April 5

But the anointing which ye have received of him, abideth in you; and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teaches you all things.—1 John 2:27.

THERE is in every righteous man a new vital principle; the Spirit of grace is the spirit of wisdom, and teaches us by secret inspirations, by proper arguments, by actual persuasions, by personal applications, by effects and energies; and as the soul of a man is the cause of all his vital operations, so is the Spirit of God the life of that life, and the cause of all actions and productions spiritual: on the consequence of this is what St. John tells us of, “Ye have received the unction from above, and that anointing teacheth you all things.” All things of some one kind; that is certainly,—all things that pertain to life and godliness;—all that by which a man is wise and happy. The Spirit of God makes us “wise unto salvation.” God’s Spirit does not destroy reason, but heightens it. That which was imperfect he leads on to perfection; and that which was weak he makes strong. He opens the heart, not to receive murmurs, or to attend to secret whispers, but to hear the word of God. And then he opens the heart and creates a new one; and without this new creation, this new principle of life, we may hear the word of God, but we can never understand it; we hear the sound, but are never the better.

Unless there be in our hearts a secret conviction by the Spirit of God, the gospel itself is a dead letter, and worketh not in us the light and righteousness of God.

Do not we see this by daily experience? Even those things which a good man and an evil man know, they do not know them both alike. A wicked man does not know that good is lovely, and sin is of an evil and destructive nature; and when he is reproved, he is convinced; and when he is observed, he is ashamed; and when he is done, he is unsatisfied; and when he pursues his sin, he does it in the dark. Tell him he shall die, and he sighs deeply, but he knows it as well as you. Proceed and say that after death comes the judgment, and the poor man believes and trembles; he knows that God is angry with him; and if you tell him, that for aught he knows he may be in hell to-morrow, he knows that it is an intolerable truth, but it is also undeniable. And yet, after all this, he runs to commit his sin with as certain an event and resolution as if he knew no argument against it. These notices of things terrible and true pass through his understanding, as an eagle through the air; as long as her flight lasted, the air was shaken, but there remains no path behind her.

Now since, at the same time, we see other persons, not so learned, it may be, not so much versed in Scriptures,—yet say a thing is good and lay hold of it; they believe glorious things of heaven, and they live accordingly, as men that believe themselves; half a word is enough to make them understand; a nod is a sufficient reproof; the crowing of a cock, the singing of a lark, the dawning of the day, and the washing of their hands, are to them competent memorials of religion, and warnings of their duty. What is the reason of this difference? They both read the Scriptures, they read and hear the same sermons, they have capable understandings, they both believe what they hear and what they read, and yet the event is vastly different. The reason is that which I am now speaking of; the one understands by one principle, the other by another; the one understands by nature, and the other by grace; the one by human learning, and the other by Divine; the one reads the Scriptures without, and the other within; the one understands as a son of man, the other as a son of God; the one perceives by the proportions of the world, and the other by the measures of the Spirit; the one understands by reason, the other by love; and, therefore, he does not only understand the sermons of the Spirit, and perceives their meaning, but he pierces deeper, and knows the meaning of that meaning; that is, the secret of the Spirit, that which is spiritually discerned, that which gives life to the proposition, and activity to the soul. And the reason is, because he hath a divine principle within him, and a new understanding; that is, plainly, he hath love, and that is more than knowledge; as was rarely well observed by St. Paul, "knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth;" that is, charity makes the best scholars. No sermons can edify you, no scriptures can build you up a holy building to God, unless the love of God be in your hearts, and "purify your souls from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit."

But so it is in the regions of the stars, where a vast body of fire is so divided by eccentric motions, that it looks as if nature had parted them into orbs and round shells of plain and purest materials; but where the cause is simple, and the matter without variety, the motions must be uniform; and in heaven we should either espy no motion, or no variety. But God who designed the heavens to be causes of all changes and motions here below, hath placed his angels in their houses of light, and given to every one of his appointed officers a portion of the fiery matter to circumagitate and roll; and now the wonder ceases: for if it be inquired why this part of the fire runs eastward, and the other to the south, they being both indifferent to either,—it is because an angel of God sits in the centre, and makes the same matter turn, not by the bent of its own mobility and inclination, but in order to the needs of man, and the great purposes of God: and so it is in the understandings of men; when they all receive the same notions, and are taught by the same master, and give full consent to all the propositions, and can, of themselves, have nothing to distinguish them in the events, it is because God hath sent his Divine Spirit, and kindles a new fire, and creates a braver capacity, and applies the actives to the passives, and blesses their operation; for there is, in the heart of man, such a dead sea, and an indisposition to holy flames, like as in the cold rivers in the north, so as the fires will not burn them, and the sun itself will never warm them, till God's Holy Spirit does, from the temple of the New Jerusalem, bring a holy flame, and make it shine and burn.