unto the Father, but by me." John xiv, 6. "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." Eph. ii, 4, 5. Numerous other texts may be quoted upon this subject; but it is not relevant. It was stated above, that the Holy Ghost is represented in Scripture as the agent with man to bring him to seek the blessings of redemption bestowed by God the Father through God the Son. One passage was adduced in proof of this, Eph. ii, 18. Another is recorded in John xvi, 8: "And when he [the Spirit] is come, he will reprove [the marginal reading is convince, which corresponds most with the original] the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." The history of conversions, from the day of Pentecost downward, and the experience of all who now enjoy the blessing of salvation, are corroborative evidence of the truth, that the Holy Ghost is the agent by whom sinners are led to God through Christ. Besides, there are other thoughts in relation to man's first state of grace with which the Spirit is the Divine agent. His liberty from the errors of false systems of religion, from the thralldom and slavery of the flesh and the devil, takes place only by the indwelling of the Spirit. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 2 Cor. iii, 17. We cannot become the property of Christ as his purchased possession, and have an inward assurance of it, but by the Spirit. "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." Rom. viii, 9. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." Rom. viii, 16. His regeneration from a state of darkness into light, from nature to grace, etc., is effected by the Holy Ghost. "Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. . . . That which is born of the Spirit, is spirit." John iii, 5, 6. We cannot even call Christ "Lord," as St. Paul tells us, but by the Holy Ghost. In one word, man is utterly, absolutely, everlastingly lost to all saving religious light, influence, and blessings, without the Spirit. This is the unequivocal teaching of Scripture, and the undeniable experience of all mankind. Here, then, we see what is the relation of the Holy Spirit to man, and his work with him, in his natural state. This brings us in our inquiries to the main point in hand, the sin against the Holy Ghost which men may commit in the present age of the world. Any transgression of the laws to be observed by man, in seeking, by the agency of the Spirit, the salvation of his soul, must be sin against the Spirit, those laws being of his imposition and authority. Any opposition offered, or violence done to the Holy Ghost, in his gracious and benign influences to convince man of sin and guide him to a pardoning God, through an atoning Saviour, is sin against him. The Spirit labors with man for his salvation by direct interference and through mediums. He has immediate access to the mind and heart, as an omniscient Being searching the inmost recesses, and disclosing the hidden and secret contents to the conscience and understanding; to rebel against this procedure of the Spirit is sin against him. He insinuates and draws men, by the charms of his love and grace, from the rugged ways of sin into the luxurious paths of virtue and holiness; to repel these influences and steel the heart against them, is sin offered to the Holy Ghost. In the hour of moral danger, in the season of temptation, he cautions and admonishes the sinner not to involve his soul in deeper guilt; to close the ear and go on heedlessly, is sin against the Spirit. He unfolds the justice, goodness, and holiness of the Divine law, and creates a sense of obligation to observe that law; to close the eye against the discovery, and wipe away that sense of obligation, is sin against the Holy Ghost. He sets forth the perfect excellence of Christ, his adaptation as a Saviour, the necessity of faith in him for salvation, wooing, beseeching, laboring to persuade the soul to come and receive, by the faith he shall inspire, "the Lamb of God;" to withstand, resist, and command the Spirit to "Go thy way for this time," is a sin against him. The Spirit labors with sinners by a combination of agencies, such as the ministry, the word, providence, Christians, and all the means of grace included in the Church of Christ; to resist or throw off all the convictions, desires, purposes, or resolutions which these may excite in the heart, is to sin against the Holy Ghost. Observe, that in rejecting any one or all of the agencies employed by the Spirit, is not to sin against them, but against the Spirit, seeing they are not their own, but his; as a criminal, who should refuse the pardon of a sovereign presented to him by the embassador of the sovereign, would refuse not the grace of the embassador, but of the sovereign; or, as the rebel, who violates the laws of the monarch made known to him by the magistrate, does no violence to the magistrate, but to the monarch who made the laws and commanded them to be obeyed. Here it may be said, Does not this view exonerate the sinner from sin against the Holy Ghost, seeing he is an agent of the Father; and constitute the sin into one against God, and not against the Spirit? It must be remembered that the Spirit is God. He is so essentially and perfectly, as much