Live, then, in obedience to that great law which binds heaven and earth in one. All things on high worship Him; to Him all things in earth and under the earth bow the knee. The Name of Jesus is the law of angels, archangels, principalities, and powers; it is the healing of penitents, the song of God's elect. Be it your motive and your law, and it shall be your strength and stay; your shield, and your exceeding great reward.

SERMON IV.

HALTING BETWEEN GOD AND THE WORLD.

1 KINGS Xviii. 21.

"And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.

AFTER the separation of Israel and Judah, the kingdom of Israel fell into gross idolatry. Jeroboam, foreseeing that if the people went up unto Jerusalem to sacrifice in the House of the Lord, they would turn from him to the kingdom of Judah, took counsel, and set up two calves of gold, and made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people. All this he did as a scheme of policy, to keep the people of Israel under his allegiance. The effect of it was, that they soon fell into the idolatries of the Zidonians and Ammonites. Baal was the god of the Zidonians, and his worship was set up by Ahab, through his marriage with Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians. He also made a grove for the rites of idol worship. Idolatry became the popular and national tradition; the whole force and support of public opinion sustained it; all the presumptions and usages of public and private life were full of it; all things around them confessed Baal, his godhead, and his worship. They were thoroughly possessed with a belief of his divinity. To dispute it was to attack a sort of religious common sense.

This was the state of Israel when Elijah was sent from

God to gather out the remnant of His elect. His witness and his miracles had confounded, and half convinced the people. Some were, perhaps, altogether convinced in secret; but they hung in suspense, wavering and doubting what to do. Baal was strong, and his worship was loud and splendid. The prophets of Baal were four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred; and they were in the favor and protection of the royal house. They did "eat at Jezebel's table." I need not recount the detail of this well-known history. In a word, Elijah challenged them to a trial on the heights of Carmel. There they built an altar, and laid on it a sacrifice, and invoked fire from Baal to consume it in token of his power and godhead. And Elijah mocked them as "they cried and cut themselves with knives and lancets." And when the heaven was serene and silent, and there was no voice, nor any to answer, in the fury of despair they leaped upon the altar and broke it down. When mid-day was past, Elijah builded an altar of twelve stones in the Name of the Lord, and laid the sacrifice upon it, and poured water thrice upon it, and filled the trench round about it with water. And about the time of the evening sacrifice, he came near and said, “ O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel." Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces, and said, The Lord He is the God; the Lord He is the God."

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Now this history strikingly illustrates a very common fault of character. I mean, indecision in religion.

First, we have here a type of the worship of the world set up within the Church of God; and of the insensibility which. comes upon worldly Christians. The greater part of men, if

they do not grieve and resist the Spirit of their baptism, fall into a low, dim, relaxed Christianity, which is the Christianity of the world. They are nominally Christians; but splendor, society, rank, high connexions, great friends, money, pleasure, and the like, are the real objects of their anxiety and labor,— that is, of their worship. To such people the rule of life is the custom of the majority. Their standard of judgment is the opinion of those by whom they wish to be well thought of. They measure their duties by the example of the patrons whom they serve or follow. Their maxim and theory of life are founded upon the average practice of the society in which they live. Their religion is the religion of the greater number. What is practicable in religion is what the world will allow them to fulfil. Whatever is beyond it, is overstrained, indiscreet, singular, and in bad taste. Sometimes, many better qualities are mingled in such minds; as, for example, reverence for established usages, the customs of former generations, the names of forefathers, and the like. But these, though they mitigate the personal fault of yielding to the way of the world, do not change the quality of indecision, nor avert the danger of it.

The effect of all this is, to produce a dulness of spiritual perception. Whatever is above the average standard is to them enthusiastic and visionary, or conceited and singular. The precepts and counsels of devotion and holy living are to them refinements and excess. They cannot see them to be a duty, or to be profitable, or even to be safe. Such minds have either very faint, or no clear insight or faculties of the Spirit, to which you can appeal. The more perfect forms of holiness, which ought to be instincts in the regenerate, must be laboriously proved to them. The higher those precepts are, the more need of proof.

What is the plain meaning of all this? It is, that the

world weighs heavy upon the visible mass of Christians, and lowers them to its own standard. Only individuals rise above it; and the mass keep each other in countenance; denouncing them as dreamers. "The prophets of Baal are four hundred and fifty men, and the prophets of the grove four hundred men," and "they eat at Jezebel's table." The world loves its own, and follows them because they wait upon it.

But next we see here how light sometimes forces itself upon such people. God sends to them a witness and a warning. Sickness, danger, the loss of those they love, worldly adversity, such as ruin of fortune, disappointments, and the like:—these things make them look deeper than the surface. They find the world's religion to be an imposture, a conspiracy to keep up a decent appearance, and to keep out the stern reality of the Cross. Little by little they begin to see that ease, glitter, smoothness, comfort, a free life, a fair opinion of themselves, are not the signs of Christ's servants; that in such things there are no tokens of the Crucifixion. These are not the array of repentance, nor fit trappings for fallen sinners. They begin, therefore, to doubt the truth of their past self-persuasion; they begin to see that their active thoughts and powers are bestowed with a fearful concentration upon this world, and that God and His kingdom are but faintly remembered: that their prayers and repentance are not states and habits, but momentary acts or feelings. Their whole life of private devotion, perhaps, would not fill one hour in the twenty-four. Whatever is right, this must be wrong. New truths then begin to glimmer,-old truths, long slighted, to break out full upon them. They see enough to convince them that they cannot go on as in time past; that they have been walking in a vain show; that their religion has been a dream, and that the world has been their reality; and that this is an open contradiction of Divine Truth; for "the world passeth away,