on Edwards' concept of sensibility. Second Corinthians chapter four, therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we do pray that as we continue to think about the subjects that we're led to think about through the writings and sermons, Life of Edwards, that this would show us that indeed, as Paul said about himself, that Edwards is a servant of the gospel, a servant of people for Jesus' sake. And unless that Divine and supernatural light comes into our hearts. We do not have a true knowledge of you, so we do pray for your mercy. We pray for your grace. We pray that we may grow in grace and grow in our appreciation for these great truths that you have given us and for the work of Christ and for the work of the Spirit to form Christ in us. So now we pray that this final session will be one that is edifying and helpful and leads us to a deeper love for God's grace toward us. For we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Jonathan Edwards loved the theology of personal religious experience. Not only does he have four major works given largely to the task of describing, but also prescribing, the nature of religious experience as he observed it in others, he indulges himself in teasing out the nature of his own experience. Edwards' diary is just filled with these sorts of things in which he describes his experience and his own mental ruminations about the work of the Spirit in his life and the work of biblical truth. His resolutions show a personal determination to examine every motive, plan, every thought, be responsible for every moment, the improvement of precious time, take great care in every movement of the eye, expression of the faith, and hold himself to give an account to himself for success or failure. On June the 6th, he wrote in his diary, I am sometimes in a frame so listless that there is no other way of profitably improving time but conversation, visiting, or recreation, or some bodily exercise. However, it may be best in the first place before resorting to either of these to try the whole circle of my mental employments. He felt the personal stewardship of destroying everything in his life that raised itself against the knowledge of God and to take every thought captive to obey Christ. One of his attempts to do this is found in the scrutiny he gives to his own life in personal narrative. These analyses of the nature and progress of his own religious perceptions supplemented those he did of others, including particularly his critical observation of the spiritual life of his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, a remarkable person in her own right. In some thoughts concerning the revival, as I mentioned earlier, Edwards fills several pages with an extended observation of her spiritual experience for a period of about seven years. He called her the person. He noted several things united in the person's experience. a very frequent dwelling for some considerable time together, in such views of the glory of the divine perfections and Christ's excellencies, that the soul in the meantime has been, as it were, perfectly overwhelmed and swaddled up with the light and love and a sweet solace, rest, and joy of soul that was altogether unspeakable. and more than once continuing for five or six hours together without any interruption in that clear and lively view or sense of the infinite beauty and amiableness of Christ's person and the heavenly sweetness of his excellent and transcendent love. In his personal narrative, one finds an analysis of Edward's concept of sensibility, Notice he mentioned that she had a lively view or sense of the infinite beauty and amialness of Christ's love. This appears very frequently in his other writings and is sprinkled strategically throughout his sermons. In this personal narrative, Edwards points to May or June of 1721 as the time when he could identify that change by which I was brought to those new dispositions and that new sense of things. The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since was on reading those words, now unto the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. And as I read the words, they came into my soul, and as it were, diffused through it a sense of the glory of the divine being, a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself how excellent a being that was and how happy I should be if I might enjoy that God and be wrapped up in Him in heaven and be, as it were, swallowed up in Him forever. I kept saying, and as it were, singing over these words of scripture to myself and went to pray to God that I might enjoy Him and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do, with a new sort of affection. But it never came into my thought that there was anything spiritual or of a saving nature in this. From about that time, Edward says, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ and the work of redemption and the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward sweet sense of these things at times came into my heart and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations on them. My mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of His person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in Him. I found no book so delightful to me as those that treated of these subjects. Those words, Canticles 2-1, used to be abundantly with me. I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys. The words seem to me sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ. The whole book of Canticles used to be pleasant to me, and I used to be much in reading it about that time and found from time to time an inward sweetness that would carry me away in my contemplations. The sense I had of divine things would often of a