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He is not a stumbling-block and a disease of the church. There are scandal, as the inactive professor is, many who appear to be neither col but a blessing to the church. How nor hot.. They are too proud, and much did the corrupt practices and careless, and disputatious, and cover unholy spirit of the Corinthians dis-. ous, to have much time or inclina grace the Gospel by divisions and tion for that holy, spiritual, ardent sects and heresies! Whereas growth self-denying pursuit, which fills the in grate promotes unity and peace. soul of the advancing, Christian This the apostle implies in the words Now, whatever is the prevailing ey which follow my text; "Let as of our times will insensibly injur many as be perfect be thus mind- us, unless we are doubly watchful. ed;" let those who are established in Christ have this most ardent desire after further holiness; "and, if in any thing ye be otherwise minded," variously minded among each other, "God shall reveal even this unto you;" your differences of sentiment will lessen as you grow in grace. As Christians become worldly, they are divided as they are spiritual, they are united.

Need I say that it is only the improving Christian who glorifies God in the world? There is nothing which is so calculated to touch the consciences of sinners as the loveliness of a Christian's conduct, who is evidently indifferent to wealth and honour and worldly pleasure; whose affections are manifestly fixed on the glorious prize before him; and who is supremely anxious to adorn the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things.

7. Remember further, that Satan particularly opposes a Christian's advance in religion. He uses every art to draw him aside, to lessen his watchfulness, to cool his zeal, to abate his spirituality, to damp his love. As he deceived Eve, so he still aims at "corrupting our minds from the simplicity which is in Christ." If he can induce men to sleep, he then sows his tares. Sometimes he attacks as a roaring lion, and sometimes he allures as an angel of light. Now, shall the devil be thus vigilant to destroy our souls, and shall not we be diligent to press forward, in spite of all his wiles, towards our eternal inheritance?

8. The devices of Satan are very much assisted by the spirit of the present day. Spiritual sloth is now the

an

9. Consider, in the next place that growth in grace brings peculia consolation into the mind.—I do no say always, but commonly, where there is no special obstacle enjoyment follows activity. Thus, h who loves God in Christ Jesus mos fervently, and follows after a glorios resurrection most ardently, has ge nerally most consolation. His sou is in health and prospers.-Beside by this very progress, he obtain clearer evidences of his state befor God. He "makes his calling an election sure." As in the natur world, so in the spiritual, there is stronger sign of life than growth.

In this way also, he has peculia communion with God. "If any ma love me," said our Saviour," he w keep my word, and my Father wi love him, and we will come un him and make our abode with him. It is to them that obey him that Go vouchsafes the richer visits of h grace. The Christian who quenche the Spirit by indifference and world ly-mindedness, cannot expect peac of conscience. He has grieved th Comforter. "The secret of the Lor is with them that fear him, and h will shew them his covenant."

10. Consider, again, that a co tinual advance in holiness is the on way in which we can walk, if would reach eternal glory.-This the narrow road that leadeth to lif We enter upon it when we belie on Christ for justification. And, b daily growing in grace, we procee onwards in it towards eternal glory "Without holiness no man shall st the Lord." St. Paul" kept und his body, and brought. it into sul jection, lest, by any means, after h

had preached to others, he himself should be a cast-away." It is by the holy fear which such alarming thoughts raise, that the Christian is preserved from departing from God. He thus "works out his own salvation with fear and trembling," remembering that, at the last solemn day of account, every one will receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

II. Nor should we forget that larger measures of grace will increase par final reward." The works of the Christian do follow him." We are" to see that we lose not the things we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward." If we add to our faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity, an entrance will be ministered unto us andantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

12. I only add, as a most powerful consideration, that, if we are not growing in grace, we are declining -There is no standing still. He who is not going forward, is Ang backward. The stone which to be forced up a hill, must be stantly pushed forward, or it will 2 carried down by its own weight. As there is no consolation, so there a no safety, in religion, without ha

al progress. A decay in holy dections should as much alarm ds, as a fever or consumption. It as necessary for us to press Karward with holy ardour holy ardour to wards heaven, as it is for the soldier to be valiant in the fight,-as it a for the wrestler to be eager in the struggle,—as it is for the racer to reach forth with constant exertion after the prize.

