(Continued from p. 382).
“Quench not the Spirit” (I. Thess. v. 19).
Preached by the Rev. Kenneth Bayne, Gaelic Church, Greenock, 29th October and 12th November 1820.
[AFTER a considerable recapitulation of his former discourses, he added the following ways in which God’s own people quenched the Spirit.]. 1. By pride and presumption. This was most unlike to the Christian character. There was none of it in the holy creatures of God. Show me a man of haughty looks and haughty mind, and I will show you a man destitute of the Spirit of God. 2. By distrust, discouragement, and desponding thoughts, as to the dealings of God with them and His work in them. Some persons indulged so much in this kind of thoughts, either from bodily constitution and frame, or from education, or from the providence of God, or other ways, that they made these things themselves their religion, and thought the religion of others was wrong if they were cheerful and not always gloomy. 3. By sloth and indolence. Because of the people of God indulging in sloth or similar evils the Lord might not let them see the fruit of their labours in the conversion of their relatives. 4. By their formality in duties and religious exercises. 5. By tampering with temptations. We ought to shun these, to fly from them and evade them. 6. By neglecting to improve the motions and suggestions of the Spirit when He excited us to get matters decided in the diligent use of means as to any particular point we were uncertain about. Suppose a person to be uncertain about some point of doctrine, as the personality of the Holy Ghost, the Deity of Christ, or had doubts about any of His offices, the total corruption of human nature, or about a person being in a state of grace and reconciliation with God. Now, when the Spirit excites us to get any or all of these put beyond a doubt as to their truth and certainty—if we quench these motions and suggestions it is like they will soon cease to trouble us, and we will fall into security and carelessness again, and be no more certain or decided than before. 7. God’s own people quench the Spirit by intemperance and the gratification of carnal lusts and appetites. 8. By the indulgence of angry, malevolent passions. This is contrary to Ephes. iv. 31.
[Lord’s Day, 12th Nov. 1820, Mr Bayne preached on the same text. He proceeded to his third head of method, which was to speak of the great guilt and danger of quenching the Spirit.] These arose (1) from the dignity of His Person. He was the true God, equal with the Father and Son (Acts v. 3, 4). (2) This guilt and danger arose from His being nearest to sinners in the work of redemption. He dwelt in them. (3) This guilt arose because of the various names and titles and offices the Spirit had taken to Himself to perform in the plan of redemption for men, and because of His operations in their souls. (4) This guilt arose because of the benignity and mildness of His operations in His dealings with men. (5) Because of the effects and consequences of resisting His strivings. These were very awful: 1. The effects to unconverted sinners were awful—they were given up of God to the lusts of their own hearts (Ps. lxxi. 11, 12). Here was an address to them yet to seek God while it was to-day—why will ye die? 2. To converted persons. They were ready to fall into a dead, secure, indolent and uncertain state, though they should be saved at last, and they were entreated to awake, to repent.