time in all the tranquillity of death. We say peace, when there is no peace. Though in a state of disruption from God, we live as securely and as inconsiderately as if there were no question and no controversy betwixt us. About this whole matter, there is within us a spirit of heaviness and of deep slumber. We lie fast asleep on the brink of an unprovided eternity,—and, if possible to awaken you, let us urge you to compare, not your own conduct with that of acquaintances and neighbours, but to compare your own finding of the ungodliness that is in your heart with the doctrine of God's word about it,—to bring down the loftiness of your spirit to its humbling declarations-to receive it as a faithful saying, that man is lost by nature, and that unless there be some mighty transition, in his history, from a state of nature to a state of salvation, the wrath of God abideth on him.

God, and the joys of paradise; that each of you shall look to the measure of God's law, so that when the commandment comes upon you, in the sense of its exceeding broadness, à sense of your sin, and of your death in sin, may come along with it. "Without the commandment I was alive," says the Apostle; "but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Be assured, that if the utterance of such truth in your hearing, impress no personal earnestness, and lead to no personal measures, and be followed up by no personal movements, then to you it is as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. The preacher has been beating the air. That great Agent, whose revealed office it is to convince of sin, has refused to go along with him. Another influence altogether, than that which is salutary and saving, has been sent into your bosom; and the glow of the truth universal has deafened or intercepted the application of The next inquiry comes to be, What is the truth personal, and of the truth particular. this transition? Tell me the step I should This leads us to the second thing proposed take, and I will take it. It is not enough, in our last discourse, under which we shall at- then, that you exalt upon your own person tempt to explain the wisdom opposite to that the degree of those virtues, by which you folly of measuring ourselves by ourselves, have obtained a credit and a distinction and comparing ourselves among ourselves, among men. It is not enough, that you which we have already attempted to expose. throw a brighter and a lovelier hue over The first step is to give up all satisfac- your social accomplishments. It is not tion with yourselves, on the bare ground, enough, that you multiply the offerings of that your conduct comes up to the measure your charity, or observe a more rigid comof human character, and human reputation pliance, than heretofore, with all the requiaround you. This consideration may be sitions of justice. All this you may do, of importance to your place in society; but, and yet the great point, on which your as to your place in the favour of God, it is controversy with God essentially hinges, utterly insignificant. The moral differences may not be so much as entered upon. All which obtain in a community of exiles, are this you may do, and yet obtain no nearer all quite consistent with the entire oblitera- approximation to Him who sitteth on the tion amongst them, of the allegiance that throne, than the outlaws of an offended is due to the government of their native government for their fidelities to each other. land. And the moral differences which To the eye of man you may be fairer than obtain in the world, may, in every way, before,and in civil estimation be greatly more be as consistent with the fact, that one and righteous than before, and yet, with the unall of us, in our state of nature, are alienated quelled spirit of impiety within you, and as from God by wicked works. And, in like habitual an indifference as ever to all the submanner, as convicts may be all alive to a ordinating claims of the divine will over your sense of their reciprocal obligations, while heart and your conduct, you may stand at dead, in feeling and in principle, to the su- as wide a distance from God as before. And preme obligation under which they lie to besides, how are we to dispose of the whole the sovereign, so may we, in reference to guilt of your past iniquities? Whether, is our fellow-men, have a sense of rectitude, it the malefactor or the Lawgiver who is to and honour, and compassion, while, in re- arbitrate this question? God may remit ference to God, we may labour under the our sins, but it is for him to proclaim this. entire extinction of every moral sensibili- God may pass them over; but it is for him ty, so that the virtues which signalize us, to issue the deed of amnesty. God may may, in the language of some of our old have found out a way whereby, in consisdivines, be neither more nor less than tency with his own character, and with the splendid sins. With the possession of these stability of his august government, he may virtues, we may not merely be incurring take sinners into reconciliation; but it is for every day the guilt of trespassing and sin-him both to devise and to publish this way; ning against our Maker in heaven; but de--and we must just do what convicts do, void as we are of all apprehension of the when they obtain a mitigation or a cancelenormity of this, we may strikingly realize ment of the legal sentence under which the assertion of the Bible, that we are dead they lie, we must passively accept of it, in trespasses and sins. And we pass our on the terms of the deed,-we must look

