Srom f ^e &i6rari5 of (profe06ot ^iffiam Jgenrj? (Breen (fequeat^e^ 6^ ^im fo t^e aifirarg of gprinceton S^eofo^icaf ^eminarg BX 8915 .C438 1850 Chalmers, Thomas, 1780-184 Sermons and discourses SERMONS DISCOURSES / BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., LL.D NOW COMPLETED BY THE INTRODUCTION OF HIS P O S T H U M O U S S E R iM O N S . IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. IL NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, No. 285 BROADWAY. 1850. CONTENTS OF VOL. II, SERMONS ON THE DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. SERMON I. THE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRIT TO GIVE EFFECT TO THE PREACHTNG 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 MTSICRIOTJS ASPECT OF THE GOSPEL TO THE MEN OF THE WOELD. "Then said I, Ah, Lord God ! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables T'— 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 tho 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 38 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 ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a rnan, 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. . . 93 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." — JoBix. 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 S5 IT CONTENTS. SERMON IX. THE PRINCIPLES OF LOVE TO GOD. "Keep yourselves in the love of God." — Jude 21 61 SERMON X. GKATITUDE, 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 thmg have I desired of the Lord, that v?ill 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 temole." — Psalm xxvii. 4 75 SERMON XII. THE EMPTINESS OF NATURAL VIRTUE. " But I knov? you, that ye have not the love of God in you." — John v. 42. ... 82 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." — Ephes. 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 MAT EXIST WITHOUT THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. " Finally, brethren, whatsoeve 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, and if there be any praise, think on these thmgs." Fhil.iv. 8 119 CONTENT* t 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." — Rom. xiv. 18 135 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 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 \injust 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 littleones." — Luke xvii. 1,2. 161 DISCOURSE VIII. ON THE LOVE OF MONET. " 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 abideth. 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 lore of the Father is not in him." — 1 John xi. 15 371 Tl 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, bebg reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." — 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 closed your eyes ; the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. And the vision of all is become unto you £is 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 Pkter 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 XL 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 among you, but of the ship. Paul said to the centurion and to the sokliers. 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 I say 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 against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world w9 come." — Matt. xii. 31, 32. 332 CONTENTS. VU 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- manished." — Eccl. iv. 13 340 SERMON XIV. '^'.-^ ON THE DUTY AND THE MEANS OF CHRISTIANIZING OUR HOME POPULATION. y " And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every crea- ture."— Mark xvi. 15 346 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 MODERN 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 % and the son of man, that thou yisitest himi" — 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 HI. 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 t" — 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 OP INTELLIGENCE. " And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it."— Col. ii. 15 398 VIU 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 xxxui. 32 401 APPENDIX 410 OCCASIONAL SERMONS, &c. SERMON. PREACHED BEFORE THE SOCIETY FOR RELIEF OF THE DESTITUTE SICK. " Blessed is he that considereth the poor ; the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble." — Psalm ili. 1 176 SERMON. THOUGHTS ON UNIVERSAL PEACE. " Nation shall not lift 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 1 PhiUp Baith luito him, come and see." — John i. 46 281 SERMON. DELIVERED ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES. " For when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants 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. ... 25) EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ... 417 SERMONS 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 him. 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 we 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 yoke 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 new condition, to breathe holy p:r poses, and to abound in holy performances. He is created anew unto good works. Heisraadethe workmanshipofGod 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 literary 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 HUMAN NATURE. fsERM. 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 length, 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, he 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. There 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, more 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. The Necessity of the Spirit to give Effect to the Preaching of the Gospel. And ray 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 eff(!ct as in the text, in the following 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 ot a Christian teacher, — a something essential to its suc- cess, and. which is not essential to the pro- ficiency of scholars in the ordmary branches of education, — an influence that is beyond the reach of human power and human wis- 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 !