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 Chalmers, Thomas, 1780-18A7. 
 The select works of Thomas 
 Chalmers 
 
X '^ 
 
THE 
 
 SELECT WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, D,D. LL.D. 
 
 COMPRISING HIS 
 
 MISCELLANIES ;— LECTURES ON ROMANS ;— ASTRONOMICAL, 
 COaDIERCIAL, AND CONGREGATIONAL DISCOURSES, &c. 
 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES, 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 SERMONS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT CARTER, 58 CANAL ST 
 
 1848. 
 
SERMONS 
 
 AND 
 
 DISCOURSES. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CHALMERS, DD. & LLD., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 THIRD COMPLETE AMERICAN EDITION, 
 
 FROM THE LATE GLASGOW STEREOTYPE EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ROBERT CARTER 58 CANAL STREET. 
 
 1848. 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 
 
 SERMONS ON THE DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRIT TO GIVE EFFECT TO THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 " And my speech, and my preaching, was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in 
 demonstration of the Spirit and of power ; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of 
 men, but in the power of God." — 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5 13 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE MYSTERIOUS ASPECT OF THE GOSPEL TO THE MEN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 "Then said I, Ah, Lord God ! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables V — Ezek, xx. 49. 20 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 THE PREPARATION NECESSARY FOR UNDERSTANDING THE MYSTERIES OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 " He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, 
 and he shall have more abundance ; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even 
 that he hath."— Matt. xiii. 11, 12 26 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 AN ESTIMATE OF THE MORALITY THAT IS WITHOUT GODLINESS. 
 
 " If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean ; yet shalt thou 
 plvuige me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, 
 that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any 
 day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." — Job ix. 30 — 33. . . 33 
 
 ' SERMON V. 
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF MEN, COMPARED WITH THE JUDGMENT OF GOD. 
 
 " With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment ; — 
 he that judgeth me is the Lord." — 1 Cor. iv. 3, 4 37 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF A MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. 
 
 " Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both." — 
 Job ix. 33. 44 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 THE FOLLY OF MEN MEASURING THEMSELVES BY THEMSELVES. 
 
 " For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that com- 
 mend themselves : but they, measuring themselves by themselves, and,comparing themselves 
 among themselves, are not wise." — 2 Cor. x. 12 48 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 CHRIST THE WISDOM OF GOD. 
 
 " Christ the Wisdom of God."— 1 Cor. i. 24 ; 55 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOVE TO GOD. 
 
 "Keep yourselves in the love of God." — Jude 21 61 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 GRATITUDE, NOT A SORDID AFFECTION. 
 " We love him, because he first loved us." — 1 John iv. 19 66 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 THE AFFECTION OF MORAL ESTEEM TOWARDS GOD. 
 
 " One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after ; that I may dv^ell in the 
 house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inqidre in 
 his temple." — Psalm xxvii. 4 75 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 THE EMPTINESS OF NATURAL VIRTUE. 
 " But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you." — John v. 42. ... 83 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 THE NATURAL ENMITY OF THE MIND AGAINST GOD. 
 " The carnal mind is enmity against God." — Rom. viii. 7 91 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 THE POWER OF THE GOSPEL TO DISSOLVE THE ENMITY OF THE HUMAN 
 HEART AGAINST GOD. 
 
 "Having slain the enmity thereby." — Eph'es. ii. 16 96 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 THE EVILS OF FALSE SECURITY. 
 
 " They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, 
 peace ; when there is no peace." — Jer. vi. 14 101 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 THE UNION OF TRUTH AND MERCY IN THE GOSPEL. 
 
 " Mercy and truth are met together ; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." — 
 Psalm Ixxxv. 10 107 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 " Sanctified by faith."— Acts xxvi. 18 112 
 
 DISCOURSES ON THE APPLICATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE 
 COMMERCIAL AND ORDINARY AFFAIRS OF LIFE. 
 
 DISCOURSE L 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WHICH MAY EXIST WITHOUT THE INFLUENCE OF 
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 " Finally, brethren, whatsoeve things are true, whatsoever tilings are honest, whatsoever 
 things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
 are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." 
 Phil. iv. 8 119 
 
CONTENTS. V 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITT IN AIDING AND AUGMENTING THE 
 MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 
 
 " For he that in these things servcth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.' — 
 Rom. xiv. 18 ]Co 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 THE POWER OF SELFISHNESS IN PROMOTING THE HONESTIES OF MERCANTILE 
 
 NTERCOURSE. 
 
 " And if you do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye 1 for sinners also 
 do even the same." — Luke vi. 33. I3l 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY NOT TO BE ESTIMATED BY THE GAIN OF IT. 
 
 " He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust 
 in the least, is unjust also in much." — Luke xvi. 10., 139 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MAN AND MAN. 
 
 " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
 them ; for this is the law and the prophets." — Matt. vii. 12 147 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 " Let no man deceive you with vain words ; for because of these things cometh the wrath 
 of God upon the children of disobedience." — Eph. v. 6 154 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 ON THE VITIATING INFLUENCE OF THE HIGHER UPON THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 " Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come : but woe unto 
 him through whom they come ! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his 
 neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." — Lukk xvii. 1,2. 161 
 
 DISCOURSE VIII. 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 " If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold. Thou art my confidence; If 1 
 rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much ; If I beheld 
 the sun when it shined. or the moon walking in brightness ; and my heart hath been secretly 
 enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the 
 judge; for I should have denied the God that is above." — Job xxxi. 24— 28. . . . 169 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, GLASGOW. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 THE CONSTANCY OF GOD iN HIS WORKS AN ARGUMENT FOR THE FAITHFULNESS 
 OF GOD IN HIS WORD. 
 
 " For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: 
 thou hast established the earth, and it abiJeth. They continue this day according to thy ordi- 
 nances : for all are thy servants." — Psalm cxix. 89, 90, 91 261 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, 
 the love of the Father is not in him." — 1 John xi. 15 271 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 THE SURE WARRANT OF A BELIEVEr's HOPE. 
 
 " For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son , much 
 more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his hfe." — Romans v. 10 278 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 THE RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 
 
 " How say ye to my soul. Flee as a bird to your mountain 1 — O that I had the wings of a 
 dove, that I may fly away, and be at rest." — Psalm xi. 1, and Iv. 6. .... 285 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS, 
 "The things that are seen are temporal." — 2 Cor. iv. 18. 289 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 " Stay yourselves, and wonder, cry ye out, and cry : they are drunken, but not with wine ; 
 they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of 
 deep sleep, and hath clo.sed your eyes ; the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. 
 And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men de- 
 Uver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee : and he saith, I cannot ; for it is 
 sealed. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying. Read this, I pray thee ; 
 and he saith, I am not learned." — Isaiah xxix. 9 — 12 294 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 
 
 " Nevertheless we, according to his promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness." — 2 Peter iii. 13 301 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 " For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." — 1 Cor. iv. 20. . . 307 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 " But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should 
 afterwards be revealed." — Gal. iii. 23. 313 
 
 SERMON X. 
 
 ON THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 " And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." — 
 Mark ii. 27 319 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 " And now I exhort you to be of good cheer : for there shall be no loss of any man's life 
 amoncr you, but of the ship. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers. Except these abide 
 in the ship, ye cannot be saved." — Acts xxvii. 22, 31 325 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 "Wherefore Tsay unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; 
 but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever 
 speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever speaketh 
 atrainst the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither m this world, neither in the world 
 to come." — Matt. xii. 31, 32. 332 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 ON THE ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE TO THE LOWER ORDERS OF 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 " Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish King, who will no more be ad- 
 monished." — EccL. iv. 13. 340 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 ON THE DUTY AND THE MEANS OF CHRISTIANIZING OUR HOME POPULATION. 
 
 " And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every crea- 
 ture." — Mark xvi. 15 345 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 " The OX knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib ; but Israel doth not know, my 
 people doth not consider." — Isaiah i. 3. 350 
 
 DISCOURSES ON THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION, VIEWED IN 
 CONNECTION WITH AK)DERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou 
 hast ordained ; What is man, that thou art mindful of him 1 and the son of man, that thou 
 visitest himl" — Psalm viii. 3, 4 362 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 " And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to 
 know." — 1 Cor. viii. 2 369 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 ON THE EXTENT OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 " Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high ; Who humbleth himself to be- 
 hold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth !" — Psalm cxiii. 5, 6. , . . 377 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY IN THE DISTANT PLACES OF 
 
 CREATION. 
 
 'Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Peter i. 12. .... 383 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 ON THE SYMPATHY THAT IS FELT FOR MAN IN THE DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 
 
 •' I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more 
 than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance." — Luke xv. 7. . . 390 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 ON THE CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN, AMONG THE HIGHER ORDERS OF 
 
 INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 " And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing 
 over them in it." — Col. ii. 15. 396 
 
Till CONTENTS, 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 ON THE SLENDER INFLUENCE OF MERE TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN MATTERS OF 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 " And lo ! thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and 
 can play well on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not." — Ezekiel 
 xxxiii. 32. , . 401 
 
 APPENDIX 41C 
 
 OCCASIONAL SERMONS, &c. 
 SERMON. 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE SOCIETY FOR RELIEF OF THE DESTITUTE SICK. 
 
 " Blessed is he that considereth the poor ; the Lord will dehver him in time of trouble."' — 
 Psalm xli. 1 176 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON UNIVERSAL PEACE. 
 
 " Nation shall not Uft up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." — 
 Isaiah xi. 4 185 
 
 AN ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE PARISH OF KILMANY. 
 
 THE DUTY OF GIVING AN IMMEDIATE DILIGENCE TO THE BUSINESS OF THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN LIFE. 194 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES ON THE TEMPORAL NECESSITIES OF THE POOR. 210 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE SOCIETY IN SCOTLAND FOR PROPAGATING CHRISTIAN 
 
 KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 " And Nathaniel said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth "? Pliilip 
 saith unto him, come and see." — John i. 46 231 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 DELIVERED ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF 
 
 WALES. 
 
 " For when thy judgments are in the earth, the mhabitants of the world will learn right- 
 eousness." — Isaiah xxvi. 9 229 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY APPLIED TO THE CASE OF RELIGIOUS 
 
 DIFFERENCES. 
 
 " And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the 
 beam that is in thine own eye 1 — Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the 
 mote out of thine eye ; and behold a beam is thine own eye 1 Thou hypocrite ! first cast out 
 the beam out of thine own eye, and then shall thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy 
 brother's eye." — Matt. vii. 3, 4, 5. 240 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 " A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast." — Prov. xii. 10. ... 251 
 
SERnONS 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The doctrine which is most urgently, and most frequently insisted on in the 
 following volume, is that of the depravity of human nature; and it were certainly 
 cruel to expose the unworthiness of man for the single object of disturbing l|im. 
 But the cruelty is turned into kindness, when, along with the knowledge of the 
 disease, there is offered an adequate and all-powerful remedy. It is impossible to 
 have a true perception of our own character, in the sight of God, without feeling 
 our need of acquittal : and in opposition to every obstacle, which the justice of 
 God seems to hold out to it, this want is provided for in the Gospel. And it is 
 equally impossible, to have a true perception of the character of God, as being 
 utterly repugnant to sin, without feeling the need of amendment : and in opposition 
 to every obstacle, which the impotency of man holds out to it, this want is also 
 provided for in the Gospel. There we behold the amplest securities for the peace 
 of the guilty. But there do we also behold securities equally ample for their 
 progress, and their perfection in holiness. Insomuch, that in every genuine 
 disciple of the New Testament, we not only see one who, delivered from the 
 burden of his fears, rejoices in hope of a coming glory — but we see one who, set 
 free from the bondage of corruption, and animated by a new love and a new desire, 
 is honest in the purposes, and strenuous in the efforts, and abundant in the works 
 of obedience. He feels the instigations of sin, and in this respect he differs from 
 an angel. But he follows not the instigations of sin, and in this respect he differs 
 from a natural or unconverted man. He may experience the motions of the 
 flesh — but he walks not after the flesh. So that in him v.e may view the picture 
 of a man, struggling with effect against his earth-born propensities, and yet 
 hateful to himself for the very existence of them — holier than any of the people 
 around him, and yet humbler than them all — realizing, from time to time, a posi- 
 tive increase to the grace and excellency of his character, and yet becoming more 
 tenderly conscious every day of its remaining deformities — gradually expanding 
 in attainment as well as in desire, towards the light and the liberty of heaven, 
 and yet groaning under a voke from which death alone will fully emancipate him. 
 
 When time and space have restrained an author of sermons from entering on 
 what may be called the ethics of Christianity, — it is the more incumbent on him 
 to avouch of the doctrine of the gospel, that while it provides directly for the 
 peace of a sinner, it provides no less directly and efficiently for the purity of his 
 practice — that faith in this doctrine never terminates in itself, but is a mean to holi- 
 ness as an end — and that he who truly accepts of Christ, as the alone foundation of 
 his meritorious acceptance before God, is stimulated, by the circumstances of his ne\v 
 condition, to breathe holv purposes, and to abound in holy perfoimances. He is 
 created anew unto good works. He is made the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 The anxious enforcement of one great lesson on the part of a writer, generally 
 proceeds from the desire to effect a full and adequate conveyance, into the mind 
 of another, of some truth which has filled his own mind, by a sense of its im- 
 portance ; and, in offering this volume to the public, the author is far from being 
 insensible to the literarv defects that from this cause may be charged upon it. 
 He knows, in particular, that throughout these discourses there is a frequent 
 
12 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HTJMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 recurrence of the same idea, though generally expressed in different language, 
 and with some new speciality, either in its bearing or in its illustration. And he 
 further knows, that the habit of expatiating on one topic may be indulged to such 
 a leiio'th, as to satiate the reader, and that, to a degree, far beyond the limits of 
 his forbearance. 
 
 And yet, if a writer be conscious that, to gain a reception for his favorite doc- 
 trine, he must combat with certain elements of opposition, in the taste, or the 
 pride, or the indolence, of those whom he is addressing, this will only serve to 
 make him the more importunate, and so to betray him still farther into the fault 
 of redundancy. If the lesson he is urging be of an intellectual character, he will 
 labour to bring it home, as nearly as possible, to the understanding. If it be a 
 moral lesson, lie will labour to bring it home, as nearly as possible, to the heart. 
 It is difficult, and it were hard to say in how far it would be right, to restrain 
 this propensity in the pulpit, where the high matters of salvation are addressed 
 to a multitude of individuals, who bring before the minister every possible variety 
 of taste and of capacity ; and it it no less difficult, when the compositions of the 
 pulpit are transferred to the press, to detach from them a peculiarity by which 
 their whole texture may be pervaded, and thus to free them from what may be 
 counted by many to be the blemish of a very great and characteristic deformity. 
 -jThere is, however, a difference between such truths as are merely of a specu- 
 lative nature, and such as are allied with practice and moral feeling ; and much 
 ought to be conceded to this difference. With the former, all repetition may 
 often be superfluous ; with the latter, it may just be by earnest repetition, that 
 their influence comes to be thoroughly established over the mind of an inquirer. 
 And, if so much as one individual be gained over in this way to the cause of 
 righteousness, he is untrue to the spirit and to the obligations of his office, 
 who would not, for the sake of this one, willingly hazard all the rewards, and all 
 the honours of literary estimation. 
 
 And, if there be one truth which, piore than another, should be habitually 
 presented to the notice, and proposed to the conviction of fallen creatures, it is 
 the humbling truth of their own depravity. This is a truth which may be re- 
 cognized and read in every exhibition of unrenewed nature ; but it often lurks 
 under a specious disguise, and it is surely of the utmost practical importance to 
 unveil and elicit a principle, which, when admitted into the heart, may be con- 
 sidered as the great basis of a sinner's religion. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 T%e Necessity of the Spirit to give Effect to the Preaching of the Gospel. 
 
 " And my speech, and my preaching, was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration 
 of the Spirit and of power : that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of man but in the power of 
 God." — 1 Corinthians, ii. 4, 5 
 
 Paul, in his second epistle to the Co- 
 rinthians has expressed himself to the same 
 effect as in the text, in the fohowing words: 
 " Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to 
 think any thing as of ourselves; but our 
 sufficiency is of God ; who also hath made 
 us able ministers of the New Testament; 
 not of the letter, but of the Spirit." 
 
 In both these 'passages, the Apostle points 
 to a speciality in the work of a Christian 
 teacher, — a something essential to its suc- 
 cess, and. which is not essential to the pro- 
 ficiency of scholars in the ordinary branches 
 of education, — an influence that is beyond 
 
 the reach of human power and human Avis- 
 dom ; and to obtain which, immediate re- 
 course must be had, in the way of prayer 
 and dependence, to the power of God. With- 
 out attempting a full exposition of these dif- 
 ferent verses, we shall, first, endeavour to 
 direct your attention to that part of the work 
 of a Christian teacher, which it has in com- 
 mon with any other kind of education ; and, 
 secondly, offer a few remarks on the spe- 
 ciality that is adverted to in the text. 
 
 I. And here it must be admitted, that 
 even in the ordinary branches of human 
 learning, the success of the teacher, on the 
 
!•] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 13 
 
 one hand, and the proficiency of the scho- 
 lars on the other, are still dependent on the 
 will of God. It is true, that in this case, 
 we are not so ready to feel our depend- 
 ence. God is apt to be overlooked in all 
 those cases where he acts with uniformity. 
 Wherever we see, what we call, tlie opera 
 lion of a law of nature, we are apt to shut 
 our eyes against the operation of his hand, 
 and faith in the constancy of this law, is 
 sure to beget, in the mind, a sentiment of 
 independence on the power and will of the 
 Deity. Now, in the matters of human edu- 
 cation, God acts with uniformity. Let there 
 be zeal and ability on the part of the teacher, 
 and an ordinary degree of aptitude on the 
 part of the taught, — and the result of their 
 vigorous and well sustained co-operation 
 may in general be counted upon. Let the 
 parent, who witnesses his son's capacity. 
 and his generous ambition for improvement, 
 send him to a well qualified instructor, and 
 he will be filled with the hopeful sentiment 
 of his future eminence, without any refer- 
 ^ence to God whatever, — without so much as 
 ever thinking of his purpose or of his agency 
 in the matter, or its once occurring to him 
 to make the proficiency of his son the sub- 
 ject of prayer. This is the way in which 
 nature, by the constancy of her operations, 
 is made to usurp the place of God : and it 
 goes far to spread, and to establish the de- 
 lusion, when we attend to the obvious fact, 
 that a man of the most splendid genius may 
 be destitute of piety ; that he may fill the ofiice 
 of an instructor with the greatest talent and 
 success, and yet be without reverence for 
 God, and practically disown him ; and that 
 thousands of our youth may issue every j'ear 
 warm from the schools of Philosophy, stored 
 with all her lessons, and adorned with all her 
 accomplishments, and yet be utter strangers 
 to the power of godliness, and be filled with 
 an utter distaste and antipathy for its name. 
 All this helps on the practical conviction, 
 that common education is a business, with 
 which praj'er and the exercise of depend- 
 ence on God, have no concern. It is true 
 that a Christian parent will see through the 
 vanity of this delusion. Instructed to make 
 his requests known unto God in all things, 
 he will not depose him from the supremacy 
 of his power and of his government over 
 this one thing, — he will commit to God the 
 progress of his son in every one branch of 
 education he may put him to, — and, know- 
 ing that the talent of every teacher, and the 
 continuance of his zeal, and his powers of 
 communication, and his foculty of interest- 
 ing the attention of his pupils, — that all 
 these are the gifts of God, and may be with- 
 drawn by him at pleasure, — he will not suf- 
 fer the regular march and movement of 
 what is visible or created to cast him out of 
 his dependence on the Creator. He will 
 see that everyone element which enters into 
 
 the business of education, and conspires to 
 the result of an accompHshed and a well 
 informed sclioiar, is in the hand of the Deity, 
 and he will pray for the continuation of 
 these elements, — and while science is raising 
 her wondrous monuments, and drawing ihe 
 admiration of the world after her, — it re- 
 mains to be seen, on the day of the revela- 
 tion of hidden things, whether the prayers 
 of the humble and derided Christian, for a 
 blessing on those to whom he has confided 
 the object of his tenderness, have not sus- 
 tained the vigour and brilliancy of those 
 very talents on which the world is lavishing 
 the idolatry of her praise. 
 
 Let us now conceive the very ablest of 
 these teacliers, to bring all his powers and 
 all his accomplishments, to bear on the sub- 
 ject of Christianity. Has he skill in the 
 languages? The very same process by 
 which he gets at the meaning of any ancient 
 author, carries him to a fair and faithful ren- 
 dering of the scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testament. Has he a mind enlightened 
 and exercised on questions of erudition? 
 The very same principles which qualify 
 him to decide on the genuineness of any 
 old publication, enable him to demonstrate 
 the genuineness of the Bible, and how fully 
 sustained it is on the evidence of history. 
 Has he that sagacity and comprehension of 
 talent, by which he can seize on the leading 
 principles which run through the writings 
 of some eminent philosopiier? This very ex- 
 ercise may be gone through on the writings 
 of Inspiration; and tlie man, who, with the 
 works of Aristotle before him can present the 
 world with the best system or summary of 
 his principles, might transfer these very pow- 
 ers to the works of the Apostles and Evan- 
 gelists, and present the world with a just 
 and interesting survey of the doctrines of 
 our faith. And thus it is, that the man who 
 might stand the highest of his fellows in 
 the field of ordinary scholarship, might turn 
 his entire mind to the field of Christianity; 
 and. by the very same kind of talent, which 
 Would have made him the most eminent of 
 all the philosophers, he might come to be 
 counted the most eminent of all the theolo- 
 gians ; and he who could ha\e reared to his 
 fame so'tne monument of literary genius 
 might now, by the labours of his midnigh 
 oil, rear some beauteous and consistent fabric 
 of orthodoxy, strengthened, in all its parts, 
 by one unbroken chain of reasoning, and 
 recommended throughout by the powers of 
 a persuasive and captivating eloquence. 
 
 So much for the talents which a Christian 
 teacher may emplo}% in common with other 
 teachers, and even though they did make 
 up all the qualifications necessary for his 
 office, there would still be a call, as we said 
 before, for the exercise of dependence upon 
 God. Well do we know, that both he and 
 his hearers would be apt to put their faith 
 
14 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 in the uniformity of nature; and forgetting 
 tliat it is the inspiration of the Alniiglitv 
 which giveth and preserveth the understand- 
 ing of ail his creatures, might be tempted to 
 repose that confidence in man, which dis- 
 places God from the sovereignty tliat belongs 
 to him. But what we wish to prepare )^ou 
 for, by the preceding obserV(iti(jns, is, that 
 you may understand t:ie altogether pe.culiar 
 call, that there is for dependence on God in 
 thecaseof a Christian teacher. \ v^e liave made 
 a short enumeration of those talents which 
 a teacher of Christianity might possess, in 
 common with other teachers; but it is for 
 the purpose of proving that he might pos- 
 sess them all, and heightened to such a de- 
 gree, if you will, as would have made him 
 illustrious on any other field, and yet be ut- 
 terly destitute of powers for acquiring him- 
 self, or of experience for teaching others, 
 that knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ 
 which is life everlasting. 
 
 With the many brilliant and imposing 
 things which he may have, there is one 
 thing which he may not have, and the vvant 
 of that one thing may form an invincible 
 barrier to his usefulness in the vineyard of 
 Christ. If, conscious that he wants it, he 
 seeks to obtain from God the sufficiency 
 which is not in himself, then he is in a likely 
 way of being put in possession cxf that power, 
 which alone is mighty to the pulling down 
 of strong holds. But if he, on the one hand, 
 proudly conceiving the sufficiency to be hi 
 himself, enters with aspiring confidence into 
 the field of argumejit, and think that he is 
 to carry all before him, by a series of invin- 
 cible demonstration ; or, if his people, on 
 the other hand, ever ready tu be set in mo- 
 tion by the idle impulse of novelty, or to be 
 seduced by the glare of human accomplish- 
 ments, come in trooping multitudes around 
 him, and hang on the eloquence of his lips, 
 or the wisdom of his able and profound un- 
 derstanding, a more unchristian attitude 
 cannot be conceived, nor shall we venture 
 to compute the weekly accumulation of 
 guilt which may come upon the parties, 
 when such a business as this is going on. 
 How little must t!ie presence of God be felt 
 in that place where the high functions of 
 the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated ex- 
 change of entertainment on the one side, 
 and of admiration on the other; and surely 
 it were a sight to make angels weep when 
 a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded 
 by his fellow sinners, and hastening to the 
 grave and the judgment along. with them, 
 finds it a dearer object to his bosom, to regale 
 his hearers by the exhibition of himself, than 
 to do in plain.earnest the work of his Mas- 
 ter, and urge on the business of repentance 
 and of faith by the impressive simplicities 
 of the Gospel. ' 
 
 II. This brings us to the second head of I 
 discourse, under which we shall attempt to I 
 
 give ynu a clear view of what that is which 
 constitutes a speciality in the work of a 
 Christian teacher. And to carry you at 
 once by a few plain instances to the matter 
 we are aiming to impress upon you, let us 
 suppose a man to take up his Bible, and 
 with tlie same powers of attention and un 
 der.standing which enable him to compre- 
 hend the subject of any other book, there 
 is much in this book also which he will be 
 able to perceive and to talk of intelligently. 
 Thus, for example, he may come, by the 
 mere exercise of his ordinary powers, to 
 understand that it is the Holy Spirit which, 
 taketh of the things of Christ and showeth 
 them to the mind of man. But is not his 
 understanding of this truth, as it is put 
 down in the plain language of the New 
 Testament, a very different thing from the 
 Holy Spirit actually taking of these things 
 and showing them unto him ? Again, he will 
 be able to say, and to annex a plain mean- 
 ing to what he says, that man is rescued 
 from his natural darkness about the things 
 of God, by God who created the light out 
 of darkness shining in his heart, and giving 
 him the light of the knowledge of his glory 
 in the face of Jesus Christ. But is not his 
 saying this, and understanding this, by tak- 
 ing up these words in the same obvious 
 way in which any man of plain and honest 
 understanding would do, a very different 
 thing from God actually putting forth his 
 creative energy upon him, and actually 
 .shining upon his heart, and giving him that 
 light and that knowledge which are ex- 
 pressed in the passage here alluded to? 
 Again, by the very same exercise where- 
 with he renders the sentence of an old au- 
 thor into his own language, and perceives 
 the meaning of that sentence, will he annex 
 a meaning to the following sentence of the 
 Bible — " the natural man receive th not the 
 things of the Spirit of God, for they are 
 foolishness unto him ; neither can he know 
 them, because they are spiritually discern- 
 ed." By the mere dint of that shrewdness 
 and sagacity with which nature has en- 
 dowed him, he will perceive a meaning 
 here which you will readily acknowledge 
 could not be perceived by a man in a state 
 of idiotism. In the case of the idiot, there 
 is a complete barrier against his ever ac- 
 quiring that conception of the meaning of 
 this passage, which is quite competent to a 
 man of a strong and accomplished under- 
 standing. For the sake of illustration, we 
 may conceive this poor outcast from the 
 common light of humanity, in some unac- 
 countable fit of attention, listening to the 
 sound of these words, and making some 
 strenuous but abortive attempts to arrive 
 at the same comprehension of them with a 
 man whose reason is entire. But he can- 
 not shake off the fetters which the hand of 
 nature has laid upon his understanding, 
 
I] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 15 
 
 and he goes back again to the dimness and 
 delirium of his unhappy situation ; and his 
 mind locks itself up in the prison-hold of 
 its confined and darkened faculties ; and if, 
 in his mysterious state of existence, he 
 formed any conception whatever of the 
 words now uttered in your hearing, we may 
 rcsl assured that it stands distinguished by 
 a wide and impassable chasm, from the 
 conception of him, who has all the com- 
 mon powers and perceptions of tlie species. 
 Now, we would ask what kind of con- 
 ception is that which a man of entire facul- 
 ties may form ? Only grant us the unde- 
 niable truth, that he may understand how 
 he cannot discern the things of the Spirit, 
 unless the Spirit reveal them to him ; and 
 yet with this understanding, he may not be 
 one of those in behalf of whom the Spirit 
 hath actually interposed with his peculiar 
 office of revelation ; and then you bring 
 into view another barrier, no less insur- 
 mountable than that wliich fixes an immu- 
 table distinction between the conceptions 
 of an idiot and of a man of sense, — even 
 that wonderful barrier which separates the 
 natural from the spiritual man. You can 
 conceive him struggling Avith every power 
 which nature has given him to work his 
 way through this barrier. You can con- 
 ceive him vainly attempting, by some en- 
 ergies of his own, to force an entrance 
 into that field of light where every object 
 of faith has the bright colouring of reality 
 thrown over it, — wliere he can command a 
 clear view of the things of eternity, — where 
 spiritual truth comes home with effect upon 
 his every feeling and his every conviction, — 
 where he can expatiate at freedom over a 
 scene of manifestation, which the world 
 knoweth not, — and breathe such a peace, 
 and such a joy, and such a holiness, and 
 such a superiority to time, and such a de- 
 votedness of all his affections to the things 
 which are above, as no man of the highest 
 natural wisdom can ever reach with all his 
 attention to the Bible, and all the efforts of 
 his sagacity, however painful, to unravel, 
 and to compare and to comprehend its pas- 
 sages. And it is indeed a deeply interest- 
 ing object to see a man of powerful under- 
 standing thus visited with an earnest desire 
 after the light of the gospel, and toiling at 
 the entrance with all the energies which 
 belong to him, — pressing into the service 
 all the resources of argument and philoso- 
 phy, — mustering to the high enterprise, his 
 attention, and his conception, and his rea- 
 son, and his imagination, and the whole 
 host of his other faculties, on which science 
 has conferred her imposing names, and laid 
 before us in such a pompous catalogue, as 
 might tempt us to believe, that man, by one 
 mighty grasp of his creative mind, can 
 make all truth his own, and range at plea- 
 sure over the wide variety of her domin- 
 
 ions. How natural to think that the same 
 powers and habits of investigation which 
 carried him to so respectable a height in 
 the natural sciences will enable him to clear 
 his way through all the darkness of the- 
 ology. It is well that he is seeking, — for 
 if he persevere and be in earnest, he will 
 obtain an interest in the promise, and will 
 at length find ; — but not till he find, in the 
 progress of those inquiries on which he en 
 tered with so much alacritj^ and prosecuted 
 with so much confidence, that there is a 
 barrier between him and the spiritual dis- 
 cernment of his Bible, which all the powers 
 of philosophy cannot scale, — not till he find, 
 that he must cast down his lofty imagina- 
 tions, and put the pride of all his powers 
 and his pretensions away from him, — not till 
 he find, that, divested of those fancies which 
 deluded his heart into a feeling of its own 
 sutficiency, he must become like a little 
 child, or one of those babes to whom God 
 reveals the tilings which he hides from the 
 wise and from the prudent, — not till he find, 
 that the attitude of self-dependence must be 
 broken down, and he be brought to acknow- 
 ledge that the light he is aspiring after, is 
 not created by himself, but must be made 
 to shine upon him at the pleasure of an- 
 other,— not in short, till, humbled by the 
 mortifying experience that many a simple 
 cottager who reads his Bible and loves his 
 Saviour has got before him, he puts himself 
 on a level with the most illiterate of them 
 all, and prays that light and truth may 
 beam on his darkened understanding from 
 the sanctuary of God. 
 
 We read of the letter, and we read also 
 of the spirit, of the New Testament. It 
 would require a volume, rather than a sin- 
 gle paragraph of a single sermon, to draw 
 the line between the one and the other. 
 But you will readily acknowledge that there 
 are many things of this book which a man, 
 though untaught by the Spirit of God, may 
 be made to know. One of the simplest in- 
 stances is, he may learn the number of 
 chapters in every book, and the number of 
 verses in every chapter. But is this all? 
 No, — for by the natural exercise of his me- 
 mory he rnay be able to master all its his- 
 torical information. And is this all ? No, 
 for by the natural exercise of his judgment 
 he may compare scripture with scripture, — 
 he may learn what its doctrines are, — he 
 may demonstrate the orthodoxy of every- 
 one article in our national confession, — he 
 may rank among the ablest and most judi- 
 cious of the commentators, — he may read, 
 and with understanding, too, many a pon- 
 derous volume, — he may store himself with 
 the learning of many generations, — he may 
 be familiar with all the systems, and have 
 mingled with all the controversies, — and 
 yet, with a mind supporting as it does the 
 burden of the erudition of whole libraries, 
 
16 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 he may have gotten to himself no other 
 wisdom than the wisdom of the letter of 
 the New Testament. The man's creed, with 
 all its arranged and its well weighed arti- 
 cles, may be no better than the dry bones 
 in the vision of Ezekiel, put together into a 
 skeleton, and fastened with sinews, and 
 covered with flesh and skin, and exhibiting 
 to the eye of the spectators, the aspect, 
 and the lineaments of a man, but without 
 breath, and remaining so, till the Spirit of 
 God breathed into it, and it lived. And it 
 is in truth a sight of wonder, to behold a 
 man who has carried his knowledge of 
 scripture as far as the wisdom of man can 
 carry it, — to see him blest with all the light 
 which nature can give, but labouring under 
 all the darkness which no power of nature 
 can dispel, — to see this man of many ac- 
 complishments, who can bring his every 
 power of demonstration to bear upon the 
 Bible, carrying in liis bosom a heart un- 
 cheered by any one of its consolations, un- 
 moved by the influence of any one of its 
 truths, unshaken out of any one attacliment 
 to the world, and an utter stranger to those 
 high resolves, and the power of those great 
 and animating prospects, which shed a glory 
 over the daily walk of a believer, and give 
 to every one of his doings the high charac- 
 ter of a candidate for eternity. 
 
 We are quite aware of the doubts which 
 this is calculated to excite in the mind of 
 the hearer, — nor is it possible within the 
 compass of an hour to stop and satisfy them 
 all ; or to come to a timely conclusion, with- 
 out leaving a number of unresolved ques- 
 tions behind us. 
 
 There is one, however, which we cannot 
 pass without observation. Does not this 
 doctrine of a revelation of the Spirit, it may 
 be asked, additional to the revelation of the 
 word, open a door to the most unbridled 
 variety? May it not give a sanction to any 
 conceptions of any visionary pretenders, 
 and clothe in all the authority of inspira- 
 tion a set of doctrines not to be found within 
 the compass of the written record ? Does 
 it not set aside the usefulness of the Bible, 
 and break in upon the unity and consis- 
 tency of revealed truth, by letting loose 
 upon the world a succession of fancies, as 
 endless and as variable as are the caprices 
 of the human imagination ? All very true, 
 did we ever pretend that the office of tlie 
 Spirit was to reveal any thing additional to 
 the information, wliethcr in the way of doc- 
 trine or of duty, which the Bible sets before 
 us. But his office, as defined by the Bible 
 itself, is not to make known to us any truths 
 which are not contained in the Bible ; but to 
 make clear to our understandings the trutlis 
 which are contained in it. He opens our 
 understandings to understand the Scrip- 
 tures. The word of God is called the sword 
 of the Spirit. It is the instrument by which 
 
 the Spirit worketh. He does not tell us any 
 thing tliat is out of the record ; but all that 
 is within it he sends home, with clearness 
 and effect, upon the mind. He does not 
 make us wise above that which is written j 
 but he makes us wise, up to that which is , 
 written. When a telescope is directed Xov 
 some distant landscape, it enables us to see / 
 wliat we could not otherwise have seen;/ 
 but it does not enable us to see any thing'^j 
 which has not a real existence in the pros- \ 
 pect before us. It does not present to the ' 
 eye any delusive imagery, — neither is that a 
 fanciful and fictitious scene which it throws 
 open to our contemplation. The natural 
 eye saAV nothing but blue land stretching 
 along the distant horizon. By the aid of 
 the glass, there bursts upon it a charming 
 variety of fi Ids, and woods, and spires, and 
 villages. Yet who would say that the glass 
 added one feature to this assemblage ? It 
 discovers nothing to us which is not there; 
 nor, out of that portion of the book of na- 
 ture which we are employed in contem- 
 plating, does it bring into view a single 
 character which is not really and previously 
 inscribed upon it. And so of the Spirit. 
 He does not add a single truth, or a single 
 character, to the book of revelation. He 
 enables the spiritual man to see what the 
 natural man cannot see; but the spectacle 
 which he lays open is uniform and immu- 
 table. It is the word of God which is ever 
 the same ; — and he, whom the Spirit of God 
 has enabled to look to the Bible with a clear 
 and affecting discernment, sees no phantom 
 passing before him ; but amid all the vision- 
 ary extravagance with which he is charged, 
 can, for every one article of his faith, and 
 every one duty of his practice, make his 
 triumphant appeal to the law and to the 
 testimony. 
 
 We trust that this may be made clear 
 by one example. We have not to travel 
 out of the record for the purpose of having 
 tliis trutli made known to us, — that God is 
 every where present. It meets the obser- 
 vation of the natural man in his reading 
 of the Bible ; and he understands, or thinks 
 be understands, the terms in which it is 
 delivered ; and he can speak of it with con- 
 sistency ; and he ranks it with the other 
 attributes of God ; and he gxves it an avowed 
 and formal admission among the articles 
 of his creed ; and yet, with all this parade 
 of light and knowledge, he, upon the sub- 
 ject of the all-seeing and ever-present Deity, 
 labours under all the obstinacy of an habit- 
 ual blindness. Carry him abroad, and you 
 will find that the light which beams upon 
 his senses, from tlie object of sight, com- 
 pletel)^ overpowers that light which ought 
 to beam upon his spirit, from this object 
 of faith. He may occasionally think of it 
 as he does of other things; but for every 
 one practical purpose the thought aban- 
 
I-J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HVMAN NATURE. 
 
 17 
 
 dons him, so soon as he goes into the next 
 company or takes a part in the next 
 worldl}" concern, which, in the course of 
 his business, comes round to him. It com- 
 pletely disappears as an element of conduct, 
 and he talks, and thinks, and reasons just 
 as he Avould have done, had his mind, in 
 reference to God, been in a state of entire 
 darkness. If any thing hke a right con- 
 ception of the matter ever exist in his heart, 
 tlie din and the day light of the world 
 drive it all away from him. Now, to recti- 
 fy this case, it is surely not necessary, that 
 the Spirit add anj' thing to the truth of 
 God's omnipresence, as it is put down in 
 the written record. It will be enough, that 
 he gives to the mind upon which he ope- 
 rates, a steady and enduring impression of 
 this truth. Now, this is one part of his 
 office, and accordingly it is said of the unc- 
 tion of the Spirit, that it is an unction which 
 remaineth. Neither is it necessary that the 
 light, which he communicates, should con- 
 sist in any vision which he gives to the 
 eye, or in any bright impression upon the 
 fancy, of any one thing not to be fonnd 
 within the pages of the Bible. It will be 
 enough if he give a clear and vigorous ap- 
 prehension of the truth, just as it is written, 
 to the understanding. Though the Spirit 
 should do no more than give vivacity and 
 effect to the truth of the constancy of God's 
 presence, just as it stands in the written 
 record — this will be quite enough to make 
 the man who is under its influence carry 
 an habitual sense of God about with him, 
 think of him in tlie shop and in the market- 
 place, walk with him all the day long, and 
 feel the same moral restraint upon his 
 doings, as if some visible superior, whose 
 virtues he revered, and whose approbation 
 he longed after, haunted his every footstep, 
 and kept an attentive eye fastened upon 
 the wliole course of his history. The natu- 
 ral man may have sense, and he may have 
 sagacity, and a readiness withal to admit 
 the constancy of God's presence, as an un- 
 deniable doctrine of the Bible. But to the 
 power of this truth he is dead ; and it is 
 only to the power of this world's interests 
 and" pleasures that he is alive. The spiritual 
 mail is the reverse of all this, and that 
 without carrj'ing his conceptions a single 
 hair breadth beyond the communications 
 of the written message. He makes no pre- 
 tensions to wisdom by one jot or one tittle 
 beyond the testimony of Scripture, and 
 yet, after all, he lives under a re'velation to 
 which the other is a stranger. It docs not 
 carry him by a single footstep without the 
 field of the written revelation, but it throws 
 a radiance over every object within it. It 
 furnishes him with a constant light which 
 enables him to withstand the domineering 
 hifluence of sight and of sense. He dies 
 unto the world, he lives unto God, — and 
 
 the reason is, that there rests upon him a 
 peculiar manifestation, by which the truth 
 is made visible to the eye of his mind, and 
 a peculi-ir energy, by which it comes home 
 upon his conscience. And if you come to 
 inquire into the cause of this speciality, it is 
 the language of the Bible, confirmed, as we 
 believe it to be, by the soundest experience, 
 that every power whicli nature has con- 
 ferred upon man, exalted to its highest 
 measure, and called fortli to its most stren- 
 uous exercise is not able to accomplish it, — 
 that it is due to a power above nature, and 
 beyond it ; tliat it is due to what the Apostle 
 calls the demonstration of the Spirit, — a de- 
 monstration witliheld from the self-suffi- 
 cient exertions of man, and given to his be- 
 lieving prayers. ~> 
 
 And here we are reminded of an instruc- 1 
 live passage in the life of one of our earliest 
 and most eminent reformers. When the light 
 of divine truth broke in upon his heart, it 
 was so new^ and so delightful to one form- 
 erly darkened by the errors of popery, — 
 he saw such a power and such an evidence 
 along with it, — he was so ravished by its 
 beauties, and so carried along by its resist- 
 less arguments, tluit he felt as if he had 
 nothing to do, but to brandish those mighty 
 weapons, that he might gain all hearts and 
 carry every thing before him. But he did 
 not calculate on the stubborn resistance of 
 corrupt human nature, to him and to his 
 reasonings. He preached and he argued, 
 and he put forth all his powers of eloquence 
 amongst them. But mortified that so many- 
 hearts remained hardened, that so many 
 hearers resisted him, that the doors of so 
 many hearts were kept shut in spite of all 
 loud and repeated warnings, that so many 
 souls remained unsubdued, and dead in 
 trespasses and sins, he was heard to ex- 
 claim that old Adam was too strong for 
 young Melancthon. 
 
 There is the malignity of the fall which 
 adheres to us. There is a power of cor- /' 
 ruption and of blindness along with it, 
 wiiich it is beyond the compass of human 
 means to overthrow. There is a dark and 
 settled depravity in the human character, 
 which maintains its gloomy and obstinate 
 resistanc-e to all our warnings and all our 
 arguments. There is a spirit working in 
 the children of disobedience which no 
 power of human eloquence can lay. There 
 is a coAcring of thick darkness upon the 
 face of all people, a mighty influence abroad 
 upon the world, with which the Prince of 
 the power of the air keeps his thousands 
 and his tens of thousands under him. The 
 minister who enters into this field of con- 
 flict may have zeal, and talents, and elo- 
 quence. His heart may be smitten with 
 the love of the truth, and his mind be fully 
 fraught with its arguments. Thus armed, 
 he may come forth among his people, 
 
1& 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HU3IAN NATURE. 
 
 SERK 
 
 flusli^d with the mighty enterprise of turn- 
 ing souls from the dominion of Satan unto 
 God. In all the hope of victory he may 
 discharge the weapons of his warfare among 
 them. VVcelc after week, he may reason 
 witti them out of the Scriptures. Sabbath 
 after Sabbath he may declaim, he may de- 
 monstrate, he may put fortli every expe- 
 dient, he may at one time set in array be- 
 fore them the terrors of the law, at another 
 he may try to win them by the free oifer 
 of t!ie Gospel; and, in the proud confidence 
 of success, he may lliink that nothing can 
 withstand him, and that the heart of every 
 hearer must give way before the ardour of 
 his zeal and the power of his invincible 
 arguments. Yes; they may admire him, 
 and they may follow him, but the question 
 we have to ask is, will they be converted 
 by him? They may even go so far as to 
 allow that it is all very true he says. He 
 may be their favourite preaclier, and when 
 he opens his exhortations upon them, there 
 may be a deep and a solemn attention in 
 every countenance. But how is the heart 
 coming on all the while? How do those 
 people live, and what evidence are they 
 giving of being born again under the power 
 of his ministry ? It is not enough to be told 
 of those momentary convictions which flash 
 from the pulpit, and carry a thrilling influ- 
 ence along witli them through the hearts of 
 listening admirers. Have tiiese hearers of 
 the word, become the doers of the word? 
 Have they sunk down into the character of 
 humble, and sanctified, and penitent, and 
 pains-taking Christians ? Where, where is 
 the fruit ? And while the preaching of 
 Christ is all tlieir joy, has the will of Christ 
 become all their directions? Alas, he may 
 look around him, and at the end of the year, 
 after all t'ne tumults of a sounding popularity, 
 he may find the great bulk of them just 
 where they were, — as listless and uncon- 
 cerned about the things of eternity, — as ob- 
 stinately alienated from God, — as firmly 
 devoted to selfish and transitory interests, — 
 as exclusively set upon the farm, and the 
 money, and the merchandize, — and, with 
 the covering of many external decencies, to 
 make them as fair and plausible as their 
 neighbours around them, proving by a heart 
 given, with the whole tide of its affections, 
 to the vanities of the world, that they have 
 their full share of the Avickedness which 
 abounds in it. After all his sermons, and 
 all his loud and passionate addresses, he 
 finds that the power of darkness still keeps 
 its ground among them. He is grieved to 
 learn that all he has said, has had no more 
 eflfect, than the foolish and the feeble lisp- 
 ings of infancy. He is overwhelmed by a 
 sense of his own helplessness, and the lesson 
 is a wholesome one. It makes him feel 
 that the suflSciency is not in him, but in 
 God ; it makes him understand that another 
 
 power must be brought to bear upon the 
 mass of resistance v.iiich is before him ; and 
 let the ma;i of confident and aspiring genius, 
 who thought he was to assail the dark seats 
 of human corruption, and to carry them by 
 storm, let him be reduced in nionified and 
 dependent humbleness to the expedient of 
 the Apostle, let him crave the intercessions 
 of his people, and throw himself upon their 
 prayers. 
 
 Let us now bring the whole matter (o a 
 practical conclusion. For the acquirement 
 of a saving and spiritual knowledge of the 
 gospel, you are on the one hand, to put forth 
 all your ordinary powers, in tlie very same 
 way that you do for the acquirement of 
 knowledge in any of the ordinary branches 
 of human learning. But in the act of doing 
 so, you, on the other hand, are to proceed 
 on a profound impression of the utier fruit- 
 lessness of all your endeavouns, unless God 
 meet them by the manifestations of his 
 Spirit. In otiier words, j^ou are to read 
 your Bible, and to bring your fiiculties of 
 attention, and understanding, and memory, 
 to the exercise, just as strenuously as if 
 these and these alone could conduct you to 
 the light after which you are aspiring. But 
 you are at the same time to pray as earn- 
 estly for this object, as if God accomplished 
 it without your exertions at all, instead of 
 accomplishing it in the way he actually 
 does, by your exertions. It is when your 
 eyes are turned toward the book of God's 
 testimony, and not when your eyes are 
 turned away from it, that he fulfils upon 
 you the petition of the Psalmist, — "Lord, 
 do thou open mine e3'es, that I may behold 
 the wondrous things contained in tiiy law." 
 You are not to exercise your laculties in 
 searching after truth without prayer, else 
 God will withhold from you his illuminating 
 influences. And you are not to pray for truth, 
 without exercising your fiicuhies, else God 
 will reject your prayers, as the mockery of 
 a hypocrite. But you are to do both, and 
 this is in harmony with the whole style of , 
 a Christian's obedience, who is as strenuous / 
 in doing as if his doings were toiiccomplish ! 
 all, and as fervent in prayer, as if without 
 the inspiring enemy of God, all his doings ( 
 were vanity and feebleness. And the great ) 
 Apostle may be quoted as the best exam- 
 ple of this observation. 
 
 There never existed a man more active 
 than Paul, in the work of the Christian^ 
 ministry. How great the weight and the va- 
 riety of his labours! What preaching, what 
 travelling, what writing of letters, what daily 
 struggling with difficulties, wlrat constant 
 exercise of thought in watching over the 
 Churches, what a worldof perplexity in his 
 dealings with men, and in the hard dealings 
 of men with him ; and were they friends, 
 or were they enemies, how his mind be- 
 hooved to be ever on the alert, in counsel 
 
1.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 19 
 
 ling the one and warding off the hostility 
 of the other. Look to all that is visible 
 in the life of this Apostle, and you see 
 nothing but bustle, and enterprise, and 
 vareity. You see a man intent on the fur- 
 therance of some great object, and in the 
 prosecution of it, as ever diligent, and as 
 ever doing, as if the whole burden of it 
 lay upon himself, or as if it were reserved 
 for the strength of his solitary arm to ac- 
 complish it. To this object he conse- 
 crated every moment of his timC; and even 
 when he set him down to the work of a 
 tent-maker, for the sake of vindicating the 
 purity of his intentions, and holding forth 
 an example of honest independence to the 
 poorer brethren ; even here, you just see 
 another display of the one principle which 
 possessed liis whole heart, and gave such a 
 character of wondrous activity to all the 
 days of his earthly pilgrimage. There are 
 some, who are so far misled by a kind of 
 perverse theology which they have adopted, 
 as to hesitate about thelawfulness of being di- 
 ligent and doing in the use of means. While 
 they are slumbermg over tlieir speculation, 
 and proving how honestly they put faith 
 in it by doing nothing, let us be guided bj' 
 the example of the pains-taking and indus- 
 trious Paul, and remember, that never since 
 the days of this Apostle, who calls upon us 
 to be followers of him, even as he was of 
 Christ, — never were the labours of human 
 exertion more faithfully rendered, — never 
 were tiie workings of a human instrument 
 put forth with greater energy. 
 
 But it forms a still more striking part of 
 the example of Paul, tliat while he did as 
 much toward the extension of the Chris- 
 tian faith, as if the whole success of the 
 cause depended upon his doing, — he prayed 
 as much, and as fervently for this object, as 
 if all his doings were of no consequence. 
 A fine testimony to the supremacy of God, 
 from the man, who, in labours was more 
 abundant than any that ever come after 
 him, that he counted all as nothing, unless 
 God would interfere to put his blessings 
 upon all and to give his efficacy to all ! He 
 who looked so busy, and whose hand was 
 so constantly engaged, in the work that 
 was before him, looked for all his success 
 to that help which cometh from the sanc- 
 tuary of God. There was his eye directed. 
 Thence alone did he expect a blessing upon 
 his endeavours. He wrought, and that with 
 diligence too, because God bade him ; but 
 he also prayed, and that with equal dili- 
 gence, because God had revealed to him, 
 that plant as he may, and water as he may, 
 God alone giveth the increase. He did ho- 
 mage to the will of God, by the labours of 
 the ever-working minister, — and he did ho- 
 mage to the power of God, by the devotions 
 of the ever-praying minister. He did not 
 say, what signifies my working, for God 
 R 
 
 alone can work with effect ? This is very- 
 true, but God chooses to work by instru- 
 ments, — and Paul, by the question, '' Lord 
 what wilt thou have ine to do ?" expressed 
 his readiness to be an instrument in his 
 hand. Neither did he say, what signifies 
 my praying, for I have got a work here to 
 do, and it is enough that I be diligent in the 
 performance of it. No — for the power of 
 God must be acknowledged, and a sense of 
 his power must mingle witli all our per- 
 formances; and therefore it is that the 
 Apostle kept both working and praying, and 
 with him they formed two disiinct emana- 
 tions of the same principle ; and while tliere 
 are many who make these Christian graces 
 to neutralize each other, the judicious and 
 the clear-sighted Paul, who had received 
 the spirit of a sound mind, could give his 
 unembarrassed vigour to both these exer- 
 cises, and combine, in his own example, 
 the utmost diligence in doing, with the 
 utmost dependence on him wlio can alone 
 give to that doing all its fruit and all its 
 efficacy. 
 
 The union of these two graces has at 
 times been finely exemplified in the latter, 
 and uninspired ages of the Christian 
 Church : and the case of the missionary 
 Elliot is the first, and the most impressive 
 that occurs to us. His labours, like those 
 of the- great Apostle, were directed to the 
 extension of the vineyard of Christ, — and 
 he was among the very first who put fortli 
 his hand to the breaking up the Ameri- 
 can wilderness. For this purpose did he 
 set himself down lo the acquirement of a 
 harsh and barbarous language ; and he be- 
 came qualified to confer with savages ; and 
 he grappled for years with their untracta- 
 ble humours ; and he collected these wan- 
 derers into villages; and Avhile other re- 
 formers have ennobled their names by the 
 formation of a new set of public laws, did 
 he take upon him the far more arduous task 
 of creating for his untamed Indians, a new 
 set of domestic habits; and such was the 
 power of his influence that he carried his 
 christianizing system into the very bosom 
 of their fomilies; and he spread art, and 
 learning, and civilization amongst them ; 
 and to his visible labours among his people 
 he added the labours of the closet ; and he 
 translated the whole Bible into their tongue; 
 and he set up a regular provision for the 
 education of their children ; and lest the 
 spectator who saw his fourteen towns risen 
 as by enchantment in the desert, and peo- 
 pled by the rudest of his tribes, should ask 
 in vain for the mighty power by which 
 such wondrous things had been brought to 
 pass, — this venerable priest left his testi- 
 mony behind him ; and neither overlooking 
 the agency of God, nor the agency of man 
 as the instrument of God, he tells us in the 
 one memorable sentence written by him- 
 
•20 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 self at the end of his Indian grammar, that 
 "prayers and pains through faith in Christ 
 Jesus can do any tiling." 
 
 The last inference we shalldraw from this 
 topic, is the duty and importance of prayer 
 among Christians, for the success of tiie 
 minisiry of the Cospel. Paul had a high 
 sense of llie efficacy of prayer. Not ac- 
 cording to that refined view of it, which, 
 making all its influence to consist in its im- 
 proving and moralizing effect upon the 
 mind, fritters down to nothing the plain 
 import and significancy of this ordinance. 
 With liim it was a matter of asking and of 
 receiving. And just as when in pursuit of 
 some earthly benefit which is at the giving 
 of another, you think yourselves surer of 
 your object the more you multiply the 
 number of askers and the number of appli- 
 cations — in this very way did he, if we may 
 be allowed the expression, contrive to 
 strengthen and extend his interest in the 
 court of heaven. He craved the interces- 
 sion of his people. There were many be- 
 lievers formed under his ministry, and each 
 of these could bring the prayer of faith to 
 bear upon the counsels of God, and bring 
 down a larger portion of strength and of 
 
 fitness to rest on the Apostle for making 
 more believers. It was a kind of creative 
 or accumulating process. After he had 
 travelled in birth with his new converts till 
 Christ was formed in them — this was the 
 use he put them to. It is an expedient 
 which harmonizes with the methods bf Pro- 
 vidence and the will of God, who orders in- 
 tercessions, and on the very principle too, 
 that he willeth all men to be saved, and to 
 come to the knowledge of the truth. The 
 intercession of christians, who are already 
 formed, is the leaven which is to leaven the 
 whole earth with Christianity. It is one of 
 the destined instruments in the hand of 
 God for hastening the glory of the latter 
 days. Take the world at large, and the 
 doctrine of intercession, as an engine of 
 mighty power, is derided as one of the re- 
 veries of fanaticism. This is a subject on 
 which the men of the world are in a deep 
 slumber ; but there are watchmen wlio 
 never hold their peace day nor night, and 
 to them God addresses these remarkable 
 words, •' Ye that make mention of the 
 Lord, keep not silence, and give him no 
 rest, till he establish, and till he make Jem 
 salem a praise in the earth." 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 The mysterious Aspect of the Gospel to the Men of the World 
 
 ' Then said I, Ah, Lord God ! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables V'—Ezekiel xx. 49. 
 
 In parables, the lesson that is meant to 
 be conveyed is to a certain degree shaded 
 in obscurity. Tliey are associated by the 
 Psalmist with dark sayings — " I will open 
 my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark 
 sayings of old." We read in the New Tes- 
 tament of a parable leaving all the effect of 
 an unexpla-ned mystery upon the under- 
 standing of the general audience to which 
 it was addressed ; and the explanation of 
 the parable given to a special few was to 
 them the clearing up of a mystery. " It is 
 given unto you to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of heaven; but to them it is 
 not given !" 
 
 The prophets of old were often commis- 
 sioned to address their countrymen under 
 the guise of symbolical language. This 
 threw a veil over the meaning of their com- 
 munications ; and though it was a veil of 
 such transparency as could be seen through 
 by those who "looked earnestly and atten- 
 tively, and with a humble desire to be 
 taught in the will of God, — yet there was 
 dimness enough to intercept all the moral, 
 and all the significancy, from the minds of 
 those who wanted principle to be in earnest; 
 
 or who wanted patience for the exercise of 
 attention ; or wlio wanted such a concern 
 about God, as either to care very much for 
 his will, or to feel that any thing which re- 
 spected him was worth the trouble of a very 
 serious investigation. 
 
 They who wanted this concern and this 
 principle, from them was taken away even 
 that which they had. God at length ceased 
 from his messages, and the Spirit of God 
 ceased from his warnings. They who had 
 the preparation of all this docility, to them 
 more was given. Their honest desire after 
 knowledge, was rewarded by the acquire- 
 ment of it. They continued to look, and 
 to enquire, and at length they were illumi- 
 nated ; and thus was fulfilled the saying of 
 the Saviour, that " whosoever hath, to him 
 shall be given, and he shall have more 
 abundantly, — but whosoever hath not, from 
 him shall be taken away even that he hath." 
 
 It is not difficult to conceive how the ob- 
 scure intimations of Ezekiel would be taken 
 by the careless and ungodly men of his 
 generation. It is likely that even from the 
 naked denunciations of vengeance they 
 would have turned contemptuously away. 
 
DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATDRE. 
 
 II.] 
 
 And it is still more likely that they would 
 refuse the impression of thetn, when offered 
 to their notice, under a figurative disguise. 
 It is not at all to be supposed that they would 
 put forth any activity of mind in quest of 
 that which they nauseated, and of that 
 which, if ever they had found, they would 
 have found to be utterlj' revolting to all 
 their habits of impiety. They are the very 
 last men we should expect to meet with at 
 the work of a pains-taking search after the 
 interpretation of these parables. Nay, they 
 would gladly fasten upon the obscurity of 
 them both as a circumstance of reproach 
 against the prophet, and as an apology for 
 their own indifference. And thus it is, that 
 to be a teacher of parables might at length 
 become a scoff and a by-word ; and the pro- 
 phet seems to have felt the force of it as an 
 opprobrious designation, seems to be looking 
 forward to the mixture of disdain and impa- 
 tience with which he would be listened to, 
 when God charged him with an allegorical 
 communication to his countrymen, and he 
 answered, " Ah, Lord God ! they say of me. 
 Doth he not speak parables?" 
 
 Now the question we have to put is — Is 
 there no similar plea of resistance ever pre- 
 ferred against the faithful messengers of 
 God in the present day? It is true, that in 
 our time there is no such thing as a man 
 coming amongst you, charged with the ut- 
 terance of a direct and personal inspiration. 
 But it is the business of every minister truly 
 to expound the record of inspiration ; and 
 is it not very possible that in so doing he 
 may be reproached, not for preaching para- 
 bolically, but for preaching mysteriously ? 
 Have you never heard of a sermon being 
 called mystical ; and what shall we think 
 of it, if, in point of fact, this imputation falls 
 most readily and most abundantly on the 
 sermon that is most pervaded by the spirit, 
 and most overnm with the phraseology of 
 the New Testament? In that composition 
 there are certain terms which recur inces- 
 santly, and which would therefore appear 
 to represent certain very leading and promi- 
 nent ideas. Now, whether are these ideas 
 clearly and promptly suggested to your 
 mind, by the utterance of terms? What 
 are the general character and effect which 
 in your eye is imparted to a sermon, when, 
 throughout the whole of it, the words of the 
 apostolic vocabulary are ever and anon ob- 
 truded upon your hearing — and the whole 
 stress of the argument is made to lie on 
 such matters as sanctification ; and the 
 atonement ; and the blood of the everlasting 
 covenant ; and the indwelling of the Holy 
 Ghost, who takes up his habitation in the 
 soul of the believer ; and salvation by grace ; 
 and the spirit of adoption poured forth on 
 the heart, and filling it with all the peace 
 and joy of a confident reconciliation ; and 
 the exercise of fellowship with the Father, 
 
 21 
 
 and the Son ; and the process of growing 
 up unto Christ ; and the habit of receiving 
 out of his fulness, and of beholding with 
 open face his glory, so as to be changed 
 into the same image, from glory to glory, 
 even as by the spirit of the Lord. We are 
 not at present asking, if j-ou feel the disgust 
 with which unsubdued nature ever listens 
 to these representations, or in what degree 
 they are offensive to your taste, and pain- 
 fully uncongenial with the whole style and 
 habit of your literature. But we ask, if 
 such terms and such phrases as have now 
 been specified, do not spread before the eye 
 of your mind an aspect of exceeding dim- 
 ness over the preacher's demonstration? 
 Does he not appf^ar to you as if he wrapped 
 himself up in the obscurity of a technical 
 language, which you are utterly at a loss to 
 comprehend ? When the sermon in ques- 
 tion is put bj' the side of some lesson of 
 obvious morality, or some exposition of 
 those principles which are recognized and 
 acted upon in ordinary life, does it not look 
 to you as if it was shrouded from common 
 observation altogether; and that ere you 
 could be initiated into the mystery of such 
 language and of such doctrine, you would 
 need to describe a mighty and still untrod- 
 den interval from all your present habits of 
 conception ? And yet, what if it be indeed 
 the very language and the very doctrine of 
 the New Testament ? — if all the jargon that 
 is charged on the interpretation of the word 
 be the actual word itself? — and if the 
 preacher be faithfully conveying the mes- 
 sage of the Bible, at the very time that the 
 hearer is shielding himself from the impres- 
 sion of it by the saying, that he preacheth 
 mysteries ? 
 
 But to keep the two parties at a still more 
 hopeless distance from each other, — the 
 message of such a preacher, incomprehen- 
 sible as many of its terms and many of its 
 particulars may be, evidently bears a some- 
 thing upon it that is fitted to alarm the 
 fears, and utterly to thwart the strongest 
 tendencies of nature. Let him be just a 
 faithful expounder of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, and let the blindness of the natural 
 man be what it may, still there is scarcel}' 
 a hearer who can l^^il to perceive, that, an 
 terior to the reception of this Gospel, th 
 preacher looks upon him as the enemy ol 
 God, — and strongly points at such a con- 
 troversy between him and his maker, as 
 can only be made up through an appointed 
 Mediator — and requires of him such a faith 
 as will transform his character, and as will 
 shift the whole currency of his affections 
 and desires — and affirms the necessity of 
 such a regeneration, as that all old things 
 shall be done away, and all things shall be- 
 come new ; — and lets him know, that to be 
 a Christian indeed he must die unto sense, 
 he must be crucified unto the world, and. 
 
22 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 renouncing its chai'ms and its predilections, 
 must learn to have his conversation in hea- 
 ven, and to choose God as the strength of 
 his heart and his portion for evermore. All 
 this flashes plainly and significantly enough, 
 through tliat veil of mysticism which ap- 
 pears to oversiiread the general doctrine of 
 the preacher; and imparts a forbidding cha- 
 racter to it in the eyes of those to whom 
 we are alluding ; and they will be glad of 
 any pretence to shun a painful and a re- 
 volting contemplation ; and they will com- 
 plain of him on the very ground on which 
 the Jews of old complained of Ezekiel, as 
 a dealer in parables — and while much of 
 their antipathy is founded upon his being 
 so strict and so spiritual, and so unaccom- 
 modating to the general tone of society, 
 one of the charges which will be most fre- 
 quently and most loudly preferred against 
 him, is, that he is so very mysterious. 
 
 In the prosecution of the following dis- 
 course, we shall endeavour in the first place 
 to state shortly the ground on which the 
 religion of the New Testament looks so 
 mysterious a thing to the men of the world, 
 and then conclude with a short practical 
 remonstrance upon this subject. 
 
 I. There are certain experiences of hu- 
 man life so oft repeated, and so familiar to 
 all our recollections, that when we per- 
 ceive, or think we perceive, an analogy be- 
 tween them and the matters of religion, 
 then religion does not appear to us to be 
 mysterious. There is not a more familiar 
 exhibition in society than that of a servant 
 who performs his allotted work, and who 
 obtains his stipulated reward — and we are 
 all servants, and one is our master, even 
 God. 
 
 There is nothing more common than that 
 a son should acquit himself to the satis- 
 faction of his parents, — and we are all the 
 children of an universal parent, whom it is 
 our part to please in all things. Even when 
 that son falls under displeasure, and is either 
 visited with compunction or made to re- 
 ceive the chastisement of his disobedience, 
 there is nothing more common than to 
 witness the relentings of an earthly father, 
 and the readiness with which forgiveness is 
 awarded on the repentance and sorrow of 
 the offender, — and we, in like manner, liable 
 to err from the pure law of heaven, have 
 surely a kind and indulgent Father to deal 
 with. And, lastly, there is nothing more 
 common than that the loyalty of a zealous 
 and patriotic subject should be rewarded by 
 the patronage, or at least by the protection 
 of the civil magistrate, — and that an act of 
 transgression against the laws should be 
 visited by an act of vengeance on the part 
 of him who is a terror to evil-doers, while 
 a praise to such as do well. And thus it is, 
 too, that we are under a lawgiver in heaven 
 who is able both to save and to destroy. 
 
 Now so long as the work of religious in- 
 struction can be upheld by such anal(igies 
 as tliese, — so long as the relations of civil or 
 of domestic society can be employed to 
 illustrate the relation between G'od and the 
 creatures whom he has formed, — so long 
 as the recollections of daily experience can 
 thus be applied to the method of the divine 
 administration, — a vein of perspicuity will 
 appear to run through the clear and rational 
 exposition of him who has put all tlie mist 
 and all the technicals of an obscure theo- 
 logy away from him. All his lessons will 
 run in an easy and direct train. Nor do we 
 see how it is possible to be bewildered 
 amongst such explanations, as are sug- 
 gested by the most ordinary doings and 
 concerns of human society; — and did the 
 preacher only confine himself to such doc- 
 trine, as that God rewards the upright, and 
 punishes the rebellious, and upon the im- 
 pulse of that compassion which belongs to 
 him, takes again the penitent into accept- 
 ance, and in the great day of remuneration, 
 will give unto every man according to his 
 works, — did he only confine himself to 
 truths so palpable, and build upon it appli- 
 cations so obvious, as just to urge us to the 
 performance of duty by the promised re- 
 ward, and deter us from the infraction of it 
 by the severities of the threatened punish- 
 ment, and call us to reformation by affec- 
 tionately pleading with us the mercies of 
 God, and warn us with all his force and all 
 his fidelity, that should we persist in ob- 
 stinate impenitence we shall be cut off from 
 happiness for ever, — there might be some- 
 thing to terrify, — but there would at least be 
 nothing to darken or to perplex us in these 
 interpretations — nothing that would not 
 meet common intelligence, and be helped 
 forward by all the analogies of common ob- 
 servation, — and should this therefore prove 
 the great burden of the preacher's demon- 
 stration, we should be the last to reproach 
 him, as a dealer in parables, or as a dealer 
 in mysteries. 
 
 To attach us the more to this rational 
 style of preaching, we cannot but perceive 
 that it obtains a kind of experimental coun- 
 tenance from the actual distinctions of cha- 
 racter which are realized in the peopled 
 world around us. Can any thing be more 
 evident than that there is a line of separa- 
 tion between the sensual and the temperate, 
 between the selfish and the disinterested, 
 between the sordid and the honourable ; or 
 if you require a distinction more strictly 
 religious, between the profane and the de- 
 cent keeper of all the ordinances? Do not 
 the former do, what, in the matter of it, is 
 contrary to the law of God, and the latter 
 do, what, in the matter of it, is agreeable 
 to that law? Here then at once we witness 
 the two grand divisions of human society 
 in a state of real and visible exemplification 
 
II.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 23 
 
 — and what more is necessary than just to 
 employ the most direct and intelligible mo- 
 tives of conduct, for persuading men to 
 withdraw from one of these divisions, and 
 pass over to the other of them? Surely it 
 is just as we occupy the higher and the 
 lower places in the scale of character, that 
 we shall be found on the right and on the 
 left hand of t!ie judge on the day of reckon- 
 ing: And what more obvious way, then, 
 of preparing a people for eternity — than 
 just to point our urgency to the one object 
 of prevailing upon men to cross the line 
 of separation, to cease from tiie miquities 
 which abound on the one side of it, and to 
 put on the reformations which are practised 
 on the otlier side of it ? For this purpose, 
 what else is to be done than plainly to tell 
 the whole amount of the interest and obli- 
 gation which lies on the side of virtue, and 
 as plainly to tell of the ruin and the degrada- 
 tion both of character and of prospect which 
 lie on the side of vice — to press the accom- 
 plishments of a good life on the one hand, 
 and to denounce the falsehoods and the dis- 
 honesties, and the profligacies of a bad life 
 on the other, — in a word, to make our 
 hearers the good subjects of God, much in 
 the same way, as you would propose to 
 make them the good servants of their mas- 
 ter or tlie good subjects of their govern- 
 ment ; and thus by the simple and direct 
 enforcements of duty, to shun all the diffi- 
 culties of a scholastic tlieology. and to keep 
 clear of all its n)ysteriousness. 
 
 It is needless to say how much this pro- 
 cess is reversed by many a teacher of 
 Christianity. It is true that they hold out 
 most prominently the need of some great 
 transition — but it is a transition most mys- 
 teriously different from the act of crossing 
 that line of separation, to which v/e have 
 just been adverting. Without referring at 
 all in fact to any such line, do they come 
 forth from the very outset with one sweep- 
 ing denunciation of worthlessness and guilt, 
 which they carry round among all the va- 
 rieties of character, and by which they 
 affirm every individual of the human race, 
 to be an undone sinner in the sight of God. 
 Instead of bidding him look to other sin- 
 ers less deformed by blemishes, and more 
 .ch in moral accomplishments, than him- 
 self, and then attempt to recover his dis- 
 tance from the divine favour by the imita- 
 tion of them, they bid him think of the 
 awful amount of debt and of deficiency 
 that lies between the lawgiver in heaven, 
 and a whole world guilty before him. They 
 speak of a depravity so entire, and of an 
 alienation from God, so deep, and so uni- 
 versal, as positively to obliterate that line 
 of separation which is supposed to mark 
 off those, who, npon the degree of their 
 obedience, are rightful claimants to the 
 honours of eternity, from those, who, upon 
 
 the degree of their disobedience, are wretch- 
 ed outcasts of condemnation. They reduce 
 the men of all casts and of all characters, 
 to the same footing of worthlessness in the 
 sight of God ; and speak of the evil of tlie 
 human heart in such terms, as will sound 
 to many a mysterious exaggeration, and, 
 like the hearers of Kzekiel, will these not 
 be able to comprehend the argument of the 
 preacher, when he tells them, though in 
 the very language of the Bible, that they 
 are the heirs of wrath ; that none of them 
 is righteous, no not one; that all flesh have 
 corrupted their ways, and have fallen short 
 of the glory of God ; that the world at large 
 is a lost and a fallen world, and that the 
 natural inheritance of all who live in it, is 
 the inheritance of a temporal death, and a 
 ruined eternity. 
 
 When the preacher goes on in this strain, 
 those hearers whom the spirit has not con- 
 vinced of sin will be utterly at a loss to un- 
 derstand him, — nor are we to wonder, if 
 he seem to speak to them in a parable, 
 when he speaks of the disease, — that all the 
 darkness of a parable should still seem -to 
 hang over his demonstrations, when as a 
 faithful expounder of the revealed will and 
 counsel of God, he proceeds to tell them of 
 the remedy. For God hath not only made 
 known the fearful magnitude of his reckon- 
 ing against us, but he has prescribed, and 
 with that authority which only belongs to 
 him, the way of its settlement ; and that he 
 has told us all the works and all the efforts 
 of imrenewed nature are of no avail in 
 gaining us acceptance, and that he has laid 
 the burden of our atonement on him who 
 alone was able to bear it ; and he not onl}^ 
 invites, but he commands, and he beseeches 
 us to enter into peace and pardon on the 
 footing of that expiation which Christ hath 
 made, and of that righteousness which 
 Christ hath wrought out for us ; and he 
 further declares, that we have come into 
 the world with such a moral constitution, 
 as will not merely need to be repaired, but 
 as will need to be changed or made over 
 again, ere we be meet for the inheritance 
 of the saints; and still for this object does 
 he point our eyes to the great Mediator who 
 has undertaken, not merely for the forgive- 
 ness, but who has undertaken for the sancti- 
 fication of all who put their trust in him ; and 
 he announces that out of his fulness there 
 ever come forth supplies of strength for the 
 new obedience of new creatures in Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. Now, it is when the 
 preacher is unfolding this scheme of salva- 
 tion, — it is when he is practically applying 
 it to the conscience and the conduct of his 
 hearers, — it is when the terms of grace, and 
 faith, and sanctification, are pressed into 
 frequent employment for the work of these 
 very peculiar explanations, — it is when, in- 
 stead of illustrating his subject by those 
 
24 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 analogies of common life which might have 
 done for men of an iititaintcd Datiire, but 
 whicli will not do for tii(; mon of this cor- 
 rupt world, he faithfully unfolds liiat econo- 
 my of redemption which (»od hath actually 
 set up for the recovery of our degenerate 
 species, — it is tlien, that to a hearer still in 
 darkness, the whole argument sounds as 
 strangely and as obscurely, as if it were 
 conveyed to him in an unknown language, 
 — it is then, that the repulsion of his nature 
 to the t?uth as it is in Jesus, finds a willing 
 excuse in the utter mysteriousness of its 
 articles, and its terms ; and gladly does he 
 put away from him the unwelcome mes- 
 sage, witti the remark, that he wlio delivers 
 it, is a sp(;aker of parables, and there is no 
 comprehending liim. 
 
 It will readily occur as an observation 
 upon all that has been delivered, that by the 
 great majority of hearers, this imjjutation 
 of mysteriousness is never ])rt;ferred, — that 
 in fact, they are most habituated to this 
 style of preaching, — and that they recognise 
 the ver}' thing wiiich they value most, and 
 are best acquainted with, when they hear 
 a sermon replete with the doctrine, and 
 aboimding in the terms, and uttered in the 
 cadence of orthodoxy. Of this we are per- 
 fectly aware. The point to carry with the 
 great bulk of hearers is, not to conquer 
 their disgust at the form of sound words, 
 but to con(|uer their resistance to the power 
 of them; to alarm them by the considera- 
 tion, that the influence of the lesson is alto- 
 gether a distinct matter from the pleasant- 
 ness of the song, — that their ready and (h;- 
 lighted acquiescence in tlu! ])reaehing of the 
 faith, may consist with a total want of obe- 
 dience to the faith, — and (hat with all the 
 love they bear to the phraseology of the 
 gospel, and all their pn^fcirence for its minis- 
 ters, and all their attendance upon its sacra- 
 ments, the kingdom of God, however much 
 it may have; come to them in word, may 
 not at all have come to them in power. 
 This is a distinct error from th(( one we 
 have been combating, — a weed which grows 
 abundantly in another quarttir of the fi(!ld 
 altogetlu^r, — a p(!rversen(^ss of mind, more 
 deceitful than the other, and perhaps still 
 more unmanageable, and against which 
 the faithful minister has to set liimself 
 amongst that numerous class of professors, 
 who like to hear of the; faith, but never -ap- 
 ply a single practical test to the question, 
 Am I in the iaith? who like to hear of re- 
 generation, but never put the question. Am 
 I really regenerated? who like to heiirthat 
 without Christ they can do nothing, but 
 may bo enabled to do all things through 
 him strengthening them, but nevtn'enter into 
 the important personal in()uiry. Is he really 
 streni^tliening rne, and am I, by my actual 
 victory ovc r the world, and my actual pro- 
 gress in the accomplishments of personal 
 
 (Christianity, bearing evidence upon myself 
 that I have a real part and interest in these 
 things? 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the existence 
 of such a class, — and inider another text, 
 there could be no ditliculty in finding out a 
 spiritual application, by which to reach and 
 to reprove them. IJut the matter suggested 
 by the present text is, that if a minister of 
 the present day should preach as the Apos- 
 tles did before him, — if the great theme of 
 his ministrations be .lesus Christ, and him 
 crucified, — if the doctrine of the sermon be 
 a faitliful transcript of the doctrine of the 
 New Testament, — there is one class, we 
 have every warrant for believing, from 
 whom the word will not return unto him 
 void, — and there is another class who will 
 be the willing hearers, but not the obe- 
 dient doers of the word : but there is still a 
 third class, made up of men of cultivated 
 literature, and men of polished and respec- 
 table society, and men of a firm secular in- 
 telligence in all the ordinary matters of bu- 
 siness, who, at the same time, possessing 
 no sympathies whatever with the true spirit 
 and design of Christianity, are exceedingly 
 shut up, in all the avcmucs both of their 
 heart and understanding, against the pecu- 
 liar teaching of the gospel. Like the hearers 
 of Ezekiel, they feel an impression of mys- 
 teriousness. There is a certain want of 
 adjustm(!nt between the truth as it is in Je 
 sus, and the prevailing style of their con 
 (•e|)lions. All their views of human life, 
 and all the lessons they may have; gathered 
 from the schf)ol of civil or classical mo- 
 rality, and all their preferences for what 
 they count the clearness and the ration- 
 ality of legal preaching, and all the pre- 
 dilections they have gotten in its favour 
 from the most familiar analogies in human 
 sf)ciety, — all these, coupled with their utter 
 blindness to the magnitude of that guilt 
 which they have incurred under the judg- 
 ment of a spiritual law, enter as so many 
 elements of dislike in their hearts, towards 
 the whole tone and character of tlu; peculiar 
 doctrines of Christianity. And they go to 
 envelope the subject in siKdi a shroud of 
 mysticism to their eyes, that many of the 
 preachers of the gospel are, by them, resist- 
 ed on the same plea with the prophet of old, 
 to whom his contemptuous countrymen 
 meant to attach the ridicule and the igno- 
 miny of a proverb, when they said, — he is 
 a dealer in parables. 
 
 We mistake the matter, if we think that 
 th(! ofTence of the cross has yet ceased from 
 the land. We mistake it, if we think that 
 tlie persecution of contempt, a species of 
 p('rseeution more appalling to some minds 
 than even direct and personal violence, is 
 not still the appointed trial of all who would 
 live godi}', and of all who would expound 
 zealously and honestly the doctrine of 
 
II.] 
 
 DEPRAVIT\ OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 Christ Jesus our Lord. We utterly mis- 
 take it, if we thiuiv that Clirislianity is not 
 even to tliis very hour the same very peculiar 
 thing that it was in the days of the Apos- 
 tles, — that it does not as much signalize 
 and separate us from a world lying in wick- 
 edness, — that the reproach cast upon Paul, 
 that he was mad, because he was an intrepid 
 follower of Christ, is not still ready to be 
 preferred against every faithful teacher, and 
 every consistent disciple of the faith, — and 
 that, under the terms of methodism, and 
 fanaticism, and mysticism, there is not rea- 
 dy to be discharged upon them from the 
 thousand batteries of a hostile and unbe- 
 lieving world, as abundant a shower of in- 
 vective and contumely as in the first ages. 
 
 II. Now, if there be any hearers present 
 who feel that we have spoken to them, 
 when we spoke of the resistance which is 
 held out against peculiar Christianity, on 
 the ground of that mysieriousness in which 
 it appears to be concealed from all ordinary 
 discernment, — we should like to take our 
 leave of tliein at present with two observa- 
 tions. Wc ask them, in the first place, if 
 they have ever, to the satisfaction of their 
 own minds, disproved the Bible, — and if 
 not, we ask them how they can sit at ease, 
 should all the mystcriousness which they 
 charge upon Evangelical truth, and by 
 which they would attempt to justify their 
 contempt for it, be found to attach to the 
 very language, and to tli-e very doctrine 
 of God's own communication ? What if it 
 be indeed the truth of God ? What if it be 
 the very language of the offended lawgiver? 
 What if they be the only overtures of re- 
 conciliation, upon the acceptance of which 
 a sinner can come nigh unto him? Now he 
 actually does say that no man cometh unto 
 the Father but by the Son, — and that his 
 is the only name given under heaven 
 whereby men can be saved, — and that he 
 will be magnified only in the appointed 
 Mediator, — and that Christ is all in all, — 
 and that there is no other foundation on 
 which man can lay, and that he who be- 
 lieveth on him shall not be confounded. 
 
 He further speaks of our personal prepa- 
 ration f(tr heaven — and here, too, may his 
 utterance .sound mysteriously in your hear- 
 ing, as he tells that without holiness no man 
 can see God, — and that we are without 
 strength while we are without the Spirit to 
 make us holy — and that unless a man be 
 born again he shall not enter into the king- 
 dom of God, — and that he should wrestle 
 in prayer for the washing of regeneration 
 — and that he should watch for the Holy 
 Ghost witli all perseverance, — and that he 
 should aspire at being perfect through 
 Christ .strengthening him — and that he 
 .should, under the operation of tho.se great 
 provisions whicii are set up in the New 
 Testament for creating us anew unto good 
 
 Avorks, conform himself unto that doctrine 
 of grace by whicli he is brought to deny un- 
 godliness and worldly lusts, and to live so- 
 berly, rigiiteousiy, and godly in tlie present 
 evil world. We again ask them, if :dl this 
 be ollensive to their taste, and utterly re- 
 volting to their habits and inclinations, and 
 if they turn with disgust from the biller- 
 ness of such an application, and can i)eliold 
 no strength to constrain them in any such 
 arguments, and no elocjueucc to admire in 
 them. With what discernment truly is 
 your case taken up in this very Bible, 
 whose phraseology and whose doctrine are 
 so unpalatable to you, when it tells us of 
 the preaching of the cross being foolish- 
 ness, — but remember that it says it is fool- 
 ishness to those who perish : when it tells 
 of the natural man not receiving of the 
 things of the Spirit, — but remember tliat it 
 says, if ye have not the S])irit of God, ve 
 are none of his ; wiien it tells of the gospel 
 being hid, — but hid to them who are lost : 
 " In whom the God of this world hath 
 blinded the minds of those which believe 
 not, lest lie light of the glorious gospel of 
 Christ, who is the image of God, should 
 shine unto them." 
 
 vSecondly, let us assure the men, who at 
 this moment bid the stoutest defiance to the 
 message of the gospel — the men whose na- 
 tural taste appears to ofller an invincible 
 barrier against the reception of its truths, 
 the men who, upon the plea of mysierious- 
 ness, or the plea of fanaticism, or the plea 
 of excessive and unintelligible Deculiarity, 
 are most ready to repudiate the whole style 
 and doctrine of the New Testament, — let us 
 assure them that the time may yet come, 
 when they shall render to this very gospel 
 the most striking of all acknowledgments, 
 even by sending to the door of its most 
 faithful ministers, and humbly craving 
 from them their explanations and their 
 prayers. It indeed offers an affecting con- 
 trast to all the glory of earthly prospects, 
 and to all the vigour of confident and re- 
 joicing health, and to all the activity and 
 enterprize of business, when the man who 
 made the world his theatre, and felt his 
 mountain to stand strong on the fleeting 
 f(nmdation of its enjoyments and its con 
 cern.s, — when he comes to be bowed down 
 with infirmity, or receives from the (rouble 
 within, the solenm intimation that death is 
 now looking to him in good earnest: When 
 such a man takes him to the b^d of sick- 
 ness, and he knows it to be a sickness unto 
 death, — when, under all the weight of 
 brealhlessness and pain, he listens to the 
 man of God, as he points the way that 
 leadelh to eternity, — what, I would ask, is 
 the kind of gospel that is most fitted to 
 charm the sense of guilt and the anticipa- 
 tions of vengeance away from him ? . Sure 
 we are, that we never in these affecting 
 
26 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SEHM. 
 
 circumstances — through which you have all 
 to pass — we never saw the man who could 
 maintain a stabilitj', and a hope, from the 
 sense of his own righteousness ; but who, 
 if leaning on the righteousness of Christ, 
 could mix a peace and an elevation with 
 his severest agonies. We never saw the 
 expiring mortal who could look with an un- 
 daunted eye on God as his lawgiver; but 
 often has all its languor been hghted up 
 with joy at the name of Christ as his Sa- 
 viour. We never saw the dying acquaint- 
 ance, who upon the retrospect of his virtues 
 and of his doings, could prop the tranquilli- 
 ty of his spirit on the expectation of a legal 
 reward. O no ! this is not the element 
 which sustains the tranquillity of death- 
 beds. It is the hope of forgiveness. It is a 
 believing sense of the efficacy of the atone- 
 ment. It is the prayer of faith, offered up 
 in the name of him who is the captain of 
 all our salvation. It is a dependence on that 
 power which can alone impart a meetness 
 for the inheritance of the saints, and present 
 the spirit holy, and unreproveable, and un- 
 blamable, in the s-ght of God, 
 
 Now, what we have to urge is. that if these 
 be the topics, which, on the last half hour 
 of your life, are the only ones that will 
 possess, in your judgment, any value or 
 
 substantial importance, w^hy put them away 
 from you now ? You will recur to them 
 then; and for what ? that you may get the 
 forgiveness of j^our sins. But there is a 
 something else you must get, ere you can 
 obtain an entrance into peace or glory. 
 You must get the renovation of that nature, 
 which is so deeply tainted at this moment 
 with the guilt of ingratitude and forgetful- 
 ness towards God. This must be gone 
 through ere you die ; and say if a change so 
 mighty should be wantonly postponed to 
 the hour of dying ? — when all your refusals 
 of the gospel have hardened and darkened 
 the mind against it; when a demonstration 
 of the Spirit then, is surely not to be counted 
 on, as the return that you will experience for 
 resisting all his intimations now; when the 
 effects of the alienation of a whole life, both 
 in extinguishing the light of your con- 
 science, and in riveting your distaste for 
 holiness, will be accumulated into such a 
 barrier in the way of your return to God, 
 as stamps upon death-bed conversions, a 
 grievous unlikelihood, and should give 
 an imperious force to the call of " To- 
 day," — " while it is called to-day, harden 
 not your hearts, seeing that now is your 
 accepted time, and now is your day of 
 salvation." 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 The Preparation necessary for Understanding the Mysteries of the Gospel. 
 
 ' He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of 
 heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more 
 abundance; but whosoever haih not, from him shall be taken even that he hath." — Matthew xiii. 11, 12. 
 
 It is of importance to mark the principle 
 of distribution on which it is given to some 
 to know the mysteries of the kingdom of 
 heaven, and it is not given to others. Both 
 may at the outset be equally destitute of a 
 clear understanding of these mysteries. But 
 the former may have what the latter have 
 not. AVith the former there may be a de- 
 sire for explanation ; with the latter there 
 may be no such desire. The former may, 
 in the earnest prosecution of this desire, be 
 praying earnestly, and reading diligently, 
 and striving laboriously, to do all that they 
 know to be the will of God. "With the latter, 
 there may be neither the habit of prayer, 
 nor the habit of inquiry, nor the habit of 
 obedience. To the one class will be given 
 what they har\e not. From the other class 
 what they have shall be taken away. We 
 have already attempted to excite in the latter 
 class a respectful attention to the truths of 
 the gospel, and shall now confine ourselves 
 chiefly to the object of encouraging and di- 
 
 recting those who feel the mystericmsness of 
 these truths, and long for light ta arise in 
 the midst of it ; — shall address ourselves to 
 those who have an honest anxiety after 
 that truth, which is unto us salvation, but 
 find the way to it beset with many doubts 
 and many perplexities, — to those who are 
 impressed with a general convicjion on 
 the side of Scripture, but in whosa eyes a 
 darkness impenetrable still broods .over its 
 pages, — to these who are haunted by a 
 sense of the imperious necessity of i^ehgion, 
 and at the same time cannot escape from 
 the impression, that if it is any wher^e to be 
 found, it is to be found within the records 
 of the Old and New Testament, but from 
 whose heart in the reading of these records 
 the veil still remains untaken av.-ay. 
 
 In the further prosecution of this dis- 
 course, lei ns attempt, in the first place, to 
 explain Avhat it is that we ought to have, in 
 order to attain an imderstanding of the mys- 
 teries of the gospel; and, m the second 
 
ni.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 27 
 
 place, how it is that in many cases these 
 mysteries are evolved upon the mind in a 
 clear and convincing manifestation. 
 
 I. First, then, we ought to have an honest 
 desire after light ; and if we have this desire, 
 it will not remain unproductive. There is 
 a connexion repeatedly announced to us in 
 Scripture between desire upon this subject, 
 and its accomplishment. He that willeth 
 to do the will of God shall know of my 
 doctrine. He who hungereth and thirsteth 
 shall be filled. He who lacketh wisdom and 
 is desirous of obtaining it, let him vent his 
 desire in prayer, — and if it be the prayer of 
 confidence in God, his desire shall be given 
 him. There are thousands to whom the 
 Bible is a sealed book, and who are satis- 
 fied that it should remain so, who share in 
 tjie impetuous contempt of the Pharisees 
 against a doctrine to which they are alto- 
 gether blind, who have no understanding of 
 the matter, and no wish that it should be 
 otherwise, — and unto them it will not be 
 given to know the mysteries of the king- 
 dom of heaven. They have not, and from 
 them therefore shall be taken away even 
 that which they have. There are others, 
 again, who have an ardent and unquencha- 
 ble thirst after the mysteries of the gospel ; 
 who, like the prophet in the apocalypse, 
 weep much because the book is not opened 
 to them ; who complain of darkness, like 
 the Apostles of old when they expostulated 
 with their Teacher because he spoke in 
 parables, and, like them, who go to him with 
 their requests for an explanation. These 
 shall find that what they cannot do for 
 themselves, the Lion of the tribe of Judah 
 will do for them. He will prevail to open 
 the book, and to loose the seals thereof. 
 There is something they already have, 
 even an honest wish to be illuminated, and 
 to this more will be given. They are awake 
 to the disirableness, they are awake to the 
 necessity of a revelation, which they have 
 not yet gotten, — and to them belongs the 
 promise of. Awake, O sinner, and Christ 
 shall give thee light. 
 
 Secondly, We ought to have a habit of 
 prayer conjoined with a habit of inquiry; 
 and to this more will be given. We have 
 already adverted to the circumstance, that 
 it is in the Bible, and not out of the Bible, 
 where this light is to be met with. It is by 
 the Si)irit of God, shining upon the word 
 of God, that his truth is reflected with 
 clearness upon the soul. It is by his opera- 
 tion that the characters of this book are 
 made to stand as visibly out to the eye of 
 the understanding, as they do to the eye of 
 the body ; and therefore it is evident that it 
 IS not in the act of looking away from the 
 written revelation, but in the act of looking 
 towards it, that the wished-for illumination 
 will at length come into the mind of an 
 mquirer. Let your present condition then 
 
 be that of a darkness as helpless and as 
 unattainable as can possiblj' be imagined, 
 there still remains an obvious and practica- 
 ble direction which you can be doing with 
 in the mean time. You can persevere in 
 the exercise of reading your Bible. 1 here 
 you are at the plac(i of meeting etween 
 the Spirit of God and your own spirit. 
 You may have to wait, as if at the pool of 
 Siloam ; but the many calls of the Bible to 
 wait upon God, to wait upon him with pa- 
 tience, to wait and to be of good courage, all 
 prove that this waiting is a frequent and 
 a familiar part of that process by which a 
 sinner finds his way out of darkness into 
 the marvellous light of the gospel. 
 
 And we have also adverted already, 
 though in a very general way, to the dif- 
 ference in point of result between the active 
 inquiries of a man who looks forward to 
 the acquisition of saving tnuh as the natural 
 and necessary termination of his inquiries, 
 and of a man who mingles with every per- 
 sonal attempt after this object, the exercise 
 of prayer, and a reverential sense of his 
 dependence on God. The latter is just as 
 active, and just as inquisitive as the former. 
 The difference between them does not lie 
 in the one putting forth diligence without 
 a feeling of dependence, and the other feel- 
 ing dependence, without a putting forth of 
 diligence. He who is in the right path to- 
 wards the attainment of light, combines 
 both these properties. 
 
 It is through the avenues of a desirous 
 heart and of an exercised understanding, 
 and of sustained attention, and of faculties 
 in quest of truth, and labouring after the 
 possession of it, that God sends into the 
 mind his promised manifestations. All this 
 exercise on the one hand, without such an 
 acknowledgement of him as leads to prayer, 
 will be productive of nothing in the way 
 of spiritual discernment. And prayer, with- 
 out this exercise, is the mere form and 
 mockery of an acknowledgement. He who 
 calls upon us to hearken diligently, when 
 he addresses us by a living voice, does in 
 effect call upon us to read and to ponder 
 diligently wlien he addresses us by a writ- 
 ten message. To ask truth of God, while 
 we neglect to do for this object what he 
 bids us, is in fact not to recognize God, but 
 to insult him. It is to hold out the appear- 
 ance of presenting ourselves before him, 
 while we are not doing it at the place of 
 meeting, which he has assigned for us. It 
 is to address an imaginary Being, whom 
 we have mvested with a character of our 
 own conception, and not the Being who 
 bids us search his Scriptures, and incline 
 unto his testimonies, and stir ourselves up 
 that we may lay hold of him. Such prayer 
 is utterance, and nothing more. It wants 
 all the substantial characters of prayer. It 
 may amount to the seeking of those who 
 
28 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 shall not be able to enter the strait gate. It 
 falls short of the striving of those who take 
 the kingdom of heaven by force, and of 
 whom that kingdom suffereth violence. 
 
 He who without prayer looks confidenth' 
 forward to success as the fruit of his own 
 investigations, is not walking humbly with 
 God. If he were humble he would pray. 
 But whether is he the more humble, who 
 joins with a habit of prayer all those ac- 
 companying circumstances which God hath 
 prescribed, or he who, in neglect of these 
 circumstances, ventures himself into his 
 presence in the language of supplication ? 
 There may be the show of humility in con- 
 fiding the whole cause of our spiritual and 
 saving illumination to the habit of praying 
 for it to God. But if God himself tells us, 
 that we must read, and seek, and meditate, 
 then it is no longer humility to keep by the 
 solitary exercise of praying. It is, in fact, 
 keeping pertinaciously by our own way. 
 heedless of his will and his way altogether. 
 It is approaching God in the pride of our 
 own understanding. It is detaching from 
 the whole work of seeing after him some 
 of those component parts which he himself 
 hath recommended. In the very act of 
 makmg pra^-er stand singly out as alone 
 instrument of success, we are in fact draw- 
 ing the life and the spirit out of prayer 
 itself ; and causing it to wither into a thing 
 of no power and no significancy in the sight 
 of God. It is not the prayer of acknow- 
 ledgement, unless it comes from him who 
 acknowledges the will of God in other things 
 as well as in prayer. It is not the prayer 
 of submission unless it comes from the heart 
 of a man who manifests a principle of sub- 
 mission in all things. 
 
 Thirdly, "We ought to do all that we 
 know to be God's will ; and to this habit of 
 humble earnest desirous reformation, more 
 will be given. 
 
 We trust that what has been said will 
 prepare you for the reception of another 
 advice besides that of reading or praying 
 for the attainment of that manifestation 
 which you are in quest of, — and that is. 
 doing. There is an alarm raised in many 
 a heart at the very suggestion of doing for 
 an inquirer, lest he should be misled as to 
 the ground of his justification ; lest among 
 the multitude or the activity of his works, 
 he should miss the truth, that a man is ac- 
 cepted, not through the works of the law, 
 but by faith in Jesus Christ ; lest by every 
 one performance of duty, he should just be 
 adding another stone to the fabric of a de- 
 lusive confidence, and presumptuously tr}- 
 to force his own way to heaven, without 
 the recognition of the gospel or any of its 
 peculiarities. Now, doing stands precisely 
 in the same relation to praj'er that reading 
 does. Without the one or the other it is 
 the pra3-er either of presumption or hypo- 
 
 crisy. If he both read and pray, it is far 
 more likely that he will be brought unto the 
 condition of a man being justified through 
 faith in Christ, than that he will rest his 
 hopes before God in the mere exercise of 
 reading. If he both do and pray, it is far 
 more likely that lie will come to be esta- 
 blished in the righteousness of Christ, as 
 the foundation of all his trust, than that he 
 will rest upon his own righteousness. For 
 a man to give up sin at the outset, is just to 
 do what God wills him at the out.set. For a 
 man at the commencement of his inquiries, 
 to be strenuous in the relinquishment of all 
 that he knows to be evil, is just to enter on 
 the path of approach towards Christ, in the 
 very way that Christ desires him. He who 
 cometh unto me must forsake all. For a 
 man to put forth an immediate hand to the 
 doing of the commandments, while he is 
 groping his way towards a firm basis on 
 which he might rear his security before 
 God, is not to deviate or diverge from the 
 Saviour. He may do it with an e}-e of most 
 intense earnestness towards the Saviour, — 
 and while the artificial interpreter of Christ's 
 doctrine holds him to be wrong, Christ him- 
 self may recognize him to be one of those 
 who keep his sayings, and to whom there- 
 fore he stands pledged to manifest himself 
 The man in fact by strenuously doing, is 
 just the more significantly and the more 
 energetically praying. Ke is adding one in- 
 gredient to the business of seeking, without 
 which the other ingredient would be in 
 God's sight an abomination. He is strug- 
 gling against all regard to iniquity in his 
 heart, seeing that if he have this regard God 
 will not hear him. To say, that it is danger- 
 ous to tell a man in these circumstances to 
 do, lest he rest in his doings, and fall short 
 of the Saviour, is to say, that it Avould be 
 dangerous to place a man on the road to his 
 wished-for home, lest, when he has got upon 
 the road,heshould stand still and be satisfied. 
 The more, in foct, that the man's conscience 
 is exercised and enlightened (and what more 
 fitted than wilful sin to deafen the voice of 
 conscience altogether ?) the less will it let 
 him alone, and the more will it urge him 
 onward to that righteousness which is the 
 onh' one commensurate to God's law, and 
 in which alone the holy and inflexible God 
 can look upon him with complacency. Let 
 him humbly betake himself, then, to the 
 prescribed path of reading, and prayer, and 
 obvious reformation. — and let us see if there 
 do not evolve upon his mind, in the prosecu- 
 tion of it, the worthlessness of all that man 
 can do for his meritorious acceptance with 
 the Lawgiver — and the deep ungodliness 
 of character which adheres to him — and 
 the suitableness of Christ's atonement to all 
 his felt necessities, and all his moral aspi- 
 rations — and the need in which he stands 
 of a regenerating influence; to make him a 
 
ni.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 29 
 
 willing and a spiritual subject of God. Let 
 us see whether, though the light which he 
 at length receives be marvellous, the way is 
 not plain which leads to it; and whether 
 though nature be compassed about with a 
 darkness which no power of nature can 
 dissipate, — there is not a clear and obvious 
 procedure, by the steps of which the most 
 alienated of her children may be carried on- 
 wards to all the manifestation of the king- 
 dom of grace, and to the discernment of all 
 its mysteries. 
 
 Though to the natural eye, then, the doc- 
 trine of Christ be not plain, the way is plain 
 by which we arrive at it. Though, ere we 
 see the things of Christ, the Spirit must 
 take of them and show them unto us, — yet 
 this Spirit deals out such admonitions to all, 
 that, if we follow them, he will not cease to 
 enlarge, and to extend his teaching, till we 
 have obtained a saving illumination. He is 
 given to those who obey him. He abandons 
 those who resist him. AVhen conscience 
 tells us to read, and to pray, and to reform, 
 it is he who is prompting this faculty. It is 
 he who is sending through this organ, the 
 whispers of his own voice to the ear of the 
 inner man. If we go along with the move- 
 ment, he will follow it up by other move- 
 ments. He will visit him who is the willing 
 subject of his first influences by higher de- 
 monstrations. He will carry forward his 
 own work in the heart of that man, who, 
 while acting upon the suggestions of his 
 own moral sense, is in fact acting in con- 
 formity to the warnings of this kind and 
 faithful monitor. So that the Holy Spirit 
 will connect his very first impulses on the 
 mind of that inquirer, who, under the reign 
 of earnestness, has set himself to read his 
 Bible, and to knock with importunity at the 
 door of heaven, and to forsuke the evil of 
 his v/ays, and to turn him to the practice 
 of all that he knows to be right, — the Spirit 
 will connect these incipient measures of a 
 seeker after Zion, with the acquirement of 
 wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of 
 Christ. 
 
 Let it not be said, then, that because the 
 doctrine of Christ is shrouded m mystery 
 to the general eye of the world, it is such a 
 mystery as renders it inaccessible to the 
 men of the world. Even to them does the 
 trumpet of invitation blow a certain sound. 
 They may not yet see the arcana of the 
 temple, but they may see the road which 
 leads to the temple. If they are never to 
 obtain admission there, it is not because 
 they cannot, but because they will not, 
 come to it. "Ye will not come to me," 
 says the Saviour, "that ye might have life," 
 Reading, and prayer, and reformation, these 
 are all obvious things ; and it is the neglect 
 of these obvious things which involves them 
 in the guilt and the ruin of those who ne- 
 glect the great salvation. This salvation is 
 
 to be found of those who seek after it. The 
 knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, 
 which is life everlasting, is a knowledge 
 open and acquirable to all. And, on the 
 day of judgment, there will not be found a 
 single instance of a man condemned be- 
 cause of unbelief, who sought to the utter- 
 most of his opportunities; and evinced the 
 earnestness of his desire after peace with 
 God, b}^ doing all that he might have done, 
 and by being all that he might have been. 
 
 Be assured, then, that it will be for want 
 of seeking, if you do not find. It will 
 be for want of learning, if you are not 
 taught. It will be for want of obedience 
 to the movements of your own conscience, 
 if the Holy Ghost, who prompts and who 
 stimulates the conscience to all its move- 
 ments, be not poured upon you, in one large 
 and convincing manifestation. It may still 
 be the day of small things with you — a day 
 despised by the accomplished adepts of a 
 systematic and articled theologJ^ But God 
 will not despise it. He will not leave your 
 longings for ever unsatisfied. He will not 
 keep you standing always at the threshold 
 of vain desires and abortive endeavours. 
 That faith, which is the gift of God, you 
 have already attained, in a degree, if you 
 have obtained a general conviction of the 
 importance and the reality of the whole 
 matter. He will increase that faith. Act 
 up to the light that you have gotten by 
 reading earnestly, and praying importu- 
 nately, and striving laboriously, — and to 
 you more will be given. You will at length 
 obtain a clear and satisfying impression 
 of the things of God, and the things of 
 salvation. Christ will be recognised in all 
 his power and in all his preciousness. You 
 will know what it is to be established upon 
 him. The natural legality of your hearts 
 will give way to the pure doctrine of accep- 
 tance with God, through faith in the blood 
 of a crucified Saviour. The sanctifying in- 
 fluence of such a fi\ith will not merely be 
 talked of in word, but be experienced in 
 power; and you will evince that you are 
 God's workmanship in Christ Jesus, by 
 your abounding in all those fruits of righ- 
 teousness which are through him, to the 
 praise and glory of the Father. 
 
 H. We shall nov/ attempt to explain, 
 how it is that the mysteries of the gospel 
 are, in many cases, evolved upon the 
 mind in a clear and convincing manifesta- 
 tion. 
 
 And here let it be distinctly understood, 
 that the way in many cases may be very 
 far from the way in ail cases. The expe- 
 rience of converts is exceedingly various, — 
 nor do we know a more frequent, and at 
 the same time a more groundless cause of 
 anxiety, than that by which the mind of an 
 inquirer is often harassed, when he at- 
 tempts to realize the very process bv viftvch 
 
30 
 
 PEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 another has been called out of darkness to 
 the marvellous light of the gospel. 
 
 Referring, then, to those grounds of mys- 
 terioiisness which we have already specified 
 in a former discourse, — God may so mani- 
 fest himself to the mind of an inquirer, as 
 to convince him, that all those analogies of 
 common life which are taken from the re- 
 lation of a servant to his master, or of a 
 son to his father, or of a subject to his sove- 
 reign, utterly fail in the case of man, as he 
 is by Jiature, in relation to his God. A ser- 
 vant may discharge all his obligations ; a 
 son may acquit himself of all his duties, or 
 may, with his occasional failures, and his 
 occasional chastisements, still keep his 
 place in the instinctive affection of his pa- 
 rents ; and a subject may persevere in un- 
 seduced loyalty to the earthly government 
 under vidiich he lives. But the glaring and 
 the demonstrable fact with regard to man, 
 viewed as a creature, is, that the habit of 
 his heart is one continued habit of dislike 
 and resistance to the Creator who gave him 
 birth. 
 
 The earthly master may have all those 
 services rendered to which he has a right, 
 and so. be satisfied. The earthly father may 
 have all the devotedness, and all the attach- 
 ment from his family, which he can desire, 
 and so be satisfied. The earthly sovereign 
 may have all that allegiance from a loyal 
 subject, who pays his taxes, and never 
 transgresses his laws, which he expects or 
 cares for, and so be satisfied. But go up- 
 ward from them to the God who made us, — 
 to the God who keeps us, — to the God in 
 whom we live, and move, and have om- 
 being, — to the God whose care and whose 
 presence are ever surrounding us, who, 
 from morning to night, and from night 
 to morning, watches over us, and tends us 
 while we sleep, and guides us in our waking 
 moments, and follows us to the business of 
 the world, and brings us back in safety to 
 our homes, and never for a single instant 
 of time withdraws from us the superintend- 
 ence of an eye that never slumbers, and of 
 a hand that is never weary. Now, all we 
 require is a fair estimate of the claims of 
 such a God. Does he ask too much, when 
 he asks the affections of a heart that receives 
 its every beat, and its every movement, 
 from the impulse of his power ? Does he 
 ask too much, when he asks the devoted- 
 ness of a life, which owes its every hour 
 and its every moment to him, whose right 
 iiand preserves us continually ? Has he 
 no right to complain, when he knocks at the 
 door of our hearts, and trying to possess 
 himself of the love and the confidence of 
 his own creatures, he finds that all their 
 thoughts, and all their pursuits, and all 
 likings, are utterly away from him? Is 
 there no truth, and no justice in the charge 
 which he prefers against us, — when, sur- 
 
 rounded as we are by the gifts of nature 
 and of providence, all of which are his, the 
 giver is meanwhile forgotten, and, amid the 
 enjoyments of his bounty, we live without 
 him in the world. If it indeed be true, that 
 it is his sun which lights us on our path, and 
 his earth on which we tread so firmly, and 
 his air which circulates a freshness around 
 our dwellings, and his rain which produces 
 all the luxuriance that is spread around u^, 
 and drops upon every field the smiling pro- 
 mise of abundance for all the wants of his 
 dependent children, — if all this be true, can 
 it at the same time be right, that this all- 
 pro^'iding God should have so little a place 
 in our remembrance ? that the whole man 
 should be otherwise engaged than with a 
 sense of him, and the habitual exercise of 
 acknowledgment to him ? that in fact the 
 full play of his regards should be expended 
 on the things which are formed, and through 
 the whole system of his conduct and his 
 affairs, there should be so utter a neglect of 
 him who formed them ? Surely if this be 
 the true description of man, and the cha- 
 racter of his heart in reference to God, then 
 it is a case of too peculiar a nature to he 
 illustrated by any of the analogies of human 
 society. It must be taken up on its own 
 grounds; and should the injured and of- 
 fended Lawgiver offer to make it the subject 
 of any communication, it is our part hum- 
 bly to listen and implicitly to follow it. 
 
 And here it is granted, that amongst the 
 men who are utter strangers to this com- 
 munication, you meet with the better and 
 the worse ; and that there is an obvious 
 line of distinction which marks off the base 
 and the Avorthless amongst them, from those 
 of them who are the valuable and the ac- 
 complished members of society. And yet 
 do we aver that one may step over that line 
 and not be nearer than he was to God, — 
 that, between the men on either side of it, 
 and Him who created them, there lies an 
 untrodden gulf of separation, — that, with 
 all the justice which rules their transac- 
 tions, and all the honour which animates 
 their bosoms, and all the compassion which 
 warms their hearts, and streams forth 
 either in tears of pity, or in acts of kind- 
 ness, upon the miserable, — with all these 
 virtues which they do have, and which 
 serve both to bless and to adorn the condi- 
 tion of humanity, there is one virtue, which, 
 prior to the reception and the influence of 
 the gospel of Christ, they most assuredly 
 do not have, — they are utterly devoid of 
 godliness. They have no desire, and no 
 inclinaiion towards God. There may be 
 the dread of him, and the occasional re- 
 membrance of him ; but there is no affec- 
 tion for him. 
 
 This is the charge which we carry round 
 amongst all the sons and daughters of 
 Adam, who have not submitted themselves 
 
ni.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 31 
 
 to the only name that is given under hea- 
 ven whereby men can be saved. We are 
 not denying that the persons of some of 
 them are dignified by the more respectable 
 attributes of character ; and that, from the 
 persons of others of them, there are beau- 
 teously reflected the more amiable and en- 
 dearing attributes of character. But we 
 affirm, that with all these random varieties 
 of moral exhibition which are to be found — 
 the principle of loyalty to God has lost 
 the hold of a presiding influence over all 
 the children of our degraded and undone 
 nature. We ask you to collect all the scat- 
 tered remnants of what is great, and of 
 what is graceful in accomplishments that 
 may have survived the fall of our first pa- 
 rents ; and we pronounce, of the whole as- 
 semblage, that they go not to alleviate, by 
 one iota, the burden of that controversy 
 which lies between God and their posterity, 
 — that throughout all the ranks and diver- 
 sities of character which prevail in the 
 world, there is one pervading affection of 
 enmity to him ; that the man of talents for- 
 gets that he has nothing which he did not 
 receive, and so, courting by some lofty en- 
 terprize of mind, the gaze of this world's 
 admiration, he renounces his God, and 
 makes an idol of his fame, — that the man 
 of ambition feels not how subordinate he is 
 to the might and the majesty of his Cre- 
 ator, but turning away all his reverence 
 from him, falls down to the idol of power, — 
 that the man of avarice withdraws all his 
 trust from the living God, and, embarking 
 all his desire in the pursuit of riches, and 
 all his security in the possession of them, 
 he makes an idol of wealth, — that, descend- 
 ing from these to the average and the every- 
 day members of our world's population, we 
 see each walking after the counsel of his 
 own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes, 
 with every wish directed to the objects of 
 time, and every hope bounded by its anti- 
 cipations : and, amid all the love they bear 
 to their families, and all the diligence they 
 give to their business, and all the homage 
 of praise and attachment they obtain from 
 their friends, are they so surrounded by the 
 influences of what is seen and what is sen- 
 sible, that the invisible God is scarcely ever 
 bought of, and his character not at all 
 dwelt on with delight, and his will never 
 admitted to an habitual and a practical as- 
 cendency over their conduct, so as to make 
 it true of all, and of every one of us, that 
 there is none who understandeth, and none 
 who seeketh after God. 
 
 Now, if a man do not see this case made 
 out against himself in all its enormity, he 
 will feel that the man who talks of it, and 
 who proposes the gospel application to it, 
 talketh mysteriously. If the Spirit have 
 not convinced him of sin, and he have 
 not learned to submit his character to 
 
 the lofty standard of a law which offers 
 to subordinate to the will of God, not 
 merely the whole habit of his outward his- 
 tory, but also the whole habit of his inward 
 affections, both the disease and the remedy 
 are alike unknown to him. His character 
 may be fair and respectable in the eyes of 
 men ; but it will not carry upon it one 
 feature of that spirituality and holiness, and 
 relish for those exercises that have God for 
 their immediate object, which assimilate 
 men to angels, and make them meet for 
 the joys of eternity. His morality will be 
 the morality of life, and his virtues will be 
 the virtues of the world ; and all the mys- 
 tery of a parable, or of a dark saying will 
 appear to hang over the terms and the ex- 
 planations of that gospel, against the light of 
 which, the god of this world blindeth the 
 minds of those who believe not. 
 
 Letiis therefore reflect that the principle 
 on which the peculiarities of the gospel look 
 so m5^sterious, is just the feeling which na- 
 ture has of its own suftlciency; and, that 
 you may renounce this delusive feehng 
 altogether, we ask you to think, how totally 
 destitute you are of that whic God chiefly 
 requires of you. He requires j'our heart, and 
 we venture to say of every man amongst you, 
 who has heretofore lived in neglect of the 
 great salvation, that his heart, with all its ob- 
 jects and affections, is away from God, — that 
 it is not a sense of obligation to him which 
 forms the habitual and the presiding in- 
 fluence of its movements, — that therefore 
 every day and every hour of your history 
 in the world, accumulates upon j-ou the 
 guilt of a disobedience of a far deeper and 
 more oflfensive character than even the 
 disobedience of your more notorious and 
 external violations. There is ever with 
 you, lying folded in the recesses of your 
 bosom, and persuading the whole system 
 both of your desires and your doings, that 
 which gives to sin all its turpitude, and all 
 its moral hideousness in the sight of God. 
 There is a rooted preference of the creature 
 to the Creator. There is a full desire 
 after the gift, and a listless ingratitude to- 
 wards the giver. There is an utter devoted- 
 ness, in one shape or other, to the world 
 that is to be burnt up, — and an utter forget- 
 fulness, amid all your forms, and all your 
 decencies, of him who endureth for ever. 
 There is that universal attribute of the car- 
 nal mind — enmity against God; and we 
 nffirm that, with this distaste in your hearts 
 towards him, you, on every principle of a 
 spiritual and intelligent morality, are as 
 chargeable with rebellion against your 
 Maker, as if some apostate angel had been 
 your champion, and you warred with God, 
 under the waving standards of defiance. 
 It was to clear away the guilt of this mon- 
 strous iniquity that Christ died. It was to 
 make it possible for God, with his truth 
 
32 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 imviolated, and his holiness untarnished, 
 and all the high attributes of his eternal and 
 unchangeable nature unimpaired, to hold 
 out forgiveness to the world, — that propi- 
 tiation was made through the blood of his 
 own son, even that God might be just, 
 while the justifier of them who believe in 
 .Tesus. It is to make it possible for man to 
 love the Being whom nature taught him to 
 hate and to fear, that God now lifts, from 
 his mercy-seat, a voice of the most beseech- 
 ing tenderness, and smiles upon the world 
 as God in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
 himself, and not imputing unto them their 
 trespasses. It was utterly to shift the moral 
 constitution of our minds, — an achievement 
 beyond any power of humanity, — that the 
 Saviour, after he d led and rose again, obtained 
 the promise of the Father, even that Spirit, 
 througii whom alone the fixed and radical 
 disease of nature can be done away. And 
 thus, by the ministration of the baptism of 
 the Holy Ghost, does he undertake not only 
 to improve but to change us, — not only to 
 repair but to re-make us, — not only to 
 amend our evil works, but to create us 
 
 anew unto good works, that we may be the 
 workmanship of God in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord. These are the leading and essential 
 peculiarities of the New Testament. This 
 is the truth of Christ ; though to the gene- 
 ral mind of the world it is the trutla of 
 Christ in a mystery. These are the para- 
 bles which the commissioned messengers 
 of grace are to deal out to the sinful children 
 of Adam, — and dark as they may appear, 
 or disgusting as they may sound in the ears 
 of those who think that they are rich, and 
 have need of nothing, they are the very ar- 
 'icles upon which hope is made to beam 
 on the heart of a converted siimer, — and 
 peace is restored to him, — and acceptance 
 with God is secured by the terms of an un- 
 alterable covenant, — and the only effec- 
 tive instruments of a vital and substantial 
 reformation are provided ; so that he who 
 before was dead in trespasses and sins is 
 quickened together witii Christ, and made 
 alive unto God, and renewed again after 
 his image, and enabled to make constant 
 progress in all the graces of a holy and 
 spiritual obedience. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 An Estimate of the Morality that is without Godliness. 
 
 If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean : Yet shalt thou plunge me in the 
 ditfh, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that 1 should answer him, 
 and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his 
 hand upon us both." — Job is. 30 — 33. 
 
 To the people of every Christian coun- 
 try the doctrine of a Mediator between God 
 and man is familiarized by long possession ; 
 though to many of them it be nothing more 
 than the Himiliarity of a name recognized 
 as a well-known sound by the ear, without 
 sending one fruitful or substantial thought 
 into the understanding. For, let it be ob- 
 served, that the listless acquiescence of the 
 mind in a doctrine, to the statement or to 
 the explanation of which it has been long 
 habituated, is a very different thing from 
 the actual hold which the mind takes of the 
 doctrine, — insomuch that it is very possible 
 for a man to be a lover of orthodoxy, and 
 to sit with complacency under its mini-sters, 
 and to be revolted by the heresies of those 
 who would either darken or deny any of 
 its articles, — and, in a word, to be most te- 
 nacious in his preference for that form of 
 words to wlfich he has been accustomed ; 
 while to the meaning of the words them- 
 selves, the whole man is in a state of entire 
 dormancy ; and delighted though he really 
 be bv the utterance of the truth, exhibits 
 not in his person, or in his history, one 
 
 evidence of that practical ascendency which 
 Christian truth is sure to exert over the 
 heart and the habits of every genuine be- 
 liever. 
 
 In the midst oi all that dimness, and all 
 this indolence about the realities of salva- 
 tion, it is refreshing to view the workings 
 of a mind that is in earnest ; and of a mind 
 too, which, instead of being mechanically 
 carried forward in the track of a prescribed 
 or authoritative orthodoxy, is prompted to 
 all its aspirations by a deep feeling of guilt, 
 and of necessity. Such we conceive to hav 
 been the mind of Job, to whom the doc- 
 trine of a Redeemer had not been explicitly 
 unfolded, but who seems at times to have 
 been favoured with a prophetic glimpse of 
 him through the light of a dim and distant 
 futurity. The state of his body, covered as 
 it was with disease, makes him an object 
 of sympathy. But there is a still deeper 
 and more attractive sympathy excited by 
 the state of his soul, labouring under the 
 visitation of a hand that was too heavy for 
 him ; called out to combat with God, and 
 struggling to maintain it ; at one time, 
 
IV.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 tempted to measure the justice of his cause 
 with tlie righteousaess of Heaven's dis- 
 pensations ; "at another, closing his com- 
 plaint with the murmurs of a despairing ac- 
 quiescence ; and at length brought, through 
 ail the varieties of an exercised and agitated 
 spirit, to submit himself to God, and to re- 
 pent in dust and in ashes. 
 
 Tliere is a darkness in the book of .Tob. 
 He, at one time, under the soreness of his 
 calamity, gives way to impatience ; and, at 
 another, he seems to recall the hasty utter- 
 ance of his more distempered moments. 
 He, in one place, fills his mouth with argu- 
 ments; and, in another, he appears willing 
 to surrender them all, and to decline the 
 unequal struggle of man contending with 
 his Maker. He is evidently oppressed 
 throughout by a feeling of want, without 
 the full understanding of an adequate or an 
 appropriate remedy. Now, it does gi\e a 
 higher sense of the value of this remedy, 
 when we are made to witness the unsatis- 
 fied 1 ingings of one who lived in a dark and 
 early period of the world, — when we hear 
 him telling, as he does in these verses, 
 where the soreness lies, and obscurely 
 guessing at the ministration that is suited 
 to it, — nor do we know a single passage of 
 the Bible which carries home with greater 
 effect the necessity of a Mediator, than that 
 where Job, on his restless bed, is set before 
 us, wearying himself in the hopeless task of 
 arguing with God, and calling for some 
 day"s-man betwixt them who might lay his 
 hand upon them both. 
 
 The afflictions which were heaped upon 
 Tob made him doubt his acceptance with 
 his Maker. This was the great burden of 
 his complaint, and the recovery of this ac- 
 ceptance was the theme of many a fruit- 
 less and fatiguing speculation. We have 
 one of these speculations in the verses 
 which are now submitted to you; and as 
 they are four in number, so there is such a 
 distinction in the subjects of them, that the 
 passage naturally resolves itself into four 
 separate topics of illustration. In the 30th 
 verse, we have an expedient proposed by 
 Job, for the pupose of obtaining the accept- 
 ance which he longed after: "If I wash 
 myself with snow water, and make my 
 hands never so clean." In the 31st verse, 
 we have the inefhcacy of this expedient ; 
 "Yet shaft thou plunge me in the ditch, and 
 mine own clothes shall abhor me." In the 
 32d verse, he gives the reason of this ineiR- 
 cacy; '•■ For he is not man, as I am, that I 
 should answer him, and we should come 
 together in judgment." And in the 33d 
 verse, he intimates to us the right expedient, 
 under the form of complaining that hehim- 
 seif has not the benefit of it : " Neither is 
 there any day's-man betwixt us, that might 
 lay his hand upon us both." 
 
 I. It is not to be wondered at, that even 
 5 
 
 a mistaken efficacy should be ascribed to 
 snov.' viater, in the country of Job's resi- 
 dence, where snow, if ever it fell at all, 
 must have fallen rarely, at very extraordi- 
 nary seasons, and in the more elevated parts 
 of his neighbourhood. This ranty, added 
 to its unsullied whiteness, might have given 
 currency to an idea of its efficacy as a puri- 
 fier, beyond what actually belonged to it. 
 Certain it is, too, that snow water, like 
 water deposited from the atmosphere, in 
 any otlier form, does not possess that hard- 
 ness which is often to be met with in spring 
 water. But however this be, and whether 
 the popular notion of the purifying virtues 
 of snow water, taken up by Job, be well 
 founded or not, we have here an expedient 
 suggested for making the hands clean, and 
 the man pure and acceptable in the sight of 
 God, — a method proposed within the reach 
 of man. and which man can perform, for 
 making himself an object of complacency 
 to his Maker; a method, too, which is quite 
 effectual for beautifying all that meets the 
 discernment of the outward eye, and which 
 is here set before us as connected with the 
 object of gaining the eye of that high and 
 heavenly Witness, with whom we have to 
 do. This is what we understand to be re- 
 presented by washing w'nh snow water. 
 It comprehends all that man can do for 
 washing himself. an(^ for making himself 
 clean in the sight of God. Job complains 
 of the fruitlessness of this expedient, and 
 perhaps mingles with his complaints the 
 reproaches of a spirit tliat was not yet sub- 
 dued to entire acquiescence in the righte- 
 ousness of God. Let us try to examine 
 this matter, and, if possible, ascertain whe- 
 ther man is able, on the utmost stretch of 
 his powers and of his performances, to make 
 himself an object of approbation to his 
 Judffe. 
 
 Without entering into the metaphysical 
 controversy about the extent or the freedom 
 of human agency, let it be observed, that 
 there is a plain and a popular understanding 
 on the subject of what man can do and of 
 what he cannot do. We wish to proceed 
 on this understanding for the present, and 
 to illustrate it by a few examples. Should 
 it be asked, if a man can keep his hands 
 from stealiner, it would be the unhesitating 
 answer of almost every one that he can do 
 it, — and if he can keep his tongue from 
 lying, that he can do it, — and if he can con- 
 strain his feet to carry him every Sabbath 
 to the house of God, tliat he can do this 
 also, — and if he can tithe his income, or 
 even reducing himself to the necessaries of 
 life, make over the mighty sacrifice of all 
 the remainder to the poor, that it is certainly 
 possible for him to do it, — and if he can 
 keep a guard upon his lips, so that not one 
 whisper of malignity shall escape, from 
 them, that he can also prescribe this task to 
 
34 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE, 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 himself, and is able to perform it, — and if 
 he can read much of his Bible, and inter 
 many prayers in private, that he can do it, 
 — and if he can assemble his family on the 
 morning and the evening of every day, and 
 go through the worship of God along with 
 them, that all this he can do, — that all this 
 lies within the compass of human agency. 
 
 Let any one man do, then, what all men 
 think it possible for him to do, and he will 
 wear upon his person the visible exhibition 
 of much to recommend him to the favoura- 
 ble judgment of his fellows. He will be 
 guilty of no one transgression against the 
 peace and order of society. He will be cor- 
 rect, and regular, and completely inoffen- 
 sive. He will contribute many a deed of 
 positive beneficence to the welfere of those 
 around him ; and may even, on the strength 
 of his many decencies, and mauy observa- 
 tions, hold out an aspect of religiousness to 
 the general eye of the world. There will 
 be a wide and most palpable distinction of 
 character between him, and those who, at 
 large from the principle of self-control, re- 
 sign themselves to the impulse of every 
 present temptation; and are either intem- 
 perate, or dishonest, or negligent of ordi- 
 nances, just as habit, or the urgency of their 
 feelings and their circumstances, may hap- 
 pen to have obtained the ascendancy OAcr 
 them. Those do not. what they might, and 
 what, in common estimation, they can do ; 
 and it is just because the man has put forth 
 all his strenuousness to the task of accom- 
 plishing all that he is able for, that he looks 
 so much more seemly than those who are 
 beside him, and holds out a far more en- 
 gaging display of what is moral and praise- 
 worthy to all his acquaintances. 
 
 n. 1 will not be able to convince you 
 how superficial the reformation of all these 
 doings is, without passing on to the 31st 
 verse, and proving, that in the pure eye of 
 God the man who has made the most co- 
 pious application in his power of snow- 
 water to the visible conduct, may still be an 
 object of abhorrence ; and that if God enter 
 into judgment with him, he will make him 
 appear as one plunged in the ditch, his 
 righteousness as filthy rags, and himself as 
 an unclean thing. There are a thousand 
 things which, in popular and understood 
 language, man can do. It is quite the general 
 sentiment, that he can abstain from stealing, 
 and'lying, and calumny, — that he can give 
 of his substance to the poor, and attend 
 church, and pray, and read his Bible, and 
 keep up the worship of God in his family. 
 But, as an instance of distinction between 
 what he can do, and what he cannot do, let 
 us make the undoubted assertion, that he 
 can eat wormwood, and just put the ques- 
 tion, if he can also relish wormwood. That 
 is a different affair. I may command the 
 performance ; but have no such command 
 
 over my organs of sense, as to command a 
 liking, or a taste for the performance. The 
 illustration is homely ; but it is enough for 
 our purpose, if it be effective. I may ac- 
 complish the doing of what God bids ; but 
 have no pleasure in God himself The for- 
 cible constraining of the hand, may make 
 out many a visible act of obedience, but the 
 relish of the heart may refuse to go along 
 with it. The outer man may be all in a 
 bustle about the commandments of God, 
 while to the inner man God is an offence 
 and a weariness. His neighbours may look 
 at him, and all that their eje can reach may 
 be as clean as snow-water can make it. But 
 the eye of God reaches a great deal farther. 
 He is the discerner of the thoughts and in- 
 tents of the heart, and he may see the foul- 
 ness of spiritual idolatry in every one of its 
 receptacles. The poor man has no more 
 conquered his rebellious affections, than he 
 has conquered his distaste for wormwood. 
 He may fear God ; he may listen to God ; 
 and, in outward deed, may obey God. But 
 he does not, and he will not, love God; and 
 while he drags a heavy load of tasks, and 
 duties, and observances after him, he lives 
 in the hourly violation of the first and 
 greatest of the commandments. 
 
 Would any parent among you count it 
 enough that you obtained a service like this 
 from one of your children? Would you 
 be satisfied with the obedience of his hand, 
 while you knew that the affections of hiS 
 heart were totally away from you? Let 
 every one requirement, issued from the 
 chair of parental authority, be most rigidly 
 and punctually done by him, would not the 
 sullennessof his alienated countenance turn 
 the whole of it into bitterness? It is the 
 heart of his son which the parent longs af- 
 ter ; and the lurking distaste and disaflltction 
 which rankle there, "can never, never be 
 made up by such an obedience, as the 
 j'oked and the tortured negro is compelled 
 to yield to the whip of the overseer. The 
 service may be done ; but all that can mi- 
 nister satisfaction in the principle of the 
 service, may be withheld from it; and 
 though the very last item of the bidden per- 
 formance is rendered, this will neither mend 
 the deformity of the unnatural child, nor 
 soothe the feelings of the afHicted and the 
 mortified father. 
 
 God is the Father of spirits; and the 
 willing subjection of the spirit is that which 
 he requires of us. " My son, give me th}' 
 heart ;" and if the heart be withheld, God 
 says of all our visible performances, "To 
 what purpose is the multitude of your sacri- 
 fices unto me ?" The heart is his require- 
 ment ; and full, indeed, is the title which he 
 prefers to it. He put life into us ; and it is 
 he who hath drawn a circle of enjoyments, 
 and friendships, and interests around us. 
 Everv thing that we take delight in, is min- 
 
IV.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUJIAN NATURE. 
 
 istered to us out of his hand. Tie plii^s us 
 every moment with his kindness; and when 
 at length the gift stole the heart of man 
 aw;iy from the Giver, so that he became a 
 lover of his own pleasure, rather than a 
 lover of God, even then would he not leave 
 us lo perish in the guilt of our rebellion. 
 jM;ui made himself an alien, but God was 
 not willing to abandon him ; and, rather 
 than lose him for ever, did he devise a way 
 of access by which to woo, and to welcome 
 him back again. The way of our recovery 
 is indeed a way that his heart was set upon ; 
 and to prove it, he sent his own eternal Son 
 into the world, who unrobed him of all his 
 glories and made himself of no reputation. 
 He had to travel in the greatness of his 
 strength, that he might unbar the gates of 
 acceptance to a guilty world ; and now that, 
 in full harnionj' with the truth and the jus- 
 tice of God, sinners msij draw nigh through 
 the blood of the atonement, vviiat is the 
 wonderful length to which the condescen- 
 sion of God carries him? Whj', he actually 
 beseeches us to be reconciled ; and, with a 
 tone more tender than the affection of an 
 earthly father ever prom.pted, does he call 
 upon us to turn, and to turn, for why should 
 Ave die? if, after all this, the antipathy of na- 
 ture to God still cleave to us ; if, under the 
 power of this antipathy, the service we 
 yield be the cold and unwilling service of 
 constraint ; if, with many of the visible out- 
 works of obedience, there be also the strug- 
 gling? of a reluctant heart to take away 
 from this obedience all its cheerfulness, is 
 not God defrauded of his offering? Does 
 there not rest on the moral aspect of our 
 character, in reference to him, all the odious- 
 ness of unnatural children ? Let our outer 
 doings be what they may, does there not 
 adhere to us the turpitude of having deeply 
 revolted against that Being whose kindness 
 has never abandoned us ? And, thougli pure 
 in the ej-e of our fellows, and our hands be 
 clean as with snow-water, is there nothing 
 in our hearts against which a spiritual law 
 may denounce its severities, and, the giver 
 of that law may lift a voice of righteous ex- 
 postulation? " Hear ye now what the Lord 
 saith : Arise, contend thou before the moun- 
 tains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear 
 ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversj', 
 and ye strong foundations of the earth : 
 for the Lord hath a controversy with his 
 people, and he will plead with Israel. O 
 my people, M'hat have I done unto thee, 
 and wherein have I wearied thee ? testify 
 against me." 
 
 It is not easy to lay open the utter naked- 
 ness of the natural heart in reference to 
 God ; or to convince the possessor of it, 
 that, under the guise of his many plausi- 
 bilities, there maj' lurk that which gives to 
 sin all its hideousncss. 
 
 The mere man of ordinances cannot ac- 
 
 quiesce in what he reckons to be the ex- 
 aggerations of orthodoxy upon this subject; 
 nor can he at all conceive how it is possible 
 that, with so much of the semblance of god- 
 liness about him, there should, at the same 
 time, be within him the very opposite of 
 godliness. It is, indeed, a difficult task to 
 carry upon this point the conviction of him 
 who positively loves the Sabbath, and to 
 whom the chime of its morning bells brings 
 the delightful associations of peace and of 
 sacredness, — who has his hours of prayer, 
 at which he gathers his family around him, 
 and his hours of attendance on that house 
 where the man of God deals out his weekly 
 lessons to the assembled congregation. It 
 may be in vain to tell him, that God in fact 
 is a weariness to his heart, w^hen it is at- 
 tested to him by his own consciousness; 
 that when the preacher is before him, and 
 the people are around him, and the pro- 
 fessed object of their coming together is to 
 join in the exercise of devotion, and to grow 
 in the knowledge of God, he finds in fact 
 that all is pleasantness, that his eye is not 
 merely filled with the public exhibition, and 
 his ear regaled by the impressiveness of a 
 human voice, but that the interest of his 
 heart is completely kept up by the succes- 
 sion and variety of the exercises. It may 
 be in vain to tell him, that this religion of 
 taste or this religion of habit, or this re- 
 ligion of inheritance, may utterly consist 
 Avith the deep and the determined worldli- 
 ness of all his affections, — that he whom 
 he thinks to be the God of his Sabbath is not 
 the God of his week ; but that, throughout 
 all the successive days of it, he is .going 
 astray after the idols of vanity, and living 
 without God in the world. This is demon- 
 stration enough of all his forms, and all his 
 observations, being a mere surface display, 
 without a living principle of piety. But 
 perhaps it may serve more effectually to 
 convince him of it, should we ask him, how 
 his godliness thrives in the closet, and what 
 are the •workings of his heart, in the ab- 
 stract and solitary hour of intercourse with 
 the unseen Father. In church, there may 
 be much to interest ^him, and to keep him 
 alive. But when alone, and deserted b}^ all 
 the accompaniments of a solemn assembly, 
 we should like to know- with what vivacity 
 he enters on the one business of meditating 
 on God, and holding converse M'ith God. 
 Is the sense of the all-seeing and ever-pre- 
 sent Deity enough for him ; and does love 
 to God brighten and sustain the moments 
 of solitary prayer? The mind may have 
 enough to interest it in church ; but does 
 the secret exercise of fellowship with the 
 Father bring no distaste, and no weariness 
 along with it? Is it any thing more than 
 the homage of a formal presentation ? And 
 when the business of devotion is thus un- 
 peopled of all its externals, and of all its 
 
36 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 fsERM. 
 
 accessaries ; when thus reduced to a naked 
 exercise of spirit, can you appeal to the 
 lon;fings, and the affections of that spirit, as 
 the essential proof of your godliness ? And 
 do you never, on occasions lilce this, dis- 
 cover that whicli is in your hearts, and de- 
 tect their enmity to him who formed them? 
 Do you afford no ground for the complaint 
 which he uttered of old, when he said, 
 " Have I been a wilderness unto Israel, and 
 a land of darkness?" and do you not per- 
 ceive that with this direction of your feel- 
 ings and your desires away Irom the living 
 God, though you be outwardly clean, as by 
 the operation cf snow water, he may plunge 
 you in the ditch, and make your own clothes 
 to abhor you. 
 
 We shall conclude this part of our sub- 
 ject with two observations. 
 
 First. The efforts of nature may, in point 
 of inadequacy, be compared to the applica- 
 tion of snow water. Yet there is a practical 
 mischief here, in whicli the zeal of contro- 
 versy, bent on its one point, and its one 
 principle, may unconsciously involve us. 
 We are not, in pursuit of any argiunent 
 whatever, to lose siglit of efforts. We are 
 not to deny them the place, and the im- 
 portance which the Bible plainly assigns 1o 
 them; nor are we to forbear insisting upon 
 their performance by men, previous to con- 
 version, and in the very act of conversion, 
 and in every period of the progress, how- 
 ever far advanced it may be, of the new 
 creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. We 
 speak just now of men, previous to con- 
 version, and we call to your remembrance 
 the example of John the Baptist. The in- 
 judicious way in which the doings of men 
 have been spoken of, has had practically 
 this effect on many an inquirer. Since do- 
 ing is of so little consequence, let us even 
 abstain from it. Now the forerunner of 
 Christ spake a very different language. Me 
 unceasingly called upon the people to do; 
 and this was the very preaching which the 
 divine wisdom appointed as a preparation 
 for the Saviour. " He that hath two coats, 
 let him impart to him that hat'n none ; and 
 he that hath meat, let him. do likewise." — 
 " Exact no more than that which is ap- 
 pointed." — " Do violence to no man ; neither 
 accuse any falsely, and be content with 
 your wages." Was not John, then, it may 
 be said, a mere superficial reformer? Had 
 he stopped short at this, he would have 
 been no better. His teaching could have 
 done no more than is done by the mere 
 application of snow water. But he did not 
 stop here. He told the people that there 
 was a preacher and a preaching to come 
 after him, in comparison of which he and 
 his sermons were nothing. He pointed the 
 eye and the expectation of his hearers full 
 upon one that was greater than himself; 
 and, while he baptized with water unto re- 
 
 pentance, and called upon the people to 
 frame their doings, he told them of one 
 mightier than he, who was to baptize with 
 the Holy Ghost and with fire. 
 
 And, Secondly, Tiiat you may be con- 
 vinced of the utter necessity of t^ueh a bap- 
 tism, let us affirm the inadequacy of all 
 tlie fairest virtues and accomplishments of 
 nature. God has, for the well-being of 
 society, provided man with certain feel- 
 ings and constitutional principles of action, 
 wliich lead him to a conduct beneficial to 
 those around him; to which conduct he 
 may be carried by the impulse of these 
 principles, with as little reference to the 
 will of God, as a mother, among tlie in- 
 ferior animals, when constrained by the 
 sweet and powerful inflnences of. natural 
 affection, to guard the salety, and provide 
 for the nourishment of her young. Take 
 account of these principles as they exist in 
 the bosom of man, and you there find com- 
 passion for the unfortunate; the shame of 
 detection in any tiling mean, or disgrace- 
 ful ; the desire of standing well in the 
 opinion of liis fellows ; the kindlier chari- 
 ties, which shed a mild and a quiet lustre 
 over the walks of domestic life; and those 
 wider principles of patriotism and public 
 usefulness wliich, combined with >an appe 
 tite for distinction, will raise a few of the 
 more illustrious of our race to some high 
 and splendid career of beneficence. Now, 
 these are the principles which, scattered in 
 various proportions among the individuals 
 of human kind, gave rise to the varied lines 
 of character among them. Some possess 
 them in no sensible degi-ee; and they are 
 pointed at with abhorrence, as the most 
 monstrous and deformed of the species. 
 Others have an average share of them ; 
 and they take their station amongst the 
 common-place characters of society. And 
 others go beyond the average; and are 
 singled out from amongst their fellows, as 
 the kind, the amiable, the sweet-tempered, 
 the upright, whose hearts swell willi hon- 
 ourable feeling, or whose pulse beats high 
 in the pride of integrity. 
 
 Now, conceive for a moment, that the 
 belief of a God were to be altogether ex- 
 punged from the world. We have no doubt 
 that society would suffer most painfully in 
 its temporal interests by such an event. 
 But the machine of society might still be 
 kept up ; and on the face of it you might 
 still meet with the same gradations of cha- 
 racter, and the same varied distribution of 
 praise, among the individuals who compose 
 it. Suppose it possible, that the world could 
 be broken off from the system of God's ad- 
 ministration altogether; and tha' he were to 
 consign it, with all its present accommoda- 
 tions, and all its natural principles, to some 
 far and solitary jjlace, beyond the limits of 
 his economy — we should still find ourselves 
 
▼•] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATtiRE. 
 
 37 
 
 in the midst of a moral variety of character ; 
 and man, sitting in judgment over it, would 
 say of some, that they are good, and of 
 others, that they are evil. Even in this 
 desolate region of atheism, the eye of the 
 sentimentalist might expatiate among beau- 
 
 ous and interesting spectacles, — amiable 
 mothers shedding their graceful tears over 
 the tomb of departed infancy ; high-toned 
 integrity maintaining itself unsullied amid 
 the allurements of corruption ; benevolence 
 pljang its labours of usefidness ; and patri- 
 otism earning its proud reward, in the testi- 
 mony of an approving people. Here, then, 
 you have compassion, and natural affec- 
 tion, and justice, and public spirit — but 
 would it not be a glaring perversion of lan- 
 guage to say, that there was godliness in 
 a world, wliere there was no feeling and 
 no conviction about God, 
 
 In the midst of this busy scene, let God 
 reveal himself, not to eradicate these princi- 
 ples of action — but giving his sanction to 
 whatsoever things are just, and lovely, and 
 honourable, and of good report, to make 
 himself known, at the same time as the 
 Creator and Upholder of all things, and as 
 the Being with whom all his rational off- 
 spring had to do. Is this solemn an- 
 nouncement from the voice of the Eternal 
 to make no difference upon them? Are 
 those principles which might flourish and 
 be sustained on a soil of atheism, to be 
 counted enough even after the wonderful 
 truth of a living and a reigning God has 
 burst upon the world ? You are just ; — right, 
 indispensably right. You say you have as- 
 serted no more than your own. But this 
 property is not your own. He gave it to 
 you, and he may call upon you to give to 
 him an account of your stewardship. You 
 are compassionate; — right also. But what 
 if he set up the measure of the sanctuary 
 
 upon your compassion? and, instead of a 
 desultory mstinct, excited to feeling by a 
 moving picture of sensibility, and limited in 
 effect lo a humble fraction of your expendi- 
 ture, he call upon you to love your neigh- 
 bour as yourself, and to maintain this prin- 
 ciple at the expense of self-denial, and in 
 the midst of manifold provocations? You 
 love your children ; — still indispensably 
 riglit. But what if he should say, and he 
 has actually said it, that you may know 
 how to give good gifts unto your children, 
 and still be evil ? and that if you love father, 
 or mother, or wife, or children, more than 
 him, you are not worthy of him ? The lus- 
 tre of your accomplishments dazzles the 
 eye of your neighbourhood, and you bask 
 with a delighted heart in the sunshine of 
 glory. But what if he should say, that his 
 glory, and not your own, should be the 
 constant aim of your doings ? and that if 
 you love the praise of men more than the 
 praise of God, you stand, in the pure and 
 spiritual records of heaven, convicted of 
 idolatry ? You love the things of the world; 
 and the men of the world, coming together 
 in judgment upon you, take no offence at 
 it. But God takes offence at it. He says, — 
 and is he not right in saying ? — that if the 
 gift withdraw the affections from the Giver, 
 there is something wrong; that the love of 
 these things is opposite to the love of the 
 Fatlier ; and that, unless you withdraw your 
 affections from a world that perisheth, you 
 will perish along with it. Surely if these, 
 and such like principles, may consist with 
 the atheism of a world where God is un- 
 thought of and unknown, — 50U stand con- 
 victed of a still deeper and more determined 
 atheism, who under the revelation of a God 
 challenging the honour that is due unto his 
 name, are satisfied with your holding in 
 society, and live without him in the world. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 TTie Judgment of Men, compared with the Judgment of God. 
 
 " With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment — he that judget 
 me is the Lord." — 1 Corinthians iv. 3, 4. 
 
 HI. When two parties meet together on 
 the business of adjusting their respective 
 claims, or when, in the language of our 
 text, they come together in judgment, the 
 principles on which they proceed must de- 
 pend on the relation in which they stand 
 to each other: and we know not a more 
 fatal or a more deep laid delusion, than that 
 l)y which the principles, applicable to the 
 case of a man entering into judgment with 
 his fellow-men, are transferred to the far dif- 
 
 ferent case of man's entering into judgment 
 with his God. Job seems to have been 
 aware of this difference, and at times to 
 have been humbled by it. IiiTeference to 
 man, he stood on triumphant ground, and 
 often spoke of it in a style of boastful vindi- 
 cation. No one could impeach his justice. 
 No one could question his generosity. And 
 he made his confident appeal to the remem- 
 brance of those arciiiid him, when he says 
 of himself, that he delivered the poor that 
 
38 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 cried, and the fatherless, and hhn that had 
 none to help him; that the blessing of him 
 that was ready to perish came upon him, 
 and he caused the widow's heart to sing 
 for joy ; that he put on righteousness, and it 
 clothed him, and his judgment was as a 
 robe and a diadem ; that he was eyes to the 
 blind, and feet was he to the lame ; that he 
 was a father to the poor, and the cause that 
 he knew not, he searched out. On these 
 grounds did he challenge the judgment 
 of man, and actually obtained it. For we 
 are told, because he did all this, that when 
 the ear heard him, then i't blessed him. and 
 when the eye saw him, it gave witness unto 
 him. 
 
 There is not a more frequent exercise of 
 mind in society, than that by which the 
 members of it form and declare their judg- 
 ment of each other — and the work of thus 
 deciding is a work which they all share in, 
 and on which, perhaps, there is not a day 
 of their lives wherein they are not called 
 upon to expend some measure of attention 
 and understanding — and we know not if 
 there be a single topic that more readily 
 engages the conversation of human beings — 
 and often do we utter our own testimony, 
 and hear the testimony of others to the 
 virtues and vices of the absent — and out of 
 all this has arisen a standard of estimation — 
 and it is such a standard as many may 
 actually reach, and some have actually ex- 
 ceeded — and thus it is, that it appears to re- 
 quire a very extended scale of reputation 
 to take in all the v^arieties of human charac- 
 ter — and while the lower extremity of it 
 is occupied by the dishonest, and the per- 
 fidious, and the glaringly selfish, who are 
 outcasts from general respect ; on the higher 
 extremity of it, do we behold men, to whom 
 are awarded, by the universal voice, all the 
 honours of a proud and unsullied excel- 
 lence — and their walk in the world is digni- 
 fied by the reverence of many salutations 
 — and as we hear of their truth and their 
 uprightness, and their princely liberalities, 
 and of a heart alive to every impulse of 
 sympathy, and of a manner sweetened by 
 all the delicacies of genuine kindness ; — 
 who does not see that, in this assemblage 
 of moral graces and accomplishments, there 
 is enough to satisfy man, and to carry the 
 admiration of man ? and can we wonder if, 
 while we gaze on so fine a specimen of our 
 nature, we should not merely pronounce 
 upon him an honourable sentence at the 
 tribunal of human judgment, but we should 
 conceive of him that he looks as bright and 
 faultless in the eye of God, and that he is 
 in every way-meet for his presence and his 
 friendship in eternity. 
 
 Now, if there be any truth in the dis- 
 tinction of our text ; ii a man may have the 
 judgment of his fellows, and yet be utterly 
 unfit for contending in judgment with God; 
 
 if there be any emphasis in the considera- 
 tion, that he is God, and not man ; or any 
 delusion in conceiving of him, that he is 
 altogether like unto ourselves, — may not 
 all that ready circulation of praise, and of 
 acknowledgement, which obtains in society, 
 carry a most ruinous, and a most bewitching 
 influence along with it 1 Is it not possible 
 that on the applause of man there may be 
 reared a most treacherous self-complacency? 
 Might not we build a confidence before 
 God, on this sandy foundation ? Think 
 you not, that it is just this ill-supported con- 
 fidence whicli shuts out from many a heart 
 the humiliating doctrine of the gospel? Is 
 there no such imagination as that because 
 we are so well able to stand our ground 
 before the judgment of the world, we shall 
 be equally well able to stand our ground be- 
 fore the judgment-seat of the great day? Are 
 there not many who, upon this very prin- 
 ciple, count themselves rich and to have 
 need of nothing? And have you never 
 met with men of character, and estimation in 
 society, who, surrounded by the gratulations 
 of their neighbourhood, find the debasing 
 views of humanity, which are set before us 
 in the New Testament, to be beyond theii 
 comprehension; who are utterly in the dark, 
 as to the truth and the justness of such re- 
 presentations, and with whom the voice of 
 God is therefore deafened by the voice and 
 the testimony of men ? They see not them- 
 selves in that character of vileness and of 
 guilt which he ascribes to them. They are 
 blind to the principle of the text, that he is 
 not a man ; and that they may not be able 
 to answer him, though they may be able 
 to meet the every reproach, and to hold out 
 the lofty vindication against every charge, 
 which any one of their fellows may prefer 
 And thus it is, that many live in the habitual 
 neglect of a salvation which they cannot 
 see that they require; and spend their days 
 in an insidious security, from which nothing 
 but the voice of the last messenger, or the 
 call of the last trumpet, shall awaken them. 
 
 To do awav^ this delusion, we shall ad- 
 vert to two leading points of distinction 
 between the judgment of men and that of 
 God. There is a distinction founded upon 
 the claims which God has a right to pre- 
 fer against us, when compared with the 
 claims which our fellow-men have a right 
 to prefer against us ; — and there is a dis- 
 tinction founded upon that clearer and more 
 elevated sense which God has of that holi- 
 ness without which uo man shall see his 
 face, of that moral worth without which we 
 are utterly unfit for the society of heaven. 
 
 The people around me have no right to 
 complain, if I give to every man his own . 
 or, in other words, if I am true to all my 
 promises, and faitliful to all my bargains ; 
 and if what I claim as justice to myself, I 
 most scrupulously render to others, when 
 
v.l 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 39 
 
 they are in like circumstances with myself. 
 Now, let me do all this, and I earn amongst 
 my fellows the character of a man of 
 honour and of equity. Did I live with such 
 a character in an unfallen world, these vir- 
 tues would not at all signalize me, though 
 *lie opposite vices would mark me out for 
 universal surprise and indignation. Cut 
 it so happens that I live in a world full of 
 corruption, where deceit and dishonesty are 
 common ;r— where, though the higher de- 
 grees of them are spoken of with abhor- 
 rence, the lower degrees of them are looked 
 at with a very general connivance ; — where 
 the inflexibility of a truth that knows not 
 one art of concealment, and the delicacy of 
 an honour that was never tainted, Avould 
 greatly signalize me ; — and thus it is, that 
 though I went not beyond the strict require- 
 ments of integrity, yet by my nice and un- 
 varying fulfilment of them, should I rise 
 above the ordinary level of human reputa- 
 tion, and be rewarded by the most flatter- 
 ing distinctions of human applause. 
 
 But again, I may in fact give to others 
 more than their own ; and in so doing I may 
 earn the credit of other virtues. I may 
 gather an additional lustre around my cha- 
 racter, and collect from those around me 
 the tribute of a still louder and more rap- 
 turous approbation. I may have a heart 
 constitutionally framed to the feeling and 
 the exercise of compassion. I may scatter 
 on every side of me the treasures of benefi- 
 cence. I may have an eye for pity, and a 
 hand open as day for melting charhy. I 
 may lay aside a large proportion of my 
 wealth to the service of others, — and what 
 with a bosom open to every impulse of pity, 
 and with an eye ever lighted up by the 
 smile of courteousness, and with a ready 
 ear to all that is offered in the shape of 
 complaint or supplication, I may not go be- 
 yond the demands of others, but I may 
 go greatly beyond all that they have a right 
 to demand, and if I signalize myself by 
 rendering faithfully to every man his due, 
 — still more shall I signalize myself by a 
 kindness that is never weary, by a liberality 
 that never is exhausted. 
 
 Now, we need not offer to assign the pre- 
 cise degree to which a man must carry the 
 e.xercise of these gratuitous virtues, ere he 
 can obtain for them the good will, and the 
 good opinion of society. We need not say 
 by how small a fraction of his income, he 
 may thus purchase the homage of his ac- 
 quaintances, — at how easy a rate he may 
 send away one person delighted by his af- 
 fability ; or another by the hospitality of 
 his reception ; or a third by the rendering 
 of a personal service ; or a fourth by the 
 direct conveyance of a present, — or, finally, 
 for what expense he may surround him- 
 self by the gratitude of many poor, and the 
 blessings and the prayers of many cottages. 
 
 We cannot bring forward any rigid com- 
 putation of this matter. But we appeal to 
 the experience of your own history, and to 
 your observation of others, if a man mi^hl 
 not, without any painfid, or an)' sensible 
 surrender of enjoyment at all, stand out to 
 the eye of others in a blaze of moral re- 
 putation — if the substantial citizen might 
 not, on the convivialities of friendship, be 
 indulging his own taste, and at the very 
 time be securing from his pleased and sa- 
 tisfied guests, the attestations of tlieir cor- 
 diality — if the man of business might not 
 be nobly generous to his friends in adver- 
 sity, and at the same time be running one 
 unvaried career of accumulation — if the 
 man of society might not be charming 
 every acquaintance by the truth and the 
 tenderness of his expressions, and at the 
 same time, instead of impairing, be height- 
 ening his share of that felicity, which the 
 Author of our being has annexed to human 
 intercourse — if a thousand little acts of ac- 
 commodation from one neighbour to an- 
 other, might not swell the tide of praise and 
 of popularitj', and yet, as ample a remain- 
 der of pleasurable feeling be left to each as 
 before. And even when the sacrifice is 
 more painful, and the generosity more ro- 
 mantic, and man can appeal to some mighty 
 reduction of wealth as the measure of his 
 beneficence to others, might it not be said 
 of him, if the life be more than meat, and 
 the body than raiment, that still there is 
 left to him more than he can possibly sur- 
 render ? that, though he strip himself of all 
 his goods to feed the poor, there remains 
 to him that, without Avhich all is nothing- 
 ness, — that a breathing and a conscious man, 
 he still treads on the face of our world, and 
 bears his part in that universe of hfe, where 
 the unfailing compassion of God still con- 
 tinues to uphold him, — that instead of lying 
 wrapt in the insensibility of an eternal 
 grave, he has all the images of a waking 
 existence around him, and all the glories 
 of immortality before him, — that instead of 
 being Avithered to a thing of nought, and 
 gone to that dark and hidden land, where 
 all is silence and deep annihilation, a thou- 
 sand avenues of enjoyment are still open to 
 him, and the promise of a daily provision is 
 still made sure, and he is free to all the 
 common blessings of nature, and he is 
 freer still to all the consolations, and to all 
 the privileges of the gospel. 
 
 Thus it appears that after I have fulfilled 
 all the claims of men, and men are satis- 
 fied, — that after having gone, in the exer- 
 cise of liberality, beyond these claims, and 
 men are filled with delight and admiration, 
 — that after, on the footing of equal and in- 
 dependent rights, I have come into judg 
 ment with luy fellows, and they have 
 awarded to me the tribute of their most 
 honourable testimony, the footing on which 
 
40 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUi&AN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 I Stand with God still remains to be at- 
 tended to, and his claims still remain to be 
 adjusted, — and the mighty account still lies 
 uncancelled between the creature and the 
 Creator, — between the man who, in refer- 
 ence to his neighbours, can say, I give every 
 one his own, and out of my own I expa- 
 tiate in acts of tenderness and generosity 
 amongst them, and the God who can say, 
 You have nothing that you did not receive, 
 and all you ever gave is out of the ability 
 which I have conferred upon you, and this 
 wealth is not your own, but his who be- 
 stowed it, and who now calls upon you to 
 render an account of your stewardship, — 
 between the man who has purchased, by a 
 fraction of his property, the good will of 
 his acquaintances, and the God who asserts 
 his right to have every fraction of it turned 
 into an expression of gratitude, and devoted 
 to his glory, — between the man who holds 
 up his head in society, because his justice, 
 and the ministrations of his liberality, have 
 distinguished him, and the God who de- 
 mands the returns of duty and of acknow- 
 ledgement, for giving him the fund of these 
 ministrations, and for giving what no money 
 can purchase, — for putting the principle of 
 life into his bosom, — for furnishing him 
 with all his senses, and, through these in- 
 lets of communication, giving him a part, 
 and a property, in all tliat is around him, — 
 for sustaining him in all the elements, of 
 his being, and conferring upon him all his 
 capacities, and all his joys. 
 
 Now, what we wish you to feel is, that 
 the judgment of men may be upon your 
 side, and the judgment of God be most 
 righteously against you — that while from 
 the one nothing is heard but admiration and 
 gratitude, from the other, there may be such 
 a charge of sinfulness, as, when set in or- 
 der before your eye, will convince you, that 
 he by whom you consist, is defrauded of 
 all his offerings, — that, while all the com- 
 mon honesties and humanities of social life, 
 are acquitted to the entire satisfaction of 
 others, and to the entire purity of your 
 own reputation in the world, your whole 
 heart and conduct may be utterly pervaded 
 by the habit of ungodliness, — that, while 
 not one claim which your neighbours can 
 prefer, is not met most readily, and dis- 
 charged most honourably, the great claims 
 of the Creator, over those whom he has 
 formed, may lie altogether imhceded ; and 
 he, your constant benefactor, be not loved, 
 — and he, your constant preserver, be not 
 depended on, — and he, your most legiti- 
 mate sovereign, be not obeyed, — and he, 
 the unseen Spirit, who pervades all, and 
 upholds all, be neither worshipped in spirit 
 and in truth, nor vested with the hold of a 
 rightful supremacy over your rebellious 
 affections. 
 
 God is not man; nor can we measure 
 
 what is due to him, by what is due to our 
 fellows in society. He made us, and he 
 upholds us, and at his will the life which is 
 in us, will, like the expiring vapour, pass 
 away ; and the tabernacle of the i)ody, that 
 curious frame-work which man tliinks he 
 can move at his own pleasure, when it is 
 only in God that he moves, as well as lives, 
 and has his being, will, when abandoned 
 by its spirit, mix with the dust out of which 
 it was formed, and enter again into the un- 
 conscious glebe from which it was taken. 
 It was, indeed, a wondrous preferment for 
 unsliapen clay to be wrought into so fine an 
 organic structure, but not more wondrous 
 surely than that the soul which animates 
 it sliould have been created out of nothing ; 
 and what shall we say, if the compound 
 being so originated, and so sustained, and 
 depending on the will of another for every 
 moment of his continuance, is found to 
 spurn tlie thought of God, in distaste and 
 disaffection away from him ? Wlien the 
 spirit returns to him who sitteth on the 
 throne; when the question is put. Amid all 
 the multitude of your doings in the world, 
 what have you done unto me ? When the 
 rightful ascendency of his claims over every 
 movement of the creature is made manifest 
 by him who judgeth righteously ; when 
 the high but just pretensions of all things 
 being done to his glory ; of the entire lieart 
 being consecrated in every one of its re- 
 gards to his person and character ; of the 
 whole man being set apart to his service, 
 and every compromise being done away, 
 between the world on the one hand, and 
 that Being on the other, who is jealous of 
 his honour : — when these high pretensions 
 are set up and brought into comparison 
 witli the character and the conduct of any 
 one of us, and it be inquired in how far we 
 have rendered unto God the ever-breathing 
 gratitude that is due to him, and that obe- 
 dience which we should feel at all times to 
 be our task and our obligation ; how shall 
 we fare in that great day of examination, 
 if it be found tliat this has not been the 
 tendency of our nature at all ? and when 
 he who is not a man shall thus enter into 
 judgment with us, how shall we be able to 
 stand ? 
 
 Amid all the praise Ave give and receiv 
 from each other, we may have no claims 
 to that substantial praise which cometh 
 from God only. Men may be satisfied, but 
 it followeth not that God is satisfied. Un- 
 der a ruinous delusion upon this subject, 
 we may fancy ourselves to be rich, and 
 have need of nothing, while, in fact, we are 
 naked, and destitute, and blind, and misera- 
 ble. And thus it is, that there is a morality 
 of this world, which stands in direct oppo- 
 sition to the humbling representations of 
 the Gospel; which cannot comprehend 
 what it means by the utter worthlessness 
 
^•1 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 41 
 
 and depravit3'' of our nature ; which pas- 
 sionately repels this statement, and tliat too 
 on its own consciousness of attainments 
 superior to those of the sordid, and the profli- 
 gate, and the dislionourable ; and is fortified 
 in its resistance to the truth as it is in Jesus, 
 by the flattering testimonials which it gathers 
 to its respectability and its worth from the 
 various quarters of human society. 
 
 A just sense of the extent of claim which 
 God has upon his own creatures, would lay 
 open this hiding-place of security: would 
 lead us to see, that to do some things for 
 our neighbours, is not the same with doing 
 all things for our ]\Iaker; that a natural 
 principle of honesty to man, is altogether 
 distinct from a principle of entire devoted- 
 ness to God ; that the tithe which we be- 
 stow upon others is not an equivalent for a 
 total dedication unto God of ourselves, and 
 of all which belongs to us ; tliat wo may 
 present those around us with many an of- 
 fering of kindness, and not present our 
 bodies a living sacrifice to God, which is 
 our reasonable service ; that we may earn 
 a cheap and easy credit for such virtues 
 as will satisfy the world, and be utter 
 strangers to the self-denial, and the spiritu- 
 ality, and the mortification of every earthly 
 desire, and the aff'ection for the things that 
 are above ; — all of which graces enter as 
 essential ingredients into the sanctification 
 of the gospel. 
 
 But this leads us to the second point of 
 distinction between the judgment of man 
 and that of God, — even his clearer and more 
 elevated sense of that holiness without 
 which no man shall see his face, and of 
 that moral worth without which we are 
 utterly unfit for the society of heaven. 
 
 Man's sense of the right and the wrong 
 may be clear and intelligent enough, in so 
 far as that part of character is concerned 
 which renders us fit for the society of earth. 
 Those virtues, without which a community 
 could not be held together, are both urgently 
 demanded by that community, and highly 
 appreciated by it. The morality of our 
 earthly life, is a morality which is in direct 
 subservience to our earthly accommodation ; 
 and seeing that eqmty, and humanity, and 
 civility, are in such visible and immediate 
 connexion with all the security, and all the 
 enjoyment which they spread around them, 
 it is not to be wondered at, that they should 
 throw over the character of him by whom 
 they are exhibited, the lustre of a grateful 
 and a superior estimation. And thus it is, 
 that even without any very nice or exqui- 
 site refinement of these virtues, many an 
 ordinary character will pass; — and should 
 that character be deformed by the levities, 
 or even by the profligacies of intemperance, 
 he who sustains it may still bear his part j 
 among the good men of society, — and keep , 
 away from it all that malignity, and all that i 
 6 
 
 dishonesty, which have a disturbing effect 
 on the enjoyments of others, and tliese 
 others will still retain their kindliness for 
 the good-humoured coiivivialist, — and he 
 will be suffered to retain his own taste, and 
 his own peculiarities; and, though it may 
 be true, that chastity, and self-control, and 
 the severer virtues of personal discipline 
 and restraint, would in fact give a far more 
 happy and healthful tone to society than at 
 present it possesses, yet this influence is 
 not so conspicuous, and heedless men do not 
 look so far : and therefore it is, that in spite 
 of his many outward and positive trans- 
 gressions of the divine law, many an indi- 
 vidual can be referred to, who, with his 
 average share of the integrities and the sen- 
 sibilities of social life, has stamped upon 
 him the currency of a very fair e\^ry-day 
 character, who moves among his fellows 
 without disgrace, and meets with acceptance 
 throughout the general run of this world's 
 companies. 
 
 If such a measure of indulgence be ex- 
 tended to the very glaring iniquities of the 
 outer man. let us not wonder though the 
 errors of the heart, the moral diseases of 
 the spirit, the disorganization of the inner 
 man, with its turbulent passions, and its 
 worldly affections, and its utter deadness to 
 the consideration of an overruling God, 
 should find a very general indulgence 
 among our brethren of the species. Bring 
 a man to sit in judgment over the depravi- 
 ties of our common nature, and unless 
 these depravities are obviously pointed 
 against the temporal good of society, what 
 can we expect, but that he will connive at 
 the infirmities of which he feels himself to 
 be so large and so habitual a partaker ? 
 What can we expect but that his moral 
 sense, clouded as it is against the discern- 
 ment of his own exceeding turpitude, will 
 also perceive but dimly, and feel but ob- 
 tusely, a similar turpitude in the character 
 of others ? "\Miat else can we look for. than 
 that the man who fires so promptly on the 
 reception of an injury, will tolerate in his 
 fellow all the vindictive propensities ? — or, 
 that the man who feels not in his bosom a 
 single movement of principle or of tender- 
 ness towards God, will tolerate in another 
 an equally entire habit of ungodliness ? — 
 or, that the man who surrenders himself to 
 the temptations of voluptuousness, will per- 
 ceive no enormity of character at all in the 
 unrestrained dissipations of an acquaint- 
 ance? — and, in a word, when I see a man 
 whose rights I have never invaded, who 
 has no complaint of per.sonal wrong or 
 provocation to allege against me, and who 
 shares equally with myself in nature's 
 blindness and nature's propensities, I will 
 not be afraid of entering into judgment with 
 him ; — nor shall I stand in awe of any pene- 
 trating glance from his eye, of any indig- 
 
42 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATrRE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 nant remonstrance from his offended sense 
 of what is righteous, though there be made 
 bare to his inspection all my devotedness 
 to the world, and all my proud disdain at 
 the insolence of others, and all my anger 
 at the sufferings of injustice, and all my in- 
 difference to the God who formed me, and 
 all those secrecies of an unholy and an un- 
 heavenly character, which are to be brought 
 out into full manifestation on the great day 
 of the winding up of this world's history. 
 
 It is a very capital delusion tliat God is 
 like unto man, — " Thou thoughtest that I 
 was altogether such a one as thyself; but 
 I will reprove thee, and set thy sins in order 
 before thine eyes. Now consider this, )^e 
 that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, 
 and there be none to deliver." 
 
 Man and man may come together in judg- 
 ment, and retire from each other in mutual 
 complacency. But when man and God 
 thus come together, there is another prin- 
 ciple, and another standard of examination. 
 There is a claim of justice on the part of 
 the Creator, totally distinct from any claim 
 which a fellow-creature can prefer, — and 
 while the one will tolerate all that is con- 
 sistent with the economy and the interest 
 of the society upon earth, the other can 
 tolerate nothing that is inconsistent with 
 the economy and the character of the so- 
 ciety in heaven. God made us for eternity. 
 He designed us to be the members of a 
 family which never separates, and over 
 which he himself presides in the visible 
 glory of all that worth, and of all that moral 
 excellence, ^yhich belong to him. He formed 
 us at first after his own likeness ; and ere we 
 can be re-admitted into that paradise from 
 which we have been exiled, we must be 
 created anew in the image of God. These 
 spirits must be made perfect, and every taint 
 of selfishness and impurity be done away 
 from them. Heaven is the place into which 
 nothing that is unclean or unholy can enter ; 
 and we are not preparing for our inherit- 
 ance there, imless there be gathering upon 
 us here, the lineaments of a celestial cha- 
 racter. Now, a man may be accomplished 
 in the moralities of civil and of social life, 
 without so much as the semblance of such 
 a character resting upon him. He may 
 have no share whatsoever in the tastes, or 
 in the enjoyments, or in the affections of 
 paradise. There might not be a single trace 
 of the mark of the Lamb of God upon his 
 forehead. He who ponders so intelligently 
 the secrets of the heart, may be able to 
 discover there no vestige of any love for 
 himself, — no sensibility at all to what is 
 amiable or to wViat is great in the character 
 of the Godhead, — no desire whatever after 
 his glory, — no such feeling towards him 
 who is to tabernacle with men, as will 
 qualify him to bear a joyful part in the 
 songs, and the praises of that city which 
 
 has foundations. Surrounded as he is by the 
 perishable admiration of his fellows, he is 
 altogether out of afffction, and out of ac- 
 quaintance, with that I'eing with whom he 
 has to do; and it will be found, on the great 
 day of the doings, and the d( liberations of 
 the judgment-seat, that as he had no relisli 
 for God in time, so is he utterly unfit for his 
 presence, or for his friendship in eternity. 
 
 It is said of God, that he created man after 
 his own image, and it was upon losing this 
 image that he was cast out of paradise: and 
 ere he can be again admitted, the image 
 that has been lost must again be formed on 
 him. The grand qualification for the so- 
 ciety of heaven is, that each of its members 
 be like unto God. In the selfish and sensual 
 society of earth, there is many a feature of 
 resemblance to the Godhead that is most 
 readily dispensed with ; and many an indi- 
 vidual here obtains applause and toleration 
 among his fellows, though there is not one 
 attribute of the saintly character belonging 
 to him. Let him only fulfil the stipulations 
 of integrity, and smile benignity upon his 
 friends, and render the alacrity of willing 
 and valuable services to those who have 
 never offended him, and on the strength of 
 such performances as these, may he rise to 
 a conspicuous place in the scale of this 
 world's reputation. But what would have 
 been the sad event to us, had these been 
 the only performances which went to illus- 
 trate the character of the Godhead, — had 
 he been a God of whom we could saj'^ no 
 more, than that he possessed the one attri- 
 bute of an imrelenting justice, or even that 
 he went beyond this attribute, in the exer- 
 cise of kindness to those who loved him. 
 and in acts of beneficence to those who had 
 never offended him ? Do we not owe our 
 place and our prospect to tlie love of God 
 for his enemies ? Is it not from the riches 
 of his forbearance and long-suffering, that 
 we draw all our enjoyments in time, and 
 all our hopes for eternity? Is it not be- 
 cause, though grieved with sinners every 
 day, he still waits to be gracious ; that he 
 holds out to us, his heedless and wayward 
 children, the beseeching voice of reconcilia- 
 tion ; and puts on such an aspect of tender- 
 ness to those who have not ceased from 
 their birth to vex his Holy Spirit, and to 
 thwart him every hour by the perverseness 
 of their disobedience ? This is the godlike 
 attribute on which all the privileges of our 
 fallen race are suspended ; and yet against 
 the intimation of which, nature, when urged 
 by the provocations of injustice, rises in 
 such a tumult of strong and impetuous re 
 sistance. It is through the putting forth of 
 this attribute, that any redeemed sinners 
 are to be found among the other society of 
 heaven ; but into which no member shall 
 be admitted out of this corrupt world, till 
 there be stamped and realized on his own 
 
y-l 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 43 
 
 person, that feature of the divinity to which 
 he owes a distinction so exalted. And tell 
 us, ye men who are so jealous of right and 
 of honour, who take sudden fire at every 
 insnlt, and suffer the slightest imagination 
 of another's contempt, or another's unfair- 
 ness, to chase from your bosom every feel- 
 ing of complacency; — ye men whom every 
 fancied affront puts into sncli a turbulence 
 of emotion, and in wliom every fancied in- 
 fringement stirs up the quick and the re- 
 sentful appetite for justice — how will you 
 stand the rigorous application of that test 
 by which the forgiven of God are ascer- 
 tained, even that the spirit of forgiveness is 
 in them, and by whicl} it will be pronounced 
 whether you are indeed the children of the 
 highest, and perfect as your Father in 
 heaven is perfect '? 
 
 But we must hasten to a close, and will, 
 tlierefore, barely suggest some other mat- 
 ters of self-examination. We ask you, to 
 think of the facility with which you might 
 obtain the approbation of men, without be- 
 ing at all like unto God in the holiness of 
 his character. We ask you to think of the 
 delight which he takes in the contempla- 
 tion of what is pure, and moral, and righ- 
 teous. We ask you to think how one great 
 object of his creation, was to diffuse over 
 the face of it a multiplied resemblance of 
 himself, — and that, therefore, however fit 
 you may be for sustaining your part in the 
 alienated community of this world, you are 
 most assuredly unfit for the great and the 
 general assembly of the spirits of just men 
 made perfect, — if luilike unto God who is 
 in the midst of them, you have no conge- 
 nial delight with the Father of all, in the 
 contemplation of spiritual excellence. Now, 
 are you not blind to the glories and the 
 l)erfections of that Being who realizes this 
 excellence to a degree that is infinite? Does 
 not the creature fill up all your avenues of 
 enjoyment, while the Creator is forgotten? 
 In reference to God, is there not an utter 
 dulness and insensibility of all your re- 
 gards to him ? If thus blind to the percep- 
 tion of that supreme virtue and loveliness 
 which reside in the Godhead, are you not, 
 in fact, and by nature an outcast from the 
 Godhead? And an outcast will you ever 
 remain, until your character be brought 
 under some mighty revolutionizing influ- 
 ence which is able to shift the currency of 
 your desires, and to over-rule nature with 
 all her obstinate habits, and all her fond 
 and favourite predilections. 
 
 These are topics of great weight and 
 great pregnancy ; but we leave them to your 
 own thoughts, and only ask you at present 
 to look at the vivid illustration of them that 
 may be gathered out of the history of Job. 
 In reference to his fellows, he could make 
 a triumphant appeal to the honour and the 
 humanity which adorned him, — he could 
 
 speak of the splendid career of beneficence 
 that he had run, — and in the recollection of 
 the plaudits that had surrounded him, he 
 could boldly challenge the inspection of all 
 his neighbours, and of all his enemies, on 
 the whole tract of his visible history in the 
 world. He protested his innocence before 
 them, and even so long as he had only heard 
 of God by the hearing of the ear did he ad- 
 dress him in the language of justification. 
 But when God at length revealed himself, — 
 when the worth and the majesty of the 
 Eternal stood before him in visible array, — 
 when the actual presence of his Maker 
 brought the claims of his Maker to bear 
 impressively upon his conscience, it was 
 not merely the presence of the power of 
 God which overawed him ; it was the pre- 
 sence of the righteousness of God which 
 convinced him, — and when, from the bright 
 assemblage of all that was pure, and holy, 
 and graceful in the aspect of the Divinity, 
 he turned the eye of contemplation down- 
 ward upon himself, — O it is instructive to 
 be told, how the vaunting patriarch shrunk 
 into all the depths of self-abasement at so 
 striking a manifestation ; and how he said, 
 " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the 
 ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; where- 
 fore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and 
 in ashes." 
 
 It is indeed a small matter to be judged 
 of man's judgment. He who judges us is 
 God. From this judgment there is no es- 
 cape, and no hiding place. The testimony 
 of our fellows will as little avail us in the 
 day of judgment, as the help of our fel- 
 lows will avail us in the hour of death. 
 
 We may as well think of scekii.g a refuge 
 in the applause of men, from the condem- 
 nation of God, as we may tliink of seeking 
 a refuge in the power or the skill of men, 
 from the mandate of God, that our breath 
 shall depart from us. And, have you never 
 thought, when called to the chamber of the 
 dying man, — when you saw the warning 
 of death upon his countenance, and how its 
 symptoms gathered and grew, and got the 
 ascendency over all the ministrations of 
 human care and of human tenderness, — 
 when it every day became more visible, 
 that the patient was drawing to his close, 
 and that nothing in the whole compass of 
 art or any of its resources, could stay the 
 advances of the sure and the last malady, 
 — have you never thought, on seeing tiie 
 bed of the sufferer surrounded by other 
 comforters than those of the Patriarch, — 
 when, from morning to night, and from 
 night to morning, the watchful family sat 
 at his couch, and guarded his broken slum- 
 bers, and interpreted all his signals, and 
 tried to hide from his observation the tears 
 which attested him to be the kindest ol 
 parents, — when the sad anticipation spread 
 its gloomy stillness over the household, and 
 
44 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE, 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 even set forth an air of seriousness and con- 
 cern upon the men of other families, — when 
 you have witnessed the despair of friends, 
 who could only turn them to cry at the 
 spectacle of his last agonies, and had seen 
 how little it was that weeping children and 
 inquiring neighbours could do for him, — 
 when you have contrasted the unrelenting 
 necessity of the grave, with the feebleness 
 of every surrounding endeavour toward it, 
 has the thought never entered within you. 
 How powerless is the desire of man ! — how 
 sure and how resistless is the decree of God! 
 And on the day of the second death, will 
 it be found, that it is not the imagination of 
 man, but the sentence of God that shall 
 stand. When the sound of the last trumpet 
 awakens us from the grave, and the ensigns 
 of the last day are seen on the canopy of 
 heaven, and the tremor of the dissolving ele- 
 ments is felt upon the earth, and the Son of 
 God with his mighty angels are placed around 
 the iudgment-seat,aud the menof all ages and 
 of all nations are standing before it, and wait- 
 ing the high decree of eternity, — then will it 
 be found, that as no power of man can save 
 his fellow from going down to the grave of 
 mortality, so no testimony of man can save 
 his fellow frjom gomg down to the pit of con- 
 demnation. Each on that day will mourn 
 apart. Each of those on the left hand, en- 
 grossed by his own separate contemplation, 
 and overwlielnied by the dark and the louring 
 futurity of his own existence, will not have 
 a thought or a sympathy to spare for those 
 who are around him. Each of those on the 
 right hand will see and acquiesce in the righ- 
 
 teousness of God, and be made to acknow 
 ledge, that those things which are highly 
 esteemed among men are in his sight an 
 abomination. When the judge and his at- 
 tendants shall come on the high errand of 
 this world's destinies, they will come from 
 God, — and the pure principle they shall 
 bring along with them from the sanctuary 
 of heaven, will be the entire subordination 
 of the thing formed to him who formed it. 
 In that praise which upon earthly feelings 
 the creatures offer one to another, we behold 
 no recognition of this principle whatever; 
 and therefore it is, that it is so very differ- 
 ent from the praise which cometh from 
 God only. And should any one of these crea- 
 tures be made on that great day of manifes- 
 tation, to see his nakedness, — should the 
 question, what have you done unto me? 
 leave him speechless ; should at length, con- 
 victed of his utter rebelliousness against 
 God, he try to find among the companions 
 of his pilgrimage, some attestation to the 
 kindness that beamed from him upon his 
 fellow mortals in the world, — they will not 
 be able to hide him from the coming wrath. 
 In the face of all the tenderness they ever bore 
 him, the severity of an unreconciled law- 
 giver must have upon him its resistless 
 operation. They may all bear witness to 
 the honour and the generosity of his doings 
 among men, but there is not one of them 
 .who can justify him before God. Nor among 
 all those who now yield him a ready testi- 
 mony on earth will he find a day's-man be- 
 twixt him and his Creator, who can lay his 
 hand upon them both. 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 The Necessity of a Mediator between God and Man. 
 
 " Neither is there any day's-man betwixt us, that might lay his hands upon us both." — Jd> ix. 33. 
 
 IV. The feeling of Job, at the time of his 
 uttering the complaint which is recorded in 
 the verses before us, might not have been 
 altogether free of areproachful spirit towards 
 those friends who had refused to advocate his 
 cause, and who had even added bitterness 
 to his distress by their most painful and 
 unwelcome arguments. And well may it 
 be our feeling, and that too without the 
 presence of any such ingredient along with 
 it — that there is not a man upon earth who 
 can execute the office of a day's-man be- 
 twixt us and God, — that taking the com- 
 mon sense of this term, there is none who 
 can act as an umpire between us the chil- 
 dren of ungodliness, and the Lawgiver, 
 whom we have so deeply offended; or 
 taking up the term that occurs in the Sep- 
 
 tuagint version of the Bible, that amongst 
 all our brethren of the species, not an indi- 
 vidual is to be found who, standing in the 
 place of a mediator, can lay his hand upon 
 us both. It is, indeed, very possible, that all 
 this may carry the understanding, and at 
 the same time have all the inefficiency of a 
 cold and general speculation. But should 
 the Spirit, whose office it is to convince us 
 of sin, lend the power of his demonstration 
 to the argument, — should he divide asunder 
 our thoughts, and enable us to see that, 
 with the goodly semblance of what is fail 
 and estimable in the sight of man, all within 
 us is defection from the principle of loyalty 
 to God — that while we yield a duty as the 
 members of society, the duty that lies upon 
 us, as the creatures of the Supreme Being 
 
VI.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 45 
 
 IS, in respect of the spirit of allegiance which 
 gives it all its valne, fallen away from, by 
 every one of us, — should this conviction 
 cleave to us like an arrow sticking fast, and 
 work its legitimate influence, in causing us 
 to feel all the worthlessness of our charac- 
 ters, and all the need and danger of our 
 circumstances, — then would the urgency of 
 the case be felt as well as understood by us, 
 — nor should we be long of pressing the 
 inquiry of where is the day's-man belwixt 
 us that might lay his hand upon us both! 
 
 And, in fact, by putting the Mediator 
 away from you, — by reckoning on a state 
 of safety and acceptance without him, what 
 is the ground upon which, in reference to 
 God, you actually put yourselves? We 
 speak not at present of the danger of per- 
 sisting in such an attitude of independence, 
 of its being one of those refuges of treache- 
 ry in which the good man of the world is 
 often to be found, — of its being a state 
 wherein peace, when there is no peace, 
 lulls him by its flatteries unto a deceitful 
 repose. We are not at present saying how 
 ruinous it is to rest a security upon an im- 
 posing exterior, when in fact tiie heart is 
 not right in the sight of God, and while the 
 reproving eye of him, who judgeth not as 
 man judgeth, is upon him, or how poison- 
 ous is the unction that comes upon the soul 
 from those praises which upon the mere 
 exhibition of the social virtues, are rung 
 and circulated through society. But, 
 in addition to the danger, let us insist upon 
 the guilt of thus casting the offered Medi- 
 ator away from us. It implies in the most 
 direct possible way, a sentiment of the suffi- 
 ciency of our own righteousness. It is ex- 
 pressly saying of our obedience, that it is 
 good enough for God. It is presumptuously 
 thinking that what pleases the world may 
 please the Maker of it, even though he him- 
 self has declared it to be a world h'ing in 
 wickedness. There is an aggravation you 
 will perceive in all this which goes beyond 
 the simple infraction of the commandment. 
 It is, after the infraction of it, challenging 
 for some remainder or for some semblance 
 of conformity, the reward and approbation 
 of the God whose law we have dishonour- 
 ed. It is, after we have braved the attribute 
 of the Almighty's justice, by incurring its 
 condemnation, making an attempt upon the 
 attribute itself, by bringing it down to the 
 standard of a polluted obedienca It is, after 
 msulting the throne of God's righteousness, 
 embarking in the still deadlier enterprize 
 of demolishing all the stabilities which 
 guard it ; and spoiling it of that truth which 
 ftas pronounced a curse on the children of 
 iniquity, — of that holiness which cannot 
 dwell with evil, — of that unchangeableness 
 which will admit of no compromise with 
 sinners that can violate the honours of the 
 Godhead, or weaken the authority of his 
 
 government over the universe that he has 
 formed. It is laj-ing those paltry accom- 
 plishments whicii give you a place of dis- 
 tinction among your fellows, before that 
 God of whose throne justice and judgment 
 are the habitation, and calling upon him to 
 connive at all that you want, and to look 
 with complacency on all that you possess. 
 It is to bring to the bar of judgment the 
 poor and the starving samples of virtue 
 which are current enough in a world 
 broken loose from its communit)n with 
 God, and to defy the inspection upon them 
 of God's eternal Son, and of the angels he 
 brings along with him to witness the righ- 
 teousness of his decisions. Sin has indeed 
 been the ruin of our nature — but this re- 
 fusal of the Saviour of sinners lands them 
 in a perdition still deeper and more irreco- 
 verable. It is blindness to the enormity of 
 sin. It is equivalent lo a formally an- 
 nounced sentiment on your part tiiat your 
 performances, sinful as they are, and pol- 
 luted as they are, are good enough for hea- 
 ven. It is just saying of the oflfered Saviour 
 that you do not see the use of him. It is a 
 provoking contempt of mercy ; and causing 
 the measure of ordinary guilt to overflow, 
 by heaping the additional blasphemy upon 
 it, 01 calling upon God to honour it by his 
 rewards, and to look to it with the compla- 
 cency of his approbation. 
 
 We cannot, then, we cannot draw near 
 unto God, by a direct or independent ap- 
 proach to him. And who in these circum- 
 stances, is fit to be the day's-man betwixt 
 you 1 There is not a fellow-mortal from 
 Adam downward, who has not sins of his 
 own to answer for. There is not one of 
 them who has not the sentence of guilt in- 
 scribed upon his own forehead, and who is 
 not arrested by the same unsealed barrier 
 which keeps you at an inacessible distance 
 from God. There is not one of them whose 
 eiUrance into the holiest of all would not 
 inflict on it as great a profanation, as if any 
 of you were to present yourselves before 
 him, who dwelleth there, without a Media- 
 tor. There lieth a great gulf between God 
 and the whole of this alienated world ; 
 and after looking round amongst all tiie 
 men of all its generations, we may say, in 
 the language of the text, that there is not a 
 day's-man betwixt us who can la)' his hand 
 upon us both. 
 
 What we aim at as the effect of all these 
 observations, is, that you should feel your 
 only security to be in the revealed and the 
 oflTcred mediator ; that you should seek to 
 him as your only effectual hiding-place; 
 and who alone, in the whole range of mii- 
 versal being, is able to lay his hand upon 
 you, and shield you from the justice of 
 the Almighty, and to lay his hand upon 
 God, and stay the fury of the avenger. By 
 liim the deep atonement has been rendered. 
 
46 
 
 EPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 By him the mystery has been accomplish- 
 ed, which angels desired to look into. By 
 him such a sacrifice for sin has been otfered, 
 as that, in the acceptance of the sinner, 
 every attribute of the Divinity is exalted ; 
 and the throne of the Majesty in the hea- 
 vens, though turned into a throne of grace, 
 is still upheld in all its firmness, and in all 
 its glory. Through the unchangeable priest- 
 hood of Christ, the vilest of sinners may 
 draw nigh, and receive of that mercy which 
 ■ has met with truth, and of that peace which 
 is in close alliance with righteousness ; and 
 without one perfection of the Godhead 
 being surrendered by this act of forgiveness, 
 all are made to receive a higher and more 
 wondrous manifestation ; for though he 
 will by no means clear the guilty, yet there 
 is no place for vengeance, when all their 
 guilt is cleared away by the blood of the ever- 
 lasting covenant ; and though he executeth 
 justice upon the earth, yet he can be jiist while 
 the justifier of them who believe in Jesus. 
 
 The work of our redemption is every 
 where spoken of as an achievement ot 
 strength — as done by the putting forth of 
 mighty energies — as the work of one who, 
 travelling in his own unaided greatness, 
 had to tread the wine-press alone ; and who, 
 wiien of the people there was none to help 
 him, did by his own arm bring unto him 
 salvation. To move aside the obstacle 
 which beset the path of acceptance ; to re- 
 instate the guilty into favour with the of- 
 fended and unchangeable Lawgiver : to 
 avert from them the execution of that sen- 
 tence to which there were staked the truth 
 and justice of the Divinity ; to work out a 
 pardon for the disobedient, and at the same 
 time to uphold in all their strength the pillars 
 of that throne which they had insuUed; to in- 
 tercept the defied penalties of the law, and at 
 the same time magnify it, and to make it ho- 
 nourable; thus to bend, as it were, the holy and 
 everlasting attributes of God, and in doing 
 so, to pour over them the lustre of a high and 
 awful vindication, — this was an enterprise of 
 such height, and deptli, and length, as no cre- 
 ated being could fulfil, and which called forth 
 the might and the counsel of him who is the 
 power of GJod, and the wisdom of God. 
 
 When no man could redeem his neigh- 
 bour from the grave, — God himself found 
 out a ran.«iom. When not one of the beings 
 whom he had formed could offer an ade- 
 quate expiation, — did the Lord of hosts 
 awaken the sword of vengeance against his 
 fellow. When there was no messenger 
 among the angels who surrounded his 
 throne, that could both proclaim and pur- 
 chase peace for a guilty world, — did God 
 manifest in the flesh descend in shrouded 
 majesty amongst our earthly tabernacles, 
 and pour out his soul unto the deatli for us, 
 and purchase the church by his own blood, 
 and bursting away from the grave which 
 
 could not hold him, ascend to the throne 
 of his appointed mediatorship; and now he, 
 the first and the last, who was dead and is 
 alive, and maketh intercession for trans- 
 gressors, is able to save to the uttermost 
 all who come unto God through him ; and 
 standing in the breach between a holy God 
 and the sinners who have offended him, 
 does he make reconciliation, and lay his 
 hand upon them both. 
 
 But it is not enough that the Mediator be 
 appointed by God, — he must be accepted 
 by man. And to incite our acceptance does 
 he hold fortli every kind and constraining 
 argument. He casts abroad, over the whole 
 face of the world, one wide and universal 
 assurance of welcome. "Whosoever cometh 
 unto me .shall not be cast out." " Come 
 unto me all ye who labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." " Where 
 sin hath abounded, grace hath much more 
 abounded." " Whatsoever ye ask in my 
 name ye shall receive." The path of access 
 to Christ is open and free of every obstacle, 
 which kept fearful and guilty man at an 
 impracticable distance from the jealous and 
 unpacified Lawgiver. He hath put aside 
 the obstacle, and now stands in its place. 
 Let us only go in tlie way of the Gospel, 
 and we shall find nothing between us and 
 God but the author and finisher of the Gos- 
 pel, — who, on the one hand, beckons to him 
 the approacli of man with every token of 
 truth and of tenderness ; and, on the other 
 hand, advocates our cause with God, and 
 fills his mouth with arguments, and pleads 
 that very atonement which was devised in 
 love by the Father, and with the incense 
 of which he was well pleased, and claims, 
 as the fruit of the travail of his soul, all 
 who put their trust in him ; and thus, laying 
 his hand upon God, turns him altogether 
 from the fierceness of his indignation. 
 
 But Jesus Christ is something more than 
 the agent of our justification, — he is the 
 agent of our sanctification also. Standing 
 between us and God, he receives from him 
 of that Spirit which is called the promise 
 of the Father, and he pours it forth in free 
 and generous dispensation on those who 
 believe in him. Without this .spirit there 
 may, in a few of the goodlier specimens of 
 our race, be within us the play of what is 
 kindly in constitutional feeling, and with- 
 out us the exhibition of what is seemly in 
 a constitutional virtue ; and man, thus stand- 
 ing over us in judgment, may pass his \er- 
 dict of approbation ; and all that is visible 
 in our doings may be pure as by the ope- 
 ration of snow water. But the utter irre- 
 ligiousness of our nature will remain as 
 entire and as obstinate as ever. The aliena- 
 tion of our desires from God will persist 
 with unsubdued vigour in our bosoms ; and 
 sin, in the very essence of its elementary 
 principle, will still lord it over the inner 
 
TI.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN' NATURE. 
 
 47 
 
 man with all the power of its original as- 
 cendency, — till the deep, and the searching, 
 and the pervading influence of the love of 
 God be shed abroad, in our hearts by the 
 Holy Ghost. This is the work of the great 
 Mediator. This is the might and the mys- 
 tery of that regeneration, without which 
 we shall never see the kingdom of God. 
 This is the office of Him to wtioni all power 
 IS committed, both in heaven and in earth, — 
 wlio reigning In heaven, and uniting its 
 mercy with its righteousness, causes them 
 to flow upon earth in one stream of celes- 
 tial influence ; and reigning on earth, and 
 working mightily in the hearts of its peo- 
 ple, makes them meet for the society of 
 heaven, — thereby completing the wonderful 
 work of our redemption, by which, on the 
 one hand he brings the eye of a holy God 
 to look approvingly on the sinner, and on 
 the other hand, makes the sinner fit for the 
 fellowship, and altogether prepared for the 
 enjoyment of God. 
 
 Such are the great elements of a sinner's 
 religion. But if you turn from the pre- 
 scribed use of them, the wrath of God 
 abideth on you. If you kiss not the Son 
 while he is in the way, you provoke his 
 anger, and when once it begins to burn, they 
 only are blessed who have put their trust in 
 him. If, on the fancied sufficiency of a 
 righteousness that is without godliness, you 
 neglect the great salvation, you will not 
 escape the severities of that day, when the 
 Being with whom you have to do shall en- 
 ter with you into judgment ; and it is only 
 by fleeing to the Mediator, as you would 
 from a coming storm, that peace is made 
 between you and God, and that, sanctified 
 by the faith which is in Jesus, you are 
 made to abound in such fruits of righteous- 
 ness, as shall be to praise and glory at the 
 last and the solemn reckoning. 
 
 Before we conclude, we shall just advert 
 to another sense, in which the Mediator be- 
 tween God and man may be affirmed to 
 have laid his hand upon them bo h : — He 
 fills up that mysterious interval which lies 
 between every corporeal beins, and the 
 God who is a spirit and is invisible. 
 
 No man hath seen God at any time, — 
 and the power which is unseen is terrible. 
 Fancy trembles before its own picture, and 
 superstition throws its darkest imagen,' over 
 it. The voice of the thunder is awful, but 
 not so awful as the conception of that angry 
 being who sits in mysterious concealment, 
 and gives it all its energy. In these sketches 
 of the imagination, fear is sure to predomi- 
 nate. We gather an impression of Nature's 
 God, from those scenes where Nature 
 threatens, and looks dreadful. We speak 
 not of the theology of the schools, and the 
 empty parade of its demonstrations. We 
 speak of the theology of actual feeling, — 
 that theology which is sure to derive its 
 
 lessons from the quarter whence the human 
 heart derives its ."strongest sensations, — and 
 we refer both to your own feelings, and to 
 the history of this world's opini(ms, if God 
 is more felt or more present to your ima- 
 ginations in the peacefulness of spring, or 
 the loveliness of a summer landscape, than 
 v/hen winter with its mighty elements 
 sweeps the forest of its leaves, — when the 
 rushing of the storm is heard upon our 
 windows, and man flees to cover himself 
 from the des<jlation that walkelh over the 
 surface of the world. 
 
 If nature and her elements be dreadful, 
 how dreadful that mysterious and unseen 
 Being; who sits behind the elements he has 
 formed, and gives birth and movement to 
 all things ! It is the mystery in which he 
 is shrouded, — it is that dark and unknown 
 region of spirits, where he reigns in glory, 
 and stands revealed to the immediate view 
 of his worshippers, — it is the inexplicable 
 manner of his being so far removed from 
 that province of sense, within which the 
 understanding of man can expatiate, — it is 
 its total unlikeness to all that nature can 
 furnish to the eye of the body, or to the 
 conception of the mind, which animates 
 it. — it is all this which throws the Being 
 who formed us at a distance so inaccessi- 
 ble, — which throws an impenetrable mantle 
 over his way, and gives us the idea of some 
 dark and untrodden interval betwixt the 
 fflory of God, and all that is visible and 
 created. 
 
 Now, Jesns Christ has lifted up this mys- 
 terious veil, or rather he has ente'*ed within 
 it. He is now at the right hand of God ; 
 and though the brightness of his Fathers 
 glory, and the express image of his person, 
 he appeared to us in the palpable charac- 
 ters of a man ; and those high attributes of 
 truth, and justice, and mercy, which could 
 not be felt or understood, as they existed 
 in the abstract and invisible Deity, are 
 brought down to our conceptions in a man- 
 ner the most famihar and impressive, by 
 having been made, through Jesus Christ, 
 to flow in utterance from human lips, and 
 to beam in expressive physiognomy from a 
 human countenance. 
 
 So long as I had nothing before me but 
 the unseen spirit of God, my mind wandered 
 in uncertainty, my busy fancy was free to 
 expatiate, and hs images fiUed my heart 
 with disquietude and terror. But in the 
 life, and person, and historj' of Jesus Christ, 
 the attributes of the Deity are brought down 
 to the observation of the senses ; and I can 
 no longer mistake them, when in the Son, 
 who is the express image of his Father, I 
 see them carried home to my under.«tanding 
 by the evidence and expression of human 
 orsrans, — when I see the kindness of the 
 Father, in the tears which fell from his Son 
 at the tomb of Lazarus, — when I see liis 
 
48 
 
 DEPRATITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 justice blended with his mercy, in the ex- 
 clamation. " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem," by 
 Jesus Christ ; uttered with a tone more 
 tender than the sympathy of human bosom 
 ever prompted, while he bewailed the sen- 
 tence of its desolation, — and in the look of 
 energy and significance which he threw 
 upon Peter, I feel the judgment of God 
 himself, flashing conviction upon my con- 
 science, and calling me to repent while his 
 wrath is suspended, and he still waiteth to 
 be gracious. 
 
 And it was not a temporary character 
 which he assumed. The human kindness, 
 and the human expression which makes 
 it intelligible to us, remained with him 
 till his latest hour. They survived his re- 
 surrection, and he has carried them along 
 with him to the mysterious place which he 
 now occupies. How do I know all this ? 
 I know it from his history ; I hear it in the 
 parting words to his mother from the cross ; 
 
 I see it in his unaltered form when he rose 
 triumphant from the grave; I perceive it 
 in his tenderness for the scruples of the 
 unbelieving Thomas ; and I am given to 
 understand, that as his bodj' retained the 
 impression of his own sufferings, so his 
 mind retains a sympathy for ours, as warm, 
 and gracious, and endearing, as ever. We 
 have a Priest on high, who is touched with 
 a fellow feeling of our infirmities. My soul, 
 unable to support itself in its aeriad flight 
 among the spirhs of the invisible, now re- 
 poses on Christ, who stands revealed to my 
 conceptions in the figure, the countenance, 
 the heart, the sympathies of a man. He 
 has entered within that veil which hung 
 over the glories of the Eternal ; and the 
 mysterious inaccessible throne of God is 
 divested of all its tenors, when I think that 
 a friend who bears the form of the species, 
 and knows its infirmities, is there to plead 
 for me. 
 
 SER]\rON VII. 
 
 The Folly of Men measuring themselves by themselves. 
 
 " For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves , 
 but they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not 
 wise." — 2 Corinthians, %. 12. 
 
 St. Paul addressed these words to the 
 members of a Christian congregation ; and 
 were we to confine their application to 
 those people of the present day, who in 
 circumstances, bear the nearest resemblance 
 to them, we would, in the present discourse, 
 have chiefly to do with the more serious 
 and declared professors of the Gospel. Nor 
 should we be long at a loss for a very ob- 
 servable peculiarity amongst them, against 
 which to point the admonition of the 
 Apostle. For, in truth there is a great dis- 
 position with the members of the religious 
 world, to look away from the unalterable 
 standard of God's will, and to form a stand- 
 ard of authority out of the existing attain- 
 ments of those whom they conceive to be 
 in the faitli. We know nothing that has 
 contributed more than this to reduce the 
 tone of practical Christianity. We know 
 not a more insidious security, than that 
 which steals over the mind of him who 
 when he looks to another of eminent name 
 for godliness, or orthodoxy, and perceives 
 in him a certain degree of conformitj^ to the 
 world, or a certain measure of infirmity of 
 temper, or a certain abandonment of him- 
 self to the natural enjoyments of luxury, or 
 of idle gossiping, or of commenting with 
 malignant plea.sure on the faults and fail- 
 ings of the absent, thinks, that upon such 
 
 an example, it is safe for him to allow in 
 himself an equal extent of indulgence ; and 
 to go the same lengths of laxity or trans- 
 gression ; and thus, instead of measuring 
 himself by the perfect law of the Almighty, 
 and making conformity to it the object of 
 his strenuous aspirings, — does he measure 
 himself and compare himself with his fel- 
 low-mortals, — and pitches his ambition to 
 no greater height than the accidental level 
 which obtains amongst the members of his 
 own religious brotherhood, and finds a quiet 
 repose in the mediocrity of their actual 
 accomplishments, and of their current and 
 conventional observations. 
 
 There is much in this consideration to 
 alarm many of those who within the pale 
 of a select and peculiar circle, look upon 
 themselves as firmlj' seated in an enclosure 
 of safety. They may be recognized by the 
 society around them as one of us ; and they 
 may keep the even pace of acquirement 
 along with them ; and they may wear all 
 those marks of distinction which separate 
 them from the general and unprofessing 
 public ; and, in respect of Church, and of 
 sacrament, and of family observances, and 
 of exclusive preference for each other's 
 conversation, and of meetings for prayer 
 and the other exercises of Christian fellow- 
 ship, they may stand most decidedly out 
 
VII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 49 
 
 from the world, and most decidedly in witli 
 tho'e of their own cast and their own de- 
 nominition; — and yet, in fact, there may 
 be individuals, even of such a body as this, 
 who instead of looking upwarJs to the 
 Being with whom they have to do, are 
 looking no further than to the testimony 
 and example of those who are immediately 
 around them; who count it euougli that 
 they are highly esteemed among men; who 
 feel no earnestness, and put fortti no strength 
 in the pursuit of a lofty s:mctification ; who 
 are not living as in the siglit of God, and 
 are not in tlie habit of bringing their con- 
 duet into measurement with the principles 
 of that great day, when God's righteousness 
 sludl be vindicated in tlie eyes of all his 
 creatures ; wiio, satisfied, in short, witli the 
 countenance of the people of their own 
 communion, come under the charge of my 
 text, that measuring themselves by them- 
 selves and comparing themselves among 
 themselves, they are not wise. 
 
 Now, though this habit of measuring 
 ourselves by ourselves, and comparing our- 
 selves among ourselves, be charged by the 
 Apostle, in the text, against the professors 
 of a strict and peculiar Christianity ; it is 
 a liabit so universally exemplified in the 
 wond, and ministers such a deep and fatal 
 security to the men of all characters who 
 live in it, and establishes in their hearts so 
 firm a principle of resistance against the 
 humbling doctrines of the New Testament, 
 that we trust we shall be excused if we 
 leave out, for a time, the consideration of 
 those who are within the limits of the 
 Church, and dwell on the operation of this 
 habit among those who are without these 
 limits; and going beyond that territory of 
 observation to which tlie words now read 
 would appear to restrict us, we shall attend 
 to the effects of that principle in human 
 nature which are there adverted to, in as 
 far as it serves to fortify tlie human mind 
 against an entire reception of the truths and 
 the overtures of the Gospel. 
 
 It may be remarked, by way of illustra- 
 tion, that the habit condemned in the text is 
 an abundant cause of that vanity which is 
 founded on a sense of our importance. If, 
 instead of measuring ourselves by our com- 
 panions and equals in society, we brought 
 ourselves into measurement with our supe- 
 riors, it might go far to humble and chastise 
 our vanity. The rustic conqueror on some 
 arena of strength or of dexterity, stands 
 proudly elevated among his fellow-rustics 
 who are around him. Place him beside the re- 
 turned warrior, who can tell of the hazards, 
 and the achievements, and the desperations 
 of the great battle in which he had shared 
 the renown and the danger; and he will 
 stand convicted of the humility of hi? own 
 performances. The man who is most keen, 
 and, at the same time, most skilful in the 
 
 busy politics of his corporation, triumphs in 
 the consciousness of that sagacity by which 
 he has batlled and overpowered the devices 
 of his many antagonists, but lake him to 
 the iiigh theatre of Parliament, and brinfe 
 him into fellowship with the man who has 
 there won tlie mighty game of superiority, 
 and he will feel abaslied at the insignifi- 
 cance of his own tamer and homelier pre- 
 tensions. The richest individual of the 
 district struts throughout his neiglibour- 
 hood in all the glories of a provincial emi- 
 nence. Carry iiim to tiie metropolis of the 
 empire, and he hides his diminished head 
 under the brilliancy of rank far loftier than 
 his own, and equipage more splendid than 
 that by which he gathers from his sur- 
 rounding tributaries, the homage of a re- 
 spectful admiration. The principle of all this 
 vanity was seen by the discerning eye of 
 the Apostle. It is put down for our instruc- 
 tion in the text before us. And if we, instead 
 of looking to our superiority above the level 
 of our immediate acquaintanceship, pointed 
 an eye of habitual observation to" our inferi- 
 ority beneath the level of those in society 
 who are more dignified and more accomplish- 
 ed than ourselves, — such a habit as this might 
 shed a graceful humility over our charac- 
 ter's, and save us from tlie pangs and the 
 delusions of a vanity which was not made 
 for man. 
 
 And let it not be said of those, who, in the 
 more exalted walks of life, can look to few 
 or to none above them, that they can derive 
 no benefit from the principle of my text, be- 
 cause they are placed beyond the reach of 
 its application. It is true of him who is on 
 the very pinnacle of human society, that 
 standing sublimely there, he can cast a 
 downward e3'e on all the ranks and varieties 
 of the world. But, though in the act of 
 looking beneath him to men, he may gather 
 no salutary lesson of luimiiily — the lesson 
 should come as forcibly upon him as upon 
 any of his fellow mortals, in the act of 
 looking above him to God. Instead of com- 
 paring himself with the men of this world, 
 let him leave the world and expatiate in 
 thought over the tracts of immensity, — let 
 him survey the mighty apparatus of worlds 
 scattered in such profusion over its distant 
 regions ; let him brinsf the whole field of the 
 triumphs of his ambition into measurement 
 with the magnificence that is above him, 
 and around him, — above all, let him rise 
 through the ascending series of angels, and 
 principalities, and powers, to the throne of 
 the august Monarch on whom all is sus- 
 pended, — and then will the lofty imagina- 
 tion of his heart be cast down, and all 
 vanity die within him. 
 
 Now, if all this be obviously true of that 
 vanity which is founded on a sense of our 
 importance, might it not be as true of that 
 complacency which is founded on a sense 
 
50 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 of our worth. Should it not lead us to sus- 
 pect the ground of this complacency, and to 
 fear lest a similar delusion be misleading us 
 into a false estimate of our own righteous- 
 ness ? When we feel a sufficiency in the 
 act of measuring ourselves by ourselves, 
 and comparing ourselves among ourselves, 
 is it not the average virtue of those around 
 us that is the standard of measurement ? Do 
 we not at the time, form our estimate of 
 human worth upon the character of man as 
 it actually is, instead of farming it upon the 
 high standard of that pure and exalted law 
 which tells us what the character ought to 
 be? Is it not thus that many are lulled into 
 security, because tliey are as good or better 
 than their neighbours? This may do for 
 earth, but the question we v.'ant to press is, 
 Avill it do for heaven? It may carry us 
 through life with a fair and equal character 
 in society, and even when we come to die, 
 it may gain us an epitaph upon our tomb- 
 stones. But after death cometh the judg- 
 ment; and in that awful day judgment is 
 laid to the line and righteousness to the 
 plummet, every refuge of lies will be swept 
 away, and every hiding-place of security be 
 laid open. 
 
 Under the influence of this delusion, 
 thousands and tens of thousands are posting 
 their infatuated way to a ruined and un- 
 done eternity. The good man of society 
 lives on the "applause and cordiality of his 
 neighbours. He compares himself with his 
 fellow-men : and their testimony to the 
 graces of his amiable, and upright, and ho- 
 nourable character, falls like the music of 
 paradise upon his ears. And it were also 
 the earnest of paradise, if these his flatterers 
 and admirers in time were to be his judges 
 in the day of reckoning. But, alas ! they 
 will only be l;is fellow-prisoners at the bar. 
 The eternal Son of God will preside over 
 the .solemnities of tliat day. He will take 
 the judgment upon himself, and he will 
 conductlt on his own lofty standard of ex- 
 amination, and not on the maxims or the 
 habits of a world lying in wickedness. O 
 ye deluded men! who carry your heads so 
 iiigh, and look so safe and so satis.fied amid 
 the smooth and equal measurements of 
 society, — do you ever think how you are 
 to stand the admeasurement of Christ and 
 of his angels ? and think you that the 
 fleeting applause of mortals, sinful as your- 
 selves, will carry an authority over the 
 mind of your judge, or prescribe to him 
 that solemn award which is to fix you for 
 eternity? 
 
 In the prosecution of the following dis- 
 course, let us first attempt to expose the 
 folly of measuring ourselves by ourselves, 
 and comparing ourselves amongst our- 
 selves ; and then point out the wisdom op- 
 posite to this folly, which is recommended 
 in the gospel. 
 
 I. The folly of measuring ourselves by 
 ourselves is a lesson which admits of many 
 illustrations. The habit is so universal. Jt 
 is so strikingly exemplified, even among the 
 most acknowledged outcasts from all that 
 is worthy, and all that is respectable m 
 general estimation. There is not a congre- 
 gated mass of human beings, associated in 
 one common pursuit, or brought togethei 
 by one common accident, among whom 
 there is not established either so.uie tacit or 
 proclaimed morality, to tiie observance of 
 which, or to the violation of which, there is 
 awarded admiration or disgrace, by the 
 voice of the society that is formed by them. 
 You cannot bring two or more human 
 beings to act in concert without some con- 
 ventional principle of right and wrong 
 arising out of it, which either must be prac- 
 tically held in regard, or the concert is dis- 
 sipated. And yet it may be altogether a 
 concert of iniquit}'. It may be a concert 
 of villany and injustice against the larger 
 interests of human society. It may be a 
 banded conspiracy against the peace and 
 the property of the commonwealth; and 
 there may not be a member belonging to it 
 who does not carry the stamp of outlawry 
 upon his person, and who is not liable, and 
 rightly liable, to the penalties of an out- 
 raged government, against which he is bid- 
 ding, by the whole habit of his life, a daily 
 ,and systematic defiance. And yet even 
 among such a class of the species as this, 
 an enlightened observer of our nature will 
 not fail to perceive a standard of morality, 
 both recognized and acted upon by all its 
 individuals, and in reference to which mo- 
 rality, there actually stirs in many a bosom 
 amongst them a very warm and enthusi- 
 astic feeling of obligation, — and some will 
 you find, who, by their devoted adherence 
 to its maxims, earn among their compa- 
 nions all the distinctions of honour and of 
 virtue, — and others who, by falling away 
 from the principles of the compact, become 
 the victims of a deep and general execra- 
 tion. And thus may the very same thing 
 be perceived with them, that we see in the 
 more general society of mankind — a scale 
 of character, and, corresponding to it, a scale 
 of respectabiht}^, along which the members 
 of the most wicked and worthless associa- 
 tio^i upon earth n>ay be ranged according 
 to the gradation of such virtues as are there 
 held in demand, and in reverence; and thus 
 there will be a feeling of complacency, and 
 a distribution of applause, and a conscious 
 superiority of moral and personal attain- 
 ment, and all this grounded on the habit of 
 measuring themselves by themselves, and 
 comparing themselves amongst themselves. 
 
 The first case of such an exhibition M'hich 
 we offer to your notice, comes so aptly in 
 for the purpose of illustration, that homely 
 and familiar as it is, we cannot resist the 
 
vii."! 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 51 
 
 introduction of it We allude to the case 
 of smugglers. These men, in as far at least 
 as it respects one tie of allegiance, may be 
 considered as completely broken loose from 
 the government of their country. They 
 have formed themselves into a plot against 
 tlie interests of the public revenue, and it 
 may be generally said of them, that they 
 have no feeli)ig whatever of the criminality 
 of their undertaking. On this point there 
 is utterly wanting the sympathy of any 
 common principle between the administra- 
 tors of the law and the transgressors of the 
 law, — and yet it would be altogether untrue 
 to nature and to experience to say of the 
 latter, that they are entire strangers to the 
 feeling of every moral obligation. They 
 have a very strong sense of obligation to 
 each other. There are virtues amongst 
 them which serve to signalize certain mem- 
 bers, and vices amongst them which doom 
 to infamy certain other members of their 
 own association. In reference to the duties 
 which they owe to government, they may 
 be dead to every impression of them. But 
 in reference to those duties, on the punctual 
 fulfilment of which depends the success, or 
 even the continuance, of their system, of 
 operations, tlicy may be most keenly and 
 sensitively alive. They may speak of the 
 informer who has abandoned them, with 
 all the intensity of moral hatred and con- 
 tempt; and of the man, again, who never 
 once swerved from his fidelity; of the man, 
 who, with all the notable dexterity of his 
 evasions from the vigilance that was sent 
 forth to track and to discover him, was 
 ever known to be open as day amongst the 
 members of his own brotherhood ; of the 
 man, who, with the unprincipledness of a 
 most skilful and systematic falsehood, in 
 reference to the agents and pursuers of the 
 law, was the most trusty, and the most in- 
 corruptible, in reference to his fellows of 
 the trade; of the man who stands highest 
 amongst them in all the virtues of pledged 
 and sworn companionship ; — why, of such 
 a man will these roving mountaineers speak 
 in terms of honest and heartfelt veneration; 
 and nothing more is necessary, in order to 
 throw a kind of chivalric splendour over 
 him, than just to be told, along with his in- 
 flexible devotedness to the cause, of his 
 hardy adventures, and his hair-breadth mi- 
 racles of escape, and his inexhaustible re- 
 sources, and of the rapidity of his ever-suit- 
 ing and ever-shifting contrivances, and of 
 his noble and unquelled spirit of daring, 
 and of the art and activity by which he has 
 eluded his opponents, and of the unfalter- 
 ing courage by which he has resisted them. 
 We doulit not, that even in tlie history of 
 this ignominious traffic, there do occur such 
 deeds and characters of unrecorded hero- 
 ism ; and still the men who carry it on, 
 measuring tliemselves by themselves, may 
 
 never think of the ignominy. Tliey will 
 enjoy the praise they have one of another, 
 and care not for the distant blame that is 
 cast upon them by the pul)lic voice. 'I'hey 
 will carry in their bosoms the swelling 
 consciousness of worth, and be regaled by 
 the home testimony of those who are about 
 them ; and all this at the very time when, 
 to the general community, they offer a spec- 
 tacle of odiousness; all this at the very 
 time, when the power and the justice of an 
 incensed government are moving forth upon 
 them. 
 
 But another case, still more picturesque, 
 and, what is far better, still more subservi- 
 ent to tlie establishment of the lesson of our 
 text, may be taken from another set of ad- 
 venturers, hardier, and more ferocious, and 
 more unprincipled than the former. We 
 allude to the men of rapine; and who, rather 
 than that their schemes of rapine should be 
 frustrated, have so far overcome all the 
 scruples and all the sensibilities of nature, 
 that they have become men of blood. They 
 live as commoners upon the world ; and, at 
 large from those restraints, whether of feel- 
 ing or of principle, which hold in security 
 together the vast majority of this vvorld's 
 families, they are looked at by general so- 
 ciety with a revolting sense of terror and 
 of odiousness. And yet, among these mon- 
 sters of the cavern, and practised as they 
 are in all the atrocities of the highway, will 
 you find a virtue of their own, and a high- 
 toned morality of their own. Living as they 
 do, in a state of emancipation from the law 
 universal, still there is among them a law 
 isoterical, in doing homage to which, the 
 hearts of these banditti actually glow with 
 the movements of honourable principle ; 
 and the path of their conduct is actually 
 made to square with the conformities of 
 right and honourable practice. Extraordi- 
 nary as you may think it, the very habit of 
 my text is in full operation among these 
 very men, who have wandered so far from 
 all that is deemed righteous in society ; and 
 disowning, as they do, our standard of prin- 
 ciple altogether, they have a standard among 
 tlTemselves, on which they can adj ust a scale 
 of moral estimation, and apply it in every 
 exercise of judgment on the character of 
 each individual who belongs to them. In 
 reference to every deviation that is made 
 by them from the general standard of right, 
 there is an entire obliteration of all their 
 sensibilities, — and this is not the ground on 
 wliich they ever think either of reproach- 
 ing themselves, or of casting any imputation 
 of disgrace on their companions. But, in 
 reference to their own particular standard 
 of right, they are all awake to the enormity 
 of every act of transgression against it, — 
 and thus it is, that measuring themselves 
 by tliemselves, and comparing themselves 
 amongst themselves, there is just with them 
 
52 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM- 
 
 as varied a distribution of praise and of 
 obloquy as is to be met with on the face of 
 any regular and well-ordered common- 
 wealth. And wlio, v/e would ask, is the 
 man among all these prowling outcasts of 
 nature, on whom the law of his country 
 would inflict the most unrelenting ven- 
 geance? He who is most signalized by the 
 moralities of his order, — he who has gained 
 by fidelity, and courage, and disinterested 
 honour, the chieftainship of confidence and 
 affection amongst them, — he, the foremost 
 of all the desperadoes, on whose character 
 perhaps the romance of generosity and truth 
 is strangely blended with the stern barbari- 
 ties of his calling,— and who, the most ad- 
 mired among the members of his own bro- 
 therhood, is, at the same time, the surest to 
 bring down upon his person all the rigours 
 and aU the severities of the judgment-seat. 
 Let us now follow with the eye of our 
 observation, a number of these transgres- 
 sors into another scene. Let us go into the 
 place of their confinement ; and, in this re- 
 ceptacle of many criminals, with all their 
 .varied hues of guilt and of depravity, we 
 shall perceive the habit of my text in full 
 and striking exemplification. The mur- 
 derer stands lower in the scale of character 
 than the thief. The first is worse than the 
 second — and you have only to reverse the 
 terms of the comparison, tJiat you may be 
 enabled to see how the second is better than 
 the first. Thus, even in this repository of 
 human worthlessness, we meet with grada- 
 tions of character ; with the worse and the 
 better and the best ; with an ascending and 
 a descending scale, whicli runs in conti- 
 nuity, from the one who stands upon its 
 pinnacle, to the one who is the deepest and 
 most determined in wickedness amongst 
 them, it is utter ignorance of our nature 
 to conceive that tliis moral gradation is not 
 fully and frequently in the minds of the 
 criminals themselves, — that there is not, 
 even here, the habit of each measuring 
 himself with his fellow-prisoners around 
 him, and of some soothed by the conscious- 
 ness of a more untainted character, and 
 rejoicing over it with a feeling of secret 
 elevation. They, in truth, know themselves 
 to be the best of their kind, — and this know- 
 ledge brings a complacency along with it, — 
 and, even in this mass of profligacy, there 
 swells and kindles the pride of superior at- 
 tainments. But there is at least one delu- 
 sion from which one and all of them stand 
 exempted. The very best of them, how- 
 ever much he may be regaled by the in- 
 ward sense of his advantage over others, 
 knows, that in reference to the law, he is 
 not on a footing lof merit, but on a fooling 
 of criminality, — knows, that though he will 
 be the most gently dealt with, and that on 
 him the lightest penalty will fall, yet still 
 he stands to his judge and to his country, 
 
 in the relation of a condemned malefactor — 
 feels, how preposterous it were, if, on the 
 plea of being the most innocent of the 
 whole assemblage, he was to claim, not 
 merely exemption from punishment, but 
 The reward of some high and honourable 
 ' distinction at the hands of the magistrate. 
 He is fully aware of the gap that lies be- 
 tween him and the administrators of jus- 
 tice, — is sensible, that though he deserves 
 to be beaten with fewer stripes than others, 
 yet still, that, in the eye of the law, he de- 
 serves to be beaten ; and that he stands at 
 as hopeless a distance, as the most depraved 
 of liis fellows, from a sentence of complete 
 justification. 
 
 Let us, last of all, go along with these 
 malefactors to the scene of their banishment. 
 Let us view them as the members of a sepa- 
 rated community ; and we shall widely 
 mistake it, if we tliink, that in this settle- 
 ment of New Soutli Wales, there is not the 
 same shading of moral variety, there is not 
 the same gradation of character, there is 
 not the same scale of reputation, there is 
 not the same distribution of respect, there is 
 not the same pride of loftier principle, and 
 debasement of more shameful and abandon- 
 ed profligacy, there is not the same triumph 
 of conscious superiority on the one hand, 
 and the same crouching sense of nnworthi- 
 ness on the other, which you find in the 
 more decent, and virtuous, and orderly so- 
 ciety of Europe. 
 
 Within the limits of this colony there ex- 
 ists a tribunal of public opinion, from which 
 praise and popularity, and reproach, are 
 awarded in various proportions among all 
 the inhabitants. And without the limits of 
 this colony there exists another tribunal of 
 public opinion, by the voice of which an 
 unexpected stigma of exclusion and disgrace 
 is cast upon every one of them. Insomuch-, 
 that the same individual may by a nearer 
 judgment, be extolled as the best and the 
 most distinguished of all who are around 
 him, — and by a more distant judgment, he 
 may have all the ignominy of an outcast 
 laid upon his person and his character He 
 may, at one and the same time, be regaled 
 by the applause of one society, and held in 
 rightful execration by another society. In 
 the former, lie may have the deference of a 
 positive regard rendered to him for his 
 virtues, — while, from the latter, he is justly 
 exiled by the hateful contamination of his 
 vices. And in him do we behold the in- 
 structive picture of a man, who, at the bar 
 of his own neighbourhood, stands the 
 highest in moral estimation, — while, at a 
 higher bar, he has had a mark of foulest 
 ignominy stamped upon him. 
 
 We want not to shock the pride or the 
 delicacy of your feelings. But on a ques- 
 tion so high as that of your eternity, we 
 want to extricate you from the power of 
 
VII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 53 
 
 every vain and bewildering delusion. We 
 want to urge upon you the lesson of 
 Scripture, that this world differs from a 
 prison-liouse, only in its being a more spa- 
 cious receptacle of sinners, — and that there 
 is not a wider distance, in point of habit 
 and of judgment, between a society of con- 
 victs, and the general community of man- 
 kind, than there is between the wliole com- 
 munity of otir species, and the society of 
 that paradise, from which, under the apos- 
 tacy of our fallen nature, we have been 
 doomed to live in dreary alienation. ^Ve 
 refuse not to the men of our world the pos- 
 session of many high and honourable vir- 
 tues; but let us not forget, that amongst tne 
 marauders of the highway, we hear, too, of 
 indexible faith, and devoted frietidship, and 
 splendid generosity. We deny not, that 
 there exists among our species, as much 
 truth and as much honesty, as serve to keep 
 society together : but a measure of the very 
 same principle is necessary, in order to 
 perpetuate and to accomplish the end of the 
 most unrighteous combinations. We deny 
 not, that there flourishes on the face of our 
 earth a moral diversity of hue and of 
 character, and that there are the better and 
 the best who have signalized themselves 
 above the level of its general population; 
 but so it is in the malefactor's dungeon ; 
 and as there, so here, may a positive sen- 
 tence of condemnation be the lot of the 
 most exalted individual. We deny not, 
 there are many in every neighbourhood, to 
 whose character, and whose worth, the 
 cordial tribute of admiration is awarded ; but 
 the very same thing may be witnessed 
 amongst the outcasts of every civilized ter- 
 ritory, — and what they are, in reference to 
 the country from which they have been 
 exiled, we may be, in reference to the whole 
 of God's unfellen creation. In the sight of 
 men we may be highly esteemed, — and we 
 may be an abomination in the sight of an- 
 gels. We may receive homage from our 
 immediate neighbours for all the virtues of 
 our relationship with them, — while our re- 
 lationship with God may be utterly dis- 
 solved, and its appropriate virtues may nei- 
 ther be recognized nor acted on. There 
 may emanate from our persons a certain 
 beauteousness of moral colouring on those 
 who are around us, — but when seen through 
 the universal morality of God's extended 
 and all-pervading government, we may look 
 as hateful as the outcasts of felony, — and 
 living, as we do, in a rebellious province, 
 that has broken loose from the community 
 of God's loyal and obedient worshippers, 
 we may, at one and the same time, be sur- 
 rounded by the cordialities of an approving 
 fellowship, and be frowned upon by the su- 
 preme judicatory of the universe. At one 
 and the same time, we may be regaled by 
 the incense of this world's praise, and be the 
 
 objects of Heaven's most righteous execra- 
 tion. 
 
 But is this the real place, it may be asked, 
 that our world occupies in the moral uni- 
 verse of God ? The answer to this question 
 Uiay be obtained either out of the historical 
 informations of Scripture, or out of a sur- 
 vey that may be made of the actual charac- 
 ter of man, and a comparison that may be 
 instituted between this character and the 
 divine law. We can conceive nothing more 
 uniform and more decisive than the testi- 
 mony of the Bible, when it tells us that 
 however fair some may be in the eyes of 
 men, yet that all are guilty before God; 
 that in his eyes none are righteous, no not 
 one : that he, who is of purer eyes than to 
 behold iniquity, finds out iniquity in every 
 one of us ; that there is none who under- 
 standeth, and none who seeketh after God ; 
 that however much we may compare our- 
 selves amongst ourselves, and found a com- 
 placency upon the exercise, yet that we 
 have altogether gone out of the way ; that 
 however distinctly we may retain, even in 
 the midst of this great moral rebellion, our 
 relative superiorhies over each other, there 
 is a wide and a general departure of the 
 species from God ; that one and all of us 
 have deeply revolted against him : that the 
 taint of a most inveterate spiritual disease 
 has overspread all the individuals of all the 
 families upon earth ; insomuch, that the 
 heart of man is deceitful above all things 
 and desperately wicked, and the imagina- 
 tions of his thoughts are only evil, and that 
 continually. 
 
 The fall of Adam is represented, in the 
 Bible, as that terribly decisive event, on 
 which took place this deep and fatal un- 
 hingement of the moral constitution of our 
 species. From this period the malady has 
 descended, and the whole history of our 
 world gives evidence to its state of banish- 
 ment from the joys and the communica- 
 tions of paradise. Before the entrance of 
 sin did God and man walk in sweet com- 
 panionship together, and saw each other 
 face to face in the security of a garden. A 
 little further down in the history, we meet 
 with another of God"s recorded manifesta- 
 tions. We read of his descent in thunder 
 upon mount Sinai. O what a change from 
 the free and fearless intercourse of Eden ! 
 God, though surrounded by a people whom 
 he had himself selected, here sits, if we 
 may use the expression, on a throne of 
 awful and distant ceremony ; and the lift- 
 ing of his mighty voice scattered dismay 
 among the thotisands of Israel. When he 
 looked now on the children of men, he 
 looked on them with an altered counte- 
 nance. The days were, when they talked 
 together in the lovely scenes of paradise as 
 one talketh with a friend. But, on the top 
 of Sinai, he wraps himself in storms, and 
 
54 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HITMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 orders to set bounds about the mount, lest 
 the people should draw near, and God 
 should break forth upon them. 
 
 But we have an evidence to our state of 
 banishment from God, which is nearer 
 home. We have it in our own hearts. The 
 habitual attitude of the inner man is not an 
 attitude of subordination to God. The feel- 
 ing of allegiance to him is practically and 
 almost constantly away from us. All that 
 can give value to our obedience, in the sight 
 of an enlightened Spirit who looks to mo- 
 tive, and sentiment, and principle, has con- 
 stitutionally no place, and no residence in 
 our characters. We are engrossed by other 
 anxieties than anxiety to do the will, and 
 to promote the honour, of him who formed 
 us. We are animated by other affections 
 altogether, than love to him, whose right 
 hand preserves us continually. That Being 
 by whom we are so fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made ; whose upholding presence it 
 is that keeps us in life, and in movement, 
 and in the exercise of all our faculties ; 
 who has placed us on the theatre of all our 
 enjoyments, and claims over his own crea- 
 tures the ascendency of a most rightful au- 
 thority ; — that surely is the Being with 
 whom we have to do. And yet, when we 
 take account of our thoughts and of our 
 doings, how little of God is there ? In the 
 random play and exhibition of such feelings 
 as instinctively belong tons, we may gather' 
 around us the admiration of our fellows, — 
 and so ii is in a colony of exiled criminals. 
 But as much wanting there, as is the ho- 
 mage of loyalty to the government of their 
 native land ; so much wanting here, is the 
 homage of any deference or inward regard, 
 to the government of Heaven. And yet this 
 is the very principle of all that obedience 
 which Heaven can look upon. If it be true 
 that obedience is rewardable by God, but 
 that which has respect unto God, then this 
 must be the essential point on which hinges 
 the difference between a rebel, and a loyal 
 subject to the supreme Lawgiver. The re- 
 quirement we live under is to do all things 
 to his glory ; and this is the measure of 
 principle and of performance that will be set 
 over you, — and tell us, ye men of civil and 
 '•elative propriety, who, by exemplifying in 
 ^he eye of your fellows such virtue, as may 
 be exemplified by the outcasts of banish- 
 ment, have shed around your persons the 
 tiny lustre of this world's moralities ; tell 
 us how you will be able to stand such a 
 severe and righteous application ? The 
 measure by which we compare ourselves 
 with ourselves, is not the measure of the 
 sanctuary. When the judge comes to take 
 account of us, he will come fraught with 
 the maxims of a celestial jurisprudence, and 
 his question will be, not, what have you 
 done at the shrine of popularity, — not, what 
 have vou done to sustain a character 
 
 amongst men, — not what have you done at 
 the mere impulse of sensibilities however 
 amiable, or of native principles however up- 
 right, and elevated, and manly, — but what 
 have you done unto me '? how much of 
 God. and of God's will, was there in the 
 principle of your doingrs? This is the hea- 
 venly measure, and it will set aside all your 
 earthly measures and comparisons. It will 
 sweep away all these refuges of lies. The 
 man whose accomplishments of character, 
 however lively, were all social, and worldly, 
 and relative, will hang his head in confu- 
 sion when the utter wickedness of his pre- 
 tensions is thus laid open, — when the God 
 who gave him every breath, endowed him 
 with every faculty, enquires after his share 
 of reverence and acknowledgment, — when 
 he tells liim from the judgment-seat, I was 
 the Being with whom you had to do, and 
 yet in the vast multiplicity of your doings, 
 I was seldom or never thought of, — when 
 he convicts him of habitual forgetfulness 
 of God, and setting aside all the paltry 
 measurements wliicli men apply in their 
 estimates of one another, he brings the high 
 standard of Heaven's law, and Heaven's al- 
 legiance to bear upon them. 
 
 It must be quite palpable to any man who 
 has seen much of life, aqd still more if he 
 has travelled extensively, and witnessed the 
 varied complexions of morality that obtain 
 in distant societies, — it must he quite ob- 
 vious to such a man, how readily the moral 
 feeling, in eacli of them, accommodates itself 
 to the general state of practice and observa- 
 tion, — that the practices of one country, for 
 which there is a most complacent tolera- 
 tion, would be shuddered at as so many 
 atrocities in another country, — that in every 
 given neighbourhood, the sense of right 
 and of wrong, becomes just as fine or as 
 obtuse as to square with its average purity, 
 and its average humanity, and its average 
 uprightness, — that what would revolt the 
 public feeling of a retired parish in Scot- 
 land as gross licentiousness or outrageous 
 cruelty, might attach no disgrace whatever 
 to a residenter in some colonial settlement, 
 — that, nevertheless, in the more corrupt 
 and degraded of the two communiles, there 
 is a scale of differences, a range of charac- 
 ter, along which are placed the compara- 
 tive stations of the disreputable, and the 
 passible, and the respectable, and tlie super- 
 excellent; and yet it is a very possible 
 thing, that if a man in the last of these 
 stations were to import all his habits and 
 all his profligacies into his native land, 
 superexcellent as he may be abroad, at 
 home he would be banished from the gene- 
 ral association of virtuous and well-ordered 
 families. Now, all we ask of you is, to 
 transfer this consideration to the matter 
 before us, — to think how possible a thing 
 it is, that the moral principle of the world 
 
VIII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 55 
 
 at large, may have sunk to a peaceable 
 and approving acquiescence, in the existing 
 practice of the world at large, — that the 
 security which is inspired by the habit of 
 measuring ourselves by ourselves, and com- 
 paring ourselves amongst ourselves, may 
 therefore be a delusion altogether, — that the 
 very best member of society upon earth, 
 may be utterly unfit for the society of hea- 
 ven, — that the morality which is current 
 here, may depend upon totally another set 
 of principles from the morality wliich is 
 lield to be indispensable there ; — and when 
 
 we gather these principles from the book of 
 God's revelation, — when we are told that tlie 
 law of the two great commandments is, to 
 love the Lord our God with all our strength, 
 and heart, and mind, and to bear the same 
 love to our neighbour that we do to our- 
 selves, — the argument advances from a con- 
 jecture to a certainty, that every inhabitant 
 of earth when brought to the bar of Heaven's 
 judicature, is altogether wanting; and that 
 unless some great moral renovation take effect 
 upon him, he can never be admitted within 
 the limits of the empire of righteousness. 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 Christ the Wisdom of God. 
 
 "Christ the Wisdom of God." — 1 Corinthians i. 24. 
 
 We cannot but remark of the Bible, how 
 uniformly and how decisively it announces 
 Itself in all its descriptions of the state and 
 character of man, — how, without offering 
 to palliate the matter, it brings before us the 
 totality of our alienation, liow it represents 
 us to be altogether broken off from our alle- 
 giance to God, — and how it fears not, in the 
 face of those undoubted diversities of cha- 
 racter which exist in the world, to assert 
 of the whole world, that it is guilty before 
 him. And if we would only seize on what 
 may be called the elementary principle of 
 guilt, — if we would only take it along with 
 us, that guilt, in reference to God, must 
 consist in the defection of our regard and 
 our reverence from him, — if we would only 
 open our eyes to the undoubted foct, that 
 there may be such an utter defection, and 
 j'et there may be many an amiable, and 
 many a graceful exhibition, both of feeling 
 and of conduct, in reference to those who 
 are around us, — then should we recognize, 
 in the statements of the Bible, a vigorous, 
 discerning, and intelligent view of human 
 nature, — an unfaltering announcement of 
 wliat that nature essentially is, under all the 
 plausibilities which serve to disguise it, — 
 and such an insight, in fact, into the secre- 
 cies of our inner man, as if carried home 
 by that Spirit, whose office it is to apply the 
 word with power into the conscience, is 
 enough, of itself, to stamp upon this book, 
 the evidence of the Divinity which in- 
 spired it. 
 
 But it is easier far to put an end to the 
 resistance of the understanding, than to 
 alarm the fears, or to make the heart soft 
 and tender, under a sense of its guiltiness, or 
 to prompt the inquiry, — if all those secu- 
 rities, within the entrenchment of which I 
 'A-ant to take my quiet and complacent re- 
 
 I pose, are thus driven in, where in the whole 
 compass of nature or revelation can any 
 effectual security be found? It may be 
 easy to find our way amongst all the com- 
 plexional varieties of our nature, to its ra- 
 dical and pervading ungodliness; and thus 
 to carry the acquiescence of the judgment 
 in some extended demonstration about the 
 utter sinfulness of the species. But it is not 
 so easy to point this demonstration towards 
 the bosom of any individual, — to gather it 
 up, as it were, from its state of diffusion 
 over tlie whole field of humanity, and send 
 it whh all its energies concentered to a 
 single heart, in the form of a sharp, and 
 humbling, and terrifying conviction, — to 
 make it enter the conscience of some one 
 listener, like an arrow sticking fast, — or, 
 when the appalling picture of a wliole world 
 lying in wickedness, is thus presented to tlic 
 understanding of a general audience, to make 
 each of that audience mourn apart over liis 
 own wickedness ; just as when, on the day 
 of judgment, though all tliat is visible be 
 shaking, and dissolving, and giving way, 
 each despairing eye-witness shall mourn 
 apart over the recollection of his own guilt, 
 over the prospect of his own rueful and 
 undone eternity. And yet, if this be not 
 done, nothing is done. The lesson of the 
 text has come to you in word only and not 
 in power. To look to the truth in its gene- 
 
 I rality, is one thing; to look to yoiu- own 
 separate concern in it, is another. "What we 
 want is that each of you shall turn his eye 
 homewards ; that each shall purify his own 
 heart from the influence of a delusion which 
 we pronounce to be ruinous; that each 
 shall beware of leaning a satisfaction, or a 
 triumph, on the comparison of himself with 
 corrupt and exiled men, whom sin has de- 
 graded into outcasts from the presence of 
 
56 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 God, and the joys of paradise ; that each of 
 j'ou shall look to the measure of God's law, 
 so that when the commandment comes upon 
 you, hi the sense of its exceeding broad- 
 ness, a sense of your sin, and of your death 
 in sin, may come along with it. " Without 
 the commandment I was alive," says the 
 Apostle ; " but when the commandment 
 came, sin revived, and I died." Be assured, 
 that if the utterance of such truth in your 
 hearing, impress no personal earnestness, 
 and lead to no personal measures, and be 
 followed up by no personal movements, 
 then to j'ou it is as a sounding brass and as 
 a tinkling cymbal. The preacher has been 
 beating the air. That great Agent, whose 
 revealed office it is to convince of sin, has 
 refused to go along with him. Another in- 
 fluence altogether, than that which is salu- 
 tary and saving, has been sent into your 
 bosom ; and the glow of the truth universal 
 has deafened or intercepted the application of 
 the truth personal, and of the truth particular. 
 
 This leads us to the second thing proposed 
 in our last discourse, under wh ich we shall at- 
 tempt to expkiin the wisdom opposite to that 
 folly of measuring ourselves by ourselves, 
 and comparing ourselves among ourselves, 
 which we have already attempted to expose. 
 
 The first step is to give up all satisfac- 
 tion with yourselves, on the bare ground, 
 that yoilr conduct conies up to the measure 
 of human character, and human reputation 
 around you. This consideration may be 
 of importance to your place in society ; but, 
 as to your place in the favour of God, it is 
 utterly insignificant. The moral differences 
 which obtain in a community of exiles, are 
 all quite consistent with the entire oblitera- 
 tion amongst them, of the allegiance that 
 is due to the government of their native 
 land. And the moral differences which 
 obtain in the world, may, in every way, 
 be as consistent with the fact, that one and 
 all of us, in our state of nature, are alienated 
 from God by wicked works. And, in like 
 manner, as convicts may be all alive to a 
 sense of their reciprocal obligations, while 
 dead, in feeling and in principle, to the su- 
 preme obligation under which they lie to 
 the sovereign, — so may we, in reference to 
 our fellow-men, have a sense of rectitude, 
 and honour, and compassion, while, in re- 
 ference to God, we may labour under the 
 entire extinction of every moral sensibili- 
 ty, — so that the virtues which signalize us, 
 may, in the language of some of our old 
 divines, be neither more nor less than 
 splendid sins. With the possession of these 
 virtues, we may not merely be incurring 
 3very day the guilt of trespassing and sin- 
 ning against our.Maker in heaven; but de- 
 void as we arc of all apprehension of the 
 enormity of this, we may strikingly realize 
 the assertion of the Bible, that we are dead 
 \\ tre.'^passes and sins. And we pass our 
 
 time in all the tranquillity of death. We 
 say peace, when there is no peace. Though 
 in a state of disruption from God. we live 
 as securely and as inconsiderately as if 
 there were no question and no controversy 
 betwixt us. About this whole matter, there 
 is within us a spirit of heaviness and of 
 deep slumber. We lie fast asleep on the 
 brink of an unprovided eternity, — and, if 
 possible to awaken you, let us urge you to 
 compare, not your own conduct with that 
 of acquaintances and neighbours, but to 
 compare your own finding of the ungodli- 
 ness that is in your heart with the doctrine 
 of God's word about it, — to bringdown the 
 loftiness of your spirit to its humbling de- 
 clarations — to receive it as a faithful saying, 
 that man is lost by nature, and that unless 
 there be some mighty transition, in his his- 
 tory, from a state of nature to a state of 
 salvation, the wrath of God abideth on him. 
 
 The next inquiry comes to be. What is 
 this transition? Tell me the step I shoulc 
 take, and I will take it. It is not enough, 
 then, that you exalt upon your own person 
 the degree of those virtues, by which j-ou 
 have obtained a credit and a distinction 
 among men. It is not enough, that you 
 throw a brighter and a lovelier hue over 
 your social accomplishments. It is not 
 enough, that you multiply the offerings of 
 your charity, or observe a more rigid com- 
 pliance, than heretofore, with all the requi- 
 sitions of justice. All this you may do, 
 and yet the great point, on wliich your 
 controversy with God essentially hinges, 
 may not be so much as entered upon. All 
 this you may do, and yet obtain no nearer 
 approximation to Him who sitteth on the 
 throne, than the outlaws of an offended 
 government for their fidelities to each other. 
 
 To the eye of man you may be fairer than 
 before.and in civil estimation be greatly more 
 righteous than before, — and yet, with the un- 
 quelled spirit of impiety within you, and as 
 habitual an indifference as ever to all the sub- 
 ordinating claims of the divine Avilloveryour 
 heart and your conduct, you may stand at 
 as wide a distance from God as before. And 
 besides, how are we to dispose of the whole 
 guilt of your past iniquities? Whether, is 
 it the malefactor or the Lawgiver who is to 
 arbitrate this question? God may remit 
 our sins, but it is for him to proclaim this. 
 God may pass them over; but it is for him 
 to issue the deed of amnesty. God may 
 have found out a way whereby, in consis- 
 tency with his own character, and with the 
 stability of his august government, he may 
 take sinners into reconciliation ; but it is for 
 him both to devise and to publish this way ; 
 — and we must just do what convicts do, 
 when they obtain a mitigation or a cancel- 
 nient of the legal sentence under which 
 they lie, — we must passively accept of it. 
 on the terms of the deed, — we must look 
 
VIII.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 ^ol 
 
 to the warrant as issued by the sovereign, 
 and take the boon ov fulfil the conditions, 
 just as it is there presented to us. The ques- 
 tion is between us and God ; and in the ad- 
 justment of this question, we must look, 
 singly to tlie expression of his will, and feel 
 that it is with liim, and with his authority, 
 that we have exclusively to do. In one 
 word, we must wait his own revelation, and 
 learn from his own mouth how it is that he 
 would have us to come nigh unto him. 
 
 Let us go then to the record. " No man 
 Cometh unto the Father but through the 
 Son." " There is no other name given un- 
 der heaven, but the name of Jesus, whereby 
 we can be saved." " Without the shedding 
 of blood there is no remission of sin ;" and 
 " God hatli set forth Christ to be a propitia- 
 tion through faith in his blood." "He was 
 once offerexl to bear the sins of many," — and 
 " became sin for us, though he knew no sin, 
 that we might be made the righteousness of 
 God in him." " God is in Christ reconciling 
 the world unto himself, and not imputing 
 unto them their trespasses." " Justified by 
 faith, we have peace with God through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord ;" — " and we become 
 the children of God, through the faith that is 
 in Christ Jesus." We are "reconciled to God 
 by the death of his Son," — " and by his 
 obedience are many made righteous," — and 
 " where sin abounded, grace did much more 
 abound." These verses sound foolishness 
 to many ; but the cross of Christ is foolish- 
 ness to those that perish. They appear to 
 them invested with all the mysteriousness 
 of a dark and hidden saying ; but if this 
 Gospel be hid, it is hid to them which are 
 lost. They have eyes that they cannot see 
 the wondrous things contained in this book 
 of God's communication ; but they have 
 minds which believe not, because they are 
 blinded by the god of this world, lest the 
 light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who 
 is the image of God, should shine into them. 
 
 And here we cannot but insist on the utter 
 hopelessness of their circumstances, who 
 hear these overtures of reconciliation, but 
 will not listen to them. Theirs isjust the case 
 of rebels turning their back on a deed of 
 grace and of amnesty. We are quite confi- 
 dent in stating it to the stubborn experience 
 of human nature, that all who reject Christ, 
 as he is offered in the Gospel, persist in that 
 radical ungodliness of character on which 
 the condemnation of our world mainly and 
 essentially rests. And as they thus refuse 
 to build their security on the foundation of 
 his merits, — what, we would ask, is the 
 other foundation on which they build it? 
 If ever they think seriously of the matter, 
 or feel any concern about a foundation on 
 which they might rest their confidence be- 
 fore God, they conceive it to lie in such 
 feRlings, and such numanities, and such 
 nonestics, as make tliem even with the 
 8 
 
 world, or as elevate them to a certain de- 
 gree above the level of the world's pitpula 
 tion. These are tiie materials of the ibund 
 ation on which they build. It is np(;n the 
 possession of virtues which in truth have 
 not God for their object, that they propose 
 to support in the presence of God the atti- 
 tude of fearlessness. It is upon the testi- 
 mony of fellow rebels that they brave the 
 judgment of the Being who has pronounced 
 of them all, that they have deeply revolted 
 against him. And all this in the face of 
 God's high prerogative, to make and to pub- 
 lish his own overtures. All this in contempt 
 of that Mediator whom he has appointed. 
 All this in resistance to the authentic deed 
 of grace and of forgiveness, which has been 
 sent to our world, and from which we gather 
 the full assurance of God's willingness to be 
 reconciled ; but, at the same time, are ex- 
 pressly bound down to that particular way 
 in which he has chosen to dispense recon- 
 ciliation. Who does not see, that, in these 
 circumstances, the guilt of sin is fearfully 
 aggravated on the part of sinners, by their 
 rejection of the Gospel 1 Who does net 
 see, that thus to refuse the grant of everlast- 
 ing life in the terms of the grant, is just to 
 set an irretrievable seal upon their own con- 
 demnation? Who does not see, that, in the 
 act of declining to take the shelter which is 
 held out to them, they vainly imagine, 
 that God will let down his approbation to 
 such performances as are utterly devoid of 
 any spirit of devout or dutiful allegiance to 
 the Lawgiver ? This is, in fact, a deliberate 
 p sting of themselves, and that more firmly 
 and more obstinately than ever, on the 
 ground of their rebellion— and let us no 
 longer wonder, then, at the terms of that 
 alternative of which we read so often in the 
 Bible. We there read, that if we believe, we 
 shall be saved ; but we also read, that if we 
 believe not, we shall be damned. We are there 
 told of the great salvation ; but how shall 
 we escape if we neglect it ? We are there 
 invited to lay hold of the Gospel, as the 
 savour of life unto life : but, if we refuse 
 the invitation, it shall be to us the savour 
 of death unto death. The gospel is there 
 freely proclaimed to us, for our acceptance; 
 but if we will not obey the Gospel, we shall be 
 punished with everlasting destruction from 
 the presence of the Saviour's power. We are 
 asked to kiss the Son while he is in the way; 
 but if we do not, the alternative is that he will 
 be angry,and that his wrath will burn against 
 us. He is revealed to us a sure rock, on 
 which if welean weshall not be confounded ; 
 but ifweshift our dependence away from it, 
 it will fall upon us and grind us to powder. 
 And this alternative, so far from a matter 
 to be wondered at, appears resolvable into 
 a principle that might be easily compre- 
 hended. God is the party sinned against: 
 and if he have the will to be reconciled, it 
 
58 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 is surely for him to prescribe the way of 
 it : and this he has actually done in the re- 
 velation of the New Testament: and whether 
 he give a reason for the way or not. certain 
 it is, that in order to give it accomplish- 
 ment, he sent his eternal Son into our world ; 
 and this descent was accompanied with 
 such circumstances of humiliation, and con- 
 flict, and deep suffering, that heaven looked 
 on with astonishment, and earth was bid- 
 den to rejoice, because of her great salva- 
 tion. It is enough for us to know that God 
 lavished on this plan the riches of a wisdom 
 that is unsearchable; that, in the hearing 
 of sinful men, he has proclaimed its import- 
 ance and its efficacy ; that every Gospel 
 messenger felt himself charged with tidings 
 pregnant of joy, and of miglity deliverance 
 to the world. And we ask you just to con- 
 ceive, in these circumstances, what effect 
 it should have on the mind of the insulted 
 Sovereign, if the world, instead of respond- 
 ing, with grateful and delighted welcome, to 
 the message, shall either nauseate its terms, 
 or, feeling in them no significancy, shall 
 turn with indifference away from it? Are 
 we at all to wonder if the King, very wroth 
 with the men of such a world shall at length 
 send his armies to destroy it ? Do you think 
 it likely that the same God, who after we 
 had broken his commandment, was willing 
 to pass by our transgressions, will be equally 
 willing to pass them by after we have thus 
 despised the proclamation of his mercy; 
 after his forbearance and his long-suffering 
 have been resisted ; and that scheme of par- 
 don, with the weight and the magnitude of 
 which angels appear to labour in amaze- 
 ment, is received by the very men for whom 
 it was devised, as a thing of no estimation? 
 Surely, if there had been justice in the sim- 
 ple and immediate punishment of sin — this 
 justice will be discharged in still brighter 
 manifestation on him, who, in the face of 
 such an embassy, holds out in his determi- 
 nation to brave it. And, if it be a righteous 
 thing in God to avenge every violation of 
 his law, how clearly and how irresistibly 
 righteous will it appear, when, on the great 
 day of his wrath, he taketh vengeance on 
 those wlio have added to the violation of 
 his law, the rejection of the Gospel ! 
 
 But what is more than this — God hath 
 condescended to make known to us a rea- 
 son, for that peculiar way of reconciliation, 
 which he hath set before us. It is, that he 
 might be just while the justifier of those 
 who believe ni Jesus. In the dispensation 
 of his mercy, he had to provide for the dig- 
 nity of his throne. He had to guard the 
 stability of h-is truth and of his righteous- 
 ness. He had to pour the lustre of a high 
 and awful vindication, over the attributes 
 of a nature that is holy and unchangeable. 
 He had to make peace on earth and good 
 will to men meet, and be at one with glory 
 
 to God in the highest ; and for this purpose 
 did the eternal Son pour out his soul an of- 
 fering for sin, and by his obedience unto 
 death, bring in an everlasting righteousness. 
 It is through the channel of this gixat ex- 
 piation that the guilt of every believer is 
 washed away ; and it is through the im- 
 puted merits of him with whom the Fathei 
 was well pleased, t'lat every believer is ad- 
 mitted to the rewards of a perfect obedience. 
 Conceive any man of this world to reject 
 the offers of reward and forgiveness in this 
 way, and to look for them in another. Con- 
 ceive him to cliallenge the direct approba- 
 tion of his Judge, on the measure of hi? 
 own worth, and his own performances, and 
 to put away from him that righteoiisnt ss of 
 Christ, in the measure of which there is no 
 short coming. Is he not, by this attitude, 
 holding out against God, and that too, on a 
 question in which the justice of God stands 
 committed against him ? Is not the poor 
 sinner of a day entering into a fearful con- 
 troversy, with all the plans, and all the per- 
 fections of the Eternal? Might not you 
 conceive every attribute of the Divinity, 
 gathering into a frown of deeper indigna- 
 tion against the daringness of him, who 
 thus demands the favour of the Almighty 
 on some plea of his own, and resolutely 
 declines it on that only plea, under which 
 the acceptance of the sinner can be in har- 
 mony with the glories of God's holy and 
 inviolable character? Surely, if we have 
 fallen short of the obedience of his law, and 
 so short as to have renounced altogether 
 that godliness which imparts to obedience 
 its spiritual and substantial quality, — then 
 do we aggravate the enormity of our sin. 
 by building our hope before God on a foun- 
 dation of sin ? To sin is to defy God : but 
 the very presumption that he will smile 
 complacency upon it, involves in it another, 
 and a still more deliberate attack upon his 
 government ; and all its sanctions, and all 
 its severities, are let loose upon us in greater 
 force and abundance than before, if we 
 either rest upon our own virtue, or mix up 
 this polluted ingredient with the righteous- 
 ness of Christ, and refuse our single, entire, 
 and undivided reliance on him who alone 
 has magnified the law and made it honour- 
 able. 
 
 But such, if we maybe allowed the expres- 
 sion, is the constitution of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, that, in proportion to the terror which 
 it holds out to those who neglect it, is the 
 security that it provides to all who flee for 
 refuge to the hope which is set before them. 
 Paul understood this well, when, though he 
 profited over many of his equals in his own 
 nation, — when, though had he measured 
 himself by them, he might have gathered 
 from the comparison a feeling of proud su- 
 periority, — when, though in all that was 
 counted righteous among his fellows, he 
 
VIII. 1 
 
 'DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 59 
 
 signalized liimself in general estimation, — 
 yet he willingly renounced a dependence 
 upon all, that he might win Christ, and be 
 found in him, not having his own righ- 
 teousness, which was of the law, but that 
 righteousness which is through the faith of 
 Christ, even the righteousness which is of 
 God by faith. He felt the force of the al- 
 ternative, between the former and the latter 
 righteousness. He knew that the one ad- 
 mitted of no measurement with the other ; 
 and that whatever appearance of worth it 
 had in the eyes of men, when brouglit to 
 their relative and earthly standard, it was 
 reduced to nothing, and worse than nothing, 
 when brought to the standard of Heaven's 
 holy and unalterable law. Jesus Christ has 
 in our nature fulfilled this law; and it is in 
 the righteouisness which he thus wrought, 
 that we are invited to stand before God. 
 You do not tlien take in a full impression 
 of Gospel security, if you only believe that 
 God is merciful, and has forgiven you. You 
 are called farther to believe, that God is 
 righteous, and has justified you. You have 
 a warrant to put on the righteousness of 
 Christ as a robe and a diadem, and to go 
 to the throne of grace with the petition of 
 Look upon me in the face of him who hath 
 fulfilled all righteousness. You are furnished 
 with such a measure of righteousness as 
 God can accept, without letting down a 
 single attribute which belongs to him. The 
 truth, and the justice, and the holiness, 
 which stand in such threatening array 
 against the sinner who is out of Christ, 
 now form into a shield and a hiding-place 
 around him. And while he who trusts in 
 the general mercy of God does so at the 
 expense of his whole character, he who 
 trusts in the mercy of God, which hath ap- 
 peared unto all men through the Saviour, 
 offers in that act of confidence an homage 
 to every perfection of the Divinity, and has 
 every perfection of the Divinity upon his 
 side. And thus it is, that under the economy 
 of redemption, we now read, not merely of 
 God being merciful, but of God being just 
 and faithful in forgiving our sins, and in 
 cleansing us from all our unrighteousness. 
 
 Thus much for what may be called the 
 jiuiicial rio-hteousness with which every 
 believer is invested by having the merits of 
 Christ imputed to him through faith. But 
 this faith is something more than a name. 
 It takes up a positive residence in the mind 
 as a principle. It has locality and opera- 
 tion there, and has either no existence at 
 all, or by its purifying and reforming in- 
 fluence on the holder of it, does it invest 
 him also with a personal righteousness. 
 
