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III. Of the character of those whose death is desirable. There are two questions here: Who are the righteous ? Am I of the number? We shall endeavour to answer the first; let your consciences, as we proceed, reply to the second. "There is none righteous, no, not one." None are less disposed to dispute this humbling truth-this levelling doctrine-than those who are righteous, because by the grace of God they are so. They are all ready to acknowledge that they were by nature the children of disobedience and wrath, and to ascribe to the mercy of God the distinction which has been created between them and others of their race. This, then, is the first mark by which you are to try yourselves. Have you been convinced of sin-brought to see and be affected with your disconformity to the holy law of God, in conduct, conversation, and thought? Have you been led to trace all your actual transgressions to the fountain of a heart deceitful and radically corrupted? And have you been persuaded that you were justly obnoxious to the divine displeasure, and lying under a sentence of condemnation, incapable of doing any thing for your own relief?

Such as are righteous have received the gift of righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ. This God offers to all freely in the gospel, and imputes to the believer. On the ground of it he justifies him from all the charges of the law, acquits or declares him righteous. Here is a second mark by which you are to try yourselves. Persuaded that the obedience and death of Christ furnish a righteousness commensurate to all the claims of the holy and violated law, and which God not only approves, but has provided and reveals for the express purpose of justifying the ungodly, have you, under the teaching and influence of the Holy Spirit, fled to it by faith as your refuge and the foundation of your rest? Is it the sole ground of your peace, and hope, and confidence, in the prospect of death, and of appearing before the judgment-seat? Do you renounce all dependence on your own personal merits or goodness? and is it not only your wish, but also your lively and animating desire to be "found in Christ, not having your own righteousness, but that which is of God by faith?"

But all who are righteous in the primary, evangelical sense of the word, are also holy in their dispositions. The relative change made on their state by justification, is accompanied by a real change on their hearts, effectuated by Divine power through the instrumentality of the word. By means of the light of divine knowledge, which is made to pervade the whole soul, not only are their consciences pacified, but their hearts are purified, rectified, and reduced to a cheerful conformity to the eternal law of righteousness. Examine yourselves by this test. Are your hearts right with God, and sound in his statutes? Do you love him supremely? is it your desire to please him in all things? Do you esteem his commandments concerning all things to be right, and hate every false and wicked way? Have your affections been disengaged from the world, and set on things above, where Christ is?

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In fine, the righteous have a holy practice regulated by the moral law. Instead of considering themselves as released by their redemption from any moral duty, they judge that they are laid under new and stronger obligations to holiness in all manner of conversation. They are righteous before God, walking in all his commandments and ordinances blameless." Try yourselves by this. Is your obedience universal and unexceptioned? Do you exercise yourselves to have consciences void of offence toward God and toward man? "Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. Whosoever doth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother." In many things you are conscious of offending, but you do not live in the allowed transgression of any divine precept; you feel that sin dwells in you and obtains the mastery for a time over the better part of your nature, but you are engaged in a constant warfare against it, abhor yourselves so far as you are involved in its pollutions, and long for the time when you shall be completely set free from its power.

Does your character, gospel hearers, answer in any good degree to the description which has been given? If not, then you are among the unrighteous; and you must die their death.

Yes; if death overtake you (and it may not be far off)—if it overtake you in this condition, you must "die in your sins;" and as death leaves, judgment shall find you. When you survey the enclosed field of death, you read many a monumental inscription and epitaph, closed by a text of holy writ; but there is one text, which would suit them all, and might be written on the gate of every burying-ground: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." O beware of that thief of time, and most successful purveyor of hell, procrastination. Reject not, or, which amounts to the same thing, shift not the offers of grace and calls to repentance, which are addressed to you. "Now is the accepted time; now the day of salvation." The approach of death is not the only thing you have to dread. Before that period arrive God may give you up to a reprobate mind, as a just punishment for your voluntary and self-contracted obstinacy and infatuation. Thus shall you be as to all good hope "dead, while you live-twice dead," like a tree blasted by the bolt of heaven, and plucked up by the roots. "He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." * There are favourable seasons, which, if misimproved, shall never return. The man who originally uttered the words of the text, is an awful instance of this. After being restrained, reproved, enlightened, and favoured with such discoveries of the blessedness of the righteous, as to feel and express the most ardent wishes to "stand in their lot at the end of the days," he relapsed into his former state, became more depraved than ever, "taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel,”† and perished in his iniquity.

I repeat it for gospel-hearers do not appear sufficiently aware of the truth there are to every person under the preaching of the word, and the discipline of providence, sea

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sons of visitation, which, if misimproved, will never return— soft moments-times of awakening, enlightening, relenting, when the ears are open to instruction, when conscience speaks and the heart listens, when the stirrings and striving of the Spirit of God are felt, when the vanity of the present world is seen, and the powers of the world to come lay hold on the soul, when Satan is thrown down, and his prisoner, sighing for an unknown liberty, drags in his chains toward the spot on which a great light shines. Thou art not far from the kingdom of God, O sinner! Lift up a prayer: one effort more, and all will be well. Ministers of the gospel, and all who know the value of an immortal soul, help with your prayers! Now he stands on the limit which divides the kingdoms of darkness and light. One foot is on the line, and the other is lifted up, and stands on tiptoe he hesitates-his resolution fails-he looks behind -the world rushes into his heart-he falls back-devils shout, and angels retire, covering their faces with their wings!

SERMON XIV.

THE SOUL COMMITTED TO CHRIST.

2 TIM. I. 12.

"I KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED, AND AM PERSUADED THAT HE IS ABLE TO KEEP THAT WHICH I HAVE COMMITTED UNTO HIM AGAINST THAT DAY."

THERE are certain periods in the life of every man, marked by events affecting his happiness, which he can never forget, and on which he cannot reflect without emotions of gratitude and joy. Such, for example, are the periods when he first set out in the world, when he formed a connexion for life, or when he was providentially saved from some dangerous distemper or imminent calamity. There are similar periods in the life of every Christian man; as when he first took a seat at the Lord's table, when he was admitted to sensible communion with God in that or any other ordinance, when he was relieved from spiritual distress, or experienced a revival of religion in his soul after a season of deadness and decay. But of all others the most important era in a Christian's life is that at which he was first led and disposed to commit his soul to its Saviour. With respect to other mercies of a spiritual kind, they all take their character from this, and may be traced back to it as their source. But for it they never would have been, and by it they are what they are. Nothing is asserted of other seasons like to what is said by Christ of this: "There is joy in heaven in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth ;"-joy that a soul has been saved from death, that a multitude of sins has been covered, that a brand has been plucked from the fire and converted into a luminary which, after lighting many on the way to heaven, shall

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