to the warrant as issued by the sovereign, | world, or as elevate them to a certain deand take the boon or fulfil the conditions, gree above the level of the world's populajust as it is there presented to us. The question. These are the materials of the foundtion is between us and God; and in the ad- ation on which they build. It is upon the justment of this question, we must look possession of virtues which in truth have singly to the expression of his will, and feel not God for their object, that they propose that it is with him, and with his authority, to support in the presence of God the attithat we have exclusively to do. In one tude of fearlessness. It is upon the testiword, we must wait his own revelation, and mony of fellow rebels that they brave the learn from his own mouth how it is that he judgment of the Being who has pronounced would have us to come nigh unto him. of them all, that they have deeply revolted Let us go then to the record. "No man against him. And all this in the face of cometh unto the Father but through the God's high prerogative, to make and to pubSon." "There is no other name given un-lish his own overtures. All this in contempt der heaven, but the name of Jesus, whereby of that Mediator whom he has appointed. we can be saved." "Without the shedding All this in resistance to the authentic deed of blood there is no remission of sin ;" and "God hath set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." "He was once offered to bear the sins of many,"-and "became sin for us, though he knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." "God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and not imputing unto them their trespasses." "Justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord;"-" and we become the children of God, through the faith that is in Christ Jesus." We are "reconciled to God by the death of his Son,"-" and by his obedience are many made righteous," and "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." These verses sound foolishness to many; but the cross of Christ is foolishness to those that perish. They appear to them invested with all the mysteriousness of a dark and hidden saying; but if this Gospel be hid, it is hid to them which are lost. They have eyes that they cannot see the wondrous things contained in this book of God's communication; but they have minds which believe not, because they are blinded by the god of this world, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them. And here we cannot but insist on the utter hopelessness of their circumstances, who hear these overtures of reconciliation, but will not listen to them. Theirs is just the case of rebels turning their back on a deed of grace and of ainnesty. We are quite confident in stating it to the stubborn experience of human nature, that all who reject Christ, as he is offered in the Gospel, persist in that radical ungodliness of character on which the condemnation of our world mainly and essentially rests. And as they thus refuse to build their security on the foundation of his merits,--what, we would ask, is the other foundation on which they build it? If ever they think seriously of the matter, or feel any concern about a foundation on which they might rest their confidence before God, they conceive it to lie in such feelings, and such humanities, and such honesties, as make them even with the

of grace and of forgiveness, which has been sent to our world, and from which we gather the full assurance of God's willingness to be reconciled; but, at the same time, are expressly bound down to that particular way in which he has chosen to dispense reconciliation. Who does not see, that, in these circumstances, the guilt of sin is fearfully aggravated on the part of sinners, by their rejection of the Gospel? Who does not see, that thus to refuse the grant of everlasting life in the terms of the grant, is just to set an irretrievable seal upon their own condemnation? Who does not see, that, in the act of declining to take the shelter which is held out to them, they vainly imagine, that God will let down his approbation to, such performances as are utterly devoid of any spirit of devout or dutiful allegiance to the Lawgiver? This is, in fact, a deliberate p sting of themselves, and that more firmly and more obstinately than ever, on the ground of their rebellion-and let us no longer wonder, then, at the terms of that alternative of which we read so often in the Bible. We there read, that if we believe, we shall be saved; but we also read, that if we believe not, we shall be damned. We are there told of the great salvation; but how shall we escape if we neglect it? We are there invited to lay hold of the Gospel, as the savour of life unto life: but, if we refuse the invitation, it shall be to us the savour of death unto death. The gospel is there freely proclaimed to us, for our acceptance; but if we will not obey the Gospel, we shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Saviour's power. We are asked to kiss the Son while he is in the way; but if we do not, the alternative is that he will be angry,and that his wrath will burn against us. He is revealed to us a sure rock, on which if we lean we shall not be confounded; but if we shift our dependence away from it, it will fall upon us and grind us to powder.