so as the Son or the Father. In the part he takes in man's salvation, he is equal in his Divinity to either the first or second Person in the Trinity. He is God, as the great agent of man's salvation; therefore, to be guilty of any conduct such as is instanced above, is to sin against him; as much as trampling upon the blood of the covenant is a sin against Christ, or to blaspheme the name of the Lord is a sin against God. Is the sin against the Holy Ghost, in the sense just described, unpardonable? Is there no forgiveness for it, neither in this world nor in that which is to come? There is a negative and a positive answer to these questions. There is a sense in which the sin is pardonable, and in which it is not pardonable. Whatever sins may be committed against the Holy Ghost are pardonable, so long as he continues to act with the sinner as the agent of his salvation. The continuance of the Spirit is a satisfactory evidence upon this particular. But a protracted, determined, unwavering course of hostility to the Spirit, until the Spirit is driven from all direct or indirect agency with him, is a sin which hath not forgiveness. If his light be lost in darkness, how great is that darkness! There is none left to shed the feeblest gleam athwart the blackness of darkness which, as a deathly pall, hangs over his selfmurdered soul. If his heat be quenched by the frigid influences of sin, no more to be revived and re-strengthened, there is no power which can melt or subdue the frozen heart into sensibility; nothing that can circulate through the moral system a life-blood and action which shall lead to God. If, as a guide to the Saviour, he be rejected, despised, bound in bondage, or forced to depart, there is no angel spirit, no glorified immortal, no sanctified Christian, no concentration of wisdom, love, and power, sufficient to open the way and direct the abject soul to the bleeding cross. He must wander everlastingly amid the wilds and horrors, the wants and woes of a lost, lost, lost soul. It is in this sense that I regard the sin against the Holy Ghost unpardonable. It is impossible to bring one thus abandoned of the Spirit to repentance. He is utterly incapable of faith in Christ. Regeneration is no more possible than the change of the Ethiopean's skin by his own hands, or the change of the leopard's spots by its own paws. When may a man be said to have committed this unpardonable sin? In the absence of all those convictions, desires, purposes, feelings, etc., included in the work of the Spirit with man, as previously described, without any return of them, it is to be feared that this sin has been committed. When the broad, glorious light of the Gospel shines upon the sinner, and he has no eye to see the faintest ray, because he has suffered the god of this world to blind him; when the voice of the charmer can charm never so sweetly in his ears, to lure and attract to the pleasant ways of grace, and he hears not, because he has been deafened by the lulling sounds of the syren of hell; when every avenue to his soul is closed, and the soul itself twice dead by original and actual iniquities; when he stands in the dispensation of mercy, insensible, unsusceptible, boasting in his selfsecurity, declaring his independence of every moral obligation, feeling he has nothing to fear from his sins, nothing to dread from God, saying, "What have I done? my conscience is at ease; I need not your Gospel repentance and faith; I am prepared to meet my Judge:" in such a case, there is evidence sufficient to show that the fatal sin has been committed. The Spirit has taken his flight, and left the wretched soul to live out the residue of his days without feeling after God; without any hope or desire after salvation, hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, having nothing before him but a fearful looking for of fiery indignation which shall devour the adversary. How many such cases there are, I would not presume to say. I would hesitate to declare of any particular man, whom I might be asked to judge upon, that he had committed the unpardonable sin. That there are such in the world, where Christianity has been promulged, cannot be denied, but who they are by name or person, I would leave their conscience and God to decide. ART. IX.-RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. GREAT BRITAIN. The Protestant Churches.-The protracted sufferings of the Christian missions in India have been a spur to the various missionary societies to mature a combined system of evangelization, which, it is confidently hoped, will prove much more effectual than the hitherto too little connected operations of so many different religious bodies. Thus the Indian mutiny is already becoming a source of much good, for the missionary zeal of the Christian denominations is aroused to an unprecedented degree. At home, the Church of England is reflecting on the most suitable means of drawing the masses of the people into its churches and meetings, and of warning them against the doctrines of infidelity or indifference, which a rapidly increasing number of talented and popular papers spread among them. The regular services commenced by the evangelical party in the unconsecrated Exeter