3.  The third remark suggested by the subject we have been considering is, that it is exceedingly hazardous to resist Divine influences.  “Quench not the Spirit” is one of the most imperative of the Apostolic injunctions.  Our Lord, after saying that a word spoken against Himself is pardonable, adds that he that blasphemes against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come.  The New Testament surrounds the subject of Divine influences with very great solemnity.  It represents the resisting of the Holy Ghost to be as heinous, and dangerous, as the trampling upon Christ’s blood.

There is a reason for this.  We have seen that in this operation upon the mind and heart, God comes as near, and as close to man, as it is possible for Him to come.  Now to grieve or oppose such a merciful, and such an inward agency as this, is to offer the highest possible affront to the majesty and the mercy of God.  It is a great sin to slight the gifts of Divine providence,—­to misuse health, strength, wealth, talents.  It is a deep sin to contemn the truths of Divine Revelation, by which the soul is made wise unto eternal life.  It is a fearful sin to despise the claims of God the Father, and God the Son.  But it is a transcendent sin to resist and beat back, after it has been given, that mysterious, that holy, that immediately Divine influence, by which alone the heart of stone can be made the heart of flesh.  For, it indicates something more than the ordinary carelessness of a sinner.  It evinces a determined obstinacy in sin,—­nay, a Satanic opposition to God and goodness.  It is of such a guilt as this, that the apostle John remarks:  “There is a sin unto death; I do not say that one should pray for it."[3]

Again, it is exceedingly hazardous to resist Divine influences, because they depend wholly upon the good pleasure of God, and not at all upon any established and uniform law.  We must not, for a moment, suppose that the operations of the Holy Spirit upon the human soul are like those of the forces of nature upon the molecules of matter.  They are not uniform and unintermittent, like gravitation, and chemical affinity.  We may avail ourselves of the powers of nature at any moment, because they are steadily operative by an established law.  They are laboring incessantly, and we may enter into their labors at any instant we please.  But it is not so with supernatural and gracious influences.  God’s awakening and renewing power does not operate with the uniformity of those blind natural laws which He has impressed upon the dull clod beneath our feet.  God is not one of the forces of nature.  He is a Person and a Sovereign.  His special and highest action upon the human soul is not uniform.  His Spirit, He expressly teaches us, does not always strive with man.  It is a wind that bloweth when and where it listeth.  For this reason, it is dangerous to the religious interests of the soul, in the highest degree, to go