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cast yourself upon his mercy and credit his promise in this good hour, so you shall be this night enrolled among the saved, and he shall have all the praise. The Lord grant it, for Jesus Christ's sake.

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E shall have two things to consider this evening-the misery of our past estate, and the great deliverance which God has wrought for us.

I. As for the misery of our past estate, be it known unto you that, in common with the rest of mankind, believers were once without Christ. No tongue can tell the depth of wretchedness that is hid in this half a sentence. There is no poverty like it; no indigence or destitution that is comparable to it; for those who die so, there is no outlook, but dark desertion, dire despair, irretrievable ruin: all sorrow, no succour. Without Christ! If this be the description of some of you, we need not affright you with talk about the fires of hell; there is surely peril enough in the privation to startle you, when you are in such a desperate state as to be without Christ. Oh, what terrible evils lie clustering thick within these two words!

The man who is without Christ is without any of those spiritual blessings which only Christ can bestow. Christ is the life of the believer, but the man who is without

There he lies;

It is decent and absent, and life

Christ is dead in trespasses and sins. let us stand and weep over his corpse. clean, and well laid out, but life is being absent, there is no knowledge, no feeling, no power. What can we do? Shall we take the word of

God and preach to this dead sinner? We are bidden to do so, and therefore we will attempt it; but so long as he is without Christ no result will follow, any more than when Elisha's servant laid the staff upon the child-there was no noise, nor sound, nor hearing. As long as that sinner is without Christ we may give him ordinances, if we dare; we may pray for him, we may keep him under the sound of the ministry, but everything will be in vain. Till thou, O quickening Spirit, come to that sinner, he will still be dead in trespasses and sins. Till Jesus is revealed to him there can be no life.

So, too, Christ is the light of the world. Light is the gift of Christ. "In him was light, and the light was the light of men." Men sit in darkness until Jesus appears. The gloom is thick and dense; not sun, nor moon, nor star appeareth, and there can be no light to illumine the understanding, the affections, the conscience. Man has no power to get light. He may strike the damp match of reason, but it will not yield him a clear flame. The candle of superstition, with its tiny glare, will but expose the darkness in which he is wrapped. Rise, morning star! Come, Jesus, come! Thou art the sun of righteousness; and healing is beneath thy wings. Without Christ there is no light of true spiritual knowledge, no light of true spiritual enjoyment, no light in which the brightness of truth can be seen, or the warmth of fellowship proved. The soul,

like the men of Napthali, sits in darkness, and seeth no

light.

See that

See that poor soul

It flies

swift as the wind, It seeks a covert

Without Christ there is no peace. hunted by the dogs of hell. but faster far do the hunters pursue. yonder in the pleasures of the world, but the baying of the hell-hounds affright it in the festive haunts. It seeks to toil up the mountain of good works, but its legs are all too weak to bear it beyond the oppressor's rule. It doubles; it changes its tack; it goes from right to left, but the hell-dogs are too swift of foot, and too strong of wind to lose their prey, and till Jesus Christ shall open his bosom for that poor hunted thing to hide itself within, it shall have no peace.

Without Christ there is no rest. The wicked are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, and only Jesus can say to that sea-"Peace, be still."

Without Christ there is no safety. The vessel must fly before the gale, for it has no anchor on board; it may dash upon the rocks, for it has no chart, and no pilot. Come what may, it is given up to the mercy of wind and waves. Safety it cannot know without Christ. But let Christ come on board that soul, and it may laugh at all the storms of earth, and e'en the whirlwinds which the Prince of the power of the air may raise need not confound it; but without Christ there is no safety for it.

Without Christ, again, there is no hope. Sitting wrecked upon this desert rock, the lone soul looks far away, but marks nothing that can give it joy. If, perchance, it fancies that a sail is in the distance, it is soon undeceived. The poor soul is thirsty, and around it

flows only a sea of brine, soon to change to an ocean of fire. It looks upward, and there is an angry God; downward, and there are yawning gulfs; on the right hand, and there are accusing sounds; on the left hand, and there are tempting fiends. It is all lost! lost! lost! without Christ, utterly lost, and until Christ comes not a single beam of hope can make glad that anxious eye.

Without Christ, beloved, remember that all the religious acts of men are vanity. What are they but mere air-bags, having nothing in them whatever that God can accept? There is the semblance of worship,-the altar, the victim, the wood laid in order,-and the votaries bow the knee, or prostrate their bodies, but Christ alone can send the fire of heaven's acceptance. Without Christ the offering, like that of Cain's, shall lie upon the stones, but it shall never rise in fragrant smoke, accepted by the God of heaven. Without Christ your church-goings are a form of slavery, your chapelmeetings a bondage. Without Christ your prayers are but empty wind, your repentances are wasted tears, your alms-givings and your good deeds are but a coating of thin veneer to hide your base iniquities. Your professions are white-washed sepulchres, fair to look upon, but inwardly full of rottenness. Without Christ your religion is dead, corrupt, a stench, a nuisance before God-a thing of abhorrence, for where there is no Christ there is no life in any devotion, nothing in it for God to see that can possibly please him. And this, mark you, is a true description, not of some, but of all who are without Christ. You moral people without Christ, you are lost as much as the immoral. You rich

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