lesson of John, and far less would I be bringing forward the counsel of God, as made known to us in his subsequent revelation, were I to say any thing which led you to stop short at those visible reformations, which formed the great burden of John's practical addresses to his countrymen; and therefore along with your doing, and most diligently doing all that is within your reach, I call on you to pray, and most fervently and faithfully to pray for that larger baptism of the Holy Ghost, by which your hearts may be cleansed from all their corruptions, and you be enabled to render unto God all the purity of a spiritual obedience.

not to the others, that I shall look for a submissive and thankful acquiescence in the whole of his salvation; and thus passing with the docility of little children from one lesson of the Bible to another; these are the people who, working because God so bids Ita them, will count that a man is not justified by the works of the law, because God so tells them; these are the people who, not offended by what Christ told them at the outset, that he who cometh unto him must forsake all, will evince their willingness to forsake all, by turning from their iniquities, and coming unto Christ; these are the people who, while they do what they may with their hands, will think that while their heart is not directed to the love of God, they I cannot expatiate within the limits of have done nothing; and counting it a faith- this short address on the texts both of the ful saying, that without Christ they can do Old and New Testament, which serve to nothing, they will take to him as their sanc-establish, that the right attitude of a returntifier as well as their Saviour, and having ing sinner is what I have sometimes called received him as the Lord their righteous-in your hearing, the compound attitude of ness, will ever repair to him and keep by him as the Lord their strength.

service and expectation. But I shall repeat a few of these texts, that they may While I urge upon you the doing of suggest what you have been in the habit every obviously right thing, you will not of hearing from me upon this subject. conceive of me that I want you to rest in "And Samuel spake to all the house of Isthis doing. I trust that my introductory rael, saying, if ye do return unto the Lord paragraphs may convince you how much with all your hearts, then put away the of this doing may be gone through, and strange gods and Ashtaroth from among yet the mighty object of the obedience of you, and prepare your hearts unto the the willing heart might be unreached and Lord, and serve him only, and he will deunaccomplished. Not to urge the doing, lest liver you out of the hand of the Philistines. you should rest, would be to deviate from Then the children of Israel did put away scriptural example. And again, to urge the Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the Lord doing, and leave you to rest, would be also alone." "They will not frame their doings to deviate from scriptural example. John to turn unto the Lord." "Thus saith the the Baptist urged the doing of many things, Lord, keep ye judgment and do justice, for and his faithful disciples set themselves to my salvation is near to come, and my righthe performance of what he bade them teousness to be revealed. Blessed is the do. They entered immediately on the field man that doeth this, and the son of man of active and diligent service. But did they that layeth hold on it, that keepeth the stop short? No; out of the very preach- Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his ing of their master did they obtain a cau- hand from doing evil." "Deal thy bread tion against resting; and the same submis- to the hungry, and bring the poor that are sive deference to his authority, in virtue of cast out into thy house. When thou seest which they were set a working, led them the naked, cover him, and hide not thyalso, along with their working at the things self from thine own flesh. Then shall thy which he set them to, to look forward to light break forth as the morning, and thine greater things than these. He told them health shall spring forth speedily, and thy expressly, that all his preaching was as no- righteousness shall go before thee; the thing to the preaching of one who was to glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward." come after him. They were diligent with "He that hath my commandments and present things, but be assured that they keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and combined with this diligence the attitude he that loveth me shall be loved of my Faof looking forward to greater things. Is ther, and I will love him, and will manifest this the attitude of men who place their myself unto him." "For whosoever hath, repose and their dependance upon the per- to him shall be given, and he shall have formances on hand? Was it not the atti- more abundance; but whosoever hath not, tude of men walking in the way revealed from him shall be taken away even that he by a messenger from heaven, to the object hath." "Whosoever, therefore, shall break which this messenger pointed out to them? one of these least commandments, and shall I call on you to commence at this moment an immediate struggle with all sin, and an immediate striving after all righteousness; but I would not be completing even the

teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

"And we are witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him." "Trust in the Lord and do good."

