admitted here, it would not overthrow the original idea of strict personality in him who is said thus to inhabit such a temple; the doctrine would remain correct, which is, that as the temple in Zion was devoted to the service of the great Jehovah, so to him we yield our bodies and souls, which on the same principle are are devoted to the same being, or, as here, they become the temple of the Holy Ghost. In this sense a temple does not necessarily imply arches, and aisles, and galleries, and dome, and spire, but a RESIDENCE for a Divine Being; connected with the circumstance of his continual honour and worship. There is not, then, enough of figure in the expression to touch in the slightest degree the argument in question; and if the contrary be asserted, all that we are anxious to enforce is, the evident design of the passage, which effectually establishes our point-that, as the Temple was set apart for the honour of God, so are we the service and the object at once the same with only this annotation, that in doctrinal passages of this kind, sometimes one Divine Person is more expressly mentioned, than another: here the Holy Ghost; as in common with the Father and the Son, God over all, blessed for evermore. Amen.

X.

To determine.

Which is here an action altogether intellectual and personal. Thus see,

Acts xv. 28. "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things."

Here the Holy Ghost is said to judge, compare, and decide, in a matter of church government or ecclesiastical economy. The inference of the Apostles was derived from him; to whom they attribute personality in the same sense as they imply it for themselves. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us : that is to say, his decision is our law.

To will.

XI.

1 Cor. xii. 11. "But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will."

How any less than a person can will and decree the gifts and callings of God, is utterly inconceivable. These acts are as much personal in the Holy Ghost, as electing love in the Father, and atoning obedience in the Son. If some, who deny both, would next resolve the sovereign mandates of the Eternal Spirit into metaphor or non-entity, we may expect afterwards to learn that the introductory chapters of Genesis must not be under

stood literally, any more than the Metamorphoses of Ovid; and that the history of Calvary and the Epistles of Paul are as imaginative as the Iliad of Homer or the Theogony of Hesiod.

Let these texts suffice for instances in which the Holy Ghost, as the agent, is said to perform personal acts. I come now to a second class of evidences; I mean to passages wherein He is declared to be the object of such actions as can be addressed only to a person. Thus he is said

To be grieved.

XII.

Ephes. iv. 30. And grieve not the Holy Spirit-whereby ye are sealed unto the day of Redemption."

Is it possible to conceive of this action as terminating on a figure? and would not figurative language itself, with all its privileges, be denounced as extravagant to the highest degree, if advancing on any other subject into such expressions? If we were to argue any doctrine on our side by such a license, the Socinians would laugh us to scorn. Yet, when it suits their case, an effusion may be distressed -a varied name ungratefully treated-a mere impulse grieved-the solid relations of eternal reality may attach to a fleeting zephyr; and epithets immense in meaning, capable of proper application only to the Deity, shall be

lost in a magnificent, but fugitive image, though as brilliant, yet as vapid as the early cloud and the morning dew! Were this method of speculative annihilation allowed, the adversary might soon take up the taunt of ancient times, "Where is thy God?"

and say,

To be resisted.

XIII.

Acts vii. 51. "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye."

This charge of St. Stephen against the Jews entirely vanishes, if, after all, they resisted only an impassive shade, incapable of intelligent or intellectual existence? The passage clearly informs us, that in all the dark ferocities of their rebellion against God, THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS RESISTED, He being the great administrator of truth in every age of the church. But we have lived to see the fuller organization of a system which tells us, that He is only a spectre-a gliding image along the arcades of the temple : less real than the phantoms of a winter's eve, and to be classed only with the fables of the village beldame, who terrifies her youthful audience with scenes from the grave-yard . . . . when the stroke of midnight mourns over the dead, or strange sights announce to distant friends the last change

of departed man. The Great Spirit from whom all others derive their existence, is now to be driven out of the temple of the universe; REASON may assume the throne he has vacated, and light up the altar he has deserted! His glorious influences in the church, or rather our accounts of them, must be forgotten, or attributed to the very pupilage of rational knowledge; so that it now becomes a virtue to style his influence enthusiasm, his "holy fire descending from above" the mere coruscation of fancy, and his personal existence a something, which, in pity to human weakness, had better be forgotten!

The blind man who denies the doctrine of solar light, repudiates a physical fact: the vapouring satirist who ridicules "the faith of God's elect," abnegates a positive reality, and demonstrates that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: and he who denies the Personality and Godhead of the Holy Ghost, is guilty of high treason against the Majesty of Heaven. God's word, and not man's arrogance, will furnish on this question the last appeal. The furious bandit and the desperate incendiary may deem it convenient to explain away the principles of national subordination; but they will not, on that account, escape, when seized and condemned, the heavy sword of political justice, which will descend with a seve