[Footnote 2:  PLUTARCH:  Numa, 8; AUGUSTINE:  De Civitate, iv. 31.]

[Footnote 3:  It should be noticed that Cornelius was not prepared for another life, by the moral virtue which he had practised before meeting with Peter, but by his penitence for sin and faith in Jesus Christ, whom Peter preached to him as the Saviour from sin (Acts x. 43).  Good works can no more prepare a pagan for eternity than they can a nominal Christian.  Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius could no more be justified by their personal character, than Saul of Tarsus could be.  First, because the virtue is imperfect, at the best:  and, secondly, it does not begin at the beginning of existence upon earth, and continue unintermittently to the end of it.  A sense of sin is a far more hopeful indication, in the instance of a heathen, than a sense of virtue.  The utter absence of humility and sorrow in the “Meditations” of the philosophic Emperor, and the omnipresence in them of pride and self-satisfaction, place him out of all relations to the Divine mercy.  In trying to judge of the final condition of a pagan outside of revelation, we must ask the question:  Was he penitent? rather than the question:  Was he virtuous?]

THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE INFLUENCES.

LUKE xi. 13.—­“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

The reality, and necessity, of the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart, is a doctrine very frequently taught in the Scriptures.  Our Lord, in the passage from which the text is taken, speaks of the third Person in the Trinity in such a manner as to convey the impression that His agency is as indispensable, in order to spiritual life, as food is in order to physical; that sinful man as much needs the influences of the Holy Ghost as he does his daily bread.  “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone?” If this is not at all supposable, in the case of an affectionate earthly parent, much less is it supposable that God the heavenly Father will refuse renewing and sanctifying influences to them that ask for them.  By employing such a significant comparison as this, our Lord implies that there is as pressing need of the gift in the one instance as in the other.  For, he does not compare spiritual influences with the mere luxuries of life,—­with wealth, fame, or power,—­but with the very staff of life itself.  He selects the very bread by which the human body lives, to illustrate the helpless sinner’s need of the Holy Ghost.  When God, by his prophet, would teach His people that he would at some future time bestow a rich and remarkable blessing upon them, He says:  “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”  When our Saviour was about to leave his disciples, and was sending them forth as the ministers of his religion, he promised them a direct and supernatural agency that should “reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.”