dons him, so soon as he goes into the next the reason is, that there rests upon him a company or takes a part in the next peculiar manifestation, by which the truth worldly concern, which, in the course of is made visible to the eye of his mind, and his business, comes round to him. It com- a peculiar energy, by which it comes home pletely disappears as an element of conduct, upon his conscience. And if you come to and he talks, and thinks, and reasons just inquire into the cause of this speciality, it is as he would have done, had his mind, in the language of the Bible, confirmed, as we reference to God, been in a state of entire believe it to be, by the soundest experience, darkness. If any thing like a right con- that every power which nature has conception of the matter ever exist in his heart, ferred upon man, exalted to its highest the din and the day light of the world measure, and called forth to its most strendrive it all away from him. Now, to recti-uous exercise is not able to accomplish it,— fy this case, it is surely not necessary, that that it is due to a power above nature, and the Spirit add any thing to the truth of beyond it; that it is due to what the Apostle God's omnipresence, as it is put down in calls the demonstration of the Spirit,-a dethe written record. It will be enough, that monstration withheld from the self-suffihe gives to the mind upon which he ope- cient exertions of man, and given to his berates, a steady and enduring impression of lieving prayers. this truth. Now, this is one part of his And here we are reminded of an instrucoffice, and accordingly it is said of the unc- tive passage in the life of one of our earliest tion of the Spirit, that it is an unction which and most eminent reformers. When the light remaineth. Neither is it necessary that the of divine truth broke in upon his heart, it light, which he communicates, should con- was so new and so delightful to one formsist in any vision which he gives to the erly darkened by the errors of popery,eye, or in any bright impression upon the he saw such a power and such an evidence fancy, of any one thing not to be found along with it, he was so ravished by its within the pages of the Bible. It will be beauties, and so carried along by its resistenough if he give a clear and vigorous ap- less arguments, that he felt as if he had prehension of the truth, just as it is written, nothing to do, but to brandish those mighty to the understanding. Though the Spirit weapons, that he might gain all hearts and should do no more than give vivacity and carry every thing before him. But he did effect to the truth of the constancy of God's not calculate on the stubborn resistance of presence, just as it stands in the written corrupt human nature, to him and to his record-this will be quite enough to make reasonings. He preached and he argued, the man who is under its influence carry and he put forth all his powers of eloquence an habitual sense of God about with him, amongst them. But mortified that so many think of him in the shop and in the market-hearts remained hardened, that so many place, walk with him all the day long, and feel the same moral restraint upon his doings, as if some visible superior, whose virtues he revered, and whose approbation he longed after, haunted his every footstep, and kept an attentive eye fastened upon the whole course of his history. The natural man may have sense, and he may have There is the malignity of the fall which sagacity, and a readiness withal to admit adheres to us. There is a power of corthe constancy of God's presence, as an un-ruption and of blindness along with it, deniable doctrine of the Bible. But to the which it is beyond the compass of human power of this truth he is dead; and it is means to overthrow. There is a dark and only to the power of this world's interests settled depravity in the human character, and pleasures that he is alive. The spiritual which maintains its gloomy and obstinate man is the reverse of all this, and that resistance to all our warnings and all our without carrying his conceptions a single arguments. There is a spirit working in hair breadth beyond the communications the children of disobedience which no of the written message. He makes no pre-power of human eloquence can lay. There tensions to wisdom by one jot or one tittle is a covering of thick darkness upon the beyond the testimony of Scripture, and face of all people, a mighty influence abroad yet, after all, he lives under a revelation to upon the world, with which the Prince of which the other is a stranger. It does not the power of the air keeps his thousands carry him by a single footstep without the and his tens of thousands under him. The field of the written revelation, but it throws minister who enters into this field of cona radiance over every object within it. It flict may have zeal, and talents, and elofurnishes him with a constant light which quence. His heart may be smitten with enables him to withstand the domineering the love of the truth, and his mind be fully influence of sight and of sense. He dies fraught with its arguments. Thus armed, unto the world, he lives unto God,-and he may come forth among his people, hearers resisted him, that the