What a vast world of unimaginable power, of multiplied usefulness, of startling grandeur, and of terrific danger there is in electricity! No mortal man understands what it is. The great wizards of invention, who ever and anon astonish the world with some new electrical discovery, know just as little as to what it is as the untutored savage, only they know how to develop it, and concentrate it, and turn it in currents of power for motion, heat, or light. It is more than fire, and more than mere motion. It reposes quietly in every atom of matter, and by chemistry and mechanics it can be aroused to a form of energy surpassing all the power of wind, or gravitation, or water, or steam, or the ordinary function of fire. The discovery of how to develop and utilize electricity in recent years marks a new era of the history of the world, and the turning point of another dispensation in the destiny of our race. What electricity is in the material world, is a type and a sample of what the Holy Spirit is in the moral and spiritual world. There is in the office work of the Holy Spirit in men and angels, a sublime mystery, a vastness of unexplored possibilities, a fathomless secret of energy, and yet a distinct consciousness of spiritual facts, just as variable and practicable in the inner life of the soul, as the uses of electricity in material phenomena. It is likely that just as few nominal Christians understand the Personality and deep multiplied operations of the Holy Spirit, in proportion to their numbers, as the common population of men understand the currents and volts and operations of electricity. As we have previously noticed, discoveries in science, and great moral or mental movements among men, occur simultaneously, and furthermore it will be found there is some sort of kindred or family likeness between the inventions in the physical world and the breaking forth of new intellectual and religious energies. It is evident that the human race is rapidly approaching some great crisis in the history of the world. We are entering the verge of the fire age; both the fire of God's wrath for the wicked, and the fire of divine strength and glory for the 6oly ones. The Scriptures prophesy that in making preparation for the coming of His Kingdom, there will be discoveries and the utilizing of electricity. "The chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation. The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in the broadways, they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings." Nahum 2:3-4. Here is a specific foretelling of cars or chariots being run by lightning along the highways, and the time is designated, when the Lord is making preparation for the opening of a new age. Another very elaborate electrical prophecy is found in the first and tenth chapters of Ezekiel, in which he describes redeemed and glorified men coming in a cloud with their Lord, and led by the Holy Spirit over the face of the earth ''like coals of fire," and "burning lamps," and "flashes of lightning," corresponding with the glorified saints on white horses, riding down from the marriage supper of the Lamb to destroy the Antichrist, and reign over the nations, as set forth in the 19th and 20th chapters of Revelation. Our "Spiritual Sea- Voyage" would be incomplete without boarding a sub-marine ship, driven by electricity down through the silent chambers of the sea. Navigation under the water is only in its feeblest infancy as an applied science, and yet just enough has been found out to furnish us a peep into its amazing possibilities. As sub-marine ships can have no smoke stack, it is evident they must be run by electricity. As electricity may be looked upon as the culmination and perfection of every form of energy in the material world, so there is a corresponding spiritual state in the mature forms of Christian sanctification, which combines and intensifies into one steady blaze of divine heat and zeal, all the various kinds of religious knowledge, and love, and power, in the previous stages of experience. It has been described by old spiritual writers as a state of "fixed fervor," or the state of the "burning presence of God," or the "living flame of love." It is in the religious life what an electric sub-marine ship is in navigation, a heart of pure smokeless fire, sunk deep in the sea of God's nature, with secret, powerful movements, unknown and unconjectured by those on the surface on the earth. It is the maturing of the summer graces in the soul, the focalizing of all true spiritual heat into a furnace of melting love and divine contemplation, the true baptism of fire into the glory of communion with the three Persons in the one ever blessed God. Let us consider the following points about our sub-marine vessel and voyage.

