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place, how it is that in many cases these
mysteries are evolved upon the mind in a
clear and convincing manifestation.

be that of a darkness as helpless and as unattainable as can possibly be imagined, there still remains an obvious and practicable direction which you can be doing with in the mean time. You can persevere in the exercise of reading your Bible. There you are at the place of meeting etween the Spirit of God and your own spirit. You may have to wait, as if at the pool of Siloam; but the many calls of the Bible to wait upon God, to wait upon him with patience, to wait and to be of good courage, all prove that this waiting is a frequent and a familiar part of that process by which a sinner finds his way out of darkness into the marvellous light of the gospel.

I. First, then, we ought to have an honest desire after light; and if we have this desire, it will not remain unproductive. There is a connexion repeatedly announced to us in Scripture between desire upon this subject, and its accomplishment. He that willeth to do the will of God shall know of my doctrine. He who hungereth and thirsteth shall be filled. He who lacketh wisdom and is desirous of obtaining it, let him vent his desire in prayer, and if it be the prayer of confidence in God, his desire shall be given him. There are thousands to whom the Bible is a sealed book, and who are satis- And we have also adverted already, fied that it should remain so, who share in though in a very general way, to the difthe impetuous contempt of the Pharisees ference in point of result between the active against a doctrine to which they are alto- inquiries of a man who looks forward to gether blind, who have no understanding of the acquisition of saving truth as the natural the matter, and no wish that it should be and necessary termination of his inquiries, otherwise, and unto them it will not be and of a man who mingles with every pergiven to know the mysteries of the king-sonal attempt after this object, the exercise dom of heaven. They have not, and from of prayer, and a reverential sense of his them therefore shall be taken away even dependence on God. The latter is just as that which they have. There are others, active, and just as inquisitive as the former. again, who have an ardent and unquencha- The difference between them does not lie ble thirst after the mysteries of the gospel; in the one putting forth diligence without who, like the prophet in the apocalypse, a feeling of dependence, and the other feelweep much because the book is not opened ing dependence, without a putting forth of to them; who complain of darkness, like diligence. He who is in the right path tothe Apostles of old when they expostulated wards the attainment of light, combines with their Teacher because he spoke in both these properties. parables, and, like them, who go to him with their requests for an explanation. These shall find that what they cannot do for themselves, the Lion of the tribe of Judah will do for them. He will prevail to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof. There is something they already have, even an honest wish to be illuminated, and to this more will be given. They are awake to the disirableness, they are awake to the necessity of a revelation, which they have not yet gotten, and to them belongs the promise of, Awake, O sinner, and Christ shall give thee light.

Secondly, We ought to have a habit of prayer conjoined with a habit of inquiry; and to this more will be given. We have already adverted to the circumstance, that it is in the Bible, and not out of the Bible, where this light is to be met with. It is by the Spirit of God, shining upon the word of God, that his truth is reflected with clearness upon the soul. It is by his operation that the characters of this book are made to stand as visibly out to the eye of the understanding, as they do to the eye of the body; and therefore it is evident that it is not in the act of looking away from the written revelation, but in the act of looking towards it, that the wished-for illumination will at length come into the mind of an inquirer. Let your present condition then

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It is through the avenues of a desirous heart and of an exercised understanding, and of sustained attention, and of faculties in quest of truth, and labouring after the possession of it, that God sends into the mind his promised manifestations. All this exercise on the one hand, without such an acknowledgement of him as leads to prayer, will be productive of nothing in the way of spiritual discernment. And prayer, without this exercise, is the mere form and mockery of an acknowledgement. He who calls upon us to hearken diligently, when he addresses us by a living voice, does in effect call upon us to read and to ponder diligently when he addresses us by a written message. To ask truth of God, while we neglect to do for this object what he bids us, is in fact not to recognize God, but to insult him. It is to hold out the appearance of presenting ourselves before him, while we are not doing it at the place of meeting, which he has assigned for us. It is to address an imaginary Being, whom we have invested with a character of our own conception, and not the Being who bids us search his Scriptures, and incline unto his testimonies, and stir ourselves up that we may lay hold of him. Such prayer is utterance, and nothing more. all the substantial characters of prayer. It may amount to the seeking of those who