In the next discourse, I shall proseed to give some Directions to asas in growing in grace. For the present, let us ask ourles, whether this argument, drawn the apostle's example, weighs spun our minds? Whether we see how far we fall short of the apostle

in actual attainments; in grief and pain and humiliation of soul, under our remaining imperfections; and in eager and persevering exertion after further holiness? We should also inquire how far the considerations of the importance of growth in grace, here set forth, touch our consciences? Whether we consider that the possibility of higher attainments; the examples, exhortations, and promises of Scripture; the blessings we have received of God; the design of the death of Christ, and of the work of the Spirit; the importance of honouring God in our family, in the church, and in the world; the opposition of Satan, and of the spirit of the times; the comfort of our own souls; the necessity of holiness, if we would reach heaven; larger degrees of glory; and the danger of spiritual decays; do not form such a body of evidence on the immense importance of growing in grace, as may well cover us with confusion as to the past, and fill us with ardour and diligence as to the time to come?-Now, unto Him who alone can keep us from falling, and present us faultless before his presence with exceeding joy to the only wise God our Saviour, be all honour and glory, dominion and power, both now and

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To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

VERY inadequate are the views generally entertained of the nature and malignity of sin. How often, in the cases of the sick and the dying, are acknowledgments made of the frequent commission of iniquity, utterly unaccompanied by any impression of its certain and dreadful consequences! Yet as a right knowledge of this point is evidently the first link in the chain, the first step towards the reception of the mercies of the Gospel, it is of the greatest importance to illustrate its nature.

1. The evil of sin may appe

then, in the first place, from the numerous obligations it violates.-We admit that every relation in which we stand to others, produces correspondent obligations, which it is shameful and wicked to despise. For example, are we children? We are bound to the love of our parents. Their protection of our infancy, their support of our childhood, their care, their instruction, their unnumbered kindnesses and incessant watchfulness, claim at our hands the returns of obedience, submission, love, reverence, and attention.-Are we servants? The wages we receive, the sustenance we obtain, call upon us to give back industriously to our masters the fruits of fidelity, honesty, diligence, and zeal.-Are we the offspring of misfortune, early bequeathed as orphans to the arms of charity, and indebted to the tenderness of a benefactor for all the comforts we enjoy? His voluntary anxiety, and unwearied benevolence, ask from us continual gratitude, and every possible proof of it, in our conduct through life.-Or (to rise from individual to public relations), are we members of a state, receiving protection and deriving benefits from its laws, authority, and civil regulations? We naturally are required to yield back loyalty, obedience, respect to the king, and to the magistrates under his appoint

ment.

All these obligations are plain, and intelligible, admitted and felt by every one. The breach of them is accounted a disgrace, a reproach. We abhor, without hesitation, an unkind and neglectful child, a dishonest and slothful servant, an ungrateful offender against a disinterested benefactor, a rebellious subject, a despiser of law and good order. We perceive at once, in their characters, something unnatural, unbecorning, base, and unworthy; something that outrages our feelings, and revolts against our notions of what is decent and right. Now all these relations are far more than contained in that in which we stand to

God. Open the Bible, and you wil observe God claiming the titles of father, a master, a husband, a be nefactor, a king. The breach therefore, of any of his laws mus involve the guilt of violating simi lar obligations to those by which we are bound in domestic and socia life. Thus strikingly do the Scrip tures speak: "Hear, O heavens; and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hat! spoken: I have nourished and brought up chlidren, and they hav rebelled against me." "Surely a a wife treacherously departeth frou her husband, so have ye dealt trea cherously with me, O house of Is rael." "A son honoureth his fa ther, and a servant his master: then I be a father, where is min honour? and if I be a master, wher is my fear? saith the Lord hosts." The same guilt, infamy and shame, which generally follow the contempt of human ties, ough therefore to follow the contempt o the divine laws.

But there are still higher obliga tions which bind us to the Almighty He is our God, our Creator; we ow the existence of our bodies and soul to his will and power; we ar completely dependent on his care we possess nothing which we have no received from him. Can, then, word express the daring rebellion which disobedience to his laws implies? I is the "rising up of the clay agains the potter;" of the creature against the hand by which it was created.But our obligations rise yet higher if God's act of redemption is consi dered. As the mere creatures of his power, we are in existence only to render service and obedience to ou Maker; but as his redeemed crea tures, as sinners rescued by unme rited and unutterable mercy, we are in a yet more emphatic sense, the property of God. Now we are, in deed, "no longer our own, but are bought with a price, that we should glorify God with our bodies and spirits, which are his." Do we the ask the guilt incurred by offending God? It is the insulting Him wh

unites in his single person the venerable characters of father, husband, prince, and friend; and who invests these characters with unimaginable interest and awe, by the addition of the adorable names of Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer. Who can measure the obligations by which we are bound to such a Being? and who then can measure the crime which a violation of these obligations implies? If even in the joyous service of such a Being, the angels veil their faces, abashed by his purity and inajesty, O who shall tell the nature of the deed, when a dependent mortal lifts up his feeble and unhallowed arm in defiance of the will, and in subversion of the authority, of his God!

