through the very clouds of heaven. It is the sky-
cleaving force and swiftness, the unerring instinct of the dove, and not
a sentimental gentleness to which Scripture likens that Holy Spirit,
which like the rushing mighty wind bloweth whither it listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth;--that Holy Spirit who, when He fell on the apostles,
fell in tongues of fire, and shook all the house where they were sitting;
that Holy Spirit of whom one of the wisest Christians who ever lived, who
knew well enough the work of the Spirit, arguing just as I am now against
the fancy of associating the Holy Spirit merely with pretty thoughts of
our own, and pleasant feelings of our own, and sentimental raptures of
our own, said, "Wouldst thou know the manner of spiritual converse? Of
the way in which the Spirit of God works in man? Then it is this: He
hath taken me up and dashed me down. Like a lion, I look, that He will
break all my bones. From morning till evening, Thou wilt make an end of
me."

But people are apt to forget this. And therefore they fall into two
mistakes. They think of the Holy Spirit as only a gentle, and what they
call a dove-like being; and they forget what a powerful, awful, literally
formidable being He is. They lose respect for the Holy Spirit. They
trifle with Him; and while they sing hymns about His gentleness and
sweetness, they do things which grieve and shock Him; forgetting the
awful warning which He, at the very outset of the Christian Church, gave
against such taking of liberties with God the Holy Ghost:--how Ananias
and Sapphira thought that the Holy Spirit was One whom they might honour
with their lips, and more, with their outward actions, but who did not
require truth in the inward parts, and did not care for their telling a
slight falsehood that they might appear more generous than they really
were in the eyes of men; and how the answer of the Holy Spirit of God was
that He struck them both dead there and then for a warning to all such
triflers, till the end of time.

Another mistake which really pious and good people commit, is, that they
think the Holy Spirit of God to be merely, or little beside, certain
pleasant frames, and feelings, and comfortable assurances, in their own
minds. They do not know that these pleasant frames and feelings really
depend principally on their own health: and, then