 Now, to apply the conception of our text 
 to this personal righteousness, the first thing 
 we would say of it is, that it admits of no 
 measurement whatever with the social 
 worth, or the moral virtue, or any other of 
 
 the personal accomplishments of character 
 which may belong to those who have not 
 the faith of the Gospel. Faith accepts of 
 the offered reconciliation, and moves away 
 from the alienated heart those suspicions, 
 and aversions, and fears, which kept man 
 asunder from his God. We would not say, 
 then, of the personal righteousness of a be- 
 liever, that it consisted in a higher degree 
 of that virtue which may exist in a lower 
 degree with him who is not a believer. It 
 consists in the dawn, and the progress, and 
 the perfecting of a virtue, which, before he 
 was a believer, had no existence whatever. 
 It consists in the possession of a character 
 of which, previous to his acceptance of 
 Christ, he had not the smallest feature of 
 reality, though to the external eye, there 
 may have been some features of resem- 
 blance. The principle of Christian sancti- 
 fication, which, if we were to express it by 
 another name, we would call devoted ness 
 to God, is no more to be found in the un- 
 believing world, than tlie principle of an 
 allegiance to tlieir rightful sovereign, is to 
 be found among the outcasts of banishment. 
 It is not by any stretching out of the mea- 
 sure of your former virtues, then, that you 
 can attain this principle. There needs to 
 be originated within you a new virtue al- 
 together. It is not by the fostering of that 
 which is old, — it is by the creation of some- 
 thing new, that a man comes to have the 
 personal righteousness of a disciple of the 
 New Testament. It is by giving existence 
 to that which formerly had no existence. 
 And let us no longer wonder, then, at the 
 magnitude of tlie terms which are employed 
 in the Bible, to denote the change, tlie per- 
 sonal change, which in point of character, 
 and affection, and principle, takes place o)i 
 all who become meet for the inheritance 
 of the saints. It is there called life from 
 the dead, and a new birth, and a total reno- 
 vation, — all old things are said to be done 
 away, and all things to become new. With 
 many it is a v^onder liow a change of such 
 totality and of such magnitude, should be 
 accounted as indispensable to the good and 
 creditable man of society, as the sunken 
 profligate. But if the one and the other 
 are both dead to a sense of their Lawgiver 
 in heaven, — then both need to be made alive 
 unto him. With both there must be the 
 power and the reality of a spiritual resur- 
 rection. And after tliis great transition has 
 been made, it will be found that the virtues 
 of the new state, and those of the old state, 
 cannot be brought to any common standard 
 of measurement at all. Tlie one distances 
 the other by a Avide and impassable inter- 
 val. There is all the difference in point of 
 principle between a man of the world and 
 a new creature in Christ, that there is be- 
 tween him who has the Spirit of Gdd, and 
 him who has it not, — and all the difference 
 
60 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 in point of performance, that there is be- 
 tween him who is with(»ut Christ, and can 
 therefore do nothing, and him who can 
 do all things through Christ strengthening 
 him. There is a new principle now, which 
 formerly had no operation, even that of 
 godliness, — and a new influence now, even 
 that of the Holy Ghost, given to the prayers 
 of the believer; — and under these provi- 
 sions will he attain a splendour and an en- 
 ergy of character, with wliich, the better 
 and the best of this world can no more be 
 brought into comparison, than earth will 
 compare with heaven, or the passions and 
 the frivolities of time, with the pure ambi- 
 tion and the lofty principles of eternity. 
 
 And let it not be said, that the transforma- 
 tion of which we are now speaking, in- 
 stead of being thus entire and universal, 
 consists only with a good man of the world 
 in the addition of one virtue, to his previous 
 stock of many virtues. We admit that he 
 had justice before, and humanity before, 
 and courteousness before, and that the god- 
 liness which he had not before, is only one 
 virtue. But the station which it asserts, 
 among the other virtues, is a station of 
 supreme authority. It no sooner takes 
 its place among them, than it animates 
 them all, and subordinates them all. It sends 
 forth among them a new and pervading 
 quality, which makes them essentially 
 dilTerent from what they were before. I 
 may take daily exercise from a regard to 
 my health, and by so doing I may deserve 
 the character of a man of prudence ; or I 
 may take daily exercise apart from this 
 consideration altogether, and because it is 
 the accidental wish of my parents that I 
 should do so ; and thus may I deserve the 
 character of a man of filial piety. The ex- 
 ternal habit is the same ; but under the one 
 principle, the moral character of this habit 
 is cutally and essentially diflTerent from 
 what it is under the other principle. Yet 
 the difference here, is, most assuredl}'-, not 
 greater than is the difference between the 
 justice of a good man of society, and the 
 justice of a Christian disciple. In the 
 former case, it is done unto others, or done 
 unto himself. In the latter case, it is done 
 unto God. The frame-work of his outer 
 doings is animated by another spirit alto- 
 gether. There is the breath of another life 
 in it. The inscription of Holiness to God 
 stands engraven on the action of the be- 
 liever ; and if this character of holiness be 
 utterly effaced from the corresponding 
 action of the good man of society, then, 
 surely, in character, in worth, in spiritual 
 and intelligent, estimation, vnere is the ut- 
 most possible diversity between the two 
 actions. So that, should the most upright 
 and amiable man upon earth embrace the 
 Gospel faith, and become the .subject of the 
 Gospel regeneration, — it is true of him, too, 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 that all old things are done away, and that 
 all things have become new. 
 
 Thu-3 11 is, tiiat while none of the Christian 
 virtues can be made to come into measure- 
 ment with any of what may be called the 
 constituti nal virtues, in respect of their 
 principle, because the principle of the one 
 set differs from that of the other set, in kind 
 as well as in degree, yet there are certain 
 corresponding virtues in each of the classes, 
 which might be brought together into mea- 
 surement, in respect of visible and external 
 performance. And it is a high point of 
 obligation with every disciple of the faith, 
 so to sustain his part in this competition, 
 as to show forth the honour of Christianity; 
 to prove by his own personal history in 
 the world, how much the morality of grace 
 outstrips the morality of nature ; to evince 
 the superior lustre and steadiness of the 
 one, when compared with the frail, and 
 fluctuating, and desultory character of the 
 other; and to make it clear to the eye of 
 experience, that it is only under the pecu- 
 liar government of the doctrine of Christ, 
 that all which is amUible in human worth, 
 becomes most lovely, and all which is justly 
 held in human admiration, becomes most 
 gi-eat, and lofty, and venerable. The Bible 
 tells us to provide things honest in the sight 
 of men, as well as of God. It tells us, that 
 upon the person of every Chri*otian, the 
 features of excellence should stand so legi- 
 bly engraven, that, as a living epistle, he 
 might be seen and read of all men. It is 
 true, there is much in the character of a 
 genuine believer which the world cannot 
 see, and cannot sympathize with. There 
 is the rapture of faith, when in lively exer- 
 cise. There is the ecstacy of devotion. 
 There is a calm and settled serenity amid 
 all the vicissitudes of life. There is the 
 habit of having no confidence in the flesh, 
 and of rejoicing in the Lord Jesus. There 
 is a holding fast of our hope in the pro- 
 mises of the Gospel. There is a cherishing 
 of the Spirit of adoption. There is the 
 work of a believing fellowship with the 
 Father and with the Son. There is a move- 
 ment of aflTection towards the things which 
 are above. There is a building up of our- 
 selves on our most holy faith. There is a 
 praying in the Holy Ghost. There is a 
 watching for his influence with all perse- 
 verance. In a word, there is all which 
 the Christian knows to be real, and which 
 the world hates, and denounces as visionary, 
 in the secret, but sublime and substantial 
 processes of experimental religion. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there is also 
 much in the doings of an altogether Chris- 
 tian of that palpable virtue which forces 
 itself upon general observation ; and he is 
 most grievously untrue to his master's 
 cause, if he do not, on this ground, so out- 
 run the world, as to force from the men of 
 
IX.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 61 
 
 it, an approving testimony. The eye of 
 the world cannot enter within the spiritual 
 reces:ses of his heart; but let him ever re- 
 member that it is fastened, and that too 
 with keen and scrutinizing jealousy, on the 
 path of his visible history. It will offer no 
 homage to the mere sanctity of his com- 
 plexion ; nor, unless there be shed over it 
 the expression of what is mild in domestic, 
 or honourable in public virtue', will it ever 
 look upon him in any other light, than as 
 an object of the most unmingled disgust. 
 And therefore it is, that he must enter on 
 the field of ostensible accomplishment, and 
 there bear away the palm of superiority, 
 and be the most eminent of his fellows in 
 all those recognized virtues, that can bless 
 or embellish the condition of society; the 
 most untainted in honour, and the most dis- 
 interested in justice, and the most alert in 
 beneficence, and the most unwearied in all 
 these graces, under every discouragement 
 and every provocation. 
 
 We have now only time to say, that we 
 shall not regret the length of this discourse, 
 or even the recurrence of some of its argu- 
 ments, if any hearer amongst you, not in 
 the faith, be led by it, to withdraw his con- 
 fidence from the mere accomplishments 
 
 of nature, — and if any believer amongst 
 you be led by it not to despise these accom- 
 plishments, but to put them on, and to ani- 
 mate them all with the spirit of religious- 
 ness, — if any hearer amongst you, beginning 
 to perceive his own nothingness in the sight 
 of God, be prompted to inquire, Wherewithal 
 shall I appear before him? and not to rest 
 from the inquiry, till he flee from his hiding- 
 place, to that everlasting righteousness 
 which the Saviour hath brought in : and if 
 any believer amongst you, rightly dividing 
 the word of truth, shall act on the principle, 
 that though nothing but the doctrine of 
 Christ crucified, can avail him for accept- 
 ance with God, yet he is bound to adorn 
 this doctrine in all things. And knowing 
 that one may acquiesce in the whole of 
 such a demonstration, without carrying it 
 personally home, we leave off with the sin- 
 gle remark, that every conviction not prose- 
 cuted, every movement of conscience not 
 followed up, every ray of light or of truth 
 not turned to individual application, will 
 aggravate the reckoning of the great daj^, — 
 and that in proportion to the degree of ur- 
 gency which has been brought to bear upon 
 you, and been resisted, will be the weight 
 and the justness of your final condemnation. 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 
 The Principle of Love to God. 
 
 " Keep yourselves in the love of God." — Jude 21. 
 
 It is not easy to give the definition of a 
 term, which is currently and immediately 
 understood without one. But, should not 
 this ready understanding of the term super- 
 sede the definition of it, what can we tell 
 of love in the way of explanation, but by a 
 substitution of terms, not more simple and 
 more intelligible than itself ? Can thisaffec- 
 tio.n of the soul be made clearer to you by 
 words, than it is already clear to you by 
 your own consciousness? Are we to at- 
 tempt the elucidation of a term, which, 
 without any feeling of darkness or of mys- 
 tery, you make familiar use of every day ? 
 You say with the utmost promptitude, and 
 you have just as ready an apprehension of 
 the meaning of what you say, that I love 
 this man, and bear a still higher regard to 
 another, but have my chief and my best 
 liking directed to a third. We will not at- 
 tempt to go in search of a more luminous 
 or expressive term, for this simple affection, 
 than the one that is commonly employed. 
 But it is a different thing to throw light upon 
 the workings of this affection, — to point 
 your attention to the objects on which it 
 
 rests, and finds a complacent gratification, — 
 and to assign the circumstances, which are 
 either favourable or unfavourable to its ex- 
 citement. All this may call forth an exer- 
 cise of discrimination. But instead of dwell- 
 ing any more on the significancy of the 
 term love, which is the term of my text, let 
 us forthwith take it unto use, and be confi- 
 dent that, in itself, it carries no ambiguity 
 along with it. 
 
 The term love, indeed, admits of a real 
 and intelligible application to inanimate ob- 
 jects. There is a beauty in sights, and a 
 beauty in sounds, and I may bear a posi- 
 tive love to the mute and unconscious in- 
 dividuals in which this beauty hath taken 
 up its residence. I may love a flower, or 
 a murmuring stream, or a sunny bank, or a 
 humble cottage peeping forth from its con- 
 cealment, — or in fine, a whole iandscape 
 may teem with such varied graces, that I 
 may say of it, this is the scene I most love 
 to behold, this is the prospect over v.'hich 
 my eye and my imagination most fondly 
 expatiate. 
 
 The term love admits of an equally real 
 
62 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 and equally intelligible application to our 
 fellow-men. Thej-, too, are the frequent 
 and familiar objects of this affection, and 
 they often are so, because they possess cer- 
 tain accomplishments of person and of cha- 
 racter, by which it is excited. I love the 
 man whose every glance speaks an eliusive 
 cordiality towards those who are around 
 him. I love the man whose heart and 
 whose hand are ever open to the represen- 
 tations of distress. I love the man who 
 possesses such a softness of nature, that the 
 imploring look of a brother in want, or of 
 a brother in pain, disarms him of all his 
 selfishness, and draws him out to some large 
 and willing surrender of generoshy. I love 
 the man who carries on his aspect, not 
 merely the expression of worth, but of 
 worth maintained in the exercise of all its 
 graces, under every variety of temptation 
 and discouragement ; who, in the midst of 
 calumny, can act the warm and enlightened 
 philanthropist ; who, when beset with many 
 provocations, can weather them all in calm 
 and settled endurance ; who can be kind 
 even to the unthankful and the evil ; and 
 who, if he possess the awful virtues of truth 
 and of justice, only heightens our attach- 
 ment the more, that he possesses goodness, 
 and tenderness, and benignity along Avith 
 them. 
 
 Now, we would have you to advert to 
 one capital distinction between the former 
 and the latter class of objects. The inani- 
 mate reflect no love upon us back again. 
 They do not single out any one of their ad- 
 mirers, and, by an act of preference, either 
 minister to his selfish appetite for esteem, 
 or minister to his selfish appetite for enjoy- 
 ment, by affording to him a larger share 
 than to others, of their presence, and of all 
 the delights which their presence inspires. 
 They remain motionless in their places, 
 without will and without sensibility: and 
 the homage they receive, is from the dis- 
 interested affection which men bear to their 
 loveliness. They are loved, and that purely, 
 because they are lovely. There is no mix- 
 ture of selfishness in the affection that is of- 
 fered to them. They do not put on a 
 sweeter smile to one man than to another ; 
 but all the features of that beauty in which 
 they are arrayed, stand inflexibly the same 
 to every beholder ; and he, without any con- 
 scious mingling whatever of self-love, in 
 the emotion with which he gazes at the 
 charms of some external scenery, is actu- 
 ated by a love towards it, which rests and 
 which terminates on the objects that he is 
 employed in contemplating. 
 
 But this is not always the case when our 
 fellow men are objects of this affection. I 
 should love cordiality, and benevolence, and 
 compassion for their own sakes; but let 
 your own experience tell how far more 
 sweetly and more intensely the love is felt, 
 
 when this cordiality is turned, in oric stream 
 of kindliness, towards myself; when the 
 eye of friendship has singled oui me, and 
 looks at me with a peculiar graciousaess; 
 when the man of tenderness has pointed 
 his waj to the abode of my suffering family, 
 and there shed in secrecj' over them his 
 liberalities, and his tears ; when he has for- 
 gi^en me the debt that I was unable to dis- 
 charge; and when, oppressed as I am, by the 
 consciousness of having injured or reviled 
 him, he has nobly forgotten or overlooked 
 the whole provocation, and persists in a re- 
 gard tliat knows no abatement, in a well- 
 doing that is never weary 
 
 There is an element, then, in the love I 
 bear to a fellow man, which does not exist 
 in the love I bear to an inanimate object , 
 and which ma)^ serve, perhaps, to 'larken 
 the character of the aflection I feel towards 
 the former. We most readily concede it, 
 that the love of another, on account of the 
 virtues which adorn him, changes its moral 
 character altogether, if it be a love to him. 
 solely on account of the benefit which I de- 
 rive from the exercise of these virtues. I 
 should love compassion on its own account, 
 as well as on the account that it is I who 
 have been the object of it. I should love 
 justice on its own account, as well as on 
 the account that my grievances have been 
 redressed by the dispensation of it. On 
 looking at goodness, i should feel an affec- 
 .tion resting on this object, and finding there 
 its full and its icrniiaiating gratification; 
 and that, though I had never stood in the 
 way of any one of its beneficent operations. 
 
 How is it, then, that the special direction 
 of a. moral virtue in another, towards the 
 object of my personal benefit, operates in 
 enhancing both the sensation v.hich it im- 
 parts to my heart, and the estimate which I 
 form of it ? What is the peculiar quality com- 
 mmiicated to m)' admiration of another's 
 frienc^ship, and another-s goodness, by the 
 circumstance of myself being the individual 
 towards whom that friendship is cherished, 
 and in favour of whom, that goodness puts 
 itself forth into active exertion? At the 
 sight of a benevolent man, there arises in 
 my bosom an instantaneous homage of re- 
 gard and of reverence ; — but should that 
 homage take a pointed direction towards 
 myself, — should it realize its fruits on the 
 comfort, and the security of my ovrn per- 
 son, — sliould it be employed in gladdening 
 my home, and spreading enjoj^ment over 
 my family, oppressed with want and pining 
 in sickness, there is. you will allow, by 
 these circumstances, a heightening of the 
 love and the admiration that I formerly 
 rendered him. And, we should like to know 
 what is the precise character of the addition 
 that has thus been given to my regard for 
 the virtue of benevolence. We should like 
 to know, if it be altogether a pure and a 
 
«•] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 63 
 
 praise-worthy accession that has thus come 
 upon the sentiment with which I now look 
 at my benefactor, — or, if, by contracting 
 any taint of selfishness, it has lost the high 
 rank that formerly belonged to it, as a dis- 
 interested affection, towards the goodness 
 which beautifies and adorns his character. 
 There is one way, however, in which 
 this special direction of a moral virtue to- 
 wards my particular interest, may increase 
 my affection for it, and without changing 
 the moral character of my affection. It 
 gives me a nearer view of the virtue in 
 question. It is true, that the virtue may just 
 be as lovely when exercised in behalf of my 
 neighbour, as when exercised in behalf of 
 myself. But, in the former case, I am not 
 an eye-witness to the display and the evo- 
 lution of its loveliness. I am a limited be- 
 ing, who cannot take in so full and so dis- 
 tinct an impression of the character of what 
 is distant, as of the character of what is 
 immediately beside me. It is true, that all 
 the circumstances may be reported. Rut 
 you know very well, that a much livelier 
 representation is obtained of any object, 
 by the seeing of it, than by the hearing of 
 it. To be told of kindness, does not bring 
 this attribute of character so forcibly, or so 
 clearly home to my observation, as to re- 
 ceive a visit from kindness, and to take it 
 by the hand, and to see its benignant mien, 
 and to hear its gentle and complacent voice, 
 and to witness the solicitude of its inquiries, 
 and to behold its tender and honest anxiety 
 for my interest, and to share daily and 
 weekly in the liberalities which it has be- 
 stowed upon me. When all this goes on 
 around my own person, and within the 
 limits of my own dwelling-place, it is very 
 true that self is gratified, and that this cir- 
 cumstance may give rise to sensations, 
 which are altogether distinct from the love 
 I bear to moral worth, or to moral excel- 
 lence. But this does not hinder, that along 
 with these sensations, a disinterested love 
 for the moral virtue of which I have been 
 the object, may, at the same time, have its 
 room and its residence within my bosom. 
 I may love goodness more than ever, on 
 its own account, since it has taken its spe- 
 cific way to my habitation, and that, just 
 because I have obtained a nearer acquaint- 
 ance with it. I may love it better, because 
 I know it better. My affection for it may 
 have become more intense, and more de- 
 voted than before, because its beauty is now 
 more fully unfolded to the eye of my ob- 
 servation than before. And thus, while we 
 admit that the goodness of which I am the 
 object, originates within me certain feelings 
 different in kind from that which is excited 
 by goodness in the general, yet it may 
 heighten the degree of this latter feeling 
 also. It may kindle or augment the love I 
 bear to moral virtue in itself; or, in other 
 
 words, it may enhance my affection for 
 worth, without anj^ change whatever in 
 the moral character of that affection. 
 
 Now, before we proceed to consider those 
 peculiar emotions which are excited within 
 me, by being the individual, in whose fa. 
 vour certain virtues are exercised, and which 
 emotions are, all of them, different in kind 
 from the affection that I bear for these vir- 
 tues, — let us farther observe, that the term 
 love, when applied to sentient beings con- 
 sidered as the object of it, may denote an 
 affection, different in the principle of its ex- 
 citement, from any that we have been yet 
 considering. IMy love to another may lie 
 in the liking I have for the moral qualities 
 which belong to him; and this, by way of 
 distinctness, may be called the love of moral 
 esteem or approbation. Or, my love to an- 
 other may consist in the desire I have for 
 his happiness ; and this may be called the 
 love of kindness. These two are often al- 
 lied to each other in fact, but there is a real 
 difference in their nature. The love of 
 kindness which I bear to my infant child 
 may have no reference to its moral qualities 
 whatever. This love finds its terminating 
 gratification in obtaining, for the object of 
 it, exemption from pain, or in ministering 
 to its enjoyments. It is very true, that the 
 sight of what is odious or revolting in the 
 character of another, tends, in point of fact, 
 to dissipate all the love of kindness I may 
 have ever borne to him. But it does not 
 always do so, and one instance of this 
 proves a real distinction, in point of nature, 
 between the love of kindness, and the love 
 of moral esteem. And the highest and 
 most affecting instance which can be given 
 of this distinction, is in the love wherewith 
 God hath loved the world ; is in that kind- 
 ness lAvards us, through Christ Jesus, 
 which he hath made known to men in the 
 Gospei ; is in that longing regard to his 
 fallen creatures, whereby he was' not will- 
 ing that any should perish, but rather that 
 all should live. There was the love of kind- 
 ness standing out, in marked and separate 
 display, from the \o\e of moral esteem ; for, 
 alas ! in the degraded race of mankind, there 
 was not one quality which could call forth 
 such an affection in the breast of the God- 
 head. It was, when we were hateful to him 
 in character, that in person and in interest 
 we Avere the objects of his most unboimded 
 tenderness. It was, when we wen; enemies 
 by wicked works, that God looked on with 
 pity, and stretched forth, to his guilty chil- 
 dren, the arms of offered reconciliation. It 
 was when we had wandered far in the paths 
 of worthlessness and alienation, that he de- 
 vised a message of love, and sent his Son 
 into our world, to seek and to save us. 
 
 And this, by the way, may serve to il- 
 lustrate the kind of love which we are re- 
 quired to bear to our enemies. We are rr 
 
64 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 quired to love them, in the same way in 
 whicli God loves his enemies. A conscien- 
 tious man will feel oppressed by the diffi- 
 culty of such a precept, if he try to put it 
 into obedience, by loving those who have of- 
 fended,\vitli thesame feeling of complacency 
 Avitli which he loves those who have be- 
 friended him. But the truth is, that the love 
 of moral esteem often enters, as a principal 
 ingredient, into the love of complacency ; 
 and we are not required, by our imitation 
 of the Godhead, to entertain any such affec- 
 tion for the depraved and the worthles's. It 
 is enough, that we cherish towards them in 
 our hearts the love of kindness; and this 
 will be felt a far more practicable achieve- 
 ment, tlian to force up the love of compla- 
 cency into a bosom, revolted by the aspect 
 of treachery, or dishonesty, or unprincipled 
 selfishness. There is no possible motive to 
 excite the latter affection. There may be a 
 thousand to excite the former : and we have 
 only to look to the unhappy man in all his 
 prospects, and in all his relations; we have 
 only to pity his delusions, and to view him 
 as the hapless victim of a sad and ruin- 
 ous infatuation ; we have only to carry our 
 eye onwards to the agonies of that death, 
 which will shortly lay hold of him, and to 
 compute the horrors of that eternity, which, 
 if not recovered from the error of his way, 
 he is about to enter; we have only, in a 
 word, to put forth an exercise of fiiith in 
 certain near and impending realities, the 
 evidence of which is altogether resistless, in 
 order to summon up such motives, and such 
 considerations, as may cause the compassion 
 of our nature to predominate over the re- 
 sentment of our nature: and as will assure 
 to a believer the victory over such urgen- 
 cies of his constitution as, to the unrenewed 
 heart, are utterly unconquerable. 
 
 But to resume our argument, let it be ob- 
 served that the kindness of God is one of the 
 loveliest, and most estimable of the attri- 
 butes which belong to him. It is a bright 
 feature in that assemblage of excellencies, 
 which enter into the character of the God- 
 head : and, as such, independently altogether 
 of this kindness being exercised upon me, I 
 shoidd offer to it the homage of my moral 
 approbation. But, should I be the special 
 and the signalized object of his kindness, 
 there is another sentiment towards God, be- 
 side the love of moral esteem, that ought to 
 be formed within me by that circumstance, 
 and which, in the business of reasoning, 
 should be kept apart from it. There is the 
 love of gratitude. These often go together, 
 and may be felt simultaneously, towards 
 the one being \\'e are employed in contem- 
 plating. But they are just as distinct, each 
 from the other, as is the love of moral es- 
 teem from the love of kindness. We trust 
 that we have already convinced you, that 
 God feels towards u.s, his inferiors, the love 
 
 of kindness, when he cannot, from the na- 
 ture of the object, feel for us the slightest 
 degree of the love of moral esteem, in the 
 same manner may we feel, we are not say- 
 ing towards God, but towards an earthly 
 benefactor, the love of gratitude, when, from 
 the nature of the object we are emph^yed 
 in contemplating, there is much to impair 
 within us the love of moral esteem, or to 
 extinguish it altogether. Is it not most na- 
 tural to say of the man, who has been per- 
 sonally benevolent to myself, and who has, 
 at the same time, disgraced himself, by his 
 vices, that, bad as he is, he has been at all 
 times remarkably kind to me, and felt many 
 a movement of friendship towards my per- 
 son, and done many a deed of important 
 service to my family, and that I, at least, 
 owe him a gratitude for all this, — that I, at 
 least, should be longer than others, of dis- 
 missing from my bosom the last remainder 
 of cordiality towards him,^that if, infamy 
 and poverty have followed, in the career of 
 his wickedness, and he have become an 
 outcast from the attentions of other men, it 
 is not for me to spurn him instantly from 
 my door, — or, in the face of my particidar 
 recollections, to look unpitying and un- 
 moved, at the wretchedness into which he 
 has fallen. 
 
 It is the more necessary, to distinguish 
 the love of gratitude from the love of moral 
 esteem, that each of these affections may 
 be excited sinndtaneously within me, by one 
 act or by one exhibition of himself, on the 
 part of the Deity. Let me be made to un- 
 derstand, that God has passed by my trans- 
 gression, and generously admitted me into 
 the privileges and the rewards of obe- 
 dience, — I see in this a tenderness, and a 
 mercy, and a love, for his creatures, which, 
 if blended at the same time with all that is 
 high and honourable in the more august 
 attributes of his nature, have the effect of 
 presenting him to my mind, and of draw- 
 ing out my heart in moral regard to him, 
 as a most amiable and estimable object of 
 contemplation. But besides this, there is a 
 peculiar love of gratitude, excited by the 
 consideration that I am the object of this 
 benignity, — that I am one of the creatures 
 to whom he has directed this peculiar re- 
 gard, — that he has singled out me, and con- 
 ceived a gracious purpose towards me, and 
 in the execution of this purpose is lavishing 
 upon my person, the blessings of a father's 
 care, and a father's tenderness. Both the 
 love of moral esteem, and the love of grati- 
 tude, may thus be in contemporaneous op- 
 eration within me; and it will be seen to 
 accomplish a practical, as well as a meta- 
 physical purpose, to keep the one apart 
 from the other, in the view of the mind, ' 
 when love towards God is the topic of spec- 
 ulation which engages it. 
 
 But, farther, let it be understood, that the 
 
V.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 65 
 
 love of gratitude differs from the love of 
 moral esteem, not merely in the cause wiiich 
 immtdiati'ly originates it, but also in tiie 
 object, ill which it finds its rest and its grati- 
 fication It is the kindness of another being 
 to myself, which originates within me the 
 'ove of gratitude towards him ; and it is the 
 view of what is morally estimable in this 
 being, that originates within me all the love 
 of moral esteem, that I entertain for him. 
 There is a real distinction of cause between 
 these two alIections,and there is also between 
 them a real distinction of object. The love 
 of moral esteem finds its complacent grati- 
 fication, in the act of dwelling contempla- 
 tively on that Being, by whom it is excited ; 
 just as a tasteful enthusiast inhales delight 
 from the act of gazing on the charms of 
 some external scenery. The pleasure he 
 receives, emanates directly upon his mind, 
 from the forms of beauty and of loveliness, 
 which are around him. And if, instead of 
 a taste for the beauties of nature, there ex- 
 ists within him, a taste for the beauties of 
 holiness, then will he love the Being, who 
 presents to the eye of his contemplation the 
 fullest assemblage of them, and his taste 
 will find its complacent gratification in 
 dwelling upon him, whether as an object of 
 thought, or as an object of perception. "One 
 thing have I desired," says the Psalmist, 
 " that I may dwell in the house of the Lord 
 all the days of my life, to behold the l)eauty 
 of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple." 
 Now, the love of gratitude is distinct from 
 this in its object. It is excited by the love 
 of kindness; and the feeling which is thus 
 excited, is just a feeling of kindness back 
 again. It is kindness begetting kindness. 
 The language of this affection is, " What 
 shall I render unto the Lord for all his bene- 
 fits V" lie has done what is pleasing and 
 gratifying to me. What shall I do to please, 
 and to gratify him ? The love of gratitude 
 seeks for answers to this question, and finds 
 its delight in acting upon them, and whether 
 the answer be, — tliis is the will of God, even 
 your sanctification, — or, with the sacrifices 
 of liberality God is well pleased, — or, obe- 
 dience to parents is well pleasing in his 
 sight, — these all point out so many lines of 
 conduct, to which the impulse of the love 
 of gratitude would carry us, and attest this 
 to be the love of God, — that ye keep his 
 commandments. 
 
 And, indeed, when the same Being com- 
 bines, in his own persoai, that which ought 
 to excite the love of moral esteem, with 
 that which ought to excite the love of grati- 
 tude, — the two ingredients, enter with a 
 mingled but harmonious concurrence, into 
 the exercise of one compound affection. It 
 is true, that the more appropriate offering 
 of the former is the offering of praise, — 
 just as when one looks to the beauties of 
 nature, he breaks out into a rapturous ac- 
 9 
 
 knowledgment of them ; and so it may be, 
 when one looks to the venerable, and the 
 lovely in the character of God. The more 
 appropriate offering of the latter, is the offer- 
 ing of thanksgiving, or of such services as 
 are fitted to please, and to gratify a bene- 
 factor. But still it may be observed, how 
 each of these simple affections tends to ex- 
 press itself, by the very act which more 
 characteristically marks the workings of 
 the other; or, how the more appropriate 
 offering of the first of them, may be prompt- 
 ed under the impulse, and movement of 
 the second of them, and conversely. For,' 
 if I love God because of his perfections, 
 what principle can more powerfully or more 
 directly lead to the imitation of them? — 
 which is the very service that he requires, 
 and the very offering that he is most 
 pleased with. And, if I love God because 
 of his goodness to me, what is more fitted 
 to prompt my every exertion, in the way 
 of spreading the honours of his character 
 and of his name among my fellows, — 
 and, for this purpose, to magnify in their 
 hearing the glories and the attributes of iiis 
 nature 1 It is thus that the voice of praise 
 and the voice of gratitude may enter into 
 one song of adoration ; and that wliilst tho 
 Psalmist, at one time, gives thanks to God 
 at the remembrance of Ins holiness, he, at 
 another, pours forth praise at the itmem- 
 brance of his mercies. 
 
 To have the love of gratitude towards 
 God, it is essential that we know and be- 
 lieve his love of kindness towards us. To 
 have the love of moral esteem towards him, 
 it is essential that the loveliness of his char- 
 acter be in the eye of the mind : or, in other 
 words, that the mind keep itself in steady 
 and believing contemplation of the excel- 
 lencies which belong to him. The view 
 that we have of God, is just as much in the 
 order of precedency to the affection that we 
 entertain for him, as any two successive 
 steps can be, in any of the processes of our 
 mental constitution. To obtain the intro- 
 duction of love into the heart, there must, 
 as a preparatory circumstance, be the in- 
 troduction of knowledge into the under- 
 standing; or, as we can never be said to 
 know what we do not believe — ere we have 
 love, we musthave faith; and, accordingly, in 
 the passage from which our text is extracted, 
 do we perceive the one pointed to, as the 
 instrument for the production of the other. 
 " Keep yourselves in the love of God, build- 
 ing yourselves up on your most holy faith." 
 
 And here, it ought to be remarked, that a 
 man may experience a mental process, and 
 yet have no taste or no understanding for 
 the explanation of it. The simple truths of 
 the Gospel, may enter with acceptance into 
 the mind of a peasant, and there work all 
 the proper influences on his heart and cha- 
 racter, which the Bible ascribes to them: and 
 
66 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SIIRBI 
 
 yet lie may be utterly incapable of tracing 
 that series of inward movements, by wliicii 
 he is carried onward from a belief in the 
 truth, to all those moral and affectionate re- 
 gards, whicli mark a genuine disciple of the 
 truth. lie may be the actual subject of these 
 movements, tliough altogether unable to fol- 
 ow or to analyze them. This is not pecu- 
 liar to tiie judgments or tlie feelings of 
 Christianity. In the matters of ordinary 
 life, a man may judge sagaciously, and feel 
 correctly while ardently ; — and experience, 
 in right and natural order, the play of his 
 various faculties, without having it at all in 
 his power, either to frame or to follow a true 
 
 theory of his faculties. It is well, that the 
 simple preaching of the Gospel has its right 
 practical operation on men, who mal<e no 
 attempt whatever, to comprehend the meta- 
 pliysics of the operation. But, if ever 
 metaphysics be employed to darken the 
 freeness of the Gospcd offer, or to dethrone 
 faitli from the supremacy which belongs to 
 it, or to forbid the approaches of tho.'-e 
 whom God has not forbidden; then must it 
 be met upon its own ground, and the real 
 character of our beneficent religion be as- 
 serted, amid the attempts of those who have 
 in any way obscured or injured it by their 
 illustrations. 
 
 SERMON X. 
 Gratitude, not a sordid Affection. 
 
 " We love him, because he first loved us." — 1 John iv. 19. 
 
 Some theologians have exacted from an 
 inquirer, at the very outset of his conver- 
 sion, tiiat he should carry in his heart what 
 they call the disinterested love of God. 
 Tliey have set him on the most painful ef- 
 forts to acquire tliis affection, — and tliat too, 
 before he was in circumstances in which it 
 was at all possible to entertain it. They 
 have led him to view with suspicion the 
 love of gratitude, as having in it a taint of 
 selfishness. They are for having him to 
 love God, and that on the single ground 
 that he is lovely, without any reference to 
 his own comfort, or even to his own saiety. 
 Strange demand which they make on a 
 sentiiMit being, that even amidst the fears 
 and the images of destruction, he should 
 find room in liis heart for the love of com- 
 placency! and equally strange demand to 
 make on a sinful being, that ere he admit 
 such a sense of reconciliation into his bo- 
 som, as will instantly call forth a grateful 
 regard to him Afho has conferred it, he 
 must view God with a disinterested aflTec- 
 lion ; that from the deep and Iielpless abyss 
 of his depravity, he must find, unaided, his 
 ascending way to the purest and the sub- 
 limist emotion of moral nature ; that ere 
 he is delivered from fear he must love, even 
 though it be said of love, that it casteth out 
 fear ; and that ere he is placed on the van- 
 tage ground of the peace of the Gospel, he 
 must realize on his character, one of the 
 most exalted of its perfections. 
 
 The effect of all this on many an anxious 
 seeker after rest, has been most discouraging. 
 With the stigma that has been affixed to the 
 love of gratitude, they have been positively 
 apprehensive of the inroads of this affec- 
 tion, and have studiously averted the eye of 
 
 their contemplation from the objects which 
 are fitted to inspire it. In other words, 
 they have hesitated to entertain the free of- 
 fers of salvation, and misinterpreted all the 
 tokens of an embassy, which has proclaim- 
 ed peace on earth and good will to men. 
 They think that all which they can possi- 
 bly gather, in the way of affection, from 
 such a contemplation, is the love of grati- 
 tude ; and that gratitude is selfishness ; and 
 that selfishness is not a gracious affection ; 
 and that ere they be surely and soundly 
 converted, tfie love they bear to God must 
 be of a totally disinterested character ; and 
 thus through another medium than that of 
 a free and gratuitous dispensation of kind- 
 ness, do they strive, by a misunderstood 
 gospel, or without the gospel altogether, to 
 reach a peace and a preparation which we 
 fear, in their way of it, is to sinners utterly 
 unattainable. 
 
 In the progress of this discourse let us 
 endeavour, in the first place, to rescue the 
 love of gratitude from the impntations 
 which have been preferred against it, — and 
 secondly, to assign to the love of kindness 
 manifested to the world in the gospel, and 
 to the faith by which that love is made to 
 arise in the heart, the place and the pre- 
 eminence which belong to them. 
 
 I. The proper object of the love of grati- 
 tude, is the being who has exercised towards 
 me the love of kindness ; and this is more 
 correct than to say, that the proper object 
 of this affection is the being who has con- 
 ferred benefits upon me. I can conceive 
 another to load me with benefactions, and 
 at the same time, to evmce that kindness 
 towards me was not the principle which 
 impelled him. It may be done reluctantly 
 
X.1 
 
 DEPftAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 67 
 
 at the'bidding of another, or it may bedono 
 to serve some interested purpose, or it may 
 be done to parade his generosity before the 
 eye of the public. If it be not done from 
 a real principle of kindness to myself, 1 may 
 take his gifts, and I may find enjoyment in 
 the use of them ; but I feel no gratitude to- 
 wards the dispenser of them. Unless I see 
 his kindness in them, I will not be grateful. 
 It is true, that, in point of fact, gratitude 
 often springs from the rendering of a bene- 
 fit ; but, lest we should confound things 
 which are different, let it be well observed, 
 that this is only when the benefit .serves as 
 the indication of a kind purpose, or of a 
 kind affection, on the part of him who hath 
 granted it. And this may be proved, not 
 merely by showing, that there may be no 
 gratitude where there is a benefit, but also 
 by showing, that there may be gratitude 
 where there is no material benefit what- 
 ever. Just let the naked principle of kind- 
 ness discover itself, and though it have nei- 
 ther the power, nor the opportunity of 
 coming forth with the dispensation of any 
 service, it is striking to observe, how, upon 
 the bare existence of this affection being 
 known, it is met by a grateful feeling, on 
 the part of him to whom it is directed; and 
 what mighty augmentations may be given 
 in this way, to the stock of enjoyment, and 
 that, by the mere reciprocation of kindness 
 begetting kindness. For, to send the expres- 
 sion of this kindness into another's bosom, 
 it is not always necessary to do it on the 
 vehicle of positive donation. It may be 
 conveyed by a look of benevolence; and 
 thus it is, that by the mere feeling of cor- 
 diality, a tide of happiness may be made to 
 circulate throughout all the individuals of 
 an assembled company. Or it may be done 
 by a very slight and passing attention, and 
 thus it is, that the cheap services of courte- 
 ousness, may spread such a charm over the 
 face of a neighbourhood. Or it may be done 
 by the very poorest member of human so- 
 ciety; and "thus it is, that the ready and sin- 
 cere homage of attachment from such a man, 
 may beam a truer felicity upon me, and 
 call forth a livelier gratitude to him who 
 has conferred it, than some splendid act of 
 patronage on the part of a superior. Or it 
 may be done by a Christian visiter in some 
 ofthe humblest ofour city lanes, who, without 
 one penny to bestow on the children of want, 
 may spread among them the simple con- 
 viction of her good will, and call down upon 
 her person the voice of thankfulness and of 
 blessing from all their habitations. And 
 thus it is, that by good will creating good 
 will, a pure and gladdening influence will 
 at length go abroad over the face of our 
 world, and mankind will be made to know 
 the might and the mysteryof that tie which 
 is to bind them together into one family, 
 and they will rejoice in the power of that 
 
 secret charm which so heightens and so mul- 
 tiplies the pleasure of all the members of it; 
 and, when transpcjrted from earth to heaven, 
 they will still feel, that while it is to the 
 benefits which Had hath conferred that they 
 owe the possession and all the privileges of 
 existence; it is to a sense of the l;)ve which 
 prompted these benefits, that they will owe 
 the ecstatic charm of their immortality. It 
 is the beaming kindness of God upon them, 
 that will put their souls into the liveliest 
 transports of gratitude and joy ; and it is the 
 reciprocation of this kindness on the part of 
 those, who, while they have fellowship with 
 the Father, and with the Son, have fellow- 
 ship also with one another, that will cause the 
 joy of heaven to be full, y 
 
 The distinction which we are now ad- 
 verting to, is something more, than a mere 
 shadowy refinement of speculation. It may 
 be realized on the most trodden and ordi- 
 nary path of human experience, and is, in 
 fact, one of the mo.st familiar exhibitions of 
 genuine and unsophisticated nature in those 
 ranks of society where refinement is un- 
 known. Let one man go over any given 
 district of the city fully fraught with the 
 mater-iel of benevolence; let him be the 
 agent of some munificent subscription, and 
 with nothing in his heart >but just such 
 affections, and such jealousies, and such 
 thoughtful anxieties, about a right and equi- 
 table division, as belong to the general spirit 
 of his office; let liim leave some substantial 
 deposit with each ofthe families; and then 
 compute, if he can, the quantity of gratitude 
 which he carries away with him. It were 
 a most unkind reflection on the lower orders, 
 and not more unkind than untrue, to deny 
 that there will be the mingling of some 
 gratitude, along with the clamour, and the 
 envy, and the discontent, which are ever sure 
 to follow in the train of such a ministration. 
 It is not to discredit the poor, that we intro- 
 duce our present observation ; but to bring 
 out, if possible, into broad and luminous ex- 
 hibition, one ofthe finest sensibilities which 
 adorns them. It is to let you know the 
 high cast of cliaracter of which they are 
 capable; and how the glow of pleasure 
 which arises in their bosoms, when the eye 
 of simple affection beams upon their per- 
 sons, or upon their habitations, iray not have 
 one single taint of sordidness to debase it. 
 And to prove this, just let another man go 
 over the same district, and in the train of 
 the former visitation ; conceive him unbacked 
 by any public institution, to have nothiu;^ in 
 his hand that might not be absorbed by the 
 needs of a single family, but that, utterly 
 destitute as he is of the materiel, he has a 
 heart charged and overflowing witii the 
 whole morale of benevolence. .lust let him 
 go forth among the people, without one 
 other recommendation than an honest and 
 undissembled good will to them; and let 
 
68 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 this good will manifest its existence, in any 
 one of the thousand ways, by whicli it may 
 be authenticated ; and whether it be by the 
 cordiality of his manners, or by his sympa- 
 thy with their griefs, or by the nameless at- 
 tentions and offices of civility, or by the 
 higher aim of that kindness which points ti) 
 the welfare of tlieir immortality, and evinces 
 its reality by its ready and unwearied ser- 
 vices among the young, or the sick, or the 
 dying; just let them be satisfied of the one 
 fact, tliat he is their friend, and that all their 
 joys and all their sorrows are his own ; he 
 may be struggling with hardships and ne- 
 cessities as the poorest of them all ; but poor 
 as they are, they know what is in his heart, 
 and well do they know how to value it ; and 
 from the voice of welcome, which meets 
 him in the very humblest oCtheir tenements; 
 and from the smile of that heartfelt enjoy- 
 ment, which his presence is ever sure to 
 awaken, and from the influence of gracious- 
 ness which he carries along with hun into 
 every house, and by which he lights up an 
 honest emotion of thankfulness in the bosom 
 of every family, may we gather the exist- 
 ence of a power, which worth alone, and 
 without the accompaniment of wealth, can 
 bestow ; a power to sweeten and subdue, 
 and tranquillize, which no money can pur- 
 chase, which no patronage can create. 
 
 It will be readily acknowledged by all, 
 that the most precious object in the manage- 
 ment of a town, is to establish the reign of 
 happiness and contentment among those 
 who live in it. And it is interesting to mark 
 the operations of those, who, without advert- 
 ing to the principle that I now insist upon, 
 think that all is to be achieved by the beg- 
 garly elements which enter into the arith- 
 metic of ordinary business : who rear their 
 goodlv scheme upon the basis of sums and 
 computations ; and think that by an over- 
 whelming discharge of the materiel of be- 
 nevolence, they will reach an accomplish- 
 ment which the morale of benevolence 
 alone is equal to. We are sure that it is not 
 to mortify our men of grave, and official, 
 and calculating experience, fhat we tell 
 them, how, with all their strength, and all 
 their sagacity, they have only given their 
 money for that which is not meat, and 
 their labour for that which satisfieth not. 
 It is to illustrate a principle of our common 
 nature, so obvious, that to be recognized, it 
 needs only to be spoken of. And it were 
 well, if in so doing their thoughts could be 
 led to the instrumentality of this principle, 
 as the only way, in which they can redeem 
 the failures of their by-gone experience ; if 
 they could be convinced, that the agents of 
 a zealous and affectionate Christianity can 
 alone do what all the influence of municipal 
 weight and municipal wisdom cannot do; 
 if thev couIq be taught what the ministra- 
 tions are, by which a pure and a respond- 
 
 ing gratitude, may be made to circulate 
 throughout all our dwelling-places; il', in a 
 word, while they profess to serve tlie poor, 
 they could be led to respect the poor, to do 
 homage to that fineness of moral tempera- 
 ment which belongs to them, and whidi 
 hitherto seems to have escaped, altogelhei, 
 the eye of civil or political superintendence : 
 and they ma}"^ rest ;:ssured, that let them 
 give as miich in the shape of munificence 
 as they will, if they add not the love to the 
 liberality of the Uospel, they will never 
 soften one feature of unkindness. or chase 
 away one exiisperated feeling, from the 
 hearts of a neglected population. 
 
 But, beside the degree of purity in which 
 this principle may exist among the most 
 destitute of our species, it is also of import- 
 ance to mark the degree of strength, in 
 which it actually exists among the most de- 
 praved of our species. And, on this subject, 
 do we think that the venerable Howard 
 has bequeathed to us a most striking and 
 valuable observation. You know the his- 
 tory of this man"s enterprises; how his do- 
 ings, and his observations, were among the 
 veriest outcasts of humanity, — how he de- 
 scended into prison houses, and there made 
 himself familiar whh all that could most 
 revolt or terrify, in the exhibition of oui 
 fallen nature; "how, for this purpose, he 
 made the tour of Europe ; but instead of 
 walking in the footsteps of other travellers, 
 he toiled his painful and persevering way 
 through these receptacles of worthlessness ; 
 — and, sound experimentalist as he was, did 
 he treasure up the phenomena of our na- 
 ture, throughout all the stages of misfor- 
 tune, or depravity. We may well conceive 
 the scenes of moral desolation that would 
 often meet his eye ; and that, as he looked 
 to the hard, and dauntless, and defying 
 aspect of criminality before him, he would 
 sicken in despair of ever finding one rem- 
 nant of a purer and better principle, by 
 which he might lay hold of these unhappy 
 men. and convert them into the willing and 
 the consenting agents of their own amelio- 
 I ration. And j'et such a principle he foimd, 
 I and found it, as he tells us, after years of 
 ! intercourse, as the fruit of his greater ex- 
 perience, and his longer observation ; and 
 gives, as the result of it, that convicts, and 
 that among the most desperate of them all, 
 are not ungovernable, and that there is a 
 way of managing even them, and that the 
 way is, without relaxing, in one iota, from 
 the steadiness of a calm and resolute disci- 
 pline, to treat them with tenderness, and to 
 shoAv them that you have humanity ; and 
 thus a principle, of itself so beautiful, that 
 to expatiate upon it, gives in the eyes of 
 some, an air of fantastic declamation to our 
 argument, is actually deponed to, by an aged 
 and most sagacious observer. It is the very 
 principle of our text ; and it would appeal 
 
X.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 69 
 
 that it keeps a lingering hold of our nature, 
 even in the last and lowest degree of human 
 wickedness ; and that when abandoned by 
 every other principle, this may still be de- 
 tected, — that even among the most hack- 
 neyed and most hardened of malefactors 
 there is still about them a softer part which 
 will give way to the demonstrations of ten- 
 derness : that this one ingredient of a bet- 
 ter character is still found to survive the 
 dissipation of all the others, — that, fallen as 
 a brother may be, from the moralities which 
 at one time adorned him, the manifested 
 good-will of his fellow-man still carries a 
 charm and an influence along with it ; and 
 that, therefore, there lies in this, an opera- 
 tion which, as no poverty can vitiate, so no 
 depr vity can extinguish.* 
 
 Now, this is the very principle which is 
 brought into action, in the dealings of God 
 with a whole world of malefactors. It 
 looks as if he confided the whole cause of 
 our I'ecovery to the influence of a demon- 
 stration of good will. It is truly interest- 
 ing to mark, what, in the devisings of his 
 unsearchable wisdom, is the character \vhich 
 he has made to stand most visibly out, in 
 the great scheme and history of our re- 
 demption : and surely if there be one fea- 
 ture of prominency more visible than an- 
 other, it is the love of kindness. There 
 appears to be no other possible way, by 
 which a responding affection can be depo- 
 sited in the heart of man. Certain it is, 
 that the law of love cannot be carried to its 
 ascendency over us by storm. Authority 
 cannot command it. Strength cannot im- 
 plant it. Terror cannot cliarm it into ex- 
 istence. The threatenings of vengeance 
 may stifle, or they may repel, but they 
 never can woo this delicate principle of our 
 nature, into a warm and confiding attach- 
 ment. The human heart remains shut, in 
 all its receptacles, against the force of these 
 various applications ; and God, who knew 
 what was in man, seems to have known, 
 that in his dark and guilty bosom, there was 
 but one solitary hold tliat he had over him ; 
 and that to reach it, he must just put on a 
 look of graciousness, and tell us that he has 
 no pleasure in our death, and manifest to- 
 wards us the longings of a bereaved parent, 
 and even humble himself to a suppliant in 
 the cause of our return, and send a Gospel 
 of peace into the world, and bid his messen- 
 gers to bear throughout all its habitations, 
 the tidings of his good-will to the children 
 of men. This is the topic of his most 
 anxious and repeated demonstration. This 
 manifested good will of God to his crea- 
 tures, is the band of love, and the cord 
 of a man, by which he draws them. It is 
 
 * The operation of the same principle has, of 
 late, been strikingly exemplified by Mrs. Fry, 
 and her coadjutors, in the prison at Newgate, 
 
 true, that from the inaccessible throne of 
 his glory, we see no direct emanation of 
 his tenderness upon us, from this face of 
 the King who is invisible. But, as if to 
 make up for this, he sent his Son into the 
 world, and declared him to be God mani- 
 fest in the flesh, and let us see, in his tears, 
 and inhis sympathies, and in all therecordcd 
 traits of his kindness, and gentleness, and 
 love, what a God we have to deal with. It 
 is true, that even in love to us, he did not 
 let down one attribute of truth or of ma- 
 jesty which belonged to him. But, in love 
 to us, he hath laid upon his own Son the 
 burden of their vindication : — and now, that 
 every obstacle is done away; now, that the 
 barrier which lay across the path of ac- 
 ceptance, is levelled by the power of liim 
 wlio travailed in the greatness of his strength 
 for us ; now, that the blood of atonement 
 has been shed, and that the justice of God 
 has been magnified, and that our iniquities 
 have been placed on the great Sacrifice, and 
 so borne away that there is no more men- 
 tion of them : now, that with his dignity 
 entire, and his holiness untainted, the door 
 of heaven may be opened, and sinners be 
 called upon to enter in, — is the voice of a 
 friendly and beseeching God, lifted up with- 
 out reserve, in the hearing of us all; — his 
 love of kindness is published abroad among 
 men ; — and this one mighty principle of 
 attraction is brought to bear upon a nature, 
 that might have remained sullen and un- 
 moved under every other application. 
 
 And, as God, in the measure of restoring 
 a degenerate world unto himself, hath set 
 in operation the very same principle as that 
 which we have attempted to illustrate, — so 
 the operation hath produced the very same 
 result that we have ascribed to it. As soon 
 as his love of kindness is believed, so soon 
 does the love of gratitude spring up in the 
 heart of the believer. As soon as man gives 
 up his fear and his suspicion of God, and 
 discerns him to be his friend, so soon does 
 he render him the homage of a willing and 
 affectionate loyalty. There is not a man 
 who can say, I have knoAvn and believed 
 the love which God hath to us, who cannot 
 say also, I have loved God because he first 
 loved me. There has not, we will venture 
 to afl^rm, been a single example in the 
 whole history of the church, of a man who 
 had a real faith in the overtures of peace 
 and of tenderness which are proposed by 
 tlie Gospel, and who did not, at the same 
 time, exemplify this attribute of the Christian 
 faith, that it worketh by love. 
 
 It is thus that the faith, which recognizes 
 God, as God in Christ reconciling the world 
 unto himself, lies at the turning point of 
 conversion. In this \vay, and in this way 
 alone, is there an inlet of communication 
 open to the heart of man, for that principle 
 of love to God, Avhich gives all its power 
 
70 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 and all its character to the new obedience 
 of the gospel. So soon as a man really 
 knows the truth, and no man can be said to 
 know what he does not believe, will this 
 truth enthrone a new affection in his bosom, 
 which will set him free from the dominion 
 of all such affections as are earthly and re- 
 bellious. The whole style and spirit of his 
 obedience are transformed. The man now 
 walks with the vigour, and the confidence, 
 and the enlargement, of one who is set at 
 liberty. It looks a mysterious revolution 
 in the general eye of the world. But the 
 fact is, that from the moment a sinner 
 closes with the overtures of the gospel, 
 from that moment a new era is established 
 in the history of his mind altogether. As 
 soon as he sees what he never saw before, 
 so soon does he feel what he never felt be- 
 fore. Without the faith of the gospel he 
 may serve God in the spirit of bondage : 
 he may be driven, by the terrors of his law, 
 into many outward and reluctant conformi- 
 ties ; he may even, without the influence of 
 these terrors, maintain a thousand decen- 
 cies of tastes, and custom, and established 
 observation. But he is still an utter stranger 
 to the first and the greatest commandment. 
 There may be the homage of many a visi- 
 ble movement with the body, while, in the 
 whole bent and disposition of the soul there 
 is nothing but aversion, and distance, and 
 enmity. Even the word of the gospel may 
 be addressed. Sabbath after Sabbath, and 
 that too, to hearers who offer no positive 
 resistance to it. — but coming to them only 
 in word, they remain as motionless and un- 
 impressed as ever, and with an utter dor- 
 mancy in their hearts as to any responding 
 movement of gratitude. The heart, in fact, 
 remains unapproachable in every other way, 
 but by the gospel coming to it, not in word 
 only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, 
 and in much assurance. Then is it, that 
 the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts ; 
 and that the gospel approves itself to be his 
 power, and his wisdom, to the sanctification 
 of all who believe in it. 
 
 Now, the theologians to wuom we allude, 
 have set up obstacles in the way of such a 
 process. They hold a language about the 
 disinterested love of God, and demand this 
 at the very outset of a man's conversion, in 
 such a Avay, as may retard his entrance 
 upon a life of faith, — as may have prolonged 
 the darkness of many an inquirer, and have 
 kept him in a state of despair, whom a right 
 understanding of the gospel would have 
 relieved of all his doubts, and all his per- 
 plexities. They seem to look on the love 
 of gratitude, as having in it a taint of selfish- 
 ness. They say that to love a being, 
 because he is my benefactor, is little bet- 
 ter than to love the benefit which he has 
 conferred upon me ; and that this, instead 
 of any evidence of a state of grace, is the 
 
 mere effect of an appetite which belongs 
 essentially and universally to tlie animal 
 state of nature. They appear to have missed 
 the distinction, between the love that is felt 
 towards the benefit itself, and the love of 
 gratitude that is felt towards the author of 
 it; though certainly there are here two ob- 
 jects of affection altogether distinct from 
 each other. 
 
 My liking for the gift is a different phase 
 of mind from my liking for the giver. In 
 the one exercise, I am looking to a different 
 object, and my thoughts have a different 
 employment, from wliat they have in the 
 other. Had I an affection for the gift, without 
 ail affection for the giver, then might I evince 
 an unmixed selfishness of character. But I 
 may have both; and my affection for the 
 giver may be purely in obedience to that 
 law of reciprocity, whereby if another likes 
 me, I am disposed by that circumstance, 
 and by that alone, to like him back again. 
 The gift may serve merely the purpose of 
 an indication. It is the medium tiirough 
 which I perceive the love that another bears 
 me. But it is possible for me to perceive 
 this through another medium, and, in this 
 case, the rising gratitude of my bosom might 
 look a purer and more disinterested emotion. 
 But the truth is, that it retains the very same 
 character, though a gift has been the occa- 
 sion of its excitement, — and, therefore, it 
 ought not to have been so assimilated to the 
 principle of selfishness. It ouglit not to 
 have been so discouraged, and made the 
 object of suspicion, at that moment of its 
 evolution, when the returning sinner looks 
 by faith to the truths and the promises of 
 the gospel, and sees in them the tenderness 
 of an inviting God. It ought not to have 
 been so stigmatized, as a mere portion of 
 his unrenewed nature ; for, in truth, it will 
 heighten and grow upon him, with every 
 step in the advancement of his moral re- 
 novation. It will be one of the gracefullest 
 of his accomplishments in this world ; and 
 so far from being extinguished in the next, 
 along with the baser and more selfish affec- 
 tions of our constitution, it will pour an ani- 
 mating spirit into many a song of ecstacy, 
 to him who loved us, and washed us from 
 our sins in his own blood. The law of love 
 begetting love, will obtain in eternity. Like 
 the law of reciprocal attraction in tlie ma- 
 terial world, it will cement the immutable 
 and everlasting order of that moral system, 
 which is to emerge with the new heavens 
 and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righ- 
 teousness. The love which emanates from 
 the throne of God, upon his surrounding 
 family, will call back a voice of blessing, 
 and thanksgiving, and glory, from all the 
 members of it. And the love which his 
 children bear to each other, will, in like 
 manner, be reflected and multiplied. All 
 that is wrong in selfisnness will be there 
 
X.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 71 
 
 unknown. But gratitude, so far from being 
 counted an unseemly companion for para- 
 dise, will be one chief ingredient in the 
 fulness of its joy ; one of the purest and 
 most exquisite of those pleasures which are 
 for evermore. 
 
 The first consideration, then, upon which 
 we would elevate gratitude to the rank of a 
 virtue, is, that in its object, it is altogether 
 distinct from selfishness. It is enough, in- 
 deed, to dissolve the imagination of any 
 kindred character between selfishness and 
 gratitude, that the man without selfishness:, 
 seems to the eye of a beholder, as standing 
 on a lofty eminence of virtue. The man 
 without gratitude, is held, by all, to be a 
 monster of deformity. Give me a man who 
 .seizes with ravenous appropriation all that 
 I have to bestow, — and who hoards it, or 
 feeds upon it, or, in any way rejoices over 
 it, without one grateful movement of his 
 heart towards me, — and you lay before me 
 a character, not merely unlike, but diametri- 
 cally opposite, to tlie character of him who 
 obtains the very same gift, and, perhaps, de- 
 rives from the use of it, an equal, or a greater 
 degree of enjoyment, to the sensitive part 
 of his nature, — but who, in addition to all 
 this, has thought, and aflfection, and the 
 higher principles of his nature, excited by 
 the consideration of the giver; and looks to 
 the manifested love that appears in this act 
 of generosity; and is touched with love 
 back again ; and, under the influence of this 
 responding affection, conceives the kindest 
 wishes, and pours out the warmest prayers, 
 for the interest of his benefactor, and shows 
 him all the symptoms of friendship, and 
 surrounds him with all its services. 
 
 The second consideration upon which we 
 would elevate gratitude to the rank of a 
 pure virtue, has already been glanced at. 
 Were it not a virtue, it would have no place 
 in heaven. Did it only appertain to the un- 
 renewed part of our nature, it would find 
 no admittance among the saints in paradise. 
 But one of the songs of the redeemed, is a 
 song of gratitude. 
 
 And, thirdly, by looking more closely to 
 this affection, both in its origin and in its 
 exercises, we shall perceive in it, more 
 clearly, all the characteristics of virtue. 
 
 Let it be remarked, then, that an affection 
 may simply exist, and yet be no evidence 
 of any virtue, or of any moral worth in the 
 holder of it. I may look on a beautiful 
 prospect, and be drawn out to an invo- 
 luntary sentiment of admiration. Or, I may 
 look on my infant child, and without one 
 effort of volition, feel a parental tenderness 
 towards it. Or, I may be present at a scene 
 of distress, and without choosing or willing 
 to be so, I may be moved to the softest com- 
 passion. And, in this way, I may have a 
 character made up of many affections, some 
 of which are tasteful, some of which are 
 
 most amiable in themselves, and some oi 
 which are most useful to society and yet 
 none of which may possess the sn)allest 
 portion of the essential character of virtue. 
 They may be brought into exercise without 
 any working of a sense of duty whatever. 
 One of those we have specified — the instinc- 
 tive affection of parents for their young, is 
 exemplified in all its strength, and in afl its 
 tenderness, by the inferior animals. And, 
 therefore, if we want to know what that is 
 which constitutes the character of virtue, or 
 moral worth, in a human being, we must 
 look to something else, than to the mere 
 existence of certain affections, however val- 
 uable they may prove to others, or whatever 
 gracefulness they may shed over the com- 
 plexion of him who possesses them. 
 
 Now, it would be raising a collateral into 
 a main topic, were we to enter upon a full 
 explanation of the matter that has now been 
 suggested. And we shall, therefore, briefly 
 remark, that to give the character of virtue 
 to any grace of the inner man, the will, 
 acting under a sense of dutv, must, in some 
 way or other, have been concerned in the 
 establishment, or in the continuance of it ; 
 and that to give the same character of virtueto 
 a deed of the outer man, the will must also 
 be concerned. A deed is only virtuous in 
 as far as it is voluntary; and it is only in 
 proportion to the share which the will" has 
 in the performance of it, and the will im 
 pelling us to do, what we are persuaded 
 ought to be done, that there can be awarded, 
 to the deed in question, any character of 
 moral estimation. 
 
 This will explain wliat the circumstances 
 are, under which the gratitude of a human 
 being may at one time be an instinct, and 
 at another time a virtue. I may enter the 
 house of an individual who is an utter 
 stranger to the habit of acting under a sense 
 of duty ; who is just as min^h the creature 
 of mere impulse, as the animals beneath 
 him ; and who, therefore, though some of 
 these impulses are more characteristic of 
 his condition as a man, and most subser- 
 vient to the good of his fellows, may be con- 
 sidered as possessing no virtue whatever, 
 in the strict and proper sense of the term. 
 But he has the property of being affected 
 b}' external causes. And I, by some mi- 
 nistration of friendship, may flash upon his 
 mind such an overpowering conviction of 
 the good will that I bear him, as to affect 
 him with a sense of gratitude even unto 
 tears. The moral obligation of gratitude 
 may not be present to his mind at all. But 
 the emotion of gratitude comes into his 
 heart unbidden, and finds its vent in ac- 
 knowledgments, and blessings, on the per- 
 son of his benefactor. "We would say, of 
 such a person, that he possesses a happier 
 original constitution than another, who, in 
 tiie same circumstances, would not be so 
 
72 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERH 
 
 powerfully or so tenderly affected. And 
 yet he may have hitherto evinced nothing 
 more than the vvorlvings of a mere instinct, 
 which springs spontaneously within him, 
 and gives' its own impulse to his words and 
 his performances, without a sense of duty 
 having any share in the matter, or without 
 the will prompting the individual by any 
 such consideration, as, let me do this tiling 
 because I ought to do it. 
 
 Let us now conceive the moral sense to 
 be admitted to its share of influence over 
 this proceeding. Let it be consulted on the 
 question of vvhat ought to be felt, and what 
 ought to be done, by one being, when an- 
 other evinces the love of kindness towards 
 him. A mere instinct may, in point of fact, 
 draw out a return of love and of service 
 back again. But it is the province of the 
 moral sense to pronounce on the point of 
 obligation, and we speak its universal sug- 
 gestion, when we say, that the love of grati- 
 tude ought to be felt, and the services of 
 gratitude ought to be rendered. 
 
 Now, to make this decision of the moral 
 sense practically effectual, and, indeed, to 
 make the moral sense have any thing to do 
 with this question at all, tliefeehng of grati- 
 tude must, in some way or other, be de- 
 [)endent either for its existence, or its 
 growth, or its continuance, upon the will ; 
 and the same will must also have a com- 
 mand over the services of gratitude. The 
 moral sense^ in fact, never interposes with 
 any dictate, or with any declaration about 
 the feelings, or the conduct of man, unless 
 in so far as the will of man has an influ- 
 ence, and a power of regulation over them. 
 It never makes the rate of the circulation 
 of the blood a question of duty, because 
 this is altogether an involuntary move- 
 ment. And it never would have offered any 
 authoritative intimation, about the way in 
 which gratitude ought to be felt, or ought 
 to be expressed, unless the will had had 
 some kind of presiding sovereignty over 
 both the degree and the workings of this 
 affection. 
 
 The first way, then, in which the will 
 may have to do with the love of gratitude, 
 is by the putting forth of a desire for the pos- 
 session of it. It may long to realize this moral 
 accomplishment. It may hunger and thirst 
 after this branch of righteousness. Even 
 though it has not any such power under its 
 command as would enable it to fulfil such 
 a volition, the volition itself has, upon it, 
 the stamp and the character of virtue. The 
 man who habitually wills to have in his 
 heart a love of gratitude towards God, is a 
 man at least of holy desires, if not of holy 
 attainments. A'nd, when we consider that 
 a way has actually been established, in 
 which the desire may be followed up by 
 t!ie attainment,— when we read of the pro- 
 mise given to tliose v/ho seek after God, — 
 
 when we learn the assurance that he will 
 grant the heart's desire of those wiio will 
 stir themselves up to lay hold of him, — 
 when we think that prayer is the natural 
 expression of desire for an object wliich 
 man cannot reach, but which God is both 
 able and willing to confer upon him, — then 
 do we see how the very existence of the 
 love of gratitude may have had its pure and 
 lioly commencement, in such a habitude of 
 the will as has the essential character of 
 virtue engraven upon it. " Keep your- 
 selves," says the Apostle, " in the love of 
 God, by praying in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 But, again, there are certain doings of 
 the mind, over which the will has a control, 
 and by which the affection of gratitude 
 may either be brought into being, or be sus- 
 tained in lively and persevering exercise. 
 At the bidding of the will, I can tiiink of 
 one topic, rather than of another. I can 
 transfer my mind to any given object of 
 contemplation. I can keep that object stea- 
 dily in view, and make an effort to do so, 
 when placed in such circumstances as might 
 lead me to distraction or forgetfulness. And 
 it is in this way that moral praise or moral 
 responsibility, may be attached to the love 
 of gratitude. Ere the heart can be moved 
 by this affection to another, there must be 
 in the mind a certain appropriate object, 
 that is fitted to call it, and to keep it in ex- 
 istence, — and that object is the love of kind- 
 hess which the other bears me. I may en- 
 deavour, and I may succeed in the endea- 
 vour, to hold this love of kindness in daily 
 and perpetual remembrance. If the will 
 have to do with the exercises of thought 
 and memory, then the will may be respon- 
 sible for the gratitude that would spring in 
 my bosom, did I only think of the love of 
 God, and that would continue with me in 
 the shape of an habitual affection, did I only 
 keep that love in habitual remembrance. It 
 is thus that the forgetfulness of God is 
 chargeable with criminality, — and it will 
 appear a righteous thing in tlie day of judg- 
 ment, when they, who are thus forgetful of 
 him, shall be turned into hell. It is this 
 which arms, with such a moral and condem- 
 natory force, the expostulation he holds with 
 Israel, " that Israel doth not know, that my 
 people do not consider." It is because we 
 like not to retain God in our knowledge, 
 that our minds become reprobate; — and, 
 on'the other hand, it is by a continuous effort 
 of my will, towards the tliought of him, 
 that I forget not his benefits. It is by the 
 strenuousness of a voluntary act, that I con- 
 nect the idea of an unseen benefactor, with 
 all the blessings of my present lot, and all 
 th" anticipations of my futurity. It is by a 
 combat with the most urgent propensities 
 of nature, that I am ever looking beyond 
 this surrounding materialism, and setting 
 God and his love before me all the day long 
 
X.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HTTMAN NATURE. 
 
 73 
 
 There is no virtue, it is allowed, without 
 voluntary exertion ; but this is the very 
 character which runs throughout the whole 
 work and exercise of faith. To keep him- 
 self in the love of God is a habit, with the 
 maintenance of which the will of man has 
 most essentially to do, because it is at his 
 will that he keeps himself in the thought of 
 God's love towards him. To bid away from 
 me such intrusions of sense, and of time, 
 as would shut God out of my recollections ; 
 to keep alive the impression of him in the 
 midst of bustle, and company, and worldly 
 avocations ; to recall the thought of him and 
 of his kindness, under crosses, and vexa- 
 tions, and annoyances ; to be still, and know 
 that he is God, even when beset with tempt- 
 tations to impatience and discontent ; never to 
 loose sight of him as merciful and gracious; 
 and above all, never to let go my hold of that 
 great Propitiation, by which in every time of 
 trouble, I have the privilege of access with 
 confidence to my reconciled Father; these are 
 all so many acts of faith, but they are just 
 such acts as the will bears a share, and a 
 sovereignity, in the performance of. And, 
 as they are the very acts which go to ali- 
 ment and to sustain the love of gratitude 
 within me, it may be seen, how an affection 
 which, in the first instance, may spring in- 
 voluntarily, and be therefore regarded as a 
 mere instinct of nature, or as bearing upon 
 it a complexion of selfishness, may, in an- 
 other view, have upon it a complexion of 
 deepest sacredness, and be rendered unto 
 God in the shape of a duteous and devoted 
 offering from a voluntary agent, and be, in 
 fact, the laborious result of a most difficult, 
 and persevering, and pains-taking habit of 
 obedience. 
 
 And if this be true of the mere sense of 
 gratitude, it is still more obviously true of 
 the services of gratitude. "What shall I 
 render unto the Lord for all his benefits ?" 
 is the genuine language of this affection. It 
 seeks to make a gratifying return of service, 
 and that, under the feeling that it ought to 
 do so. Or, in other words, do we behold 
 that it is the will of man, prompted by a 
 sense of duty, which leads him on to the 
 obedience of gratitude, and that the whole of 
 this obedience is pervaded by the essential 
 character of virtue. This is the love of 
 God, that ye keep his commandments. 
 This is the most gratifying return unto him, 
 that ye do those things which are pleasing 
 in his sight. And thus it is, that the love of 
 gratitude may be vindicated in its character 
 of moral worth, from its first commence- 
 ment in the heart to its ultimate effect on 
 the walk and conversation. It is originally 
 distinct from selfishness in its object ; and 
 it derives a virtuousness at its very outset, 
 from the aspirations of a soul bent on the 
 acquirement of it, because bent on being 
 what it ought to be ; and it is sustained, both 
 10 
 
 in life and in exercise, by such habits oi 
 thought as are of voluntary cultivation ; and 
 it n )bly sustains an aspect of moral righ 
 teousness onwards to the final n suit ol ils 
 operation on the character, by sitting him 
 who is imder its power, on a career of olie 
 dience to God, and introducing liim to an 
 arduous contest of principle, witli all the 
 influences of sense and of the world. 
 
 If, to render an affection virtuous, the 
 will acting under a sense of duly, should be 
 concerned either in producing or in per 
 petuating it ; then the love of moral esteerr. 
 coming into the heart, as an involutarj 
 sensation, may, in certain circunistances. 
 have as little of the character of virtue as 
 the love of gratitude. In this respect, both 
 these affections are upon a footing with 
 each other ; and the first ought not to 
 have been exalted at the expense of the se- 
 cond. That either be upheld within us in 
 our present state, there ifiust, in fact, be the 
 putting forth of the same voluntary control 
 over the thoughts and contemplations of 
 the understanding; the same active exer- 
 cise of faith; the same laborious resistance 
 to all those urgencies of sense which would 
 expel from the mind the idea of an unseen 
 and spiritual object ; the same remembrance 
 of God sustained by effort, and prayer, and 
 meditation. 
 
 II. We now feel ourselves in a condition 
 to speak of the Gospel, in its free and gra- 
 tuitous character ; to propose its blessings 
 as a gift; to hold out the pardon, and the 
 strength, and all the other privileges which 
 it proclaims to believers, as so many articles 
 for their immediate acceptance ; to make it 
 known to men that they are not to delay 
 their compliance with the overtures of 
 mercy, till the disinterested love of God 
 arises in their hearts ; but that they have a 
 warrant for entering even now, into instant 
 reconciliation with God. Nor are we to 
 dread the approach of any moral contami- 
 nation, though when, after their eyes are 
 opened to the marvellous spectacle of a plead- 
 ing, and offering, and beseeching God, hold- 
 ing out eternal life unto the guilty, through 
 the propitiation which his own Son hath 
 made for them, they should, from that mo- 
 ment, open their whole soul, to the influ- 
 ences of gratitude, and love the God who 
 thus hath first loved them. 
 
 We conclude then with remarking, that 
 the whole of this argument gives us another 
 view of the importance of faith. We do not 
 say all for it that we ought, when we say 
 that by faith we are justified in the sight of 
 God. By faith also our hearts are purified. 
 It is in fact the primary and the presiding 
 principle of regeneration. It brings the 
 heart into contact with that influence by 
 which the love of gratitude is awakened. 
 The love of God to us, if it is not believed, 
 will exert no more power over our affections 
 
74 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 than if it were a nonentity. They are 
 the preachers of faith, tlien, who alone deal 
 out to tlieir hearers, the elementary and 
 pervading spirit of the Christian morality. 
 And the men who have been stigmatized us 
 the enemies of good works, are tlie very 
 men who are most sedulously employed in 
 depositing within you, that good seed which 
 has its fiuit unto holiness. We are far from 
 asserting, that the agency of grace is not 
 concerned, in every step of that process, b}' 
 which a sinner is conducted from the outset 
 of his conversion to the state of being per- 
 fect, and complete in the whole will of God. 
 But there is a harmony between the pro- 
 cesses of grace and of nature : and in the 
 same manner, as in human society, the ac- 
 tual conviction of a neighbour's good-will 
 to me, takes the precedency in point of or- 
 der of any returning movement of gratitude 
 on my part; so, in the great concerns of our 
 fellowship with God, my belief that he loves 
 me, is an event prior ar.d preparatory to 
 the event of my loving him. So that tlie 
 primary obstacle to the love of God is not 
 the want of human gratitude, but the want 
 of human faith. 
 
 The reason why man is not excited to 
 the love of God by the revelation of God's 
 love to him, is just because he does not be- 
 lieve that revelation. This is the barrier 
 which lies between the guilty and their of- 
 fended Lawgiver. It is not the ingratitude 
 of man, but the incredulity of man, that 
 needs, in the first instance, to be overcome. 
 It is the suUenness, and the hardness, and 
 the obstinacy of unbelief which stands as a 
 gate of iron, between him and his enlarge- 
 ment. Could the kindness of God, in Christ 
 Jesus, be seen by him, the softening of a 
 kindness back again, would be felt by him. 
 And let us cease to wonder, then, at the 
 preachers of the gospel, when they lay upon 
 belief all the stress of a fundamental opera- 
 tion; — when they lavish so much of their 
 strength on the establishment of a principle, 
 which is not only initial, but indispensable; 
 when they try so strenuously to charm that 
 into existence, without which all the ele- 
 ments of a spiritual obedience are in a state 
 of dormancy or of death ; — when they la- 
 bour at the only practicable way by which 
 the heart of a sinner can be touched, and 
 attracted towards God ; — when they try so 
 repeatedly to hold and to fasten him by 
 that hnk which God himself hath put into 
 their hands — and bring the mighty princi- 
 
 ple to bear upon their hearers, which any 
 one of us may exempUfy upon the poorest^ 
 and by which both Howard and 1-ry have 
 tried witii success, to soften and to reclaim 
 the most worthless of mankind. 
 
 This also suggests a practical direction to 
 Christians, for keeping themselves in the 
 love of God. They must keep themselves 
 in the habit, and m the exercise of faith 
 They must hold fast that conviction in their 
 minds, the presence of which is indispensa- 
 ble to the keeping of that affection in ti;eir 
 hearts. This is one of the methods recom- 
 mended by the Apostle Jude, when he tells 
 his disciples to build themselves up on their 
 most holy faith. This direction to you is 
 both intelligible and practicable. Keep in 
 view the truths which you have learned. 
 Cherish tliat belief of them which you 
 already possess. Recall them to your 
 thoughts, and, in general, they will not 
 come alone, but they will come accompa- 
 nied by their own power, and their own 
 evidence. You may as well think of main- 
 taining a steadfast attachment to your 
 friend, after you have expunged from your 
 memory all the demonstrations of kindness 
 he ever bestowed upon you, as think of 
 keeping your heart in the love of God, 
 after the thoughts and contemplations of 
 the gospel have fled from it. It is just by 
 holding these fast, and by building yourself 
 up on their firm certainty, that you preserve 
 this affection. Any man, versant in the 
 matters of experimental religion, knows 
 well what it is when a blight and a barren- 
 ness come over the mind, and when, under 
 the power of such a visitation, it loses all sen- 
 sibility towards God. There is at that time 
 a hiding of his countenance, and you lose 
 your hold of the manifestation of that love 
 wherewith God loved the world, even when 
 he sent his only begotten Son into it, that 
 we might live "through him. You will re- 
 cover a right frame, when you recover your 
 hold of this consideration. If you want to 
 recall the strayed affection to your heart — 
 recall to your mind the departed object of 
 contemplation. If you want to reinstate 
 the principle of love in your bosom — rein- 
 state faith, and it will work by love. It is 
 got at through the medium of believing, and 
 trusting; — nor do we know a more sum- 
 mary, and, at the same time, a more likely 
 direction for living a life of holy and hea- 
 venly affection, than that you should live a 
 life of faith. 
 
II., 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 SERMON XL 
 
 T%e Affection of Moral Esteem towards God. 
 
 ' One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all 
 the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple." — Psalm xxvii. 4. 
 
 In our last discourse we adverted to the 
 effect of a certain theological speculation 
 about love, in darlvening the freeness of the 
 gospel, and intercepting the direct influence 
 of its overtures and its calls on the mind of 
 an inquirer. Ere we can conceive the love 
 of gratitude towards another, we must see 
 in him the love of kindness towards us ; and 
 thus, by tliose who have failed to distinguish 
 between a love of the benefit, and a love of 
 the benefactor, has the virtue of gratitude 
 been resolved into the love of ourselves. 
 And they have thought that there must 
 surely be a purer affection than this, to 
 mark the outset of the great transition from 
 sin unto righteousness ; and the one they 
 have specified is the disinterested love of 
 God. They have given to this last affection 
 a place so early, as to distract the attention 
 of an inquirer from that which is primary. 
 The invitation of " come and buy without 
 money, and without price," is not heard by 
 the sinner along with the exaction of loving 
 God for himself, — of loving him on account 
 of his excellences, — of loving him because 
 he is lovely. Let us, therefore, try to ascer- 
 tain whether even this love of moral esteem 
 is not subordinate to the faith of the gospel ; 
 and whether it follows, that because this af- 
 fection forms so indispensable a part of 
 godUness, faith should, on that account, be 
 deposed from the place of antecedency 
 which belongs to it. 
 
 And here let it be most readily and most 
 abundantly conceded, that we are not per- 
 fect and complete in the whole of God's 
 will, till the love of moral esteem be in us, 
 as well as the love of gratitude, — till that 
 principle, of which, by nature, we are ut- 
 terly destitute, be made to arise in our 
 hearts, and to have there a thorough esta- 
 blishment, and operation, — till we love God, 
 not merely on account of his love to our 
 persons, but on account of the glory, and 
 the residing excellence, which meet the eye 
 of the spiritual beholder, upon his. own cha- 
 racter. We are not preparing for heaven, — 
 we shall be utterly incapable of sharing in 
 the noblest of its enjoyments, — we shall not 
 feel ourselves surrounded by an element of 
 congeniality in paradise, — there will be no 
 happiness for us, even in the neighbourhood 
 of the throne of God. and with the moral 
 lustre of the Godhead made visible to our 
 eyes, if we are strangers to the emotion of 
 loving God for himself, — if additional alto- 
 
 gether, to the consideration that God is 
 looking with complacency upon me, I do 
 not feel touched and attracted by the beau- 
 ties of his character, when I look with the 
 eye of contemplation towards him. I am 
 without the most essential of all moral ac- 
 complishments in myself, if I am without 
 the esteem of moral accomplishments in 
 another ; and if my heart be of such a con- 
 stitution that nothing in the character of 
 God can draw my admiration, or my re- 
 gard, to him — then, though admitted within 
 the portals of the city which hath founda- 
 tions, and removed from the torments of 
 hell, I am utterly unfit for the joys and the 
 exercises of heaven. I may spend an eter- 
 nity of exemption from pain, but without 
 one rapture of positive felicity to brighten 
 it. Heaven, in fact, would be a wilderness 
 to my heart ; and, in the midst of its ac- 
 claiming throng would I droop, and be in 
 heaviness under a sense of perpetual disso- 
 lution. 
 
 And let this convince us of the mighty 
 transition that must be described by the 
 men of this world, ere they are meet for 
 the other world of the spirits of just men 
 made perfect. It is not speaking of this 
 transition, in terms too great and too lofty, 
 to say, that they must be born again, and 
 made new creatures, and called out of dark- 
 ness into a light that is marvellous. The 
 truth is that out of the pale of vital Chris- 
 tianity, there is not to be found among all 
 the varieties of taste, and appetite, and sen- 
 timental admiration, any love for CJod as 
 he is, — any relish for the holiness of his 
 character, — any echoing testimony, in the 
 bosom of alienated man, to what is grace- 
 ful, or to what is venerable in the character 
 of the Deity. He may be feelingly ahve to 
 the beauties of what is seen, and what is 
 sensible. The scenery of external nature 
 may charm him. The sublimities of a sur- 
 rounding materialism may kindle and di- 
 late him with images of grandeur. Even 
 the moralities of a fellow-creature may en- 
 gage him ; and these, with the works of 
 genius, may fascinate him into an idolatrous 
 veneration of human power, or of human 
 virtue. But while he thus luxuriates and 
 delights himself with the forms of derived 
 excellence, there is no sensibility in his 
 heart towards God. He rather prefers to 
 keep by the things that are made, and, sur- 
 rounded by them, to bury himself into a 
 
76 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERV 
 
 foi'Sf'tfulno s of his Maker. He is most in 
 his ('liMiiciU, wh n in feeling, or in ctnploy- 
 mcnt, lie is most at a distance from God. 
 Tlien; is a coldness, or a hatred, or a terror, 
 wliicii mixes up with all his contemplations 
 of the Deity ; and gives to his mind a kind 
 of sensitive recoil from tlie very thought 
 of him. lie would like to live always in 
 the world, and be content with such felicity 
 as it can give, and cares not, could he only 
 get what his heart is set upon here, and be 
 permitted to enjoy it for ever, thougli he 
 had no sight of God, and no fellowship 
 with him through eternity. The event to 
 which, of all others, he looks forward with 
 the most revolting sense of aversion and 
 dismay, is that event which is to bring him 
 into a nearer contact with Ciod, — which is 
 to dissolve his present close relationship 
 with the creature, and to conduct his dis- 
 embodied spirit into the immediate pre- 
 sence of the Creator. There is nothing in 
 death, in grim, odious, terrific death, that 
 he less desires, or is more afraid of, tlian a 
 nearer manifestation of the Deity. The 
 world, in truth, the warm and the well 
 known world, is his home; and the men 
 who live in it, and are as regardless of the 
 Divinity as himself, form the whole of his 
 companionsliip. Were it not for the fear 
 of hell, he would shrink from heaven as 
 a dull and melancholy exile. All its songs 
 of glory to him who sitteth on the throne, 
 would be to his heart a burden and a weari- 
 ness ; — and thus it is, that tlie foundation 
 of every natural man has its place in that 
 perishable earth, from which death will 
 soon carry him away, and which the fiery 
 indignation of God will at length burn up ; 
 and as to the being who endnrcth for ever, 
 and witli wliom alone he has to do, he sees 
 in him no form nor comeliness, nor no 
 beauty that he should desire him. 
 
 Now, is not this due to the darkness of 
 nature, as well as to the depravity of na- 
 ture? There is in our diseased constitu- 
 tion, a spiritual blindness to the excellen- 
 ces of the Godhead, as well as a spiritual 
 disrelish for them. The truth is, that these 
 two elements go together in the sad pro- 
 gress of human degeneracy. Man liked not 
 to retain God in his knowledge, and God 
 gave him over to a reprobate mind ; and 
 again, man walking in vanity, and an 
 enemy to (lod by wicked works, had his 
 understanding darkened, and was visited 
 with ignorance, and blindness of heart. We 
 do not appreluMul (Jod, and therefore it is 
 that we nnist be renewed in the knowledge 
 of him, ere we can be formed again to the 
 love of liiin. The natural man can no more 
 admire the Deity through the obscurities in 
 which he is shrouded, than he can admire a 
 landscape which he never saw, and which 
 at the time of his approach to it, is wrap- 
 ped in the gloom of midnight. He can no 
 
 more, with every offort to stir up his facul- 
 ties to lay hold of bin), catch an endearing 
 view of the Deity, than his eye can by 
 straining, penetrate its way through a dark- 
 ened firmament, to tiie features of that ma- 
 terial loveliness wiiich lies before him, and 
 around him. It must be lighted up to him, 
 ere he can love it, or enjoy it, and tell us 
 what the degree of his affection for the 
 scenery would be, if instead of being lighted 
 up by the peaceful approach of a summer 
 morn, it were to blaze into sudden visibility, 
 with all its cultivation and cottages, by the 
 fires of a bursting volcano. Tell us, if all 
 the glory and gracefulness of the landscape 
 wliicli had thus started into view, would 
 charm the beholder for a moment, from the 
 terrors of his coming destruction ? Tell us, 
 if it is [)ossible for a sentient being to admit 
 another thought in such circumstances as 
 these, than the tliought of his own preser- 
 vation. O would not the sentiment of fear 
 about himself, cast out every sentiment of 
 love for all that he now saw, and were he 
 only safe could look upon with ecstacy? — 
 and let the beauty be as exquisite as it may, 
 would not all the {)ower and pleasure of its 
 enchantments tly away from his bosom, 
 were it only seen through the glowing fer- 
 vency of elements that threatened to de- 
 stroy him? 
 
 Let us now conceive, that through that 
 thick spiritual darkne.^s b)^ which every 
 child of nature is encompassed, there was 
 forced upon him a view of the countenance 
 of the Deitj% — that the perfections of God 
 were made visible, — and that the character 
 on which the angels of paradise gaze with 
 delight, because they there behold all the 
 lineaments of moral grandeur, and moral 
 loveliness, were placed before the eye of his 
 mind, in bright and convincing manifes- 
 tation. It is very true, that on what he 
 would be thus made to see, all that is fair 
 and magnificent are assembled, — that what- 
 ever of greatness, or whatever of beauty can 
 be found in creation, is but a faint and 
 shadowy transcript of that original sub- 
 stantial excellence, which resides in the 
 conceptions of him who is the fountain of 
 being, — that all the pleasing of goodness, 
 and all the venerable of worth, and all the 
 sovereign command of moral dignity meet 
 and are realised on the person of God, — 
 that through the whole range of universal 
 existence there cannot be devised a single 
 feature of excellence which does not serve 
 to enrich the character of him whosu.stains 
 all things, and who originated all things. 
 No wonder that tlie pure eye of an angel 
 takes in such fulness of pleasure from a 
 contemplation so ravishing. Hut let all this 
 burst upon the eye of a sinner, and let the 
 truth and the righteousness of God out of 
 Christ stand before it in visible array, along 
 with the other glories of charai'ter which 
 
XI.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 77 
 
 belong to him. The love of moral esteem, 
 you may say, ought to arise in his bos<jm ; — 
 but it cannot. The affection is in such cir- 
 cumstuiicos impossible. The man is in ter- 
 ror. And he can no more look with com- 
 placency upon his God, than he can delight 
 himself with the fair forms of a landscape, 
 opened to his view by the flashes of an im- 
 pending volcano. He cannot draw an emo- 
 tion so sweet and deliglitful as love, from 
 the view of that countenance on which he 
 beholds a purpose of vengeance against 
 himself, as one of the children of iniquity. 
 The fear which hath torment castetli out 
 this affection altogether. There is positively 
 no room for it within the bosom of a sen- 
 tient being, along with tlie dread and the 
 alarm by wiiich he is agitated. It is tliis 
 which explains the recoil of his sinful na- 
 ture from the thougiit of God. The sense 
 of guilt comes into his heart, and tlie terrors 
 and the agitations of guilt come along with 
 it. It is because he sees the justice of God 
 frowning upon him, and the truth of God 
 pledged to the execution of its tlireatenings 
 against him, and the holiness of (Jod wliicli 
 cannot look upon him witliout abhorrence, 
 and all the sacred attril)iites of a nature 
 that is jealous, and imcliangeable, leagued 
 against him for his everlasting destruction. 
 He cannot' love the Heing. witli the very 
 idea of whom there is mixed up a sense of 
 danger, and a dread of condenuiation, and 
 all the images of a wretched eternity. We 
 cannot love (iod, so long as we look upon 
 him as an enemy armed to destroy us. Ere 
 we love him, we must be made to feel tlie 
 security, and the enlargement of one who 
 knows himself to be safe. Let him take 
 his rod away from me, and let not his fear 
 terrify me, — and then may I love him and 
 not fear him ; hut it is not so with me. 
 
 But let him who commanded the light to 
 shine out of darkness, shine in our hearts 
 to give us the light of the knowledge of his 
 own glory, in the face of Je.sus Christ, — 
 let us only look upon him as God in Christ 
 reconciling the world unto himself, and not 
 imputtniT unto tliem their trespasses, — let 
 him without expunging the characters of 
 truth and majesty, from that one aspect of 
 perfect excellence whicii belongs to him, — 
 let him in his own unsearchable wisdom 
 devise a way by which he can both bring 
 them out in the eye of sinners with brighter 
 illustration, and make these sinners feel that 
 they are sate ; — let him lift off from the men 
 of this guilty world, the burden of his vio- 
 lated law, and cause it to be borne by an- 
 other who can magnify that law, and make 
 it honourable, — let him publish a full re- 
 lease from all its penalties, but in such a 
 way, as that the truth which proclaimed 
 them, and the justice which should execute 
 them, sliall remain untainted under the dis- 
 pensation of mercy, — let him instead of 
 
 awakiuff the sword of vengeance against 
 us, awake it against a sufferer of such worth 
 and such dignity, tliat his blood siiuU be 
 the atoiu'uu^nt of a worKl, and by pouring 
 out his soul unto death, he shall make the 
 pardon of tiie transgressor meet, and be at 
 one with the everlasting righteousiu'ss of 
 God, — in a word, instead of tiie character 
 of God being lighted up to the eye of the 
 sinner, by the fire of his own indignation, 
 let it through the demonstration of the 
 Spirit be illustrated, and shone upon, by the 
 mild, but peacefid light of the Sun of rin[h- 
 teousness, and then may the sinner look in 
 peace and safety on the manifested charac- 
 ter of the liodiiead. Delivered from the 
 burden of his fears, he may now oficn iiis 
 whole heart to tlu" influences of affection. 
 And that love of moral esteem, whicli be- 
 fore the entrance of the faith of the gospel, 
 the sense of condcMunation was sure to 
 scare away, is now free to take its place 
 beside the love of gratitude, and to arise 
 along with it in the offering of one spiritual 
 sacrifice to a reconciled Fatiu-r. 
 
 Thus, then, it would appear, that the love 
 of moral esteem is in every way as much 
 posterior, and subordinate to faitli,as is the 
 love of gratitude- 'J'hat we may b(^ able to 
 love God, either according to the one or 
 the other of its modifications, we mus\ Jii si 
 kno\V tliat God loved us. We caniu)t har- 
 bour this aflVction in any one shape what- 
 ever, so long as there is the suspicion, and 
 the dread of a yet un.settled controversy 
 between us and God. Peace with our of- 
 fended Lawgiver, is not tin; fruit of our 
 love, but of our faith ; — and faith, if it be a 
 reality, and iu)t a semblance, worketh by 
 love. We have peace with God through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. And we love much 
 when we know, and believe, that our sins 
 are forgiven us. 
 
 God did not wait for any returning af- 
 fection on the part of a guilty world, ere 
 he felt an affection for it himself. At that 
 period when he so loved the world, as to 
 send his only begotten Son into it, — did it 
 exhibit the spectacle of an immense jjrison- 
 house of depravity. Among the men of it, 
 tluTC was friendship one for another, but 
 there was one unalleviated character of en- 
 mity against God. Mea.suring themselves 
 by themselves, there was often a high mu- 
 tual esteem for such accomplishments as 
 wen; in demand for the good of society ; — 
 but that which is highly esteemed among 
 men, is in God's sight an abomination ; iiiid 
 when brought to the measure of that uni- 
 versal righteous which forms the standard 
 and rule of Heaven's government, was it 
 found that our species had through all its 
 generations broken off from their allegiance, 
 and stood at as wide a distance trom the 
 obedient, and unfallen creation, as does a 
 colony of convicts, from the country which 
 
78 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 has cast, them out of its borders. And it 
 was at such a time, when the world liked 
 not to retain God in their knowledge, — 
 when all flash had corrupted their ways, — 
 when there was none seeking after God, — 
 when there was not the thought, or the 
 wish, of a movement to him back again, 
 that he looked with pity on our fallen race, 
 and in the fulness of time, sent his Son into 
 the world to seek and to save us. 
 
 And the same is true of every individual 
 to whom the overtures of reconciliation 
 are proposed. God does not wait for any 
 change of affection in our heart, ere v.e ac- 
 cept of pardon at his hands. But he asks 
 one and all of us now to accept of pardon, 
 and to submit our heart and character to 
 the influences of that grace which he is 
 ready to bestow upon us. In the gospel he 
 procl turns a pardon ready made for you, — 
 a deed of amnesty which he is even now 
 stretching out for your acceptance, a pre- 
 venting offer of mercy, of which, if you 
 believe the reality, you will feel that he is 
 your friend, and in which feeling you will 
 not be disappointed. He does not expect 
 from you the love of gratitude, till you 
 have known and believed the great things 
 that he hath done for you. But he expects 
 from you ihe offering of an homage to his 
 truth. He does not expect from you the 
 love of moral esteem, till, released from the 
 terror of having him for your enemy, you 
 may contemplate with all the tranquil 
 calmness of conscious safety, the glories 
 and the graces of his manifested character. 
 But he expects from you faith in his declara- 
 tion, that he is not your enemy,— that he has 
 no pleasure in your death, — that in Christ he 
 is beseeching you to be reconciled, — and 
 stretching out to you the arms of invitation. 
 
 The first matter on hand, then, between 
 God and sinners, in the work of making 
 reconciliation, is, that they believe in him. 
 It is, that the tidings of great joy shall fall 
 upon them Vvith credit and acceptance. It 
 is, that they count the sayings of the word 
 of this life to be faithful sayings. It is, thai 
 they put faith in the record which God 
 hath given of his Son, which if they do, 
 they will believe that God hath given them 
 eternal life, and that this life is in his Son. 
 
 There is a certain speculation about the 
 disinterested love of God, which has served 
 to darken and to embarrass this process. 
 It has cast an unmerited stigma on the love 
 of gratitude. But its worst effect, by far, 
 is, that it has impeded the freeness of the 
 overtures of the gospel. It has perplexed 
 the outset of many an inquirer. It has 
 made him search in his own mind for the 
 evidences of an affection which he never 
 can meet with, till he embraces the offers, 
 and relies upon the promises of the New 
 Testament. It has deposed faith from that 
 post of presiding supremacy which belongs 
 
 to it, and shifted from its place that great 
 principle on which both the love of grati- 
 tude and the love of moral esteem are sus- 
 pended. 
 
 Let us cease to wonder, then, why faith 
 occupies so much the station of a pre- 
 liminary in the New Testament. It is the 
 great starting point, as it were, of Christian 
 discipleship. Grant but this principle, and 
 love, with all the vigour, and all the alac- 
 rity which it gives to obedience, will emerge 
 from its operation. There is no other way, 
 in fact, of charming love into existence; 
 and the gratitude which devotes me to the 
 service of a reconciled God, and the love 
 of his character, which makes me meet for 
 the enjoyment of himi in heaven, can only 
 arise in my bosom after I have believed. 
 
 Let this consideration shut you up unto 
 the faith. Let it exalt in your estimation, 
 the mighty importance of a principle, with- 
 out which there can neither be any sancti- 
 fication here, nor any salvation hereafter. 
 Tiiink it not enough {hat you import it into 
 your mind as a bare existence. Know what 
 it is to put it into habhual exercise, to dwell 
 upon the truths which it embraces, and to 
 submit, in feeling and practice, to their 
 genuine operation. This is the only way 
 in which you can ever live a life of faith 
 on the Son of God, — or live by the power 
 of a world to come, — or keep yourselves in 
 the love of God, seeing that it is only when 
 you know and believe that God first loved 
 you, that you can be made to love him. 
 
 In the progress of these observations, a 
 few thoughts have occurred, which we trust 
 may be deemed of sufficient importance 
 to be brought forward, — and which we 
 bring forward now, as supplementary to the 
 whole argument. 
 
 It will have been remarked, that we do 
 not consider man as altogether incapable of 
 the love of moral esteem towards any being 
 whatever. There are certain virtues of 
 character which do call forth the admira- 
 tion and the tenderness, even of our dis- 
 eased nature, when they reside somewhere 
 else than in the person of the Deity. Let 
 our depravity be what it may, it were in 
 the face of all observation to affirm, that 
 man does not love the truth rather than 
 falsehood, and compassion rather than cru- 
 elty, in a fellow-man, — and the interesting 
 question comes to be, how is it that these 
 qualities appear to lose all the force which 
 naturally belongs to them, of attracting our 
 regard, so as to awaken no such sentiment 
 towardis God, though they be exemplified 
 by him, in a degree that is infinite ? 
 
 It will help us, in part, to resolve this 
 question, if we conceive of our man of 
 moral virtues, that his very truth, and jus- 
 tice, and compassion, lead him, in the de- 
 fence of wronged or calunmiated innocence 
 
Xl.| 
 
 DKI'llAVITY OV HUMAN NArilllK. 
 
 70 
 
 to turn till) whole force <t{ IiIh IndiKtiatioii 
 on tint lieiid (>( nil ()|)|ir(-HHr)r ; and then think 
 of the feelni^' which will iiri^e, <tf coiimc 
 qnenee, in the heart of the latter. It will lie 
 ufeeliiii,; of hatred and antipalhy. And yet 
 W(! do not nee (iir into the MeerecieM (tf the 
 human conHlitiition, if we do not perceive, 
 tlial,in perfect coiiMiMleney with thin fee|iii(^ 
 of peiHonal di^^liKr- In the man of virtue, who 
 IN lioHtilr- to liiin, Ihere may exml, even in 
 liiH vitiated Koiil, thr- love of moral cHteem 
 towards virtue residint; in inome other (|iiar- 
 ter, or exeinplihed liy Moine other individual, 
 IllHlead <d lhi>i virtue heiii^^ leali/ed on the 
 m'.THtm of one who \h an enemy to inyHelf, 
 let it b<! od'ered hy description to my no 
 tU'i', ill the permiii of one who liven in a 
 diHtant connlry, or who lived in a diHlant 
 &({(-, and let tint thoiif.'ht of my particular 
 udverMiiry he ii<it od'eiiMively Mii/.(>/ehted to 
 my mind hy Hiirdi a conlemplation, — and I, 
 with all tliow; de|)ravitieM which have |iro 
 voked the reMciilment (d' my npriid't iieitdi 
 hour a^aiiiMt me, and have called forth in 
 my heart a corr<:.spondin/; hatred lowardn 
 linn, will oiler the lioniatM- of my rej/ard 
 and rever<;n«(; towards tlur picture of moral 
 excellence, that \h IIiiih Het hefore me, TIiih 
 may look an aiiomalr)UH exhihition of our 
 nature; hut it c(;rlaiiily in not more ho, than 
 tti(! well known fa<t of a .slave proprietor, 
 at one tim*; wreaking his ca|iric(t and Ins 
 cruelty «»ii the living* men who are around 
 him, and at another weeping;, in all the 
 HoflncHM of pathetic emotion, «iver tin; dis 
 IrcHHCH of a fir-titioiiM narrative. DistrcHH 
 in one c|narlr;r may move our pity. Din 
 trcHH in another may he iiillictefj hy our 
 own liaiid, to {,dut oiir vindictive piopen 
 Hili«H. Worth in llir; perHon of one who is 
 indilferent, and slill more of one v\ho is 
 friendly, may cafi forth our warm and lio 
 nest acknow|edt!mr;ntM. Worth in the per 
 HDti ii( aiirither, th«; vrry nrinciples >>{ whonr- 
 character have moved iiim to irrilatr; our 
 pride, or tf* wound «Hir Hfilfishness, may turn 
 iiim into the ohjeet of our most pansionate, 
 (lel<:rmined, and unrr;|eritinff hostility. 
 
 And IhuH it is, that I may havr; a natural 
 la«te for wveral of the virtues whicli rnter 
 into the (iodhead. and at the same time, 
 may have a hatred towards the person i)f' 
 the (iodhe.id. '/'his natural taste may he 
 rej/arded hy some, as a predlsposln^^ e|e 
 ment in my heart towards Ifie lovr- of (»od ; 
 hilt mi lont; as I view him armed in rifhle 
 oiisness lf> destroy me, will this hh effectu 
 ally n-presH the emhryo uffeelion, as if still 
 it were fast slumherinj^ in the depths of 
 nonentity. It is wilhnj/ly admitted, that 
 there arr;eert;iifi parli.il skelehirsrjf the cha 
 raetifrofthe Deity, which, if fWfered to our 
 notice, in a HUtU-. of s<'na ration from his 
 antfer aj^ainst us, the enildren of rlisoUr 
 dienee, would kindle in our \Km'uiiH a feel 
 in," of tasteful admiration. Hut the dread, 
 
 or the NUH|iinon of his an({er almorhn thin 
 feelnif.^ alto(.M-tlier ; and liow('Ver much w« 
 may hear the setiihlance of love for his cha- 
 racter, when we lonk to c<Ttain trails of ll 
 in a detached and htokeii exhlhllioil,-- yet 
 this IS prrlectly consistent with the fact, thai 
 the natural mind hates the person of Ihn 
 Deity, that the natnrnl mind is enmity 
 a({ainst (>od. And this ini(.dil to convince lis, 
 that even Ihon^^h Ihere shoiild he prediiiKm- 
 111^ elements ol love to him lor Ins «oilli, it 
 IS still indifpensiihle, m order to change our 
 hatred into alleclion, that we should look 
 upon (ioil as having ceaserl from his iinj^r-r, 
 or that we should sei- him arrayr'd m all tlio 
 tenderness of odereil and inviliiiK frien<lship. 
 There is a spell hy which tln'sr; elemenlH 
 ar*; fastened, and wlindi can never he donn 
 away, till (iod' woo me to friendship and 
 ciinlHlence, hy an exIilhilirMi of f^ood will. 
 
 I''ailh in tlie cross of Christ, is the pri- 
 mary step of this appioximation. 'I'o call 
 for a dlsilltere^•led a(|l-ctioii towards (»od, 
 liom one who looks upon (iod as an adver- 
 ttary, and that even thoiifdi there should Im 
 in his hosoni the und«'veloped seiils of re- 
 {;ar<l to the worth or characler ui the Hn- 
 preme, is to make a demand on a si iiiient 
 iieirij/, which, hy his very consliUilion, he 
 IS unahle to meet or lo satisfy. Ami is not 
 ihisdr-maiid slill more pn posteroiis when 
 It comes from a (|Uiirler wlure lite (h> 
 pravity of man is held to he so entire, that 
 not one laleni or [iredisposinp; element to- 
 wards the |(/V(; </f (iod is iiscrihed \ii him V 
 Is it not a still vainer expecialion lo lliink, 
 in MiK'li liopeh'ss circumslanceH as iIkw, 
 that ere man seizes the {/ill <d' redemption, 
 he shall imjiort iiilo his r-haracti r the |»rac<i 
 of a pun- and spiritual ad'ectioii ; Ihiit with 
 the terror of his hosom yet iiiipiicilli d, and 
 the ciaiiiieiiaiice of (iod ujioii him as iinre- 
 lenlint' as ever, there shall ari^e, ni the midst 
 of all this a;{ilation, a love to that lieiiiK, 
 the very Ihoiifdil (;(' whom hriii{/s a hciiho 
 of inseenrity aloiif^ with it; or thai a (/uilly 
 creature, wlio, even if he had in a stale of 
 dormancy within him the priinipleH of 
 moral re^Mird lo IIk; Divinity, could not, 
 under the hiirden of wrath still imappra«<;d, 
 charm these principles out of tlnr slaU; of 
 their inactif;ri, ihat he, even were he ut- 
 terly destitute of thes(! (jritieiples should h« 
 aide, under this hiirden, lo eliarm lliem out 
 of the ti.iic of noil existence V 
 
 And this, hy the way, may wrv** to «how 
 the wh'de amount ii( that lasleful seiili- 
 menialism, in virtue of which, a iransienl 
 hut treacherous and holl<»w rej/ard t/»wardH 
 ifie Divmily, may he d«rlect*'rl in tin; heart« 
 o( Ihow wfio nauseate the whole spirit and 
 cfditeuis of thr- (iospel. 'J'hey admit into 
 their conleni()lation only as niiK'h of llm 
 rharacier of (»od, as may Kerve lo mako 
 out a tender or an en/^aj/inj^ exinhiiion of 
 him. '/'hey may leave entire the j^round 
 
80 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 work of Ills natural attributes; but, in every 
 survey they take of the moral complexion 
 of tlie Godhead, they refuse to look to all 
 his moral attributes put together, and only 
 fasten their regard upon one of them, even 
 the attribute of indulgence. They cannot 
 endure the view of his whole character; 
 and should this view ever intrude itself, it 
 puts to flight all the pathos and elegance 
 of mere natural piety. Truth, as directed 
 against themselves ; holiness, as refusing to 
 dwell in peaceful or approving fellowship 
 with themselves; justice, as committed to a 
 sentence of severe and inflexible relributitju 
 upon themselves, — all these are out of their 
 contemplation at that moment, when the 
 votaries of a poetical theism feel towards 
 their imagined deity an evanescent glow 
 of affection or reverence. But truth and 
 conscience are ever meddling with this en- 
 joyment; and piety resting on so frail and 
 partial a foundation, never can attain an 
 habitual ascendency over the character; 
 and what at the best is fictitious, does not, 
 and ought not, to have more than a rare 
 and little hour of emotion given to it; and 
 this may explain how it is, that with the 
 very same individual, there may be both an 
 occasional recurrence of devotional feeling, 
 and a life of rooted and practical ungodli- 
 ness, ^n illusory representation of God 
 will no more draw away our affections 
 from the world, or engage us in the solid 
 and experimental business of obedience to 
 its Maker, than the flippancy of a novel will 
 practically influence the habits of nature, or 
 of society. And thus it is, that the religion 
 which is apart from Christianity, falls as far 
 short of true religion, as the humanity we 
 have j ust quoted, falls short of true humanity. 
 But to return. We have already said, 
 that even though there did exist in the heart 
 of man a native regard to certain ingre- 
 dients of worth in the character of the Di- 
 vinity, a previous exhibition of good will is 
 still essential, that the person of the Di- 
 vinity may be endeared to him. And the 
 argument for such a priority becomes 
 much stronger, when it is made out, on a 
 farther attention to this matter, that there 
 is, in fact, no such native or predisposing 
 regard. For, though it be true, that there 
 are certain moral virtues, which, when re- 
 alized upon man, draw towards them the 
 love and the reverence even of our de- 
 praved nature, and which, when heightened 
 iiUo perfection upon God, .should therefore, 
 it migtit be conceived, obtain from nature, 
 if placed in favourable circumstances, the 
 homage of a love still more tender, and of 
 a reverence still more profound; — yet there 
 is one great and.compreliensive quality by 
 which all the moral attributes of the God- 
 head are pervaded, and for which we can 
 detect no native and no kindred principle 
 of attachment whatever, in the constitution 
 
 of our species. We allude to the holiness 
 of the Godhead. Were we asked to define 
 this holiness, we should feel that we were 
 not giving to the term its full significancy, 
 by saying, that it merely consisted in the 
 absolute perfection of all the moral virtues 
 of the Divinity. It is a term which, in the 
 appropriate force of it, denotes contrast or 
 separation. It was for this reason assigned 
 to the vessels of the temple, and just be- 
 cause they were set apart from comuiun use. 
 To have made them common, would have 
 been to make them unclean, or unholy. To 
 have turned them to any ordinary or house- 
 hold purposes, would have been to inflict 
 upon them such a touch of profanation, tliat 
 their holiness would have departed from 
 them. Had there been a full and perfect 
 sense of God in every house, and in every 
 heart, — had the presence of the Divinity 
 been equally felt by his creatures at all 
 times, and in all places,— had the will of the 
 Divinity held as presiding an influence over 
 the every-day doings, as over the services of 
 the solemn and extraordinary occasion, — 
 then there might have been no temple, and 
 no ritual observation, and, of consequence, 
 no room for such an application of the term 
 holiness. A thing is not consecrated by 
 being set apart from that which is equally 
 pure and sacred with itself; and did there 
 obtain an equal and universal purity through- 
 out the whole system of nature, there could 
 be no need for separation. Iji tliese circimi- 
 ces, there would have been no contrast, and, 
 therefore, no demand for such a term as 
 that of holiness. 
 
 This may serve to illustrate the force and 
 import of the term, as applied to the cha- 
 racter of God. It does not signify the moral 
 perfection of his character, taken absolutely. 
 It signifies this perfection in relation to its 
 opposite. When we look to the holiness of 
 the divine character, we look to it in its aspect 
 of lofty separation from all that can either 
 taint or debase it. We look to its irreconcila- 
 ble variance with sin. We look to the inac- 
 cessible height at which it stands above all 
 the possible acquirements of created nature, 
 insomuch, that he who possesses it, charges 
 even his angels with folly: and when cre- 
 ated nature is not only imperfect, but sinful, 
 when we look to the recoil of the Divinity 
 from all contact, and from all approxima- 
 tion, we think of the purer eyes than can 
 behold iniquity, and of the presence so sa- 
 cred, thatevil cannot dwell with it. We think 
 of that sanctuary into which there cannot 
 enter any thing that defileth, orthatmakelh 
 a lie,— a sanctuary guarded by all the jea- 
 lousies of the Divine nature, and so repugnant 
 to the approach of pollution, that if it offer 
 to draw nigh, the fire of a consuming indig- 
 nation will either check, or will destroy it. 
 
 Now, were the whole severity of this at- 
 tribute directed against the violations of 
 
XI.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 81 
 
 social kindness, and social equity, we would 
 admit that there was a ready coalescence 
 with it in the principles of our natural con- 
 stitution. But when it searches into tiie 
 character of the most urgent affections of 
 nature, and there detects the very c;ssence of 
 sinfulness ; — when it sits in judgment over 
 the preference given by every child of Adam 
 to the creature, rather than tiie Creator, and 
 who holds this in righteous abomination ; — 
 when it looks through a society of human 
 beings, and pronounces, in spite of all the 
 justici! by which its interests are guarded, 
 and of all the humanity by which its ills are 
 softened, or done away, tliat, wholly given 
 over to the enjoyment of tlie world, it is 
 wholly immersed in tlie guilt of an idolatry, 
 by which the jealousies of the supreme and 
 spiritual God are provoked to the uttermost; 
 — when holiness is thus seen, not merely in 
 its antipathy to crime, which is occasional 
 and rare, but in its antipathy to an affection, 
 the rooted obstinacy of which, and the en- 
 grossing power of which, are universal, — 
 then sofar from the coalescence of approving 
 nature, do we behold the revolt of pained and 
 irritated nature. It no more follows, be- 
 cause man loathes the cruelty or the injustice 
 of his fellow-man, that he therefore carries 
 in his heart a predisposing element of re- 
 gard for the essential character of God, 
 than it follows, because a man would sicken 
 with disgust at the atrocities of a prison- 
 house, that he therefore feels his element 
 land his joy to be in the humble piety of a 
 conventicle. A high-minded and an ho- 
 nourable merchant finds room in his bosom 
 for the love both of truth and of the world. 
 Yet the one is an attribute of God, while 
 the love of the other is opposite to the loAe 
 of God. " If any man love the world," says 
 an apostle, " the love of the Father is not in 
 him." He may like the transcript of truth, 
 and of many other virtues on the face of 
 the creature, but he likes not the Creator. 
 He can gaze, and that even with rapture on 
 the partial and imperfect sketches of the 
 unfinished copy, but he shrinks from the 
 view of the entire original. He can hold 
 the intercourse of wistful thoughts, and fer- 
 vent aspiration, the absent object of his 
 earthly regard, but he has neither taste nor 
 capacity for communion with his Father in 
 heaven. " Holy, holy, holy. Lord God 
 Almighty," is the anthem of the celestial, 
 but theirs is a delight which he cannot share 
 in. And as surely as his body would need 
 to be transformed, ere it could cease to have 
 pain amid the agonies of hell, — so surely 
 would his mind need to be transformed, ere 
 it ceased to feel a confinement and an irk- 
 someness amid the halleluiahs of paradise. 
 Even though man, then, had in his heart 
 a nascent affection for the character of God, 
 this would be restrained from passing on- 
 wards to an affection for his person, by a 
 
 sense of guilt, and the consequent dread of 
 God as an enemy. Nor could tiie lo\e of 
 God be inserted in his bosom, till by faith 
 in the expiation of the gospel, tiiat whicli 
 letteth was taken out of the way. But still 
 more, if, in conformity to our present argu- 
 ment, tl)ere be no such nascent aflr'ction for 
 the Divine character, is it hopeless to at- 
 tempt tlie estalilishment of love antecedently 
 to belief, or that attaclunent should take 
 possession of the heart, ere fear takes its de-s 
 partnre away from it. Even if by tiie v.ork- 
 ing of some power unknown in the human 
 constitution, or by some effort, the success 
 of whicli has never yet, in a single instance, 
 been experienced, there could be made to 
 ari.se in the soul, the love of holiness, pre- 
 vious to the act of trusting in tlie offered 
 Saviour, — a terror at God, which, in the 
 absence of this trust, is the instinctive and 
 universal feeling of nature, would just as 
 effc'ctuall} repress the love of holiness, as it 
 docs the love of truth, or of compassion, or 
 of justice, from carrying us onwards to a 
 regard for the person of the Godhead. To 
 put the love of God's character into a heart 
 not yet brought into enlargement by the 
 faith of the gospel, would just be to put it 
 into a prison-iiold, and there to chain it 
 down to a fruitlcssness and inactivity, where 
 it would be wholly unproductive of love to 
 God himself. Confidence must take the 
 precedency of this love, even in a bosom 
 already furnished with the preparatory ele- 
 ments of affection ; and hov/ much more es- 
 sential then is it, that it should take the pre- 
 cedency in a bosom, wlicro these elements 
 are altogether wanting ? Faith is thus more 
 strongly evinced to be a thing of prior and 
 indispensable necessity. Without it, even 
 the seed of any precious affect ion for the 
 Godhead, stiffed in embryo, would not blow 
 into luxuriance. And if our nature be such 
 a wilderness that no seed is there, — if tlie 
 thing wanted be the germination of a new 
 principle, and not the developemcnt of an 
 old, — if it be by a creative and not by a 
 mere fostering process, that we are trans- 
 formed into a meetne-ss for heaven, — if the 
 agency that is made to bear upon the human 
 soul, must have a power to regenerate as 
 well as to repair, — and if the promise of this 
 agency be given only to those who believe, 
 then let us no more linger, or be bewildered, 
 in that abyss of helplessness from which 
 faith alone can extricate the inquirer, — let 
 us no longer arrest the eye of confidence 
 from that demonstration of good will, which 
 is held out to the most widely alienated of 
 sinners, — but hasten to place ourselves, even 
 now, on that foundation of trust, where alone 
 we are made the workmanship of God in 
 Christ Jesus, and the love of God is shed 
 abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " Destroy this temple," says the Saviour, 
 "and I will raise it up again in three days." 
 
82 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 It is there alone that we can behold the 
 beauty of the lord and be safe. This place 
 of greatest security, is also the place of 
 chiefest glory. It is when admitted into 
 this greater and more perfect tabernacle, 
 that we can look on majesty without terror, 
 and on holiness without an overwhelmins 
 sense of condemnation. The sinner en- 
 circled in mercy looks in tranquil contem- 
 plation on all that is awful and venerable in 
 the character of the Godhead, — and never 
 do truth, and righteousness, and purity, 
 appear in loftier exhibition before him, than, 
 v/hen withheld from his own person, he 
 sees the whole burden of their avenging 
 laid upon the head of the great Sacrifice. 
 
 " One thing have I desired of the Lord," 
 says the Psalmist, "that I may dwell in the 
 courts of the Lord, all the days of my life. 
 to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to en- j 
 quire in his temple." It is not till we are I 
 within the portals of the place of refuge | 
 that this desire can obtain its fulfilment. 
 Selfishness may have originated the move- 
 ment \v'hich took us there. The fear of the 
 coming wrath may have lent celerity to our 
 footsteps. A joyful sense of deliverance 
 may have been felt, ere the glories of the 
 divine character were seen in bright and 
 convincing manifestation. The love of 
 gratitude may have kindled within us, — 
 and, with the Psalmist, we may have to seek, 
 and to inquire, and to have daily exercise 
 and meditation, ere the love of moral esteem, 
 has attained the place of ascendency which 
 belongs to it. Nevertheless, the chief end 
 of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy him 
 
 for ever. This is the real destination of 
 every individual who is redeemed from 
 among men. This should be the main ob- 
 ject of all his prayers, and ail his prepara- 
 tions. It is this which fits him for the com- 
 pany of heaven ; and unless there be a grow- 
 ing taste for God, in the glories of his ex- 
 cellency, — for God, in the beauties of his 
 holiness, — there is no ripening, and no per- 
 fecting, for the mansions of immortality. 
 Though you have to combat, then, with tlie 
 sluggishness of sense, and Avith the real 
 aversion of nature to every spiritual exercise, 
 you must attempt, and stenuously cultivate, 
 the habit of communion with God. And 
 as no man knoweth the Father save the Son 
 reveal him, and as it is by the Spirit thai 
 Christ gives light to those who believe in 
 him ; — for the attainment of this great moral 
 and spiritual accomplishment, do M-hat the 
 Apostle directs 3"0u, when he says, " Keep 
 yourselves in the love of God, by praying 
 in the Holy Ghost." Your first endeavours 
 may be feeble, and fatiguing, and fruitless. 
 But God will not despise the day of small 
 things, — nor will the light of his counte- 
 nance be always withheld from those who 
 aspire after it, — nor will the soul that thirsts 
 after God, be left for ever unsatisfied, — and 
 the life and peace of being spiritually mind- 
 ed, will come in rich experience to his feel- 
 ings, — and the whole habit of his tastes 
 and enjoyments, will be in a diametric op- 
 position to that of the children of the world, 
 — God being the habitation to which he re- 
 sorts continually, — God being the strength 
 of his heart, and his portion for evermore. 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 The Emptiness of Natural Virtue. 
 
 "But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you." — John v. 24. 
 
 Whe\ it is said, in a former ver.se of the 
 o[ospel, that Jesus knew what was in man, 
 we feel, that it is a tribute of acknowledg- 
 ment, rendered to his superior insight into 
 the secrecies of our constitution. It was 
 not the mere faculty of perceiving what lay 
 before him, that was ascribed to him by the 
 Evangelist. It was the faculty of perceiving 
 what lay disgtiised under a semblance, that 
 would have imposed on the understanding 
 of other men. It was the faculty of de- 
 tecting. It was a discerning of the spirit, 
 and that not through the transparency of 
 such unequivocal, symptoms, as brought its 
 character clearly home to the view of the 
 observer. But it was a discerning of the 
 spirit, as it lay wrapt in what, to an ordi- 
 nary spectator, was a thick and impenetra- 
 
 ble hiding place. It was a discover}^ there 
 of the real posture and habitude of the soul. 
 It was a searching of it out. through all the 
 recesses of duplicit)', winding and counter- 
 winding in such a way as to elude altogether 
 the eye of commom acquaintanceship. It 
 was the assigning to it of one attriBiite, at 
 the time when it wore the guise of another 
 attribute, — of utter antipathy to the nature 
 and design of his mission, at the very time 
 that multitudes were drawn around him, 
 by the fame of his miracles, — of utter indif- 
 ference about God, at the very time that 
 they zealously asserted the sanctity of his 
 sabbaths, and resented as blasphemous, 
 whatever they felt to be an usurpation of 
 the greatness which belonged to him only. 
 It was in the exercise of this faculty, that 
 
XII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 83 
 
 Jesus came forward with the utterance of 
 our text. The Jews, by whom he %vas sur- 
 rounded, had charged him with the guilt of 
 profanation, and sought even to avenge it 
 by his death, because he had healed a man 
 on the sabbath day. And their desire of 
 vengeance was still more inflamed, by what 
 they understood to be an assertion, on his 
 part, of equality with God. And yet, under 
 all this appearance, and even with all this 
 reality of a zeal about God, did he who 
 knew what was in man pronounce of these 
 his enemies, that the love of God was not 
 in them. I know you says he, — as if at 
 this instant he had put forth a stretch 
 of penetration, in order to find his way 
 through all the sounds of godliness which 
 he heard, and through all the symptoms of 
 godliness which he saw, — I know that there 
 does not exist within you that principle, 
 which links to God, the whole of God's obe- 
 dient creation, — I know that you do not 
 love him, and that, therefore, you are ut- 
 terly in want of that affection, which lies at 
 the root of all real, and of all acceptable 
 godliness. 
 
 It is mortifying to the man who pos- 
 sesses many accomplishments of character, 
 to be told, that the greatest and most essen- 
 tial accomplishment of a moral being, is 
 that of which he has no share, — that the 
 principle on which we expatiated in our 
 last discourses does not. in any of its varie- 
 ties, belong to him, — that, wanting it, he 
 wants not merely obedience to the first and 
 the greatest commandment, which is the 
 love of God, but he wants what may be 
 called the impregnating quality of all ac- 
 ceptable obedience whatever, — the spirit 
 which ought to animate the performance of 
 every other commandment, and M'ithout 
 which the most laborious conformity to the 
 law of Heaven, may do no more than im- 
 press upon his person the cold and lifeless 
 image of loyalty, while in his mind there is 
 not one of its essential attributes. 
 
 We know not a more useful exercise 
 than that of carrying round this conviction 
 amongst all the classes and condhions of 
 humanity. In the days of our Saviour, the 
 pride of the Pharisees stood opposed to 
 such a demonstration ; and in our own days, 
 too. there are certain pretensions of worth, 
 and of excellence, which must be disposted, 
 ere we can hope to obtain admittance for 
 the humiliating doctrine of the gospel. For 
 this gospel, it must be observed, proceeds 
 upon the basis, not of a partial, but of an 
 entire and universal depravity among the 
 men of the world. It assimilates all the 
 varieties of the human character into one 
 common condition of guilt, and need, and 
 helplessness. It presumes the existence of 
 such a moral disease in every son and 
 daughter of Adam, as renders the applica- 
 tion of the same moral remedy indispensa- 
 
 ble to them all. The formalists of Judea 
 did not like to be thus grouped with publi- 
 cans and harlots, under one description of 
 sinfulness. Nor do men of taste, and feeling, 
 and graceful morality, in our present day, 
 readily understand how they should require 
 the same kind of treatment, in the work of 
 preparing them for immortality, with the 
 most glaringly profligate and unrighteous 
 of their neighbourhood. They look to the 
 ostensible marks of distinction between 
 themselves and others ; — and what wider 
 distinction, they think, can possibly be as- 
 signed, than that which obtains between 
 the upright or the kind-hearted, on the one 
 hand, and the ungenerous or dishonest, on 
 the other 1 Now, what we propose, in the 
 following discourse, is to lead them to look 
 a little farther, — and then they will see at 
 least one point of similarity between these 
 two classes, the want of one common ingre- 
 dient with both, and M'hich attaches to each 
 of them a great moral defect, that can only 
 be repaired by one and the same application. 
 
 It is well when we can find out an accor- 
 dancy between the actual exhibition of hu- 
 man nature on the field of experience, and 
 the representation that is given of this na- 
 ture on the field of revelation. Now, the 
 Bible every where groups the individuals 
 of our species, into two gsneral and dis- 
 tinct classes, and assigns to each of them its 
 appropriate designation. It tells us of the 
 vessels of wrath, and of the vessels of 
 mercy ; of the travellers on a narrow path, 
 and on a broad way; of the children of this 
 world, and the children of light ; and, lastly, 
 of men who are carnally minded, and men 
 who are spiritually minded. It employs 
 these terms in a meaning so extensive, that 
 by each couplet of them it embraces all in- 
 dividuals. There is no separate number of 
 persons, forming of themselves a neutral 
 class, and standing without the limits of the 
 two others. And were it possible to con- 
 ceive, that human nature, as it exists at pre- 
 sent in the world, v/ere laid in a map before 
 us, you would see no intermediate ground 
 between the two classes which are thus con- 
 trasted in the Bible,— but these thrown into 
 two distinct regions, with one clear and 
 vigorous line of demarcation between them. 
 
 AVe often read of this line, and we often 
 read of the transition from the one to the 
 other side of it. But there is no trace of 
 any middle department to be met with in 
 the New Testament. The alternative has 
 only two terms, and ours must be the one 
 or the other of them. And as surely as a 
 day is coming, when all the men of our as- 
 sembled world shall be found on the right 
 or on the left hand of the throne of judg- 
 ment—so surely do the carnal and the 
 spiritual regions of human nature, stand 
 apart from each other; and all the men 
 who are now living on the surface of the 
 
84 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 world, are to be found on the right, or on 
 the wrong side, of the Une of demarcation. 
 
 We cannot conceive, then, a question of 
 mightier interest, than the situation of this 
 line,— a Vine which takes its own steady 
 and uiil'aUeriug way through the thousand 
 varieties of character that exist in the world ; 
 and which reduces them all to two great, 
 and awfully important divisions. It marks 
 'off one part of the' species from the other. 
 We are quite aware that the terms which 
 are employed to characterize the two sets 
 are extremely unfashionable; and, what is 
 more, are painfully offensive to many a 
 mind, whose taste, and wliose habits, have 
 not yet been brought under the overpow- 
 ering controul of God's own message ex- 
 pressed in God's own language. They are 
 such terms as would be rejected with a posi- 
 tive sensation of disgust by many a mor- 
 alist, and would be thought by many more, 
 to impart the blemish of a most hideous de- 
 formity, to his eloquent and philosophical 
 pages. It is curious here to observe how 
 much the Maker of the human mind, and 
 the mere observer of the human mind, dif- 
 fer in their views and representations of 
 the same object. But when told, on the 
 highest of all authority, that to be car- 
 nally minded is death, and to be spiritually 
 minded is life and peace, we are compelled 
 to acknowledge with a feeling of earnest- 
 ness, greater than mere curiosity can in- 
 spire, that the application of these terms, 
 is a question of all others the most deeply 
 affecting to the fears and the wishes of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 In the prosecution of this question, let 
 me attempt to bring a succession of charac- 
 ters before you, most of wiiich must have 
 met your own distinct and familiar obser- 
 vation ; and of which, while exceedingly 
 various in their complexion, we hope to 
 succeed in convincing you, that the love of 
 God, at least, ;s not in them. If this can 
 be made out against them, it may be con- 
 sidered as experimentally fixing to w^hich 
 of the two great divisions of humanity they 
 belong. All who love God, may have bold- 
 ness when they think of the day of judg- 
 ment, because, like unto God. who himself 
 is love, they will be pronounced meet for 
 the enjoyment, and the fellowship of him 
 through eternity. And they who want this 
 affection, when they die shall be turned 
 into hell. They shall be found to possess 
 that carnal mind which is enmity against 
 God. So that upon the single point of 
 whether they possess this love or not, 
 hinges the question which I have just now 
 started. — a question surely which it were 
 better for every man to decide at the bar 
 of conscience now, ere it comes under the 
 review of that dread tribunal which is to 
 award to him his everlasting habitation. 
 
 I. Let us first offer to your notice, a 
 
 man living in the grossness of animal in- 
 dulgence, — a man, the field of whose en- 
 joyments is altogether sensual, — and who, 
 therefore, in addition to the charge he 
 brings down upon himself, of directly vio- 
 lating the law of God, is regarded by the 
 admirers of what is tasteful and refined in 
 the human character, as a loathsome olijcct 
 of contemplation. There is something more 
 here than mere wickedness of character to 
 excite the regret or detestation of the godly. 
 There is sordidness of character to excite the 
 disgust of the elegant. And let us just add 
 one feature more to this portrait of deform- 
 ity. Let us suppose the man in question to 
 have so abandoned himself to the impulses 
 of selfishness, that no feeling and no prin- 
 ciple whatever, restrains him from yielding 
 to its temptations, — that to obtain the gra- 
 tification he is in quest of, he can violate 
 all the decencies, and bid away from him 
 all the tendernesses of our common hu- 
 manitj^ — that he has the hardihood to set 
 the terrors of the civil law at defiance, — 
 and that, for the money which ministers to 
 every earthly appetite, he can even go so 
 far, as to steel his heart against the atrocity 
 of a murder. When we have thus set be- 
 fore you, the picture of one feasting on the 
 prey of his inhuman robberies, we have 
 surely brought our description as far down 
 in the scale of character, as it can well be 
 carried. And we have done so, on purpose 
 that you may be at no loss to assign the 
 place which belongs to him. It were a 
 monstrous supposition altogether, that either 
 the love of gratitude, or the love of moral 
 esteem for the Deity, were to be found in 
 the bosom of such a man. He, then, of all 
 others, is not spiritual but carnal ; nor do 
 we anticipate a single dissenting voice 
 when we say, that whatever be the doubts 
 and the delusions which may prevail about 
 men of another aspect, the man whose 
 habits and pursuits have now been sketched 
 to you, stands on the wrong side of the line 
 of demarcation. 
 
 We are far from saying, that a man of 
 such a character as this is of frequent oc- 
 currence in society. We merely set him 
 up as a kind of starting-post, for the future 
 train of our argument. It is a mighty ad- 
 vantage, in every discussion, to have a clear 
 and undisputed outset, — and we trust, that, 
 if thus far we have kept cordially by the 
 side of each other, we shall not cast out by 
 the way, in the progress of our remaining 
 observations. 
 
 II. Let us now proceed, then, to detach 
 one offensive feature from the character of 
 him, whom we have thus set before you, 
 as a compound of many abominations. 
 Let us leave entire all his dishonesty, and 
 all his devotedness to the pleasures of sense, 
 but soften and transform his heart to such 
 a degree, that he would recoil from the 
 
XII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 85 
 
 perpetration of a murder. This is a differ- 
 ent portrait from the one which we formerly 
 exhibited. There is in it an instinctive 
 horror at an act of violence, which did not 
 belong to the other; — and the question we 
 have now to put, is, Has the man who owns 
 this improved representation, become, on 
 this single difference, a spiritual man ? We 
 answer this question by another. Is the 
 difference that we have now assigned to 
 him, due to the love of God, or to such a 
 principle of loyal subjection to his authority, 
 as this love is sure to engender? You will 
 not call him spiritual from the mere exist- 
 ence of a feeling which would rise spon- 
 taneously in his heart, even though the 
 Father of spirits were never thought of 
 We appeal to your own consciousness of 
 what passes within you, if the heart do not 
 experience the movement of many a con- 
 stitutional feeling, altogether unaccompa- 
 nied by any reference of the mind, to the 
 love, or to the character, or even to the 
 existence of God. Are you not quite sen- 
 sible, that though the idea of a God lay in 
 a state of dormancy for hours and for days 
 together, many of the relentings of nature 
 would, in the meanwhile, remain with you ? 
 For the preservation and the order of so- 
 ciety, God has been kind enough to implant 
 in the bosom of man, many a natural pre- 
 dilection, and many a natural horror, — of 
 which he feels the operation, and the people 
 of his neighbourhood enjoy the advantage, 
 at the very time that one and all of them, 
 unmindful of God, are walking in the coun- 
 sel of their own hearts, and after the sight 
 of their own eyes. He has done the same 
 thing to the inferior animals. He has en- 
 dowed them with a principle of attachment 
 to their offspring, in virtue of which, they, 
 generally speaking, would recoil from the 
 murder of their young with as determined 
 an abhorrence, as you would do from the 
 murder of a fellow-creature. You would 
 not surely say of the irrational instinct, 
 that because amiable, or useful, or pleasing 
 to contemplate, there is any thing spiritual 
 in the impulse it communicates. Then do 
 not offer a violence both to Scripture and 
 philosophy, by confounding, in the mind 
 of man, principles which are distinct from 
 each other. Do not say, that he is spiritual, 
 merely because he is moving in obedience 
 to his constitutional tendencies. Do not 
 say, that he is not carnal, while all that he 
 has done, or abstained from doing, may be 
 done or abstained from, though he lived 
 without God in the world. And go not to 
 infer, while the pleasures of sense are the 
 idols of his every affection, that because he 
 would shudder to purchase them, at the 
 expence of another's blood, he, on that 
 single account, may be looked on as a 
 spiritual man, and as standing on the right 
 side of the line of demarcation. I 
 
 IH. All this may be looked upon, as too 
 indisputable for argument. And yet it is 
 the very principle which, if carried to its 
 fair extent, and brought faithfully home to 
 the conscience, would serve to convince of 
 ungodliness, the vast majority of this world's 
 generations. If a natural recoil from mur- 
 der, may be experienced by the bosom, in 
 which there exists np love to God, — why 
 may not this natural recoil be carried still 
 farther, and yet the love of God be just as 
 absent from the bosom as before? There are 
 other dishonesties, of a far less outrageous 
 character, than that by which you would 
 commit an act of depredation ; and other 
 cruelties far less enormous, than that by 
 which you would imbrue your hand in an- 
 other's blood, — which still the generality of 
 men would revolt from constitutionally, 
 and that, too, without the movement of any 
 affection for their God, or even so much as 
 any thought of him. We have only to con- 
 ceive the softening of a further transforma- 
 tion, to take place on the man with whom 
 we set out at the beginning of our argu- 
 ment; and he may thus become, like the 
 man we read of in the parable, who took 
 comfort to himself in the security, that he 
 had goods laid up for many years, and at 
 the same time is not charged either with 
 violence or dishonesty in the acquirement 
 of them. He is charged with nothing but 
 a devoted attachment to wealth, and to the 
 pleasures which that wealth can purchase. 
 And yet, what an awful reckoning did he 
 come under ! He seems to have been just 
 such a man as we can be at no loss to meet 
 with every day in the range of our fami- 
 liar acquaintances, — enjoying themselves in 
 easy and comfortable abundance ; but at an 
 obvious and unquestionable distance from 
 any thing that can be called atrocity of 
 character. There is not one of them, per- 
 haps, who would not recoil from an act of 
 barbarity ; and who would not be moved 
 with honest indignation, at the tale of per- 
 fidy, or of violence. They live in a placid 
 course of luxury, and good humour ; and 
 we are far from charging them with any 
 thing which the world calls monstrous, — 
 when Ave say, that the Father of spirits is 
 unminded, and unregarded by them, and 
 that the good things of the world are their 
 gods. If it be a vain superfluity of argu- 
 ment to prove, that a man may not be 
 spiritual, and yet be endowed with such a 
 degree of natural tenderness, as to recoil 
 from the perpetration of a murder, — then 
 it is equally indisputable, that a n^an may 
 not be spiritual, though endowed with such 
 a degree of natural tenderness, as to recoil 
 from many lesser acts of cruelty, or in- 
 justice. In other words, he may be a very 
 fair every-day character; and if it be so 
 sure a principle, that a man may not be a 
 murderer, and yet be carnal, then let one 
 
86 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SEUM. 
 
 and all of you look well to your own se- 
 curity; for it is the very principle which 
 might be employed, to shake the thousands 
 and tens of thousands of ordinary men, out 
 of the security in which they have en- 
 trenched themselves. 
 
 rv. But to proceed in this work of trans- 
 formation. Let us now conceive a still 
 more exquisite softening of affection and 
 tenderness, to be thrt^wn over the whole of 
 our imaginary character. We thus make 
 another step, and another departure, from 
 the original specimen. By the first step, 
 the mind is made to feel a kind of revolting, 
 at the atrocity of a murder ; and the cha- 
 racter ceases to be monstrous. By the 
 second, the mind is made to share in all 
 the common antipathies of our nature, to 
 what is cruel and unfeeling ; and it is thus 
 wrought up to the average of character 
 which obtains in society. By the third 
 step the mind is endowed with the warmer 
 and more delicate sympathies of our nature, 
 and thus rises to a more exalted place in 
 the scale of character. It becomes posi- 
 tively amiable. You look to him, who owns 
 all these graceful sensibilities, even as the 
 Saviour looked unto the young man of the 
 gospels, and, like the Saviour, you love him. 
 Who can, in fact, refrain from doing homage 
 to such a lovely exhibition of all that is 
 soothing in humanity ; and whether he be 
 emploj'^ed in mingling his tears, and his 
 charities, with the unfortunate, or in shed- 
 ding a gentle lustre over the retirement of 
 his own family, even orthodoxy herself, 
 stern and unrelenting as she is conceived 
 to be, cannot find it in her heart to frown 
 upon him. But, feeling is one thing, and 
 truth is another ; and when the question is 
 put, Do all these sensibilities, heightened 
 and adorned as they are, on the upper walks 
 of society, constitute a spiritual man? — it 
 is not by a sigh, or an aspiration of tender- 
 ness, that vve are to answer it. We are 
 put m a cool exercise of the understand- 
 ing , and we cannot close it against the fact, 
 that ^11 these feelings may exihrt apart from 
 the love of God, and apart from the reli- 
 gious principle, — that the idea of a God 
 may be expunged from the heart of man, 
 and yet that heart be still the seat of the 
 same constitutional impulses as ever, — that 
 in reference to the realities of the unseen 
 and spiritual world, the mind may be an 
 entire blank, and there, at the same time, 
 be room in it for the play of kindly and be- 
 nevolent emotions. We commit these truths 
 to your own experience, and if carried faith- 
 fully to the conscience, they may chase away 
 another of the delusions which encompass 
 it. There is no fear of me, for I have a 
 feeling heart, is a plea which they put a 
 decisive end to. This feeling heart, if un- 
 accompanied by any sense of God, is no 
 better evidence of a spiritual man, than is 
 
 the circulation of the blood. We are far from 
 refusing it the homage of our tenderness. We 
 feel a love to it, but we will not make a lie 
 about it. We can make no more of it, than 
 Scripture and experience enable us to do. 
 And, if it be true, that a man's heart may 
 be the habitual seat of kind affections, while 
 an affection for God is habitually away 
 from it, if it be true that no man can be 
 destitute of tliis affection, and at the same 
 time be a spiritual man, — if it be true, that 
 he who is not spiritual, is carnal, and that 
 the carnally-minded cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of God ; — then the necessity lies 
 upon us : he is still in the region and 
 shadow of deatli ; and if he refuse the argu- 
 ments and invitations of the gospel, calling 
 him over to another region than that which 
 he now occupies, he must just be numbered 
 among those more beauteous wrecks of our 
 fallen nature, which are destmed to perish 
 and be forgotten. 
 
 V. But let us go still farther. Let us 
 suppose the heart to be furnished, not 
 merely with the finest sensibilities of our 
 nature, but with its most upright and 
 honourable principles. Let us conceive a 
 man whose palse beats high with the pride 
 of integrity ; whose every word carries 
 security along with it; whose faithfulness 
 in the walks of business has stood the test 
 of many fluctuations ; who, amid all the 
 varieties of his fortune, has nobly sustained 
 the glories of an untainted character ; and 
 whom we see by the salutations of the 
 market-place, to be acknowledged and re- 
 vered by all, as the most respectable of the 
 citizens. Now, which of the two great re- 
 gions of human character shall we make him 
 to occupy? This question depends upon 
 another. May all this manly elevation of 
 soul, and of sentiment, stand disunited in 
 the same heart, with the influence of the 
 authority of God, or with that love of God 
 which is the keepingof his commandments? 
 The discerning eye of Hume saw that it 
 could ; and he tells us that natural honesty 
 of temper is a better security for the faith- 
 fulness of a man's doings, than all the au- 
 thority of religious principle over him. We 
 deny the assertion ; but the distinction be- 
 tween the two principles on which it pro- 
 ceeds, is mdisputable. There is a principle 
 of honour, apart in the human mind alto- 
 gether, from any reference to the realities 
 of a spiritual world. It varies in the in- 
 tensity of its operation, with different indi- 
 viduals. It has the chance of being more 
 entire, when kept aloof from the tempta- 
 tions of poverty : and therefore it is, that 
 we more frequently meet with it in the 
 upper and middling classes of life. And 
 we can conceive it so strong in its originaJ 
 influence, or so grateful to the possessor 
 from the elevating consciousness which 
 goes along with it, or so nourished by the 
 
XII.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 87 
 
 voice of an applauding world, as to throw 
 all the glories of a romantic chivalry over 
 the character of him, with whom God is as 
 much unthought of, as he is unseen. We 
 are far from refusing our admiration. But 
 we are saying, that the Being who brought 
 this noble specimen of our nature into 
 existence; who fitted his heart for all its 
 higli and generous wiiotions ; who threw a 
 theatre around him for the display and ex- 
 ercise of his fine moral accomplishments ; 
 who furnished each of his admirers with a 
 heart to appreciate his worth, and a voice to 
 pour into his ear the flattering expression of 
 it ; — the Being whose hand upholds and per- 
 petuates the whole of this illustrious exhi- 
 bition, may all the while be forgotten, and 
 unnoticed as a thing of no consequence. 
 We are merely saying, that the man whose 
 heart is occupied with a sentiment of 
 honour, and is at the same time unoccu- 
 pied with a sense of Him, who is the first 
 and greatest of spiritual beings, is not a 
 spiritual man. But, if not spiritual, we are 
 told in the Bible, that there are only two 
 terms in the alternative, and he must be 
 carnal : and the God whom he has disre- 
 garded in time, will find, that in the praises 
 and enjoyments of time, he has gotten all 
 his reward, and that he owes him no re- 
 compense in eternity. 
 
 We appeal to the state of the public mind 
 some years ago, on the subject of Africa, 
 as a living exemplification of the whole ar- 
 gument. " Love thy neighbour as thyself," 
 says the Bible ; and this precept, coming 
 with all the force of its religious influence 
 upon the hearts of men, who carry their 
 respects to the will of a spiritual and un- 
 .seen God, have urged them on, and with 
 noble effect, to the abolition of the deadliest 
 mischief that was ever let loose upon the 
 species. And whether Ave look to the Qua- 
 kers, who originated the cause, or to him 
 who pioneered the cause, or to him who 
 plead the cause, or to him who has impreg- 
 nated with such a moral charm, the atmo- 
 sphere of his country, that no human crea- 
 ture can breathe of its air without taking in 
 the generous inspiration of liberty along 
 with it, — we cannot fail to observe, that one 
 and all of them speak the language, and 
 evince the tastes, and are not ashamed to 
 own their most entire and decided pre- 
 ference for the objects of spiritual men. 
 There is an evident sense of religious duty, 
 which gives the tone of Christianity, and 
 throws the aspect of sacredness over the 
 whole of their doings ; and the unbaffled 
 perseverance of the many years they had 
 to struggle with difficulties, and to spend 
 in the weariness of ever recurring disap- 
 pointments, bears striking proof to the un- 
 quenchable energy of the Christian princi- 
 ple within them. But who can deny the 
 iaige and important contributions which 
 
 came in upon the cause from other quar- 
 ters ? We hold it quite consistent with the 
 truth of human nature, to aver, 1 hat in this en- 
 lightened country, other principles may have 
 lent their aid to tlie cause, and, apart from 
 Christianity altogether, may havesentacom- 
 manding influence into the hearts of some 
 of its ablest and most efficient supporters. 
 There is nothing in the presence of Chris- 
 tian principle to quell the impassioned ffer- 
 vour of our desires after right objects ; but 
 the absence of Christian principle does not 
 necessarily extinguish this fervour. When 
 we look back to the animating ferment of 
 the British public, on tlie subject of Africa, 
 we will ever conicnd, that a feeling of obli- 
 gation to a spiritual being, was the ingre- 
 dient which set it a going, and which kept 
 it a going. But who can deny the exist- 
 ence, and the powerful operation of other 
 ingredients ? An instinctive horror at cruel- 
 ty, is a separate and independent attribute 
 of the heart, and sufficient of itself to in- 
 spire the deepest tones of that eloquence 
 which sounded in parliament, and issued 
 from the press, and spread an infection over 
 all the provinces of the empire, and mus- 
 tered around the cause, thousands and tens 
 of thousands of our rallying population, 
 and gave such an energy to the public 
 voice, that all the resisting jealousies and 
 interests of the country were completely 
 overborne ; — and hence the interesting 
 spectacle, of carnal and spiritual men lend- 
 ing their respective energies to the accom- 
 plishment of one object, and securing, by 
 their success, a higher name for Britain in 
 the world, than all the wisdom of her coun- 
 sels, and all the pride of her victories can 
 ever achieve for her. 
 
 Were it our only aim to carry the acqui- 
 escence of the vmaerstanding, there might 
 be a danger in affirming, and urging, and 
 illustrating to excess, the position, that we 
 want to establish among you; — and it 
 were, perhaps, better, to limit ourselves to 
 one simple delivery of the argument. But 
 our aim is, if possible, to affect the con- 
 science, and to accomplish this object, not 
 with one, but with many individuals. And 
 when it is reflected, that one developement 
 of the principle may come home more for- 
 cibly to some man's experience than an- 
 other, we must beg to be excused for one 
 recurrence more to a topic, so pregnant of 
 consequence to your everlasting interests. 
 Tliere is a sadly meagre and frivolous con- 
 ception of human sinfulness, that is preva- 
 lent amongst you, — and it goes to foster- 
 this delusion, that when we look abroad on 
 the face of society, we must be struck with 
 the diversity of character which obtains 
 among the individuals who compose it. 
 Some there are, who, in the estimation of 
 the world, are execrable for their crimes, 
 but others, who, in the same estimation 
 
88 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 are illustrious for their virtues. In that 
 general mass of corruption, to which we 
 would reduce our unfortunate species, is 
 there, it may be asked, no solitary example 
 of what is pure, and honourable, and love- 
 ly ? Do we never meet with the charity 
 which melts at suffering ; with the honesty 
 which disdams, and is proudly superior 
 to falsehood ; with the active beneficence 
 which gives to others its time and its la- 
 bour; with the modesty which shrinks 
 from notice, and gives all its sweetness 
 to retirement ; with the gentleness whicli 
 breathes peace to all, and throws a beauti- 
 ful lustre over the walks of domestic socie- 
 ty 1 If we find these virtues to be some- 
 times exhibited, is not this an argument 
 against the doctrine of such an entire, and 
 unmitigated depravity, as w© have been 
 contending for ? Will it not serve to re- 
 deem humanity from that sweeping, indis- 
 criminate charge of corruption, which is 
 so often advanced against it, m all the 
 pride and intolerance of orthodoxy ? "SMiat 
 better evidence can be given of our love 
 to God, than our adherence to his law ? 
 And are not the virtues which we have just 
 now specified, part of that law ? Are not 
 they the very virtues which his authority 
 requires of us, and which imparts such a 
 charm to the morality of the New Testa- 
 ment ? 
 
 Now, it caiTies us at once to the bottom 
 of this delusion, to observe, that though the 
 religious principle can never exist, without 
 the amiable and virtuous conduct of the 
 New Testament ; yet, that conduct may, in 
 some measure, be maintained, without the 
 religious principle. A man may be led to 
 " precisely the same conduct, on the impulse 
 of many different principles. He may be 
 gentle, because it is a prescription of the 
 divine law : — or, he may be gentle, because 
 he is naturally of a peaceful, or indolent 
 constitution; — or, he may be gentle, be- 
 cause he sees it to be an amiable graceful- 
 ness, with which he wishes to adorn his 
 own character ; — or, he may be gentle, be- 
 cause it is the ready way of perpetuating 
 the friendship of those around him; — or, 
 he may be gentle, because taught to ob- 
 serve it, as a part of courtly and fashiona- 
 ble deportment, — and what was implanted 
 by education, may come, in time, to be 
 confirmed, by habit and experience. Now, 
 it is only under the first of these principles, 
 that there is any religion in gentleness. 
 The other principles may produce all the 
 outward appearance of this virtue, and 
 much even of its inward complacency, and 
 yet be as distinct ftom the religious princi- 
 ple, as they are distinct from one another. 
 To infer the strength of the religious prin- 
 ciple, from the taste of the human mind 
 for what is graceful and lovely in charac- 
 ter, would just be as preposterous, as to in- 
 
 fer it from the admiration of a fine picture, 
 or a cultivated landscape. They are not 
 to be confounded. They occupy a differ- 
 ent place, even in the classifications of phi- 
 losophy. We do not deny, that the admi- 
 ration of what is fine in character, is a 
 principle of a higher order, than a taste for 
 the sensualities of the epicure. But they, 
 one and all of them, stand at a wide dis- 
 tance from the religious principle : and 
 whether it be taste, or temper, or the love 
 of popularity, or the high impulse of hon- 
 ourable feeling, or even the love of truth, 
 and a naturaF principle of integrity, — the 
 virtues in question may be so unconnected 
 with religion, as to flourish in the world, 
 and be rewarded by its admiration, even 
 though God were expunged from the be- 
 lief, and immortality from the prospects, 
 of the species. 
 
 The virtues, then, to which the enemies 
 of our doctrine make such a confident ap- 
 peal, may have no force whatever in the 
 argument, — because, properly speaking, 
 they may not be exemplifications of the 
 religious principle. If you do what is vir- 
 tuous, because God tells you so, then, and 
 then only, do you give us a fair example 
 of the authoritj' of religion over your prac- 
 tice. But, if you do it merely "because it 
 is lo'v ely, because it is honourable, or be- 
 cause it is a fine moral accomplishment, — 
 we will not refuse the testimony of our ad- 
 miration, but we cannot submit to such 
 an error, either of conception, or of lan- 
 guage, as to allow that there is any reli- 
 gion in all this. These qualities have our 
 utmost friendship ; and we give the most 
 substantial evidence of this, when, instead 
 of leaving them to their own solitar)- claims 
 upon the human heart, we call in the aid 
 of religion, and support them by its autho- 
 rity : " "\Miatsoever things are pure, or love- 
 h\ or honest, or of good report; if there 
 be an}- virtue, if there be any praise, think 
 of these things." But we will not admit, 
 that the mere circumstance of their being 
 lovely, supersedes the authority of religion; 
 nor can we endure such an injustice to the 
 Author of all that is graceful, both in 
 nature and morality, as that the native 
 charms of virtue should usurp, in our ad- 
 miration, the place of God — of him who 
 gave to virtue all its charms, and formed the 
 heart of man to love and to admire them. 
 
 Be not deceived, then, into a rejection of 
 that doctrine which forms the great basis 
 of a sinner's religion, by the specimens of 
 moral excellence which are to be met with 
 in society ; or by the praise which your 
 own virtues extort from an applauding 
 neighbourhood. Virtue maj'' exist, and in 
 such a degree too, as to constitute it a love- 
 ly object in the eyes of the world, but if 
 there be in it no reference of the mind to 
 the will of God, there is no religion in it. 
 
XII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 89 
 
 Such virtue as this has its reward in its na- 
 tural consequences, in the admiration of 
 others, or in the dehghts of conscious satis- 
 faction. But we cannot see why God will 
 reward it in the capacity of your master, 
 when his service was not the principle of 
 it, and you were therefore not acting at all 
 the part of a servant to him, — nor do we 
 see how he can reward it in the capacity 
 of your judge, when, in the whole process 
 of virtuous feeling, and virtuous sentiment, 
 and virtuous conduct, you carried in your 
 heart no reference whatever, for a single 
 moment, to him as your lawgiver. We do 
 not deny that there are many such exam- 
 ples of virtue in the world ; but then we in- 
 sist upon it, that they cannot be put down 
 to the account of religion. They often 
 may, and actually do, exist in a state of 
 entire separation from the religious princi- 
 ple ; and in that case, they go no farther 
 than to prove that your taste is unvitiated, 
 that your temper is amiable, that your so- 
 cial dispositions promote the peace and 
 welfare of society: and they will be re- 
 warded with its approbation. Now, it is 
 well that you act your part as a member of 
 society; and religion, by making this one 
 of its injunctions, gives us the very best 
 security, that wherever its influence pre- 
 vails, it will be done in the most perfect 
 manner. But the point we labour to im- 
 press is, that a man may be what we all 
 understand by a good member of society, 
 without the authority of God, as his legis- 
 lator, being either recognized or acted upon. 
 We do not say that his error lies in being 
 a good member of society. This, though 
 only a circumstance at present, is a very 
 fortunate one. The error lies in his having 
 discarded the authority of God, or rather, 
 in his never having admitted the influence 
 of that authority over his heart, or his 
 practice. We want to guard him against 
 the delusion, that the principle which he 
 has, can ever be accepted as a substitute 
 for the principle he has not, — or, that the 
 very highest sense of duty, which his situ- 
 ation as a member of society, impresses 
 upon his feelings, will ever be received as 
 an atonement for wanting that sense of 
 duty to God, which he ought to feel in the 
 far more exalted capacity of his servant, 
 and candidate for his approbation. We 
 stand on the high ground, that he is the 
 subject of the Almighty, — nor shall we 
 shrink from declaring the whole extent of 
 the principle. Let his path in society be 
 ever so illustrious, by the virtues which 
 adorn it ; let every word, and every per- 
 formance, be as honourable as a proud 
 sense of integrity can make it ; let the sa- 
 lutations of the market-place mark him out 
 as the most respectable of the citizens; 
 and the gratitude of a thousand families 
 ring the praises of his beneficence to the 
 12 
 
 world : If the actor in this splendid exhi- 
 bition, carry in his mind no ri fc rcnce to 
 the authority of God, we do not hesitate to 
 pronounce him unworthy, — nor shall all 
 the execrations of generous, but mistaken 
 principle, deter us from putting forth our 
 hand to strip him of his honours. What! 
 is the world to gaze in admiration on this 
 fine spectacle of virtue ; and are Me to be 
 told that the Being, who gave such facul- 
 ties to one of his children, and provides 
 the theatre for their exercise, — that the Be- 
 ing, who called this moral scene into ex- 
 istence, and gave it all its beauties, — that 
 he is to be forgotten, and neglected as of 
 no consequence ? Shall we give a deceit- 
 ful lustre to the virtues of him who is un- 
 mindful of his God, — and with all the 
 grandeur of eternity before us. can we 
 turn to admire those short-lived exertions, 
 which only shed a fleeting brilliancy over 
 a paltry and perishable scene 1 It is true, 
 that he who is counted faithful in little 
 will also be counted faithful in much ; and 
 when God is the principle of his fidelity, 
 the very humblest wishes of benevolence 
 will be rewarded. But its most splendid 
 exertions Avithout this principle, have no 
 inheritance in heaven. Human praise, and 
 human eloquence, may acknowledge it ; 
 but the Discerner of the heart never will. 
 The heart may be the seat of every amia- 
 ble feeling, and every claim which comes 
 to it in the shape of human misery may 
 find a welcome; but if the love of God be 
 not there, it is not right ^ith God, — and he 
 Avho owns it, will die in his sins : he is in a 
 state of impenitency. 
 
 Having thus disposed of those virtues 
 which exist in a state of independence on 
 the religious principle, we must be forced 
 to recur to the doctrine of human depravity, 
 in all its original aggravation. Man is cor- 
 rupt, and the estrangement of his heart from 
 God, is the decisive evidence of it. Ev ery 
 day of his life the first commandment of 
 the law is trampled on, — and it is that com- 
 mandment on which the authority of the 
 whole is suspended. His best exertions are 
 unsound in their very principle ; and as the 
 love of God reigns not within him, all that 
 has usurped the name of virtue, and de- 
 ceived us by its semblance, must be a mock- 
 ery and a delusion. 
 
 We Shall conclude with three observa- 
 tions: First, there is nothing more justly 
 fitted to revolt the best feelings of the human 
 heart against orthodoxy, than when any 
 thing is said to its defence, which tends to 
 mar the credit or the lustre of a moral 
 accomplishment so lovely as benevolence. 
 Let it be observed, then, that substantial 
 benevolence is rarely, if ever, to be found 
 apart from piety, — and that piety is but the 
 hypocrisy of a name, when benevolence, in 
 all the unweariedness of its well doing, does 
 
90 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE, 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 not go along with it. Benevolonce may 
 make some brilliant exhibitions of herself 
 without the instigation of the reliffious prin- 
 ciple. But in these cases you seldom have 
 the touchstone of a painful sacrifice, — and 
 you never have a spiritual aim, after the 
 good of our imperishable nature. It is easy 
 to indulge a consthutional feeling. It is 
 easy to make a pecuniary surrender. It is 
 easy to move gently along, amid the visits 
 and the attentions of kindness, when every 
 eye smiles welcome, and the soft whispers 
 of gratitude minister their pleasing reward, 
 and flatter you into the delusion that you 
 are an angel of mercy. But give us the 
 benevolence of him, who can ply his faithful 
 task in the face of every discouragement, — 
 who can labour in scenes where there is no 
 brilliancy whatever to reward him, — whose 
 kindness is that sturdy and abiding princi- 
 ple which can weather all the murmurs of 
 ingratitude, and all the provocations of dis- 
 honesty, — who can find his way through 
 poverty's putrid lan^s, and depravity's most 
 nauseous and disgusting receptacles, — who 
 can maintain the uniform and placid tem- 
 per, witliin the secrecy of his own home, 
 and amid the irksome annoyances of his 
 own family, — who can endure hardships 
 as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, — whose hu- 
 manity acts with as much vigour amid the 
 reproach, and the calumny, and the con- 
 tradiction of sinners, as when soothed and 
 softened by the poetic accompaniment of 
 weeping orphans and interesting cottages, — 
 and, above all, who labours to convert sin- 
 ners, to subdue their resistance of the gos- 
 pel, and to spiritualize them into a meetness 
 for the inheritance of the saints. We main- 
 tain, that no such benevolence, realizing all 
 these features, 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, the 
 meekness, the difficuhies of such a benevo- 
 lence, cannot be sustained without the in- 
 fluence of a heavenly principle, — and when 
 all that decks the theatre of this world is 
 withdrawn, what else is there but the mag- 
 nificence of eternity, to pour a glory over 
 its path, and to minister encouragement in 
 the midst of labours unnoticed by human 
 eye, and unrewarded by hmnan testimony? 
 Even the most splendid enterprizes of be- 
 nevolence, which the world ever witnessed, 
 can be traced to the operation of what the 
 world laughs at, as a quakerish and metho- 
 distical piety. And we appeal to the abo- 
 lition of the slave trade, and the still nobler 
 abolition of vice and ignorance, which is 
 now accomplishing amongst the uncivilized 
 countries of the earth, for the proof, that 
 m good will to men, as well as glory to 
 God, they are the men of piety who bear 
 
 away the palm of superiority and of tri- 
 umph. 
 
 But, Secondly, If all Scripture and all 
 observation, are on the side of our text, 
 should not this be turned by each of us into 
 a personal concern ? Should it not be taken 
 up, and pursued, as a topic in which we all 
 have a deep individual interest ? Should it 
 not have a more permanent hold of us, than 
 a mere amusing general speculation ? Are 
 not prudence, and anticipation, and a sense 
 of danger, all linked with the conclusion we 
 have attempted to press upon you? In one 
 word, if there be such a thing as a moral 
 government on the part of God, — if there 
 be such a thing as the authority of a high 
 and divine legislature, — if there oe such a 
 thing as a throne in heaven, and a judge sit- 
 ting on that throne, — should not the ques- 
 tion. What shall I do to be saved? come 
 with all its big and deeply felt significancy 
 into the heart and conscience of every one 
 of ns ? We know that there is a very loose 
 and general security upon this subject, — that 
 the question, if it ever be suggested at all, 
 is disposed of in an easy, indolent, and su- 
 perficial way, by some such presumption, 
 as that God is merciful, and that should be 
 enough to pacify us. But why recur to any 
 presumption, for the purpose of bringing 
 the question to a settlement, when, upon 
 this very topic, we are favoured with an 
 authoritative message from God, — when an 
 actual embassy has come from him, and 
 that on the express errand of reconcilia- 
 tion? — when the records of this embassy 
 have been collected into a volume, within 
 the reach of all who will stretch forth their 
 hand to it ; — when the obvious expedient of 
 consulting this record is before us ? And 
 surely, if what God says of himself, is of 
 higher signification than what we think 
 him to be, and if he tell us not merely that 
 he is merciful, but that there is a particular 
 way in which he chooses to be so ; — notliing 
 remains for us but submissively to learn 
 that way, and obediently to go along with 
 it. But he actually tells us, that there is no 
 other name given under heaven, whereby 
 man can be saved, but the name of Jesus. 
 He tells, that it is only in Christ, that he 
 has reconciled the world unto himself. He 
 tells us, that our alone redemption is in him 
 whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
 through faith in his blood. — that he might 
 be just, while the justifier of him who be- 
 lieveth in Jesus ; — and sureh', we must either 
 give up the certainty of the record, or count 
 these to be faithful sayings, and worthy of 
 all acceptation. 
 
 Lastly, The question may occur, after 
 having established the fact of human cor- 
 ruption, and recommended a simple acqui- 
 escence in the Saviour for forgiveness, What 
 becomes of the corruption after this? Musi 
 we just be doing with it as an obstinate. 
 
XIII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HITMAN NATURE. 
 
 91 
 
 peculiarity of our nature, bearing down all 
 our powers of resistance, and making every 
 struggle with it hopeless and unavailing? 
 For the answer to this question, we commit 
 you, as before, to the record. He who is in 
 Christ Jesus is a new creature. Sin has no 
 longer dominion over him. That very want 
 which constituted the main violence of the 
 disease, is made up to him. He wanted the 
 love of God ; and this love is shed abroad in 
 his heart by the Holy Ghost. He wanted 
 the love of his neighbour ; but God enters 
 into a covenant with him, by which he puts 
 this law in his heart, and writes it in his 
 mind. The spirit is given to them who ask 
 it in faith, and the habitual prayer, of. Sup- 
 port me in the performance of this duty, — 
 or. Carry me in safety through this trial of 
 my heart and of my principles, — is heard 
 with acceptance, and answered with power. 
 The power of Christ is made to rest on those 
 wlio look to him ; and they will find to be 
 their experience what Paul found to be his, — 
 they will be able to do all things through 
 Christ strengthening them. Now, the ques- 
 tion we have to put is, — Tell us, if all this 
 
 sound strange, and mysterious, and foreign 
 to the general style of your conceptions? 
 Then be alarmed for your safety. Ihe 
 things you thus professtobestrange to you, 
 are not the peculiar notions of one man, or 
 the still more peculiar phraseology of an- 
 other. They are the very notions and the 
 very phraseology of the Bible, — and you, 
 by your antipathy or disregard to them, 
 bring yourselves under precisely the same 
 reckoning with God, that you do with a dis- 
 tant acquaintance, whom you insult by re- 
 turning his letter unopened, or despise, by 
 suffering it to lie beside you unread and un- 
 attended to. In this indelible word of God, 
 you will meet with the free offer of forgive- 
 ness for the past, and a provision laid before 
 you, by which all who make use of it, are 
 carried forward to amendment, and pro- 
 gressive virtue for the future. They are 
 open to all, and at the taking of all ; but in 
 proportion to the frankness, and freeness, 
 and universality of the offer, will be the 
 severity of that awful threatening to them 
 who despise it. How shall they escape, if 
 they neglect so great a salvation ? 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 The natural Enmity of the Mind against God. 
 
 " The carnal mind is enmity against God." — Romans viii. 7. 
 
 We should be blinding ourselves against 
 the light of experience, did we deny of 
 many of our acquaintances, that they have 
 either brought into the world, or have ac- 
 quired, by a natural process of education, 
 such a gentleness of temper, such a docility, 
 such a taste for the amiable and the kind, 
 such an honourable sense of integrity, such 
 a feeling sympathy for the wants, and mis- 
 fortunes of others, that it would not be easy, 
 and what is more, we may venture to say, 
 from the example of our Saviour, who, when 
 he looked to the young man, loved him, 
 that it would positively not be right, to with- 
 hold from them our admiration and our 
 tenderness. Still it were a violation of all 
 scriptural propriety in language, to say of 
 them that they were not carnal, or not car- 
 nally minded. All, by the very signification 
 of tiie term, are carnal, whose minds either 
 i-etain their original constitution, or have un- 
 dergone no other transforming process than 
 a mere process of natural education. Some 
 mmds are in these circumstances, more 
 agreeable to look upon than others, just as 
 some faces are more agreeable than others, 
 to the eye. Each mind has its own pecu- 
 liar character, just as each face has its own 
 set of features, and its own complexion. 
 
 But as all the varieties in the latter, from ex- 
 quisite beauty to most revolting deformity, 
 do not exclude from any, the one and 
 universal attribute of decay, — so neither 
 may all the constitutional varieties in the 
 former, from the most sordid to the most 
 naturally upright and amiable, exclude the 
 possession of some one and universal at- 
 tribute ; and it may be the very attribute 
 assigned to nature in the text — even hostility 
 against God. 
 
 Let us first offer some remarks on the 
 affirmation of the text, that the carnal mind 
 is enmity against God, — and then shortly 
 consider how it is that the gospel of Jesus 
 Christ suits its applications to this great 
 moral disease. 
 
 I. It appears a very presumptuous at- 
 tempt, on the part of a human interpreter, 
 when the object which he proposes, and 
 which he erects into a separate head of 
 discussion, is to prove the assertion of the 
 text. Should not the very circumstance of 
 its being the assertion of the text, be proof 
 enough for you ? On what better founda- 
 tion can y®ur belief be laid than on the 
 testimony of God? and when we come to 
 understand the meaning of the thing testi- 
 fied, is not the bare fact of God being the 
 
92 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 witness of it, sufficient ground for its cre- 
 dibility to rest upon ? Shall man's reason- 
 ing carry a greater authority along with it 
 than God's declaration? Is your faith to 
 depend on the success or the failure of his 
 argument? Whether he succeed in esta- 
 blishing the truth of the assertion or not, 
 upon independent reasonings of his own, — 
 remember that by reading it out in his text, 
 he has already come forward with an ar- 
 gument more conclusive than any which 
 his ingenuity can devise. And yet, how 
 often do your convictions lie suspended on 
 the ability of the preacher, and on the 
 soundness of his demonstrations 1 You re- 
 fuse to belie.ve truth, plainly set before you 
 in the Bible, because the minister has failed 
 in making out his point. Now, the truth 
 of the point in question may have already 
 received its decisive settlement, from the 
 text delivered in your hearing. We may 
 try, and take our own way of bringing the 
 truth of your enmity against God, close 
 and home upon your consciences. But, if 
 there be truth in all the sayings of the 
 Bible, enough has been already said to un- 
 dermine the security of your fancied attain- 
 ments. It is said, that in om- nature there 
 is a rooted and an embodied character of 
 hostility to our Maker. This should make 
 the wisest and most sufficient among you 
 feel that you are poor indeed, — and let other 
 expedients, to press home the melancholy 
 truth fail, or be effectual as they may, this 
 is surely enough to convince and to alarm 
 you. 
 
 But, though we cannot add to the truth 
 of God, there is such a thing as what the 
 Apostle calls making that truth manifest to 
 your consciences. Your own observation 
 may attest the very same truth, which God 
 announces to you in his word. And if it 
 be a truth, respecting the state of your own 
 heart, this agreement between what God 
 says you are, and what you find yourselves 
 to be, is often most powerfully instrumental 
 in reclaiming men to the acknowledgment 
 of the truth, and bringing their heart under 
 its influence. This is the very argument 
 which compelled the faith of the woman 
 of Samaria. " Come and see the man which 
 told me all the things that ever I did; is 
 not this the Christ ?" It is the very argu- 
 ment by which many an unbeliever was 
 convinced in the Apostle's days. The se- 
 crets of his heart were made manifest, and 
 so falling dowii on his face, he worshipped 
 God, and reported that God was in them, 
 of a truth. We cannot make the assertion 
 in the text stronger than God has made it 
 already ; but we rnay be able to guide your 
 observations to th'at which is the subject of 
 it — even to your own mind. We may lead 
 you to attend more closely, and to view 
 more distinctl}'', the state of your minds, 
 than you have ever yet done. If your find- 
 
 ing of the matter shall agree with God's 
 saying about it, it may make the truth of 
 the text tell with energy upon your con- 
 sciences ; — and it were well for one and all 
 of us, that we obtained a more overwhelm- 
 ing sense of our necessities than we have 
 ever yet gotten ; that we saw ourselves in 
 those true colours of deformity which re- 
 ally belong to us; that the inveteracy of 
 our disease as sinners were more known 
 and more felt by us ; that we could lift up 
 the mantle of delusion, which the accom- 
 plishments of nature throw over the carnal 
 mind, and by which they spread a most 
 bewildering gloss over all the rebelliousness 
 and ingratitude of the inner man. Could 
 we but make you feel your need and your 
 helplessness as sinners, — could we chase 
 away from you the pride and the security 
 of your fancied attainments ; could we lead 
 you to mourn and be in heaviness, under a 
 sense of your alienations and idolatries, 
 and risings of hatred against the God who 
 created and who sustains you ; — then might 
 we look for the overtures of the gospel being 
 more thankfully listened to, more cordially 
 embraced, more rejoiced in as the alone 
 suitable remedy to the wants and the sore- 
 nesses of your fallen nature, — then might 
 we look for the attitude of self-dependence 
 being broken down, and for all trust, and 
 all glorying, being transferred from our- 
 selves, and laid upon Jesus Christ, and him 
 crucified. 
 
 It is no proof of love to God that we do 
 many things, and that too with the willing 
 consent of tlie mind, the performance of 
 which is agreeable to his law. If the same 
 thing miglit be done upon either of two 
 principles, then the doing of it in^ty only 
 prove the existence of one of these princi- 
 ples, while the other has no presence or 
 operation in the mind whatever. I do not 
 steal, and the reason of it may be either 
 that I love God, and so keep his command- 
 ments, or it may be that I have honourable 
 feelings, and would spurn at the disgrace- 
 fulness of such an action. This is onl)' one 
 example, but the bare statement of it serves 
 for a thousand more. It lets us in at once 
 to the decisive fact that there are many 
 principles of action applauded, and held 
 in reverence, and most useful to society, 
 and withal urging us to the performance of 
 what, in the matter of it, is agreeable to the 
 law of God, which may have a practical 
 ascendency over a man whose heart is 
 alienated from the love of God. Propose 
 the question to yourself. Would not I do 
 this good thing, or abstain from this evil 
 thing, though God had no will in this mat- 
 ter? If you would, then, put not down 
 what is altogether due to other principles 
 to the principle of love to God, or a desire 
 of pleasing him. The principle upon which 
 you have act d may be respectable, and 
 
XIII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 93 
 
 honourable, and amiable. We are not dis- 
 puting all this. We are only saying, tliat 
 it IS not the love of God ; and should we 
 hear any one of you assert, that I have 
 nothing to reproach myself with, and that 
 I give every body their own, and that I 
 possess a fair character in society, and have 
 done nothing to forfeit it, and that I have 
 my share of generosity, and honour, and 
 tenderness, and civility, our only reply is, 
 that this may be very true. You may have 
 a very large share of these and of other 
 estimable principles, but along with the 
 possession of these many things, you may 
 lack one thing, and that one thing may be 
 the love of God. An enlightened discerner 
 of the heart may look into you, and say, 
 with our Saviour in the text, " I know yon 
 that you have not the love of God in you." 
 
 It is no test whatever of your love to 
 God, that you tolerate him, when he calls 
 upon you to do the things which your na- 
 tural principles incline you to do, and which 
 you would have done at any rate. But 
 when he claims that place in your affec- 
 tions which you give to many of tlie objects 
 of the world, — when he puts in for that 
 share of your heart which yon give to 
 wealth, or pleasure, or reputation among 
 men, — then is not God a weariness? and 
 does not the inner man feel impatience and 
 dislike at these grievous exactions ; and when 
 the will of God thwarts the natural current 
 of your tastes and employments, is not God, 
 at the moment of urging that will, with all 
 the natural authority which belongs to him, 
 a positive offence to you ? 
 
 How would you like the visit of a man 
 whose presence broke up some arrangement 
 that you had set your heart upon ; or mar- 
 red the enjoyment of some favourite scheme 
 that you were going to pTit into execution? 
 Would not you hate the visit? and if it were 
 often repeated, — if the disappointments you 
 received from this cause were frequent and 
 perpetual, — if you saw a systematic design 
 of thwarting you by these galling and nu- 
 merous interruptions, would not you also 
 cordially hate the visitor, and give the most 
 substantial evidence of your hatred, too, by 
 shunning him, or shutting him out? Now, 
 is not God j ust such a visitor ? O ho w many 
 favourite schemes of enjoyment would the 
 thought of him, and of his will, if faithfully 
 admitted to the inner chambers of the mind, 
 put to flight ! How many fond calculations 
 be given up about the world, the love of 
 which is opposite to the love of the Father. 
 How many trifling amusements behooved 
 to be painfully surrendered, if a sense of 
 God's will were to tell upon the conscience 
 with all the energy that is due to it. How 
 many darling habitsabandoned, if the whole 
 man were brought under the dominion of 
 this imperious visitor, — how many affec- 
 tions torn away from the objects on which 
 
 they are now fastened, if his presence were 
 at all times attended to, and he was regarded 
 with that affection wiiich he at all times 
 demands of us ! 
 
 This may explain a fact, which we fear 
 must come near to the conscience of many 
 a respectable man, and that is, the recoil 
 which lie has often experienced, as if from 
 some object of severe and unconquerable 
 aversion, when the preacher urges upon 
 his thoughts some scriptural representation 
 either of the will or the character of God. 
 Or take this fact in another way, and in 
 which it presents itself, if not more strik- 
 ingly, at least more habitually; and that is, 
 the undeniable circumstance of God being 
 shut out of his thoughts for the great ma- 
 jority of his time, and him feeling the same 
 kind of ease at the exclusion, as whcai he 
 shuts the door on the most unwelcome of his 
 visitors. The reason is, that the inner man, 
 busied with other objects, would positively 
 be offended at the intrusion of the thought 
 of God. It is because, to admit him, with ' 
 all his high claims and spiritual require- ^ 
 ments into your mind, would be to disturb 
 you in the enjoyment of objects which are 
 better loved and more sought after than he. 
 It is because your heart is occupied with 
 idols that God is shut out of it. It is be- 
 cause your heart is after another treasure. 
 It is because your heart is set upon other 
 things. Whether it be wealth, or amuse- 
 ment, or distinction, or the ease and the 
 pleasures of life, we pretend not to know ; 
 but there is a something which is your god, 
 to the exclusion of the great God of heaven 
 and earth. The Being who is upholding 
 you all the time, and in virtue of whose 
 preserving hand, you live, and think, and 
 enjoy, is all the while unminded and unre- 
 garded by you. You look upon him as an 
 interruption. It is of no consequence to the 
 argument what the occupation of your heart 
 be, if it is such an occupation as excludes 
 God from it. It may be what the world 
 calls a vicious occupation, — the pursuits of 
 a dishonest, or the debaucheries of a profli- 
 gate life, — and, in this case, the world has 
 no objection to stigmatize you with enmity 
 against God. Or it may be what the world 
 calls an innocent ocijipation — amusement 
 to make you happy, work to earn a subsist- 
 ence, business to establish a liberal provi- 
 sion for your families. But your heart may 
 be so given to it that God is robbed of his 
 portion of your heart altogether. Or it may 
 be what the world calls an honourable oc- 
 cupation, — the pursuit of eminence in the 
 walks of science or of patriotism ; and stili 
 there may be an exclusion, or a hatred of 
 the God who puts in for all things being 
 done to his glory. Or it may be what the 
 world calls an elegant occupation, — even 
 that of a mind enamoured with the taste- 
 fulness of literature ; but it may be so ena 
 
94 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 raoured with this, that the God who created 
 your iniad, and all the tastes which are 
 within it, and all the objects which are with- 
 out it, and which minister to its most ex- 
 quisite gratification, — this God, we say, may 
 be turned away from with a feeling of the 
 most nauseous antipathy, and you may give 
 the most substantial evidence of your hatred 
 to him, by ridding your thoughts of him al- 
 together. Or, lastly, it may be what the 
 world calls a virtuous occupation, even that 
 of a mind bustling with the full play of its 
 energies, among enterprises of charity and 
 plans of public good. Yet even here, won- 
 derful as you may think it, there may be a 
 total exclusion and forgetfulness of' God ; 
 and, while the mind is filled and gratified 
 with a rejoicing sense of its activity and its 
 usefulness, it may be merely delighting itself 
 with a constitutional gratification, — and God 
 the author of that constitution, be never 
 thought of, — or if thought of according to 
 the holiness of his attributes, and the nature 
 of that friendship, opposite to the friendship 
 of the world, which he demands of us, and 
 the kind of employment whicli forms the 
 reward and the happiness of his saints in 
 eternity, even the praise and the contem- 
 plation of himself, — if thought of, we sa}', 
 according to this his real character, and 
 these the real requirements that he lays upon 
 us, — even the man to whom the world yields 
 the homage of virtue may think of his God 
 with feelings of offensiveness and disgust. 
 
 There is nothing monstrous in all tliis, to 
 the men of our world, seeing that they have 
 each a share in that deep and lurking un- 
 godliness, which has both so vitiated our 
 nature, and so blinded all Avho inherit this 
 nature, against a sense of its enormity. But 
 only conceive how it must be thought of, 
 and how the contemplation of it must be 
 felt, among those who can look on character 
 with a spirhual and inteUigent estimation. 
 How must the pure eye of an angel be 
 moved at such a spectacle of worthless- 
 ness, — and surely, in the records of heaven, 
 this great moral peculiarit)^ of our outcast 
 race must stand engraven as that, which of 
 all others, has the character of guilt most 
 nakedly and most essentially belonging to 
 it. That tlie bosom of a thing formed should 
 feel cold or indifferent to him who formed 
 it, — that not a thought or an image should 
 be so unwelcome to man as that of his 
 Maker, that the creature should thus turn 
 round on its Creator, and eye disgust upon 
 him, — that its every breath should be en- 
 venomed with hatred against him who in- 
 spired it, — or, if it be not hatred, but only 
 unconcern, or disinclination, that even this 
 should be the real disposition of a fashioned 
 and sustained being, towards the hand of 
 his Presener, — there is a a perversity here 
 which time may palliate for a season, but 
 which, under a universal reign of justice, 
 
 must at length be brought out to its ade- 
 quate condemnation. And on that day, 
 when the earth is to be burnt up, and all its 
 flatteries shall have subsided, will it be seen 
 of many a heart that rejoiced in the ap- 
 plause and friendship of this Avorld, that, 
 alienated from the love of God, it was in- 
 deed in the gall of bitterness, and in the 
 bond of iniquity. 
 
 Nor does it palliate the representation 
 which we have now given, that a God, in 
 the fancied array of poetic loveliness — that 
 a God of mere natural perfection, and with- 
 out one other moral attribute than the single 
 attribute of indulgence — that a God. di- 
 vested of all which can make him repul- 
 sive to sinners, and, for this purpose, shorn 
 of all those glories, which truth and au- 
 thority, and holiness, throw around his 
 character — that such a God should be idol- 
 ized at times by many a sentimentalist. It 
 would form no deduction from our enmity 
 against the true God, that we gave an occa- 
 sional hour to the worship of a graven 
 image, made with our own hands — and it 
 is just of as little significancy to the argu- 
 ment, that we feel an occasional glow of 
 affection or of reverence, towards a fictitious 
 being of our own imagination. If there be 
 truth in the Bible, it is there where God has 
 made an authentic exhibition of his nature, 
 — and if God in Christ be an ofii?nce to you 
 — if you dislike this way of approach — if 
 y6u shrink from the contemplation of that 
 Being, who bids you sanctify him in your 
 hearts, and who claims such a preference 
 in your regard, as shall dispossess your af- 
 fections for all that is earthly — if you have 
 no relish for the intercourse of prayer, and 
 of spiritual communion with such a God — 
 if your memory neither love to recal him, 
 nor j'Our fancy to dwell upon him, nor he 
 be the being with whom you greatly de- 
 light yourself, the habitation to which you 
 resort continually, — then be assured, that 
 amid the painted insignificancy of all your 
 other accomplishments, your heart is not 
 right with God ; and he who is the Father 
 of your existence, and of all that gladdens 
 it, may still be to you a loathing and an 
 abomination. 
 
 Neither does it palliate the representation 
 which we have now offered, that we do 
 many things with the direct object of doing 
 that whicli is pleasing to God. It is true, 
 there cannot be love where there is no de- 
 sire to please ; but it is as true, that there 
 may be a desire to please where there is no 
 love. Why, I may both hate and fear the 
 man. whom I may find it very convenient 
 to please ; and to secure whose favour, I 
 may practice a thousand arts of accommo- 
 dation and compliance. I may comply by 
 action — but instead of complying with my 
 will, I may abominate the necessity which 
 constrains me. I may be subject to his 
 
XIII.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 95 
 
 pleasure in my person, and in my perform- 
 ances — but you would not say, while hatred 
 rankled within me, that I was subject to him 
 with my mind. A sovereign may overrule 
 the humours of a rebellious province, by 
 the presence of his resistless military — but 
 you would not say that there was any loy- 
 alty in this forced subordination. He may 
 compel the bondage of their actual services 
 — but you would not say, that it was in 
 this part of his dominions, where the prin- 
 ciple of subjection to him existed in the 
 minds of the people. We have already af- 
 firmed, that though our will went along with 
 a number of performances, which in the 
 matter of them were agreeable to God's 
 law — this was far from an unfailing indica- 
 tion of love to God ; for there may be a 
 thousand other constitutional principles, 
 the residence and operation of which in the 
 heart may give rise to these performances, 
 while there was an utter distaste, and hos- 
 tility on our part to God. They may be 
 done, not because God wills the doing, but 
 because the doing falls in with our humour, 
 or our interest, or our vanity, or our in- 
 stinctive gratification. But now we are pre- 
 pared to go farther, and say, that they may 
 be done, because God wills the doing, and 
 yet there may be an utter want of subjec- 
 tion in the mind, to the law of God. The 
 terror of his power may constrain you to 
 man)' acts of obedience, even as the call, 
 " Flee from the coming wrath," told on the 
 disciples of John the Baptist. But obedience 
 may be rendered to all the requirements of 
 this prophet. Thieves and swearers, and 
 sabbath-breakers, may, under the fear of the 
 coming vengeance, give up their respective 
 enormities, and yet their minds be alto- 
 gether carnal, and utterly destitute of sub- 
 jection to the law of God. There may 
 be the obedience of the hand while there is 
 the gall of bitterness in the heart, at the 
 necessity which constrains it. It may not 
 be the consenting of the mind, to the law 
 of him whom you delight to please and to 
 honour. Now, this is the service for which 
 it is the aim of Christianity to prepare you. 
 It is by putting that law, which was graven 
 on tables of stone, upon the tables of your 
 heart, that it enables you to yield that obe- 
 dience which is acceptable to God. He is 
 grieved at the reluctancy of your services. 
 No performances can satisfy him, while 
 your heart remains in shut and shielded 
 alienation against him. What he wants, 
 is to gain the friendship and the confi- 
 dence of his creatures ; and he feels all the 
 concern of a woimded and mortified fa- 
 ther when he knocks at the door of your 
 heart and finds its affections to be away 
 from him. He condescends to plead the 
 matter, and with the tenderness of a dis- 
 appointed father, does he say, "WTierein 
 have I wearied you, children of Israel, 
 
 testify against me?" You may fear him; 
 you may heap sacrifices upon his altar 
 you may bring the outer man to something 
 like a slavish obedience, at his bidding, but 
 till your heart be subdued, by that great 
 process, which all who are his spiritual sub- 
 jects must undergo, you are carnal, and 
 you do not love him. Your obedience is 
 like a body without a soul. The very prin- 
 ciple which gives it all its value, is wanting. 
 It is this, which turns the whole to bitter- 
 ness. It is this, which, with all the bustling 
 activit}^ of your services, keeps you dead in 
 trespasses and sins. It is this which mars 
 every religious performance, and imparts 
 the character of rebelliousness to every one 
 item, in the list of your plausible and osten- 
 tatious duties. There is not one of them 
 which is not accompanied with an act of 
 disobedience, and that too, to the first and 
 greatest commandment, by which we are 
 called upon to love the Lord with all our 
 heart, strength, and soul. Though the hand 
 should be subject, — though the mouth 
 should be subject, — though all the organs 
 of the outer man should be subject; yet it 
 availeth nothing, if the wiU of the mind is 
 not subject. I could sell all my goods to 
 feed the poor. I could compel my hand 
 to sign an order to that effect. — and I could 
 keep my hand from reversing that order 
 till it was executed. But all this I may do 
 says Paul, and yet have nothing, because I 
 have not charity. It is not the act of well- 
 doing to your neighbour, but a principle of 
 love to your neighbour, on which God 
 stamps the testimony of his approbation. 
 In like manner, it is not the act of well- 
 doing to God, but the principle of love to 
 God, which he values ; — and if this be with- 
 held from him, you are carnal ; and with 
 all your painful and multiplied attempts at 
 obedience, your mind is not subject to the 
 law of God. 
 
 We shall conclude, at present, with two 
 short reflections. 
 
 First, If any of you are convinced of the 
 justness of the representations which we 
 have now given, you will perceive that 
 your guilt in the sight of God, may be of a 
 far deeper and more alarming kind, than 
 men are generally aware of. And such a 
 view of the matter may be quite intolerabl& 
 to him who nauseates the peculiarities of 
 the gospel, — to him who has a contempt for 
 the foolishness of that preaching, of which 
 the great burden is Jesus Christ, and him 
 crucified, — to him, in a word, whom the 
 true description of our moral disease, must 
 terrify or offend, — seeing that he carries 
 a distaste in his heart toward the alone 
 remedy, by which the disease can be met 
 and extirpated. 
 
 But secondly. There is another class of 
 people, whom such a view of the actual 
 state of human nature ought to tranquillize. 
 
96 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 by bringing their minds out of perplexity, 
 into a slate of firm and confident decision. 
 Tliere are often in a congregation, a set of 
 hearers not yet shut up into tlie faith, but 
 approaching towards it, — with a growing 
 taste for the Christianity of the NewTesta- 
 meiu, but without a full and a final acqui- 
 escence in it, — with an opening and an 
 enlarging sense of the iniportaiice of the 
 gospel, but still halting between two opi- 
 nions respecting it ; who, in particular, are 
 not sure where their sole dependence for 
 salvation should be placed, whether singly 
 upon tlieir own performances, or singly 
 upon the righteousness of ('hrist, or jointly 
 upon both. Now, we trust tliat the lesson 
 of our text may have the effect with some, 
 of bringing this unsettled account more 
 speedily to its terminaMon. You may have 
 hitherto, perhaj)s, been under the impres- 
 sion, that the condition of man was not just 
 so bad as to require a Saviour, who must 
 undertake the whole of his cure, and bring 
 about the whole of his salvation. You have 
 attempted to share with the (Saviour in the 
 matter of your redemption. Instead of 
 looking upon it .with the eyeof the Apostle. 
 as being all of grace, or all of works, you 
 have in some way or other, attempted a 
 compromise between them ; and this has 
 the undoubted effect of keeping you at a 
 distance from Christ. You have not felt 
 your entire need of him, and therefore you 
 have not leaned in close and constant de- 
 pendence upon him. But let the torch of a 
 spiritual law be lifted over your characters, 
 and through the guise of its external de- 
 cencies reveal to you the mountain of ini- 
 quity within; let the deformity of the heart 
 be made known, and you become sensible 
 of the fruitlessness of every endeavour, so 
 long as the consent of a willing cordiality is 
 withheld from the person and authority of 
 God ; let the utter powerlessness of all 
 your doings, be contrasted with the per- 
 versity of your stubborn and unmanageable 
 desires, and the case is seen in all its help- 
 
 lessness ; — you become desperate of salva- 
 tion in one way, and you are led to look for 
 it in another way. The question, whether 
 salvation is of grace or of works, receives 
 its most decisive settlement; — when thus 
 driven away from one term of the alterna- 
 tive, you are compelled, as your only re- 
 source, to the other term. You feel tliat 
 nothing else will do for your acceptance 
 with God, but your acceptance of the of- 
 fered iSaviour. \'ou stand at the foot of 
 the cross, — you make an absolute surrender 
 of yourself to the terms of the gospel. 
 
 And we know not a more blissful or a 
 more memorable event, in the history of 
 the human soul, than, when convinced that 
 there is no other righteousness than in the 
 merits, and no other sanctification than in 
 tiic grace of the Saviour, it henceforth glo- 
 ries oidy in his cross ; and now. that e\ ery 
 othcrexpedicnt of reformation has been tried, 
 and failed of its accomplishinvnt, it takes to 
 the remainingone of crying mightily to (jiod 
 and pressing, at a throne of grace, the sup- 
 plication of the Psalmist, '• Create a clean 
 lieart, and renew' a right spirit Mithin me.' 
 
 One thing is certain ; you are welcome 
 at this moment, to lay hold of the righteous 
 ncss of Ciod, in Christ Jesus ; you are wel- 
 come, at this moment, to the use of his pre- 
 vailing name, in your prayers to the Father 
 you are welcome, at this moment, to the 
 plea of his meritorious obedience, and of 
 his atoning deatli : and you are welcome, 
 at this moment, to the promise of the Spirit, 
 given unto all who believe, whereby the 
 enmity of their carnal minds will be done 
 away, — God will no longer be regarded 
 with antipathy and disgust, — he will appear 
 in the face of Jesus Christ as a reconciled 
 father, — he will pour upon you the spirit of 
 adoption, — you will walk before him with- 
 out fear, — and those bonds being loosed, 
 wherewith you were formerly held, you will 
 yield to him the willing obedience of those 
 whose hearts are enlarged, and who run, with 
 delight, in the way of his commandments 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 
 The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the human Heart against God. 
 
 " Having slain the enmity thereby." — Ephesians ii. 16. 
 
 II. We shall now consider how it is that 
 the gospel of Jesus Christ suits its applica- 
 tion to this great moral disease. 
 
 The necessity bf some singular expedient 
 for restoring the love of God to the alien- 
 ated heart of man, will appear from the 
 utter impossibility of bringing this about by 
 any direct application of authority what- 
 
 ever. For, do you think that the delivery 
 of the law of love, in his hearing, as a posi- 
 tive and indispensable enactment coining 
 forth from the legislature of heaven will do 
 it? You may as well pass a law, making 
 it imperative upon him to delight in pain, 
 and to feel comfort on a bed of torture. 
 Or, do you think, that you will ever give a 
 
XIV. "I 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 97 
 
 practical establish nient to the law of love, 
 by surrounding it with accuuiulateil penal- 
 ties ? This may irritate, or it may terrify, — 
 but for the purpose of begetting any thing 
 like attachment, one may as well think of 
 lashing anotlier into tender regard for him. 
 Or, do you think, that the terrors of the 
 coming vengeance will ever incline a hu- 
 man being to love the God who threatens 
 him ? Powerful as these terrors are, in 
 persuading man to turn from the evil of his 
 ways^ — they most assuredly do not form 
 the artillery by whicli the heart of man can 
 be carried. They draw not forth a single 
 affection, but the affection of fear. They 
 never can cliarm the human bosom into a 
 feeling of attachment to God. And it goes 
 to prove the necessity of some singular ex- 
 pedient, for restoring man to fellowship 
 with his Maker ; that the only obedience 
 on which this fellowship can be perpetu- 
 ated, is an obedience which no tlireatenings 
 can force, — to which no warnings of dis- 
 pleasure can reclaim, — which all the solemn 
 procUiraations of law and justice cannot 
 carry, — and all the terrors and severities of 
 a sovereignty resting on power, as its only 
 foundation, can never subdue. The utter- 
 ance of the words. Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God, or perisli everlastingly, can 
 no more open the shut and alienated heart 
 of man, tlian it can open a gate of iron. 
 Multiply these arguments of terror as you 
 may, — arm them with tenfold energy, and 
 make them to fall in thunder on the sin- 
 ner's ears, — tell liim of the God of judg- 
 ment, and manifest to him the frown of his 
 angry countenance, — lay before him the 
 grim aspect of his impending death, and 
 spread a deeper mantle of despair over the 
 vast field of that eternity which is on the 
 other side of it; — you may disquiet him, 
 and riglit that he should be so, — you may 
 prevail on him to give up many evil doings ; 
 and right tliat the whole urgency of the 
 coming wrath should be employed to make 
 him give them up immediately, — you may 
 set him a trembling at the power of God, 
 and better this than spending his guilty 
 career, in tlioughtlessness and unconcern, 
 about the great Lawgiver ; — but where, in 
 the midst of all this, shall we find obedience 
 to the very first and greatest commandment 
 of the law ? Has this obedience been yet 
 so much as entered on ? Has love to God 
 so much as reached the infancy of its ex- 
 istence in that heart which is now begin- 
 ning to be agitated by its terrors? Amid 
 all the bitterness of remorse, and all the 
 fearful looking for of judgment, and all the 
 restless anxieties of conscious guilt, and 
 anticipated vengeance, tell us, if a single 
 particle of tenderness towards God has any 
 place in this restless and despairing bosom ? 
 Tell us, if it act as an element at all, in this 
 wild war of turbulence and disorder ? Or, 
 13 
 
 has it yet begun to dawn upon the mind, 
 and spread its salutary and composing 
 charm over that dark scene of contiict, un- 
 der which many a sinner has to sustain the 
 burden of the wearisome nights that are 
 appointed to him ? You may seek for love 
 to God throughout all the chambers of his 
 heart, and seek in vain. The man may be 
 acting such reformations as he is driven to, 
 and may be clothing himself in such visible 
 decencies, as he feels himself compelled to 
 put on, and may be labouring away at the 
 drudgery of such observances as he thinks 
 will give him relief from tlie corrosions of 
 that undying worm, which never ceases to 
 goad him with its reproaches ; but as to the 
 love of God, there is as grim and deter- 
 mined an exclusion of this principle as 
 ever, — that avenue to his heart has never 
 been unlocked, tlirough which it might be 
 made to find its way, — every form(?r argu- 
 ment, so far from having dissolved the bar- 
 rier,. Ikis only served to rivet and to make 
 it more unmoveable. And the difficulty 
 still lies upon us, — how are we to deposit 
 in the heart of man, the only right princi- 
 ple of obedience to God, — and to lead him 
 onward in the single way of a pure, and 
 spiritual, and substantial repentance? 
 
 This, then, is a case of difficulty, and, in 
 the Bible, God is said to have lavished all 
 the riches of his unsearchable wisdom on 
 the business of managing it. No wonder 
 that to his angels it appeared a mystery, 
 and that they desired to look into it. It 
 appears a matter of direct and obvious 
 facility to intimidate man, — and to bring 
 his body into a forced subordination to all 
 the requirements. But the great matter 
 was, how to attach man, — how to work in 
 him a liking to God, and a relish for his 
 character- — or, in other words, how to 
 communicate to human obedience, that 
 principle, without which it is no obedience 
 at all, — to make him serve God because he 
 loved him ; and to run in the way of all his 
 commandments, because this was the thing 
 in which he greatly delighted himself. To 
 lay upon us the demand of satisfaction for 
 his violated hiw, could not do it. To press 
 home the claims of justice upon any sense 
 of authority within us, could not do it. To 
 bring forward, in threatening array, the 
 terrors of his judgment, and of his power 
 against us, could not do it. To unveil the 
 glories of that throne wdiere he sitteth in 
 equity, and manifest to his guilty creatures 
 the aw^ful inffcxibilities of his truth and 
 righteousness, could not do it. To look out 
 from the cloud of vengeance, and trouble 
 our darkened souls as he did those of the 
 Egyptians of old, with the aspect of a me- 
 nacing Deity, coidd not do it. To spread the 
 field of an undone eternity before us, and 
 tell us of those dreary abodes where each 
 criminal hath his bed in hell, and the cen- 
 
98 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 turies of despair which pass over him are 
 not counted, because there no seasons roll, 
 and the unhappy victims of the tribulation, 
 and the WTalh, and the anguish, know, that 
 for the migiity burden of the sufferings 
 which weigh upon them, there is no end, 
 and no mitigation: this prospect, appalling 
 as it is, and coming home upon the belief 
 with all the characters of the most immuta- 
 ble certainty, could not do it. The affections 
 of the inner man remain as unmoved as 
 ever, under the successive and repeated in- 
 fluence of all these dreadful applications. 
 There is not one of them, which, instead of 
 conciliating, does not stir up a principle of 
 resistance; and, subject any human crea- 
 ture to the treatment of them all, and to 
 nothing else, and he may tremble at God, 
 and shrink at the contemplation of God, 
 and feel an overpowering awe at the thought 
 of God, when that thought vishs him; — 
 but we maintain, that not one particle of 
 influence has been sent into his heart, to 
 make him love God. Under such applica- 
 tions as these, we can conceive the crea- 
 ture, gathering a new energy from despair, 
 and mustering up a stouter defiance than 
 ever to the God who threatens him. Strange 
 contest between the thing formed and him 
 who formed it ; — but we see it exhibited 
 among the determined votaries of wicked- 
 ness in life ; and it is the very contest which 
 gives its moral aspect to hell throughout all 
 eternity. There God reigns in vindictive 
 majesty, and there every heart of every 
 outcast, sheathed in impenetrable hardness, 
 mutters its bla.sphemies against him. O 
 hideous and revolting spectacle 1 and how 
 awful to think that the unreclaimed sons of 
 profligacy, who pour along our streets, and 
 throng our markets, and form the fearful 
 majority in almost every chamber of busi- 
 ness, and in every v/orkshop of industry, 
 are thither speeding their infatuated way ! 
 What a WTctehed field of contemplation is 
 around us, when we see on every side of it 
 the mutual encouragement, — the everply- 
 ing allurements, — the tacit, though effectual 
 and well understood, combination, sustain- 
 ing, over the whole face of this alienated 
 world, a firm and systematic rebellion 
 against God ! We are not offering an ex- 
 aggerated picture when we say, that within 
 reach of the walk of a single hour, there 
 are thousands, and thousands more, who 
 have cast away from them the authority of 
 Grod ; and who have been ner\ed by all his 
 threatening^ into a more determined atti- 
 tude of wickedness ; and who glory in their 
 unprincipled dissipations; and who, with- 
 out one sigh at the moving spectacle of 
 ruined innocence,' will, in the hearing of 
 companions younger than themselves, scat- 
 ter their pestilential levities arotmd them, 
 and care not though the hope of parents, 
 and the yet unvitiated delicacy of youth, 
 
 shall wither and expire under the contagion 
 of their ruffian example ; and will patronize 
 every step of that progress which leads 
 from one depravity to another, till thein ill 
 fated proselyte, made as much the child of 
 hell as themselves, shall share in that com- 
 mon ruin which, in the great day of the reve- 
 lation of therighteous judgment of God, will 
 come forth from the storehouse of his wrath, 
 in one mighty torrent, on the heads of all 
 who boast of their iniquity. We have now 
 touched on the limits of a subject of wh.ich 
 half its horrors are untold; but through 
 which; the minister of the counsels of hea- 
 ven must clear his intrepid way, in spite of 
 all its painfulness. We will not pursue it 
 at present, but neither will we count the 
 digression out of place, should a single pa- 
 rent among you be led, from what we have 
 now uttered, to be jealous over his children 
 with a godly jealousy, and not to suffer those, 
 for whose eternity he is so deeply responsi- 
 ble, to take their random direction through 
 society, just where the prospects of busi- 
 ness, and of worldly advantage, may chance 
 to carry them : to calculate on the possi- 
 bilities of moral corruption, as well as on 
 the possibihties of lucrative emplo)'ment ; 
 to look well to exposures and acquaintances, 
 and hours of social entertainment, as well 
 as to the common-place object of a situation 
 in the world. And when you talk of a 
 good line for your children, just think a 
 little more of the line that leadeth to eter- 
 nity, and have a care lest you be the instru- 
 ment of putting them on such a path of 
 danger, that it shall only be the very rarest 
 miracle of grace that your helpless young 
 can be kept from falling, or be renewed 
 again into repentance. 
 
 But the difficulty in question still re- 
 mains unresolved. How then is this re- 
 generation to be wrought, if no threatenings 
 can work it. — if no terrors of judgment 
 can soften the heart into that love of God, 
 which forms the chief feature of repent- 
 ance, — if all the direct applications of law 
 and of righteous authority, and of its tre- 
 mendous and immutable sanctions, so far 
 from attaching man in tenderness to his 
 God, have only the effect of impressing a 
 violent recoil upon all his affections, and, 
 by the hardening influence of despair, of 
 stirring up in his bosom a more violent an- 
 tipathy than ever 1 Will the high and so- 
 lemn proclamations of a menacing Deity 
 not do it ? This is not the way in which 
 the heart of man can be carried. He is so 
 constituted, that the law of love can never, 
 never be established within him by the en- 
 gine of terror ; and here is the barrier to 
 this regeneration on the part of man. But 
 if a threat of justice cannot do it. wiU an 
 act of forgiveness do it ? This again is not 
 the way in which God can admit the 
 guilty to acceptance. He is so constituted 
 
XIV.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 99 
 
 that his truth cannot be trampled upon, 
 and his government cannot be despoiled 
 of its authority, and its sanctions cannot, 
 with impunity, be defied, and every solemn 
 utterance of the Deity cannot but find its 
 accomplishment, in such a way as may 
 vindicate his glory, and maice the whole 
 creation he has formed stand in awe of 
 its Almighty Sovereign. And here is an- 
 other barrier on the part of God ; and that 
 economy of redcniption, in which a dead 
 and undiscerning world see no skilfulness 
 to admire, and no feature of graciousness 
 to allure, was so planned, in the upper 
 counsels of heaven, that it maketh known, 
 to principalities and powers, the manifold 
 wisdom of Him who devised it. The men 
 of this infidel generation, whose every fa- 
 culty is so bedim med by the grossness of 
 sense, tliat they cannot la}'' hold of the 
 realities of faith, and cannot appreciate 
 them, — to them the barriers we have now 
 insisted on, which lie in the way of man 
 taking God into his love, and of God taking 
 man into his acceptance, may appear to be 
 so many faint and shadowy considerations, 
 of w'hich they feel not the significancy ; 
 but, to the pure and intellectual eye of an- 
 gels, they are substantial obstacles, and 
 One Mighty to save had to travail in tlie 
 greatness of his strength, in order to move 
 them away. The Son of God descended 
 from heaven, and he took upon him the 
 nature of man, and lie suffered in his stead, 
 and he consented that the whole burden of 
 offended justice should fall upon him, and 
 he bore in his own body on the tree, the 
 weight of all those accomplishments by 
 wdiich his Father behooved to be glorified, 
 and after having magnified the law, and 
 made it honourable, b}^ pouring out his 
 soul unto the death for us, he went up on 
 high, and by an arm of everlasting 
 strength, levelled that wall of partition 
 which lay across the path of acceptance ; 
 and thus it is, that the barrier on the part 
 of God is done aw^ay, and he, with untar- 
 nished glory, can dispense forgiveness 
 over the whole extent of a guilty creation, 
 because he can be just, while he is the 
 justifier of them who believe in Jesus. 
 
 And if the barrier, on the part of God, is 
 thus moved aside, why not the barrier on 
 the part of man ? Does not the wisdom of 
 redemption show itself here also 1 Does it 
 not embrace some skilful contrivance, by 
 wiiich it penetrates those mounds that be- 
 set the human heart, and ward the en- 
 trance of the principle of love away from 
 it, and which all, the direct applications of 
 terror and authority, have only the effect 
 of fixing more immoveably upon their 
 basis? Yes it does, — for it changes the 
 aspect of the Deity towards man ; and 
 were man only to have faith in the an- 
 nouncements of the gospel, so as to see 
 
 God with the eye of his mind under this 
 new aspect, — love to God would spring up 
 in his heart, as the unfailing consequence. 
 Let man see God as he sets himself forth 
 in this wonderful revelation, and let him 
 believe the reality of wliat he sees ; and 
 he cannot but love the Being he is employ- 
 ed in contemplating. Without this gospel, 
 he may see him to be a (>od of justice; 
 but he cannot do this without seeing the 
 frown of severity directed against himself, 
 a wretched offender : With this gospel, he 
 sees the full burden of violated justice 
 borne aw^ay from him : and God stands be- 
 fore him unrobed of all his severities, and 
 tenderlj- inviting him to draw near through 
 that blood of atonement which was shed, 
 the just for the unjust, to bring the sinner 
 unto God. Without this gospel, he may 
 see the truth of God ; but he sees it pledged 
 to the fulfilment of the most awful threat- 
 enings against him: With this gospel, 
 he sees the full weight of all these ac- 
 complishments resting on the head of the 
 great sacrifice; and God's truth is now 
 fully embarked on the most cheering as- 
 surances of pardon, on the most liberal in- 
 vitations of good will, on the most exceed- 
 ing great and precious promises. Without 
 this gospel, he may see the government of 
 -God leaning on the pillars of that immuta- 
 bility which upholds it; but this very im- 
 mutability is to him the sentence of despair; 
 and how can he love that face, on which 
 are stamped the characters of a stern and 
 vindictive majesty ? With this gospel, the 
 face of God stands legibly revealed to 
 him in other characters. That law which, 
 resting on the solemn authority of its firm 
 and unalterable requirements, demanded a 
 fulfilment, up to the last jot and tittle of it, 
 has been magnified, and has been made 
 honourable, by one illustrious sufferer, who 
 put forth the greatness of his strength, in 
 that dark hour of the travail of his soul, 
 when he bore the burden of all its penal- 
 ties. That wratli which should have been 
 discharged on tlie guilty millions he died 
 for, was all concentred upon him, who 
 took upon himself the chastisement of our 
 peace, and on that day of mysterious ago- 
 ny, drank, to the very dregs, the cup of 
 our expiation. And God, who planned the 
 w^hole w^ork of this wonderful redemption, 
 — God, who in love to a guilty world sent 
 his Son amongst us to accomplish it, — 
 God, who rather than lose his alienated 
 creatures, as he could not strip his eternal 
 throne of a single attribute that supported 
 it, awoke the sword of vengeance against 
 his fellow, that on him the truth and the 
 justice of the Deity might receive their 
 most illustrious vindication, — God, who, out 
 of Christ, sits surrounded with all the dark- 
 ness of unapproachable majesty, is now 
 God in Christ, reconciling the world unto 
 
100 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM 
 
 himself, and not imputing unto them their I defied and trampled on, and that it was not 
 trespasses ; his tender mercy is now free possible for his perfections to receive the 
 to rejoice amid all the glory of his other ' sHghtest taint in the eyes of the creation 
 
 bright and untarnished perfections, and he 
 pours the expression of his tendernes.=, 
 with an unsparing hand, over the wl.ole 
 extent of his sinful creation — and he lets 
 himself down to the language of a beseech- 
 ing supplicant, praying that each and every 
 one of us might be reconciled unto him — 
 and, putting on a winning countenance of 
 invitation to the guiltiest of us ail, he tells 
 us, that if we only come to him through 
 the appointed mediator, he will blot out, as 
 with a thick cloud, our transgressions, — 
 and that, as if carried away to a land that 
 was not inhabited, he will make no more 
 mention of them. 
 
 And thus it is, that the gpodness of God 
 destroyeth the enmity of the human heart 
 When every other argument fails, this, if 
 perceived by the eye of faith, finds its 
 powerful and persuasive way through 
 every barrier of resistance. Try to ap- 
 proach the heart of man by the instru- 
 ments of terror and of authority, and it 
 will disdainfully repel you. There is not 
 one of you skilled in the management of 
 human nature, who does not perceive, that, 
 though this may be a way of working on 
 the other principles of our constitution, — 
 of working on the fears of man, or on liis 
 sense of interest, — this is not the way of 
 gaining by a single hair-breadth on the at- 
 tachments of his heart. Such a way may 
 force, or it may terrify, but it never, never 
 can endear ; and after all the threaten- 
 ing array of such an influence as this, is 
 brought to bear upon man, there is not one 
 particle of service it can extort from him, 
 but Avhat is all rendered in the spirit of a 
 painful and reluctant bondage. Now, this 
 is not the service which prepares for hea- 
 ven. This is not the service which assimi- 
 lates men to angels. This is not the obe- 
 dience of those glorified spirits, whose every 
 affection harmonizes with their every per- 
 formance ; and the very essence of whose 
 piety consists of delight in God, and the 
 love, they bear to him. To bring up man 
 to such an obedience as this, his heart be- 
 hooved to be approached in a peculiar 
 way ; and no such way is to be found, but 
 within the limits of the Christian revela- 
 tion. There alone you see God, without 
 injury to his other attributes, plying the 
 heart of man with the irresistible argument 
 of kindness. There alone do you see the 
 great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting 
 himself forth to ihe most worthless and the 
 most wandering of his children, — putting 
 forth his own hand to the work of healing 
 the breach which sin had made between 
 them, — telling him that his word could not 
 be set aside, and his threatenings could not 
 be mocked, and his justice could not be 
 
 he had thrown around him ; but that all 
 this was provided for, and not a single 
 creature within the compass of the uni- 
 verse he had formed, could now say, that 
 forgiveness to man was degrading to the 
 authority of God, and that by the very act 
 of atonement, which poured a glory over 
 all the high attributes of his character, his 
 mercy might now burst forth without 
 limit, and without controul, upon a guilty 
 world, and the broad flag of invitation be 
 unfurled in the sight of all its families. 
 
 Let the sinner, then, look to God through 
 the medium of such a revelation ; and the 
 sight which meets him there, may well 
 tame the obstinacy of that heart which had 
 wrapped itself up in impenetrable hardness 
 against the force of every other considera- 
 tion. Now that the storm of the Almighty's 
 wrath has been discharged upon him who 
 bore the burden of the world's atonement, 
 he has turned his throne of glory into a 
 throne of grace, and cleared away from the 
 pavilion of his residence, all the darkness 
 which encompassed it. The God who dwell- 
 eth there, is God in Christ ; and the voice 
 he sends from it, to this dark and rebellious 
 province of his mighty empire, is a voice 
 of the most beseeching tenderness. Good 
 will to men is the announcement with which 
 his messengers come fraught K) a guilty 
 world ; and, since the moment in which it 
 burst upon mortal ears from the peaceful 
 canopy of heaven, may the ministers of 
 salvation take it up, and go round with it 
 among all the tribes and individuals of the 
 species. Such is the real aspect of God to- 
 wards you. He cannot bear that his alien- 
 ated children should be finally and ever- 
 lastingly away from him. He feels for j'ou 
 all the longing of a parent bereaved of his 
 offspring. To woo you back again unto 
 himself, he scatters among you the largest 
 and the most liberal assurances, and with a 
 tone of imploring tenderness, does he say 
 to one and all of you, "Turn ye, turn ye, 
 why will you die?" He has no pleasure 
 in yotir death. He does not wish to glorify 
 himself by the destruction of any one of 
 you. " Look to me all ye ends of the earth, 
 and be saved," is the wide and the generous 
 announcement, by which he would recal, 
 from the very outermost limits of his sinful 
 creation, the most worthless and polluted 
 of those who have wandered away from 
 him. Now give us a man who perceives, 
 with the eye of his mind, the reality of all 
 this, and you give us a man in possession 
 of the principle of faith. Give us a man 
 in possession of this faith ; and his heart, 
 shielded, as it were, against the terrors of a 
 menacing Deity, is softened and subdued, 
 and resigns its every affection at the mov- 
 
XV.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 101 
 
 ing spectacle of a beseeching Deity; and 
 thus it is that faith manifests the attribute 
 which the Bible assigns to it, of working by 
 love. Give us a man in possession of tliis 
 love; and animated as he is, with the living 
 principle of that obedience, where the will- 
 ing and delighted consent of the inner man 
 goes along with the performance of the 
 outer man, his love manifests the attribute 
 which the Bible assigns to it, when it says, 
 " This is the love of God, that ye keep his 
 commandments." And thus it is, amid the 
 fruitlessness of every other expedient, when 
 power threatened to crush the heart which 
 it could not soften, — when authority lifted 
 its voice, and laid on man an enactment of 
 love which it could not carry, — when terror 
 
 shot its arrows, and they dropped ineffectual 
 from tliat citadel of the human atfections, 
 which stood proof against the impression 
 of every one of them, — when wrath mus- 
 tered up its appalling severities and filled 
 that bosom with despair which it could not 
 fill with the warmth of a confiding attach- 
 ment, — then the kindness of an inviting God 
 was brought to bear on the heart of man, 
 and got an opening through all its myste- 
 rious avenues. Goodness did what the na- 
 kedness of power could not do. It found 
 its way through all the intricacies of the 
 human constitution, and there, depositing the 
 right principle of repentance, did it establish 
 tlie alone effectual security for the right pur- 
 poses, and the right fruits of repentance. 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 
 TTie Evils of false Security. 
 
 " They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying Peace, Peace ; when there 
 
 is no peace." — Jeremiah vi. 14. 
 
 We must all have remarked, on what a 
 slight and passing consideration people will 
 dispose of a question which relates to the 
 interest of their eternity ; and how strikingly 
 this stands contrasted with the very deep, 
 and earnest, and long sustained attention, 
 which they bestow on a question which re- 
 lates to their interest, or their fortune, in 
 this world. Ere they embark, for example, 
 on an enterprise of trade, they will look at 
 all the sides, and all the possibilities of the 
 speculation; and every power of thought 
 within them, will be put to its busiest exer- 
 cise, and they will enter upon it with much 
 fearfulness, and they will feel an anxious 
 concern in every step, and every new evo- 
 lution of such an undertaking. Compare 
 this with tlie very loose and summary way 
 in which they make up their minds about 
 the chance of happiness in another world. 
 See at how easy a rate they will be satisfied 
 with some maxim of security, the utterance 
 of which serves as a bar against all further 
 prosecution of the subject. Behold the use 
 they make of some hastily assumed prin- 
 ciple in religion, — not for the purpose of 
 fastening their minds upon it, but for the 
 purpose, in fact, of hurrying their minds 
 away from it. For it must be observed of 
 the peo^e to whom we allude, that, in spite 
 of all their thoughtlessness about the affairs 
 of the soul, they are not altogether without 
 some opinion on the matter ; and in which 
 opinion there generally is comprised all the 
 tlieology of wliich they are possessed. With- 
 out some such opuiion, even the most re- 
 gardless of men might fsel themselves in a 
 
 state of restlessness; and therefore it is, 
 however seldom they are visited with any 
 thought about eternity, and however gently 
 this thought touches tliem, and however 
 quickly it passes away, to be replaced by 
 some of the more urgent vanities and inter- 
 ests of time, yet, with most men, there is 
 something like an actual making up of their 
 minds, on this awfully important subject. 
 There is a settlement they have come to 
 about it, which, generally speaking, serves 
 them to the end of their days; — and on the 
 strength of which, there are many who can 
 hush within them every alarm of conscience, 
 and repel from without them, the whole 
 force of a preacher's demonstration, and all 
 that power of disquietude which lies in his 
 faithful and impressive warnings. 
 
 We speak in reference to a very nume- 
 rous set of individuals, among the upper 
 and middling classes of society. There is a 
 class of what may be called slender and sen- 
 timental religionists, who do profess a re- 
 verence for the matter, and maintain many 
 of its outward decencies, and are visited 
 with occasional thoughts, and occasional 
 feelings of tenderness about death, and duty, 
 and eternity, and would be shocked at the 
 utterance of an infidel opinion ; and with 
 all these symptoms of a religious inclina- 
 tion about them, have their minds very com- 
 fortably made up, and altogether free from 
 any apprehension, either of present wrath 
 or of coming vengeance. Now, on examin- 
 ing the ground of their tranquillity, we are 
 at a loss to detect a single ingredient of that 
 peace and joy in believing, whicli we rear 
 
102 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SIRM. 
 
 of among the Christians of the New Testa- 1 to gloss it over with the gentle epithet of 
 ment. It is not that Christ is set forth an ihfirmhy. It is readily allowed, then, 
 a propitiation for their sins, — it is not that that we have our infirmities ; and tlien to 
 
 they stagger not at the promise of God, be 
 cause of unbelief, — it is not that the love of 
 him is shed abroad in their hearts, by the 
 Holy Ghost, — it is not that they carry along 
 Avith them any consciousness whatever, of 
 a growing conformity to the image of the 
 Saviour, — it is not that their calling and 
 their election are made sure to them, by 
 the successful diligence with which they 
 are cuhivatingthe various accomplishments 
 of the Christian character ; — there is not 
 
 make all right, and sc<Sure, and comforta- 
 able, the sentiment with which they bring 
 the matter round again, is, that though we 
 have our infirmities, God is a merciful God. 
 and he will overlook them. This vague, 
 and general, and indistinct apprehension of 
 the attribute of mercy is the anchor of their 
 hope ; not a very sure and steadfast one, 
 certainly, but just as sure and as steadfast, 
 as, in their peaceful state of unconcern, they 
 have any demand for. A vessel in smooth 
 
 one of these ingredients, will we venture to Mater needs not be very strong'y fastened 
 
 say, which enters into the satisfaction that 
 many feel with their own prospects, and 
 into the complacency they have in their 
 own attainments, and into their opinion, 
 that God is looking to them with indulgence 
 and friendship. With most of them, there 
 is not only an ignorance, but a positive dis- 
 gust, about these things. They associate 
 with them the charges of methodism, and 
 mysticism, and fanaticism : and meanwhile 
 cherish in their own hearts a kind of im- 
 pregnable confidence, resting entirely on 
 some other foundation. 
 
 We believe the real cause of their tran- 
 quillity to be, just that eternity is not seen 
 nearly enough, or urgently enough, to dis- 
 turb them. It stands so far away on the 
 back ground of their contemplation, that 
 they are almost entirely taken up with 
 the intervening objects. Any glimpse they 
 have of the futurity which lies on the other 
 side of time, is so faint, and so occasional, 
 that its concerns never come to them with 
 trie urgency of a matter on hand. It is not 
 so much because they think in a particular 
 way on this topic, that tliey feel themselves 
 to be at peace. It is rather because they 
 think so little of it. Still, however, they do 
 have a tran.^ient and occasional thought, 
 and it is all on the side of tranquillity; and 
 could this thought be exposed as a minister 
 of deceitful complacency to the heart, it 
 may have the effect of working in it a salu- 
 tary alarm, and of making the possessor of 
 it see the nakedness of his condition, and 
 of undermining every other trust but a trust 
 m the offered salvation of the gospel, and 
 of unsettling the blind and easy confidence 
 of his former days, and of prompting him 
 with the question, " AMiat shall I do to be 
 saved?" and of leading him to try this 
 question by the light of revelation, and to 
 prosecute it to a scriptural conclusion, till 
 he came to the answer of, "Believe in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and thou slialt be saved." 
 What is tlie wa\^, then, in which they do 
 actually make up. their minds upon this 
 subject ? There is, in the first place, a 
 pretty general admission, that we are sin- 
 ners, though along with this, there is a dis- 
 position to palliate the enormity of sin, and 
 
 in her moorings ; and really any convictions 
 of sin they have, agitate them so gently, 
 that a very slender principle indeed, uttered 
 occasionally by the moulh, and with no 
 distinct or perceptible hold upon the heart, 
 is enough to quiet and subdue all that is 
 troublesome witliin tiiem. A slight hurt 
 needs but a slight remedy, and howevey 
 virulent the disease may be, yet if the pa- 
 tient be but gently alarmed, a gentle appli- 
 cation is enough to pacify him in the mean 
 time. Now, a tasteful and a tender senti- 
 ment about the goodness of God, is just such 
 an application. He will not be severe upon 
 our weaknesses ; he will not cast a glance 
 of stern and unrelenting indignation upon 
 us. It is true, that there is to be met with,_ 
 among the vilest dregs and refuse of society, 
 a degree of profligacy for which it would 
 really be too much to expect forgiveness. 
 The use of hell is for the punishment of such 
 gross and enormous wickedness as this / 
 But the people who are so very depraved, 
 and so verj- shocking, stand far beneath the 
 place which we occupy in the scale of 
 character. We, with our many amiable, 
 and good, and neighbourlike points and 
 accomplishments, are fair and befitting sub- 
 jects for the kindness of God. ^\'hen we 
 err, we shall betake ourselves to a trust in 
 that indulgence, which gives to our religion 
 the aspect of so much cheerfulness; and 
 we will school down all tliat is disquieting, 
 by a sentiment of confidence in that mercy 
 which is soothing to our hearts, and which 
 we delight to hear expatiated upon in terms 
 of tastefulness, by the orators of a genteel 
 and cultivated piety. 
 
 Under this loose system of confidence, 
 then, by which the peace of so many a sin- 
 ner is upheld, it is the general mercy of 
 God on which he rests. I shall, therefore, 
 in the first place, endeavour to pfove the 
 vanity of such a confidence ; and, in the 
 second place, the evils of it. 
 
 I. Tliere is one obvious respect, in which . / 
 this mercy that is so slenderly spoken of, 
 and so vaguely trusted in, is not in unison 
 with truth; and that is, it is not the mercy 
 which hns been made the subject of an 
 actual oifer from God to man, in the true 
 
XV.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 lC-3 
 
 message that he has been pleased to de- 
 livei' to the world. In this message, God 
 makes a free offer of his mercy, no doubt ; 
 but lie offers it on a particular footing, and 
 on that footing only, will he have it to be 
 received. Along with the revelation he 
 makes of his attribute of mercy, he bids us 
 look to tlie particular way in which he 
 chooses that attribute to be put forth. The 
 man who steps forward to relieve you of 
 your debts, by an act of gratuitous kind- 
 ness, may surely reserve the privilege of 
 doing it in his own way ; and whether it 
 be by a present in goods, or by a present 
 in money, or by an order upon a tliird per- 
 son, or by the appointment of one whom he 
 makes the agent of his beneficence, and 
 whom he asks you to correspond witli and 
 to draw upon, it would surely be most pre- 
 posterous in you to quarrel with his gene- 
 rosity, because it would have been more to 
 your taste, had it come to you through a 
 different channel of conveyance. He has a 
 fair right of insisting upon his own way of 
 it; and if you will not acquiesce in this way, 
 and he leaves you under your burden, you 
 have nothing to complain of. You might 
 have liked it better had he authorized you 
 to draw upon himself, rather than on the 
 agent he has fixed upon. But no ; he has 
 his reasons, and he persists in his own way 
 of it, and you must either go along with 
 this way, or throw yourself out of the 
 benefit of his generosity altogether. It is 
 conceivable that, in spite of all this, you 
 may be so very perverse as to draw upon 
 himself, instead of drawing upon the au- 
 thorized agent. Well, the effect is, just that 
 your draft is dishonoured, and your debt 
 still lies upon you ; and, by your wilful re- 
 sistance to the plan of relief laid down, are 
 left to remain under the full weight of your 
 embarrassments. 
 
 And so of God. He may, and he actu- 
 ally has stepped forward, to relieve us from 
 that debt of sin under which we lie. But 
 he has taken his own way of it. He has 
 not left us to dictate the matter to him, — 
 but he himself has found out a ransom. He 
 offers us eternal life ; but he tells us where 
 this is to be found, even in his Son, and he 
 bids us look unto him, and be saved ; and 
 he says, that he who hath the Son hath 
 life, and that he who believeth not the Son, 
 the wrath of God abideth on him. To re- 
 strain, as it were, our immediate approaches 
 to himself, he reveals an agent, a Mediator 
 between God and man, — and he lets us 
 know, that no one cometh unto the 
 Father, but by him. He makes a free offer 
 of salvation, — but it is in and through Jesus 
 Christ, to whom the whole revealed word 
 of God directs our eye, as the prime agent 
 in the recovery of a guilty world. To say 
 that we have our infirmities, but God is 
 merciful, is like drawing direct upon God 
 
 himself. But God tells us that he will not 
 be so drawn upon. He chooses, and has he 
 not the riglit of clioosing, to bestow all his 
 favours upon a guilty world, in and through 
 his Son Christ Jesus? If you choose to 
 object to this way, you nmst just abide 
 by the consequences. The offer is made. 
 God sets himself forward as merciful. But 
 he lets you know, at the same time, the 
 particular way in which he chooses to be 
 so. This way may be an offence to you. 
 You would, pcrliaps, have liked better, had 
 there been no Christ, no preaching of his 
 cross, nothing said about his cleansing and 
 peace-speaking blood, — in a word, nothing 
 of all that which forms the burden of 
 methodislical sermons, and which, if met 
 with in the New Testament at all, is only 
 to be found in what you may think its dark 
 and mystical passages. It would have been 
 more congeni'dl to your taste, perhaps, had 
 you been left to the undisturbed enjoyment 
 of your own soothing and elegant concep- 
 tions, — could you just have gone direct to 
 God himself, whom the eye of your ima- 
 gination had stripped of all tremendous se- 
 verity against sin, of all the pure and holy 
 jealousies of his nature, of all that is ma- 
 jestic in the high attributes of truth and 
 rigliteousness. A God singly possessed of 
 tenderness, in virtue of which, he would 
 smile connivance at all our infirmities, and 
 bend an indulgent eye over the wayward- 
 ness of a heart devoted with all its af- 
 fections to the vanities and pleasures of 
 time, — this would be a God highly suited 
 to the taste and convenience of a guilty 
 world. But, alas 1 there is no such God. 
 To trust in the mercy of such a Being as 
 this, is to lean on a nonentity of your own 
 imagination. It is to be led astray, by a 
 fancy picture of your own forming. There 
 is no other God to whom you can repair 
 for mercy, but God in Christ, reconciling 
 the world unto himself, and not imputing 
 unto them their trespasses. And if you 
 resist the preaching of Clirist as foolish- 
 ness, — if you will not recognize him, but per- 
 sist in your hoping, and your trusting, on the 
 general ground that God is merciful, you 
 are just wrapping yourselves up in a delu- 
 sive confidence, and pleasing yourselves 
 with your own imagination ; and the only 
 real offer that ever was, or ever will be 
 made to sinful man, you are putting away 
 from you. The mercy upon which you 
 rest, is in disunion with truth. It is a spark 
 of your own kindling, and if you continue 
 to walk in it, it will lead you into a path of 
 darkness, and bewilder you to your final 
 undoing, 
 
 II. The evils of such a confidence as we 
 have been attempting to expose, are mainly 
 reducible to two, which we shall consider 
 in order. 
 
 First, this delusive confidence casts an 
 
104 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 J 
 
 aspersion on the character of God. It 
 would inflict a mutilation upon that cha- 
 racter. It is confidence in such a mercy as 
 would dethrone the lawgiver, and establish 
 the anarchy of a wild misrule, over his 
 fallen and dishonoured attributes. We may 
 lightly take up with the conception that 
 God is all tenderness, and nothing else, and 
 thus try to accommodate the character of 
 the Eternal, to the standard of our own 
 convenience and our own wishes. We, 
 instead of lookingto the immutability of the 
 Godhead, and taking our fixed and perma- 
 nent lesson from such a contemplation, may 
 fancy of the Godhead, that he is ever as- 
 suming a new shape, and a new character, 
 according to the frail and fluctuating ca- 
 prices of human opinion. Instead of God 
 making man according to his pleasun , man 
 would form God in the mould of his own 
 imagination. He forgets that, in the whole 
 range of existence, he can only meet with 
 one object who is inflexibly and ever- 
 lastingly the same, and that is God, — that 
 he may sooner think of causing the ever- 
 lasting hills to recede from their basis, than 
 of causing an infringement on the nature 
 of the unalterable Deity, or on the designs 
 and maxims which support the method of 
 his administration, — that to assume a cha- 
 racter for him in our own mind, instead of 
 learning what the character is from himself, 
 is in fact to make the foolish thought of the 
 crfeature, paramount to the eternal and im- 
 mutable constitution of the Creator. 
 
 Let us therefore give up our own concep- 
 tions, and look steadily to that light in which 
 God hath actually put himself forth to us. 
 He has dealt out a variety of communications 
 respecting his own ever-during character 
 and attributes, to the children of men ; and 
 he tells us, that he is a God of truth, and 
 that he is jealous of his honour, and that he 
 will not be mocked, and that heaven and 
 earth shall pass away, ere any of his words 
 pass away. Letus jusi attend tosomeofthese 
 words, ile who continues not in the whole 
 book of this law, is accursed. The whole 
 world is guilty before God. He will by no 
 means clear the guilty. Without shedding 
 of blood, there is no remission. These are 
 the words of God. He has put them into a 
 record. Every one of us may read them, 
 and compare the sayings of God, with the 
 doings of God, and if they do not correspond, 
 the one with the other, we may charge him 
 with falsehood in the face of his insulting 
 enemies, and lift the voice of mockery 
 against him, and feel the triumph which 
 rebels feel, wlien they witness the timidity 
 of a feeble monarchy who does not, or dares 
 not, carry his threats into accomplishment. 
 And is it possible, that the throne of the 
 eternal God can rest on a basis so tottering. — 
 or that, if ever he shall descend to the mani- 
 festaUon of mercy, he will not give the 
 
 manifestation of his truth and his righteous- 
 ness along with it? 
 
 Now, those who, without any reference 
 to Christ, find their wa}' to comfort on the 
 strength of their own general confidence 
 in God's mercy, make no account whatever 
 of his truth, or his righteousness. What be- 
 comes of the threatenings of God? What 
 becomes of the immutability of his pur- 
 poses? What becomes of the unfailing truth 
 of all his communications ? What h< comes 
 of the solemnity of his warnings ? and how is 
 it possible to be at all impressed by them, — 
 if they are ever and anon done away by a 
 weak and capricious system of connivance? 
 What becomes of the wide and everlasting 
 distinctions, between obedience and sin? 
 What becomes of the holiness of the Deity ? 
 What becomes of reverence for his name, 
 among the wide circle of angels, and arch- 
 angels, and seraphim, and cherubim, who 
 have all heard his awful proclamations , / 
 against the children of iniquity, — if they ' 
 see that any one of them may, by a mere 
 act of confidence in his mercy, turn all thai 
 has been uttered against them into an un- , 
 meaning parade? Where, in a word, are 
 all those sanctions and securities which can 
 alone make the government of the Deity 
 to be a government at all? These are all 
 questions which the people to whom we 
 allude, never think of entertaining; nor do 
 they feel the slightest concern about them • 
 and they count it quite enough, if they can 
 just work themselves up into such a tolera- 
 ble feeling of security, as that they shall 
 not be disturbed in the quiet enjoyment of 
 the good things of this life, which form all 
 in fact that their hearts long after, and which 
 if only permitted to retain in peace, they 
 positively care not for the glory of God, or 
 how shall it be kept inviolate. This is not 
 their affair. The engrossing desire of their 
 bosoms, is just a selfish desire after their 
 own ease: and the strange preparation for 
 that heaven, the unceasing song of which 
 is, Holy and righteous are thy judgments, 
 O thou king of Saints, is such a habit of 
 confidence, as lays prostrate all the majesty 
 of these high and unchangeable perfections. 
 And yet if you examine these people 
 closely, you will obtain their con.sent to the 
 position, that there is a law, and that the hu- 
 man race are bound to obedience, and that the 
 authority of the law is supported by sanc- 
 tions, and that the truth, and justice, and 
 dignity of the Supreme Being, are involved 
 in these sanctions being enforced and exe- 
 cuted. They do not refuse the tenet that man 
 is an accountable subject, and that God is a 
 judge and a lawgiver. All that we ask of 
 them, then, is, to examine the account 
 which this subject has to render, and they 
 will find, in characters too glaring to be re- 
 sisted, that, M'ith the purest and most per- 
 fect individual amongst us, it is a wretched 
 
XV. 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 105 
 
 account of guilt and of deficiency. That 
 law, which is huld to be in full authority 
 and operation over us, has been most un- 
 questionably viokited. Now, what is to be 
 made of this ? is the subject to rebel, and 
 disobey every hour, and the king, by a per- 
 petual act of indulgence, to efface every 
 character of truth and dignity from his 
 government? Do this and you depose the 
 legislator from his throne. You reduce 
 the sanction of his law to a name and a 
 mockery. You bring down the high eco- 
 nomy of heaven, to the standard of human 
 convenience. You pull the fabric of God's 
 moral government to pieces ; and unsub- 
 stantiate all the solemnity of his proclaimed 
 sayings. — all the lofty annunciations of the 
 law, and of the prophets, — all that is told 
 of the mighty apparatus of the day of judg- 
 ment, all that revelation points to, or con- 
 science can suggest, of a living and a reign- 
 ing God, wlio will not let himself down to 
 be affronted, or trampled upon, by the crea- 
 tures whom he has formed. 
 
 They who, in profession, admit the truth 
 of God, and yet take comfort from his mercy, 
 without looking to him who bare in his 
 own person, the accomplishment of all the 
 threatenings, do in fact turn that truth into 
 a lie. The)', who, in profession, admit the 
 justice of God, and yet trust in the remis- 
 sion of their sins, without any distinct ac- 
 knowledgement of him on whom God has 
 laid the burden of their condemnation, do 
 in fact prove, that in their mouths justice is 
 nothing but an unmeaning articulation. 
 They who, in profession, admit the autho- 
 rity of those great and unchanging princi- 
 ples, which preside over the whole of God's 
 moral administration, and yet assign to him 
 such a loose and easy connivance at iniquity, 
 as by a mere act of tenderness, to recal the 
 every denunciation that he had uttered 
 against it, do in fact put forth a sacrile- 
 gious hand, to the pillars of that immuta- 
 bility, by which the government of creation 
 is upheld and perpetuated. Let them rest 
 assured, that there is no way of reconci- 
 liation,but such a way as shields all the holy, 
 and pure, and inflexible attributes of the 
 Divinity, from degradation and contempt. 
 
 Out of that hiding-place which is made 
 known in the gospel, all that is just, and 
 severe, and inflexible in the perfections of 
 God, stands in threatening arraj' against 
 every son and daughter of the species. And 
 if they will not look to God as he sets him- 
 self forth to us in the New Testament, — if 
 they refuse to look unto him as God in 
 Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, 
 and not imputing unto them their tres- 
 passes, — if they set aside all that is said 
 about the blood of the everlasting covenant, 
 and the new and living way of access, and 
 the manner in which the mediatorship of 
 Christ hath repaired all the indignities of 
 14 
 
 sin, and shed a glory over the truth and 
 justice of the lawgiver, — if they will still 
 persist in looking to him throu; li another 
 channel than that of his own levtk.tion; he 
 will persist in looking to them with the 
 aspect of a stern and unappeased enemy. 
 He will not let down the lionours of his 
 inflexible character, for the sake of those 
 who refuse his way of salvation. He will 
 not fall in with the delusions of those who 
 profess to revere this character, and then 
 shake the whole burden of conscious" guilt 
 and infirmity away from them, by the pre- 
 sumption, that in some way or other, the 
 mercy of God will interpose "to defend them 
 from the vengeance of his more severe and 
 j unrelenting perfections. The one and the 
 j only way, in which he dispenses mercy, is 
 1 through "the atonement of Christ. — and if 
 i your confidence be laid in any other quarter, 
 I he will put that confidence to shame. He 
 will not accept the prayers of those, who 
 can thus make free with the unchangeable 
 attributes which belong to him. He will 
 not descend with such to any intercourse 
 of affection whatever. He wiU not own the 
 approaches, nor will he deal out any boon 
 from the storehouse of his grace, to those 
 who profess a general confidence in his 
 mercy — when, instead of a mercy which 
 guards, and dignifies, and keeps entire the 
 whole glory and character of God, it is a 
 mercy which belies his word, which invades 
 his other perfections, which spoils the divkie 
 image of its grandeur, which breaks up the 
 whole fabric of his moral government, and 
 would make the throne of heaven the seat 
 of an unmeaning pageant, the throne of an 
 insulted and degraded sovereign. 
 
 The religion of nature, — or the religion 
 of unaided demonstration, — or the rehgion 
 of our most fashionable and philosophical 
 schools, leaves this question totally undis- 
 posed of; — and at the same time, till the 
 question be resolved, all the hopes of tlie 
 human soul are in a state of the most fearful 
 uncertainty. This religion makes God the 
 subject of its demonstrations, and it draws 
 out a list of attributes, and it makes the 
 justice of God to be one of these attributes, 
 and the placability of God to be another of 
 them, and it admits that it is in virtue of the 
 former perfection of his nature, that he 
 makes condemnation and punishment to 
 rest on the head of those who violate his 
 laN*', and that it is in virtue of the latter 
 perfection that he looks connivance, and 
 extends pardon to such violations. 
 
 Now, the question which the disciples of 
 this religion have never settled, is, how to 
 strike the compromise between these attri- 
 butes. They cannot dissipate the cloud of 
 mystery, which hangs over the line of de- 
 marcation that is between them. They 
 cannot tell in how far the justice of God 
 will insist on its exactions and its claims, or 
 
106 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATrRE 
 
 wiiat the extent of that disobedience is, 
 over which the placability of God will 
 spread the shelter of a fjenerous forgive- 
 ness. There is a dilemma here, out of 
 which they cannot imwarp themselves, — a 
 question to which they can give no other 
 answer, than the expressive answer of their 
 silence, — and it is such a silence, as leaves 
 our every apprehension unquelled, and the 
 whole burden of our unappeased doubts 
 and difficulties as insupportable as before. 
 What we demand is, that they shall lay 
 down the steady and unalterable position 
 of that limit, at Avhich the justice of God, 
 and the placability of God, cease their 
 respective encroachments on each other. 
 If they cannot tell this, they can tell nothing 
 that is of any consequence, either to the 
 purpose of comfort, or of direction. The 
 sniner wishes to know on which side of 
 this unknown and undetermined limit, his 
 degree of sinfulness is placed. He wishes 
 to know whether his offences are such as 
 come under the operation of justice, or of 
 raercy. — whether the one attribute will 
 exact from him the penalty, or the other 
 will smile on him connivance. It is in vain 
 to say, that if he repent and turn from them, 
 mercy will claim him as her own, and re- 
 cover him from the dominion of justice, 
 and spread over all his sins the mantle of 
 an everlasting oblivion. This may still be 
 saying nothing, — for the work of repent- 
 ance is a work, which, though he should be 
 always trying, he always fails in; and in 
 spite of his every exertion, there is a sin 
 and a shortness in all his services. And 
 when he casts his eye along the scale of 
 character, he sees the better and the worse 
 on each side of him ; and the difficulty still 
 recurs, how far down in the scale does 
 mercy extend, or liow far up on this scale 
 does justice carry its fiery sentence of con- 
 demnation. And thus it is, that he feels no 
 fixed security, which he can lay hold of, — 
 no solid ground on which he can lay the 
 trust of his acceptance with God. And 
 this religion, which has left the whole 
 problem of the attributes undetermined, 
 which can furnish the sinner with no light, 
 by which he may be made to perceive how 
 justice can be displayed, but at the expense 
 of mercy, or how mercy can be displayed, 
 but by breaking in upon the entireness of 
 justice ; this hollow, baseless, unsupported 
 system, which, by mangling and deforming 
 the whole aspect of the Deity, has virtually 
 left man without God, — has also, by the 
 faint and twilight obscurity, or rather by 
 the midnight darkness in which it has in- 
 volved the question about the point of sin- 
 '"ulness, at which the one attribute begins 
 the exercise of its rigour, and the other 
 ceases its indulgence, not only left man 
 without God, but also left him without any 
 ?olid hope in the world. 
 
 But, Secondly, tlie confidence v.v have 
 been attempting to expose, is hostile to 
 the cause of practical righteousness m the 
 world. 
 
 For what is the real and experimental 
 effi'ct of the obscurity in question on the 
 practice of mankind J The question about 
 our interest with God, is felt to be ui.re- 
 solvable ; and, under this feeling, no genuine 
 attempt is made to resolve it. Man eases 
 himself of the difficulty by putting it away 
 from him; and, as he cannot find the point 
 of gradation in the scale of character, on 
 the one side of which, there lies acceptance 
 with God, and on the other side of it, con- 
 demnation. — he just upholds himself in 
 tranquillity at any one point, throughout 
 every one variety of tliis gradation. 
 
 Let the question only be put. How far 
 down, in the scale of character, may this 
 loose system of confidence be carried ? and 
 where is the limit between those sins, to 
 which forgiveness may be looked for, and 
 those sins from which it is withheld ? and 
 you will seldom find the man who gives 
 an answer against himself. The world, in 
 fact, is so much the home and the resting- 
 place of every natural man, that ycm will 
 not get him so to press, and so to prosecute 
 the question, as to come to any conclusion, 
 that is at all likely to alarm him. He will 
 not barter his present peace, for a concern 
 that looks so distant to him as that of his 
 eternity. The question touches but lightly 
 on his feelings, and an answer conceived 
 lightly, and given lightly, will be enough to 
 pacify him. Go to the man, whose decent 
 and unexceptionable proprieties make him 
 the admiration of all his acquaintances, and 
 even he will allow that he has his infirniitits ; / 
 but he can smother all liis apprchensionSj 
 and regale his fancy with the smile of an 
 indulgent God. Take, now, a descending 
 step in the scale of character ; and do you 
 think there is not to be met with there, the 
 very same process of conscious infirmity 
 on the one hand, and of vague, general, and 
 bewildering confidence on the other? "Will 
 the people of the lower station not do the 
 very same thing with the people above 
 them? — Compare themselves with them- 
 selves, and find equals to keep them in 
 countenance, and share in the average 
 respect that circulates around them, and 
 take comfort in the review of their very 
 fair and neighbourlike accomplishments, 
 and with the allowance of being just such 
 sinners as they are in the daily habit of 
 associating with, get all their remorse, and 
 all their gloomy anticipations disposed of, 
 by throwing the whole burden of them, in 
 a loose and general wav, on the indulgence 
 of God? 
 
 And Avhere, in the name of truth and of 
 righteousness, will this stop ? We can an- 
 swer that question. It will not step at ail. 
 
IVI.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 107 
 
 It will describe the whole range of liumaii 
 character ; and we challenge you to put 
 your finger on that point where it is to ter- 
 minate, or to find out the place where a 
 barrier is to be rai^d against the pro- 
 gress of this miscliievous security. It will 
 go downwards and downwards, till it come 
 totlie very verge of the malefactor's dungeon. 
 Nay, it will enter there ; and we doubt not, 
 that an enlightened discerner may witness, 
 even in this receptacle of outcasts, the ope- 
 ration of the very sentiment whicli gives 
 such peace and such buoyancy to him whose 
 moral accomplishments throw around him 
 the lustre of a superior estimation. But 
 this lustre will not impose on the eye of 
 God. The Discerner of the heart sees that 
 one and all of us are alienated from him, 
 and strangers to the obligation of his high 
 and spiritual acquirements. He declares 
 the name of Christ to be the only one given 
 under heaven, whereby men can be saved ; 
 and after this, every act of confidence, dis- 
 owning his name, is an expression of the 
 most insulting impiety. On the system of 
 general confidence, every man is left to sin 
 just as much as lie lilies, and to take com- 
 fort just as much as his powers of delu- 
 sion can administer to him. At this rate, 
 the government of God is unhinged, — the 
 whole earth is broken loose from the sys- 
 tem of his administration, — he is deposed 
 from his supremacy altogether, — peace, 
 when there is no peace, spreads its deadly 
 poison over the face of society, — and one 
 sentiment, of deep and fatal tranquillity 
 about the things of God, takes up hs firm 
 residence in a world, which, from one end 
 to tlie other of it, sends up the cry of re- 
 bellion against him. 
 
 lliis is a sore evil. The want of a fixed 
 and clearly perceptible line between the 
 justice and placability of the divine nature, 
 not only buries in utter darkness the ques- 
 tion of our acceptance with God ; but, by 
 throwing every thing loose and undeter- 
 mined, it opens up the range of a most 
 lawless and uncontrolled impunity for the 
 disobedience of man, up from its gentler 
 deviations, and down to its most profligate 
 
 and daring excesses. If there be no intel- 
 ligible line to separate the exercise of the 
 justice of God from the exercise of his 
 placability, every individual .vill fix this 
 line for himself; and he will make these 
 two attributes to be yea and nay, or fast 
 and loose with each other; and he will 
 stretch out the placabilit)', and he will press 
 upon the justice, just as much as to ac- 
 commodate the standft"d of his religious 
 principles to the state of his religious prac- 
 tice; and he will make every thing to 
 square with his own existing taste, and 
 wishes, and convenience ; and his mind 
 will soon work its own way to a system 
 of religious opinions which gives him no 
 disturbance; and the spirit of a deep slum- 
 ber will lay hold of his deluded conscience ; 
 and thus, from the want of a settled line, — 
 from the vague, ambiguous, and indefinite 
 way in which this matter is taken up, and 
 brought to a very loose and general con- 
 clusion, — or, in other words, from that very 
 way in which natural religion, whether 
 among deists, or our more slender profes- 
 sors of Christianity, leaves the whole ques- 
 tion, about the limit of the attributes, unen- 
 tered upon, — will every man take comfort 
 in the imagined tenderness of God, just as 
 much as he stands in need of it, and expe- 
 riment on the patience of God just as far as 
 his natural desires may carry him, — so that 
 when we look to the men of the world, as 
 they pass smoothly onward, from the cra- 
 dle to the grave, do we see each of them in 
 a state of profound security as to his inter- 
 est with God ; each of them solacing him- 
 self with his own conception about the 
 slenderness of his guilt, and the kindness 
 of an indulgent Deity ; each of them in a 
 state of false and fmcied peace with Hea- 
 ven, while every affection of the inner man, 
 and many of the doings of the outer man, 
 bear upon them the stamp of rebellion 
 against Heaven's law ; each of them walk- 
 ing without uneasiness, and without terror, 
 while, at the same time, each and all of 
 them do in fact walk in the counsel of their 
 own hearts, and after the sight of their own 
 eyes. 
 
 SERMON XVI. 
 
 The Union of Truth and Mercy in the Gospel. 
 
 ' Mercy and truth are met together : righteousness and peace have kissed each other." — Psalm Ixxxv. 10. 
 
 It was not by a simple deed of amnesty, 
 that man Avas invited to return and be at 
 peace with God. It was by a deed of ex- 
 piation. It was not by nullifying the sanc- 
 tions of the law, that man was offered a 
 
 free and a full discharge from the penalties 
 he had incurred by breaking it. ItAvas by 
 executing these sanctions on another, who 
 voluntarily took them upon himself, and 
 who, in so doing, magnified the law, and 
 
108 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 made it honourable. To redeem us from 
 the curse of the law, Christ became a curse 
 for us. It was not by God lifting off our 
 iniquities from our persons, and scattering 
 them away into a region of forgetfulness, 
 without one demonstration of his abhor- 
 rence, and without the fulfilment of his 
 threatenings against them ; but lifting them 
 off from us, he laid them on another, who 
 bare, in his own jfcrson, the punishment 
 that we should have borne. God laid upon 
 his own Son the iniquities of us all. The 
 guilt of our sins is not done away by a 
 mere act of forgiveness. It is washed away 
 by the blood of the Lamb. God set him 
 forth a propitiation. Ke was smitten for 
 our transgressions. He gave himself for 
 us an offering and a sacrifice to God. The 
 system of the gospel no more expunges 
 the attribute of mercy from the character 
 of the Godhead, tlian it expunges the attri- 
 butes of truth and righteousness. But all 
 the mercy which it offers and proclaims to 
 a guilty world, is the mercy which flows 
 upon it througli the channel of that Media- 
 torship, by which his truth and his justice 
 have been asserted and vindicated ; and, 
 while it reveals to us the openness of this 
 channel, it also reveals to us that every 
 other which the heart of man may con- 
 ceive, is shut, and intercepted, and utterly 
 impassable. There is none other name 
 given under heaven, whereby man can be 
 saved, but the name of him who poured 
 out his soul unto the death for us. "With- 
 out the shedding of his blood, there could 
 have been no remission. And he who hath 
 not the Son, hath the wrath of God abiding 
 on him. 
 
 It is due to our want of moral sensibility, 
 that sin looks so light and so trivial in our 
 estimation. AVe have no adequate feeling 
 of its malignity, of its exceeding sinfulness. 
 And. liable as we are to think of God, that 
 he is altogether like imto ourselves, do we 
 think that he ma}' cancel our guilt as easily 
 from the book of his condemnation, by an 
 act of forgiveness, as we cancel it from our 
 own memory, by an act of forgetfulness. 
 But God takes his own way, and most 
 steadfastly asserts, throughout the whole 
 process of our recovery, the prerogatives of 
 his own truth, and his own righteousness. 
 He so loved the world, as to send his Son 
 to it, not to condemn, but to .save. But he 
 will not save us in such a way as to con- 
 firm our light estimation of sin, or to let 
 down the worth and dignity of his own 
 character. The method of our salvation is 
 not left to the random caprices of human 
 thought, and human fancy. It is a method 
 devised for us by. unsearchable wisdom, 
 and made known to us by fixed and unal- 
 terable truth, and prescribed to us by a su- 
 preme authority, which has debarred every 
 other method ; and though we may behold 
 
 no one feature, either of greatness or ojf 
 beauty to admire in it — yet do angels ad- 
 mire it; and to accomplish it, did the Son 
 of God move from the residence of his glory, 
 and all heaven appears to haAe laboured 
 with the magnitude and the mystery of the 
 great undertaking ; and along the whole 
 tract of revelation, from the first age of the 
 world, do we behold the notices of the 
 coming atonement ; and while man sits at 
 his ease, and can see nothing to move him 
 either to gratitude or to wonder, in the 
 evolution of that mighty scheme, by which 
 mercy and truth have been made to meet 
 together, and righteousness and peace to 
 kiss each other, — it is striking to mark the 
 place and the prominency which are given 
 to it, in the councils of the Eternal. And 
 it might serve to put us right, and to re- 
 buke the levities which are so currently 
 afloat in this dead and darkened world, did 
 we only look at the stress that is laid on 
 this great work, throughout the whole of 
 its preparation and its performance, — and 
 how, to bring it to its accomplishment, the 
 Father had to send the Son into the world, 
 and to throw a veil over his glory, — and to 
 put the cup of our chastisement into his 
 hand, — and to bid the sword of righteous 
 vengeance awake against his fellow, — and, 
 that he might clear a way of access to a 
 guilty world, had to do it through the 
 blood of an everlasting covenant, — and to 
 lay .the full burden of our atonement on the 
 head of the innocent sufferer, — and to en- 
 dure the spectacle of his bitterness, and his 
 agonies, and his tears, till he cried out that 
 it was finished, and so bowed himself and 
 gave up the ghost. 
 
 Man is blind to the necessity, but God 
 sees it. The prayer of Christ in his agony 
 was, that the cup, if possible, might be re- 
 moved from him. But it was not possible. 
 He could have called twelve legions of an- 
 gels, and they would have eagerly flown to 
 rescue their beloved Lord from the hands 
 of his persecutors. But he knew that the 
 Scripture must be fulfilled, and they look- 
 ed on in silent forbearance. It behooved 
 him to undergo all this. And there was a 
 need, and a propriety, why he should suf- 
 fer all these things, ere he entered into his 
 glory. 
 
 "W e shall offer three distinct remarks on 
 this method of our redemption, in order to 
 prove that it fulfils the whole assertion of 
 our text, that it has made mercy and truth 
 to meet together, and righteousness and 
 peace to kiss each other. 
 
 First, it maintains the entireness and 
 glory of all the attributes of the Godhead. 
 Secondly, it provides a solid foundation for 
 the peace of every sinner who concurs in 
 it. And, thirdly, it strengthens all the se- 
 curities for the cause of practical righteous- 
 ness among men. 
 
