The word of God, or the gospel, with all the hidden treasures of it, is the chief instrument, or means, whereby this divine life is wrought and supported in the soul. The true christian beholds the purity of God in the precepts; he reads grace, heaven, and glory, in the promises; he sees the words of the bible in a divine light, and feeds sweetly on the hidden blessings of scripture, deriving life, and nourishment, and joy from it; whereas the carnal world go not far beyond the letters and syllables. The gospel, which is all light and glory to a saint, is hidden to them that are lost; 2 Cor. iv. 3. This same gospel is written in the heart of a christian, and is the principle of his life there. This is immortal and incorruptible, the seed of the word abiding in the heart; the image of the eternal God, drawn out in such characters as our nature can bear: For the written word is a transcript of God’s holiness; and when it is inwrought into all the powers of a believing soul, it becomes a vital principle within him for ever. A believer is, as it were, cast in the very mould of the gospel; so the word signifies; Rom. vi. 17. This is the word hidden in the heart, that secures the saint from sin; Ps. cxix. 11. The motives and springs that awaken a christian to keep up, and maintain this spiritual life, are things hidden from the eyes of the world; things eternal and invisible, 2 Cor. iv. 18. _While we look not at the things that are seen, that are temporal; but at the things that are unseen, and eternal_; we then count the joys or sorrows of this world, things of little importance; then we live like christians, and the life of our Lord Jesus is manifested, or copied out, in our lives; as ver. 10, 11. The habits of grace and holiness in the hearts of believers, whence all the actions of the spiritual life proceed, are secret and hidden. Who knows how they were wrought at first? how this heavenly breath, this divine life was infused, which changed a dead sinner into a living saint? Our Saviour himself compares this work of the Spirit to the wind; John iii. 8. _We hear the sound_, we feel and see the effects of it, _but we know not whence it comes, nor whither it goes; so is every one that is born of the Spirit_. Who can describe those secret and almighty influences of the blessed Spirit on the mind and will of man, which work with such a sovereign, and yet such a gentle, and con-natural agency, that the believer himself hardly knows it, but by the gracious effects of it, and the blessed alterations wrought in his soul. It is this glorious Agent, this Creator, this blessed Spirit, who is the uncreated principle of this life. The Spirit, as proceeding from our Lord Jesus Christ, begun this life at first in the soul: and the same glorious unseen power carries it on through all difficulties and oppositions, and will fulfil it in glory.