men. Particularly under the gospel is this distinguishing privilege conferred on all who hear the joyful sound; they are called, as our catechism expresses it, to a state of salvation by JESUS CHRIST, and furnished with all the means necessary thereto.

Yet, though this is undeniably the case, and the only view of the subject which makes religion a reasonable service, nevertheless, the glad tidings of the gospel and the grace of our LORD JESUS CHRIST do not operate as charms. As we are rational beings, the information given us is to be acted upon, the help offered us is to be resorted to, and the duties enjoined upon us are to be performed, otherwise there is no benefit to be expected.

Revelation is addressed, first to our understandings, next to our wants, then to our interests, and, through all these to our affections. And when either sufficiently proved or admitted, as a communication from God, our reason has no other province than to receive or reject it. It is not the prerogative of our rational faculties to sit in judgment on the mode or the manner in which God shall reveal himself to his creatures, or yet on the means by which his benefits shall be conferred on us; with all this we have nothing to do, we are saved by grace through faith. To act upon a different principle, then, is to usurp a station which does not belong to us, to the details of which we are not competent, and by the entertainment of which we manifest the very temper denounced in my text. Hence we learn, my brethren, to what description of persons St. Paul applies the expression of natural man, in the passage of Scripture under consideration.

It is the man who sets the wisdom of the world on a par with the wisdom of GOD. It is the man who would bring the mysteries of the divine will in the redemption of the world, to be tried at the bar of human reason; it is the man who proudly rejects what his shallow reason cannot fathom; it is the man who carelessly neglects the treasures of divine wisdom furnished in the Scriptures of truth; it is the wise man, the philosopher, the disputer of this world, who would try the gospel, its glorious discoveries, its means, and its mercies, by a standard beneath its measure, and receive or reject it according as it agreed

therewith. It is the Greek, who counted the preaching of the cross foolishness, because it squared not with the rules of the philosophy of the day. This, my hearers, is the natural man whom the apostle had in his eye when he penned this passage, who receiveth not the things of the SPIRIT OF GOD, and to whom they are foolishness. The apostle speaks not here of the natural inability of fallen creatures to regain the favour of God, to comply with his holy and spiritual law, and prepare themselves for his presence in glory. This deficiency he was provided to remedy in every sincere mind, by the grace of that JESUS whom he preached to them; but he speaks of those who, when the gospel was proposed to them, received not the truth in the love of it, who submitted not themselves to the righteousness of God, by believing and obeying his message, but resisted it upon the strength of their own reason, or through the love of their own corruptions; making themselves wiser than GoD, and preferring time to eternity.

And are there none of this description of persons in the present day? Are there none among us who are entitled, in this acceptation of the words, to the name of natural men? Alas! for the multitudes who, either by neglect or perversion, bar themselves out from the grace of the gospel. Alas! for the thousands who dispute against the gospel, who think it an accomplishment to be above its faith and its duties, and who listen with greedy ears to what perverted reason can muster up in behalf of infidelity in some of its protean shapes. Alas! alas! cannot fallen sinners find the way to hell readily enough without deepening their damnation by sinning against light and knowledge, denying the LORD that bought them, and treading under foot the Son of God.

But it may and will be asked of what use, then, is our reason, the distinguishing attribute of man, if it is not to be applied in this our supreme concern? And who ever said or thought that it is not to be here applied, yea, earnestly and diligently applied? Certainly I have never said so, nor yet given room for any to think I said so, unless by such an overhasty conclusion as darkens counsel.

Permit me, however, in my turn, to ask a question of these

contenders for the supremacy of human reason. To what end, think you, was reason given you as respects things spiritual and invisible? what is its proper province in application to them? Have you ever asked yourself this question? Can you answer it? If not, your boasted reason has not yet done the best part of its office for you.

Learn, then, that the highest use of the faculty of reason in man, fallen, is to render him capable of instruction in things of a spiritual and heavenly nature. Human reason can have no privity with the mind or will of God, and, had God been silent, never could have advanced one step beyond the things that are seen; for even the superstitions of the Heathen are all resolvable into the original revelation made to Adam after his fall. Revelation, then, is to reason in things spiritual what light is to the eye in things natural; for reason is the eye of the mind. However perfect, therefore, in all its parts the eye may be, take away the material light and where or what is its use? It is an incumbrance, a hindrance, presenting something to rely upon which yet answers not the purpose.

