the principles which preside over the very first movements of a sinner, casting away from him his transgressions, and returning unto God. obedience along with it; that to forsake the evil of his ways can never be pressed too early upon his observance; that this, and every subsequent degree of obedience, is the prescribed path to clearer manifestations; and that, to attempt the establishment of a perfect faith by the single work of expounding the truth, is to strike out a spark of our own kindling-it is to do the thing in our own way-it is to throw aside the use of scriptural expedients, and to substitute the mere possession of a dogma, for that principle which, growing progressively within us, animates and sustains the whole course of a humble, and diligent, and assiduous, and painstaking Christian. Christ had at that time but an obscure dawn-ever awaken in the mind, that these are ing in their minds; but they did not wait for its full and its finished splendour, till they should begin the work of keeping the commandments. To this infant faith there corresponded a certain degree of obedience, But let us not throw any impediment in and this obedience grew more enlightened, the way of these first movements. Let us more spiritual, more allied with the purity have a practical outset. Let us not be afraid of the heart, and the movements of the of giving an immediate character of exerinner man, just as faith obtained its brighter tion to the very infancy of a Christian's and larger accessions in the course of the career. To wait in slavish adherence to subsequent revelations. The disciple of system, till the principle of faith be depoJohn keeping himself free from extortion sited with all the tenacity of a settled asand adultery, was a very different man from surance in the mind, or the brilliancy of a the Pharisee, who was neither an extortioner finished light be thrown around it, would nor an adulterer. The mind of the Phari- be to act in the face of scriptural example. see rested on his present performances; the Let the gospel be preached in all its freemind of the disciple was filled with the ex-ness at the very outset; but let us never pectation of a higher Teacher, and he look- forget, that to every varying degree of faith ed forward to him, and was in the attitude in the mind of the hearer there goes an of readiness to listen and believe, and obey. Many of them were transferred from the forerunner to the Saviour, and they companied with him during his abode in the world, and were found with one accord in one place on the day of Pentecost, and shared in the influences of that Comforter, whom Christ promised to send down upon his disciples on earth, from the place to which he had ascended in heaven; and thus it is that the same men who started with the preaching of John at the work of putting their obvious and palpable transgressions away from them, were met afterwards at the distance of years living the life of faith in Christ, and growing in meetness for a spiritual inheritance, by growing in Whence the fact, that the deriders and all the graces and accomplishments of a the enemies of evangelical truth set themspiritual obedience. There was a faith in selves forward as the exclusive advocates Christ, which presided over the very first of morality? It is because many of its steps of their practical career; but it is wor- friends have not ventured to show so bold thy of being remarked, that they did not and so immediate a front on this subject as wait in indolence till this faith should re- they ought to have done. They are posiceive its further augmentations. Upon this tively afraid of placing morality on the faith, humble as it was at its commence- fore-ground of their speculations. They do ment, their teacher exacted a corresponding not like it to be so prominently brought forobedience, and this obedience, so far from ward at the commencement of their inbeing suspended till what was lacking in structions. They have it, ay, and in a their faith should be perfected, was the very purer and holier form than its more ostenpath which conducted them to larger mani- tatious advocates; but they have thrown festations. Now, is not faith a growing prin- a doctrinal barrier around it, which hides ciple at this hour? Is not the faith of an it from the general observation. Would it incipient Christian different in its strength, not be better to drag it from this concealand in the largeness of its contemplations, ment-to bring it out to more immediate from the faith of him who, by reason of view-to place it in large and visible chause, has had his senses well exercised to dis-racters on the very threshold of our subcern both the good and the evil? I am wil-ject; and if our Saviour told his countryling to concede it, for it accords with all my experience on the subject, that some anticipation, however faint, of the benefit to be derived from an offered Saviour; some apprehension, however indistinct, of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus: some hope, inspired by the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, and which nothing but the preaching of that Gospel in all its peculiarity will men, at the very outset of their discipleship, that they who followed after him must forsake all, is there any thing to prevent us from battling it at the very outset of our ministrations, with all that is glaringly and obviously wrong? Much should be done to chase away the very general delusion which * John, xiv. 21. Acts, v. 32. exists among the people of this country, | for the single object of forgiveness, or as a that the preachers of faith are not the Priest who has wrought out an atonement preachers of morality. If there be any for you; for Christ offers himself in more thing in the arrangements of a favourite system which are at all calculated to foster this delusion, these arrangements should just be broke in upon. Obedience should be written upon every signal; and departure from all iniquity, should be made to float, in a bright and legible inscription, upon all our standards. capacities than this one, and