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witness of it, sufficient ground for its cre- ing of the matter shall agree with God's dibility to rest upon? Shall man's reason-saying about it, it may make the truth of ing carry a greater authority along with it the text tell with energy upon your conthan God's declaration? Is your faith to sciences;-and it were well for one and all depend on the success or the failure of his of us, that we obtained a more overwhelmargument? Whether he succeed in esta- ing sense of our necessities than we have blishing the truth of the assertion or not, ever yet gotten; that we saw ourselves in upon independent reasonings of his own,- those true colours of deformity which reremember that by reading it out in his text, ally belong to us; that the inveteracy of he has already come forward with an ar- our disease as sinners were more known gument more conclusive than any which and more felt by us; that we could lift up his ingenuity can devise. And yet, how the mantle of delusion, which the accomoften do your convictions lie suspended on plishments of nature throw over the carnal the ability of the preacher, and on the mind, and by which they spread a most soundness of his demonstrations? You re- bewildering gloss over all the rebelliousness fuse to believe truth, plainly set before you and ingratitude of the inner man. Could in the Bible, because the minister has failed we but make you feel your need and your in making out his point. Now, the truth helplessness as sinners,-could we chase of the point in question may have already away from you the pride and the security received its decisive settlement, from the of your fancied attainments; could we lead text delivered in your hearing. We may you to mourn and be in heaviness, under a try, and take our own way of bringing the sense of your alienations and idolatries, truth of your enmity against God, close and risings of hatred against the God who and home upon your consciences. But, if created and who sustains you ;-then might there be truth in all the sayings of the we look for the overtures of the gospel being Bible, enough has been already said to un-more thankfully listened to, more cordially dermine the security of your fancied attainments. It is said, that in our nature there is a rooted and an embodied character of hostility to our Maker. This should make the wisest and most sufficient among you feel that you are poor indeed,—and let other expedients, to press home the melancholy truth fail, or be effectual as they may, this is surely enough to convince and to alarm you.

embraced, more rejoiced in as the alone suitable remedy to the wants and the sorenesses of your fallen nature,--then might we look for the attitude of self-dependence being broken down, and for all trust, and all glorying, being transferred from ourselves, and laid upon Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

It is no proof of love to God that we do many things, and that too with the willing But, though we cannot add to the truth consent of the mind, the performance of of God, there is such a thing as what the which is agreeable to his law. If the same Apostle calls making that truth manifest to thing might be done upon either of two your consciences. Your own observation principles, then the doing of it may only may attest the very same truth, which God prove the existence of one of these princiannounces to you in his word. And if it ples, while the other has no presence or be a truth, respecting the state of your own operation in the mind whatever. I do not heart, this agreement between what God steal, and the reason of it may be either says you are, and what you find yourselves that I love God, and so keep his commandto be, is often most powerfully instrumental ments, or it may be that I have honourable in reclaiming men to the acknowledgment feelings, and would spurn at the disgraceof the truth, and bringing their heart under fulness of such an action. This is only one its influence. This is the very argument example, but the bare statement of it serves which compelled the faith of the woman for a thousand more. It lets us in at once of Samaria. "Come and see the man which to the decisive fact that there are many told me all the things that ever I did; is principles of action applauded, and held not this the Christ ?" It is the very argu-in reverence, and most useful to society, ment by which many an unbeliever was and withal urging us to the performance of convinced in the Apostle's days. The se- what, in the matter of it, is agreeable to the crets of his heart were made manifest, and law of God, which may have a practical so falling down on his face, he worshipped ascendency over a man whose heart is God, and reported that God was in them, alienated from the love of God. Propose of a truth. We cannot make the assertion the question to yourself, Would not I do in the text stronger than God has made it this good thing, or abstain from this evil already; but we may be able to guide your thing, though God had no will in this matobservations to that which is the subject of ter? If you would, then, put not down it-even to your own mind. We may lead what is altogether due to other principles you to attend more closely, and to view to the principle of love to God, or a desire more distinctly, the state of your minds, of pleasing him. The principle upon which than you have ever yet done. If your find-you have acted may be respectable, and