And this alternative, so far from a matter to be wondered at, appears resolvable into a principle that might be easily comprehended. God is the party sinned against: and if he have the will to be reconciled, it

is surely for him to prescribe the way of | to God in the highest; and for this purpose it: and this he has actually done in the re- did the eternal Son pour out his soul an ofvelation of the New Testament: and whether fering for sin, and by his obedience unto he give a reason for the way or not, certain death, bring in an everlasting righteousness. it is, that in order to give it accomplish-It is through the channel of this great exment, he sent his eternal Son into our world; piation that the guilt of every believer is and this descent was accompanied with washed away; and it is through the imsuch circumstances of humiliation, and con-puted merits of him with whom the Father flict, and deep suffering, that heaven looked was well pleased, that every believer is adon with astonishment, and earth was bid-mitted to the rewards of a perfect obedience. den to rejoice, because of her great salva- Conceive any man of this world to reject tion. It is enough for us to know that God the offers of reward and forgiveness in this lavished on this plan the riches of a wisdom way, and to look for them in another. Conthat is unsearchable; that, in the hearing ceive him to challenge the direct approbaof sinful men, he has proclaimed its import- tion of his Judge, on the measure of his ance and its efficacy; that every Gospel own worth, and his own performances, and messenger felt himself charged with tidings to put away from him that righteousness of pregnant of joy, and of mighty deliverance Christ, in the measure of which there is no to the world. And we ask you just to con- short coming. Is he not, by this attitude, ceive, in these circumstances, what effect holding out against God, and that too, on a it should have on the mind of the insulted question in which the justice of God stands Sovereign, if the world, instead of respond- committed against him? Is not the poor ing, with grateful and delighted welcome, to sinner of a day entering into a fearful conthe message, shall either nauseate its terms, troversy, with all the plans, and all the peror, feeling in them no significancy, shall fections of the Eternal? Might not you turn with indifference away from it? Are conceive every attribute of the Divinity, we at all to wonder if the King, very wroth gathering into a frown of deeper indignawith the men of such a world shall at length tion against the daringness of him, who send his armies to destroy it? Do you think thus demands the favour of the Almighty it likely that the same God, who after we on some plea of his own, and resolutely had broken his commandment, was willing declines it on that only plea, under which to pass by our transgressions, will be equally the acceptance of the sinner can be in harwilling to pass them by after we have thus mony with the glories of God's holy and despised the proclamation of his mercy; inviolable character? Surely, if we have after his forbearance and his long-suffering fallen short of the obedience of his law, and have been resisted; and that scheme of par- so short as to have renounced altogether don, with the weight and the magnitude of that godliness which imparts to obedience which angels appear to labour in amaze-its spiritual and substantial quality,-then ment, is received by the very men for whom do we aggravate the enormity of our sin, it was devised, as a thing of no estimation? by building our hope before God on a founSurely, if there had been justice in the sim-dation of sin? To sin is to defy God: but ple and immediate punishment of sin-this the very presumption that he will smile justice will be discharged in still brighter complacency upon it, involves in it another, manifestation on him, who, in the face of such an embassy, holds out in his determination to brave it. And, if it be a righteous thing in God to avenge every violation of his law, how clearly and how irresistibly righteous will it appear, when, on the great day of his wrath, he taketh vengeance on those who have added to the violation of his law, the rejection of the Gospel!

and a still more deliberate attack upon his government; and all its sanctions, and all its severities, are let loose upon us in greater force and abundance than before, if we either rest upon our own virtue, or mix up this polluted ingredient with the righteousness of Christ, and refuse our single, entire, and undivided reliance on him who alone has magnified the law and made it honour

But what is more than this-God hathable. condescended to make known to us a rea- But such, if we may be allowed the expresson, for that peculiar way of reconciliation, sion, is the constitution of the Gospel of Jesus which he hath set before us. It is, that he Christ, that, in proportion to the terror which might be just while the justifier of those it holds out to those who neglect it, is the who believe in Jesus. In the dispensation security that it provides to all who flee for of his mercy, he had to provide for the dig- refuge to the hope which is set before them. nity of his throne. He had to guard the Paul understood this well, when, though he stability of his truth and of his righteous-profited over many of his equals in his own ness. He had to pour the lustre of a high and awful vindication, over the attributes of a nature that is holy and unchangeable. He had to make peace on earth and good will to men meet, and be at one with glory

nation,-when, though had he measured himself by them, he might have gathered from the comparison a feeling of proud superiority,-when, though in all that was counted righteous among his fellows, he

in point of performance, that there is between him who is without Christ, and can therefore do nothing, and him who can do all things through Christ strengthening him. There is a new principle now, which formerly had no operation, even that of godliness, and a new influence now, even that of the Holy Ghost, given to the prayers of the believer;-and under these provisions will he attain a splendour and an energy of character, with which, the better and the best of this world can no more be brought into comparison, than earth will compare with heaven, or the passions and the frivolities of time, with the pure ambition and the lofty principles of eternity.

that all old things are done away, and that all things have become new.