In like manner, my brethren, and by an analogy of the strictest kind, however perfect human reason may be, however improved and extended in all its capacities, deprive it of the light of revealed truth, and what is its value in spiritual things? Of what use, in particular, is it in the deep mystery of man's redemption by the Son of God? Alas! is it not, even to our experience, a hindrance, a stumbling block, a betrayer of souls to all those who will not learn its right use, but proudly exalt a depraved and perverted attribute of the creature into the place and station of the Most High GOD.

Human reason, my friends, is competent to determine whether we have a revelation of the will of God, because it is by this faculty alone, that the truth and certainty of the evidences by which its title is established are to be judged. But this being done reason can go no further; it is not competent to decide on the propriety or fitness of what is revealed. For example

Whether the doctrine of the trinity be a part of the revelation made to our faith, is a question for our reason to examine and VOL. II.-9

determine. But whether it be consistent with the nature of the Supreme Being that such should be the manner of his subsistence, is a question we have no means of resolving, and, therefore, ought not to entertain. To assent, then, upon grounds of human reason, that it is inconsistent with the unity of the Godhead that it should consist in three coeternal subsistences, is not only to be wise above what is written, intruding into things not seen, vainly puffed up by a fleshly mind, but is an illogical assumption of the point in argument. And to support this assertion by reasonings from the incomprehensibility to us of such a mode of subsistence in deity is, in fact, atheistical. Because the same argument is equally good against the being of GOD under any other mode of subsistence; for a self-existent, underived, eternal Being, as the Almighty must be in his nature or not be at all, is as incomprehensible to our faculty in a single essence as in three.

The sum is this, my hearers-the fact our reason can compass, the mode it cannot compass. We, therefore, have nothing to do with the mode; and to intrude into it with our puny measure of intelligence is precisely that abuse and perversion of reason which marks the natural man of my text, to whom the things of the SPIRIT OF GOD, that is, the mysteries revealed to our faith, are foolishness.

Let, then, these plain and practical truths guard you, my brethren and hearers, against the seductive sophistry, which would exalt your reason at the expense of your souls-which would lead you away from the only foundation, and leave you on the dark and slippery steps of an unreasonable infidelity. For, as the apostle argues, in the 11th verse of this chapter, what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him, even so the things of GOD knoweth no man, but the SPIRIT OF GOD.

But, while this is undoubtedly the primary sense in which the apostle here uses the words natural man, as is evident from the context for he, throughout, contrasts the natural man with the spiritual, or spiritually enlightened man-yet, as I observed in the outset, this is not the only sense in which the text is to be used and applied by us. For we may apply it to man as he now is, a fallen, depraved creature, savouring only the things of

time and sense, and indisposed and averse to the entertainment of things spiritual and heavenly. It also denotes the unrenewed man, the person upon whom the grace of the gospel has produced no change; upon whom the SPIRIT OF GOD hath not operated the mighty transformation of a new creature. And this, because the discoveries of the gospel have not been met in faith, and GOD sought unto, as he is therein revealed and set forth, by and through our LORD JESUS CHRIST.

This gives to the words of my text a wide range, my brethren, inasmuch as it includes all who hold themselves back from the claims of the gospel upon their attention and observance, whether that proceed from the proud and lofty pretensions of infidel reason, or the carelessness and neglect of worldly occupation, or the love of sensual indulgence. To what extent and under which designation the words may be most properly applied, those who hear them are the most competent judges; and I earnestly beseech all present, who are not conscious of that spiritual change which must pass upon all who would see God and live, seriously to lay to heart the unutterable consequences of turning a deaf ear to saving truth, and an unwilling mind to commanded duty. The day of grace is shortening-the day of eternity is drawing near-awake, then, thou that sleepest in thy natural state, and CHRIST shall give thee light.

II. Secondly, I am to show you what those things of the SPIRIT OF GOD are, which are foolishness to the natural man.

That these are the mysteries of the gospel, the things which in an especial manner are the things of JESUS CHRIST, and which he told his disciples the HOLY SPIRIT would take and show unto them, is clear, both from the tenour and purpose of the gospel, and from the whole structure of the apostle's argument in this epistle.

The Grecian philosophers of St. Paul's day decried and derided the doctrines of the cross; they brought the things of the SPIRIT OF GOD, preached by him with great plainness of speech, indeed, but with miraculous attestation to their truth-to the standard of the wisdom of their schools, and, because not answerable to the principles of their philosophy, they rejected them.

It was not the morality of the gospel, my hearers, that was