doors of so many hearts were kept shut in spite of all loud and repeated warnings, that so many souls remained unsubdued, and dead in trespasses and sins, he was heard to exclaim that old Adam was too strong for young Melancthon. Let us now bring the whole matter to a practical conclusion. For the acquirement of a saving and spiritual knowledge of the gospel, you are on the one hand, to put forth all your ordinary powers, in the very same way that you do for the acquirement of knowledge in any of the ordinary branches of human learning. But in the act of doing so, you, on the other hand, are to proceed on a profound impression of the utter fruitlessness of all your endeavours, unless God, meet them by the manifestations of his Spirit. In other words, you are to read your Bible, and to bring your faculties of attention, and understanding, and memory, to the exercise, just as strenuously as if these and these alone could conduct you to the light after which you are aspiring. But you are at the same time to pray as earnestly for this object, as if God accomplished flushed with the mighty enterprise of turn- | power must be brought to bear upon the ing souls from the dominion of Satan unto mass of resistance which is before him; and God. In all the hope of victory he may let the man of confident and aspiring genius, discharge the weapons of his warfare among who thought he was to assail the dark seats them. Week after week, he may reason of human corruption, and to carry them by with them out of the Scriptures. Sabbath storm, let him be reduced in mortified and after Sabbath he may declaim, he may de-dependent humbleness to the expedient of monstrate, he may put forth every expe- the Apostle, let him crave the intercessions dient, he may at one time set in array be- of his people, and throw himself upon their fore them the terrors of the law, at another prayers. he may try to win them by the free offer of the Gospel; and, in the proud confidence of success, he may think that nothing can withstand him, and that the heart of every hearer must give way before the ardour of his zeal and the power of his invincible arguments. Yes; they may admire him, and they may follow him, but the question we have to ask is, will they be converted by him? They may even go so far as to allow that it is all very true he says. He may be their favourite preacher, and when he opens his exhortations upon them, there may be a deep and a solemn attention in every countenance. But how is the heart coming on all the while? How do those people live, and what evidence are they giving of being born again under the power of his ministry? It is not enough to be told of those momentary convictions which flash from the pulpit, and carry a thrilling influit without your exertions at all, instead of ence along with them through the hearts of listening admirers. Have these hearers of the word, become the doers of the word? Have they sunk down into the character of humble, and sanctified, and penitent, and pains-taking Christians? Where, where is the fruit? And while the preaching of Christ is all their joy, has the will of Christ become all their directions? Alas, he may look around him, and at the end of the year, after all the tumults of a sounding popularity, he may find the great bulk of them just where they were, as listless and unconcerned about the things of eternity,-as obstinately alienated from God,-as firmly devoted to selfish and transitory interests, as exclusively set upon the farm, and the money, and the merchandize, and, with the covering of many external decencies, to make them as fair and plausible as their neighbours around them, proving by a heart given, with the whole tide of its affections, to the vanities of the world, that they have their full share of the wickedness which abounds in it. After all his sermons, and all his loud and passionate addresses, he finds that the power of darkness still keeps its ground among them. He is grieved to learn that all he has said, has had no more effect, than the foolish and the feeble lispings of infancy. He is overwhelmed by a sense of his own helplessness, and the lesson is a wholesome one. It makes him feel that the sufficiency is not in him, but in God; it makes him understand that another accomplishing it in the way he actually does, by your exertions. It is when your eyes are turned toward the book of God's testimony, and not when your eyes are turned away from it, that he fulfils upon you the petition of the Psalmist,-"Lord, do thou open mine eyes, that I may behold the wondrous things contained in thy law." You are not to exercise your faculties in searching after truth without prayer, else God will withhold from you his illuminating influences. And you are not to pray for truth, without exercising your faculties, else God will reject your prayers, as the mockery of a hypocrite. But you are to do both, and this is in harmony with the whole style of a Christian's obedience, who is as strenuous in doing as if his doings were to accomplish all, and as fervent in prayer, as if without the inspiring energy of God, all his doings were vanity and feebleness. And the great Apostle may be quoted as the best example of this observation. There never