ciples, as the seal of their adoption, the earnest of their inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession. And it is important, therefore, to consider some of the Scripture declarations concerning this gift, that we may learn both how uniformly it is marked out as the special privilege of Christianity, and what are the chief manifestations of its presence in the heart.

And here we must begin with the predictions of the Old Testament Prophets. For all the revelations of God are closely connected with each other, and no one of them, therefore, can be fully understood without reference to the rest. Judaism can be rightly estimated only when viewed as anticipative of Christianity, and Christianity has no meaning but as the product and consummation of Judaism. The Old Testament and the New are but different chapters in the one book of God, and in the former do we find the seeds of those divine ideas which in the latter are developed into full expansion. "I am not come," said Jesus, "to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfil them.”

Turning then, in the first place, to the prophet Isaiah, we shall find him, in the 42nd chapter of his book, predicting as the special blessing which God designed to bestow upon his people in the times of the Messiah, the outpouring of his Spirit. "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty," he

the dry

declares in verses 3-5, " and floods upon ground; I will pour мY SPIRIT upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water-courses. One shall say I am the Lord's; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord and surname himself by the name of Israel." Where you observe, first, that the particular character under which the Spirit is promised, is that of new life, refreshment, springing up towards God. As the rain upon the parched ground, which makes all things spring up as it were from death, so is the Spirit of God to the heart of man; the source of vital energy; "the Lord and Giver of life," as the Nicene creed denominates him. In proportion as his influences are restrained, all things languish: in proportion as they are again poured forth, all things are revived and germinate, and blossom into blessedness. Which germinating of the heart, you will observe, secondly, is placed in the developement of moral affections towards God. "One shall say I am the Lord's and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord;" the first manifestation of spiritual life shall be entire self-consecration and devotedness to God.

And this characteristic of inward life is still

D

more fully exhibited in a further prediction of the Spirit, which is given by Ezekiel in his 36th chapter, verses 23-27. For therein God promises in connection with his pardoning compassion and recovery of his people, "A new heart also will 1 give you, and a new Spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh; and I will put MY SPIRIT within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and keep my judgments and do them." Where you perceive that the Spirit of God is promised as something altogether "new," and different from that which hitherto had actuated the Jews, impelling them to love and keep those laws which they had hitherto so uniformly broken. It is the Spirit of a child tenderly susceptible of his Father's influence, and sensitive to his opinion, instead of hardening himself against it; and voluntarily walking in the path which he points out. God himself in the heart, his will made our own, and animating and directing all we think and do.

But, next, the Spirit is promised by the Prophets as the source of intimate communion and intercourse with God. This characteristic is distinctly commemorated by the Prophet Joel, (chapter ii. 28, 29,) as the special privilege of the times of the Messiah. "It shall come to pass afterward," that is, in the last days, the days of

the Christ," that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit." Where the essence of the promise is the same with those in Isaiah and Ezekiel, but the characteristic of inward spiritual life is more strongly marked by reference to what had hitherto constituted the privilege of a peculiar class of men. In those days, says Joel, not the prophetic class alone, not any one particular rank, or sex, or age, but all shall prophesy that is, shall have the Spirit of a Prophet, the Spirit of Wisdom, Piety, and Zeal, for God. Just as Isaiah had proclaimed of these same times. "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children." And Jeremiah more diffusely: "After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people, and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord." All that insight into God's truth, and acquaintance with his will, and communion with his Spirit, which has been hitherto vouchsafed, and that by measure only, and occa

sionally, to some few favoured men, by dreams and visions, shall then be diffused, copiously and ordinarily, by the teaching and the influences of a common Spirit, through all the people of God. The inward judgment shall direct, the inward conscience shall control, the inward life of communion with the Father, shall animate and strengthen. They shall have fulfilled in them the generous wish of Moses; "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them." They shall possess, what St. John describes as actually enjoyed by those to whom he writes, "An unction from the Holy One, and know all things; and the anointing which they receive of Him shall abide in them, and they need not that any man should teach them, but as the same anointing teacheth them of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, they shall abide in Him." This is the Spirit which is predicted by the Prophets as the glory of the Gospel times, and which the Christian therefore is to seek for and to cultivate, as his special privilege ;—the Spirit of intercourse with God, of friendship, freedom, lifting up of heart, which the Prophets were endowed with; and the Spirit of life, and energy, and boldness, which by that intercourse is nourished and invigorated. That state of mind which rises above the world, not that it may disdainfully spurn that world.