the one principle only, people may come you read of the Holy Ghost, by whom rein gathering multitudes to the house of God; newed in the whole desire and character of and share with eagerness in all the glow your mind, you are led to run with alacrity and bustle of a crowded attendance; and in the way of the commandments? Have have their every eye directed to the speaker; you turned to its practical use, the imporand feel a responding movement in their tant truth, that he has given to the believbosom to his many appeals and his many ing prayers of all, who really want to be arguments; and carry a solemn and over-relieved from the power both of secret and powering impression of all the services of visible iniquity? I demand something away with them; and yet throughout the whole of this seemly exhibition, not one effectual knock may have been given at the door of conscience. The other principle may be as profoundly asleep, as if hushed into the insensibility of death. There is a spirit of deep slumber, it would appear, which the music of no description, even though attuned to a theme so lofty as the greatness and majesty of the Godhead, can ever charm away. Oh! it may have been a piece of parading insignificance altogetherthe minister playing on his favourite in-ly interesting exhibition of human nature, strument, and the people dissipating away their time on the charm and idle luxury of a theatrical emotion.

more than the homage you have rendered to the pleasantness of the voice that has been sounding in your hearing. What I have now to urge upon you, is the bidding of the voice, to read, and to reform and to pray, and, in a word, to make your consistent step from the elevations of philosophy, to all those exercises, whether of doing or of believing, which mark the conduct of the earnest, and the devoted, and the subdued, and the aspiring Christian.

This brings under our view a most deep

which may often be witnessed among the cultivated orders of society. When a teacher of Christianity addresses himself to The religion of taste, is one thing. The that principle of justice within us, in virtue religion of conscience, is another. I recur of which we feel the authority of God to be to the test. What is the plain and practical a prerogative which righteously belongs to doing which ought to issue from the whole him, he is then speaking the appropriate of our argument? If one lesson come more language of religion, and is advancing its clearly or more authoritatively out of it naked and appropriate claim over the obethan another, it is the supremacy of the dience of mankind. He is then urging that Bible. If fitted to impress one movement pertinent and powerful consideration, upon rather than another, it is that movement of which alone he can ever hope to obtain a docility, in virtue of which, man, with the the ascendency of a practical influence over feeling that he has all to learn, places him- the purposes and the conduct of human self in the attitude of a little child, before beings. It is only by insisting on the moral the book of the unsearchable God, who has claim of God to a right of government over deigned to break his silence, and to trans- his creatures, that he can carry their loyal mit, even to our age of the world, a faithful subordination to the will of God. Let him record of his own communication. What keep by this single argument, and urge it progress then are you making in this move- upon the conscience, and then, without any ment? Are you, or are you not, like new- of the other accompaniments of what is born babes, desiring the sincere milk of the called christian oratory, he may bring conword, that you may grow thereby? How vincingly home upon his hearers all the are you coming on in the work of casting varieties of christian doctrine. He may down your lofty imaginations? With the establish within their minds the dominion modesty of true science, which is here at of all that is essential in the faith of the one with the humblest and most penitenti- New Testament. He may, by carrying out ary feeling which Christianity can awaken, this principle of God's authority into all its are you bending an eye of earnestness on applications, convince them of sin. He may the Bible, and appropriating its informa- lead them to compare the loftiness and tions, and moulding your every conviction spirituality of his law, with the habitual to its doctrines and its testimonies? How obstinacy of their own worldly affections. long, I beseech you, has this been your He may awaken them to the need of a Sahabitual exercise? By this time do you feel viour. He may urge them to a faithful and the darkness and the insufficiency of na- submissive perusal of God's own communiture? Have you found your way to the cation. He may thence press upon them the need of an atonement? Have you learned truth and the immutability of their Sovethe might and the efficacy which are given reign. He may work in their hearts an to the principle of faith? Have you longed impression of this emphatic saying, that with all your energies to realize it? Have God is not to be mocked-that his law must you broken loose from the obvious misdo-be upheld in all the significancy of its proings of your former history? Are you con- clamations-and that either his severities vinced of your total deficiency from the must be discharged upon the guilty, or in spiritual obedience of the affections? Have some other way an adequate provision be

