Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

direct influence of the Spirit of God. Remove this from Christianity, and
it is a dead letter.
The fact to be witnessed is beyond the knowledge of man: no human
power or cunning can acquire it: if obtained at all, it must come from
above. In this, human wit and ingenuity can do nothing. It is to tell us that
we are reconciled to God; that our sins are blotted out; that we are
adopted into the family of heaven. The apostle tells us that this is
witnessed by the Spirit of God. God alone can tell whom he has accepted;
whose sins he has blotted out; whom he has put among his children: this
he makes known by his Spirit in our spirit; so that we have (not by
induction or inference) a thorough conviction and mental feeling, that we
are his children.
There is as great a difference between this and knowledge gained by
logical argument, as there is between hypothesis and experiment.
Hypothesis states that a thing may be so: experience alone proves the
hypothesis to be true or false. By the first, we think the thing to be
possible or likely; by the latter we know, experience, or prove, by
practical trial, that the matter is true, or is false, as the case may be.
I should never have looked for the "witness of the Spirit," had I not
found numerous scriptures which most positively assert it, or hold it out
by necessary induction; and had I not found that all the truly godly of
every sect and party possessed the blessing—a blessing which is the
common birthright of all the sons and daughters of God. Wherever I went
among deeply religious people, I found this blessing. All who had turned
from unrighteousness to the living God, and sought redemption by faith
in the blood of the cross, exulted in this grace. It was never looked on by
them as a privilege with which some peculiarly favoured souls were
blessed: it was known from Scripture and experience to be the common
lot of the people of God. It was not persons of a peculiar temperament
who possessed it; all the truly religious had it, whether in their natural
dispositions sanguine, melancholy, or mixed. I met with it everywhere,
and met with it among the most simple and illiterate, as well as among