It is there alone that we can behold the for ever. This is the real destination of beauty of the lord and be safe. This place every individual who is redeemed from of greatest security, is also the place of among men. This should be the main obchiefest glory. It is when admitted into ject of all his prayers, and all his preparathis greater and more perfect tabernacle, tions. It is this which fits him for the comthat we can look on majesty without terror, pany of heaven; and unless there be a growand on holiness without an overwhelming ing taste for God, in the glories of his exsense of condemnation. The sinner en- cellency,-for God, in the beauties of his circled in mercy looks in tranquil contem- holiness, there is no ripening, and no perplation on all that is awful and venerable infecting, for the mansions of immortality. the character of the Godhead,-and never do truth, and righteousness, and purity, appear in loftier exhibition before him, than, when withheld from his own person, he sees the whole burden of their avenging laid upon the head of the great Sacrifice. "One thing have I desired of the Lord," says the Psalmist, "that I may dwell in the courts of the Lord, all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple." It is not till we are within the portals of the place of refuge that this desire can obtain its fulfilment. Selfishness may have originated the movement which took us there. The fear of the coming wrath may have lent celerity to our footsteps. A joyful sense of deliverance may have been felt, ere the glories of the divine character were seen in bright and convincing manifestation. The love of gratitude may have kindled within us,-ed, will come in rich experience to his feeland, with the Psalmist, we may have to seek, and to inquire, and to have daily exercise and meditation, ere the love of moral esteem has attained the place of ascendency which belongs to it. Nevertheless, the chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him Though you have to combat, then, with the sluggishness of sense, and with the real aversion of nature to every spiritual exercise, you must attempt, and stenuously cultivate, the habit of communion with God. And as no man knoweth the Father save the Son reveal him, and as it is by the Spirit that Christ gives light to those who believe in him ;--for the attainment of this great moral and spiritual accomplishment, do what the Apostle directs you, when he says, "Keep yourselves in the love of God, by praying in the Holy Ghost." Your first endeavours may be feeble, and fatiguing, and fruitless. But God will not despise the day of small things,-nor will the light of his countenance be always withheld from those who aspire after it,-nor will the soul that thirsts after God, be left for ever unsatisfied,-and the life and peace of being spiritually mind ings, and the whole habit of his tastes and enjoyments, will be in a diametric opposition to that of the children of the world, God being the habitation to which he resorts continually,-God being the strength of his heart, and his portion for evermore. SERMON XII. The Emptiness of Natural Virtue. "But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you."-John v. 24. WHEN it is said, in a former verse of the ble hiding place. It was a discovery there gospel, that Jesus knew what was in man, of the real posture and habitude of the soul. we feel, that it is a tribute of acknowledg- It was a searching of it out, through all the ment, rendered to his superior insight into recesses of duplicity, winding and counterthe secrecies of our constitution. It was winding in such a way as to elude altogether not the mere faculty of perceiving what lay the eye of commom acquaintanceship. It before him, that was ascribed to him by the was the assigning to it of one attribute, at Evangelist. It was the faculty of perceiving the time when it wore the guise of another what lay disguised under a semblance, that attribute,-of utter antipathy to the nature would have imposed on the understanding and design of his mission, at the very time of other men. It was the faculty of de- that multitudes were drawn around him, tecting. It was a discerning of the spirit, by the fame of his miracles,-of utter indifand that not through the transparency of such unequivocal symptoms, as brought its character clearly home to the view of the observer. But it was a discerning of the spirit, as it lay wrapt in what, to an ordinary spectator, was a thick and impenetra ference about God, at the very time that they zealously asserted the sanctity of his sabbaths, and resented as blasphemous, whatever they felt to be an usurpation of the greatness which belonged to him only. It was in the exercise of this faculty, that Jesus came forward with the utterance of ble to them all. The formalists of Judea our text. The Jews, by whom he was sur-did not like to be thus grouped with publirounded, had charged him with the guilt of cans and harlots, under one description of profanation, and sought even to avenge it sinfulness. Nor do men of taste, and feeling, by his death, because he had healed a man and graceful morality, in our present day, on the sabbath day. And their desire of readily understand how they should require vengeance was still more inflamed, by what the same kind of treatment, in the work of they understood to be an assertion, on his preparing them for immortality, with the part, of equality with God. And yet, under most glaringly profligate and unrighteous all this appearance, and even with all this of their neighbourhood. They look to the reality of a zeal about God, did he who ostensible marks of distinction between knew what was in man pronounce of these themselves and others;-and what wider his enemies, that the love of God was not distinction, they think, can possibly be asin them. I know you says he,-as if at signed, than that which obtains between this instant he had put forth a stretch