brother whom he hath seen, does not love God whom he hath not seen; and let all speculation be done away, and all argument be given to the winds, rather than that this lovely and characteristic feature of the gospel should suffer the slightest obscuration. By putting the case of an amiable and romantic benevolence existing in a state of separation from the sense of God, and by lifting a voice of condemnation against it, I may have shocked the tenderness of your feelings, and made you recoil in aversion as from the harsh voice of a stern and unrelenting orthodoxy. Spare your agitations, my brethren. I have done no man injustice, for the case is imaginary. Benevolence may make some brilliant exhibitions of herself without the instigations of the religious principle-she may make some romantic sacrifices, and the quantity of money surrendered may be far beyond the average charities of the world; but give me a man who carries out benevolence in the whole extent of its sacrifices-who labours unknown in scenes where there is no brilliancy to reward him-who supports the habit of unwearied well-doing amid the growlings of ingratitude and the provocations of dishonesty-who maintains a uniform tone of kindness in the retirement of his own house and amid the irksome annoyances of his own family-who endures hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ-whose humanity exists. as vigorously amid the reproaches and the calumny and the contradiction of sinners, as amid the sad pictures of weeping orphans and interesting cottagers,-I maintain, my brethren, that no such benevolence exists without a deeply-seated principle of piety lying at the bottom of it. Walk from Dan to Beersheba, and away from Christianity and beyond the circle of its influences, there is positively no such benevolence to be found. The patience and the meekness, and all the more difficult exercises of benevolence, must be nourished by the influences of heaven, and looking beyond all that dazzles the theatre of the world, must have its eye fixed on a better and a more enduring country. Even the most splendid enterprises of benevolence which the world ever witnessed can be traced to the operation of what the world laughs at as a Quakerish and Methodistical

piety; and we appeal to the abolition of the slave-trade, and to the still nobler abolition of ignorance and vice which is now accomplishing in the Pagan and uncivilized countries of the earth, for a proof that, in good-will to man, as well as in glory to God, your men of piety bear away the palm of superiority in triumph.

I conclude with two observations. If all Scripture and all experience can be brought in to support the doctrine of my text, should not this stir the question within each individual who now hears me-What shall I do to be saved? If there be a throne in heaven and a God sitting upon that throne, what is to become of me who have trampled on the solemn authority of His law, and come under the full weight of its condemnation? I may wrap myself in a general feeling of security that God is merciful, but in a question of such mighty import as the favour of my God and the fate of my eternity, I should like to have some better security than my own feelings which may be delusive, and my own conjecture which may be rash and ignorant. I have no right to trust to my own conjectures in this, and far less have I any such right in the face of the authoritative message which God has sent to the world upon this very subject. An actual embassy came from God to man upon an errand of reconciliation about 2000 years ago, and the records of this embassy have come down to us collected into a volume, and lying within the reach of all who will take the trouble of stretching forth their hand to it. Why spend my strength upon any conjecture on the subject, when the obvious. expedient of consulting the record is before me. Surely what God says of Himself is of higher authority and signification than what I think of Him, and if He has chosen to reveal not merely that He is merciful, but that there is a way in which He has chosen to be so, nothing remains for me but to learn of that way, and obediently to walk in it. If He says there is no other name given under heaven but the name of Jesus-if He says that it is only in Christ that He reconciles the world to Himself-if He says that redemption is only in Him whom God hath set forth to be the propitiation through faith in His blood,

that He might be just and the justifier of him who believeth in Jesus, what have I to do but to count these sayings faithful and worthy of all acceptation? I have been perhaps too long of coming to this conclusion, and adopted too circuitous a line. of argument to bring you to it; and while I have endeavoured to maintain through the whole of this process the forms and the phraseology of a philosophical argument, which I know not whether I should have magnified, I rejoice to think that many a simple cottager has got before me, and that under his humble roof there exists a wisdom of a more exalted kind than mere philosophy can ever reach-the wisdom of a Christian who loves his Bible, and rests with firm assurance upon his Saviour. "Father, I thank Thee that whilst Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, Thou hast revealed them to babes, even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in Thy sight."

My next observation is in answer to this question—You have attempted to establish the fact of human corruption—you have recommended a simple acquiescence in the doctrine of the Saviour-now what becomes of the corruption after this? Must we just be doing with it as a tremendous necessity of our nature bearing down every power of resistance, and against which it were in vain to struggle? For the answer to this question I make the same reference as before to the record. He who is in Christ Jesus is a new creature-sin or corruption hath no more dominion over him, and the very want which constituted the main element of the disease is made up to him. He wanted the love of God, but that love is shed abundantly into the heart of every true Christian by the power of the Holy Ghost. He wants the love of his neighbour, but God enters into covenant with all who acknowledge His Son and embrace the Saviour as He is offered to them in the covenant-He puts this law in their hearts, and writes it in their minds-He works in them and dwells in them, so that He becomes their God, and they become His people. The Holy Spirit is given to them who ask it in faith, and the habitual prayer of-support me in the performance of this duty, or carry me in safety through this trial of my heart and my principles-is heard with accept

ance. The power of Christ is made to rest on those who look to Him, and they will find that to be their experience which Paul found to be His-they will be able to do all things through Christ strengthening them. Is all this strange and mysterious and foreign to the general style of your conceptions?—then, my brethren, be alarmed for your safety. It is not the peculiar notions of this man, nor the still more peculiar phraseology of that man, which you profess to be strange to you, it is the very notions and the very phraseology of the Bible, and you are bringing yourself under precisely the same relationship with God that you do with a distant acquaintance whom you insult by sending his letter unopened, or despise, by suffering it to lie beside you without counting it worthy of a perusal. Let this day of fasting bring you under a conviction of your sins, and let this salutary conviction shut you up to the only remaining alternative-even the refuge set before you in the gospel. You will there find a free offer of forgiveness for the past, and a provision laid before you by which all who believe are carried forward to amendment and progressive virtue for the future. It open to all and at the taking of all, but in proportion to the frankness and freeness and cordiality of the offer will be the severity of that awful threatening to those who despise it— How shall they escape if they neglect so great a salvation?

is

SERMON XIII.

[PREACHED at Kilmany, 20th March, 1814. At Glasgow, in February, 1817.]

JOHN XIV. 21.

"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

IT were well if we could strip every term, and every process signified by that term, of all the unnecessary mysteriousness which is annexed to it. To manifest is to show plainly; and the question comes to be-In what sense can an invisible being, as God or Jesus Christ, show himself plainly to creatures in this world? It appears to me that there may be two ways of it. First, you all understand what it is to have the conception of a distant friend. Your firm belief that he is your friend, is one thing; your lively conception of him, is another. The belief may remain steady--the conception may vary every hour in clearness and intensity. Have you never experienced a livelier conception at one time than another of his unwearied regard, of his trusty attachment, of his affectionate looks, of his benignant countenance? Yes, you have; and in those moments a finer glow of tenderness has come over you, and a feeling of more joyful security in the possession of his friendship. Now, the same God who can endow you with one faculty can endow you with another, or bring that other, when it pleases Him, into livelier exercise. The same God who can work in you the faith and conception of a distant friend, can work in