found for its outraged dignity, and its vio-bitious description; as will attach him to lated sanctions. Thus may he lead them the truth in its simplicity; as will fasten to flee for refuge to the blood of the atone- his every regard upon the Bible, where, if ment. And he may further urge upon his he persevere in the work of honest inquiry, hearers, how, such is the enormity of sin, he will soon be made to perceive the acthat it is not enough to have found an ex-cordancy between its statements, and all piation for it; how its power and its ex- those movements of fear, or guilt, or deeplyistence must be eradicated from the hearts felt necessity, or conscious darkness, stuof all, who are to spend their eternity in the pidity, and unconcern about the matters mansions of the celestial; how, for this pur- of salvation, which pass within his own pose, an expedient is made known to us in bosom; in a word, as will endear him to the New Testament; how a process must that plainness of speech, by which his own be described upon earth, to which there is experience is set evidently before him, and given the appropriate name of sanctifica- that plain phraseology of scripture, which tion; how, at the very commencement of is best fitted to bring home to him the docevery true course of discipleship, this pro- trine of redemption, in all the truth, and in cess is entered upon with a purpose in the all the preciousness of its applications. mind of forsaking all; how nothing short Now, the whole of this work may be of a single devotedness to the will of God, going on, and that too in the wisest and will ever carry us forward through the suc- most effectual manner, without so much as cessive stages of this holy and elevated ca- one particle of incense being offered to any reer; how, to help the infirmities of our of the subordinate principles of the human nature, the Spirit is ever in readiness to be constitution. There may be no fascinations given to those who ask it; and that thus of style. There may be no magnificence of the life of every Christian becomes a life description. There may be no poignancy of entire dedication to Him who died for of acute and irresistible argument. There us-a life of prayer, and vigilance, and close may be a rivetted attention on the part of dependance on the grace of God; and, as those whom the Spirit of God hath awakenthe infallible result of the plain but power-ed to seriousness about the plain and affectful and peculiar teaching of the Bible, a ing realities of conversion. Their conlife of vigorous unwearied activity in the science may be stricken, and their appetite doing of all the commandments. be excited for an actual settlement of mind Now, this I would call the essential busi- on those points about which they feel restness of Christianity. This is the truth as less and unconfirmed. Such as these are it is in Jesus, in its naked and unassociated vastly too much engrossed with the exigensimplicity. In the work of urging it, no-cies of their condition, to be repelled by thing more might have been done, than to the homeliness of unadorned truth. And present certain views, which may come thus it is, that while the loveliness of the with as great clearness, and freshness, and song has done so little in helping on the take as full possession of the mind of a influences of the gospel, our men of simpeasant as of the mind of a philosopher. plicity and prayer have done so much for There is a sense of God, and of the rightful it. With a deep and earnest impression of allegiance that is due to him. There are the truth themselves, they have made maniplain and practical appeals to the conscience. fest that truth to the consciences of others. There is a comparison of the state of the Missionaries have gone forth with no other heart, with the requirements of a law which preparation than the simple Word of the proposes to take the heart under its obe-Testimony-and thousands have owned its dience. There is the inward discernment power, by being both the hearers of the of its coldness about God; of its unconcern word and the doers of it also. They have about the matters of duty and of eternity; given us the experiment in a state of unof its devotion to the forbidden objects of mingled simplicity; and we learn, from the sense; of its constant tendency to nourish success of their noble example, that withwithin its own receptacles, the very ele-out any one human expedient to charm ment and principle of rebellion, and in the ear, the heart may, by the naked invirtue of this, to send forth the stream of strumentality of the Word of God, urged an hourly and accumulating disobedience over those doings of the outer man, which make up his visible history in the world. There is such an earnest and overpower ing impression of all this, as will fix a man down to the single object of deliverance; as will make him awake only to those realities which have a significant and substantial bearing on the case that engrosses him; as will teach him to nauseate all the impertinences of tasteful and am

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with plainness on those who feel its deceit and its worthlessness, be charmed to an entire acquiesence in the revealed way of God, and have impressed upon it the genuine stamp and character of godliness.