It wants

shall not be able to enter the strait gate. It falls short of the striving of those who take the kingdom of heaven by force, and of whom that kingdom suffereth violence.

crisy. If he both read and pray, it is far more likely that he will be brought unto the condition of a man being justified through faith in Christ, than that he will rest his He who without prayer looks confidently hopes before God in the mere exercise of forward to success as the fruit of his own reading. If he both do and pray, it is far investigations, is not walking humbly with more likely that he will come to be estaGod. If he were humble he would pray. blished in the righteousness of Christ, as But whether is he the more humble, who the foundation of all his trust, than that he joins with a habit of prayer all those ac- will rest upon his own righteousness. For companying circumstances which God hath a man to give up sin at the outset, is just to prescribed, or he who, in neglect of these do what God wills him at the outset. For a circumstances, ventures himself into his man at the commencement of his inquiries, presence in the language of supplication? to be strenuous in the relinquishment of all There may be the show of humility in con- that he knows to be evil, is just to enter on fiding the whole cause of our spiritual and the path of approach towards Christ, in the saving illumination to the habit of praying very way that Christ desires him. He who for it to God. But if God himself tells us, cometh unto me must forsake all. For a that we must read, and seek, and meditate, man to put forth an immediate hand to the then it is no longer humility to keep by the doing of the commandments, while he is solitary exercise of praying. It is, in fact, groping his way towards a firm basis on keeping pertinaciously by our own way, which he might rear his security before heedless of his will and his way altogether. God, is not to deviate or diverge from the It is approaching God in the pride of our Saviour. He may do it with an eye of most own understanding. It is detaching from intense earnestness towards the Saviour,— the whole work of seeing after him some and while the artificial interpreter of Christ's of those component parts which he himself doctrine holds him to be wrong, Christ himhath recommended. In the very act of self may recognize him to be one of those making prayer stand singly out as alone who keep his sayings, and to whom thereinstrument of success, we are in fact draw-fore he stands pledged to manifest himself. ing the life and the spirit out of prayer The man in fact by strenuously doing, is itself; and causing it to wither into a thing just the more significantly and the more of no power and no significancy in the sight energetically praying. He is adding one inof God. It is not the prayer of acknow-gredient to the business of seeking, without ledgement, unless it comes from him who acknowledges the will of God in other things as well as in prayer. It is not the prayer of submission unless it comes from the heart of a man who manifests a principle of submission in all things.

Thirdly, We ought to do all that we know to be God's will; and to this habit of humble earnest desirous reformation, more will be given.

which the other ingredient would be in God's sight an abomination. He is struggling against all regard to iniquity in his heart, seeing that if he have this regard God will not hear him. To say, that it is dangerous to tell a man in these circumstances to do, lest he rest in his doings, and fall short of the Saviour, is to say, that it would be dangerous to place a man on the road to his wished-for home, lest, when he has got upon the road, he should stand still and be satisfied. The more, in fact, that the man's conscience is exercised and enlightened (and what more fitted than wilful sin to deafen the voice of conscience altogether?) the less will it let him alone, and the more will it urge him onward to that righteousness which is the only one commensurate to God's law, and in which alone the holy and inflexible God can look upon him with complacency. Let

We trust that what has been said will prepare you for the reception of another advice besides that of reading or praying for the attainment of that manifestation which you are in quest of,-and that is, doing. There is an alarm raised in many a heart at the very suggestion of doing for an inquirer, lest he should be misled as to the ground of his justification; lest among the multitude or the activity of his works, he should miss the truth, that a man is ac-him humbly betake himself, then, to the cepted, not through the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ; lest by every one performance of duty, he should just be adding another stone to the fabric of a delusive confidence, and presumptuously try to force his own way to heaven, without the recognition of the gospel or any of its peculiarities. Now, doing stands precisely in the same relation to prayer that reading does. Without the one or the other it is the prayer either of presumption or hypo

prescribed path of reading, and prayer, and obvious reformation,-and let us see if there do not evolve upon his mind, in the prosecution of it, the worthlessness of all that man can do for his meritorious acceptance with the Lawgiver-and the deep ungodliness of character which adheres to him-and the suitableness of Christ's atonement to all his felt necessities, and all his moral aspirations--and the need in which he stands of a regenerating influence, to make him a

