teach and rule, and, in the widespread capacity, to prophesy, to heal the sick, and even to raise the dead.

It is to these gifts of the Spirit that the Apostle apparently alludes. What they all were we shall never, perhaps, be able to affirm. Some were altogether miraculous. In some the supernatural shaded off into the natural; and in others, were it not that the Spirit of God made all supernatural and divine, we should be disposed to say that there was nothing supernatural at all. It was, throughout, a wondrous stage in the Church's history, when every man felt a divine afflatus within him, and when effects like these bore immediate testimony to the Spirit within. It was a grand epoch. It met a great need. It bore witness to the presence of a mighty power, and it produced stupendous results.

But with the first age these died away. I say the first age," not that I think we are warranted in asserting that they were all buried in the tomb of the last of the Apostles; or, that it is possible to determine now the precise date at which they came to an end. But die out they did, and that before very long. It is true that the Church of Rome has ever laid claim to a continued and infallible inspiration, and even to miraculous powers; but her inspired infallibility bas uttered too many absurdities, and has too often contradicted itself for her assertions to be worthy of regard; and her pretended miracles are too farfetched and extravagant to bear a moment's comparison with those of earlier days.

But why did they all die out as they did? Was it that the Spirit was itself withdrawn? The continued and growing triumphs of the Gospel proved the very opposite. Was it that the piety and faith of the Church declined? Many think so, and believe that they could be

recovered still. But if the possession of the Spirit depended on the purity of the Church, it is passing strange that the most corrupt of all the Apostolic churches possessed the most striking gifts; whereas, in the midst of the fires of persecution, the gifts declined as the piety grew, and it was only in the darker ages of the Church that the claim was ever revived.

The explanation is much rather to be found in the fact that they had really done all their work, and their continuance would have done harm. The extraordinary was now to subside into the ordinary, and the miraculous to be brought within the category of regular law. Was this a loss of power? No doubt many think so. There are always men to be found who can see no force except in a storm, and always look for God in the earthquake, the whirlwind, and the fire. And many, doubtless, are ready to affirm that the first Christians, with their inspired teachers and their gifts of prophecy and tongues, must have been better off than we; and to cry out, almost in despair, "Oh, for some inspiration to settle our differences ; and some miraculous power to compel the indifferent to listen to our word!"

Has the Church, then, suffered any loss? Was the Church of the first days better off than we are now? Or, had it really anything of which we are deprived? Unquestionably, no! The Church has gained, not lost; and all it ever had it possesses still.

The inspiration to bring out new truth may have gone; but it has gone simply because we have all the truth. The revelation itself is here. When the world was all in darkness, God filled the heavens with sun, moon, and stars; and who ever imagines that it is any loss to us if He does not go on creating still? They are there for all time, and all we

want is good eyes with which to see them, and improving telescopes to bring them near. And inasmuch as in this Bible we have the full light of Divine truth, and in the Christ of the Bible the Light of the worldwith the Bible in our hand and the Spirit of God in our hearts, we have all that inspiration itself ever did or could do for the Church of old. And though some few may then have climbed to heights we have not reached, and scanned a clear horizon far broader than our own, the Church as a whole, was never in a position half so favourable for taking a full survey of the entire plain of Divine revelation, and never had a finer opportunity for entering into possession of all the truth.

The miracles may have ceased. But what if some saints sleep quietly in Jesus, whom we should be tempted to call back from their graves? and what if it is only by improved surgery that the sick are healed, and by improved education that the ignorant are taught, and after careful study that we can speak in other tongues? Is this so great a loss? We can heal the sick, secure good teachers, and learn the languages of all the world: and it is only a morbid taste that desires from a miracle what we can obtain in other ways. All that those early m.iracles were really meant to accomplish can be accomplished still. Eighteen centuries of Christian work are to those who have eyes to see a far stronger evidence of the Divinity of Christianity, than all the miracles of the New Testament times. What though the eyes of the blind are not opened by our touch, and the graves do not give up their dead! the Spirit of God is still here to open blind eyes and quicken those that are dead in trespasses and sins. The same Spirit which dwelt in the Church at Corinth is dwelling in the Church still, not to speak with tongues and

work miracles, but to do greater things than these. Still is it in every Christian as truly and fully as in any early temple of the Holy

Ghost. Still is it here to lead the sons of God to their Father's home; to sanctify those who believe; to make words of weakness into words of mighty power; to lead the thinking and inquiring from truth to truth, till words have life, and creeds are really believed. Still have we here, in the Spirit of God, the living stream that cleanses-the golden chain that draws up to heaven-the power that sanctifies and saves.