Hall, have been forbidden by the High Church rector of the parish; and the High Church party indulges the hope, that perhaps the same object may be reached by special services in the churches, at which all the seats are free. The splendor displayed by the Church at the marriage of the Princess Royal has filled many Churchmen with satisfaction, but at the same time, the connection between Church and State is as productive of strife and discord as ever. The Divorce Act has now gone into operation, but a large portion of the clergy refuse to submit to it, and the Bishop of Oxford has enjoined to all his surrogates never to grant a license for marriage to any person whose divorced husband or wife is still living. The Society for the Revival of the Convocation thinks that all the pressing requirements of religion may be summed up in one word-convocation; and the anti-Church-rate party, whose leaders, according to High-Church papers, are all Dissenters, Radicals, and Freethinkers, endeavor again to effect the total and uncompensated abolition of Church rates. The Roman Church.-Another large batch of Tractarians has gone over to Rome, under the training of the Rev. Dr. Manning. Great efforts are made by the members of the Roman Church in England and Ireland, to organize, under the management of monastic orders, reformatories for juvenile delinquents, some of which are already, it seems, in a successful operation. GERMANY, PRUSSIA, AUSTRIA. The Protestant Churches. The High-Church Lutherans of Prussia, though no longer basking in the royal protection, have still a great influence on the Church government. The Provincial Consistories are actively working in its favor, and the Supreme Ecclesiastical Council has again made to them some far-reaching concessions. In order to oppose their tendencies more effectually, the orthodox friends of the Union have organized themselves anew in the provinces of Pomerania and Saxony, in the latter under the leadership of Dr. Stier, the well-known theological author. The Rationalistic Dissenters have been treated with greater clemency since the regency of the Prince of Prussia. In Bavaria the Lutheran Church of the seven old provinces, and the United Church of the Palatinate have held general synods. The former, which was ordered this year by the government, from fear of exciting debates, to hold two separate General Synods at Bayrenth and Ansfach, has indorsed the High Lutheran views of the Supreme Consistory of Munich, while the United Church of the Palatinate, through its General Synod at Spires, has abrogated the rationalistic hymn book, and nearly completed the reorganization of the Church, on an entirely evangelical basis. In Wirtemberg several synods have petitioned the king for a greater independence of the Church, as the Concordat, grants to the Roman Church much more of selfgovernment than the Protestant Church enjoys. Preparations are made, in accordance with this report, to transfer the whole jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters from the state to ecclesiastical boards. In Austria numerous conversions are still taking place to the Protestant Church, and Dr. Nowotny, formerly an Austrian priest, and now pastor of an evangelical congregation in Silesia, has published a list of thirty-five priests and members of religious orders, who within the last few years have renounced the Roman and adopted the evangelical creed. The Methodist and Baptist missions are uninterruptedly progressing, and, though consistories and Church Gazettes not rarely thunder against them, are on the whole no longer so much annoyed as in years past by the interference of the po lice. The Roman Church. The ultramontane party in Austria is making a powerful assault upon the plan of studies introduced in 1854 into the Austrian colleges. It is demanded to give to the Latin a greater preponderance than it has at present, by reducing the time devoted to the native tongue and to the natural sciences. A committee of eminent philologists, appointed by the Minister of Instruction to report on these demands, unanimously and strongly opposes them; but it is feared that the ultramontane party will know how to dispose the emperor in favor of it. The restoration of the old monastic discipline in all Austrian convents will considerably increase the number of zealous combatants for the Roman Church, both in Austria and in Germany at large. SWITZERLAND. The Protestant Churches. - In many places the tie which binds Church and State together begins to loosen. After the precedence of the cantons of Glaris, Berne, and Neufchatel, the evangelical portion of the canton of St. Gall is at present occupied with securing to the cantonal Church a greater independence of the state. A committee of the evangelical Grand Council has drafted a new constitution, which transfers nearly the whole jurisdiction over all matters of a merely ecclesiastical character, from the Grand Council to the Annual Synod, which is to consist of all the clergymen of the canton, and lay representatives of every congregation. As a similar progress, we hail a recent decree of the Grand Council of Vaud, by which a law of 1849, forbidding all religious assemblies outside of the national Church, is |