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lesson of John the Baptist with energy to your fears, "Flee from the coming wrath." But there is something so very deceiving in the progress of time. Its progress is so gradual. To-day is so like yesterday that we are not sensible of its departure. We should make head against this delusion. We should turn to personal account every example of change or of mortality. When the clock strikes, it should remind you of the dying hour. When you hear the sound of the funeral bell, you should think, that in a little time it will perform for you the same office. When you wake in the morning, you should think that there has been the addition of another day to the life that is past, and the subtraction of another day from the remainder of your journey. When the shades of the evening fall around you, you should think of the steady and invariable progress of time---how the sun moves and moves till it will see you out--and how it will continue to move after you die, and see out your children's children to the latest generations.

For death is at work upon all ages. The fever of a few days may hurry the likeliest of us all from this land of mortality. The cold of a few weeks may settle into some lingering but irrecoverable disease. In one instant the blood of him who has the promise of many years, may cease its circulation. Accident may assail us. A slight fall may precipitate us into eternity. An exposure to rain may lay us on the bed of our last sickness, from which we are never more to rise. A little spark may kindle the midnight conflagration, which lays a house and its inhabitants in ashes. A stroke of lightning may arrest the current of life in a twinkling. A gust of wind may overturn the vessel, and lay the unwary passenger in a watery grave. A thousand dangers beset us on the slippery path of this world; and no age is exempted from them-and from the infant that hangs on its mother's bosom, to the old man who sinks under the decrepitude of years, we see death in all its woful and affecting varieties.

You may think it strange-but even still we fear, we may have done little in the way of sending a fruitful impression into your consciences. We are too well aware of the distinction between seriousness of feeling, and seriousness of principle, to think that upon the strength of any such moving representation as we are now indulging in, we shall be able to dissipate that confounded spell which chains you to the world, to reclaim your wandering af fections, or to send you back to your week day business more pure and more heavenly. But sure we are you ought to be convinced, how that all which binds you so cleavingly to the dust is infatuation and vanity; that there is something most la mentably wrong in your being carried away by the delusions of time--and this is a conviction which should make you feel restless and dissatisfied. We are well

Every thing around us should impress the mutability of human affairs. An acquaintance dies--you will soon follow him. Á family moves from the neighbourhoodlearn that the works of man are given to change. New familes succeed-sit loose to the world, and withdraw your affections from its unstable and fluctuating interests. Time is rapid, though we observe not its rapidity. The days that are past appear like the twinkling of a vision. The days that are to come will soon have a period, and will appear to have performed their course with equal rapidity. We talk of our fathers and grandfathers, who figured their day in the theatre of the world. In a little time, we will be the ancestors of a future age. Posterity will talk of us as of the men that are gone, and our remembrance will soon depart from the face of the country. When we attend the burial of an ac-aware that it is not human eloquence, or quaintance, we see the bones of the men of other times-in a few years, our bodies will be mangled by the power of corruption, and be thrown up in loose and scattered fragments among the earth of the new made grave. When we wander among the tombstones of the church-yard, we can scarcely follow the mutilated letters that compose the simple story of the inhabitant below. In a little time, and the tomb that covers us, will moulder by the power of the seasons-and the letters will be eaten away-and the story that was to perpetuate our remembrance, will elude the gaze of some future inquirer.

human illustration, that can accomplish a victory over the obstinate principles of human corruption--and therefore it is that we feel as if we did not advance aright through a single step of a sermon, unless we look for the influences of that mighty Spirit, who alone is able to enlighten and arrest you--and may employ even so humble an instrument as the voice of a fellow mortal, to send into your heart the inspiration of understanding.

