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the Gospel, this law is made to stand in another place. It is conveyed, as it were, from its old position, on a tablet of stone, and written in the characters of a living epistle on the tablet of a believer's heart. Now the question we have to put is, in this transference of the law from its old to its new repository, does any one of its articles fall away from it, and is lost, as it were, in the passage, by being loosened and detached from the other articles among which it was incorporated? We can specify some, at least, of the ten commandments, which have found their way safe and entire to the heart of him who has embraced the Gospel, and lives under the power of its purifying in

of practical obedience is upheld under the dispensation of the Gospel, by all the securities of positive and preceptive obligation. But more than this-there is such a change wrought by grace in the heart of every believer, that he not only understands the obligation, but is made cordially to acquiesce in it. There is such a revolution in his desires, that it is now his meat and drink to do the will of that God, against whom there existed within him the most stubborn and revolting enmity. The man who by faith, now looks on God as his friend, will have no difficulty in understanding this change, for he feels it; and there is not a believer on the face of the earth who does not, from the time of his becoming so, love that law which he afore-fluences. We are sure that such a man will time violated. This law was at first graven on tables of stone, and held out for the government of a helpless and guilty race, who were both unable and unwilling to yield to it the loyalty of their obedience; and it therefore served to them for a ministry of condemnation.

have his supreme affections fastened upon God, and renouncing every idol, whether of wealth, or of ambition, or of vanity, that can dethrone the Father of his spirit from his rightful ascendency, he will prefer no one object of regard, or of reverence before him. We are sure that such a man will be quite in earnest to have a right knowledge and conception of God-that the Being he worships may be the true God-and lest, by directing his homage to some false and distorted picture of his own fancy, he may incur all the guilt, and be carried away by all the delusion of him who falls down to a material image, in lowly and bending adoration. We are sure that such a man will do honour to the hallowed name of his Master, who is in heaven, and be sickened and appalled by that profaneness which is so current in many of our companies, We are sure that such a man will revere his earthly parents, and will stand by them in the midst of their sinking infirmities; and whether in the form of a declining father, or a widowed mother, who has thrown the whole burden of her dependence on the children who remain to her, we are sure that he will never turn a contemptuous ear to the feebleness of their entreating voicebut will bid his proud and aspiring manhood give up to their authority all its waywardness, and all its tumultuous indepen

When the dispensation of grace was brought in, this law was not abrogated. One of the most illustrious exercises of the grace of God, consisted in his putting forth a device for securing the observance of his laws, and this device is neither more nor less than putting the law in our hearts, and writing it in our minds. On the change taking place from our being under the law, to our being under grace, the law, to use the language of the Bible, is taken down from the place it formerly occupied on tablets of stone, and from which it frowns upon us in all the wrath of its violated dignity; and it is graven on the fleshly tablets of the heart-or, in other words, the man is endowed with a liking for that which he formerly rebelled against. And grant him possessed of the genuine principle of faith; and there can be no doubt, that the spirit, true to his office, has been at work within him, and has given a new bent to his affections, and has turned them to the love of those commandments which he aforetime hated and resisted, and has established in his bosom this omnipotent security for obe-dence. We are quite sure, that in the heart dience, that the taste and the inclinations of of such a man, there is an aspiration of the new creature are now upon his side; kindliness towards every thing that breathes, and as if carried forward by the spontaneous and that the commandment, "Thou shalt and inborn alacrity of a constitutional im- not kill," carries in his bosom the widely pulse, does the man who is thus trans- extended import of thou shalt not conceive formed, and thus acted upon by that Spirit, one purpose, nor carry against a single hufor which he never ceases to pray, run with man being, one rankling sentiment of madelight in the way of all the commandments. lignity. We are sure that such a man, far Now, we have already attempted to satisfy removed from all that is licentious in prac you, that there is no erasure of the fourth tice, will recoil, even in the unseen solitude commandment from that lettered record of of thought, from all that is licentious in conthe law, which is met with in your Bibles, ception, and spurning away from the pure and where the institution of the Sabbath is sanctuary of his heart every evil and unhalgraven as indelibly as any one of the un-lowed visitation, he will present to the apchangeable moralities among which it is proving eye of Heaven, all the adornments situated. But by the new dispensation of of a spiritual temple, all the graces and all