XVI.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 109 
 
 I. In darkness, as we are, about the glory 
 and character of the Supreme Being, it 
 would offer a violence even to our habitual 
 conceptions of him, to admit of any limit, 
 or any deduction from the excellencies of 
 his nature. We should even thinlv it a lessen- 
 ing of the Deity, were the extent of his 
 perfections such, as that we should be able 
 to grasp them within the comprehension 
 of our understandings. The property of 
 chiefest admiration to his creatures is, that 
 they know but a part, and are not aware 
 how small a part that is, to what is un- 
 known ; and never is their obeisance more 
 lowly, than when, under the sense of a 
 greatness that is undefined and unsearch- 
 able, they feel themselves baffled by the in- 
 finitude of the Creator. It is not his power, 
 as attested by all that exists within the 
 limits of actual discovery ; but his power, 
 as conceived to form and uphold a uni- 
 verse, whose outskirts are unknown. — It is 
 not his wisdom, as exhibited in what has 
 been seen by human eye ; but his wisdom, 
 as pervading the unnumbered secresies of 
 mechanism, which no eye can penetrate. 
 It is not his knowledge, as displayed in the 
 greater and prophetic outlines of the his- 
 tory of this world ; but his knowledge, as 
 embracing all the mazes of creation, and 
 all the mighty periods of eternity. — It is 
 not his antiquity, as prior to all that is visi- 
 ble, and as reaching far above and beyond 
 the remote infancy of nature ; but his an- 
 tiquity, as retiring upwards from the lof- 
 tiest ascent of our imaginations, and lost in 
 the viewless depth of an existence, that 
 was from everlasting. — These are Avhat 
 serve to throne the Deity in grandeur inac- 
 cessible. It is the thought of what eye hath 
 not seen, and ear hath not heard, neither 
 hath it entered into the heart of man to 
 conceive, that places him on such a height 
 of mystery before us. And should we ever 
 be able to overtake, in thought, the dimen- 
 sions of any attribute that belongs to him, 
 — and far more .should we ever be able to 
 outstrip, in fancy, a single feature of that 
 character which is realised by the living 
 and reigning God, — should defect or im- 
 potency attach to him who dwelleth in the 
 light which no man can approach unto, 
 would we feel as if all our most rooted and 
 accustomed conceptions of the Godhead 
 had sustained an overthrow, would we feel 
 as if the sanctuary of him w'ho is the King 
 eternal and invisible had suffered violence. 
 And this is just as true of the moral as 
 of the natural attributes of the Godhead. 
 WTien we think of his truth, it is a truth 
 %vhich, if heaven and earth stand committed 
 to the fulfilment of its minutest article, 
 heaven and earth must, for its vindication, 
 pass away. When we think of his holiness, 
 it is such that, if sin offer to draw nigh, a 
 devouring fire goeth forth to burn up and to 
 
 destroy it. AVhen we think of his law, it is 
 a law which must be made honourable 
 even though, by the enforcement of its 
 sanctions, it shall sweep into an abyss of 
 misery all the generations of the rebellious. 
 And yet this God, just, and righteous, and 
 true, is a God of love, and of compassion, 
 infinite. He is slow to anger, and of great 
 mercy. He does not afflict willingly ; and 
 as a father rejoices over his children, does 
 he long to rejoice in tenderness over us all; 
 and out of the store-house of a grace that is 
 inexhaustible, does he deal out the offers 
 of pardon and reconciliation to every one 
 of us. Even in some way or other does the 
 love of God for his creatures find its way 
 through the barrier of their sinfulness ; and 
 he who is of purer eyes than to behold 
 iniquity, — he who hath spoken the word, 
 and shall he not perform it, — he of whose 
 law it has been said, that not one jot or one 
 tittle of it, shall pass away, tiU all be ful- 
 filled, — he holds out the overtures of friend- 
 ship to the children of disobedience, and 
 invites the guiltiest among them to the 
 light of his countenance, in time, and to the 
 enjoyment of his glory and presence, in 
 eternity. 
 
 There is no one device separate from the 
 gospel, by which the glory of any one of 
 these attributes can be exalted, but by the 
 surrender or the limitation of another attri- 
 bute. It is in the gospel alone that we per- 
 ceive how each of them may be heightened 
 to infinity, and yet each of them reflect a 
 lustre on the rest. When Christ died, jus- 
 tice was magnified. A^'hen he bore the 
 burden of our torment, the truth of God re- 
 ceived its vindication. When the sins of 
 the world brought him to the cross, the 
 lesson taught by this impressive spectacle 
 was, holiness unto the Lord. All the se- 
 verer perfections of the Godhead, were, in 
 fact, more powerfully illustrated by the 
 deep and solemn propitiation that was made 
 for sin, than they could have been by the 
 direct punishment of sin itself — Yet all re- 
 dounding to the triumph of his mercy. — 
 For mercy, in the exercise of a simple and 
 spontaneous tenderness, does not make so 
 high an exhibition, as mercy forcing its 
 way through restraints and difficulties, — as 
 mercy accomplishing its purposes by a 
 plan of unsearchable wisdom, — as mercy 
 surrendering what was most dear for the 
 attainment of its object, — as the mercy of 
 God, not simply loving the woild, but so 
 loving it as to send his only beloved Son, 
 and to lay upon him the iniquities of us 
 all, — as mercy, thus surmounting a barrier 
 which, to created eye, appeared immove- 
 able, and which both pours a glory on the 
 other excellencies of the Godhead, and re- 
 joices over them. 
 
 It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has 
 poured the light of day into all the intri 
 
no 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 cacies of this contemplation. We there sec 
 no compromise, and no surrender, of the 
 attributes to each other. We see no mutual 
 encroachment on their respective provinces, 
 — no letting down of that entire and abso- 
 lute perfection which belongs to every part 
 iii the character of the Godhead. The jus- 
 tice of God has not been invaded; for by 
 him, who poured out his soul unto the 
 death for us, has the whole weight of this 
 aggrieved and offended attribute been bcrrne ; 
 and from that cross of agony, where he 
 cried out that it was finished, does the di- 
 vine Justice send forth a brighter and a 
 nobler radiance of vindicated majesty, than 
 if the minister of vengeance had gone forth 
 and wreaked the whole sentence of con- 
 demnation on every son and daughter of 
 the species. And as the justice of God has 
 suffered no encroachment, so, such is the 
 admirable skilfulness of this expedient, that 
 the mercy of God is restrained by no limi- 
 tation. It is arrested in its offers by no 
 questions about the shades, and the degrees, 
 and the varieties of sinfulness. It stops at 
 no point in the descending scale of human 
 depravity. The blood of Christ cleansing 
 from all sin, has spread such a field for its 
 invitations, that in the full confidence of a 
 wai ranted and universal commission, may 
 the messengers of grace walk over the face 
 of the world, and lay the free gift of ac- 
 ceptance at the door of every individual, 
 and of every family. Such is the height^ 
 and depth, and breadth, and length, of the 
 mercy of God in Christ Jesus ; and yet it is 
 a mere J- so exercised, as to keep the whole 
 council and character of God unbroken, — 
 and a mercy, from the display of which, 
 there beams a brighter radiance than ever 
 from each lineament in the image of the 
 Godhead. 
 
 Now if the glory of God be so involved 
 in this way of redemption, what shall we 
 think of the disparagement, that is rendered 
 to him, and to all his attributes, by the man 
 who, without respect to the work and the 
 righteousness of Christ, seeks to be justified 
 by his own righteousness? It is quite possi- 
 ble for man to toil and to waste his strength 
 on the object of his salvation, and yet, by ail 
 he can make out. may be only widening 
 his laborious deviation from the path which 
 leads to it. Do his uttermost to establish a 
 righteousness of his own, and what is the 
 whole fruit of his exertion? — the mere 
 semblance of righteousness, without the in- 
 fusion of its essential quality, — labour with- 
 out love, — the drudgery of the hand, without 
 the desire and devotednes? of the heart, as 
 its inspiring principfe. If the man be dis- 
 satisfied, as he certainly ought to be. then a 
 sense of unexpiated guilt will ever and anon 
 intrude itself upon his fears ; and a resist- 
 less conviction of the insufficiency of all his 
 performances will never cease to haunt and 
 
 to paralyze him. In these ciicumstances, 
 there may be the conformity of the letter 
 extorted from him, in the spirit of bondage ; 
 but the animating soul is not there, which 
 turns obedience into a service of deliglit and 
 a service of affection. In Heaven's account, 
 such obedience as this is but the mockery 
 of a lifeless skeleton ; and, even as a skele- 
 ton, it is both wanting in its parts, and 
 unshapely in its proportions. It is an obe- 
 dience defective, even in the tale and mea- 
 sure of its external duties. But what per- 
 vades the whole of it by the element of 
 worthlessness is, that, destitute of love to 
 God, it is utterly destitute of a celestial cha- 
 racter, and can never prepare an inhabitant 
 of this M^orld for the joys or the services of 
 the great celestial family. 
 
 And, on the other hand, if the man be 
 satisfied, this very circumstance gives to the 
 righteousness that he would establish for 
 himself, the character of an insult upon 
 God, instead of a reverential offering. It is 
 a righteousness accompanied with a certain 
 measure of confident feeling, that it is good 
 enough for the acceptance of the Lawgiver. 
 There is in it the audacity of a claim and 
 a challenge upon his approbation. Short 
 as it is, in respect of outward performance, 
 and tainted within by the very spirit of 
 earthliness, it is brought like a lame and dis- 
 eased victim in sacrifice, and laid upon the 
 altal- before him. It is an evil and a bitter 
 thing to sin against God : but it is a still 
 more direct outrage upon his attributes, to 
 expect that he Avill look on sinfulness with 
 complacenc}-. It is an open defiance to the 
 law, to trample upon its requirements ; but 
 it were a still deadlier overthrow of its au- 
 thority, to reverse its sanctions, and make 
 it turn its threatenings into rcMards. The 
 sinner who disobeys and trembles, renders 
 at least the homage of his fears to the truth 
 and power of the Eternal. But the sinner 
 who makes a righteousness of his infirmi- 
 ties; and puts a gloss upon his disobedience, 
 and brinss the accursed thing to the gate of 
 the sanctuary, and bids the piercing eye of 
 Omniscience look upon it, and be satisfied, 
 — tell us whether the fire which cometh 
 forth will burn up the offering, that it may 
 rise in sweetly smelling savour to him who 
 sitteth on the throne ; or will it seize on the 
 presumptuous offerer, who could thus dare 
 the inspection, and thrust his unprepared 
 footstep within the precincts of unspotted 
 holiness ? 
 
 And how must it go to aggravate the of- 
 fence of such an approach, wlien it is made 
 in the face of another righteousness which 
 God himself hath provided, and in which 
 alone he hath proclaimed that it is safe for 
 a sinner to draw nigh. When the alterna- 
 tive is fairly proposed, to come on the merit 
 of your own obedience and tried by it, or 
 to come on the merit of the obedience of 
 
XVI.J 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 ll*! 
 
 Christ, and receive in your own person llie 
 reward which he hath purchased for you, — 
 only think of the aspect it must bear in the 
 eye of Heaven, when the offer of the perfect 
 righteousness is contemptuously set aside, 
 and the sinner chooses to appear in his own 
 character before the presence of the Eternal. 
 When the imputation of vanity and useless- 
 ness is thus fastened on all that the Son hath 
 done, and on all that the Father hath devised 
 for the redemption of the guilty, — when 
 that righteousness, to accomplish which, 
 Christ iiad to travail in the greatness of his 
 strength, is thus held to be nothing, by crea- 
 tures whose every thought, and every per- 
 formance, have the stain of corruption in 
 them — when that doctrine of his death, on 
 which, in the book of God's counsel, is made 
 to turn the deliverance of our world, is 
 counted to be foolishness, — when the sinner 
 thus persists in obtruding his own virtue on 
 the notice of the Lawgiver, and refuses to 
 put on, as a covering of defence, the virtue 
 of liis Saviour, — we have only to contrast 
 the lean, shrivelled, paltry dimensions of the 
 one, with the faultless, and sustained, and 
 Godlike perfection of the other, to perceive 
 how desperate is the folly, and how un- 
 escapable is the doom of him who hath 
 neglected the great salvation. 
 
 It is thus that the refusal of Christ, as our 
 righteousness, stamps a deeper and a more 
 atrocious character of rebellion on the guilty 
 than before, — and it is thus that the word 
 of his mouth, like a two-edged sword, per- 
 forms one function on him who accepts, 
 and an opposite function on him who de- 
 spises it. If the gospel be not the savour of 
 life unto life, it will be the savour of death 
 unto death. If it be not a rock of confi- 
 dence, it will be a rock of offence, and it will 
 fall upon him who resists it, and grind him 
 into powder. If we kiss not the Son, in the 
 day of our peace, the day of his wrath is 
 joming, and who shall be able to stand when 
 nis anger is kindled but a little? We have 
 ilready offended God by the sinfulness of 
 our practice, — we may yet offend him still 
 more by the haughtiness of our pretensions. 
 The evil of our best works constitutes them 
 an abomination in his siglit; but nothing 
 remains to avert the hostility of his truth 
 and his holiness against us, if by those works 
 we seek to be justified. It will indeed be 
 the sealing up of our iniquity, if our obe- 
 dience, impregnated as it is with the very 
 spirit of that iniquity, shall be set up in rival- 
 ship to the obedience of his only and well 
 beloved Son, — if. by viewing the defect of 
 our righteousness, as a thing of indifference, 
 and the fulness of his, as a thing of no value, 
 we shall heap insult upon transgression, — 
 and if, after the provocation of a broken law, 
 we shall maintain the boastful attitude of 
 him who hath won the merit and the re- 
 ward of vicitory, and in this attitude add the 
 
 farther provocation of a slighted and re- 
 jected gospel. 
 
 II. We shall conclude, for the present, 
 these brief and imperfect remarks, by ad- 
 verting to the solidity of that foundation of 
 peace, which the gospel scheme of mercy 
 provides for every sinner who concurs in 
 it. It is altogether worthy of observation, 
 how, under this exquisite contrivance, the 
 very elements of disquietude in a sinner's 
 bosom, are turned into the elements of com- 
 fort and confidence in the mind of a be- 
 lieATr. It is the unswerving truth of God, 
 which haunts the former by the thought of 
 the certainty of his coming vengeance. But 
 this very truth, committed to the fulfilment 
 of all those promises, which are yea and 
 amen in Christ Jesus, sustains the latter by 
 the thought of the certainty of his coming 
 salvation. It is justice, unbending justice, 
 which sets such a seal on the condemnation 
 of the disobedient, that every sinner who is 
 out of Christ, feels it to be irrevocable. In 
 Christ, this attribute, instead of'a terror, be- 
 comes a securitj' ; for it is just in God to 
 justify him who believes in Jesus. It is the 
 sense of God's violated authority which fills 
 the heart of an awakened sinner with the 
 fear that he is undone. But this authority 
 under the gospel proclamation, is leagued 
 on the side of comfort, and not of fear ; for 
 this is the commandment of God, that we 
 believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 as he has given us commandment. It is not 
 by an act of mercy, triumphing over the 
 other attributes, that pardon is extended to 
 the sinful ; for, under the economy of the 
 gospel, these attributes are all engaged on 
 the side of mercy ; and God is not only 
 merciful, but he is faithful and just in for- 
 giving the sins of those who accept of Christ, 
 as he is offered to them in the gospel. Those 
 very perfections, then, which fix and neces- 
 sitate the doom of the rebellious, form into 
 a canopy of defence around the head of the 
 believer. The guarantees of a sinner's pun- 
 ishment now become the guarantees of 
 promise; and while, like the flaming sword 
 at the gate of paradise, they turn every 
 way, and shut him out of every access to 
 the Deity but one, — let him take to that 
 one, and they instantly become to him the 
 sureties and the safe-guard of that hiding- 
 place into which he has entered. 
 
 The foundation, then, of abeliever's peace, 
 is, in every way, as sure and as solid as is 
 the foundation of a sinner's fears. The very 
 truth which makes the one tremble, because 
 staked to the execution of an unfulfilled 
 threat, ministers to the other the strongest 
 consolation. It is impossible for God to lie, 
 says an awakened sinner, and this thought 
 pursues him with the agony of an arrow 
 sticking fast. It is impossible for God to 
 lie, says a believer ; and as he hathnot only 
 said but sworn, there are two immutable 
 
112 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 things by which to anchor the confidence 
 of him who hath fled for refuge to the hope 
 set before him. He staggers not at the 
 promises of God, because of unbehef. He 
 holds himself steadfast, by simply counting 
 him to be faithful who hath promised. It 
 is through that very faith, by being strong 
 in which he gives glory to God, that he 
 
 gains peace to his own heart ; and the jus- 
 tice which beams a terror on all who stand 
 without, utterly passes by the shielded head 
 of him who hath turned to the strong hold, 
 and taken a place under the shadow of his 
 wings, who hath satisfied the justice of God, 
 and taken upon himself the burden of its 
 fullest vindication. 
 
 SERMON XVII. 
 
 The purifying Influence of the Christian Faith- 
 
 "Sanctified by faith." — Acts xxvi. 18. 
 
 III. It is a matter of direct and obvious 
 understanding, how the law, by its promises 
 and its threaten ings, should exert an influ- 
 ence over human conduct. We seem to 
 walk in a plain path, when we pass onwards 
 from the enforcements of the law, to the 
 effect of them on the fears, and the hopes, 
 and the purposes of man. Do this, and you 
 shall live ; and do the opposite of this, and 
 you shall forfeit life, form two clear and 
 distinct processes, in the conceiving of 
 which, there is no difficulty whatever. The 
 motive and the movement both stand intel- 
 ligibly out to the discernment of common 
 sense ; nor in the application of such argu- 
 ment as this, to the design of operating on 
 the character or life of a human being, is 
 there any mystery to embarrass, any hidden 
 step, which, by baffling our every attempt 
 to seize upon it, leaves us in a state of help- 
 less perplexity. 
 
 The same is not true of the gospel, or of 
 the manner in which it operates on the 
 springs of human action. It is not so rea- 
 dily seen how its privileges can be appro- 
 priated by faith, and at the same time its 
 precepts can retain their practical authority 
 over the conduct of a believer. There is an 
 alarm, and an honest alarm, on the part of 
 many, lest a proclamation of free grace unto 
 the world, should undermine all our securi- 
 ties for the cause of righteousness in the 
 world. They look with jealousy upon the 
 freeness. They fear lest a deed so ample 
 and unconditional, of forgiveness for the 
 past, should give rise, in the heart of a sin- 
 ner, to a secure opinion of its impunity for 
 the future. What they dread is, that to pro- 
 claim such a freeness of pardon on the part 
 of God, w'ould be to proclaim a correspond- 
 ing freeness of practice on the part of man. 
 They are able to comprehend how the law, 
 by its direct enforcements, should operate 
 in keeping men from sin ; but they are not 
 able to comprehend how, when not under 
 the law, but under grace, theie should con- 
 
 tinue the same motives to abstain from sin, 
 as those intelligible ones which the law 
 furnishes, or even other motives of more 
 powerful operation. We are quite sure that 
 there is something here which needs to be 
 made plain to the understandings of a very 
 numerous class of inquirers, — a knot of dif- 
 ficulty which needs to be untied, — a hidden 
 step in the process of explanation, on which 
 they may firmly pass from what is known 
 to wiiat is unknown. There are not two 
 terms in the whole compass of human lan- 
 guage, which stand more frequently and 
 more familiarly contrasted with each other, 
 than those of faith and good works; and 
 this, not merely on the question of our ac- 
 ceptance before God, but also on the ques- 
 tion of the personal character and acquire- 
 ments of a true disciple of Christ. It is 
 positively not seen, how the possession of 
 the one should at all stimulate to the per- 
 formance of the other,— how the peace of 
 the gospel should reside in the same heart, 
 from which there emanates, on the life of a 
 believer, the practice of the gospel, — how a 
 righteousness that is without the deeds of 
 the law, should stand connected, in the ac- 
 tual history of him wiio obtains it, with a 
 zealous, and diligent, and every-day doing 
 of these deeds. 
 
 There is much in all this to puzzle the 
 man who is experimentally a stranger to 
 the truth as it is in Jesus. Nor does it at 
 all serve to extricate or to enlighten him, 
 when he is made to perceive, that, in point 
 of fact, those men who most cordially assent 
 to the doctrine of salvation being all of grace 
 and not of works, are most assiduous in so 
 walking, and in so working, and in so pains- 
 taking, as if salvation were all of works, 
 and not of grace. The fact is quite obvious 
 and unquestionable. But the principle on 
 which it rests, remains a mystery to the 
 general eye of the world. They marvel, but 
 they go no farther. They see that thus it 
 is, but they see not how it is ; and they put 
 
XVII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 113 
 
 It down among those inexplicable oddities 
 which do at times occur, both in the moral 
 and natural kingdom of the creation. 
 
 But in all our attempts to dissipate this 
 obscurity, it is well to advert to the total 
 difference between him who has the faith, 
 and him who has it not. The one has the 
 materials of the argument under his eye, 
 and within the grasp of his handling. The 
 other may be able to recognize in the argu- 
 ment, a logical and consistent process ; but 
 he is at a loss about the simple conceptions, 
 which form the materials of the argument. 
 He is like a man who can perform all the 
 manipulations of an algebraical process, 
 while he feels not the force or the signifi- 
 cancy of the symbols. His habits of ratio- 
 cination enable him to perceive, that there 
 is a connexion between the ideas in the ar- 
 gument. But the ideas themselves are not 
 manifest to him. It is nqt in the power of 
 reasoning to supply this want. Reasoning 
 cannot create the primary materials of the 
 argument. It only cements them together. 
 And here it is, that you are met by the im- 
 potency of human demonstration, — and are 
 reduced to the attitude of knocking at a 
 door which you cannot open, — and feel 
 your need of an. enlightening spirit, — and 
 are made to perceive, that it is only on the 
 threshold of Christianity, where you can 
 hold the intercourse of a common sympa- 
 thy and understanding with the world, — 
 and that to be admitted to the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of heaven, you must pass into 
 a region of manifestation, where the world 
 cannot follow, but where it will cast the 
 imputation of madness and of mysticism 
 after you. 
 
 . Without attempting to define faith, as to 
 the nature of it, which could not be done 
 but with other words more simple than 
 itself, let us look to the objects of faith, and 
 see w^hether there do not emanate from them, 
 a sanctifying influence on the heart of every 
 real believer. 
 
 First, then, the whole object of faith, is 
 the matter o^ the testimony of God in 
 Scripture. So that though faith be a single 
 principle, and is designated in language by 
 a single term, — yet this by no means pre- 
 cludes it from being such a principle, as 
 comes into contact, and is conversant, with a 
 very great variety of objects. In this re- 
 spect it may bear a resemblance to sight, 
 or hearing, or any other of the senses, by 
 which man holds communication with the 
 external things that are near him, and 
 around him. The same eye which, when 
 open, looks to a friend, and can, from that 
 very look, afford entrance into the heart for 
 an emotion of tenderness, will also behold 
 other visible things, and take in an appro- 
 priate influence from each of them, — will 
 behold the prospect of beauty that is before 
 it, and thence obtain gratification to the 
 15 
 
 taste, — or will behold the sportive felicity of 
 animals, and thence obtain gratification to the 
 benevolence, — or will beliold the precipice 
 beneath, and thence obtain a warning of 
 danger, or a direction of safety, — or may 
 behold a thousand different objects, and 
 obtain a thousand different feelings and 
 different intimations. 
 
 Now the same of faith. It has been called 
 the eye of the mind. But whether this be 
 a well conceived image or not, it certainly 
 affords an inlet to the mind for a great 
 variety of communications. The Apostle 
 calls faith the evidence of things not seen, — 
 not of one such thing, but of very many 
 such things. The man who possesses faith, 
 can be no more intellectually blind to one of 
 these things, and at the same time knowing 
 and believing as to another of them, than 
 the man who possesses sight can, with his 
 eye open, perceive one external ol^ject, and 
 have no perception of another, which stands 
 as nearly and as conspicuously before him. 
 The man who is destitute of sight, will 
 never know what it is to feel the charm of 
 visible scenery. But grant him sight ; and 
 he will not only be made alive to this 
 charm, but to a multitude of other influ- 
 ences, all emanating from the various ob- 
 jects of visible nature, through the eye upon 
 the mind, and against which his blindness 
 had before opposed a hopeless and invinci- 
 ble barrier. And tlie man who is destitute 
 of faith, will never know wiiat it is to feel 
 the charm of the peace-speaking blood of 
 Christ. But grant him faith ; and he will 
 not only be made alive to this charm, but 
 to a muhitude of other influences, all ema- 
 nating from the various truths of revela- 
 tion, through this intellectual organ, on the 
 heart of him who w-as at one time blind, 
 but has now been made to see. This will 
 help, in some measure, to clear up the per- 
 plexity to which we have just now adverted. 
 They who are under its darkening hiflu- 
 ence, conceive of the faitli which worketh 
 peace, that it has only to do with one doc- 
 trine, and that that one doctrine relates to 
 Christ, as a peace-offering for sin. Now, it 
 is very true, that it has to do with this one 
 doctrine ; but it has also to do with other 
 doctrines, all equally presented before it in 
 the very same record, and the view of all 
 which is equally to be had, from the very 
 same quarter of contemplation. In other 
 words, the very same opening of the men- 
 tal eye, through which the peace of the 
 gospel finds entrance into the bosom of a 
 faithful man, affords an entrance for the 
 righteousness of the gospel along with it. 
 The truth that Christ died for the sins of 
 the world, will cast upon his mind its ap- 
 propriate influence. But so also will the 
 truth that Christ is to judge the world, and 
 the truth that unless ye repent ye shall 
 perish, and the truth that they \vho have a 
 
11' 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 right to the tree of life, are they who keep 
 the commandments, and the truth that an 
 imrighteous man shall not inherit the king- 
 dom of God. If a man see not every one 
 object that is placed within the sphere of 
 his natural vision, he sees none of them, 
 and his whole body is full of darkness. If 
 a man believe the Bible to be the word of 
 (4od, he will read it ; but if he read it, and 
 believe not every one truth that lies within 
 the grasp of his understanding, he believes 
 none of them, and is in darkness, and 
 knoweth not v.^hither he is going. 
 
 If I open the door of my mind to the 
 word of God, I as effectually make it tlie 
 repository of various truths, as, if I open 
 the door of my chamber, and take in the 
 Bible, I make this chamber tlie repository 
 of the book, and of every chapter, and of 
 every verse, that is contained in it. I thus 
 bring my mind into contact with every one 
 influence, that every one truth is fitted to 
 exercise over it. If there be nothing in 
 these truths contradictory to each other, 
 (and if there be, let this set aside, as it 
 ought, the authority of the whole commu- 
 nication,) then the mind acts a right and 
 consistent part in believing each of them, 
 and in submitting itself to the influence of 
 each of them. And thus it is, that believing 
 the propitiation which is through the blood 
 of Christ, for tlie remission of sins that are 
 past, I may feel through him the peace of 
 reconciliation with the Father; and be- 
 lieving that he who cometh unto Christ for 
 forgiveness must forsake all, I may also 
 feel the necessity which lies upon me of 
 departing from all iniquity ; and believing 
 'that in myself there is no strength for the 
 accomplishment of such a task, I may look 
 aroiuid for other expedients, than such as 
 can be devised by my own natural wisdom, 
 or carried into effect by my own natural 
 energies; and believing that, in the hand 
 of Christ there are gifts for the rebellious, 
 and that one of these gifi s is the Holy Spirit 
 to strengthen his disciples, I may look to 
 him for my sanctification, even as I look 
 unto him for my redemption : and believing 
 that the gift is truly promised as an answer 
 to prayer, I may mingle a habit of prayer, 
 with a habit of watchfulness and of en- 
 deavour. And thus may I go abroad over 
 the whole territory of divine truth, and turn 
 to its legitimate account every separate por- 
 tion of it, and be in all a trusting, and a 
 working, and a praying, and a rejoicing, 
 and a trembling disciple, — and that, not be- 
 cause I have given myself up to the guidance 
 of clashing and contradictory principles, — 
 but because, with a faith commensurate to 
 the testimony of God, I give myself over 
 in my whole mind, and whole person, to 
 the authority of a whole Bible. 
 
 But secondly, let us take what some may 
 think a more restricted view of the object 
 
 of faith, and suppose it to be Jesus Chrisi 
 in his person and in his character, it is a 
 summary, but at the same time a most true 
 and substantial aflirmation, that we are 
 saved by faith in Chri.«t. And yet this very 
 aflirmation, true as it is, may have been so 
 misunderstood as to darken the minds of 
 many, into the very misconception that we 
 are attempting to expose. I could not be 
 said to have faith in an acquaintance, if I 
 believed not all that lie told me. Nor have 
 I faith in Christ, if I believe not every item 
 of that communication of which he is the 
 author, either by himself or by his mes- 
 sengers. So that faith in Christ, so far from 
 excluding any of the truths of the Bible, 
 comprehends our assent to them all. But 
 we are willing to admit, that the ph.rase is 
 calculated to fasten our attention more par- 
 ticularly on such truth as relates, in a more 
 immediate manner, to the person and the 
 doings of the Saviour. Take it in this 
 sense, and you will find, that though emi- 
 nently and directly fitted to work peace in 
 the heart of a believer, it is just as directly 
 and powerfully on the side of his practical 
 righteousness. When I think of Christ, and 
 think of him as one who has poured out his 
 soul unto the death for me, I feel a confi- 
 dence in drawing near unto God. When 
 employed in this contemplation, I look to 
 him as a crucified Saviour. But without 
 keeping mine eye for a single moment from 
 off his person, — without another exercise 
 of mind, than that by which I look unto 
 Jesus, simply and entirely, as he is set forth 
 unto me, — I also behold him at one time as 
 an exalted Saviour, and at another time as 
 a commanding Saviour, and at another time 
 as a strengthening Saviour. In other words, 
 by the mere work of faith in Christ, 1 bring 
 my heart into contact with all those motives, 
 and all those elements of influence, which 
 give rise to the new obedience of the gos- 
 pel. When the veil betwixt me and the 
 Saviour is withdrawn, — when God shines 
 in my heart with the light of the know- 
 ledge of his own glory in the face of his 
 Son, — when the Spirit" taketh of the things 
 of Christ, and showeth them unto me, and 
 I am asked which of the things it is tliat is 
 most fitted to arrest a convicted sinner, in 
 the midst of his cries and prayers for de- 
 liverance, — I would say, that it was Christ 
 lifted up on the cross of his oflTences, and 
 pouring out the blood of that mighty ex- 
 piation, by which the guilt of them all is 
 washed away. This is the rock on which 
 he will build all his hopes of acceptance 
 before God. He will look unto Christ and 
 be at peace. But this is not the only atti- 
 tude in which Christ is revealed to him. 
 He will look to Christ as an example. He 
 will look to him as a teacher. He will look 
 to him in all the capacities which are at- 
 tached to the person, or identified with the 
 
XVII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 115 
 
 doings of the Saviour. He will look to him, 
 asserting his right of authority and disposal 
 over tliose whom he has purchased unto 
 himself. He will, by the eye of faith, see 
 that rebuking glance which our Saviour cast 
 over the misconduct of his disciples. — and 
 which, when Peter saw, by the eye of siglit, 
 he was so moved by the spectacle, that he 
 went out and wept bitterly. That meek- 
 ness and gentleness of Christ, in the name 
 of which, Paul besought his disciples to 
 walk no more after the flesh, will be pre- 
 sent in its iniiuence on those who, though 
 they see him not, yet believe him, and have 
 their conceptions filled and satisfied with 
 his likeness. They will behold him to be 
 an exalted Prince, as well as an exalted Sa- 
 viour, and they will count it a faithful say- 
 ing, that he came to sanctify as well as re- 
 deem, — and they will look upwards to his 
 present might as a commander, as well as 
 forwards to his future majesty as a judge, — 
 and tliey will be thoroughly persuaded, that 
 to persevere in sin, is altogether to thwart 
 the great aim of the enterprize of our re- 
 demption, — and they will understand as 
 Paul did, who affirmed, with expostulations 
 and tears, that the enemies of righteousness 
 are also the enemies of the cross ; — and 
 thus, from Christ, in all his various attitudes, 
 will a moralizing power descend on the 
 hearts of those who really believe in him, — 
 and as surely as any man possesses the 
 faith that is in Christ Jesus, so surely will 
 he be sanctified by that faith. 
 
 And, thirdly, let us confine our attention 
 still farther, to one particular article of our 
 faith. Paul was determined to know no- 
 thing, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 
 Now, coaceive faith to attach itself to the 
 latter clause of this verse, and that Christ 
 crucified, for the time being, is the single 
 object of its contemplation. There is still 
 no such thing as a true faith, attaching 
 itself to this one object exclusively ; and 
 though at one time it may be the sole con- 
 templation which engrosses it, at other 
 times it may have other contemplations. If, 
 in fact, it shut out those other contempla- 
 tions, which are furnished by the subject- 
 matter of the testimony of God, it may be 
 proved now, and it will be proved in the 
 day of reckoning, to be no faith at all. But 
 just as it has been said, that the mind can 
 only think of one thing at a time, so faith 
 may be employed, for a time, in looking 
 only towards one object ; and as we said be- 
 fore, let Christ crucified be conceived to be 
 that one oliject. From what has been said 
 already, it will be seen, that this one exer- 
 cise of failli will not counteract the legiti- 
 mate effect of the other exercises. But we 
 should like to compute the influence of this 
 one exercise on the heart and life of a be- 
 liever. In the case of an Antinomian, the 
 doctrine of the atonement may furnish a 
 
 pretext and a pacification to his consciehce, 
 under a wilful habit of perseverance in 
 iniquity. But, if this partial faith of his be 
 nut a real faith, then we are not responsible 
 for his conduct, nor ought he to be at all 
 quoted as an exception against that alliance, 
 for which we are contending, between the 
 faith of the gospel and the cause of practical 
 righteousness. Only grant the faith to be 
 real, and as there is no one doctrine of the 
 Bible, out of which it may not gather a pu- 
 rifying influence to the heart, so out of this 
 doctrine of the atonement, will such a puri- 
 fying influence descend most abundantly on 
 the heart of every genuine believer. 
 
 For, it first takes away a wall of partition, 
 which, in the case of every man who has 
 not received this doctrine, lies across the 
 path of his obedience at the very com- 
 mencement. So long as I think that it is 
 quite impossible for me so to run as to ob- 
 tain, I will not move a single footstep. Un- 
 der the burden of a hopeless controversy 
 between me and God, I feel as it were 
 Aveighed down to the inactivity of despair, 
 I live without hope ; and so long as I do so, 
 I live without God in the world. And be- 
 sides, he, while the object of my terror, is 
 also the object of my aversion. The help- 
 less necessity under which I labour, so long 
 as the question of my guilt remains unset- 
 tled is to dread the Being whom I am com- 
 manded to love. I may occasionally cast a 
 feeble regard towards that distant and inac- 
 cessible Lawgiver : But so long as I view 
 him shrouded in the darkness of frowning 
 majesty, I can place in him no trust, and I 
 can bear towards him no filial tenderness. 
 I may occasionally consult the require- 
 ments of his law: But when I look to the 
 uncancelled sentence that is against me, I 
 can never tread, with hopeful or assured 
 footsteps, on the career of obedience. But 
 let me look unto Christ lifted up for our 
 oflfences, and see the hand-writing of ordi- 
 nances that was against us, and which M'as 
 contrary unto us, nailed to his cross, and 
 there blotted out and taken out of the way ; 
 and then I see the barrier in question level- 
 led with the ground. I now behold the way 
 of repentance cleared of the obstructions, 
 by which it was aforetime rendered utterly 
 impassable. This is the will of God — even 
 your sanctifieation, may be sounded a thou- 
 sand times in the ear of an unbeliever, and 
 leave him as immoveable as it found him; 
 because, while under a sense of unexpiated 
 guilt, he sees a mighty parapet before him, 
 which he cannot scale. But if the same 
 words be sounded in the ears of a believer, 
 they will put him into motion. For to him 
 the parapet is opened up, and the rough 
 way is made smooth, and the mountain and 
 the hill are brought low, and the valley of 
 separation is filled, and he is made to see 
 the salvation of God. The path of obedience 
 
116 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 is made level before him, and he enters it 
 With the inspiration of a new and invigora- 
 ting principle; and that love to God, which 
 the consciousness of guilt will ever l<.eep at 
 a distance from the heart, now takes up the 
 room of this terrifying, and paralysing, and 
 alienating sentiment; and the reception of 
 this doctrine of atonement is just as much 
 the turning point of a new character, as it 
 is the turning point of a new hope ; and it 
 is the very point, in the history of every 
 human soul, at which tiie alacrity of gospel 
 obedience takes its commencement, as well 
 as the cheerfulness of gospel anticipations. 
 Till this doctrine be believed, there is no 
 attempt at obedience at all ; or else, it is 
 such an obedience as is totally unanimated 
 by the life and the love of real godliness. 
 And it is not till this doctrine has taken 
 possession of the mind, that any man can 
 take up the language of the Psalmist, and 
 say, " Lord, I am thy servant, I am thy ser- 
 vant, thou hast loosed my bonds." 
 
 Conceive, then, a believer with the career 
 of obedience tlrns opened up and made 
 hopeful to him,— conceive him with the ne- 
 cessity of obedience made just as authen- 
 tically known to him as are the tidings of 
 his deliverance from guilt, — conceive a man 
 who, by the act of rendering homage to the 
 truth of God, rests a confidence in the death 
 of (Christ for pardon, and who also, by the 
 very same act, subscribes to the sayings of 
 Christ about repentance, and tlie new walk 
 of the new creature, — and then let me ask 
 you to think of the securities which encom- 
 pass his mind, and protect it from tlie delu- 
 sion that we liave already alluded to. We 
 have said that the peace whicli is felt in a 
 vague apprehension of God's mercy, and 
 which makes no account of his trutli, or of 
 his justice, has the effect of making him 
 who entertains it altogether stationary, in 
 point of acquirement. With the semblance 
 of good that he has about him, he will meet 
 the sterner attributes (.f tlie Deity. For his 
 defect of real good, he will draw on the in- 
 dulgent attributes of the Deity. He will 
 make the character of God, suit itself to his 
 own character, so that any stimulus to ad- 
 vance or to perfect it, shall be practically 
 done away. And thus it is, that along the 
 whole range of human accomplishment, 
 you may observe an unvaried state of re- 
 pose, — the repose, in fact, of death, — for the 
 repose of man wlio brought to the estimate 
 of a spiritual law, will be found, to use the 
 significant language of the Bible, dead in 
 trespasses and sins, — sinning at one time 
 without remorse, trusting at another time 
 without foundation. 
 
 Now the gospel scheme of mercy is clear 
 of this abuse altogether. It comes forth 
 upon the sinner with an antidote against 
 this security, just as strong and as promi- 
 nent as is its antidote against despair. In- 
 
 somuch that the state of the believer, in re- 
 spect of motive and of practical influence, 
 is the very reverse of what we have now 
 adverted to. In the act of becoming a be- 
 liever, he awakens from the deep and uni- 
 versal lethargy of nature. Witli his new 
 hope commences his new life. He ceases 
 to be stationary, — and what is more, he 
 never ceases to be progressive. He does 
 not satisfy himself with barely moving on- 
 wards to a higher point in the scale of hu- 
 man attainment, and then sitting down 
 with the sentiment that it is enough. He 
 never counts it enough. The practical atti- 
 tude of the believer is that of one who is 
 ever looking forwards. The practical move- 
 ment of the believer is that of one who is 
 ever pressing forwards. He could not, with- 
 out a surrender of those essential principles 
 which make him what he is, tarry at any 
 one point in the gradation of moral excel- 
 lence. It is not more inseparable from him 
 to be ever doing well, than it is inseparable 
 from hiin to be ever aspiring to do better. 
 So that the paltry question about the de- 
 grees and the comparisons of virtue, he en- 
 tertains not for a moment ; and, with all the 
 aids and expedients of the gospel for help- 
 ing his advancement, does he strenuously 
 prosecute the work of conforming to the 
 precept of the gospel, — to be growing in 
 grace, to be perfecting himself in holiness. 
 
 It has been a much controverted ques- 
 tion, how far this process of continual ad- 
 vancement will carry a believer in this 
 world. Some affirm it will carry him to 
 the point of absolute perfection. Others 
 more cautiously satisfy tliemselves by the 
 remark, that whether perfection be ever 
 our attainment or not, it ought always to 
 be our aim. And one thing seems to be 
 certain, — that there is no such perfection 
 in this world, as might bring along with it 
 the repose of victory. 
 
 Paul counted all that was behind as no- 
 thing, and he pressed onwards. And it is 
 the experience of every Christian, who 
 makes a real business of his sanctification, 
 that there is a struggle between nature and 
 grace, even unto the end. There is no dis- 
 charge from this warfare, wliile we are in 
 the body. To the last hour of life there 
 will be the presence of a carnal nature to 
 humble him, and to make him vigilant ; 
 and, with every true Christian, there will 
 be the ascendency of grace, so as that this 
 nature shall not have the dominion over 
 him. The corruption of the old man will 
 be effectually resisted ; but not, we fear, till 
 the materialism of our actual frames be re- 
 solved into dust, will this corruption be 
 destroyed. The flesh lusting against the 
 spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, is the 
 short but compendious descri()tion of the 
 state of every believer in the world ; — and 
 could the evil and adverse principle be 
 
XVII.] 
 
 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 117 
 
 eradicated, as well as overborne, — could a 
 living man bid the sinful propensity, with 
 all its workings and all its inclinations, 
 conclusively away from him, — could the 
 authority of the new creature obtain such 
 unrivalled sway over the whole machinery 
 of the affections and the doings, that re- 
 sistance was no longer felt,- and the battle was 
 brought to its termination, — if it were pos- 
 sible, we say, for a disciple, on this side of 
 the grave, to attain the eminency of a con- 
 dition so glorious, then we know not of 
 what use to him would be either a death 
 or a resurrection, or why he might not 
 bear his earthly tabernacle to heaven, and 
 set him down by direct translation amongst 
 the company of the celestial. But no ! 
 There hangs about the person of the most 
 pure and perfect Christian upon earth, 
 some mysterious necessity of dying. That 
 body, styled with such emphasis a vile 
 body, by the Apostle, must be pulverized 
 and made over again. And not till that 
 which is sown in corruption shall be raised 
 in incorruption, — not till that which is 
 sown in weakness shall be raised in power, 
 — not till that which is sown a natural 
 body shall be raised a spiritual body, — not 
 till the soul of man occupy another tene- 
 ment, and the body which now holds him 
 be made to undergo some unknown but 
 glorious transformation, will he know what 
 it is to walk at perfect liberty, and, with 
 the full play of his then emancipated 
 powers, to expatiate without frailty, and 
 without a flaw, in the service of his God. 
 
 We know that the impression which 
 many have of the disciples of the gospel is, 
 that their great and perpetual aim is, that 
 they may be justified, — that the change of 
 state which they are ever aspiring after, is 
 a change in their forensic state, and not in 
 their personal, — that if they can only at- 
 tain delivery from wrath, they will be sa- 
 tisfied, — and that the only use they make 
 
 of Christ, is, through his means, to obtain 
 an erasure of the sentence of their con- 
 demnation. Now, though this, undoubt- 
 edly, be one great design of the gospel, it 
 is not the design in which it terminates. 
 It may, in fact, be only considered as a 
 preparation for an ulterior accomplish- 
 ment altogether. Christ came to redeem 
 us from all iniquity, and to purify us unto 
 himself a peculiar people, zealous of good 
 works. It were selfishness under the guise 
 of sacredness, to sit down, in placid con- 
 tentment, with the single privilege of jus- 
 tification. It is only the introduction to 
 higher privileges. 
 
 But not till we submit to the righteous- 
 ness of Christ, as the alone meritorious 
 plea of our acceptance, shall we become 
 per.^onally righteous ourselves, — not till we 
 see the blended love and hoUness of the 
 Godhead, in our propitiation, shall w^e 
 know how to combine a confidence in his 
 mercy, with a reverence for his character, 
 — not till we look to that great transac- 
 tion, by which the purity of the divine na- 
 ture is -vindicated, and )-et the sinner is 
 delivered from the coming vengeance, shall 
 we be freed from the dominion of sin, or 
 be led to admire and to imitate the great 
 Pattern of excellence. The renewing Spirit, 
 indeed, is withheld from all those who 
 withhold their consent from the doctrine 
 of Christ, and of him crucified. Paid was 
 determined to know notliing else ; and it is 
 in this knowledge, and in this alone, that 
 we are renewed after the image of him 
 who created us. 
 
 Now the God of peace, that brought 
 again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that 
 great Shepherd of the sheep, through the 
 blood of the everlasting covenant, make 
 you perfect in every good work to do his 
 will, working in you that which is well- 
 pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, 
 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
DISCOURSES 
 
 APPLICATION OF CHRISTIANITl 
 
 TO THE 
 
 COMMERCIAL AND ORDINARY AFFAIRS OF LIFE. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following Discourses can be regarded in no other light, than as the frag- 
 ment of a subject far too extensive to be overtaken within a compass so narrow. 
 There has only a partial survey been taken of the morality of the actions that 
 are current among people engaged in merchandise : and with regard to the 
 morality of the affections which stir in their hearts, and give a feverish and 
 diseased activity to the pursuits of worldly ambition, this has scarcely been 
 touched upon, save in a very general way in the concluding discourse. 
 
 And yet, in the estimation of every cultivated Christian, this second branch of 
 the subject should be by far the most interesting, — as it relates to that spiritual 
 discipline by which the love of the world is overcome ; and by which all that 
 oppressive anxiety is kept in check, which the reverses and uncertainties of 
 business are so apt to inject into the bosom ; and by which the appetite that urges 
 him who hasteth to be rich is effectually restrained — so as to make it possible 
 for a man to give his hand to the duties of his secular occupation, and, at the same 
 time, to maintain that sacredness of heart which becomes every fleeting traveller 
 through a scene, all whose pleasures and whose prospects are so soon to pass away. 
 
 Should this part of the subject be resumed at some future opportunity, there 
 are two questions of casuistry connected with it, which will demand no small 
 degree of consideration. The first relates to the degree in which an affection for 
 present things, and present interests ought to be indulged. And the second is, 
 whether, on the supposition that a desire after the good things of the present life 
 were reduced down to the standard of the gospel, there would remain a sufficient 
 impulse in the world for upholding its commerce, at the rate which would secure 
 the greatest amount of comfort and subsistence to its families. 
 
 Without offering any demonstration, at present, upon this matter, we simply 
 state it as our opinion, that, though the whole business of the world were in the 
 hands of men thoroughly Christianised, and who, rating wealth according to its 
 real dimensions on the "high scale of eternity, were chastened out of all their 
 idolatrous regards to it — yet would trade, in these circumstances, be carried to the 
 extreme limit of its being really productive or desirable. An affection for riches, 
 beyond what Christianity prescribes, is not essential to any extension of com- 
 merce that is at all valuable or legitimate ; and in opposition to the maxim, that 
 the spirit of enterprise is the soul of commercial prosperity, do we hold, that it 
 is the excess of this spirit beyond the moderation of the New Testament, which, 
 pressing on the natural boundaries of trade, is sure, at length, to visit every 
 country where it operates, with the recoil of all those calamities, which in the 
 shape of beggared capitalists, and unemployed operatives, and dreary intervals 
 of bankruptcy and alarm, are observed to follow a season of overdone speculation 
 
DISCOURSE I. 
 
 On the mercantile Virtues which may exist without the Influence of Christianity. 
 
 " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, 
 whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there 
 be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things." — Philippians iv. 8. 
 
 The Apostle, in these verses, makes use of 
 certain terms, without ever once proposing 
 to advance any definition of their meaning. 
 He presumes on a common understanding 
 of this, between himself and the people 
 whom he is addressing. He presumes that 
 they know what is signified by Truth, and 
 Justice, and Loveliness, and the other mo- 
 ral qualities which are included in the enu- 
 meration of our text. They, in fact, had 
 words to express them, for many ages an- 
 tecedent to the coming of Christianity into 
 the world. Now, the very existence of the 
 words proves, that, before the gospel was 
 taught, the realities which they express 
 must have existed also. These good and 
 respectable attributes of character must 
 have been occasionally exemplified by 
 men, prior to tlie religion of the New Tes- 
 tament. The virtuous and the praisewor- 
 thy must, ere the commencement of the new 
 dispensation, have been met with in society 
 — for the Apostle does not take them up in 
 this passage, as if they were unknown and 
 unlieard of novelties — but such objects of 
 general recognition, as could be under- 
 stood on the bare mention of them, with- 
 out warning and without explanation. 
 
 But more than this. These virtues must 
 not only have been exemplified by men, 
 previous to the entrance of the gospel 
 amongst them — seeing that the terms, ex- 
 pressive of the virtues, were perfectly un- 
 derstood — but men must have known how 
 to love' and to admire them. How is it that 
 we apply the epithet lovely to any moral 
 qualification, but only in as far as that 
 qualification does in fact draw towards it a 
 sentiment of love? How is it that another 
 qualification is said to be of good report, 
 but in as far as it has received from men 
 an applauding or an honourable testimony? 
 The Apostle does not bid his readers have 
 respect to such tilings as are lovely, and 
 then, for the purpose of saving them from 
 error, enumerate what the things are which 
 he conceives to possess this qualification. 
 He commits the matter, with perfect con- 
 fidence, to their own sense and their own 
 apprehension. He bids them bear a re- 
 spect to whatsoever things are lovely — 
 nor does he seem at all suspicious that, by 
 so doing, he leaves them in any darkness 
 or uncertainty about the precise import of 
 the advice which he is delivering. He 
 therefore recognizes the competency of 
 
 men to estimate the lovely and the honour- 
 able of character. He appeals to a tribunal 
 in their own breasts, and evidently sup- 
 poses, that, antecedently to the light of the 
 Christian revelation, there lay scattered 
 among the species certain principles of feel- 
 ing and of action, in virtue of which, they 
 both occasionally exhibited what was just 
 and true, and of good report, and also 
 could render to such an exhibition, the ho- 
 mage of iheir regard and of their reverence. 
 At present we shall postpone the direct en- 
 forcement of these virtues upon the ob- 
 servation of Christians, and shall confine 
 our thoughts of them to the object of esti- 
 mating their precise importance and cha- 
 racter, when they are realised by those who 
 are not Christians. 
 
 WHiile we assert with zeal every doctrine 
 of Christianity, let us not forget that there 
 is a zeal without discrimination ; and that, 
 to bring such a spirit to the defence of our 
 faith, or of any one of its peculiarities, is 
 not to vindicate the cause, but to discredit 
 it. Now, there is a way of maintaining the 
 utter depravity of our nature, and of doing 
 it in such a style of sweeping and of ve- 
 hement asseveration, as to render it not 
 merely obnoxious to the taste, but obnoxious 
 to the understanding. On this subject there 
 is often a roundness and a temerity of an- 
 nouncement, wliich any intelligent man, 
 looking at the phenomena of human cha- 
 racter with his own eyes, cannot go along 
 with; and thus it is, that there are injudi- 
 cious defenders of orthodoxy, who have 
 mustered against it not merely a positive 
 dislike, but a positive strength of observa- 
 tion and argmnent. Let the nature of man 
 be a ruin, as it certainly is, it is obvious to 
 the most common discernment, that it does 
 not offer one unvaried and unalleviated 
 mass of deformity. There are certain 
 phases, and certain exhibitions of this na- 
 ture, which are more lovely than others — 
 certain traits of character, not due to the 
 operation of Christianity at all, and yet 
 calling forth our admiration and our ten- 
 derness — certain varieties of moral com- 
 plexion, far more fair and more engaging 
 than certain other varieties ; and to prove 
 that th.e gospel may have had no share in 
 the formation of them, they in fact stood 
 out to the notice and respect of the world 
 before the gospel Mas ever heard of The 
 classic page of antiquity sparkles with re 
 
120 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 peatcd exemplifications of what is bright 
 and beautiful in the character of man ; nor 
 do all its descriptions of external nature 
 waken up such an entlmsiasm of pleasure, 
 as when it bears testimony to some grace- 
 ful or elevated doing out of the history of 
 the species. And whether it be the kindli- 
 ness of maternal affection, or the unwearied- 
 ness of filial piety, or the constancy of tried 
 and unalterable friendship, or the earnest- 
 ness of devoted patriotism, or the rigour of 
 unbending fidelity, or any other of the re- 
 corded virtues which shed a glory over the 
 remembrance of Greece and of Rome — we 
 fully concede it to the admiring scholar, 
 that they one and all of them were some- 
 times exemplified in those days of Heathen- 
 ism ; and that, out of the materials of a pe- 
 riod, crowded as it was with moral abomi- 
 nations, there may also be gathered things 
 which are pure, and lovely, and true, and 
 just, and honest, and of good report. 
 
 What do we mean, then, it may be ask- 
 ed, by the universal depravity of man? 
 How shall we reconcile the admission now 
 made, with the unqualified and authorita- 
 tive language of the Bible, when it tells us 
 of the totality and the magnitude of human 
 corruption? Wherein lies that desperate 
 wickedness, which is every where ascribed 
 to all the men of all the families that be on 
 the face of the earth ? And how can such 
 a tribute of acknowledgment be awarded 
 to the sages and the patriots of antiquity, 
 who yet, as the partakers of our fallen na- 
 ture, must be outcasts from the favour of 
 God, and have the character of evil stamp- 
 ed upon the imaginations of the thoughts 
 of their hearts continually ? 
 
 In reply to these questions, let us speak 
 to your own experimental recollections on a 
 subject in which you are aided, both by 
 the consciousness of what passes within 
 you, and by your observation of the cha- 
 racters of others. Might not a sense of 
 honour elevate that heart which is totally 
 unfurnished with a sense of God? Might 
 not an impulse of compassionate feeling be 
 sent into that bosom which is never once 
 visited by a movement of duteous loyalty 
 towards the Lawgiver in heaven? Might 
 not occasions of intercourse with the be- 
 ings around us, develope whatever there is 
 in our nature of generosity, and friendship, 
 and integrity, and patriotism ; and yet the 
 imseen Being, who placed us in this thea- 
 tre, be neither loved, nor obeyed, nor listen- 
 ed to? Amid the manifold varieties of 
 human character, and the number of con- 
 stitutional principles v/hich enter into its 
 composition, might, thei-e not be an indi- 
 vidual in whom the constitutional virtues 
 so blaze forth and have the ascendency, as 
 to give a general effect of gracefulness to 
 the whole of this moral exhibition ; and yet, 
 may not that individual be as unmindful of 
 
 his God, as if the principles of his consti- 
 tiitiun had been mixed up in such a differ- 
 ent proportion, as to make him an odious 
 and a revolting spectacle? In a word, 
 might not Sensibility shed forth its tears, 
 and Friendship perform its services, and 
 Liberality impart of its treasure, and Pa- 
 triotism earn the gratitude of its country, 
 and Honour maintain itself entire and un- 
 tainted, and all the softenings of what is 
 amiable, and all the glories of what is 
 chivalrous and manl}^ gather into one 
 bright effulgency of moral accomplishment 
 on the person of him who never, for a sin- 
 gle day of his life, subordinates one habit, 
 or one affection, to the will of the Al- 
 mighty ; who is just as careless and as un- 
 concerned about God, as if the native ten- 
 dencies of his constitution had compounded 
 him into a monster of deformity ; and who 
 just as effectually realizes this attribute of 
 rebellion against his Maker, as the most 
 loathsome and profligate of the species, 
 that he walks in the counsel of his own 
 heart, and after the sight of h is own eyes ? 
 The same constitutional variety may be 
 seen on the lower fields of creation. You 
 there witness the gentleness of one animal, 
 the affectionate fidelity of another, the cruel 
 and ui;relenting ferocity of a third; and 
 you n' ver question the propriety of the 
 langu;.ge, when some of these instinctive 
 tendencies are better reported of than 
 others ; or when it is said of the former of 
 them, that they are the more fine, and amia- 
 ble, and endearing. But it does not once 
 occur to you, that, even in the very best of 
 these exhibitions, there is any sense of God^ 
 or that the great master-principle of his au- 
 thority is at all concerned in it. Transfer 
 this contemplation back again to our spe- 
 cies ; and under the same complexional dif- 
 ference of the more and the less lovely, or 
 the more and the less hateful, you will per- 
 ceive the same utter insensibility to the 
 consideration of a God, or the same utter 
 inefliciency on the part of his law to sub- 
 due human habits and human inclinations. 
 It is true, that there is one distinction be- 
 tween the two cases ; but it all goes to ag- 
 gravate the guilt and the ingratitude of 
 man. He has an understanding which the 
 inferior animals have not — and yet, with 
 this understanding, does he refuse practi- 
 cally to acknowdedge God. He has a con- 
 science, which they have not — and yet. 
 though it whisper in the ear of his inner 
 man the claims of an unseen legislator, 
 does he lull away his time in the slumbers 
 of indifference, and live without him in the 
 world. 
 
 Or go to the people of another planet, 
 over whom the hold of allegiance to their 
 maker is unbroken — in whose hearts the 
 Supreme sits enthroned, and throughout 
 the whole of whose history there runs the 
 
I.] 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY 
 
 121 
 
 perpetual and the unfailing habit of subor- 
 dination to his law. It is conceivable, that 
 with them too, there may be varipties of 
 temper and of natural inclination, and yet 
 all of them be under the effective control 
 of one great and imperious principle ; that 
 in subjection to the will of God, every kind 
 and eve'"'' honourable disposition is che- 
 rished to the uttermost ; and that in sub- 
 jection to the same will, every tendency to 
 anger, and malignity, and revenge, is re- 
 pressed at the first moment of its threatened 
 operation ; and that in this way, there will 
 be the fostering of a constant encourage- 
 ment given to the one set of instincts, and 
 the struggling of a constant opposition 
 made against the other. Now, only con- 
 ceive this great bond of allegiance to be 
 dissolved ; the mighty and subordinating 
 principle, which wont to wield an ascend- 
 ency over every movement and every af- 
 fection, to be loosened and done away ; and 
 then would this loyal, obedient world, be- 
 come what ours is, independent of Chris- 
 tianity. Every constitutional desire would 
 run out, in the unchecked spontaneity of 
 its own movements. The law of heaven 
 would furnish no counteraction to the im- 
 pulses and tendencies of nature. And tell 
 us, in these circumstances, when the re- 
 straint of religion was thus lifted off, and all 
 the passions let out to take their own tu- 
 multuous and independent career — tell us, 
 if, thougli amid the uproar of the licentious 
 and vindictive propensities, there did gleam 
 forth at times some of the finer and the 
 lovelier sympathies of nature — tell us, if 
 this would at all affect the state of that 
 world as a state of enmity against God ; 
 where his will was reduced to an element 
 of utter insignificancy ; where the voice of 
 their rightful master fell powerless on the 
 consciences of a listless and alienated fa- 
 mily; where humour, and interest, and 
 propensity — at one time selfish, and at an- 
 other social — took their alternate sway over 
 those hearts from which there was excluded 
 all effectual sense ofan overruling God. If he 
 be unheeded and disowned by the creatures 
 whom he has formed, can it be said to alle- 
 viate the deformity of their rebellion, that 
 they, at times, experience the impulse of 
 some amiable feeling which he hath im- 
 planted, or at times hold out some beau- 
 teousness of aspect which he hath shed over 
 them ? Shall the value of the multitude of 
 the gifts release them from their loyalty to 
 the giver ; and when nature puts herself 
 into the attitude of indifference or hostility 
 against him, now is it that the graces and 
 the accomplishments of nature can be plead 
 in mitigation of her antipathy to him, who 
 invested nature with all her graces, and up- 
 holds her in the display of all her accom- 
 plishments ? 
 The way, then, to assert the depravity of 
 16 
 
 man, is to fasten on the radical element of 
 depravity, and to show how deeply .t lies 
 incorporated with his moral constitution. 
 It is not by an utterance of rash and sweep- 
 ing totality to refuse him the possession of 
 what is kind in sympathy, or of what is 
 dignified in principle — for this were in the 
 face of all observation. It is to charge him 
 direct with his utter disloyalty to God. It 
 is to convict him of treason against the ma- 
 jesty of heaven. It is to press home upon 
 him the impiety of not caring about God. 
 It is to tell him, that the hourly and liabit- 
 ual language of his heart is, I will not have 
 the Being who made me to rule over me. 
 It is to go to the man of honour, and, while 
 we frankly award it to him that his pulse 
 beats high in the pride of integrity — it is to 
 tell him, that he who keeps it in living play, 
 and who sustains the loftiness of its move- 
 ments, and who, in one moment of time, 
 could arrest it for ever, is not in all his 
 thoughts. It is to go to the man of soft and 
 gentle emotions, and while we gaze in ten- 
 derness upon him — it is to read to him, out 
 of his own character, how the exquisite 
 mechanism of feeling may be in full ope- 
 ration, while he Avho framed it is forgotten ; 
 while he who poured into his constitution the 
 milk of human kindness, may never be ad- 
 verted to with one single sentiment of vene- 
 ration, or on one single purpose of obe- 
 dience ; while he who gave him his gentler 
 nature, who clothed him in all its adorn- 
 ments, and in virtue of whose appointment 
 it is, that, instead of an odious and a revolt- 
 ing monster, he is the much loved child of 
 sensibility, may be utterly disowned by 
 him. In a word, it is to go around among 
 all that Humanity has to offer in the shape 
 of fair and amiable, and engaging, and to 
 prove how deeply Humanity has revolted 
 against that Being who has done so much 
 to beautify and to exalt her. It is to prove 
 that the carnal mind, under all its varied 
 complexions of harshness, or of delicacy, is 
 enmity against God. It is to prove that 
 let nature be as rich as she may in moral 
 accomplishments, and let the most favoured 
 of her sons realize upon his own person the 
 finest and the fullest assemblage of them — 
 should he, at the moment of leaving this 
 theatre of display, and bursting loose from 
 the framework of mortality, stand in the 
 presence of his judge, and have the ques- 
 tion put to him. What hast thou done unto 
 me ? This man of constitutional virtue, with 
 all the salutations he got upon earth, and all 
 the reverence that he has left behind him^ 
 may, naked and defenceless, before him 
 who sitteth on the throne, be left without a 
 plea and without an argument. 
 
 God's controversy with our species, is 
 not, that the glow of honour or of human- 
 ity is never felt among them. It is, that 
 none of them understandeth, and none of 
 
122 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 them seeketh after God. It is, that he is 
 deposed from his rightful ascendency. It 
 is that he, who in fact inserted in the hu- 
 man bosom every one principle that can 
 embellish the individual possessor, or main- 
 tain ihe order of society, is banished alto- 
 gether from the circle of his habitual con- 
 templations. It is, that man taketh his way 
 in life as much at random, as if there was 
 no presiding Divinity at all ; and that, 
 whether he at one time grovel in the depths 
 of sensuality, or at another kindle with 
 some generous movement of sympathy or 
 of patriotism, he is at both times alike un- 
 mindful of liim to whom he owes his con- 
 tinuance and his birth. It is, that he moves 
 his every footstep at his own will ; and has 
 utterly discarded, from its supremacy over 
 him, the will of that invLsibie Master who 
 compasses all his goings, and never ceases 
 to pursue him by the claims of a resistless 
 and legitimate autliority. It is this which 
 
 for all that is manly in the accomplish- 
 ments of nature, disjoined from the faith ol 
 Christianity. They take up a separate 
 residence in the human character from the 
 principle of goaliness. Anterior to this re- 
 ligion, they go not to alleviate the guilt of 
 our departure from the living G'od ; and 
 subsequently to this religion, they may 
 blazon the character of him who stands out 
 against it ; but on the principles of a most 
 clear and intelligent equity, they never can 
 shield him from the condemnation and the 
 curse of those who have neglected the great 
 salvation. 
 
 The doctrine of the New Testament will 
 bear to be confronted with all that can be 
 met or noticed on the face of human .society. 
 And we speak most contidently to the ex- 
 perience of many who now hear us, when 
 we say, that often, in the course of their 
 manifold transactions, have they met the 
 man, whom the bribery of no advantage 
 
 is the essential or the constituting principle whatever could seduce into the slightest 
 of rebellion against God. This it is which deviation from the path of integrity — the 
 
 has exiled the planet we live in beyond the 
 limitsof his favoured creation — and whether 
 it be shrouded in tiie turpitude of licentious- 
 ness or cruelty, or occasionally brightened 
 with the gleam of the kindly and the honour- 
 able virtues, it is thus that it is seen as afar 
 off, by Him who sitteth on the throne, and 
 looketh on our strayed world, as athwart a 
 wide and dreary gulf of separation. 
 
 And when, prompted by love towards his 
 alienated children, he devised a way of re- 
 calling them — when, M'illing to pass over 
 all the ingratitude he had gotten from their 
 hands, he reared a patinvay of return, and 
 proclaimed a pardon and a welcome to all 
 who sliould walk upon it — when through 
 the offered Mediator, who magnified his 
 broken law, and upheld, by his mysterious 
 sacrifice, the dignity of that government, 
 which the children of Adam had disowned, 
 he invited all to come and be saved — 
 should this message be brought to the door 
 of the most honourable man upon earth, 
 and he turn in contempt and hostility away 
 from it, has not that man posted himself 
 more firmly than ever on the ground of re- 
 bellion ? Though an unsullied integrity 
 should rest upon all his transactions, and 
 the homage of confidence and respect be 
 awarded to him from every quarter of so- 
 ciety, has not this man, by slighting the 
 overtures of reconciliation, just plunged 
 himself the deeper in the guilt of a wilful 
 and determined ungodliness? Has not the 
 creature exalted itself above the Creator ; 
 and in the pride of those accomplishments, 
 which never would have invested his per- 
 son had not they come to him from above, 
 has he not, in the act of resisting the gospel, 
 aggravated the provocation of his whole 
 previous defiance to the author of it ? 
 Thus much for all that is amiable, and 
 
 man, who felt his nature within him put 
 into a state of the most painful indignancy. 
 at every thing that bore upon it the charac- 
 ter of a sneaking or dishonourable artifice — 
 the man, who positively could not be at 
 rest under the consciousness that he had 
 ever betrayed, even to his own heart, the 
 remotest symptom of such an inclinatioii- 
 aod whom, therefore, the unaided law of 
 justice and of truth has placed on a high 
 and deserved eminence in the walks of 
 honourable merchandize. 
 
 Let us not withhold from this charactei 
 the tribute of its most rightful admiration 
 but let us further ask, if, v.'ith all that he 
 thus possessed of native feeling and consti- 
 tutional integrity, you have never observed 
 in any such individual an utter emptiness 
 of religion ; and that God is not in all his 
 thoughts; and tj'.at, when he does Avhat 
 happens to be at one with the will of the 
 Lawgiver, it is not because he is impelled 
 to it by a sense of its being the will of the 
 Lawgiver, but because he is impelled to il 
 by the working of his own instinctive sen- 
 sibilities; and that, however fortunate, or 
 however estimable tliese sensibilities are. 
 they still consist with the habit of a mind 
 that is in a state of total indifference about 
 God ? Have you never read in your own 
 character, or observed in the character of 
 others, that the claims of the Divinity may 
 be entirely forgotten by the very man to 
 whom society aroimd him yield, and rightly 
 yield, the liomage of an unsullied and 
 honourable reputation ; that this man may 
 have all his foundations in the world ; that 
 every security on which he rests, and every 
 enjoyment upon which his iieart is set, lieth 
 on this side of death ; that a sense of the 
 coming day on which God is to enter into 
 judgment with him, is to every purpose of 
 
• I 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTTES WITHOVT CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 123 
 
 pfiiCtical ascendency, as good as expunged 
 altogether from his bosom ; that he is fai- 
 in desire, and far in enjoyment, and far in 
 habitual contemplation, away from that 
 God who is not far from any one of us ; 
 that his extending credit and his brighten- 
 ing prosperity, and his magnificent retreat 
 from business, with all the splendour of its 
 accommodations — that these are the futuri- 
 ties at which he terminates ; and that he 
 goes not in thought beyond them to that 
 eternity, which in the flight of a few little 
 years, will absorb all, and annihilate all ? 
 In a word, have you never observed the 
 man, who, with all that was right in mer- 
 cantile principle, and all that was open and 
 unimpeachable in the habit of his mercan- 
 tile transactions, lived in a state of utter 
 estrangement from the concerns of immor- 
 tality ? who, in reference to God, persisted, 
 from one year to another, in the spirit of a 
 deep slumber? who, in reference to the 
 man that tries to awaken him out of his 
 lethargy, recoils, with the most sensitive 
 dislike, from the faithfulness of his minis- 
 trations ? who, in reference to the Book 
 which tells him of his nakedness and his 
 guilt, never consults it with one practical 
 aim, and never tries to penetrate beyond 
 that aspect of mysteriousness which it holds 
 out to an undiscerning world ? who attends 
 not church, or attends it with all the life- 
 lessness of a form ? who reads not his Bible, 
 or reads it in the discharge of a self-pre- 
 scribed and unfruitful task ? who prays not, 
 or prays with the mockery of an unmean- 
 ing observation? and, in one word, who 
 while surrounded by all those testimonies 
 which give to man a place of moral dis- 
 tinction among his fellows, is living in utter 
 carelessness about God, and about all the 
 avenues which lead to him ? 
 
 Now, attend for a moment to what that 
 is which the man has, and to what that is 
 which he lias not. He has an attribute of 
 character which is in itself pure, and lovely, 
 and honourable, and of good report. He 
 has a natural principle of integrity ; and 
 under its impulse he may be carried for- 
 ward to such fine exhibitions of himself, as 
 are worthy of all admiration. It is very 
 noble, when the simple utterance of his 
 word carries as much security along with 
 it as if he had accompanied that utterance 
 by the signatures, and the securities, and 
 the legal obligations which are required of 
 other men. It might tempt one to be proud 
 of his species when he looks at the faith 
 that is put in him by a distant correspon- 
 dent, who, without one other hold of him 
 than his honour, consigns to him the wealth 
 of a whole flotilla, and sleeps in the confi- 
 dence that it is safe. It is indeed an animat- 
 ing thought, amid the gloom of this world's 
 depravity, when we behold the credit which 
 one man puts in another, though separated 
 
 by oceans and by continents ; when he fixes 
 the anchor of a sure and steady dependence 
 on the reported honesty of one whom he 
 never saw ; when, with all his fears for the 
 treachery of the varied elements, through 
 which his property has to pass, he knows, 
 that should it only arrive at the door of its 
 destined agent, all his fears and all his sus- 
 picions may be at an end. We know nothing 
 finer than such an act of homage from one 
 human being to another, when perhaps the 
 diameter of the globe is between them; nor 
 do we think that either the renown of her 
 victories, or the wisdom of her councils, so 
 signalizes the country in which we live, as 
 does the honourable dealing of her mer- 
 chants ; that all the glories of British policy, 
 and Biitish valour, are far eclipsed by the 
 moral splendour wiiich British faith has 
 thrown over the name and the character of 
 our nation ; nor has she gathered so proud 
 a distinction from all the tributaries of her 
 power, as she has done from the awarded 
 confidence of those men of all tribes, and 
 colours, and languages, who look to our 
 agency for the most faithful of all manage- 
 ment, and to our keeping for the most un- 
 violable of all custody. 
 
 There is no denying, then, the very ex- 
 tended prevalence of a principle of integrity 
 in the commercial world ; and he m ho has 
 such a principle within him, has tliat to 
 which all the epithets of our text may 
 rightly be appropriated. But it is just as 
 inipossible to deny, that, with this thing 
 which he has, there may be another thing 
 which he has not. He may not have one 
 duteous feeling of reverence which points 
 upward to God. He may not have one 
 wish, or one anticipation, which points for- 
 ward to eternity. He may not have any 
 sense of dependence on the Being who sus- 
 tains him ; and who gave him his \ery 
 principle of honour, as part of that interior 
 furniture which he has put into his bosom ; 
 and who surrounded him with the theatre 
 on which he has come forward with the 
 finest and most illustrious displays of it; 
 and who set the whole machinery of his 
 sentiment and action agoing; and can, by 
 a single word of his power, bid it cease 
 from the variety, and cease from the grace- 
 fulness of its movements. In other Avords. 
 he is a man of integrity, and yet he is a 
 man of ungodliness. 
 
 He is a man born for the confidence and 
 the admiration of his fellows, and yet a man 
 whom his Maker can charge with utter de- 
 fecticm from all the principles of a spiritual 
 obedience. He is a man whose virtues have 
 blazoned his own character in time, and 
 have upheld the interests of society, and 
 yet a man who has not, by one movement 
 of principle, brought himself nearer to the 
 kingdom of heaven, than the most profli- 
 gate of the species. The condemnation, that 
 
124 
 
 ON THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 he is an alien from God, rests upon him in 
 all the weight of its unmitigated severity. 
 The threat, that they who forget God shall 
 be turned into hell, will, on the great day 
 of its fell and sweeping operation, involve 
 him among the wretched outcasts of eter- 
 nity. That God from whom, while in the 
 world, he withheld every due offering of 
 gratitude, and remembrance, and universal 
 subordination of habit and of desire, will 
 show him to his face, how, under the delu- 
 sive garb of such sympathies as drew upon 
 him the love of his acquaintances, and of 
 such integrities as drew upon him their re- 
 spect and their confidence, he was in fact a 
 determined rebel against the authority of 
 heaven ; that not one commandment of the 
 law, in the true extent of its interpretation, 
 was ever fulfilled by him ; that the pervad- 
 ing principle of obedience to this law, which 
 is love to God, never had its ascendency 
 over him ; that the beseeching voice of the 
 Lawgiver, so offended and so insulted — but 
 who, nevertheless, devised in love a way of 
 reconciliation for the guilty, — never had the 
 effect of recalling him; that, in fact, he 
 neitiier had a wish for the friendship of 
 God, nor cherished the hope of enjoying 
 him, and that therefore, as he lived without 
 hope, so he lived without God in the world; 
 finding all his desire, and all his sufficiency, 
 to be somewhere else, than in that favour 
 which is better than life, and so, in addition 
 to the curse of having continued not in all 
 the words of the book, of God's law to do 
 them, entailing upon himself the mighty 
 aggravation of having neglected all the of- 
 fers of his gospel. 
 
 We say, then, of this natural virtue, what 
 our Saviour said of the virtue of the Phari- 
 sees, many of whom were not extortioners, 
 as other men — that, verily, it hath its re- 
 ward. When disjoined from a sense of God, 
 it is of no religious estimation whatever; 
 nor will it lead to any religious blessing, 
 either in time or in eternity. It has, however, 
 its enjoyments annexed to it, just as a fine 
 taste has its enjojnnents annexed to it; and 
 in these it is abundantly rewarded. It is 
 exempted from that painfulness of inward 
 feeling which nature has annexed to every 
 act of departure from honesty. It is sus- 
 tained by a conscious sense of rectitude and 
 elevation. It is gratified by the homage of 
 society ; the members of which are ever 
 ready to award the tribute of acknowledg- 
 ment to those virtues that support the in- 
 1;erests of society. And finally, it may be 
 
 said, that prosperity, with some occasional 
 variations, is the general accompaniment ol 
 that credit, which every man of undeviat- 
 ing justice is sure to draw around him. But 
 what reward will you tell us is due to him 
 on the great day of the manifestation of 
 God's righteousness, when, in fact, he has 
 done nothing unto God 1 What recompence 
 can be awarded to him out of those books 
 which are then to be opened, and in which 
 he stands recorded as a man overcharged 
 with the guilt of spiritual idolatry ? How 
 shall God grant unto him the reward of a 
 servant, when the service of God was not the 
 principle of his doings in the world ; and 
 when neither the justice he rendered to 
 others, nor the sensibility that he felt for 
 them, bore the slightest character of an of- 
 fering to his Maker? 
 
 But wherever the religious principle has 
 taken possession of the mind, it animates 
 these virtues with a new spirit; and when 
 so animated, all such things as are pure, 
 and lovely, and just, and true, and honest, 
 and of good report, have a religious import- 
 ance and character belonging to them. The 
 text forms part of an epistle addressed to 
 all the saints in Christ Jesus, which were 
 at Philippi ; and the lesson of the text is 
 matter of direct and authoritative enforce- 
 ment on all who are saints in Christ Jesus 
 at the present day. Christianity, with the 
 weight of its positive sanctions on the side 
 ofwhat is amiable and honourable in hu- 
 man virtue, causes such an influence to rest 
 on the character of its genuine disciples, 
 that, on the ground both of inflexible jus- 
 tice and ever-breathing charity, they are 
 ever sure to leave tlie vast majority of the 
 world behind them. Simplicity and godly 
 sincerity form essential ingredients of that 
 peculiarity by which they stand signalized 
 in the midst of an ungodly generation. The 
 true friends of the gospel, tremblingly alive 
 to the honour of their master's cause, blush 
 for the disgrace that has been brought on it 
 by men who keep its sabbaths, and yield an 
 ostentatious homage to its doctrines and its 
 sacraments. They utterly disclaim all fel- 
 lowship with that vile association of cant 
 and of duplicity, which has sometimes been 
 exemplified, to the triumph of the enemies 
 of religion ; and they both feel the solemn 
 truth, and act on the authority of the say- 
 ing, that neither thieves, nor liars, nor ex- 
 tortioners, nor unrighteous persons, have 
 any part in the kingdom of Christ and of 
 God. 
 
n.] 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, &C. 
 
 125 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 The Influence of Christianity in aiding and augmenting the mercantile Virtues. 
 
 ■ For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men." — Romans xiv. 18. 
 
 We have already asserted the natural ex- 
 istence of such principles in the heart of 
 man, as lead him to many graceful and to 
 many honourable exhibitions of character. 
 We have further asserted, that this formed 
 no deduction whatever from that article of 
 orthodoxy which affirms the utter depravity 
 of our nature ; that the essence of this de- 
 pravity lies in man having broken loose 
 from the authority of God, and delivered 
 himself wholly up to the guidance of his 
 own inclinations ; that though some of these 
 inclinations are in themselves amiable fea- 
 tures of human character, and point in their 
 effects to what is most useful to human 
 society, yet devoid as they all are of any 
 reference to the will and to the rightful 
 sovereignty of the Supreme Being, they 
 could not avert, or even so much as alle- 
 viate that charge of ungodliness, which may 
 be fully carried round amongst all the sons 
 and daughters of the species ; that they fur- 
 nish not the materials of any valid or satis- 
 factory answer to the question, " What hast 
 thou done unto God ?" and that whether 
 they are the desires of a native rectitude, or 
 the desires of an instinctive benevolence, 
 they go not to purge away the guilt of hav- 
 ing no love, and no care for the Being who 
 formed and who sustains them. 
 
 But what is more. If the virtues and ac- 
 complishments of nature are at all to be 
 admitted into the controversy between God 
 and man. instead of forming any abatement 
 upon the enormity of our guilt, they stamp 
 upon it the reproach of a still deeper and 
 more determined ingratitude. Let us con- 
 ceive it possible, for a moment, that the 
 beautiful personifications of scripture were 
 all realized ; that the trees of the forest clap- 
 ped their hands unto God, and that the isles 
 were glad at his presence ; that the little 
 hills shouted on every side, and that the 
 vallies covered OA'er with corn sent forth 
 their notes of rejoicing ; that the sun and 
 the moon praised him, and the stars of light 
 joined in the solemn adoration ; that the 
 voice of glory to God was heard from every 
 mountain and from every water-fall ; and 
 that all nature, animated throughout by the 
 consciousness of a pervading and presiding 
 Deity, burst into one loud and universal 
 song of gralulation. Would not a strain of 
 greater loftiness be heard to ascend from 
 those regions where the all-working God 
 had left the traces of his own immensity, 
 than from the tamer and the humbler 
 
 scenery of an ordinary landscape? Would 
 not you look for a gladder acclamation 
 from the fertile field, than from the arid 
 waste, where no character of grandeur 
 made up for the barrenness that was around 
 you? Would not the goodly tree, com- 
 passed about with the glories of its summer 
 foliage, lift up an anthem of louder grati- 
 tude' than the lowly shrub that grew be- 
 neath it? Would not the flower, from 
 whose leaves every hue of loveliness was 
 reflected, send forth a sweeter rapture than 
 the russet w-eed, which never drew- the eye 
 of any admiring passenger? And in a 
 word, wherever you saw the towering emi- 
 nences of nature, or the garniture of her 
 more rich and beauteous adornments, -would 
 it not be there that you looked for the deep- 
 est tones of devotion, or there for the ten- 
 derest and most exquisite of its melodies? 
 
 There is both the sublime of character, 
 and the beauteous of character exemplified 
 upon man. We have the one in that high 
 sense of honour which no interest and no 
 terror can seduce from any of its obliga- 
 tions. We have the other in that kindli- 
 ness of feeling, which one look, or one sigh 
 of imploring distress can touch into liveliest 
 sympathy. Only grant that we have no- 
 thing either in the constitution of our spirits, 
 or in the structure of our bodies, which we 
 did not receive; and that mind, with all its 
 Aarieties, is as much the product of a creat- 
 ing hand, as matter in all its modifications; 
 and then, on the face of human society, do we 
 witness all the gradations of a moral scenery, 
 which may be directly referred to the opera- 
 tion of him who worketh all in all. It is our 
 belief, that, as to any effectual sense of God, 
 there is as deep a slumber througliout the 
 whole of this world's living and rational 
 generations, as there is throughout all the 
 diversities of its mute and unconscious ma- 
 terialism ; and that to make our alienated 
 spirits again alive unto the Father of them, 
 calls for" as distinct and as miraculous an 
 exertion of the Divinity, as would need to 
 be put forth in the act of turning stones into 
 the children of Abraham. Conceive this to 
 be done then — and that a quickening and a 
 realizing sense of the Deity pervaded all the 
 men of our species — and that each knew 
 how to refer his own endowments, with an 
 adequate expression of gratitude to the un- 
 seen author of them — from whom we ask of 
 all these various individuals, would you look 
 for the halleluiahs of devoutest- ecstacv ■? 
 
126 
 
 INFLUKNCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN 
 
 [disc. 
 
 Would it not be from him whom God had 
 arraynd in the splendour of nature's bright- 
 est accomplishments ? Would it not bo from 
 him, with whose constitutional feelings the 
 movements of honour and benevolence were 
 in fullest harmony? Would it not be from 
 him whom his Maker had cast into the hap- 
 piest mould, and attempered into sweetest 
 unison with all that was kind, and generous, 
 and lovely, and ennobled by the loftiest emo- 
 tions, and raised above his fellows into the 
 finest spectacle of all tliat was graceful and 
 all that was manly? Surely, if the posses- 
 sion of these moralities be just another 
 theme of acknowledgment to tlie Lord of 
 the spirits of all flesh, then, if the acknow- 
 ledgment be withheld, and these moralities 
 have taken up their residence in the bosom 
 of him who is utterly devoid of piety, they 
 go to aggravate the reproach of his ingrati- 
 tude ; and to prove, that of all the men upon 
 earth who are far from God, he stands at 
 the widestdistance,he remains proof against 
 the weightiest claims, and he, of the dead 
 in trespasses and sins, is the most profoundly 
 asleep to the call of religion, and to the su- 
 premacy of its righteous obligations. 
 
 It is by argument such as this, that we 
 would attempt to convince of sin, those 
 who have a righteousness that is without 
 godliness ; and to prove, that, with the pos- 
 session of such things as are pure, and 
 lovely, and honest, and of good report, they 
 in fact can only be admitted to reconcilia- 
 tion with God, on the same footing with 
 the most worthless and profligate of the 
 species ; and to demonstrate, that they are 
 ni the very same state of need and of naked- 
 ness, and are therefore children of wrath, 
 even as others; that it is only through faith 
 in the preaching of the gospel of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ that they can be saved ; and 
 that unless brought down from the delusive 
 eminency of their own conscious attain- 
 ments, they take their forgiveness through 
 the blood of the Redeemer, and their sanc- 
 tification through the spirit which is at his 
 giving, they shall obtain no part in that in- 
 heritance which is incorruptible and unde- 
 filed, and wliich fadeth not away. 
 
 But the gospel of Jesus Christ does some- 
 thing more than hold out a refuge to the 
 guilty. It takes all those who accept of its 
 overtures under its supreme and exclusive 
 direction. It keeps by them in the way of 
 counsel and exhortation, and constant su- 
 perintendence. The grace which it r(;veals, 
 is a grace which not merely saves all men, 
 but which teaches all men. He who is the 
 proposed Saviour, also claims to be the 
 alone master of those who put their trust 
 in him. His cognizance extends itself over 
 the whole line of their history ; and there is 
 not an affection of their heart, or a deed 
 of their visible conduct, over which he does 
 not assert the right of an authority that is 
 
 above all control, and that refuses all rival 
 
 ship. 
 
 Now, we want to point your attention to 
 a distinction which obtains between one set 
 and another set of his requirements. By 
 the former, we are enjoined to practise cer- 
 tain virtues, which se[)arately from his in- 
 junction altogether, are in great demand, and 
 in great reverence, amongst the members of 
 society—such as compassion, and generosity, 
 and justice, and truth ; whici), independently 
 of tlie religious sanction they obtain from 
 the law of the Saviour, are in themselves so 
 lovely, and so honourable, and of such good 
 report, that they are ever sure to carry 
 general applause along with them, and thus 
 to combine both the characteristics of our 
 text — that he vvlio in these things serveth 
 Christ, is both acceptable to God, and ap- 
 proved of men. 
 
 But there is another set of requirements, 
 where the will of God, instead of being 
 seconded by the apj)lause of men, is utterly 
 at variance with it. There are some who 
 can admin; the generous sacrifices that are 
 made to truth or to friendship, but who, 
 without one opposing scruple, abandon 
 themselves to all the excesses of riot and 
 festivit}^, and are therefore the last to admire 
 the puritanic soliriety of him whom they 
 cannot tempt to put liis chastity or his tem- 
 perance away from him ; though the same 
 God, who bids us lie not one to another, 
 also bids us keep tlie body under subjec- 
 tion, and to abstain from fleshly lusts which 
 war against the soul. Again, there are 
 some in Avhose eye an nnvitiated delicacy 
 looks a beautiful and an interesting specta- 
 cle, and an undeviating self-control looks a 
 manly and respectable accomplishment ; 
 but Vvho have no taste in themselves, and 
 no admiration in others, for the more direct 
 exercises of religion ; and who positively 
 hate the strict and unbending preciseness 
 of those who join in every ordinance, and 
 on every returning night celebrate the 
 praises of God in their family ; and that, 
 thougli the heavenly Lawgiver, M'ho tells 
 us to live righteously and soberly, tells us 
 also to live godly in the present evil world. 
 And lastly, tliere are some who have not 
 merely a toleration, but a liking for all the 
 decencies of an established observation ; 
 but who, with the homage they pay to 
 sabbatlis and to sacraments, nauseate the 
 Chiistian principle in the supreme and re- 
 generating vitality of its influences; who, 
 under a general religiousness of aspect, are 
 still in fact the children of the world — and 
 therefore hate the children of light in all 
 that is peculiar and essentially characteris- 
 tic of that high designation ; who under- 
 stand not what is meant by having our con- 
 versation in heaven ; and utter strangers to 
 the separated walk, and the spiritual exer- 
 cises, and the humble devoted ncss, and the 
 
n.J 
 
 AUGMENTING THE MARCANTILE VIRTUES. 
 
 127 
 
 consecrated affections, of the new creature 
 in Jesus Christ, shrink from them aUo- 
 gether as from the extravagancies of a fa- 
 naticism in which they have no share, and 
 with which they can have no sympatliy — 
 ind all this, though the same scripture 
 which prescribes the exercises of household 
 and of public religion, lays claim to an 
 undivided authority over all the desires and 
 affections of the soul ; and will admit of no 
 compromise between God and the world ; 
 and insist upon an utter deadncss to the 
 one, and a most vehement sensibility to the 
 other ; and elevates the standard of loyalty 
 to the Father of our Spirits, to the lofty 
 pitch of loving him with all our strength, 
 and of doing all things to his glory. 
 
 Let these examples serve to impress a 
 real and experimental distinction which 
 obtains between two sets of virtues ; be- 
 tween those which possess the single ingre- 
 dient of being approved by God, while they 
 want the ingredient of being also accepta- 
 ble unto men — and those which possess 
 both these ingredients, and to the observ- 
 ance of which, therefore, we may be carried 
 by a regard to the will of God, without any 
 reference to the opinion of men — or by a 
 regard to the opinion of men, without any 
 reference to the will of God. Among the 
 first class of virtues we would assign a 
 foremost place to all those inward and 
 spiritual graces which enter into the obe- 
 dience of the affections — highly approved 
 of God, but not at all acceptable to the gene- 
 ral taste, or carrying along with them the 
 general congeniality of the world. And 
 then, though they do not possess the ingre- 
 dient of God's approbation in a way so 
 separate and unmixed, we would say that 
 abstinence from profane language, and at- 
 tendance upon church, and a strict keeping 
 of the sabbath, and the exercises of family 
 worship, and the more rigid decrees of so- 
 briety, and a fearful avoidance of every en- 
 croachment on temperance or chastity, 
 rank more appropriately with the first than 
 with the second class of virtues ; for though 
 there be many in society who have no re- 
 ligion, and yet to whom several of these 
 virtues are acceptable, yet you will allow, 
 that they do not convey such a universal 
 popularity along with them, as certain other 
 virtues wliich belong indisputably to the 
 second class. These are the virtues which 
 have a more obvious and immediate bearing 
 on the interest of society — such as the truth 
 which is punctual to all its engagements, 
 and the honour which never disappoints the 
 confidence it has inspired, and the compas- 
 sion which cannot look unmoved at any of 
 the symptoms of human wretchedness, and 
 the generosity which scatters unsparingly 
 around it. These are virtues which God 
 has enjoined, and in behalf of which man 
 lifts the testimony of a loud and ready ad- 
 
 miration — virtues in which there is a meet- 
 ing and a combining of both the properties 
 of our text; so that he who in these things 
 serveth Christ, is both approved of GoS, 
 and acceptable unto men. 
 
 Let a steady hold be kept of this distinc- 
 tion, and it will be found capable of being 
 turned to very useful application, both to 
 the object of illustrating principle, and to 
 the important object of detecting character. 
 For this purpose, let us carry the distinc- 
 tion along with us, and make it subservient 
 to the establishment of two or three succes- 
 sive observations. 
 
 First. A man may possess, to a consider- 
 able extent, the second class of virtues, and 
 not possess so much as one iota of tlie reli- 
 gious principle ; and that among other rea- 
 sons, because a man may feel a \alue for 
 one of the attributes which belongs to this 
 class of virtues, and have no value what- 
 ever for the other attribute. If justice be 
 both approved by God, and acceptable to 
 men, he may on the latter property alone, 
 be induced to the strictest maintenance of 
 this virtue — and that without suffering its 
 former property to have any practii-al in- 
 fluence whatever on any of his habits, or 
 any of his determinations , and the same 
 with every other virtue belonging to this 
 second class. As residing in his character, 
 there may not be the ingredient of godli- 
 ness in any one of them. He may be well 
 reported on account of them by men ; but 
 with God he may lie under as fearful a 
 severity of reckoning, as if he wanted them 
 altogether. Surely, it does not go to alle- 
 viate the withdrawment of your homage 
 from God, that you have such an homage 
 to the opinion of men, as influences you to 
 do things, to the doing of which the law of 
 God is not able to influence you. It cannot 
 be said to palliate the revolting of your in- 
 clinations from the Creator, that you have 
 transferred them all to the creature ; and 
 given an ascendency to the voice of human 
 reputation, which j'ou have refused to the 
 voice and authority of your Lawgiver in 
 heaven. Your want of subordination to 
 him, is surely not made up by the respectful 
 .subordination that you render to the taste 
 or the judgment of society. And in addi- 
 tion to this, we would have you to remem- 
 ber, that though other constitutional prin- 
 ciples, besides a regard to the opinion of 
 others, helped to form the virtues of the 
 second class upon your character ; though 
 compassion and generosity, and truth, 
 would have broken out into full and flou- 
 rishing display upon you, and that, just be- 
 cause you had a native sensibility, or a na- 
 tive love of rectitude ; yet, if the first 
 ingredient be wanting, if a regard to the 
 approbation of God have no share in the 
 production of the moral accomplishment — 
 then all the morality you can pretend to, is 
 
128 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 [disc. 
 
 of as little religious estimation, and is as 
 utterly disconnected with the rewards of 
 religio i, as all the elegance of taste you can 
 pretend to, or all the raptured love of music 
 you can pretend to, or all the vigour and 
 dexterity of bodily exercise j'ou can pre- 
 tend to. All these, in reference to the great 
 question of immortality, profit but little; 
 and it is godliness alone that is profitable 
 unto all things. It is upon this considera- 
 tion th;it we would have you to open your 
 eyes to the nakedness of your condition in 
 the sight of God ; to look to the full weight 
 of the charge that he may prefer against 
 you ; to estimate the fearful extent of the 
 deficiency under which you labour ; to re- 
 sist the delusive whispering of peace, when 
 there is no peace ; and to understand, that 
 the wrath of God abideth on every child of 
 nature, however rich he may be in the vir- 
 tues and accomplishments of nature. 
 
 But again. This view of the distinction 
 between the two sets of virtues, will serve 
 to explain how it is, that, in the act of turn- 
 ing unto God, the one class of them appears 
 to gather more copiously, and more con- 
 spicuously, upon the front of a renewed 
 character, than the other class; how it is 
 that the former wear a more unequivocal 
 aspect of religiousness than the latter ; how 
 it is, that an air of gravity, and decency, 
 and seriousness, looks to be more in alliance 
 with sanctity, than the air either of open 
 integrity, or of smiling benevolence ; how 
 it is, that the most ostensible change in the 
 habit of a converted profligate, is thai 
 change in virtue of which he withdraws 
 himself from the companions of his licen- 
 tiousness ; and that to renounce the dissi- 
 pations of his former life stands far more 
 frequently, or, at least, far more visibly, as- 
 sociated with the act of putting on Chris- 
 tianity, than to renounce the dishonesties of 
 his form* r life. It is true, that, by the law of 
 the gospel he is laid as strictly under the 
 authority of the commandment to live righ- 
 teously, as of the commandment to live 
 soberly. But there is a compound cha- 
 racter in those virtues which are merely 
 social ; and the presence of the one ingre- 
 dient serves to throw into the shade, or to 
 disguise altogether, the presence of the other 
 ingredient. There is a greater number of 
 irreligious men, who are at the same time 
 just in their dealings, than there is of irre- 
 ligious men, who are at the same time pure 
 and temperate in their habits: and there- 
 fore it is that justice, even the most scrupu- 
 lous, is not so specifical, and of course not 
 so satisfying a mark of religion, as is a so- 
 briety that is rigid and unviolable. And 
 all this helps to explain how it is, that when 
 a man comes under the power of religion, 
 to abandon the levities of his past conduct 
 is an event which stands far more notice- 
 ably out upon him, at this stage of his his- 
 
 tory, than to abandon the iniquities of his 
 past conduct; that the most characteristic 
 transformation which takes place at such a 
 time, is a transformation from thoughtless- 
 ness, and from licentious gaiety, and from 
 the festive indulgencies of those with whom 
 he is wont to run to all those excesses of 
 riot, of which the Apostle says, that they 
 which do these things shall not inherit the 
 kingdom of God ; for even then, and in the 
 very midst of all his impiety, he may have 
 been kindhearted, and there might be no 
 room upon his person for a visible trans- 
 formation from inhumanity of character, 
 even then, he may have been honourable, 
 and there might be as little room for a 
 visible transformation from fraudulency of 
 character. 
 
 Thirdly. Nothing is more obvious than 
 the antipathy that is felt by a certain class 
 of religionists against the preaching of good 
 works ; and the antipathy is assuredly well 
 and warrantably grounded, when it is such 
 a preaching as goes to reduce the import- 
 ance, or to infringe upon the simplicity, of 
 the great doctrine of justification by faith, 
 but along with this, may there not be re- 
 marked the toleration with which they will 
 listen to a discourse upon one set of good 
 works, and the evident coldness and dis- 
 like with which they listen to a discourse on 
 another set of them ; how a pointed remon- 
 strance against Sabbath breaking sounds in 
 their ears as if more in character from the 
 pulpit, than a pointed remonstrance against 
 the commission of theft, or the speaking of 
 evil ; how an eulogium on the observance 
 of family worship, feels, in their taste, to be 
 more impregnated with the spirit of sacred- 
 ness, than an eulogium on the virtues of 
 the shop, or of the market-place ; and that 
 while the one is approved of as having 
 about it the solemn and the suitable cha- 
 racteristics of godliness, the other is stig- 
 matized as a piece of barren, heartless, hea- 
 thenish, and philosophic morality? Now, 
 this antipathy to the preaching of tlie latter 
 species of good works, has something pe- 
 culiar in it. It is not enough to say, that 
 it arises from a sensitive alarm about the 
 stability of the doctrine of justification ; for 
 let it be observed, that this doctrine stands 
 opposed to the merit not of one particular 
 class of performances, but to the merit of 
 all performances whatsoever. It is just as 
 unscriptural a detraction from the great 
 truth of salvation by faith, to rest our ac- 
 ceptance with God on the duties of prayer, 
 or of rigid Sabbath keeping, or of strict and 
 untainted sobriety, as to rest it on the punc- 
 tual fulfilment of all your bargains, and on 
 the extent of your manifold liberalities. It 
 is not, then, a mere zeal about the great 
 article of justification which lies at the bot- 
 tom of that peculiar aversion that is felt 
 towards a sermon on some social or hu- 
 
11.1 
 
 IN AUGMENTING THE MERCANTILE VIRTUES. 
 
 129 
 
 mane accomplishment ; and that is not felt 
 towards a sermon on sobermindedness, or 
 a sermon on ihe observation of the sacra- 
 ment, or a sermon on any of those perform- 
 ances which bear a more direct and exclu- 
 sive reference to God. We sliall find the 
 explanation of this phenomenon, which 
 often presents itself in tlie religious world, 
 in that distinction of which we have just 
 requir(;d that it should be kept in steady 
 hold, and followed into its various applica- 
 tions. Tlie aversion in question is often, in 
 fact, a well founded aversion, to a topic, 
 which, though religious in the matter of it, 
 may, from the way in which it is proposed, 
 be altogether secular in the principle of it. 
 It is resistance to what is deemed, and justly 
 deemed, an act of usurpauon on the part 
 of certain virtues, which, when unanimated 
 by a sentiment of godliness, are entitled to 
 no place whatever in the ministrations of 
 the gospel of Christ. It proceeds from a 
 most enlightened fear, lest that should be 
 held to make up the whole of religion, 
 which is in fact utterly devoid of the spirit 
 of religion ; and from a true and tender ap- 
 prehension, lest, on the possession of cer- 
 tain accomplishments, which secure a fleet- 
 ing credit throughout the little hour of this 
 world's history, deluded man should look 
 forward to his eternity with hope, and up- 
 ward to his God with complacency, while 
 he carries not on his forehead one vestige 
 of the character of heaven, one lineament 
 of the aspect of godliness. 
 
 And lastly. The first class of virtues 
 bear the character of religiousness more 
 strongly^ just because they bear that cha- 
 racter more singly. The people who are 
 without, might, no doubt, see in every real 
 Christian the virtues of the second class 
 also ; but these virtues do not belong to 
 them peculiarly and exclusively. For though 
 it be true, that every religious man must be 
 honest, the converse does not follow, that 
 every honest man must be religious. And 
 it is because the social accomplishnients do 
 not form the specific, that neither do they 
 form the most prominent and distinguish- 
 ing marks of Christianity. They may also 
 be recognized as features in the -character 
 of men, who utterly repudiate the whole 
 style and doctrine of the New Testament ; 
 and hence a very prevalent impression in 
 society, that the faith of the gospel does not 
 bear so powerfully and so directly on the 
 relative virtues of human conduct. A few 
 instances of hypocrisy amongst the more se- 
 rious professors of our faith, serve to rivet 
 the impression, and to give it perpetuity in 
 the world. One single example, indeed, of 
 sanctimonious duplicity will suffice, in the 
 judgment of many, to cover the whole of 
 vital and orthodox Christianity with dis- 
 grace. The report of it will be borne in 
 triumph amongst the companies of the ir- 
 17 
 
 religious. Tlie man who pays no homage 
 to sabbaths or to sacraments, will iu; con- 
 trasted in the open, liberal, and manly style 
 of all his transactions, with the low cun- 
 ning of this drivelling metliodistical pre- 
 tender; and the loud laugh of a nndtilude 
 of scorners, will give a force and a swell to 
 this public outcry against the whole cha- 
 racter of the sainthood. 
 
 Now, tliis delusion on the part of the un- 
 believing world is very luitural, and ought 
 not to excite our astonishment. We are 
 not surprized, from tlie reasons already ad- 
 verted to, tliat the truth, and the justice, and 
 the humanity, and the moral loveliness, 
 which do in fact belong to every new crea- 
 ture in Jesus Christ our Lord, sliould mi.ss 
 their observation ; or, at least, fail to be re- 
 cognized among the other more obvious 
 characteristics into which believers have 
 been translated by the faith of the gospel. 
 But, on til is very subject there is a tendency 
 to delusion on the part of the disciples of 
 the faith. They need to be reminded of 
 the solemn and indispensable religiousness 
 of the second class of virtues. They need 
 to be told, that though these virtues do pos- 
 sess the one ingredient of being approved 
 by men, and may, on this single account, 
 be found to reside in the characters of those 
 who live without God — yet, that tliey also 
 possess the other ingredient of being ac- 
 ceptable unto God; and, on this latter ac- 
 count, should be made tlie subjects of their 
 most strenuous cultivation. They must not 
 lose sight of the one ingredient in the other ; 
 or stigmatize, as so many fruitless and in- 
 significant moralities, those virtues which 
 enter as component parts, into the service 
 of Christ ; so that he who in these things 
 serveth Clirist, is both acceptable to God, 
 and approved by men. They must not 
 expend all their warmth on tlie high and 
 peculiar doctrine of the New Testament, 
 while they offer a cold and reluctant ad- 
 mission to the practical duties of the New 
 Testament. The Apostle has bound the 
 one to the other by a tie of immediate con- 
 nexion. Wherefore, lie not one to another, as 
 ye have put off the old man and his deeds, 
 and put on the new man, which is formed 
 after the image of God, in righteousness 
 and true holiness. Here the very obvious 
 and popular accomplishment of truth is 
 grafted on the very peculiar doctrine of re- 
 generation : and you altogether mistake the 
 kind of transforming influence which the 
 faith of the gospel brings along with it, if 
 you think that uprightness of cliaracterdoes 
 not emerge at the same time with godliness 
 of character ; or that the virtues of society 
 do not form upon the believer into as rich 
 and varied an assemblage, as do the virtues 
 of the sanctuary ; or that, while he puts on 
 those graces which are singly acceptable to 
 God, he falls behind in any of those graces 
 
130 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, &C. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 which are both acceptable to God. and ap- 
 proved of men. 
 
 Let, therefore, every pretender to Chris- 
 tianity vindicate this assertion by his own 
 personal iiistory in the world. Let him not 
 lay iiis godliness aside, when he is done 
 with the morning devotion of his family ; 
 but carry it abroad with him, and make it 
 his companion and his guide through the 
 whole business of the day ; always bearing 
 in his heart the sentiment, that thou God 
 seest me ; and remembering, that there is not 
 one hour that can flow, or one occasion 
 that can cast up, w^here his law is not pre- 
 sent with some imperious exaction or other. 
 It is false, that the principle of christian 
 sanctification possesses no influence over 
 the familiarities of civil and ordinary life. 
 It is altogether false, t"' at godliness is a vir- 
 tue of such a lofty and monastic order, as 
 to hold its dominion only over the solemni- 
 ties of worship, or over the solitudes of 
 prayer and spiritual contemplation. If it 
 be substantially a grace wilhin us at all, it 
 will give a direction and a colour to the 
 whole of our path in society. There is not 
 one conceivable transaction, pmongrst all the 
 manifold varieties of human employment, 
 which it is not fitted to animate by its spirit. 
 There is nothing that meets ns too homely 
 to be beyond the reach of obtaining, from 
 its influence, the stamp of something celes- 
 tial. It off -rs to take the whule man under 
 its ascendency, and to subordinate all his 
 movements ; nor does it hold the place 
 which rightfully belongs to it, till it be 
 vested with a presiding authority over the 
 entire system of human affairs. And there- 
 fore it is, that the preacher is not bringing 
 down Christianity — he is only sending it 
 abroad over the field of its legitimate ope- 
 ration, when he goes with it to your coimt- 
 ing-houses, and there rebukes every selfish 
 inclination that would carry you ever so 
 littlewithin the limits of fraudulency; when 
 he enters into your chambers of agency, 
 and there detects the character of falsehood, 
 which lurks under all the plausibility of 
 your multiplied and excessive charges ; 
 when he repairs to the crowded market- 
 place, and pronounces of every bargain, 
 over which truth, in all the strictness of 
 quakerism. has not presided, that it is tainted 
 with moral evil ; when he looks into your 
 shops, anrj, in listening to the contest of 
 argument between him who magnifies his 
 article, and him who pretends to undervalue 
 it, he calls it the contest of avarice, broken 
 loose from the restraints of integrity. He 
 is not, by all this, ^iilgarizing religion, or 
 giving it tho hue and the character of earth- 
 liness. He is only asserting the might and 
 the universality of its sole preeminence over 
 man. And therefore it is, that if possible 
 to solemnize his hearers to the practice of 
 simplicity and godly sincerity in their deal- 
 
 ings, he would try to make the odiousness 
 of sin stand visibly out on every shade and 
 modification of dishonesty; and to assure 
 them that if there be a place in our world, 
 where the subtle evasion, and the dexterous 
 imposition, and the sly but gainful conceal- 
 ment, and the report which misleads an 
 inquirer, and the gloss which tempts the 
 unwary purchaser — are not only currently 
 practised in the walks of merchandize, but, 
 when not carried forward to the glare and 
 the literality of falsehood, are beheld with 
 general connivance; if there be a place 
 where the sense of morality has thus fallen, 
 and all the nicer delicacies of conscience 
 are overborne in the keen and ambitious 
 rivalry of men hasting to be rich, and 
 wholly given over to the idolatrous service 
 of the god of this world — then that is the 
 place, the smoke of whose iniquity rises be- 
 fore Him who sitteth on the throne, in a 
 tide of the deepest and most revolting abo- 
 mination. 
 
 And here we have to complain of the 
 public injustice that is done to Christianity 
 when one of hs ostentatious professors has 
 acted the hypocrite, and stands in disgrace- 
 ful exposure before the eyes of the world. 
 We advert to the readiness with which this; 
 is turned into a matter of general impeach- 
 ment, against every appearance of serious- 
 ness ; and how loud the exclamation is against 
 the religion of all who signalize thejn- 
 selves ; and that, if the aspect of godliness 
 be so very decided as to become an aspect 
 of peculiarity, then is this peculiarity con- 
 verted into a ground of distrust and suspi- 
 cion against the bearer of it. Now, it so 
 happens, that in the midst of this world 
 lying in wickedness, a man, to be a Chris- 
 tian at all, must signalize himself. Neither 
 is he in a way of salvation, unless he be 
 one of a very peculiar people ; nor would 
 we precipitately consign him to discredit, 
 even though the peculiarity be so very 
 glaring as to provoke the charge of me- 
 thodism. But instead of making one man's 
 hypocrisy act as a draw-back upon the 
 reputation of a thousand, we submit, if it 
 would not be a fairer and more philosophi- 
 cal procedure, just to betake one's-self to 
 the method of induction — to make a walk- 
 ing survey over the town, and record an 
 inventory of all the men in it who are so 
 very far gone as to have the voice of psalms 
 in their family ; or as to attend the meet- 
 ings of fellowship for prayer ; or as scru- 
 pulously to abstain from all that is ques- 
 tionable in the amusements of the world ; 
 or as, by any other marked and visible 
 symptom whatever, to stand out to general 
 observation as the members of a saintly 
 and separated societ}^ We know, that even 
 of such there are a few, who, if Paul were 
 alive, would move him to weep for the re- 
 proach they bring upon his master. Rut 
 
ai.] 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 131 
 
 ^ve also know, that llie blind and impe- 
 tuous world exaggerates the few into the 
 many; inverts the process of atonement 
 alto'^ether, by laying the sins of one man 
 upon tlie multitude ; looks at their general 
 aspect of sanctity, and is so engrossed with 
 this single expression of character, as to be 
 insensible to the noble uprightness, and the 
 tender luinianity with which this sanctity 
 is associated. And therefore it is, that we 
 offer the assertion, and challenge all to its 
 most thorough and searching investigation, 
 that the Christianity of these people, which 
 many think does nothing ijut cant, and 
 profess, and run after ordinances, has aug- 
 mented their honestiesand their liberalities, 
 and that, tenfold beyond the average cha- 
 racter of society; that these are the men 
 we oftenest meet with in the mansions of 
 
 poverty — and who look with the most 
 wakeful eye over all the sufferings and ne- 
 cessities of our species — and who open 
 their hand most widely in behalf of the 
 imploring and the friendless — and to whom, 
 in spite of all their mockery, the men of 
 the world are sure, in the negociations of 
 business, to award the readiest confidence 
 — and who sustain the most splendid part in 
 all those great movements of philanthropy 
 which bear on the general interests of man- 
 kind — and who, with their eye full upon 
 eternity, scatter the most abundant blessings 
 over the fleeting pilgrimage of time — and 
 who, while they hold their conversation in 
 heaven, do most enrich the earth we tread 
 upon, with all those virtues which secure en- 
 joyment to families, and uphold the order 
 and prosperity of the commonwealth. 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 The Power of Selfishness in promoting the Honesties of mercantile Intercourse. 
 
 " And if you do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the 
 
 same." — Luke vi. 33. 
 
 It is to be remarked of many of those 
 duties, the performance of which confers 
 the least distinction upon an individual, 
 tliat they are at the same time the very 
 duties, the violation of which would con- 
 fer upon him the largest measure of oblo- 
 quy and disgrace. Truth and justice do 
 not serve to elevate a man so highly above 
 the average morality of his species, as 
 would generosity, or ardent friendship, or 
 devoted and disinterested patriotism ; the 
 former are greatly more common than the 
 latter; and, on that account, the presence 
 of them is not so calculated to signalize the 
 individual to whom they belong. But that 
 is one account, also, why the absence of 
 them would make him a more monstrous 
 exception to the general run of character 
 in society. And, accordingly, while it is 
 true, that there are more men of integrity 
 in the world, than there are men of very 
 wide and liberal beneficence — it is also true, 
 that one act of falsehood,^ or one act of dis- 
 honesty, would stamp a far more burning 
 im-amy on the name of a transgressor than 
 any defect in those more heroic charities, 
 and extraordinary virtues, of which hu- 
 manity is capable. 
 
 So it is far more disg-aceful not to be 
 just to another, than notTo be kind to him ; 
 and, at the same time, an act of kindness 
 may be held in higher positive estimation 
 than an act of justice. The one is my right 
 —nor is there any call for the homage of a 
 
 particular testimony when it is rendered. 
 The other is additional to my right — the 
 offering of a spontaneous good will which 
 I had no title to exact ; and which, there- 
 fore, when rendered to me. excites in my 
 bosom the cordiality of a warmer acknow- 
 ledgement. And yet, our Saviour, who 
 knew what was in man, saw, that much 
 of the apparent kindness of nature, was re- 
 solvable into the real selfishness of nature; 
 that much of the good done unto others, 
 was done in the hope that these others 
 would do something again. And, we be- 
 lieve it would be found by an able analyst 
 of the human character, that this was the 
 secret but substantial principle of many of 
 the civilities and hosjjitalities of ordinary 
 intercourse — that if there were no expecta- 
 tion either of a return in kind, or of a re- 
 turn in gratitude, or of a return in popu- 
 larity, many of the sweetening and cement- 
 ing virtues of a neighbourhood would be 
 practically done away — all serving to prove, 
 that a multitude of virtues, which, in effect, 
 promoted the comfort and the interest of 
 others, were tainted in principle by a latent 
 regard to one's own interest ; and that thus 
 being the fellowship of those who did good, 
 either as a return for the good done unto 
 them, or who did good in hope of such a 
 return, it might be, in fact, what our Sa- 
 viour characterizes in the text — the fellow- 
 ship of sinners. 
 
 But if to do that which is unjust, is still 
 
132 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 [liISC. 
 
 more disgraceful than not to do that which 
 is kind, it would prove more strikingly than 
 before, how deeply sin had tainted the 
 moral constitution of our species — could it 
 be shown, that the great practical restraint 
 on the prevalence of this more disgraceful 
 thing in society, is the tie of that common 
 selfislmess which actuates and characterizes 
 all its members. It were a curious but im- 
 portant question, were it capable of being re- 
 solved — if men did not feel it their interest 
 to be honest, how much of tlie actual doings 
 of honesty would still be kept up in the 
 world ? It is our own opinion of the nature 
 of man, that it has its honourable feelings, 
 and its instinctive principles of rectitude, 
 and its constitutional love ol truth and of 
 integrity ; and that, on the basis of these, a 
 certain portion of uprightness would re- 
 main amongst us, without the aid of any 
 prudence, or any calculation whatever. All 
 this we have fully conceded ; and have al- 
 ready attempted to demonstrate, that, in 
 spite of it, the character of man is tho- 
 roughly pervaded by the very essence of 
 sinfulness ; because, with all the native vir- 
 tues which adorn it, there adheres to it that 
 foulest of all spiritual deformities — uncon- 
 cern about God, and even antipathy to God. 
 It has been argued against the orthodox 
 doctrine of the universality of human cor- 
 ruption, that even without the sphere of the 
 operation of the gospel, there do occur so 
 many engaging specimens of worth and be- 
 nevolence in society. The reply is, that 
 this may be no deduction from the doctrine 
 whatever, but be even an aggravation of it 
 — should the very men who exemplify so 
 much of what is amiable, carry in their 
 hearts an indifference to the will of that 
 Being who thus hath formed, and thus hath 
 embellished them. But it would be a heavy 
 deduction indeed, not from the doctrine, 
 but from its hostile and opposing argument, 
 could it be shown, tliat the vast majority of 
 all equitable dealing amongst men, is per- 
 formed, not on the principle of honour at 
 all, but oil the principle of selfishness — that 
 this is tlie soil upon which the honesty of 
 the world mainly flourishes, and is sus- 
 tained ; that, were the connexion dissolved 
 between justice to others and our own par- 
 ticular advantage, this would go very far to 
 banish the observation of justice from the 
 earth; that, generally speaking, men are 
 honest, not because tliey are lovers of God, 
 and not even because they are lovers of vir- 
 tue, but because tliey are lovers of their 
 ownselves — insomuch, that if it were pos- 
 sible to disjoin the good of self altogether 
 from the habit of doing what was fair, as 
 well as from the habit of doing what was 
 kind to the people around us, this would 
 not merely isolate the children of men 
 from each other, in respect of the obliga- 
 tions of beneficence, but it would arm them 
 
 into an undisguised hostility against each 
 other, in respect to their rights. The mere 
 disinterested principle would set up a feeble 
 barrier, indeed, against a desolating tide of 
 selfishness, now set loose from the consi- 
 deration of its own advantage. The genu- 
 ine depravity of the human heart would 
 burst forth and show itself in its true cha- 
 racters; and the world in which we live be 
 transformed into a scene of unblushing 
 fraud, of open and lawless depredation. 
 
 And, perhaps, after all, the best way of 
 arriving practically at the solution of this 
 question would be, not by a formal induc- 
 tion of particular cases, but by committing 
 the matter to the gross and general expe- 
 rience of those who are most conversant in 
 the aflTairs of business. — There is a sort of 
 undefinable impression you all have upon 
 this subject, on tlie justness of which how- 
 ever, we are disposed to lay a very consi- 
 derable stress — an impression gathered out 
 of the mass of the recollections of a whole 
 life — an impression founded on what you 
 may have observed in the history of your 
 own doings — a kind of tact that you have 
 acquired as the fruit of your repeated in- 
 tercourse with men, and of the manifold 
 transactions tliat you have had with them, 
 and of the number of times in which you 
 have been personally implicated with the 
 plaj of human passions, and human in- 
 terests. It is our own conviction, that a 
 well exercised merchant could cast a more 
 intelligent glance at this question, than a 
 well exercised metaphysician ; and there 
 fore do we submit its decision to those of 
 you who have hazarded most largely, and 
 most frequently, on the faith of agents, and 
 customers, and distant correspondents. We 
 know the fact of a very secure and well 
 warranted confidence in the honesty of 
 others, being Avidely prevalent amongst 
 you : and that, were it not for this, all the 
 interchanges of trade would be suspended ; 
 and that confidence is the very sold and life 
 of commercial activity; and it is delightful 
 to think, how thus a man can suffer all the 
 wealth which belongs to him to depart from 
 under his eye, and to traverse the mightiest 
 oceans and continents of our world, and to 
 pass into the custody of men whom he 
 never saw. And it is a sublime homage, 
 one should think, to the honourable and 
 high-minded principles of our nature, that, 
 under their guardianship, the adverse hemi- 
 spheres of the globe should be bound to- 
 gether in safe and profitable merchandise; 
 and that thus one should sleep with a bo- 
 som undisturbed by jealousy, in Britain 
 who has all, and more than all his property 
 treasured in the warehouses of India — and 
 that, just because there he knows there is 
 vigilance to defend it, and activity to dis- 
 pose of it, and truth to account for it, and 
 all those trusty virtues which ennoble the 
 
III.J 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS . ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 133 
 
 character of man to shield it from injury, 
 and send it back again in an increasing tide 
 of opulence to his door. 
 
 There is no question, then, as to the fact 
 of a very extended practical honesty, be- 
 tween man and man, in their intercourse 
 with each other. The only question is, as 
 to the reason of the fact. \Vhy is it, that 
 he whom you have trusted acquits himself 
 of his trust with such correctness and fidel- 
 ity ? Whether is his mind in so doing, most 
 set upon your interest or upon his own ? 
 Whether is it because he seeks your ad- 
 vantage in it, or because he finds it is his 
 own advantage ? Tell us to which of the 
 two concerns he is most tremblingly alive — 
 to your property, or to his own character? 
 and whether, upon the last of these feelings, 
 he may not be more forciblj^ impelled to 
 equitable dealing than upon the first of 
 them ? We well know, that there is room 
 enough in his bosom for both ; but to de- 
 termine how powerfully selfishness is blen- 
 ded with the punctualities and the integrities 
 of business, let us ask those who can speak 
 most soundly and experimentally on the 
 subject, what would be the result, if the ele- 
 ment of selfishness were so detached from 
 the operations of trade, that there was no 
 such thing as a man suffering in his pros- 
 perity, because he suffered in his good 
 name: that there was no such thing as a 
 desertion of custom and employment com- 
 ing upon the back of a blasted credit, and a 
 tainted reputation ; in a word, if the only 
 security we had of man was his principles, 
 and that his interest flourished and aug- 
 mented just as surely without his princi- 
 ples as with them ? Tell us, if the hold we 
 have of a man's own personal advantage 
 were thus broken down, in how far the vir- 
 tues of the mercantile world would survive 
 it? Would not the world of trade sustain 
 as violent a derangement on this mighty 
 hold being cut asunder, as the world of na- 
 ture would on the suspending of the law of 
 gravitation ? Would not the whole system, 
 in fact, fall to pieces, and be dissolved ? 
 Would not men, when thus released from 
 the magical chain of their own interest, 
 which bound them together into a fair and 
 seeming compact of principle, like dogs of 
 rapine let loose upon their prey, overleap 
 the barrier which formerly restrained them? 
 Does not this prove, that selfishness, after 
 all, is the grand principle on which the 
 brotherhood of the human race is made to 
 hang together ; and that he who can make 
 the wrath of man to praise him, has also, 
 upon the selfishness of man, caused a most 
 beauteous order of wide and useful inter- 
 course to be suspended 1 
 
 But let us here stop to observe, that, while 
 there is much in this contemplation to mag- 
 nify the wisdom of the Supreme Contriver, 
 there is also much in it to humble man, and 
 
 to convict him of the deceitfulness of that 
 moral complacency with which he looks to 
 his own character, and his own attainments. 
 There is much in it to demonstrate, that 
 his righteousness are as filthy rags ; and that 
 the idolatry of self, however hidden in its 
 operation, may be detected in almost every 
 one of them. God may combine the sepa- 
 rate interests of every individual of the hu- 
 man race, and the strenuous prosecution of 
 these iiuerests by each of them, into a har- 
 monious system of operation, for the good 
 of one great and extended family. But if, 
 on estimating the character of each indivi- 
 dual member of that family, we shall find 
 that the mainspring of his actions is the 
 urgency of a selfish inclination; and that to 
 this his very virtues are subordinate : and 
 that even the honesties which mark his con- 
 duct are chiefly, though, perhaps, insensi- 
 bly due to the selfishness which actuates 
 and occupies his whole heart; — then, let 
 the semblance be what it may, still the re- 
 ality of the case accords with the most mor- 
 tifjing representations of the New Testa- 
 ment. The moralities of nature are but the 
 moralities of a day, and will cease to be ap- 
 plauded when this world, the only theatre 
 of their applause, is burnt up. They are 
 but the blossoms of that rank elflorescence 
 which is nourished on the soil of human 
 corruption, and can never bring forth fruit 
 unto immortality. The discerner of all se- 
 crets sees that they emanate from a princi- 
 ple which is at utter war with the charity 
 that prepares for the enjoyments, and that 
 glows in the bosoms of the celestial ; and, 
 therefore, though highly esteemed among 
 men, they may be in His sight an abomina- 
 tion. 
 
 Let us, if possible, make this still clearer 
 to your apprehension, by descending more 
 minutel}' into particulars. There is not one 
 member of the great mercantile family, with 
 whom there does not obtain a reciprocal in- 
 terest between himself and all those who 
 compose the circle of his various corres- 
 pondents. He does them good ; but his eye 
 is all the while open to the expectation of 
 their doing him something again. They 
 minister to him all the profits of his employ- 
 ment ; but not luiless he minister to them 
 of his service, and attention, and fidelity. 
 Insomuch, that if his credit abandon him, 
 his prosperity will also abandon him. If 
 he forfeit the confidence of others, he will 
 also forfeit their custom along with it. So 
 that, in perfect consistency with interest 
 being the reigning idol of his soul, he may 
 still be, in every way. as sensitive of en- 
 croachment upon his reputation, as he would 
 be of encroachment upon his property ; and 
 be as vigilant, to the full, in guarding his 
 name against the breath of calumny, or sus- 
 picion, as in guarding his estate against the 
 inroads of a depredator. Now, this tie of 
 
134 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 recipi ocity, which binds him into fellowship 
 and good faith with society at large, will 
 sometimes, in the mere course of business, 
 and its unlooked-for fluctuations, draw one 
 or two individuals into a still more special 
 intimacy witli himself. There may be a 
 lucrative partnership, in which it is the 
 pressing necessity of each individual, that 
 all of them, for a time at least, slick, closely 
 and steadily together. Or there may be a 
 thriving interchange of commodities struck 
 out, where it is the mutual interest of all 
 who are concerned, that each take his as- 
 signed part and adhere to it. Or there may 
 be a promising arrangement devised, which 
 it needs concert and understanding to ef- 
 fectuate; and, for wliich purpose, several 
 may enter into a skilful and well-ordered 
 combination. 
 
 We are neither saying that this is very 
 general in the mercantile world, or that it 
 is in the slightest degree unfitir. But you 
 must be sensiblo, tliat, amid the reelings and 
 movements of the great trading society, the 
 phenomenonl%ometimes otfers itself of a 
 groupe of Individuals who have entered 
 into some compact of mutual accommoda- 
 tion, and who, therefore, look as if they were 
 isolated from the rest by the bond of some 
 more strict and separate alliance. All we 
 aim at, is to gather illustration to our prin- 
 ciple, out of tlie way in which the members 
 of this associated cluster condi^ct themselves 
 to each other; how such a cordiality may- 
 pass between them, as one could suppose 
 to be the cordiality of genuine friendship ; 
 how such an intercourse might be main- 
 tained among their families, as alight look 
 like the intercourse of unmingled affection ; 
 how such an exuberance of mutual hospi- 
 tality might he poured forth as to recal those 
 poetic days when avarice was unknown, and 
 men lived in harmony together on the fruits 
 of one common inheritance ; and how nobly 
 disdainful each member of the combination 
 appeared to be of such little savings, as could 
 be easily surrendered to the general good 
 and adjustment of the whole concern. And 
 all this, you will observe, so long as the con- 
 cern prospered, and it was for the interest 
 of each to abide by it ; and the respective 
 accounts current gladdened the heart of 
 every individual by the exhibition of an 
 abundant share of the common benefit to 
 himself. Bu* then, every such system of 
 operations comes to an end. And what we 
 ask is, if it be at all an unlikely evolution 
 of our nature, that the selfishness which lay 
 in wrapt concealment, during the progress 
 of these transactions, should now come for- 
 ward and put out to view its cloven foot, 
 when they draw to'their termination ? And 
 as the tie of reciprocity gets looser, is it not 
 a very possible thing, that the murmurs of 
 something like unfair or unhandsome con- 
 duct should get louder? And that a fellow- 
 
 ship, hitherto carried forward in smiles, 
 should break up in reproaclics? And tiial 
 the whole character of this fellowship shouJG 
 show itself more unequivocally as it comes 
 nearer to its close ? And that some of its 
 members, as they are becoming disengaged 
 from the bond of mutual interest, should 
 also become disengaged from the bond of 
 those mutual delicacies and proprieties, and 
 even honesties, which had heretofore mark- 
 ed the whole of their intercourse? — Inso- 
 much, that a matter in \vhich all tlie parties 
 looked so fair, and magnanimous, and libe- 
 ral, might at length degenerate into a con- 
 test of keep appropriation, a scramble of 
 downright and undisguised selfishness ? 
 
 But though this may happen sometimes, 
 we are far from saying tiiat it will hap- 
 pen generally. It could not, in fact, with- 
 out such an exposure of character, as might 
 not merely bring a man down in the esti- 
 mation of "those from whom he is now with- 
 drawing himself, but also in the estimation 
 of that general public with w'hom he is still 
 linked; and on whose opinion of him there 
 still rests the dependence of a strong per- 
 sonal interest. To estimate precisely the 
 whole influence of this consideration, or the 
 degree in which honesty of character is re- 
 solvable into selfishness of character, it 
 would be necessary to suppose, that the tie 
 of reciprocity was'dissohed, not merely be- 
 tween the individual and those with whom 
 he 'had been more particular])- and more 
 iniimately associated — but that the tie of 
 reciprocity Avas dissolved between the in- 
 dividual and the whole of his former ac- 
 quaintancesliip in business. 
 
 Now, the situation which comes nearest 
 to this, is that of a man on the eve of bank- 
 ruptcy, and with no sure hope of so retriev- 
 ing his circumstances as again to emerge 
 into credit, and be restored to some em- 
 ployment of gain or of confidence. If he 
 have either honoural^le or religious feel- 
 ings, then character, as connected with 
 principle, may still, in his eyes, be some- 
 thing; but character, as connected with 
 prudence, or the calculations of interest, 
 may now be nothing. In the dark hour 
 of the desperation of his soul, he may feel, 
 in fact, that he has nothing to lose; and let 
 us now see how he will conduct himself, 
 when thus released from that check of re- 
 putation which formerly held him. In 
 these circumstances, if j-ou have ever seen 
 the man abandon himself to utter regard- 
 lessness of all the honesties which at one 
 time adorned him, and doing such disgrace- 
 ful things as he would have spurned at the 
 very suggestion of, in the days of his pros- 
 perity ; and, forgetful of his former name 
 practising all possible shifts of duplicity to 
 prolong the credit of a tottering establish- 
 ment; and to keep himself afloat for a few 
 months of torture and restlessness, weaving 
 
ni.] 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 135 
 
 such a web of entanglement around his 
 many friends and companions, as shall 
 most surely implicate some of them in his 
 fall; and, as the crisis approaches, plying 
 his petty wiles how to survive the coming 
 ruin, and to gather up of its fragments to 
 his family, i) ! how much is there here to 
 deplore ; and who can be so ungenerous as 
 to stalk in unrelenting triumph over the 
 helplessness of so sad an overthrow ! But 
 if ever such an exhibition meet your eye, 
 while we ask you not to withhold your pity 
 from the unfortunate, we ask you also to 
 read in it a lesson of worthless and sunken 
 humanity ; how even its very virtues are 
 tinctured with corruption ; and that the 
 honour, and the truth, and the equity, with 
 which man proudly thinks his nature to be 
 embellished, are often reared on the basis 
 of selfishness, and lie prostrate in the dust 
 when that basis is cut away. 
 
 But other instances may be quoted, which 
 go still more satisfactorily to prove the very 
 extended influence of selfishness on the 
 moral judgments of our species ; and how 
 readily the estimate, which a man forms on 
 the question of right and wrong, accommo- 
 dates itself to his own interest. There is a 
 strong general reciprocity of advantage be- 
 tween the government of a country and 
 all its inhabhants. The one party, in this 
 relation, renders a revenue for the expenses 
 of the state. The other party renders back 
 again protection from injustice and vio- 
 lence. Were the means furnished by the 
 former withheld, the benefit conferred by 
 the latter would cease to be administered. 
 So that, with the government, and the pub- 
 lic at large, nothing can be more strict, and 
 more indispensable, than the tie of reciproci- 
 ty that is between them. But this is not 
 felt, and therefore not acted upon by the 
 separate individuals who compose that pub- 
 lic. The reciprocity does not come home 
 with a sufficiently pointed and personal ap- 
 plication to each of them. Every man may 
 calculate, that though he, on the strength 
 of some dexterous evasions, were to keep 
 back of the tribute that is due by him, the 
 mischief that would recoil upon himself is 
 divided with the rest of his countrymen ; 
 and the portion of it which comes to his 
 door would be so very small, as to be alto- 
 gether insensible. To all feeling he will 
 just be as effectually sheltered, by the pow- 
 er and the justice of his country, whether 
 he pay his taxes in full, or under the guise 
 of some skilful concealment, pay them but 
 partially ; and therefore, to every practical 
 effect, the tie of reciprocity, between him 
 and his sovereign, is in a great measure dis- 
 solved. Now, what is the actual adjust- 
 ment of the moral sense, and moral conduct, 
 of the population, to this state of matters? 
 It is quite palpable. Subterfuges, which in 
 private business, would be held to be dis- 
 
 graceful, are not held to be so disgraceful in 
 this department of a man's personal transac- 
 tions. The cry of indignation, which would 
 be lifted up against the falsehood or disho- 
 nesty of a man's dealings in his own neigh- 
 bourhood, is mitigated or unheard, though, in 
 his dealings with the state, there should be 
 the very same relaxation of principle. On 
 this subject, there is a convenience of popu- 
 lar feeling, which, if extended to the whole 
 of human traffic, would banish all its secu- 
 rities from the world. Giving reason to 
 believe, that much of the good done among 
 men, is done on the expectation of a good 
 that will be rendered back again ; and that 
 many of the virtues, by which the fellow- 
 ship of human beings is regulated and sus- 
 tained, still leave the imputation unredeem- 
 ed, of its being a fellowship of sinners ; and 
 that both the practice of morality, and the 
 demand for it, are measured by the opera- 
 tion of a self-love, which, so far from signal- 
 izing any man, or preparing him for eter- 
 nity, he holds in common with the fiercest 
 and most degenerate of his species; and 
 that, apart from the consideration of his 
 own interest, simplicity and godly since- 
 rity are, to a great degree, unknown ; inso- 
 much, that though God has interposed with 
 a law, of giving unto all their dues, and 
 tribute to whom tribute is due— we may 
 venture an affirmation of the vast majority 
 of this tribute, that it is rendered for wrath's 
 sake, and not for conscience's sake. Of so 
 little effect is unsupported and solitary con- 
 science to stem the tide of selfishness. And 
 it is chiefly when honesty and truth go over- 
 bearingly along with this tide, that the 
 voice of man is lifted up to acknowledge 
 them, and his heart becomes feelingly alive 
 to a sense of their obligations. 
 
 And let us here just ask, in what relation 
 of criminality does he who uses a contra- 
 band article stand to him who deals in it? 
 In precisely the same relation that a re- 
 ceiver of stolen goods stands to a thief or a 
 depredator. There may be some who re- 
 volt at the idea of being so classified. But. 
 if the habit we have just denounced can be 
 fastened on men of rank and seemly repu- 
 tation, let us just humble ourselves into the 
 admission of how little the righteous prac- 
 tice of the world has the foundation of righ- 
 teous principle to sustain it ; how feeble are 
 the securities of rectitude, had it nothing to 
 uphold it but its own native charms, and 
 native obligations ; how society is held to- 
 gether, only because the grace of God can 
 turn to account the worthless propensities 
 of the individuals who compose it; and 
 how, if the virtues of fidelity, and truth, and 
 justice, had not the prop of selfishness to 
 rest upon, they would, with the exception 
 of a few scattered remnants, take their de- 
 parture from the world, and leave it a prey 
 to the anarchy of the human passions — to. 
 
136 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 the wild misrule of all those depravities 
 which agitate and deform our ruined na- 
 ture. 
 
 The very same exhibition of our nature 
 may be witnessed in almost every parish of 
 our sister kingdom, where the people ren- 
 der a revenue to the minister of religion, 
 and the minister renders back again a re- 
 turn, it is true — but not such a return, as, in 
 the estimation of gross and ordinary selfish- 
 ness, is at all deemed an equivalent for the 
 sacrifice which has been made. In this in- 
 stance, too, that law of reciprocity which 
 reigns throughout the common transactions 
 of merchandise, is altogether suspended ; 
 and the consequence is, that the law of 
 right is trampled into ashes. A tide of pub- 
 lic odium runs against the men who are 
 outraged of their property, and a smile of 
 general connivance rewards the successful 
 dexterity of the men who invade it. That 
 portion of the annual produce of our soil, 
 which, on a foundation of legitimacy as 
 firm as the propertj' of the soil itself, is al- 
 lotted to a set of national functionaries — 
 and Avhich, but for them, would all have 
 gone, in the shape of increased revenue, to 
 the indolent proprietor, is altogether thrown 
 loose from the guardianship of that great 
 principle of reciprocity, on which we strong- 
 ly suspect that the honesties of this world 
 are mainly supported. The national clergy 
 of England may be considered as standing 
 out of the pale of this guardianship ; and 
 the consequence is, that what is most right- 
 fully and most sacredly theirs, is abandoned 
 to the gambol of many thousand depreda- 
 tors ; and in addition to a load of most un- 
 merited obloquy, have they had to sustain 
 all the heartburnings of known and felt in- 
 justice ; and that intercourse between the 
 teachers and the taught, which ought surely 
 to be an intercourse of peace, and friend- 
 ship, and righteousness, is turned into a 
 contest between the natural avarice of the 
 one party, and the natural resentments of 
 the other. It is not that we wish our sister 
 church were swept away, for we honesth- 
 think, that the overthrow of that establish- 
 ment would be a severe blow to the Chris- 
 tianity of our land. It is not that we envy 
 that great hierarchy the splendor of her en- 
 dowments — for better a dinner of herbs, 
 when surrounded by the love of parishioners, 
 than a preferment of stalled dignity, and 
 strife therewith. It is not cither that we 
 look upon her ministers as having at all 
 disgraced themselves by their rapacity ; 
 for look to the amount of the encroach- 
 ments that are made upon them, and you 
 will see that they have carried their privi- 
 leges with the most exemplary forbearance 
 and moderation. But from these very en- 
 croachments do we infer how lawless a hu- 
 man beiivg will become, when emancipated 
 from the bond of his own interest ; how 
 
 much such a state of things must multiply 
 the temptations to injustice over the face 
 of the country; and how desirable, there- 
 fore, that it were put an end to — not by the 
 abolition of that venerable church, but by a 
 fair and liberal commutation of the reve- 
 nues which support her — not by bringing 
 any blight on the property of her ecclesias- 
 tics, but by the removal of a most devour- 
 ing blight from the worth of her popula- 
 tion — that every provocative to justice may 
 be done away, and the frailty of human 
 principle he no longer left to such a ruinous 
 and such a withering exposure. 
 
 This instance we would not have men- 
 tioned, but for the sake of adding another 
 experimental proof to the lesson of our text ; 
 and we now hasten onward to the lesson 
 itself, with a few of its applications. 
 
 We trust you are convinced, from what 
 has been said, that much of the actual ho- 
 nesty of the world is due to the selfishness 
 of the world. And then you will surely 
 admit, that in as far as this is the actuating 
 principle, honesty descends from its place 
 as a rewardable, or even as an amiable vir- 
 tue, and sinks down into the character of a 
 mere prudential virtue — which, so far from 
 conferring any moral exaltation on him by 
 whom it is exemplified, emanates out of a 
 propensity that seems inseparable from the 
 constitution of every sentient being — and by 
 which man is, in one point, assimilated 
 either to the most worthless of his own spe- 
 cies, or to those inferior animals among 
 whom worth is unattainable. 
 
 And let it not deafen the humbling im- 
 pression of this argument, that you are not 
 distinctly conscious of the operation of sel- 
 fishness, as presiding at every step over the 
 honesty of your daily and familiar transac- 
 tions ; and that the only inward checks 
 against injustice, of which you are sensible, 
 are the aversion of a generous indignancy 
 towards it, and the positive discomfort you 
 would incur by the reproaches of your own 
 conscience. Selfishness, in fact, may have 
 originated and alimented the whole of this 
 virtue that belongs to you, and yet the mind 
 incur the same discomfort by the violation 
 of it, that it v/ould do by the violation of 
 any other of its established habits. And as 
 to the generous indignancy of your feelings 
 against all that is fraudulently and disgrace- 
 fully wrong, let us never forget, that this 
 may be the nurtured fruit of that common 
 selfishness which links human beings with 
 each other into a relationship of mutual de- 
 pendence. This may be seen, in all its 
 perfection, amon^ the leagued and sworn 
 banditti of the highwa)^; who, while exe- 
 crated by society at large for the compact 
 of iniquity into which they have entered, 
 can maintain the most heroic fidelity to the 
 virtues of their own brotherhood — and be, 
 in every way, as lofty and as chivalric with 
 
INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS OX MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. 
 
 137 
 
 their points of honour, as we are with ours ; 
 and elevate as indignant a voice against the 
 worthlessness of him who could betray the 
 secret of their association, or break up any 
 of the securities by which it was held to- 
 gether. And, in like manner, may we be 
 the members of a wider combination, yet 
 brought together by the tie of reciprocal in- 
 terest ; and all the virtues essential to the 
 existence, or to the good of such a combi- 
 nation, may come to be idolized amongst 
 us; and the breath of human applause niaj' 
 fan them into a lustre of splendid estima- 
 tion ; and yet the good man of society on 
 earth be, in common with all his fellows, an 
 utter outcast from the society of heaven — 
 with his heart altogether bereft of that alle- 
 giance to God which forms the reigning 
 principle of his unfallen creation — and in a 
 state of entire destitution either as to that 
 love of the Supreme Being, or as to that 
 disinterested love of those around us, which 
 form the graces and the virtues of eternity. 
 We have not affirmed that there is no 
 such thing as a native and disinterested 
 principle of honour among men. But we 
 have affirmed, on a former occasion, that a 
 sense of honour may be in the heart, and 
 the sense of God be utterly away from it. 
 And we affirm now, that much of the ho- 
 nest practice of the world is not due to ho- 
 nesty of principle at all, but takes its origin 
 from a baser ingredient of our constitution 
 altogether. How wide is the operation of 
 selfishness on the one hand, and how limit- 
 ed is the operation of abstract principle on 
 the other, it were difficult to determine ; 
 and such a labyrinth to man is his own 
 heart, that he may be utterly unable, from 
 his own consciousness, to answer this ques- 
 tion. But amid all the difficulties of such 
 an analysis to himself, we ask him to think 
 of another who is unseen by us, but who is 
 represented to us as seeing all things. We 
 know not in what characters this heavenly 
 witness can be more impressively set forth, 
 than as pondering the heart, as weighing 
 the secrets of the heart, as fastening an at- 
 tentive and a judging eye on all the move- 
 ments of it, as treasuring up the whole of 
 man's outward and inward history in a 
 book of remembrance ; and as keeping it 
 in reserve for that day when, it is said, that 
 the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open ; 
 and God shall bring out every secret thing, 
 whether it be good, or whether it be evil. 
 Your consciousness may not distinctly in- 
 form you, in how far the integrity of your 
 habits is due to the latent operation of sel- 
 fishness, or to the more direct and obvious 
 operation of honour. But your conscious- 
 ness may, perhaps, inform you distinctly 
 enough, how little a share the will of God 
 has in the way of influence on any of your 
 doings. Your own sense and memory of 
 what passes within you, may charge you 
 18 
 
 with the truth of this monstrous indictment 
 — that you live without God in tlic world; 
 that however you may be signalized among 
 your fellows, by that worth of character 
 which is held iii highest value and demand 
 amongst the individuals of a mercantile so- 
 ciety, it is at least without the influence of 
 a godly principle that you have reached the 
 maturity of an established reputation ; that 
 either the proud emotions of rectitude wliich 
 glow within your bosom are totally untinc- 
 Uired by a feeling of homage to the Deity — 
 or that," without any such emotions. Self is 
 the divinity you have all along worshipped, 
 and your very virtues are so many offer- 
 ings of reverence at her shrine. If such 
 be, in fact, the nakedness of your spiritual 
 condition, is h not high time, we ask, that 
 you awaken out of this delusion, and shake 
 the lying spirit of deep and heavy slumber 
 away from you ? Is it not high time, when 
 eternity is so fast coming on, that you ex- 
 amine your accounts with God, and seek 
 for a settlement with that Being who will 
 so soon meet your disembodied spirhs with 
 the question of— what have you done unto 
 me? — And if all the virtues which adorn 
 you are but the subserviences of time, and 
 of its accommodati(m— if either done alto- 
 gether unto yourselves, or done without the 
 recognhion of God on the spontaneous in- 
 stigation of your own feelings— is it not 
 high time that you lean no longer to the 
 securities on which you have rested, and 
 that you seek for acceptance with your Ma- 
 ker on a more firm and unalterable foun- 
 dation '? 
 
 This, then, is the terminating object of 
 all the experience that we have tried to set 
 before you. We want to be a schoolmas- 
 ter to bring you unto Christ. We Avant 
 you to open your eyes to the accQrdancy 
 which obtains between the theology of the 
 New Testament and the actual state and 
 history of man. Above all, we want you 
 to turn your eyes inwardly upon your- 
 selves, and there to behold a character 
 without one trace or lineament of godli- 
 ness—there to behold a heart set upon to- 
 tally other things than those which consti- 
 tute the portion and the reward of eternity 
 — there to behold every principle of action 
 resolvable info the idolatry of self, or, at 
 least into something independent of the au- 
 thority of God— there to behold how worth- 
 less in their substance are those virtues 
 which look so imposing in their semblance 
 and their display, and draw round them 
 here a popularity and an applause Avhich 
 M-ill all be dissipated into notliing, when 
 hereafter they are brought up for examina- 
 tion to the judgment seat. We want you, 
 when the revelation of the gospel charges 
 vou with the totality and magnitude of 
 your corruption, that you acquiesce in that 
 charge; and that you may perceive the 
 
138 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SELFISHNESS ON MERCANTILE INTERCOURSE. [DISC. 
 
 trueness of it, under the disguise of all 
 those hollow and unsubstantial accomplish- 
 ments, with which nature may deck her 
 own fallen and degenerate children. It is 
 easy to be amused, and interested, and in- 
 tellectually regaled by an analysis of the 
 human character, and a survey of human 
 society. But it is not so easy to reach the 
 individual conscience with the lesson — we 
 are undone. It is not so easy to strike the 
 alarm into your hearts of the present guilt, 
 and the future damnation. It is not so easy 
 to send the pointed arrow of conviction 
 into youi bosoms, where it may keep by 
 you and pursue you like an arrow sticking 
 fast ; or so to humble you into the conclu- 
 sion, that in the sight of God, 5'ou are an 
 accursed thing, as that you may seek unto 
 him who became a curse for you, and as 
 that the preaching of his Cross might cease 
 to be ibolishness. 
 
 Be assured, then, if you keep by the 
 ground of being justified by your present 
 works, you will perish : and though we 
 may not have succeeded in convincing you 
 of their worthlessness, be assured that a 
 day is coming when such a flaw of deceit- 
 fulness, in the principle of them all, shall 
 be laid open, as will demonstrate the equity 
 of your entire and everlasting condemna- 
 tion. To avert the fearfulness of that day 
 is the message of the great atonement 
 sounded in your ears — and the blood of 
 Christ, cleansing from all sin, is offered to 
 your acceptance ; and if you turn away 
 from it, you add to the guilt of a broken 
 law the insult of a neglected gospel. But 
 if you take the pardon of the gospel on the 
 footing of the gospel, then, such is the effi- 
 cacy of this great expedient, that it will 
 reach an application of mercy farther than 
 the eye of your own conscience ever reach- 
 ed ; that it will redeem you from the guilt 
 even of your most secret and unsuspected 
 iniquities; and thoroughly wash you from 
 a taint of sinfulness, more inveterate than, 
 in the blindness of nature, you ever thought 
 of, or ever conceived to belong to you. 
 
 But when a man becomes a believer, 
 there are two great events which take 
 place at this great turning point in his his- 
 tory. One of them takes place in heaven 
 — even the expunging of his name from the 
 book of condemnation. Another of them 
 takes place on earth — even the application 
 of such a sanctifying influence to his per- 
 son, that all old things are done away with 
 him, and all things become new with him. 
 He is made the workmanship of God in 
 Christ Jesus our Lord. He is not merely 
 
 forgiven the sin of every one evil work of 
 which he had aforetime been guilty, but 
 he is created anew unto the corresponding 
 good work. And therefore, if a Christian, 
 will his honesty be purified from that taint 
 of selfishness by which tlie general honesty 
 of this world is so deeply and extensively 
 pervaded. He will not do this good thing, 
 that any good thing may be done unto 
 him again. He will do it on a simple re- 
 gard to its own native and independent 
 rectitude. He will do it because it is ho- 
 nourable, and because God wills him so to 
 adorn the doctrine of his Saviour. All his 
 fair dealing, and all his friendship, will be 
 fair dealing and friendship without interest. 
 The principle that is in him will stand in 
 no need of aid from any such auxiliary — 
 but strong in its own unborrowed re- 
 sources, will it impress a legible stamp of 
 dignity and uprightness on the whole va- 
 riety of his transactions in the world. All 
 men find it their advantage, by the integrity 
 of their dealings, to prolong the existence 
 of some gainful fellowship into which they 
 may have entered. But with him, the 
 same unsullied integrity which kept this 
 feltowship together, and sustained the pro- 
 gress of it, will abide with hirn through 
 its last transactions, and dignify its full 
 and final termination. Most men find, 
 that, without the reverberation of any mis- 
 chief pn their own heads, they could re- 
 duce beneath the point of absolute jus- 
 tice, the charges of taxation. But he has 
 a conscience both towards God, and to- 
 wards man, which will not let him; and 
 there is a rigid truth in all his returns, a 
 pointed and precise accuracy in all his pay- 
 ments. When hemmed in with circum- 
 stances of difficulty, and evidently tottering 
 to his fall, the demand of nature is, that 
 he should ply his every artifice to secrete 
 a provision for his family. But a Chris- 
 tian mind is incapable of artifice ; and the 
 voice of conscience within him will ever 
 be louder than the voice of necessity ; and 
 he will be open as day with his creditors, 
 nor put forth his hand to that which is 
 rightfully theirs, any more than he would 
 put forth his hand to the perpetration of a 
 sacrilese; and though released altogether 
 from that tie of interest which binds a man 
 to equity with his fellows, yet the tie of 
 principle will remain with him in all its 
 strength. Nor will it ever be found that 
 he, for the sake of subsistence, will enter 
 into fraud, seeing that, as one of the chil- 
 dren of light, he would not, to gain the 
 whole world, lose his own soul. 
 
iv.l 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 130 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 The Guilt of Dishonesty not to be estimated by the Gain of it. 
 
 He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust 
 
 also in much." — Luke xvi. 10. 
 
 It is the fine poetical conception of a late 
 poetical countryman, whose fancy too often 
 grovelled amonoKthe despicable of human 
 character — but who, at the same time, was 
 capable of exhibiting, either in pleasing or 
 in proud array, both the tender and the 
 noble of human character — when he says 
 of the man who carried a native, unborrow- 
 ed, self-sustained rectitude in his bosom, 
 that " Jiis eye, even turned on empty space, 
 beamed keen with honour." It was affirm- 
 ed, in the last discourse, that much of the ho- 
 nourable practice of the world rested on the 
 substratum of selfishness; that society was 
 held together in the exercise of its relative 
 virtues, mainly, by the tie of reciprocal ad- 
 vantage; that a man's own interest bound 
 him to all those average equities which ob- 
 tained in the neighbourhood around him; 
 and in which, if he proved himself to be 
 glaringly deficient, he would be abandoned 
 by the respect, and the confidence, and the 
 good will of the people with whom he had 
 to do. It is a melancholy thought, how 
 little the semblance of virtue upon earth 
 betokens the real and substantial preseiace 
 of virtuous principle among men. But on 
 the other hand, though it be a rare, there 
 cannot be a more dignified attitude of the 
 soul, than when of itself it kindles with a 
 sense of justice)^and the holy flame is fed, 
 as it were, by its owni energies ; than 
 when man moves onwards in an unchang- 
 ing course of moral magnanimity, and dis- 
 dains the aid of those inferior principles, 
 by which gross and sordid humairity is 
 kept from all the grosser violations ; than 
 when he rejoices in truth as his kindred 
 and congenial element; — so, that though 
 unpeopled of all its terrestrial accompani- 
 ments; though he saw no interest what- 
 ever to be associated with its fulfilment ; 
 though without one prospect either of 
 fame or of emolument before him, would 
 his eye, even when turned on emptiness 
 itself, still retain the living lustre that had 
 been lighted up in it, by a feeling of inward 
 and independent reverence. 
 
 It has already been observed, and that 
 fully and frequently enough, that a great 
 part of the homage which is rendered to 
 integrity in the world, is due to the opera- 
 tion of selfishness. And this substantially 
 is the reason, why the principle of the text 
 has so very slender a hold upon the human 
 conscience. Mail is ever prone to estimate 
 the enormity of injustice, by the degree in 
 
 Avhich he suffers from it. He brings this 
 moral question to the standard of his own 
 interest. A master will bear with all the 
 lesser liberties of his servants, so long as he 
 feels them to be harmless ; and it is not till 
 he is awakened to the apprehension of per- 
 sonal injurjr, from the amount or frequency 
 of the embezzlements, that his moral indig- 
 nation is at all sensibly awakened. And 
 thus it is, that the maxim of our great 
 teacher of righteousness seems to be very 
 much unfelt, or forgotten, in society. Un- 
 faithfulness in that which is little, and un- 
 fiiithfulness in that which is much, are very 
 far from being regarded, as they were by 
 him, under the same aspect of criminality. 
 If there be no great hurt, it is felt that there 
 is no great harm. The innocence of a dis- 
 honest freedom in respect of morality, is 
 rated by its insignificance in respect of mat- 
 ter. The margin which separates the right 
 from the wrong, is remorselessly trodden un- 
 der foot, so long as each makes only a mi- 
 nute and gentle encroacliment beyond the 
 landmark of his neighbours territory. On 
 this subject there is a loose and popular es- 
 timate, which is not at one with the deliver- 
 ance of the New Testament ; a habit of 
 petty invasion on the side of aggressors, 
 which is scarcely felt by them to be at all 
 iniquitous — and even on the part of those 
 who are thus made free with, there is a 
 habit of loose and careless toleration. 
 There is, in fact, a negligence oi a dor- 
 mancy of principle among men, which 
 causes this sort of injustice to be easily 
 practised on the one side, and as easily put 
 up Avith on the other; and, in a general 
 slackness of observation, is this virtue, in 
 its strictness and in its delicacj-. completely 
 overborne. 
 
 It is the taint of selfishness, then, which 
 has so marred and corrupted the moral 
 sensibility of our world ; and the man, if 
 such a man can be, whose "eye, even turned 
 on empty space, beams keen with honour;" 
 and whose homage, therefore, to the virtue 
 of justice, is altogether freed from the mix- 
 ture of unworthy and interested feelings, 
 will long to render to her, in every instance, 
 a faultless and a completed offering. What- 
 ever his forbearance to others, he could not 
 suffer the slightest blot of corruption upon 
 any doings of his owm. He cannot be sa- 
 tisfied Avith any thing short of the very last 
 jot and tittle of the requirements of equity 
 being fulfilled. He not merely shares in 
 
140 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 the revolt of the general world against such 
 outrageous departures from the rule of 
 right, as would carry in their traiu the ruin 
 of acquaintances or the distress of families. 
 Such is the delicacy of the principle within 
 him, that he could not have peace under 
 the consciousness even of the minutest and 
 least discoverable violation. He looks fully 
 and fearlessly at the whole account which 
 justice has against him; and he cannot 
 rest, so long as there is a single article un- 
 met, or a single demand unsatisfied. If, in 
 any transaction of his there was so much 
 as a farthing of secret and injurious reser- 
 vation on his side, this would be to him 
 like an accursed thing, which marred the 
 character of the whole proceeding, and 
 spread over it such an aspect of evil, as to 
 offend and to disturb him. He could not 
 bear the whisperings of his own heart, if it 
 told him, that, in so much as by one iota 
 of defect, he had balanced the matter un- 
 fairly between himself and the unconscious 
 individual with whom he deals. It would 
 lie a burden upon his mind to hurt and to 
 make him unhappy, till the opportunity of 
 explanation had come round, and he had 
 obtained ease to his conscience, by acquit- 
 ting himself to the full of all his obligations. 
 It is justice in the uprightness of her atti- 
 tude : it is justice in the onwardness of her 
 path ; it is justice disdaining every advan- 
 tage that would tempt her, by ever so little 
 to the right or to the left ; it is justice spurn- 
 ing the littleness of each paltry enticement 
 away from her, and maintaining herself, 
 without deviation, in a track so purely rec- 
 tilinear, that even the most jealous and mi- 
 croscopic eye could not find in it the slight- 
 est aberration : this is the justice set forth 
 by our great moral Teacher in the passage 
 now submitted to you; and by which we 
 are told, ttiat this virtue relV.ses fellowship 
 with every degree of iniquity that is per- 
 ceptible ; and that, were the very least act of 
 unfaiihfuhjess admitted, she would feel as if 
 in her sanctity she had been violated, as if 
 in her character she had sustained an over- 
 throw. 
 
 In the further prosecution of this dis- 
 course, let us first attempt to elucidate the 
 principle of our text, and then urge onward 
 to its practical consequences — both as it re- 
 spects our general relation to God, and as 
 it respects the particular lesson of faithful- 
 ness that may be educed from it. 
 
 I. The great principle of the text is, that 
 he who has sinned thougli to a small amount 
 in respect of the fruit of his transgression — 
 provided he has done so, by passing over a 
 forbidden limit whicl\ was distinctly known 
 to him, has in the act of doing so, incurred 
 a full condemnation in respect of the prin- 
 ciple of his transgression. In one word, 
 that the gain of it may be small, while the 
 guilt of it may be great; that the latter 
 
 ought not to be measured by the former ; 
 but that he who is unfaithful in the least, 
 shall be dealt with in respect of the offence 
 he has given to God, in the same way a.s 
 if he had been unfaithful in much. 
 
 The first reason, which we would assign 
 in vindication of this is, that by a small act 
 of injustice, the line which separates the 
 right from the wrong is just as effectually 
 broken over as by a great act of injustice. 
 There is a tendency in gross and corporeal 
 man to rate the criminality of injustice by 
 the amount of its appropriations — to reduce 
 it to a computation of weight and measure — 
 to count the man who has gained a double 
 sum by his dishonesty, to be doubly more 
 dishonest than his neiglibour — to make it 
 an affair of product rather than of princi- 
 ple ; and thus to weigh the morality oJ a 
 character in the same arithmetical balance 
 with number or with magnitude. Now, 
 this is not the rule of calculation on which 
 our Saviour has proceeded in the text. He 
 speaks to the man who is only half an inch 
 within the limit of forbidden ground, in the 
 very same terms by which he addresses the 
 man who has made the furthest and the 
 largest incursions upon it. It is true, that 
 he is only a little way upon the wrong side 
 of the line of demarcation. But why is he 
 upon it at all ? It was in the act of cross- 
 ing that line, and not in the act of going 
 onwards after he had crossed it — it was 
 then that the contest between right and 
 wrong was entered upon, and then it was 
 decided. That was the instant of time at 
 which principle struck her surrender. The 
 great pull which the man had to make, was 
 in the act of overleaping the fence of sepa- 
 ration ; and after that was done, justice had 
 no other barrier by which to obstruct his 
 progress over the whole extent of the field 
 which she had iuterdicted. Tliere might 
 be barriers of a different description. There 
 might be still a revolting of humanity 
 against the sufferings that would be inflicted 
 by an act of larger fraud or depredation. 
 There might be a dread of exposure, if the 
 dishonesty should so swell, in point of 
 amount, as to become mr-re noticeable. 
 There might, after the absolute limit be- 
 tween justice and injustice is broken, be an- 
 other limit against the extending of a man's 
 encroachments, in a terror of discovery, 
 or in a sense of interest, or even in the re- 
 lentings of a kindly or a compunctious feel- 
 ing towards him who is the victim of in- 
 justice. But this is not the limit with 
 which the question of a man's truth, or a 
 man's honesty, has to do. These have al- 
 ready been given up. He may only be a 
 little way within the margin of the luilaw- 
 ful territory, but still he is upon it ; and the 
 God who finds him there will reckon with 
 him, and deal with him accordingly. Other 
 principles and other considerations, may 
 
ivl 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 141 
 
 restrain his progress to the very heart of 
 the territory, but justice is not one of them. 
 This he deliberately flung away from him, 
 at that moment when he passed tlie line of 
 circumvallation ; and, though in the neigh- 
 bourhood of that line, he may ho\er all his 
 days at the petty work of picking and pur- 
 loining such fragments as he meets with, 
 though he may never venture himself to a 
 place of more daring or distinguished atro- 
 city, God sees of him, that, in respect of the 
 principle of justice, at least, there is an utter 
 unhingement. And thus it is that the Sa- 
 viour, who knew what was in man, and who, 
 therefore, knew all the springs of that mo- 
 ral machinery by which he is actuated, 
 pronounces of him who was unfaithful in 
 the least, that he was unfaithful also in 
 much. 
 
 After the transition is accomplished, the 
 progress will follow of course, just as op- 
 portunity invites, and just as circumstances 
 make it safe and practicable. For it is not 
 with justice as it is with generosity, and 
 some of the other virtues. There is not 
 the same graduation in the former as there 
 is in the latter. The man who, other cir- 
 cumstances being equal, gives away a dou- 
 ble sum in charity, may, Avith more pro- 
 priety be reckoned doubly more generous 
 than his neighbour ; than tlie man who, 
 with the same equality of circumstances, 
 only ventures on half the extent of fraudu- 
 lenc)', can be reckoned c:ily 'me half as 
 mijust as his neighbour. Each has broken 
 a clear line of demarcation. Each has trans- 
 gressed a distinct and visible limit which he 
 knew to be forbidden. Each has knowingly 
 forced a passage beyond his neighbour's 
 land-mark — and that is the place where 
 justice has laid the main force of her inter- 
 dict. As it respects the materiel of injus- 
 tice, the question revolves itself into a mere 
 computation of quantity. As it respects 
 the morale of injustice, the computation is 
 upon other principles. It is upon the latter 
 that our Saviour pronounces himself And 
 he gives us to understand, that a very hum- 
 ble degree of the former may indicate the 
 latter in all its atrocity. He stands on the 
 breach between the lawful and the unlaw- 
 ful ; and he tells us, that the man who en- 
 ters by a single footstep on the forbidden 
 ground, immediately gathers upon his per- 
 son the full hue and character of guiltiness. 
 He admits no extenuation of the lesser acts 
 of dishonest}'. He does not make right 
 pass into wrong, by a gradual melting of 
 the one into the other. He does not thus 
 obliterate the distinctions of morality. 
 There is no shading off at the margin of 
 guilt, but a clear and vigorous delineation. 
 It is not by a gentle transition that a man 
 steps over from honesty to dishonesty. 
 There is between them a wall rising up 
 into heaven; and the high authority of 
 
 heaven must be stormed ert one inch of 
 entrance can be made into the region of 
 iniquity. The morality of the Saviour never 
 leads him to gloss over the beginnings of 
 crime. His object ever is, as in the text be- 
 fore us, to fortify the limit, to cast a ram- 
 part of exclusion around the whole territory 
 of guilt, and to rear it before the eye of 
 man in such characters of strength and sa- 
 credness, as shonld make them feel that it 
 is impregnable. 
 
 The second reason, why he who is un- 
 faithful in the least has incurred the con- 
 demnation of him who is unfaithful in much, 
 is, that the littleness of the gain, so far from 
 giving a littleness to the guilt, is in fact a 
 circumstance of aggravation. There is just 
 this difference. He who has committed in- 
 justice for the sake of a less advantage, has 
 done it on the impulse of a lees temptation. 
 He has parted with his honesty at an infe- 
 rior price ; and this circumstance may go 
 so to equalize the estimate, as to bring it 
 very much to one with the deliverance, in 
 the text, of our great Teacher of righteous- 
 ness. The limnation between good and 
 evil stood as distinctly before the notice of 
 the small as of the great depredator ; and 
 he has just made as direct a contravention 
 to the first reason, when he passed over 
 upon the wrong side of it. And he may 
 have made little of gain by the enterprise, 
 but this does not allay the guilt of it. Nay, 
 by the second reason, this may serve to ag- 
 gravate the wrath of the Divinity against 
 him. It proves how small the price is which 
 he sets upon his eternity, and how cheaply 
 he can bargain the favour of God away from 
 him, and how low he rates the good of an 
 inheritance with him, and for what a trifle 
 he can dispose of all interest in his kingdom 
 and in his promises. The very circum- 
 stance which gives to his character a milder 
 transgression in the eyes of the world, 
 makes it more odious in the judgment of 
 the sanctuary. The more paltry it is in 
 respect of profit, the more profane it may 
 be in respect of principle. It likens him 
 the more to profane Esau, who sold his 
 birthright for a mess of pottage. And thus 
 it is, indeed, most woful to think of such 
 a senseless and alienated world ; and how 
 heedlessly the men of it are posting their 
 infatuated way to destruction ; and how, 
 for as httle gain as might serve them a day, 
 they are contracting as much guilt as will 
 ruin them for ever ; and are profoundly 
 asleep in the midst of such desiLms and 
 such doings, as will form the valid mate- 
 rials of their entire and everlasting con- 
 demnation. 
 
 It is with argument such as this that we 
 would try to strike conviction among a 
 very numerous class of offenders in society 
 — those who, in the various departments 
 of trust, or service, or agency, are e\ev pra/^- 
 
142 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 [disc 
 
 tising in littles, at the work of secret appro- 
 priation — those whose hands are in a stale 
 of constant defilement, by the putting of 
 them forth to that which they ought to 
 touch not, anftaste not, and handle not — 
 those \v ho silently number such pilferments 
 as can pass unnoticed among the perqui- 
 sites of their office ; and who, by an excess 
 in their charges, just so slight as to escape 
 detection — or by a habit of purloining, just 
 so restrained as to elude discovery, have 
 both a conscience very much at ease in 
 their own bosoms, and a credit very fair, 
 and very entire, among their acquaintances 
 around them. They grossly count upon 
 the smallness of their transgression. But 
 they are just going in a small way to hell. 
 They would recoil with violent dislike from 
 the act of a midnight depredator. It is just 
 because terrors, and trials, and executions, 
 have thrown around it the pomp and the 
 circumstance of guilt. But at another bar, 
 and on a day of more dreadful solemnity, 
 their guilt will be made to stand out in its 
 essential characters, and their condemna- 
 tion will be pronounced from the lips of 
 Him who judgeth righteously. They feel 
 that they have incurred no outrageous for- 
 feiture of character among men, and this 
 instils a treacherous complacency into 
 their own hearts. But the piercing eye of 
 Him who looketh down from heaven is 
 upon the reality of the question ; and He 
 who ponders the secrets of every bosom, 
 can perceive, tliat the man Avho recoils only 
 from such a degree of injustice as is noto- 
 rious, may have no justice whatever in his 
 character. He may have a sense of repu- 
 tation. He may have the fear of detection 
 and disgrace. He ma}' feel a revolt in his 
 constitution against the magnitude of a 
 gross and glaring violation. He may even 
 share in all the feelings and principles of 
 that conventional kind of morality which 
 obtains in his neighbourhood. But, of that 
 principle which is surrendered by the least 
 act of unfaithfulness, he has no share what- 
 ever. He perceives no overawing sacred- 
 ness in that boundary which separates the 
 right from the wrong. If he only keep 
 decently near, it is a matter of indifference 
 to him whether he be on this or on that 
 side of it. He can be unfaithful in that 
 which is least. There may be other prin- 
 ciples, and other considerations to restrain 
 him ; but certain it is, that it is not now the 
 principle of jusiice which restrains him from 
 being unfaitiiful in much. — This is given 
 up; and, through a blindness to. the great 
 and important principle of our text, this 
 virtue may, in its essential character, be as 
 good as banished from the world. All its 
 protections may be utterly overthro\\Ti. 
 The line of defence is effaced by which it 
 ought to have been firmly and scrupulously 
 guarded. The sign-posts of intimation. 
 
 which ouglit to warn and to fecare away, are 
 planted along the barrier ; and when, in de- 
 fiance to them, the barrier is broken, man 
 will not be checked by any sense of honesty, 
 at least, from expatiating over Ihe whole 
 of the forbidden territory. And thus may 
 we gather from the countless peccadilloes 
 W'hich are so current in the various depart- 
 ments of trade, and service, and agency — 
 from the secret freedoms in which many do 
 indulge, without one remonstrance from 
 their own heart — from the petty inroads 
 that are daily practised on the confines of 
 justice, by which its line of demarcation is 
 trodden under foot, and it has lost the mo- 
 ral distinctness, and the moral cliarm, that 
 should have kept it unviolate — from the ex- 
 ceeding multitude of such offences as are 
 frivolous in respect of the matter of them, 
 but most fearfully important in respect of 
 the principle in which thej- originate — 
 from the woful amount of that unseen and 
 unrecorded guilt which escapes the cogni- 
 zance of the human law, but on the appli- 
 cation of the touchstone in cur text, may 
 be made to stand out in cliaracters of se- 
 verest condemnation — from instances, too 
 numerous to repeat, but certainly too ob- 
 ■vious to be missed, even by the observation 
 of charity, may we gather the frailty of 
 human principle, and the virulence of that 
 moral poison, which is now in such full 
 circulation to taint and to adulterate the 
 character of our species. 
 
 Before finishing this branch of our sub- 
 ject, we may observe, that it is whh this, as 
 with many other phenomena of the human 
 character, that we are not long in con- 
 templation upon it, without coming in sight 
 of that great characteristic of fallen man, 
 which meets and forces itself upon us in 
 every view that we take of him — even the 
 great moral disease of ungodlmess. It is 
 at the precise limit between the right and 
 the wrong that the flaming sword of God's 
 law is placed. It is there that " Thus saith 
 the Lord" presents itself, in legible charac- 
 ters, to our view. It is there where the ope- 
 ration of his commandment begins; and 
 not at any of those higher gradations, where 
 a man's dishonesty first appals himself by 
 the chance of its detection, or appals others 
 by the mischief and insecurity which it 
 brings upon social life. An extensive 
 fraud upon the revenue, for example, un- 
 popular as this branch of justice is, would 
 tiring a man down from his place of emi- 
 nence and credit in mercantile society. 
 That petty fraud which is associated with 
 so many of those smaller payments, where 
 a lie in the -written acknowledgment is both 
 given and accepted, as a way of escape from 
 the legal imposition, circulates at large 
 among the members of the great trading 
 community. In the former, and in all the 
 greater cases of injustice, there is a human 
 
IV.] 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 143 
 
 restraint, and a human terror, in operation. 
 There is disgrace and civil punishment, to 
 scare away. There are all the sanctions 
 of that conventional morality which is sus- 
 pended on the fear of man, and the opinion 
 of man; and which, without so much as 
 the recognition of a God, would naturally 
 point its armour against every outrage that 
 could sensibly disturb the securities and the 
 rights of human society. But so long as 
 the disturbance is not sensible — so long as 
 the injustice keeps within the limits of 
 smallness and secrecy — so long as it is safe 
 for the individual to practise it, and, borne 
 along on the tide of general example and 
 connivance, he has nothing to restrain 
 him but that distinct and inflexible word of 
 God, which proscribes all unfaithfulness, 
 and admits of it in no degrees, and no modi- 
 fications — then, let the almost universal 
 sleep of conscience attest, how little of God 
 there is in the virtue of this world ; and 
 how much the peace and the protection of 
 society are owing to such moralities, as 
 the mere selfishness of man would lead 
 him to ordain, even in a community of 
 atheists. 
 
 II. Let us now attempt to unfold a few 
 of the practical consequences that may be 
 drawn from the principle of the text, both 
 in respect to our general relation with God, 
 and in respect to the particular lesson of 
 faithfulness which may be educed from it. 
 
 1. There cannot be a stronger possible 
 illustration of our argument, than the very 
 first act of retribution that occurred in the 
 history of our species. " And God said unto 
 Adam, Of the tree of the knowledge of good 
 and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in 
 the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt 
 surely die. But the woman took of the 
 fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto 
 her husband with her, and he did eat." 
 
 What is it that invests the eating of a soli- 
 tary apple with a grandeur so momentous? 
 How came an action in itself so minute, to 
 be the germ of such mighty consequences ? 
 How are we to understand that our first 
 parents, by the doing of a .single instant, not 
 only brought death upon themselves, but 
 shed this big and baleful disaster over all 
 their posterity? We may not be able to 
 answer all these questions, but we may at 
 least learn, what a thing of danger it is, 
 under the government of a holy and inflexi- 
 ble God, to tamper with the limits of obe- 
 dience. By the eating of that apple, a clear 
 requirement was broken, and a distinct 
 transition was made from loyalty to rebel- 
 lion, and an entrance was effected into the 
 region of sin — and thus did this one act 
 serve like the opening of a gate for a torrent 
 of mighty mischief; and if the act itself was 
 a trifle, it just went to aggravate its guilt — 
 that, for such a trifle, the authority of God 
 could be despised and trampled on. At all i 
 
 events, his attribute of truth stood commit- 
 ted to the fulfilment of the threatening; and 
 the very insignificancy of the deed, which 
 provoked the execution of it, gives a sub- 
 limer character to the certainty of the fulfil- 
 ment. We know how much this trait, in 
 the dealings of God with man, has been the 
 jeer of infidelity. But in all this ridicule, 
 there is truly nothing else than the gross- 
 ness of materialism. Had Adam, instead of 
 plucking one single apple from the Ibrl^id- 
 den tree, been armed with the power ul' a 
 malignant spirit, and spread a wanton havoc 
 over the face of paradise, and spoiled the 
 garden of its loveliness, and been able to mar 
 and to deform the whole of that terrestrial 
 creation over which God had so recently re- 
 joiced — the punishment he sustained would 
 have looked to these arithmetical moralists, 
 a more adequate return for the offence of 
 which he had been guilty. They cannot 
 see how the moral lesson rises in greatness, 
 just in proportion to the humility of the ma- 
 terial accompaniments — and how it wraps a 
 sublimer glory around the holiness of the 
 Godhead — and how from the transaction, 
 such as it is, the conclusion cometh forth 
 more nakedly, and, therefore, more impres- 
 sively, that it is an evil and a bitter thing to 
 sin against the Lawgiver. God said, "Let 
 there be light, and it was light ;" and it has 
 ever been regarded as a sublime token of 
 the Deity, that, from an utterance so simple, 
 an accomplishment so quick and so mag- 
 nificent should have followed. God said, 
 " That he who eateth of the tree in the 
 midst of the garden should die." It appears 
 indeed, but a little thing, that one s^hould 
 put forth his hand to an apple and taste of 
 it. But a saying of God was involved in 
 the matter — and heaven and earth must pass 
 away, ere a saying of his can pass away ; 
 and so the apple became decisive of the fate 
 of a world ; and, out of the very scantiness 
 of the occasion, did there emerge a sublimer 
 display of truth and of holiness. The be- 
 ginning of the world was, indeed, the period 
 of great manifestations of the Godhead ; and 
 they all seem to accord, in style and cha- 
 racter, with each other ; and in that very 
 history, which has called forth the profane 
 and unthinking levity of many a scorner, 
 may we behold as much of the majesty of 
 principle, as in the creation of light, we be- 
 hold of the majesty of power. 
 
 But this history furnishes the materials 
 of a contemplation still more practical. If, 
 for this one offence, Adam and his posterity 
 have been so visited — if so rigorously and 
 so inflexibly precise be the spirit of God's 
 administration — if, under the economy of 
 heaven, sin, even in the very humblest of 
 its exhibitions, be the object of an intoler- 
 ance so jealous and. so unrelenting — if the 
 Deity be such as this transaction manifests 
 him to be, disdainful of fellowship even with 
 
144 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 [disc 
 
 the very least iniquity, and dreadful in the 
 certainty of all his accomplishments against 
 £t — if, for a single transgression, all the 
 promise and all the felicity of paradise had 
 to be broken up, and the wretched offen- 
 ders had to be turned abroad upon a world. 
 now changed by the curse into a wilder- 
 ness, and their secure and lovely home of 
 innocence behooved to be abandoned, and 
 to keep them out, a flaming sword had to 
 turn every way, and guard their reaccess to 
 the bowers of inunortality — if sin be so very 
 hateful in the eye of unspotted holiness, 
 that, on its very first act. and first appear- 
 ance, the wonted communion between hea- 
 ven and earth was interdicted— if that was 
 the time at which God looked on our spe- 
 cies with an altered countenance, and one 
 deed of disobedience proved so terribly de- 
 cisive of the fate and history of a world — 
 what should each individual amongst us 
 think of his own danger, whose life has 
 been one continued habit of disobedience ? 
 If we be still in the hands of that God who 
 laid so fell a condemnation ort this one 
 trjinsgression. let us just think of our many 
 transgressions, and that every hour we live 
 multiplies the account of them ; and that, 
 however they may vanish from our own 
 remembrance, they are still alive in the 
 records of a judge whose eye and whose 
 memory never fail him. Let us transfer the 
 lesson we have gotten of heaven's jurispru- 
 dence from the case of our first parents to 
 our own case. Let us compare our live? 
 wath the law of God, and we shall find that 
 our sins are past reckoning. Let us take 
 account of the habitual posture of our souls. 
 as a posture of dislike for the things that 
 are above, and we shall find that our 
 thoughts and our desires are ever running 
 in one current of sinfulness. Let us just 
 make the computation how often we fail in 
 the biddfn charity, and the bidden godli- 
 ness, and the bidden long suffering — all as 
 clearly bidden as the duty that was laid on 
 our first parents — and we shall find, tliat we 
 are borne down under a mountain of ini- 
 quity; that, in the languageof the Psalmist, 
 our transgressions have gone over our 
 heads, and, as a heavy burden, are too 
 heavy for 'us; and if we be indeed under 
 the government of Him who followed up 
 the offence of the stolen apple by so dread- 
 ful a chastisement, then is wrath gone out 
 unto the uttermost against every one of us. 
 — There is something in the history of that 
 apple which might be brought specially to 
 bear on the case of those small sinners who 
 practise in secret at the work of their petty 
 depredations. But it also carries in it a 
 great and a universal moral. It tells us that 
 no sin is small. It serves a general purpose 
 of conviction. It holds out a most alarming 
 di.'^closure of the charge that is against us ; 
 and makes it manifest to the conscience of 
 
 him who is awakened thereby, that, unless 
 God himself point out a way of escape, we 
 are indeed most hopelessly sunk in con- 
 demnation. And, seeing that such wrath 
 went out from the sanctuary of this un- 
 changeable God, on the one offence of our 
 first parents, it irresistibly follows, that if 
 we, manifold in guilt, take not ourselves to 
 his appointed way of reconciliation — if we 
 refuse the overtures of Him, who then so 
 visited the one offence through which aU 
 are dead, but is now laying before us all 
 that free gift, which is of many offences 
 unto justification — in other words, if we 
 will not enter into peace through the of- 
 fered Mediator, how much greater must be 
 the wrath that abidcth on us ? 
 
 Now, let the sinner have his conscience 
 schooled by such a contemplation, and 
 there will be no rest whatever for his soul 
 till he find it in the Saviour. Let him only 
 learn, from the dealings of God with the 
 first Adam, what a God of holiness he him- 
 self has to deal with; and let him further 
 learn, from the history of the second Adam, 
 that to manifest himself as a God of love, 
 another righteousness had to be brought in, 
 in place of that from which man had fallen 
 so utterly away. There was a faultless 
 obedience rendered by Him, of whom it is 
 said, that he fulfilled all righteousness. 
 There was a magnifying of the law by one 
 in human form, who up to the last jot and 
 tittle t)f it, acquitted himself of all its obli- 
 gations. '^There was a pure, and lofty, and 
 undefiled path, trodden by a holy and 
 harmless Beinsf, who gave not up his work 
 upon earth, till ere he left it, he could cry 
 out, that it was finished ; and so had 
 wrought out for us a perfect righteousness. 
 Now, it forms the most prominent annun- 
 ciation of the New Testament, that the re- 
 ward of this righteousness is offered unto 
 all — so that there is not one of us who is 
 not put by the gospel upon the alternative 
 of being either tried by our own merits, or 
 treated according to the merits of Him who 
 became sin for us, though he knew no sin, 
 that we might be made the righteousness 
 of God in him. Let the sinner just look 
 unto himself, and look unto the SSviour. 
 Let him advert not to his one, but to his 
 many offences ; and that, too, in the sight 
 of a God, who, but for one so slight and so 
 insignificant in respect of the outward de- 
 scription, as the eating of a forbidden ap- 
 ple, threw off a world into banishment, and 
 entailed a sentence of death upon all its 
 generations. Let him learn from this, that 
 for sin, even in its humblest degrees, there 
 exists in the bosom of the Godhead no 
 toleration ; and how shall he dare, with the 
 degree and the frequency of his own sin, 
 to stand any longer on a ground, where, if 
 he remaiit,'the fi^erceness of a consuming 
 fire is so sure to overtake him 1 The righ 
 
iV.] 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 145 
 
 teousness of Christ is without a flaw, and 
 there he is invited to take slielter. Lnder 
 the actual regiiiien, which God has esta- 
 blished in our world, it is indeed liis only 
 security — his refuge from the tempest, and 
 hiding place from the storm. The only 
 beloved vSon offers to spread his own un- 
 spotted garment as a protection over him ; 
 and, if he be rightly alive to the niter na- 
 kedness of his moral and spiritual condition 
 he will indeed make no tarrying till he be 
 found m Christ, and find that in liim there 
 is no condemnation. 
 
 Now, it is worthy of remark, that those 
 principles, which shut a man up unto the 
 faith, do not lake flight and abandon liim, 
 after they have served this temporary pur- 
 pose. Tiiey abide with him, and work 
 their appropriate influence on his charac- 
 ter, and serve as the germ of a new moral 
 creation ; and we can afterwards detect 
 their operation in his heart and life; so, that 
 if they were present at the formation of a 
 saving belief, they are not less unfailingly 
 present with every true Christian, through- 
 out the whole of his future history, as the 
 elements of a renovated conduct. If it was 
 sensibility to the evil of sin which helped 
 to wean ihe man fi'om himself, and led him 
 to his Saviour, this sensibility does not fall 
 asleep in the bosom of an awakened sinner, 
 after Christ has given him light — but it 
 grows with the growth, and strengthens 
 with the strength, of his Christianity. If, 
 at the interesting period of his transition 
 from nature to grace, he saw, even in the 
 very least of his offences, a deadly provo- 
 cation of the Lawgiver, he does not lose 
 sight of til is consideration in his future pro- 
 gress — nor does it barely remain with him, 
 like one of the unproductive notions of an 
 inert and unproductive theory. It gives 
 rise to a fearful jealousy in his heart of the 
 least appearance of evil ; and, with every 
 man who has undergone a genuine process 
 of conversion, do we behold the scrupulous 
 avoidance of sin, in its most slender, as well 
 as in its more aggravated forms. If it was 
 the perfection of the character of Christ, 
 who felt that it became him to fulfil all 
 vighleousness, that offered him the first 
 solid foundation on which he could lean — 
 then, the same character, which first drew 
 his eye for the purpose of confidence, still 
 continues to draw his eye for the purpose 
 of imitation. At the outset of faith, all the 
 essential moralities of thought, and feeling, 
 and conviction, are in play ; nor is there 
 any thing in the progress of a real faith 
 which is calculaled to throw them back 
 again into the dormancy out of which they 
 had arisen. They break out, in fact, into 
 more full and flourishing display on every 
 new creature, witli every new step, and new 
 evolution, in his mental history. All the 
 principles of the gospel serve, as it were, to 
 19 
 
 fan and to perpetuate his hostility against 
 sin ; and all ihe powers of the gospel enable 
 him, more and more, to fulfil the desires of 
 his heart, and to carry his purposes of hos- 
 tility into execution. In the case of every 
 genuine believer, w ho walks not after the 
 flesh, but after the spirit, do we beliold a 
 fulfilling of the righteousness of the law — a 
 strenuous avoidance of sin, in its slightest 
 possible taint or modification — a strenuous 
 peribrmance of duty, up to the last jot and 
 tittle of its exactions — so. that let the un- 
 true professors of the faith do what they 
 will in the way of antinomianism, and let 
 the enemies of the faith say what they will 
 about our antinomianism, the real spirit of 
 the dispensation under which we li\e is 
 such, that whosoever shall break one of the 
 least of these commandments, and teach 
 men so, is accounted the least — whosoever 
 sliall do and teach them is accounted the 
 greatest. 
 
 2. Let us, therefore, urge the spirit and 
 the practice of this lesson upon your obser- 
 vation. The place for the practice of it 
 is the familiar and week-day scene. The 
 principle for the spirit of it descends upon 
 tlie heart, from the sublimest heights of 
 the sanctuary of God. It is not vulgarizing 
 Christianity to bring it down to the very 
 humblest occupations of human life. It is, 
 in fact, dignifying human life, by bringing 
 it up to the level of Christianity. 
 
 It may look to soir.e a degradation of the 
 pulpit, when the household servant is told 
 to make her firm stand against the temp- 
 tation of open doors, a.'id secret opportuni- 
 ties; or when the confidential agent is told 
 to resist the slightest inclination to any un- 
 seen freedom with the property of his em- 
 ployers, or to any undiscoverable excess in 
 the charges of his management; or when 
 the receiver of a humble payment is told, 
 that the tribute which is due on every writ- 
 ten acknowledgment ought faitlifully to be 
 met, and not fictitiously to be evaded. This 
 is not robbing religion of its sacredness, but 
 spreading its sacredness over the face of 
 society. It is evangelizing human life, by 
 impregnating its minutest transactions with 
 the spirit of the gospel. It is strengthening 
 the wall of partition between sin and obe- 
 dience. It is the teacher of righteousness 
 taking his stand at the outpost of that ter- 
 ritory which he is appointed to defend, 
 and warning his hearers of the danger that 
 lies in a single footstep of encroachment. It 
 is letting them know, that it is in the act of 
 stepping over the limit, that the sinner 
 throws the gauntlet of his defiance against 
 the authority of God. And though he may 
 deceive himself with the imagination that 
 his soul is safe, because the gain of his in- 
 justice is small, such is the God with whom 
 he has to do, that, if it be gain to the value 
 of a single apple, then, within the compass 
 
146 
 
 ESTIMATION OF THE GUILT OF DISHONESTY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 of SO small an outward dimension, may as 
 much guilt be euclgsed as lliat which hath 
 Drought death into our world, and carried it 
 down in a descending ruin upon all its 
 generations. 
 
 It may appear a very little thing, when 
 you are told to be honest in little m itters; 
 when the servant is told to keep her hand 
 from every one article about which there is 
 not an express or understood allowance on 
 the part of her superiors; when the dealer 
 is told to lop off the excesses of that minuter 
 fraudulency, which is so currently prac- 
 tised in the humble walks of merchandise: 
 when the workman is told to abstain from 
 those petty reservations of the material of 
 his work, for which he is said to have such 
 snug and ample opportunity ; and when, 
 without pronouncing on the actual extent 
 of these transgressions, all are told to be 
 faithful in that which is least, else, if there 
 be truth in our text, they incur the guilt of 
 being unfaithful in much. It maybe thought, 
 that because such dishonesties as these are 
 scarcely noticeable, they are therefore not 
 worthy of notice. But it is just in the pro- 
 portion of their being unnoticeable by the 
 human eye, that it is religious to refrain 
 from them. These are the cases in which it 
 will be seen, whether the controul of the 
 omniscience of God makes up for the con- 
 troul of human observation — in which the 
 sentiment, that thou God seest me, should 
 carry a preponderance through all the secret 
 ..places of a man's history — in which, when 
 every earthly check of an earthly morality 
 is withdrawn, it should be felt, that the eye 
 of God is upon him, and that the judgment 
 of God is in reserve for him. To him who 
 is gifted Avith a true discernment of these 
 matters, will it appear, that often, in propor- 
 tion to the smailness of the doings, is the 
 sacredness of that principle whieh causes 
 them to be done with integrity ; that honesty, 
 in little transactions, bears upon it more of 
 the aspect of holiness, than honesty in great 
 ones: that the man of deepest sensibility to 
 the obligations of the law, is he who feels 
 the quickening of moral alarm at its slightest 
 violations; that, in the morality of grains 
 and of scruples, there may be a greater ten- 
 derness of conscience, and a more heaven- 
 born sanctity, than in that larger morality 
 which flashes broadly and observably upon 
 the world ; — and that thus, in the faithful- 
 ness of the household maid, or of the ap- 
 prentice boy, there may be the presence of 
 a truer principle than there is in the more 
 conspicuous transactions of human business 
 — w^hat they do, being done, not with eye- 
 service — what they do, being done unto the 
 Lord. 
 
 And here we may remark, that nobleness 
 of condition is not essential as a school for 
 noblenessof character; nor does man require 
 to be high in office, ere he can gather around 
 
 his person the worth and the lustre of a high 
 minded integrity. It is delightful to think, 
 that humble life may be just as rich in moral 
 grace, and moral grandeur, as the loftier 
 places of society; that as true a dignity of 
 principle may be earned by him who in 
 homeliest drudgery, plies his conscientiou."? 
 task, as by him who stands entrusted with 
 the fortunes of an empire ; that the poorest 
 menial in the land, who can lil't a hand un- 
 soiled by the pilferments that are within his 
 reach, may have achieved a victory over 
 temptation, to the full as honourable as the 
 proudest patriot can boast, who has spurned 
 the bribery of courts away from him. It is 
 cheering to know, from the heavenly judi^e 
 himself, that he who is faithful in the least, is 
 faithful also in much ; and that thus, among 
 the labours of the field and of the work-shop, 
 it is possible for the peasant to be as bright 
 in honour as the peer, and have the chivalry 
 of as much truth and virtue to adorn him. 
 
 And, as this lesson is not little in respect 
 of principle, so neither is it little in respect 
 of influence on the order and well-being of 
 human society. He who is unjust in the 
 least, is, in respect of guilt, unjust also in 
 much. And to reverse this proposition, as it 
 is done in the first clause of our text — he 
 who is faithful in that which is least, is, in 
 respect both of righteous principle and of 
 actual observation, faithful also in much. 
 Who is tlie man to whom I would most 
 readily confide the whole of my property? 
 He who would most disdain to put forth an 
 injurious hand on a single farthing of it. 
 Who is the man from whom I would have 
 the least dread of any unrighteous encroach- 
 ment ? He, all the delicacies of whose prin- 
 ciple are awakened, when he comes within 
 sight of the limit which separates the region 
 of justice from the region of injustice. Who 
 is the man whom we shall never find among 
 the greater degrees of iniquity? He who 
 shrinks with sacred abhorrence from the 
 lesser degrees of it. It is a true, though a 
 homely maxim of economy, that if we take 
 care of our small sums, our great sums will 
 take care of themselves. And, to pass from 
 our own things to the things of others, it is 
 no less true, that if principle should lead us 
 all to maintain the care of strictest honesty 
 over our neighbour's pennies, then will his 
 pounds lie secure from the grasp of injustice, 
 behind the barrier of a moral impossibility. 
 This lesson, if carried into effect among you, 
 would so strengthen all the ramparts of se- 
 curity' between man and man, as to make 
 them utterly impassable ; and therefore, 
 while, in the matter of it, it may look, in 
 one view, as one of the least of the com- 
 mandments, it, in regard both of principle 
 and effect, is, in another view of it, one ol 
 the greatest of the commandments. And we 
 therefore conclude with assuring you. that 
 nothing v,-ill spread the principle of this 
 
l^J 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. 
 
 147 
 
 commandment to any great extent through- 
 oui the mass of society, but the pruiciple of 
 godliness. Nothing will secure the general 
 observation of justice amongst us, in its 
 punctuality and in its preciseness, but such 
 a precise Christianity as many affirm to be 
 puritanical. In other words, the virtues of 
 society, to be kept in a healthful and pros- 
 perous condition, must be upheld by the 
 virtues of the sanctuary. Human law may 
 restrain many of the grosser violations. But 
 without religion among the people, justice 
 will never be in extensive operation as a 
 moral principle. A vast proportion of the 
 species will be as unjust as the vigilance and 
 the severities of law allow them to he. A 
 thousand petty dishonesties, which never 
 
 will, and never can be brought within the 
 cognizance of any of our courts of admiuis- 
 tration, will still continue to derange the 
 business of human life, and to stir up all the 
 heartburnings of suspicion and resentment 
 among the members of human society. And 
 it is, indeed, a triumphant reversion await- 
 ing the Christianity of the New Testament, 
 when it shall become manifest as day, that 
 it is her doctrine alone, which, by its search- 
 ing and sanctifying influence, can so moral- 
 ize our world — as tliat each may sleep secure 
 in the lap of his neighbour's integrity, and 
 charm of confidence, between man and man, 
 will at length be felt in the business of 
 every town, and in the bosom of every 
 family. 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 On the great Christian Law of Reciprocity between Man and Man. 
 
 " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them : for this is 
 the law and the prophets." — Matthew vii. 12. 
 
 There are two great classes in human 
 society, between whom there lie certain 
 mutual claims and obligations, which are 
 felt by some to be of xevy difficult adjust- 
 ment. There are those who have requests 
 of some kind or other to make; and there 
 are those to whom the requests are made, 
 and with whom there is lodged the power 
 either to grant or to refuse them. Now, at 
 first sight, it would appear, that the firm 
 exercise of this power of refusal is the only 
 barrier by which the latter class can be se- 
 cured against the indefinite encroachments 
 )f the former ; and that, if this were remov- 
 3d, all the safeguards of right and property 
 would be removed along with it. The power 
 of refusal, on the part of those who have 
 the right of refusal, may be abolished by an 
 act of violence, on the part of those who 
 have it not ; and then, when this happens 
 in individual cases, we have the crimes of 
 assault and robbery ; and when it happens 
 on a more extended scale, we have anarchy 
 and insurrection in the land. Or the power 
 of refusal may be taken away by an au- 
 thoritative precept of religion ; and then 
 might it still be matter of apprehension, lest 
 our only defence against the inroads of 
 selfishness and injustice were as good as 
 given up, and lest the peace and interest of 
 families shoidd be laid open to a most fearful 
 exposure, by the enactnients of a romantic 
 and impracticable system. Whenever this 
 is apprehended, the temptation is strongly 
 *elt, either to rid ourselves of the enactments 
 altogether, or at least to bring them down 
 
 in nearer accommodation to the feelings and 
 the conveniences of men. 
 
 And Christianity, on tlie very first blush 
 of it, appears to be precisely such a religion. 
 It seems to take away all lawfulness of re- 
 sistance from the possessor, and to invest 
 the demander with such an extent of privi- 
 lege, as would make the two classes of so- 
 ciety, to which we have just now adverted, 
 speedily change places. And this is the true 
 secret of the many laborious deviations that 
 have been attempted in this branch of mo- 
 rality, on the obvious meaning of the New 
 Testament. This is the secret of those many 
 qualifying clauses, by which its most lumin- 
 ous announcements have been beset, to the 
 utter darkening of them. This it is which 
 explains the many sad invasions that have 
 been made on the most manifest and un- 
 deniable literalities of the law and of the 
 testimony. And our present text, among 
 others, has received its full share of mutila- 
 tion, and of Avhat may be called " dressing 
 up," from the hands of commentators — it 
 having wakened the very alarms of w-hich 
 we have just spoken, and called forth the 
 very attempts to quiet and to subdue tliem. 
 Surely, it has been said, we can never be 
 required to do unto others what they have 
 no right, and no reason, to expect from us. 
 The demand must not be an extravagant 
 one. It must lie v.'ithin the limits of modera- 
 tion. It must be such as, in the estimation 
 of every justly thinking person, is counted 
 fair in the circumstances of the case. The 
 principle on which our Saviour, in the text. 
 
148 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAAV OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 rests the oblig.ition of doing any particular 
 tiling to otliers, is, tliat we wish otliers to 
 do tiiat thing unto us. But this is too much 
 for an affrighted selfishness; and, for her 
 own protection, she would put forth a de- 
 fensive sophistry upon the subject; and in 
 place of that distinctly announced principle, 
 on which the Bible both directs and specifies 
 what the things are which we should do 
 unto others, does she substitute another 
 principle entirely — which is, merely to do 
 unto others such things as are fair, and right, 
 and reasonable. 
 
 Now, there is one clause of this verse 
 which would appear to lay a positive inter- 
 dict on all these qualifications. How shall 
 we dispose of a phrase, so sweeping and 
 universal in its import, as that of " all things 
 whatsoever?" We cannot think that such 
 an expression as this was inserted for no- 
 thing, by him who lias told us, that "cursed 
 is every one wlio taketh away from the 
 words of this book." There is no distinction 
 laid down between things fair, and things un- 
 fair — between things reasonable, and things 
 unreasonable. Both are comprehended in 
 the " all tilings whatsoever." The significa- 
 tion is plain and absolute, that, let the thing 
 be what it may, if you wish others to do 
 that thing for you, it lies imperatively upon 
 you to do the very same thing for them also. 
 
 But, at this rate, you may think that the 
 whole system of human intercourse would 
 go into unhingement. You mnj wish your 
 next-door neighbour to present you with 
 half his fortune. In this case, we know not 
 how you are to escape from the conclusion, 
 that you are bound to present him with the 
 half of yours. Or you may wish a relative 
 to burden himself with the expenses of all 
 your family. It is then impossible to save 
 you from the positive, obligation, if you are 
 equally able for it, of doing the same ser- 
 vice to the family of another. Or you may 
 wish to engross the whole time of an ac- 
 quaintance in personal attendance upon 
 yourself. Then, it is just your part to do the 
 same extent of civility to another who may 
 desire h. These are only a few specifica- 
 tions, out of the manifold varieties, whether 
 of service oi of donation, which are con- 
 ceivable between one man and another ; nor 
 are we awaie of any artifice of explanation 
 by which they can possibly be detached 
 from the "all things whatsoever" of the 
 verse before us. These are the literalities 
 which we are not at liberty to compromise 
 — but are bound to urge, and that simply, 
 according to the terms in which they have 
 been conveyed to us by the great Teacher 
 of righteousness. This jnay raise a sensitive 
 dread in many a bosom. It may look like 
 the opening of a floodgate, through which 
 a torrent of human rapacity would be made 
 to set in on the fair and measured domains 
 of property, and by which all the fences of 
 
 legality would be overthrown. It is some 
 such fearful anticipation as this wliicii causes 
 casuistry to ply its wily expedients, and 
 busily to devise its many limits, ;ind it? 
 many exceptions, to the morality of the 
 New Testament. And yet, we think it pos- 
 sible to demonstrate of our text, that no such 
 modifying is requisite ; and that, tliough ad- 
 mitted strictly and rigorously as the rule of 
 our daily conduct, it would lead to no prac- 
 tical conclusions which are at all formidable. 
 For, what is the precise circumstance 
 which lays the obligation of this precept 
 upon you? There may be other places in 
 the Bible where you are required to do 
 things for the benefit of your neighbour, 
 whether you would wish your neiglibour to 
 do these things for your benefit or not. But 
 this is not the requirement here. There is 
 none other thing laid upon you in this 
 place, than that you should do that good 
 action in behalf of another, which yon 
 would like that other to do in behalf of 
 yourself. If you would not like him to do 
 it for you, then there is nothing in the com 
 pass of this sentence now before you, that 
 at all obligates you to do it for him. II 
 you would not like your neighbour to make 
 so romantic a surrender to your interest, as 
 to oflTer you to the extent of half his fortune, 
 then there is nothing in that part of the gos- 
 pel code which now engages us, that ren 
 ders it imperative upon you to make the 
 same o'ffer to your neighbour. If you would 
 positively recoil, in all the reluctance of in- 
 genuous delicacy, from the selfishness of 
 laying on a relation the burden of tlie ex- 
 penses of all your family, then this is not 
 the good office that you would have him to 
 do unto you ; and this, therefore, is not the 
 good office which the text prescribes you to 
 do unto him. If you have such considera- 
 tion for another's ease, and another's con- 
 venience, that you could not take the un- 
 generous advantage of so much of his time 
 for your accommodation, there may be 
 other verses in the Bible which point to a 
 greater sacrifice, on your part, for the good 
 of others, than you would like these others 
 to make for yours ; but, most assuredly, 
 this is not the verse which imposes that 
 sacrifice. If you would not that others 
 should do these things on your accouni., 
 then these things form no part of the " all 
 things whatsoever" j^ou would that men 
 should do unto you ; and, therefore, they 
 form no part of the " all things whatsoever" 
 that you are required, by this verse, to do 
 unto them. The bare circumstance of your 
 positively not wishing that any such ser- 
 vices should be rendered unto you, exempts 
 you, as far as the single authority of this 
 precept is concerned, from the obligation of 
 rendering these services to others. This is 
 the limitation to the extent of those services 
 which are called for in the text ; and it is 
 
v.l 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. 
 
 149 
 
 surely better, that every limitation to a 
 commandment of God's, should be defined 
 by God himself, than that it should be 
 drawn from the assumptions of human fan- 
 cy, or from the fears and the feelings of 
 human convenience. 
 
 Let a man, in fact, give himself up to a 
 strict and literal observance of the precept 
 in this verse, and it will impress a two-fold 
 direction upon him. It will not only guide 
 him to certain performances of good in be- 
 half of others, but it will guide him to the 
 regulation of his own desires of good from 
 them. For his desires of good from others 
 are here set up a? the measure of his per- 
 formances of good to others. The more 
 selfish and unbounded his desires are, the 
 larger are those performances with the ob- 
 ligation of which he is burdened. What- 
 soever he would that others should do unto 
 him, he is bound to do unto them ; and, 
 therefore, the more he gives way to unge- 
 nerous and extravagant wishes of service 
 from those who are around him, the hea- 
 vier and more insupportable is the load of 
 duty which he brings upon him-self — The 
 commandment is quite imperative, and 
 there is no escaping from it ; and if he, by 
 the excess of his selfishness, should render 
 it impracticable, then the whole punishment 
 due to the guilt of casting aside the autho- 
 rity of this commandment, follows in that 
 train of punishment which is annexed to 
 selfishness. There is one way of being re- 
 lieved from such a burden. There is one 
 way of reducing this verse to a moderate 
 and practicable requirement ; and that is, 
 just to give up selfishness — ^just to stifle all 
 ungenerous desires — ^^just to moderate every 
 wish of service or liberality from others, 
 down to the standard of what is right and 
 equitable ; and then there may be other 
 verses in the Bible by which we are called 
 to be kind even to the evil and the unthank- 
 ful. But, most assuredly, this verse lays 
 upon us none other thing, than that we 
 should do such services for others as are 
 right and equitable. 
 
 The more extravagant, then, a man's 
 wishes of accommodation from others are, 
 the wider is the distance between him and 
 the bidden performances of our text. The 
 separation of him from his duty, increases 
 at the rate of two bodies receding from each 
 other by equal and contrary movements. 
 The more selfish his desires of service are 
 from others, the more feeble, on that very 
 account, will be his desires of making any 
 surrender of himself to them, and yet the 
 greater is the amount of that surrender 
 whicli is due. The poor man, in fact, is 
 moving himself away from the rule ; and 
 the rule is just moving as fast away from 
 the man. As he sinks, in the scale of sel- 
 fishness, beneath the point of a fair and 
 moderate expectation from others, does the 
 
 rule rise, in tlie scale of duty, with its de- 
 mands upon him ; and thus there is render- 
 ing to him double for every unfair and un- 
 generous imposition that he would make 
 on the kindness of those who are around 
 him. 
 
 Now, there is one way, and a verj- effec- 
 tual one, of getting these two ends to meet. 
 Moderate your own desires of service from 
 others, and you will moderate, in the snme 
 degree, all those duties of service to others 
 which are measured by these desires. Have 
 the delicacy to abstain from any wish of 
 encroachment on ttie convenience or pro- 
 perty of another. Have the high-minded- 
 ness to be indebted for your own support 
 to the exertions of your own honourable 
 industry, rather than the dastardly habit of 
 preying on the simplicity of those around / 
 )^ou. Have such a keen sense of equity, ' 
 and such a fine tone of independent feeling, 
 that you could not bear to be the cause of 
 hardship or distress to a single human 
 creature, if you could help it. Let the 
 same spirit he in you, which the Apostle 
 wanted to exemplify before the eye of his 
 disciples, when he coveted no man's gold, 
 or silver, or apparel ; when he laboured not 
 to be chargeable to any of them ; but 
 wrought with his own hands, rather than 
 be burdensome. Let this mind be in you, 
 which was also in the Apostle of the Gen- 
 tiles ; and, then., the text before us will not 
 come near you with a single oppressive or 
 impracticable requirement. There may be 
 other passag'es. where you are called to go 
 beyond the strict line of justice, or common 
 humanity, in behalf of your suffering bre- 
 thren. i3ut this passage does not touch 
 you with any such preceptive imposition : 
 and you. by moderating your wishes from 
 others down to what is fair and equitable, 
 do, in fact, reduce the rule whicli binds j'ou 
 to act according to the measure of these 
 wishes, down to a rule of precise and unde- 
 viating equity. 
 
 The operation is somewhat like that of a 
 governor or fly, in mechanism. This is a 
 very happy contrivance, by which all that 
 is defective or excessive in the motion, is 
 confined within the limits of equability: 
 and every tendenc}', in particular, to any 
 mischievous acceleration, is restrained. 
 The impulse given by this verse to the con- 
 duct of man among his fellows, would seem, 
 to a superficial observer, to carry him to all 
 the excesses of a most ruinous and quixotic 
 benevolence. But let him only look to the 
 skilful adaptation of the fly. Just suppose 
 the control of moderation and equity to be 
 laid upon his own wishes, and there is not 
 a single impulse given to his conduct be- 
 yond the rate of moderation and equitj-. 
 You are not required here to do all things 
 whatsoeA^er in behalf of others, but to do all 
 things. whatsoever for them, that you would 
 
150 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. [DISC 
 
 should be done unto yourself. This is the 
 check by which the whole of the bidden 
 movement is governed, and kept from Tun- 
 ing out into any hurtful excess. And such 
 is the beautiful operation of that piece of 
 moral meciumism that we are now employ- 
 ed in contemplating, that while it i<eeps 
 down all the aspirations of selfishness, it 
 does, in fact, restrain every extravagancy, 
 and impress on its obedient subjects no 
 other movement, tlian that of an even and 
 inflexible justice. 
 
 This rule of our Saviour's, then, pre- 
 scribes moderation to our desires of good 
 from others, as well as generosity to our 
 doings in behalf of others ; and makes the 
 first the measure of obligation to the se- 
 cond. It may thus be seen how easily, in 
 a Cliristian society, the whole work of be- 
 nevolence could be adjusted, so as to render 
 it possible for the givers not only to meet, 
 but also to overpass, the wishes and expec- 
 tations of the receivers. The rich man 
 may have a heavier obligation laid upon 
 him by other precepts of the New-Testa- 
 ment; but, by this precept, he is not bound 
 to do more for the poor man, than what he 
 himself would wish, in like circumstances, 
 to be done for him. And let the poor man, 
 on the other hand, wish for no more than 
 what a Christian ought to wish for ; let him 
 work and endure to the extent of nature's 
 sufferance, rather than beg — and only beg, 
 rather than that he should starve ; and in 
 such a state of principle among men, a tide 
 of beneficence would so go forth upon all 
 the vacant places in society, as that there 
 should be no room to receive it. The duty 
 of the rich, as connected with this adminis- 
 tration, is of so direct and positive a charac- 
 ter, as to obtrude itself at once on the notice 
 of the Christian moralist. But the poor 
 also have a duty in it — to which we feel 
 ourselves directed by the train of argument 
 which we have now been prosecuting — and 
 a duty, too, we think, of far greater impor- 
 tance even than the other, to the best inte- 
 rests of mankind. 
 
 For, let us first contrast the rich man 
 who is ungenerous in his doings, with the 
 poor man who is ungenerous in his desires ; 
 and see from which of the two it is, that 
 the cause of charity receives the deadlier 
 infliction. There is, it must be admitted, 
 an individual to be met with occasionally, 
 who represents the former of these two 
 characters ; with every affection gravitating 
 to itself, and to its sordid gratifications and 
 interests ; bent on his own pleasure, or his 
 own avarice — and so engrossed with these, 
 as to have no spare feeling at all for the 
 brethren of his common nature ; with a 
 heart obstinately shut against that most 
 powerful of applications, the look of genuine 
 and imploring distress — and whose very 
 countenance speaks a surly and determined 
 
 exclusion on every call that proceeds from 
 it; who in a tumult of perpetual alarm 
 about new cases, and new tales of surlering, 
 and new plans of pliilantiiropy, has at 
 length learned to resist and to resent every 
 one of them; and, spurning the whole of 
 this disturbance impatiently away, to main- 
 tain a firm defensive over the close system 
 of his own selfish luxuries, and his own 
 snug accommodations. Such a man keeps 
 back, it must be allowed, from the cause of 
 charity, what he ought to have rendered it 
 in his own person. There is a diminution 
 of the philanthropic fund up to the extent 
 of what benevolence would have awarded 
 out of his individual means, and individual 
 opportunities. The good cause is a sufferer, 
 not by any positive blow it has sustained, 
 but the simple negation of one friendly and 
 fostering hand, that else miglit liave been 
 stretched forth to aid and patronise it. 
 There is only so much less of direct coun- 
 tenance and support- tlum would otherwise 
 have been ; for, in this our age, we have no 
 conception M'hatever of such an example 
 being at all infectious. For a man to wal- 
 low in prosperity himself and be unmindful 
 of the wretchedness that is around him, is 
 an exhibition of altogether so ungainly a 
 character, that it will far oftener provoke 
 an observer to aff"ront it by the contrast of 
 his own generosity, than to render it the 
 apprgving testimony of his imitation. So 
 that all we have lost by the man who is 
 ungenerous in his doings, is his own con- 
 tribution to the cause of pliilanthropy. And 
 it is a loss that can be borne. The cause 
 of this world's beneficence can do abun- 
 dantly without him. There is a ground 
 that is yet unbroken, and tliere are resources 
 wliich are still unexplored, that will yield a 
 far more substantial produce to the good of 
 humanity, than he, and thousands as weal- 
 thy as he, could render to it out of all their 
 capabilities. 
 
 But there is a far wider mischief inflicted 
 on the cause of charity, by the poor man 
 who is ungenerous in his desires; by him, 
 whom every act of kindness is sure to call 
 out to the reaction of some new demand, or 
 new expectation; by him, on whom the 
 hand of a giver has the effect, not of ap- 
 peasing his wants, but of inflaming his ra- 
 pacity ; by hnu who, trading among the 
 sympathies of the credulous, can dexterous- 
 ly appropriate for himself a portion tenfold 
 greater than what would have blest and 
 brightened the aspect of many a deserving 
 family. Him we denounce as tlie worst 
 enemy of the poor. It is he whose ravenous 
 gripe wrests from them a far more abun- 
 dant benefaction, than is done by the most 
 lordly and unfeeling proprietor in the land. 
 He is the arcli-oppressor of his brethren ; 
 and the amount of the robbery which he 
 has practised upon them, is not to be est! 
 
^.] 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. 
 
 151 
 
 mated by the alms which he has monopo- 
 lized, by the food, or the raiment, or the 
 money, which he has diverted to himself, 
 from ihe more modest sufferers around him, 
 he has done what is infinitely worse than 
 turning aside the stream of charity. He 
 has closed its floodgates. He has chilled 
 and alienated the hearts of tlie wealthy, by 
 the gall of bitterness which he has infused 
 into this whole ministration. 
 
 A few such harpies would suffice to exile 
 a whole neighbourhood from the attentions 
 of the benevolent, by the distrust and the 
 jealousy wherewith they have poisoned 
 their bosoms, and laid an arrest on all the 
 sensibilities that else would have flowed 
 from them. It is he who, ever on the 
 watch and on the wing about some enter- 
 prize of imposture, makes it his business to 
 work and to prey on the compassionate 
 principles of our nature ; it is he who, in 
 effect, grinds the faces of the poor, and that, 
 with deadlier severity than even is done by 
 the great baronial tyrant, the battlements of 
 whose castle seem to frown, in all the pride 
 of aristocracy, on the territory that is be- 
 fore it. There is, at all times, a kindliness 
 of feeling ready to stream forth, with a ten- 
 fold greater liberality than ever, on the 
 humble orders of life ; and it is he, and such 
 as he, who have congealed it. He has 
 raised a jaundiced medium between the 
 rich and the poor, in virtue of which, the 
 former eye the latter with suspicion ; and 
 there is not a man who wears the garb, and 
 prefers the applications of poverty, that has 
 not suffered from the worthless impostor 
 who has gone before him. They are, in 
 fact, the deceit, and the indolence, and the 
 low sordidness of a few who have made 
 outcasts of the m.any, and locked against 
 them the feelings of the wealthy in a kind 
 of iron imprisonment. The rich man who 
 is ungenerous in his doings, keeps back one 
 labourer from the field of charity. But a 
 poor man who is ungenerous in his desires, 
 can expel a thousand labourers in disgust 
 away from it. He sheds a cruel and ex- 
 tended blight over the fair region of phi- 
 lanthropy ; and many have abandoned it, 
 who, but for him, would fondly have lin- 
 gered thereupon ; very many, who, but for 
 the way in which their simplicity has been 
 tried and trampled upon, would still have 
 tasted the luxury of doing good unto the 
 poor, and made it their delight, as well as 
 their duty, to expend and expatiate among 
 their habitations. 
 
 We say not this to exculpate the rich ; 
 for it is their part not to be weary in well- 
 doing, but to prosecute the work and the 
 labour of love under every discouragement. 
 Neither do we say this to the disparage- 
 ment of the poor ; for the picture we have 
 given is of the few out of the many; and 
 the closer the acquaintance with humble 
 
 life becomes, will it be the niore seen of 
 what a high pitch of generosity even the 
 very poorest are capable. I'hey, in truth, 
 though perhaps they are not aware of it, 
 can contribute more to the cause of charity, 
 by th« moderation of their desires, than the 
 rich can by the generosity of their doings. 
 They, without, it may be, one penny to be- 
 stow, might obtain a place in the record of 
 heaven, as the most liberal benefactors of 
 their species. Tiiere is nothing in the hum- 
 ble condition of life they occupy, which 
 precludes them from all that is great or 
 graceful in human charity. There is a way 
 in which they may equal, and even out- 
 peer, the wealthiest of the land, in that very 
 virtue of which vvxalth alone has been con- 
 ceived to have the exclusive inheritance. 
 There is a pervading character in huraanit}' 
 which the varieties of rank do not oblite- 
 rate ; and as, in virtue of the common cor- 
 ruption, the poor man may be as effectually 
 the rapacious despoiler of his brethren, as 
 the man of opulence above him — so, there 
 is a common excellence attainable by both ; 
 and through which, the poor man may, to 
 the full, be as splendid in generosity as the 
 rich, and yield a far more important contri- 
 bution to the peace and comfort of society. 
 To make this plain — it is in virtue of a 
 generous doing on the part of a rich man, 
 when a sum of money is oflered for the re- 
 lief of want; and it is in virtue of a gene- 
 rous desire on the part of a poor man, when 
 this money is refused ; when, with the feel- 
 ing, that his necessities do not just warrant 
 him to be yet a burden upon others, he de- 
 clines to touch the offered liberality; when, 
 with a delicate recoil from the unlooked-for 
 proposal, he still resolves to put it for the 
 present away, and to find, if possible, for 
 himself a little longer; when, standing on 
 the very margin of dependence, he woidd 
 yet like to struggle with the difficulties of 
 his situation, and to maintain this severe 
 but honourable conflict, till hard necessity 
 should force him to surrender. Let the mo- 
 ney which he has thus nobly shifted from 
 himself take some new direction to another : 
 and who, we ask, is the giver of it ? The 
 first and most obvious reply is, that it is he 
 who owned it: but, it is still more empha- 
 tically true, that it is he who has declined 
 it. It came originally out of the rich man's 
 abundance : but it was the noble-hearted 
 generosity of the poor man that handed it 
 onwards to its final destination. He did 
 not emanate the gift ; but it is just as much 
 that he has not absorbed it, but left it to 
 find its full conveyance to some neighbour 
 poorer than himself, to some family still 
 more friendless and destitute than his own. 
 It was given the first time out of an over- 
 flowing fulness. It is given the second time 
 out of stinted and self-denying penury. In 
 the world's eye, it is the proprietor who he 
 
152 
 
 ox THE GREAT CHRISTIAN" LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. 
 
 LDISC. 
 
 Stowed the charitj-. But, in heaven's eye, 
 the poor man who waived it away from 
 himself to another is the more ilhistrious 
 philanthropist of the two. The one gave it 
 out of his affluence. The other gave it out 
 of the sweat of his brow. He rose up early, 
 and sat up late, that he might have it to be- 
 stow on a poorer than himself; and without 
 once stretching forth a giver's hand to the 
 necesshies of his brethren, still is it possi- 
 ble, that by him. and such as him, may the 
 main burden of this world's benevolence be 
 borne. 
 
 It need scarcely be remarked, that, with- 
 out supposing the offer of any sum made to 
 a poor man who is generous in his desires, 
 he, by simply keeping himself back from 
 the distributions of charity, fulfils all the 
 high functions which we have now ascribed 
 to him. He leaves the charitable fund un- 
 touched for all that distress which is more 
 clamorous than his own ; and we, therefore, 
 look, not to the original givers of the mo- 
 ney, but to those who line, as it were, the 
 margin of pauperism, and yet firmly refuse 
 to enter it — we look upon them as the pre- 
 eminent benefactors of society, who narrow, 
 as it were, by a wall of defence, the ground 
 of human dependence, and are, in fact, the 
 guides and the guardians of all that opu- 
 lence can bestow. 
 
 Thus it is, that when Christianity becomes 
 universal.lhedoings of the one party, and the 
 desires of the other, will meet and overpass. 
 The poor will wish for no more than the 
 rich will be delighted to bestow ; and the 
 rule of our text, which every real Christian 
 at present finds so practicable, will, when 
 carried over the face of society, bind all the 
 members of it into one consenting brother- 
 hood. The duty of doing good to others 
 will then coalesce with that counterpart 
 duty which regulates our desires of good 
 from them ; and the work of benevolence 
 will, at length, be prosecuted without that 
 alloy of rapacit}^ on the one hand, and dis- 
 trust on the other, which serves so much 
 to fester and disturb the whole of this minis- 
 tration. To complete this adjustment, it is 
 :n every vv'aj"^ as necessary to lay all the in- 
 umbent moralities on those who ask. as on 
 those who confer ; and never till the whole 
 te.vt, which comprehends the wishes of man 
 as well as his actions, wield its entire au- 
 thority over the species, will the disgusts 
 and the prejudices, which form such a bar- 
 rier between the ranks of human life, be ef- 
 fectually done away. It is not by the abo- 
 lition of rank, but by assigning to each rank 
 its duties, that peace, and friendship, and 
 order, will at length be firmly established 
 in our world. It is by the force of princi- 
 ple, and not by the force of some great po- 
 litical overthrow, that a consummation so 
 delightful is to be attained. We have no 
 cor ception whatever, that, even in millennial 
 
 i days, the diversities of wealth and station 
 j will at length be equalized. On looking for- 
 ward to the time when kings shall be the 
 i nursing fathers, and queens the nursing 
 mothers of our church, we think that we 
 ' can behold the perspective of as varied a 
 I distribution of place and property as before. 
 I In the pilgrimage of life, there will still be 
 j the moving procession of the few charioted 
 j in splendour on the highway, and the many 
 j pacing by their side along the line of the 
 same journey. There will, perhaps, be a 
 somewhat more elevated footpath for the 
 crowd — there will be an air of greater com- 
 fort and sufficiency amongst them ; and the 
 I respectabiJit}' of evident worth and goodness 
 j will sit upon the countenance of this general 
 population. But, bating these, we look for 
 no great change in the external aspect of 
 society. It will only be a moral and a spi- 
 ritual change. Kings wiU retain their scep- 
 tres, and nobles their coronets : but, as they 
 float in magnificence along, will they look 
 with benignant feeling on the humble way- 
 farers ; and the honest salutations of regard 
 and reverence will arise to them back again ; 
 and, should an}' weary passenger be ready 
 to sink unfriended on his career, will he, at 
 one time, be borne onwards bj" his fellows 
 on the pathway, and, at another, will a 
 shower of beneficence be made to descend 
 from the crested equipage that overtakes 
 him. Jt is Utopianism to think, that in the 
 ages of our world which are yet to come, 
 the outward distinctions of life will not all 
 be upholden. But it is not Utopianism, it 
 is Prophecy to aver, that the breath of a 
 new spirit will go abroad over the great fa- 
 mil}- of mankind — so, that while, to the end 
 of time, there shall be the high and the low 
 in even,' passing generation, will the charity 
 of kindred feelings, and of a common un- 
 derstanding, create a fellowship between 
 thern on their way. till they reach that hea- 
 ven where human love shall be perfected, 
 and all human greatness is unknown. 
 
 In various places in the New Testament, 
 do we see the checks of spirit and delicacy 
 laid upon all extravagant desires. Our text, 
 while it enjoins the performance of good to 
 others, up to the full measure of your de- 
 sires of good from them, equally enjoins the 
 keeping down of these desires to the mea- 
 sure of your performances. If Christian 
 dispensers had only to do with Christian 
 recipients, the whole work of benevolence 
 would be with ease and harmony carried 
 on. All that was unavoidable — all that 
 came from the hand of Providence — all 
 that was laid upon our sufl^ering brethren 
 b)' the unlooked-for visitations of accident 
 or disease — all that pain and misfortune, 
 which necessarily attaches to the constitu 
 tion of the species — all this the text most 
 amply provides for : and all this a Christian 
 society would be delighted to stretch forth 
 
V.J 
 
 ON THE GREAT CHRISTIAN LAW OF RECIPROCITY BETWEEN MEN. 
 
 153 
 
 their means for the purpose of alleviating 
 or doing away. 
 
 We siiould not have dwelt so long upon 
 this lesson, were it not for the essential 
 Christian principle that is involved in it. 
 The morahty of the gospel is not more 
 strenuous on the side of the duty of giving 
 of this world's goods when it is needed, than 
 it is against the desire of receiving when it 
 is not needed. It is more blessed to give 
 than to receive, and therefore less blessed to 
 receive than to give. For the enforcement 
 of this principle among the poorer brethren, 
 did Paul give up a vast portion of his apos- 
 tolical time and labour; and that he might 
 be an ensample to the flock of working with 
 his own hands, rather than be burdensome, 
 did he set liimself down to the occupation 
 of a tent-maker. That lesson is surely wor- 
 thy of engrossing one sermon of an unin- 
 spired teacher, for the sake of which an 
 inspired Apostle of the Gentiles engrossed 
 as much time as would have admitted the 
 preparation and the delivery of many ser- 
 mons. But there is no more striking indi- 
 cation of the whole spirit and character of 
 the gospel in this matter, than the example 
 of him who is the author of it — and of whom 
 we read these affecting words, that he came 
 into the world not to be ministered unto, 
 out to minister. It is a righteous thing 
 in him who has of this world's goods, to 
 minister to the necessities of others ; but 
 it is a still higher attainment of righteous- 
 ness in him who has nothing but the daily 
 earnings of his daily work to depend upon, 
 so to manage and to strive that he shall not 
 need to be ministered unto. Christianity 
 overlooks no part of human conduct ; and 
 by providing for this in particular, does it, 
 in fact, overtake, and that with a precept 
 of utmost importance, the habit and condi- 
 tion of a very extended class in human so- 
 ciety. And never does the gospel so exhibit 
 its adaptation to our species — and never does 
 virtue stand in such characters of strength 
 and sacredness before us — as when impreg- 
 nated with the evangelical spirit and urged 
 by evangelical motives, it takes its most di- 
 rect sanction from the life and doings of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 And he who feels as he ought, will bear 
 with cheerfulness all that the Saviour pre- 
 scribes, when he thinks how much it is for 
 him that the Saviour has borne. We speak 
 20 
 
 not of his poverty all the time that he lived 
 upon earth. We speak not of those years 
 when, a houseless wanderer in an uutliank- 
 ful wurld, he had not where to lay his bead. 
 We speak not of the meek and uncomplain- 
 ing sulTerance with which he met the many 
 ills that oppressed the tenor of his mortal 
 existence. But we speak of that awful 
 burden which crushed and overwhelmed 
 its termination. We speak of that season 
 of tlie hour and the power of darkness, when 
 it pleased the Lord to bruise him, and to 
 make his soul an offering for sin. To esti- 
 mate aright the endurance of him who 
 himself bore our infirmities, would we ask 
 of any individual to recollect some deep 
 and awful period of abandonment in his 
 own history — v\hen that countenance which 
 at one time beamed and brightened upon 
 him from above, was mantled in thickest 
 darkness — when the iron of remorse enter- 
 ed into his soul — and, laid on a bed of tor- 
 ture, he was made to behold the evil of sin, 
 and to taste of its bitterness. Let him look 
 back, if he can, on this conflict of many 
 agitations, and then figure the whole of tliis 
 mental wretchedness to be borne off by 
 the ministers of vengeance into hell, and 
 stretched out unto eternity. And if, on the 
 great day of expiation, a full atonement Avas 
 rendered, and all that should ha\e fallen 
 upon us was placed upon the head of the 
 sacrifice — let him hence compute the weight 
 and the awfulness of those sorrows which 
 were carried by him on whom the chastise- 
 ment of our peace was laid, and who poured 
 out his soul unto the death for us. If ever 
 a sinner, under such a visitation, shall again 
 emerge into peace and joy in believing — 
 if he ever shall again find his way to that 
 fountain which is opened in the house of 
 Judah — if he shall recover once more that 
 sunshine of the soul, which, on the days 
 that are past, disclosed to him the beauties 
 of holiness here, and the glories of heaven 
 hereafter — if ever he shall hear with effect, 
 in this world, that voice from the mercy- 
 seat, which still proclaims a welcome to the 
 chief of sinners, and beckons him afresh to 
 reconciliation — O! how gladly then should 
 he bear throughout the remainder of his 
 days, the whole authorit}' of the Lord who 
 bought him ; and bind forever to his o\\ti 
 person that yoke of the Saviour Avhich is 
 easy, and that burden which is light. 
 
154 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES, 
 
 (DISC 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 On the Dissipation of large Cities. 
 
 " Let no man deceive you with vain vi^ords ; for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the 
 children of disobedience." — Ephesians v. 6. 
 
 There is one obvious respect in which 
 tlie standard of morality amongst men, dif- 
 fers ironi that pure and universal standard 
 which God hath set up for the obedience 
 of his subjects. Men will not demand very 
 urgently of each other, that, which does 
 not very nearly, or very immediately, af- 
 fect their own personal and particular in- 
 terest. To the violations of justice, or 
 truth, or humanity, they will be abundant- 
 ly sensitive, because these offer a most vi- 
 sible and quickly felt encroachment on 
 this interest. And thus it is, that the social 
 virtues, even witliout any direct sanction 
 from God at all, will ever draw a certain 
 portion of respect and reverence around 
 them ; and that a loud testimony of abhor- 
 rence may often be heard from the mouths 
 of ungodly men, against all such vices as 
 may be classed under the general designa- 
 tion of vices of dishonesty. 
 
 Now, the same thing does not hold true 
 of another class of. vices, which may be 
 termed the vices of dissipation. These do 
 not touch, in so visible or direct a manner, 
 on the security of what man possesses, and 
 of what man has the greatest value for. 
 But man is a selfish being, and therefore it 
 is, that the ingredient of selfishness gives a 
 keenness to his estimation of the evil and 
 of the enormity of the former vices, which 
 is scarcely felt at all in any estimation he 
 may form of the latter vices. It is very 
 true, at the same time, that if one were to 
 compute the whole amount of the mischief 
 they bring upon society, it would be found 
 that the profligacies of mere dissipation go 
 very far to break up the peace, and enjoy- 
 ment, and even the relative virtues of the 
 world : and that, if these profligacies were 
 reformed, it would work a miglity aug- 
 mentation on the temporal good both of 
 individuals and families. But the con- 
 nexion between sobriety of character, and 
 the happiness of the community, is not so 
 apparent, because it is more remote than 
 the connexion which obtains between in- 
 tegrity of character, and the happiness of 
 the community ; and man being not only 
 a selfish, but a shortsighted being, it fol- 
 lows, that while the voice of execration may 
 be distinctly heard against every instance of 
 fraud or of injustice, instances of licentious- 
 ness may occur on every side of u.s, and be 
 reported on the one hand with the utmost 
 levity, and be listened to, on the other, with 
 the most entire and complacent toleration. 
 
 Here, then, is a point, in which the general 
 morality of the world is at utter and irre- 
 concilable variance with the law of God. 
 Here is acase, in which the voice that cometh 
 forth from the tribunal of public opinion 
 pronounces one thing, and the voice that 
 cometh forth from the sanctuary of God 
 pronounces another. When there is an 
 agreement between these two voices, the 
 principle on wliich obedience is rendered to 
 their joint and concurring authority, may 
 be altogether equivocal ; and, with reh- 
 gious and irreligious men, you may ob- 
 serve an equal exhibition of all the equi- 
 ties, and all the civilities of life. But when 
 there is a discrepancy between these two 
 voices — or when the one attache? a crimi- 
 nality to certain habits of conduct, and is 
 not at all seconded by the testimony of 
 the otlier — then do we escape the confu- 
 sion of mingled motives, and mingled sta 
 thorities. The character of the two parties 
 emerges out of the ambiguity which in- 
 volved, it. The law of God points, it must 
 be allowed, as forcible an anathema against 
 the man of dishonesty, as against the man 
 of dissipation. But the chief burden of the 
 world's anathema is laid on tlie head of 
 the former ; and therefore it is, that, on the 
 latter ground, we meet witli more discri- 
 minative tests of principle, and gather more 
 satisfying materials for the question of — 
 who is on the side of the Lord of hosts, and 
 who is against him ? 
 
 The passage we have now submitted to 
 you, looks hard on the votaries of dissi- 
 pation. It is like eternal truth, lifting up 
 its own proclamation, and causing it to be 
 heard amid the errors and tlie delusions 
 of a tlioughtless world. It is like the Deity 
 himself, looking forth, as he did, from a 
 cloud, on the Egyptians of old, and trou- 
 bling the souls of those who are lovers of 
 pleasure, more tlian lovers of God. It is 
 like the voice of heaven, crying down the 
 voice of human society, and sending forth 
 a note of alarm amongst Us giddy genera- 
 tions. It is like the unrolling of a portion 
 of that book of higher jurisprudence, out 
 of which we sliall be judged on the day of 
 our coming account, and setting before our 
 eyes an enactment, which, if we disregard it, 
 will turn that day into the day of our com- 
 ing condemnation. The words of man are 
 adverted to in this solemn proclamation of 
 God, against all unlawful and all unhal- 
 lowed enjoyments, and they are called 
 
VI.1 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 155 
 
 words of vanity. He sets aside tlie au- 
 thority of human opinion altogether ; and, 
 on an irrevocable record, has he stamped 
 such an assertion of the authority that be- 
 longeih to himself only, as serves to the 
 end of time for an enduring memorial of 
 his will ; and as commits the truth of the 
 Lawgiver to the execution of a sentence 
 of wrath against all whose souls are 
 hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There 
 is, in fact, a peculiar deceitfulness in the 
 matter before us ; and, in this verse, are 
 we warned against it — " Let no man de- 
 ceive you with vain words; for, because 
 of these things, the wrath of God cometh 
 on the children of disobedience." 
 
 In the preceding verse, there is such an 
 enumeration as serves to explain what the 
 things are which are alluded to in the text ; 
 and it is such an enumeration, you should 
 remark, as goes to fasten the whole terror, 
 and the whole threat, of the coming ven- 
 geance — not on the man who combines in 
 his own person all the characters of ini- 
 quity which are specified, but on the man 
 who realizes any one of these characters. 
 It is not, you will observe, the conjunction 
 and., but the conjunction or, which is in- 
 terposed between them. It is not as if we 
 said, that the man who is dishonest, and 
 licentious, and covetous, and unfeeling, 
 shall not inherit the kingdom of God — but 
 the man who is either dishonest, or licen- 
 tious, or covetous, or unfeeling. On the 
 single and exclusive possession of any one 
 of these attributes, will God deal with you 
 as with an enemy. The plea, that we are 
 a little thoughtless, but we have a good 
 heart, is conclusively cut asunder by this 
 portion of the law and of the testimony. 
 And in a corresponding passage, in the 
 ninth verse of the sixth chapter of Paul's 
 first epistle to the Corinthians, the same 
 peculiarity is observed in the enumeration 
 of those who shall be excluded from God's 
 favour, and have the burden of God's 
 wrath laid on them through eternity. It is 
 not the man who combines all the deformi- 
 ties of character which are there specified, 
 l)ut the man who realizes any one of the 
 separate deformities. Some of them are 
 the vices of dishonesty, others of them are 
 the vices of dissipation ; and, as if aware 
 of a deceitfulness from this cause, he, after 
 telling us that the unrighteous shall not in- 
 herit the kingdom of God, bids us not be 
 deceived — for that neither the licentious, 
 nor the abominable, nor thieves, nor covet- 
 ous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor ex- 
 tortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 He who keepeth the whole law, but of- 
 fendeth in one point, says the Apostle .Tames, 
 IS guilty of all. The truth is, that his dis- 
 obedience on this one point may be more de- 
 cisive of the state of his loyalty to God, than 
 
 his keeping all the rest. It may be the only 
 point on which the character of his loyalty 
 is really brought to the trial. All his con- 
 formities to the law of God might have been 
 rendered, because they thwarted not his 
 own inclination ; and, therefore, would have 
 been rendered though there had been no 
 law at all. The single infraction may have 
 taken place in the only case where there 
 was a real competition between the will of 
 the creature, and the will of the Creator; 
 and the event proves to which of the two 
 the right of superiority is awarded. Alle- 
 giance to God in truth is but one principle, 
 and may be described by one short and 
 summary expression : and one act of dis- 
 obedience may involve in it such a total sur- 
 render of the principle, as goes to dethrone 
 God altogether from the supremacy which 
 belongs to him. So that the account be- 
 tween a creature and the Creator is not like 
 an account made up of many items, where 
 the expunging of one item would only make 
 one small and fractional deduction from the 
 whole sum of obedience. If you reserve 
 but a single item from tliis account, and an- 
 other makes a principle of completing and 
 rendering up the whole of it, then your cha- 
 racter varies from his not by a slight shade 
 of difference, but stands contrasted with it 
 in direct and diametric opposition. We 
 perceive, that, while with him tlie will of 
 God has the mastery over all his inclina- 
 tions, whh you there is, at least, one incli- 
 nation which has tlie mastery over God; 
 that while in his boscmi there exists a single 
 and subordinating principle of allegiance to 
 the law, in yours there exists another prin- 
 ciple, which, on the coming round of a fit 
 opportunity, developes itself in an act of 
 transgression; that, while with him God 
 may be said to walk and to dwell in him, 
 with you there is an evil visitant, who has 
 taken up his abode in your heart, and lodges 
 there either in a state of dormancy or of 
 action, according to circumstances; that, 
 while with him the purpose is honestly 
 proceeded on, of doing nothing which God 
 disapproves, with you tiiirc is a purpose 
 not only difl^erent, but opposite, of doing 
 something which he disapproves. On this 
 single difference is suspended not a question 
 of degree, but a question of kind. There 
 are presented to us not two hues of the 
 same colour, but two colours, just as broadly 
 contrasted with each other as light and 
 darkness. And such is the state of the al- 
 ternative between a partial and an unre- 
 served obedience, that while God impera- 
 tively claims the one as his due, he looks 
 on the other as an expression of defiance 
 against him, and against his sovereignty. 
 
 It is the very same in civil government. 
 A man renders himself an outcast by one 
 act of disobedience. He does not need to 
 accumulate upon himself the guilt of all the 
 
156 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 higher atrocities in crime, ere he forfeits his 
 hfe to the injured laws of his country. By 
 the perpetration of any of them is the whole 
 vengeance of the state brought to bear upon 
 his person, and sentence of death is pro- 
 nounced on a single murder, or forgery, or 
 act of violent depredation. 
 
 And let us ask you just to reflect on the 
 tone and spirit of that man towards his God, 
 who would palHate, for example, the vices 
 of dissipation to which he is addicted, by 
 alleging his utter exemption from the vices 
 of dishonesty, to which he is not addicted. 
 Just think of the real disposition and cha- 
 racter of his soul, who can say, " I will 
 please God, but only when, in so doing, I 
 also please myself; or I will do homage to 
 his law, but just in those instances by which 
 I honour the rights, and fulfil the expecta- 
 tions, of society ; or I will be decided by 
 his opinion of the right and the wrong, but 
 just \\'hen the opinion of my neighbourhood 
 lends its powerful and effective confirma- 
 tion. But in other cases, when the matter 
 is reduced to a bare question between man 
 and God, when he is the single party I have 
 to do with, when his will and his wrath are 
 the only elements which enter into the de- 
 liberation, when judgment, and eternity, 
 and the voice of him who speaketh from 
 heaven are the only considerations at issue — 
 then do I feel myself at greater liberty, and 
 I shall take my own way, and walk in the 
 counsel of mine own heart, and after the 
 sight of my own eyes." O ! be assured, 
 that when all this is laid bare on the day of 
 reckoning, and the discerner of the heart 
 pronounces upon it, and such a sentence is 
 to be given, as will make it manifest to the 
 consciences of all assembled, that true and 
 righteous are the judgments of God — there 
 is many a creditable man who has passed 
 through the world with the plaudits and 
 the testimonies of all his fellows, and with- 
 out one other flaw upon his reputation but 
 the very slender one of certain harmless 
 foibles, and certain good-humoured pecu- 
 liarities, who when brought to the bar of 
 account, will stand convicted thereof having 
 made a divinity of his own will, and spent 
 his days in practical and habitual atheism. 
 
 And this argument is not at all affected 
 by the actual state of sinfulness and infirmity 
 mto which we have fallen. It is true, even 
 of saints on earth, that they commit sin. 
 But to be overtaken in a fault is one thing ; 
 to commit that fault with the deliberate con- 
 sent of the mind is anotlier. There is in the 
 bosom of every true Christian a strenuous 
 principle of resistance to sin, and it belongs 
 to the very essence of the principle that it 
 is resistance to all sin. It admits of no vo- 
 luntary indulgence to one sin more than 
 to another. Such an indulgence would not 
 only change the character of what may be 
 called the elementary principle of regene- 
 
 ration, but would destroy it altogether. 
 The man who has entered on a course of 
 Christian discipleship, carries on an un- 
 sparing and universal war with all iniquity. 
 He has chosen Christ for his alone master, 
 and he struggles against the ascendency of 
 every other. It is his sustained and habitual 
 exertion in following after him to forsake 
 all ; so that if his performances were as 
 complete as his endeavour, you would not 
 merely see a conformity to some of the 
 precepts, but a conformity to the whole law 
 of God. At all events, the endeavour is an 
 honest one, and so far successful, that sin 
 has not the d-ominion ; and sure we are, 
 that, in such a state of things, the vices of 
 dissipation can have no existence. These 
 vices can be more eff"ectually sliunned, and 
 more eflTectually surmounted, for example, 
 than the infirmities of an unhappy temper. 
 So that, if dissipation still attaches to the 
 character, and appears in the conduct of any 
 individual, we know not a more decisive 
 evidence of the state of that individual as 
 being one of the many who crowd the broad 
 way that leadeth to destruction. We look 
 no further to make out our estimate of his 
 present condition as being that of a rebel, 
 and of his future prospect as being that of 
 spending an eternity in hell. There is no 
 halting between two opinions in this matter. 
 The man who enters a career of dissipation 
 throws down the gauntlet of defiance to his 
 God. The man who persists in this career 
 keeps on the ground of hostility against 
 him. 
 
 Let us now endeavour to trace the origin, 
 the progress, and the effects of a life of dis- 
 sipation. 
 
 First, then, it may be said of a very great 
 number of young men, on their entrance 
 into the business of the world, that they have 
 not been enough fortified against its se- 
 ducing influences by their previous educa- 
 tion at home. Generally speaking, they 
 come out from the habitation of their pa- 
 rents unarmed and unprepared for the con- 
 test which awaits them. If the spirit of 
 this world's morality reign in their own fa- 
 mily, then it cannot be, that their introduc- 
 tion into a more public scene of life will be 
 very strictly guarded against those vices on 
 which the world placidly smiles, or at least 
 regards with silent toleration. They may 
 have been told, in early boyhood, of the in- 
 famy of a lie. They may have had the vir- 
 tues of punctuality, and of economy, and 
 of regular attention to business, pressed upon 
 their" observation. They may have heard a 
 uniform testimony on the side of good be- 
 haviour, up to the standard of such current 
 moralities as obtain in their neighbourhood : 
 and this, we are ready to admit, may in- 
 clude in it a testimony against all such ex- 
 cesses of dissipation "as would unfit them 
 for the prosecution of this world's interests. 
 
VI.] 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 157 
 
 But let us ask, whether there are not pa- 
 rents, who, after they have carried the work 
 of discipline thus far, forbear to carry it any 
 fiirther ; who, while they would mourn over 
 it as a family trial should any son of theirs 
 fall a victim to excessive dissipation, yet are 
 willing to tolerate the lesser degrees of it; 
 who, instead of deciding the question on 
 the alternative of his heaven or his hell, are 
 satisfied with such a measure of sobriety as 
 will save him from ruin and disgrace in this 
 life; who, if they can can only secure this, 
 have no great objection to the moderate 
 share he may take in this world's conform- 
 ities; who feel, that in this matter there is 
 a necessity and a power of example against 
 which it is vain to struggle, and which must 
 be acquiesced in; who deceive themselves 
 with the fancied impossibility of stopping 
 the evil in question — and say, that business 
 must be gone through ; and that, in the 
 prosecution of it, exposures must be made ; 
 and that, for the success of it, a certain de- 
 gree of accommodation to others must be 
 observed; and seeing that it is so mighty 
 an object for one to widen the extent of his 
 connexions, he must neither be very retired 
 nor very peculiar — nor must his hours of 
 companionship be too jealously watched or 
 inquired into— nor must we take him too 
 strictly to task about engagements, and ac- 
 quaintances, and expenditure — nor must we 
 forget, that while sobriety has its time and 
 its season in one period of life, indulgence 
 has its season in another ; and we may fetch 
 from the recollected follies of our own 
 youth, a lesson of connivance for the pre- 
 sent occasion ; and altogether there is no 
 help for it; and it appears to us, that abso- 
 lutely and totally to secure him from ever 
 entering upon scenes of dissipation, you 
 must absolutely and totally withdraw him 
 from the world, and surrender all his pros- 
 pects of advancement, and give up the ob- 
 ject of such a provision for our families as 
 we feel to be a first and most important 
 concern with us. 
 
 "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his 
 righteousness," says the Bible, "and all other 
 things shall be added unto you." This is the 
 promise which the faith of a Christian pa- 
 rent vvill rest upon ; and in the face of every 
 hazard to the worldly interests of his off- 
 spring.wili lie bring them up in the strict nur- 
 ture and admonition of the Lord ; hn6 he will 
 loudly protest against iniquity, in all its de- 
 grees and in all its modificp',ons; and while 
 the power of discipline emains with him, 
 will it ever be exerte'" on the side of pure, 
 faultless, undevia*' .g obedience ; and he 
 will tolerate noe ^eption whatever; and he 
 will brave all that looks formidable in singu- 
 larity, and all that looks menacing in sepa- 
 ration from the custom and countenance of 
 the world ; and feeling that his main con- 
 cern is to secure for himself and for his fa- 
 
 mily a place in the city which hath founda- 
 tions, will he spurn ail the maxnus and all 
 the plausibilities of a contagious neighbour- 
 hood away from him. He knows the price 
 of his Christianity, and it is that he must 
 break oif conformity with the world— nor 
 for any paltry advantage which it has to 
 offer, will he compromise the eternity of his 
 children. And let us tell the parents of an- 
 other spirit and principle, that they are as 
 good as incurring the guilt of a human sa- 
 crifice; that they are offering up their chil- 
 dren at the shrine of an idol ; that they are 
 parties in provoking the wrath of God 
 against them here; and on the day when 
 that wrath is to be revealed, shall they hear 
 not only the moanings of their despair but 
 the outcries of their bitterest execration. 
 On that day, the glance of reproach from 
 their own neglected offspring will throw a 
 deeper shade of wretchedness over the dark 
 and boundless futurity that lies before them. 
 And if, at the time when prophets rung the 
 tidings of God's displeasure against the peo- 
 ple of Israel it was denounced as the foulest 
 of all their abominations that they caused 
 their children to pass through the fire unto 
 Moloch — know, ye parents, who in placing 
 your children on some road to gainful em- 
 ployment, have placed them without a sigh 
 in the midst of depravity, so near and so 
 surrounding, that, without a miracle, they 
 must perish, you have done an act of idola- 
 try to the god of this world ; you have com- 
 manded your household after you to wor- 
 ship him as the great divinity of their lives ; 
 and you have caused your children to make 
 their approaches unto his presence — and, 
 in so doing, to pass through the fire of 
 such temptations as have destroyed them. 
 
 We do not wish to oflfer you an over- 
 charged picture on this melancholy subject. 
 What we now say is not applicable to all. 
 Even in the most corrupt and crowded of 
 our cities, parents are to be found, who no- 
 bly dare the surrender of every vain and 
 flattering illusion, rather than surrender the 
 Christianity of their children. And what 
 is still more affecting, over the face of the 
 country do we meet with such parents, who 
 look on this world as a passage to another, 
 and on all the members of their household 
 as fellow-travellers to eternity along with 
 them ; and who, in the true spirit of be- 
 lievers, feel the salvation of their children 
 to be, indeed, the burden of their best and 
 dearest interest ; and who, by prayer, and 
 precept, and example, have .strenuously la- 
 boured with their souls, from the earliest 
 light of their understanding ; and have 
 taught them to tremble at the way of evil 
 doers, and to have no fellowship with those 
 who keep not the commandments of God — 
 nor is there a day more sorrowful in the 
 annals of this pious family, than when the 
 course of time has brought them onwardis 
 
158 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 to the departure of their eldest boy — and he 
 must bid adieu to his native home, with all 
 the peace, and all the simplicity which 
 abound in it — and as he eyes in fancy the 
 distant town whither he is going, does he 
 shrink as from the thought of an unknown 
 wilderness — and it is tiis firm purpose to 
 keep aloof from the dangers and the profli- 
 gacies which deform it — and, should sinners 
 offer to entice him, not to consent, and 
 never, never to forget the lessons of a fa- 
 ther's vigilance, the tenderness of a mother's 
 prayers. 
 
 Let us now, in the next place, pass from 
 that state of things which obtains among the 
 young at their outset into the world, and 
 take a look of that state of things which 
 obtains after they have got fairly introduced 
 into it — when the children of the ungodly, 
 and the children of the religious, meet on 
 one common arena- -when business asso- 
 ciates them togethei in one chamber, and 
 the omnipotence of custom lays it upon 
 them ail to meet together at periodic inter- 
 vals, and join in the same parties, and the 
 same entertainments — when the yearly im- 
 portation of youths from the country falls 
 in witli that assimilating mass of corrup- 
 tion which has got so firm and so rooted 
 an establishment in the town — when the 
 frail and unsheltered delicacies of the timid 
 boy have to stand a rude and a boisterous 
 contest with the hardier depravity of those 
 who have gone before him — when ridicule, 
 and example, and the vain words of a de- 
 lusive sophistry, Avhich palliates in his hear- 
 ing the enormity of vice, are all brought to 
 bear upon his scruples, and to stifle the re- 
 morse he might feel when he casts his prin- 
 ciple and his purity away from him — when, 
 placed as he is in a land of strangers, he 
 finds, that the tenure of acquaintanceship, 
 with nearly all around him, is, that he ren- 
 der himself up in a conformity to their 
 doings — when a voice, like the voice of 
 protecting friendship, bids him to the feast; 
 and a welcome, like the welcome of honest 
 kindness, hails his accession to the society; 
 and a spirit, like the spirit of exhilarating 
 joy, animates the whole scene of hosphality 
 before him ; and hours of rapture roll suc- 
 cessively awaj^ on the wings of merriment, 
 jocularity, and song ; and after the homage 
 of many libations has been rendered to 
 honour, and fellowship, and patriotism, im- 
 purity IS at length proclaimed in full and 
 open cry, as one presiding divinity, at the 
 board of their social entertainment. 
 
 And now it remains to compute the gene- 
 ral result of a process, which we assert of 
 the vast majoritj^ o£ our young, on their 
 way to manhood, that they have to under- 
 go. The result is, that the vast majority 
 are initiated into all the practices, and 
 describe the full career of dissipation. 
 Those who have imbibed from their fathers 
 
 the spirit of this world's morality, are not 
 sensibly arrested in this career, either by 
 the opposition of their own friends, or by 
 the voice of their own conscience. Those 
 who have imbibed an opposite spirit, and 
 have brought it into competition with an 
 evil world, and have at length yielded, have 
 done so, we may well suppose, with many 
 a sigh, and many a struggle, and many a 
 look of remembrance on those former years 
 when they were taught to lisp the prayer 
 of infancy, and were trained in a mansion 
 of piety to a reverence for God, and for all 
 his ways ; and, even still, will a parent's part- 
 ing advice haunt his memory, and a letter 
 from tlie good old man revive thesensibilities 
 wliichat one time guarded and adorned him; 
 and, at times, will the transient gleam of 
 remorse ligliten up its agony within him ; 
 and v.'hen iie contrasts the profaneness and 
 depravity of his present companions, with 
 the sacredness of all he ever heard or saw 
 in his father's dwelling, it will almost feel 
 as if conscience were again to resume her 
 power, and the re\isiting spirit of God to 
 call him back again from the paths of wick- 
 edness ; and on his restless bed will the 
 images of guilt conspire to disturb him. and 
 the terrors of punisliment offer to scare him 
 awa}^ ; and man}' will be the dreary and 
 dissatisfied intervals when he shall be forced 
 to acknowledge that in bartering his soul 
 for the pleasures of sin, he has bartered the 
 peace and enjoyment of the world along 
 with it. But, alas ! the entanglements of 
 companionship have got hold of him ; and 
 the inveteracy of habit tyrannizes over all 
 his purposes ; and the stated opportunity 
 again comes round ; and the loud laugh of 
 his partners in guilt chases, for another sea- 
 son, all his despondency away from him, 
 and the infatuation gathers upon him every 
 month; and a hardening process goes on 
 within his heart; and the deceit fulness of 
 sin grows apace ; and he at length becomes 
 one of the sturdiest and most unrelenting 
 of her votaries ; and he, in his turn, strength- 
 ens the conspiracy that is formed against 
 the morals of a new generation; and all the 
 ingenuous delicacies of other days are ob- 
 literated ; and he contracts a temperament 
 of knowing, hackneyed, unfeeling depra- 
 vity; and thus the mischief is transmit- 
 ted from one year to another, and keeps up 
 the guilty history of every place of crowd- 
 ed population. 
 
 And let us hert speak one word to those 
 seniors in depravity -those men who give 
 to the corruption of aci^ 'aintances, who are 
 younger than thcmseh s their counte- 
 nance, their agency ; and who can initiate 
 them without a sigh in the mysteries of 
 guilt, and care not though a parent's hope 
 should wither and expire under the conta- 
 gion of their ruffian example. It is only 
 upon their own conversion that we can 
 
VI.] 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 159 
 
 speak to them the pardon of the gospel. It 
 is only if tlicy themselves are waslied, and 
 sanctified^ and justified, that we can warrant 
 their personal deliverance from the wrath 
 that is to come. But under all the conceal- 
 ment wnich rests on the futurities of God's 
 administration, we know that there are de- 
 grees of suffering in hell — and that while 
 some are beaten with few stripes, others 
 are beaten with many. And surely, if they 
 who turn many to righteousness shall shine 
 as the stars for ever and ever, we may be 
 well assured that they who patronize the 
 cause of iniquity — they who can beckon 
 others to that way which leadeth on to the 
 chambers of death — they who can aid and 
 witness, without a sigh, the extinction of 
 youthful modesty — surely, it may well be 
 said of such, that on them a darker frown 
 will fall from the judgment-seat, and through 
 eternity will they have to bear the pains of 
 a fiercer indignation. 
 
 Having thus looked to the commence- 
 ment of a course of dissipation, and to its 
 progress, let us now, in the third place, 
 look to its usual termination. AVe speak 
 not at present of the coming death, and of 
 the coming judgment, but of the change 
 which takes place on many a votary of licen- 
 tiousness, when he becomes what the world 
 calls a reformed man ; and puts on the de- 
 cencies of a sober and domestic establish- 
 ment ; and bids adieu to the pursuits and 
 the profligacies of youth, not because he 
 has repented of them, but because he has 
 outlived them. You all perceive how this 
 maj'^ be done without one movement of the 
 heart, or of the understanding, towards God 
 — that it is done by many, though duty to 
 him be not in all their thoughts — that the 
 change, in this case, is not from the idol 
 of pleasure unto God, but only from one 
 idol to another — and that, after the whole 
 of this boasted transformation, we may still 
 behold the same body of sin and of death, 
 and only a new complexion thrown over it. 
 There may be the putting on of sobriety, 
 but there is no putting on of godliness. It 
 is a common and easy transition to pass 
 from one kind of disobedience to another, 
 but it is not so ea.sy to give up that re- 
 belliousness of the heart which lies at the 
 root of all disobedience. It may be easy, 
 after the wonted course of dissipation is 
 ended, to hold out another aspect altogether 
 in the eye of acquaintances ; but it is not 
 so easy to recover that shock, and that 
 overthrow, which the religious principle 
 sustains, when a man first enters the world, 
 and surrenders himself to the power of its 
 enticements. Such were some of j^ou, says 
 the Apostle, but ye are washed, and sanc- 
 tified, and justified. Our reformed man 
 knows not the meaning of such a process ; 
 and, most assuredly, has not at all realized 
 it in the history of his own person. We 
 
 will not say what neAv object he is running 
 after. It may be wealth, or ambition, or 
 philosophy; but it is nothing connected with 
 the interest of his soul. It bears no refer- 
 ence whatever to the concerns of that great 
 relationship which obtains between the 
 creature and the Creator. The man has 
 withdrawn, and perhaps for ever, from the 
 scenes of dissipation, and has betaken him- 
 .self to another way — but still it is his oAvn 
 way. It is not the will or the wa}' of God 
 that he is yet caring for. Such a man may 
 bid adieu to profligacy in his own person. 
 But he lifts up the light of his countenance 
 on the profligacy of others. He gives it 
 the whole weight and authority of his con- 
 nivance. He wields, Ave will say it, sudi an 
 instrumentality of seduction over the young, 
 as, though not so alarming, is far more dan- 
 gerous than the undisguised attempts of 
 those who are the immediate agents of cor- 
 ruption. The formal and deliberate conspi- 
 racy of those who club together, at stated 
 terms of companionship, may be all seen, 
 and watched, and guarded against. But 
 how shall we pursue this conspiracy into 
 its other ramifications? How shall we be 
 able to neutralize that insinuating poison 
 which distils from the lips of grave and re- 
 spectable citizens ? How shall we be able 
 to dissipate that gloss which is thrown by 
 the smile of elders and superiors over the 
 sins of forbidden indulgence? How can 
 we disarm the bewitching sophistry which 
 lies in all these evident tokens of compla- 
 cency, on tlie part of advanced and reput- 
 able men ? How is it possible to trace the 
 progress of tliis sore evil, throughout all 
 the business and intercourse of society? 
 How can we stem the influence of evil 
 communications, when the friend, and the 
 patron, and the man who has cheered and 
 siffnalized us by his polite invitations, turns 
 his own family-table into a nursery of li- 
 centiousness ? How can we but despair of 
 ever witnessing on earth a pure and a holy 
 generation, when even parents will utter 
 their polluting levities in the hearing of their 
 own children ; and vice, and humour, and 
 gaiety, are all indi.scriminately blended into 
 one conversation : and a loud laugh, from 
 the initiated and the uninitiated in profli- 
 gacy, is ever ready to flatter and to regale 
 the man who can thus prostitute his powers 
 of entertainment? ! for an arm of strength 
 to demolish this firm and far spread com- 
 pact of iniquity ; and for the power of 
 some such piercing and prophetic voice, 
 as might convince our reformed men of 
 the baleful influence they cast behind them 
 on the morals of the succeeding genera 
 tion. 
 
