The poet Cowper was plunged into unutterable gloom by the conviction that he had committed this awful sin; but God tenderly brought him into the light and sweet comforts of the Holy Spirit again, and doubtless it was in the sense of such lovingkindness that he wrote: "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains." John Bunyan was also afflicted with horrible fears that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and in his little book entitled, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners" (a book which I would earnestly recommend to all soul-winners), he tells how he was delivered from his doubts and fears and was filled once more with the joy of the Lord. There are portions of his "Pilgrim's Progress" which are to be interpreted in the light of this grievous experience. Those who think they have committed this sin may generally be assured that they have not. 1. Their hearts are usually very tender, while this sin must harden the heart past all feeling. 2. They are full of sorrow and shame for having neglected God's grace and trifled with the Saviour's dying words, but such sorrow could not exist in a heart so fully given over to sin that pardon was impossible. 3. God says, "Whosoever will may come"; and if they find it in their hearts to come, they will not be cast out, but freely pardoned and received with loving kindness through the merits of Jesus' blood. God's promise will not fail, His faithfulness is established in the heavens. Bless His holy name! Those who have committed this sin are full of evil, and do not care to come, and will not, and, therefore, are never pardoned. Their sin is eternal. "HAVE YE RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST SINCE YE BELIEVED?" XIII. OFFENCES AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." One day, in a fit of boyish temper, I spoke hot words of anger, somewhat unjustly, against another person, and this deeply grieved my mother. She said but little, and though her sweet face has mouldered many years beneath the Southern daisies, her look of grief I can still see across the years of a third of a century. And that is the one sad memory of my childhood. A stranger might have been amused or incensed at my words, but mother was grieved--grieved to her heart by my lack of generous, self-forgetful, thoughtful love. We can anger a stranger or an enemy, but it is only a friend we grieve. The Holy Spirit is such a Friend, more tender and faithful than a mother; and shall we carelessly offend Him, and estrange ourselves from Him in spite of His love?