Thus it is, that while none of the Christian virtues can be made to come into measurement with any of what may be called the constitutional virtues, in respect of their principle, because the principle of the one set differs from that of the other set, in kind as well as in degree, yet there are certain corresponding virtues in each of the classes, which might be brought together into measurement, in respect of visible and external performance. And it is a high point of obligation with every disciple of the faith, so to sustain his part in this competition, as to show forth the honour of Christianity; And let it not be said, that the transforma- to prove by his own personal history in tion of which we are now speaking, in- the world, how much the morality of grace stead of being thus entire and universal, outstrips the morality of nature; to evince consists only with a good man of the world the superior lustre and steadiness of the in the addition of one virtue, to his previous one, when compared with the frail, and stock of many virtues. We admit that he fluctuating, and desultory character of the had justice before, and humanity before, other; and to make it clear to the eye of and courteousness before, and that the god- experience, that it is only under the peculiness which he had not before, is only one liar government of the doctrine of Christ, virtue. But the station which it asserts, that all which is amiable in human worth, among the other virtues, is a station of becomes most lovely, and all which is justly supreme authority. It no sooner takes held in human admiration, becomes most its place among them, than it animates great, and lofty, and venerable. The Bible them all, and subordinates them all. It sends tells us to provide things honest in the sight forth among them a new and pervading of men, as well as of God. It tells us, that quality, which makes them essentially different from what they were before. I may take daily exercise from a regard to my health, and by so doing I may deserve the character of a man of prudence; or I may take daily exercise apart from this consideration altogether, and because it is the accidental wish of my parents that I should do so; and thus may I deserve the character of a man of filial piety. The external habit is the same; but under the one principle, the moral character of this habit is totally and essentially different from what it is under the other principle. Yet the difference here, is, most assuredly, not greater than is the difference between the justice of a good man of society, and the justice of a Christian disciple. In the former case, it is done unto others, or done unto himself. In the latter case, it is done unto God. The frame-work of his outer doings is animated by another spirit altogether. There is the breath of another life in it. The inscription of Holiness to God stands engraven on the action of the believer; and if this character of holiness be utterly effaced from the corresponding action of the good man of society, then, surely, in character, in worth, in spiritual and intelligent estimation, there is the utmost possible diversity between the two actions. So that, should the most upright and amiable man upon earth embrace the Gospel faith, and become the subject of the Gospel regeneration,-it is true of him, too,

upon the person of every Christian, the
features of excellence should stand so legi-
bly engraven, that, as a living epistle, he
might be seen and read of all men.
It is
true, there is much in the character of a
genuine believer which the world cannot
see, and cannot sympathize with. There
is the rapture of faith, when in lively exer-
cise. There is the ecstacy of devotion.
There is a calm and settled serenity amid
all the vicissitudes of life. There is the
habit of having no confidence in the flesh,
and of rejoicing in the Lord Jesus. There
is a holding fast of our hope in the pro-
mises of the Gospel. There is a cherishing
of the Spirit of adoption. There is the
work of a believing fellowship with the
Father and with the Son. There is a move-
ment of affection towards the things which
are above. There is a building up of our-
selves on our most holy faith. There is a
praying in the Holy Ghost. There is a
watching for his influence with all perse-
verance. In a word, there is all which
the Christian knows to be real, and which
the world hates, and denounces as visionary,
in the secret, but sublime and substantial
processes of experimental religion.

But, on the other hand, there is also much in the doings of an altogether Christian of that palpable virtue which forces itself upon general observation; and he is most grievously untrue to his master's cause, if he do not, on this ground, so outrun the world, as to force from the men of