through his fault, but because his armour has repeatedly given way, and his weapons failed him in the hour of combat. At last, he gets a suit of mail which is proof,—a sword, and spear, and shield well tempered and tried,-he clothes himself in these, and then rushes back into the battle-field, sure of victory. The Spirit of God had often met and combated the Spirit of hell; for 4000 years the warfare had been carried on, but he had never been able to get a decisive and lasting victory, because he could never find a sure footing on the treacherous groundwork of the human heart. He had gained many a triumph in the saints and prophets; but in each case had been often obliged to retire through the power of their indwelling sin; but now, at last, he has found a sure footing; embosomed in the holy Jesus, and secured in that temple which he had himself prepared, he may challenge the devil to do his worst,—and he is in haste to do so. Like the warrior, flushed with high thoughts of glory, urging his charger into the thickest of the fight, the Spirit driveth Jesus into the wilderness, eager to deal a deadly blow to the spirit of hell, and to plant his foot upon the serpent's neck.

Accordingly, when we look at the temptation, we find that it is not a conflict between Christ as God, and the devil; but between the devil and the Holy Ghost. Christ did not foil the tempter by the weapons of his own deity, but by the words of the Holy Ghost.

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V. We find the Spirit exerting a similar control in Luke iv. 14, And Jesus returned in the power (or rather, by the power') of the Spirit into Galilee;' from which expression, with others, we may conclude, that all the Saviour's motions were regulated by the same blessed Agent, and that the restraint which he seemed occasionally to feel, delaying him on his path to the cross, proceeded from the hand which was upon him, which having before planned out his course, now guided him in it.

VI. He was anointed by the Spirit as a preacher of heavenly truth; and, like the prophets, he spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, which is proved by that well-known passage, Luke iv. 18, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,' &c.

VII. His miracles were wrought by the power of the Holy Ghost, at least the chief of all, viz. casting out devils, But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you,' Matt. xii. 28.

VIII. In his death, we find that the Spirit had a part; for it is written, that he through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God,'-an expression certainly obscure, which teaches us, however, that the power of making a spotless offering was derived in some way from the presence of the Holy Ghost.

IX. The Holy Ghost was further employed in raising him from the dead. He seems to have been charged with the care of Christ's

body, which he kept from seeing corruption, and quickened on the third day.

And, finally, Scripture teaches us that not only in his personal affairs and motions was he thus led by the Spirit; but that in the prospective arrangements of the church-in the directions which he gave his disciples for carrying on the plans which he had commenced he was guided by the same authority, Acts i. 2,— Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen.'

Thus, the Spirit was evidently very much implicated in the whole work of Christ-he prepared a people and a place for him, and then a body-he descended upon him at his first public appearance, and abode upon him-he led him whithersoever he would, even into temptation; Christ preached by the Spirit, and cast out devils by the Spirit; through the eternal Spirit he presented himself an offering for sin, and quickened by the Spirit, rose from the deadand even after his resurrection, the Spirit wrought in him, for when he spake to his disciples of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and gave them commandments as to their coming duties, he did so through the Holy Ghost."

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Hence, it seems a well-warranted doctrine, that the Spirit of God acted in Christ in the same way as in prophets before him and apostles after him, only in an enlarged degree, and with unresisted freedom; for the Spirit was given to him without measure. In him dwelt the fulness of the Spirit bodily.

Now, it seems to us that Mr Winslow might have enriched his work, by bringing out the practical views which may be derived from this doctrine.

We must see at once, that when the disciples came to know it, it must have speedily assuaged their pain at Christ's departure. To part from a well-known friend to lose the benefit of his tender offices, and to be handed over to the care of a stranger, grievously wounds the affections of the heart; but there was no such transference here; for it was not a stranger who was coming in Christ's room, but that blessed Being with whose acts and movements they were already conversant-who had been addressing them, encircling them with his mighty power, and dwelling in their bosom; and the amount of the change was to be this: they were henceforth to know him, not through the medium of another-they were to see him, not in the shrine of Christ's mortality-he was going to build his throne in their hearts, walk in them, and dwell in them, as he had done in their Master. Yea, he was going to make a mightier manifestation of his grace and power in them than he had been able to do in him," Ye shall do greater works than these;"—because he

was to work in them as free men, whereas he had wrought in Christ while he was bound by the substitutionary curse.

Thus would the disciples be reconciled to Christ's going away. It was their gain. They lost his bodily presence-they gained his Divine Spirit. And thus the Spirit would be particularly endeared to them, because he was the friend and inmate of him whom their souls loved. Coming under other circumstances, the Spirit would have appeared to supplant their Lord, by superseding him; but coming from their Lord's bosom, he formed a bond of sweet and heavenly union.

And such a view of the Spirit-the self-same Spirit working in all and through all-in the Head as well as in the members of the church-is fitted for the edification and comfort of believers now, as well as at the first. It exalts the Spirit as our Comforter—it recommends him as our Sanctifier, and it authenticates him as a witness; for while his qualifications to testify of Christ'-' to take of his things and show them unto us-may be rested upon his admitted deity, and the knowledge which he acquires, by searching the mind of God; surely these are greatly enhanced, in the present case, by the intimate acquaintance which he gained with the mind and work of Christ, while he dwelt within his bosom, and guided him in the exercises of his mind, and the execution of his work.

