Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

year of its truth; and they know it to be the common birthright of all the
sons and daughters of God. Without it the whole life of faith would be
hypothetical. And if a man have not the consolations of the Holy Spirit,
and a Scriptural and satisfactory evidence of his own interest in Christ,
and of his title through him to the kingdom of heaven, the Koran, for
aught he knows, may be as true as the Bible. No man can inherit unless
he be a son: "For if sons, then heirs;" and to them that are sons "God
sends the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father." These
are the true sayings of God, and all his people know them.
Those who feel little or none of the work of God in their own hearts
are not willing to allow that he works in others. Many deny the influences
of God's Spirit, merely because they never felt them. This is to make any
man's experience the rule by which the whole word of God is to be
interpreted; and, consequently, to leave no more divinity in the Bible than
is found in the heart of him who professes to explain it.
When moral effects, the purest, the most distinguished, and the most
beneficial to society are attributed to natural causes, human passions, and
the inquietudes of vanity, and not to the Author of all good, the Father of
lights, then we may safely assert that the person who so views him is one
of those unwise men of whom the psalmist speaks. He excludes God from
his own peculiar work; gives to nature what belongs to grace; to human
passions what belongs to the divine Spirit; and to secondary causes what
must necessarily spring from the First Cause of all things.
Were not the subject too grave, it would be sufficient to excite
something more than a smile, to see men both of abilities and learning,
in their discussion of spiritual subjects which they have never thoroughly
examined, because they have never experimentally felt them, labour to
account for all the phenomena of repentance, faith, and holiness, by
excluding the Spirit of God from his own proper work; and to the
discredit of their understanding, and the dishonour of religion and sound
philosophy, search for the principle that produces love to God and all