I now shortly insist on the truth, that the things which are not seen are eternal. No man hath seen God at any time, and he is eternal. It is said of Christ, "whom We know that time is short, but none having not seen, we love, and he is the of us know how short. We know that it same to-day, yesterday, and for ever." It will not go beyond a certain limit of years; is said of the Spirit, that, like the wind of but none of us know how small the num-heaven he eludes the observation, and no ber of years, or months, or days may be. man can tell of him whence he cometh, or

whither he goeth-and he is called the heart all alive to religion, and sensibly afEternal Spirit, through whom the Son of- fected with its charms, and its seriousness, fered himself up without spot unto God. and its principle. Now, my brethren, I will We are quite aware, that the idea suggest-venture to say, that there may be a world ed by the eternal things which are spoken of all this kind of enthusiasm, with the of in our text, is heaven, with all its cir- very man who is not moving a single step cumstances of splendour and enjoyment. towards that blessed eternity, over which This is an object which, even on the prin- his fancy delights to expatiate. The movciples of taste, we take a delight in contem-ing representation of the preacher may be plating; and it is also an object set before listened to as a pleasant song-and the enus in the Scriptures, though with a very tertained hearer return to all the inveterate sparing and reserved hand. All the de- habits of one of the children of this world. scriptions we have of heaven there, are It is this, my brethren, which makes me general, very general. We read of the fear that a power of deceitfulness may acbeauty of the heavenly crown, of the un- company the eloquence of the pulpit-that fading nature of the heavenly inheritance, the wisdom of words may defeat the great of the splendour of the heavenly city-and object of a practical work upon the conthese have been seized upon by men of science-that a` something short of a real imagination, who, in the construction of business change in the heart, and in the their fancied paradise, have embellished it principles of acting, may satisfy the man with every image of peace, and bliss, and who listens, and admires, and resigns his loveliness; and, at all events, have thrown every feeling to the magic of an impressive over it that most kindling of all concep- description-that, strangely compounded tions, the magnificence of eternity. Now, beings as we are, broken loose from God, such a picture as this has the certain effect and proving it by the habitual voidness of of ministering delight to every glowing our hearts to a sense of his authority, and and susceptible imagination. And here lies of his will; that, blind to the realities of anthe deep-laid delusion, which we have oc- other world, and slaves to the wretched incasionally hinted at. A man listens, in fatuation which makes us cleave with the the first instance, to a pathetic and high- full bent of our affections to the one by wrought narrative on the vanities of time which we are visibly and immediately sur-and it touches him even to the tenderness rounded; that utterly unable, by nature, of tears. He looks, in the second instance, to live above the present scene, while its to the fascinating perspective of another cares, and its interests are plying us every scene, rising in all the glories of immor-hour with their urgency; that the prey of tality from the dark ruins of the tomb, and evil passions which darken and distract the he feels within him all those ravishments inner man, and throw us at a wider disof fancy, which any vision of united gran-tance from the holy Being who forbids the deur and loveliness would inspire. Take indulgence of them; and yet with all this these two together, and you have a man weight of corruption about us, having minds weeping over the transient vanities of an that can seize the vastness of some great ever-shifting world, and mixing with all conception, and can therefore rejoice in the this softness, an elevation of thought and expanding loftiness of its own thoughts, as of prospect, as he looks through the vista it dwells on the wonders of eternity; and of a futurity, losing itself in the mighty having hearts that can move to the impulse range of thousands and thousands of cen- of a tender consideration, and can, thereturies. And at this point the delusion fore, sadden into melancholy at the dark comes in, that here is a man who is all that picture of death, and its unrelenting cruelreligion would have him to be-a man ties; and having fancies that can brighten weaned from the littleness of the paltry to the cheerful colouring of some pleasing scene that is around him-soaring high and hopeful representation, and can, thereabove all the evanescence of things present, fore, be soothed and animated when some and things sensible-and transferring every sketch is laid before it of a pious family affection of his soul to the durabilities of a emerging from a common sepulchre, and pure and immortal region. It were better on the morning of their joyful resurrection, if this high state of occasional impress-forgetting all the sorrows and separations ment on the matters of time and of eternity, of the dark world that has now rolled over had only the effect of imposing the false-them--0, my brethren, we fear, we greatly hood on others, that man who was so fear it, that while busied with topics such touched and so transported, had on that as these, many a hearer may weep, or be single account the temper of a candidate elevated, or take pleasure in the touching for heaven. But the falsehood takes pos-imagery that is made to play around him, session of his own heart. The man is while the dust of this perishable earth is all pleased with his emotions and his tears-that his soul cleaves to; and its cheating and the interpretation he puts upon them vanities are all that his heart cares for, or is, that they come out of the fullness of a his footsteps follow after.

