Charity and Its Fruits (continued)
and likeness of Christ does much more consist in having the same mind in us which was in Christ; in being of the same Spirit that he was of; in being meek and lowly of heart; in baying a spirit of Christian love, and walking as Christ walked. This makes a man more like Christ than if he could work ever so many miracles.
4. That grace ace which is the effect of the ordinary influences of the Spirit of God, is a privilege which God bestows only on his own favorites and children, but the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are not so.—It has been observed before, that though God most commonly has chosen saints, and eminent saints, to bestow extraordinary nary gifts of the Spirit upon, yet he has not always done so; but these gifts are sometimes bestowed on others. They have been common to both the godly and the ungodly. Balaam is stigmatized in Scripture as a wicked man (2 Pet. ii. 15; Jude 11 ; Rev. ii. 14), and yet he had the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit of God for a while. Saul was a wicked man, but we read, once and again, of his being among the prophets. Judas was one of those whom Christ sent forth to preach and work miracles: he was one of those twelve disciples of whom it is said, in Matt. x. 1, " And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease." And in the next verses we are told who they were; their names are all rehearsed over, and " Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him,,, among the rest. And in ver. 8, Christ says to them, " Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." The grace of God in the heart is a gift of the Holy Ghost peculiar to the saints: it is a blessing that God reserves only for those who are the objects of his special and peculiar love. But the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are what God sometimes bestows on those whom he does not love, but hates; which is a sure sign that the one is infinitely more precious and excellent than the other. That is the most precious gift, which is most of an evidence of God's love. But the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were, in the days of inspiration and miracles, no sure sign of the love of God. The prophets were not wont to build their persuasion of the favour and