PART VIII.

DOCTRINE OF GRACE.

1. THE doctrine of grace has been abused by the wicked, perplexed by the subtile, and mistaken by the credulous. Some have employed it as an engine of mischief, and others have made it minister to the propagation of folly.

2. Most of the promises of grace which occur in the scriptures are restrained to the apostolic age. At present the operations of the spirit of whatever nature they may be, are certainly carried on in secret. They are neither visible to the eye nor palpable to the touch, and they neither supersede the exercise of the rational faculty, nor control the freedom of the will.

3. The first christians could afford demonstrative proof of their possession of spiritual gifts by working miracles, by the powers of prophecy, by different

kinds of languages, and by their interpretation. In our day no such evidence can be given.

4. Our Saviour seems to represent the outward means, by which the grace or the favour of God is to

be obtained, as consequent on

exertion, on the part of man.

prayer and strenuous

Ask and it shall be

given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the holy spirit to them that ask him. In the natural course of things man is condemned to labour; he is to earn bread by the seat of his brow, but the world is furnished with various powers and influence to invigorate his industry, and to assist his trials.

5. There are various powers also in nature, which man, by the active force of his body or his mind, may in some measure control, and render subservient to the purposes of life. The earth is full of vegetable juices, but labour is required to elicit their beneficial properties and to make them subservient to the sus tenance of man. When man has carefully tilled and sown the earth, he can do no more; then other

powers, the sun, the air, the dew, the rain, the meteor, the storm, all acting under the wise control of a providential hand, combine their varied influences to succour the varied operations of human art and human toil. In the moral world, it is highly probable that many secondary influences are made to contribute, under the superintending agency of the moral governor of the world, to the moral welfare of man, and that his moral endeavours are the conditions of his obtaining their assistance.

6. The spirit of God is universal. We live, move and have our being in the unseen but infinite orbit of its power, and it is probable that its favourable influence on every sentient and intelligent individual bears a certain fixed relation to the right use, which he makes of those faculties, that are given him to profit withal, to the sincerity of his devotion, to the fervour of his charity, and to the zeal of his obedience.

7. If man will exert his natural strength, God will succour his natural infirmities, by strength from above. If man will exert his moral powers, God will further the growth of moral goodness in the soul. In proportion as we labour to become fit for heaven, he will

work that fitness within us. Reason leads to this conclusion, and revelation sanctions it. It teaches us that if we wish to reap spiritual things, we must sow spiritual, that if we are sincerely zealous to improve in righteousness, we must first make a just use of our reason and conscience, and that then God will favour our progress, and invigorate our exertions.

8. When grace, or the favour of God, is shed upon us, we are not to consider it as an apology for idleness, but an incentive to exertion. The more our power of doing good increases, the more we are sensible that the word of God is taking root in our souls, the more we should endeavour, and with greater success we may endeavour to fulfil all righteousness. This is to use the manifestation of the spirit to profit withal, to zvalk in the spirit, to be worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, and to prove that we are the workmanship of God, created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works.

9. Grace explained in this sense, though its specific agency be not the object of any of our senses, is on this account not less a reality. We

know there are many powers, whose mode of agency is inscrutable, but whose benefits are felt, and whose effects are seen. In the natural world heat, light, and electricity, and perhaps many other powers, whose precise nature we do not understand, and whose specific agency we cannot discover, have a very sensible influence on the frame of man, and the fruits of the earth. In the moral world it is probable that there are various influences employed, peculiarly fitted to act on the moral powers of man and to give them strength, in proportion as they are fitted to receive it. The moral government of God in some measure supposes the exertion of such influence; for if God be a moral governor, he must prefer the righteous to the sinner, and is it not highly probable, that he has arranged the moral order of things to favour moral improvement, as he has arranged the natural order of things to favour physical industry?

10. The laws which regulate the moral world are probably as regular and uniform, as those which regulate the natural. In the natural world effects follow their causes in a chain of connection, that is not, except for