man into a readiness for receiving the offer has been discouraged, as if it carried in it a reflection against the freeness of the offer itself. The obedient disciples of John were But danger presses on us in every direc- more prepared for the doctrines of grace, tion; and in the work of dividing the word than the careless hearers of this prophet; of truth, many, and very many, are the ob- but their obedience did not confer any stacles which lie in the way of our doing claim of merit upon them, it only made it rightly. When a minister gives his them more disposed to receive the good strength to one particular lesson, it often tidings of that salvation which was altocarries in it the appearance of his neglect-gether of grace. A despiser of ordinances ing all the rest, and throwing into the is put into a likelier situation for receiving back ground other lessons of equal im- the free offer of the Gospel, by being preportance. It might require the ministra- vailed upon to attend a church where this tions of many years to do away this ap-offer is urged upon his acceptance. His pearance. Sure I am, that I despair of attendance does not impair the freeness of doing it away within the limits of this the offer. Yet where is the man so warpshort address to any but yourselves. You ed by a misleading speculation, as to deny know all that I have urged upon the ground that the doing of this previous to his union of your acceptance with God; upon the with Christ, and preparatory to that union, freeness of that offer which is by Christ may be the very mean of the free offer beJesus; upon the honest invitations which ing received. Again, it is the lesson both of every where abound in the Gospel, that all experience and of the Bible, that the young who will, may take hold of it; upon the are likelier subjects for religious instrucnecessity of being found by God not in tion than the old. The free offer may and your own righteousness, but in the righ- ought to be addressed to both these classes; teousness which is of Christ; upon the but generally speaking, it is in point of helplessness of man, and how all the strug-fact more productive of good when adglings of his own unaided strength can dressed to the first class than the second. never carry him to the length of a spiritual And we do not say that youth confers any obedience; upon the darkness and enmity meritorious title to salvation, nor do we of his mind about the things of God, and make any reflection on the freeness of the how this can never be dissolved, till he offer, when we urge it upon the young, who by nature stands afar off is brought lest they should get old, and it have less near by the blood of the atonement, and he chance of being laid before them with acreceives that repentance and that remis- ceptance. We make no reflection upon the sion of sins, which Christ is exalted a offer as to its character of freeness, but we Prince and a Saviour to dispense to all who proceed upon the obvious fact, that, free as believe in him. These are offers and doc-it is, it is not so readily listened to or laid trines which might be addressed, and ought to be addressed immediately to all. But the call I have been urging upon you through the whole of this pamphlet, of "Cease ye from your manifest transgressions," should be addressed along with them.

Now, here lies the difficulty with many a sincere lover of the truth as it is in Jesus. He feels a backwardness in urging this call, lest it should some how or other impair the freeness of the offer, or encroach upon the singleness of that which is stated to be our alone meritorious ground of acceptance before God. In reply to this, let it be well observed, that though the offer be at all times free, it is not at all times listened to; and though the only ground of acceptance be that righteousness of Christ which is unto all them and upon all them that believe, yet some are in likelier circumstances for being brought to this belief than others. There is one class of hearers who are in a greater state of readiness for being impressed by the Gospel than another, and I fear that all the use has not been made of this principle, which Scripture and experience warrant us to do. Every attempt to work

hold of by the second class of hearers as by the first. And, lastly, when addressing sinners now, all of them might and ought to be plied with the free offer of salvation at the very outset. But if it be true, that those of them who wilfully persist in those misdoings, which they could give up on the inducement of a temporal reward, will not, in point of fact, be so impressed by the offer, or be so disposed to accept of it, as those who (on the call of-" Flee from the coming wrath ;") and on being told, that, unless they repent they shall perish; and on being made to know, what our Saviour made inquirers know at the very starting point of their progress as his disciples, that he who followeth after him must forsake all,) have begun to break off their sins, and to put the evil of their doings away from them: then we are not stripping the offer of its attribute of perfect freeness, but we are only doing what God in his wisdom did two thousand years ago; we are, under Him, preparing souls for the reception of this offer, when along with the business of proposing it, which we cannot do too early, we bring the urgency of an immediate call

to bear on the children of iniquity, that | rest on the decency of their own character; they should cease to do evil, and learn to-not by men who, deformed by these inido well,

quities, still wilfully and obstinately persist in them; but by men who, earnest in their inquiries after salvation, and who, made to know, as they ought to be at the very outset of their inquiries, that it is a salvation from sin as well as from punishment, have given up the practice of their outward iniquities, as the first fruit and evidence of their earnestness.