sudden kindle up as if it were a sweet burning in my heart, an ardor of soul that I know not how to express." Well, these impressions stayed with Edwards very clearly all his ministry. And through study were intensified and formed the basis of his life's work. His works on religious affections, the will, original sin, his analysis of revival, the nature of true virtue, the end for which God created the world, all focused on the point of the divine human encounter, the excellence of the divine being and the new sense of things that the human must grasp and the resultant relish of the holy beauty of God. In the very first section of his observations on the facts and evidences of Christianity and the objections of infidels, he says, it is easily proved that the highest end and happiness of man is to view God's excellency, to love him, and receive expressions of his love. This love, including all those other affections which depend upon, are necessarily connected with it, are expressed in worship. Well, what does Edwards mean when he speaks of that new sense of things? You'll meet this concept of sensibility at every turn in Edwards. So I will attempt a definition, and there is something of his appreciation for John Locke in this, and you will see it as we go along. Now this is what I think he means. Sensibility or condition of being made sensible is a state in which both the mind and the affections are convinced of and approve a biblical idea as if the senses themselves had recorded it on the consciousness as an invincible and indelible fact. It is as if Someone had tried to describe the smell of a banana to you, and then you smell a banana. What is the difference? One is purely propositional and rational without any sense experience, but the smelling of a banana, then you know what it smells like. It's like to describe to a child that a stove is hot. What does hot mean? Well, it means that if you touch it, you don't want to touch it again. It means it gives a, if you tell the child, it gives a strange sensation to your skin that goes through to your very bones and you move your hand really fast because it hurts. Well, what does hot mean? Let them touch the stove and they will know sensibly what hot is. And on and on we could go with those kinds of things. So that's what he means by sensibility. It is something that is a biblical idea that becomes so real In the mind, the affections and the mind are convinced of it and approve it as if the senses themselves had recorded it on the conscious as an invisible and an indelible fact. Sometimes he uses the word for a state of sensibility in which a merely natural man may be brought by a powerful working of the spirit upon the mind and conscience. Normally such a state of sensibility would be of the danger of condemnation in which an unforgiven sinner stands. Most often the word refers to a state of true spiritual understanding arising from the spirit's work of effectual calling or of some particular operations of his sanctifying influences. Edwards expressed this relation between natural and spiritual sensibility as he examined the ground of his assurance, fearing that he did not feel the Christian graces sensibly enough. He went on to explain that he feared that they were only such hypocritical outside affections which wicked man may feel as well as others. Then he continued his rumination by focusing on the positive spiritual substance of sensibility. He called such perceptions inward, full, sincere, entire, and hearty. They should be substantial and wrought into my very nature. Now in his personal narrative, he explains at least 10 of these moments of sensibility. The first that he mentions, that he goes into some explanation of, but it's a full rational satisfaction with the absolute divine sovereignty. He, notice it's a rational satisfaction at this point, but he had seen the scriptures, he resisted it, he fought against this idea of divine sovereignty, but then there is something that happened where rationally he became absolutely convinced of it. It is as if he had seen God's sovereignty. He had seen it, he had felt it, he had tasted it, so he had a rational certainty that it was impossible for there to be a God that was not sovereign. And then the second sensibility, he says, is a delightful conviction of absolute sovereignty based on 1 Timothy 1.17. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. Later in Northampton, he says, the doctrines of God's absolute sovereignty and free grace and showing mercy to whom he would show mercy and man's absolute dependence on the operations of God's Holy Spirit have very often been much my delight. God's sovereignty has ever appeared to me as a great part of his glory. It has often been sweet to me to go to God and adore him as a sovereign God and ask sovereign mercy of him. The third of these areas of sensibility is new apprehensions of Christ and the work of redemption. He saw the loveliness of the person of Christ and the sweetness of redemption by him. He says, I had an inward sense of these things that at times came into my heart and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. He speaks about the ineffable excellence of the person of Christ and his glory as a mediator. Then he says, on another occasion, I have sometimes had a sense of the excellent fullness of Christ and his meatness and suitableness as a savior, whereby he has appeared to me far above all, the chief of ten thousands, And his blood and atonement has appeared sweet, and his righteousness sweet, which is always accompanied with an ardency of spirit and inward struggling and breathing and groaning that cannot be uttered, to be emptied of myself and swallowed up in Christ. Edwards also uses the following