renouncing its charms and its predilections, | Now so long as the work of religious inmust learn to have his conversation in hea- struction can be upheld by such analogies ven, and to choose God as the strength of as these, so long as the relations of civil or his heart and his portion for evermore. All of domestic society can be employed to this flashes plainly and significantly enough, illustrate the relation between God and the through that veil of mysticism which ap-creatures whom he has formed,-so long pears to overspread the general doctrine of the preacher; and imparts a forbidding character to it in the eyes of those to whom we are alluding; and they will be glad of any pretence to shun a painful and a revolting contemplation; and they will complain of him on the very ground on which the Jews of old complained of Ezekiel, as a dealer in parables-and while much of their antipathy is founded upon his being so strict and so spiritual, and so unaccom-gested by the most ordinary doings and modating to the general tone of society, one of the charges which will be most frequently and most loudly preferred against him, is, that he is so very mysterious. In the prosecution of the following discourse, we shall endeavour in the first place to state shortly the ground on which the religion of the New Testament looks so mysterious a thing to the men of the world, and then conclude with a short practical remonstrance upon this subject. I. There are certain experiences of human life so oft repeated, and so familiar to all our recollections, that when we perceive, or think we perceive, an analogy between them and the matters of religion, then religion does not appear to us to be mysterious. There is not a more familiar exhibition in society than that of a servant who performs his allotted work, and who obtains his stipulated reward-and we are all servants, and one is our master, even God. There is nothing more common than that a son should acquit himself to the satisfaction of his parents,--and we are all the children of an universal parent, whom it is our part to please in all things. Even when that son falls under displeasure, and is either visited with compunction or made to receive the chastisement of his disobedience, there is nothing more common than to witness the relentings of an earthly father, and the readiness with which forgiveness is awarded on the repentance and sorrow of the offender, and we, in like manner, liable to err from the pure law of heaven, have surely a kind and indulgent Father to deal with. And, lastly, there is nothing more common than that the loyalty of a zealous and patriotic subject should be rewarded by the patronage, or at least by the protection of the civil magistrate, and that an act of transgression against the laws should be visited by an act of vengeance on the part of him who is a terror to evil-doers, while a praise to such as do well. And thus it is, too, that we are under a lawgiver in heaven who is able both to save and to destroy. as the recollections of daily experience can thus be applied to the method of the divine administration,-a vein of perspicuity will appear to run through the clear and rational exposition of him who has put all the mist and all the technicals of an obscure theology away from him. All his lessons will run in an easy and direct train. Nor do we see how it is possible to be bewildered amongst such explanations, as are sug concerns of human society;-and did the preacher only confine himself to such doctrine, as that God rewards the upright, and punishes the rebellious, and upon the impulse of that compassion which belongs to him, takes again the penitent into acceptance, and in the great day of remuneration, will give unto every man according to his works,-did he only confine himself to truths so palpable, and build upon it applications so obvious, as just to urge us to the performance of duty by the promised reward, and deter us from the infraction of it by the severities of the threatened punishment, and call us to reformation by affectionately pleading with us the mercies of God, and warn us with all his force and all his fidelity, that should we persist in obstinate impenitence we shall be cut off from happiness for ever,-there might be something to terrify,-but there would at least be nothing to darken or to perplex us in these interpretations-nothing that would not meet common intelligence, and be helped forward by all the analogies of common observation, and should this therefore prove the great burden of the preacher's demonstration, we should be the last to reproach him, as a dealer in parables, or as a dealer in mysteries. To attach us the more to this rational style of preaching, we cannot but perceive that it obtains a kind of experimental countenance from the actual distinctions of character which are realized in the peopled world around us. Can any thing be more evident than that there is a line of separation between the sensual and the temperate, between the selfish and the disinterested, between the sordid and the honourable; or if you require a distinction more strictly religious, between the profane and the decent keeper of all the ordinances? Do not the former do, what, in the matter of it, is contrary