which, the god of this world blindeth the minds of those who believe not. to the only name that is given under hea- | the lofty standard of a law which offers ven whereby men can be saved. We are to subordinate to the will of God, not not denying that the persons of some of merely the whole habit of his outward histhem are dignified by the more respectable tory, but also the whole habit of his inward attributes of character; and that, from the affections, both the disease and the remedy persons of others of them, there are beau- are alike unknown to him. His character teously reflected the more amiable and en- may be fair and respectable in the eyes of dearing attributes of character. But we men; but it will not carry upon it one affirm, that with all these random varieties feature of that spirituality and holiness, and of moral exhibition which are to be found relish for those exercises that have God for the principle of loyalty to God has lost their immediate object, which assimilate the hold of a presiding influence over all men to angels, and make them meet for the children of our degraded and undone the joys of eternity. His morality will be nature. We ask you to collect all the scat- the morality of life, and his virtues will be tered remnants of what is great, and of the virtues of the world; and all the myswhat is graceful in accomplishments that tery of a parable, or of a dark saying will may have survived the fall of our first pa- appear to hang over the terms and the exrents; and we pronounce, of the whole as-planations of that gospel, against the light of semblage, that they go not to alleviate, by one iota, the burden of that controversy which lies between God and their posterity, Let us therefore reflect that the principle -that throughout all the ranks and diver- on which the peculiarities of the gospel look sities of character which prevail in the so mysterious, is just the feeling which naworld, there is one pervading affection of ture has of its own sufficiency; and, that enmity to him; that the man of talents for- you may renounce this delusive feeling gets that he has nothing which he did not altogether, we ask you to think, how totally receive, and so, courting by some lofty en-destitute you are of that whic God chiefly terprize of mind, the gaze of this world's requires of you. He requires your heart, and admiration, he renounces his God, and we venture to say of every man amongst you, makes an idol of his fame,—that the man who has heretofore lived in neglect of the of ambition feels not how subordinate he is great salvation, that his heart, with all its obto the might and the majesty of his Cre-jects and affections, is away from God,--that ator, but turning away all his reverence it is not a sense of obligation to him which from him, falls down to the idol of power,- forms the habitual and the presiding inthat the man of avarice withdraws all his fluence of its movements,-that therefore trust from the living God, and, embarking every day and every hour of your history all his desire in the pursuit of riches, and in the world, accumulates upon you the all his security in the possession of them, guilt of a disobedience of a far deeper and he makes an idol of wealth,-that, descend- more offensive character than even the ing from these to the average and the every-disobedience of your more notorious and day members of our world's population, we see each walking after the counsel of his own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes, with every wish directed to the objects of time, and every hope bounded by its anticipations and, amid all the love they bear to their families, and all the diligence they give to their business, and all the homage of praise and attachment they obtain from their friends, are they so surrounded by the influences of what is seen and what is sensible, that the invisible God is scarcely ever hought of, and his character not at all dwelt on with delight, and his will never admitted to an habitual and a practical ascendency over their conduct, so as to make it true of all, and of every one of us, that there is none who understandeth, and none who seeketh after God. Now, if a man do not see this case made out against himself in all its enormity, he will feel that the man who talks of it, and who proposes the gospel application to it, talketh mysteriously. If the Spirit have not convinced him of sin, and he have not learned to submit his character to external violations. There is ever with you, lying folded in the recesses of your bosom, and pervading the whole system both of your desires and your doings, that which gives to sin all its turpitude, and all its moral hideousness in the sight of God. There is a rooted preference of the creature to the Creator. There is a full desire after the gift, and a listless ingratitude towards the giver. There is an utter devotedness, in one shape or other, to the world that is to be burnt up,--and an utter forgetfulness, amid all your forms, and all your decencies, of him who endureth for ever. There is that universal attribute of the carnal mind-enmity against God; and we affirm that, with this distaste in your hearts towards him, you, on every principle of a spiritual and intelligent morality, are as chargeable with rebellion