phrase in describing the concept of sensibility when he's speaking about the person of Christ. He calls it a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world. The fourth area was a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God. I seem to see them both in sweet conjunction, majesty and meekness joined together. He wrote of a sweet, gentle, and holy majesty, and conversely viewed God in terms of majestic meekness. You've heard the hymn, majestic sweetness sits enthroned upon the Savior's brow. His head with great radiant glories crowned, his lips with grace or flow, majestic sweetness. That was a phrase borrowed out of Edwards. And then the fifth area, well he says, there's a peculiar beauty and meekness when it arises from infinite majesty and strength as well as a delightful and absorbing wonder and overwhelming majesty when it is displayed in gentle meekness. Now the fifth thing, he began to sense the divine beauty in everything. The sun, the moon, the stars, the sky, the flowers, birds, insects, thunderstorms. I felt God at the first appearance of a thunderstorm and used to take the opportunity at such times to fix myself, to view the clouds and to see the lightnings play." He talks about how before he was fearful of this. It was something that he just did not like to see. He wanted to hide himself from it. He was fearful of the power of nature, but then he began to see it as an expression of the power of God and the beauty of God and the unpredictable nature. from a human standpoint of how God so finely operates within the created order through all of these things that appear to be happening so fast to us and with such randomness and yet they're fully explicable on the basis of absolute principles. And he says it just reminded him of the sort of the unbridled sovereignty of God. He liked to fix himself to view the clouds and see the lightnings play and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder. which oftentimes was exceeding entertaining. He would sing or chant his meditations and put his thoughts into soliloquies on viewing these natural phenomena. The sixth area is as my sense of divine things seemed gradually to increase till I went to preach at New York. While I was there, I felt them very sensibly in a much higher degree than I had done before. My longings after God and holiness were much increased. Holiness here and perfection of holiness in heaven. His meditations led him to adore holiness, to seek both lowliness as well as holiness, and to contemplate the holiness of heaven. The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness, to be with God, to spend my eternity. and divine love and holy communion with Christ. I remember I then said sometimes to myself, I certainly know that I love holiness, such as the gospel prescribes. It appeared to me that there was nothing in it but what was ravishingly lovely. On December 22, 1722, Edwards confided to his diary that he was affected with a sense of the excellence of holiness. In conjunction with that, he also acknowledged, I have also felt sensible repentance of sin because it was committed against so merciful and good a God. In a sermon entitled The Way of Holiness, Edwards opened his doctrine with the words, many are not sensible enough of the necessity of holiness in order to salvation. If all who wanted heaven went there, then it would be filled with murderers, adulterers, swearers, drunkards, and rogues of all sorts, who see heaven not in terms of holiness, but in terms of an endless continuation of their pursuit of sensual pleasure. I remember hearing some well-known singers that used to sing in a group together talking about when they died they were going to go to heaven and they'd wait for the others to get there so they could go out to the golf course and play golf and sit around the bar and drink and tell jokes to each other because that's to them what heaven would be like. So Edwards is anticipating that kind of discussion. He said, in rogues of all sorts who see heaven not in terms of holiness but in terms of an endless continuation of their pursuit of sensual pleasure. To counteract this great misperception, he says, it behooves us all to be sensible of the necessity of holiness in order to salvation. As Edward spins out his explanation of this sensibility of holiness, he uses words like most inward, hearty, sincere holiness. Sensibility of holiness is of such a nature that it must become natural thus to be and thus to act. It must be the constant inclination and new nature of the soul. A seventh area of sensibility was the Bible and the doctrines of the gospel. He says, I felt harmony between something in my heart and those sweet and powerful words. I seemed to see so much light exhibited by every sentence and such a ravishing food communicated that I could not get along in reading. Just every sentence seemed to have so much in it that he just could not get beyond it. Had to think about it, had to contemplate it. The gospel has seemed to me the richest treasure, the treasure that I have most desired, and longed that it might dwell richly in me. The way of salvation by Christ has appeared in a general way glorious and excellent and most pleasant and beautiful. Then later, I have sometimes had an affecting sense of the excellency of the divine word as a word of life, accompanied with a thirsting after that word that it might dwell richly in my heart. This kind of delight in the word of God points to Edward's understanding of the relation between cognition and sensibility. These are two things. One is speculative and notional, and involves analysis, intellectual engagement, and increasing in the grasp of the conceptual framework of ideas, and may be obtained by