2. Quenching the Spirit, the standing danger of the Church.-It follows, from what has been already said, that the danger referred to not only is not always the same, but may vary from age to age. The nature of the danger changes; the danger itself remains. We cannot quench the Spirit as they could: and they were not exposed to the dangers which beset ourselves. Inspired men may have had their temptations to suppress the truth in face of danger or from the power of prejudice, or even to pervert it for the sake of reward. And had they done this-had Peter, when the sheet was drawn up, refused to learn the lesson that it taught, and sent the messengers Cornelius away; had Paul held back from the heathen, to whom he preached Christ, the freedom he was commissioned to proclaim, and preached circumcision instead; had the Apostles, for fear of any conse quences, allowed a Judaizing gospel to be proclaimed, they would, indeed, have quenched the Spirit with most disastrous results. We have no such inspiration; no such results are dependent on the course we take; no new truth is revealed for us to keep back; we cannot in this way quench the Spirit. Or had the Church itself, by any arbitrary law, decreed that the rules of the old

of

synagogue should still be rigidly observed; had all speaking with tongues, all irregular prophesying, all unofficial working of miracles been studiously suppressed; this would have been the very quenching of the Spirit to which the Apostle refers. But we have no miraculous powers to suppress; no speaking with tongues to put down; no prophesy ing to silence; we cannot in this way quench the Spirit. Nevertheless, the possibility still remains, and the danger still exists,

We quench the Spirit, then,

(1) If ever we wilfully suppress or hide the truth,

We all admit that if inspired Apostles had seen a whole truth and kept back half; had seen both sides themselves, and shown us only onethey would to that extent have extinguished the light, or quenched the Spirit. And what is true of them must be no less true of others. The fact of inspiration cannot make all the difference, It matters little whether I light half the lamps instead of the whole, or lock up one half when others have lighted the whole. And so it would make but little difference whether an inspired man refused to speak the truth, or one uninspired kept it back when spoken. And this has been done again and again. For some time the Church of Rome deliberately kept the Word of God locked up in a language that few could read, while teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. And even now that it has been thrown open, and we can sit under our own vine and fig-tree and read for ourselves, there are many ways in which the truth is hidden, and the Spirit quenched. How many there are who never take the Bible in their hands with an honest resolution to find out what really is the mind of the Spirit, or the meaning of the words. Bound

down by old creeds, fettered by authoritative articles, or hampered by the fear of some imaginary heresy, they make their own Bible as they go along. The Spirit of God may still be prayed for, and its teaching still be desired; but even while they pray for it, they take care to bind it down by conditions of their own. The earnest prayer

of one man is that he may be led into all the truth, provided it does not contradict the Thirty-nine Articles, or the Athanasian Creed; the Calvinist is open to conviction on every point, provided always he is kept clear of Arminianism; and the Arminian will follow the Spirit wherever He leads, unless it should be into Calvinism. The Baptist admits his need of further light on every point except the subject of baptism; and many of those who differ from him equally hold that subject sacred, as a settled point that is never to be opened again, Now, I am not indifferent to the worth of creeds, or the importance of sound doctrine; and though I do think we have ridden our sectarian differences too far, and made our denominational walls too strong and unyielding, yet I suppose even these must be regarded as "good for the present distress." The old creeds have done good service in their time, in throwing up intrenchments against the foe.

Well-defined doctrines have helped many a wayfaring man to know where he really was, and sectarian differences have brought out truths which would otherwise have been neglected or forgotten. But if creeds are to be retained, when the chief purpose they serve is to block out the view of fields beyond; if well-defined doctrines really mean that the Spirit of God must make us think precisely as our fathers thought before us; and if the only effect of sectarian differences is to prevent the ranks on one

side from ever seeing the distinctive truths the others hold so firmly, and so dearly love,-then it were better far that we could all read the Bible ourselves, with nothing but the Spirit of God to guide us, and that creeds, confessions, and sects were all swept away. If we once say in our hearts, the Spirit of God itself shall open no new road to carry me off the rails on which my fathers were content to run; shall let in no light to shake my implicit faith in the creed my fathers taught me; shall never bring me to believe that in any point some other sect may possibly be right and I may possibly be wrong, we are so far quenching the Spirit of God. And better far a Church without a creed, than a Church without the Spirit. And infinitely better a union of all Christians, led simply by the Spirit of the Lord, than rigid sects whose divisions fetter their freedom, strengthen their prejudices, contract their horizon, and so quench the Spirit.

(2) By unduly restricting the usefulness of others.