1. A sub-marine ship must combine in its structure the knowledge of ship building as applied to every other kind of vessel, with several new features added to it. It is the ultimate stage of aquatic ship building, and beyond it will come the air-ship, which does not lie within the scope of this analogy, and although aerial navigation will some day come, it more properly belongs to the next age, and will typify the life of glorified saints more properly than those experiences which are possible to us in our present state. The sub-marine ship must be so fashioned as to sink at the commanders will out of sight in the depths of the sea; which fitly illustrates that the soul, in order to reach true saintliness, must be gifted with unspeakable humility. Such a soul must possess a clear spiritual perception into the fathomless meekness of Jesus, it must make a study of humility, and instinctively turn away from every form of pride; not only those varieties of pride that everybody has naturally, but also from every delicate, subtle variety of religious pride, of spiritual self-esteem. To sink down into the depths of the quiet, hidden humility of Jesus, requires great searchings of heart, and manifold testings of grace, and a special revelation from the Holy Spirit of divine meekness, and its unearthly beauty and a sweet craving of the heart to be nothing but lowly love. Just as ordinary ships cannot, at short notice, sink with safety under the water, so Christians, even sanctified Christians, do not at first learn how to sink down into all the lowly mind of Jesus, till specially fitted for it by a life of prayer and revelations of divine things.

2. The sub-marine ship descends into a hidden world, beyond the sight of other ships, which agrees with the hiddenness a devout soul enters in the advanced forms of a life of prayer. Sin and holiness both love secrecy, but from exactly opposite reasons; for sin seeks to hide its deeds, but holiness seeks to hide itself. Isaiah says, "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself,'' and the profound secrecy of God under so many vails of creation, law, judgment, providence, and grace, constitutes one of the most thorough tests of genuine faith; and yet this hiding of God is not a mere trick or merely to try his creatures, but a part of the Divine character, and when we walk with God long enough to get acquainted with the traits of his mind, with the slow, quiet, loving movements of his heart, and become as it were steeped in the secret night dews of his fellowship, we take on his manner of hiddenness. Like the ship under the sea, we want to accomplish as much as possible for God without being praised, or having our good deeds known. A true saint has a dread of being lifted up, of being honored by men, of having its secret wealth of prayer and love and spiritual vision exposed to public gaze. There is a pure, sweet, spiritual, shy modesty that causes true holiness to hide its divine jewels for the knowledge only of its divine Spouse. Such a soul enjoys doing ten times more than it gets credit for, and glides here and there under the sea, pouring out prayers, and tears, and money, and ministries, out of a passion for Christ, hoping that its good deeds will not be known till the day of rewards. It has a great secret world of thoughts, and meditations, and conversations with God; and heavenly dreams, and spiritual revelations, and secret joys, which would be tarnished and torn if exposed to the common knowledge of others.

3. Sub-marine ships, by sinking in the sea, are enveloped in all the qualities of the ocean, and in immediate touch with the interior attributes of the sea, such as the weight of the water, its density, color, fixed temperature, purity, and chemical properties of salt, phosphorescence, and other qualities. In like manner in the deeper forms of the sanctified life, where the soul is endowed with sufficient self-abnegation to sink deep into God in divine contemplation, it becomes enveloped in a sense of the Divine presence, in a steady, tranquil, holy awe of the sacred nearness of the three Divine Persons; and by the habit of mental prayer and divine recollection keeps itself in touch with the attributes and amazing perfections of God. When the Holy Spirit so fills the soul^ that its inner senses are expanded and brought into vital play, God becomes a living presence, and the heart fairly tingles under the Divine touch; and the understanding, chastened and subdued, receives the knowledge of God in a wonderful way. Just as the sea has interior perfections of gravity, purity, and chemistry, not recognized by persons on the shore, so God has interior perfections of changeless temperature of love, of the awful weight, of spotless majesty, of unspeakable sanctity, of fathomless peace, and of intense thrilling vitality, which are blessedly revealed and imparted to a soul of tried faith and humility, and which many Christians only guess at in an intellectual way. In these serene depths of love, there is made known to the understanding a wonderful knowledge of the most Holy Trinity; the person of the eternal Father, the substance and