e of God's Spirit.

Our own convictions are ours because they are God's. Our own souls
possess these emotions of love and tender desire going out to
God--our own spirits possess them; but our own spirits did not
originate them. They are ours by property; they are His by source.
The spirit of a Christian man has no good thought in it, no true
thought, no perception of the grace of God's Gospel, no holy desire,
no pure resolution, which is not stamped with the sign of a higher
origin, and is not the witness of God's Spirit in his spirit. The
passage before us tells us that the sense of Fatherhood which is in
the Christian's heart, and becomes his cry, comes from God's Spirit.
This passage, and that in the Epistle to the Galatians which is
almost parallel, put this truth very forcibly, when taken in
connection. 'Ye have received,' says the text before us, 'the Spirit
of adoption, whereby _we_ cry, Abba, Father.' The variation in the
Epistle to the Galatians is this: 'Because ye are sons, God hath sent
forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, _crying_ (the Spirit
crying), Abba, Father.' So in the one text, the cry is regarded as
the voice of the believing heart; and in the other the same cry is
regarded as the voice of God's Spirit. And these two things are both
true; the one would want its foundation if it were not for the other;
the cry of the Spirit is nothing for me unless it be appropriated by
me. I do not need to plunge here into metaphysical speculation of any
sort, but simply to dwell upon the plain practical teaching of the
Bible--a teaching verified, I believe, by every Christian's
experience, if he will search into it--that everything in him which
makes the Christian life, is not his, but is God's by origin, and his
only by gift and inspiration. And the whole doctrine of my text is
built on this one thought--without the Spirit of God in your heart,
you never can recognise God as your Father. That in us which runs,
with love, and childlike faith, and reverence, to the place 'where
His honour dwelleth,' that in us which says 'Father,' is kindred with
God, and is not the simple, unhelped, unsanctified human nature.
There is no ascent of human desires above their source. And wherever
in a heart there springs up heavenward a thought, a wish, a prayer, a
trembling confidence, it is because that came down first from heaven,
and rises to seek its level again. All that is divine in man comes
from God. All that tends