-his love more ardent-his obedience more uniform-the manifestations of the Divine love are more clear and less interrupted -the Divine presence is more habitually realized and experienced in all its sanctifying and blissful results.

Alas, how little of this holy happiness is enjoyed by us Christians, in comparison of what might be. And what is, and what can be, the reason? Ah, it is not far to seek. It is to be found in our ignorance, our unbelief, our indolence, our love of the world, our neglect of what we know to be right, our doing what we know to be wrong. And shall we rather forego these manifestations of the Redeemer, shall we shut the door against the heavenly visitant, who would come and make his abode with us, rather than renounce and crucify our sinful propensities, mortify our worldly affections, and give all diligence to grow in knowledge, and faith, and love, and holiness? "Ah, how much do we, by our indolence and worldliness, deprive ourselves of! And for what do we sacrifice such high and holy delights? For some paltry perishing gratification, or because we will not be at the pains rightly to understand our privileges, or the order established for obtaining the enjoyment of them."

Let

Let us form a juster estimate of these high and holy privileges. Let us be persuaded that, in comparison of them, everything called enjoyment is insipid and worthless. Let us seek a larger measure of the character, with the possession of which their enjoyment is so inseparably connected. Oh, let us avoid everything that unfits us for the manifestations of Christ, for the coming and abode of the Father-everything fitted to quench and grieve the Holy Spirit who brings the Father and the Son to us. us study the Scriptures. Let us abound in prayer. Let us deny ourselves. Oh, let us more and more hold fast our Lord's sayings-more and more love him-more and more keep his commandments. Thus will he ever clearly manifest himself to us more and more, as he does not to the world. Then will he and his Father love us, and show that they love us by coming and abiding with us, and then, in due time, shall we be taken to that blessed world, where we shall see him as he is, and be for ever with the Lord. And now "beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life."

I cannot persuade myself to close the illustration of this subject, without one word to those who are entirely destitute of the privileges we have been speaking of. Continuing destitute of them, they must be strangers to all true happiness in life and in death, through time and eternity. They are incapable of enjoying it, and they are so because they are wilfully ignorant, unbelieving, impenitent. Let them know that their destitution is not a matter of arbitrary arrangement. It grows out of their own depraved character. The words we have been illustrating 46 Jude 20, 21.

are, as it were, but one side of an antithesis. The other is, 'He that loveth me not keepeth not my saying;' and he is not, he cannot be, while he continues what he is, the object of the complacent regard, the subject of the favorable fellowship, either of Christ or his Father. They cannot love him—they cannot come and make their abode with him. If he would enjoy these privileges, he must repent and be converted. God does love him, Christ does love him, inasmuch as they have no pleasure in his death. They will that he turn from his evil ways, and live in the enjoyment of their favor and fellowship; but he must come to the knowledge of the truth, in order to being thus saved. God and Christ cannot love him with a love of complacency-cannot come and dwell with him-unless he keep their sayings; he cannot keep their sayings unless he love themselves-he cannot love them unless he know them-he cannot know them unless he receive and hold fast their words. Here we are again at the point at which we so often arrive in the course of our teaching. There is no holiness, no happiness, for the sinner, but through the faith of the truth as it is in Jesus. This is the sinner's immediate duty-this is the gate of life-the entrance equally to true holiness and true happiness-the means equally of the formation of the peculiar character, and the enjoyment of the peculiar privileges, of the true Christian. Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be sweetly constrained to love him and keep his commandments, and, loving him and keeping his commandments, he and his Father will love you, and will manifest themselves to you, and will come to you, and make their abode with you. Remain in unbelief, and thou must remain estranged from God and his Son -unacquainted with the holy satisfactions of their love and fellowship the object of their disapprobation and displeasure—and thus, far from God, thou must perish.

XII.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AS THE PARACLETE, THE GREAT TEACHER
AND REMEMBRANCER.

JOHN XIV. 25, 26.-"These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your reremembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

THE inferiority of the epistles to the gospels in the New Testament, as to authority and importance, is a favorite dogma of "Jesus those who have assumed to themselves the distinctive appellation of rational Christians; and "Not Paul but Jesus," or and not Paul," is the quaint title of a very weak book, by a very able man, in support of his dogma. The professed object of the

book is to demolish the authority of the apostles, in order to establish the authority of their Master. The author would have us seek our religion exclusively in the Gospels. According to him, the sayings of Jesus, as recorded there, are divine oracles; the writings of the apostles are only human, and sometimes mistaken, commentaries on these oracles.

The distinction thus attempted to be established, as to the origin and authority of the two constituent portions of the New Testament, the gospels and the epistles, is utterly unfounded.' The authority of Christ and his apostles must stand or fall together. The doctrine taught by the apostles in the epistles, is not "diverse" from that taught by their Master in the gospels. It is substantially the same. All the doctrines of Christianity, as taught by the apostles-even those of them most unpalatable to self-called rational Christians, such as the trinal distinction in the one divine nature-the true divinity of the Son--the distinct personality and divinity of the Holy Spirit-redemption through substitutionary and expiatory suffering-justification by faith of the truth-transformation of character through Divine influence the resurrection of the body,-all these doctrines in their elements, many of them very clearly expressed, are to be found in our Lord's discourses.

