But must not we speak of others? is not another case to be supposed possible? may there not be some who cannot say with truth that they are receiving the holy Ghost now?  They received him once; we doubt it not; perhaps they were receiving him for some length of time; their early childhood was watched by Christian care; their youth and early manhood, when it received freshly things of this world, received also, with lively thankfulness, the grace of God; they can remember a time when they were growing in goodness; when they were being renewed after the image of God.  But they can remember, also, that this time passed away; the grace of early childhood was put out by the temptations of boyhood; the grace of youth and opening manhood died away amid the hardness of this life’s maturity.  It is so, I believe, often; that boyhood, which is, as it were, ripened childhood, destroys the grace of our earliest years; that again, when youth offers us a second beginning of life, we are again impressed with good; but that ripened youth, which is manhood, brings with it again the reason of hardness, and again our spiritual growth, is destroyed.  We can remember, I am supposing, that this fatal change did take place; but can we date it to any particular act, or month, or day, or hour?  We can do so most rarely:  in this respect the seed of death can even less be traced to its beginning than the seed of life.  And yet there was a beginning, only we do not remember it.  And why do we not remember it?  Because the real beginning was in some act which seemed of so little consequence that it made no impression; in the altering some habit which we judged to be a mere trifle; in the indulging some temper which even at the time we hardly noticed.  Some such little thing,—­little in our view of it,—­made the fatal turn; we received the grace of God less and less:  we heeded not the change for a season; and when it was so marked that we could not but heed it, then we had ceased to regard it; and so it was that the spring of our life was dried up:  and it is of no more avail to our present and future state, that we once received grace, than the rain of last winter will be sufficient to ripen the summer’s harvest, if from this time forward we have nothing but drought and cold.

Some few, again, there may be, who, within their own recollection, could not say that they have received the Holy Ghost:  persons who have lived among careless friends, to whom the way of life has never been steadily pointed out; while the way of death, with all its manifold paths, meeting at last in one, has been continually before them.  Shall we say that these, because they have been baptized, are therefore guilty of having rejected grace given? that this sin is aggravated, because a mercy was offered them once of which they were unconscious?  We would not say this; but we would say that it is impossible but that they must have received the Holy Ghost within their memory; it is impossible but that conscience