meets us, are all thus " made partakers of

Christ? Do all thus find in God a Father ready to pronounce on them the benediction of beloved children, and to welcome them to heavenly rest? Alas! by brethren, we cannot with truth return you the answer that our soul yearns for. The same Scripture, that tells how Christ" is the first-born among many brethren," points also to "children of wrath," who have neither part nor lot in the inheritance. "To as many

as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name,' "* but to no others does that distinction belong. And where are we to look for those who receive Christ and believe on his name? Are they the persons we generally meet with in the world? Can the crowds that daily pass

* John i. 12. In one sense, all who have been baptized are, or certainly have been, sons of God, for they have received the Spirit, which is "the Spirit of Adoption," Rom. viii. 15. But that relationship cannot be supposed to last longer than the influences of the Spirit, which effect it last; therefore if, when a man is of sufficient age to exercise the will responsibly, he quenches those influences, the relationship must be at an end, and at an end till renewed by the operations of the same Spirit which first gave it birth.

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before us on the stage of life, be said to have received Christ? Do they appear to be guided and actuated by this one notion, that it was that they might resemble him that they were placed here by God, and that they might so pass through things temporal, as finally to lose not the things eternal? But little reflection is required to supply the answer. They are comparatively few who are so partakers of Christ as to be with him sons of God.

Or let us bring the matter a little closer to ourselves. *[Are all here sons of God? Surely we shall find them here-here in his own holy temple-here with his name upon every lip, and every ear open to listen to the voice of his word? Will his enemies enter here into his immediate presence? Will they come to mock him by a seeming reverence, as the enemies of earthly princes blind their victims to their designs by more than usual attention; forgetting, that unlike the powers of this world, his eye is on

In family reading, the passage in brackets may be read thus:-" Are all here sons of God; here, with his name upon our lips, and our ears open to listen to the voice of his word?”

them when far away from the courts of his house, and that he hears the first word of blasphemy they utter, aud beholds the first act of rebellion, the first evil deed they do after they have turned their backs upon his doors?] This is a question I cannot, dare not, answer. That those who neither receive, nor believe, nor love Christ, do come and call Him Father, who is the God and Father of him, who by their lives they set at nought, is what no one can deny; but we will turn our eyes to the more cheering prospect, and offer thanks to God with heartfelt gratitude, that so many can be found to wait upon his courts in holy fear and ardent love, with becoming reverence, and an unequivocal spirit of pure filial obedience. Who they are that do thus, rests between God and your consciences; human eye cannot fathom the secret chambers of the heart, nor pronounce with unerring certainty between real and professing Christians; but we are permitted to know, that such as do come to the preaching of the gospel with an earnest desire to gather from it the way of salvation, that such as do lift up their hearts to God in a sense of

guilt and weakness, and with humble submission ask for "repentance and his Holy Spirit," that such are at least not far from his kingdom; and that when their faith is made perfect in love, as, if they persevere, it shortly will be, Christ will not be ashamed to call them brethren, and will present them as such before the throne of his Father and their Father.

When Jesus was first declared to be the Son of God, openly in the face of the world, by a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," the Holy Ghost had just descended in a bodily shape, and remaining on him, took up its abode in his heart. We learn from this how we ourselves become sons of God. We cannot be by nature as he was, for we can have no part in his conception by "the power of the Highest,' but we can be by the agency of the same Spirit that sat in a visible form upon him, when his eternal Father acknowledged the dear relationship. Thus it is that they who ask, with faith in Christ, for repentance and the Holy Spirit, become sons of God: those he listens to who ask in Jesus'

name believing: He gives his Spirit to guide unto righteousness those who repent of, and would forsake their sins, and "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,"* and are thus made like unto Jesus Christ.

They are made partakers of his sonship in two ways.

I. First, by adoption.

II. Secondly, by regeneration.

I. Christians are said by St. Paul to be 'predestinated to the adoption of children," and, therefore, the Holy Ghost is called by the same apostle," the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father."+ Now as adopted sons are not the children by nature of him they call father, but being sprung from some other parent, are, from love and affection, taken and treated as children by one with whom they were before connected by no such intimate tie, this case exactly corresponds with our own circumstances with God. We are by nature children of erring and mortal beings, shapen in iniquity and conceived in

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*Rom. viii. 14.

† Eph. i. 5.

Rom. viii. 15.