willing and a spiritual subject of God. Let to be found of those who seek after it. The us see whether, though the light which he knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, at length receives be marvellous, the way is which is life everlasting, is a knowledge not plain which leads to it; and whether open and acquirable to all. And, on the though nature be compassed about with a day of judgment, there will not be found a darkness which no power of nature can single instance of a man condemned bedissipate, there is not a clear and obvious cause of unbelief, who sought to the utterprocedure, by the steps of which the most most of his opportunities; and evinced the alienated of her children may be carried on-earnestness of his desire after peace with wards to all the manifestation of the king- God, by doing all that he might have done, dom of grace, and to the discernment of all and by being all that he might have been. its mysteries. Be assured, then, that it will be for want Though to the natural eye, then, the doc-of seeking, if you do not find. It will trine of Christ be not plain, the way is plain by which we arrive at it. Though, ere we see the things of Christ, the Spirit must take of them and show them unto us,-yet this Spirit deals out such admonitions to all, that, if we follow them, he will not cease to enlarge, and to extend his teaching, till we have obtained a saving illumination. He is given to those who obey him. He abandons those who resist him. When conscience tells us to read, and to pray, and to reform, it is he who is prompting this faculty. It is he who is sending through this organ, the whispers of his own voice to the ear of the inner man. If we go along with the movement, he will follow it up by other movements. He will visit him who is the willing subject of his first influences by higher demonstrations. He will carry forward his own work in the heart of that man, who, while acting upon the suggestions of his own moral sense, is in fact acting in conformity to the warnings of this kind and faithful monitor. So that the Holy Spirit will connect his very first impulses on the mind of that inquirer, who, under the reign of earnestness, has set himself to read his Bible, and to knock with importunity at the door of heaven, and to forsake the evil of his ways, and to turn him to the practice of all that he knows to be right,-the Spirit will connect these incipient measures of a seeker after Zion, with the acquirement of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ.

Let it not be said, then, that because the doctrine of Christ is shrouded in mystery to the general eye of the world, it is such a mystery as renders it inaccessible to the men of the world. Even to them does the trumpet of invitation blow a certain sound. They may not yet see the arcana of the temple, but they may see the road which leads to the temple. If they are never to obtain admission there, it is not because they cannot, but because they will not, come to it. "Ye will not come to me," says the Saviour, "that ye might have life," Reading, and prayer, and reformation, these are all obvious things; and it is the neglect of these obvious things which involves them in the guilt and the ruin of those who neglect the great salvation. This salvation is

be for want of learning, if you are not taught. It will be for want of obedience to the movements of your own conscience, if the Holy Ghost, who prompts and who stimulates the conscience to all its movements, be not poured upon you, in one large and convincing manifestation. It may still be the day of small things with you-a day despised by the accomplished adepts of a systematic and articled theology. But God will not despise it. He will not leave your longings for ever unsatisfied. He will not keep you standing always at the threshold of vain desires and abortive endeavours. That faith, which is the gift of God, you have already attained, in a degree, if you have obtained a general conviction of the importance and the reality of the whole matter. He will increase that faith. Act up to the light that you have gotten by reading earnestly, and praying importunately, and striving laboriously, and to you more will be given. You will at length obtain a clear and satisfying impression of the things of God, and the things of salvation. Christ will be recognised in all his power and in all his preciousness. You will know what it is to be established upon him. The natural legality of your hearts will give way to the pure doctrine of acceptance with God, through faith in the blood of a crucified Saviour. The sanctifying influence of such a faith will not merely be talked of in word, but be experienced in power; and you will evince that you are God's workmanship in Christ Jesus, by your abounding in all those fruits of righteousness which are through him, to the praise and glory of the Father.

II. We shall now attempt to explain, how it is that the mysteries of the gospel are, in many cases, evolved upon the mind in a clear and convincing manifestation.

