are, like them, deep-rooted, and require great trouble to be removed. Like them they are interwoven one with the other, and increase rapidly and abundantly. Like them they are useless, nay, pernicious, injuring those who rear them, wounding them, and occasioning death. Like them they hinder growth of sound principles around them, and the reception of grace in the heart. Such are the fruits of insincere professors of apostates. So different is the improvement of the same blessings by true and false professors.

Secondly. Their end is different.

1. Believers bringing forth herbs meet for the dressers, are blessed by God. They meet with his ap. probation. He smiles upon them, and grants them peace. He increases their fruitfulness, and causes them to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Their views are enlarged, their faith strengthened, their love is made more ardent, their obedience more general, their holiness more complete. They die unto sin, they live unto. righteousness. They go from strength to strength, till. they appear before God in Zion. God shines upon them in their way, and encourages them. Their trust in Jesus becomes more unqualified; their crucifixion to the world, and devotion to God more evident. They evince more and more spiritual and heavenly mindedness. They walk with God in the cloudy day of adversity, as well as in the sunshine of prosperity. Thus the believer is blessed by receiving gifts and graces from Jehovah. In this is an exceeding great reward. But great as it is here, it is imperfect. Hereafter it will be perfect. Blessed through life, he is blessed also in death. Its sting is removed. Blessed in death, he is blessed in eternity; entering into his rest, enjoying peace, happiness, and unbounded pleasure with God and his Christ.

2. False professors, on the contrary, bringing forth

thorns and briers, meet an awful fate! They are rejected, i. e. disapproved, laid aside as a field which, after repeated trials, still produces weeds. God withdraws his blessings, and charges his providences not to affect them, nor his Gospel to soften their hearts. His patience is exhausted, his long-suffering worn out to the last exercise. Ephraim is joined unto idols; let him alone, is his language towards them. Ministers of the Gospel, and believers, no longer take care of them. Seeing their unfruitfulness, they refrain from counselling them, or warning them. They are rejected as past remedy by God or man.

They are nigh unto cursing. The earth, which, though cultivated and blessed with rain, produces only thorns and briers, is not only laid aside, but is thrown open, and exposed to desolation. They whọ abuse Gospel blessings, are given over to themselves, to the misrule and tyranny of their passions and lusts. These lead them captive at pleasure, and make them miserable in their own hearts, as well as in their social connexions. They are nigh unto cursing; unto that state wherein it shall not be known that they have ever enjoyed Gospel blessings. Every restraint is removed. Conscience becomes callous. Appetites grow furious. Sin rages in them, and hastens on their destruction.

As

Their end is to be burned. They die impenitent, and lift up their eyes in everlasting torments. thorns and briers are collected and burnt, so they will be gathered together and cast into the lake of fire, where weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth shall for ever prevail.

Such is the awful judgment which Jehovah denounces upon those who, under the cultivation and rain of the Gospel, bring forth unto the end, ungodly fruits. These are not only the openly wicked, but those also who sin in secret, seeking to hide their vices from the public; nay, even those who are moral VOL. IV. No. II. I

and unexceptionable before the world, but strangers to the grace of Jesus. These last, though amiable and attractive in our eyes, bring forth no fruit meet for repentance. Their principles and motives are not correct. They do not honour God supremely, nor realize God's presence. They do not obey the law cheerfully and universally. They do not seek to have their hearts right with God. They are selfish, seeking and finding their gratification in their own feelings, their good character, their happiness, whilst God is forgotten, and Jesus Christ slighted. But let us descend to a few particulars.

1. Baptized persons, who slight their baptismal engagements, bring forth thorns and briers. They may indeed, acknowledge the excellence of the Gospel, but yet they do not conform their lives to it. Their hearts are unchanged, and their practice is unreformed. They neglect the great duties of prayer, and self-examination, and constant dependance on the of God. Concerning all baptized persons, grace God has promised to his Church, that out of them he would always raise up a seed to serve him. They who neglect to fulfil their baptismal engagements, cast contempt on this promise, and reject an interest in God's kingdom.

2. Prayerless heads of families bring forth thorns and briers. Such are meant who enjoy the preaching of the Gospel; on whom the rain descends, and who drink it in, listening to the word and approving it, and yet call not on the Lord, neither honour the God of their salvation. In these families, the Bible is neglected. Children and servants grow up in ignorance of essential truth, and come out into the world unprepared to resist temptation, and disqualified for the service of God.

3. Immoral professors of Jesus, bring forth thorns and briers. They are meant, who, notwithstanding their immoralities, retain their profession.

They say, Lord, Lord, to Jesus, whilst they sacrifice to their lusts, and keep up appearances with the world. They have little of Christianity about them but the name.

All these will be rejected and nigh unto cursing, and their end will be, to be burned. This is no delusion, no fanaticism, but is sober truth.

FOR THE CHRISTIAN's MAGAZINE.

149

THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION.

And the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.-1 Cor. xv. 52.

(Continued from page 16.)

II. WE shall now examine the objections of

unbelievers.

It is

Founded upon the evidence already stated, our faith remains unshaken by the storms which assail it. Faith is the gift of God; a supernatural living principle. The assent which it involves is, notwithstanding, an intelligent and a rational assent. intelligent, and excludes ignorance. We know what we believe. It is rational, for we do not believe any thing which is self-contradictory, or which is really inconsistent with evident truths. The articles of our faith do not repel, but invite investigation.

It is a duty from which we do not shrink, to expose those subtle sophisms with which men, otherwise respectable, may have opposed this part of the

Christian doctrine. The Redeemer deigned to listen to the pitiful objections of the Jewish Saducee, and to expose, in the presence of a vast assembly, the ignorance and infidelity from which they derived their origin. It would be a presumption which the intelligent would ascribe to the true cause, ignorance or indolence, were we always to evade the objections of infidels, under pretence of despising them. We owe it, moreover, to the rising generation, to defend the doctrines of the Gospel. The unwary youth, enamoured of a literary reputation, is readily entangled in the snares of unbelief, urging objections to his creed to which he cannot reply. Ashamed of his credulity, he gives up truths which he had implicitly embraced, and which having never examined, he has not ability to defend.

The doctrine of the resurrection is defensible. We believe it upon the authority of God's word, and we defend it by rational arguments, against every attack. We invite the unbeliever, in all the lustre of literary endowments, and in all the force of a genius improved by philosophy, to make the attack.

"Of the hope of the resurrection of the dead are we now called in question," and we may use the words of the apostle to the judge, before whom he stood accused, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?"

1. "The body after death is decomposed; it is

separated into atoms: these atoms are widely scat"tered. Some bodies are torn by vultures. These "vultures are devoured by other birds of prey. "Some are cast into the sea, and become food for "fishes; and these are again devoured by the larger "inhabitants of the deep. Some are destroyed by "worms, which are in their turn devoured by other "animals. Some are reduced to ashes; and these