you do not receive him truly, unless you receive him just as he offers himself. Again it is not enough that you receive Christ only as a Priest and a Prophet; for all that he teaches will be to you a dead letter, unless you are qualified to understand and to obey it; and if you think that you are qualified by naI call on you, my brethren, to abound in ture, you in fact, refuse his teaching, at the those good deeds, by which, if done in the very time that you profess him to be your body, Christ will be magnified in your bo- teacher, for he says, without me ye can dies. I call on you for a prompt vindica- do nothing.' You must receive him for tion of the truth as it is in Jesus, by your strength, as well as for forgiveness and direcexample and your lives. Let me hear of your tion, or, in other words, you must submit being the most equitable masters, and the to him as your King, not merely to rule most faithful servants, and the most up- over you by his law, but to rule in you by right members of society, and the most his Spirit. You must live in constant dewatchful parents, and the most dutiful chil- pendance on the influences of his grace, dren. Never forget, that the object of the and if you do so, you never will stop short Saviour is to redeem you from all iniquity, at any one point of obedience; but, knowand that every act of wilful indulgence, in ing that the grace of God is all-powerful, any one species of iniquity, is a refusal to you will suffer no difficulties to stop your go along with him. Do maintain to the eye progress; you will suffer no paltry limit of of by-standers the conspicuous front of a what unaided human nature can do, to reforming, and conscientious, and ever-do- bound your ambition after the glories of a ing people. Meet the charge of those who purer and a better character than an earthare strangers to the power of the truth, byly principle can accomplish; you will enter the noblest of all refutations-by the graces and accomplishments of a life given in faithful and entire dedication to the will of the Saviour. Let the remembrance of what he gave for you, ever stir you up to the sense of what you should give him back again; and while others talk of good works, in such a way as to depose Christ from his pre-eminence, do you perform these good works through Christ, by the power of his grace working in you mightily. And think not that you have attained, or are already perfect. Have your eye ever directed to the perfect righteousness of Christ, as the only ground of your acceptance with God, and as the only example you should never cease to aspire after. Rest not in any one measure of attainment. Think not that you should stop short till you are righteous, even as he is glorious. Take unto you the whole armour of God, that you be fitted for the contest, and prove that you are indeed born again by the anointing which you have received, being an anointing which remaineth. May the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. May he shed abroad his love in your hearts. And may the Spirit which I call on you to pray for, in the faith of Him who is entrusted with the dispensation of it, impel you to all diligence, that you may be found of Him, at his coming, without spot, and blameless. I shall conclude this very hurried and imperfect Address, with the last words of my last sermon to you. "It is not enough that you receive Christ a career, of which you at this moment see not the end; you will try an ascent, of which the lofty eminence is hid in the darkness of futurity; the chilling sentiment, that no higher obedience is expected of me than what I can yield, will have no influence upon you; for the mighty stretch of attainment that you look forward to, is not what I can do, but what Christ can do in me; and, with the all-subduing instrument of his grace to help you through every difficulty, and to carry you in triumph over every opposition, you will press forward conquering and to conquer ; and, while the world knoweth not the power of those great and animating hopes which sustain you, you will be making daily progress in a field of discipline and acquirement which they have never entered; and in patience and forgiveness, and gentleness and charity, and the love of God and the love of your neighbour, which is like unto the love of God, you will prove that a work of grace is going on in your hearts, even that work by which the image you lost at the fall is repaired and brought back again, the empire of sin within you is overthrown, the subjection of your hearts to what is visible and earthly is exchanged for the power of the unseen world over its every affection, and you be filled with such a faith, and such a love, and such a superiority to perishable things, as will shed a glory over the whole of your daily walk, and give to every one of your doings the high character of a candidate for eternity. all the credit and all the glory which belong to him, by making him your only, and your perfect, and your entire, and your altogether Saviour. "Choose him, then, my brethren, choose him as the Captain of your salvation: Let him enter into your hearts by faith, and let him dwell continually there. Cultivate a daily intercourse and a growing acquaintance with him. O, you are in safe company, indeed, when your fellowship is with him! The shield of his protecting mediatorship is ever between you and the justice of God; and out of his fullness there goeth a constant stream, to nourish, and to animate, and to strengthen every believer. Why should the shifting of human instruments so oppress and so discourage you, when he is your willing friend; when he is ever present, and is at all times in readiness; when he, the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever, is to be met with in every place; and while his disciples here, giving way to the power of sight, are sorrowful, and in great heaviness, because they are to move at a distance from one another, he, my brethren, he has his eye upon all neighbourhoods and all countries, and will at length gather his disciples into one eternal "Christ is offered to all of you for forgiveness. The man who takes him for this single object must be looking at him with an eye half shut upon the revelation he makes of himself. Look at him with an open and a steadfast eye, and then I will call you a true believer; and sure I am, that if you do so, you cannot avoid seeing him in the earnestness of his desire that you should give up all sin, and enter from this moment into all obedience. True, and most true, my brethren, that faith will save you; but it must be a whole faith in a whole Bible. True, and most true, that they who keep the commandments of Jesus shall enter into life; but you are not to shrink from any one of these commandments, or to say because they are so much above the power of humanity, that you must give up the task of attempting them. True, and most true, that he who trusteth to his obedience as a saviour, is shifting his confidence from the alone foundation it can rest upon. Christ is your Saviour; and when I call upon you to rejoice in that reconciliation which is through him, I call upon you not to leave him for a single moment, when you engage in the work of doing those things which if left undone, will exclude us from the king-family. With such a Master, let us quit dom of heaven. Take him along with you into all your services. Let the sentiment ever be upon you, that what I am now doing I may do in my own strength to the satisfaction of man, but I must have the power of Christ resting upon the performance, if I wish to do it in the way that is acceptable to God. Let this be your habitual sentiment, and then the supposed opposition between faith and works vanishes into nothing. The life of a believer is made up of good works; and faith is the animating and the power-working principle of every one of them. The spirit of Christ actuates and sustains the whole course of your obedience. You walk not away from him, but in the language of the text, you 'walk in him,' (Col. ii. 6.) and as there is not one of your doings in which he does not feel a concern, and prescribe a duty for you, so there is not one of them in which his grace is not in readiness to put the right principle into your heart, and to bring it out into your conduct, and to make your walk accord with your profession, so as to let the world see upon you without, the power and the efficacy of the sentiment within; and thus, while Christ has the whole merit of your forgiveness, he has the whole merit of your sanctification also, and the humble and deeply-felt consciousness of 'nevertheless not me, but the grace of God that is in me,' restores to Jesus Christ ourselves like men. With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, with its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness. If God is pleased to spare me, I trust I shall often meet with you in person, even on this side of the grave; but if not, let us often meet in prayer at the mercy-seat of God. While we occupy different places on earth, let our mutual intercessions for each other go to one place in heaven. Let the Saviour put our supplications into one censer; and be assured, my brethren, that after the dear and the much-loved scenery of this peaceful vale has disappeared from my eye, the people who live in it shall retain a warm and an ever-during place in my memory;-and this mortal body must be stretched on the bed of death, ere the heart which now animates it can resign its exercise of longing after you, and praying for you, that you may so receive Christ Jesus, and so walk in him, and so hold fast the things you have gotten, and so prove that the labour I have had among you has not been in vain; that when the sound of the last trumpet awakens us, these eyes, which are now bathed in tears, may open upon a scene of eternal blessedness, and we, my brethren, whom the providence of God has withdrawn for a little while from one another, may on that day be found side by side at the right hand of the everlasting throne." APPENDIX. walk in the fields on a Sabbath day at the time of divine service, and the very same man indulging without remorse his propensity to throw ridicule or SINCE the present edition of this work was putting to press, I have seen a review of it by the Christian Instructor, and the following are the immediate observations which the perusal of this re-discredit on an absent character. His actual review has suggested. I meant no attack on any body of clergy, and I have made no attack upon them. The people whom I addressed were the main object on which my attention rested; and any thing I have said in the style of animadversion, was chiefly, if not exclusively, with a reference to that perverseness which I think I have witnessed in the conceptions and habits of private Christians. I have alluded, no doubt, to a method of treatment on the part of some of the teachers of Christianity, and which I believe to be both inefficient and unscriptural. But have I at all asserted the extent to which this method prevails? Have I ventured to fasten an imputation upon any marked or general body of Christian ministers? It was no object of mine to set forth or to signalize my own peculiarity in this matter; and if I rightly understand who the men are whom the reviewer has in his eye when he speaks of the evangelical clergy, then does he represent me as dealing out my censures against those whom I honestly believe to be the instrumental cause of nearly all the vital and substantial Christianity in the land. Again, is it not possible for a man to have an awakened and tender sense of the sinfulness of one sin, and to have a very slender and inadequate sense of the sinfulness of another? Might not the first circumstance beget in his mind an honest and a general desire to be delivered from sin; and might not the second circumstance account for the fact, that with this mourning for sin in the gross, he should put forth his hand without scruple to the commission of what is actually sinful? I do not know a more familiar exhibition of this, than of a man who would be visited with remorse were he to morse on the commission