INTRODUCTION.

N bringing before the general Christian Church the testimony of a so great cloud of witnesses as to the measure, fulness, and serene strength attainable in Him who is our life, I wish especially to express my deep conviction that this calm and glad assurance depends, like all other spiritual gifts, upon God alone, while man does not meantime depend upon it for salvation or for acceptance. Also, I would gladly say that it seems undesirable that the question of this state, the soul's true Sabbath wherein it rests (comparatively) alike from sin and from toil, should be too closely pressed by one believer upon another, whose guidance and whose experience are possibly quite unlike his own. For there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administration, but the same Lord.'

Offices, and the gifts requisite to hold them, it

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is evident, vary, and we are told in Scripture of marks of Divine favour of a more secret, intimate, and strictly individual character. There is 'a white stone, a hidden manna, a new name, known only to him who receiveth it.'

All the kingdoms of God are allied kingdoms, linked together by close analogies; and as in the vegetable world plants refuse to grow, in many cases even to live, except in the soil and temperature which suit them; as they will not consent to have anything forced upon them, and will, even in their deep passivity, repel a condition of existence which they feel to be an alien one, so will each human soul demand its own climate. Its quick and subtle instincts will often warn it to retire from that which it feels would be for it unsafe, unfriendly; it resists compulsion, and will not that even the good things of the kingdom should be forced upon it. The experience of one believer can never justly be made a standard or criterion for another, for who knoweth the mind of a man except the spirit of man that is in him? or who, we may also fitly ask, knows what may be the designs of God for each individual soul, or how far and in what direction he may intend it to advance? For God hath set the members, every one of them, in the body as it has

pleased Him,' and St. Paul is careful in a following sentence to assure us that the feebler members are the more necessary. It is through their lowly unconsidered ministry, their humble, faithful adherence to known duties, that the whole frame coheres and acts. It was obviously never meant that the whole universal Church should be kept in a white incandescent glow, and the attempt to produce this by friction, or any human machinery, will only end in phosphorescence and spiritual decay. The spark must be kindled from within, and kindled by Him who came to send fire upon earth! Our natural reason, if we do but a little consult it, will commend to our acceptance as truth the explicit statement of revelation, that 'a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.' It must be given, not grasped at. Between two beings like God and man, each spiritual, allied, yet separate by a tremendous and (to man) impassable gulf and interspace, every advance towards intimacy must come, it is self-evident, from the side of God. In this, as in all beside, the Creator has appointed the bounds of His creatures' habitation. In all things the

less must be blessed of the greater.

The present state of the Christian Church makes this subject a very important one; for while some

believers, even on first awakening to spiritual life, will desire, and possibly require, strong sustaining cordials, and be ready to exclaim with Jonathan, 'How have mine eyes been enlightened since I have tasted but a little of this honey!' others less ardent, yet not less sincere than they, are in spiritual no less than in natural things fearful of in any degree overstepping the modesty of nature. They shrink from publicity; they are best pleased to be before men just what they are but too conscious they appear before God. They are content with modest and moderate joys, and will say with George Herbert

'What though some have a fraught

Of cloves and nutmeg, and in cinnamon sail,
If thou hast wherewithal to spice a draught
When griefs prevail,

And for the future time art heir

To the Isle of Spices, is't not fair?

A Christian's state and case

Is not a corpulent, but a thin and spare
Yet active strength, whose long and bony face

Content and care

Do seem to equally divide

Like a pretender, not a bride.

Wherefore sit down, good heart,

Grasp not at much, for fear thou losest all."

There is a rare wisdom in the caution implied in this last line. In merely social life there are few