to the law of God, and the latter do, what, in the matter of it, is agreeable to that law? Here then at once we witness the two grand divisions of human society, in a state of real and visible exemplification --and what more is necessary than just to the degree of their disobedience, are wretch- There can be no doubt as to the existence of such a class, and under another text, there could be no difficulty in finding out a spiritual application, by which to reach and to reprove them. But the matter suggested by the present text is, that if a minister of the present day should preach as the Apostles did before him,-if the great theme of his ministrations be Jesus Christ, and him crucified,-if the doctrine of the sermon be a faithful transcript of the doctrine of the analogies of common life which might have | Christianity, bearing evidence upon myself done for men of an untainted nature, but that I have a real part and interest in these which will not do for the men of this cor- things? rupt world, he faithfully unfolds that economy of redemption which God hath actually set up for the recovery of our degenerate species, it is then, that to a hearer still in darkness, the whole argument sounds as strangely and as obscurely, as if it were conveyed to him in an unknown language, -it is then, that the repulsion of his nature to the truth as it is in Jesus, finds a willing excuse in the utter mysteriousness of its articles, and its terms; and gladly does he put away from him the unwelcome mes-New Testament, there is one class, we sage, with the remark, that he who delivers it, is a speaker of parables, and there is no comprehending him. have every warrant for believing, from whom the word will not return unto him void,-and there is another class who will be the willing hearers, but not the obedient doers of the word: but there is still a third class, made up of men of cultivated literature, and men of polished and respectable society, and men of a firm secular intelligence in all the ordinary matters of business, who, at the same time, possessing no sympathies whatever with the true spirit and design of Christianity, are exceedingly shut up, in all the avenues both of their heart and understanding, against the peculiar teaching of the gospel. Like the hearers of Ezekiel, they feel an impression of mysteriousness. There is a certain want of adjustment between the truth as it is in Jesus, and the prevailing style of their conceptions. All their views of human life, and all the lessons they may have gathered from the school of civil or classical morality, and all their preferences for what they count the clearness and the rationality of legal preaching, and all the predilections they have gotten in its favour, from the most familiar analogies in human society,-all these, coupled with their utter blindness to the magnitude of that guilt which they have incurred under the judgment of a spiritual law, enter as so many elements of dislike in their hearts, towards the whole tone and character of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. And they go to envelope the subject in such a shroud of mysticism to their eyes, that many of the preachers of the gospel are, by them, resisted on the same plea with the prophet of old, to whom his contemptuous countrymen meant to attach the ridicule and the ignominy of a proverb, when they said, he is a dealer in parables. It will readily occur as an observation upon all that has been delivered, that by the great majority of hearers, this imputation of mysteriousness is never preferred, that in fact, they are most habituated to this style of preaching, and that they recognise the very thing which they value most, and are best acquainted with, when they hear a sermon replete with the doctrine, and abounding in the terms, and uttered in the cadence of orthodoxy. Of this we are perfectly aware. The point to carry with the great bulk of hearers is, not to conquer their disgust at the form of sound words, but to conquer their resistance to the power of them; to alarm them by the consideration, that the influence of the lesson is altogether a distinct matter from the pleasantness of the song,-that their ready and delighted acquiescence in the preaching of the faith, may consist with a total want of obedience to the faith, and that with all the love they bear to the phraseology of the gospel, and all their preference for its ministers, and all their attendance upon its sacraments, the kingdom of God, however much it may have come to them in word, may not at all have come to them in power. This is a distinct error from the one we have been combating,-a weed which grows abundantly in another quarter of the field altogether, a perverseness of mind, more deceitful than the other, and perhaps still more unmanageable, and against which the faithful minister has to set himself amongst that numerous class of professors, who like to hear of the faith, but never ap: ply a single practical test to the question, Am I in the faith? who like to hear of regeneration, but never put the question, Am We mistake the matter, if we think that I really regenerated? who like to hear that the offence of the cross has yet ceased from without Christ they can do nothing, but the