existed a man more active than Paul, in the work of the Christian ministry. How great the weight and the variety of his labours! What preaching, what travelling, what writing of letters, what daily struggling with difficulties, what constant exercise of thought in watching over the Churches, what a world of perplexity in his dealings with men, and in the hard dealings of men with him; and were they friends, or were they enemies, how his mind behooved to be ever on the alert, in counsel ling the one and warding off the hostility | alone can work with effect? This is very of the other. Look to all that is visible true, but God chooses to work by instruin the life of this Apostle, and you see ments, and Paul, by the question, "Lord, nothing but bustle, and enterprise, and what wilt thou have me to do?" expressed vareity. You see a man intent on the fur- his readiness to be an instrument in his therance of some great object, and in the hand. Neither did he say, what signifies prosecution of it, as ever diligent, and as my praying, for I have got a work here to ever doing, as if the whole burden of it do, and it is enough that I be diligent in the lay upon himself, or as if it were reserved performance of it. No-for the power of for the strength of his solitary arm to ac- God must be acknowledged, and a sense of complish it. To this object he conse- his power must mingle with all our percrated every moment of his time, and even formances; and therefore it is that the when he set him down to the work of a Apostle kept both working and praying, and tent-maker, for the sake of vindicating the with him they formed two distinct emanapurity of his intentions, and holding forth tions of the same principle; and while there an example of honest independence to the are many who make these Christian graces poorer brethren; even here, you just see to neutralize each other, the judicious and another display of the one principle which the clear-sighted Paul, who had received possessed his whole heart, and gave such a the spirit of a sound mind, could give his character of wondrous activity to all the unembarrassed vigour to both these exerdays of his earthly pilgrimage. There are cises, and combine, in his own example, some, who are so far misled by a kind of the utmost diligence in doing, with the perverse theology which they have adopted, utmost dependence on him who can alone as to hesitate about the lawfulness of being di-give to that doing all its fruit and all its ligent and doing in the use of means. While efficacy. they are slumbering over their speculation, and proving how honestly they put faith in it by doing nothing, let us be guided by the example of the pains-taking and industrious Paul, and remember, that never since the days of this Apostle, who calls upon us to be followers of him, even as he was of Christ,-never were the labours of human exertion more faithfully rendered,--never were the workings of a human instrument put forth with greater energy.. The union of these two graces has at times been finely exemplified in the latter, and uninspired ages of the Christian Church; and the case of the missionary Elliot is the first, and the most impressive that occurs to us. His labours, like those of the great Apostle, were directed to the extension of the vineyard of Christ,-and he was among the very first who put forth his hand to the breaking up the American wilderness. For this purpose did he But it forms a still more striking part of set himself down to the acquirement of a the example of Paul, that while he did as harsh and barbarous language; and he bemuch toward the extension of the Chris-came qualified to confer with savages; and tian faith, as if the whole success of the he grappled for years with their untractacause depended upon his doing,--he prayed ble humours; and he collected these wanas much, and as fervently for this object, as derers into villages; and while other reif all his doings were of no consequence. formers have ennobled their names by the A fine testimony to the supremacy of God, formation of a new set of public laws, did from the man, who, in labours was more he take upon him the far more arduous task abundant than any that ever come after of creating for his untamed Indians, a new him, that he counted all as nothing, unless set of domestic habits; and such was the God would interfere to put his blessings power of his influence that he carried his upon all, and to give his efficacy to all! He christianizing system into the very bosom who looked so busy, and whose hand was of their families; and he spread art, and 80 constantly engaged, in the work that learning, and civilization amongst them; was before him, looked for all his success and to his visible labours among his people to that help which cometh from the sanc- he added the labours of the closet; and he tuary of God. There was his eye directed. translated the whole Bible into their tongue; Thence alone did he expect a blessing upon and he set up a regular provision for the his endeavours. He wrought, and that with education of their children; and lest the diligence too, because God bade him; but spectator who saw his fourteen towns risen he also prayed, and that with equal dili- as by enchantment