Therefore, while we express our admiration of Mr Winslow's treatise, and our fervent hope that God may give it the seal of his blessing, we desiderate a chapter which should have been entitled, • THE OPERATIONS OF THE SPIRIT IN CHRIST,' with a practical application of that subject to Christians individually, and the church at large.*

ART. V.-Treatise on the Offices of Christ. By the late GEORGE STEVENSON, D.D., Ayr. Second Edition. Edinburgh, 1845. W. P. Kennedy.

THE necessity of a deep and solid theology is becoming more apparent every day. The Man of sin is laying his foundations broad and deep; and by a flood of errors is seeking to sap the foundations of the church of Christ. By the sure word of prophecy we are forewarned, that, in the last and perilous times, he is to come with all deceivableness of unrighteousness-deceiving, if it were possible,

* We refer our readers to a work on this subject, adverted to in the first of our critical notices; and as this is a subject claiming much attention in the present day, we shall take occasion to revert to it at another time, with the view of meeting the false teaching of those who would make void altogether the Spirit's work, even as they do the sovereignty of the Father, and the suretyship of the Son.

the very elect. And what the Spirit of prophecy announced of old, experience is verifying in our own day. Error is springing up on every side, and under every subtle form. The fountains of the great deep seem breaking up. In the rising of the gathering flood, the old lines and landmarks are ready to disappear. In the deepening shadows of the world's parting day, the old paths and ancient boundaries seem fading from men's eyes. It is becoming more and more insecure to walk by the sight of the eyes, or to be guided by the mere impressions of the heart. The subtle adversary, with whom we have to do, can come upon us clothed as an angel of light-can assume the gloss of sentiment-can affect the glow of feeling and affection. For every varying state of the church, he has his corresponding agencies, by which he hastens on its tendencies to evil-by which he expands, intensifies, and perpetuates its errors. In a time of coldness and inaction, he lulls and secularises, till he succeeds in laying it in the rigidity of death, under the Arian or Socinian heresy, as was the case with nearly all the churches of the Reformation, to a very large extent, during the course of last century.

In a time of renovated warmth and action, he leads men from the silent and unseen movements of the life which is hid with Christ in God, to the mere stir and bustle of an outside life, that is never out of the world's sight, and never done pleading at the world's bar,—a life of platforms and public meetings, for the calm and humble walk with God,—to a kind of combined and corporate revival, for the deep exercises of the individual soul. Such, in action, is the danger to which, and nowhere more than in our own Church, we seem exposed. And corresponding to this restlessness in action, there is a certain headiness in doctrine, of which, as seen in its workings elsewhere, we would do well to be upon our guard. So long as Satan was seeking to bring in infidelity, his object was to secularise the church by friendship with the world, and to bereave its members of life and hope, by denying the Lord that bought them. Now, however, that he is seeking to restore his masterpiece-the great apostacy of Rome-as the only power that can cope with an awakened church,—his great object is to simulate life-to assume the form of godliness, that he may the better counteract its power-to take the show of spirituality, that he may meet, in some measure, the newborn cravings of the awakened soul.

Within his own domain, in the world that lieth in wickedness, he is plying his old artifices-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life,-and, in the stir and whirl of overwrought speculation, whereby, in making haste to be rich, the men of the world are piercing themselves through with many sorrows, we see on every side the trophies of his deadly success in keeping them from

God. But in Christ's domain-in the bosom of his visible church, the tempter has to come in a more ethereal form, and with more subtle devices. He comes with religious excitement for the headywith religious novelty for the inconstant-with easy conversions for the light and indolent, and self-conversion for the proud-with the show of spirituality and high-wrought feeling for the sentimental, and the bustle of many doings for them that have zeal without knowledge. His object is in any way to keep the anxious or awakening soul at a distance from Jesus. So as they be kept from Him, he cares but little where they go. Those that have a kind of natural or sentimental devoutness, he turns aside to the cloistral pietism of Oxford, or sends direct to the idolatries of Rome. Those, again, that have a natural warmth of temperament, or impulsiveness of character, in union, perhaps, with a hereditary liking to the sound of a free gospel, he is seducing by the crude yet plausible sophistries of the old Pelagian heresy, linked, for the time, in strange fellowship with the doctrines of free grace. The conflict with Popery, aided and abetted by infidelity, seems, from all the signs of the times, to be in the immediate background. Meanwhile, however, whilst Satan is mustering the forces of Antichrist for his last great trial of strength, he is endeavouring to thin and weaken ́ ours, by the assaults of a foe from the opposite quarter of the field. It would seem as if Satan feels that the minds of men are scarcely yet prepared for embracing Popery itself. Hence, in England, he is preparing the way by Puseyism, which is just the form of doctrine in the Church of England, drained of its evangelic truths, and with its remaining errors intensified and caricatured. So in Scotland, excluding every truth but one-and transmuting even that, by substituting the numerical extent, for the infinite completeness and sufficiency of Christ's work, he is throwing men on a free but unfinished redemption-not to be saved by Christ, but to be helped by him to save themselves.

There may be life, but there can be no stability, in any church, unless there be the distinct and habitual recognition of the Father's sovereign authority, working all things according to the counsel of his own will,-free forgiveness through the blood of the Son, dying the just for the unjust,-the efficacious grace of the Holy Spirit, distributing to every man severally as he wills. Let these precious and fundamental truths be held with a firm hand, and with an honest and assenting heart, and we believe the utmost freedom in making proclamation of the grace of God may be allowed and enjoyed. But let these be once renounced or loosely held, and in the unsettlement that will follow, the church, beaten about with every wind of doctrine, will find no rest till she fall beneath the dreary yoke of Rome. There is no truth revealed from God but has its