uncreated fountain of divinity, who eternally generates through his understanding the Word, the Wisdom, who is the Son of His love; and from the mutual love of the Father and the person of the eternal Word, there flows out, without beginning, without ending, the eternal Spirit, that Divine Person of awful sacredness, who reveals to the heart the love, the grace, the beauty, and glory of the Father and the Son. The soul that abides in the furnace of divine love, finds an endless delight in looking at the three Divine Persons, and sings with David, "I have set the Lord always before my face." Then there is the knowledge of God's different attributes acquired through his daily providences, and specific answers to prayer, and fresh openings in his word, and the beautiful flashes of light that open to our minds in prayer, and secret touches of a holy trembling joy, as if a mighty spirit finger touched our hearts at the core, or swept our brain like an autoharp. Oh, it is glorious to know God, to know him personally, privately, penetratingly; to feel the foldings of something like a summer breath keeping us warm and tender in this cold, rough world. 4. Passengers in a sub-marine ship, through glass doors, can discover not only the still, noiseless grandeurs of the deep, where no storms penetrate, or sounds of earth intrude, a type of that shut-in life which mature saints have in God; but they also can descry the dangers in the form of rocks, or hidden shoals, or sea monsters, or sunken torpedoes. This fitly illustrates that clear, quick, far-reaching discernment which real saintly persons have into the dangers that underlie a spiritual sea voyage. Hardly anything is more rare among Christian people, than true discernment into the heresies and deceptions that beset the religious life. Most Christians are foolish enough to read books, or hear men preach, with just enough Bible truth to sugar-coat some awful satanic lie. The deep sea saint is no novice, he has gone through the wars with the Lamb, he has learned by experience, and through many a crucifixion and trial of faith his understanding has been whetted to a quickness of perfection, and he can swiftly discern the heresies against Jesus, such as ignoring Christ's atoning blood, or the teaching of second probation, or annihilation, or the unconscious state of the soul after death, or the denial of the personality of the Holy Spirit and of his sanctifying office, or of the literal resurrection of the dead, or of the personal and visible return of Jesus to conquer and reign on earth, or of the infallible inspiration of the Bible. A sub-marine saint will see rocks, or shallows, or torpedoes of heresy and fanaticism, upon which many a gay vessel, bounding along on the top of the water, will strike and go to pieces; and in these days of the winding up of this age, what multitudes of spiritual wrecks are thrown up on the shore, or go down out of sight, because they did not discern the wild fire, or the self-conceit, or the fanaticism that lay hidden in their lives.

5. There is something in traveling down through the sea that corresponds with the spirit of true worship of God. For instance there is a strange hush in those depths, where we are beyond the sights and sounds of earth, which illustrates that sacred awful stillness when the soul is drawn into deep worship, where our own words annoy us, and we utter with most intense mental articulation our prayer and adoration to the most Holy Trinity. Again, there is a strange awe, a peculiar dread, that accompanies a sub-marine passenger, at the very thought of being enveloped in the mighty resistless sea, which fitly answers to that holy awe that falls over our spirits in seasons of close fellowship with God. The principle of holy fear, of sweet and sacred dread in the presence of the infinitely holy and mighty One, is one of the truest elements of worship, and it is a principle never found in shallow, blustering, fanatical, and self-conceited Christians. You will notice that while the real saints are cheerful and sweetly bouyant, they spurn from them the light, trifling, punning, joking, laughing dispositions, which undermine and ruin the usefulness and solidity of so many ministers and Christians. A fun-making Christian knows but little, if anything, of the awful sublimity of intimacy with God, and of being embraced by the vast shining waters of those divine perfections in which the strongest angels quiver with ecstatic amazement, and holy Prophets and Apostles trembled and cried out with sweet dread. Again, the sub-marine ship is the most terrific power in time of war for the destruction of the enemies' navy; silently planting great explosives under battle ships, and making inspections beyond the detection of other people. This feature has its counterpart in that awful power which deep saints have in prevailing prayer, not only when they pray for the salvation of souls, but also for the overthrow and destruction of incorrigible sinners, wicked plots, iniquitous enterprises, and Satanic delusions. Sub-marine ships are rare, and so are those deep mature saints who live in unbroken fellowship with God.