehensions which men betray in the prospect of death and judgment : but as for any real humilia- tion, he has it not ; nor can he form it in himself by any power of his own. It is only when Christ sends his Holy Spirit into our souls, that this great pre- paratory work is accomplished in us. It is that heavenly Agent alone, that can " take away from us the heart of stone, and give us an heart of flesh b." Hence our blessed Lord has promised to send his Holy Spirit for this very end : " I will send the Comforter unto you ; and when he is come, he will reprove the world of sinc."
Now, the Holy Spirit will convince us, not of the mere existence of sin, for nobody can be ignorant of that ; but of the extent and heinousness of our trans- gressions. In order to this, he will discover to us the spiritual import of the law. Whilst in a natural and unconverted state, we have little notion of the law, except as it appears in the mere letter. But the Holy Spirit will shew us, that it extends to every motion of the heart ; that an angry wish is murder ; and an impure look, adultery d ; and an inordinate desire after any thing whatever, is a violation of the tenth com- mandment6. Thus he shews us that our sins, which to the generality appear only as the stars in a cloudy night, few, and at a great distance from each other, are, in reality, like the stars in the brightest hemis- phere ; or, rather, like the stars in the clearest night, viewed through a telescope of the largest power, when their numbers (the number of our sins) exceed all that we could ever have imagined ; forming, as it were, one continuous mass through the whole space of our lives f. The various aggravations of our sins are then, also, brought to light, and are revealed to us as the vilest ingratitude towards our heavenly