Christianity is the ministration of the spirit.  All real and sanctifying knowledge of the truth and love of God is from His inspiration.  It was the last and best promise which the Savior made to His afflicted disciples at the moment of parting, “I will send the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth; he shall glorify me, for he shall take of mine and shall show it unto you.”  It is He who convinces the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment:  who infuses resistless vigor into means otherwise weak and useless.  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, God the Spirit, to the pulling down of strongholds.  Without His benediction, the ministry of an archangel would never convert one sinner from the error of his way.  But when He descends with His life-giving influence from God out of heaven, then “foolish things of the world confound the wise; and weak things of the world confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, bring to naught things which are.”  It is this ministration of the Spirit which renders the preaching of the gospel to men dead in trespasses and sins a reasonable service.  When I am set down in the valley of vision, and view the bones, very many and very dry, and am desired to try the effects of my own ability in recalling them to life, I will fold my hands and stand mute in astonishment and despair.  But when the Lord God commands me to speak in His name, my closed lips shall be opened; when He calls upon the breath from the four winds to breathe upon the slain that they may live, I will prophesy without fear, “Oh, ye dry bones, hear the words of the Lord”; and, obedient to His voice, they shall come together, bone to His bone—­shall be covered with sinews and flesh—­shall receive new life, and stand up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.  In this manner, from the graves of nature, and the dry bones of natural men, does the Holy Spirit recruit the “armies of the living God,” and make them, collectively and individually, a name, and a praise, and a glory to the Captain of their salvation.

3.  Among the instruments which the Lord Jesus employs in the administration of His government, are the resources of the physical and moral world.

Supreme in heaven and in earth, “upholding all things by the word of his power,” the universe is His magazine of means.  Nothing which acts or exists, is exempted from promoting in its own place the purposes of His kingdom.  Beings rational and irrational, animate and inanimate; the heavens above, and the earth below; the obedience of sanctified, and the disobedience of unsanctified men; all holy spirits; all damned spirits; in one word, every agency, every element, every atom, are but the ministers of His will, and concur in the execution of His designs.  And this He will demonstrate to the confusion of His enemies, and the joy of His people, in that great and terrible day when He shall sit upon the throne of His glory, and dispense ultimate judgment to the quick and the dead.