in the desert, and peogence, because God had revealed to him, pled by the rudest of his tribes, should ask that plant as he may, and water as he may, in vain for the mighty power by which God alone giveth the increase. He did ho- such wondrous things had been brought to mage to the will of God, by the labours of pass,-this venerable priest left his testithe ever-working minister,--and he did ho-mony behind him; and neither overlooking mage to the power of God, by the devotions the agency of God, nor the agency of man of the ever-praying minister. He did not as the instrument of God, he tells us in the say, what signifies my working, for God one memorable sentence written by him R self at the end of his Indian grammar, that | fitness to rest on the Apostle for making "prayers and pains through faith in Christ Jesus can do any thing." more believers. It was a kind of creative or accumulating process. After he had travelled in birth with his new converts till Christ was formed in them--this was the use he put them to. It is an expedient which harmonizes with the methods of Pro The last inference we shall draw from this topic, is the duty and importance of prayer among Christians, for the success of the ministry of the Gospel. Paul had a high sense of the efficacy of prayer. Not ac-vidence and the will of God, who orders incording to that refined view of it, which, making all its influence to consist in its improving and moralizing effect upon the mind, fritters down to nothing the plain import and significancy of this ordinance. With him it was a matter of asking and of receiving. And just as when in pursuit of some earthly benefit which is at the giving of another, you think yourselves surer of your object the more you multiply the number of askers and the number of applications--in this very way did he, if we may be allowed the expression, contrive to strengthen and extend his interest in the court of heaven. He craved the intercession of his people. There were many believers formed under his ministry, and each of these could bring the prayer of faith to bear upon the counsels of God, and bring down a larger portion of strength and of tercessions, and on the very principle too, that he willeth all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. The intercession of christians, who are already formed, is the leaven which is to leaven the whole earth with Christianity. It is one of the destined instruments in the hand of God for hastening the glory of the latter days. Take the world at large, and the doctrine of intercession, as an engine of mighty power, is derided as one of the reveries of fanaticism. This is a subject on which the men of the world are in a deep slumber; but there are watchmen who never hold their peace day nor night, and to them God addresses these remarkable words, "Ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth." SERMON II. The mysterious Aspect of the Gospel to the Men of the World. "Then said I, Ah, Lord God! they say of me, IN parables, the lesson that is meant to be conveyed is to a certain degree shaded in obscurity. They are associated by the Psalmist with dark sayings-"I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings of old." We read in the New Testament of a parable leaving all the effect of an unexplained mystery upon the understanding of the general audience to which it was addressed; and the explanation of the parable given to a special few was to them the clearing up of a mystery. "It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but to them it is not given !" The prophets of old were often commissioned to address their countrymen under the guise of symbolical language. This threw a veil over the meaning of their communications; and though it was a veil of such transparency as could be seen through by those who looked earnestly and attentively, and with a humble desire to be taught in the will of God,-yet there was dimness enough to intercept all the moral, and all the significancy, from the minds of those who wanted principle to be in earnest; Doth he not speak parables ?"-Ezekiel xx. 49. They who wanted this concern and this principle, from them was taken away even that which they had. God at length ceased from his messages, and the Spirit of God ceased from his warnings. They who had the preparation of all this docility, to them more was given. Their honest desire after knowledge, was rewarded by the acquirement of it. They continued to look, and to enquire, and at length they were illuminated; and thus was fulfilled the saying of the Saviour, that "whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly,-but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." It is not difficult to conceive how the obscure intimations of Ezekiel would be taken by the careless and ungodly men of his generation. It is likely that even from the naked denunciations of vengeance they would have turned contemptuously away. And it is still more likely that they would refuse the impression of them, when offered to their notice, under a figurative disguise. It is not at all to be supposed that they would put forth any activity of mind in quest of that which they nauseated, and of that which, if ever they had found, they