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 pro