In the early Church the possession of the Spirit was often manifested immediately by special signs. Every believer had the Spirit.

And whether the possession of the Spirit communicated some new power, or strengthened, refined, and exalted one already possessed; in either case it involved responsibility, whilst the special gift determined the duty or ministry that each had to perform. One of the earliest, clearest, and to my mind dearest principles upon which the Church was founded was the universal ministry of believers in Christ. There were "diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit;" and the "manifestation of the Spirit was given to every man to do good with."

Whoever then restrained, orbade, or silenced the gifts im

parted by the Spirit, did so far quench the Spirit.

But does the same law hold good still? To my mind it certainly does; and there are few truths that we need more strongly to enforce, than that every Christian has received a Divine call, is endowed with a Divine Spirit, and is in possession of some Divine charisma or spiritual gift. Does this imply that the Church has, therefore, no further need of pastors, teachers, ministers, in the ordinary sense of the word? By no means. In my opinion we cannot overrate the importance of good government and good teaching, and, therefore, of good pastors and good teachers. The two are not incompatible. We are none of us ministers apart from the Church, but simply as part of the ministering Church, There is no distinction between God's laos, or laity, and His kleros, or clergy. Your ministry is on precisely the same level as our own; and since the ministry of visiting the sick and teaching the young, and the ministry of giving and of getting too, are as sacred as that of bishop or pastor, it is greatly to be desired that this fact were recognized by all our churches, and the one as thoroughly organized as the other. I believe in no special call to ministry in the Church, because I believe in the call of every Christian, and the gift of the Spirit to them all. God has not endowed us all alike, but He has endowed us all. And whether your peculiar talent lie in the head or the hand, whether it be capacity for the desk or the pulpit, for teaching or for trade, that gift, sanctified by the Spirit of God, determines your ministry in the Church of Christ. Suppress that talent, pervert its purpose, or waste your time, and you so far quench the Spirit. If ever we are to realize the true ideal of a church, we shall not have a

church without pastors and teachers, and universal exhortation taking their place; nor shall we have the man of business neglecting the work for which he is well qualified, for the performance of duties for which he is not qualified at all. But we shall have, I think, the far nobler spectacle of men of business trading for Christ, and getting, to have the more to give; students of all kinds studying for Christ; and men of science bringing their resources to bear more directly upon His cause; while all, both rich and poor, unite with gifts of endless variety to spread His kingdom in the world. And whatever hinders this, whether it spring from superstitious notions of what the ministry of the Gospel really is, or from the still more superstitious notion that business is too secular to form a branch of the

Saviour's work, or from priestly jealousy on the part of those in office, or from the dread of study and research, is to that extent quenching the Spirit of God.

Of all the dangers that beset the Church in this respect, one of the greatest is that of extinguishing light, or quenching the Spirit, by the official assumption that the Spirit of God must be restricted to certain unvarying modes and forms. The very disciples forbade a man to cast out devils, because he was not one of themselves; and it took some time to persuade the Church at Jerusalem that it was a right thing for a church to grow up at Antioch in so irregular a way. Had not the Spirit of God been stronger than the Church, Luther and the other reformers would never have published the Bible to the world; Carey would not have carried the Gospel to the heathen; and Wesley would never have preached a simple warmhearted gospel through the length and breadth of the land. The national Church of our fatherland

tried hard in past times to compel the Spirit of God to adopt its Shibboleth, and convey all the water of life through the pipes that it had laid down. It would have silenced a Bunyan, rather than admit that a separatist of any kind could convey the light of life to the world. And now that such men are shining through their works as stars in the firmament of heaven; now that the power of tens of thousands of free churches is felt through the land to be a power for good,-cold is the encouragement that many give them, and timid the recognition they receive.

But why speak of others? Is it not the fact that there is a power for good locked up in many of our own churches, which ought to be called forth, and by the suppression of which, whether by official jealousy on our own part, or by selfish indolence on the part of those who ought to work, the Spirit itself is quenched or extinguished? I do not know exactly how we should set to work to remedy the evil, but I do think that we who are pastors have not yet got the right knack of fulfilling one of the most important duties of our office, viz., to perfect the saints for the work of their ministry. We do far too much ourselves; just because it is always much easier to do a thing yourself than to set others to do it. But the busy pastor is not always the best. As the most successful general would not be one who ran about in the vain attempt to fire off every gun and defend every post himself, but one who could put the right man in the right place, fill other hearts with enthusiasm and courage, and direct them with the requisite wisdom and skill; so the successful pastor is not one who tries, beyond all human strength, to do all the visiting, all the preaching, all the thinking, all the working for his people, but one who can dis