And therefore all the progress of your first conviction, which by the grace of God you have had from above, consists in the simplicity of your faith, in adhering to it, as the work of God in your soul, which can only go on in God’s way, and can never cease to go on in you, any more than God can cease to be that which he is, but so far as it is stopped by your want of faith in it, or trusting to something else along with it. God is found, as soon as he alone is sought; but to seek God alone, is nothing else but the giving up ourselves unto him. For God is not absent from us in any other respect, than as the spirit of our mind is _turned_ from him, and not left wholly to him. *This _spirit of faith_, which not here or there, or now and then, but every where, and in all things, looks up to God alone, trusts solely in him, depends absolutely upon him, expects all from him, and does all it does for him, is the utmost perfection of piety in this life. And this is that union with God, in which man was at first created, and to which he is again called, and will be fully restored by God and man being made one Christ. _Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost._ These are always together, the one can never be without the other. This was _Stephen_’s qualification for the deaconship, not because of any thing high or peculiar in that office, but because the gospel dispensation was the opening a kingdom of God amongst men, a spiritual theocracy, in which as God, and man fallen from God, were united in Christ, so an union of immediate operation between God and man was restored. Hence this dispensation was called, in distinction from all that went before it in outward types, figures, and shadows, a _ministration of the Spirit_, that is, an immediate operation of the Spirit of God itself in man, in which nothing human, or depending upon the power of man’s wit, ability, or natural powers, had any place, but all things begun in and under obedience to the Spirit, and all were done in the power of faith united with God. Therefore to be a faithful minister of this new covenant between God and man, is to live by faith alone, to act only, and constantly under its power, to desire no will, understanding, or ability as a labourer in Christ’s vineyard, but what comes from faith, and full dependance upon God’s immediate operation in and upon us. This is that very thing which is expressly commanded by St. _Peter_, saying, _If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God_, if any _man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth_. For all which he giveth this reason, which will be a reason as long as the world standeth, viz. _That in all things God may be glorified thro’ Jesus Christ_. A plain declaration, that where this is not done, there God is not glorified by Christians through Christ Jesus.