all, ALL, are a most fearful proof, that we have cast off, to a very great extent, the obligations of Christianity, and have forgotten that our greatness and prosperity, in their inception and their continuance, in their essential elements and their glorious aggregate, are the blessings of Almighty God.

These, our sins, demand a speedy and thorough repentance. If we refuse to do it, the unequivocal declarations of Holy Writ, and the voice of faithful history, tell us what must be the result. O! let us not, then, as we value the greatness of America, and its continued prosperity; as we regard God's claim upon us, and our duty to the world, refuse to return to him whom we have so wickedly forsaken.

But, with all these evils among us, this nation is still blessed by God. Though his curse is written against us, he holds back the blow, that we may have a space for repentance. He has lodged the salt of the earth with us, and by its savor we have been preserved from decay and death. He has treated us better than we have deserved; and his forbearance demands from us a tribute of thanksgiving and praise.

Let these sins, then, which check our songs of gratitude, be removed from among us, and who may tell of the prosperity which shall spread its scenes of gladness before us, and bind, with its silken cords, the hearts of the people together? Who may tell of the greatness which shall sit enthroned upon all the green hills of America, and, like a mighty Pharos, send out its light to the distant nations of the earth? And is this vision of greatness and prosperity, the false sketchings of an ardent imagination, or the deceptive pencillings of a misguided fancy? Nay! if our "God is the Lord," and we acknowledge him in all our ways, his amplest blessing will rest upon us. Peace, intelligence, morality, and religion, shall shed their benign radiance over the vast multitude which shall people the granite hills of the North; cover the savannas and plantations of the South; and pour its living tide over the beautiful prairies of the West; while the choral songs of a great and prosperous people shall swell up from every part of our whole country, and God's voice shall be heard from the mid-heaven, proclaiming, "Blessed is the nation," because "God is the Lord."

SERMON XCIII.

BY REV. JAMES E. COBB,

WASHINGTON, ARKANSAS.

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF MORAL REFORM.

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Matthew vii. 5.

THE carnal man is more apt to teach, than to be taught. He is more alert to examine and criticise the conduct of others, than to reflect upon his own. His pride and self sufficiency are fed and gratified at the uncandid contrast which he institutes between his own fancied rectitude and the assumed delinquency of those around him. The beam in his own eye is unheeded; while all his energies are called forth to make manifest and extract the mote in his brother's. The humiliating lessons, only learnt through the comparison of the natural heart with "the law of the Spirit of life," do not engage his attention. But out of a mass of tradition, implicitly received, or of maxims which have impressed themselves on his mind, during his scrutinies into the conduct of others, he has fashioned to himself a system of morality which only serves to exalt his own character, and furnish sentences of condemnation upon those he would pretend to enlighten. He arrogates the office of reformer among his associates in depravity; his own heart is vile, and he affects to despise the dispositions of men like himself; he pours out unsparingly his maledictions, himself "by nature" a child of heaviest wrath. Blindly, in his rash judgments, he appeals to a principle which awfully inculpates himself, and which one day will light up his long slumbering conscience to apprehend, what he has forgotten, in his delusive career of reforming and condemning, instead of reflecting and repenting,-to apprehend that principle couched in the terrible words: "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to

you again." How vile, in the eyes of Jehovah, must appear this deep and deluding hypocrisy of human nature. How searching must be the eye that perceives it. What an evidence is afforded, that Christ saw with other than human eyes, when, in such masterly strokes, he could delineate the character of the text. And oh! how inexplicable our nature, when we can endorse the truth of the text, in exemplification of the necessity of its declarations, and transfer its applications to other characters than our own. The text is searching, general in its application, solemn in its portent, and its implied charge is heavy indeed; hence it behooves us to search ourselves, prove ourselves, and see, whether we can wisely exculpate ourselves from its wide and universal exhortation.

In the text we are presented with,

I. A CHARACTER ADDRESSED AND DELINEATED; and

II. SUITABLY ADMONISHED.

I. THE CHARACTER ADDRessed.

It is a character in all ages contemned, shunned, abhorred. One so universally odious, and, in the detestation it produces, bringing with it so many circumstances of annoyance and active reprobation, that even the hypocrite himself would desire to be delivered from its imputation. And well may society set a stamp of indelible infamy upon the character, as it is generally defined; for it is one calculated in its traits to dissolve society, by destroying confidence in the declarations of men. But hypocrisy, in its popular acceptation, does not seem fully to meet the Scriptural idea. Hence, by confounding what Scripture terms hypocrisy, with what the world would so denominate, men have often managed to escape the charge, to their own satisfaction, delusion, and shipwreck of conscience. They are not the same. In the one case, an individual knowingly assumes a mask, that he may practise on the credulity or unwariness of his dupes; in the other case, he is, as will hereafter be proved, to a great extent, himself deceived. But both are equally pernicious and vile. An indulgence in either, will result in temporal and eternal ruin. To point out and exhibit the former, whom the whole world recognizes and contemns, would be a useless task. Let us turn our attention to the character designated by Christ. "Thou hypocrite," says he. Does he not speak as one having authority? an authority to teach based on an intimate knowledge-an all-pervading perception of that heart, whence

