unto him, if a man love me, he will keep my words : and my Father will love him ; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with himh."]
2. By the very works which that Holy Spirit
produces in us —
[David prayed, " Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me\" And St. James says, " The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envyk." And in this sense we may understand our text: " We know that he abideth in us, by the spirit which he hath given us ; that is, we know the cause by the effects. Now, consider the effects, as before con- templated. We perceive not only the manifestations of God's love to us, but the drawing of our souls to him ; so that in the habit of our minds we are going forth to him, and delighting ourselves in him. Is this the fruit of nature ? Can it have proceeded from any power, but that of the Holy Spirit dwell- ing in us? Will any one see iron suspended in the air, and not refer it to the magnet ? Be assured, when such an effect as this exists, we can trace it to no other source than the agency of the indwelling Spirit within us. Again ; the dispo- sition to obey the commandments of the Lord, and especially the sublime commandments of faith and love — is this of man ? is the desire from man ? How much less, then, can the attain- ment be ? No, verily : " it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of his own good pleasure :" and when we have in ourselves the evidence that we are " keeping these com- mands," we may as well doubt who it was that formed the universe, as who the Author is of the work that has been wrought within us. We must say, " He that hath wrought us to the self-same thing, is God1."]
Permit me to impress this subject more fully upon you,
1. In a way of complaint —
[There is great reason to complain of the world at large, for deriding these things as enthusiasm, when they will not examine the grounds on which they are founded. I will grant, that, never having experienced any thing of the kind in their own souls, they can have no just conception of them. But they might read the Scriptures : they might see what the inspired writers have spoken ; and what was the recorded experience of the primitive saints. If persons in a tropical climate were to deny the existence or properties of congealed water, it would be no proof at all that there are not mountains
h John xiv. 22, 23. i Ps. li. 10.
k Jam. iv. 5. * 2 Cor. v. 5.