On such grounds as these, our Church, in its Confession, teaches us every day to acknowledge on our knees, that "there is no health in us:"and I would to God that our hearts always harmonized with so just and scriptural a declaration! To the same purpose, St. Paul, in enumerating the dreadful effects of the fall of man, observes, that "there is no fear of God before their eyes." Now the very point under our present consideration is, how to recover this lost principle of the fear of God, the absence of which makes such ravages in the world, and the presence of which, when in its full operation, would not only correct all the abuses we have described as taking place in judicial investigations and decisions, but even almost annihilate the necessity for a code of penal jurisprudence.

"Restore thou them that are penitent," is the prayer contained in the same Confession of our excellent Church; which distinctly points out to the humbled sinner the way, and the only way, by which he can recover the lost favour of his Maker, and again possess those holy principles of a reverential fear, which will hereafter shew themselves in a sober, godly, and religious life. In other words; the true penitent, conscious of utter unworthiness, and also of inability to

amend his life, without the grace of God preventing him that he may have a good will, and working with him when he has that will, learns to put his whole trust in the Redeemer for every spiritual blessing. On the ground of the promises, he prays for that Holy Spirit which is to purify him, and make him fear God and be zealous of good works. He looks on the Gospel as the true medicine for the maladies of human nature. His redemption is purchased by the blood of his Saviour: accordingly, he ranks himself under the banner of the Captain of his salvation, and fights the good fight manfully against the world, the flesh, and the devil, unto his life's end.

Such is the Gospel of Christ; and such is the way to make a right use of it. The followers of Christ in this way recover a due sense of the fear of God, and live habitually under its influence. They love their neighbours as themselves; they adorn their profession by good works, and let their light shine before men that they may see them-in fact, that they may see what the humbling and restorative doctrines of Revelation can do for our fallen nature, as well as what all the ostentatious pharisaical pomp and pretension of philosophers cannot do. Such, I

repeat it, is the Gospel of Christ; and it may well challenge all the efforts of ancient wisdom combined together, to produce any plan or contrivance worthy of being compared with it, either in principle or operation, for the recovery of a perverse and untoward generation, sunk in ignorance and impieties, and lost to all pure and spiritual obedience towards its great Creator and Benefactor. Let the Philosophers produce every argument they can invent; let them enlarge on the beauty and excellence of virtue; let them pronounce the will free to choose the good and refuse the evil; still that single sentence, "if ye love me, keep my commandments," contains in it more profundity of wisdom, and more efficacious and systematic contrivance, than all the numerous and heavy volumes of the philosophers, and all the rich and extensive libraries of the learned, for the blessed purpose of bringing back the degenerate sons and daughters of Adam to a willing, rational, and spiritual service of the righteous Father of spirits, who never desires the death of a sinner; and to à humble and grateful sense of their immense obligations to his Son, who redeems them both from the penalty and the dominion of sin.

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SERMON VI.

JOHN xx. 17.

Go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.

IT is generally observed, that the last words of great and good men are remembered, as being peculiarly important, and deserving very particular attention. How much more, then, do merit our notice, the last words of Him who "spake as never man spake ;" who is God as well as man,—

Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God!" I have chosen, then, these words, which were some of the precious last words of our Lord while here on earth, to speak from this morning, for the profit and instruction of this congregation.

Here is a message delivered to Mary Magdalen, on Christ's discovery of himself to her after his resurrection. What affection does he shew to his disciples! He would have them to know he looks on them as a brother does: "Go to my brethren," says he. He has the spirit of a brother towards them. He is just going to his Father and his God, to take possession of the inheritance, in their name and his own; assuring them of the reality of their being owned by the Father as their Father and their God, as much as he himself was so owned : for that he had purchased the inheritance of heaven for them with his own blood. He had now finished the work of redemption; and also proved that he had finished it for them, by his resurrection. He, the eldest Brother, and the First-born from the dead, was going to take actual possession first; and, as he had told them before, to prepare a place for them. There are many mansions in the Father's house the disciples were "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;" and after a course of afflictive discipline, they were to be taken up to reign with Him, and "return to Zion with songs, and with everlasting joy upon their heads:" they