THE KNOWLEDGE OF ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD.

BY REV. WILLIAM A. SMITH, D. D.,

PRESIDENT OF RANDOLPH MACON COLLEGE, VIRGINIA CONFERENCE, METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH SOUTH.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.-Romans, viii, 15, 16.

I. I propose to show that it is the privilege of every subject of grace, under the Gospel, to know that he is a child of God; that this experience, only, can keep us in immediate contact with the atonement; and that this doctrine is in perfect harmony with the intellectual nature of man and the facts of Christian experience.

It is not necessary, in order to verify this position, that all the Scriptures bearing on the subject be examined. Attention will be chiefly directed to the language of Paul.

"Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” What does the Apostle mean by "the spirit of bondage," and by "the spirit of adoption?" It is assumed that they were understood by those to whom they were first addressed, and that, in themselves, they define opposite mental states. "Ye were once in a state of bondage," says Paul; ye have not relapsed into that state, but ye are now in the contrary or opposite state. Some, who interpret Scripture with a view to discredit a spiritual in favor of what they call a rational religion, assert that the genius of the Law and the genius of the Gospel are here personified. The natural tendency of the law, in its operations upon the mind of one who has violated its provisions, being to produce a servile fear of God, its operation and effects may be called the spirit of bondage; and the tendency of the

Gospel being to quiet the fears which the threatenings of the law do actually awaken, this operation and effect may be called the spirit of adoption. But this interpretation, I think, may be safely ignored, as far short of the high import of the spiritual teaching of the Apostle, for no man deferred to the law more than he. He relied implicitly upon his obedience to both the moral and ceremonial law, as affording him the only ground of salvation. "As touching the law," says he, "I was blameless." Whatever, then, may be the natural operation of the law upon a mind which looks not to it merely as a rule of life, but to his obedience to it as the procuring cause of salvation, we may expect to see exemplified in the early history of Paul. What, then, was the effect upon him? Was he a subject of servile fear? Far from it. For, speaking (Romans, vii, 9) of that period in his history when he was "without the law," in that spiritual import which gives it a direct awakening effect, he says of himself, " I was alive," in that state; I had no idea of my sin and danger. With the straight edge of the law lying to my crooked path, I was nevertheless ignorant of the obliquities of my course! I really thought I was doing God service, while I was actually shedding innocent blood, in utter contempt of His authority! "But when the commandment came, I died"—that is, "when my pure reason was so enlightened by the Holy Spirit, whose office it is 'to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of a judgment to come,' that I had a clear perception and just discrimination of the nature and relations of moral law to my heart and conduct, I at once saw and felt that I was a ruined sinner, hastening on to judgment without a single ray of hope. ‘I died,' to all the former quiet of my mind. I saw that I was really dead, in the eye of the law, and only awaited the act of the executioner to complete my ruin." Hence the bitter lament: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Here was slavish fear, indeed-the bondage of a chain, which, his own unhappy and fruitless experience taught him, no human power could break.

Now, we know that the law is not defective in its own nature. It is "through the flesh" only that it is "weak." In itself, it is holy, just, and good. Here, then, is an effect, in the case of Paul, not resulting from the nature of the law, for that remained the same that it was before his awakening-holy then, and holy now; nor yet resulting from the essential nature of mind, for Paul's mind remained

the same also; but, as the context shows, an effect resulting from the direct operation of the Holy Spirit-so enlightening, and thereby quickening his pure reason-the faculty by which he perceives real abstract truth, and discovers its relations to himself-that he perceives and acknowledges his lost and ruined condition, and feels all the force of this new belief.

Let it be observed, that there remains to man, since his fall, in common with his fellow animals, the capacity to take in all ideas which come through his physical senses. Besides this, there is that measure of understanding, or capacity to perceive and assent to the nature and relations of these ideas to himself and the business of life, which is inseparable from the existence of the pure reason, and which makes him, though a fallen, still a rational, being. But because his pure reason is no longer in immediate contact with the Holy Spirit, as it was before his fall, he has, by nature, no clear perception of moral good, moral beauty, and moral truth, (our classification of all pure abstract moral ideas,) and, at best, only a dim, shadowy outline of these ideas. Hence he does not discriminate their relations to himself, and their claims upon him. Hence he does not believe the teachings of the law, that he is a transgressor, and liable to death. And as he does not believe this, he does not (nor can he) feel the obligations of this belief. The feeling of the ought or the ought not is not present-that is, he has no conscience about it. Hence his will is powerless, touching these matters, though capacitated for freedom, because it is not supplied with the antecedent feeling of obligation, which is the necessary condition of volition, or condition of choosing by election-a condition inherent in an act of moral freedom. For, as the presence of two individuals, one with the other, is a necessary condition of their holding a personal conversation, while at the same time, this condition, being supplied, does not compel the conversation they hold with each other; so the feeling of obligation to the truth believed (conscience) is a necessary condition of an act of volition, or an act electing to be governed by this obligation; whilst at the same time, this condition, being supplied, (conscience being present,) does no more compel the volition than, in the former case, the presence of the parties compels the conversation. If this were not so, it could not be said with truth, in any sense, that man was a free and accountable being. But, although it is true that he is constituted a free being in his essential mental nature, it is still true that, in his