Another mistake which really pious and good people commit, is, that they
think the Holy Spirit of God to be merely, or little beside, certain
pleasant frames, and feelings, and comfortable assurances, in their own
minds. They do not know that these pleasant frames and feelings really
depend principally on their own health: and, then, when they get out of
health, or when their brain is overworked, and the pleasant feelings go,
they are terrified and disheartened, and complain of spiritual dryness,
and cry out that God's Spirit has deserted them, and are afraid that God
is angry with them, or even that they have committed the unpardonable
sin: not knowing that God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of
man that He should repent; that God is as near them in the darkness as in
the light; that whatever their own health, or their own feelings may be,
yet still in God they live, and move, and have their being; that to God's
Spirit they owe all which raises them above the dumb animals; that
nothing can separate them from the love of Him who promised that He would
not leave us comfortless, but send to us His Holy Ghost to comfort us,
and exalt us to the same place whither He has gone before.
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