would have found to be utterly revolting to all their habits of impiety. They are the very last men we should expect to meet with at the work of a pains-taking search after the interpretation of these parables. Nay, they would gladly fasten upon the obscurity of them both as a circumstance of reproach against the prophet, and as an apology for their own indifference. And thus it is, that to be a teacher of parables might at length become a scoff and a by-word; and the prophet seems to have felt the force of it as an opprobrious designation, seems to be looking forward to the mixture of disdain and impatience with which he would be listened to, when God charged him with an allegorical communication to his countrymen, and he answered, "Ah, Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables?" and the Son; and the process of growing up unto Christ; and the habit of receiving out of his fulness, and of beholding with open face his glory, so as to be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord. We are not at present asking, if you feel the disgust with which unsubdued nature ever listens to these representations, or in what degree they are offensive to your taste, and painfully uncongenial with the whole style and habit of your literature. But we ask, if such terms and such phrases as have now been specified, do not spread before the eye of your mind an aspect of exceeding dimness over the preacher's demonstration? Does he not appear to you as if he wrapped himself up in the obscurity of a technical language, which you are utterly at a loss to comprehend? When the sermon in question is put by the side of some lesson of obvious morality, or some exposition of those principles which are recognized and acted upon in ordinary life, does it not look to you as if it was shrouded from common observation altogether; and that ere you Now the question we have to put is--Is could be initiated into the mystery of such there no similar plea of resistance ever pre-language and of such doctrine, you would ferred against the faithful messengers of need to describe a mighty and still untrodGod in the present day? It is true, that in den interval from all your present habits of our time there is no such thing as a man conception? And yet, what if it be indeed coming amongst you, charged with the ut- the very language and the very doctrine of terance of a direct and personal inspiration. | the New Testament?—if all the jargon that But it is the business of every minister truly is charged on the interpretation of the word to expound the record of inspiration; and be the actual word itself?-and if the is it not very possible that in so doing he preacher be faithfully conveying the mesmay be reproached, not for preaching para-sage of the Bible, at the very time that the bolically, but for preaching mysteriously? hearer is shielding himself from the impresHave you never heard of a sermon being sion of it by the saying, that he preacheth called mystical; and what shall we think mysteries? of it, if, in point of fact, this imputation falls most readily and most abundantly on the sermon that is most pervaded by the spirit, and most overrun with the phraseology of the New Testament? In that composition there are certain terms which recur incessantly, and which would therefore appear to represent certain very leading and prominent ideas. Now, whether are these ideas clearly and promptly suggested to your mind, by the utterance of terms? What are the general character and effect which in your eye is imparted to a sermon, when, throughout the whole of it, the words of the apostolic vocabulary are ever and anon obtruded upon your hearing-and the whole stress of the argument is made to lie on such matters as sanctification; and the atonement; and the blood of the everlasting covenant; and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who takes up his habitation in the soul of the believer; and salvation by grace; and the spirit of adoption poured forth on the heart, and filling it with all the peace and joy of a confident reconciliation; and the exercise of fellowship with the Father, But to keep the two parties at a still more hopeless distance from each other,-the message of such a preacher, incomprehensible as many of its terms and many of its particulars may be, evidently bears a something upon it that is fitted to alarm the fears, and utterly to thwart the strongest tendencies of nature. Let him be just a faithful expounder of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and let the blindness of the natural man be what it may, still there is scarcely a hearer who can fail to perceive, that, an terior to the reception of this Gospel, th preacher looks upon him as the enemy of God,-and strongly points at such a controversy between him and his maker, as can only be made up through an appointed Mediator-and requires of him such a faith as will transform his character, and as will shift the whole currency of his affections and desires and affirms the necessity of such a regeneration, as that all old things shall be done away, and all things shall become new;-and lets him know, that to be a Christian indeed he must die unto sense, he must be crucified unto the world, and, |