464

OF A CHANGE OF HEART.

ance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power:" Eph. i, 17-19. And that all such saving knowledge of the truth is foreign from our own nature, and is wrought in man by the Holy Spirit, the same apostle has expressly determined in the following comprehensive passage: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned : but he that is spiritual (i. e. he that is influenced by the Spirit) discerneth all things, yet he himself is discerned of no man :" I Cor. ii, 14, 15.

With that divine illumination of the understanding to which we have now adverted, respecting God and Christ, sin and holiness, life, death, and eternity, is closely-perhaps inseparably-connected a corresponding change of the heart or affections. Those who have attained to a spiritual apprehension of the power, the sovereignty, the wisdom, and all the moral perfections, of the Supreme Being, can scarcely fail to fear, honour, love, and desire him above all things. Those who have been enabled, by divine grace, to embrace any adequate view of the comparative nothingness of things temporal, and of the unsearchable depth and importance of eternity, will not long continue destitute of a powerful impulse to deliver themselves from the bondage of the world, and to lay firm hold of ever-enduring happiness. Those who are quickened of God to a due sense of the deep depravity of sin, and of the unblemished loveliness of

8 I Cor. ii, 15. ȧvangíves—" discerneth." I have here adopted the common English marginal version which is evidently correct: comp. v. 14; vide Schleusner lex. in voc.

virtue, will assuredly be anxious to escape from the corruptions of their fallen nature, and to live in conformity with the divine law, which is holy, and just, and true. Those, lastly, who know that God is their reconciled Father through Christ, and that Jesus has bought them with the precious price of his own blood, are furnished with almost irresistible motives to devote themselves to the service, and to follow the footsteps, of their Holy Redeemer. Now, this change of mind and affection, as well as of sentiment, is the work, not of the natural man, nor of any of his faculties, but solely of the Lord's Spirit for persons in whom such a change has taken place are spiritually minded, and they only are spiritually-minded who have submitted themselves to the influence, and are, therefore, following the dictates, of the Converter and Sanctifier of men. "To be carnally-minded," said the apostle Paul to the Romans, "is death, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of god dwell IN YOU. Now, if any man have not the SPIRIT OF CHRIST, he is none of his :" Rom. viii, 6-9.

Now, I conceive, that all those persons, of every denomination and condition, who have experienced such a change, of view on the one hand, and of disposition on the other, are properly described as the regenerate children of God. They are introduced to a new world, and are animated by new principles of action. A "new heart" is given to them, and a "new spirit" is put within them. They They are born a second time,

H H

466

GENERALLY GRADUAL.

born from above, born of the eternal Spirit of the Father of light and holiness. "As many as received him," says the apostle John respecting Jesus Christ, "to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God:" John i, 12, 13.

Under that free operation of the Spirit, which is as the wind blowing where it listeth, examples may probably sometimes occur of the very rapid, and even sudden production, of that revolution in the sentiments and affections of fallen man, which has now been depicted, and of which the beginning only can be properly described as a new birth. Such an example is afforded by the history of the apostle Paul, who, within the compass of one short journey, was first a persecutor of the Christians, and afterwards a preacher of Christianity;--who left Jerusalem, the proud, furious, sanguinary, bigot,—and entered Damascus the subdued and contrite believer, prepared to be an instrument of honour in his master's hands, for the most extensive propagation of the Gospel, which any individual has ever been the means of effecting. But, in general, this vital change is very gradual, and its precise commencement, as well as the daily progress of its growth, are often impalpable alike to the regenerate man himself, and to the persons by whom he is surrounded. "So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear" Mark iv, 26-28. All that we can, for the

most part, safely say on the subject is this-that, as the vital principle of religion-the immortal seed of the kingdom-springs up and unfolds itself in the heart of the believer, the celestial plant is known by its fruits.

During the progress of the work of religion a work, in general, slow and gradual-of which the commencement is regeneration, and the end salvation, it cannot be denied, that the individual who has been really quickened by the Spirit, and is therefore born again, is nevertheless exposed to many seasons of doubt and darkness, and wages a painful and often unequal warfare, with the infirmity and corruptions of the flesh, with the temptations of the world, and with the power of the enemy. Such a warfare is described, in affecting terms, by the apostle Paul:-"We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.............. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The answer to this question was, "I thank God," or according to another reading of the Greek Text," the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord;" and this answer introduces the full enunciation of that glorious doctrine already adverted to, that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus "makes free from the law of sin and death"that, "what the law could not do in that it was weak

ο ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θεοῦ, instead of Εὐχαριστῶ τῷ Θεῷ. Vide Gr. Test, Gries

bach; Rom. vii, 25.

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BETWEEN THE FLESH AND SPIRIT.

through the flesh, God, sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled (or completed)' in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit:" Rom. vii, 14-25. viii, 2-4.

Although, therefore, the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, which strive within us, and are contrary the one to the other, is often long-continued, and perhaps is seldom entirely finished, until the moment when the thread of the Christian's life is cut, and death is swallowed up in victory, we ought, nevertheless, to be consoled and encouraged under the assurance that divine grace is omnipotent, and to press forwards with holy diligence and magnanimity towards the only practical standard proposed to us by the Gospel—the standard of uninterrupted piety, charity, and holiness.

This remark will form a natural introduction to the doctrine of Scripture, that the Holy Spirit not only regenerates fallen man, by effecting in him the first change from darkness to light, and from moral death to a spiritual life, but, during the whole progress of the work of religion in our souls, is our teacher, our helper and comforter, and, above all, our sanctifier: and that, in these respects, his operations are perfectly adapted to our condition.

To dwell, for a short time, on the several particulars of the subject, let us observe, in the first place, that the spiritual knowledge of the Christian is progressive. Although, from the very period of his regeneration, he may, on the comparison with his former

1 Rom. viii, 4. λngw. Vide Schleusner lex. in voc. 5 & 6.