the conscience with its quick
response to the law of duty, the will with its resolutions,--these
are all, as sanctified by Him, the witness of His Spirit; and the
life with its strenuous obedience, with its struggles against sin and
temptation, with its patient persistence in the quiet path of
ordinary duty, as well as with the times when it rises into heroic
stature of resignation or allegiance, the martyrdom of death and the
martyrdom of life, this too is all (in so far as it is pure and
right) the work of that same Spirit. The test of the inward
conviction is the outward life; and they that have the witness of the
Spirit within them have the light of their life lit by the Spirit of
God, whereby they may read the handwriting on the heart, and be sure
that it is God's and not their own.

III. And now, lastly, this divine Witness in our spirits is subject
to the ordinary influences which affect our spirits.

The notion often prevails that if there be in the heart this divine
witness of God's Spirit, it must needs be perfect, clearly indicating
its origin by an exemption from all that besets ordinary human
feelings, that it must be a strong, uniform, never flickering, never
darkening, and perpetual light, a kind of vestal fire burning always
on the altar of the heart! The passage before us, and all others that
speak about the matter, give us the directly opposite notion. The
Divine Spirit, when it enters into the narrow room of the human
spirit, condescends to submit itself, not wholly, but to such an
extent as practically for our present purpose _is_ wholly to submit
itself to the ordinary laws and conditions and contingencies which
befall and regulate our own human nature. Christ came into the world
divine: He was 'found in fashion as a man,' in form a servant; the
humanity that He wore limited (if you like), regulated, modified, the
manifestation of the divinity that dwelt in it. And not otherwise is
the operation of God's Holy Spirit when it comes to dwell in a human
heart. There too, working through man, _it_ 'is found in fashion as a
man'; and though the origin of the conviction be of God, and though
the voice in my heart be not only my voice, but God's voice there, it
will obey those same laws which make human thoughts and emotions
vary, and fluctuate, flicker and flame up again, burn bright and burn
low, according to a thousand circumstances. The witness of the
Spirit, if it were yonder in heaven, would shine l