the beauties of an unspotted offering. We have gotten their secure and inviolable lodgare sure that such a man, with a hand un-ment within the tablet of a Christian heart? soiled by any one of the gains of injustice, If we look into that heart, do we meet with will with all the sensitiveness of high-minded no trace of the commandment we are in and honourable principle, keep himself as quest of? Will you tell us, that the law nobly aloof from substantial as from literal of the Sabbath is erased, we will not say dishonesty. He will feel superior to every from the remembrance, but from the affecone of those tolerated artifices, and those tion of any one of the actual Christians by practical disguises, which, throughout the whom you are surrounded? Has it left begreat mass of mercantile society, have so hind it a vacancy in that spiritual tablet hardened and so worn down the con- which is graven by the Spirit of God, when sciences of those, who, for years, have been he writes the law in the believer's heart, speeding and bustling their way amongst a and puts it into his mind? This is a quesvariety of manifold transactions-and in the tion of observation-and speaking from our high walk of simplicity and godly sincerity, own observation, we never, in the whole will he carry along with him the impress round of it, met with a man, drawn by the of one of the peculiar people, amid all the cords of love to the doing of the other comlegalized fraudulency of a selfish and un-mandments, and carrying in his heart either principled generation. We are quite sure that such a man, seeing he had put on the deeds of the new creature, would never suffer the burning infamy of a lie to rest upon him. All that was within him, and about him, would be clear as the ethereal firmament. The wiles of a deceitful policy would be utterly unknown to him. The openness and the ingenuousness of truth, would sit upon his forehead, and his every utterance bear upon it as decided a stamp of authority, as if shielded by a solemn appeal to God and to the judgment-seat. And, lastly, we are quite sure that such a man could not breathe a single avaricious desire after the substance of another. His heart is set on another treasure. He has entered the service of another master than the mammon of unrighteousness. His affections have settled on a more enduring substance, With the eye of faith, he looks to heaven, and to its unfading and unperishable riches; and all the splendours of this world's vain and empty magnificence, sink into worthlessness before them. He can eye the golden career of his more prosperous neighbours, without one wistful sentiment either of covetousness or of envy; and feels not the meanness and the hardships of his humbler condition, amid the tranquillities of a heart that is cherishing a better prospect, and reposing on the sure anticipation of a happier and more enduring home.

a distaste or an indifference for the fourth of them? We may have seen men high in honour, and earning by their integrity the rewards of an unsullied reputation amongst their fellow-citizens, carrying a visible contempt for the Sabbath law throughout the whole line of their Sabbath-history-but all the truth and all the justice of these men are such constitutional virtues as may exist in a character which owns not and feels not the power of godliness; and sure we are that wanting this power, several of the other commandments can be specified, to which they are as utter strangers as to the commandment of the seventh day. We repeat it, therefore, that if you grant us a man who bears about with him in his bosom, a warm and conscientious attachment to all the articles of the decalogue but this one, before we look at him, we say with confidence, that scarch him, and both in his heart and in his practice, this one is to be found; and that we shall not fail to meet the Sabbath law as firmly established as any other within the secrecies of his bosom, and standing out as conspicuously on the front of his external observations. We never, in the whole course of our recollections, met with a Christian friend, who bore upon his character every other evidence of the Spirit's operation, who did not remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. We appeal to the memory of all the worthies Well, then, in the heart of this man, of who are now lying in their graves, that whom we suppose nothing more than that eminent as they were in every other grace he has drunk in the genius of our better and accomplishment of the new creature, dispensation, we find graven in the most the religiousness of their Sabbath-day shone legible and distinct characters, nine of the with an equal lustre amid the fine assemcommandments. We meet with all the ten blage of virtues which adorn them. In every in the letter of the Old Testament, and we Christian household, it will be found, that find nine out of these ten in a state of most the discipline of a well-ordered Sabbath is vigorous and entire operation, under the never forgotten amongst the other lessons spirit of the New Testament. What has of a Christian education-and we appeal to become of the fourth commandment? Has every individual who now hears us, and it sunk and disappeared under the stormy who carries the remembrance in his bosom vicissitudes of that middle passage, through of a father's worth, and a father's piety, if which all the rest have found their way, on the coming round of the seventh day, an from the tablets of a literal inscription, and air of peculiar sacredness did not spread it

