Religious conversation is described as peculiarly pleasing to God; a book of remembrance is written before him for those who spake often one to another. "Words in season are not only beautiful as apples of gold in baskets of silver, but they are imperishable as the book of remembrance before God. This is a most exalted motive for holy converse. Speak, then, as you would wish to read your conversation copied in the record on high. The state of mankind calls for this effort. They are unpardoned, unsanctified, and hopeless: they have no pity on themselves; they are deliberate selfdestroyers, and they have souls to live for ever. If Christ thought their souls worth dying for, you should think them worth speaking to, that you might promote and secure their salvation. Your negligence and silence may have been the ruin of very many. I do not know any thought more oppressive to any Christian, than that, at this moment, there may be some in hell, thinking of his name with bitterness and a curse; because that a neighbor, friend, or relation, now in woe, was once in intimate contact with him, and expected him to converse about salvation; but he let the season slip for ever, and the result is the ruin of such a soul, and the execration of his name amid damned spirits. This awful fact cannot be undone, but it should act as a powerful motive, whose constraints ought to be abidingly felt to induce you henceforth to use every means to save others from going to that place of torments.

You yourselves have greatly profited by the religious conversation of others. You were once in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity, and you longed to be delivered; you expected and wished that some holy man would speak to you about your salvation; you even put yourself in the way of Christians, as they retired from the sanctury, or as they were pursuing their avocations; you remember your disappointment and grief, when they did not seize that opportunity to speak to you, words by which you might be saved. There are many now waiting for you, just with the same feelings. You remember also the season when, eventually, some pious Christian did speak to you, and converse with you about religion; his very form is still dear to you, you cordially welcomed his approach to the subject so important to you, and "you loved him the more when you heard, such tenderness fall from his tongue." It is impossible to estimate what would have been your state now, had not this agent of mercy

joined in conversation to minister grace to you. Go, then, and do likewise. It is a work practicable to every Christian. In this holy work every Christian may choose his season, mark the person with whom he intends to converse, select the subject of his conversation, and cull the arguments which he wishes to employ.

Christians profess to have found that a sate of sin and crime is itself a state of distress and misery; they should, therefore, from mere philanthropy, endeavor to convince and to persuade the sinner to forsake his way. Having themselves found mercy, they ought to be anxious to minister it to others. They profess that they have fled from the wrath to come, and that they have done this from a right apprehension of the dreadful looking for of damnation, and of the blackness of the darkness of the place of torment, which the sinner has ever before him. Christians should, therefore, as a benevolent community, feel concerned that no fellow-man should ever enter there. And as they believe that heaven is full of bliss and glory, and that it is offered to the sinful sojourners of this world, and that it deserves that the attention of men should be directed to it, they cannot neglect to make this known, and to press it on the attention of men, without being liable to the charge, and the disgrace, of misanthropy and reckless cruelty.

Every soul is to live for ever: if saved, it is saved for ever if lost it is lost for ever. A church which professes to believe this, and to have realized eternity in its own hopes and emotions, must awaken a lively sense of the never-ceasing results in glory, of its benevolent efforts; or of the ever-corroding effects, in torments, of its inactivity and listlessness. Were there in our world but ONE SOUL in danger of being lost, or in the mere probability of being "scarcely saved," how would all the ninety and nine just persons, by one concentrated effort, try and strive to save it! How comes it to pass that our feelings are benumbed and insensible, when there are more than ONE, when there are two, or twenty, or twenty millions in this peril? and by what diabolical narcotic is it that we become listless, when the whole ninety and nine have themselves been in the same danger, in the same wormwood and gall? The soul of every one who perishes is as valuable as the soul that is saved. The eternal interests of the perishing are of the same importance to them, as the immortal affairs of the saved are to the saved. Is it distressing

that your soul should be tormented in unquenchable fire? It is equally so to the soul of your neighbor. Would it be joy unspeakable and full of glory for you to be in heaven? So it would be to the spirit of a heathen. The torments of woe will not affect them less than they would affect you; and the souls of others are not less capable of glory and blessedness than your souls: this, therefore, should excite your compassion, and stir you to effort, to travail for souls as noble and as valuable as your own.