•] one hand, and the proficiency of the scho- lars on the other, are still dependent on the will of God. It is true, tliat in this case, we are not so ready to feel onr depend- ence. God is apt to be overlooked in all those cases where he acts with uniformity. Wherever we see, what we call, the opera- tion of a li^v 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 purposeor of his agency in the mat^r, 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 senius may be destitute of piety ; that he may fill the office of an instuictor 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 year 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 prayer 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, — an ', know- ing that the talent of every teacher, and the continuance of his zeal, and his powers of communication, and his faculty 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 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 13 the business of education, and conspires to the result of an accomplished and a well informed scholar, is in the hand of the Deity, and he will pray for the continuation of these elenunts, — and while science is raising her wondrous monuments, and drawing the 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, lor 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 teachers, to brmg 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 Ie:iding principles which run through the writings of some eminent philosopher? This very ex- ercise may be gone through on the writings of Inspiration; and the 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 Lvan- 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 have reared to his fame some 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 employ, in common with other teachers, and even though they did make up all the qualifications necessary for his ofl5ce, 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 fedth 14 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. [SERM. in the uniformity of nature ; and forgetting that it is the inspiration of the Alinight\ which giveth and preservoth the understand- ing of all his creatures, might he tempted to repose that confidence in man, which dis- places God from the sovereignty that belongs to him. But what we wish to prepare you for, by the preceding observations, is, that you may understand tlie altogether pe^culiar call, that there is for dependence on God in the case of a Christian teaclier. We have 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 want 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 of 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 in himself, enters with aspiring confidence into the field of argument, 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 to 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 unchri-stian 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 the 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 si^ht to make angrels weep when a weak and vapouring mortal, surnnmded by his fellow sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgment along with them, finds it a dearer object to his bo.som, to regale his hearers by the exhibition of him.self, 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 Uu; Gospel. IT. 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 the same powers of attention and un derstanding 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 m,ay 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 knowledg^f 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 Avay in which an)'^ man of plain and honest understanding would do, a very different thing from God actually puttmg 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 receiveth 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 m:m of a strong and accomplislied 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, 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 rest 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 the 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 pecuhar office of revelation ; and then you bring into view another barrier, no less insur- mountable than that which fixes an immu- table distinction between the conceptions of an idiot and of a maa of sense, — even that wonderful barrier which separates the natural from the spiritual man. You can conceive him struggling with 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, — where 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 alacrity, 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 sufficiency, he must become like a httle child, or one of those babes to whom God reveals the things 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 w^ould 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 may 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 M'ith 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. 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 his 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 attachment 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 compsss 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 ofl'ice of the Spirit was to reveal any thing additional to the inform;ition, whether in the way of doc- trine or of duty, w^hich the Bible sets before us. But his office, as defined by the Bible itself, is not to make known to us any trutlis which are not contained in the Bible; but to make clear to our understandings the truths 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 [SERM. the Spirit worketh. He does not tell us any thing that is out of the record ; but all that is within it he sends home, with clearness and eflect, upon the mind. He does not make us wise above that which is written ; but he makes us wise, up to that which is written. When a telescope is directed to some di.stant landscape, it enables us to see what we could not otherwise have seenj but it does not enable us to see any thing 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 saw 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 hot 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 aflTecting 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 this truth 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 he 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 gives 