the natural exercise of our own faculties without any special illumination of the Spirit of God. This level of understanding is essential, and upon it depends the other level of knowledge, sensibility. The more cognition one has, then the more elevated and intense may one's sensibility be. Spiritual understanding rests not entirely in the head or in the speculative ideas of things, but the heart is concerned in it. It principally consists in a sense of the heart. While only one of these kinds of knowledge is saving, the other is of infinite importance, for without it we can have no spiritual or practical knowledge. One cannot love an object that is entirely unknown, and the heart cannot be set upon an object of which there is no idea in the understanding. Sensibility follows and depends on cognition. There is no spiritual knowledge where there is not first a rational knowledge. The spiritual senses cannot verify the truth and rightness of a thing without the thing being present in the mind. Edward says, he cannot have a taste of the sweetness and divine excellency of such and such things contained in divinity unless he first have a notion that there is such and such a thing. So his sensibility of the doctrines of the gospel was that seventh area. The eighth area was a sense of the glory and pleasantness of a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel irrespective of his own safe estate in its provision. We talked a little bit about that in the last session, which we call a disinterested love of the gospel. The purely objective ontological beauty of God's scheme of redemption becomes a matter of sensibility, even outside of our being convinced that we ourselves are partakers of it. Ninth was the glory of the third person in the Trinity. He talks about the Holy Spirit being an infinite fountain of divine glory and sweetness being full and sufficient to fill and satisfy the soul. And then the 10th area that he mentions is too great a dependence on my own strength. He says, this proved a great disadvantage to me. He discovered extreme feebleness and impotence in every way. not simply creatureliness, that was a part of it. He was a finite being, a created being, cannot exalt to himself any properties of deity, but it's not just creatureliness, but the weakening poison of indwelling sin, the innumerable and bottomless depths of secret corruptions and deceit. We were talking about this earlier. He had a powerful view of his own wickedness, like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. It is affecting to me to think how ignorant I was when I was a young Christian of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in my heart. He expressed his growing consciousness of being afflicted with a proud and self-righteous spirit much more sensibly than I used to be formally. So those are ten things, maybe I have not, it's possible I have not synthesized them in exactly the right way, but those are the ten ideas that stood out to me. And he says in August of 1722, about a year and a half after this new sense of things began, He began a regular preaching ministry at the Presbyterian Church in New York. And he began his resolutions, which finally reached the number of 70, as we mentioned earlier. 34 of them written before December the 18th, 1722. He says, the sense of divine things increased to a much higher degree. Well, what are some of the sermons? How does he express himself in some of the sermons that set forth this ideal? One of the sermons that I won't talk about, but is very filled with this, is called The Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God. This is where he talks about Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi, and it said, Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, which is in heaven. And he talks about the difference between speculative knowledge, the kind of evidence upon which some people said, well, he's Moses, or he's Elijah, he's one of the prophets, and then he says, Peter says, you're the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and so, Jesus says, flesh and blood is not revealed to you but my Father. So that's where he says that there must be this divine and supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul that shows you and convinces you of the truth of the doctrinal proposition. We see it also centers in the hands of an angry God. After stating his doctrine, he says, there's nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. and then establishing its truthfulness by ten rigorously reasoned doctrinal proofs that God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction. He introduces the applicatory phase of the sermon with this phrase, but you probably are not sensible of this. Edward saw his task as a preacher to set forth the cognitive foundation of truth with as much reasoning and exposition as he could muster, and to press the application with as many images, analogies, metaphors, and similes as would make impressions on the senses. The wrath of God burns against them. Their damnation don't slumber. The pit is prepared. The fire is made ready. The furnace is now hot, ready to receive them. The flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is wet and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them. They are the black clouds of God's wrath, now hanging over your heads, full of dreadful storm and big with thunder. The corruption of the heart of man is a thing that is immoderate and boundless in its fury. And while wicked men live here, it is like fire, pit up by God's restraints, whereas if it were let loose, it would set on fire the course of nature. And as the heart is now a sink of sin, so if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven