trine, without applying to him passages in Scripture which the voice of sacrilege itself would scarce dare to divert from the Lord God, of whom they are spoken. Hence, then, on Jesus devolves the indefeasible right to the name and worship of Jehovah ; and hence upon us devolves the duty, neither to be avoided nor yet intermitted, of rendering to him that divine homage. And it were well that we should make, now and at all times, the thought and anticipations of judgment, occasions of that worship of Christ, which is therein attested to be his due ;* just as we make the daily provision of his paternal providence an occasion of grateful homage to the Father: for nothing is more profitable for us than that our religion should not be left floating, as it were, in the unattached and dim grandeur of abstract principles; but that it should be laid hold on, and called down, and exercised at certain times, or on certain occasions, and even in certain forms. And if it be true (which I neither affirm nor deny), that when we are all spiritual, there shall be no longer any need for such exercise; yet at least while we are cumbered with the coil of flesh, the best preparation, and the greatest advance to that perfect spirituality, is by the exercise of these very helps; even as the diagrams of geometers are useful and necessary to the student, towards that proficiency in an

As is done by the Church Catholic in that most magnificent of all doxologies of human composition, the TE DEUM: "We believe that Thou shalt come: to be our Judge. We therefore pray Thee, help thy servants: whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood," &c.

abstract science, which shall enable him at last to comprehend as it were intuitively, and unaided by the eye, far more advanced problems.

We have mentioned the confidence which we should repose in our Judge, because he is the Son of Man. And shall not this confidence be tempered with awe, because he is the Son of God? And again, we speak of the participation of Jesus in those temptations which we also endure, as being an assurance of mercy. But shall we not also remember that he did, in our nature, repel and conquer all those temptations, and ascend from his conflict with Satan, and from his contact with the world, free from the sulliage of sin? And shall we not thence collect the folly, as well as the wickedness, of trusting to the mercy of the Saviour, in the place of the divine Justice of the judge? Truly there is no point of scriptural doctrine which does not encourage the broken and contrite heart to repent with hope; and none which does not say to the impenitent and self-righteous, Your God is a consuming fire.

And it cannot be foreign either to the doctrinal or to the practical application of our faith, that Christ cometh to judge both the quick and the dead, to remind you of the suddenness of his advent. If, then, there be any that are impenitent, and not only so, but hardened in impenitency,―scoffers walking in their own lusts; and saying, Where is the promise of his coming, and the judgment which he hath denounced?

for since the fathers fell asleep, all things remain as they were, and there is no longer any token of God's government in the world: Oh! let them fear the time when He who now looketh upon them in the silence of indignation shall have them in derision. And most of all, let them beware of finding incentives to vice in present impunity, seeing that the goodness of God leadeth to repentance; and where that hath been long slighted, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, but the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. And then shall the sinners of this world be like the inhabitants of that famed city of old who went to their last evening's repose with no thought of evil; and continued their usual or extraordinary works looking for nothing less than death but on all alike burst a sudden cloud of horror, the last and the worst that they ever beheld : and to those busied in the preparation of a feast, or rioting in the revelries of its close; and to the miser that fled to his hoarded gold; and to the magistrate in his chair of justice; and to the condemned criminal who awaited the morning execution, in fetters and manacles, and the iron collar round his neck ; the terrors of that day were unexpected equally, and equally beyond all imagination and fear.

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SERMON XII.

I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY GHOST.

JOHN XVI. 14.-He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

THE last discourse concluded the exposition of whatever the Church hath thought good to include in that symbol of her faith called the Apostles' Creed, concerning God the Father Almighty, and his only Son our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We now proceed to state her doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost, whose claim upon our homage she bids us acknowledge in the words, I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY GHOST.

And this is all that is expressly declared in the Apostles' Creed concerning the Holy Ghost, except when he is mentioned on account of the part which he had in the bringing in of Christ into the world, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary. It is obvious then to inquire, whether the Church intendeth any inferiority of homage or be

lief to be due to the Holy Ghost, of whom she hath here said so little, in comparison of what had preceded concerning the Father and the Son: or whether, supposing her to assert an equality of essence, she yet permits us to infer, from her silence concerning them, a less degree of importance in the offices of the Holy Ghost. We shall shortly set at rest

both these questions.

First, With regard to the co-equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son: we may observe that the church hath sufficiently declared this, by a similar mention of his Person, as the object of religious homage and faith, together with the Father and the Son; especially when we expound her mention of the Holy Ghost, by comparison with the divinely instituted form of baptism, in which, as we shall presently take occasion to shew, the divinity of the Third Person is most clearly implied.

The Church, however, in this Creed affords even a more marked, though not a more convincing attestation of the equality of the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son, than the occasion permitted Jesus to do, in the institution of baptism. For Jesus had to make no mention of creatures or ordinances, which might in any sense be proposed to our belief; and therefore had no opportunity, by varying his expression, to intimate that there must be a correspondent variety in our faith, arising from the disparity in the objects of that faith: but the Church, having to mention certain other objects of belief, besides the ever