he has. We will refer to one who has been used of God to turn thousands to the obedience of the faith. In a season of confidential communion with brethren and fellow-workers, he narrated this experience which was taken down from his lips:

"It was in connection with evangelistic services which I was conducting in Scotland in the early part of my ministry, that I experienced a marked visitation of God's Spirit. While preaching one evening there fell on me suddenly such an overpowering impression of the realities of the world to come as I had never known before. It seemed as though hell opened to my gaze, and I saw the misery of the lost in all its unutterable woe, while heaven, at the same time, revealed its glories to me so that I apprehended something of the unspeakable blessedness of the redeemed of Christ in glory. So powerful was the impression that I was overcome with weeping, and in spite of all my efforts at restraining my emotion was compelled to retire from the church. In my room alone for hours the visitation continued. I lay there weeping and bewailing before the Lord, that I had loved him so little and served him so coldly. I was led after awhile to give myself away to him in an everlasting covenant. I prayed that he would just take me and empty me utterly of self and fill me with his Spirit. I gave myself up to him to be

despised and rejected and counted a fool for his sake, if I might be the means thereby of saving perishing souls. Never has the memory of the hour left me; never can it leave me."

In laboring with this devoted servant of Christ, we have always been' struck with the fixed relationship between effort and result in his ministry. Oftentimes when the sermon has appeared very ill adapted to the end the effect has been greatest; and what have seemed, humanly speaking, the weakest efforts, have often fallen with unaccountable power upon the hearts of the hearers. It certainly is a reiteration of a lesson which we are very slow to learn, that it is "not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." If the preacher's message is made a medium of the Spirit, and not a work of art, it will not be strange to find the most artless, homely and unstudied utterance often carrying the mightiest results. John Livingstone, the renowned Scots worthy, says: "There is sometimes somewhat in preaching that cannot be ascribed either to matter or expression, and cannot be described what it is or from whence it cometh, but with a sweet violence it pierceth into the heart and affections and comes

immediately from the Lord; but if there be any way to obtain such a thing it is by the heavenly disposition of the speaker." No wonder at his comment on the "sometimes somewhat in preaching," when the Lord had put on him the signal honor of bringing five hundred souls to repentance under a single sermon, and that, moreover, an unstudied and almost unpremeditated effort. But here too the secret is an open one, for the closet door stands ajar, and behind the pulpit we catch a glimpse of an all-night prayer-meeting, in which the preacher was a participant - a prayer-meeting directed to this single end, of getting the enduement of power upon him who should plead with sinners on the coming day.* Ah, what a mighty make-weight in the scale of success is the baptism of this invisible, impalpable Spirit of Life! Science has perfected a balance so delicate and susceptible, that when two pieces of paper hold the

*"I never preached ane sermon which I would be earnest to see again in wryte but two: the one was on ane Monday after communion at Shotts, and the other was on ane Monday after communion at Holywood; and both these times I had spent the whole night before in conference and prayer with some Christians without any more than ordinary preparations. Other wayes my gift was rather suited to simple, common people, than to learned and judicious auditors."-John Livingstone, 1630.

scales in perfect equipoise, the writing of your name upon one will instantly tip the beam and bear it down. So it is when the signature of the Spirit is put upon the heart by the heavenly seal. ing. It is a transaction so hidden and so delicate that its subject may be quite unconscious of it as it is passing. But it has often changed the whole poise of one's life, transforming the weakling into a spiritual giant, so that he who has utterly failed by the energy of the flesh has gone forth victorious in the power of the Spirit.

We are inclined to believe that this enduement of the Spirit has often been confounded with conversion in the experience of good men. When we hear that Dr. Chalmers, or Legh Richmond, or William Haslam preached the gospel several years before they were really converted, we seriously question the statement, even though these men may have expressed such an opinion themselves. They had during these years honestly believed on the Lord Jesus and confessed him with the mouth, and therefore we must think, that had they been called out of the world they would have been saved. But all this time they may have lacked the witness and power of the Spirit, and therefore exercised a

comparatively barren ministry. The change which came to them was so radical and so transforming in its effects upon their lives that, knowing nothing of two distinct stages in the Christian life, it seemed to them like the experience of conversion, whereas we judge that the difference in their ministry before and after this change, was quite like the dif ference between the ministry of Peter before the day of Pentecost, and after that day. In other words, the event from which they dated such a change in their spiritual history we conceive to have been their enduement by the Spirit with power, rather than their conversion. This seems. to us a much more rational and scriptural explanation of their experience than the view, that during all the period before this striking change they were lost souls and without part or lot in the salvation of Christ.

We give a single illustration of a transaction which we regard as belonging to this class. G. V. Wigram was held in great esteem in the body known as "The Brethren" for his rare gifts and remarkable consecration. For several years a communicant, and in the judgment of one who knew him intimately, "a quickened soul;" living