 We, at the same time, have our eye per- 
 fectly open to that great external improve- 
 ment which has taken place, of late years, 
 in the manners of society. There is not the 
 
160 
 
 ON THE DISSIPATION OF LARGE CITIES. 
 
 DISC 
 
 same grossness of conversation. There is 
 not the same impatience ibr the wilhdraw- 
 ment of him, wiio, asked to grace the outset 
 of an assembled parly, is compelled, at a 
 certain step in the process of conviviality, 
 by the obligations of professional decency, 
 to retire from it. There is not so frequent 
 an exaction of this as one of the established 
 proprieties of social or of fashionable life. 
 And if such an exaction was ever laid by 
 the omnipotence of custom on a minister of 
 Christianity, it is such an exaction as ought 
 never, never, to be complied with. It is not 
 for him to lend the sanction of his presence to 
 a meeting with which he could not sit to its 
 final termination. It is not for him to stand 
 associated, for a single hour, with an assem- 
 blage of men who begin with hypocrisy, 
 and end with downright blackguardism. It 
 is not for him to watch the progress of tlie 
 coming ribaldry, and to hit the well selected 
 moment when talk, and turbulence, and bois- 
 terous merriment, are on the eve of bursting 
 forth upon the company, and carrying them 
 forward to the full acme and uproar of their 
 enjoyment. It is quite in vain to say, that he 
 has only sanctified one part of such an en- 
 tertainment. He has as good as given his 
 connivance to the whole of it, and left be- 
 hind him a discharge in full of all its abom- 
 inations; and, therefore, be they who they 
 may, whether they rank among the proudest 
 aristocracy of our land, or are charioted in 
 splendour along, as the wealthiest of the 
 citizens, it is his part to keep as purely and 
 indignantly aloof from such society as this, 
 as he would from tlie vilest and most de- 
 basing associations of profiigacy. 
 
 And now the important question comes to 
 t)e put; what is the likeliest way of setting 
 up a barrier against this desolating torrent 
 of corruption, into which there enter so 
 many elements of power and strength, that 
 to the general eye, it looks altogether irre- 
 sistible ? It is easier to give a negative, than 
 an affirmative answer to this question. 
 And, therefore, it shall be our first remark, 
 that the mischief never will be effectually 
 combatted by any expedient separate from 
 the growth and the transmission of personal 
 Christianity throughout the land. If no 
 addition be made to the stock of religious 
 principle in a country, then the profligacy 
 of a co-untry will make its obstinate stand 
 against all the mechanism of the most skil- 
 ful, and plausible, and well looking contriv- 
 ances. It must not be disguised from you, 
 that it does not lie within the compass either 
 of prisons or penitentiaries to work any 
 sensible abatement on the wickedness of 
 our existing generation. The operation must 
 be of a preventive, rather than of a corrective 
 tendency. It must be brought to bear upon 
 boyhood ; and be kept up through that whole 
 period of random exposures through which 
 it has to run, on its way to an established 
 
 condition in society; and a high tone ol 
 moral purity must be infused into the bosom 
 of many individuals; and their agency will 
 effect through the channels of family and 
 social connexion, what never can be effected 
 by any framework of artificial regulations, 
 so long as the spirit and character of society 
 remain what tliev are. In other words, the 
 progress of reformation will never be sc nsi- 
 bly carried forward beyond the progress of 
 personal Christianity in the world ; and, 
 therefore, the question resolves itself into 
 the likeliest method of adding to the num- 
 ber of Christian parents who may Ibrtify 
 the principles of their children at their first 
 outset in life — of adding to the number uf 
 Christian young men, who might nobly 
 dare to be singular, and to perform tiie an- 
 gelic office of guardians and advisers to 
 those who are younger than themselves — 
 of adding to tlie number of Christians in 
 middle and advanced life, who might, a* far 
 as in them lies, alter the general feeling and 
 countenance of society ; and blunt the force 
 oi' that tacit but most seductive testimony, 
 which has done so much to thro\\' a pallia- 
 tive veil over the guilt of a life of dissipation. 
 Such a question cannot be entered upon, 
 at present, in all its bearings, and in all its 
 generality. And we must, therefore, smiply 
 satisfy ourselves with the object, that as we 
 hav£ attempted already to approach the in- 
 difference of parents, and to reproach the 
 unfeeling depravity of those young men 
 who scatter their pestilential levities around 
 the whole circle of their companionshi]), we 
 may now shortly attempt to lay upon the 
 men of middle and advanced life, in oenerai 
 society, their share of responsibility' for the 
 morals of the rising generation. For the 
 promotion of this great cause, it is not at all 
 necessary to school them into any nice or 
 exquisite contrivances. Could we only give 
 them a desire towards it, and a sense of 
 obligation, they would soon find their own 
 way to the right exercise of their own in- 
 fluence in forwarding the interests of purity 
 and virtue among the young. Could we 
 only affect their consciences on this point, 
 there would be almost no necessity what- 
 ever to guide or enlighten their iinderstjuid- 
 ing. Could we only get them to be Chris- 
 tians, and to carry their Christianity into 
 their business, they would then feel tin m- 
 selves invested with a guardianship; and 
 that time, and pains, and attention, ought 
 to be given to the fulfilment of its concerns. 
 It is quite in vain to ask, as if there was 
 any mystery, or any helplessness about it, 
 "What can" they do?" For, is it not the 
 fact, most palpably obvious, that much can 
 be done even by the mere power of ex- 
 ample? Or might not the master of any 
 trading establishment send the pervading 
 influence of his own principles among some, 
 at least, of the servants and auxiliaries who 
 
V^II.] 
 
 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWKR ORDERS. 
 
 161 
 
 belong to it ? Or can he, in no degree what- 
 ever, so select those who are admitted, as 
 to ward off much contamination from the 
 branches of his employ ? Or might not he 
 so deal out his encouragement to the de- 
 serving, as to confirm them in all their pur- 
 poses of sobriety? Or might not he inter- 
 pose the shield of his countenance and his 
 testimony between a struggling youth and 
 the ridicule of his acquaintances ? Or, by 
 the friendly conversation of half an hour, 
 might not he strengthen within him every 
 principle of virtuous resistance ? By these, 
 and by a thousand other expedients, which 
 will readily suggest themselves to him who 
 has the good will, might not a healing water 
 be sent fortli tlirough the most corrupted of 
 all our establishments ; and it be made safe 
 for the unguarded young to officiate in its 
 chambers ; and it be made possible to enter 
 upon the business of the world without en- 
 tering on such a scene of temptation, as to 
 render almost inevitable the vice of the 
 world, and its impiety, and hs final and 
 everlasting condemnation? Would Chris- 
 tians only be open and intrepid, and carry 
 their religion into their merchandize ; and 
 
 furnish us with a single hundred of such 
 houses in this city, where the care and cha 
 racter of the master fornird a guarantee for 
 the sobriety of all his dependents, it would 
 be like the plearing out of a piece of culti- 
 vated ground in the midst of a frightful wil- 
 derness; and parents would know whither 
 they could repair witli confidence for the 
 settlement of their offspring ; and we should 
 behold, what is mightily to be desired, a line 
 of broad and visilile demarcation between 
 the church and the world ; and an interest 
 so precious as the immortality of children, 
 would no longer be left to the play of such 
 fortuitous elements, as operated at random 
 throughout the confused mass of a mingled 
 and indiscriminate society. And thus, the 
 pieties of a fether's house might bear to be 
 transplanted even into the scenes of ordi- 
 nary business ; and instead of withering, as 
 they do at present, under a contagion which 
 spreads in every direction, and fills up the 
 whole face of the community, they might 
 flourish in that moral region which was oc- 
 cupied by a peculiar people, and which they 
 had reclaimed from a world that lieth in 
 wickedness. 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 071 the vitiating Influence of the higher upon the lower Orders of Society. 
 
 " Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come; but wo unto him through 
 whom they come ! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into 
 the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.'' — Ltike xvii. 1, 2. 
 
 To offend another, according to the com- 
 mon acceptation of the words, is to dis- 
 please him. — Now, this is not its accepta- 
 tion in the verse before us, nor in several 
 other verses of the New Testament. It 
 were coming nearer to the scriptural 
 meaning of the term, had we, instead of 
 offence and offending, adopted the terms, 
 scandal and scandalizing. But the full sig- 
 nification of the phrase to offend another, 
 is to cause him to fall from the faith and 
 obedience of the gospel. It may be such a 
 falling away as that a man recovers him- 
 self — like the disciples, who were all of- 
 fended in Christ, and forsook him ; and, 
 after a season of separation, were at length 
 re-established in their discipleship. — Or it 
 may be such a falling away as that there 
 is no recovery — like those in the gospel of 
 John, who, offended by the sayings of our 
 Saviour, went back, and walked no more 
 with him. If you put such a stumbling 
 block in the way of a neighbour, who is 
 walking on a course of christian disciple- 
 ship, as to make him fall, you offend him. 
 It is in this sense that our Saviour uses 
 21 
 
 the word, -when he speaks of your ow^n 
 right hand, or your own right eye, oflfend- 
 ing you. They may do so, by giving you an 
 occasion to fall. — And what is here trans- 
 lated offend, is, in the first epistle to the 
 Corinthians, translated to make to offend ; 
 where Paul says, " If meat make my bro- 
 ther to oflfend, I will eat no more flesh 
 wiiile the world standeth, lest I make my 
 brother to oflfend." 
 
 The little ones to whom our Saviour al- 
 ludes, in this passage, he elsewhere more 
 fully particularises, by telling us, that they 
 are those wlio believe in him. There is no 
 call here for entering into any controversy 
 about the doctrine of perseverance. It is 
 not necessary, either for the purpose of 
 explaining, or of giving force to the practi- 
 cal lesson of the text now^ submitted to 
 you. We happen to be as much satisfied 
 with the doctrine, that he who hath a real 
 faith in the gospel of Christ will never fall 
 away, as we are satisfied with the truth of 
 any identical proposition. If a professing 
 disciple do, in fact, fall away, this is a 
 phenomenon which might be traced to 
 
162 
 
 VITIATING INFLrENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 an essential defect of principle at the first ; 
 which proves, in fact, that he made the 
 mistake of one principle for another ; and 
 that, while he thought he liad the faith, it 
 was not that very faith of the New Tes- 
 tament which is unto salvation. There 
 might have been the semblance of a work 
 of grace without its reality. Such a work, 
 if genuinely begun, will be carried on- 
 wards even unto perfection. But this is a 
 point on which it is not at all necessary, at 
 present, to dogmatize. We are led, by the 
 text, to expatiate on the guilt of that one 
 man who has wrecked the interest of an- 
 other man's eternity. Now, it may be very 
 true, that if the second has actually en- 
 tered within the strait gate, it is not in the 
 power of the first, with all his artifices, 
 and all his temptations, to draw him out 
 again. But instead of having entered the 
 gate, he may only be on the road that leads 
 to it ; and it is enough, amid the uncertain- 
 ties which, in this life, hang over the ques- 
 tion of — Avho are really believers, and Avho 
 are not ? that it is not known in which of 
 these two conditions the little one is ; and 
 that, therefore, to seduce him from obe- 
 dience to the will of Christ, may, in fact, 
 be to arrest his progress towards Christ, 
 and to draw him back unto the perdhion 
 of his soul. The whole guilt of the text 
 may be realized by him who keeps back 
 another from the church, where he might 
 have heard, and heard with acceptance, that 
 word of life which he has not yet accepted; 
 or by him, whose influence or whose ex- 
 ample detains, in the entanglement of any 
 one sin, the acquaintance who is meditating 
 an outset on the path of decided Christiani- 
 ty — seeing, that every such outset will land 
 in disappointment those who, in the act of 
 following after Christ, do not forsake all ; 
 or by him who tampers with the con- 
 science of an apparently zealous and con- 
 firmed disciple, so as to seduce him into 
 some habitual sin, either of neglect or of 
 performance — seeing, that the individual 
 who but for this seduction might have 
 cleaved fully unto the Lord, and turned i 
 out a prosperous and decided Christian, | 
 has been led to put a good conscience 
 away from him — and so, by making ship- 
 wreck of his faith, has proved to the world, 
 that it was not the faith which could ob- 
 tain the victory. It is true, that it is not 
 possible to seduce the elect. But even this 
 suggestion, per\'erse and unjust as it would 
 be in its application, is not generally pre- 
 sent to the mind of him who is guilty of 
 the attempt to seduce, or of the act which 
 carries a seducing-influence along with it. 
 The guilt with which he is chargeable, is 
 that of an indifference to the spiritual and 
 everlasting fate of others. He is wilfully 
 the occasion of causing those who are the \ 
 little ones, or, for any thing he knows, ! 
 
 might have been the little ones of Christ, to 
 fall ; and it is against him that our Saviour, 
 in the text, lifts not a cool, but an impas- 
 sioned testimony. It is of him that he 
 utters one of the most severe and solemn 
 denunciations of the gospel. 
 
 If this text were thoroughly pursued 
 into its manifold applications, it would be 
 found to lay a weight of fearful responsi- 
 bility upon us all. We are here called 
 upon not to work out our own salvation, 
 but to compute the reflex influence of all 
 our works, and of all our ways, on the 
 principles of others. And when one thinks 
 of the mischief which this influence might 
 spread around it, even from Christians of 
 chiefest reputation: when one thinks of 
 the readiness of man to take shelter m the 
 example of an acknowledged superior; 
 when one thinks that some inconsistency 
 of ours might seduce another into such an 
 imitation as overbears the reproaches of 
 his own conscience, and as, by vitiating 
 the singleness of his eye, makes the whole 
 of his body, instead of being full of light, 
 to be full of darkness ; when one takes the 
 lesson along with him into the various con- 
 ditions of life he may be called by Provi- 
 dence to occupy, and thinks, that if, either 
 as a parent surrounded by his family, or as 
 a master by the members of his establish- 
 ment, or as a citizen by the' many observers 
 of -his neighbourhood around him, he shall 
 either speak such words, or do such ac- 
 tions, or administer his affairs in such a 
 way as is unworthy of his high and im- 
 mortal destination, that then a taint of cor- 
 ruption is sure to descend from such an 
 exhibition, upon the immortals who are on 
 every side of him ; when one thinks of 
 himself as the source and the centre of a 
 contagion which might bring a Wight upon 
 the graces and the prospects of other souls 
 besides his own — surely this is enough to 
 supply him with a reason why, in work- 
 ing out his own personal salvation, he 
 should do it with fear, and with watchful- 
 ness, and with much trembling. 
 
 But we are now upon the ground of a 
 higher and more delicate conscientiousness, 
 than is generally to be met with. \MiereaSi 
 our object, at present, is to expose certain 
 of the grosser offencrs which abound in so- 
 ciety, and which sp- ead a most dangerous 
 and ensnaring influence among the indi- 
 viduals who compose it. To this we have 
 been insensibly led, by the topics of that dis- 
 course which we addressed to you on a for- 
 mer occasion ; and when it fell in our way 
 to animadvert on the magnitude of that 
 man's guilt, who, either by his example, or 
 his connivance, or his direct and formal 
 tuition, can speed the entrance of the yet 
 unpractised young on a career of dissipa- 
 tion. And whether he be a parent, who, 
 trenched in this world's maxims, can. with- 
 
VII.J 
 
 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 163 
 
 out a struggle, and without a sigh, leave his 
 helpless offspring to take their random and 
 unprotected way through this world's con- 
 formities ; or whether he be one of those 
 seniors in depravity, who can cheer on his 
 more youthful companion to a surrender of 
 all those scruples, and all those delicacies, 
 which have hitherto adorned him ; or whe- 
 ther he be a more aged citizen, who, having 
 run the wonted course of intemperance, can 
 cast an approving eye on the corruption 
 throughout all its stages, and give a tenfold 
 force to all its allurements, by setting up the 
 authority of grave and reformed manhood 
 upon its side ; in each of these characters do 
 we see an offence that is pregnant with 
 deadliest mischief to the principles of the 
 rising generation : and while we are told by 
 our text, that, for such offences, there exists 
 some deep and mysterious necessity — inso- 
 much, that it is impossible but that offences 
 must come — yet let us not forget to urge on 
 every one sliarer in this work of moral con- 
 tamination, that never does the meek and 
 gentle Saviour speak in terras more threat- 
 ening or more reproachful, than when he 
 speaks of the enormity of sucli misconduct. 
 There cannot, in truth, be a grosser outrage 
 committed on the order of God's administra- 
 tion, than that which he is in the habit of 
 inflicting. Therecannot, surely,be adirecter 
 act of rebellion, than that which multiplies 
 the adherents of its own cause, and which 
 swells the hosts of the rebellious. There 
 cannot be made to rest a feller condemna- 
 tion on the head of iniquity, than that which 
 is sealed by the blood of its own victims, and 
 its own proselytes. Nor shoiild we wonder 
 when that is said of such an agent for ini- 
 quity which is said of the betrayer of our 
 Lord. It were better for him that he had not 
 been born. It were better for him, now that 
 he is born, could he be committed back again 
 to deep annihilation. Rather than that he 
 should offend one of these little ones, it were 
 better for him that a millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. 
 Tliis is one case of such offences as are 
 adverted to in the text. Another and still 
 more specific is beginning, we understand, 
 to be exemplified in our own city, though it 
 has not attained to the height or to the fre- 
 quency at which it occurs in a neighbouring 
 metropolis. We allude to the doing of week- 
 day business upon the Sabbath. We allude 
 to that violence which is rudely offered to 
 the feelings and the associations of sacred- 
 ness, by those exactions that an ungodly 
 master lays at times on his youthful de- 
 pendents — when those hours which they 
 wont to spend in church, they are called 
 upon to spend in the counting-house — when 
 that day, which ought to be a day of piety, 
 is turned into a day of posting and of pen- 
 manship — when the rules of the decalogue 
 are set aside, and utterly superseded by the 
 
 rules of the great trading establishment; and 
 every thing is made to give way to the hur- 
 rying emergency of orders, and clearances, 
 and the demands of instant correspondence. 
 Such is the magnitude of this stumbling- 
 block, that many is the young man who has 
 here fallen to rise no more — that, at this 
 point of departure, he has so widened his 
 distance from God, as never, in fact, to re- 
 turn to him — that, in this distressing contest 
 between principle and necessity, the final 
 blow has been given to his religious princi- 
 ples — that the master whom he serves, and 
 under whom he earns his provision for time, 
 has here wrested the wliole interests of his 
 eternity away from him — that, from this 
 moment, there gathers upon his soul the 
 complexion of a hardier and more deter- 
 mined impiety — and conscieuce once stifled 
 now speaks to him with a feebler voice — 
 and the world obtains a firmer lodgement in 
 his heart — and, renouncing all his original 
 tenderness about Sabbath, and Sabbath em- 
 ployments, he can now, with the thorough 
 unconcern of a fixed and familiarised prose- 
 lyte, keep equal pace by his fellows through- 
 out every scene of profanation — and he who 
 wont to tremble and recoil from the free- 
 doms of nrreligion with the sensibility of a 
 little one, may soon become the most dar- 
 ingly rebellious of them all — and that Sab- 
 bath which he has now learned, at one time, 
 to give to business, he at another, gives to 
 unhallowed enjoyments— and it is turned 
 into a day of visits and excursions, given up 
 to pleasure, and enlivened by all the mirth 
 and extravagance of holiday — and, when 
 sacrament is proclaimed from the city pul- 
 pits, he, the apt, the well trained'disciple of 
 his corrupt and corrupting superior, is the 
 readiest to plan the amusements of the com- 
 ing opportunitj', and among the very fore- 
 most in the ranks of emigration — and though 
 he may look back, at times, to the Sabbath 
 of his Father's pious house, yet the retro- 
 spect is always becoming dimmer, and at 
 length it ceases to disturb him — and thus the 
 alienation widens every year, till, wholly 
 given over to impiety, he lives without God 
 in the world. 
 
 And were we asked to state the dimen- 
 sions of that iniquity which stalks regard- 
 lessly, and at large, over the ruin of youth- 
 ful principles — were we asked to find a place 
 in the catalogue of guilt for a crime, the 
 atrocity of which is only equalled, we un- 
 derstand, by its frequency — were we called 
 to characterise the man who, so far from 
 attempting one counteracting influence 
 against the profligacy of his dependents, 
 issues, from the chair of authority on which 
 he sits, a commandment, in the direct face 
 of a commandment from God — the man 
 who has chartered impiety in articles of 
 agreement, and has vested himself with a 
 property in that time which only belongs to 
 
164 
 
 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 the Lord of the Sabbath— were we asked to ! such a proportionate abatement of truth, as 
 
 look to the man who could thus o%'crbear 
 the last remnants of remorse in a struggling 
 and unpractised bosom, and glitter in all the 
 ensigns of a prosperity that is reared on the 
 violated consciences of those who are be- 
 neath him— 0! were the question put, to 
 whom shall we liken such a man ? or what 
 is the likeness to which we can compare 
 him ? we would say, that the guilt of liim 
 who trafficked on the high^ray. or trafficked 
 on that outraged coast, from whose weeping 
 famihes children were inseparably torn, was 
 far outmeasured by the guilt which could 
 thus fritstrate a father's fondest prayers, and 
 trample under foot the hopes and" the pre- 
 parations of eternity. 
 
 Tliere is anotlier way whereby in the em- 
 ploy of a careless and unprincipled master, 
 it is impossible but that offences must come. 
 You know just as well as we do, that there 
 are chicaneries in business; and, so long as 
 we forbear stating the precise extent" of 
 them, there is not an individual among you 
 who has a title t construe the assertion into 
 an affronting charge of criminality against 
 himself But you surely know as well as we, 
 that the mercantile profession, conducted, as 
 it often is, witli the purest integrity, and 
 laying no resistless necessity whatever for 
 the surrender of principle on any of its 
 members; and dignified by some" of the 
 noblest exhibitions of untainted honour, and 
 devoted friendship, and magnificent gene- 
 rosity, that have ever been recorded of our 
 nature;— you know as well as we, that it 
 was utterly extravagant, and in the face of 
 all observation, to affirm, that each, and 
 every one of its numerous competitors, stood 
 clearly and totally exempted from the sins 
 of an undue selfishness. And, accordingly, 
 there are certain commodious falsehoods 
 occasionally practised in this department of 
 human affairs. There are, for example, cer- 
 tain dexterous and gainful evasions, whereby 
 the payers of tribute are enabled, at times, 
 to make their escape from the eagle eye of 
 the exactors of tribute. There are even cer- 
 tain contests of ingenuity between individual 
 traders, where in the higglina of a very keen 
 and anxious negociation, each of them is 
 tempted in talking of offers and prices, and 
 the reports of fluctuations in home and 
 foreign markets, to say the things which are 
 not. You must assuredly know, that these, 
 and such as these, then, "have introduced a 
 certain quantity of what mav be called shuf- 
 fling, into the communications of the trad- 
 ing world — insomuch, that the simplicity of 
 yea, yea, and nay, nay, is in some degree 
 exploded; there is a kind of understood tole- 
 ration established for certain modes of ex- 
 pression, which could not, we are much 
 afraid, stand the rigid scrutiny of the great 
 day; and there is an abatemt-ni of ooiifidence 
 between man and man, implying, we doubt, I 
 
 goes to extend most fearfully the condemna- 
 tion that is due to all liars, who shall have 
 their part in the lake that burneth with fire 
 and brimstone. And who can compute the 
 effect of all this on the young and yet un- 
 practised observer? Who does not see, that 
 it must go to reduce the tone of his princi- 
 ples; and to involve him in many a delicate 
 struggle between the morality he has learned 
 from his catechism, and the morality he sees 
 in the counting-house; and to obliterate, in 
 his min'd, the distinctions between right and 
 wrong; and, at length, to reconcile his con- 
 science to a sin, which, like every other, 
 deserves the wrath and the curse of God; 
 and to make him tamper with a direct com- 
 mandment, in such a way, as that falsehoods 
 and frauds might be nothing more in his 
 estimation, than the peccadilloes of an in- 
 nocent compliance with the current prac- 
 tices and moralities of the world ? Here then 
 is a point, at which the way of those who 
 conform to this world, diverges from the 
 way of those peculiar people who are re- 
 deemed from ail iniquity, and are thorough- 
 ly furnished unto all good works. Here is a 
 grievous occasion to fall. Here is a com- 
 petition between the service of God and the 
 service of Mammon. Here is the exhibition 
 of another offence, and the bringing forward 
 of another temptation, to those who are en- 
 te"ring on the business of the world, little 
 adverted to, we fear, by those who live in 
 utter carelessness of their own souls, and 
 never spend a thought or a sigh about the 
 immortality of others — but most distinctly 
 singled out by the text as a crime of fore- 
 mosl. magnitude in the eye of Him who 
 judgetTi righteousl}^ 
 
 And before we quit the subject of such 
 offences as take place in ordinary trade, let 
 us just advert to one example of it — not so 
 much for the frequency of its occurrence, 
 as for the way that it stands connected in 
 principle with a very general, and, we be- 
 lieve, a very mischievous offence, that takes 
 place in domestic society. It is neither, 
 you will observe, the avarice nor the sel- 
 fishness of our nature, which forms the only 
 obstruction in the way of one man dealing 
 plainly with another. There is another 
 obstruction, founded on a far more pleasing 
 and amiable principle — even on that deli- 
 cacy of feeling, in virtue of which, one man 
 cannot bear to wound or to mortif}^ another. 
 It would require, for instance, a very rare, 
 and, certainly, not a very enviable degree 
 of hardihood, to tell another, without pain, 
 that you did not think him worthy of being 
 trusted. And yet, in the doings of mer- 
 chandise, this is the very trial of delicacy 
 which sometimes offers itself. The man 
 with whom you stand committed to as 
 great an extent as you count to be advisa- 
 ble, would like, perhaps, to try your confl 
 
VII.] 
 
 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 165 
 
 dence in him, and his own credit with you, 
 a little farther ; and he conies back upon 
 you with a fresh order ; and you secretly 
 have no desire to link any more of your 
 property with his speculation ; and the dif- 
 ficulty is, how to get the application in 
 question disposed of; and you feel that by 
 far the pleasantest way, to all the parties 
 concerned, would be, to make him believe 
 that you refuse the application, not because 
 you will not comply, but because you can- 
 not — for that you have no more of the ar- 
 ticle he wants from you upon hand. And 
 it would only be putting your own soul to 
 hazard, did you personally, and by your 
 self, make this communication: but you 
 select, perhaps, as the organ of it, some 
 agent or underling of your establishment, 
 who knows it to be false ; and to avoid the 
 soreness of a personal encounter with the 
 man whom you are to disappoint, you de- 
 volve the whole business of this lying apol- 
 ogy upon others ; and thus do you continue 
 to shift this oppressive burden away from 
 you — or, in other words, to save your own 
 delicac)^, you count not, and you care not, 
 about another's damnation. 
 
 Now, what we call upon you to mark, is 
 the perfect identity of principle between 
 this case of making a brother to offend, and 
 another case which obtains, we have heard, 
 to a very great extent, among the most gen- 
 teel and opulent of our city families. In 
 this case, you put a lie into the mouth of a 
 dependent, and that, for the purpose of 
 protecting your substance from such an 
 application as might expose it to hazard 
 or diminution. In the second case, you 
 put a lie into the mouth of a dependent, 
 and that, for the purpose of protecting 
 your time from such an encroachment 
 as you would not feel to be convenient 
 or agreeable. And, in both cases, you 
 are led to hold out this offence by a 
 certain delicacy of temperament, in vir- 
 vue of which, you can neither give a man 
 plainly to understand, that you are not wil- 
 ling to trust him, nor can you give him to 
 understand that you count his company to 
 be an interruption. But, in both the one 
 and the other example, look to the little 
 account that is made of a brother's or of a 
 sister's eternity ; behold the guilty task that 
 is thus unmercifully laid upon one who is 
 shortly to appear before the judgment-seat 
 of Christ ; think of the entanglement which 
 is thus made to beset the path of a creature 
 who is un perishable. That, at the shrine 
 of Mammon, such a bloody sacrifice should 
 be rendered by some of his unrelenting vo- 
 taries, is not to be wondered at ; but that 
 the shrine of elegance and fashion should 
 be bathed in blood — that soft and sentimen- 
 tal ladyship should put forth her hand to 
 such an enormity — that she who can sigh 
 fep gently, and shed her graceful tear over 
 
 the sufferings of others, should thus be ac- 
 cessary to the second and more awful death 
 of her own domestics — that one who looks 
 the mildest and the loveliest of human be- 
 ings, should exact obedience to a mandate 
 which carries wrath, and tribulation, and 
 anguish, in its train — O ! how it should 
 confirm every Christian in his defiance to 
 the authority of fashion, and lead him to 
 spurn at all its folly, and at all its worth- 
 lessness. 
 
 And it is quite in vain to say, that the ser 
 vant whom you thus employ as the deputy 
 of your falsehood, can possibly execute the 
 commission without the conscience being 
 at all tainted or defiled by it ; that a simple 
 cottage maid can so sophisticate the matter 
 as, without any violence to her origina^ 
 principles, to utter the language of what 
 she assuredly knows to be a downright lie ; 
 tliat she, humble and untutored soul, can 
 sustain no injury when thus made to tam- 
 per with the plain English of these realms ; 
 that she can at all satisfy herself, how, by 
 the prescribed utterance of " not at home," 
 she is not pronouncing such words as are 
 substantially untrue, but merely using them 
 in another and perfectly understood mean- 
 ing — and which, according to their modern 
 translation, denote, that the person of whom 
 she is thus speaking, instead of being away 
 from home, is secretly lurking in one of the 
 most secure and intimate of its recepta- 
 cles. You may try to darken and trans- 
 form this piece of casuistry as you will ; 
 and work up your own minds into the peace- 
 able conviction that it is all right, and as it 
 should be. But be very certain, that where 
 the moral sense of your domestic is not al- 
 ready overthrown, there is, at least one bo- 
 som within which you have raised a war 
 of doubts and difficulties ; and where, if the 
 victory be on j'our side, it will be on the 
 side of him who is the great enemy of righ- 
 teousness. There is, at least, one person 
 along the line of this conveyance of deceit, 
 who condemneth herself in that which she 
 alloweth ; who, in the language of Paul, es- 
 teeming the practice to be unclean, to her 
 will it be unclean; who will perform her task 
 with the offence of her own conscience^ 
 and to whom, therefore, it will indeed be 
 evil : who cannot render obedience in this 
 matter to her earthly superior, but by an 
 act, in which she does not stand clear and 
 unconscious of guilt before God ; and with 
 whom, therefore, the sad consequence of 
 what we can call nothing else than a bar- 
 barous combination against the principles 
 and the prospects of the lower orders, is — 
 that as she has not cleaved fully unto the 
 Lord, and has not kept by the service of 
 the one master, and has not forsaken all at 
 His bidding, she cannot be the disciple of 
 Christ. 
 The aphorism, that he who offendeth in 
 
166 
 
 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 one point is guilty of all, tells ns something 
 more than of the way in wliich God ad- 
 judges condemnation to the disobedient. 
 It also tells us of the way in which one in- 
 dividual act of sinfulness operates upon our 
 moral nature. It is altogether an erroneous 
 view of the commandments, to look upon 
 them as so many observances to which we 
 are bound by as many distinct and inde- 
 pendent ties of obligation — insomuch, that 
 the transgression of one of them may be 
 brought about by the dissolution of one 
 separate tie, and may leave all the others, 
 with as entire a constraining influence and 
 authority as before. The trutli is, that the 
 commandments ought rather to be looked 
 upon as branching out from one great and 
 general tie of obligation; and that there is 
 no such thing as loosening the hold of one 
 of them upon the conscience, but by the 
 unfastening of that tie wiiich binds them all 
 upon the conscience. So that if one mem- 
 ber in the system of practical righteousness 
 be made to suifer, all the other members 
 suffer along with it; and if one decision of 
 the moral sense be thwarted, the organ of 
 the moral sense is permanently impaired, 
 and a leaven of iniquity infused into all its 
 other decisions ; and if one suggestion of 
 this inward monitor be stifled, a general 
 shock is given to his authority over the 
 whole man ; and if one of the least com- 
 mandments of the law is left unfulfilled, the 
 law itself is brought down from its rightful 
 ascendency ; and thus it is, that one act of 
 disobedience may be the commencement 
 and the token of a systematic ana universal 
 rebelliousness of the heart against God. It 
 is this which gives such a wide-wasting ma- 
 lignity to each of the separate offences on 
 which we have now cxj)atiated. It is this 
 which so multiplies the means and the pos- 
 sibilities of corruption in the world. It is 
 thus that, at every one point in the inter- 
 course of human society, there may be 
 struck out a fountain of poisonous emana- 
 tion on all who approach it ; and think not, 
 therefore, that under each of the examples 
 we have given, we were only contending 
 for the preservation of one single feature in 
 the character of him who stands exposed to 
 this world's offences. We felt it, in fact, to 
 be a contest for his eternity; and that the 
 case involved in it his general condition 
 with God ; and that he who leads the young 
 into a course of dissipatitm — or that he who 
 tampers with their impressions of sabbath 
 sacredness — or that he who, either in the 
 walks of business, or in the services of the 
 family, makes them the agents of deceitful- 
 ness — or that he, in short, who tempts them 
 to transgress in afiy one thing, has, in fact, 
 poured such a pervading taint into their 
 moral constitution, as to spoil or corrupt 
 them in all things ; and that thus, upon one 
 solitary occasion, or by the exhibition of one 
 
 particular offence, a mischief may be done 
 equivalent to the total destruction of a hu- 
 man soul, or to the blotting out of its pros- 
 pects for immortality. 
 
 And let us just ask a master or a mistress, 
 who can thus make free with the moral 
 principle of their servants in one instance, 
 how they can look for pure or correct prin- 
 ciple from them in other instances? What 
 right have they to com.plain of unfaithful- 
 ness against themselves, who have delibe- 
 rately seduced another into a habit of un- 
 faithfulness against God ? Are they so ut- 
 terly unskilled in the mysteries of our na- 
 ture, as not to perceive, that if a man gather 
 liardihood enough to break the Sabbath in 
 opposition to his own conscience, this very 
 hardihood will avail him to the breaking of 
 other obligations? — that he whom, for their 
 advantage, they have so exercised, as to fill 
 his conscience with offence towards his 
 God, will not scruple, for liis own advan- 
 tage, so to exercise himself, as to fill his 
 conscience with offence towards bis master? 
 — that the servant whom yon have taught 
 to lie, has gotten such rudiments of educa- 
 tion at your hand, as that, without any fur- 
 ther help, he can now teach himself to pur- 
 loin? — and yet nothing more frequent than 
 loud and angry complainings against the 
 treachery of servants ; as if, in the general 
 wreck of their other principles, a principle 
 of consideration for tlie good and interest of 
 tlieir employer — and who, at the same time, 
 has been their seducer — was to survive in 
 all its power, and all its sensibility. It is 
 just such a retribution as was to be looked 
 for. It is a recoil upon tiieir own heads of 
 the mischief which they themselves have 
 originated. It is the temporal part of the 
 punishment which they have to bear for the 
 sin of our text, but not the whole of it ; far 
 the better for tliem tliat both person and 
 property were cast into the sea, than that 
 they should stand the reckoning of that day, 
 when called to give an account of the souls 
 that they have murdered, and the blood of 
 so mighty a destruction is required at their 
 hands. 
 
 The evil against which we have just pro- 
 tested, is an outrage of far greater enormity 
 than tyrant or oppressor can inflict, in the 
 prosecution of his worst designs against the 
 political rights and liberties of the common- 
 wealth. The very semblance of such de- 
 signs will summon every patriot to his post 
 of observation ; and, from a tliousand watch- 
 towers of alarm, will the outcry of freedom 
 in danger be heard throughout the land. 
 But there is a conspiracy of a larmore ma- 
 lignant influence upon "the destinies of the 
 species that is now going on ; and which 
 seems to call forth no indignant spirit, and 
 to bring n(j generous exclamation along 
 with it. Throughout all the recesses of 
 private and domestic history, there is an 
 
VII.] 
 
 VITIATING INFLUENCE OF HIGHER UPON LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 167 
 
 ascendency of rank and station against 
 which no stern republican is ever heard to 
 lift his voice — though it be an ascendency 
 so exercised, as to be of most noxious ope- 
 ration to the dearest hopes and best interests 
 of humanity. There is a cruel combination 
 of l!ie great against the majesty of the peo- 
 ple — we mean tlie majesty of the people's 
 worth. There is a haughty unconcern about 
 an inheritance, which, by an unalienable 
 right, should be tlieirs — we mean their fu- 
 ture and everlasting inheritance. There is 
 a deadly invasion made on their rights — 
 we mean their rights of conscience ; and, 
 in tliis our land of boasted privileges, are 
 the low trampled upon b)^ the high — we 
 mean trampled into all tlie degradation of 
 guilt and worthlessness. They are utterly 
 .bereft of that homage which ought to be 
 rendered to the dignity of their immortal 
 nature ; and to minister to the avarice of 
 an imperious master, or to spare the sickly 
 delicacy of the fashionables in our land, are 
 the truth and the piety of our population, 
 and all the virtues of their eternit}% most 
 imfeelingly plucked away from them. It 
 belongs to others to fight the battle of their 
 Pfivileges in time. But wlio that looks with 
 a calculating eye on their duration that 
 never ends, can repress an alarm of a higher 
 order ? It belongs to others generously to 
 struggle for the place and the adjustment 
 of the lower orders in the great vessel of 
 the state. But, surely, the question of their 
 place in eternity is of mightier concern than 
 how tliey are to sit and be accommodated 
 in that pathway vehicle which takes them 
 to their everlasting habitations. 
 
 Christianity is, in one sense, tlie greatest 
 of all levellers. It looks to the elements, 
 and not to tlie circumstantials of humanity; 
 and regarding as altogether superficial and 
 temporary the distinctions of this fleeting 
 pilgrimage, it fastens on those points of as- 
 similation which liken the king upon the 
 throne to the very humblest of his subject 
 population. They are alike in the naked- 
 ness of their birth. They are alike in the 
 sureness of their decay. They are alike in 
 the agonies of their dissolution. And after 
 the one is tombed in sepulchral magnifi- 
 cence, and the other is laid in his sod-wrapt 
 grave, are they most fearfully alike in the 
 corruption to which they moulder. But it 
 is with the immortal nature of each that 
 Christianity has to do ; and, in both the one 
 and the other, does it behold a nature alike 
 forfeited by guilt, and alike capable of being 
 restored by the grace of an offered salva- 
 tion. And never do the pomp and the cir- 
 cumstance of externals appear more humi- 
 liating, than when, looking onwards to the 
 day of resurrection, we behold the sovereign 
 standing witliout his crown, and trembling, 
 with the subject by liis side, at the bar of 
 heaven's majesty. There the master and 
 
 the servant will be brought to their reckon- 
 ing together; and when tlie one is tried 
 upon the guilt and the malignant influence 
 of his Sabbath companies — and is charged 
 with the profane and careless ]iai)it of liis 
 household establishment — and is reiuiuded 
 how he kept both himself and his domes- 
 tics from thesolemn ordinance — and is made 
 to perceive the fearful extent of the moral 
 and spiritual mischief u Inch he has wrought 
 as the irreligious head of an irreligious fa- 
 mily — and liow, among otlier tilings lie, un- 
 der a system of fashionable hypocrisy, so 
 tampered with another's principles as to de- 
 file his conscience, and to destroy him — O ! 
 how tremendously will the little brief au- 
 tliority in wliich he now plays his fantastic 
 tricks, turn to his own condemnation; for, 
 tiian thus abuse his authority, it were bet- 
 ter for him that a millstone were hanged 
 about his neck, and he were cast into the 
 sea. 
 
 And how comes it, we ask, that any mas- 
 ter is armed with a power so destructive 
 over the immortals who are around him ? 
 God has given him no such power: The 
 state has not given it to him. There is no 
 law, either human or divine, by which he 
 can enforce any order upon his servants to 
 an act of falsehood, or to an act of impiety. 
 Should any such act of authority be at- 
 tempted on the part of tlie master, it should 
 be followed up on the part of the servant 
 by an act of disobedience. Should your 
 master or mistress bid you say not at home, 
 when you know that they are at home, it 
 is your duty to refuse compliance with such 
 an' order: and if it be asked, how can this 
 matter be adjusted after such a violent and 
 alarming innovation on the laws of fashion- 
 able intercourse, we answer, just by the sim- 
 ple substitution of truth for falsehood — ^.just 
 by prescribing the utterance of, engaged, 
 which is a fact, instead of the utterance of, 
 not at home, which is a lie— just by holding 
 the principles of your servant to be of higlier 
 account than the false delicacies of your ac- 
 quaintance—just by a bold and vigorous re- 
 currence to the simplicity of nature— just 
 by determinedly doing what is right, though 
 the example of a whole host were against 
 you; and by giving impulse to the current 
 of example, when it happens to be moving 
 in a proper direction. And here we are 
 happy to say that fashion has of late been 
 making a capricious and accidental move- 
 ment on the side of principle — and to be 
 blunt, and open, and manly, is now on the 
 fair way to be fashionable — and a temper 
 of a homelier quality is beginning to infuse 
 itself into the luxuriousness, and the efl^emi- 
 nacy, and the palling and excessive complai- 
 sance of genteel society — and the staple of 
 cultivated manners is improving in firmness, 
 and frankness, and lionesty, and may, at 
 length, by the aid of a principle of Chris- 
 
168 
 
 VITIATING INFLUEXCE OF HIGHER UPOX LOWER ORDERS. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 tian rectitude, be so interwoven with the 
 cardinal virtues, as to present a different 
 texture altogether from the soft and silken 
 degeneracy of modern days. 
 
 And that we may not appear the cham- 
 pions of an insurrection against the autho- 
 rity of masters, let us further say, that 
 while it is the duty of clerk or apprentice to 
 refuse the doingof weekday work on the Sab- 
 bath, and while it is the duty of servants to 
 refuse the utterance of apruscribed falsehood, 
 and while it is the duty of every dependent, 
 in the service of his master, to serve him 
 only in the Lord — yet this very principle, 
 tending as it may to a rare and occasional 
 act of disobedience, is also the principle 
 which renders every servant who adheres 
 to it a perfect treasure of fidelity, and at- 
 tachment, and general obedience. This is 
 the way in which to obtain a credit for his 
 refusal, and to stamp upon it a noble con- 
 sistency. In this way he will, even to the 
 mind of an ungodly master, make up for 
 all his particularities : and should he be 
 what, if a Christian, he will be ; should he 
 be, at all times, the most alert in service, 
 and the most patient of provocation, and 
 the most cordial in affection, and the most 
 scrupulously honest in the charge and cus- 
 tody of all that is committed to him — then 
 let the post of drudgery at which he toils 
 be humble as it may, the contrast between 
 the meanness of his office and the dignity 
 of his character will only heighten the re- 
 verence that is due to principle, and make 
 it more illustrious. His scruples may, at 
 first, be the topics of displeasure, and after- 
 wards the topics of occasional levity : but, 
 in spite of himself, will his employer be at 
 length constrained to look upon them with 
 respectful toleration. The servant will be 
 to the master a living epistle of Christ, and 
 he may read there what he has not jet per- 
 ceived in the letter of the New Testament. 
 He may read, in the person of his own do- 
 mestic, the power and the truth of Chris- 
 tianity. He may positively stand in awe 
 of his own hired servant — and, regarding 
 his bosom as a sanctuary of worth which it 
 were monstrous to violate, will he feel, when 
 tempted to offer one command of impiety, 
 that he cannot, that he dare not. 
 
 And before we conclude, let us, if possi- 
 ble, try to rebuke the wealthy out of their 
 unfeeling indifference to the souls of the 
 poor, by the example of the Saviour. Let 
 those who look on the immortality of the 
 poor as beneath their concern, only look 
 unto Christ — to him who, for the sake of 
 the poorest of us all, became poor himself, 
 that we, tlu'ough his poverty, might be 
 made rich. Let them think how the prin- 
 ciple of all these offences which we have 
 been attempting to expose, is in the direct 
 face of that principle which prompted, at 
 first, and which still presides over^ the 
 
 whole of the gospel dispensation. Let them 
 leant a higher reverence for the eternity 
 of those beneath them, by thinking of him, 
 who, to purchase an inheritance for the 
 poor, and to provide them with the bless- 
 ings of a preached gospel, unrobed him of 
 all his greatness; and descended himself 
 to the lot and labours of poverty ; and toiled 
 to the beginning of his public ministry, at 
 the work of a carpenter ; and submitted to 
 all the horrors of a death which was aggra- 
 vated by the burden of a world's atone- 
 ment, and made inconceivably severe by 
 their being infused into it all the bitter of 
 expiation. Think, O think, when some petty 
 design of avarice or vanity would lead you 
 to forget the imperishable souls of those 
 who are beneath you. that you are setting 
 yourselves in diametric opposhion to that 
 which lieth nearest to the heart of the Sa- 
 viour ; that 3"ou are countervailing the whole 
 tendency of his redemption : that jou are 
 thwarting the very object of (hat enterprise 
 for which all heaven is represented as in 
 motion — and angels are with wonder look- 
 ing on — and God the Father laid an ap- 
 pointment on the Son of his love — and he. 
 the august personage in whom the mag- 
 nificent train of prophecy, from the begin- 
 ning of the world, has its theme and its 
 fulfilment, at length came amongst us. in 
 shrouded majesty, and was led to the cross, 
 like a lamb for the slaughter, and bowed 
 his "head in agony, and gave up the ghost. 
 
 And here let us address one word more 
 to the masters and mistresses of families. 
 By adopting the reformations to which we 
 have been urging 5'ou, you may do good 
 to the cause of Christianity, and yet not ad- 
 vance, by a single hair-breadth, "the Chris- 
 tianity of your own souls. It is not by this 
 one reformation, or indeed, bj- any given 
 number of reformations, that you are saved. 
 It is by believing in Christ that men are saved. 
 You may escape, it is sure, a higher degree 
 of punishment, but j'ou will not escape 
 damnation. You may do good to the souls 
 of 3'our servants, by a rigid observance of 
 the lesson of this day. But we seek the 
 good of your own souls, also, and we pro- 
 nounce upon them that they are in a state 
 of death, till one ffreat act be performed, 
 and one act, too, which does not consist of 
 any number of particular acts, or particular 
 reformations. What shall I do to be saved ? 
 Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou 
 shalt be saved. And he who believeth not, 
 the wrath of God abideth on him. Do this, 
 if you want to make the great and impor- 
 tant transition for j'ourselves. Do this if 
 you want your own name to be blotted 
 out of the book of condemnation. If you 
 seek to have j'our own persons justified 
 before God, submit to the righteousness of 
 God — even that righteousness which !&■ 
 through the faith of Christ, and is unto aU 
 
7I1I.] 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY, 
 
 169 
 
 and upon all who believe. This is the turn- 
 ing point of your acceptance with the Law- 
 giver. And at this step, also, in the history 
 of your souls, will there be applied to 
 you a power of motive, and will you be en- 
 dowed with an obedient sensibility to the 
 influence of motive, which will make it the 
 turning point of a new heart and a new 
 
 character. The particular reformation that 
 we have now been urging will be one of a 
 crowd of other reformations: and, in the 
 spirit of him who pleased not himself, but 
 gave up his life for others, will you forego 
 all the desires of seifislmess and vanity, and 
 look not merely to your own things, but 
 also to the things of others. 
 
 DISCOURSE VIII. 
 
 On the Love of Money. 
 
 •' If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; If I rejoiced because 
 my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much : If I beheld the sun when it shined or 
 the moon waliving in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my 
 hand ; this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge ; for 1 should have denied the God that is 
 above." — Job xsxi. 24 — 28. 
 
 What is worthy of remark in this pas- 
 sage is, that a certain affection only known 
 among the votaries of Paganism, should 
 be classed under the same character and 
 "have the same condemnation with an affec- 
 tion, not only known, but allowed, nay 
 cherished into habitual supremacy, all over 
 Christendom. How universal is it among 
 those who are in pursuit of wealth, to 
 make gold their hope, and among those 
 who are in possession of wealth, to make 
 fine gold their confidence ? Yet we are here 
 told that this is virtuallj^ as complete a re- 
 nunciation of God as to practise some of 
 the worst charms of idolatry. And it might 
 perhaps serve to unsettle the vanity of those 
 who, unsuspicious of the disease that is in 
 their hearts, are wholy given over to this 
 world, and wholly without alarm in their 
 anticipations of another, — could we con- 
 vince them that the most reigning and re- 
 sistless desire by which they are actuated, 
 stamps the same perversity on them, in the 
 sight of God, as he sees to be in those who 
 are worshippers of the sun in the firma- 
 ment, or are offering incense to the moon, 
 as the queen of heaven. 
 
 We recoil from an idolater, as from one 
 who labours under a great moral derange- 
 ment, in suffering his regards to be carried 
 away from the true God to an idol. But, 
 is it not just the same derangement, on the 
 part of man, that he should love anj^ cre- 
 ated good, and in the enjoyment of it lose 
 sight of the Creator — that he should delight 
 himself with the use and the possession of 
 a gift, and be unaffected by the circum- 
 stance of its having been put into his hands 
 by a giver — that thoroughly absorbed with 
 the present and the sensible gratification, 
 there should be no room left for the move- 
 ments of dut)' or regard to the Being who 
 furnislied him with the materials, and en- 
 22 
 
 dowed him with the organs, of every grati- 
 fication, — that he should thus lavish all his 
 desires on the surroundmg materialism, 
 and fetch from it all his delights, while the 
 thought of him who formed it is habitually 
 absent from his heart — that in the play 
 of those attractions that subsist between 
 him and the various objects in the neigh- 
 bourhood of his person, there should be the 
 same want of reference to God, as there is 
 in the play of those attractions which sub- 
 sist between a piece of unconscious matter 
 and the other matter that is around it — 
 that all the influences which operate upon 
 the human will should emanate from so 
 many various points in the mechanism of 
 what is formed, but that no practical or 
 ascendant influence shotild come down 
 upon it from the presiding and the preserv- 
 ing Deity ? ^^Tiy, if such be man, he could 
 not be otherwise, though there were no 
 Deity. The part he sustains in the world 
 is the very same that it would have been 
 had the world sprung into being of itself, 
 or without an originating mind had main- 
 tained its being from eternity. He just puts 
 forth the evolutions of his own nature, as 
 one of the component individuals in a vast 
 independent s^-stem of nature, made up of 
 many parts and m.any individuals. In hun- 
 gering for what is agreeable to his senses, 
 or recoiling from what is bitter or unsuit- 
 able to them, he does so without thinking 
 of God, or borrowing any impulse to his 
 own will from any thing he knows or be- 
 lieves to be the will of God. Religion has 
 just as little to do with those daily mo^e- 
 ments of his which are voluntary, as it has 
 to do with the growth of his body, which 
 is involuntary ; or, as it has to do, in other 
 words, with the progress and the pheno- 
 mena of vegetation. With a mind that 
 ought to know God, and a conscience that 
 
170 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 [nisy. 
 
 ought to award to him the supreme juris- 
 diction, he lives as effectually without him 
 as if he had no mind and no conscience ; 
 and, bating a few transient visitations of 
 thouglit, and a few regularities of outward 
 and mechanical observation, do we behold 
 man running, and willing, and preparing, 
 and enjo3ing, just as if there was no other 
 portion than the creature — ^just as if the 
 world, and its visible elements, formed the 
 all with which he had to do. 
 
 I wish to impress upon you the distinc- 
 tion that there is between the love of mo- 
 ney, and the love of what money pur- 
 chases. Either of these affections may 
 equally displace God from the heart. But 
 -there is a malignity and an inveteracy of 
 atheism in the former which does not be- 
 long to the latter, and in virtue of v/hich it 
 may be seen that the love of money is, in- 
 deed, the root of all evil. 
 
 When we indulge the love of that w-hich 
 is purchased by money, the materials of 
 gratification and the organs of gratification 
 are present with each other — ^just as in the 
 enjoyments of the inferior animals, and 
 just as in all the simple and immediate en- 
 joyments of man ; such as the tasting of 
 food, or the smelling of a flower. There 
 is an adaptation of the senses to certain 
 external objects, and there is a pleasure 
 arising out of that adaptation, and it is a 
 pleasure which may be felt by man, along 
 with a right and a full infusion of godli- 
 ness. The primitive Christians, for exam- 
 ple, ate their meat with gladness and sin- 
 gleness of heart, praising God. But, in the 
 case of every unconverted man, the plea- 
 sure has no such accompaniment. He car- 
 ries in his heart no recognition of that 
 hand, by the opening of which it is, that 
 the means and the materials of enjoyment 
 are placed within his reach. The matter 
 of the enjoyment is all with which he is 
 conversant. The Author of the enjoyment 
 is unheeded. The avidity with which he 
 rushes onward to any of the direct gratifi- 
 cations of nature, bears a resemblance to 
 the avidity with wiiich one of the low^er 
 creation rushes to its food, or to its water, 
 or to the open field, where it gambols in 
 all the wantonness of freedom, and finds 
 a high-breathed joy in the very strength 
 and velocity of its movements. And the 
 atheism of the former, who has a mind for 
 the sense and knowledge of his Creator, is 
 often as entire as the atheism of the latter, 
 who has it not. Man, who ought to look 
 to the primary cause of all his blessings, 
 because he is capable of seeing thus far, is 
 often as blind to God, in the midst of en- 
 joyment, as the animal who is not capable 
 of seeing him. He can trace the stream to 
 its fountain; but still he drinks of the 
 stream with as much greediness of plea- 
 sure, and as little recognition of its source, 
 
 as the animal beneath h' ji. In other words, 
 his atheism, while tasting the bounties of 
 Providence, is just as complete, as is tue 
 atheism of the inferior animals. I'ut theirs 
 proceeds from their incapacity of knowing 
 God. His proceeds from his not liking to 
 retain God in his knowledge. He may 
 come under the power of godliness, if he 
 would. But he cliooses rather that the 
 power of sensuality should lord it over 
 him, and his whole man is engrossed with 
 the objects of sensuality. 
 
 But a man diflfers from an animal in be- 
 ing something more than a sensitive being. 
 He is also a reflective being. He has the 
 power of thought, and inference, and anti- 
 cipation, to signalize him above the beasts 
 of the field, or of the forest ; and yet will 
 it be found, in the case of every natural 
 man, that the exercise of those powers, so 
 far from having carried him nearer, has 
 only widened his departure from God, and 
 given a more deliberate and wilful charac- 
 ter to his atheism, than if he had been with- 
 out them altogether. 
 
 In virtue of the powers of a mind which 
 belong to him, he can carry his thoughts 
 beyond the present desires and the pre- 
 sent gratification. He can calculate on the 
 visitations of future desire, and on the 
 means of its gratification. He cannot 
 only follow out the impulse of hunger that 
 is now upon him ; he can look onwards to 
 the successive and recurring impulses of 
 hunger which await him, and he can de- 
 vise expedients for relieving it. Out of that 
 great stream of supply, which comes direct 
 from Heaven to earth, for the sustenance 
 of all its living generations, he can draw off - 
 and appropriate a separate rill of convey- \ 
 ance, and direct it into a reservoir for him- 
 self. He can enlarge the capacity, or he 
 can strengthen the embankments of this 
 reservoir. By doing the one, he augments 
 his proportion of this common tide of 
 wealth which circulates through the world, 
 and by doing the other, he augments his 
 security for holding it in perpetual posses- 
 sion. The animal who drinks out of the 
 stream thinks not whence it issues. But 
 man thinks of the reservoir which yields 
 to him his portion of it. And he looks no 
 further. He thinks not that to fill it, tliere 
 must be a great and original fountain, out 
 of which there issueth a mighty flood of 
 abundance for the purpose of distribution 
 among all the tribes and families of the 
 world. He stops short at the secondary 
 and artificial fabric which he himself haih 
 formed, and out of which, as from a spring, 
 he draws his own peculiar enjoyments ; 
 and never thinks either of his own pecu- 
 liar supply, fluctuating with the variations 
 of the primary spring, or of connecting 
 these variations with the will of the great 
 but unseen director of all things. It is true, 
 
VIII. J 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 171 
 
 that if this m-iin and originating fountain 
 be, at any time, less copious in its emis- 
 sion, he will have less to draw fr ,m it to 
 his own reservoir; and in that very pro- 
 portion will his share of tlie bounties of 
 Providence be reduced. But still it is to 
 the well, or receptacle, of his own striking 
 out that he looks, as his main security for 
 the relief of nature's wants, and the abun- 
 dant supply of nature's enjoyments. It is 
 upon his own work that he depends in this 
 matter, and not on the work or the will of 
 him who is the author of nature; who 
 giveth rain from heaven, and fruitful sea- 
 sons, and fiUeth every l>eart with food and 
 gladness. And thus it is, that the reason 
 of man, and the retrospective power of 
 man, still fail to carry him, by an ascend- 
 ing process to the First Cause. He stops 
 at the instrumental cause, which, by his 
 own wisdom find his own power, he has 
 put into operation. In a word, the man's 
 understanding is over-run with atheism, as 
 well as liis desires. The intellectual as well 
 as the sensitive part of his constitution 
 seems to be infected with it. When, like 
 the instinctive and unreflecting animal, he 
 engages in the act of direct enjoyment, he 
 is hke it, too, in its atlieism. When he 
 rises above the animal, and, in the exercise 
 of his higher and larger faculties, he en- 
 gages in the act of providing for enjoyment, 
 he still carries his atheism along with him. 
 
 A sum of money is, in all its functions, 
 equivalent to such a reservoir. Take one 
 year with another, and the annual con- 
 sumption of the world cannot exceed the 
 annual produce which issues from the 
 storehouse of him who is the great and the 
 bountiful Provider of all its families. The 
 money that is in any man's possession re- 
 presents the share which he can appro- 
 priate to himself of this produce. If it be 
 a large sum it is like a capacious reservoir 
 on the bank of the river of abundance. If 
 It be laid out on firm and stable securities, 
 still it is like a firmly embanked reservoir. 
 The man who toils to increase his money 
 is like a man who toils to enlarge the ca- 
 pacity of his reservoir. The man who sus- 
 pects a flaw in his securities, or who appre- 
 hends, in the report of failures and fluctua- 
 tions, that his money is all to flow away 
 from him, is like a man who apprehends a 
 flaw in the embankments of his reservoir. 
 
 Meanwhile, in all the care that is thus 
 expended, either on the money or on the 
 magazine, the originating source, out of 
 which there is imparted to the one all its 
 real worth, or there is imparted to the other 
 all its real fulness, is scarcely ever thought 
 of. Let God turn the earth into a barren 
 desert, and the money ceases to be con- 
 vertible to any purpose of enjoyment ; or 
 let him lock up that magazine of great and 
 general supply, out of which he showers 
 
 abundance among our habitations, and ali 
 the subordinate magazines formed beside 
 the wonted stream of liberality, would re 
 main empty. But all this is forgotten l)y the 
 vast majority of our unthoughtful and un- 
 reflecting species. The patience of God is 
 still unexhausted ; and the seasons still roll 
 in kindly succession over the heads of an 
 ungrateful generation ; and that period, 
 when the machinery of our present sys- 
 tem shall stop and be taken to pieces has 
 not yet arrived ; and that Spirit, who will 
 not always strive with the children of men, 
 is still prolonging his experiment on the 
 powers and perversities of ovn- moral na- 
 ture ; and still suspending the edict of dis- 
 solution, by which this earth and these 
 heavens are at length to pass away. So 
 that the sun still shines upon us; and the 
 ckmds still drop upon us ; and the earth 
 still puts forth the bloom and the beauty 
 of its luxuriance ; and all the ministers of 
 heaven's liberality still walk their annual 
 round, and scatter plenty over the face of 
 an alienated world; and the whole of na- 
 ture continues as smiling in promise, and 
 as sure in fulfilment, as in the days of our 
 forefathers ; and out of her large and uni- 
 versal granary is th.ere, in every returning 
 year, as rich a conveyance of aliment as be- 
 fore, to the populous family in whose be- 
 half it is opened. But it is the business of 
 many among that population, eiich to erect 
 his own separate granary, and to replenish 
 it out of the general store, and to feed him- 
 self and his dependants out of it. And he 
 is right in so doing. But he is not right 
 in looking to his own peculiar receptacle, 
 as if it were the first and the emanating 
 fountain of all his enjoyments. He is not 
 right in thus idolising the work of his own 
 hands — awarding no glory and no confi- 
 dence to him in whose hands is the key 
 of that great storehouse, out of which 
 every lesser storehouse of man derives its 
 fulness. He is not right, in labouring after 
 the money which purchascth all things, to 
 avert the earnestness of his regard from 
 the Being who provides all things. He is 
 not right, in thus building his security on 
 that which is subordinate, unheeding and 
 unmindful of him who is supreme. It is 
 not right, that silver, and gold, though un- 
 shaped into statuary, should still be doing, 
 in this enlightened land, what the images 
 of Paganism once did. It is not right, that 
 they should thus supplant the deference 
 which is owing to the God and the govei'nor 
 of all things — or that each man amongst 
 us should in the secret homage of trust and 
 satisfaction which he renders to his bills, 
 and his deposits, and his deeds of property 
 and possession, endow these various arti- 
 cles with the same moral ascendency over 
 his heart, as the household gods of anti- 
 quity had over the idolaters of antiquity — 
 
172 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 making them as effectually usurp the 
 place of the Divhiity, and dethrone the 
 one Monarch of heaven and earth from 
 that pre-eminence of trust and of affection 
 that belongs to him. 
 
 He who makes a god of his pleasure, 
 renders to this idol the homage of his 
 senses. He who makes a god of his wealth, 
 renders to this idol the homage of his 
 mind ; and he, therefore, of the two, is the 
 more hopeless and determined idolater. 
 The former is goaded on to his idolatry, 
 b}' the power of appetite. The latter cul- 
 tivates his with wilful and deliberate per- 
 severance; consecrates his very highest 
 powers to its service ; embarks in it, not 
 with the heat of passion, but with the 
 coolness of steady and calculating princi- 
 ple; fully gives up his reason and his time, 
 and all the faculties of his understanding, 
 as well as all the desires of his heart, to 
 the great object of a fortune in this world; 
 makes the acquirement of gain the settled 
 aim, and the prosecution of that aim the 
 settled habit of his existence; sits the 
 whole day long at the post of his ardent 
 and unremitting devotions ; and, as he la- 
 bours at the desk of his counting-house, 
 has his soul just as effectually seduced 
 from the living God to an object distinct 
 from him, and contrary to him, as if the 
 ledger over which he was bending was a 
 book of mystical characters, written in ho- 
 nour of some golden idol placed before 
 him, and with a view to render this idol 
 propitious to himself and to his family. 
 Baal and Moloch were not more substan- 
 tialh' the gods of rebellious Israel, than 
 Mammon is the god of all his affections. 
 To the fortune he has reared, or is rearing, 
 for himself and his descendants, he ascribes 
 all the power and all the independence of 
 a divinity. With the wealth he has gotten 
 by his own hands, does he feel himself as 
 independent of God, as the Pagan does, 
 who, happy in the fancied protection of an 
 image made with his own hands, suffers no 
 disturbance to his quiet, from any thought 
 of the real but the unknown Deity. His 
 confidence is in his treasure, and not in 
 God. It is there that he places all his 
 safety and all his sufficiency. It is not on 
 the Supreme Being, conceived in the light 
 of a real and a personal agent, that he 
 places his dependence. It is on a mute 
 and material statue of his own erection. It 
 is wealth, which stands to him in the 
 place of God — to which he awards the 
 credit of all his enjoyments — which he 
 looks to as the emanating fountain of all 
 his present sufficiency — fiom which he 
 gathers his fondest expectations of all the 
 bright and fancied blessedness that is yet 
 before him — on which he rests as the firm- 
 est and stablest foundation of all that the 
 heart can wish or the eye can long after^ 
 
 both for himself and for his children. It 
 matters not for him, that all his enjoyment 
 comes from a primary fountain, and that 
 his wealth is only an intermediate reservoir. 
 It matters not to him, that, if God were to 
 set a seal upon the upper storehouse in 
 heaven, or to blast and to burn up all the 
 fruitfulness of earth, he would reduce, to 
 the worthlessness of dross, all the silver 
 and the gold that abound in it. Still the 
 gold and the silver are his gods. His own 
 fountain is between him and the foun- 
 tain of original supply. His wealth is be- 
 tween him and God. Its various lodging 
 places, whether in the bank, or in the place 
 of registration, or in the depository of wills 
 and title deeds— these are the sanctuaries 
 of his secret worship — these are the high- 
 places of his adoration ; and never did the 
 devout Israelite look with more intentness 
 towards Moimt Zion, and with his face 
 towards Jerusalem, than he does to his 
 wealth, as to the mountain and strong hold 
 of his security. Nor could the Supreme 
 be more effectually deposed from the ho- 
 mage of trust and gratitude than he ac- 
 tually is, though this wealth were recalled 
 from its various investments; and turned 
 into one mass of gold ; and cast into a 
 piece of molten statuary ; and enshrined 
 on a pedestal, around which all his house- 
 hold might assemble, and make it the ob- 
 ject of their family devotions ; and plied 
 every- hour of every day with all the 
 fooleries of a senseless and degrading Pa- 
 ganism. It is thus, that God may keep up 
 the charge of idolatry against us, even after 
 all its images have been overthrown. It is 
 thus that dissuasives from idolatry are still 
 addressed, in the New Testament, to the pu- 
 pils of a new and better dispensation ; that 
 little children are warned against idols ; and 
 all of us are warned to flee from covetous- 
 ness, which is idolatry. 
 
 To look no furtlier than to fortune as the 
 dispenser of all the enjoyments wliich mo- 
 ney can purchase, is to make that for- 
 tune stand in the place of God. It is to 
 make sense shut out faith, and to rob the 
 King eternal and invisible of that supre- 
 macy, to which all the blessings of human 
 existence, and all the varieties of human 
 condition, ought, in every instance, and in 
 every particular, to be referred. But, as 
 we have already remarked, the love of mo- 
 ney is one affection, and the love of what is 
 purchased by money is another. It was 
 at first, we have no doubt, loved for the sake 
 of the good things which it enabled its pos- 
 sessor to acquire. But whether, as the re- 
 sult of associations in the mind, so rapid as 
 to escape the notice of our own conscious- 
 ness — or as the fruit of an infection running 
 by the sympathy among all men busily en- 
 gaged in the prosecution of wealth, as the 
 supreme good of their being — certain it is. 
 
VIII.] 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 173 
 
 that money, originally pursued for the sake 
 of other things, comes at length to be prized 
 for its own sake. And, perhaps, there is no 
 one circumstance which serves more to liken 
 the love of money to the most irrational of 
 the heathen idolatries, than that it at length 
 passes into the love of money for itself; and 
 acquires a most enduring power over the 
 human affections, separately altogether from 
 the power of purchase and of command 
 which belongs to it, over the proper and ori- 
 ginal objects of human desire. The first 
 thing which set man agoing in the pursuit 
 of wealth, was that, through it, as an inter- 
 vening medium, he found his way to other 
 enjoyments; and it proves him, as we have 
 observed, capable of a higher reach of an- 
 ticipation than the beast of tlie field, or the 
 fowls of the air, that he is thus able to cal- 
 culate, and to foresee, and to build up a 
 provision for the wants of futurity. But. 
 mark how soon this boasted distinction of 
 his faculties is overthrown, and how near 
 to each other lie the dignity aiyi the debase- 
 ment of the human understanding. If it 
 evinced a loftier mind in man than in the 
 inferior animals, that he invented money, 
 and by the acquisition of it can both secuue 
 abundance for himself, and transmit this 
 abundance to the future g^erations of his 
 family — what have we to offer, in Vindica- 
 tion of this intellectual eminence, when we 
 witness how soon it is, that the pursuit of 
 wealth ceases to be rational ? How, instead 
 of being prosecuted as an instrument, either 
 for the purchase of ease, or the purchase of 
 enjoyment, both the ease and enjoyment of 
 a Avhole life are rendered up as sacrifices at 
 its shrine? How, from being sought after 
 as a minister of gratification to the appetites 
 of nature, it at length brings nature into 
 bondage, and robs her of all her simple de- 
 lights, and pours the infusion of wormwood 
 into the currency of her feelings? — making 
 that man sad who ought to be cheerful, and 
 that man who ought to rejoice in his pre- 
 sent abundance, filling him either with the 
 cares of an ambition which never will be 
 satisfied, or with the apprehensions of a dis- 
 tress which, in all its pictured and exagge- 
 rated evils, will never be realised. And it is 
 wonderfid, it is passing wonderful, that 
 wealth, which derives all that is true and 
 sterling in its worth from its subserviency 
 to other advantages, should, apart from all 
 thought about this subserviency, be made 
 the object of such fervent and fatiguing 
 devotion. Insomuch, that never did Indian 
 devotee inflict upon himself a severer agony 
 at the footstool of his Paganism, than those 
 devotees of wealth who, for its acquire- 
 ment as their ultimate object, will forego 
 all the uses for which alone it is valuable — 
 will give up all that is genuine or tranquil in 
 the pleasures of life ; and will pierce them- 
 selves through witli many sorrows; and 
 
 will undergo all the fiercer tortures of the 
 mind ; and, instead of employing what they 
 have, to smooth their passage through the 
 world, will, upon the hazardous sea of ad- 
 venture, turn the whole of this passage into , 
 a storm — thus exalting wealth from a ser- 
 vant unto a lord, who in return for the ho- 
 mage that he oSlains from his worshippers, 
 exercises them, like Rehoboam his subjects 
 of old, npt with whips but with scorpions— |^,. 
 with consuming anxiety, with never-sated 
 desire, with brooding apprehension, and its 
 frequent and ever-flitting spectres, and the 
 endless jealousies of competition with men 
 as intently devoted, and as emulous of a 
 high place in the temple of theiUcommon 
 idolatry, as themselves. And, without going 
 to the higheriexhibitions of this-propensity, 
 in all its rage and in all its restlessness, we 
 have only to mark its workings on the walk 
 of even and every-day citizenship ; and 
 there see, how, in the hearts even of its 
 most commonplace votaries, wealth is fol- 
 lowed after for its own sake ; how, unasso-^ 
 ciated with all for which reason pronounces 
 it to be of estimation, hut, in virtue of some 
 mysterious and undefi^able charm, ope- 
 ratihg not on any principle of the judgment, 
 but on the utter perversity of judgment, mo- 
 iT^y has cpme to be of higher^gccount than 
 all that is'purchased by money, artd has at- 
 tained a rank co-ordinate with that which 
 our Saviour assigns to the life and to the 
 body of man, in being reckoned more than 
 meat and more than raiment. Thus making 
 that which is subordinate to be primary, 
 and that which is primary subordinate; 
 transferring, by a kind of fascination, the 
 affections away from wealth in use, to 
 wealth in idle and unemployed possession — 
 insomuch, that the most welcome intelli- 
 gence you could give to the proprietor of 
 many a snug deposit, in some place of se- 
 cure and progressive accumulation, would 
 be, that he should never require any part 
 either of it or of its accumulation back 
 again for the purpose of expenditure — and 
 that, to the end of his life, every new year 
 should witness another unimpaired addition 
 to the bulk or the aggrandizement of his 
 idol. And it vvould just heighten his enjoy- 
 ment could he be told, with prophetic cer- 
 tainty, that this process of undisturbed aug- 
 mentation would go on with his children's 
 children, to the last age of the world ; that 
 the economy of each succeeding race of 
 descendants would leave the sum with its 
 interest untouched, and the place of its sanc- 
 tuary unviolated ; and, that through a series 
 of indefinite generations, would the magni- 
 tude ever grow, and the lustre ever brighten, 
 of that household god which he had erected 
 for his own senseless adoration, and be- 
 queathed as an object of as senseless adora- 
 tion to his family. 
 
 We have the authority of that word which 
 
.74 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 nas been pronounced a discerner of the 
 thoughts and intents of the heart, that it 
 cannot have two masters, or that there is 
 not room in it for two great and ascendent 
 affections. The engrossing power of one 
 such affection is expressly affirmed of the 
 love for Mammon, or the love for money 
 thus named and characterised as an idol. 
 Or, in other words, if the love of money be 
 m the heart, the love of God is not there. 
 If a man be trusting in uncertain riches, he 
 is not trusting in the living God, who giveth 
 us all things richly to enjoy. If his lieart 
 be set upon covetousness, it is set upon an 
 object of idolatry. The true divinity is 
 moved a\vay from his place, and, worse than 
 atheism, which would only leave it empty, 
 has the love of wealth raised another di- 
 vinity upon his throne. So that covetous- 
 ness offers a more daring and positive ag- 
 gression on the right and territory of the 
 Godhead, than even infidelity. The latter 
 would only desolate the sanctuary of hea- 
 ven ; the former would set up an abomi- 
 nation in the midst of it. It not only 
 strips God of love and of confidence, which 
 are his prerogatives, but it transfers them to 
 another. And little does the man who is 
 proud in honour, but, at the same time, 
 proud and peering in ambition — little does 
 he think, that, though acquitted in the eye 
 of all his fellows, there still remains an 
 atrocity of a deeper character than even 
 that of atheism, with which he is chargeable. 
 Let him just take an account of his mind, 
 amid the labours of his merchandise, and 
 he will find that the living God has no 
 ascendency there; but that wealth, just as 
 much as if personified into life, and agency, 
 and power, wields over him all the ascend- 
 ency of God. Where his treasure is, his 
 heart is also ; and, linking as he does his 
 main hope with its increase, and his main 
 fear with its fluctuations and its failures, 
 he has effectually dethroned the Supreme 
 from his heart, and deified an usurper 
 in his room, as if fortune had been embo- 
 died into a goddess, and he were in the 
 habit of repairing, with a crowd of other 
 worshippers, to her temple. She, in fact, 
 is the dispenser of that which he chiefly 
 prizes in existence. A smile from her is 
 worth all the promises of the Eternal, and 
 her threatening frown more dreadful to the 
 imagination than all his terrors. 
 
 And the disease is as near to universal 
 Eis it is virulent. Wealth is the goddess 
 whom all the world worshippeth. There is 
 many a city in our empire, of which, with 
 an eye of apostolical discernment, it may be 
 seen that it is almost wholly given over to 
 idolatry. If a man look no higher than to 
 his money for his enjoyments, then money 
 is his god. It is the god of his dependence, 
 and the god upon wliom his heart is staid. 
 Or if apart from other enjoyments, it by 
 
 some magical power of its own, has gotten 
 the ascendency, then still it is followed after 
 as the supreme good ; and there is an actual 
 supplanting of the living God. lie is rob- 
 bed of the gratitude that we owe him for 
 our daily sustenance ; for, instead of receiv- 
 ing it as if h came direct out of his hand, 
 we receive it as if it came from the hand of 
 a secondary agent, to whom we ascribe all 
 the stability and independence of God. This 
 wealth, in fact, obscures to us the character 
 of God, as the real though unseen Author 
 of our various blessings ; and as if by a mate- 
 rial intervention does it hide from the per- 
 ception of nature, the hand wliich feeds, 
 and clothes, and maintains us in life, and 
 in all the comforts and necessaries of life. 
 It just has the effect of thickening still more 
 that impalpable veil which lies between God 
 and the eye of the senses. We lose all dis- 
 cernment of him as the giver of our com- 
 forts ; and coming, as they appear to do, 
 from that wealth which our fancies have 
 raised into a living personification, does this 
 idol stand before us, not as a deputy but as 
 a substitute for that Being, with whom it is 
 that we really have to do. All this goes 
 both to widen and to fortify that disruption 
 which has taken place between God and 
 the world. It adds the power of one great 
 master idol to the seducing influence of all 
 the lesser idolatries. When the liking and 
 the confidence of men are towards money, 
 there is no direct intercourse, either by the 
 one or the other of these affections towards 
 God ; and, in proportion as he sends forth 
 his desires, and rests his security on the 
 former, in that very proportion does he re- 
 nounce God as his hope, and God as his 
 dependence. 
 
 And to advert, for one moment, to the 
 misery of this affection, as well as to its 
 sinfulness. He, over whom it reigns, feels 
 a worthlessness in his present wealth, after 
 it is gotten ; and when to this we add the 
 restlessness of a yet unsated appetite, lord- 
 ing it over all his convictions, and panting 
 for more ; when, to the dullness of his ac- 
 tual satisfaction in all the riches that he 
 has, \ve add his still unquenched, and, in- 
 deed, unquenchable desire for the riches 
 that he has not ; when we reflect that as, in 
 the pursuit of wealth, he widens the circle 
 of his operations, so he lengthens out the 
 line of his open and hazardous exposure, 
 and multiplies, along the extent of it, those 
 ^'ulnerable points from which another and 
 another dart of anxiety may enter into his 
 heart; when he feels himself as if floating 
 on an ocean of contingency, on which, per- 
 haps, he is only borne up by the breath of 
 a credit that is fictitious, and which, liable 
 to burst every moment, may leave him to 
 sink under the weight of his overladen spe- 
 culation; when suspended on the doubtful 
 result of his bold and uncertain adventure, 
 
VIII.] 
 
 ON THE LOVE OF MONEY. 
 
 175 
 
 ne dreads the tidings of disaster in every 
 arrival, and lives in a continual agony of 
 feeling, kept up by the crowd and turmoil of 
 his manifold distractions, and so overspread- 
 ing the whole compass of his thoughts, as to 
 leave not one narrow space for the thought 
 of eternity ; — will any beholder just look to 
 the mind of this unhappy man, thus tost 
 and bewildered and thrown into a general 
 unceasing frenzy, made out of many fears 
 and many agitations, and not to say, that 
 the bird of the air, which sends forth its un- 
 reflecting song, and lives on the fortuitous 
 bounty of Providence, is not higher in the 
 scale of enjoyment than he? And how 
 much more, then, the quiet Christian beside 
 him, who, in possession of food and rai- 
 ment has that godliness with contentment 
 whicli is great gain — who, with the peace 
 of heaven in his heart, and the glories of 
 heaven in his eye, has found out the true 
 philosophy of existence; has sought a por- 
 tion where alone a portion can be found, 
 and, in bidding away from his mind the 
 love of money, has bidden away all the 
 cross and all the carefulness along with it. 
 Death will soon break up every swelling 
 enterprise of ambition, and put upon it a 
 most cruel and degrading mocker3^ And 
 it is, indeed, an affecting sight, to behold the 
 workings oif this world's infatuation among 
 so many of our fellow mortals nearing and 
 Hearing every day to eternity, and yet, in- 
 stead of taking heed to that which is before 
 them, mistaking their temporarj' vehicle for 
 their abiding home — and spending all their 
 time and all their thought upon its accom- 
 modations. It is all the doing of our great 
 adversary, thus to invest the trifles of a day 
 in such characters of greatness and dura- 
 bility; and it is, indeed, one of the most 
 
 formidable of his wiles. And whatever may 
 be the instrument of reclaiming men I'rom 
 this delusion, it certainly is not any argu- 
 ment either about the shortness of life, or 
 the certainty and awfulness of its approach- 
 ing termination. On this point man is ca- 
 pable of a stout-hearted resistance, even to 
 ocular demonstration ; nor do we know a 
 more striking evidence of the bereavement 
 which must have passed upon the human 
 facuhies, than to see how, in despite of 
 arithmetic, — how, in despite of manifold 
 experience, — how, in desphe of all his ga- 
 thering wrinkles, and all his growing infir- 
 mities, — how, in despite of the ever-lessen- 
 ing distance between him and his sepulchre, 
 and of all the tokens of preparation for the 
 onset of the last messenger, with Avhich, in 
 the shape of weakness, and breathlessness, 
 and dimness of eyes, he is visited ; will the 
 feeble and asthmatic man still shake his 
 silver locks in all the glee and transport oi 
 which he is capable, when he hears of his 
 gainful adventures, and his new accumula- 
 tions. Nor can we tell how near he must 
 get to his grave, or how far on he must ad- 
 vance in the process of dying, ere gain 
 cease to delight, and the idol of wealth 
 cease to be dear to him. But when we see 
 that the topic is trade and its profits, which 
 lights up his faded eye with tlie glow of its 
 chiefest ecstacy, we are as much satisfied 
 that he leaves the world with all his trea- 
 sure there, and all the desires of his heart 
 there, as if acting what is told of the miser's 
 death-bed, he made his bills and his parch- 
 ments of security the companions of his 
 bosom, and the last movements of his life 
 were a fearful, tenacious, determined grasp, 
 of what to him formed the all for which 
 life was valuable. 
 
A SERMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH EDINBURGH, 
 
 BEFORE 
 
 THE SOCIETY 
 
 FOR 
 
 THE RELIEF OF THE DESTITUTE SICK, 
 
 APRIL 18, 1813. 
 
 'Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deUver him in time of trouble." — Psalm xh. 1. 
 
 There is an evident want of congeniality 
 between the wisdom of this world, and the 
 wisdom of the Christian. The term " wis- 
 dom," carries my reverence along with it. 
 It brings before me a grave and respectable 
 character, whose rationality predominates 
 over the inferior principles of his constitu- 
 tion, and to whom I willingly yield that 
 peculiar homage which the enlightened, and 
 the judicious, and the manly, are sure to 
 exact from a surrounding neighboui^ood. 
 Now, so long as this wisdom has for its ob- 
 ject some secular advantage, I yield it an 
 unqualified reverence. It is a reverence 
 which all understand, and all sympathize 
 with, if, in private life, a man be wise in 
 the management of his farm, or his fortune, 
 or his family; or if, in public life, he have 
 wisdom to steer an empire through all its 
 difficulties, and to carry it to aggrandize- 
 ment and renown — the respect which I feel 
 for such wisdom as this, is most cordial and 
 entire, and supported by the universal ac- 
 knowledgment of all whom I call to attend 
 to it. 
 
 Let me now suppose that this wisdom has 
 changed its object — that the man whom I 
 am representing to exemplify this respecta- 
 ble attribute, instead of being wise for time, 
 is wise for eternity — that he labours by the 
 faith and sanctification of the gospel for un- 
 perishable honours — that, instead of listen- 
 ing to him with admiration at his sagacity, 
 as he talks of business, or politics, or agri- 
 culture, v.'e are cojnpelled to listen to him 
 talking of the hope within the veil, and of 
 Christ being the power of God, and the wis- 
 dom of God, unto salvation. ^\Tiat becomes 
 of your respect for him now? Are there not 
 some of you who are quite sensible that this | 
 
 respect is greatly impaired, since the wis- 
 dom of the man has taken so unaccountable 
 a change in its object and in its direction? 
 The truth is, that the greater part of the 
 world feel no respect at all for a wisdom 
 which they do not comprehend. They may 
 love the innocence of a decidedly religious 
 character, but they feel no sublime or com- 
 manding sentiment of veneration for its wis- 
 dom. All the truth of the Bible, and all the 
 grandeur of eternity, will not redeem it from 
 a certain degree t)f contempt. Terms which 
 lower, undervalue, and degrade, suggest 
 themselves to the mind; and strongly dis- 
 pose it to throw a mean and disagreeable 
 colouring over the man Avho, sitting loose to 
 the objects of the world, has become alto- 
 gether a Christian. It is needless to ex- 
 patiate; but what I have seen myself, and 
 what must have fallen under the observa- 
 tion of many whom I address, carry in them 
 the testimony of experience to the assertion 
 of the Apostle, " that the things of the Spirit 
 of God are fooUshness to the natural man, 
 neither can he know them, for they are 
 spiritually discerned." 
 
 Now, what I have said of the respectable 
 attribute of wisdom, is applicable, with al- 
 most no variation, to another attribute of the 
 human character, to which I would assign 
 the gentler epithet of " lovely." The attri- 
 bute to which I allude, is that of benevo- 
 lence. This is the burden of every poet's 
 song, and every eloquent and interesting 
 enthusiast gives it his testimony. I speak 
 not of the enthusiasm of methodists and de- 
 votees — I speak of that enthusiasm of fine 
 sentiment which embellishes the pages of 
 elegant literature, and is addressed to all her 
 sighing and amiable votaries, in the various 
 
CHARITY SERMON. 
 
 177 
 
 forms of novel, and poetry, and dramatic 
 entertainment. You would think if any 
 thing could bring the Christian at one with 
 the world around him, it would be this; and 
 that in the ardent benevolence which figures 
 in novels, and sparkles in poetry, there 
 would be an entire congeniality with the 
 benevolence of the gospel. I venture to say, 
 however, that there never existed a stronger 
 repulsion between two contending senti- 
 ments, than between the benevolence of the 
 Christian, and the benevolence which is the 
 theme of elegant literature — that the one, 
 with all its accompaniments of tears, and 
 sensibilities, and interesting cottages, is nei- 
 ther felt ntH' understood by the Christian as 
 such ; and the other, with its work and la- 
 bours of love — its enduring hardness as a 
 good soldier (f Jesus Christ, and its living 
 not to itself, but to the will of Him who 
 died for us, and who rose again, is not only 
 not understood, but positively nauseated, by 
 the poetical amateur. 
 
 But the contrast does not stop here. The 
 benevolence of the gospel is not only at an- 
 tipodes with the visionary sons and daugh- 
 ters of poetry, but it even varies in some of 
 its most distinguishing features with the ex- 
 perimental benevolence of real and familiar 
 life. The fantastic benevolence of poetry is 
 now indeed pretty well exploded ; and, in 
 the more popular works of the age, there is 
 a benevolence of a far truer and more sub- 
 stantial kind substituted in its place — the 
 benevolence which you meet with among 
 men of business and observation — the be- 
 nevolence which bustles and finds employ- 
 ment among the most public and ordiiiar}^ 
 scenes, and which seeks for objects, not 
 where the flower blows loveliest, and the 
 stream, with its gentle murmurs, falls sweet- 
 est on the ear, but finds them in his every- 
 day walks — goes in quest of them through 
 the heart of the great city, and is not afraid 
 to meet them in its most putrid lanes and 
 loathsome receptacles. 
 
 Now, it must be acknowledged, that this 
 benevolence is of a far more respectable 
 kind than that poetic sensibility, which is 
 of no use. because it admits of no applica- 
 tion. Yet I am not afraid to say, that, re- 
 spectable as it is, it does not come up to the 
 benevolence of the Christian, and is at vari- 
 ance, in some of its most capital ingredients, 
 whh the morality of the gospel. It is well, 
 and very well, as far as it goes ; and that 
 Christian is wanting to the will of his mas- 
 ter who refuses to share and go along with 
 it. The Christian will do all this, ^ut he 
 would like to do more ; and it is at the pre- 
 cise point where he proposes to do more, 
 that he finds himself abandoned by the co- 
 operation and good wishes of those who 
 had hitherto supported him. The Christian 
 goes as far as the votary of this useful be - 
 nevolence, but then he would like to go fur- 
 23 
 
 ther, and this is the point at which he is 
 mortified to find tliat his old coadjutors re- 
 fuse to go along with Jiim ; and tlial instead 
 of being strengthened by their assistance, 
 he has their contempt and their ridicule; 
 or, at all events, tlieir total want of sympa- 
 thy, to contend with. 
 
 The truth is, tiial the benevolence I allude 
 to, with all its respectable air of business 
 and good sense, is altogether a secular be- 
 nevolence. Through all the extent of its 
 operations, it carries in it no reference to 
 the eternal duration of its oliject. Time, and 
 the accommodations of time, form all its 
 subject and all its exercise. It labours, and 
 often with success, to provide for its object 
 a warm and well-sheltered tenement, but it 
 looks not beyond the few little years when 
 the earthly house of this tabernacle shall be 
 dissolved — when the soul shall be driven 
 from its perishable tenement, and the only 
 benevolence it will acknowledge or care for, 
 will be the benevolence of those who have 
 directed it to a building not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens. This, then, is 
 the point at which the benevolence of the 
 gospel separates from that worldly benevo- 
 lence, to which, as far as it goes, I otTer my 
 cheerful and unmingled testimony. The 
 one minds earthly things, the other has its 
 conversation in heaven. Even when the 
 immediate object of both is the same, you 
 will generally perceive an evident distinc- 
 tion in the principle. Individuals, for exam- 
 ple, may" co-operate, and will often meet in 
 the same room, be members of the same so- 
 ciety, and go hand in hand cordially toge- 
 ther for the education of the poor. I3ut the 
 forming habits of virtuous industry, and 
 good members of society, which are the 
 sole consideration in the heart of the worldly 
 philanthropist, are but mere accessions in 
 the heart of the Christian. The main im- 
 pulse of his benevolence lies in furnishing 
 the poor with the means of enjoying that 
 bread of life which came down from hea- 
 ven, and in introducing them to the know- 
 ledge of those scriptures which are the 
 power of God unto salvation to every one 
 who believeth. Now, it is so far a blessing 
 to the world that there is a co-operation in 
 the immediate object. But what I contend 
 for, is, that there is a total want of conge- 
 niality in the principle — that the moment 
 you strip the institution of its temporal ad- 
 vantages, and make it repose on the naked 
 grandeur of eternity, it is fallen from, or 
 laughed at as one of the chimeras of fanati- 
 cism, and left to the despised efforts of those 
 whom they esteem to be unaccountable peo- 
 ple, who subscribe for missions, and squan- 
 der their money on Bible societies. Strange 
 efTect, you would think, of eternity, to de- 
 grade the object with which it is connected ! 
 But so it is. The blaze of glory, which is 
 thrown around the martyrdom of a patriot 
 
178 
 
 CHARITY SERMON. 
 
 or a philosopher, is refused to the martyr- 
 dom of a Christian. When a statesman dies, 
 who hfted his intrepid voice for the hberty 
 of the species, we hear of nothing but of the 
 shrines and the monuments of immortahty. 
 Put into his place one of those sturdy re- 
 formers, who, unmoved by councils and 
 inquisitions, stood up for the religious liber- 
 ties of the world ; and it is no sooner done, 
 than the full tide of congenial sympathy and 
 admiration is at once arrested. We have 
 all heard of the benevolent apostleship of 
 Howard, and what Christian will be behind 
 his fellows with his applauding testimony? 
 But will they, on the other hand, share his 
 enthusiasm when he tells them of the apos- 
 tleship of Pa:ul, who, in the sublimer sense 
 of the term, accomplished the liberty of the 
 captive, and brought them that sat in dark- 
 ness out of the prison-house? Will they 
 share in the holy benevolence of the apos- 
 tle when he pours out his ardent effusions 
 in behalf of his countrymen ? They were at 
 that time on the eve of the cruelest suffer- 
 ings. The whole vengeance of the Roman 
 power was mustering to bear upon tliem. 
 The siege and destruction of their city form 
 one of the most dreadful tragedies in the 
 history of war. Yet Paul seems to have had 
 another object in his eye. It was their souls 
 and their eternity which engrossed him. 
 Can you sympathise with him in this prin- 
 ciple, or join in kindred benevolence with 
 him, when he says, that " my heart's desn-e 
 and prayer for Israel is that they might be 
 saved ?" 
 
 But to bring my list of examples to a 
 close, the most remarkable of them all may 
 be collected from the history of the present 
 attempts which are now making to carry 
 the knoAvledge of divine revelation into the 
 Pagan and uncivilized countries of the 
 world. Now, it may be my ignorance, but 
 I am certainly not aware of the fact, that 
 without a book of religious faith — without 
 religion, in fact, being the errand and occa- 
 sion, we have never been able in modern 
 imes so far to compel the attentions and to 
 subdue the habits of savages, as to throw in 
 among them the use and possession of a 
 written language. Certain it is, however, 
 at all events, that this very greatest step in 
 the process of converting a wild man of the 
 woods into a humanized member of society, 
 has been accomplished by christian mis- 
 sionaries. They have put into the hands 
 of barbarians this mighty instrument of a 
 written language, and they have taught 
 them how to use it.* They have formed 
 
 * As, for instance, Mr. John Elliot, and the 
 Moravian brethren among tiie Indians of New 
 England and Pennsylvania; the Moravians of 
 South America ; Mr. Hans Egede, and the Mo- 
 ravians in Greenland; the latter in Labradore, 
 
 an orthography for wandering and untu* 
 tored savages. They have given a shape 
 and a name to their barbarous articulations; 
 and the children of men, who lived on the 
 prey of the wilderness, are now forming in 
 village schools to the arts and the decencies 
 of cultivated life. Now, I am not involving 
 you in the controversy whether civilization 
 should precede Christianity, or Christianity 
 should precede civilization. It is not to 
 what has been said on the subject, but to 
 what has been done, that we are pointing 
 your attention. We appeal to the fact ; and 
 as an illustration of the pririciple we have 
 been attempting to lay before you, we call 
 upon you to mark the feelings, and the 
 countenance, and the language, of the mere 
 academic moralist, Avhen you put into his 
 hand the authentic and proper document 
 wliere the fact is recorded — we mean a mis- 
 sionary report, or a missionary magazine. 
 We know tliat there are men who have so 
 much of the firm nerve and liardihood of 
 philosophy about them, as not to be repelled 
 from the truth in whatever shape, or from 
 whatever quarter it comes to them. But 
 there are others of a hiunbler cast who have 
 transferred their homage from the omnipo- 
 tence of truth, to the omnipotence of a name ; 
 who, because missionaries, while they are 
 accomplishing the civilization, are labour- 
 ing also for the eternity of savages, have 
 lifted up the cry of fanaticism against 
 them — who, because missionaries revere the 
 word of God, and utter themselves in the 
 language of the New Testament, nauseate 
 every word that comes from them as over- 
 run will) the flavour and phraseology of 
 methodism — who are determined, in sliort, 
 to abominate all that is missionary, and suf- 
 fer the very sound of the epithet to fill their 
 minds with an overwhelming association 
 of repugnance, and prejudice, and disgust. 
 
 We would not have counted this so re- 
 markable an exainple, had it not been that 
 missionaries are accomplishing the very 
 object on which the advocates for civiliza- 
 tion love to expatiate. They are working 
 for the temporal good far more effectually 
 than any adventurer in the cause ever did 
 before ; but mark the want of congeniality 
 between the lienevolence of this world, and 
 th»! benevolence of the Christian ; they incur 
 contempt, because they are working for the 
 spiritual and eternal good also. Nor do the 
 earthly blessings which they scatter so 
 
 among the Eskimaux ; the missionaries of Ota- 
 heite, and other South Sea islands; and Mr. 
 Brunton, under the patronage of the Society for 
 Missions to Africa and the East, who reduced the 
 language of the Susoos, a nation on the coast of 
 Africa,' to writing and grammatical form, and 
 printed in it a spelling-book, vocabulary, catechism, 
 an 1 some tracts. Other instances besides might 
 be given. 
 
CHARITY SERMON. 
 
 179 
 
 abundantly in their way, redeem from scorn 
 the purer and the nobler principle which 
 inspires them. 
 
 These observations seem to be an appli- 
 cable introduction to the subject before us. 
 I call your attention to the way in which 
 the Bible enjoins us to take up the care of 
 the poor. It does not say, in the text before 
 us, Commiserate the poor ; for, if it said no 
 more than this, it would leave their neces- 
 sities to be provided for by the random ebul- 
 litions of an impetuous and unreflecting 
 sympathy. It provides them with a better 
 security than the mere feeling of compas- 
 sion — a feeling wliich, however useful for 
 the purpose of excitement, must be con- 
 trolled and regulated. Feeling is but a faint 
 and fluctuating security. Fancy may mis- 
 lead it. The sober realities of life may dis- 
 gust it. Disappointment may extinguish it. 
 Ingratitude may embitter it. Deceit, with 
 its counterfeit representations, may allure it 
 to the wrong object. At all events, Time is 
 the little circle within wliich it in general 
 expatiates. It needs the impression of sen- 
 sible objects to sustain it ; nor can it enter 
 with zeal or with vivacity/ into the wants 
 of the abstract and invisible soul. The 
 Bible, then, instead of leaving the relief of 
 the poor to the mere instinct of sympathy, 
 makes it a subject for consideration — 
 Blessed is he that considereth the poor — a 
 grave and prosaic exercise I do allow, and 
 which makes no figure in those high 
 wrought descriptions, where the exquisite 
 tale of benevolence is made up of all the 
 sensibilities of tenderness on the one hand, 
 and of all the ecstacies of gratitude on the 
 other. The Bible rescues the cause from 
 the mischief to which a heedless or un- 
 thinking sensibility would expose it. It 
 brings it under the cognizance of a higher 
 faculty — a faculty of steadier operation than 
 to be weary in well-doing, and of sturdier 
 endurance than to give it up in disgust. 
 It calls you to consider the poor. It 
 makes the virtue of relieving them a matter 
 of computation as well as of sentiment ; 
 and in so doing, it puts you beyond the 
 reach of the various delusions by which 
 you are at one time led to prefer the in- 
 dulgence of pity to the substantial interest 
 of its object ; at another, are led to retire 
 chagrined and disappointed from the scene 
 of duty, because you have not met with the 
 gratitude or the honesty that you laid your 
 account with : at another, are led to expend 
 all your anxieties upon the accommodation 
 of time, and to overlook eternity. It is the 
 office of consideration to save you from 
 all these fallacies. Under its tutorage, at- 
 tention to the wants of the poor ripens 
 into principle. I want, my brethren, to 
 press its advantages upon you, for I can in 
 no other way recommend the society whose 
 clai ms I am appointed to lay before you, so 
 
 effectually to your patronage. My time 
 will only permit me to lay before you a few 
 of their advantages, and I shall therefore 
 confine myself to two leading particulars. 
 
 I. The man who considers the poor, in- 
 stead of slumbering over the emotions of a 
 useless sensibility, among those imaginary 
 beings whom poetry and romance have 
 laid before him in all the elegance of fic- 
 titious history, will bestow the labour and 
 the attention of actual business among the 
 poor of the real and the living world. Be- 
 nevolence is the burden of every romantic 
 tale, and of every poet's song. It is dressed 
 out in all the fairy enchantments of imagery 
 and eloquence. All is beauty to the eye 
 and music to the car. Nothing seen but 
 pictures of felicity, and nothing heard but 
 the soft whispers of gratitude and affection. 
 The reader is carried along by this soft and 
 delightful representation of virtue. He ac- 
 companies his hero through all the fancied 
 varieties of his history. He goes along with 
 him to the cottage of poverty and disease, 
 surrounded, as we may suppose, with all 
 the charms of rural obscurity, and where 
 the murmurs of an adjoining rivulet accord 
 with the finer and more benevolent sensi- 
 bilities of the mind. He enters this en- 
 chanting retirement, and meets with a pic- 
 ture of distress, adorned in all the elegance 
 of fiction. Perhaps a father laid on a bed 
 of languishing, and supported by the la- 
 bours of a pious and affectionate family, 
 where kindness breathes in every word, and 
 anxiety sits upon every countenance — where 
 the industry of his children struggles in 
 vain to supply the cordials which his po- 
 verty denies him — where nature sinks every 
 hour, and all feel a gloomy foreboding, 
 which they strive to conceal, and tremble 
 to express. The hero of romance enters, 
 and the glance of his benevolent eye en- 
 lightens this darkest recess of misery. He 
 turns him to the bed of languishing, tells 
 the sick man that there is still hope, and 
 smiles comfort on his despairing children. 
 Day after day he repeats his kindness and 
 his charity. They hail his approach as the 
 footsteps of an angel of mercy. The father 
 lives to bless his deliverer. The family re- 
 ward his benevolence by the homage of an 
 affectionate gratitude; and, in the piety of 
 their evening prayer, offer up thanks to the 
 God of heaven, for opening the hearts of 
 the ricli to kindly and beneficent attentions. 
 The reader weeps with delight. The visions 
 of paradise play before his fancy. His tears 
 flow, and his heart dissolves in all the lux- 
 ury of tenderness. 
 
 Now, we do not deny that the members 
 of the Destitute Sick Society via7j at times 
 have met with some such delightful scene 
 to soothe and encourage them. But put 
 the question to any of their visitors, and he 
 will not fail to tell you, that if they had 
 
180 
 
 CHARITY SERMON, 
 
 never moved but when they had something 
 hke this to excite and to gratify their 
 hearts, they would seldom have moved at 
 all; and their usefulness to the poor would 
 have been reduced to a very humble frac- 
 tion of what they have actually done for 
 them. What is this but to say, that it is 
 the business of a religious instructor to give 
 you, not the elegant, but the true reprftsen- 
 tation of benevolence — to represent it not 
 so much as a hixiirious indulgence to the 
 finer sensibilities of the mind, but according 
 to the sober declaration of Scripture, as a 
 work and as a labour — as a business in 
 which you must encounter vexation, op- 
 position, and fatigue; where you are not 
 always to meet with that elegance, which 
 allures the fancy, or with tliat humble and 
 retired adversity, which interests the more 
 tender propensities of the heart ; but as a 
 business where reluctance must often be 
 overcome by a sense of duty, and where, 
 though oppressed at every step, by envy, 
 disgust, and disappointment, you are bound 
 to persevere, in obedience to the law of 
 God, and the sober instigation of principle. 
 
 The benevolence of the gospel lies in ac- 
 tions. The benevolence of our fictitious 
 writers, in a kind of high-wrought delicacy 
 of feeling and sentiment. The one dissi- 
 pates all its fervour in sighs and tears, and 
 idle aspirations — the other reserves its 
 strength for efforts and execution. The 
 one regards it as a luxurious enjo^'ment for 
 the heart — the other, as a worlc and busi- 
 ness for the hand. The one sits in indo- 
 lence, and broods, in visionary rapture, 
 over its schemes of ideal philanthropy — the 
 other steps abroad, and enlightens by its 
 presence, the dark and pestilential hovels 
 of disease. The one wastes awa}" in emptj^ 
 ejaculation — the other gives time and trou- 
 ble to the work of beneficence — gives edu- 
 cation to the orphan — provides clothes for 
 the naked, and lays food on the table of 
 the hungry. The one is indolent and ca- 
 pricious, and often does mischief by the 
 occasional overflowings of a whimsical and 
 ill-directed charity — the other is vigilant 
 and discerning, and takes care lest his dis- 
 tributions be injudicious, and the effort of 
 benevolence be misapplied. The one is 
 soothed with the luxury of feeling, and re- 
 clines in easy and indolent satisfaction — the 
 other shakes off the deceitful languor of 
 contemplation and solitude, and delights in 
 a scene of activity. — Remember, that virtue, 
 in general, is not to feel, but to do ; not 
 merely to conceive a purpose, but to carry 
 that purpose into execution ; not merely to 
 be overpowered by the impression of a sen- 
 timent, but to practise what it loves, and to 
 imitate what it admires. 
 
 To be benevolent in speculation, is often 
 to be selfish in action and in reality. The 
 vanity and the indolence of man delude 
 
 him into a thousand inconsistencies. He 
 professes to love the name and the sem- 
 blance of virtue, but the labour of exertion 
 and of self-denial terrifies him from at- 
 tempting it. The emotions of kindness are 
 delightful to his bosom, but then they are 
 little better than a selfish indidgence — they 
 terminate in his own enjoyment — they are 
 a mere refinement of luxury. His eye 
 melt? over the picture of fictitious distress 
 while not a tear is left for the actual starva- 
 tion and misery with which he is sur- 
 rounded. It is easy to indulge the imagina- 
 tions of a visionary heart in going over a 
 scene of fancied aflHiction, because here 
 there is no sloth to overcome — no avari- 
 cious propensity to control — no offensive or 
 disgusting circumstance to allay the un- 
 mingled impression of sympathy which a 
 soft and elegant picture is calculated to 
 awaken. It is not so easy to be benevolent 
 in action and in reality, because here there 
 is fatigue to undergo — there is time and 
 money to give — there is the mortifying 
 spectacle of vice, and folly, and ingratitude, 
 to encounter. We like to give you the fair 
 picture of lo%e to man, because to throw 
 over it false and fictitious embellishments, 
 is injurious to its cause. These elevate the 
 fancy by romantic visions which can never 
 be realized. They embitter the heart by 
 the most severe and mortifying disappoint- 
 m'ents, and often force us to retire in dis- 
 gust from what heaven has intended to be 
 the theatre of our discipline and prepara- 
 tion. Take the representation of the Bible. 
 Benevolence is a work and a labour. It 
 often calls for the severest efforts of vigi- 
 lance and industry — a habit of action not to 
 be acquired in the school of fine sentiment, 
 but in the walks of business, in the dark 
 and dismal receptacles of misery — in the 
 hospitals of disease- — in the putrid lanes of 
 great cities, where poverty dwells in lank 
 and ragged wretchedness, agonized with 
 pain, faint with hunger, and shivering in a 
 frail and unsheltered tenement. 
 
 You are not to conceive yourself a real 
 lover of your species, and entitled to the 
 praise or the reward of benevolence, be- 
 cause you weep over a fictitious represen- 
 tation of human misery. A man may weep 
 in the indolence of a studious and contem- 
 plative retirement ; he may breathe all the 
 tender aspirations of humanity ; but Avhat 
 avails all this warm and diffusive benevo- 
 lence, if it is never exerted — if it never rise 
 to execution — if it never carry him to the 
 accomplishment of a single benevolent 
 purpose — if it shrink from activity, and 
 sicken at the pain of fatigue ? It is easy, 
 indeed, to come forward with tlys cant and 
 hypocrisy of fine sentiment — to have a 
 heart trained to the emotions of benevo- 
 lence, while the hand refuses the labours 
 of discharging its offices — to wetp for 
 
CHARITY SERMON. 
 
 181 
 
 amusement, and to have nothing to spare 
 for human suffermg but the tribute of an 
 indolent and unmeaning sympathy. Many 
 of you must be acquainted with that cor- 
 ruption of Christian doctrine, which has 
 been termed Antinomianism. It professes 
 tlie highest reverence for the Supreme 
 Being, while it refuses obedience to the 
 lessons of his autliority. It professes the 
 highest gratitude for the sufferings of 
 Christ, while it refuses that course of life 
 and action, which he demands of his fol- 
 lowers. It professes to adore the tremen- 
 dous Majesty of heaven, and to weep in 
 shame and in sorrow over the sinfulness 
 of degraded humanity, while ever}^ day it 
 insults Heaven by the enormity of its mis- 
 deeds, and evinces the insincerity of its 
 wilful perseverance in the practice of ini- 
 quit}^ This Antinomianism is generally 
 condemned ; and none reprobate it more 
 than the Votaries of fine sentiment — your 
 men of taste and elegant literature — your 
 epicures of feeling, who riot in all the lux- 
 ury of theatrical emotion, and who, in their 
 admiration of what is tender, and beautiful, 
 and cultivated, have alwa3^s turned with 
 disgust from the doctrines of a sour and 
 illiberal theology. We may say to such, 
 as Nathan to David, " Thou art the man." 
 Theirs is to all intents and purposes Anti- 
 nomianism — and an Antinomianism of a 
 far more dangerous and deceitful kind, than 
 the Antinomianism of a spurious and pre- 
 tended orthodoxy. In the Antinomianism of 
 religion, there is nothing to fascinate or de- 
 ceive you. It wears an air of repulsive 
 bigotry, more fitted to awaken disgust than 
 to gain the admiration of proselytes. There 
 is a glaring deformity in its aspect, which 
 alarms you at the very outset, and is an 
 outrage to that natural morality which, dark 
 and corrupted as it is, is still strong enough 
 to lift its loud remonstrance against it. But 
 in the Antinomianism of high wrought sen- 
 timent, there is a deception far more insinu- 
 ating. It steals upon you under the sem- 
 blance of virtue. It is supported by the 
 delusive colouring of imagination and 
 poetry. It has all the graces and embel- 
 lishments of literature to recommend it. 
 Vanity is soothed, and conscience lulls itself 
 to repose in this dream of feeling and of 
 indolence. 
 
 Let us dismiss these lying vanities, and 
 regulate our lives by the truth and sober- 
 ness of the New Testament. Benevolence 
 is not in word and in tongue, but in deed 
 and in truth. It is a business with men as 
 they are, and with human life as drawn by 
 the rough hand of experience. It is a duty 
 whidh you must perform at the call of prin- 
 ciple, though there be no voice of eloquence 
 to give splendour to your exertions, and no 
 music or poetry to lead your willing foot- 
 steps through the bowers of enchantment. 
 
 It is not the impulse of high and ecstatic 
 emotion. It is an exertion of principle. You 
 must go to the poor man's cottage, though 
 no verdure flourish around it, and no rivulet 
 be nigh to delight you by the gentleness of 
 its nnirmurs. If you look for the romantic 
 simplicity of fiction you will be disappoint- 
 ed : but it is your duty to persevere, in spite 
 of every discouragement. Benevolence is 
 not merely a feeling, but a principle ; not a 
 dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge 
 in, but a business for the hand to execute. 
 
 It must now be obvious to all of you, that 
 it is not enough that you give money, and 
 add your name to the contributors of cha- 
 rity — you must give it with judgment. You 
 must give your time and your attention. 
 You must descend to the trouble of examina- 
 tion. You must rise from the repose of con- 
 templation, and make yourself acquainted 
 with the objects of your benevolent exer- 
 cises. Will he husband your charity with 
 care, or will he squander it away in idle- 
 ness and dissipation ? Will he satisfy him- 
 self with the brutal luxury of the moment, 
 and neglect the supply of his more substan- 
 tial necessities, or suffer his children to be 
 trained in ignorance and depra\'.ity ? Will 
 charity corrupt him by laziness? What is 
 his peculiar necessity ? Is it the want of 
 health or the want of employment ? Is it 
 the pressure of a numerous family? Does 
 he need medicine to administer to the dis- 
 eases of his children ? Does he need fuel or 
 raiment to protect them from the incle- 
 mency of winter ? Does he need money 
 to satisfy the yearly demands of his land- 
 lord, or to purchase books, and to pay for 
 the education of his offspring? 
 
 To give money is not to do all the work 
 and labour of benevolence. Y"ou must go 
 to the poor man's bed. Y'ou must lend your 
 hand to the work of assistance. You must 
 examine his accounts. Y'ou must try to re- 
 cover those debts \\'hich are due to his fa- 
 mily. You must try to recover those wages 
 which are detained by the injustice or the 
 rapacity of his master. You must employ 
 your mediation with his superiors. You 
 must represent to them the necessities of 
 his situation. You must solicit their assist- 
 ance, and awaken their feelings to the tale 
 of his calamity. This is benevolence in its 
 plain, and sober, and substantial reality, 
 though eloquence may have withheld its 
 imagery, and poetry may have denied its 
 graces and its embellishments. This is true 
 and unsophisticated goodness. It may be 
 recorded in no earthly documents •, but if 
 done under the influence of christian prin- 
 ciple — in a word, done unto Jesus, it is writ- 
 ten in the book of heaven, and will give 
 a new lustre to that crown to which his 
 disciples look forward in time, and will Avear 
 through eternity. 
 
 You have all heard of the division of la 
 
182 
 
 HARITY SERJIOX. 
 
 bour, and I wish you to understand, that the 
 advantage of this principle may be felt as 
 much ill the operations of charity, as in the 
 operations of trade and manufactures. The 
 work of beneficence does not lie in the one 
 act of gu-ing money; there must be the act 
 of attendance; there must be the act of in- 
 quiry; there must be the act of judicious 
 application. But I can conceive that an 
 individual may be so deficient in the 
 varied experience and attention which a 
 work so extensive demands, that he may 
 retire in disgust and discouragement from 
 the practice of charity altogether. The in- 
 stitution of a Society, such as this, saves 
 this individual to the cause. It takes upon 
 itself all the subsequent acts in the work 
 and labour of love, and restricts his part to 
 the mere act of giving money. It fills the 
 middle space between t!ie dispensers and 
 the recipients of charity. The habits of 
 many who now hear me, may disqualify 
 them for the work of examination. Tliey 
 may have no time f )r it ; they may live at 
 a distance from the objects ; they may nei- 
 ther know how to introduce, nor how to 
 conduct themselves in the management of 
 all the details ; their want of practice and 
 of experience may disable them for the 
 work of repelling imposition ; they should 
 try to gain the necessary habits ; it is right 
 that every individual among us, should 
 eacli, in his own sphere, consider the poor, 
 and qualify themselves for a judicious and 
 discriminating charity. But, in the mean 
 time, the Society for the Relief of the Des- 
 titute Sick, is an instrument ready made 
 to our hands. Avail yonrselves of this in- 
 strument immediately, as, by the easiest 
 part of the exercise of charity, which is to 
 give money, you carry home to the poor 
 all the benefits of its most difl5cult exercises. 
 The experience which you want, the mem- 
 bers of this laudable Society are in posses- 
 sion of. By the work and observation of 
 years, a stock of practical wisdom is novv' 
 accumulated among them. They have been 
 long inured to all that is loathsome and dis- 
 couraging in this good work, and they have 
 nerve, and hardihood, and principle to front 
 it. They are ever)- way qualified to be the 
 carriers of your bounty, for it is a path they 
 have long travelled in. Give the money, 
 and these conscientious men wiii soon bring 
 it into contact with the right objects. They 
 know the way through all the obscuriues 
 of this metropolis, and they they can bring 
 the offerings of your charity to people whom 
 you will never see, and into houses which 
 yon will never enter. It is not easy to con- 
 ceive, far less to compute the extent of hu- 
 man misery ; but these men can give you 
 experience for it. They can show you their 
 registers of the sick and of the dying ; they 
 are familiar with disease in all its varieties 
 ;>f faiutness, and breathlessness, and pain. — 
 
 Sad union ! they are called to witness it in 
 conjunction with poverty ; and well do they 
 know that tliere is an eloquence in the im- 
 ploring looks of these helpless poor, which 
 no description can set before you. Oli ! my 
 brethren, figure to yourselves the calamity 
 in all its soreness, and measure your bounty 
 by the actual greatness of the claims, and 
 not by the feebleness of their advocate. 
 
 I have trespassed upon your patience; 
 but, at the hazard of carrying my address 
 to a length that is unusual, 1 must still say 
 more. Nor would I ever forgive myself if 
 I neglected to set the eternity of the poor 
 in all its importance before you. This is 
 the second point of consideration to which 
 I wish to direct you. Tlie man who con- 
 siders the poor will give his chief anxiety 
 to the wants of their eternity. It must be 
 evident to all of you tiiat this anxiety is 
 little felt. I do not appeal for the evidence 
 of this to the selfish part of ni:mkind — there 
 we are not to expect it. I go to those who 
 are really benevolent — who have a wish to 
 make others happy, and who take trouble 
 in so doing ; and it is a striking observation, 
 how little tlie salvation of these others is 
 the object of that benevolence which makes 
 them so amiable. It will be found that in 
 and by far the greater number of instances, 
 this principle is all consumed on the ac- 
 commodations of lime, and the necessities 
 of the body. It is the meat which feeds 
 them — the garment which covers them — 
 the house which shelters them — the money 
 which purchases all things ; these, I say, 
 are what form the chief topics of benevo- 
 lent anxieties. Now, we do not mean to dis- 
 courage this principle. We cannot afford 
 it ; there is too little of it ; and it forms too 
 refreshing an exception to that general sel- 
 fishness which runs throughout the haunts 
 of business and ambition, for us to say any 
 thing against it. We are not cold-blooded 
 enough to refuse our delighted concurrence 
 to an exertion so amiable in its principle, 
 and so pleasing in the warm and comfort- 
 able spectacle which it lays before us. The 
 poor, it is true, ought never to forget, that 
 it is to their own industry, and to the wis- 
 doin and economy of their own manage- 
 ment, that they are to look for the elements 
 of subsistence — that if idleness and prodi- 
 gality shall lay hold of the mass of our 
 population, no benevolence, however un- 
 bounded, can ever repair a mischief so irre- 
 coverable — that if they wnl not labour for 
 themselves, it is not in the power of the 
 rich to create a sufficiency for them ; and 
 that though every heart were opened, and 
 every purse emptied in the cause, it would 
 absolutely go for nothing towards forming 
 a well-fed, a well-lodged, or a well condi- 
 tioned peasantry. StUl, however, there are 
 cases which no foresight could prevent, and 
 no industry could provide for — where the 
 
CHARITY SERMOIJ. 
 
 183. 
 
 blow falls heavy and unexpected on some 
 devoted son or daughter of misfortune, and 
 where, though thoughtlessness and folly 
 may have had their share, benevolence, not 
 very nice in its calculations, will feel the 
 overpowering claim of actual, helpless, and 
 imploring misery. Now, I again offer my 
 cheerful testimony to such benevolence as 
 this ; I count it delightful to see it singling 
 out its object; and sustaining it against tlie 
 cruel pressure of age and of indigence ; ^nd 
 when I enter a cottage where I see a warmer 
 fire-side, or more substantial provision, than 
 the visible means can account for, I say tliat 
 the landscape, in all its summer glories, 
 does not offer an object so gratifying, as 
 when referred to the vicinity of the great 
 man's house, and the people who live in it, 
 and am told that I will find my explanation 
 there. Kind and amiable people ! your 
 benevolence is most lovely in its display, 
 but oh ! it is perishable in its consequences. 
 Does it never occur to you that in a few 
 years this favourite will die — and tliat he 
 will go to the place where neither cold nor 
 hunger will reach him, but that a mighty 
 interest remains, of wliich both of us may 
 know the certainty, though neither you nor 
 I can calculate the extent. Your benevo- 
 lence is too short. — It does not shoo far 
 enough a-liead. — It is like regaling a child 
 with a sweetmeat or a toy, and tiien aban- 
 doning the happy, unreflecting infant to 
 exposure. You make the poor old man 
 happy with your crumbs and your frag- 
 ments, but he is an infant on the mighty 
 range of infinite duration ; and will you 
 leave the soul, which has the infinity to go 
 through, to its chance? How comes it that 
 the grave should throw so impenetrable a 
 shroud over the realities of eternity ? How 
 comes it that heaven, and hell, and judg- 
 ment, should be treated as so many nonen- 
 tities, and that there should be as little real 
 and operative sympathy felt for the soul 
 which lives forever, as for the body after it 
 is dead, or for the dust into which it mould- 
 ers ? Eternity is longer than time ; the 
 arithmetic, my brethren, is all one side upon 
 this question ; and the wisdom which calcu- 
 lates, and guides itself by calculation, gives 
 its weighty and respectable support to what 
 may be called the benevolence of faith. 
 
 Now, if there be one employment more 
 fitted than another to awaken this benevo- 
 lence, it is the peculiar employment of that 
 Society for which I am now pleading. I 
 would have anticipated such benevolence 
 from tlie situation they occupy, and the in- 
 formation before the public bears testimony 
 to the fact. The truth is, that the diseases 
 of he body may be looked upon as so many 
 outlets through which the soul finds its way 
 to eternity. Now, it is at these outlets that 
 the members of this Society have stationed 
 themselves. This is the interesting point of 
 
 survey at which they stand, and from which 
 they command a look of both worlds. They 
 have placed themselves in the avenues 
 which lead from time to eternity, and they 
 have often to witness the awful transition 
 of a soul hovering at the entrance — strug- 
 gling its way through the valley of the 
 shadow of death, and at last breaking loose 
 from the confines of all that is visible. Do 
 you think it likely that men with such spec- 
 tacles before them, will withstand tlie sense 
 of eternity? No, my brethren, they cannot, 
 they have not. Eternity, I rejoice to an- 
 nounce to you. is not forgotten by them ; 
 and with their care for the diseases of tlie 
 body, they are neither blind nor indifferent 
 to the fact, tliat the soul is diseased also. 
 We know it well. There is an indolent and 
 superficial theology, wliich turns its eyes 
 from the danger, and feels no pressing call 
 for the application of the remedy — which 
 reposes more in its own vague and self- 
 assumed conceptions of the mercy of God, 
 tlian in the firm and consistent representa- 
 tions of the New Testament — wliich over- 
 looks the existence of disease altogetlier, 
 and therefore feels no alarm, and exerts no 
 urgency in the business — which, in the face 
 of all the truths and all the severities that 
 are uttered in the word of God, leaves the 
 soul to its chance; or, in other words, by 
 neglecting to administer every thing spe- 
 cific for the salvation of the soul, leaves it 
 to perish. 
 
 We do not want to involve you in con- 
 troversies ; we only ask you to open the 
 New Testament, and attend to the obvious 
 meaning of a word which occurs frequently 
 in its pages — wo mean the word saved. 
 The term surely implies, that the present 
 state of the thing to be saved is a lost and 
 an undone state. If a tree be in a health- 
 ful state from its infancy, you never apply 
 the term saved to it, though you see its 
 beautiful fol'age, its flourishing blossoms, 
 its abundant produce, and its progressive 
 ascent through all the varieties incidental 
 to a sound and a prosperous tree. But if 
 it were diseased in its infancy, and ready 
 to perish, and if it were restored by man- 
 agement and aitificial applications, then 
 you would say of this tree that it was saved; 
 and the very term implies some previous 
 state of uselessness and corruption. What, 
 then, are we to make of the frequent occur- 
 rence of this term in the New Testament, 
 as applied to a human being ? If men come 
 into this world pure and innocent, and have 
 nothing more to do but to put forth the 
 powers with which nature has endowed 
 them, and so rise through the progressive 
 stages of virtue and excellence, to tne re- 
 wards of immortality, you would not say 
 of these men that tliey were saved, wlien 
 they were translated to these rewards. 
 These rewards of man are the natural 
 
184 
 
 CHARITY SERMON. 
 
 effects of his obedience, and the term saved 
 
 is not at all applicable to such a supposi- 
 tion. But the God of the Bible says differ- 
 ently. If a man obtain heaven at all, it is 
 by being saved. He is in a diseased state, 
 and it is by the healing application of the 
 blood of the Son of God, that he is restored 
 from tliat state. The very title applied to 
 him proves the same thing. He is called 
 our Saviour. The deliverance which he 
 effects is called our salvation. The men 
 whom he doth deliver are called the saved. 
 Doth not this imply some previous state of 
 disease and helplessness? And from the 
 frequent and incidental occurrence of this 
 term, may we not gather an additional tes- 
 timony to tlie trutli of what is elsewhere 
 more expressly revealed to us, that we are 
 lost by nature, and that to obtain recovery, 
 we must be found in Him who came to 
 seek and to save that whicli was lost. He 
 that believeth on tlie Son of God shall be 
 saved, but he that believeth not, the wrath 
 of God abideth on him. 
 
 We know that there are some v/ho loathe 
 this representation ; but this is just another 
 example of the substantial interests of the 
 poor being sacrificed to mismanagement 
 and delusion. It is to be hoped that there 
 are many who have looked the disease fairly 
 in the face, and are ready to reach forward 
 the remedy adapted to relieve it. We should 
 have no call to attend to the spiritual in- 
 terests of men, if they could safely be left 
 to themselves, and to the spontaneous ope- 
 ration of those powers with which it is sup- 
 posed that nature has endowed them. But 
 this is not the state of the case. We come 
 into the world with the principles of sin and 
 condemnation within us ; and, in the con- 
 genial atmosphere of this world's example, 
 these ripen fast for the execution of the 
 sentence. D\iring the period of tliis short 
 but interesting passage to another world, 
 the remedy is in the gospel held out to all, 
 and the freedom and universality of its in- 
 vitations, while it opens assured admission 
 to all who will, must aggravate the weight 
 and severity of the sentence to those who 
 will not ; and upon them the dreadful en- 
 ergy of that saying will be accomplished, — 
 " How shall they escape if they neglect so 
 great a salvation ?" 
 
 We know part of your labours for the 
 eternity of the poor. We know that you 
 have brought the Bible into contact with 
 many a soul. And we are sure that this is 
 Buiting the remedy to the disease ; for the 
 IJible contains those words which are the 
 
 power of God through faith unto salvation, 
 to every one who believes them. 
 
 To this established instrument for work- 
 ing faith in the heart, add the instrument 
 of hearing. When you give the Bible, ac- 
 company the gift with the living energy 
 of a human voice — let prayer, and advice, 
 and explanation, be brought to act upon 
 them ; and let the warm and deeply felt 
 earnestness of your hearts, discharge itself 
 upon theirs in tiie impressive tones of sin- 
 cerity, and friendship, and good will. This 
 is going substantial!}^ to work. It is, if I 
 may use the expression, bringing the right 
 element to bear upon the case before you ; 
 and be assured, every treatment of a con- 
 vinced and guilty mind is superficial and 
 ruinous, which does not lead it to the Sa- 
 viour, and bring before it his sacrifice and 
 atonement, and the influences of that spirit 
 bestowed through his obedience on all who 
 believe on Him. 
 
 While in the full vigour of health we may 
 count it enough to take up with something 
 short of this. But — striking testimony to 
 evangelical truth ! go to the awfid reality 
 of a human soul on the eve of its departure 
 from the body, and you will find that all 
 those vapid sentimentalities which partake 
 not of the substantial doctrine of the New 
 Testament, are good for nothing. Hold up 
 your face, my brethren, for the truth and 
 simplicity of the Bible. Be not ashamed 
 of its phraseology. It is the right instru- 
 ment to handle in the great work of calling 
 a human soul out of darkness into marvel- 
 lous light. Stand firm and secure on the 
 impregnable principle, that this is the word 
 of God, and that all taste, and imagination, 
 and science, must give way before its over- 
 bearing authority. Walk in the footsteps 
 of your Saviour, in the twofold ofiice of 
 caring for the diseases of the body, and ad- 
 ministering to the wants of the soul ; and 
 though you may fail in the former — though 
 the patient may never arise and walk, yet, 
 by the blessing of Heaven upon your fer- 
 vent and effectual endeavours, the latter ob- 
 ject may be gained — the soul may be light- 
 ened of all its anxieties, the whole burden of 
 its diseases may be swept away — it may be 
 of good cheer, because its sins are forgiven 
 — and the right direction may be impressed 
 upon it, which will carry it forward in pro- 
 gress to a happy eternity. Death may not 
 be averted, but death maybe disarmed. It 
 may be stript of its terrors, and instead of 
 a devouring enemy, it may be hailed as a 
 messenger of triumph. 
 
THOUGHTS ON UNIVERSAL PEACE. 
 
 A SERillON, 
 
 DELIVERED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 1816, THE DAY OF NATIONAL 
 THANKSGIVING FOR THE RESTORATION OF PEACE. 
 
 " Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." — Isaiah ii. 4. 
 
 There are a great many passages in 
 Scripture which warrant the expectation 
 that a time is coming, when an end shall be 
 put to war — when its abominations and its 
 cruelties shall be banished from the face of 
 the earth — when those restless elements of 
 ambition and jealousy which have so long 
 kept the species in a state of unceasing 
 commotion, and are ever and anon sending 
 another and another wave over the field of 
 this world's politics, shall at length be 
 hushed into a placid and ever-during calm ; 
 and many and delightful are the images 
 which the Bible employs, as guided by the 
 light of prophecy, it carries us forward to 
 those millennial days, when the reign of 
 peace shall be estalilished, and the wide 
 charity of the gospel, which is confined by 
 no limits, and owns no distinctions, shall 
 embosom the whole human race within the 
 ample grasp of one harmonious and uni- 
 versal family. 
 
 But before I proceed, let me attempt to 
 do away a delusion which exists on the 
 subject of prophecy. Its fulfilments are all 
 certain, say many, and we have therefore 
 nothing to do, but to wait for them in pas- 
 sive and indolent expectation. The truth 
 of God stands in no dependence on human 
 aid to vindicate the immutability of all his 
 announcements; and the power of God 
 stands in no need of the feeble exertions of 
 man to hasten the accomplishment of any 
 of his purposes. Let us therefore sit down 
 quietly in the attitude of spectators — let us 
 leave the Divinity to do his own work in 
 his own way, and mark, by the progress of 
 a history over which we have no control, 
 the evolution of his designs, and the march 
 of his wise and beneficent administration. 
 
 Now, it is very true, that the Divinity 
 will do his own work in his own way, but 
 if he choose to tell us that that way is not 
 without the instrumentality of men, but by 
 their instrumentality, might not this sitting 
 down into tlie mere attitude of spectators, 
 turn out to be a most perverse and disobe- 
 dient conclusion ? It is true, that his pur- 
 pose will obtain its fulfilment, whether we 
 24 
 
 shall otter or not to help it forward by our 
 co-operation. But if the object is to be 
 brought about, and if, in virtue of the same 
 sovereignty by which he determined upon 
 the object, he has also determined on the 
 way which leads to it, and that that way 
 shall be by the acting of human principle, 
 and the putting forth of human exertion, 
 then, let us keep back our co-operation as 
 we may, God will raise up the hearts of 
 others to that which we abstain from ; and 
 they, admitted into the high honour of be- 
 ing fellow-workers with God, may do ho- 
 mage to the truth of his prophecy, while 
 we, perhaps, may unconsciously do dread- 
 ful homage to the truth of another warning, 
 and another prophecy : " I work a work in 
 your days which you shall not believe, 
 though a' man declare it unto you. Behold, 
 ye despisers, and wonder and perish." 
 
 Now this is the very way in which pro- 
 phecies have been actually fulfilled. The 
 return of the people of Israel to their own 
 land, was an event predicted by inspiration, 
 and was brought about by the stirring up 
 of the spirit of Cyrus, who felt himself 
 charged with the duty of building a house 
 to God at Jerusalem. The pouring out of 
 the Spirit on the day of Pentecost was fore- 
 told by the Saviour ere he left the world, 
 and was accomplished upon men who as- 
 sembled tlieinselves together at the place 
 to which they were commanded to repair; 
 and there they waited, and the)' prayed. 
 The rapid propagation of Christianity in 
 those days was known by the human agents 
 of this propagation, to be made sure b}"^ the 
 word of prophecy ; but the way in which 
 it was actually made sure, was by the 
 strenuous exertions, the unexampled hero- 
 ism, the holy devotedness and zeal of mar- 
 tyrs, and apostles, and evangelists. And 
 even now, my brethren, while no profess- 
 ing Christian can deny that their fuith is to 
 be one day the faith of all countries ; but 
 while many of them idly sit and wait tjie 
 time of God putting forth some mysterious 
 and unheard of agency, to bring about the 
 universal diffusion, there are men who have 
 
186 
 
 THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 betaken themselves to the obvious expedient other, and aking its ample round among 
 of goiufr abroad among the nations, and all the tribes and families of the eartli, shall 
 teaching them; and though derided by an we arrive at the magniticent resiilt of peace 
 undeserving world, they seem to be the throughout all its provinces, and security in 
 very men pointed out by the Bible, who all its dwelling-places. 
 are going to and fro increasing the know- , In the further prosecution of this dis- 
 ledg'j of its doctrines, and who will be the course, I shall, first, expatiate a little on the 
 honoured instruments of carrying into ef- evils of war. 
 
 feet tlie most splendid of all its anticipa- 1 In the second place, I shall direct your 
 tions. [ attention to the obstacles which stand in 
 
 Now, the same holds true, I apprehend, the way of its extinction, and whicti threaten 
 of the prophecy in my text. The abolition to retard for a time the accomplishment of 
 of war will be the effect not of any sudden • the prophecy I have now selected for your 
 or resistless visitation from heaven on the consideration. 
 
 character of men — not of any mystical in- , And, in the third place, I shall endeavour 
 fluence working with all the omnipotence , to point out, what can only be done at 
 of a charm on the passive hearts of those ' present in a hurried and superficial man- 
 who are the subjects of it — not of any blind ! ner, some of the expedients by which these 
 or overruling fatality which will come upon I obstacles may be done away, 
 the earth at some distant period of its his- I. I shall expatiate a little on the evils of 
 tory, and about which, we, of the present j war. The mere existence of the prophecy 
 day, have nothing to do but to look silently | in my text, is a sentence of condemnation 
 on, v.ithout concern, and without co-ope- ] upon war, and stamps a criminality on its 
 ration. The prophecy of a peace as uni- j very forehead. So soon as Christianity 
 versal as the spread of the human race, and shall gain a full ascendency in the world, 
 
 as enduring as the moon in the firmament, 
 will meet its accomplishment, ay, and at 
 that very time which is already fixed bj^ 
 Him wiio seeth the end of all things from 
 the beginning tliereof But it will be brought 
 about by the activity of men. It will be 
 done by the philanthropy of thinking and 
 intelligent Christians. The conversion of 
 the Jews — the spread of the gospel light 
 among the regions of idolatry — these are 
 distinct subjects of prophecy, on which the 
 faithful of the land are now acting, and to 
 the fulfilment of which they are giving their 
 zeal and their energy. I conceive the pro- 
 phecy which relates to the final abolition of 
 war will be taken up in the same manner, 
 and the subject will be brought to the test 
 of christian principle, and many will unite 
 to spread a growing sense of its follies and 
 its enormities, over the countries of the 
 
 from that moment war is to disappear. We 
 have heard that there is something noble in 
 the art of war; that there is something 
 generous in the ardour of that fine chivalric 
 spirit which kindles in the hour of alarm, 
 and rushes with delight among the thickest 
 scenesofdangerandofenterprise;— that man 
 is never more proudly arrayed, than when, 
 elevated by a contempt for death, he puts 
 on his intrepid front, and looks serene, 
 while the arrows of destruction are flying 
 on every side of him : — that expunge war, 
 and 3'ou expunge some of the brightest 
 names in the catalogue of human virtue, 
 and demolish that theatre on which have 
 been displayed some of the sublimcst ener- 
 gies of the human character. It is thus that 
 war has been invested with a most perni- 
 cious splendour, and men ha\e olfered to 
 justify it as a blessingr and an ornament to 
 
 world— and the public will be enlightened, society, and attempts have been made to 
 not by the factious and turbulent declama- throw a kind of imposing morality around 
 tions of a party. but by the mild dissemina- , it; and one might almost be reconciled to 
 
 tion of gospel sentiment through the land 
 and the prophecy contained in this book 
 will pass into effect and accomplishment, 
 by no other influence than the influence of 
 its ordinary lessons on the hearts and con- 
 sciences of individuals — and the measure 
 will first be carried in one country, not by 
 the unhallowed violence of discontent, but 
 by the control of general opinion, expressed 
 on the part of a people, who, if Christian 
 in their repugnance to war, will be equally 
 Christian in all the loyalties, and subjections, 
 and meek unresisting virtues of the New 
 Testament — and the sacred fire of good-will 
 to the children of men will spread itself 
 through all chmes, and through all lati- 
 tudes — and thus by scriptural tnith con- 
 veyed with pow'er from one people to an- 
 
 the whole train of its calamities and its hor- 
 rors, did he not believe his Bible, and learn 
 from its information, that in tiie days of 
 perfect righteousness, there will be no 
 war ; — that so soon as tlie character of man 
 has had the last finish of Christian principle 
 thrown over it, from that moment all the 
 instruments of war will be thrown aside, 
 and all its lessons will be forgotten : that 
 therefore what are called the virtues of war, 
 are no virtues at all, or that a better and a 
 worthier scene will be provided for their 
 exercise ; but in short, that at the com- 
 mencement of that bli.ssful era, when the 
 reign of heaven shall be established, war 
 will take its departure from the wcn'ld uith 
 all the other plagues and atrocuies of the 
 species. 
 
th:)Ughis on peace. 
 
 187 
 
 But apart altogether from this testimony 
 to tfie evil of war, let us just lake a direct 
 look of it, and see whether we can find its 
 character engraved on the aspect it bears 
 to the eye of an attentive observer. The 
 stoutest heart of tliis assembly would recoil, 
 were he who owns it, to behold the de- 
 struction of a single iudividual by some 
 deed of violence. Were the man who at 
 this moment stands before you in the full 
 play and energy of health, to be in another 
 moment laid by some deadly aim a lifeless 
 corpse at your feet, there is not oue of you 
 who would not prove how strong are t!ie 
 relentings of nature at a spectacle so hide- 
 ous as death. There are some of you who 
 would be haunted for whole days by the 
 image of horror you had witnessed — who 
 would feel the weight of a most oppressive 
 sensation upon your heart, which nothing 
 but time could wear away — who would be 
 so pursued by it as to be unfit for business 
 or for enjoyment — who would think of it 
 through the day, and it would spread a 
 gloomy disquietude over your waking mo- 
 ments — who would dream of it at niglit, 
 and it would turn that bed which you 
 courted as a retreat from the torments of 
 an ever-meddling memory, into a scene of 
 restlessness. 
 
 But generally the death of violence is not 
 instantaneous, and there is often a sad and 
 dreary interval between its final consumma- 
 tion, and the infliction of tlie blow which 
 causes it. The winged messenger of de- 
 struction has not found its direct avenue to 
 that spot, where the principle of life is situ- 
 ated — and the soul, finding obstacles to its 
 immediate egress, has to struggle it for 
 hours, ere it can make its weary way 
 through the winding avenues of that te- 
 nement, which has been torn open by a 
 brother's hand. O ! my brother, if there 
 be something appalling in the suddenness 
 of death, think not that when gradual in its 
 advances, you will alleviate the horrors of 
 this sickening contemplation, by viewing it 
 in a milder form. O ! tell me, if there be 
 any relentings of phy in your bosom, how 
 could you endure it, to behold the agonies 
 of the dying man — as goaded by pain, 
 he grasps the cold ground in convulsive 
 energy, or faint with the loss of blood, his 
 pulse ebbs low, and the gathering pale- 
 ness spreads itself over his countenance ; or 
 wrapping himself round in despair, he can 
 only mark by a few feeble quiverings, that 
 life still lurks and lingers in his lacerated 
 body ; or lifting up a faded eye, he casts 
 on you a look of imploring helplessness, 
 for that succour which no s>'mpathy can 
 yield liim. It may be painful to dwell on 
 such a representation ; but this is the way 
 in which the cause of humanity is served. 
 The eye of the sentimentahst turns away 
 from its sufferings, and he passes by on the 
 
 other side, lest he hear that pleading voice, 
 which is armed with a tone of remon- 
 strance so vigorous as to disturb him. He 
 cannot bear thus to pause, in imagination, 
 on the distressing picture of one individiml, 
 but multiply it ten thousand times ; saj'. 
 how much of all this distress has been 
 heaped together upon a single field ; give 
 us the arithmetic of this accumulated 
 wretchedness, and lay it before us with all 
 the accuracy of an official computation — 
 and strange to tell, not one sigh is lifted up 
 among the crowd of eager listeneis, as they 
 stand on tiptoe, and catch every syllable of 
 utterance, which is read to them out of the 
 registers of death. O I say, what mystic 
 spell is that, which so blinds us to the suffer- 
 ings of our brethren ; which deafens to our 
 ear the voice of bleeding humanity, when it 
 is aggravated by the shriek of dying thou- 
 sands; which makes the very magnitude 
 of the slaughter, throw a softening disguise 
 over its cruelties, and its horrors ; which 
 causes us to ej^e with indifference, the field 
 that is crowded with tlie most revolting 
 abominations, and arrests that sigh, which 
 each individual would singly liave drawn 
 from us, by the report of the many who 
 have fallen, and breathed their last in agony 
 along with them. 
 
 I am not saying that the burden of all 
 this ciiminality rests upon the head of the 
 immediate combatants. It lies somewhere; 
 but who can deny that a soldier may be a 
 Christian, and that from the bloody field 
 on which his body is laid, his soul may 
 wing its ascending way to the shores of a 
 peaceful eternity? But when I think that 
 the Christians, even of the creat world, form 
 but a very little flock, and that an army h\ 
 not a propitious soil for the growth of chris- 
 tian principle — when I think on the cha- 
 racter of one such army, that had been led 
 on for years by a ruffian ambition, and 
 been inured to scenes of barbarity, and had 
 gathered a most ferocious hardihood of 
 soul, from the many enterprises of violence 
 to which an unprincipled coirimander had 
 carried them — when I follow tliem to the 
 field of battle, and further think, that on 
 both sides of an exasperated contest — the 
 gentleness of Christianity can have no place 
 in almost any bosom ; but that nearly every 
 heart is liglited up with fury, and breathes 
 a vindictive purpose against a brother of 
 the species, I cannot but reckon it among 
 the most fearful of the calamities of war — 
 tliat while the work of death is thickening 
 along its ranks, so many disembodied spirits 
 should pass into the presence of Him who 
 sitteth upon the throne, in such a posture, 
 and with such a preparation. 
 
 I have no time, and assuredly as little 
 taste, for expatiating on a topic so melan- 
 choly, nor can I afford at present, to set be- 
 fore you a vivid picture of the other mise- 
 
188 
 
 THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 ries which war carries in its train — how it 
 desolates every country through which it 
 rolls, and spreads violation and alarm 
 among its villages — how, at its approach, 
 every home pours forth its trembling fugi- 
 tives — how all the rights of property, and 
 all the provisions of justice must give way 
 before its devouring exactions — how, when 
 Sabbath comes, no Sabbath charm comes 
 along with it — and for the sound of the 
 church bell, which wont to spread its music 
 over some fine landscape of nature, and 
 summon rustic worshippers to the house 
 of prayer — nothing is heard but the death- 
 ful voUies of the battle, and the maddening 
 outcry of infuriated men — how, as the fruit 
 of victory, an unprincipled licentiousness, 
 which no discipline can restrain, is suffered 
 to walk at large among the people — and all 
 that is pure, and reverend, and holy, in the 
 virtue of families, is cruelly trampled on, 
 and held in the bitterest derision. 
 
 Oh ! my brethren, were we to pursue 
 those details, which no pen ever attempts, 
 and no chronicle perpetuates, we should be 
 tempted to ask, what that is which civiliza- 
 tion has done for the character of the 
 species ? It has thrown a few paltry embel- 
 lishments over the surface of human affairs, 
 and for the order of society, it has reared 
 the defences of law around the rights and 
 the property of the individuals who com- 
 pose it. But let war, legalized as you may, 
 and ushered into the field with all the pa- 
 rade of forms and manifestos — let this war 
 only have its season, and be suffered to 
 overleap these artificial defences, and you 
 will soon see how much the security of the 
 commonwealth is due to positive restric- 
 tions, and liow little of it is due to a natural 
 sense of j ustice among men. I know well, that 
 the plausibilities of human character which 
 abound in every modern and enlightened 
 society, have been mustered up to oppose 
 the doctrine of the Bible, on the woful de- 
 pravity of our race. But out of the history of 
 war, I can gather for this doctrine the evi- 
 dence of experiment. It tells me, that man 
 when left to himself, and let loose among 
 his fellows, to walk after the counsel of his 
 own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes, 
 will soon discover how thin that tinsel is, 
 which the boasted hand of civilization has 
 thrown over him. And we have only to 
 blow the trumpet of war, and proclaim to 
 man the hour of his opportunity, that his 
 character may show itself in its essential 
 elements — and that we may see how many, 
 in this our moral and enlightened day, 
 would spring forward, as to a jubilee of 
 delight, and prowl like the wild men of 
 the woods, amidst scenes of rapacity, and 
 cruelty, and violence. 
 
 II. But let me hasten away from this 
 part of the subject, and in the second place, 
 lirect your attention to those obstacles 
 
 which stand in the way of the extinction 
 of war, and whii.h threaten to retard, for 
 a time, the accomplishment of the pro- 
 phecy I have now selected for your consi- 
 deration. 
 
 Is this the time, it may be asked, to com- 
 plain of obstacles to the extinction of war, 
 when peace has been given to the nations, 
 and we are assembled to celebrate its tri- 
 umphs? Is this day of high and solemn 
 gratulation, to be turned to such forebod- 
 ings as these ? The whole of Europe is 
 now at rest from the tempest which con- 
 vulsed it — and a solemn treaty with all its 
 adjustments, and. all its guarantees, pro- 
 mises a firm perpetuity to the repose of 
 the world. We have long fought for a hap- 
 pier order of things, and at length we have 
 established it — and the hard-earned bequest, 
 we hand down to posterity as a rich inherit- 
 ance, won by the labours and the suffer- 
 ings of the present generation. That gi- 
 gantic amljition which stalked in triumph 
 over the firmest and the oldest of our mo- 
 narchies, is now laid — and can never again 
 burst forth from the confinement of its 
 prison-hold to waken a new uproar, and to 
 send forth new troubles over the face of a 
 desolated world. 
 
 Now, in reply to this, let it be observed 
 that every interval of repose is precious; 
 every breathing time from the work of vio- 
 lence is to be rejoiced in by the friends of 
 humanity ; every agreement among the 
 powers of the earth, by which a temporary 
 respite can be gotten from the calamities 
 of war, is so much reclaimed from the 
 amount of those miseries that afflict the 
 world, and of those crimes, the cry of 
 which ascendeth unto heaven, and bringeth 
 down the judgments of God on this dark 
 and rebellious province of his creation. I 
 trust, that on this day, gratitude to Him 
 who alone can still the tumults of the peo- 
 ple, will be the sentiment of every heart j 
 and I trust, that none who now hear me, 
 will refuse to evince his gratitude to the 
 Author of the New Testament, by their 
 obedience to one of the most distinct and 
 undoubted of its lessons; I mean the lesson 
 of a reverential and submissive loj^alty. I 
 cannot pass an impartial eye over this re- 
 cord of God's will, without perceiving the 
 utter repugnance that there is between the 
 spirit of Christianity, and tiie factious, tur- 
 bulent, unquenchable, and ever-meddling 
 spirit of political disaffection. I will not 
 compromise, by the surrender of a single 
 jot or tittle, the integrity of that precep- 
 tive code which my Saviour hath left be- 
 hind him for the obedience of his disciples. 
 I will not detach the very minutest of its 
 features, from the fine picture of morality 
 that Christ hath bequeathed, both by com- 
 mandment and example, to adorn the na 
 tiu-e he condescended to wear— and sure I 
 
THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 189 
 
 am that the man who has drunk in the en- 
 tire spirit of the gospel — who, reposing 
 himself on the faith of its promised immor- 
 tality, can maintain an elevated calm amid 
 all the fluctuations of this world's interest 
 — whose exclusive ambition is to be the 
 unexcepted pupil of pure, and spiritual, 
 and self-denying Christianity — sure I am 
 that such a man will honour the king and 
 all who are in authority — and be subject 
 unto them for the sake of conscience — and 
 render unto them all their dues — and not 
 withhold a single fractit)n of the tribute 
 they impose upon him — and be the best of 
 subjects, just because he is the best of 
 Christians — resisting none of the ordi- 
 nances of God, and living a quiet and a 
 peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. 
 But it gives me pleasure to advance a 
 further testimony in behalf of that govern- 
 ment with which it has pleased God, wlio 
 appointeth to all men the bounds of their 
 habitation, to bless that portion of the globe 
 that we occupy. I count it such a govern- 
 ment, that I not only owe it the loyalty of 
 my principles — but I also owe it the loyalty 
 of my affections. I could not lightly part 
 with my devotion to that government 
 which the other year opened the door to 
 the Christianization of India — I shall never 
 withhold the tribute of my reverence from 
 that government which put an end to the 
 atrocities of the Slave Trade — I shall never 
 forget the triumph, which, in that proud- 
 est day of Britain's glory, the cause of hu- 
 manity gained within the walls of our en- 
 lightened Parliament. Let my right hand 
 forget her cunning, ere I forget that coun- 
 try of my birth, where, in defiance to all 
 the clamours of mercantile alarm, every 
 calculation of interest was given to the 
 wind, and braving every hazard, she nobly 
 resolved to shake off the whole burden of 
 infamy, which lay upon her. I shall never 
 forget, that how to complete the object in 
 behalf of which she has so honourably led 
 the way, she has walked the whole round 
 of civilized society, and knocked at the 
 door of every government in Europe, and 
 lifted her imploring voice for injured Africa, 
 and plead with the mightiest monarchs of 
 the world, the cause of her outraged shores, 
 and her distracted families. I can neither 
 shut my heart nor my eyes to the fact, that 
 at this moment she is stretching forth the 
 protection of her naval arm, and shielding, 
 to the uttermost of her vigour, that coast 
 where an inhuman avarice is still plying 
 its guilty devices, and aiming to perpetuate 
 among an unoffending people, a trade of 
 cruelty, with all the horrid train of its ter- 
 rors and abominations. Were such a govern- 
 ment as this to be swept from its base, 
 either by the violence of foreign hostility, 
 or by the hands of her own misled and in- 
 fatuated children — I should never cease to 
 
 deplore it as the deadliest interruption, 
 which ever had been given to the interests 
 of human virtue, and to the march of Im- 
 man improvement. O ! how it should swell 
 every heart, not with pride, but with gra- 
 titude, to think that the land of our fathers, 
 with all the iniquities which abound in it, 
 with all the profligacy which spreads , 
 along our streets, and all the profanenesa 
 that is heard among our companies — to 
 think that this our land, overspread as it is 
 with the appalling cliaracters of guilt, is 
 still the securest asylum of worth and liber- 
 ty — that this is the land, from which the 
 most copious emanations of Christianity 
 are going forth to all the quarters of the 
 world — that this is the land, which teems 
 from one end to the other of it with the 
 most splendid designs and enterprises for 
 the good of the species — that this is the 
 land, where public principle is most felt, 
 and public objects are most prosecuted, 
 and the fine impulse of a public spirit is 
 most ready to carry its generous people 
 beyond the limits of a selfish and contract- 
 ed patriotism. Yes, and when the heart 
 of the philanthropist is sinking within him 
 at the gloomy spectacle of those crimes 
 and atrocities, which still deform the his- 
 tory of man, I know not a single earthly 
 expedient more fitted to brighten and sus- 
 tain him, than to turn his eye to the coun- 
 try in which he lives — and there see the 
 most enlightened government in the world 
 acting as the organ of its most moral and 
 intelligent population. 
 
 It is not against the government of my 
 country, therefore, that I direct my ob- 
 servations — but against that nature of man, 
 in the infirmities of which we all share, and 
 the evil of which no government can ex- 
 tinguish. We have carried a new political 
 arrangement, and we experience the result 
 of it, a temporary calm — but we have not 
 yet carried our way to the citadel of hu- 
 man passions. The elements of war are 
 hushed for a season — but these elements 
 are not destroyed. They still rankle in 
 many an unsubdued heart — and I am too 
 well taught by the history of the past, and 
 the experience of its restless variations, not 
 to believe that tliey will burst forth again 
 in thunder over the face of society. No, 
 my brethren, it will only be when diffused 
 and vital Christianity comes upon the earth, 
 that an enduring peace will come along 
 witii it. The prophecy of my text will 
 obtain its fulfilment — but not till the fulfil- 
 ment of the verses which go before it; — 
 not till the influence of the gospel has 
 found its way to the human bosom, and 
 plucked out of it the elementary principles 
 of war; — not till the law of love shall 
 spread its melting and ail-subduing efficacy, 
 among the children of one common nature: 
 not till ambition be dethroned from its mas- 
 
190 
 
 THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 tery over the affections of the inner man ; 
 — not till the guilty splendours of war shall 
 cease to captivate its admirers, and spread 
 the blaze of a deceitful heroism over the 
 wholesale butchery of the species ; — not till 
 national pride be humbled, and man shall 
 learn, that if it be individually the duty of 
 each of us in honour to prefer one another ; 
 then let these individuals combine as they 
 may, and form societies as numerous and 
 extensive as they may, and each of these 
 be swelled out to the dimensions of an em- 
 pire, still, that mutual condescension and 
 forbearance remain the unalterable chris- 
 tian duties of these empires to each other ; 
 — not till man learn to revere his brother 
 as man, whatever portion of the globe he 
 occupies, and all the jealousies and prefer- 
 ences of a contracted patriotism be given 
 to the wind ; — not till war shall cease to be 
 prosecuted as a trade, and the charm of all 
 that interest which is linked with its con- 
 tinuance, shall cease to beguile men in the 
 peaceful walks of merchandise, into a bar- 
 barous longing after war ; not, in one word, 
 till pride, and jealousy, and interest, and 
 all that is opposite to the law of God and 
 the charity of the gospel, shall be for ever 
 eradicated from the character of those who 
 possess an effectual control over the public 
 and political movements of the species; — 
 not till all this be brought about, and there 
 is not another agent in the whole compass 
 of nature that can bring it about but the 
 gospel of Christ, carried home by the all- 
 subduing power of the Spirit to the con- 
 sciences of men ; — then, and not till then, 
 my brethren, will peace come to take up 
 its perennial abode with us, and its bless- 
 ed advent on earth be hailed by one shout 
 of joyful acclamation throughout all its fa- 
 milies ; then, and not till then, will the 
 sacred principle of good will to men circu- 
 late as free as the air of heaven among all 
 countries — and the sun looking out from 
 the firmament, will behold one fine aspect 
 of harmony throughout the wide extent of 
 a regenerated world. 
 
 It will only be in the last days, " when it 
 shall come to pass, that the mountain of the 
 Lord's house shall be established in the top 
 of the mountains, and shall be exalted above 
 the hills, and all nations shall flow into it : 
 And many people shall go, and say, Come 
 ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the 
 Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob ; and 
 he will teach us of his ways, and we will 
 walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go 
 fcx'th the law, and the word of the Lord from 
 Jerusalem ; and he shall judge among the 
 nations, and shall rebuke many people ;" 
 then and not till then, " they shall beat their 
 swords into plough-shares, and their spears 
 into ] runing-hooks. Nation shall not lift up 
 sword against nation, neither shall they 
 learn war any more." 
 
 The above rapid sketch glances at the 
 chief obstacles to the extinction of war, and 
 in what remains of this discourse, I shall 
 dwell a little more particularly on as many 
 of them as my time will allow me, finding 
 it impossible to exhaust so wide a topic, 
 within the limits of the public services of 
 one day. 
 
 Tlie first great obstacle, then, to the ex- 
 tinction of war, is the way in which the^ 
 heart of man is carried off from its barbari 
 ties and its horrors, by the splendour ol 
 its deceitful accompaniments. There is a 
 feeling of the sublime in contemplating the 
 shock of armies, just as there is in contem- 
 plating the devouring energy of a tempest, 
 and this so elevates and engrosses the whole 
 man, that his eye is blind to the tears of 
 bereaved parents, and his ear is deaf to the 
 piteous moan of the dying, and the shriek 
 of their desolated families. There is a grace- 
 fulness in the picture of a youthful warrior 
 burning for distinction on the field, and 
 lured by this generous aspiration to the 
 deepest of the animated throng, where, in 
 the fell work of death, the opposing sons of 
 valour struggle for a remembrance and a 
 name ; and this side of the picture is so much 
 the exclusive object of our regard, as to dis- 
 guise from our view the mangled carcases 
 of the fallen, and the v.ritliing agonies of the 
 hundreds and the hundreds more who have 
 been laid on the cold ground, where they 
 are left to languish and to die. There no 
 eye pities them. No sister is there to weep 
 over them. There no gentle hand is present 
 to ease the dying posture, or bind up the 
 wounds, which, in the maddenhig fury of 
 the combat, have been given and received 
 by the children of one common father. 
 There death spreads its pale ensigns over 
 everv countenance, and when night comes 
 on, and darkness around them, how many 
 a despairing wretch must take up with the 
 bloody field as the untended bed of his last 
 sufferings, without one friend to bear the 
 messase of tenderness to his distant home, 
 without one companion to close his eyes. 
 
 I avow it. On every side of me I see 
 causes at work which go to spread a most 
 delusive colouring over war. and to remove 
 its shockinof barbarities to the back ground 
 of our contemplations altogether. I see it in 
 the history which tells me of the superb ap- 
 pearance of the troops, and the brilliiincy 
 of their successive charges. I see it in the 
 poetry which lends the magic of its numbers 
 to the narrative of blood, and transports its 
 rpany admirers, as by its images, and its 
 figures, and its nodding plumes of chivalry, 
 it throws its treacherous embellishments 
 over a scene of legalized slaughter. 1 see it 
 in the music which represents the progress 
 of the battle ; and where, after being inspired 
 by the trumpet-notes of preparation, the 
 whole beauty and teiiderness of a drawing- 
 
THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 191 
 
 room are seen to bend over the sentimental 
 entertainment; nor do I hear the utterance 
 of a single sigh to interrupt the death-tones 
 of the thickening contest, and the moans of 
 the wounded men as they fade away upon 
 the ear, and sink into hfeless silence. All, 
 all goes to prove what strange and half- 
 sighted creatures we are. Were it not so, 
 war could never have been seen in any 
 other aspect than that of unmingled hate- 
 fulness ; and I can look to nothing but to the 
 progress of christian sentiment upon earth, 
 to arrest the strong current of its popular 
 and prevailing partiality for war. Then o)ily 
 will an imperious sense of duty lay the check 
 of severe principle, on all the subordinate 
 tastes and faculties of our nature. Then will 
 glory be reduced to its right estimate, and 
 the wakeful benevolence of the gospel chas- 
 ing away every spell, will be turned by the 
 treachery of no delusion whatever, from its 
 simple but sublime enterprises for the good 
 of the species. Then the reign of truth and 
 quietness will be ushered into the world, and 
 war, cruel, atrocious, unrelenting war, will 
 be stript of its many and its bewildering 
 fascinations. 
 
 But again, another obstacle to the extinc- 
 tion of war, is a sentiment which seems to 
 be universally gone into, that the rules and 
 promises of the gospel which apply to a 
 single individual, do not apply to a nation 
 of individuals. Just think of the mighty 
 effect it would have on the politics of the 
 world, were this sentiment to be practically 
 deposed from its wonted authority over the 
 counsels and the doings of nations, in their 
 transactions with each other. If forbearance 
 be the virtue of an individual, forbearance 
 is also the virtue of a nation. If it be incum- 
 bent on men in honour to prefer each other, 
 it is incumbent on the very largest societies 
 of men, through the constituted organ of 
 their government to do the same. If it be 
 the glory of a man to defer his anger, and 
 to pass over a transgression, that nation 
 mistakes its glory which is so feelingly alive 
 to the slightest insult, and musters up its 
 threats and its armaments upon the faintest 
 shadow of a provocation. If it be the mag- 
 nanimity of an injured man to abstain from 
 vengeance, and if by so doing, he heaps coals 
 of fire upon the head of his enemy, then 
 that is the magnanimous nation, which, re- 
 coiling from violence and from blood, will 
 do no more than send its christian embassy, 
 and prefer its mild and impressive remon- 
 strance ; and that is the disgraced nation 
 which will refuse the impressiveness of the 
 moral appeal that has been made to it. — O! 
 my brethren, there must be the breathing 
 of a different spirit to circulate round the 
 globe, ere its christianized nations resign the 
 jealousies which now front them to each 
 other in the scowling attitude of defiance; 
 nd much is to do with the people of every 
 
 land, ere the propnesied influence of the 
 gospel shall bring its virtuous, and its paci- 
 fying controul to bear with effect on the 
 counsels and governments of the world. 
 
 I find that I must be drawing to a close, 
 and that I must forbear entering into several 
 topics on which I meant at one time to ex- 
 patiate. I wished, in particular, to have laid 
 it fully before yon how the extinction of 
 war, though it should withdraw one of those 
 scenes on which man earns the glory of in- 
 trepidity; yet it would leave other, and bet- 
 ter, and nobler scenes, for the disj^lay and 
 the exercise of this respectal)le atlrilnite. I 
 wished also to explain to you, tb.at however 
 much I admired the general spirit of Qua- 
 kerism, on the subject of war ; yet that I was 
 not prepared to go all the length of its prin- 
 ciples, when that war was strictly defensive. 
 It strikes me, that war is to be abolished by 
 the abolition of its aggressive spirit among 
 the different nations of the world. The text 
 seems to tell me that this is the order of 
 prophecy upon the subject; and that it is 
 when nation shall cease to lift up its sword 
 against nation ; or, in other words, when one 
 nation shall cease to move, for the purpose 
 of attacking another, that military science 
 will be no longer in demand, and that the 
 people of the earth will learn the art of war 
 no more I should also have stated, that on 
 this ground, I refrained from pronouncing 
 on the justice or necessity of any one war 
 in which this country has ever been involved. 
 I have no doubt that many of those who 
 supported our former wars, looked on seve- 
 ral of them as wars for existence ; but on 
 this matter I carefully abstain from the ut- 
 terance of a single sentiment ; for in so doing, 
 I should feel myself to be descending from 
 the generalities of christian principle, and 
 employing that pulpit as the vehicle of a 
 quest ional3le polic}-, which ought never to 
 be prostituted either to the unworthy object 
 of sending forth the incense of human flat- 
 tery to any one administration, or of regal- 
 ing the factious, and turbulent, and disloyal 
 passions of any party. I should next, if I 
 had time, offer such observations as were 
 suggested by my own vieAvs of political 
 science, on the multitude of vulnerable 
 points by which this country is surrounded, 
 in the shape of numerous and distant de- 
 pendencies, and which, however much they 
 may tend to foster the warlike politics of 
 our government, are, in truth, so little worth 
 the expense of a war, that should all of them 
 be wrested away from us, they would leave 
 the people of our empire as great, and as 
 wealthy, and as competent to every purpose 
 of home security as ever. Lastly, I might 
 have whispered my inclination, for a little 
 more of the Chinese policy being imported 
 into Europe, not for the purp(!se of restrain- 
 ing a liberal intercoin-se betv/een its different 
 countries, but for the purpose ofquietingin 
 
192 
 
 THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 each its restless spirit of alarm, about every 
 foreign movement in the politics and designs 
 of other nations; because, sure I am, that 
 were each great empire of the world to lay 
 it,down as the maxim of its most scrupulous 
 observance, not to meddle till it was med- 
 dled with, each would feel in such a maxim 
 both its safety and its triumph; — for such 
 are the mighty resources of defensive war, 
 that though the whole transportable force 
 of Europe were to land upon our borders, 
 the result of the experiment would be such, 
 that it should never be repeated — the rally- 
 ing population of Britain could sweep them 
 all from the face of its territory, and a whole 
 myriad of invaders would melt away under 
 the power of such a government as ours, 
 trenched behind the loyalty of her defen- 
 ders, and strong, as she deserves to be, in 
 the love and in the confidence of all her 
 children. 
 
 I would not have touched on any of the 
 lessons of political economy, did they not 
 lead me, by a single step, to a christian les- i 
 son, which I count it my incumbent duty 
 to press upo'n the attention of you all. Any 
 sudden change in the state of the demand, 
 must throw the commercial world into a 
 temporary derangement. And Avhether the 
 change be from war to peace, or from peace 
 to war, this effect is sure to accompany it. 
 Now for upwards of twenty years, the direc- 
 tion of our trade has been accommodated to 
 a war system, and when this system is put 
 an end to, I do not say what amount of the 
 distress will light upon this neighbourhood, 
 but we may be sure that all the alarm of 
 falling markets, and ruined speculation, will 
 spread an impressive gloom over many of 
 the manufacturing districts of the land. 
 Now^, let my title to address you on other 
 grounds, be as questionable as it may, I feel 
 no hesitation whatever in announcing it, as 
 your most imperative duty, that no outcry 
 of impatience or discontent from you, shall 
 embarrass the pacific policy of his majesty's 
 government. They have conferred a great 
 blessing on the country, in conferring on it 
 peace, and it is your part resignedly to 
 weather the languid or disasterous months 
 which may come along with it. The interest 
 of trade is an old argument that has been 
 set up in resistance to the dearest and most 
 substantial interests of humanity. 
 
 Wlien Paul wanted to bring Christianity 
 into Ephesus, he raised a storm of opposi- 
 tion around him, from a quarter which, I 
 dare say, he was not coiinting on. There 
 happened to be some shrine manufactories 
 in that place, and as the success of the 
 Apostle would infallibly have reduced the 
 demand for that article, forth came the de- 
 cisive argument of. Sirs, by this craft we 
 have our wealth, and should this Paul turn 
 away the people from the worship of gods 
 made with hands, thereby much damage 
 
 would accrue to our trade. Why, my bre 
 thren, if this argument is to be admitted^ 
 there is not one conceivable benefit that can 
 be offered for the acceptance of the species. 
 Would it not be well if all the men of read- 
 ing in the country were to be diverted from 
 the poison which lurks in many a mischiev- 
 ous publication — and should this blessed re- 
 formation be efliected, are there none to be 
 found who would feel that mucli damage 
 had accrued to their trade? Would it not 
 be well, if those wretched sons of pleasure, 
 before whom if they repent not, there lieth 
 all the dreariness of an unprovided eternity 
 — would it not be well, that they were re- 
 claimed from the maddening intoxication 
 which speeds them on in the career of dis- 
 obedience — and on this event, too, Mould 
 there be none to complain that much damage 
 had accrued to their trade? Is it not well, 
 that the infamy of the slave trade has been 
 swept from the page of British history? and 
 yet do not many of you remember how long 
 the measure lay suspended, and tliat about 
 twenty annual flotillas, burdened with the ' 
 load of human wretchedness, were wafted 
 across the Atlantic, while Parliament Avas 
 deafened and overborne by unceasing clam- 
 ours about the much damage that would 
 accrue to the trade? And now, is it not well 
 that peace has once more been given to the 
 nations? and are you to follow up this 
 goodly train of examples, by a single whis- 
 per of discontent about the much damage 
 that will accrue to your trade? No, my bre- 
 thren, I will not let dov.n a single inch of 
 the christian requirement that lies upon j'ou. 
 Should a sweeping tide of bankruptcy set in 
 upon the land, and reduce every individual 
 who now hears me, to the very humlJest 
 condhion in societ}% God stands pledged to 
 give food and raiment to all avIio depend 
 upon him; — and it is not fair to make, others 
 bleed, that you may roll in affluence; — it is 
 not fair to desolate thousands of f\imilies, 
 that yours may be upheld in luxury and 
 splendour — and your best, and noblest, and 
 kindest part is, to throw yourselves on the 
 promises of God. and he will hide you and 
 your little ones in the secret of his pavilion 
 till these calamities be overpast. 
 
 III. I trust it is evident from all that has 
 been said, bow it is only by the extension 
 of christian principle among the people of 
 the earth, tliat the atrocities of war will at 
 length be swept away from it ; and that 
 each of us in hastening the commencement 
 of that blissful period, in his own sphere, is 
 doing ah that in him lies to bring his own 
 heart, and the hearts of others, under the 
 supreme influence of this principle. It is 
 public opinion, which in the long run go- 
 verns the world ; and while I look Avith 
 confidence to a gradual revolution in the 
 state of public opinion from the omnipo- 
 tence of gospel truth working its silent, bat 
 
THOUGHTS ON PEACE. 
 
 193 
 
 effectual way, through the families of man- 
 kind — yet I will not deny that much maybe 
 done to accelerate the advent of perpetual 
 and universal peace, by a distinct body 
 of men embarking their every talent, and 
 their every acquirement in the prosecution 
 of this, as a distinct object. This was the 
 way in which, a few years ago, the British 
 public were gained over to the cause of 
 Africa. This is the way in which some of 
 the other prophecies of the Bible are at this 
 moment hastening to their accomplish- 
 ment ; and it is this vvay, I apprehend, that 
 the prophecy of my text may be indebted 
 for its speedier fulfilment to the agency of 
 men selecting this as the assigned field on 
 which their philanthropy shall expatiate. 
 Were each individual member of such a 
 scheme to prosecute his own walk, and 
 come forward with his own peculiar con- 
 tribution, the fruit of the united labours of 
 all would be one of the finest collections of 
 christian eloquence, and of enlightened mo- 
 rals, and of sound political philosophy, that 
 ever was presented to the world. I could 
 not fasten on another cause more fitted to 
 call forth such a variety of talent, and to 
 rally around it so many of the generous 
 and accomplished sons of humanity, and to 
 give each of them a devotedness, and a 
 power far beyond whatever could be sent 
 mto the hearts of enthusiasts, by the mere 
 impulse of literary ambition. 
 
 Let one take up the question of war in its 
 principle, and make the full weight of his 
 moral severity rest upon it, and upon all 
 its abominations. Let another take up the 
 question of war in its consequences, and 
 bring his every power of graphical descrip- 
 tion to the task of presenting an awakened 
 public with an impressive detail of its cruei- 
 
 25 
 
 ties and its horrors. Let another neutralize 
 the poetry of war, and dismantle it of alh 
 those bewitciiing splendours, which the hand 
 of misguided genius has thrown over it. 
 Let another teacli the world a truer, and 
 more magnanimous path to national glory, 
 than any country of the world has yet 
 walked in. Let another tell with irresisti- 
 ble argument, how the christian ethics of a 
 nation is at one witii the christian flhics of 
 its humblest individual. Let another bring 
 all the resources of his political science to 
 unfold the vast energies of defensive war, 
 and show, that instead of that ceaseless 
 jealousy and disquietude, wliicli are ever 
 keeping alive the flame of hostility among 
 the nations, each may wait in prepared se- 
 curity, till the first footstep of an invader 
 shall be the signal for mustering around 
 the standard ol its outraged rights, all the 
 steel, and spirit, and patriotism of the 
 country. Let another pour the light of mo- 
 dern speculation into the mysteries of trade 
 and prove that not a single war has been 
 undertaken for any of its objects, where the 
 millions and the millions more which were 
 lavished on the cause, have not all been 
 cheated away from us by the phantom of 
 an imaginary interest. This may look to 
 many like the Utopian ism of a romantic 
 anticipation — but I shall never despair of 
 the cause of truth addressed to a christian 
 public, when the clear light of principle 
 can be brought to every one of its positions, 
 and when its practical and conclusive es- 
 tabhshment forms one of the most distinct of 
 Heaven's prophecies — "that men shall beat 
 their swords into plough-shares, and their 
 spears into pruning-hooks — and that nation 
 shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
 shall they learn the art of war any more." 
 
THE DUTY 
 
 OF 
 
 GIVING AN IMMEDIATE DILIGENCE TO THE BUSINESS OF 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 BEING AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE PARISH OF KILMANY. 
 
 When one writes a letter to an intimate, 
 and a much loved friend, he never thinks of 
 the graces of the composition. He unbosoms 
 himself in a style of perfect freeness and sim- 
 plicity.^ He gives way to the kindly affec- 
 tions of his heart, and though there may be 
 many touches of tenderness in his perform- 
 ance, it is not because he aims at touches of 
 any kind, but because all the tenderness that 
 is written, is the genuine and the artless 
 transcript of all the tenderness that is felt. 
 Now conceive for a moment, that he wrote 
 his letter under the consciousness that it 
 was to be broadly exhibited before the eye 
 of tiie public, this would immediately ope- 
 rate as a heavy restraint upon him. A man 
 would much rather pour the expression of 
 his friendship into the private ear of him 
 who was the object of it, than he would do 
 it under the full stare of a numerous com- 
 pany. And I, my brethren, could my time 
 have allowed it, would much rather' have 
 written my earnest and longing aspiration 
 for the welfare of you all by a private letter 
 to each individual, than by this general 
 Address, which necessarily exposes to the 
 wide theatre of the public all that I feel, and 
 all that I utter on the subject of ray affec- 
 tionate regard for you. 
 
 It were better, then, for the exercise to 
 which I have now set myself, that I shut 
 out all idea of the public ; and never, with- 
 in the whole recollection of my life, was I 
 less disposed to foster that idea. It may 
 be observed, that the blow of some great 
 and calamitous visitation brings a kind of 
 insensibility along with it. I ought not to 
 lament my withdrawment from you as a 
 calamity, but it has-had all the effect of a 
 calamity upon me. I am removed from 
 those objects which habitually interested 
 my heart, and, for a time, it refuses to be 
 interested in other objects. I am placed at 
 
 a distance from that scene to which I was 
 most alive, and I feel a deadness to every 
 other scene. The people who are now 
 around me, carry an unquestionable kind- 
 ness in their bosoms, and vie with one an- 
 other in tlie expression of it. I can easily 
 perceive that there exists abundantly among 
 them all the constituents of a highly inter- 
 esting neighbourhood, and it may look cold 
 and ungrateful in me that I am not interest- 
 ed. But it takes a time before the heart can 
 attune itself to the varieties of a new situa- 
 tion. It is ever recurring to the more fa- 
 miliar scenes of other days. The present 
 ministers no enjoyment, and in looking to 
 the past the painful circumstance is, that 
 while tlie fancy will not be kept from stray- 
 ing to that neighbourhood which exercises 
 over it all the power of a much-loved home, 
 the idea that it is home no longer comes 
 with dread reality upon the mind, and turns 
 the whole to bitterness. 
 
 With a heart thus occupied, I do not feel 
 that the admission of the public into our 
 conference will be any great restraint upon 
 me. I shall speak to you as if they were 
 not present, and I do not conceive that they 
 can take a great interest in what I say, be- 
 cause I have no time for the full and ex- 
 plicit statement of principles. I have this 
 advantage with you that I do not have with 
 others, that witla you I can afford to be less 
 explicit. I presume upon your recollec- 
 tions of what I have, for some time, been 
 in the habit of addressing to you, and flat- 
 ter myself that you may enter into a train 
 of observation which to others may appear 
 dark, and abrupt, and unconnected. In 
 penning this short Address, I follow the im- 
 pulse of my regard for j'ou. You will re- 
 ceive it with indulgence, as a memorial 
 from one who loves you, who is e'er with 
 3'ou in heart, though not in person ; who 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 195 
 
 classes among the dearest of his recollec- 
 tions, the tranquil enjoyments he has had 
 in your neighbourhood ; who carries upon 
 his memory the faithful image of its fields 
 and of its families ; and whose prayers for 
 you all is, that you may so grow in the 
 fruits of our common faith, as to be made 
 meet for that unfading inheritance where 
 sorrow and separation are alike unknown. 
 
 Were I to sit down for the purpose of 
 drawing out a list of all the actions which 
 may be called sinful, it would be long be- 
 fore I could complete the enumeration. 
 Nay, I can conceive, that by adding one 
 peculiarity after another, the variety may 
 be so lengthened out as to make the attempt 
 impossible. Lying, and stealing, and break- 
 ing the Sabbath, and speaking evil one of an- 
 other, these are all so many sinful actions ; 
 but circumstances may be conceived which 
 make one kind of lying different fom an- 
 other, and one kind of theft different from 
 another, and one kind of evil speaking 
 different from another, and in this way the 
 number of sinful actions may be greatly 
 swelled out ; and should we attempt to take 
 the amount, they may be like the host 
 which no man could number, and every 
 sinner, realizing one of these varieties, may 
 wear his own peculiar complexion, and 
 have a something about him, which marks 
 him out, and signalizes him from all the 
 other sinners by whom he is surrounded. 
 
 Yet, amid all this variety of visible as- 
 pect, there is one summary expression to 
 which all sin may be reduced. There is 
 one principle which, if it always existed in 
 the lieart, and were always acted upon in 
 the life, would entirely destroy the exis- 
 tence of sin, and the very essence of sin 
 lies in the want of this one principle. Sin 
 is a want of conformity to the will of God ; 
 and were a desire to do the will of God at 
 all times the overruling principle of the 
 heart and conduct, there would be no sin. 
 It is this want of homage to him and to his 
 authority, which gives to sin its essential 
 character. The evil things coming out of 
 the heart, which is the residence of this evil 
 principle, may be exceedingly various, and 
 may impart a very different complexion to 
 different individuals. This complexion may 
 be more or less displeasing to the outward 
 eye. The evil speaker may look to us more 
 hateful than the voluptuary, the man of 
 cruelty than the man of profaneness, the 
 breaker of his word than the breaker of the 
 Sabbath. 1 believe it will generally be found, 
 that the sin which inflicts the more visible 
 and immediate harm upon men, is, in the 
 eye of men, the more hatefnl sin. There 
 is a readiness to execrate falsehood, and 
 calumny, and oppression ; and along with 
 this readiness there is an indulgence for 
 the good-hnmoured failings of him who is 
 the slave of luxury, and makes a god of his 
 
 pleasure, and spends his days in all the 
 thoughtlessness of one who walks in the 
 counsel of his own heart, and in the sight 
 of his own eyes, provided that his love of 
 society leads him to share with others the 
 enjoyment of all these gratifications, and 
 his wealth enables him, and his moral 
 honesty inclines him, to defray the expense 
 of them. 
 
 Behold, then, one frequent source of de- 
 lusion. He whose sins are less hateful to 
 the world than those of others, wraps up 
 himself in a kind of security. I wrong no 
 man. I have a heart that can be moved by 
 the impulses of compassion. I carry in my 
 bosom a lively sentiment of indignation at 
 the tale of perfidy or violence ; and surely 
 I may feel a satisfaction which others have 
 no title to feel, who are guilty of that from 
 which my nature recoils with a generous 
 abhorrence. He forgets all the while, that 
 sin, in its essential character, may have as 
 full and firm a possession of his heart, as 
 of the man's with whom he is comparing 
 himself: that there may be an entire dis- 
 ownal and forgetfulness of God ; that not 
 one particle of reverence, or of acknowledg- 
 ment, may be given to the Being with 
 whom he has to do ; that whatever he may 
 be in the eye of his neighbour, in the eye 
 of him who seeth not as nian seeth, he is 
 guilty; that, walking just as he would have 
 done though there had been no divine 
 government whatever, he is a rebel to that 
 government; and that amid all the com- 
 placency of his own feelings, and all the 
 applause and good liking of his acquaint- 
 ances, he wears all the deformity of rebelr 
 liousness in the eye of every spiritual 
 being, who looks at the state of his heart, 
 and passes judgment upon him by those 
 very principles which are to try him at the 
 great day when the secrets of all hearts 
 shall be laid open. 
 
 If this were kept in view, it would lead 
 to a more enlightened estimate of the cha- 
 racter of man, than man in the thought- 
 lessness and unconcern of his natural state 
 ever forms. It would lead us to see, that 
 under all the hues and varieties of charac- 
 ter, diversified as they are by constitutional 
 taste, and the power of circumstances, there 
 lurks one deep and universal disease, and 
 that is the disease of a mind labouring un- 
 der alienation from God, and without any 
 practical sense of what is dire to him. You 
 will all admit it to be true, that the heart of 
 a man may be under the full operation of 
 this deadly poison, while the man himself 
 has a constitutional taste for the pleasures 
 of social intercourse. You see nothing un- 
 likely or impossible in this combination. 
 Now I want you to go along with me, when 
 I carry my assertion still further; and sure 
 r am that experience bears me out when I 
 say, that the heart of a man may be under 
 
196 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 the full operation of a dislike or iiidifTc'r- 
 cnce to (lod, while the man himself has 
 a constitutional abhorrence at cruelty, a 
 constitutional repugnance to fraud, a con- 
 stitutional antipathy to what is uncour- 
 tcous in manners, or harsh and unfeeling 
 in conversation, a constitutional gentleness 
 of character; or, to sum up the whole in 
 one clause, a man may be free from many 
 things which give him a moral hatefulness 
 in the eye of others, and he may have 
 many things which throw a moral loveli- 
 ness around him, and tiie soul be under the 
 entire dominion of that carelessness about 
 God, which gives to sin its essential cha- 
 racter. And upon him, even upon him, 
 graceful and engaging as he may be by the 
 lustre of his many accomplishments, the 
 saying of the Bible does not fail of being 
 realised, that " the heart of man is deceitful 
 above all things, and desperately wicked; 
 who can know it?" 
 
 And thus it is, that our great and ulti- 
 mate aim in the reformation of a sinner, is 
 the reformation of his heart. There may 
 be many reformations short of this, and in 
 which many are disposed to rest with de- 
 ceitful complacency. I can conceive, that 
 the man who formerly stole may steal no 
 more, not because he is now sanctified, 
 and feels the obligation of religious princi- 
 ple, but because he is now translated into 
 better circumstances, and by the power of 
 example, has contracted tliat tone of ho- 
 nourable feeling which exists among the 
 upper classes of society. Here, then, is a 
 reformation of the conduct, while the heart, 
 in respect of that which constitutes its ex- 
 ceeding sinfulness, is no better than before. 
 The old leaven of ungodliness may over- 
 spread its every desire, and its every affec- 
 tion ; and while the outer man has been 
 washed of one of its visible deformities, the 
 inner man may still persist in its unmind- 
 fulness of God ; and the pollution of this 
 greatest and vilest of all moral turpitude, 
 may adhere to it as obstinately as ever. 
 
 Now, it appears to me, that these views, 
 true in themselves, and deserving to be 
 carried along with us through every inch 
 of our religious progress, have often been 
 practically misapplied. I can conceive an 
 inquirer under the influence of these views, 
 to fall into such a process of reflection as 
 the following : ' If the outer conduct be of 
 no estimation in the sight of God, unless it 
 stand connected with the actings of a holy 
 principle in the heart, let us begin with the 
 heart, and from the establishment of a holy 
 principle there, p^irity of conduct will fol- 
 low as an effect of course. Let us beware 
 of laying an early stress upon the doings of 
 the outer man, lest we and others should 
 have our eye turned from the reformation 
 of the inner man, as the main and almost 
 the exclusive object of a Christian's ambi- 
 
 tion. Let us be fearful how we urge such 
 and such visible reformations, either upon 
 ourselves or those around us, lest they be 
 made to stand in the place of tliat grand 
 renewing process, by which the soul, dead 
 in trespa-sses and sins, is made alive unto 
 God. Let us labour to impress the neces- 
 sity of this process, and seeing the utter 
 inability of man to change his own heart, 
 let us turn his eye from any exertions of 
 his own, to that fulness which is in C'hrist 
 Jesus, through whom alone he can obtain 
 the forgiveness of all his sins, and such a 
 measure of power resting upon him, as 
 carries along with it all tlie purifying in- 
 fluences of a spiritual reformation. In the 
 mean time, let us take care how we speak 
 about good works. Let the very mention 
 of them put us into the defensive attitude 
 of coldness and suspicion ; and instead of 
 giving our earnestness or our energy to 
 them, let us press upon ourselves and 
 others the exercises of that faith, by which 
 alone we are made the workmanship of God, 
 and created imto such good works as he 
 hath ordained that we should walk in them.' 
 Now, there is a great deal of truth through- 
 out the whole of this train of sentiment ; 
 but truth contemplated under such an as- 
 pect, and turned to such a purpose, as has 
 the effect of putting an inquirer into a prac- 
 tice attitude, whicii appears to me to be 
 unscriptural and wrong. I would not have 
 him keep his hand for a single moment 
 from tlie doing of that which is obviously 
 right. I wo\ild not have him to refrain 
 from grappling inimediately with every 
 one sin which is within the reach of his 
 exertions. 1 would not have him to incur 
 the delay of one instant in ceasing to do 
 that which is evil ; and I conceive that it is 
 not till this is begun that he will learn to 
 do that which is well. It ought not to re- 
 strain the energy of his immediate doing, 
 that he is told how doings are of no ac- 
 count, unless they are the doings of one 
 who has gone through a previous regenera- 
 tion. This ought not to keep him from 
 doing. It should only lead him to com- 
 bine with tlie prescribed doing, an earnest 
 aspiring after a cleaner heart, and a better 
 spirit than he yet finds himself to have. It 
 is very true, tliat a man may do an out- 
 wardly good thing, and rest in what he has 
 done. But it is as true, that a man may do 
 the outwardly good thing he is bidden do, 
 and, instead of resting, may look forward 
 with diligent striving, and earnest, humble 
 prayer, to some greater things than this. 
 Now, this last my brethren, is the att'tude 
 I want to put you into. Let the thief give 
 up his stealing at this moment. Let the 
 drunkard give up his intemperance. Let 
 the evil speaker give up his calumnies. Let 
 the doer of all that is obviously wrong 
 break off his sins, and turn him to the 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 197 
 
 doing of all that is obviously right. Let 
 no one thing, not even the speculations of 
 orthodoxy,* be suffered to stand a barrier 
 against your entrance into the field of iuj- 
 mediate exertion. I raise the very first 
 blow of my trumpet against the visible ini- 
 quities which I see to be in you. and if 
 there be any one obviously right thing you 
 have hitherto neglected, I will not consume 
 one particle of time before I call upon you 
 to do it. 
 
 It is quite in vain to say that all this is 
 not called for, or tliat I am now spending 
 my strength and your time in combating 
 an error which has no practical existence. 
 V"ou must be quite familiarised with the 
 melancholy spectacle of a zealous professor 
 mourning over tlie sinfulness of his heart, 
 and, at the same time putting forth his 
 hand, without one sigh of remorse, to what 
 is sinful in ordinarj^ conduct. Have you 
 never witnessed one, who could speak evil 
 of his neighbour, and was at the same time 
 trenching among what he thought the spe- 
 culations of orthodoxy, and made the utter 
 corruption of the soul of man one of these 
 speculations? Is it not enough to say that 
 he is a mere speculative Christian? for the 
 ■-ery same thing may be detected in tlie 
 practice of one who leels a real longing to 
 6e delivered from the power of that sin, 
 which he grieves has such an entire do- 
 minion over him. And yet, strange to tell, 
 there is many an obvious and every-day sin, 
 which is not watched against, which is not 
 struggled against, and the commission of 
 which gives no uneasiness whatever. The 
 man is, as it were, so much occupied with 
 the sinfulness of his heart, that he neitlier 
 feels nor attends to the sinfulness of his con- 
 duct. He wants to go methodically to work. 
 He wants to begin at the beginning, and lie 
 forms his estimate of what the beginning is 
 upon the arrangements of human specula- 
 tions. 
 
 It sounds very plausibly, that as out of 
 the heart are the issues of life, the work of 
 an inquiring Christian must begin there; 
 but the mischief I complain of is, that in 
 the first prosecution of this work, months 
 or years may be consumed ere the purified 
 fountain send forth its streams, or the re- 
 pentance he is aspiring after tell on the 
 plain and palpable doings of his ordinary 
 conduct. Hence, my brethren, the morti- 
 fying exliihition of great zeal, and much 
 talk, and diligent canvassing and conversing 
 about the abstract principles of the chris- 
 
 * Sorry should I be, if a term expressive of right 
 notions on the most interesting of all subjects, 
 were used by me vfith a levity at all calculated to 
 beget an indifference to the soundness of your re- 
 ligious opinion, or to divert your most earnest at- 
 tention from those incjuiries, which have for their 
 object the true will, and the true way of God for 
 the salvation of men. 
 
 tian faith, combined with what is visible in 
 the christian practice, being at a dead stand, 
 and not one inch of sensible progress being 
 made in any one thing which the eye can 
 witness, or the hand can lay a tangible 
 hold upon. The man is otherwise employed. 
 He is busy with the first principles of the 
 subject. He still goes on with his wonted 
 peevishness within doors, and his wonted 
 dishonesties without doors. He has not yet 
 come to these matters. He is taken up with 
 laying and labouring at the foundation. The 
 heart is the great subject of his anxiety; 
 and in the busy exercise of mourning, and 
 confessing, and praying, and studying the 
 right management of his heart, he may take 
 up months or years before he come to the 
 deformities of his outward and ordinary 
 conduct. I will venture to go farther, my 
 brethren, and assert, that if this be the track 
 he is on, it will be a great chance if he ever 
 come to them at all. To the end of his days 
 he may be a talking, and inquiring, and 
 speculating, and I doubt not, along with all 
 this, a church-going and ordinance-loving 
 Christian. But I am mucli afraid that he is, 
 practically speaking, not in the way to the 
 solid attainments of a Cliristian, M'hose light 
 shines before men. All that meets the eye 
 of daily observers, may have undergone no 
 change whatever, and the life of the poor 
 man may be nothing better than the dream 
 of a delusive and bewildering speculation...- 
 Now, it is very true that, agreeably to the 
 remarks with which I prefaced this argu- 
 ment, the great and ultimate aim of all re- 
 formation is to reform the heart, and to 
 bring it into such a state of principle and 
 desire, that God may be glorified in soul 
 and in spirit, as well as in body. This is 
 the point that is ever to be sought after, and 
 ever to be pressed forward to. Under a sense 
 of his deficiencies from this point, a true 
 Christian will read diligently, that he may 
 learn the gospel method of arriving at it. 
 He will pray diligently that the clean heart 
 may be created, and the right spirit may be 
 renewed within him. The earnestness of 
 his attention to this matter will shut hirn up 
 more and more into the faith of that perfect 
 sacrifice, which his short-comings from a 
 holy and heart-searching law will ever re- 
 mind him of, as the firm and the only ground 
 of his acceptance with God. The same ho- 
 nest reliance on the divine testimony, which 
 leads him to close with the doctrine of the 
 atonement, and to rejoice in it, will also lead 
 him to close with the doctrine of sanctifica- 
 tion, and diligently to aspire after it. Now, 
 in the business of so aspiring after this ob- 
 ject, it is not enough that he read diligently 
 in the Word ; it is not enough that he pray 
 diligently for the Spirit. These are two in- 
 gredients in the business of seeking after 
 his object, but they are not the only ones ; 
 and what I lament is, that a fear about the 
 
198 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 entireness of his orthodoxy leads many a 
 zealous inquirer to look coldly and askance 
 at another ingredient in this business. He 
 should not only read diligently, and pray 
 diligently, but he should do diligently every 
 one right thing that is within his reach, and 
 that he finds himself to have strength for. 
 
 Any one author who talks of the insig- 
 nificance of doings, in such a way as practi- 
 cally to restrain an inquirer from vigorous!}- 
 and immediately entering upon the perform- 
 ance of them, misleads that inquirer from 
 the scriptural method, by which we are di- 
 rected to a greater measure of light and of 
 holiness than we are yet in possession of 
 He detaches one essential ingredient from 
 the business of seeking. He may set the 
 spirit of his reader a roaming over some 
 field of airy speculation ; but he works no 
 such salutary effect upon his spirit, as 
 evinces itself by any one visible or substan- 
 tial reformation. I have often and often 
 attempted to press this lesson upon you, my 
 brethren ; and I bear you testimiony, that, 
 while a resistance to practical preaching 
 has been imputed to the zealous professors 
 of orthodoxy, you listened with patience, 
 and I trust not without fruit, when address- 
 ing you as if you had just begun to stir 
 yourselves in the matter of your salvation, 
 I ranked it among my preliminary instruc- 
 tions, that 5'ou should cease from the evil 
 of your doings ; that you should give up all 
 that you know to be wrong in your ordi- 
 nary conduct ; that the thief should restrain 
 himself from stealing, the liar from false- 
 hood, the evil speaker from backbiting, the 
 slothful labourer in the field from eye-ser- 
 vice, the faithless housemaid in the family 
 from all purloining and all idleness. 
 
 The subterfuges of hypocrisy are endless; 
 and if it can find one in a system of theo- 
 logy, it will be as glad of it from that quar- 
 ter «J from any other. Some there are who 
 deafen the impressions of all these direct 
 and immediate admonitions, by saying, that 
 before all these doings are insisted on, we 
 must lay well and labour well at the foun- 
 dation of faith in Christ, without whom 
 we can do nothing. The truth, that with- 
 out Christ we can do nothing, is unquestion- 
 able ; but it would take many a paragraph 
 to expose its want of application to the use 
 that is thus made of it. But to cut short 
 this plea of indolence for delaying the pain- 
 ful work of surrendering all that is vicious 
 in conduct ; let me put it to your common 
 sense whether a thief would not, and could 
 not give up stealing for a week, if he had 
 the reward of a fortune waiting him at the 
 end of it ; whether, .upon the same reward, 
 an evil speaker could not, for the same time, 
 impose a restraint upon his lips, and the 
 slothful servant become a most pains-taking 
 and diligent worker, and the liar maintain 
 an undeviating truth throughout all his con- 
 
 versations. Each of these would find him 
 self to have strength for these things, were 
 the inducement of a certain temporal re- 
 ward held out, or the dread of a certain 
 temporal punishment were made to hang 
 over him Now, for the temporal punish- 
 ment, I substitute the call of, " Flee from 
 the coming wrath." Let this call have the 
 eifect it should have, and the effect it actually 
 does have, on many who are not warped 
 by a misleading speculation, and it will 
 make them stir up such strength as they 
 possess, and give up, indeed, much of their 
 actual misconduct. This effect it had in the 
 days of John the Eaptist. People, on his 
 call, gave up their violence and their extor- 
 tions, and the evil of many of their doings, 
 and were thus put into what God in his 
 wisdom counted a fit state of preparation 
 for the Saviour. If there was any thing in 
 the revelation of the Gospel calculated to 
 supersede this call of, "Cease you from the 
 evil of your doings," then I could under- 
 stand the indifference, or the positive hos- 
 tility of zealous pretenders to the work of 
 addressinsr practical exhortation to inquirers 
 at the very outset of their progress. But so 
 far from being superseded by any thing 
 that the Gospel lays before us, the Author, 
 and the first preachers of the Gospel, just 
 took up the lesson of John, and at the very 
 commencement of their ministry did thej' 
 urgeit upon people to turn them from the 
 evil of their doings. Repent and believe the 
 Gospel, says our Saviour. Repent and turn 
 unto God, and do works meet for repent- 
 ance, saj's the apostle Paul. And there 
 must be something wrong, my brethren, if 
 you resist me urging it upon you, to give 
 up at this moment, even though it should 
 be the first moment of your concern about 
 salvation, to give up all that is obviously 
 wrong; to turn you to all that is obviously 
 right; to grapple with every sin you can 
 lay your hand upon ; and if h be true, in 
 point of experience and common sense, that 
 many a misdeed mnj be put away from 
 you on the allurement of some temporal 
 reward ; then if you have faith in the reality 
 of eternal things, the hope of an escape from 
 the coming wrath may and will tell imme- 
 diately upon you. and we shall see among 
 j'ou a stir, and a diligence, and a doing, and 
 a visible reformation. 
 
 It is a great matter to chase away all mys- 
 ticism from the path by which a sinner is 
 led unto God ; and it is to be lamented that 
 many a speculation of many a respected di- 
 vine, has the effect of throwing a darkening 
 cloud of perplexity over the very entrance 
 of this path. I tell you a very plain thing, 
 and, if it be true, it is surely of importance 
 that you should know it, when I tell you, 
 that if you are a servant, and are visited 
 with a desire after salvation, then a faithful 
 performance of your daily task is a step 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 199 
 
 without which the object you aim at is un- 
 attainable. If you are a son, a more punc- 
 tual fulfilment of your parent's bidding is 
 another step. If you are a neighbour, a 
 more civil and obliging deportment to those 
 around you is another step. If you are a 
 dealer, the adoption of a just weight and a 
 just measure is another step. There are 
 some who, afraid of your attempting to get 
 acceptance with God by the merit of your 
 own doings, would not venture to urge all 
 this at the outset, lest they should lead you 
 to rest on a delusive ground of confidence. 
 They would try to get a perfect and a clear 
 understanding of the right ground of ac- 
 ceptance established, previous to the use of 
 any such urgency; and then, upon this 
 principle being well laid within you, they 
 might take the liberty of telling you your 
 duty. Their fearfulness upon tliis point 
 forms a very striking contrast to the free, 
 and unembarrassed, and energetic manner, 
 in which the Bible, both of the Old and 
 New Testament, calls on every man who 
 comes within the reach of a hearing, to 
 cease from all sin, and turn him to all 
 righteousness. In following its example, 
 let us be fearless of all consequences. It 
 may not suit the artificial processes of some 
 of our systems, nor fall in with the order 
 of their well-weighed and carefully arranged 
 articles, to tell at the very outset of those 
 obvious reformations which I am now 
 pressing upon you. But sure I am, that an 
 apostle would have felt no difficulty on the 
 subject ; nor whatever the visible sin which 
 deformed you, or whatever the visible act 
 of obedience in which you were deficient, 
 would he have been restrained from giving 
 his immediate energy to the work of calling 
 on you to abstain from the one and to do 
 the other. 
 
 The disciples of John could not have 
 such a clear view of the ground of accept- 
 ance before God, as an enlightened disciple 
 of the apostles. Yet the want of this clear 
 view did not prevent them from being right 
 subjects for John's preparatory instructions. 
 And what were these instructions? Sol- 
 diers were called on to give up their vio- 
 lence, and publicans their exactions, and 
 rich men the confinement of their own 
 wealth to their own gratification ; and will 
 any man hesitate for a moment to decide 
 whether those who turned away from 
 the directions of the forerunner, or those 
 who followed them, were in the likeliest 
 state for receiving light and impro^'ement 
 from the subsequent teaching of the Sa- 
 viour ? 
 
 But there is one difference between them 
 and us. The whole of Christ's teaching, 
 as put down in the word of God, is already 
 before us. Now what precise effect should 
 this have upon the nature of an initiatory 
 address to sinners? The right answer to 
 
 this question will confirm, or it will demo 
 lish the whole of our preceding argument. 
 The alone ground of acceptciiice, is the 
 righteousness of Christ imputed to all who 
 believe. This truth deserves to be taken 
 up, and urged immediately in the hearing 
 of all who are within the reach of the 
 preacher's voice. Till this truth be re- 
 ceived, there should be no rest to the sin- 
 ner, there is no reconciliation with God, nor 
 will he attain that consummation of holi- 
 ness, without which there can be no meet- 
 ness for the enjoyment of heaven. Bu 
 some are readier to receive this truth than 
 others. The reforming publicans and har- 
 lots of John were in a state of greater readi- 
 ness to receive this truth, than either the 
 Pharisees, or those publicans and harlots 
 who, unmindful of John, still persisted in 
 their iniquities. And who will be in greater 
 readiness to receive this truth in the present 
 day ? Will it be the obstinate and deter- 
 minate doers of all that is sinful, and that 
 too in the face of a call, that they should do 
 works meet for repentance? Or will it be 
 those who, under the influence of this call, 
 do what the disciples of John did before 
 them, turn them from the evil of their ma- 
 nifest iniquities, and so give proof of their 
 earnestness in the way of salvation? It is 
 true that, along with such a call, we might 
 now urge a truth which even John could 
 not. But are we to suspend the call of 
 doing works meet for repentance, till this 
 truth be urged and established in the mind 
 of the hearer ? Surely, if God thought it 
 wise to ply sinners with a call to turn them 
 from the evil of their ways, befoix he fully 
 revealed to them the evangelical ground of 
 their acceptance, we may count it scriptural 
 and safe to ply them with this call at the 
 same time that we state to them the evan- 
 gelical ground of their acceptance. 
 
 It is true, that the statement may not be 
 comprehended all at once. It may be years 
 before it is listened to by the careless, before 
 it is rested in by the desponding, before the 
 comfort of it is at all felt or appropriated by 
 the doubting and melancholy inquirer. Now 
 what I contend for is, that during this in- 
 terval of time, these people may and ought 
 to be urged with the call of departing from 
 their iniquities. This very call was brouglit 
 to bear on the disciples of John, before the 
 ground of their acceptance was fully made 
 known to them ; and it might be brought to 
 bear on sinners now, even though it should 
 be before the ground of their acceptance be 
 fully understood by them. The effect of 
 this preparatory instruction in these days, 
 was to fit John's disciples for the subse- 
 quent revelation of Christ and his apostles. 
 It is true that we are in possession of that 
 doctrine which they only had the prospect 
 of. But it accords with experience, that 
 this doctrine might be addressed without 
 
200 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE IX THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 effect for years to men inquiring after sal- 
 vation. The doctrine of justifica.ion by the 
 righteousness of Christ, might be announced 
 in all its force, and in all its simplicity, to 
 men who hold out against it ; and you 
 would surely say of them, that the way of 
 the Lord had not been prepared to their 
 minds, nor his paths made straight. Now 
 we read of such a preparation set agoing 
 in behalf of men to whom this doctrine had 
 not yet been revealed. Will this prepara- 
 tion be altogether ineffectual in behalf of 
 men, by whom this doctrine is not j-et un- 
 derstood ? Surely it is quite evident, that 
 in the days of John, men who, in obedience 
 to his call, were struggling with their sins, 
 were in a likelier way for receiving those 
 larger measures of truth, which were after- 
 ward revealed, than they who, in the face 
 of that call, were obstinately and presump- 
 tuously retaining them. Suffer us to avail 
 ourselves of the same advantage now. You, 
 my brethren, who, in obedience to the calls 
 that ha\e been sounded in your hearing, are 
 struggling with your sins, are in a likelier 
 way for receiving those larger measures of 
 truth which are now revealed, than those 
 of you who feel no earnestness, and are 
 making no endeavours upon the subject. 
 While, therefore, I announce to you, in the 
 most distinct terms, that you will not be 
 saved unless you are found in the righteou.s- 
 ness of Christ, this will not restrain me at 
 the very same time from doing what John 
 did. You know how his disciples were 
 prepared for the baptism of the Holy Ghost, 
 who guides unto all truth ; and while I do 
 not think that any one point of time is too 
 early for offering Christ to you, in all the 
 benefits of his sacrifice, in all the imputed 
 merits of his perfect righteousness, in all 
 the privileges which he has proclaimed and 
 purchased for believers; all I contend for 
 is, that neither is there any point of time too 
 early for letting you know, that all sin must 
 be abandoned, for calling on you to enter 
 into the work of struggling with all sin im- 
 mediately, for warning you, that while you 
 persist in those sinful actions which you 
 might give up, and would give up, were 
 a temporal inducement lield out to you, I 
 have no evidence of your receiving benefit 
 i'rom the word of salvation that I am sound- 
 mg in your ears. There is surely room for 
 telling sinners more than one thing, in the 
 course of the very earliest lesson that is laid 
 before them. It is an exclusive deference 
 to the one point, and the one principle, and 
 the bringing of every thing else into a forced 
 subordination upon it,^which has enfeebled 
 many an attempt to turn sinners to Christ 
 from their iniquities. I can surely tell a man, 
 that unless he is walkin? in a particular line, 
 he will not reach the object he is aiming at; 
 and I can tell him at the same time, that 
 neither will he reach it, unless he have his 
 
 i eyes open, and he look upon the object. On 
 these two unquestionable truths, I bid him 
 I both walk and look at the same time, and 
 I at the same time he can do both. In the 
 i same manner I may tell a man, that unless 
 he give up stealing he shall not reach hea- 
 : ven ; and I may also tell him, that unless 
 he accept, by faith, Christ as his alone Sa- 
 viour, he shall not reach hea\en. On these 
 two truths I found two practical directions; 
 
 I and I must be convinced, that the doing of 
 i the one hinders the doing of the other, ere 
 
 I desist from that which the first teachers 
 of Christianity did before me, — proclaim 
 Christ, and within the compass of the same 
 breathing, call on men to do works meet 
 for repentance. 
 
 In the order of time, the practical in- 
 structions of John went before the full an- 
 nouncement of the doctrines of salvation. 
 
 I I do not think, however, that this order is 
 I authoritative upon us; but far less do I 
 
 think that our full possession of the doc- 
 trine of salvation confers any authority 
 upon us for reversing the historical process 
 of the New Testament. I bring all the 
 truths which the teachers of these days ad- 
 dressed to the sinners among whom they 
 labour, to bear immediately upon you sin- 
 ners now. And while I call upon you to 
 turn from the evil of your ways, I also warn 
 you of tlie danger of putting awa\' from you 
 the otlfered Saviour, or refusing all your 
 confidence m that name than which there 
 is no other given under heaven whereby 
 rnen can be saved. 
 
 If by faith be meant the embracmg of 
 one doctrine, then I can understand how 
 some might be alarmed lest an outset so 
 practical should depose faith from the pre- 
 cedency which belongs to it. But if by 
 faith be meant a reliance upon the whole 
 testimony of Scripture, then the precedency 
 of faith is not at all broken in upon. If, on 
 the call of " Flee from the coming wrath," 
 I get you to struggle it with v'our more pal- 
 pable iniquities, I see in that very struggle 
 the operation of a faith in the divine testi- 
 mony about the realities of an invisible 
 world, and I have reason to bless God that 
 he has wrought in you what I am sure no 
 arsuraent and no vehemence of mine could, 
 without the power of his Spirit, ever have 
 accomplislied. Those of you who have thus 
 evinced one exercise of faith, I look upon 
 as more hopeful subjects for another exer- 
 cise, than those of you who remain trenched 
 in obstinacy and unconcern. And v.hen I 
 tell the former, that nothing will get them 
 acceptance with God. but the mediation of 
 Christ offered to all who come, it will be to 
 them, and not to the latter, that I sliould 
 look for an earnest desire after tlie offered 
 Saviour. 'Wlien I tell them that tliey aflfront 
 God by not receiving the record which he 
 gives of his Son, it will be to them and 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 •201 
 
 not to the others, that I shall look for a 
 submissive and thankful acquiescence in the 
 whole of his salvation ; and thus piissing 
 with the dociUty of little ciiildren from one 
 lesson of the Bible to another ; these are the 
 people who, working because God so bids 
 them, will count that a man is not justified 
 by the works of the law, because God so 
 tells them; these are the people who, not 
 offended by what Christ tcfld them at the 
 outset, that he who cometh unto him must 
 forsake all, will evince their willingness to 
 forsake all, by turning from their iniquities, 
 and coming unto Christ ; these are the peo- 
 ple who, while they do what they mav' 
 with their hands, will think that while their 
 heart is not directed to the love of God, they 
 have done nothing ; and counting it a faith- 
 ful saying, that without Christ they can do 
 nothing, they will take to him as their sanc- 
 tifier as well as their Saviour, and having 
 received him as the Lord their righteous- 
 ness, will ever repaid to him and keep by 
 him as the Lord their strength. 
 
 While I lu-ge upon you the doing of 
 every obviously right thing, you will not 
 conceive of me that I want you to rest in 
 this doing. I trust that my introductory 
 paragraphs may convince you how much 
 of this doing may be gone through, and 
 yet the mighty object of the obedience of 
 the willing heart might be unreached and 
 unaccomplislied. Not to urge the doing, lest 
 you should rest, would be to deviate from 
 scriptural example. And again, to urge the 
 doing, and leave you to rest, would be also 
 to deviate from scriptural example. John 
 the Baptist urged the doing of many things, 
 and his faithful disciples set themselves to 
 the performance of what he bade them 
 do. They entered immediately on the field 
 of active and diligent service. But did they 
 stop short I No ; out of the very preach- 
 ing of their master did they obtain a cau- 
 tion against resting ; and the same submis- 
 sive deference to his authority, in virtue of 
 which they were set a working, led them 
 also, along with their working at the things 
 which he set them to, to look forward to 
 greater things than these. He told them 
 expressly, that all his preaching was as no- 
 thing to the preaching of one who was to 
 come after him. They were diligent with 
 present things, but be assured that they 
 combined with this diligence the attitude 
 of looking forward to greater things. Is 
 this the attitude of men who place their 
 repose and their dependance upon the per- 
 formances on hand ? Was it not the atti- 
 tude of men walking in the way revealed 
 by a messenger from heaven, to the object 
 which this messenger pointed out to them? 
 I call on you to commence at this moment 
 an immediate struggle with all sin, and an 
 immediate striving after all righteousrfess ; 
 but I would not be completing even the 
 2G 
 
 lesson of John, and far less would I be 
 bringing forward the counsel of God, as 
 made known to us in his subsequent reve- 
 lation, were I to say any thing which led 
 you to stop short at those visible reforma- 
 tions, which formed the great burden of 
 John's practical addresses to his country- 
 men ; and therefore along with your do- 
 ing, and most diligently doing all that is 
 witliin your reach, I call on you to pray, 
 and most fervently and faithfully to pray 
 for that larger baptism of the Holy Ghost, 
 by w'hich your hearts may be cleansed 
 from all their corruptions, and you be en- 
 abled to render unto God all the purity of a 
 spiritual obedience. 
 
 I cannot expatiate within the limits of 
 this short address on the texts both of the 
 Old and New Testament, which serve to 
 establish, that the right attitude of a return- 
 ing sinner is what I have sometimes called 
 in your hearing, the compound attitude of 
 service and expectation. But I shall re- 
 peat a few of these texts, that they may 
 suggest what you have been in the habit 
 of hearing from me upon this subject. 
 " And Samuel spake to all the house of Is- 
 rael, saying, if ye do return unto the Lord 
 with all your hearts, then put away the 
 strange gods and Ashtaroth from among 
 you, and prepare your hearts unto the 
 Lord, and serve him only, and he will de- 
 liver you out of the hand of the Philistines. 
 Then the children of Israel did put away 
 Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the Lord 
 alone." " They will not frame their doings 
 to turn unto the Lord." " Thus saith the 
 Lord, keep ye judgment and do justice, for 
 my salvation is near to come, and my righ- 
 teousness to be revealed. Blessed is tht 
 man that doeth this, and the son of man 
 that layeth hold on it, that keepeth the 
 Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his 
 hand from doing evil." " Deal thy bread 
 to the hungry, and bring the poor that are 
 cast out into thy house. When thou seest 
 the naked, cover him, and hide not thy- 
 self from tliine own flesh. Then shall thy 
 light break forth as the mornin?, and thine 
 health shall spring forth speedily, and thy 
 righteousness shall go before thee ; the 
 glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward." 
 " He that hath my commandments and 
 keepeth them, he it is that loveth me, and 
 he that loveth me shall be loved of my Fa- 
 ther, and I will love him, and will manifest 
 myself unto him." " For whosoever hath, 
 to him shall be given, and he shall have 
 more abundance ; but whosoever hath not. 
 from him shall be taken away e\en tliat he 
 hath." "Whosoever, therefore, shall breaK 
 one of these least commandments, and shaU 
 teach men so, he shall be called the least in 
 the kingdom of heaven ; but uiiosoever 
 shall do and teach them, the same shall be 
 called great in the kingdom of heaven." 
 
202 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 'And we are witnesses of these things; 
 and so is also the Holy Ghost, whoni God 
 hath given to them that obey him." "Trust 
 in the Lord and do good." 
 
 But danger presses on us in every direc- 
 tion ; and iii the work of dividing the word 
 of truth, many, and very many, are tlie ob- 
 stacles whicli lie in the way of our doing 
 it rightly. "When a minister gives his 
 strength to one particular lesson, it often 
 carries in it the appearance of his neglect- 
 ing all the rest, and throwing into the 
 back ground other lessons of equal im- 
 portance. It might require the ministra- 
 tions of many years to do away this ap- 
 pearance. Sure I am, that I despair of 
 doing it away within the limits of this 
 short address to any but yourselves. You 
 know all that I have urged upon the ground 
 of your acceptance with God ; upon the 
 freeness of that offer which is by Christ 
 Jesus; upon the honest invitations which 
 every where abound in the Gospel, that all 
 who will, may take hold of it; upon the 
 necessity of being found by God not in 
 your own righteousness, but in tlie righ- 
 teousness which is of Christ ; upon the 
 helplessness of man, and how all the strug- 
 ghngs of his own unaided strength can 
 never carry him to the length of a spiritual 
 obedience ; upon the darkness and enmity 
 of his mind about the things of God, and 
 how this can never be dissolved, till he 
 who by nature stands afar off is brought 
 near by the blood of the atonement, and he 
 receives that repentance and that remis- 
 sion of sins, which Christ is exalted a 
 Prince and a Saviour to dispense to all who 
 believe in him. These are offers and doc- 
 trines wliich might be addressed, and ought 
 to be addressed immediately to all. But the 
 call I have been urging upon you through 
 the whole of this pamphlet, of " Cease ye 
 from your manifest transgressions," should 
 be addressed along with them. 
 
 Now, here lies the difficulty with many a 
 sincere lover of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 He feels a backwardness in urging this call, 
 lest it should some how or other impair 
 the freeness of tlie offer, or encroach upon 
 the singleness of tliat which is stated to be 
 our alone meritorious ground of acceptance 
 before God. In reply to this, let it be well 
 observeii, that tliough the offer be at all 
 times free, it is not at all times listened to ; 
 and though the only ground of acceptance 
 be that righteousness of Christ whicli is 
 unto all them and upon all them that be- 
 lieve, yet some are in likelier circumstances 
 for being brought to- this belief than others. 
 1'here is one class of hearers who are in a 
 greater state of readiness for being impress- 
 ed by the Gospel than another, — and I fear 
 that all the use has not been made of this 
 principle, which Scripture and experience 
 warrant us to do. Every attempt to work 
 
 man into a readmess for receiving the offer 
 has been discouraged, as if it carried in it a 
 reflection against the freeness of the offer 
 itself. The obedient disciples of John were 
 more prepared for the doctrines of grace, 
 than the careless hearers of this prophet ; 
 but their obedience did not confer any 
 claim of merit upon them, it only made 
 them more disposed to receive the good 
 tidings of that salvation which was alto- 
 gether of grace. A despiser of ordinances 
 is put into a likelier situation for receiving 
 the free offer of the Gospel, by being pre- 
 vailed upon to attend a clnircli where this 
 offer is urged upon his acceptance. His 
 attendance docs not impair the freeness of 
 the offer. Yet where is the man so warp- 
 ed by a misleading speculation, as to deny 
 that the doing of this previous to his union 
 with Christ, and preparatory to that union, 
 may be the very mean of the free offer be- 
 ing received. Again, it is the lesson both of 
 experience and of the Bible, that the young 
 are likelier subjects for religious instruc- 
 tion than the old. The free offer may and 
 ought to be addressed to both these cla.sses ; 
 but generally speaking, it is in point of 
 Aict more productive of good when ad- 
 dressed to the first class than the second. 
 And we do not say that youth confers any 
 meritorious title to salvation, nor do we 
 make any reflection on the freeness of the 
 offer, when we nrge it upon the young, 
 lest they should get old, and it have less 
 chance of being laid before them with ac- 
 ceptance. We make no reflection up(m the 
 offer as to its character of freeness, but we 
 proceed upon the obvious fact, that, free as 
 it is, it is not so readily listened to or laid 
 hold of by the second class of hearers as 
 by the first. And, lastly, when addressing 
 sinners now, all of them might and ought 
 to be plied with the free offer of salvation 
 at the very outset. But if it be true, that 
 those of them who wilfully persist in those 
 misdoings, which they conld give np on 
 the inducement of a temporal reward, will 
 not, in point of fact, be so impressed by the 
 offer, or be so disposed to accept of it, as 
 those who (on the call of^" Flee from the 
 coming wrath ;") and on being told, that, 
 unless they repent they shall perisli ; and 
 on being made to know, what our Saviour 
 made inquirers know at the very starting 
 point of their progress as his di.sciples, that 
 he who followeth after him must forsjike 
 all,) have begun to break off' their sins, and 
 to put the evil of their doings away from 
 them: then we are not stripping tlie offer 
 of its attribute of perfect freeness, but we 
 are only doing what God in his wisdom 
 did two thousand years ago ; we are, under 
 Him, preparing souls for the reception of 
 this offer, wlien along with the business of 
 proposing it, which we cannot do too early, 
 we bring the nrgency of an innncdiate call 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IX THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 203 
 
 to bear on the children of iniquity, that 
 they should cease to do evil, and learn to 
 do well. 
 
 The publicans and harlots entered into 
 the kingdom of God before the Pharisees, 
 and yet the latter were free from the out- 
 ward transgressions of the former. Now, 
 the fear which restrains many from lifting 
 the immediate call of — " Cease ye from your 
 transgressions," is, lest it should put those 
 who obey the call into the state of Pharisees ; 
 and there is a secret, though not avowed, 
 impression in their minds, that it were bet- 
 ter for their hearers to remain in the state 
 of publicans and harlots, and in this state to 
 have the offer of Christ and all his benefits 
 set before them. But mark well, that it 
 was not the publicans and harlots wlio per- 
 sisted ill their iniquities, but they who 
 counted John to be a prophet, and in obe- 
 dience to his call, were putting their iniqui- 
 ties away from them, who liad the advan- 
 tage of the Pharisees. None will surely 
 say, that those of them who continued as 
 they were, were put into a state of prepara- 
 tion for the Saviour by the preaching of 
 John. Some will be afraid to say, that 
 those of them who gave up their iniquities 
 at the bidding of John, were put into a 
 state of preparation, lest it should encourage 
 a Pharisaical confidence in our own doings. 
 But mark the distinction between these and 
 the Phitrisees: The Pharisees might be as 
 free as the reforming publicans and harlots, 
 of those visible transgressions which cha- 
 racterized them; but on this they rested 
 their confidence, and put the offered Sa- 
 viour away from them. The publicans and 
 harlots, so far from resting their confidence 
 on the degree of reformation which they 
 had accomplished, were prompted to this 
 reformation by the hope of the coming Sa- 
 viour. They connected with all their do- 
 ings the expectation of greater things. 
 They waited for the kingdom of God that 
 was at hand ; and the preaching of John, 
 under the influence of which they had put 
 away from them many of their misdeeds, 
 could never lead them to stop short at this 
 degree of amendment, when the very same 
 John told them of one who was to come af- 
 ter him, in comparison of whom he and all 
 his sermons were as nothing. The Saviour 
 did come, and he said of tliose publicans 
 and harlots who believed and repented at 
 the preaching of John, that they entered 
 the kingdom of heaven before the Phari- 
 sees. They liad not earned that kingdom 
 by their doings, but they were in a fitter 
 and readier state for receiving the tidings 
 of it. The gospel came to them on the 
 footing of a free and unmerited offer; and 
 on this footing it should be proposed to all. 
 But it is not on this footing that it will be 
 accepted by all. Not by men who, free 
 from ra;iny glaring and visible iniquities. 
 
 rest on the decency of their own character; 
 — not by men who, deformed by these mi- 
 quities, still wilfully and obstinately persist 
 in them ; bin. by men who, earnest in their 
 inquiries after salvation, and who, made to 
 know, as they ought to be at the very out- 
 set of their inquiries, that it is a salvation 
 from sin as well as from punishment, have 
 given up the practice of their outward ini- 
 quities, as the first fruit and evidence of 
 their earnestness. 
 
 Let me, tfiereforp, in addition to the les- 
 son I have already urged upon you, warn 
 you against a pharisaical confidence in 
 your own doings. While, on the one hand, 
 I tell you that none are truly seeking who 
 have not begun to do ; J, on the other hand, 
 tell you, that none have truly found who 
 have not taken up with Christ as the end of 
 the law for righteousness. Let Jesus Christ, 
 the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever, 
 be the end of your conversation. Never 
 take rest till you have found it in him. You 
 never will have a well-grounded comfort in 
 your intercourse with God, till you have 
 learned the way of going to the tlirone of his 
 grace in fellowship witli Christ as your ap- 
 pointed Mediator; — you never will rejoice 
 in hope of the coming glory, till your peace 
 be made with God through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord ; you never will be sure of par- 
 don, till you rest in the forgiveness of your 
 sins as coming to you through the redemp- 
 tion which is in his blood. And what is 
 more, addressing you as a people who have 
 received a practical impulse to the obe- 
 dience of the commandments, never forget, 
 that, while the reformation of your first and 
 earliest stages in the chri.stian life went no 
 farther tlian to the amendment of your more 
 obvious and visible deficiencies, "this refor- 
 mation, to be completed, must bring the 
 soul and spirit, as well as the body, under 
 a subserviency to the glory of God ; and it 
 never can be completed but by the shed- 
 ding abroad of that spirit which is daily 
 poured on the daily prayers of believers : 
 and I call upon you always to look up to 
 God through the channel of Christ's ap- 
 pointed mediatorship, that you may receive 
 through this same channel a constant and 
 ever increasing supply of the washing of 
 regeneration and renewing of the Holy 
 Gliost. 
 
 I call\]pon yon to be up and doing; but 
 I call upon you with the very same breath, 
 not to rest satisfied with any dark, or con- 
 fused notions about your way of acceptance 
 with God ; and let it be your earnest and 
 never-ceasing object to be found in that 
 way. While you have the commandments 
 and keep them, look at the same time for 
 the promised manifestations. 7''o be indif- 
 ferent whether you have a clear understand- 
 ing of the righteousness of Christ, is the 
 same as thmking it not worth your while 
 
204 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 to inquire into that which God thought it 
 worth his while to give up his Son unto the 
 death that he might aceomphsh. It is to 
 affront God, by letting him speak while you 
 refuse to listen or attend to him. Have a 
 care, lest it be an insulting sentiment on 
 your part, as to the worth of your polluted 
 services, and that, sinful as the)' are, and 
 defective as they are, they are good enough 
 for (iod. Lean not on such a bruised reed ; 
 but let Christ, in all the perfection of that 
 righteousness, which is unto all them and 
 upon all them that believe, be the alone 
 rock of your confidence. Your feet will 
 never get on a sure place till they be estab- 
 lished on that foundation than which there 
 is no other ; and to delay a single moment 
 in your attempts to reach it, and to find 
 rest upon it, after it is so broadly announced 
 to you, is to incur the aggravated guilt of 
 those who neglect the great salvation, and 
 who make God a liar, by suspending tlieir 
 belief of that record which he hath given of 
 his Son, — "And this is the record that God 
 hath given us eternal life, and this life is in 
 his Son." 
 
 Again I call upon you to be up and doing ; 
 and I call upon you to accept of Christ as 
 your alone Saviour : but 1 call upon you, 
 at the same time, to look to the whole ex- 
 tent of his salvation. " You hath he quick- 
 ened, having forgiven you all trespasses." 
 There is the forgiveness of all that has been 
 dead, and sinful, and alienated within you : 
 but there is also a quickening, and a reform- 
 ing, and a putting within you a near and a 
 lively sense of God, so as that you may 
 henceforth serve him with newness of heart, 
 and walk before him in all newness of life 
 and of conversation. Y^our hearts will be 
 enlarged, so as that 3'ou may run the way 
 of all the commandments. O, how it puts 
 to flight all Pharisaical confidence in the 
 present exercises of obedience, when one 
 casts an enlightened eye over the whole 
 extent of the Christian race, and thinks of 
 the mighty extent of those attainments 
 which were exemplified by the disciples of 
 the New Testament I The service which I 
 now yield, and is perhaps offered up in the 
 spirit of bondage, must be offered up in the 
 spirit of adoption. It must be the obe- 
 dience of a child, who yields the willing 
 homage of his affections to his reconciled 
 father. It must be the obedience of the 
 heart : and O how far is a slavish perform- 
 ance of the bidden task, from the consent 
 of the inner man to the law of that God 
 whom he delights to honour ! This love to 
 him, and delight in .him, occupy the fore- 
 most place in the list of the bidden require- 
 ments. If I love the creature more than 
 the Creator, I trample on the authority of 
 the first and greatest of the commandments; 
 and what an mposing exhibition of so- 
 briety, and jus .ce, and almsgiving, and reli- 
 
 gious decency, may be presented in the 
 character and doings of him whose conver- 
 sation is not in heaven, who minds earthly 
 things, who loves his wealth more than 
 God, who likes his ease and comfort on this 
 side of time more than all his prospects on 
 the other side of it, and who, therefore, 
 though he may never have looked upon 
 himself to be any thing else than a fair 
 Christian, is looked upon by every spiritual 
 being as a rebel to his God, with the prin- 
 ciple of rebellion firmly seated in his most 
 vital part, even in his heart, turned in cold- 
 ness and alienation away from him. 
 
 But if God be looked upon by you as a 
 Father with whom you are reconciled 
 througli the blood of sprinkling, it will not 
 be so with you. Now, this is what he calls 
 you to do. He gives you a warrant to 
 choose him as your God. He offers him- 
 self to your acceptance, and beseeches all 
 to whom the word of salvation is sent, to 
 be reconciled to Him. It is indeed a won- 
 derful change in the state of a heart, when, 
 giving up its coldness and indifference to 
 God, (and I call upon every careless and 
 unawakened man to tell me, upon his ho- 
 nesty, whether this be not tlie actual state 
 of his heart.) it surrenders itself to him with 
 the warm and the willing tribute of all its 
 affections. Now, there is not one power, 
 within the compass of nature, that can 
 bring about this change. It does not lie 
 with man to give up the radical iniquity of 
 an alienated heart ; the Ethiopian may as 
 soon change his skin, and the leopard his 
 spots. But what cannot be done by him, 
 is done to him, when he accepts of the Gos- 
 pel. The promises of Christ are abundant- 
 ly peformed upon all who trust in him. 
 Through him is the dispensation of forgive- 
 ness, and with him is the dispensation of 
 the all-powerful and all-subduing Spirit. 
 ^\^lile, then, with the very first mention of 
 his name, I call on you to cease your hand 
 from doing evil, surely there is nothing in 
 the call that can lead you to stop at any 
 one point of obedience, when I, at the same 
 time, tell j^ou of the mighty change that 
 must be accomplisb.ed, ere you are meet 
 for the inheritance of the saints. Y"ou must 
 be made the workmanship of God ; you 
 must be born again ; you must be made to 
 feel your dependance on the power of the 
 renewing Spirit; and that power must 
 come down upon you, and keep by you, 
 and by his ever-needed supj)lies must form 
 the habitual answer to your habitual and 
 believing prayers. 
 
 I have now got upon ground on which 
 many will refuse to go along with me. I 
 can get their testimony to the spectacle cf 
 a reforming people, putting the visible ini- 
 quities of stealing, and lying, and evil 
 speaking, and drunkenness, away from 
 them J but from the moment we come to 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 205 
 
 \.ne only principle which confers any value 
 on 'hese visible expressions, even the wil- 
 Img homage of the heart to God, and to his 
 law in all its spirituality and extent; and 
 from the moment that we come to the only 
 expedient by which such a principle cnn 
 ever obtain an establishment within us, 
 (and we challenge tbem to attempt the 
 establishment of tliis principle in any other 
 way,) even the operation of that spirit 
 which is given to those who accept of 
 Christ as he is laid before us in the Gospel ; 
 then, and at tliat moment, are we looked 
 upon as having entered within the borders 
 of fanaticism ; and, while they lavish their 
 superficial admiration on the flowers of 
 virtue, do they refuse the patience of their 
 attention to the root from which they 
 spring, or to the nourishment which main- 
 tains them. 
 
 And here I cannot but record the effect 
 of an actual though undesigned experiment, 
 which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve 
 years among you. For the greater part of 
 that time, I could expatiate on the meanness 
 of dishonesty, on the villainy of falsehood, 
 on the despicable arts of calumny, — in a 
 word, upon all those deformities of cliarac- 
 ter, which awalven the natural indignation 
 of the human heart against the pests and 
 the disturbers of human society. Now 
 could I, upon the strength of these warm 
 expostulations, have got the thief to give 
 up his stealing, and the evil speaker his 
 censoriousncss, and the liar his deviations 
 from truth, I should have felt all the repose 
 of one who had gotten his ultimate object. 
 It never occurred to me that all this might 
 have been done, and yet every soul of every 
 hearer have remained in full alienation from 
 God ; and that even could I have established 
 in the bosom of one who stole, such a prin- 
 ciple of abhorrence at the meanness of dis- 
 honesty, that he was prevailed upon to steal 
 no more, he might still have retained a heart 
 as completely unturned to God, and as to- 
 tally unpossessed by a principle of love to 
 Him, as before. In a Avord, though I might 
 have made him a more upright and honour- 
 able man, I might have left him as destitute 
 of the essence of religious principle as ever. 
 But the interesting fact is, that during the 
 whole of that period in which I made no 
 attempt against the natural enmity of the 
 mind to God, while I was inattentive to the 
 way in which this enmity is dissolved, even 
 by the free offer on the one hand, and the 
 believing acceptance on the other, of the 
 gospel salvation; while Christ, through 
 whose blood the sinner, who by nature 
 stands afar off, is brought near to the hea- 
 venly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was 
 scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in 
 such a way, as stripped him of all the im- 
 portance of his character and his offices, 
 even at this time I certainly did press the 
 
 reformations of honour, and truth, and in- 
 tegrity among my people; but 1 never once 
 heard of any such reformations having been 
 effected among them. If there was any thing 
 at all brought about in this way, it was more 
 than ever 1 got any account of. I am not 
 sensible, that all the vehemence with which 
 I urged the virtues and the proprieties of 
 social life, had the weight of a feather on 
 the moral habits of my parishioners. And 
 it was not till I got impressed by the utter 
 alienation of the heart in all its desires and 
 affections from God ; it was not till recon- 
 ciliation to Him became the distinct and the 
 prominent object of my ministerial exer- 
 tions ; it was not till I took the scriptural 
 way of laying the method of reconciliation 
 before them ; it was not till the free offer 
 of forgiveness through the blood of Christ 
 was urged upon their acceptance, and the 
 Holy Spirit given through the channel of 
 Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, 
 was set before them as the unceasing object 
 of their dependance and their prayers; it 
 was not, in one word, till the contemplations 
 of my people were turned to these great 
 and essential elements in the business of a 
 soul providing for its interest with God and 
 the concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard 
 of any of those subordinate reformations 
 which 1 aforetime made the earnest and the 
 zealous, but I am afraid at the same time, 
 the ultimate object of my earlier ministra- 
 tions. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidel- 
 ity has now attracted the notice, and drawn 
 forth in my hearing a delightful testimony 
 from your masters, what mischief you would 
 have done, had your zeal for doctrines and 
 sacraments been accompanied by the sloth 
 and the remissness, and what, in the pre- 
 vailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted 
 the allowable purloining of your earlier 
 days ! But a sense of your heavenly Mas- 
 ter's eye has brought another influen'^e to 
 bear upon you; and while you are thus 
 striving to adorn the doctrine of God your 
 Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you 
 are, reclaim the great ones of the land to 
 the acknowledgment of the faith. You have 
 at least taught me, that to preach Christ is 
 the only effective way of preaching morality 
 in all its branches ; and out of your humble 
 cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I 
 pray God I may be enabled to carry with 
 all its simplicity into a wider theatre, and to 
 bring with all the power of its subduing 
 efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded 
 population. 
 
 And here it gives me pleasure to observe, 
 that, earnest as I have been for a plain and 
 practical outset, the very first obedience of 
 John's disciples was connected with a be- 
 lief in the announcement of a common Sa- 
 viour. This principle was present with 
 them, and had its influence on the earliest 
 movements of their repentance. Faith in 
 
206 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 Christ had at that time but an obscure dawn- 
 ing in their minds; but they did not wait for 
 its full and its finished splendour, till they 
 should begin the work of keeping the com- 
 mandments. To this infant faith there cor- 
 responded a certain degree of obedience, 
 and this obedience grew more enlightened, 
 more spiritual, more allied with the purity 
 of the heart, and the movements of the 
 inner man, just as faith obtained its brighter 
 and larger accessions in the course of the 
 subsequent revelations. The disciple of 
 John keeping himself free from extortion 
 and adultery, was a very different man from 
 the Pharisee, who was neither an extortioner 
 nor an adulterer. The mind of the Phari- 
 see rested on his present performances ; the 
 mind of the disciple was filled with the ex- 
 pectation of a higher Teacher, and he look- 
 ed forward to him. and was in the attitude 
 3f readiness to listen and believe, and obey. 
 Many of them were transferred from the 
 forerunner to the Saviour, and they com- 
 panied with him during his abode in the 
 world, and were found with one accord in 
 one place on the day of Pentecost, and 
 shared in the influences of that Comforter, 
 whom Christ promised to send down upon 
 his disciples on earth, from the place to 
 which he had ascended in heaven ; and thus 
 it is that the same men who started with 
 the preaching of John at the work of put- 
 ting their obvious and palpable transgres- 
 sions away from them, were met afterwards 
 at the distance of years living the life of 
 faith in Christ, and growing in meetness 
 for a spiritual inheritance, by growing in 
 all the graces and accomplishments of a 
 spiritual obedience. There was a faith in 
 Christ, which presided over the very first 
 steps of their practical career; but it is wor- 
 thy of being remarked, that they did not 
 wait in indolence till this Aiith should re- 
 ceive its further augmentations. Upon this 
 faith, humble as it was at its commence- 
 ment, their teacher exacted a corresponding 
 obedience, and this obedience, so far from 
 being suspended till what was lacking in 
 their faith should be perfected, was the very 
 path which conducted them to larger mani- 
 festations. Now, is not faith a growing prin- 
 ciple at this hour? Is not the faith of an 
 incipient Christian different in its strength, 
 and in the largeness of its contemplations, 
 from the faith of him who, by reason of 
 use, has had his senses well exercised to dis- 
 cern both the good and the evil ? I am wil- 
 ling to concede it, for it accords with all 
 my experience on the subject, that some an- 
 ticipation, however faint, of the benefit to 
 be derived from an offered Saviour; some 
 apprehension, however indistinct, of the 
 mercy of God in Christ Jesvis: some hope, 
 inspired by the peculiar doctrines of the 
 Gospel, and which nothing but the preach- 
 ng of that Gospel in all its peculiarity wiU 
 
 I ever awaken in the mind, — that these are 
 the principles which preside over the very 
 first movements of a sinner, casting away 
 from him his transgressions, and returning 
 unto God. 
 
 But let us not throw any impediment in 
 the Avay of these first movements. Let us 
 have a practical outset. Let us not be afraid 
 of giving an immediate character of exer- 
 tion to the very infancy of a Christian's 
 career. To wait in slavish adherence to 
 system, till the principle of faith be depo- 
 sited with all the tenacity of a settled as- 
 surance in the mind, or the brilliancy of a 
 finished light be thrown around it, "would 
 he to act in the face of scriptural example. 
 Let the gospel be preached in all its free- 
 ness at the very outset ; but let us never 
 forget, that to every varying degree of faith 
 in the mind of the hearer there goes an 
 obedience along with it ; that to forsake the 
 evil of his ways can never be pressed too 
 early upon his observance ; that this, 
 and every subsequent degree of obe- 
 dience, is the prescribed path to clearer 
 manifestations ;* and that, to attempt the 
 establishment of a perfect faith by the single 
 work of expounding the truth, is to strike 
 out a spark of our own kindling — it is to 
 do the thing in our own way — it is to 
 throw aside the use of scriptural expedients, 
 and to substitute the mere possession of a 
 dogma, for that principle which, growing pro- 
 gressively within us, animates and sustains 
 the whole course of a humble, and diligent, 
 and assiduous, and painstaking Christian. 
 
 Whence the fact, that the deriders and 
 the enemies of evangelical truth set them- 
 selves forward as the exclusive advocates 
 of morality? It is because many of its 
 friends have iiot ventured to show so bold 
 and so immediate a front on this subject as 
 they ought to have done. They are posi- 
 tively afraid of placing morality on the 
 fore-ground of their speculations. They do 
 not like it to be so prominently brought for- 
 ward at the commencement of their in- 
 structions. They have it. ay, and in a 
 purer and holier form than its more osten- 
 tatious advocates; but they have thrown 
 a doctrinal barrier around it, which hides 
 it from the general observation. AVould it 
 not be better to drag it from this conceal- 
 ment — to bring it out to more immediate 
 view — to place it in large and visible cha- 
 racters on the very threshold of our sub- 
 ject ; and if our Saviour told his country- 
 men, at the very outset of their disciple- 
 ship, that they who followed after him must 
 forsake all, is there any thing to prevent us 
 from battling it at the very outset of our 
 ministrations, with all that is glaringly and 
 obviously wrong ? Much should be done to 
 cheise awav the verv general delusion which 
 
 ♦ John, xiv. '21. Acts, v. 32, 
 
DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 207 
 
 ex,sts among the people of this country, 
 that the preachers of faith are not the 
 preachers of morahty. If there be any 
 thing in the arrangements of a favourite 
 system which are at all calculated to foster 
 this delusion, these arrangements sliould 
 just be broke in upon. Obedience should 
 be written upon every signal ; and depar- 
 ture from all iniquity, should be made to 
 float, in a bright and legible inscription, 
 upon all our standards. 
 
 I call on you, my brethren, to abound in 
 those good deeds, by which, if done in the 
 bod)^, Christ will be magnified in your bo- 
 dies. I call on you for a prompt vindica- 
 tion of the truth as it is in Jes\is, by your 
 example and your lives. Let mehearof your 
 being the most equitable masters, and the 
 most faithful servants, and the most up- 
 right members of society, and the most 
 watchful parents, and the most dutiful chil- 
 dren. Never forget, that the object of the 
 Saviour is to redeem you from all iniquity, 
 and tliat every act of wilful indulgence, in 
 any one species of iniquity, is a refusal to 
 go along with him. Do maintain to the eye 
 of by-standers the conspicuous front of a 
 reforming, and conscientious, and ever-do- 
 ing people. Meet the charge of those who 
 are strangers to the power of the truth, by 
 the noblest of all refutations — by the graces 
 and accomplishments of a life given in 
 faithful and entire dedication to the will of 
 the Saviour. Let the remembrance of what 
 he gave for you, ever stir you up to the 
 sense of what you should give him back 
 again ; and while others talk of jrood works, 
 in such a way as to depose Christ from his 
 pre-eminence, do you perform these gond 
 works tlirough Christ, by the power of his 
 grace working in you mightily. 
 
 And think not that you have attained, or 
 are already perfect. Have your eye ever 
 directed to the perfect righteousness of 
 Christ, as the only ground of your accep- 
 tance with God, and as the only exam- 
 ple you should never cease to aspire after. 
 Rest not in any one measure of attainment. 
 Tliink not that you should stop short till you 
 are righteous, even as he is glorious. Take 
 unto you the whole armour of God, that 
 you be fitted for the contest, and prove that 
 you are indeed born again by the anointing 
 which you have received, being an anoint- 
 ing which remaineth. May the very God 
 of peace sanctify you wholly. May he shed 
 abroad his love in your hearts. And may 
 the Spirit which I call on you to pray for, 
 in the foith of Him who is entrusted with 
 the dispensation of it, impel you to all dili- 
 gence, that yon may be found of Him, at his 
 coming, without spot, and blameless. 
 
 I shall conclude this very hurried and im- 
 perfect Address, with the last words of my | 
 last sermon to you. 
 
 " It is not enough that you receive Christ | 
 
 for the single object of forgiveness, or as a 
 Priest who has wrought out an atonement 
 for you ; for Christ offers himself in more 
 capacities than this one, and you do not 
 receive him truly, unless you receive him 
 just as he offers himself. Again it is not 
 enough that you receive Christ only as a 
 Priest and a Prophet ; for all that he teaches 
 will be to you a dead letter, unless you are 
 qualified to understand and to obey it ; and 
 if you think that you are qualified by na- 
 ture, you in fact, refuse his teaching, at the 
 very time that you profess him to be your 
 teacher, for he says, ' without me ye can 
 do nothing.' You must receive him for 
 strength, as well as for forgiveness and direc- 
 tion, or, in other words, you must sulnuit 
 to him as your King, not merely to rule 
 over you by his law, but to rule in you by 
 his Spirit. You must live in constant de- 
 pendance on the influences of his grace, 
 and if you do so, you never will stop short 
 at any one point of obedience; but, know- 
 ing that the grace of God is all-powerful, 
 you will suffer no difhculties to stop your 
 progress; you will suffer no paltry limit of 
 what unaided human nature can do, to 
 bound your ambition after the glories of a 
 purer and a better character than an earth- 
 ly principle can accomplish ; you will enter 
 a career, of which 3'ou at this moment see 
 not the end ; you will try an ascent, of 
 which the lofty eminence is hid in the 
 darkness of futurity; the chilling sentiment, 
 that no higher obedience is expected of me 
 than what I can j'ield, will have no influence 
 upon you ; for the mighty stretch of attain- 
 ment that you look forward to, is not what 
 I can do, but what Christ can do in me ; 
 and, with the all-subduing instrument of 
 his grace to help you through every difli- 
 culty, and to carry you in triumph over 
 every opposition, you will press forward 
 conquering and to conquer ; and, while the 
 world knoweth not the power of those 
 great and animating hopes which sustain 
 you, you will be making daily progress in 
 a field of discipline and acquirement which 
 they have never entered ; and in patience 
 and forgiveness, and gentleness and cha- 
 rity, and the love of God and the love of 
 your neighbour, which is like unto the love 
 of God, you will prove that a work of grace 
 is going on in your hearts, even that work 
 by which the image you lost at the fall is 
 repaired and brought back again, the em- 
 pire of sin within you is overthrown, 
 the subjection of your hearts to what is 
 visible and earthly is exchanged for the 
 power of the unseen world over its every 
 affection, and you be filled with such a faith, 
 and such a love, and such a superiority to 
 perishable things, as will shed a glory over 
 the whole of your daily walk, and give to 
 every one of your doings the high charac 
 ter of a candidate for eternity. 
 
20S 
 
 DUTY OF DILIGENCE I\ THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 
 
 " Christ is offered to all of you for for- 
 giveness. The man who takes him for this 
 single object must be looking at him with 
 an eye half shut upon the revelation he 
 makes of himself. Look at him with an open 
 and a steadfast eye, and then I will call 
 you a true believer ; and sure I am, that if 
 you do so, you cannot avoid seeing him in 
 the earnesitness of his desire that you 
 should give up all sin, and enter from this 
 moment into all obedience. True, and 
 most true, my brethren, that faith will 
 save you ; but it must be a whole faith 
 in a whole Bible. True, and most true, 
 that they who keep the commandments 
 of Jesus shall enter into life ; but you 
 are not to shrink from any one of these 
 commandments, or to say because they 
 are so much above the power of human- 
 ity, that you must give up the task of 
 attempting them. True, and most true, 
 that he who trusteth to his obedience as a 
 saviour, is shifting his confidence from the 
 alone foundation it can rest upon. Christ 
 is your Saviour ; and when I call upon you 
 to rejoice in that reconciliation which is 
 through him, I call upon you not to leave 
 him for a single moment, when you engage 
 in the work of doing those things which if 
 left undone, will exclude us from the king- 
 dom of heaven. Take him along with you 
 into all 3'our services. Let the sentiment 
 ever be upon you, th?t what I am now 
 doin? I may do in my own strength to the 
 satisfaction of man, but I must have the 
 power of Christ resting upon the perform- 
 ance, if I wish to do it in the way that is 
 acceptable to God. Let this be your habi- 
 tual sentiment, and then the supposed op- 
 position between faith and works vanishes 
 into nothing. The life of a believer is made 
 up of good works; and faith is the ani- 
 mating and the power-working principle 
 of every one of them. The spirit of Christ 
 actuates and sustains the whole course of 
 your obedience. You walk not away from 
 him. but in the language of the text, you 
 ' walk in him,' (Col. ii. 6.) and as there is 
 not one of your doings in which he does 
 not feel a concern, and prescribe a duty 
 for you, so there is not one of them in 
 which his grace is not in readiness to put 
 the right principle into your heart, and to 
 bring it out into your conduct, and to make 
 your walk accord with yrur profession, so 
 as to let the world see upon you without, 
 the power and the efficacy of the sentiment 
 ■within ; and thus, while Christ has the 
 whole merit of your forgiveness, he has the 
 'whole merit of your sanctification also, and 
 the humble and deeply-felt consciousness 
 of ' nevertheless not me, but the grace of 
 God that is in me,' restores to Jesus Christ 
 
 all the credit and all the glor}^ which belong 
 to him, by making him your only, and your 
 perfect, and your entire, and your altoge- 
 ther Saviour. 
 
 '• Choose him, then, my brethren, choose 
 him as the Captain of your salvation Let 
 him enter into your hearts by faith, and let 
 him dwell continually there. Cultivate a 
 daily intercourse and a growing acqui'int- 
 ance with him. O, j-ou are in safe com- 
 pany, indeed, when your fellowship is with 
 him ! The shield of his protecting raedi- 
 atorship is ever between you and the jus- 
 tice of God : and out of his fullness there 
 goeth a constant stream, to nourish, and to 
 animate, and to strengthen every believer. 
 Why should the shil'ting of hum;ui instru- 
 ments so oppress and so discourage you, 
 when he is your willing friend ; when he 
 is ever present, and is at all times in readi- 
 ness; when he, the same to-day, yesterday, 
 and for ever, is to be met with in every 
 place; and while his disciples here, giving 
 way to the power of sight, are sorrowful, 
 and in great heaviness, because they are to 
 move at a distance from one another, he, 
 my brethren, he has his eye upon all neigh- 
 bourhoods and all countries, and will at 
 length gather his disciples into une eternal 
 family. With such a Master, let us quit 
 ourselves like men. With the magnifi- 
 cence of eternity before us, let time, with 
 its fluctuations, dwindle into its own little- 
 ness. If God is pleased to spare n^e, I trust 
 I shall often meet with you in person, even 
 on this side of the grave ; but if not, let us 
 often meet in prayer at the mercy-seat of 
 God. While we occupy different places 
 on earth, let our mutual intercessions for 
 each other go to one place in heaven. Let 
 the Saviour put our supplications into one 
 censer ; and be assured, my brethren, that 
 after the dear and the much-loved scenery 
 of this peaceful vale has disappeared from 
 my eye, the people who live in it shall re- 
 tain a warm and an ever-during place in 
 my memory; — and this mortal body must 
 be stretched on the bed of death, ere the 
 heart which no^v animates it can resign its 
 exercise of longing after you, and praying 
 i for you, that you may so receive Christ 
 i Jesus, and so walk in him, and so hold fast 
 the things you have rotten, and so prove 
 that the labour I have had among you has 
 not been in vain; that when the .sound of 
 the last trumpet awakens us, these eyes, 
 which are now bathed m tears, may open 
 upon a scene of eternal blessedness, and 
 we, my brethren, whom the pro\idence of 
 God has withdrawn for a little while from 
 one another, may on that day be found side 
 by side at the right hand of the everlasting 
 throne." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Since the present edition of this work was put- 
 -ing to press, I have seen a review of it by the 
 Christian Instructor, and the following are the im- 
 mediate observations which the perusal of this re- 
 Ndew has suggested. 
 
 I meant no attack on any body of clergy, and I 
 have made no attack ujion them. The people whom 
 I addressed were the main object on which my 
 attention rested ; and any thing I have said in the 
 style of animadvei-sion, was chiefly, if not exclu- 
 sively, with a reference to that perverseness which 
 I think I have witnessed in the conceptions and 
 habits of private Christians. 
 
 I have alluded, no doubt, to a method of treat- 
 ment on the part of some of the teachers of Chris- 
 tianity, and which I believe to be both inefficient 
 and unscriptural. But have 1 at all asserted the 
 extent to which this methofl prevaUs ? Have I ven- 
 tured to fasten an imputation upon any marked or 
 general body of Christian ministers 1 It was no 
 object of mine to set forth or to signalize my own 
 pecuharity in tliis matter; and if I rightly under- 
 stand who the men are whom the reviewer has in 
 liis eye when he speaks of the evangelical clergy, 
 then does he represent me as dealing oui my cen- 
 sures against those whom I honestly believe to be 
 the instrumental cause of nearly all the vital and 
 substantial Christianity in the land. 
 
 Again, is it not possible for a man to have an 
 iwakened and tender sense of the sinfulness of one 
 sin, and to have a very slender and inadequate 
 sense of the sinfulness of another ? Might not the 
 first circumstance beget in his mind an honest and 
 a general desire to be delivered from sin ; and migh;; 
 not the second circumstance account for the fact, 
 that with this mourning for sin in the gross, he 
 should put forth his hand without scruple to the 
 commission of what is actually sinful ? I do not 
 know a more familiar exhibition of this, than of a 
 man who would be visited with remorse were he to 
 
 27 
 
 walk in the fields on a Sabbath day at the time of 
 divine service, and the very same man indulging 
 without remorse his proiiensity to throw ridicule or 
 discredit on an absent character. His actual re- 
 morse on the commission of all that he feels to be 
 sinful, might lead a man to mourn over sin in the 
 general ; but surely this general direction of his can 
 have no such necessary influence, as the reviewer 
 contends for, in the way of leading him to i-enounce 
 what he does not feel to be sinful. But this is what 
 he should be made to feel ; and it may be done in 
 two ways — either in the didactic way, by a formal 
 announcement that the deed in question is con- 
 trary to the law of God ; or in the imperative way, 
 by bidding him cease from the doing of it, — a way 
 no less effective and scriptural than the former, and 
 brought to bear in the New Testament upon men 
 at the earliest conceivable stage of their progress 
 from sin unto righteousness. 
 
 I share most cordially in opinion with the re- 
 viewer, that he might extend his observations 
 greatly beyond the length of the original pamphlet, 
 were he to say all that might be said on the topics 
 brought forward in it. I believe that it would re- 
 quire the compass of an extended volume to meet 
 every objection, and to turn the argument in every 
 possible way. I did not anticipate all the notice 
 that has been taken of this performance, and am 
 fearful lest it should defeat the intended eflect on 
 the hearts of a ]jlain people. With this feeUng I 
 close the discussion for the present; and my desire 
 is, that in all I may afterwards say upon this sub- 
 ject, I may be preserved from that tone of contro- 
 \ersy, which I feel to be hurtful to the practical 
 influence of every truth it accompanies ; and which, 
 1 fear, may have in so far infected my former com 
 munications, as to make it more fitted to arouse the 
 speculative tendencies of the mind, and provoke to 
 an intellectual warfare, than to tell on the conscience 
 and on the doings of an earnest inquirer. 
 
THE 
 
 INFIiUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 TEMPORAL NECESSITIES OF THE POOR, 
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 1. The Objection stated. 2. The Radiodl Answer to it. 3. But the Objection is not true in point 
 of fact. 4. A former act of charity does not exempt from the obUgation of a new act, if it can be 
 afforded. 5. Estimate of the encroachment made by the Bible Society upon the funds of the country. 
 6. A Subscriber to tlie Bible Society does not give less to the Poor on that account. 7. Evidence for 
 the truth of this assertion. 8. And explanation of its principle. (1.) The ability for other acts of 
 charity nearly as entire as before. 9. (2.) And the disposition greater. 10. Poverty is better kept 
 under by a preventive, than by a positive treatment. 11. Exemjiiified in Scotland. 1'3. The Bible 
 Society has a strong preventive operation. 13. And therefore promotes the secular interests of the 
 Poor. 14. The argument carried down to the case of Penny Societies. 15. Difficulty in the exposi- 
 tion of the argument. 16. The eflects of a charitable endowment in a parish pernicious to the Poor. 
 17. By inducing a dependance upon it. IS. And stripping them of their industrious habits. If). The 
 effects of a Bible Association are in an opposite direction to those of a charitab'e endowment. 20. And 
 it stands completely free of all the objections to wliich a tax is liable. 21. A Bible Association gives 
 dignity to the Poor. 22. And a delicate reluctance to pauperism. 23. The shameof paTiprrisni isthe 
 best defence against it. 24. How a Bible Association augments this feeling. 23. By dignifying the 
 Poor. 26. And adding to the inlluence of Bible Princfjiles. 27. Exemplified in the humblest situa- 
 tion. 28. The progress of these Associations in the country. 20. Compared with other Associations 
 for the relief of temporal necessities. 30. The more salutary influence of Bible Associations, 31. And 
 how they counteract the jjomicious influence of other charities. 32. It is best to confide the secular 
 relief of the Poor to Lndi^idual benevolence. 33. And a Bible Association both augments and en- 
 lightens tliis principle. 
 
 1. Without entering into the positive 
 claims of the Bible Society upon the gene- 
 rosity of the public, I shall endeavour to do 
 away an objection which meets us at the 
 very outset of every attempt to raise a sub- 
 scription, or to fotind an institution in its 
 favour. The secular necessities of the poor 
 ,ire brought into competition with it, and 
 every shilling given to the Bible Society is 
 represented as an encroachment upon that 
 fund which was before allocated to the re- 
 lief of poverty. 
 
 2. Admitting the fact stated in the objec- 
 tion to be true, we have an answer in readi- 
 ness for it. If the Bible Society accomplish 
 Its professed object, which Is, to make those 
 who were before ignorant of the Bible bet- 
 ter acquainted with it, then the advantage 
 given more than atones for the loss sus- 
 tained. We stand upon the high ground, 
 that eternity is longer than time, and the 
 unfading enjoymeiits of the one a boon 
 more valuable than the perishable enjoy- 
 ments of the other. Money is sometimes 
 expended for the idle purpose of amusing 
 the poor by the gratuitous exhibition of a 
 spectacle or show. It is a far wiser distribu- 
 
 tion of the money when it is transferred 
 from this object to the higher and more 
 useful objects of feeding those among them 
 who are hungry, clothing those among them 
 who are naked, and paying for medicine or 
 attendance to those among them who are 
 sick. We make bold to say, that if money 
 for the purpose could be got from no other 
 quarter, it v/ould be a wiser distribution still 
 to withdraw it from the objects last men- 
 tioned to the supreme object of paying for 
 the knowledge of religion to those among 
 them who are ignorant ; and, at the hazard 
 of being execrated by many, we do not 
 hesitate to affirm, that it is better for the 
 poor to be worse fed and worse clothed, than 
 that they should be left ignorant of those 
 Scriptures, which are able to make them 
 wise unto salvation through the faith that 
 is in Clirist Jesus. 
 
 3. But tlie statement contained in the ob- 
 jection is not true. It seems to go upon the 
 supposition, that the fund for relieving the 
 temporal wants of the poor is the only fund 
 which exists in the country; and that when 
 any new object of benevolence is started, 
 there is no other fund to which we can re- 
 320 
 
INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 211 
 
 pair for the requisite expenses. But there 
 are other funds in the country. There is a 
 prodigious fund for the maintenance of go- 
 vernment, nor do we wish that fund to be 
 encroached upon by a single farthing. There 
 is a fund out of which the people of the land 
 are provided in the necessaries of life: and 
 before we incur the odium of trenching 
 upon necessaries, let us first inquire, if there 
 be no other fund in existence. Go, then, to 
 all who are elevated above the class of mere 
 labourers, ana you will find in their pos- 
 session a fund, out of which they are pro- 
 vided with what are commonly called the 
 superfluities of life. We do not dispute their 
 right to these superfluities, nor do we deny 
 the quantity of pleasure which lies in the 
 enjoyment of them. We only state the ex- 
 istence of such a fund, and that by a trifling 
 act of self-denial on tlie part of those who 
 possess it, we could obtain all that we are 
 pleading for. It is a little hard, that the com- 
 petition should be struck between the fund 
 of the Bible Society and the fund for reliev- 
 ing the temporal wants of the poor, while 
 the far larger and more transferable fund 
 for superfluities is left out of consideration 
 entirely, and suffered to remain an untouch- 
 ed and unimpaired quantity. In this way, 
 the odium of hostility to the poor is fastened 
 upon those who are labouring for their most 
 substantial interests, vv'hile a set of men who 
 neglect the immortality of the poor, and 
 would leave their souls to perish, are suf- 
 fered to sheer off" with the credit of all the 
 finer sympathies of our nature. 
 