proceeded the things which defile a man? "Thou hypocrite!" Tender as is the heart of Christ, meek as is his deportment, yet he does not compromise with iniquity; he boldly designates the subject of his animadversions, and attaches to him his appropriate name. There were those who judged, who ought to have been judged; meting in a measure out of which they did not partake; binding heavy burdens, to which they would not apply so much as a finger; anxious to remove a mote, though afflicted with a beam," and these, having graphically defined, he entitles hypocrites. By a careful attention to his concise, but comprehensive delineation, we can estimate their characters in their full deformity. Let us reflect upon the traits thus expressed or implied. 1. The "beam" in the eye of the hypocrite.

This is a simple and expressive metaphor, to show the beclouded moral perception of the natural man. He has no clear and impartial apprehension of moral truth. There is a beam in his eye. This beam is sin, "In whom," says the apostle, speaking of those to whom the truths of the gospel were "hid," and who were consequently "lost," "in whom the god of this world, hath blinded the minds of them which believe not." Now the god of this world is in nature opposed to the true God; and, as the influence the latter exerts, when he "hath shined in our hearts," is obviously sanctifying, that of the former, which is the contrary, must be corrupting and sinful. Sin, then, revelation declares, not only pollutes the heart, but also perverts the judgment. And this perversion, attaches, not to a part, but to the whole of the moral sense. It is a beam, not a mote. The carnal mind, in consequence, cannot estimate aright the obligations of a single relation it sustains, or appreciate the condition in which it lies. It does not view God as a being near at hand, according to the injunction of Sacred Writ, but secretly holds him as a God afar off; as one engaged in regulating and controlling magnificent physical and ethical systems, and not as one who is hourly sitting in judgment upon the inmost heart and every action of man. It does not adequately apprehend the purifying and spiritual principles of the great primeval laws of Love and Truth. Selecting a few isolated exponents of that law, as all that calls for its observance, it feels not that the law is extensive as the innumerable varieties of human action, and goes as deep in application, as are the hidden springs of human conduct. The carnal mind does not perceive its own grossness and impurity.

It can fancy itself obeying God, approved of God, loving and loved of God; and yet, of its own nature, from the very necessity of its existence, absolute enmity to God, and incapable of reconciliation with his law and nature; dark, chaotic, and in every atom repulsive. Its possessor can commence and pursue a career, condemned at every step, by justice, truth, and mercy, and yet, appealing to those very principles for his justification, claim to be zealously advocating the cause of a genuine religion, or of a pure morality, or of high toned honor. The motives of selfishness, of pride, ambition, fanaticism, moral or spiritual, which actuate his life, are boldly disavowed; and sincerity and disinterestedness are as unblushingly arrogated. The perception is made through an eye, every vein of which is unhealthy and vitiated from the pressure of this beam of sin; and every object of vision is necessarily distorted and discolored. Not a hill, or tree, or valley, or stream, of the moral landscape, seems to wear its proper shape, or possess its truthfulness here. They are not beheld with a "single eye," but with an "evil;" and if the eye, given to be the medium of a display of all the rich and grand scenery of moral truth, be evil, and, instead of designed results, only impress upon the mind an aspect of wild, misshapen, incongruous error, "how great is that darkness." Better have no eye, than one that would guide to a precipice, when we anticipated a plain; to a mirage, when we hoped to find waters of alleviating freshness. Such is the beam of sin.

2. Of this beam the hypocrite, if not utterly unconscious, is, in effect, entirely unobservant.

This fact is evident, from the air of self-complacency with which he offers to remove the mote that he fancies to have perceived in his brother's eye. How else, could he so impudently say to his brother, "Brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold a beam in his own eye." Would a surgeon, conscious of the imperfection of his vision, and unsteadiness of hand, essay to operate on the physical eye? In such an attempt he would inevitably fail, and bring upon himself confusion and disgrace. Neither are we to suppose the hypocrite to be fully awake to a sense of his state. He may, indeed, admit that there are faults in his nature and practice. But, doatingly tender of self, he maintains. them to be few and trivial. And who, he would ask, has not some slight imperfections? Let these be removed, and his character would be most unblemished and exalted. It is only a few