wind, in
cloven tongues of fire, filling the soul with God.

II. The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul's idea. The one fulness
begins from without, the other from within. The one proceeds from the
flesh and then influences the emotions. The other reverses this order.
Stimulants like wine, inflame the senses, and through them set the
imaginations and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual being
is, that that which begins with the flesh, sensualizes the
Spirit--whereas that which commences in the region of the Spirit,
spiritualizes the senses in which it subsequently stirs emotion. But
the misfortune is that men mistake this law of their emotions; and the
fatal error is, when having found spiritual feelings existing in
connection, and associated with, fleshly sensations, men expect by the
mere irritation of the emotions of the frame to reproduce those high
and glorious feelings.

You might conceive the recipients of the Spirit on the day of
Pentecost acting under this delusion; it is conceiveable that having
observed certain bodily phenomena--for instance, incoherent utterances
and thrilled sensibilities coexisting with those sublime
spiritualities--they might have endeavoured, by a repetition of those
incoherencies, to obtain a fresh descent of the Spirit. In fact, this
was exactly what was tried in after ages of the Church. In those
events of church history which are denominated revivals, in the camp
of the Methodist and the Ranter, a direct attempt was made to arouse
the emotions by exciting addresses and vehement language. Convulsions,
shrieks, and violent emotions, were produced, and the unfortunate
victims of this mistaken attempt to produce the cause by the effect,
fancied themselves, and were pronounced by others, converted. Now the
misfortune is, that this delusion is the more easy from the fact that
the results of the two kinds of causes resemble each other. You may
galvanize the nerve of a corpse till the action of a limb startles the
spectator with the appearance of life. It is not life, it is only a
spasmodic hideous mimicry of life. Men having seen that the spiritual
is always associated with forms, endeavour by reproducing the forms to
recall spirituality; you do produce thereby a something that looks
like spirituality, but it is a resemblance only. The worst case of all
occurs in the department of the affections. That which begins in the
heart ennobles t