is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.”  And yet the Scripture and common experience alike show us, that a man may call Jesus Lord, and yet not be really his, nor one who will be owned by Him at the last day.  So that what is of real importance to us is, the degree of fulness and force with which we could give the answer to the words of the text; not simply saying that we have received the Holy Ghost, which would be true, but might be far from sufficient; but saying that we have received Him and are receiving Him more and more, so that our hearts and lives are showing the impression of his heavenly seal daily more and more clearly and completely.

And this must really have always been the answer which it concerned every Christian to be able to make; although it has been in various instances, and by very opposite parties, tried to be evaded.  It is evaded alike by those who set too highly the grace given in baptism, and by those who, setting this too low, direct our attention to another point in a man’s life, which they call his justification or conversion.  For both alike would give an exaggerated importance to one particular moment of our lives, and to the grace then given.  Now, the importance of particular moments in men’s lives differs exceedingly in different persons; but yet in all may be exaggerated.  I suppose that if ever in any man’s life a particular point was of immense importance, it was the point of his conversion in the case of St. Paul.  There were here united all that grace which according to one view accompanies baptism especially, and all which according to the other view accompanies conversion and justification.  Here was a point which separated St. Paul’s later life from his earlier with a broader line of separation than can possibly be the ease in general.  There can be no doubt that he, if ever man did, received at that particular time the Holy Ghost.  But if, ten or twenty years afterwards, St. Paul had been asked concerning what the Holy Ghost had done for him, he would not certainly have confined himself in his answer to the grace once given him at his conversion and baptism, but would have spoken of that which he had been receiving since every hour and every day, carrying forward and completing that work of God which had been begun at the time of his journey to Damascus.  And as he had received more and more grace, so was his confidence in his acceptance with God at the last day more and more assured.  For he writes to the Corinthians, many years after his conversion and baptism, that he kept under his body, and was bringing it into subjection, lest that by any means, after having preached to others, he should be himself a castaway.  And some years later still, though he does not use so strong an expression as that of becoming a castaway, yet he still says, even when writing to the Philippians from Rome, that he counted not himself to have apprehended, nor to have attained his object fully; but forgetting what was behind, even the grace of his conversion and baptism,