ened conscience, should often appear not only as true but as suited to the condition of the awakened sinner. Hence he receives the Word with joy. He believes with a faith founded on tiiis moral evidence of the truth. This faith continues as long as the state of mind by which it is produced continues. When that changes, and the sinner relapses into his wonted state of insensibility, his faith disappears. To this class of persons our Saviour refers when He speaks of those who receive the Word in stony places or among thorns. Of such examples of temporary faith there are numerous instances given in the Scriptures, and they are constantly occurring within our daily observation.
In the third place, the state of mind induced by these common operations of the Spirit, often leads to reformation, and to an externally religious life. The sense of the truth and importance of the doctrines of the Bible constrains men often to great strict- ness of conduct and to assiduous attention to religious duties.
The experiences detailed above are included in the " law work " of which the older theologians were accustomed to speak as gen- erally preceding regeneration and the exercise of saving faith in Christ. They often occur before genuine conversion, and perhaps more frequently attend it ; but nevertheless they are in many cases neither accompanied nor followed by a real change of heart. They may be often renewed, and yet those who are their subjects return to their normal state of unconcern and worldliness.
No strictness of inward scrutiny, no microscopic examination or delicacy of analysis, can enable an observer, and rarely the man himself, to distinguish these religious exercises from those of the truly i-egenerated. The words by which they are described both in the Scriptures and in ordinary Christian discourse, are the same. Unrenewed men in the Bible are said to repent, to believe, to be partakers of the Holy Ghost, and to taste the good Word of God, and the powers of the world to come. Human language is not adequate to express all the soul's experiences. The same word must always represent in one case, or in one man's experience, what it does not in the experience of another. That there is a specific difference between the exercises due to common grace, and those experienced by the true children of God, is certain. But that dilference does not reveal itself to the consciousness, or at least, certainly not to the eye of an observer. " By their fruits ye shall know them." This is the test given by our Lord. It is only when these experiences issue in a holy life, that their distinctive character is known.