 4. To whom much is given, of them much 
 will be required. Whatever be your former 
 liberalities in another direction, when a new 
 and a likely direction of benevolence is 
 pointed out, the question still comes back 
 upon you. What have you to spare? If 
 there be a remainder left, it is by the extent 
 of this remainder that you will be judged ; 
 and it is not right to set the claims of the 
 Bible Society against the secular necessities 
 of the poor, while meaus so ample are left, 
 that the true way of instituting the compe 
 tition is to set these claims against some 
 personal gratification which it is in your 
 power to abandon. Have a care, lest with 
 the language of philanthropy in your mouth, 
 you shall be found guilty of the crudest 
 indifference to the true welfare of the spe- 
 cies, and lest the Discerner of your heart 
 shall perceive how it prefers some sordid 
 indulgence of its own to the dearest interests 
 of those around you. 
 
 5. But let me not put to hazard the pros- 
 {jcrity of our cause, by resting it on a 
 standard of charity far too elevated for the 
 general practice of the times. Let us now 
 drop our abstract reasoning upon the re- 
 spective funds, and come to an actual spe- 
 cification of their quantities. The truth is, 
 that the fund for the Bible Society is so 
 
 very small, that it is not entitled to make 
 its appearance in any abstract argument 
 whatever, and were it not to do away even 
 the shadow of an objection, we would have 
 been ashamed to have thrown the argument 
 into the language of general discussion. 
 What shall we think of the objection when 
 told, that the whole yearly revenue of the 
 Bible Society, as derived from the contribu- 
 tions of those who support it, does not 
 amount to a half-penny per month from 
 each householder in Britain and Ireland? 
 Can this be considered as a serious invasion 
 upon any one fund allotted to other desti- 
 nations, and shall the most splendid and 
 promising enterprise that ever benevolence 
 was engaged in, be arrested upon an objec- 
 tion so fanciful? We do not want to oppress 
 any individual by the extravagance of our 
 demands. It is not in great sums, but in 
 the combination of littles, that our strength 
 lies. It is the power of combination which 
 resolves the mystery. Great has been the 
 progress and activity of the Bible Society 
 since its first institution. All we want is, 
 that this rate of activity be kept up and ex- 
 tended. The above statementwill convince 
 the reader, that there is ample room for the 
 extension. The whole fund for the secular 
 wants of the poor may be left untouched, 
 and as to the fund for luxuries, the revenue 
 of the Bible Society may be augmented a 
 hundred-fold before this fund is sensibly 
 encroached upon. The veriest crumbs and 
 sweepings of extravagance would suffice 
 us ; and it will be long, and very long, be- 
 fore any invasion of ours upon this fund 
 shall give rise to any perceivable abridge- 
 ment of luxury, or have the weight of a 
 straw upon the general style and establish- 
 ment of families. 
 
 6. But there is still another way of meet- 
 ing the objection. Let us come immediately 
 to a question upon the point of fact. Does 
 a man, on becoming a subscriber to the 
 Bible Society, give less to the secular wants 
 of the poor than he did formerly? It is 
 true, there is a difficulty in the way of ob- 
 taining an answer to this question. He 
 who knows best what answer to give will 
 be the last to proclaim it. In as far as the 
 subscribers themselves are concerned, we 
 must leave the answer to their own expe- 
 rience, and sure we are that that experience 
 will not be against us. But it is not from 
 this quarter that we can expect to ob- 
 tain the wished for information. The be- 
 nevolence of an individual does not stand 
 out to the eye of the public. The know- 
 ledge of its operations is confined to the 
 little neighbourhood within which it expa- 
 tiates. It is often kept from the poor them- 
 selves, and then the information we are in 
 quest of is shut up with the giver in the si- 
 lent consciousness of his bosom, and with 
 God in the book of his remembrance. 
 
212 
 
 INFLTTENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES, 
 
 7. But much good has been done of late 
 years by the combined exertions of indi- 
 viduals ; and benevolence, when operating 
 in this way, is necessarily exposed to pub- 
 lic observation. Subscriptions have been 
 started for almost every one object which 
 benevolence can devise, and the published 
 lists may furnish us .vith data for a par- 
 tial solution of the proposed question. In 
 point of fact, then, those who subscribe 
 for a religious object, subscribe with the 
 greatest readiness and liberality for the re- 
 lief of human affliction, under all the vari- 
 ous forms in which it pleads for sympathy. 
 This is quite notorious. The human mind, 
 by singling out the eternity of others as the 
 main object of its benevolence, does not 
 withdraw itself from the care of sustaining 
 them on the way which leads to eternity. It 
 exerts an act of preference, but not an act 
 of exclusion. A friend of mine has been 
 indebted to an active and beneficent patron, 
 for a lucrative situation in a distant country, 
 but he wants money to pay his travelling 
 expenses. I commit every reader to his 
 own experience of human nature, when I 
 rest with him the assertion, that if real 
 kindness lay at the bottom of this act of pa- 
 tronage, the patron himself is the likeliest 
 quarter from which the assistance will come. 
 The man who signalizes himself by his re- 
 ligious charities, is not the last but the first 
 man to whom I would apply in behalf of 
 the sick and the destitute. The two prin- 
 ciples are not inconsistent. They give sup- 
 port and nourishment to each other, or 
 rather they are exertions of the same prin- 
 ciple. This will appear in full display on 
 the day of judgment ; and even in this dark 
 and undiscerning world, enough of evidence 
 is before us upon which the benevolence of 
 the Christian stands nobly vindicated, and 
 from which it may be shown, that, while 
 its chief care is for the immortality of others, 
 it casts a wide and a wakeful eye over all 
 the necesshies and sufferings of the species. 
 
 8. Nor have we far to look for the ex- 
 planation. The two elements which com- 
 bine to form an act of charity, are the abi- 
 lity and the disposition, and the question 
 simply resolves itself into this, " In how far 
 these elements will survive a donation to 
 the Bible Society, so as to leave the other 
 charities unimpaired by it ?" It is certainly 
 conceivable, that an individual may give 
 every spare fartliing of his income to this 
 institution. In this case, there is a total 
 extinction of thi. first element. But in point 
 of fact,ithis is never done, or done so rarely 
 as not to be admitted into any general ar- 
 gtiment. With by far the greater number 
 of subscribers, the ability is not sensibly en- 
 croached unon. There is no visible re- 
 trenchment in the superfluities of life. A 
 very slight and partial change in the direc- 
 tion of that fund, which is familiarly known 
 
 by the name of pocket-money, can, gene- 
 rally speaking, provide for the whole 
 amount of the donation in question. There 
 are a thousand floating and incidental ex- 
 penses, which can be given up v.iihout 
 almost the feehng of a sacrifice, and the di- 
 version of a few of them to the charity we 
 are pleading for, leaves the ability of the 
 giver to all sense as entire as before. 
 
 9. But the second element is subject to 
 other laws, and the formal calculations of 
 arithmetic do not apply to it. 'i'he dispo- 
 sition is not like the ability, a given quan- 
 tity, which suffers an abstraction by every 
 new exercise. The effect of a donation 
 upon the purse of a giver, is not the same 
 with the moral influence of that donation 
 upon his heart. Yet tlie two are assimi- 
 lated by our antagonists, and the pedantry 
 of computation carries thein to results which 
 are in the face of all experience. It is not 
 so easy to awaken the benevolent principle 
 out of its sleep, as, when once awakened in 
 behalf of one object, to excite and to inter- 
 est it in behalf of another. When the bar 
 of selfishness is broken down, and the flood- 
 gates of the heart are once opened, the 
 stream of beneficence can be turned into a 
 thousand directions. It is true, that there 
 can be no beneficence witliout wealth, as 
 there can be no stream without water. It 
 is conceivable that the opening of the flood- 
 gates may give rise to no flow, as the open- 
 ing of a poor man's heart to the distresses 
 of those around him may give rise to no act 
 of almsgiving. But we have already proved 
 the abundance of wealth. [Sec. 8.] It is 
 the selfishness of the inaccessible heart 
 which forms the mighty barrier, and if this 
 could be done away, a thousand fertilizing 
 streams would issue from it. Now, this is 
 vvhat the Bible Society, in many instances, 
 has accomplished. It has unlocked the 
 avenue to many a heart, which was before 
 inaccessible. It has come upon them with 
 all the energy of a popular and prevailmg 
 impulse. It has created in them a new taste 
 and a new principle. It has opened the 
 fountain, and we are sure that, in every dis- 
 trict of the land where a Bible Association 
 exists, the general principle of benevolence 
 is more active and more expanding than 
 ever. 
 
 10. And after all, what is the best me- 
 thod of providing for the secular necessi- 
 ties of the poor? Is it by labouring tc 
 meet the necessity after it has occurred, or 
 by labouring to establish a principle and a 
 habit which would go far to prevent its ex- 
 istence ? If you wish to get rid of a noxioua 
 stream, y^ou may first try to intercept it by 
 throwing across a barrier ; but in this way, 
 you only spread the pestilential water over 
 a greater extent of ground, and M'hen the 
 basin is filled, a stream as copious as be- 
 fore is formed out of its overflow. The 
 
INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 213 
 
 most effectual method, were it possible to 
 carry it into accomplishment, would be to 
 dry up the source. The parallel in a great 
 measure holds. If you wish to extinguish 
 poverty, combat with it in its first elements. 
 If you confine your beneficence to the re- 
 lief of actual poverty, you do nothing.. Dry 
 up, if possible, the spring of poverty, for 
 every attempt to intercept the running 
 stream has totally failed. The education 
 and the religious principle of Scotland have 
 not annihilated pauperism, but they have 
 restrained it to a degree that is almost in- 
 credible to our neighbours of the South. 
 They keep down the mischief in its princi- 
 ple. They impart a sobriety and a right 
 sentiment of independence to the character 
 of our peasantry. They operate as a check 
 upon profligacy and idleness. The main- 
 tenance of parish schools is a burden upon 
 the landed property of Scotland, but it is a 
 cheap defence against the poor rates, a bur- 
 den far heavier, and which is aggravating 
 perpetually. The writer of the paper knows 
 of a parish in Fife, the average mainten- 
 ance of whose poor is defrayed by twenty- 
 four pounds sterling a year, and of a parish, 
 of the same population, in Somersetshire, 
 where the annual assessments come to 
 thirteen hundred pounds sterling. The pre- 
 ventive regimen of the one country does 
 more than the positive applications of the 
 other. In England, they have suffered po- 
 verty to rise to all the virulence of a form- 
 ed and obstinate disease. But they may as 
 well think of arresting the destructive pro- 
 gress of a torrent by throwing across an 
 embankment, as think that the mere posi- 
 tive administration of relief, will put a stop 
 to the accumulating mischiefs of poverty. 
 
 11. The exemption of Scotland from the 
 miseries of pauperism is due to the educa- 
 tion which their people receive at schools, 
 and to the Bible which their scholarship 
 gives them access to. The man who sub- 
 scribes to the divine authority of this sim- 
 ple saying, " If any would not work nei- 
 ther should he eat," possesses, in the good 
 treasure of his own heart, a far more effec- 
 tual security against the hardships of indi- 
 gence, than the man who is trained, by the 
 legal provisions of his country, to sit in 
 slothful dependence upon the liberalities of 
 those around him. It is easy to be elo- 
 quent in the praise of those liberalities, but 
 the truth is, that they may be carried to 
 the mischievous extent of forming a de- 
 praved and beggarly population. The hun- 
 gry expectations of the poor will ever keep 
 pace with the assessments of the wealthy, 
 and their eye will be averted from the ex- 
 ertion of their own industry, as the only riglit 
 source of comfort and independence. It is 
 quite in vain to think, that positive relief will 
 ever do away the wretcnedness of poverty. 
 Carry the relief beyond a certain limit, and 
 
 you foster the diseased principle which gives 
 birth to poverty. On this subject, the people 
 of England feel themselves to be in a state 
 of almost inextricable helplessness, and they 
 are not without their fears of some mighty 
 convulsion, which must come upon them 
 with all the energy of a tempest, before 
 this devouring mischief can be swept away 
 from the face of their community. 
 
 12. If any thing can avert this calamity 
 from England, it will be the education of 
 their peasantry, and this is a cause to which 
 the Bible Society is contributing its full 
 share of influence. A zeal for the circula- 
 tion of the Bible, is inseparable from a zeal 
 for extending among the people the capa- 
 city of reading it ; and it is not to be con- 
 ceived, that the very same individual can be 
 eager for the introduction of this volume 
 into our cottages, and sit inactive under the 
 galling reflection, that it is still a sealed 
 book to many thousands of the occupiers. 
 Accordingly we find, that the two concerns 
 are keeping pace with one another. The 
 Bible Society docs not overstep the simpli- 
 city of its assigned object : but the mem- 
 bers of t!iat Society receive an impulse 
 from the cause, which carries them to pro- 
 mote the education of the poor, either by 
 their individual exertions, or by giving 
 their support to the Society for Schools. 
 The two Societies move in concert. Each 
 contributes an essential element in the busi- 
 ness of enlightening the people. The one 
 furnishes the book of knowledge, and the 
 other furnishes the key to it. This division 
 of employment, as in every other instance, 
 facilitates the work, and renders it more ef- 
 fective. But it does not hinder the same indi- 
 vidual from giving his countenance to both ; 
 and sure I am, that the man whose feelings 
 have been already warmed, and whose purse 
 has been already drawn in behalf of the one, 
 is a likelier subject for an application in behalf 
 of the other, than he whose money is still un- 
 touched, but whose heart is untouched also. 
 
 13. It will be seen, then, that the Bible 
 Society is not barely defensible, but may be 
 plead for upon that very ground on which 
 its enemies have raised their opposition to 
 it. Its immediate object is neither to feed 
 the hungry nor to clothe the naked, but in 
 every country under the benefit of its ex- 
 ertions, there will be less hunger to feed, 
 and less nakedness to clothe. It does not 
 cure actual poverty, but it anticipates event- 
 ful poverty. It aims its decisive thrust at 
 the heart and principle of the mischief, and 
 instead of suffering it to form into the 
 obstinacy of an inextirpable disease, it 
 smothers and destroys it m the infancy of 
 its first elements. The love which worketh 
 no ill to his neighbour will not suffer the 
 true Christian to live in idleness upon an- 
 other's bounty; and he will do as Paul did 
 before him, he will labour with iiis hands 
 
214 
 
 INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 rather than be burdensome. Could we re- 
 form the improvident habits of the people, 
 and ])our the healthful infusion of Scrip- 
 ture principle into their hearts, it would 
 reduce the existing poverty of the land to a 
 very liumble fraction of its present extent. 
 We make bold to say, that in ordinary 
 times there is not one-tenth of the pauper- 
 ism of England due to unavoidable misfor- 
 tune. It has grown out of a vicious and 
 impolitic system, and the millions which 
 are raised every year have only served to 
 nourish and extend it. Now, the Bible So- 
 ciety is a prime agent in the work of coun- 
 teracting this disorder. Its mode of pro- 
 ceeding carries in it all the cheapness and 
 all the superior efficacy of a preventive 
 operation. With a revenue not equal to 
 the poor-rates of many a county, it is do- 
 ing more even for the secular interests of 
 the poor than all the charities of England 
 united ; and while a palling and injudicious 
 sympathy is pouring out its complaints 
 against it, it is sowing the seeds of charac- 
 ter and independence, and rearing for fu- 
 ture daj's the spectacle of a thriving, sub- 
 stantia], and well-conditioned peasantry. 
 
 14. I have hitherto been supposing, that 
 the rich only are the givers, but I now call 
 on the poor to be sharers in this work of 
 charity. It is true, that of these poor there 
 are some vvho depend on charity for their 
 subsistence, and these have no right to give 
 what they receive from others. And there 
 are some who have not arrived at this state 
 of dependence, but are on the very verge 
 of it. Let us keep back no part of the truth 
 from them, " If any provide not for his 
 own, and specially for those of his own 
 house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
 worse than an infidel." There are others 
 again, and these I apprehend form by far 
 the most numerous class of society, who 
 can maintain themselves in humble, but 
 honest independence, who can spare a little 
 and not feel it, who can do what Paul ad- 
 vises,'^ lay aside their penny a week as God 
 hath prospered them, who can share that 
 blessedness which the Saviour spoke of 
 when he said, It was more blessed to give 
 than to receive ; who, though they cannot 
 equal their rich neighbours in the amount 
 of their donation, can bestow their some- 
 thing, and can, at all events, carry in their 
 bosom a heart as warm to the cause, and 
 call down as precious a blessing from the 
 God who witnesses it. The Bible Society 
 is opposed on the ground of its diverting a 
 portion of relief from the secular necessi- 
 ties of the poor, even when the rich only 
 are called upon to' support it. When the 
 application for support is brought down 
 to the poor themselves, and instead of the 
 recipients, it is proposed to make them the 
 
 I Corinthians x\i. 2. 
 
 dispensers of charity, we may lay our ac- 
 count with the opposition being still more 
 clamorous. — Yv'e undertake to prove, that 
 this opposition is founded on a fallacy, and 
 that, by interesting the great mass of a pa- 
 rish in the Bible Society, and assembKng 
 them into a penny association for the sup- 
 port of it, you raise a defence against the 
 extension of pauperism. 
 
 15. We feel a difficulty in this undertak- 
 ing, not from any uncertainty which hungs 
 over the principle, but from the difficulty of 
 bringing forward a plain and popular exhi- 
 bition of it. However familiar the princi- 
 ple may be to a student of political science, 
 it carries in it an air of paradox to the mul- 
 titude, and it were well if this air of paradox 
 were the only obstacle to its reception. But 
 to the children of poesy and fine sentiment, 
 the principle in question carries in it an air 
 of barbarity also, and all the rigour of a pure 
 and impregnable argument has not been 
 able to protect the conclusions of Malthus 
 from their clamorous indignation. There is 
 a kind of hurrying sensibility about thera 
 which allows neither time nor temper for 
 listening to any calculation on the subject 
 and there is not a more striking vanity 
 under the sun, tlian that the substantial in- 
 terests of the poor liave suffered less from 
 the malignant and tlie unfeeling, than from 
 those who give without wisdom, and who 
 feel -without consideration ; 
 
 Blessed is he that uisely doth 
 The poor man's case consider. 
 
 16. Let me put the case of two parishes, 
 in the one of whicli there is a known and 
 public endowment, out of which an annual 
 sum is furnished for the maintenance of the 
 poor ; and that in tlie other there is no such 
 endowment. At the outset, the poor of the 
 first parish may be kept in greater comfort 
 than the poor of the second ; but it is the 
 lesson of all experience, that no annual sum, 
 however great, will be able to keep them 
 permanently in greater comfort. The cer- 
 tain effect of an established provision for the 
 poor is a relaxation of their economical 
 habits, and an increased number of improvi- 
 dent marriages. When their claim to a 
 provision is known, that claim is always 
 counted upon, and it were well, if to tlatter 
 their natural indolence, they did not carry 
 the calculation beyond the actual benefit 
 they can ever receive. But this is what they 
 always do. When a public charity is known 
 and counted upon, the relaxation of frugal 
 and provident liabits is carried to such an ex- 
 tent, as not only to absorb the whole produce 
 of the charity, but to leave new wants unpro- 
 vided for, and the effect of the benevolent in 
 stitution is just to create a population more 
 wretched and more clamorous than ever. 
 
 17. In the second parish, the economical 
 habits of the people are kept unimpaired. 
 
INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 215 
 
 and jnst because their economy is forced to 
 take a higher aim, and to persevere in it. 
 The aim of tlie first people is to provide for 
 themselves a part of their maintenance : 
 The aim of the second people is to provide 
 for themselves their Avhole maintenance. 
 We do not deny, that even among the latter 
 we wUl meet with distress and poverty, just 
 such distress and such poverty as are to be 
 found in the average of Scottish parishes. 
 This finds hs alleviation in private benevo- 
 lence. To alleviate poverty is all that can 
 be done for it; to extinguish it, we fear is 
 hopeless. Sure we are, that tlie known and 
 regular provisions of England will never 
 extinguisli it, and that, in respect of the 
 poor themselves, the second parish is under 
 a better system than the first. The poor- 
 rates are liable to many exceptions, but there 
 is none of them more decisive with him 
 who cares for the eternity of the poor, than 
 the temptation they hold out to positive 
 guilt, the guilt of not working with their 
 own hands, and so becoming burdensome 
 to others.* 
 
 18. Let us conceive a political change in 
 the circumstances of the country, and that 
 the public charity of the first parish fell 
 among the ruin of other institutions. Then 
 its malignant influence would be felt in 
 all its extent ; and it would be seen, that it, 
 in fact, had impoverished those whom it 
 professed to sustain, that it had stript them 
 of a possession far more valuable than all 
 it had ever given, that it had stripped them 
 of industrious habits, and left those whom 
 its influence never reached, wealthier in the 
 resources of their own superior industry, 
 than the artificial provisions of an unwise 
 and meddling benevolence could ever make 
 them. 
 
 19. The comparison between these two 
 parishes paves the way for another compari- 
 son. Let me now put the case of a third 
 parish, where a Bible Association is insti- 
 tuted, and wOiere the simple regulation of a 
 penny a week, throws it open to the bulk 
 of the people. What effect has this upon 
 their economical habits ? It just throws 
 them at a greater distance from the thrift- 
 lessness w^hich prevails in the first parish, 
 and leads them to strike a higher aim in 
 the way of economy than the people of the 
 second. The general aim of economy in 
 humble life, is to keep even with the world ; 
 but it is known to every man at all familiar 
 with that class of society, that the great 
 majority may strike their aim a little higher, 
 and in point of fact, have it in their power 
 to redeem an annual sum from the mere 
 squanderings of mismanagement and care- 
 lessness. The unwise provisions in the pa- 
 rish have had the effect of sinking the in- 
 come of the poor below their habits of 
 
 * Acts XX. 35. 1 Tim. v. 
 
 expenditure, and they are brought, pcrma 
 nently and irrecoverably brought into a 
 state of pauperism. In the second parish, 
 the income, generally speaking, is even with 
 the habits of expenditure. In the third, the 
 income is above the habits of expenditure, 
 and above it by the annual sum contributed 
 to the Bible Society. The circumstance of 
 being members to such a Society, throws 
 them at a greater distance from pauperism 
 than if they had not been members of it. 
 
 20. The effect on the economical habits 
 of the people would just be the same in 
 whatever way the stated annual sum was 
 obtained from them, even though a com- 
 pulsory tax were the instrument of raising 
 it.* This assimilation of our plan to a tax 
 may give rise to a world of impetuous de- 
 clamation, but let it ever be remembered, 
 that the institution of a Bible Society gives 
 you the whole benefit of such a tax without 
 its odiousness. It brings up their economy 
 to a higher pitch, but it does so, not in the 
 way which they resist, but in the way which 
 they choose. The single circumstance of 
 its being a voluntary act, forms the defence 
 and the answer to all the clamours of an 
 affected sympathy. You take from the poor. 
 No! they give. You take beyond their abil- 
 ity. Of this they are the best judges. You 
 abridge their comforts. Iso ! there is a com- 
 fort in the exerci.se of charity ; there is a 
 comfort in the act of lending a hand to a 
 noble enterprise; there is a comfort in the 
 contemplation of its progress; there is a 
 comfort in rendering a service to a friend, 
 and when that friend is the Saviour, and 
 that service the circulation of the message 
 he left behind him, it is a comfort which 
 many of the poor are ambitious to share in. 
 Leave them to judge of their comfort, and 
 if in point of fact, they do give their penny 
 a week to a Bible Society, it just speaks 
 them to have more comfort in this way of 
 spending it than in any other which occurs 
 to them. 
 
 21. Perhaps it does not occur to those 
 friends of the poor while they are sitting in 
 judgment on tlieir circumstances and feel- 
 ings, how unjustly and how unworthily 
 they think of iliem. They do not conceive 
 hoAv truth and benevolence can be at all 
 objects to them, and suppose, that after they 
 have got the meat to feed, the house to 
 shelter, the raiment to cover them, there is 
 nothing else that they will bestow a penny 
 upon. They may not be able to express 
 their feelings on a suspicion so ungenerous, 
 but I sliall do it for them ; " We have souls 
 as well as you, and precious to our hearts 
 is the Saviour who died for them. It is true 
 
 ♦ I mu.st here sup})ose the ^uin to be a stat«l 
 one, and a feeling of security on the part of the 
 people, that the tax sliall not be subject to varia- • 
 tion at the caprice of an arbitrary government. 
 
216 
 
 INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 we have our distresses, but tliese have bound 
 us more firmly to our Bibles, and it is the 
 desire of our hearts, that a gift so precious, 
 should be sent to the poor of other coun- 
 tries. The word of God is our hope and our 
 rejoicing ; we desire that it may be theirs 
 also, that the wandering savage may know 
 it and be glad, and the poor negro, under 
 the lash of his master, may be told of a 
 Master in heaven wlio is full of pity, and 
 full of kindness. Do you think that sym- 
 pathy for such as these is your peculiar at- 
 tribute? Know that our hearts are made 
 of the same materials with your own, that 
 we can feel as well as you, and out of the 
 earnings of a hard and honest industry, w^e 
 shall give an offering to the cause; nor shall 
 we cease our exertions till the message of 
 salvation be carried round the globe, and 
 made known to the countless milUons who 
 live in guilt, and who die in darkness." 
 
 22. And here it is obvious that a superior 
 habit of economy is not the only defence 
 which the Bible Society raises against pau- 
 perism. The smallncss of the sum contri- 
 buted may give a littleness to this argu- 
 ment, but not, let it be remembered, whhout 
 giving an equal littleness to the objection 
 of those who declaim against the institution, 
 on the ground of its oppressiveness to the 
 poor contributors. The great defence which 
 sucli a Society establishes against pauper- 
 ism, is the superior tone of dignity and in- 
 dependence which it imparts to the charac- 
 ter of him who supports it. He stands on 
 the high ground of being a dispenser of 
 charity ; and before he can submit to be- 
 come a recipient of charity, he must let 
 himself farther douTi than a poor man in 
 ordinary circumstances. To him the transi- 
 tion will be more violent, and the value of 
 this principle will be acknowledged by all 
 who perceive that it is reluctance on the 
 part of the poor man to become a pauper, 
 which forms the mighty barrier against the 
 extension of pauperism. A man by becom- 
 ing the member of a benevolent association, 
 puts himself into the situation of a giver. 
 He stands at a greater distance than before 
 from the situation of a receiver. He has a 
 wider interval to traverse before he can 
 reach this point. He will feel it a greater 
 degradation, and to save himself from it, 
 he will put iforth all his powers of frugality 
 and exertion. The idea of restraining pau- 
 fierism by external administrations, seems 
 now to be generally abandoned. But could 
 we thus enter into the hearts of the poor, 
 we could get in at the root of the mischief, 
 and by fixing there a habit of economy and 
 independence, more* would be done for 
 them, than by all the liberalities of all the 
 opulent. 
 
 23. In those districts of Scotland where 
 poor-rates are unknown, the descending 
 avenue which leads to pauperism is power- 
 
 fully guarded by the stigma which attaches 
 to it. Remove this stigma, and our cottages, 
 now rich in the possession of contentment 
 and industry, would resign their habits, and 
 crowd into the avenue by thousands. The 
 shame of descending, is the powerful stimu- 
 lus w^hich urges them to contest it manfully 
 with the difficulties of their situation, and 
 which bears them through in all the pride 
 of honest independence. Talk of this to 
 the people of the South, and it sounds in 
 their ears like an Arcadian story. But there 
 is not a clergyman among us who has not 
 witnessed tlie operation of the principle in 
 all its fineness, and in all its moral delicacy ; 
 and surely a testimony is due to those vil- 
 lage heroes who so nobly struggle with the 
 difficulties of pauperism, that they may shim 
 and surmount its degradation. 
 
 24. A Bible Association gives additional 
 vigour and buoyancy to this elevated prin- 
 ciple. The trifle which it exacts from its 
 contributor is in truth never missed by him, 
 but it puts him in the high attitude of a 
 giver, and every feeling which it inspires, 
 is on the side of independence and delicacy. 
 Go over each of these feelings separately, 
 and you find that they are all fitted to for- 
 tify his dislike at the shame and dependence 
 of pauperism. There is a consciousness of 
 importance which unavoidably attaches to 
 the share he has taken in the support and 
 direction of a public charity. There is the 
 expanding effect of the information which 
 comes to him through fhe medium of the cir- 
 culated reports, which lays before him the 
 mighty progressof an institution reaching to 
 all countries, and embracing in its ample 
 grasp, the men of all latitudes and all lan- 
 guages, which deeply interests him in the ob- 
 ject, and perpetuates his desire of promoting 
 it. A man with his heart so occupied, and his 
 attention so directed, is not capable of a vo- 
 luntary descent to pauperism. He has in fact 
 become a more cultivated and intellectual 
 being than formerly. His mind gathers an 
 enlargement from the wide and animating 
 contemplations which are set before him, 
 and we appeal to the reflection of every 
 reader, if such a man will descend as rea- 
 dily to a dependence on the charity of 
 others, as he whose mind is void of informa- 
 tion, and whose feelings are void of dignity. 
 
 25. In such associations, the rich and the 
 poor meet together. They share in one ob- 
 ject, and are united by the sympathy of 
 one feeling and of one interest. We have not 
 to look far into human nature to be con- 
 vinced of the happy and the harmonizing 
 influence which this must have upon so- 
 ciety, and how, in the glow of one common 
 cordiality, all asperity and discontent must 
 give way to the kindlier principles of our 
 nature. The days have been, when the very 
 name of an association carried terror and 
 suspicion along with it.— In a Bible Asso- 
 
INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 217 
 
 ciation there is nothing which our rulers 
 need to be afraid of, and they may rest as- 
 sured, that the moral influence of such in- 
 stitutions is all on the side of peace and 
 loyalty. But to confine myself to the pre- 
 sent argument. Who does not see that they 
 exalt the general tone and character of our 
 people, that they bring them nearer to the 
 dignity of superior and cultivated life, and 
 that therefore, though their direct aim is 
 not to mitigate poverty, they go a certain 
 way to dry up the most abundant of its 
 sources. 
 
 26. Let me add, that the direct influence 
 of the Bible principles is inseparable from 
 a zeal for the circulation of the Bible. It 
 is not to be conceived, that anxiety for 
 sending it to others can exist, while there is 
 no reverence for it among ourselves, and 
 we appeal to those districts where such as- 
 sociations have been formed, if a more visi- 
 ble attention to the Bible, and a more se- 
 rious impression of its authority, is not the 
 * consequence of them. Now, the lessons 
 of this Bible are all on the side of industry. 
 They tell us that it is more blessed to give 
 than to receive, and that therefore, a man 
 who, by his own voluntary idleness, is 
 brought under the necessity of receiving, 
 has disinherited himself of a blessing. The 
 poor must have bread, but the Bible com- 
 mands and exhorts, that wherever it is pos- 
 sible, that bread sliould be their own, and 
 that all who are able should make it their 
 own by working for it.* No precept can 
 be devised which bears more directly on the 
 source of pauperism. The minister who, 
 in his faithful exposition of the Bible, urged 
 this precept successfully upon his people, 
 would do much to extinguish pauperism 
 among them. It is true that he does not 
 always urge successfully ; but surely if suc- 
 cess is to be more looked for in one quarter 
 than in another, it is among the pious and 
 intelligent peasantry whom he has assem- 
 bled around him, whom he has formed into 
 a little society for the circulation of the Bi- 
 ble, and whose feelings he has interested 
 in this purest and worthiest of causes. 
 - 27. Nor is the operation of this principle 
 confined to the actual contributor. We 
 have no doubt that it has been beautifully 
 exemplified even among those who, unable 
 to give their penny a week, either stand on 
 the very verge of pauperism, or have got 
 within its limits. They are unable to give 
 any thing of their own, but they may be 
 able at the same time to forego the wonted 
 allowance whicli they received from ano- 
 ther, or a part of it. The refusals of the 
 poor to take an offered charity, or the 
 whole amount of the offer, are quite familiar 
 to a Scottish clergyman; and the plea on 
 which they set the refusal, that it would be 
 
 ♦2 Thcssalonians iii. 12. 
 
 28 
 
 taking from others who are even needier 
 than they, entitles them, when honestly ad- 
 vanced, to all the praise of benevolence. 
 A spirit of pious attachment to the Bible 
 would prompt a refusal of the same kind. 
 You have other and higher claims upon 
 you; you have the spiritual necessities of 
 the world to provide for, and that you may 
 be the more able to make the provision, 
 leave me to the frugality of my own ma- 
 nagement. In this way the principle de- 
 scends, and carries its healthful influence 
 into the very regions of pauperism. It is 
 the only principle competent to its extirpa- 
 tion. The obvious expedient of a positive 
 supply to meet the wants of existing pover 
 ty, has failed, and the poor-rates of Eng 
 land will ever be a standing testimony to 
 the utter inefficiency of this expedient, 
 which, instead of killing the disease, has 
 rooted and confirmed it. Try the other 
 expedient then. The remedy against the 
 extension of pauperism does not lie in the 
 liberalities of the rich. It lies in the hearts 
 and habits of the poor. Plant in their bo- 
 soms a principle of independence. Give a 
 higher tone of delicacy to their characters. 
 Teach them to recoil from pauperism as a 
 degradation. The degradation may, at 
 times, be unavoidable ; but the thing which 
 gives such an alarming extent to the mis- 
 chief, is the debasing influence of poor-rates, 
 whereby, in the vast majority of instances, 
 the degradation is voluntary. But if there 
 be an e.xahing influence in Bible Assccia- 
 tions to counteract this, if they foster a right 
 spirit of importance ; above all, if they se- 
 cure a readier submission to the lessons of 
 the volume which they are designed to cir- 
 culate, who does not see, that, in proportion 
 as they are multiplied and extended over 
 the face of the country, they carry along 
 with them the most effectual regimen for 
 preventing the extension of poverty. 
 
 28. And here it may be asked, if it be at 
 all likely that these Associations will ex- 
 tend to such a degree as to have a sensible 
 influence upon the habits of the country ? 
 Nothing more likely. A single individual 
 of influence in each parish, would make the 
 system universal. In point of fact, it is 
 making progress every month, and such is 
 the wonderful spirit of exertion which is 
 now^ abroad, that in a few years every little 
 district of the land may become the seat of a 
 Bible Society. We are now upon the dawn 
 of very high anticipations, and the whole- 
 some effect upon the habits and principles 
 of the people at home, is not the least of 
 them. That part of the controversy which 
 relates to the direct merhs of the Bible So- 
 ciety may be looked upon as already ex- 
 hausted ;* and could the objection, founded 
 
 ' See Dealtrv's pamphlets. Letter from the 
 late Dr. Murray, professor of Hebrew in the Uni 
 
■218 
 
 INFLUENCE OF BIBLE SOCIETIES. 
 
 on its interference with the relief of the poor, 
 tie annihilated, or still more, could it be con- 
 verted into a positive argument in its behalf, 
 Ave are not aware of a single remaining 
 plea upon which a rational or benevolent 
 man can refuse his concurrence to it. 
 
 29. And the plea of conceived injury to the 
 poor deserves to be attended to. It wears 
 an amiable complexion, and we believe, that 
 in some instances, a real sympathy with 
 their distresses, lies at the bottom of it. Let 
 sympathy be guided by consideration. It 
 is the part of a Cliristian to hail benevo- 
 lence in all its forms ; but when a plan is 
 started for the relief of the destitute, is he 
 to be the victim of a popular and sentimen- 
 tal indignation, because he ventures to ta!\e 
 up the question whether the plan be really 
 an effective one? We know that in various 
 towns of Scotland you meet with two dis- 
 tinct Penny Societies, one a Bible Associa- 
 tion, the otlier for the relief of the indigent. 
 It is to be regretted that tliere should ever 
 be any jealousy between them, but we be- 
 lieve, that agreeably to what we have al- 
 ready said, it will often be found tliat the 
 one suggested the other, and that the sup- 
 porters of the former, are the most zealous, 
 and active, and useful friends of the latter. 
 We cannot, however, suppress tlie fact, that 
 there is now a growing apprehension lest 
 the growth of the latter Societies should 
 break down the delicacies of the lower or- 
 ders, and pave the way for a permanent 
 introduction of poor-rates. There is a 
 pretty general impression, that the system 
 may be carried too far, and the uncertainty 
 as to the precise limit has given the feeling 
 to many who have embarked with enthu- 
 siasm, that they are now engaged in a tick- 
 lish and questionable undertaking. I do 
 not attempt either to confirm or to refute 
 this impression, but I count it a piece of 
 justice to the associations I am pleading 
 for, to assert, that they stand completely 
 free of every such exception. The Bible 
 Society is making steady advances towards 
 the attainment of its object, and the sure 
 effect of multiplying its subscribers istocon- 
 duct it in a shorter time to the end of its la- 
 bours. A Society for the relief of tempo- 
 ral necessities is grasping at an object that 
 is completely unattainable, and the mischief 
 is, that the more known, and the more ex- 
 tensive, and the more able it becomes, it is 
 sure to be more counted on, and at last, to 
 create more poverty than it provides for. 
 The Bible Society aims at making every 
 
 versity of Edinburgh, to Dr. Charles Stuart. 
 Steinkofi''s Tour on the Continent. Edinburgh 
 Review, vol. xix. p. 39; and above all, the reports 
 and summaries of the institution itself, where you 
 will meet with a cloud of testimonies from Mora- 
 vians, Missionaries, Roman Catholics, the Literati 
 of our chief European towns, and men of piety 
 and pubhc spirit in all quarters of the world. 
 
 land a land of Bibles, and this aim it wiii ac 
 complish after it lias translated the Bjble 
 into all languages, and distributed a sample 
 large enough to create a native and univer- 
 sal demand for them.* After the people of 
 the world have acquired such a taste for the 
 Bible, and such a sense of its value as to pur- 
 chase it for themselves, the Society termi- 
 nates its career, and instead of the corrup- 
 tions and abuses which other charities scat- 
 ter in tlieir way, it leaves the poor to whom 
 it gives, more enlightened, and the poor 
 from whom it takes, more elevated than it 
 found them. 
 
 30. ' Charity,' says Shakspeare, ' is twice 
 blest. It blesses him who gives, and him 
 who takes.' This is far from being miiver- 
 sally true. There is a blessing annexed to 
 the heart which deviseth liberal things. 
 Perhaps the founder of the English poor- 
 rates acquired this blessing, but the indo- 
 lence and depravity which they have been 
 the instruments of spreading over the face 
 of the country, are incalculable. If we 
 wish to see the assertion of the poet realised 
 in its full extent, go to such a charity as we 
 are now pleading for, where the very exer- 
 cise of giving on the one hand, and the in- 
 struction received on the other, have the 
 effect of narrowing the limits of pauperism, 
 by creating a more virtuous and dignified 
 population. 
 
 31. There is poverty to be met with in 
 every land, and we are ready to admit, that 
 a certain proportion of it is due to unavoid- 
 able misfortune. But it is no less true, that in 
 those countries where there is a known and 
 established provision for thenecessitiesof the 
 poor, the greater proportion of the poverty 
 which exists in them is due to the debasing 
 influence of a public charity on the habits 
 of the people. The institution we are 
 pleading for, counteracts this influence. It 
 does not annihilate all poverty, but it tends 
 to annihilate the greater part of it. It ar- 
 rests the progress of the many who were 
 making a voluntary descent to pauperism, 
 and it leaves none to be provided for but 
 the few who have honestly struggled against 
 their distresses, and have struggled in vain. 
 
 32. And how shall they be provided for? 
 You may erect a public institution. This, 
 in fact, is the same with erecting a signal 
 of invitation, and the voluntary and self- 
 created poor will rush in, to the exclusion 
 of those modest and unobtrusive poor who 
 are the genuine objects of charity. This is 
 the never failing mischief of a known and 
 established provision,! ^n^ it has been sadly 
 
 * But this native demand never will be created 
 without the exertion of Missionaries, and the 
 above reasoning apj)lies, in its most important 
 parts, to Missionary Associations. See AppcndLr. 
 
 1 We must here Acept all those nistitutions, 
 the object of wliich is to provide for involuntary 
 distress, such as hospitals, and dispensaries, anJ 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 219 
 
 exemplified in England. The only method 
 of doina: away the mischief is to confide 
 the relief of the poor to individual benevo- 
 lence. This draws no dependence along 
 with it. It is not counted upon like a pub- 
 lic and proclaimed charity. It brings the 
 claims of the poor under the discriminating 
 eye of a neiglibour, wlio will make a differ- 
 ence between a case of genuine helplessness, 
 and a ca«e of idleness or misconduct. It 
 turns the tide of benevolence into its true 
 channel, and it will ever be found, that un- 
 der its operation, tlie poverty of misfortune 
 is better seen to, and the poverty of im- 
 providence and guilt is more effectually 
 prevented. 
 
 33. My concluding observation then is, 
 that the extension of Bible Societies, while 
 it counteracts, in various directions, the 
 mischief of poor-rates, augments that prin- 
 ciple of individual benevolence which is the 
 best substitute for poor-rates. You add to 
 the stock of individual benevolence, by add- 
 ing to the number of benevolent individuals, 
 and this is the genuine effect of a Bible As- 
 
 sociation. Or, you add to the stock of in- 
 dividual benevolence in a country, liy add- 
 ing to the intensity of the benevolent prin- 
 ciple, and this is the undoubted tendency 
 of a Bible Association.* And wliat is of 
 mighty importance in this argument, a' Bi- 
 ble Association not only awakens the be- 
 nevolent principle, but it enlightens it. It 
 establishes an intercourse between tlie va- 
 rious orders of society, and on no former 
 occasion in the history of this country, have 
 the rich and the poor come so often to- 
 gether upon a footing of good will. The 
 kindly influence of this is incalculable. It 
 brings the poor under the eye of tlieir richer 
 neighbours. The visits and inquiries con- 
 nected with the objects of the Bible vSociety, 
 bring them into contact with one another. 
 The rich come to be more skilled in the 
 wants and difliculties of the poor, and by 
 entering their houses, and joining with 
 them in conversation, they not only acquire 
 a benevolence towards them, but they ga- 
 ther that knowledge v.'hich is so essential 
 to guide and enlighten their benevolence. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 It is evident, that the above reasoning applies, 
 in its chief parts, to benevolent Associations, in- 
 stituted for any other religious purpose. It is 
 not necessary to restrict the argument to the case 
 of Bible Associations. I should be sorry if the 
 Bible Society were to engross the religious benevo- 
 lence of the public, and if, in the multiplication 
 of its auxiliaries over the face of the country, it 
 were to occupy the whole ground, and leave no 
 room for the great and important claims of other 
 institutions. 
 
 Of this I conceive that there is little danger. 
 The revenue of each of these Societies is founded 
 upon voluntary contributions, and what is volun- 
 tary may be withdrawn or transferred to other ob- 
 jects. I may give both to a Bible and a Mission- 
 ary Society, or if I can only afford to give to one, 
 I may select either, according to my impression of 
 their respective claims. In this way a vigilant and 
 discerning public will suit its benevolence to the 
 urgency of tlie case, and it is evident, that each 
 institution can employ the same methods for ob- 
 taining ])atronage and support. Each can, and 
 does bring forward a yearly statement of its claims 
 and necessities. Each has the same access to the 
 public through the medium of the pulpit or the 
 press. Each can send iu advocates over the face 
 of the country, and every individual, forming his 
 
 asylums for the lunatic or the bUnd. A man may 
 resign himself to idleness, and become wilfully poor, 
 that he may eat of the public bread, but he will 
 not become wilfully sick or maimed that he may 
 receive n>edicines from a dispensary, or undergo 
 an operation in a hospital. 
 * Sec. 9. 
 
 own estimate of their respective claims, will ap- 
 portion his benevolence accordingly. 
 
 Now what is done by an indi\idual, may be 
 done by every such Association as I am now 
 pleading for. Its members may sit in judgment 
 on the various schemes of utility which are now 
 in operation, and though originally ibrmed as an 
 auxiliary to the Bible Society, it may keep itself 
 open to other calls, and occasionally give of its 
 funds to Missionaries, or Moravians, or the So- 
 ciety for Gaelic Schools, or the African Institu- 
 tion, or to the .Tewish, and Baptist, and Hibernian, 
 and Lancasterian Societies. 
 
 In point of fact, the subordinate Associations 
 of the country are tending towards this arrange- 
 ment, and it is a highly beneficial arrangement, it 
 carries in it a most salutary control over all these 
 various institutions, each labouring to maintain 
 itself in reputation with the public, and to secure 
 the countenance of this great Patron. Indolence 
 and corruption may lay hold of an endowed cha- 
 ritv, but when the charity depends upon pubUc 
 favour, a few glaring examples of mismanagement 
 would annihilate it. 
 
 During a few of the first j'ears of the Bible So- 
 ciety, the members of other Societies were alarm.ed 
 at the rapid extension of its popularity, and ex- 
 pressed their fears lest it should engross all the 
 attention and benevolence of the rebgious public. 
 But the reverse has happened, and a principle 
 made use of in the body of tliis pamphlet may be 
 well illustrated by the history of this matter. [Sec. 
 9.J The Bible Society has drawn a great yearly 
 sum of money from the pubhc, and the first im- 
 pression was, that it would exhaust the fund foi 
 religious charities. But while it drew money from 
 
220 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 the hand, it sent a fresh and powerful excitement 
 of Christian benevolence into the heart, and under 
 the influence of this creative principle, the fund 
 has extended to such a degree, as not only to meet 
 the demands of the new Society, but to yield a 
 more abundant revenue to the older Societies than 
 ever. We believe that the excitement goes much 
 farther than this, and that many a deed of ordinary 
 charity could be traced to the impulse of the cause 
 we are pleading for. We hazard the assertion, 
 that many thousands of those who contribute to 
 the Bible Society, find in themselves a greater 
 readiness to every good work, since the period of 
 their connexion vnth it, and that in the wholesome 
 channel of individual benevolence, more hunger is 
 fed, and more nakedness clothed throughout the 
 land, than at any period anterior to the formation 
 of our Religious Societies. 
 
 The alarm grounded upon the tendency of 
 these Societies with their vast revenues, to im- 
 poverish the country, is ridiculous. If ever their 
 total revenue shall amount to a sum which can 
 make it worthy of consideration to an enlightened 
 economist at all, it may be proved that it trenches 
 upon no national interest whatever, that it leaves 
 population and public revenue on precisely the 
 same footing of extent and prosperity in which it 
 found them, and that it interferes with no one ob- 
 
 ject which patriot or politician needs to care for. 
 In the mean time it may suffice to state, that the 
 income of all the Bible and Missionary Societies in 
 the_ island, would not do more than defray the an- 
 nual maintenance of one ship of the line. When 
 put by the side of the millions which are lavished 
 without a sigh on the enterprises of war, it is 
 nothing; and shall this veriest trifle be grudged 
 to the advancement of a cause, which, when car- 
 ried to its accomplishment, will put an end to war, 
 and banish all its passions and atrocities from the 
 world 7 
 
 I should be sorry if Penny Associations were to 
 bind themselves down to the support of the Bible 
 Society. I should like to see them exercising a 
 judgment over the numerous claims which are 
 now before the public, and giving occasionally of 
 their funds to other religious institutions. The 
 effect of tliis very exercise would be to create a 
 Uberal and well-informed peasantry, to open a wider 
 sphere to their contemplaticms, and to raise the 
 standard not merely of piety but of general intel- 
 ligence among them. The diminution of pau- 
 perism is only part of the general efi'ect which the 
 multiplication of these Societies will bring about 
 in the country ; and if my limits allowed me, I 
 might expatiate on their certain influence in raising 
 the tone and character of the British population 
 
A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE SOCIETY IN SCOTLAND, 
 
 FOR 
 
 PROPAGATING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 (incorporated by royal charter,) 
 
 AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY MEETING, IN THE HIGH CHURCH OF EDINBURGH, ON 
 THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1814. 
 
 * And Nathaniel said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ? Philip saith unto him, 
 
 Come and see." — John i. 46. 
 
 The principle of association, however I 
 useful in the main, has a blinding and mis- 
 leading ettect in many instances. Give it a 
 wide enough field of induction to work 
 upon, and it will carry you to a right con- 
 clusion upon any one case or question that 
 comes before you. But the evil is, that it 
 often carries you forward with as much 
 confidence upon a limited, as upon an en- 
 larged field of experience, and the man of 
 narrow views will, upon a few paltry indi- 
 vidual recollections, be as obstinate in the 
 assertion of his own maxim, and as boldly 
 come forward with his own sweeping gene- 
 rality, as if the whole range of nature and 
 observation had been submitted to him. 
 
 To aggravate the mischief, the opinion 
 thus formed upon the specialities of his 
 own limited experience, obtains a holding 
 and a tenacity in his mind, which dispose 
 him to resist all the future facts and in- 
 stances that come before him. Thus it is 
 that the opinion becomes a prejudice ; and 
 that no statement, however true, or how- 
 ever impressive, will be able to dislodge it. 
 You may accumulate facts upon facts, but 
 the opinion he has already formed, has ac- 
 quired a certain right of pre-occupancy 
 over him. It is the law of the mind which, 
 like the similar law of society, often carries 
 it over the original principles of justice, and 
 it is this which gives so strong a positive 
 influence to error, and makes its overflow 
 so very slow and laborious an operation. 
 
 I know not the origin of the prejudice re- 
 specting the town of Nazareth ; or what it 
 was that gave rise to an aphorism of such 
 sweeping universality, as that no good thing 
 could come out of it. Perhaps in two, three, 
 or more instances, individuals may have 
 come out of it who threw a discredit over 
 
 the place of their nativity by the profligacy 
 of their actions. Hence an association be- 
 tween the very name of the town, and the 
 villainy of its inhabitants. The association 
 forms into an opinion. The opinion is em- 
 bodied into a proverb, and is transmitted in 
 the shape of a hereditary prejudice to future 
 generations. It is likely enough, that many 
 instances could have been appealed to, of 
 people from the town of Nazareth, who 
 gave evidence in their characters and lives 
 against the prejudice in question. But it is 
 not enough that evidence be offered by the 
 one party. It must be attended to by the 
 other. The disposition to resist it must be 
 got over. The love of tiuth and justice 
 must prevail over that indolence which likes 
 to repose, without disturbance, in its present 
 convictions; and over that malignity which, 
 I fear, makes a dark and hostile impression 
 of others, too congenial to many hearts. 
 Certain it is, that when the strongest possible 
 demonstration was oflTered in the person of 
 him who was the finest example of the good 
 and fair, it was found that the inveteracy 
 of the prejudice could withstand it; and it 
 is to be feared that with the question, " Can 
 any good come out of Nazareth ?" there 
 were many in that day who shut their eyes 
 and their affections against him. 
 
 Thus it was that the very name of a town 
 fastened an association of prejudice upon 
 all its inhabitants. But this is only one ex- 
 ample out of the many. A sect may be 
 thrown into discredit by a very few of its 
 individual specimens, and the same associa- 
 tion be fastened upon all its members. A 
 society may be thrown into discredit by the 
 failure of one or two of its undertakings, 
 and this will be enough to entail suspicion 
 and ridicule upon all its future operations. 
 
222 
 
 MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 A system may be thrown into discredit by 
 the fanaticism and folly of some of its ad- 
 vocates, and it may be long before it 
 emerges from the contempt of a precipitate 
 and unthinking public, ever ready to follow 
 the impulse of her former recollections; it 
 may be long before it is reclaimed from ob- 
 scurity by the eloquence of future defend- 
 ers ; and there may be the struggle and the 
 perseverance of many years before the ex- 
 isting association, with all its train of ob- 
 loquies, and disgusts, and prejudices, shall 
 be overthrown. 
 
 A lover of truth is thus placed on the 
 right field for the exercise of his principles. 
 It is the field of his faith and of his pa- 
 tience, and in which he is called to a manly 
 encounter with the enemies of his cause. 
 He may have much to bear, and little but 
 the mere force of principle to uphold him. 
 But what a noble exhibition of mind, when 
 this force is enough for it; when, though 
 unsupported by the sympathy of other 
 minds, it can rest on the truth and righ- 
 teousness of its own principle ; when it can 
 select its object from among the thousand 
 entanglements of error, and keep by it 
 amidst all the clamours of hostility and 
 contempt ; when all the terrors of disgrace 
 cannot alarm it ; when all the levities of 
 ridicule cannot shame it; when all the 
 scowl of opposition cannot overwhelm it. 
 
 There are some very fine examples of 
 such a contest, and of such a triumph, in 
 the history of philosophy. In the progress 
 of speculation, the doctrine of the occult 
 qualities fell into disrepute, and every 
 thing that could be associated with such a 
 doctrine was disgraced and borne down b}^ 
 the authority of the reigning school, \^'^len 
 Sir Isaac Newton's Theory of Gravitation 
 was announced to the world, if it had not 
 the persecution of violence, it had at least 
 the persecution of contempt to struggle 
 with. It had the sound of an occult prin- 
 ciple, and it was charged with all the bi- 
 gotry and mysticism of the schoolmen. 
 This kept it for a time from the chairs and 
 universities of Europe, and for years a kind 
 of obscure and ignoble sectarianism was 
 annexed to that name, which has been 
 carried down on such a tide of glory to 
 distant age.s. Let us think of this, when 
 philosophers bring their names and their 
 authority to bear upon us, when they pour 
 contempt on the truth which we love, and 
 on the system which we defend ; and as 
 they fasten their epithets upon us, let us take 
 comfort in thinking that we are under the 
 very ordeal through which philosophy her- 
 self had to pass, before she achieved the 
 most splendid of her victories. 
 
 Sure I am, that the philosophers of that 
 age could not have a more impetuous con- 
 tempt for the occult principle, which they 
 conceived to lie in the doctrine of gravita- 
 
 tion, that many of our present philoso- 
 phers have for the equally occult principle 
 which they conceive to lie in the all-sub- 
 duing efficacy of the christian faith over 
 every mind which embraces it. Each of 
 these two doctrines is mighty m its preten- 
 sions. The one, asserts a principle to be 
 now in operation, and which, reigning over 
 the material world, gives harmony to all 
 its movements. The other, asserts a prin- 
 ciple which it wants to put into operation, to 
 apply to all minds, to carry round the 
 globe, and to visit with its influence all the 
 accessible dominions of the moral world. 
 Mighty anticipation ! It promises to rectify 
 all disorder, to extirpate all vice, to dry 
 up the source of all those sins, and suflfer- 
 ings, and sorrows, which have spread such 
 dismal and unseemly ravages over the face 
 of society, to turn every soul from Satan 
 unto God ; or, in other words, to annihilate 
 that disturbing force which has jarred the 
 harmony of the moral world, and make all 
 its parts tend obedientl}' to the Deity as its 
 centre and its origin. 
 
 But how can this principle be put into 
 operation ? How shall it be brought into 
 contact with a soul at the distance of a 
 thousand miles from the place in which we 
 are now standing ? I know no other con- 
 ceivable way than sending a messenger in 
 pos.session of the principle himself, and 
 able to convey it into the mind of another 
 by Iiis powers of communication. The 
 precept of " Go and preacli the Gospel 
 unto every creature," would obtain a very 
 partial obedience indeed, if there was no 
 actual moving of the preacher from one 
 place or neighbourhood to another. Were 
 he to stand still he might preach to some 
 creatures ; he might get a smaller or a 
 larger number to assemble around him, and 
 it is to be hoped from the stationary pul- 
 pits of a christian country the preaching 
 of the word has been made to bear with 
 efficacy on the souls of multitudes. But in 
 reference to the vast majority of the world, 
 that may still be said which was said by 
 an apostle in the infant state of our reli- 
 gion, how shall they hear without a preach- 
 er, and how .shall they preach except they 
 be sent ? It is the single circumstance of 
 being sent, which forms the peculiarity so 
 much contended for by one part of the 
 British public, and so much resisted by the 
 other. The preacher who is so sent is, in 
 good Latin, termed a Missionai^ij ; and such 
 is the magical power which lies in the very 
 sound of this hateful and obnoxious term, 
 that it is no sooner uttered than a thousand 
 associations of dislike and prejudice start 
 into existence. And yet you would think 
 it very strange : the term itself is perfectly 
 correct in point of etymology. Many of 
 those who are so clamorous in their hos- 
 tility against it, feel no contempt for the 
 
MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 223 
 
 mere act of preaching, sit with all decencj^ 
 and apparent seriousness under it, and have 
 a becoming respect for the character of a 
 preacher. Convert the preacher into a Mis- 
 sionary, and all you have done is merely to 
 graft upon the man's preaching the circum- 
 stance of locomotion. How comes it that 
 the talent, and the eloquence, and the prin- 
 ciple, which appeared so respectable in 
 your eyes, so long as they stood still, lose 
 all their respectablility so soon as they be- 
 gin to move? It is certainly conceivable, 
 that the personal qualities which bear with 
 salutary influence upon the human beings 
 of one place, may pass unimpaired and 
 have the same salutary influence upon the 
 human beings of another. But this is a 
 missionary process, and though unable to 
 bring forward any substantial exception 
 against the thing, they cannot get the bet- 
 ter of the disgust excited by the term. 
 They cannot release their understanding 
 from the influence of its old associations, 
 and these philosophers are repelled from 
 truth, and frightened out of the way which 
 leads to it, by the bugbear of a name. 
 
 The precept is, " Go and preach the gos- 
 pel to every creature under heaven." The 
 people I allude to have no particular quar- 
 rel with the preach; but they have a mor- 
 tal antipathy to the fro — and should even 
 their own admired preacher ofller to go 
 himself; or help to send others, he becomes 
 a missionary, or the advocate of a mission ; 
 and the question of my text is set up in re- 
 sistance to the whole scheme, "Can any 
 good thing come out of it V 
 
 I never felt myself in more favourable 
 circumstances for giving an answer to the 
 question, than I do at this moment, sur- 
 rounded as I am by the members of a So- 
 ciety, which has been labouring for up- 
 wards of a century in the field of mission- 
 ary exertion. It need no longer be taken up 
 or treated as a speculative question. The 
 question of the text may, in reference to 
 the subject now before us, be met imme- 
 diately by the answer of the text, " Come 
 and see." We call upon you to look to a 
 set of actual performances, to examine the 
 record of past doings, and like good philo- 
 sophers as you are, to make the sober de- 
 positions of history carry it over the reve- 
 ries of imagination and prejudice. We deal 
 in proofs, not in promises ; in practice, not 
 in profession; in experience, and not in 
 experiment. The Society whose cause I 
 am now appointed to plead in your hear- 
 ing, is to all intents and purposes a Mis- 
 sionary Society. It has a claim to all tlie 
 honour, and must just submit to all the 
 disgrace which such a title carries along 
 with it. It has been in the habit for many 
 years of hiring preachers and teachers, 
 and may be convicted times without num- 
 ber, of the act of sending them to a dis- 
 
 tance. What the precise distance is I do 
 not understand to be of any signification to 
 the argument ; but even though it should, 
 I fear that in the article of distance, our 
 Society has at times been as extravagant 
 as many of her neighbours. Her labours 
 have been met with in other quarters of 
 the world. They have been found among 
 the haunts of savages. They have dealt 
 with men in the very infoncy of social im- 
 provement, and their zeal for proselytism 
 has far outstript that sober preparatory 
 management, which is so much contended 
 for. Why, they have carried the Gospel 
 message into climes on which Europe had 
 never impressed a single trace of her boast- 
 ed civilization. They have tried the spe- 
 cies in the first stages of its rudeness and 
 ferocity, nor did they keep back the offer 
 of the Saviour from their souls, till art and 
 industry had performed a sufficient part, 
 and were made to administer in fuller 
 abundance to the wants of their bodies. 
 This process, which has been so much in- 
 sisted upon, they did not wait for. They 
 preached and they prayed at the very out- 
 set, and they put into exercise all the wea- 
 pons of their spiritual ministry. In a word, 
 they have done all the fanatical and of- 
 fensive things which have been charged 
 upon other missionaries. If there be folly 
 in such enterprises as these, our Society 
 has the accumulated follies of a whole cen- 
 tury upon her forehead. She is among the 
 vilest of the vile, and the same overwhelm- 
 ing ridicule which has throA\Ti the mantle 
 of ignominy over other Societies, will lay 
 all her honours and pretensions in the dust. 
 
 We are not afraid of linking the claims 
 of our Society with the general merits of 
 the Missionary cause. With this cause she 
 stands or Aills. When the spirit of Mis- 
 sionary enterprise is afloat in the country, 
 she will not be neglected among the mul- 
 tiplicity of other objects. She will not suffer 
 from the number or the activity of kindred 
 Societies. They who conceive alarm upon 
 this ground, have not calculated upon the 
 productive powers of benevolence. They 
 have not meditated deeply upon the opera- 
 tion of this principle, nor do they conceive 
 how a general impulse given to the Mis- 
 sionary spirit, may work the two fold eflfect 
 of multiplying the number of Societies, and 
 of providing for each of them more abun- 
 dantly than ever. 
 
 The fact is undeniable. In this corner of 
 the empire there is an impetuous and over 
 bearin? contempt for every thing connected 
 with the name of Missionary. The cause 
 has been outraged by a thousand inde- 
 cencies. Every thing like the coolness of 
 the philosophical spirit has been banished 
 from one side of the controversy, and all 
 the epithets of disgrace, which a perverted 
 ingenuity could devise, have been unspa- 
 
224 
 
 MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 ringly lavished on the noblest benefactors 
 of the species. We have reason to believe 
 that this opposition is not so extensive, nor 
 so virulent in England. It is due to certain 
 provincial associations, and may be ac- 
 counted for. It is most a Scottish pecu- 
 liarity ; and while, with our neighbours in 
 the South, it is looked upon as a liberal and 
 enlightened cause ; as a branch of that very 
 principle which abolished the Slave Trade 
 of Africa ; as one of the wisest, and likeliest 
 experiments, which in this age of benevo- 
 lent enterprise, is now making for the in- 
 terests of the world ; as a scheme ennobled 
 by the patronage of royalty ; supported by 
 the contributions of opulence ; sanctified by 
 the prayers and the wishes of philanthropy ; 
 assisted by men of the first science, and the 
 first scholarship ; carrying into execution 
 by as hardy adventurers as ever trod the 
 desert in quest of novelty; and enriching 
 grammar, geography, and natural know- 
 ledge, by the discoveries they are making 
 every year, as to the statistics of all countries, 
 and the peculiarities of all languages ; while, 
 I say, such are the dignified associations 
 thrown around the Missionary cause in 
 England ; in this country I am sorry to say 
 a very ditferent set of collaterals is annexed 
 to it. A great proportion of our nobility, 
 gentry, and clergy, look upon it as a very 
 low and drivelling concern ; as a visionary 
 enterprize, and that no good thing can 
 come out of it ; as a mere dreg of sectarian- 
 ism, and which none but sectarians, or men 
 who should have been sectarians, have any 
 relish or respect for. The torrent of pre- 
 judice runs strongly against it, and the very 
 name of Missionary excites the most nau- 
 seous antipathy in the hearts of many, who, 
 in other departments, approve themselves 
 to be able, and candid, and reflecting in- 
 quirers. 
 
 We have no doubt that in the course of 
 years all this will pass away. But reason 
 and experience are slow in their operation ; 
 and, in the mean time, we count it fair to 
 neutralize, if possible, one prejudice by an- 
 other; to school down a Scottish antipathy 
 by a Scottish predilection, and to take shel- 
 ter from the contempt that is novv so wan- 
 tonly pouring on the best of causes under 
 the respected name of a Society, which has 
 earned by the services of a hundred years, 
 the fairest claims on the gratitude and vene- 
 ration of all our countrymen. Come, and 
 see the eff"ect of her Missionary exertions. 
 It is palpable and near at hand. It lies within 
 the compass of many a summer tour; and 
 tell me, ye children of fancy, who expatiate 
 with a delighted eye over the wilds of our 
 mountain scenery, if it be not a dearer and 
 worthier exercise still, to contemplate the 
 habits of her once ragged and wandering 
 population. What would they have been at 
 this moment, had schools, and Bibles, and 
 
 Ministers, been kept back from them? and 
 had the men of a century ago been deterred 
 by the flippancies of the present age, from 
 the work of planting chapels and seminaries 
 in that neglected land ? The ferocity of their 
 ancestors would have come down unsoftened 
 and unsubdued to the existing generation. 
 The darkening spirit of hostility would still 
 have lowered upon us from the North ; and 
 these plains, now so peaceful and so happy, 
 would have lain open to the fury of merci- 
 less invaders. O, ye soft and sentimental 
 travellers, who wander so secureh^ over this 
 romantic land, you are right to choose the 
 season when the angry elements of nature 
 are asleep. But what is it that has charmed 
 to their long repose the more dreadful ele- 
 ments of human passion and human injus- 
 tice? What is it that has quelled the bois- 
 terous spirit of her natives? — and while her 
 torrents roar as fiercely, and her mountain 
 brows look as grimly as ever, what is that 
 which has thrown so softening an influence 
 over the minds and manners of her living 
 population? 
 
 I know not that there are several causes; 
 but sure I am, that the civilizing influence 
 of our Society has had an important share. 
 If it be true that our country is indebted to 
 her Schools and her Bibles for the most in- 
 telligent and virtuous peasantry in Europe, 
 let it never be forgotten thai the Schools in 
 the establishment of our Society are nearly 
 equal to one-third of all the parishes in Scot- 
 land; that these schools are chiefly to be 
 met with in the Highland district; that they 
 bear as great a proportion to the Highland 
 population, as all our parochial seminaries 
 do to all our population ; or, in other words, 
 had the local convenience for the attendance 
 of scholars been as great as in other parts 
 of the country, the apparatus set a going by 
 our Society, for the education of the High- 
 land peasantry, would have been as effective 
 as the boasted provision of the legislature, 
 for the whole of Scotland.* 
 
 * This want of local convenience for the attend- 
 ance of scholars, is the chief difficulty which our 
 Society has to struggle with. The number of 
 scholars bears to the population the proportion 
 stated in the text ; but think of the broad surface 
 of a thinly peopled country', intersected with deep 
 bavs, and crossed in every direction by the natural 
 barriers of lakes and mountains. There are only 
 two ways in which education can be carried over 
 the face of a country so peculiarly formed. The 
 first wav is, by the multiplication of stationary 
 points, from which learning may emanate among 
 the children in distinct neighbourhoods. The se- 
 cond way is, by the operation of circulating schools, 
 which describe at intervals the blank spaces that 
 are placed bevond the reach of stationary- schools. 
 In the present situation of the Highlands, both of 
 these methods are puttmg into oj^eration ; and both 
 are entitled to the support and patronage of the 
 public. But without wishing to wulidraw a single 
 farthing from the latter of these methods, no one 
 
MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 225 
 
 I pass over the attempts of our Society to 
 introduce the knowledge of the arts and the 
 habits of useful industry among them. 1 
 
 will deny that the former, if it could be put into 
 operation, is the most effectual, for the full and the 
 egular education of the Highlanders. A fixed 
 ochool, operating at all seasons, will do more for its 
 neighbourhood than can be done by a moveable 
 apparatus set up only at intervals, and transferring 
 itself at the end of a few months to other scenes, 
 and to other neighbourhoods. Let us aim, tliere- 
 fore, at the multiplication of the fixed points; but 
 a mighty sum will be necessary' before such a sys- 
 tem is completed ; and in the mean time, let not the 
 population of the intermediate spaces be abandoned. 
 Let the cheapest and readiest expedient that offers 
 for their education be adopted, and let the public 
 hold forth a liberal hand to the society for circulat- 
 ing schools. But what is to hinder us to combine 
 with this, the gradual extension of the system of 
 fixed and regular education 7 The parochial schools 
 furnish us with so many fixed points. The Society 
 I am now pleading for, furnish us so many more. 
 The very existence of the Gaelic Society, is a 
 proof both of the extent and multiplicity of those 
 intermediate spaces, over which they are operating 
 with so much efficiency. Now the precise ground 
 upon which we lay claim to the support of the 
 public, is, that we want to scatter a few more 
 stationary schools over these intermediate spaces — 
 not to supersede the labours of the other Society; 
 for the period of time at wliich this can be possibly 
 accomplished, is still at an indefinite distance from 
 us — but by narrowing the ground of their opera- 
 tion, to enable them to do more complete justice to 
 the mighty remainder, on which they have every 
 prospect of expatiating for years and generations 
 to come ; to make the task more commensurate to 
 their means, and enable them to circulate, with 
 greater frequency and effect, over those remoter 
 tracts, which we have as yet no immediate prospect 
 of reaching. 
 
 Who would not give all jealousy to the wind, 
 when they see how beautifully situated the opera- 
 tions of these two distinct societies are to one an- 
 other! Circulate, \vith all possible activity, among 
 the interjacent spaces on the one hand, but do not 
 give up the prospect of permanent establishments 
 in these spaces on the other. The last is the pro- 
 vince of our Society, and is advanced as our distinct 
 claim upon the generosity of the public. We lay 
 claim to this generosity; and what is more, we 
 stand in need of it. It is not true that we do not 
 t«ach the Gaelic to our Highland scholars. The in- 
 structions given to every Schoolmaster, and the 
 Reports of the committees of Presbyteries, upon 
 the examination of scholars, form a distinct refuta- 
 tion to the impression which has got abroad upon 
 this subject. Strange that this Society shoultl be 
 charged with a hostility to Gaelic education, to 
 whose exertion and whose patronage the High- 
 lands of Scotland are indebted for the existence of 
 the Gaelic Bible. On the other hand, it is not true 
 that our funds are so ample as to make us inde- 
 pendent of any appeals that can be made to the 
 generosity of the public. Our expenditure is at this 
 moment pressing upon our resources. We have 
 done much. There are hundreds of Schools regu- 
 larly supported by us; but we appeal to the very 
 existence of other Societies for the fact, that we 
 have still much to do. We appeal to the press of 
 applications for more Schools, and more School- 
 masters, and more salaries. These applications 
 
 29 
 
 have not room for every thing. And to re- 
 claim, if possible, the prejudices of those 
 who I fear have little sympathy with the 
 wants of the ever-during soul, I have been 
 lingering all the while upon the inferior 
 ground of temporal advantage. But I may 
 detain you for hours u[)()n this ground, and 
 after all I have said about a more peaceful 
 neighbourhood, and a more civilized pea- 
 santry, I may positively have said nothing 
 upon the essential merits of the cause. 1 
 can conceive the wish of his present Ma- 
 jesty, that every one in his dominions may 
 be able to read the Bible, to meet an echo 
 in every bosom. But wliy? Because the 
 very habit of reading implies a more intel- 
 ligent people, and must stand associated in 
 every mind with habits of order, and com- 
 fort, and decency. But separate these from 
 the religiodis principle, and what are they? 
 At the very best they are the virtues of a 
 life; their office is to scatter a few fleeting 
 joys over a short and uncertain pilgrimage, 
 and to deck a temporary scene with bless- 
 ings, which are to perish and be forgotten. 
 No ! In our attempts to carry into effect the 
 principle of being all things to all men. let 
 us never exalt that which is subordinate; 
 let us never give up our reckoning upon 
 eternity, or be ashamed to own it as our 
 sentiment, that though schools were to mul- 
 tiply, though Missionaries were to labour, 
 and all the decencies and accomplishments 
 of social life were to follow in their train, 
 the great object would still be unattained, so 
 long as the things of the Holy Spirit were 
 unrelished and undiscerned among them, 
 and they wanted that knowledge of God and 
 of Jesus Christ, which is life everlasting. 
 This is Die ground upon which every Chris- 
 tian will rest the vindication of every Mis- 
 sionary enterprise ; and this is the ground 
 upon which he may expect to be abandoned 
 by the infidel, who laughs at piety; or the 
 lukewarm believer, who dreads to be laughed 
 at for the extravagance to which he carries 
 it. The Christian is not for giving up the 
 social virtues; but the open enemy and the 
 cold friend of the gospel are for giving up 
 piety; and while they garnish all that is 
 right and amiable in humanity, with the 
 unsubstantial praises of their eloquence, they 
 pour contempt upon that very principle 
 which forms our best security for the ex- 
 istence of virtue in the world. We say no- 
 thing that can degrade the social virtues in 
 the estimation of men; bat by making them 
 part of religion, we exalt them above all 
 that poet or moralist can do for them. We 
 give them God for their object, and for their 
 end the grandeur of eternity. No ! It is not 
 
 come upon us every year, and the painful necessity 
 we are under of refusing many of them, proves to 
 a demonstration, that the want of pecuniary aid is 
 the only limit to the usefulness of our exertions. 
 
226 
 
 MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 the Christian who is the enemy of social 
 virtue; it is he who sighs in all the ecstacy 
 of sentiment over it, at the very time that 
 he is digging away its foundation, and 
 wreaking on that piety which is its princi- 
 ple, the cruelty of his scorn. 
 
 It is very well in its place to urge the 
 civilizing influence of a Missionary Society. 
 But this is not the main object of such an in- 
 stitution. It is not the end. It is only the 
 accompaniment. It is a never-failing colla- 
 teral, and may be used as a lawful instru- 
 ment in fighting the battles of the Mission- 
 ary cause. It is right enough to contest it 
 with our enemies at every one point of 
 advantage; and for this purpose to descend, 
 if necessary, to the very ground on which 
 they have posted themselves. But, when 
 so engaged, let us never forget the main 
 elements of our business; for there is a 
 danger, that when turning the eye of our 
 antagonist to the lovely picture of peace, 
 and industry and cultivation, raised by 
 many a Christian Missionary, among the 
 wilds of heathenism, we turn it away from 
 the very marrow and substance of our un- 
 dertaking; the great aim of which is to 
 preach Christ to sinners, and to rear human 
 souls to a beauteous and never-fading im- 
 mortality. 
 
 The wish of our pious and patriotic king, . 
 that every man in his dominions might be 
 able to read the Bible, has circulated 
 through the land. It has been commented 
 upon with eloquence ; and we doubt not, 
 that something like the glow of a virtuous 
 sensibility has been awakened by it. But 
 let us never forget that in the breasts of 
 many, all this may be little better than a 
 mere theatrical emotion. Give me the man 
 Avho is in the daily habit of opening his 
 Bible, who willingly puts himself into the 
 attitude of a little child when he reads it. 
 and casts an unshrinking eye over its in- 
 formation and its testimony. This is the 
 way of giving effect and consistency to their 
 boasted admiration of the royal sentiment. 
 The mere admiration in itself indicates no- 
 thing. It may be as little connected with 
 the sturdiness of principle as the finery of 
 any poetical delusion. O ! it is easy to 
 combine a vague and general testimony to 
 the Bible, with a disgusted feeling of anti- 
 pathy to the methodism of its actual con- 
 tents; and thousands can profess to make it 
 their rallying point, who pour contempt 
 upon its doctrines, and give the lie to the 
 faithfulness of its sayings. 
 
 Let us put you to the trial. The Bible 
 tells us, that " he who believeth not the Son 
 shall not see life, but the wrath of God 
 abideth on him." It calls upon us "to 
 preach the gospel to every creature," that 
 every creature may believe it ; for he who 
 so " believeth shall not perish, but have 
 everlasting life." Such is the mighty dif- 
 
 ference between believing and not believ- 
 ing. It makes all the difference between 
 hell and heaven. He who believeth. hath 
 passed from death even unto life; and the 
 errand of the Missionary is to carry these 
 overtures to the men of all languages, and 
 all countries ; that he may prevail upon 
 them to make this transition. Some reject 
 his overtures, and to them the gospel is the 
 savour of death unto death. Others em- 
 brace them, and to them the gospel is the 
 savour of life unto life. Whatever be his 
 reception, he counts it his duty and his bu- 
 siness to preach the gospel ; and if he get 
 some to hear, and others to forbear, he just 
 fares as the Apostles did before him. Now, 
 my brethren, have we got among the sub- 
 stantial realities of the Missionary cause. 
 We have carried you forward from the ac- 
 cessaries to the radical elements of the bu- 
 siness ; and if you, offended at the hardness 
 of these sayings, feel as if now we had got 
 within the confines of methodism ; then 
 know that this feeling arose in your minds 
 at the very moment that we got within the 
 four corners of the Bible ; and your fancied 
 admiration of this book, however exquisite 
 ly felt, or eloquently uttered, is notliing bet 
 ter than the wretched flummery of a sickly 
 and deceitful imagination. 
 
 Our venerable Society has given the 
 sanction of her example to the best and the 
 dearest objects of Missionaries. Like others 
 she has kept a wakeful eye over all that 
 could contribute to the mterests of the 
 species. She has given encouragement to 
 art and to industry, but she has never been 
 diverted from the religion of a people as the 
 chief aim of all her undertakings. To this 
 end slie has multiplied schools, and made 
 the reading of the Scriptures the main ac- 
 quirement of her scholars. The Bible is her 
 school-book, and it is to her that the 
 Highlands of Scotland owe the transla- 
 tion of the sacred record into their own 
 tongue. She sends preachers as well as 
 teachers among them. As she has made 
 the reading of the word a practicable ac- 
 quirement, so she ha? made the hearing of 
 the word an accessible privilege. In short, 
 she has set up what may be called a chris- 
 tian apparatus in many districts, which the 
 Legislature of the country had left un- 
 provided for. She is filling up the blanks 
 which, among the scattered and extended 
 parishes of the North, occur so frequently 
 over the broad surface of a thinly peopled 
 country. She has come in contact with 
 those remoter groups and hamlets, which 
 the influence of the Establishment did not 
 reach. And she has multiplied her en- 
 dowments at such a rate, that very many 
 people have got christian instruction in its 
 different branches as nearly, and as effec- 
 tively to bear upon them, as in the more 
 favoured districts of the land. 
 
MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 227 
 
 Wlien a wealthy native of a Highland 
 parish, penetrated with a feeling of the 
 wants of his neighbours, erects a chapel, or 
 endows a seminary among them, his bene- 
 volence is felt and acknowledged by all ; 
 and I am not aware of a single association 
 which can disturb our moral estimate of 
 such a proceeding, or restrain the fulness 
 of that testimony which is due to it. But 
 should an individual, at a distance from 
 the parish in question, do the same thing ; 
 should he, with no natural claim upon him, 
 and without the stimulus of any of those 
 aifections, which the mere circumstance 
 of vicinity is fitted to inspire ; should he, I 
 say, merely upon a moving representation 
 of their necessities, devote his wealth to the 
 same cause ; what influence ought this to 
 have upon our estimate of his character ? 
 Why, in all fairness, it should just lead us 
 to infer a stronger degree of the principle 
 of philanthropy, a principle which in his 
 case was unaided by any local influence 
 whatever, and which urged him to exer- 
 tion, and to sacrifice, in the face of an obsta- 
 cle which the other had not to contend with 
 — the obstacle of distance. Now, what one 
 individual may be conceived to do for one 
 parish, a number of individuals may do for 
 a number of parishes. They may form into 
 a societj', and combine their energies and 
 their means for the benefit of the whole 
 country, and should tliat countr}' lie at a 
 distance, the only way in which it affects 
 our estimate of their exertions, is by lead- 
 ing us to see in them a stronger principle 
 of attachment to the species, and a more de- 
 termined zeal for the object of their bene- 
 volence, in spite of the additional difiiculties 
 with which it is encumbered. 
 
 Now the principle does not stop here. 
 In the instance before us, it has been car- 
 ried from the metropolis of Scotland to the 
 distance of her Northern extremities. But 
 tell me, why it might not be carried round 
 the globe. This very Society has carried 
 it over the Atlantic, and the very apparatus 
 which she has planted in the Highlands 
 and islands of our country, she has set a 
 going more than once in the wilds of 
 America. Tlie very discipline which she 
 has applied to her own population, she has 
 brought to bear on human beings in other 
 quarters of the world. She has wrought 
 with the same instruments upon the same 
 materials, and as in sound philosophy it ought 
 to have been expected, she has obtained the 
 same result — a christian people rejoicing in 
 the faith of Jesus, and ripening for heaven, by 
 a daily progress upon earth in the graces 
 and accomphshments of the gospel. I have 
 yet to learn what that is which should make 
 the same teaching, and the same Bible, ap- 
 plicable to one part of the species, and not 
 applicable to another. I am not aware of 
 a single principle in the philosophy of man, 
 
 which points to such a distinction ; nor do I 
 know a single category in the science of 
 human nature, which can assist me in draw- 
 ing the landmark between those to whom 
 Christianity may be given, and those who 
 are unworthy or unfit for the participation 
 of its blessings. I have been among iUiterate 
 peasantry, and I have marked how apt they 
 were in their narrow field of observation, 
 to cherish a kind of malignant contempt for 
 the men of another shire, or another coun- 
 try. I have heard of barbarians, and of 
 their insolent disdain for foreigners. 1 have 
 read of Jews, and of their unsocial and ex- 
 cluding prejudices. But I always looked 
 upon these as the jealousies of ignorance, 
 which science and observation had the 
 eflfect of doing away, and that the accom- 
 plished traveller, liberalized by frequent in- 
 tercourse with the men of other countries, 
 saw through the vanity of all these preju- 
 dices, and disowned them. What the man 
 of liberal philosophy is in sentiment, the 
 Missionary is in practice. He sees in every 
 man a partaker of his own nature, and a 
 brother of his own species. He contem- 
 plates the human mind in the generality of 
 its great elements. He enters upon the wide 
 field of benevolence, and disdains those 
 geographical barriers, by which little men 
 would shut out one half of the species from 
 the kind offices of the other. Flis business 
 is with man, and let his localities be what 
 they may, enough for his large and noble 
 heart, tliat he is bone of the same bone. 
 To get at him, he will shun no danger, he 
 will shrink from no privation, he will spare 
 himself no fatigue, he will brave every ele- 
 ment of heaven, lie will hazard the extremi- 
 ties of every clime, he will cross seas, and 
 work his persevering way through the briers 
 and thickets of the wilderness. In perils 
 of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils 
 by the heathen, in weariness and painful- 
 ness, he seeks after him. The cast and the 
 colour are nothing to the comprehensive 
 eye of a Missionary. His is the broad prin- 
 ciple of good will to the children of men. 
 His doings are with the species, and over- 
 looking all the accidents of climate, or of 
 country, enough for him, if the indivi- 
 dual he is in quest of be a man — a brother 
 of the same nature — with a body which a 
 few years will bring to the grave, and a 
 spirit that returns to the God who gave it. 
 
 But this man of large and liberal princi- 
 ples is a jMissionary ; and this is enough to 
 put to flight all admiration of him, and of 
 his doings. I forbear to expatiate ; but sure 
 I am that certain philosophers of the day, 
 and certain fanatics of the day, should be 
 made to change places ; if those only are the 
 genuine philosophers who keep to the prin- 
 ciples in spite of names, and those only the 
 genuine fanatics who are ruled by names in- 
 stead of principles. 
 
228 
 
 MISSIONARY SERMON. 
 
 The Society for propagating Christian 
 knowledge in the Highlands and Islands 
 of Scotland, has every claim upon a reli- 
 gious public ; and I trust that those claims 
 will not be forgotten among the multiplicity 
 of laudable and important objects, which 
 are novv afloat in this age of benevolent 
 enterprise. She has all the experience and 
 respectability and tried usefulness of age; 
 may she have none of the infirmities of age. 
 May she have nothing either of the rust or 
 the indolence of an establishment about 
 her. Resting on the consciousness of her 
 ovi^n righteous and strongly supported 
 cause ; may she look on the operations of 
 other societies with complacency, and be 
 jealous of none of them. She confers with 
 them upon their common objects ; she as- 
 sists them with her experience, and when, 
 struggling with difficulties, they make 
 theii appeal to the generosity of the chris- 
 tian world, she nobly leads the way, and 
 
 imparts to them with liberal hand, out of 
 her own revenue. She has conferred last- 
 ing obligations upon the Missionary cause. 
 She spreads over it the shelter of her vene- 
 rable name, and by the answer of " Come 
 and see," to those who ask if any good 
 thing can come out of it, she gives a prac- 
 tical refutation to the reasonings of all its 
 adversaries. She redeems the best of causes 
 from the unmerited contempt under which 
 it labours, and she will be repaid. The re- 
 ligious public will not be backward to own 
 the obligation. We are aware of the pre- 
 valence of the Missionary spirit, and of the 
 many useful directions in which it is now 
 operating. But we are not afraid of the 
 public being carried away from us. We 
 know that there is room for all, that 
 there are funds for all ; and our policy is 
 not to repress, but to excite the Mission- 
 ary spirit, and then there will be a heart 
 or all. 
 
A SERMON, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE TRON CHURCH, GLASGOW, ON WEDNESDAY, NOV. 19, 181T, 
 THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL OF HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, 
 
 THE 
 
 PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES. 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following Sermon is the fruit of a very hurried and unlooked-for exer- 
 tion — and never was there any publication brought forward under circumstances 
 of greater reluctancy, and with a more honest feeling of unpreparedness, on the 
 part of the author. The truth is, that he was at a great distance from home, 
 when the urgency of the public demand for his personal appearance on the nine- 
 teenth of November, reached him, and that so late, that he had no other resource 
 than to write for the pulpit during the intervals, and after the exhaustion of a 
 very rapid and fatiguing journey. It is true that he might revise. But to revise 
 such a composition, would be to re-make it ; and he has chosen rather to bring it 
 forward, and that as nearly as possible, in the literal terms of its delivery. 
 
 But, it may be asked, if so unfit for the public eye, why make it public ? It may 
 be thought by many, that the avowal is not a wise one. But wisdom ought never 
 to be held in reverence separately from truth ; and it would be disguising the 
 real motive, were it concealed, that a very perverse misconception which has 
 gone abroad respecting one passage of the Sermon, and which has found its way 
 into many of the newspapers, is the real and impelling cause of the step that has 
 been taken ; and that, had it not been for the spread of such a misconception, 
 there never would have been obtruded on the public, a performance written on a 
 call of urgent necessity, and most assuredly without the slightest anticipation of 
 authorship. 
 
 But, it may be said, does not such a measure as this bring the pulpit into a state 
 of the most degrading subordination to the diurnal press, since there is not a single 
 sermon which cannot be so reported, as, without the literality of direct falsehood, 
 to convey through the whole country, all the injuries of a substantial misrepre- 
 sentation ; and if a minister should condescend publicly to notice every such ran- 
 dom and ephemeral statement, he might thereby incessantly involve himself in 
 the most helpless and harassing of all controversy ? 
 
 Now, in opposition to this, let it be observed, that a person placed in this diffi- 
 cult and disagreeable predicament, may advert for once to such a provocation, and 
 that for the express purpose, that he may never have to do it again. He may 
 count it enough to make one decisive exposure of the injustice which can be done 
 in this way to a public instructor, and then hold himself acquitted of every similar 
 attempt in all time coming. He thereby raises a sort of abiding or monumental 
 antidote, which may serve to neutralize the mischief of any future attack, or fu- 
 ture insinuation. By this one act, though he may not silence the obloquies of the 
 daily press, he has at least purchased for himself the privilege of standing unmoved 
 by all the mistakes, or by all the malignities which may proceed from it. 
 
 Yet, it is no more than justice to a numerous and very important class of writers, 
 tc state it as our conviction of the great majority of them, that they feel the dig- 
 
230 
 
 SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 iiity and responsibility of their office, and hold it to be the highest point of pro 
 fessional honour, ever to maintain the most gentlemanly avoidance of all that is 
 calculated to wound the feelings of an unofiending individual. 
 
 There is one temptation, however, to which the editors of this department of 
 literature are peculiarly liable, which may be briefly adverted to, and the influ- 
 ence of which, may be observed to extend even to a higher class of journalists. 
 There is an eagernesss to transmute every thing into metal of their own peculiar 
 currency — there is an extreme avidity to lay hold of every utterance, and to send 
 it abroad, tinged with the colouring of their own party — there is a ravenous de- 
 sire of approbation, extending itself to every possible occurrence, and to every one 
 individual whom they would like to enlist under the banners of their own parti- 
 sanship, which, for their own credit, they would be more careful to repress, did 
 they perceive with sufficient force, and sufficient distinctness, that it makes them 
 look more like desperadoes of a sinking cause, than the liberal and honest ex- 
 pounders of public politics and literature, which claim so respectable a portion of 
 the intelligence of the country. 
 
 The writer of this sermon has only to add, that he does not know how a sorer 
 imputation could have been devised against the heart and the principles of a clergy- 
 man, than that, on the tender and hallowed day of a nation's repose from all the 
 sordidness and all the irritations of party, he should have made the pulpit a vehicle 
 of invective against any administration ; or that, after mingling his tears with those 
 of his people, over the untimely death of one so dear to us, he should have found 
 room for any thing else than those lessons of general Christianity, by which au 
 unsparing reproof is ministered to impiety, in whatever quarter it may be found — 
 even that impiety which wears the very same features, and offers itself in the very 
 same aspect, under all administrations. 
 
 SERMOIV. 
 
 ' For when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." 
 
 Isaiah xxvi. 9. 
 
 I AM sorry that I shall not be able to ex- 
 tend the application of this text beyond its 
 more direct and immediate bearing on that 
 event on which we are now met to mingle 
 our regrets, and our sensibilities, and our 
 prayers — that, occupied as we all are with 
 the mournful circumstance that has bereft 
 our coimtry of one of its brightest anticipa- 
 tions, I shall not be able to clear my way 
 to the accomplisliment of what is, strictly 
 speaking, the congregational object of an 
 address front the pulpit, which ought, in 
 every possible case, to be an address to the 
 conscience — that, therefore, instead of the 
 concerns of personal Christianity, which, 
 under my present text, I might, if I had 
 space for it, press home upon the attention 
 of my hearers, I shall be under the necessi- 
 ty of restricting myself to tliat more partial 
 application of the text which relates to the 
 matters of public Christianity. It is upon 
 this account, as well as upon others, that I 
 rejoice in the present appointment, for the 
 improvement of that sad and sudden visita- 
 tion, which has so desolated the hearts and 
 the hopes of a whole people. I therefore 
 feel more freedom in coming forward with 
 
 such remarks as, to the eyes of many, may 
 wear a more public and even political com- 
 plexion, than is altogether suited to the 
 ministrations of the Sabbath. And yet I 
 cannot but advert, and that in such terms 
 of reproof as I think to be most truly appli- 
 cable, to another set of men, whose taste for 
 preaching is very much confined to these 
 great and national occasions — who, habitu- 
 ally absent from church on the Sabbath, are 
 yet observed, and that most prominently, to 
 come together in eager and clustering at- 
 tendance, on some interesting case of pathos 
 or of politics — who in this way obtrude upon 
 the general notice, their loyalty to an earthly 
 sovereign, while, in reference to their Lord 
 and Master, Jesus Christ, tliey scandalize 
 all that is Christian in the general feeling, 
 by their manifest contempt for him and for 
 his ordinances — who look for the ready 
 compliance of ministers, in all that can gra- 
 tify their inclinations for pageantry, v,'hile 
 for the real, effective, and only important 
 business of ministers, they have just as little 
 reverence as if it were all a matter of hollow 
 and insignificant parade. Tt is right to share 
 in the triumphs of successful, and to ?hed 
 
SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 231 
 
 the tears of afflicted, patriotism. But it is 
 also right to estimate according to its true 
 character, the patriotism of those who are 
 never known to oflfer one homage to Chris- 
 tianity, except when it is associated with 
 the affairs of state, or with the wishes, and 
 the commands, and the expectations of 
 statesmen. 
 
 But the frivolous and altogether despica- 
 ble taste of the men to wliom I am alluding, 
 must be entirely separated from such an oc- 
 casion as the present. For, in truth, there 
 never was an occasion of such magnitude, 
 and at the same time of such peculiarity. 
 There never w'as an occasion on which a 
 matter of deep pohtical interest was so 
 blended and mixed up with matter of very 
 deep and affecting tenderness. It does not 
 wear the aspect of an affair of politics at all, 
 but of an affair of the heart ; and the novel 
 exhibition is now offered, of all party-irrita- 
 tions merging into one common and over- 
 whelming sensibility. Oh! how it tends to 
 quiet the agitations of every earthly interest 
 and earthly passion, wTien Death steps for- 
 M'ard and demonstrates the littleness of 
 them all — when he stamps a character of 
 such affecting insignificance on all that we 
 are contending for — when, as if to make 
 known the greatness of his power in the 
 sight of a whole country, he stalks in 
 ghastly triumph over the might and the 
 grandeur of its most august family, and 
 singling out that member of it on whom 
 the dearest hopes and the gayest visions of 
 the people were suspended, he, by one fatal 
 and resistless blow, sends abroad the fame 
 of his victory and his strength, throughout 
 the wide extent of an afflicted nation. He has 
 indeed put a cruel and impressive mockery 
 on all the glories of mortality. A few days 
 ago, all looked so full of life, and promise, 
 and security — when we read of the bustle 
 of the great preparation — and were told of 
 the skill and the talent that were pressed 
 into the service — and heard of the goodly 
 attendance of the most eminent in the na- 
 tion — and how officers of state, and the 
 titled dignitaries of the land, were charioted 
 in splendour to the scene of expectation, as 
 to the joys of an approaching holiday — yes, 
 and we were told too, that the bells of the 
 surrounding villages were all in readiness 
 for the merry peal of gratulation, and that 
 the expectant metropolis of our empire, on 
 tiptoe for the announcement of her future 
 monarch, had her winged couriers of des- 
 patch to speed the welcome message to the 
 ears of her citizens, and that from her an 
 embassy of gladness was to travel over all 
 the provinces of the land ; and the country, 
 forgetful of all that she had suffered, was at 
 length to offer the spectacle of one wide and 
 rejoicing jubilee. O Death 1 thou hast in- 
 deed chosen the time and the victim, for 
 demonstrating the grim ascendancy of thy 
 
 power over all the hopes and fortunes o, 
 our species ! — Our bloomingrPrincess, whom 
 fancy had decked with the coronet of these 
 realms, and under whose gentle sway all 
 bade so fair for the good and the peace of 
 our nation, has he placed upon her bier ! 
 And, as if to fill up the measure of liis tri- 
 umph, has he laid by her side, that babe, 
 who, but for him, might have been the mo- 
 narch of a future generation ; and he has 
 done that, which by no single achievement 
 he could otherwise have accomplished — he 
 has sent forth over the whole of our land, 
 the gloom of such a bereavement as cannot 
 be replaced by any living descendant of 
 royalty — he has broken the direct succes- 
 sion of the monarchy of England — by one 
 and the same disaster, has he wakened up 
 tiie public anxieties of the country, and sent 
 a pang as acute as that of the most woful 
 domestic visitation, into the heart of each 
 of its families. 
 
 In the prdsecution of the following dis- 
 course, as I have already stated, I shall sa- 
 tisfy myself wuh a very limited application 
 of the text. I shall, in the first place, offer 
 a few remarks on that branch of the righ- 
 teousness of practical Christianity, which 
 consists in the duty that subjects owe to 
 their governors. And in the second place, 
 I shall attempt to improve the present great 
 national disaster, to the object of impressing 
 upon you, that, under all our difficulties and 
 all our fears, it is the righteousness of the 
 people alone which will exalt and perpetuate 
 the nation ; and that therefore, if this great 
 interest be neglected, the country, instead 
 of reaping improvement from the judgments 
 of God, is in imminent danger of being 
 utterly overwhelmed by them. 
 
 I. But here let me attempt the difficult 
 task of rightly dividing the \^'ord of truth — 
 and premise this head of discourse, by ad- 
 mitting that I know nothing more hateful 
 than the crouching spirit of servility. I 
 know not a single class of men more un- 
 worthy of reverence, than the base and in- 
 terested minions of a court. I know not a 
 set of pretenders who more amply deserve 
 to be held out to the chastisement of public 
 scorn, than they who, under the guise of 
 public principle, are only aiming at per- 
 sonal aggrandizement. This is one corrup- 
 tion. But let us not forget that there is an- 
 other — even a spurious patriotism Avhich 
 would proscribe loyalty as one of the vir- 
 tues altogether. Now, I cannot open my 
 Bible, without learning that loyalty is one 
 branch of the righteousness of practical 
 Christianity. — I am not seeking to please 
 men, but God, when I repeat his words in 
 your hearing — that you should honour the 
 Kmg — that you should obey Magistrates — 
 that "you should meddle not with those who 
 are given to change — that you should be 
 subject to principalities and powers — that 
 
232 
 
 SERMON C»\ THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 you should lead a quiet and peaceable life 
 in all cfodliness and honesty. This, then, is 
 a part (jf the rigliteousness which it is our 
 business to teach, and sure I am that it is a 
 part of righteousness which the judgment 
 now dealt out to us, should, of all others, 
 dispose you to learn. I know not a virtue 
 more in harmony with the present feelings, 
 and afflictions, and circumstances of the 
 country, than that of a steadfast and deter- 
 mined loyalty. The time has been, when 
 such an event as the one that we are now 
 assembled to deplore, would have put every 
 restless spirit into motion, and set a guilty 
 ambition upon its murderous devices, and 
 brought powerful pretenders with their op- 
 posing hosts of vassalage into the field, and 
 enlisted towns and families under the rival 
 banners of a most destructive fray of con- 
 tention, and thus have broken up the whole 
 peace and confidence of society. Let us 
 bless God that these days of barbarism are 
 now gone by. But the vessel of the state is 
 still exposed to many agitations. The sea 
 of politics is a sea of storms, on which the 
 gale of human passions would make her 
 founder, were it not for the guidance of hu- 
 man principle; and. therefore, the truest 
 policy of a nation is to christianize her 
 subjects, and to disseminate among them 
 the influence of religion. The most skilful 
 arrangement for rightly governing a state, 
 is to scatter among the governed, not the 
 terrors of power — not the threats of jealous 
 and alarmed authority — not the demonstra- 
 tions of sure and ready vengeance held 
 forth by the rigour of an offended law. 
 These ma)', at times, be imperiously called 
 for. But a permanent security against the 
 wild outbreakings of turbulence and disas- 
 ter, is only to be attained by diffusing the 
 lessons of the Gospel throughout the great 
 mass of our population — even those lessons 
 which are utterly and diametrically at anti- 
 podes with all that is criminal and wrong 
 in the spirit of political disaffection. The 
 only radical counteraction to this evil is to 
 be found in the spirit of Christianity ; and 
 though animated by such a spirit, a man 
 may put on the intrepidity of one of the old 
 prophets, and denounce even in the ear of 
 royalty the profligacies which may disgrace 
 or deform it — though animated by such a 
 spirit, he may lift his protesting voice in the 
 face of an unchristian magistracy, and tell 
 them of their errors — though animated by 
 such a spirit, he, to avoid every appearance 
 of evil, will neither stoop to the flattery of 
 power, nor to the solicitations of patronage 
 — and though all this may bear, to the su- 
 perficial eye, a hard', and repulsive, and hos- 
 tile aspect towards the established dignities 
 of the land — yet forget not, tJiat if a real 
 and honest principle of Christianity lie at 
 the root of this spirit, there exists within 
 the bosom of such a man, a foundation of 
 
 principle, on which all the lessons of Chris- 
 tianity will rise into visible and consistent 
 exemplification. And it is he, and such as 
 he, who will turn out to be the salvation of 
 the country, when the hour of her threat- 
 ened danger is approaching — and it is just 
 in proportion as you spread and multiply 
 such a character, that you raise within the 
 bosom of the nation, the best security 
 against all her fluctuations — and, as in every 
 other department of human concerns, so 
 will it be found, that, in this particular de- 
 partment, Christians are the salt of the 
 earth, and Christianity the most copious 
 and emanating fountain of all the guardian 
 virtues of peace, and order, and patriotism. 
 The judgment under which we now la- 
 bour, supplies, I think, one touching, and, 
 to every good and christian mind, one 
 powerful argument of loyalty. It is the 
 distance of the prince from his people which 
 feeds the political jealousy of the latter, and 
 which, by removing the former to a height 
 of inaccessible grandeur, places him, as it 
 were, beyond the reach of their sympathies. 
 Much of the political rancour, which festers, 
 and agitates, and makes such a tremendous 
 appearance of noise and of hostility in our 
 land, is due to the aggravating power of 
 distance. If two of the deadliest political 
 antagonists in our country, who abuse, and 
 vilify, and pour forth their stormy elo- 
 quence on each other, whether in parlia- 
 ment or from the press, were actually to 
 come into such familiar and personal con- 
 tact, as would infuse into their controversy 
 the sweetening of mere acquaintanceship, 
 this very circumstance would disarm and 
 do away almost all their violence. The 
 truth is, that when one man rails against 
 another across the table of a legislative as- 
 sembly, or when he works up his ferment- 
 ing imagination, and pens his virulent sen- 
 tences against another, in the retirement of 
 a closet — he is fighting against a man at a 
 distance — he is exhausting his strength 
 against an enemy whom he does not know 
 — he is swelling into indignation, and into 
 all the movements of what he thinks right 
 and generous principle, against a chimera 
 of his own apprehension ; and a similar re- 
 action comes back upon him from the quar- 
 ter that he has assailed, and thus the con- 
 troversy thickens, and the delusion every 
 day gets more impenetrable, and the dis- 
 tance is ever widening, and the breach is 
 always becoming more hopeless and more 
 irreparable; and all this between two men, 
 who, if they had been in such accidental 
 circumstances of juxta-position as could 
 have let them a Ijttle more into one another's 
 feelings, and to one another's sympathies, 
 would at least have had all the asperities of 
 their diflference smoothed away by the mere 
 softenings and kindlinesses of ordinary hu- 
 man intercourse 
 
SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 233 
 
 Now let me apply this remark to the mu- 
 tual state of sentiment which obtains be- 
 tween the different orders of the comaninity. 
 Among the rich, there is apt at times to 
 rankle an injurious and unworthy impres- 
 sion of the poor — and just because these 
 poor stand at a distance from them — ^^just 
 because they come not into contact with 
 that which would draw them out into cour- 
 teousness to their persons, and in benevo- 
 lent attentions to their families. Among 
 the poor, on the other hand, there is often a 
 disdainful suspicion of the wealthy, as if 
 they were actuated by a proud indifference to 
 them and to their concerns, and, as if ihey 
 were placed away from them at so distant 
 and lofty an elevation as not to require the 
 exercise of any of those cordialities, which 
 are ever sure to spring in the bosom of man 
 to man, when they come to know each 
 other, and to have the actual sight of each 
 other. But let any accident place an indi- 
 vidual of the higher before the eyes of the 
 lower order, on the ground of their common 
 humanity — let the latter be made to see that 
 the former are akin to themselves in all tlie 
 sufferings and ni all the sensibilities of our 
 common inheritance — let, for example, the 
 greatest chieftain of the territory die, and 
 the report of his weeping children, or of his 
 distracted widow, be sent through the neigh- 
 bourhood — or let an infant of his family be 
 in suffering, and the mothers of the humble 
 vicinity be run to for counsel and assist- 
 ance — or in any other way let the rich, in- 
 stead of being viewed by their inferiors 
 through the dim and distant medium of that 
 fancied interval which separates the ranks 
 of society, be seen as heirs of the same 
 frailty, and as dependent on the same sym- 
 pathies with themselves — and at that mo- 
 ment, all the floodgates of honest sym- 
 pathy will be opened — and the lowest ser- 
 vants of the establishment will join in the 
 cry of distress which has come upon their 
 l^imily — and the neighbouring cottagers, to 
 share in their grief, have only to recognise 
 them as the partakers of one nature, and to 
 perceive an assimilation of feelings and of 
 circumstances between them. 
 
 Let me further apply this to the sons and 
 the daughters of royalty. The truth is, 
 that they appear to the public eye as stalks 
 ing on a platform so highly elevated above 
 the general level of society, that it removes 
 them, as it were, from all the ordinary 
 sympathies of our nature. And though we 
 read at times of their galas, and their birth- 
 days, and their drawing-rooms, there is 
 nothing in all this to attach us to their in- 
 terests and their feelings, as the inhabitants 
 of a familiar home — as the members of an 
 affectionate family. Surrounded as they 
 are with the glare of a splendid notoriety, 
 we scarcely recognize them as men and as 
 women, who can rejoic^, and weep, and 
 30 
 
 pine with disease, and taste the sufferings 
 of mortality, and be oppressed with anguish, 
 and love with tenderness, and experience 
 in their bosoms the same movements of 
 grief or of affection that we do ourselves. 
 And thus it is, that they labour under a 
 real and heavy disadvantage. There is not 
 in their case, the counteraction of that 
 kindly influence, to alleviate the weight or 
 the malignity of prejudice, which men of a 
 h umbler station are ever sure to enjoy. In the 
 case of a man whose name is hardly known 
 beyond the limits of his personal acquain- 
 tance, the tale of calumny that is raised 
 against him extends not far beyond these 
 limits ; and, therefore, where*, er it is heard, 
 it meets with a something to blunt and to 
 soften it, in those very cordialities which 
 the familiar exhibition of him as a brother 
 of our common nature is fitted to awaken. 
 But it is not so with those in the elevated 
 walks of society. Their names are familiar 
 where their persons are unknown ; and 
 whatever malignity may -ttach to the one, 
 circulates abroad, and is spread far beyond 
 the limits of their possible intercourse 
 with human beings, and meets with no 
 kindly counteraction from our acquaintance 
 with the other. And this may explain 
 how it is, that the same exalted person- 
 age may, at one and the same time, be suf- 
 fering under a load of most unmerited ob- 
 loquy from the wide and the general pub- 
 lic, and be to all his familiar domestics an 
 object of the most enthusiastic devotedness 
 and regard. 
 
 Now, if through an accidental opening, 
 the public should be favoured with a do- 
 mestic exhibition — if, by some overpower- 
 ing visitation of Providence upon an illus- 
 trious family, the members of it should come 
 to be recognised as the partakers of one 
 common humanity with ourselves — if, in- 
 stead of beholding them in their gorgeous- 
 ness as princes, we look to them in their 
 natural evolution of their sensibilities as 
 men — if the stately palace should be turned 
 into a house of mourning — in one word, if 
 death should do what he has already done, 
 he has met the Princess of England in the 
 prime and promise of her days, and as she 
 was moving onward on her march to a he- 
 reditary throne, he has laid her at his feet. 
 Ah ! my brethren, when the imagination 
 dwells on that bed where the remains of 
 departed youth and departed infancy are 
 lying — when, instead of crowns and cano- 
 pies of grajideur, it looks to the forlorn hus- 
 band, and the weeping father, and the hu- 
 man feelings which agitate their bosom, and 
 the human tears which flow down their 
 cheeks, and all such symptoms of deep af- 
 fliction as bespeak the workings of suffer- 
 ing and dejected nature — what ought to be, 
 and what actually is, the feeling of the 
 country at so sad an exhibition? It is just 
 
234 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 the feeling of the domestics and the labour- 
 ers at Claremont. All is soft and tender as 
 womanhood. Nor is there a peasant in our 
 land, who is not touched to the very heart 
 when he thinks of the unhappy Stranger 
 who is now spending his days in grief and 
 nights in sleeplessness — as he mourns alone 
 in his darkened chamber, and refuses to be 
 comforted — as he turns in vain for rest to 
 his troubled feelings, and cannot find it — as 
 he gazes on the memorials of an affection 
 that blessed the brightest, happiest, shortest 
 year of his existence — as he looks back on 
 the endearments of the bygone months, and 
 the thought that they have for ever fleeted 
 away from him, turns all to agony — as he 
 looks forward on the blighted prospect of 
 this world's pilgrimage, and feels that all 
 which bound him to existence, is now torn 
 irretrievably away from him ! There is not 
 a British heart that does not feel to this in- 
 teresting visitor, all the force and all the 
 tenderness of a most affecting relationship ; 
 and go where he may, will he ever be recog- 
 nised and cherished as a much loved mem- 
 ber of the British family. 
 
 It is in this way that through the avenue 
 of a nation's tenderness, we can estimate 
 the strength and the steadfastness of a na- 
 tion's loyalty. On minor questions of the 
 constitution we may storm and rave, and 
 look at each other a little ferociously — and 
 it was by some such appearance as this, that 
 he, who in the days of his strength, was the 
 foulest and most formidable of all our ene- 
 mies, said of the country in which we live, 
 that, torn by factions, it was going rapidly 
 to dissolution. Yet these are but the skir- 
 mishings of a petty warfare — the move- 
 ments of nature and of passion, in a land 
 of freemen — the harmless contests of men 
 pulling in opposite ways at some of the 
 smaller ropes in the tackling of our great 
 national vessel. But look to these men in 
 the time of need and the hour of suffering — 
 look to them now, when in one great and 
 calamitous visitation, the feeling of every 
 animosity is overborne — look to them now, 
 when the darkness is gathering, and the 
 boding cloud of disaster hangs over us, and 
 some chilling fear of insecurity is beginning 
 to circulate in whispers through the land — 
 look to them now, when in the entombment 
 of this sad and melancholy day, the hopes 
 of more than half a century are to be in- 
 terred — look to them now, when from one 
 end of the country to the other, there is the 
 mourning of a very great and sore lamenta- 
 tion, so that all who pass by, may say, this 
 is a grievous mourning to the people of the 
 land. Oh ! is it possible that these can be 
 other than honest tears, or that tears of pity 
 can on such an emergency as the present, 
 be other than tears of patriotism. Who 
 does not see this principle sitting in visible 
 expression on the general countenance of 
 
 the nation — that the people are sound at 
 heart, and that with this, as the mainsheet of 
 our dependence, we may still, under the bless- 
 ing of God, weather and surmount all the 
 difficulties which threaten us. 
 
 11. I now proceed to the second head of 
 discourse, under which I was to attempt 
 such an improvement of this great national 
 disaster, as might enforce the lesson, that 
 under every fear and every difficulty, it is 
 the righteousness of the people alone which 
 will exalt and perpetuate a nation ; and 
 that, therefore, if this great interest be ne- 
 glected, instead of learning any thing fronc 
 tiie judgments of God, we are in immi 
 nent danger of being utterly overwhelmet 
 by them. 
 
 Under my first head I restricted myself 
 exclusively to the virtue of loyalty, which 
 is one of the special, but I most willingly 
 admit, nay, and most earnestly contend, is 
 also one of the essential attributes of righ- 
 teousness. But there is a point on which I 
 profess myself to be altogether at an issue 
 with a set of men, who composed, at one 
 time, whatever they do now, a very nume- 
 rous class of society. I mean those men, 
 who, with all the ostentation, and all the 
 intolerance of loyalty, evinced an utter in- 
 difference either to their own personal reli- 
 gion, or to the religion of the people who were 
 around them — who were satisfied with the 
 single object of keeping the neighbourhood 
 in a state of political tranquillity — who, if 
 they could only get the population to be 
 quiet, cared not for the extent of profane- 
 ness or of profligacy that was among them — 
 and who, while they thought to signalize 
 themselves in the favour of their earthly 
 king, by keeping down every turbulent or 
 rebellious movement among his subjects, 
 did, in fact, by their own conspicuous ex- 
 ample lead them and cheer them on in their 
 rebellion against the king of heaven — and, 
 as far as the mischief could be wrought by 
 the contagion of their personal influence, 
 these men of loyalty did what in them lay, 
 to spread a practical contempt for Chris- 
 tianity, and for all its ordinances, through- 
 out the land. 
 
 Now, I would have such men to under- 
 stand, if any such there be within the sphere 
 of my voice, that it is not with their loyalty 
 that I am quarrelling. I am only tellmg 
 them, that this single attribute of righteous- 
 ness will never obtain a steady footing in the 
 hearts of the people, except on the ground 
 of a general principle of righteousness. I 
 am telling tliem how egregiously they are 
 out of their own politics, in ever thinking 
 that they can prop the virtue of loyalty in 
 a nation, while they are busily employed, 
 by the whole instrumentality of their ex- 
 ample and of their doings, in sapping the 
 very foundation upon which it is reared. I 
 am telling them, that if they wish to see 
 
ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 235 
 
 loyalty in perfection, and such loyalty, too, 
 as requires not any scowling vigilance of 
 theirs to uphold it, they must look, to the 
 most moral, and orderly, and christianized 
 districts of the country. I am merely teach- 
 ing them a lesson of whicli they seem to be 
 ignorant, that if you loos'en the hold of 
 Christianity over the hearts of the popula- 
 tion, you pull down from their ascendency 
 all the virtues of Christianity, of which 
 loyally is one. Yes, and I will come yet a 
 little closer, and talce a look of that loyalty 
 which exists in the shape of an isolated 
 principle in their own bosoms. I should 
 like to gauge the dimensions of this loyalty 
 of theirs, in its state of disjunction from the 
 general principle of Christianity. 1 wish 
 to know the kind of loyalty which charac- 
 terizes the pretenders to whom I am al- 
 luding — the men who have no value for 
 preaching, but as it stands associated with 
 the pageantry of state — the men who would 
 reckon it the most grievous of all heresies, 
 to be away from church on some yearly 
 day of the king's appointment, but are sel- 
 dom within its walls on the weekly day of 
 God's appointment — the men who, if minis- 
 ters were away from their post of loyalty, 
 on an occasion like the present, would, with- 
 out mercy, and without investigation, de- 
 nounce them as suspicious characters; but 
 who, when we are at the post of piety, 
 dispensing the more solemn ordinances of 
 Christianity, openly lead the way in that 
 crowded and eager emigration which car- 
 ries half the rank and opulence of the town 
 away from us. What, oh ! what is the 
 length, and the breadth, and the height, and 
 the depth of this vapourmg, swaggering, 
 high-sounded loyalty ? — It is nothing better 
 than the loyalty of political subalterns, in 
 the low game of partisanship, or of whip- 
 pers-in to an existing administration — it is 
 not the loyalty which will avail us in the day 
 of danger — it is not to them that we need to 
 look, in the evil hour of a country's visita- 
 tion ; — but to those right-hearted, sound- 
 thinking christian men, wlio, without one 
 interest to serve, or one hope to forward, 
 honour their king, because they fear their 
 God. 
 
 Let me assure such a man, if such a man 
 there is within the limits of this assembly — 
 that, keen as his scent may be after political 
 heresies, the deadliest of all such heresies 
 lies at his own door — that there is not to be 
 found, within the city of our habitation, a 
 rottener member of the community than 
 him.self— that, withering as he does by his 
 example the principle which lies at the root 
 of all national prosperity, it is he, and such 
 as he, who stands opposed to the best and 
 he dearest objects of loyalty — and if ever 
 (hat shall happen, which it is my most de- 
 lightful confidence that God will avert from 
 us and from our children's children to the 
 
 latest posterity — if ever the wild frenzy of 
 revolution shall run through the ranks of 
 Britain's population, these are the men who 
 will be the most deeply responsible for all its 
 atrocities and for all its horrors.* 
 
 * I cannot hut advert here to a delicate impedi- 
 ment which Ues in the way of the faithful exercise 
 of the ministerial functions, from the existence of 
 two great political parties, whicii would monopo- 
 lize between them, all the sentiments and all the 
 services of the country. Is it not a very possible 
 thing that the line of demarcation between these 
 parties, may not coalesce, throughout all its extent, 
 with the sacred and infinutable line of distinction 
 between right and wrong? — and ouglit not this 
 latter line to stand out so dearly and so promi- 
 nently to the eye of the christian minister, that in 
 the act of dealing around him the reproofs and the 
 lessons of Christianity, the former line should be 
 away from his contemplation altogether 1 But it 
 is thus that, with the most scrupulous avoidance 
 both of the one and of the other species of partisan 
 ship, he may, in the direct and conscientious dis- 
 charge of the duties of his office, deliver himself in 
 such a way as to give a kind of general and corpo- 
 rate oflence to one political denomination ; and 
 what is still more grievous, as to be appropriated 
 by the men of another denomination, with whom 
 in their capacity as politicians he desires no fellow- 
 ship whatever, and whose applauses of him in this 
 capacity are in every way most odious and insuf- 
 ferable. 
 
 It appears to us that a christian minister cannot 
 keep himself in the true path of consistency at all, 
 without refusing to each of the parties all right of 
 appropriation. Their line of demarcation is not 
 his line. Their objects are not his objects. He 
 asks no patronage from the one — he asks no favour 
 from the other, except that they shall not claim 
 kindred with him. He may sufl'er, at times, from 
 the intolerance of the unworthy underlings of the 
 former party : but never will his sensations of dis- 
 taste, for the whole business of party politics, be- 
 come so intense and so painful, as when the hosan- 
 nas of the latter party threaten to rise around him. 
 We often hear from each, and more particularly 
 from one of these parties, of the virtue and the 
 dignity of independence. The only way, it appears 
 to us, in which a man can sustain the true and 
 complete character of independence, is to be inde- 
 pendent of both. He who cares for neither of them 
 is the only independent man : and to him only be- 
 longs the privilege of crossing and re-crossing their 
 factious line of demarcation, just as he feels himsell 
 impelled by the liigh, paramount, and subordinating 
 principles of the Christianity which he professes. 
 In the exercise of this privilege, 1 here take the 
 opportunity of saying, that if the chastisement of 
 public scorn should tall on those who, under the 
 disguise of public principle, have found personal 
 aggrandisement for themselves, it should fall with 
 c(pial severity on those who, under the same dis- 
 guise, are seeking precisely the same object — that 
 if there be some men in the country who care not 
 for the extent of profanencss and profligacy that 
 is among the people, provided they can only keep 
 them quiet, there are also some men who care not for 
 their profancness or tlieir profligacy, provided they 
 can only keep them unquiet — wiio bear no other 
 regard to the people than merely as an instrument 
 of annoyance against an existing administration — 
 who can shed their serpent tears over their dis- 
 tresses, and yet be inwardly grieved, should either 
 
236 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 Having thus briefly adverted to one of 
 the causes of impiety and consequent dis- 
 loyalty, I shall proceed to offer a few re- 
 marks on the great object of teaching the 
 people righteousness, not so much in a 
 general and didactic manner, as in the way 
 
 if brief, and, if possible, of memorable illus- 
 ■ation — gathering my argument from the 
 present event, and availmg myself, at the 
 same time, of such principles as have been 
 advanced in the course of the preceding ob- 
 servations. 
 
 My next remark, then, on this subject, 
 will be taken from a sentiment, of which I 
 think you must all on the present occasion 
 
 a favourable season or reviving trade disappoint 
 their boding speculation — who, in the face of un- 
 deniable common sense, can ascribe to political 
 causes, such calamities as are altogether due to 
 what is essential and uncontrollable in the circum- 
 stances of the country — and who, if on the strength 
 of misrepresentation and artifice they could only 
 succeed in eft'ectinff the great object of their own 
 instalment into office, and dispossession of their 
 antagonists, would prove themselves, then, to be 
 as indifTercnt to the comfort, as they show them- 
 selves now to be utterly indifferent to the religion 
 and the virtue of the country's population. 
 
 But turning away from the beggarly elements 
 of such a competition as this, let us remark, that 
 on the one hand, a religious administration will 
 never take offence at a minister who renders a per- 
 tinent reproof to any set of men, even though they 
 should happen to be their own agents or their own 
 underlings ; and that, on the other hand, a minis- 
 ter who is actuated by the true spirit of his office, 
 will never so pervert or so prostitute his functions, 
 as to descend to the humble arena of partisanship. 
 He is the faithful steward of such tilings as are 
 profitable for reproof, and for doctrine, and for cor- 
 rection, and for instruttion in righteousness. His 
 single object with the men who are within reach 
 of his hearing, is, that they should come to the 
 knowledge of the truth and be saved. In the ful- 
 filment of tliis object, he is not the servant of any 
 admini.st ration — though he certainly renders such 
 a service to the state as will ficilitate the work of 
 ' governing to all administrations — as will bring a 
 mighty train of civil and temporal blessings along 
 with it — and in particular, as will diffuse over the 
 whole sphere of his influence, a loyalty as steadfast 
 as the friends of order, and as free from every taint 
 of poUtical severity, as the most genuine friends of 
 freedom can desire. 
 
 There is only one case in which it is conceived 
 that this jMrtisanship of a christian minister is at 
 all justiliahle. Should the government of our coun- 
 try ever fall into the hands of an infidel or demi- 
 irmdel adminLstration — should the men at the helm 
 of affairs bo the patrons of all that is unchristian 
 in the sentiment and literature of the country — 
 should they offer a violence to its religious esta- 
 blishments — and thus attempt what we honestly 
 believe would reach a blow to the piety and the 
 character of our population — then I trust that the 
 language of partisanship will resound from many 
 of the pulpits of the land — and that it will be 
 turned in one stream of pointed invective against 
 such a ministry as this — till, by the force of pubUc 
 opinion, it be swept away as an intolerable nui- 
 sance, from the face of our kingdom. 
 
 feel the force and the propriety. Would it 
 not have been most desirable could the 
 whole population of the city have been ad 
 mitted to join in the solemn services of the 
 day ? Do you not think that they are pre- 
 cisely such services as would have spread 
 a loyal and patriotic influence among them ? 
 Is it not experimentally the case, that, over 
 the untimely grave of our fair Princess, the 
 meanest of the people would have shed as 
 warm and plentiful a tribute of honest sen- 
 sibility as the most refined and delicate 
 among us? And, I ask, is it not unfortu- 
 nate, that, on the day of such an affecting, 
 and, if I may so style it, such a national 
 exercise, there should not have been twenty 
 more churches, with twenty more minis- 
 ters, to have contained the whole crowd of 
 eager and interested listeners ? A man of 
 mere loyaltj', without one other accomplish- 
 ment, will, I am sure, participate in a regret 
 so natural ; but couple this regret with the 
 principle, that the only way in which the 
 loyalty of the people can effectually be 
 maintained, is on the basis of Christianity, 
 and then the regret in question embraces 
 an object still more general — and well were 
 it for us, if, amid the insecurity of families, 
 and the various fluctuations of fortune and 
 of arrangement that are taking place in the 
 highest walks of society, the country were 
 led, b}^ the judgment with which it has now 
 been -visited, to deepen the foundation of 
 all its order and of all its interests, in the 
 moral education of its people. Then indeed 
 the text would have its literal fulfilment. 
 When the judgments of God are in the 
 earth, the rulers of the world would lead 
 the inhabitants thereof to learn righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 In our own city, much in this respect 
 remains to be accomplished ; and I speak 
 of the great mass of our cit}^ and suburb 
 population, when I say, that through the 
 week they lie open to every rude and ran- 
 dom exposure — and when Sabbath comes, 
 no solemn appeal to the conscience, no stir- 
 ring recollections of the past, no urgent 
 calls to resolve against the temptations of 
 the future, come along with it. It is unde- 
 niable, that within the compass of a few 
 square miles, the daily walk of the vast ma- 
 jority of our people is beset with a thousand 
 contaminations ; and whether it be on the 
 way to the market, or on the way to the 
 workshop, or on the way to the crowded 
 manufactory, or on the way to any one re- 
 sort of industry that you may choose to 
 condescend upon, or on the way to the 
 evening home, where the labours of a vir- 
 tuous day should be closed by the holy 
 thankfulness of a pious and affectionate 
 family ; be it in passing from one place to 
 another ; or be it amid all the throng of se- 
 dentary occupations: there is not one day 
 of the six, and not one hour of one of these 
 
ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 237 
 
 days, when frail and unsheltered man is not 
 plied by the many allurements of a world 
 lying in wickedness — when evil communi- 
 cations are not assailing him with their cor- 
 ruptions — wlien the full tide of example 
 does not bear down upon his purposes, and 
 threaten to sweep all his purity and all his 
 principle away from him. And when the 
 seventh day comes, where, I would ask, are 
 the efficient securities that ought to be pro- 
 vided against all those inundations of profli- 
 gacy which rage without control through 
 the week, and spread such a desolating influ- 
 ence among the morals of tlie existing gene- 
 ration ?— Oh ! tell it not in Gath, publish it 
 not in the streets of Askelon — this seventh 
 day, on which it would require a whole 
 army of labourers to give every energy 
 which belongs to them, to the plenteous 
 harvest of so mighty a population, witnesses 
 more than one half of the people precluded 
 from attending the house of God, and wan- 
 dering every man after the counsel of his 
 own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes — 
 on this day, the ear of heaven is assailed 
 with a more audacious cry of rebellion than 
 on any other, and the open door of invita- 
 tion plies with its welcome the hundreds 
 and the thousands who have found their 
 habitual way to the haunts of depravity. 
 And is there no room, then, to wish for 
 twenty more churches, and twenty more 
 ministers — for men of zeal and of strength, 
 who might go forth among these wanderers, 
 and compel them to come in — for men of 
 holy fervour, who might set the terrors of 
 hell and the free offer of salvation before 
 them — for men of affection, who might visit 
 the sick, the dying, and the afl^icted, and 
 cause the irresistible influence of kindness 
 to circulate at large among their families — 
 for men, who, while they fastened their 
 most intense aim on the great object of pre- 
 paring sinners for eternity, would scatter 
 along the path of their exertions all the 
 blessings of order, and contentment, and 
 sobriety, and at length make it manifest as 
 day, that tlie righteousness of the people is 
 the only effectual antidote to a country's 
 ruin — the only path to a country's glory ? 
 My next remark shall be founded on a 
 principle to which I have already alluded — 
 the desirableness of a more frequent inter- 
 course between the higher and the lower 
 orders of society; and what more likely to 
 accomplish thi.s, than a larger ecclesiastical 
 accommodation ? — not the scanty provision 
 of the present day, by which the poor are 
 excluded from the church altogether, but 
 such a wide and generous system of ac- 
 commodation, as that the rich and the poor 
 might set in company together in the house 
 of God. It is this christian fellowship, 
 which more than any other tie, links so in- 
 timately together, the high and the low in 
 country parishes. Xhere is, however, an- 
 
 other particular to which I would advert, 
 and though I cannot do so without magni- 
 fying my office, yet I know not a single 
 circumstance which so upholds the golden 
 hne of life among our agricultural popula- 
 tion, as the manner in which the gap be- 
 tween the pinnacle of the community and 
 its base is filled up by the week-day duties 
 of the clergyman— by that man, of whom 
 it has been well said, that he belongs to no 
 rank, because he associates with all ranks — 
 by that man, whose presence may dignify 
 the palace, but whose peculiar glory it is to 
 carry the influences of friendship and piety 
 into cottages. 
 
 This is the age of moral experiment, and 
 much has been devised in our day for pro 
 moting the virtue, and the improvement, 
 and the economical habits of the lower or- 
 ders of society. But in all these attempts 
 to raise a barrier against the growing profli- 
 gacy of our towns, one important element 
 seems to have passed unheeded, and to 
 have been altogether omitted in the calcu- 
 lation. In all the comparative estimates of 
 the character of a town and the character 
 of a country population, it has been little 
 attended to, that the former are distin- 
 guished from the latter by the dreary, hope- 
 less, and almost impassible distance at 
 which they stand from their parish minis- 
 ter. Now, though it be at the hazard of 
 again magnifying my office, I must avow, 
 in the hearing of you all, that there is a 
 moral charm in his personal attentions and 
 his affectionate civilities, and the ever-recur- 
 ring influence of his visits and his prayers, 
 which, if restored to the people, would im- 
 part a new moral aspect, and eradicate 
 much of the licentiousness and the dis- 
 honesty that abound in our cities. On this 
 day of national calamity, if ever the subject 
 should be adverted to from the pulpit, we 
 may be allowed to express our riveted con- 
 victions on the close alliance that obtains 
 between the political interests and the reli- 
 gious character of a country. And I am 
 surely not out of place, when, on looking 
 at the mighty mass of a city population, I 
 state my apprehension, that if something 
 be not done to bring this enormous physical 
 strength under the control of christian and 
 humanized principle, the day may yet come 
 when it may lift against the authorities of 
 the land its brawny vigour, and discharge 
 upon them all the turbulence of its rude and 
 volcanic energy. 
 
 Apart altogether from the essential cha- 
 racter of the gospel, and keeping out of 
 view the solemn representations of Chris- 
 tianity, by which we are told that each in- 
 dividual of these countless myriads carries 
 an undying principle in his bosom, and 
 that it is the duty of the minister to che- 
 rish it, and to watch over it, as one who 
 must render, at the judgment-seat, an ac- 
 
/ 
 
 238 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 count of the charge which has been com- 
 mitted to him — apart from this considera- 
 tion entirely, which I do not now insist 
 upon, though I blush not to avow its para- 
 mount importance over all that can be al- 
 leged on the inferior ground of political 
 expediencj', yet, on that ground alone, I 
 can gather argument enough for the mighty 
 importance of such men, devoted to the la- 
 bours of their own separate and peculiar 
 employments — giving an unbewildered at- 
 tention to the office of dealing with the 
 hearts and principles of the thousands who 
 are around them — coming forth from the 
 preparations of an unbroken solitude, arm- 
 ed with all the omnipotence of Truth 
 among their fellow citizens — and who, rich 
 in the resources of a mind which meditates 
 upon these things, and gives itself wholly to 
 them, are able to suit their admonitions to 
 all the varieties of human character, and to 
 draw their copious and persuasive illustra- 
 tions from every quarter of human ex- 
 perience. But I speak not merely of their 
 Sabbath ministrations. Give to each a ma- 
 nageable extent of town within the com- 
 pass of his personal exertions, and where 
 he might be able to cultivate a ministerial 
 influence among all its families — put it into 
 his power to dignify the very humblest of 
 its tenements by the courteousness of his 
 soothing and benevolent attentions — let it 
 be such a district of population as may not 
 bear him down by the multiplicity of its 
 demands ; but where, without any feverish 
 or distracting variety of labour, he may be 
 able to familiarize himself to every housf . 
 and to know every individual, and to visit 
 every spiritual patient, and to watch every 
 death-bed. and to pour out the sympathies 
 of a pious and affectionate bosom over every 
 mourning and bereaved family. Bring ever}^ 
 city of the land under such moral regimen 
 as this, and another generation would not 
 pass away, ere righteousness ran down all 
 their streets like a mighty river. That sul- 
 len depravity of character, which the gib- 
 bet cannot scare away, and which sits so 
 immoveable in the face of the most me- 
 nacing severities, and in despite of the 
 yearly recurrence of the most terrifying ex- 
 amples, — could not keep its groimd against 
 the mild, but restless application of an ef- 
 fective christian ministry. The very worst 
 of men would be constrained to feel the 
 power of such an application. Sunk as 
 they are in ignorance, and inured as they 
 have been from the first years of their 
 neglected boyhood, to scenes of week-day 
 profligacy and Sabbath profanation — these 
 men, of whom it may be said, that all their 
 moralities are extinct, and all their tender- 
 ness blunted — even they would feel the 
 power of that reviving touch, which the 
 mingled influence of kindness and piety 
 ^n often impress on the souls of the most 
 
 abandoned — even they would open the 
 flood-gates of their hearts, and pohr forth 
 the tide of an honest welcome on the men 
 who had come in all the cordiality of good 
 will to themselves and to their families. 
 And thus might a humanizing and an 
 exalting influence be made to circulate 
 through all their dwelling-places: and such 
 a system as this, labouring as it must do at 
 first, under all the discouragements of a 
 heavy and unpromising outset, would ga- 
 ther, during every year of its perseverance, 
 new triumphs and new testimonies to its 
 power. All that is ruthless and irreclaim- 
 able, in the character of the present day, 
 would in time be replaced by the softening 
 virtues of a purer and a better generation. 
 This I know to be the dream of many a 
 philanthropist : and a dream as visionary 
 as the very wildest among the fancies of 
 Utopianism it ever will be, under any other 
 expedient than the one I am now pointing 
 to : and nothing, nothing within the whole 
 compass of nature, or of experience, will 
 ever bring it to its consummation, but the 
 multiplied exertions of the men who carry 
 in their hearts the doctrine, and who bear 
 upon their persons the seal and commis- 
 sion of the New Testament. And, if it be 
 true that towns are the great instruments 
 of political revolution — if it be there that 
 all the elements of disturbance are ever 
 found in busiest fermentation — if we learn, 
 from " the history of the past, that they 
 are the favourite and frequented rallying- 
 places for all the brooding violence of the 
 land — who does not see that the pleading 
 earnestness of the christian minister is at 
 one with the soundest maxims of political 
 wisdom, when he urges upon the rulers and 
 magistrates of the land, that this is indeed 
 the cheap defence of a nation — this the vi- 
 tality of all its strength and of all its great- 
 ness. 
 
 And it is with the most undissemlr ed sa- 
 tisfaction that I advert to the first t'ep ui 
 such a process, within the city of our ha- 
 bitation, as I have now been recommend- 
 ing. It may still be the da}^ of small things; 
 but it is such a day as ought not to be de- 
 spi.^ed. The prospect of another church 
 and another labourer in this interesting 
 field, demands the most respectful acknow- 
 ledgement of the christian public, to the 
 men who preside over the administration 
 of our affairs ; and they, I am sure, will 
 not feel it to be oppressive, if, met by the 
 willing cordialities of a responding popula- 
 tion, the demand should ring in their ears for 
 another, and another, till, like the moving 
 of the spirit on the face of the waters, which 
 made beauty and order to emerge out of 
 the rude materials of creation, the germ of 
 moral renovation shall at length burst intc 
 all the efllorescence of moral accomplish 
 ment — and the voice of psalms shall again 
 
ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 
 
 239 
 
 be heard in our families— and impurity and 
 violence shall be banished from our streets 
 — and then the erasure made, in these de- 
 generate days, on the escutcheons of our city, 
 again replaced in characters of gold, shall 
 tell to every stranger, that Glasgow flourish- 
 eth through the preaching of the word* 
 
 And though, under the mournful remem- 
 brance of our departed Princess, we can- 
 not but feel, on this day of many tears, as 
 
 ♦ The original motto of the City is, " Let Glas- 
 gow flourish through the preaching of the Word ;" 
 which, by the curtailment alluded to, has been re- 
 duced to the words, "Let Glasgow flourish." 
 
 if a volley of lightning from heaven had 
 been shot at the pillar of our State, and 
 struck away the loveliest ornament from its 
 pinnacle, and shook the noble fabric to its 
 base ; yet still, if we strengthen its founda- 
 tion in the principle and character of our 
 people, it will stand secure on the deep and 
 steady basis of a country's worth, which 
 can never be overthrown. And thus an 
 enduring memorial of our Princess will be 
 embalmed in the hearts of the people, and 
 good will emerge out of this dark and bitter 
 dispensation, if, when the judgments of God 
 are in the earth, the inhabitants of the 
 world shall learn righteousness. 
 
/ 
 
 THE 
 
 DOCTRIXE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY 
 
 APPLIED TO THE 
 CASE OF RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCES. 
 
 A SER3ION, 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE AUXILIARY SOCIETY, GLASGOW, TO THE HIBERNIAN 
 
 SOCIETY, FOR ESTABLISHING SCHOOLS, AND CIRCULATING THE HOLY 
 
 SCRIPTURES IN IRELAND. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 If the question were put, what is Popery ? an answer might be given by the 
 enumeration of what are conceived to be its leading principles. Without at all 
 inquiring whether the conception be a just one or not, there are many persons 
 who would tell us, that the members of this denomination ascribe an infallibility 
 to the Pope; and that they hold the doctrine of transubstantiation ; and that they 
 offer religious worship to departed saints, and render an external homage to 
 images ; and that they give such an importance to the ceremonial of extreme 
 unction, as to conceive, that by the administration of it, all the guilt of the most 
 worthless and unrenewed character is expiated and done away. — It is enough 
 to mark our aversion to these positions and practices, that we say, that every one 
 of them is unscriptural ; and that, if this be a real portraiture of Popery, it is a 
 religion which has no foundation in truth or in the Bible. But it is altogether a 
 different question, in how far Popery, as thus defined, is actually realized by those 
 men who wear the name and the profession of it. Whether this was ever the 
 Popery of a past age, is a question of erudition, into which we propose not to 
 enter. And whether this be the Popery of any people of the present age, is a 
 question of observation, into which we propose not to enter. AVe confine our- 
 selves to the object of looking into our own hearts, and of looking to those who 
 are immediately around us, with the view of ascertaining whether the contamina- 
 tion and the substantial mischief of these alleged principles might not be detected 
 on a nearer field of observation. 
 
 We are all aware that such an attempt as this is not enough to satisfy many 
 Protestants, or to fill up the measure of their zeal against what they hold to be a 
 most blasphemous and pestilential heresy. They would not merely demand the 
 disavowal of a corrupt svstem — but they would like to see it attached with all its 
 deformities in the form of a personal charge to the men of a certain prominent and 
 visible denomination. Now, we do not see how the former demand can be more 
 effectually met, than by the denunciation of this system, under whatever shape, 
 or in whatever quarter of society, it may be found. — Nor do we conceive how a 
 more honest and decisive seal of reprobation can be set upon it, than by the ex- 
 pression of a dislike so strong and so irreconcilable, as to be felt, even when it 
 obtrudes upon our notice any of its features amongst the individuals of our own 
 connexion, and offers itself to view under the screen of an ostensible Protestant- 
 ism. As to the latter demand, we frankly confess that we are not historically 
 enough acquainted with the present state of the Catholic mind, to be at all abk 
 
DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY, &C. 
 
 241 
 
 1(1 comply with it. But should any member of that persuasion come forward witn 
 his own explanations, and give such a mitigated view of the peculiarities of Catho- 
 lics, as to leave the great evangelical doctrines of faith and repentance unimpaired 
 by them, and state that an averment of the Bible has never, in his instance, been 
 neutralized or practically stript of its authority, by an averment of Popes or of 
 Councils ; — on what principle of candour shall the recognition of a common Chris- 
 tianity be withheld from him ? Is it not better to confine our animadversion to 
 the principles of the system, and to let persons alone : and if these persons shall 
 step forward with the affirmation that the system is imaginary, or that, at least, it 
 has no actual residence with them, whether is it the more Christian exhibition on 
 our part, that we exercise, in their behalf, the charity which believeth all things, 
 or that we pertinaciously keep by a charge, the truth of which they solemnlv 
 disclaim ? 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 " And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in 
 thine own eye ? — Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye ; and behold 
 a beam is in thine own eye ? — Thou hypocrite ! first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then 
 shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." — Matthew vii. 3, 4, 5. 
 
 The word beam suggests the idea of a 
 rafter ; and it looks very strange that a thing 
 of such magnitude should be at all con- 
 ceived to have its seat or fixture in the eye. 
 To remove, by a single sentence, this mis- 
 apprehension, I shall just say, that the 
 word in the original signifies also a thorn, 
 a something that the eye has room for, but 
 at the same time much larger than a mt)le, 
 and which must, therefore, have a more 
 powerful effect in deranging the vision, and 
 preventing a man from forming a riglit es- 
 timate of the object he is looking at. Take 
 this along with you, and the three verses 
 will run thus: — Why beholdest thou the 
 mote that is in thy brother's eye, but con- 
 siderest not the thorn that is in thine own 
 eye ? Or how wilt thou say to lliy brother. 
 Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye ; 
 and behold a thorn is in thine own eye? 
 Thou hypocrite ! first cast out the thorn out 
 of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see 
 clearly to cast out the mote out of thy bro- 
 ther's eye." 
 
 In my farther observations on this pas- 
 age, I shall first introduce what I propose 
 o make the main subject of my discourse, 
 by a very short application of the leading 
 principle of my text, to the case of those 
 judgments that we are so ready to pro- 
 nounce on each other in private life. And 
 I shall, secondly, proceed to the main sub- 
 ject, viz. that more general kind of judg- 
 ment which we are apt to pass on the men 
 of a different persuasion, in matters of re- 
 ligion, 
 
 I. Every fault of conduct in the outer 
 man, may be run up to some defect of prin- 
 ciple in the inner man. It is this defect 
 of principle, which gives the fault all its 
 31 
 
 criminality. It is this alone, which makes it 
 odious in "the sight of God. It is upon this 
 that the condemnation of the law rests; 
 and on the day of judgment, when the se- 
 crets of all hearts shall be laid open, it will 
 be the share that the heart had in the mat- 
 ter, wliich will form the great topic of ex- 
 amination, when the deeds done in the 
 body pass under tlie review of the Son of 
 God. For example, it is a fault to speak evil 
 one of another ; but the essence of the fault 
 lies in the want of that charity which 
 thinketh no ill. Had the heart been filled 
 with this principle, no such bad thing as 
 slander would have come out of it ; but if 
 the heart be not filled with this principle, 
 and in its stead there be the operation of 
 envy — or a desire to avenge yourselves of 
 others, by getting the judgment of men to 
 go against them — or a taste for the ludi- 
 crous, which rather than be ungratified, 
 will expose the peculiarities of the absent 
 to the mirth of a company — or the idle and 
 thoughtless levity of gossiping, which can- 
 not be checked by any consideration of the 
 mischief that may be done by its indul- 
 gence ; I say, if any or all of these, take up 
 that room in the heart, which should have 
 been filled with charity, and sent forth the 
 fruits of it, then the stream will just be as 
 the fountain, and out of the treasure of the 
 evil heart, there will flow that evil practice 
 of censoriousness, on which the gospel of 
 Christ pronounces its severe and decisive 
 condemnation. 
 
 But though all evil-speaking be referable 
 to the want of a good, or to the existence 
 of an evil principle in the heart, yet there 
 is one style of evil-speaking different from 
 another ; and you can easily conceive how a 
 
242 
 
 DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITT, &C. 
 
 man addicted to one way of it, may hate, 
 and despise, and have a mortal antipathy, 
 to another way of it. In this case, it is not 
 the thing itself in its essential deformity 
 that he condemns ; it is some of the dis- 
 gusting accompaniments of the thing ; and 
 while these exci'e his condemnation, and 
 he views the man in whom they are real- 
 ized, as every way worthy of being repro- 
 bated, he may not be aware, all the while, 
 that in himself there exists an equal, and 
 perhaps a much larger portion of that very 
 principle, which he should be reprobated 
 for. The forms of evil-speaking break out 
 into manifold varieties. There is the soft 
 insinuation. There is the resentful outcry. 
 There is the manly and indignant disap- 
 proval. There is the invective of vulgar 
 malignity. There is the poignancy of sa- 
 tirical remark. There is the giddiness of 
 mere volatility, which trips so carelessly 
 along, and spreads its entertaining levities 
 over a gay and light-hearted party. These 
 are all so many transgressions of one and 
 the same duty ; and you can easily con- 
 ceive an enlightened Christian sitting in 
 judgment over them all, and taking hold of 
 the ri'ght principle upon whicli he would 
 condemn tliem all ; and which, if brought 
 to bear with efBcacy on the consciences of 
 the different offenders, would not merely 
 silence the passionate evil-speaker out of 
 
 the leaven of iniquity over them all. By 
 looking into his own heart, he is made ac 
 quainted with the movements of this prin- 
 ciple. "When forced to disapprove of others, 
 his disapprobation is not a mere matter of 
 taste, or of education, but the entire and 
 well-founded disapprobation of prmciple 
 He sees where the radical mischief of the 
 whole business lies. He sees that if the 
 principle of doing no ill were established 
 within the heart, it would cut up by the 
 root all evil-speaking in all its shapes and 
 in all its modifications. His own diligent 
 keeping of his own heart upon this subject 
 would bring the matter into his frequent 
 contemplation, and enable him to perceive 
 where its essence and its malignity lay, and 
 give him an enlightened judgment of it in 
 all its effects and workings upon others ; 
 and tlius, by the very progress of struggling 
 against it, and watching against it, and pray- 
 ing against it, and the stren^tli of divine 
 grace prevailing against it, and at length suc- 
 ceeding in pulling tlie thorn out of his own 
 eye. he would see clearly to cast out the 
 mote out of his brother's eye. 
 
 But another mightyadvantage of this self- 
 examination is, that the more a man does ex- 
 amine the more does he discover the infirmi- 
 ties of his own character. That very infirmity 
 against which, in another, he might have 
 protested with all the force of a veliemenl 
 
 his outrageous exclamations, and restrain indignation, he might find lurking in his own 
 
 ■the malignant evil-speaker from his delibe 
 rate thrusts at the reputation of the absent ; 
 but would rebuke the liumorous evil-speaker 
 out of his fanciful and amusing sketches, 
 and the gossiping evil-speaker out of his 
 tiresome and never-ending narratives. Now 
 you may further conceive, how a man who 
 realizes upon his own character one of 
 these varieties, might have a positive dislike 
 to another of them ; how the open and 
 generous-hearted denouncer of what is 
 wrong, may hate from his very soul the 
 poison of a sly and secret insinuation ; how 
 he who delivers himself in the chastened 
 and well-bred tone of a gentleman, mav 
 
 bosom, though under the disguise of a dif- 
 ferent form. Such a discovery as this will 
 temper his indignation. It will humble 
 him into the meekness of wisdom. It will 
 soften him into charity. It will infuse a can- 
 dour and a gentleness into all his judg 
 ments. The struggle he has had with him- 
 self to keep down the sin he sees in an- 
 other, will train him to an indulgence he 
 might never have felt, had he been altoge- 
 ther blind to the diseases of his own moral 
 constitution. When he tries to reform a 
 neighbour, the attempt will be marked by 
 all the mildness of one who is deeply con- 
 scious of his OM'u frailties, and fearfij of 
 
 recoil from the violence of an unmannerly i the exposures which he himself may have 
 invective ; how he who enjoys the ridicu- to endure. And I leave it to your own ex- 
 lous of character, may be hurt and offended perience of human nature to determine, 
 at hearing of the criminal of character ; — i whether he bids fairer for success who re- 
 and thus each, witli the thorn in his ov/n bukes with the intolerant tone of a man 
 
 eye, may advert with regret and disappro 
 bation to the mote in his brother's eye. 
 
 Now, mark the two advantages which 
 arise from every man bringing himself to a 
 strict examination, that he may if possible 
 find out the principle of that fault in his 
 own mind, which he conceives to deform 
 the doings and- the character of another. 
 His attention is carried away from the 
 mere accompaniment of the fault to its ac- 
 tual and constituting essence. He pursues 
 
 who is unconscious of his own blemishes; 
 or he who, with all the spiritualit)^ of a 
 humble and exercised Christian, endea- 
 vours to restore him Avho is overtaken in 
 a fault, with the spirit of meekness, "con- 
 sidering himself lest he also be tempted." 
 
 Now, the fault of evil-speaking is only one 
 out of the many. The lesson of the text 
 might be farther illustrated by other cases 
 and other examples. I might specify the 
 various forms of worldliness, and wilful 
 
 his searcli from the outward and accidental ness, and fraud, and falsehood, and profa 
 varieties, to tlie one orinciple which spreads ! nity, and show how the man who realizes 
 
DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY, &C. 
 
 243 
 
 these sins m one form might pass his con- 
 demnatory sentence on the man who rea- 
 lizes the very same sins in another form ; 
 and I might succeed in saying to the con- 
 viction of his conscience, even as Nathan 
 said to David, " Thou art the man ;" and 
 might press home upon him the mighty 
 task of self-examination, and set him from 
 that to the task of diligent reform, that he 
 might be enabled to see the fault of his 
 neighbour more clearly, and rebuke it more 
 gently, and winningly, and considerately. 
 But my time restrains me from expatiat- 
 ing; and however great my reluctance at 
 being withdrawn from the higher office of 
 dealing with the hearts and the consciences 
 of individuals, to any other office, which, 
 however good in itself, bears a most minute 
 and insignificant proportion to the former, 
 yet I must not forget that I stand here as 
 the advocate of a public Society ; — and I 
 therefore propose to throw the remainder 
 of my discourse into such a train of observ- 
 ation as may bear upon its designs and its 
 enterprises. 
 
 II. I now proceed, then, to the more ge- 
 neral kind of judgment which we are apt to 
 pass on men of a different persuasion in 
 matters of religion. — There is something in 
 the very circumstance of its being a differ- 
 ent religion from our own, which, prior to 
 all our acquaintance with its details, is cal- 
 culated to repel and to alarm us. It is not 
 the religion in which we have been edu- 
 cated. It is not the religion which fur- 
 nishes us with our associations of sacred- 
 ness. Nav, it is a religion, which, if admitted 
 into our creed, would tear asunder all these 
 associations. It would break up all the re- 
 pose of our established habits. It would 
 darken the whole field of our accustomed 
 contemplations. It would put to flight all 
 those vision? of the mind which stood link- 
 ed with the favour of God, and the blissful 
 prospects of eternity. It would unsettle, and 
 disturb, and agitate; and this, not merel}'' 
 because it threw a doubtfulness over the 
 question of our personal security, but be- 
 cause it shocked our dearest feelings of ten- 
 derness for that which we had been trained 
 to love, and of veneration for that which 
 we had been trained to look at in the aspect 
 of awful and imposing solemnity. 
 
 Add to all this, the circumstance of its 
 being a religion with the intolerance of 
 whicli our fathers had to struggle unto the 
 death ; a religion which lighted up the fires 
 of persecution in other days ; a religion, 
 which at one time put on a face of terror, and 
 bathed its hands in the blood of cruel mar- 
 tyrdom ; a religion, by resistance to which, 
 the men of a departed generation are em- 
 balmed in the memory of the present, 
 among the worthies of our established faith. 
 We have only to contemplate the influence 
 of these things, when handed down by tra- 
 
 dition, and written in the most popular his 
 tories of the land, and told round the even 
 ing fire to the children of every cottage 
 family, who listen, in breathless wonder- 
 ment, to the tale of midnight alarm, and 
 kindle at the battle-cry lifted by the pa 
 triots of a former age, when they made 
 their noble stand for the outraged rights 
 of conscience and of liberty ; we have only 
 to think of these things, and we shall cease 
 our amazement, that such a religion, even 
 though its faults and its merits be equally 
 unknown, should light up a passionate 
 aversion in many a bosom, and have a re- 
 coiling sense of horror, and sacrilege, and 
 blasphemy associated with its very name. 
 
 Now Popery is just such a religion ; and 
 I appeal to many present, if, though igno- 
 rant of almost all its doctrines and all its 
 distinctions, there does not spring up a 
 quickly fell antipathy in their bosoms even 
 at the very mention of Popery. There can 
 be no doubt, that for one or two genera- 
 tions, this feehng has been rapidly on the 
 decline. But it still lurks, and operates, 
 and spreads a very wide and sensible infu- 
 sion over the great mass of our Scottish 
 population. There is now a dormancy 
 about it, and it does not break out into those 
 rude and tumultuary surges, which at one 
 time filled our streets with violence, and 
 sent a fimiament of jealousy and alarm 
 over the whole face of our country. But 
 we still meet with the traces of its existence. 
 We feel it in our bosoms when we hear of 
 any of the ceremonials of Popery; and I just 
 ask you to think of those peculiar sensations 
 which rise within you at the mention of 
 the holy water, or the consecrated wafer, 
 or the extreme unction of the Catholic 
 ritual. There is still a sensation of repug- 
 nance, though it be dim, and in its painful- 
 ness it be rapidly departing awa}^ from us ; 
 and I think that, even at this hour, should 
 a Popish Chapel send up its lofty minarets 
 and spread a rich and expanded magnifi- 
 cence before the public eye, though many 
 look with unmingled delight on the gran- 
 deur of the ascending pile, yet there may 
 still be detected a visible expression of 
 jealousy and offence in the sidelong glance, 
 and the inward and half-suppressed mur- 
 muring of the occasional passenger. 
 
 Now, is it not conceivable that such a 
 traditional repugnance to Popery may exist 
 in the very same mind, with a total igno- 
 rance of what those things are for which 
 it merits our repugnance ? May there not 
 be a kind of sensitive recoil in the heart 
 against this religion, while the understand- 
 ing is entirely blind to those alone features 
 which justify our dislike to it ? May there 
 not be all the violence of antipathy within 
 us at Popery, and there be at the same 
 time within us all the faults and all the errors 
 of Popery ? May not the thorn be in our 
 
244 
 
 DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY, &C. 
 
 own eye, while the mote in our neighbour's 
 eye is calling forth all the severity of our 
 indignation ! While we are sitting in ihe 
 chair of judgment, and dealing forth from 
 the eminence of a superior discernment, 
 our invectives against wiiat we think to be 
 sacrilegious in the cree I and practice of 
 others, may it not be possible to detect in 
 ourselves the same perversion of principle, 
 the same idolatrous resistance to truth and 
 righteousness ; and surely, it well becomes 
 us m this case, while we are so ready to 
 precipitate our invectives upon the head of 
 by-standers, to pass a humbling examina- 
 tion upon ourselves, that we may come to 
 a more enliglitened estimate of that which 
 is the object of our condemnation; and that 
 when we condemn, we may do it with wis- 
 dom, and with the meekness of wisdom. 
 
 Let us therefore take a nearer look of 
 Popery, and try to find out how much of 
 Popery there is in the religion of Protes- 
 tants. 
 
 But, let it be premised, that many of the 
 disciples of this religion disclaim much of 
 what we impute to them ; that the Popery 
 of a former age may not be a fair specimen 
 of the Popery of the present ; that, in point 
 of fact, many of its professors have evinced 
 all the spirit of devout and enlightened 
 Christians ; that in many districts of Popery, 
 the Bible is in full and active circulation ; 
 and that thus, while the name and exter- 
 nals are rtitained, and waken up all our tra- 
 ditional repugnance against it, there may 
 be, among thousands and tens of thousands 
 of its nominal adherents, all the soul, and 
 substance, and principle, and piety of a re- 
 formed faith. When I therefore enumerate 
 the errors of Popery, I do not assert the 
 extent to which they exist. I merely say 
 that such errors are imputed to them ; and 
 instead of launching forth into severities 
 against those who are thus charged, all I 
 propose is, to direct you to the far more 
 profitable and Christian employment of 
 shaming ourss'lves out of these very errors, 
 that we may know how to judge of others, 
 and that we may do it with the tenderness 
 of charity. 
 
 First, then, it is said of Papists, that they 
 ascribe an infallibility to the Pope, so that 
 if he were to say One thing and the Bible 
 another, his authority would carry it over 
 the authority of God. And, think you, my 
 brethren, that there is no such Popery 
 among you ? Is tlieie no taking of your 
 rehgion upon trust from another, when 
 you should draw it fresh, and unsullied 
 from the fountain-head of inspiration? You 
 all have, or you ought to have Bibles ; and 
 how often is it repeated there, " Hearken 
 diligently unto me?" Now, do you obey 
 this requirement, by making the reading 
 of your Bible a distinct and earnest exer- 
 cise ? Do you ever dare to bring your fa- 
 
 vourite minister to the tribunal of the word, 
 or would you tremble at the presumption 
 of such an attempt; so that the hearing of 
 the word carries a greater authority over 
 your mind than the reading of the word. 
 Now this want of daring, this trembling at 
 the very idea of a dissent from your minis- 
 ter, this indolent acquiescence in his doc- 
 trine, is just calling another man master; 
 it is putting the authority of man over the 
 authority of God ; it is throwing yourself 
 into a prostrate attitude at the footstool of 
 human infallibility; it is not just kissing the 
 toe of reverence, but it is the profounder 
 degradation of the mind and of all its facul- 
 ties ; and without the name of Popery — 
 that name which lights up so ready an an- 
 tipathy in your bosoms, your soul may be 
 infected with the substantial poison, and 
 your conscience be weighed down by the 
 oppressive shackles, of Popery. And all 
 this, in the noonday effulgence of a protest- 
 ant country, where the Bible, in your mo- 
 ther tongue, circulates among all your 
 families — where it may be met with in al- 
 most every shelf, and is ever soliciting you 
 to look to the wisdom that is inscribed 
 upon its pages. O ! hoAv tenderly should 
 we deal with the prejudices of a rude and 
 uneducated people, who have no Bibles, 
 and no art of reading among them, to un- 
 Jock its treasures, when we think that, even 
 in this our land, the voice of human au- 
 thority carries so mighty an influence along 
 with it, and veneration for the word of God 
 is darkened and polluted by a blind venera- 
 tion for its interpreters. 
 
 We tremble to read of the fulminations 
 that have issued in other days from a conclave 
 of cardinals. — Have we no conclaves, and 
 no fulminations, and no orders of inquisition, 
 in our own country ? Is there n-o professing 
 brotherhood, or no professing sisterhood, to 
 deal their censorious invectives around 
 them, upon the members of an excommu- 
 nicated world? There is such a thing as a 
 religious public. There is a "little flock," 
 on the one hand, and a "world lying in 
 wickedness," on the other. But have a 
 care, ye who think yourselves of the favour- 
 ed few, how you never transgress the mild- 
 ness, and charity, and unostentatious vir- 
 tues of the gospel ; lest you hold out a dis- 
 torted picture of Christianity in your neigh- 
 bourhood, and impose that as religion on 
 the fancy of the credulous, which stands at 
 as wide a distance from the religion of the 
 New Testament, as do the services of an 
 exploded superstition, or the mummeries of 
 an antiquated ritual. 
 
 But, again, it is said of Papists, that they 
 hold the monstrous doctrine of transubstan- 
 tiation. Now, a doctrine may be monstrous 
 on two grounds. It may be monstrous on 
 the ground of its absurdity, or it may bo 
 monstrous on the ground of its impiety. It 
 
DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY, &C. 
 
 245 
 
 must have a most practically mischievous 
 effect on the conscience, should a commu- 
 nicant sit down at the table of the Lord ; 
 and think that the act of appointed remem- 
 brance is equivalent to a real sacrifice, and 
 a real expiation ; and leave the performance 
 with a mind unburdened of all its past guilt, 
 and resolved to incur fresh guilt to be wiped 
 away by a fresh expiation. But in the 
 sacrament of our own country, is there no 
 crucifying of the Lord afresh? Is there 
 none of that which gives the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation all its malignant influence 
 on the hearts and lives of its proselytes'? Is 
 there no mysterious virtue annexed to the 
 elements of this ordinance? Instead of be- 
 ing repaired to for the purpose of recruit- 
 ing our languid affections to the Saviour, 
 and strengthening our faith, and arming us 
 with a firmer resolution, and more vigorous 
 purpose of obedience, does the conscience 
 of no communicant solace itself by the 
 mere performance of the outward act, and 
 suffer him to go back with a more reposing 
 security to the follies, and vices, and indul- 
 gences of the world ? Then, my brethren, 
 his erroneous view of the sacrament may 
 not be clothed in a term so appalling to the 
 hearts and the feelings of Protestants as 
 transubstantiation, but to it belongs all the 
 immorality of transubstantiation; and the 
 thorn must be pulled out of his eye, ere he 
 can see clearly to cast the mote out of his 
 brother's eye. 
 
 But, thirdly, it is said, that Papists wor- 
 ship saints, and fall down to graven 
 images. This is very, very bad. " Thou 
 shalt worship the Lord thy God, and liim 
 only shalt thou serve." But let us take 
 ourselves to task upon this charge also. 
 Have we no consecrated names in the an- 
 nals of reformation — no worthies who hold 
 too commanding a place in the remem- 
 brance and affection of Protestants ? Are 
 there no departed theologians, whose works 
 hold too domineering an ascendency over 
 the faith and practice of Christians ? Are 
 there no laborious compilations of other 
 days, which instead of interpreting the Bi- 
 ble, have given its truths a shape, and a 
 form, and an arrangement, that confer upon 
 them another impression, and impart to 
 them another influence, from the pure and 
 original record? We may not bend the 
 knee in any sensible cliamber of imagery, 
 at the remembrance of favourite saints. 
 But do we not bend the imderstanding be- 
 fore the volumes of favourite authors, and 
 do a homage to those representations of 
 the minds of the men of other days, which 
 should be exclusively given to the repre- 
 sentation of the mind of the Spirit, as put 
 down in the book of the Spirit's revelation ? 
 Ft is right that each of us should give the 
 contribution of his own talcMits, and his own 
 learning, to this most interesting cause ; biU 
 
 let the great drift of our argument be to 
 prop the authority of the Bible, and to turn 
 the eye of earnestness upon its pages; for 
 if any work, instead of exalting the Bible, 
 shall be made, by the misjudging reverence 
 of others, to stand in its place, then we in- 
 troduce a false worship into the heart of a 
 reformed country, and lay prostrate the 
 conscience of men, under the yoke of a 
 spurious authority. 
 
 But, fourthly and lastly— for time does 
 not permit such an enumeration as would 
 exhaust all the leading peculiarities ascrib- 
 ed to this faith— it is stated, that by the 
 form of a confession, in the last days of a 
 sinner's life, and the ministration of extreme 
 unction upon his death-bed, he may be 
 sent securely to another world, with all the 
 unrepented profligacy, and fraud, and wick- 
 edness of this world upon his forehead; 
 that this is looked forward to, and counted 
 upon by every Catholic— and sets him loose 
 from all those anticipations whicii work 
 upon the terror of otlier men — and throws 
 open to him an unbridled career, through 
 the whole of which, he may wanton in all 
 the varieties of criminal indulgence— and 
 at length, when death knocks at his door, if 
 he just allow him tiiue to send for his minis- 
 ter, and 10 hurry along v.'ith hiiu through 
 the steps of an adjusted ceremonial, the 
 man's passage through that dark vale, 
 which carries him out of tlie world, is strew- 
 ed with the promises of delusion— that 
 every painful remembrance of the past is 
 stifled amid the splendours and the juggle- 
 ries of an imposing ritual : and in place of 
 conscience rising upon him, and charging 
 him with the guilty track of disobedience 
 he has run, and forcing him to flee, amid 
 the agitations of his restless bed, to the 
 blood of the great Atonement, and alarming 
 him into an earnest cry for the clean heart 
 and the right spirit, knowing that unless he 
 be born again unto repentance, he shall 
 perish — why, my brethren, instead of these 
 salutary exercises, we are told, that a ficti- 
 tious hope is made to pour its treacherous 
 sunshine into the bosom of a deceived 
 Catholic— that, when standing on the verge 
 of eternity, he can cast a fearless eye over 
 its dark and untravelled vastness — and that, 
 for the terror of its coming wrath, his guilty 
 and unrenewed soul is filled with all the 
 radiance and all the elevation of its antici- 
 pated glories. 
 
 O ! my brethren, it is piteous to think of 
 such a preparation, but it is just such a pre- 
 paration as meets the sad experience of us 
 all. The man, whose every affection has 
 clung to the world, till the last hour of his 
 possfbility to enjoy it ; who never put forth 
 an effort or a prayer to be delivered from 
 the power of sin, till every faculty of its 
 pleasures had expired; who, through the 
 varied progress of his tastes and his desires 
 
246 
 
 DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY, &.C. 
 
 from amusement to dissipation, and from 
 dissipation to business, had always a some- 
 thing in all the successive stages of his ca- 
 reer, to take up his heart to the exclusion 
 of him who formed it ; — wliy, such a man, 
 who never thought of pressing the lessons 
 of the minister upon his conscience, while 
 life was vigorous, and the full swing of its 
 delights and occupations could be indulged 
 in,--do we never find, even in the bosom of 
 this reformed country, that while his body 
 retains all its health, his spirit retains all its 
 hardihood ; and not till the arrival of that 
 week, or that month, or that year, when the 
 last messenger begins to alarm him, does 
 he think of sending to the man of God, an 
 humble supplicant for his attendant prayers. 
 Ah! my brethren, do you not think, amid 
 the tones, and the sympathies, and the tears, 
 which an affectionate pastor pours out in 
 the fervency of his soul, and mingles with 
 all his petitions, and all his addresses to the 
 dying man, that no tlattering unction ever 
 steals upon him, to lull his conscience, and 
 smooth the agony of his departure? Then, 
 my brethren, you mistake it, you sadly mis- 
 take it ; and even here, where I lift my 
 voice among a crowd of men, in the prime 
 and unbroken vigour of their days, — if even 
 the youngest and likeliest of you all, shall, 
 trusting to some future repentance, cherish 
 the purpose of sin another hour, and not 
 resolve at this critical and important Nov/, 
 to break it all off, by an act of firm abandon- 
 ment, then be your abhorrence of Popery 
 what it may, you are exemplifying the 
 worst of its errors, and wrapping yourselves 
 up in the crudest and most inveterate of its 
 delusions. 
 
 I have left myself very little time for the 
 application of all this to the particular ob- 
 jects of our Society. — First, Let it correct 
 the very gross and vulgar tendency we all 
 have, to think that the kingdom of God 
 cometh with observation. That kingdom 
 has its seat within us, and consists in the 
 reign of principle over the hidden and invisi- 
 ble mind. The mere deposition of the 
 Pope from that throne where he sits sur- 
 rounded with the splendour of temporali- 
 ties, — the mere ascendency of Protestant 
 princes, over the counsels and politics of 
 the world, — the mere exclusion of Catholic 
 subjects from our administrations and our 
 Parliaments, — these things are all very ob- 
 servable, but they may all happen, without 
 one inch of progress being made towards 
 the establishment of that kingdom, which 
 cometh not with observation. Why, my 
 brethren, the supposition may be a very odd 
 one, nor do I say that it is at all likely to be 
 realized, — but for the sake of illustration, I 
 will come forward with it. Conceive that 
 the Spirit of God, accompanying the circu- 
 lation of the word of God, were to intro- 
 duce all its truths and all its lessons into 
 
 the heart of every individual of the Catho- 
 lic priesthood ; and that the Pope himself, 
 instead of being brought dovMi in person 
 from the secular eminence he occupies, 
 were brought down in spirit, with all his 
 lofty imaginations, to the captivity of the 
 obedience of Christ, — then I am not pre- 
 pared to assert, that under the influence of 
 this great Christian episcopacy, a mighty 
 advancement may not be made in building 
 up the kingdom of Cod, and in throwing 
 down the kingdom of Satan, tln-oiighout all 
 the territories of Catholic Christendom. 
 And yet, with all this, the name of Catholic 
 may be retained, — the external and visible 
 marks of distinction, may be as prominent 
 as ever, — and with all those insignia about 
 them, which keep up our passionate anti- 
 pathy to this denomination, there might not 
 be a single ingredient in the spirit of its 
 members, to merit our rational antipathy. 
 I beg you will just take all this as an at- 
 tempt at the illustration of what 1 count a 
 very important principle ; — and, to make 
 the illustration more complete, let me take 
 up the case of a Protestant country, and 
 put the supposition, that, with the name of 
 a pure and spiritual religion, the majority 
 of its inhabitants are utter strangers to its 
 power; that an indifference to the matters 
 of faith and of eternity, works all the effect 
 of a deep and fatal infidelity on their con- 
 sciences ; that the world engrosses every 
 heart, and the kingdom which is not of this 
 world, is virtually disowned and held in 
 derision among the various classes and 
 characters of society ; that the spirit of the 
 New Testament is banished from our Par- 
 liaments, and banished from our Universi- 
 ties, and banished from the great bulk of 
 our ecclesiastical establishments, and it is 
 only to be met with among a few inconsid- 
 erable men, w' ho are scouted by the general 
 voice as the fanatics and visionaries of the 
 day ; — then, my brethren, I am not to be 
 charmed out of truth, and of principle, by 
 the mockery of a name. Call such a coun- 
 try reformed, as you may, it is full of the 
 strong-hold of antichrist, from one end to 
 the other ol it ; and there must be a revolu- 
 tion of sentiment there, as well as in the 
 darkest regions of Popery, ere the "ene- 
 mies of the Son of God be consumed by the 
 breath of his mouth," or "Babylon the 
 great be fallen." 
 
 Now, secondly, mark the influence of 
 such a train of sentiment, on the spirit of 
 those who are employed in spreading the 
 light of reformation among a Catholic peo- 
 ple. It will purify their aim, and give it a 
 judicious direction, and chase away from 
 their proceedings that offensive tone of ar- 
 rogance which is calculated to ft-ritate, and 
 to beget a more determined obstinacy of 
 prejudice than ever. Their great aim, to 
 express it in one word, s to plant in the 
 
DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY, &C. 
 
 247 
 
 hearts of all men of all countries, .the reli- 
 gion of the Bible. Their great direction 
 will be toward the establishment of right 
 principle ; and in the prosecution of it, they 
 will carefully avoid multiplying the points 
 of irritation, by giving vent to their tradi- 
 tional repugnance against the less material 
 forms of Popery. And the meek conscious- 
 ness of that woful departure from vital 
 Christianity, which has taken place even 
 in the reformed countries of Christendom, 
 will divest them of that repulsive supe- 
 riority which, I fear, has gone far to defeat 
 the success of many an attempt, upon many 
 an enemy of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
 " The whole amount of our message is to 
 furnish you with the Bible, and to furnish 
 you with the art of reading it. We think 
 the lessons of this book well titted to chase 
 away the manifold errors which rankle in 
 the bosom of our own country. You are 
 the subjects of error as well as we ; and we 
 trust that you will find them useful, in en- 
 lightening the prejudices, and in aiding the 
 frailties to which, as the children of one com- 
 mon humanity, we are all liable. Amongst 
 us, there is a mighty deference to the au- 
 thority of man : if this exists among you, 
 nere is a book which tells us to call no man 
 master, and delivers us from the fallibility 
 of human opinions. Amongst us there is a 
 delusive confidence in the forms of godli- 
 ness, with little of its power : here is a book, 
 which tells us that holiness of life is the 
 great end of all our ceremonies, and of all 
 our sacraments. Amongst us there is a 
 host of theologians, each wielding his sepa- 
 rate authority over the creed and the con- 
 science of his countrymen, and you, Catho- 
 lics, have justly reproached us with our 
 manifold and never-ending varieties; but 
 liere is a book, the influence of which is 
 throwing all these differences into the back 
 ground, and bringing forward those great 
 and substantial points of agreement, which 
 lead us to recognise the man of another 
 creed to be essentially a Christian, — and we 
 want to Aviden this circle of fellowship, that 
 we may be permitted to live in the exercise 
 of one faith and of one charity along with 
 you. Amongst us the great bulk of men 
 pass through life forgetful of eternity, and 
 think, that by the sighs and the ministra- 
 tions of their last days, they will earn all 
 the blessedness of its ever-during rewards. 
 But here is a book which tells us that we 
 should seek first the kingdom of God ; and 
 will not let us off with any other repentance 
 than repentance now ; and tells us, what 
 we trusts will light with greater energy on 
 your consciences than it has ever done upon 
 ours, that we should haste and make no de- 
 lay to keep the commandments." O ! my 
 brethren, let us not despair that such argu- 
 ments, urged by the mild charity which 
 adorns the Bible, and followed up by its 
 
 circulation, will at length tell on the firmest 
 defences that bigotry ever raised around 
 the conscience and the principles of nun — 
 and that, outof those jarring elements wiiich 
 threaten our empire with a wild war of tur- 
 bulence and disorder, we shall, by the bless- 
 ing of God, be enabled to cement all its 
 members into one great and harmonious 
 family. 
 
 I conclude with saying, that, mainly and 
 substantially speaking, I conceive tliis to be 
 the very spirit of the attempt that is now 
 making by the Society 1 am now pleading 
 for. It is not an offensive declaration of war 
 against Popery. It is true that it may be 
 looked upon virtually as a measure of hos- 
 tility against the errors of Catholics, but no 
 more than ii is a measure of hostility against 
 the errors of Protestants. The light of truth 
 is fitted lo chase away ail error, and there is 
 something in that Bible which the agents of 
 our Society are now teaching so assiduously, 
 that is not more humbling and more severe 
 on the general spirit of Ireland, than it is on 
 the general spirit of our own country. It is 
 true, that some of the Catholics set their face 
 against liie establishment of our schools, but 
 this resistance to education is not peculiar 
 to them. It is to be met with in England. 
 It is to be met with in our own boasted and 
 beloved Scotland. It is to be met with even 
 among the enlightened classes of British 
 society — and shall we speak of it as if it 
 fastened a peculiar stigma on that country, 
 which we have left to languish in depression 
 and ijrnorance for so many generations? 
 But, this resistance on the part of Catholics 
 is far from general. In one district the 
 teachers of our schools are chiefly Roman 
 Catholics; many of the school-houses are 
 Catholic chapels; and the great majority of 
 the scholars are children of Catholic parents, 
 who have appeared not a little elated that 
 their children have proved more expert in 
 their scriptural quotations than their neigh- 
 bours. — Call you not this an auspicious 
 commencement? Is there no loosening of 
 prejudice here? Do you not perceive that 
 the firmest system of bigotry, ever erected 
 over the minds of a prostrate population, 
 must give way before the continued opera- 
 tion of such an expedient as this? There is 
 no one device of human policy that has 
 done so much for Ireland in a whole cen- 
 tury, as is now doing by the progress of 
 education, and the freer circulation of the 
 gospel of light through the dark mass and 
 interior of their peasantry. Let me crave 
 the assistance of the public in this place to 
 one of the most powerful instruments that 
 has yet been set agoing for helping forward 
 this animating cause. It is an instrument 
 ready made to your hand. The Hibernian 
 Society have already estai)lished 347 schools 
 in our sister country, a nuinlier equal to one 
 third of the parishes in Scotland; and they 
 
248 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 are dealing out education, a pure scriptural 
 education, to 27,700 Irish children. It will 
 be a disgrace to us if we do not signalize 
 ourselves in such a business as this. We 
 talk of the Irish as a wild and uncivilized 
 people. It will be the indication of a very 
 gross and uncivilized public at home, if we 
 restrict our interchange with the men of 
 the opposite shore, to the one intercliange 
 of merchandise. 
 
 Let the rudeness of the Irish be what it 
 may, sure I am, that there is much in their 
 constitutional character to encourage us in 
 this enterprise. They have many good 
 points and engaging properties about them. 
 I speak not of that peculiar style of genius 
 and of eloquence, which gives such fascina- 
 tion to the poets, the authors, the orators of 
 Ireland. I speak of the great mass, and I do 
 think that I perceive a something in the 
 natural character of Ireland, wliich draws 
 me more attractively to the love of its peo- 
 ple, than any other picture of national man- 
 ners ever has inspired. Even amid the wild- 
 est extravagance of that humour which sits 
 so visibly and so universally on the counte- 
 nance of the Irish population, I can see a 
 heart and a social sympathy along with it. 
 Amid all the wayward and ungovernable 
 flights of that rare pleasantry which belongs 
 to them, there is a something by which the 
 bosom of an Irishman can be seriously and 
 permanently affected, and which I think in 
 judicious hands is convertible into the finest 
 results on the ultimate character of that 
 people. It strikes me, that, of all the men 
 on the face of the earth, they would be the 
 
 worst fitted to withstand the expression of 
 honest, frank, liberal, and persevering kind- 
 ness; — that if they saw there was no artful 
 policy in the attentions by which you plieo 
 them, but that an upright and firmly ;^us- 
 tained benevolence lay at the bottom of all 
 your exertions for the best interest of their 
 families; could they attain the conviction, 
 that, amid all the contempt and all the re- 
 sistance you experienced from their hands, 
 there still existed in j^our bosoms an un- 
 quelled and an undissembled love for their 
 and for their children; — could they see the 
 working of tliis principle divested of every 
 treacherous and suspicious symptom, and 
 unwearied amid every discouragement in 
 prosecuting the task of their substantial 
 amelioration, — why, my brethren, let all 
 tliis come to be seen, and in a few years I 
 trust our devoted missionaries will bring it 
 before them broad and undeniable as the 
 light of day, and those hearts that are now 
 shut against you in sullenness and disdain 
 will be subdued into tenderness; the strong 
 emotions of gratitude and nature will at 
 length find their way through all the bar- 
 riers of prejudice; and a people whom no 
 penalties could turn, whom no terror of 
 military violence could overcome, who kept 
 on a scowling front of hostility that was 
 not to be softened, while war spread its 
 desolating cruelties over their unhappy land, 
 — this very people will do homage to the 
 omnipotence of charity, and when the 
 mighty armour of Christian kindness is 
 brought to bear upon them, it will be found 
 to be irresistible. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Extracts from the Eleventh Annual Report of the Hibernian Society, for establishing" 
 Schools, and circulating- the Holy Scriptures in Ireland. London, 1817. 
 
 The Committee are persuaded, that among the ' 
 numerous Institutions which the Di\ine power 
 and goodness have raised up in this kingdom, the 
 Hibernian Society, if duly considered, will stand 
 very high in the scale of moral and religious im- 
 portance ; and they are happy to add, that the 
 present Report will present to its worthy support- 
 ers, continued and additional instances of the prac- 
 ticability of its designs, and the success of its ope- 
 rations. 
 
 " In the good work of establishing Schools for 
 the education of the children of the poor, in Ire- 
 land, the Committee had proceeded so far, at the 
 time of holding the last General Meeting, as to re- 
 port, that the number of Schools exceeded three 
 hundred ; and that the children and adults edu- 
 cated therein were upwards of nineteen thousand. 
 Thev have now the pleasure to state, that, by the 
 annual return which was made up to Christmas 
 
 last, the number of Schools is 347 ; and the chil- 
 dren and adults educated therein, are 27,776. 
 
 " Such is the endearing and interesting specta- 
 cle which the present state of the labours of the 
 Society presents to its benevolent supporters. Every 
 Parent, every Christian, and every Briton must 
 rejoice in the accomplishment of so much good to 
 Ireland, where it was so peculiarly needed ; and it 
 is of such a nature, and is in such a course of ex- 
 tension and increase, as to afford the most reasona- 
 ble expectations of enlarged and permanent bene- 
 fits to that part of the United Kingdom. 
 
 " The Committee are happy to state, that the 
 regulation for the conduct of the Schools are in 
 full operation, and that the Inspectors are active 
 and circumspect. The progress of the children in 
 learnuig to read, and in committing the Scrijitures 
 to memory, and the mterest that even Catliolic pa- 
 rents feel in ha^'ing their little ones appear with 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 249 
 
 credit at the inspections, are truly jjratif\-ing. The 
 attention of the Miisters, in general, to the import 
 of the sacred word, is pleasincrly on the increase : 
 and among such as have had their own under- 
 standings enlightened and informed, there exists a 
 spirit of emulation to have their pupils excel in 
 giving suitable answers to questions relating to the 
 meanmg of the passages which they repeat. 
 
 " These instances evidently show the immediate 
 and direct influence which the Schools produce on 
 the minds of the parents of the children who are 
 educated therein ; and that an emanation of Scrip- 
 ture light, and a portion of religious interest of the 
 most important and useful kind, are introduced into 
 the huiuble cottages of the poor. These now have 
 some ' Ught in their dwelling,' in the midst of sur- 
 rounding darkness and superstition ; which, how- 
 ever, begins to be penetrated with the beams of 
 Divine truth, and to be impressed with that word 
 which is ' quick and powerful, and a discerner of 
 the thoughts and intents of the heart.' On this 
 interesting subject, a most valuable correspondent 
 of the Committee thus writes : — 
 
 " From the many applications I receive from in- 
 dividuals from dirierent parts of the country for 
 Bibles and Testaments, there is strong evidence to 
 the spreading of religious inquiry among the mass 
 of the jieople. Manv of them come from places 
 remote from any of the Schools ; but I always find 
 that anxiety for the "Scriptures has been excited by 
 converse with some who have lieen pupils therein, 
 who have lived in the neighbourhood of the Schools, 
 or have been in some other ways immediately or 
 remotely connected with them. 
 
 "Could the moral and religious improvement of 
 the human mind be as easily discovered as the 
 agricultural improvement of a country, those nu- 
 merous districts where the Schools have been for 
 any time established, would be found to exliibit a 
 striking contrast to those wherein they have not 
 yet taken place. While these would be seen in all 
 the nakedness of sterility, or fruitful only in the 
 production of noxious weeds ; in the other it would 
 appear that in a great degree the fallow ground has 
 been broken up, the good seed sown and in a state 
 of vegetation, waiting for the *arly and latter rain ; 
 in many, the appearance of a healthful crop would 
 gladden the eye, and in some, the fields would ap- 
 pear already white unto the harvest. 
 
 " The great increase in the number of the 
 Schools; the amazing anxiety for the Scriptures 
 which they have been the means of exciting in 
 every district ; the increasing demand for Evening 
 Schools for the instruction of the adult popula- 
 tion, —all pressingly call for such a supply of Bibles 
 and Testaments as I am unable to meet. Were 
 the wonders doing in this country by the instru- 
 mentality of the tlibernian Society fully known in 
 England, and their importance rightly appreciated, 
 no Society would be found deserving of greater 
 support." 
 
 " The Committee continue to give the greatest 
 encouragement to the instruction of adults in the 
 vicinity of the Schools ; and they receive the most 
 pleasing accounts of the efiScacy of the word of 
 God in the enfightening of the minds of those who 
 probably would never have had an op{X)rtunity of 
 reading the Scriptures, or of hearing them read, 
 had it not been for the free Schools which this So- 
 ciety has established, and for the numerous copies 
 of the Divine word which it has industriously cir- 
 culated. Indeed, the Visitors to the Schools per- 
 ceive and acknowledge, that, uere it not fur the 
 iabours of this Institution, it would be impossible 
 32 
 
 for the Bible Societies to gel the Scriptures into the 
 hands of the Calholii-t, the great mass of the popu- 
 lation oflrcland. 
 
 " The formation of Irish classes in the Schools 
 which are appropriate thereto, continues to be se- 
 dulously promoted. An additional allowance has 
 been granted to the Masters for their Irish Testa- 
 ment classes ; and this has ]iowcrl"ulIy operated to 
 increase the demand for Irish Testaments, both in 
 the day Schools, and also in those which are heia 
 in the evening, for teaching the adults. 
 
 " The Conunittee could adduce additional in- 
 stances of approbation and support from some of 
 the Catholic Clergy, both of the Society's Schools, 
 and of its exertions to circulate the Scriptures ; but 
 the limits of this Report will not permit an en- 
 largement on this pleasing and interesting subject. 
 If, however, the views and object of this Institu- 
 tion liave only commended themselves as yet to a 
 small part of the Catholic body, the Committee are 
 happy to state, that, in the Protestant community, 
 the liigh importance of the Hibernian Society in- 
 creasingly arrests public attention ; that the de- 
 mands for Schools in almost every district are more 
 numerous than can be attended to, and that in 
 every place respectable individuals come forward, 
 unsolicited, to carry into execution the benevolent 
 designs of the Society. And here it is very ap- 
 propriate and grateful to observe, that to the Clergy 
 of the Established Church who have afforded their 
 patronage to the Schools, and have condescended 
 to act as Visitors, the Society are under ver>-^reat 
 obhgations ; and particularly to an excellent Dig- 
 nitary of that Churcii, who has always entered into 
 the views of the Society with a liberal mind, has 
 furthered them with continued assiduity, and has 
 recently from the pulpit pleaded the cause of the 
 Institution, and thereby added to its celelirity and 
 support. This last service called for the official 
 thanks of the Committee. They were transmitted 
 by the treasurer, and the answer which has been 
 received from this estimable personage is so charac- 
 teristic of his piety and philanthropy, and so highly 
 honourable to the Hibernian Society, that it would 
 be unsuitable and injurious to withhold the follow- 
 ing extract : — 
 
 " I have received your very kmd letter, commu- 
 nicating the thanks of the Committee of the Hi- 
 bernian Society of London, to me, for the sermon 
 I preached in Sligo Church on their behalf; and 
 for other services which the Committee are pleased 
 kindly to notice, as rendered by me to the Schools 
 under their patronage. Whatever little I have 
 been enabled to do, I have felt that therein I have 
 been doing the best service I could to tliis quarter 
 of my poor benighted country. And I thank God, 
 that I see the exertions wliich the Society has made 
 already (and they have been great) so largely owiieil 
 of him. I am persuadei), that nothing is calculated 
 so much, under the Divine blessing, to dispel the 
 gross darkness that has covered this land, for so 
 many ages, as such a system of general scriptural 
 education, as that adopted by your Society. And 
 I have to acknowledge that the establishment of 
 the Society's Schools m the vicinity of my minis- 
 terial duties, has proved the happy instrument of a 
 great enlargement of utterance and usefulness to 
 ine ; and never more did I experience this enlarge- 
 ment, than on the late occasion of my \isiting 
 Sligo, to advocate the cause of the Society. If I 
 have done this with any degree of succes.s, I desire 
 to thank, and give glory to God. Surely you well 
 deserve the cordial co-operation of the Irish pub- 
 lic; and you call forth from Irish Christians, 
 
250 
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 thanksgivings to God for the grace bestowed upon 
 you." I» 
 
 It has been noticed that the number of children 
 and adults taught in the Society's Schools has in- 
 creased, in the course of the last year, from 19,000 
 to 27,000, and that requisitions for additional 
 Schools are far more numerous tlian can be com- 
 phed with. It will also be remembered, that at the 
 time of holding the last Annual Meeting, the ex- 
 penditure of the Society had exceeded its income 
 upwards of 600/. In this conflict of an enlarged 
 establishment and a deficient revenue, of encourag- 
 ing prospects and limited means, the Committee 
 have endeavoured to increase the funds of the So- 
 ciety, and to lessen the expense of its future ope- 
 rations. To obtain the first-mentioned benefit, 
 they have transmitted a circular letter to Ministers 
 generally, in town and country, describing the state 
 of the Institution, as to its importance, its useful- 
 ness, and its necessities; urging them to interest 
 themselves in procuring subscriptions and dona- 
 tions : and particularly and earnestly requesting 
 them to incorporate it amongst those other excel- 
 lent Societies, for the assistance of which Auxi- 
 liary Institutions have in so many places been 
 established. These dispense their tributary streams 
 with fertilizing and invigorating enerfries ; and if 
 in their course, they were permitted to visit and 
 enrich the Hibernian Society, Ireland would 
 greatly benefit by the diffusion, and would ar- 
 dently bless her pious and Uberal benefactors. — 
 With reg-ard to lessening the expense of future 
 operations, the Committee have endeavoured to 
 connect the formation of new Schools, with an 
 Annual Subscription ; and, in this way, it is to be 
 hoped, that many of the resident noblemen and 
 gentlemen in Ireland, will assist in carrying into 
 eli'ect the designs, and in reUeving the funds, of 
 the Hibernian Society. 
 
 It has been truly gratifying to the Committee, to 
 state the considerable increase of the Society's 
 Schools, and the endent utility and success of its 
 operations ; but it is with regret that they view the 
 inadequacy of the funds to defray the necessary 
 expenses of the Institution; and with anxiety that 
 they contrast the openings of Pro\idence which 
 present themselves, for exertions of a very exten- 
 sive nature — in the highest degree important, and 
 promising the most happy results, — with the alarm- 
 ing dc riciency of pecuniary means for following those 
 providential leadings, with the energies and the 
 hopes which they are so well calculated to inspire. 
 
 With respect to the progress which has already 
 been made in fulfilling the purposes for which the 
 Society was formed, it may be observed, — that its 
 advances in extension of operations, and its suc- 
 cess by its means and instruments, have proved in 
 the highest degree pleasing and satisfactory. It 
 was not till about the year 1809, that Schools were 
 established in Ireland, under the patronage of the 
 Hibernian Society ; from which period to tlie pre- 
 sent time, these establishments have so increased 
 as to include upwardsof "27,000 pupils. And when 
 it is considered that the Schools have been formed, 
 and the cliildren collected therein, for the purpose 
 of imparting the benefits of education to the lower 
 classes of the people, who had neither the means 
 nor the hopes of these benefits from any other 
 quarter ; and also of diffusing the blessings of pure 
 Scriptual instruction among those to whom the 
 
 policy and the power of their superiors forbid the 
 introduction of these blessings ; surely it must be 
 acknowledged, that the designs and operations of 
 the Society have been appropriate and efficient, 
 for the removal of the greatest of evils, and lor the 
 production of the most essential and important 
 good. In fact, the gradually increasing operation* 
 of the Society have greatly exceeded its progres- 
 sive means of support ; its designs have been truly 
 laudable and excellent, its means and instruments 
 well adapted to execute them, and the s})here of 
 its labours admirably calculated to gratify British 
 benevolence, and to reward Christian zeal. Under 
 all these circumstances, it is a matter of surprise 
 and regret, that the income of this Institution, 
 arising from annual subscriptions, does ni)t amount 
 to sot)/ ; whilst its annual expenditure is upwards 
 of 4,000/. The deficiency has, in part, been sup- 
 plied by donations and collections, and also by as- 
 sistance received from Auxiliary Societies ; hut the 
 arrears at length amount to a sum (1,(505/.) which 
 must have become burdensome to the Treasurer, 
 embarrassing to the Connnittee, and prejudicial to 
 the interest of the Society. 
 
 To relieve it of tliis debt, is the anxious wish of 
 its Committee, and nmst be the earnest desire of its 
 Members. And when it is considered, as having 
 arisen out of the actual prosperity of the cause, 
 which the Society was established to promote, and 
 from the enlarged and successful exertions which 
 it has been enabled to prosecute, the Committee 
 are persuaded that every Member of the Institu- 
 tion will feel it to be his duty and his pleasure, to 
 unite with them, in immediate and earnest elforts, 
 to replenish and increase its funds, in order that 
 the Society may be relieved from the pressure 
 of present obligations, and be capacitated to enter 
 on a course of additional labours, and of extensive 
 and hopeful exertions. 
 
 That the operations of this Society should be 
 stationary whilst the most fair and promising 
 prosjiects open for their exertions ; that the bene- 
 fits of education which it has conferred, and the 
 blessings of Scriptural histruction, which it has 
 imparted, should be circumscribed comparatively 
 to a few, while hundreds of thousands are perish- 
 ing for lack of knowledge, is a state of things, 
 wliich must wound the feelings, and disappoint the 
 hopes, of the supporters of the Institution. 
 
 That a work so truly important, that otyects so 
 highly benevolent, and that eflbrts so eminently 
 successful, will be impeded or paralyzed for wan> 
 of pecuniary support, the Committee cannot be- 
 lieve. For the appeal to Christian prmcijjles, feel- 
 ings, and generosity, is made, in the present in- 
 stance, to the religious pul)lic in Great Britain; 
 whose noble liberality supports eflbrts of compas- 
 sion and mercy, amongst the ignorant and the 
 miserable, in the most distant parts of the world. 
 And this hberality will surely not be withheld 
 from the Hibernian Society, whose labours are di- 
 rected to remove the afflicting spectacle of igno- 
 rance, superstition, immorality, and mental degra- 
 dation, wliich the lower classes of the community 
 in Ireland exhibit ; to place our "brethren acconl- 
 ing to the flesh," our fellow subjects, on the same 
 high ground of moral and national advantage on 
 which we stand, and thus to promote their best 
 interest, their highest happiness, and their eternaJ 
 salvation. 
 
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS: 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN EDINBURGH, ON THE 5th OF MARCH, 1826. 
 
 " A righteous man regardelh the life of his beast." — Prov. xii. 10. 
 
 The woid regard is of two-fold signifi- 
 cation, and may either apply to the moral 
 or to the intellectual part of our nature. 
 In the one application, the intellectual, it is 
 the regard of attention. In the other, the 
 moral, it is the regard of sympathy, or 
 kindness. We do not marvel at this com- 
 mon term having been applied to two dif- 
 ferent things; for, in truth, they are most 
 intimately associated ; and the faculty by 
 which a transition is accomplished from 
 the one to the other, may be considered as 
 the intermediate link between the mind 
 and the heart. It is the faculty by which 
 certain objects become present to the mind; 
 and then the emotions are awakened in 
 the heart, which correspond to these ob- 
 jects. The two act and re-act upon each 
 Dther. But as we must not dwell too long 
 on generalities, we shall satisfy ourselves 
 with stating, that as, on the one hand, if 
 he heart be very alive to any peculiar set 
 of emotions, this of itself is a predisposing 
 cause why the mind should be very alert 
 in singling out the peculiar objects which 
 excite them ; so, on the other hand, that 
 the emotions be specifically felt, the objects 
 must be specifically noticed : and thus it is, 
 that the faculty of attention — a faculty at 
 tlie bidding of the will, and for the exer- 
 cise of which, therefore, man is responsible 
 — is of such mighty and commanding in- 
 fluence upon the sensibilities of our nature; 
 insomuch that, if the regard of attention 
 could be fastened strongly and singly on 
 the pain of a suffering creature as its ob- 
 ject, we believe that no other emotion 
 than the regard of sympathy or compassion 
 would in any instance be awakened by it. 
 
 So much is this indeed the case — .so sure 
 is this alliance between the mind simply 
 noticing the distress of a sentient creature, 
 a:id the heart being sympathetically affect- 
 ed by it, that Nature seems to have limited 
 and circumscribed our power of noticing, 
 and just for the purpose of shielding us 
 from the pain of too pungent, or too inces- 
 sant a sympathy. And, accordingly, one 
 
 of the exquisite adaptations in the mechan- 
 ism of the human frame may be observed 
 in the very imperfection of the human fa- 
 culties. The most frequently adduced ex- 
 ample of this is, the limited power of that 
 organ which is the instrument of vision. 
 The imagination is, that, did man look out 
 upon Nature with microscopic eye, so that 
 many of those wonders which now lie hid 
 in deep obscurity should henceforth start 
 into open revelation, and be hourly and 
 habitually obtruded upon his gaze, then, 
 with nis present sensibilities exposed to the 
 torture and the disturbance of a perpetual 
 and most agonizing offence from aU possi- 
 ble quarters of contemplation, he would be 
 utterly incapacitated for the movements of 
 familiar and ordinary life. Did lie actually 
 see, for example, in the beverage which he 
 carried to his lips, that teeming multitude 
 of sentient and susceptible creatures where- 
 with it is pervaded, or if it were alike pal- 
 pable to his senses, that, by the crush of 
 every footstep, he inflicted upon thousands 
 the pangs of dissolution, then it is appre- 
 hended that, to man as he is, the world 
 would be insupportable. For, beside tlie 
 irritation of that sore and incessant disgust, 
 from which the power of escaping was de- 
 nied to him, there would be another, and a 
 most intense suffering, in the constantly 
 aggrieved tenderness of his nature. Or if 
 by the operation of habit, all these sensi- 
 bilities were blunted, and he could behold 
 unmoved the ruin and the wretchedness 
 that he strewed along his path, then he 
 might attain to comfort in the midst of 
 this surrounding annoj'ance ; but what 
 would become of character in tlie utter ex- 
 tinction of all the delicacies and the feel- 
 ings which wont to adorn it? Such a 
 change in his physical, could oidy be ad- 
 justed to his happiness, by a reverse and 
 most melancholy change in the moral 
 constitution of his nature. The fineness of 
 his bodily perceptions would .need to be 
 compensated by a proportional hardness 
 in the temperament of his soul. With his 
 
252 
 
 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 now finer sensations, there behooved to be 
 duller and coarser sensibilities; and to as- 
 sort tliat eye, whose retina had become 
 tenfold more soft and susceptible than be- 
 fore, its owner must be furnished with a 
 heart of tenfold rigidity, and a nervous 
 system as impregnable as iron. — that he 
 might walk forth in ease and in compla- 
 cency, while the conscious destroyer of 
 millions by his tread, or the conscious de- 
 vourer of a whole living and suifering he- 
 catomb with every morsel of the sustenance 
 which upheld him. 
 
 But, for the purpose of a nice and deli- 
 cate balance between the actual feelings 
 and faculties of our nature, something more 
 is necessary than the imperfection of our 
 outward senses. The bluntness of man's 
 visual organs serves, no doubt, as a screen 
 of protection against both the nausea and 
 the horror of those many spectacles, which 
 would else have either distressed or dete- 
 riorated the sensibilities that belong to him. 
 But then, by help of the microscope, this 
 screen can be occasionally lifted up ; and 
 Avhat the eye then saw, the memory might 
 retain, and the imagination might dwell 
 upon, and the associating faculty might 
 both constantly and vividly suggest ; and 
 thus, even in the absence of every provoca- 
 tive from without, the heart might be sub- 
 jected either to a perpetual agitation, or a 
 perpetual annoyance, by the meddling im- 
 portunity of certain powers and activities 
 which are within. It is not, therefore, an 
 adequate defence of our species, against a 
 very sore and hurtful molestation, that 
 there should be a certain physical incapa- 
 city in our senses. There must, further- 
 more, be a certain physical inertness in 
 our reflective faculties. In virtue of the 
 former it is, that so many painful or dis- 
 gusting objects are kept out of sight. But 
 it seems indispensable tn our happy or even 
 tolerable existence, that, in virtue of the 
 latter, these objects, when out of sight, 
 should be also out of mind. In the one 
 way, they lose their power to offend as ob- 
 jects of outward observation, tn the other 
 way, their power to haunt and to harass, 
 by means of inward reflection, is also taken 
 away. For the first purp.se. Nature has 
 struck with a certain impotency the organs 
 of our material framework. For the se- 
 cond, she has infused, as it were, an opiate 
 into the recesses of our mental economy, 
 and made it of sufficient strength and seda- 
 tive virtue for the needful tranqui-Uity of 
 man, and for upholding that average en- 
 joyment in the midst both of agony and of 
 loathsomeness, which either senses more 
 acute, or a spirit more wakeful, must have 
 effectually dissipated. It is to some such 
 provision too, we think, that much of the 
 heart's purity, as well as much of its ten- 
 derness is owing; and it is well that the 
 
 thoughts of the spirit should be kept, 
 though even by the weight of its own 
 lethargy, from too busy a converse with 
 objects which are alike offensive or alike 
 hazardous to both. 
 
 It is more properly with the second of 
 these adaptations than the first, that our 
 argument has to do — with the inertness of 
 our reflective faculties, rather than with 
 the incapacity of our senses. It is in be- 
 half of animals, and not of animalculae, 
 that we are called upon to address you — 
 not of that counties- swarm, the agonies of 
 whose destruction are shrouded from ob- 
 servation by the vail upon the sight ; but 
 of those creatures who move on the face 
 of the open perspective before us, and not 
 as the others in a region of invisibles, and 
 yet whose dying agonies are shrouded al- 
 most as darkly and as densely from general 
 observation, by the vail upon the mind 
 For you will perceive, that in reference to 
 the latter vail, - and by which it is that 
 what is out of sight is also out of mind, its 
 purpose is accomplisiied, whether the ob- 
 jects which are disguised by it be without 
 the sphere of actual vision, or beneath the 
 surface of possible vision. Now it is with- 
 out the sphere of your actual, although not 
 beneath the surface of your possible vision, 
 where are transacted the dreadful mysteries 
 of a slaughter-house, and more especially 
 those lingering deaths which an animal 
 has to undergo for the gratifications of a re- 
 fined epicurism. It were surely most de- 
 sirable that the duties, if they may be so 
 called, of a most revolting trade, were all 
 of them got over with the least possible ex- 
 pense of suffering ; nor do we ever feel so 
 painfully the impression of a lurking can- 
 nibalism in our nature, as when we think 
 of the intense study which has been given 
 to the connexion between modes of killing, 
 and the flavour or delicacy of those viands 
 which are served up to mild, and pacific, 
 and gentle-looking creatures, who form the 
 grace and the ornament of our polished so- 
 ciety. One is almost tempted, after all, to 
 look upon them as so many savages in dis- 
 guise; and so, in truth, we should, but for 
 the strength of that opiate whose power 
 and whose property we have just endea- 
 voured to explain ; and in virtue of which, 
 the guests of an entertainment are all the 
 while most profoundly unconscious of the 
 horrors of that preparatory scene which 
 went before it. It is not, therefore, that 
 there is hypocrisy in these smiles where- 
 with they look so benignly to each other. 
 It is not that there is deceit in their words 
 or their accents of tenderness. The truth 
 is, that one shriek of agony, if heard from 
 without, would cast most impressive gloom 
 over this scene of conviviality; and the 
 sight, but for a moment, of one wretched 
 creature quivering towards death, would. 
 
ON CRpEL VY ro ANIMALS, 
 
 253 
 
 with Gorgon spell, dissipate all the gaieties 
 which enlivened it. But Nature, as it were, 
 hath practised most subtle reticence, both 
 on the senses and the spirit of her chil- 
 dren ; or rather, the Author of Nature hath, 
 by the siiill of his master hand, instituted 
 the harmony of a most exquisite balance 
 between the tenderness of the human feel 
 ings and the listlessness of the human fa- 
 culties, so as that, in the mysterious econo- 
 my under which we live, he may at once 
 provide for the sustenance, and leave entire 
 the moral sensibilities of our species. 
 
 But there is a still more wondrous limita- 
 tion than this, wherewith he hath bounded 
 and beset the faculties of the human spirit. 
 You already understand how it is, that the 
 sufferings of the lower animals may, when 
 out of sight, be out of mind. But more than 
 this, these sufferings may be ir< siglit, and 
 yet out of mind. This is strikingly exem- 
 plified in the sports of the field, in the midst 
 of whose varied and animating bustle, that 
 cruelty which all along is present to the 
 senses, may not, for one moment, have been 
 present to the thoughts. There sits a some- 
 what ancestral dignity and glory on this 
 favourite pastime of joyous old England; 
 when the gallant knighthood, and the hearty 
 yeomen, and the amateurs or virtuosos of 
 the chase, and the full assembled jockeyship 
 of half a province, muster together in all 
 the pride and pageantry of their great em- 
 prize — and the panorama of some noble 
 landscape, lighted up with autumnal clear- 
 ness from an unclouded heaven, pours fresh 
 exhilaration into every blithe and choice 
 spirit of the scene — and every adventurous 
 heart is braced, and impatient for the hazards 
 of the coming enterprise — and even the 
 high-breathed coursers catch the general 
 sympathy, and seem to fret in all the res- 
 tiveness of their yet checked and irritated 
 fire, till the echoing horn shall set them at 
 liberty — even that horn which is the knell 
 of death to some trembling victim, now- 
 brought forth of its lurking place to the 
 delighted gaze, and borne down upon with 
 the full and open cry of its ruthless pursuers. 
 Be assured that, amid the whole glee and 
 fervency of this tumtiltuous enjoyment, 
 there might not, in one single bosom, be 
 aught so fiendish as a principle of naked 
 and abstract cruelty. The fear which gives 
 its lightning speed to the unhappy animal ; 
 the thickening horrors which, in the pro- 
 gress of exhaustion, must gather upon its 
 flight; its gradually sinking energies, and, 
 at length, the terrible certainty of that de- 
 struction which is awaiting it; that piteous 
 cry, which the ear can sometimes distin- 
 guish amid the deafening clamour of the 
 blood-hounds, as they spring exultingly 
 upon their prey; the dread massacre and 
 dying agonies of a creature so miserably 
 torn J — afi this weight of suffering, we ad- 
 
 mit, is not once sympathized with; but it is 
 just because the suffering itself is not once 
 thought of. It touches not the sensibilities 
 of the heart ; but just because it is never pre- 
 sent to the notice of the mind. We allow 
 that the hardy followers in the wild romance 
 of this occupation, we allow them to be 
 reckless of pain; but this is not rejoicing in 
 pain. Theirs is not the delight of savage, 
 but the apathy of unreflecting creatures. 
 They are wholly occupied with the chase 
 itself, and its spirit-stirring accompaniments, 
 nor bestow one moment's thought on the 
 dread violence of that infliction upon sen- 
 tient nature which marks its termination. 
 It is the spirit of the competition, and it 
 alf)ne, which goads onward this hurrying 
 career; and even he, who in at the death, 
 is foremost in the triumph, although to him 
 the death itself is in sight, the agony of its 
 wretched sufferer is wholly out of mind. 
 
 We are inclined to carry this principle 
 much farther. We are not even sure if, 
 within the whole compass of humanity, 
 fallen as it is, there be such a thing as de- 
 light in suffering, for its own sake. But, 
 without hazarding a coi\troversy on this, 
 we hold it enough for every practical ob- 
 ject, that much, and perhaps the whole of 
 this world's cruelty, arises not from the en- 
 joyment that is felt in consequence of others' 
 pain, but from the enjoyment that is felt in 
 spite of it. It is something else in the spec- 
 tacle of agony which ministers pleasure 
 than the agony itself; and many is the eye 
 which glistens with transport at the fra}' of 
 animals met together for their mutual de- 
 struction, and which might be brought to 
 weep, if, apart from all the excitements of 
 such a scene, the anguish of wounded or 
 dying creatures wer° placed nakedly b( fore 
 it. Were it strictly analyzed, it would be 
 found that the charm, neither of the ancient 
 jrladiatorships, nor of our mndern prize- 
 fights, lies in the torture which is thereby 
 inflicted; for we should feel the very same 
 charm, and look with the very same intent- 
 ness, on some doubtful, yet strenuous colli- 
 sion, even among the inanimate elements 
 of nature — as, when the water and the fire 
 contended l"or ma.stery, and the inherent 
 force of the one was met by a plying and 
 a powerful enginery that gave impulse and 
 direction to the other. It is even so, when 
 the enginery of bones and of muscles comes 
 into rivalship; and every spectator of the 
 ring fastens on the spectacle with that iden- 
 tical engrossment which he feels in the 
 hazards of some doubtful game, or in the 
 desperate conflict and eflTervescence even of 
 the altogether mute unconscious elements. 
 To him it is little else than a problem in 
 dynamics. There is a science connected 
 with the fight, which has displaced the sen 
 sibilities that are connected with its expiring 
 moans, its piteous and piercing outcries, its 
 
254 
 
 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 cruel lacerations. In all this, we admit the 
 utter heedlessness of pain; but we are not 
 sure if even yet there be aught so hellishly 
 revollinff as any positive gratification in the 
 pain itself — or whether, even in the lowest 
 walks of blackguardism in society, it do not 
 also hold, that when sufferings even unto 
 death are fully in sight, the pain of these 
 sufferings is as fully out of mind. 
 
 But the term science, so strangely applied 
 as it has been in the example now quoted, 
 reminds us of another variety in this most 
 afflicting detail. Even in the purely academic 
 walk we read or hear of the most appalling 
 cruelties; and the interest of that philosophy 
 wherewith they have been associated, has 
 been plead in mitigation of them. And just 
 as the moral debasement incurred by an act 
 of theft is somewhat redeemed, if done by 
 one of Science's enamoured worshippers, 
 when, overcome by the mere passion of 
 connoisseurship, he puts forth his hand on 
 some choice specimen of most tempting and 
 irresistible peculiarity — even so has a like 
 indulgence been extended to certain perpe- 
 trators of stoutest and most resolved cruelty; 
 and that just because of the halo wherewith 
 the glories of intellect and of proud discovery 
 have enshrined them. And thus it is, that, 
 bent on the scrutiny of nature's laws, there 
 are some of our race who have hardihood 
 enough to explore and elicit them at the ex- 
 pense of dreadest suffering — who can make 
 some quaking, some quivering animal, the 
 subject of their hapless experiment — who 
 can institute a questionary process by which 
 to draw out the secrets of its constitution, 
 and, like inquisitors of old, extract every 
 reply by an instrument of torture — who can 
 probe their unfaltering way among the 
 vitalities of a system which shrinks, and 
 palpitates, and gives forth, at every move- 
 ment of their steadfast hand, the pulsations 
 of deepest agony ; and all, perhaps, to ascer- 
 tain and to classify the phenomena of sen- 
 sation, or to measure the tenacity of animal 
 life, by the power and exquisiteness of ani- 
 mal endurance. And still, it is not because 
 of all this wretchedness, but in ^pite of it, 
 that they pursue their barbarous occupation. 
 Even here it is possible, that there is nought 
 so absnlutely Satanic as delight in those suf- 
 fering-, of which themselves are the inflict- 
 ers. That law of emotion by which the 
 sight of pain calls forth sympathy, may not 
 be reversed into an opposite law, by which 
 the sight of pain would call forth satisfaction 
 or pleasure. The emotion is not reversed — 
 it is only overborne, in the play of other 
 emotions, called fcrth by other objects. He 
 is intent on the science of those phenomena 
 which he investigates, and bethinks not 
 himself of the suffering which they involve 
 to the unhappy animal. So far from the 
 sympathies of his nature being re^^ersed, or 
 even annihilated, there is in most cases an 
 
 effort, and of great ? renuousness, to keep 
 them down; and his neart is differently af- 
 fected from that of other men, just because 
 the regards of his mental eye are differently 
 pointed from those of other men. The whole 
 bent and engagement of his faculties are 
 similar to those of another operator who is 
 busied with the treatment of a piece of in- 
 animate matter, and may almost be said to 
 subject it to the torture, when he puts it in 
 the intensely heated crucible, or applies to 
 it the test, and the various searching opera- 
 tions of a laboratory. The one watches 
 every change of hue in the substance upon 
 which he operates, and waits for the re- 
 sponse which is given forth by a spark, or 
 an effervescence, or an explosion ; and the 
 other, precisely similar to him, watches 
 every change of aspect in the suffering or 
 dying creature that is before him, and marks 
 every symptom of its exhaustion, or sorer 
 distress, every throb of renewed anguish, 
 every cry, and every look of that pain which 
 it can feel, though not articulate; marks 
 and considers these in no other light than 
 as the exponents of its variously affected 
 phj^siology. But still, could merely the 
 same interesting phenomena have been 
 evolved without pain, he would like it bet- 
 ter. Only he will not be repelled from the 
 study of them by pain. Even he would 
 have had more comfort in the study of a 
 complex automaton, that gave out the same 
 results' on the same application. Only, he 
 will not shrink from the necessary incisions, 
 and openings, and separation of parts, al- 
 though, instead of a lifeless automaton, it 
 should be a sentient and sorely agonized 
 animal. So that there is not even with him 
 any reversal of the law of sympathy. There 
 may be the feebleness, or there may be the 
 negation of it. Certain it is, that it ha^s given 
 way to (ither laws of superior force in his 
 constitution. And, without imputing to him 
 aught so monstrous as the positive love of 
 suffering, we may even admit for him a 
 hatred of suffering, but that the love of 
 science had overborne it. 
 
 In the views that we have now given, and 
 which we deem of advantage for the right 
 practical treatment of our question, it may 
 be conceived that we palliate the atrocious- 
 ness of cruelty. It is forgotten, that a charge 
 of foulest delinquency may be made up al- 
 together of wants or of negatives ; and, just 
 as the human face, by the mere want of 
 some of its features, although there should 
 not be any inversion of them, might be an 
 object of utter loathsomeness to beholders, 
 so the human character, by the mere ab- 
 sence of certain habits, or certain sensibili- 
 ties, which belong ordinarily and constitu- 
 tionally to our species, may be an object of 
 utter abomination in societ)^ The want of 
 natural affection forms one article of the 
 Apostle's indictment against our world ; and 
 
ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 255 
 
 certain it is, that the total want of it were 
 stigma enough for the designation of a 
 monster. The mere want of religion, or 
 irreligion, is enough to make man an outcast 
 from his God. Even to the most barbarous 
 of our kind you apply, not the term of anti- 
 humanity, but of inhumanity — not the term 
 of antisensibility: and you hold it enough 
 for the purpose of branding him for general 
 execration, that you convicted him of com- 
 plete and total insensibility. He is regaled, 
 it is true, by a spectacle of agony — but not 
 because of the agony. It is something else, 
 therewith associated, which reg:iles him. 
 But still lie is rightfully tiie subject of mo.st 
 emphatic denunciation, not because regaled 
 by, but because regardless of, the agony. 
 We do not feel ourselves to be vindicating 
 the cruel man, when we affirm it to be not 
 altogether certain, whether he rejoices in 
 the extinction of life ; for we count it a deep 
 atrocity, that, unlike to the righteous man 
 of our text, he simply does not regard the 
 Ufe of a Ijeast. You may perhaps have been 
 accustomed to look upon the negatives of 
 character, as making up a sort of neutral or 
 midway innocence. But this is a mistake. 
 Unfeeling is but a negative quality ; and yet, 
 we speak of an unfeeling monster. It is 
 thus that even the profound experimental- 
 ist, wliose delight is not in the torture which 
 he inflicts, but in the truth which he elicits 
 thereby, may become an object of keenest 
 reprobation : not because he was pleased 
 with suffering, but simply because he did 
 not pity it — not because the object of pain, 
 if dwelt upon by him, would be followed 
 up by any other emotion than that which 
 is experienced by other men, but because, 
 intent on the prosecution of another object, 
 it was not so dwelt upon. It is found that 
 the eclat even of brilliant discovery does 
 not shield him from the execrations of a 
 public, who can yet convict him of nothing 
 more than simply of negatives — of heed- 
 lessness, of heartlessness, of looking upon 
 the agonies of a sentient creature without 
 regard, and therefore without sensibility. 
 The true principle of his condemnation is, 
 that he ought to have regarded. It is not 
 that, in virtue of a different organic struc- 
 ture, he feels differently from others, wlien 
 the same simple object is brought to bear 
 upon him. But it is, that he resolutely kept 
 that object at a distance from his attention, 
 or rather, that he steadily kept his atteniion 
 away from the object ; and that, in opposi- 
 sition to all the weight of remonstrance 
 which lies in the tremours, and the writh- 
 ings, and the piteous outcries of agonized 
 Nature. Had we obtained for these the re- 
 gards of his mind, the relentings of his heart 
 might have followed. His is not an anoma- 
 lous heart ; and the only way in which he 
 can brace it into sternness, is by barricad- 
 ing the avenue which leads to it That fa- 
 
 culty of attention, which might have opened 
 the door, through which suffering without 
 finds its way to sympathy within, is other- 
 wise engaged; and the precise charge, on 
 which either morality can rightfully con- 
 demn, or humanity be offended, is, that he 
 wills to have it so. 
 
 It may be illustrated by that competition 
 of speed v.hieh is held, with busy appliance 
 of whip ai^d of spur, betwixt animals. A 
 similar competition can be imagined be- 
 tween steam-carriages, when, either to pre- 
 serve the distance which has been gained, 
 or to recover the distance which has been 
 lost, the respective guides Mould keep up 
 an incessant appliance to tiie furnace, and 
 the safety-valve. Now, the sport and the 
 excitement are the same, whether this ap- 
 pliance of force be to a dead or a living 
 mechanism ; and the enormity of the latter 
 does not lie in any direct pleasure which is 
 felt in tlie exhaustion, or the soreness, or, 
 finally, in the death of the over-driven ani- 
 mal. If these awake any feeling at all in 
 the barbarous rider, it is that of pain ; and it is 
 either the want or the weakness of this latter 
 feeling, and not the presence of its opposite, 
 whicli constitutes him a barbarian. He does 
 not rejoice in animal suffering — but it is 
 enough to bring down upon him the charge 
 of barbarit}', that lie does not regard it. 
 
 But these introductory remarks, although 
 they lead, I do think, to some most im- 
 portant suggestions for the management of 
 the evil, yet they serve not to abate its ap- 
 palling magnitude. iMan is the direct agent 
 of a wide and continual distress to the lower 
 animals, and the question is. Can any me- 
 thod be devised for its alleviation ? On this 
 subject that scriptural image is strikingly re- 
 alized, " The whole inferior creation groan- 
 ing and travailing together in pain," because 
 of him. It signifies not to the substantive 
 amount of the suffering, whether this be 
 prompted by the hardness of his heart, or 
 only permitted through the heedlessness of 
 hismind. In either way it holds true, not 
 only that the arch-devourer man stands 
 pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the 
 wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for 
 his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as 
 for his service or merest curiosity and amuse- 
 ment, Nature must be ransacked throughout 
 all her element:;. Rather than forego the 
 veriest gratifications of vanity, he will wring 
 them from the anguish of wretched and ill- 
 fated creatures; and whether for the indul- 
 gence of his barbaric sensuality, or barbaric 
 splendour, can stalk paramount over the 
 sufferings of that prostrate creation which 
 has been placed beneath his feet. That 
 beauteous domain whereof he has been con- 
 stituted the terrestrial sovereign, gives out 
 so many blissful and benignant aspects ; and 
 whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or its 
 flowery landscapes, or its e^'ening ski'-s, or 
 
256 
 
 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, 
 
 to all that soft attire which overspreads the 
 hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles 
 of sweetest sunshine, and where animals 
 disport themselves in all the exuberance of 
 gaiety — this surely were a more befilthig 
 scene for the rule of clemency, than for the 
 iron rod of a murderous and remorseless 
 tyrant. But the present is a mysterious 
 world wherein we dwell. It still bears 
 much upon its materialism of the impress 
 of Paradise. But a breath from the air of 
 Pandemonium has gone over its living ge- 
 nerations. And so " the fear of man, and 
 the dread of man, is now upon every beast 
 of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, 
 upon all that moveth upon the earth, and 
 upon all the fishes of the sea ; into man's 
 hands are they delivered : every moving 
 thing that liveth is meat for him ; yea, even 
 as the green herbs, there have been given 
 to him all things." Such is the extent of i 
 his jurisdiction, and with most full and] 
 wanton license has he revelled among its 
 privileges. The Mhole earth labours and is 
 in violence because of his cruelties; and, j 
 from the amphitheatre of sentient Nature, 
 there sounds in fancj-'s ear the bleat of one 
 wide and universal sufferins. — a dreadful 
 homage to the power of Nature's consti- 
 tuted lord. 
 
 These sufferings are really felt. The 
 beasts of the field are not so many automata 
 without sensation, and just so constructed 
 as to give forth all the natural signs and 
 expressions of it. Nature has not practised 
 this universal deception upon our species. 
 These poor animals just look, and tremble, 
 and give forth the very indications of suf- 
 fering that we do. Theirs is the distinct cry 
 of pain. Theirs is the unequivocal physiog- 
 nomy of pain. They put on the same aspect 
 of terror on the demonstrations of a menacing 
 blow. They exhibit the same distortions of 
 agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, 
 or the burn, or the fracture, or the deep 
 incision, or the fierce encounter with one 
 of equal or superior strength, just affects 
 them similarly K) ourselves. Their blood 
 circulates as ours. They have pulsations 
 in various parts of the body like ours. 
 They sicken, and they grow feeble with 
 age, and, finally, they die just as we do. 
 They possess the same feelings ; and what 
 exposes them to like suffering from another 
 quarter, thej^ possess the same instincts 
 with our own species. The lioness robbed 
 of her whelps causes the wilderness to ring 
 aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs ; 
 or the bird Avhose little household has been 
 stolen, fills and saddens all the grove with 
 melodies of deepest pathos. All this is pal- 
 pable even to the general and unlearned 
 eye ; and when the physiologist lays open 
 the recesses of their system by means of 
 that scalpel, imder wliose operation they 
 just shrink and are convulsed as any living 
 
 subject of our own species, there stands 
 forth to view the same sentient apparatus, 
 and furnished with the same conductors for 
 the transmission of feeling to every minut- 
 est pore upon the surface. Theirs is un- 
 mixed and unmitigated pain — the agonies 
 of martyrdom, without the alleviation of 
 the hopes and the sentiments, whereof they 
 are incapable. When they lay them down 
 to die, their only fellowship is with suffer- 
 ing, for in the prison-house of their beset 
 and bounded faculties, there can no relief 
 be afforded by communion with other in- 
 terests or other things. The attention does 
 not lighten their distress as it does that of 
 man, by carrying off his spirit from that 
 existing pungency and pressure which 
 might else be overwhelming. There is but 
 room in their mysterious economy for one 
 inmate ; and that is, the absorbing sense of 
 their own single and concentrated anguish. 
 And so in that bed of torment, whereon 
 the wounded animal lingers and expire.?, 
 there is an unexplored depth and intensity 
 of suffering which the poor dumb animal 
 itself cannot tell, and against which it can 
 offer no remonstrance ; an untold and un- 
 known amount of wretchedness, of which 
 no articulate voice gives utterance. But 
 there is an eloquence in its silence ; and the 
 very shroud which disguises it, only serves 
 to aggravate its horrors. 
 
 "\Ve now come to the practical treatment 
 of this question — to the right method of 
 which, we hold the views that are now 
 offered to be directly and obviously sub- 
 servient. 
 
 First, then, upon this subject, we should 
 hold no doubtful casuistry. We should ad- 
 vance no pragmatic or controversial doc- 
 trine. We should carefully abstain from 
 all such ambiguous or questionable posi- 
 tions, as the unlawfulness of animal food, 
 or the unlawfulness of animal experiments. 
 We should not even deem it the right tac- 
 tics for this moral warfare, to take up the 
 position of the unlawfulness of field-sports, 
 or yet the unlawfulness of those competi 
 tions, whether of strength or of speed, 
 which at one time on the turf, and at an- 
 other in the ring, are held forth to the view 
 of assembled spectators. We are aware that 
 some of these positions are not so ques- 
 tionable, yet we should refrain from the 
 elaboration of them ; for we hold, that this 
 is not the way by which we shall most ef- 
 fectually make head against the existing 
 cruelties of our land. The moral force by 
 which our cause is to be advanced, does not 
 lie even in the soundest categories of an 
 ethical jurisprudence — and far less in the 
 dogmata of any paltry sectarianism. We 
 have almost as little inclination for the con- 
 troversy which respects animal food, as we 
 have for the controversy about the eating 
 of blood ; and this, we repeat, is not the 
 
ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 
 
 257 
 
 way by which the claims of the inferior 
 animals are practically to be carried, 'i'o 
 obtain tile regards of man's heart in behalf 
 of the lower animals, we slioiild strive to 
 draw the regards of his mind towards 
 them. We should avail ourselves of the 
 close alliance that obtains between the re- 
 gards of his attention, and those of his sym- 
 pathy. For this purpose, we should ini- 
 portunately ply liim with the objects of 
 suffering, and thus call up its respondent 
 emotion of sympathy, tliat among the 
 other objects which have hitherto engross- 
 ed his attention, and the other desires or 
 emotions which have hitherto lorded it 
 over the compassion of his nature and over- 
 powered it, this last may at length be re- 
 stored to its legitimate play, and reinstated 
 in all its legitimate pre-eminence over the 
 other affections or appetites which belong 
 to him. It affords a hopeful view of our 
 cause, that so much can be done by the 
 mere obtrusive presentation of the object to 
 the notice of society. It is a comfort to 
 know, that in this benevolent warfare we 
 have to make head, not so much against 
 the cruelty of the public, as against the 
 heedlessness of the public ; that to hold 
 forth a right view, is the way to call forth 
 a right sensibility ; and, that to assail the 
 seat of any emotion, our likeliest process is 
 to make constant and conspicuous exhibi- 
 tion of the object which is fitted to awaken 
 it. Our text, taken from the profoundcst 
 book of experimental wisdom in the world, 
 keeps clear of every questionable or ca- 
 suistical dogma ; and rests the whole cause 
 of the inferior animals on one moral ele- 
 ment, wiiich is, in respect of principle, 
 and on one practical method, which is, in 
 respect of efficacy, unquestionable: "A 
 righteous man regardeth the life of his 
 beast." Let a man be but righteous in the 
 general and obvious sense of the word, and 
 let the regard of his attention be but di- 
 rected to the case of the inferior animals, 
 and then the regard of his sympathy will 
 be awakened to the full extent at which it 
 is either duteous or desirable. Still it may 
 be asked to what extent will the duty go ? 
 and our reply is, that we had rather push 
 the duty forward than be called upon to de- 
 fine the extreme termination of it. Yet 
 we do not hesitate to say, that we foresee 
 not aught so very extreme as the abolition 
 of annual food ; but we do foresee the in- 
 definite abridgement of all that cruelty 
 which subserves the gratifications of a base 
 and Selfish epicurism. We think that a 
 christian and humanized society will at 
 length lift their prevalent voice, for the 
 least possible expense of suffering to all the 
 victims of a necessary slaughter — for a 
 business of utmost horror being also a 
 business of utmost despatch — for the blow, 
 in short, of an instant extermination, that 
 33 
 
 not one moment might elapse between a 
 state of pleasurable existence and a state 
 of profound unconsciousness. Again, we 
 do not foresee, but with the perfecting of 
 the two sciences of anatomy and physio- 
 logy, tlie abolition of animal c.xperinK nts 
 but we do foresee a gradual, and, at length, 
 a complete abandonment of the experimcius 
 of illustration, which are at present a thou- 
 sand-fold more numerous than the experi- 
 ments of humane discovery./ 
 
 As to field-sports, we for the present, ab- 
 stain from all prophecy, in regard, either to 
 their growing disuse, or to the conclusive 
 extinction of them. We are quite sure, in 
 the mean time, that casuistry upon this 
 subject would be altogether powerless ; and 
 nothing could be imagined more keenly, or 
 more energetically contemptuous, than the 
 impatient, the impetuous disdain where- 
 with the enamoured votaries of this gay 
 and glorious adventure wo;ild listen to any 
 demonstration of its unlawfulness. We 
 shall therefore make no attempt to dogma- 
 tise them out of that fond and favourite 
 amusement which they prosecute with all 
 the intensity of a passion. It is not thus 
 that the fascination v.-ill be dissipated. And, 
 therefore, for the present, we should be in- 
 clined to subject the lovers of the chase, 
 and the lovers of the prize-fight, to the 
 same treatment, even as there exists be- 
 tween them, we are afraid, the affinity of 
 a certain common or kindred character. 
 There is, we have often thought, a kind 
 of professional cast, a family likeness, by 
 which the devotees of game, and of all sorts 
 of stirring or hazardous enterprise admit 
 of being recognized; the hue of a certain 
 assimilating quality, although of various 
 gradations, from the noted champions of 
 the hunt, to the noted champions of the 
 ring or of the racing-course ; a certain dash 
 of moral outlawry, if I may use the ex- 
 pression, among all those children of high 
 and heated adventure, that bespeaks them 
 a distinct class in society, — a set of wild 
 and wayward humourists, who have broken 
 them loose from the dull regularities of life, 
 and formed themselves into so many trusty 
 and sworn brotherhoods, wholly given over 
 to frolic, and excitement, and excess, in 
 all their varieties. They compose a sepa- 
 rate and outstanding public among them- 
 selves, nearly arrayed in the same pictu- 
 resque habiliments — bearing most distinctly 
 upon their countenance the same air of 
 recklessness and hardihood — admiring the 
 same feats of dexterity or danger— indulg- 
 ing the same tastes, even to their very 
 literature — members of the same sporting 
 society — readers of the same sporting ma- 
 gazine, whose strange medley of anecdotes 
 gives impressive exhibition of that one and 
 pervading characteristic for which we are 
 contending; anecdotes of the chase, and 
 
258 
 
 ON crt:eltv to animals. 
 
 anecdotes of the high-breathed or bloody 
 contest, and anecdotes of the gaming-table, 
 and, lastly, anecdotes of the high-way. 
 We do not just affirm a precise identity be- 
 tween all the specimens or species in this 
 very peculiar department of moral history. 
 But, to borrow a phrase from natural his- 
 tory, we affirm, that there are transition 
 processes, by which the one melts, and de- 
 moralises, and graduates insensibly into the 
 other. What we have now to do with, is 
 the cruelty of their respective entertain- 
 ments — a cruelty, however, iipon which 
 we could not assert, even of the very worst 
 and most worthless among them, that they 
 rejoice in pain, but that they are regardless 
 of pain. It is not by the force of a mere 
 ethical dictum, in itself, perliaps, unques- 
 tionable, that tiiey.will be restrained from 
 Iheir pursuits. But when transformed by 
 the operation of unquestionable principle, 
 into righteous and regardful men. they will 
 spontaneously abandon them. Meanwhile, 
 we try to help forward our cause, by forcing 
 upon general regard, those sufferings which 
 are now so unheeded and unthought of 
 And we look forward to its final triumph, 
 as one of those results that will historically 
 ensue, in the train of an awakened and a 
 moralized society. 
 
 The institution of a yearly sermon against 
 cruelty to animals, is of itself a likely 
 enough expedient, that might at least be of 
 some auxiliary operation, along with other 
 and more general causes, towards such an 
 awakening. It is not by one. but by man)' 
 successive appeals, that the cause of justice 
 and mercy to the brute creation will at 
 length be practically carried. On this sub- 
 ject I cannot, within the limits of a single 
 address, pretend to aught like a full or a 
 finished demonstration. This might require 
 not one, but a whole century of sermons ; 
 and many therefore are the topics which 
 necessarily I must bequeath to m}' succes- 
 sors, in this warfare against the listlessness 
 and apathy of the public. And, beside the 
 force and the impression of new topics, if 
 there be any truth in our doctrine, there is 
 a mighty advantage gained upon this sub- 
 ject of all others by the repetition of old 
 topics. It is a subject on which the pub- 
 lic do not require so much to be instruct- 
 ed, as to be reminded ; to have the re- 
 gard of their attention directed again and 
 again to the sufferings of poor helpless 
 creatures, that the regard of their s^inpathy 
 might at length be effectually obtained for 
 them. This then is a cause to which the 
 institution of an anniversary pleading in its 
 favour, is most precisely and peculiarly 
 adapted. And besides, we mustconfess, inthe 
 general, our partialit}' for a scheme that has 
 originated the Boyle, and the Brimpton, and 
 the Warburtonian lectureships of England, 
 with all the valuable authorship which has 
 
 proceeded from them. An endowment for 
 an annual discourse upon a given theme, is. 
 we believe, a novelty in Scotland ; though 
 it is to similar institutions that much of the 
 best sacred and theological literature of our 
 sister country is owing. We should rejoice 
 if, in this our comparatively meagre and 
 unbeneficed land, both these themes and 
 these endowments were multiplied. We 
 recommend this as a fit species of charity 
 for the munificence of v.-ealthy individuals. 
 Whatever their selected argument shall be, 
 whether that of cruelty to animals, or some 
 one evidence of our faith, or the defence and 
 illustration of a doctrine, or an)' distinct " 
 method of Christian philanthropy for the 
 moral regeneration of our species, or aught 
 else of those innumerable topics that lie 
 situated within the reach and ample domain 
 of that rcAelation which God has made to 
 our world — we feel assured that such a 
 movement must be responded to with bene- 
 ficial effect, both by the gifted pastors of 
 our Church, and by tlie aspiring youths of 
 greatest power or greatest promise among 
 its candidates. Such institutions as these 
 would help to quicken the energies of our 
 establishment ; and through means of a 
 sustained and reiterated effort, directed to 
 some one great lesson, whether in theology 
 or morals, they might impress, and thai 
 more deeplj' every year, some specific and 
 most . salutary amelioration on the princi- 
 ples or the practices of general society. 
 
 Yet ye are loath to quit our subject with- 
 out one appeal more in behalf of those poor 
 sufferers, who, unable to advocate their 
 own cause, possess, on that very account, 
 a more imperative claim on the exertions 
 of him who now stands as their advocate 
 before you. 
 
 And first, it may have been felt that, by 
 the waj' in which we have attempted to 
 resolve cruelty into its elements, we instead 
 of launching rebuke against it, have only 
 devised a palliation for its gross and shock- 
 ing enormity. But it is not so. It is true, 
 we count the enormity to lie mainly in the 
 heedlessness of pain ; but then we charge 
 this foully and flagrantly enormous thing, 
 not on the mere desperadoes and barbarians 
 of our land, but on the men and the women 
 of general, and even of cultivated and high- 
 bred society. Instead of stating cruelty to 
 be what it is not, and then confining the 
 imputation of it to the outcast few, we hold 
 it better, and practically far more impor- 
 tant, to state what cruelty really is, and then 
 fasten the imputation of it on the common- 
 place and the companionable many. Those 
 outcasts to whom you woidd restrict the 
 condemnation, are not at present within 
 the reach of our voice. But you are ; and 
 it lies with you to confer a ten-fold greater 
 boon on the inferior creation, than if all 
 barbarous sports, and all bloody experi- 
 
ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS 
 
 259 
 
 inents were forthwith put an end to. It is 
 at the bidding of your collective will to save 
 those countless myriads who are brought to 
 the regular and the daily slaughter, all the 
 difference between a gradual and an instant 
 death. And there is a practice realized in 
 every-day life, which you can put down 
 — a practice which strongly reminds us of a 
 ruder age that has long gone by ; — when 
 even beauteous and high-born ladies could 
 partake in the dance, and the song, and the 
 festive chivalry of barbaric castles, unmind- 
 ful of all the piteous and the pining agony 
 of dungeoned prisoners below. We charge 
 a like unmindfulness on the present gene- 
 ration. "NV'e know not whether those wretch- 
 ed animals whose still sentient frameworks 
 are under process of ingenious manufacture 
 for the epicurism or the splendour of your 
 coming entertainment, — we know not whe- 
 ther they are now dying by inches in your 
 own subterranean keeps, or tli rough the 
 subdivided industry of our commercial age, 
 are now suffering all the horrors of their 
 protracted agony, in the prison house of 
 some distant street where this dreadful 
 trade is carried on. But truly it matters 
 nought to our arguuient, ye heedless sons 
 and daughters of gaiety ! We speak not of 
 the dailj'' thousands who have to die that 
 man may live; but of those thousands who 
 have to die more painfullj', just that man 
 may live more luxuriously. We speak to 
 you of the art aud the mystery of the kill- 
 ing trade — from which it would appear, 
 that not alone the delicacy of the food, but 
 even its appearance, is, among the connois- 
 seurs of a refined epicurism, the matter of 
 skilful and scientific computation. There 
 is a sequence, it would appear — there is a 
 sequence between an exquisite death, and 
 an exquisite or a beautiful preparation of 
 cookery ; and just in the ordinary way that 
 art avails herself of the other sequences of 
 philosophy, — the first term is made sure, 
 that the second term might, according to 
 the metaphysic order of causation, follow 
 in its train. And hence, we are given to 
 understand, hence the cold-blooded ingenui- 
 ties of that previous and preparatory tor- 
 ture which oft is undergone, both that man 
 might be feasted with a finer relish, and 
 that the eyes of man might be feasted and 
 regaled with a finer spectacle. The atroci- 
 ties of a ^lajendie have been blazoned be- 
 fore the eye of a British public; but this is 
 worse in the fearful extent and magnitude 
 of the evil — truly worse than a thousand 
 Majendies. His is a cruel luxury, but it is the 
 luxury of intellect. Yours is both a cruel 
 and a sensual luxury : and you have posi- 
 tively nought to plead for it but the most 
 worthless and ignoble appetites of our nat ure. 
 But, secondly, and if possible to secure 
 your kindness for our cause, let me, in the 
 act of drawing these lengthened observa- 
 
 tions to a close, offer to your notice the 
 bright and the beautiful side of it. I would 
 bid you think of all that fond and pleasant 
 imagery, which is associated even with the 
 lower animals, when they become the ob- 
 jects of a benevolent care, which at length 
 ripens into a strong and cherished affection 
 for them — as when the worn-out hunter is 
 permitted to graze, and be still the favourite 
 of all the domestics through the remainder 
 of his life ; or the old and shaggy house- 
 dog, that has now ceased to be serviceable, 
 is nevertheless sure of its regular meals, and 
 a decent funeral ; or Avhen an adopted in- 
 mate of the household is claimed as pro- 
 perty, or as the object of decided partiality, 
 by some one or other of the children ; or, 
 finally, when in the warmth and comfort of 
 the evening fire, one or more of these home 
 animals take their part in the living groupe 
 that is around it, and their very presence 
 serves to complete the picture of a blissful 
 and smiling family. Such relationships 
 with the inferior creatures, supply many of 
 our finest associations of tenderness, and 
 give, even to the heart of man, some of its 
 simplest yet sweetest enjoyments. He even 
 can find in these some compensation for the 
 dread and the disquietude wherewith his 
 bosom is agitated amid the fiery conflicts 
 of infuriated men. When he retires from 
 the stormy element of debate, and exchanges, 
 for the vindictive glare, and the hideous dis- 
 cords of that outcry which he encounters 
 among his fellows, — when these are ex- 
 changed for the honest welcome and the 
 guileless regards of those creatures who 
 gambol at his feet, he feels that even in the 
 society of the brutes, in whose hearts there 
 is neither care nor controversy, he can sur- 
 round himself with a better atmosphere far, 
 than in that which he breathes among the 
 companionships of his own species. Here 
 he can rest himself from the fiitigues of that 
 moral tempest which has beat upon him so 
 violently; and, in the play of kindliness 
 with these poor irrationals, his spirit can 
 forget for awhile all the injustice and fe- 
 rocity of their boasted lords. 
 
 Biit this is only saying, that our subject 
 is connected with the pleasures of senti- 
 ment. And therefore, in the third and last 
 place, we have to offer it as our concluding 
 observation, that it is also connected with 
 the principles of deepest sacredness. It may 
 be thought by some that we have wasted 
 the whole of this Sabbath morn, on what 
 may be ranked among hut the lesser morali- 
 ties of human conduct. But there is one 
 aspect, in which it may be regarded as more 
 profoundly and more peculiarly religious 
 than any one virtue which reciprocates, or 
 is of mutual operation among the fellows 
 of the same species. It is a virtue which 
 oversteps, as it were, the limits of a species, 
 aud which, in this instance, prompts a de- 
 
260. 
 
 ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
 
 scending movement, on our part, of righ- 
 teousness and mercy towards those who 
 have an inferior place to ourselves in the 
 scale of creation. The lesson of this day is 
 not the circulation of benevolence within 
 the limits of one species. It is the trans- 
 mission of it from one species to another. 
 The first is but the charity of a world. The 
 second is the charity of a universe. Had 
 there been no such charity, no descending 
 current of love and of liberality from spe- 
 cies to species, what, I ask, should have 
 become of ourselves? Whence have we 
 learned this attitude of lofty unconcern 
 about the creatures who are beneath us ? 
 Not from those ministering spirits who wait 
 upon the heirs of salvation. Not from those 
 angels who circle the throne of heaven, and 
 make all its arches ring with joyful har- 
 mony, when but one sinner of this prustrate 
 world turns his footsteps towards them. 
 Not from that mighty and mysterious visi- 
 tant, who unrobed Him of all his glories, 
 and bowed down his head unto the sacri- 
 fice, and still, from the seat of his now ex- 
 alted mediatorship, pours forth his interces- 
 sions and his calls in behalf of the race he 
 died for. Finally, not from the eternal 
 Father of all, m the pavilion of whose resi- 
 dence there is the golden treasury of all 
 those bounties and beatitudes that roll over 
 the face of nature, and from the footstool of 
 whose empyreal throne there reaches a 
 golden chain of providence to the very 
 humblest of his family. He who hath 
 given his angels charge concerning us, 
 means that the tide of beneficence should 
 pass from order to order, through all the 
 ranks of his magnificent creation ; and we 
 ask, is it with man that this goodly provi- 
 sion is to terminate — or shall he, with all 
 his sensations of present blessedness, and 
 all his visions of future glory let down upon 
 him from above, shall he turn him selfishly 
 
 and scornfully away from the rights of 
 those creatures whom God hath placed in 
 dependence under him ? We know that the 
 cause of poor and unfriended animals has 
 many an obstacle to contend with in the dif- 
 ficulties or the delicacies of legislation. But 
 we shall ever deny that it is a theme be- 
 neath the dignity of legislation ; or that 
 the nobles and the senators of our land 
 stoop to a cause which is degrading, when, 
 in the imitation of heaven's high clemency, 
 they look benignly downward on these 
 humble and helpless sufferers. Ere we 
 can admit this, we must forget the whole 
 econo.ny of our blessed gospel. We must 
 forget the legislations and tlie cares of 
 the upper sanctuary in behalf of our falJrn 
 species. We must forget that the redemj)- 
 tion of our world is suspended on an act of 
 jurisprudence which angels desired to look 
 into, and for effectuating which, the earth 
 we tread upon was honoured by the foot- 
 steps, not of angel or of archangel, but of 
 God manifest in the flesh. The distance 
 upward between us and that mysterious 
 Being, who let himself down from heaven's 
 high concave upon our lowly platform, sur- 
 pas.ses by infinity the distance downward 
 between us and every thing that breathes. 
 And He bowed himself thus far for the pur 
 pose of an example, as well as for the pur- 
 pose of an expiation ; that every Christian 
 might extend his compassionate regards 
 over the whole of sentient and suffering na- 
 ture. The high court of Parliament is not 
 deoraded by its attentions and hs cares in 
 behalf of inferior creatures, else the Sanc- 
 tuary of Heaven has been degraded by its 
 counsels in behalf of the world we occupy, 
 and in the execution of which the Lord of 
 heaven himself relinquished the highest 
 seat of glory in the universe, and went 
 forth to sojourn for a time on this outcast 
 and accursed territory. 
 
SERMONS 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, 
 
 GLASGOW. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following Sermons are of too miscellaneous a character to be arranged ac- 
 cording to the succession of their topics, and they are, therefore, presented to the 
 reader as so many compositions that are almost wholly independent of each other. 
 
 Two of the Sermons treat of Predestination, and the Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 There are topics of a highly speculative character, in the system of Christian 
 Doctrine, which it is exceedingly difficult to manage, without interesting the 
 curiosity rather than the conscience of the reader. And yet, it is from their fitness 
 of application to the conscience, that they derive their chief right to appear in a 
 volume of Sermons ; and I should not have ventured any publication upon either 
 of these doctrines, did I not think them capable of being so treated as to subserve 
 the great interests of practical godliness. 
 
 The Sermons all relate to topics that I hold to be strictly congregational, with 
 the exception of the thirteenth and fourteenth in the volume, which belong rather 
 to Christian Economies, than to Christian Theology — to the '' outer things of the 
 house of God," rather than to the things of the sanctuary, or the intimacies of the 
 spiritual life. I, perhaps, ought therefore to apologize for the appearance of these 
 two in a volume of Congregational Sermons, and yet I have been led by experi- 
 ence to feel the religious importance of their subject, and I think that much injury 
 has been sustained by the souls of our people, from the neglect of obvious princi- 
 ples both in the business of education, and in the business of public charity. I 
 have, however, more comfort in discussing this argument from the press, than 
 from the pulpit, which ought to be kept apart for loftier themes, and which seems 
 to suffer a sort of desecration when employed as the vehicle for any thing else 
 than the overtures of pardon to the sinner, and the hopes and duties of the believer. 
 
 SERMON I. 
 
 The Constancy of God in His Works an .Argument for the Faithfulness of Ond %n 
 
 His Word. 
 
 " For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations : thou hast esta- 
 blished the earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according to thy ordinances : for ail are thy 
 servants." — Psalm cxix. 89, 90, 91. 
 
 In these verses there is affirmed to be an 
 analogy between the Avord of God and the 
 works of God. It is said of his word, that it 
 is settled in heaven, and that it sustains its 
 faithfulness from one generation to another. 
 It is said of his works, and more especially 
 of those that are immediately around us, 
 even of the earth which we inhabit, that as 
 it was established at the first so it abideth 
 
 afterwards. And then, as if to perfect the 
 assimilation between them, it is said of both 
 in the 91st verse, "They continue this day 
 according to thine ordinances, for all are 
 thy servants;" thereby identifying thesure- 
 ness of that word which proceeded from his 
 lips, with the unfailing constancy of that 
 Nature which was formed and is upholden 
 by his hands. 
 
 371 
 
262 
 
 THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 The constancy of Nature is taught by 
 universal experience, and even strikes the 
 popular eye as the most characteristic of 
 those features which have been impressed 
 upon her. It may need the aid of philosophy 
 to learn how unvarying Nature is in all her 
 processes — how even her seeming anomalies 
 can be traced to a law that is inflexible — 
 how what might appear at first to be the 
 caprices of her waywardness, are, in fact, 
 the evolutions of a mechanism that never 
 changes — and that the more thoroughly she 
 is sifted and put to the test by the imerroga- 
 tions of the curious, the i7iore certainly will 
 they find that she walks by a rule which 
 knows no abatement, and perseveres with 
 obedient footstep in that even course, from 
 which the eye of strictest scrutiny, has never 
 yet detected one hair-breadth of deviation. 
 It is no longer doubted by men of science, 
 that every remaining semblance of irregu- 
 larity in the universe is due, not to the 
 fickleness of Nature, but to the ignorance 
 of man — that her most hidden movements 
 are conducted with a uniformity as rigorous 
 as fate — that even the fitful agitations of the 
 weather have their law and their principle^ 
 that the intensity of every breeze, and the 
 number of drops in every shower, and the 
 formation of every cloud, and all the occur- 
 ring alternations of storm and sunshine, and 
 the endless shiftings of temperature, and 
 those tremulous varieties of the air which 
 our instruments have enabled us to discover, 
 but have not enabled us to explain — that 
 still, they follow each other by a method of 
 succession, which, though greatly more in- 
 tricate, is yet as absolute in itself as the 
 order of the seasons or the mathematical 
 courses of astronomy. This is the impres- 
 sion of every philosoph. al mind with re- 
 gard to Nature, and it is strengthened by 
 each new accession that is made to science. 
 The more we are acquainted with her, the 
 more are we led to recognise her constancy ; 
 and to view her as a mighty though com- 
 plicated machine, all whose results are sure, 
 and all whose workings are invariable. 
 
 But there is enough of patent and palpa- 
 ble regularity in Nature, to give also to the 
 popular mind, the same impression of her 
 constancy. There is a gross and general 
 experience that teaches the same lesson, and 
 that has lodged in everj- bosom a kind of 
 secure and steadfast confidence in the uni- 
 formity of her processes. The very child 
 knows and proceeds upon it. He is aware 
 of an abiding character and property in the 
 elements around him — and has already 
 learned as much of the fire, and the water, 
 and the food that he eats, and the firm 
 ground that he treads upon, and even of the 
 gravitation by which he must regulate his 
 postures and his movements, as to prove, 
 that infant though he be, he is fully initiated 
 in the doctrine, that Nature has her laws 
 
 and her ordinances, and that she continueth 
 therein. And the proofs of this are ever 
 multiplying along the journey of human 
 observation: insomuch, that when we come 
 to manhood, we read of Nature's constancy 
 throughout every department of the visible 
 world. It meets us wherever we turn our 
 eyes. Both the day and the night bear wit- 
 ness to it. The .silent revolutions of the 
 firmament give it their pure testimony. 
 Even those appearances in the heavens, at 
 which superstition stood aghast, and ima- 
 gined that Nature was on the eve of giving 
 way, are the proudest trophies of that sta- 
 bility which reigns throughout her pro- 
 cesses — of that unswerving consistency 
 wherewith she prosecutes all her move- 
 ments. And the lesson that is thus held 
 forth to us from the heavens above, is re- 
 sponded to by the earth below; just as the 
 tides of ocean wait the footsteps of the 
 moon, and, by an attendance kept up with- 
 out change or intermission for thousands of 
 years, would seem to connect the regularity 
 of earth with the regularity of heaven. But, 
 apart from these greater and simpler ener- 
 gies, we see a course and a uniformity every 
 where. AVe recognise it in the mysteries of 
 vegetation. "We follov>' it through the suc- 
 cessive stages of growth, and maturity, and 
 decay, both in plants and animals. We dis- 
 cern it still more palpably in that beautiful 
 circulation of the element of water, as it 
 rolls its way by many thousand channels to 
 the ocean — and, from the surface of this 
 expanded reservoir, is again uplifted to the 
 higher regions of the atmosphere — and is 
 there dispersed in light and fleecy maga- 
 zines over the four quarters of the globe — 
 and at length accomplishes its orbit, by fall- 
 ing in showers on a world that waits to be 
 refreshed by it. And all goes to impress u? 
 with the regularity of Nature, which in fact 
 teems, throughout all its varieties, with 
 power, and principle, and uniform laws of 
 operation — and is viewed by us as a vast 
 laboratory, all the progressions of which 
 have a rigid and unfailing necessity stamped 
 upon them. 
 
 Now, this contemplation has at times 
 served to foster the atheism of philosophers 
 It has led them to deify Nature, and to make 
 her immutability stand in the place of God. 
 Tliey seem impressed with the imagination, 
 that had the Supreme Cause been a being 
 who thinks, and wills, and acts as man does, 
 on the impulse of a felt and a present mo- 
 tive, there would be more the appearance 
 of spontaneous activity, and less of mute 
 and unconscious mechanism in the admi- 
 nistrations of the universe. It is the very 
 unchangeableness of Nature and the stead- 
 fastness of those great and mighty processes 
 wherewith no living power that is superior 
 to Nature, and is able to shift or to control 
 her, is seen to mterfere — it is this vhich 
 
I-] 
 
 AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS IN HIS WORD. 
 
 ■26c 
 
 seems to have impressed the notion of some 
 blind and eternal fatality on certain men of 
 loftiest but deluded genius. And, accord- 
 ingly, in France, where the physical sciences 
 have, of late, been the most cultivated, have 
 there also been the most daring avowals of 
 atheism. The uni\ erse has been affirmed to 
 be an everlasting and indestructible effect; 
 and from the abiding constancy that is seen 
 in Nature, tbrougli all her departments, 
 have they inferred, that thus it has always 
 been, and that thus it will ever be. 
 
 But this atheistical impression tliat is de- 
 rived from the constancy of Nature, is not 
 peculiar to the disciples of philosopiiy. It 
 is the familiar and the practical impression 
 of every-day life. The world is apprehended 
 to move on steady and unvarying principles 
 of his own ; and these secondary causes 
 have usurped, in man's estimation, the 
 throne of the Divinity. Nature in fact is 
 personified into God: and as we look to the 
 performance of a machine without thinkihg 
 of its maker, — so the very exactness and 
 certainty, wherewith tlie machinery of 
 creation performs its evolutions, has thrown 
 a disguise over the agency of the Creator. 
 Should God interpose by miracle, or inter- 
 fere by some striking and special manifesta- 
 tion of providence, then man is awakened 
 to the recognition of him. But he loses 
 sight of the Being who sits behind these 
 visible elements, while he regards those 
 attribute^ of constancy and power which 
 appear in the elements themselves. They 
 see no demonstration of a God, and they 
 feel no need of him, while such unchanging, 
 and such unfailing energy continues to ope- 
 rate in t!ie visible world around them ; and 
 we need not go to the schools of ratiocina- 
 tion in quest of this infidelity, but may de- 
 tect it in the bosoms of simple and unlet- 
 tered men, who, unknov.n to themselves, 
 make a god of Nature, and just because of 
 Nature's constancy; having no faith in the 
 unseeu Spirit who originated all and up- 
 holds all, and that, because all things con- 
 tinue as they were from the beginning of 
 the creation. 
 
 Such has been the perverse effect of Na- 
 ture's constancy on the alienated mind of 
 man : but let us now attend to the true in- 
 terpretation of it. God has, in the first in- 
 stance, put into our minds a disposition to 
 count on the uniformity of Nature, insomuch 
 that we universally look for a recurrence of 
 the same event in the same circumstances. 
 This is not merely the belief of experience, 
 but the belief of instinct. It is antecedent 
 to all the fiudings of observation, and may 
 be exemplified in the earliest stages of child- 
 hood. The infant who makes a noise on the 
 table with his hand, for the first time, anti- 
 cipates a repetition of the noise from a re- 
 petition of the stroke, with as much confi- i 
 dence as he who has witnessed, for years I 
 
 together, the invariableness wherewith these 
 two terras of the succession have followed 
 each other. Or, iu other words, God, by 
 putting this faith into every human crea- 
 ture, and making it a necessary part of his 
 mental constitution, has taught him at all 
 times to expect the like result in the like 
 circumstances. He has thus virtually told 
 him what is to happen, and what he has to 
 look for in every given condition — and by 
 its so happening accordingly, he just makes 
 good the veracity of his own declaration. 
 The man who leads me to expect that 
 which he fails to accomplish, I would hold 
 to be a deceiver. God has so framed the 
 machinery of my perceptions, as that I am 
 led irresistibly to expect, that every where 
 events will follow each other in the very 
 train in which I have ever been accustomed 
 to observe them — and when God so sustains 
 the uniformity of Nature, that in every in- 
 stance it is rigidly so, he is just manifesting 
 the faithfulness of his character. Were it 
 otherwise, he would be practising a mock- 
 ery on the expectation which he himself 
 had inspired. God may be said to have pro- 
 mised to every human being, that Nature 
 will be constant — if not by the whisper of 
 an inward voice to every heart, at least by 
 the force of an uncontrollable bias which 
 he has impressed on every constitution. So 
 that, when we behold Nature keeping by its 
 constancy, we behold the God of Nature 
 keeping by his faithfulness — and the system 
 of visible things, with its general laws, and 
 its successions which are invariable, instead 
 of an opaque materialism to intercept from 
 the view of mortals the face of tlie Divinity, 
 becomes the mirror which reflects upon 
 them the truth that is unchangeable, the 
 ordination that never fails. 
 
 Conceive that it had been otherwise — 
 first, that man had no faith in the constancy 
 of Nature — then how could all his experi- 
 ence have profited him? How could he 
 have applied the recollections of his past, 
 to the guidance of his future history ? And. 
 what would have been left to signalize the 
 wisdom of mankind above that of veriest 
 infancy? Or, suppose that he had the im- 
 plicit faith in Nature's constancy, but that 
 Nature was wanting in the fulfilment of it — 
 that at every moment his intuitive reliance 
 on this constancy, was met by some caprice 
 or waywardness of Nature, which thwarted 
 him in all his undertakings — that, instead 
 of holding true to her announcements, she 
 held the children of men iu most distressful 
 uncertainty, by the freaks and tlie falsities 
 in which she ever indulged herself — and 
 that every design of human foresight was 
 thus liable to be broken up, by ever and 
 anon the putting forth of some new fluctua- 
 tion. Tell me. In t!iis wild misrule of ele- 
 ments changing their properties, and events 
 ever flitting from one method of succession 
 
264 
 
 THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 to another, if man could subsist for a single 
 day, when all the accomplishments without, 
 were thus at war with all the hopes and 
 calculations within. In such a chaos and 
 conflict as this, would not the foundations 
 of human wisdom be utterly subverted? 
 Would not man, with his powerful and per- 
 petual tendency to proceed on the constancy 
 of Nature, be tempted, at all times, and by 
 the very constitution of his being, to pro- 
 ceed upon a falsehood ? It were the way, 
 in fact, to turn the administration of Nature 
 into a system of deceit. The lessons of to- 
 day, would be falsified by the events of to- 
 morrow. He were indeed the father of lies 
 who could be the author of such a regimen 
 as this — and well may we rejoice in the 
 strict order of the goodly universe which 
 we inhabit, and regard it as a noble attesta- 
 tion to the wisdom and beneficence of its 
 great Architect. 
 