The publicans and harlots entered into the kingdom of God before the Pharisees, and yet the latter were free from the outward transgressions of the former. Now, the fear which restrains many from lifting the immediate call of-"Cease ye from your transgressions," is, lest it should put those who obey the call into the state of Pharisees; and there is a secret, though not avowed, impression in their minds, that it were better for their hearers to remain in the state of publicans and harlots, and in this state to have the offer of Christ and all his benefits set before them. But mark well, that it was not the publicans and harlots who persisted in their iniquities, but they who counted John to be a prophet, and in obedience to his call, were putting their iniquities away from them, who had the advantage of the Pharisees. None will surely say, that those of them who continued as they were, were put into a state of preparation for the Saviour by the preaching of John. Some will be afraid to say, that those of them who gave up their iniquities at the bidding, of John, were put into a state of preparation, lest it should encourage a pharisaical confidence in our own doings. But mark the distinction between these and the Pharisees: The Pharisees might be as free as the reforming publicans and harlots, of those visible transgressions which characterized them; but on this they rested their confidence, and put the offered Saviour away from them. The publicans and harlots, so far from resting their confidence on the degree of reformation which they had accomplished, were prompted to this reformation by the hope of the coming Saviour. They connected with all their doings the expectation of greater things. They waited for the kingdom of God that was at hand; and the preaching of John, under the influence of which they had put away from them many of their misdeeds, could never lead them to stop short at this degree of amendment, when the very same John told them of one who was to come after him, in comparison of whom he and all his sermons were as nothing. The Saviour did come, and he said of those publicans and harlots who believed and repented at I call upon you to be up and doing; but the preaching of John, that they entered I call upon you with the very same breath, the kingdom of heaven before the Phari- not to rest satisfied with any dark, or consees. They had not earned that kingdom fused notions about your way of acceptance by their doings, but they were in a fitter with God; and let it be your earnest and and readier state for receiving the tidings never-ceasing object to be found in that of it. The gospel came to them on the footing of a free and unmerited offer; and on this footing it should be proposed to all. But it is not on this footing that it will be accepted by all. Not by men who, free from many glaring and visible iniquities,

Let me, therefore, in addition to the lesson I have already urged upon you, warn you against a pharisaical confidence in your own doings. While, on the one hand, I tell you that none are truly seeking who have not begun to do; I, on the other hand, tell you, that none have truly found who have not taken up with Christ as the end of the law for righteousness. Let Jesus Christ, the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever, be the end of your conversation. Never take rest till you have found it in him. You never will have a well-grounded comfort in your intercourse with God, till you have learned the way of going to the throne of his grace in fellowship with Christ as your appointed Mediator;-you never will rejoice in hope of the coming glory, till your peace be made with God through Jesus Christ our Lord; you never will be sure of pardon, till you rest in the forgiveness of your sins as coming to you through the redemption which is in his blood. And what is more, addressing you as a people who have received a practical impulse to the obedience of the commandments, never forget, that, while the reformation of your first and earliest stages in the christian life went no farther than to the amendment of your more obvious and visible deficiencies, this reformation, to be completed, must bring the soul and spirit, as well as the body, under a subserviency to the glory of God; and it never can be completed but by the shedding abroad of that spirit which is daily poured on the daily prayers of believers: and I call upon you always to look up to God through the channel of Christ's appointed mediatorship, that you may receive through this same channel a constant and ever increasing supply of the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.

way. While you have the commandments and keep them, look at the same time for the promised manifestations. To be indifferent whether you have a clear understanding of the righteousness of Christ, is the same as thinking it not worth your while

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to inquire into that which God thought it | gious decency, may be presented in the

worth his while to give up his Son unto the death that he might accomplish. It is to affront God, by letting him speak while you refuse to listen or attend to him. Have a care, lest it be an insulting sentiment on your part, as to the worth of your polluted services, and that, sinful as they are, and defective as they are, they are good enough for God. Lean not on such a bruised reed; but let Christ, in all the perfection of that righteousness, which is unto all them and upon all them that believe, be the alone rock of your confidence. Your feet will never get on a sure place till they be established on that foundation than which there is no other; and to delay a single moment in your attempts to reach it, and to find rest upon it, after it is so broadly announced to you, is to incur the aggravated guilt of those who neglect the great salvation, and who make God a liar, by suspending their belief of that record which he hath given of his Son,-" And this is the record that God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."

character and doings of him whose conversation is not in heaven, who minds earthly things, who loves his wealth more than God, who likes his ease and comfort on this side of time more than all his prospects on the other side of it, and who, therefore, though he may never have looked upon himself to be any thing else than a fair Christian, is looked upon by every spiritual being as a rebel to his God, with the principle of rebellion firmly seated in his most vital part, even in his heart, turned in coldness and alienation away from him.

