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powerfully or so tenderly affected. And yet he may have hitherto evinced nothing more than the workings of a mere instinct, which springs spontaneously within him, and gives its own impulse to his words and his performances, without a sense of duty having any share in the matter, or without the will prompting the individual by any such consideration, as, let me do this thing because I ought to do it.

when we learn the assurance that he will grant the heart's desire of those who will stir themselves up to lay hold of him,when we think that prayer is the natural expression of desire for an object which man cannot reach, but which God is both able and willing to confer upon him,--then do we see how the very existence of the love of gratitude may have had its pure and holy commencement, in such a habitude of Let us now conceive the moral sense to the will as has the essential character of be admitted to its share of influence over virtue engraven upon it. "Keep yourthis proceeding. Let it be consulted on the selves," says the Apostle, "in the love of question of what ought to be felt, and what | God, by praying in the Holy Ghost." ought to be done, by one being, when another evinces the love of kindness towards him. A mere instinct may, in point of fact, draw out a return of love and of service back again. But it is the province of the moral sense to pronounce on the point of obligation, and we speak its universal suggestion, when we say, that the love of gratitude ought to be felt, and the services of gratitude ought to be rendered.

But, again, there are certain doings of the mind, over which the will has a control, and by which the affection of gratitude may either be brought into being, or be sustained in lively and persevering exercise. At the bidding of the will, I can think of one topic, rather than of another. I can transfer my mind to any given object of contemplation. I can keep that object steadily in view, and make an effort to do so, Now, to make this decision of the moral when placed in such circumstances as might sense practically effectual, and, indeed, to lead me to distraction or forgetfulness. And make the moral sense have any thing to do it is in this way that moral praise or moral with this question at all, the feeling of grati- responsibility, may be attached to the love tude must, in some way or other, be de-of gratitude. Ere the heart can be moved pendent either for its existence, or its by this affection to another, there must be growth, or its continuance, upon the will; in the mind a certain appropriate object, and the same will must also have a com- that is fitted to call it, and to keep it in exmand over the services of gratitude. The istence,-and that object is the love of kindmoral sense, in fact, never interposes withness which the other bears me. I may enany dictate, or with any declaration about the feelings, or the conduct of man, unless in so far as the will of man has an influence, and a power of regulation over them. It never makes the rate of the circulation of the blood a question of duty, because this is altogether an involuntary movement. And it never would have offered any authoritative intimation, about the way in which gratitude ought to be felt, or ought to be expressed, unless the will had had some kind of presiding sovereignty over both the degree and the workings of this affection.

deavour, and I may succeed in the endeavour, to hold this love of kindness in daily and perpetual remembrance. If the will have to do with the exercises of thought and memory, then the will may be responsible for the gratitude that would spring in my bosom, did I only think of the love of God, and that would continue with me in the shape of an habitual affection, did I only keep that love in habitual remembrance. It is thus that the forgetfulness of God is chargeable with criminality, and it will appear a righteous thing in the day of judg ment, when they, who are thus forgetful of The first way, then, in which the will him, shall be turned into hell. It is this may have to do with the love of gratitude, which arms, with such a moral and condemis by the putting forth of a desire for the pos-natory force, the expostulation he holds with session of it. It may long to realize this moral Israel, "that Israel doth not know, that my accomplishment. It may hunger and thirst after this branch of righteousness. Even though it has not any such power under its command as would enable it to fulfil such a volition, the volition itself has, upon it, the stamp and the character of virtue. The man who habitually wills to have in his heart a love of gratitude towards God, is a man at least of holy desires, if not of holy attainments. And, when we consider that a way has actually been established, in which the desire may be followed up by the attainment, when we read of the promise given to those who seek after God,

people do not consider." It is because we like not to retain God in our knowledge, that our minds become reprobate ;-and, on the other hand, it is by a continuous effort of my will, towards the thought of him, that I forget not his benefits. It is by the strenuousness of a voluntary act, that I connect the idea of an unseen benefactor, with all the blessings of my present lot, and all the anticipations of my futurity. It is by a combat with the most urgent propensities of nature, that I am ever looking beyond this surrounding materialism, and setting God and his love before me all the day long.