 But it is more especially as an evidence 
 of his truth, that the constancy of Nature is 
 adverted to in our text. It is of his faithful- 
 ness unto all generations that mention is 
 there made — and for the growth and the 
 discipline of your piety, we know not a bet- 
 ter practical habit than that of recognising 
 the unchangeable trutli of God, throughout 
 your daily and hourly experience of Na- 
 ture's unchangeableness. Your faith in it 
 is of his working — and what a condition 
 would you have been reduced to, had the 
 faith whicli is within, not been met by an 
 entire and unexpected accordancy with the 
 fulfilments that are without ! He has not 
 told you what to expect by the utterance of 
 a voice — but he has taught you what to ex- 
 pect by the leadings and the intimations of 
 a strong constitutional tendency — and, in 
 virtue of this, there is not a human creature 
 who does not believe, and almost as firmly 
 as in his own existence, that fire will con- 
 tinue to burn, and water to cool, and matter 
 to resist, and unsupported bodies to fall, and 
 ocean to bear the adventurous vessel upon 
 its surface, and the solid earth to uphold 
 the tread of his footsteps ; and that spring 
 will appear again in her wonted smiles, and 
 summer will glow into heat and brilliancy, 
 and autumn will put on the same luxuri- 
 ance as before, and winter, at its stated pe- 
 riods, revisit the world with her darkness 
 and her storms. We cannot sum up those 
 countless varieties of Nature; but tlie firm 
 expectation is, that throughout them all, as 
 she has been established, so she will abide 
 to the day of her final dissolution. And I 
 call upon you to recosnise in Nature's con- 
 stancy, the answer of Nature's God to this 
 expectation. All these material agents are, 
 in fact, the organs by which he expresses 
 his feithfulness to the world ; and that un- 
 veering generality which reigns and con- 
 tinues every where, is but the perpetual 
 demonstration of a truth that never varies, 
 
 as well as of laws that never are rescinded. 
 It is for us that he upholds the world in all 
 its regularity. It is for us that he sustains 
 so inviolably the march and the movement 
 of those innumerable progressions which 
 are going on around us. It is in remem- 
 brance of his promises to us, that he meets 
 all our anticipations of Nature's uniformity, 
 with the evolutions of a law that is unal- 
 terable. It is because he is a God that can- 
 not lie, that he will make no invasion on 
 that wondrous correspondency which he 
 himself hath instituted between the world 
 that is without, and our little world of 
 hopes, and projects, and anticipations that 
 are within. By the constancy of Nature, 
 he hath imprinted upon it the lesson of his 
 own constancy — and that very character- 
 istic wherewith some would fortify tiie un- 
 godliness of their hearts, is the most im- 
 pressive exhibition which can be given of 
 God, as always faithful, and always the 
 same. 
 
 This, tlien, is the real character which the 
 constancy of Nature should lead us to assign 
 to him who is the Author of it. In every 
 human understanding, he hath planted a 
 universal instinct, by which all are led to 
 believe that Nature will persevere in her 
 wonted courses, and that each succession 
 of cause and eflfect which has been observed 
 by us in the time that is past, will, while 
 the world exists, be kept up invariably, and 
 recur in the very same order through the 
 time that is to come. This constancy, then, 
 is as good as a promise that he has made 
 unto all men, and all that is around us on 
 earth or in heaven, proves how inflexibly 
 the promise is adhered to. The chemist in 
 his laboratory, as he questions Nature, may 
 be almost said to put her to the torture, 
 when tried in his hottest furnace, or probed 
 by his searching analysis, to her innermost 
 arcana, she, by a spark, or an explosion, or 
 an effervescence, or an evolving substance, 
 makes her distinct replies to his investiga 
 tions. And he repeats her answer to all his 
 fellows in philosophy, and they meet in 
 academic state and judgment to reiterate 
 the question, and in every quarter of the 
 globe her answer is the same — so that, let 
 the experiment, though a thousand times 
 repeated, only be alike in all its circum- 
 stances, the result which cometh forth is as 
 rigidly alike, without deficiency, and with- 
 out deviation. We know how possible it is 
 for these worshippers at the footstool of 
 science, to make a divinity of matter; and 
 that every new discovery of her secrets 
 should only rivet them more devotedly to 
 her throne. But there is a God who liveth 
 and sitteth there, and these unvarying re- 
 sponses of Nature are all prompted by him- 
 self, and are but the utterances of his im- 
 mutability. They are the replies of a God 
 who never changes, and who hath adapted 
 
1.1 
 
 AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS IN HIS WORD. 
 
 265- 
 
 the whole materialism of creation to the 
 constitution of everj' mind that he hath sent 
 forth upon it. And to meet the expectation 
 which he himself hath given of Nature's 
 constancy, is he at each successive instant 
 of time, vigilant and ready in every part of 
 his vast dominions, to hold out to the eye of 
 all observers, the perpetual and unfailing 
 demonstration of it. The certainties of Na- 
 ture and of Science are, in fact, the vocables 
 by which God announces his truth to the 
 world — and when told how impossible it is 
 that Nature can fluctuate, we are only told 
 how impossible it is that the God of Nature 
 can deceive us. 
 
 The doctrine that Nature is constant, 
 when thus related, as it ought to be, with 
 the doctrine that God is true, might well 
 strengthen our confidence in him anew with 
 ever}' new experience of our histor^^ There 
 is not an hour or a moment, in which we 
 may not verify the one — and, therefore, not 
 an hour or a moment in which we may not 
 invigorate the other. Every touch, and 
 every look, and every taste, and every act 
 of converse between our senses and the 
 things that are without, brings home a new 
 demonstration of the steadfastness of Na- 
 ture, and along with it a new demonstration 
 both of his steadfastness and of his faithful- 
 ness, who is the Governor of Nature. And 
 the same lesson may be fetched from times 
 and from places, that are far beyond the 
 limits of our own personal history. It can 
 be drawn fom the retrospect of past ages, 
 where, from the unvaried currency of those 
 very processes which we now behold, we 
 may learn the stability of all his ways, 
 whose goings forth are of old, and from 
 everlasting. It can be gathered from the 
 most distant extremities- of the earth, where 
 Nature reigns with the same unwearied 
 constancy, as it does around us — and \vhere 
 savages count as we do on a uniformity, 
 irom which she never falters. The lesson 
 is commensurate with the whole system of 
 things — and with an effulgence as broad as 
 the face of creation, and as clear as the light 
 which is poured over it, does it at once tell 
 that Nature is unchangeably constant, and 
 that God is unchangeably true. 
 
 And so it is, that in our text there are 
 presented together, as if there was a tie of 
 likeness between them — that the same God 
 who is fixed as to the ordinances of Nature, 
 is faithful as to the declaration of his word; 
 and as all experience proves how firmly he 
 may be trusted for the one, so is there an 
 argument as strong as experience, to prove 
 liow firmly he may be trusted for the other. 
 Hy his work in us, he hath awakened 
 the expectation of a constancy in Nature, 
 which he never disappoints. By his word 
 to us, should he awaken the expectation of 
 a certainty in his declarations, this he will 
 never disappoint. It is because Nature is 
 34 
 
 so fixed, that we apprehend the God of Na- 
 ture to be so faithful. He who never fnlsifies 
 the hope that hath arisen in every bosom, 
 from the instinct whicli he himself hath 
 communicated, will never falsify the hope 
 that shall arise in any bosom from the ex- 
 press utterance of his voice. Were he a God 
 in whose hand the processes of Nature were 
 ever shifting, then might we conceive hira 
 a God from whose mouth the proclamations 
 of grace had the like characters of variance 
 and vacillation. But it is just because of 
 our reliance on the one, that we feel so 
 much of repose in our dependence upon the 
 other — and the same God who is so unfail- 
 ing in the ordinances of his creation, do we 
 hold to be equally unfailing in the ordi- 
 nances of his word. 
 
 And it is strikingly accordant with these 
 views, that Nature never has been known 
 to recede from her constancy, but for the 
 purpose of giving place and demonstration 
 to the authority of the word. Once, in a 
 season of miracle, did the word take the 
 precedency of Nature, but ever since hath 
 Nature resumed her courses, and is now 
 proving by her steadfastness, the authority 
 of that, which she then proved to be au- 
 thentic by her deviations. When the word 
 was first ushered in. Nature gave way for 
 a period, after which she moves in her 
 wonted order, till the present system of 
 things shall pass away, and that faith which 
 is now upholden by Nature's constancy, 
 shall then receive its accomplishment at 
 Nature's dissolution. And O, how God mag- 
 nifieth his word above all his name, when 
 he tells that heaven and earth shall pass 
 away, but that his word shall not pass 
 away — and that while his creation shall 
 become a wreck, not one jot or one tittle of 
 his testimony shall fail. The world passeth 
 away — but the word endureth for e^er — 
 and if the faithfulness of God stand forth so 
 legibly on the face of the temporary world, 
 how surely may we reckon on the faithful- 
 ness of that word, which has a vastly higher 
 place in the counsels and fulfilments of 
 eternity. 
 
 The argument may not be comprehended 
 by all, but it will not be lost, should it lead 
 any to feel a more emphatic certainty and 
 meaning than before, in the declarations of 
 the Bible — and to conclude, that he who for 
 ages hath stood so fixed to all his plans and 
 purposes in Nature, will stand equally fixed 
 to all that he proclaims, and to all that he 
 promises in Revelation. To be in the hands 
 of such a God, might well strike a terror 
 into the hearts of the guilty — and that un- 
 relenting death, which, with all the surcness 
 of an immutable law, is seen, before our 
 eyes, to seize upon every individual of every 
 species of our world, full well evinces how 
 he, the uncompromising Lawgivei-, will ex- 
 ecute every utterance that he has made 
 
266 
 
 THE CONSIANCY OF GOD IN HIS WOKKS 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 against the childrei? of iniquity. And, on 
 the other hand, how this very contempla- 
 tion ought to encourage all who are looking 
 to the announcements of the same God in 
 the Gospel, and who perceive that there he 
 has embarked the same truth, and the same 
 unchangeableness on the offers of mercy 
 All Nature gives testimony to tlii.s, that lie 
 cannot lie — and seeing that he has stamped 
 such enduring properties on the elements 
 even of our perishable world, never should 
 I falter from that confidence which lie hath 
 taught me to feel, when I think of that pro- 
 perty wherewith the blood which was shed 
 for me, cleanseth from all sin ; and of that 
 property wherewith the body v\-hich was 
 broken, beareth the burden of all its penal- 
 ties. He who hath so nobly met the faith 
 that he has given unto all in the constancy 
 of Nature, by a uniformity which knows 
 no abatement, will meet the faith that he 
 has given unto any in the certainty of grace, 
 by a fulrilment unto every believer, which 
 knows no exception. 
 
 And it is well to remark the difference 
 that there is between the explanation given 
 in the text, of Nature's constanc}*, and the 
 impression which the mere students or 
 disciples of Nature have of it. It is because 
 of her constancy that they have been led 
 to invest her, as it were, in ])roperties of 
 her own ; that they have given a kind of in- 
 dependent power and stabiu y to matter; 
 that in the various energies which lie scat- 
 tered over the field of visible contemplation, 
 they see a native inherent virtue, which 
 never for a single moment is slackened 
 or suspended — and therefore imagine, that 
 as no force from without seems necessary 
 to sustain, so as little, perhaps, is there need 
 for any such force from without to originate. 
 The mechanical certainty of all Nature's 
 processes, as it appears in their eyes to 
 supersede tlie demand for any upholding 
 agency, so does it also supersede, in the 
 silent imaginations of many, and according 
 to the express and bold avowals of some, 
 Ihe demand for any creative agency. It is 
 thus, that Nature is raised into a divinity, 
 and has been made to reign over all, in the 
 state and jurisdiction of an eternal fatalism: 
 and proud Science, which by wisdom 
 knoweth not God. hath in her march of 
 discovery, seized upon the invariable cer- 
 tainties of Nature, those highest char^ icr- 
 istics of his authority and wisd ,n and 
 truth, as the instruments by wh.cn to dis- 
 prove and to dethrone him. 
 
 Now compare this interpretation of mon- 
 strous and melancjioly atheism, with that 
 which the Bible gives, why all things move 
 so invariably. It is because that all are thy 
 servants. It is because they are all under 
 the bidding of a God who has purposes 
 from which he never falters, and hath is- 
 ^ued pr '::r^es from which he never fails. I 
 
 It is because the arrangements of his vast 
 and capacious household are already order- 
 ed for the best, and all the elements of Na- 
 ture are the ministers by which he fulfils 
 them. That is the master who has most 
 honour and obedience from his domestics 
 throughout all whose ordinations there runs 
 a consistency from which he never devi- 
 ates; and he best sustains his dignity in 
 the midst of them, who, by mild but resist- 
 less sway, can regulate tlie successions of 
 every hour, and affix his sure and appropri- 
 ate service to every member of tlie lamily. 
 It is when we see all, in any gi^en time, 
 at their respective places, and each dis- 
 tinct period of the day having its own 
 distinct evolution of business or recreation, 
 that we infer the wisdom of tlie instituted 
 government, and how irrevocable the sanc- 
 tions are by which it is upholden. The 
 vexatious alternations of command and of 
 countermand ; the endless fancies of hu- 
 mour, and caprice, and waywardness, which 
 ever and anon break forth, to the total 
 overthrow of system ; the perpetual in- 
 novations which none do foresee, and foi 
 which none, therefore, can possibly be pre- 
 pared — these are not more harassing to 
 the subject, than they are disparaging to 
 the truth and authority of tlie superior. 
 It is in the bosom of a well-conducted fa- 
 mily, where you witness the sure dispensa- 
 tion of all the reward and encouragement 
 which have been promised, and the unfail- 
 ing execution of the disgrace and the dis- 
 missal that are held forth to obstinate dis 
 obedience. Now those very qualities of 
 which this uniformity is the test and the 
 characteristic in the government of any 
 human society, of these also is it the test 
 and the characteristic in the government 
 of Nature. It bespeaks the wisdom, and the 
 authority, and the truth of him who framed 
 and who administers. Let there be a King 
 eternal, immortal, and invisible, and let this 
 universe be his empire — and in all the 
 rounds of its complex but unerring mechan- 
 ism, do I recognise him as the only wise God 
 In the constancy of Nature, do I read the 
 constancy and truth of that great master 
 Spirit, who hath imprinted his own charac- 
 ter on all that hath emanated from his 
 power; and when told tliat throughout the 
 mighty lapse of centuries, all the courses 
 both of earth and of heaven, ha' e been 
 upholden as before. I only recognise the 
 footsteps of him who is ever the same, and 
 whose faithfulness is unto all generations. 
 That perpetuity, and order, and ancient 
 law of succession, which have subsisted so 
 long, throughout the wide diversity of 
 thinffs, bear witness to the Lord of [tests 
 as stiU at the head of his well-marslialled 
 family. The present age is ottly re-echo- 
 ing tiie lesson of all past ages — and that 
 spectacle, which has misled those who bj' 
 
I.T 
 
 AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS IN Ills WORD. 
 
 267 
 
 wl?dom know not God, into dre:\ry atheism, 
 has enlianced every demonstration liotli of 
 his veracity and power, to ail intelligent 
 worshippers. We know that all things 
 continue as they were from the beginning 
 of creation. We know tl at tlie whole of 
 surrounding materialism stands forth, to 
 this very liour, in all The inflexibility of her 
 wonted characters. We know thatheaven, 
 and earth, and sea, still discharge the same 
 functions, and subserve the very same be- 
 neficent processes. We know that astrono- 
 my plies the same rounds as before, that 
 the cycles of the firmament move in their 
 old and appointed order, and that the year 
 'circulates as it has ever done, in grateful 
 variety, over the face of an expectant world 
 — but only because all are of God, and they 
 continue this day according to his ordi- 
 nances — for all are his servants. 
 
 Now, it is just because the successions 
 which take place in the economy of Nature, 
 are so invariable, that we should expect the 
 successions which take place in the econo- 
 my of God's moral go%ernment to be equal- 
 ly invariable. That expectation which he 
 never disappoints when it is the fruit of a 
 universal instinct, he surely will never dis- 
 appoint when it is the fruit of his own ex- 
 press and immediate revelation. If because 
 God hath so established it, it cometh to 
 pass, then of whatsoever it maybe affirmed 
 that God hath so said it, it will come equally 
 to pass. I should certainly look for the 
 same character in the administrations of 
 his special grace, that I, at all times, wit- 
 ness in the administrations of his ordinary 
 providence. If I see in the system of his 
 world, that the law by which two events 
 follow each other, gives rise to a connexion 
 oetween them that never is dissolved, then 
 should he say in his word, that there are 
 certain invariable methods of succession, 
 in virtue of which when the first term of it 
 occurs, the second is sure at all times to 
 follow, I should be very sure in my antici- 
 pations, that it will indeed be most punc- 
 tually and most rigidly so. It is thus, that 
 the constancy of Nature is in fullest har- 
 mony with the authority of Revelation — 
 and that, when fresh from the contempla- 
 tion of the one, I would listen with most 
 implicit faith to all the announcements of 
 the other. 
 
 AYhen we behold all to be so sure and 
 settled in the works of God, then may we 
 look for all being equally sure and settled 
 in the word of God. Philosophy hath 
 never yet detected one iota of deviation 
 from the ordinances of Nature — and never, 
 therefore, may we conclude, shall the ex- 
 perience either of past or future ages, de- 
 tect one iota of deviation from the ordi- 
 nances of Revelation. He who so pointedly 
 adheres to every plan that he hath establish- 
 ed in creation, will as pointedly adhere to 
 
 every proclamation that he hath uttered in 
 Scripture. There is nought of the fast and 
 loose in any of his processes— and wluther 
 in the terrible denunciations of Sinai, or those 
 mild proffers of mercy that were sounded 
 forth upon the world through Messiah, who 
 upholdeth all things by the word of his pow- 
 er, shall we alike experience that God is not 
 to be mocked, and that with him there is no 
 variableness;, neither shadow of turning. 
 
 With this certainty then upon our spirits, 
 let us now look, not to the successions 
 which he hath instituted in nature, but to 
 the successions which he hath announced to 
 U.S, in the word of his testimony — and let 
 us, while so doing, fix and solemnize our 
 thoughts by the consideration, that as God 
 hath said it, so will he do it. 
 
 The first of these successions, then, on 
 which we may count infallibly, is that 
 which he hath proclaimed between sin and 
 punishment. The soul that sinneth it shall 
 die. And here there is a common ground 
 on which the certainties of divine revela- 
 tion meet and are at one with the certain- 
 ties of human experience. We are told in 
 the Bible, that all have sinned, and that, 
 therefore, death hath passed upon all men. 
 The connexion between these two terms is 
 announced in Scripture to be invariable — 
 and all observation tells us, that it is even 
 so. Such was the sentence uttered in the 
 hearing of our first parents; and all history 
 can attest how God hath kept by the word 
 of his threatening — and how tliis law of 
 jurisprudence from heaven is realized be- 
 fore us upon earth, with all the certainty 
 of a law of Nature. The death of man is 
 just as stable and as essential a part of his 
 physiology, as are his birth, or his expan- 
 sion, or his maturity, or his decay. It looks 
 as much a thing of organic necessity, as a 
 thing of arbitrary institution— and here do 
 we see blended into one exhibition, a cer- 
 tainty of tlie divine word that never fails, 
 and a constancy in Nature that never is de- 
 parted from. It is indeed a striking accord- 
 ancy, that what in one view of it appears 
 to be a uniform process of Nature, in an- 
 other view of it, is but the unrelenting exe- 
 cution of a dread utterance from the God 
 of Nature. From this contemplation may 
 we gather, that God is as certain in all his 
 words, as he is constant in all his ways. 
 Men can philosophize on the diseases of the 
 human system — and the laborious treatise 
 can be written on the class, and the charac- 
 ter, and the symptoms, of each of them — 
 and in our halls of learning, the ample de- 
 monstration can be given, and disciples may 
 be taught how to judge and to prognosticate, 
 and in what appearances to read the fell 
 precursors of mortality — and death has so 
 taken up its settled place among the immu- 
 tabilities of Nature, that it is as familiarly 
 treated in the lecture-rooms of science, as 
 
268 
 
 THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS 
 
 fSERM. 
 
 any other phenomena which Nature has to 
 Offer for the exercise of the human under- 
 standing. And, O, how often are the smile 
 and the stoutness of infidehty seen to min- 
 gle with this appalling contemplation — and 
 how little wijl its hardy professors bear to be 
 told, that what gives so dread a certainty to 
 their speculation is, that the God of Nature 
 and the God of the Bible, are one — that when 
 they describe, in lofty nomenclature, the 
 path of dying humanity, they only describe 
 the way in which he fulfils upon it his ir- 
 revocable denunciation— tha the is but doing 
 now to the posterity of Adam what he 
 told to Adam himself on his expulsion from 
 Paradise — and that, if the universality of 
 death prove how every law in the physics 
 of creation is sure, it just as impressively 
 proves, how every word of God's immedi- 
 ate utterance to man, or how every word of 
 prophecy, is equally sure. 
 
 And in every instance of mortality which 
 you are called to witness, do we call upon 
 you to read in it the intolerance of God 
 for sin, and how unsparingly and unrelent- 
 ingly it is, that God carries into effect his 
 every utterance against it. The connection 
 which he hath instituted between the tv/o 
 terms of sin and of death should lead you 
 from every appeal that is made to your 
 senses by the one, to feel the force of an 
 appeal to your conscience by the other. 
 It proves the hatefulness of sin to God, and 
 it also proves with what unfaltering con- 
 stancy God vvill prosecute every threat un- 
 til he hath made an utter extirpation of sin 
 from his presence. There is nought which 
 can make more palpable the way in which 
 God keeps every saying in his perpetual 
 remembrance, and as surely proceeds upon 
 it, than doth this universal plague where- 
 with he hath smitten every individual of 
 our species, and carries off its successive 
 generations from a world that sprung from 
 his hand in all the bloom and vigour of 
 immortality. When death makes entrance 
 upon a familv, and perhaps, seizes on that 
 one member of it, all whose actual trans- 
 gressions might be summed up in the out- 
 breakings of an occasional waywardness, 
 wherewith the smiles of infant gaiety were 
 chequered — still how it demonstrates the 
 unbending purposes of God against our 
 present accursed nature, that in some one 
 or other of its varieties, every specimen 
 must die. And so it is, that from one age 
 o another, he makes open manifestation to 
 the world, that every utterance which hath 
 fallen from him is sure ; and that ocular 
 proof is given to tl\e character of him who 
 is a Spirit, and is invisible ; and that sense 
 lends its testimony to the truth of God, and 
 the truth of his Scripture ; and that Nature, 
 when rightly viewed, instead of placing 
 its inquirers at atheistical variance with 
 the being who upholds it, holds out to us 
 
 Ihe most impressive commentary that can 
 be given on the reverence which is due 
 to all his communications, even by de- 
 monstrating, that faith in his word is at 
 unison with the findings of our daily ob- 
 servation. 
 
 But God hath further said of sin and of 
 its consequences, what no observation oi" 
 ours has yet realized. He hath told us of 
 the judgment that cometh after death, and 
 he hath told us of the two diverse paths 
 which lead from the judgment-seat unto 
 eternity. Of these we have not yet seen 
 the verification, yet surely we have seen 
 enough to prepare us for the unfailing accom- 
 plishment of every utterance that cometh 
 from the lips of God. The unexcepted 
 death which we know cometh upon all 
 men, for that all have sinned, might well 
 convince us of the certainty of that second 
 death which is threatened upon all who 
 turn not from sin unto the Saviour. There 
 is an indissoluble succession here between 
 our sinning and our dying — and we ought 
 now to be so aware of God as a God of 
 precise and peremptory execution, as to 
 look upon the succession being equally in- 
 dissoluble, between our dying in sin now, 
 and rising to everlasting condemnation here- 
 after. The sinner who wraps himself in de- 
 lusive security — and that, because all things 
 continue as they have done, does not reflect 
 of this very characteristic, that it is indeed 
 the most awful proof of God's immutable 
 counsels, and to himself the most tremen- 
 dous presage of all the ruin and wretched- 
 ness which have been denounced upon him. 
 The spectacle of uniformity that is before 
 his eyes, only goes to ascertain that as God 
 hath purposed, so, without vacillation or 
 inconstancy, will he ever perform. He hat) 
 already given a sample, or an earnest of this 
 in the awful ravages of death ; and we ask 
 the sinner to behold, in the ever-recurring 
 spectacle of moving funerals, and desolated 
 families, the token of that still deeper per- 
 dition which awaits him. Let him not think 
 that the God who deals his relentless inflic- 
 tions here on every son and daughter of the 
 species, will falter there from the work of 
 vengeance that shall then descend on the 
 heads of the impenitent. O, how deceived 
 then are all those ungodly, who have been 
 building to themselves a safety and an ex- 
 emption on the perpetuity of Nature ! All 
 the perpetuity which they have witnessed, 
 is the pledge of a God who is unchange- 
 able — and who, true to his threatening as to 
 every other utterance which passes his lips, 
 hath said, in the hearing of men and of 
 angels, that the soul which is in sin shall 
 perish. 
 
 But, secondly, there is another succession 
 announced to us in Scripture, and on the 
 certainty of which we may place as firm a 
 reliance as on any of the observed succes- 
 
I.] 
 
 AN ARGUMENT FOR HIS FAITHFULNESS IN HIS WORD. 
 
 269 
 
 sions of Nature — even that which obtains 
 between faith and salvation. He who be- 
 lieveth in Christ, shall not perish, but shall 
 have life everlasting. The same truth 
 which God hath embarked on the declara- 
 tions of his wrath against the impenitent, he 
 hath also embarked on the declarations of 
 his mercy to the believer. There is a law 
 of continuity, as unfailing as any series of 
 events in Nature, that binds with the present 
 state of an obstinate sinner upon earth, all 
 the horrors of his future wretchedness in 
 hell — but there is also another law of con- 
 tinuity just as unfailing, that binds the pre- 
 sent state of him who putteth faith in Christ 
 here, with the triumphs and the transports 
 of his coming glory hereafter. And thus it 
 is, that what we read of God's constancy in 
 the book of Nature, may well strengthen our 
 every assurance in the promises of the gos- 
 pel. It is not in the recurrence of winter 
 alone, and its desolations, that God mani- 
 fests his adherence to established processes. 
 There are many periodic evolutions of the 
 bright and the beautiful along the march 
 of his administrations — as the dawn of morn ; 
 and the grateful access of spring, with its 
 many hues, and odours, and melodies; and 
 the ripened abundance of harvest ; and that 
 glorious arch of heaven, which science hath 
 now appropriated as her own, but which 
 nevertheless is placed there by God as the 
 unfailing tokenof a sunshine already begun, 
 and a storm now ended — all these come forth 
 at appointed seasons, in a consecutive or- 
 der, yet mark the footsteps of a beneficent 
 Deity. And so the economy of grace has 
 rts regular successions, which carry, how- 
 ever, a blessing in their train. The faith in 
 Christ, to which we are invited upon earth, 
 has its sure result and its landing-place in 
 heaven — and just with as unerring certainty 
 as we behold in the courses of the firma- 
 ment, will it be followed up by a life of vir- 
 tue, and a death of hope, and a resurrection 
 of joyfulness, and a voice of welcome at the 
 judgment-seat, and a bright ascent into fields 
 of ethereal blessedness, and an entranceupon 
 glory, and a perpetual occupation in the city 
 of the living God. 
 
 To all men hath he given a faith in the 
 constancy of Nature, and he never disap- 
 points it. To some men hath he given a 
 faith in the promises of the gospel, and he 
 is ready to bestow it upon all who ask, or 
 to perfect that which is lacking in it — and 
 the one faith will as surely meet with its 
 corresponding fulfilment as the other. The 
 invariableness that reigns throughout the 
 kingdom of Nature, guarantees the like in- 
 variab'.eness in the kingdom of grace. He 
 who is steadfast to all his appointments, will 
 De true to all his declarations — and those 
 very exhibitions of a strict and undeviating 
 order in our universe, which have minis- 
 tered to the irreligion of a spurious philoso- 
 
 phy, form a basis on which the believer can 
 prop a firmer confidence than before, in all 
 the spoken and all the written testimonies 
 of God. 
 
 With a man of taste, and imagination, and 
 science, and who is withal a disciple of the 
 Lord Jesus, such an argument as this must 
 shed a new interest and glory over his whole 
 contemplation of visible things. He knows 
 of his Saviour, that by him all things were 
 made, and that by liim too all things are up- 
 holden. The world, in fact, was created by 
 that Being whose name is the Word, and 
 from the features that are imprinted on the 
 one, may he gather some of the leading cha- 
 racteristics of the other. More expressly 
 will he infer from that sure and established 
 order of Nature, in which the whole family 
 of mankind are comprehended, that the 
 more special family of believers are indeed 
 encircled within the bond of a sure and a 
 well-ordered covenant. In tliose beauteous 
 regularities by which the one economy is 
 marked, will he be led to recognise the 
 " yea" and the " amen" which are stamped 
 on the other economy — and when he learns 
 that the certainties of science are unfailing, 
 does he also learn that the sayings of Scrip- 
 ture are unalterable. Both he knows to 
 emanate from the same source ; and every 
 new experience of Nature's constancy, will 
 just rivet him more tenaciously than before 
 to the doctrine and the declarations of his 
 Bible. Furnished with such a method of 
 interpretation as this, let him go abroad upon 
 Nature, and all that he sees will heighten 
 and establish the hopes which Revelation 
 hath awakened. Every recurrence of the 
 same phenomena as before, will be to him 
 a distinct testimony to the faithfulness of 
 God. The very hours will bear witness to 
 it. The lengthening shades of even will 
 repeat the lesson held out to him by the light 
 of early day — and when night unveils to his 
 eye the many splendours of the firmament, 
 will every traveller on his circuit there, 
 speak to him of that mighty and invisible 
 King, all whose ordinations are sure. And 
 this manifestation from the face of heaven, 
 will be reflected to him by the panorama 
 upon earth. Even the buds which come 
 forth at their appointed season on the leaf- 
 less branches ; and the springing up of the 
 flowers and the herbage, on the spots of 
 ground from which they had disappeared ; 
 and that month of vocal harmony where- 
 with the mute atmosphere is gladdened as 
 before, with the notes of joyous festival ; and 
 so, the regular march of the advancing year 
 through all its footsteps of revival, and pro- 
 gress, and maturity, and decay — these are 
 to him but the diversified tokens of a God 
 whom he can trust, because of a God who 
 changeth not. To his eyes, the world re- 
 flects upon the word the lesson of its own 
 wondrous harmony j and his science, in- 
 
270 
 
 THE CONSTANCY OF GOD IN HIS WORKS, &C. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 Stead of a meteor that lures him from the 
 greater light of revelation, serves him as a 
 pedestal on which the stability of Scripture 
 is more firmly upholden. 
 
 The man who is accustomed to view aright 
 the uniformity of Nature's sequences, will 
 be more impressed with the certainty of that 
 sequence which is announced in the Bible 
 between faith and salvation — and he, of all 
 others, should re-assure his hopes of immor- 
 tality, when he reads, that the end of our 
 faith is the salvation of our souls. In this 
 secure and wealthy place, let him take up 
 his rest, and rejoice himself greatly with 
 that God who has so multiplied upon him 
 the evidences of his faithfulness. Let him 
 henceforth feel that he is in the hands of 
 one Avho never deviates, and who cannot 
 lie — and who, as he never by one act of ca- 
 price, hath mocked the dependence that is 
 built on the foundation of human experience, 
 so, never by one act of treachery, will he 
 mock the dependence that is built on the 
 foundation of the divine testimony. And 
 more particularly, let him think of Christ, 
 who hath all the promises in his hand, that 
 to him also all power has been committed 
 in heaven and in earth — and that presiding 
 therefore, as he does, over that visible ad- 
 ministration, of which constancy is the un- 
 failing attribute, he by this hath given us 
 the best pledge of a truth that abideth the 
 same, to-day, and yesterday, and for ever. 
 
 We are aware, that no argument can of 
 itself work in you the faith of the Gospel — 
 that words and reasons, and illustrations, 
 may be multiplied without end, and yet be 
 of no efficacy — that if the simple manifesta- 
 tion of the Spirit be witliheld, the expounder 
 of Scripture, and of all its analogies with 
 creation or Providence, will lose his labour 
 — and while it is his part to prosecute these 
 to the uttermost, yet nought will he find 
 more surely and experimentally true, than 
 that without a special interposition of light 
 from on high, he runneth in vain, and 
 wearieth himself in vain. It is for him to 
 ply the instrument, it is for God to give 
 unto it the power which availeth. We are 
 told of Christ, on his throne of mediator- 
 ship, that he hath all the energies of Na- 
 ture at command, and up to this hour do we 
 know with what a steady and unfaltering 
 hand he hath wielded them. Look to the 
 
 promise as equally steadfast, of " Lo, I an' 
 with 'you always, even unto the end of tlie 
 world" — and come even now to his own 
 appointed ordinance in the like confidence 
 of a fellowship with him, as you would to 
 any of the scenes or ordinations of Nature, 
 and in the confidence that there the Lord of 
 Nature will prove himself the same that He 
 has ever been.* The blood that was an- 
 nounced many centuries ago to cleanse 
 from all sin, cleanseth still. The body 
 which hath borne in all past ages the ini- 
 quity of believers, beareth it still. That faith 
 which appropriates Clirist and all the benfr 
 fits of his purchase, to the soul, still per- 
 forms the same office. And that magnificent 
 economy of Nature which was established 
 at the first, and so abideth, is but tlie sym- 
 bol of that higher economy of grace which 
 continueth to this day according to all its 
 ordinances. 
 
 "Whosoever eateth my flesh, and drink- 
 eth my blood," says the Saviour, "shall 
 never die." When you sit down at his table, 
 you eat the bread, and you drink the wine 
 by which these are represented — and if this 
 be done worthily, if there be a right corres- 
 pondence between the hand and the heart 
 in this sacramental service, then by faith do 
 you receive the benefits of the shed blood, 
 and the broken body ; and your so doing 
 will as surely as any succession takes place 
 in the -instituted courses of Nature, be fol- 
 lowed up b}' your blessed immortality. And 
 the brighter your hopes of glory hereafter, 
 the hoher will you be in all your acts and 
 affections here. The character even now 
 will receive a tinge from the prospect that 
 is before you — and the habitual anticipation 
 of heaven will bring down both of its charity 
 and its sacredness upon your he;u-t. He 
 who hath this hope in him purilietli him- 
 self even as Christ is pure — and even from 
 the present, if a true approach to the gate 
 of his sanctuary, will you carry a portion 
 of his spirit away with you. In partaking 
 of these, his consecrated elements, you be- 
 come partakers of his gentleness and devo- 
 tion, and unwearied beneficence — and be- 
 cause like him in time, you will live with 
 him through eternity. 
 
 * This Sermon was delivered on the morning ( f 
 a Communion Sabbath. 
 
n.l 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 271 
 
 SERMON II. 
 
 The expulsive Power of a new Affection. 
 
 " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the 
 Father is not in him."- — 1 John ii. 13. 
 
 There are two ways in which a practi- 
 cal moralist may attempt to displace from 
 the human heart its love of the world — 
 either by a demonstration of the world's 
 vanity, so as that the heart shall be pre- 
 vailed upon simply to withdraw its regards 
 from an object that is not worthy of it ; or. 
 by setting forth another object, even God, 
 as more worthy of its attachment, so as 
 that the heart shall be prevailed upon not 
 to resign an old affection, which shall have 
 nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an 
 old affection for a new one. My purpose is 
 to show, that from the constitution of our 
 nature, the former method is altogether in- 
 competent and ineffectual — and that the 
 latter method will alone suffice for the res- 
 cue and recovery of the heart from the 
 wrong affection that domineers over it. Af- 
 ter having accomplished this purpose, I 
 shall attempt a few practical observations. 
 
 Love may be regarded in two different 
 conditions. The first is, when its object is 
 at a distance, and then it becomes love in a 
 state of desire. The second is, when its 
 object is in possession, and then it becomes 
 love in a state of indulgence. Under the 
 impulse of desire, man feels himself urged 
 onward in some path or pursuit of activity 
 for its gratification. The faculties of his 
 mind are put into busy exercise. In the 
 steady direction of one great and engross- 
 ing interest, his attention is recalled from 
 the many reveries into which it miglit other- 
 wise have wandered ; and the powers of his 
 body are forced away from an indolence in 
 which it else might have languished ; and 
 that time is crowded with occupation, which 
 but for some object of keen and devoted 
 ambition, might have drivelled along in 
 successive hours of weariness and distaste — 
 and though hope does not always enliven, 
 and success does not always crown this 
 career of exertion, yet in the midst of this 
 very variety, and with the alternations of 
 occasional disappointment, is the machinery 
 of the whole man kept in a sort of conge- 
 nial play, and upholden in that tone and 
 temper which are most agreeable to it. In- 
 somuch, that if through the extirpation of 
 that desire which forms the originating 
 principle of all this movement, the ma- 
 chinery were to stop, and to receive no im- 
 pulse from another desire substituted in its 
 place, the man would be left with all his 
 propensities to action in a state of most 
 painful and unnatural abandonment. A 
 
 sensitive being suffers, and is in violence, 
 if, after having thoroughly rested from his 
 fatigue, or been relieved from liis pain, he 
 continue in possession of powers without 
 any excitement to these powers ; if he pos- 
 sess a capacity of desire without having 
 an object of desire ; or if he have a spare 
 energy upon his person, without a counter- 
 part, and without a stimulus to call it into 
 operation. The misery of such a condition 
 is often realized by him who is retired from 
 business, or who is retired from law, or who 
 is even retired from the occupations of the 
 chase, and of the gaming table. Such is 
 the demand of our nature for an object in 
 pm-suit, that no accimiulation of previous 
 success can extinguish it — and thus it is, 
 that the most prosperous merchant, and the 
 most victorious general, and the most for- 
 tunate gamester, when the labour of their 
 respective vocations has come to a close, 
 are often found to languish in the midst of 
 all their acquisitions, as if out of their kin- 
 dred and rejoicing element. It is quite in 
 vain with such a constitutional a])petite for 
 employment in man, to attempt cutting 
 away from him the spring or the principle 
 of one employment, without providing him 
 with another. The whole heart ar.d habit 
 will rise in resistance against such an under- 
 taking. The else unoccupied female, who 
 spends the hours of every evening at some 
 play of hazard, knows as well as you, that 
 tiie pecuniary gain, or the honourable tri- 
 umph of a successful contest, are altogether 
 paltry. It is not such a demonstration of 
 vanity as this that will force her away from 
 her dear and delightful occupation. The 
 habit cannot so be displaced, as to leave 
 nothing but a negative and cliecrless va- 
 cancy behind it — thougli it may so be sup- 
 planted as to be followed up by another 
 liabit of employment, to -which tlie power 
 of some new affection has constrained her. 
 It is willingly suspended, for example, on 
 any single evening, should the time that 
 wont to be allotted to gaming, recjuire to 
 be spent on the preparations of an approach- 
 ing assembly. 
 
 The ascendant power of a second affec- 
 tion will do, what no exposition, however 
 forcible, of the folly and worthlessness of 
 the first, ever could effectuate. And it is 
 the same in the great world. You never 
 will be able to arrest any of its leading pur- 
 suits, by a naked demonslrntion of their 
 vanity. It is quite in vain to think of stop- 
 
272 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE TOWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 ping one of these pursuits in any way else, 
 but hy stimulating to another. In attempt- 
 ing to bring a worldly man, intent and bu- 
 sied with the prosecution of his objects, to 
 a dead stand, you have not merely to en- 
 counter the charm which he annexes to 
 these f)bjecls — but you have to encounter 
 the pleasure wliich he feels in the very 
 prosecution of them. It is not enough, 
 then, that you dissipate the charm, by your 
 moral, and eloquent, and affecting exposure 
 of its illusiveness. You must address to the 
 eye of his mind another object, with a 
 charm powerful enough to dispossess the 
 first of its influence, and to ensage him in 
 some other prosecution as full of interest, 
 and hope, and congenial activity, as the 
 former. It is this which stamps an impo- 
 tenc)' on all moral and pathetic declamation 
 about the insignificance of the world. A 
 man will no more consent to the misery of 
 being without an object, because that object 
 is a trifle, or of being without a pursuit, be- 
 cause that pursuit terminates in some frivo- 
 lous or fugitive acquirement, than he will 
 voluntarily submit himself to the torture, 
 because that torture is to be of short dura- 
 tion. If to be without desire and without 
 exertion altogether, is a state of violence 
 and discomfort, then the present desire, 
 with its correspondent train of exertion, is 
 not to be got rid of simply by destroying it. 
 It must be by substituting another desire, 
 and another line or habit of exertion in its j 
 place — and the most effectual way of with- 
 drawini the mind from one object, is not 
 by turninij it away upon desolate and un- 
 peopbd v;icancy — but bv presenting to its '< 
 regards another object still more alluring. 
 
 Th"s^ r-^marks apply not merely to love 
 considered in its state of desire for an ob- 
 ject not yet obtained. They apply also to 
 love considered in its state of indulgence, 
 or placid gratification, with an object al- 
 ready in possession. It is seldom that any 
 of our tastes are made to disappear by a 
 mere process of natural extinction. At 
 least, it is very seldom that this is done 
 through the instrumentality of reasoning. 
 It may be done b}' excessive pampering — 
 but it is almost never done by the mere 
 force of mental determination. But what 
 cannot be thus destroyed, may be dispos- 
 sessed — and one taste may be made to give 
 way to another, and to lose its power en- 
 tirely as the reisrning affection of the mind. 
 It is thus, that the boy ceases, at length, to 
 bo the slave of his appetite, but it is because 
 a manlier taste has now brought it into sub- 
 oidination — and 'that the yonth ceases to 
 idolize pleasure, but it is because the idol 
 of wealth has become the stronger and got- 
 ten the ascendency — and that even the love 
 of money ceases to have the mastery over 
 the heart of many a thriving citizen, but it 
 is because drawn into the whirl of city poli- 
 
 tics, another affection has been wrought 
 into his moral system, and he is now lorded 
 over by the love of power. There is not 
 one of these transformations in which the 
 heart is left without an object. Its desire 
 for one particular object may be conquered ; 
 but as to its desire for having some one 
 object or other, this is unconquerable. Its 
 adhesion to that on which it has fastened 
 the preference of its regards, cannot wil- 
 hngly be overcome by the rending awa)- of 
 a simple separation. It can be done only 
 by the application of something else, to 
 which it may feel the adhesion of a still 
 stronger and more powerful preference. 
 Such is the grasping tendency of the hu- 
 man heart, that it must have a something 
 to lay hold of — and which, if wrested away 
 without the substitution of another some- 
 thing in its place, would leave a void and a 
 vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger 
 is to the natural system. It may be dispos- 
 ses.sed of one object, or of any, but it can- 
 not be desolated of all. Let there be a 
 breathing and a sensitive heart, but without 
 a liking and without affinity to any of the 
 things that are around it, and in a state of 
 cheerless abandonment, it would be alive to 
 nothing but the burden of its own con- 
 sciousness, and feel it to be intolerable. It 
 would make no difference to its owner, 
 whether he dwelt in the midst of a gay and 
 goodly world, or placed afar beyond the 
 outskirts of creation, he dwelt a solitary 
 unit in dark and unpeopled nothingness. 
 The heart must have something to cling to 
 — and never, by its own voluntary consent, 
 will it so denude itself of all its attachments, 
 that there shall not be one remaining object 
 that can draw or solicit it. 
 
 The misery of a heart thus bereft of all 
 relish for that which wont to minister en- 
 joyment, is strikingly exemplified in those, 
 who, satiated with indulgence, have been 
 so belaboured, as it were, with the variety 
 and the poignancy of the pleasurable sen- 
 sations that they have experienced, that 
 they are at length fatigued out of all ca- 
 pacity for sensation whatever. Tlie disease 
 of ennui is more frequent in the French 
 metropolis, where amusement is more ex- 
 clusively the occupation of higher classes, 
 than it is in the British metropolis, where 
 the longings of the heart are more diversi- 
 fied by the resources of business and poli- 
 tics. There are the votaries of fashion, 
 who, in this way, have at length become 
 the victims of fashionable excess — in whom 
 the very multitude of their enjoyments, has 
 at last extinguished their power of enjoy- 
 ment — who, with the gratifications of art 
 and nature at command, now look upon all 
 that is around them with an eye of taste- 
 lessness — who, plied with the delights of 
 sense and of splendour even to weariness, 
 and incapable of higher delights, have come 
 
11.] 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 273 
 
 to the end of all their perfection, and like 
 Solomon of old, found it to be vanity and 
 vexation. Tlie man whose heart has thus 
 been turned into a desert, can vouch for the 
 insupportable languor which must ensue, 
 when one affection is thus plucked away 
 from the bosom, without another to replace 
 it. It is not necessary that a man receive 
 pain from any tiiiui,', in order to become 
 miserable. It is barely enough that he looks 
 with distaste to every thing — and in that 
 asylum wliich is the repository of minds 
 out of joint, and where the organ of feelmg 
 as well as the organ of intellect, has been 
 impaired, it is ni»t in the cell of loud and 
 frantic outcries where you will meet with 
 the acme of mental suffering. But that is 
 the individual who outpeers in wretched- 
 ness all his fellows, who throughout the 
 whole expanse of nature and society, meets 
 not an object that has at all the power to 
 detain or to interest him; who neither in 
 earth beneath, nor in heaven above, knows 
 of a single charm to which his heart can 
 send forth one desirous or responding 
 movement ; to whom the world, in his eye 
 a vast and empty desolation, has left him 
 nothing but his own consciousness to feed 
 upon — dead to all that is without him, and 
 alive to nothing but to the load of his own 
 torpid and useless existence. 
 
 It will now be seen, perhaps, why it is 
 that the h(>art keeps by its present affections 
 with so much tenacity — when the attempt 
 is, to do them away by a mere process of 
 extirpation. It will not consent to be so 
 desolated. The strong man, u'hose dwell- 
 ing-place is there, may be compelled to give 
 way to another occupier — but unless ano- 
 ther stronger than he, has power to dispos- 
 sess and to succeed him, he will keep his 
 present lodjiment inviolable. The heart 
 would revolt against its own emptiness. It 
 could not bear to be so left in a state of 
 waste and cheerless insipidity. The moralist 
 who tries such a process of dispossession 
 as this upon the heart, is thwarted at every 
 step by the recoil of its own mechanism. 
 You have all heard that Nature abhors, a 
 vacuum. Such at least is the nature of the 
 eart, that though the room which is in it 
 may change one inmate for another, it can- 
 not be left void without the pain of most 
 intolerable suffering. It is not enough then 
 to argue the folly of an existing affection. 
 It is not enough, in the terms of a forcible 
 or an affecting demonstration, to make good 
 the evanescence of its object. It may not 
 even be enough to associate the threats and 
 terrors of some coming vengeance, with the 
 indulgence of it. The heart may still re- 
 sist the every application, by obedience to 
 which it would finally be conducted to a 
 state so much at war with all its appetites 
 as that of downright inanition. So to tear 
 away an affection from the heart, as to leave 
 35 
 
 it bar* of all its regards, and of all its pre- 
 ferences, were a hard and hopeless under- 
 taking—and it would appear as if the alone 
 powerful engine of dispo3scssion, were to 
 bring the mastery of another affection to 
 bear upon it. 
 
 We know not a more sweeping interdict 
 upon the affections of Nature, than that 
 which is delivered by the Apostle in the 
 verse before us. To bid a man iiuo whom 
 there is not yet entered the great and 
 ascendant influence of the principle of re- 
 generation, to bid him withdraw his love 
 from all the things that are in the world, is 
 to bid him give up all the affections that are 
 in his heart. The world is the all of a na- 
 tural man. He has not a taste, nor a desire, 
 that points not to a something placed with- 
 in the confines of its visible horizon. He 
 loves nothing above it, and he cares for no- 
 thing beyond it; and to bid him love not 
 the world, is to pass a sentence of expulsion 
 on all the inmates of his bosom. To esti- 
 mate the magnitude and the difficulty of 
 such a surrender, let us only think that it 
 were just as arduous to prevail on him not 
 to love wealth, which is but one of the 
 things in the world, as to prevail on him 
 to set wilful fire to his own property. This 
 he might do with sore and painful reluc- 
 tance, if he saw that the salvation of his 
 life hung upon it. But this he would do 
 willingly, if he saw that a new property of 
 tenfold value was instantly to emerge from 
 the wreck of the old one. In this case there 
 is something more tlian the mere displace- 
 ment of an affection. There is the over- 
 bearing of one affection by another. But 
 to desolate his heart of all love for the 
 things of the world, without the substitu- 
 tion of any love in its place, were to him a 
 process ol^ as unnatural violence, as to de- 
 .stroy all the things he has in the world, 
 and give him nothing in their room. So 
 that, if to love not the world be indispensa- 
 ble to one's Christianity, then the cruci- 
 fixion of the old man is not too strong a 
 term to mark that transition in his history, 
 when all old things are done away, and all 
 things are become new. 
 
 We hope that by this time, you under- 
 stand the im potency of a mere demonstra- 
 tion of this world's insignificance. Its sole 
 practical effect, if it had any, would be to 
 leave the heart in a state which to every 
 heart is insupportable, and that is a mere 
 state of nakedness and negation. You may 
 remember the fond and unbroken tenacity 
 with which your heart has often recm-red 
 to pursuits, over the utter frivolity of which 
 it sighed and wept but yesterday. Tlie 
 arithmetic of your short-lived days, may 
 on Sabbath make the clearest impression 
 upon your understanding — and from his 
 fancied bed of death, may the preacher 
 cause a voice to descend in rebuke and 
 
274 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 mocker J' on all the pursuits of earthliness 
 — and as he pictures before you the fleet- 
 ing generations of men, with the absoibing 
 grave, whither all the joys and interests of 
 the world hasten to their S'.ire and speedy 
 oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized 
 by his argument, feel for a moment as if 
 en the eve of a practical and permanent 
 emancipation from a scene of so much 
 vanity. But the morrow comes, and the 
 business of the world, and the objects of 
 the world, and the moving forces of the 
 world come along with it — and the ma- 
 chinery of the heart, in virtue of which it 
 must have something to grasp, or some- 
 thing to adhere to, brings it under a kind 
 of moral necessity to be actuated just as 
 before — and in utter repulsion towards a 
 state so unkindly as that of being frozen 
 out both of delight and of desire, does it 
 feel all the warmth and the urgency of its 
 wonted solicitations — nor in the habit and 
 historj' of the whole man, can we detect so 
 much as one symptom of the new creature 
 — so that the church, instead of being to 
 him a school of obedience, has been a mere 
 sauntering place for the luxury of a pass- 
 ing and tlieatrical emotion ; and the preach- 
 ing which is mighty to compel the attend- 
 ance of multitudes, which is mighty to still 
 and to solemnize the hearers into a kind 
 of tragic sensibility, which is mighty in the 
 play of variety and vigour that it can keep 
 up around the imagination, is not mighty to 
 the pulling down of strong-holds. 
 
 The love of the world cannot be expung- 
 ed by a mere demonstration of the world's 
 worthlessness. But may it not be supplant- 
 ed by the love of that which is more wor- 
 thy than itself 7 The heart cannot be pre- 
 vailed upon to part with the world, by a 
 simple act of resignation. But may not 
 the heart be prevailed upon to admit into 
 its preference another, who shall subordi- 
 nate the world, and bring it down from its 
 wonted ascendency ? If the throne which 
 is placed there, must have an occupier, and 
 the tyrant that now reigns has occupied it 
 wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom 
 which would rather detain him, than be 
 left in desolation. But may he not give 
 way to the lawful sovereign, appearing 
 with every charm that can secure his will- 
 ing admittance, and taking imto himself his 
 great power to subdue the moral nature of 
 man, and to reign over it ? In a word, if 
 the way to disengage the heart from the 
 positive love of one great and ascendent 
 object, is to fasten it in positive love to an- 
 other, then it is not by exposing the worth- 
 less.ness of the fo,rmer, but by addressing to 
 the mental eye the worth and excellence of 
 the latter, that all old things are to be done 
 away, and all things are to become new. 
 
 To obliterate all our present affections, by 
 simply expunging them, and so as to leave 
 
 the seat of them unoccupied, would be to 
 destroy the old character, and to substitue 
 no new character in its place. But when 
 they take their departure upon the ingress 
 of other visitors ; when they resign tlieir 
 sway to the power and the predominance 
 of new affections; wlien, abandoning the 
 lieart to solitude, they merely give place to 
 a successor who turns it into as busy a 
 residence of desire, and interest, and ex- 
 pectation as before — there is nothing in all 
 this to thwart or to overbear any of the 
 laws of our sentient nature — and we see 
 how, in fullest accordance with the me- 
 chanism of the heart, a great moral revolu- 
 tion may be made to take place upon it. 
 
 This, we trust, will explain the operation 
 of that charm which accompanies the effec- 
 tual preacliing of the gospel. The love of 
 God, and the love of the world, are two 
 affections, not merely in a state of rival- 
 sliip, but in a state of enmity — and that so 
 irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell to- 
 gether in the same bosom. We have al- 
 ready affirmed how impossible it were for 
 the heart, by any innate elasticity of its 
 own, to cast the world aAvay from it, and 
 thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The 
 heart is not so constituted, and the only 
 way to dispossess it of an old affection, is 
 by the expulsive power of a new one. No- 
 tliing can exceed the magnitude of the re- 
 qyired change in a man's charactei- — when 
 bidden as he is in the New Testament, to 
 love not the world; no, nor any of the 
 things that are in the world — for this so 
 comprehends all that is dear to him in 
 existence, as to be equivalent to a com- 
 mand of self-annihilation. But the same 
 revelation which dictates so mighty an 
 obedience, places within our reach as 
 mighty an instrument of obedience. It 
 brings for admittance, to the very door of 
 our heart, an affection which, once seated 
 upon its throne, will either subordinate 
 every previous inmate, or bid it away. Be- 
 side the world, it places before the e5'e of 
 the mind, him who made the world, and 
 with this peculiarity, which is all its own 
 — that in the Gospel do we so behold God, 
 as that we may love God. It is there, and 
 there only, where God stands revealed as 
 an object of confidence to sinners — and 
 where our desire after him is not chilled 
 into apathy, by that barrier of human guilt 
 which intercepts every approach that is 
 not made to him through the appointed 
 Mediator. It is the bringing in of this bet- 
 ter hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God 
 — and to live without hope, is to live with- 
 out God, and if the heart be without God, 
 the world will then have all the ascendency. 
 It is God apprehended by the believer as 
 God in Christ, who alone can dispost it 
 from this ascendency. It is when he stands 
 dismantled of the terrors which belong to 
 
«.l 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 275 
 
 him as an offended lawgiver, and when we 
 are enabled by faith, which is his own gift, 
 to see his glory in the face of Jesus Christ, 
 and to hear his beseeching voice, as it pro- 
 tests good will to men, and entreats the 
 return of all who will to a full pardon, and 
 a gracious acceptance — it is then, that a 
 love paramount to the love of the world, 
 and at length expulsive of it, first arises in 
 the regenerating bosom. It is Avhen re- 
 leased from the spirit of bondage, w^th 
 which love cannot dwell, and when admit- 
 ted into the number of God's children, 
 through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, 
 the spirit of adoption is poured upon us — it 
 is then that the heart, brought under the 
 mastery of one great and predominant af- 
 fection, is delivered from the tyranny of 
 its former desires, and in the only way in 
 which deliverance is possible. And that 
 faith which is revealed to us from heaven, 
 as indispensable to a sinner's justification 
 in the sight of God, is also the instrument 
 of the greatest of all moral and spiritual 
 achievements on a nature dead to the in- 
 fluence, and beyond the reach of every 
 other application. 
 
 Thus may we come to perceive what it 
 is that makes the most effective kind of 
 preaching. It is not enough to hold out 
 to the world's eye the mirror of its own 
 imperfections. It is not enough to come 
 forth with a demonstration, however pa- 
 thetic, of the evanescent character of all its 
 enjoyments. It is not enough to travel 
 the walk of experience along with j'ou, 
 and speak to your own conscience, and 
 vour own recollection of the deceitfulness 
 of the heart, and the deceitfulness of all 
 that the heart is set upon. There is many a 
 bearer of the Gospel message, who has not 
 shrewdness of natural discernment enough, 
 and who has not power of characteristic de- 
 scription enough, and who has not the talent 
 of moral delineation enough, to present you 
 with a vivid and faithfid sketch of the ex- 
 isting follies of society. But that very 
 corruption which he has not the faculty of 
 representing in its visible details, he may 
 practically be the instrument of eradicating 
 in its principle. Let him be but a faithful 
 expounder of the gospel testimony. — Un- 
 able as he may be to apply a descriptive 
 hand to the character of the present world, 
 let him but report with accuracy the mat- 
 ter which revelation has brought to him 
 from a distant world, — unskilled as he is in 
 the work of so anatomizing the heart, as 
 with the power of a novelist to create a 
 graphical or impressive exhibition of the 
 worthlessness of its many affections — let 
 him only deal in those mysteries of peculiar 
 doctrine, on which the best of novelists 
 have thrown the wantonness of their deri- 
 sion. He may not be able, with the eye 
 of shrewd and satirical observation, to ex- 
 
 pose to the ready recognition of his hearers 
 the desires of world) iness — but with the 
 tidings of the gospel in commission, he 
 may wield the only engine that can extir- 
 pate them. He cannot do what some have 
 done, when, as if by the hand of a ma- 
 gician, they have brought out to view, 
 from the hidden recesses of our nature, the 
 foibles and lurking appetites which belong 
 to it. — But he has a truth in his possession, 
 which into whatever heart it enters, will, 
 like the rod of Aaron, swallow up them all 
 — and unqualified as he may be, to describe 
 the old man in all the nicer shading of his 
 natural and constitutional varieties, with 
 him is deposited that ascendent influence un- 
 der which the leading tastes and tendencies 
 of the old man are destroyed, and he becomes 
 a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 Let us not cease, then, to ply the only 
 instrument of powerful and positive opera- 
 tion, to do away from you the love of the 
 world. Let us try every legitimate method 
 of finding access to your hearts for the love 
 of him who is greater than the world. For 
 this purpose, let us, if possible, clear away 
 that shroud of unbelief which so hides and 
 darkens the face of the Deity. Let us in- 
 sist on his claims to your affection — and 
 whether in the shape of gratitude, or in the 
 shape of esteem, let us never cease to aflirm, 
 that in the whole of that wondrous econo- 
 my, the purpose of which is to reclaim a 
 sinful world unto himself — he, the God of 
 love, so sets himself forth in characters of 
 endearment, that nought but faith, and 
 nought but understanding, are wanting, on 
 your part, to call forth the love of your 
 hearts back again. 
 
 And here let me advert to the incredulity 
 of a worldly man ; when he brings his own 
 sound and secular experience to bear upon 
 the high doctrines of Christianity — when 
 he looks on regeneration as a thing impos- 
 sible — Avhen feeling as he docs, the obsti- 
 nacies of his own heart on the side of 
 things present, and casting an intelligent 
 eye, much exercised perhaps in the obser- 
 vation of human life, on the equal obstina- 
 cies of all who are around him, he pro- 
 nounces this whole matter about the cruci- 
 fixion of the old man, and the resurrection 
 of a new man in his place, to be in down- 
 right opposition to all that is known and 
 witnessed of the real nature of humanity. 
 We think that we have seen such men, 
 who, firmly trenched in their own vigorous 
 and homebred sagacity, and shrewdly re- 
 gardful of all that passes before them 
 through the week, and upon the scenes of 
 ordinary business, look on that transition 
 of the heart by which it gradually dies 
 unto time, and awakens in all the life of a 
 new-felt and ever-growing desire towards 
 God, as a mere Sabbath speculation ; and 
 who thus, with all their attention engrossed 
 
276 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 upon the concerns of earthliness, continue 
 unmoved, to the end of their days, amongst 
 the feeUngs, and tlie appetites, and the pur- 
 suits of earthliness. If the thought of death, 
 and another slate of being after it, conies 
 across them at all, it is not with a change 
 so radical as that of being born again, that 
 they ever connect the idea of preparation. 
 They have some vague conception of its 
 being quite enough that they acquit them- 
 selves in some decent and tolerable way 
 of their relative obligations ; and that, upon 
 the strength of some such social and do- 
 mestic moralities as are often realized by 
 him in whose heart the love of God has 
 never entered, they will be transplanted in 
 safety from this world, where God is the 
 Being with whom it may almost be said, 
 that they have had nothing to do, to that 
 world where God is the Bemg with whom 
 they will have mainly and immediately to 
 do throughout all eternity. They admit all 
 that is said of the utter vanity of time, when 
 taken up with as a resting place. But they 
 resist every application made upon the 
 heart of man, with the view of so shifting 
 its tendencies, that it shall not henceforth 
 find in the interests of time, all its rest and 
 all its refreshment. They, in fact, regard 
 such an attempt as an enterprise that is al 
 together aerial — and with a tone of secular 
 wisdom, caught from the famdiarities of 
 every-day experience, do they see a vision- 
 ary character in all that is said of setting 
 our affections on the things that are above ; 
 and of walking by faith ; and of keeping 
 our hearts in such a love of God as shall 
 shut out from them the love of the world ; 
 and of having no confidence in the flesh ; 
 and of so renouncing earthly things as to 
 have our conversation in heaven. 
 
 Now, it is altogether worthy of being re- 
 marked of those men who thus disrelish 
 spirhu-il Christianity, and, in fact, deem it 
 an impracticable acquirement, how much 
 of a piece their incredulity about the de- 
 mands of Christianity, and their incredulity 
 about the doctrines of Christianity, are with 
 one another. No wonder that they feel the 
 work of the New Testament to be beyond 
 their strength, so long as they hold the 
 words of the New Testament to be beneath 
 their attention. Neither they nor any one 
 else can dispossess the heart of an old af- 
 fection, but by the impulsive power of a new 
 one — and, if that new affection be the love 
 of God, neither they nor any one else can 
 be made to entertain it, but on such a re- 
 presentation of the Deity, as shall draw the 
 heart of the sinner towards him. Now 
 it is just their unbelief which screens 
 from the discernment of their mmds this 
 representation. They do not see the love 
 of God in sending his Son into the world. 
 They do not see the expression of his ten- 
 derness to men, in sparing him not, but 
 
 giving him up unto the death for us all. They 
 do not see the sutticicncy of the atonement, 
 or of the sufferings that were endured by 
 him who bore the burden that sinners 
 should have borne. They do not see the 
 blended holiness and compassion of the 
 Godhead, in that he passed by the trans- 
 gressions of his creatures, yet coidd not 
 pass them by without an expiation. It is a 
 mystery to them, how a man should pass 
 to the state of godliness from a state of na- 
 ture — but had they only a beheving view 
 of God manifest in the flesh, this would re 
 solve for them the wliole mystery of godli 
 ness. As it is, they cannot get quit of 
 their old affections, because they are out 
 of sight from all those truths which have 
 influence to raise a new one. They aie like 
 the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, 
 when required to make bricks without straw 
 — they cannot love God, while thf y want 
 the only food which can aliment this aff'cction 
 in a sinner's bosom — and however great 
 their errors may be both in resisting the de- 
 mands of the Gospel as impracticable, and 
 in rejecting the doctrines of the Gospel as 
 inadmissible, yet there is not a spiritual 
 man (and it is the prerogative of him who 
 is spiritual to judge all men) who will not 
 perceive that there is a consistency in these 
 errors. 
 
 Put if there be a consistency in the errors, 
 in like manner is there a consistency in the 
 truths which are opposite to them. The 
 man who believes in the peculiar dtctrines, 
 will readily bow to the peculiar demands 
 of Christianity. When he is told to love 
 God supremely, this may startle another, 
 but it will not startle him to whom God has 
 been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and 
 in all the freeness of an offered reconcilia- 
 tion. When told to shut out the world from 
 his heart, this may be impossible with him 
 who has nothing to replace it — but not im- 
 possible with him, who has found in God 
 a sure and a satisfying portion. When told 
 to withdraw his affections from the things 
 that are beneath, this were laying an order 
 of self-extinction upon the man, who knows 
 not another quarter in the whole sphere of 
 his contemplation, to which he could trans- 
 fer them— but it were not grievous to him 
 whose view has been opened up to the love- 
 liness and glory of the things that are 
 above, and can there find, for every feeling 
 of his soul, a most ample and delighted oc- 
 cupation. When told to look not to the 
 things that are seen and temporal, this were 
 blotting out the light of all that is visible 
 from the prospect of him in whose eye 
 there is a wall of partition between guilty 
 nature and the joys of eternity— but he 
 who believes that Christ hath broken dawn 
 this wall, finds a gathering radiance upon 
 his soul, as he looks onwards in faith to 
 the things that are unseen and eternal 
 
11.] 
 
 THE EXPULSIVE POWER OF A NEW AFFECTION. 
 
 277 
 
 Tell a man to be holy — and how can he 
 compass such a performance, when his 
 alone fellowship with holiness is a fellow- 
 ship of despair ? It is the atonement of the 
 cross reconciling the holiness of the law- 
 giver with the safety of the offender, that 
 hath opened the way for a sanctifying in- 
 fluence into the sinner's heart, and he can 
 take a kindred impression from the cha- 
 racter of God now brought nigh, and now 
 at peace with him. Separate the demand 
 from the doctrine, and you have either a 
 system of righteousness that is impractica- 
 ble, or a barren orthodoxy. Bring the de- 
 mand and the doctrine together — and the 
 true disciple of Christ is able to do the one, 
 through the other strengthening him. The 
 motive is adequate to the movement ; and 
 the bidden obedience of the Gospel is not 
 beyond the measure of his strength, just 
 because the doctrine of the Gospel is not 
 beyond the measure of his acceptance. 
 The shield of faith, and the hope of salva- 
 tion, and the Word of God, and the girdle of 
 truth — these are the armour that he has put 
 on ; and with these the battle is won, and the 
 eminence is reached, and tlie man stands on 
 the vantage ground of a new field and a new 
 prospect. The effect is great, but the cause 
 is equal to it — and stupendous as this moral 
 resurrection to the precepts of Christianity, 
 undoubtedly is, there is an element of 
 strength enough to give it being and con- 
 tinuance in the principles of Christianity. 
 
 The object of the Gospel is both to pacify 
 the sinner's conscience, and to purify his 
 heart ; and it is of importance to observe, 
 that what mars the one of these objects, 
 mars the other also. The best way of cast- 
 ing out an impure affection is to admit a 
 pure one; and by the love of what is good, 
 to expel the love of what is evil. Thus it 
 is, that the freer the Gospel, the more sanc- 
 tifying is the Gospiil ; and the more it is re- 
 ceived as a doctrine of grace, the more will 
 it be felt as a doctrine according to godli- 
 ness. This is one of the secrets of the 
 Christian life, that the more a man holds 
 of God as a pensioner, the greater is the 
 payment of service that he renders back 
 again. On the tenure of " Do this and livT," 
 a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and 
 the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away 
 all confidence from the intercourse between 
 God and man ; and the creature striving to 
 be square and even with his Creator, is, in 
 tact, pu:rsuing all tlie while his own selfish- 
 ness instead of God's glory ; and with all 
 the conformities which he labours to ac- 
 complish, the soul of obedience is not there, 
 the mind is not subject to the law of God, 
 nor indeed under such an economy ever 
 can be. It is only when, as in the Gospel, 
 acceptance is bestowed as a present, with- 
 out money and without price, that the se- 
 curity which man feels in God is placed 
 
 beyond the reach of disturbance — or, that 
 he can repose in him, as one friend reposes 
 in another — or, that any liberal and gene- 
 rous understanding can be established be- 
 twixt them — the one party rejoicing over 
 the other to do him good — the other find- 
 ing that the truest gladness of his heart lies 
 in the impulse of a gratitude, by which it is 
 awakened to the charms of a new moral 
 existence. Salvation by grace — salvation 
 by free grace — salvation not of works, but 
 according to the mercy of God — salvation 
 on such a footing is not more indispensable 
 to the deliverance of our persons from the 
 hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance 
 of our hearts from the chill and the weight 
 of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or 
 fragment of legality with the Gospel, and 
 you raise a topic of distrust between man 
 and God. You take away from the power 
 of the Gospel to melt and to conciliate. For 
 this purpose, the freer it is, the better it is. 
 That very peculiarity which so many dread 
 as the germ of Antinomianism, is, in fact, 
 the germ of a new spirit, and a new inclina- 
 tion against it. Along with the light of a 
 free Gospel, does there enter the love of the 
 Gospel, which in proportion as you impair 
 the freeness, you are sure to chase away. 
 And never does the sinner find within him- 
 self so mighty a moral transformation, as 
 when under the belief that he is saved by 
 grace, he feels constrained thereby to oflfer 
 his heart a devoted thing, and to deny un- 
 godliness. 
 
 To do any work in the best manner, you 
 would make use of the fittest tools for it. 
 And Ave trust, that what has been said may 
 serve in some degree, for the practical 
 guidance of those who would like to reach 
 the great moral achievement of our text — 
 but feel that the tendencies and desires of 
 Nature are too strong for them. We know 
 of no other way by which to keep the love 
 of the world out of our heart, than to keep 
 in our hearts the love of God — and no other 
 way by which to keep our hearts in the 
 love of God, than building ourselves up on 
 our most holy faith. That denial of the 
 world which is not possible to him that dis- 
 sents from the Gospel testimony, is possible, 
 even as all things are possible to him that 
 believeth. To try this without faith, is to 
 work without the right tool or the right in- 
 strument. But faith worketh by love ; and 
 the way of expelling from the heart the 
 love that transgresseth the law, is to admit 
 into its receptacles the love which fulfilleth 
 the law. 
 
 Conceive a man to be standing on the 
 margin of this green world ; and that, when 
 he looked towards it, he saw abundance 
 smiling upon every field, and all the bless- 
 ings which earth can afford, scattered in 
 profusion throughout every family, and the 
 light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the 
 
278 
 
 THE SURE WARRANT OF A BELIEVER'S HOPE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 pleasant habitations, and the joys of human 
 companionship brightening many a happy 
 circle of society — conceive this to be the 
 general character of the scene upon one 
 side of his contemplation ; and that on the 
 other, beyond the verge of the goodly 
 planet on which he was situated, he could 
 descry nothing but a dark, and fathomless 
 unknown. Think you that he would bid a 
 voluntary adieu to all the brightness and 
 all the beauty that were before him upon 
 earth, and commit himself to the frightful 
 solitude away from it. Would he leave its 
 peopled dwelling places, and become a soli- 
 tary wanderer through the fields of non- 
 entity ? If space offered him nothing but a 
 wilderness, would he for it abandon the 
 homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness 
 that lay so near, and exerted such a power 
 of urgency to detain him ? Would not he 
 cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and 
 of society? — and shrinking away from the 
 desolation that was beyond it, would not he 
 be glad to keep his firm footing on the ter- 
 ritory of this world, and to take shelter under 
 the silver canopy that was stretched over it ? 
 But if, during the time of his contempla- 
 tion, some happy island of the blest had 
 floated by ; and there had burst upon his 
 senses the light of its surpassing glories, and 
 
 its sounds of sweeter melody ; and he clearly 
 saw, that there, a purer beauty rested upon 
 every field, and a more heart-felt joy spread 
 itself among all the families; and he could 
 discern there a peace, and a piety, and a 
 benevolence, wdiich put a moral gladness 
 into every bosom, and united the whole so- 
 ciety in one rejoicing sympathy with each 
 other, and with the beneficent Father of 
 them all. — Could he further see, that pain 
 and mortality were there unknown ; and 
 above all, that signals of welcome were 
 hung out, and an avenue of comnuinicalion 
 was made for him — perceive you not, that 
 wl^at was before the wilderness, would be- 
 come the land of invitation ; and that now 
 the world would be the wilderness ? What 
 unpeopled space coidd not do, can be done 
 by space teeming with beatific scenes, and 
 beatific society. And let the existing ten- 
 dencies of the heart be what they may to 
 the scene that is near and visible around us, 
 still if another stood revealed to the pros- 
 pect of man, either through the channel of 
 faith, or through the channel of his senses — 
 then, without violence done to the consti- 
 tution of his moral nature, may he die unto 
 the present world, and live to the lovelier 
 world that stands in the distance away 
 from it. 
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 The sure Warrant of a Believer's Hope. 
 
 " For if, when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by ihe death of his Son : much more, being 
 reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." — Romans v. 10. 
 
 St. Paul, who, by the way, is by far the 
 most argumentative of all the Apostles — 
 and who, from being the most successful of 
 them all, proves that argument is both a 
 legitimate and a powerful weapon in the 
 work of making Christians, sometimes un- 
 dertakes to reason upon one set of premises, 
 and then to demonstrate how much more 
 valid and irresistible is the conclusion which 
 he tries to establish, when he is in actual 
 possession of another and more fovourable 
 set of premises. In this way a great addi- 
 tional strength is made to accrue to his ar- 
 gument — and the how much more with 
 which he finishes, causes it to come with 
 greater power and assurance upon his rea- 
 ders — and it is this which gives him the 
 advantage of what is well known, both in 
 law and in logic, under the phrase of argu- 
 inentum a foi'tiore, or, an argument which 
 riffirms a thing to be true in adverse and 
 unpromising circumstances, and therefore 
 far more worthy of being held true in like- 
 lier circumstances. It is quite a familiar 
 
 mode of reasoning in common discourse. 
 If a neighbour be bound to sympathise witli 
 the distresses of an unfortunate family, how 
 much more, when that neighbour is a re- 
 lative? If I obtained an offer of friendship 
 from a man in difficulties, how much more 
 may I count upon it should he now be 
 translated into a state of sufficiency and 
 ease ? If, in the very heat of our quarrel, 
 and under the discouragement of all my pro- 
 voking insolence towards him, my enemy 
 forbear the vengeance which he had the 
 power to indict, liow much more, should 
 the quarrel be made up, and I have beeft 
 long in terms of reconciliation with him, 
 may I feel myself secure from the effects 
 of his indignation ? Such also is the argu- 
 ment of my text. There is one state of mat- 
 ters in which God sets forth a demonstra- 
 tion of friendship to the world, and this is 
 compared with the present and actual state 
 of matters, more favourable than the former, 
 and from whicli, therefore, the friendship 
 of God may be still more surely inferred. 
 
in. J 
 
 THE SURE WARRANT OF A BELIEVER'S HOPE. 
 
 279 
 
 and still more firmly confided in. But it 
 will be further seen, that in this short sen- 
 tence of the Apostle, there lies a compound 
 argument which admits of being separated 
 into distinct parts. There is a reference 
 made to a two- fold state of matters, which, 
 by being resolved into its two particulars, 
 brings out two accessions of strength to the 
 conclusion of our Apostle, which are inde- 
 pendent of each other. He, in fact, holds 
 forth a double claim upon our understand- 
 ing, and we propose to view successively 
 the two particulars of which it is made up. 
 
 There is first, then, a comparison made 
 between one state of matters, and another 
 state of matters which obtain in our earth — 
 and there is at the same time a comparison 
 made between one state of matters, and 
 another state of matters which obtain in 
 heaven — aud from eacli of these there may 
 be educed an argument for strengthening 
 the assurance of every Christian, in that 
 salvation which the Gospel has made known 
 to us. 
 
 Let us first look, then, to the two states 
 upon earth — and this may be done either 
 with a reference to this world's history, or 
 it may be done with a reference to the per- 
 sonal history of every one man who is now 
 a believer. 
 
 That point of time in the series of ge- 
 neral history at which reconciliation was 
 made, was when our Saviour said that it is 
 finislied, and gave up the ghost. God may 
 be said to have then become reconciled to 
 the world, in as far as he was ready to enter 
 into agreement with all who drew nigh in 
 the name of this great propitiation. Now 
 think of the state of matters upon earth, 
 previous to the time when reconciliation in 
 this view was entered upon. Think of the 
 strength of that moving principle in the 
 bosom of the Deity, which so inclined him 
 towards a world then lying in the depths of 
 ungodliness — and from one end to another 
 of it, lifting the cry of rebellion against him. 
 There was no movement on the part of the 
 world towards God — no returning sense of 
 allegiance towards him from whom they 
 liad revolted so deeply — no abatement of 
 that profligacy which so rioted at large over 
 a wide scene of lawless, and thankless, and 
 careless abandonment — no mitigation of that 
 foul and audacious insolence by which the 
 throne of heaven was assailed ; and a spec- 
 tacle so full of offence to the unfallen was 
 held forth, of a whole province in arms 
 against the lawful Monarch of creation. 
 Had the world thrown doAvn its weapons 
 of disobedience — had a contrite and relent- 
 ing spirit gone previously forth among its 
 generations — had the light which even tl\en 
 glimmered in the veriest wilds of Pagan- 
 ism, just up to the strength and degree of 
 Its influence, told aright on the moral 
 sensibilities of the deluded and licentious 
 
 worshippers — had they, whose conscience 
 was a law unto themselves, just acted and 
 followed on as they might under the guid- 
 ance of its compunctious visitations — had 
 there been any thing like the forth-gomg 
 of a general desire, however faint, towards 
 that unknown Being, the sense and impres- 
 sion of whom were never wholly oblite- 
 rated — then it might have been less decisive 
 of God's will for reconciliation, that he gave 
 way to these returning demonstrations on 
 the part of his alienated creatures, and 
 reared a pathway of communication by 
 which sinners may draw nigh imto God. 
 But for God to have done this very thing, 
 when these sinners were persisting in the 
 full spirit and determination of their unholy 
 warfare — for him to have done so, when in- 
 stead of any returning loyalty rising up to 
 him like the incense of a sweet-smelling 
 savour, the exhalations of idolatry and vice 
 blackened the whole canopy of heaven, 
 and ascended in a smoke of abomination 
 before him — for him to have done so at the 
 very time that all flesh had corrupted it? 
 ways, and when either with or without the 
 law of revelation, God saw that the wicked- 
 ness of man was great in the earth, and that 
 every imagination of the thoughts of his 
 heart was only evil continually — in these 
 circumstances of deep and unalleviated pro- 
 vocation, and when God may have eased 
 him of his adversaries, by sweeping the 
 whole of this moral nuisance away from 
 the face of the universe which it deformed — 
 for such a time to have been a time of love, 
 when majesty seemed to call for some so- 
 lemn vindication, but mere}' could not let 
 us go — surely, if through such a barrier be- 
 tween God and the guilty, he, in the long- 
 ings of his desire after them, forced a path- 
 way of reconciliation, he never will turn 
 himself away from any, who, cheered for- 
 ward by his own intreaties, are Avalking 
 upon that path. But if, when enemies, he 
 himself found out an approach by whicli 
 he might beckon them to enter into peace 
 with him, how much more when they are 
 so approaching, will he meet them with the 
 light of his countenance, and bless them 
 with the joys of his salvation. 
 
 But this argument may be looked to in 
 another way. Instead of fixing our regards 
 upon that point in the general history of the 
 world, when the avenue was struck out be- 
 tween our species and their offended Law- 
 giver ; and through the rent vail of a Sa- 
 viour's flesh, a free and consecrated way of 
 access was opened for the guiltiest of thera 
 all — let a believer in Christ fix his regards 
 upon that passage in his own personal his- 
 tory at which he was drawn in liis desires 
 and in his confidence to this great Mediator, 
 and entered upon the grace wherein he now 
 stands, and gave up his evil heart" of unbe- 
 lief, and made his transition out of dark- 
 
280 
 
 THE SURE WARRANT OF A BELIEVEr's HOPE. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 ness to the marvellous light of the Gospel. 
 Let him compare what he was, when an 
 alien from God, through wicked works of 
 his own, with what he is when a humble 
 but confiding expectant of God's mercy 
 through the righteousness of another. Who 
 translated him into the condition which he 
 now occupies? Who put into his heart the 
 faith of the Gospel? Who awakened him 
 from the dormancy and unconcern of na- 
 ture ? Who stirred up that restless but salu- 
 tary alarm which at length issued in the 
 secure feeling of reconciliation ? There was 
 a time of his past life when the whole doc- 
 trine of salvation was an offence to him, 
 when its preaching was foolishness to his 
 ears; when its phraseology tired and dis- 
 gusted him ; when, in light and lawless 
 companionship, he put the warnings of reli- 
 gious counsel, and the urgency of menacing 
 sermons away from his bosom — a time when 
 the world was his all, and when he was 
 wholly given over to the idolatry of its 
 pursuits, and pleasures, and projects of ag- 
 grandizement — a time when his heart was 
 unvisited with any permanent seriousness 
 about God, of whom his conscience some- 
 times reminded him, but whom he soon 
 dismissed from his earnest contemplation — 
 a time when he may have occasionally 
 heard of a judgment, but without one prac- 
 tical movement of his soul towards the task 
 of preparation — a time when the overtures 
 of peace met him on his way, but which 
 he, in the impetuous prosecution of his own 
 objects, utterly disregarded — a time when 
 death plied him with its ever-recurring me- 
 mentoes, but which he, overlooking the 
 short and summary arithmetic of the few 
 little years that lay between him and the 
 last messenger, placed so far on the back- 
 ground of his anticipation, that this earth, 
 this passing and perishable earth, formed 
 the scene of all his solicitudes. Is there 
 none here present who remembers such a 
 time of his by-gone history, and with such 
 a character of alienation from God and from 
 his Christ, as 1 have now given to it? And 
 who, I ask, recalled him from this aliena- 
 tion ? By whose guidance was he con- 
 ducted to" that demonstration either of the 
 press or of the pulpit, which av\-akened him ? 
 Who sent that afflictive visitation to his 
 door, which weaned his spirit from the 
 world, and wooed it to the deathless friend- 
 ships, and the ever-during felicities of hea- 
 ven ? Who made known to him the extent 
 of his guilt, witVi the overpassing extent of 
 the redemption that is provided for it ? It 
 was not he himself who origiiiated the pro- 
 cess of his own salvation. God may have 
 abandoned him to his own courses; and 
 said of him as he has done of many others, 
 " I will let him alone, since he will have it 
 so ;" and given him up to that judicial blind 
 ntss, under which the vast majority of the 
 
 world are now sleeping in profonndest leth- 
 argy; and witiiiield altogether tliat light of 
 the spirit which he had done so much to 
 extinguish. But if. instead of all this, God 
 kept by him in the midst of his thankless 
 provocations — and while he was yet a re- 
 gardless enemy, made his designs of grace 
 to bear upon him — and throughout all the 
 mazes of his chequered history, conducted 
 him to the knowledge of himself as a recon- 
 ciling God — and so softened his heart with 
 family bereavements, or so tore it from all 
 its worldly dependencies by the disasters of 
 business, or so shook it with frightful agi- 
 tation by the terrors of tlie law, or so shone 
 upon it with the light of his free Spirit, as 
 made it glad to escape from the treachery 
 of nature's joys and nature's promises, into 
 a relying faith on the offers and assurances 
 of the Gospel — why, just let him think of 
 the time when God did so much for him — 
 and then think of the impossibility that God 
 will recede from him now, or that he Avill 
 cease from the prosecution of t!iat work in 
 circumstances of earnest and desirous con- 
 currence on the part of the believer, which he 
 himself begun in the circumstances either 
 of his torpid unconcern, or of his active and 
 haughty defiance. The God who moved 
 towards him in his days of forgetfulness, 
 will not move away from him in his days 
 of hourly and habitual remembrance — and 
 he- who intercepted him in his career of re- 
 bellion, will not withdraw from him in his 
 career of new obedience — and he who first 
 knocked at the door of his conscience, and 
 that too in a prayerless, and tliankless, and 
 regardless season of his history, will not, 
 now that he prays in the name of Christ, 
 and now that his heart is set upon salva- 
 tion, and now that the doctrine of grace 
 forms all his joy and all his dependence; 
 he who thus found him out a distant and 
 exiled rebel, will not abandon him now that 
 his fellowship is with the Father, and with 
 the Son. It is thus that the believer may 
 shield his misgiving heart from all its des- 
 pondencies. It is thus that the argument of 
 the text goes to fortify his feith, and to per- 
 fect that which is lacking in it. It is thus 
 that the how much more of the Apostles 
 should cause him to abound more and more 
 in the peace and the joy of believing — and 
 should encourage every man who has laid 
 hold on the hope set before us, to steady 
 and confirm his hold still more tenaciously 
 than before, so as to keep it fast and sure 
 even unto the end. 
 
 With a man who knows himself to be a 
 believer, this argument is quite irresistible, 
 and it will go to establish his faith, and to 
 strengthen it, and to settle it, and to make 
 it perfect. But it is possible for a man really 
 to believe, and yet to be in ignorance for a 
 time whether he does so or not— and it is 
 possible for a man to be in earnest about 
 
ai. 
 
 THE SURE WARRAM' OF A BELIEVER'S HOPE. 
 
 281 
 
 his soul, and yet not to have received that 
 truth wiiich is unto salvation — and it is pos- 
 sible for him to be actuated by a strong 
 general desire to be right, and yet to be 
 walking among the elements of uncertain- 
 ty — and it is possible for him t(j be looking 
 to that quarter whence the truths of tlie 
 Gospel are offered to his contemplation, and 
 yet not to have attained the distinct or satis- 
 fying perception of tiiem — thoroughly en- 
 gaged in the prosecution of his peace with 
 God, determinedly bent on this object as the 
 highest interest he can possibly aspire after, 
 labouring after a settlement, and, under all 
 the agonies of a fierce internal war, seeking, 
 and toiling, and praying for his deliverance. 
 It is at the point of time when faith en- 
 ters the heart, that reconciliation is entered 
 upon — nor can we say of this man, that he 
 is yet a believer, or, that he has passed from 
 the condition of an enemy to that of a friend. 
 And yet upon him the argument of the text 
 should not be without its efficacy. It is 
 such an argument as may be employed not 
 merely to confirm the faith which already 
 exists, bur to help on to its formation that 
 faith which is struggling for an establisli- 
 ment in the heart of an inquirer. It falls, 
 no doubt, with fullest and most satisfying 
 light upon the heart of a conscious be- 
 liever — and yet may it be addressed, and 
 with pertinency too, to men under their first 
 and earliest visitations of seriousness. For 
 give me an acquaintance of whom I know 
 nothing more tlian that his face is towards 
 Zion — give me one arrested by a sense of 
 guilt and of danger, and merely groping 
 his way to a place of enlargement — give 
 me a soul not in peace, but in perplexity, 
 and in the midst of all those initial dithcul- 
 ties which beset the awakened sinner, ere 
 Christ shall give him light — give me a la- 
 bouring and heavy laden sinner, haunted 
 by the reflection, as if by an arrow sticking 
 fast, that the mighty question of his eter- 
 nitj' is yet unresolved. There are many I 
 fear amongst you to whom this tremendous 
 uncertainty gives no concern — but give me 
 one who lias newly taken it up, and who, 
 in the minglings of doubt and despondencj^, 
 has not found his way to any consolation — 
 and even with him may it be found, that 
 the same reason which strengthens the hope 
 of an advanced Cliristian, may well inspire 
 the hope of him who has still his Christian- 
 ity to find, and thus cast a cheering and a 
 comforting influence on the very infancy of 
 his progress. For if it was in behalf of a 
 careless world that the costly apparatus of 
 redemption was reared — if it was in the 
 lull front and audacity of their most deter- 
 mined rebellion, that God laid the plan of 
 reconciliation — if it was for the sake of men 
 sunk in the very depths of ungodliness, that 
 he constructed his overtures of peace, and 
 sent forth his Son with them amongst our 
 36 
 
 loathsome and polluted dwelling-places — if 
 to get at his strayed children, lie liad thus 
 to find his way through all tiiose ekments 
 of impiety and ungodliness, which are most 
 abhorrent to the sanctity of his nature, think 
 you, my brethren, think you l!iat the God 
 who made such an advancing movement 
 towards the men whose faces were utterly 
 away from him — is this a God who will 
 turn his own face away from tlie man \\ho 
 is moving towards God, and earnestly seek- 
 ing after him, if haply he may find him? 
 
 This argument obtains great additional 
 force, when we look to the state of matters 
 in heaven at the time that we upon earth 
 were enemies, and compare it with the state 
 of matters in heaven, now that we are ac- 
 tualh" reconciled, or are beginning to enter- 
 tain the offers of reconciliation. Before the 
 work of our redemption, Jesus Christ was 
 in primeval glory — and though a place of 
 mystery to us, it was a place of secure and 
 ineffable enjoyment — insomuch, that the 
 fondest prayer he could utter in the depths 
 of his humiliation, was to be taken back 
 again to the ancient of days, and there to be 
 restored to the glor}' which he had with 
 him before the world was. It was from the 
 heights of celestial security and blessedness 
 that he looked with an eye of pity on our 
 sinful habitation — it was from a scene where 
 beings of a holy nature surrounded him. 
 and the full homage of the Divinity^ was 
 rendered to him, and in the ecstacies of his 
 fellowship with God the Father, all was 
 peace, and purity, and excellence — it was 
 from this that he took his voluntary depar- 
 ture, and went out on his errand to seek 
 and to save us. And it was not the parade 
 of an unreal suffering that he had to en- 
 counter; but a deep and a dreadful endur- 
 ance — it was not a triumphant promenade 
 through this lower world, made easy over 
 all its obstacles by the energies of his God- 
 head; but a conflict of toil and of strenuous- 
 ness — it was not an egress from heaven on 
 a journey brightened through all its stages 
 by the hope of a smooth and gentle return; 
 but it was such an exile from heaven as 
 made his ascent and his readmittance there 
 the fruit of a hard won victory. We have 
 nothing but the fcicts of revelation to guide 
 or to inform us, and yet from these we most 
 assuredly gather, that the Saviour, in step- 
 ping down from the elevation of his past 
 eternity, incurred a substantial degradation 
 — that when he wrapped himself in the hu- 
 manity of our nature, he put on the wiiole 
 of its infirmities and its sorrows — that for 
 the joy which he renounced, he became 
 acquainted with grief, and a grief, too, 
 commensurate to the whole burden of our 
 world's atonement — that the hidings of his 
 Father's countenance were terrifying to his 
 soul — and when the oflfended justice of the 
 Godhead Avas laid upon his person, it re- 
 
2S2 
 
 THE SURE WARRANT 01 A BELIEVER'S HOPE. 
 
 SERM. 
 
 quired the whole strength of the Godliead 
 to sustain it. What mean the agonies of the 
 garden? What mean the bitter cries and 
 comphiiiiings of abandunment upon the 
 cross? What raeaneth the prayer tliat the 
 cup miglU pass away from him, and the 
 struggle of a lofty resolution with the ago- 
 nies of a mighty and unknown distress, and 
 the evident symptoms of a great and toil- 
 some achievement throughout the whole 
 progress of this undertaking, and angels 
 looking down from their eminences, as on 
 a field of contest where a great'Captain had 
 to put forth the travailing of his strength, 
 and to spoil principalities and powers, and 
 to make a show of them openly ? Was there 
 nothing in all this, do you think, but the 
 mockery of a humihation that was never 
 felt — the mockery of a pain that was never 
 suffered — the mockery of a battle that was 
 never fought? No, my brethren, be assured 
 that there was, on that day. a real vindica- 
 tion of God's insulted majesty. On that day 
 there was the real transference of an aveng- 
 ing hand, from the heads of the guilty to the 
 head of the innocent. On that day one man 
 died for the people, and there was an actual 
 laying on of the iniquhies of us all. It was 
 a war of strength and of suffering in highest 
 possible aggi'avation because the war of ele- 
 ments which were infinite. The wrath 
 which millions should have borne, was all 
 of it discharged. Nor do we estimate aright 
 what we owe of love and obligation to the 
 Saviour, till we believe, that the whole of 
 . that fury, which if poured out upon the 
 world, would have served its guilt}' genera- 
 tions through eternity — that all of it was 
 poured into the cup of expiation. 
 
 A more adequate sense of this might not 
 only serve to awaken the gratitude which 
 slumbers within us, and is dead — it might 
 also, through the aid of the argument in my 
 text, awaken and assure our confidence. If 
 when we were enemies, Christ ventured on 
 an enterprise so painful — if, when loathsome 
 outcasts from the sacred territory of hea- 
 ven, he left the abode of his Father, and 
 exchanged love, and adoration, and con- 
 genial felicity among angels, for the hatred 
 and persecution of men — ^-if, when the ago- 
 nies of the coming vengeance were still be- 
 fore him, and the dark and dreary vale of 
 suffering had yet to be entered upon, and he 
 had to pass under the inflictions of that 
 sword which the eternal God awakened 
 against his Fellow, and he had still to give 
 himself up to a death equivalent in the 
 amount of its soreness to the devouring fire, 
 and the everlasting.burnings, which but for 
 him believers would have borne — if. when 
 all this had yet to be travelled through, he 
 nevertheless, in his compassionate longing 
 for the souls of men, went forth upon the 
 errand of winning them to himself, — let us 
 just look to the state of matters in heaven 
 
 j then, and compare it with the state of mat- 
 I ters nnvv. 
 
 Christ has there ascended on the wings 
 of victory — and he is now sitting at God's 
 right hand, amid all the purchased triumphs 
 ' of his obedience — and the toil, and the con- 
 j flict, and the agony, are now over — and 
 [ fro^i that throne of mediatorship to which 
 he has been exalted, is h his present office 
 to welcome the approaches of all who come, 
 and to save to the uttermost all who put 
 their trust in him. And is it possiiile, we 
 would ask, my brethren, is it possilile that 
 he who died to atone, now that he lives, 
 will not live to make intercession for us? 
 Can the love for men which bore him 
 through a mighty and a painful sacrifice, 
 not be strong enough to carry him onwards 
 in peace and in triumph to its final consum- 
 mation? Will he now abandon that work 
 which his own hands have so laboriously 
 reared ? — or leave the cause for which he 
 has already sustained the weight of such an 
 endurance, in the embryo and unfinished 
 state of an abortive undertaking? Will he 
 cast awa}' I'rom him the spoils of that vic- 
 tory for which he bled ; and how can it be 
 imagined for a moment, but by such dark 
 and misgiving hearts as ours, that he whose 
 love for a thankless world carried him 
 through the heat and the severity of a con- 
 test that is now ended, will ever, with the 
 cold" and forbidding glance of an altered 
 countenance spurn an inquiring world away 
 from him? 
 
 The death of a crucified Saviour, when 
 beheld under such a view, is the firm step- 
 ping stone to confidence in a risen Saviour 
 You may learn from it that his desire and 
 your salvation are most thoroughly at one 
 Of his good-will to have you into heaven, 
 he has given the strongest pledge and de- 
 monstration, by consecrating, with his own 
 blood, a way of access, through which sin- 
 ners may draw nigh. And now, that as our 
 forerunner, he is already there — now that 
 he has gone up again to the place from 
 which he arose — now that to the very place 
 which he left to die, and that, that the bar- 
 rier to its entrance from our world may be 
 moved away, he has ascended alive and in 
 glory, without another death to endure, for 
 death has no more the dominion over him — 
 will ever he do any thing to close that en- 
 trance whicli it has cost him so much to 
 open ? Will he thus throw away the toil 
 and the travail of his own soul, and reduce 
 to impotency that apparatus of reconcilia- 
 tion which he himself has reared, and at an 
 expense, too, equal to the penance of many 
 millions through eternity? ^^^lat he died to 
 begin, will he not now live to carry for- 
 ward; and will not the love which could 
 force a May through the grave to its ac- 
 complishments—now that it has reached 
 the summit of triumph and of elevation 
 
III.] 
 
 THE SUIvE WARRANT OF A BELIEVER'S HOPE. 
 
 283 
 
 which he at present occupies, burst forth 
 and around the field of that niigiity enter- 
 prise, which was begun in deepest suffering, 
 and will end in full and finished glory? 
 
 This is a good argument in all the stages 
 of a man's Christianity. Whether he has 
 found, or is only seeking — whether he be 
 in a state of faith, or in a state of inquiry — 
 whether a believer like Paul and many of 
 the disciples that he was addressing, or an 
 earnest and convinced sinner groping the 
 way of deliverance, and labouring to be at 
 rest, there may be made to emanate from 
 the present circumstances of our Savioiu', 
 and the position that he now occupies, an 
 argument either to perpetuate the confi- 
 dence where it is, or to inspire it where it 
 is not. If, when an enemy, I was reconciled, 
 and that too by his death — if he laid down 
 his life to remove an obstacle in the way of 
 my salvation, how much more, now that he 
 has taken it up, will he not accomplish that 
 salvation? It is just fulfilling his own desire. 
 It is just prospering forward the very cause 
 that his heart is set upon. It is just follow- 
 ing out the facilities which he himself has 
 opened— and marching onward in glorious 
 procession, to the consummation of those 
 triumphs, for which he had to struggle his 
 way through a season of difficulties that are 
 now over. It is thus that the believer rea- 
 sons himself into a steadier assurance than 
 before — and peace may be made to flow 
 through his heart like a mighty river — and 
 resting on the foundation of Christ, he 
 comes to feel himself in a sure and wealthy 
 place — and the good-will of the Saviour 
 rises into an undoubted axiom — so as to 
 chase away all his distrust, and cause him 
 to delight himself greatly in the riches of 
 his present grace, and in the brightening 
 certainty of his coming salvation. 
 
 And this view of the matter is not only 
 fitted to heighten the confidence that is al- 
 ready formed — but also to originate the con- 
 fidence that needs to be inspired. It places 
 the herald of salvation on a secure and lofty 
 vantage ground. It seals and authenticates 
 the offer with which he is intrusted — and 
 with which he may go round among the 
 guiltiest of this world's population. It en- 
 ables him to say, that for guilt even in the 
 season of its most proud and unrepentant 
 defiance, did Christ give himself up unto 
 the death — and that to guilt even in this 
 state of hardihood, Christ in prosecution of 
 his own work has commissioned him to go 
 with the overtures of purchased mercy — 
 and should the guilt which has stood its 
 ground against the threatenings of power, 
 feel softened and arrested by pity's prevent- 
 ing call, may the preacher of forgiveness 
 affirm in his Master's name, that he, who 
 for the chief of sinners, bowed himself down 
 unto the sacrifice, will not now, that he has 
 arisen a Prince and a Saviour, stamp a nul- 
 
 lity upon that contest, the triumph of which 
 is awaiting him ; but the bitterness of which 
 has passed away. lie will not turn with 
 inditterence and distaste from that very fruit 
 which he- himself has fought for. But if for 
 guilt in its full impenitency, he dyed his 
 garments, and waded through the arena of 
 contest and of blood — then should the most 
 abandoned of her children begin a contrite 
 movement towards him, it is not he who 
 will cither break the prop for which he 
 feels, or quench his infant aspu-ation. He 
 will look to him as the travail of his own 
 soul, and in him he will be satisfied. 
 
 We know not what the measure of the 
 sinfulness is of any who now hear us. But 
 we know, that however foul his depravity, 
 and however deep the crimson dye of his 
 manifold iniquities may be, the measure of 
 the gospel warrant reaches even unto him. 
 It was to make an inroad on the territory 
 of Satan, and reclaim from it a kingdom 
 unto himself, that Christ died — and I speak 
 to the farthest off in guilt and alienation 
 amongst you — take the overture of peace 
 that is now brought to your door, and you 
 will add to that kingdom Mhich he came to 
 establish, and take away from that king- 
 dom which he came to destroy. The free- 
 ness of this Gospel has the honour of him 
 who liveth and was dead for its guarantee. 
 The security of the sinner and the glory 
 of the Saviour, are at one. And with the 
 spirit of a monarch who had to fight his 
 way to the dominion which was rightfully 
 his own, will he hail the returning alle- 
 giance of every rebel, as a new accession to 
 his triumphs, as another trophy to the might 
 and the glory of his great undertaking. 
 
 But, amid all this latitude of call and of 
 invitation, let me press upon you that alter- 
 native character of the Gospel, to which 1 
 have often adverted. I have tried to make 
 known to you, how its encouragements 
 rise the one above the other to him who 
 moves towards it. But it has its correspond- 
 ing terrors and severities, which also rise 
 the one above the other to him who moves 
 away from it. If the transgressor will not 
 be recalled by the invitation which I have 
 now made known to him, he will be rivet- 
 ted thereby into deeper and more hopeless 
 condemnation. If the offer of peace be not 
 entertained by him, then, in the very pro- 
 portion of its largeness and generosity, will 
 the provocation be of his insulting treat- 
 ment in having rejected it. Out of the 
 mouth of the Son of man there cometh a 
 two-edged sword. There is pardon free as 
 the light of heaven to all who will. There 
 is wrath, accumulated and irretrievable 
 wrath, to all who will not. "Kiss the -Son, 
 therefore, lest he be angry, and ye perish 
 from the way : when his wrath is kindled 
 but a little, blessed only are they who put 
 their trust in him." 
 
284 
 
 THE SURE Warrant of a believer's hope. 
 
 [SERM, 
 
 It is the most delusive of all calculations 
 to put off the acceptance of the Gospel, be- 
 cause of its freeiiess — and because it is free 
 at all times — and because the present you 
 think may be the time of your unconcern 
 and liberty, and some distant future be the 
 time of your return through that door 
 which will still be open for you. The door 
 of Christ's Mediatorship is ever open, till 
 death puts its unchangeable seal upon your 
 eternity. But the door of your own heart, 
 if you are not receiving him, is shut at 
 this moment, and every day is it fixing 
 and fastening more closely — and long ere 
 death summon you away, may it at length 
 settle immoveably upon its hinges, and the 
 voice of him who standet-h without, and 
 knoci<eth, may be unheard by the spiritual 
 ear — and, therefore, you are not made to 
 feel too much, though you feel as earnestly 
 as if now or never was the alternative on 
 which you were suspended. It is not 
 enough, that the Word of God, compared 
 to a hammer, be weighty and powerful. 
 The material on which it works must be 
 capable of an impression. It is not enough, 
 that there be a free and forcible applica- 
 tion. There must be a willing subject. 
 You are unwilling now, and therefore it' is 
 that conversion does not follow. To-mor- 
 row the probability is, that you will be still 
 more unwilling — and, therefore, though the 
 application be the same, the conversion is 
 still at a greater distance away from you. 
 And thus, while the application continues 
 the same, tlie subject hardens, and a good 
 result is ever becoming more and more 
 unlikely — and thus may it go on till you 
 arrive upon the bed of your last sickness, 
 at the confines of eternity — and what, I 
 would ask, is the kind of willingness that 
 comes upon you then ? Willing to escape 
 the pain of hell — this you are now, but yet 
 not willing to be a Christian. Willing that 
 the fire and your bodily sensations be 
 kept at a distance from each other — this 
 you are now, for who of you at present, 
 would thrust his hand among the flames ? 
 Willing that the frame of your animal sen- 
 sibilities shall meet with nothing to wound 
 or torture it — this is willingness of which 
 the lower animals, incapable of religion, 
 are yet as capable as yourself You will 
 be as wihing then for deliverance from 
 material torments as you can be now — but 
 there is a willingness v/hich you want now, 
 and which, in all likelihood, will then be 
 still more beyond the reach of your attain- 
 ment. If the free Gospel do not meet with 
 your willingness now to accept and sub- 
 mit to it, neither nviy it then. And I know 
 not, my brethren, what has been your ex- 
 perience in death-beds, but sure I am, that 
 both among the agonies of mortal disease, 
 and the terrors of the malefactor's cell, 
 Christ may be offered, and the offer be 
 
 sadly and sullenly put away. The free 
 proclamation is heard without one accom- 
 panying charm — and the man who refused 
 to lay hold of it through life, finds, that in 
 the impotency of his expiring grasp, he 
 cannot apprehend it. And O, if you but 
 knew how often the word of faith may fall 
 from the minister, and the work of faith be 
 lelt undone upon the dying man, never 
 would you so pot^tpone the purposes of se- 
 riousness, or look forward to the last week 
 of your abode upon earth as to the conve- 
 nient season for winding up the concerns 
 of a neglected eternity. 
 
 Tf you look attentively to the text, 3'ou 
 will find that there is something more than 
 a shade of difference between being recon- 
 ciled and being saved. Reconciliation is 
 spoken of as an event that has already 
 happened — salvation as an event that is to 
 come. The one event may lead to the 
 other J but there is a real distinction be- 
 tween them. It is true, that the salvation 
 instanced in the preceding verse, is salva- 
 vation from wrath. But it is the wrath 
 which is incurred by those who have sin- 
 ned wilfully, after they had come to the 
 knowledge of the truth — " when there re- 
 maineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a 
 certain fearful looking for of judgment and 
 fiery indignation, which shall devour the 
 adversaries." Jesus Christ will save us 
 frora this by saving us from sin. He who 
 hath reconciled us by his death, will, by his 
 life, accomplish for us this salvation. Re- 
 conciliation is not salvation. It is only the 
 portal to it. Justification is not the end of 
 Christ's coming — it is only the means to 
 an ultimate attainment. By his death he 
 pacified the lawgiver. By his life he puri- 
 fies the sinner. The one work is finished. 
 The other is not so, but it is only going on 
 unto perfection. And this is the secret of 
 that unwillingness which I have already 
 touched upon. There is a willingness that 
 God would lift off from their persons the 
 hand of an avenger. But there is not a 
 willingness that Christ would lay upon 
 their persons the hand of a sanctifier. The 
 motive for him to apprehend them is to 
 make them holy. But they care not to ap- 
 prehend that for which they are appre- 
 hended. They see not that the use of the 
 new dispensation, is for them to be restored 
 to the image they have lost, and, for this 
 purpose to be purged from their old sins. 
 This is the point on which they are in 
 darkness — "and they love the darkness 
 rather than the light, because their deeds 
 are evil." They are at all times willing for 
 the reward without the service. But they 
 are not willing for the reward and the ser- 
 vice together. The willingness for the one 
 they always have. But the willingness for 
 both they never have. They have it not 
 to-day — and it is not the operation of time 
 
IV. 1 
 
 THE RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 
 
 285 
 
 thai will put it in them to-inorrow. Nor 
 will disease put it in. Nor will age put it 
 in. Nor will the tokens of death put it in. 
 Nor will the near and terrific view of eter- 
 nity put it in. It may call out into a livelier 
 sensation than before, a willingness for the 
 reward. But it will neither inspire a taste 
 nor a willingness for the service. A dis- 
 taste for God and godliness, as it was the 
 
 reigning and paramount principle of his 
 life, so may it be the reigning and para- 
 mount principle of his dealh-bed. As it 
 envenomed every breath which he drew, 
 so may it envenom his last — and the spirit 
 going forth to the God who gave it, with 
 all the enmity that it ever had, God. will 
 deal with it as with an enemy. 
 
 SERMON IV. 
 
 The Restlessness of human Ambition. 
 
 "How say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain ? — O that I had the wings of a dove, that I may 
 fly away, and be at rest." — Psalm xi. 1. and \v. 6. 
 
 To all those who are conversant in the 
 scenery of external nature, it is evident, 
 that an object to be seen t-o the greatest ad- 
 vantage must be placed at a certain distance 
 from the eye of the observer. The poor 
 man's hut, though all withiji be raggedness 
 and disorder, and all around it be full of the 
 most nauseous and disgusting spectacles — 
 yet, if seen at a sufficient distance, may ap- 
 pear a sweet and interesting cottage. That 
 field where the thistle grows, and the face 
 of which is deformed by the wild exuber- 
 ance of a rank and pernicious vegetation, 
 may delight the eye of a distant spectator 
 by the loveliness of its verdure. That lake, 
 whose waters are corrupted, and whose 
 banks poison the air by their marshy and 
 putrid exhalations, may charm the eye of 
 an enthusiast, who views it from an adjoin- 
 ing eminence, and dwells with rapture on 
 the quietness of its surface, and on the 
 beauty of its outline — its sweet border 
 fringed with the gayest colouring of Na- 
 ture, and on which spring lavishes its finest 
 ornaments. All is the effect of distance. It 
 softens the harsh and disgusting features of 
 every object. What is gross and ordinary, 
 it can dress in the most romantic attrac- 
 tions. The country hamlet it can transform 
 into a paradise of beauty, in spite of the 
 abominations that are at every door, and 
 the angry brawlings of the men and the 
 women who occupy it. All that is loath- 
 some and offensive, is softened down by the 
 ^ower of distance. You see the smoke 
 rising in fantastic wreaths through the pure 
 air, and the village spire peeping from among 
 the thick verdure of the trees, which embo- 
 som it. The fancy of our sentimentalist 
 swells with pleasure, and peace and piety 
 supply their delightful associations to com- 
 plete the harmony of the picture. 
 
 This principle may serve to explain a 
 feeling which some of you who now hear 
 me may have experienced. On a fine day, 
 
 when the sun threw its unclouded splen- 
 dours over a whole neighbourhood, did you 
 never form a wish that your place could be 
 transferred to some distant and more beau- 
 tiful part of the landscape ? Did the idea 
 never rise in your fancy, that the people 
 who sport on yon sunny bank are happier 
 than yourself — that you would like to be 
 buried in that distant grove, and forget, for a 
 while, in silence and in solitude, the distrac- 
 tions of the world — that you would like to 
 repose by yon beautiful rivulet, and soothe 
 every anxiety of your heart by the gentle- 
 ness of its murmurs — that you would like 
 to transport yourself to the distance of miles, 
 and there enjoy the peace wliicli resides in 
 some sweet and sheltered concealment? In 
 a word, was there nosf cret aspiration of the 
 soul for another place than what you actu- 
 ally occupied? Instead of resting in the 
 quiet enjoyment of your present situation, 
 did not your wishes wander abroad and 
 aroimd you — and were not you ready to ex- 
 claim with the Psalmist in the text, "Othat 
 I had the wings of a dove; for I would fly 
 to yonder mountain, and be at rest?" 
 
 But what is of most nnportance to be ob- 
 served is. that even when y(ni have reached 
 the mountain, rest is as far from you as ever. 
 As you get nearer the wished-for spot, the 
 fairy enchantments in which distance had 
 arrayed it, gradually disappear; when j'ou 
 at last arrive at your object, the illusion is 
 entirely dissipated ; and you are grieved to 
 find, that you have carried the same princi- 
 ple of restlessness and discontent along with 
 you. 
 
 Now, what is true of a natural landscape, 
 is also true of that moral landscape, which 
 is presented to the eye of ttie mind when it 
 contemplates human life, and casts a wide 
 survey over the face of human society. The 
 position which I myself occupy is seen and 
 felt with all its disadvantages. Its -vexations 
 come home to my feelings with all the cer 
 
286 
 
 THE RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 tainty of experience. I see it before mine 
 eyes with a ^vision so near and intimate, as 
 to admit of no colouring, and to preclude the 
 exercise of fancy. It is only in those situa- 
 tions which are without me, where the prin- 
 ciple of deception operates, and where the 
 Tacancies of an imperfect experience are 
 filled up by the power of imagination, ever 
 ready to summon the fairest forms of pure 
 and unmingled enjoyment. It is all resolva- 
 ble, as before, into the principle of distance. 
 I am too far removed to see the smaller 
 features of the object which I contemplate. 
 I overlook the operation of those minuter 
 causes, which expose every situation of hu- 
 man life to the inroads of misery and dis- 
 appointment. Mine eye can only take in the 
 broader outlines of the object before me, 
 and it consigns to fancy the task of filling 
 them up with its finest colouring. 
 
 Am I unlearned ? I feel the disgrace of 
 ignorance, and sigh for the name and the 
 distinctions of philosophy. Do I stand upon 
 a literary eminence? I feel the vexations of 
 rivalship, and could almost renounce the 
 splendours of my dear-bought reputation 
 for the peace and shelter which insigni- 
 ficance bestows. Am I poor? I riot in 
 fancy upon the gratifications of luxury, and 
 think how great I would be, if invested with 
 all the consequence of wealth and of pa- 
 tronage. Am I rich? I sicken at the de- 
 ceitful splendour which surrounds me, and 
 am at times tempted to think, tliat I would 
 have been happier far. if, born to a humbler 
 station, I had been trained to the peace and 
 innocence of poverty. Am I immersed in 
 business ? I repine at the fatigues of em- 
 ployment, and envy the lot of those who 
 have every hour at their disposal, and can 
 spend all their time in the sweet relaxations 
 of amusement and society. Am I exempted 
 from the necessity of exertion ? I feel the 
 corroding anxieties of indolence, and at- 
 tempt in vain to escape that weariness and 
 disgust which useful and regular occupation 
 can alone save me from. Am I single ? I 
 feel the dreariness of solitude, and my fancy 
 warms at the conception of a dear and do- 
 mestic circle. Am I embroiled in the cares 
 of a family? I am tormented with the per- 
 verseness or ingratitude of those around 
 me ; and sigh in all the bitterness of repent- 
 ance, over the rash and irrecoverable step 
 by which I have renounced for ever the 
 charms of independencp. 
 
 This, in fact, is the grand principle of hu- 
 man ambition, and it serves to explain both 
 its restlessness and its vanity. Wliat is pre- 
 sent is seen in all its minuteness, and we 
 overlook not a single article in the train of 
 little drawbacks, and difficulties and disap 
 pointments. WTiat is distant is seen under 
 a broad and general aspect, and the illu- 
 • sions of fancy are substituted in those places 
 which we cannot fill up with the details of 
 
 actual observation. What is present fills m' 
 with disgust. What is distant allures me 
 to enterprise. I sigh for an office, the busi- 
 ness of which is more congenial to my tem- 
 per. I fix mine eye on some lofty eminence 
 in the scale of preferment. I spurn at the 
 condition which I now occupy, and I look 
 around me and above me. The perpetual 
 tendency is not to enjoy his actual position, 
 but to get away from it — and not an indivi- 
 dual amongst us who does not every day of 
 his life join in the aspiration of the Psalmist, 
 "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I 
 may fly to yonder mountain, and be at 
 rest." 
 
 But the truth is, that we never rest. The 
 most regular and stationary being on the face 
 of the earth, has something to look forward 
 to, and something to aspire after. He must 
 realize that sum to which he annexes the 
 idea of a competency. He must add that 
 piece of ground which he thinks necessary 
 to complete the domain of which he is the 
 proprietor. He must secure that office which 
 confers so much honour and emolument 
 upon the holder. Even after every effort 
 of personal ambition is exhausted, he has 
 friends and children to provide for. The 
 care of those who are to come after him, 
 lands him in a never-ending train of hopes, 
 and wishes, and, anxieties. O that I could 
 gain the vote and the patronage of this ho- 
 noucable acquaintance — or, that I could se- 
 cure the political influence of that great man 
 who honours me with an occasional call, 
 and addressed me the other day with a cor- 
 diality which was quite bewitching — or that 
 my young friend could succeed in his com- 
 petition for the lucrative vacancy to which 
 I have been looking forward, for years, with 
 all the eagerness which distance and uncer- 
 tainty could inspire — or that we could fix 
 the purposes of that capricious and unac- 
 countable wanderer, who, of late indeed has 
 been very particular in his attentions, and 
 whose connection we acknowledge, in se- 
 cret, would be an honour and an advantage 
 to our family — or, at all events, let me heap 
 wealth and aggrandizement on that son, who 
 is to be the representative of my name, and 
 is to perpetuate that dynasty which I have 
 had the glory of establishing. 
 
 This restless ambition is not peculiar to 
 any one class of society. A court only 
 offbrs to one's notice a more exalted theatre 
 for the play of rivalship and political en« 
 terprise. In the bosom of a cottage, you 
 may witness the operation of the very same 
 principle, only directed to objects of greater 
 insignificance— and though a place for my 
 girl, or an apprenticeship for my boy, be all 
 that I aspire after, yet an enlightened ob- 
 server of the human character will per- 
 ceive in it the same eagerness of competi- 
 tion, the same jealousy, the same malicious 
 attempts to undermine the success of a more 
 
IT.] 
 
 THE RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION. 
 
 287 
 
 likely pretender, the same busy train of pas- 
 sions and anxieties which animate the ex- 
 ertions of him who struggles for precedency 
 in the cabinet, and lifts his ambitious eye to 
 the management of an empire. 
 
 Tlii-s is the universal property of our na- 
 ture. In the whole circle of your experience, 
 did you ever see a man sit down to the full 
 enjoyment of the present, without a hope 
 or a wish unsatisfied ? Did lie carry in his 
 mind no refereice to futurity — no longing 
 of the soul after some remote or inaccessible 
 object— no day-dream whicii plaj^ed its en- 
 chantments around him, and wliich, even 
 when accomplished, left him nothing more 
 than the delirium of a momentary triumph ? 
 Did you never see him, after the bright illu- 
 sions of novelty were over — when the pre- 
 sent object had lost its charm, and the dis- 
 tant begun to practise its allurements — when 
 some gay vision of futurity had hurried him 
 on to a new enterprise, and in the fatigues 
 of a restless ambition, he felt a bosom as 
 oppressed with care, and a heart as anxious 
 and dissatisfied as ever ? 
 
 This is the true, though the curious, and 
 I had almost said, the farcical picture of hu- 
 man life. Look into the heart which is the 
 seat of feeling, and you there perceive a 
 perpetual tendency to enjoyment, but not 
 enjoyment itself — the cheerfulness of hope, 
 but not the happiness of actual posses- 
 sion. The present is but an instant of 
 time. The moment you call it your own, 
 it abandons you. It is not the actual sensa- 
 tion which occupies the mind. It is what is 
 to come next. Man lives in futurity. The 
 pleasurable feeling of the moment forms al- 
 most no part of his happiness. It is not the 
 reality of to-day which interests his heart. 
 It is the vision of to-morrow. It is the dis- 
 tant object on which fancy has thrown its de- 
 ceitful splendour. When to-morrow comes, 
 the animating hope is transformed into the 
 dull and insipid reality. As the distant ob- 
 ject draws near, it becomes cold and taste- 
 less, and uninteresting. The only way in 
 which the mind can support itself, is by re- 
 curring to some new anticipation. This 
 may give buoyancy for a time — but it will 
 share the fate of all its predecessors, and be 
 the addition of another folly to the wretched 
 train of disappointments that have gone be- 
 fore it. 
 
 What a curious object of contemplation 
 to a superior being, who casts an eye over 
 this lower world, and surveys the busy, 
 restless, and unceasing operations of the 
 people who swarm upon its surface. Let 
 him select any one individual amongst us, 
 and confine his attention to him as a speci- 
 men of the whole. Let him pursue him 
 through the intricate variety of his move- 
 ments, for he is never stationary ; see him 
 with his eye fixed upon some distant ob- 
 ject, and struggling to arrive at it; see him 
 
 pressing forward to some eminence which 
 perpetually recedes away from him ; see 
 the inexplicable being, as he runs in full 
 pursuit of some glittering bauble, and on 
 the moment he reaches it, throws it behind 
 him, and it is forgotten; see him unmindful 
 of his past experience, and hurrying his 
 footsteps to some new object with the same 
 eagerness and rapidity as ever ; compare the 
 ecstacy of hope with the lifelessness of pos- 
 session, and observe the whole history of 
 his day to be made up of one fatiguing race 
 of vanity, and restlessness, and disappoint- 
 ment ; 
 
 " And, like the glittering of an idiot's toy, 
 
 Doth Fancy mock his vows." 
 
 To complete the unaccountable history, 
 let us look to its termination. Man is irre- 
 gular in his movements, but this does not 
 hinder the regularity of Nature. Time wtll 
 not stand still to look at us. It moves at its 
 own invariable pace. The winged moments 
 fly in swift succession over us. The great 
 luminaries which are suspended on high, 
 perform their cycles in the heaven. The 
 sun describes his circuit in the firmament, 
 and the space of a few revolutions will bring 
 every man among us to his destiny. The 
 decree passes abroad against the poor child 
 of infatuation. It meets him in the full ca- 
 reer of hope and of enterprise. He sees the 
 dark curtain of mortality falling upon the 
 world, and upon all Us interests. That 
 busy, restless heart, so crowded with its 
 plans, and feelings, and anticipations, for- 
 gets to play, and all its fluttering anxieties 
 are hushed for ever. 
 
 Where, then, is that resting-place which 
 the Psalmist aspired after? What are we 
 to mean by that mountain, that wilderness, 
 to which he prayed that the wings of a dove 
 may convey him, afar from the noise and 
 distractions of the world, and hasten his 
 escape from the windy storm, and the tem- 
 pest ? Is there no oi)ject, in the whole round 
 of human enjoyment, which can give rest 
 to the agitated spirit of man ? Will he not 
 sit down in the fulness of contentment, after 
 he has reached it, and bid a final adieu to 
 the cares and fatigues of ambition ? Is this 
 longing of the mind a principle of his na- 
 ture, which no gratification can extinguish 1 
 Must it condemn him to perpetual agitation, 
 and to the wild impulses of an ambition 
 which is never satisfied? 
 
 We allow that exercise is the health of 
 the mind. It is better to engage in a trifling 
 pursuit, if innocent, tlian to watch the me- 
 lancholy progress of time, and drag out a 
 weary existence in all the languor of a con- 
 suming indolence. But nobody will deny 
 that it is better still, if the pursuit in which 
 we are engaged be not a trifling one — if it 
 conducts to some lasting gratification — if it 
 leads to some object, the possession of 
 which confers more happiness than the ' 
 
288 
 
 THE RESTLESSNESS OF HUMAN AMBITION, 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 mere prospect — if the mere pleasure of the 
 chase is not the only recompense — but 
 where, in addition to this, we secure some 
 reward proportioned to the fatigue of the 
 exercise, and that justifies the eagerness 
 with which we embariced in it. So long as 
 the exercise is innocent, better do something 
 than be idle: but better still, when the 
 something we do, leads to a valuable and 
 hnportant termination. Any thing rather 
 than the ignoble condition of that mind 
 which feels the burden of itself — and which 
 knows not how to dispose of the weary 
 hours that hang so oppressively upon it. 
 But there is certainly aground of preference 
 in the objects which invite us to exertion — 
 and better far to fix upon that object which 
 leaves happiness and satisfaction behind it, 
 than dissipate your vigour in a pursuit 
 which terminates in nothing — and where 
 the mere pleasure of occupation is the only 
 circumstance to recommend it. When we 
 talk of the vanity of ambition, we do not 
 propose to extinguish the principles of our 
 nature, l)ut to give them a more useful and 
 exalted direction. A state of hope and of 
 activity is the element of man — and all that 
 we propose, is to withdraw his hopes from 
 the deceitful ol\jects of fancy, and to engage 
 his activity in the pursuit of real and per- 
 manent enjoyments. 
 
 Man must have an object to look forward 
 to. Without this incitement the mind lan- 
 guishes. It is thrown out of its element, 
 and, in this unnatural suspension of its 
 powers, it feels a dreariness, and a discom- 
 fort, far more unsufferable than it ever ex- 
 perienced from the visitations of a real or 
 positive calamity. If such an object does 
 not offer, he will create one for himself. 
 The mere possassion of Avealth, and of all 
 its enjoyments, will not satisfy him. Pos- 
 session carries along with it the dulness of 
 certainty, and to escape from this dulness, 
 he will transform it into an uncertainty — he 
 will embark it in a hazardous speculation, 
 or he will stake it at the gaming-table ; and 
 from no other principle than that he may 
 exchange the lifelessness of possession, for 
 the animating sensations of hope and of en- 
 terprise. It is a paradox in the moral con- 
 stitution of man ; but the experience of 
 every day confirms it — that man follows 
 what he knows to be a delusion, with as 
 much eagerness, as if he were assured of its 
 reality. Put the question to him, and he 
 will tell you, that if you were to lay before 
 him all the profits which his fancy antici- 
 pates, he wf)uld long as much as ever for 
 some new speculation ; or, in other words, 
 be as much dissati'sfied as ever with the po- 
 sition wliich he actually occupies — and yet, 
 with his eye perfectly open to this circum- 
 stance, will he embark every power of his 
 ,mind in the chase of what he knows to be 
 a mockery and a phantom. 
 
 Now, to find fault with man for the plea- 
 sure which he derives from the mere ex- 
 citement of a distant object, would be to 
 find fault with the constitution of his nature. 
 It is not the general principle of his activity 
 which I condemn. It is the direction of 
 that activity to a usele:?s and unprofitable 
 object. Tiie mere happiness of the pursuit 
 does not supersede the choice of the object. 
 Even though you were to keep religion out 
 of sight ahogether, and bring the conduct 
 of man to the test of worldly principles, you 
 still presuppose a ground of preference, in 
 the object. Why is the part of the sober 
 and industrious tradesman preferred to that 
 of the dissipated gambler? Botli feel the 
 delights of a mind fully occupied with 
 something to excite and to animate. But 
 the exertions of the one lead to the safe en- 
 joyment of a competency. The exertions 
 of the other lead to an object which, at best, 
 is precarious, and often land you in the hor- 
 rf)rs of poverty and disgrace. The mere 
 pleasure of exertion is not enough to justify 
 every kind of it: you must look forward to 
 the object and the termination — and it is 
 the judicious choice of the object which, 
 even in the estimation of worldly wisdom, 
 forms the great point of distinction betwixt 
 prudence and folly. Now, all that I ask of 
 you, is to extend the application of the same 
 principle to a life of religion. Compare the 
 wisdom of the children of light, with the 
 wisdom of a blind and worldly generation; 
 the prudence of the Christian who labours 
 for immortality, with the prudence of him 
 who labours for the objects of a vain and 
 perishable ambition. Contrast the littleness 
 of time, with the greatness of eternity — the 
 restless and unsatisfying pleasures of the 
 world, with the enjoyments of heaven, so 
 pure, so substantial, so unfading — and tell 
 me which plays the higher game — he, all 
 whose anxiety is frittered away on the pur- 
 suits of a scene that is ever shifting, and 
 ever transitory ; or he, who contemplates 
 the life of man in all its magnitude ; who 
 acts upon the wide and comprehensive sur- 
 vey of its interests, and takes into his esti- 
 mate the mighty roll of innumerable ages. 
 
 There is no resting-place o be found on 
 this side of time. It is the doctrine of the 
 Bible, and all experience loudly proclaims 
 it. I do not ask you to listen to the com- 
 plaints of the poor, or the murmurs of the 
 disappointed. Take your lesson from the 
 veriest favourite of fortune. See him placed 
 in a prouder eminence than he ever aspired 
 after. See him arrayed in brighter colours 
 than ever dazzled his early imagination. 
 See him surrounded with all the homage 
 that fame and flattery can bestow — and af- 
 ter you have suffered this parading exterior 
 to practise its deceitfulness upon you, enter 
 into his solitude — mark his busy, restless, 
 dissatisfied eye, as it wanders uncertain on 
 
V-J 
 
 THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 
 
 289 
 
 every object — enter into his mind, and tell 
 me if repose or enjoyment be there ; see 
 him the poor victim of chagrin and disquie- 
 tude — mark his heart as it nauseates the 
 splendour which encompasses him — and 
 tell me, if you have not learned, in the 
 truest and most affecting characters, that 
 even in the full tide of a triumphant ambi- 
 tion, "man labours for the meat which 
 perisheth, and for the food which satisfieth 
 not." 
 
 What meaneth this restlessness of our 
 nature ? What meaneth this unceasing ac- 
 tivity which longs for exercise and employ- 
 ment, even after every object is gained, 
 which first roused it to enterprise? What 
 mean those unmeasurable longings, which 
 no gratification can extinguish, and which 
 still continue to agitate the heart of man, 
 even in the fulness of plenty and of enjoy- 
 ment. If they mean any thing at all, they 
 mean, that all which this world can offer, is 
 not anough to fill up his capacity for hap- 
 
 piness — that lime is too small for him, and 
 he is born for something beyond it — that 
 the scene of his earthly existence is too 
 limited, and he is formed to expatiate in a 
 wider and a grander theatre — that a nobler 
 destiny is reserved for him — and that to 
 accomplish the purpose of his being, he 
 must soar above the littleness of the world, 
 and aim at a loftier prize. 
 
 It forms the peculiar honour and excel- 
 lence of religion, that it acconnnodates to 
 this property of our nature — that it holds 
 out a prize suited to our high calling — that 
 there is a grandeur in its objects, which 
 can fill and surpass the imagination — that it 
 dignifies the present scene by connecting it 
 with eternity — that it reveals to the eye of 
 faith the glories of an unperishable world — 
 and how, from the high eminences of hea- 
 ven, a cloud of witnesses are looking down 
 upon earth, not as a scene for the petty 
 anxieties of time, but as a splendid theatre 
 for the ambition of immortal spirits. 
 
 SERMON V. 
 
 The transitory Nature of visible Things. 
 
 " The things that are seen are temporal." — 2 Corinthians iv. 18. 
 
 The assertion that the things which are 
 seen are temporal, holds true in the abso- 
 lute and universal sense of it. They had a 
 beginning, and they will have an end. 
 Should we go upwards through the stream 
 of ages that are past, we come to a lime 
 when they were not. Should we go on- 
 ward through the stream of ages that are 
 before us, we come to a time when they 
 will be no more. It is indeed a most mys- 
 terious flight which the imagination ven- 
 tures upon, when it goes back to the eter- 
 nity that is behind us — when it mounts its 
 ascending way through the millions and 
 the millions of years that are already gone 
 through, and stop where it may, it finds the 
 line of its march always lengthening be- 
 yond it, and losing itself in the obscurity of 
 as far removed a distance as ever. It soon 
 reaches the commencement of visible things, 
 or that point of its progress when God 
 made the heavens and the earth. They had 
 a beginning, but God had none; and what 
 a wonderful field for the fancy to expatiate 
 on, when we get above the era of created 
 worlds, and think of that period when, in 
 respect of all that is visible, the immensity 
 around us was one vast and unpeopled soli- 
 tude. But God was there in his dwelling- 
 place, for it is said of him that he inhabits 
 eternity ; and the Son of God was there, for 
 we read of the glory which he had with the 
 37 
 
 Father before the world was. The mind 
 cannot sustain itself under the burden of 
 these lofty contemplations. It cannot lift 
 the curtain which shrouds the past eternity 
 of God. But it is good for the soul to be 
 humbled under a sense of its incapacity. It 
 is good to realize the impression which too 
 often abandons us, that he made us, and not 
 we ourselves. It is good to feel how all 
 that is temporal lies in passive and pros- 
 trate subordination before the will of the un- 
 created God. It is good to know how little 
 a portion it is that we see of him and of 
 his mysterious ways. It is good to lie at 
 the feet of his awful and unknown majesty 
 — and while secret things belong to him, it 
 is good to bring with us all the helplessness 
 and docility of children to those revealed 
 lessons which belong to us and to our chil- 
 dren. 
 
 But this is not the sense in which the 
 temporal nature of visible things is taken 
 up by the Apostle. It is not that there is a 
 time past in which they did not exist — but 
 there is a time to come in which they will 
 exist no more. He calls them temporal, 
 because the time and the duration of their 
 existence will have an end. His eye is full 
 upon futurity. It is the passing away of 
 visible things in the time that is to come, 
 and the ever during nature of invisible 
 things through the eternity that is to come, 
 
200 
 
 THE TRAXSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 which the Apostle is contemplating. Now. 
 on this one point we say nothing about the 
 positive annihilation of the matter of visible 
 things. There is reason for believing, that 
 some of the matter of our present bodies 
 may exist in those more glorified and trans- 
 formed bodies which we are afterwards to 
 occupy. And for any thing we know, the 
 matter of the present world, and of the pre- 
 sent system may exist in those new heavens 
 and that new earth, wherein dwelleth righ- 
 teousness. There may be a transfiguration 
 of matter without a destruction of it — and. 
 therefore it is, that when we assert with 
 the Apostle in the text, how things seen 
 are temporal, we shall not say more than 
 that the substance of these things, if not 
 consigned back again to the nothing from 
 which they had emerged, will be employed 
 in the formation of other things totally dif- 
 ferent — that the change will be so great, as 
 that all old things may be said to have 
 passed away, and all things to become new 
 — that after the wreck of the last conflagra- 
 tion, the desolated scene will be re-peopled 
 with other objects ; the righteous will live 
 in another world, and the eye of the glori- 
 fied body will open on another field of con- 
 templation from that which is now visible 
 around us. 
 
 Now, in this sense of the Avord temporal, 
 the assertion of my text may be carried 
 round to alltha-t is visible. Even those ob- 
 jects which men are most apt to count upon 
 as unperishable, because, without any sensi- 
 ble decay, they have stood the lapse of 
 many ages, will not weather the lapse of 
 eternity. This earth will be burnt up. The 
 light of yonder sun will be extinguished. 
 These stars will cease from their twink- 
 ling. The heavens will pass away as a 
 scroll — and as to those solid and enormous 
 masses which, like the firm world we tread 
 upon, roll in mighty circuit through the 
 immensity around us, it seems the solemn 
 language of revelation of one and all of 
 them, that from the face of him who sitteth 
 on the throne, the earth and the heavens 
 will fly away, and there will be found no 
 place for them. 
 
 Even apart from the Bible, the eye of 
 observation can witness, in some of the 
 hardest and firmest materials of the present 
 system, the evidence of its r.pproaching dis- 
 solution. What more striking, for example, 
 than the natural changes which take place 
 on the surface of the world, and which 
 prove that the strongest of Nature's ele- 
 ments must, at last, yield to the operation 
 of time and of decay— that yonder towering 
 mountain, though propped by the rocky 
 battlements which surround it, must at last 
 sink under the power of corruption — that 
 every year brings it nearer to its end — that 
 at this moment, it is wasting silently away, 
 and letting itself down from the lofty emi- 
 
 nence which it now occupies — that the tor- 
 rent which falls from its side never ceases 
 to consume its substance, and to carry it 
 off" in the form of sediment to the ocean — 
 that the frost wliich assails it in the winter 
 loosens the solid rock, detaches it in pieces 
 from the main precipice, a-nd makes it fall 
 in fragments to its base — that the power 
 of the weather scales off the most flinty 
 materials, and that the wind of heaven 
 scatters them in dust over the surrounding 
 country— that even though not anticipated 
 by the sudden and aAvful convulsions of the 
 day of God's wrath, nature contains within 
 itself the rudiments of decay — that every 
 hill must be levelled with the plains, and 
 every plain be swept away by the constant 
 operation of the rivers which run through 
 it — and that, unless renewed by the hand 
 of the Almight}', the earth on which we 
 are now treading must disappear in the 
 mighty roll of ages and of centuries. We 
 cannot take our flight to other worlds, or 
 have a near view of the changes to which 
 they are liable. But surely if this world 
 which, with its mighty apparatus of conti- 
 nents and islands, looks so healthful and so 
 firm after the wear of many centuries, is 
 posting visibly to its end, we may be pre- 
 pared to believe that the principles of des- 
 truction are also at work in other pro 
 vinces of the visible creation— and tha' 
 tlrough of old God laid the foundation of 
 the earth, and tlie heavens are the work of 
 his hands, yet they shall perish ; yea, all 
 of them shall wax old like a garment, and 
 as a vesture shall he change them, and they 
 shall be changed. 
 
 We should be out of place in all this style 
 of observation, did we not follow it up with 
 the sentiment of the Psalmist, "These shall 
 perish, but thou shalt endure ; for thou art 
 the same, and thy years have no end." 
 What a lofty conception does it give us of 
 the majesty of God, when we think how he 
 sits above, and presides in high authority 
 over this might}'^ series of changes — when 
 after sinking under our attempts to trace 
 him through the eternity that is behind, we 
 look on the present system of things, and 
 are taught to believe that it is but a single 
 step in the march of his grand administra- 
 tions through the eternity that is before us 
 —when we think of this goodly universe, 
 summoned into being to serve some tem- 
 porary evolution of his great and mysteri- 
 ous plan— when we think of the time when 
 it shall be broken up, and out of its disor- 
 dered fragments other scenes and other 
 systems shall emerge— surely, Avhen fa- 
 tigued with the vastness of these contem- 
 plations, it well becomes us to do the ho- 
 mage of our reverence and wonder to the 
 one Spirit which conceives and animates the 
 whole, and to the one noble design which 
 runs through all its fluctuations. 
 
v.] 
 
 THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 
 
 291 
 
 But there is another way in which the 
 objects that are seen are temporal. The 
 object may not merely be removed from 
 us, but we may be removed from the ob- 
 ject. The disappearance of this earth, and 
 of these heavens from us, we look upon 
 through the dimness of a for-placed futurity. 
 It is an event, therefore, which may re- 
 gale our imagination ; which may lift our 
 mind by its subhmitj''; which may disengage 
 us in the calm hour of meditation from 
 the littleness of life, and of its cares ; and 
 which may even throw a clearness and a 
 solemnity over our intercourse with God. 
 But such an event as this does not come 
 home upon our hearts with the urgency of 
 a personal interest. It does not carry along 
 with it the excitement which lies in the 
 nearness of an immediate concern. It does 
 not fall with such vivacity upon our con- 
 ceptions, as practically to tell on our pur- 
 suits, or any of our purposes. It may ele- 
 vate and solemnize us, but this effect is 
 perfectly consistent with its having as little 
 influence on the walk of the living, and the 
 moving and the acting man, as a dream of 
 poetry. The preacher may think that he 
 has done great things with his eloquence — 
 and the hearers may think that great things 
 have been done upon them — for they felt a 
 fine glow of emotion, when they heard of 
 God shting in the majesty of his high coun- 
 sels, over the progress and the destiny of 
 created things. But the truth is, my bre- 
 thren, that all this kindling of devotion 
 which is felt upon the contemplation of his 
 greatness, may exist in the same bosom, 
 whh an utter distaste for the holiness of 
 his character ; with an cutire alienation of 
 the heart and of the habits from the obe- 
 dience of his law ; and above all, with a 
 most nauseous and invincible contempt for 
 the spiritualities of that revelation, in which 
 he has actually made known his will and 
 his way to us. The devotion of mere taste 
 is one thing — the devotion of principle 
 is another. And as surely as a man may 
 weep over the elegant sufferings of poetry, 
 yet add to the real sufferings of life by 
 peevishness in his family, and insolence 
 among his neighbours — so surely may a 
 man he wakened to rapture by the magni- 
 ficence of God, while his life is deformed 
 by its rebellions, and his heart rankles with 
 ail the foulness of idolatry against him. 
 
 Well, then, let us try the other way of 
 bringing the temporal nature of visible 
 things to bear upon your interests. It is 
 true, that this earth and these heavens, will 
 at length disaippear ; but they may outlive 
 our posterity for many generations. How- 
 ever, if they disappear not from us, we 
 most certainly shall disappear from them. 
 They will soon cease to be any thing to 
 you — and though the splendour and variety 
 of all that is visible around us, should last \ 
 
 for thousands of centuries, your eyes will 
 soon be closed upon them. The time is 
 coming when this goodly scene shall reach 
 its positive consummation. But, in all like- 
 lihood, the time is coming much sooner, 
 when you shall resign the breath of your 
 nostrils, and bid a final adieu to every thing 
 around you. Let this earth, and these hea- 
 vens be as enduring as they may, tp you 
 they are fugitive as vanity. Time, with its 
 mighty strides, will soon reach a future ge- 
 neration, and leave the present in death and 
 in forgetfulness behind it. The grave will 
 close upon every one of j^ou, and that is 
 the dark and the silent cavern where no 
 voice is heard, and the light of the sun never 
 enters. 
 
 But more than this. Tliough we live too 
 short a time to see the great changes which 
 are carrying on in the universe, we live 
 long enough to see many of its changes — 
 and such changes too as are best fitted to 
 warn and to teach us ; even the changes 
 which take place in society, made up of 
 human beings as frail and as fugitive as 
 ourselves. Death moves us away from 
 many of those objects which are seen and 
 temporal — but we live long enough to see 
 many of these objects moved away from us 
 — to see acquaintances falling every year — 
 to see families broken up by the rough and 
 unsparing hand of death — to see houses 
 and neighbourhoods shifting their inhabi- 
 tants — to see a new race, and a new gene- 
 ration — and, whether in church or in mar- 
 ket, to see unceasing changes in the faces 
 of the people who repair to them. We 
 know well, that there is a poetic melan- 
 choly inspired by such a picture as this, 
 which is altogether unfruitful — and that, 
 totally apart from religion, a man may 
 give way to the luxury of tears, when he 
 thinks how friends drop away from him — 
 how every year brings along with it some 
 sad addition to the registers of death — how 
 the kind and hospitable mansion is left with- 
 out a tenant — and how, when you knock 
 at a neighbour's door, you find that he who 
 welcomed you, and made you happy, is no 
 longer there. O that we could impress by 
 all this, a salutary direction on the fears 
 and on the consciences of individuals — that 
 we could give them a living impression of 
 that coming day, when they shall severally 
 share in the general wreck of the species — 
 when each of you shall be one of the many 
 whom the men of the next generation may re- 
 member to have lived in yonder street, or la- 
 boured in yonder manufactory--when they 
 shall speak of you, just as you speak of the 
 men of the former generation— who, when 
 they died, had a few tears dropped over their 
 memory, and for a few years will still con- 
 tinue to be talked of. O, could we succeed 
 in giving you a real and living impression of 
 all this ; and then may we hope to carry the 
 
292' 
 
 THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 
 
 fSERM. 
 
 esson of John the Baptist with energy to 
 your fears, " Flee from the coming wrath." 
 But there is something so very deceiving in 
 the progress of time. Its progress is so 
 gradual. To-day is so like yesterday that 
 we are not sensible of its departure. "VVe 
 should make head against this delusion. 
 We should turn to personal account every 
 example of change or of mortality. When 
 the clock strikes, it should remind you of 
 the dying hour. When you hear the sound 
 of the funeral bell, you should think, that 
 in a Uttle time it will perform for you the 
 same office. When you wake in the morn- 
 ing, you should think that there has been 
 the addition of another day to the life 
 that is past, and the subtraction of another 
 day from the remainder of your journey. 
 When the shades of the evening fall around 
 you, you should think of the steady and 
 invariable progress of time — how the sun 
 moves and moves till it will see you out — 
 and how it will continue to move after you 
 die, and see out your children's children to 
 the latest generations. 
 
 Every thing around us should impress 
 the mutability of human affairs. An ac- 
 quaintance dies — you will soon follow him. 
 A family moves from the neighbourhood — 
 learn that the works of man are given to 
 change. New familes succeed — sit loose 
 to the world, and withdraw your affections 
 from its unstable and fluctuating interests. 
 Time is rapid, though we observe not its 
 rapidity. The days that are past appear 
 like the twinkling of a vision. The days 
 that are to come will soon have a period, 
 and will appear to have performed their 
 course with equal rapidity. We talk of 
 our fathers and grandfathers, who figured 
 their day in the theatre of the world. In a 
 little time, we will be the ancestors of a fu- 
 ture age. Posterity will talk of us as of the 
 men that are gone, and our remembrance 
 will soon depart from the face of the coun- 
 try. When we attend the burial of an ac- 
 quaintance, we see the bones of the men of 
 other times — in a few years, our bodies will 
 be mangled by the power of corruption, 
 and be thrown up in loose and scattered 
 fragments among the earth of the new 
 made grave. When we wander among the 
 tombstones of the church-yard, we can 
 scarcely follow the mutilated letters that 
 compose the simple story of the inhabitant 
 below. In a little time, and the tomb that 
 covers us, will moulder by the power of 
 the seasons — and the letters will be eaten 
 away — and the story that was to perpetuate 
 our remembrance, will elude the gaze of 
 some future inquirer. 
 
 We know that time is short, but none 
 of us know how short. We know that it 
 will not go beyond a certain limit of years; 
 but none of us know how small the num- 
 ber of years, or months, or days may be. 
 
 For death is at work upon all ages. The 
 fever of a few days may hurry the likeliest 
 of us all from this land of mortality. The 
 cold of a few weeks may settle into some 
 lingering but irrecoverable disease. In one 
 instant the blood of him who has the pro- 
 mise of many years, may cease its circula- 
 tion. Accident may assail us. A slight 
 fall may precipitate us into eternity. An 
 exposure to rain may lay us on the bed of 
 our last sickness, from which we are never 
 more to rise. A little spark may kindle the 
 midnight conflagration, which lays a house 
 and its inhabitants in ashes. A stroke of 
 lightning may arrest the current of life in a 
 twinkling. A gust of wind may overturn 
 the vessel, and lay the unwary passenger 
 in a watery grave. A thousand dangers 
 beset us on the slippery path of this world ; 
 and no age is exempted from them — and 
 from the infant that hangs on its mother's 
 bosom, to the old man who sinks under the 
 decrepitude of years, we see death in all its 
 woful and affecting varieties. 
 
 You may think it strange — but even still 
 we fear, we may have done little in the 
 way of sending a fruitful impression into 
 your consciences. We are too well aware 
 of the distinction between seriousness of 
 feeling, and seriousness of principle, to 
 think that upon the strength of any such 
 moving representation as we are now in- 
 dulging in, we shall be able to dissipate 
 that confounded spell which chaii;s you to 
 the world, to reclaim your wandering af- 
 fections, or to send you back to your week- 
 day business more pure and more hea- 
 venly. But sure we are you ought to be 
 convinced, how that all which binds you so 
 cleavingl}' to the dust is infatuation and 
 vanit)^; that there is something most la- 
 mentably wrong in your being carried 
 away by the delusions of time — and this 
 is a conviction which should make you 
 feel restless and dissatisfied. We are well 
 aware that it is not human eloquence, or 
 human illustration, that can accomplish a 
 victory over the obstinate principles of hu- 
 man corruption — and therefore it is that 
 we feel as if we did not advance aright 
 through a single step of a sermon, unless 
 we look for the influences of that mighty 
 Spirit, who alone is able to enlighten and 
 arrest you — and may employ even so hum- 
 ble an instrument as the voice of a fellow 
 mortal, to send into your heart the inspira- 
 tion of understanding. 
 
 I now shortly insist on the truth, that 
 the things which are not seen are eternal. 
 No man hath seen God at any time, and 
 he is eternal. It is said of Christ, " whom 
 having not seen, we love, and he is the 
 same to-day, yesterday, and for ever." It 
 is said of the Spirit, that, like the wind of 
 heaven he eludes the observation, and no 
 man can tell of him whence he cometh, or 
 
v.] 
 
 THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 
 
 293 
 
 whither he goeth — and he is called the 
 Eternal Spirit, through whom the Son of- 
 fered himself up without spot unto God. 
 We are quite aware, that the idea suggest- 
 ed by the eternal things which are spoken 
 of in our text, is heaven, with all its cir- 
 cumstances of splendour and enjoyment. 
 This is an object which, even on the prin- 
 ciples of taste, we take a delight in contem- 
 plating; and it is also an object set before 
 us in the Scriptures, though with a very 
 sparing and reserved hand. All the de- 
 scriptions we have of heaven there, are 
 general, very general. We read of the 
 beauty of the heavenly crown, of the un- 
 fading nature of the heavenly inheritance, 
 of the splendour of the heavenly city — and 
 these have been seized upon by men oi 
 imagination, who, in the construction of 
 their faiijcied paradise, have embellished it 
 with every image of peace, and bliss, and 
 loveliness ; and, at all events, have thrown 
 over it that most kindling of all concep- 
 tions, the magnificence of eternity. Now, 
 such a picture as this has the certain effect 
 of ministering delight to every glowing 
 and susceptible imagination. And here lies 
 the deep-laid delusion, which we have oc- 
 casionally hinted at. A man listens, in 
 the first instance, to a pathetic and high- 
 wrought narrative on the vanities of time 
 —and it touclies him even to the tenderness 
 of tears. He looks, in the second instance, 
 to the fascinating perspective of another 
 scene, rising in all the glories of immor- 
 tality from the dark ruins of the tomb, and 
 he feeft within him all those ravishments 
 of fancy, which any vision of united gran- 
 deur and loveliness would inspire. Take 
 these two together, and you have a man 
 weeping over the transient vanities of an 
 ever-shifting world, and mixing with all 
 this softness, an elevation of thought and 
 of prospect, as he looks through the vista 
 of a futurity, losing itself in the mighty 
 range of thousands and thousands of cen- 
 turies. And at this point the delusion 
 cpmes in, that here is a man who is all that 
 religion would have him to be — a man 
 weaned from the littleness of the paltry 
 scene that is around him — soaring high 
 above all the evanescence of things present, 
 and things sensible — and transferring every 
 affection of his soul to the durabilities of a 
 pure and immortal region. It were better 
 if this high state of occasional impress- 
 ment on the matters of time and of eternity, 
 had only the effect of imposing the false- 
 hood on others, that man who was so 
 touched and so transported, had on that 
 single account the temper of a candidate 
 for heaven. But tlie falsehood takes pos- 
 session of his own heart. The man is 
 pleased with his emotions and his tears — 
 and the interpretation he puts upon them 
 is, that they come out of the fullness of a 
 
 heart all alive to religion, and sensibly af- 
 fected with its charms, and its seriousness, 
 and its principle. Now, my brethren, I will 
 venture to say, that there may be a world 
 of all this kind of enthusiasm, with the 
 very man who is not moving a single step 
 towards that blessed eternity, over which 
 iiis fancy delights to expatiate. The mov- 
 ing representation of the preacher may be 
 listened to as a pleasant song — and the en- 
 tertained hearer return to all the inveterate 
 habits of one of the children of this world. 
 It is this, my brethren, which makes me 
 fear that a power of deceitfulness may ac- 
 company the eloquence of the pulpit — that 
 the wisdom of words may defeat the great 
 object of a practical work upon the con- 
 science — that a something short of a real 
 business change in the heart, and in the 
 principles of acting, may satisfy the man 
 who listens, and admires, and resigns his 
 every feeling to the magic of an impressive 
 description — that, strangely compounded 
 beings as we are, broken loose from God, 
 and proving it by the habitual voidness of 
 our hearts to a sense of his authority, and 
 of his will ; that, blind to the realities of an- 
 other world, and slaves to the wretched in- 
 fatuation which makes us cleave with the 
 full bent of our affections to the one by 
 which we are visibly and immediately sur- 
 rounded ; that utterly unable, by nature, 
 to live above the present scene, while its 
 cares, and its interests are plying U3 every 
 hour with their urgency ; that the prey of 
 evil passions which darken and distract the 
 inner man, and throw us at a wider dis- 
 tance from the holy Being who forbids the 
 indulgence of them ; and yet with all this 
 weight of corruption about us, having minds 
 that can seize the vastness of some great 
 conception, and can therefore rejoice in the 
 expanding loftiness of its own thoughts, as 
 it dwells on the wonders of eternity ; and 
 having hearts that can move to the impulse 
 of a tender consideration, and can, there- 
 fore, sadden into melancholy at the dark 
 picture of death, and its unrelenting cruel- 
 ties ; and having fancies that can brighten 
 to the cheerful colouring of some pleasing 
 and hopeful representation, and can, there- 
 fore, be soothed and animated when some 
 sketch is laid before it of a pious family 
 emerging from a common sepulchre, and 
 on the morning of their joyful resurrection, 
 forgetting all the sorrows and separations 
 of the dark world that has now rolled over 
 them — O, my brethren, we fear, we greatly 
 fear it, that while busied with topics such 
 as these, many a hearer may weep, or be 
 elevated, or take pleasure in the touching 
 imagery that is made to play around him, 
 while the dust of this perishable earth is all 
 that his soul cleaves to ; and its cheating ' 
 vanities are all that his heart cares for, or 
 his footsteps follow after. 
 
294 
 
 ON THE rXIVERSALlTY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 The thing is not merely possible — but we 
 see in it a stamp of likelihood to all that 
 experience tells us of the natvire or the 
 habitudes of man. Is there no such thing as 
 his having a taste for the beauties of land- 
 scape, and, at the same time, turning with 
 disgust from what he calls the methodism 
 of peculiar Christianitj- ? Miglit not he be 
 an admirer of poetry, and at the same time, 
 nauseate with his whole heart, the doctrine 
 and the language of the New Testament 1 
 Might not he have a fancy that can be re- 
 galed by some fair and well-formed vision 
 of immortality — and, at the same time, have 
 
 no practical hardihood whatever for the ex 
 ercise of labouring in the prescribed way 
 after the meat that endureth ? Surely, sure- 
 ly, this is all very possible — and it is just as 
 possible, and many we believe to be the in- 
 stances we have of it in real life, when an 
 eloquent desciiption of heaven is exquisitely 
 felt, and wakens in the bosom the raptures 
 of the sincerest admiration, among those 
 who feel an utter repugnancy to the heaven 
 of the Bible — and are not moving a single 
 inch through the narrowaiess of the path 
 which leads to it. 
 
 SERMON VI. 
 On the Universality of spiritual Blindness. 
 
 Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye oat, and cry : they are drunken, but not vvith wine ; they stagger, but 
 not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed 
 your eyes : the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered: And the vision of all is become unto 
 you asthe words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying. Read this, 1 
 pray thee : and he saith, I cannot ; for it is sealed. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, 
 saying, Read this, I pray thee : and he saith, I am not learned." — Isaiah xxix. 9 — 12. 
 
 What is affirmed in these verses of a 
 vision and prophecy, holds so strikingly 
 true of God's general revelation to the 
 world, that we deem the lesson contained 
 in them to be not of partial, but permanent 
 application — and we therefore proceed im- 
 mediately, to the task of addressing this les- 
 son, both to the learned and unlearned of 
 the present day. 
 
 Let me, in the first place, dvv-ell for a little 
 on the complaints which are uttered by 
 these two classes respecting the hidden and 
 impenetrable character of the book of God's 
 communication— and, in the second place, 
 try to explain the nature of that sleep which 
 is' upon both, and in virtue of which both 
 are alike in a state of practical blindness to 
 the realities of the divine word— and, in the 
 third place, raise a short application upon 
 the whole argument. 
 
 I. There is a complaint uttered in these 
 verses, first by the learned— and, secondly, 
 by the unlearned— and we shall consider 
 each of them in order. 
 
 1st. If a book be closed down by a ma- 
 terial seal, then, till that seal be broken, 
 there lies a material obstacle even in the 
 way of him who is able to read the contents 
 of it. And we have no doubt, that the pos- 
 session of the art of reading would form the 
 most visible and prominent distinction, be- 
 tween the learned and the unlearned in the 
 days of Isaiah. But it no longer, at least in 
 our country, forms the distinction between 
 these two classes. Many a man who can 
 barely read in these days, will still say, and 
 sav with truth, that he is not learned. We 
 
 must now therefore strike a higher mark of 
 distinction — and, in reference to the Bible, 
 such a mark can be specified. This book is 
 often made the subject of a much higher 
 exercise of scholarship than the mere read- 
 ing of it. It may be read in its original lan- 
 guages. It may be the theme of many a 
 laborious commentary. The light of con- 
 temporaneous historv^ may be made to shine 
 upon it, by the diligence of an exploring an- 
 tiquarian. Those powers and habits of criti- 
 cism, which are of so much avail towards 
 the successful elucidation of the mind and 
 meaning of other authors, may all be trans- 
 ferred to that volume of which God is the 
 author — and what, after all this, it may be 
 asked, is the seal or the obstacle which 
 stands in the way of learned men of our 
 present generation? How is it that any of 
 them can now join in the complaint of their 
 predecessors, in the days of Isaiah — and 
 say, I cannot read this book because it is 
 sealed? Or, is there any remaining hin- 
 drance still, in virtue of which, the critics, 
 and the grammarians, and the accomplished 
 theologians of our age, are unable to reach 
 the real and effective understanding of the 
 words of this prophecy? 
 
 Yes, my brethren, there is such an ob- 
 struction as j'ou now inquire after — and it 
 is wonderful to tell, how little the merfe 
 erudition of Scripture helps the real dis- 
 cernment of Scripture — how it maj' be said, 
 of many of its most classical expounders, 
 that though having eyes, they see not, and 
 though having ears, they hear not — how 
 doctrine, which if actually perceived and 
 
VI.J 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSAt XTY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 295 
 
 credited, would bring tbe realities of an 
 eternal world to bear with effect upon tlieir 
 conduct, is, operatively speaking, just as 
 weak as if they did not apprehend it even 
 in its literal significancy — how the mere 
 verbiage of the matter is all in which they 
 appear to be conversant, without any actual 
 hold of sight, or of conviction, on the sub- 
 stance of the matter — how dexterously they 
 can play at logic with the terms of the com- 
 munication, and how dimly and deficiently 
 they apprehend the truths of it — how, after 
 having exhausted the uttermost rescujccs 
 of scholarship on the attempt of forcing an 
 entrance into the region of spiritual mani- 
 festation, they only find themselves labour- 
 ing at a threshold of height and of difficulty, 
 which they cannot scale — how, as if struck 
 with blindness, like the men of Sodom, they 
 weary themselves in vain to find tiie door — 
 and after having reared their stately argu- 
 mentation about the message of peace, they 
 have no faith; about the doctrine of godli- 
 ness, they have no godliness. 
 
 And it is not enough to say, that all this 
 is not due to the want of discernment, but 
 to the want of power — for the power lies in 
 the truth — and the truth has only to be seen 
 or believed, that it may have the power. 
 The reflection may never have occurred to 
 you — but it is not the less just on that ac- 
 count, how little of actual faith there is in 
 the world. Many call it a mere want of im- 
 pressio!!. We call it a want of belief. Did 
 we really believe, that there was a God in 
 existence — did we really believe, that with 
 the eye of a deeply interested judge, he was 
 now .scrutinizing all the propensities of our 
 heart, and appreciating, with a view to fu- 
 ture retribution, all the actions of our his- 
 tory—did we really believe, that sin was to 
 him that hateful enemy with which he 
 could keep no terms, and to which he could 
 give no quarter; and that with every indi- 
 vidual who had fallen into it, either in its 
 guilt it must be expiated, and in its presence 
 be finally done away, or the burden of a 
 righteous vengeance would rest upon his 
 person through eternity — did we really be- 
 lieve, that in these circumstances of deepest 
 urgency, a way of redemption has been de- 
 vised, and that to all whom the tidings of it 
 had reached the offer of deliverance, both 
 from sin in its condemnation, and from sin 
 in its power, was made, through the atoning 
 blood and sanctifying spirit of a complete 
 and omnipotent Saviour — did we really be- 
 lieve, that such an offer was lying at the 
 door of every individual, and that his reli- 
 ance upon its honesty constituted his ac- 
 ceptance of the offer — did we really believe, 
 that throughout the fugitive period of our 
 abode in this world, which was so soon to 
 pass awaj', God in Christ was beseeching 
 every one of us to reconciliation; and even 
 now, as if at the place of breaking forth, was 
 
 ready to begin that great renewing process 
 whereby there is made a commencement of 
 holiness upon earth, and a consunnnatiou 
 both of holiness and happiness in heaven- 
 were these, which w^e all know to be the 
 truths of Christianity, actually believed, the 
 power of them upon our hearts would come, 
 and come immediately, in the train of the 
 perception of them by our understandings. 
 if we remain unquickened by the utterance 
 of them, it is because, in the true sense of 
 the term, we remain unconvinced by them. 
 The utterance of them may be heard as a 
 very pleasant song — and the representation 
 of them be viewed as a very lovely picture 
 — but the force of a felt and present reality 
 is wanting to the whol^demonstration. And 
 all that reason can do is to adjust the steps 
 of the demonstration — and all that eloquence 
 can do, is to pour forth the utterance— and 
 all that conception can do is to furnish its 
 forms and its colouring to the picture. And 
 after learning has thus lavished on the task 
 the whole copiousness of its manifold in- 
 gredients, may we beliold in the person of 
 its proudest votary, that his Christianity to 
 him is nothing better than an aerial phan- 
 tom — that it is of as little operation in dis- 
 posting sense, and nature, and ungodliness 
 from his heart, as if it were but a nonentity, 
 or a name — that to his eye a visionary dim- 
 ness hangs over the whole subject matter 
 of the testimony of the Bible — and still un- 
 translated into the life, and the substance, 
 and the reality of these things, he may join 
 in the' complaint of the text, as if they lay 
 sealed in deepest obscurity from his con- 
 templation. 
 
 Make what you like in the way of argu- 
 ment, of so many simple conceptions, if the 
 conceptions themselves do not carry the 
 impress of vividness and reality along with 
 them — the reasoning, of which they form 
 the materials, may be altogether faultless — 
 and the doctrine in which it terminates, be 
 held forth as altogether impregnable — yet 
 will it share in all the obscurity which at- 
 taches to the primary elements of its forma- 
 tion — and while nature can manage the 
 logical process which leads from tlie first 
 simple ideas, to the ultimate and made-out 
 conclusion, she cannot rid herself of the 
 dimness in which, to her unrenewed eye, 
 the former stand invested ; and she must, 
 therefore, leave the latter in equal dimness. 
 
 The learned just labour as helplessly un- 
 der a want of an impression of the reality 
 of this whole matter, as the unlearned — and 
 if this be true of those among them, who, 
 with learning and nothing more, have ac- 
 tually tried to decipher the meaning of 
 God's communication — if this be true of 
 many a priest and many a theologian, with 
 whom Christianity is a science, and the 
 study of the Bible is the labour- and the 
 business of their profession — what can we 
 
296 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 expect of those among the learned, who, in 
 the pursuits of a secular philosophy, never 
 enter into contact with the Bible, either in its 
 doctrine or in its language, except when it 
 is obtruded on them ? Little do they know 
 of our men of general literature, who have 
 not observed the utter listlessness, if not 
 the strong and active contempt wherewith 
 many of them hear the doctrine of the book 
 of God's counsel uttered in the phraseology 
 of that book — how, in truth, their secret 
 impression of the whole matter is, that it is 
 a piece of impenetrable mysticism — how, 
 in their eyes, there is a cast of obscurity 
 over all the peculiarities of the Gospel — and 
 if asked to give their attention thereto, they 
 promptly repel the' imposition under the 
 feeling of a hopeless and insuperable dark- 
 ness, which sits in obsolete characters over 
 the entire face of the evangelical record. 
 There may be bright and cheering exam- 
 ples to the contrary, of men in the highest 
 of our literary walks, who, under a peculiar 
 teaching, have learned what they never 
 learned from all the lessons of the academy. 
 But apart from this peculiar influence, be 
 assured that learning is of little avail. The 
 sacred page may wear as hieroglyphical an 
 aspect to the lettered, as to the unlettered. 
 It lies not with any of the powers or pro- 
 cesses of ordinary education to dissipate 
 that blindness, wherewith the god of this 
 world hath blinded the mind of him who 
 believes not. To make the wisdom of the 
 New Testament his wisdom, and its spirit 
 his spirit, and its language his best-loved 
 and best-understood language, there must 
 be a higher influence upon the mind, than 
 what lies in human art, or in human expla- 
 nation. And till this is brought to pass, the 
 doctrine of the atonement, and the doctrine 
 of regeneration, and the doctrine of fellow- 
 ship with the Father and the Son, and the 
 doctrine of a believer's progressive holiness, 
 under the moral and spiritual power of the 
 truth as it is in .Icsus, will, as to his own 
 personal experience of its meaning, remain 
 so many empty sounds, or so many deep 
 and hidden mysteries — and just as effectu- 
 ally, as if the book were held together by 
 an iron clasp, wliich he has not strength to 
 unclose, may he say of the same book lying 
 open and legible before him, that he cannot 
 read it, because it is sealed. 
 
 2. So much for tlie complaint of the 
 learned ; and as for the complaint of the 
 unlearned, it happily, in the literal sense of 
 it, is not applicable to the great majority of 
 our immediate countrymen, even in the 
 very humblest walks of society. They can 
 put together its letters, and pronounce its 
 words, and make a daily exercise, if they 
 choose, of one or* more of its chapters. 
 They have learning enough to carry them 
 thus far, but not so far as to keep them from 
 joining the unlearned of my text in the 
 
 complaint that I am not learned. They 
 cannot, for example, estimate the criticism 
 of many an expounder. They have not 
 time to traverse the weary extent of many a 
 ponderous and elaborate commentary. And 
 those who have had much of Christian in- 
 tercourse with the poor, must have re- 
 marked the effiect which their sense of this 
 inferiority has upon many an imagination 
 — how it is felt by not a few of them, that 
 they labour under a hopeless disadvantage, 
 because they want the opportunities of a 
 higiier and a more artificial scholarship, and 
 that if they could only get nearer to their 
 teachers in respect of literary attainment, 
 they would be nearer tliat wisdom which is 
 unto salvation, and that though they can 
 read the book in the plainest sense of the 
 term, they cannot read it with any saving 
 or salutary effect, just because, in the lan- 
 guage of my text, they say that they are 
 not learned. And thus it is, that the man 
 who has the literary accomplishments after 
 which they sigh, meets with two distinct 
 exhibitions to instruct and to humble him. 
 The first is, when the poor look up to him 
 as to one who, because he has the scholar- 
 ship of Christianity, must have the saving 
 knowledge of it also, when he intimately 
 feels that the luminary of science may 
 shine full upon him, while not one ray to 
 cheer or to enlighten, may pass into his 
 heart from the luminary of the Gospel. 
 The second is, when he observes among 
 the poor, those who live, and who rejoice 
 under the power of a revelation, to which 
 himself is a stranger, those who can dis- 
 cern a beauty and an evidence in the doc- 
 trine of Christ, which have never beamed 
 with full radiance upon his own under- 
 standing — those whose feelings and whose 
 experience move in a consonancy with the 
 truths of the New Testament, which, in his 
 own experience, he never felt — those whose 
 daily path bespeaks the guidance of a wis- 
 dom which never yet shone upon his own 
 way, and who are blest with a peace and a 
 joy in believing, which have never found 
 entrance into his own desolate bosom. 
 
 This gives us a new sight of the pecu- 
 liarity which lies in the Bible — and by 
 which it .stands distinguished from all other 
 compositions. There may remain a seal 
 upon its meaning to him, who, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the term, is learned, while the 
 seal may be removed, and the meaning lie 
 open as the light of day to him, who in the 
 same sense is unlearned. It may come with 
 all tlie force of a felt and perceived reality 
 upon the one, while the reality is not per- 
 ceived, and therefore not felt by the other. 
 To the man of literary accomplishment, the 
 report of eternal things may reach no other 
 influence than that of a sound upon his ear, 
 or of a shadowy representation upon the 
 eye of his fancy. To the unlettered work 
 
V,) 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 297 
 
 man, it may reach an influence as substan 
 tial and as practical, as the report of to-mor- 
 row's work, or to-morrow's wages. The 
 latter may be led to shape his actual mea- 
 sures by the terms of the message of reve- 
 lation. The former may lavish all the 
 powers of science, and subtlety, and specu- 
 ation upon the terms — and yet be as un- 
 ouched in his personal habits by all the in- 
 formation which it lays before him, as if 
 the message were untrue. It is not learn- 
 ing that has made the diiference ; for the 
 veil may be upon the eyes of him who is 
 rich in this acquirement, while it is taken 
 away from him who, in respect of scholar- 
 ship, is poor, and blind, and destitute. 
 There is not a single weapon in the whole 
 armoury of human learning, by which the 
 proudest of its votaries can force his en- 
 trance into a region of spiritual manifesta- 
 tion. The wise and prudent cannot, on the 
 strength of any of their own peculiar re- 
 sources, they cannot, with all their putting 
 forth of desire and energy, attain unto those 
 things which are revealed inito babes. 
 There is a barrier here against which all 
 the machinery of the schools may be made 
 to play without effect. And it would look 
 as if argument might as soon remove the 
 film from the eye of him who labours un- 
 der a natural blindness, as dissipate that 
 thick and impalpable obscurity which lies 
 in the way of all spiritual discernment. 
 
 There are two immediate uses to which 
 all this may be rendered subservient. The 
 first, to rebuke the poor for an apology 
 which they are sometimes heard to make, 
 when convicted of blindness and ignorance 
 m regard to the essential truths of Chris- 
 tianity. The second, while we do not sus- 
 tain the apology, to encourage them with 
 the assurance, that it is just as competent 
 for them to be wise unto salvation, as for 
 those in the higher and more cultivated 
 walks of human society. 
 
 In pressing home the truths and over- 
 tures of Christianity on the poor, we often 
 meet with the very answer of the text, " I 
 am not learned." This answer is not co- 
 pied by them from the text. But the text, 
 true as the Bil^le strikingly and universally 
 is, in all its descriptions of Nature, copied it 
 from them. It is in truth a very frequent 
 conception among them, that had they the 
 advantages of a higher scholarship than 
 what they actually possess, they would be 
 nearer the wisdom which is unto salvation. 
 This ministers a kind of false security to 
 their hearts, under the consciousness of a 
 lack of knowledge, and that too of vital ne- 
 cessity to their immortal well-being. They 
 think that there is an ignorance which ne- 
 cessity attaches to their condition ; and that 
 this should alleviate the burden of their 
 condemnation, in that they know not God. 
 They spend the day in drudgery, and think, 
 38 
 
 that on this account, they must a so spend 
 it in a state of desolation, as to Ihe whole 
 light and learning of the Gospel. They 
 are apt to look upon it, not as their fault, 
 but as their doom, that they are strangers 
 to the doctrine of peace and of righteous- 
 ness ; and often regard it to be as effectual 
 a plea for justifying their ignorance of 
 what is sacred, as of what is profane and 
 secular, that they are not learned. 
 
 Now we refuse this apology altogether ; 
 and we should like to warn you in time, 
 that it will stand you in no stead, nor be of 
 any avail to you in the day of reckoning. 
 The word of the Lord is in your hands, and 
 you can at least read it. The candle of the 
 Lord may be lighted in your hearts, and 
 you can at least pray for it. The Gospel 
 is preached unto you as well as unto others; 
 and you can at least attend to it. There 
 will no incurable darkness settle upon your 
 minds, unless you love the darkness. There 
 will no fixed and obstinate unbelief adhere 
 to your understandings, unless your deeds 
 are evil. This will be your condemnation, 
 if you are found to be without knowledge 
 and without faith. But be assured, that all 
 the aids and promises of Christianity are 
 unto you as well as unto others; and if 
 you grieve not the spirit by your wilful 
 resistance — if you put not at a distance 
 from you that Holy Ghost which is given 
 to those who obey him, by j^our disobe- 
 dience — if you despise not the grace of God 
 by your daily and habitual neglect of those 
 mercies — in the use of which alone, God 
 undertakes to meet you with its influences 
 — then be assured, that all the comforts of 
 the Gospel, and all its high and heavenly 
 anticipations, will descend more richly 
 upon you, than upon the noble and wealthy 
 of our land ; and let your work through the 
 week be what it may, there is not an hour 
 of it which may not be sweetened by a 
 blessing from above, which may not be re- 
 galed and heightened into rapture by the 
 smile of a present Deity. 
 
 It is not merely to blame you, that we 
 thus speak. It is further to encourage you, 
 my friends, and that, by an assurance 
 which we cast abroad among you, and that, 
 too, with all. the confidence of one who has 
 the warrant of inspiration. The knowledge 
 which is hfe everlasting, is just as accessible 
 to the poor, as it is to the rich, who have 
 time to prosecute, and money to purchase 
 education. Whatever the barrier may be, 
 which rises as a wall of separation between 
 Nature and the Gospel, it is just as impene- 
 trable to the learned as it is to the unlearned 
 — and however the opening through that 
 barrier is made, it is made as often and 
 oftener, for the purpose of .sending a beam 
 of spiritual light into the heart of the latter, 
 than into the heart of the former. The Gos- 
 pel may as effectually be preached unto the 
 
298 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 poor as unto the wealthy. Simply ^rant to 
 the one the capacity of reading, and the op- 
 portunity of hearing, and he is, at the very 
 least, in as fair circumstances for becoming 
 one of the children of light as the other. In 
 respect to human science, there is a distinc- 
 tion between them. In respect of the gos- 
 pel, that distinction is utterly levelled and 
 done away. Whatever the incapacity of 
 Nature be for the lessons and the light of 
 revelation, it is not learning, commonly so 
 called, which resolves the incapacity ; and 
 imtil that peculiar instrument be actually 
 put forth which can alone resolve it, the 
 book of revelation may pass and repass 
 among them ; the one complaining that he 
 cannot read it, because he is not learned ; 
 the other equally complaining that he cannot 
 read it, because it is sealed. 
 
 II. Let us now proceed, in the second 
 place, to explain a circumstance which 
 stands associated in our text, with the in- 
 capacity both of learned and unlearned, to 
 discover the meaning of God's communica- 
 tions ; and that is the spirit of a deep sleep 
 which had closed the eyes of the people, 
 and buried in darkness and insensibility the 
 prophets, and the rulers, and the seers, as 
 well as the humblest and most ignorant of 
 the land. 
 
 The connexion between the one circum- 
 stance and the other is quite palpable. If 
 a peasant and a philosopher, for example, 
 were both literally asleep before me, and 
 that so profoundly, as that no voice of mine 
 could awaken them ; then they are just in 
 the same circumstances, with regard to any 
 demonstration which I address to their un- 
 derstandings. The powers and acquire- 
 ments of the latter would be of no avail to 
 him in such a case. They are in a state of 
 dormancy, and that is just as firm an ob- 
 stacle in the way of my reasoning, or of 
 my information, as if they were in a state 
 of non-existence. Neither would it at all 
 help the conveyance of my meaning to 
 their mind, that while dead to all percep- 
 tion of the argument which issued from my 
 lips, or even of the sound which is its vehi- 
 cle, the minds of both of them were most 
 busily alive and active amongst the ima- 
 gery of a dream ; the one dreaming too, 
 perhaps, in the style of some high intellec- 
 tual pursuit ; and the other dreaming in the 
 style of some common and illiterate occu- 
 pation. Such, indeed, may be the intoxica- 
 tion of their fancy, that in respect of mental 
 delirium, they may be said to be drunken, 
 but not with wine, and to stagger, but not 
 with strong drink. Still, though in the lan- 
 guage of the text, I should cry out, and cry, 
 it may be just as diflicult to awaken them 
 to a sense of what I am saying, out of a 
 reverie of imagination, as it is to awaken 
 them out of a simple and unconscious slum- 
 ber. Nay, the very engagement of their i 
 
 fancy, with its ever-floating and aerial pic 
 tures, may have the effect of more stnjngly 
 detaining the mind from the call which I 
 vainl)^ lift, for the purpose of arousing them. 
 And as the visionary scenes, w'hether of 
 bliss, or of anxiety, or of sadness, or of eager 
 pursuit, or of bright or of fearful anticipation, 
 pass successively before them, the reality 
 of my waking address maj^ fall unheeded 
 upon each ; and though the one be .earned, 
 and the other be unlearned, it, in respect of 
 their listening to me, and their understand 
 ing of me, totally annuls this difference be- 
 tween them, that their eyes are firmlj 
 closed, and a deep sleep is poured upon 
 them both. 
 
 Such, it is possible to conceive, may be 
 the profoundness of this lethargy, as to be 
 unmoved by the most loud and terrifying 
 intimations. I may lift this note of alarm, 
 that a fire has broken out in the premises 
 and is on the eve of bursting into their 
 apartment — and yet such may be the death- 
 like sleep of both, that both may lie motion- 
 less and unconscious on the very confines 
 of their approaching dissolution. Or, what 
 would be more affecting still, both, in the 
 airy chase of their own imagination, may 
 be fully engrossed among the pictures and 
 the agitations of a dream, and be inwardly 
 laughing, or crying, or striving, or pursuing, 
 or rejoicing ; and that, while the flame is at 
 their door, which in a few minutes is to 
 seize upon and to destroy them. 
 
 When a man is asleep and dreaming, he 
 is alive only to his own fancies, and dead to 
 all the realities of the visible world around 
 him. Awaken him, and he becomes intel- 
 ligent and alive to these realities, but there 
 may still be other realities to which he is 
 not yet awakened. There may remain a 
 torpor upon his faculties, in virtue of which, 
 he may have as little sense and as little 
 feeling of certain near and impending reali- 
 ties, as the man who is wrapt in the insensi- 
 bility of his midnight repose has of earth 
 and of all its concerns. The report of an 
 angry God, and a coming eternity, may as 
 little disturb him as the report of a confla- 
 gration in the premises, disturbs the sleep- 
 ing inmate before he is awakened. It is not 
 learned argument which works out, in the 
 one case, the escape of him who is in dan- 
 ger. Could we only awaken him, we would 
 need no argument. Neither is it learned 
 argument which works out, in the other 
 case, the escape of him who is in danger. It 
 is the cry of, "Awake, O sinner," hfted with 
 power enough to arouse him out of his spi- 
 ritual lethargies. It is the shaking of the 
 soul out of those heavy slumbers, under 
 which it is weighed down to deep and strong 
 insensibility, about the awful urgencies of 
 guilt, and danger, and death, by Miiich it 
 is encompassed. Wlien the house which 
 covers a sleeping peasant and a sleeping 
 
»I.l 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 299 
 
 philosopher, is in flames, it is not by a de- 
 monstration of philosophy that the one is 
 awakened, and the other is lei't to perish in 
 the ruin ; and when both are awakened by 
 the same call, it is not at the bidding of 
 philosophy that the one hastens his escape, 
 while the other lingers in the midst of de- 
 struction. They need only, to be recovered 
 to the use of senses whicli were alike sus- 
 pended with both, that both may flee with 
 equal promptitude from the besetting ca- 
 lamity. And the same of the coming 
 wrath — the same of the consuming fire, 
 that is now ready to burst on the head of 
 the guilty, from the storehouse of treasured 
 vengeance — the same of all the surround- 
 ing realities of God, and judgment, and 
 eternity, which lie on every side of us. It 
 is not philosophy which awakes him who 
 has it, to a sense of these things. Neither 
 is it the want of philosophy which keeps 
 liim who has it not, fast asleep among the 
 vaniiies and day-dreams of a passing world. 
 All the powers of philosophy, operating 
 upon all the materials of philosophy, will 
 never dissolve the infatuation of him wlio 
 is not yet aroused either from the slumbers, 
 or from the visions of carnality. To effect 
 this, there must be either the bestowment 
 of a new sense, or the restoration of an old 
 sense, which has been extinguished. And 
 be he learned or be he unlearned, such an 
 awakening as this will tell alike upon both. 
 The simple view of certain simple realities, 
 to which the vast majority of the world are 
 asleep, will put each of them into motion. 
 And when his eyes are once opened by the 
 force of such a demonstration, will he either 
 flee from the coming wrath, or flee for re- 
 fuge to the hope set before him in the Gos- 
 pel, without the bidding or the voice of phi- 
 losophy to speed his way. 
 
 And that the vast majority of the world 
 are, in truth, asleep to all those realities 
 which constitute the great materials of re- 
 ligion, may be abundantly proved by ex- 
 perience — and we cannot proceed far in the 
 details of such a proof, witliout leading many 
 an individual hearer to carry the topic home 
 to his own experience. For this purpose, 
 let us just compare the kind of feeling and 
 perception which we have about an event 
 that may happen on this side of time, with 
 the feeling and perception about an event, 
 as nearly similar as possible, that will hap- 
 pen on the other side of time, and try how 
 much it is that we are aw^ake as to the for- 
 mer, and asleep as to the latter. Should we 
 assuredly know, that in a few years we are 
 to be translated into a splendid affluence, 
 or sunk into the most abject and deplorable 
 poverty, how keen would be our anticipa- 
 tion, whether of hope or of fear: and why ? 
 Because we are awake unto these things. 
 We do assuredly know, that in a few years 
 we pass that mysterious portal, which leads 
 
 to bliss, or pain, or annihilation — and these 
 are certainties which we do not keenly an- 
 ticipate, and just because we are asleep unto 
 these tilings. Sliould we belioid a neigh- 
 bour on the same path of enterprise with 
 ourselves, suddenly arrested by the hand of 
 bankruptcy, and be further told to our con- 
 viction, that the same fatality is sure to en- 
 counter all who are treading that path, we 
 would retrace, or move aside, or do cur ut- 
 most to evade it — because all awake to the 
 disgrace and wretchedness of bankruptcy.. 
 We every month behold such a neighbour 
 arrested by the hand of death — nor can we 
 escape the conviction, that sooner or later, 
 he will cast his unfailing weapon at our- 
 selves; and yet no one practical movement 
 folio w^s the conviction, because we are asleep 
 to a sense of the mighty ruin which awaits 
 us frotn unsparing and universal mortality. 
 Should the house in which you live, be en- 
 tered with violence by the executioners of a 
 tyrant's will, and a brother, or a child, be 
 hurried away to a perpetual dungeon— if 
 made to know, that it was because such a 
 doom had been laid upon the whole family, 
 and that sooner or later, its infliction was 
 most surely in reserve for every successive 
 member of it — woxdd not you be looking 
 out in constant terror, and live in constant 
 insecurity, and prove how feelingly you 
 were awake to a sense of the sufferings of 
 an earthly imprisonment ? But though death 
 break in upon our dwelling, and lay a ruth- 
 less grasp on the dearest of its inmates, and 
 leave the assurance behind him, that he will 
 not cease his inroads on this devoted house- 
 hold, till he has swept it utterly away— all 
 we know of the loneliness of the church- 
 yard, and all we read of the unseen horrors 
 of that eternity to w^hich the impenitent and 
 the unbeliever are carried by the ministers 
 of the WTath of God, fail to disturb us out 
 of the habit of living here, as if here we 
 were to live for ever ; and t'.iat, just because 
 while awake to all the reality which lieth 
 on this side of Uie grave, we are asleep to 
 the consideration both of the grave itself, 
 and of all the reality which lies beyond it. 
 Now, the question comes to be, how is 
 this sleep dissipated ? Not, we affirm, and 
 all experience will go along with us, not by 
 the power of natural argument— not by the 
 demonstrations of human learning, for these 
 are just as powerless with him who under- 
 stands them, as with him who makes his 
 want of learning the pretence for putting 
 tliem away— not by putting the old mate- 
 rials of thought into a new arrangement— 
 not by setting such things as the eye of 
 Nature can see, or its ear can hear, or its 
 heart can conceive, into a new liglit— not by 
 working in the varied processes of combi- 
 nation, and abstraction, and reasoning, with 
 such simple and elementary ideas as the 
 mind of man can apprehend. The feelings 
 
300 
 
 ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 and the suggestions of all our old senses 
 put together, will not mike out for us a 
 P'-actical impression of the matters of faith — 
 and there must be a transition as great as 
 that by which man aw^akens out of the sleep 
 of nature, and so comes to see the realities 
 of Nature which are around him—there 
 must be a something equivalent to the com- 
 munication of a new sense, ere a reality 
 comes to be seen in those eternal things, 
 where no reality was felt or seen, however 
 much it may have been acknowledged be- 
 fore. 
 
 It is true, that along the course of our or- 
 dinary existence, we are awake to the con- 
 cerns of our ordinary existence. But this 
 is not a wakefulness w.iich goes to disturb 
 the profoundness of our insensibility, as to 
 the concerns of a higher existence. We are 
 in one sense awake, but in another most 
 entirely, and, to all human appearance, 
 most hopelessljf and irrecoverably asleep. 
 We are just in the same condition with a 
 man w'ho is dreaming, and so moves for the 
 time in a pictured world of his own. He 
 is not steeped in a more death-like indiffer- 
 ence to the actual and the peopled world 
 around him, than the man who is busy for 
 the short and fleeting pilgrimage of his 
 days upon earth, among its treacherous de- 
 lusions, is shut in all his sensibilities, and 
 all his thoughts, against the certainties of 
 an immortal state. And the transition is 
 not greater from the sleeping fancies of the 
 night to the waking certainties of our daily 
 business, than is the transition from the day- 
 dreams of a passing world, to those sub- 
 stantial considerations, which wield a pre- 
 siding authority over the conduct of him 
 wlio walketh not by the sight of that which 
 is around him, but by the faith of the unseen 
 things that are above him, and before him. 
 To be thus translated in the habit of our 
 mind, is beyond the power of the most busy 
 and intense of its natural exercises. It 
 needs the power of a new and simple mani- 
 festation ; and as surely as the dreamer on 
 his bed behooves to be awakened, ere he be 
 restored to a just sense of his earthly con- 
 dition, and of his earthly circumstances, so 
 surely must there be a distinct awakening 
 made to pass on the dark, and torpid, and 
 overborne faculties of us all, ere the matters 
 of faith come to be clothed to our eye in the 
 characters of certainty, and we be made 
 truly to apprehend the bearing in which 
 we stand to the God who is now looking 
 over us, to the eternity which is now ready 
 to absorb us. 
 
 This awakening calls for a peculiar and 
 a preternatural application We say pre- 
 ternatural, for such is the obstinacy of this 
 sleep of nature, that no power within the 
 compass of nature can put an end to it. It 
 withstands all the demonstrations of arith- 
 metic. Time moves on without disturbing 
 
 it. The last messenger lifts many a note of 
 preparation, but so deep is the lethargy of 
 our text, that he is not heard. Every year 
 do his approaching footsteps become more 
 distinct and more audible ; yet every year 
 rivets the affections of the votary of sense 
 more tenaciously than before, to the scene 
 that is around him. One would think, that 
 the fall of so many acquaintances on every 
 side of him, might at length have reached 
 an awakening conviction into his heart. 
 One would think, that standing alone, and in 
 mournful survey amid the wreck of former 
 associations, the spell might have been alrea- 
 dj^ broken, which so fastens him to a perish- 
 able world. O, why were the tears he shed 
 over his children's grave, not fohowed up by 
 the deliverance of his soul from this sore 
 infatuation ? Why, as he hung over the 
 dying bed of her with whom he had so oft 
 taken counsel about the plans and the in- 
 terests of life, did he not catch a glimpse 
 of this \vorld's vanity, and did not the light 
 of truth break in upon his heart from the 
 solemn and apprehended realities beyond 
 it ? But no. The enchantment, it would 
 appear, is not so easily dissolved. The deep 
 sleep which the Bible speaks of, is not so 
 easily broken. The conscious infirmities of 
 age cannot do it. The frequent and touch- 
 ing specimens of mortality around us, can- 
 not do it. The rude entrance of death into 
 our o"wn houses, and the breaking up of our 
 own families, cannot do it. The melting 
 of our old society away from us, and <he 
 constant succession of new faces, and new 
 families, in their place, cannot do it. The 
 tolling of the funeral bell, which has rung 
 so many of our companions across the con- 
 fines of eternity, and in a few little years, 
 will perform the same office for us, cannot 
 do it. It often happens, in the visions of 
 the night, that some fancied spectacle of 
 terror, or shriek of alarm, have frightened 
 us out of our sleep, and our dream together. 
 But the sleep of worldliness stands its 
 ground against all this. We hear the moan- 
 ings of many a deafh-bed — and we witness 
 its looks of imploring anguish — and we 
 watch the decay of life, as it glimmers on- 
 wards to its final extinction — and we hear 
 the last breath — and we pause in the solemn 
 stillness that follows it, till it is broken in 
 upon by the bursting agony of the Aveeping 
 attendants — and in one day more, we re- 
 visit the chamber of him, who, in white and 
 shrouded stateliness, lies the effigy of what 
 he was — and we lift the border that is upon 
 the dead man's countenance, and there we 
 gaze on that brow so cold, and those eyes 
 so motionless — and, in two days more, we 
 follow him to his sepulchre, and mingled 
 with the earth, among which he is to be 
 laid, we behold the skulls and the skeletons 
 of those who have gone before him — and it 
 is the distinct understanding of nature, that 
 
VII. 
 
 ON THE NEW HEWENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 
 
 301 
 
 soon shall have every one of us to go 
 through the same process of dying, and add 
 our mouldering bodies to the mass of cor- 
 ruption that we have been contemplating. 
 But mark the derangement of nature, and 
 how soon again it falls to sleep among the 
 delusions of a world, of the vanity of which 
 it has recently got so striking a demonstra- 
 tion. Look onwards but one single day 
 more, and you behold every trace of this 
 loud and warning voice dissipated to no- 
 thing. The man seemed, as if he had been 
 actually awakened ; but it was only the 
 start and the stupid glare of a moment, after 
 which he has lain him down again among 
 the visions and the slumbers of a soul that 
 is spiritually dead. He has not lost all 
 sensibility any more than the man that is 
 in a midnight trance, who is busied with 
 the imaginations of a dream. But he has 
 gone back again to the sensibilities of a 
 world which he is so speedily to abandon ; 
 and in these he has sunk all the sensibili- 
 ties of that everlasting world, on the con- 
 fines of which he was treading but yester- 
 day. All is forgotten amid the bargains. 
 
 and the adventures, and the bustle, and the 
 expectation of the scene that is immediately 
 around him. Eternity is again shut out ; 
 and amid the dreaming illusions of a fleet- 
 ing and fantastic day, does he cradle his 
 infatuated soul into an utter unconcern 
 about its coming torments, or its coming 
 triumphs. 
 
 Yes ! my brethren, we have heard the 
 man of serious religion denounced as a 
 visionary. But if that be a vision which is 
 a short-lived deceit — and that be a sober 
 reality which survives the fluctuations both 
 of time and of fancy — tell us if such a use 
 of the term be not an utter misapplication ; 
 and whether, with all the justice, as well as 
 with all the severity of truth, it may not be 
 retorted upon the head of him, who, though 
 prized for the sagacity of a firm, secular, 
 and much exercised understanding, and 
 honoured in the market-place for his ex- 
 perience on the walks and ways of this 
 world's business, has not so much as en- 
 tered upon the beginning of wisdom, but is 
 toiling away all his skill and all his energy 
 on the frivolities of an idiot's dream. 
 
 SERMON VII. 
 
 On the new Heavens and the new Earth. 
 
 " Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth 
 
 righteousness." — 2 Peter iii. 13. 
 
 There is a limit to the revelations of the 
 Bible about futurity, and it were a mental 
 or spiritual trespass to go beyond it. The 
 reserve which it maintains in its informa- 
 tions, we also ought to maintain in our in- 
 quiries — satisfied to know little on every 
 subject, where it has communicated little, 
 and feeling our way into regions which are 
 at present unseen, no further than the light 
 of Scripture will carry us. 
 
 But while we attempt not to be " wise 
 above that which is written," we should at- 
 tempt, and that most studiously, to be wise 
 up to that which is written. The disclo- 
 sures are very few and very partial, which 
 are given to us of that bright and beautiful 
 economy, which is to survive the ruins of 
 our present one. But still there are such 
 disclosures — and on the principle of the 
 things that are revealed belonging unto us, 
 we have a right to walk up and down, for 
 the purpose of observation, over the whole 
 actual extent of them. 
 
 What is made known of the details of 
 immortality, is but small in the amount, nor 
 are we furnished with the materials of any 
 thing like a graphical or picturesque exhibi- 
 tion of its abodes of blessedness. But still 
 
 somewhat is made known, and which, too, 
 may be addressed to a higher principle than 
 curiosity, being like every other Scripture, 
 " profitable both for doctrine and for instruc- 
 tion in righteousness." 
 
 In the text before us, there are two lead- 
 ing points of information, which we should 
 like successively to remark upon. The first 
 is, that iji the new economy which is to be 
 reared for the accommodation of the blessed, 
 there will be materialism, not merely new 
 heavens, but also a new earth. The second 
 is, that, as distinguished from the present, 
 which is an abode of rebellion, it will be an 
 abode of righteousness. 
 
 I. We know historically that earth, that 
 a solid material earth, may form the dwell- 
 ing of sinless creatures, in full converse and 
 friendship with the Being who made them — 
 that, insteaiof a place of exile for outcasts, 
 it may have a broad avenue of communica- 
 tion with the spiritual world, for the descent 
 of ethereal beings from on high — that, like 
 the member of an extended family, it may 
 share in the regard and attention of the 
 other members, and along with them be glad- 
 dened by the presence of him who is the 
 Father of them all. To inquire how this 
 
302 
 
 ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 can be, were to attempt a wisdom beyond 
 Scripture; but to assert that this has been, 
 and therefore may be, is to i<eep most strictly 
 and modestl} within the limits of the record. 
 For, we tliere read, that God framed an ap- 
 paratus of materialism, which, on his own 
 surveying, he pronounced to be all very 
 good, and the leading features of which may 
 still be recognised among the things and the 
 .substances that are around us — and that he 
 created man with the bodily organs and 
 senses Avhich we now wear — and placed 
 him under the very canopy that is over our 
 heads — and spread around him a scenery, 
 perhaps lovelier in its tints, and more smiling 
 and serene in the whole aspect of it, but cer- 
 tainly made up, in the main, of the same 
 objects that still compose the prospect of 
 our visible contemplations — and there, work- 
 ing with his hands in a garden, and with 
 trees on every side of him, and even with 
 animals sporting at his feet, was this inha- 
 bitant of earth, in the midst of all those 
 earthly and familiar accompaniments, in 
 full possession of the best immunities of a 
 citizen of heaven — sharing in the delight of 
 angels, and M'hile he gazed on the very 
 beauties which we ourselves gaze upon, re- 
 joi'^ing in them most as the tokens of a pre- 
 sent and presiding Deity. It were venturing 
 on the region of conjecture to affirm, whe- 
 ther, if Adam had not fallen, the earth that 
 we now tread upon, would have been the 
 everlasting abode of him and his posterity. 
 But certain it is, that man. at the first, had 
 for his place this world, and, at the same 
 time, for his privilege, an unclouded fel- 
 lowship with God, and, for his prospect, an 
 immortality, which death was neither to 
 intercept nor put an end to. He was ter- 
 restrial in respect of condition, and j^et 
 celestial in respect both of character and 
 enjoyment. His eye looked outwardly on 
 a landscape of earth, while his heart breath- 
 ed upwardly in the love of heaven. And 
 though he trode the solid platform of our 
 world, and was compassed about with its 
 horizon — still was he within the circle of 
 God's favoured creation, and took his place 
 among the freemen and the denizens of the 
 great spiritual commonwealth. 
 
 This may serve to rectify an imagina- 
 tion of which we think that all must be 
 conscious — as if the grossness of material- 
 ism was only for those who had degenerated 
 into the grossness of sin ; and that, when a 
 spiritualizing process had purged away all 
 our corruption, then, by the stepping-stones 
 of a death and a resurrection, we should 
 be borne away to some ethereal region, 
 where sense, and body, and all in the shape 
 either of audible sound, or of tangible sub- 
 stance, were unknown. And hence that 
 strangeness of impression which is felt by 
 you, should the supposition be offered, that 
 in the place of eternal blessedness there 
 
 will be ground to walk upon ; or scenes of 
 luxuriance to delight the corporeal senses ; 
 or the kindly intercourse of -friends talking 
 familiarly, and by articulate converse to- 
 gether ; or, in short, any thing that has the 
 least resemblance to a local territory, filled 
 with various accommodations, and peopled 
 over its whole extent by creatures formed 
 like ourselves — having bodies such as we 
 now wear, and faculties of perception, and 
 thought, and mutual communication, such as 
 we now exercise. The common imagination 
 that we have of paradise on the other side 
 of death, is, that of a lofty aerial region, 
 where the inmates float in ether, or are 
 mysteriously suspended upon nothing — 
 where "all the warm and sensible accompa- 
 niments which give such an expression of 
 strength, and life, and colouring, to our 
 present habitation, are attenuated into a 
 sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, 
 and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting 
 to the eye of mortals here below — where 
 every vestige of materialism is done away, 
 and nothing left but certain unearthly 
 scenes that have no power of allurement, 
 and certain unearthly ecstacies, with which 
 it is felt impossible to sympathize. The 
 holders of this imagination forget all the 
 while, that really there is no essential con- 
 nection between materialism and sin — that 
 the world which we now inhabit, had all 
 the 'amplitude and solidity of its present 
 materialism, before sin entered into it — 
 that God so far, on that account, from look- 
 ing slightly upon it, after it had received 
 the last touch of his creating hand, review- 
 ed the earth, and the waters, and the firma- 
 ment, and all the green herbage, with the 
 living creatures, and the man whom he had 
 raised in dominion over them, and he saw 
 every thing that he had made, and behold 
 it was all very good. They forget that on 
 the birth of materialism, when it stood out 
 in the freshness of those glories which the 
 great Architect of Nature had impressed 
 upon it, that then the " morning stars sang 
 together, and all the sons of God shouted 
 for joy." They forget the appeals that are 
 made every where in the Bible to this ma- 
 terial workmanship — and how, from the 
 face of these visible heavens, and the garni- 
 ture of this earth that we tread upon, the 
 greatness and the goodness of God are re- 
 flected on the view- of his worshippers. No, 
 my brethren, the object of the administra- 
 tion we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but it 
 is not to sweep away materialism. By the 
 convulsions of the last day, it may be 
 shaken, and broken down from its present 
 arrangements, and thrown into such fitful 
 agitations, as that the whole of its existing 
 frame-work shall fall to pieces, and by a heat 
 so fervent as to melt its most solid elements, 
 may it be utterly dissolved. And thus may 
 the earth again become without form, and 
 
VII.] 
 
 ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 
 
 303 
 
 void, but without one particle of its sub- 
 stance going into annihilation. Out of the 
 ruins of this second chaos, may another 
 heaven and another earth be made to arise ; 
 and a new materialism, with other aspeciR 
 of magnificence and beauty, emerge from 
 the wreck of this mighty transformation ; 
 and the Avorld be peopled as before, with 
 the varieties of material loveliness, and 
 space be again lighted up into a firmament 
 of material splendour. 
 
 Were our place of everlasting blessed- 
 ness so purely spiritual as it is commonly 
 imagined, then the soul of man, after, at 
 death, having quitted his body, would quit 
 it conclusively. That mass of materialism 
 with wliich it is associated upon earth, and 
 which many regard as a load and an in- 
 cumbrance, would have leave to putrefy in 
 the grave without being revisited by super- 
 natural power, or raised affain out of the 
 inanimate dust into which it had resolved. 
 If the body be indeed a clog and a con- 
 finement to the spirit, instead of its commo- 
 dious tenement, then would the spirit feel 
 lightened by the departure it had .made, 
 and expatiate in all the buoyancy of its 
 emancipated powers, over a scene of en- 
 largement. And this is, doubtless, the pre- 
 vailing imagination. But why, then, after 
 having made its escape from such a thral- 
 dom, should it ever recur to the prison-house 
 of its old materialism, if a prison-house it 
 really be. Why should the disengaged 
 spirit again be fastened to the drag of that 
 grosser and heavier substance, which many 
 think has only the effect of weighing down 
 its activity, and infusing into the pure 
 element of mind an ingredient which serves 
 to cloud and to enfeeble it. In other words, 
 what is the use of a day of resurrection, 
 if the union which then takes place is to 
 deaden,' or to reduce all those energies that 
 are commonlj^ ascribed to the living prin- 
 ciple, in a state of separation? But, as a 
 proof of some metaphysical delusion upon 
 this subject, the product, perhaps, of a 
 wrong though fashionable philosophy, it 
 would appear, that to embody the spirit is 
 not the stepping-stone to its degradation, 
 but to its preferment. The last day will be 
 a day of triumph to the righteous — because 
 the day of the re-entrance of the spirit to 
 its much-loved abode, where its faculties, 
 so far from being shut up into captivity, 
 will find their free and kindred develope- 
 ment in such material organs as are suited 
 to them. The fact of the resurrection 
 proves, that, with man at least, the state of 
 a disembodied spirit, is a stale of unnatural 
 violence — and that the resurrection of his 
 body is an essential step to the highest per- 
 fection of which he is susceptible. And it 
 is indeed an homage to that materialism, 
 which many are for expunging from the 
 future state of the universe altogether — 
 
 that ere the immaterial soul of man has 
 reached the ultimate glory and blessedness 
 which are designed for it, it must return 
 and knock at that very grave where lie the 
 mouldered remains of the body which it 
 wore — and there inquisition must be made 
 for the flesh, and the sinews, and the bones, 
 which the power of corruption has perhaps 
 for centuries before, assimilated to the earth 
 that is aroimd them — and there, the minute 
 atoms must be re-assembled into a structure 
 that bears upon it the form and the linea- 
 ments, and the general aspect of a man — 
 and the soul passes into this material 
 frame-work, which is hereafter to be its 
 lodging-place for ever — and that, not as its 
 prison, but as its pleasant and befitting ha- 
 bitation — not to be trammelled, as some 
 would have it, in a hold of materialism, 
 but to be therein equipped for the services 
 of eternity — to walk embodied among the 
 bowers of our second paradise — to stand 
 embodied in the presence of our God. 
 
 There will, it is true, be a change of 
 personal constitution between a good man 
 before his death, and a good man after his 
 resurrection — not, however, that he will be 
 set free from his body, but that he will be 
 set free from the corrupt principle that 
 is in his body — not the materialism by 
 which he is now surrounded will be done 
 away, but that the taint of evil by which 
 this materialism is now pervaded, will be 
 done away. Could this be effected without 
 dying, then death would be no longer an 
 essential stepping-stone lo paradise. But 
 it would appear of the moral virus which 
 has been transmitted downwards from 
 Adam, and is now spread abroad over the 
 whole human family — it would appear, 
 that to get rid of this, the old fabric must 
 be taken down, and reared anew ; and that, 
 not of other materials, but of its own ma- 
 terials, only delivered of all impurity, as if 
 by a refining process in the sepulchre. It 
 is thus, tliat what is " sown in weakness, 
 is raised in power"' — and for this purpose, 
 it is not necessary to get quit of material- 
 ism, but to get quit of sin, and to purge 
 materialism of its malady. It is thtis that 
 the dead shall come forth incorruptible — 
 and those, we are told, who are alive at 
 this great catastrophe, shall suddenly and 
 mysteriously be changed. While we are 
 compassed about with these vile bodies, as 
 the Apostle emphatically terms them, evil 
 is present, and it is well, if through the 
 working of the Spirit of grace, evil does not 
 prevail. To keep this besetting enemy in 
 check, is the task and the trial of our Chris- 
 tianity on earth — and it is the detaching of 
 this poisonous ingredient which constitutes 
 that for which the believer is represented 
 as groaning earnestl}'^, even liie redemption 
 of the body that he now wears, and which 
 will then be transformed into the hkeness 
 
304 
 
 ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 of Christ's glorified body. And this will 
 be his heaven, that he will serve God with- 
 out a struggle, and in a full gale of spiritual 
 delight — because with the full concurrence 
 of all the feelings and all the faculties of 
 his regenerated nature. Before death, sin 
 is only repressed — after the resurrection, 
 all sin will be exterminated. Here he has 
 to maintain the combat, with a tendency to 
 evil still lodging in his heart, and working 
 a perverse movement among his inclina- 
 tions ; but after his warfare in this world 
 is accomplished, he will no longer be so 
 thwarted — and he will set him down in an- 
 other world, with the repose and the tri- 
 umph of victory for his everlasting reward. 
 The great constitutional plague of his na- 
 ture will no longer trouble him ; and there 
 will be the charm of a genial affinity be- 
 tween the purity of his heart, and the 
 purity of the element he breathes in. Still 
 it will not be the purity of spirit escaped 
 from materialism, but of spirit translated 
 into a materialism that has been clarified 
 of evil. It will not be the purity of souls 
 unclothed as at death, but the purity of 
 souls that have again been clothed upon at 
 the resurrection. 
 
 But the highest homage that we know of 
 to materialism, is that which God, manifest 
 in the flesh, has rendered to it. That He, 
 the Divinity, should have wrapt his unfa- 
 thomable essence in one of hs coverings, 
 and expatiated amongst us in the palpable 
 form and structure of a man ; and that he 
 should have chosen such a tenement, not as 
 a temporary abode, but should have borne 
 it with him to the place which he now oc- 
 cupies, and where he is now employed in 
 preparing the mansions of his followers ; 
 that he should have entered within the vail, 
 and be now seated at the right hand of the 
 Father, with the very body which was 
 marked by the nails upon his cross, and 
 wherewith he ate and drank after his resur- 
 rection—that he who repelled the imagina- 
 tion of his disciples, as if they had seen a 
 spirit, by bidding them handle him and see, 
 and subjecting to their familiar touch the 
 flesh and the bones that encompassed him ; 
 that he should now be throned in universal 
 supremacy, and wielding the whole power of 
 heaven and earth, have every knee to bow 
 at his name, and every tongue to confess, 
 and yet all to the glory of God the Father — 
 that humanity, that substantial and embo- 
 died humanity, should thus be exalted, and 
 a voice of adoration from every creature, 
 be lifted up to the Lamb for ever and ever — 
 does this look like the abolition of materi- 
 alism, after the present system of it is de- 
 stroyed ; or does it not rather prove, that 
 transplanted into another system, it will be 
 preferred to celestial honours, and prolonged 
 in immortality throughout all ages? 
 
 It has been our careful endeavour, in all 
 
 that we have said, to keep within the limits of 
 the record, and to otter no other remarks than 
 those which may fitly be suggested by the 
 circumstance, that a new earth is to be cre- 
 ated, as well as a new heavens for the future 
 accommodation of the righteous. We have 
 no desire to push the speculation beyond 
 what is written, but it were, at the same 
 time, well, that in all our representations of 
 the immortal state, there was just the same 
 force of colouring, and the same vivacity 
 of scenic exhibition that there is in the New 
 Testament. The imagination of a total 
 and diametric opposition between the re- 
 gion of sense and the region of spirituality, 
 certainly tends to abate the interest with 
 which we might otherwise look to the per- 
 spective that is on the other side of the 
 grave ; and to deaden all those sympathies 
 that we else might have with the joys and 
 the exercises of the blest in paradise. To 
 rectify this, it is not necessary to enter on 
 the particularities of heaven — a topic on 
 which the Bible is certainly most sparing 
 and reserved in its communications. But 
 a great step is gained simply by dissolving 
 the alliance that exists in the minds of many 
 between the two ideas of sin and material- 
 ism ; or proving, that when once sin is done 
 away, it consists with all we know of God's 
 administration, that materialism shall be 
 perpetuated in the full bloom and vigour 
 ofimmorlality. It altogether holds out a 
 warmer and more alluring picture of the 
 elysium that awaits us, when told, that there, 
 will be beauty to delight the eye ; and music 
 to regale the ear ; and the comfort that 
 springs from all the charities of intercourse 
 between man and man, holding converse 
 as they do on earth, and gladdening each 
 other with the benignant smiles that play 
 on the human countenance, or the accents 
 of kindness that fall in soft and soothing 
 melody from the human voice. There is 
 much of the innocent, and much of the in- 
 spiring, and much to affect and elevate the 
 heart, in the scenes and the contemplations 
 of materialism — and we do hail the infor- 
 mation of our text, that after the dissolution 
 of its present frame-work, it will again be 
 varied and decked out anew in all the graces 
 of its unfading verdure, and of its un- 
 bounded variety — that in addition to our di- 
 rect and personal view of the Deity, when 
 he comes down to tabernacle with men, we 
 shall also have the reflection of him in a 
 lovely mirror of his own workmanship ; 
 and that instead of being transported to 
 some abode of dimness and of mystery, so 
 remote from human experience, as to be be- 
 yond all comprehension, we shall walk for 
 ever in a land replenished with those sen- 
 sible delights, and those sensible glories, 
 which, we doubt not, will lie most profusely 
 scattered over the " new heavens and the 
 new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 
V1I."| 
 
 01? THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH, 
 
 305 
 
 II. But though a paradise of sense, it will 
 not be a paradise of sensuality. Though not 
 so unlike tlie present world as many appre- 
 hend it, there will be one point of total dis- 
 similarity betwixt them. It is not the entire 
 substitution of spirit for matter, that will 
 distinguish the future economy from the 
 present. But it will be the entire substitu- 
 tion of righteousness for sin. It is this which 
 signalizes the Cliristian from the Mahome- 
 tan pnradise — not that sense, and substance, 
 and splendid imagery, and the glories of a 
 visible creation seen with bodily eyes are 
 excluded from it, but that all which is vile 
 in principle, or voluptuous in impurity, will 
 be utterly excluded from it. There will be 
 a firm earth, as we have at present, and a 
 heaven stretched over it, as we have at pre- 
 sent ; aud it is not b}^ the absence of these, 
 but by the absence of sin, that the abodes of 
 immortality will be characterized. There 
 will both be heavens and earth, it would 
 appear, in the next great administration — 
 and with this speciality to mark it from 
 the present one, that it will be a heavens 
 and earth, "wherein dwelleth righteous- 
 ness." 
 
 Now, thougli the first topic of information 
 that we educed from the text, may be re- 
 garded as not very practical, yet the second 
 topic on which I now insist, is most emi- 
 nently so. Were it the great characteristic 
 of that spirituality which is to obtain in a 
 future heaven, that it was a spirituality of 
 essence, then occupying and pervading the 
 place from which materialism has been 
 swept away, we could not, by any possible 
 method, approximate the condition we are 
 in at present to the condition we are to 
 hold everlastingly. We cannot etherealize 
 the matter that is around us — neither can we 
 attenuate our own bodies, nor bring down 
 the slightest degree of such a heaven to the 
 earth that we now inhabit. But when we 
 are told that materialism is to be kept up, 
 and that the spirituality of our future state 
 lies not in the kind of substance which is to 
 compose Its frame-work, but in the charac- 
 ter of those who people it — this puts, if not 
 *he fulness of heaven, at least a foretaste of 
 heaven, within our reach. We have not to 
 strain at a thing so impracticable, as that 
 of diluting the material economy which is 
 without us; we have only to reform the 
 moral economy that is within us. We are 
 now walking on a terrestrial surface, not 
 more compact, perhaps, than the one we 
 shall hereafter walk upon ; and are now 
 wearing terrestrial bodies, not firmer and 
 more solid, perhaps, than those we shall 
 hereafter Avear. It is not by working any 
 change upon them that we could realize, to 
 an extent, our future heaven. And this is 
 simply done by opening the door of our 
 heart for the influx of heaven's affections — 
 by bringing the whole man, as made up of 
 
 soul, and spirit, and bodj^, under the presid- 
 ing authority of heaven's principles. 
 
 This will make plain to you how it is that 
 it could be said in the New Testament, that 
 the "kingdom of heaven was at hand" — 
 and how, in that book, its place is marked 
 out, not by locally pointing to any quarter, 
 and saying, Lo here, or lo there, but by the 
 simple atfirmation that the kingdom of hea- 
 ven is within you — and how, in defining 
 what it was that constituted the kingdom 
 of heaven, there is an enumeration, not of 
 such circumstances as make up an outward 
 condition, but of such feelings and qualities 
 as make up a character, even righteousness, 
 and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost — and 
 how the ushering in of the new dispensa- 
 tion is held equivalent to the introduction 
 of this kingdom into the world — all making 
 it evident, that if the purity and the princi- 
 ples of heaven begin to take effect upon our 
 heart, what is essentially heaven begins with 
 us, even in this world ; that instead of as- 
 cending to some upper region, for the pur- 
 pose of entering it, it may descend upon us, 
 and make an actual entrance of itself into 
 our bosoms ; and that so fur, therefore, from 
 that remote and inaccessible thing which 
 many do regard it, it may, through the in- 
 fluence of the word which is nigh unto you, 
 and of the Spirit that is given to prayer, be 
 lighted up in the inner man of an individual 
 upon earth, whose person may even here, 
 exemplify its graces, and whose soul may 
 even here realize a measure of its enjoyments. 
 
 And fjence one great purpose of tiie in- 
 carnation of our Saviour. He came down 
 amongst us in the full perfection of heaven's 
 character, and has made us see, that it is a 
 rharacter which may be embodied. All its 
 virtues were, in his case, infused into a cor- 
 poreal frame-work, and the substance of 
 these lower regions was taken into intimate 
 and abiding associati(m with the spirit of 
 the higher. The ingredient which is hea- 
 venly, admits of being united Avith the in- 
 gredient which is earthly — so that we, who, 
 by nature are of the earth, and earthly, 
 could we catch of that pure and celestial 
 element which made the man Christ Jesus 
 to differ from all other men, then might we 
 too be formed into that character by which 
 it is that the members of the family above 
 diflfer from the outcast family beneath. 
 Now, it is expressly said of him, that he is 
 set before us as an example ; and we are re- 
 quired to look to that living exhibition of 
 him, where all the graces of the upper 
 sanctuary are beheld as in a picture; and 
 instead of an abstract, Ave have in his his- 
 tory a familiar representation of such Avorth, 
 and piety, and excellence, as could they 
 only be stamped upon our oavu persons, and 
 borne along Avith us to the place Avhere he 
 now dAvelleth — instead of being shunned as 
 aliens, we should be welcomed and recog- 
 
506 
 
 ON THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 nised as seemly companions for the inmatfs 
 of that place of holiness. And, in truth, tl-.e 
 great work of Christ's disciples upon earth, 
 is a constant and busy process of assimila- 
 tion to their Master who is in heaven. And 
 we live under a special economy', that has 
 been set up for the express purpose of lielp- 
 ing it forward. It is for this, in particular, 
 that the Spirit is provided. We are changed 
 into the image of the Lord, even by the 
 Spirit of the Lord. Nursed out of this ful- 
 ness, we grow up unto the stature of perfect 
 men in Christ Jesus — and instead of heaven 
 being a remote and mysterious unknown, 
 heaven is brought near to us by the simple 
 expedient of inspiring us where Ave now 
 stand, with its love, and its purity, and its 
 sacredness. We learn from Christ, that the 
 heavenly graces arc all of them compatible 
 with the wear of an earthly body, and the 
 circumstances of an earthly habitation. It 
 is not said in how many of its features the 
 new earth will differ from, or be like unto 
 the present one — but we, by turning from 
 our iniquities unto Christ, push forward the 
 resemblance of the one to the other, in the 
 only feature thai is specified, even that 
 " therein dwelleth riorhteousness." 
 
 And had we only the character of hea- 
 ven, we should not be long of feeling what 
 that is which essentially makes the comfort 
 of heaven. " Thou lovest righteousness, and 
 hatest iniquity; therefore, God, thy God, 
 hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness, 
 above thy fellows." Let us bu\ love the 
 righteousness which he loves, and hate the 
 iniquity which he liateth, and this, of hself, 
 would so soften and attun? the mechanism 
 of our moral nature, that in all the move- 
 ments of it, there should be joy. It is not 
 sufficiently adverted to, that the happiness 
 of heaven lies simply and essentially in the 
 well-going machinery of a well-conditioned 
 soul — and that according to its measure, it 
 is the same in kind with the happiness of 
 God, who liveth for ever in bliss ineffable, 
 because he is unchangeable in being good, 
 and upright, and holy. There may be audi- 
 ble music in heaven, but its chief delight 
 will be in the music of well-poised affections, 
 and of principles in full and consenting har- 
 mony with the laws of eternal rectitude. 
 There may be visions of loveliness there, 
 but it will be the loveliness of virtue, as seen 
 directly in God, and as reflected back again 
 in family likeness from all his children — it 
 will be this that shall give its purest and 
 sweetest transports to the soul. In a word, 
 the main reward of paradise, is spiritual joy 
 — and that, springing at once from the love 
 and the possession of spiritual excellence. 
 It is such a joy as sin extinguishes on the 
 moment of its entering the soul ; and such a 
 joy as is again restored to the soul, and that 
 imrnediatelj' on its being restored to righ- 
 teousness. 
 
 It is thus that heaven may be established 
 upon earth, and the petition of our Lord's 
 prayer be fulfilled, " Thy kingdom come." 
 This petition receives its best explanation 
 from the one which follows : " Thy wiU be 
 done on earth as it is done in heaven." It 
 just requires a similarity of habit and cha- 
 racter in the two places, to make out a simi- 
 larity of enjoyment. Let us attend, then, to 
 the way in which the services of the upper 
 sanctuary are rendered — not in the spirit of 
 legality, for this gendereth to bondage; but 
 in the spirit of love, which genderetli to the 
 beatitude of the affections rejoicing in their 
 best and most favourite indulgence. They 
 do not work there, for the purpose of mak- 
 ing out the conditions of a bargain. They 
 do not act agreeably to the pleasure of God, 
 in order to obtain the gratification of any 
 distinct will or distinct pleasure of their 
 own, in return for it. Their will is, in fact, 
 identical with the will of God. There is a 
 perfect unison of taste and of inclination, 
 between the creature and the Creator. They 
 are in their element, when they are feeling 
 righteously, and doing righteously. Obe- 
 dience is not drudgery, but delight to them ; 
 and as much as there is of the congenial 
 between animal nature, and the food that is 
 suitable to it, so much is there of the con- 
 genial between the moral nature of heaven, 
 and its sacred employments and services. 
 Let the will of God, then, be done here, as 
 it IS done tliere, and not only will character 
 and conduct be tlie same here as there, but 
 they will also resemble each other in the 
 style, though not in the degree of their 
 blessedness. The happiness of heaven will 
 be exemplified upon earth, along witli the 
 virtue of heaven — for, in truth, the main 
 ingredient of that happiness is not giver, 
 them in payment for work; but it lies in the 
 love thoy bear to the work itself A man is 
 never happier than when employed in that 
 which he likes best. This is all a question 
 of taste ; but should such a taste be given as 
 to make it a man's meat and drink to do the 
 will of his Father, then is he in perfect 
 readiness for being carried upwards to hea- 
 ven, and placed beside the pure river of 
 water of life, that proceedeth out of the 
 throne of God and of the Lamb. This is the 
 way in which you may make a heaven upon 
 earth, not by heaping your reluctant offers 
 at the shrine of legality, but by serving God 
 because you love him ; and doing his w ill, 
 because 30U delight to do him honour. 
 
 And here we may remark, that the only 
 possible conveyance for this new principle 
 into the heart, is the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
 — that in no other way, than throuffh the 
 acceptance of its free pardon, sealed by the 
 blood of an atonement, which exalts the 
 Lawgiver, can the soul of man be both 
 emancipated from the fear of terror, and 
 solemnized into the fear of humble and holy 
 
VII I. j 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 307 
 
 reverence — that it is only in conjunction 
 with the faith which justifies, that the love 
 of gratitude, and the love of moral esteem, 
 are made to arise in the bosom of regene- 
 rated man; and, therefore, to bring down 
 the virtues of heaven, as well as the peace 
 of heaven, into this lower world, we know 
 
 not what else can be done, than to urge 
 upon you the great propitiation of the New 
 Testament — nor are we aware of any ex- 
 pedient by which all the cold and freezing 
 sensations of legality can be done away, 
 but by your thankful and unconditional ac- 
 ceptance of Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 
 
 SERMON VIII. 
 The Nature of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 " For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power." — 1 Corinthians iv. 20. 
 
 There is a most important lesson to be 
 derived from the variety of senses in which 
 the phrases " kingdom of God," and " king- 
 dom of heaven," are evidently made use of 
 in the New Testament. If it, at one time, 
 carry our thoughts to that place where God 
 sits in visible glory, and where, surrounded 
 by the family of the blessed, he presides in 
 full and spiritual authority — it, at another 
 time, turns our thoughts inwardly upon 
 ourselves, and instead of leading us to say, 
 Lo, here, or lo, there, as if to some local 
 habitation at a distance, it leads us, by the 
 declaration, that the " kingdom of God is 
 within us," to look for it into our own 
 breast, and to examine whether heavenly 
 affections have been substituted there in the 
 place of earthly ones. Such is the tendency 
 of our imagination upon this subject, that 
 the kingdom of heaven is never mentioned, 
 ■without our minds being impelled thereby 
 to take an upward direction — to gf) aloft to 
 that place of spaciousness, and of splendour, 
 and of psalmody, which forms the residence 
 of angels; and where the praises both of 
 redeemed and unfallen creatures, rise in one 
 anthem of gratulation to the Father, who 
 rejoices over them all. 
 
 Now, it is evident, that in dwelling upon 
 such an elysium as this, the mind can pic- 
 ture to itself a thousand delicious accom- 
 paniments, which, apart from moral and 
 spiritual character altogether, are fitted to 
 regale animal, and sensitive, and unrenewed 
 man. There may be sights of beauty and 
 brilliancy for the eye. There may be sounds 
 of sweetest melody for the ear. There may 
 be innumerable sensations of delight, from 
 the adaptation which obtains between the 
 materialism of surrounding heaven, and the 
 materialism of our own transformed and 
 glorified bodies. There may even be poured 
 upon us, in richest abundance, a higher and 
 a nobler class of enjoyments — and separate 
 still from the possession of holiness, of that 
 peculiar quality, by the accession of which 
 a sinner is turned into a saint, and the man 
 who, before, had an entire aspect of secu- 
 
 larity and of the world, looks as if he had 
 been cast over again in another mould, and 
 come out breathing godly desires, and aspir- 
 ing, with a newly created fervour, after 
 godly enjoyments. And so, without any 
 such conversion as this, heaven may still be 
 conceived to minister a set of very refined 
 and intellectual gratifications. One may 
 figure it so formed, as to adapt itself to the 
 senses of man, though he should possess 
 not one single virtue of the temple, or of 
 the sanctuary; and one may figure it to be 
 so formed, as, though alike destitute of these 
 virtues, to adapt itself even to the spirit of 
 man, and to many of the loftier principles 
 and capacities of his nature. His taste may 
 find an ever-recurring delight in the pano- 
 rama of its sensible glories; and his fancy 
 wander untired among all the realities and 
 all the possibilities of created excellence; 
 and his understanding be feasted to ecstacy 
 among those endless varieties of truth, 
 which are ever pouring in a rich flood of 
 discovery, upon his mind; and even his 
 heart be kept in a glow of warm and kindly 
 affection among the cordialities of that be- 
 nevolence, by which he is surrounded. All 
 this is possible to be conceived of heaven; 
 and when we add its secure and everlasting 
 exemption from the agonies of hell, let us 
 not wonder, that such a heaven should be 
 vehemently desired by those who have not 
 advanced by the very humblest degree of 
 spiritual preparation, for the real heaven of 
 the New Testament — who have not the 
 least congeniality of feeling with that which 
 forms its most essential and characteristic 
 blessedness — who cannot sustain on earth 
 for a very short interval of retirement, the 
 labour and the weariness of communion 
 with God — who, though they could relish 
 to the uttermost, all the sensible and all the 
 intellectual joys of heaven, yet hold no taste 
 of sympathy whatever, with its hallelujahs, 
 and its songs of raptured adoration — and 
 who, therefore, if transported at this mo- 
 ment, or if transported after death, with the 
 frame and character of soul that they have 
 
508 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 at tliis moment, to the New Jerusalem, and 
 the city of the living God, would positively 
 find themselves aliens, and out of their kin- 
 dred and rejoicing element, however much 
 they may sigh after a paradise of pleasure, 
 or a paradise of poetry. 
 
 It may go to dissipate this sentimental 
 illusion, if we ponder well the meaning 
 which is often assigned to the kingrdom of 
 heaven in the Bible; if we reflect, that it is 
 often made to attach personally to a hu- 
 man creature upon earth, as well as to be 
 situated locally in some distant and myste- 
 rious region away from us— that to be the 
 subject of such a kingdom, it is not indis- 
 pensible that our residence be within the 
 limits of an assigned territory, any more, in 
 fact, than tliat the subject of an earthly 
 sovereign should not remain so, though 
 travelling, for a time, beyond the confines 
 of his master'sjurisdiction. He may, though 
 away from his country in person, carry 
 about with him in mind a full principle 
 of allegiance to his country's sovereign; 
 and may, both in respect of legal duty, and 
 of his own most willing and aflfectionate 
 compliance with it, remain associated with 
 him both in heart and in political relation- 
 ship. He is still a member of that king- 
 dom in the domains of which he was born; 
 and in the very same way, may a man be 
 travelling the journey of life in this world, 
 and be all the while a member of the king- 
 dom of heaven. The beiiig who reigns in 
 supreme authority there may, even in this 
 land of exile and alienation, have some one 
 devoted subject, who renders to the same 
 authority the deference of his heart, and 
 the subordination of his whole practice. 
 The will of God may possess such a mora! 
 ascendency over his will, as that when the 
 one command.^, the other promptly and 
 cheerfully obeys. The character of God 
 may stand revealed in such charms of per- 
 fection and gracefulness to the eye of his 
 mind, that by ever looking to him he both 
 loves and is made like unio him. A sense 
 of God may pervade his every hour, and 
 every employment, even as it is the hand 
 of God which preserves him continually, 
 and through the actual power of God, that 
 he lives and moves, as well as has his being. 
 Such a man, if such a man there be on the 
 face of our world, has the kingdom of God 
 set up in his heart. He is already one of 
 the children of the kingdom. He is not 
 locally in heaven, and yet his heaven is be- 
 gun. He has in his eye the glories of hea- 
 ven ; though, as yet, he sees them through 
 a glass darkly. He feels in his bosom the 
 principles of hearen ; though, still at war 
 with the propensities of nature, they do not 
 yet reign in all the freeness of an undis- 
 puted ascendency. He carries in his heart 
 the peace, and the joy, and the love, and the 
 elevation of heaven ; though under the in- 
 
 cu mbrance of a vile body, the spiritual repast 
 which isthusprovided,is not withoutitsmix- 
 tures, and without its mitigation. In a word, 
 the essential elements of heaven's reward, 
 and of heaven's felicity, are all in his posses- 
 sion. He tastes the happiness of heaven in 
 kind, though not in its full and finished de- 
 gree. When he gets to heaven above, he will 
 not meet there with a happiness differing in 
 character from that which he now feels; but 
 only higher in gradation. There may be 
 crowns of material splendour. I'here may be 
 trees of unfading loveliness. There may be 
 pavements of emerald — and canopies of 
 brightest radiance— and gardens of deep and 
 tranquil security — and palaces of proud and 
 stately decoration — and a city of lofty pin- 
 nacles, through which there unceasing flows 
 a river of gladness, and where jubilee is 
 ever rung with the concord of seraphic 
 voices. But these are only the accessaries 
 of heaven. They form not the materials 
 of its substantial blessedness. Of this the 
 man who toils in humble drudg-ery, an utter 
 stranger to the delights of sensible pleasure, 
 or the fascinations of sensible glory, has got 
 already a foretaste in his heart. It consists 
 not in the enjoyment of created good, nor 
 in the survey of created magnificence. It is 
 drawn in a direct stream, through the chan- 
 nels of love and of contemplation, from the 
 fullness of the Creator. It emanates from the 
 coiHitenance of God, manifesting the spiritu- 
 al glories of his holy and perfect character, 
 on those whose characters are kindred to his 
 own. And if on earth there is no tendency 
 towards such a character — no process of 
 restoration to the lost image of the Godhead 
 — no delight in prayer — no relish for the 
 sweets of intercourse with our Father, now 
 unseen, but then to be revealed to the view 
 of his immediate worshippers — then, let 
 our imaginations kindle as they may, with 
 the beatitudes of our fictitious heaven, the 
 true heaven of the Bible is what we shall 
 never reach, because it is a heaven that we 
 are not fttted to enjoy. 
 
 But such a view of the matter seems not 
 merely to dissipate a sentimental illusion 
 which obtains upon the subject. It also 
 serves to dissipate a theological iUusion. 
 Ere we can enter heaven, there must be 
 granted to us a legal capacity of admission 
 — and Christ by his atoning death, and 
 perfect righteousness, has purchased this 
 capacity for those who believe ; and they, 
 by the very act of believing, are held to be 
 in possession of it, just as a man by stretch- 
 ing out his hand to a deed or a passport, 
 becomes vested with all the privileges which 
 are thereby conveyed to the holder. Now, 
 in the zeal of controversialists, (and it is a 
 point most assuredly about which they 
 cannot be too zealous) — in their zeal to 
 clear up and to demonstrate the ground on 
 which the sinner's legal capacity must rest, 
 
VIII.] 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 309 
 
 there has, with many, been a sad overlook- 
 ing of what is no less indispensable, even 
 his personal capacity. And yet even on the 
 lowest and grossest conceptions of wiiat 
 that is which constitutes the felicity of hea- 
 ven, it would be no heaven, and no place 
 of enjoyment at all, without a personal 
 adaptation on the part of its occupiers, to the 
 kind of happiness which is current there. 
 If that happiness consisted entirely in sights 
 of magnificence, of what use would it be to 
 confer a title-deed of entry on a man who 
 was blind ? To make it heaven to him, his 
 eyes must be opened. Or, if that happiness 
 consisted in sounds of melody, of what use 
 would a passport be to the man who was 
 deaf? To make out a heaven for him, a 
 change must be made on the person which 
 he wears, as well as in the place which he 
 occupies, and his ears must be unstopped. 
 Or, if that happiness consisted in fresh and 
 perpetual accessions of new and delightful 
 truth tothevniderstanding, what would rights 
 and legal privileges avail to him who was 
 sunk in helpless idiotism ? To provide him 
 with a heaven, it is not enough that he be 
 transported to a place among the mansions 
 of the celestial : he must be provided with 
 a new faculty, and as before a change be- 
 hooved to be made upon the senses ; so 
 now, ere heaven can be heaven to its occu- 
 pier, a change must be made upon his 
 mind. And, in like manner, my brethren, 
 if that happiness shall consist in the love 
 of God for his goodness, and in the love of 
 God for the moral and spiritual excellence 
 which belongs to him — if it shall consist in 
 the play and exercise of affections directed 
 to such objects as are alone worthy of their 
 most exalted regard — if it shall consist in 
 the movements of a heart now attracted in 
 reverence and admiration towards all that 
 is noble, and righteous, and holy — it is not 
 enough to constitute a heaven for the sin- 
 ner, that God is there in visible manifesta- 
 tion, or that heaven is lighted up to him in 
 a blaze of spiritual glory. His heart must 
 be made a fit recipient for the impression 
 of that glory. Of what possible enjoyment 
 to him is heaven, as his purchased inherit- 
 ance, if heaven be not also his precious and 
 his much-loved home '? To create enjoy- 
 ment for a man, there must be a suitable- 
 ness between the taste that is in him, and 
 the objects that are around him. To make 
 a natural man happy upon earth, we may 
 let his taste alone, and surround him with 
 favourable circumstances — with smiling 
 abundance, and merry companionship, 
 and bright anticipations of fortune or of 
 fame, and the salutations of public respect, 
 and the gaieties of fashionable amusement, 
 and the countless other pleasures of a 
 world, which yields so much to delight and 
 to diversify the short-lived period of its 
 fleeting generations. To make the same 
 
 man happy in heaven, it would suffice sim- 
 ply to transmit him there with the same 
 taste, and to surround him with the same 
 circumstances. But God has not so order- 
 ed heaven. He will not suit the circum 
 stances of heaven to the character of man ; 
 and therefore to make it, that man can be 
 happy there, nothing remains but to suit 
 the character of man to the circumstances 
 of heaven; and, therefore it is, that to bring 
 about heaven to a sinner, it is not enough 
 that there be the preparation of a place for 
 him ; there must be a preparation of him 
 for the place — it is not enough that he be 
 meet in law, he must be meet in person — 
 it is not enough that there be a change in 
 his forensic relation towards God, there 
 must be a change in the actual disposition 
 of his heart towards him ; and unless deli- 
 vered from his earth-born propensities — 
 unless a clean heart be created, and a right 
 spirit renewed — unless transformed into a 
 holy and godlike character, it is quite in 
 vain to have put a deed of entry into his 
 hands — heaven will have no charm for 
 him — all its notes of rapture will fall 
 with tasteless insipidity upon his ear — and 
 justification itself will cease to be a privi- 
 lege. 
 
 Let us cease to wonder, then, at the fre- 
 quent application, in Scripture, of this 
 phrase to a state of personal feeling and 
 character upon earth ; and rather let us 
 press upon our remembrance the important 
 lessons which are to be gathered from such 
 an application. In that passage where it 
 is said, that the " kingdom of God is not 
 meat and drink, but righteousness, and 
 peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," there 
 can be no doubt that the reference is alto- 
 gether personal, for the apostle is here con- 
 trasting the man who, in these things, 
 serveth Christ, with the man who eateth 
 unto the Lord, or who eateth not unto the 
 Lord. And in the passage now before us, 
 there can be as little doubt, that the refer- 
 ence is to the kingdom of God, as fixed and 
 substantiated upon the character of the 
 human soul. He was just before alluding 
 to those who could talk of the things of 
 Christ, while it remained questionable 
 whether there was any change or any eflfect 
 that could at all attest the power of these 
 things upon their persdn and character. 
 This is the point which he proposed to 
 ascertain on his next visit to them. "I 
 will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, 
 and will know not the speech of them 
 which are puffed up, but the power. For 
 the kingdom of God is not in word, but in 
 power." It is not enough to mark you as 
 the children of this kingdom ; or as those 
 over whose hearts the reign of God is es- 
 tablished ; or as those in whom a prepara- 
 tion is going on here for a place of glory and 
 blessedness hereafter — that you know the 
 
310 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 [SERH. 
 
 terms of ortliodoxy, or that you can speak 
 its language. If even an actual belief in 
 ts doctrine could reside in your mind, 
 without fruit and without influence, this 
 would as little avail you. But it is well to 
 know, both from experience and from the 
 information of him who knew what was in 
 man, that an actual belief of the Gospel, is 
 at all times an effectual belief — that upon 
 the entrance of such a belief, the kingdom 
 of God comes to us with power, being that 
 which availeth, even faith, \^orking by love, 
 and purifying the heart, and overcoming 
 the world. 
 
 One of the simplest cases of the kingdom 
 of God in word, and not in power, is that 
 of a child, with its memory stored in pas- 
 sages of Scriptures, and in all the answers 
 to all the questions of a substantial and 
 well-digested catechism. In such an in- 
 stance, the tongue may be able to rehearse 
 the whole expression of evangelical truth. 
 Avhile neither the meaning of the truth is 
 perceived by the understanding, nor, of 
 consequence, can the moral influence of the 
 truth be felt in the heart. The learner has 
 got words, but nothing more. This is the 
 whole fruit of his acquisition ; nor would 
 it make any difference, in as far as the ef- 
 fect at the time is concerned, though, in- 
 stead of words adapted to the expression 
 of Christian doctrine, they had been the 
 words of a song, or a fable, or any secular 
 narrative and performance whatever. This 
 is all undeniable enough — if we could only 
 prevail on many men, and many women, 
 not to deny its application to themselves — 
 if we could only convince our grown-up 
 children of the absolute futility of many of 
 their exercises — if we could only arouse 
 from their dormancy our listless readers 
 of the Bible — our men, who make a mere 
 piece-work of their Christianity ; who, in 
 making waj' through the Scriptures, do it 
 by the page, and, in addressing prayers to 
 their Maker, do it by the sentence ; with 
 whom the perusal of the sacred volume, is 
 absolutely little better than a mere exercise 
 of the lip, or of the eye ; and a preference 
 for orthodoxy is little better than a prefer- 
 ence for certain familiar and well-known 
 sounds ; where the thinking principle is al- 
 most never in contact with the matter of 
 theological truth, however conversant both 
 their mouths and their memories may be 
 with the language of it — so that in fact the 
 doctrine by the knowledge of which, and 
 the pov.'er of wliich it is, that we are saved, 
 lies as effectually hidden from their minds, 
 as if it lay wrapt in hieroglyphical obscu- 
 rity ; or, as if their intellectual organ was 
 shut against all communication with any 
 thing without them ; and thus it is, that 
 what is not perceived by the mental eye, 
 having no possible operation upon the men- 
 tal feelings, or mental purposes, the king- 
 
 dom of God Cometh to them in word only 
 while not in power. 
 
 But again, what is translated word in this 
 verse, is also capable of being rendered by 
 I the term reason. It may not only denote 
 [ that which constitutes the material vehicle 
 by which the argument conceived in the 
 mind of one man is translated into the 
 mind of another ; it may also denote the 
 argument itself; and when rendered in 
 this way, it offers to our notice a very in- 
 teresting case, of which there are not want- 
 ing many exemplifications. In the case 
 just now adverted to, the mere word is in 
 the mouth, without its corresponding idea 
 being in the mind ; but in the case imme- 
 diately before us, ideas are present as well 
 as words, and every intellectual faculty is 
 at its post, for the purpose of entertaining 
 them — the attention most thoroughly awake 
 — and the curiosity on the stretch of its ut- 
 most eagerness — and the judgment most 
 busily employed in the work of comparing 
 one doctrine, and one declaration with an- 
 other — and the reason conducting its long 
 or its intricate processes ; and, in a word, 
 the Avhole machiner)^ of the mind as power- 
 fully stimulated by a theological, as it ever 
 can be by a natural or scientific specula- 
 tion — and yet, with this seeming advance- 
 ment that it makes from the language of 
 Christianhy to the substance of Chris- 
 tianity, what shall we think of it, if there 
 be no advancement whatever in the power 
 of Christianity — no accession to the soul 
 of any one of those three ingredients, 
 which, taken together, make up the apos- 
 tle's definition of the kingdom of God — no 
 augmentation either of its righteousness, or 
 its peace, or its joy in the Holy Ghost — 
 the man, no doubt, very much engrossed and 
 exercised with the subject of divinity, but 
 with as little of the real spirit and charac- 
 ter of divinity, thereb)' transferred into his 
 ovm spirit, and his own character, as if he 
 were equally engrossed and equally exer- 
 cised with the subject of mathematics — re- 
 maining, in short, after all his doctrinal 
 acquisitions of the truth, an utter stranger 
 to the moral influence of the truth ; and 
 proving, in the fact of liis being practically 
 and personally the very same man as be- 
 fore, that if the kingdom of God is not 
 in word, it is as little in argument, but in 
 power. 
 
 If it be of importance to know, that a 
 man may lay hold, by his raemor)', of all 
 the language of Christianity, and yet not 
 be a Christian — it is also of importance to 
 know that a man may la}' hold by his un- 
 derstanding, of all the doctrine of Chris- 
 tianity, and yet not be a Christian. It is 
 our opinion, that in this case the man has 
 only an apparent belief, without having an 
 actual behef — that all the doctrine is con- 
 ceived by him, without being credited by 
 
VIII.] 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 311 
 
 him — that it is the object of his fancy, 
 without being the object of his faith — and 
 that, as on the one hand, if the conviction 
 be real, the consequence of another heart, 
 and another character, will be sure ; so, on 
 the other hand, and on the principle, of 
 "by their fruits shall ye know them," if he 
 want the fruit, it is just because he is in 
 want of the foundation — if there be no pro- 
 duce, it is because there is no principle ; 
 having experienced no salvation from sin 
 here, he shall experience no salvation from 
 the abode of sinners hereafter. If faith 
 were present with him, he would be kept 
 by the powers of it unto salvation, from 
 both ; but destitute as he proves himself to 
 be now of the faith which sanctifies, he will 
 be found then, in the midst of all his sem- 
 blances, and all his delusions, to have been 
 equally destitute of the faith which justifies. 
 And it is, perhaps, not so difficult to stir 
 up in the mind of the learned controver- 
 sialist, and the deeply-exercised scholar, the 
 suspicion, that with all his acquirements 
 in the lore of theology, he is, in respect of 
 its personal influence upon himself, still in 
 a state of moral and spiritual unsoundness, 
 it is not so difficult to raise this feeling of 
 self-condemnation in his mind, as it is to do 
 it in tlie mind of him who has selected his 
 one favourite article, and there, resolved, if 
 die he must, to die hard, has taken up his 
 obstinate and immoveable position — and 
 retiring within the intrenchment of a few 
 verses of the Bible, will defy all the truth 
 and all the thunder of its remaining decla- 
 rations; and with an orthodoxy which car- 
 ries on all its play in his head, without one 
 moving or one softening touch upon his 
 heart, will stand out to the eye of the world, 
 both in avowed principle, and in its corres- 
 ponding practice, a secure, sturdy, firm, 
 impregnable Antinomian. He thinks that 
 he will have heaven, because he has faith. 
 But if his faith do ncit bring the virtues of 
 heaven into his heart, it will never spread 
 either the glory or the security of heaven 
 around his person. The region to which 
 he vainly thinks of looking forward, is a 
 region of spirituality ; and he himself must 
 be spiritualized, ere it can prove to him a 
 region of enjoyment. If he count on a 
 different paradise from this, he is as widely 
 mistaken as they who dream of the luxury 
 that awaits them in the paradise of Maho- 
 met. He misinterprets the whole under- 
 taking of Jesus Christ. He degrades the 
 salvation which He hath achieved, into a 
 salvation from animal pain. He transforms 
 the heaven which He has opened into a 
 heaven of animal gratifications. He for- 
 gets, that on the great errand of man's re- 
 storation, it is not more necessary to recal 
 our departed species to the heaven from 
 which they had wandered, than it is to re- 
 cal to the bosom of man its departed worth, 
 
 and its departed excellence. The one is 
 what faith will do on the other side of 
 time. But the other just as certainly faith 
 must do on this side of time. It is here 
 that heaven begins. It is here that eternal 
 life is entered upon. It is here that man 
 first breathes the air of immortality. It is 
 upon earth that he learns the rudiments of 
 a celestial character, and first tastes of ce- 
 lestial enjoyments. It is here, that the well 
 of water is struck out in the heart of reno- 
 vated man, and that fruit is made to grow 
 unto holiness, and then, in the end, there is 
 life everlasting. The man whose thread- 
 bare orthodoxy is made up of meagre and 
 unfruitful positions, may think that he 
 walks in clearness, while he is only walk- 
 ing in the cold light of speculation. He 
 walks in the feeble sparks of his own kin- 
 dling. Were it fire from the sanctuary, it 
 would impart, to his unregenerated bosom, 
 of the heat, and spirit, and love of the sanc- 
 tuary. This is the sure result of the faith 
 that is unfeigned — and all that a feigned 
 faith can possibly make out, will be a ficti- 
 tious title deed, which will not stand before 
 the light of the great day of final examina- 
 tion. And thus will it be found, I fear, in 
 many cases of marked and ostentatious pro- 
 fessorship, how possible a thing it is to 
 have an appearance of the kingdom of God 
 in word, and the kingdom of God in letter, 
 and the kingdom of God in controversy — 
 while the kingdom of God is not in power. 
 But once more— instead of laying a false 
 security upon one article, it is possible to 
 have a mind familiarized to all the articles 
 — to admit the need of holiness, and to 
 demonstrate the channel of influence by 
 which it is brought down from heaven 
 upon the hearts of believers— to cast an eye 
 of intelligence over the whole symphony 
 and extent of Christian doctrine — to la}' 
 bare those ligaments of connection by 
 which a true faith in the mind is ever sure 
 to bring a new spirit and a new practice 
 along with it : and to liold up the lights 
 both of Scripture and of experience, over the 
 whole process of man's regeneration. It is 
 possible for one to do all this — and yet to 
 have no part in that regeneration — to de- 
 clare with ability and effect the Gospel to 
 others, and yet himself be -cast away — to 
 unravel the whole of that spiritual mechan- 
 ism, by which a sinner is transformed into 
 a saint, while he does not exemplify thai 
 mechanism upon his own person — to ex- 
 plain what must be done, what must be 
 undergone in the process of becoming one 
 of the children of the kingdom, while he 
 remains one of the children of this world. 
 To him the kingdom of God hath come in 
 word, and it hath come in letter, and it 
 hath come in natural discernment ; but it 
 hath not come in power. He may have 
 profoundly studied the whole doctrine of 
 
312 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 the kingdom — and have conceived the va- 
 rious ideas of which it is composed--and 
 have embodied tliem in words — and have 
 poured them forth in utterance— and yet 
 be as little spiritualized by these manifold 
 operations, as the air is spirhualized by its 
 being the avenue for the soinids of his 
 voice to the ears of his listening auditory. 
 The living man may, with all the force of 
 his active intelUgence, be a mere vehicle of 
 transmission. The Holy Ghost may leave 
 the message to take ils own way through 
 his mind — and may refuse the accession of 
 his influence, till it make its escape from 
 the lips of the preacher — and may trust for 
 its conveyance to those aerial undulations 
 by w'hich the report is carried forward to 
 an assembled multitude — and maj^ onlj-, 
 after the entrants of hearing has been ef- 
 fected for the terms of the message, may 
 only, after the unaided powers o? moral 
 and physical nature have brought the mat- 
 ter thus far, may then, and not till then, 
 add his own influence to the truths of the 
 message, and send them with this impreg- 
 nation from the ear to the conscience of 
 any whom he listeth. And thus from the 
 workings of a cold and desolate bosom in 
 the human expounder, may there proceed 
 a voice which on its way to some of those 
 who are assembled around him, shall turn 
 out to be a voice of urgency and power. 
 He may be the instrument of blessings to 
 others, which have never come with kindly 
 or effective influence upon his own heart. 
 He may inspire an energy, which he does 
 not fee!, and pour a comfort into the 
 wounded spirit, the taste of which, and the 
 enjoyment of which is not permitted to his 
 own — and nothing can serve more effec- 
 tually than this experimental fact to hum- 
 ble him, and to demonstrate the existence 
 of a power whicli cannot be wielded by all 
 the energies of Nature — a power often re- 
 fused to eloquence, often refused to the 
 might and the glory of human wisdom— 
 often refused to the most strenuous exer- 
 tions of human might and human talent, 
 and generally met with in richest abun- 
 dance among the ministrations of the men 
 of simplicity and prayer. 
 
 Some of you have heard of the individual, 
 who, under an oppression of the severest 
 melancholy, implored relief and counsel 
 
 from his physician. The unhappy patient 
 was advised to attend the performances of 
 a comedian, who had put all the world in 
 ecstacies. But it turned out, that the patient 
 was the comedian himself — and that while 
 his smile was the signal of merriment to all, 
 his heart stood uncheered and motionless, 
 amid the gratulations of an applauding 
 theatre — and evening after evening, did he 
 kindle around him a rapture in which he 
 could not participate — a poor, helpless, de- 
 jected mourner, among the tumults of that 
 high-sounding gaiety, which he himself had 
 created. 
 
 Let all this touch our breasts with the 
 persuasion of the nothingness ol man. Let 
 it lead us to withdraw our confidence from 
 the mere instnnnent, and to carry it up- 
 wards to him who alone worketh all in all. 
 Let it reconcile us to the arrangements of 
 his providence, and assure our minds, that 
 he can do with one arrangement, what we 
 foiidly anticipated from another. Let us 
 cease to be violently affected by the muta- 
 bilities of a fleeting and a shifting world — 
 and let nothing be suffered the power ol 
 dissolving for an instant, that connection of 
 trust which should ever subsist between our 
 minds and the will of the all-working Deity. 
 Above all, let us carefully separate between 
 our liking for certain accompaniments of 
 the word, and our liking for the word it- 
 seif: Let us be jealous of tliose human pre- 
 ferences which may bespeak some human 
 and adventitious influence upon our hearts, 
 and be altogether different from the influ- 
 ence of Christian truth upon Christianized 
 and sanctified affections. Let us be tena- 
 cious only of one thing— not of holding by 
 particular ministers — not of saving, that " I 
 am Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos" — not of 
 idolizing the servant, while the Master is 
 forgotten, — but let us hold by the Head, 
 even Christ. He is the source of all spirit- 
 ual influence — and while the agents whom 
 he employs, can do no more than bring the 
 kingdom 'of God to you in word — it lies 
 •\v\th him either to exalt one agency, or to 
 humble and depress another — and either 
 with or without such an agency, by the 
 demonstration of that Spirit, which is given 
 unto faith, to make the kingdom of God 
 come into your hearts with power. 
 
1X.1 
 
 ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 313 
 
 SERMON IX. 
 On the Reasonableness of Faith. 
 
 'But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be 
 
 revealed." — Galatians iii. 23. 
 
 " Shut up unto the faith." This is the 
 expression which we fix upon as the subject 
 of our present discourse — and to let you 
 more effectually into the meaning of it, it 
 may be right to state, that in the preceding 
 clause " kept under the law," the term kept, 
 is, in the original Greek, derived from a 
 word which signifies a sentinel. The mode 
 of conception is altogether military. The 
 law is made to act the part of a sentry, 
 guarding every avenue but one — and that 
 one leads iliose who are compelled to take 
 it to the faith of the Gospel. They are shut 
 up to this faith as their only alternative — 
 like an enemy driven by tlie superior tac- 
 tics of an opposing genera], to take up the 
 onl}^ position in which they can maintain 
 themselves, or fly to the only town in which 
 they can find a refuge or a security. This 
 seems to have been a favourite style of ai'- 
 gument with Paul, and the way in which 
 he often carried on an intellectual warfare 
 with the enemies of his master's cause. It 
 forms the basis of that masterly and deci- 
 sive train of reasoning, which we have in 
 his epistle to the Romans. By the operation 
 of a skilful tactics, he, (if we may be al- 
 lowed the expression) manoeuvred them, 
 and shut them up to the faith of the Gospel. 
 It gave prodigious effect to his argument, 
 when he reasoned with them, as he often 
 does, upon their own principles, and turned 
 them into instruments of conviction against 
 themselves. With the Jews he reasoned as 
 a Jew. He made a full concession to them 
 of the leading principles of Judaism — and 
 this gave him possession of the vantage 
 ground upon Avhich these principles stood. 
 He made use of the Jewish law as a senti- 
 nel to shut them out of every other refuge, 
 and to shut them up to the refuge laid be- 
 fore them in the Gospel. He led them to 
 Christ by a school-master which they could 
 not refuse — and the lesson of this school- 
 master, though a very decisive, was a very 
 short one. " Cursed be he that continueth 
 not in all the words of this law to do them." 
 But, in point of fact, they had not done 
 them. To them belonged the curse of the 
 violated law. The awful severity of its 
 sanctioiis was upon them. They found the 
 faith and the free offer of the Gospel to be 
 the onlj'' avenue open to receive them. They 
 were shut up unto this avenue; and the law, 
 by concluding them all to be under sin, left 
 them no other outlet but the free act of grace 
 40 
 
 and of mercy laid before us in the Ntjw Tes- 
 tament. 
 
 But this is not the only example of that 
 peculiar Avay in which St. Paul has managed 
 his discussions with the enemies of the faith. 
 He carried the principle of being all things 
 to all men into his very reasonings. He had 
 Gentiles as well as Jews to contend with; 
 and he often made some sentiment or con- 
 viction of their own, the starting point of 
 his argument. In this same epistle to the 
 Romans, he pleaded with the Gentiles the 
 acknowledged law of nature and of con- 
 science. In his speech to the men of Athens, 
 he dated his argument from a point in their 
 own superstition. In this way he drew con- 
 verts both from the ranks of Judaism, and 
 the ranks of idolatry ; and whether it wa's 
 the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem, or the 
 school of poetry and philosophy in coun- 
 tries of refinement, that he had to contend 
 with, his accomplished mind was never at 
 a loss for principles by which he bore down 
 the hostility of his adversaries, and shut 
 them up unto the faith. 
 
 But there is a fashion in philosophy as well 
 as in other things. In the course of centu- 
 ries, new schools are formed, and the old, 
 Avith all their doctrines, and all their plausi- 
 bilities, sink into oblivion. The restless ap- 
 petite of the human mind for speculation, 
 must have novelties to feed upon — and after 
 the countless fluctuations of two thousand 
 years, the age in which we live has its own 
 taste, and its own style of sentiment to cha- 
 racterize it. If Paul, vested with a new 
 apostolical commission, were to make his 
 appearance amongst us, we should like to 
 know how he would shape h is argument 
 to the reigning taste and philosophy of the 
 times. We should like to confront him with 
 the literati of the day, and hear him lift his 
 intrepid voice in our halls and colleges. In 
 his speech to the men of Athens, he refers 
 to certain of tlieir own poets. We should 
 like to hear his reference to the poetry and 
 the publications of modern Europe — and 
 while the science of this cultivated age 
 stood to listen in all the pride of academic 
 dignity, we should like to know the argu- 
 ments of him who was determined to know 
 nothing save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 
 But all this is little better than the indul- 
 gence of a dream. St. Paul has already 
 fought the good fight, and his course is 
 finished. The battles of the faith are now 
 
314 
 
 ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 [SERM 
 
 in other hands — and thougli the wisdom, 
 and tlie elo |uence, and the inspiration of 
 Paul have departed from among us, yet he 
 has left behind him the record of his princi- 
 ples. With this for our guide, we may at- 
 tempt to d ) what he himself calls upon us 
 to do. W<; may attempt to be followers of 
 him. Wc may imitate him in the intrepid 
 avowal of his principles — and we may try, 
 however humbly and imperfectly, to imi- 
 tate his style of defending them. VVe may 
 accommodate our argument to the reigning 
 principles of the day. We may be all things 
 to all men — and out of the leading varieties 
 of taste and of sentiment which obtain in 
 the present aa^e, and in the present country, 
 we may try if we can collect something, 
 which may he turned into an instrument of 
 conviction i >r reclaiming men from their 
 delusions, and shutting them up unto the 
 faith. 
 
 Tliere is first, then, the school of Natural 
 Religion — a school founded on the compe- 
 tency of the human mind to know God by 
 the exercise of its own faculties — to clothe 
 him in the attributes of its own demonstra- 
 tion — to serve him by a worship and a law 
 pf its own discovery — and to assign to him 
 a mode of procedure in the administration 
 of this vast universe, upon the strength and 
 the plausibility of its own theories. W'e have 
 not time at present, for exposing the rash 
 and unphilosophical audacity of all these 
 presumptions. We lay hold of one of them, 
 and we maintain, that if steadily adhered 
 to, and consistently carried into its conse- 
 quences, it would empty the school of na- 
 tural religion of all its disciples — it would 
 shut them up unto the faith, and impress 
 one rapid and universal movement into the 
 school of Christ. 
 
