not Israel who are of Israel," he does not mean that faithless Israelites are not of the lineage of Israel. Nor, when our Lord called Nathanael "an Israelite indeed," did He mean that they who were not true to their name were not indeed of God's chosen nation. So in this place, as many as follow where the Spirit leads, they are sons of God indeed.

This, then, is our calling, and this is the test of our adoption.

How many simply deride it. In this day of light, when we are told that manhood is divine, and that, when conscious of his divinity, man is what I dare not speak, the grace of God in our adoption is looked down upon as a superstition of human childhood, a figment of the mind, or a remnant of medieval credulity. How many disbelieve it because they cannot find it in their own consciousness, therefore cannot realise it; and what they cannot realise they deny. How many profess to believe, and yet choose their own path, are their own leaders; consciously evading the leading of their baptism in all its higher and deeper paths, in all that cross their own inclinations. How many stifle and lower their spiritual life by empty, unworthy, frivolous trifling; by ease, luxury, sloth, softness, self- indulgence,

1 Rom. ix. 6.

2 St. John i. 47.

and acquiescence in relaxed maxims of the world. How few truly realise the spirit of their adoption, and become sons of God in life, energy, and act. How few, I mean, realise the personality and presence of the Holy Spirit. How few live in the consciousness that they are within the sphere of a Divine person, loving, compassionate, long-suffering, who, from their childhood, has been guiding and bearing with them.

Let us, then, try ourselves, and see how it is with us; whether or no we be sons of God in that one only sense which shall stand when all things shall be tried by fire. For in one sense sons of God we must be for ever. We can destroy ourselves, but we cannot efface our baptism; we may mar the image of God, but not our baptismal cross; we may forfeit the bliss of our adoption, but we cannot evade the doom of reprobate sons. This must be our chiefest bliss or our deepest anguish, and abide with us for ever. Let us, then, well try ourselves, lest we be deceived.

There are three certain marks by which we may ascertain our true sonship.

1. The first mark is a ready will. It may be asked, How does the Spirit of God lead us? In what way? Is it in any way distinguishable from the actings of our natural conscience; and if so, how may we distinguish it? How am I to know

what is His leading? and what am I to do to follow it?

The natural conscience is indeed the throne of the Holy Spirit within us. It is the power in us over which He presides, and by which He guides us. There is by nature a light which separates between right and wrong, between truths and falsehoods; and to this natural light the Spirit of God adds yet greater light. There is a light infused by baptism which strengthens and extends the light of nature. New faculties are awakened in the soul, and new powers implanted. Faith is a new sense; and to this sense the realities of the world unseen are lifted up. New objects and laws are revealed by the illumination of truth; new affections and perceptions are elicited by the inspirations of grace. This is the passive state of the soul born again of the Spirit. But here the trial begins. It is by our will that we are to be proved and judged. In the midst of all this growing, overwhelming light, the will may remain stubborn and rebellious. Faults in childhood growing into the sins of boyhood, hardening into the entanglements and obstinacy of manhood, establish a deliberate resistance in the will against the light of the Spirit.

We often see the most promising forms of character slowly fading off. For a time there is a kind of negative declension. No marked and ac

tive faults appear; but nothing is advancing towards holiness and the mind of Christ. They seem for a while to stand still, as we see in an arrow's flight a momentary pause before it begins to descend. So they never go beyond a certain point; then for a while they hang in suspensethen slowly fall. Then some one sin appears, long nourished in secret, now at last revealed; some one parasite, which has clung about them, and slowly confirmed its grasp around the whole strength and stature of their character. And this one sin gives the fatal wound to their spiritual life. They deliberately choose this sin; and this choice in riper years overmasters the grace of their baptism. The responsible agent rejects God's free gift, received in unconsciousness at the font.

So even with refined faults, which will equally produce an intense variance of the will, and even a more subtil spirit of hostility against God. Such, I mean, as pride, ambition, selfishness, fastidious refinement, supercilious confidence in self. All these estrange the will from God; and the will is the centre and quick of our probation.

For it is this estrangement of the will that creates reluctance, struggling, opposition, and a slavish or rebellious heart. What more miserable state than to have our reason clearly convinced of the sovereignty of God's Spirit, and our will averted

from Him? Such Christians are sons by God's grace; but slaves and rebels by their own choice and will.

This, then, is the first mark-a ready will to follow where the light of the Spirit leads. When we come to some hard choice between pleasure and duty, between a desire to venture and a motion to forbear, we come to our place and hour of trial. The motions in our conscience are admonitions from God; they are given to be obeyed.

It is dangerous to delay. When our Lord called one to follow Him, and he answered, "Suffer me first to go and bury my father," what answer did he receive? "Let the dead bury their dead.”1 So with us; hesitation brings reasons for delay; and delay gives time for temptation: one hour's delay brings unknown hindrance. The motions of God's Spirit are like the flowing of the tide, which, taken at the full, will lift us over every bar: tarry and lose them, and we may be stranded for ever.

There is a golden chain, a thread frail and delicate, by which He leads us on.

In some it is drawing them to conversion. Their past life rises up into its true shape and colour, and they are moved to flee from it. They see its sin, or hollowness, or presumption. Then they are drawn onward to holier aspirations and 1 St. Matt. viii. 21, 22.