And here let it be distinctly understood, that the way in many cases may be very far from the way in all cases. The experience of converts is exceedingly various,nor do we know a more frequent, and at the same time a more groundless cause of anxiety, than that by which the mind of an inquirer is often harassed, when he attempts to realize the very process by which

another has been called out of darkness to | rounded as we are by the gifts of nature the marvellous light of the gospel.

fended Lawgiver offer to make it the subject of any communication, it is our part humbly to listen and implicitly to follow it.

and of providence, all of which are his, the Referring, then, to those grounds of mys- giver is meanwhile forgotten, and, amid the teriousness which we have already specified enjoyments of his bounty, we live without in a former discourse,-God may so mani- him in the world. If it indeed be true, that fest himself to the mind of an inquirer, as it is his sun which lights us on our path, and to convince him, that all those analogies of his earth on which we tread so firmly, and common life which are taken from the re- his air which circulates a freshness around lation of a servant to his master, or of a our dwellings, and his rain which produces son to his father, or of a subject to his sove- all the luxuriance that is spread around us, reign, utterly fail in the case of man, as he and drops upon every field the smiling prois by nature, in relation to his God. A ser-mise of abundance for all the wants of his vant may discharge all his obligations; a dependent children,-if all this be true, can son may acquit himself of all his duties, or it at the same time be right, that this allmay, with his occasional failures, and his providing God should have so little a place occasional chastisements, still keep his in our remembrance? that the whole man place in the instinctive affection of his pa- should be otherwise engaged than with a rents; and a subject may persevere in un- sense of him, and the habitual exercise of seduced loyalty to the earthly government acknowledgment to him? that in fact the under which he lives. But the glaring and full play of his regards should be expended the demonstrable fact with regard to man, on the things which are formed, and through viewed as a creature, is, that the habit of the whole system of his conduct and his his heart is one continued habit of dislike affairs, there should be so utter a neglect of and resistance to the Creator who gave him him who formed them? Surely if this be birth. the true description of man, and the chaThe earthly master may have all those racter of his heart in reference to God, then services rendered to which he has a right, it is a case of too peculiar a nature to be and so be satisfied. The earthly father may illustrated by any of the analogies of human have all the devotedness, and all the attach-society. It must be taken up on its own ment from his family, which he can desire, grounds; and should the injured and ofand so be satisfied. The earthly sovereign may have all that allegiance from a loyal subject, who pays his taxes, and never transgresses his laws, which he expects or And here it is granted, that amongst the cares for, and so be satisfied. But go up- men who are utter strangers to this comward from them to the God who made us, munication, you meet with the better and to the God who keeps us,-to the God in the worse; and that there is an obvious whom we live, and move, and have our line of distinction which marks off the base being,-to the God whose care and whose and the worthless amongst them, from those presence are ever surrounding us, who, of them who are the valuable and the acfrom morning to night, and from night complished members of society. And yet to morning, watches over us, and tends us do we aver that one may step over that line while we sleep, and guides us in our waking and not be nearer than he was to God,moments, and follows us to the business of that, between the men on either side of it, the world, and brings us back in safety to and Him who created them, there lies an our homes, and never for a single instant untrodden gulf of separation,-that, with of time withdraws from us the superintend- all the justice which rules their transacence of an eye that never slumbers, and oftions, and all the honour which animates a hand that is never weary. Now, all we require is a fair estimate of the claims of such a God. Does he ask too much, when he asks the affections of a heart that receives its every beat, and its every movement, from the impulse of his power? Does he ask too much, when he asks the devoted-tion of humanity, there is one virtue, which, ness of a life, which owes its every hour and its every moment to him, whose right hand preserves us continually? Has he no right to complain, when he knocks at the door of our hearts, and trying to possess himself of the love and the confidence of his own creatures, he finds that all their thoughts, and all their pursuits, and all likings, are utterly away from him? there no truth, and no justice in the charge which he prefers against us,-when, sur

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their bosoms, and all the compassion which warms their hearts, and streams forth either in tears of pity, or in acts of kindness, upon the miserable,-with all these virtues which they do have, and which serve both to bless and to adorn the condi

prior to the reception and the influence of the gospel of Christ, they most assuredly do not have,-they are utterly devoid of godliness. They have no desire, and no inclination towards God. There may be the dread of him, and the occasional remembrance of him; but there is no affection for him.