2. The evil of sin may, in the next place, be illustrated by tracing the actual effects it has produced in the world. We are accustomed to measure any evil by the quantity of misery it produces. The same standard I wish to use here—that is, to shew the malignity of sin by remarking the dreadful calamities, public and private, which it has produced in the world. In respect to public or national calamities, I am well aware that we are far too ready to impute them to the influence of second causes, and to look for their source in political errors, and an insufficient government; and, therefore, instead of noticing those public miseries and sorrows which have come within our own experience, I would rather refer to those similar, but yet more dreadful, national evils which are recorded in Scripture, with this special comment, written by the finger of God, that they were his judgments on the wickedness of the people. Unfold then the book of God, and when scarcely we are advanced in the history of creation, to rejoice, with the first happy representatives of the human race, on the glorious exist ence to which they had been elevated, we are compelled to mourn with them on its abasement and rain. They transgressed the law

of God, and their punishment immediately commenced. They no longer bore the image of God; they no longer beheld that tree of life, which was either the pledge or the source of immortality. A dark and cheerless cloud overshadowed the future; and the sad prophecy, "Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return," was but too rapidly verified in the murder of one son by the hands Thus Adam's sin of another. "brought death into the world, and all our woe." Let us go forward in the page of Scripture, and we perceive that ere long the earth became populous; and in proportion to its numbers was its wickedness. For a hundred and twenty years, the Divine forbearance was evinced. The warnings of Noah were uttered in vain. At length, God made bare his holy arm: the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the deep were broken up. With the exception of one family, a whole world was blotted from existence, and its awful fate is lifted up, perhaps to the universe, as an eternal monument of the evil of sin, and of the indignation of the Almighty against it. In the ruin of Sodom and Gomorrah, mark a similar lesson: fire and brimstone are commissioned from heaven to overwhelm these impenitent cities, these daring rebels against the authority of God. Trace on the subject through the whole history of the children of Israel; and in the destruction of Corah,, in the pangs of the people stung by fiery serpents, in the cruel captivity and prostration of the whole nation at the feet of the king of Babylon, behold the proofs of the Divine vengeance. against iniquity. Oh, how instructive and how touching is the lesson their melancholy confessions impart! "We all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away; for thou hast hid thy face from us, and consumed us for our iniquities. Thy holy cities are a wilderness; Zion is a wilderness; Jerusalem a desolation; our holy and our beautiful

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... But if from public we turn to the scriptural details of private and individual misfortune, the same truth will meet our eye. Is Herod struck by the hand of God even upon the summit of his throne? Is Nebuchadnezzar levelled with the brutes, #though exalted as the eagle, and though his nest was among the stars?" Does Gelazi, go out from the presense of Elisha a leper as white as snow? Do Ananias and Sapphira unite in the same declaration, and meet in the same grave? It is because God's judgments are poured out. It is because, though hand join in hand, iniquity shall not go unpunished,"

And is not the misery which still sinks the spirit of a man to the earth, which attacks him under the various -shapes of disease, and poverty, and scorn, and tears, and death, imputable to the same cause? Are not all these the dire effects, the tremendous marks of God's displeasure against the ungodliness of men? And even upon the penitent, though changed by a father's kindness to the gentlest chastisements of love, do not these calamities still fall with sufficient weight to bow them to the dust, when they turn in bitter recollection to the true source from whence afflictions spring?

3. The nature of sin will be depicted in yet more glowing colours, if we advert to the misery which it' will produce hereafter.

If the Gospel has brought life aud immortality, it has likewise brought death and immortality to light. It has disclosed the awful

truth, that, striking and terrific as are the traces of divine wrath in this world, they are insignificant when compared with those which will be manifested in the next. The delay of vengeance ought not, therefore, to give courage to transgressors, who, could they see

"The dawn of Christ's last advent, long desir'd,

Would creep into the bowels of the hills,

And flee for safety to the falling rocks."

The images under which the fature punishment of iniquity is described are the strongest which could be suggested as intelligible to hu man capacity. They are taken from the most dreadful sources and instruments of pain and horror with which we are acquainted. The torments which finally await the wretched offenders who shall reject every ef fort of forbearance, every offer of mercy, are compared to the gnawing

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worm that dieth not," and "to the fire which is not quenched.” "The wicked shall go away, as "cursed" of God," into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and bis angels. Their immortal souls will be eternally banished from God's presence; will be shut out from every joy allotted to the righteous; will partake the full curse of sin, unmitigated by any of its former pleasures; will experience that remorse and anguish, and enmity against God, which result from conscious guilt and annihilated hope; that unutterable désolation of soul, which the progress of eternal ages will not exhaust or diminish. Let then the pains of hell evince the malignity of sin.

4. The last consideration which I shall offer in confirmation of this subject, is the infinite price at which a provision for the pardon of offences has been procured.

Far be it from me to say what the Almighty might have effected in man's behalf; whether in any other way than in that which he has seen fit to reveal, he could have pardoned sin in consistency with

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