You have not only a right to all these
glorious blessings of His grace, but the Holy
Ghost given to you in your baptisms begets
in you a desire after them. While you seek
to “work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling,” “it is God which worketh
in you both to will and to do of His good
pleasure.”

The holy Scriptures teach, and whoever
carefully observes his own experiences and
those of others, may know, that persons
baptized have stronger and more wakeful
religious instincts and aspirations. There is
in them a nature more susceptible to the call
and approach of grace, than is found in the
unbaptized. There is in them that to which
St. John refers, when he says, “His seed
remaineth in them” — a seed that will show
life when the means of grace are brought to
bear on it, as naturally and surely as any
natural seed, that lies unseen and silent in
the bosom of the soil, will awake to life when
the warm spring sun beams on it, and the
genial south wind breathes over it.

This need not seem strange and unac-
countable, when we remember that to the
baptized it is said, “Ye shall receive the
gift of the Holy Ghost;” that our Saviour
promises that the Holy Ghost dwelleth with
them, and shall be in them; and that the
apostle declares that our very bodies are the
temple of the Holy Ghost, and that He
dwelleth in us. If the Holy Ghost dwells
in those who have put on Christ and are
united to Him, in a way in which the world
can neither receive nor know Him (St. John
xiv. 17), we have the very best ground on
which to explain the fact of stronger reli-
gious instincts, aspirations, and desires in
such as have received Holy Baptism, and
with it the gift of the Holy Ghost.

You have, in some measure at least, these
holy desires after Christ. You wish to grow
into full self-conscious, Christian life. These
warm desires that burn in you are kindled
by reclaiming grace! Thank “the love of
the Spirit” for them! Cherish them more
than life itself, and cultivate them as a plant
of grace which you expect to bloom forever
in the Paradise above.