he pressed on to the things which were before, even that continued and increasing grace which was required to bring him in safety to his heavenly crown.  But if we go on some years yet farther, when his labours were ended, and the sure prospect of speedy death was before him; when the past grace was everything, and what he could expect yet to come was scarcely any other than that particular aid which we need in our struggle with the last enemy—­death; then, his language is free from all uncertainty; then, in the full sense of the words, he could say that he had received the Holy Ghost, that his spirit had been fully born again for its eternal being, and that there only remained the raising up also of his mortal body, to complete that new creation of body and soul which Christ’s Spirit works in Christ’s redeemed.  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.  Henceforth there is laid up for me my crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day.”

It seems, then, that the great question which we should be anxious to be able to answer in the affirmative, is this, “Are we receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed?” “Since we believed,” whether we choose to carry back the date of our first belief to the very time of our baptism, when grace was given to us,—­we know not to what degree nor how,—­yet given to us, as being then received into Christ’s flock; or whether we go back only to that time when we can ourselves remember ourselves to have believed, and so can remember that God’s grace was given to us.  Have we been ever since, and are we still, receiving the Holy Ghost?  O blessed above all blessedness, if we can say that this is true of us!  O blessed with a blessedness most complete, if we only do not too entirely abandon ourselves to enjoy it!  Elect of God; holy and beloved; justified and sanctified; there is nothing in all the world that could impair or destroy such happiness, except we ourselves, in evil hour, believed it to be out of the reach of danger.

But if the witness of memory and conscience be less favourable; if we can remember long seasons of our lives during which we were not receiving the Holy Ghost; long seasons of a cold and hard state, in which there was, as it were, neither rain nor dew, nor yet sun to ripen what had grown before; but all was so ungenial that no new thing grew; and what had grown was withering and almost dying; what shall be said, then, and how can the time be made up which was so wasted?  But we remember, it may be, that this deadly season passed away:  the rain fell once more, and the tender dew, and the quickening sun shone brightly:  our spiritual growth began again, and is now going on healthily; we have not always been receiving the Holy Ghost since we believed, but we are receiving him now.  How gracious, then, has God been to us, that he has again renewed us unto repentance; that he has shown that we have not, in the fullest sense, sinned against the Holy Ghost, seeing that the Holy Ghost still abides with us! we grieved him, and tried his long-suffering, but he has not abandoned us to our own evil hearts; we are receiving him who is the giver of life, and we still live.