will keep him from burning, and so, while his companions take their way around the borders of the volcano, he marches straight in the direction across it, and perishes. Just this, but infinitely worse, is the madness that dares the experiment of the fires of hell, as a matter of experi

ence.

In the nature of things, in regard to the evil in eternity, of which men are warned, they cannot have the evidence of experience, but must take that of faith, which is given for this very purpose, that that of experience may be avoided, may not be incurred, it being eternal.

We may and must solemnly reflect upon this point. We must call to mind again the great reason why a revelation from God is given at all, which is because the destiny to come is an eternal one, because the heaven to be lost, if lost, is eternal, and the retributions to be endured, if endured at all, are eternal. We may safely say, that if this were not the case, there would have been no revelation, because no need of such an interposition of the Almighty as that revelation supposes and discloses. The human race could as well have gone on and have been saved without a revelation as with one. The very fact on which that revelation is grounded is the fact of a future state of endless retribution, to which this world, according to the character formed in it, is an introduction. What makes God's warnings so awfully impressive is, that they are warnings as to a threatened experience which is endless. There is no return from it, no change of it, after it be once entered. Heaven is changeless in enjoyment, hell is changeless in misery; heaven in holiness, hell in sin. This is what has produced a revelation. This eternity of our future condition has made the Cross a reality; for without it there had been no Saviour suffering, dying, and no need of one. And the cross itself, the system of redemption, this vast, incomprehensible, all-comprehending transaction, demonstrates that eternal retribution, and makes its eternity a reality. The system itself,

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GRACE AND TRUTH, CHRIST IN THE MIND.

the gospel itself, in the character of the sinner, and the character of the Son of God, is such, that if accepted, it secures heaven as eternal; but if rejected, is death unto death, and renders hell both inevitable and eternal. It is under these circumstances that God has said that there is no way or possibility of salvation except through Christ, and that he has added to this the warning of the Holy Ghost, TO-DAY! "To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." And why not To-morrow? Because, To-morrow may be ETERNITY, instead of being a new To-day. To-morrow, when put in the bosom of To-day, is sacrificed beforehand. The evil that is not believed in, and so felt by faith as present, to-day, will to-morrow, if to-morrow comes, be still less believed in, and still less felt as present. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

"Not that which full of life, instinct with power,
Makes known its present being; that is not

The true, the perilously formidable.”

Men are on their guard against that; men flee from that, because they see and feel it.

"O no! it is the common, the quite common,
The thing of an eternal yesterday,

What ever was, and evermore returns,
Sterling to-morrow, for to-day 'twas sterling!
For of the wholly common is man made,
And custom is his nurse."

Yea, the custom of security to-day makes men feel that to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant. Faith in To-morrow, instead of Christ, is Satan's nurse, for man's perdition.

CHAPTER VI.

Sympathy with God and sympathy with man.-Faith in God's Word, faith in God's holiness and justice, and faith in man's guilt, the elements of power in leading the Soul to faith in Christ the Saviour.-Comparison of Edwards and Whitefield.-Comparison of revivals of religion as produced mainly by true sympathy with God, and a regard to his glory, or mainly by sympathy with man and the desire of salvation.

THE view we have taken in the preceding chapters concerning the necessity of faith in the evil as well as the good disclosed of God awaiting us in the eternal world, is attended with important consequences as to the elements of Christian power and usefulness. It is manifest that sympathy with God is to be coveted and relied upon rather than sympathy with man. It is manifest that all righteous and truly useful sympathy with man grows out of sympathy with God, and cannot exist without it. Here is the line between a true and false theology, and a genuine and spurious benevolence. Heartfelt benevolence is the child of faith in God; so is all correct theology; we are thrown upon simple faith in God's Word. There must be faith in God, simply and alone, as to the nature and consequences of sin in an untried world, as to God's own feelings towards the sinner and his treatment of him, and as to the eternity of future punishment. There must be faith in God as to all these points, above all human sympathy, and then true human sympathy will proceed out of that faith. But if we begin with human sympathy, and reason from that towards God, we shall believe man rather

than God, we shall color our theology by our wishes and our suppositions of what we think ought to be, instead of what we learn from God's Word is. This is a habit that destroys faith, which must receive its knowledge of God's government from God himself, not man.

We have experience of some things, but for all that lies beyond our experience, we must trust God. We have experience of sin in ourselves, but if our faith goes no further than experience, we shall have radically defective views both of human depravity and of its deserts and consequences. We have experience of sin in ourselves, but our examination of that experience is necessarily superficial, even because of our own sinfulness; and in regard to God's view of sin, and his treatment of it, we are thrown entirely upon faith. Hence, the amazing power of great faith in God, which gives a man command of the deepest depths of human experience, and enables him to master an experience in man, on the authority of God, beyond the measurement of individual consciousness, and to wield it as an element of irresistible conviction. Faith in God carries a man to depths of self-knowledge, and knowledge of human nature, otherwise unattainable. A man under the guidance of it may be ploughing into the souls of men in furrows of depravity never before laid open, perhaps unsuspected and unacknowledged, at sight of which the complacent self-consciousness, that would have gnashed its teeth in rebellion, becomes the enlightened, wounded, angry conscience, that indicts the soul in guilt before God.

But there must be faith in God's Word; the source of this power is that faith, faith both in God and man as presented in God's Word. It is the possession or deficiency of this element of faith in God as presented in his Word, that constitutes power or weakness in the soul; and in the presentation of the subject, produces either unmingled, majestic, overwhelming truth, or a mixture of falsehood. It was this faith in God's Word, and in God as presented

in his Word, that made one of the elements, perhaps the grand element, of irresistible power in the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. It was the deficiency of this faith that made the element of weakness and poverty in the ministry of John Foster, who, powerful and clear as he was in the excavation of the human heart, and the province of religious morality, and splendid as his genius was, in grandeur of imagination, profound thought, and exquisite taste and sensibility, was shorn of his power, and betrayed into lamentable weakness on the point on which he doubted, on the views of God's government and man's destiny, which he did not take from the Word of God. We bring these two great minds together for illustration. Edwards. believed and reasoned; Foster doubted and reasoned; both reasoned strongly, but Edwards in God's light, Foster in man's twilight. In the light there are nothing but clear, well-defined, not doubtful objects; in the twilight there is gathering gloom and perplexity; you may mistake a man for a tree. Edwards was clear and irresistible, Foster perplexed and hesitating; Edwards had the certainty of God, Foster the uncertainty of man. Edwards accepted the character and administration of God, as presented in his Word; he saw God in God's own light, not man's. Foster let it be colored through the prism of the sympathy of man with man; he saw God and his administration through man's miseries and sins, instead of seeing man's. sins through God. What an incomparably higher position of observation, light, and power, was that of Edwards!

And here much depends upon personal experience at the outset. Deep conviction of sin, and heartfelt contrition for it, are great helps to faith in God's Word; they make a man take God's part against himself, and against the sinner, instead of taking the sinner's part against God. The truly contrite heart, enlightened as to God's holiness, and filled with his love, rejoices in God's sovereignty, and in all God's judgments. Such a heart speaks of God at once from the secret place of thunder, and the deepest