Rom. viii. 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of his.
IN entering on this closing part of our subject, I feel peculiar difficulty, not from any want of scriptural and incontrovertible materials, but from the very nature of those materials which, being wholly of an experimental nature, can only commend them- selves to those who, by actual experience, are qualified to judge of them. There are, as we all know, different kinds of life — vegetable, animal, and rational — each rising above the other, and each, in its order, evincing a manifest superiority above that which is below it. But there is a fourth kind of life, of which the Scrip- ture speaks ; viz. a spiritual life, which rises as far above the rest, as any one of them does above another. All have their proper powers, which, however, they cannot exceed. The vegetable life has productive- ness, but no consciousness nor activity. The animal life has feeling, but no perception of the deductions of reason. The rational life apprehends moral truth ; but forms no just conception of things which are spiritual. The spiritual life is exercised on things that are matters of pure revelation, which reason is not of itself able to apprehend.
But I wish to guard against a common misappre- hension respecting this spiritual life. It is by no means correct to speak of it as constituting a new sense ; for then it would be a man's misfortune only, and not his fault, if he did not possess it. But it is correct to say, that the spiritual man has a spiritual 'percep- tion, which the natural man does not possess. The merely rational man has a film before his eyes ; he views things through the medium of sense, and not of faith ; and the medium through which he looks at objects, distorts them, if it do not altogether hide them from his sight. But in the spiritual man, the Holy Spirit, as "eye-salve," clears away the filma,
a Rev. iii. 18.
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and enables him to discern things as they really are. Faith also assists him, by bringing remote objects with greater clearness to his mind. The power of the telescope to bring to our view things that are invisible to the naked eye, is well known. Now this is the office and effect of faith, which enables us, if I may so speak, to behold both God himself, and the hidden mysteries of Godb, and to obtain a clear per- ception of things which are altogether beyond the reach of the eye of sense. Hence it appears that the merely rational man labours under a twofold disad- vantage in comparison of the spiritual man : he looks through a dense medium of sense, which distorts, or altogether conceals, the objects before him ; and he wants that peculiar glass of faith, which would present them truly, and bring them, if I may so say, directly upon the retina of his mind. This is what St. John means, when he says, " The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it notc;" and this is, in very explicit terms, declared by St. Paul to be a matter of universal experience11. "The natural man (whoever he may be) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto him (being seen by him only in a distorted view) : neither can he know them, because they are spiri- tually discerned (and he wants that spiritual perception, whereby alone he can truly apprehend them). But he that is spiritual, judge th all things (having a clear and just perception of them) ; yet he himself is judged of no man (for it were a downright absurdity for a blind man to sit in judgment on one who sees) ; For who (i.e. what merely natural man) hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him (the spiritual man) ? But we (we who are spiritual) have the mind of Christ" (and are, therefore, able to judge both ourselves and others).