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and voluntarily and cordially seek by every means, direct and indirect, to please him, to promote his designs, to shew him homage, to celebrate his virtues, and to spread his reputation, it will be found that there is a congeniality between us and the object of our ardent and profound respect. Is it surprising then that men should so seldom seek God's glory, when we consider what men are, and what God is? Will they who are "earthly, sensual, and devilish," be solicitous for the glory of the invisible and holy God? Predominating sin will ever disqualify men from honouring God. There will be a repugnance to the object, and a distaste to all the means by which that object is to be sought. Sin, so far from consenting that God shall be the great end of being and action, aims, as far as in it lies, to dethrone and undeify him. It sets its "mouth against the heavens," and makes a thrust at the very throne of God. And if sin has the disposition, it has the mastery, of the mind. Every thing then is under its dominion and dictates. Understanding, conscience, terrors, resolutions, plans of acting, efforts, and struggles-all fall before this uncontrollable tyrant; and the mind is overborne and hurried along the path of ungodliness, in spite of its own fears, purposes, and remonstrances. Of little avail then will be the resolve to glorify God, however truly meant, unless the heart be liberated from the impulses of dominant sin. We must "die to sin," or we cannot "live unto God." Draw out your scheme of godly life; and see if you can fill it up with an unsanctified disposition. Try if anything but a holy heart can fill up your sketch of godliness.

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Soon will failure, disappointment, and despair, teach you the hopelessness of your task. Oar taste must also be spiritual as well as holy. If the disposition be earthly, the ends sought are not likely to be heavenly and divine. If God's glory be formally proposed by the intellect as the object of pursuit, the worldly heart will infallibly and instinctively fly of to some other end more congenial with its tastes and inclinations. The mind will ever be subject an obsequious to its own strongest tendencies; and sure as is the connexion between cause and effect: so certain will be the bias of a worldly heart to a worldly end. And "we cannot serve two mas ters." If the world is regnant and supreme in our affections, our motives and our purposes, God is disowned and despised. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."* friendship of the world is enmity with God: whoever therefore will be the friend of the world, is the enemy of God." This close, ardent, constant, de voted attachment to earthly things, resembling eager confidential, intimate, self-denying "friendship," is incompatible with cordial regard for an object so diverse and opposed as the glory of God. The conflicting claims cannot be reconciled; nothing but hy. pocrisy can make them seem to harmonize; and no thing but ignorance can believe them to be capable of agreement. There will therefore clearly be no aim at the honour of God, until the disposition be made holy and spiritual. We must be "renewed in the spirit of our minds." In order to " yield ourselves as

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living sacrifices to God," and to escape being "conformed to this world," we must "be transformed by the renewing of our minds." We must "put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." "A new heart and a right spirit must be given us." The Lord in accomplishing his promise that he will be our God and that we shall be his people," "puts his laws in our mind, and writes them in our hearts." Whilst we are "in the flesh it is impossible to please God." The necessity therefore for a radical and vital change lies in the very nature of things. Whilst the mind is doating and grovelling upon the dust-embracing and fondly clinging to "the world and the things of the world" -blindly burrowing and hiding in earthliness and carnality-plunging and wallowing in sensuality and sin, it is impossible that it should soar towards God. Who does not perceive that the whole temper and habit of the mind must be altered-that there must be indeed a new nature? The thoughts and affections of men flow naturally, and freely, and rapidly in the low channels of sense and sin, and no mere human force or skill will make them ascend towards God. The very effort appears to them strange and unnatural, something like forcing waters above their source. Not more naturally do streams seek the vales, than their hearts the world; and the unaided effort to force them upwards towards God and heaven, would be as vain and hopeless as the task of impelling mighty rivers up the sides of towering mountains. God by his own mighty Spirit must bring us up to this lovely eminence-this highest style of man-this perfection of life-this acme of existence -doing all things to the glory of God.

IV. The subjugation of the selfish propensities of the heart is likewise essential. Man is radically selfish. Let us look out upon the world, and look round upon our own circles, and look in upon ourselves, and how wide-spread, how settled, how absorbing do we perceive to be, the influence of selfishness over the human heart! It is perhaps the more profound and the less suspected, because, instead of being so originally, unmixedly and nakedly evil as many other sinful propensities, it is the overgrowth of an elemental and allowable principle of our primitive nature-regard to our own happiness. But it is so vicious, enormous, engrossing an overgrowth-so diseased, unshapely and monstrous an excess-as to be incompatible with a just regard to the divine claims. Thus disordered, it becomes preventive and exclusive of all care for other interests and other ends than its own. Thus changed and corrupted, like the over-swelling and low-hanging excrescence of a plant, it absorbs all the life and spirit of our minds, and totally hinders the healthy and vigorous, the generous and lofty shooting upward of godly aims and divine affections.

So long as a man looks upon himself as the great and sole end of all he thinks, and designs and does, so long God is not recognised. He is indeed regarded as an intruder and an usurper. Whilst the mind is engrossed with a sole regard to self aggrandizement, self-gratification, self-reputation, selfpraise, or even self-security, there will be no desire to magnify, to please, to adore God, nor hearty aim to advance those interests which are God's, or to promote them because they are his. Where all is done for self, nothing is done for God.

This exclusive,

and unlovely, and all-absorbing care for self, must yield to more generous and expanded sentiments, before we shall "do all to the glory of God." The frost-bound heart must melt. "The love of God must be shed abroad in the heart, by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.” * The sullen fire of selfish affections must be exchanged for the pure and expansive glowings of true regard for God. We must be brought to feel as well as acknowledge that there are claims and interests inconceivably beyond and above our own. We must shrink into our proper dimensions, fall down to our proper level, and keep in our proper place, before we shall be in a position glorify the God of heaven."

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V. Somewhat allied to this last mentioned requisite, is the destruction of that pride and self-sufficiency which have rule over the hearts of unrenewed men. The unhumbled mind resents the claims of divine sovereignty, and ill relishes the all-sufficiency of God, as it must at the same time confess its own littleness and dependency. It cannot brook "the riches of grace" because it cannot endure to look upon its own debt, poverty and guilt. And how intolerable the thought of giving up itself to the will, and purposes and glory of God! How unendurable to put itself, so to speak, out of its own power! It seems like giving up itself to chains and bondage. It appears like casting one's self away. How terrible does the surrender appear! O the struggles, the anguish, the dismay which the proud mind feels at the thought of giving up itself to God! What

* Rom, v. 5,

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