to inquire into that which God thought it | gious decency, may be presented in the worth his while to give up his Son unto the character and doings of him whose converdeath that he might accomplish. It is to sation is not in heaven, who minds earthly affront God, by letting him speak while you things, who loves his wealth more than refuse to listen or attend to him. Have a God, who likes his ease and comfort on this care, lest it be an insulting sentiment on side of time more than all his prospects on your part, as to the worth of your polluted the other side of it, and who, therefore, services, and that, sinful as they are, and though he may never have looked upon defective as they are, they are good enough himself to be any thing else than a fair for God. Lean not on such a bruised reed; Christian, is looked upon by every spiritual but let Christ, in all the perfection of that being as a rebel to his God, with the prinrighteousness, which is unto all them and ciple of rebellion firmly seated in his most upon all them that believe, be the alone vital part, even in his heart, turned in coldrock of your confidence. Your feet will ness and alienation away from him. never get on a sure place till they be established on that foundation than which there is no other; and to delay a single moment in your attempts to reach it, and to find rest upon it, after it is so broadly announced to you, is to incur the aggravated guilt of those who neglect the great salvation, and who make God a liar, by suspending their belief of that record which he hath given of his Son,-" And this is the record that God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."

But if God be looked upon by you as a Father with whom you are reconciled through the blood of sprinkling, it will not be so with you. Now, this is what he calls you to do. He gives you a warrant to choose him as your God. He offers himself to your acceptance, and beseeches all to whom the word of salvation is sent, to be reconciled to Him. It is indeed a wonderful change in the state of a heart, when, giving up its coldness and indifference to God, (and I call upon every careless and Again I call upon you to be up and doing; unawakened man to tell me, upon his hoand I call upon you to accept of Christ as nesty, whether this be not the actual state your alone Saviour: but I call upon you, of his heart,) it surrenders itself to him with at the same time, to look to the whole ex- the warm and the willing tribute of all its tent of his salvation. "You hath he quick- affections. Now, there is not one power, ened, having forgiven you all trespasses." within the compass of nature, that can There is the forgiveness of all that has been | bring about this change. It does not lie dead, and sinful, and alienated within you: with man to give up the radical iniquity of but there is also a quickening, and a reform-an alienated heart; the Ethiopian may as ing, and a putting within you a near and a lively sense of God, so as that you may henceforth serve him with newness of heart, and walk before him in all newness of life and of conversation. Your hearts will be enlarged, so as that you may run the way of all the commandments. O, how it puts to flight all pharisaical confidence in the present exercises of obedience, when one casts an enlightened eye over the whole extent of the Christian race, and thinks of the mighty extent of those attainments which were exemplified by the disciples of the New Testament! The service which I now yield, and is perhaps offered up in the spirit of bondage, must be offered up in the spirit of adoption. It must be the obedience of a child, who yields the willing homage of his affections to his reconciled father. It must be the obedience of the hearts and O how far is a slavish performance of the bidden task, from the consent of the inner man to the law of that God whom he delights to honour! This love to him, and delight in him, occupy the foremost place in the list of the bidden requirements. If I love the creature more than the Creator, I trample on the authority of the first and greatest of the commandments; and what an imposing exhibition of sobriety, and justice, and almsgiving, and reli

soon change his skin, and the leopard his spots. But what cannot be done by him, is done to him, when he accepts of the Gospel. The promises of Christ are abundantly peformed upon all who trust in him. Through him is the dispensation of forgiveness, and with him is the dispensation of the all-powerful and all-subduing Spirit. While, then, with the very first mention of his name, I call on you to cease your hand from doing evil, surely there is nothing in the call that can lead you to stop at any one point of obedience, when I, at the same time, tell you of the mighty change that must be accomplished, ere you are meet for the inheritance of the saints. You must be made the workmanship of God; you must be born again; you must be made to feel your dependance on the power of the renewing Spirit; and that power must come down upon you, and keep by you, and by his ever-needed supplies must form the habitual answer to your habitual and believing prayers.

I have now got upon ground on which many will refuse to go along with me. I can get their testimony to the spectacle of a reforming people, putting the visible iniquities of stealing, and lying, and evil speaking, and drunkenness, away from them; but from the moment we come to

the only principle which confers any value | reformations of honour, and truth, and inon these visible expressions, even the wil- tegrity among my people; but I never once ling homage of the heart to God, and to his heard of any such reformations having been law in all its spirituality and extent; and effected among them. If there was any thing from the moment that we come to the only at all brought about in this way, it was more expedient by which such a principle can than ever I got any account of. I am not ever obtain an establishment within us, sensible, that all the vehemence with which (and we challenge them to attempt the I urged the virtues and the proprieties of establishment of this principle in any other social life, had the weight of a feather an way,) even the operation of that spirit the moral habits of my parishioners. And which is given to those who accept of it was not till I got impressed by the utter Christ as he is laid before us in the Gospel ; alienation of the heart in all its desires and then, and at that moment, are we looked affections from God; it was not till reconupon as having entered within the borders ciliation to Him became the distinct and the of fanaticism; and, while they lavish their prominent object of my ministerial exersuperficial admiration on the flowers of tions; it was not till I took the scriptural virtue, do they refuse the patience of their way of laying the method of reconciliation attention to the root from which they before them; it was not till the free offer spring, or to the nourishment which main- of forgiveness through the blood of Christ tains them. was urged upon their acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, was set before them as the unceasing object of their dependance and their prayers; it was not, in one word, till the contemplations of my people were turned to these great and essential elements in the business of a soul providing for its interest with God and the concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any of those subordinate reformations which I aforetime made the earnest and the zealous, but I am afraid at the same time, the ultimate object of my earlier ministrations. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidelity has now attracted the notice, and drawn forth in my hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, what mischief you would have done, had your zeal for doctrines and sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allowable purloining of your earlier days! But a sense of your heavenly Master's eye has brought another influence to bear upon you; and while you are thus striving to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You have at least taught me, that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry with all its simplicity into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded population.

