Consider the HOLY SPIRIT'S INVITATION. In Revelation xxii. 17, it is written: "And the Spirit and the bride say, come. And let him that heareth say, come. And let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will let him take the water of life freely." Whilst we are so constituted that we cannot believe a proposition the terms of which we do not understand, and whilst there is much that is inscrutable in the Spirit's work, yet the passage just quoted clearly means, if it means anything, that the Holy Spirit invites all to come and drink of the life-giving water. We cannot doubt His sincerity. When all are invited to drink, it is implied that there is water for all, and that it is free to all, and that they have power to drink. We may not ask one to drink at an empty fountain without being guilty of the sheerest mockery; and neither may we ask the wounded and disabled man, who cannot walk a step, to come and drink, without being guilty of the same. This invitation of the Spirit, then, is inconsistent with the Calvinistic notion that His converting grace is limited. Says the late Dr. John Guthrie, "Was it antecedently to be supposed that a Divine Father who loves all, and so loved as to give His own and only-begotten for our ransom, and that the Divine Son, who as lovingly gave Himself, would send the Divine Spirit mediatorially to reveal and interpret both, who should not operate in the world on the same principle of impartiality and universality? What philosophy and theology thus dictate, Scripture confirms. Christ promised His disciples an interpreting and applying Spirit, who should convince the _world_. Prophets predicted, and Pentecost proved, that God was pouring out His Spirit on all flesh. These influences were, in their largest incidents, soul-saving; through being moral, they were resistible. Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, said Stephen, and the Holy Ghost himself saith to-day, Oh that ye would hear His voice; which He would not do if faith came by another sort of influence which He only could give, and which He did not mean to give till _to-morrow_, or next year, or not at all! In that last and most gracious of Gospel invitations, which the incarnate Himself utters in Rev. xxii. 17, among other inviters, the Spirit says, come! and says it to all; which surely, as He is the Spirit of truth, He would not do, if not a soul could come till He himself put forth an influence which He had predetermined to bestow only on a select and favoured number. The ugly limitation will not do. The work and heart of the loving Spirit are, and must be, as large as those of the Father and the Son, whom He came to reveal." (_Discourses_, Ser. X.)