then permits us to abandon our first motives, and to continue in them from new motives, from a love of truth, the love of our neighbour, and the love of goodness. And, although, in passing this state of purification, we may find that we have indeed a sea of troubles and difficulties to pass through, yet we have this consolation, that the Lord has placed lions, oxen, and cherubs, round this sea, in order to guard us in its danger, and protect that good and truth which we have imbibed from being injured; thereby fulfilling his promise, "When thou passest through the waters they shall not overflow thee."

Let all of us, then, examine the motives which have induced us to profess those doctrines which are here taught, and to acknowledge ourselves members of the Lord's new church. If those motives have been pure, let us pursue them with vigour, and trust in the divine providence for success; if they were impure, let us remember that the Lord has placed a molten sea within us; therefore let us wash both our hands and our feet, and trust in the divine mercy.

SERMON XXXVII.

ON CHRISTIAN PERSEVERANCE.

BY THE REV. E. D. RENDELL.

Luke xvii. 31.

"In that day, he which shall be upon the house top, and his stuff in his house, let him not come down to take it away; and he that is in the field let him likewise not return back." THESE words form a portion of a discourse which was delivered by the Lord Jesus Christ, concerning the subject of his second coming. From all that is revealed of this event, it is evident, that it is intended to constitute a distinguished climax of that dispensation which was planted by himself, and propagated through the instrumentality of his apostles. Concerning the manner in which this coming is to be accomplished, various conjectures have been formed and entertained. The notion which commonly prevails is of a very external character; it supposes that the Lord will make his appearance in the clouds of the atmosphere by which the earth is surrounded, and that he will thereupon, by the exercise of some mysterious power, summon the living and raise the dead to judgment. It is further imagined, that when this awful catastrophe is completed, the world is to be set on fire and consumed in an universal conflagration. These, however, are inaccurate views of this important subject. They have originated in mistaking the figurative language, in which the circumstance is described, for its literal sense, and they have been perpetuated, in consequence of the professing church having fallen into an external and sensual state. This condition has overtaken the church, in consequence of its members having neglected to cultivate the affection of charity; for when the heat of heavenly charity is extinguished, the light of genuine truth will necessarily perish. This was a moral and intellectual calamity, which the Lord foresaw would spread its awful mantle over the people and nations of the earth, that is, the spiritual and celestial principle of the church. It has arisen from the ascendency which has been acquired by the impure loves of self and of the world, and the corruptions which are consequent on their influence. It was to shorten these days,

by preventing these evils from inflicting final desolation on the church, that the Lord promised he would come again.

The manner in which this second advent is to be effected is not by a second manifestation of himself in person, but in the spiritual and intellectual effects that are to follow the accomplishment of certain wise and important arrangements in his church. These purposes, in general, were two. First, the execution of a judgment in the world of spirits, as the common receptacle for all those who depart this life, and thereby the removal of those barriers which there existed, and which not only obstructed the orderly influx of goodness and truth from the Lord, but choaked up the avenues designed for the reception of those blessings. By this judgment the Lord prepared an orderly medium for the accomplishing of his second purpose, which was to make a Revelation of those truths which distinguish the internal, as the genuine sense of the Holy Word, and thereby vouchsafing the knowledge of spiritual doctrine for the illumination of his church. This the Lord most distinctly taught by closing his description of the desolation which would prevail in the latter days, with the declaration, "even thus shall it be when the Son of Man shall be revealed." So that while the first advent consisted in the Lord's personal appearance as the Word made flesh, and thus as the Word humiliated, his second. advent is to consist in his intellectual appearance as the Word made spirit, and thus as the Word glorified. This is an interior view of the subject which completely removes us from those sensual apprehensions of it which so commonly prevail: it relieves our rational capacities from those embarrassments which must otherwise attend the literal sense of the language in which it is described, and thereby it prepares us for the consideration of those more minute phenomena of the intellectual Word, which are described in the language of the text.

Without dwelling upon the supposed historical reference of the text to the peculiar construction of the buildings of Judea, and the escape thereby of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the destruction into which it was overwhelmed by Titus, we shall proceed to the consideration of the language of the text as conveying to us a spiritual lesson, having for its object the instruction of man as a spiritual being, and the elevation of his character in the Christian church as a spiritual dispensation.

