prevent this, the Son of God becomes incarnate, and a sacrifice; the hosts of heaven array themselves, and go forth to meet the enemy in our cause; and the Spirit of the Highest descends to earth, deigns to take up his abode in the human heart, and supplies the weapons, the skill, and the strength, which must render the faithful more than conquerors through Him who hath loved them. Surely the results about which such wonderful agencies are employed, and thus employed, must be beyond all our thought momentous ! To be among the lost, or the saved, must be an event of unspeakable, of inconceivable magnitude. Were all the power, the opulence, and the pleasures of the earth at our bidding, should we deem them valueless? Were all its evils to break at once upon us, should we affect to be unmoved? If this would not be, then be it remembered, that to be uninfluenced by what the Almighty has said as to the worth of our spiritual nature, and the danger to which it is exposed, is to do more strangely. It is to hazard an infinite loss, and to choose an infinitude of evil in its place! What an emphasis do these considerations give to that scripture,- What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall he give in exchange for his soul? How true is that saying,-The redemption of the soul is precious!

The Christian will see much in what has now passed before him, that, under the divine blessing,

may conduce to his improvement. How manifest is the duty of humility, the importance of strong faith, and the necessity of watchfulness, prayer, and elevated spirituality. The facts now reviewed exhibit something of the peculiarity, and the grandeur, of that warfare in which Christians are engaged; and the different positions, and various progress, of which it will be our object in the ensuing chapters to consider. May God, even our own God, establish, strengthen, settle us; may he render us steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. So fight we, not as one who beateth the air.

THE sacred writers attach the greatest importance to the exercise of mind which we denote by the term-believing. They repeatedly assure us, that to be without faith, is to be in a perishing condition. He that believeth not is condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on him. On the other hand, to believe, is, in the language of scripture, to possess the main element of all goodness, and blessedness. Unbelief, therefore, is our greatest evil,

its opposite is our greatest good. The scriptures know nothing of that doctrine which describes man as free from all accountableness in the matter of his opinions. On the contrary, it teaches that such as reject the truth, must do it wickedly, so wickedly as to be justly liable to an everlasting punishment. If any man will do his will, said Jesus, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God. These are the words of him who knew what is in man; and they distinctly trace the absence of saving faith, to the absence of right dispositions,to the want of a proper temperament in ourselves, and not to the want of sufficient evidence in connexion with the gospel. With men who receive the Bible as the word of God, these things are so plain as to need little explanation or enforcement.

And even in the case of others, a very small share of that philosophical shrewdness, to which so much pretension is made, should be enough to induce a considerable agreement with the doctrine of scripture on this point. A temper unreasonably distrustful is never pleasing. We do not choose such a man as our friend, and we find it difficult to bestow upon him any large measure of affection. Such a temper, moreover, becomes increasingly odious, in proportion to the claims of the authority whose testimony it rejects; and, generally, in proportion to the importance of the communications to which it may refer. If the quarter from which any supposed statement proceeds, be one where the greatest wisdom and excellence conçur to render

its truth certain, or in the highest degree probable, we say it ought to be received with a marked confidence; and, if relating to the security of great interests, we say it ought to be listened to with gratitude, and in the earnest hope that it may be true. But if, on the contrary, we meet with cold questionings; with a manifest preference of doubt to certainty, of disputation to acquiescence; and with a readiness to believe the most evil and improbable things of men, rather than receive on their evidence what it is not exactly pleasant to receive, we know what the impression is which such perverseness must produce. We feel at once, that there is a great gulph fixed between the heart of such a man and our own heart. We deplore the mental vice thus exhibited, and say of such persons, My soul, come thou not into their secret. It is felt, that the men who are thus distrustful of others, must necessarily be no less distrustful of ourselves; and that, on their own part, they may very properly be the objects of all that suspicion in which it is their habit to indulge.

Thus the man whose opinions are not to be regulated by the acknowledged laws of reason and evidence in common affairs, is uniformly regarded as under the influence of disorderly and vicious feeling. The mind soon loses its patience with him; and the punishment of his scepticism is, that, in his turn, he is generally suspected and avoided. In short, the language of this proneness to unbelief, when relating to common matters, is,