stripes in revenge for their having once sinned? None will admit this. When will you have sinners sufficiently punished then, if not while they are sinners? If you have them continue to be sinners in the future world for the sake of making them subjects of punishment there, it will not alter the state of the case. You only make them punishable while they are sinners ;-I do not mean merely while they are doing some external act of sin, but while they remain in the disposition and character of sinners.

Hence, we are unavoidably brought again to this immoveable scriptural position; viz. that the way of sin is a way of death and evil; and men must suffer the death and evil, as long as they continue in the way of sin. This is the doctrine of our text, and of reason, and of observation, and of experience.

My hearers, we now have before us a wholesome practical sentiment. It does not attach such infinite and tremendous consequences to our present conduct, as to dismay and distract us, and paralize our exertions. We bless God that he hath given us gratefully to trust in his power and grace, for that immortal life, the hope of which our souls need, and which he has not put it into our power either to squander away, or to boast as procuring by our merits. But God has placed before us that good and evil, attached

to our doings here, which, while not so tremendous as to disqualify the mind for calmly considering them, are yet amply sufficient to influence the mind that learns the truth in the case, to "eschew evil, and do good."

SERMON 2.

BY SEBASTIAN STREETER.

1 TIMOTHY IV: 10-11. We trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. These things command and teach.

I HAVE purposely omitted the first clause of the tenth verse. It refers to the persecutions and sufferings of the apostles and primitive christians. An open profession of the gospel, and a zealous, untemporising devotion to its interests exposed them to many and deep disasters. Their persons, their reputation, their property-every worldly hope and comfort were put in jeopardy. They became the sport of an enraged superstition, the victims of a relentless and insatiable cruelty.

I have not, therefore, passed by that clause of the verse, because I deem the matter of it too trivial to merit an attentive consideration. I certainly do not. Nothing can be further from my feelings. The reproaches and sufferings of the early martyrs to the great cause of the Redeemer, form a subject of unspeakable interest to every

real christian, and to no one more so than to myself; but it is no part of my object in the present discourse to enter into a discussion of this particular topic.

I purpose to state the doctrine of the text in plain terms, and then offer a few reasons why some receive and others reject it.

With respect then to the doctrine inculcated in the scripture before us, I remark, that it is plainly that of universal salvation. This is a fact, than which, it would seem, no one can be more evident. If any reliance can be placed upon the most simple and unequivocal language, the text obviously proves that this doctrine was believed and preached in the apostolic age, and by the apostles themselves. If this were not the fact, how can the claims of Paul to the character of common honesty and ingenuousness be sustained? He solemnly declared, "We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men." Was not this the same, substantially, as to aver, We believe in the doctrine of universal salvation? We sincerely think it was; and is it possible that we should be mistaken in this case? If we are, it is in the most artless and innocent way conceivable; and one too, which gives us the strongest claims upon the indulgence and compassion both of God and of man, because our mistake has arisen from taking the plainest language of the holy scriptures in its most natural and obvious acceptation.

It should be remembered also, as a further excuse for our deception, if we are deceived, that this language was employed under peculiar and highly interesting circumstances--those which demanded the use of the most select and explicit terms. It was solemnly addressed by Paul to Timothy a young convert, who had just entered upon the duties of the christian ministry-who must have been exceedingly anxious to know what the leading truths were in the doctrine which he was to preach, and who must also have entertained a strong confidence in the competency of this apostle, his own father in the christian faith, to instruct him correctly on this point. He knew him to be eminently distinguished for an open, honest, fearless and strait-forward course. these respects, no one stood above Paul.

In

What then, under these circumstances, would Timothy naturally understand by the solemn, apostolic declaration, "We trust in the living. God who is the Saviour of all men ?" Is it possible that he should have understood Paul to assert, or even to imply, that, according to the belief of christians generally, and of himself, in particular, God was the Saviour of a part only of mankind? In other words, that notwithstanding the fulness of grace and truth revealed in the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of the Son of God, only here and there one of the human race would be eventually saved ?