against your Maker, as if some apostate angel had been your champion, and you warred with God, under the waving standards of defiance. It was to clear away the guilt of this monstrous iniquity that Christ died. It was to make it possible for God, with his truth unviolated, and his holiness untarnished, Janew unto good works, that we may be the and all the high attributes of his eternal and workmanship of God in Christ Jesus our unchangeable nature unimpaired, to hold Lord. These are the leading and essential out forgiveness to the world, that propi- peculiarities of the New Testament. This tiation was made through the blood of his is the truth of Christ; though to the geneown son, even that God might be just, ral mind of the world it is the truth of while the justifier of them who believe in Christ in a mystery. These are the paraJesus. It is to make it possible for man to bles which the commissioned messengers love the Being whom nature taught him to of grace are to deal out to the sinful children hate and to fear, that God now lifts, from of Adam,-and dark as they may appear, his mercy-seat, a voice of the most beseech- or disgusting as they may sound in the ears ing tenderness, and smiles upon the world of those who think that they are rich, and as God in Christ, reconciling the world unto have need of nothing, they are the very arhimself, and not imputing unto them their ticles upon which hope is made to beam trespasses. It was utterly to shift the moral on the heart of a converted sinner,-and constitution of our minds,-an achievement peace is restored to him,-and acceptance beyond any power of humanity,-that the with God is secured by the terms of an unSaviour, after he died and rose again, obtained alterable covenant, and the only effecthe promise of the Father, even that Spirit, tive instruments of a vital and substantial through whom alone the fixed and radical reformation are provided; so that he who disease of nature can be done away. And before was dead in trespasses and sins is thus, by the ministration of the baptism of quickened together with Christ, and made the Holy Ghost, does he undertake not only alive unto God, and renewed again after to improve but to change us,-not only to his image, and enabled to make constant repair but to re-make us, not only to progress in all the graces of a holy and amend our evil works, but to create us spiritual obedience. SERMON IV. An Estimate of the Morality that is without Godliness. "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean: Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both."-Job ix. 30-33. To the people of every Christian coun- evidence of that practical ascendency which try the doctrine of a Mediator between God Christian truth is sure to exert over the and man is familiarized by long possession; heart and the habits of every genuine bethough to many of them it be nothing more liever. than the familiarity of a name recognized In the midst of all that dimness, and all as a well-known sound by the ear, without this indolence about the realities of salvasending one fruitful or substantial thought tion, it is refreshing to view the workings into the understanding. For, let it be ob- of a mind that is in earnest; and of a mind served, that the listless acquiescence of the too, which, instead of being mechanically mind in a doctrine, to the statement or to carried forward in the track of a prescribed the explanation of which it has been long or authoritative orthodoxy, is prompted to habituated, is a very different thing from all its aspirations by a deep feeling of guilt, the actual hold which the mind takes of the and of necessity. Such we conceive to hav doctrine,-insomuch that it is very possible been the mind of Job, to whom the docfor a man to be a lover of orthodoxy, and trine of a Redeemer had not been explicitly to sit with complacency under its ministers, unfolded, but who seems at times to have and to be revolted by the heresies of those been favoured with a prophetic glimpse of who would either darken or deny any of him through the light of a dim and distant its articles, and, in a word, to be most te- futurity. The state of his body, covered as nacious in his preference for that form of it was with disease, makes him an object words to which he has been accustomed; of sympathy. But there is a still deeper while to the meaning of the words them- and more attractive sympathy excited by selves, the whole man is in a state of entire the state of his soul, labouring under the dormancy; and delighted though he really visitation of a hand that was too heavy for be by the utterance of the truth, exhibits him; called out to combat with God, and not in his person, or in his history, one struggling to maintain it; at one time, tempted to measure the justice of his cause a mistaken efficacy should be ascribed to with the righteousness of Heaven's dis- snow water, in the country of Job's resipensations; at another, closing his com-dence, where snow, if ever it fell at all, plaint with the murmurs of a despairing ac- must have fallen rarely, at very extraordiquiescence; and at length brought, through nary seasons, and in the more elevated parts all the varieties of an exercised and agitated of his neighbourhood. This rarity, added spirit, to submit