There is no virtue, it is allowed, without in life and in exercise, by such habits of voluntary exertion; but this is the very thought as are of voluntary cultivation; and character which runs throughout the whole it nobly sustains an aspect of moral righwork and exercise of faith. To keep him-teousness onwards to the final result of its self in the love of God is a habit, with the operation on the character, by setting him maintenance of which the will of man has who is under its power, on a career of obemost essentially to do, because it is at his dience to God, and introducing him to an will that he keeps himself in the thought of arduous contest of principle, with all the God's love towards him. To bid away from influences of sense and of the world. me such intrusions of sense, and of time, If, to render an affection virtuous, the as would shut God out of my recollections; will acting under a sense of duty, should be to keep alive the impression of him in the concerned either in producing or in permidst of bustle, and company, and worldly petuating it; then the love of moral esteem avocations; to recall the thought of him and coming into the heart, as an involutary of his kindness, under crosses, and vexa-sensation, may, in certain circumstances, tions, and annoyances; to be still, and know have as little of the character of virtue as that he is God, even when beset with tempt- the love of gratitude. In this respect, both tations to impatience and discontent; never to these affections are upon a footing with loose sight of him as merciful and gracious; each other; and the first ought not to and above all, never to let go my hold of that have been exalted at the expense of the segreat Propitiation, by which in every time of cond. That either be upheld within us in trouble, I have the privilege of access with our present state, there must, in fact, be the confidence to my reconciled Father; these are putting forth of the same voluntary control all so many acts of faith, but they are just over the thoughts and contemplations of such acts as the will bears a share, and a the understanding; the same active exerSovereignity, in the performance of. And, cise of faith; the same laborious resistance as they are the very acts which go to ali- to all those urgencies of sense which would ment and to sustain the love of gratitude expel from the mind the idea of an unseen within me, it may be seen, how an affection and spiritual object; the same remembrance which, in the first instance, may spring in- of God sustained by effort, and prayer, and voluntarily, and be therefore regarded as a meditation. mere instinct of nature, or as bearing upon it a complexion of selfishness, may, in another view, have upon it a complexion of deepest sacredness, and be rendered unto God in the shape of a duteous and devoted offering from a voluntary agent, and be, in fact, the laborious result of a most difficult, and persevering, and pains-taking habit of obedience.

II. We now feel ourselves in a condition to speak of the Gospel, in its free and gratuitous character; to propose its blessings as a gift; to hold out the pardon, and the strength, and all the other privileges which it proclaims to believers, as so many articles for their immediate acceptance; to make it known to men that they are not to delay their compliance with the overtures of And if this be true of the mere sense of mercy, till the disinterested love of God gratitude, it is still more obviously true of arises in their hearts; but that they have a the services of gratitude. "What shall I warrant for entering even now, into instant render unto the Lord for all his benefits?" reconciliation with God. Nor are we to is the genuine language of this affection. It dread the approach of any moral contamiseeks to make a gratifying return of service, nation, though when, after their eyes are and that, under the feeling that it ought to opened to the marvellous spectacle of a pleaddo so. Or, in other words, do we beholding, and offering, and beseeching God, holdthat it is the will of man, prompted by a sense of duty, which leads him on to the obedience of gratitude, and that the whole of this obedience is pervaded by the essential character of virtue. This is the love of God, that ye keep his commandments. This is the most gratifying return unto him, that ye do those things which are pleasing in his sight. And thus it is, that the love of gratitude may be vindicated in its character of moral worth, from its first commencement in the heart to its ultimate effect on the walk and conversation. It is originally distinct from selfishness in its object; and it derives a virtuousness at its very outset, from the aspirations of a soul bent on the acquirement of it, because bent on being what it ought to be; and it is sustained, both

ing out eternal life unto the guilty, through the propitiation which his own Son hath made for them, they should, from that moment, open their whole soul, to the influences of gratitude, and love the God who thus hath first loved them.