the upright or the kind-hearted, on the one of penetration, in order to find his way hand, and the ungenerous or dishonest, on through all the sounds of godliness which the other? Now, what we propose, in the he heard, and through all the symptoms of following discourse, is to lead them to look godliness which he saw, I know that there a little farther, and then they will see at does not exist within you that principle, least one point of similarity between these which links to God, the whole of God's obe- two classes, the want of one common ingredient creation, I know that you do not dient with both, and which attaches to each love him, and that, therefore, you are ut- of them a great moral defect, that can only terly in want of that affection, which lies at be repaired by one and the same application. the root of all real, and of all acceptable godliness. It is mortifying to the man who possesses many accomplishments of character, to be told, that the greatest and most essential accomplishment of a moral being, is that of which he has no share,-that the principle on which we expatiated in our last discourses does not, in any of its varieties, belong to him, that, wanting it, he wants not merely obedience to the first and the greatest commandment, which is the love of God, but he wants what may be called the impregnating quality of all acceptable obedience whatever, the spirit which ought to animate the performance of every other commandment, and without which the most laborious conformity to the law of Heaven, may do no more than impress upon his person the cold and lifeless image of loyalty, while in his mind there is not one of its essential attributes. We know not a more useful exercise than that of carrying round this conviction amongst all the classes and conditions of humanity. In the days of our Saviour, the pride of the Pharisees stood opposed to such a demonstration; and in our own days, too, there are certain pretensions of worth, and of excellence, which must be disposted, ere we can hope to obtain admittance for the humiliating doctrine of the gospel. For this gospel, it must be observed, proceeds upon the basis, not of a partial, but of an entire and universal depravity among the men of the world. It assimilates all the varieties of the human character into one common condition of guilt, and need, and helplessness. It presumes the existence of such a moral disease in every son and daughter of Adam, as renders the application of the same moral remedy indispensa It is well when we can find out an accordancy between the actual exhibition of human nature on the field of experience, and the representation that is given of this nature on the field of revelation. Now, the Bible every where groups the individuals of our species, into two general and distinct classes, and assigns to each of them its appropriate designation. It tells us of the vessels of wrath, and of the vessels of merey; of the travellers on a narrow path, and on a broad way; of the children of this world, and the children of light; and, lastly, of men who are carnally minded, and men who are spiritually minded. It employs these terms in a meaning so extensive, that by each couplet of them it embraces all individuals. There is no separate number of persons, forming of themselves a neutral class, and standing without the limits of the two others. And were it possible to conceive, that human nature, as it exists at present in the world, were laid in a map before us, you would see no intermediate ground between the two classes which are thus contrasted in the Bible, but these thrown into two distinct regions, with one clear and vigorous line of demarcation between them. We often read of this line, and we often read of the transition from the one to the other side of it. But there is no trace of any middle department to be met with in the New Testament. The alternative has only two terms, and ours must be the one or the other of them. And as surely as a day is coming, when all the men of our assembled world shall be found on the right or on the left hand of the throne of judg ment-so surely do the carnal and the spiritual regions of human nature, stand apart from each other; and all the men who are now living on the surface of the world, are to be found on the right, or on man living in the grossness of animal in- that you may be at no loss to assign the place which belongs to him. It were a monstrous supposition altogether, that either the love of gratitude, or the love of moral esteem for the Deity, were to be found in the bosom of such a man. He, then, of all others, is not spiritual but carnal; nor do we anticipate a single dissenting voice when we say, that whatever be the doubts and the delusions which may prevail about men of another aspect, the man whose habits and pursuits have now been sketched to you, stands on the wrong side of the line of demarcation. In the prosecution of this question, let me attempt to bring a succession of characters before you, most of which must have met your own distinct and familiar observation; and of which, while exceedingly various in their complexion, we hope to succeed in convincing you, that the love of God, at least, is not in them. If this can be made out against them, it may be considered as experimentally fixing to which of the two great divisions of humanity they We are far from saying, that a man of belong. All who love God, may have bold- such a character as this is of frequent ocness when they think of the day of judg-currence in society. We merely set him ment, because, like unto God, who himself is love, they will be pronounced meet for the enjoyment, and the fellowship of him through eternity. And they who want this affection, when they die shall be turned into hell. They shall be found to possess that carnal mind which is enmity against God. So that upon the single point of whether they possess this love or not, hinges the question