honourable, and amiable. We are not disputing all this. We are only saying, that it is not the love of God; and should we hear any one of you assert, that I have nothing to reproach myself with, and that I give every body their own, and that I possess a fair character in society, and have done nothing to forfeit it, and that I have my share of generosity, and honour, and tenderness, and civility, our only reply is, that this may be very true. You may have a very large share of these and of other estimable principles, but along with the possession of these many things, you may lack one thing, and that one thing may be the love of God. An enlightened discerner of the heart may look into you, and say, with our Saviour in the text, "I know you that you have not the love of God in you." It is no test whatever of your love to God, that you tolerate him, when he calls upon you to do the things which your natural principles incline you to do, and which you would have done at any rate. But when he claims that place in your affections which you give to many of the objects of the world,-when he puts in for that share of your heart which you give to wealth, or pleasure, or reputation among men, then is not God a weariness? and does not the inner man feel impatience and dislike at these grievous exactions; and when the will of God thwarts the natural current of your tastes and employments, is not God, at the moment of urging that will, with all the natural authority which belongs to him, a positive offence to you?

they are now fastened, if his presence were at all times attended to, and he was regarded with that affection which he at all times demands of us!

This may explain a fact, which we fear must come near to the conscience of many a respectable man, and that is, the recoil which he has often experienced, as if from some object of severe and unconquerable aversion, when the preacher urges upon his thoughts some scriptural representation either of the will or the character of God. Or take this fact in another way, and in which it presents itself, if not more strikingly, at least more habitually; and that is, the undeniable circumstance of God being shut out of his thoughts for the great majority of his time, and him feeling the same kind of ease at the exclusion, as when he shuts the door on the most unwelcome of his visitors. The reason is, that the inner man, busied with other objects, would positively be offended at the intrusion of the thought of God. It is because, to admit him, with all his high claims and spiritual requirements into your mind, would be to disturb you in the enjoyment of objects which are better loved and more sought after than he. It is because your heart is occupied with idols that God is shut out of it. It is because your heart is after another treasure. It is because your heart is set upon other things. Whether it be wealth, or amusement, or distinction, or the ease and the pleasures of life, we pretend not to know; but there is a something which is your god, to the exclusion of the great God of heaven How would you like the visit of a man and earth. The Being who is upholding whose presence broke up some arrangement you all the time, and in virtue of whose that you had set your heart upon; or mar-preserving hand, you live, and think, and red the enjoyment of some favourite scheme enjoy, is all the while unminded and unrethat you were going to put into execution? garded by you. You look upon him as an Would not you hate the visit? and if it were interruption. It is of no consequence to the often repeated, if the disappointments you argument what the occupation of your heart received from this cause were frequent and be, if it is such an occupation as excludes perpetual,-if you saw a systematic design God from it. It may be what the world of thwarting you by these galling and nu- calls a vicious occupation, the pursuits of merous interruptions, would not you also a dishonest, or the debaucheries of a proflicordially hate the visitor, and give the most gate life, and, in this case, the world has substantial evidence of your hatred, too, by no objection to stigmatize you with enmity shunning him, or shutting him out? Now, against God. Or it may be what the world is not God just such a visitor? O how many calls an innocent occupation-amusement favourite schemes of enjoyment would the to make you happy, work to earn a subsistthought of him, and of his will, if faithfully ence, business to establish a liberal proviadmitted to the inner chambers of the mind, sion for your families. But your heart may put to flight! How many fond calculations be so given to it that God is robbed of his be given up about the world, the love of portion of your heart altogether. Or it may which is opposite to the love of the Father. be what the world calls an honourable ocHow many trifling amusements behooved cupation,--the pursuit of eminence in the to be painfully surrendered, if a sense of walks of science or of patriotism; and still God's will were to tell upon the conscience there may be an exclusion, or a hatred of with all the energy that is due to it. How the God who puts in for all things being many darling habits abandoned, if the whole done to his glory. Or it may be what the man were brought under the dominion of world calls an elegant occupation,-even this imperious visitor,-how many affec- that of a mind enamoured with the tastetions torn away from the objects on which fulness of literature; but it may be so ena