We conclude then with remarking, that the whole of this argument gives us another view of the importance of faith. We do not say all for it that we ought, when we say that by faith we are justified in the sight of God. By faith also our hearts are purified. It is in fact the primary and the presiding principle of regeneration. It brings the heart into contact with that influence by which the love of gratitude is awakened. The love of God to us, if it is not believed, will exert no more power over our affections

than if it were a nonentity. They are the preachers of faith, then, who alone deal out to their hearers, the elementary and pervading spirit of the Christian morality. And the men who have been stigmatized as the enemies of good works, are the very men who are most sedulously employed in depositing within you, that good seed which has its fruit unto holiness. We are far from asserting, that the agency of grace is not concerned in every step of that process, by which a sinner is conducted from the outset of his conversion to the state of being perfect, and complete in the whole will of God. But there is a harmony between the processes of grace and of nature; and in the same manner, as in human society, the actual conviction of a neighbour's good-will to me, takes the precedency in point of order of any returning movement of gratitude on my part; so, in the great concerns of our fellowship with God, my belief that he loves me, is an event prior and preparatory to the event of my loving him. So that the primary obstacle to the love of God is not the want of human gratitude, but the want of human faith.

ple to bear upon their hearers, which any one of us may exemplify upon the poorest, and by which both HOWARD and FRY have tried with success, to soften and to reclaim the most worthless of mankind.

This also suggests a practical direction to Christians, for keeping themselves in the love of God. They must keep themselves in the habit, and in the exercise of faith They must hold fast that conviction in their minds, the presence of which is indispensa ble to the keeping of that affection in their hearts. This is one of the methods recommended by the Apostle Jude, when he tells his disciples to build themselves up on their most holy faith. This direction to you is both intelligible and practicable. Keep in view the truths which you have learned. Cherish that belief of them which you already possess. Recall them to your thoughts, and, in general, they will not come alone, but they will come accompanied by their own power, and their own evidence. You may as well think of maintaining a steadfast attachment to your friend, after you have expunged from your memory all the demonstrations of kindness The reason why man is not excited to he ever bestowed upon you, as think of the love of God by the revelation of God's keeping your heart in the love of God, love to him, is just because he does not be- after the thoughts and contemplations of lieve that revelation. This is the barrier the gospel have fled from it. It is just by which lies between the guilty and their of holding these fast, and by building yourself fended Lawgiver. It is not the ingratitude up on their firm certainty, that you preserve of man, but the incredulity of man, that this affection. Any man, versant in the needs, in the first instance, to be overcome. matters of experimental religion, knows It is the sullenness, and the hardness, and well what it is when a blight and a barrenthe obstinacy of unbelief which stands as a ness come over the mind, and when, under gate of iron, between him and his enlarge- the power of such a visitation, it loses all senment. Could the kindness of God, in Christ sibility towards God. There is at that time Jesus, be seen by him, the softening of a a hiding of his countenance, and you lose kindness back again, would be felt by him. your hold of the manifestation of that love And let us cease to wonder, then, at the wherewith God loved the world, even when preachers of the gospel, when they lay upon he sent his only begotten Son into it, that belief all the stress of a fundamental opera- we might live through him. You will retion; when they lavish so much of their cover a right frame, when you recover your strength on the establishment of a principle, hold of this consideration. If you want to which is not only initial, but indispensable; recall the strayed affection to your heart-when they try so strenuously to charm that recall to your mind the departed object of into existence, without which all the ele- contemplation. If you want to reinstate ments of a spiritual obedience are in a state the principle of love in your bosom-reinof dormancy or of death;-when they la- state faith, and it will work by love. It is bour at the only practicable way by which got at through the medium of believing, and the heart of a sinner can be touched, and trusting;-nor do we know a more sumattracted towards God;-when they try somary, and, at the same time, a more likely repeatedly to hold and to fasten him by direction for living a life of holy and heathat link which God himself hath put into venly affection, than that you should live a their hands and bring the mighty princi-life of faith.

