tained by his death. Our minds refuse to enter on the inquiry, just as it would shrink from an Utopian enterprise. Probably no mind but NEWTON'S could adequately conceive and grasp the detriment which would accrue to science from a death so premature. He knew the young scholar's mind; knew the energies and powers of his soul; he knew the state of science at that time; knew what a mind of such tendencies and aspirations could and would do for it; and therefore in the midst of this clear and vivid knowledge, he pronounced the above declaration. Conceive that Newton employed a physician to attend the young scholar, one who professed to be a friend to both, who was informed of his patient's splendid powers, who valued their importance to science highly, who knew the disease that enfeebled them, and who possessed the remedy to restore and save them. Imagine this functionary to dally and trifle and sport with a life so inconceivably precious, and you will feel towards him all the indignation and disgust, which you ought to feel towards an idle Christian, or a trifling minister. Conceive again of this assiduous attendant succeeding in the preservation of such a noble genius, and you will understand the luxury of doing good, the joy that a soul is saved from death, and the honor of a crown of rejoicing to adorn your brow.

In all our efforts to realize and estimate the amount of distress, produced by each and by all of the grades of losses just marked, the mind may perhaps scarcely feel the pressure of the question, through an apprehension that all the detriment and misery, which is supposed to follow, was purely conjectural. There is one more loss to be enumerated, which is the greatest of all, the most disastrous of all, a loss which involves, and absorbs all others, and sinks along with it every interest-it is the loss of the soul. The God of the spirits of all flesh has informed us that this loss is not conjectural-but real, true, felt, and owned. If the soul be lost, nothing is saved. If a man lose a limb, or a sense, and retain the mind and life, the loss is bearable; or if he lose the mind, it is a loss for a time; but when the soul is lost, the loss is entire, unmitigated, and eternal. The loss of a limb in our fellow-men awakens our pity; the loss of a sense, especially of sight, pains us more; the loss of a mind distresses us more still; the loss of a life of a beloved friend excites us even to agony. The loss of a soul! What can be the affections and the emotions, the pangs of anguish, and the throes of travail, which such a catastrophe

would produce and justify? If we ask the world, it recommends us to contemplate the scene with stoical hardihood: if we ask lukewarm Christians and formal churches, they recommend decent and stately mourning: if we ask the Holy Spirit, he not only recommends but insists that such a distressing spectacle should produce in us great heaviness, continual sorrow, true compassion, real tears, unfictitious agony, unfeigned pains, and every other form of genuine emotion, which can express the meaning of "travailing in birth for souls until Christ be formed in them."

When the Holy Spirit is in full union with a church, and where a church is in full communication with the influences of the Holy Spirit, there will be proportionate compassion, tenderness, and concern for the souls of men; and these will be excited and developed in a higher degree than could be accomplished by the mere sympathies of humanity. It deserves to be exhibited on the face of the skies, in letters as bright and vivid as rainbows, that, on the supposition that a soul is in real danger of being lost, no excitement of the emotions however high, no anguish of feeling however intense, is either extravagant or enthusiastic. The enemies of religious emotion brand this excitement with the epithet of enthusiastic; but it is only in proportion as they diminish the amount of danger which produces it. It must, however, be admitted that there is, in connexion with this subject, one state of religious emotion which well deserves to be called enthusiasm― weak, vain, and empty enthusiasm. It is enthusiasm to fancy facts concerning the soul which are not testified in the scriptures; it is enthusiasm to fancy that a soul is under the influences of the Spirit when there are no fruits of the Spirit: it is enthusiasm to expect a thing strongly without using the appointed means; to expect a soul to go to heaven who neither walks nor seeks the way thitherward; to expect a mysterious process of forced conversion to take place in the dying hour; and to hope there is no danger to the soul, when the scriptures declare that it is in danger of eternal perdition. The men who indulge in these fancies and expectations, and oppose enthusiasm, are themselves fanatics the most wild and extravagant.

When Paul endeavored to revive and animate the church in Rome to powerful and united exertions for the furtherance of the gospel, he employed an argument of the most persuasive and melting character: "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the

Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the LOVE OF THE SPIRIT, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me." (Rom. xv. 30.) The argument of the apostle requires us to conclude that, by "the love of the Spirit," he means, not the emotion which Christians felt towards the Spirit, but the affection which the person of the Holy Spirit indulged towards them. In our pulpit ministrations much has been said of the love of the Father and the love of the Son, and much remains to be said; but the love of the Spirit has not yet obtained that prominence, which its glory and beauty deserve. The Father so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son; the Son so loved the world that though he was rich, yet for its sake, he became poor; and the Holy Spirit has so loved the world that he takes of the things of Christ, and descends with them into the midst of loathsome corruptions, to perfume and to heal, to purify and to save, a putrefying world from a destruction that is as offensive in its character as it is dreadful in its results. This is love in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit loves the word. His benign offices towards the world have been undertaken from the freest and the sweetest love. His methods of operation on the soul savor of his glorious love: all is kind, gentle, persuasive, and winning. The circumstances and the characters of those whom he visits to bless, prove that his disposition is free, generous, and sovereign love. The heavenly Dove has descended on a noisome valley of dry bones, with healing in its wings, and continues, by its sweet influences brooding over corrupt elements, to give them the beauty and freshness of life. He has deigned to make the heart that was once the home of evil spirits, the nest of unclean birds, the sink of filthy reptiles, to be sanctified for his own temple. His love alone has induced him to carry on his operations, amidst much perverse dislike and opposition of the heart. Men's own negligence and recklessness, and their aversion and repugnance to his gentle and holy character and purposes have often vexed and have much grieved him; but even his grief is an emotion of love. Were he an enemy he would be offended; it is only a friend that feels grieved by our waywardness. The result, the issue, and the aspect, of all his operations will be a splendid product of his love. His most powerful operations are benign and salutary; he wounds only to heal, he disciplines and chastises only to improve, he mortifies only to refresh, he kills only to make alive. He that began the good work will finish it; and its

consummation will be the finish of skill, the finish of power, and the finish of love. The origin, the process, and the consummation of the world's conversion and holiness is love, and the dispositions and feelings of the Holy Spirit towards this sinful world are those of free, fervid, patient, strong, and unchangeable LOVE.

Ere the church will achieve much in the conversion of the world, the church must love the world; love it as the Holy Spirit loves it ;-love it with tender compassion, with the meltings of pity, with the unction of gentleness, with the emotion of concern, and with musterings of energy to save it. The greatest and deepest distress for souls, the most ardent and intense desire for their welfare, and the utmost agony of effort for their rescue, are, according to the mind of the Holy Spirit, but the sentiments and actions of soberness and truth: they are warranted by what is revealed of God's feelings towards sinners, by the character and life of Christ, by the tendencies of the influences of the Spirit, by the relation of man's mental constitution to the moral system of the universe, and by prophecies and declarations concerning the right dispositions and measures of the Christian church towards the world.

I. The real feelings of God for the salvation of sinners are revealed in the Bible, and explained and illustrated by every form of imagery that can shadow forth love, compassion, tenderness, anxiety, longing, and vehement earnestness. Nehemiah describes him as "God ready to pardon, of great kindness, and who, for his great mercy's sake, did not consume and forsake the people that rebelled against his overtures." David describes him as "FULL of compassion, and PLENTEOUS in mercy and truth." Isaiah contemplated him in this character when he prayed, "Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness, and of thy glory: where is thy ZEAL and thy strength, the sOUNDING OF THY BOWELS and of thy mercies towards me?" Jeremiah was inspired to put the following sentiments in the lips of the blessed God: "Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do EARNESTLY remember him still: therefore my bowels are TROUBLED for him: I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." Hosea describes him as provoked, grieved, concerned, and anxious about man's salvation: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine HEART IS TURNED WITHIN

ME, and my REPENTINGS are kindled together." In the interpretation of these passages, make the freest and largest allowance for bold and poetic imagery, yet you cannot refuse the conclusion, that had the reality and the truth of this state of the emotions in good men been irregular, extravagant, wild, and enthusiastic, holy men of God, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, would never have ascribed them to the Divine Majesty himself. If in Christians we sometimes see and admire pungent distress, strong compassion, and agonizing desires for the salvation of souls, how amazing, how unutterable must be the gentle and august pitifulness of our God!-a God FULL of compassion-all the perfections of his nature "kindled together" into pity.

II. The character and the example of Jesus Christ authorize a state of the highest excitement of the emotions in the view of human guilt and misery. Jesus Christ was God manifested in the flesh, God acting by the machinery of our nature, God expressing his character by our sensations and emotions, God living and feeling and acting as he would wish man to live, feel, and act. Emotions excited by the same class of facts, produced by the same reflections, indulged and expressed to the same degree, can be neither wild nor fanatical. We have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; and if we have a church that cannot be touched, or refuses to be touched, with the same feelings, it is because such a church is, so far, anti-Christian, and "ready to die." Jesus Christ openly expressed what he felt; and he, in all reality, felt what he expressed. At one time he felt and expressed the highest emotion of astonishment and marvel at the unbelief of his hearer. On another occasion, he looked round about on his audience with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. At the grave of Lazarus he wept, partly from sympathy with the bereaved family, but much also from his reflection on the obduracy, cavils, and machinations, of the Jews, who, instead of being convinced by the miracle of his love and of his power, would conspire to kill both Lazarus and himself. In the midst of the most alarming and thundering discourse ever pronounced over sinners, he felt for them; for when he beheld the city he wept over it, and said, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." He surveyed the miseries that would fol