Spirit of the living God, as it does on the decalogue of Moses-that this is not the peculiarity of some accidental Christians, meeting our observation on some random walk over the face of Christian society—that it is the constant and universal attribute of all Christians-that in every age of the church the love of the Sabbath, and an honest delight in all its pious and profitable observances, have ever stood out among the visible lineaments of the new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord that the great Spirit, whose office it is to inscribe the law of God on the hearts of those whose sins are forgiven them, and whom he has admitted into the privileges of his new and his better covenant, has never omitted, in a single instance, to make the remembrance of the Sabbath one of the most conspicuous, and one of the most indelible articles of that inscription. And thus has it happened, that without any statutory enactment in the whole compass of the New Testament upon the subject-without any formal setting forth of Sabbath observation, or any laying down of a Sabbath ceremonial, the grave, the solemn, the regular, and with all this, the affectionate keeping of this distinguished day, has come down to us through a series of eighteen centuries, and may be recognised to this hour as the ever present badge of every Christian individual-and as the great index and palladium of religion in every Christian land.

We shall just say one thing more upon this subject at present. What now becomes of him, who, like a special pleader, with a statute book in his hand, thinks that the New Testament has set him at large from every one style of Sabbath observa

tion, because he cannot find in it any laying down of Sabbath observances? He will not own the force of any obligation till it be shown to him as one of the clauses in the bond. His constant appeal is to the bond. He will not exceed, by a single inch, the literalities of the bond. He will square his every service, and his every offering by the bond-and when he is charged with any one of the misdemeanours of Sabbath-breaking, he will tell you that it is not specified in the bond. Why, my brethren, if the bond be what he stands upon, he just wakens up against himself the old ministry of condemnation. If it be on the just and even footing of the bond, that he chooses to have his exactly literal dealings with God, on this footing God will enter into judgment with him— and soon, and very soon, will he convict him of his glaring deficiencies from his own favourite standard the bond. Ah, my brethren, when a Christian serves his reconciled Father, it is the service of a liberal and spontaneous attachment. His aim is to please him and to glorify him to the uttermost; and he is never more delighted than when it is in his power to offer the God whom he loves, some of those substantial testimonies of affection which no jealousy can extort by any of its enactments, and the letter of no law is able to embody in any of its descriptions. With such a spirit, and such a cordiality within, we cannot doubt for a moment the delight which such a man will take in the Sabbath, and how dear to his bosom will the affecting remembrance be to which it is consecrated-and how diligently he will cultivate its every hour to the purpose for which it was made-and how, knowing that the Sabbath

was made for man, he will earnestly and honestly give himself to the task of realizing all its usefulness to himself and to his family. And do you think, that God will not see this? Do you think, that he will stand in need of any literal specifications by which he may mark the character of this man on the day of retribution? Will he not be able to read that epistle which he himself has engraven on the fleshly tablets of his heart? Will he not know his own? Will he not recognise all the lineaments of that new creature, which has been fashioned by his own spirit—and on that day when the secrets of every heart are laid open, will not the Sabbath observations of an honest and affectionate believer, flowing, as they do, from the impulses of a love for that law which is written on his mind, be put down among those good deeds which shall be found to praise, and honour, and glory, at the solemn reckoning of the judgment seat?

SERMON XI.

ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION.

ACTS XXVII. 22, 31.

And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.

THE Comparison of these two verses lands us in what may appear to many to be a very dark and unprofitable speculation. Now, our object in setting up this comparison, is not to foster in any of you a tendency to meddle with matters too high for us-but to protect you against the practical mischief of such a tendency. You have all heard of the doctrine of predestination. It has long been a settled article of our church. And there must be a sad deal of evasion and of unfair handling with particular passages, to get free of the evidence which we find for it in the Bible. And independently of Scripture altogether, the denial of this doctrine brings a number of monstrous conceptions along with it. It supposes God to make a world, and not to reserve in his own hand the management of its concerns. Though it should concede to him an absolute sovereignty over all matter, it deposes him from his sovereignty over

the region of created minds, that far more dignified and interesting portion of his works. The greatest events in the history of the universe, are those which are brought about by the agency of willing and intelligent beings-and the enemies of the doctrine invest every one of these beings with some sovereign and independent principle of freedom, in virtue of which it may be asserted of this whole class of events, that they happened, not because they were ordained of God, but because the creatures of God, by their own uncontrolled power, brought them into existence. At this rate, even he to whom we give the attribute of omniscience, is not able to say at this moment, what shall be the fortune or the fate of any individual-and the whole train of future history is left to the wildness of accident. All this, carries along with it so complete a dethronement of God -it is bringing his creation under the dominion of so many nameless and undeterminable contingencies-it is taking the world and the current of its history so entirely out of the hands of him who formed it-it is withal so opposite to what obtains in every other field of observation, where, instead of the lawlessness of chance, we shall find that the more we attend, the more we perceive of a certain necessary and established order-that from these and other considerations which might be stated, the doctrine in question, in addition to the testimonies which we find for it in the Bible, is at this moment receiving a very general support from the speculations of infidel as well as Christian philosophers.

Assenting, as we do, to this doctrine, we state it as our conviction, that God could point the fin