SERMON XI.

The Affection of Moral Esteem towards God.

"One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple."-Psalm xxvii. 4.

In our last discourse we adverted to the gether, to the consideration that God is effect of a certain theological speculation looking with complacency upon me, I do about love, in darkening the freeness of the not feel touched and attracted by the beaugospel, and intercepting the direct influence ties of his character, when I look with the of its overtures and its calls on the mind of eye of contemplation towards him. I am an inquirer. Ere we can conceive the love without the most essential of all moral acof gratitude towards another, we must see complishments in myself, if I am without in him the love of kindness towards us; and the esteem of moral accomplishments in thus, by those who have failed to distinguish another; and if my heart be of such a conbetween a love of the benefit, and a love of stitution that nothing in the character of the benefactor, has the virtue of gratitude God can draw my admiration, or my rebeen resolved into the love of ourselves. gard, to him-then, though admitted within And they have thought that there must the portals of the city which hath foundasurely be a purer affection than this, to tions, and removed from the torments of mark the outset of the great transition from hell, I am utterly unfit for the joys and the sin unto righteousness; and the one they exercises of heaven. I may spend an eterhave specified is the disinterested love of nity of exemption from pain, but without God. They have given to this last affection one rapture of positive felicity to brighten a place so early, as to distract the attention it. Heaven, in fact, would be a wilderness of an inquirer from that which is primary. to my heart; and, in the midst of its acThe invitation of "come and buy without claiming throng would I droop, and be in money, and without price," is not heard by heaviness under a sense of perpetual dissothe sinner along with the exaction of loving God for himself,-of loving him on account of his excellences,-of loving him because he is lovely. Let us, therefore, try to ascertain whether even this love of moral esteem is not subordinate to the faith of the gospel; and whether it follows, that because this affection forms so indispensable a part of godliness, faith should, on that account, be deposed from the place of antecedency which belongs to it.

And here let it be most readily and most abundantly conceded, that we are not perfect and complete in the whole of God's will, till the love of moral esteem be in us, as well as the love of gratitude,-till that principle, of which, by nature, we are utterly destitute, be made to arise in our hearts, and to have there a thorough establishment, and operation,-till we love God, not merely on account of his love to our persons, but on acconnt of the glory, and the residing excellence, which meet the eye of the spiritual beholder, upon his own character. We are not preparing for heaven, we shall be utterly incapable of sharing in the noblest of its enjoyments,-we shall not feel ourselves surrounded by an element of congeniality in paradise, there will be no happiness for us, even in the neighbourhood of the throne of God, and with the moral lustre of the Godhead made visible to our eyes, if we are strangers to the emotion of loving God for himself,-if additional alto

lution.

And let this convince us of the mighty transition that must be described by the men of this world, ere they are meet for the other world of the spirits of just men made perfect. It is not speaking of this transition, in terms too great and too lofty, to say, that they must be born again, and made new creatures, and called out of darkness into a light that is marvellous. The truth is, that out of the pale of vital Christianity, there is not to be found among all the varieties of taste, and appetite, and sentimental admiration, any love for God as he is,-any relish for the holiness of his character, any echoing testimony, in the bosom of alienated man, to what is graceful, or to what is venerable in the character of the Deity. He may be feelingly alive to the beauties of what is seen, and what is sensible. The scenery of external nature may charm him. The sublimities of a surrounding materialism may kindle and dilate him with images of grandeur. Even the moralities of a fellow-creature may engage him; and these, with the works of genius, may fascinate him into an idolatrous veneration of human power, or of human virtue. But while he thus luxuriates and delights himself with the forms of derived excellence, there is no sensibility in his heart towards God. He rather prefers to keep by the things that are made, and, surrounded by them, to bury himself into a

ties to lay hold of him, catch an endearing view of the Deity, than his eye can by straining, penetrate its way through a darkened firmament, to the features of that material loveliness which lies before him, and