 The principle which we allude to makes 
 a capital figure in their self-formed specula- 
 tions ; and it is neither more nor less than 
 the judicial government of God over moral 
 and accountable creatures. They hold that 
 there is a law. They hold the human race 
 to be bound to obedience. They hold the 
 authority of the law to be supported by 
 sanctions ; and that the truth, and justice, 
 and dignity of the Supreme Being are in- 
 volved in these sanctions being enforced 
 and executed. One step more, and they 
 are fairly shut up unto the faith. That law 
 which they hold to be in full authority and 
 operation over us, has been most unques- 
 tionably violated. We appeal, as Paul did 
 before us, to the actual state of the human 
 heart, and of human performances. We ask 
 them to open their eyes to the world around 
 them — to respect, like true philosophers, the 
 evidence of observation, and not to flinch 
 from the decisive undeniable fact which 
 this evidence lays before them. Men are 
 under the law, and that law they have vio- 
 lated. " There is not a just man on earth, 
 
 that sinneth not." It is not to open, shame 
 less, and abandoned profligacy, that we are 
 pointing your attention. VVe make our con- 
 fident appeal to the purest and loveliest of 
 the species. We rest our cause witli the 
 most virtuous individual of our nature. 
 We enter his heart, and from what passes 
 there, we can gather enough, and more than . 
 enough to overthrow this tottering and un- 
 supported fabric. We take a survey of its 
 desires, its wishes, its affections ; and we put 
 the question to the consciousness of its pos- 
 sessor, if all these move in obedient har- 
 mony even to the law of natural religion. 
 The external conduct viewed separately and 
 in itself, is, in the eye of every enlightened 
 moralist, nothing. j"t is mere visible display. 
 Virtue consists in the motive which lies 
 behind it ; and the soul is the place of its 
 essential residence. Bring the soul, then, 
 into immediate comparison with the law of 
 God. Think of the pure and spiritual ser- 
 vice which it exacts from you. Amid all the 
 busy and complicated movemerUs of the 
 inner man, is there no estrangement from 
 God? Are there no tumultuous wander- 
 ings from that purity, and goodness, and 
 truth, which even philosophers ascribe to 
 him? Is there no shortcoming from the 
 holiness of his law, and the magnificence of 
 his eternity? Is there no slavish devotion 
 to the paltry things of sense and of the 
 world ? Is there no dreary interval of hours 
 together, when God is unfelt and unthought 
 of? Is there no one time when the mind 
 delivers itself up to the guidance of its own 
 feelings, and its own vanities — when it 
 moves at a distance from heaven ; and 
 whether in solitude or among acquaint- 
 ances, carries along, without any reference 
 to that Being whose arm is perpetually 
 upon me ; who, at this moment, is at my 
 right hand, and measures out to me every 
 hairbreadlli of my existence — who upholds 
 me through every point of that time which 
 runs from the first cry of my infancy, to that 
 dark hour when the weight of my dying 
 agonies is upon me — whose love and whose 
 kindness are ever present to give me every 
 breath which I draw, and every comfort 
 which I enjoy? We grant the disciples of 
 natural religion the truth of iheir own prin- 
 ciple, that we are under the moral govern- 
 ment of the Almighty ; and by the simple 
 addition of one undeniable fact to their 
 speculation, we shut them up unto the 
 faith. 
 
 The simple fact is, that we are rebels to 
 that government, and the punishment of 
 these rebels is due to the vindication of its 
 insulted authority. To say, that God will 
 perpetually interpose with an act of oblivion, 
 would be vastly convenient for us ; but 
 what then becomes of that moral govern- 
 ment whicli figures away in tlie demonstra- 
 tions of moralists? Does it turn out, after 
 
«.! 
 
 ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 315 
 
 all, to be nothing more than an idle and 
 unmeaniiij^ declam itinn, on which they 
 love to expatiate; without any thing liive 
 real atteniiou or belief on the part of the 
 thinking principle ? If they are not true to 
 their own professed convictions, we can 
 undertake to shut them np to nothing. 
 This is slipping from under us ; but it is by 
 an actual desertion of their own principle. 
 If you cannot get them to stand to the ar- 
 gument, the argument is discharged upon 
 them in vain. If this be the result, we do 
 not promise ourselves that all we can say 
 sliall have any weight upon their convic- 
 tions ; not, however, because they have 
 gained a victory, but because they have be- 
 taken themselves to flight. At the very mo- 
 ment that we thought of shutting them up, 
 and binding them in captivity to the obe- 
 dience of the truth, they have turned about 
 and got away from us — but how ? By an 
 ojfen renunciation of their own principle. 
 Look at the great majority of infidel and 
 demi-infidel authors, and they concur in 
 representing man as an accountable subject, 
 and God as a judge and a lawgiver. Ex- 
 amine then the account which this subject 
 has to render ; and you will see, in charac- 
 ters to glaring to be resisted, that with the 
 purest and most perfect individual amongst 
 us, it is a wretched account of guilt and de- 
 ficiency. What make you, of this ? Is the 
 subject to rebel and disobey every hour, 
 and the King, by a perpetual act of indul- 
 gence, to efface every character of truth 
 and dignity from his government? Do this, 
 and you depose the legislator from his 
 throne. You reduce the sanctions of his 
 law to a name and a mockery. You give 
 the lie to your own speculation. You pull 
 the fabric of his moral government to 
 pieces ; and you give a spectacle to angels 
 which makes them weep compassion on 
 your vanity — poor, pigmy, perishable man, 
 prescribing a way to the Eternal, and bring- 
 ing down the high economy of Heaven to 
 the standard of his convenience, and his 
 wishes. This will never do. If there be 
 any truth in the law of God over the crea- 
 tures whom he has formed, and if that law 
 we have trampled upon, we are amenable 
 to its sentence. Ours is the dark and un- 
 sheltered state of condemnation — and if 
 there be a single outlet or way of escaping. 
 It cannot be such a way as will abolish the 
 law, and degrade the Lawgiver; but it must 
 be such a way as will vindicate and exalt 
 the Deity — as will pour a tide of splendour 
 over the majesty of his high attributes — 
 and as in the sublime language of the pro- 
 phet, who saw it from afar, will magnify 
 his law, and make it honourable. To this 
 way we are fairly shut up. It is our only 
 alternative. It is offered to us in the Gos- 
 pel of the New Testament. I am the way, 
 says the Author of tliat Gospel, and by me, 
 
 if any man enter in, he shall be saved. In 
 the appointment of this Mediat r — in his 
 death, to make propitiation for the sins of 
 the world — in his triumph over the powers 
 of darkness — in tlie voice heard from the 
 clouds of heaven, and issuing from llie 
 mouth of God himself, " This is iny beloved 
 Son, in whom I am well pleased" — in the 
 resistless argument of the Apostle, who de- 
 clares God to be just, and the jnstificr of 
 him that believeth in Jesus — in tiie un- 
 doubted miracles which accompanied (he 
 preaching of this illustrious personage, and 
 liis im.Tiediate followers — in the noble train 
 of prophecy, of which he was the object 
 and the termination — in the choir of angels 
 from heaven, who sung his entrance into 
 the world — and in the sublime ascension 
 from the grave, which carried him away 
 from it — in all this we see a warrant and a 
 security given to the work of our redemp- 
 tion in the New Testament, before which 
 philosophy and all her speculations vanish 
 into nothing. Let us betake ourselves to this 
 way. Let us rejoice in being siuit up unto it. 
 It is passing, in fact, from death unto life; or, 
 from our being under tlie law, which speaks 
 tribulation and wrath to every soul of man 
 that doeth evil, to being under the grace 
 which speaks quietness and assurance for 
 ever to all that repair to it. The Scripture 
 hath concluded all to be under sin, that the 
 promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be 
 given to them that believe. 
 
 We now pass on from tlie school of na- 
 tural religion to another school, possessing 
 distinct features ; and of which we con- 
 i eive the most expressive designation to be, 
 the school of Classical Morality. The les- 
 sons of this school are given to the public 
 in the form of periodical essays, elaborate 
 dissertations on the principles of virtue, elo- 
 quent and often highly interesting pictures 
 of its loveliness and dignity, the charm that 
 it imparts to domestic retirement, and its 
 happy subservience to the peace, and order, 
 and well-being of society. It differs from 
 the former school in one leading particular 
 It does not carry in its speculations so dis- 
 tinct and positive a reference to the Su- 
 preme Being. It is true, that our duties to 
 him are found to occupy a place in the cata- 
 logue of its virtues, but then the principle 
 on which they are made to rest, is not the 
 will of God, or obedience to his law. They 
 are rather viewed as a species of moral ac- 
 complishment, the effect of which is to ex- 
 alt and embellish the individual. They 
 form a component part of what they call 
 virtue ; but if their virtue be looked upon in 
 no other light than as the dress of the mind, 
 we maintain, that in the act of admiring 
 this dress, and of even attempting to put it 
 on, you may stand at as great a distance 
 from God, and he be as little i-n your 
 thoughts, as in the tasteful choice of your 
 
116 
 
 ox THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 [SEKM. 
 
 apparel, for the dress and ornament of the 
 body. The object of these writers is not 
 to bring tiieir readers under a sense of the 
 dominion and authority of God. The main 
 principle of their morality, is not to please 
 God, but to adorn man — to throw the 
 splendour of virtue and accomplishment 
 around Lim — to bring liim up to what they 
 call the end and dignity of his being — to 
 raise him to the perfection of his nature — 
 and to rear a spectacle for the admiration 
 of men and of angels, whom the}' figure to 
 look down with rapture, from their high 
 eminence, on the perseverance of a mortal 
 in the career of worth, and integrhy, and 
 honour. This is all very fine. It makes 
 a good picture; but what we insist upon is, 
 that it is a fancy picture : that, without the 
 limits of Christianity and its influence, )-ou 
 will not meet with a single family, or a sin- 
 gle individual to realize it — that the whole 
 range of human experience furnishes no 
 resemblance to it — and that it is as unlike 
 to what we find among the men of the 
 world, or in the familiar walks of society, 
 as the garden of Eden is unlike the desola- 
 tion of a pestilence. The representation is 
 beautiful; but it is still more flattering than 
 it is fair. It is a gaudy deception, and 
 stands at as great a distance from the truth 
 of observation, as it does from the truth of 
 the New Testament. There is positively 
 nothing like it in the whole round of hu- 
 man experience. It is the mere glitter of 
 imagination. It may serve to throw a tinsel 
 colouring over the pages of an ambitious 
 eloquence ; but with business and reality 
 for our objects, we may describe the tour 
 of many thousand families, or take our sta- 
 tion for years in the market-place, and in 
 our attempts to realize the picture which 
 has been laid before us, we will be sure to 
 meet with nothing but vanity, fatigue, and 
 disappointment. Now, the question we 
 have to put to the disciples of this school 
 is, are thev realh' sincere in this admira- 
 tion of virtue ? Is it a true process of senti- 
 ment within them ? "We are willing to 
 share in their admiration and to ascend the 
 highest summit of moral excellence along 
 with them. We join issue with them on 
 their owu principle, and coupling it with 
 the obvious and undeniable facts of man's 
 depravity, we shut them up unto the faith. 
 Virtue is the idol which they profess to 
 venerate ; and this virtue, as it exists in 
 their own conceptions, and figures in their 
 own dissertations, they cannot find. In pro- 
 portion to their regard for virtue, must be 
 their disappointment at missing her ; and 
 when we witness the ardour of their senti- 
 ments, and survey the elegance of their 
 high-\vrought pictures, what must be the 
 humiliation of these men, we think, wlien 
 they look on the world around them, and 
 contrast the purity of their own sketches. 
 
 i with the vices and the degradation ol the 
 species. Grosser beings may be satisfied 
 I with the average morality of mankind ; but 
 ' if their be any truth in their high standard 
 of perfection, or any sincerity in their as- 
 pirations after it, it is impossible that they 
 can be satisfied. By one single step do we 
 lead thera from the high tone of academic 
 ; sentiment, to the sober humility of the Gos- 
 ^ pel. Give them their time to expatiate on 
 j virtue, and they cannot be too loud or elo- 
 ' quent in her praises. "We have only a sin- 
 I gle sentence to add to their description : 
 The picture is beautiful, but on the whole 
 I surface of the world we defy them to fasten 
 upon one exemplification ; ami by every 
 grace which they have thrown around their 
 idol, and everv* addition they have made to 
 her loveliness, they have only thrown man- 
 kind at a distance more helpless and more 
 irrecoverable from their high standard of 
 duty and of excellence. 
 
 The tasteful admirer of eloquent des- 
 cription and beautiful morality, turns with 
 disgust from those mortilying pictures of 
 man, which abound in the New Testament. 
 We only ask them to combine, with all this 
 finery and eloquence, what has been esteem- 
 ed as the best attribute of a philosopher, 
 respect for the evidence of observation. 
 We ask them to look at man as he is, and 
 compare him with man as they would have 
 him to be. If they find that he falls miser- 
 ably short of their ideal standard of excel- 
 lence, what is this but making a principle 
 of their own the instrument of shutting 
 them up unto the faith of the Gospel, or, at 
 least, shutting them up unto one of the 
 most peculiar of its doctrines, the depravity 
 of our nature, or the dismal ravage which 
 the power of sin has made upon the mored 
 constitution of the species. The doctrine 
 i of the academic moralist, so far from reach- 
 ing a wound to the doctrine of the Apostle, 
 gives an additional energy- to all his senti- 
 ments. '"My mind approves the things 
 which are more excellent, but how to per- 
 form that which is good, I find not.-' " I 
 delight in the law of God after the iuM-ard 
 man." " But the good that I would, I do 
 not, and the evil that I would not, that 
 I do." 
 
 But the faith of the Gospel does not stop 
 here. It does not rest, satisfied with shut- 
 ting you up unto a belief of the fact of hu- 
 man depravity. That depravity it proposes 
 to do away. It professes itself equal to the 
 mighty achievement of rooting out the 
 deeply seated corruption of our nature — of 
 making us new creatures in Christ Jesus— 
 of destroying the old man and his deeds, 
 and bringing every rebellious movement 
 within us under the dominion of a new 
 and a better principle. If sincere in your 
 admiration of virtue, you are shut up unto 
 the only expedient for the re-estabhshment 
 
IX.-] 
 
 ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 317 
 
 of virtue in the world. That expedient is 
 the Spirit of God working in the heart of 
 believers — quickening those who were dead 
 in trespasses and sins, and bringing into 
 action the same might) power which raised 
 Jesus from the grave, for raising us who 
 believe in Jesus to newness of life and 
 of obedience. This is the process of sancti- 
 fication laid before us in the New Testa- 
 ment. A wonderful process it undoubtedly 
 is ; but are we who walk in a world of 
 mystery, who have had only a few little 
 years to look about us, and are bewildered 
 at every step amid the variety of his works 
 and of his counsels, are we to reject a pro- 
 cess because it is wonderful ? Must no step, 
 no operation of the mighty God be admit- 
 ted, till it is brought under the dominion of 
 our faculties ? — and shall we who strut our 
 little hour in the humblest of his mansions, 
 prescribe a law to him whose arm is abroad 
 upon all worlds, and whose eye can take 
 in, at a single glance, the unmeasurable fields 
 of creation and providence? Be it as won- 
 derful as it may — enough for us that it is 
 made sure by the distinct and authentic 
 testimony of heaven; and if, from the 
 mouth of Jesus, who is heaven's messen- 
 ger, we are told, that " unless a man be 
 born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
 kingdom," it is our part submissively to 
 acquiesce, and humbly to pray for it. 
 Whatever repugnance others may feel to 
 this part of the revealed counsels of God, 
 those who look to a sublime standard of 
 moral excellence, and sigh for the estab- 
 lishment of its authority in the world, 
 ought to rejoice in it. It is the only re- 
 maining expedient for giving effect and re- 
 ality to their own declamations, and they 
 are fairly shut up unto it. Long have they 
 tried to repair the disorders of a ruined 
 world. Many an expedient has been fallen 
 upon. Temples have been reared to science 
 and to virtue; and from the lofty academic 
 chair, the wisdom of this world has lifted 
 Its voice amid a crowd of listening ad- 
 mirers. For thousands of years, the un- 
 aided powers and principles of humanity, 
 have done their uttermost ; and tell us, ye 
 advocates for the dignity of the species, the 
 amount of their operation. If you refuse 
 to answer, we shall answer for you ; and 
 do not hesitate to say, that mighty in pro- 
 mise, and wretched in accomplishment, 
 you have positively done nothing — that all 
 the wisdom of the schools, and all its 
 vapouring demonstrations, have not had 
 the least perceptible weight, when brought 
 to bear upon the mass of human character, 
 and human performance ; that the corrup- 
 tion of the inner man has not yielded at 
 all to your reasoning, and remains as un- 
 subdued and as obstinate a principle as 
 ever ; that the power of depravity in the 
 soul of man is beyond you ; and that setting 
 
 aside tne real operation of Christianity 
 in the hearts of individuals and the surface 
 dressing which the hand of legislation has 
 thrown over the face of society, the human 
 soul, if seen in its nakedness, would still 
 be seen in all its original deformity — as 
 strong in selfishness, as lawless in propen- 
 sity, as devoted to sense and to time, as 
 estranged from God, as unmindful of the 
 obedience, and as indiflferent to the reward 
 and the in"heritance of his children. 
 
 The machine has gone into disorder; and 
 there is not a single power within the com- 
 pass of the machinery itself that is able to 
 repair it. You must do as you do in other 
 cases; you must have recourse to some ex- 
 ternal application. The inefficacy of every 
 tried expedient shuts you up unto the only 
 remaining one. Every human principle has 
 been brought to bear upon it in vain, and 
 we are shut up unto the necessity of some 
 other principle that is beyond humanity, 
 and above it. The Spirit of God is that 
 mighty principle. That Spirit which moved 
 on the face of the waters, and made lifijht, 
 and peace, and beauty to emerge out of the 
 wild war of nature and her elements, is the 
 revealed agent of heaven, for repairing the 
 disorders of sin, and restoring the moral 
 creation of God to health and to loveliness. 
 It will create us anew unto good works. It 
 will make us again after that image in 
 which Ave were originally formed. It will 
 sanctify us by tlie faith that is in Jesus. 
 And by that mighty po\ver whereby it is 
 able to'subdue all things unto itself, it will 
 obtain the victory over that spirit which 
 now worketh in the children of disobedience. 
 The resurrecticm of Jesus from the dead is 
 the first fruit of its operation; and to him 
 who believes it is the satisfying pledge of 
 its future triumphs. That body, which, left 
 to it.self, Avould have mouldered into frag- 
 ments, is now in all the bloom of immor- 
 tality, at the right hand of the everlasting 
 throne. We have tried the operation of a 
 thousand principles in vain. Let us repair 
 to this, so great in promise, and so mighty 
 in performance. It has already achieved its 
 wonders. It has wrought those miracles of 
 faith and fortitude which, in the first ages 
 of Christianity, threw a gleam of triumph 
 over the horrors of martyrdom. It has given 
 us displays of the great and the noble which 
 are without example in history; and from 
 the first moment of its operation in the 
 world, it has been working in those unseen 
 retirements of the cottage and the family, 
 where the eye of the historian never pene- 
 trates. The admirers of virtue are fairly 
 shut up unto the faith; for faith is the only 
 avenue that leads to it. "To your faith add 
 virtue," says the Apostle; and that you may 
 be able to"make the addition, the promise 
 of the Spirit is given to them that believe. 
 We should now pass on to another school 
 
318 
 
 ON THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 the school of fine feeling and poetical senti- 
 ment. It differs from the former in tiiis — 
 that while the one, in its dissertations on 
 virtue, carries you up to the principles of 
 duty, the other paints and admires it as a 
 tasteful exhibition of what is fair and lovely 
 in luiman character. The one makes virtue 
 its idol because of its rectitude; the other 
 makes virtue its idol because of its beauty; 
 and the process of reasoning by which they 
 are shut up unto the faith, is the same in 
 both. Look at the actual state of the world, 
 and you find that both the rectitude and the 
 beauty are a-wanting. If you admire the 
 one, and love the other, you are shut up 
 unto the only expedient that is able to re- 
 store them — and that expedient is sanctioned 
 by the truth of heaven, and has all the power 
 of omnipotence employed in giving effect 
 to the operation — the Spirit of God subdu- 
 ing all things unto itself — putting the law 
 in our hearts, and writing it in our minds — 
 and by bringing the soul of man under the 
 influence of "whatsoever things are pure, 
 or honest, or lovely, or of good report," 
 creating a finer spectacle, and rearing a 
 fairer and more unfading flower, than ever 
 grew in the gardens of poetry. 
 
 The processes are so entirely similar, that 
 we would not have made it the distinct ob- 
 ject of your attention, had it not been for 
 the sake of an argument in behalf of the 
 faith, which may be addressed with great 
 advantage to the literary and cultivated or- 
 ders of society. There are few people of 
 literary cultivation, who have not read a 
 novel. In this fictitious composition, there 
 are often one or two perfect characters that 
 figure in the history, and delight the imagi- 
 nation of the reader; and you are at last 
 landed in some fairy scene of happiness and 
 virtue, which it is quite charmiiig to con- 
 template, and which you would like to 
 aspire after; perhaps some interesting fami- 
 ly in the bosom of which love, and inno- 
 cence, and tranquility, have fixed them- 
 selves — where the dark and angry passions 
 never enter — where suspicion is unknown, 
 and every eye meets another in the full 
 glance of cordiality and affection — where 
 charity reigns triumphant, and smiles benefi- 
 
 cence and joy upon the humble cottages 
 which surround it. Now this is very sooth- 
 ing, and very delightful. It makes you glad 
 to think of it. The fancy swells with rap- 
 ture, and the moral principle of our nature 
 lends its full approbation to a scene so vir- 
 tuous and so exemplary. So much for the 
 dream of fancy. Let us compare it with the 
 waking images of truth. Walk from Dan to 
 Beersheba, and tell us, if without and be- 
 yond the operation of Gospel motives, and 
 Gospel principles, the reality of life ever 
 furnished you with a picture that is at all 
 like the elegance and perfection of this ficti- 
 tious history. Go to the finest specimen of 
 such a famii3^ Take your secret stand, and 
 observe them in their more retired and in- 
 visible moments. It is not enough to pay 
 them a ceremonious visit, and observe them 
 in the put on manners and holiday dress of 
 general company. Look at them when all 
 this disguise and finery are thrown aside. 
 Yes, we have no doubt, that you will per- 
 ceive some love, some tenderness, some vir- 
 tue ; but the rough and untutored honesty 
 of truth compels us to say, that along with 
 all this, there are at times mingled the bit- 
 terness of invective, the growlings of dis- 
 content, the harpings of peevishness and 
 animosity, and all that train of angry, sus- 
 picious, and discordant feelings, which im- 
 bitter the heart of man, and make the reality 
 of human life a very sober affair indeed, 
 when compared with the high colouring of 
 romance, and the sentimental extravagance 
 of poetry. 
 
 Now, what do we make of ail this? We 
 infer, that however much we may love per- 
 fection, and aspire after it, yet there is some 
 want, some disease in the constitution of 
 man, which prevents his attainment of it — 
 that there is a feebleness of principle about 
 him — that the energy of his practice does 
 not correspond to the fair promises of his 
 fancy; and however much he may delight 
 in an ideal scene of virtue and moral excel- 
 lence, there is some lurking malignity in his 
 constitution, which, without the operation 
 of that mighty power revealed to us in the 
 Gospel, makes it vain to wish, and hopeless 
 to aspire after it. 
 
X.] 
 
 ON THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 319 
 
 SERMON X. 
 On the Christian Sabbath. 
 
 " And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for ma.i, and not man for the Sabbath." — Mark ii. 27. 
 
 The first recommendation of the Sabbath 
 is the place which it occupies in the deca- 
 logue. There was much of Jewish obser- 
 vancy swept away with the ruin of the na- 
 tional institutions. There was much of it 
 desiorned for a temporary purpose, and 
 which fell into disuse among the worship- 
 pers of God after that purpose was accom- 
 plished. A Christian of the present day, 
 looks upon many of the most solemn ser- 
 vices of Judaism in no other light than as 
 fragments of a perishaljle ritual — nor does 
 he ever think, that upon himself they have 
 any weight of personal obligation. But this 
 does not hold true of all the duties and all 
 the services of Judaism. There is a broad 
 line of distinction between that part of it 
 which is now broken up, and that part of it 
 which still retains all the authority of a per- 
 petual and immutable law. Point us out a 
 single religious observance of the Hebrews 
 that is now done away, and we are able to 
 say of it, and of all the others which have 
 experienced a similar termination, that they, 
 every one of them, lie without the compass 
 of the ten commandments. They have no 
 place whatever in that great record of duty 
 Avhich was graven on tables of stone, and 
 placed within the holy of holies, under the 
 mercy-seat. Now, how does the law of the 
 Sabbath stand as to this particular? Does it 
 lie within or without a limit so tangible, and 
 forming so distinct and so noticeable a line 
 of demarcation? We see it then standing 
 within this record, of which all the other 
 duties are of such general and such imper- 
 ishable obligation. We meet with it in the 
 interior of that hallowed ground, of which 
 every other part is so sacred and so inviola- 
 ble. We perceive it occupying its own con- 
 spicuous place in that register of duties, all 
 of which have the substance and the irrevo- 
 cable permanency of moral principle. On 
 reading over the other articles of this me- 
 morable code, we see all of them stamped 
 with such enduring characters of obligation, 
 as no time can wear away; and the law of 
 the Sabbath taking its station in the midst 
 of them, and enshrined on each side of it 
 among the immutabilities of truth, and jus- 
 tice, and piety. It is true, that much of 
 Judaism has now fallen into desuetude, and 
 that many of its dearest and most distin- 
 guished solemnities are now regarded in no 
 other light than as i\ve obsolete and repealed 
 observances of an antiquated ritual. But it 
 is worthy of being well observed that the 
 whole of this work of demolition took place 
 
 around and without the line of demarcation 
 We see no attempt whatever to violate the 
 sanctity of the ground which this line en- 
 closes. We no where see any express or 
 recorded incursion upon any one of the ob- 
 servances of the decalogue. We perceive 
 an Apostle in the New Testament making 
 his allusion to the fifth of these observances, 
 and calling it the first commandment with 
 promise; and by the very notice he bestows 
 on the arrangement of the duties, are we 
 given to understand, that no attempt had 
 been made to disturb their order, or to de- 
 pose any one of them from the place which 
 had been assigned to it. We should count 
 it an experiment of the most fearful audaci- 
 ty, without the intimation of any act of re- 
 peal passed in the high legislature of hea- 
 ven, to fly in the face of that Sabbath law, 
 which stands enrolled among the items of 
 so notable and so illustrious a document; 
 and nothing short of a formal and absolute 
 recallment can ever tempt us to think, that 
 the new dispensation of the Gospel has 
 created so much as one vacancy in that 
 register of duties, which bears upon the 
 aspect of its whole history the impress of a 
 revealed standard that is unalienable and 
 everlasting. We cannot give up one article 
 in that series of enactments which, in every 
 one age of the Christian world, has been 
 revealed as a code, not of ceremonial but 
 of moral law. We cannot consent, but on 
 the ground of some resistless and overbear- 
 ing argument, to the mutilation of the in- 
 tegrity of this venerable record. We see 
 throughout the whole line of the Jewish 
 histor}^, that it stood separate and alone; 
 and that free from all the marks of national 
 or local peculiarity, it bore upon it none of 
 the frailty of the other institutions, but has 
 been preserved and handed down to us an 
 unchanged standard of duty, for all genera- 
 tions. We see, at the very commencement 
 of the Mosaic dispensation how God him- 
 self thought fit to signalize it; for, from the 
 place where he stood, did he proclaim the 
 ten commandments of the law, in the hear- 
 ing of the assembled multitude; while every 
 other enactment, whether moral or cere- 
 monial, was conveyed to the knowledge of 
 the people, through the medium of a human 
 legislator. And we should feel that, in de- 
 throning any one of the perceptive imposi- 
 tions of the decalogue from its authority 
 over our practice, vve were bidding defiance 
 to the declared will of the Eternal; and re- 
 sisting a voice which sounds as loudly and 
 
320 
 
 ON THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 as impressively to our conscience, as the 
 one that issued in thunder from the flaming 
 top of Sinai, and scattered dismay among 
 the thousands of Israel. 
 
 But, secondly., in the practice of the 
 Christian world, the Sabbath has been 
 moved forward by one day ; and the re- 
 membrance to which it is now consecrated, 
 is a different one from that of the creation 
 of the world. For this change we can find 
 no positive enactment ; but we can quote 
 the uncontrolled observation of it down 
 from the period of the apostolic age. We 
 are sure that a practice so early and so 
 universal, could not have been introduced 
 without the sanction of Heaven's inspired 
 messengers. And, mark the limit of that 
 liberty which has been taken with the 
 fourth commandment. It amounts to no- 
 thing more than the circumstantial change 
 of a day. Had the early Christians felt 
 themselves warranted to take more liberty, 
 they would have taken it ; for then was the 
 time when Christianity took its determi- 
 nate movement away from the practices of 
 the old dispensation, and established all its 
 distinctions as a religion of principle, and a 
 religion of spiritual character. But widely 
 as the one religion departed from the other, 
 there never, in any one age of the church, 
 has been a departure from the observance 
 of a Sabbath, appropriated to the more so- 
 lemn and peculiar exercises of piety. The 
 change in the day goes to prove that Chris- 
 tianitj^ is not a religion of mere days. But 
 while it has abandoned one particular day, 
 you find it transferring itself to another; and 
 in the choice of that other it is guided by 
 the affecting remembrance of an event, the 
 contemplation of which is fitted to strength- 
 en the faith, and to refresh the piety, and 
 to waken the best and most religious feel- 
 ings of those who are spiritually engaged 
 in it. It commemorates the rise of the 
 crucified Saviour from the grave — of him 
 who is the first fruits of them who slept — 
 of him who by that Spirit which is com- 
 mitted to him, raises all those who are dead 
 in tresspasses and sins, to newness of life — 
 of him who is the great agent of Heaven 
 for repairing all the disorders and all the 
 deformities of the moral world — of him by 
 whom, as the word of God, the universe 
 was at first created, but who has since 
 earned a more enduring title to the memory 
 , of Christians, by taking upon him that 
 great scheme, in virtue of which, there are 
 to emerge out of this ruined and rebellious 
 province, a new heaven and a new earth, 
 wherein dvv'eUeth righteousness. At the 
 first creation of the world, the Spirit moved 
 over the turbuleace of its confused and jar- 
 ring elements, and awoke them all to or- 
 der and to harmony. "When Adam fell, 
 we know not what precise mischief it in- 
 flicted on the material world ; but we know 
 
 that the moral world went back again into 
 a wild chaos of dark and disorderly rebel- 
 lion ; and the heart of man lost its obe- 
 dience to the attractive influences of that 
 great principle which can alone subdue it 
 into harmonious accordancy with the law 
 of God ; and the resurrection of Christ 
 from the grave was a mighty and essential 
 step in the counsels of heaven for quelling 
 all the violence of this elementary war; 
 "for unless I go away, the comforter can- 
 not come ; but if I go to my Father, I shall 
 send him." And from the place which he 
 now occupies, does the Spirit come down 
 at the commission of the exalted Saviour, 
 and he moves on the face of this spiritual 
 chaos, and is ever and anon reclaiming 
 some portion of a moral and renovated em- 
 pire from the rugged domain of a world 
 lying in wickedness. And the time is yet 
 to come when this ever-renovating Spirit 
 shall fulfil its conclusive triumph, by spread- 
 ing an entire aspect of worth, and piety, 
 and moral loveliness over the wide extent 
 of a now sinful creation. 
 
 And thus it is, that while the day of Sab- 
 bath has been changed, there is a most af- 
 fecting remembrance which gives to the 
 observation of Sabbath the full import and 
 significancy of its original purpose — the 
 remembrance of a new creation emerging 
 f^rom an old one — the animating view of 
 life and immortality rising in splendour 
 from the corruption of the grave — the con- 
 templation of an ascended Saviour, who 
 pours the promise of the Father on all his 
 believing disciples — and working in them 
 by the Spirit the graces of the new creature, 
 prepares them for a welcome entrance into 
 those regions, where sin is unknown, and 
 where death is swallowed up in victory. 
 
 But, thirdly, in addition to the slight cir- 
 cumstantial change which has been made 
 upon the Sabbath, and which we are sure 
 no honest and enlightened Christian can 
 ever construe into an entire and absolute 
 repeal of the whole institution — there is a 
 general change affectirig every one of the 
 ten commandments, but which was never 
 so well understood till the new dispensa- 
 tion was fully and fairly ushered into the 
 world. 
 
 We do not mean to say, that the wor- 
 thies of the Old Testament Avere utter 
 strangers to that doctrine of grace on 
 which the Spirit of God, working in larger 
 measure on the minds of the Apostles, from 
 the day of Pentecost, has poured so clear 
 and so celestial a splendour. We believe 
 that many Jews were, under the shadow of 
 their types and their sacrifices, trained to 
 the faith, and the humility, and the aflec- 
 tionate obedience of creatures who knew 
 themselves to be incapable of perfect con- 
 formity to the law of God — and that, in 
 the act of serving him. they stood on es- 
 
s.] 
 
 ON THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 321 
 
 seiitially the same footing of mercy to 
 pardon and grace to help in the time of 
 need, on which a spiritual Christian of the 
 day now feels himself to be so firmly and 
 so conclusively established. The change 
 we are alluding to, then, did not take place 
 at tlie first settlement of the new dispensa- 
 tion. It only came out at that time into 
 more distinct exhibition; and it consists in 
 this; that wliereas the direct and natural 
 way of taking up the promulgated law of 
 God, is to t;ike it up as a law of works, and 
 to labour at tlie performance of it on the 
 understood condition of " This do, and ye 
 shall live" — and as this condition has not 
 been fulfilled by a single son or daughter 
 of the species, then, unless some new ar- 
 rangement of the matter between God and 
 man had been entered into, life was forfeit- 
 ed by every one of us, and we should just 
 have been what the New Testament tells 
 us we actually are, anterior to our recep- 
 tion of the Gospel, the children of wrath, 
 and under the full operation of the sen- 
 tence, that " the soul which sinneth it shall 
 die." Now, it would lead us away from 
 our subject into a most interminable ex- 
 cursion, did we say all that might be perti- 
 nently and substantially said on the precise 
 turn which the Gospel has given to the 
 obligation of the law. Eternal life is no 
 longer the wages of perfect obedience. It 
 is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. The man who has faith to perceive 
 the reality of this gift, lays hold of it, and 
 rejoices in all the enlargement of conscious 
 forgiveness, and in all the cordialities of a 
 secure and confident reconciliation, with 
 the God whom he had offended. But this 
 faith does not set him loose from any one 
 of the duties of obedience. Had no other 
 doctrine been proposed to the believer, than 
 the single one of forgiveness through the 
 redemption that is in the blood of Jesus, 
 then we can conceive how the dawning of 
 the Gospel faith might be a signal for the 
 emancipation of the whole man from the 
 restraints of moral obligation. But other 
 doctrines have been proposed ; and faith, 
 which is neither more nor less than a re- 
 liance on the divine testimony, gives an 
 equally honest and welcome admission to 
 all the particulars of that testimony. It 
 embraces all the particulars of God's com- 
 munication ; and such is the amplitude of 
 its grasp, that though as a principle, it is 
 single and undivided, and can be defined 
 within the limits of a short sentence ; yet 
 grant us the existence of this principle, and 
 then you grant us room enough, and pro- 
 vision enough for giving effect to every 
 one of the lessons of revelation. AVhen 
 faith attaches itself to the doctine of recon- 
 ciliation through Christ, it will make him 
 who possesses it, to walk before God with- 
 out fear AVhen faith attaches itself to the 
 41 
 
 doctrine, that " without holiness no man 
 can see God," it makes him wiio pos 
 sesses it, to "walk before God wiiliout 
 fear, in righteousness and in holiness." 
 When faith attaches itself to the doctrins 
 that unless ye do such and such command- 
 ments, ye shall uot inherit the kingdom of 
 God, it makes him who possesses it, feel 
 as constraining an urgency of personal in- 
 terest in the work of keeping these com- 
 mandments, as if the old covenant of works 
 had got up again, and he behooved to ply 
 his assiduous task for the rewards of per- 
 fect obedience. When faith attaches itself 
 to the doctrine of every man receiving his 
 award at the judgment-seat, according to 
 the deeds done in the body, it makes him 
 who possesses it just strive with as much 
 earnestness to multiply good deeds — as if 
 each performance done at the bidding of 
 the Saviour, was a distinct addition to the 
 treasure reserved for him in heaven. But 
 faith does attach itself to every one of these 
 doctrines, or it is no faith at all. It gives 
 the homage of Us reliance to each particu- 
 lar of the law and the testimony. It clears 
 its unfettered way from among the per- 
 plexities of human arrangement ; and dis- 
 owning every authority but that of the one 
 master, it sits at his feet with the docility 
 of a little child, and appropriates to its right 
 influence every item of his communications. 
 And thus it is, that the man who is in sim- 
 plicity and in good faith a believer, while 
 he rejoices all the day long in the sunshine 
 of a countenance which he knows to be 
 friendly to him, labours all the day long at 
 his faithful and assiduous task of doing 
 every thing to the glory of God. There ;s 
 room enough in his enlarged heart for 
 knowing, that while the one is his offered 
 privilege, the other is his required duty — 
 and free as he is, from all the embroilments 
 of a darkening speculation, he does not 
 wait for the adjustment of any human con- 
 troversy on the subject, but taking himself 
 to his Bible, he both lives in all the security 
 of the offered reconciliation, and without 
 questioning the simple announcement of 
 the Saviour, that "if ye love me, ye will 
 keep my commandments," he also lives in 
 all the diligence of one who is "steadfast 
 and unmoveable, and always abounding in 
 the work of the Lord." 
 
 It is true, that tliere is a difference between 
 being under the law, and under grace. But 
 how does this difference affect the morality 
 of a Christian '? Let us take the deliverance 
 of an Apostle upon the subject. " Shall we 
 sin," says Paul, "because we are not under 
 the law, but under grace? God forbid." 
 Quite the contrary, for it is precisely be- 
 cause we are under grace, that sin hath not 
 dominion over us. We must shorten this 
 explanation, and bring it to bear on the ob- 
 servation of the Sabbath. Tlie great interest 
 
ON THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 of practical obedience Is upheld under tlie 
 dispensation of tlie Gospel, by all the securi- 
 ties of positive and preceptive obligation. 
 But more than this — there is such a change 
 wrought by grace in the heait of every be- 
 liever, that he not only understands tlie obli- 
 gation, but is made cordially to acquiesce in it. 
 T.here is such a revolution in Uis desires, that 
 it is now his meat and drink to do the will of 
 that God, against whom there existed within 
 him the most stubborn and revolting en- 
 mity. The man who by faith, now looks 
 on God as his friend, will have no difficulty 
 in understanding this change, for he feels 
 it ; and there is not a believer on the face of 
 the earth who does not, from the time of his 
 becoming so, love that law which he afore- 
 time violated. This law was at first graven 
 on tables of stone, and held out for the go- 
 vernment of a helpless and guilty race, who 
 were both unable and unwilling to yield to 
 it the loyahy of their obedience; and it 
 therefore served to them for a ministry of 
 condemnation. 
 
 When the dispensation of grace was 
 brought in, this law was not abrogated. 
 One of the most illustrious exercises of the 
 grace of God, consisted in his putting forth 
 a device for securing the observance of his 
 laws, and this device is neither more nor 
 less than putting the law in our hearts, and 
 writmg it in our minds. On the chanore 
 taking place from our being under the law, 
 to oar being under grace, the law, to use 
 the language of the Bible, is taken down 
 from the place it formerly occupied on 
 tablets of stone, and from wliich it frowns 
 upon us in all the wrath of its violated dig- 
 nity ; and it is graven on the fleshly tablets 
 of the heart — or, in other words, the man is 
 endowed with a liking for that which he 
 formerly rebelled against. And grant him 
 possessed of the genuine principle of faith ; 
 and there can be no doubt, that the spirit, 
 true to his office, has been at work within 
 him, and has given a new bent to his affec- 
 tions, and has turned them to the love of 
 those commandments which he aforetime 
 hated and resisted, and has established in 
 his bosom this omnipotent security for obe- 
 dience, that the taste and the inclinations of 
 the new creature are now upon his side; 
 and as if carried forward by the spontaneous 
 and inborn alacrity of a constitutional im- 
 pulse, does the man who is thus trans- 
 formed, and thus acted upon by that Spirit, 
 for wliich he never ceases to pray, run with 
 delight in the way of all the commandments. 
 
 Now, we have already attemjjted to satisfy 
 you, that there, is no erasure of the fourth 
 commandment from that lettered record of 
 the law, which is met with in your Bibles, 
 and where the institution of the Sabbath is 
 graven as indelibly as any one of the un- 
 changeable moralities among which it is 
 situated. But by the new dispensation of 
 
 the Gospel, this law is made to stand in 
 another place. It is conveyed, as it were, 
 from its old position, on a tablet of stone, 
 and written in the characters of a living 
 epistle on the tablet of a believer's heart. 
 Now the question we have to put is, in this 
 transference of the law from its old to its 
 new repository, does any one of its articles 
 fall away from it, and is lost, as it were, in 
 the passage, by being loosened and detached 
 from the other articles among which it was 
 incorporated ? We can specify some, at 
 least, of the ten commandments, which have 
 found their way safe and entire to the heart 
 of him who has embraced the Gospel, and 
 lives under the power of its purifying in- 
 fluences. We are sure that such a man will 
 have his supreme affections fastened upon 
 God, and renouncing every idol, whether 
 of wealth, or of ambition, or of vanity, that 
 can dethrone the Father of his spirit from 
 his rightful ascendency, he will prefer no 
 one object of regard, or of reverence before 
 him. We are sure that such a man Avill be 
 quite in earnest to have a right knowledge 
 and conception of God — that the Being he 
 worships may be the true God — and lest, by 
 directing his homage to some false and dis- 
 torted picture of his own fancy, he may 
 incur all the guilt, and be carried away by 
 all the delusion of him who falls down to a 
 material image, in lowly and bending ado- 
 ration. We are sure that such a man Avill 
 do honour to the hallowed name of his 
 Master, who is in heaven, and be sickened 
 and appalled by that profaneness which is 
 so current in many of our companies. We 
 are sure that such a man will revere his 
 earthly parents, and will stand by them in 
 the midst of their sinking infirmities; and 
 whether in the form of a declining father, 
 or a widowed mother, who has throAvn the 
 whole burden of her dependence on the 
 children who remain to her, we are sure 
 that he will never turn a contemptuous ear 
 to the feebleness of their entreating voice — 
 but will bid his proud and aspiring man- 
 hood give up to their authority all its way- 
 wardness, and all its tumultuous indepen- 
 dence. We are quite sure, that in the heart 
 of such a man, there is an aspiration of 
 kindliness towards everything that breathes, 
 and that the commandment, "Thou shalt 
 not kill," carries in his bosom the widely 
 extended import of thou shalt not conceive 
 one purpose, nor carry against a single hu- 
 man being, one rankling sentiment of ma- 
 lignity. We are sure that such a man, far 
 removed from all that is licentious in prac- 
 tice, will recoil, even in the unseen solitude 
 of thought, from all that is licentious in con- 
 ception, and spurning away from the pure 
 sanctuary of his heart every evil and unhal- 
 lowed visitation, he will present to the ap- 
 pi'oving eye of Heaven, all the adornments 
 of a spiritual temple, all the graces and all 
 
X.] 
 
 ON THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 
 
 the beauties of an unspotted offering. We 
 are sure that sucli a man, with a hand un- 
 soiled by any one of the gains of injustice, 
 will with all the sensitiveness of h igh-minded 
 and honiiurable principle, keep himself as 
 nobly aloof from substantial as from literal 
 dishonesty. He will feel superior to every 
 one of those tolerated artifices, and those 
 practical disguises, which, throughout the 
 great mass of mercantile society, have so 
 hardened and so worn down the con- 
 sciences of those, who, for years, have been 
 speeding and bustling their way amongst a 
 variety of manifold transactions — and in the 
 high walk of simplicity and godly sincerity, 
 will he carry along with him the impress 
 of one of the peculiar people, amid all the 
 legalized fraudulency of a selfish and un- 
 principled generation. We are quite sure 
 that such a man, seeing he had put on the 
 deeds of the new creature, would never 
 suffer the burning infamy of a lie to rest 
 upon him. All tliat was within him, and 
 about him, would be clear as the ethereal 
 firmament. The wiles of a deceitful policy 
 would be utterly unknown to him. The 
 openness and the ingenuousness of truth, 
 would sit upon liis forehead, and his every 
 utterance bear upon it as decided a stamp 
 of authority, as if shielded by a .solemn ap- 
 peal to God and to the judgment-seat. And, 
 lastly, we are quite sure that such a man 
 could not breatlie a single avaricious desire 
 after the substance of another. His heart 
 is set on aiiother treasure. He has entered 
 the service of another master than the mam- 
 mon of unrighteousness. His affections have 
 settled on a more enduring substance. With 
 the eye of faith, he looks \) heaven, and to 
 its unfading and unpcrishable riches ; and 
 all the splendours of this world's vain and 
 empty magnificence, sink into wortliless- 
 ness before them. He can eye the golden 
 career of his more prosperous neighbours, 
 without one wistful sentiment either of*co- 
 vetousness or of envy ; and feels not the 
 meanness and the hardships of his humbler 
 condition, amid the tranquillities of a heart 
 that is clierishing a better prospect, and re- 
 posing on the sure anticipation of a happier 
 and more enduring home. 
 
 Well, then, in the heart of this man, of 
 whom we suppose nothing more than that 
 he has drunk in the genius of our better 
 dispensation, we find graven in the most 
 legible and distinct characters, nine of the 
 commandments. We meet with all the ten 
 in the letter of the Old Testament, and wc 
 find nine out of these ten in a state of most 
 vigorous and entire operation, under the 
 spirit of the New Testament. Wliat has 
 become of the fourth commandment ? Has 
 it sunk and disappeared imder the stormy 
 vicissitudes of that middle passage, through 
 which all the rest have found their way, 
 from the tablets of a literal inscription, and 
 
 have gotten their secure and inviolable loi 
 ment within the tablet of a Christian heart ? 
 If we look into that heart, do we meet with 
 no trace of the commandment we are in 
 quest of? Will you tell us, that the law 
 of the Sabbath is erased, we will not say 
 from the remembrance, but from the affec- 
 tion of any one of tlie actual Christians by 
 whom you are surrounded? Has it left be- 
 hind it a vacancy in that spiritual tablet 
 which is graven by the Spirit of God, when 
 he writes the law in the believer's heart, 
 and puts it info his mind? This is a ques- 
 fion of observation — and speaking from our 
 own observation, we never, in the whole 
 round of it, met with a man, drawn by the 
 cords of love to the doing of the other com- 
 mandments, and carrying in his heart either 
 a distaste or an indifference for the fourth 
 of them ? We may have seen men high in 
 honour, and earning by their integrity the 
 rewards of an unsullied reputation amongst 
 their fellovv-chizens, carrying a visible con- 
 tempt for the Sabbath law throughout the 
 whole line of tlieir Sabbath-history — but 
 all the truth and all the justice of these 
 men are such constitutional virtues as may 
 exist in a character which owns not and 
 feels not the power of godliness ; and sure 
 we are that wanting this power, several 
 of the other commandments can be speci- 
 fied, to which they are as utter strangers 
 as to the commandment of the seventh 
 day. We repeat it, therefore, that if you 
 grant us a man who bears about with him 
 in his bosom, a warm and conscientious at- 
 tachment to all the articles of the decalogue 
 but this one, before we look at him, we say 
 with confidence, that search him, and both 
 in his heart and in his practice, this one is 
 to be found ; and that we shall not fail to 
 meet the Sabbath law as firmly established 
 as any other within the secrecies of his bo- 
 som, and standing out as conspicuously on 
 the front of his external observations. We • 
 never, in the whole course of our recollec- 
 tions, met with a Christian friend, who bore 
 upon his character every other evidence of 
 the Spirit's operation, who did not remem- 
 ber the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. We 
 appeal to the memory of all tlie worthies 
 who are now lying in their graves, that 
 eminent as they were in every otlier grace 
 and accomplishment of the new creature, 
 the religiousness of their Sabbath-day shone 
 with an ecpial lustre amid the fine assem- 
 blage of virtues which adorn them. In every 
 Christian household, it will be found, that 
 the discipline of a well-ordered Sabbath is 
 never forgotten amongst the other lessons 
 of a Christian education — and we appeal to 
 every individual who now hears us, and 
 who carries the remembrance in his bosom 
 of a father's worth, and a father's piety, if 
 on the coming round of the seventh day, an 
 air of peculiar sacredness did not spread it- 
 
524 
 
 ox THE CHRISTIAN" SABBATH. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 self over that mansion where he drew his 
 first breath, and was taught to repeal his 
 infant hymn, and lisp liis infant praj'er. 
 Rest assured, that a Christian, having the 
 love of God written in his heart, and deny 
 ing the Sabbath a place in its affections, is 
 an anomaly that is no where to be fonnd. 
 Evf-ry Sabbath image, and every Sabbath 
 circumstance, is dear to him. He loves the 
 quietness of that hallowed morn. He loves 
 the church-bell sound, which summons him 
 to the house of prayer. He loves to join the 
 chorus of devotion, and to sit and listen to 
 that voice of persuasion which is lifted in 
 the hearing of an assembled multitude. He 
 loves the retirement of this day from the 
 din of worldly business, and the inroads of 
 worldly men. He loves the leisure it brings 
 along with it — and sweet to his soul is the 
 exercise of that hallowed hour, when there 
 is no eye to witness him but the eye of 
 heaven — and when in solemn audience with 
 the Father, who seeth him in secret, he can, 
 on the wings of celestial contemplation, 
 leave all the cares, and all the vexations, 
 and all the secularities of an alienated world 
 behind hira. O, how is it possible, that a 
 man can be under the dominion of a prin- 
 ciple of piety, who does not love that day 
 which brings round to piety its most pre- 
 cious opportunities? How is it possible, 
 that he can wear the character of a religious 
 being, if the very day which offers him the 
 freest time for the lessons and the exercises 
 of relicrion, is spent in other exercises, or 
 idly suffered to roll over his head in no ex- 
 ercise at all ? How is it possible, that there 
 can exist within him any honest care of his 
 eternity, if the best season for carrying on, 
 without disturbance, the preparations of 
 eternity, pass away in disgust and in weari- 
 nessl How is it possible, with all the ten- 
 derness of his instinctive nature for the 
 members of liis family, that there can be 
 one particle of tenderness for their souls, if 
 this day run on at large from all the re- 
 straints of Christian discipline, and careless 
 parents, giving themselves up to neglect and 
 to indolence, make no effort to reclaim the 
 wild ignorance of children, untaught and 
 untrained to that wisdom which is unto sal- 
 vation? The thing is not to be conceived ; 
 and upon the strength of all these impossi- 
 bles, do we assert, that every real Christian 
 has the love of the Sabbath engraven on 
 the tablet of the inner man — that if you had 
 a window to his bosom, you would there 
 see the fourth commandment filling up as 
 large a space of that epistle, which is writ- 
 ten not with ink; but with the Spirit of the 
 living God, as it does on the decalogue of 
 
 tians — that in every age of the church the 
 love of the Sabbath, and an honest delighl 
 in all its pious and profitable observances, 
 have ever stood out among the visible linea- 
 ments of the new creature in Jesus Christ 
 our Lord — that the great Spirit, whose of 
 fice it is to inscribe the laM' of God on the 
 hearts of those whose sins are forgiven 
 tJiem, and whom he has admitted into the 
 privileges of his new and his better cove- 
 nant, has never omitted, in a single in- 
 stance, to make the remembrance of the 
 Sabbath one of the most conspicuous, and 
 one of the most indelible articles of that in- 
 scription. And thus has it happened, that 
 without any statutory enactment in the 
 whole compass of the New Testament upon 
 the subject — without any formal setting 
 forth of Sabbath observation, or any laying 
 down of a Sabbath ceremonial, the grave, 
 the solemn, the regular, and with all this, 
 the affectionate keeping of this distinguished 
 day, has come down to us through a series 
 of eighteen centuries, and may be recog- 
 nised to this hour as the ever-present badge 
 of every Christian individual; and as the 
 great index and palladium of religion in 
 every Christian land. 
 
 We sliall just say one thing more upon 
 this subject at present. What now becomes 
 of him, who, like a special pleader, with a 
 statute-book in his hand, thinks that the 
 New Testament has set him at large from 
 every other style of Sabbath observation, 
 because he cannot find in it anj- laying 
 down of Sabbath observances? He will 
 not own the force of any obligation till it 
 be shown to him as one of the clauses in the 
 bond. His constant appeal is to the bond. 
 He will not exceed, by a single inch, the 
 literalities of the bond. He will square his 
 every service, and his every offering by the 
 bond ; and when he is charged witli any 
 one of the misdemeanours of Sabbath-break- 
 ing, he will tell you that it is not specified 
 in the bond. Why, my brethren, if the 
 bond be Avhat he stands upon, he just 
 wakens up against himself the old ministry 
 of condemnation. If it be on the just and 
 even footing of the bond that he chooses to 
 have his exactly literal dealings with God, 
 on this footing God will enter into judg- 
 ment with him ; and soon, and very soon, 
 will he convict him of his glaring deficien- 
 cies from his o^vn favourite standard, the 
 bond. Ah, my brethren, when a Christian 
 serves his reconciled Father, it is the ser- 
 vice of a liberal and spontaneous attach- 
 ment. His aim is to please him and to glo- 
 rify him to the uttermost ; and he is never 
 more delighted than when it is in his power 
 
 Moses — that this is not the peculiarity of | to offer the God whom he loves, some of 
 some accidental Christians, meeting our ob- j those substantial testimonies of aflfection 
 servation on some random walk over the which no jealousy can extort by any of its 
 face of Christian society — that it is the con- enactments, and the letter of no law is able 
 stant and universal attribute of all Chris- 1 to embody in any of its descriptions. With 
 
XI.] 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 325 
 
 such a spirit, and such a cordiality within, 
 we cannot d(.)ubt for a moment the dehght 
 which such a man will take in the Sabbatli, 
 and how dear to his bosom will the affect- 
 ing remembrance be to which it is conse- 
 crated, and ho\v diligently he will cultivate 
 its every hour to the purpose for which it 
 was made — and how, knowing that the 
 Sabbath was made for man, he will earn- 
 estly and honestly give himself to the task 
 of reahzing all its usefulness to himself and 
 to his family. And do you think, that God 
 will not see this I Do you think, that he 
 will stand in need of any literal specifica- 
 tions by which he may mark the character 
 
 of this man on the day of retribution ? Will 
 he not be able to read that epistle which he 
 himself has engraven on the fleshly tablets 
 of his heart? Will he not know his own? 
 Will he not recognise all the lineaments of 
 that new creature, which has been fashioned 
 by his own spirit — and on that day when 
 the secrets of every heart are laid open, will 
 not the Sabbath observations of an honest 
 and affectionate believer, flowing, as they 
 do, from the impulses of a love for that law 
 which is written on his mind, be put down 
 among those good deeds which shall be 
 found to praise, and honour, and glory, at 
 the solemn reckoning of the judgment seat. 
 
 SERMON XI. 
 On the Doctrine of Predestination. 
 
 ' And now I exhort you to be of good cheer : for there shall be no loss of any mr.n's life among you, but 
 of the ship. Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be 
 saved." — Acts xvii. 22, 31. 
 
 The comparison of these two verses 
 lands us in what may appear to many to be 
 a very dark and unprofitabe speculation. 
 Now, our object in setting up this compari- 
 son, is not to foster in any of you a tendency 
 to meddle with matters too high for us; but 
 to protect you against the practical mischief 
 of such a tendency. You have all heard of 
 the doctrine of predestination. It has long 
 been a settled article of our church. And 
 there must be a sad deal of evasion and of 
 unfair handling with particular passages, 
 to get free of the evidence which we find 
 for it in the Bible. And independently of 
 Scripture altogether, the denial of this doc- 
 trine brings a number of monstrous con- 
 ceptions along with it. It supposes God to 
 make a world, and not to reserve in his 
 own hand the management of its concerns. 
 Though it should concede to him an abso- 
 lute sovereignty over all matter, it deposes 
 him from his sovereignty over the region 
 of created minds, that far more dignified 
 and interesting portion of his works. The 
 greatest events of the history of the uni- 
 verse, are those which are brought about 
 by the agency of willing and intelligent be- 
 ings; and the enemies of the doctrine in- 
 vest every one of these beings with some 
 sovereign and independent principle of 
 freedom, in virtue of which it may be as- 
 serted of this whole class of events, that 
 they happened, not because they were or- 
 dained of God, but because the creatures 
 of God, by their own uncontrolled power, | 
 brought them into existence. At tiiis rate, 
 even he to whom we give the attribute of 
 omniscience, is not able to say at this mo- 
 ment, what shall be the fortune or the fate 
 
 of any individual — and the whole train of 
 future history is left to the wildness of ac- 
 cident. All this carries along with it so 
 complete a dethronement of God — it is 
 bringing his creation under the dominion 
 of so many nameless and undeterminable 
 contingencies — it is taking the world and 
 the current of its history so entirely out 
 of the hands of him who formed it — it is 
 withal so opposite to what obtains in every 
 other field of observation, where, instead 
 of the lawlessness of chance, we shall find 
 that the more we attend, the more we per- 
 ceive of a certain necessary and establish- 
 ed order — that from these and other con- 
 siderations which might be stated, the 
 doctrine in question, in addition to the tes- 
 timonies which we find for it in the Bible, 
 is at this moment receiving a very general 
 support from the speculations of infidel as 
 well as Christian philosophers. 
 
 Assenting, as we do, to this doctrine, we 
 state it as our conviction, that God could 
 point the finger of his omniscience to every 
 one individual amongst us, and tell what 
 shall be the fate of each, and the place of 
 each, and the state of suffering or enjoy- 
 ment of each at any one period of futurity, 
 however distant. Well does he know those 
 of us who are vessels of wrath fitted for de- 
 struction, and those of us whom he has 
 predestinated to be conformed to the image 
 of his dear Son, and to be rendered meet 
 for the inheritance. We are not saying, 
 that we, or that any of you could so cluster 
 and arrange the two sets of individuals 
 This is one of the secret things which be- 
 long to God. It is not our duty to be aUo- 
 gether silent about the doctrine of predes- 
 
ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 tination ; for the Bible is not silent about it, 
 and it is our duty to promulgate and to 
 hold up our testimony for all that we find 
 there. But certain it is, that the doctrine 
 has been so injudiciously meddled with — 
 it has tempted so many inu;enious and spe- 
 culative men to transgress the limits of 
 Scripture — it has engendered so much pre- 
 sumption among some, and so much de- 
 spondency among others — it has been so 
 much abused to the mischief of practical 
 Christianity, that it were well for us all, 
 could we carefully draw the line between 
 the secret things which belong to God, and 
 the things whicb are revealed, and belong 
 to us and to our children. 
 
 With this view, we shall, in the first 
 place, lay before you the observations 
 which are suggested by tlie immediate his- 
 tory in the passage now submitted to you. 
 And, in the second place, we shall attempt 
 to evince hs application to lis of the pre- 
 sent day, and how far it should carry an 
 influence over the concerns of practical 
 godliness. 
 
 I. In the 22d verse Paul announces in 
 absolute terms, that all the men of the ship 
 were to be saved. He had been favoured 
 with this intimation from the mouth of an 
 angel. It was the absolute purpose of God, 
 and no obstacle whatever could prevent its 
 accomplishment. Toliim belongs that know- 
 ledge wliich sees every thing, and that 
 power which determines every thing ; and 
 he could say to his prophet, "These men 
 v.'ill certainly be saved.-' Compare this 
 with what we have in the 31st verse. By 
 this time the sailors had given up all hope 
 of the safety of the vessel. They had toiled, 
 as they thouglit, in vain — and in despair of 
 doing any good, they ceased from working 
 the ship, and resolved to abandon her. 
 With this view they let down the boat to 
 try the chance of deliverance for them- 
 selves, and leave the passengers to perish. 
 Upon this Paul, though his mind had been 
 previously assured, by an intimation from 
 the foreknowledge and predestination of 
 God, that there should be no loss of men's 
 lives, put on all the appearance of earnest- 
 ness and urgency — and who can doubt, 
 that he really felt this earnestness at the 
 moment of his speaking to the centurion, 
 when he told him, that unless these men 
 should abide in the ship, they would not 
 be saved ? He had before told them, in the 
 most unrestricted terms, that they would 
 be saved. But this does not restrain his 
 practical urgency now — and the urgency 
 of Paul gave an. alarm and a promptitude 
 to the mind of the centurion — and the cen- 
 turion ordered his soldiers to cut the ropes 
 which fastened the boat to the vessel, that 
 the sailors, deprived of this mode of escape, 
 might be forcibly detained among them — 
 tnd the soldiers obeyed — and the sailors 
 
 were kept on board, and rendered the full 
 benefit of their seamanship and their exer- 
 tions. They did what other passengers 
 could not do. They lightened the ship. 
 They took up the anchors. Thej' loosed 
 the rudder-bands. They hoisted up the 
 mainsail to the wind — and the upshot of 
 this long intermediate process, with all its 
 steps, was, that tlie men escaped safe to the 
 land, and the decree of God was accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Now, in the first instance, it was true, in 
 the most absolute sense of the word, that 
 these men were to be saved. And in the 
 second instance, it was no less true, that 
 unless the sailors abode in the ship, they 
 could not be saved. And the terms of this 
 apparent contradiction admit of a very ob- 
 vious reconciliation on the known truth, 
 that God worketh by instruments. He may 
 carry every one purpose of his into imme- 
 diate accomplishment by the direct energy 
 of his own hands. But in point of fact, 
 this is not his general way of proceeding. 
 He chooses rather to arrive at the accom- 
 plishment of many of his objects by a suc- 
 cession of steps, or by the concurrence of one 
 or more visible instruments, which require 
 time for their operation. This is a truth to 
 which all nature and all experience lend 
 their testimony. It was his purpose that, 
 at, the moment I am now addressing you, 
 there should be light over the face of the 
 country, and this purpose he accomplishes 
 by the instrumentality of the sun. There 
 is a time coming, when light shall be fur- 
 nished out to us in arioliier way — when 
 there shall be no need ciflier of the sun or 
 the moon to lighten the city of our habita- 
 tion—but when the glory of God shall 
 lighten it, and the Lamb shall be the light 
 thereof. But this is not the way at pre- 
 sent, and, therefore, it is both true, that it 
 was God's purpose there should be light 
 over us and around us at this moment, and 
 that unless the sun had risen upon us this 
 morning, there would have been no such 
 light. It may be the purpose of God to 
 bless the succeeding year with a plentiful 
 harvest. He could accomplish this pur- 
 pose in two ways. He could make the 
 ripened corn start into existence by a sin- 
 gle word of his power. But this is not the 
 actual way in which he carries such de- 
 signs into accomplishment. He does it by 
 the co-operation of many visible instru- 
 ments. It is true, he can pour abundance 
 among us even in the midst of adverse 
 weather and unfavourable seasons. But he 
 actually does it by ineans of favourable 
 weather and favourable seasons. It is not 
 in spite of bad weather that we receive 
 from his hands the blessings of plenty 
 — but in consequence of good w^eather — 
 sunshine and shower succeeding each 
 other in fit proportion— calm to prevent the 
 
xi.l 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 J27 
 
 shaking of the corn, and wind in sufficient 
 quantity to wiiniow it, and make a prospe- 
 rous ingathering. Should it be the purpose 
 of God to give a plentiful harvest to us next 
 year, it will certainly happen, and yet it 
 may be no less true, that unless such wea- 
 ther come, we shall have no such plentiful 
 harvest. God who appoints the end, orders 
 and presides over the wliole series of means 
 which lead to it. These visible causes are 
 all in his hand. They are the instruments 
 of his power. The elements are his, and he 
 can either restrain their violence, or let 
 them loose in fury upon the world. 
 
 Now, look upon human beings as the in- 
 struments of his pleasure, and you have an 
 equally complete explanation of the passage 
 before us. You will be made to understand 
 how it is true, that it was God's absolute 
 purpose that the men of the vessel should 
 be saved, and how it is equally true, that 
 unless the sailors abode in the ship, they 
 could not be saved. Why, the same God 
 who determined the end, gave certain effi- 
 cacy to the means which he himself had 
 instituted and set agoing for the accomplish- 
 ment of the end. It does not at all affect 
 tlie certainty of God's influence over these 
 means, that in addition to wind, and water, 
 and material elements, there were also hu- 
 man beings employed as instruments for 
 carrying his purpose into execution. It is 
 expressly said of God, not only that he stiU- 
 eth the waves of the sea, but that he also 
 stiUeth the tumuits of the people, and that 
 he can turn the heart of man as the rivers 
 of water, turning it whithersoever he will. 
 He. appoint^; the end, and it does not at all 
 'es;<e;i the eure and absolute nature of the 
 appointment, that he brings it about by a 
 long succession of means, provided that it 
 is his poM'c:i' which gives effect to every 
 step in tlie progress and operation of these 
 means. Now, in the case before us, there 
 v,'as just such a progress as we pointed out 
 in the ca«e of a favourable harvest. He had 
 determined, that all the men of the vessel 
 shonid be saved ; but agreeably to the me- 
 thod of his administration in other cases, 
 lie brought it about by the operation of in- 
 struments. He did not save them against 
 the use of instruments, but he did it by the 
 use of instruments. The instruments he 
 employed were men. Paul speaking to the 
 centurion — the centurion ordering the sol- 
 diers to cut the ropes, and let the boat away 
 from the vessel — the sailors obliged to work 
 for their own safety — these were the instru- 
 ments of God, and he had as miich com- 
 mand over them as of any others he has 
 created. He brought about the saving of 
 the men by means of those instruments, as 
 certainly as he brings about a good harvest 
 by the instrument of favourable weather, 
 and congenial seasons. He is as much 
 master of the human heart, and its determi- 
 
 nations, as he is of the elements. He reigns 
 in the mind of man, and can turn its pur- 
 poses in any way that suits his purposes. 
 He made Paul speak. He made the centu- 
 rion listen and be impressed by it. He 
 made the soldiers obey. He made the sai- 
 lors exert themselves. The conditional as- 
 sertion of the 31st verse was true; but he 
 made the assertion serve the purpi se for 
 which it was uttered. He overruled the 
 condition, and brought about the fulfilment 
 of the absolute prophecy in the 22d verse. 
 The whole of this process was as com- 
 pletely overruled by him as any other j)ro- 
 cess in nature — and in vntue too of the very 
 same power by which he can cause the 
 wind of heaven to fly loose upon the world, 
 make the rain descend, the corn ripen into 
 harvest, and all the blessings of plenty sit in 
 profusion over a happy and a favoured land. 
 
 There is no inconsistency, then, between 
 these verses. God says in oneofthem, by the 
 mouth of Paid, that these men were certainly 
 to be saved. And Paul says in the ot'ier 
 of these verses, that unless the centurion 
 and soldiers were to do so and so, they 
 should not be saved. In one of the verses, 
 it is made to be the certain and unfailing 
 appointment of God. In the other, it is 
 made to depend on the centm-ion. There 
 is no difficulty in all this, if you would just 
 consider, that God, who made the end cer- 
 tain, made the means certain also. It is 
 true, that the end was certainly to happen, 
 and it is as true that the end would not 
 happen without the means — but God se- 
 cured the happening of both, and so gives 
 sureness and consistency to the passage be- 
 fore us. 
 
 Now, it is worth while to attend here 
 both to the conduct of Paul who gave the 
 directions, and to the conduct of the centu- 
 rion who obeyed them. Paul, who gave 
 the directions, knew, in virtue of the reve- 
 lation that was made to him some time be- 
 fore, that the men were certainly to be 
 saved, and yet this does not prevent him 
 from urging them to the practical adoption 
 of means for saving themselves. He knew 
 that their being saved was a thing predesti- 
 nated, and as sure as the decree of heaven 
 could make it ; but he must likewise have 
 known, that while it was God's counsel 
 they should be saved, it was also God's 
 will that they should be saved by the exer- 
 tions of the sailors — that they were the in- 
 struments he made choice of — that this was 
 the way in which he wished it to be brought 
 about ; and Paul had too high a reverence 
 for the will of God, to decline the use ot 
 those practical expedients, which formed 
 the likeliest way of carrying this will into 
 effect. It is a very striking circumstance, 
 that the same Paul who knew absolutely 
 and unequivocally that tlie men were to be 
 saved, could also say, and say with truth. 
 
328 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION". 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 that unless the sailors were detained in the 
 ship, they should not be saved. Both were 
 true, and both were actually brought about. 
 The thing was done by the appointment of 
 God, and it was also done by a vohmtary 
 act on the part of the centurion and his sol- 
 diers. Paul knew of the appointment, but 
 he did not feel himself exempted by thir. 
 knowledge, from the work of practically 
 influencing the will of the people who were 
 around him ; and the way in wliich he got 
 them to act, was by bringing the urgency 
 of a prevailing argument to bear upon them. 
 He told them that their lives depended upon 
 it. God put it into Paul's heart to make use 
 of the argument, and he gave it tliat in- 
 fluence over the hearts of tfiose to whom it 
 was addressed, that by the instrumentality 
 of men, his purpose, conceived from eter- 
 nity, and revealed beforehand to the Apos- 
 tle, was carried forward to its accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 And again, as the knowledge that they 
 were to be saved, did not prevent Paul from 
 giving directions to the centurion and sol- 
 diers for saving themselves, neither did it 
 prevent them from a practical obedience to 
 these directions. It does not appear whether 
 they actualh', at this time, believed Paul to 
 be a messenger of God — though it is likely, 
 from the previous history of the voyage, 
 that they did. If they did not. then they 
 acted as the great majority of men do, they 
 acted as unconscious instruments for the ! 
 execution of the divine purposes. But if I 
 the}' did believe Paul to be a prophet, it is 
 highly striking to observe, that the know- | 
 ledge they had gotten from his mouth of ! 
 their really and absolutely escaping with > 
 their lives, did not slacken their utmost de- 1 
 gree of activity in the business of working 
 for the preservation of their lives, at a bid- 1 
 ding from the mouth of the same prophet. 
 He is a prophet from God — and whatever | 
 he ESiys must be true. He tells us that we : 
 are to escape with our lives — let us believe 
 this and rejoice in it. But he also tells us, i 
 that unless we do certain things, we shall j 
 not escape with our lives — let us believe , 
 this also, and do these things. A fine ex- i 
 ample, on the one hand, of their faithful 
 dependence on his declarations, and. on the j 
 other, of their practical obedience to his re- 
 quirements. If one were to judge by the i 
 prosperous result of the whole business. | 
 the way in which the centurion and sol- ' 
 diers were affected by the different revela- 
 tions of Paul, was the very way which 
 satisfied God — for it was rewarded with | 
 success, and issued both in the fulfilment of 
 his decree, and the completion of their de- 
 liverance. 
 
 II. We now come to the second thing 
 proposed, which was to evince the appli- 
 cation of the passage to us of the present 
 day— and how far it should carry an in- 
 
 fluence over the concerns of practical god- 
 liness. 
 
 We shall rejoice in the first instance, if 
 the explanation we have now given, have 
 the efifect of clearing away any of those 
 perplexities which throw a darkening cloud 
 over the absolute and universal sovereignty 
 of God. We are ready enough to concede 
 to the Supreme Being the administration of 
 the material world, and to put into his hand 
 all the force of its mighty elements. But 
 let us caiT}' the commanding influence of 
 Deity into the higher world of moral and 
 intelligent beings. Let us not erect the 
 will of the creature into an independent 
 principle. Let us not conceive that the 
 agency of man can bring about one single 
 iota of deviation from tlie plans and the 
 purposes of God ; or that he can be thwart- 
 ed and compelled to varj' in a single case 
 by the movement of an}" of tliose subordi- 
 nate beings vrhom he himself has created. 
 There may be a diversity of operations, but 
 it is God who worketh all in all. Look at 
 the resolute and independent man, and you 
 there see the purposes of the human mind 
 entered upon with decision, and followed 
 up by vigorous and successful exertion. 
 But these only make up one diversity of 
 God's operations. The will of man, active, 
 and spontaneous, and fluctuating as it ap- 
 pears to be, is an instrument in his hand — 
 and he turns it at his pleasure — and he 
 brings other instruments to act upon it — 
 and he plies it with all its excitements — and 
 he measures the force and proportion of 
 each of them — and every step of every in- 
 dividual receives as determinate a character 
 from the hand of God, as every mile of a 
 planet's orbit, or every gust of wind, or 
 every wave of the sea, or every particle of 
 flying dust, or every rivulet of flowing 
 water. This power of God knows no ex- 
 ceptions. It is absolute and unlimited, and 
 while it embraces the vast, it carries its re- 
 sistless influence to all the minute and un- 
 noticed diversities of existence. It reigns 
 and operates through all the secrecies of 
 the inner man. It gives birth to every pur 
 pose. It gives impulse to every desire. It 
 gives shape and colour to every conception, 
 it wields an entire ascendency over every 
 attribute of the mind ; and the will, and the 
 fancy, and the understandinsr. with all the 
 countless variety of their hidden and fugi- 
 tive operations, are submitted to it. It 
 gives movement and direction tlirough ever;/ 
 one point in the line of our pilgrimage. 
 At no one moment of time does it abandon 
 us. It follows us to the hour of death, and 
 it carries us to our place and our everlasting 
 destiny in the region beyond if. It is true, 
 that no one gets to heaven, but he, who by- 
 holiness, is meet for it. But the same power 
 which carries us there, works in us the 
 meetness. And if we are conformed to the 
 
XI.] 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 329 
 
 image of the Saviour, it is by the enerjfy 
 of the same predestinating God, whose good 
 pleasure it is to give unto us the kingdom 
 prepared for us before the foundation of 
 the world. 
 
 Thus it is that some are elected to ever- 
 lasting life. This is an obvious doctrine 
 of Scripture. The Bible brings it forward, 
 and it is not for us, the interpreters of the 
 Bible, to keep it back from you. God 
 could, if it pleased him, read out, at this 
 moment, tlie names of those in this congre- 
 gation, who are ordained to eternal life, and 
 are written in his book. In reference to 
 their deliverance from shipwreck, he en- 
 abled Paul to say of the whole ship's com- 
 pany, tliat they were to be saved. In refer- 
 ence to your deliverance from wrath and 
 from punishment, he could reveal to us the 
 names of tlie elect among you, and enable 
 us to say of them that they are certainly to 
 be saved. 
 
 But again, tlie same God who ordains the 
 end, ordains also the means which go be- 
 fore it. In virtue of the end being ordained 
 and made knovv'n to him, Paul could say 
 that all tlie men's lives were to be saved. 
 And in virtue of the means being ordained 
 and made known to him, he could also say, 
 that unless the sailors abode in the ship, 
 they should not be saved. In the same 
 manner, if the ordained end were made 
 known to us, we could, perhaps, say of 
 some individual among you, that you are 
 certainly to be saved. And if the ordained 
 means were made knovvn to us, we could 
 say, that unless you are rendered meet for 
 the inheritance of the saints in light, you 
 shall not be saved. Now, the ordination of 
 the end, God has not been pleased to reveal 
 to us. He has not told us who among you 
 are to be saved, as he told Paul of the de- 
 liverance of his ship's company. This is 
 one of the secret things which belong to 
 him, and we dare not meddle with it. But 
 he has told us about the oi'dained means, 
 and we know, through the medium of the 
 Bible, that unless you do such and such 
 things, you shall not be saved. This is one 
 of the revealed things which belong to us, 
 and with as great truth and practical ur- 
 gency as Paul made use of, when he said 
 to the centurion and soldiers, that unless 
 these men abide in the ship ye shall not be 
 saved, do we say to one and to all of you, 
 unless ye repent ye shall not be saved — un- 
 less ye do works meet for repentance, ye 
 shall not be saved — unless ye believe the 
 Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, ye shall 
 not be saved — unless ye are born again, ye 
 shall not be saved — unless the deeds done 
 in your bodj^ be good deeds, and ye bring 
 fortli those fruits of righteousness which 
 are by Jesus Christ to the praise and glory 
 of God, ye shall not be saved. 
 
 Mark the difference between the situation 
 42 
 
 of Paul urging upon the people of the ship 
 the immediate adoption of the only way by 
 which their lives could be saved, and the 
 situation of an ordinary minister urging it 
 upon the people of his church, to take to 
 that way of faith and repentance, by which 
 alone they can save their souls from the 
 wrath that is now abiding on them. Paul 
 did know that the people were certainly to 
 escape with their lives, and that did not" 
 prevent him from pressing uptn them the 
 measures which they ought to adopt for 
 their preservation. Even, then, though a 
 minister did know those of his people 
 whose names are written in the boi;k of 
 life, that ought not to hinder him from 
 pressing it upon them to lay hold of eter- 
 nal life — to lay up their treasure in heaven 
 — to labour for the meat that endureth — to 
 follow after that holiness, witliout which 
 no man shall see the Lord — to be strong in 
 the faith, and such a faith too as availeth, 
 even faith which Morketh by love, and of 
 which we may say, even those whom we 
 assuredly know to be the chosen heirs of 
 immortality, that unless this faith abideth 
 in them, they shall not be saved. But it so 
 happens, that we do not know who are, 
 and who are not, the children of election. 
 This is a secret thing belonging to God, 
 and which is not imparted to us ; still it 
 would be our part to say to those of Avhose 
 final salvation we were assured, believe the 
 Gospel, or you shall not be saved — repent, 
 or you shall not be saved— purify yourselves, 
 even as God is pure, or you shall not be 
 saved. But we are not in possession of the 
 secret — and how much more then does it 
 lie upon us to ply with earnestness the fears 
 and the consciences of our hearers, by those 
 revealed things which God hath been pleas- 
 ed to make known to us ? What ! if Paul, 
 though assured by an angel from heaven 
 of the final deliverance of this ship's com- 
 pany, still persists in telling them, tliat if 
 they leave certain things undone, their de- 
 liverance will be impossible — shall we, ut- 
 terly in the dark about the final state of a 
 single hearer we are addressing, let down 
 for a single instant the practical urgency 
 of the New Testament ? 
 
 The predestination of God respecting the 
 final escape of Paul and his fellow-travel- 
 lers from shipwreck, though made known 
 to the Apostle, did not betray him into the 
 indolence Avhich is ascribed, and falsely 
 ascribed, to the belief of this doctrine; nor 
 did it restrain him from spiriting on the 
 people to the most strenuous and fatiguing 
 exertions. And shall we, who only know 
 in general that God does predestinate, but 
 cannot carry it home with assurance to a 
 single individual, convert this doctrine into 
 a plea of indolence and security? Even 
 should we see the mark of God upon their 
 foreheads, it would be our dutv to labour 
 
:o 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTIXATIOX. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 them with the necessity of doing those 
 thiug^s, which, if left undone, will exclude 
 from ttie kingdom of God. But, we mali^e 
 no such pretensions. We see no mark upon 
 any of your foreheads. We possess no 
 more than tlie Bible, and access through 
 the >redi;a(<r to him, who, by his Spirit, can 
 open our understandings to understand it. 
 The revealed things which we find there 
 belong to us, and we press them upon you 
 — " Unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise 
 perish." "If ye believe not in the Son of 
 God, tiis wrath of God abideth on you." 
 •• Be not deceived, neither covetous, nor 
 thieves, nor extortioners, nor drunkards, 
 shall inherit the kingdom of God." " He 
 who forsaketh not all, shall not be a disci- 
 ple of Christ." "The fearful, and the un- 
 believing, and the abominable, and all liars 
 shall liave their part in the lake which burn- 
 eth with fire and brimstone." These are 
 plain declarations, and apart from the doc- 
 trine of predestination altogether, they 
 ought, and if they are believed and listened 
 to. they will have a practical influence upon 
 you. We call upon you not to resist this 
 influence, bin to cherisli it. If any of you 
 are the ciiildren of election, it is by the 
 right infinence of revealed tilings upon your 
 understandings and your consciences, that 
 this secret tiling will be brought to pass. 
 Paul said as much to the centurion and the 
 soldiers, as that if you do the things, I call 
 upon you to do, you will certainly be saved. 
 They did what he bade them, and the de- 
 cree of God respecting their deliverance 
 from shipwreck, a decree which Paul had 
 the previous knowledge of, was accom- 
 plished. We also feel ourselves warranted 
 to say to one and to all of you, " Believe 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be 
 saved." " Repent and be converted, and 
 your sins shall be forgiven you." Return 
 unto God, and he will be reconciled. If 
 you do as we bid you, God's decree re- 
 specting your deliverance from hell a de- 
 cree which we have not the previous know- 
 ledge of, will be made known by its accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Again, we call upon you, our hearers, to 
 compare your situation with that of the 
 centurion and the soldiers. They were 
 told by a prophet that they were to be 
 saved, and when that prophet told them 
 what tliey were to do for the purpose of 
 saving themselves, they obeyed him. They 
 did not say, " O it is all predestinated, and 
 we may give up our anxieties and do no- 
 thing." They were just as strenuous and 
 active, as if there had been no predestina- 
 tion in the matter. Paul's previous assur- 
 rance, that all was to end well, had no effect 
 in lulling them to indolence. It did end 
 well, not however without their exertions, 
 out b}' their exertions. How much more 
 ;foes it lie upon you to enter with earnest- 
 
 ness upon the business of doing. We can 
 give you no assurance of its being the de- 
 cree of God, that any of you shall be saved. 
 But we can give you the assurance, that 
 you will be saved, if you do such and such 
 things. Surely, if the people whom Paul 
 addressed, did not feel themselves exempt- 
 ed b3' their knowledge of God's decree, 
 from practically entering upon those mea- 
 sures which carried forward its accom- 
 plishment, you. who have no such know- 
 ledge, must feel doublj' impelled by the un- 
 certainty which hangs over you, to the work 
 of making your calling and your election 
 sure. You know in general, that predes- 
 tination is a doctrine of the Bible, but there 
 is not one of you who can say of himself, 
 that God lias made known his decrees to 
 me, and given me directly to understand, 
 that I am the object of a blessed predesti- 
 nation. This is one point of which j'ou 
 know nothing ; but there is another point 
 of which you know something — and that is. 
 if I believe, if I repent, if I be made like 
 unto Christ, if I obtain the lioly Spirit to 
 work in me a conformity to his image — and 
 I am told, that I shall obtain it if I ask it — 
 then by this I become an heir of life, aiid 
 the decree of which I know nothing at the 
 outset of my concern about salvation, will 
 become more and more apparent to me as 
 I advance in a meetness for heaven, and 
 will, at length, become fully, and finally, 
 and conclusively made known by its ac- 
 complishment. I may suffer my curiosity 
 to expatiate on the question, " Am I, or am 
 I not, of the election of God ?" But my 
 wisdom tells me that this is not the busi- 
 ness on hand. It is not the matter which 
 I am called on to do with at present. After 
 Paul said to his companions, that it was 
 quite indispensable to their safety that the 
 sailors should be kept in the vessel, what 
 did the centurion and his men do? Did 
 they fall a speculating about the decrees ? 
 Did they hug themselves in the confidence, 
 that as their safety v.as a point sure and 
 determined upon, the\' need to take no 
 trouble at all in the concern ? O no ! No 
 sooner did Paul rrive the word, than they 
 acted upon it. Thev gave themselves up 
 with all the promptitude of men whose 
 lives were at stake, to the business on hand. 
 They cut the ropes — they let go the boat — 
 they kept in the sailors — and from the very 
 first moment of Paul's address to them on 
 the subject, all was bustling, and strenuous, 
 and unremitting activity ; till, bv the un- 
 wearied perseverance of those living and 
 operative instruments, the decree of God 
 was accomplished. Now, they were much 
 better acquainted with the decree which 
 respected them, than you are with the 
 decree respectincr you. Tliey had the be- 
 forehand knowledge of it. and will you be 
 less active, or less strenuous, than they ? 
 
XI.] 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 
 
 331 
 
 Do, therefore, betake yourselves to the bu- 
 siness on hand. liet our exhortations to 
 embrace the free offer of the Gospel — to 
 rely on Christ as your Saviour — to resolve 
 against all your iniquities, and turn unto 
 him — to ply the throne of grace for the 
 strengthening inlluence of tlie Spirit, by 
 which alone you are enabled to die unto 
 all sin, and live unto all righteousness — let 
 this have an immediate, and a stirring, and 
 a practical influence upon you. If you put 
 this influence away from you, you are in a 
 direct way now of proving what we tremble 
 to think may be rendered clear and indis- 
 putable at last, on the great day of the re- 
 velation of hidden things, that you have 
 neither part nor lot in the matter. NVhatever 
 the employment be which takes you up, 
 and hinders you from entering immediately 
 on the work of faith and repentance, it is 
 an alarming symptom of your soul, that you 
 are so taken up — and should the emplo}"- 
 ment be an idle dreaming, and amusing of 
 yourselves with the decrees and counsels 
 cf heaven, it is not the less alarming. 
 
 Some will spend their time in inquiries 
 about the number of the saved, when they 
 ought to be striving for themselves, that 
 they miglit obtain an entrance into the strait 
 gale; and some will waste those precious 
 moments in speculating about the secrets of 
 the book of life, which they should fill up 
 by supporting themselves, and making pro- 
 gress through the narrowness of the way 
 that leads to it. The plain business we lay 
 upon you, is to put away from you the evil 
 of your doings — to submit yourselves to 
 Clu'ist as he is offered to you — to fly to his 
 atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of your 
 offences — to place yourselves under the 
 guidance of his word, and a dependence on 
 the influences of his Spirit — to live no longer 
 to yourselves, but to him — and to fill up 
 your weeks and your days with those fruits 
 of righteousness, by which God is glorified. 
 We stand here by the decree of heaven, and 
 it is by the same decree that you are now- 
 sitting round and listening to us. We feel 
 the importance of the situation we occupy ; 
 and though we believe in the sovereignty 
 of Gnd, and the unfailingness of all his ap- 
 pointments, this, instead of restraining, im- 
 pels us to bring the message of the Gospel, 
 with all the practical urgency of its invita- 
 tions, and its warnings, to bear upon you. 
 We feel, with all our belief in predestina- 
 tion, that our business is not to forbear this 
 urjiency, but to ply you with it most anxi- 
 ously, and earnestly, and unceasingly; and 
 you should feel, with the same belief in your 
 mind, that your business is not to resist this 
 urgency, but to be guided by its impulse. 
 Who knows but we may be the humble in- 
 strument, and you the undeserved subjects 
 of some high and heavenly ordination? The 
 catting of the ropes was the turning point 
 
 on which the deliverance of Paul's com- 
 pany from shipwreck was suspended. Who 
 knows but the urgency we now ply you 
 with, telling upon you, and carrying your 
 purposes alona: with it, may be the very 
 step in the wonderful progress of God's 
 operations, on which your conversion hin- 
 ges? We, therefore, press the Gospel Mith 
 all its duties, and all its promises, and all its 
 privileges upon you. O listen, and resolve, 
 and. manfully forsaking all that keeps you 
 from the Saviour, we call upon you, from 
 this moment, to give yourselves up unto 
 him; and be assured, it is only by acting in 
 obedience to such calls laid before you in 
 the Bible, and sounded in* your ear from the 
 pulpit, that your election unto life can ever 
 be made known in tiiis world, or reach its 
 positive cons" mmation in eternity. 
 
 And now you can have no difllculty in 
 understanding how it is th . we make our 
 calling and our election sure. It is not in the 
 power of the elect to inake their election 
 surer in itself than it really is; for this is a 
 sureness which is not capable of receiving 
 any addition. It is not in the power of the 
 elect to make it surer to God — for all futurity 
 is submitted to his all-seeing eye, and his 
 absolute knowledge stands in need of no 
 confirmation. Rut there is such a thing as 
 the elect being ignorant for a time of their 
 own election, and their being made sure of 
 it in the progress of evidence and discovery. 
 And therefore it is that they are called to 
 make their election sure to themselves, or 
 to make tliemselves sure of their election. 
 And how is this to be done? Not by read- 
 ing it in the book of God's decrees — not by 
 obtaining from him any direct information 
 about his counsels — not by conferring with 
 prophet or angel, gifted with the revelation 
 of hidden things. But the same God who 
 elects some unto everlasting life, and keeps 
 back from tliem all direct information about 
 it, tells them that he who bi lieveth, and he 
 who repenteth, and he who obeyeth the 
 Gospel, shall obtain everlasting life. We 
 shall never in this world have an immediate 
 communication from him, whether we are 
 of the elect or not — but let us believe— let us 
 repent— let us obey the Saviour, and from 
 the first moment of our setting ourselves to 
 these things in good earnest, we may con- 
 ceive the hope of a place among the heirs 
 of immortality. In the progress and success 
 of our endeavours, this hope may advance 
 and grow brighter within us. As we grow 
 in the exercises of faith and obedience, the 
 light of a cheering manifestation is more 
 sensibly felt, and our hope ripens into as- 
 surance. "Hereby do we know that we 
 know him, by our keeping his command- 
 ments," is an evidence which every year 
 becomes clearer and more encouraging; and 
 thus, by a well-sustained perseverance in 
 the exercises of the Christian life, do we 
 
332 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 labour with all diligence to make our call- 
 ing and election sure. We call upon you, in 
 the language of the Apostle, to have faith, 
 and to this faith add virtue, and knowledge, 
 and temperance, and patience, and godli- 
 ness, and brotherly kindness, and charity. 
 It is by the doing of these things, that you 
 are made sure of your calling and election, 
 " for if ye do these things," says Peter, "ye 
 shall never fail, and an entrance shall be 
 ministered unto you abundantly into the 
 everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Sa- 
 viour .lesus Christ." 
 
 If there be any of you who have not fol- 
 lowed this train of observation — if it still 
 remain one of those things of Paul which 
 are hard to be understood — let us beseech 
 you, at least, that you wrest it not to your 
 own destruction, by remitting your activity, 
 and your diligence, and your pains-taking 
 in the service of Christ. Why, the doctrine 
 of election leaves our duty to exhort, and 
 your duty to obey, on the same footing on 
 which it found them. We are commissioned 
 to lay before you the free offer of the Gos- 
 pel — to press it on the acceptance of one 
 and all of you — to assure every individual 
 amongst you of a hearty welcome from the 
 
 Lord God merciful and gracious — to call 
 you to the service of Christ, that great Mas- 
 ter of the household of faith — to urge it 
 upon you, that you must renounce every 
 other master, and, casting all your idols, 
 and vanities, and iniquities away from you, , 
 to close with the invitation, and be diligent 
 in all the duties and performances ol the 
 Gospel. If you resist, or put oif— if, blind to 
 the goodness of God in Christ Jesus, you 
 suffer it not to lead you to repentance — if 
 the call of " awake to righteousness, and sin 
 not," make no practical impression on you 
 — if the true assurance of pardcm for the 
 sins of the past, do not fill your heart with 
 the desire of sanctification for the future — 
 if the word of Christ be not so received by 
 you as to lead to the doing of it — then you 
 are just leaving undone those things, of 
 which we say in the words of the text, 
 " Except these things be done, ye cannot be 
 saved" — and to all the guilt of your past 
 disobedience, you add the aggravation of 
 putting away from you both the offered 
 atonement and the commanded repentance 
 of the Gospel, and " how can you escape if 
 you neglect so great a salvation?" 
 
 SERMON XII. 
 
 On the Nature of the Sin against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 *■ VThei-efore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men : but the Oias- 
 phemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against 
 the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speai^eih against the Holy fihost, it shall not bo 
 forgiven limi, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." — Matthew xii. 31, 32. 
 
 Let us never suspend the practical in- 
 fluence of what we do know, by idly ram- 
 bling in a vain and impertinent pursuit after 
 wiiat we do not know. Thus much we 
 know from the Bible, that God refuses not 
 his Holy Spirit to them who ask it — that 
 every right movement of principle within 
 us is from him — that when we feel an im- 
 pulse of conscience, we feel the Spirit of 
 God knocking at the door of our hearts, and 
 challenging from us that attention and that 
 obedience which are due to the great Law- 
 giver — that if w^e follow not the impulse, 
 we provoke and dissatisfy him who is the 
 Autlior of it — and that there is such a thing 
 as tempting him to abandon us altogether, 
 and to surrender the friendly office of plying 
 us any longer with his admonitions and his 
 warnings. Reucp, an emphatic argument 
 for immediate repentance. By every mo- 
 ment of delay, v/o hasten upon ourselves 
 the awful crisis of being let alone. The con- 
 science is every day getting harder; and he 
 who sits behind, and is the unseen Author 
 of all its instigation.s, is lifting every day a 
 
 feebler voice; and coming always nearer 
 and nearer to that point in the history of 
 every determined sinner, when, left to his 
 own infatuation, he can hold up a stubborn 
 and unyielding front to all that instrumen- 
 tality of advice and of expostulation which 
 is brought to bear upon him. The preacher 
 plies him with his weekly voice, but the 
 Spirit refuses to lend it his constraining 
 energy; and all that is tender, and all that 
 is terrifying in his Sabbath argument plays 
 around his heart, without reaching it. The 
 judgments of God go abroad against him, 
 and as he carries his friends or his children 
 to the grave, a few natural tears may bear 
 witness to the tenderness he bore them — 
 but that Spirit who gives to these judgments 
 all their moral significancy, withholds from 
 him the anointing which remaineth, and the 
 man relapses as before into all the obstinate 
 habits, and all the uncrucified affections 
 which he has hitherto indulged in. 'Ilie dis- 
 ease gathers upon him, and gets a more 
 rooted inveteracy than ever; and tluis it is, 
 that there are thousands and thousand? 
 
XIT.] 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 333 
 
 more, who, though active and astir on that 
 living scene of population which is around 
 us, have an iron hardness upon their souls, 
 which malies them, in reference to the things 
 of God, dark and sullen as the grave, and 
 fast locks them in all the insensibility of 
 spiritual death. Is there no old man of your 
 acquaintance, who realizes this sad picture 
 of one left to himself that we have now at- 
 tempted so rapidly to set before you ? Then 
 know, that by every deed of willful sin, that 
 by every moment of wilful delay in the 
 great matter of repentance, that by every 
 stifled warning of conscience, that by every 
 deafening of its authoritative voice among 
 the temptations of the world, and the riot 
 of lawless acquaintances, you are just mov- 
 ing yourself to the limits of this helpless and 
 irrecoverable condition. We have no doubt, 
 that you may have the intention of making 
 a violent step, and suddenly turning round 
 to the rigiit path ere you die. But this you 
 will not do but by an act of obedience to 
 the reproaches of a conscience that is ever 
 getting harder. This you will not do with- 
 out the constraining influence of that Spirit, 
 who is gradually dying away from you. 
 This you will not do but in virtue of some 
 overpowering persuasion from that monitor 
 who is now stirring within you, but with 
 whom you are now taking the most effectual 
 method of drowning his voice, and disarm- 
 ing him of all his authority. Do not you 
 perceive, that in tliese circumstances, every 
 act of delay is madness — that you are getting 
 by every hour of it into deeper water — that 
 you are consolidating a barrier against your 
 future return to the paths of righteousness, 
 which you vainly think you will be able to 
 surmount when the languor and infirmity 
 of old age have got hold of you — that you 
 are strengthening and multiplying around 
 you the wiles of an entanglement, which 
 all the strugglings of deathbed terror cannot 
 break asunder — tiiat you are insulting the 
 Spirit of God by this daily habit of stifling 
 and neglecting the other and the other call 
 that he is sounding to your moral ear, 
 through the organ of conscience. And O 
 the desperate hazard and folly of such a 
 calculation! Think you, think you, that 
 this is tiie vvay of gainiwg his friendly pre- 
 sence at that awful moment, when the 
 urgent sense of guilt and of danger forces 
 from the sinner an imploring cry as he 
 stands on the brink of eternity? 
 
 " How long, ye simple ones, will ye love 
 simplicity, and the scorners delight in their 
 scorning, and fools hate knowledge ? Turn 
 ye at my reproof. Behold I will pour out 
 my spirit unto you ; I will make known my 
 words unto you. Because I have called, 
 and ye refused ; I have stretched out my 
 hand, and no man regarded; but ye have 
 set at nought all my counsel, and would 
 none of my reproof: I also will laugh at 
 
 your calamity ; I will mock when your fear 
 cometh. When your fear cometh as deso 
 lation, and your destruction cometh as a 
 whirlwind ; when distress and anguish 
 cometh upon you : then shall they call 
 upon me, but I will not answer ; they shall 
 seek me early, but they shall not find me." 
 You see, then, how a man may shut 
 against himself all the avenues of reconci- 
 liation. There is nothing mysterious in the 
 kind of sin by which tlie Holy Spirit is 
 tempted to abandon him to that state in 
 which there can be no forgiveness, and no 
 return unto God. It is by a movement of 
 conscience within him, that the man is made 
 sensible of sin — that he is visited with the 
 desire of reformation — that he is given to 
 feel his need both of mercy to pardon, and 
 of grace to help him — in a word, that he is 
 drawn unto the Saviour, and brought into 
 tliat intimate alliance with him by faith, 
 which brings down upon him both accep- 
 tance with the Father, and all the power of 
 a new and a constraining impulse, to the 
 way of obedience. But tliis movement is a 
 suggestion of the Spirit of God, and if it be 
 resisted by any man, the Spirit is resisted. 
 The God who offers to draw him unto 
 Christ, is resisted. Tlie man refuses to be- 
 lieve, because his deeds are evil ; and by 
 every day of perseverance in these deeds, 
 the voice which tells him of their guilt, and 
 urges him to abandon them, is resisted; 
 and thus, tlie Spirit ceases to suggest, and 
 the Father, from whom the Spirit proceed- 
 eth, ceases to draw, and the inward voice 
 ceases to remonstrate ; and all this because 
 their authority lias been so often put forth, 
 and so often turned from. This is the deadly 
 offence which has reared an impassable wall '^ 
 against the return of the obstinately impeni- ; 
 tent. This is the blaspliemy to which no "• 
 forgiveness can be granted, because in its 
 very nature, the man who has come this 
 length, feels no movement of conscience 
 towards that ground on wliich alone for 
 giveness can be awarded to him — and where 
 it is never refused even to the very worst 
 and most malignant of human iniquities. 
 This is the sin against the Holy Ghost. It 
 is not peculiar to any one age. It does not 
 lie in any one unfatliomable mystery. It 
 may be seen at this day in thousands and 
 thousands more, who, by that most familiar 
 and most frequently exemplified of all ha- 
 bits, a habit of resistance to a sense of duty, 
 have at length stifled it altogether, and dri- 
 ven their inward monitor away from them, 
 and have sunk into a profound moral lethar- 
 gy, and so will never obtain forgiveness — 
 not because forgiveness is ever refused to 
 any who repent and believe the Gospel, but 
 because they have made their faith and tlieir 
 repentance impracticable. They choose not 
 to repent ; and this choice has i)een made 
 so often and so perseveringly, that the Spirit 
 
334 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 / 
 
 has let them alone. Thej^ have obstinately 
 clung to their love of darkness rather than 
 of light, and the Spirit has at length turned 
 away from them since they will have it so. 
 They wisli not to believe, because their 
 deeds are evil, and that Spirit has ceased to 
 strive with them, who has so often spoken 
 to them in vain ; and whose many remon- 
 strances have never prevailed upon them to 
 abandon the evil of their doings. 
 
 Take all this attentively along with you, 
 and the whole mysteriousness of this sin 
 against the Holy Ghost should be done 
 away. Grant him the office with which he 
 is invested in the Word of God, even the 
 office of instigating the conscience to all its 
 reprovals of gin, and to all its admonitions 
 of repentance — and then, if ever you wit- 
 nessed the case of a man whose conscience 
 had fallen into a profound and irrecoverable 
 sleep, or, at least, had lost to such a degree 
 its power of control over him, that he stood 
 out against every engine which was set up 
 to bring him to the faith and the repentance 
 of the New Testament — behold in such a 
 man a sinner agninst conscience to such a 
 woful extent, that conscience had given up 
 its direction of him; or, in other words, a 
 sinner against the Holy Ghost to such an 
 extent, that he had let 'down the office of 
 warning him away from that ground of 
 danger and of guilt on which he stood so 
 immovably posted; or, of urging him on- 
 ward to that sure road of access, where if a 
 man seek for pardon, he will never miss it, 
 and where, if he cry for the clean heart and 
 the right spirit, he will not cr}' in vain. 
 
 And as there is nothing dark or incom- 
 prehensible in the nature of this sin. so there 
 is nothing in it to impair the freeness of the 
 Gospel, or the universality of its calls and 
 of its offers, or its power of salvation to all 
 who will, or that attribute which is expressly 
 ascribed to it, that where sin abounded, grace 
 did much more abound. It is never said 
 that pardon through that blood, which is 
 distinctly stated to cleanse from all sin — it is 
 nowhere said, that this pardon is extended 
 to any but to those who believe. If you do 
 not believe, you do not get pardon — and if 
 you will not believe, because yon love dark- 
 ness rather than light — if you will not be- 
 lieve, because you will not abandon those 
 evil deeds which the Spirit tells you through 
 the conscience, that you must forsake in 
 coming unto Christ— if his repeated calls 
 have been so unheeded and so withstood by 
 you, that he has at length ceased from striv- 
 hig, then the reason why your sin is unpar- 
 donable, is just because you have refused 
 the Gospel salvation. The reason why your 
 case is irrecoverable, is just because you 
 have refused the method of recovery so 
 long, and so often, that every call of repen- 
 tance has now come to play upon you in 
 lain. The reason v/hy you lie under a 
 
 guilt that can meet with no forgiveness, is 
 not that one or all of your sins are of a die 
 so deep and so inveterate, that the cleansing 
 power of the Saviour's atonement cannot 
 overmatch them. Let the invitation to the 
 fountain that is opened in the house of Ju- 
 dah, circulate among you as freely as the 
 preacher's voice ; for sure we are, that there 
 does not stand, at this moment, within the 
 reach of hearing us, any desperado in vice, 
 so sunk in the depths of his dark and un- 
 natural rebellion, that he is not welcome if 
 he will. But, if ye will not come that ye 
 may have life, this is your sin. 
 
 This is the barrier in the way of your for- 
 giveness. Grant us repentance and faith, 
 and we know not of a single mysterious 
 crime in the whole catalogue of human de- 
 pravity, that the atoning blood of our Sa- 
 viour cannot wash away. But withhold 
 from us repentance and faith — let us see the 
 man who stands unrebuked out of his wick- 
 edness by all that conscience has reproached 
 him v.'ith — unmoved out of the hardness of 
 his unbelief by all that power of tenderness, 
 which should have softened his unrelenting 
 bosom, when told of the Saviour who had 
 poured out his soul unto the death for him 
 — if all this contempt and resistance of his 
 has been so long and so grievously persisted 
 in, that the Spirit has ceased to strive — then, 
 j it is not the power of the Gospel that is in 
 ! fault, but the obstinacy of him who has re- 
 I jected it. The sufficiency of the Gospel is 
 i not detracted from by so much as a jot or a 
 tittle. To this very hour may we proclaim 
 I it as the savour of life unto life, to the very 
 ; Morst of sinners who receive t. But if he 
 i so turn aside from its invitations, and the 
 j habit be so fixed with him, and conscience 
 get into a state of such immovable dorman- 
 ! cy, that the Spirit gives him over, it is not 
 j that the Gospel dots not carry a remedy 
 ! along with it for one and all of his offences, 
 i but because he refuses that Gospel, that it 
 I is to him the savour of death unto death. 
 
 A king publishes a wide and unexpected 
 amnesty to the people of a rebellious dis- 
 I trict in his empire, upon the bare act of 
 each presenting himself within a limited 
 period, before an authorized agent, and pro- 
 fessing his purposes of future lo)'ahy. Does 
 it at all detract from the clemency of this 
 deed of grace, that many of the rebels feel 
 a strong reluctance to this personal exhibi- 
 tion of themselves; and that the reluctance 
 strengthens and accumulates upon them by 
 every day of their postponement; and that 
 even before the season ofinercy has expired, 
 it has risen to such a degree of aversion on 
 their part, as to form a moral barrier in the 
 way of their prescribed return, that is aho- 
 gether impassable ? Will you say, because 
 there is no forgiveness to them, that there 
 is any want of amjilitude in that charter of 
 forgiveness which is proclaimed in the hear 
 
XII.] 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 335 
 
 ing of f.U ; or, that pardon has not been pro- 
 vidp;i (or every offence, because some of- 
 fenders are to be found, with such a degree 
 of perverseness and of obstinacy in tlieir 
 bosom, as constrains them to a determined 
 refusal of all pardon? 
 
 The blood of Christ cleanseth from all 
 ain ; and tliere is not a human creature, who, 
 let him repent and believe, will ever find 
 the crimson inveteracy of his manifold of- 
 fences to be beyond the reach of its purify- 
 ing and its peace-speaking power. And 
 tell us if it detract by a shigle iota from tlie 
 omnipotence of this great Gospel remedy, 
 that there are many sinners in the world 
 who refuse to lay hold of it. To the hour 
 of death it is within the reach of all and of 
 any who will. This is the period in the 
 history of each individual, at which this 
 great act of amnesty expires, and to the last 
 minute of his life, it is competent for me 
 and for every minister of the Gospel to urge 
 it upon him, in all the largeness and in all 
 the universality which belong to it — and to 
 assure him, that there is not a single deed 
 of wickedness with which his faithful me- 
 mory now agonizes him, not one habit of 
 disobedience that now clothes his retrospect 
 of the past in the sad colouring of despair, 
 all the guilt of which, and all the condemna- 
 tion of which, the blood of the offered Sa- 
 viour cannot do away. But, though we may 
 .">ffer, that is not to say that he will accept. 
 Though we may proclaim, and urge the 
 proclamation in his hearing, with every 
 tone of truth and of tenderness, that is not 
 to say, that our voice will enter witli power, 
 or make its resistless way through those 
 avenues of his heart, where he has done so 
 much to rear a defending barrier, that may 
 prove to be impenetrable. Though there be 
 truth in our every announcement, that is 
 not to say, that the demonstration of tlie 
 Spirit will accompany it — even that Spirit 
 who long ere now may have left to himself 
 the man, who, his whole life long, has 
 grieved and resisted him. It is still true, 
 that the pardon lies at his acceptance : and 
 it may be as true, that there can be no par- 
 don to him because he has brought such an 
 inveterate blindness upon his soul, that he 
 will neither receive the truth, nor love it, 
 nor feel those genuine impulses by which it 
 softens tlie heart of man to repentance. And 
 thus it is, that while the blood of Christ 
 cleanseth the every sin of every believer, 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be 
 forgiven, because Avith this sin, and with its 
 consequences upon him, man wills not, and 
 repents not, and believes not. 
 
 And now for the interesting question, — 
 How am I to know that I have committed 
 this sin, that is said to be beyond the reach 
 of forgiveness ? We are sure that the right 
 solution of this question, if well understood, 
 would go to dissipate all that melancholy 
 
 which has been felt upon the subject, by 
 many a bewildered inquirer. You cannot 
 take a review of the years that are gone, and 
 fetch up til is mysterious sin to 3'our remem- ,) 
 
 brance out of the history of the sins that " 
 
 are past. There is not one of them, which, 
 if turned away from, in the f;iith of that 
 pardon that is through the blood of the 
 atonement — there is not one of them beyond 
 the reach of the great redemption of the 
 Gospel. The sin against the Holy Ghost is 
 not some awl\il and irrevocable deed, around 
 which a disordered fancy has tlirown its 
 superstitious array, and which beams in 
 deeper terror upon the eye of the mind, 
 from tlie very obscurity by which it is en- 
 compassed. I'here ought to be no darkness 
 and no mystery about it. The sin against 
 the Holy Ghost is such a daring and obsti- 
 nate rebellion against the prerogatives of 
 conscience — that all its calls to penitency 
 have been repelled — and all the urgency of 
 its admonitions to flee to the offered Saviour, 
 has been withstood — and all this obstinacy 
 of resistance has been carried forward to 
 such a point in the history of the unliappy 
 man, that his conscience has ceased from 
 the exercise of its functions ; and the Holy 
 Spirit has laid down his office of prompting 
 it; and the tenderness of a beseeching God 
 may be sounded in his ear — but unaccom- 
 panied as it is by that power which makes 
 a willing and obedient people, it reaches not 
 his sullen and inflexible heart. And instead, 
 therefore, of looking for that sin among 
 those imaginary few who nKUirn and are in 
 distre.ss, under an overwhelming sense of 
 its enormity, I look for it to those thou- 
 sands, who, trenched among the seculari- 
 ties of the world, or fully set on the mad 
 career of profligacy, are posting their care- 
 less and infatuated way — and suffering Sab- 
 baths and opportunities to pass over tl^em — 
 and turn with contempt from the foolishness 
 of preacliing — and hold up the iron front of 
 insensibility against all that is appalling in 
 the judgments of God — and cling to this 
 perishable scene under the most tf)ucliing 
 experiences of its vanity — and walk their 
 unfaltering path amid all the victims which 
 mortality has strewn around them — and 
 every year drink deeper into the spirit of 
 the world — till the moral disease rises to 
 such an inveteracy, that all the engines of 
 conversion, unaided as they are, by that 
 peculiar force and demonstration which is 
 from on high, fall powerless as infancy upon 
 them, and every soul amongst them, sunk 
 in torpor immovable, will never, never be 
 made to know the power and the life of a 
 spiritual resurrection. 
 
 We know nothing that goes farther to 
 nullify the Bible, than the habit of subject- W^ 
 ing the interpretation of its passages to any 
 other principle, than that all its parts must 
 consist and be in harmony with t acli other 
 
336 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 [SERM 
 
 There has a world of mischief been done 
 by the niodifications that have been laid on 
 the obvious meaning of Scripture, with the 
 purpose of rendering it more palatable to 
 our independent views of what is right, and 
 wise, and reasonable. This, in fact, is de- 
 posing the word of God from that primitive 
 authority wliich belongs to it, as the court 
 of highest appeal — all whose decisions are 
 final and irreversible. Grant us that there is 
 no contradiction between what we find in 
 the book of God's counsel, and what we 
 know by the evidence of our own experi- 
 ence, or the overbearing testimony of others 
 — and such we hold to be the ignorance of 
 man about the wliole of that spiritual and 
 unseen world which lies beyond the circle 
 of his own observation, that we count it not 
 merely his most becoming piety, but we 
 count it also his soundest and most en- 
 lightened philosophy, to sit down with the 
 docility of a little child to all that is inti- 
 mated and made known to him by a well- 
 attested revelation. After the deductions we 
 have just now made, we know of no other 
 principle on which we should ever offer to 
 modify a verse or a clause of the written 
 record ; but the principle of that entire con- 
 sistency which must reign throughout all 
 its communications. We know of no other 
 cross-examination which we have a right to 
 set up on this witness to the invisible things 
 of faith — than to try it by itself, and to con- 
 demn it, if possible, out of its own mouth, 
 by confronting together its own depositions. 
 "VVe are only at freedom to sustain or to 
 qualify the literal sense of one of its an- 
 nouncements, by the literal and equally au- 
 tlioritative sense of some other of its an- 
 nouncements. And such 's our respect for 
 the paramount authority of Scripture, that 
 we know of no discovery more pleasing, 
 than that by which the apparent inconsis- 
 tency between two places, is so cleared up, 
 that "all necessity for encroaching upon the 
 literal sense of either of them is completely 
 done away — for it goes to establish our 
 every impression of the unviolable sanc- 
 tity of its various communications, and to 
 heighten our belief that every semblance of 
 opposition between the particulars of the 
 divine testimony, exists not in the testimony 
 itself, but in the misapprehension of our own 
 dark and imperfect understandings. 
 
 Now, if you look to the 31st verse of the 
 12th chapter of Matthew, you will perceive, 
 that all who think the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost to lie in the commission of some rare 
 and monstrous, but at the same time spe- 
 cific iniquity, cannot admit the first clause 
 of the verse without qualifying it by some 
 of the undeniable doctrines of the New Tes- 
 tament. They would say, it is not true 
 that all manner of sin shall be forgiven unto 
 men, with the exception of this blasphemy 
 against the Holy Ghost, which they con- 
 
 ceive to occur but seldom in the history of 
 human wickedness. They would sa)', that 
 there is forgiveness to no sin whatever but 
 on the faith and the repentance of liim who 
 has incurred it — and we must, therefore, 
 suppose this, and qualify the clause by this 
 indispensable condition, and thus make the 
 clause to tell us, how such is the power of 
 the Gospel, that all tlie sin and blasphemy 
 shall be forgiven of those who have em- 
 braced it — save that one sin against the 
 Holy Ghost, for the remission of which, not 
 even their acceptance of the Gospel of Christ 
 could avail them. 
 
 Now, the explanation we have given of 
 this sin renders all this work of annexing 
 terms and modifications to this verse of the 
 Bible unnecessary, and gives, we think, even 
 to its literal and unrestricted meaning, a 
 most lucid consistency with all that is lead- 
 ing and that is undeniable in the doctrine 
 of the New Testament. If the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost be just that sin, in virtue oi 
 which the calls and offers of the Gospel are 
 so rejected, as to be finally and irreversibly 
 put away from us, then it is true, it is abso- 
 lutely and unreservedly true, that all other 
 manner of sin shall be forgiven but this one 
 only. All wlio so reject this Gospel, have 
 sinned against the Holy Ghost — and none 
 who accept this Gospel have incurred this 
 sin, nor shall they want the forgiveness that 
 IS there provided for them. It is quite in 
 vain to think, that the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost is confined to that period of the world 
 at which our Saviour made his personal ap- 
 pearance in it. The truth is, that it is since 
 Christ withdrew from the world, that he 
 now carries forward b}' the Spirit, as his 
 agent and substitute, the business of press- 
 ing home tipon men the acceptance of the 
 Gospel, by working with their consciences. 
 He employs the Spirit as his Avitness, since 
 he himself has gone away from us ; and as 
 in the business of entertaining the calls and 
 the offers of the New Testament, our doings 
 are more exclusively with this Spirit, and 
 not at all with the Saviour himself personally, 
 we are surely as much in the way of now 
 committing the sin in question, as in those 
 days when the Holy Ghost was not so 
 abundantly given, because Jesus Christ was 
 not then glorified. All those, be assured, 
 who refuse the Gospel now, do so because 
 they refuse the testimony of this witness — 
 do so because they stifle within them the 
 urgency of his rebuke, when he tells them 
 of faith and of repentance — do so when he 
 offers to convince them on principles that 
 would be clear to themselves, could they 
 only be so far arrested by the imperious 
 claims of God and of eternity, as to attend to 
 them — convince them that they are indeed 
 on a way of guilt and of alienation, which, 
 if not turned from, through the revealed 
 Mediator, will land them in the condemna- 
 
XII. 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 337 
 
 tion ol a most righteous and immitigable 
 law. And thus, ia the day of reckoning, will 
 this verse, in its most plain and obvious 
 literality, be so accomplished on the hosts 
 who are assembled round the judgment- 
 seat — that all who are free from this sin 
 ishall have their every other sin forgiven, 
 just because they have obeyed the Gospel 
 (11 embracing the overtures of forgiveness — 
 and that all who, on that day, shall find no 
 escape, and no forgiveness, have this doom 
 laid upon them, just because each, without 
 exception, has incurred the sin to which no 
 forgiveness is awarded, by the very act of 
 neglecting tlie great salvation. 
 
 The sin, then, against the Holy Ghost, so 
 far from conferring any rare distinction of 
 wickedness on liim who is guilty of it, is, in 
 fact, the sin of all who, living under the 
 dispensation of the Gospel, have, by their 
 rejection of it, made it the " savour of death 
 unto death." It is a sin which can be 
 charged upon every man who has put the 
 overtures of forgiveness away from him. It 
 is a sin which if, on the great day of ex- 
 amination, you are found to be free from, 
 will argue your acceptance of the Gospel, 
 in virtue of which its forgiveness is made 
 sure to you. And it is a sin, which, if found 
 on that day to adhere to you, will argue 
 your final refusid of this same Gospel, in 
 virtue of which your forgiveness is impossi- 
 ble — because you are out of the only way 
 given under heaven whereby men can be 
 sived. So that this sin, looked upon by 
 many as tlie sin of one particular age, or, if 
 possible to realize it in the present day, as 
 only to be met with in a few solitary in- 
 stances of enormous and unexpiable trans- 
 gression, is the very sin upon wliich may 
 be made to tiu-n the condemnation and 
 the ruin of the existing majoiity of our 
 species. 
 
 Before we are done with this subject, 
 there is one question that remains to be 
 disposed of. Does it appear, from the his- 
 torical circumstances of the case, that tliat 
 conduct of the Pharisees which called forth 
 from our Saviour the denunciation of the 
 text, bears a resemblance to the account we 
 have given of the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost, as exemplified by the men of the 
 present generation? In their rejecting of 
 Christ, was there a determined rebellion of 
 purpose against the light of their own con- 
 science? Was there a wilful and resolved 
 suppression of the force of evidence ? Was 
 there a habitual stifling within them of the 
 movement and the impulse of moral princi- 
 ple ? Was there a firm and deliberate post- 
 ing of themselves on the ground of opposi- 
 tion, in the whole of their past resistance to 
 this Jesus of Nazareth ? Was there an ob- 
 stinate keeping of this ground ? Was tliere 
 an audacious and desperate intent of holding 
 out against all that could be oiTered in the 
 43 
 
 shape of proofs or of remonstrances on the 
 side of Christianity? Was tliere a volun- 
 tary darkening, on their part, of the light 
 of truth when it began to dawn upon their 
 souls, and threatened to carry their convic- 
 tions away from thcnn ? Was there a habit 
 of fetching up, at all hazards, every argu- 
 ment, however false and however blas- 
 phemous it may be, on whicli they might 
 rest the measures of a proud and interested 
 party, and thus miglit give the shape and 
 tlie colour of plausibility to that systematic 
 opposition they had entered on? 
 
 It strikes us, that the whole history of 
 the Pharisees in the New Testament, holds 
 them out in the very attitude of mind which 
 we have now described to you. And think 
 you not that in the work of maintaining 
 this attitude against the warfare of all that 
 moral and miraculous argument which was 
 brought to bear upon them, they never 
 smothered the instigations of conscience, 
 and through it rebelled against that Spirit, 
 who conveyed, by this organ of the inner 
 man, the whispers of his still but impres- 
 sive voice? "Which of you convinceth me 
 of sin," says the Saviour, " and if I tell you 
 the truth, why do you not believe me ?" Did 
 conscience never tell them how impossible 
 it was 'that Jesus of Nazareth could lie ? 
 Did not the words of him who spake as 
 never man spake, bear upon them the im- 
 press of truth as well as of dignity ? Is 
 there not such a thing as the suspicious as- 
 pect of an impostor, and is there not also 
 such a thing as the open, the declared, the 
 ingenuous, and altogether overbearing as- 
 pect of integrity — and is it not conceivable, 
 how, in this way, tlie words of the Saviour 
 might have carried such a moral evidence 
 along with them, as to stamp an unques- 
 tionable character on all his attestations ? 
 Now, was there no resisting of the Holy 
 Spirit in the act of shutting the eye of the 
 judgment against the whole weight and au- 
 thority of this character ? In the person of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the men of that day vvere 
 honoured with the singular privilege of be- 
 holding God manifest in the flesh — of seeing 
 all the graces of the Holy Spirit substan- 
 tiated, without one taint of imperfection, on 
 the life and character of one who wore the 
 form of the species — of witnessing, if we 
 may so express ourselves, a sensible exhi- 
 bition of the Godhead — of hearing the truth 
 of God fall in human utterance upon their 
 ears, with a tone of inimitable candour — of 
 seeing the earnest longing of God after the 
 creatures he had formed, stamped in living 
 and undeniable traces upon a human coun- 
 tenance — of beholding the tenderness of 
 God expressed in human tears, by him who 
 wept over the sins and the sufferings of 
 mankind — and all the goodness of Deity 
 distinctly announcing itself in the mild and 
 impressive sympathies of a human voice. 
 
338 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 Think you not that there was no strugglingr 
 with their own consciences, and no wilful 
 blinding of their own hearts, on the part of 
 those by whom sucli an exiiibition was re- 
 sisted ? Surely, surely, the Spirit of God 
 did much to subdue their acquiescence in 
 the alone way of salvation — when all his 
 fruits and all his accomplishments were 
 gathered upon the person of the Redeemer 
 into one visible assemblage — when the 
 whole force of this moral ascendency was 
 made so nearly and so repeatedly to bear 
 upon them — when trutli, with all its plead- 
 ing energy, assailed them — and gentleness 
 tried to win them over to the cause of their 
 own eternity — and the soft eye of compas- 
 sion beamed upon them — and the unwearied 
 forbearance, which no weight of personal 
 injustice could overcome, told them how, 
 for their sakes, Jesus of Nazareth was ready 
 to do all and to suffer all — and patience, even 
 unto martyrdom, left a meek, but a tirm testi- 
 mony behind it. O 1 think you not, that in 
 the perverse representations, and the spite- 
 ful malignity, and the sullen immoveable 
 hardness, by which all this was withstood 
 and overborne, there was such an outrage 
 upon the authority of conscience, and such 
 a dark and determined principle of rebellion 
 against him who prompts it with all its in- 
 stigations, as by provoking him to cast them 
 off from all his further communications, 
 might raise an eternal barrier against that 
 faith, and that repentance, and that obedi- 
 ence to the Gospel of Christ, through which 
 alone forgiveness is extended to a guilty 
 world. 
 
 To aggravate still further this resistance 
 to the moral claims of the Saviour, on the 
 part of his inflexible enemies, let us see how 
 these very claims told on the consciences 
 of other men. The officers whom they sent 
 to apprehend him, when they went, faltered 
 from the purpose, at what they saw and 
 heard — and when they returned with their 
 errand unfulfilled, and the answer in their 
 mouth, that " surely never man spake like 
 this man," they found the masters they had 
 to deal with were made of sterner mate- 
 rials — men who knew not what it was to 
 falter — men who reproached them for their 
 moral sensibility — and who had sternly 
 resolved, at all hazards, and in defiance to 
 all principle, to rid themselves of this dan- 
 gerous pretender. Again, when they insti- 
 gated Pilate to a capital sentence against 
 him, the Roman governor was shaken by 
 all tiiat he observed of this innocent victim 
 — but look all the while at the unrelenting 
 constancy with which they kept by their 
 purpose ; and in the barbarous prosecution 
 of it schooled the governor out of his diffi- 
 culties ; and raised the phrenzy of the popu- 
 lace ; and surrounded the best and kindest 
 of the species with the scowl of a brutal 
 and reviling multitude. And, lastly, when 
 
 he had sealed his testimony hj)- his blood, 
 mark how the man who presided over the 
 execution, was overpowered mto the ac- 
 knowledginent, that " surely this was the 
 Son of God ;" and how they, unsoftened 
 and unsubdued, stood fast to their object— 
 and got his body to be watched, and a story 
 to be devised, and a falsehood of deliberate 
 manufacture to be thrown afloat, with which 
 they might stem the growing faith of oiu* 
 Saviour's resurrection. Now, in this differ- 
 ence between the resolved and inflexible 
 hatred of the Jewish persecutors of Christ, 
 and the relentings of other men, do you see 
 no suppression of the voice of conscience — 
 no resistance to that light of principle which 
 sends forth an occasional gleam over the 
 path of the determinedly reprobate, do you 
 see no one of those ingredients which give 
 to the sin against the Holy Ghost all the 
 malignancy that belongs to it — or, rather, in 
 this hard and unmovable hostility against 
 one whose challenge to convince him of 
 sin, they dared not to entertain ; against 
 one, of whom they could not fail to perceive, 
 that he was the mildest, and the sincerest, 
 and tne most unoffending, and the most un- 
 wearied in well-doing of all the characters 
 that had met their observation, do you not 
 perceive how it was in the cause of their 
 own offended pride, and their own threat- 
 ened interest, that they made their sys- 
 tematic resistance to every moral argument, 
 and hurried away their minds from every 
 painful remonstrance — and that, too, in the ' 
 very style in which the obstinately impeni- 
 tent of the day do, in resistance to every 
 demonstration of guilt, and to every warn- 
 ing of danger, walk in the counsel of their 
 own hearts, and in the sight of their own 
 eyes. 
 
 It is very true, that it was upon an out- / 
 ward act of speaking, on the part of the 
 Pharisees, that our Saviour uttered this re- 
 markable denunciation. But remember 
 what he says himself upon this subject — 
 how the things which come out of a man 
 are evil, because they are the products of a 
 heart which is evil. Remember what iis 
 said a few verses before — how our Saviour, 
 who knew what was in man, knew the 
 thoughts of those Pharisees; and it is upon 
 his knowledge of their thoughts, that he 
 ascribed such a malignity, and laid such a 
 weight of condemnation on the words 
 which conveyed them. Remember what 
 is said a few verses after, where the fruit 
 is represented as bad, just because the tree 
 is bad— where the words have their whole 
 character of evil imparted to them, just be- 
 cause it is out of the abundance of the heart 
 that the mouth speaketh, and out of the evil 
 humours of the heart, that the man bring 
 eth forth evil things. And surely, when, 
 after our Saviour had uttered such a pecu- 
 liar sentence of condemnation on the sin 
 
xu.'] 
 
 ON THE NATURE OF THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST. 
 
 339 
 
 against the Holy Ghost, he expressly con- 
 nects the words of the month, with ,the dis- 
 position of the heart, ere he tells lis that it 
 was by our words we shall be justified, and 
 by our words we shall be condemned — we 
 ought no longer to do what we are sure is 
 done by many in their obscure imagina- 
 tions upon this subject, we ought not to 
 liken the sin against the Holy Ghost to the 
 spell of some magical incantation, deriving 
 the whole of that deadly taint which be- 
 longs to it, from some infernal charm 
 with which the utterance of mere language 
 is darkly and unaccountably impregnated. 
 But knowing that every denunciation of 
 our great Spiritual Teacher, had some clear 
 and unchangeable principle of morality 
 to rest upnn — and perceiving, as we do, 
 that on this very occasion he refers us to 
 tiie disposition of the heart, as that which 
 gives to the utterance of the tongue all its 
 malignity, let us, when reading of this des- 
 parate guilt of the Pharisees, look to the 
 spirit and moral temper of the Pharisees, 
 and if possible, gather a something that 
 may carry to our own bosoms a salutary 
 and convincing application. 
 
 And a single glance at the circumstances 
 may be enough to satisfy us, that never, in 
 any one recorded passage of their history, 
 did they evince the bent of so inflexible a 
 determination against the authority of con- 
 science — never such a wilful darkening of 
 their own hearts against tlie light and the 
 power of evidence, as in the passage that is 
 now before us. The whole weight of that 
 moral argument on whicli we have already 
 expatiated, v/as reinforced by a miracle so 
 striking and so palpable in its effects, that 
 all the people were thrr';\n into amazement. 
 But what constituted the peculiarity of the 
 miracle was, that it was just such a miracle 
 as the Pharisees themselves had been ac- 
 customed to look upon with veneration, and 
 had viewed as an example of successful 
 hostility against the empire of darkness. 
 They had faith in these possessions. They 
 counted every one of them to be the work 
 of Beelzebub, and the casting out of any of 
 them as a direct triumph of warfare against 
 the jirince of the devils. They themselves, 
 it would appear, laid claim to the power 
 of dispossessing these demons, and we have 
 no doubt that the imagination of such a 
 power residing with them and their chil- 
 dren, or proselytes, would help to give 
 them that prophetical sanctity in the eyes 
 of the common people, which they so much 
 aspired after. 
 
 But when the very thing on which they 
 tried to strengthen their own claims to au- 
 thority, was done by that man, the progress 
 of whose authority, among his countrymen, 
 they were determined, at all hazards, to ar- 
 rest ; the}' went round the whole compass 
 of their principles, and quashed the voice 
 
 of every one of them, rather than own the 
 hand of God, or submit to the demonstra- 
 tion of his power in the miracle before 
 them. It was indeed a desperate fetch that 
 they made for an argument, when the very 
 work in which they gloried, and on which 
 they founded the credit of their own order, 
 was so maligned and misrepresented by 
 them. They had ever been in the habit of 
 ascribing the possessions of that age to the 
 power of Beelzebub — and now to give a co- 
 lour to their hatred to Jesus and his claims, 
 they suppose the house of Beelzebub to 
 be divided against itself, and they ascribe 
 to his power a miracle, the doing of which 
 went to dispossess him of a part of his em- 
 pire. They pretended that their sons or 
 their proselytes had the power of casting 
 out those possessions, and never failed to 
 ascribe this power to the Spirit and the 
 countenance of God — but now they turned 
 round upon the matter, and by rearing the 
 argument against the Saviour in the direct 
 face of their own principle, did they prove 
 how firmly they were resolved to lay hold 
 of any thing, rather than admit the claims 
 of one who was so offensive to them. Thus 
 did they give, perhaps at this moment, a 
 more conspicuous evidence than they had 
 ever done before, how every proof and 
 every remonstrance would all be wasted 
 upon them. The Spirit of God had gone 
 his uttermost length with them, and on 
 abandoning them for ever, he left behind 
 him their blood upon their own head, and 
 the misery of an irrecoverable condition, 
 that was of their own bringing on. He had 
 long borne with them — and it will be seen 
 in the day of reckoning, when all myste- 
 ries are cleared up, how great the patience, 
 and the kindness, and the unwearied per- 
 severance were which they had resisted. 
 For though the spirit strives long, he does 
 not strive always ; and they brought on 
 this crisis in their history, just by the very 
 steps in which every impenitent man brings 
 it on in the present day, by a wilful resist- 
 ance to the light of their own understand- 
 ing; by a resolute suppression of the voice 
 of their own conscience. 
 
 But we must bring all these explanations 
 to a close. The distinction between speak- 
 ing against the Son of man, and speaking 
 against the Holy Ghost, may be illustrated 
 by what he says of the difference between 
 bearing witness of himself, and another 
 bearing witness of him. If he had had no 
 other testimony than his own to offer, they 
 had not had sin. If he had not done the 
 works before them which none other man 
 did, and which no mere son of man could 
 do, they had not had sin. If he had no- 
 thing to show on which to sustain the cha- 
 racter that signalized him above the mere 
 children of men, their resistance could have 
 been forgiven ; but he had shown the most 
 
340 
 
 ON THE ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 abundant evidence on this point — he had 
 just performed a deed which their every 
 habit, and their every conception, led them to 
 ascribe to the Spirit and the power of God, 
 and he had brought forward what to their 
 own judgments was tlie testimony of the 
 Spirit, and they resisted it. It was no 
 longer now an opposition to man, and a rail- 
 ing of man, and a contemptuous negligence 
 of man : all this is sinful ; but it was not 
 that which blocked up the way against the 
 remission of sin ; it was when tliey reviled 
 him who offered to lead them on in that 
 way, that they were ever strengthening the 
 barrier which lay across the path of accept- 
 ance. While the last and most conclusive 
 proof that would be given of Jesus having 
 indeed the seal and the commission of the 
 Spirit upon him, was not yet tried and 
 found ineffectual ; all their opposition to 
 him still partook of opposition to one of 
 whom the most decisive evidence that he 
 was any thing more than the Son of man, 
 
 was still in reserve. It still partook of op- 
 position to a fellow-man. But when that 
 decisive evidence was at length offered, and 
 the Spirit interposed with his last and 
 greatest attempt to vindicate his own seal, 
 and to authenticate his own commission on 
 the person of Jesus of Nazareth ; then that 
 which was before tlie speaking evil of the 
 Son of man become the speaking evil of 
 the Son of God ; and that, aggravated to 
 the uttermost length that it now would be 
 permitted to go. And the Pharisees, by 
 smothering the light of all that evidence 
 wliich the Holy Spirit had brought forward, 
 both in the miracles that were done, and m 
 the graces of that sinless example which 
 was set so impressively before them, had 
 by that time raised in their hearts such 
 an entrenchment of prejudice against the 
 faith of the Gospel, and so discouraged the 
 Holy Spirit from any farther attempt to scale 
 and to surmount it, that all recovery was 
 hopeless, and all forgiveness was impossible. 
 
 SERMON XIII. 
 
 On the Advantages of Christian Knowledge to the Lower Orders of Society. 
 
 Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished " 
 
 Ecclesiastes iv. 13. 
 
 There is no one topic on which the Bi- 
 ble, throughout the variety of its separate 
 compositions, maintains a more lucid and 
 entire consistency of sentiment, than the 
 superiority of moral over all physical and 
 all external distinctions. This lesson is 
 frequently urged in the Old Testament, and 
 as frequently reiterated in the New. There 
 is a predominance given in both to worth, 
 and to wisdom, and to principle, which 
 leads us to understand, that within the 
 compass of human attainment, there is an 
 object placed before us of a higher and more 
 estimable character than all the objects of 
 a common-place ambition — that wherever 
 there is mind, there stands associated with 
 it a nobler and more abiding interest than 
 all the aggrandizements which wealth or 
 rank can bestow — that within the limits of 
 the moral and intellectual department of 
 our nature, there is a commodity which 
 money cannot purchase, and possesses a 
 more sterling excellence than all which 
 money can command. This preference of 
 man viewed in .his essential attributes, to 
 man viewed according to the variable ac- 
 cessories by which he is surrounded — this 
 preference of the subject to all its outward 
 and contingent modifications — this prefer- 
 ence of man viewed as the possessor of a 
 
 heart, and of a spirit, and of capacities for 
 truth and for righteousness, to man signal- 
 ized by prosperity, and clothed in the pomp 
 and in the circumstance of its visible glories 
 — this is quite akin v.ith the superiority 
 which the Bible every where ascribes to the 
 soul over the body, and to eternity over 
 time, and to the Supreme Author of Being 
 over all that is subordinate and created. It 
 marks a discernment, unclouded by all those 
 associations which are so current and have 
 so fatal an ascendency in our world — the 
 wisdom of a purer and more ethereal re- 
 gion than the one we occupy — the unpol- 
 luted clearness of a light shining in a dark 
 place, which announces its own coming 
 to be from above, and gives every spiritual 
 reader of the Bible to perceive the beaming 
 of a powerful and presiding intelligence 
 in all its pages. 
 
 One very animating inference to be drawn 
 from our text, is, how much may be made 
 of humanity. Did a king come to take up 
 his residence among you — did he shed a 
 grandeur over your city by the presence of 
 his court, and give the impulse of his ex- 
 penditure to the trade of its population — it 
 were not easy to rate the value and the 
 magnitude which such an event Avould have 
 on the estimation of a common understand- 
 
XIII.] 
 
 TO THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 341 
 
 ing, or the degree of personal importance 
 which would attacli to him, who stood a 
 lofty object in tlie eye of admiring towns- 
 men. And yet it is possible, out of the raw 
 and ragged materials of the obscurest lane, 
 to rear an individual of more inherent 
 worth, than him who thus draws the gaze 
 af the world upon his person. By the act 
 jf training in wisdom's ways the most tat- 
 tered and neglected boy who runs upon our 
 pavements, do we present the community 
 with that which, in wisdom's estimation, is 
 of greater price than this gorgeous inhabi- 
 tant of a palace. And when one thinks 
 how such a process may be multiplied 
 ^mong the crowded families that are around 
 Tis — when one thinks of the extent and the 
 denshy of that mine of moral wealth, which 
 retires, and deepens, and accumulates, be- 
 hind each front of the street along which 
 we are passing — when one tries to compute 
 the quantity of spirit that is imbedded in 
 the depth and the frequency of these hu- 
 man habitations, and reflects of this native 
 ore, that more than tlie worth of a monarch 
 may be stamped, by instruction, on each 
 separate portion of it — a field is thus opened 
 for the patriotism of those who want to give 
 an augmented value to the produce of our 
 land, which throws into insignificance all 
 the enterprises of vulgar speculation. Com- 
 merce may flourisli.or may fail — and amid 
 the ruin of her many fluctuations, may ele- 
 vate a few of the more fortunate of her sons 
 to the affluence of princes. Thy merchants 
 may be princes, and thy traffickers be the 
 honouicxble of the earth. 
 
 But if there be truth in our text, there 
 may, on the very basis of human society, 
 and by a silent process of education, mate- 
 rials be formed, which far outweigh in cost 
 and true dignity, all the blazing pinnacles 
 that glitter upon its summit — and it is, in- 
 deed, a cheering thought to the heart of a 
 philanthropist, that near him lies a territory 
 so ample, on which he may expatiate — 
 where for«ll his pains, and all his sacrifices, 
 he is sure of a repayment more substantial, 
 than was ever wafted by richly laden flo- 
 tilla to our shores — wliere the return comes 
 to him, not in that which superficially decks 
 the man, but in a solid increment of value 
 fixed and perpetuated on the man himself— 
 where additions to the worth of the soul 
 form the proceeds of his productive opera- 
 tion — and where, when he reckons up the 
 profits of his entorprise, he finds them to 
 consist of that, which, on the highest of all 
 authorities, he is assured to be more than 
 meat, of that which is greatly more than 
 raiment. 
 
 Even without looking beyond the con- 
 fines of our present world, the virtue of hum- 
 ble life will bear to he advantageously con- 
 trasted with all the pride and glory of an 
 elevated condition. The man who, though 
 
 among the poorest of them all, has a wis- 
 dom and a weight of character, which 
 makes him the oracle of his neighbourhood 
 — the man, who, vested with no other au- 
 thority than tlie meek authority of worth, 
 carries in his presence a power to shame 
 and to overawe the profligacy that is around 
 him — the venerable father, from whose 
 lowly tenement the voice of psalms is heard 
 to ascend with the offering up of every 
 evening sacrifice — the Christian sage, who, 
 exercised among life's severest hardships, 
 looks calmly onward to heaven, and trains 
 the footsteps of his children in the way that 
 leads to it — the eldest of a well-ordered 
 family, bearing their duteous and honoura- 
 ble part in the contest with its difliculties 
 and its trials — all these off(?r to our notice 
 sucli elements of moral respectability, as do 
 exist among the lowest orders of human 
 society, and elements, too, which admit of 
 being multiplied far beyond the reach of 
 any present calculation. And while we 
 hold nothing to be more unscriptural than 
 the spirit of a factious discontent with the 
 rulers of our land — while we feel nothing 
 to be more untastcful than the insolence of 
 a vulgar disdain towards men of rank, or 
 men of opulence — yet should the king upon 
 the throne be taught to understand, that 
 there is a dignity of an intrinsically higher 
 order than the dignity of birth or power — 
 a dignity which may be seen to sit with 
 gracefulness on the meanest of his subjects 
 — and which draws from the heart of the 
 beholder a truer and profounder reverence. 
 So that, M'ere it for nothing more than to 
 bless and adorn our present state, there can- 
 not be an attempt of greater promise, than 
 that of extending education among the 
 throng of our peasantry ; there cannot be 
 a likelier way of filling tlie country with 
 beauteous and exalted spectacles — there can- 
 not be a readier method of pouring a glory 
 over the face of our land, than that of spread- 
 ins the wisdom of life, and the wisdom of 
 principle, throughout the people who live 
 in it — a glory differing in kind, but greatly 
 higher in degree, than the glories of com- 
 mon prosperity. It is well that the pro- 
 gress of knowledge is now looked to by 
 politicians without alarm — that the igno- 
 rance of the poor is no longer regarded as 
 more essential to the devotion of their pa- 
 triotism, than it is to the devotion of their 
 piety — that they have, at length, found that 
 the best way of disarming the lower orders 
 of all that is threatening and tumultuous, 
 is not to enthral, but to enlighten them ; 
 that the progress of truth among them, in 
 stead of bein? vi-^wed with dismay, is 
 viewed with high anticipation — and an im- 
 pression greatly more just, and greatly more 
 generous, is now beginning to prevail, that 
 the strongest rampart which can possibly 
 be thrown around the cause of public tran- 
 
342 
 
 ON THE ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 qiiillity, consists of a people raised by in- 
 formation, and graced by all moral and all 
 Christian accomplishments. 
 
 For our own part, we trust, that the 
 mighty interval of separation between the 
 higher and lower orders of onr community, 
 will, at length, be broken down, not by any 
 inroad of popular violence; not by the 
 fierce and devouring sweep of any revolu- 
 tionary tempest ; not even by any new ad- 
 justment, either of the limits of power, or 
 the limits of property; not, in short, as the 
 result of any battle, fought ehher on the 
 arena of war, or on the arena of politics ; 
 but as the fruit of that gradual equalization 
 in mind and in manners, to which even 
 now a sensible approach is already making 
 on the part of onr artisans and our labour- 
 ers. They are drawing towards an equality, 
 and on that field, too, in which equality is 
 greatly most honourable. And we fondly 
 hope, that the time is coming, when, in 
 frank and frequent intercourse, we shall 
 behold tiie ready exchange of confidence 
 on the one side, and affection on the other 
 — when the rich and the poor shall love 
 each other more, just because they know 
 each other more — when each party shall 
 recognise the other to be vastly worthier 
 of regard and of reverence than is now ap- 
 prehended — when united by the sympathies 
 of a common hope, and a common nature, 
 and on a perfect level with all that is essen- 
 tial and characteristic of humanity, they 
 shall, at length, learn to live in love and 
 peacefuiness together, as the expectants of 
 one common heaven — as the members of 
 one common and rejoicing family. 
 
 But, to attain a just estimate of the supe- 
 riority of the poor man who has wisdom, 
 over the rich man who has it not, we must 
 enter into the calculation of eternity — we 
 must look to wisdom in its true essence, as 
 consisting of religion, as having the fear of 
 God for its beginning, and the rule of God 
 for its way, and the favour of God for its 
 full and satisfying termination — we must 
 compute how speedily it is, that, on the 
 wings of time, the season of every paltry 
 distinction between them must, at length, 
 pass away ; how soon death will strip the 
 one of his rags, and the other of his pa- 
 geantry, and send them, in utter nakedness, 
 to the dust ; how soon judgment will sum- 
 mon them from their graves, and place 
 them in outward equality before the great 
 disposer of their future lot, and their future 
 place, through ages which never end; how, 
 in that situation, the accidental distinctions 
 oflife Mill be rendered void, and personal dis- 
 tinctions will be all that shall avail them ; how, 
 when examined by the secrets of the inner 
 man, and the deeds done in their body, the 
 treasure of heaven shall be adjudged only 
 to him whose heart was set upon it in this 
 world: and how tremendously the account 
 
 between them will be turned, when it shall 
 be found of the one, that he must perish 
 for lack of knowledge, and of the other, that 
 he has the wisdom which is unto salvation. 
 And here it is of importance to remark, 
 that to be wise as a Christian is wise, it is 
 not essential to have that higher scholar- 
 ship which wchhli alone can purchase — that 
 such is the peculiar adaptation of the Gos- 
 pel to the poor, that it may be felt in the 
 full force of its most powerful evidence, by 
 the simplest of its hearers — that to be con- 
 vinced of its truth, all which appears neces- 
 sary is, to have a perception of sin through 
 the medium of the conscience, and a per- 
 ception of the suitableness of the offered 
 Saviour through the medium of a revela- 
 tion, plain in its terms, and obviously sin- 
 cere and affectionate in its calls. Philoso- 
 phy does not melt the conscience. Philoso- 
 phy does not make luminous that which in 
 itself is plain. Philosophy does not bring 
 home, with greater impression upon the 
 heart, the symptoms of honesty and good 
 will, which abound in the New Testament. 
 Prayer may do it. Moral earnestness may 
 do it. The Spirit, given to tho.se who ask 
 him, may shine with the light of his demon- 
 stration, on the docility of those little chil- 
 dren, who are seeking, with their whole 
 hearts, the way of peace, and long to have 
 their feet established on the paths of righ- 
 teousness. There is a learning, the sole 
 fruit of which is a laborious deviation from 
 the truth as it is in Jesus. And there is a 
 learning which reaches no farther than to 
 the words in which that truth is announced, 
 and yet reaches far enough to have that 
 truth brought home with power upon the 
 understanding — a learning, the sole achieve- 
 ment of which is, to read the Bible, and yet 
 by which the scholar is conducted to that 
 hidden wisdom, which is his light in life, 
 and his passport to immortality — a learning, 
 which hath simply led the inquirer's way 
 to that place, where the Holy Ghost hath 
 descended upon him in rich effusion, and 
 which, as he was reading in his own tongue, 
 the wonderful works of God, has given 
 them such a weight and such a clearness in 
 his eyes, that they have become to him the 
 words whereby he shall be saved. And 
 thus it is, that in many a cottage of our 
 land, there is a wisdom which is reviled, or 
 unknown, in many of our halls of litera- 
 ture — there is the candle of the Lord shin- 
 ing in the hearts of those who fear him — 
 there is a secret revealed unto babes, which 
 is hidden from the wise and the prudent — 
 there is an eye which discerns, and a mind 
 that is well exercised on the mysteries of 
 the sure and the well-ordered covenant — 
 there is a sense and a feeling of the pre- 
 ciousness of that cross, the doctrine of 
 which is foolishness to those who perish — 
 there is a ready apprehension of that truth 
 
XIII.J 
 
 TO THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 
 
 343 
 
 which is held at nought by many rich, and 
 many niiglily, and many noble, who will 
 not be admonished — but which makes these 
 poor to be rich in faith, and heirs of that 
 kingdom which God hath prepared for those 
 who love him. 
 
 We know not, if any who is now present, 
 has ever felt the charm of an act of in- 
 tercourse with a Christian among the poor 
 — with one, whose chief attainment is, that 
 he knows the Bible to be true; and that his 
 heart, touched and visited by a consenting 
 movement to its doctrine, feels it to be pre- 
 cious. We shall be disappointed, if the 
 very exterior of such a man do not bear 
 the impress of that worth and dignity 
 which have been stamped upon his charac- 
 ter — if, in the very aspect and economy of 
 his houseiiold, the traces of his superiority 
 are not to be found — if the promise, even 
 of the life that now is, be not conspicuously 
 realized on the decent sufficiency of his 
 means, and the order of his well-conditioned 
 family — if the eye of tasteful benevolence 
 be not regaled by the sjnTiptoms of com- 
 fort and cheerfulness which are to be seen 
 in his lowly habitation. And we shall be 
 greatly disappointed, if, after having sur- 
 vived the scoff of companions, and run 
 through the ordeal of nature's enmity, he 
 do not earn, as the fruits of the good con- 
 fession that he witnesses among his neigh- 
 bours, the tribute of a warm and willing 
 cordiality from them all — if, while he lives, 
 he do not stand the first in estimation, and 
 when he dies, the tears and acknowledg- 
 ments of acquaintances, as well as of kins- 
 folk do not follow him to his grave — if, 
 even in the hearts of the most unholy 
 around him, an unconscious testimony is 
 not borne to the worth of holiness, so as to 
 make even this world's honour one of the 
 ingredients in the portion of the righteous. 
 But these are the mere tokens and visible 
 accompaniments of Christian excellence — 
 the passing efflorescence of a growth that 
 is opening and maturing for eternity. To 
 behold this excellence in all its depth, and 
 in all its solidity, you must examine his 
 mind, and there see the vastly higher ele- 
 ments, with which it is conversant, than 
 those among which the children of this 
 world are grovelling : there see how, in the 
 hidden walk of the inner man, he treads a 
 more elevated path than is trodden either 
 by the daughters of gaiety, or the sons of 
 ambition ; there see how the whole great- 
 ness and imagery of heaven are present to 
 his thoughts, and what a reach and noble- 
 ness of conception have gathered upon his 
 sou., by his daily approaches to heaven's 
 sanctuary. He lives in a cottage ; and yet 
 he is a king and priest unto God. He is 
 fixed for life to the ignoble drudgery of a 
 workman, and yet he is on the full march 
 to a bhssful immortality. He is a child in | 
 
 the mysteries of science, but familiar with 
 greater mysteries. That preacliiug of the 
 crosSj^which is foolishness to others, lie feels 
 to be the power of God, and the wisdom of 
 God. That faithfulness which annexes to 
 all the promises of the Gospel — that righ- 
 teousness which is unto the believer— that 
 fulness in Christ, out of which the sup- 
 plies of light and of strength are ever made 
 to descend on the prayers of all who put 
 their trust in him — that wisdom of princi- 
 ple, and wisdom of application, by which, 
 through his spiritual insight into his Bible, 
 he is enabled both to keep his heart, and 
 to guide the movements of his history, — 
 these are his treasures — these are the ele- 
 ments of the moral wealth, by which he is 
 far exalted above the monarch, who stalks 
 his little hour of magnificence on earth, and 
 then descends a ghost of departed great- 
 ness into the land of condemnation. He is 
 rich, just because the word of Christ dwells 
 in him richly in all wisdom. He is great, 
 because the Spirit of glory and of God rests 
 upon him. 
 
 So that, the same conclusion comes back 
 upon us with mightier emphasis than be- 
 fore. If a poor child be capable of being 
 thus transformed, how it should move the 
 heart of a city philanthropist, when he 
 thinks of the amazing extent of raw mate- 
 rial, for this moral and spiritual manufac- 
 ture that is on every side of him — when he 
 thinks, that in going forth on some Chris- 
 tian enterprise among a population, he is, 
 in truth, walking among the rudiments of a 
 state that is to be everlasting — that out of the 
 most loathsome and unseemly abodes, a 
 glory can be extracted, which will weather 
 all the storms, and all the vicissitudes of 
 this world's history — that in the filth and 
 raggedness of a hovel, that is to be found, 
 on which all the worth of heaven, as well 
 as all the endurance of heaven, can be im- 
 printed — that he is, in a word, dealing in 
 embryo with the elements of a great and 
 future empire, which is to rise, indestructi- 
 ble and eternal, on the ruins of all that is 
 earthly, and every member of which shall 
 be a king and a priest for evermore. 
 
 And before I pass on to the application 
 of these remarks, let me just state, that the 
 great instrument for thus elevating the 
 poor, is that Gospel of Jesus Christ, which 
 may be preached unto the poor. It is the 
 doctrine of his cross finding an easier 
 admission into their hearts, than it does 
 through those barriers of human pride, and 
 human resistance,- which are often reared 
 on the basis of literature. Let the testi- 
 mony of God be simply taken in, that on 
 his own Son he has laid the iniquities of us 
 all — and from this point does the humble 
 scholar of Christianity pass unto light, and 
 enlargement, and progressive holiness. On 
 the reception of this great truth, there 
 
M4 
 
 ON THE ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, &C. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 hinges the emancipation of his heart from a 
 thraldom which represses all the spiritual 
 energies of those who live without hope, 
 and, therefore, live without God in tlie 
 world. It is guilt — it is the sense of his 
 awakened and unexpiated guilt; which 
 keeps man at so wide a distance from the 
 God whom he has offended. Could some 
 method be devised, by which God, jealous 
 of his honour, and man jealous of his safe- 
 ty, miglit be brought together on a firm 
 ground of reconciliation — it would trans- 
 late the sinner under a new moral influence, 
 to the power of which, and the charm of 
 which he, before, was utterly impractica- 
 ble. Jesus Christ died, the just for the un- 
 just, to bring us unto God. This is a truth, 
 which, when all the world shall receive it, 
 all the world will be renovated. Many do 
 not see how a principle, so mighty in ope- 
 ration, should be enveloped in a proposi- 
 tion so simple of utterance. But let a man, 
 by his faith in this utterance, come to know 
 that God is his friend, and that heaven is 
 the home of his fondest expectation ; and 
 in contact with such new elements as these, 
 he will evince the reach, and the habit, and 
 the desire of a new creature. It is this 
 doctrine which is the alone instrument of 
 God for the moral transformation of our 
 species. When every demonstration from 
 the chair of philosophy shall fail, this will 
 achieve its miracles of light and virtue 
 among the people — and however infidelity 
 may now deride—or profaneness may now 
 lift her appalling voice upon our streets — 
 or licentiousness may now oflfer her sicken- 
 ing spectacles — or moral worthlessness may 
 have now deeply tainted the families of 
 our outcast and long-neglected population, 
 — however unequal may appear the con- 
 test with the powers and the principles of 
 darkness — yet let not the teachers of righ- 
 teousness abandon it in despair ; God will 
 bring forth judgmeit unto victory, and on 
 the triumphs of the word of his own testi- 
 mony, will he usher in the glory of the lat- 
 ter days. 
 
 There is one kind of institution that 
 never has been set up in a country, with- 
 out deceiving and degrading its people ; and 
 another kind of institution that never has 
 been set up in a country, without raising 
 both the comfort and the character of its 
 lamilies. We leave it to the policy of our 
 sister kingdom, by the pomp and the 
 pretension of her charities, to disguise the 
 wretchedness which she cannot do away. 
 The glory of Scotland lies in her schools. 
 Out of the abundance of her moral and 
 literary wealtli, that wealth which com- 
 munication cannot dissipate — that wealth, 
 which its possessor may spread and multi- 
 ply among thousands, and yet be as affluent 
 
 as ever, that wealth which grows by com- 
 petition, instead of being exhausted, this is 
 what, we trust, she will ever be ready to 
 bestow on all her people. Silver and gold 
 she may have none — but such as she has 
 she will give — she will send them to sch'")l. 
 She cannot make pensioners of them, but 
 will, if they like, make scholars of them. 
 She will give them of that food by which 
 she nurses and sustains all her offspring — 
 by which she renders wise the very poorest 
 of her children — by which, if there be truth 
 in our text, she puts into many a simple 
 cottager, a glory surpassing that of the 
 mightiest potentates in our world. To hold 
 out any other boon, is to hold out a pro- 
 mise which she and no country in the uni- 
 verse, can ever realize — it is to decoy, and 
 then most wretchedly to deceive — it is to 
 put on a front of invitation, by which num- 
 bers are allured to hunger, and nakedness, 
 and contempt. It is to spread a table, and 
 to hang out such signals of hospitality, as 
 draw around it a multitude expecting to be 
 fed, and v.'ho find that they must famish 
 over a scanty entertainment. A system 
 replete with practical mischief can put on 
 the semblance of charity, even as Satan, 
 the father of all lying and deceitful pro- 
 mises, can put on the semblance of an an- 
 gel of light. But we trust, that the country 
 in -which we live will ever be preserved 
 from the cruelty of its tender mercies — 
 that she will keep by her schools, and her 
 Scriptures, and her moralizing process ; and 
 that, instead of vainly attempting so to 
 force the exuberance of Nature, as to meet 
 and satisfy the demands of a population 
 whom she has led astray, she will make it 
 her constant aim so to exalt her population, 
 as to establish every interest that belongs 
 to them, on the foundation of their own 
 worth and their own capabilities — that 
 taunted, as she has been, by her contemp- 
 tuous neighbour, for the poverty of her 
 soil, she will at least prove, by deed and by 
 example, that it is fitted to sustain an erect, 
 and honorable, and liigh-minded peasantry; 
 and leaving England to enjoy the fatness 
 of her own fields, and a complacency with 
 her own institutions, that we shall make a 
 clean escape from her error, and never 
 again be entangled therein — that unseduced 
 by the false lights of a mistaken philanthro- 
 py, and mistaken patriotism, we shall be 
 enabled to hold on in the way of our an- 
 cestors; to ward ofFevery near and threat- 
 ening blight from the character of our be- 
 loved people ; and so to labour with the 
 manhood of the present, and the boyhood 
 of the coming generation, as to enrich our 
 land with that wisdom which is more pre- 
 cious than gold, and that righteousness 
 which exalteth a kingdom. 
 
\IV.\ 
 
 ON THE DUTY AND THE MEANS OF, &C. 
 
 34i 
 
 SERMON XIV. 
 On the Duty and the Means of Christianizing our Home Population. 
 
 "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."— 3fnri xvi. 15, 
 
 Christianity proceeds upon the native 
 indisposition of the liuman heart to its truths 
 and its i;;ssons — and all its attempts for the 
 establish ment of itself in the world are made 
 upon this principle. It never expects that 
 men will, of their own accord, originate that 
 movemriit by which they are to come in 
 contact witli the faith of the Gospel; and, 
 therefore, instead of waiting till they shall 
 move toward the Gospel, it has been pro- 
 vided, from the first, that the Gospel shall 
 move towards them. The Apostles did not 
 set up their stationary college at Jerusalem, 
 in the hope of embassies from a distance 
 to inquire after the recent and wondrous 
 revelation tliat had broke upon the world. 
 But they liad to go forth, and to preach 
 among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 
 And, in like manner, it never was looked 
 for, that men, in the ardour of their curi- 
 osit)', or desire after the way of salvation, 
 were to learn the language of the Apostles, 
 that they might comq and hear of it at their 
 mouth. But the Apostles were miraculously 
 gifted with the power of addressing all in 
 their own native language — and when thus 
 furnished, they went actively and aggres- 
 sively about among them. It is no where 
 supposed that the demand for Christianity 
 is spontaneously, and in the first instance, 
 to arise among those who are not Chris- 
 tians ; but it is laid upon those who are 
 Christians, to go abroad, and, if possible, to 
 awaken out of their spiritual lethargy, those 
 who are fast asleep in that worldliness, 
 which they love, and from which, without 
 .some external application, there is no ra- 
 tional prospect of ever arousing them. The 
 dead mass will not quicken into sensibility 
 of itself; and, therefore, unless some cause 
 of fermentation be brought to it from with- 
 out, will it remain in all the sluggishness of 
 its original nature. For there is an utter 
 diversity between the article of Christian 
 instruction, and the articles of ordinary 
 merchandise. For the latter there is a de- 
 mand, to which men are natively and ori- 
 ginally urged by hunger or by thirst, or by 
 the other physical sensations and appetites 
 of their constitution. For the former there 
 is no natural appetite. It is just as necessary 
 to create a spiritual hunger, as it is to af- 
 ford a spiritual refreshment ; and so from 
 the very first, do we find, that for the spread 
 of Christianity in the world, there had to be 
 not an itinerancy on the part of inqiurers, 
 but a busy, active, and extended itinerancy 
 on the part of its advocates and its friends. 
 44 
 
 Now, those very principles which were 
 so obviously acted on at the beginning, are 
 also the very principles that, in all ages of 
 the church, have characterized its evangel- 
 izing processes. The Bible Society is now 
 doing, by ordinary means, what was done 
 by the miracle of tongues, in the days of 
 the Apostles — enabling tlie people of all na 
 tions to read, each in their own tongue, uic- 
 wonderfnl works of God. And the Mis 
 sionary Societies are sending forth, not in- 
 I spired Apostles, gifted with tongues, but the 
 expounders of apostolical doctrine, learned 
 in tongues, over the face of tlie globe. They 
 do not presume upon such a taste for the 
 Gospel in heathen lands, as that the people 
 there shall traverse seas and continents, or 
 shall set themselves down to the laborious 
 acquisition of some Christian langnagfe, that 
 they might either have access to Scripture, 
 or the ability of converse with men that are 
 skilled in the mysteries of the faith. But 
 this taste which they do not find, they ex- 
 pect to create ; and for this purpose, is "there 
 now an incessant application to Pagan 
 countries, of means and instruments from 
 without, and many are the lengthened and 
 the hazardous journies which have been 
 undertaken — and voyages of splendid en- 
 terprise have recently been crowned with 
 splendid moral achievements; insomuch, 
 that even the ferocity and licentiousness of 
 the savage character have given way under 
 the power of the truth ; and lands, that 
 within the remembrance of many now 
 alive, rankled with the worst abominations 
 of idolatry, have now exchanged them for 
 the arts and the decencies of civilization ; 
 for village schools, and Christian Sabbaths, 
 and venerable pastors, who first went forth 
 as missionaries, and, as the fruits of their 
 apostolic labour, among these outcast wan- 
 derers, can now rejoice over holy grand- 
 sires, and duteous children, and all that can 
 gladden the philanthropic eye, in the peace, 
 and purity, and comfort of pious families. 
 
 Now, amid the splendour and tlie interest 
 of these more conspicuous operations, it is 
 often not adverted to, how much work of 
 a missionary character is indispensable for 
 perpetuating, and still more for extending 
 Christianity at home — how families, within 
 the distance of half a mile, may lapse, with- 
 out observation or sympatliy on our part, 
 into a .state of practical heathenism — how, 
 within less than an hour's walk, hundreds 
 may be found, who morally and spiritually 
 live at as wide a separation from the Gospel 
 
546 
 
 ON THE DUTY AND MEANS OF 
 
 [SERM 
 
 jmd all its ordinances, as do the barbarians 
 of another continent — how, in many of our 
 crowded recesses, the families, which, out of 
 sight, and out of Christian sympathy, have 
 accumulated there, might, at length, sink 
 and settle down into a listless, and lethar- 
 gic, and to all appearance, impracticable 
 population — leaving the Christian teacher 
 as much to do with them as has the tirst 
 missionary when he touches oft a yet un- 
 broken shore. It is vain to expect, that 
 by a proper and primary impulse originat- 
 ing witli themselves, those aliens from 
 Christianity will go forth on the inquiry 
 after it. The messengers of Christianity 
 must go forth upon them. Many must go 
 to and fro amongst tlie streets, and the lanes, 
 and tliose deep intricacies that teem with 
 human life, to an extent far beyond the eye 
 or imagination of the unobservant passen- 
 ger, if we are to look for the increase either 
 of a spiritual taste, or of scriptural know- 
 ledge among the families. That mass which 
 is so dense of mind, and, therefore, so dense 
 of immortality, must be penetrated in the 
 length and in the breadth of it ; and then 
 many^ will be found, wJio, however small 
 their physical distance from the sound of 
 the Gospel, stand at as wide a moral dis- 
 tance therefrom, as do the children of the 
 desert, and to overpass this barrier, to send 
 out upon this outfield, such ministrations 
 as miglit reclaim its occupiers to the habits 
 and the observations of a Christian land, to 
 urge and obtrude, as it were, upon the no- 
 tice of thousands, what, without such an 
 advancement, not one of them might have 
 moved a footstep in quest of— these are so 
 many approximations, that, to all intents 
 and purposes, have in them the charac- 
 ter, and might, with the blessing of God, 
 have also the effect of a missionary enter- 
 prise. 
 
 When we are commanded to go into all 
 the world, and preach the Gospel to every 
 creature, our imagination stretclies forth be- 
 yond the limits of Christendom ; and we 
 advert not to the millions who are within 
 these limits, nay, within the sight of Chris- 
 tian temples, and the sound of Sabbath bells, 
 yet who never heard the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ. Tliey live to manhood, and to old 
 age, deplorably ignorant of the way of sal- 
 vation, and in ignorance, too, not the less 
 deplorable than it is wilful. It is this which 
 so fearfully aggravates their guilt, that on the 
 very confines of light, they remain in dark- 
 ness : and thereby prove, that it is a darkness 
 which they love, and which they choose to 
 persist in. Thus it will be found more 
 tolerable for the heathen abroad, than for 
 the heathen at home ; and therefore it is, 
 that for the duty of our text, the wilds of 
 Pagan idolatry, or of Mahometan delusion, 
 are not the only theatres — that for its full 
 performance, it is not enough that we equip 
 
 the missionary vessel, and go in quest oi 
 untaught humanity at a distance, and hold 
 converse with tlie men of other climes, and 
 of other tongues, and rear on some barba- 
 rous shore, the Christianized village, as an 
 outpost in that spiritual warfare, by which 
 we hope, at length, to banish depravity and 
 guilt, even from the farthest extremities of 
 our species. These are noble efliirts, and 
 altogether worthy of being extended and 
 multiplied a hundred fold. But they are not 
 the only efforts of Christian philanthropy; 
 nor can they be sustained as a complete 
 discharge from the obligation of preaching 
 the Gospel to every creature under lieaven. 
 For the accomplishment of this, there must 
 not only be a going forth on the vast and 
 untrodden spaces that are without; there 
 must be a filling up of the numerous and 
 peopled vacancies that are within — a busy, 
 internal locomotion, that might circulate, 
 and disperse, and branch off to the right and 
 to the left, among the many thousand fami- 
 lies which are at hand : And thoroughly to 
 pervade these families; to make good a 
 lodgment in the midst of thenv for the 
 nearer or the more frequent ministrations 
 of Christianity than before; to have gained 
 welcome for the Gospel testimony into their 
 houses, and, in return, to have drawn any 
 of them forth to attendance on the place of 
 Sabbath and of solemn services; this, also, 
 is to act upon our text, this is to do the part, 
 and to render one of tlie best achievements 
 of a missionary. 
 
 " How can they believe," says Paul, 
 " without a preacher," — and " how can they 
 preach, except they be sent?" To make 
 sure this process, there must be a juxtapo- 
 sition between him who declares the word, 
 and them who are addressed by it; but to 
 make good this juxtaposition, the Apostle 
 never imagines that alienated man is, of his 
 own accord, to move towards the preacher 
 — and therefore, that the preacher must be 
 sent, or must move towards him. And, per- 
 haps, it has not been adverted to, that in 
 the very first steps of this approximation, 
 there is an encouragement for going on- 
 ward, and for f^lying the families of a city 
 population with still nearer and more be- 
 setting urgencies than before. It is not 
 known how much the very juxtaposition ol 
 an edifice for worship, tells upon the church- 
 going habit of the contiguous houseJiolders . 
 how many there are who will not move ai 
 the sound of a distant bell, that witli almost 
 mechanical sureness, will go forth and min- 
 gle with the stream of passengers who are 
 crowding the way to a place that is at hand 
 — how children, lured, perhaps, at the first, 
 by curiosity, are led so to reiterate their at- 
 tendance, as to be landed in a most precious 
 habit for youth and for manhood— jiow tliis 
 tendency spreads by talk, and sympatliv, 
 and imitation, through each little vicinity ; 
 
xtv.] 
 
 ClJRiSTIANIZIXG OXIR HOME POPULATION. 
 
 347 
 
 and tliiis, ill groups, or in clusters, might 
 adjoining families be gained over to the or- 
 dinances of religion — how the leaven, when 
 once set a-going, might spread by the fer- 
 mentation of converse, and mutual senti- 
 ment, through the whole lump ; till over the 
 face of a wiiole city department, the Chris- 
 tian fabric, wliich stands conspicuously in 
 the midst of it, and whither its people are 
 rung every Sabbath, to the ministrations of 
 1/he Gospel, might come to be its place of 
 general repair ; and attendance there be at 
 length proceeded on as one of the decencies 
 of its established observation. Some of the 
 influences in this process may appear slight 
 or fanciful to the superficial eye ; and yet 
 they are known and familiarly known, to 
 be of powerful operation. 
 
 You must surely be aware, that it makes 
 all the practical difference in the world, to 
 the retail and custom even of an ordinary 
 shop, should it deviate, by a very small 
 hairbreadth, from the minutest convenience 
 of the public — should it retire, by ever so 
 little from the busy pavement, or have to be 
 ascended by two or three steps, or require 
 the slightest turn and change of direction 
 from the beaten path which passengers do 
 invelerately walk in. And human nature 
 on a week-day, is human nature on the 
 Sabbath. There is no saying on how slight 
 or trivial a circumstance it may be made to 
 turn ; and odd as the illustration may ap- 
 pear, we feel confident that we have not, at 
 present, either a profound or a pious hearer, 
 who will undervalue one single stepping- 
 stone, by which a hearer more might be 
 brought to the house of God— who will de- 
 spise any of the means, however humble, 
 that bring a human creature within the 
 reacli of that word, which is able to sanc- 
 tify and save him — who will forget the 
 wonted style of God's administrations, by 
 which, on these minutest incidents of life, 
 the greatest events of history are oft sus- 
 pended — or, who will deny that the same 
 Being, who, by the flight of a single bird, 
 turned the pursuers of Mahomet away from 
 him, and so spared the instrument by which 
 a gross and grievous superstition hath found 
 an ascendency over millions of immortal 
 spirits, that he can enlist in the cause of his 
 own Son, even the least and slightest fa- 
 miliarities of human practice ; and with 
 links, which in themselves are exceeding 
 small, can fasten and uphold the chain, 
 which runs through the eaithly pilgrimage 
 of man, and reaches to his eternity. 
 
 But after all, though local conveniency 
 may allure, in the first instance, to the house 
 of God, local conveniency will not detain 
 the attendance of multitudes, unless there 
 be a worth and a power in the services 
 which are rendered there — unless there be 
 a moral earnestness in the heart of the 
 preaclier, which may pour forth a sympa- 
 
 thy with itself through the hearts of a 
 listening congregation — unless, acquitting 
 himself as an upright minister of the New 
 Testament, he expound with faithfulness 
 and some degree of energy, those truths 
 which are unto salvation; and so distribute 
 among his fellow-sinners, the alone substan- 
 tial and satisfying food of the soul — unless 
 such a demonstration be given of the awful 
 realities in which we deal, as to awaken in 
 many bosoms the realizing sense of death, 
 and of the judgment-seat— and above all, 
 unless the demands of the law, with its ac- 
 companying severities and terrors, be so 
 urged on the conviction of guilty man, as to 
 make it fall with welcome upon his ear, 
 when told, that unto him a Saviour has been 
 born. These are the alone elements of a 
 rightful and well-earned popularity. Elo- 
 quence may dazzle — and argument may 
 compel the homage of hs intellectual admir- 
 ers — and fashion may even, when these are 
 wanting, sustain through its little hour of , 
 smile and sunshine, a complacent attend- 
 ance on the reigning idol of the neighbour- 
 hood — but it is only if armed with the pan- 
 oply of Scriptural truth, that thAe will 
 gather and adhere to him a people who 
 hunger for the bread of life, and who make 
 a business of their eternity. To fill the 
 church well, we must fill the pulpit well, 
 and see that the articles of the peace-speak- 
 ing blood, and the sanctifying Spirit, are 
 the topics that be dearest to the audience, 
 and on which the Christian orator who ad- 
 dresses them most loves to expatiate. These 
 form the only enduring staple of good and 
 vigorous preaching ; and unless they have 
 a breadth, and a prominency, and a fond 
 reiteration in the sermons that shall be de- 
 livered from the place where we now 
 stand,* they either will not, or ought not 
 to be listened to. 
 
 Yet grieved and disappointed should we 
 be, did he confine himself to Sabbath minis- 
 trations — did he not go forth, and become 
 the friend and the Cliristian adviser of all 
 who dwell within the limits of his vineyard 
 — did he not act tlie part of an Apostle 
 among you, from house to house, and vary 
 the fatigue of his preparations for the pul 
 pit, by a daily walk amongst the ignorant, 
 or the sick, or the sorrov.-ful, or the dying. 
 It is your part to respect, as you would a 
 sanctuary, that solitude to which. Cor hours 
 together," he should commit himself, in the 
 work of meditating the truths of salvation ■ 
 and it is his part to return your delicacy by 
 his labours of love, by the greetings of his 
 cordial fellowship, by his visits of kindness. 
 It is a wrong imagination on the side of a 
 
 * This Sermon was preached at the opening of 
 a city chapel, which has a local district assigned to 
 it, and whose rtde of seat-letting is on the territorial 
 principle. 
 
348 
 
 ON THE DUTY AND THE MEANS OF 
 
 [SEIIM 
 
 people, when they look on the Sabbath for 
 a vigorous exposition of duty or doctrine, 
 from him whom they tease, and interrupt, 
 and annoy, through the week; and it is a 
 wrong imagination on the side of a pastor, 
 when looking on the church as the s^'e 
 arena of his usefulness, he does not rciax 
 the labour of a spirit that has been much 
 exercised on the great topics of the Chris- 
 tian ministry, by frequent and familiar in- 
 tercourse among those, whom, perhaps, he 
 has touched or arrested by his Sabbath de- 
 monstrations. You ought to intrude not 
 upon his arrangements, and his studies; 
 but he ought, in these arrangements, to 
 provide the opportunities of ample con- 
 verse with every spiritual patient, with 
 every honest inquirer. You should be 
 aware of the distinction that he makes be- 
 tween that season of the day which is set 
 apart for retirement, and that season of the 
 day which lies open to the duty of holding 
 courteous fellowship with all ; and of hiding 
 not himself from his own flesh. It is the 
 gross insensibility which obtains to the pri- 
 vileges both of a sacred and literary order — 
 it is the disturbance of a perpetual inroad 
 on that prophet's chamber, which ought, at 
 all times, to be a safe retreat of contempla- 
 tion — it is the incessant struggle that must 
 be made for a professional existence, with 
 irksome application, and idle ceremony, and 
 even the urgencies of friendship ; these are 
 sufficient to explain those pulpit imbecili- 
 ties, of which many are heard to complain, 
 while themselves they help to create them. 
 And, therefore, if j'ou want to foster the 
 energies of your future clergyman ; if you 
 would co-operate with him in those mental 
 labours, by which he provides through the 
 week for the repast of your Sabbath festi- 
 val ; if it is yonr desire that an unction and 
 a power sliall be felt in all his pulpit minis- 
 trations ; if here you would like to catch a 
 glow of heaven's sacredness, and receive 
 that fresh and forcible impulse upon your 
 spirits, which might send you forth again 
 with a redoubled ardour of holy affection 
 and zeal on tlie business of life, and make 
 you look and long for the coming Sabbath, 
 as another delightful resting-place on your 
 journey towards Zion — then suffer him to 
 breathe, without molestation, in that pure 
 and lofty region, where he might inhale a 
 seraph ic fervency, by which to kindle among 
 his hearers his own celestial fire, his own 
 noble enthusiasm. If it be this, and not the 
 glee of companionsliip, or the drudgeries 
 of ordinary clerkship that you want from 
 your mmister, then leave, I beseech you, 
 his time in his own hand, and hold his asy- 
 lum to be inviolable. 
 
 But, we trust, that from this asylum his 
 excursions will be frequent; and sure we 
 are, that nought but an affectionate forth- 
 going is necessary on his part, that he may 
 
 have a warm and a willing reception upon 
 yours. It is utterly a mistake, that any 
 population, whatever be their present habits, 
 will discourage the approaches of a Chris- 
 tian minister to their families. It is a par- 
 ticularly wrong imagination, that in cities 
 there is a liard or an insolent defiance 
 among the labouring classes, which no as- 
 siduities of service or of good-will on the 
 part of their clergyman can possibly over- 
 come. Let him but try what their tem- 
 perament is in this matter, and he will find 
 it in every way as courteous and inviting, 
 as among the most primitive of our Scottish 
 peasantry. Let him be but alert to every call 
 of threatening disease among his people, 
 and the ready attendant upon every death- 
 bed — let him ply not his fatiguing, but his 
 easy and most practicable rounds of visita- 
 tion in the midst of them — let him be zeal- 
 ous for their best interests, and not in the 
 spirit of a fawning obsequiousness, but in 
 that of a manly, intelligent, and honest 
 friendship, let him stand forth as the guar- 
 dian of the poor, the guide and the counsel- 
 lor of their children; it is positively not in 
 human nature to withstand the charm and 
 tlie power whicli lie in such unwearied 
 ministrations; and if visibly prompted by 
 the affinity that there is in the man's heart 
 for his fellows of the species, there will, by 
 a kw of the human constitution, be an affi- 
 nity in theirs towards him, which they can- 
 not stifle, though they would; and they 
 will have no wish to stifle it. 
 
 It is to this principle, little as it has been 
 recognised, and still less as it has been pro- 
 ceeded on, it is to this that we confide the 
 gathering at length of a congregation within 
 these wails, and that too from the vicinities 
 by which we are immediately surrounded. 
 That the chapel will be filled at the very 
 outset, from the district which has been as- 
 signed to it, we have no expectation. But 
 we do fondly hope, as the fruit of his un- 
 wearied services, that its minister will draw 
 the kind regards of the people after him ; 
 that an impression will be made by his 
 powerful and reiterated addresses in the 
 bosom of their families, which may not 
 stop there ; that the man who prays at every 
 funeral, and sits by every dying bed, and 
 seizes every opening for Chri-stian useful- 
 ness that is afforded to him by the visita- 
 tions of Providence on the houses of the 
 surrounding neighbourhood, and who, while 
 a fit companion for the great in his vine- 
 yard, is a I'eady, and ever accessible friend 
 to the poorest of them all ; it is utterly im- 
 possible, that such a man, after his work of 
 varied and active benevolence, will have 
 nought to address on the Sabbath but empty 
 walls. After being the eye-witness of what 
 he does, there will spring up a most natural 
 desire, and that cannot be resisted, to heat 
 what he says. It is not yet known how 
 
CHRISTIANIZING OUR HOME POPULATION. 
 
 XIV.] 
 
 much such attentions as these, kept up, and 
 made to play in busy and constant recurrence 
 upon one local neighbourhood ; it is not yet 
 known how much and how powerfully they 
 tell in drawing the hearts of tlie people to- 
 wards him who faithfully and with honest 
 friendship, discharges them. They will 
 make the pulpit which he fills a common 
 centre of attraction to the whole territory 
 over which he expatiates ; and we need not, 
 that we may see exemplified in human so- 
 ciety the worth and importance of the pas- 
 toral relationship, we need not go alone 
 among the sequestered vales, or the far and 
 upland retreats of our country parishes. It 
 is not a local phenomenon dependent on 
 geography. It is a general one, dependent 
 on the nature of man ; on those lav/s of the 
 heart, which no change of place or of cir- 
 cumstances can obliterate. To gain the 
 moral ascendency of which we speak, it is 
 enough if the upright and laborious clergy- 
 man have human feelings and human fami- 
 lies on every side of him. It signifies not 
 where. Give him Christian kindness, and 
 this will pioneer a way for him amongst all 
 the varieties of place and of population. 
 Beside the smoke, and the din, and the diz- 
 zying wheel of crowded manufactories, will 
 he find as ready an introduction for himself 
 and for his ollice, as if his only walk had 
 been am"ong peaceful hamlets, and with 
 nought but the romance and the rusticity 
 of nature spread out before him. It is ut- 
 terly a wrong imagination, and m the face 
 both of experience and of prophecy, that in 
 towns there is an impracticable barrier 
 against the capabilities and the triumphs of 
 the Gospel — that in toM^ns the cause of hu- 
 man amelioration must be abandoned in 
 despair — that in towns it is not by the archi- 
 tecture of chapels, but by the architecture 
 of prisons, and of barracks, and of bride- 
 wells, we are alone to seek for the protec- 
 tion of society — that elsewhere a moralizing 
 charm may go forth among the people, from 
 village schools and Sabbath services, but 
 that there is a hardihood and a ferocity in 
 towns, which must be dealt with in another 
 way, and against which all the artillery of 
 the pulpit is feeble as infancy — that a foul 
 and feverish depravity has settled there, 
 which no spiritual application will ever ex- 
 tinguish : for amid all the devisings for the 
 peace and order of our community, do we 
 find it to be the shrewd and sturdy appre- 
 hension of many, that all which can be 
 achieved in our overgrown cities, is by the 
 strength of the secular arm ; that a stern 
 and vigorous police will do more for public 
 morals, than a whole band of ecclesiastics ; 
 that a periodical execution will strike a 
 more salutary terror into the hearts of the 
 multitude, than do the dreadest fulminations 
 of the preacher's voice ; and this will ex- 
 plain the derision and the distrust where- 
 
 349 
 
 with that argument is listened to, which 
 goes to set forth the eflicacy of Christian 
 doctrine, or to magnify the office of him 
 who delivers it. 
 
 We can offer no computation that will 
 satisfy such antagonists as these, of the im- 
 portance of Christianity even to the civil 
 and the temporal well-being of our species ; 
 and we shall, therefore, plead the authority 
 of our text, for extending its lessons to every 
 creature — for going forth with it to every 
 haunt and every habitation where immortal 
 beings are to be found — for not merely car- 
 rying it beyond the limits of Christendom, 
 but for filling up with instruction the many 
 blank, and vacant, and still unoccupied 
 places, teeming with population, that, even 
 within these limits have not been overtaken. 
 What ! shall we be told, that if there is a 
 man under heaven, wliom the Gospel has 
 not yet reached, it is but obedience to a last 
 and solemn commandment, when the mis- 
 sionary travels even to the farthest verge of 
 our horizon, that he may bear it to his door 
 — shall we be told of the thousands wdio 
 are beside us, that, thougli their souls are 
 perishing for lack of knowledge, we might, 
 without one care or one effort abandon 
 them ? Are we to give up as desperate, the 
 Christian reformation of our land, when we 
 read of those mighty achievements, and 
 those heavenly outpourings, by which even 
 the veriest wilds of heathenism have been 
 fertilized — or, with such an in-strument to 
 work by as that of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, which in the hands of the Spirit of 
 God, hath wrought its miracles on the men 
 of all ages, shall we forbear, as a hopeless 
 enterprise, the evangelizing of our own 
 homes, the eternal salvation of our own fa- 
 milies? " Be of good cheer," says the Spirit 
 to the apostle, "I have much people for 
 thee in this city;" and that, a city, too, the 
 most profligate and abandoned that ever 
 flourished on the face of our world. And 
 still the Lord's hand is not shortened, that 
 it cannot save. Neither is his ear heavy, 
 that it cannot hear. It is open as ever to 
 the cry of your intercessions — and on these, 
 we would devolve our cause. We entreat 
 the fellowship of your prayers. We know, 
 that all human exertion, and eloquence, and 
 wisdom, are vain without them — that, lack- 
 ing that influence, which is gotten down by 
 supplications from on high, sermons are but 
 high-sounding cymbals, and churches but 
 naked architecture — that mere pains are of 
 no avail, and that it only lies within the com- 
 pass of pains and prayers, to do any thing. 
 And we, indeed, have great reason for 
 encouragement, when we think of the sub- 
 ject of our message. When wo are bidden 
 in the text to preach, it is to preach the 
 Gospel — it is to proclaim good news in the 
 hearing of the people — it is to sound forth 
 the glad tidings of great joy — it is to tell 
 
350 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 even the chief of sinners, that God is now 
 willing to treat him as a sinner no longer ; 
 that he invites him to all the honours of 
 righteousness ; and that in virtue of a blood 
 which cleanseth from all sin, and of an obe- 
 dience, to the rewards of which he is freely 
 and fully invited, there is not a guilty crea- 
 ture in our world, who may not draw nigh. 
 Should he who preaches within these walls, 
 turn out the faithful and the energetic ex- 
 pounder of this word of salvation — should 
 the blessing of God be upon his ways, and 
 that demonstration which cometh from on 
 nigh, accompany his words— should he, filled 
 with zeal in the high cause of your immor- 
 tality, be instant am.ong you in season, and 
 out of season — and devoted to the work of 
 his sacred ministry, he make it his single 
 aim to gather in a harvest of unperishable 
 spirits, that by him as an instrument of 
 grace, have been rescued from hell, and 
 raised to a blissful eternity — should this be 
 indeed the high walk of his unremitting 
 
 toil, and his unwearied perseverance — then, 
 such is the power of the divine testimony, 
 when urged out of tlie fulness of a believer's 
 heart, and made to fall with the impression 
 of his undoubted sincerit}^ on those whom 
 he addresses; that for ourselves we shall 
 have no fear of a good and a glorious issue 
 to this undertaking ; and, therefore, as Paul 
 often cast the success of his labours on the 
 prayers of them for whom he laboured, 
 would I again entreat that your supplica- 
 tions do ascend to the throne of grace for 
 him who is to minister amongst you in 
 word and in doctrine — that he may, indeed, 
 be a pastor according to God's own heart, 
 who shall feed a people here wit.i know 
 ledge and with spiritual understanding — 
 that the travail of his soul may be blest to 
 tlie conversion of many sons and daughters 
 unto righteousness — that he may prove a 
 comfort to all your hearts, and a great pub- 
 lic benefit to all your families. 
 
 SERMON XV. 
 On the Distinction between Knowledge and Considci ation. 
 
 •The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth no 
 
 consider." — Isaiah 1. 3. 
 
 It would appear, from this verse, that 
 the children of Israel neither knew nor con- 
 sidered — but still there is a distinction sug- 
 gested by it between these two things. 
 And in the book of the prophet Malaclii, 
 we have a similar distinction, Avhen the 
 Lord says to the priests, " If ye will not 
 hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart." It 
 IS, in fact, possible for a man to do one of 
 these things, and not to do the other. He 
 may know the truth, and yet he may not 
 consider it. He may hear, and yet not lay 
 to heart. Nay, he may have heard of a 
 particular doctrine so often as to have got 
 it by heart, without ever laying it to heart. 
 And this, we hold, to be the just and the 
 applicable complaint that may be uttered of 
 many professing Christians in our day. 
 
 And thus it is, that we may gather the 
 difference which there is between know- 
 ledge and wisdom. The one is a specu- 
 lative acquirement. The other is a practi- 
 cal faculty or habit. Uy the latter, we turn 
 to its right and profitable use the former. 
 Thus it is, that- there may be great folly 
 along with great scholarship ; and, on the 
 other hand, may an unlettered mind be il- 
 lustrious in wisdom. You have, perhaps, 
 seen when there was great wealth, and yet, 
 from the want of judicious management, 
 
 great want of comfort in a family; and 
 what stands in fine and beautiful contrast 
 with this, you may have witnessed the union 
 of very humble means, with such a skill 
 and consideration in the guidance of them, 
 as to have yielded a respectable appearance, 
 and a decent hospitality, and the sufl^cien- 
 cy of a full and regular provision. And so, 
 with the treasures of intellect, the acquisi- 
 tions of the mind, whereof one may be rich, 
 being possessed of most ample materials in 
 all knowledge and information, and yet 
 have an ill-conditioned mind notwithstand- 
 ing; and another destitute of all but the 
 most common and elementary truths, may 
 yet, by a wise application of them, have 
 attained to the true light and harmony of 
 the soul, and be in sound preparation both 
 for the duties of time, and for the delights 
 of eternity. 
 
 All have so learned to number their days 
 as to know the extreme limit of human 
 life upon earth ; yet all have not so learn- 
 ed to number their days as to apply their 
 hearts unto wisdom. They are aware of 
 their latter end, but they consider not their 
 latter end. 
 
 I. This distinction between knowledge 
 and wisdom, is abundantly realized even 
 on the field of earthly and of sensible ex- 
 
XV.] 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 351 
 
 perience. The man of dissipation may 
 have his eyes open to the ruin of character 
 and of fortune that awaits him, yet the 
 tyranny of his evil desires constrains him 
 to a perseverance in the ways of wretched- 
 ness. The man of indolence may foresee 
 the coming bankruptcy that will ensue on 
 the slovenly management of his affairs, yet 
 there is a lethargy within that weighs him 
 down to fatal inactivity. The man of 
 prone and headlong irritation, may be 
 able to discern the accumulating mischief 
 that he raises against himself in the hos- 
 tility of tliose who are around him, and 
 may even look forward to the time when, 
 deserted by the friendship of all, he shall 
 live a neglected outcast from all human com- 
 panionship, yet continue as before to be 
 hurried away by the onward violence that 
 seizes iiim. In all these instances, there is 
 no want of knowledge in possession. But 
 there is a want of knowledge in use, or 
 knowledge in application. The unhappy 
 man has the truth of the matter in his head. 
 But he does not lay it with the authority of 
 a commander upon his practice. The pre- 
 sent urgency carries it over all thought of the 
 future consequences. He has received the 
 truth, but he does not give heed unto the 
 truth. He does not charge it upon his at- 
 tention, or give effectual warning of it to 
 his fears, or to his sense of prudence and 
 of interest. It is not of his ignorance that 
 we complain, but of his inconsideration. 
 And thus, apart from the things of spiritual 
 contemplation altogether, and on the mere 
 ground of every day life, with its passions 
 and pursuits in this world, may the distinc- 
 tion to which we now advert, be abundantly 
 exemplified. 
 
 II. But what we have now affirmed, even 
 of those events and consequences that take 
 place along the journey of this world, is 
 still more strikingly apparent of that great 
 event which marks its termination. There 
 is not a human creature of most ordinary 
 mind, and who hath overstepped the limits 
 of infancy, that does not know of death, 
 and with whom it does not rank among 
 the most undoubted of the certainties that 
 await him. And it is not only that of which 
 he is most thoroughly assured ; but it is 
 that of which, in the course of observation 
 and history, he is most constantly remind- 
 ed. And many are the aids and the accom- 
 paniments which might serve to deepen his 
 impression of it. The horror of every death 
 that he witnesses ; and the pathos of every 
 death which he deplores ; and the distress, 
 even unto the measure of tragic sensibility, 
 which is felt when some tie of near and 
 affecting relationship is broken ; and every 
 act of attendance on those last obsequies, 
 when acquaintances meet to carry one of 
 their number to his grave ; and the aspect 
 of seriousness that gathers upon every 
 
 inquiring neighbourhood, when the word 
 spreads that some one of their friends is 
 dying; and the frequency of those funeral 
 processions that pass along our streets, and 
 so mingle the business of death witli the 
 moving throng of the people and the car- 
 riages, which the business of life has press- 
 ed into hs service ; these are the remem- 
 brances that ever and anon hold up the 
 lesson of our mortality, and one might 
 think, should effectually keep it from sink- 
 ing for a single hour into oblivion. But 
 how is it truly and experimentally ? That 
 death of which we all know so well, is scarce- 
 ly ever in our thoughts. The momentary 
 touch of grief, and of seriousness, where- 
 with we are at times visited, speedily goeth 
 into utter dissipation. With as cheerful and 
 assured footsteps, do we tread the face of 
 this world, as if it were the scene of our 
 immortality ; and the latter end of life is 
 totallv unseen in the obscure and undefined 
 distance at which we have placed it, on the 
 field of our contemplations. It argues for 
 the strength of that recoil with wliich nature 
 shrinks from, the thought of its own dissolu- 
 tion, that all these loud and repeated de- 
 monstrations pass so unheeded by — and 
 that walking though we be, over the accu- 
 mulated ruins of so many generations, we 
 nevertheless will talk as merrily, and lift up 
 our heads as securely, as though beings 
 who were to live for ever. It seems not 
 to work the slightest abatement in the 
 eagerness of man after this world's in- 
 terests, that a few years will sweep them 
 utterly away ; and when we look to the 
 busy engrossment of all his faculties with 
 the plans and the pursuits of eartliliness, 
 it is but too manifest, that it is one tiling 
 to know of death, and another to consider 
 of it. 
 
 This heedlessness of our latter end, is of 
 a character still more obstinate and incura- 
 ble than any such heedlessness as we have 
 already quoted, of reputation or fortune in 
 the world. It needs no impetuous appetite 
 to overbear the thought of death ; for in 
 the calm equanimity of many a sober and 
 aged citizen, you will find him as pro- 
 foundly asleep to the feeling of his own 
 mortality, as he is to any of the feelings 
 or instigations of licentiousness. It needs 
 no over^veighinff indolence of tempera- 
 ment to be all listless and unmoved by the 
 fears of our coming death-bed ; for many 
 are to be found, who consume every hour 
 in the activities of business and of daring 
 adventure, without one emotion of serious- 
 ness on the awful catastrophe that awaits 
 them. 
 
 It needs no imprudence, or unguarded 
 violence, to betray a man into the ibrget- 
 fulness of death : for many is the cool and 
 practised calculator, and many is the sage 
 of tranquil philosophy, and many is the 
 
^^Q. 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 crafty politician, who can loolc far into con- 
 sequences, and is skilled in all the expe- 
 dients of his vocation ; and of whom it may 
 be said, that tlie mind of each is steeped in 
 the oblivion of death. We are heedless of 
 much that is before us, even in this world ; 
 but as to its last and closing scene, there is 
 a peculiar inveteracy of heedlessness that 
 we do not have as to any of the other futu- 
 rities of our earthly existence. Death is the 
 steppincr-stone between the two worlds ; and 
 so it somewhat combines the palpable of 
 matter, with the shadow}^ and the evanescent 
 of spirit. It is the gateway to a land of 
 mystery and of silence, and seems to gather 
 upon it something of the visionary charac- 
 ter which the things of faith have to the 
 eye of the senses. It is not a thing unseen; 
 but beiug an outlet to the region of invisi- 
 bles, there settles upon it a degree of that 
 faintness and obscurity wherewith the car- 
 nal eye regards all that is told of the mat- 
 ters of eternity. And so, amid all the va- 
 rieties of temperament in our species, there 
 is a universal heedlessness of death. It 
 seems against the tendency of nature to 
 think of it. There is an opposhe bias that 
 ever inclines us away from this dark con- 
 templation, towards the warm and living 
 realities of the peopled world around us. 
 The mind refuses to dwell on that dreary 
 abode of skulls and of sepulchres, and makes 
 its willing escape from all this hideous im- 
 agery, to society, and to business, and to the 
 whole interest and variety of life. Instead 
 of some mighty impulse being required to 
 dispossess us of the thought, it costs an ef- 
 fort of unnatural violence to uphold it in 
 our bosoms. The thing is known, but it is 
 not considered : and the giddj^ dance of life 
 is carried oawards, as if there were no de- 
 stroyer upon the way — the tide of human 
 existence is borne as restlessly along, as if 
 there were no grave to absorb it. 
 
 This might serve to convince us, how 
 unavailins is the mere knowledge, even of 
 important truth, if not accompanied b)"- the 
 feeling, or the practical remembrance of it. 
 The knowledge, in this case, only serves to 
 €iggravate our folly, and to bring, on the 
 utter heedlessness of our lives, a more full 
 and emphatic condemnation. And on the 
 subject of death, we M^ould ask, how is it 
 that your fatal insensibility can be justified? 
 Has God left this matter without a witness? 
 Has he not strewed the whole path of your 
 existence in the world with the mementos 
 of its affecting termination? Has he not 
 pointed the eye of your experience to the 
 agonies of many a death-bed, and brought 
 it irresistibly down upon }'our convictions, 
 that these are the very agonies through 
 which you have to pass? In every death 
 of an acquaintance does he not lift a voice 
 of warning unto yourselves; and when 
 that acquaintance is a relative or a friend, 
 
 does he not seek to grave upon vour soft- 
 eued heart the lesson of mortality in cha- 
 racters of deeper remembrance? Has he not 
 tried to find access for the truth, through 
 the varied avenues of feeling, and of obser- 
 vation, and of conscience ? Aud living, as 
 you do, in the land of dying mrii. have you 
 not seen enough of this world's changes to 
 make the histor)'^ of your life (me continued 
 sermon upon the grave ? God has not been 
 wanting in those demonstrations of Provi- 
 dence, which should have riveted a serious- 
 ness upon your hearts, and transformed you 
 out of tlie careless, and gay, and worldly 
 creature that you still are. We protest, by 
 the many sick-beds over which you have 
 hung, and by the deaths which you have 
 witnessed, and b\' the tears whicli you 
 have shed over them, that you have long 
 ago had enough to loosen your hold upon 
 earth, and to break that accursed spell by 
 which you are so bound to its lying vanities. 
 You have enough to dislodge from your 
 bosom the spirit of the god of this world ; 
 and O! therefore, that you were wise, that 
 you understood these things, that you con- 
 sidered your latter end. 
 
 There is no topic on which the distinction 
 that there is between knowledge and consi- 
 deration stands more palpably before us 
 than that of death. All are assured of its 
 coming, yet how few so bethink, or so be- 
 stir themselves, as to be prepared for its 
 coming. The position which this event 
 occupies in the line of our existence, gives 
 to it a peculiar advantage for illustrating 
 the distinction in question. It stands on 
 the extreme horizon of what is sensible, 
 and beyond it lie the dimness and the mys- 
 tery of an untrodden land. On this side of 
 it are the matters of experience. On the 
 other side of it are the matters of faith. 
 Now, it partakes Avith the one in the cer- 
 tainty wherewith all must regard it ; and it 
 partakes with the other in the nullity of its 
 practical influence, over tlie vast majority 
 of our species. As an object of knowledge, 
 there belongeth to it the assurance of a most 
 unquestioned truth ; as an object of consi- 
 deration, there belongeth to it the airy light- 
 ness of a vain and visionary fable. It i* 
 believed, but it is not minded ; and while, 
 on the one hand, it ranks among those expe- 
 rimental realities which are most assuredly 
 known, it, on the other hand, ranks among 
 those illusions of the fancy which are prac- 
 tically and habitually disregarded. It stands 
 forth'to the eye in all the plainness of ocu- 
 lar demonstration, and yet with as little 
 power as if it were a tale of necromancy. 
 It is quite obvious, that in the things of 
 faith, there is a want of ascendant power 
 over the life of man ; and, to justify man, 
 this has been ascribed to their want of evi- 
 dence. But where is the want of evidence 
 in death '? This is not a thing of faith, but 
 
XV,] 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION 
 
 J53 
 
 ji thing of observation; and makes it as 
 olear as day, tliat even when the evidence 
 is complete and irresistible, the effect may 
 be as utterly unsubstantial, as if it were 
 a thing of nought. This ought to alarm 
 us. It sliould lead us to apprehend, that 
 there was enough of argument, on the side 
 even of what is spiritual and unseen, to con- 
 demn our indifference to it. If the certain- 
 ty of death do not move us, it may not be 
 the uncertainty of what is on the other side 
 of death, that can account for the sluggish- 
 ness of our obstinate and unmoved car- 
 nality. One thing is certain, that we can 
 see an acquaintance fall into his grave, and 
 yet continue to live here, as if this were 
 our eternity. And does not this make it 
 probable, that though that acquaintance were 
 to rise again, and to tell us of the world of 
 spirits upon which he had entered, we 
 should be unaffected as before by the real 
 eternity that is awaiting us ? Christ says 
 to us himself, that if we believe not Moses 
 and the prophets, neither should we believe 
 though one rose from the dead. This is 
 the way in which we meet the demand of 
 infidelity, for more of proof, and more of 
 information. The fact is that thousands 
 have died before us, and are still dying 
 around us, and yet the heart of man re- 
 mains unvisited by any practical sense of 
 his mortality. And the presumption, there- 
 fore, is, that though one of these thousands 
 were to revive, and to re-appear amongst 
 us, fraught with the tidings of heaven's 
 glory, and hell's unutterable despair, we 
 should still keep our ground against him, 
 and the heart of man be unvisited as before 
 by any practical sense of his immortality. 
 It is not more of evidence that we want. 
 There is as much as ouglit to convince 
 us now — and if not convinced, there is as 
 much as will condemn us afterwards. The 
 cause of our irreligion is not that we could 
 not know, but that we do not, and will not 
 consider. 
 
 This is a great practical use to which our 
 insensibility about death is capable of being 
 turned. It proves, that our insensibility 
 about eternal things, may be due to some- 
 thing else than to the defect of that evidence 
 by which they are accompanied. It causes 
 us to perceive, that a truth may be surely 
 known, and yet not be pondered, or not be 
 proceeded upon. Surely to know it is one 
 thing — seriously to reflect upon it is an- 
 other; and thus it may be, tliat the irreligion 
 of the world is due not to the want of a 
 satisfying demonstration on God's part, for 
 this might have excused us; but, to the 
 want of right consideration on ours, and 
 this is inexcusable. 
 
 III. Let us now pass onwards, then, to 
 
 the invisibles of faith — to those things which 
 
 do not, like death, stand upon the confines 
 
 of the spiritual region, but are wholly within 
 
 45 
 
 that region, and which man hatli not seen 
 by his eye, or heard by his ear — to the awful 
 realities that will abide in deep and mysteri- 
 ous concealment from us, so long as we are 
 in the body, and v.'hich not till the body is 
 dissolved, will stand in direct manifestation 
 before us. This character of unseen and 
 spiritual, is not confined to things future. 
 There are things present which are spiritual 
 also. There is a present Deity, who dwelleth 
 in light, it is true, but it is light inaccessible 
 — who is encompassed with glory, but it is 
 glory which we, in the body, cannot ap- 
 proach unto — who stands revealed to angels 
 and adoring spirits; but v/hom no man hath 
 seen, neither can see. He is the King eter- 
 nal and immortal, but he is also the King 
 invisible — who, though not far from any 
 one of us, is remote as infinity itself, from 
 the ken of our earthly senses — and shrouded 
 in the obscurity of his own unfathomable 
 nature, is he so veiled and darkened from 
 all human contemplation, that we cannot 
 behold him. 
 
 And yet, even of this great Spirit we may 
 be said, in one sense, to know, however lit- 
 tle it is that we may consider him. There 
 are averments about God which we have 
 long recognised, and ranked among our ad- 
 mitted propositions, though we seldom re- 
 cur to them in thought, and are never ade- 
 quately impressed by them. We know, or 
 think we know, that God is; and that all 
 other existence is suspended upon his will; 
 and that, were it not for his upholding arm, 
 the whole of Nature would go into dissolu- 
 tion ; and that while he sits in high authority 
 over all worlds, there is not one individual 
 member of his vast family, that is overlook- 
 ed by him; and, more particularly, that he 
 looks with the eye of a wise and a watchful 
 judge, into every heart, and every con- 
 science; and that he claims a right and a 
 property in the services of all his creatures; 
 and that he is more absolutely the owner 
 and the master of tliem all, than is man of 
 the machinte that he hath made, and to 
 whose touch all its movements are subordi- 
 nate; and that he is a God of august and 
 inviolable sacredness, in whose presence 
 evil cannot dwell, and between the sanctity 
 of whose nature and sin, there is a wide and 
 implacable enmity; and that he does not sit 
 in lofty and remote indifference to the cha- 
 racters of his children, but takes deep, and 
 perpetual, and most vigilant concern in them 
 all — loving their righteousness, hating their 
 iniquity, treasuring their thoughts, and their 
 purposes, and their doing, in the book of his 
 remembrance; and that, with a view to the 
 manifestation of them, on that day, when 
 time shall be no more, and each of his ac- 
 countable ofl^spring shall have their condi- 
 tion awarded to them through etemity — 
 when the mystery of God shall be finished, 
 and the glory of his attributes shall be made 
 
354 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 to shine forth at the clos« and the consum- 
 mation of all things. 
 
 Now, most of these things you know, or 
 profess to know. They are recognised by 
 you as true propositions, and not to have 
 them among the articles of your creed, 
 would be deemed by you as monstrous and 
 revolting infidelity. Most of you would 
 shudder at the thought of an atheism, which 
 could deny the existence of God, or of a 
 blasphemy that could disown his govern- 
 ment, or of a heresy that could profane his 
 character by stripping it of its truth, and 
 justice, and holiness. So dear, in fact, are 
 your long-established notions of tlie Divini- 
 ty, that you could not bear them to be med- 
 dled with ; and would hold that m.an to be 
 the enemy of your repose, who should offer 
 to violate them. So that, there do exist in 
 your mind certain positions which regard a 
 Deity, the athrmative of which carries your 
 consent, and the denial of which would 
 painfully be offensive to you — and thus far 
 may you be said to know God, and to be- 
 lieve in him. 
 
 Now, as a proof how distinct this know- 
 ledge of God is from the consideration of 
 him, I will venture to say, that even the 
 first and simplest of all these propositions 
 is, by many, unthought of for days and 
 weeks together. The truth, that God is, 
 which all here present would sliudder to 
 deny, is out of habitual regard, and habitual 
 remembrance. It lies like a forgotten thing 
 in some deep and latent depository; and as 
 to its being brouglit forth of its hiding-place, 
 for hourly use and meditation, this we never 
 meet with, but among a saintly and selected 
 few, who are indeed a very peculiar people.. 
 When God is acknowledged, we cannot lift 
 the charge of theoretical atheism ; but when, 
 along with tliis, God is unminded, surely 
 then may we lift the charge of practical 
 atheism. Now this is the very charge that 
 we prefer against the vast majority of our 
 world. They have a knowledge of God ; but 
 this, so far from extenuating tlieir thought- 
 lessness, brings upon it its most fearful ag- 
 gravation. It is just because they stand pre- 
 eminent among the creatures of our world, 
 in the faculty of understanding God, that 
 they also stand pre-eminent in the crime of 
 their ungodliness. It is tor this, that they 
 suffer in the comparison with " the ox that 
 knoweth his owner, and the ass that know- 
 eth his master's criJD;" and what they have 
 learned of God, or are capable of learning, 
 will bring upon their heedlessness of him, 
 and of his ways, its severest condemnation. 
 
 It is, indeed, one of the most fearful mys- 
 teries of the human spirit, that a truth 
 which, of all others, most intimately con- 
 cerns us, should yet, of all others, be the 
 most gladly bidden away into oblivion — 
 that, as rid of an unwelcome visitor, the 
 mind of man is never more at ease, or in its 
 
 kindred and rejoicing element, than when 
 God is not in all his thoughts — that then it 
 is, when, as broken loose from imprison 
 ment, the heart revels in its own desires, 
 and securely blesses its deliverance from the 
 hateful presence of one Avho constrained and 
 over.iwed it — that the creature shotild tlms 
 hide itself, as it were, from the Creator, and 
 in virtue of his perpetual recoil from the 
 Being who formed, and who upholds him, 
 should so keep up a perpetual distance from 
 God — that wliolly given over to the idolatry 
 of the things that are made, tlie Maker 
 should, to him, be little better than a non- 
 entity, or a name; this is the marvel of the 
 strange and wayward nature that belojigs 
 to us, and may well lead us to apprehend 
 the visitation upon it of some sore leprosy, 
 the shock of some great and total derange- 
 ment. 
 
 P'or what truth of weightier import to us 
 all than simply that there is a God — that 
 all the busy and unceasing movements 
 around us are suspended on the will of a 
 living Sovereign — that those mighty forces 
 whicli constantly uphold the plaj' and the 
 mechanism of things, are not the random 
 energies of Nature that is unconscious; l)ut 
 that one sitteth above, and wieldelh them all 
 at his pleasure — that a powerful and a pre- 
 siding intelligence hath originated all, and 
 overrules all — and that while our only con- 
 verse and concern are with the near and the 
 visible, tliat are on every side of us, there is 
 an unseen Spirit, to whom belongcth the 
 mastery, and with whom alone it is that we 
 have mainly and substantially to do? 
 
 Now, how is it that man practicallj'' re- 
 sponds to this real condition of his being? 
 Tell me, from the intimate assurances of 
 your own conscience, or tell me, from the 
 broad and palpable character that sits upon 
 the doings of your acquaintances, whetlier 
 God hath the ascendency over them, is 
 there, all the day long, a felt solemnity on 
 your spirits, because of God, which follows 
 you whithersoever you go, and causes you 
 to walk with him in the world? Or, are 
 you familiarized with the habit of submit- 
 ting your will to his will? Or, have yon 
 ever, for an hour together, looked upon 
 yourselves in the light of being the servants 
 of another, and have accordingly run and 
 laboured as at the bidding of that other? 
 Or, utter strangers to this, do you not v,'alk 
 in the counsel of your own heart? Do you 
 not move as independently, as if in your- 
 self it was that you lived, and moved, and 
 had your being? In the work that yon 
 prosecute, and the comforts that you enjoy, 
 and even the obligations of which you ac- 
 quit yourselves to relatives, and to friends, 
 is there any fear of God before your eyes? 
 — and is not the fear of disgrace from men, 
 a far more powerful check upon your licen- 
 tiousness, than the fear of damnation from 
 
xyr.] 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 355 
 
 him who is the judge and the discerner of 
 men? The mind is ever crowded with 
 thoughts, and wishes, and purposes, that 
 pass in busy succession, through its cham- 
 bers of imagery, and minister tlie food of its 
 unremitting contemplations. Tell me how 
 much of God and godliness there is in them 
 all. Turn the inward survey upon your- 
 selves, and report to us how much of this 
 heavenly fruit groweth and flourisheth 
 there. O you have but spied the nakedness 
 of the land — God is unto you a wilderness, 
 and your heart is to him a spiritual desola- 
 tion ! 
 
 This emptiness of a man's heart as to the 
 recognition of God, runs throughout the 
 whole of his history. He is engrossed with 
 what is visible and secondary, and he thinks 
 no farther. The sense of a present and pre- 
 siding Deit}', is habitually absent from his 
 soul; and just because he will not stir him- 
 self up to consideration, that he may lay 
 hold of Giod, is he bounded, as if by an im- 
 passable limit, to earth and to earthliness. 
 It needs a force of thought and of reflection, 
 to bear him across this barrier, which, whe- 
 ther from indolence, or carnality, or a mis- 
 giving conscience, he does not choose to 
 put into operation; and tiius, does he live 
 without God in the world. When he enjoys, 
 it is without gratitude. When he labours, 
 it is without the impulse of an obedient 
 loyalty. When he admires, it is without 
 carrying the sentiment upwardly unto hea- 
 ven, whence all that is lovely on the face 
 of our world, was strewn for its embellish- 
 ment, and the delight of its beholders. And 
 thus, may a traveller on his tour of recrea- 
 tion, through some goodly land, be carried 
 forward from scene to scene, till the whoie 
 landscape of an empire shall have passed 
 behind liim like a shifting panorama — and, 
 as he eyes the beauteous succession of ver- 
 dant iields, and massy foliage, and the many 
 pictures of comfort or elegance in human 
 habitations, and the rapid variety where- 
 witli, in the speed and the turning of his 
 movements, he is, at one time, closed upon 
 by tlie limits of a sweet and sequestered 
 valley, and, at another, breaks out in full 
 and open perspective, on the glories of half 
 a province; why, may all the ecstacy he 
 feels be lavished on the spectacles before 
 him, without one thought of that master 
 hand, which spread out the whole of this 
 magnificence, and poured the tide of lustre 
 over it. No piety may mingle with this 
 contemplation; and not for the want of 
 knowledge, but the v/ant of thought, may 
 there be as little of God in the eye of this 
 raptured enthusiast, as in the brute uncon- 
 scious gaze of the creature that hath no 
 understanding. 
 
 Now, this is God's controversy with man 
 in the text. He there complains of our 
 heedlessness. He feels himself slighted, 
 
 that we so seldom think of him, and that 
 he should be thus neglected and set at 
 nought by his own offspring. And this in- 
 consideration of ours, is matter of blame, 
 just because it is a matter of wilfulness. 
 Man has a voluntary control over his 
 thoughts. He can turn and transfer them 
 from one object of mental contemplation to 
 another. He may think of God when he 
 chooses. He may recal his scattered im- 
 aginations, and summon all that is within 
 him to an act of attendance upon God. He 
 may bid his mind cease from its rambles., 
 and its reveries, and lift itself up to the 
 abode of the Eternal. He may lay an ar- 
 rest on the processes of the inner man, and 
 say to it, with authority, that now is the 
 moment for an aspiration, or a solemn feel- 
 ing towards God. He may repeat and mul- 
 tiply this effort into a habit of seriousness. 
 It may mix itself in with his ordinary busi- 
 ness. It may accompany him on his walk, 
 even through the streets of the crowded 
 cit}'. It may season the hours of his social 
 fellowship ; and what, at first, is difficult, 
 and irregular, and rare, may thus, by dint 
 of perseverance, settle down into an habitual 
 tendency. He may, at length, be famihar- 
 ized to "the thought of God, as his master 
 and his owner; and, at length, putting on 
 the attitude of a daily and hourly obedience, 
 as the eye of a servant looketh towards his 
 master, so may his eye be ever towards 
 God. This is not the attitude of nature, but 
 it may be tried and practised, and, at length, 
 effectually learned. But you will never 
 reach it, unless you begin ; you will never 
 succeed in it, imless you persevere. And, 
 therefore, my plain advice to jou is, that 
 j'ou now set to it in good earnest. Lay a 
 mandate upon your thinking faculty, and 
 send it heavenward to God. There is many 
 a useless moment that mav thus be turned 
 to account — manj' an idle "waste in our ex- 
 istence, that may thus he reclaimed to sa- 
 credness. This is true spiritual education 
 — the practice of godliness, instead of the 
 theory — the way of going about it — and by 
 which the soul may, at length, be disci- 
 plined to the habit of setting God always 
 before it. 
 
 It is the absence of this habit which con- 
 stitutes the tmgodliness of man. Tliere 
 cannot be a fouler provocation than that 
 man should be satisfied to do withoi;t God ; 
 and this is the provocation inflicted by all 
 who have other cares and other pleasures, 
 which take up the whole of their hearts, 
 and have no room there for God or for god- 
 liness. Each of you can best tell whether 
 you fall under this description of habit and 
 of character. Is it not the truth now, that 
 God is scarcely in all your thoughts? — that 
 you feel no encouragement in any of his 
 promises, neither do you tremble under the 
 iearfulness of his denunciations? that you 
 
356 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 [SERM. 
 
 are otherwise employed than in the prose- 
 cution of your interest with him? and are 
 busied with plans, and objects, and antici- 
 pations of your own, wherewith his will, 
 and his glory, have nothing to do? This is 
 your gudt. This, in the estimation of hea- 
 ven's jurisprudence, is the very essence of 
 sinfulness. Quite consistent, we do admit, 
 with much to soften and much most lio- 
 no'.irably to signalize you ; but involving 
 you in the direct charge, that none of you 
 understandeth, and none of you seeketh af- 
 ter God. 
 
 IV. But the distinction between those 
 who only know, and those who also consi- 
 der, is never more strongly marked than in 
 the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel. And 
 fearful is tlie hazard, lest knov/ledge, and it 
 alone, should satisfy the possessor ; lest he 
 should settle down into a treacherous ct>m- 
 placency, because he has made a right ad- 
 justment of the articles of his creed ; lest he 
 count it enough, that he has acquiesced, at 
 all points, in the orthodoxy of the question ; 
 and so come forth with a flaming Chris- 
 tianity, that lies more in dogmatism than in 
 devotion, more in a sturdy intolerance of 
 error, than in a true and tender sincerity 
 of heart. And the very controversies of the 
 church have served to foster this delusicm. 
 The very quantity of debate and of argu- 
 ment that has been expended on theology, 
 leads to a most hurtful misconceiving of this 
 matter. You know, that tlie design of ar- 
 gument is to carry you onward to a set of 
 just and accurate convictions. This, in 
 fact, is the landing place to which it brings 
 you, and at which it leaves yo<i ; and the 
 danger is, that having brought you there, 
 you go no further — and this place of arri- 
 val becomes your place of rest, and sta- 
 tionary residence. It is the pride, and am- 
 bition, and the zeal of every intellectual 
 combatant, to carry the understanding of 
 his reader ; and having done this, he is apt 
 to sit down and be satisfied with the tri- 
 umphs of his gotten victory ; and the scholar 
 himself, seized with the very same infection, 
 may sit down, too, as if he had attained an 
 ultimate good, in which he may rejoice, and 
 where he may now securely and fearlessly 
 repose. And yet, the whole amount of his 
 acquisition may be a mere notional Chris- 
 tianity — a list of doctrines that are settled 
 and set by — that are as much within the 
 grasp of his knowledge as many other arti- 
 cles of human speculation and science — but 
 are just as little reiterated upon as they by 
 a habit of frequent and feeling consideration. 
 And hence a familiar exhibition to all who 
 live in this our scholastic land, where a 
 people, fresh from their catechisms, are 
 primed and charged with orthodoxy, and 
 all whose articles stand before you in well- 
 marshalled and metaphysical array — who 
 have a religion in their heads, but that has 
 
 there an almost exclusive occupancy— whom 
 many a stout defender of the faith would 
 rejoice in as his own, but in whom the 
 Author and the Finisher of faith, finds lit- 
 tle of that love or that obedience which to 
 him are the alone tests of discipleship — a 
 people whom none can challenge for igno- 
 rance, but whose still unmortified tempers, 
 and still unabated worldliuess, may prove, 
 that though they do know, yet they do not 
 consider. 
 
 It were well, if such people could be ex- 
 tricated from the strongholds of their yet 
 impregnable Antinomianism. It were well 
 to alarm their conscience with the saying, 
 that no knowledge and no belief will give 
 them justification, which does not give sane 
 tification also. All their doctrinal acquire 
 ments are precisely of as little avail as is 
 the knowledge of death, if they think not 
 of dying — or, as their knowledge of a God, 
 if they give no earnest heed to him. It is 
 well that they know; but the blessing is 
 turned into a condemnation and a curse, if, 
 while they know, they do not consider. 
 
 There are no topics on which there has 
 been so much of controversy, or that has 
 given rise to so many an elaborate disserta- 
 tion, as the person and offices of Christ. 
 And, doubtless, the scholarship has been 
 well employed, that rescued from the en- 
 tanglements of sophistry, tlie precious truth 
 of the divinity of our Saviour. And well 
 may England rejoice in those lettered ec- 
 clesiastics, who have put down, as far as 
 argument could do it, the infidelity that 
 decried the truth of his high and heavenly 
 apostleship. And worthier far than all the 
 revenue of all her colleges, is the return of 
 criticism and of demonstration that they 
 have made in behalf of his great sacrifice, 
 and of his unchangeable and ever-during 
 priesthood. Yet, let it not be disguised, 
 that the knowledge of all these credentials 
 is one thing, and the serious, the practical 
 consideration of them, is another — that 
 many a commentator has mastered the dif- 
 ficulties of the question, who has not been 
 solemnized by the thought of its urgent and 
 affecting realities — that stalled orthodoxy, 
 with her clear understanding, but untouched 
 heart, has often launched upcm heresy her 
 mighty fulminations, and manfully asserted 
 the truth which she never felt — that the 
 peasant may catch direct from his Bible, 
 what the dignitary has gathered by wading 
 through the erudition of distant centuries; 
 and this veriest babe in literature may out- 
 strip the literary giant, because he not only 
 knows the truth, but wisely and duteously 
 considers it. 
 
 Let us, in like manner, look unto Jesus 
 with the eye of a plain Christian, instead 
 of looking "at him with the eye of a pro- 
 found critic, or commentator. For this 
 purpose, let us lay hold of things that are 
 
XV.] 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 357 
 
 palpably and mianibigiioiisly told of him, 
 and see whether, without learning of him 
 that which we do not know, much might 
 not be made by considering of him that 
 which we do know — and whether, out of 
 such materials of thought as are within 
 reach of all, there might not a far more 
 solemn impression come upon the heart, 
 and a far more powerful influence upon the 
 character, than are to be witnessed even 
 among the most zealous and declared pro- 
 fessors of our day. 
 
 First, then, he is the Apostle of our pro- 
 fession, or we profess him to be our Apos- 
 tle. Let us consider b.im as such. Let us 
 bethink ourselves of all' which tliis title im- 
 plies. It means one who is sent. The 
 twelve were called apostles, because sent to 
 preach the Gospel unto every creature. 
 And, in like manner, he too is an Apostle, 
 because sent by his Father into the world. 
 He came to us from a place of deep and 
 unknown mystery — he traversed that do- 
 main wliich separates the land of spirits 
 from the peopled and familiar land in which 
 we dwcU^ie burst upon our senses from 
 a region where all is invisible — and far 
 more wonderful than if he had been a visi- 
 tor from another planet than our own, did 
 he light upon our world from the dwelling- 
 place of him who is the uncreated source 
 of all worlds, from the very abode and 
 sanctuary of the Eternal. How it ought to 
 move us with awe at the approach of such 
 a messenger, when we think of the glory 
 and the sacredness of his former habitation ! 
 — of those ineflable communions that he 
 had with the Father before the world was 
 — and deep insight into all those mysteries 
 of God, that are to us unsearchable I How 
 it ought to fasten upon it the gaze of every 
 mortal eye, that on the shore of our world 
 there has been an arrival from the dark and 
 the shrouded infinity wliich lies beyond it 
 — that, at length, out of realms which are 
 afar, a traveller hath come; and that, though 
 veiled from everlasting in the obscurity of 
 a remote and lofty nature, he hath now 
 stood revealed to the observation of human 
 senses, and poured forth an utterance that 
 can be taken up by human ears ! 
 
 And what outriit to fasten upon him a 
 still more intense regard, he comes witli a 
 message to our world — he comes straight 
 from the Divinity himself, and charged by 
 him with a special communication — God 
 had broken silence, and this great Apostle 
 of our profession was the bearer of that 
 voice wliich speaketh from heaven unto the 
 children of men. It was a thing of mighty 
 import, indeed, that there should have been 
 an actual errand to us from the pavilion of 
 the Almighty's residence — that one fa- 
 miliarly acquainted there should have come 
 to tabernacle here, and to enter upon con- 
 verse and companionship with men — that 
 
 he did announce himself, and on satisfying 
 credentials, to have been sent amongst us 
 from the upper paradise, with tidings that 
 he had to deliver, and on a work that had 
 been given him to do. And it ought, at 
 least, to make no difference, that now he 
 has returned to the place from whence he 
 came. For he left behind him the records 
 of his wondrous embassy — and the authen- 
 tic and the authoritative voice of heaven 
 still speaketh to us there — and with our 
 hands upon the Bible, we are in contact 
 with the very materials of a communication 
 from the Deity. In the breast of the God- 
 head, there was a motion and a desire to- 
 wards our species, and here is the expres- 
 sion of it — the very transcript of that mes- 
 sage which our Apostle brought, and which 
 our Apostle left amongst us — the word that 
 actually came from the secret place of the 
 Eternal, and is fraught with those revealed 
 things, which now belong to us and to our 
 children. I declare not a novelty in your 
 hearing. It is not a matter of which you 
 are ignorant, and which you need to know. 
 But it is a matter of which you are wofully 
 heedless, and which you need to consider 
 We do not need to teach you what is new. 
 But we need to arrest you by the sense of 
 what is old and forgotten. We charge 
 your neglect of the Scriptures of our faith 
 upon your neglect of tliat great Apostle, 
 who is the Author and the Finisher of our 
 faith. By your daily indifference to the 
 word that is written, you inherit all the 
 guilt, and will come under the very reckon- 
 ing of those, who, in the days of the Sa- 
 viour, treated with neglect and indifference, 
 the word that was spoken. Our challenge 
 against you is, that the Bible is to you a 
 thing of insipidity — that it is not desired by 
 you as the aliment of your souls — that 
 though unread for days together, you miss 
 no necessary food, you feel no vacancy, you 
 are visited with no hunger, you can do very- 
 well without this nourishment of the spiri- 
 tual life, and so give reason to fear, that 
 within you there is no spiritual principle to 
 sustain. And looking unto that of which 
 this written document is the memorial, do 
 we charge upon all who slight the perusal 
 of it, that they trample into insignificance a 
 formal embassy from heaven — that they 
 treat with contumely the messenger who 
 came thei ceforth unto our world— that 
 God by him has spoken, and they have 
 disregarded — that the dailj^ spectacle of the 
 Bible before their eyes, is a daily solicita- 
 tion on the part of Christ to be heard, and 
 by their continued heedlessness to which, 
 they, all their lives, set his character, as an 
 Apostle, utterly to scorn. 
 
 The way to repair this treatment, is forth- 
 with to give your diligence unto the book 
 — and to press upon your moral sense, as 
 you open it, that now you are about to en ■ 
 
358 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. [SERM. 
 
 tcr into converse with God — and t\ius to 
 fix and solemnize your attention, while you 
 read tliose words of which Christ may be 
 called the Apostle or the messenger. The 
 act of reading the Bible, is the act of hold- 
 ing conference with the Deity — and while 
 this is what all know, this is what few con- 
 sider. 
 
 There is one topic which stands con- 
 nected with the apostleship of Christ, and 
 that stamps a most peculiar interest on the 
 visit which he made to us from on high. 
 He is God manifest in the flesh. In the 
 character of a man, hath he pictured forth 
 to us the attributes of the Divinity. He is 
 the brightness of his Fathers glory, and 
 the express image of his person — yet, in 
 virtue of the humanity wherewith he is in- 
 vested, hath he offered, even to the eye of 
 sense, a palpable representation of the God- 
 head. " He who hath seen me, hath seen 
 the Father," — and we, by fastening our at- 
 tentive regards upon his person and history, 
 may gather the very aspect and lineaments 
 of the King invisilile. That Being, who 
 had been so long v.rapt in profoundest se- 
 crecy from our world — that Being, whom 
 none could apprehend, for no eye of mortal 
 could carry him through that dark and un- 
 trodden interval, by which the two regions 
 of sense and of spirit stand apart from each 
 other — the Being, who ever since the en- 
 trance of sin, had laid his jealous interdict 
 on the approaches of our species, and with- 
 drawn himself by a remote and lofty sepa- 
 ration away from us — he, at length, broke 
 out from this vail of deepest mystery, and 
 in the person of liim who is at once his re- 
 presentative and his Apostle, does he now 
 stand before us in visible manifestation. 
 And we, by considering this Apostle, learn 
 of God. By looking unto him, we look 
 unto the likeness of our Creator, and we 
 become acqiiainted with him. In the 
 purity, and the gentleness, and the simple 
 majesty of Christ, do we read the charac- 
 teristics of the Deity. And O how it con- 
 cerns us to know, from this narrative of 
 unwearied well-doing, that there is so much 
 of benevolence in heaven — that the Sove- 
 reign who sUs in high authority there, is as 
 good as he is great — that there is a meek- 
 ness to soften the majesty of his nature, 
 and a compassionate longing after those 
 men whom the hand of justice was lifted 
 up to destroy — that even in the holy of 
 holies, there dwells a tenderness for our 
 degrEided species — and could the securities 
 of heaven's throne only be upholden, that 
 there were a good-will and a mercy on 
 high, ready to Burst forth upon our world 
 and to circulate at large over all its fa- 
 milies. 
 
 But this leads us to another topic of con- 
 sideration, the priesthood of Christ. The 
 atonement that he made for sin has a fore- 
 
 most place in orthodoxy. It is reiterated 
 in all our catechisms. It forms the burden 
 and the argument of many a ponderous 
 dissertation. And to the popular mind, too, 
 is it fully as familiar as to the accomplish- 
 ed scholar in theology. Insomuch, that 
 scarcely an individual can be met with, 
 even in the humblest walks of societj^, who 
 does not know, and who could not tell, that 
 Christ died for the world. But as we have 
 often said, there is a knowledge without 
 consideration. A truth may be acquired, 
 and then, cast as it were into some hidden 
 corner of the mind, may it lie forgotten, as 
 in a dormitory. And thus it fares with 
 many a precious doctrine of the Bible. 
 We learn it most readily from the ques- 
 tion-book. We give the vote to it of our 
 most prompt and zealous aflirmative. We 
 enlist it among the articles of our creed — 
 and espousing it as our own belief, do we 
 become partisans, or even advocates in itjs 
 favour. And yet all this may consist with 
 an entire practical heedlessness — with a 
 deep torpor and unconcern about that truth 
 which may have come to us most abun- 
 dantly in word, though not at all in power. 
 The soul may be habitually inadvertent to 
 that as a principle, which is most zeal- 
 ously professed, and even contended for as 
 an opinion. And accordinglj^ we are told 
 by the apostle, of this very doctrine, that 
 Christ died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures, how possible it is for men to 
 receive it, yet not to remember it — that 
 they may have once committed it to their 
 understanding, as an article of faith, with- 
 out having charged it upon their memory 
 as an article of hourly and habitual recur- 
 rence — that it may have been consented to 
 by the mind, without being dwelt upon by 
 the mind — in which case, saj's Paul, you 
 have believed in vain ; and just because 
 you keep not in memory, or, rather, con- 
 sider not, and call not up to memory, that 
 which I have preached unto you. 
 
 And, therefore, would I again bid you 
 consider him who is the High Priest of 
 your profession. I call upon you ever and 
 anon to think of this sacrifice — and to Avard 
 off the legality of nature from your spirits, 
 by a constant habit of recurrence, upon 
 your part, to the atonement that he hath 
 made, and to the everlasting righteousness 
 that he hath brought in. Without this, the 
 mind is ever lapsing anon into alienation 
 and distrust— and the habitual jealousy of 
 guilt, when not met, at all times, by a sense 
 of that blood which washes it away, will 
 throw us back again to our wonted distance 
 from God— and instead of breathing the 
 free air of confidence in him, or rejoicing 
 in the sunshine of his reconciled counte- 
 nance, there will be a flaw of suspicion in 
 all our intercourse, and instead of loving 
 him as a friend, we shall still stand in 
 
XV.'] 
 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND CONSIDERATION. 
 
 359 
 
 dread of him as an accuser. There may 
 be the occasioaal recognition of Christ, and, 
 perhaps, along with it a gleam of light and 
 of liberty. But t!ie general stale will be, 
 that of a mind which is overcast. And, 
 therefore, to keep all clear, and habitually 
 clear, wouhl I advise a regular forthgoing 
 of your believing thoughts, to the great 
 decease that was accomplished at Jerusa- 
 lem. I would have you to look unto Jesus 
 Christ, and unto him crucified, and be 
 lightened thereby. Forget not that for guilt 
 there has been an appropriate remedy pro- 
 vided in the Gospel — and tiie way for you 
 to stand delivered from all your fears of its 
 vengeance and its agony, is to think of the 
 vengeance that has already been poured 
 out, and of the agony that has already been 
 endured for it. Be very sure, that wlien 
 justice is satisfied, then mercy, set at large 
 from this obstruction, is free to rejoice over 
 you. And justice is satisfied. The suffer- 
 ings of the garden and the cross, have ab- 
 sorbed it all — nor after Christ hath poured 
 out his soul unto the death for you, will it 
 seek, in the horrors of your condemned 
 eternity, for a double redress, and a double 
 vindication. O, come out then, from the 
 prison-house of despondency — and, when 
 you think of your sins, think also of the 
 ransom wliich has been paid for them. On 
 the strength of this, do make your resolute 
 stand against the spirit of bondage — and 
 looking, and looking hourly unto the vic- 
 tim wlio has already bled a full expiation, 
 do uphold yourself in the confidence, that 
 sin is made an end of, that transgression is 
 finished, that reconciliation for iniquity is 
 made, and that now the believer, released 
 from captivity, may walk before God in the 
 security and the triumph of an everlasting 
 riglileousness. 
 
 In other sacrifices, the priest is distin- 
 guishable from the victim. Here they are 
 t!ie same. He was the victim when dying. 
 He is the High Priest, now that he is risen 
 again. And thus does he still plead, in the 
 ear of God, the offering that was once 
 made, and the power of which endureth 
 continually. That incense, with the savour 
 of which God was well pleased, he is at 
 ail times well pleased to be reminded of — 
 and only consider him who fills his mouth 
 with this argument in behalf of all who re- 
 
 pair to him, who can argue his sacrifice as 
 an adequate redemption for the cliief of 
 sinners, and whose glory as a physician 
 and a Saviour, is most illustrated, wlien the 
 most desperate of offenders come unto him, 
 aiSd are healed. It is not enough, that you 
 have, at one time, imported this into your 
 understanding, and given it a place there 
 among the articles of your belief. It is by 
 keeping it in memory — it is by renewing 
 upon it your mental acts of faith and de- 
 pendence — it is by again and again re- 
 pairing to it — and looking habitually unto 
 him as your Intercessor and High Prie.st, 
 even as tlie children of Israel looked daily 
 to Jerusalem, at the times of their morning 
 and evening sacrifice. It is thus, that 
 peace is kept up in the heart— and it is 
 thus, that instead of coming upon us at 
 starts, and in the shape of a momentary 
 visitation, it maintains the continuous flow 
 within us, of a river that is at once mighty 
 and inexhaustible. It is thus, that this doc- 
 trine of our faith, instead of having only 
 once made its entrance into our creed, is 
 used by us at all times as a cordial — and 
 the thought of Christ, as our acceptable 
 and all-prevailing High Priest, is often pre- 
 sent to the mind, and always felt to be pre- 
 cious. 
 
 And never forget that the way to main- 
 tain peace of conscience, is also the way to 
 maintain purity of character. This is a 
 mystery of the Christian life which the 
 world apprehendeth not — and yet so real- 
 ized, we think, by universal experience, 
 that never do we reckon, in the history of 
 the church, or in any of its members, had 
 wilful sin place at the same time along 
 with a full exercise of faith on the testi- 
 mony of God. It is peace in the conscience, 
 in fact, that keeps up love in the heart. It 
 is this which, by putting joy, and hope, 
 and confidence in the bosom, furnishes the 
 soul with the most powerful springs of 
 obedience. It is this which awakens grati- 
 tude in the bosom, that ere now was beset 
 with the cold distractions of legality; and 
 under the constraining influence of the 
 love of Christ, is it ever found, that the 
 most joyful believer is also the most fruit- 
 ful believer, living no longer to himself, but 
 to Christ who died for him, and who rose 
 again. 
 
DISCOURSES 
 
 ON 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION, 
 
 VIEWED IN CONNEXION WITH 
 
 THE MODERN ASTROXOMY. 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The astronomical objection against the truth of the Gospel does not occupy a 
 very prominent place in any of our Treatises of Infidelity. It is often, however, 
 met with in conversation — and we have known it to be the cause of serious 
 perplexity and alarm in minds anxious for the solid establishment of their re- 
 ligious faith. 
 
 There is an imposing splendour in the science of astronomy ; and it is not to 
 be wondered at, if the light it throws, or appears to throw, over other tracks of 
 speculation than those which are properly its own, should at times dazzle and 
 mislead an inquirer. On this account we think it were a service to what we 
 deem a true and a righteous cause, could we succeed in dissipating this illusion ; 
 and in stripping Infidelity of those pretensions to enlargement, and to a certain 
 air of philosophical greatness, by which it has often become so destructively 
 alluring to the young, and the ardent, and the ambitious. 
 
 In my first Discourse, I have attempted a sketch of the Modern Astronomy — 
 nor have I wished to throw any disguise over that comparative littleness which 
 belongs to our planet, and which gives to the argument of Freethinkers all its 
 plausibility. 
 
 This argument involves in it an assertion and an inference. The assertion is, 
 that Christianity is a religion which professes to be designed for the single benefit 
 of our v/orld ; and the inference is, that God cannot be the author of this religion, 
 for he would not lavish on so insignificant a field, such peculiar and such dis- 
 tinguishing attentions as are ascribed to him in the Old and New Testament. 
 
 Christianity makes no such profession. That it is designed for the single 
 benefit of our world, is altogether a presumption of the Infidel himself — and 
 feeling that this is not the only example of temerity which can be charged on 
 the enemies of our faith, I have allotted my second Discourse to the attempt of de- 
 monstrating the utter repugnance of such a spirit with the cautious and enlight- 
 ened philosophy of modern times. 
 
 In the course of this Sermon Ihave offered a tribute of acknowledgment to 
 the theology of Sir Isaac Newton; and in such terras, as if not farther explained, 
 may be liable to misconstruction. The grand circumstance of applause in the 
 character of this great man, is, that unseduced by all the magnificence of his own 
 discoveries, he had a solidity of mind which could resist their fascination, and 
 keep him in steady attachment to that book whose general evidences stamped 
 upon it the impress of a real communication from heaven. This was the sole 
 attribute of his theology which I had in my eye when I presumed to eulogize it 
 
PREFACE. 361 
 
 I do not think, that, amid the distraction and the engrossment of his other pur- 
 suits, he has at all times succeeded in his interpretation of the book ; else he 
 would never, in my apprehension, have abetted the leading doctrine of a sect, or 
 a system, which has now nearly dwindled away from public observation. 
 
 In my third Discourse I am silent as to the assertion and attempt to combat the 
 inference that is founded on it. I insist, that upon all the analogies of nature and 
 of providence, we can lay no limit on the condescension of God, or on the multi- 
 plicity of his regards even to the very humblest departments of creation ; and that 
 it is not for us, who see the evidences of divine wisdom and care spread in such 
 exhaustless profusion around, to say, that the Deity would not lavish all the wealth 
 of his wondrous attributes on the salvation even of our solitary species. 
 
 At this point of the argument I trust that the intelligent reader may be enabled 
 to perceive in the adversaries of the gospel, a twofold dereliction from the maxims 
 of the Baconian philosophy ; that, in the hrst instance, the assertion which forms the 
 groundwork of their argument, is gratuitously fetched out of an unknown region 
 where they are utterly abandoned by the light of experience ; and that, in the se- 
 cond instance, the inference they urge from it, is in the face of manifold and unde- 
 niable truths, all lying within the safe and accessible field of human observation. 
 
 In my subsequent Discourses, I proceed to the informations of the record. 
 The infidel objection, drawn from astronomy, may be considered as by this time 
 disposed of; and if we have succeeded in clearing it away, so as to deliver the 
 Christian testimony from all discredit upon this ground, then may we submit, on 
 the strength of other evidences, to be guided by its information. We shall thus 
 learn, that Christianity has a far more extensive bearing on the other orders of 
 cieation than the infidel is disposed to allow ; and whether he will own the 
 authority of this information or not, he will at least be forced to admit, that the 
 subject matter of the Bible itself is not chargeable with that objection which he 
 has attempted to fasten upon it. 
 
 Thus, had my only object been the refutation of the Infidel argument, I might 
 have spared the last Discourses of the Volume altogether. But the tracts of 
 Scriptural information to which they directed me, I considered as worthy of 
 prosecution on their own account — and I do think, that much may be gathered 
 from these less observed portions of the field of revelation, to cheer, and to 
 elevate, and to guide the believer. 
 
 But, in the management of such a discussion as this, though for a great degree 
 of this effect it would require to be conducted in a far higher style than I am 
 able to sustain, the taste of the human mind maybe regaled, and its understanding 
 put into a state of the most agreeable exercise. Now, this is quite distinct from 
 the conscience being made to feel the force of a personal application ; nor could 
 I either bring this argument to its close in the pulpit, or offer it to the general 
 notice of the world, without adverting, in the last Discourse, to a delusion which, 
 I fear, is carrying forward thousands, and tens of thousands to an undone eternity. 
 
 I have closed the volume with an Appendix of Scriptural authorities. I found 
 that I could not easily interweave them in the texture of the Work, and have, 
 therefore, thought fit to present them in a separate form. I look for a twofold 
 benefit from this exhibition — first, on those more general readers, who are 
 ignorant of the Scriptures, and of the riches and variety which abound in them — 
 and, secondly, on those narrow and intolerant professors, who take an alarm at the 
 very sound and semblance of philosophy, and feel as if there was an utter irre- 
 concileable antipathy between its lessons on the one hand, and the soundness and 
 .piety of the Bible on the other. It were well, I conceive, for our cause, that the 
 latter could become a little more indulgent on this subject ; that they gave up a 
 portion of those ancient and hereditary prepossessio^is, which go so far to cramp 
 and to enthral them ; that they would suffer theology to take that wide range of 
 argument and of illustration which belongs to her ; and that less, sensitively 
 jealous of any desecration being brought upon the Sabbath, or the pulpit, they 
 would suffer her freely to announce all those truths, which either serve to protect 
 i"!hristianity from the contempt of science, or to protect the teachers of Chris 
 46 
 
362 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 tianity from those invasions which are practised both on the sacredness of the 
 office, and on the solitudes of its devotional and intellectual labours. 
 
 I shall only add, for the information of readers at a distance, that thesf 
 Discourses were chiefly delivered on the occasion of the week-day sermon tha 
 is preached in rotation by the Ministers of Glasgow. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 A Sketch of the Modern Astronomy. 
 
 " When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ot 
 dained ; What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that thou visitest him." 
 
 Psalm viii. 3, 4. 
 
 Ix the reasonings of the Apostle Paul, I 
 we cannot fciil to observe how studiously 
 he accommodates his arguments to the pur- 
 suits, or principles, or prejudices of the 
 people whom he was addressing. He often ' 
 made a favourite opinion of their own the j 
 starting point of his explanation ; and edu- s 
 cing a dexterous but irresistible train of j 
 argimient from some principle upon which | 
 each of the parties had a common under- 
 standing, did he force them out of all their 
 opposition, by a weapon of their own choos- 
 ing — nor did he scruple to avail himself of 
 a Jewish peculiarity, or a heathen super- 
 stition, or a quotation from Greek poetry, 
 by which he might gain the attention of 
 those whom he labored to convince, and 
 by the skilful application of which he might 
 " shut them up unto the faith." 
 
 Now, when Paul was thus addressing 
 one class of an assembly or congregation, 
 another class might, for the time, have 
 been shut out of all direct benefit and ap- 
 plication from his arguments. AVhen he 
 wrote an Epistle to a mixed assembly of 
 Christianised Jews and Gentiles, he had 
 often to direct such a process of argument 
 to the former, as the latter would neither 
 require nor comprehend. Now, what shoidd 
 have been the conduct of the Gentiles at 
 the reading of that part of the Epistle which 
 bore almost an exclusive reference to the 
 Jews ? Should it be impatiejice at the hearing 
 of something for which they had no relish or 
 understanding ? Should it be a fretful dis- 
 appointment, because every thing that was 
 said, was not said for their edification ? 
 Should it be angry discontent with the 
 Apostle, because, leaving them in the dark, 
 he had brought forward nothing for them, 
 through the whole extent of so many suc- 
 cessive chapters ? Some of them may have 
 felt in this way ;' but surely it would have 
 been vastly more Christian to have sat with 
 meek and unfeigned patience, and to have 
 rejoiced that the great Apostle had under- 
 taken the management of those obstinate 
 
 prejudices which kept back so many hu- 
 man beings from the participation of the 
 Gospel. And should Paul have had reason 
 to rejoice, that, by the success of his argu- 
 ments, he had reconciled one or anj^ num- 
 ber of Jews to Christianity, then it was the 
 part of these Gentiles, though receiving no 
 direct or personal benefit from the argu- 
 ments, to have blessed God, and rejoiced 
 along with him. 
 
 Conceive that Paul were at this moment 
 alive, and zealously engaged in the work 
 of pressing the Christian religion on the 
 acceptance of the various classes of society. 
 Should he not still have acted on the prin- 
 ciple of being all things to all men ? Should 
 he not have accommodated his discussion 
 to the prevailing taste, and literature, and 
 philosophy of the times? Should he not 
 have closed with the people, whom he was 
 addressing, on some favourite principle of 
 their own ; and, in the prosecution of this 
 principle, might he not have got completelj- 
 beyond the comprehension of a numerous 
 class of zealous, humble, and devoted Chris- 
 tians ? Now, the question is not, how these 
 woidd conduct themselves in such circum- 
 stances ? but how should they do it ? "Would 
 it be right in them to sit with impatience, 
 because the argument of the apostles contain- 
 ed in it nothing in the wav of comfort or edi- 
 fication to themselves ? Should not the be- 
 nevolence of the Gospel give a diflferenl 
 direction to their feelings J And, instead 
 of that narrow, exclusive, and monopoliz- 
 ing spirit, which I fear is too characteristic 
 of the more declared professors of the truth 
 as it is in Jesus, ought they not to be pa- 
 tient, and to rejoice ; when to philosophers, 
 and to men of literary accomplishment, 
 and to those who have the direction of the 
 public taste among the upper M-alks of so- 
 ciety, such arguments are addressed as may 
 bring home to their acceptance also, " the 
 words of this life?" It is under the im 
 pulse of these considerations, that I have 
 with some hesitation, prevailed upon my 
 
I-l 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 363 
 
 self to attempt an argument which I think 
 fitted to soften and subdue those prejudices 
 wliich He at tlie bottom of what may be 
 called the infidelity of natural science; if 
 possible to bring over to the humility of the 
 Gospel, those who expatiate with delight 
 on the wonders and sublimities of creation ; 
 and to convince them that a loftier wisdom 
 still tlian that even of tlicir high and hon- 
 ourable acquirements, is the wisdom of him 
 who is resolved to know nothing but Jesus 
 Christ, and him crucified. 
 
 It is truly a most Christian exercise to 
 extract a sentiment of piety from the works 
 and the appearances of nature. It has the 
 authority of the Sacred Writers upon its 
 side, and even our Saviour himself gives it 
 the weight and the solemnity of his exam- 
 ple. " Behold the lilies of the field ; they 
 toil not, neither do they spin, yet your 
 heavenly Father careth for them." He ex- 
 patiates on the beauty of a single flower, 
 and draws from it the delightful argument 
 of confidence in God. He gives us to see 
 tliat taste may be combined with piety, and 
 that tlie sanip heart may be occupied with 
 all that is serious in the contemplations of 
 religion, and be at the same time alive to 
 the charms and the loveliness of nature. 
 
 The Psalmist takes a still loftier flight. 
 He leaves the world, and lifts his imagina- 
 tion to that mighty expanse which spreads 
 above it and around it. He wings his way 
 through space, and wanders in thought over 
 its immeasurable regions. Instead of a dark 
 and unpeopled solitude, he sees it crowded 
 with splendour, and filled with tH*e energy of 
 the Divine presence. Creation rises in its 
 immensity before him, and the world, with 
 all which it inherits, shrinks into littleness 
 at a contemplation so vast and so overpow- 
 ering. He wonders that he is not over- 
 looked amid the grandeur and the variety 
 which are on every side of him, and pass- 
 ing upward from the majesty of nature to 
 the majesty of nature's Architect, he ex- 
 claims, " What is man that thou art mind- 
 ful of liim, or the son of man that thou 
 shouldest deign to visit him?" 
 
 It is not for us to say, whether inspira- 
 tion revealed to the Psalmist the vv-onders 
 ^f the modern astronomy. But even though 
 he mind be a perfect stranger to the sci- 
 ence of these enlightened times, the heavens 
 present a great and an elevating spectacle ; 
 an immense concave reposing upon the 
 circular boundary of the world, and the in- 
 mmicrable lights which are suspended from 
 on high, moving with solemn regularity 
 .along its surface. It seems to have been at 
 night that the piety of the Psalmist was 
 awakened by this contemplation, when the 
 moon and the stars were visible, and not 
 when the sun had risen in his strcnjrth, 
 and thrown a splendour around him, which 
 bore down and eciipsed all the lesser glories 
 
 of the firmament And there is much in 
 the scenery of a nocturnal sky, to lift the 
 soul to pious contemplation. That moon, 
 and these stars, what are ihey ? They are 
 detached from the world, and they lift you 
 above it. You feel withdrawn from the 
 earth, and rise in lofty abstraction above 
 this little theatre of human passions and 
 human anxieties. The mind abandons it- 
 self to reverie, and is transferred, m the te- 
 stacy ofits thoughts, to distant and unexplor- 
 ed regions. It sees nature in the simplicity of 
 her great elements, and it sees the God of 
 nature invested with the high attributes of 
 wisdom and majesty. 
 
 But what can these lights be ? The cu- 
 riosity of the human mind is insatiable, 
 and the mechanism of these wonderful 
 heavens has, in all ages, been its subject 
 and its employment. It has been reserved 
 for these latter times, to resolve this great 
 and interesting question. The sublimest 
 powers of philosophy have been called to 
 the exercise, and astronomy may now be 
 looked upon as the most certain and best 
 established of the sciences. 
 
 We all know that every visible object 
 appears less in magnitude as it recedes 
 from the eye. The lofty vessel as it re- 
 tires from the coast, shrinks into littleness, 
 and at last appears in the form of a small 
 speck on the verge of the horizon. The 
 eagle with its expanded wings, is a noble 
 object ; but when it takes its flight into tlie 
 upper regions of the air, it becomes less to 
 the eye, and is seen like a dark spot upon 
 the vault of heaven. The same is true of 
 all magnitude. The heavenly bodies appear 
 small to the eye of an inhabitant of this 
 earth, only from the immensity of their 
 distance. When we talk of lumdrcds of 
 millions of miles, it is not to be listened to 
 as incredible. For remember that we are 
 talking of those bodies which are scattered 
 over the immensity of space, and tliat space 
 knows no termination. The conception is 
 great and difficult, but the truth is unques- 
 tionable. By a process of measurement 
 which it is unnecessary at present to ex- 
 plain, we have ascertained first the distance, 
 and then the magnitude of some of those 
 bodies which roll in the firmament ; that 
 the sun, which presents itself to the eye 
 under so diminutive a form, is really a globe, 
 exceeding, by many thousands of times, the 
 dimensions of the earth which we inhabit ; 
 that the moon itself has the magnitude of 
 a world ; and that even a few of those stars, 
 which appear like so many lucid points to 
 the unassisted eye of the observer, expand 
 into large circles upon the application of 
 the telescope, and are some of them much 
 larger than the ball which we tread upon, 
 and to which we proudly apply the denom- 
 ination of the universe. 
 
 Now, what is the fair and obvious pre 
 
364 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 sumption? The world in which we live, 
 is a round ball of a determined magnitude, 
 and occupies its own place in the firma- 
 ment. But when we explore the unlimited 
 tracts of that space, which is every where 
 around us, we meet with other balls of equal 
 or superior magnitude, and from which our 
 earth would either be invisible, or appear as 
 small as any of those twinkling stars which 
 are seen on the canopy of heaven. \Miy 
 then suppose that this little spot, little at 
 least in the immensity which surrounds it, 
 should be the exclusive abode of life and of 
 intelligence? What reason to think that 
 those mightier globes which roll in other 
 parts of creation, and which we have discov- 
 ered to be worlds in magnitude, are not also 
 worlds in use and in dignity? Why should 
 we think that the great Architect of nature, 
 supreme in wisdom as he is in power, 
 would call these stately mansions into ex- 
 istence, and leave them unoccupied ? \^Tien 
 we cast our eye over the broad sea, and look 
 at the country on the other side, we see no- 
 thing but the blue land stretching obscurely 
 over the distant horizon. We are too far 
 away to perceive the richness of its scenery, 
 or to hear the sound of its population. 
 Whj' not extend this principle to the still 
 more distant parts of the universe? What 
 though, from this remote point of observa- 
 tion, we can see nothing but the naked 
 roundness of yon planetary orbs ? Are we 
 therefore to say, that they are so many vast 
 and unpeopled solitudes; that desolation 
 reigns in every part of the universe but 
 ours ; that the whole energy of the divine 
 attributes is expended on one insignificant 
 corner of these mighty works ; and that to 
 this earth alone belongs the bloom of vege- 
 tation, or the blessedness of life, or the dig- 
 nity of rational and immortal existence ? 
 
 But this is not all. We have something 
 more than the mere magnitude of the 
 planets to allege, in favour of the idea that 
 they are inhabited. We know that this 
 earth turns round upon itself; and we ob- 
 serve that all those celestial bodies, which 
 are accessible to such an observation, have 
 the same movement. We know that the 
 earth performs a yearly revolution round 
 the sun; and we can detect in all the 
 planets which compose our system, a revo- 
 lution of the same kind, and under the same 
 circumstances. They have the same suc- 
 cession of day and night. They have the 
 same agreeable vicissitude of the seasons. 
 To them, light and darkness succeed each 
 other ; and the gaiety of summer is followed 
 by the dreariness of winter. To each of 
 them the heavens' present as varied and 
 magnificent a spectacle ; and this earth the 
 encompassing of which would require the 
 labour of years from one of its puny inhabi- 
 tants, is but one of the lesser lights which 
 sparkle in their firmament. To them, as well 
 
 as to us, has God divided the light from the 
 darkness, and he has called the light day, and 
 the darkness he has called night. He has said 
 let there be lights in the firmament of their 
 heaven,todivide the day from the night: and 
 let them be for signs, and for seasons, and 
 for days, and for years ; and let them be for 
 lights in the firmament of heaven, to give 
 light upon their earth ; and it was so. And 
 God has also made to them great lights. 
 To all of them he has given the sun to rule 
 the day ; and to many of them has he given 
 moons to rule the night. To them he has 
 made the stars also. And God has set thera 
 in the firmament of heaven, to give light 
 unto their earth ; and to rule over the day, 
 and over the night, and to divide the light 
 from the darkness ; and God has seen that 
 it was good. 
 
 In all these greater arrangements of di- 
 vine wisdom, we can see that God has done 
 the same things for the accommodation of 
 the planets that he has done for the earth 
 which we inhabit. And shall we say, that 
 the resemblance stops here, because we are 
 not in a situation to observe jt? Shall we 
 say, that this scene of magnificence has 
 been called into being, merely for the 
 amusement of a few astronomers? Shall 
 we measure the counsels of heaven by the 
 narrow importance of the human faculties? 
 or conceive, that silence and solitude reign 
 throughout the mighty empire of nature,, 
 that the greater part of creation is an empty 
 parade; and that not a worshipper of the 
 Divinity is to be found through the wide 
 extent of yon vast and immeasurable re- 
 gions ? 
 
 It lends a delightful confirmation to the 
 argument, when, from the growing perfee 
 tion of our instruments, we can discover a 
 new point of resemblance between our 
 earth and the other bodies of the planetary 
 system. It is now ascertained, not merely 
 that all of them have their day and night, 
 and that all of them have their vicissitudes 
 of seasons, and that some of them have 
 their moons to rule their night and allevi- 
 ate the darkness of it. We can see of one, 
 that its surface rises into inequalities, that 
 it swells into mountains and stretches into 
 valleys ; of another, that it is surrounded 
 by an atmosphere which may support th 
 respiration of animals; of a third, that 
 clouds are formed and suspended over it, 
 which may minister to it all the bloom and 
 luxuriance of vegetation , and of a fourth, 
 that a white colour spreads over its north- 
 ern regions, as its winter advances, and 
 that on the approach of summer this white- 
 ness is dissipated — giving room to suppose, 
 that the element of water abounds in it, 
 that it rises by evaporation into its atmos- . 
 phere, that it freezes upon the application 
 of cold, that it is precipitated in the form of 
 snow, that it covers the ground with a 
 
1. 1 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 365 
 
 fleecy mantle, which melts away from the 
 heat of a more vertical sun; and that other 
 worlds bear a resemblance to our own, in 
 the same yearly round of beneficent and in- 
 teresting changes. 
 