himself to God, and to re-to its unsullied whiteness, might have given pent in dust and in ashes. There is a darkness in the book of Job. He, at one time, under the soreness of his calamity, gives way to impatience; and, at another, he seems to recall the hasty utterance of his more distempered moments. He, in one place, fills his mouth with arguments; and, in another, he appears willing to surrender them all, and to decline the unequal struggle of man contending with his Maker. He is evidently oppressed throughout by a feeling of want, without the full understanding of an adequate or an appropriate remedy. Now, it does give a higher sense of the value of this remedy, when we are made to witness the unsatisfied longings of one who lived in a dark and early period of the world,-when we hear him telling, as he does in these verses, where the soreness lies, and obscurely guessing at the ministration that is suited to it, nor do we know a single passage of the Bible which carries home with greater effect the necessity of a Mediator, than that where Job, on his restless bed, is set before us, wearying himself in the hopeless task of arguing with God, and calling for some day's-man betwixt them who might lay his hand upon them both. The afflictions which were heaped upon Job made him doubt his acceptance with his Maker. This was the great burden of his complaint, and the recovery of this acceptance was the theme of many a fruitless and fatiguing speculation. We have one of these speculations in the verses which are now submitted to you; and as they are four in number, so there is such a distinction in the subjects of them, that the passage naturally resolves itself into four separate topics of illustration. In the 30th verse, we have an expedient proposed by Job, for the pupose of obtaining the acceptance which he longed after: "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean." In the 31st verse, we have the inefficacy of this expedient; "Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.". In the 32d verse, he gives the reason of this inefficacy; "For he is not man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment." And in the 33d verse, he intimates to us the right expedient, under the form of complaining that he himself has not the benefit of it: "Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." I. It is not to be wondered at, that even currency to an idea of its efficacy as a purifier, beyond what actually belonged to it. Certain it is, too, that snow water, like water deposited from the atmosphere, in any other form, does not possess that hardness which is often to be met with in spring water. But however this be, and whether the popular notion of the purifying virtues of snow water, taken up by Job, be well founded or not, we have here an expedient suggested for making the hands clean, and the man pure and acceptable in the sight of God,-a method proposed within the reach of man, and which man can perform, for making himself an object of complacency to his Maker; a method, too, which is quite effectual for beautifying all that meets the discernment of the outward eye, and which is here set before us as connected with the object of gaining the eye of that high and heavenly Witness, with whom we have to do. This is what we understand to be represented by washing with snow water. It comprehends all that man can do for washing himself, and for making himself clean in the sight of God. Job complains of the fruitlessness of this expedient, and perhaps mingles with his complaints the reproaches of a spirit that was not yet subdued to entire acquiescence in the righteousness of God. Let us try to examine this matter, and, if possible, ascertain whether man is able, on the utmost stretch of his powers and of his performances, to make himself an object of approbation to his Judge. Without entering into the metaphysical controversy about the extent or the freedom of human agency, let it be observed, that there is a plain and a popular understanding on the subject of what man can do and of what he cannot do. We wish to proceed on this understanding for the present, and to illustrate it by a few examples. Should it be asked, if a man can keep his hands from stealing, it would be the unhesitating answer of almost every one that he can do it, and if he can keep his tongue from lying, that he can do it, and if he can constrain his feet to carry him every Sabbath to the house of God, that he can do this also,-and if he can tithe his income, or even reducing himself to the necessaries of life, make over the mighty sacrifice of all the remainder to the poor, that it is certainly possible for him to do it, and if he can keep a guard upon his lips, so that not one whisper of malignity shall escape from them, that he can also prescribe this task to himself, and is able to perform it, and if he can read much of his Bible, and utter many prayers in private, that he can do it, -and if he can assemble his family on the morning and the evening of every day, and go through the worship of God along with them, that all this he can do,-that all this lies within the compass of human agency. over my organs of sense, as to command a liking, or a taste for the performance. The illustration is homely; but it is enough for our purpose, if it be effective. I may accomplish the doing of what God bids; but have no pleasure in God himself. The forcible constraining of the hand, may make out many a visible act of obedience, but the relish of the heart may refuse to go along with it. The outer man may be all in a bustle about the commandments of God, while to the inner man God is an offence and a weariness. His neighbours may look at him, and all that their eye can reach may receptacles. The poor man has no more conquered his rebellious affections, than he has conquered his distaste for wormwood. He may fear God; he may listen to God; and, in outward deed, may obey God. But he does not, and he will not, love God; and while he drags a heavy load of tasks, and duties, and observances after him, he lives in the hourly violation of the first and greatest of the commandments. Let any one man do, then, what all men think it possible for him to do, and he will wear upon his person the visible exhibition of much to recommend him to the favourable judgment of his fellows. He will be guilty of no one transgression against the peace and order of society. He will be cor-be as clean as snow-water can make it. But rect, and regular, and completely inoffen- the eye of God reaches a great deal farther. sive. He will contribute many a deed of He is the discerner of the thoughts and inpositive beneficence to the welfare of those tents of the heart, and he may see the foularound him; and may even, on the strengthness of spiritual idolatry in every one of its of his many decencies, and many observations, hold out an aspect of religiousness to the general eye of the world. There will be a wide and most palpable distinction of character between him, and those who, at large from the principle of self-control, resign themselves to the impulse of every present temptation; and are either intemperate, or dishonest, or negligent of ordinances, just as habit, or the urgency of their feelings and their circumstances, may happen to have obtained the ascendancy over them. Those do not what they might, and what, in common estimation, they can do; and it is just because the man has put forth all his strenuousness to the task of accomplishing all that he is able for, that he looks so much more seemly than those who are beside him, and holds out a far more engaging display of what is moral and praiseworthy to all his acquaintances. Would any parent among you count it enough that you obtained a service like this from one of your children? Would you be satisfied with the obedience of his hand, while you knew that the affections of his heart were totally away from you? Let every one requirement, issued from the chair of parental authority, be most rigidly and punctually done by him, would not the sullenness of his alienated countenance turn the whole of it into bitterness? It is the II. I will not be able to convince you heart of his son which the parent longs afhow superficial the reformation of all these ter; and the lurking distaste and disaffection doings is, without passing on to the 31st which rankle there, can never, never be verse, and proving, that in the pure eye of made up by such an obedience, as the God the man who has made the most co-yoked and the tortured negro is compelled pious application in his power of snow-to yield to the whip of the overseer. The water to the visible conduct, may still be an object of abhorrence; and that if God enter into judgment with him, he will make him appear as one plunged in the ditch, his righteousness as filthy rags, and himself as an unclean thing. There are a thousand things which, in popular and understood language, man can do. It is quite the general sentiment, that he can abstain from stealing, and lying, and calumny,-that he can give of his substance to the poor, and attend church, and pray, and read his Bible, and keep up the worship of God in his family. But, as an instance of distinction between what he can do, and what he cannot do, let us make the undoubted assertion, that he can eat wormwood, and just put the question, if he can also relish wormwood. That is a different affair. I may command the performance; but have no such command service may be done; but all that can minister satisfaction in the principle of the service, may be withheld from it; and though the very last item of the bidden performance is rendered, this will neither mend the deformity of the unnatural child, nor soothe the feelings of the afflicted and the mortified father. God is the Father of spirits; and the willing subjection of the spirit is that which he requires of us. "My son, give me thy heart;" and if the heart be withheld, God says of all our visible performances, "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?" The heart is his requirement; and full, indeed, is the title which he prefers to it. He put life into us; and it is he who hath drawn a circle of enjoyments, and friendships, and interests around us. Every thing that we take delight in, is min istered to us out of his hand. He plies us | quiesce in what he reckons to be the exevery moment with his kindness; and when aggerations of orthodoxy upon this subject; at length the gift stole the heart of man nor can he at all conceive how it is possible away from the Giver, so that he became a that, with so much of the semblance of godlover of his own pleasure, rather than a liness about him, there should, at the same lover of God, even then would he not leave time, be within him the very opposite of us to perish in the guilt of our rebellion. godliness. It is, indeed, a difficult task to Man made himself an alien, but God was carry upon this point the conviction of him not willing to abandon him; and, rather who positively loves the Sabbath, and to than lose him for ever, did he devise a way whom the chime of its morning bells brings of access by which to woo, and to welcome the delightful associations of peace and of him back again. The way of our recovery sacredness,—who has his hours of prayer, is indeed a way that his heart was set upon; at which he gathers his family around him, and to prove it, he sent his own eternal Son and his hours of attendance on that house into the world, who unrobed him of all his where the man of God deals out his weekly glories and made himself of no reputation. lessons to the assembled congregation. It He had to travel in the greatness of his may be in vain to tell him, that God in fact strength, that he might unbar the gates of is a weariness to his heart, when it is atacceptance to a guilty world; and now that, tested to him by his own consciousness; in full harmony with the truth and the jus- that when the preacher is before him, and tice of God, sinners may draw nigh through the people are around him, and the prothe blood of the atonement, what is the fessed object of their coming together is to wonderful length to which the condescen- join in the exercise of devotion, and to grow sion of God carries him? Why, he actually in the knowledge of God, he finds in fact beseeches us to be reconciled; and, with a that all is pleasantness, that his eye is not tone more tender than the affection of an merely filled with the public exhibition, and earthly father ever prompted, does he call his ear regaled by the impressiveness of a upon us to turn, and to turn, for why should human voice, but that the interest of his we die? if, after all this, the antipathy of na- heart is completely kept up by the succesture to God still cleave to us; if, under the sion and variety of the exercises. It may power of this antipathy, the service we be in vain to tell him, that this religion of yield be the cold and unwilling service of taste or this religion of habit, or this reconstraint; if, with many of the visible out-ligion of inheritance, may utterly consist works of obedience, there be also the strug- with the deep and the determined worldliglings of a reluctant heart to take away ness of all his affections, that he whom from this obedience all its cheerfulness, is he thinks to be the God of his Sabbath is not not God defrauded of his offering? Does the God of his week; but that, throughout there not rest on the moral aspect of our all the successive days of it, he is going character, in reference to him, all the odious- astray after the idols of vanity, and living ness of unnatural children? Let our outer without God in the world. This is demondoings be what they may, does there not stration enough of all his forms, and all his adhere to us the turpitude of having deeply observations, being a mere surface display, revolted against that Being whose kindness without a living principle of piety. But has never abandoned us? And, though pure perhaps it may serve more effectually to in the eye of our fellows, and our hands be convince him of it, should we ask him, how clean as with snow-water, is there nothing his godliness thrives in the closet, and what in our hearts against which a spiritual law are the workings of his heart, in the abmay denounce its severities, and, the giver stract and solitary hour of intercourse with of that law may lift a voice of righteous ex- the unseen Father. In church, there may postulation? "Hear ye now what the Lord be much to interest him, and to keep him saith: Arise, contend thou before the moun- alive. But when alone, and deserted by all tains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear the accompaniments of a solemn assembly, ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, we should like to know with what vivacity and ye strong foundations of the earth: he enters on the one business of meditating for the Lord hath a controversy with his on God, and holding converse with God. people, and he will plead with Israel. O Is the sense of the all-seeing and ever-premy people, what have I done unto thee, sent Deity enough for him; and does love and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me." It is not easy to lay open the utter nakedness of the natural heart in reference to God; or to convince the possessor of it, that, under the guise of his many plausibilities, there may lurk that which gives to sin all its hideousness. The mere man of ordinances cannot ac- to God brighten and sustain the moments of solitary prayer? The mind may have enough to interest it in church; but does the secret exercise of fellowship with the Father bring no distaste, and no weariness along with it? Is it any thing more than the homage of a formal presentation? And when the business of devotion is thus unpeopled of all its externals, and of all its |