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 the object of sight, com- pletely overpowers that light which ought to beam upon his spirit, from this object of ftiith. He may occasionally think of it as he does of other things; but for every one practical purpose the thought aban- DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE dons him, so soon as he goes into the next company or takes a part in the next worldly 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 would have done, had his mind, in reference to God, been in a state of entire darkness. If any tiling like a right con- ception of the matter ever exist in his heart, the din and the day light of the world drive it all away from him. Now, to recti- fy this case, it is surely not necessar}', that the Spirit add any 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 found 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 w'ritten 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 the 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 whole 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 thai he is alive. Tlae spiritual man is the re\erse of all this, and that without carrying 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 revelation to which the other is a stranger. It does 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 furni-^hes him with a constant light which enables him to withstand the domineering influence of sight and of sense. He dies unto the world, he lives unto God,— and 17 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 peculiar energy', by which it comes home iTpon 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 which nature has con- ferred upon man, exalted to its highest measure, and called forth to its most stren- uous exercise is not able to accomplish it, — that it is due to a power above nature, and beyond it ; that it is due to what the Apostle calls the demon.stration of the Spirit, — a de- monstration withheld from the self-suffi- cient exertions of man, and given to his be- lieving prayers. And here we are reminded of an instruc- tive 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, that he felt as if he had nothing to do, but to brandish those miglity 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 io 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, which 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 resistance to all our warnings and all our arguments. There is a spirit working hi the children of disobedience which no power of human eloquence can lay. There is a covering 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, \b DEPRAvrrr of human nature. flushi.(l with the mighty enterprise of turn- ing souls from the dominion of Satan unio God. In all the hope of victory he may discharge the weapons of his warfare among thum. Week after week, he may reaBon with them out of tlie Scriptures. Sabbath afu;r Sabbath lie may dechiim, he may de- m )nstrate, lie may put forth every expe- dient, he may at one time set in array be- fore them the terrors of the hiw, at another he may try to win them by the free offer of the Gospel ; and, in the proud confidence of success, lie may ibiuk that nothing can witlistand iiim, and tliat the heart of every liear'ir 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 hini ? They may even go so lar as to allow tiiat it is all very true he says. He may be their favourite preacher, and when he opHus his exhortations upon them, there may be a deep and a solemn attention in every countenance. Bui how is the heart coming on all the while? How do those people live, aud what evidence are they giving of being born again under the power of his inini'^try ? It is not enough to be told of i:i(iise momentary convictions which flash from the pulpit, and carry a thrilling influ- ence along with them llrrough the hearts of lisieaiiig admirtrs. Have these hearers of th' 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 their joy, has the will of Christ become all their directions? Alas, he may look around him, and at the end of the year, alter all the tumults of asounding popularity, h" may find the great bulk of them just where they were, — as listless and uncon- cerned about the tnings of eternity, — as ob- stinatc'ly alienated from God, — as firmly dcn'oted tf) 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 tlie whole tide of its affections, to the vanities of the world, that they have their full share of the wickedness 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 grf)und amf)ng them. He is grieved to learn that all he has said, has had no more effect, 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 sufficiency is not in him, but in God : it makes him understand that another |SERM power must be brought to bear upon the mass of re.sistauce which is Uloie him ; and lei the ir.a.« of confident and a>pning ^; iiius, who thought he was to assail tiic dark seats oi humai: corruption, and to carry tlueni by storm, l(!t him be reduced in mortified and dependent humbleness to the exptd cut of , the Apostle, let him crave the intercessions of his people, and throw himself upon liieir prayers. Let us now bring the whole matter to a practical conclusion. For the acquirement of a saving and spiritual knowledye of ihe gospel, you are cm the one hand, to put f< rth all your ordinary powers, in the 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 domg so, you, on the other hand, are to roceed on a profound impression of the utter fiuit- lessness of all your endeavours, unless t od meet them by the manifestations of his Spirit. ;n oilier words, you are" to read your Bible, and to bring your facuhies of attention, and understanding, aud memor}, to the exercise, just as strenuously us if these and these alone could conduct you to the»light after which you are aspiring. .' ul ycm are at the .same lime tci pray as (am- estly for this object, as if God accomplished it without your exertions at all, instead of accomplishing it in the way he actu.illy does, by your exertions. It is when yciv.i eyes are turned toward the book of Gofi's testimony, and not when your eyes are turned away from it, that he fulfils iipf)n you the petition of the