as God would think, and speak, and act." All depends on pausing to consider our own ways; finding out the man within ourselves and becoming intimate and at home in our own bosom. Not that we need laborious thought; difficult abstraction; mystic musings; morbid brooding over frames and feelings; anything that cannot be pursued by the most occupied or the least intellectual:- but that observing of ourselves, as we observe other men, questioning of ourselves, keeping account of ourselves, talking with ourselves, which exalts the thinking man above the heedless child, and makes him live for something more than to be the slave and sport of each successive outward object that may present itself to his bodily eyes or ears. The considering who we are; what we are; whence we are; why we are; whither we are going-the pondering on our relation to God who is our Father; to the world which is our school of discipline; to men who are our brethren; and to Eternity which is our home. So shall we understand our actual state of mind; our spiritual wants; the suitableness of the Gospel truths and promises to their supply; the course we are to run, the steps that we must take; beginning with ourselves to end with God.

And let us add to this, Intercourse with our Fellow Christians. For all the experiences of Religion depend upon the influences of the Spirit of God; and

the Spirit of God resides in the church of Christ, and diffuses itself by means of the members of Christ. It is a Family Spirit, to be caught by intercourse with that Family. And, therefore, the grand means appointed by Christ himself for its communication has ever been the social intercourse of Christian men. This he promised his Apostles when he said, "I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter which shall abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you;" speaking here not to any individual separately, (the pronouns are plural,) but to the whole collectively as a united body.

Wherefore it was that he afterwards commanded them not to break up their community and separate themselves to different parts, but that "they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father which they had heard of him ;" and then, "when they were all with one accord in one place," that promise was fulfilled and they were filled with the Holy Ghost. For this, moreover, he has given Apostles, and Prophets, and Evangelists, and Pastors, and Teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministering to their spiritual wants, for the edifying of the body of Christ, from whom the

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whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." For this, he has commanded us by his Apostle "not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together," because where two or three are gathered together in his name, there is he in the midst of them." For this, he gives the manifestation of the Spirit to every Christian man that he may profit his brethren therewith. And, therefore, to participate in this, we must be regular and frequent in public worship, in family and social prayer, in friendly Christian intercourse, thereby to imbibe and to sustain the Spiritual Life. We must place ourselves in the atmosphere of the Spirit if we would inhale the Spirit. The principle of Social interest which leads us to join ourselves to other men; the principle of Imitation which bends the mind unconsciously in the direction of those to whom we join ourselves; the principle of Sympathy which makes the slightest thought and feeling of our own mind to be increased to a fourfold intensity, by our consciousness of its participation by those around us;-of their being sensible themselves of this participation;—of their emotions being heightened by their sympathy with ours;-of their thus responding not to us alone, but to all the rest in mutual communion with us; these several mighty means

of influence on the human heart, by which the Spirit of God communicates, as through the links of an electric chain, the principle of spiritual life, must all be grasped by us if we would thrill with fire from heaven.

But then, with both these means, we must unite Intercourse with God by secret Prayer. For Prayer re-acts upon all other influences and collects them into the unity of our own Spirit, and diffuses them through every power of the man. And Prayer brings down into the midst of every thought, and train of thought, the idea of God; reminds us that ourselves are in the presence and under the control of God; our circumstances have been all arranged by God; our opportunities of grace have been ordained by God; our teachers have been commissioned by God; our Christian friends are actuated and blessed by God; and thus infuses into the most ordinary objects, persons, and occurrences, the character and power of a divine communication to the soul. "Now, therefore," said Cornelius to St. Peter, we are all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of GOD." And what was the result of this devout infusion of the thought of GOD into all the words that Peter then addressed to them? "While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word."

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CHAPTER II.

THE PROCESS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

THE Spiritual Life must, we have seen, from the very nature of our being, take its rise in the inscrutable depths of the human soul, and have its source in the secret inspiration of the Holy Ghost. But the developement of this life must not the less, from this same nature of our being, become manifest to the consciousness of the Individual; and the Process of that Developement will, moreover, from the general similarity of man to man, be, for the most part, similar in all religious minds. These are the two points which will occupy the present chapter.

And first, The Developement of Spiritual Life must become manifest to the consciousness of the individual in whom it is awakened. For deep and hidden as are the mass of our conceptions in the recesses of the Spirit, their workings and results become both seen and felt by that peculiar power of self-consciousness,—of introspection and inward