moured with this, that the God who created | must at length be brought out to its adeyour mind, and all the tastes which are quate condemnation. And on that day, within it, and all the objects which are with- when the earth is to be burnt up, and all its out it, and which minister to its most ex-flatteries shall have subsided, will it be seen quisite gratification,-this God, we say, may of many a heart that rejoiced in the apbe turned away from with a feeling of the plause and friendship of this world, that, most nauseous antipathy, and you may give alienated from the love of God, it was inthe most substantial evidence of your hatred deed in the gall of bitterness, and in the to him, by ridding your thoughts of him al- bond of iniquity. together. Or, lastly, it may be what the world calls a virtuous occupation, even that of a mind bustling with the full play of its energies, among enterprises of charity and plans of public good. Yet even here, wonderful as you may think it, there may be a total exclusion and forgetfulness of God; and, while the mind is filled and gratified with a rejoicing sense of its activity and its usefulness, it may be merely delighting itself with a constitutional gratification,-and God the author of that constitution, be never thought of, or if thought of according to the holiness of his attributes, and the nature of that friendship, opposite to the friendship of the world, which he demands of us, and the kind of employment which forms the reward and the happiness of his saints in eternity, even the praise and the contem-affection or of reverence, towards a fictitious plation of himself,—if thought of, we say, according to this his real character, and these the real requirements that he lays upon us,-even the man to whom the world yields the homage of virtue may think of his God-if you dislike this way of approach-if with feelings of offensiveness and disgust.

Nor does it palliate the representation which we have now given, that a God, in the fancied array of poetic loveliness-that a God of mere natural perfection, and without one other moral attribute than the single attribute of indulgence-that a God, divested of all which can make him repulsive to sinners, and, for this purpose, shorn of all those glories, which truth and authority, and holiness, throw around his character-that such a God should be idolized at times by many a sentimentalist. It would form no deduction from our enmity against the true God, that we gave an occasional hour to the worship of a graven image, made with our own hands-and it is just of as little significancy to the argument, that we feel an occasional glow of

being of our own imagination. If there be truth in the Bible, it is there where God has made an authentic exhibition of his nature, and if God in Christ be an offence to you

fections for all that is earthly-if you have no relish for the intercourse of prayer, and of spiritual communion with such a Godif your memory neither love to recal him, nor your fancy to dwell upon him, nor he be the being with whom you greatly delight yourself, the habitation to which you resort continually, then be assured, that amid the painted insignificancy of all your other accomplishments, your heart is not right with God; and he who is the Father of your existence, and of all that gladdens it, may still be to you a loathing and an abomination.

you shrink from the contemplation of that There is nothing monstrous in all this, to Being, who bids you sanctify him in your the men of our world, seeing that they have hearts, and who claims such a preference each a share in that deep and lurking un-in your regard, as shall dispossess your afgodliness, which has both so vitiated our nature, and so blinded all who inherit this nature, against a sense of its enormity. But only conceive how it must be thought of, and how the contemplation of it must be felt, among those who can look on character with a spiritual and intelligent estimation. How must the pure eye of an angel be moved at such a spectacle of worthlessness, and surely, in the records of heaven, this great moral peculiarity of our outcast race must stand engraven as that, which of all others, has the character of guilt most nakedly and most essentially belonging to it. That the bosom of a thing formed should feel cold or indifferent to him who formed it, that not a thought or an image should be so unwelcome to man as that of his Maker, that the creature should thus turn round on its Creator, and eye disgust upon him, that its every breath should be envenomed with hatred against him who inspired it, or, if it be not hatred, but only unconcern, or disinclination, that even this should be the real disposition of a fashioned and sustained being, towards the hand of his Preserver, there is a a perversity here which time may palliate for a season, but which, under a universal reign of justice,