Man, having fallen from a state in which he was interiorly acquainted with God and heavenly things, into a condition, in which, by nature, he is ignorant of and alien from both, has become, in an

especial manner, an object of the divine compassion; and the Lord has evinced his solicitude that man should return to obedience, to duty, to love, and order. Infinite wisdom has planned the means whereby these are to be effected, and they have been made known to us in the Holy Word. These means, in general, are therein spoken of, under the idea of which the term regeneration is peculiarly expressive. We make use of the term regeneration in contradistinction to that degeneration into which man has voluntarily descended. To understand practically what regeneration is and means, is the great business of the Christian. They whose life and knowledge are unacquanted with this important process know nothing of true Christianity. The title to the Christian character is acquired by man in the proportion in which the work of regeneration goes on in him, and he only becomes in fulness what that character implies when that process is completed. In that case he receives a new understanding altogether dissimilar to that which he had by nature, which enables him to see spiritual truths; he also acquires a new will entirely opposed to that by which he was immersed in the loves of self and of the world, since by it he is enabled to love the Lord above all things, and his neighbour as himself. His motives and ends of life are also new, so that as to purposes, thoughts, affections, and objects, towards which they are directed, the regenerated man is actually a new creature. He is positively born of the spirit, not in a fanciful and figurative sense, but in a real and substantial manner, for that is real and substantial which is good and true in man, because such goodness and truth are not man's, but the Lord'sin him. The divine presence thus, with man, constitutes him a new creature, and because God is a spirit, and because man derives his regenerated character from him, he is most properly said to be born of the spirit. The superior condition which is implied in those expressions, is not a sudden acquisition but a gradual process, like most other things that are of real value and importance to man. The Lord himself describes it, as the process of the corn ripening for the sickle; it is, says he, first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear. This indispensable process of the Christian life is attended by a variety of states, consisting of inferior and superior degrees of goodness and truth; all of them, however, have reference to, and are instrumental in, establishing of conjunction with the Lord. But all this variety of states may be classified under and viewed as two general ones, the consideration of each of which will not only assist us in ascertaining the progress we are making in this hea

venly work, but also form an orderly preparation of the mind for seeing the intellectual doctrines delivered in the text.

The first general cognizable state of man in the progress of his regeneration is formed by the acquisition of religious truth, a perception of them as such from a rational principle, and a discovery from a feeling that to act contrary to them is to offend against his reason. From this state he gradually settles down into another, in which he complies with the directions and ordinances of truth from a principle of obedience. A compliance with the government which truths require, because they are in accordance with reason, and because to transgress them would be to offend against the conscience which they have been instrumental in forming, is the first general state to which man arrives in the progress of his regeneration, and in which he is permitted to recognize a progression in spiritual possessions. Obedience to the directions of truth, is, moreover, a state which continues to improve in its perfection as regeneration advances its influences, but it changes its quality when that process is completed, and then it consequently forms a new state. In this latter state man acts from goodness and from affection founded on it and directed towards it. From these considerations it is evident, that these two general states are the inverse of each other. Thus in the former state, when man merely acts from obedience, truth has the dominion in him; but in the latter case, when man acts from the love of use, goodness has the ascendancy, which is the primary object of all spiritual truth and love. It is to establish what is good and true, and to fix those principles permanently in man's affections and thoughts that christianity has been vouchsafed. This is the top of that heavenly house which is successively erected by the active states of regeneration. When man acts from obedience to the dominion and force of truth, merely because he is commanded to do so, and because to do otherwise would be to offend against the light of his rational perception, the quality of his state is inferior to that which is to follow when virtue flows from love. Nevertheless, they who are in this state are engaged in the important work of collecting additional truth, or, as it is expressed in the text, in procuring that stuff by which his spiritual house is furnished, to the end that access to the summit may be procured.

Now these two states of the regenerate life are frequently treated of in the Word, and they are therein carefully distinguished from each other, because man cannot be in both of them at the same time any more than he can occupy two apartments in one house