SERMONS.

SERMON I.

ROM. viii. 9.

"Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."

WHO that looks upon the work of redemption, does not regard it with admiring wonder! Christ has delivered men from the wrath of God, and secured for them eternal life. But to be so happy as to have an interest in Christ, we must be his disciples. Are we then his disciples? Do we belong to the Lord Jesus; are we members of his kingdom? This is the great question for eternity, which we must

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all answer; and would to God that we might all do so with hope and joy. The text gives the decisive mark upon which our judgment must be founded, and I pray that the divine blessing may be vouchsafed to our present endeavour to consider it, and enable us to perceive whether we have just reason to believe that we have the Spirit of Christ.

We may begin by remarking that in the words before us nothing is said of outward circumstances or privileges. There is no inquiry as to whether we have been baptized or are the members of any visible church. However desirable or however obligatory these things may be, they are all merged in the one grand query, whether we have the Spirit of Christ; without this, all is unavailing; but with it we are Christ's, and our salvation is secure.

By the words "the Spirit of Christ," is meant the third person in the blessed Trinity, who is also called the Spirit of God, and who proceeds from the Son no less

than from the Father, and whose office is to sanctify the elect people of God. To "have" the Spirit signifies to be the subjects of his work of sanctification, so that the Spirit may dwell in us. A like expression is frequently used in the scriptures. Thus, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. iii. ver. 16, we read, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" and in many other places.

We are not to understand that the text speaks of what are distinguished as the gifts of the Spirit, miraculous or prophetical power, which are sometimes meant by the expression "to have the Spirit,"

for these are not essential to salvation. Such gifts of the Spirit have sometimes been bestowed upon unholy characters; Balaam was enabled to prophesy and Judas to work miracles. The apostle Paul expressly says that a man may possess them, and yet not be a Christian. In 1 Cor. xiii. he says, "Though I speak with the

tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal; and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."

Further, too, the text does not speak merely of what in scripture is sometimes called the strivings of the Spirit; occasional outward checks and admonitions, and convictions of conscience. The Spirit of God, it is said, strove with man in the days of Noah, but yet the old world was not turned from its wickedness, and perished in the flood. A man may feel and suffer much from inward convictions, and, even for a season appear to be reformed, yet after a while, he will return to his former follies and ungodly course, and at last die in his sins. Cannot some among us bear but too certain a testimony to the truth of what I am now asserting?

Has

not sometimes an affliction, an expostulation, a book, a sermon touched your heart; have you not trembled at the terrors of an awful eternity; have you not cried to Heaven for mercy; have you not seen the evil of sin; possibly the remembrance of sin may have caused you many tears; but yet are you not the same irreligious persons you were, not one step nearer to heaven, but alas! many, many steps nearer to a dreadful eternity?

To "have the Spirit" is, therefore, more than this. The Spirit must enter into our hearts and abide in us, and effect that change in us which conforms us to the image of Christ, and prepares us for glory. We may not always, perhaps, be able to know when this blessed work of sanctification began, its operations may proceed so gently and so silently; nevertheless its existence is certain, and it is perceptible. We may know it by the change in the desires and affections, and by the graces with which it endues those who are its happy subjects. We may know