our Lord-that the great Spirit, whose of fice it is to inscribe the law of God on the hearts of those whose sins are forgiven them, and whom he has admitted into the privileges of his new and his better cove nant, has never omitted, in a single instance, to make the remembrance of the Sabbath one of the most conspicuous, and one of the most indelible articles of that inscription. And thus has it happened, that without any statutory enactment in the whole compass of the New Testament upon the subject-without any formal setting forth of Sabbath observation, or any laying down of a Sabbath ceremonial, the grave, the solemn, the regular, and with all this, the affectionate keeping of this distinguished day, has come down to us through a series of eighteen centuries, and may be recognised to this hour as the ever-present badge of every Christian individual; and as the great index and palladium of religion in every Christian land.

self over that mansion where he drew his tians--that in every age of the church the first breath, and was taught to repeat his love of the Sabbath, and an honest delight infant hymn, and lisp his infant prayer. in all its pious and profitable observances, Rest assured, that a Christian, having the have ever stood out among the visible linealove of God written in his heart, and deny-ments of the new creature in Jesus Christ ing the Sabbath a place in its affections, is an anomaly that is no where to be found. Every Sabbath image, and every Sabbath circumstance, is dear to him. He loves the quietness of that hallowed morn. He loves the church-bell sound, which summons him to the house of prayer. He loves to join the chorus of devotion, and to sit and listen to that voice of persuasion which is lifted in the hearing of an assembled multitude. He loves the retirement of this day from the din of worldly business, and the inroads of worldly men. He loves the leisure it brings along with it-and sweet to his soul is the exercise of that hallowed hour, when there is no eye to witness him but the eye of heaven--and when in solemn audience with the Father, who seeth him in secret, he can, on the wings of celestial contemplation, leave all the cares, and all the vexations, and all the secularities of an alienated world behind him. O, how is it possible, that a man can be under the dominion of a principle of piety, who does not love that day We shall just say one thing more upon which brings round to piety its most pre- this subject at present. What now becomes cious opportunities? How is it possible, of him, who, like a special pleader, with a that he can wear the character of a religious statute-book in his hand, thinks that the being, if the very day which offers him the New Testament has set him at large from freest time for the lessons and the exercises every other style of Sabbath observation, of religion, is spent in other exercises, or because he cannot find in it any laying idly suffered to roll over his head in no ex-down of Sabbath observances? He will ercise at all? How is it possible, that there not own the force of any obligation till it can exist within him any honest care of his be shown to him as one of the clauses in the eternity, if the best season for carrying on, bond. His constant appeal is to the bond. without disturbance, the preparations of He will not exceed, by a single inch, the eternity, pass away in disgust and in weari-literalities of the bond. He will square his ness? How is it possible, with all the ten- every service, and his every offering by the derness of his instinctive nature for the bond; and when he is charged with any members of his family, that there can be one of the misdemeanours of Sabbath-breakone particle of tenderness for their souls, if ing, he will tell you that it is not specified this day run on at large from all the re-in the bond. Why, my brethren, if the straints of Christian discipline, and careless bond be what he stands upon, he just parents, giving themselves up to neglect and wakens up against himself the old ministry to indolence, make no effort to reclaim the of condemnation. If it be on the just and wild ignorance of children, untaught and even footing of the bond that he chooses to untrained to that wisdom which is unto sal- have his exactly literal dealings with God, vation? The thing is not to be conceived; on this footing God will enter into judg and upon the strength of all these impossi- ment with him; and soon, and very soon, bles, do we assert, that every real Christian will he convict him of his glaring deficienhas the love of the Sabbath engraven on cies from his own favourite standard, the the tablet of the inner man-that if you had bond. Ah, my brethren, when a Christian a window to his bosom, you would there serves his reconciled Father, it is the sersee the fourth commandment filling up as vice of a liberal and spontaneous attachlarge a space of that epistle, which is writ- ment. His aim is to please him and to gloten not with ink, but with the Spirit of the rify him to the uttermost; and he is never living God, as it does on the decalogue of more delighted than when it is in his power Moses-that this is not the peculiarity of to offer the God whom he loves, some of some accidental Christians, meeting our ob- those substantial testimonies of affection servation on some random walk over the which no jealousy can extort by any of its face of Christian society-that it is the con-enactments, and the letter of no law is able stant and universal attribute of all Chris-to embody in any of its descriptions. With

