CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

ACTS i. 6-8.

When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom unto Israel? And He said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judæa and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

THE object of my last discourse was to exhibit the grounds on which we are justified in looking for evidences of the truth of Revelation in the results which the experience of such as have accepted the conditions of Salvation itself furnishes; and I endeavoured to show the source of that error which has at different times given birth to doctrines upon this subject, opposed to each other, and equally opposed to the view taken by our Church, and set forth in all parts of her

Liturgy, but especially in her Baptismal Service. The source of error I maintained to be the incomplete conception of the extent of God's mercy as manifested in the scheme of Redemption; the defective notion entertained of our Lord's work, in viewing it as the efficient cause only of Man's exemption from punishment, not, also, of his restoration to holiness. I argued that such a limitation of the meaning of the Gospel message made the work of Restoration far from coextensive with the work of Ruin, that it left the effects of the primeval transgression unobliterated, and no real atonement effected by the offering of Him who, be it remembered, was especially called Jesus, because he should deliver his people from their sins.* The Mediatorial agency of our Lord once confined to the obtaining for Man the remission of the penalty of Death, and not recognised as extending throughout the whole process of his restoration to holiness, it was seen to result, either that such process was no essential condition of Salvation, (the doctrine of the Antinomians,) or that it was effected by the agency of Man himself, a position from which all those doctrines relative to good works which our Church declares "cannot be taught without arrogance and impiety" necessarily follow. But where this baneful limitation of the extent of the *Matt. i. 21. † Article xiv.

Redemption is avoided; where we believe that our sanctification is absolutely part and parcel of the benefit which was purchased by the Great Sacrifice, and that no one portion of that benefit is separable from another, then both the one and the other of the errors we have mentioned exhibit themselves at once in colours so glaring and distinct as to be recognised at the first glance. That holiness should not be a necessary condition of Salvation becomes inconceivable, when it is seen to be itself a part of Salvation; that it should be Man's work is as inconceivable, when it is seen that Man is not his own Redeemer. He who sowed the seed, to him be ascribed the fruits; and fruits there will be where the seed has been sown.

To resume the main thread of the argument, I would urge, that the progress made in the work of restoration constitutes to every believer an evidence, in the strictest sense of the word, of the truth of the Gospel declaration that God, through the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ, has been reconciled to Man. Regarding such progression as the work of the indwelling Spirit, whose temples we are; and regarding the reception of this Spirit as inseparable from the other benefits of the Redemption; the conclusion is irresistible, that where the effects appear, the cause must have existed, a conclusion recognised

no less by the understanding than by the conscience of the believer. And such evidence, although experience alone can furnish it, constitutes a confirmation of our faith, distinct indeed in its kind from that which the Historical and Moral Evidences present, but no less satisfactory in its nature, and moreover no less definite and clear. For that in this region, any more than any other, fanaticism and enthusiasm have a congenial soil to take root in, will appear, on a very little consideration, an utterly baseless and erroneous supposition.

For the question at once occurs, How is this progress manifested? How is the assurance evoked that we are participators in the blessings of the Gospel? Recalling to mind the vital principle of our faith, that the work of Redemption is to undo all the evil which Sin has done, the answer to this question will at once be given in the form of another: How in the natural Man is the corruption of Sin manifested? How is the conviction elicited that he is under the power of Evil? Of whatever kind the evidence may be which we have of the progress of the disease, of that same kind are we to look for indications of the advance of the cure. But the alienation from God involved in the original transgression does not manifest itself by a direct intuition: it shows itself first through its effects. And why should

we expect the reconciliation with Him to be revealed to us in another way? Both the good seed and the bad, both the corn and the tares, are invisible while they lie buried in the earth : nay, even when the green blade first begins to show itself above the surface of the soil, it is not every eye that can at once discern whether what is growing up shall bear fruit to be gathered into the barn, or be piled in heaps for the fire. The seed must have been sown or the plant would not have sprung up: but until it does spring up, the owner of the field has no evidence of what has been sown beyond the assertion of the husbandman. Even so is it with the seed of Sin sown in every child of Adam, and the seed of the Spirit, implanted at Baptism in every adopted child of God. The infant removed from the font doubtless exhibits no outward sign of the wonderful change which has been wrought in him; but if they who urge this as an argument against the doctrine of the Church on the subject, will be consistent, they must on the same grounds deny the participation of the same infant in the effects of the original transgression. For assuredly the child antecedently to Baptism exhibits as little signs of partaking in the corruption of our nature, as it does afterwards of sharing in the blessings of the Atonement. Time is requisite in both the one case and the other to allow