of the grace of God even in such an unpromising soil as this.

Now let no man misapprehend my meaning. I say, there may be these things in the natural temper; and therefore the grace of God will have, most undoubtedly, a great deal to do, a great change to effect: for God forbid that I should say these unfavourable symptoms are still to continue in their growing and flourishing state! That would indeed be a proof of the absence of the graces of the Spirit, and not of their presence. But this I say: the truly spiritual man may have hard fighting with his old corrupt nature, and may even gain the victory, so that sin shall not have dominion over him; and yet he may have, while he continues in the flesh, many failings; and, from his corrupt nature, he may experience many struggles, enough to humble him, enough to keep him on the watch, and make him very diligent in his applications to the Throne of Mercy for help in time of need.

Secondly. This improvement in the knowledge of the Christian life will, of necessity, produce the improvement in Christian temper and affection

2c2

to which I alluded. And this consists in a truly charitable way of estimating characters;—that is, ye will not only know how to discern the true Christian better wherever ye can perceive him, but ye will be better disposed" to hope all things, to believe all things, to endure all things:" ye will learn to place the stress on essentials both in doctrine and practice. It is far from true that the genuine followers of Christ Jesus differ materially in any one of the essential doctrines: in outward forms and ceremonies they may differ, and so in many other lesser matters; but in the general principles of redemption by the blood of Christ, of regeneration of our corrupt nature and sanctification by the blessed Spirit of God, they have agreed in all ages since the first promulgation of the Gospel.

These, brethren, are the grand practical points to which you must for ever look: they are the marks by which you are to steer your course through a perverse generation: they are the only principles by which you may hope, like good Enoch, to walk with God. They are the principles which will prove your comfort here, and

your support under all trials: and in the blessed mansions of immortality you must on the same principles throw down your crowns, and sing the song of the penitent sanctified sinner, "Thou hast redeemed us by thy blood!"

390

SERMON XII.

1 TIM. i. 5.

Now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.

THESE words denote the subject recommended by the Apostle Paul to Timothy's attention as a Christian minister. They express the ideas which he wishes him to impress on his own heart, and also to inculcate on the people who were under his charge; at the same time lamenting that others, by neglecting these things, had run into various speculations of no utility to the church of God, and had turned aside unto vain jangling. At least, then, the Holy Spirit of God bears us witness, through the pen of St. Paul, that the subject before us is no vain jangling, no idle question, but is the very life and soul of the

Gospel itself. It ought, therefore, to be your prayer and mine, that God would be pleased to. point it out to us in its real power and its beauty; and that he would graciously direct our endeavours in the consideration of it, so that it may afford us salutary and substantial evangelical edification.

"The end of the commandment," he says, "is charity," or love-for this same Apostle in his First Epistle to the Corinthians chap. xiii. has explained at length, and in the most beautiful manner, how this great Christian grace of charity is ever to be distinguished from mere liberality. The man who is possessed of true charity, must be a liberal man; liberality is a necessary ingredient in the charitable man's composition: but the contrary is not true; and St. Paul, who well knew to what pernicious mistakes we are prone, guards us most particularly against such a conclusion, by informing us that a man may give all his goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burnt, and yet be devoid of charity.

When, therefore, it is said that the end of the commandment is charity, we must distinctly remember not to deceive ourselves, by substituting, in the place of that comprehensive Christian grace