Psalmist, — '' Lord, do thou open mine eyes, thai i may bel.ild the wondrous things contained in thy law." You are not to exercise your faculties in searching after truth withoul prayer, ^ise God will withhold from you his illuii:inating influences. And you are not to pray for truth, without exercising your faculties, else God will reject your prayers, as the mockery of a hypocrite. But you are to do both, and this is in harmonjf with the whole sl\ le of a Christian's obedience, who is as strenuous in doing as if his doings were to accomplish all, and as fervent in prayer, as if without the inspiring energy 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 writingof letters, what daily struggling with difficulties, what constant exercise of thought in watching over the Churches, what a world of 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 I-] DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 19 ling the one and warding off the hostility of the other. Look to all that is viible 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 ii lay upon himself, or as if it were reserve; for the strength of his solitary arm to ac- complish it. To this object he cons;-- crated every moment of his time, 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 his 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 ppfvers'^ thf'f)lo?y whicli they have adnpfeil as to hesitate about the lawfulness of being di- ligent and doing in the use of means. While they are slumbering over their speculation, and proving liow honestly they put faith in it hy doing notiiing, let us be guided by the example of the pains-taking and indus- trious Paul, and remember, that never since the days of tliis Apostle, who calls upon us to he followTS nf him, even as he was of Christ, — never were the labours of human exertion more faithfully rendered, — never wer- the workings of a human instrument put forth with greater energy. But it forms a still more striking part of the example of Paul, that 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 t.iis object, as if all his doings were of no consequence. A fine t'^stiniony to the supremacy of God, from the man, who, in laDours 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 efhcacy 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 thai 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 i - very true, but Go! ciiooses to work i \ lisfrii- ments, — and Paul, by the question, '• Lord what wilt thou have me to do ?"' expn .ssed his readiness to be an instrument in his hand. Neither did he say, what signifies my praying, for 1 have got a work here Jo do, and it is enough that be dilige;!t in the performance of it. No — for the power cf God mu.st be acknowledLed, and a sen.se of his power must miu;'le with all our per- formances; and therefore it is that the Apostle kept both working and praying, and with him they formed two distinct emana- tions of the same principle ; and while there 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 dejjendence on him who can alone give to that doing all its fruit and all its eflicacy. 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 tlie extension of the vineyard of Christ,— and he was among the very first who put forth his hand to the breaking up the Ameri- can wilderness. For this purpose did lie set himself down to 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 villatres: and while 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 families ; and he spread art, and learning, and civilization amongst them ; and to ills 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. self at the end of his Indian grammar, that '• prayers and pains through faith in Christ Jesus can do any thing." The last inference we shall draw from this topic, is the duty and importance of prayer among Christians, for the success of the ministry of the Gospel. Paul had a high sense of the efficacy of prayer. Not ac- cording to that refined view of it, which, making all its influence to consist in itsim- provmg and moralizing effect upon the mind, fritters down to nothing the plain import and significancy of this ordinance. With him 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 lie, 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 [SERM. 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 of 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 who never hold their peace day nor night, and to them God addre-^ises 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 Jeru salem a praise in the earth." SERMON II. The rilystenous 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. I\ parables, the lesson that is meant to be conveyed is to a certain degree shaded in obscurity. They 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 ths will of God, — yet there was dinmess 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 who wanted such a concern about God, a^ 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 aw!«v. DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 11.] And it is still more likely that they would refuse the impression of them, 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 indirfercnce. And thus it is, that to be a teaclier of parables might at length become a scoff and a by-word ; and the pro- phet seems to have felt tlie force of it as an opprobrious designation, seems to be looking forward to the mixture of disdain and impa- tience with which he would he 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 faitliful messengers of God in the present day? It is true, that in our time there is no such thing as a man comintr amongst you,, charged with the ut- teranc: of a direct and personal inspiration. Bui 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- bolieall}', 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 impirtation falls most readily and most abundantly on the sermon that is most pervaded by the spirit, and most overrun with the phraseology of the New Testament ? In that composition there are certain terms which recur inces- santly, and wliich 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 w? 