Neither does it palliate the representation which we have now offered, that we do many things with the direct object of doing that which is pleasing to God. It is true, there cannot be love where there is no desire to please; but it is as true, that there may be a desire to please where there is no love. Why, I may both hate and fear the man, whom I may find it very convenient to please; and to secure whose favour, may practice a thousand arts of accommodation and compliance. I may comply by action-but instead of complying with my will, I may abominate the necessity which constrains me. I may be subject to his

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pleasure in my person, and in my perform-| testify against me?" You may fear him; ances-but you would not say, while hatred you may heap sacrifices upon his altar: rankled within me, that I was subject to him you may bring the outer man to something with my mind. A sovereign may overrule like a slavish obedience, at his bidding, but the humours of a rebellious province, by till your heart be subdued, by that great the presence of his resistless military--but process, which all who are his spiritual subyou would not say that there was any loy-jects must undergo, you are carnal, and alty in this forced subordination. He may you do not love him. Your obedience is compel the bondage of their actual services like a body without a soul. The very prin-but you would not say, that it was in ciple which gives it all its value, is wanting. this part of his dominions, where the prin- It is this, which turns the whole to bitterciple of subjection to him existed in the ness. It is this, which, with all the bustling minds of the people. We have already af- activity of your services, keeps you dead in firmed, that though our will went along with trespasses and sins. It is this which mars a number of performances, which in the every religious performance, and imparts matter of them were agreeable to God's the character of rebelliousness to every one law-this was far from an unfailing indica- item, in the list of your plausible and ostention of love to God; for there may be a tatious duties. There is not one of them thousand other constitutional principles, which is not accompanied with an act of the residence and operation of which in the disobedience, and that too, to the first and heart may give rise to these performances, greatest commandment, by which we are while there was an utter distaste, and hos- called upon to love the Lord with all our tility on our part to God. They may be heart, strength, and soul. Though the hand done, not because God wills the doing, but should be subject, though the mouth because the doing falls in with our humour, should be subject,-though all the organs or our interest, or our vanity, or our in- of the outer man should be subject; yet it stinctive gratification. But now we are pre-availeth nothing, if the will of the mind is pared to go farther, and say, that they may not subject. I could sell all my goods to be done, because God wills the doing, and feed the poor. I could compel my hand yet there may be an utter want of subjec- to sign an order to that effect, and I could tion in the mind, to the law of God. The keep my hand from reversing that order terror of his power may constrain you to till it was executed. But all this I may do many acts of obedience, even as the call, says Paul, and yet have nothing, because I "Flee from the coming wrath," told on the have not charity. It is not the act of welldisciples of John the Baptist. But obedience doing to your neighbour, but a principle of may be rendered to all the requirements of love to your neighbour, on which God this prophet. Thieves and swearers, and stamps the testimony of his approbation. sabbath-breakers, may, under the fear of the In like manner, it is not the act of wellcoming vengeance, give up their respective doing to God, but the principle of love to enormities, and yet their minds be alto- God, which he values ;--and if this be withgether carnal, and utterly destitute of sub- held from him, you are carnal; and with jection to the law of God. There may all your painful and multiplied attempts at be the obedience of the hand while there is obedience, your mind is not subject to the the gall of bitterness in the heart, at the law of God. necessity which constrains it. It may not be the consenting of the mind, to the law of him whom you delight to please and to honour. Now, this is the service for which it is the aim of Christianity to prepare you. It is by putting that law, which was graven on tables of stone, upon the tables of your heart, that it enables you to yield that obedience which is acceptable to God. He is grieved at the reluctancy of your services. No performances can satisfy him, while your heart remains in shut and shielded alienation against him. What he wants, is to gain the friendship and the confidence of his creatures; and he feels all the concern of a wounded and mortified father when he knocks at the door of your heart and finds its affections to be away from him. He condescends to plead the matter, and with the tenderness of a dis- But secondly, There is another class of appointed father, does he say, "Wherein people, whom such a view of the actual have I wearied you, O children of Israel, state of human nature onght to tranquillize,

We shall conclude, at present, with two short reflections.

