counter to any impulses of the Spirit, however slight, or to neglect any of His admonitions, however gentle.  If God in mercy has once come in upon a thoughtless mind, and wakened it to eternal realities; if He has enlightened it to perceive the things that make for its peace; and that mind slights this merciful interference, and stifles down these inward teachings, then God withdraws, and whether He will ever return again to that soul depends upon His mere sovereign volition.  He has bound himself by no promise to do so.  He has established no uniform law of operation, in the case.  It is true that He is very pitiful and of tender mercy, and waits and bears long with the sinner; and it is also true, that He is terribly severe and just, when He thinks it proper to be so, and says to those who have despised His Spirit:  “Because I have called and ye refused, and have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded, I will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh.”

Let no one say:  “God has promised to bestow the Holy Ghost to every one who asks:  I will ask at some future time.”  To “ask” for the Holy Spirit implies some already existing desire that He would enter the mind and convince of sin, and convert to God.  It implies some craving, some yearning, for Divine influences; and this implies some measure of such influence already bestowed.  Man asks for the Holy Spirit, only as he is moved by the Holy Spirit.  The Divine is ever prevenient to the human.  Suppose now, that a man resists these influences when they are already at work within him, and says:  “I will seek them at a more convenient season.”  Think you, that when that convenient season comes round,—­when life is waning, and the world is receding, and the eternal gulf is yawning,—­think you that that man who has already resisted grace can make his own heart to yearn for it, and his soul to crave it?  Do men at such times find that sincere desires, and longings, and aspirations, come at their beck?  Can a man say, with any prospect of success:  “I will now quench out this seriousness which the Spirit of God has produced in my mind, and will bring it up again ten years hence.  I will stifle this drawing of the Eternal Father of my soul which I now feel at the roots of my being, and it shall re-appear at a future day.”

No!  While it is true that any one who “asks,” who really wants a spiritual blessing, will obtain it, it is equally true that a man may have no heart to ask,—­may have no desire, no yearning, no aspiration at all, and be unable to produce one.  In this case there is no promise.  Whosoever thirsts, and only he who thirsts, can obtain the water of life.  Cherish, therefore, the faintest influences and operations of the Comforter.  If He enlightens your conscience so that it reproaches you for sin, seek to have the work go on.  Never resist any such convictions, and never attempt to stifle them.  If the Holy Spirit urges you to confession of sin before God, yield instantaneously to His urging, and pour out your soul before the All-Merciful.  And when He says, “Behold the Lamb of God,” look where He points, and be at peace and at rest.  The secret of all spiritual success is an immediate and uniform submission to the influences of the Holy Ghost.