temptation present itself, than he yields to it. Doubtless there had been times innumerable when he would have turned from it at once, and the spell would have been broken. He would have resisted the devil, and the devil would have fled from him. Dangerous as temptation at all times is, yet had it found him calling upon the Lord, and waiting upon him for help in a humble watchful frame, the Lord would have even over-ruled it for good. But now, alas! he gives way to the seduction. No man, it is true, can prevent the occurrence of sudden and unsolicited temptations. Perhaps no man can entirely prevent their taking hold, in some degree, of his heart. But to yield to them, to bring them into effect, is something positive, requiring time, reflection, deliberation, contrivance. It is in not fleeing from temptation, in parlying with it, in taking counsel to accomplish it, that guilt begins. Thus Just conceived in David and brought forth sin, and the anointed of the, Lord is taken in the snare of the ungodly, goes like an ox to the slaughfer, not considering that it is for his life.

Oh! had David paused but for one moment! Had he retired a while to reflect on what he was about to do! Had he but put up a prayer for divine help; or gone into company, or applied to business, to divert the channel of his thoughts; surely the snare would have been broken, and he would have eseaped. But, alas! he stands a melancholy monument of what the best men are capable of doing, when they forsake God.

And now we are called to behold the awful manner in which crimes are linked to each other in bonds almost indissoluble, so that he who is guilty, of one gross act of sin, can never say, how enormous may be the amount of criminality to which it leads.

What must have been David's feel ings after the perpetration of the first crime! The sense of the divine presence, and the inspiring hope of the, divine favour, and of eternal glory,, would immediately withdraw from him. Did he go up at the hour of prayer to the temple of the Lord? The holy rites and the sacred place would reproach him, and say,. are pure:" his own sweet psalms, perhaps, would awaken the bitter recollection" Who shall go up to the

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house of the Lord, or ascend his holy hill? Even he that hath clean hands,, and a pure heart." Shall he retire into his closet and there touch his sacred harp? His heart would be in no tune for the songs of Zion. Would he join those with whom he once used to walk to the house of God, and to take sweet counsel on divine things? The conscious sense of guilt would make his tongue dumb, and his heart hard. With what face could. he meet his servants, and look upon those whom he used to reprove or exhort? Their very eyes intently fixed upon his would confound-him with shame and apprehension. Should he join his partner in sin? The guilty, hours spent with her would be embittered by the reflection of the ruin he had brought upon her soul. In short, a degree of hardness of heart and desperateness would be induced, which would render him unfit for. and incapable of, those holy exercises in which he once placed his chief delight; and guilt would reign in his heart..

The consequences of David's crime are now becoming visible, and in order to hide them he has recourse to the lowest artifices. He sends for the injured husband. He treats him with a base and unworthy subtlety, and endeavours to impose upon him a spurious offspring. How must the noble refusal of the brave soldier to sleep on his bed while the ark of God was abroad, and the armies of Israel were encamped to fight the battles of his beloved though treacherous sovereign, have cut him to the soul. Doubtless this was but one of many daggers which his crime had plunged into his heart.

When deceit would not prevail, a fresh crime is resorted to: a crime at which David would once have shuddered. He had been the seducer of Uriah's wife: he now becomes the tempter of her husband to sin. But neither would this ayail. The faithful soldier, even when overcome with wine, refuses to yield to the temptation. It is remarkable of sin, that one act so paves the way for another, that there is scarcely any crime, however flagrant, which may not be committed when the mind is brought to it step by step. David, urged by the dread of a husband's detection (though what was detection when his crime was already known to God :) determines to add murder to adultery:

to kill his servant, one of the bravest and most faithful of his servants, the man whom he had so grossly abused: to murder him by an act of the basest perfidy at the very moment he was braving death in his defence. Nor could he rest till news was brought him that Uriah was slain, in order that he might enjoy his criminal intercourse without fear.

Here let us pause to consider what David once was, and what he is now become. Once the leader of the Lord's people, the first in the sanctuary, the zealous restorer of divine worship, the sweet singer of Israel. Who that had once heard his pious strains, and seen his devout addresses to God, could have ever thought that he would have so fallen! Who but should tremble to see the holy David so deeply immersed in guilt! How fallen must he have appeared to the servants whom he sent for Bathsheba: to Bathsheba when he solicited her to sin: to Uriah when he seduced him to intoxication: to Joab when he gave the perfidious order for Uriah's murder to the messenger sent with the tidings of his death! How must all these have been hardened in their own sin by the example of the royal transgressor!

David's wicked schemes had now succeeded to his wish. Uriah can no more disturb the bed of his seducer and murderer. No obstacle now remains to enjoyment. But at this moment the divine hand arrests him, and God is pleased in mercy to interpose to save his servant from everlasting destruction. With a heart so hardened, a conscience so seared, a soul so habituated to sin, David would probably have remained in the awful state into which he had fallen, had not God by his grace rescued him from it. It was his mercy alone which saved David.

