those who
have it abundantly: if it were so, the separation of the great day of
judgment would be begun already, nor would it require, in order to
effect it rightly, the wisdom of Him who trieth the very hearts and
reins. No doubt there will be at last but two divisions of us all, the
saved and the lost; but now the divisions are infinite; so much so that
the great body of us offer much matter for hope as well as for fear. We
cannot say, that they are without the Spirit of God; yet neither can we
say that they are led by the Spirit, so as to be God's true servants. We
cannot say, that the things of God's are absolutely to them as
foolishness; yet certainly, we cannot say either, that they are to them
as the divinest wisdom.

And here we return to the subject on which I was speaking last Sunday.
It is because we are not led by the Spirit of God, but have within us
much of the spirit of the world, that our judgments of right and wrong
are so faulty; and that this faultiness is particularly seen in our
faint sense of our relations to God. These relations seem continually
foolishness to us, because they are spiritually discerned, and we have
so little of God's Spirit to enable us to discern them. And our
blindness here affects our whole souls; we have, in consequence of it, a
much fainter perception even of those truths which reason can discern by
herself; or, at any rate, if we do not doubt them, they have over us
much less influence.

Now we will first see how much of natural reason, and even of the Spirit
of God, does exist in our common judgments; for it is fair to see and to
allow what there is of right in our language and sentiments, as well as
to note what is wrong. Reason influences thus much, that we not only
commend good generally, and blame evil; but even, in particular cases,
we commend, I think, each separate virtue, and we blame each separate
vice. I never heard of justice, truth, kindness, self-denial, &c., being
other than approved of in themselves; or injustice, falsehood, malice,
and selfishness being other than condemned. And the Spirit of God
influences at least thus much, that we shrink from direct blasphemy and
profaneness; we cannot but respect those whom we believe to be living
sincerely in the fear of God; and further, if we thought our death
near, we should desire to hear of God, and to depart from this life
under his favour. No doubt, all such feelings, so far as they go, are
the work of God's S