And here I cannot but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment, which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years among you. For the greater part of that time, I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villainy of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny,-in a word, upon all those deformities of character, which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. Now could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing, and the evil speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet every soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that even could I have established in the bosom of one who stole, such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty, that he was prevailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to Him, as before. In a word, though I might have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might have left him as destitute of the essence of religious principle as ever. But the interesting fact is, that during the whole of that period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salvation; while Christ, through And here it gives me pleasure to observe, whose blood the sinner, who by nature that, earnest as I have been for a plain and stands afar off, is brought near to the hea- practical outset, the very first obedience of venly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was John's disciples was connected with a bescarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in lief in the announcement of a common Sasuch a way, as stripped him of all the im-viour. This principle was present with portance of his character and his offices, them, and had its influence on the earliest even at this time I certainly did press the movements of their repentance. Faith in

Christ had at that time but an obscure dawn- | ever awaken in the mind,-that these are

the principles which preside over the very first movements of a sinner, casting away from him his transgressions, and returning unto God.

But let us not throw any impediment in the way of these first movements. Let us have a practical outset. Let us not be afraid of giving an immediate character of exertion to the very infancy of a Christian's career. To wait in slavish adherence to system, till the principle of faith be deposited with all the tenacity of a settled assurance in the mind, or the brilliancy of a finished light be thrown around it, would be to act in the face of scriptural example. Let the gospel be preached in all its free

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 obe dience, 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.

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, and this obedience grew more enlightened, more spiritual, more allied with the purity of the heart, and the movements of the inner man, just as faith obtained its brighter and larger accessions in the course of the subsequent revelations. The disciple of John keeping himself free from extortion and adultery, was a very different man from the Pharisee, who was neither an extortioner nor an adulterer. The mind of the Pharisee rested on his present performances; the mind 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, that the preachers of faith are not the preachers of morality. If there be any 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.

for the single object of forgiveness, or as a Priest who has wrought out an atonement for you; for Christ offers himself in more 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, by ly principle can accomplish; you will enter the noblest of all refutations-by the graces a career, of which you at this moment see and accomplishments of a life given in not the end; you will try an ascent, of faithful and entire dedication to the will of which the lofty eminence is hid in the the Saviour. Let the remembrance of what darkness of futurity; the chilling sentiment, gave for you, ever stir you up to the that no higher obedience is expected of me sense of what you should give him back than what I can yield, will have no influence again; and while others talk of good works, upon you; for the mighty stretch of attainin such a way as to depose Christ from his ment that you look forward to, is not what pre-eminence, do you perform these good I can do, but what Christ can do in me; works through Christ, by the power of his and, with the all-subduing instrument of grace working in you mightily. 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.

he

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

"Christ is offered to all of you for for-all the credit and all the glory which belong giveness. The man who takes him for this to him, by making him your only, and your single object must be looking at him with perfect, and your entire, and your altogean eye half shut upon the revelation he ther Saviour. makes of himself. Look at him with an open "Choose him, then, my brethren, choose and a steadfast eye, and then I will call him as the Captain of your salvation. Let you a true believer; and sure I am, that if him enter into your hearts by faith, and let you do so, you cannot avoid seeing him in him dwell continually there. Cultivate a the earnestness of his desire that you daily intercourse and a growing acquaintshould give up all sin, and enter from this ance with him. O, you are in safe commoment into all obedience. True, and pany, indeed, when your fellowship is with most true, my brethren, that faith will him! The shield of his protecting medisave you; but it must be a whole faith atorship is ever between you and the jusin a whole Bible. True, and most true, tice of God; and out of his fullness there that they who keep the commandments goeth a constant stream, to nourish, and to of Jesus shall enter into life; but you animate, and to strengthen every believer. are not to shrink from any one of these Why should the shifting of human instrucommandments, or to say because they ments so oppress and so discourage you, are so much above the power of human- when he is your willing friend; when he ity, that you must give up the task of is ever present, and is at all times in readiattempting them. True, and most true, ness; when he, the same to-day, yesterday, that he who trusteth to his obedience as a and for ever, is to be met with in every saviour, is shifting his confidence from the place; and while his disciples here, giving alone foundation it can rest upon. Christ way to the power of sight, are sorrowful, is your Saviour; and when I call upon you and in great heaviness, because they are to to rejoice in that reconciliation which is move at a distance from one another, he, through him, I call upon you not to leave my brethren, he has his eye upon all neighhim for a single moment, when you engage bourhoods and all countries, and will at in the work of doing those things which if length gather his disciples into one eternal left undone, will exclude us from the king-family. With such a Master, let us quit dom of heaven. Take him along with you ourselves like men. With the magnifiinto all your services. Let the sentiment cence of eternity before us, let time, with ever be upon you, that what I am now its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littledoing I may do in my own strength to the ness. If God is pleased to spare me, I trust satisfaction of man, but I must have the I shall often meet with you in person, even power of Christ resting upon the perform-on this side of the grave; but if not, let us ance, 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

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."