The authority claimed for these doctrines by the apostles. and attested by their miracles, was as really and entirely divine as the authority claimed by Jesus for his doctrine. They declared that they spake "the wisdom of God in a mystery, hidden from the world, revealed to them by his Spirit," who "searcheth all things, even the deep things of God;" and that they spake this divine wisdom, not in words taught them by man, but in words taught them by the same Spirit who had revealed to them the doctrine. They declared that they were "ambassadors of Christ," as he was the ambassador of God; that "they had his mind," and that "he spoke in them;" and they warned those who rejected their testimony, or disobeyed their injunctions, that "he that despised, despised not man, but God, who had also given to them his Holy Spirit.'

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And, in making such claims, they were fully warranted by the declarations of our Lord, as recorded in the gospels; so that he who refuses to submit implicitly to the teaching of the apostles, must, to be consistent, renounce the authority of Jesus. If we take him for the one Master, we must take them for the qualified and accredited, infallible interpreters of his doctrine. "As the Father hath sent me," said he to them, "even so send I you.

1 "I should be astonished at the opinion of some divines who make light of the Epistles, did I not plainly perceive why they do so. It seems probable they cannot reconcile many things in these with their favorite notions. It is not the difficulty of understanding them that leads them to these sentiments. The scheme of exalting the evangelists above the epistles was first begun by THOMAS CHUBB of Salisbury, in a tract which he styled The True Gospel of Christ.'"JOB ORTON. There is but little original in late infidel literature.

21 Cor. ii. 7, 10, 13, 16. 2 Cor. v. 20. 1 Thess. iv. 8.

Receive ye the Holy Ghost." "He that receiveth you, receiveth me; he that despiseth you, despiseth me." Their doctrine, like his, then, was not theirs, but his who sent them. If a distinction is to be taken, not as to authority, but as to importance, between the gospels and the epistles, viewed as sources of doctrinal instruction, the advantage is on the side of the latter. The great design of our Lord's mission was, no doubt, to make that revelation of God which the circumstances of man required; but that was a revelation to be made fully more by what he was and did than even by what he said-in his person and work, than in his personal teaching; and, for obvious reasons, the full development of the doctrine of his person and work could not properly be given till that work was accomplished; and that development is given-professedly given-in the apostolical epistles. He as really spoke from his throne in the heavens, through his apostles in the apostolical epistles, inspired by his Spirit, as he did, when on the earth, through the medium of his human nature; and if they escaped not who refused to hear him speaking on earth, they are not likely to escape who refuse to hear him speaking from heaven.

One of the most remarkable of our Lord's personal attestations of the authority of apostolical teaching, is given in that passage of his valedictory discourse which now comes before us for exposition, "These things have I spoken to you, being yet present with you; but the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you." Nor is it a singular attestation. We have others, and, if possible, still more explicit ones, in the sequel of the discourse:-"When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness." "How

beit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. He will glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.'

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These remarks, naturally suggested by the words for exposition, are intended, and if well understood and seriously reflected on, will be found sufficient, to put down that disposition which exists in many minds which, though they would revolt with horror from the drctrine, "Jesus, and not Paul," are yet inclined to consider the epistolary part of the New Testament, though of great value, as of but secondary importance, when viewed alongside the evangelical history. We cannot overrate the gospels, but we may-I am afraid many of us do-practically underrate the epistles. We do not study them with the frequency and attention they deserve, as containing in them the completed revelation of the mystery of Divine power and wisdom, right3 John xx. 21, 22. Luke x. 16.

4 John xv. 26, 27; xvi. 13-15.

eousness and grace, in the redemption of man; and, therefore, we are so far from "comprehending its height and depth, and length and breadth, and being filled with all the fulness of God." Let us now proceed to examine somewhat more particularly the words which lie before us.

§ 1. The introductory statement.

"These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you." The expression, "these things," has, by some interpreters, been referred to the whole statements made by our Lord to his disciples, during the entire period of their companying with him; we think it more natural to understand them of the communications he had made to them at this time, "these things," here, being contrasted with the "all things" in the next verse, which he had said to them, and which the Holy Spirit was to call to their remembrance. The whole statement in the verse is just equivalent to, 'I have said these things to you while I remain with you.' The words express no more than this, but they naturally suggest, they seem plainly intended to suggest, more. It is as if he had said, 'My time is short,-the hour is at hand when I must leave you. I have not said all that is in my heart. I have many things to say to you, but I have not time to say them, you are not prepared to hear them;-but "these things" I felt it necessary to say, I feel it sufficient to have said. Had these things not been said, you would have been unprepared for what is about to take place; they will conduce to allay your fears, and to strengthen your faith. I have said these things now that I am with you, and just about to depart from you. I shall have more, much more, to say when we meet again. I, as your paraclete, have made these revelations to instruct, and sustain, and guide, and comfort you. Another paraclete ere long, will still more fully, still more effectually, give you all necessary instruction and consolation.' I cannot help thinking, that they were especially intended to convey this idea, as introductory to what follows; 'I have said these things to you, but I perceive they have very imperfectly found their way into your minds and hearts. You have a very indistinct apprehension of them; and you are likely to have but an indistinct recollection of them. I know. I see, they have not entirely cleared up your difficulties, nor removed your fears, nor calmed your sorrows: but they are not lost, they have had some effect, they will have their full effect in due time. I have said these things, but the Holy Ghost will teach you them. He will be their interpreter, and your remembrancer. He will teach you these things, and all things that I have spoken to you. He will bring these things, and all things that I have spoken to you, to remembrance.'

5 Eph. iii. 18, 19.

6 “Tavтa-hæc, non plura."-BENGEL