such a spirit, and such a cordiality within, we cannot doubt for a moment the delight which such a man will take in the Sabbath, and how dear to his bosom will the affect ing remembrance be to which it is consecrated, and how diligently he will cultivate its every hour to the purpose for which it was made and how, knowing that the Sabbath was made for man, he will earnestly and honestly give himself to the task of realizing all its usefulness to himself and to his family. And do you think, that God will not see this? Do you think, that he will stand in need of any literal specifications by which he may mark the character

of this man on the day of retribution? Will he not be able to read that epistle which he himself has engraven on the fleshly tablets of his heart? Will he not know his own? Will he not recognise all the lineaments of that new creature, which has been fashioned by his own spirit-and on that day when the secrets of every heart are laid open, will not the Sabbath observations of an honest and affectionate believer, flowing, as they do, from the impulses of a love for that law which is written on his mind, be put down among those good deeds which shall be found to praise, and honour, and glory, at the solemn reckoning of the judgment seat.

SERMON XI.

On the Doctrine of Predestination.

"And now I exhort you to be of good cheer for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved."-Acts xvii. 22, 31.

doctrine in question, in addition to the testimonies which we find for it in the Bible, is at this moment receiving a very general support from the speculations of infidel as well as Christian philosophers.

THE comparison of these two verses of any individual-and the whole train of lands us in what may appear to many to be future history is left to the wildness of aca very dark and unprofitabe speculation. cident. All this carries along with it so Now, our object in setting up this compari- complete a' dethronement of God-it is son, is not to foster in any of you a tendency bringing his creation under the dominion to meddle with matters too high for us; but of so many nameless and undeterminable to protect you against the practical mischief contingencies-it is taking the world and of such a tendency. You have all heard of the current of its history so entirely out the doctrine of predestination. It has long of the hands of him who formed it-it is been a settled article of our church. And withal so opposite to what obtains in every there must be a sad deal of evasion and of other field of observation, where, instead unfair handling with particular passages, of the lawlessness of chance, we shall find to get free of the evidence which we find that the more we attend, the more we perfor it in the Bible. And independently of ceive of a certain necessary and establishScripture altogether, the denial of this doc- ed order-that from these and other contrine brings a number of monstrous considerations which might be stated, the ceptions along with it. It supposes God to make a world, and not to reserve in his own hand the management of its concerns. Though it should concede to him an absolute sovereignty over all matter, it deposes him from his sovereignty over the region Assenting, as we do, to this doctrine, we of created minds, that far more dignified state it as our conviction, that God could and interesting portion of his works. The point the finger of his omniscience to every greatest events of the history of the uni-one individual amongst us, and tell what verse, are those which are brought about by the agency of willing and intelligent beings; and the enemies of the doctrine invest every one of these beings with some sovereign and independent principle of freedom, in virtue of which it may be asserted of this whole class of events, that they happened, not because they were ordained of God, but because the creatures of God, by their own uncontrolled power, brought them into existence. At this rate, even he to whom we give the attribute of omniscience, is not able to say at this moment, what shall be the fortune or the fate

shall be the fate of each, and the place of each, and the state of suffering or enjoyment of each at any one period of futurity, however distant. Well does he know those of us who are vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, and those of us whom he has predestinated to be conformed to the image of his dear Son, and to be rendered meet for the inheritance. We are not saying, that we, or that any of you could so cluster and arrange the two sets of individuals. This is one of the secret things which belong to God. It is not our duty to be altogether silent about the doctrine of predes

benefit of their seamanship and their exertions. They did what other passengers could not do. They lightened the ship. They took up the anchors. They loosed the rudder-bands. They hoisted up the mainsail to the wind-and the upshot of this long intermediate process, with all its steps, was, that the men escaped safe to the land, and the decree of God was accomplished.

