ry of God. In the promotion of this great object, God, the Holy Ghost, co-operates with God the Father, and God the Son. The Holy Ghost, therefore, recognizes and enforces the great truth, that all subordinate tendencies, that all inferior and private interests, whenever they receive a corrected and sanctified direction, will always converge to the same centre, and will never reach their TERMINUS, if we may so express it, except in the bosom of the adorable Infinite. To this great result, all his interior and individual teachings infallibly tend. To know all things and to love all things in God; to annihilate self in all the various forms of crea-. ture-love and of self-will, and to make God the great centre of our being; this only is true wisdom and everlasting life. He, therefore, who is led by the teachings of the Holy Ghost, will be taught that he must think for God, feel for God, will for God, act for God; and that the great reality of God, which is the true beginning and completion of all religious life, must be received into the soul as the paramount motive; and with a power to 'expel all subordinate motives, and to reign there forever with supreme dominion.

Such are some of the marks by which those may be known, who are led by the Divine Spirit. These are a HIDDEN people. They have intimacy with the Highest; but they are, nevertheless, the little ones, that are almost unknown among men. Rational with the highest degree of rationality, scrupulously conscientious, ever desirous to learn the will of God as manifested in his Word and Providences, mod

256 EVIDENCES OF BEING GUIDED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT.

est and sincerely courteous and becoming in their intercourse with their fellow-men, and governed under all circumstances by a supreme regard to God's glory, they pass calmly and devoutly through the world, blessed in themselves and a blessing to others. And yet the people of the world, blinded by their unbelief, but little know and little value. that interior instruction, by which they are thus guided to the illuminated heights of evangelical perfection. Happy is he who is led, not by mere sights and sounds; not by strange and momentary impressions, which may come from the disordered senses, from the world, or from the devil; but by that clear light which illuminates the intellect, the conscience, and the heart; which is ever consistent with itself and with God's Word and Providences; and which has in reality for its author, the Comforter, the Holy Ghost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH.

On the voice of God in the interior solitude of the soul.

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, [that is, into the retired or solitary place,] and speak comfortably unto her." Hosea 2: 14.

It seems to have been a favorite idea among some of the philosophers of ancient times, and also, to some extent, among the serious and reflecting of later periods, that seasons of solitude are propitious to inward teachings. Certain it is, under certain circumstances and positions in its history, that the soul, in proportion as it ceases to be perplexed by outward and worldly influences, appears to increase its inward receptivity, and does actually become the subject of pleasant and purifying visitations, which bring not only peace, but truth. Perhaps it may be said with truth, that no man has ever become truly eminent, even in the worldly sense of the term, that no man has ever been able to perfect the great works of literature and art, who did not love solitude. It is in solitude that the soul, no longer wasted in the frivolities of social and congregated life, gathers up the fragments of its powers, and learns the mighty secret of its refreshed

and consolidated strength. It was not in the splendid court of Augustus, but in the retirement of Mantua, and on the banks of the Mincius, that Virgil wrote his enduring poems. It was in the solitary vales of Vaucluse, and not in the palaces of Avignon, that the works of Petrarch were composed. In poverty, in seclusion, and in blindness, and not in the turbulence of the political arena, and amid the convulsions and labors of public life, did Milton perfect his great work, the Paradise Lost.

But if it be thus evident, both from their example and testimony, that seasons of solitude are important to the philosopher, the orator, the poet, and indeed to all men who aim at great intellectual results, they are certainly not less essential and indispensable to the Christian. Without seasons of retirement, in which the Christian can commune with the conversations of his own soul, he necessarily lives a weak and evaporated life, destitute of the fulness of interior strength, and without the record of outward and aggressive victories. If philosophers, and orators, and poets, in rejecting the company of men, have found that higher inspiration, which they have fictitiously ascribed to the company of the Muses, how much more shall the Christian, by rejecting, so far as he can consistently with duty, the unnecessary social and conventional requisitions which are constantly made upon him, be visited with the inspirations of the Holy Ghost, and be clothed with the baptism of God. But without delaying further upon these general remarks, we proceed now more minutely to the following considerations.

(1.) There are two kinds of solitude, viz., the EXTERIOR and the INTERIOR. Both have their appropriate place and their appropriate value. Exterior as well as interior solitude has its worth. Who that has mingled much in the assemblies of men and has been involved in the perplexities of worldly business, in the strife and the turmoil, the jealousies and the cupidities of corrupted human life, has not often thought of the blessings of retirement, and sighed for the hour and the place of solitude; some vale, which has heard the voice only of its own woods and waters; some mountain, untrodden by human footsteps, where the soul could cease from its agitations and enter into rest? Charles the Fifth, one of the familiar names of history, whose ambition and power had agitated Europe for more than half a century, resigned his authority in the latter part of his life, and spent the remainder of his days in the secluded monastery of St. Justus. He felt deeply, that territorial acquisitions offered but a poor compensation for desolations of the heart, and that retirement alone could give what society and the activities of public stations had taken away.

But there is an authority on this subject, which will have more weight with the Christian, than any other name which can be mentioned. Our blessed Savior had his seasons of retirement. Often, attended by a few companions, and not unfrequently alone, he retired by day, or in the silent hours. of the night, to the garden of Gethsemane, to the shades of Olivet, to solitary places in the wilderness, by the sea side, or in distant mountains. His