in it all that is tremendous in "perdition"-since the symptoms of such a delusion are so obvious, and its consequences so disastrous, there is positive benevolence, not merely in referring to it, but in urging it frequently, and with the deepest earnestness, on the attention of the Christian public: "What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord."

It is true, that the things which at present favour the delusion, at least that class of them of which we are treating, are not in themselves of deep discovery, but lie open to the view of every mind which is given. to serious reflection; but of how few minds can this be affirmed, especially in the department of personal religion? How often, in this department, are symptoms which are obvious to every one else, overlooked by the individual who bears them, or left unexamined, although events of the greatest importance are suspended on them? It is also true, that the faithful ministry of the gospel throughout the land, are frequent and assiduous in their pleadings against the influence of an easy and unsuspecting age: for who that is alive to the responsibilities of office—that is zealous for God, or compassionate to man, does not dread its influence, as the most subtle and evasive of all the elements with which he has to contend. is well that they are so; and every one of them has reason to hope for his portion of success. But the question is, does the danger continue to exist, or does it not? Is the charm of the delusion dissolved, or is it still in force?

It

Are the probable victims of it many, or are they few? Is the suspicion of it, even where the danger is most prevalent, asleep to a

great extent; or is that suspicion wakeful and active? If the primary of these inquiries bear upon the fact, while the secondary do not-if there be even a possibility, that the majority of men in our professing age, however shrewd or quick-sighted in secular matters, are blessing themselves in religion, in that which they have not-if they be satisfied and complacent when they ought to be anxious and inquisitive-if there be an ominous readiness to say, "Lord, Lord," without a yielding of moral subjection, a doing of what is commanded-if these things, in short, can be said, in any measure, to characterize the age, then surely the call is loud for a speedy and thorough investigation. "Prove your ownselves" is the inspired admonition, and the man of wisdom will bend his ear to it.

It is painfully instructive to survey in succession the diversified expedients by which men contrive to keep themselves aloof from the spirit of Christianity, while yet they admit its importance, and wish to be owned as its friends. They will not embrace it as it is; and neither are they prepared to let it alone. Their love of sin prevents them from the former ; and their fears of retribution, or their respect for outward decency, restrains them from the latter. They are too much under its influence to fly off from it altogether; and too much opposed to it to be brought into actual subjection to it. In this state of mind, they go round it, and round it, looking at it, now in one of its aspects, then in another; but still the distance from which they look at it is so great, and the medium through which their eye penetrates,

so dim and disfiguring, that the intrinsic excellence of the thing itself is hid from their view. They come short of the reality, and take up with a dark shadow of it, which varies in its degrees of unlikeness to that reality, according to the measure of their depravity, and the consequent deficiency of their mental vision.

One of the most common, and perhaps the most insnaring expedients, by which men contrive to quiet the pleadings of conscience in favour of Christianity, is by attempting to effectuate for themselves, or to systematize for others, a reconciliation between it and the manners of this world, by diminishing the claims of the former, and increasing the offers of the latter, till, as they suppose, the two are brought into unison. A man of this description sees much to be praised in the morality of the Bible, and much to be blamed in the immorality of the world—for this is his style of talking about the matter. When, in the lower walks of life, he meets with the wanton profanities, or violent infractions upon reason and equity, which are ever disfiguring the aspect of society, and multiplying the miseries of man, he is rendered unhappy, and cannot refrain from deploring such things, with feelings of ingenuous sorrow. Nor are his emotions greatly different when, among the higher orders, he meets with so much of the ceremony of sound morality, and so little of its living spirit-so much of its dress and tinsel, and so little of its solid worth. While the open deformity of the one class offends him, he despises the inanity, or deceit which are so prevalent

among the other. To remedy this state of things, to restrain and discipline the grossly vicious, on the one hand, and to give spirit and substance to the forms of virtue on the other, he sees the general principles of Christianity to be greatly needed; and he is perfectly honest in saying, that he would rejoice to see these principles much more deeply rooted in society than they have hitherto been.

At the same time he is for resting in generals, and would adjust the whole affair on the principle of compromise. He is not for subjecting feelings, or motives, or minor delinquencies, to a rigid scrutiny. His whole system is softening or assuasive, but not thoroughly remedial. He has not taken into his calculation that life of faith, and painful mortification, and habitual restraint, and aspiring spirituality, which is so often inculcated as the essence of Christianity, and without which her power over man, even to reform his social manners, is at best but feeble, and not to be relied on. It is, nevertheless, his deliberate conviction, that those pleaders for the Bible, who insist so strenuously upon these things-who set value on nothing but an entire surrender of the man to the dictates of inspiration, without consulting either his convenience or his inclination, do injury to their cause, by the extravagance of their demands. He is quite sure of it, that were they to lower the subject into something of an approximation to the infirmities of human nature, and were the defective morality of the world to make a corresponding advance, a junction might be formed between them, which would afford to man

the benefit of Christianity, without trenching materially on his present indulgences. You may suggest to him the depth and entireness of man's depravity; or the absolute purity of that law under which, as a reasonable being, he is necessarily placed; or the minuteness and range of its precepts, as taking effect upon the whole of his actions, as well as the most deeply secreted of his thoughts; or the obvious impossibility of bringing man to a correspondence with such a law, by any thing short of what the Bible calls a renovation of him, in the spirit of his mind. You may amplify these topics before him; or mingle and substantiate them by pertinent and cogent quotations from the record whence you have drawn them; but still he is for generalizing. He cannot believe that the beneficent Creator could impose upon his creature a religion, which as thus viewed, cuts him out from so many indulgences, subordinates himself, with every thing dear to him, to the culture of principles for which his nature is obviously inapt, and constrains him to live in an element which is too refined and unearthly for the habitudes of his constitution. Such is the man's creed; he has adopted it, perhaps after much deliberation; his practice is in strict conformity with it; and on its results, whatever these may be, he has made up his mind to rest

his eternal destiny.

Such a creed as this is by no means rare or solitary in the Christian world; if it were so, there would be no propriety in singling it out; but there is reason to apprehend, that the man who owns it is but one of a numerous class-a class too, who are