which I have just now started, a question surely which it were better for every man to decide at the bar of conscience now, ere it comes under the review of that dread tribunal which is to award to him his everlasting habitation. I. Let us first offer to your notice, ala degree, that he would recoil from the up as a kind of starting-post, for the future train of our argument. It is a mighty advantage, in every discussion, to have a clear and undisputed outset,-and we trust, that, if thus far we have kept cordially by the side of each other, we shall not cast out by the way, in the progress of our remaining observations. II. Let us now proceed, then, to detach one offensive feature from the character of him, whom we have thus set before you, as a compound of many abominations. Let us leave entire all his dishonesty, and all his devotedness to the pleasures of sense, but soften and transform his heart to such perpetration of a murder. This is a differ-1 III. All this may be looked upon; as too indisputable for argument. And yet it is the very principle which, if carried to its fair extent, and brought faithfully home to the conscience, would serve to convince of ungodliness, the vast majority of this world's generations. If a natural recoil from murder, may be experienced by the bosom, in which there exists no love to God,-why may not this natural recoil be carried still farther, and yet the love of God be just as absent from the bosom as before? There are other dishonesties, of a far less outrageous character, than that by which you would commit an act of depredation; and other cruelties far less enormous, than that by which you would imbrue your hand in another's blood,-which still the generality of men would revolt from constitutionally, and that, too, without the movement of any affection for their God, or even so much as any thought of him. We have only to conceive the softening of a further transformation, to take place on the man with whom we set out at the beginning of our argument; and he may thus become, like the man we read of in the parable, who took comfort to himself in the security, that he had goods laid up for many years, and at the same time is not charged either with violence or dishonesty in the acquirement of them. He is charged with nothing but a devoted attachment to wealth, and to the pleasures which that wealth can purchase. And yet, what an awful reckoning did he come under! He seems to have been just such a man as we can be at no loss to meet with every day in the range of our familiar acquaintances,-enjoying themselves in easy and comfortable abundance; but at an obvious and unquestionable distance from any thing that can be called atrocity of character. There is not one of them, perhaps, who would not recoil from an act of barbarity; and who would not be moved with honest indignation, at the tale of perfidy, or of violence. They live in a placid course of luxury, and good humour; and we are far from charging them with any thing which the world calls monstrous, when we say, that the Father of spirits is unminded, and unregarded by them, and that the good things of the world are their gods, If it be a vain superfluity of argument to prove, that a man may not be spiritual, and yet be endowed with such a degree of natural tenderness, as to recoil from the perpetration of a murder,-then it is equally indisputable, that a man may not be spiritual, though endowed with such a degree of natural tenderness, as to recoil from many lesser acts of cruelty, or injustice. In other words, he may be a very fair every-day character; and if it be so sure a principle, that a man may not be a murderer, and yet be carnal, then let one ent portrait from the one which we formerly exhibited. There is in it an instinctive horror at an act of violence, which did not belong to the other; and the question we have now to put, is, Has the man who owns this improved representation, become, on this single difference, a spiritual man? We answer this question by another. Is the difference that we have now assigned to him, due to the love of God, or to such a principle of loyal subjection to his authority, as this love is sure to engender? You will not call him spiritual from the mere existence of a feeling which would rise spontaneously in his heart, even though the Father of spirits were never thought of. We appeal to your own consciousness of what passes within you, if the heart do not experience the movement of many a constitutional feeling; altogether unaccompanied by any reference of the mind, to the love, or to the character, or even to the existence of God. Are you not quite sensible, that though the idea of a God lay in a state of dormancy for hours and for days together, many of the relentings of nature would, in the meanwhile, remain with you? For the preservation and the order of society, God has been kind enough to implant in the bosom of man, many a natural predilection, and many a natural horror,-of which he feels the operation, and the people of his neighbourhood enjoy the advantage, at the very time that one and all of them, unmindful of God, are walking in the counsel of their own hearts, and after the sight of their own eyes. He has done the same thing to the inferior animals. He has endowed them with a principle of attachment to their offspring, in virtue of which, they, generally speaking, would recoil from the murder of their young with as determined an abhorrence, as you would do from the murder of a fellow-creature. You would not surely say of the irrational instinct, that because amiable, or useful, or pleasing to contemplate, there is any thing spiritual in the impulse it communicates. Then do not offer a violence both to Scripture and philosophy, by confounding, in the mind of man, principles which are distinct from each other. Do not say, that he is spiritual, merely because he is moving in obedience to his constitutional tendencies. Do not