his
spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and that there
only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to complete that
new creation of body and soul which Christ's Spirit works in Christ's
redeemed. "I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I
have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me my crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at
that day."

It seems, then, that the great question which we should be anxious to
be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, "_Are we receiving_ the
Holy Ghost since we believed?" "Since we believed," whether we choose to
carry back the date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism,
when grace was given to us,--we know not to what degree nor how,--yet
given to us, as being then received into Christ's flock; or whether we
go back only to that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to
have believed, and so can remember that God's grace was given to us.
Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy Ghost? O
blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is true of us! O
blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too entirely
abandon ourselves to enjoy it! Elect of God; holy and beloved; justified
and sanctified; there is nothing in all the world that could impair or
destroy such happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it
to be out of the reach of danger.

But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable; if we
can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were not
receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard state, in
which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen
what had grown before; but all was so ungenial that no new thing grew;
and what had grown was withering and almost dying; what shall be said,
then, and how can the time be made up which was so wasted? But we
remember, it may be, that this deadly season passed away: the rain fell
once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening sun shone brightly:
our spiritual growth began again, and is now going on healthily; we have
not always been receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are
receiving him now. How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has
again renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in
the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy
Ghost still