Could the sense of what is due to God, be effectually stirred up within the human bosom, it would lead to a practical carrying of all the lessons of Christianity. Now, to awaken this moral sense, there are certain simple relations between the creature and the

Creator, which must be clearly apprehend-| And here I cannot but remark, how much ed, and manifested with power unto the effect and simplicity go together in the anconscience. We believe, that however much nals of Moravianism. The men of this truly philosophers may talk about the compara- interesting denomination, address themtive ease of forming those conceptions selves exclusively to that principle of our which are simple, they will, if in good earn-nature on which the proper influence of est after a right footing with God, soon dis- Christianity turns. Or, in other words, cover in their own minds, all that darkness they take up the subject of the gospel mesand incapacity about spiritual things, which sage, that message devised by him who knew are so broadly announced to us in the New what was in man, and who, therefore, knew Testament. And, oh! it is a deeply inter- how to make the right and the suitable apesting spectacle, to behold a man, who can plication to man.-They urge the plain Word take a masterly and commanding survey of the Testimony; and they pray for a blessover the field of some human speculation, ing from on high; and that thick impalpable who can clear his discriminated way through veil, by which the god of this world blinds all the turns and ingenuities of some human the hearts of men who believe not, lest the argument, who by the march of a mighty and light of the glorious gospel of Christ should resistless demonstration, can scale with as-enter into them-that veil, which no sured footstep the sublimities of science, power of philosophy can draw aside, gives and from his firm stand on the eminence way to the demonstration of the Spirit; and he has won, can descry some wondrous thus it is, that a clear perception of scriprange of natural or intellectual truth spreadtural truth, and all the freshness and perout in subordination before him ;-and yet manency of its moral influences, are to this very man may, in reference to the be met with among men who have just moral and authoritative claims of the God-emerged from the rudest and the grossest head, be in a state of utter apathy and blind- barbarity.-Oh! when one looks at the ness! All his attempts, either at the spiritual discernment, or the practical impression of this doctrine, may be arrested and baffled by the weight of some great inexplicable impotency. A man of homely talents, and still homelier education, may see what he cannot see, and feel what he cannot feel; and wise and prudent as he is, there may lie the barrier of an obstinate and impenetrable concealment, between his accomplished mind, and those things which are re vealed unto babes.

number and the greatness of their achievements; when he thinks of the change they have made on materials so coarse and so unpromising; when he eyes the villages they have formed; and around the whole of that engaging perspective by which they have chequered and relieved the grim solitude of the desert, he witnesses the love, and listens to the piety of reclaiming savages;-who would not long to be in possession of the charm by which they have wrought this wondrous transformation-who would not willingly exchange for it all the parade of human eloquence, and all the confidence of human argument

and for the wisdom of winning souls, who is there that would not rejoice to throw the loveliness of the song, and all the insignificancy of its passing fascinations, away from him?

But while his mind is thus utterly devoid of what may be called the main or elemental principle of theology, he may have a far quicker apprehension, and have his taste and his feelings much more powerfully interested, than the simple Christian who is beside him, by what may be called the circumstantials of theology. He can throw a wider and more rapid glance over the mag- And yet it is right that every cavil against nitudes of creation. He can be more deli-Christianity should be met, and every argucately alive to the beauties and the sublimities which abound in it. He can, when the idea of a presiding God is suggested to him, have a more kindling sense of his natural majesty, and be able, both in imagination and in words, to surround the throne of the Divinity by the blazonry of more great, and splendid, and elevating images. And yet, with all those powers of conception which he does possess, he may not possess that on which practical Christianity hinges. The moral relation between him and God, may neither be effectively perceived, nor faithfully proceeded on. Conscience may be in a state of the most entire dormancy, and the man be regaling himself with the magnificence of God, while he neither loves God, nor believes God, nor obeys God.

ment for it be exhibited, and all the graces and sublimities of its doctrine be held out to their merited admiration. And if it be true, as it certainly is, that throughout the whole of this process, a man may be carried rejoicingly along from the mere indulgence of his taste, and the mere play and exercise of his understanding; while conscience is untouched, and the supremacy of moral claims upon the heart and the conduct is practically disowned by himit is further right that this should be adverted to; and that such a melancholy unhingement in the constitution of man should be fully laid open, and that he should be driven out of the seductive complacency which he is so apt to cherish, merely because he delights in the loveliness of the song;

and that he should be urged with the imperiousness of a demand which still remains unsatisfied, to turn him from the corrupt indifference of nature, and to become personally a religious man; and that he should be assured how all the gratification he felt in listening to the word which respected the kingdom of God, will be of no avail, unless that kingdom come to himself in power-that it will only go to heighten the perversity of his character-that it will not extenuate his real and practical ungodliness, but will serve most fearfully to aggravate the condemnation of it.

it

may

withheld from the exercise of loftiest talent, is often brought down on an impressed audience, through the humblest of all instrumentality, with the demonstration of the Spirit and with power.