 Who shall assign a limit to the discove- 
 ries of future ages? Who can prescribe to 
 science her boundaries, or restrain the ac- 
 tive and insatiable curiosity of man within 
 the circle of his present acquirements? We 
 may guess with plausibility what we can- 
 not anticipate with confidence. The day 
 may yet be coming, when our instruments 
 of observation shall be inconceivably more 
 powerful. They may ascertain still more 
 decisive points of resemblance. They may 
 resolve the same question by the evidence 
 of sense which is now so abundantly con- 
 vincing by the evidence of analogy. They 
 may lay open to us the unquestionable ves- 
 tiges of art, and industry, and intelligence. 
 We may see summer throwing its green 
 mantle over these mighty tracts, and we 
 may see them left naked and colourless af- 
 ter the flush of vegetation has disappeared. 
 In the progress of years, or of centuries, we 
 may trace the hand of cultivation spreading 
 a new aspect over some portion of a plan- 
 etary surface. Perhaps some large city, 
 the metropolis of a mighty empire, may ex- 
 pand into a visible spot by the powers of 
 some future telescope. Perhaps the glass 
 of some observer, in a distant age, may en- 
 able him to construct a map of another 
 world, and to lay down the surface of it in 
 all its minute and topical varieties. But 
 there is no end of conjecture, and to the 
 men of other times we leave the full assu- 
 rance of what we can assert with the high- 
 est probability, that yon planetary orbs are 
 so many worlds, that they teem with life, 
 and that the mighty Being who presides in 
 high authority over this scene of grandeur 
 and astonishment, has there planted wor- 
 shippers of his glory. 
 
 Did the discoveries of science stop here, 
 we have enough to justify the exclamation 
 of the Psalmist, "What is man that thou 
 art mindful of him, or the son of man that 
 thou shouldest deign to visit him ?"' They 
 widen the empire of creation far beyond the 
 limits which were formerly assigned to it. 
 They give us to see that yon sun, throned 
 in the centre of his planetary system, gives 
 light, and warmth, and the vicissitude of 
 seasons, to an extent of surface several hun- 
 dreds of times greater than that of the earth 
 which we inhabit. They lay open to us a 
 number of worlds, rolling in their respect- 
 ive circles around this vast luminary — 
 and prove, that the ball which we tread 
 upon, with all its mighty burden of oceans 
 • and continents, instead of being distinguished 
 from the others, is among the least of them ; 
 and, from some of the more distant planets, 
 would not occupy a more visible point in 
 
 the concave of their firmament. They lei 
 us know, that though this mighty earth, 
 with all its myriads of people, were to sink 
 into annihilation, there are some worlds 
 where an event so awful to us would be 
 unnoticed and unknown, and others where 
 it would be nothing more than the disap- 
 pearance of a little star which had ceased 
 from its twinkling. We should feel a sen- 
 timent of modesty at this just but humili- 
 ating representation. We should learn not 
 to look on our earth as the universe of 
 God, but one paltry and insignificant por 
 tion of it ; that it is only one of the many 
 mansions which the supreme Being has 
 created for the accommodation of his wor- 
 shippers, and only one of the many worlds 
 rolling in that flood of light which the sun 
 pours around him to the outer limhs of 
 the planetary system. 
 
 But is there nothing beyond these limits? 
 The planetary system has its boundary, but 
 space has none; and if we wing our fancy 
 there, do we only travel through dark and 
 unoccupied regions ? There are only five, 
 or at most six, of the planetary orbs visible 
 to the naked eye. What, then, is that multi- 
 tude of other lights which sparkle in our 
 firmament, and fill the whole concave of 
 heaven with innumerable splendours ? The 
 planets are all attached to the sun ; and, in 
 circling around him, they do homage to tliat 
 influence which binds them to perpetual 
 attendance on this great luminary. But the 
 other stars do not own his dominion. They 
 do not circle around him. To all common 
 observation, they remain immoveable ; and 
 each, like the independent sovereign of his 
 own territory, appears to occupy the same 
 inflexible position in the regions of immen- 
 sity. What can we make of them ? Shall 
 we take our adventurous flight to explore 
 these dark and untravelled dominions ? 
 What mean these innumerable fires lighted 
 up in distant parts of the universe ? Are 
 they only made to shed a feeble glimmer- 
 ing over this little spot in the kingdom of 
 nature ? or do they serve a purpose wor- 
 thier of themselves, to light up other worlds, 
 and give animation to other systems. 
 
 The first thing which strikes a scientific 
 observer of the fixed stars, is their immea- 
 surable distance. If the whole planetary 
 system were lighted up into a globe of fire, 
 it would exceed, by many millions of times, 
 the magnitude of this world, and yet only 
 appear a small lucid point from the nearest 
 of them. If a body were projected from the 
 sun with the velocity of a cannon-ball, it 
 would take hundreds of thousands of years 
 before it described that mighty interval 
 which separates the nearest of the fixed 
 stars from our sun and from our system. 
 If this earth, which moves at more than the 
 inconceivable velocity of a million and a 
 half miles a day, were to be hurried from 
 
366 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 I DISC. 
 
 Its orbit, and to take the same rapid flight 
 over this immense tract, it would not have 
 arrived at the termination of its journey, 
 after taking all the time which has elapsed 
 since the creation of the w orld. These are 
 great numbers, and "great calculations, and 
 the mind feels its own impotency in at- 
 tempthig to grasp them. We can state them 
 in words. We can exhibit them in figures. 
 We can demonstrate them by the powers 
 of a most rigid and infallible geometry. But 
 no human fancy can summon up a lively 
 or an ;rbquate conception — can roam in its 
 ideal flight over this immeasureable large- 
 ness — can take in this mighty space in all 
 its grandeur, and in all its immensity — can 
 sweep the outer boundaries of such a crea- 
 tion — or lift itself up to the majesty of that 
 great and invisible arm, on which all is 
 suspended. 
 
 But what can those stars be which are 
 seated so far beyond the limits of our plane- 
 tary system ? They must be masses of 
 immense magnitude, or they could not be 
 seen at the distance of place which they 
 occupy. The light which they give must 
 proceed from themselves, for the feeble re- 
 flection of light from some other quarter, 
 would not carry through such mighty tracts 
 to the eye of an observer. A body may be 
 visible in two ways. It may be visible from 
 its own light, as the flame of a candle, or 
 the brightness of a fire, or the brilliancy of 
 yonder glorious sun, which lightens all be- 
 low, and is the lamp of the world. Or it 
 may be visible from the light which falls 
 upon it, as the body which receives its light 
 from the taper that falls upon it — or the 
 whole assemblage of objects on the surface 
 of the earth, which appear only when the 
 light of day rests upon them — or the moon, 
 which, in that part of it which is towards 
 the sun, giA'es out a silvery whiteness to the 
 eye of the observer, while the other part 
 forms a black and invisible space in the 
 firmament — or as the planets, which shine 
 only because the sun shines upon them, 
 and which, each of them, present the ap- 
 pearance of a dark spot on the side that is 
 turned away from it. Now apply this ques- 
 tion to the fixed stars. Are they luminous 
 of themselves, or do they derive their light 
 from the sun, like the bodies of our plane- 
 tary system ? Think of their immense dis- 
 tance, and the solution of this question be- 
 comes evident. The sun, like any other 
 body, must dwindle into a less apparent 
 magnitude as you retire from it. At the 
 prodigious distance even of the very nearest 
 of the fixed stars, it "must have shrunk into 
 a small indivisible point. In short, it must 
 have become a star itself, and could shed no 
 more light than a single individual of those 
 glimmering myriads, the whole assemblage 
 of which cannot dissipate, and can scarce- 
 ly alleviate the midnight darkness of our 
 
 world. These stars are visible to us, not 
 because the sun shines upon them, but be- 
 cause they shine of themselves, because 
 they are so many luminous bodies sca;tered 
 over the tracts of immensity; in a word, 
 because they are so many suns each throned 
 in the centre of his own dominions, and 
 pouring a flood of light over his own por- 
 tion of these unlimitable regions. 
 
 At such an immense distance for obs.er- 
 vation, it is not to be supposed, that we can 
 collect many points of resemblance between 
 the fixed stars, and the solar star which 
 forms the centre of our planetary system. 
 There is one point of resemblance, how- 
 ever, which has not escaped the penetration 
 of our astronomecs. We know that our sun 
 turns round upon himself, in a regular pe- 
 riod of time. We also know, that there are 
 dark spots scattered over his surface, whicli, 
 thougli invisilile to the naked eye, are per- 
 fectly noticeable by our instruments. If 
 these spots existed in greater quantity upon 
 one side than upon another, it would have 
 the general eff'ect of making that side darker, 
 and the revolution of the sun must, in such 
 a case, give us a brighter and a fainter 
 side, by resfular alternations. Now, there 
 are some of the fixed stars which present 
 this appearance. They present us with pe 
 riodical variations of liglit. From the splen 
 doui* of a star of the first or second magni- 
 tude, they fade away into some of the 
 inferior magnitudes — and one, by becoming 
 invisible might give reason to apprehend 
 tliat we had lost him altogether — but we 
 can still recognize him by the telescope, till 
 at length he re-appears in his own place, 
 and, after a regular lapse of so many days 
 and hours, recovers his original brightness. 
 Now. the fair inference from this is, that 
 the fixed stars, as they resemble our sun in 
 being so many luminous masses of immense 
 magnitude, they resemble him in this also, 
 that each of them turns round upon his own 
 axis; so that if any of them should have an 
 inequahty in the brightness of their sides, 
 this revolution is rendered evident, by the 
 regular variations in the degree of light 
 which It undergoes. 
 
 Shall we say, then, of these vast lumina- 
 ries, that they were created in vain ? Were 
 they called into existence for no other pur- 
 pose than to throw a tide of useless splen- 
 dour over the solitudes of immensity? Our 
 sun is only one of these luminaries, and we 
 know that he lias worlds in liis train. Why 
 should we strip the rest of this princely at- 
 tendance ? Why may not each of them be 
 the centre of his own system, and give light 
 to his own worlds ? It is true that we see 
 them not, but could the eye of man take its 
 flight into those distant regions, it should 
 lose sight ofour little world, before it reached 
 the outer limits of our system— the greater 
 planets should disappear in their turn— be- 
 
^I 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 367 
 
 fore it had described a small portion of that 
 abyss which separates us from the fixed 
 stars, the sun should decline into a little 
 spot, and all its splendid retinue of worlds 
 be lost in the obscurity of distance — lie 
 should, at last, shrink into a small indivisi- 
 ble atom, and all that could be seen of this 
 magnificent system, should be reduced to 
 the glimmering of a little star. Why resist 
 any longer the grand and interesting con- 
 clusion ? Each of these stars may be the 
 token of a system as vast and as splendid 
 as the one which we inhabit. Worlds roll 
 in these distant regions ; and these worlds 
 must be the mansionsof life and intelligence. 
 In yon gilded canopy of heaven we see the 
 broad aspect of the universe, where eacli 
 shining point presents us with a sun, and 
 each san with a system of worlds — where 
 the Divinity reigns in all the grandeur of 
 his attributes — where he peoples immensity 
 with his wonders; and travels in the great- 
 ness of his strength through the dominions 
 of one vast and unlimited monarchy. 
 
 The contemplation has no limits. If we 
 ask tlie mnnber of suns and of systems, the 
 unassisted eye of man can take in a thou- 
 sand, and the best telescope which the 
 genius of man has constructed can take in 
 eighty millions. Fancy may take its flight 
 far beyond the ken of eye or of telescope. 
 Shall we have the boldness to say, tliat 
 there is nothing there — that the wonders of 
 the Almighty are at an end — that the creative 
 energy of God has sunk into repose, be- 
 cause the imagination is enfeebled by the 
 magnitude of its efforts ? 
 
 There are two points of interesting spec- 
 ulation, both of which serve to magnify our 
 conceptions of the universe. If a body be 
 struck in the direction of its centre, it ob- 
 tains a progressive inotion, but without any 
 movement of revolution being at the same 
 time impressed upon it. But, again, should 
 the stroke not be in the direction of the cen- 
 tre — should the line which joins the point 
 of percussion to the centre, make an angle 
 with that line in which the impulse was com- 
 municated, then the body is both made to go 
 forward in space, also to wheel upon its axis. 
 Thus, each of our planets may have had 
 their compound motion communicated to it 
 by one single impulse; and, on the other 
 hand, if ever the rotatory motion be commu- 
 nicated by one blow, then the progressive mo- 
 tion must go along with it. In order to have 
 the first motion without the second, tliere 
 must be a twofold force applied to the body 
 in opposite directions. It must be set agoing 
 in the same way as a spinning-top, so as to 
 revolve about an axis, and to keep un- 
 changed its situation in space. 
 
 But at this stage of the argument, the 
 matter only remains a conjectural point of 
 speculation. The sun may have had his 
 rotation impressed upon him by a spinning 
 
 impulse ; or, this movement may be coeval 
 with his being, and he maj^ have derived 
 both from an immediate fiat of tlie Creator. 
 But there is an actually observed phenome- 
 non of the heavens which advances the con- 
 jecture into a probability. In the course 
 of age, the stars in one quarter of the celes- 
 tial sphere are apparently receding from 
 each other; and in the op[)osite quarter, 
 they are apparently drawing nearer to each 
 other. If the sun be approaching the for- 
 mer and receding from the latter, this phe- 
 nomenon admits of an easy explanation, 
 and we are furnished with a magnificent 
 step in the scale of the Creator's ^^•orkman- 
 sliip. In the same manner as the planets, 
 with their satellites, revolve romid the sun, 
 may the sun, with all its tributaries, be 
 moving in common with other stars, around 
 some distant centre, from which there ema- 
 nates an influence to bind and to subordi- 
 nate tliem all. Our sun may, therefore, 
 be only one member of a higher family 
 — taking his part, along with millions of 
 others, in some loftier system of mechanism, 
 by which they are all subjected to one 
 law, and to one arrangement — describing 
 the sweep of such an orbit in space, and 
 completing the mighty revolution in such a 
 period of time, as to reduce our planetary 
 seasons and our planetary movements, to a 
 very humble and fractionary rank in the 
 scale of a higiier astronomy. There is room 
 for all this in immensity ; and there is even 
 argument for all tliis in the records of actual 
 observation ; and, from the whole of this 
 speculation, do we gather a new emphasis 
 to the lesson, how minute is the place,. and 
 how secondary is the importance of our 
 world, arnid the glories of such a surround- 
 ing magnificence! 
 
 Another very interesting tract of specula- 
 tion, has been opened up to us by the more 
 recent observations of astronomy, the dis- 
 covery of the nehnlce.. We allow that it is 
 but a dim and indistinct light wiiich this 
 discovery has thrown upon the structure of 
 the universe; but still it has spread before 
 the eye of the mind a field of very wide and 
 lofty ccmteinplation. Before this the uni- 
 verse might appear to have been composed 
 of an indefinite number of suns, about equi- 
 distant from each other, and each encom- 
 passed by such a planetary attendance as 
 takes place in our own system. But, it now 
 appears instead of lying uniformly and in a 
 state of equidistance from each other, they 
 are arranged into distinct clusters — that, 
 in the same manner as the distance of the 
 nearest fixed stars, marks the sr-paration of 
 the solar systems, so the distance of twc 
 contiguous clusters may be so inconceivably 
 superior to the reciprocal distance of those 
 fixed stars which belong to th*e same cluster, 
 as to mark an equally distinct separation of 
 the clusters, and to constitute each of them 
 
368 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. 
 
 an individual member of some higher and 
 more extended arrangement. This car- 
 ries us upwards through another ascend- 
 ing step in the scale of magnificence, and 
 there leaves us wilder ing in the uncer- 
 tainty, whether even here the wonderful 
 progression is ended ; and at all events fixes 
 the assured conclusion in our minds, that, 
 to an eye which could spread itself over the 
 whole, the mansion which accommodates 
 our species might be so very small as to lie 
 wrapped in microscopical concealment; and, 
 in reference to the only Being who pos- 
 sesses this universal eye, well might we 
 say, "What is man that thou art mindful 
 of him, or the son of man that thou shouldest 
 d^e gn to visit him ?" 
 
 And, after all, though it be a mighty 
 and difficult conception, yet who can ques- 
 tion it ? What is seen may be nothing to 
 what is unseen ; for what is seen is limited 
 by the range of our instruments. What is 
 unseen has no limit ; and, though all which 
 the eye of man can take in, or his fancy can 
 grasp at, were swept away, there might still 
 remain as ample a field, over which the Di- 
 vinity may expatiate, and which he may 
 have peopled with innumerable worlds. If 
 the whole visible creation were to disappear, 
 it would leave a solhude behind it — but to 
 the infinite Mind, that can take in the whole 
 system of nature, this solitude might be 
 nothing, a small unoccupied point in that 
 immensity which surrounds it, and which 
 he may have filled with the wonders of his 
 omnipotence. Though this earth were to be 
 burned up, though the trumpet of its disso- 
 lution were sounded, though yon sky were 
 to pass away as a scroll, and every visible 
 glory, which the finger of Divinity has in- 
 scribed on it, were to be put out for ever — 
 an event so awful, to us and to every world 
 in our vicinity, by which so many suns 
 would be extinguished, and so many varied 
 scenes of life and of population would rush 
 into forgetfulness — what is it in the high 
 scale of the Almighty's workmanship? a 
 mere shred, which, though scattered into 
 nothing, would leave the universe of God 
 one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. 
 Though this earth, and these heavens, were 
 to disappear, there are other worlds, which 
 roll afar ; the light of other suns shines upon 
 them ; and the sky which mantles them, is 
 garnished with other stars. Is it presump- 
 tion to say, that the moral world extends to 
 these distant and unknown regions ? that 
 they are occupied with people? that the 
 charities of home and of neighbourhood 
 flourish there? that the praises of God are 
 there lifted up, anci his goodness rejoiced 
 in? that piety has its temples and its offer- 
 ings? and the richness of the divine attri- 
 butes is there felt and admired by intelli- 
 gent worshippers ? 
 And what is this world in the immensity 
 
 which teems with them — and what are they 
 who occupy it ? The universe at large 
 would suffer as little, in its splendour and 
 variety, by the destruction of our planet, as 
 the verdure and sublime magnitude of a 
 forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. 
 The leaf quivers on the branch which sup- 
 ports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest 
 accident. A breath of wind tears it from its 
 stem, and it lights on the stream of water 
 which passes underneath. In a moment of 
 time, the life which we know, by the micro- 
 scope, it teems with, is extinguished ; and. 
 an occurrence, so insignificant in the eye of 
 man, and on the scale of his observation, 
 carries in it, to the myriads which people 
 this little leaf, an event as terrible and as 
 decisive as the destruction of a world. Now, 
 on the grand scale of the universe, we, the 
 occupiers of this ball, which performs its 
 little round among the suns and the systems 
 that astronomy has unfolded — we may feel 
 the same littleness and the same insecurity. 
 We differ from the leaf only in this circum- 
 stance, that it would require the operation 
 of greater elements to destroy us. But 
 these elements exist. The fire which rages 
 within, may lift its devouring energy to the 
 surface of our planet, and transform it into 
 one wide and wasting volcano. The sudden 
 formation of elastic matter in the bowels of 
 the earth — and it lies within the agency of 
 known substances to accomplish this — may 
 explode it into fragments. The exhalation 
 of noxious air from below, may impart a 
 virulence to the air that is around us ; it may 
 affect the delicate proportion of its ingre- 
 dients ; and the whole of animated nature 
 may wither and die under the malignhy of 
 a tainted atmosphere. A blazing comet 
 may cross this fated planet in its orbit, and 
 realize all the terrors which superstition has 
 conceived of it. We cannot anticipate with 
 precision the consequences of an event 
 which every astronomer must know to lie 
 within the limits of chance and probability. 
 It may hurry our globe towards the sun — 
 or drag it to the outer regions of the plane- 
 tary system : or give it a new axis of revo- 
 lution — and the effect which I shall simply 
 announce, without explaining it, Avould be 
 to change the place of the ocean, and bring 
 another mighty flood upon our islands and 
 continents. These are changes which may 
 happen in a single instant of time, and 
 against which nothing known in the present 
 system of things provides us with any secu- 
 rity. They might not annihilate the earth, 
 but they would unpeople it ; and we who 
 tread its surface with such firm and assured 
 footsteps, are at the mercy of devouring 
 elements, which, if let loose upon us by the 
 hand of the Almighty, would spread solitude, 
 and silence, and death over the dominions of 
 the world. 
 
 Now it is this littleness, and this inse 
 
II.J 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIFNCK 
 
 369 
 
 ourity which make the protection of tlie 
 Ahnighty so dear to us, and bring, with 
 such emphasis, to every pious bosom, the 
 holy lessons of humility and gratitude. 
 The God wlio sitteth above, and presides in 
 high authority over all worlds, is mindful 
 of man; and, though at this moment his 
 energy is felt in the remotest provinces of 
 creation, we may feel the same security in 
 his providence, as if we were the objects of 
 his undivided care. It is not for us to bring 
 our minds up to this mysterious agency. 
 But, such is the incomprehensible fact, that 
 the same Being, whose eye is abroad over 
 the whole universe, gives vegetation to 
 every blade of grass, and motion to ever}- 
 particle of blood which circulates through 
 the veins of the minutest animal ; that, 
 though his mind takes into its comprehen- 
 sive grasp, immensity and all its wonders, I 
 am as much known to him as if I were the 
 single object of his attention ; that he marks 
 all my thoughts ; that he gives birth to every 
 feeling and every movement within me ; and 
 that, with an exercise of power which I 
 can neither describe nor comprehend, the 
 .same God who sits in the highest heaven 
 and reigns over the glories of the firma- 
 ment, is at my right hand, to give me every 
 breath which I draw, and every comfort 
 which I enjoy. 
 
 But this very reflection has been appro- 
 priated to the use of infidelity, and the very 
 language of the text has been made to 
 bear an application of hostility to the 
 faith. " What is man, that God should be 
 mindful of him, or the son of man, that he 
 should deign to visit him ?" Is it likely, 
 says the Infidel, that God would send his 
 eternal Son to die for the puny occupiers 
 
 of so insignificant a province in the mighty 
 field of his creation ? Are we the befitting 
 objects of so great and so signal an interpo 
 sition? Does not the largeness of that field 
 which astronomy lays open to the view of 
 modern science, throw a suspicion over the 
 truth of the gospel history ; and how shall 
 we reconcile the greatnessof tliat wonderful 
 movement which was made in heaven for the 
 redemption of fallen man, witli the compara- 
 tive meanness and obscurity of our species ? 
 This is a popular argument against Chris- 
 tianity, not much dwelt upon in books, but, 
 we believe, a good deal insinuated in con- 
 versation, and having no small influence on 
 the amateurs of a superficial philosophy. 
 At all events, it is right that every such 
 argument should be met, and manfully con- 
 fronted ; nor do we know a more discredita- 
 ble surrender of our religion, than to act as 
 if she had any thing to fear from the inge- 
 nuity of her most accomplished adversaries. 
 The author of the following treatise en- 
 gages in his present undertaking, under the 
 full impression that a something may be 
 found with which to combat Infidelity in all 
 its foyms : that the truth of God and of his 
 message, admits of a noble and decisive 
 manifestation, through every mist which the 
 pride, or the prejudice, or the sophistry of man 
 may throw around it; and elevated as the 
 wisdom of him may be, who has ascended 
 tlie heights of science, and poured the light 
 of demonstration over the most wondrous 
 of nature's m3^steries, that even out of his 
 own principles, it maj^ be proved how much 
 more elevated is tlie wisdom of him who 
 sits with the docihty of a little child, to his 
 Dible, and casts dov/n to its authority all 
 his lofty imaginations. 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 The Modesty of True Science. 
 
 " And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." 
 
 1 Corinthians vii. 2. 
 
 There is much profound and important 
 wisdom in that proverb of Solomon, where 
 it is said, that the heart knoweth its own bit- 
 terness. It forms part of a truth still more 
 comprehensive, that every man knoweth his 
 own peculiar feelings, and difficulties, and 
 trials, far better than he can get any of his 
 neighbours to perceive them. It is natural 
 to us all, that we should desire to engross, 
 to the uttermost, the sympathy of others 
 with what is most painful to the sensibili- 
 ties of our own bosom, and with what is 
 most aggravating in the hardships of our 
 own situation. But, labour it as we may, 
 47 
 
 we cannot, with every power of expression 
 make an adequate conversance, as it were, 
 of all our sensations, and of all our circum- 
 stances, into another understanding. There 
 is a something in the intimacy of a man's 
 own experience, which he cannot make to 
 pass entire into the heart and mind even of 
 the most familiar companion — and thus it is, 
 that he is so often defeated in his attempts 
 to obtain a full and a cordial po.ssession of 
 his sympathy. He is mortified, and he won- 
 ders at the obtuseness of the people around 
 him — and how he cannot get them to enter 
 into the justness of his complainings — nor 
 
370 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 to feel the point upon which turn the truth 
 and the reason of his remonstrances — nor 
 to give their interested attention to the case 
 of his peculiarities and of his wrongs — nor 
 to kindle, in generous resentment along with 
 him, when he starts the topic of his indigna- 
 tion. He does not reflect, all the while that, 
 with every human being he addresses, there 
 IS an inner man, which forms a theatre of pas- 
 sions, and of interests, as busy, as crowded, 
 and as fitted as his own to engross the anxious 
 and the exercised feelings of a heart, which 
 can alone understand its own bitterness, and 
 lay a correct estimate on the burden of its 
 own visitations. Every man we meet, carries 
 about with him, in the unperceived solitude 
 of his bosom, a little world of his own — and 
 we are just as blind, and as insensible, and 
 as dull, both of perception and of sympathy 
 about his engrossing objects, as he is about 
 ours ; and, did we suffer this observation to 
 have all its weight upon us, it miglU serve 
 to make us more candid, and more consi- 
 derate of others. It might serve to abate 
 the monopolizing selfishness of our nature. 
 It might serve to soften down all the malignity 
 which comes out of those envious contem- 
 plations that we are so apt to cast on the 
 fancied ease and prosperity which are 
 around us. It might serve to reconcile 
 every man to his own lot, and dispose him 
 to bear, with thankfulness, his own burden ; 
 and sure I am, if this train of sentiment 
 were prosecuted with firmness, and calm- 
 ness, and impartiality, it would lead to the 
 conclusion, that each profession in life has 
 its own peculiar pains, and its own beset- 
 ting inconveniences ; that, from the very 
 bottom of society, up to the golden pinnacle 
 which blazons upon its summit, there is 
 much in the shape of care and of suffering 
 to be found — that, throughout all the con- 
 ceiveable varieties of human condition, 
 there are trials, which can neither be ade- 
 quately told on the one side, nor fully un- 
 derstood on the other — that the ways of God 
 to man are as equal in this, as in every de- 
 partment of his administration — and that, 
 go to whatever quarter of human expe- 
 rience we may, we shall find how he has 
 provided enough to exercise the patience, 
 and to accomplish the pu rposes of a wise and 
 a salutary discipline upon all his children. 
 
 I have brought forward this observation, 
 that it may prepare the way for a second. 
 There are perhaps no two sets of human 
 beings, who comprehend less the move- 
 ments, and enter less into the cares and con- 
 cerns of each other, than the wide and busy 
 public on the one hand ; and, on the other, 
 those men of close-and studious retirement, 
 whom the world never hears of, save when, 
 from their thoughtful solitude, there issues 
 forth some splendid discovery, to set the 
 world on a gaze of admiration. Then will 
 the brilliancy of a superior genius draw 
 
 every eye towards it — and the homage paid 
 to intellectual superiority, will place its idol 
 on a loftier eminence than all wealth or than 
 all titles can bestow — and the name of the 
 successful philosopher will circulate, in his 
 own age, over the whole extent of civilized 
 societ}-, and be borne down to posterity 
 in the characters of ever-during remem- 
 brance — and thus it is, that, when we look 
 back on the days of Newton, we annex a 
 kind of mysterious greatness to him, who, 
 by the pure force of his understanding, rose 
 to such a gigantic elevation above the level 
 of ordinary men — and the kings and war- 
 riors of other days sink into insignificance 
 around him ; and he, at this moment, stands 
 forth to the public eye, in a prouder array 
 of glory than circles the memory of ail the 
 men of former generations — and, while all 
 the vulgar grandeur of other days is now 
 mouldering in forgetfulness, the achie\e- 
 menls of our great astronomer are still fresh 
 in the veneration of his countrymen, and 
 they carry him forward on the stream of 
 time, with a reputation ever gathering, and 
 the triumphs of a distinction that will never 
 die. 
 
 Now, the point that I want to impress 
 upon you is, that the same public, who are 
 so dazzled and overborne by the lustre of 
 all this superiority, are utterly in the dark 
 as to what that is which confers its chief 
 me?it on the philosophy of Newton. Tliey 
 see the result of his labours, but they 
 know not how to appreciate the difficulty or 
 the extent of them. They look on the 
 stately edifice he has reared, but they know 
 not wliat he had to do in settling the founda- 
 tion which gives to it all its stability — nor 
 are the}- aware what painful encounters he 
 had to make, both with the natural predi- 
 lections of his own heart, and with the pre- 
 judices of others, when employed on the 
 work of laying together its unperishing 
 materials. They have never heard of the 
 controversies which this man, of peaceful, 
 unambitious modesty, had to sustain, with 
 all that was proud and all that was intole- 
 rant in the philosophy of the age. They 
 have never, in, thought, entered that closet 
 which was the scene of his patient and pro- 
 found exercises — nor have they gone along 
 with him, as he gave his silent hours to the 
 labours of the midnight oil, and plied that 
 unwearied task, to which the charm of lofty 
 contemplation had allured him — nor have 
 they accompanied him through all the 
 workings of that wonderful mind, from 
 which, as from the recesses of a laboratory, 
 there came forth such gleams and processes 
 of thought as shed an effulgency over the 
 whole amplitude of nature. All thi.s, the 
 public have not done; for of this the great 
 majority, even of the reading and cultivated 
 public, are utterly incapable; and therefore 
 is it, that they need to be told what that is. 
 
n.J 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 371 
 
 m which the main distinction of his philo- 
 sophy lies; that when labouring in other 
 fields of investigation, they may Icnow how 
 to borrow from his safe example, and how to 
 profit by that superior wisdom which mark- 
 ed the whole conduct of his understanding. 
 
 Let it be understood, then, that they are 
 the positive discoveries of Newton, which, 
 in the eye of a superficial public, confer up- 
 on him all his reputation. He discovered 
 the mechanism of the planetary system. 
 He discovered the composition of light. 
 He discovered the cause of those alternate 
 movements which take place on the waters 
 of the ocean. These form his actual and 
 his visible achievements. These are what 
 the world look at as the monuments of his 
 greatness. These are doctrines by which 
 he has enriched the field of philosophy; 
 and thus it is that the whole of his merit is 
 supposed to lie in having had the sagacity 
 to perceive, and the vigour to lay hold of 
 the proofs, which conferred upon these doc- 
 trines all the establishment of a most rigid 
 and conclusive demonstration. 
 
 But, while he gets all his credit, and all 
 his admiration for those articles of science 
 which he has added to the creed of philoso- 
 phers, he deserves as much credit and ad- 
 miration for those articles which he kept 
 out of his creed, as for those which he in- 
 troduced into it. It was the property of his 
 mind, that it kept a tenacious hold of every 
 one position which had proof to substanti- 
 ate it — but it forms a property equally cha- 
 racteristic, and which, in fact, gives its 
 leading peculiarity to tlie whole spirit and 
 style of his investigations, that he put a 
 most determined exclusion on every one 
 position that was destitute of such proof. 
 He would not admit the astronomical theo- 
 ries of those who went befiire him, because 
 they had no proof. He would not give in 
 to their notions about the planets wheeling 
 their rounds in v\'hirlpools of ether — for he 
 did not see this ether — he had no proof of 
 its existence — and, besides, even supposing 
 it to exist, it would not have impressed, on 
 the heavenly bodies, such movements as 
 met his observation. He would not submit 
 his judgment to the reigning systems of the 
 day — for, though they had authority to re- 
 commend them, they had no proof: and 
 thus it is, that he evinced the strength and 
 the soundness of his philosophy, as much 
 by his decisions upon those doctrines of sci- 
 ence which he rejected, as by his demon- 
 stration of those doctrines of science, which 
 he was the first to propose, and whicli now 
 stand out to the eye of posterity as the only 
 monuments to the force and superiority of 
 his understanding. 
 
 He wanted no other recommendation for 
 any one article of science, than the recom- 
 mendation of evidence — and, with this re- 
 commendation, he opened to it the chamber 
 
 of his mind, though anthority scowled upon 
 it, and taste was disgusted by it, and fashion 
 was ashamed of it, and all the beauteous 
 speculation of former days was cruelly 
 broken up by this new announcement of 
 the better philosophy, and scattered like 
 the fragments of an aerial vision, over 
 which the past generations of the world 
 had been slumbering their profound and 
 their pleasing reverie. But, on the other 
 hand, should the article of science want 
 the recommendation of evidence, he shut 
 against it all the avenues of his understand- 
 ing — aye, and though all antiquity lent 
 their suffrages to it, and all eloquence had 
 thrown around it the most attractive bril- 
 liancy, and all habit had incorporated it 
 with every sj^stem of every seminary in 
 Europe, and all fancy had arrayed it in 
 graces of the most tempting solicitation; 
 yet was the steady and inflexible mind of 
 Newton proof against this whole weight of 
 authority and allurement, and, casting his 
 cold and unwelcome look at the specious 
 plausibility, he rebuked it from his presence. 
 The strength of his philosophy lay as much 
 in refusing admittance to that which want- 
 ed evidence, as in giving a place and an oc- 
 cupancy to that which possessed it. In 
 that march of intellect, which led him on- 
 wards through the rich and magnificent 
 field of his discoveries, he pondered every 
 step; and, while he advanced with a firm 
 and assured movement, wherever the light 
 of evidence carried him, he never suffered 
 any glare of imagination or prejudice to se- 
 duce him from his path. 
 
 Sure I am, that, in the prosecution of his 
 wonderful career, he found himself on a 
 way beset with temptation upon every side 
 of him. It was not merely that he had the 
 reigning taste and philosophy of the times 
 to contend with ; but, he expatiated on a 
 lofty region, where, in all the giddiness of 
 success, he might have met with much to 
 solicit his fancy, and tempt liim to some 
 devious speculation. Had he been like the 
 majority of other men, he would have bro- 
 ken free from the fetters of a sober and 
 chastised understanding, and, giving wing 
 to his imagination, had done what philoso- 
 phers have done after him — been carried 
 away by some meteor of their own forming, 
 or found their amusement in some of their 
 own intellectual pictures, or palmed some 
 loose and confident plausibilities of their 
 own upon the world. But Newton stood 
 true to his principle, that he would take up 
 with nothing which wanted evidence, and 
 he kept by his demonstrations, and his 
 measurements, and his proofs; and, if it be 
 true that he who ruleth his own spirit is 
 greater than he who taketh a city, there 
 was won, in the solitude of his chamber, 
 many a repeated victory over him.self, which* 
 should give a brighter lustre to hii: rarae 
 
372 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 than all the conquests he has made on the 
 field of discovery, or than all the splendour 
 of his positive acliievements. 
 
 I trust you understand, liow, though it 
 be one of the maxims of the true philoso- 
 phy, never to shrink from a doctrine which 
 has evidence on its side, it is another max- 
 im, equally essential to it, never to harbour 
 any doctrine when this evidence is want- 
 ing. Take these two maxims along with 
 you, and you will be at no loss to explain 
 the peculiarity, which, more than any other, 
 goes both to characterise and to ennoble 
 the philosophy of Newton. What I allude 
 to is, the precious combination of its 
 strength and of its modesty. On the one 
 hand, what greater evidence of strength 
 than the fulfilment of that mighty enter- 
 prise, by which the heavens have been 
 made its own, and tlie mechanism of un- 
 numbered worlds has been brought within 
 the grasp of the human understanding? 
 Now, it was by walking in the light of a 
 sound and competent evidence, that all this 
 was accomplished. It was by the patient, 
 the strenuous, the unfaltering application 
 of the legitimate instruments of discovery. 
 It was by touching that which was tangi- 
 ble, and looking to that which was visible, 
 and computing that which was measure- 
 able, and in one word, by making a right 
 and a reasonable use of all that proof which 
 the field of nature around us has brought 
 within the limit of sensible observation. 
 This is the arena on which the modern 
 philosophy has won all her victories, and 
 fulfilled all her wondrous achievements, and 
 reared all her proud and enduring monu- 
 ments, and gathered all her magnificent 
 trophies to that power of intellect with 
 which the hand .of V bounteous heaven 
 has so richly gifted the constitution of our 
 species. 
 
 ^ But,*'on the other hand, go beyond the 
 *iimits of sensible observation, and, from that 
 moment, the genuine disciples of this en- 
 lightened school cast all their confidence 
 and all their intrepidity away from them. 
 Keep them on the firm ground of experi- 
 ment, and none more bold and more deci- 
 sive in their announcements of all tliat they 
 have evidence for — but, off this ground, 
 none more humble, or more cautious of any 
 thing like positive announcem.ents, than 
 they. They choose neither to know, nor 
 to believe, nor to assert, where evidence is 
 wanting ; and they will sit, with all the pa- 
 tience of a scholar to his task, till they have 
 found it. They are utter strangers to that 
 haughty confidence with which some phi- 
 losophers of the day sport the plausibilities 
 of unauthorised speculation, and by which, 
 immindful of the limit that separates the 
 region of sense from the region of conjec- 
 ture, they make their blind and their im- 
 petuous inroads into a province which does 
 
 not belong to them. There is no one object 
 to which the exercised mind of a true New- 
 tonian disciple is more familiarized than 
 this limit, and it serves as a boundary by 
 which he shapes, and bounds, and regulates, 
 all the enterprises of his philosophy. AH 
 tlie space which lies within this limit, he 
 cultivates to the uttermost, and it is by such 
 successive labours, that every year which 
 rolls ever the world, is witnessing some 
 new contribution to experimental science, 
 and adding to the solidity and aggrandize- 
 ment of this wonderful fabric. But, if true 
 to their own principle, then, in reference to 
 the forbidden gi'ound which lies without 
 this limit, those very men, who, on the field 
 of warranted exertion, evinced all the hardi- 
 liood and vigour of a full grown under- 
 standing, show, on every subject where the 
 light of evidence is withheld from them, all 
 the modesty of children. They give you 
 positive opinion only when they have in- 
 disputable proof— but, when they have no 
 such proof, then they have no such opinion. 
 The single principle of their respect to truth, 
 secure their homage for every one posi- 
 tion, where the evidence of truth is present, 
 and, at the same time, begets an entire dif- 
 fidence about every one position, from Avhich 
 this evidence is disjoined. And thus you 
 may understand, how the first man in the 
 accomplishments of philosophy, which the 
 world ever saw, sat at the book of nature 
 in the humble attitude of its interpreter and 
 its pupil — how all the docility of conscious 
 ignorance threw a sweet and softening lus- 
 tre around the radiance even of his most 
 splendid discoveries — and, while tlie flip- 
 pancy of a few superficial acquirements is 
 enough to place a philosopher of the day 
 on the pedestal of his fancied elevation, and 
 to vest him with an assumed lordship over 
 the whole domain of natural and revealed 
 knowledge; I cannot forbear to do honour 
 to the unpretending greatness of Newton, 
 than whom I know not if there ever lighted 
 on the face of our world, one in the charac- 
 ter of whose admirable genius so much 
 force and so much humility were more at- 
 tractively blended. 
 
 I now propose to carry you forward, by 
 a few simple illustrations, to the argument 
 of this day. All the sublime truths of th 
 modern astronomy lie within tlie field of 
 actual observation, and have the firm evi- 
 dence to rest upon of all that information 
 which is conveyed to us by the avenue of 
 the senses. Sir Isaac Newton never went 
 beyond this field, without a reverential im- 
 pression upon his mind, of the precarious- 
 ness of the ground on which he was stand- 
 ing. On thfs ground, he never ventured a 
 positive affirmation— but, resigning the lofty 
 tone of demonstration, and putting on the 
 modesty of conscious ignorance, he brought 
 forward all he had to say in the humble 
 
THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 373 
 
 form of a doubt, or a conjecture, or a ques- 
 tion. Biit, what he had not confidence to do, 
 other philosophers have done after him — 
 and they have winged their audacious way 
 into forbidden regions — and they have 
 crossed that circle by which the field of 
 observation is enclosed — and there have 
 they debated and dogmatized with all the 
 pride of a most intolerant assurance. 
 
 Now. though the case be imaginary, let 
 us conceive, for the sake of illustration, 
 that one of these philosophers made so ex- 
 travagant a departure from the sobriety of 
 experimental science, as to pass from the 
 astronomy of the different planets, and to 
 attempt the natural history of their animal 
 and vegetable kingdoms. He might get 
 hold of some vague and general analogies, 
 to throw an air of plausibilit}^ around his 
 speculation. He might pass from the botany 
 of the different regions of the globe that we 
 inhabit, and make his loose and confident 
 application to each of the other planets, ac- 
 cording to its distance from the sun, and 
 the inchnation of its axis to the plane of its 
 annual revolution; and out of some such 
 slender materials, he may work up an 
 amusing [ihilosophical romance, full of in- 
 genuit}^, and having, withal, the colour of 
 truth and of consistency spread over it. 
 
 I can conceive how a superficial public 
 might be delighted by the eloquence of such 
 a composition, and even be impressed by 
 Its arguments; but were I asked, which is 
 the man of all the ages and countries in 
 the world, who would have the least respect 
 for this treatise upon the plants which gi'ow 
 on the surface of Jupiter, I should be at no 
 loss to answer the question. I should say, 
 that it would be he who had computed the 
 motions of Jupiter — that it would be he 
 who had measured the bulk and the density 
 of Jupiter — that it would be he who had 
 estimated the periods of Jupiter — that it 
 would be he whose observant eye and pa- 
 tiently calculating mind, had traced the 
 satellites of Jupiter through all the rounds 
 of their mazy circulation, and unravelled 
 the intricacy of all their movements. He 
 would see at once that the subject lay at a 
 hopeless distance beyond the field of legiti- 
 mate observation. It would be quite enough 
 for him, that it was beyond the range of 
 his telescope. On this ground, and on this 
 ground only, would he reject it as one of 
 the puniest imbecilities of childhood. As 
 to any character of truth or of importance, 
 it would have no more effect on such a 
 mind as that of Newton, than any illusion of 
 poetry; and from the eminence of his intel- 
 lectual throne, would he cast a penetrating 
 glance at the whole speculation, and bid its 
 gaudy insignificance away from him. 
 
 But let us pass onward to another case, 
 which, though as imaginary as the former, 
 may still serve the purpose of illustration. 
 
 This same adventurous philosopher may 
 be conceived to shift his speculation from 
 the plants of another world to the character 
 of its inhabitants. He may avail himself 
 of some slender correspondencies between 
 the heat of the sun and the moral tempera- 
 ment of the people it shines upon. He may 
 work up a theory, wliich carries on the front 
 of it some of the characters of plausibility: 
 but surely it does not require the philoso- 
 phy of Newton to demonstrate the folly of 
 such an enterprise. There is not a man of 
 plain understanding, who does not perceive 
 that this said ambitious inquirer has got 
 without his reach — that he has stepped be- 
 yond the field of experience, and is now 
 expatiating on the field of imagination — 
 that he has ventured on a dark unknown, 
 where the wisest of all philosophy, is the 
 philosophy of silence, and a profession of 
 ignorance is the bc^ evidence of a solid 
 understanding; that if he thinks he knows 
 any thing on such a subject as this, he 
 knov^'eth nothing j'^ct as he ought to know. 
 He knows not what Newton knew, and 
 what he kept a steady eye upon throughout 
 the whole march of his sublime investiga- 
 tions. He knows not the limit of his own 
 faculties. He has overleaped ihe barrier 
 which hem.s in all the possibilities of human 
 attainment. He has wantonly flung hnn- 
 self off from the safe and firm field of ob- 
 servation, and got on tliat undiscoverahle 
 ground, where, bj^ everj^ step he takes, he 
 widens his distance from the true philoso- 
 phy, and by every affirmation he utters, 
 he rebels against the authority of all its 
 maxims. 
 
 I can conceive it the feeling of every one 
 of you, that I have hitherto indulged in a 
 vain expense of argument, and it is most 
 natural for you to put the question, "\Miat 
 is the precise point of convergence to which 
 I am directing all the light of this abundant 
 and seemingly superfluous illustration?" 
 
 In the astronomical objection which in- 
 fidelit}'' has proposed against the truth of 
 the Christian revelation, there is first an 
 assertion, and then an argument. The as- 
 sertion is, that Christianity is set up for 
 the exclusive benefit of our minute and 
 solitary world. The argument is, that God 
 would not lavish such a quantity of atten- 
 tion on so insignificant a field. Even though 
 the assertion were admitted, I should have 
 a quarrel with the argument. But the fu- 
 tility of the objection is not laid open in all 
 its extent, unless ^ve expose the utter Avant 
 of all essential evidence even for the truth 
 of the assertion. How do infidels know 
 that Christianity is set up for the single 
 benefit of this earth and its inhabitants? 
 How are they able to tell us, tliat if you 
 go to other planets, the person and the re- 
 ligion of Jesus, are ther^ unknown to them ? 
 We challenge them to the proof of this said 
 
374 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 [disc 
 
 positive announcement of theirs. We see 
 in this objection the same rash and gratui- 
 tous procedure, which was so apparent in 
 Uie two cases that we have ah-eady advan- 
 ced for the purpose of ilhistration. We see 
 in it the same glaring transgression on the 
 spirit and the maxims of that very philoso- 
 phy which they profess to idolize. They 
 have made their argument against us, out 
 of an assertion which has positively no feet 
 to rest upon — an assertion which they have 
 no means whatever of verifying — an asser- 
 tion, the truth or the falsehood of which 
 can only be gathered out of some super- 
 natural message ; for it lies completely be- 
 yond the range of human observation. It 
 is willingly admitted, that by an attempt 
 at the botany of other worlds, the true 
 method of philosophising is trampled on ; 
 for this is a subject that lies beyond the 
 range of actual observation, and every per- 
 formance upon it must be made up of as- 
 sertions Avithout proofs. It is also v/illingly 
 admitted, that an attempt at the civil and 
 political history of their people, would be 
 an equally extra\agant departure from the 
 spirit of the true philosophy ; for this also 
 lies beyond the field of actual observation ; 
 and all that could possibly be mustered up 
 on such a subject as this, would still be as- 
 sertions without proofs. Now, the theology 
 of these planets, is, in every way, as inac- 
 cessible a subject as their politics or their 
 natural history ; and therefore it is, that the 
 objection, grounded on the confident as- 
 sumption of those infidel astronomers, who 
 assert Christianity, to be the religion of this 
 one world, or that the religion of these 
 other worlds is not our very Christianity, 
 can have no influence on a mind that has 
 derived its habits of thinking from the pure 
 and rigorous school of Newton ; for the 
 whole of this assertion is just as glaringly 
 destitute, as in the two former instances, 
 of proof. 
 
 The man who could embark in an enter- 
 prise so foolish and so fanciful, as to theorise 
 it on the details of the botany of another 
 world, or to theorise it on the natural and 
 moral history of its people, is just making 
 as outrageous a departure from all sense, 
 and science, and all sobriety, when he pre- 
 sumes to speculate, or to assert on the de- 
 tails or the methods of God's administra- 
 tion among its rational and accountable in- 
 habitants. He wings his fancy to as haz- 
 ardous a region, and vainly strives a pene- 
 trating vision through the mantle of as 
 deep an obscurity. All the elements of 
 such a speculation are hidden from him. 
 For any thing he can tell, sin has found its 
 way into these other worlds. For any t'uing 
 he can tell, their people have banished them- 
 selves from communion with God. For 
 any thing he can tell, m^ny a visit has 
 been made to each of them, on the subject 
 
 of our common Christianity, by commis 
 sioned messengers from the throne of the 
 Eternal. For any thing he can tell, the 
 redemption proclaimed to us is not one 
 solitary instance, or not the whole of that 
 redemption which is by the Son of God — 
 but only our part in a plan of mercy, equal 
 in magnificence to all that astronomy has 
 brought within the range of Inmian con- 
 templation. Fur any thing he can tell, the 
 moral pestilence, which \Aalks abroad over 
 the face of our world, may have spread its 
 desolation over all the planets of all the 
 systems, which the telescope has made 
 known to us. For any thing he can tell, 
 some mighty redemption has been devised 
 in heaven, to meet this disaster in the whole 
 extent and malignity of its visitations. For 
 any thing he can tell, the wonder working 
 God, who has strewed the field of immen- 
 sity with so many worlds, and spread the 
 shelter of his omnipotence over them, may 
 have sent a message of love to each, and 
 re-assured the hearts of its despairing peo- 
 ple by some overpowering manifestation 
 of tenderness. For any thing he can tell, 
 angels from paradise may have sped to 
 every planet their delegated way, and sung, 
 from each azure canopy, a joyful annuncia- 
 tion, and said, " Peace be to this residence, 
 and good will to all its families, and glorj^ 
 to. Him in the highest, who, from the emi- 
 nency of his throne, has issued an act of 
 grace so magnificent, as to carry the tidings 
 of life and of acceptance to the unnumber- 
 ed orbs of a sinful creation." For any thing 
 he can tell, the Eternal Son, of Avhom it is 
 said, that by him the worlds were created, 
 may have had the government of many 
 sinful worlds laid upon his shoulders ; and 
 by the power of his mysterious word, have 
 awoke them all from that spiritual death, 
 to which they had sunk in lethargy as pro- 
 found as the slumbers of nonexistence. 
 For any thing he can tell, the one Spirit 
 who moved on the face of the waters, and 
 whose presiding influence it was, that hush- 
 ed the wild war of nature's elements, and 
 made a beauteous system emerge out of its 
 disjointed materials, may now be working 
 with the fragments of another chaos ; and 
 educing order, and obedience, and harmo- 
 ny, out of the wrecks of a moral rebellion, 
 which reaches through all these spheres, 
 and spreads disorder to the uttermost limits 
 of our astronomy. 
 
 Rut, here I stop — nor shall I attempt to 
 grope my dark and fatiguing way, by 
 another inch, among such sublime and mys- 
 terious secrecies. It is not I who am oflTer- 
 ing to lilt this curtain. It is not I who am 
 pitching my adventurous flight to the se- 
 cret things which belong to God, away 
 from the things that are revealed, and 
 which belong to me and to my children. 
 It is the champion of that very infidelity 
 
II.] 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 375 
 
 which I am now combating. It is he who 
 props his unchristian argument, by pre- 
 sumptions fetched out of those untravelled 
 obscurities wliich lie on the other side of a 
 barrier that I pronounce to be impassable. 
 It is he who transgresses the limits which 
 Newton forbore to enter; because, with a 
 justness which reigns throughout all his in- 
 quiries, he saw the limit of his own under- 
 standing, nor would he venture himself be- 
 yond it. It is he who has borrowed from 
 the philosophy of this wondrous man, a few 
 dazzling conceptions, which have only served 
 to bewilder him — while, an utter stranger 
 to the spirit of this philosophy, he has car- 
 ried a daring and an ignorant speculation 
 far beyond the boundary of its prescribed 
 and allowable enterprises. It is he who 
 has mustered against the truths of the Gos- 
 pel, resting, as it does, on the evidence 
 within the reach of his faculties, an objec- 
 tion, for the truth of which he has no evi- 
 dence whatever. It is he who puts away 
 from him a doctrine, for which he has the 
 substantial and the familiar proof of human 
 testimony; and substitutes in its place a 
 doctrine for which he can get no other sup- 
 port than from a reverie of his own imagi- 
 nation. It is he who turns aside from all 
 that safe and certain argument, that is sup- 
 plied by the history of this world, of which 
 he knows something ; and who loses him- 
 self in the work of theorising about other 
 worlds, of the moral and theological history 
 of which he positively knows nothing. 
 Upon him, and not upon us, lies the folly 
 of launching his impetuous way beyond 
 the province of observation — of letting his 
 fancy afloat among the unknown of distant 
 and mysterious regions ; and by an act of 
 daring, as impious as it is unphilosophical, 
 of trying to unwrap that shroud, Avhich, till 
 drawn aside by the hand of a messenger 
 from heaven, will ever veil, from human 
 eye, the purposes of the Eternal 
 
 If you have gone along with aie in the 
 preceding observations, you will perceive 
 how they are calculated to disarm of all its 
 point and all its energy, that flippancy of 
 Voltaire ; when, in the examples he gives 
 of the dotage of the human understanding, 
 he tells us of Bacon having believed in 
 witchcraft, and Sir Isaac Newton having 
 written a Commentary on the Book of Re- 
 velation. The former instance we shall 
 not undertake to vindicate ; but in the lat- 
 ter instance, we perceive what this brilliant 
 and spacious, but withal superficial, apostle 
 of infidelity, either did not see, or refused 
 to acknowledge. We see in this intellec- 
 tual labour of our great philosopher, the 
 working of the very same principles which 
 carried him through the profoundest and 
 the most successful of his investigations ; 
 and iiow he kept most sacredly and most 
 consistently by those very maxims, the 
 
 authority of which he, even in the full 
 vigor and manhood of his faculties, ever 
 recognized. We see in the theology of 
 Newton, the very spirit and principle which 
 gave all its stability, and all its sureness, to 
 the philosophy of Newton. We see the 
 same tenacious adherence to every one doc- 
 trine, that had such valid proof to uphold 
 it, as could be gathered from the field of 
 humaii experience ; and we see the same 
 firm resistance of every one argument, that 
 had nothing to recommend it, but such 
 plausibilities as could easily be devised by 
 the genius of man, when he expatiated 
 abroad on those fields of creation, which 
 the eye never witnessed, and from which 
 no messenger ever came to us with any 
 credible information. Now, it Avas on the 
 former of these two principles that Newton 
 clung so determinedly to his Bible, as the 
 record of an actual annunciation from God 
 to the inhabitants of this world. When he 
 turned his attention to this book, he came 
 to it with a mind tutored to the philosophy 
 of facts — and, when he looked at its cre- 
 dentials, he saw the stamp and the impress 
 of this philosophy on every one of them. 
 He saw the fact of Christ being a messen- 
 ger from heaven, in the audible language 
 by which it was conveyed from heaven's 
 canopy to human ears. He saw the fact 
 of his being an approved ambassador of 
 God, in those miracles which carried their 
 own resistless evidence along with them to 
 human eyes. He saw the truth of this 
 whole history brought home to his own 
 conviction, by a sound and substantial ve- 
 hicle of human testimony. He saw the 
 reality of that supernatural light, which in- 
 spired the prophecies he himself illustrated, 
 by such an agreement with the events of a 
 various and distant futurity as could be 
 taken cognizance of by human observation. 
 He saw the wisdom of God pervading the 
 whole substance of the written message, in 
 such manifold adaptations to the circum- 
 stances of man, and to the whole secrecy 
 of his thoughts, and his affections, and his 
 spiritual wants, and his moral sensibilities, 
 as even in the mind of an ordinary and un- 
 lettered peasant, can be attested by human 
 consciousness. These formed the solid ma- 
 terials of the basis on which our experi- 
 mental philosopher stood ; and there was 
 nothing in the whole compass of his own 
 astronomy to dazzle him away from it ; and 
 he was too well aware of the limit between 
 what he knew and what he did not know, 
 to be seduced from the ground he had 
 taken, by any of those brilliancies w^hich 
 have since led so many of his humbler suc- 
 cessors into the track of infidelity. He had 
 measured the distances of these planets. 
 He had calculated their periods.- He had 
 estimated their figures, and their bulk, and 
 their densities, and he had subordinated the 
 
376 
 
 THE MODESTY OF TRUE SCIENCE. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 whole intricacj' of their movements to the 
 simple and sublime agency of one com- 
 manding principle. But he had too much 
 of the ballast of a substantial understanding 
 about him, to be thrown afloat by all this 
 success among the plausibilities of wanton 
 and unauthorized speculation. He knew 
 the boundary which hemmed him. He knew 
 that he had not thrown one particle of light 
 on the moral or religious history of these 
 planetary regions. He had not ascertained 
 what visits of communication they received 
 from the God who upholds them. But he 
 knew that the fact of a real visit made to 
 this planet, had such evidence to rest upon, 
 ^ that it was not to be disposted by any aerial 
 imagination. And wlien I look at the steady 
 and unmoved Christianity of this wonder- 
 ful man ; so far from seeing any symptom 
 of dotage and imbecility, or any forgetful- 
 ness of those principles on which the fabric 
 of his philosophy is reared ; do I see that 
 in sitting down to the work of a Bible Com- 
 mentator, he hath given us their most 
 beautiful and most consistent exemplifica- 
 tion. 
 
 I did not anticipate such a length of time, 
 and of illustration, in this stage of my ar- 
 gument. But I will not regret it, if I have 
 familiarised the minds of any of my readers 
 to the reigning principle of this Discourse. 
 We are strongly disposed to think, that it 
 :« a principle which miglit be made to ap- 
 ply to every argument of every unbeliever 
 — and so to serve not merely as an anti- 
 dote against the infidelity of astronomers, 
 but to serve as an antidote against all infi- 
 delity. We are well aware of the diversity 
 of complexion which infidelity puts on. It 
 looks one thing in the man of science and 
 of liberal accomplishment. It looks another 
 thing in the refined voluptuarj'. It looks 
 still another thing in the common-place 
 railer against the artifices of priestly domi- 
 nation. It looks another thing in the dark 
 and unsettled spirit of him, wiiose every 
 reflection is tinctured with gall, and who 
 casts his envious and malignant scowl at 
 all that stands associated witli the esta- 
 blished order of society. It looks another 
 thing in the prosperous man of business, 
 who has neither time nor patience for the 
 details of the christian evidence — but who, 
 amid tlie hurry of his other occupations, 
 has gathered as many of the lighter petu- 
 lances of the infidel writers, and caught 
 from the perusal of them, as contemptuous 
 a tone towards the religion of the New 
 Testament, as to set him at large from all 
 the decencies of rQiigious observation, and 
 to give him the disdain of an elevated com- 
 placency over all the follies of what he 
 ?ounts a vulgar superstition. 
 
 \nd, lastly, for infidelity has now got 
 down among us to the humblest walks of 
 life ; may it occasionally be seen lowering 
 
 on the forehead of the resolute and hardy 
 artificer, wlio can lift his menacing voice 
 against the priesthood, and, looking on the 
 Bible as a jugglery of theirs, can bid stout 
 defiance to all its denunciations. Now, 
 under all these varieties, we think that 
 there might be detected the one and uni- 
 versal principle which we have attempted 
 to expose. The something, whatever it is, 
 which has dispossessed all these people of 
 their Christianity, exists in their minds, in 
 the shape of a position, which they hold to 
 be true, but Avhich, by no legitimate evi 
 dence, they have ever reahzed — and a po- 
 sition which lodges within them as a wil- 
 ful fancy or presumption of their own, 
 but which could not stand the touch- 
 stone of that wise and solid principle, in 
 virtue of which, the followers of Newton 
 give to observation the precedence over 
 theory. It is a principle altogether worthy 
 of being laboured — as. if carried round in 
 faithful and consistent application among 
 these numerous varieties, it is able to break 
 up all the existing infidelity of the world. 
 
 But there is one other most important 
 conclusion to which it carries us. It car- 
 ries us, with all the docilitj' of children, to 
 the Bible; and puts us down into the atti- 
 tude of an unreserved surrender of thougJit 
 and understanding, to its authoritative in- 
 formation. Without the testimony of an 
 authentic messenger from heaven, I know 
 nothing of heaven's counsels. I never heard 
 of any moral telescope that can bring to 
 my observation the doings or the delibera- 
 tions which are taking place in the sanc- 
 tuary of the Eternal. I may put into the 
 registers of my belief, all that comes home 
 to me through the senses of the outer man, 
 or by the consciousness of the inner man. 
 But neither the one nor the other can tell 
 me of the purposes of God ; can tell me of 
 the transactions or the designs of his sub- 
 lime monarchy: can tell me of the goings 
 forth of Him who is from everlasting unto 
 everlasting ; can tell me of the march and 
 the movements of that great administration 
 which embraces all worlds, and takes into 
 its wide and comprehensive survey the 
 mighty roll of innumerable ages. It is true 
 that my fiincy may break its impetuous 
 way into this lofty and inaccessible field ; 
 and through the devices of my heart, which 
 are many, the visions of an ever-shifting 
 theology" may take their alternate sway 
 over me ; but the counsel of the Lord, it 
 shall stand. And I repeat it, that if true 
 to the leading principle of that philosophy, 
 which has poured such a flood of light over 
 the mysteries of nature, we shall dismiss 
 every self-formed conception of our own, 
 and wait in all the humility of conscious 
 ianorance, till the Lord himself shall break 
 liis silence, and make his counsel known, 
 bv an act of communication. And now 
 
in.] 
 
 EXTENT OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 377 
 
 that a professed communication is before 
 me, and tliat it lias all the solidity of the 
 experimental evidence on its side, and 
 nothing but the reveries of a daring specu- 
 lation to oppose it, what is the consistent, 
 what is the rational, what is the philoso- 
 phical use that should be made of tliis doc- 
 ument, but to set me down like a school- 
 boy, to the work of turning its pages, and 
 conning its lessons, and submitting the 
 every exercise of my judgment to its infor- 
 mation and its testimony ? We know that 
 there is a superficial philosophy, which 
 casts the glare of a most seducing brilliancy 
 around itj and spurns the Bible, with all 
 
 the doctrine, and all the piety of the Bible, 
 away from it ; and has infused tlie spirit of 
 Antichrist into many of the literary esta- 
 blishments of the age ; but it is not tlie solid, 
 tlie profound, the cautious spirit of that 
 pliilosophy, which has done so much to 
 ennoble the modern period of our world ; 
 for the more that tills spirit is cultivated 
 and understood, the more will it be found 
 in alliance with that spirit, in virtue of 
 which all that exaltcth itself against the 
 knowledge of God, is humbled, and all lofty 
 imaginations are cast down, and every 
 thought of the heart is brought into the 
 captivity of the obedience of Christ. 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 On the Extent of the Divine Condescension. 
 
 " Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high ? Who humbleth himself to behold the things 
 that are in heaven, and in the earth ?" — Psalm cxiii. 5, 6. 
 
 In our last discourse we attempted to ex- 
 pose the total want of evidence for the as- 
 sertion of the infidel astronomer — and tliis 
 reduces tlie whole of our remaining contro- 
 versy with him to the business of arguing 
 against a mere possibility. Still, however, 
 the answer is not so complete as it might 
 be, till the soundness of the argument be at- 
 tended to, as well as the credibility of the 
 assertion — or, in other words, let us admit 
 the assertion, and take a view of the reason- 
 ing which has been constructed upon it. 
 
 We have already attempted to lay before 
 you the wonderful extent of that space, 
 teeming with unnumbered worlds, which 
 modern science has brought within the cir- 
 cle of its discoveries. We even ventured to 
 expatiate on those tracts of infinity, which 
 lie on the other side of all that eye or that 
 telescope hath made known to us — to shoot 
 afar into those ulterior regions which are 
 beyond the limits of our astronomy — to im- 
 press you with the rashness of the imagina- 
 tion, that the creative energy of God had 
 sunk exhausted by the magnitude of its ef- 
 forts, at that very line, through which the 
 art of man, lavished as it has been on the 
 work of perfecting the instruments of vision, 
 has not yet been able to penetrate : and 
 upon all this we hazarded the assertion, 
 that though all these visible heavens were 
 to rush into annihilation, and the besom of 
 the Almighty's wrath were to sweep from 
 the face of the universe, those millions, and 
 millions more of suns and of systems, which 
 lie within the grasp of our actual observation 
 — that this event, which, to our eye, would 
 leave so wide, and so dismal a solitude be- 
 hind it, might be nothing in the eye of Him 
 48 
 
 who could take in the wliole, but the disap- 
 pearance of a little speck from that field of 
 created things, whicli the hand of his om- 
 nipotence had thrown around him. 
 
 But to press home the sentiment of the 
 text, it is not necessary to stretch the im- 
 agination beyond the limit of our actual dis- 
 coveries. It is enough to strike our minds 
 with the insignificance of this world, and of 
 all who inhabit it, to bring it into measure- 
 ment with that mighty assemblage of worlds, 
 which lie open to the eye of man, aided as 
 it has been by the inventions of his genius. 
 When we told you of the eighty millions 
 of suns, each occupying his own independ- 
 ent territory in space, and dispensing his own 
 influences over a cluster of tributarj^ worlds , 
 this world could not fail to sink into little- 
 ness in the eye of him who looked to all the 
 magnitude and variety which are around 
 it. We gave you but a feeble image of our 
 comparative insignificance, when we said 
 that the glories of an extended forest would 
 suflfer no more from the fall of a single leaf, 
 than the glories of this extended universe 
 would suflTer, though the globe we tread, 
 " and all that it inherits, should dissolve." 
 And when we lift our conceptions to Him 
 who has peopled immensity with all these 
 wonders — who sits enthroned on the mag- 
 nificence of his own works, and by one sub- 
 lime idea can embrace the whole extent of 
 that boundless amplitude, which he has 
 filled with the trophies of his divinity: we 
 cannot but resign our whole heart to the 
 Psalmist's exclamation of "What is man, 
 that thou art mindful of him, or the son ot 
 man, that thou shouldest deign to vish 
 him!" 
 
378 
 
 EXTENT OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 Now mark the use to which all this has 
 been turned by the genius of infidelity. 
 Such a humble portion of the universe as 
 ours, could never have been the object of 
 such iiigh and distinguishing attentions as 
 Christianity has assigned to it. God would 
 not have manifested himself in the flesh for 
 the salvation of so paltry a world. The 
 monarch of a whole continent, would never 
 move from his capital, and lay aside the 
 splendour of royalty, and subject himself 
 for months, or for years, to perils, and 
 poverty, and persecution ; and take up his 
 abode in some small islet of his dominions, 
 which, though swallowed by an earthquake, 
 could not be missed amid the glories of so 
 wide an empire ; and all this to regain the 
 lost aiiections of a few families upon its 
 surface. And neither would the eternal Son 
 of God— he who is revealed to us as having 
 made all worlds, and as holding an empire, 
 amid the splendours of which the globe that 
 we inherit, is shaded insignificance; neither 
 would he strip himself of the glory he had 
 with the Father before the world was, and 
 light on this lower .scene, for the purpose 
 imputed to liimin the New Testament. Im- 
 possible, that the concerns of this puny ball, 
 which floats its little round among an in- 
 finity of larger worlds, should be of such 
 mighty account in the plans of the Eternal, 
 or should have given birth in heaven to so 
 wonderful a movement, as the Son of God 
 putting on the form of our degraded 
 species, and sojourning among us, and 
 sharing in all our infirmities, and crown- 
 ing the whole scene of humiliation by the 
 disgrace and the agonies of a cruel martyr- 
 dom. 
 
 This has been started as a difiiculty in 
 the way of the Christian Revelation ; and 
 it is the boast of many of our philosophical 
 infidels, that by the light of modern disco- 
 very, the light of the New Testament is 
 eclipsed and overborne ; and the mischief 
 is not confined to philosophers, for the argu- 
 ment has got into other hands, and the 
 popular illustrations that are now given to 
 the sublimest truths of science, have widely 
 disseminated all the deism that has been 
 grafted upon it ; and thehigh tone of a decided 
 contempt for the Gospel, is now associated 
 with the flippancy of superficial acquire- 
 ments: and, while the venerable Newton, 
 whose genius threw open those mighty fields 
 of contemplation, found a fit exercise for his 
 powers in the interpretation of the Bible, 
 there are thousands and tens of thousands, 
 who, though walking in the light which he 
 holds out to them, are seduced by a com- 
 placency which he never felt, and inflated 
 by a pride which never entered into his 
 pious and philosophical bosom, and whose 
 only notice of the Bible, is to depreciate, 
 ^nd tn deride, and to disown it. 
 
 Before entering into what we conceive to 
 
 be the right answer to this objection, let us 
 previously observe, that it goes to strip the 
 Deity of an attribute which forms a wonder- 
 ful addition to the glories of his hicompre- 
 hensible character. It is indeed a mighty 
 evidence of the strength of his arm, that so 
 many millions of worlds are suspended on 
 it; but it would surely make the high attri- 
 bute of his power more illustrious, if while 
 it expatiated at large among the suns and 
 the systems of astronomy, it could, at the 
 very same instant, be impressing a move- 
 ment and a direction on all tiie minuter 
 wheels of that machinery, which is work- 
 ing incessantly around us. It forms a no- 
 ble demonstration of his wisdom, that he 
 gives unremitting operation to those laws 
 which uphold the stability of this great uni- 
 verse ; but it would go to heighten that 
 wisdom inconceivably, if while equal to the 
 magnificent task of maintaining the order 
 and harmony of the spheres, it was lavish- 
 ing its inexhaustible resources on the beau- 
 ties, and varieties, and arrangements, of 
 every one scene, however humble, of every 
 one field, however narrow, of the creation he 
 had formed. It is a cheering evidence of 
 the delight he takes in communicating hap- 
 piness, that the whole of immensity should 
 be so strewed with the habitations of life 
 and of intelligence ; but it would surely 
 bring home the evidence, with a nearer and 
 more affecting impression, to every bosom, 
 did we know, that at the very time his be- 
 nignant regard look in the mighty circle of 
 created beings, there was not a single fami- 
 ly overlooked by him, and that every indi- 
 vidual in every corner of his doininiona 
 was as eflfectually seen to, as if the objec 
 of an exclusive and undivided care. It is 
 our imperfection, that we cannot give oiu 
 attention to more than one object at one 
 and the same instant of time ; but surely il 
 would elevate our every idea of the perfec- 
 tions of God, did we know, that while hia 
 comprehensive mind could grasp the whole 
 amplitude of nature, to the very outer- 
 most of its boundaries, he had an attentive 
 eye fastened on the very humblest of its ob- 
 jects, and pondered every thought of my 
 heart, and noticed every footstep of my 
 goings, and treasured up in his remem- 
 brance every turn and every movement of 
 my history. 
 
 And, lastly, to apply this train of senti- 
 ment to the matter before us ; let us sup- 
 pose that one among the countless myriads 
 of worlds, should be visited by a moral 
 pestilence, which spread througli all its peo- 
 ple, and brought them under the doom of a 
 law, whose sanctions were unrelenting and 
 immutable ; it were no disparagement to 
 God, should he, by an act of righteous in- 
 dignation, sweep this ofl^ence away from the 
 universe which it deformed — nor should we 
 wonder, though, among the multitude of 
 
IM} 
 
 EXTENT OF DIV'INE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 379 
 
 otlier worlds from which the ear of the Al- 
 mighty was regaled with the songs of 
 praise, and the incense of a pure adoration 
 ascended to his throne, he should leave the 
 strayed and solitary world to perish in the 
 guilt of its rebellion. But, tell me, oh ! tell 
 me, would it not throw the softening of a 
 most exquisite tenderness over the charac- 
 ter of God, should we see him putting forth 
 his every expedient to reclaim to himself 
 those children who had wandered away 
 from him — and, few as they were when 
 compared with the host of his obedient 
 worshippers, would it not just impart to his 
 attribute of compassion the infinity of the 
 Godhead, that, rather than lose the single 
 world which had turned to its own way, 
 he should send the messengers of peace 
 to woo and to welcome it back again ; and, 
 if justice demanded so mighty a sacrifice, 
 and tlie law behoved to be so magnified 
 and mads honourable, tell me whether it 
 would not throw a moral sublime over the 
 goodness of the Deity, should he lay upon 
 his own Son the burden of its atonement, 
 that he might again smile upon the world, 
 and hold out the sceptre of invitation to all 
 its families ? 
 
 We avow it, therefore, that this infidel 
 argument goes to expunge a perfection from 
 the character of God. The more we know 
 of the extent of nature, should not we have 
 the loftier conception of him who sits in 
 high authority over the concerns of so wide 
 a universe ? But, is it not adding to the 
 bright catalogue of his other attributes, to 
 say, that, while magnitude does not over- 
 power him, minuteness cannot escape him, 
 and variety cannot bewilder him ; and that, 
 at t!ie very time while the mind of the 
 Deity is abroad over the whole vastness of 
 creation, there is not one particle of matter, 
 there is not one individual principle of ra- 
 tional or of animal existence, there is not 
 one single world in that expanse which 
 teems with them, that his eye does not dis- 
 cern as constantly, and his hand does not 
 guide as unerringly, and his spirit does not 
 watch and cp.pp fcr as vigilantly, as if it 
 formed the one ancJ exclusive object of his 
 attention. 
 
 The thing is inconceivable to us, whose 
 ninds are so easily distracted by a number 
 of objects; and this is the secret principle 
 of the whole infidelity I am now alluding 
 to. To bring God to the level of our own 
 comprehension, we would clothe him in the 
 impotency of a man. We would transfer to 
 Ills wonderful mind all the imperfection of 
 oiu' own faculties. When we are taught 
 by astronomy, that he has millions of worlds 
 to look after, and thus add in one direction 
 to the glories of his character; we take 
 avray from them in another, by saying, that 
 each of these worlds must be looked after 
 .mperfectly. The use that we make of a 
 
 discovery, which should hasten our every 
 conception of God, and humble us into the 
 sentiment, that a Being of such mysterious 
 elevation is to us unfathomable, is to sit in 
 judgment over him, aye, and to pronounce 
 sucti a judgment as degrades him, and keeps 
 him down to tlie standard of our own paltry 
 imagination ! We are introduced by modern 
 science to a multitude of other suns and of 
 other systems; and the perverse interpreta- 
 tion we put upon the fact, that God can 
 diffuse the benefits of his power and of his 
 goodness over such a variety of worlds, is, 
 that he cannot, or will not, bestow so much 
 goodness on one of those worlds, as a 
 professed revelation from Heaven has an- 
 nounced to us. While we enlarge the pro- 
 vinces of his empire, we tarnish all the glory 
 of this enlargement, by saying, he has so 
 much to care for, that the care of every one 
 province must be less complete, and less 
 vigilant, and less effectual, than it would 
 otiierwise have been. By the discoveries 
 of modern science, we multiply the places 
 of tlie creation; but along with this, we 
 would impair the attribute of his eye being 
 in every place to behold the evil and the 
 good; and thus, while we magnify one of 
 his perfections, we do it at the expense of 
 another; and to bring him within the grasp 
 of our feeble capacity, would deface one of 
 the glories of that character, which it is our 
 part to adore, as higher than all thought, 
 and as greater than all compreliension. 
 
 The objection we are discussing, I shall 
 state again in a single sentence. Since 
 astronomy has unfolded to us such a num- 
 ber of worlds, it is not likely that God would 
 pay so much attention to this one world, 
 and set up such wonderful provisions for its 
 benefit, as are announced to us in the Chris- 
 tian Revelation. This objection will have 
 received its answer, if we can meet it by 
 the following position; — that God, in ad- 
 dition to the bare faculty of dwelling on 
 a multiplicity of objects at one and the 
 same time, has this faculty in such wonder- 
 ful perfection that he can attend as fully 
 and provide as richly, and manifest all his 
 attributes as illustriously, on everj^ one of 
 these objects, as if the rest had no existence, 
 and no place whatever in his government 
 or in his thoughts. For the evidence of this 
 position, we appeal, in the first place, to the 
 personal history of each individual among 
 you. Only grant us, that God never loses 
 sight of any one thing he has created, and 
 that no created thing can continue either to 
 be or to act independently of him ; and then, 
 even upon the face of this world, humble 
 as it is on the great scale of astronomy, how 
 widely diversified and how multiplied into 
 many thousand distinct exercises, is the at- 
 tention of God! His eye is upon every 
 hour of my existence. His spirit is inti- 
 mately present with every thought of my 
 
580 
 
 EXTEXT OF DITINE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 heart. His inspiration gives birtli to every 
 purpose within nie. His hand impresses a 
 direction on every footstep of my goings. 
 Every breath 1 inliale, is drawn by an en- 
 erg3" which God deals out to me. This 
 body, which, upon tlie slightest derange- 
 ment, would become the prey of death, or 
 of woful suffering, is now at ease, because 
 he at this moment is warding off from me 
 a thousand dangers, and upholding the thou- 
 sand movements of its complex and delicate 
 machinery. His presiding influence keeps 
 by me through the whole current of my 
 restless and ever changing history. AVhen 
 I walk by the way side, he is along with 
 me. AVhen I enter into company, amid all 
 my forgetfulness of him, he never forgets 
 me. In the silent watches of the night, when 
 my eyelids have closed, and my spirit has 
 sunk into unconsciousness, the observant 
 eye of him who never slumbers, is upon 
 me. I cannot fly from his presence. Go 
 where I will, he tends me, and watches me, 
 and cares for me; and the same being who 
 is now at work in the remotest domains of 
 Nature and of Providence, is also at my 
 right hand to eke out to me every moment 
 of my being, and to uphold me in the exer- 
 cise of all m_v feelings, and of all my faculties. 
 
 Now, v.-hat God is doing with me, he is 
 doing with every distinct individual of this 
 world's population. The intimacy of his 
 presence, and attention, and care, reaches 
 to one and to all of them. With a mind un- 
 burdened by the vastness of all its other 
 concerns, he can prosecute, without distrac- 
 tion, the government and guardianship of 
 everyone son and daughter of the species. — 
 And is it for us, in the face of all this expe- 
 rience, ungratefully to draw^ a limit around 
 the perfections of God ? — to aver, that the 
 multitude of other worlds has withdrawn 
 any portion of his benevolence from the one 
 we occupy ? — or that he, whose eye is upon 
 every separate family of the earth, would 
 not lavish all the riches of his unsearchable 
 attributes on some high plan of pardon and 
 immortality, in behalf of its countless gene- 
 rations ? 
 
 But, secondly, were the mind of God so 
 fatigued, and so occupied with the care of 
 other worlds, as the objection presumes him 
 to be, should we not see some traces of ne- 
 glect, or of carelessness, in his management 
 of ours ? Should we not behold, in many a 
 field of observation, the evidence of its mas- 
 ter being overcrowded with the variety of 
 his other engagements? A man oppressed 
 bj^ a multitude of business, would simplify 
 and reduce the w;ork of any new concern 
 that was devolved upon him. Now, point 
 out a single mark of God being thus op- 
 pressed. Astronomy has laid open to us so 
 many realms of creation, which were before 
 unheard of. that the world we inhabit shrinks 
 into one remote and solitary province of his 
 
 wide monarchy. Tell me, then, if, in any 
 one field of this province, which man has 
 access to, you witness a single indicatiuD 
 of God sparing himself — of God reduced to 
 languor by the weight of his other employ- 
 ments — of God sinking under the burden 
 of that vast superintendence which lies upon 
 him — of God being exhausted, as one of 
 ourselves would be, by any number of con- 
 cerns, however great, by any variety of 
 them, however manifold ? and do you not 
 perceive, in that mighty profusion of wis- 
 dom and of goodness, which is scattered 
 every where around us, that the thoughts 
 of this unsearchable Being are not as oui 
 thoughts, nor his ways as our ways? 
 
 IVIy time does not suffer me to dwell on 
 this topic, because, before I conclude, 1 
 must hasten to another illustration. But 
 when I look abroad on the wondrous scene 
 that is immediately before me — and see, 
 that in every direction it is a scene of the 
 most various and unwearied activity — and 
 expatiate on all the beauties of that garni- 
 ture by which it is adorned, and on all the 
 prints of design and of benevolence which 
 abound in it — and think, that the same God, 
 who holds the universe, with its every sys- 
 tem, in the hollow' of his hand, pencils 
 every flower, and gives nourishment to 
 every blade of grass — and actuates the 
 movements of every living thing — and is 
 not disabled, by the weight of his other 
 cares, from enriching the humble depart- 
 ment of nature I occupy, with charms and 
 accommodations, of the most unbounded 
 variet)- — then, surely, if a message, bear- 
 ing every mark of authenticity, should pro- 
 fess to come to me from God, and inform 
 me of his mighty doings for the happiness 
 of our species, it is not for me, in the face 
 of all this evidence, to reject it as a tale of 
 imposture, because astronomers have told 
 me that he has so many other worlds and 
 other orders of beings to attend to — and, 
 when I think tliat it were a deposition of 
 him from his supremacy over the creatures 
 he has formed, should a single sparrow 
 fall to the ground without his appointment, 
 then let science and sophistry try to cheat 
 me of my comfort as they may — I will not 
 let go the anchor of my confidence in God 
 — I will not be afraid, for I am of mor 
 value than many sparrows. 
 
 But thirdly, it was the telescope, that by 
 piercing the obscurit }• which lies betw'een 
 us and distant worlds, put infidelity in pos- 
 session of the argument, against which we 
 are now contending. But, about the time 
 of its invention, another instrument was 
 formed, which laid open a scene no less 
 wonderful, and rewarded the inquisitive 
 spirit of man with a discovery, which ser\es 
 to neutralize the whole of "this argument. 
 This was the microscope. The one led me 
 to see a system in every star. The other 
 
III.] 
 
 EXTENT OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 381 
 
 leads me to see a world in every atom. 
 The one taught me, that this mighty globe, 
 with the whole burden of its people, and of 
 its countries, is but a grain of sand on the 
 ]iigh field of immensity. The other teaches 
 me, that every grain of sand may harbour 
 within it the tribes and the families of a 
 busy population. The one told me of the 
 insignificance of the world I tread upon. 
 The other redeems it from all its insignifi- 
 cance ; for it tells me that in the leaves of 
 every forest, and in the flowers of every 
 garden, and in the waters of every rivulet, 
 there are worlds teeming with life, and 
 numberless as are the glories of the firma- 
 ment. The one has suggested to me, that 
 beyond and above all that is visible to man, 
 there may lie fields of creation which sweep 
 immeasurably along, and carry the impress 
 of the Almighty's hand to the remotest 
 scenes of the universe. The other suggests 
 to me, that within and beneath all that mi- 
 nuteness which the aided eye of man has 
 been able to explore, there may be a region 
 of invisibles ; and that could we draw aside 
 the mysterious curtain which shrouds it 
 from our senses, we miglit there see a 
 theatre of as many wonders as astronomy 
 has unfolded, a universe within the com- 
 pass of a point so small, as to elude all the 
 powers of the microscope, but where the 
 wonder working God finds room for the 
 exercise of all his attributes, where he can 
 raise another mechanism of worlds, and fill 
 and animate them all with the evidences of 
 his glory. 
 
 Now, mark how all this may be made to 
 meet the argument of our infidel astrono- 
 mers. By the telescope they have discov- 
 . ered, t"hat no magnitude, however vast, is 
 beyond the grasp of the Divinity. But by 
 the microscope we have also discovered, 
 that no minuteness, however shrunk from 
 the notice of the human eye, is beneath 
 the condescension of his regard. Every 
 addition to the powers of the one instru- 
 ment, extends the limit of his visible do- 
 minions. But, by every addition to the 
 powers of the other instrument, we see 
 each part of them more crowded than be- 
 fore, witli the wonders of his unwearying 
 hand. The one is constantly widening the 
 ■ circle of his territory. The other is as con- 
 stantlj- filling up its separate portions, with 
 all that is rich, and various, and exquisite. 
 In a word, by the one I am told that the 
 Almighty is now at work in regions more 
 distant than geometry has ever measured, 
 and among worlds more manifold than 
 numbers have ever reached. But, by the 
 other, I am also told, that, with a mind to 
 comprehend the whole, in the vast com- 
 pass of its generality, he has also a mind 
 to concentrate a close and a separate at- 
 tention on each and on all of its particu- 
 lars; and that the same God, who sends 
 
 forth an upholding influence among the 
 orbs and the movements of astronomy, can 
 fill the recesses of every single atoin with 
 the intimacy of his presence, and travel, in 
 all the greatness of his unimpaired attri- 
 butes, upon every one spot and corner of 
 the universe he has formed. 
 
 They, therefore, who think that God will 
 not put forth such a power, and such a 
 goodness, and such a condescension, in be- 
 half of this world, as are ascribed to him 
 in the New Testament, because he has so 
 many other worlds to attend to, think of 
 him as a man. They confine their view to 
 the informations of the telescope, and for- 
 get altogether the informations of the other 
 instrument. They only find room in their 
 minds for his one attribute of a large and 
 general superintendance, and keep out of 
 their remembrance, the equally impressive 
 proofs we have for his other attribute of a 
 minute and multiplied attention to all that 
 diversity of operations, where it is he that 
 worketh all in all. And then I think, that 
 as one of the instruments of philosophy 
 has heightened our every impression of the 
 first of these attributes, so another instru- 
 ment has no less heightened our impression 
 of the second of them — then I can no longer 
 resist the conclusion, that it would be a H 
 transgression of sound argument, as well 
 as a daring of impiety, to draw a limit 
 around the doings of this unsearchable 
 God — and, should a professed revelation 
 from heaven, tell me of an act of conde- 
 scension, in behalf of some separate world, 
 so wonderful that angels desired to look 
 into it, and the Eternal Son had to move 
 from his seat of glory to carry it into ac- 
 complishment, all I ask is the evidence of 
 such a revelation ; for, let it tell me as much 
 as it may of God letting himself down for 
 the benefit of one single province of his do- 
 minions, this is no more than what I see 
 lying scattered, in numberless examples, 
 before me ; and running through the whole 
 line of my recollections ; and meeting me 
 in every walk of observation to which I 
 can betake myself; and, now that the mi- 
 croscope has unveiled the Avonders of an- 
 other region, I see strewed around me, Avith 
 a profusion which baffles my every attempt 
 to comprehend it, the evidence that there 
 is no one portion of the universe of God 
 too minute for his notice, nor too humble 
 for the visitations of his care. 
 
 As the end of all these illustrations, let 
 me bestow a single paragraph on what I 
 conceive to be the precise state of this ar- 
 gument. 
 
 It is a wonderful thing that God should 
 be so unincumbered by the concerns of a 
 whole universe, that he can give a constant 
 attention to every moment of every indi- 
 vidual in this world's population. But, 
 wonderful as it is, you do not hesitate to 
 
382 
 
 EXTENT OF DIVINE CONDESCENSION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 admit it as true, on the evidence of your 
 own recollections. It is a wonderful thing 
 that he whose eye is at every instant on so 
 many worlds, should have peopled the 
 world we inhabit with all the traces of the 
 varied design and benevolence which abound 
 in it. But, great as the wonder is, you do 
 not allow so much as the shadow of im- 
 probability to darken it, for its reality is 
 what you actually witness, and you never 
 think of questioning the evidence of obser- 
 vation. It is wonderful, it is passing won- 
 derful, that the same God, Avhose presence 
 is diffused through immensity, and who 
 spreads the ample canopy of his adminis- 
 tration over all its dwelling-places, should, 
 with an energy as fresh and as unexpen- 
 ded as if he had only begun the work of 
 creation, turn him to the neighbourhood 
 around us, and lavish on its every hand- 
 breadth, all the exuberance of his goodness, 
 and crowd it with the many thousand va- 
 rieties of conscious existence. But, be the 
 wonder incomprehensible as it may, you 
 do not suffer in your mind the burden of a 
 single doubt to lie upon It because you do 
 not question the report of the miscroscope. 
 You do not refuse its information, nor turn 
 away from it as an incompetent channel 
 H of evidence. But to bring it still nearer to 
 the point at issue, there are many who 
 never looked through a microscope ; but 
 who rest an implicit faith in all its revela- 
 tions ; and upon what evidence, I would 
 ask ? Upon the evidence of testimony — 
 upon the credit they give to the authors of 
 the books they have read, and the belief 
 they put in the record of their observations. 
 Now, at tliis point I make my stand. It is 
 wonderfid that God should be so interested 
 in the redemption of a single world, as to 
 send forth his well-beloved Son upon the 
 errand, and he, to accomplish it, should, 
 mighty to save, put forth all his strength, 
 and travail in the greatness of it. But such 
 wonders as these have already multiplied 
 upon you ; and when evidence is given of 
 their truth, you have resigned your every 
 'udgment of the unsearchable God, and 
 rested in the faith of them. I demand, in 
 the name of sound and consistent philoso- 
 phy, that you do the same in the matter 
 before us — and take it up as a question of 
 evidence — and examine that medium of 
 testimony through which the miracles and 
 informations of the Gospel have come to 
 yviur door — and go not to admit as argu- 
 ment here, what would not be admitted as 
 argument in any of the analogies of nature 
 and observation— ;and take along with you 
 in this field of inquiry, a lesson which you 
 should have learned upon other fields — 
 even the depth of the riches both of the 
 wisdom and the knowledge of God, that 
 his judgments are unsearchable, and his 
 vays are past finding out. 
 
 I do not enter at all into the positive evi- 
 dence for the truth of the Christian Reve- 
 lation, my single aim at present being to 
 dispose of one of the objections which is 
 conceived to stand in the way of it. Let 
 me suppose then that this is done to the 
 satisfaction of a philosophical inquirer, and 
 that the evidence is sustained, and that the 
 same mind that is familiarised to all the 
 sublimities of natural science, and has been 
 in the habit of contemplating God in asso- 
 ciatiofi with all the magnificence which is 
 around him, shall be brought to submit its 
 thoughts to the captivity of the doctrine of 
 Christ. Oh ! with what veneration, and 
 gratitude, and wonder, should he look on 
 the descent of him into this lower world, who 
 made all these things, and without whom 
 was not any thing made that was made, 
 Wlaat a grandeur does it throw o\er every 
 step in the redemption of a fallen world, 
 to think of its being done by him who un- 
 robed him of the glories of so wide a mo 
 narehy, and came to this humblest of its 
 pro\-inces, in the disguise of a servant, and 
 took upon him the form of our degraded 
 species, and let himself down to sorrows 
 and to sufferings, and to death, for us. In 
 this lo\e of an expiring Saviour to tliose 
 for whom in agony he poured out his soul, 
 there is a height, and a depth, and a length, 
 and a breadth, more than I can compre- 
 hend ; and let me never, never from this 
 moment neglect so great a salvation, or lose 
 my hold of an atonement, made sure by 
 him who cried, that it was finished, and 
 brought in an everlasting righteousness. It 
 was not the visit of an empty parade that 
 he made to us. It was for the accomplish- 
 ment of some substantial purpose ; and, if 
 that purpose is announced, and stated to 
 consist in his dying the just for the unjust, 
 that lie might bring us unto God, let us never 
 doubt of our acceptance in that way ^of 
 communication witli our Father in heaven, 
 which he hath opened and made known 
 to us. In taking to that way, let us follow 
 his every direction with that humility Avhich 
 a sense of all this wonderful condesceasion 
 is fitted to inspire. Let us forsake all that 
 he bids us forsake. Let us do all that he 
 bids us do. Let us give ourselves up to his 
 guidance with the docility of children, 
 overpowered by a kindness that we never 
 merited, and a love that is imcqualled by 
 all the perverseness and all the ingrati- 
 tude of our stubborn nature — for what 
 shall we render unto him for such myste- 
 rious benefits — to him who has thus been 
 mindful of us — to him who thus has deigned 
 to visit VIS ? 
 
 But the whole of this argument is not 
 yet exhausted. We have scarcely entered 
 on the defence that is commonly made 
 against the plea which infidelity rests on 
 the wonderful extent of the universe of 
 
IV.J 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY. 
 
 583 
 
 God, and the insignificancy of our assigned 
 portion of it. The way in which we have 
 attempted to dispose of this plea, is by in- 
 sisting on the evidence that is every where 
 around us, of God combining with the large- 
 ness of a vast and mighty superintendence, 
 which reaches the outskirts of creation, and 
 spreads over all its amplitudes — the faculty 
 of bestowing as much attention, and exer- 
 cising as complete and manifold a wisdom, 
 and lavishing as profuse and inexhaustible 
 a goodness on each of its humblest depart- 
 ments, as if it formed the whole extent of 
 his territory. 
 
 In the whole of this argument we have 
 looked upon the earth as isolated from the 
 rest of the universe altogether. But ac- 
 cording to the way in which the astrono- 
 mical objection is commonly met, the earth 
 is not viewed as in a state of detachment 
 from the other worlds, and the other orders 
 of being which God has called into exist- 
 ence. It is looked upon as the member of 
 a more extended system. It is associated 
 with the magnificence of a moral empire, 
 as wide as the kingdom of nature. It is not 
 merely asserted, what in our last Discourse 
 has been already done, that for any thing 
 we can know by reason, the plan of re- 
 demption may have its influences and its 
 bearings on those creatures of God who 
 people other regions, and occupy other 
 fields in the immensity of his dominions ; 
 that to argue, therefore, on this plan being 
 instituted for the single benefit of the world 
 we live in, and of the species to which we 
 belong, is a mere presumption of the infi- 
 del himself; and that the objection he rears 
 on it, must fall to the ground, when the 
 vanity of the presumption is exposed. The 
 Christian apologist thinks he can go fur- 
 ther than this — that he cannot merely ex- 
 pose the utter baselessness of the infidel 
 assertion, but that he has positive ground 
 for erecting an opposite and a confronting 
 assertion in its place — and that after having 
 neutralised their position, by showing the 
 
 entire absence of all observation in iis be- 
 half, he can pass on to the distinct affirma- 
 tive testimony of the Bible. 
 
 We do think that this lays open a very 
 interesting track, not of wild and fanciful, 
 but of most legitimate and sober-minded 
 speculation. And anxious as we are to put 
 every thing that bears upon the Christian 
 argument into all its lights ; and fearless as 
 we feel for the result of a most thorough sift- 
 ing of it; and thinking as we do think it, 
 the foulest scorn that any pigmy philoso- 
 pher of the day should mince his ambigu- 
 ous scepticism to a .set of giddy and igno- 
 rant admirers, or that a half-learned and 
 superficial public should associate with the 
 christian priesthood, the blindness and the 
 bigotry of a sinking cause — with these feel- 
 ings, we are not disposed to blink a single 
 question that may be started on the subject 
 of the Christian evidences. There is not 
 one of its parts or bearings whicli needs the 
 shelter of a disguise thrown over it. Let 
 the priests of another faitli ply their pruden- 
 tial expedients, and look so wise and so 
 wary in the execution of them. But Chris- 
 tianity stands in a higlier and a firmer atti- 
 tude. The defensive armour of a shrinking 
 or timid policy does not suit her. Hers is 
 the naked majesty of truth ; and with all 
 the grandeur of age, but with none of its 
 infirmities, has she come down to ns, and 
 gathered new strength from the battles she 
 has won in the many controversies of many 
 generations. With such a religion as this 
 there is nothing to hide. All should be 
 above boards. And the broadest light of 
 day should be made fully and freely to cir- 
 culate throughout all the secrecies. But 
 secrets she has none. To her lielong the 
 frankness and the simplicity of conscious 
 greatness ; and whether she grapple it with 
 the pride of philosophy, or stand in fronted 
 opposition to the prejudices of the multitude, 
 she does it upon her own strength, and 
 spurns all the props and all the auxiliaries 
 of superstition aAvay trom her. 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 On the Knowledge of Mart's Moral History in the Distant Places of Creation. 
 
 "Which things the angels desire to look into." — 1 Peter i. 12. 
 
 There is a limit, across which man can- 
 not carry any one of his perceptions, and 
 from the ulterior of which he cannot gather a 
 single observation to guide or to inform him. 
 While he keeps by the objects which are 
 near, he can get the knowledge of them 
 conveyed to his mind through the ministry 
 of several of the senses. He can feel a sub- 
 
 stance that is within reach of his hand. He 
 can smell a flower that is presented to him. 
 He can taste the fond that is before him. 
 He can hear a sound of certain pitch and 
 intensity ; and, so much dors this sense of 
 hearing widen his intercourse with exter- 
 nal nature, that, from the distance ol' miles, 
 it can bring him in an occasional intimation. 
 
384 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 But of all the tracks of conveyance which 
 God has been pleased to open up between 
 the mind of man, and the theatre by which 
 he is surrounded, there is none by which 
 he so muUiplies his acquaintance with 
 the rich and the varied creation on every 
 side of him, as by the organ of the eye. It 
 is this which gives to him his loftiest com- 
 mand over the scenery of nature. It is this 
 by which so broad a range of observation 
 is submitted to him. It is this which ena- 
 bles him, by the act of a single moment, to 
 send an exploring look over the surface of an 
 ample territory, to crowd his mind with the 
 whole assembly of its objects, and to fill his 
 vision with those countless hues which di- 
 versify and adorn it. It is this which carries 
 him abroad over all that is sublime in the 
 immensity of distance ; which sets him as 
 it were on an elevated platform, from 
 v.iience he may cast a surveying glance 
 over the arena of innumerable worlds ; 
 which spreads before him so mighty a pro- 
 vince of contemplation, that the earth he 
 inhabits, only appears to furnish him with 
 the pedestal on which he may stand, and 
 from which he may descry the wonders of 
 all that magnificence which the Divinity 
 has poured so abundantly around him. It 
 is by the narrow outlet of the eye, that the 
 mind of man takes its excursive flight over 
 those golde-n tracks, where, in all the ex- 
 haustlessness of creative wealth, lie scatter- 
 ed the suns, and the systems of astronomy. 
 But oh ! how good a thing it is, and how be- 
 coming well, for the philosopher to be 
 humble even amid the proudest march of hu- 
 man discovery, and the sublimest triumphs 
 of the human understanding, when he 
 thinks of that unsealed barrier, beyond 
 which no power, either of eye or of tele- 
 scope, shall ever carry him : when he thinks 
 that on the other side of it, there is a height, 
 and a depth, and a length, and a breadth, 
 to which the whole of this concave and 
 visible firmament dwindles into the insig- 
 nificancy of an atom — and above all, how 
 ready should he be to cast his every lofty 
 imagination away from him, when he 
 thinks of the God, who, on the simple foun- 
 dation of his word, has reared the whole 
 of this stately architecture, and, by the 
 force of his preserving hand, continues to 
 upliold it ; aye, and should the word again 
 come out from him, that this earth shall 
 pass away, and a portion of the heavens 
 which are around it, shall again fall back 
 into the annihilation from which he at first 
 summoned them, what an impressive re- 
 buke does it bring on the swelling vanity 
 of science, to think that the whole field of 
 its most ambitious enterprises may be swept 
 away altogether, and there remain before 
 the eye of him who sitteth on the throne, 
 an untravelled inuriensity, which he hath 
 filled with innumerable splendours, and 
 
 over the whole face of which he hath in- 
 scribed the evidence of his high attributes, 
 in all their might, and in all their manifes- 
 tations. 
 
 But man has a great deal more to keep 
 him humble of his understanding, than a 
 mere sense of that boundary which skirts 
 and terminates the material field of his 
 contemplations. He ought also to feel 
 how within that boundary, the vast ma- 
 jority of things is mysterious and unknown 
 to him ; that even in the inner chamber of 
 his own consciousness, where so much lies 
 hidden from the observation of others, there 
 is also, to himself, a little world of incom- 
 prehensibles ; that if stepping beyond the 
 limits of this familiar home, he look no 
 further than to the members of his family, 
 there is much in tlie cast and the colour of 
 every mind that is above his powers of di- 
 vination ; that in proportion as he recedes 
 from the centre of his own personal expe- 
 rience, there is a cloud of ignorance and 
 secrecy, which spreads, and thickens, and 
 throws a deep and impenetrable veil over 
 the intricacies of every one department of 
 human contemplation ; that of all around 
 him his knowledge is naked and superficial, 
 and confined to a few of those more conspicu- 
 ous lineaments which strike upon his senses; 
 that the whole face both of nature and of 
 society, presents him with questions which 
 he cannot unriddle, and tells him how be- 
 neath the surface of all that the eye can 
 rest up'/n, there lies the profoundness of a 
 most unsearchable latency; aye, and should 
 he in some lofty enterprise of thought, leave 
 this world, and shoot afar into those tracks of 
 speculation which astronomy has opened — 
 should he, baffled by the mysteries which be- 
 set his every footstep upon earth attempt an 
 ambitious flight towards the mysteries of 
 heaven — let him go, but let the justness of a 
 pious and philosophical modesty go along 
 with him;'let him forget not,that from the mo- 
 ment h is mind has taken its ascending way for 
 a few little miles above the world he treads 
 upon, his every sense abandons him but one — 
 that number, and motion, and magnitude, 
 and figure, make up all the barrenness of its 
 elementary informations — that these orbs 
 have sent him scarce another message, than 
 told by their feeble glimmering upon his 
 eye, the simple fact of their existence— that 
 he sees not the landscape of other worlds — 
 that he knows not the moral system of any 
 one of them— nor athwart the long and 
 trackless vacancy which lies between, does 
 there fall upon his listening ear, the hum of 
 their mighty populations. 
 
 But the knowledge which he cannot 
 fetch up himself from the obscurity of this 
 wondrous but untravelled scene, by the ex- 
 ercise of any one of his own senses, might 
 be fetched to him by the testimony of a 
 competent messenger. Conceive a native 
 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY. 
 
 iv.l 
 
 of one of these planetary mansions to light 
 upon our world, and all we should require, 
 would be, to be satisfied of his credentials, 
 that v/o may tack our faith to every point 
 of information he had to offer us. With th ■ 
 solitary exception of what we have been 
 enabled to gather by the instruments of 
 astronomy, there is not one of his commu- 
 nications about the place he came from, on 
 which we possess any means at all of con- 
 fronting him ; and, therefore, could he only 
 appear before us invested with the charac- 
 ters of truth, we should never think of any 
 thing else than taking up the whole matter 
 of his testimony just as he brought it to us. 
 It were well had a sound philosophy 
 schooled its professing disciples to the same 
 kind of acquiescence in another message, 
 which has actually come to the world ; and 
 has told us of matters still more remote 
 from every power of unaided observation ; 
 and has been sent from a more sublime and 
 mysterious distance, even from that God 
 of whom it is said, that "clouds and dark- 
 ness are the habitation of his throne ;" and 
 treating of a theme so lofty and so inacces- 
 sible, as the counsels of that Eternal Spirit, 
 " wliose goings forth are of old, even from 
 everlasting," challenges of man that he 
 should submit his every thought to the au- 
 thority of this high communication. O ! 
 had the philosophers of the day known as 
 well as their great Master, how to draw the 
 vigorous land-mark which verges the field 
 of legitimate discovery, they should have 
 seen when it is that philosophy becomes 
 vain, and science is falsely so called ; and 
 how it is, that when philosophy is true to 
 her principles, she shuts up her faithful 
 votary to the Bible, and makes him willing 
 to count all but loss, for the knowledge of 
 Jesus Christ, and of him crucified. 
 
 But let it be well observed, that the object 
 of this message is not to convey information 
 to us about the state of these planetary re- 
 gions. This is not the matter with which 
 it is fraught. It is a message from the throne 
 of God to this rebellious province of his do- 
 minions ; and the purpose of it is, to reveal 
 the fearful extent of our guilt and of our dan- 
 ger, and to lay before us the overtures of 
 reconciliation. Were a similar message 
 sent from the metropolis of a mighty em- 
 pire, to one of its remote and revolutionary 
 districts, we should not look to it for much 
 information about the state or economy of 
 the intermediate provinces. This were a 
 departure from the topic on hand — though 
 still there may chance to be some incidental 
 allusions to the extent and resources of the 
 Avhole monarchy, to the existence of a simi- 
 lar spirit of rebellion in other quarters of the 
 . land, or to the general principle of loyalty 
 by which it was pervaded. Some casual 
 references of this kind may be inserted in 
 such a proclamation, or they may not — 
 49 
 
 38; 
 
 and it is with tliis precise feeling of ambi- 
 guity that we open the record of that em- 
 bass}'' which has been sent us from heaven, 
 !(» see if we can gather any thing there, 
 about other placus of the creation, to 
 meet the objections of the infidel astrono- 
 mer. But, while we pursue this ol.jcct, let 
 us have a care not to push the speculation 
 beyond the limits of the written testimony; 
 let us keep a just and a steady eye on the 
 actual boundary of our knowledge, that, 
 throughout every distinct step of our argu- 
 ment, we might preserve that chaste and 
 unambitious spirit, which characterizes the 
 philosophy of him who explored these dis- 
 tant heavens, and, by the force of his genius, 
 unravelled the secret of that wondrous me- 
 chanism which upholds them. 
 
 The informations of the Bible upon this 
 subject, are of two sorts — that from which 
 we confidently gather the fact, that the 
 history of the redemption of our species is 
 known in other and distant places of the 
 creation — and that, from which we indis- 
 tinctly guess at the fact, that the redemption 
 itself may stretch beyond the limits of the 
 world we occupy. 
 
 And, here it may shortly be adverted to, 
 that, though we know little or iwthing of 
 the moral and theological economy of the 
 other planets, we are not to infer, that the 
 beings who occupy these widely extended 
 regions, even though not higher than we 
 in the scale of understanding, know little 
 of ours. Our first parents, ere they com- 
 mitted that act by which they brought them- 
 selves and their posterity into the need of 
 redemption, had frequent and familiar in- 
 tercourse with God. He walked with them 
 in the garden of paradise; and there did 
 angels hold their habitual converse; and, 
 should the same unblotted innocence which 
 charmed and attracted these superior beings 
 to the haunts of Eden, be perpetuated in 
 every planet but our own, then might each 
 of them be the scene of high and heavenly 
 communications, an open way for the mes- 
 sengers of God be kept up with them all, 
 and their inhabitants be admitted to a share 
 in the themes and contemplations of angels, 
 and have their spirit exercised on those 
 things, of which we are told that the angels 
 desired to look into them; and thus, as we 
 talk of the public mind of a city, or the 
 public mind of an empire — by the well-fre- 
 quented avenues of a free and ready cir- 
 culation, a public mind might be formed 
 throughout the whole extent of God's sin- 
 less and intelligent creation — and, just as 
 we often read of the eyes of all Europe 
 being turned to the one spot where some 
 affair of eventful importance is going on, 
 there might be the eyes of a Avhole universe 
 turned to the one world, where rebellion 
 against the Majesty of heaven had planted 
 its standard; and for the re-admission of 
 
386 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 which within the circle of his fellowship, 
 God, whose justice was inflexible, but whose 
 mercy he had, by some plan of mysterious 
 wisdom, made to rejoice over it, was put- 
 ting forth all the might, and travelling in all 
 the greatness of the attributes which belong 
 to him. 
 
 But, for the full understanding of this ar- 
 gument, it must be remarked, that, while in 
 our exiled liabitation, where all is darkness 
 and rebellion, and enmity, the creature en- 
 grosses every heart, and our affections, 
 when they shift at all, only wander from 
 one fleeting vanity to another, it is not so 
 in the habitations of the unfallen. There, 
 every desire and every movement is subor- 
 dinated to God. He is seen in all that form- 
 ed, and in all that is spread around them — 
 and, amid the fidness of that delight with 
 which they expatiate over the good and the 
 fair of this wondrous universe, the anima- 
 ting charm which pervades their every 
 contemplation, is that they behold, on each 
 visible thing, the impress of the mind that 
 conceived, and of the hand that made and 
 that upholds it. Here, God is banished from 
 the thoughts of every natural man, and by 
 a firm and constantly maintained act of 
 usurpation, do the things of sense and of 
 time wield an entire ascendancy. There 
 God is all in all. They walk in his light. 
 They rejoice in the beatitudes of his pre- 
 sence. The veil is from off their eyes, 
 and they see the character of a presiding 
 Divinity in every scene, and in every event 
 to which the Divinity has given birth. It 
 is this which stamps a glory and an im- 
 portance on the whole field of their contem- 
 plations; and when they see a new evolution 
 in the history of created things, the reason 
 they bend towards it so attentive an eye, is, 
 that it speaks to their understanding some 
 new evolution in the purposes of God; some 
 new manifestation of his high attributes — 
 some new and interesting step in the his- 
 tory of his sublime administration. 
 
 Now, we ought to be aware how it takes 
 off, not from tiie intrinsic weight, but from 
 the actual impression of our argument, that 
 this devotedness to God which reigns in 
 other places of tlie creation, this interest in 
 him as the constant and essential principle 
 of all enjoyment; this concern in the un- 
 taintedness of his glory; this delight in the 
 survey of his perfections and his doings, 
 are what the men of our corrupt and dark- 
 ened world cannot sympathize with. 
 
 But however little we may enter into it, 
 the Bible tells us by many intimations, that 
 among those creatures who have not fallen 
 from their allegiance, nor departed from the 
 living God, God is their all — that love to 
 him sits enthroned in their hearts, and fills 
 them with all the ecstacy of an overwhelm- 
 ing affection — that a sense of grandeur 
 never so elevates their souls, as w en they 
 
 look at the might and majesty of the Eter- 
 nal — that no field of clou ess transparency 
 so enchants them by the biissfulness of its 
 visions, as when at the shrine of infinite 
 and unspotted holiness, they bend then)- 
 selves in raptured adoration — that no beauty 
 so fascinates and attracts them, as does that 
 moral beauty which throws a softening lus- 
 tre over the awfulness of the Godhead — 
 in a word, that the image of his character 
 is ever present to their contemplations, and 
 the unceasing joy of their sinless existence 
 lies in the knowledge and the admiration 
 of the Deity. 
 
 Let us put forth an effort, and keep a 
 steady hold of this consideration; for the 
 deadness of our earthly imaginations makes 
 an effort necessary ; and we shall perceive, 
 that though the world we live in were the 
 alone theatre of redemption, liiere is a 
 something in the redemption itself that is 
 fitted to draw the eye of an arrested uni- 
 verse towards it. Surely, surely, where de- 
 light in God is the constant enjoyment, and 
 the earnest intelligent contemplation of God 
 is the constant exercise, there is nothing in 
 the whole compass of nature or of history, 
 that can so set his adoring myriads upon 
 the gaze, as some new and wondrous evolu- 
 tion of the character of God. Now this is 
 found in the plan of our redemption; nor, 
 do- 1 see how in any transaction between 
 the great Father of existence, and the chil- 
 dren who have sprung from him, the moral 
 attributes of the Deity could, if I may so 
 express myself, be put to so severe and so 
 delicate a test. It is true, that the great 
 matters of sin and of salvation fall without 
 impression, on the heavy ears of a listless 
 and alienated world. But they who, to use 
 the language of the Bible, are light in the 
 Lord, look otherwise at these things. They 
 see sin in all its malignity, and salvation in 
 all its mysterious greatness. Aye, and it 
 would put them on the stretch of all their 
 faculties, when they saw rebellion lifting 
 up its standard against the Majesty of hea- 
 ven, and the truth and the justice of God 
 embarked on the threatenings he had ut- 
 tered against all the doers of iniquity, and 
 the honours of that august throne, which 
 has the firm pillars of immutability to rest 
 upon, linked with the fulfilment of the law 
 that had come out from it ; and when no- 
 thing else was looked for, but that God, by 
 putting forth the power of his wrath, should 
 accomplish his every denunciation, and vin- 
 dicate the inflexibility of his government, 
 and by one sweeping deed of vengeance, 
 assert in the sight of all his creatures, the 
 sovereignty which belongeth to him — Oh ! 
 with what desire must they have pondered 
 on his ways, when amid the urgency of all 
 these demands which looked so high and 
 so indispensable, they saw the unfoldings 
 of the attribute of mercy— and how the 
 
IV.] 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN's MORAL HISTORY. 
 
 387 
 
 supreme Lawgiver was bending upon his 
 guilty creatures an eye of tenderness — and 
 how in his profound and unsearchable wis- 
 dom, he was devising for them some plan 
 of restoration — and how the eternal Son had 
 to move from his dwelling-place in heaven, 
 to carry it forward through all the difficul- 
 ties by which it was encompassed — and 
 how, after, by the virtue of his mysterious 
 sacrifice, he had magnified the glory of 
 every other perfection, he made mercy re- 
 joice over them all, and threw open a way 
 by which we sinful and polluted wanderers 
 might, with the whole lustre of the Divine 
 character untarnished, be re-admitted into 
 fellowship with God, and be again brought 
 back within the circle of his loyal and affec- 
 tionate family. 
 
 Now, the essential character of such a 
 transaction, viewed as a manifestation of 
 God, does not hang upon the number of 
 worlds, over which this sin and this salva- 
 tion may have extended. We know that 
 over this one world such an economy of 
 wisdom and of mercy is instituted — and, 
 even should this be the only world that is 
 embraced by it, the moral display of the 
 Godhead is mainly and substantially the 
 same, as if it readied throughout the whole 
 of that habitable extent which the science 
 of astronomy has made known to us. By 
 the disobedience of this one world, the law 
 was trampled on ; and, in the business of 
 making truth and mercy to meet, and have 
 a harmonious accomplishment on the men 
 of this world, the dignity of God was put 
 to the same trial ; the justice of God ap- 
 peared to lay the same immoveable barrier ; 
 the wisdom of God had to clear a way 
 through the same difficulties ; the forgive- 
 ness of God had to find the same myste- 
 rious conveyance to the sinners of a solitary 
 world, as to the sinners of half a universe. 
 The extent of the field upon which this 
 question was decided, has no moi'c influence 
 on the question itself, than the figure oi- the 
 dimensions of that fieldof combat, on which 
 some great political question was fought, 
 has on the importance or on the moral 
 principles of the controversy that gave rise 
 to it. This objection about the narrowness 
 of the theatre, carries along with it all the 
 grossness of materialism. To the eye of 
 spiritual and intelligent beings, it is nothing. 
 In their view, the redemption of a sinful 
 world derives its chief interest from the 
 display it gives of the mind and purposes 
 of the Deity — and, should that world be but 
 a single speck in the immensity of the 
 works of God, the only way in which this 
 affects their estimate of him, is to magnify 
 his loving kindness — who rather than lose 
 one solitary world of the myriads he has 
 formed, would lavish all tlie riches of his 
 beneficence and of his wisdom on the re- 
 covery of its guilty population. 
 
 Now, though it must be admitted that the 
 Bible does not speak clearly or decisively a 
 as to the proper effect of redemption being \ 
 extended to other worlds; it speaks most • 
 clearly and most decisively about the know- 
 ledge of it being disseminated among other 
 orders of created intelligence than our own. 
 But if the contemplation of God be their 
 supreme enjoyment, then the very circum- 
 stance of our redemption being known to 
 them, may invest it, even though it be but 
 the redemption of one solitary world, with 
 an importance as wide as the universe itself. 
 It may spread among the hosts of immen- 
 sity a new illustration of the character of 
 Him who is all their praise, and looking to- 
 ward whom every energy within them is 
 moved to the exercise of a deep and de- 
 lighted admiration. The scene of the trans- 
 action may be narrow in point of material 
 extent ; while in the transaction itself there 
 may be such a moral dignity, as to blazon 
 the perfections of the Godhead over the 
 face of creation ; and from the manifested 
 glory of the Eternal, to send forth a tide of 
 ecstacy, and of high gratulation, through- 
 out the whole extent of his dependent pro- 
 vinces. 
 
 I will not, in proof of the position, that 
 the history of our redemption is known in 
 other and distant places of creation, and 
 is matter of deep interest and feeling among 
 other orders of created intelligence — I will 
 not put down all the quotations which 
 might be assembled together upon this ar- 
 gument. It is an impressive circumstance, 
 than when Moses and Elias made a visit to 
 our Saviour on the mount of transfigura- 
 tion, and appeared in glory from heaven, 
 the topic they brought along with them, 
 and with which they were fraught, was the / 
 decease he was going to accomplish at Je- / 
 rusalem. And however insipid the things / 
 of our salvation may be to an earthly un- 
 derstanding ; we are made to know, that in 
 the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which 
 should follow, there is matter to attract the 
 notice of celestial spirits, for these are the 
 very things, says the Bible, which angels 
 desire to look into. And however listlesslj'- 
 we, the dull and grovelling children of an 
 exiled family, may feel about the perfec- 
 tions of the Godhead, and the display of 
 those perfections in the economy of the 
 Gospel, it is intimated to us in the book of 
 God's message, that the creation has its 
 districts and its provinces ; and we accord- 
 ingly read of thrones, and dominions, and 
 principalities, and powers ; and whether ' 
 these terms denote the separate regions of 
 government, or the beings who, by a com- 
 mission granted from the sanctuary of hea- 
 ven, sit in delegated authority over them — 
 even in their eyes the mystery of Oirist 
 stands arrayed in all the splendour of uu 
 searchable riches ; for we are told that this 
 
5S8 
 
 THE KNO'WLEDGE OF MAN's 5I0RAL HISTORY. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 / 
 
 mystery was revealed for the very intent, 
 that unto the principalities and powers in 
 heavenly places, might be made known by 
 the church, the manifold wisdom of God. 
 And while we, whose prospect reaches not 
 beyond the narrow limits of the corner we 
 occupy, look on the dealings of God in the 
 world, as carrying in them all t-he insignifi- 
 cancy of a provincial transaction ; God him- 
 self, wnose eye reaches to places wJiich our 
 eye hath not seen, nor our ear heard of, 
 neither hath it entered into the imagination 
 of our heart to conceive, stamps auniver- 
 sality on the whole matter of the Christian 
 salvation, by such revelations as the fol 
 lowing: That he is to gather together in 
 one all things in Christ, both which are in 
 heaver., and which are in earth, even in 
 him — and that at the name of Jesus every 
 knee should bow, of things in heaven, and 
 things in earth, and things under the earth — 
 and that by him God reconciled all things 
 unto himself, whether they be things in 
 earth, or things in Jieaven. 
 
 We will not say in how far some of these 
 passages extend the proper effect of that 
 redemption which is by Christ Jesus, lo 
 other quarters of the universe of God ; 
 but they at least go to establish a widely 
 disseminated knowledge of this transaction 
 among the other orders of created intelli- 
 gence. And they give us a distant glimpse 
 of something more extended. They present 
 a faint opening, through which may be seen 
 some few traces of a wider and a nobler 
 
 ' the fountain opened in the house of Judah, 
 for sin and for uncieannest-, send forth its 
 healing streams to other worlds than our 
 own. He does not tell us the extent of the 
 atonement. But he tells us that the atone- 
 ment itself, known as it is among the my- 
 riads of the celestial, forms the high song 
 of eternity ; that the Lamb who was slain, 
 is surrounded by the acclamations of one 
 wide and universal empire ; that the might 
 of his Avondrous achievements, spreads a 
 tide of gratulation over the multitudes who 
 are about his throne ; and that there never 
 ceases to ascend from tlie w^orshippers of 
 him wlio washed us from our sins in his 
 blood, a voice loud as from numbers with- 
 out number, sweet as from blessed voices 
 uttering joy, when heaven rings jubilee, and 
 loud hosannas fill the eternal regions. 
 
 "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of 
 many angels round about the throne, and 
 the number of them was ten thousand times 
 ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; 
 saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the 
 Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and 
 riches, and wisdom, and strength, and glory, 
 and honour, and blessing. And every crea- 
 ture which is in heaven, and on earth, and 
 under the earth, and such as are in the sea, 
 and all that are in them, heard I saying, 
 Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, 
 be imto him that sitteth on the throne, and 
 unto the Lamb, forever and ever." 
 
 A king might have the whole of his reign 
 crowded with the enterprises of glory: 
 
 dispensation. They bring before us a dim j and by the might of his arms, and the wis^ 
 transparency, on the other side of which i dom of his counsels might win the first 
 the images of an obscure magnificence daz- ! reputation among the potentates of the 
 
 zle indistinctly upon the eye ; and tell us 
 that in the econom.y of redemption, there is 
 a grandeur commensurate to all that is 
 
 world ; and be idolized throughout all his 
 provinces, for the wealth and the security 
 that he had spread around them — and still 
 known of the other works and purposes of I it is conceivable, that by the act of a sin- 
 the Eternal. They offer us no details; and gle day in behalf of a single family; by 
 man, who ought not to attempt a wisdom some soothing visitation of tenderness to a 
 above that wliich is WTitten, should never ' poor and solitary cottage ; by .some deed 
 put forth his hand to the drapery of that I of compassion, which conferred enlarge- 
 impenetrable curtain which God in his mys- ment and relief on one despairing suflferer ; 
 
 terious wisdom has spread over those ways, 
 of which it is but a very small portion that 
 we know of them. But certain it is, that 
 we know as much of them from the Bible; 
 and the infidel, with all tlie pride of his 
 boasted astronomy, knows so little of them, 
 from any power of observation, that the 
 baseless argument of his, on whicli we have 
 dwelt so long, is overborne in the light of 
 all that positive evidence which God has 
 poured around the record of his own testi- 
 mo-ny, and even in the light of its more 
 obscure and casual intimations. 
 
 The minute and variegated details of the 
 way in which this wondrous economy is 
 extended, God has chosen to withhold from 
 us ; but he has oftener than once made to 
 us a broad and a general announcement of 
 its dignity. He does not tell us whether 
 
 by some graceful movement of sensibility 
 at a tale of wretchedness ; by some noble 
 effort of self-denial, in virtue of wliich he 
 subdued his every purpose of revenge, and 
 spread the mantle of a generous oblivion 
 over the fault of the man who has insulted 
 and aggrieved him ; above all, by an exer- 
 cise of pardon so skilfully administered, as 
 that instead of bringing him down to a state 
 of defencelessness against the provocation 
 of future injuries, ii tiirew a deeper sacred- 
 ness over him, -and stamped a more invio- 
 lable dignity than ever on his person and 
 character: — whj^, my brethren, on the 
 strength of one such performance, done in 
 a single hour, and reaching no further in 
 its immediate effects than to one house, or 
 to one individual, it is a most possible 
 thing, that the highest monarch upon earth 
 
iv.l 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN'S MORAL HISTORY. 
 
 389 
 
 might draw such a lustre around him as 
 would eclipse the renown of all his public 
 achievements — and that such a display of 
 magnanimity, or of worth, beaming from 
 the secrecy of his familiar moments, might 
 waken a more cordial veneration in every 
 bosom, than all the splendour of his con- 
 spicuous history — aye, and that it might 
 pass down to posterity, as a more enduring 
 monument of greatness, and raise him fur- 
 ther by its moral elevation above the level 
 of ordinary praise ; and when he passes in 
 review before the men of distant ages, may 
 this deed of modest, gentle, unobtrusive vir- 
 tue, be at all times appealed to, as the 
 most sublime and touching memorial of his 
 name. 
 
 In like manner did the King eternal, 
 immortal, and invisible, surrounded as he is 
 with the splendours of a wide and everlast- 
 ing monarchy, turn him to our humble 
 habitation ; and the foot-steps of God mani- 
 fest in the flesh, have been on the narrow 
 spot of ground we occupy; and small 
 though our mansion be, amid the orbs and 
 the systems of immensity, hither hath the 
 King of glory bent his mysterious way, and 
 entered the tabernacle of men, and in the 
 disguise of a servant did he sojourn for 
 years under the roof which canopies our 
 obscure and solitary world. Yes, it is but a 
 twinkling atom in the peopled infinity of 
 worlds that are around it — but look to the 
 moral grandeur of the transaction, and not 
 to the material extent of the field upon 
 which it was executed — and from the re- 
 tirement of our dwelling-place, there may 
 issue forth such a display of the Godhead, 
 as wOl circulate the glories of his name 
 among all his worshippers. Here sin en- 
 tered. Here was the kind and universal 
 beneficence of a Father, repaid by the in- 
 gratitude of a whole family. Here the law 
 of God was dishonoured, and that too in 
 the face of its proclaimed and unalterable 
 sanctions. Here the mighty contest of the 
 attributes was ended — and when justice 
 put forth its demands, and truth called for 
 the fulfilment of its warnings, and the im- 
 mutability of God would not recede by a 
 single iota, from any one of its positions, 
 and all the severities he had ever uttered 
 against the children of iniquity, seemed to 
 i^ather into one cloud of threatening venge- 
 ance on the tenement that held us — did the 
 visit of the only-begotten Son chase away 
 all these obstacles to the triumph of mercy — 
 and humble as the tenement may be, deeply 
 shaded in the obscurity of insignificance as 
 It is, among the statelier mansions which 
 are on every side of it — yet will the recal 
 of its exiled family never be forgotten — and 
 the illustration that has been given here 
 of the mingled grace and majesty of God, 
 will never lose its place among the themes 
 and the acclamations of eternity. 
 
 And here it may be remarked, that as the 
 earthly king who throws a moral aggran- 
 dizement around him, by the act of a single 
 day, finds, that after its performance, he 
 may have the space of many years for ga- 
 thering to himself the triumphs of an ex- 
 tended reign — so the king who sits on 
 high, and with whom one day is as a thou- 
 sand years, and a thousand years as one 
 day, will find, that after the period of that 
 special administration is ended, by which 
 this strayed world is again brought back 
 within the Umhs of his favoured creation, 
 there is room enough along the mighty 
 track of eternit}", for accumulating upon 
 himself a glory as wide and as universal as 
 is the extent of his dominions. You will 
 allow the most illustrious of this worla s 
 potentates, to give some hour of his private 
 history to a deed of cottage or domestic 
 tenderness ; and every time you think of the 
 interesting story, you will feel how sweetly 
 and how graceful!}' the remembrance of it 
 blends itself with the fame of his public 
 achievements. But still you think that 
 there would not have been room enough 
 for these achievements of his, had much of 
 his time been spent, either among the habi- 
 tations of the poor, or in the retirement of 
 his own family ; and you conceive, that it 
 is because a single day bears so small a pro- 
 portion to the time of his whole history, 
 that he has been able to combine an in- 
 teresting display of private worth, with all 
 that brilliancy of exhibition, which has 
 brought him down to posterity in the 
 character of an august and a mighty sove- 
 reign. 
 
 Now apply tliis to the matter before us. 
 Had the history of our redemption been 
 confined within the limits of a single day, 
 the argument that infidelity has drawn 
 from the multitude of other worlds, would 
 never have been offered. It is true, that 
 ours is but an insignificant pttrlion of the 
 territory of God — but if the attentions by 
 which he has signalized it, had only taken 
 up a single day, this would never have oc- 
 curred to us as forming any sensible with- 
 drawment of the mind of the Deity from 
 the concerns of his vast and universal go- 
 vernment. It is the time which the plan of 
 our salvation requires, that startles all those 
 on whom this argument has any impres- 
 sion. It is the time taken up about this 
 paltry world, which they feel to be out of 
 proportion to the number of other worlds, 
 and to the immensity of the surrounding 
 creation. Now, to meet this impression, I do 
 not insist at present on what I have already 
 brought forward, that God, whose ways 
 are not as our ways, can have his eye at 
 the same instant on every place, and can 
 divide and diversify his attention into any 
 number of distinct exercises. What I have 
 now to remark, is, that the infidel who 
 
590 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR MAN IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 
 
 [disc 
 
 urges the astronomical objection to the 
 truth of Christianity, is only looking with 
 half an eye to the principle on which it 
 rests. Carry out the principle, and the 
 objection vanishes. He loolcs abroad on 
 the immensity of space, and tells us how 
 impossible it is, that this narrow corner of 
 it can be so distinguished by the attentions 
 of the Deity. Why does he not also look 
 abroad on the magnificence of eternity; and 
 perceive how tlie whole period of these pe- 
 culiar attentioiis, how the whole time which 
 elapses between the fall of man and the con- 
 summation of the scheme of his recovery, is 
 but the twinkling of a moment to the mighty 
 roll of innumerable ages ? The whole inter- 
 val between the time of Jesus Christ's leav- 
 ing his Father's abode, to sojourn among 
 ns, to that time when he shall have put all 
 his enemies under his feet, and delivered 
 up the kingdom to Gud, even his Father, 
 that God may be all in all; the whole of this 
 interval bears as small a proportion to the 
 whole of the Almighty's reign, as this soli- 
 tary world does to the universe around it, 
 and an infinitely smaller proportion than 
 any time, however short, which an earthly 
 monarch spends on some enterprise of pri- 
 vate benevolence, does to the whole walk of 
 his public and recorded history. 
 
 Why, then, does not the man, who can 
 shoot his conceptions so sublimely abroad 
 over the field of an immensity that knows 
 
 no limits — why does he not also shoo< 
 them forward through the vista of a suc- 
 cession, that ever flows without siop and 
 without termination? He has burst across 
 the confines of this world's habitatii)n in 
 space, and out of the field which lies on the 
 other side of it, has he gathered an argu- 
 ir.ent against the truth of revelation. I feel 
 that I have nothing to do but to burst 
 across the confines of this world's history 
 in time, and out of the futurity which lies 
 beyond it, can I gather that which will 
 blow the argument to pieces, or stamp up- 
 on it all the narrowness of a partial and 
 mistaken calculation. The day is coming, 
 when the whole of this wondrous history 
 shall be looked back upon by the eye of the 
 remembrance, and be regarded as one in- 
 cident in the extended annals of creation, 
 and with all the illustration and all the 
 glory it has thrown on the character of the 
 Deity, will it be seen as a single step in the 
 evolution of his designs; and long as the 
 time may appear, from the first act of oui 
 redemption to its final accomplishment, 
 and close and exclusive as we may think 
 the attentions of God upon it, it will be 
 found that it has left him room enough for 
 all his concerns, and that on the high scale 
 of eternity, it is but one of those passing 
 and ephemeral transactions, which crowd 
 the history of a never-ending administra- 
 tion. 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 On the Sympathy that is felt for Man in the Distant Places of Creation. 
 
 ' I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety 
 and nine just persons which need no repentance." — Luke xv. 7 
 
 I HAVE already attempted at full length 
 to establish the position, that the infidel ar- 
 gument of astronomers goes to expunge a 
 natural perfection from the character of 
 God, even that wondrous property of his, 
 by which he, at the same instant of time, 
 can bend a close and a careful attention on 
 a countless diversity of objects, and diffuse 
 the intimacy of his power and of his pre- 
 sence, from the greatest to the minutest and 
 most insignificant of them all. I also ad- 
 verted shortly to this other circumstance, 
 that it went to impair a moral attribute of 
 the Deity, it goes to impair the benevo- 
 lence of his natuj-e. It is saying much for 
 the benevolence of God, to say, that a single 
 world, or a single system, is not enough for 
 It — that it must have the spread of a mightier 
 region, on which it may pour forth a tide of 
 exuberancy throughout all its provinces — 
 that as far as our vision can carry us, it has 
 
 strewed immensity with the floating recep- 
 tacles of life, and has stretched over each of 
 them the garniture of such a sky as mantles 
 our own habitation — and that even from 
 distances which are far beyond the reach 
 of human eye, the songs of gratitude and 
 praise may now be arising to the one God, 
 who sits surrounded by the regards of his 
 one great and universal family. 
 
 Now, it is saying much for the benevolence 
 of God, to say that it sends forth these wide 
 and distant emanations over the surface of a 
 territory so ample, that the world we inha- 
 bit, lying imbedded as it does amidst so 
 much surrounding greatness, shrinks into a 
 point that to the universal eye might appear 
 to be almost imperceptible. But does it not 
 add to the power and to the perfection of 
 this universal eye, that at the very moment 
 it is taking a comprehensive survey of the 
 vast, it can fasten a steady and undistracted 
 
y-'] 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR MAN IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 
 
 391 
 
 attention on each minute and separate port ion 
 of it ; that at the very moment it is looking at 
 all \vorlds,it can look most pointedly and most 
 intelligently to each of them : that at tiie very 
 moment it sweeps the field of immensity, 
 it can settle all the earnestness of its regards 
 upon every distinct hand-breadth of that 
 field ; that at the very moment at which it 
 embraces the totality of existence, it can 
 send a most thorough and penetrating in- 
 spection into each of its details, and into 
 every one of its endless diversities ? You 
 cannot fail to perceive how much this adds 
 to the power of the all-seeing eye. Tell me, 
 then, if it do not add as much perfection to 
 the benevolence of God, that while it is ex- 
 patiating over the vast field of created things, 
 there is not one portion of the field over- 
 looked by it ; that while it scatters blessings 
 over the whole of an infinite range, it causes 
 them to descend in a shower of plenty on 
 every separate habitation : that while his 
 arm is underneath and round about all 
 worlds, he enters within the precincts of 
 every one of them, and gives a care and a 
 tenderness to each individual of their teem- 
 ing population. Oh ! does not the God, who 
 is said to be love, shed over this attribute of 
 ills its finest illustration, when, while he sits 
 hi the highest heaven, and pours out his ful- 
 ness on the whole subordinate domain of 
 nature and of providence, he bows a pitying 
 regard on the very humblest of his chil- 
 dren, and sends his reviving Spirit into every 
 heart, and cheers by his presence every 
 home, and provides for the wants of every 
 family, and watches every sick-bed, and 
 listens to the complaints of every sufferer; 
 and while by his wondrous mind the weight 
 of universal government is borne, oh ! is it 
 not more wondrous and more excellent still, 
 that he feels for every sorrow, and has an 
 ear open to every prayer ? 
 
 " it doth not yet appear what we shall 
 be," says the apostle John, " but we know 
 that when he shall appear, we shall be like 
 him, for we shall see him as he is." It is 
 the present lot of the angels, that they be- 
 hold the face of our Father in heaven, and 
 it would seem as if the effect of this was to 
 form and to perpetuate in them the moral 
 likeness of himself, and that they reflect 
 back upon him his own image, and that 
 thus a diffused resemblance to the Godhead 
 is kept up among all those adoring worship- 
 pers who live in the near and rejoicing con- 
 templation of the Godhead. Mark then how 
 that peculiar and endearing feature in the 
 goodness of the Deity, which we have just 
 now adverted to — mark how beauteously it 
 is reflected downwards upon us in the re- 
 vealed attitude of angels. From the high 
 eminences of heaven, are they bending a 
 wakeful regard over the men of this sinful 
 world ; and the repentance of every one of 
 them spreads a joy and a high gratulatiou 
 
 throughout all its dwelling places. Put this 
 trait of the angelic character into contrast 
 with the dark and lowering spirit of an infi- 
 del. He is told of the multitude of other 
 worlds, and he feels a kindling magnificence 
 in the conception, and he is seduced by an 
 elevation which he cannot carry, and from 
 this airy summit does he look down on the 
 insignificance of the world we occupy, and 
 pronounces it to be unworthy of those visits 
 and of those attentions which we read of in 
 the New Testament. He is unable to wing 
 his way upward along the scale, either of 
 moral or of natural perfection ; and when 
 the wonderful extent of the field is made 
 known to him, over which the wealth of 
 the Divinity is lavished — there he stops, and 
 wilders, and altogether misses this essential 
 perception, that the power and perfection 
 of the Divinity are not more displayed by 
 the mere magnitude of the field, than they 
 are by that minute and exquisite fiUing up, 
 which leaves not its smallest portions ne- 
 glected ; but which imprints the fulness of 
 the Godhead upon every one of them; and 
 proves, by every flower of the pathless de- 
 sert, as well as by every orb of immensity, 
 how this unsearchable being can care for all, 
 and provide for all ; and, throned in mystery 
 too high for us, can, throughout every in- 
 stant of time, keep his attentive eye on every 
 separate thing that he has f(jrmed, and by an 
 act of his thoughtful and presiding intelli- 
 gence, can constantly embrace all. 
 
 But God, compassed about as he is with 
 light inaccessible, and full of glory, lies so . 
 hidden from the ken and conception of all 
 our faculties, that the spirit of man sinks 
 exhausted by its attempts to comprehend 
 him. Could the image of the Supreme be 
 placed direct before the eye of the mind, 
 that flood of splendour, which is ever issuing 
 from him on all who have the privilege of 
 beholding, would not only dazzle, but over- 
 power us. And therefore it is, that I bid 
 you look to the reflection of that image, and 
 thus to take a view of its mitigated glories, 
 and to gather the lineaments of the God- 
 head in the face of those righteous angels, 
 who have never thrown away from them 
 the resemblance in which they were created ; 
 and, unable as you are to support the grace 
 and the majesty of that countenance, before 
 which the sons and the prophets of other 
 days fell, and became as dead men, let us, 
 before we bring this argument to a close, 
 borrow one lesson of Him who sitteth on 
 the throne, from the aspect and the revealed 
 doings of those who are surrounding it. 
 
 The infidel, then, as he widens the field 
 of his contemplations would suffer its every 
 separate object to die away into forgetful- 
 ness : these angels, expatiating as they do 
 over the range of a loftier universality, are 
 represented as all awake to the history of 
 each of its distinct and subordinate provin- 
 
392 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR MAN IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION, 
 
 [disc 
 
 ces. The infidel, with his mind afloat among 
 Sims and among systems, can find no place 
 in his already occupied regards, for that 
 humble planet which lodges and accommo- 
 dates our species ; the angels, standing on a 
 loftier summit, and with a mightier prospect 
 of creation before them, are yet represented 
 as looking down on this single world, and 
 attentively marking the every feeling and 
 the every demand of all its families. The 
 infidel, by sinking us down to an unnotice- 
 able minuteness, would lose sight of our 
 dwelling-place altogether, and spread a dark- 
 ening shroud of oblivion over all the con- 
 (rerns and all the interests of men ; but the 
 angels will not so abandon us ; and undaz- 
 zled by the whole surpassing grandeur of 
 that scenery which is around them, are they 
 revealed as directing all the fulness of their 
 regard to this our habitation, and casting a 
 longing and benignant eye on ourselves and 
 on our children. The infidel will tell us of 
 those worlds which roll afar, and the num- 
 ber of which outstrips the arithmetic of the 
 human understanding — and then with the 
 hardness of an unfeeling calculation, will 
 he consign the one we occupy, with all its 
 guilty generations, to despair. 
 
 But he who counts the nimibor of the 
 ^ stars, is set forth to us as looking at every 
 inhabitant among the millions of our spe- 
 cies, and by the word of the Gospel beck- 
 oning to him with the hand of invitation, 
 and on the very first step of his return, as 
 moving towards him with all the eagerness 
 of the prodigal's father, to receive him 
 back again into that presence from wiiich 
 he had wandered. And as to this world, 
 in favour of which the scowling infidel will 
 not permit one solitary movement, all hea- 
 ven is represented as in a stir about its re- 
 storation ; and there cannot a single son or 
 a single daughter be recalled from sin unto 
 righteousness, without an acclamation of 
 joy among the liosts of paradise. Aye, and 
 I can say it of tlie humblest and the un- 
 worthiest of you all, that the eye of angels 
 is upon him, and that his repentance would 
 at tills moment, send forth a wave of de- 
 • lighted sensibility throughout the mighty 
 throng of their innumerable legions. 
 
 Now, the single question I have to ask, 
 is. On which of the two sides of this con- 
 trast do we see most of the impress of hea- 
 ven? Which of the two would be most 
 glorifying to God? Wliich of them car- 
 ries upon it the most of that evidence which 
 lies in its having a celestial character ? For 
 if it be the side of the infidel, then must all 
 our hopes expire with the ratifying of that 
 fatal sentence, by -svliich the world is doom- 
 ed, through its insignificancy, to perpetual 
 exclusion from the attentions of the God- 
 head. I have long been knocking at the 
 door of your understanding, and have tried 
 to find an admittance to it for many an argu- 
 
 ment. I now make my appeal to the sensi- 
 bilities of your heart ; and tell mc. to wliom 
 does the moral feeling within it yield its 
 readiest testimony — to the infidel, who 
 would make this world of ours vanish away 
 into abandonment — or to those angels, who 
 ring throughout all their mansions the ho- 
 sannas of joy, over every one individual of 
 its repentant population ? 
 
 And here I cannot omit to take advan- 
 tage of that opening with which our Savioui 
 has furnished us, by the parables of this 
 chapter, and admits us into a familiar view 
 of that principle on which the inhabitants 
 of heaven are so awake to the deliverance 
 and the restoration of our species. To il- 
 lustrate the difference in the reach of know- 
 ledge and of affection, between a man and 
 an angel, let us think of the difference of 
 reach between one man and another. You 
 may often witness a man, who feels neither 
 tenderness nor care beyond the precincts 
 of his own family ; but who, on thp strength 
 of those instinctive fondnesses which na- 
 ture has implanted in his bosom, may earn 
 the character of an amiable father, or a 
 kind husband, or a bright example of all 
 that is soft and endearing in the relations 
 of domestic society. Now, conceive him, 
 in addition to all this, to carry his affections 
 abroad, without, at the same time, any 
 abatement of their intensity towards the 
 objects which are at home — that stepping 
 across the limits of the house he occupies, 
 he takes an interest in the families which 
 are near him — that he lends his services to 
 the town or the district W'herein he is placed, 
 and gives up a portion of his time to the 
 thoughtful labours of a humane and public- 
 spirited citizen. By this enlargement in the 
 sphere of his attention he has extended his 
 reach ; and, provided he has not done so at 
 the expense of that regard which is due to his 
 family — a thing which, cramped and con- 
 fined as we are, we are verj' apt, in the ex- 
 ercise of our humble faculties, to do — I put 
 it to you, whether, by extending the reach 
 of his views and his affections, he has not 
 extended his worth and his moral respect- 
 ability along with it? 
 
 But I can conceive a still further enlarge- 
 ment. I can figure to myself a man, whose 
 wakeful sympathy overflows the field of his 
 own immediate neighbourhood — to whom 
 the name of country comes with all the 
 omnipotence of a charm upon his heart, 
 and with uU the urgency of a most righteous 
 and resiflless claim upon his services — 
 who never hears the name of Britain 
 sounded in his ears, but it stirs up all his 
 enthusia?m in behalf of the vrorth and the 
 welfare of its people — who gives himself 
 up, with all the devotedness of a passion, 
 to the best and purest objects of patriotism 
 — and who, spurning away from him the 
 vulgarities of party ambition, separates his 
 
•] 
 
 SYMPATHY FELT FOR MAN IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 
 
 593 
 
 !ife and his labours to the fine pursuit of 
 augmenting the science, or the virtue, or 
 the substantial prosperity of his nation. 
 Oh ! could such a man retain all the ten- 
 derness, and fulfil all the duties which home 
 and which neighbourhood require of him, 
 and at the same time expatiate, in the might 
 of his untired faculties, on so wide a field 
 of benevolent contemplation — would not 
 this extension of reach place him still high- 
 er than before, on the scale both of moral 
 and intellectual gradation, and give liim a 
 still brighter and more enduring name in 
 the records of human excellence 7 
 
 And lastly, I can conceive a still loftier 
 flight of humanity — a man, the aspiring of 
 whose heart for the good of man, knows 
 no limitations — whose longings, and whose 
 conceptions on this subject, overleap all 
 the barriers of geography — who, looking on 
 himself as a brother of the species, links 
 every spare energy which belongs to liim 
 wit!i the cause of its melioration — who can 
 embrace within the grasp of his ample de- 
 sires thft whole family of mankind — and 
 who, in obedience to a heaven-born move- 
 ment of principle within him, separates 
 himself to some big and busy enterprise, 
 which is to tell on tlie moral destinies of the 
 world. Oh ! could such a man mix up the 
 soften.iigs of private virtue with the habit 
 of so sublime a comprehension — if, amid 
 those magnificent darings of thought and of 
 performance, the mildness of his benignant 
 eye could still continue to cheer the retreat 
 of his family, and to spend the charm and the 
 sacredness of piety among all its members 
 —could he even mingle himself, in all the 
 gentleness of a soothed and a smiling heart, 
 with the playfulness of his children — and 
 also find strength to shed the blessings of 
 his presence and his counsel over the vi- 
 cinity around him ; — oh ! would not the 
 combination of so much grace with so much 
 loftiness, only serve the more to aggrandize 
 him ? Would not the one ingredient of a 
 character so rare, go to illustrate and to 
 magnify the other? And would not you 
 pronounce him to be the fairest specimen 
 of our nature, who could so call out all your 
 tenderness, while he challenged and com- 
 pelled all your veneration ? 
 
 Nor can I proceed, at this point of my 
 argument, without adverting to the way in 
 which this last and this largest style of be- 
 nevolence is exemplified in our own coun- 
 try — where the spirit of the Gospel has 
 given to many of its enlightened disciples 
 the impulse of such a philanthropy, as car- 
 ries abroad their wishes and their endea- 
 vours to the very outskirts of human po- 
 pulation — a philanthropy, of .vhich, if j'ou 
 asked the extent or the boundary of its field, 
 we should answer, in the language of in- 
 spiration, that the field is the world — phi- 
 lanthropy, which overlooks all the distinc- 
 50 
 
 tions of cast and of colour, and spreads its 
 ample regards over the whole brutherliood 
 of the species — a philanthropy, which at- 
 taches itself to man in the general ; to man 
 throughout all liis varieties : to man as the 
 partaker of one common nature, and who, 
 in whatever chme or latitude you may meet 
 with him, is found to breathe the same 
 sympathies, and to possess the same high 
 capabilities both of bliss and improvement. 
 It is true that upon this subject, there is 
 often a loose and unsettled magnificence of 
 thought, which is fruitful of nothing but 
 empty speculation. But the men to whom 
 I allude have not imagined the enterprise 
 in the form of a thing unknown. They 
 have given it a local habitation. TJiey have 
 bodied it forth in deed and in accomplish- 
 ment. They have turned the dream into a 
 reality. In them, the power of a lofty gene- 
 ralization meets with its happiest attem- 
 perament in the principle and perseverance, 
 and all the chastening and subduing virtues 
 of the New Testament. And, were I in 
 search of that fine union of grace and of 
 greatness, which I have now been insisting 
 on, and in virtue of which the enlightened 
 Christian can at once find room in his 
 bosom for the concerns of universal hu- 
 manity and for the play of kindliness to- 
 wards every individual he meets with — I 
 could no where more readily expect to find 
 it, than with the worthies of our own land — 
 the Howard of a former generation, who 
 paced it over Europe in quest of the un- 
 seen wretchedness which abounds in it: or 
 in such men of our present generation as 
 Wilberforce, who lifted his unwearied voice 
 against the biggest outrage ever practised 
 on our nature, till he wrought its extermi- 
 nation ; and Clarkson, who plied his assi- 
 duous task at rearing the materials of its 
 impressive history, and at length carried, 
 for this righteous cause, the mind of Parlia- 
 ment; and Carey, from whose hand the 
 generations of the East are now receiving 
 tlie elements of their moral renovation, and, 
 in fine, those holy and devoted men, who 
 count not their lives dear unto them ; but, 
 going forth every year from the island of 
 our habitation, carry the message of hea- 
 ven over the face of the world ; and in the 
 front of severest obloquy are now labouring 
 in remotest lands; and are reclaiming an- 
 other and another portion from the wastes 
 of dark and fallen humanity; and are widen- 
 ing the domains of gospel light and gospel 
 principle among them; and are spreading a 
 moral beauty around the every spot on which 
 they pitch their lowly tabernacle ; and are at 
 length compelling even the eye and the testi- 
 mony of gainsayers, by the success of their 
 noble enterprise ; and are forcing the ex- 
 clamation of delighted surprise from the 
 charmed and arrested traveller, as he looks 
 at the softening tints which they are now 
 
394 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR MAX IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 spreading over the wilderness, and as he 
 hears the sound of the chapel bell, and as in 
 those haunts where, at the distance of half 
 a generation, savages would have scowled 
 upon his path, he regales himself with the 
 hum of missionary schools, and the lovely 
 spectacle of peaceful and christian villages. 
 
 Such, then, is the benevolence, at once so 
 gentle and so lofty, of those men. who, 
 sanctified by trie faith that is in Jesus, have 
 had their hearts visited from heaven by a 
 beam of warmth and of sacredness. — What 
 then, I should hke to know, is the benevo- 
 lence of the place from whence such an in- 
 fluence Cometh ? How wide is the compass of 
 this virtue there, and how exquisite is the feel- 
 ing of its tenderness, and how pure and how 
 fervent are its aspirings among those unfal- 
 len beings who have no darkness and no en- 
 cumbering weight of corruption to strive 
 against ? Angels have a mightier reach of 
 contemplation. Angels can look upon this 
 world, and all which it inherits, as the part 
 of a larger family. Angels were in the full 
 exercise of their powers even at the first in- 
 fancy of our species, and shared in the gra- 
 tulations of that period, when at the birth 
 of humanity all intelligent nature felt a 
 gladdening impulse, and the morning stars 
 sang together for joy. They loved us even 
 with that love which a family on earth bears 
 to a younger sister ; and the very childhood 
 of our tinier faculties did only serve the 
 more to endear us to them ; and though 
 born at a later hour in the history of crea- 
 tion, did they regard us as heirs of the same 
 destiny with themselves, to rise along with 
 them in the scale of moral elevation, to bow 
 at the same footstool, and to partake in those 
 high dispensations of a parent's kindness and 
 a parent's care, which are ever emanating 
 from the throne of the Eternal on all the 
 members of a duteous and afl^ectionate fami- 
 ly. Take the reach of an angel's mind, but, 
 at the same time take the seraphic fervour of 
 an angel's benevolence along with it ; how 
 from the eminence on which he stands he 
 may liave an eye upon many worlds, and a 
 remembrance upon the origin and the suc- 
 cessive concerns of every one of them ; how 
 he may feel the full force of a most affect- 
 ing relationship with the inhabitants of 
 each, as tiie offspring of one common Fa- 
 ther ; and though it be both the effect and the 
 evidence of our depravity, that we cannot 
 sympathise with these pure and generous 
 ardours of a celestial spirit ; how it may 
 consist with the lofty comprehension, and 
 the everbreathing love of an angel, that he 
 can both shoot Ijiis benevolence abroad over 
 a mighty expanse of planets and of systems, 
 and lavish a flood of tenderness on each 
 "ndividual of their teeming population. 
 
 Keep all this in view, and you cannot 
 fail to perceive how the principle, so finely 
 and so copiously illustrated in this chapter 
 
 may be brought to meet the infidelity we 
 have thus long been employed in combat- 
 mg. It was nature, and the experience of 
 every bosom will affirm it — it was nature 
 in the shepherd to leave the ninety and nine 
 of his flock forgotten and alone in the wil- 
 derness, and betaking him?elf to the moun- 
 tains, to give all his labour and all his con- 
 cern to the pursuit of one solitary wan- 
 derer. It was nature ; and we are told iu 
 the passage before us, that it is such a por- 
 tion of nature as belongs not merely to men 
 but to angels ; when the woman, with her 
 mind in a state of listlessness as to the nine 
 pieces of silver that were in secure custody, 
 turned the whole force of her anxiety to-the 
 one piece which she had lost, and for wliich 
 she had'to light a candle, and to sweep the 
 house, and to search diligently until she 
 found it. It was nature in her to rejoice 
 more over that piece, than ovtr all the rest 
 of them, and to tell it abroad among friends 
 and neighbours, that they might rejoice 
 along with her — aye, and sadly efiaced as hu- 
 manity is, in all her original lineaments, this ' 
 is a part of our nature, the very movemtnls * 
 of which are experienced in heaven, " where 
 there is more joy over one sinner that re- 
 penteth. than over ninety and nine just per- 
 sons who need no repentance." For any 
 thing I know, the very planet that rolls in 
 tjie immensity around me may be a land of 
 righteousness; and be a member of the 
 houseluikl of God ; and have her secure 
 dwelling-place within that ample limit, 
 which embraces his great and universal fa- 
 mily. But I know at least of one wanderer ; 
 and how wofully she has strayed from 
 peace and from purity ; and I'ow in dreary 
 alienation from him who made her, she has 
 bewildered herself among those man)- de- 
 vious tracts, which have carried her afar 
 from the path of immortality ; and hew sad- 
 ly tarnished all those beauties and felicities 
 are, which promised, on that morning of her 
 existence when God looked on her, and 
 saw that all was very good — which pro- 
 mised so richly to bless and to adorn her ; 
 and how in the eye of the wiiole unfallen 
 creation, she has renounced all this goodli- 
 ness, and is fast departing auay from them 
 into guilt, and wretchedness, and shame. 
 Oh ! if there be any truth in this chapter, 
 and any sweet or touching nature in the 
 principle which runs throughout all its pa- 
 rables, let us cease to wonder, though they 
 who surround the throne of love should be 
 looking so intently toward us — or though 
 in the way by whicli tliey have singled us 
 out, all the other orbs of space should, foi 
 one short season, on the scale of eternity, 
 appear to be forgotten — or though for every 
 stcp of her recovery, and for every indi- 
 vidual who is rendered back again to the 
 fold from which he was separated, another 
 and another message of triumph should bo 
 
^•J 
 
 SYMPATHY FOR MAN IN DISTANT PLACES OF CREATION. 
 
 305 
 
 raade to circulate among the hosts of para- 
 dise — or tlioiigh lost as we are, and sunk in 
 depravity as we are, all the sympathies of 
 heaven sliould now be awake on the en- 
 terprise of him who has travailed, in the 
 greatness of his strength, to seek and to 
 save lis. 
 
 And here I cannot but remark how fine a 
 harmony there is between the law of sym- 
 paUi^^nature in heaven, and tlie most 
 toa^Brexhibitions of it on the face of our 
 worHBBwhen one of a numerous house- 
 hold droops under the power of disease, is 
 not that the one to whom all the tenderness 
 ' is turned, and who, irf a manner, monopo- 
 lizes the inquiries of his neighbourhood, 
 and the care of his family ? When the 
 sighing of the midnight storms sends a dis- 
 mal foreboding into the mother's heart, to 
 whom of all her offspring, I would ask, are 
 her thouglits and her anxieties then wan- 
 dering ? Is it not to her sailor boy whom her 
 fancy has placed amid the rude and angry 
 surges of the ocean? Does not this, the 
 hour of his apprehended danger, concen- 
 trate upon him the whole force of her wake- 
 ful meditations ? And does not he engross, 
 for a season, her every sensibility, and her 
 every prayer? We sometimes hear of ship- 
 wrecked passengers thrown upon a barba- 
 rous sliore ; and seized upon by its prowling 
 inhabitants ; and hurried away through the 
 tracks of a dreary and unknown wilder- 
 ness ; and sold into captivity ; and loaded 
 with the fetters of irrecoverable bondage ; 
 and v»-ho, stripped of every other liberty but 
 the liberty of thought, feel even this to be 
 another ingredient of wretchedness, for 
 what can they think of but home; and as all 
 its kind and tender imagery comes upon 
 tlieir remembrance, how can they think of 
 it but m the bitterness of despair ? Oh tell 
 ine, when the fame of all this disaster 
 reaches his family, who is the member of 
 it to whom is directed the full tide of its 
 griefs and of its sympathies? Who is it that, 
 for weeks and for months, usurps their 
 every feeling, and calls out their largest sa- 
 crifices, and sets them to the busiest expe- 
 dients for getting liim back again ? Who is 
 it that makes them forgetful of themselves 
 nd of all around them ; and tell me if you 
 an assign a limit to the pains, and the ex- 
 ertions, and the surrenders which aflTiicted 
 parents and weeping sisters would make to 
 seek and to save him. 
 
 Now conceive, as we are warranted to do 
 by the parables of this chapter, the princi- 
 ple of all these earthly exhibitions to be in 
 full operation around the throne of God. 
 Conceive the imiverse to be one secure and 
 rejoicing family, and that this alienated 
 world is the only strayed, or only captive 
 member belonging to it ; and we shall cea.se 
 to wonder, that from the first period of the 
 captivity of our species, down to the con- 
 
 summation of their history in time, there 
 should be such a mo\ ciuent in h(>aven ; or 
 tliat angels should so often have sped their 
 commissioned way on the errand of our 
 recovery ; or that the t?on of God should 
 have bowed himself down to the burden of 
 our mysterious atonement; or that the 
 Spirit of God should now, by the busy va- 
 riety of his all-powerful influences, be carry- 
 ing forward that dispensation of grace 
 wiiich is to make us meet for re-admittance 
 into the mansions of the celestial. Only 
 think of love as the reigning principle tliere; 
 of love, as sending forth its energies and 
 aspirations to the quarter where its object 
 is most in danger of being for ever lost to 
 it ; of love, as called forth by this single 
 circumstance to its uttermost exertion, and 
 the most exquisite feeling of its tenderness ; 
 and then shall we come to a distinct and a 
 familiar explanation of this whole mystery: 
 Nor shall we resist by our incredulity the 
 gospel message any longer, though it tells 
 us that throughout the whole of this world's 
 history, long in our eye.s, but only a little 
 month in the high periods of immortality, 
 so much of the vigilance, and so much of the 
 earnestness of heaven, should have been 
 expended on the recovery of its guilty po- 
 pulation. 
 
 There is another touching trait of nature, 
 which goes finely to heighten ihis princi- 
 ple, and still more forcibly to demonstrate 
 its application to our present argument. So 
 long as the dying child of David was alive, 
 he was kept on the stretch of anxiety and 
 of suffering with regard to it. When it ex- 
 pired, lie arose and comforted himself. This 
 narrative of King David is in harmony with 
 all that we experience of our own move- 
 ments and our own sensibilities. It is the 
 power of uncertainty which gives them so 
 acti\ e and so interesting a play in our bo- 
 soms; and which heiglitens all our regards 
 to a tenfold pitch of feeling and exercise ; 
 and w'hich fixes down our watchfulness 
 upon our infant's dying bed ; and which 
 keeps us so painfully alive to every turn 
 and to every symptom in the progress of 
 its malady; and which draws out all oui 
 affect ions for it to a degree of intensity that 
 is quite unutterable; and which urges us on 
 to ply our every effort and O'lr every ex- 
 pedient, till hope withdraw its lingering 
 beam, or till death slnit the eyes of our be- 
 loved in the slumber of its long and its last 
 repose. 
 
 I know not who of you have j'our names 
 written in the book of life — nor can I tell 
 if this be known to the angels which are in 
 heaven. Wliile in the land of living men, 
 you are under the power and application 
 of a remedy, which if taken as the gospel 
 prescribes, will renovate the soul, and al- 
 together prepare it for the bloom and the 
 vigour of immortality. Wonder not then 
 
396 
 
 CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 that with this principle of uncertainty in 
 such full operation, ministers should feel 
 for you ; or angels should feel for you ; or 
 all the sensibilities of heaven should be 
 awake upon the symptoms of your grace 
 and reformation ; or the eyes of those who 
 stand upon the high eminences of the celes- 
 tial world, should be so earnestly fixed on 
 the every footstep and new evolution of 
 your moral history. Such a consideration 
 as this should do something more than si- 
 lence the infidel objection. It should give 
 a practical effect to the calls of repentance. 
 
 How will it go to aggravate the whole guilt 
 of our impenitency, should we stand out 
 against the power and tlie tenderness oi 
 these manifold applications — the voice of a 
 beseeching God upon us— the word of salva- 
 tion at our very door — the free oflffr of 
 strength and of acceptance sounded in our 
 hearing — the spirit in readiness with his 
 agency to meet our every desire and our 
 every inquiry — angels beckoning u^^their 
 company — and the very first mo^^^^^of 
 our awakened conscience drawin J^^Wus 
 all their regard, and all their eaniestness ! 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 On the Covtest for an Ascendency over Man, among the Higher Orders of 
 
 lutein srence. 
 
 "And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in 
 
 it." — Colossians ii. 15. 
 
 Though these astronomical Discourses 
 be now drawing to a close, it is not because 
 I feel that much more might not be said on 
 the subject of them, both in the way of ar- 
 gument and of illustration. The whole of 
 the infidel difficulty proceeds upon the as- 
 sumption, that the exclusive bearing of 
 Christianity is upon the people of our earth ; 
 that this solitary planet is in no way impli- 
 cated with the concerns of a wider dispen- 
 sation; that the revelation we have of the 
 dealings of God, in this district of his em- 
 pire, does not suit and subordinate it.self to 
 a system of moral administration, as ex- 
 tended as in the whole of his monarchy. 
 Or, in other words, because infidels have not 
 access to the whole truth, will they refuse 
 a part of it however well attested or well 
 accredited it may be; because a mantle of 
 deep obscurity rests on the government of 
 God, when taken in all its eternity and all 
 its entireness, will they shut their eyes 
 against that allowance of light which has 
 been made to pass downwards upon our 
 world from time to time, through so many 
 partial unfoldings : and till they are made 
 to know the share which other planets have 
 in these communications of mercy, will they 
 turn them away from the actual message 
 which has come to their own door, and 
 will neither examine its credentials, nor be 
 alarmed by its warnings, nor be won by the 
 tenderness of its invitations. 
 
 On that day when the secrets of all hearts 
 shall be revealed, there v.ill be found such a 
 wilful duplicity and darkening of the mind 
 in the whole of this proceeding, as shall 
 bring down upon it the burden of a righ- 
 teous condemnation. But, even now, does 
 it lie open to the rebuke of philosophy, 
 
 when the soundness and the consistency of 
 her principles are brought faithfully to bear 
 upon it. Were the characters of modern 
 science rightly understood, it would be seen, 
 that the verj' thing which gave such strength 
 and surencss to all her conclusions, was 
 that humility of spirit which belonged to 
 her. She promulgates all that is positively 
 known; but she maintains the strictest 
 silence and modesty about all that is un- 
 known. She thankfully accepts of evidence 
 wherever it can be found ; nor does she 
 spurn away from her the very humblest 
 contribution of such doctrine as can be wit- 
 nessed by human observation, or can be 
 attested by human veracity But with all 
 this she can hold out most sternly against 
 that power of eloquence and fancy, which 
 often throws so bewitching a charm over 
 the plausibilities of ingenious speculation. 
 Truth is the alone idol of her reverence; 
 and did she at all times keep by her at- 
 tachments, nor throw them away when 
 theology submitted to her cognizance its 
 demonstrations and its claims, we should 
 not despair of witnessing as great a revolu- 
 tion in those prevailing habitudes of thought 
 which obtain throughout our literary esta- 
 blishments, on the subject of Christianity, 
 as that which has actually taken place in 
 the philosophy of external nature. This is 
 the first field on which have been success- 
 fully practised the experimental lessons of 
 Bacon ; and they who are conversant Avith 
 these matters, knoAv how great and how 
 general a uniformity of doctrine now pre- 
 vails in the sciences of astronomy, and 
 mechanics, and chemistry, and almost all 
 the other departments in the history and 
 philosophy of matter. But this uniformilv 
 
vi.l 
 
 CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN. 
 
 397 
 
 stands strikingly contrasted with the diver- 
 sity of our moral systems, with the restless 
 fluctuations both of language and of senti- 
 ment which are taking place in the philoso- 
 phy of mind, with the palpable fact that 
 every new course of instruction upon this 
 subject, has some new articles, or some 
 new explanations to peculiarize it : and all 
 this is to be attributed, not to the progress 
 of the science, not to a growing, but to an 
 alternating movement ; not to its perpetual 
 additions, but to its perpetual vibrations. 
 
 I mean not to assert the futility of moral 
 science, or to deny her importance, or to 
 insist on the utter hopelessness of her ad- 
 vancement. The Baconian method will not 
 probably push forward her discoveries with 
 such a rapidity, or to such an extent, as 
 many of her sanguine disciples have anti- 
 cipated. But if the spirit and the maxims 
 of this philosophy were at all times pro- 
 ceeded upon, it would certainly check that 
 rashness and variety of excogitation, in 
 virtue of which it may almost be said, that 
 every new course presents us with a new 
 system, and that every new teacher has 
 some singularity or other to characterize 
 him. She may be able to make out an exact 
 transcript of tlie phenomena of mind, and 
 in so doing, she yields a most important 
 contribution to the stock of human acquire- 
 ments. But when she attempts to grope 
 her darkling way through the counsels of 
 the Deity, and the futurities of his admin- 
 istration ; when, without one passing ac- 
 knowledgment to the embassy which pro- 
 fesses to have come from Him, or to the 
 facts and to the testimonies by which it has 
 so illustriously been vindicated, she launches 
 forth her own speculations on the character 
 of God, and the destiny of man ; when, 
 though this be a subject on which neither 
 the recollections of history, nor the ephe- 
 meral experience of any single hfe, can fur- 
 nish one observation to enlighten her, she 
 will neverfheless utter her own plausibili- 
 ties, not merely with a contemptuous ne- 
 glect of the Bible, but in direct opposition 
 to it ; then it is high time to remind her of 
 the difference between the reverie of him 
 who has not seen God, and the well-accre- 
 dited declaration of Him who was in the 
 beginning with God, and was God ; and to 
 tell her that this so far from being the ar- 
 gument of an ignoble fanaticism, is in har- 
 mony with the very argument upon which 
 the science of experiment has been reared, 
 and by which it has been at length deliver- 
 ed from the influence of theory, and purified 
 of all its vain and visionary splendours. 
 
 In my last Discourses, I have attempted 
 to collect from the records of God's actual 
 communication to the world, such traces 
 of relationship between other orders of be- 
 ing and the great family of mankind, as 
 serve to prove that Christianity is not so 
 
 paltry and provincial a system as mfidelity 
 presumes it to be. And as I said before, 
 I have not exhausted all that may legiti- 
 mately be derived upon this subject from 
 the informations of Scripture. I have ad- 
 verted, it is true, to the knowledge of our 
 moral history, which obtains throughout 
 other provinces of the intelligent creation. 
 I have asserted the universal importance 
 which this may confer on the transactions 
 even of one planet, in as much as it may 
 spread an honourable display of the God- 
 head among all the mansions of infinity. I 
 have attempted to expatiate on the argu- 
 ment, that an event little in itself, may be 
 so pregnant with character, as to furnish all 
 the worshippers of heaven with a theme 
 of praise for eternity. I have stated that 
 nothing is of magnitude in their eyes, but 
 that which serves to endear to them the 
 Father of their spirits, or to shed a lustre 
 over the glory of his incomprehensible at- 
 tributes — and that thus, from the redemp- 
 tion even of our solitary species, there may * 
 go forth such an exhibition of the Deity, 
 as shall bear the triumphs of his name to 
 the very outskirts of the universe. 
 
 I have further adverted to another dis- 
 tinct scriptural intimation, that the state of 
 fallen man was not only matter of know- 
 ledge to other orders of creation, but was 
 also matter of deep regret and affectionate 
 sympathy ; that, agreeably to such laws 
 of sympathy as are most familiar even 
 to human observation, the very wretched- 
 ness of our condition was fitted to concen- 
 trate upon us the feelings, and the attentions, 
 and the services, of tlie celestial — to single 
 us out for a time to the gaze of their most 
 earnest and unceasing contemplation — to 
 draw forth all that was kind and all that 
 was tender within them — and just in pro- 
 portion to the need and to the helplessness 
 of us miserable exiles from the family of 
 God, to multiply upon us the regards, and 
 call out in our behalf the fond and eager 
 exertions of those who had never wandered 
 away from Him. This appears from the 
 Bible to be the style of that benevolence 
 which glows and which circulates around 
 the throne of heaven. It is the very benevo- 
 lence which emanates from the throne itself, 
 and the attentions of which have for so 
 many thousand years signalized the inha- 
 bitants of our world. This may look a long 
 period for so paltry a world. But how have 
 infidels come to their conception that our 
 world is so paltry? By looking abroad 
 over the countless systems of immensit}' 
 But why then have they missed the con 
 ception, that the time of those peculiar visi- 
 tations, which they look upon as so dispro- 
 portionate to the magnitude of this earth, 
 is just as evanescent as the earth itself is 
 insignificant ? Why look they not abroad 
 on the countless generations of eternity; 
 
598 
 
 CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN. 
 
 [disc- 
 
 i 
 
 and thus come back to the conclusion, that 
 after all, the redemption of our species is 
 but an ephemeral doing in the history of 
 intelligent nature ; that it leaves the Author 
 of it room for all the accomplishments of a 
 wise and equal administration ; and not to 
 mention, that even during the progress of 
 it, it withdraws not a single thought or a 
 single energy of his from other fields of 
 creation ; that there remains time enough 
 to him for carrying round the visitations of 
 as striking and as peculiar a tenderness, over 
 the whole extent of his great and universal 
 monarchy? 
 
 It might serve still further to incorporate 
 the concerns of our planet with the general 
 history of moral and intelligent beings, to 
 state, not merely the knowledge which 
 they take of us, and not merely the com- 
 passionate anxiety which they feel for us : 
 but to state the importance derived to our 
 world from its being the actual theatre of a 
 keen and ambitious contest among the up- 
 per orders of creation. You know that 
 how, for the possession of a very small and 
 insulated territory, the mightiest empires 
 of the world would have put forth all their 
 resources ; and on some field of mustering 
 competition have monarchs met, and em- 
 barked for victory, all the pride of a coun- 
 try's talent, and all the flower and strength 
 of a country's population. The solitary 
 island, around which so many fleets are ho- 
 vering, and on the shores of which so many 
 armed men are descending, as to an arena 
 oi hostility, may well wonder at its own 
 unlooked for estimation. But other princi- 
 ples are animating tlie battle, and the glory 
 of nations is at .stake; and a much higher 
 result is in the contemplation of each party, 
 than the gain of so humble an acquirement 
 as the primary object of the war; and ho- 
 nour, dearer to many a bosom than exist- 
 ence, is now the interest on which so much 
 blood and so much treasure is expended ; 
 and the stirring spirit of emulation has now 
 got hold of the combatants; and thus, amid 
 all the insignificancy, which attaches to the 
 material origin of the contest, do both the 
 eagerness and the extent of it, receive from 
 the constitution of our nature, their most 
 full and adequate explanation. 
 • Now, if this be also the principle of high- 
 er natures, if, on the one hand God be jea- 
 lous of his honour, and on the other, there 
 be proud and exalted spirits, who scowl de- 
 fiance at him and at his monarchy; — if, on 
 the side of heaven, there be an angelic host 
 rallying around the standard of loyalty, 
 who flee with alacrity at the bidding of the 
 Almighty, who are devoted to his glory, 
 and feel a rejoicing interest in the evolution 
 of his counsels; and if, on the side of hel!, 
 there he a sullen front of resistance, a hate 
 and malice inextinguishable, an unequalled 
 daring of revenge to baflle the wisdom of 
 
 the Eternal, and to arrest the hand, and to 
 defeat the purposes of Omniptence ; — then 
 let the material prize of victory be insig- 
 nificant as it may, it is the victory in itself, 
 which upholds the impulse of this keen 
 and stimulated rivalry. li', by the sagacity 
 of one infernal mind, a single planet has 
 been seduced from its allegiance, and been 
 brought under the ascendency of him, who 
 is called in Scripture, "the god of this 
 world," and if the errand on which our 
 Redeemer came, was to destroy the works 
 of the devil — then let this planet have all 
 the littleness which astronomy has assigned 
 to it — call it what it is, one of the smallei 
 islets which float on the ocean of vacancy , 
 it has become the theatre of such a <:ompe- 
 tition, as may have all the desires and all 
 the energies of a divided universe embarked 
 upon it. It involves in it other objects than 
 the single recovery of our species. Jt decides 
 higher questions. It stands linked with the 
 supremacy of God, and will at length demon- 
 strate the way in which he inflicts chastise- 
 ment and overthrow upon all his enemies. 
 I know not if our rebellious world be the 
 only strong-hold Avhich Satan is possessed 
 of, or if it be but the single post of an ex- 
 tended warfare, that is now going on be- 
 tween the powers of light and of darkness 
 But be it the one or the other, the parties 
 are in arra}^, and the spirit of the contest is 
 in full energy, and the honour of mighty 
 combatants is at stake ; and let us therefore 
 cease to wonder that our humble residence 
 has been made the theatre of so busy an 
 operation, or that the ambition of loftier na- 
 tures has here put forth all its desire and 
 all its strenuousness. 
 
 This unfolds to us another of those high 
 and extensive bearings, which the moral 
 history of our globe may have on the 
 system of God's universal administration. 
 Were an enemy to touch the shore of this 
 high-minded country, and to occupy so 
 much as one of the humblest villages, and 
 there to seduce the natives from tlieir loy- 
 alt)', and to sit down along with them in 
 entrenched defiance to all the threats, and 
 to all the preparations of an insulted em- 
 pire — oh! how would the cry of wounded 
 pride resound throughout all the ranks and 
 varieties of our mighty population; and 
 this very movement of indignancy would 
 reach the king upon his throne; and circu- 
 late among those who stood in all the gran- 
 deur of chieftainship around him; and be 
 heard to thrill in the eloquence of Parlia- 
 ment ; and spread so resistless an appeal to 
 a nation's honour, or a nation's patriotism, 
 that the trumpet of war would summon to 
 its call all the spirit and all the willing en- 
 ergies of our kingdom ; and rather than sit 
 down in patient endurance under the burn- 
 ing disgrace of such a violation, would the 
 whole of its strength and resources be em- 
 
VI.] 
 
 CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN. 
 
 399 
 
 barked upon the contest ; and never, never 
 '.^■ould we let down our exertions and our 
 ?acr;H(.es, till either our deluded couutry- 
 ni;'ii were reclaimed, or till the whole of 
 this offence were by one righteous act of 
 vengeance, swept away altogether from the 
 face of the territory it deformed. 
 
 The Bible is always most full and most 
 explanatory on those points of revelation in 
 wliich men are personally interested. But 
 it does at times offer a dim transparency, 
 through which may be caught a partial 
 view of such designs and of such enter- 
 prises as are now afloat among the upper 
 orders of intelligence. It tells us of a 
 mighty struggle that is now going on for a 
 moral ascendency over the hearts of this 
 world's population. It tells us that our 
 race were seduced from their allegiance to 
 God, by the plotting sagacity of one who 
 stands pre-eminent against him, among the 
 hosts of a very wide and extended rebellion. 
 It tells us of the Captain of Salvation, who 
 undertook to spoil him of this triumpii. and 
 throughout the whole of that magnificent 
 train of prophecy which points to him, does 
 it describe the work he had to do as a con- 
 flict, in which strength was to be put forth, 
 and painful suffering to be endured, and 
 fury to be poured upon enemies, and prin- 
 cipalities to be dethroned, and all those 
 toils, and dangers, and difficulties to be 
 borne, which strewed the path of perse- 
 verance that was to carry him to victory. 
 
 But it is a contest of skill, as well as of 
 strength and of influence. There is the 
 earnest competition of angelic faculties em- 
 barked on this struggle for ascendency. 
 And while in the Bible there is recorded, 
 (faintly and partially, we admit,) the deep 
 and insidious policy that is practised on 
 the one side ; we are also told, that on the 
 plan of our world's restoration, there are 
 lavished all the riches of an unsearchable 
 wisdom upon the other. It would appear, 
 that for the accomplishment of his purpose, 
 the great enemy of God and of man plied 
 his every calculation ; and brought all the 
 devices of his deep and settled malignity to 
 bear upon our species; and thought that 
 could he involve us in sin, every attribute 
 of the Divinity stood staked to the banish- 
 ment of our race from beyond the limits of 
 the empire of righteousness; and thus did 
 he practise his invasions on the moral ter- 
 ritory of the unfallen; and glorying in his 
 success, did he fancy and feel that he had 
 achieved a permanent separation between 
 the God who sitteth in heaven, and one at 
 lea^^t of the planetary mansions which he 
 had reared. 
 
 The errand of the Saviour was to restore 
 this sinful world, and have its people re- 
 admitted within the circle of heaven's pure 
 and righteous family. But in the govern 
 ment of heaven, as well as in the govern- 
 
 ment of earth, there are certain prniciples 
 wliich cannot be compromised; and certain 
 maxims (f administration wliich must 
 never be departed from ; and a certain cha- 
 racter of majesty and of truth, on which 
 the taint even of the slightest violation can 
 never be permitted ; and a certain authority 
 which must be upheld by the immutability 
 of all its sanctions, and the unerring fulfil- 
 ment of all its wise and righteous procla- 
 mations. All this was in the mind of the 
 archangel, and a gleam of malignant joy 
 shot athwart him as be conceived his pro- 
 ject for hemming our unfortunate s])ecies 
 within the hound of an irrecoverable di- 
 lemma; and as surely as sin and holiness 
 could not enter into fellowship, so surely 
 did he think, that if man were seduced to 
 disobedience, would tlie truth, and the jus- 
 tice, and the immutability of Cod, lay their 
 insurmountable harriers on the path of his 
 future acceptance. 
 
 It was only in that plan of recovery of 
 which Jesus Christ was the aiuhor and the 
 finisher, that the great adversary of our 
 species met with a wisdom which over- 
 matched him. It is true, that he reared, in 
 the guilt to which he seduced us, a mighty 
 obstacle in the way of this lofty u.ndertaking. 
 But when the grand expedient was an- 
 nounced, and the blood of that atonement, 
 by which sinners are brought nigh, was 
 willingly offered to be shed for us. and the 
 eternal Son, to carry this mystery mto ac- 
 complishment, assumed our nature — then 
 was the prince of that mighty rebellion, in 
 which the fate and the history of our world 
 are so deeply implicated, in visible alarm 
 for the safety of all his acquisnions: — nor 
 can the record of this wondrous liistory 
 carry forward its narrative, without fur- 
 nishing some transient glimpses of a sub- 
 lime and a superior warfare, in which, for 
 the prize of a spiritual dominion over our 
 species, we may dimly perceive t!~:e con- 
 test of loftiest talent, and all the designs 
 of heaven in behalf of man, met at every 
 point of their evolution, by the counter- 
 workings of a rival strength and a rival sa- 
 gacity. 
 
 We there read of a strugErle Mliirh the 
 Captain of our salvation had to sustain, 
 when the lustre of the Godhead lay obscu- 
 red, and the strength of its omnipotence 
 was mysteriously weighed down under the 
 infirmitiesof our nature — how Satan singled 
 him out, and dared him to the combat of 
 the wilderness — how all his wiles and all 
 his influences were resisted — how he left 
 our Saviour in all the triumphs of unsub- 
 dued loyalty — how the progress of this 
 mighty achievement is marked by the every 
 character of a conflict — how many of the 
 Gospel miracles were so many direct in 
 fringements on the power and empire of 
 a great spiritual rebellion — how in one 
 
400 
 
 CONTEST FOR AN ASCENDENCY OVER MAN. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 precious season of gladness among the few 
 wliich briglitened the dark career of our 
 Saviour's humihation, he rejoiced in spirit, 
 and gave as the cause of it to his disciples, 
 that " he saw Satan fall like lightning from 
 heaven" — how the momentary advantages 
 that were gotten over him, are ascribed 
 to the agency of this infernal being, who 
 entered the heart of Judas, and templed the 
 disciple to betray liis Master and his Friend. 
 I know that I am treading on the confines 
 of mystery. I cannot tell what the battle 
 that he fought. I cannot compute the ter- 
 ror or the strength of his enemies. I can- 
 not say, for I have not been told, how it 
 was that they stood in marshailed and 
 hideous array against him: — nor can I 
 measure how great the firm daring of his 
 soul, wlien he tasted that cup in all its bit- 
 terness, which he prayed might pass away 
 from him ; when with the feeling that he 
 was forsaken by his God, he trod the wine- 
 press alone ; when he entered single-handed 
 upon that dreary period of agony, and in- 
 sult, and death, in which from the garden 
 to the cross, he had to bear the burden of 
 a world's atonement. I cannot speak in 
 my own language, but I can say in the lan- 
 guage of the Bible, of the days and the nights 
 of this great #iterprise, that it was the sea- 
 son of tlie travad of his soul ; that it was 
 the hour and the power of darkness ; that 
 the work of redemption was a work accom- 
 panied by the effort, and the violence, and 
 the fury of a combat ; by all the arduous- 
 ness of a battle in its progress, and all the 
 glories of a victory in its termination ; and 
 after he called out that it was finished, after 
 he was loosed from the prison-house of the 
 grave, after he had ascended up on high, 
 he is said to have made captivity captive : 
 and to have spoiled principalities and pow- 
 ers ; and to have seen his pleasure upon 
 his enemies ; and to have made a show of 
 them openly. 
 
 I will not affect a wisdom above that 
 which is written, by fancying such details 
 of this warfare as the Bible has not laid be- 
 fore me. But surely it is no more than 
 being wise up to that which is written, to 
 assert, that in achieving the redemption of 
 our world, a warfare had to be accomplish- 
 ed; that upon this subject there was among 
 the higher provinces of creation, the keen 
 and the animated conflict of opposing in- 
 terests ; that the result of it involved some- 
 thing grander and more affecting, than even 
 the fate of this world's population ; that it 
 decided a question of rivalship between the 
 righteous and everlasting Monarch of uni- 
 versal being, and the prince of a great and 
 widely extended rebellion, of which I nei- 
 ther know how vast is the magnitude, nor 
 how important and diversified are the bear- 
 ings; and thus do we gather from this con- 
 sidciation, another distinct argument, help- 
 
 ing us to explain, why on the salvation of 
 our solitary species so much attention ap- 
 pears to have been concentred, and so much 
 energy appears to have been expended. 
 
 But it would appear from the records of 
 inspiration, that the contest is not j^et ended ; 
 that on the one hand the Spirit of God is 
 employed in making for the truths of 
 Christianity, a way into the human lieart, 
 Willi all the power of an efllectual demon- 
 stration ; that on the other there is a spirit 
 now abroad, which worketh in the children 
 of disobedience ; that on the one hand, the 
 Holy Ghost is calling men out of darkness 
 into the marvellous light of the Gospel , 
 and that on the other hand, he who is styled 
 the god of this world, is blinding their 
 hearts, lest the light of the glorious gospel 
 of Christ should enter into them ; that they 
 who are under the dominion of the one, 
 are said to have overcome, because greater 
 is he that is in them than he that is in the 
 world ; and that they who are under the 
 dominion of the other, are said to be the 
 children of the devil, and to be under his 
 snare, and to be taken captive by him at 
 his will. How these respective powers do 
 operate, is one question. The fact of their 
 operation, is another. We abstain from the 
 former. We attach ourselves to the latter 
 and gather from it, that the prince of dark- 
 ness still walketh abroad among us ; that 
 he is still working his insidious policy, if 
 not with the vigorous inspiration of hope 
 at least with the frantic energies of despair , 
 that while the overtures of reconciliation 
 are made to circulate through the world, 
 he is plying all his devices to deafen and 
 to extinguish the impression of them ; or 
 in other words, while a process of invitation 
 and of argument has emanated from hea- 
 ven, for reclaiming men to their loyalty — 
 the process is resisted at all its points, by 
 one who is putting forth his every expe- 
 dient, and yielding a mysterious ascend- 
 ency, to seduce and to enthral them. 
 
 To an infidel ear, all this carries the 
 sound of Bomething wild and visionary 
 along with it; but though only known 
 through the medium of revelation, after it 
 is known, who can fail to recognize its har- 
 mony with the great lineaments of human 
 experience ? Who has not felt the work- 
 ings of a rivalry within him, between the 
 power of conscience and the power of 
 temptation 1 \Vho does not remember 
 those seasons of retirement, when the cal- 
 culations of eternity had gotten a moment- 
 ary command over the heart ; and time, 
 with all its interests and all its vexations, 
 had dwindled into insignificancy before 
 them ? And who does not remember, how 
 upon his actual engagement with the ob- 
 jects of time, they resumed a control, as 
 great and as omnipotent, as if all the im- 
 portance of eternity adhered to them— ho u- 
 
INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 401 
 
 they emitted from them snch an impression 
 upon his feelings, as to fix and to fascinate 
 the wliole man into a subserviency to their 
 influence — how in spite of every lesson of 
 their worthlessness, brought home to him at 
 every turn by the rapidity of the seasons, and 
 the vicissitudes of life, and the ever-moving 
 progress of his own earthly career, and the 
 visible ravages of death among his acquaint- 
 ances around him, and the desolations of 
 his family, and the constant breaking up 
 of his system of friendships, and the affect- 
 ing spectacle of all that lives and is in mo- 
 tion, withering and hastening to the grave ; 
 — oh ! how comes it that in tlie face of all 
 this experience, the whole elevation of pur- 
 pose, conceived in the hour of his better 
 understanding, should be dissipated and 
 forgotten ? Whence the might, and whence 
 the mystery of that spell, which so binds 
 and so infatuates us to the world ? What 
 prompts us so to embark the whole strength 
 of our eagerness and of our desires in pursuit 
 of interests which we know a few little 
 years will bring to utter annihilation 7 Who 
 is it that imparts to them all the charm and 
 all the colour of an unfailing durability ? 
 "VMio is it that throws such an air of stability 
 over these earthly tabernacles, as makes 
 them look to the fascinated eye of man like 
 resting places for eternity ? Who is it that 
 so pictures out the objects of sense, and so 
 magnifies the range of their future enjoy- 
 ment, and so dazzles the fond and deceived 
 imagination, that in looking onward through 
 our earthly career, it appears like the vista, 
 or the perspective of innumerable ages? 
 He who is called the god of this world. He 
 who can dress the idleness of its waking 
 dreams in the garb of reality. He who can 
 pour a seducing brilliancy over the pano- 
 rama of its fleeting pleasures and its vain 
 anticipations. He who can turn it into an 
 instrument of deeeitfulness ; and make it 
 wield such an absolute ascendency over all 
 
 the affections, that man, become the poor 
 slave of its idolatries, and its charms, puts the 
 authorityof conscience, and the warnings of 
 the Word of God, and tlie offered instigations 
 of the Spirit of God. and all the lessons of 
 calculation, and the wisdom even of his own 
 sound and sober experience, away from him. 
 But this wondrous contest will come to a 
 close. Some will return to their loyalty, 
 and others will keep by their rebellion ; and, 
 in the day of the winding up of tlie drama 
 of this world's history, there will be made 
 manifest to the myriads of tlie various or- 
 ders of creation, both the mercy and vindi- 
 cated majesty of the Eternal. Oh ! on that 
 day how vain will this presumption of the 
 Infidel astronomer appear, when the affairs 
 of men come to be examined in the pre- 
 sence of an innumerable company; and 
 beings of loftiest nature are seen to crowd 
 around the judgment-seat; and the Saviour 
 shall appear in our sky, with a celestial 
 retinue, who have come with him from afar 
 to witness all his doings, and to take a deep 
 and solemn interest in all his dispensations.; 
 and the destiny of our species, whom the 
 Infidel would thus detach, in solitarj^ in- 
 significance, from the universe altogether, 
 shall be found to merge and to mingle with 
 higher destinies — the good to spend their 
 eternity with angels — the bad to spend their 
 eternity with angels — the former to be re- 
 admitted into the universal family of God's 
 obedient worshippers — the latter to share 
 in the everlasting pain and ignominy of the 
 defeated hosts of the rebellious— the people 
 of this planet to be implicated, througliout 
 the whole train of their never-ending liis- 
 tory, with the higher ranks, and the more 
 extended tribes of intelligence ; and thus it 
 is that the special administration we now- 
 live under, shall be seen to harmonize in its 
 bearings, and to accord in hs magnificence, 
 with all that extent of nature and of her ter 
 ritories, which modern science has unfolded. 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 On the slender Influence of mere Taste and Sensibility in Matters of Religion. 
 
 " And lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one who hath a pleasant voice, and can play well 
 on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not." — Ezekiel xxxiii. 32. 
 
 You easily understand how a taste for 
 music is one thing, and a real submission to 
 the influence of religion is another ; — how 
 the ear may be regaled by the melody of 
 sound, and the heart may utterly refuse the 
 proper impression of the sense that is con- 
 veyed by it; how the sons and daughters 
 of the world may, with their every affection 
 devoted to its perishable vanities, inhale all 
 51 
 
 the delights of enthusiasm, as they sit in 
 crowded assemblage around the deep and 
 solemn oratorio ; — aye, and whether it be 
 the humility of penitential feeling, or the 
 rapture of grateful acknowledgment, or the 
 sublime of a contemplative piety, or the as- 
 piration of pure and of holy purposes, which 
 breathes throughout the words of the per- 
 formance, and gives to it all the spirit and 
 
402 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 all the expression by which it is pervaded ; 
 it is a very possible thing, that the moral, 
 and the rational, and the active man, may 
 have given no entrance into his bosom for 
 any of these sentiments; and yet so over- 
 powered may he be by the charm of the 
 vocal conveyance through which they are 
 addressed to him, that he may be made to 
 feel with such an emotion, and to weep 
 with such a tenderness, and to kindle with 
 such a transport, and Jo glow with such an 
 elevation, as may one and all carry upon 
 them the semblance of sacredncss. 
 
 But might not this semblance deceive 
 him? Have you never heard any tell, and 
 with complacency too, how powerfully his 
 devotion was awakened by an act of at- 
 tendance on the oratorio — how his heart, 
 melted and subdued by the influence of 
 harmony, did homage to all the religion of 
 which it was the vehicle — how he was so 
 moved and overborne, that he had to shed 
 the tears of contrition, and to be agitated by 
 the terrors of judgment, and to receive an 
 awe upon his spirit of the greatness and the 
 majesty of God — and that wrougiit up to 
 the lofty pitch of eternity, he could look 
 down upon the world, and by the glance 
 of one commanding survey, pronounce 
 upon the littleness and the vanity of all its 
 concerns ? Oh ! it is very, very possible that 
 aU this might thrill upon the ears of the 
 man, and circulate a succession of solemn 
 and affecting images around his fancy — and 
 yet that essential principle of his nature, 
 upon which the practical influence of Chris- 
 tianity turns, might have met with no reach- 
 ing and no subduing efficacy whatever to 
 arouse it. He leaves the exhibition, as dead 
 in trespasses and sins as he came to it. 
 Conscience has not awakened upon him. 
 Repentance has not turned him. Faith has 
 not made any positive lodgement within 
 him of her great and her constraining reali- 
 ties. He speeds him back to his business 
 and to his family, and there he plays off 
 the old man in all the entireness of his 
 uncrucified temper, and of his obstinate 
 worldliness, and of all those earthly and 
 unsanctified affections, which are found to 
 cleave to him with as great tenacity as ever. 
 He is really and experimentally the very 
 same man as before — and all those sensi- 
 bilities which seemed to bear upon them 
 so much of the air and unction of heaven, 
 ■ are found to go into dissipation, and be for- 
 gotten with the loveliness of the song. 
 
 Amid all that illusion which such mo- 
 mentary visitations of seriousness and of 
 sentiment throw around the character of 
 man, let us never lose sight of the test, that 
 "by their fruits ye shall know them." It is 
 not coming up to this test, that you hear 
 ^ • and are delighted. It is that you hear and 
 X do. This is the ground upon which the 
 reality of your religion is discriminated 
 
 now; and on the day of reckoning, this is 
 the ground upon which your religion will 
 be judged then ; and that award is to be 
 passed upon you, wliich will fix and per- 
 petuate your destiny for ever. You have a 
 taste for music. This no more implies the 
 liold and the ascendency of religion over 
 you, than that you have a taste for beautiful 
 scenery, or a taste for painting, or even a 
 taste for the sensualities of epicurism. But 
 music may be made to express the glow 
 and the movement of devotional feeling; 
 and it is saying nothing to say that the 
 heart of him who listens whh a raptured 
 ear, is through the whole time of the per- 
 formance, in harmony with such a move- 
 ment? Why, it is saying nothing to the 
 purpose. Music may lift the inspiring 
 note of patriotism; and the inspiration may 
 be felt; and it may thrill over the recesses 
 of the soul, to the mustering up of all its 
 energies ; and it may sustain to the last ca- / 
 dcnce of the song, the firm nerve and pur-/ 
 pose of intrepidity; and all this may be 
 realized upon him, who in the daj^ of battle, 
 and upon actual collision with the dangers 
 of it, turns out to be a coward. And music 
 may lull the feelings into unison with piety ; 
 and stir up the inner man to lofty determi- 
 nations; and so engage for a time his affec- 
 tions, that, as if weaned from the dust, they 
 promise an immediate entrance on some 
 gre"at and elevated career, which may carry 
 him through his pilgrimage superior to all 
 the sordid and grovelling enticements that 
 abound in it. But he turns him to the world, 
 and all this glow abandons him ; and the 
 words which he hath heard, he doeth them 
 not; and in the hour of temptation he turns 
 out to be a deserter from the law of alle- 
 giance; and the test I have now specified 
 looks hard upon him, and discriminates 
 him amid all the parading insignificance of 
 his fine but fugitive emotions, to be the 
 subject both of present guilt and of future 
 vengeance. 
 
 The faithful application of this test would 
 put to flight a host of other delusions. It 
 may be carried round among all those phe- 
 nomena of human character, where there is 
 the exhibition of something associated M'ith 
 religion, but which is not religion itself. 
 An exquisite relish for music is no test of 
 the influence of Christianity. Neither are 
 many other of the exquisite sensibihties of 
 our nature. Wlien a kind mother closes 
 the eyes of her expiring babe, she is thrown 
 into a flood of sensibility, and soothing to 
 her heart are the sympathy and the prayers 
 of an attending minister. When a gathering 
 neighbourhood assemble to the funeral of 
 an acquaintance, one pervading sense of 
 regret and tenderness sits on the face of the 
 company; and the deep silence, broken only 
 by the solemn utterance of the man of 
 God, carries a kind of pleasing religiousness 
 
VII.] 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 403 
 
 along with it. The sacredness of the hal- 
 lowed day, and the decencies of its obser- 
 vation, may engage the affections of him 
 who loves to walk in the footsteps of his 
 father; and every recurring Sabbath may 
 bring to his bosom, the charm of its regu- 
 larity and its quietness. Religion has its 
 accomplishments ; and in these, there may 
 be something to soothe, and to fascinate, 
 even in the absence of the appropriate in- 
 fluences of religion. The deep and tender 
 impression of a family bereavement, is not 
 religion. The love of established decencies, 
 is not religion. The charm of all that sen- 
 timentalism which is associated with many 
 of its solemn and affecting services, is not 
 religion. They form the distinct folds of 
 its accustomed drapery; but they do not, 
 any or all of them put together, make up 
 the substance of the thing itself. A mother's 
 tenderness may flow most gracefully over 
 the tomb of her departed little one; and she 
 may talk the while of that heaven whither 
 its spirit has ascended. The man whom 
 death had widowed of his friend, may 
 abandon himself to the movements of that 
 grief, which for a time will claim an ascen- 
 dency over him ; and, among the multitude 
 of his other reveries, may love to hear of 
 the eternity, where sorrow and separation 
 are alike unknown. He who has been 
 trained, from his infant days, to remember 
 the Sabbath, may love the holiness of its 
 aspect; and associate himself with all its 
 observances; and take a delighted share in 
 the mechanism of its forms. But, let not 
 these think, because the tastes and the sen- 
 sibilities which engross them, may be blend- 
 ed with religion, that they indicate either 
 its strength or its existence within them. I 
 recur to the test. I press its imperious 
 exactions upon yo". I call for fruit, and de- 
 mand the permanency of a religious influ- 
 ence on the habits and the history. Oh ! 
 how many who take a flattering unction to 
 their souls, when they think of their amiable 
 feelings, and their becoming observations, 
 with whom this severe touch-stone would, 
 like the head of Medusa, put to flight all 
 their complacency. The afflictive dispen- 
 sation is forgotten — and he on whom it was 
 laid, is practically as indiflferent to God and 
 to eternity as before. The Sabbath services 
 come to a close ; and they are followed by 
 the same routine of week-day worldliness 
 as before. In neither the one case nor the 
 other, do we see more of the radical influ- 
 ence of Christianity than in the sublime 
 and melting influence of sacred music upon 
 the soul; and all this tide of emotion is 
 found to die away from the bosom, like the 
 pathos or like the loveliness of a song. 
 
 The instances may be multiplied without 
 number. A man may have a taste for elo- 
 quence, and eloquence the most touching 
 or sublime may lift her pleading voice on 
 
 the side of religion. A man may love to 
 have his understanding stimulated Ijy the 
 ingenuities, or the resistless urgencies of an 
 argument; and argument the most pro- 
 found and the most overbearing, may put 
 forth all the might of a constraining vehe- 
 mence in beiialf of religion. A man may 
 feel the rejoicings of a conscious elevation, 
 when some ideal scene of magnificence is 
 laid before him ; and where are tiiese scenes 
 so readily to be met with, as when led to 
 expatiate in thought over the track of eter- 
 nity, or to survey the wonders of creation, 
 or to look to the magnitude of these great 
 and universal interests which lie within the 
 compass of religion? A man may have his 
 attention riveted and regaled by that power 
 of imitative description, which brings all 
 the recollections of his own experience be- 
 fore him ; which presents him with a faithful 
 analysis of his own heart ; which embodies 
 in language such intimacies of observation 
 and of feeling, as have often passed before 
 his eyes, or played within his bosom, but 
 had never been so truly or so ably pictured 
 to the view of his remembrance. Now, all 
 this may be done in the work of pressing 
 the duties of religion ; in the work of in- 
 stancing the application of religion ; in the 
 work of pointing those allusions to life and 
 to manners, which manifest the truth to the 
 conscience, and plant such a conviction of 
 sin, as forms the very basis of a sinner's 
 religion. Now, in all these cases, I see 
 other principles brought into action, and 
 which may be in a state of most lively and 
 vigorous movement, and be yet in a state 
 of entire separation from the principle of 
 religion. I will make bold to say, on the 
 strength of these illustrations, that as much 
 delight may emanate from the pulpit, on an 
 arrested audience beneath it, as ever ema- 
 nated from the boards of a theatre — aye, 
 and with as total a disjunction of mind too, 
 in the one case as in the other, from the es- 
 sence or the habit of religion. I recur to 
 the test. I make my appeal to experience; 
 and I put it to you all, whether your finding 
 upon the subject do not agree with my 
 saying about it, that a man may weep, and 
 admire, and have many of his faculties put 
 upon the stretch of therr most intense grati- 
 fication — his judgment established, and his 
 fancy enlivened, and his feelings overpow- 
 ered, and his hearing charmed, as by the 
 accents of heavenly persuasion, and all 
 within him feasted by the rich and varied 
 luxuries of an intellectual banquet! — Oh! it 
 is cruel to frown unmannerly in the midst 
 of so much satisfaction. But I must not 
 forget that truth has her authority, as well 
 as her sternness; and she forces me to 
 aflirm, that after all this has been felt and 
 gone through, there might not be one prin- 
 ciple which lies at the turning point of 
 conversion, that has experienced a single 
 
404 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 movement — not one of its purposes be con- 
 cf'ived — not one of its doings be accom- 
 plished — not one step of that repentance, 
 which, if we have not, we perish, so much 
 ts entered upon — not one announcement of 
 that faith, by which we are saved, admitted 
 into a real and actual possession by the 
 inner man. He has had his hour's enter- 
 tainment, and willingly does he award this 
 homage to the performer, that he hath a plea- ' 
 sant voice, and can play well on an instru- 
 ment — but, in another hour, it fleets away 
 from his remembrance, and goes all to no- 
 thing, like the loveiiness of a song. 
 
 Now, in bringing these Astronomical Dis- 
 courses to a close, 1 feel it my duty to ad- 
 vert to this exhibition of character in man. 
 The sublime and interesting topic which 
 has engaged us, however feebly it may 
 have been handled ; however inadequately 
 it may have been put in all its worth, and 
 in all its magnitude belbre you ; however 
 short the representation of the speaker or 
 the conception of the hearers may have been 
 of that richness, and that greatness, and 
 that loftiness, which belong to it; possesses 
 in itself a charm to fix the attention, to re- 
 gale the imagination, and to subdue the 
 whole man into a delighted reverence; and, 
 in a word, to beget such a solemnity of 
 thought, and of emotion, as may occupy 
 and enlarge the soul for hours together, as 
 may waft it away from the grossness of or- 
 dinary life, and raise it to a kind of elevated 
 calm above all its vulgarities and all its 
 vexations. 
 
 Now, tell me whether the whole of this 
 effect upon the feelings, may not be formed 
 without the presence of religion. Tell me 
 whether there might not be such a consti- 
 tution of mind, that it may both want alto- 
 gether that principle in virtue of whicli the 
 doctrines of Christianity are admitted into 
 tlie belief, and the duties of Christianity 
 are admitted into a government over the 
 practice — and yet, at the very same time, 
 it may have the faculty of looking abroad 
 over some scene of magnificence, and of 
 being wrought up to ecstacy with the sense 
 of all those glories among which it is expa- 
 tiating. I want you to see clearly the dis- 
 tinction between these two attributes of the 
 human character. They are, in truth, as 
 different the one from the other, as a taste 
 for the grand and the graceful of scenery 
 differs from the appetite of hunger ; and the 
 one may both exist ai>d have a most intense 
 operation within the bosom of that very in- 
 dividual, who entirely disowns, and is en- 
 tirely disgusted with the other. What ! 
 must a man be converted, ere from the most 
 elevated peak of some Alpine wilderness, 
 he becomes capable of feeling the force and 
 the majesty of those great lineaments which 
 the hand of nature has thrown around him, 
 in the varied forms of precipice, and moun- 
 
 tain, and the wave of mighty forests, and 
 the rusii of sounding waterlalls, and distant 
 glimpses of liuman territory, and pinnacles 
 of everlasting snow, and the sweep of that 
 circling horizon, which folds in its ample 
 embrace the whole of this noble am- 
 phitheatre? Tell me whether, without the 
 aid of Christianity, or without a particle of 
 reverence for the only name given under 
 heaven whereby men can be saved, a man 
 may not kindle at such a perspective as this, 
 into all the raptures, and into all the move- 
 ments of a poetic elevation; and be able to 
 render into the language of poetry, the 
 whole of that sublime and beauteous image- 
 ry which adorns it ; aye, and as if he were 
 treading on the confines of a sanctuary 
 which lie has not entered, may he not mix 
 up with the power and the enchantment 
 of his description, such allusions to the pre- 
 siding genius of the scene : or to the still 
 but animating spirit of the solitude ; or to 
 the speaking silence of some mysterious 
 character which reigns throughout the land- 
 scape ; or, in fine, to that eternal Spirit, 
 who sits behind the elements he has form- 
 ed, and combines tliem into all tlie varieties 
 of a wide and a wondrous creation ; might 
 not all this be said and sung with an em- 
 phasis so moving, as to spread the colouring 
 of piety over the pages of him wdio per- 
 forms thus well upon his instrument; and 
 yet, tl^e performer himself have a conscience 
 unmoved by a single warning of God's ac- 
 tual communication, and the judgment un- 
 convinced, and tlie fears unawakened, and 
 the life unreforraed by it ? 
 
 Now what is true of a scene on earth, is 
 also true of that wider and more elevated 
 scene which stretches over the immensity 
 around it, into a dark and a distant unknown. 
 Who does not feel an aggrandisement of 
 thought and of faculty, w^hen he looks 
 abroad over the amplitudes of creation — 
 when placed on a telescopic eminence, his 
 aided eye can find a pathway to innumera- 
 ble worlds — when that w'ondrous field, over 
 which there had hung for many ages the 
 mantle of so deep an obscurity, is laid open 
 to him, and instead of a dreary and unpeo- 
 pled solitude, he can see over the whole 
 face of it such an extended garniture of ri«h 
 and goodly habitations ! Even the Atheist. 
 who tells us that the universe is self-exis- 
 tent and indestructible — even he, who in- 
 stead of seeing the traces of a manifold wis- 
 dom in its manifold varieties, sees nothing 
 in them all but the exquisite structures and 
 the lofty dimensions of materialism — even 
 he, who would despoil creation of its God, 
 cannot look upon its golden suns, and their 
 accompanying systems, without the solemn 
 impression of a magnificence that fixes and 
 overpowers him. Now, conceive such a 
 belief of God as you all profess, to dawn 
 upon his understanding. Let him become 
 
vii."! 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 405 
 
 as one of yourselves — and so be put into the 
 condilion of rising from the sublime of 
 matter to the sublime of mind. Let him 
 now learn to subordinate the wliole of this 
 meciianism to the design and authority of a 
 great presiding intelligence ; and re-assem- 
 bling all the members of the universe, how- 
 ever distant, into one family, let him mingle 
 with his former conceptions of the grandeur 
 which Ijelonged to it, the conception of that 
 eternal Spirit who sits enthroned on the 
 immensity of his own wonders, and em- 
 braces all that he has made, within the 
 ample scope of one great administration. 
 Then will t!ie images and the impressions 
 of sublimity come in upon him from a new 
 quarter. Then will another avenue be 
 opened, through which a sense of grandeur 
 may find its way into his soul, and have a 
 mightier influence than ever to fill, and to 
 elevate and to expand it. Then will be esta- 
 blished a new and a noble association, by 
 the aid of which all that he formerly look- 
 ed upon as fair becomes more lovely; and 
 all that he formerly looked upon as great, 
 becomes more magnificent. But will j'ou 
 believe me, that even with this accession to 
 his mind of ideas gathered from the con- 
 templation of the Divinity ; even with that 
 pleasurable glow which steals over his ima- 
 gination, when he now thinks him of the 
 majesty of God ; even with as much of 
 what you would call piety, as I fear is 
 enough to soothe and to satisfy many of 
 yourselves, and which stirs and kindles 
 within you \vhen you hear the goings forth 
 of the Supreme set before you in the terms 
 of a lofty representation ; even with all this, 
 I say there may be as wide a distance from 
 the habit and the character of godliness, as 
 if God was still atheistically disowned by 
 him. Take the cxinduct of his life and the 
 currency of his affectio.ns; and you may see 
 as little upon them of the stamp of loyalty 
 to God, or of reverence for any one of his 
 authenticated proclamations, as you may see 
 in him who offjrs his poetic incense to the 
 genii, or weeps enraptured over the visions 
 of a beauteous mythol gy. The sublime of 
 Deity has wrought up his soul to a pitch 
 of conscious and pleasing elevation — and 
 yet this no more argues the will of Deity 
 to have a practical authoritj'' over him, 
 than does that tone of elevation which 
 is caught by looking at the sublime of a 
 naked materialism. The one and the other 
 have their little hour of ascendency over 
 him ; and when he turns him to the rude 
 and ordinary w-orld, both vanish alike from 
 his sensibilities as does the loveliness of a 
 song. 
 
 To kindle and be elevated by a sense 
 of the majesty of God, is one thing. 
 It is totally another thing to feel a move- 
 ment of obedience totlie will of God, under 
 the impression of his rightful authority over 
 
 all the creatures whom he has formed. A 
 man may have an imagination all alive to 
 the former ; while the latter never prompts 
 him to one act of obedience ; never leads him 
 to compare his life with the requirements 
 of the Lawgiver; never carries him from 
 such a scrutiny as this, to the conviction of 
 sin ; never whispers such an accusation to 
 the ear of his conscience, as causes him to 
 mourn, and to be in heaviness for the guilt 
 of his hourly and habitual rebellion ; never 
 shuts him up to the conclusion of the 
 need of a Saviour ; never humbles him to 
 acquiescence in the doctrine of that reve- 
 lation, which comes to his door with such 
 a host of evidence, as even his own philo- 
 sophy cannot bid away ; never extorts a 
 single believing prayer in the name of 
 Christ, or points a single look, either of trust 
 or of reverence, to his atonement ; never 
 stirs any effective movement of conversion ; 
 never sends an aspiring energy into his bo- 
 som after the aids of that Spirit, who alone 
 can waken him out of his lethargies, and 
 by the anointing which remaineth, can 
 rivet and substantiate in his practice, those 
 goodly emotions which have hitherto plied 
 him with the deceitfulness of their mo- 
 men.tary visits, and then capriciously aban- 
 doned him. 
 
 The mere majesty of God's power and 
 greatness, when offered to your notice, lays 
 hold of one of the faculties within you. The 
 holiness of God, with his righteous claim 
 of legislation, laj^s hold of another of these 
 faculties. The difference between them is 
 so great, that the one may be engrossed and 
 interested to the full, while the other re- 
 mains untouched, and in a state of entire 
 dormancy. Now, it is no matter w'hat it be 
 that ministers delight to the former of these 
 two faculties : If the latter be not arrested 
 and put on its proper exercise, you are 
 making no approximation wdiatever to the 
 right habit and character of religion. There 
 are a thousand ways in which w'e may con- 
 trive to regale your taste for that which is 
 beauteous and majestic. It may find its 
 gratification in the loveliness of a vale, or 
 in the freer and bolder outlines of an upland 
 situation, or in the terrors of a storm, or in 
 the sublime contemplations of astronomy, 
 or in the magnificent idea of a God who 
 sends forth the wakefulness of his om- 
 niscient eye, and the vigour of his upholding 
 hand, throughout all the realms of nature 
 and of providence. The mere taste of the 
 human mind may get its ample enjoyment 
 in each and in all of these objects, or in a 
 vivid representation of them ; nor does it 
 make any material difference, whether this 
 representation be addressed to you from 
 the stanzas of a poem, or from the recita- 
 tions of a theatre, or finally from the dis- 
 courses and the demonstrations of a pulpiU 
 And thus it is, that still on the impulse of 
 
406 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIG ON. 
 
 DISC. 
 
 the one principle only, people may come 
 in gathering multitudes to the house of God ; 
 and share with eagerness in all the glow 
 and bustle of a crowded attendance; and 
 have their every eye directed to the speaker; 
 and feel a responding movement in their 
 bosom to his many appeals and his many 
 arguments ; and carry a solemn and over- 
 powering impression of all the services 
 away with them ; and yet throughout the 
 whole of this seemly exhibition, not one 
 effectual knock may have been given at the 
 door of conscience. The other principle 
 may be as profoundly asleep, as if hushed 
 into the insensibility of death. There is a 
 spirit of deep slumbc-, it would appear, 
 which the music of no description, even 
 though attuned to a theme so lofty as the 
 greatness and majesty of the Godhead, can 
 ever charm away. Oh ! it may have been a 
 piece of parading insignificance altogether — 
 the minister playing on his favourite in- 
 strument, and the people dissipating away 
 their time on the charm and idle luxury of 
 a theatrical emotion. 
 
 The religion of taste, is one thing. The 
 religion of conscience, is another. I recur 
 to the test. V^hat is the plain and practical 
 doing whicli ouglit to issue from the whole 
 of our argument ? If one lesson come more 
 clearly or more authoritatively out of it 
 than another, it is the supremacy of the 
 Bible. If fitted to impress one movement 
 rather than another, it is that movement of 
 a docility, in virtue of which, man, with the 
 feeling that he has all to learn, places him- 
 self in the attitude of a little child, before 
 the book of the unsearchable God, who has 
 deigned to break his silence, and to trans- 
 mit, even to our age of the world, a faithful 
 record of his own commimication. \^niat 
 progress then are you making in this move- 
 ment ? Are you, or are you not, like new- 
 born babes, desiring the sincere milk of the 
 word, that you may grow thereby ? How 
 are j^ou coming on in the work of casting 
 down your lofty imaginations '? With the 
 modesty of true science, which is here at 
 one with the humblest and most penitenti- 
 ary feeling which Christianity can awaken, 
 are you bending an eye of earnestness on 
 the Bible, and appropriating its informa- 
 tions, and moulding your every conviction 
 to its doctrines and its testimonies ? How 
 long, I beseech you, has this been your 
 habitual exercise? By this time do you feel 
 the darkness and the insuflJiciency of na- 
 ture ? Have you found your way to the 
 need of an atonement ? Have you learned 
 the might and the "efficacy which are given 
 to tlie principle of faith ? Have you longed 
 with all your energies to realize it? Have 
 you broken loose from the obvious misdo- 
 ings of your former history? Are you con- 
 vinced of your total deficiency from the 
 spiritual obedience of the aflfections? Have 
 
 you read of the Holy Ghost, by whom re- 
 newed in the whole desire and character of 
 your mind, you are led to run with alacrity 
 in the way of the commandments? Havf- 
 you turned to its practical use, the impor 
 tant truth, that he has given to the believ- 
 ing prayers of all, who really want to be 
 relieved from the power both of secret anr* 
 of visible iniquity? I demand something 
 more than the homage you have rendered 
 to the pleasantness of the voice that has 
 been sounding in your hearing. What I 
 have now to urge upon you, is the bidding 
 of the voice, to read, and to reform and to 
 pray, and, in a word, to make your con- 
 sistent step from the elevations of philoso- 
 phy, to all those exercises, whether of doing 
 or of believing, which mark the conduct of 
 the earnest, and the devoted, and the sub- 
 dued, and the aspiring Christian. 
 
 This brings under our view a most deep- 
 ly interesting exhibition of human nature, 
 which may often be witnessed among 
 the cultivated orders of society. When a 
 teacher of Christianity addresses himself to 
 that principle of justice within us, in virtue 
 of which we feel the authority of God to be 
 a prerogative which righteously belongs to 
 him, he is then speaking the appropriate 
 language of religion, and is advancing its 
 naked and appropriate claim over the obe- 
 dience of mankind. He is then urging that 
 pertinent and powerful consideration, upon 
 which alone he can ever hope to obtain 
 the ascendency of a practical influence over 
 the purposes and the conduct of human 
 beings. It is only by insisting on the moral 
 claim of God to a right of government over 
 his creatures, that he can carry their loyal 
 subordination to the will of God. Let him 
 keep by this single argument, and urge it 
 upon the conscience, and then, without any 
 of the other accompaniments of what is 
 called christian oratory, he may bring con- 
 vincingly home upon his hearers all the 
 varieties of christian doctrine. He may 
 establish within their minds the dominion 
 of all that is essential in the faith of the 
 New Testament. He may, by carrying out 
 this principle of God's authority into all its 
 applications, convince them of sin. He may 
 lead them to compare the loftiness and 
 spirituality of his law, with the habitual 
 obstinacy of their own worldly affections. 
 He may awaken them to the need of a Sa- 
 viour. He may urge them to a faithful and 
 submissive perusal of God's own communi- 
 cation. He may thence press upon them the 
 truth and the immutability of their Sove- 
 reign. He may work in their hearts an 
 impression of this emphatic saying, that 
 God is not to be mocked— that his law must 
 be upheld in all the significancy of its pro- 
 clamations — and that either his severities 
 must be discharged upon the guilty, or in 
 some other way an adequate provision b«r 
 
VII.] 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 407 
 
 found for its outraged dignity, and its vio- 
 lated sanctions. Thus may he lead them 
 to flee for refuge to the blood of the atone- 
 ment. And he may further urge upon his 
 hearers, how, such is the enormity of sin, 
 that it is not enough to have found an ex- 
 piation for it ; how its power and its ex- 
 istence must be eradicated from the hearts 
 of all, who are to spend their eternity in the 
 mansions of the celestial ; how, for this pur- 
 pose, an expedient is made known to us in 
 the New Testament ; how a process must 
 be described upon earth, to which there is 
 given the appropriate name of sanctifica- 
 tion ; how, at the very commencement of 
 every true course of discipleship, this pro- 
 cess is entered upon with a purpose in the 
 mind of forsaking all ; how nothing short 
 of a single devotedness to tlie will of God, 
 will ever carry us forward through the suc- 
 cessive stages of this holy and elevated ca- 
 reer; how, to help the infirmities of our 
 nature, the Spirit is ever in readiness to be 
 given to those who ask it ; and that thus 
 the life of every Christian becomes a life 
 of entire dedication to Him who died for 
 us — a life of prayer, and vigilance, and close 
 dependance on the grace of God ; and, as 
 the infallible result of the plain but power- 
 ful and peculiar teaching of the Bible, a 
 life of vigorous unwearied activity in the 
 doing of all the commandments. 
 
 Now, this I would call the essential busi- 
 ness of Christianity. This is the truth as 
 it is in Jesus, in its naked and unassociated 
 simplicity. In the work of urging it, no- 
 tliing more might have been done, than to 
 present certain views, which may come 
 with as great clearness, and freshness, and 
 take as full possession of the mind of a 
 peasant as of the mind of a pliilosopher. 
 There is a sense of God, and of the rightful 
 allegiance that is due to him. There are 
 plain and practical appeals to the conscience. 
 There is a comparison of the state of the 
 heart, with the requirements of a law which 
 proposes to take the heart under its obe- 
 dience. There is the inward discernment 
 of its coldness about God; of its unconcern 
 about the matters of duty and of eternity ; 
 of its devotion to the forbidden objects of 
 sense ; of its constant tendency to nourish 
 within its own receptacles, the very ele- 
 ment and principle of rebellion, and in 
 virtue of this, to send forth the stream of 
 an hourly and accumulating disobedience 
 over those doings of the outer man, which 
 make up his visible history in the world. 
 There is such an earnest and overpower- 
 ing impression of all this, as will fix a 
 man down to the single object of deliver- 
 ance; as will make him awake only to 
 those realities which have a significant 
 and substantial bearing on the case that en- 
 grosses him ; as will teach him to nauseate 
 all the impertinences of tasteful and am- 
 
 bitious description; as will attach bim to 
 the truth in its simplicity; as wih fasten 
 his every regard upon the Bible, wliere, if 
 he persevere in the work of honest inquiry, 
 he will soon be made to perceive the ac- 
 cordancy between its statements, and all 
 those movements of fear, or guilt, or deeply- 
 felt necessity, or conscious darkness, stu- 
 pidity, and unconcern about the matters 
 of salvation, which pass within his own 
 bosom ; in a word, as will endear him to 
 that plainness of speech, by which his own 
 experience is set evidently before him, and 
 that plain phraseology of scripture, which 
 is best fitted to bring home to him the doc- 
 trine of redemption, in all the truth, and in 
 all the preciousness of its applications. 
 
 Now, the whole of this work may be 
 going on, and that too in the wisest and 
 most effectual manner, without so much as 
 one particle of incense being offered to any 
 of the subordinate principles of the human 
 constitution. There may be no fascinations 
 of style. There may be no magnificence of 
 description. There may be no poignancy 
 of acute and irresistible argument. There 
 may be a rivetted attention on the part o: 
 those whom the Spirit of God hath awaken- 
 ed to seriousness about the plain and aflect- 
 ing realities of conversion. Their con- 
 science may be stricken, and their appetite 
 be excited for an actual settlement of mind 
 on those points about which they feel rest- 
 less and unconfirmed. Such as these are 
 vastly too much engrossed with the exigen- 
 cies of their condition, to be repelled by 
 the homeliness of unadorned truth. And 
 thus it is, that while the loveliness of the 
 song has done so little in helping on tlu 
 influences of the gospel, our men of sim- 
 plicity and prayer have done so much for 
 it. Witli a deep and earnest impi'cssion of 
 the truth themselves, they have made mani- 
 fest that truth to the consciences of others. 
 Missionaries have gone forth with no other 
 preparation than the simple Word of the 
 Testimony — and thousands have owned its 
 power, by being both the hearers of the 
 word and the doers of it also. They have 
 given us the experiment in a state of un- 
 mingled simplicity ; and we learn, from the 
 success of their noble example, that with- 
 out any one human expedient to charm 
 the ear, the heart may, by the naked in- 
 strumentahty of the Word of God, urged 
 with plainness on those who feel its deceit 
 and its worthlessness, be charmed to au 
 entire acquiesence in the revealed way 
 of God, and have impressed upon it the 
 genuine stamp and character of godliness. 
 
 Could the sense of what is due to God, 
 be effectually stirred up within the human 
 bosom, it would lead to a practical carrying 
 of all the lessons of Christianity. Now, to 
 awaken this moral sense, there are certain 
 simple relations between the creature and tiu 
 
408 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 [disc. 
 
 Creator, which must be clearly apprehend- 
 ed, and manifested with power unto the 
 conscience. We beheve, that however much 
 philosophers may talk about the compara- 
 tive ease of forming those conceptions 
 which are simple, they will, if in good earn- 
 est after a right footing witli God, soon dis- 
 cover in their own minds, all that darkness 
 and incapacity about spiritual things, which 
 are so broadly announced to us in the New 
 Testament. And, oh ! it is a deeplj^ inter- 
 esting spectacle, to behold a man, who can 
 take a masterly and commanding survey 
 over the field of some human speculation, 
 who can clear his discriminated way through 
 all the turns and ingenuities of some human 
 argument, who by tiie march of a mighty and 
 resistless demonstration, can scale with as- 
 sured footstep the sublimities of science, 
 and from his firm stand on the eminence 
 he has won, can descry some wondrous 
 range of natural or intellectual truth spread 
 out in subordination before him ; — and yet 
 this very man may, in reference to the 
 moral and authoritative claims of the God- 
 head, be in a state of utter apathy and blind- 
 ness ! All his attempts, either at the spiritu- 
 al discernment, or the practical impression 
 of this doctrine, may be arrested and baffled 
 oy the weight of some great inexplicable 
 impotency. A man of homely talents, and 
 still homelier education, may see what he 
 _ cannot see, and feel what he cannot feel; 
 and wise and prudent as he is, there may 
 lie the barrier of an obstinate and impene- 
 trable concealment, between his accomplish- 
 ed mind, and those things which are re- 
 vealed unto babes. 
 
 But while his mind is thus utterly devoid 
 of what may be called the main or elemental 
 principle of theology, he may have a far 
 quicker apprehension, and have his taste 
 and his feelings much more powerfully in- 
 terested, than the simple Christian who is 
 beside him, by what may be called the cir- 
 cumstantials of theology. He can throw a 
 "wider and more rapid glance over the mag- 
 nitudes of creation. He can be more deli- 
 cately alive to the beauties and the sublimi- 
 lies which abound in it. He can, when the 
 idea of a presiding God is suggested to him, 
 have a more kindling sense of his natural 
 majesty, and be able, both in imagination 
 and in words, to surround tlie throne of 
 the Divinity by the blazonry of more great, 
 and splendid, and elevating images. And 
 yet, with all those powers of conception 
 which he does possess, he may not possess 
 that on which practical Christianity hinges. 
 The moral relation between liim and God, 
 may neither be effectively perceived, nor 
 faithfully })roceeded on. Consciencemay be 
 in a state of the most entire dormancy, 
 and the man be regalins himself with the 
 magnificence of God, wliile he neither loves 
 God, nor believes God, nor obeys God. 
 
 And here I cannot btit reiuark, how much 
 effect and simplicity go together in the an- 
 nals of IMoravianism. The men of this truly 
 interesting denomination, address them- 
 selves exclusiAcly to that principle of our 
 nature on which the proper influence of 
 Christianity turns. Or, in other words, 
 they take up the svtbject of the gospel mes- 
 sage, that message devised by him who knew 
 what was in man, and who, therefore, knew 
 how to make the right and the suitable ap- 
 plication to luan.— They urge the plain Word 
 of the Testimony; and they pray for a bless- 
 ing from on high ; and that thick impalpable 
 veil, by which the god of this world blinds 
 tlie hearts of men who believe not, le^t the 
 light of the glorious gospel of Christ should 
 enter into them — that veil, which no 
 power of philosophy can draw aside, gives 
 waj^ to the demonstration of the Spirit; and 
 thus it is, that a clear perception of scrip- 
 tural truth, and all ihe freshness and per- 
 manency of its moral influences, are to 
 be met with among men who have just 
 emerged from the rudest and the grossest 
 barbarity. — Oh I when one looks at the 
 number and the grea+ncss of their achieve- 
 ments ; when he thinks of the change they 
 liave made on materials so coarse and so 
 unpromising ; when he eyes the villages 
 the}' have forined ; and around the whole 
 of 4 hat engaging perspective by which they 
 have chequered and relieved the grim soli- 
 tude of the desert, he witnesses the love, 
 and listens to the piety of reclaiming 
 savages ; — vrho Avould not long to be in 
 possession of the charm by which they 
 have wrought this wondrous transforma- 
 tion — who would not willingly exchange 
 for it all the parade of human eloquence, 
 and all the confidence of human argument 
 — and for the wisdom of winning souls, 
 who is there that would not rejoice to throw- 
 the loveliness of the song, and all the in- 
 significancy of its passing fascinations, 
 away from him ? 
 
 And yet it is right that every cavil against 
 Christianity should be met, and every argu- 
 ment for it be exhibited, and all the graces 
 and sublimities of its doctrine be held 
 out to their merited admiration. And if it 
 be true, as it certainly is, that throughout 
 the whole of this process, a man may be 
 carried rejoicingly along from the mere 
 indulgence of his taste, and the mere play 
 and exercise of his understanding ; while 
 conscience is untouched, and the suprema- 
 cy of moral claims upon the heart and the 
 conduct is practically disowmed by him — 
 it is further right that this should be adver- 
 ted to; and that such a melancholy m;- 
 liingement in the constitution of man should 
 be fullv laid open, and that he should be 
 driven "out of the seductive complacency 
 which he is so apt to cherish, merely because 
 he delights in the loveliness of the song ; 
 
VII.] 
 
 INFLUENCE OF TASTE AND SENSIBILITY IN RELIGION. 
 
 409 
 
 and that he should be urged with the im- 
 periousness of a demand which still remains 
 unsatisfied, to turn him from the corrupt 
 indifference of nature, and to become per- 
 sonally a religious man ; and that he should 
 be assured how all the gratification he felt 
 in listening to the word wliich respected 
 the kingdom of God, will be of no avail, 
 unless that kingdom come to himself in 
 power — that it will only go to heighten the 
 perversity of his character — that it will not 
 extenuate his real and practical ungodliness, 
 but will serve most fearfully to aggravate 
 the condemnation of it. 
 
 With a religion so argumentable as ours, 
 it rhay be easy to gather out of it a feast 
 for the human understanding. With a re- 
 ligion so magnificent as ours, it may be 
 easy to gather out of it a feast for the hu- 
 man imagination. But with a religion so 
 humbling, and so strict, and so spiritual, it 
 is not easy to mortify the pride ; or to quell 
 the strong enmity of nature ; or to arrest 
 the currency of the affections ; or to turn 
 the constitutional habits ; or to pour a new 
 complexion over the moral history ; or to 
 stem the domineering influence of things 
 seen and things sensible ; or to invest faith 
 with a practical supremacy ; or to give its 
 objects such a vivacity of influence as shall 
 overpower the near and the hourly im- 
 pressions, that are ever emanating upon 
 man from a seducing world. It is here 
 that man feels himself treading upon the 
 limit of his helplessness. It is here that he 
 sees where the strength of nature ends ; and 
 the power of grace must either be put forth, 
 or leave him to grope his darkling way, 
 without one inch of progress towards the 
 life and the substance of Christianity. It 
 is here that a barrier rises on the contem- 
 plation of the inquirer — the barrier of sepa- 
 ration between the carnal and the spiritual, 
 and on which he may idly waste the every 
 energy which belongs to him, in the en- 
 terprise of surmounting it. It is here, that 
 after having walked the round of nature's 
 acquisitions, and lavished upon the truth of 
 all his ingenuities, and surveyed it in its 
 every palpable character of grace and ma- 
 jesty ; he will still feel himself on a level 
 with the simplest and most untutored of the 
 species. He needs the power of a living 
 manifestation. He needs the anointing 
 which remaineth. He needs that which 
 fixes and perpetuates a stable revolution 
 upon the character, and in virtue of which 
 he may be advanced from the state of 
 one who hears, and is delighted, to the 
 state of one who hears, and is a doer. Oh ! 
 how strikingly is the experience even of 
 vigorous and accomplished nature at one 
 on this point with the announcements of 
 revelation, that to work this change, there 
 must he the putting forth of a peculiar 
 acency ; and that it is an agency, which, 
 52 
 
 withheld from the exercise of loftiest talent, 
 is often brought down on an impressed au- 
 dience, through the humblest of all instru- 
 mentality, with the demonstration of the 
 Spirit and with power. 
 
 Think it not enough, that you carry in 
 your bosom an expanded sense of the mag- 
 nificence of creation. But pray for a sub- 
 duing sense of the authority of the Creator. 
 Think it not enough, that with the justness 
 of a philosophical discernment, you have 
 traced tliat boundary which hems in all the 
 possibilities of human attainment, and have 
 found that all beyond it is a dark and 
 fathomless unknown. But let this modesty 
 of science be carried, as in consistency it 
 ought, to the question of revelation, and 
 let all the antipathies of nature be schooled 
 to acquiescence in the authentic testimonies 
 of the Bible. Think it not enough that you 
 have looked with sensibility and wonder at 
 the representation of God throned in im- 
 mensity, yet combining with the vastness 
 of his entire superintendence, a most tho- 
 rough inspection into all the minute and 
 countless diversities of existence. Think of 
 your own heart as one of these diversities ; 
 and that he ponders all its tendencies ; and 
 has an eye upon all its movements; and 
 marks all its waywardness; and, God of 
 judgment as he is, records its every secret, 
 and its ever)'^ sin, in the book of his remem- 
 brance. Think it not enough, that you 
 have been led to associate a grandeur with 
 the salvation of the New Testament ; when 
 made to understand that it draws upon it 
 the regards of an arrested universe. How is 
 it arresting your own mind ? What has been 
 the earnestness of your personal regards 
 towards it .^ And tell me, if all its faith, 
 and all its repentance, and all its holiness 
 are not disowned by you ? Think it not 
 enough, that you have felt a sentimental 
 charm when angels were pictured to your 
 fancy as beckoning you to their mansions, 
 and anxiously looking to the every symp- 
 tom of your grace and rcform.ation. Oh ! 
 be constrained by the power of all this ten- 
 derness, and yield yourselves up in a prac- 
 tical obedience to the call of the Lord God 
 merciful and gracious. Think it not enough 
 that you have shared for a moment in the 
 deep and busy interest of that arduous con- 
 flict which is now going on for a moral 
 ascendency over the species. Remember 
 the conflict is for each of you individually ; 
 and let this alarm you into a watchfulness 
 against the power of every temptation, 
 and a cleaving dependence upon him 
 through whom alone you will be more than 
 conquerors. Above all, forget not that 
 while you only hear and are delighted, you 
 are still under nature's powerlessness, and 
 nature's condemnation — and that the foun- 
 dation is not laid, the mighty and essential 
 change is not accomplished, the transition 
 
410 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 from death unto life is not undergone, the 
 saving faith is not formed, nor the passage 
 taken from darkness to the marvellous light 
 of the gospel, till you are both hearers of 
 the word and doers also. " For if any be a 
 
 hearer of the word and not a doer, he is 
 like unto a man beholding his natural face 
 in a glass : for he beholdeth himself, and 
 goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth 
 what manner of man he was." 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The writer of these Discourses has drawn up the following compilation of pas 
 sages from Scripture, as serving to illustrate or to confirm the leading arguments 
 which have been employed in each separate division of his subject. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 In" the beginning God created the heaven and 
 'the earth. Gen. i. 1. 
 
 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, 
 and all the host of them. Gen. ii. I. 
 
 Behold the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, 
 La the Lord's thy God, the earth also, with all that 
 therein is. Deut. x. 14. 
 
 There is none lilce unto the God of Jeshurun, 
 who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in 
 his excellency on the sky. Deut. xxxiii. 26. 
 
 And Hezekiah prayed Defore the Lord, and 
 said, O Lord God of Israel, which dwcUest be- 
 tween the chcrubiins, thou art the God, even thou 
 alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast 
 made heaven and earth. 2 Kings xix. 15. 
 
 For ail the gcds of the people are idols ; but the 
 Lord made the heavens. 1 Chronicles x\-i. 26. 
 
 Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou hast 
 made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their 
 host, the earth and all things that are therein, the 
 seas and all that is therein ; and thou preserves! 
 them all ; and the host of heaven worship thee. 
 Nehemiah ix. 6. 
 
 Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and 
 treadeth upon the waves of the sea; which ma- 
 keth Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the 
 chambers of the south. Job ix. 8, 9. 
 
 He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, 
 and hangeth the earth upon nothing. Job xxvi. 7. 
 By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens. 
 Job xx%i. 13. 
 
 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the 
 
 firmament showeth his handy-work. Psalm xix. 1. 
 
 By the word of the Lord were the heavens 
 
 made ; and all the host of them by the breath of his 
 
 mouth. Psalm xxxiii. G. 
 
 Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the 
 earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. 
 Psalm cii. '2b. 
 
 Who coverest thyself with light as with a gar- 
 ment ; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain. 
 Psalm civ. 2. 
 
 He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun 
 knoweth his -going down. Psalm civ. 19. 
 
 You are blessed *of the Lord which made heaven 
 and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the 
 Lord's, but the earth hath he given to the children 
 of men. Psalm cxv. 15, 16. 
 
 ]Niy help cometh from the Lord, which made 
 heaven and earth. Psalm cxxL 2. 
 
 Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made 
 heaven and earth. Psahn cxxiv. 8. 
 
 The Lord that made heaven and earth, bless 
 thee out of Zion. Psalm cxxxiv. 3. 
 
 Which made heaven and earth, the sea, and all 
 that therein is. Psalm cxlvi. 6. 
 
 The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; 
 bv understanding hath he estabhshed the heavens. 
 Prov. iii. 19. 
 
 Who hath measured the waters in the hollow 
 of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, 
 and comprehended the dust of the earth in a mea- 
 sure, and weighed the mountains in a scale, and 
 the hills in a balance. Isa. xl. 12. 
 
 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, 
 and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppere ; 
 that stretcheth out the heaven as a curtain, and 
 spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. Isa. xl. 22. 
 
 Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the 
 heavens, and stretched them out ; he that spread 
 forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it ; 
 he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and 
 spirit to them that walk therein. Isa. xlii. 5. 
 
 Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he 
 that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord 
 that maketh all things ; that stretcheth forth th? 
 heavens alone ; that spreadeth abroad the earth by 
 myself. Isa. xhv. 24. 
 
 I have made the earth, and created man upon it ; 
 I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, 
 and all their host have I commanded. Isa. xlv. 12. 
 
 For thus saith the Lord that created the hea- 
 vens, God himself that formed the earth and made 
 it, he hath established it, he created it not in vain, 
 he formed it to be inhabited. Isa. xlv. 18. 
 
 Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the 
 earth, and my right hand hath spanned the hea- 
 vens; when I call unto them, they stand up to 
 gether. Isa. xlviii. 13. 
 
 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath 
 established the world by his wisdom, and hath 
 stretched out the heavens by his discretion. Jer. 
 X. 12. 
 
 Ah Lord God ! behold, thou hast made the hea- 
 ven and the earth by thy great power and stretch- 
 ed out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. 
 Jer. xxxii. 17. 
 
 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath 
 established the world by his wisdom, and hath 
 stretched out the heaven by his understanding. 
 Jer. li. 15. 
 
 It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, 
 and hath founded his troop in the earth ; he that 
 calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them 
 out upon the face of the earth. The Lord is hif 
 name. Amos ix. 6. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 411 
 
 We also are men of liko passions with you, and 
 preach unto you, that ye should turn from these 
 vanities unto the hving God, which made heaven, 
 and earth, and the sea, and all tilings that are 
 therein. Acts xiv. 15. 
 
 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by liis 
 Son, whom he hath appointed heir of aU things, 
 by whom also he made the worlds. Heb. i. 2. 
 
 Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the 
 foundation of the earth ; and the lieavens are the 
 work of thine hands. Heb. i. 10. 
 
 Through faith, we understand that the worlds 
 were framed by the word of God. Heb. xi. 3. 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 The secret things belong unto the Lord our 
 God, but those things which are revealed belong 
 unto us and to our children for e\ er, that we may 
 do all the words of this law. Deut. xxix. 29. 
 
 1 would seek unto God, and unto Got' would I 
 commit my cause ; Which doeth great thing-i and 
 unsearchable ; marvellous things without number. 
 Job V. 8, 'J. 
 
 Which doeth great things past finding out; 
 yea, and wonders without number. Job ix. 10. 
 
 Canst thou by searching tiiid out God ? Canst 
 thou Imd out the Almighty unto perfection '? Job 
 xi. 7. 
 
 Hast thou heard the secret of God 7 and dost 
 thou restrain wisdom to thyseh"? Job xv. 8. 
 
 Lo, these are parts of liis ways ; but how little a 
 portion is heard of him 7 but the thunder of his 
 power who can understand ? Job xxvi. 14. 
 
 Behold, God is great, and we know him not; 
 neither can the number of his years be searched 
 out. Job xxxvi. 26. 
 
 God thundereth marvellously with his voice; 
 great things doeth he, which we cannot compre- 
 hend. Job xxx\iL 5. 
 
 Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him 
 out ; he is excellent in power, and in judgment, 
 and in plenty of iustice. Job xxxvii. 23. 
 
 Thy way is m the sea, and thy path in the 
 great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. 
 Psalm Ixxvii. 19. 
 
 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised ; 
 and his greatness is unsearchable. Psalm cxlv. 3. 
 
 For my thoughts are not your thouglits, neither 
 are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as 
 the heavens arc liigher than the eartli, so are my 
 ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts 
 than your thoughts. Isa. Iv. 8, 9. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, 
 and become as Uttle cliildren, ye .shall not enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven. Matt, xviii. 3. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not re- 
 ceive the kingdom of God, as a httle cliild, shall in 
 no wise enter therein. Luke x\iii. 17. 
 
 O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and 
 knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his 
 judgments, and his ways past finding out! For 
 who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who 
 luta been liis coun.sellor ] Rom. xi. 33. 2-1. 
 
 Let no man decei\e himself. If any man 
 among you seeraeth to be wise in this world, let 
 him become a fool, that he may be wise. 1 Cor. 
 JiL 18. 
 
 For if a man thinketh himself to be something, 
 when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. Gal. 
 vi. 3. 
 
 Beware lest any man spoil you through philoso- 
 phy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, af- 
 
 ter the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 
 
 Col. ii. 8. 
 
 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to 
 thy trust, avoiding prulane and vain babbluigs, and 
 oppositions of science falsely so called. 1 Tim 
 vi. 20. 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Be- 
 hold the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, can- 
 not contain thee ; how much less this house that I 
 have builded? Yet have thou respect unto the 
 
 Erayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O 
 -ord my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the 
 prayer wliich thy servant prayeth betbre thee to- 
 day. That thine eyes may be open towards this 
 house night and day, even towards the place of 
 which thou hast said, I\iy name shall be there ; 
 thai thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which 
 thy servant shall make towards this place. 1 Kings 
 viii. 27, 28, 29. 
 
 For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and 
 seeth under the whole heaven. Job xxviii. 24. 
 
 For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he 
 seeth all his goings. Job xxxiv. 21. 
 
 Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect 
 unto the lowly. Psalm cxxxviii. 6. 
 
 O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. 
 Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up- 
 jising : thou understandest my thoughts alar off. 
 Thou compasseth my path and my lying down, 
 and art acquainted with all my ways, tor there 
 is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord ! thou 
 knowest it altogether. I'iiou hast beset me behind 
 and before, and laid thine hand upon nte. Such 
 knowledge is too wonderful lor mc; it is high 1 
 cannot attain unto it. AVliither shall 1 go Irom 
 thy Spirit, or whither shall 1 llee from tny pre- 
 sence? Psalm cxxxix. 1 — 7. 
 
 How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O 
 God ! how great is the sum of them ! If 1 should 
 count them they are more in number than the 
 sand : when I awake 1 am still with thee. Psiihns 
 cxxxix. 17, 18. 
 
 The eyes of the Lord are in ever)- place, be- 
 holding the evil and the good. I'rov. xv. 3. 
 
 Can an)' hide himself in secret places that I 
 shaU not see him? saith the Lord: do not 1 fill 
 heaven and earth ] saith the Lord. Jer. xxiii. 24. 
 
 Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not. 
 neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet 
 your heavenly Father teedcth them. Are ye not 
 much better than they? And why take ye thought 
 for raiment ? Consider the lihes of the field how 
 they grow ? they toil not, neither do they spin ; 
 And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in 
 all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. 
 VVheretbre it' God so clothe the grass of the field, 
 which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into tlie 
 oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of 
 little of taith? Matt. vi. 26, 28, 29, 30. 
 
 Neither is there any creature that is not mani- 
 fest in his sight; but aJl things are naked and 
 opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have 
 to do. Heb. iv. 13. 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on 
 the earth, and the toj. of it reached to heaven ; and 
 
412 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 behold the angels of God ascending and descend- 
 ing on it. Gt-n. xx\iii. 12. 
 
 For a thousand years in thy sight, are but as 
 yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the 
 night. Psalm xc. 4. 
 
 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon 
 the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away 
 like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a gar- 
 ment, and they that dwell therein shall die in hke 
 manner ; but my salvation shall be for ever, and my 
 righteousness shall not be abolished. Isa. h. 6. 
 
 For the son of man shall come in the glory of 
 his Father with his angels ; and then he shall re- 
 ward every man accorjing to his works. Matt. 
 xvi. 27. 
 
 When the Son of ]\Ian shall come in his glory, 
 and all the holy angels with liim, then shall he sit 
 upon the throne of his glory. Matt. xxv. 31. 
 
 Also, 1 say luito you, Whosoever shall confess 
 me before men, him shall the Son of Man also 
 confess before the angels of God. But he that de- 
 nieth me before men, shall be denied before the 
 angels of God. Luke xii. 8, 9. 
 
 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say un- 
 to you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the 
 amrels of God ascending and descending upon the 
 Son of Man. John i. 51. 
 
 We are made a spectacle to the world, and to 
 angels, and to men. 1 Cor. v. 9. 
 
 ^VTierefore God also hath highly exalted him, 
 and given him a name which is above every name. 
 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 
 of tilings in heaven and things in earth, and things 
 under the earth ; and that every tongue should con- 
 fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
 the Father. Phil. ii. 9, 10, 11. 
 
 When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
 heaven with his mighty angels. 2 Thess. i. 7. 
 
 And without controversy great is the mystery" 
 of go<lliness; God was jiianifest in the flesh, justi- 
 fied in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the 
 Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into 
 vTlory. 1 Tirn. iii. 16. 
 
 I "charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and the elect angels, that thou obsen'e 
 these things. 1 Tim. v. 21. 
 
 And again, when he bringeth in the first-begot- 
 ten into the world, he saith. And let all the angels 
 of God worship him. Heb. i. 6. 
 
 But ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto 
 the city of the li\ing God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 and to" an innumerable company of angels. To the 
 general assembly and church of the first born, 
 which are written in heaven, and to God the 
 the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men 
 made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the 
 new covenant. Hebrews xii. 22, 23, 24. 
 
 But, belovetl, be not ignorant of this one thing, 
 that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
 and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is 
 not slack concerning his promise, as some men 
 count slackness ; but is long-suifering to us-ward, 
 not wilhng that any should perish, but that all 
 should come to r'^pentance. But the day of the 
 Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the 
 which the heavens shall pass away with a great 
 noise, and the elements shall melt with fenent 
 heat, the earth also and the works that are there- 
 m, shall be burnt up. 2 Peter iii. 8, 9, 10. 
 
 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea 
 and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven. 
 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, 
 who created heaven and the things that therein 
 are, and the earth and the things that there- 
 in are, and the sea and the things which are 
 
 therein, that there should be time no longer. Rev. 
 X. S, 6. 
 
 And the third angel followed them, saying 
 with a loud voice, if any man worship the beast 
 and his image, and receive his markinliis forehead 
 or in his hand. The same shall drink of the wine 
 of the wrath of God, which is poured out without 
 mixture into the cup of his indignation ; and he 
 shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the 
 presence of the holy angels, and in the presence 
 of the Lamb. Rev. xiv. 9, 10. 
 
 And 1 saw a great white throne, and him that 
 sat on it, from whose face the earth and the 
 heaven fled away, and there was found no place 
 for them. Rev. xx. 11. 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 
 AxD Nathan departed unto his house ; and the 
 Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto 
 David, and it was very sick. Da\id, therefore, be- 
 sought God for the child : and Da\id fasted and 
 went in and lay all night upon the earth. And 
 the elders of his house arose, and went to him, to 
 raise him up from the earth ; but he would not, 
 neither did he eat bread ■v^'ith them. And it came 
 to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. 
 And the servants of Da\id feared to tell him that 
 the child was dead ; for they said, Behold, while 
 the cliild was yet alive, we spake unto him, and 
 he would not hearken unto our voice, how will he 
 then vex himself, if we tell hun that the cliild is 
 dead? But when Da^^d saw that his servants 
 whispered, Da^id perceived that the cliild was 
 (3ead ; therefore David said unto his servants. Is 
 the child dead ? And they said he is dead. Then 
 Da\-id arose from the earth and washed, and 
 anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and 
 came into the house of the Lord, and worshipped : 
 then he came to his own house ; and, when he re- 
 quired, they set bread before him, and he did eat. 
 Then said his ser\ants unto him. What thing is 
 that thou hast done! Thou didst fast and weep for 
 the child while it was alive : but when the child 
 was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread. And he 
 said, while the child was yet alive, I fasted and 
 wept ; for I said who can tell whether God will be 
 gracious to me, that the child may hve 7 But now 
 he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring 
 him back again ? 1 shall go to him, but he shall 
 not return to me. 2 Sam. xii. 15 — 23. 
 
 The angel of the Lord encampeth round about 
 them that fear him, and dehvereth them. Psahu 
 xxxiv. 7. 
 
 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to 
 keep thee in aU thy ways. Psalm xci. 2. 
 
 And he shall send his angels with a great 
 sound of a trumpet ; and they shall gather together 
 his elect from the four winds, from the one end of 
 heaven to the other. Matt. xxiv. 31. 
 
 Likewise I say unto you. There is joy in the 
 presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
 repenteth. Luke xv. 10. 
 
 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth 
 to minister for them who shall te heirs of salvation. 
 Heb. i. 14. 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. 
 
 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the 
 
 wilderness, to be tempted of the de\-il. Matt. iv. 1. 
 
 The enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the 
 
harvest is the end of the world ; and the reapers 
 are the angels. The Son of Man shall send forth 
 his angels, and they shall gather out of his king- 
 dom all things that otiend, and them which do ini- 
 quity. Matt. xiii. 1^9, 41. 
 
 Then shall he say also unto them on the left 
 hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 
 fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Matt. 
 XXV. 41. 
 
 And in the synagogue there was a man which 
 had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with 
 a loud voice, saying, Let us alone ; what have we 
 to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ; art thou 
 come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art: 
 the Holy One of God. Luke iv. 33, 34. 
 
 Those by the way -side are they that hear; then 
 Cometh the devil and taketh awaj- the word out of 
 their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 
 Luke viii. 1-2. 
 
 But he knowing their thoughts, said unto them, 
 Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to 
 desolation ; and a house di^ided against a house, 
 fellcth. If Satan also be divided against himself, 
 how shall his kingdom stand ? because ye say that 
 I cast out devils through Beelzebub. Luke xi. 
 17, 18. 
 
 Ye are of your father the de\"il, and the lusts of 
 your father ye will do; he was a murderer 
 from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, 
 because there is no truth in him. When he 
 speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own : for he is a 
 liar, and the father of it. John \m. 44. 
 
 And supper being ended, (the devil ha^■ing 
 now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's 
 son to betray him.) John xiii. 2. 
 
 But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled 
 thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep 
 back part of the price of the land ? Acts v. 3. 
 
 To open their eyes, and to turn them from dark- 
 ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto 
 God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, 
 and an inheritance among them which are sancti- 
 fied by faith that is in me. Acts xxvi. 18. 
 
 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under 
 your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ be with you. Amen. Rom. xvi. 20. 
 
 Lest Satan should get an advantage of us ; for 
 we are not ignorant of his devices. 2 Cor. ii. 11. 
 In whom the God of this world hath blinded the 
 minds of them which beUeve not, lest the light of 
 the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of 
 God, should shine unto them. 2 Cor. iv. 4. 
 
 Wherein in time past ye walked according to 
 the course of this world, according to the pnnce 
 of the power of the air, the spirit that now work- 
 eth in the children of disobedience. Eph. ii. 2. 
 
 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may 
 be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For 
 we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against 
 principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world, against spiritual 
 wickedness in high places. Eph. vi. 11, 12. 
 
 For some are already turned aside after Satan. 
 1 Timothy v. 15. 
 
 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of 
 flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part 
 of the same ; that through death he might destroy 
 him that had the power of death, that is the de\il. 
 Heb. ii. 14. 
 
 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the 
 devil, and he will flee from you. James iv. 1. 
 
 Be sober, be ^igiIant; because your adversary 
 the de^il, as a roaring Uon, walketh about, seeking 
 whom he may devour ; whom resist steadfast in 
 the faith, knowing that the same atflictions are ac- 
 
 APPENDK. '313 
 
 / 
 complished in your brethren that are in the world. 
 1 Peter v. 8, 9! 
 
 He that committeth sin is of the de^■il ; for the 
 de\-il sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose 
 the Son of God was manifested, that he might de- 
 stroy the works of the devil. 
 
 In this the children of God are manifest and the 
 children of the de\il ; whosoever doeth not righ- 
 teousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not 
 his brother. 1 John iii. 8, 10. 
 
 Ye are of God, Uttle children, and have over- 
 come them ; because greater is he that is in you. 
 than he that is in the world. 1 John iv. 4. 
 
 And the angels which kept not their first estate, 
 but left tlieir own habitation, he hath reserved in 
 everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judg- 
 ment of the great day. Jude 6. 
 
 He that ovcrcometh, the same shall be clothed 
 in white raiment ; and I will not blot out his name 
 out of the book of hfe, but I ■nill confess his name 
 before my Father, and before his angels. Rev. 
 iii. 5. 
 
 And there was war in heaven ; Miahael and his 
 angels fought against the dragon ; and the dragon 
 fought and his angels. And prevailed not ; neither 
 was their place found any more in heaven. And 
 the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, 
 called the Devil^and Satan, which deceiveth the 
 whole world ; he was cast out into the earth, and 
 his angels were cast out with him. Therefore re- 
 joice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Wo 
 to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea ! for 
 the de^■il is come down unto you, having great 
 wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a 
 short time. Rev. xii. 7, 8, 9, 12. 
 
 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old ser- 
 pent, which is the De\il, and Satan, and bound 
 him a thousand years. And when the thousand 
 years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his 
 prison. And the devil that deceived them was 
 cast into a lake of fire and brimstone, where the 
 beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tor- 
 mented day and night, for ever and ever. Rev. xx. 
 2, 7, 10. 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 
 Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings 
 of mine, and doeth them, I will lilven him to a wise 
 man, which built his house upon a rock : And the 
 the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
 winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it 
 fell not ; for it was founded upon a rock. And every 
 one that heareth these sajings of mine, and doeth 
 them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, 
 which built his house upon the sand : And the 
 rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
 blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell ; and 
 great was the fall of it. Matt. xii. 24 — 27. 
 
 At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank 
 thee, O Father ! Lord of heaven and earth, be- 
 cause thou hast hid these things from the wise 
 and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. 
 Matt. xi. 2.5. 
 
 Then shall ye begin to say, we have eaten and 
 drank in thy presence, and thou hast taught in 
 our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know 
 you not whence j-e are ; depart from me all ye 
 workers of iniquity. Luke xiii. 20, 27. 
 
 For not the hearers of the law arc just before 
 God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. 
 Rom. ii. 13. 
 
 And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not 
 
414 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring 
 unto you the testimony of God. For I (letermined 
 not to know any thing among you, save Jesus 
 Christ and him crucified. And my speech and 
 my preaching was not with enticing words of 
 man's wisdom, hut in demonstration of the Spirit 
 and of power. That your faith should not stand 
 in the wisdom of men, but in the jwwer of God. 
 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, 
 but the Spirit which is of God ; that we might 
 know the things that are freely given to us of God. 
 Which things also we speak, not in the words 
 which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the 
 Holy Ghost teacheth ; comparing spiritual things 
 with spiritual. But the natural man recei\ eth not 
 the things of the Spirit of God ; for they are foolish- 
 ness unto him ; neither can he know them, because 
 they are spiritually discerned. 1 Cor. iL 1, 2, 4, 5, 
 12, 13, 14. 
 
 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness 
 with God. 1 Cor. iii. 19. 
 
 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in 
 power. 1 Cv- iv. 20. 
 
 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be 
 the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not 
 with ink, but with the Spirit of the li\ing God ; 
 not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of 
 the heart. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves 
 to think any thing as of ourselves ; but our suffi- 
 ciency is of God : who also hath made us able 
 ministers of the New Testament ; not of the let- 
 ter, but of the spirit ; for the letter killeth, but the 
 spirit giveth life. 2 Cor. iii. 3, 5, G. 
 
 Thiit the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Fa- 
 ther of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wis- 
 dom and revelation in the knowledge of him ; The 
 eyes of your understanding l'"ing enlightened ; 
 that ye may know what is the hope of his calhng, 
 
 and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance 
 in the saints. And what is the exceedincr great- 
 ness of his power to us-ward who believe, accord- 
 ing to the working of his mighty power. Eph. L 
 17, 18, 19. 
 
 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in 
 trespasses and sins. For we are his workmanship, 
 created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Eph. iL 
 1, 10. 
 
 For our gospel came not unto you in word only^ 
 but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in 
 much assurance. 1 Thes. i. 5. 
 
 Of his own will begat he us vnth the word of 
 truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his 
 creatures. 
 
 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers 
 only, decei\ing yourselves. For if any be a hearer 
 of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man 
 beholding his natural face in a glass. For he be- 
 holdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straight- 
 way forgetteth what manner of man he was. But 
 whoso looketh into the {)erfect law of hbertv, and 
 continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, 
 but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed 
 in his deed. James i. 18, 22 — 25. 
 
 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
 hood, an holy nation, a pecuhar people, that ye 
 should show forth the praises of him who has call- 
 ed you out of darkness into his marvellous light 
 1 Peter ii. 9. 
 
 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and 
 ye know all things. 
 
 But the anointing which ye have received of 
 him abideth in you ; and ye need not that any 
 man teach you ; but as the same anointing teacheth 
 you of aU things, and is truth, and is no he, and 
 even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him 
 1 John ii 20, 27. 
 
 HIE END. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Spei 
 
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