This is the charge which we carry round amongst all the sons and daughters of Adam, who have not submitted themselves

to the only name that is given under hea- | the lofty standard of a law which offers
ven whereby men can be saved. We are to subordinate to the will of God, not
not denying that the persons of some of merely the whole habit of his outward his-
them are dignified by the more respectable tory, but also the whole habit of his inward
attributes of character; and that, from the affections, both the disease and the remedy
persons of others of them, there are beau- are alike unknown to him. His character
teously reflected the more amiable and en- may be fair and respectable in the eyes of
dearing attributes of character. But we men; but it will not carry upon it one
affirm, that with all these random varieties feature of that spirituality and holiness, and
of moral exhibition which are to be found- relish for those exercises that have God for
the principle of loyalty to God has lost their immediate object, which assimilate
the hold of a presiding influence over all men to angels, and make them meet for
the children of our degraded and undone the joys of eternity. His morality will be
nature. We ask you to collect all the scat- the morality of life, and his virtues will be
tered remnants of what is great, and of the virtues of the world; and all the mys-
what is graceful in accomplishments that tery of a parable, or of a dark saying will
may have survived the fall of our first pa- appear to hang over the terms and the ex-
rents; and we pronounce, of the whole as-planations of that gospel, against the light of
semblage, that they go not to alleviate, by which, the god of this world blindeth the
one iota, the burden of that controversy minds of those who believe not.
which lies between God and their posterity, Let us therefore reflect that the principle
-that throughout all the ranks and diver- on which the peculiarities of the gospel look
sities of character which prevail in the so mysterious, is just the feeling which na-
world, there is one pervading affection of ture has of its own sufficiency; and, that
enmity to him; that the man of talents for-you may renounce this delusive feeling
gets that he has nothing which he did not altogether, we ask you to think, how totally
receive, and so, courting by some lofty en-destitute you are of that whic
God chiefly
terprize of mind, the gaze of this world's requires of you. He requires your heart, and
admiration, he renounces his God, and we venture to say of every man amongst you,
makes an idol of his fame,-that the man who has heretofore lived in neglect of the
of ambition feels not how subordinate he is great salvation, that his heart, with all its ob-
to the might and the majesty of his Cre-jects and affections, is away from God,-that
ator, but turning away all his reverence it is not a sense of obligation to him which
from him, falls down to the idol of power, forms the habitual and the presiding in-
that the man of avarice withdraws all his fluence of its movements,-that therefore
trust from the living God, and, embarking every day and every hour of your history
all his desire in the pursuit of riches, and in the world, accumulates upon you the
all his security in the possession of them, guilt of a disobedience of a far deeper and
he makes an idol of wealth,-that, descend- more offensive character than even the
ing from these to the average and the every-disobedience of your more notorious and
day members of our world's population, we
see each walking after the counsel of his
own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes,
with every wish directed to the objects of
time, and every hope bounded by its anti-
cipations: and, amid all the love they bear
to their families, and all the diligence they
give to their business, and all the homage
of praise and attachment they obtain from
their friends, are they so surrounded by the
influences of what is seen and what is sen-
sible, that the invisible God is scarcely ever
hought of, and his character not at all
dwelt on with delight, and his will never
admitted to an habitual and a practical as-
cendency over their conduct, so as to make
it true of all, and of every one of us, that
there is none who understandeth, and none
who seeketh after God.

Now, if a man do not see this case made out against himself in all its enormity, he will feel that the man who talks of it, and who proposes the gospel application to it, talketh mysteriously. If the Spirit have not convinced him of sin, and he have not learned to submit his character to

external violations. There is ever with
you, lying folded in the recesses of your
bosom, and pervading the whole system
both of your desires and your doings, that
which gives to sin all its turpitude, and all
its moral hideousness in the sight of God.
There is a rooted preference of the creature
to the Creator. There is a full desire
after the gift, and a listless ingratitude to-
wards the giver. There is an utter devoted-
ness, in one shape or other, to the world
that is to be burnt up,-and an utter forget-
fulness, amid all your forms, and all your
decencies, of him who endureth for ever.
There is that universal attribute of the car-
nal mind-enmity against God; and we
affirm that, with this distaste in your hearts
towards him, you, on every principle of a
spiritual and intelligent morality, are as
chargeable with rebellion against your
Maker, as if some apostate angel had been
your champion, and you warred with God,
under the waving standards of defiance,
It was to clear away the guilt of this mon-
strous iniquity that Christ died. It was to
make it possible for God, with his truth