ere he can love it, or enjoy it, and tell us what the degree of his affection for the scenery would be, if instead of being lighted up by the peaceful approach of a summer morn, it were to blaze into sudden visibility, with all its cultivation and cottages, by the fires of a bursting volcano. Tell us, if all the glory and gracefulness of the landscape which had thus started into view, would charm the beholder for a moment, from the terrors of his coming destruction? Tell us, if it is possible for a sentient being to admit another thought in such circumstances as these, than the thought of his own preservation. O would not the sentiment of fear about himself, cast out every sentiment of love for all that he now saw, and were he only safe could look upon with ecstacy?— and let the beauty be as exquisite as it may, would not all the power and pleasure of its enchantments fly away from his bosom, were it only seen through the glowing fervency of elements that threatened to destroy him?

forgetfulness of his Maker. He is most in | more, with every offort to stir up his faculhis element, when in feeling, or in employment, he is most at a distance from God. There is a coldness, or a hatred, or a terror, which mixes up with all his contemplations of the Deity; and gives to his mind a kind of sensitive recoil from the very thought|around him. It must be lighted up to him, of him. He would like to live always in the world, and be content with such felicity as it can give, and cares not, could he only get what his heart is set upon here, and be permitted to enjoy it for ever, though he had no sight of God, and no fellowship with him through eternity. The event to which, of all others, he looks forward with the most revolting sense of aversion and dismay, is that event which is to bring him into a nearer contact with God,-which is to dissolve his present close relationship with the creature, and to conduct his disembodied spirit into the immediate presence of the Creator. There is nothing in death, in grim, odious, terrific death, that he less desires, or is more afraid of, than a nearer manifestation of the Deity. The world, in truth, the warm and the well known world, is his home; and the men who live in it, and are as regardless of the Divinity as himself, form the whole of his companionship. Were it not for the fear of hell, he would shrink from heaven as a dull and melancholy exile. All its songs of glory to him who sitteth on the throne, would be to his heart a burden and a weariness; and thus it is, that the foundation of every natural man has its place in that perishable earth, from which death will soon carry him away, and which the fiery indignation of God will at length burn up; and as to the being who endureth for ever, and with whom alone he has to do, he sees in him no form nor comeliness, nor no beauty that he should desire him.

Let us now conceive, that through that thick spiritual darkness by which every child of nature is encompassed, there was forced upon him a view of the countenance of the Deity,-that the perfections of God were made visible,—and that the character on which the angels of paradise gaze with delight, because they there behold all the lineaments of moral grandeur, and moral loveliness, were placed before the eye of his mind, in bright and convincing manifes tation. It is very true, that on what he would be thus made to see, all that is fair and magnificent are assembled,--that whatever of greatness, or whatever of beauty can be found in creation, is but a faint and shadowy transcript of that original substantial excellence, which resides in the

Now, is not this due to the darkness of nature, as well as to the depravity of nature? There is in our diseased constitution, a spiritual blindness to the excellences of the Godhead, as well as a spiritual disrelish for them. The truth is, that these two elements go together in the sad pro-conceptions of him who is the fountain of gress of human degeneracy. Man liked not being, that all the pleasing of goodness, to retain God in his knowledge, and God and all the venerable of worth, and all the gave him over to a reprobate mind; and sovereign command of moral dignity meet again, man walking in vanity, and an and are realised on the person of God,— enemy to God by wicked works, had his that through the whole range of universal understanding darkened, and was visited existence there cannot be devised a single with ignorance, and blindness of heart. We feature of excellence which does not serve do not apprehend God, and therefore it is to enrich the character of him who sustains that we must be renewed in the knowledge all things, and who originated all things. of him, ere we can be formed again to the No wonder that the pure eye of an angel love of him. The natural man can no more takes in such fulness of pleasure from a admire the Deity through the obscurities in contemplation so ravishing. But let all this which he is shrouded, than he can admire a burst upon the eye of a sinner, and let the landscape which he never saw, and which truth and the righteousness of God out of at the time of his approach to it, is wrap-Christ stand before it in visible array, along ped in the gloom of midnight. He can nol with the other glories of character which

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