of all that he feels to be sinful, might lead a man to mourn over sin in the general; but surely this general direction of his can have no such necessary influence, as the reviewer contends for, in the way of leading him to renounce what he does not feel to be sinful. But this is what he should be made to feel; and it may be done in two ways-either in the didactic way, by a formal announcement that the deed in question is contrary to the law of God; or in the imperative way, by bidding him cease from the doing of it,-a way no less effective and scriptural than the former, and brought to bear in the New Testament upon men at the earliest conceivable stage of their progress from sin unto righteousness. I share most cordially in opinion with the reviewer, that he might extend his observations greatly beyond the length of the original pamphlet, were he to say all that might be said on the topics brought forward in it. I believe that it would require the compass of an extended volume to meet every objection, and to turn the argument in every possible way. I did not anticipate all the notice that has been taken of this performance, and am fearful lest it should defeat the intended effect on the hearts of a plain people. With this feeling I close the discussion for the present; and my desire is, that in all I may afterwards say upon this subject, I may be preserved from that tone of controversy, which I feel to be hurtful to the practical influence of every truth it accompanies; and which, I fear, may have in so far infected my former com munications, as to make it more fitted to arouse the speculative tendencies of the mind, and provoke to an intellectual warfare, than to tell on the conscience and on the doings of an earnest inquirer. THE INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES, ON THE TEMPORAL NECESSITIES OF THE POOR. ARGUMENT. 1. The Objection stated. 2. The Radical Answer to it. 3. But the Objection is not true in point of fact. 4. A former act of charity does not exempt from the obligation of a new act, if it can be afforded. 5. Estimate of the encroachment made by the Bible Society upon the funds of the country. 6. A Subscriber to the Bible Society does not give less to the Poor on that account. 7. Evidence for the truth of this assertion. 8. And explanation of its principle. (1.) The ability for other acts of charity nearly as entire as before. 9. (2.) And the disposition greater. 10. Poverty is better kept under by a preventive, than by a positive treatment. 11. Exemplified in Scotland. 12. The Bible Society has a strong preventive operation. 13. And therefore promotes the secular interests of the Poor. 14. The argument carried down to the case of Penny Societies. 15. Difficulty in the exposi tion of the argument. 16. The effects of a charitable endowment in a parish pernicious to the Poor. 17. By inducing a dependance upon it. 18. And stripping them of their industrious habits. 19. The effects of a Bible Association are in an opposite direction to those of a charitable endowment. 20. And it stands completely free of all the objections to which a tax is liable. 21. A Bible Association gives dignity to the Poor. 22. And a delicate reluctance to pauperism. 23. The shame of pauperism is the best defence against it. 24. How a Bible Association augments this feeling. 25. By dignifying the Poor. 26. And adding to the influence of Bible Principles. 27. Exemplified in the humblest situation. 28. The progress of these Associations in the country. 29. Compared with other Associations for the relief of temporal necessities. 30. The more salutary influence of Bible Associations. 31. And how they counteract the pernicious influence of other charities. 32. It is best to confide the secular relief of the Poor to individual benevolence. 33. And a Bible Association both augments and enlightens this principle. 1. WITHOUT entering into the positive |tion of the money when it is transferred claims of the Bible Society upon the generosity of the public, I shall endeavour to do away an objection which meets us at the very outset of every attempt to raise a subscription, or to found an institution in its favour. The secular necessities of the poor are brought into competition with it, and every shilling given to the Bible Society is represented as an encroachment upon that fund which was before allocated to the relief of poverty. from this object to the higher and more useful objects of feeding those among them who are hungry, clothing those among them who are naked, and paying for medicine or attendance to those among them who are sick. We make bold to say, that if money for the purpose could be got from no other quarter, it would be a wiser distribution still to withdraw it from the objects last mentioned to the supreme object of paying for the knowledge of religion to those among 2. Admitting the fact stated in the objec- them who are ignorant; and, at the hazard tion to be true, we have an answer in readi- of being execrated by many, we do not ness for it. If the Bible Society accomplish hesitate to affirm, that it is better for the its professed object, which is, to make those poor to be worse fed and worse clothed, than who were before ignorant of the Bible bet- that they should be left ignorant of those ter acquainted with it, then the advantage Scriptures, which are able to make them given more than atones for the loss sus-wise unto salvation through the faith that tained. We stand upon the high ground, is in Christ Jesus. that eternity is longer than time, and the 3. But the statement contained in the obunfading enjoyments of the one a boon jection is not true. It seems to go upon the more valuable than the perishable enjoy-supposition, that the fund for relieving the ments of the other. Money is sometimes temporal wants of the poor is the only fund expended for the idle purpose of amusing the poor by the gratuitous exhibition of a spectacle or show. It is a far wiser distribu which exists in the country; and that when any new object of benevolence is started, there is no other fund to which we can re |