God intends and expects you to be agents for him, to "minister grace" to a world that is without it. It was for this that he saved your own souls. For this he has supplied you with means, which are useful for nothing but to save the souls of men. For this, he has instructed you in the use, the application, and the adaptations, of these means of grace. For this, his providence and word supply you with specimens of the characters, who have been most useful in saving others. For this you have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, that your senses and feelings should be imbued with the love of Christ, and that even your words should become winged with grace and mercy to the world. Ere long God will institute an inquisition for blood; and in that day, before an inquest of the universe, the absorbing question will be, "How came this soul to perish?" How will parents, and friends, and relations, and ministers, and churches, feel during this august and momentous inquiry? To be held guilty of the blood of one soul will be ineffably tremendous: what must it be, then, to be charged with the blood of an entire district, or of a whole country? Who would appear in judgment so clotted with the blood of murdered men? The blood of many will, perhaps, be found then in our skirts; so very near were we to the souls that perished, so close were we to the murdered and the dying. Oh! let us awake, let us stir up our holy feelings, let us speak for God, let our voices penetrate the bosoms and the sympathies of men, and minister grace while grace may be found! Our lips are not our own; they are redeemed by Christ, and they are baptized to Christ. For us to live is Christ; for us to feel is Christ; for us to act is Christ; for us to speak is Christ. Our hearts are the homes of his love our words are the vehicles of his grace.

SECTION V.

The Spirit of Power

The Force of Christian Character to overcome the World.

To have "the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof," is the last and the blackest shade, which the pencil of inspiration has given to the portrait of a wicked character. Yet, in our day, this is thought very inoffensive, very innocent, and even praiseworthy. The world never charges nominal Christians, or formal and mechanical religionists, with this crime: the world charges none with it but those persons, who wish to be more excellent than the world in religious character; then only do we hear charges about forms without sincerity, forms swelled out with airy hypocrisy, and forms painted over with faith, hope, and love. The world will tolerate and applaud any religion that is not in advance of the world itself.

In the sacred scripture, the Holy Spirit everywhere shows that real religion is always an active, influential, powerful, and operative principle, which bears on the mind with an ever-pressing weight, and governs the heart with mighty and efficient control.

1. The various representations and images, employed by the Holy Spirit to describe the nature of true religion, suppose it to be a principle of power. Religion, according to the scriptures, burns and glows like fire, penetrates and flavors like salt, sweeps and forces like the wind, struggles for developement like a "well of water springing up," influences and transforms like leaven, and bids defiance to all the elements of darkness, like the dayspring on high. It is described in action, as laboring with strenuous effort, as striving even to agony, as running in a contested race, as wrestling with every might of bone and muscle, as fighting a deadly combat, as hungering and thirsting for righteousness, as panting for the living God. No mere form of religion can ever correspond to such representations and images as these: they all necessarily imply activity of principle and force of character. The name of being alive is not life, the painting of fire will not burn, the picture of bread will not satisfy the hungry, histrionic royalty

is not kingly power, a statue is not a man, formality is not religion. The man who tries to support a religious character without an internal principle of vital power, is like the Spartan who tried to make a corpse to stand; and the confession of both will be the same, "It wants πl evdov, something within." 2. The doctrines of religion cannot be heartily believed without being influential. These doctrines were never designed to form a mere intellectual exercise for man, or to present an interesting range for the imagination and curiosity of a sinner; they are all practical, and are intended to be influential and controling. The speculation is of very little practical importance to man, whether the sun goes round the earth, or the earth round the sun; but it is of serious consequence for him to know, whether a certain ingredient be poison or not; because it is for his life. The principles of our faith, or the things that we believe, always form our character in the sight of God. Men, and philosophic men, have said that it does not matter what we believe if our life be right. No life, however, can be right, either towards man or towards God, if what is believed is wrong. It will be right only so far as what is believed is right. If a man believes that negroes are chattels, his life towards them cannot be right; and if he believes that God is "altogether such an one as himself," his conduct towards him will be wrong, and, if wrong, under his condemnation. Others say, it does not matter what we believe if we believe it sincerely. Then, if the children, servants, and apprentices, of the advocates of this sentiment believe sincerely that they ought not to obey them, they are innocent; and, if the debtors of these philosophers believe sincerely that they ought not to pay them, they are virtuous and good. Equally preposterous is the dogma, that if a man's belief be right, or if he be sound in the orthodox faith, it matters little how he lives; this is just as rational as saying that if he believes that the sun shines, it matters little whether he opens his eyes; if he believes that bread nourishes, it matters little whether he is fed; and if he believes that summer and winter exist, it matters little whether he tills and sows the ground.

Religion differs from all these sentiments: wherever it exists it is a principle of power. Religion influences and controls the entire man, his mind, his will, his passions, his dispositions; and, since it influences the whole machinery of man, it must influence his conduct. What he believes makes