or a furnace of fire and brimstone. Edwards had no delusion that such powerful images would aid in conversion. for the granting of the new sense of things is purely and immediately an operation of the Divine Spirit. He did, however, see cognition as necessarily consistent with true spiritual understanding, and that preaching should contain sensate images. feeling fire, smelling the stench of carrion, seeing glorious light distributed in beautiful colors, the flash of lightning, hearing a symphony of harmony or the lone voice of superlative melody, or the shriek of persons in exquisite and incurable pain, tasting bitter herbs or the sweetness of honey. These sensory words and images were commensurate with the ideal that the sensibility of spiritual truth is described in scripture in terms of the senses. through which spiritual knowledge comes. For example, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. The sinner's absolute dependence on God for salvation is made clear in the bestowal of redemption in a way that is sensible. Because we are first sinful and utterly polluted and afterward holy, so the production of the effect is sensible and its derivation from God more obvious. If we are first miserable and afterwards happy, then the change is sensible. If we are first odious and afterwards excellent, the change is sensibly observable. This change comes to us through the avenue of faith, for there is included in the nature of faith a sensibleness and acknowledgment of this absolute dependence on God in this affair. When redemption comes, it is entirely fitting that its recipient should be sensible of and acknowledge the dependence on God for it. Edwards, in fact, on this occasion, defined faith in terms of sensibility. He says, faith is a sensibleness of what is real in the work of redemption. And as we do really wholly depend on God, so the soul that believes doth entirely depend on God for all salvation in its own sense and act. To have saving faith, one must be sensible that he is wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. The alteration from that position as a matter of the sovereign pleasure and power of God should be experienced with the same degree of sensibility. We must endeavor, therefore, to increase, as he says, in a sensibility of our great dependence on God, to have our eye to Him alone, to mortify self-dependent and self-righteous disposition. In a sermon entitled The Reality of Conversion, Edwards gives reasons as to why the conversion involves the granting of a new sense. He argues that it requires something above nature to make a man love an unseen object so as cheerfully to lose all things and suffer all things for its sake. natural sense works to cause people to have a strong love to an object they have seen with their bodily eyes and have conversed with. But nature does not allow a love and devotion to an object that is absolutely remote to our present senses. Hearing of such a being as Jesus might cause transient affections about that which they are so informed of, but does not knit the heart so strongly to an unseen object as to have the effect of insuperable devotion, love, and a willingness to lose this life for its sake. There must be, therefore, such a thing as conversion that gives a change of nature to produce, quote, these new feelings or a sense of divine things, close quote. This new sense inhabits their natures in such a constituent manner so as never holy to leave them. When Edwards preached to the Mohawk tribe, he used the language of the senses to communicate the kind of knowledge they needed to have if they were truly to come to Christ. In extrapolating both instruction and exhortation from the image of light in 2 Corinthians 4, Edwards assured them that there is such a thing as this light shining into the heart. And when it does so, it changes their hearts and makes them like to Jesus Christ. Just like true sunlight will make a glass shine and reflect the sun's brilliance and give a pleasant vision of a beautiful flower in the spring, so when the light of God's word shines into the heart, it gives new life to the soul. As the sun shining on earth gives life to the trees, makes the earth look green and causes flowers to appear and to give a good smell, so the light of God's word shining in the heart is better than silver or gold and is sweeter than the honey. The gospel will be a pleasant sound to you when you come to understand it. They should put themselves in the way of receiving this light, for if they never have this light shine in their hearts, they must dwell forever with the prince of darkness in the darkness of hell." Edwards focused particularly on the reality of sight and how seeing and not seeing make the difference between salvation and damnation, heaven and hell. Those who don't believe in Christ and do not come to him for salvation have never seen how excellent Christ is. For those who believe, however, God opens their eyes to see how great and how glorious He is, and how good and how lovely He is. They see the excellency of the great things of the Word of God, that the Word of God teaches about Christ and the way of being saved by Him. Also, they see what wicked, miserable creatures they be, and so they see their need of a Savior to deliver from this misery. They come to Christ because they see that they can't help themselves, and they see how exceedingly sinful they be, all over sinful, and they deserve to be damned. If one merely hears these words and don't see how wicked they be and how they deserve to perish, they can't come with all their hearts to Christ to save them. In his application, Edwards asks, Have your eyes ever been opened to see the glorious excellency of Jesus Christ? Has the light