The mode in which it pleased God to touch his heart is remarkable. To the claims of justice and the feelings of generosity, David, though greatly fallen, was not yet lost; and by these still remaining traces of grace the prophet addresses his conscience. What self-deceit is there in the human heart! David could be wroth with the man who had taken a lamb from his poor neighbour; yet he did not feel the far more flagrant iniquity of robbing Uriah of his wife and of his life. So are men blind to their own vices, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 32.

while they can clearly behold and keenly censure the faults of others. But the time of God's mercy was come. The scales of blindness fall from his eyes. His heart is softened. He feels the guilt of his sin. He stands self-condemned before the prophet; and his aggravated transgressions are forgiven.

By comparing the account of David's penitence, 2 Sam. xii. with what he has himself said in the Psalms, we shall perceive that his repentance was sincere and his grief poignant. In the fifty-first psalm, written evidently upon his repentance after this fall, we find the most fervent prayers for pardon and grace, and the most humbling confessions of his guilt and misery. In the thirty-second psalm, which seems also to have been writ ten upon the same occasion, we find him speaking of his bones waxing old with weeping all the day long, and of the hand of the Lord being so heavy upon him that his moisture was turned into the drought of summer. God we are told, forgave his sin; and we know that neither David, nor any other sinner, could be forgiven but in the way of deep humiliation and unfeigned repentance.

But when God forgives, he does not always wholly spare. He may pardon the sinner so as not to bring him into eternal condemnation, and yet punish him severely. And this was the case with David. Besides the wound which his soul had sustained, and which, perhaps, might never afterwards be entirely healed, we see his future life harassed by perpetual sorrows. He had acted perfidiously to Uriah, and his own son acts perfidiously to him. Not only was he deprived of his child, the fruit of his crime, but he is driven from his throne; his house is stained by blood; his family is polluted by scenes of incestuous lust, and distracted by fatal dissensions. From that time the sword departed not from his house; but violence, and animosity, and blood, darkened the remainder of his life: so that all the inhabitants of Jerusalem who had known of his sin, would, doubtless, see the hand of God avenging it, and say, "This hath God wrought," for they would perceive that it was his work.

Let then this dreadful fall of David induce us to guard against declensions in grace, and to watch against 3 race,

of sins, and the salvation of our souls, these are benefits obtainable only upon the condition of faith and repentunce. On the one side, no man will say that Christ died to this end, to procure salvation and forgiveness to eve ry one, whether they believe and repent or no: so on the other, none will deny but that he died to this end," that salvation and remission should redound to all and every one, in case they should repent and believe: for this depends upon the sufficiency of that price which our Saviour paid for the redemption of the world: and to pay a price sufficient for the redemption of all and every one is, in a fair sense, to redeem all and every one. Thus he, (viz. the moderator) so as neither part can find fault with the decision, and both must rest satisfied."

Thus, according to Bishop Hall, the golden mean seems to be, that the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ is sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world, but is available only to those who repent and believe the gospel. The offer of salvation is freely and fairly made to all mankind: but all do not accept it: for all have not that penitence and faith without which they cannot be saved. Thus too are the scriptures reconciled. God" is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance;" and yet, though "many are called, few are chosen."

I apprehend, Sir, that some of the most difficult subjects of controversy might, in like manner, be reconciled did we but endeavour "exuere hominem," to put off the man, to repress hasty impressions and prejudices, and did "our charity teach us to mince those errors which we cannot suppress; and where we find extremes, to strain both parts what we may, to meet in the mean." It will be a blessed day, Sir, for the Church of England, when all who profess to be her sons will imitate her wise and pious moderation; will neither torture nor attenuate the plain meaning of the scriptures; but will endeavour to reconcile discordant opinions, by permitting the word of God to speak for itself, and by resting contented with not being wise above that which is written.

BOETHOS.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

HAVING thrown together a few thoughts on the important subject of practical preaching, I submit them to your perusal. If you think it expedient, you are at liberty to insert them in your miscellany.

It is to be lamented, Sir, that, in this day of profession, practical preaching, or, in other words, the explanation and enforcement of the duties of christianity in connexion with its doctrines, is fallen into much neglect and disrepute among those who are commonly termed the religious world. We see that those preachers are invariably most popular, who treat least of the precepts of the gos pel. In short, the prevailing taste of the religious world is too much for doctrinal preaching to the utter exclusion of practical. This taste is gaining ground daily; and, unless it be resisted and repressed, we may speedily expect to see half of the apostle Paul's writings become a dead letter, and the New Testament curtailed of half its contents, and stript of half its excellency.

It is not difficult to trace the reasons of this neglect. It originates partly in the bad use which is commonly made of the morality of the gospel, by the enforcement of evangelical precepts upon the ground of merit; which leaves people destitute of any effectual motive to the performance of them, and ignorant of the only true principle of christian obedience, love to God. This miserably defective mode of preaching, but too common in the world, has caused some picus, but injudicious, persons to listen with a kind of suspicion to the discussion of any precept of the gospel, even when enforced upon proper principles; and to go away dissatisfied with such a sermon, as if morality and the gospel were at variance, and the preaching of the one excluded the preaching of the other.

But there is another reason for this neglect of more extensive influence than the former. It is to be met with in that secretaversion which most people, and even good men, have to instituting a close and cautious scrutiny into their own hearts, and to measuring their conduct by the rigorous standard of the gospel. To this, I am afraid, is to be imputed the repug