state where they shall never reach him,the fact, and the assurance of that fact, that heaven is reserved for him, and he, by God's grace, preserved for heaven.

There are times when you, I speak now to you and to you alone, who are enabled to thank God that he has begotten you again unto this lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, who have reason to hope that you are the unworthy partakers of this change of heart, and of this change of life, of which we have been speaking,—there are times when you may feel doubtful whether you shall ever arrive at the one great object of your anticipation and of your prayers; an entrance into the kingdom and joy of our Lord.

Now, my brethren, at such moments call to mind the declarations of the text, and see whether this will not turn your silence into thanksgiving, your heaviness into joy. The revealed Word of God

then, by God's power that you are kept, but it is through your own faith. If this be absent the promise is void. You are not told that you are kept by God's power, without a lively influential faith. Man may tell you so; you so; but be assured God has never told you so. He who has appointed the end has also appointed the means; and those means are a true, living, active, and obeying faith; a faith which worketh by love; a faith which knows, and which honours, and delights to honour, even the very least of God's commandments; a faith which, by uniting you to your Redeemer, brings you within the citadel; and by causing you to cleave to your Redeemer, keeps you within it.

Rejoice, therefore, in the Lord, my Christian brethren, and glorify him in your bodies and your spirits, which are his; for his unerring Word has declared, "the Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy

shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." How astonishing a promise! Three times within two verses does the Almighty pledge himself to preserve every obedient and believing servant" from this time forth even for evermore." As, therefore, you have been forgiven much, and as you have been promised much, so will you love much, obey much, practise much, of all that your Lord requires of you; but still you will cast all these duties away from you as the ground either of your merits or your stability, and will let your morning and evening song for ever be on earth as it will ever be your song in heaven, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his

114 BELIEVER'S ASSURED INHERITANCE.

abundant mercy, hath begotten us to a lively hope by the resurrection from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation."

SERMON VI.

THE DEVICES OF SATAN.

2 COR. II. 11.

"WE ARE NOT IGNORANT OF HIS DEVICES."

THE devices of Satan, our great spiritual enemy, are among the most fearful dangers of the Christian. It is not merely that we are "very far gone from original righteousness," as our Article expresses it; that we are conceived and born in sin, as the Bible reveals to us; that we carry about us a body of sin and death, and within us "a heart deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," as our own experience fully establishes; but there is yet more, far more than this,