The thing is not merely possible-but we see in it a stamp of likelihood to all that experience tells us of the nature or the habitudes of man. Is there no such thing as his having a taste for the beauties of landscape, and, at the same time, turning with disgust from what he calls the methodism of peculiar Christianity? Might not he be an admirer of poetry, and at the same time, nauseate with his whole heart, the doctrine and the language of the New Testament? Might not he have a fancy that can be regaled by some fair and well-formed vision of immortality--and, at the same time, have

no practical hardihood whatever for the exercise of labouring in the prescribed way after the meat that endureth? Surely, surely, this is all very possible-and it is just as possible, and many we believe to be the instances we have of it in real life, when an eloquent description of heaven is exquisitely felt, and wakens in the bosom the raptures of the sincerest admiration, among those who feel an utter repugnancy to the heaven of the Bible--and are not moving a single inch through the narrowness of the path which leads to it.

SERMON VI.

On the Universality of spiritual Blindness.

“Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it is sealed. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.”—Isaiah xxix. 9—12.

WHAT is affirmed in these verses of a must now therefore strike a higher mark of vision and prophecy, holds so strikingly distinction---and, in reference to the Bible, true of God's general revelation to the such a mark can be specified. This book is world, that we deem the lesson contained often made the subject of a much higher in them to be not of partial, but permanent exercise of scholarship than the mere readapplication---and we therefore proceed im- ing of it. It may be read in its original lanmediately, to the task of addressing this les-guages. It may be the theme of many a son, both to the learned and unlearned of the present day.

Let me, in the first place, dwell for a little on the complaints which are uttered by these two classes respecting the hidden and impenetrable character of the book of God's communication---and, in the second place, try to explain the nature of that sleep which is upon both, and in virtue of which both are alike in a state of practical blindness to the realities of the divine word---and, in the third place, raise a short application upon the whole argument.

I. There is a complaint uttered in these verses, first by the learned--and, secondly, by the unlearned---and we shall consider each of them in order.

1st. If a book be closed down by a material seal, then, till that seal be broken, there lies a material obstacle even in the way of him who is able to read the contents of it. And we have no doubt, that the possession of the art of reading would form the most visible and prominent distinction, between the learned and the unlearned in the days of Isaiah. But it no longer, at least in our country, forms the distinction between these two classes. Many a man who can barely read in these days, will still say, and say with truth, that he is not learned. We

laborious commentary. The light of contemporaneous history may be made to shine upon it, by the diligence of an exploring antiquarian. Those powers and habits of criticism, which are of so much avail towards the successful elucidation of the mind and meaning of other authors, may all be transferred to that volume of which God is the author---and what, after all this, it may be asked, is the seal or the obstacle which stands in the way of learned men of our present generation? How is it that any of them can now join in the complaint of their predecessors, in the days of Isaiah-and say, I cannot read this book because it is sealed? Or, is there any remaining hindrance still, in virtue of which, the critics, and the grammarians, and the accomplished theologians of our age, are unable to reach the real and effective understanding of the words of this prophecy?

Yes, my brethren, there is such an obstruction as you now inquire after-and it is wonderful to tell, how little the mere erudition of Scripture helps the real discernment of Scripture-how it may be said, of many of its most classical expounders, that though having eyes, they see not, and though having ears, they hear not-how doctrine, which if actually perceived and