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 app'^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 ? \Vhen the sermon in ques- tion is put by 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 tliat ere you could be initiated into the mystery of such language and of .'«uch dls of cond<-mi:;;tio!:. ".'hey iiciuce the men of all casts and of all i haracters, to the same footing of wortlilHS-:;-rss in ihe sight of God ; and sprak of tlie < vil of liie human heart in such terms, as' will sound to many a mys!erir)us exaggeration, and, like the hearers of !"z'kiel, wiil tluse not be able to comprehend the argument of the preacher, when hr tells them, though in the very language of the Bible, that lh y are the heirs of wrath; that none of them is righteous, no not one; that all flesh iiave corrupted their ways, and have fallen short of the glory of God ; that the world ;'.t l:,rge is a lost and a fallen worki, 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 tlrfem in a paralile, 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 expc under of the re\ea]ed will and counsel of God, he proceeds to tell them of the remedy, l-'or Cod hath not only m;ide known the fearful magnitude of his reckon- ing against us, but he has prescrih(d, and with that authority which only belongs lo him, the way of its settlement ; and that he has told us all the wc^rks and .all the efforts of unrenewed nature are of no avail in gaining us acceptance, and that he has hiid the burden of our atonement on him who alone was able to bear it ; and he not only 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 r.Tedia1or 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 .lesus 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. analogies of common life which might have done for men of an untainted nature, but which will not du for the men of this cor- rupt world, he faithfully unfolds that econo- my of redemption which God hath actually set up for the recovery of our degenerate species, — it is then, that to a hearer still in darkness, the whole, argument sounds as strangely and as obscurily, as if it were conveyed to him in an unknown language, — it is then, that the repulsion of his nature to the truth 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, with tlie remark, that he who delivers t, is a speaker of parables, and there is no comprehending him. It will readily occur as an observation upon all that has been delivered, that by tlie great majority of hearers, this imputation of mysteriousness is never preferred, — that in fact, they are most habituated to this style of preaching, — and that they recognise the very thing which they value most, and are best acquainted with, when they hear a sermon replete with the doctrine, and abounding 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 conquer their resistance to the power of them ; to alarm them by the considera- tion, that tile influence of the lesson is alto- gether a distinct matter from the pleasant- ness of the song, — that their ready and de- lighted acijuiescence in the preaching of the faith, may consist with a total want of obe- dience to the tfxith,— and that with all the love they bear to the phraseology of the gospel, and all their preference 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 the one we have been combating, — a weed which grows abundantly in anotlier quarter of the field altogether, — a perverseness of mind, more deceitful than tlie other, and perhaps still more unmanageable, and against which the faithful minister has to set himself 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 faith ? who like to hear of re- generation, but never put the question, Am I really regenerated? who like to hear that without Christ they can do nothing, but may be enabled to do all things througli him strengthening them, but never enter into the important personal inquiry. Is he really I strengtlieniiig me, and am I, by my actual victory over the world, and my actual pro- 1 gress in the accomplishments of personal I [SERM. Christianity, bearing evidence upon myself that I have a real part and interest in lliese things ? 'I'here can be no doubt as to the existence of such a ciasSj;— and under another text, there could be no difficulty in finding out a spiritual application, by which to reach and to reprove them. But the matter .suggested by the present text is, that if a minister of the present day should preach as the A| os- tles did before him, — if the great theme of his ministrations be Jesus Christ, and him crucified, — if the doctrine of the sermon be a faithful transcript of the doctrine of t.ie New Testament, — there is one cla.ss, we have every warrant for believing, from whom the word will not return unto him void, — and there is another class wlio will be the willing hearers, but not the obe- dient doers of tlie word : but there is stiJl 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 avenues botii 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 adjustment between the truth as it is in Je sus, and the prevaUing style of their con ceptions. All their views of human life, and all the lessons they may have gathered from the school of civil or classical mo- rality, and all their preferences for what the}' count the clearness and the ration- ality of legal preaciiiiig, and all the pre- dilections they have gotten in its favour from the most familiar analogies in human society, — all these, coupled with their utter blindness to the magnitude of that ^nilt which they have incurred imder the judg- ment of a spiritual law, enter as so m:iny elements of dislike in their hearts, towards the whole tone and character of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. And they go to envelope the subject in such a shroud of mysticism to their eyes, that many of the preachers of the gospel are, by them, resLst- 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 the offence of tiie cross has yet ceased from the land. We mistake it, if we think that the persecution of contempt, a species of persecution more appalling to some minds than even direct and personal violence, is not still the appointed trial of all who would live godly, and of all who would expound zealously and honestly the doctrine of DEPRAVIT\ or HUMAN NATURE. II.] Christ Jesus our Lord. We utterly mis- take it, if we think that Christianity is not even to this 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,— tiiat 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 mysteriousness in which it appears to be concealed from all ordinary discernment, — we should like to take our leave of them at present with two observa- tions. We 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 mysteriousness 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 the very doctrine of God's own communication? What if it be indeed the truth of God ? What if it be til'' 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- lif^vcth on him shall not be confounded. !Ie further speaks of our personal prepa- ration for heaven — and here, too, may his utiTHUce 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 m^ike 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 with all perseverance, — and that he should aspire at being perfect through Christ strengthening him — and that he slu)uld, under the operation of those great provisions which are set up in the New- Testament for creating us anew unto good 25 works, conform himself unto that doctrme of grace by which he is brought to deny un- godliness and worldly lusts, and to live so- berly, righteously, and godly in the present evil world. We again ask them, if all this be oflfensive to their taste, and utterly re- volting to their habits and inclinations, and if they turn with disgust from the bitter- ness of such an application, and can behold no strength to constrain them in any such arguments, and no eloquence 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 that it says, if ye have not the Spirit of God, ve are none of his ; when 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 the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, wtio is the image of God, should shine unto them." Secondly, 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 offer an invincible barrier against the reception of its truths, the men who, upon the plea of mysterious- ness, or the plea of fanaticism, or the plea of excessive and unintelligible oeculiarity,, 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 bv^ sending to the door of its most faithful ministers, and humbly craving from them their explanations and tlieir 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 foundation of its enjoyments and hs con cerns, — when he comes to be bowed down with infirmity, or receives from the trouble within, the solemn intimation that death is now looking to him in good earnest: When such a man takes him to the bfd of sick- ness, and he knows it to be a sickness unto death, — when, under all the weight of breathlessness and pain, he listens to the man of God, as he points the way that leadeth to eternity, — what, I would ask, is the kind of gospel that is most fitted to charm the sense of guilt and tlie anticipa- tions of vengeance away from him ? Sure we are, that we never in these affecting 26 DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. [SEKM. circumstances — through which you have all to p.isjj! — we never saw the man who could maintain a stal)ilily, and a hope, from the sense of his own righteousness ; but who, if leaning on the rightf^usness 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 Willi 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 wliich 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 faitli, 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 inheritanceof the saints, and present the spirit holy, and unreproveable, and un- blamable, in the sight 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, why put them away from you now ? You will recur to them then; and for what? ll.at you may get the forgiveness of your 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 momtMit 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 ^'our 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 shill have more abundance^ but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that he hath."— Mo^Mewj 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. With 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 have 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 fer^l the mysteriousness of these truths, and long for light to 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 di'iibts and many perplexities, — to those who are impressed with a general conviction on the side of Scripture, but in whose eyes a darkness impenetrable still broods over its pages, — to those who are haunted by a .sense of the imperious necessity of religion, and at the same time cannot escape from the impression, that if it is any where 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 away. In the further prosecution of this dis- cf)urse, let us attempt, in the first place, to explain -what it is that we ought to have, in order to attain an understanding of the mys- teries of the gospel; and, in the second DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. in.J place, how it is that in many cases these mysteries are evolved npon 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 the 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, tlie 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 Spirit 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 M^ill at lengtli come into the mind of an mquirer. Let your present condition then S 27 be that of a darkness as helpless and as unattainable as can possibly be imagined, there still remains an obvious and practica- ble direction which you can be doing with in the mean time. Vou can persevere in the exercise of reading 3'our Fiible. There you are at the place of meeting etAveen 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 verj^ general wa)', to the dif- fer nee in point of result between the active inquiries of a man vvlio looks forward to the acquisition of saving truth 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. 