tination; for the Bible is not silent about it, | were kept on board, and rendered the full and it is our duty to promulgate and to hold up our testimony for all that we find there. But certain it is, that the doctrine has been so injudiciously meddled withit has tempted so many ingenious and speculative men to transgress the limits of Scripture it has engendered so much presumption among some, and so much despondency among others-it has been so much abused to the mischief of practical Christianity, that it were well for us all, could we carefully draw the line between the secret things which belong to God, and the things which are revealed, and belong to us and to our children.

Now, in the first instance, it was true, in the most absolute sense of the word, that these men were to be saved. And in the second instance, it was no less true, that unless the sailors abode in the ship, they With this view, we shall, in the first could not be saved. And the terms of this place, lay before you the observations apparent contradiction admit of a very obwhich are suggested by the immediate his-vious reconciliation on the known truth, tory in the passage now submitted to you. that God worketh by instruments. He may And, in the second place, we shall attempt carry every one purpose of his into immeto evince its application to us of the pre-diate accomplishment by the direct energy sent day, and how far it should carry an of his own hands. But in point of fact, influence over the concerns of practical godliness.

this is not his general way of proceeding. He chooses rather to arrive at the accomI. In the. 22d verse Paul announces in plishment of many of his objects by a sucabsolute terms, that all the men of the ship cession of steps, or by the concurrence of one were to be saved. He had been favoured or more visible instruments, which require with this intimation from the mouth of an time for their operation: This is a truth to angel. It was the absolute purpose of God, which all nature and all experience lend and no obstacle whatever could prevent its their testimony. It was his purpose that, accomplishment. To him belongs that know- at the moment I am now addressing you, ledge which sees every thing, and that there should be light over the face of the power which determines every thing; and country, and this purpose he accomplishes he could say to his prophet, "These men by the instrumentality of the sun. There will certainly be saved." Compare this is a time coming, when light shall be furwith what we have in the 31st verse. By nished out to us in another way-when this time the sailors had given up all hope there shall be no need either of the sun or of the safety of the vessel. They had toiled, the moon to lighten the city of our habitaas they thought, in vain-and in despair of tion---but when the glory of God shall doing any good, they ceased from working lighten it, and the Lamb shall be the light the ship, and resolved to abandon her. thereof. But this is not the way at preWith this view they let down the boat to sent, and, therefore, it is both true, that it try the chance of deliverance for them- was God's purpose there should be light selves, and leave the passengers to perish. over us and around us at this moment, and Upon this Paul, though his mind had been that unless the sun had risen upon us this previously assured, by an intimation from morning, there would have been no such the foreknowledge and predestination of light. It may be the purpose of God to God, that there should be no loss of men's bless the succeeding year with a plentiful lives, put on all the appearance of earnest-harvest. He could accomplish this purness and urgency-and who can doubt, pose in two ways. He could make the that he really felt this earnestness at the ripened corn start into existence by a sinmoment of his speaking to the centurion, gle word of his power. But this is not the when he told him, that unless these men actual way in which he carries such deshould abide in the ship, they would not signs into accomplishment. He does it by be saved? He had before told them, in the the co-operation of many visible instru most unrestricted terms, that they would ments. It is true, he can pour abundance be saved. But this does not restrain his among us even in the midst of adverse practical urgency now-and the urgency weather and unfavourable seasons. But he of Paul gave an alarm and a promptitude actually does it by means of favourable to the mind of the centurion-and the cen- weather and favourable seasons. It is not turion ordered his soldiers to cut the ropes in spite of bad weather that we receive which fastened the boat to the vessel, that from his hands the blessings of plenty the sailors, deprived of this mode of escape, but in consequence of good weathermight be forcibly detained among them-sunshine and shower succeeding each and the soldiers obeyed-and the sailors other in fit proportion--calm to prevent the

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