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neither conscience nor love. But if something is done, it is still certain that the most important part remains to be done.

6. The union of the will, which has just been described, becomes consolidated and perfect when we add the concurrence of the affections to the supports of the moral sense. It is this union which we have denominated affectional. In order, therefore, to that union of the will with God which is requisite in the highest state of religious experience, the action of the will, in harmonizing with God's will, must rest upon the twofold basis of the approbation of the conscience and of the love of the heart. In any other state of the mind, the union of the will with God is more or less obstructed and enfeebled. When, in connection with the moral union, the obstruction of all discordant tendencies and desires is out of the way, and the affections are in the right direction, the union is such as it should be. Of a will thus united with God, it may be said, with almost literal truth, that it is the subject of a new creation, and has a new life.

7. But then comes up the great question again, How can we obtain this basis of love? How can we be made to possess that which we are not possessed of, by being made to love that which we do not love? Especially as love, in that higher sense of the term which has been explained, is not human, but divine; not a thing created, but eternal. The answer is, that God, in being a benevolent existence, necessarily loves to dispense his own nature, to enter into all hearts where there is a possibility of entrance, to pour out everywhere the radiance of his own brightness. What we have to do, then, is first to be emptied, in order that we may be filled; first to

cease from self, that we may be recipients of that which is not self.

But how can we do this? Or how can we learn to do it? Daily, O man, is the Providence of God teaching thee, by perplexing human wisdom, by disappointing human efforts, and by showing, in a thousand ways, the blindness, the weakness, and the iniquity of selfishness. It is for this that thou art smitten. Sorrow is thy teacher. It is a hard lesson to learn, but still a necessary one, that a life out of the divine life is not life, but that the true life is from God. Our heavenly Father, in the infinite fulness of his nature, will pour out upon us the principle of holy love, as soon as we are ready to relinquish the opposing principle of self.

8. In connection with what has now been said, we shall be able to form a true idea of what is sometimes denominated the death of the will.

Properly speaking, or perhaps we should rather say, in this case, psychologically speaking, man's will can never die. A will is essential to man's nature, as it is to the nature of every moral being. Man, without a will, ceases to be man.

When, therefore, in examining the topics connected with religious experience, we speak of the death of the human will, we mean the human will considered in its action and its tendency to action, out of the divine order. It is the human will divergent, resting in the origin of its movement on the limited and depraved basis of personal interest, and out of harmony with the will of God.

9. In the sense which has just been given, the human will, before it can have a higher and divine life, not only may die, but must die. Its death is not only possible but

necessary. In its present life, if we may so express it, it has its principle of movement in motives which God cannot respect and approve; but, on the contrary, he disapproves and condemns them as inconsistent with the highest good of the universe. From such a will he

is necessarily excluded.

It is impossible, therefore, that there should be any mitigation of its sentence; any pity or compromise whatever with its natural life. The hand of God himself, through the working of his unerring providences, nails it to the cross. It may exhibit much resistance; it may experience a painful and lingering death; with the nails driven through its hands and feet, it may plead that its bones may not be broken, and that its side may not be pierced; but no attention can, or ought to be given to its supplications.

10. The death of the will (that is to say, its death to the selfishness of nature) is the antecedent of its resurrection to holiness. In its resurrection love takes the place of selfishness. The will can no more be born into its new and divine life, and expand and flourish in its new beauty and maturity of love, before the extinction and death of its natural life of selfishness, than the spiritual body of the resurrection, adorned with immortal beauty, can come into existence before the death of the natural body. "That which thou sowest," says the apostle Paul, speaking of wheat and other grains, "is not quickened except it die." "So also," he adds, "is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

And these expressions, applied to the resurrection of the body, are applicable to the death and resurrection

of the will. If it dies to all that is the opposite of God, it is made alive to all that has God in it. Dishonored and corrupted in its selfish nature, it perishes and is thrown lifeless into its burial place, until the spirit of God, brooding over and operating in its ruins, brings life out of death, and glory out of shame.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF UNION WITH THE WILL OF GOD.

Union of submission. Illustrations. - Union accompanied with joy. -A third and higher form of union. - Instances.

THERE are different degrees of union with the Divine Will, some of which it may be proper to notice and discriminate.

The first degree may be described as union with the divine will in submission. Submission is a relative term, and always implies, when employed in a religious sense, a reference to a divine arrangement or order of things. It is acquiescence in, or conformity to, such arrangement; and is, consequently, the opposite of rebellion. Accordingly, it may always be said, when there is no element of positive resistance, no actual rebellious movement against the order of things, that there is submission to it. And this can be said without impropriety and with entire truth, even if it should be the case that the submissive state borders so closely on the line of resistance as to require all our powers of thought and of the will to keep it where it is.

2. Illustrations of this state of mind are very frequent. Occasion is furnished for them by events which are constantly taking place, such as the loss of property and reputation, and the experience of physical sufferings, either by ourselves, or by those who are dear to us. If