Think it not enough, that you carry in your bosom an expanded sense of the magnificence of creation. But pray for a subduing sense of the authority of the Creator. Think it not enough, that with the justness of a philosophical discernment, you have traced that boundary which hems in all the possibilities of human attainment, and have found that all beyond it is a dark and fathomless unknown. But let this modesty of science be carried, as in consistency it ought, to the question of revelation, and let all the antipathies of nature be schooled to acquiescence in the authentic testimonies of the Bible. Think it not enough that you have looked with sensibility and wonder at the representation of God throned in immensity, yet combining with the vastness of his entire superintendence, a most thorough inspection into all the minute and countless diversities of existence. Think of your own heart as one of these diversities; and that he ponders all its tendencies; and has an eye upon all its movements; and marks all its waywardness; and, God of

With a religion so argumentable as ours, be easy to gather out of it a feast for the human understanding. With a re- | ligion so magnificent as ours, it may be easy to gather out of it a feast for the human imagination. But with a religion so humbling, and so strict, and so spiritual, it is not easy to mortify the pride; or to quell the strong enmity of nature; or to arrest the currency of the affections; or to turn the constitutional habits; or to pour a new complexion over the moral history; or to stem the domineering influence of things seen and things sensible; or to invest faith with a practical supremacy; or to give its objects such a vivacity of influence as shall overpower the near and the hourly im-judgment as he is, records its every secret, pressions, that are ever emanating upon man from a seducing world. It is here that man feels himself treading upon the limit of his helplessness. It is here that he sees where the strength of nature ends; and the power of grace must either be put forth, or leave him to grope his darkling way, without one inch of progress towards the life and the substance of Christianity. It is here that a barrier rises on the contemplation of the inquirer-the barrier of separation between the carnal and the spiritual, and on which he may idly waste the every energy which belongs to him, in the enterprise of surmounting it. It is here, that after having walked the round of nature's acquisitions, and lavished upon the truth of all his ingenuities, and surveyed it in its every palpable character of grace and majesty; he will still feel himself on a level with the simplest and most untutored of the species. He needs the power of a living manifestation. He needs the anointing which remaineth. He needs that which fixes and perpetuates a stable revolution upon the character, and in virtue of which he may be advanced from the state of one who hears, and is delighted, to the state of one who hears, and is a doer. Oh! how strikingly is the experience even of vigorous and accomplished nature at one on this point with the announcements of revelation, that to work this change, there must be the putting forth of a peculiar agency; and that it is an agency, which,

and its every sin, in the book of his remembrance. Think it not enough, that you have been led to associate a grandeur with the salvation of the New Testament; when made to understand that it draws upon it the regards of an arrested universe. How is it arresting your own mind? What has been the earnestness of your personal regards towards it? And tell me, if all its faith, and all its repentance, and all its holiness are not disowned by you? Think it not enough, that you have felt a sentimental charm when angels were pictured to your fancy as beckoning you to their mansions, and anxiously looking to the every symptom of your grace and reformation. Oh! be constrained by the power of all this tenderness, and yield yourselves up in a practical obedience to the call of the Lord God merciful and gracious. Think it not enough that you have shared for a moment in the deep and busy interest of that arduous conflict which is now going on for a moral ascendency over the species. Remember the conflict is for each of you individually; and let this alarm you into a watchfulness against the power of every temptation, and a cleaving dependence upon him through whom alone you will be more than conquerors. Above all, forget not that while you only hear and are delighted, you are still under nature's powerlessness, and nature's condemnation-and that the foundation is not laid, the mighty and essential change is not accomplished, the transition

APPENDIX.

THE writer of these Discourses has drawn up the following compilation of passages from Scripture, as serving to illustrate or to confirm the leading arguments which have been employed in each separate division of his subject.