land. We mistake it, if we think that may be enabled to do all things through the persecution of contempt, a species of him strengthening them, but never enter into persecution more appalling to some minds the important personal inquiry, Is he really than even direct and personal violence, is strengthening me, and am I, by my actual not still the appointed trial of all who would victory over the world, and my actual pro-live godly, and of all who would expound gress in the accomplishments of personal zealously and honestly the doctrine of Christ Jesus our Lord. We utterly mis- works, conform himself unto that doctrine the in 1 circumstances-through which you have all | substantial importance, why put them away to pass-we never saw the man who could from you now? You will recur to them maintain a stability, and a hope, from the then; and for what? that you may get the sense of his own righteousness; but who, forgiveness of your sins. But there is a if leaning on the righteousness of Christ, something else you must get, ere you can could mix a peace and an elevation with obtain an entrance into peace or glory. his severest agonies. We never saw the You must get the renovation of that nature, expiring mortal who could look with an un- which is so deeply tainted at this moment daunted eye on God as his lawgiver; but with the guilt of ingratitude and forgetfuloften has all its languor been lighted up ness towards God. This must be gone with joy at the name of Christ as his Sa- through ere you die; and say if a change so viour. We never saw the dying acquaint- mighty should be wantonly postponed to ance, who upon the retrospect of his virtues the hour of dying ?-when all your refusals and of his doings, could prop the tranquilli- of the gospel have hardened and darkened ty of his spirit on the expectation of a legal the mind against it; when a demonstration reward. O no! this is not the element of the Spirit then, is surely not to be counted which sustains the tranquillity of death- on, as the return that you will experience for beds. It is the hope of forgiveness. It is a resisting all his intimations now; when the believing sense of the efficacy of the atone-effects of the alienation of a whole life, both ment. It is the prayer of faith, offered up in the name of him who is the captain of all our salvation. It is a dependence on that power which can alone impart a meetness for the inheritance of the saints, and present the spirit holy, and unreproveable, and unblamable, in the sight of God, Now, what we have to urge is, that if these be the topics, which, on the last half hour of your life, are the only ones that will possess, in your judgment, any value or in extinguishing the light of your conscience, and in riveting your distaste for holiness, will be accumulated into such a barrier in the way of your return to God, as stamps upon death-bed conversions, a grievous unlikelihood, and should giye an imperious force to the call of "Today," "while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts, seeing that now is your accepted time, and now is your day of salvation." SERMON III. The Preparation necessary for Understanding the Mysteries of the Gospel. "He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that he hath."-Matthew xiii. 11, 12. recting those who feel the mysteriousness of these truths, and long for light to arise in the midst of it ;-shall address ourselves to those who have an honest anxiety after that truth, which is unto us salvation, but find the way to it beset with many doubts and many perplexities,-to those who are impressed with a general conviction on the side of Scripture, but in whose eyes a darkness impenetrable still broods over its pages,-to those who are haunted by a sense of the imperious necessity of religion, and at the same time cannot escape from the impression, that if it is any where to be found, it is to be found within the records of the Old and New Testament, but from whose heart in the reading of these records the veil still remains untaken away. It is of importance to mark the principle | of distribution on which it is given to some to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and it is not given to others. Both may at the outset be equally destitute of a clear understanding of these mysteries. But the former may have what the latter have not. With the former there may be a desire for explanation; with the latter there may be no such desire. The former may, in the earnest prosecution of this desire, be praying earnestly, and reading diligently, and striving laboriously, to do all that they know to be the will of God. With the latter, there may be neither the habit of prayer, nor the habit of inquiry, nor the habit of obedience. To the one class will be given what they have not. From the other class what they have shall be taken away. We In the further prosecution of this dishave already attempted to excite in the latter course, let us attempt, in the first place, to class a respectful attention to the truths of explain what it is that we ought to have, in the gospel, and shall now confine ourselves order to attain an understanding of the mys chiefly to the object of encouraging and di-teries of the gospel; and, in the second |