credited, would bring the realities of an | ready to begin that great renewing process eternal world to bear with effect upon their whereby there is made a commencement of conduct, is, operatively speaking, just as holiness upon earth, and a consummation weak as if they did not apprehend it even both of holiness and happiness in heaven--in its literal significancy-how the mere were these, which we all know to be the verbiage of the matter is all in which they truths of Christianity, actually believed, the appear to be conversant, without any actual power of them upon our hearts would come, hold of sight, or of conviction, on the sub- and come immediately, in the train of the stance of the matter how dexterously they perception of them by our understandings. can play at logic with the terms of the com- If we remain unquickened by the utterance munication, and how dimly and deficiently of them, it is because, in the true sense of they apprehend the truths of it-how, after the term, we remain unconvinced by them. having exhausted the uttermost resources The utterance of them may be heard as a of scholarship on the attempt of forcing an very pleasant song---and the representation entrance into the region of spiritual mani- of them be viewed as a very lovely picture festation, they only find themselves labour---but the force of a felt and present reality ing at a threshold of height and of difficulty, is wanting to the whole demonstration. And which they cannot scale-how, as if struck all that reason can do is to adjust the steps with blindness, like the men of Sodom, they of the demonstration--and all that eloquence weary themselves in vain to find the door- can do, is to pour forth the utterance---and and after having reared their stately argu-all that conception can do is to furnish its mentation about the message of peace, they have no faith; about the doctrine of godliness, they have no godliness.

forms and its colouring to the picture. And after learning has thus lavished on the task the whole copiousness of its manifold ingredients, may we behold in the person of its proudest votary, that his Christianity to him is nothing better than an aerial phantom--that it is of as little operation in disposting sense, and nature, and ungodliness from his heart, as if it were but a nonentity, or a name—that to his eye a visionary dimness hangs over the whole subject matter of the testimony of the Bible---and still untranslated into the life, and the substance, and the reality of these things, he may join in the complaint of the text, as if they lay sealed in deepest obscurity from his contemplation.

And it is not enough to say, that all this is not due to the want of discernment, but to the want of power-for the power lies in the truth-and the truth has only to be seen or believed, that it may have the power. The reflection may never have occurred to you-but it is not the less just on that account, how little of actual faith there is in the world. Many call it a mere want of impression. We call it a want of belief. Did we really believe, that there was a God in existence-did we really believe, that with the eye of a deeply interested judge, he was now scrutinizing all the propensities of our heart, and appreciating, with a view to future retribution, all the actions of our history-did we really believe, that sin was to him that hateful enemy with which he could keep no terms, and to which he could give no quarter; and that with every individual who had fallen into it, either in its guilt it must be expiated, and in its presence be finally done away, or the burden of a righteous vengeance would rest upon his person through eternity---did we really believe, that in these circumstances of deepest urgency, a way of redemption has been devised, and that to all whom the tidings of it had reached the offer of deliverance, both from sin in its condemnation, and from sin in its power, was made, through the atoning blood and sanctifying spirit of a complete The learned just labour as helplessly unand omnipotent Saviour---did we really be-der a want of an impression of the reality lieve, that such an offer was lying at the of this whole matter, as the unlearned-and door of every individual, and that his reli- if this be true of those among them, who, ance upon its honesty constituted his ac- with learning and nothing more, have acceptance of the offer--did we really believe, tually tried to decipher the meaning of that throughout the fugitive period of our God's communication-if this be true of abode in this world, which was so soon to many a priest and many a theologian, with pass away, God in Christ was beseeching whom Christianity is a science, and the every one of us to reconciliation; and even study of the Bible is the labour and the now, as if at the place of breaking forth, was business of their profession-what can we

Make what you like in the way of argument, of so many simple conceptions, if the conceptions themselves do not carry the impress of vividness and reality along with them--the reasoning, of which they form the materials, may be altogether faultless--and the doctrine in which it terminates, be held forth as altogether impregnable--yet will it share in all the obscurity which attaches to the primary elements of its formation--and while nature can manage the logical process which leads from the first simple ideas, to the ultimate and made-out conclusion, she cannot rid herself of the dimness in which, to her unrenewed eye, the former stand invested; and she must, therefore, leave the latter in equal dimness.

expect of those among the learned, who, in | complaint that I am not learned. They the pursuits of a secular philosophy, never cannot, for example, estimate the criticism enter into contact with the Bible, either in its of many an expounder. They have not doctrine or in its language, except when it time to traverse the weary extent of many a is obtruded on them? Little do they know ponderous and elaborate commentary. And of our men of general literature, who have those who have had much of Christian innot observed the utter listlessness, if not tercourse with the poor, must have rethe strong and active contempt wherewith marked the effect which their sense of this many of them hear the doctrine of the book inferiority has upon many an imagination of God's counsel uttered in the phraseology ---how it is felt by not a few of them, that of that book-how, in truth, their secret they labour under a hopeless disadvantage, impression of the whole matter is, that it is because they want the opportunities of a a piece of impenetrable mysticism-how, higher and a more artificial scholarship, and in their eyes, there is a cast of obscurity that if they could only get nearer to their over all the peculiarities of the Gospel---and teachers in respect of literary attainment, if asked to give their attention thereto, they they would be nearer that wisdom which is promptly repel the imposition under the unto salvation, and that though they can feeling of a hopeless and insuperable dark-read the book in the plainest sense of the ness, which sits in obsolete characters over term, they cannot read it with any saving the entire face of the evangelical record. or salutary effect, just because, in the lanThere may be bright and cheering exam-guage of my text, they say that they are ples to the contrary, of men in the highest not learned. And thus it is, that the man of our literary walks, who, under a peculiar who has the literary accomplishments after teaching, have learned what they never which they sigh, meets with two distinct learned from all the lessons of the academy. exhibitions to instruct and to humble him. But apart from this peculiar influence, be The first is, when the poor look up to him assured that learning is of little avail. The as to one who, because he has the scholarsacred page may wear as hieroglyphical an ship of Christianity, must have the saving aspect to the lettered, as to the unlettered. knowledge of it also, when he intimately It lies not with any of the powers or pro-feels that the luminary of science may cesses of ordinary education to dissipate that blindness, wherewith the god of this world hath blinded the mind of him who believes not. To make the wisdom of the New Testament his wisdom, and its spirit his spirit, and its language his best-loved and best-understood language, there must be a higher influence upon the mind, than what lies in human art, or in human explanation. And till this is brought to pass, the doctrine of the atonement, and the doctrine of regeneration, and the doctrine of fellow-experience move in a consonancy with the ship with the father and the Son, and the doctrine of a believer's progressive holiness, under the moral and spiritual power of the truth as it is in Jesus, will, as to his own personal experience of its meaning, remain so many empty sounds, or so many deep and hidden mysteries---and just as effectually, as if the book were held together by an iron clasp, which he has not strength to unclose, may he say of the same book lying open and legible before him, that he cannot read it, because it is sealed.

2. So much for the complaint of the learned; and as for the complaint of the unlearned, it happily, in the literal sense of it, is not applicable to the great majority of our immediate countrymen, even in the very humblest walks of society. They can put together its letters, and pronounce its words, and make a daily exercise, if they choose, of one or more of its chapters. They have learning enough to carry them thus far, but not so far as to keep them from joining the unlearned of my text in the

shine full upon him, while not one ray to cheer or to enlighten, may pass into his heart from the luminary of the Gospel. The second is, when he observes among the poor, those who live, and who rejoice under the power of a revelation, to which himself is a stranger, those who can dis cern a beauty and an evidence in the doctrine of Christ, which have never beamed with full radiance upon his own understanding-those whose feelings and whose

truths of the New Testament, which, in his own experience, he never felt-those whose daily path bespeaks the guidance of a wisdom which never yet shone upon his own way, and who are blest with a peace and a joy in believing, which have never found entrance into his own desolate bosom.

This gives us a new sight of the peculiarity which lies in the Bible-and by which it stands distinguished from all other compositions. There may remain a seal upon its meaning to him, who, in the ordinary sense of the term, is learned, while the seal may be removed, and the meaning lie open as the light of day to him, who in the same sense is unlearned. It may come with all the force of a felt and perceived reality upon the one, while the reality is not per ceived, and therefore not felt by the other. To the man of literary accomplishment, the report of eternal things may reach no other influence than that of a sound upon his ear, or of a shadowy representation upon the eye of his fancy. To the unlettered work

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