'i'he latt(;r is just as acti\e, and just as inquisitivf; as the former. The difference between them does not lie in the one putting forth diligence without a feelin (J of dependence, and the other f"el- ina: dependence, witliout 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 mocker}' of an acknowledgement. He who calls upon us to hearken diligently, when he addresses us by a living voice, docs in effect call upon us to read and to ponder diligently when 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 tlie place of meeting, which he has assigned for us. It is to address an imaginary Being, whom we have invested 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. Me who without prayer looks confidently forward to success as the fruit of his own investigations, is not walking humbly with God. If he were humble he would pray. Ikit whether is he the more humble, who joins with a habit of prayer all those ac- couipanying circumstances which God hath presc-ribed. or he wlio, in neglect of thcs© 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 ns, 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 feet, keepnig 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 tiiose component parts which he himself hath recommended. In the very act of making prayer stand singly out as alone instrument of success, we are in fact draw- ing the life and the spirit out of pra3fer itself; and causing it to wither into a thing of no power and no significancy in the sight of irod. 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 tlie very suggestion of doing for an inquirer, lest he siiould be misled as to tiie 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 try to force his own way to heaven, without the recognition of the gospel or any of its peculiarities. Now, dointj stands precisely in the same relation to prayer that reading does. Without the one or the other it is the prayer 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 he will come to be esta- blished in the righteousness of Christ, as the foundation of all his trust, tlian 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 ontset. For a man at the commencement of his inquiries, to be strenuous in the relinquishmenl 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 w-ho Cometh unto me must forsake all. For a man to put fortli an immediate hand to the doing of the commandnients, wluie 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 eye 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 1'he man in fact by strenuously doing, i? just the more significantly and the more energetically praying. He 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 would be dangerous to place a man on the road to his wished-for home, lest, when he has got upon the road, he should stand stilland be satisfied. The more, in fact, that the man's conscience is exercised and enlightened (and what more fitted th:in 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 only 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 Ihe 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 in.J DEPRAVITY OF HITMAN 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. When conscience tells us to read, and to pray, and to reform, it is he who is prompting this fticulty. 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 metits. He will visit him who is the willinc 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 forsake 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, by 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 tlieology. Hut God will not de.spise it. He will not leave your longings for ever unsatisfiin!. 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 faith 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. II. 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 all ca-ses. 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 which 30 PEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATUKE. [SI another has been called out of darkness to the marvellous ligiil of tlie jjospel. Refcrrintr, then, to those fiioiiiids of mys- terio; siicss wliicli ne have already s|)eeified 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 niiister, or of a son to ids father, or of a subject to his sove- reign, utterly fail in the case of man, as he is by nature, in relation to his God. A ser- vant may discliar^e all his obljijations ; a son may acquit liinisclf of all liis 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 which 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 devoted ness, and all the attach- ment from his family, which he can desire, and so be sritisfied. The earthly sovereign may huv-j all that allegiance from a loyal sii'.ject, 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 our 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 a.sk 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 hand 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 agamst us, — when, sur- I rounded as we are by the gifts of nature and of providence, all of which are lis, the giver is meanvvhile forgotten, and, aniic' 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 firudy, and his air which circulates a freshness around our dwellings, and his rain which produces all the luxuriance that is spread arouiic: us, and drops upon every field the smiliiig pro- mise of abundance for all the wants oi' his dependent children, — if all this be true, can it at the same time be right, that this all providing 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 thC' 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 Ids affairs, there should be so u'ter 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 (^od, tlien it is a case of too peculiar a nature to be 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 ofler to make it the subject of any communication, it is (;ur part hum- bly to listen and implicitly to follow if. And here it is granted, that amongst the men who are utter strangers to this com- munication, you meet with the belter and the worse ; and that there is an ob\ic:us line of distinction which marks off the base and the worthless amongst them, from Ih(>se 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 foith either in tears of pity, or in acts of kind- ness, upon the miserable, — with all tlnse 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 inclination 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- semlilage, that they go not to alleviate, by