say, that he is not carnal, while all that he has done, or abstained from doing, may be done or abstained from, though he lived without God in the world. And go not to infer, while the pleasures of sense are the idols of his every affection, that because he would shudder to purchase them, at the expence of another's blood, he, on that single account, may be looked on as a spiritual man, and as standing on the right side of the line of demarcation. an affection for God is habitually away from it, if it be true that no man can be destitute of this affection, and at the same time be a spiritual man,-if it be true, that he who is not spiritual, is carnal, and that the carnally-minded cannot inherit the kingdom of God;-then the necessity lies upon us: he is still in the region and shadow of death; and if he refuse the arguments and invitations of the gospel, calling him over to another region than that which he now occupies, he must just be numbered among those more beauteous wrecks of our fallen nature, which are destined to perish and be forgotten. and all of you look well to your own se- the circulation of the blood. We are far from curity; for it is the very principle which refusing it the homage of our tenderness. We might be employed, to shake the thousands feel a love to it, but we will not make a lie and tens of thousands of ordinary men, out about it. We can make no more of it, than of the security in which they have en-Scripture and experience enable us to do. trenched themselves. And, if it be true, that a man's heart may IV. But to proceed in this work of trans-be the habitual seat of kind affections, while formation. Let us now conceive a still more exquisite softening of affection and tenderness, to be thrown over the whole of our imaginary character. We thus make another step, and another departure, from the original specimen. By the first step, the mind is made to feel a kind of revolting, at the atrocity of a murder; and the character ceases to be monstrous. By the second, the mind is made to share in all the common antipathies of our nature, to what is cruel and unfeeling; and it is thus wrought up to the average of character which obtains in society. By the third step the mind is endowed with the warmer and more delicate sympathies of our nature, V. But let us go still farther. Let us and thus rises to a more exalted place in suppose the heart to be furnished, not the scale of character. It becomes posi- merely with the finest sensibilities of our tively amiable. You look to him, who owns nature, but with its most upright and all these graceful sensibilities, even as the honourable principles. Let us conceive a Saviour looked unto the young man of the man whose palse beats high with the pride gospels, and, like the Saviour, you love him. of integrity; whose every word carries Who can, in fact, refrain from doing homage security along with it; whose faithfulness to such a lovely exhibition of all that is in the walks of business has stood the test soothing in humanity; and whether he be of many fluctuations; who, amid all the employed in mingling his tears, and his varieties of his fortune, has nobly sustained charities, with the unfortunate, or in shed- the glories of an untainted character; and ding a gentle lustre over the retirement of whom we see by the salutations of the his own family, even orthodoxy herself, market-place, to be acknowledged and restern and unrelenting as she is conceived vered by all, as the most respectable of the to be, cannot find it in her heart to frown citizens. Now, which of the two great reupon him. But, feeling is one thing, and gions of human character shall we make him truth is another; and when the question is to occupy? This question depends upon put, Do all these sensibilities, heightened another. May all this manly elevation of and adorned as they are, on the upper walks soul, and of sentiment, stand disunited in of society, constitute a spiritual man?-it the same heart, with the influence of the is not by a sigh, or an aspiration of tender- authority of God, or with that love of God ness, that we are to answer it. We are which is the keeping of his commandments? put on a cool exercise of the understand- The discerning eye of Hume saw that it ing; and we cannot close it against the fact, could; and he tells us that natural honesty that all these feelings may exist apart from of temper is a better security for the faiththe love of God, and apart from the reli- fulness of a man's doings, than all the augious principle,-that the idea of a God thority of religious principle over him. We may be expunged from the heart of man, deny the assertion; but the distinction beand yet that heart be still the seat of the tween the two principles on which it prosame constitutional impulses as ever, that ceeds, is indisputable. There is a principle in reference to the realities of the unseen of honour, apart in the human mind altoand spiritual world, the mind may be an gether, from any reference to the realities entire blank, and there, at the same time, of a spiritual world. It varies in the inbe room in it for the play of kindly and be-tensity of its operation, with different indinevolent emotions. We commit these truths viduals. It has the chance of being more to your own experience, and if carried faith-entire, when kept aloof from the temptafully to the conscience, they may chase away tions of poverty: and therefore it is, that another of the delusions which encompass we more frequently meet with it in the it. There is no fear of me, for I have a upper and middling classes of life. And feeling heart, is a plea which they put a we can conceive it so strong in its original decisive end to. This feeling heart, if un-influence, or so grateful to the possessor accompanied by any sense of God, is no from the elevating consciousness which better evidence of a spiritual man, than is goes along with it, or so nourished by the |