The man who follows his Bible as his guide, is kept from the extravagance of either extreme. It tells him, that God has procured the whole of our salvation by his own power, through the mediation of his Son, in our nature; and to the procuring of this, the helpless creature can contribute nothing whatever, for it is all of God. But it tells him also, that in applying this salvation to its perishing objects -in planting the principle of renovation in the heart of a particular sinner-and in making it to live and prosper there, he makes use of the moral constitution of that sinner, his bodily and mental faculties, as an appropriate agency for promoting the work, and bringing it to perfection. It tells him, that the God of heaven, by his divine Spirit, is the great efficient of all the saving efficacy which is wrought into the heart of man in this world; while the moral activities of the man himself, are the chosen instrumentality on which, and by which the energy is put forth. "I laboured more abundantly than all my contemporaries," says an apostle, "yet not I, but the grace of God which was in me," or operating by me. As we have no warrant to look for miracles under an organized dispensation of the Gospel-as it would be impious even to suppose, that after appointing the means of man's deliverance, and adapting them most wisely to the furtherance of the end, the Most High would disregard them, or countenance a dereliction of them in any one instance—so they must be employed, and employed too with unwearied diligence, in order to success. While, therefore, we are to ascribe all the saving benefits connected

with Christian agency, purely to the grace of God; and while we are, in no case, to ascribe to this agency any thing like merit or efficient causation, we are, at the same time, to beware of detracting from it, even the smallest item of its warranted value, or of excusing our own indolence by the plea, that we can do nothing at all; for we can do something -we can do evil: and therefore, as reasonable beings, we can do actions which would be good if our hearts were right. There is nothing more obvious, from the whole tenor of Scripture, than that every man who has the use of reason, and lives under the administration of Christianity, has a part to act in the matter of his salvation; and it is not too much to say, that unless he act that part he cannot be saved. The voice from heaven plainly shows us that there is a middle path between the two extremes already noticed; and this middle path it calls upon every man to seek out and to prosecute. It affords no hope of salvation, on the one hand, by works of righteousness which we can do, but directs us to the atonement of Jesus Christ, as the only ground of confidence; reminding us, at the same time, that this atonement is realized and rested on, by the exercise of a faith which is wrought into the heart of every convert by the Spirit of God. Nor, on the other hand, does it encourage us to trust in an imagined interest in this atonement, while there is no visible change in the spirit of our minds. On the man whose guilt is uncancelled, and whose pollution, of course, is yet in its entireness, it urges the atone

ment as the only application by which the one can be expiated, or the other washed away. It speaks out on this subject, in language the most expressive, forewarning every man, that holiness to the Lord must not only be inscribed upon him nominally, but infused into him really; and that the fruits of it must appear, not merely as a seemly appendage to his Christianity, but as an essential part of it, in the absence of which he cannot be saved.

Another thing, which often prevents a man from imbibing the spirit of saving truth, is the overgrowth of a speculative turn of mind—a weed in the vineyard of the church, which is peculiarly pestilent in its influence, and which is usually most luxuriant at a season of ease and outward tranquillity. The man who is affected by this contagion, begins to intermeddle with every thing in religion, and hopes to reason his way through every thing, however intricate or mysterious. If he be puzzled or arrested in his course, as must soon be the case, when so impotent a being as man applies himself to the things of God, he tries to extricate himself by using liberties with the word of God, which are forbidden by piety, and can only tend to lower it in his esteem. He opens his Bible, perhaps, for the seemingly harmless purpose of giving scope to his ingenuity; but it instantly meets him with precepts which he dislikes, or with doctrines which he cannot unriddle; and just because he is nonplussed, he quarrels with the record, casts suspicions over its authenticity, or palms on it a theory which it manifestly disowns. In short,

he will do any thing, rather than forego his opinions in homage to its authority, or submit his bewildered intellect to be tutored by its dictation.

The instances are very numerous, in which a love of speculation, commencing under the disguise, or mingled with the honest intention, of candid inquiry, has carried its unwary victim, by slow but sure advances, into the wildest of scepticism. Such instances are ever occurring; and so fatally does this passion sophisticate the mind, and deaden its sensibilities, that very few of those who are once caught in its snares, are ever found to regain their liberty. It does happen, indeed, with some degree of frequency, that the man, who never was any thing else in religion than a reckless theorist, is ultimately convinced, and reclaimed; but the man who, after putting on its profession, and giving himself over to its studies and observances, has turned aside in this direction, passes into a region from which scarcely a traveller ever returns. The aberrations of the intellect, in this department, cannot fail to affect the heart; for thought and feeling are inseparably conjoined in the human constitution, and incessantly acting and re-acting on each other. And if a man can let himself down to the idea, that the Spirit of God may be argued with, or even corrected by him, his feelings will speedily modify themselves into a conformity with that idea, his heart will escape from the control, and forget the sacredness of divine revelation; and thus will he bring himself, unwittingly, it may be, but in fearful reality, to the very confines of that sin, which God has not said he will forgive.

How suitable then, and how cogent, is the apostolic admonition, "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”

It

It is easy to see, that the characteristic of this state of mind is pride of intellect, with a consequent insubordination of heart to the authority of the Most High. Reason herself proclaims it, where her voice is listened to, that man, even in his best estate, is unable to solve the mysteries of the Godhead. is to her that revelation appeals, when it gives the challenge to man, as man—a challenge at once so eloquent, and so humiliating to his pride—“ Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is the heights of heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." But, if reason can respond to such an appeal, even from the darkness of her depravity-if she can perceive its force, in some measure, by the lunar dimness of nature's theology, how much more deep, and enlarged, and abasing, must be her recognitions of it, when enlightened and refreshed by the beams of revelation. Aided by this new luminary, she sees man, as a sinner smitten with a blindness of mind, and seared into a hardness of heart, which prevents him from contemplating any one doctrine of revelation in the glow of its interest, or in the amplitude of its dependencies. She sees it to be an awful truth, that the "natural man receiveth not the things of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually