tians, "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness ?" "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof; neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." And again he asks them, "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

Therefore we are buried with him, by baptism, into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." And yet once more he exclaims, "What! know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God; and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's." And just so will the Christian, who lives in the remembrance of his baptismal dedication, find it furnishing him with a continual check to the unruliness of sin. "What shall I break my sacred vows? shall I violate my plighted faith? shall I throw away my glorious privileges? shall I cast

off the authority of my Father and my God? shall I yield now to the world which I have renounced? shall I enslave myself to the flesh which I have engaged to crucify? shall I crouch before the Devil, out of whose dominion I have been translated into the kingdom of God's own dear Son? God forbid ! Thy vows are upon me, O my God, and I will keep them! I am thy servant-truly I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid; thou hast loosed my bonds. Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living!" "

And thus will the appropriation of our Baptismal Covenant become, yet further, an incentive to holiness. For the grand hindrance to all exalted piety is our prostrate state of mind. We have sunk so low as almost to have forgotten the dignity of our original nature. We look upon ourselves as natives of this miserable world, and we seek, therefore, little more than to attain that scanty measure of morality which is necessary to our character and comfort among the class of men with whom we happen to associate. But O what a different standard does our Baptismal Covenant set up for our contemplation! what a far more glorious character, what a nobler destination, does it call us to! We are taught by that to look upon ourselves as members of Christ,

and children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. We are encouraged to consider ourselves as born again to nobler rank, and higher society, and more splendid possessions than any this world can afford as constituted kings and priests to Godas made a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, that we should shew forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light-that we should walk worthy of Him who has called us unto his eternal kingdom and glory-that we should no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God! And what does the Christian feel who recollects all this? who appropriates to himself by personal acts the holy dignity to which he is exalted? He labours for a character accordant with this dignity. He raises his idea of moral excellence to the height of God's own good and just and holy Law of the immaculate purity of God's beloved Son of the exalted models which the Saints and Prophets and Apostles of the Lord have left us ;— and he endeavours, therefore, to acquire the tastes, and manners, and habits of the denizens of heaven -of the assembly of the first-born and the just made perfect,―of the nobles and the favourites of the splendid court of the Most High.

-

rank in life; maintain the level

"Act up to your

of your station in

society," is the almost universal law which influ

ences the children of this world.

And, "act up to

your spiritual rank; maintain the honour of that station into which you have been raised by your Baptismal privilege," shall not this awaken corresponding earnestness-shall it not touch a kindred feeling of the great and good, among the children of the world to come? Am I a member of Christ? Then must I cultivate the mind which was in Christ

-I must purify myself as he is pure-I must do righteousness as he is righteous-"for he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he walked." And am I a child of God? O let me strive to be in all things an obedient child, not fashioning myself according to my former lusts in my ignorance, but as He which hath called me is holy, so let me be holy in all manner of conversation! And am I too an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven? Has God promised to admit me into his own presence and eternal glory? O let me now already be breathing forth my aspirations towards that blessed society, and living as a fellowcitizen with the Saints in light! Let my conversation be in heaven! Let me seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God! Let me set my affection upon things above, and not on things on the earth! Let me be ever dead to this world, and my life hid with Christ in God, that when Christ, who is my life, shall

appear, I may appear with him in glory! Brethren, recollect what you are, and to what you are destined. Not among the brutes that perish-not the creatures of a moment-not the spawn of this low earth, the heirs only of its follies and its vices, its pleasures and its cares, its dainty shows and gilded honours, but beings of heavenly origin and of undying life-men-Christians, that highest style of man-sons of God-but little lower than the angels-partakers of the divine nature-begotten again to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you: -recollect, I say, all this, and therefore, "giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity"-therefore, "whatsoever things. are true, whatsoever things are venerable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things!"

And O that to this ennobling recollection you, especially, may come who now address yourselves to Confirmation! that you may gladly take to yourselves these blessed privileges, and assume, by personal avowal, this sacred character-remembering