God's word and man's heart Author:John Jackson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SEEMON III. STRENGTH AND SANCTIFICATION BY THE HOLT SPIRIT. Gal. v. 16. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the fle... more »sh. It is no doubt true in general, that we are very unfit judges beforehand of what a revelation made by God to man ought to be. Of most of the data requisite for the decision we were, a priori, absolutely ignorant; of many we remain ignorant still. The nature, attributes,, and modes of action of the infinite, ever- present Spirit, the place of man in the scale of being and his relations to other grades of the scale, the position of the dispensation of whichhe is the centre and subject in the vast circle of the divine government, and its possible connection with other and unknown objects and purposes of God's counsels,—all this, even after revelation, lies beyond the limits of our knowledge, and is scarcely within the shadowy province of conjecture. While it is only by revelation that a partial light has been thrown on questions which were previously equally obscure;—the entrance of evil into the creation of a good God; the complicated relations of infinite holiness and justice with infinite mefcy and love when brought into connection with human guilt; the solution of this momentous problem which involves man's eternity, by the incarnation and the atonement; the truth of the Trinity of the Persons in the Unity of the Godhead, so mysterious and difficult as an intellectual conception, so easy, suitable and blessed in its adaptation to our moral wants and instincts; and the necessity and method of preparing mankind by a patient training for the reception of the good tidings, and the mode, times, and degree in which they were to be made known to the world, and to the various nations who inhabit it. Imperfectly apprehen...« less