But if God be looked upon by you as a Father with whom you are reconciled through the blood of sprinkling, it will not be so with you. Now, this is what he calls you to do. He gives you a warrant to choose him as your God. He offers himself to your acceptance, and beseeches all to whom the word of salvation is sent, to be reconciled to Him. It is indeed a wonderful change in the state of a heart, when, giving up its coldness and indifference to God, (and I call upon every careless and Again I call upon you to be up and doing; unawakened man to tell me, upon his hoand I call upon you to accept of Christ as nesty, whether this be not the actual state your alone Saviour: but I call upon you, of his heart,) it surrenders itself to him with at the same time, to look to the whole ex- the warm and the willing tribute of all its tent of his salvation. "You hath he quick-affections. Now, there is not one power, ened, having forgiven you all trespasses." within the compass of nature, that can There is the forgiveness of all that has been | bring about this change. It does not lie dead, and sinful, and alienated within you: with man to give up the radical iniquity of but there is also a quickening, and a reform- an alienated heart; the Ethiopian may as ing, and a putting within you a near and a soon change his skin, and the leopard his lively sense of God, so as that you may spots. But what cannot be done by him, henceforth serve him with newness of heart, is done to him, when he accepts of the Gosand walk before him in all newness of life pel. The promises of Christ are abundantand of conversation. Your hearts will be ly peformed upon all who trust in him. enlarged, so as that you may run the way Through him is the dispensation of forgiveof all the commandments. O, how it puts ness, and with him is the dispensation of to flight all pharisaical confidence in the the all-powerful and all-subduing Spirit. present exercises of obedience, when one While, then, with the very first mention of casts an enlightened eye over the whole his name, I call on you to cease your hand extent of the Christian race, and thinks of from doing evil, surely there is nothing in the mighty extent of those attainments the call that can lead you to stop at any which were exemplified by the disciples of one point of obedience, when I, at the same the New Testament! The service which I time, tell you of the mighty change that now yield, and is perhaps offered up in the must be accomplished, ere you are meet spirit of bondage, must be offered up in the for the inheritance of the saints. You must spirit of adoption. It must be the obe- be made the workmanship of God; you dience of a child, who yields the willing must be born again; you must be made to homage of his affections to his reconciled feel your dependance on the power of the father. It must be the obedience of the renewing Spirit; and that power must heart: and O how far is a slavish perform-come down upon you, and keep by you, ance of the bidden task, from the consent and by his ever-needed supplies must form of the inner man to the law of that God the habitual answer to your habitual and whom he delights to honour! This love to believing prayers. him, and delight in him, occupy the foremost place in the list of the bidden requirements. If I love the creature more than the Creator, I trample on the authority of the first and greatest of the commandments; and what an imposing exhibition of sobriety, and justice, and almsgiving, and reli

I have now got upon ground on which many will refuse to go along with me. can get their testimony to the spectacle of a reforming people, putting the visible iniquities of stealing, and lying, and evil speaking, and drunkenness, away from them; but from the moment we come to

the only principle which confers any value on these visible expressions, even the wilPling homage of the heart to God, and to his law in all its spirituality and extent; and from the moment that we come to the only expedient by which such a principle can ever obtain an establishment within us, (and we challenge them to attempt the establishment of this principle in any other way,) even the operation of that spirit which is given to those who accept of Christ as he is laid before us in the Gospel; then, and at that moment, are we looked upon as having entered within the borders of fanaticism; and, while they lavish their superficial admiration on the flowers of virtue, do they refuse the patience of their attention to the root from which they spring, or to the nourishment which maintains them.

reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among my people; but I never once heard of any such reformations having been effected among them. If there was any thing at all brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any account of. I am not sensible, that all the vehemence with which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life, had the weight of a feather an the moral habits of my parishioners, And it was not till I got impressed by the utter alienation of the heart in all its desires and affections from God; it was not till reconciliation to Him became the distinct and the prominent object of my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their acceptance, and the And here I cannot but record the effect Holy Spirit given through the channel of of an actual though undesigned experiment, Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve was set before them as the unceasing object years among you. For the greater part of of their dependance and their prayers; it that time, I could expatiate on the meanness was not, in one word, till the contemplations of dishonesty, on the villainy of falsehood, of my people were turned to these great on the despicable arts of calumny,-in a and essential elements in the business of a word, upon all those deformities of charac-soul providing for its interest with God and ter, which awaken the natural indignation the concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of the human heart against the pests and of any of those subordinate reformations the disturbers of human society. Now which I aforetime made the earnest and the could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing, and the evil speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet every soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that even could I have established in the bosom of one who stole, such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty, that he was prevailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to Him, as before. In a word, though I might have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might have left him as destitute of the essence of religious principle as ever. But the interesting fact is, that during the whole of that period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salvation; while Christ, through whose blood the sinner, who by nature stands afar off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in such a way, as stripped him of all the importance of his character and his offices, even at this time I certainly did press the

zealous, but I am afraid at the same time, the ultimate object of my earlier ministra tions. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidelity has now attracted the notice, and drawn forth in my hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, what mischief you would have done, had your zeal for doctrines and sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allowable purloining of your earlier days! But a sense of your heavenly Master's eye has brought another influence to bear upon you; and while you are thus striving to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You have at least taught me, that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry with all its simplicity into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded population.

And here it gives me pleasure to observe, that, earnest as I have been for a plain and practical outset, the very first obedience of John's disciples was connected with a belief in the announcement of a common Saviour. This principle was present with them, and had its influence on the earliest movements of their repentance. Faith in