of the word of God ever shined into your heart, so that to see the excellence of the word that teaches Christ and the work of salvation by him? Has that word been made sweeter to you than the honey in honeycomb? Is the word of Christ sweet food to your soul that puts new life into you and is better than silver and gold? Again he asked what they saw about their sin, their wickedness, what filthy, vile, abominable creatures they were, and that they were like a poor little infant that can't help yourself. Edwards also uses the word sensible on some occasions when he wanted to emphasize the depth and insight and feelings, we mentioned this earlier, that a merely natural man could have of a truth even apart from his heart having been brought to love the truth. This is the work of the Holy Spirit on the natural faculties without giving a spiritual principle. Natural men may have convictions of the guilt that lies upon them and of the anger of God and of their danger of divine vengeance. These convictions are from sensibleness of truth and arise when some have more light or more of an apprehension of truth than others. But this kind of sensibility is a mere natural and keen awareness that comes from the spirits assisting the natural principles that are present in all people. Under the power of intense perceptions, due to a combination of conscience and reason, an unregenerate person can become sensible of guilt and will find himself accused and condemned by conscience. In this kind of sensibility, the spirit works upon the natural faculties of the person, perhaps similar to Judas, who came and threw his payment down at the feet of the Pharisees and said, I have betrayed innocent blood. So a deep sense of the sensibleness of what he had done, and yet it was not a converting sensibleness. It was an illumination of natural faculties, perhaps as he contemplated his entire three years with Christ and what Christ taught and what he saw Christ doing. And yet he was more concerned about his own well-being in this world than he was about the words of Christ. And so that natural sensibleness was heightened by the Spirit, but did not lead him to Under the power of these intense perceptions, due to a combination of conscience and reason, an unregenerate person can become sensible of guilt and will find himself accused and condemned by conscience. In this kind of sensibility, the spirit works upon the natural faculties of the person. In those who are born again, however, the spirit communicates himself in his very nature to the person. He establishes a holy affection as a continued course of life by indwelling the person, operating in the person, operating in the person, not just upon the person. He exerts his own nature in an actual alteration of mind and conscience by exerting his own nature in their exercise. This operation is not merely upon the imagination, nor is it the granting of a new revelation, or new truths not already contained in Scripture. Rather, the Spirit gives a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the Word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them thus arising. In rapid succession, Edwards emphasizes the quality of this true or real, as he says, sense and apprehension of the divine excellency of things revealed in the word of God. These include a true sense of the divine and superlative excellency of the things of religion, a real sense of the excellency of God and Jesus Christ and of the work of redemption, and the ways and works of God revealed in the gospel. This sense imbibes the divine and superlative glory in these things and excellency that is of a vastly higher kind and more sublime nature than in other things. The person made sensible by the spirit operating in him sees a glory greatly distinguishing them from all that is earthly and temporal. He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees it or has a sense of it. He not only rationally believes in the superlative glory of God, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart. Not only does he know rationally that God is holy and that holiness is a good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God's holiness. One may judge speculatively that God is gracious, but the spiritual person possesses a sense of how amiable God is upon that account. or a sense of the beauty of this divine attribute. This goes far beyond mere cognitive understanding, but consists in the sense of the heart. That's when there is a sense of the beauty, amiableness, or sweetness of a thing, so that the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the ideal of it. In the one appears the best judgments of the speculative faculty, but in the other one finds the will or disposition of the soul. The opinion that God is holy and gracious and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace is the difference between life and death. Returning to his propensity for taste and the uniqueness of the flavor of honey, Edwards reiterated, there is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. One may have a rational judgment about the taste of honey from a variety of descriptions he has read or heard, but be a total stranger to its real beauty or the impact it has on the senses, for he never has tasted it. One may have speculations about the nature of beauty and be able to discuss philosophically the traits of the beautiful, but have no real knowledge of its expression in a particular instance or the impact of that singular expression. Beautiful thing itself is seen. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension. Such pleasure in beauty is implied in a person's being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is sweet and pleasant to his soul. The sense of divine excellency of the things contained in the word of God comes both indirectly and directly. Indirectly, Such sensibility removes the prejudices against the superlative character of the issues prominent in the Bible and also aids the reason in its contemplation on the various and entertaining connections that tie together the holy doctrines of scripture. Directly, however, By such a sensing of these matters of divine revelation, there is an actual and lively discovery of this beauty and excellency. Such an experience will not allow one to reason that these things are merely human or are fabulous without true substance or can be subdued in their verity to ideas of lesser glory. What time am I supposed to finish? 5.30? Oh boy. Are we doing technically or? Okay. Sorry. Without this, true faith cannot arise. Such a conviction of the truth of religion as this, arising these ways from a sense of the divine excellency of them, is that true spiritual conviction that theirs is a saving faith. Or, as he states it in another way, this light and this only will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. The sense of the intrinsic loveliness of Christ and all that the Bible reveals about him cannot come apart from the mind's cognition of those revealed propositions. The mind must be in possession of them for them to come to appear as beautiful and excellent. The sense of their divine excellency, however, comes only from the work of the Holy Spirit, and nothing else is either a proper or immediate cause of this. The mind can't see the excellency of any doctrine unless that doctrine be first in the mind. But the seeing the excellency of the doctrine may be immediately from the Spirit of God. The notions given to the mind come from one's natural comprehension of the nature of linguistic communication as presented in Scripture. The due sense of the heart is immediately from the Spirit. Reason's work is to perceive the truth, not to sense the beauty, loveliness, or excellency of anything. Edward set forth one of the most extensive investigations of the nature and desirability of assurance of salvation in his sermon, I know that my Redeemer liveth. After giving a display of the implied content of such a knowledge, he showed the advantages that such a knowledge gives to the traveler in this world, showing the many advantages of being able to say with confidence, I know that my Redeemer liveth. The first reason that he gives for his doctrine is the sensible experience of coming to a knowledge of all the glories of a Redeemer. He sees in him that glory and excellency that is delight and ravishing. The beauty is so great, so divine, that the sight of it, when it is clearly seen, is above all things sweet. It fills the soul with a light so divine and powerful that it is impossible but that the soul should be withal filled with peace and pleasantness. A sinking dullness and sorrow is not consistent with such bright light. One's sensibility that his Redeemer lives constitutes a major element of assurance. Edwards, in fact, used the term sensible of the experiential knowledge of the humanity of Christ. None ever was so sensible of the distance between God and him, or had a heart so lowly before God as the man Christ Jesus. In his perfect humanity, Jesus discerned with perfection the virtually infinite distance there is between the glory of the uncreated and the created, the infinite and the finite, the eternal and the temporal. In his one person, he partook of both sides of these dichotomies and so dwelt with an infallible consciousness and spiritually sensory knowledge of these distinctions. In light of that, never has there been a man as genuinely humble, meek, reverent, patient, obedient, resigned, and dependent as Jesus of Nazareth. Not only was this perfectly clear as a matter of pure cognition with him, but it was a perfect, indelible, and immutable imprint on his affections, and intrinsic to every perception of the beauty and excellence of the divine nature. As a corollary to that, the mere mortal who comes to something of a similar persuasion will share that sensibility. because he that loves God is sensible in the hatefulness and vileness of his sin committed against the being that he loves. And discerning an abundance of this in himself, he abhors himself in his own eyes as unworthy of any good and deserving of all evil." The sensibility of God's beauty is experienced here will unfold for the elect in a truly palpable, sensate experience of the beauty of God. It is for this that God has made us, and unto this end that he created the world, so that it is evident that God made man to be happy in the beholding of God's own excellency. Edwards argued and concluded, seeing this is the end of man, doubtless this end shall be obtained to the full. What is the full attainment of this divinely conceived end? There will be a time wherein man will, with open face and with as full a view as his nature is capable of, behold the excellence and beauty of God. This is no exhaustible experience, or one that diminishes and wanes in enjoyment with its continuance. For seeing God's excellency is so great, even infinite, that there is no doubt but the happiness in beholding it will be inconceivably great, even worthy of the gloriousness of the object. This journey of eternity will certainly be a vast and unspeakable delight, a very great blessedness, and a very great Well, I think that's a good place to stop. Thank you. That was wonderful. We, I think what we ought to do is go into Q&A now. But I will just encourage you, if you need to get up and stretch your legs or use the restroom, feel free to do so. I am going to give away the last of the books here. And so two more to go. First one.