Christ, by whom it has received the atonement. This exercise is the habit of the true Christian's life. In its production and preservation, he is indebted to the written word, which he reads; to the preaching of the gospel, which he hears; and to the institution of the supper, which he observes. But then, no portion of the tranquillizing efficacy is in them, but in the sacrifice to which they conduct him, and to which, in their absence, as well as in their enjoyment, he can repair. His conscience is easy, not because he has gone through the forms of an appointed ritual; but because he has applied to Christ, who, in the means of grace, has been set before him;-because he has cast the burden of his guilt upon him, and committed the keeping of his soul unto him. "The life which he lives in the flesh" is, like that of the Apostle, "by the faith of the Son of God, who loved him, and gave himself for him." Christ, in the power of his cleansing blood, dwells, by faith, in his heart, the perennial spring of peace and joy,-the hope of glory.

If restrictions exist in the actual enjoyment of the advantages which are provided in the atonement, those restrictions arise, not from any imperfection in the sacrifice itself, but from the censurable inaptitude of those who are, or who should be, the recipients of its virtue. If limi

tation or fluctuation of peace and joy is found, in the case of any individual who has by faith received the atonement, it results from some remaining obscurity in his views of divine truth; from the contraction of his desires; or from the restraint of his prayers. In Christ we are not straitened, but in ourselves. His kind and gentle reproof to us, as well as to his disciples of old, is, "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name:" his command,-" Ask, and and ye shall receive, and your joy shall be full." If the believing reception of the atonement is partial only, among those to whom it is proclaimed, the fault is to be attributed to the perverseness of the human mind on religious subjects,—its preference of error to truth,-of darkness to light, of the transitory and delusive enjoyments of sense, to the spiritual blessings in heavenly places, which are in Christ Jesus. It may be resolved into the reason declared by the Redeemer to the Jews, as matter of deepest lamentation, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life;" and it should, in every case, be met by the heart-stirring question of the Apostle, "How shall ye escape, if ye neglect so great salvation?" If the world is but partially enlightened with the knowledge of the fact, that an atoning sacrifice has been offered for it, a sufficient reason may be assigned, in

the want of enterprise, zeal, and devotedness on the part of those whose duty it has been to send abroad the proclamations of redeeming mercy. The churches which the Apostles formed, before John, who survived his brethren, had rested from his labours, had begun to cool in their first love, and relax from their first works; and having neglected to spread the light, which they possessed, around them, their own candlestick was at length removed out of his place. The mass of those who, in what has been subsequently called the church, have worn orders of various degrees, and have presumed themselves to be the legitimate successors of the Apostles, have forgotten, what should have been the climax of the proof,-the practical part of the demonstration. It seems not to have occurred to them, that, if they were indeed the successors of the Apostles, apostolic duties became immediately and imperatively binding upon them; the duties of giving up all for Christ, and carrying his gospel to the ends of the earth. Those who did profess to tread in the steps of the Apostles mistook both the object which they had in view, and the means by which they sought its accomplishment. They went, not so much to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ to the heathen, as to extend the boundaries, and increase the influence and

revenues, of a secular church. Instead of carrying with them the incorruptible seed of the word of God, to sow, and to water, they tried to transplant the full-grown ritual of the Roman church. The result was what might have been expected. Instead of an abundant harvest, from the germinating seed at length rewarding the labour of the patient husbandman, and furnishing the store for the perpetuation and extension of the same living power and ripening fruits; the tree, originally a parasite itself, bore no fruit, and soon withered and died. Protestant churches, in their struggle for emancipation from antichristian oppression, almost overlooked the condition of the heathen; and in resting to enjoy the peace which they had with difficulty obtained, lost much of their purity and vigour. They are but beginning to awaken to a sense of their responsibility, and to a conviction of the fact, that their own vitality can be sustained only as they are obedient to their Master's command, in spreading his gospel through the world.

It argues nothing against the perfection of the sun, that there are many individuals in the world who unhappily are blind, and incapable of receiving its light;-that there are many more who are foolish, who close their eyes in unnatural slumbers, while its radiance is pouring

around them, awake when its glories are departing, trim their artificial lights, display the tinsel of their borrowed plumage, and revel through the night, until the sun again arises, rational men go forth to their labours, and creatures, not gifted with reason, lay them down in their dens;-that, there are many extensive and fertile tracts in the world which it illumines, where there is no intelligent eye to enjoy and improve its cheering and vivifying beams. The sun itself is unaffected by these circumstances of earthly restriction and human imperfection. Wherever there has been an open eye to receive its light, from the first day of its creation down to the present hour, it has poured it freely and copiously around. If the human race, in its successive generations, had been multiplied in their numbers a hundredfold, it could equally, and without individual diminution, have illumined the whole. Its fountain of radiance is still unexhausted, undiminished, undiminishable. We possess its light as clearly and regularly as did our fathers, and so will our posterity, in their remotest generations. It is the most perfect of God's material works of which we have any knowledge; the most glorious in its appearance, unchanging in its substance, diffusive in its influence, powerful and beneficial in its operation. And yet,