We now enter on the third and last stage of selfexamination, at which it is that we take cognizance of a past work of grace that is going on in the soul; and read the lineaments of our new nature; and from the fruits of the Spirit having now become distinct and discernible within us, can assuredly infer, that now we are possessed of the earnest of our inheritance, and have the witness within ourselves, that we are indeed the children of God. And we think, that the humbler exercises which we have now insisted on, may prepare the way for this more subtle and recondite part of the work of self-examination. Certain it is, that it might subserve the object of bringing the Spirit of God into closer and more effectual fellowship with the soul. Only, let the notice which one takes of his evil affections, be the signal to him for entering, and that immediately, into a war of resistance, if not of extermination, against them. Having learned the strength and number of his enemies, let him forthwith be more determined in his guardianship; and, in proportion as he succeeds, in that very proportion does he invite the approach of the Spirit of all grace, and will have the benefit of his power and workmanship upon the soul. "Grieve not the Spirit," says the apostle, and quench not his influences. Just as the disciple mortifies the pride, or the peevishness, or any of those evil propensities which are the works of the flesh, does he take away those topics of offence and discouragement which keep the Holy Ghost at a distance-does he remove the obstacles that lie in the way of his operation does he begin, in fact, that good work

which the Spirit will carry on-does he cease to do evil, and learn from the Spirit, and is enabled by the Spirit, to do well. Thus it is, that he is made to advance from one degree of grace to another; and, instead of mystically waiting for an illumination and a power which he has no reason to believe will ever come upon him, idly looking forward to it in the shape of a sudden and auspicious visitation, let him enter, even now, on that course of new obedience, along which a disciple is conducted from the first elements of his spiritual education, to those brightest accomplishments which a saint on earth has ever realized.

There is one very immediate result that comes out even of this earlier part in the work of selfexamination. If one be led, from the discovery of what is evil, to combat it, then is he led to be diligent, that he may be found without spot, and blameless in the great day of reckoning. He is working out his salvation from sin. He embarks on the toils of the Christian warfare. He fights the good fight, and forthwith makes a busy work a strenuous conflict of his sanctification. And he should not linger another day, ere he commence in good earnest this purification for eternity. He should remember that the terms which the Bible employs, are all expressive of rapidity :—To flee from the coming wrath; and flee from those evil affections which war against the soul; and make haste to keep the commandments; and tarry not in turning to Christ, and turning from all his iniquities.

There is nothing of which the earnest and aspir

ing disciple is more ready to complain, than that, while all alive to the sense of his corruptions, he is scarcely sensible of the work of grace that should be going on. The motions of the flesh are most distinct and most discernible, while, on the question of the Spirit's operation upon his heart, he is in a state of utter blindness and bewilderment. He feels weighed down by the remaining carnality of his nature, while he feels not within him any growing positive conformity to the character of one of heaven's children. There is a more galling sensation than before of all about him that is evil, but often without any thing to alleviate the oppressive thought, by the consciousness of much that is truly and unequivocally good. And thus a discomfort in the mind of many an incipient Christian -an apprehension that he has not yet tasted of the Spirit of God, nor has any part in that which is called the seal of his redemption, the earnest of his inheritance.

Now it may comfort him to know, that this very dejection of his heart may, of itself, be a fruit and an evidence of the Holy Ghost having been at work with him. This painful sensibility to what is wrong, may evince him to be now at the place of breaking forth, now at the very turning point of his regeneration. The very heaviness under which he labours, is perhaps as decisive a symptom as can be given, that he is now bending his upward way along the career of an arduous, but still advancing sanctification. When the Psalmist complained of himself that his heart clave unto the dust, and therefore prayed that God would

quicken him, he perhaps did not know that the quickening process had begun with him already, and that even now he was actuated by the spirit of grace and of supplication—that ere the lineaments of an affirmative excellence could come visibly forth upon his character, it was for him to supplicate the new heart and the right spirit, because for all these things God must be inquired after, and that he now had come the length of this inquiry-that so far from this despondency being a proof of the destitution of the Spirit, one of the first-fruits of the Spirit, in the apostle and his converts, was that they groaned inwardly, being burdened, being now touched as they never were before with a feeling of their infirmities. To the now renovated eye, the soil that is upon the character is more painfully offensive than before; and to the now softened heart, there is the grief of a moral tenderness because of sin, that was before unfelt, but now is nearly overwhelming. The dead know not that they are dead, and not till the first moments of their returning life, can they be appalled by the feeling of the death-like paralysis that is upon them. And let us not then refuse that, even under the burden of a heavy-laden consciousness, the reviving Spirit may be there—that like as with the chaos of matter, when he moved upon the face of the waters he troubled and bedimmed them, so his first footsteps on the face of the moral chaos may thicken that turbulence which he is at length to harmonize that the sense of darkness which now oppresses the soul, is in fact the first gleaming of that light by which the darkness is made visible

--and the horror by which it is seized upon, when made to feel itself in a sepulchre of corruption, is its first awakening from the death of trespasses and sins, the incipient step of its spiritual resurrection.

It is easy to

It is easy to

But, while we allege this as a word in season to the weary, yet should we like a higher class of evidences, than this for the workmanship of God upon our souls-we desire a substantive proof of our regeneration, a legible impress of some one feature that only belongs to the new man in Christ Jesus, and might be an encouraging token to ourselves, that on the groundwork of our old nature the true spiritual portrait is begun, and is now actually in progress towards that last finish, by which it is prepared for a place among the courts or palaces of the upper sanctuary. It is at this point in the series of our self-examinations, that we are met with its most formidable difficulties. take account of the visible doings. take account also of the evil or corrupt affections. But to find a positive encouragement in the sense that we have of the now gracious affections of a renovated heart to descry in embryo the rudiments of a moral excellence that is yet unformed— to catch the lineaments of that heavenly image, which is but faintly noticeable under that aspect of vigour and entireness which still belongs to the old and the ordinary man-this is found by many an anxious inquirer to be indeed a baffling enterprise ; and though he believe in Christ, he has been known to wander in darkness, and even in distress, because short in all his weary endeavours after the full assurance of hope unto the end.