Are you then really under the leadings of the Holy Spirit? Rejoice and adore your God, who has called you into so near a relation to him, and invested you with honours higher than even the highest archangel is privileged to possess.]
From this subject we may further learn,
1. The importance of discovering by what spirit we are led —
[Many are not led by the Spirit of God, but by the spirit of the world: which, as St. Paul tells us1, and as experience too fatally proves, is contrary to the Spirit of God in all its actings. What spirit, I would ask, is that which leads the young into all manner of pleasure and gaiety ; and causes those of middle age to be so immersed in cares, as scarcely to leave them a single hour to serve their God ? What spirit is that which even in advanced life engages the thoughts and affections still on the side of the world, when time has worn away almost all capacity to enjoy it ? Yet this is the spirit by which the generality are actuated to their dying hour.
But even where religion appears to occupy the mind, many, alas ! are led only by their own spirit. The very manner in which they speak and act shews, that pride and conceit and vanity are the predominant dispositions of their hearts. They have a zeal perhaps for some favourite tenets, or for their own particular party; but they want the humility, the meekness, and the love which are the distinguishing features of all who are born of God.
It is not easy for persons to discern what spirit they them- selves are of, even when all around them see how awfully they are deluded. But it concerns us all to examine carefully our own hearts and ways, that we may not deceive our own souls: for whatever we may imagine, they only are children of God, who bear the image of their Father : and they who fulfil the will of Satan, are, as God himself testifies, the children of the wicked onem. Surely we should guard against so fatal a delusion as this, lest, when we enter into the eternal world, expecting to behold the face of our God in peace, we meet only an accusing God, and an avenging Judge.]
2. The importance of honouring him whose motions
we profess to follow —
[In professing to be led by the Spirit of God, you claim, of course, the honour of being the children of God. And if you claim this honour, O think what manner of conversation yours should be ; how holy, how spiritual, how heavenly ! It should not be thought sufficient to maintain what may be called
1 1 Cor. ii. 12. ra John viii. 44. and 1 John hi. 10.