xxi Spirit in the soul of'man, and we are furnished witti a more impressive argument than ever, and set on higher vantage for urging you to stir yourselves, and set about it immediately. What is it that you propose? To keep by your present habits, and your present jndulgences-and build yourselves up all the while in the confidence that the Spirit will interpose with his mighty pow€r ofconversi.on upon you, at the very point oftime that you have fixed upon as convenient and agreeable? And how do you conciliate the Spirit's answer to your call then? Why, by doing all you can to grieve, and to quench, and to provoke him to abandon you now. Do you feel a motion towards repentance at this moment? If you keep it alive,, and act upon it, good and well. But if you smother and suppress this motion, you resist the Spirit-you stifle his movements within you: it is what the impenitent do day after day, and year after year-and is this the way for securing the influences of the Spirit at the time that you would like them best? When you/are done with the world, and are looking forward to eternity because you cannot help it? God says, "My Spirit will not always strive with the children of men." A good and a free Spirit he undoubtedly is, and, as a proof of it, he is now saying, "Let whosoever will, come and drink of the water of life freely." He says so now, but we do not promise that he will say so with efiect upon your deathbeds, if you refuse him now. You look forward then for a powerful work of conversion being done upon you, and yet you employyourselves all your life long in raising and multiplying obstacles against it. You count upon a miracle of grace before you die, and the way you take to make yourselves sure ofit, is to grieve and o~end him while you live, who alone can perform the muacle. 0 what cruel deceits will sin land us in! and ho:v artfully it pleads for a " little more sleep, and a little more slumber; a little more folding of the hands to sleep." We should hold out no longer, llW ]nake not su~h an abuse of the forbearance of J
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