one iota, the burden of that controversy which lies between God and their posterity, — tliat throughout all the ranks and diver- sities of character which prevail in the world, there is one pervading affection of enmity to him ; that tlie 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 m dves an idol of his fame, — that the man of amhitinn ft^fis not liow subordinate he is to the mig'it and the majesty of liis Cre- ator, but turning away all his reverence from him, falls down to the idol of power, — that tlie man of avarice withdraws all his trust from the living God, and, embarking all liis 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 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. liis 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 lor 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 liang over the terms and the ex ■ planations of that gospel, against the light ol which, the god of this world blindeth the minds of those who believe not. Letais therefore reflect that the principle on which the peculiarities of the gospel look so mysterious, is just the feeling which na- ture has of its own suthciency; and, tliat you may renounce this delusive feeling altogether, we ask you to think, how totally destitute you are of that whic God chiefly requires of you. He requires your lieart, and we venture to say of every man amongst j ou, who has heretofore lived in neglect of the ?reat .'salvation, that his heart, with all its ob- j( cts 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, accimnilates upon you the guilt of a disobedience of a far deeper and more offensive 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 pervading the whole system both of your desires and your doings, that which gives to sin all its turpitude, and all its moral hideonsness 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- ful ness, amid all your forms, and all your decencies, of him who endureth for ever, admitted to an habitual and a practical as- f There is that universal attribute of the car- 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 nal mind — enmity against God ; and we affirm that, with this distaste in your hearts towards him, you, on every principle of a spiritual and intelligent moralhy, 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. unviolated, and his holiness untarnished, an\ ide for the nourishment of her young. Take account of these principles as they exi.st in the bosom of man, and you tiiere find com- passion for the imfortunate ; the shame of detection in any thing mean, or disgrace- ful; the desire of standing well in th^ opinion of his 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 which, 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 degree; 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 sAveet-tempered, tlie upriglit, whose hearts swell with 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 ailtogether 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 place, beyond the limits of his economy — we should still find ourselves DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. 37 111 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 plying its labours of usefulness ; and patri- otism earning its proud reward, in the testi- mony of an approving people. Here, then, you liave 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 thei*e 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 liis sanction to wliatsoever tilings 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. [s this solemn an- nouncement from the voice of tlie Eternal to make no difference upon them ? Are those principles which might flourish and hi' snst lined on a soil of atheism, to be counted enough even after the wonderful truth of a li\ing and a reigning God has burst upon the world ? You arejust ; — right, in iispi^nsably right. You say you Iiave as- S/iri'd no more than your own. But this pr jperty is not your own. He gave it to you, a'!'] he may call upon you to give to him an account of your stewardship. You are compassionate; — right also. But what if h" set up the measure of the sanctuary upon your compassion? and, instead of a desultory instinct, excited to feeling by a moving picture of sensibility, and limited in effect to a humble fraction of your expendi- ture, he call upon you to love your neigh- bour as yourself, and to maintain tiiis prin- ciple at the expense of self-denial, and in the midst of manifold provocations'? You love your children ;— still indispensably right. 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 thhigs 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 '? — tiiat 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 FatJier ; and that, unless you withdraw your affections from a v.'orld tliat pcrisheth, you will perish along witli it. Surely if these, and such like principles, may consist with the atheism of a world where God is un- thought of and unknown, — you 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. The Judgment of Men, compared with the Judgment of God. of 4. " 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 ' -':■ [II.lWuEN 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 by 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 judgrnent with his God. .Job seems to liave been aware of this difference, and at times to have been humbled by it. In reference 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 arcaud him, when he says of himself, that he delivered' the poor that DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN NATURE. [SERM. ciifd, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him; that the blessing of him til it 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 n.lx; and a diadem ; that he was eyes~to the blind, and feet was he to the lame; that he w:is 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 wlien the eye saw him, it gave witness unto him. There is not a more frequent exercise of mind in society, than that by whicli 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 eagages 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 varieties 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- liuftion of our text; it a man may have the jud