First, If any of you are convinced of the justness of the representations which we have now given, you will perceive that your guilt in the sight of God, may be of a far deeper and more alarming kind, than men are generally aware of. And such a view of the matter may be quite intolerable to him who nauseates the peculiarities of the gospel,-to him who has a contempt for the foolishness of that preaching, of which the great burden is Jesus Christ, and him crucified,-to him, in a word, whom the true description of our moral disease, must terrify or offend,-seeing that he carries a distaste in his heart toward the alone remedy, by which the disease can be met and extirpated.

And we know not a more blissful or a more memorable event, in the history of the human soul, than, when convinced that there is no other righteousness than in the merits, and no other sanctification than in the grace of the Saviour, it henceforth glories only in his cross; and now, that every other expedient of reformation has been tried, and failed of its accomplishment, it takes to the remaining one of crying mightily to God, and pressing, at a throne of grace, the supplication of the Psalmist, "Create a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me."

by bringing their minds out of perplexity, lessness;-you become desperate of salvainto a state of firm and confident decision. tion in one way, and you are led to look for There are often in a congregation, a set of it in another way. The question, whether hearers not yet shut up into the faith, but salvation is of grace or of works, receives approaching towards it,-with a growing its most decisive settlement;-when thus taste for the Christianity of the New Testa-driven away from one term of the alternament, but without a full and a final acqui- tive, you are compelled, as your only reescence in it, with an opening and an source, to the other term. You feel that enlarging sense of the importance of the nothing else will do for your acceptance gospel, but still halting between two opi- with God, but your acceptance of the of nions respecting it; who, in particular, are fered Saviour. You stand at the foot of not sure where their sole dependence for the cross,—you make an absolute surrender salvation should be placed, whether singly of yourself to the terms of the gospel. upon their own performances, or singly upon the righteousness of Christ, or jointly upon both. Now, we trust that the lesson of our text may have the effect with some, of bringing this unsettled account more speedily to its termination. You may have hitherto, perhaps, been under the impression, that the condition of man was not just so bad as to require a Saviour, who must undertake the whole of his cure, and bring about the whole of his salvation. You have attempted to share with the Saviour in the matter of your redemption. Instead of looking upon it with the eye of the Apostle, One thing is certain; you are welcome, as being all of grace, or all of works, you at this moment, to lay hold of the righteoushave in some way or other, attempted a ness of God, in Christ Jesus; you are welcompromise between them; and this has come, at this moment, to the use of his prethe undoubted effect of keeping you at a vailing name, in your prayers to the Father; distance from Christ. You have not felt you are welcome, at this moment, to the your entire need of him, and therefore you plea of his meritorious obedience, and of have not leaned in close and constant de- his atoning death: and you are welcome, pendence upon him. But let the torch of a at this moment, to the promise of the Spirit, spiritual law be lifted over your characters, given unto all who believe, whereby the and through the guise of its external de- enmity of their carnal minds will be done cencies reveal to you the mountain of ini- away,-God will no longer be regarded quity within; let the deformity of the heart with antipathy and disgust,-he will appear be made known, and you become sensible in the face of Jesus Christ as a reconciled of the fruitlessness of every endeavour, so father, he will pour upon you the spirit of long as the consent of a willing cordiality is adoption,-you will walk before him withwithheld from the person and authority of out fear, and those bonds being loosed, God; let the utter powerlessness of all wherewith you were formerly held, you will your doings, be contrasted with the per- yield to him the willing obedience of those versity of your stubborn and unmanageable whose hearts are enlarged, and who run, with desires, and the case is seen in all its help-delight, in the way of his commandments.

SERMON XIV.

The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the human Heart against God.

"Having slain the enmity thereby."—Ephesians ii. 16.

II. We shall now consider how it is that the gospel of Jesus Christ suits its application to this great moral disease.

ever. For, do you think that the delivery of the law of love, in his hearing, as a positive and indispensable enactment coming The necessity of some singular expedient forth from the legislature of heaven will do for restoring the love of God to the alien- it? You may as well pass a law, making ated heart of man, will appear from the it imperative upon him to delight in pain, utter impossibility of bringing this about by and to feel comfort on a bed of torture. any direct application of authority what-Or, do you think, that you will ever give a

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